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Page 47
"Your customer seems to be a surly kind of fellow--not one that you'd
like to be snowed in with in a camp on a hunting trip."
"He is that," assented Bell, heartily. "He reminds me of a rattlesnake
that's been poisoned by the bite of a tarantula."
"He doesn't look like a citizen of Saltillo," I went on.
"No," said Bell, "he lives in Sacramento. He's down here on a little
business trip. His name is George Ringo, and he's been my best
friend--in fact the only friend I ever had--for twenty years."
I was too surprised to make any further comment.
Bell lived in a comfortable, plain, square, two-story white house on the
edge of the little town. I waited in the parlor--a room depressingly
genteel--furnished with red plush, straw matting, looped-up lace
curtains, and a glass case large enough to contain a mummy, full of
mineral specimens.
While I waited, I heard, upstairs, that unmistakable sound instantly
recognized the world over--a bickering woman's voice, rising as her
anger and fury grew. I could hear, between the gusts, the temperate
rumble of Bell's tones, striving to oil the troubled waters.
The storm subsided soon; but not before I had heard the woman say, in a
lower, concentrated tone, rather more carrying than her high-pitched
railings: "This is the last time. I tell you--the last time. Oh, you
WILL understand."
The household seemed to consist of only Bell and his wife and a servant
or two. I was introduced to Mrs. Bell at supper.
At first sight she seemed to be a handsome woman, but I soon perceived
that her charm had been spoiled. An uncontrolled petulance, I thought,
and emotional egotism, an absence of poise and a habitual
dissatisfaction had marred her womanhood. During the meal, she showed
that false gayety, spurious kindliness and reactionary softness that
mark the woman addicted to tantrums. Withal, she was a woman who might
be attractive to many men.
After supper, Bell and I took our chairs outside, set them on the grass
in the moonlight and smoked. The full moon is a witch. In her light,
truthful men dig up for you nuggets of purer gold; while liars squeeze
out brighter colors from the tubes of their invention. I saw Bell's
broad, slow smile come out upon his face and linger there.
"I reckon you think George and me are a funny kind of friends," he said.
"The fact is we never did take much interest in each other's company.
But his idea and mine, of what a friend should be, was always synonymous
and we lived up to it, strict, all these years. Now, I'll give you an
idea of what our idea is.
"A man don't need but one friend. The fellow who drinks your liquor and
hangs around you, slapping you on the back and taking up your time,
telling you how much he likes you, ain't a friend, even if you did play
marbles at school and fish in the same creek with him. As long as you
don't need a friend one of that kind may answer. But a friend, to my
mind, is one you can deal with on a strict reciprocity basis like me and
George have always done.
"A good many years ago, him and me was connected in a number of ways. We
put our capital together and run a line of freight wagons in New Mexico,
and we mined some and gambled a few. And then, we got into trouble of
one or two kinds; and I reckon that got us on a better understandable
basis than anything else did, unless it was the fact that we never had
much personal use for each other's ways. George is the vainest man I
ever see, and the biggest brag. He could blow the biggest geyser in the
Yosemite valley back into its hole with one whisper. I am a quiet man,
and fond of studiousness and thought. The more we used to see each
other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be together. If he ever
had slapped me on the back and snivelled over me like I've seen men do
to what they called their friends, I know I'd have had a
rough-and-tumble with him on the spot. Same way with George. He hated my
ways as bad as I did his. When we were mining, we lived in separate
tents, so as not to intrude our obnoxiousness on each other.
"But after a long time, we begun to know each of us could depend on the
other when we were in a pinch, up to his last dollar, word of honor or
perjury, bullet, or drop of blood we had in the world. We never even
spoke of it to each other, because that would have spoiled it. But we
tried it out, time after time, until we came to know. I've grabbed my
hat and jumped a freight and rode 200 miles to identify him when he was
about to be hung by mistake, in Idaho, for a train robber. Once, I laid
sick of typhoid in a tent in Texas, without a dollar or a change of
clothes, and sent for George in Boise City. He came on the next train.
The first thing he did before speaking to me, was to hang up a little
looking glass on the side of the tent and curl his moustache and rub
some hair dye on his head. His hair is naturally a light reddish. Then
he gave me the most scientific cussing I ever had, and took off his
coat.
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