Wolfville Days

by Lewis, Alfred Henry

  "That's what Peets says loco is," he resumed, as I handed back the card. "Of course, I don't go surgin' off pronouncin' no sech words; shorely not in mixed company. Some gent might take it personal an' resent it. But I likes to pack 'em about, an' search 'em out now an' then, jest to gaze on an' think what a dead cold scientist Doc Peets is. He's shorely the high kyard; thar never is that drug-sharp in the cow country in my day who's fit to pay for Peets' whiskey. Scientific an' eddicated to a feather aige, Peets is. "You-all oughter heard him lay for one of them cliff-climbin', bone-huntin' stone c'llectors who comes out from Washin'ton for the Gov'ment. One of these yere deep people strikes Wolfville on one of them rock- roundups he's makin', an' for a-while it looks like he's goin' to split things wide open. He's that contrary about his learnin', he wont use nothin' but words of four syllables-words that runs about eight to the pound. He comes into the New York Store where Boggs an' Tutt an' me is assembled, an', you hear me, son! that savant has us walkin' in a cirkle in a minute. "It's Peets who relieves us. Peets strolls up an' engages this person in a debate touchin' mule-hoof hawgs; the gov'ment sport maintainin' thar ain't no such swine with hoofs like a mule, because he's never heard about 'em; an' Peets takin' the opp'site view because he's done met an' eat 'etn a whole lot. "'The mere fact,' says Peets to this scientist, 'that you mavericks never knows of this mule-hoof hawg, cannot be taken as proof he does not still root an' roam the land. Thar's more than one of you Washin'ton shorthorns who's chiefly famed for what he's failed to know. The mule-hoof hawg is a fact; an' the ignorance of closet naturalists shall not prevail ag'inst him. His back is arched like a greyhound's, he's about the thickness of a bowie-knife, he's got hoofs like a mule, an' sees his highest deevelopment in the wilds of Arkansaw.' "But speakin' of locoweed, it's only o'casional that cattle or mules or broncos partakes tharof. Which I might repeat for the third time that, genial, they eschews it. But you— all never will know how wise a anamile is till he takes to munchin' loco. Once he's plumb locoed, he jest don't know nothin'; then it dawns on you, by compar'son like, how much he saveys prior. The change shows plainest in mules; they bein'—that is, the mule normal an' before he's locoed—the wisest of beasts. Wise, did I say? A mule is more than valise, he's sagacious. An' thar's a mighty sight of difference. To be simply wise, all one has to do is set 'round an' think wise things, an' mebby say 'em. It's only when a gent goes trackin' 'round an' does wise things, you calls him sagacious. An' mules does wisdom.

  "Shore! I admits it; I'm friendly to mules. If the Southwest ever onbends in a intellectual competition—whites barred—mules will stand at the head. The list should come out, mules, coyotes, Injuns, Mexicans, ponies, jack rabbits, sheepherders, an' pra'ry dogs, the last two bein' shorely imbecile.

  "Yes, son; you can lean up ag'inst the intelligence of a mule an' go to sleep. Not but what mules hasn't their illoosions, sech as white mares an' sim'lar reedie'lous inflooences; but them's weaknesses of the sperit rather than of mind.

  "While mules don't nacherally go scoutin' for loco, an' commonly avoids said weed when found, if they ever does taste it once, they never quits it as long as they lives. It's like whiskey to Huggins an' Old Monte; the appetite sort o' goes into camp with 'em an' takes possession. No; a locoed mule ain't vicious nor voylent; it's more like the tree-mors—he sees spectacles that ain't thar none. I've beheld a locoed mule that a-way, standin' alone on the level plains in the sun, kickin' an' pitchin' to beat a straight flush. he thinks he's surrounded by Injuns or other hostiles; he's that crazy he don't know grass from t'ran'lers. An' their mem'ry's wiped out; they forgets to eat an' starves to death. That's the way they dies, onless some party who gets worked up seein' 'em about, takes a Winchester an' pumps a bullet into 'em.

  "Yes, Peets says if a gent was to take to loadin' up on loco, or deecoctions tharof, he'd become afflicted by bats, same as cattle an' mules. But no one I knows of, so far as any news of it ever comes grazin' my way, is that ongyarded. I never hears tell in detail of sech a case but onct, an' that's a tale that Old Man Enright sets forth one evenin' in the Red Light.

  "We-all is settin' 'round the faro layout at the time. Cherokee Hall is back of the box, with Faro Nell on the look-out's stool, but nobody's feelin' playful, an' no money's bein' changed in. It's only about first drink time in the evenin', which, as a season, is prematoor for faro-bank. It's Dave Tutt who brings up the matter with some remarks he makes touchin' the crazy-hoss conduct of a party who works over to the stage company's corral. This hoss- hustler is that eccentric he's ediotic, an' is known as 'Locoed Charlie.' It's him who final falls a prey to ants that time.

