Josephine Opens the Sluices

Entering the living-room, Bud found Echo surrounded by several girls from Florence and the neighboring ranches, who were driving her almost distracted with their admiring attentions, for she was greatly disturbed about her lover’s inexplicable absence. Had she been free from the duties of hospitality, she would have leaped on her horse and gone in search of him.

Écho’s wedding-attire would seem as incongruous as Jack’s to the eyes of an Easterner, yet it was entirely suited to the circumstances, for the couple intended, as soon as they were married, to ride to a little hunting-cabin of Jack’s in the Tortilla Mountains, where they would spend their honeymoon.

She was dressed in an olive-green riding-habit, which she had brought from the East. The skirt was divided, and reached just below the knee; her blouse, of lighter material, and brown in color, was loose, allowing free play for her arms and shoulders. High riding-boots were laced to the knee. A sombrero and riding-gloves lay on the table ready to complete her costume.

Bud coldly acknowledged Écho’s affectionate and happy greeting, and curtly informed her that Jack had arrived.

She rushed out of doors with a cry of joy.

Running across the courtyard toward her lover, who awaited her with outstretched arms, she began:

“Well, this is a nice time, you outrageous ” when Polly stopped her with a mock-serious look. “Wait a minute wait a minute” (the girl drawled as if reining in a too eager horse) “don’t commence calling love-names before you get the hitch time enough after. He has been actin’ up something scandalous with me.”

Jack threw up his hands in protest, hastily denying any probable charge that the tease might make. “Why, I haven’t been saying a word!” he cried.

Polly laughed as she ran to the door.

“No, you haven’t,” she answered mockingly, as one agrees with a child whose feelings have been hurt. “He’s only been tellin’ me he loved ” Pausing an instant, she pointed at Echo, ending her sentence with a shouted “you.”

With her hand on Jack’s shoulder, Echo said: “Polly, you are a flirt. You’ve too many strings to your bow.”

“You mean I’ve too many beaux to my string!” laughingly answered the girl.

“You’ll have Slim Hoover and Bud Lane shooting each other up all on your account,” chided Echo.

“Nothing of the kind,” pouted Polly. “Can’t a girl have friends? But I know what you two are waiting for?”

“What?” asked Jack.

“You want me to vamose. I’m hep. I’ll vam.”

And Polly ran into the kitchen to tell the men that the bridegroom had arrived, but couldn’t be seen until the bride was through with an important interview with him. So she hustled them all into the living-room, where the girls were.

This room was a long and low apartment, roughly plastered. The heavy ceiling-beams, hewn with axes, were uncovered, giving an old English effect, although this was not striven for, but made under the stress of necessity. The broad windows were trellised with vines, through which filtered the sunshine. A cooling evening breeze stirred the leaves lazily. The chairs were broad and comfortable the workmanship of the monks of the neighboring mission. In the corners stood squat, earthen water-jars of Mexican molding. On the adobe walls were hung trophies of the hunt; war-bonnets and the crudely made adornments of the Apaches.

Navajo blankets covered the window-seats, and were used as screens for sets of shelves built into the spaces between the windows.

Polly carried in on a tray a large bowl of punch surrounded by glasses and gourds. This was received with riotous demonstrations. She placed it in the center of a table made of planks laid on trestles, and assisted by the other girls, served the men liberally from the bowl.

The guests showed the effects of outdoor life and training. Their gestures were full and free. The tones of their voices were high-pitched, but they spoke more slowly than their Eastern cousins, as if feeling the necessity, even when confined, of making every word carry. No one lolled in his seat, but sat upright, as if still having the feel of the saddle under him.

Toward women in all social gatherings, the cowboys act with exaggerated chivalry, but, as Sage-brush would describe it, they “herd by their lonesome.” There is none of the commingling of sexes seen in the East. At a dance the girls sit at one end of the room, the men group themselves about the doorway until the music strikes up. Then each will seize his partner after the boldest has made the first move. When the dance-measure ends the cowboy will rarely escort partner to her seat, but will leave her to find her way back to her chum, while he moves sheepishly back to the doorway, to be received by his fellows with slaps on the back and loud jests. At table cowboys carry on little conversation with the girls. They talk amongst themselves, but at the women. The presence of the girls leads them to play many pranks on one another. The ice is long in breaking, for their habitual reserve is not easily worn off. Later in the evening this shyness is less marked.

