“You’ve come out well once as the Baptist minister, Charley,” the Hen said, shaking all over; “and I reckon you can do it again––only it won’t be so easy showing off the new church and the parsonage by daylight as it was in the dark. About us girls laying low, maybe you’re right and maybe you’re not right. Anyway, don’t you worry about us. All I’ll say is, it won’t be the ladies in this combine that’ll give anything away!” And she and the other girls got so to laughing over it they all of ’em had to set down.
Cherry was more pleased than a little the way things had gone––and he said so to the boys, and set up drinks all round again. Then he and Abe Simons––they was the committee to do it––wrote out a notice that was tacked up on the deepo door and read this way:
TO THE CITIZENS OF PALOMITAS
Mr. William Hart’s aunt is coming to pay him a visit, and will strike this town either by the Denver train to-morrow morning or the Santa Fé coach to-morrow afternoon.
She is a perfect lady, and it is ordered that during her stay in Palomitas this town has got to behave itself so her feelings won’t be hurt. She is to be took care of and given a pleasant impression. All fights and drunks must be put off till 86 she’s gone. Persons neglecting to do so will be taken out into the sage-brush by members of the committee, and are likely to get hurt.
Mr. Hart regrets this occurrence as much as anybody, and agrees his aunt’s visit sha’n’t last beyond a day and a half if she comes down from Denver, and only one day if she comes in from Santa Fé.
(Signed) THE COMMITTEE.
When Cherry got a-hold of Hart and told him what the town had agreed to do for him he was that grateful––being all worked up, anyway––he pretty near cried.
As it turned out, Hart’s aunt come in on Hill’s coach from Santa Fé––her friends having gone down that way by the Atchison––and as Hill had been at the meeting at the Forest Queen he was able to give things a good start. Hill always was a friendly sort of a fellow, and––except he used terrible bad language, which he said come of his having to drive mules––he was a real first-class ladies’ man.
Hill said he spotted Hart’s aunt the minute 87 he set his eyes on her waiting for the coach at the Fonda, there not being likely to be more’n one in the Territory of that kind. She was a trig little old lady, dressed up in black clothes as neat as wax, he said, with a little black bonnet setting close to her head; and she wore gold specs and had a longish nose. But she’d a real friendly look about her, he said; and while she spoke a little precise and particular she wasn’t a bit stuck-up, and seemed to be taking things about as they happened to come along. When he asked her if she wouldn’t set up on the box with him, so she could see the country, she said that was just what would suit her; and up she come, he said, as spry as a queer little bird. Then he whipped up his mules––being careful not to use any language––and got the coach started, and begun right off to be agreeable by telling her he guessed he had the pleasure of knowing her nephew, and asking her if she wasn’t the aunt of Mr. William Hart.
Well, of course that set things to going pleasant between ’em; and when she’d 88 allowed she was Hart’s aunt, and said she was glad to meet a friend of his, she started in asking all the questions about Bill and about Palomitas she knowed how to ask.
Hill said he guessed that day they had to lay off the regular recording angel and put a hired first-class stenographer on his job––seeing how no plain angel, not writing shorthand, could a-kept up with all the lies he felt it his duty to tell if he was going to bring Bill through in good shape and keep up the reputation of the town. It wasn’t square to charge them lies up to him, anyway, Hill said, seeing he only was playing Cherry’s hand for him; and he said he hoped they was put in Cherry’s bill. By the time he’d got through with his fairy tales, he said, he’d give Hart such a character he didn’t know him himself; and he’d touched up Palomitas till he’d got it so it might a-been a town just outside Boston––only he allowed they was sometimes troubled with hard cases passing through; and he told her of course she’d find things kind of half-baked and noisy out there on the frontier. And she must remember, 89 he told her, that all the folks in the town was young––young men who’d brought their young wives with ’em, come to hustle in a new country––and she mustn’t mind if things went livelier’n the way she was used to back East.
Hill said she said she wasn’t expecting to find things like they was at home, and she guessed she’d manage all right––seeing she always got on well with young people, and wasn’t a bit set in her own ways. And she said she was as pleased as she was surprised to find out the kind of a town Palomitas was––because her nephew William’s letters had led her to think it had a good many bad characters in it; and he’d not mentioned any church but the Catholic one where the natives went; and as to the Bible Class and the Friendly Aid Society, he’d never said a word about ’em at all. She went on talking so cheerful and pleasant, Hill said, it give him creeps in his back; and he got so rattled the last half of the run––coming on from Pojuaque, where they’d had dinner at old man Bouquet’s––he hardly knowed what he’d told 90 and what he hadn’t, and whether he was standing on his head or his heels.