Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters

by Henry Wallace Phillips

One-half the roof was missin', and the clapboardin' didn't come quite to the top, but that paralytic took it good-natured, sayin' that as he wasn't more'n half a man, half a hotel was plenty good enough for him. But ah! he allus wound up, if he could get the proper motion in his hind legs, he'd be up and find his Lost Injun mine, and after that no dull care for him.

I ain't goin' to describe that gentleman any more. When I say he unloaded a map of that Lost Injun mine, with the very spot marked with a red cross, anybody'll understand that the paralysis hadn't affected his head none.

You see, he was so quiet and patient under his afflictions, and he talked it off so smooth, that the flyest gent that ever lived could be excused for slippin' up and gettin' stuck in the discourse before he knew that gravitation was workin' at the same old stand.

Now, for a straight-away dream-builder give me Aggy. He could talk the horns off a steer, and that steer would beller with happiness to think he was rid of a nuisance.

Ag stood six-foot-two by two-foot-six, and when he had the long-tailed coat, the plug hat, and his general-in-the-army whiskers working right, he only had to stick one hand in his vest and begin, "Fellow-Citizens and Gentlemen," and he could start anything from a general war to a barber-shop expedition to gather North Poles.

Give him a good, honest, upright gang of men that would weigh two hundred a head, and Aggy could romp with their money or them, so the worst used monkey in the cage would go home pleased.

Ag was built to play with huskies, not paralytics; so one day when he stooped and turned sideways to get into the paralytic's room, treadin' soft on the boards so's not to land the outfit in the cellar, the sight of the poor sick man lyin' there—everlastingly lyin'—his helpless hands turned palm up on the covers, why, old Ag's heart was touched. He was that kind of grass-hopper, Ag, to whipsaw you out of a hundred and then lend you five hundred, even if he had to rip the pelt off somebody else to get it. I asked him about that trait onct.

"Why, Hy, my boy," says he, with his thumb in his vest, and his twenty-five cent cigar in his teeth—we was livin' at the risk of a high-roller hotel at the time—"in the first place, I'm a gentleman in disguise, and carelessness allows me to drop the disguise now and then; besides that," says he, "I hate these here conventions. Because I touch Mr. Jones for his wad, must I therefor scramble Mr. Ferguson? And if I stake Ferguson, must I open a free lunch for the country? Now, God forbid!" says Ag. "I started out being pleased by doing the things that pleased me, regardless of the vulgar habits of the mob. The mob can select its destination at any or all times it pleases, but I'm going to be Agamemnon G. Jones," says he. "The unexpected always happens, and I'm the unexpected," he says.

You wouldn't ask for a man to keep his statements clearer than that. I was the only person had a line on him. I'd figger out every possibility for him and then sleep peaceful, knowing that it had come off different.

So while nobody'd figger on Ag's gettin' stuck by a paralytic, darned if he didn't come away with a map in his hands. "Here is our fortune, Henry," says he.