As Jack and Echo entered the doorway, Parenthesis had arisen from his seat at the head of table and was beginning: “Fellow citizens ”

Confused cries of “Sit down,” “Let him talk!” greeted him.

Sage-brush held up his hand for silence: “Go ahead, Parenthesis,” he cried encouragingly.

Parenthesis climbed on a chair and put a foot on the table. This was too much for the orderly soul of Mrs. Allen. “Take your dirty feet off my tablecloth!” she commanded, making a threatening move toward the offender.

Allen restrained her, and Fresno caused Parenthesis to subside by yelling: “Get down offen that table, you idiot. There’s the bride an’ groom comin’ in behind you. We can see ’em through yer legs, but we don’t like that kin’ of a frame.”

Jack had slipped his arm about Écho’s waist. She was holding his hand, smiling at the exuberance of their guests. Buck McKee, who had been drinking freely, staggered to his feet and hiccoughed: “Here, now, this, yere don’t go this spoonin’ business there ain’t goin’ to be no mush and milk served out before the weddin’ ”

“Will you shut up?” admonished Slim Hoover.

“No, siree,” cried the belligerent McKee. “There ain’t no man here can shut me up. I’m Buck McKee, I am, and when I starts in on a weddin’-festivities I deal ”

“This is one game you are not in on,” answered Jack quietly, feeling that he would have to take the lead in the settlement of the unfortunate interruption of the fun.

“That’s all right, Jack,” McKee began, holding out his hand “let bygones ”

Jack was in no mood to parley with the offender. McKee had not been invited to the wedding. The young bridegroom knew that if the first offense were overlooked it would only encourage him, and he would make trouble all evening. Moreover, he disliked Buck because of his evil habits and ugly record.

“You came to this weddin’ without an invite,” claimed Jack.

“I’m here,” he growled.

“You’re not wanted.”

“What?” shouted McKee, paling with anger.

Turning to his friends, speaking calmly and paying no attention to the aroused desperado, Jack said: “Boys, you all know my objection to this man. Dick Lane caught him spring before last slitting the tongue of one of Uncle Jim’s calves.”

“It’s a lie!” shouted McKee, pulling his revolver and attempting to level it at his accuser. Hoover was too quick for him. Catching him by the wrist, he deftly forced him to drop the muzzle toward the floor.

With frightened cries the girls huddled in a corner. The other cowboys upset chairs, springing to their feet, drawing revolvers half-way from holsters as they did so.

Hoover had pressed his thumb into the back of McKee’s hand, forcing him to open his fingers and drop his gun on the table. Picking it up, Hoover snapped the weapon open, emptied the cylinders of the cartridges.

Jack made no move to defend himself. He was aware his friends could protect him.

“That’ll do,” he said to the raging, disarmed puncher. “You can go, Buck. When I want you in any festivities, I’ll send a special invite to you.”

“I’m sure much obliged,” sneered McKee, making his way toward the door.

“Here’s your gun,” cried Slim, tossing the weapon toward him.

McKee caught the weapon, muttering “Thanks.”

“It needs cleaning,” sneered the Sheriff.

Turning at the doorway, McKee said; “I ain’t much stuck on weddin’s, anyway.” Looking at Jack, he continued threateningly: “Next time we meet it’ll be at a little swaree of my own.”

“Get,” was Jack’s laconic and ominous command.

With assumed carelessness, McKee answered: “I’m a-gettin’. Well, gents, I hopes you all’ll enjoy this yere pink tea. Say, Bud, put a piece of weddin’-cake in your pocket for me. I wants to dream on it.”

“Who brought him here?” asked Jack, facing his guests.

“I did,” answered Bud defiantly.

“You might have known better,” was Jack’s only comment.

“I’m not a-sayin’ who’s to come and go. This ain’t none of my weddin’.”

Polly stopped further comment by laying her hand over his mouth and slipping into the seat beside him.

“Well, let it go at that,” said Jack, closing the incident.

