Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/94



SOME OF THE FRIENDS MET IN OLD TUCSON—JACK LONG—HIS DIVORCE—MARSHAL DUFFIELD AND "WACO BILL"—"THEM 'ERE'S MEE VISITIN' KEE-YARD"—JUDGE TITUS AND CHARLES O. BROWN—HOW DUFFIELD WAS KILLED—UNCLE BILLY N AND HIS THREE GLASS EYES—AL. GARRETT—DOCTOR SEMIG AND LIEUTENANT SHERWOOD—DON ESTEVAN OCHOA—BISHOP SALPOINTE—PETE KITCHEN AND HIS RANCH.

"See yar, muchacho, move roun' lively now, 'n' git me a Jinny Lin' steak." It was a strong, hearty voice which sounded in my ears from the table just behind me in the "Shoo Fly," and made me mechanically turn about, almost as much perplexed as was the waiter-boy, Miguel, by the strange request.

"Would you have any objection, sir, to letting me know what you mean by a Jenny Lind steak?"

"A Jinny Lin' steak, mee son, 's a steak cut from off a hoss's upper lip. I makes it a rule allers to git what I orders; 'n' ez far's I kin see, I'll get a Jinny Lin' steak anyhow in this yere outfit, so I'm kinder takin' time by the fetlock, 'n' orderin' jes' what I want. My name's Jack Long; what mout your'n be?"

It was apparent, at half a glance, that Jack Long was not "in sassiety," unless it might be a "sassiety" decidedly addicted to tobacco, given to the use of flannel instead of "b'iled" shirts, never without six-shooter on hip, and indulging in profanity by the wholesale.

A better acquaintance with old Jack showed that, like the chestnut, his roughest part was on the outside. Courage, tenderness, truth, and other manly attributes peered out from under roughness of garb and speech. He was one of Gray's "gems of purest ray serene," born in "the dark, unfathomed caves" of frontier isolation.

Jack Long had not always been "Jack" Long. Once, way