Читать книгу Buffalo Bill's Ruse; Or, Won by Sheer Nerve - Ingraham Prentiss - Страница 3

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The ungainly female who came roaring into Eldorado in search of the husband who “run away” from her contrived to draw a crowd about her in a remarkably short time.

“I’m Pizen Kate, from Kansas City!” she yelled. “Git out of my way, er I’ll jab yer eye out with my umbreller. I’m lookin’ fer my husband, and you ain’t him. Think I’d take up with a weasel-faced, bow-legged speciment like you? Not on your tintype. I wouldn’t! So, git out o’ my way!”

The man had tried to “chaff” her and had roused her ire, but he fell back before the angry jabs of her “umbreller.”

She looked about, glaring.

She was “homely as sin.” Her features were not only irregular; they were twisted, gnarled, and seamed. A few thin hairs of an attempted beard floated from a mole on her chin, and on her upper lip there was a faint trace of a mustache. She was dressed in a soiled cotton garment, and on her head was a shapeless hat, with a faded red rose for ornament. In her muscular right hand she flourished an ancient umbrella.

“I heard my husband had come here, and I’m lookin’ fer him,” she declared. “He run away from me in Kansas City, and I set out to foller him; and I’ll foller him to the end o’ the earth but that I git him.”

“I’m bettin’ on you, all right!” called out some irreverent individual.

She fixed him with a glassy stare.

“Was I ’specially directin’ my langwidge to you?” she demanded. “I hate to hear a horse bray out that way. It’s sickenin’.”

“And I hate to hear the blather of a nanny goat!”

She lifted her umbrella.

“Say that ag’in, you red-headed son of a scarecrow, and I’ll ram this umbreller down yer neck and open it up inside of ye! I’d have you know that I’m a lady, and don’t allow no back talk.”

“What kind o’ lookin’ feller is your husband?” another asked.

“Well, he’s better-lookin’ than them that slanders him, if he is little and runty! He’s a small man, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring, and he’s a bit oldish. He was in this town less’n a week ago.”

“Kate, I reckon we ain’t met up with him.”

“Wot’s his name?” said another.

“What’s that got to do with it, if ye ain’t seen him?” she demanded.

She fixed her eyes on a man who had, a moment before, descended the steps of the Golconda Hotel, and who came now toward the crowd that hedged her in.

The man was Buffalo Bill; handsome, muscular, dressed in his border costume, and towering a full head over the other men in the street.

“That’s him, I reckon, Katie—there comes yer husband, I’m bettin’. You said he was little and runty, slim as a blacksnake, and wiry as a watch spring. I guess you hit his trail here, all right.”

It was the sort of humor this crowd could understand, and they roared hilariously.

Pizen Kate ignored them with fine scorn, and moved toward the great scout, the men falling back before her jabbing umbrella and giving her ample room. She pranced thus up in front of Buffalo Bill, and stood eying him, umbrella in one hand and the other hand on her hip.

“I think I seen you onct,” she announced, as the scout politely lifted his big hat to her.

“Possibly,” he said, smiling.

“You’re Persimmon Pete, the gazeboo what run away with my old man.”

The crowd snickered, and then roared again.

“Hardly,” said Buffalo Bill.

“Oh, I know ye!” was her vociferous assertion. “You come to Kansas City with an Injun medicine company, and lectured and sold medicine. And my old man went to your show and seen ye; and then he got magnetized by ye, somehow, and wandered off after you when you went away. He was dead gone on big men. I suppose that was because he was so durn little and runty himself. It made him like big men. And so he follered you off when you left town. Now, ain’t that so? I know ye. You’re Persimmon Pete.”

The scout lifted his hat again, flushing slightly, for he heard the roars of the crowd.

“Madam,” he said amiably, “I must deny the gentle insinuation. I never saw your husband, nor Persimmon Pete.”

“You deny it?” she shrieked.

“Certainly. I am compelled to doubt your word.”

“And you never seen my man?”

“I assure you that I never had that pleasure. What is his name?”

“If you’re goin’ to start in by lyin’, it don’t make no difference what his name is!” she declared.

“It might help in his identification,” he suggested.

“Well, then, it’s Nicholas Nomad.” She faced toward the snickering crowd. “Now laugh!” she yelled. “It’s his name, and it fits him; fer if he ain’t about next to no man I dunno it. Think of him leavin’ me in the suds there in——”

“Was ye washin’?” some one yelled.

“Well, yes, I was, though how you know it I can’t guess. I was washin’ that day fer Mrs. McGinniss and her six children, and so I had to stay at home and couldn’t watch him. He took advantage of it and skun out. But I’ll git him yit, and when I do——” She shook her red fist at the crowd.

“You’ll wallop him?”

“Wallop him? He’ll think he’s been mixed up in a barbed-wire cyclone; I won’t leave an inch of hide on him.” She turned back to Buffalo Bill. “Ye ain’t seen him, you’re sure?” she said anxiously.

“I’m sorry to say that I haven’t, madam.”

“You ain’t lyin’ to me?”

“No.”

She gave him a fierce glare, and then turned to hurl back some words of defiance to the shouting and laughing crowd.

“Don’t git too clost to me!” she warned. “I’m a lady, and I won’t stand it.”

Then she moved on up the street, looking for her husband, the crowd of amused men and boys streaming after her. Buffalo Bill followed her movements with an amused smile.

“Cody,” said the hotel clerk, who had come down into the street, “I’ve seen all sorts of females in my day, but she takes the cake.”

Buffalo Bill laughed and turned back toward the hotel.

“A bit peculiar, to say the least,” he agreed. “I don’t think I ever saw another just like her. But we’re likely to meet all kinds of queer characters out here in the West.”