CHAPTER XX.

Colonel Coyote Clubbs.

“Which as a roole,” said the Old Cattleman, “I speaks with deference an’ yields respects to whatever finds its source in nacher, but this yere weather simply makes sech attitoode reedic’lous, an’ any encomiums passed thar-on would sound sarkastic.”  Here my friend waved a disgusted hand towards the rain-whipped panes and shook his head.  “Thar’s but one way to meet an’ cope successful with a day like this,” he ran on, “an’ that is to put yourse’f in the hands of a joodicious barkeep—­put yourse’f in his hands an’ let him pull you through.  Actin’ on this idee I jest despatches my black boy Tom for a pitcher of peach an’ honey, an’, onless you-all has better plans afoot, you might as well camp an’ wait deevelopments, same as old man Wasson does when he’s treed by the b’ar.”

Promptly came the peach and honey, and with its appearance the pelting storm outside lost power to annoy.  My companion beamingly did me honour in a full glass.  After a moment fraught of silence and peach and honey, and possibly, too, from some notion of pleasing my host with a compliment, I said:  “That gentleman with whom you were in converse last evening told me he never passed a more delightful hour than he spent listening to you.  You recall whom I mean?”

“Recall him?  Shore,” retorted my friend as he recurred to the pitcher for a second comforter.  “You-all alloodes to the little gent who’s lame in the nigh hind laig.  He appeals to me, speshul, as he puts me in mind of old Colonel Coyote Clubbs who scares up Doc Peets that time.  Old Coyote is lame same as this yere person.”

“Frighten Peets!” I exclaimed, with a great air; “you amaze me!  Give me the particulars.”

“Why, of course,” he replied, “I wouldn’t be onderstood that Peets is terrorised outright.  Still, old Colonel Coyote shore stampedes him an’ forces Peets to fly.  It’s either vamos or shoot up pore Coyote; an’ as Peets couldn’t do the latter, his only alternative is to go scatterin’ as I states.

“This yere Coyote has a camp some ten miles to the no’th an’ off to one side of the trail to Tucson.  Old Coyote lives alone an’ has built himse’f a dugout—­a sort o’ log hut that’s half in an’ half outen the ground.  His mission on earth is to slay coyotes—­’Wolfin’’ he calls it—­for their pelts; which Coyote gets a dollar each for the furs, an’ the New York store which buys ’em tells Coyote to go as far as he likes.  They stands eager to purchase all he can peel offen them anamiles.

“No; Coyote don’t shoot these yere little wolves; he p’isens ’em.  Coyote would take about twelve foot, say, of a pine tree he’s cut down—­this yere timber is mebby eight inches through—­an’ he’ll bore in it a two-inch auger hole every two foot.  These holes is some deep; about four inches it’s likely.  Old Coyote mixes his p’isen with beef tallow, biles them ingredients up together a