Ladies and Gentlemen

by Irvin S. Cobb

“Tell you what, just stand up with your arms down at your sides.... There, that’s better, brother. No, it ain’t neither! I couldn’t bear afterwards to think of that forlorn look out of your eyes. The way they looked out of their eyes is the only thing that ever bothers me in connection with several of the fellows I’ve had to shoot heretofore. Maybe you’ll think I’m morbid but things like that certainly do prey on a fellow’s mind afterward—if he’s kind-hearted which, without any flattery, I may say I’m built that way. So while I hate to keep pestering you with orders when you’re hovering on the very brink of eternity, won’t you please just turn around so you’ll have your back to me? Thank you kindly, that’ll do splendid. Now you stay perfectly still and I’ll count three, kind of slow, and when I get to ‘three’ I’ll let you have it slick as a whistle right between the shoulders.... One!” And we can hear that old mule’s ear of a hammer on that six-gun go click, click. Then: “Two-o-o!... Steady, don’t wiggle or you’re liable to make me nervous.... Thr—”

Somebody lets out the most gosh-awful yell you ever heard and we shove the door open just in time to see Little Al sailing out of that window, head first, like a bird on the wing; and then we heard a hard thump on the frozen ground ’way down below, followed by low moaning sounds. In his hurry Little Al must have plumb forgot that while Billy Grimm’s saloon was flush with the street in front, at the far end it was scaffolded up over a hollow fifteen or twenty feet deep.

So we swarmed down the back steps and picked him up and you never saw a soberer party in your life than what that ex-suicider was, or one that was gladder to see a rescue party arrive. Soon as he got his wind back he clung to us, pleading with us to protect him from that murdering scoundrel of a man-killer and demanding to know what kind of a fellow he was not to be able to take a joke, and stating that he’d had a close call which it certainly was going to be a lesson to him, and so on. Pretty soon after that he began to take note that he was hurting all over. You wouldn’t have believed that a man who wasn’t over five-feet-two could be bunged up and bruised up in so many different localities as Little Al was. Even his hair was sore to the touch.

When he got so he could hobble around he joined an organization which up until then it’d only had one other charter member in good standing, the same being Whiz Bollinger, former owner and chief mourner of that there late-lamented buckboard. It was a club with just one by-law—which was entertaining a profound distrust for Samson Goodhue, Esquire—but there were quite a good many strong rich cuss-words in the ritual.

Still, any man who devotes himself to the public welfare is bound to accumulate a few detractors as he goes along. Good Sam went booming ahead like as if there wasn’t a private enemy on his list or a cloud in his sky. He’d do this or that or the other thing always, mind you, with the highest and the purest motives and every pop it would turn out wrong. Was he discouraged? Did he throw up his hands and quit in the face of accumulating ingratitude? Not so as to be visible to the naked eye. The milk of human kindness that was sloshing about inside of him appeared to be absolutely curdle-proof. I wish I knew his private formula—I could invent a dandy patent churn.

Let’s see, now, what was his next big outstanding failure? I’m passing over the little things such as him advising Timber-Line Hance about what was the best way to encourage a boil on his neck that wouldn’t come to a head and getting the medicines mixed in his mind and recommending turpentine instead of hog-lard. I’m trying to pick out the high points in his career. Let’s see? Now I’ve got it. Along toward spring, when the thaws set in, somebody told him how Boots Darnell and Babe Louder had been hived up all winter in a shanty up on the Blue Shell with nobody to keep them company except each other, and how Babe was laid up with a busted leg and Boots couldn’t leave him except to run their traps. So nothing would do Good Sam but what he must put out to stay a couple of days with that lonesome pair and give ’em the sunshine of his presence.

They welcomed him with open arms and made him right to home in their den, such as it was. I ought to tell you before we go any further that this here Babe and this here Boots were a couple of simple-minded, kind-hearted old coots that had been baching it together for going on fifteen or twenty years. It was share and share alike with those two. Living together so long, they got so they divided their thoughts. One would know what was on the other’s mind before he said it and would finish the sentence for him. They’d actually split a word when it was a word running into extra syllables. “Well, I’ll be dad—” Boots would say; “—gummed,” Babe would add, signifying that they were going partners even on the dad-gumming. Their conversation would put you in mind of one of these here anthems.

They certainly were glad to see Good Sam. In honor of the occasion Boots cooked up a muskrat stew and made a batch of sour-dough biscuits for supper and Babe sat up in his bunk and told his favorite story which Boots had already heard it probably two or three million times already but carried on like he enjoyed it. They showed him their catch of pelts and, taking turn and turn about, they told him how they’d been infested all winter by a worthless stray hound-dog. It seems this hound-dog happened along one day and adopted them and he’d been with ’em ever since and he’d just naturally made their life a burden to them—getting in the way and breeding twice as many fleas as he needed for his own use and letting them have the overflow; and so on.

But they said his worst habit was his appetite. He was organized inside like a bottomless pit, so they said. If they took him along with them he’d scare all the game out of the country by chasing it but never caught any; and if they left him behind locked up in the cabin he’d eat a side of meat or a pack-saddle or something before they got back. A set of rawhide harness was just a light snack to him, they said—sort of an appetizer. And his idea of a pleasant evening was to sit on his haunches and howl two or three hours on a stretch with a mournful enthusiasm and after he did go to sleep he’d have bad dreams and howl some more without waking up, but they did. Altogether, it seemed he had more things about him that you wouldn’t care for than a relative by marriage.

They said, speaking in that overlapping way of theirs, that they’d prayed to get shut of him but didn’t have any luck. So Good Sam asked them why somebody hadn’t just up and killed him. And they hastened to state that they were both too tender-hearted for that. But if he felt called upon to take the job of being executioner off their hands, the hound being a stranger to him and he not a member of the family as was the case with them, why, they’d be most everlastingly grateful. And he said he would do that very little trick first thing in the morning.