Chapter IV: All's Well That Ends Well

|The magic words that Geraldine emptied into Pumpkin James' ear roused him, and his eyes opened with their old diabolical light. A slight grating sound was heard. It was the broken bone of our hero's off-limb coming back into its place and reuniting.

Then his rib came back out of the ground and waltzed into him, his liver healed up, and he arose and sat in the moonlight.

His first words were, "Ah, Geraldine, you have brought me back to life. Now would you please look around and see if there is any cold pie in the house, my very ownest own?"

This seemed to indicate that he had not fully recovered his mental faculties, as the most accessible cold pie was 327 miles from where they then were, and in a direct line.

Geraldine, however, set herself at once about procuring food for her soul's idol. Taking some salt she went out along the wooded slope to find a jack-rabbit on whose tail she could throw the salt, thus securing him as an easy prey.

She soon scared up one with a broken leg.

Most all of my gentle, refined, and intellectual readers of the Rocky mountains have frightened from his lair, at some time or other, a jack-rabbit with a broken leg. Jackrabbits with shattered limbs are very common in the West.

Geraldine followed hopefully on. Up hill and down, over low parks covered with hunch-grass, across little mountain streams, through long stretches of greasewood and sagebrush, starting the owl from some blasted pine tree, or frightening the smiling coyote from his course, onward and ever onward she flew like a hunted fawn.

Her every motion was grace and poetry itself. The limber sun bonnet flopped to and fro with a merry Runic flop, but the crippled John rabbit did not tarry. For an invalid, he seemed to make very fair time.

Occasionally he would look around over his shoulder, and laugh a merry, taunting laugh. Then he would give his attention to getting over the ground.

Geraldine got mad, and resolved to overtake her game and mete out to him a horrible death.

Now and then she would wildly throw a lump of salt in the direction of the fleeing rabbit; but it always failed to connect.

It was, indeed, an exciting chase, and, in fact, is yet, for as we go to press, Geraldine is still madly pursuing the ostensibly disabled jack-rabbit with a handful of common table salt poised in the air, ready to throw upon the tail of her rapidly retreating adversary.

*****

Jesse James, alias Pumpkin Jim, waited a reasonable length of time for the return of Geraldine; but as she cometh not he said, he arose, and bestriding his narrow guage mule, he rode away.

He readily laid down his life again wherever he went, and although he died a miserable death in almost every corner of the earth, he never more met Geraldine Carboline O'Toole, the Italian Countess, to whom he was betrothed.

It is thought that she chased the crippled jack-rabbit into the realms of space.

WILLIAM NYE AND THE HEATHEN CHINEE.

|The subject of agriculture, which really lies nearest my heart of anything I can think of, naturally brings to the front the oriental buckwheater.

The Chinaman, as an agriculturalist, is generally successful in a small way, and I love to watch him work. Whenever I get bilious and need exercise, I go over to the southend of town and vicariously hoe radishes for an hour or two till the pores are open, and I feel that delightful languor and the chastened sense of hunger and honesty which comes to the man who is not afraid to toil.

There is a feeling now too prevalent among our American people that the Chinaman should be driven away, but I do not join in the popular cry because I enjoy him too much, and he soothes me and cheers me when all the earth seems filled with woe.

My favorite oriental onion-promoter is called Tue Long. This, however, was a piece of side-splitting mirth on the part of his parents, for, as a matter of fact, he is too short.

He is considerably bronzed by the action of the sun and his out-of-door pursuits, so that his complexion has that radiant olive tinge that we see on the canvas-covered ham.

I go over to Tue Long's farm, in Sherrod's alkali addition to Laramie, when I feel that office work does not give me the physical exercise that I need, and I lean over the fence and tell Tue Long my experience with club-footed parsnips and early-fried potatoes. At first he used to listen to me with his mouth open, so that you could throw a Mason & Hamlin organ into it, but now he don't seem to pay much attention to what I say to him.

This shows that the Chinaman cannot keep pace with the rapid strides now being made by American agriculture.

One day last week I had lost my appetite, and needed active bodily exertion, so I strolled over to the rat-eater's rural retreat, to watch Tue Long a few hours, and see if I couldn't get up an appetite.

The wind was blowing pretty fresh, as it sometimes does in this lovely clime, and Tue Long was trying to hold down some vulcanized rubber beets, and moss-agate asparagus. He wasn't succeeding very well, for just as he would get the beets driven into the ground securely, the zephyr would spring up from the south and blow the moss-agate asparagus all over the military reservation. Then while he would be giving his attention to the asparagus, the wailing winds would blow down his fence, and turn the tail of Tue Long's morning wrapper over his head, and leave his spinal column sticking up into the summer sky.

It seemed to be a bad day for agriculture, and Tue Long would alternately uncork some brocaded profanity, and then chase his hat, or do up his hair in a fresh Grecian coil I leaned over the fence, and laughing a low gurgling laugh, I said:

"Tue Long, you must learn to control your fiendish temper. Agriculture requires patience and serenity of disposition. You must always be cheerful and gentle. Always be pleasant and amiable in your home life. When the mountain wind uncoils your back-hair, and you cannot hold down the flap of your dressing sacque, you must not get mad and swear; but fill the air with merry laughter, just as Confucius used to do. Be a philosopher, and frown down these little annoyances."

Now, when I was propagating my Scotch-plaid summer squashes, the squash-bugs got in one morning before breakfast, and ate the vines. Soon after that I tried a new kind of fire-proof squash, with a hunting-case on it; but the squash-bugs took a spade and pried open the hunting-case, and ate the supreme stuffing out of every individual squash. I then tried the Bessemer-steel squash, with plaster of Paris works inside, but the irrigation was defective, and it never matured.

