[Dan De Quille, A Red Hair, Salt Lake Tribune, April 18, 1886]

 

A RED HAIR.

__________

It Proves Almost As Dangerous As A Real Firebrand.

__________

BY DAN DE QUILLE, FOR "TRIBUNE."

__________

The Splendid Joke Brown Played on Jones, and How Jones Returned the Compliment — Their Wives Come In on the Home Stretch.

__________

            Brown and Jones, two old Comstockers, are partners in the dry goods business. One morning early, when Brown was on his way from his residence on Howard Street, to his place of business on South C Street, he found lying at the edge of the sidewalk, where it had evidently blown from the planks, a small wisp of fiery red hair—what the ladies call a "switch." Picking it up, he said to himself: "Now I'll have some fun with that steady-going old partner of mine. Before the week is out it will be red-hot for him at his house. I'll get Mrs. Jones into his wool!"

            Three or four days after this, when Jones came back from his dinner, he said to his partner, Brown: "Brown, do you know rather a curious thing happened to me yesterday, and the day before, and has happened to me again today — a devilish strange kind of thing! Day before yesterday my wife found a long, red, undoubtedly female hair on my coat collar. I thought nothing of it and she didn't seem to think much about it — easy enough for it to get there by accident, you know — but yesterday, when I went home she found two such hairs on my coat and naturally was a little riled. Today, however, I'll be blowed if she didn't find three or four long red hairs on my coat and picked them off and showed them to me. Where I could have got them beats my time. Told my wife so—told her I had no idea how they got there. She said 'of course I hadn't,' that I 'must have caught them floating in the breeze.' Then I said: 'In passing some lady on the street her switch might have blown across my shoulder and left the hairs there.' She said: 'Nothing more likely, and nothing more likely than that you should meet a woman three evenings in succession whose switch blew across your shoulders, and nothing more likely than that in each instance the switch should belong to a woman with red hair.' She said all this coolly and calmly, but with a little twitching about the corners of her mouth and a sort of quivering about the nostrils that I never like to see there, then dropped the subject. Now, how those hairs came on my coat I can't imagine, without I did accidentally brush against some lady with auburn ringlets. But I am confident my wife don't believe that possible. During dinner, and while I was in the house, I several times caught her looking at me in such a way as I never noticed before — like she was trying to study out in me some unknown and hitherto unsuspected capacity. Now tell, Brown, have there been many red-headed women in the store during the past three days?"

            "Not one, as you well know. Oh, you old innocent, just as though you didn't know how those hairs came there and from whose head! Oh, Jones, you sly old rat! A redhead has caught you at last — has fired your venerable heart!"

            "Nonsense, sir — d--d nonsense! Do you suppose I've lived to the age of fifty in a quiet and correct way to at last lose my head all on a sudden and begin running after suspicious characters?"

            "That's the way you steady, exemplary old cocks generally go when you make a flop of it."

            "Why, blast me, Brown, you talk and look just as though you thought it all over with me. I haven't been near any woman — I don't know anything about those hairs!"

            "Oh, no, it's not all over with you; not at all, but you must own that the finding of the hairs was rather a suspicious circumstance — you yourself thought it was curious, or you would not have spoken of it, and your wife evidently thought it not only curious but also rather suspicious."

            "My wife," said Jones, and a troubled expression for a moment shaded his face, "well, yes, but then you know when there is a thing of the kind that you are unable to fully explain, a woman is liable to see more in it than there really is. It is of no use that you tell her the plain, unvarnished truth, that it is a thing you know nothing about, and which you can in no way account for; her active brain will imagine beyond all you can say."

            "Yes, that is very true. Now, seeing two or three long, red hairs that have by some accident become attached to your clothing, she at once takes the very extravagant notion that those hairs must have belonged to some red-haired woman, and is so unreasonable as to suppose that the head from which the hairs came must have been near the place where they were found, and even the finding these hairs on your coat three days in succession don't seem to convince her of the utter groundlessness of her suspicions."

