“SWEET ADELINE”

Fatty Matthews came panting through the doors.  He was one of those men who have a leisurely build and a purely American desire for action; so that he was always hurrying and always puffing.  If he mounted a horse, sweat started out from every pore; if he swallowed a glass of red-eye he breathed hard thereafter.  Yet he was capable of great and sustained exertions, as many and many a man in the Three B’s could testify.  He was ashamed of his fat.  Imagine the soul of a Bald Eagle in the body of a Poland China sow and you begin to have some idea of Fatty Matthews.  Fat filled his boots as with water and he made a “squnching” sound when he walked; fat rolled along his jowls; fat made his very forehead flabby; fat almost buried his eyes.  But nothing could conceal the hawk-line of his nose or the gleam of those half-buried eyes.  His hair was short-cropped, grey, and stood on end like bristles, and he was in the habit of using his panting breath in humming—­for that concealed the puffing.  So Fatty Matthews came through the doors and his little, concealed eyes darted from face to face.  Then he kneeled beside Strann.

He was humming as he opened Jerry’s shirt; he was humming as he pulled from his bag—­for Fatty was almost as much doctor as he was marshal, cowpuncher, miner, and gambler—­a roll of cotton and another roll of bandages.  The crowd grouped around him, fascinated, and at his directions some of them brought water and others raised and turned the body while the marshal made the bandages; Jerry Strann was unconscious.  Fatty Matthews began to intersperse talk in his humming.

“You was plugged from in front—­my beauty—­was you?” grunted Fatty, and then running the roll of bandage around the wounded man’s chest he hummed a bar of: 

   "Sweet Adeline, my Adeline,
   At night, dear heart, for you I pine."

“Was Jerry lookin’ the other way when he was spotted?” asked Fatty of the bystanders.  “O’Brien, you seen it?”

O’Brien cleared his throat.

“I didn’t see nothin’,” he said mildly, and began to mop his bar, which was already polished beyond belief.

“Well,” muttered Fatty Matthews, “all these birds get it.  And Jerry was some overdue.  Lew, you seen it?”

“Yep.”

“Some drunken bum do it?”

Lew leaned to the ear of the kneeling marshal and whispered briefly.  Fatty opened his eyes and cursed until his panting forced him to break off and hum.

“Beat him to the draw?” he gasped at length.

“Jerry’s gun was clean out before the stranger made a move,” asserted Lew.

“It ain’t possible,” murmured the deputy, and hummed softly: 

   "In all my dreams, your fair face beams."

He added sharply, as he finished the bandaging:  “Where’d he head for?”

“No place,” answered Lew.  “He just now went out the door.”

The deputy swore again, but he added, enlightened; “Going to plead self-defense, eh?”