  "'An' it's my belief,' asserts Tutt, as he concloodes his relations of the ranikaboo breaks of this party, 'that if this Charlie, speakin' mine fashion, was to take his intellects over to the assay office in Tucson, they wouldn't show half a ounce of idee to the ton; wouldn't even show a color. Which he's shore locoed.'

  "'Speakin' of being locoed that a-way,' says Enright, 'recalls an incident that takes place back when I'm a yearlin' an' assoomes my feeble part in the Mexican War. That's years ago, but I don't know of nothln' sadder than that story, nothin' more replete of sobs. Not that I weeps tharat, for I'm a thoughtless an' a callous yooth, but, all the same, it glooms me up a heap.'

  "'Is it a love story, Daddy Enright?' asks Faro Nell, all eager, an' bendin' towards Enright across the layout.

  "'It shows brands an' y'ear marks as sech, Nellie,' says Enright; 'love an' loco makes up the heft of it.'

  "'Then tell it,' urges Faro Nell. 'I'm actooally hungerin' for a love story,' an' she reaches down an' squeezes Cherokee's hand onder the table.

  "Cherokee squeezes hers, an' turns his deal box on its side to show thar's no game goin', an' leans back with the rest of us to listen. Black Jack, who knows his mission on this earth, brings over a bottle with glasses all 'round.

  "'Yere's to you, Nellie,' says Texas Thompson, as we shoves the nose-paint about. 'While that divorce edict my wife wins back in Laredo modifies my interest in love tales, an' whereas I don't feel them thrills as was the habit of me onct, still, in a subdooed way I can drink happiness to you.'

  "'Texas,'says Boggs, settin' down his glass an' bendin' a eye full of indignant reproach on Thompson; 'Texas, before I'd give way to sech onmanly weakness, jest because my wife's done stampeded, I'd j'ine the church. Sech mush from a cow-man is disgraceful. You'll come down to herdin' sheep if you keeps on surrenderin' yourse'f to sech sloppy bluffs.'

  "'See yere, Dan,' retorts Thompson, an' his eye turns red on Bogs; 'my feelin's may be bowed onder losses which sech nachers as yours is too coarse to feel, but you can gamble your bottom dollar, jest the same, I will still resent insultin' criticisms. I advises you to be careful an' get your chips down right when you addresses me, or you may quit loser on the deal.'

  "'Now you're a couple of fine three-year-olds! breaks in Jack Moore. 'Yere we be, all onbuckled an'fraternal, an' Enright on the brink of a love romance by the ardent requests of Nell, an' you two longhorns has to come prancin' out an' go pawin' for trouble. You know mighty well, Texas, that Boggs is your friend an' the last gent to go harassin' you with contoomely.'

  "'Right you be, Jack,' says Boggs plenty prompt; 'if my remarks to Texas is abrupt, or betrays heat, it's doo to the fact that it exasperates me to see the most elevated gent in camp—for so I holds Texas Thompson to be—made desolate by the wild breaks of a lady who don't know her own mind, an' mighty likely ain't got no mind to know.'

  "'I reckons I'm wrong, Dan,' says Thompson, turnin' apol'getic. 'Let it all go to the diskyard. I'm that peevish I simply ain't fit to stay yere nor go anywhere else. I ain't been the same person since my wife runs cimmaron that time an' demands said sep'ration.'

  "'Bein' I'm a married man,' remarks Dave Tutt, sort o' gen'ral, but swellin' out his chest an' puttin' on a lot of dog at the same time, 'an' wedded to Tucson Jennie, the same bein' more or less known, I declines all partic'pation in discussions touchin' the sex. I c
ould, however, yoonite with you-all in another drink, an' yereby su'gests the salve. Barkeep, it's your play.' "'That's all right about another drink,' says Faro Nell, 'but I wants to state that I sympathizes with Texas in them wrongs. I has my views of a female who would up an' abandon a gent like Texas Thompson, an' I explains it only on the theery that she shorely must have been coppered in her cradle.'

  "'Nellie onderstands my feelin's,' says Texas, an' he's plumb mournful, 'an' I owes her for them utterances. However, on second thought, an' even if it is a love tale, if Enright will resoome his relations touchin' that eepisode of the Mexican War, I figgers that it may divert me from them divorce griefs I alloodes to. An', at any rate, win or lose, I assures Enright his efforts will be regyarded.'

  "Old Man Enright takes his seegyar out of his mouth an' rouses up a bit. He's been wropped in thought doorin' the argyments of Boggs an' Thompson, like he's tryin' to remember a far-off past. As Thompson makes his appeal, he braces up.

