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Finding the 'Last Chance" Mine
(Melius)
OI=3l By EMMETT CAMPBELL HALL |( rni )|f< rrn >|
Heard a fellow singin' a song this mornin' — leastwise he called it a song, an' said he was singin', an' I reckon he oughter know better what he was doing than jest a casual passerby, like I was, so I'll allow he ivas singin,' an' that it was a song — about not gointer stand for folks kickin' his dawg around even if he was a hound — the dawg, not the fellow. Which same got me to thinking about Jimmie Nesbit's old blind burro.
Shucks! Talk about not standin' to have yo' dawg kicked around — why, Jimmie shot the left ear offen a Greaser — an' it wasn't the ear he was a-aimin' at, neither — just because he flung a rock at the burro when he caught him eating his Panama hat, what had cost him forty dollars Mex., with a rattlesnake-skin band. Jimmie allowed that if his burro had a taste for Panama hats there wasn't no Greaser living that was goin' to be allowed to interfere with such a little harmless dissipation, an' that throwin ' rocks was croolty to animals an ' a insult to Jimmie, which would be resented prompt, We shorely did lead uncomfortable lives while that burro was in our midst, he havin' a perfectly unreasonable fondness for shirts hung out on the line, an' such like unnatural burro food, an' bein' able, ready and willing to kick a hole spang thru a brick wall — none of which "cute playfulness, ' ' as Jimmie called it, did anybody feel called upon to resent in the manner that would naturally occur to you — Jimmie being a* wonderful quick hand at a draw, an' perfeet
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ly unreasonable on the subject of that burro.
We used to try to argue with Jimmie that he didn 't really owe no gratitude to the burro, because what the burro done he done under a mistake, and that he wouldn't a-done it at all for Jimmie if he had a-knowed Jimmie was Jimmie, but it wasn 't no use.
"It's no use talkin', gents," Jimmie would say, perfectly stubborn, "what he done he done, an' far be it from me to depreciate his services, whether he done it for me or for Miss Apprehension, as the poet feller said. ' '
Then Jimmie would stalk out, real cold and dignified.
What had the burro done? Oh, nothin' much to speak of, only made Jimmie so rich we was undecided whether to elect him to Congress or lynch him. Didn 't seem right for one man to have that much money and just hang around, without nothin' happenin' to him.
It's a ill wind that dont blow no roasted larks into somebody's mouth, as the sayin' is, an' it was a good thing for Jimmie that old Jean Dyer had lost a leg, 'way back some time, an' had a wooden peg, 'cause if old Dyer had a-had just regular legs, Jimmie couldn't a-fooltd the burro none at all. That one of Dyer's is the peg on which the whole story hangs, so to speak.
He was a sour, cross-grained, miserly old rascal, was Dyer; regular oldtime prospector like used to be more common before most of the boys decided it was more profitable to chase