“Non, m’sieur,”—with apologetic eyebrows and shoulders. The colonel thrust his hands into his long brown curls and said:
“I want you to put a little oil on my hair and rub it in; compre?”
“Oui, oui, m’sieur.”
Then Bill asked: “Marsh, what is French for shave?”
My French was as limited as his, so I replied:
“‘Razoo,’ I guess.”
“And I want you to razoo my face, compre?”
“Oui, oui, m’sieur.”
The barber shaved his customer, but he had mistaken the sign language of Cody’s first order, for he raised a pair of shears to clip the Colonel’s long hair—one of his most treasured possessions and features; in fact, like Samson of Biblical fame, his hair was the secret of his strength. Just as the barber lifted a lock and posed the shears for the first snip Bill saw the situation in a mirror. With a cowboy yell that would have made a Comanche Indian green with envy he sprang from the chair to save his hair. The barber, who had been working with bated breath, appalled by the savage appearance of his customer, dropped his shears and his knees shook, as, with chattering teeth, he begged for mercy. The wife’s screams added to the confusion, the lingering crowd pressed in and was reinforced by a gendarme who began a rapid fire of questions in excited French. No explanations that were offered in either tongue were comprehended by the parties who spoke the other language and, as the barber seemed consumed with a desire to get rid of us, we hurried away in a cab, the barber’s wife following us with a torrent of imprecations—and she so pretty, too!