He rejoined Echo as he spoke. The guests reseated themselves. Mrs. Allen laid her hand on Jack’s shoulder and said: “Just the same, it ain’t right and proper for you to be together before the ceremony without a chaperonie.”

“Nothin’ that’s right nice is ever right proper,” laughed Slim.

“Well, it ain’t the way folks does back East,” replied Mrs. Allen tartly, glaring at the Sheriff.

“Blast the East,” growled Allen. “We does things in our own way out here.”

With a mischievous smile, Slim glanced at his comrades, and then solemnly observed: “Still, I hear they does make the two contractin’-parties sit off alone by themselves ”

“What for?” asked Jack.

“Why, to give them the last bit of quiet enjoyment they’re goin’ to have for the rest of their lives,” chuckled Slim.

The cowboys laughed hilariously at the sally, but Mrs. Allen, throwing her arms about Écho’s neck, burst into tears, crying: “My little girl.”

“What’s the use of opening up the sluices now, Josephine?”

“Let her alone, Jim,” drawled Slim; “her feelin’s is harrowed some, an’ irrigation is what they needs most.”

The outburst of tears was incomprehensible to the bridegroom. Already irritated by the McKee incident, he took affront at the display of sentiment.

“I don’t want any crying at my wedding.”

“It’s half my wedding,” pouted Echo tearfully.

“Ain’t I losin’ my daughter,” sobbed Mrs. Allen.

“Ain’t you getting my mother’s son?” snapped Jack.

The men howled with glee at the rude badinage which only called forth a fresh burst of weeping on the part of Mrs. Allen, in which the girls began show symptoms of joining.

Polly sought to soothe the trouble by pushing Jack playfully to one side, and saying: “Oh, stop it all. Look here, Echo Allen, you know your hair ain’t fixed yet.”

“An’ the minister due here at any minute,” added Mrs. Allen.

“Come along, we will take charge of you now,” ordered Polly. The girls gathered in a group about the bride, bustling and chattering, telling her all men were brutes at time and, looking at the fat Sheriff, who blushed to the roots of his hair at the charge, that “Slim Hoover was the worst of the lot.” Mrs. Allen pushed them away, and again fell weeping on Écho’s shoulder. “Hold on now, They ain’t a soul goin’ to do nothin’ for her except her mother,” she whimpered.

“There she goes again,” said Jack in disgust.

“He’s goin’ to take my child away from me,” wailed the mother.

Tears were streaming down Écho’s cheek. “Don’t cry, mother,” she wept.

“No, no, don’t cry,” echoed the girls.

“It’s all for the best,” began Polly.

“It’s all for the best, it’s all for the best,” chorused the group.

“Well, I’ll be ” gasped Jack.

“Jack Payson you just ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Polly, stamping her foot. “You nasty, mean old thing,” she threw in for good measure.

Mrs. Allen led Echo from the room. The girls followed, crying “You nasty, mean old thing” to the unfortunate bridegroom.

The cowboys enjoyed the scene immensely. It was a bit of human comedy, totally unexpected. First they imitated the weeping women, and then laughed uproariously at Jack.

“Did you ever see such darned carryings on,” said the bridegroom, in disgust. “What have I done?”

“Shucks! All mothers is like that,” remarked Allen sympathetically. “They fuss if their girls marry and they fuss if they don’t. Why, my ma carried on something scandalous when Josephine roped me.”

All of the men chuckled except Jack.

“I’m appointed a committees,” continued the old rancher, “to sit up with you till the fatal moment.”

“I’m game,” responded Jack grimly. “I know what’s coming, but I won’t squeal.”

“You’ll git all that’s a-comin’ to you,” grinned Allen.

Slim had maneuvered until he reached the door blocking Jack’s way. As the bridegroom started to leave the room he took his hand, and with an assumption of deep dejection and sorrow bade him “Good-bye.”

“Oh, dry up!” laughed Jack, pushing the Sheriff aside. Halting, he requested: “One thing I want to understand right now, if you’re goin’ to fling any old boots after me remove the spurs.”

“This yere’s a sure enough event, an’ I’m goin’ to tap the barrel an’ throw away the bung. Wow!” shouted Sage-brush.