orthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a
nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible
occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove
the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch
property. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six
feet, slurring rhythm of speech, and sectional idioms giving evidence
of his birthplace.

And yet, after taking on Western adjustments, this languid pine-box
whittler, cracker barrel hugger, shady corner lounger of the cotton
fields and sumac hills of the South became famed as a bad man among
men who had made a life-long study of the art of truculence.

At nine the next morning Calliope was fit. Inspired by his own
barbarous melodies and the contents of his jug, he was ready primed to
gather fresh laurels from the diffident brow of Quicksand. Encircled
and criss-crossed with cartridge belts, abundantly garnished with
revolvers, and copiously drunk, he poured forth into Quicksand's main
street. Too chivalrous to surprise and capture a town by silent
sortie, he paused at the nearest corner and emitted his slogan--that
fearful, brassy yell, so reminiscent of the steam piano [115], that
had gained for him the classic appellation that had superseded his own
baptismal name. Following close upon his vociferation came three shots
from his forty-five by way of limbering up the guns and testing his
aim. A yellow dog, the personal property of Colonel Swazey, the
proprietor of the Occidental, fell feet upward in the dust with one
farewell yelp. A Mexican who was crossing the street from the Blue
Front grocery carrying in his hand a bottle of kerosene, was
stimulated to a sudden and admirable burst of speed, still grasping
the neck of the shattered bottle. The new gilt weather-cock on Judge
Riley's lemon and ultramarine two-story residence shivered, flapped,
and hung by a splinter, the sport of the wanton breezes.

[FOOTNOTE 115: steam piano--calliope. Joshua C. Stoddard
(1814-1902) invented the calliope in 1855 and
formed the American Steam Piano Company to
manufacture it commercially.]

The artillery was in trim. Calliope's hand was steady. The high, calm
ecstasy of habitual battle was upon him, though slightly embittered by
the sadness of Alexander in that his conquests were limited to the
small world of Quicksand.

Down the street went Calliope