第59章 LAW AND ORDER(3)

out that he'd probable never do it again.But once let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut a wire fence, or otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada County, Luke and me would be on 'em with habeas corpuses and smokeless powder and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette.

"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness.I've known persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches at the railroad station without being shot at or even roped and drug about by the citizens of the town.

"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice.He was kind of training me to succeed him when he went out of office.He was always looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing.What he wanted to do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work under the porch and have hens scratching in the yard.The one main thing in his mind seemed to be the yard.

"'Bud,' he says to me, 'by instinct and sentiment I'm a contractor.Iwant to be a contractor.That's what I'll be when I get out of office.'

"'What kind of a contractor?' says I.'It sounds like a kind of a business to me.You ain't going to haul cement or establish branches or work on a railroad, are you?'

"'You don't understand,' says Luke.'I'm tired of space and horizons and territory and distances and things like that.What I want is reasonable contraction.I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,' says Luke.

"That's the kind of a man he was.He was home-like, although he'd had bad luck in such investments.But he never talked about them times on the ranch.It seemed like he'd forgotten about it.I wondered how, with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of lattice-work, he'd seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court.But he wasn't a man you could ask about such things as he didn't refer to in his own conversation.

"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff.I've read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or teaching school -- something to make 'em forget.Well, I guess that was the way with Luke.But, as he couldn't paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.

"One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner station on the I.& G.N.They was just coming back from Mexico looking after mines and such.There was five of 'em -- four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.

"This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots bring West with 'em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun he had buckled around his waist.

"I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that they didn't locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly.Luke was away after a gang of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law and order when he wasn't there.

"After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the train was waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest or come too near him.He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all them tenderfoots --he didn't know a law-and-order town when he saw it.

"By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the Crystal Palace _chili-con-carne_ stand in Bildad.Pedro was a man who liked to amuse himself; so he kind of herd rides this youngster, laughing at him, tickled to death.I was too far away to hear, but the kid seems to mention some remarks to Pedro, and Pedro goes up and slaps him about nine feet away, and laughs harder than ever.And then the boy gets up quicker than he fell and jerks out his little pearl-handle, and -- bing! bing! bing! Pedro gets it three times in special and treasured portions of his carcass.Isaw the dust fly off his clothes every time the bullets hit.Sometimes them little thirty-twos cause worry at close range.

"The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow.I goes up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away his gun.But the first thing I knew that _caballard_ of capitalists makes a break for the train.One of 'em hesitates in front of me for a second, and kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against my chin, and I sort of laid down on the platform and took a nap.I never was afraid of guns; but I don't want any person except a barber to take liberties like that with my face again.When I woke up, the whole outfit -- train, boy, and all -- was gone.Iasked about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he would recover provided his wounds didn't turn out to be fatal.

"When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was mad all over.

"'Why'n't you telegraph to San Antone,' he asks, 'and have the bunch arrested there?'

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy was what I had took up just then.' That capitalist sure knew how to gesticulate with his hands.

"Luke got madder and madder.He investigates and finds in the depot a card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of some _hombre_called Scudder in New York City.