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Show A WESTERN CHARACTER, 35 try over agin, an' they might as well a been at war for any comfort they took. " But next day I found Joe's, and it was the poorest, meanest house on the Tract. I walked in, an' what do you think I seed? Thar was my dear Joe sittin' all bent up, an' poor an' thin, an' lookin', though not over forty, like a man o' sixty. He'd rastled with ager an' room-atiz time about till nothin' was left for any sickness to tack on to, an' all the while that Irish wife o' his tormentin' him to death. When I saw him I never said a word I couldn't but I jist took him in my arms, an' for the first time in all my troubles I broke down an' cried ! It done Joe no end o' good to see me, but it wa'nt for long. She soon spilt our comfort. She was a spitfire when he married her, an' you un-derstand age an' bad luck hadn't improved her any what with bein' out among such rough people, losin' her children, an' livin' in a cabin with a sick man, an' mighty little to go on, for they was poor as the low- wines o' pond- water." Only the western traveler who has been compelled to suck up moist-ure from a prairie slough, or lie down and drink out of a wagon track, can appreciate the force of this simile. It is scarcely possible to con-ceive of a more unsatisfactory drink. " She could swear like an ox- driver, an' when she took a tantrum every thing was ammunition that come to her hand the poker or an old skil-let- handle, it was all one to her. But I stood her off, and was gettin' Joe cheered up right smart, when one mornin' I \ vas everlastingly took back by seem' a crowd of men with guns comin' up to the gate. ' What does them men want?' sez I. ' You, like enough,' sez she, snap-pin'- turtle style. An', sure enough, it was me. They snatched me right out of the house, with-out a word o' why, an' I thought my time had come. They was all sorts o' talk about an aw-ful murder, an' two or three o' the lot was hot to hang me up. But the captain said, ' No ; ev-ery fellar should have a fair trial Mormon or old settler, it was all the same.' They took me down to a camp in the woods, where they was more'n a hundred men, some comin' and goin' all the time, an' nearly all drinkin', and the drunker they got the more dangered I felt. One chap stuck his face nearly agin mine, an' sez he, ' Didn't you help kill Miller and Liecy?' ' No,' sez I. ' Didn't you come MRS. JOE'S " TANTRUMS. 1 |