But, did I forget myself and swear like a Guinea hen, the way you do? Did I break forth into petulant remarks, and lower myself in the estimation of my neighbors?

Not to any remarkable degree.

I went to the stockholders of the Pioneer Canal Company and said, "Here, gentlemen, I am an inexperienced agriculturalist, and I do not succeed. Nothing grows under my watchful care but the speckled squash-bug, and the fresh water cut worm. You are old, horny-handed sons of toil, and practical tillers of the soil; what shall I do?"

Then the secretary called a meeting of the stockholders, and the matter was discussed. The general custodian of peculiar seeds and rare bulbs was ordered to select certain seeds from the bureau, and give them to me for trial. Among these were the seeds of the early dwarf salad oil vine, the Northern spy horse radish, the black and tan Lima bean, the non-explosive codfish ball, the soda water melon, the grammatical sugar beet, and the anti-cut worm asbestos string bean.

These have all grown well and thrived when my neighbors, who were too proud to ask advice, have failed. I shall this year raise, no doubt, enough of the non-explosive codfish ball alone to place me far beyond the reach of want. But Tue Long is a thousand years behind the great irresistible tide of progress, and will cling to his celluloid beets and cottonwood cucumbers for ages yet to come.

HONG LEE'S GRAND BENEFIT AT LEADVILLE.

|It will be remembered about nine months ago Hong Lee resolved to establish a branch laundry and shirt-destroying establishment--at Leadville, with the main office and general headquarters at Laramie. All at once he came back, and seemed to be satisfied at the old stand. So I would ask him his opinion of the future of the carbonate camp.

Hong Lee had just tied his hair up in a Grecian coil and secured it in a mass of shining braids, as I came in, and was giving some orders as to the day's work. One employe was just completing his devotions to a cross-eyed god in one corner, and another was squirting water out of his mouth like an oriental street sprinkler over the spotless front of a white shirt.

Hong Lee asked me to sit down on the ironing table and make myself at home. I asked him how trade was, and a few other unimportant questions, and then asked him what he thought of Leadville. I cannot give the conversation in the exact language in which it was given, as I am not up in pigeon English. He said he went over to Leadville, thinking that at $4.25 per dozen he could work up a good business and wear a brocaded overshirt with slashed sleeves and Pekin trimmings. Trade was a little dull here and he had more Chinamen than he could use, so he had concluded to establish a branch outfit at Leadville and make some scads.

I asked him why he did not remain at the camp and go through the pro--- gramme.

He said that the general feeling in Leadville was not friendly to the Chinaman. The people did not meet him with a brass band, and the mayor didn't tender him the freedom of the city. On the contrary, they seemed cold and distant toward him. By and by they clubbed together and came to call on him. They were very attentive then. Very much so. Some had shot-guns to fire salutes with, and others had large clotheslines in their hands. Hong Lee felt proud to be so much thought of, and was preparing an impromptu speech on orange paper with a marking brush, when the chairman came and told him that a few American citizens had come, hoping to be of use to him in learning the ways of the city.

Then they took him out to the public square where Hong Lee supposed that he was to make his speech, and they proceeded to kick him into the most shapeless mass. They kicked him into a globular form and then flattened him out after which they knocked him into a rhomboid. This change was followed by thumping him into an isosceles triangle. When he looked more like a bundle of old clothes than a Chinaman, they took him with a pair of tongs, and threw him over the battlements.

Hono-Lee returned to consciousness, and murmured, "Where am I?" or words to that effect. A noble mule-skinner passing by, touched him up with the hot end of his mule whip, and showed him the route to Denver.

Hong Lee says now, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

YOU FOU.

|She is rather below the medium height, and her gait is the easy gliding movement of a club-footed Guinea pig. She has a mouth like a whippoorwill, and when she laughed at some little _bon mot_, such as I am always getting off, her upper lip was thrown back over her head, till it caught on a large Celestial hair-pin, and her attendant had to go up there with a monkey-wrench and unfasten it. It was the most heavenly smile I ever saw. It had so much depth and soul to it. I felt flattered, of course, but I was more guarded in my remarks after that. The Chinese, as a nation, cannot grapple with our American style of joke. They are not strong enough.

You Fou was held here on a telegram from Denver, until Monday, when she was released on writ of _habeas corpus_. I went up to see how the writ would work on a China woman. At first it 'didn't seem to catch on, but after awhile it began to work on her all right; and eventually turned her loose. But I wouldn't be a habeas corpus for $2 per day and board.

After being released on the writ, there being no warrant at that time, counsel told Ah Say, who had You Fou in charge, that the best thing for him to do would be to light out with great vehemence for some foreign strand, as the Denver officer would be here Monday evening with the required documents to take You Fou back to Denver. She was therefore taken to the palatial residence of Hong Lee, on Second, near A street, where she was rigged up in man's attire; but Sheriff Boswell stepped in, and through the gauzy disguise he discovered You Fou.

He arrested her. She was bathed in tears. It was the first bath she ever had. He took her and held her, figuratively speaking, until another telegram announced that the requisition of the Governor was countermanded, and You Fou lit out for her destination.

I shall write a little novelette next summer with this tale as a foundation, and it will be a good thing. I am having the cuts made now at a shoemaker shop here in town.

THE LOP-EARED LOVERS OF THE LITTLE LARAMIE.