Some of them summer days in Palomitas was that hot they’d melt the stuffing out of a lightning-rod, and you could cook eggs in the pockets of your pants. When things was that way the town was apt to get quieted down––most being satisfied to take enough drinks early to make it pleasant spending the rest of the day sleeping ’em off somewheres in the shade. Along late in the afternoon, though, the wind always breezed down real cool and pleasant from the mountains––and then the boys would wake up and get a brace on, and whatever was going to happen would begin.
Being that sort of weather, nobody was paying no attention worth speaking of to 164 nothing: and when the Denver train come in––being about three hours late, like it had a way of being, after a wash-out––the place was in such a blister that pretty much all you could hear to show anybody was alive in Palomitas was snores. Besides Wood––who had to be awake to do his work when the train got there––and the clump of Mexicans that always hung around the deepo at train-time, there wasn’t half a dozen folks with their eyes open in the whole town.
Santa Fé Charley was one of the few that was awake and sober. He made a point, Santa Fé did, of being on hand when the train come in because there always was chances somebody might be aboard he could do business with; and he had to keep sober, mostly, same as I’ve said, or he couldn’t a-done his work so it would pay. He used to square things up––when he really couldn’t stand the strain no longer––by knocking off dealing and having a good one lasting about a week at a time. It was while he was on one of them tears of his, going it worse’n usual, he got cleaned out in Denver Jones’s 165 place––and him able, when he hadn’t a jag on, to wipe up the floor with Denver!––and then went ahead the next day, being still jagged, and shot poor old Bill Hart. But them is matters that happened a little later, and will be spoke of further on.
When the train pulled in alongside the deepo platform it didn’t seem at first there was nobody on it but the usual raft of Mexicans with bundles in the day-coach––who all come a-trooping out, cluttered up with their queer duds, and went to hugging their aunts and uncles who was waiting for ’em in real Mexican style. Charley looked the lot over and seen there was nothing in it worth taking time to; and then he got his Denver paper from the messenger in the express-car and started off to go on back to his room in the Forest Queen.
Down he come along the platform––he was a-looking at his Tribune, and not paying no attention––and just as he got alongside the Pullman a man stepped off it and most plumped into him; and would a-plumped if 166 he hadn’t been so beat out by the hot weather he was going slow. He was a little round friendly looking feller, with a red face and little gray side-whiskers; and he was dressed up in black same as Charley was––only he’d a shorter-tailed coat, and hadn’t a white tie on, and was wearing a shiny plug hat that looked most extra unsuitable in them parts on that sort of a day.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” says the little man, as he pulled himself up just in time to keep from bumping.
Charley bowed handsome––there was no ketching off Santa Fé when it come to slinging good manners, his being that gentlemanly he could a-give points to a New York bar-keep––and says back: “Sir, I beg yours! Heedlessness is my besetting sin. The fault is mine!” And then he said, keeping on talking the toney way he knowed how to: “I trust, sir, that you are not incommoded by the heat. Even for New Mexico in August, this is a phenomenally hot day.”
