y.

VII

THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS

In the long run, same as I said to start with, all tough towns gets to
where it's needed to have a clean-up. Shooting-scrapes is a habit that
grows; and after a while decent folks begins to be sort of sick of
such doings--and of having things all upside-downey generally--and
then something a little extry happens, bringing matters to a head, and
the white men take hold and the toughs is fired. Just to draw a card
anywheres from the pack--there was Durango. What made a clean town of
Durango was that woman getting killed in bed in her tent--the boys
being rumpussing around, same as usual, and a shot just happening her
way and taking her. It was felt that outsiders--and 'specially
ladies--oughtn't to get no such treatment; and so they had a spring
house-cleaning--after what I reckon was the worst winter a town ever
went through--and Durango was sobered right down.

Palomitas went along the same trail, and took the same pass over the
divide. All through that year, while the end of the track hung there,
things kept getting more and more uncomfortabler. When construction
started up again--the little Englishman, in spite of the dose we give
him, reported favorable on construction and the English stockholders
put up the stake they was asked to--things got to be worse still.
Right away, as soon as work begun, the place was jammed full of
Greasers getting paid off every Saturday night, and all day Sunday
being crazy drunk and knifing each other, and in between scrappings
having their pay sucked out of 'em at the banks and dance-halls--and
most of the boys going along about the same rate, except they used
guns instead of knives to settle matters--so the town really was just
about what you might call a quarter-section of hell's front yard.

Being that way, it come to be seen there'd got to be a clean-up; and
what was wanted for a starter was give by Santa Fe Charley shooting
Bill Hart. There was no real use for the shooting. The two of 'em
just got to jawing in Hart's store about which was the best of two
brands of plug tobacco--Hart being behind the counter, and Charley,
who had a bad jag on, setting out in the middle of the store on a
nail-kag--and the first thing anybody knowed, Charley'd let go
with his derringer through his pants-pocket and Hart was done for.
If Santa Fe hadn't been on one of his tears at the time, the thing
wouldn't a-happened--him and Hart always having be