Santa Fé's Partner Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town   By: Thomas A. Janvier (1849-1913)

Santa Fé's Partner

Being Some Memorials of Events in a

New Mexican Track end Town

By

Thomas A. Janvier

Author of

"The Passing of Thomas" "The Uncle of an Angel" "The Aztec Treasure House" "In the Sargasso Sea" Etc. Etc.

New York and London

Harper & Brothers Publishers

1907

Copyright, 1907, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights reserved.

Published September, 1907.

TO

C. A. J.

CONTENTS

I. PALOMITAS 1 II. THE SAGE BRUSH HEN 15 III. HART'S NEPHEW'S HOLD UP 44 IV. SANTA FÉ CHARLEY'S KINDERGARTEN 77 V. BOSTON'S LION HUNT 127 VI. SHORTY SMITH'S HANGING 163 VII. THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS 208

Illustrations

"'LOOK! LOOK! THERE BY THOSE LITTLE BUSHES!'" Frontispiece "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD GENT GOT A HOLD OF IT" 22 "WROTE OUT A NOTICE THAT WAS TACKED UP ON THE DEEPO DOOR" 84 "'ONE OF THE NEW GERMAN KINDERGARTEN APPLIANCES'" 120 "STARING 'ROUND THE PLACE SAME AS IF HE'D STRUCK A MENAGERIE" 132 "'IT'S HOTTER THAN SAHARA!' SAID THE ENGLISHMAN" 166 "AND DOWN HART WENT IN A HEAP ON THE FLOOR" 196 "'DON'T HANG HIM, SIR!' SHE GROANED OUT" 224

SANTA FÉ'S PARTNER

SANTA FÉ'S PARTNER

I

PALOMITAS

I've been around considerable in the Western Country mostly some years back and I've seen quite a little, one way and another, of the folks living there: but I can't really and truly say I've often come up with them nature's noblemen all the time at it doing stunts in natural nobility the story books make out is the chief population of them parts. Like enough the young fellers from the East who write such sorts of books having plenty of spare time for writing, while they're giving their feet a rest to get the ache out do come across 'em, same as they say they do; but I reckon the herd's a small one and, for a fact, if you could cross the book brand with the kind you mostly meet on the ranges the breed would be improved.

Cow punchers and prospectors and such don't look like and don't act like what tenderfoots is accustomed to, and so they size 'em up to be different all the way through. They ain't. They're just plain human nature, same as the rest of us only more so, through not being herded close in. About the size of it is, most folks needs barbed wire to keep 'em from straying. In a rough country where laws and constables ain't met with frequent a good sized slice of the population 's apt to run wild. With them that's white, it don't much matter. The worst you can say against 'em is, they sometimes do a little more shooting than seems really needed; but such doings is apt to have a show of reason at the bottom of 'em, and don't happen often anyhow most being satisfied to work off their high spirits some other way. With them that's not white, things is different. When the Apache streak gets on top it sends 'em along quick into clear deviltry the kind that makes you cussed just for the sake of cussedness and not caring a damn; and it's them that has give some parts of the Western Country like it did New Mexico in the time I'm talking about, when they was bunched thick there its bad name.