CHAPTER XVI
ARRANGING FOR MORE TROUBLE
See what the geography-book says about Arizona—the same size as England? Shucks! There's homely ignorance from an office duck who dreams he can use a tape-measure to size up a desert. In England, if you wander round after dark, you're apt to fall off and get wet in the ocean. But you can sure stray off the edge of Arizona without the least chance of a wet, because the desert just rolls on more continuous than ever, till you're due to die of thirst. There's a practical difference in size, which your book theorist wouldn't be apt to survive.
Again, by the books we're a community of sixty thousand pink and white citizens, all purely yearning for right and justice. By the facts, we're really split up into two herds—the town men, who use the law, and the range men, who naturally prefer a six-gun.
I aim politely to say the best I can for the town men. You see, if a gentleman feels that he's just got to waltz in and rob the graves of his own parents, one may not understand his symptoms, but one has to try and think of him charitable. Our town men has mostly been found out acting self-indulgent, and been chased around by the police. That's why they flocked to Arizona, which is convenient at the Gates of Hades, with the Breath of Flame by way of excuse for a climate. There's a sort of comfortable, smell-your-future-home feeling about old Arizona which attracts such ducks. Anywhere else they would get their necks stretched, but in Arizona they can elect judges and police out of their own tribe. Then if they happen to indulge in a little bigamy, or thieving, or shooting, the lawyers get them off. They love the law which proves them up innocent, so you may class them all as law-abiding citizens.
Now as to us plainsmen. The bad side of us is plumb apparent to the naked eye, and if there's a good side it's known to our friends, not advertised to strangers. We ain't claiming to be law-abiding citizens when we know the judge for a sure-thing politician, the lawyers for runaway gaol-birds, and the jury all for sale at the rate of a dollar a thief. We're lawless, sure enough, until we see the law dealt out by honest men.
Are you fed up with one-eyed sermons from a cow-thief? Well, suppose we apply the facts.
Here was two boys of our tribe bogged down to their withers in trouble. The town men howled for their blood, young Ryan offered plenty wealth for their raw scalps, the law claimed them for meat—and every plainsman on the range got right up on his hind legs for war. To our way of thinking robbery and killing are bad medicine, but innocent, holy joys compared with Arizona law. So naturally by twos and threes the punchers quit work on the round-up to come and smell at old Grave City and find out why she'd got a swollen head. They hung around saloons, projecting to see if something had gone wrong with the local breed of whisky; they gathered and made war-talk in the street; they came around me, wanting to know whether or not to break out and eat that town.
"Boys," says I, "if you-all stalks round with mean eyes and dangerous smiles, these here citizens is going to hole up in their cyclone cellars and send for the army. We don't want the army messing around our game. Just you whirl in now and play signs of peace, and make good medicine. Lay low, give yo' ponies a strong feed—and wait for the night."
"Chalkeye," says one of them, "is this to be war?"