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Finally came a hale, old voyaguer whom Longley greeted heartily as he swung open the toll gate: "Greetings, Monsieur Francois Gendron, and from whence came you today?" The big Frenchman handed over the "six-bits" toll for himself and his horse. "From New Helvetia." "Ah Sacramento." "And I am bound for the North Fork Dry Diggings." "Auburn?" smiled Longley. "Bah! the new names!
Now the last trace of hardness went from the weathered countenance, the drooping mustache lifted to show toothy gaps, and even the marble of that eye softened. "Now, say!" exclaimed the cowboy. "Y' ain't stringin' me, are y'? She said that? Wal, this world is a shore funny place! Right funny! Jes' recent I paid a lady here in town six-bits t' read the trails in my hands.
Then I drove the wagon to Tucson and after delivering Wheeler his especial tree and receiving the stipulated five dollars for it, commenced peddling the rest on the streets. And, say! Those Christmas trees sold like wildfire. Everybody wanted one. I sold them for as low as six-bits and as high as five dollars, and before I left pretty nearly everybody in Tucson owned one of my trees.
The jovial puncher, having enjoyed Sundown's society to the extent of six-bits' worth of Mexican provender, suggested a return to "The Last Chance," where the tramp was solemnly introduced to a newly arrived coterie of thirsty riders of the mesas. Gaunt and exceedingly tall, he loomed above the heads of the group in the barroom "like a crane in a frog-waller," as one cowboy put it.
Uncle Lance can't have any kick coming, for I offered them to Captain Byler for seven dollars, and here I'm getting ten six-bits nearly four thousand dollars' advance, and we won't be gone five weeks. Any money down? Well, I should remark!
"Suppose we are delayed in reaching the Solomon until fall," said Dell to his brother; "that will put us into the settlements in time for corn-shucking. If you get six-bits a day, I'm surely worth fifty cents." "Suppose there is no corn to shuck," replied Joel. "Suppose this wounded man dies on our hands? What then?
They are not addicted to despoiling widows and orphans, then putting up long-winded prayers. They do not sing "Jesus lover of my soul" on Sunday, then sell that same soul to the devil for six-bits on Monday. No ghost, so far as I know, was ever accused of lying about his neighbor, fracturing the Seventh Commandment or beating his butcher-bills.
"I must find Bob" mused the gambler, "an' I must have time to find him before these people euchre him out o' that valuable water right o' his. An' when I find that young man, I'll bet six-bits he sells that water right to me; then I'll sell it to my friend Carey an' the proceeds o' that sale 'll go to Donnie. A woman can get along without a man, if she's got the price to get along on."
In the East a change purse is scorned by anything masculine, but here all the men carry one, I don't know why not in the East, nor why in the West. Blessed old "two-bits" and a "dollar six-bits" are the only woolly things left over from the old wild West. What else oh, I could keep on for pages. "Stay with it" is Western and has lots more feeling I think than "stick to it."
Just at that time there was a big crowd in the town, the first cattle having arrived in charge of a hungry lot of Texan cowpunchers, and everyone was making money. I set up my little lunch counter, charged seventy-five cents, or "six-bits" in the language of the West, for a lunch consisting of a cup of coffee and a sandwich, and speedily had all the customers I could handle.
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