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Page 32
There was a rapid and impatient chorus of "Yes! yes!" and "Go on!"
"Well," continued Jack, "when Billy sees Withholder kneelin' thar
with his head down, he gives a kind o' joyous leap and claps his
hoofs together, ez much ez to say, 'I'm on in this scene,' drops
his own head, and jest lights out for the parson!"
"And butts him clean through the side scenes into the street,"
interrupted a delighted auditor.
But Jack's face never changed. "Ye think so?" he said gravely.
"But thet's jest whar ye slip up; and thet's jest whar Billy
slipped up!" he added slowly. "Mebbe ye've noticed, too, thet the
parson's built kinder solid about the head and shoulders. It
mought hev be'n thet, or thet Billy didn't get a fair start, but
thet goat went down on his fore legs like a shot, and the parson
gave one heave, and jest scooted him off the platform! Then the
parson reckoned thet this yer 'tablow' had better be left out, as
thar didn't seem to be any other man who could play Jephthah, and
it wasn't dignified for HIM to take the part. But the parson
allowed thet it might be a great moral lesson to Billy!"
And it WAS, for from that moment Billy never attempted to butt
again. He performed with great docility later on in the Pet's
engagement at Skinnerstown; he played a distinguished role
throughout the provinces; he had had the advantages of Art from
"the Pet," and of Simplicity from Polly, but only Rocky Canyon knew
that his real education had come with his first rehearsal with the
Reverend Mr. Withholder.
DICK SPINDLER'S FAMILY CHRISTMAS
There was surprise and sometimes disappointment in Rough and Ready,
when it was known that Dick Spindler intended to give a "family"
Christmas party at his own house. That he should take an early
opportunity to celebrate his good fortune and show hospitality was
only expected from the man who had just made a handsome "strike" on
his claim; but that it should assume so conservative, old-
fashioned, and respectable a form was quite unlooked-for by Rough
and Ready, and was thought by some a trifle pretentious. There
were not half-a-dozen families in Rough and Ready; nobody ever knew
before that Spindler had any relations, and this "ringing in" of
strangers to the settlement seemed to indicate at least a lack of
public spirit. "He might," urged one of his critics, "hev given
the boys,--that had worked alongside o' him in the ditches by day,
and slung lies with him around the camp-fire by night,--he might
hev given them a square 'blow out,' and kep' the leavin's for his
old Spindler crew, just as other families do. Why, when old man
Scudder had his house-raisin' last year, his family lived for a
week on what was left over, arter the boys had waltzed through the
house that night,--and the Scudders warn't strangers, either." It
was also evident that there was an uneasy feeling that Spindler's
action indicated an unhallowed leaning towards the minority of
respectability and exclusiveness, and a desertion--without the
excuse of matrimony--of the convivial and independent bachelor
majority of Rough and Ready.
"Ef he was stuck after some gal and was kinder looking ahead, I'd
hev understood it," argued another critic.
"Don't ye be too sure he ain't," said Uncle Jim Starbuck gloomily.
"Ye'll find that some blamed woman is at the bottom of this yer
'family' gathering. That and trouble ez almost all they're made
for!"
There happened to be some truth in this dark prophecy, but none of
the kind that the misogynist supposed. In fact, Spindler had
called a few evenings before at the house of the Rev. Mr. Saltover,
and Mrs. Saltover, having one of her "Saleratus headaches," had
turned him over to her widow sister, Mrs. Huldy Price, who
obediently bestowed upon him that practical and critical attention
which she divided with the stocking she was darning. She was a
woman of thirty-five, of singular nerve and practical wisdom, who
had once smuggled her wounded husband home from a border affray,
calmly made coffee for his deceived pursuers while he lay hidden in
the loft, walked four miles for that medical assistance which
arrived too late to save him, buried him secretly in his own
"quarter section," with only one other witness and mourner, and so
saved her position and property in that wild community, who
believed he had fled. There was very little of this experience to
be traced in her round, fresh-colored brunette cheek, her calm
black eyes, set in a prickly hedge of stiff lashes, her plump
figure, or her frank, courageous laugh. The latter appeared as a
smile when she welcomed Mr. Spindler. "She hadn't seen him for a
coon's age," but "reckoned he was busy fixin' up his new house."
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