Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack. Dorothea Benton Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ was slowly climbing a grade, but we were loath to give up our new-found friends, the immigrants, and it wasn't till they had drove several miles ahead of the stock train that we finally bid them a reluctant good-bye and sauntered on back to meet the special. This is the first time I've used the word special, but all stock trains are known as specials because they make special time with them.

      After we got on the train and had taken the prod pole, and drove the sheepmen and Jackdo out and made them ride on top, we emptied a bottle or so and Eatumup Jake got very hilarious and sang "The Little Black Bull Came Running Down the Mountain," while we all joined in the chorus. And finally when old Chuckwagon, Packsaddle Jack and Dillbery Ike had gone to sleep on the floor of the car, Eatumup Jake got me by the button hole and told me the story of his life in the following words. He talked in a thick, slushy, slobbery voice, something like the mud and water squirts through the holes in your overshoes on a sloppy day, but this was on account of a great deal of whiskey and the fact that he had taken a slight cold the night before standing in the snowstorm while we used his pants to measure the sidetrack.

      CHAPTER V.

      Eatumup Jake's Life Story

      He said his father was a poor Methodist preacher in a little country place in western Kansas where he was born. Said they lived there many years because they was so durn poor they couldn't get away. His father's salary was paid promptly every month in contributions and consisted of one sack of cornmeal, one sack of potatoes, two gallons sorghum molasses, four old crowing hens, seven jack rabbits, one quart choke cherry jelly and one load of dried buffalo chips for fuel. He said his father was one of the most patient beggars he ever saw, that he took up collections at all times and on all occasions, morning, noon and night – week days and Sundays he passed the hat. He had seventeen different kinds of foreign missions to beg for. He had twenty-one different kinds of home missions to beg for, and while it was the poorest community he ever saw, most people too poor to have any tea or coffee, or overshoes for winter or shoes in summer, yet his father begged so persistently that he got worlds of flannels for the heathens in Africa, any amount of bibles for the starving children in New York City and all kinds of religious literature for the reconcentrados in India.

      Finally his mother died of nothing on the stomach, his father and a woman missionary went to Chicago, his nine brothers and sisters was bound out and adopted by different people, and he, the oldest child, was taken in charge by a professional bone picker, and although he was only 10 years old at the time, yet he picked up bones on Kansas prairies summer and winter for two years till a bunch of cowpunchers came along and took him away from the bone picker. He said he never had anything much to eat till he got into this cow camp, and just eat roast veal, baking powder biscuits, plum duff and California canned goods till all the cowboys stopped eating to look at him, and one of them asked his name, and when he said Jacob, they immediately nicknamed him Eatumup Jake.

      He said he never had seen any of his folks since all this happened, but one night he had a dream, just as plain as day. He thought he was in a big city and a one-legged man with blue glasses was following him, and when he stopped the man said: "Jacob, I'm your father," and he asked him how he lost his leg, what he was wearing blue glasses for (a placard saying he was blind), and why he held out a tincup, and his father said: "I aint lost any leg, it's tied up inside my pants leg, and I'm wearing glasses so people can't see my eyes." And he said his father told him that his training as a Methodist preacher had peculiarly fitted him for a professional beggar.

      When Eatumup Jake finished telling his story he fell to weeping and wept very bitterly for a long time, and when I tried to comfort him by telling him a man wasn't to blame for what his folks done, he said no, but cowmen were to blame when they fell so durn low as to spend the best part of their lives on a special stock train associating with a hobo and two sheepmen.

      CHAPTER VI.

      The Schoolmarm's Saddle Horse

      One day while waiting on a sidetrack old Chuckwagon got to telling about the new school-marm in their neighborhood. He said he reckoned she was as high educated as anybody ever got. He said she didn't sabe cowpuncher talk much, but she used some mighty high-sounding words. Why, he said, she called a watergap a wateryawn; a shindig, a dawnce; Injuns, Naborigines; cowboys, cow servants, and Bill Allen's hired girl, where she boards, a domestic. The first night she came to Bill Allen's she heard them a talking about cowpunchers, and she asked old Bill if he wouldn't show her a real live cowpuncher: said there weren't any cowpunchers in Boston, where she came from, and old Bill said he'd have one over from the nearest cow ranch next day.

      So next morning he comes over to my ranch and tells me to rig out in fur snaps, put on my buckskin shirt and big Mexican hat with tassels on it, with red silk handkerchief around my neck, and he would take me over and introduce me to the new school-marm. So I rigged all up proper, and when we got over to Bill Allen's place, old Bill told his wife to go to the school-marm's room and tell her he had a genuine cowpuncher out there and for her to come out and see him. She told Mrs. Allen she was busy just then, but tell Mr. Allen to take the cowpuncher to the barn and give him some hay and she would be out directly.

      Now, he'd been wondering ever since, old Chuck said, what on earth she reckoned a cowpuncher was. Still she was mighty green about some things, 'cause when they had a little party at old Bill Allen's all the girls got to telling about the breed of their saddle hosses, and some said their hoss was a Hamiltonian, and some said their hoss was thoroughbred, and some was Blackhawk Morgan. The school-marm said she had a gentleman friend in Boston who had a very fine saddle hoss of the stallion breed, and when the boys giggled and the gals began to look red, she says as innocent as a lamb. "There is such a breed of hosses, ain't they?" "Of course," she says, "I know it's a rare breed and perhaps you folks out here never saw any of that breed." She says, "They are great hosses to whinney. Why, my friend's hoss kept whinneying all the time." When she got to describing that hoss's habits, course all us boys begun to back up and git out the room. I reckon she was from an Irish family, 'cause she insisted Mrs. Flanagan was right when she called the station a daypo.

      But I reckon she could just knock the hind sights off anybody when it came to singing. I never did know just whether it was a song or not she sung, 'cause none of us could understand it. She said it was Italian, and of course there wasn't any of us understood any Dago talk. But she would just commence away down in a kind of low growl, like a sleeping foxhound when he is dreaming of a bear fight, and keep growling a little louder and little louder, and directly begin to give some short barks, and then it would sound like a herd of wild cattle bawling round a dead carcass; then like a lot of hungry coyotes howling of a clear frosty night, and finally wind up like hundreds of wild geese flying high and going south for winter. She said her voice had been cultivated and I reckon it had. You could tell it had been laid off in mighty even rows, the weeds all pulled out and the dirt throwed up close to the hills. But somehow I'd a heap rather hear a little blue-eyed girl I know up in the mountains in Idaho sing "The Suwanee River," and "Coming Through the Rye," 'cause I can understand that. But I guess them Boston girls are all right at home. I reckon they are used to them there.

      CHAPTER VII.

      Selling Cattle on the Range

      Then old Packsaddle Jack got to telling about Senator Dorsey, of Star Route fame, selling a little herd of cattle he had in northern New Mexico. He said the Senator had got hold of some eyeglass Englishmen, and representing to them that he had a large herd of cattle in northern New Mexico, finally made a sale at $25 a head all round for the cattle. The Englishmen, however, insisted on counting the herd and wouldn't take the Senator's books for them. Dorsey finally agreed to this, but said the cattle would have to be gathered first. The Senator then went to his foreman, Jack Hill, and asked Jack if he knew of a place where they could drive the cattle around a hill where they wouldn't have to travel too far getting around and have a good place to count them on one side. Jack selected a little round mountain with a canyon on one side of it, where he stationed the Englishmen and their bookkeepers СКАЧАТЬ