Heart of the West. O. Hooper Henry

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      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664116956

Table of Contents

       I HEARTS AND CROSSES

       II THE RANSOM OF MACK

       III TELEMACHUS, FRIEND

       IV THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN

       V THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES

       VI SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY

       VII HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO

       VIII AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE

       IX THE HIGHER ABDICATION

       X CUPID A LA CARTE

       XI THE CABALLERO'S WAY

       XII THE SPHINX APPLE

       XIII THE MISSING CHORD

       XIV A CALL LOAN

       XV THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA

       XVI THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON

       XVII CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION

       XVIII A CHAPARRAL PRINCE

       XIX THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE

I

       HEARTS AND CROSSES

       Table of Contents

      Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually--but this is not Baldy's story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.

      "I'd be king if I was you," said Baldy, so positively that his holster creaked and his spurs rattled.

      Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful Baldy.

      "If a man marries a queen, it oughtn't to make him a two-spot," declared Webb, epitomising his grievances.

      "Sure not," said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. "By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal. The cards have been stacked on you--I'll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager."

      "What?" asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.

      "You're a prince-consort."

      "Go easy," said Webb. "I never blackguarded you none."

      "It's a title," explained Baldy, "up among the picture-cards; but it don't take no tricks. I'll tell you, Webb. It's a brand they're got for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir- apparent. That ain't any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you're a prince- consort; and if I was you, I'd start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin'; and I'd be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck."

      Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.

      "Baldy," said Webb, solemnly, "me and you punched cows in the same outfit for years. We been runnin' on the same range, and ridin' the same trails since we was boys. I wouldn't talk about my family affairs to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don't amount to a knot in a stake rope."

      "When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued Baldy with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much to say on the ranch as he did."

      "I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to call Santa the 'cattle queen.' I'm boss of the cattle--that's all. She 'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can't sell even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's the 'queen'; and I'm Mr. Nobody."

      "I'd be king if I was you," repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. "When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her--on the hoof-- dressed--dried--corned--any old way from the chaparral to the packing- house. Lots of folks thinks it's funny, Webb, that you don't have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin' none on Miz Yeager--she's the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas--but a man ought to be boss of his own camp."

      The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers forbade the comparison.

      "What was that you СКАЧАТЬ