The little man seemed to get a brace when he had his grub inside of him; and over he 177 went to the deepo and give Wood the order he had from the President to see the books––and was real intelligent, Wood said, in finding out how railroading in them parts was done. But when he’d cleaned up his railroad job, and took to asking questions about the Territory, and Palomitas, and things generally––and got the sort of answers Santa Fé had fixed should be give him, with some more throwed in––Wood said his feet showed to be that tender he allowed it would a-hurt him with thick boots on to walk on boiled beans.
Wood said he guessed he broke the lying record that afternoon; and he said he reckoned if the little man swallowed half of what was give him, and there wasn’t much of anything he gagged at, he must a-thought Palomitas––with its church twice Sundays and prayer-meetings regular three times a week, and its faro-bank with the preacher for dealer, and its Sunshine Club that was all mixed in with shooting-scrapes, and its Friendly Aid Society that attended mostly to what lynchings was needed––was something like a bit of heaven 178 that had broke out from the corral it belonged in and gone to grazing in hell’s front yard!
When he’d stuffed him as much as was needed, Wood told him––Santa Fé having fixed it that way––there was a Mexican church about a thousand years old over in the Cañada that was worth looking at; and he told him he’d take him across on his buck-board to see it if he cared to go. He bit at that, just as Santa Fé counted on; and about four o’clock off they went––it was only three mile or so down to the Cañada––in good time to get him back and give him what more was coming to him before he started off North again on the night train. Wood said the ride was real enjoyable––the little man showing up as sensible as anybody when he got to the church and struck things he knowed about; and it turned out he could talk French, and that pleased the padre––he was that French one I’ve spoke about, who was as white as they make ’em––and so things went along well.
The wind had set in to blow down the valley cool and pleasant as they was getting 179 along home; and coming down on it, when they got about half a mile from Palomitas, they begun to hear shooting––and it kept on, and more of it, the closer they come to town. Knowing what Santa Fé had set the boys up to, Wood said he pretty near laughed out when he heard it; but he held in, he said––and told the little man, when he asked what it meant, that it didn’t mean nothing in particular: being only some sort of a shooting-scrape, like enough––the same as often happened along about that time in the afternoon.
He said the little man looked queerish, and wanted to know if the men in the town was shooting at a target; and when Wood said he guessed they was targetting at each other, and likely there’d be some occurrences, he said he looked queerisher––and said such savagery was too horrible to be true. But he wasn’t worried a bit about himself, Wood said––he was as nervy a little man, Wood said, as he’d ever got up to––and all he wanted was to have Wood whip the mules up, so he’d get there quick and see what was going on. Wood whipped up, right enough, 180 and the mules took ’em a-kiting––going at a full run the last half-mile or so, and not coming down to a walk till they’d crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and was most to the top of the hill. At the top of the hill they stopped––and that was a good place to stop at, for the circus was a-going on right there.
Things really did look serious; and Wood said––for all he’d been told what was coming––he more’n half thought the boys had got to rumpussing in dead earnest. Three or four was setting on the ground with their sleeves and pants rolled up tying up their arms and legs with their pocket-handkerchiefs; there was a feller––Nosey Green, it turned out to be––laying on one side in a sort of mixed-up heap like as if he’d dropped sudden; right in the middle of the road Blister Mike was sprawled out, with Santa Fé––his black clothes all over dust and his hat off––holding his head with one hand and feeling at his heart with the other; and just as the buck-board stopped, right in the thick of it, Kerosene Kate come a-tearing along, with the 181 Sage-Brush Hen close after her, and plumped down on Mike and yelled out: “Oh, my husband! My poor husband! He is foully slain!”
It was all so natural, Wood said, that seeing it sudden that way give him a first-class jolt. For a minute, he said, he couldn’t help thinking it was the real thing. As for the little man––and he likely would have took matters just the same, and no blame to him, if his feet had been as hard as anybody’s––he swallowed the show whole. “Good Heavens!” says he, getting real palish. “What a dreadful thing this is!”
Santa let go of Mike’s head and got up, brushing his pants off, and says solemn: “Our poor brother has passed from us. Palomitas has lost one of its most useful citizens––there was nobody who could mix drinks as he could––and the world has lost a noble man! Take away his stricken wife, my dear,” he says, speaking to the Sage-Brush Hen. “Take poor Sister Rebecca home with you to the parsonage––my duties lie elsewhere at present––and pour out to her 182 from your tender heart the balm of comfort that you so well know how to give.”
Then he come along to the buck-board, and says to the little man: “I greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred while you are with us. From every point of view the event is lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his facial peculiarity as Nosey Green––the gentleman piled up over there on the other side of the road––was as noble-hearted a man as ever lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. Both were corner-stones of our Sunshine Club, and among the most faithful of my parishioners. In deep despondency we mourn their loss!”