  "'Now that Dan an' Texas has ceased buckin',' says Enright, 'an' each has all four feet on the ground, I'll try an' recall them details. As I remarks, its towards the close of the Mexican War. Whatever I'm doin' in that carnage is a conundrum that's never been solved. I had hardly shed my milk teeth, an' was only 'leven hands high at the time. An' I ain't so strong physical, but I feels the weight of my spurs when I walks. As I looks back to it, I must have been about as valyooable an aid to the gov'ment, as the fifth kyard in a poker hand when four of a kind is held. The most partial an' besotted of critics would have conceded that if I'd been left out entire, that war couldn't have suffered material charges in its results. However, to get for'ard, for I sees that Nellie's patience begins to mill an' show symptoms of comin' stampede.

  "'It's at the close of hostil'ties,' goes on Enright, 'an' the company I'm with is layin' up in the hills about forty miles back from Vera Cruz, dodgin' yellow fever. We was cavalry, what the folks in Tennessee calls a "critter company," an', hailin' mostly from that meetropolis or its vicinity, we was known to ourse'fs at least as the "Pine Knot Cavaliers." Thar's a little Mexican village where we be that's called the "Plaza Perdita." An' so we lays thar at the Plaza Perdita, waitin' for orders an' transportation to take us back to the States.

  "'Which most likely we're planted at this village about a month, an' the Mexicans is beginnin' to get used to us, an' we on our parts is playin' monte, an' eatin' frijoles, an' accommodatin' ourse'fs to the simple life of the place. Onct a week the chaplain preaches to us. He holds that Mexico is a pagan land, an', entertainin' this idee, he certainly does make onusual efforts to keep our morals close-herded, an' our souls bunched an' banded up in the Christian faith, as expressed by the Baptis' church. Candor, however, compels me to say that this yere pulpit person can't be deescribed as a heavy winner on the play.' "'Was you-all so awful bad?' asks Faro Nell.

  "'No,' replies Enright, 'we ain't so bad none, but our conduct is a heap onhampered, which is the same thing to the chaplain. He gives it out emphatic, after bein' with the Pine Knot Cavaliers over a year, that he plumb despairs of us becomin' christians.'

  "'Whatever does he lay down on you-all like that for?' says Faro

  Nell. 'Couldn't a soldier be a christian, Daddy Enright?'

  "'Why, I reckons he might,' says Enright, he'pin' himse'f to a drink; 'a soldier could he a christian, Nellie, but after all it ain't necessary.

  "'Still, we-all likes the chaplain because them ministrations of his is entertainin', an', for that matter, he likes us a lot, an' in more reelaxed moments allows we ain't so plumb crim'nal—merely loose like on p'ints of doctrine.'

  "'Baptis' folks is shore strong on doctrines,' says Tutt, coincidin' in with Enright. 'I knows that myse'f. Doctrine is their long suit. They'll go to any len'ths for doctrines, you hear me! I remembers once ridin' into a hamlet back in the Kaintucky mountains. Thar ain't one hundred people in the village, corral count. An' yet I notes two church edifices.

  "You-all is plenty opulent on sanctooaries," I says to the barkeep at the tavern where I camps for the night. "It's surprisin', too, when you considers the size of the herd. What be the two deenom'nations that worships at them structures?"

  "'"Both Baptis'," says the barkeep.

  "'"Whyever, since they're ridin' the same range an' runnin' the same brand," I says, "don't they combine like cattle folks an' work their round-ups together?"

  "'"They splits on doctrine," says the barkeep; "you couldn't get 'em together with a gun. They disagrees on Adam. That outfit in the valley holds that Adam was all right when he started, but later he struck something an' glanced off; them up on the hill contends that Adam was a hoss-thief from the jump. An' thar you be! You couldn't reeconcile 'em between now an'the crack of doom. Doctrines to a Baptis' that a-way is the entire check-rack."

  "'To ag'in pick up said narratif,' says Enright, when Tutt subsides, 'at the p'int where Dave comes spraddlin' in with them onasked reminiscences, I may say that a first source of pleasure to us, if not of profit, while we stays at the Plaza Perdita, is a passel of Mexicanos with a burro train that brings us our pulque from some'ers back further into the hills.'"

  "What's pulque?" I interjected.

  It was plain that my old gentleman of cows as little liked my interruption as Enright liked that of the volatile Tutt. He hid his irritation, however, under an iron politeness and explained.

