“Is it them?” says Jack. “Arrah, man yer Kingship,” says he, “they may be very good—for this counthry; but sure we’d throw them out of the ground for useless afther-shoots in Donegal. I mind one bean-stalk in partickler, that my father had for a show an’ a cur’osity, that he used to show as a great wondher entirely to sthrangers. It stood on ninety-nine acres of ground, it was nine hundred mile high, an’ every leaf covered nine acres. It fed nine thousand horses, nine thousand mules, an’ nine thousand jackasses for nineteen years. He used to send nine thousand harvestmen up the stalk in the spring to cut and gather off the soft branches at the top. They used to cut these off when they’d reach up as far as them (which was always in the harvest time), an’ throw them down, an’ nine hundred and ninety-nine horses an’ carts were kept busy for nine months carting the stuff away. Then the harvestmen always reached down to the foot of the stalk at Christmas again.”
“Faix, Jack,” says the King, “it was a wondherful bean-stalk, that, entirely.”
“You might say that,” says Jack, trying to make the most of it, for he was now on his last leg. “You might say that,” says he. “Why, I mind one year I went up the stalk with the harvestmen, an’ when I was nine thousand mile up, doesn’t I miss my foot, and down I come. I fell feet foremost, and sunk up to my chin in a whinstone rock that was at the foot. There I was in a quandhary—but I was not long ruminatin’ till I hauled out my knife, an’ cut off my head, an’ sent it home to look for help. I watched after it, as it went away, an’ lo an’ behould ye, afore it had gone a mile I saw a fox set on it, and begin to worry it. ‘By this an’ by that,’ says I to meself, ‘but this is too bad!’—an’ I jumped out an’ away as hard as I could run, to the assistance of my head. An’ when I come up, I lifted my foot an’ give the fox three kicks, an’ knocked three kings out of him—every one of them a nicer an’ a better jintleman than you.”
“Ye’re a liar, an’ a rascally liar,” says the King.
“More power to ye!” says Jack, givin’ three buck leaps clean into the air, “an’ it’s proud I am to get you to confess it; for I have won yer daughter.”
Right enough the King had to give up to Jack the daughter—an’ be the same token, from the first time she clapped her two eyes on Jack she wasn’t the girl to gainsay him—an’ her weight in goold. An’ they were both of them marrid, an’ had such a weddin’ as surpassed all the weddin’s ever was heerd tell of afore or since in that country or in this. An’ Jack lost no time in sendin’ for his poor ould mother, an’ neither herself nor Jack ever after knew what it was to be in want. An’ may you an’ I never know that same naither.
XI
BILLY’S TENDERFOOT
By Stewart Edward White
From “Blazed Trail Stories,” copyright, 1904, by Doubleday, Page & Company. By special permission from the author.
During one spring of the early seventies Billy Knapp ran a species of road-house and hotel at the crossing of the Deadwood and Big Horn trails through Custer Valley. Travellers changing from one to the other frequently stopped there over night. He sold accommodations for man and beast, the former comprising plenty of whiskey, the latter plenty of hay. That was the best anyone could say of it. The hotel was of logs, two-storied, with partitions of sheeting to insure a certain privacy of sight if not of sound; had three beds and a number of bunks; and boasted of a woman cook—one of the first in the Hills. Billy did not run it long. He was too restless. For the time being, however, he was interested and satisfied.