Page:Sunset Magazine vol. 31.pdf/462



HE lie-bill is an old Texas institution. If a man told the truth about you, or spoke ill of your wife or other female dependent, and softness restrained you from filling him full of buckshot, you took a gun and, pressing it firmly against his head—many preferred a more central portion of the human frame–compelled the prattler to sign a written confession that the story he had circulated was false. All this was years ago. Nowadays they resort to the courts, or pot their man from behind a telephone post.

It happened not infrequently that a gentleman would become so envenomed with spite that more than retractions found their way into lie-bills. “I am a low, ornery, sneaking hound, not fit to mix with decent white folks”—when a man feels the cold, round muzzle of a .45 against his ribs, he will call himself any names you may want him to and feel no shame until afterward. Therefore, it is not surprising that a confession often received trimmings.

Shanghai Pryor added some deft touches to one he wrested from Mel Gilpin, and nearly wrecked two lives. Shanghai was very proud of the document, and when in liquor would pull it out of his bureau drawer and gloat over the literary tang of the choicest phrases.

For upward of a year previous to this, he had ridden thrice a week from his farm to the Gourd ranch to sit in the parlor with Annielee Thurber, where he conversed with her parents whilst wondering whether they intended sticking out the entire evening or going to bed. She was a wholesome tomboy of a girl, and her mother had often had occasion to warn her that a whistling girl and crowing hen are bound to come to a bad end.

Because he regularly occupied the edge of a chair and made painful puns over which Annielee never failed to giggle, Shanghai got a notion that he was a favored suitor. To be sure, Annielee thought rather less of him than she did of the milch cow, but Shanghai did not know that.

Therefore he beheld the attentions of one Mel Gilpin with not a little dismay and chagrin. His rival's reputation was slightly unsavory, not so much by reason of what he had ever done as because Gilpin chose to have it so; it pleased him to be considered a sport by the cow-boys.

With the entry of Gilpin into the lists, the prospect began to darken for Shanghai. Twice in one week he found Mel discoursing at ease in the Thurber parlor when he arrived, convulsing both the old people and Annielee. So, in a huff, he ceased his visits and took to speculating on how a fine honest girl like Annielee could take up with a shifty rascal. And Gilpin rubbed it in as hard as he could. The manner in which he paraded his friendship with Annielee made Shanghai gnash his teeth.

Once they went together to an ice-cream social at the school-house, Gilpin driving a half-tamed bay of which he was very proud. They left the school-house at nine o'clock to make the home drive of twelve miles and they arrived at the Gourd ranch at two in the morning. One wheel was gone from the buckboard as they came scraping up the lane, the axle reposing on a board ripped from the floor of the vehicle. For nine weary miles they had toiled in this shape, the frenzied horse giving much trouble.

“Well” inquired Thurber sleepily as he let his daughter in, “how did this happen?”

“That fool horse of Mel’s” she answered crossly. “Mel, he takes too many chances. That horse ain’t safe.”

Neither her family nor anybody else who knew Annielee well gave another thought to the incident. It worried Shanghai, how ever.

On a day in town several of the boys joked Gilpin publicly about his midnight