  "Pulque is a disapp'intin' form of beverage, wharof it takes a bar'l to get a gent drunk," he observed. And then, with some severity: "It ain't for me to pull no gun of criticism, but I'm amazed that a party of your attainments, son, is ignorant of pulque. It's, as I says, a drink, an' it tastes like glucose an' looks like yeast. It comes from a plant, what the Mexicans calls 'maguey,' an' Peets calls a 'aloe.' The pulque gatherers scoops out the blossom of the maguey while it's a bud. They leaves the place hollow; what wood- choppers back in Tennessee, when I'm a colt, deescribes as 'bucketin' the stump.' This yere hollow fills up with oozin' sap, an' the Mexican dips out two gallons a day an keeps it up for a month. That's straight, sixty gallons from one maguey before ever it quits an' refooses to further turn the game. That's pulque, an' when them Greasers gathers it, they puts it into a pigskin-skinned complete, the pig is; them pulduc receptacles is made of the entire bark of the anamile. When the pulque's inside, they packs it, back down an' hung by all four laigs to the saddle, a pigskin on each side of the burro. It's gathered the evenin' previous, an' brought into camp in the night so as to keep it cool.

  "When I'm a child, an' before ever I connects myse'f with the cow trade, if thar's a weddin', we-all has what the folks calls a 'infare,' an' I can remember a old lady from the No'th who contreebutes to these yere festivals a drink she calls 'sprooce beer.' An' pulque, before it takes to frettin' an' fermentin' 'round, in them pigskins, reminds me a mighty sight of that sprooce beer. Later it most likely reminds you of the pigskin.

  "Mexican barkeeps, when they sells pulque, aims to dispose of it two glasses at a clatter. It gives their conceit a chance to spread itse'f an' show. The pulque is in a tub down back of the bar. This yere vain Mexican seizes two glasses between his first an' second fingers, an' with a finger in each glass. Then he dips 'em full back-handed; an' allers comes up with the back of his hand an' the two fingers covered with pulque. He claps 'em on the bar, eyes you a heap sooperior like he's askin' you to note what a acc'rate, high- grade barkeep he is, an' then raisin' his hand, he slats the pulque off his fingers into the two glasses. If he spatters a drop on the bar, it shows he's a bungler, onfit for his high p'sition, an' oughter be out on the hills tendin' goats instead of dealin' pulque.

  "What do they do with the sour pulque? Make mescal of it—a sort o' brandy, two hookers of which changes you into a robber. No, thar's mighty few still-houses in Mexico. But that's no set-back to them Greasers when they're out to construct mescal. As a roole Mexicans is slow an oninventive; but when the question becomes the arrangement of somethin' to be drunk with, they're plenty fertile. Jest by the way
of raw material, if you'll only confer on a Mexican a kettle, a rifle bar'l, a saddle cover, an' a pigskin full of sour pulque, he'll be conductin' a mescal still in full blast at the end of the first hour. But to go back to Enright's yarn.

  "'These yere pulque people,' says Enriglit, 'does a fa'rly rapid commerce. For while, as you-all may know, pulque is tame an' lacks in reebound as compared with nose-paint, still when pulque is the best thar is, the Pine Knot Cavaliers of the Plaza Perdita invests heavily tharin. That pulque's jest about a stand-off for the chaplain's sermons. "'It's the fourth trip of the pulque sellers, when the Donna Anna shows in the door. The Donna Anna arrives with 'em; an' the way she bosses 'round, an' sets fire to them pulque slaves, notifies me they're the Donna Anna's peonies. "'I'm sort o' pervadin' about the plaza when the Donna Anna rides up. Thar's an old she-wolf with her whose name is Magdalena. I'm not myse'f what they calls in St. Looey a "connoshur" of female loveliness, an' it's a pity now that some gifted gent like Doc Peets yere don't see this Donna Anna that time, so's he could draw you her picture, verbal. All I'm able to state is that she's as beautiful as a cactus flower, an' as vivid. She's tall an' strong for a Mexican, with a voice like velvet, graceful as a mountain lion, an' with eyes that's soft an' deep an' black, like a deer's. She's shorely a lovely miracle, the Donna Anna is, an' as dark an' as warm an' as full of life as a night in Joone. She's of the grande, for the mule she's ridin', gent-fashion, is worth forty ponies. Its coat is soft, an' shiny like this yere watered silk, while its mane an' tail is braided with a hundred littler silver bells. The Donna Anna is dressed half Mexican an' half Injun, an' thar's likewise a row of bells about the wide brim of her Chihuahua hat.

  "'Thar's mebby a half-dozen of us standin' 'round when the Donna Anna comes up. Nacherally, we-all is interested. The Donna Anna, bein' only eighteen an' a Mexican, is not abashed. She waves her hand an' says, "How! how!" Injun fashion. an' gives us a white flash of teeth between her red lips. Then a band of nuns comes out of a little convent, which is one of the public improvements of the Plaza Perdita, an' they rounds up the Donna Anna an' the wrinkled Magdalena, an' takes 'em into camp. The Donna Anna an' the other is camped in the convent doorin' the visit. No, they're not locked up nor gyarded, an' the Donna Anna comes an' goes in an' out of that convent as free as birds. The nuns, too, bow before her like her own peonies.