Cherry said he begun to have a notion, though, while Hart was talking, how the thing might be worked so there wouldn’t be no real trouble if it could be fixed so Hart’s aunt wouldn’t stay in Palomitas more’n about a day; and he come right on down to the Forest Queen to see if he could get the boys to help him put it through. He left Hart clearing out the room he kept flour and meal in––being the cleanest––trying to rig up for his aunt some sort of a bunking-place. He was going to give her his own cot and mattress, he said; and he could fit her out with a looking-glass and a basin and pitcher all right because he kept them sort of things to sell; and he said he’d make the place extra tidy by putting a new horse-blanket on the floor. Seeing his way to getting a grip on that much of the contract, Cherry said, seemed to make him feel a little less bad.
Cherry waited till the deal was over, when he got to the Forest Queen; and then he asked Santa Fé Charley if he’d let him speak 81 to the boys for a minute before the game went on. He was always polite and obliging, Santa Fé was, and he said of course he might; and he rapped on the table with his derringer for order, and said Mr. Cherry had the floor. Charley was old-fashioned in his ways of fighting. He always had a six-shooter in his belt, same as other folks; but he said he kept it mainly for show. Derringers, he said, was better and surer––because you could work ’em around in your pocket while the other fellow was getting his gun out, and before he was ready for business you could shoot him right through your pants. Later on, it was that very way Santa Fé shot Hart. But he always was friendly with Hart till he did shoot him; and it was more his backing than anything else––’specially when it come to the kindergarten––that made Cherry’s plan for helping Hart out go through.
When the game was stopped, and the boys was all listening, Cherry told about the hole Hart was in and allowed it was a deep one; and he said it was only fair––Hart having done good turns for most everybody, one 82 time and another––his friends should be willing to take some trouble to get him out of it. Hart’s aunt, he said, come from a quiet part of Vermont, and likely would be jolted bad when she struck Palomitas if things was going the ordinary way––she being elderly, and like enough a little set in her ways, and not used much to crazy drunks, and shooting-matches, and such kinds of lively carryings-on. But she’d only stay one day, or at most a day and a half––Hart having agreed to take her right back East himself, if she couldn’t be got rid of no other way––and that gave ’em a chance to fix things so her feelings wouldn’t be hurt, though doing it was going to be hard on all hands. And then, having got the boys worked up wondering what he was driving at, Cherry went ahead and said he wanted ’em to agree––just for the little while Hart’s aunt was going to stay there––to run Palomitas like it was a regular back-East Sunday-school town. He knew he was asking a good deal, he said, but he did ask it––and he appealed to the better feelings of the gentlemen 83 assembled around that faro-table to do that much to get Bill Hart out of his hole. Then Cherry said he wasn’t nobody’s orator, but he guessed he’d made clear what he wanted to lay before the meeting; and he said he was much obliged, and had pleasure in setting up drinks for the crowd.
As was to be expected of ’em, all the boys––knowing Hart for a square-acting man, and liking him––tumbled right off to Cherry’s plan. Santa Fé said––this was after they’d had their drinks––he s’posed he was chairman of the meeting, and he guessed he spoke the sense of the meeting when he allowed Mr. Cherry’s scheme was about the only way out for their esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. Hart, and it ought to go through. But as it was a matter that seriously affected the comfort and convenience of everybody in Palomitas, he said, it was only square to take a vote on it––and so he’d ask all in favor of Mr. Cherry’s motion to say “Ay.” And everybody in the room––except the few that was asleep, or too drunk to say anything––said “Ay” as loud as they knowed how.
“Mr. Cherry’s motion is carried, gentlemen,” Santa Fé said; “and I will now appoint a committee to draught a notice to be posted at the deepo, and to call around at the other banks and saloons in the town and notify verbally our fellow-citizens of the action we have taken––and I will ask the Hen here kindly to inform the other ladies of Palomitas of our intentions, and to request their assistance in realizing them. She had better tell them, I reckon, that the way they can come to the front most effectively in this crisis is by keeping entirely out of sight in the rear.”
The Sage-Brush Hen, along with some of the other girls, had come in from the back room––where the dancing was––to find out what the circus was about; and when they caught on to what Palomitas was going to be like when Hart’s aunt struck it they all just yelled.
“WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO DOOR”