Well, will you believe it? When Hill give that Hen his chance she begun to cry over it! She knew it wouldn’t do to cry hard––seeing 50 what a mess it would make with her color when the tears got running––and so she pulled herself up quick and mopped her eyes dry with her pocket-handkerchief. And then she let out with all four legs at once, like a Colorado mule, and everlastingly gave it to all hands! It was just like the Hen, being so good-hearted, and thinking so much of Hill, to fire up like that about Santa Fé’s pool on when he’d get his medicine; and all the boys knowed that beside the address she was making to the whole congregation Santa Fé was going to get another, and a worse one, when she had him off where she could play out to him a lone hand. But the boys didn’t mind the jawing she give ’em––except they was a little ashamed, knowing putting such a rig on Hill was a mean thing to do––and I guess the whole business would have ended right there (only for the dressing-down Santa Fé was to get later) if Hart’s nephew hadn’t taken it into his head to chip in––being drunker’n usual, and a fool anyway––and so started what turned out to be a fresh game.
I do suppose Hart’s nephew was about 51 the meanest ever got born. Bill Hart was a good enough fellow himself, and how he ever come to have such a God-forsaken chump for a nephew was more’n anybody could tell. Things must have been powerful bad, I reckon, on his mother’s side. He was one of the blowing kind, with nothing behind his blow; and his feet was that tender they wasn’t fit to walk on anything harder’n fresh mush. The boys all the time was putting up rigs on him; and he’d go around talking so big about what he meant to do to get even with ’em you’d think he was going to clean out the whole town. But he took mighty good care to do his tall talking promiscuous: after making the mistake of trying it once on a little man he thought he could manage––a real peaceable little feller that looked like he wouldn’t stand up to a kitten––and getting his nose and his mouth and his eyes all mashed into one. The little man apologized to the rest for doing it that way, saying he’d a-been ashamed of himself all the rest of his life if he’d gone for a thing like that with his gun.
Well, it was this Hart’s nephew––like enough he had some sort of a name that belonged to him, but he wasn’t worth the trouble of finding out what it was––who chipped in when the Hen took to her tirading, and so give things a new turn. Standing up staggery, and talking in his drunk fool way, he told her the road across to Santa Fé was as safe as a Sunday-school; and he said he’d be glad to be in Hill’s boots and drive that coach himself, seeing what an interest she took in stage-drivers; and he asked her, sort of nasty, how she managed to get along for company when Hill was at the other end of his run. Hart’s nephew was drunker’n usual that night, same as I’ve said, or even he’d a-knowed he’d likely get into trouble talking that way to the Hen.
For about a minute things looked real serious. The Hen straightened right up, and on the back of her neck––where it showed, she not being fixed red there to start with––she got as red as canned tomatoes; and some of the boys moved a little, sort of uneasy; and Santa Fé reached out 53 over the piles of chips for his gun. He didn’t get it, because the Hen saw what he was doing and stopped him by looking at him quick––and knowing what Charley was when it come to shooting, you’ll know the Hen sent that look at him about as fast as looks can go! The game had stopped right there; and it was so quiet in the room you’d a-thought the snoring of the two drunks asleep on benches in one corner was a thunder-storm coming down the cañon!
Of course what we all expected the Hen to do was to wipe up the floor with Hart’s nephew by giving him such a talking to––she could use language, the Hen could, when she started in at it––as would make him sorrier’n usual he’d ever been born; and I guess, from the looks of her, that was what at the first jump she meant to do. But she was a quick-thinking one, the Hen was, and she had a way of getting more funny notions into that good-looking head of hers than any other woman that ever walked around on this earth alive––and so she give us all a real jolt by playing out cards we wasn’t expecting at all. 54 Just as sudden as a wink, she sort of twitched and twinkled––same as she always did when she was up to some new bit of deviltry––and when she set her stamps to going she talked like as if she was real pleased. She didn’t look, though, as good-natured as she talked––keeping on being straightened up, and having a kind of setness in her jaws and a snappiness in them big black eyes of hers that made everybody but Hart’s nephew, who was too drunk to know anything, dead sure she still was mad all the way through.
“If he’ll lend ’em to you, and I guess he will, why don’t you get into Mr. Hill’s boots?” she said to Hart’s nephew. And then she fetched up a nice sort of smile, and said to him real friendly-sounding: “I do like stage-drivers, and that’s a fact––and there’s no telling how pleasant I’ll make things for you if you’ll take the coach across to Santa Fé to-morrow over that Sunday-school road! Will you do it?” And then the Hen give him one of them fetching looks of hers, and asked him over: “Will you do it––to oblige me?”
Now that was more words at one time than the Hen had dropped on Hart’s nephew since he struck the camp; and as the few he’d ever got from her mostly hadn’t been nice ones, and these sounding to him––he being drunk––like as if they was real good-natured, he was that pleased he didn’t know what to do. Of course he was dead set on the Hen, same as everybody else was––she truly was a powerful fine woman––and it just was funny to see how he tried to steady himself on his legs gentlemanly, and was all over fool smiles.
So he said back to the Hen––speaking slow, to keep his words from tumbling all over each other––he’d just drive that coach across to Santa Fé a-hooping if Hill’d lend it to him; and then he asked Hill if he might have it––and told him he could trust him to handle it in good shape, because everybody knowed he was a real daisy at driving mules.