Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1915 — HARD LUCK IN HUGGET [ARTICLE]

HARD LUCK IN HUGGET

By HAROLD CARTER.

(Copyright. 1915. by W. Q. Chapman.) Women certainly are queer. They act in the most unexpected ways, and when you think you’ve roped them they’re up and away like a wild maverick. Now there was Miss Rose Crawford, who kept books for Jim Riley. First he thought he’d got her and then he thought he hadn’t, and then, just when he thought he had—well! We’d heard a new preacher was coming to Nugget, and naturally the boys were interested. Doctor Hadley, who had been with us six years, had been thought a good deal of. His Saturday night illustrated lectures on the wonders of nature had proved a live wire. Jim Riley had won. the prize Doctor Hadley offered for the best collection of lizqfd* and Tom Bullen's wife got the prize he gave for the best cake baked for the church sociable; and so, with the parson gone, we saw all our innocent pastimes nipped in the bud unless Mr. Frank Cunningham 'turned out a sociable sort of man like his predecessor. The minute he steps off the train, however, he looks so queer we see something is wroifg. He looks about him surprisedltke. “Where’s your outlaws?” he asks. "There ain’t been none here for these ten since they passed the antigambling laws,” says Tom. . ' “Why don’t you carry pistols?” the parson asks, still more surprised. "They’s taxed too high,” I explains. "Times is hard in Nugget.” “What, don’t you shoot up tenderfeet who take drinks of lemonade?” he demands. “Everybody drinks lemonade, mister,” explains Jim Riley. "This is a prohibition county.” Naturally this didn’t make too good an .impression on us, especially when he preached a sermon against outlaws from the pulpit the first Sunday. The boys had another thing against him, too. He’d asked Miss Rose to go bug-gy-riding with him on the Wednesday, and as Jim Riley had been monopolizing her a good deal, we didn’t like the butting-in feature. However, Miss Rose went with him. “He didn’t talk about nothing but outlaws," she said to us. “He thinks we’re hiding the vice of Nugget from him to prevent his breaking it up. He says if he spots it he’s going to smash it.” / “So that’s why he come nosing round my back door on Sunday before church!” exclaimed Jim, hotly. “Wanted to see if I was violating the temperance laws, eh?” Well, after another week had gone by things was getting unbearable. None of us wanted to lay hands on the parson, but we saw he hadn’t come to Nugget in an understanding spirit Moreover, he was bothering Miss Rose, and we didn’t like that. “Now I tell you how it is, boys,” says Tom Bullen. “What he wants is to prove himself. He’s like a young horse that hasn’t been broke. He’s like a soldier going into battle, who think* he’s a hero and has to learn that it will take all his heroism to keep from running away. If once he gets up against what he’s looking for he'll sing pretty small and possibly turn out to be a good feller.” And then he outlined his plan to us. We were to stage an attempted abduction. It was three nights later, before the moon come up, that we carried out the plan. Jim and Tom lay in wait at the parsonage corner, about the time when Miss Rose used to walk home from the store. We knew the parson would be waiting for her, to say good evening and to offer to escort her, and the rest of us was hiding in Ephraim’s store across the street, to see the fun. Just as Miss Rose was. passing the parsonage Jim and Tom leaps out and grabs her. Scream? I never heard a girl holler like it Jim said afterward it scared him into thinking he was really trying to abduct her. “Help! Help!” she cried at the top of her voice. ? , - Suddenly the parsonage door opened and Mr. Cunningham'came out. “Wh-wh-what’s the matter?” he stammered.

It was so dark some of us had taken the opportunity to creep up close, and I tell you It faflrly scared me stiff to think a man could be such a coward. The parson was positively shaking' with fright, and he looked as if hj was going to turn tail any instant “You leave that young lady alone," he mumbled; and then he caught sight of Miss Rose’s face. Next instant he had landed like a catapult right into the pair of them. Before he knew it, Jim was lying in the road with a cut lip and Tom was leaning against the wall with a bruised eye. But the parson was at them again, and there wasn’t nothing to do but to turn tail. We ran, the lot of us, and we was afraid every instant the parson would land one of us blows across our necks. But he tailed off and went back to Miss Rose, and that was the last we saw, except that we heard he took her home and told her she wasn’t never to go out alone after dark tn such a vicious town agate. Miss Rose wasn’t at the store next day, and by nightfall everybody knew she was to marry the parson when the banns had been read. He got perkier than ever afterwards, and-Jim agreed we’d made ja bad. mistake, inaotaocounting for the power of love over a man. Anyhow, we’ve got a sew parson In Nugget now, and Jim’s trying to interwrt Mm in