I got a letter from Aunt Saragosa Grimes the other day which said:
Dear Breckinridge:
I believe time is softenin' yore Cousin Bearfield Buckner's
feelings toward you. He was over here to supper the other night jest
after he shot the three Evans boys, and he was in the best humor I
seen him in since he got back from Colorado. So I jest kind of
casually mentioned you and he didn't turn near as purple as he used to
every time he heered yore name mentioned. He jest kind of got a little
green around the years, and that might of been on account of him
chokin on the b'ar meat he was eatin'. And all he said was he was
going to beat yore brains out with a post oak maul if he ever ketched
up with you, which is the mildest remark he's made about you since he
got back to Texas. I believe he's practically give up the idee of
sculpin' you alive and leavin' you on the prairie for the buzzards
with both laigs broke like he used to swear was his sole ambition. I
believe in a year or so it would be safe for you to meet dear Cousin
Bearfield, and if you do have to shoot him, I hope you'll be broad-
minded and shoot him in some place which ain't vital because after all
you know it was yore fault to begin with. We air all well and nothin's
happened to speak of except Joe Allison got a arm broke argyin'
politics with Cousin Bearfield. Hopin' you air the same, I begs to
remane.
Yore lovin' Ant Saragosa.
It's heartening to know a man's kin is thinking kindly of him and
forgetting petty grudges. But I can see that Bearfield is been
misrepresenting things and pizening Aunt Saragosa's mind agen me,
otherwise she wouldn't of made that there remark about it being my
fault. All fair-minded men knows that what happened warn't my fault--
that is all except Bearfield, and he's naturally prejudiced, because
most of it happened to him.
I knowed Bearfield was somewheres in Colorado when I j'ined up
with Old Man Brant Mulholland to make a cattle drive from the Pecos to
the Platte, but that didn't have nothing to do with it. I expects to
run into Bearfield almost any place where the licker is red and the
shotguns is sawed-offs. He's a liar when he says I come into the High
Horse country a-purpose to wreck his life and ruin his career.
Everything I done to him was in kindness and kindredly affection.
But he ain't got no gratitude. When I think of the javelina meat I et
and the bare-footed bandits I had to associate with whilst living in
Old Mexico to avoid having to kill that wuthless critter, his present
attitude embitters me.
