Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 / 2008-07-01 00:00:00
EBOOK ROUGHING IT, PART 4. ***
Produced by David Widger
ROUGHING IT
by Mark Twain
1880
Part 4.
CHAPTER XXXI.
There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort.
One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one
song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one
small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person's
music. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and
quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its
tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content
to die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart
ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt and a
bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and always
suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would
accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap
somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and
then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but
invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a
disappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a
meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a
promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile.
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