Making Good for Muley

Author of “A Prevaricated Parade,” “Loco or Love,” etc.

If there’s a word of truth in that old saying about beauty being only skin deep, Susie Abernathy was the thinnest-skinned person I ever saw. I may not be a judge of womanly beauty, and the poetry of my soul may have been shook loose by pitching broncos, and buried deep under a coating of alkali dust, but I sure do sabe when a woman is hard to look at.

Seems to me like it’s human nature for a feller with squirrel-teeth, no jaw to speak about and a physique like a corn cultivator to marry a beautiful female, and vice versa—not that “Muley” Bowles qualifies in the beauty division, but at that I reckon he shaded Susie a little.

Muley was a poetical puncher, of considerable avoirdupois, and he found Susie a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Susie was a niece of Zeb Abernathy, who owned a sheep outfit on Willow Creek, and a grouch toward all cowmen—and Muley punched cows for the Cross J outfit, and drew forty a month from old man Whittaker.

I’m not belittling Muley’s salary, ’cause I drew the same, and so did “Telescope” Tolliver and “Chuck” Warner. Back in the dim and distant past, when cows first come into style, the old-timers got together and settled the pay of the average cow-hand.

They figured that any normal puncher—if there is such an animal—would try at least three turns of the roulette wheel, at ten dollars per turn. That left him ten dollars. He’d buy some tobacco, some red neckties and perfume, and what was left, at two-bits a drink for hooch, would just carry him a few inches short of the murder and sudden death stage.

I’ve just been up to the house to draw my stipend from the old man, and am on my way back to the bunk-house, when Muley rides in. He’s humped over in his saddle, like Misery going to a cemetery, and if you can stamp despair on a full-sized milk-cheese he had it on his face.

He slips his saddle off, turns his bronc into the corral, leans against the fence and cuts loose the granddaddy of all sighs. There ain’t many men that you can hear sigh at pointblank range for a .30-30, but you could with Muley. It was like releasing the air on a freight train.

I wanders down there and passes the time of day with him, but he don’t respond. He exhausts deep into his soul once more, and hangs up his saddle.

“Some of your relatives die, Muley?” I asks.

“Hello, Hen,” says he, sad-like, “I ain’t got no relatives—except one aunt. I don’t know whether she’s alive or not.”

“Name of Bowles?”

“Nope. Name’s Allender. Maw’s name was Allender, and that’s why I was named Lemule Allender, and—what do you want to know for?”

“You sighed a couple of times,” I reminds him, and he nods and looks off across the range.

“Henry, how can I make some money? Regular money. I can’t get along on forty a month—no more.”

“You aim to marry Susie Abernathy?” I asks.

Muley digs a little trench with the toe of his boot, and shakes his head, sad-like—

“No-o-o, I reckon not, Hen.”

“Just come from there?” I asks.

“Uh-huh. Listen, Hen: can you keep a secret? I know danged well that you can’t, but I got to talk to somebody. Me and Susie’s got it all framed up to get married, but she argues that I got to see Zeb. Susie ain’t of age yet, and Zeb is her guardian, Sabe?

“Believe me, Henry, if I owned a penitentiary I’d hire Zeb. I’d a killed him a long time ago if it wasn’t for Susie, ’cause no sheep-man can tell me where to head in at—dang his old billy-goat face! He’s a darned——”

“Not to change the subject, Muley,” says I, “but why don’t you ask him?”

“I did. Do you think I’d feel this way over futures? You’re darn well right I asked him! Know what he said? He said to me, just like this: ‘Mister Bowles, you keep away from Miss Abernathy. She’s got her sights set higher than a forty-dollar puncher.’

“That’s what he said, Henry, and then I said: ‘Mister Abernathy, you’re tilting that gun for her: let her do her own shooting,” and he said, ‘Your reputation ain’t none too good, and if the Vigilantes ever organize here Susie would be a widow.’ ‘You wouldn’t know it,’ says I, ‘’cause they’d get you first.’

“Muley,” says I, “which one of you shot first?”

“Neither one. I beat him on the draw, but you can’t kill your sweetheart’s guardian. It ain’t ethical, Hen. He told me that any old time I could show enough money to buy out his herd I could have Susie. I told him I wasn’t in the habit of buying either sheep or wives, and he said he knowed that without me telling him. Said that no forty-a-month puncher was ever that foolish.”

“How about Susie—does she love you, Muley?”

“Uh-huh,” he sighs, “she sure does. I don’t know how she can, but she does.”

“I don’t know either, Muley, but it takes all kinds of folks to make a world.”

“I been thinking of marriage for a long time,” he sighs, “I been afraid to ask her, but today she up and kissed me, and that settled it, Hen. Funny what a little kiss will do thataway. It makes me desperate.”

“It would have done the same to me, Muley. If a girl like her kissed me I’d likely turn outlaw. You aim to go to Chicago with that train of cows?”

“I can’t, Hen. I hope the old man don’t ask me to. You going?”

“No. Telescope and Chuck are going, but the old man wants me to act as foreman while they’re gone—he’s going, too. I’ll ask him to let you stay, if you want me to, Muley.”

“I’d love you like a brother, Hen,” he sighs, “I want to be near her.”

That’s Muley. Being of a poetical temperament he has to confide in folks. If me or Telescope or Chuck got kissed by a lady we’d cherish the memory to our graves—unless it was Susie, and think of it only when alone.

I ain’t so bad to look upon, and a lady couldn’t be censured for giving me a kiss, but when it comes to Telescope and Chuck—well, I suppose they’ll eventually marry beautiful women.

Telescope is built like a bed-slat, and orates openly that he’s a twig of the Tolliver tree, which flourished and bought colored help in Kentucky before the plans were drawn for the pyramids. Chuck Warner don’t claim nothing, and don’t get sore if you subtract from his ancestry. He was born west of the Arizona line, and if he descended from anybody it was Ananias.

Chuck’s legs are as short as his memory, and he was born with the face of a horse and the trusting eyes of an angel. He never told the truth but once. A big feller, from down below Mesquite, took him down and bumped his head on the ground.

“You got enough?” asks the big person, and Chuck howls—

“Plenty!”