Mam' Linda — Text and Context

ins. He says a regular gang of blue-bloods has been organized here to take up fer town coons agin the pore whites in the country. We might crush such a report in time, you know, but we'll never kill it if thar's a fight over it to-night.”

“That's the trouble,” the others said, in a breath.

“Wait one minute--you stay right here,” Baker said, and he went and stood in front of the store door and looked in for a moment; then he came back. “I thought maybe he'd let us all talk sense to 'im, but you can't put reason into a man like that any easier than you can dip up melted butter with a hot awl. I can't see any chance unless you fellers will leave it entirely to me.”

“Leave it to you?” Garner exclaimed. “What could you do?”

“I don't know whether I could do a blessed thing or not, boys, but the dam thing is so desperate that I'm willin' to try. You see, I never talk my politics--if I do, I talk it on t'other side to see what I kin pick up to advantage. The truth is, I think them skunks consider me a Wiggin man, and I'd like to git a whack at 'em. Maybe I can git 'em to leave town. Abe Johnson is the leader of 'em, and he never gets too drunk to have some natural caution.”

“Well, it certainly couldn't do any harm for you to try, Pole,” said Tingle.

“Well, I'll go down to the wagon-yard and see if they are still hanging about.”

As he approached the place in question, which was an open space about one hundred yards square surrounded by a high fence, at the lower end of the main street, Pole stood in the broad gateway and surveyed the numerous camp-fires which gleamed out from the darkness. He finally descried a group of men around a fire between two white-hooded wagons to the wheels of which were haltered several horses. As Pole advanced towards them, paying cheerful greetings to various men and women around the different fires he had to pass, he recognized Dan Willis, Abe Johnson, and several others.

A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on either side of Abe Johnson.

“Come on,” he growled, “I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you join us or not, Abe.”

“Well, I'm out of it,” replied Johnson. “I've talked to you fellows till I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense.”

Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to the ears of the remaining two.

“Goin' out home to-night, Abe?” Baker asked, carelessly.

“I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head shot off.”

“That's exactly what _I_ was thinking about,” said Pole, sitting down on the ground carelessly and drawing his knees up in the embrace of his strong arms. “Look here, Abe, me'n you hain't to say quite as intimate as own brothers born of the same mammy, but I hain't got nothin' agin you of a personal nature.”

“Oh, I reckon that's all right,” the other said, stroking his round, smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. “That's all right, Pole.”

“Well, my family knowed yore family long through the war,” Abe. “My daddy was with yourn at the front, an' our mothers swapped sugar an' coffee in them hard times, an', Abe, I'm here to tell you I sorter hate to see an unsuspectin' neighbor like you walk blind into serious trouble, great big trouble, Abe--trouble of the sort that would make a man's wife an' childern lie awake many and many a night.”

“What the hell you mean?” Johnson asked, picking up his ears.

“Why, it's this here devilment that's brewin' betwixt Dan an' Carson Dwight.”

“Well, what's that got to do with _me?_” Johnson asked, in surly surprise.