第11章

Johnny Florer's Axle Grease.

It was the afternoon--cool and beautiful.I had been nursing my indolence with a cigar and one of the large arm-chairs which the veranda of the great hotel afforded.

Now and then I considered within myself as to the whereabouts of my Old Cattleman, and was in a half humor to hunt him up.Just as my thoughts were hardening into decision in that behalf, a high, wavering note, evidently meant for song, came floating around the corner of the house, from the veranda on the end.The singer was out of range of eye, but I knew him for my aged friend.Thus he gave forth:

"Dogville, Dogville!

A tavern an' a still, That's all thar is in all Dog-ville.""How do you feel to-day?" I asked as I took a chair near the venerable musician."Happy and healthy, I trust?""Never feels better in my life," responded the Old Cattleman."If Iwas to feel any better, I'd shorely go an' see a doctor.""You are a singer, I observe."

"I'm melodious nacheral, but I'm gettin' so I sort o' stumbles in my notes.Shoutin' an' singin' 'round a passel of cattle to keep 'em from stampedin' on bad nights has sp'iled my voice, that a-way.

Thar's nothin' so weakenin', vocal, as them efforts in the open air an' in the midst of the storms an' the elements.What for a song is that I'm renderin'? Son, I learns that ballad long ago, back when I'm a boy in old Tennessee.It's writ, word and music, by little Mollie Hines, who lives with her pap, old Homer Hines, over on the 'Possum Trot.Mollie Hines is shore a poet, an' has a mighty sight of fame, local.She's what you-all might call a jo-darter of a poet, Mollie is; an' let anythin' touchin' or romantic happen anywhere along the 'Possum Trot, so as to give her a subjeck, an' Mollie would be down on it, instanter, like a fallin' star.She shorely is a verse maker, an' is known in the Cumberland country as 'The Nightingale of Big Bone Lick.' I remembers when a Shylock over to the Dudleytown bank forecloses a mortgage on old Homer Hines, an'

offers his settlements at public vandue that a-way, how Mollie prances out an' pours a poem into the miscreant.Thar's a hundred an' 'levcn verses into it, an' each one like a bullet outen a Winchester.It goes like this: "Thar's a word to be uttered to the rich man in his pride.

(Which a gent is frequent richest when it's jest before he died!)Thar's a word to be uttered to the hawg a-eatin' truck.

(Which a hawg is frequent fattest when it's jest before he's stuck!)"Mighty sperited epick, that! You recalls that English preacher sharp that comes squanderin' 'round the tavern yere for his health about a month ago? Shore! I knows you couldn't have overlooked no bet like that divine.Well, that night in them parlors, when he reads some rhymes in a book,--whatever is that piece he reads?

Locksley Hall; right you be, son! As I was sayin', when he's through renderin' said Locksley Hall, he comes buttin' into a talk with me where I'm camped in a corner all cosy as a toad onder a cabbage leaf, reecoverin' myse'f with licker from them recitals of his, an'

he says to me, this parson party does:

"'Which it's shorely a set-back America has no poets,' says he.

"'It's evident,' I says, 'that you never hears of Mollie Hines.'

"'No, never once,' he replies; 'is this yere Miss Hines a poet?'

"Is Mollie Hines a poet!' I repeats, for my scorn at the mere idee kind o' stiffens its knees an' takes to buckin' some.'Mollie Hines could make that Locksley Hall gent you was readin' from, or even the party who writes Watt's Hymns, go to the diskyard.' An' then Irepeats some forty of them stanzas, whereof that one I jest now recites is a speciment.

"What does this pulpit gent say? He see I has him cinched, an' he's plumb mute.He confines himse'f to turnin' up his nose in disgust like Bill Storey does when his father-in-law horsewhips him."Following this, the Old Cattleman and I wrapped ourselves in thoughtful smoke, for the space of five minutes, as ones who pondered the genius of "The Nightingale of Big Bone Lick"--Mollie Hines on the banks of the Possom Trot.At last my friend broke forth with a question.

"Whoever is them far-off folks you-all was tellin' me is related to Injuns?""The Japanese." I replied."Undoubtedly the Indians and the Japanese are of the same stock.""Which I'm foaled like a mule," said the old gentleman, "a complete prey to inborn notions ag'in Injuns.I wouldn't have one pesterin'

'round me more'n I'd eat off en the same plate with a snake.I shore has aversions to 'em a whole lot.Of course, I never sees them Japs, but I saveys Injuns from feathers to moccasins, an' comparin' Japs to Injuns, I feels about 'em like old Bill Rawlins says about his brother Jim's wife.""And how was that?" I asked.

The afternoon was lazy and good, and I in a mood to listen to my rambling grey comrade talk of anybody or anything.

"It's this a-way," he began."This yere Bill an' Jim Rawlins is brothers an' abides in Roanoke, Virginny.They splits up in their yooth, an' Jim goes p'intin' out for the West.Which he shore gets thar, an' nothin' is heard of him for forty years.

"Bill Rawlins, back in Roanoke, waxes a heap rich, an' at last clears up his game an' resolves lie takes a rest.Also he concloods to travel; an' as long as he's goin' to travel, he allows he'll sort o' go projectin' 'round an' see if he can't locate Jim.

"He gets a old an' musty tip about Jim, this Bill Rawlins does, an'

it works out all right.Bill cuts Jim's trail 'way out yonder on the Slope at a meetropolis called Los Angeles.But this yere Jim ain't thar none.The folks tells Bill they reckons Jim is over to Virginny City.