THE RIVALRY OF COOKS
Taterleg said that he would go to
Glendora that night with Lambert, when the latter
announced he was going down to order cars for the first
shipment of cattle.
“I’ve been layin’
off to go quite a while,” Taterleg said, “but
that scrape you run into kind of held me around nights.
You know, that feller he put a letter in the post
office for me, servin’ notice I was to keep
away from that girl. I guess he thinks he’s
got me buffaloed and on the run.”
“Which one of them sent you a letter?”
“Jedlick, dern him. I’m
goin’ down there from now on every chance I get
and set up to that girl like a Dutch uncle.”
“What do you suppose Jedlick intends to do to
you?”
“I don’t care what he
aims to do. If he makes a break at me, I’ll
lay him on a board, if they can find one in the Bad
Lands long enough to hold him.”
“He’s got a bad eye, a
regular mule eye. You’d better step easy
around him and not stir him up too quick.”
Lambert had no faith in the valor
of Jedlick at all, but Taterleg would fight, as he
very well knew. But he doubted whether there was
any great chance of the two coming together with Alta
Wood on the watch between them. She’d pat
one and she’d rub the other, soothing them and
drawing them off until they forgot their wrath.
Still, he did not want Taterleg to be running any
chance at all of making trouble.
“You’d better let me take
your gun,” he suggested as they approached the
hotel.
“I can take care of it,”
Taterleg returned, a bit hurt by the suggestion, lofty
and distant in his declaration.
“No harm intended, old feller.
I just didn’t want you to go pepperin’
old Jedlick over a girl that’s as fickle as you
say Alta Wood is.”
“I ain’t a-goin’
to pull a gun on no man till he gives me a good reason,
Duke, but if he gives me the reason, I want
to be heeled. I guess I was a little hard on
Alta that time, because I was a little sore. She’s
not so foolish fickle as some.”
“When she’s trying to
hold three men in line at once it looks to me she
must be playin’ two of ’em for suckers.
But go to it, go to it, old feller; don’t let
me scare you off.”
“I never had but one little
fallin’ out with Alta, and that was the time
I was sore. She wanted me to cut off my mustache,
and I told her I wouldn’t do that for no girl
that ever punched a piller.”
“What did she want you to do that for, do you
reckon?”
“Curiosity, Duke, plain curiosity.
She worked old Jedlick that way, but she couldn’t
throw me. Wanted to see how it’d change
me, she said. Well, I know, without no experimentin’.”
“I don’t know that it’d
hurt you much to lose it, Taterleg.”
“Hurt me? I’d look
like one of them flat Christmas toys they make out
of tin without that mustache, Duke. I’d
be so sharp in the face I’d whistle in the wind
every time my horse went out of a walk. I’m
a-goin’ to wear that mustache to my grave, and
no woman that ever hung her stockin’s out of
the winder to dry’s goin’ to fool me into
cuttin’ it off.”
“You know when you’re
comfortable, old feller. Stick to it, if that’s
the way you feel about it.”
They hitched at the hotel rack.
Taterleg said he’d go on to the depot with Lambert.
“I’m lookin’ for
a package of express goods I sent away to Chicago for,”
he explained.
The package was on hand, according
to expectation. It proved to be a five-pound
box of chewing gum, “All kinds and all flavors,”
Taterleg said.
“You’ve got enough there
to stick you to her so tight that even death can’t
part you,” Lambert told him.
Taterleg winked as he worked undoing the cords.
“Only thing can beat it, Duke money.
Money can beat it, but a man’s got to have a
lick or two of common sense to go with it, and some
good looks on the side, if he picks off a girl as
wise as Alta. When Jedlick was weak enough to
cut off his mustache, he killed his chance.”
“Is he in town tonight, do you reckon?”
“I seen his horse in front of
the saloon. Well, no girl can say I ever went
and set down by her smellin’ like a bunghole
on a hot day. I don’t travel that road.
I’ll go over there smellin’ like a fruit-store,
and I’ll put that box in her hand and tell her
to chaw till she goes to sleep, an then I’ll
pull her head over on my shoulder and pat them bangs.
Hursh, oh, hursh!”
It seemed that the effervescent fellow
could not be wholly serious about anything. Lambert
was not certain that he was serious in his attitude
toward Jedlick as he went away with his sweet-scented
box under his arm.
By the time Lambert had finished his
arrangements for a special train to carry the first
heavy shipment of the Philbrook herd to market it was
long after dark. He was in the post office when
he heard the shot that, he feared, opened hostilities
between Taterleg and Jedlick. He hurried out
with the rest of the customers and went toward the
hotel.
There was some commotion on the hotel
porch, which it was too dark to follow, but he heard
Alta scream, after which there came another shot.
The bullet struck the side of the store, high above
Lambert’s head.