            "I know there is no use of denying it — things do look rather against me, but I swear to you that no red-headed woman has, to my knowledge, been within a rod of me, and that no woman's head has been on my shoulder!"

            "Very well; I am sure you tell the truth, but the great point is to convince your wife."

            "My wife — aye, there is the rub!"

            The very next evening after this conversation Jones rushed into the store and cried:  "Brown, the devil is in it! More red hairs! half a dozen of 'em and all the same old color! My wife has lost patience, and what can I say? How can I explain a thing I know nothing about — a thing that is as great a mystery to me as it is exasperating to her?  The more I tell her this the more vexed she becomes, and says I ought at least to have the decency to brush the hairs off my coat before making my appearance before her. Now this thing is beginning to worry me. I shall brush my coat hereafter every day before going home."

            The next day Jones diligently brushed his coat before leaving the store. Brown accompanied him to the door to see that he was all right, but when he came back from dinner he was like a wild man. More hairs than ever before had been found on his coat, and there had been a regular scene between him and his wife.

            The next day Jones got Brown to brush his coat, to make sure that it was all right. He happened to stand between two mirrors that hung on opposite walls of the store, and just as Brown was pronouncing him all right he made a discovery. All was plain to him in a moment, and he said to himself: "So, so, Mr. Brown! I'll show you that two can play at that game!"

            Without appearing to notice anything, Jones saw where Brown tucked away the snarl of hair and then took his departure, but stopped at a barber shop on his way home and had his coat well brushed.

            When he returned to the store he purposely growled more than ever about the hairs on his coat, all of which Brown enjoyed hugely.

            Meantime, Mrs. Jones had visited Mrs. Brown and told her of the suspicions she had in regard to some of the visitors to the store over which their husbands presided — told her all about the red hairs, in fact. Mrs. Brown had never seen any red hairs about her husband's clothing, and therefore was of the opinion that the woman did not visit the store.

            Three or four days after this talk between two wives, Mrs. Brown called upon Mrs. Jones in a state of great heat and excitement. Said she: "Do you know, Mrs. Jones, that for two or three days past my husband has come home with a lot of just such hairs as you described to me on his coat? At first there were but one or two, then more and more of them. I never said a word to him about them, the deceitful wretch, but I'll find out who that red-headed hussey is before I am many days older. Let them think I am not on the watch; it will then be all the easier to catch them."

            "How long has it been since you began to see the hairs on your husband's coat?" said Mrs. Jones.

            "Just three days," was the answer.

            "It is strange," said Mrs. Jones, musingly, "but do you know that for the past three days I have seen nothing of the kind on my husband's clothes?"

            The ladies looked at each other wild-eyed for the space of a minute, then Mrs. Brown spoke the mind of both in saying: "Can it be possible that they are partners in everything?"

            "That woman visits the store every afternoon as sure as we are alive!" cried Mrs. Jones "If we have a grain of sense we shall be able to surprise the hussey, whoever she may be, when we can give her what she deserves."

            "You are right. Let us give her a nice little surprise tomorrow!" said Mrs. Brown. "I'll send my Chinaman for two good rawhides, and we'll give the creature a taste of them, no matter who she is or how high she may be holding her head at present.  We'll bring her down to her proper level!"

            The next day, along in the afternoon, Brown said to Jones: "I wonder what our wives are up to? I've seen them pass to and fro on the opposite side of the street three or four times in the last hour."

            "Oh they're just out sauntering about to see how their acquaintances are dressing this spring. Things of that kind are all women think of."

            Presently a very stylishly dressed young lady came into the store and asked to see some goods. She was young and handsome, but had a perfect cataract of fiery red hair.

            As she was the daughter of one of the wealthiest citizens of a neighboring town, the two merchants never gave her red hair a thought but both obsequiously busied themselves in taking down and showing her the costly goods she had asked to see.

            The two men were so busy with their goods and the praise of them that neither of them observed the two shawled women who swiftly glided into the store until they were upon their customer and were shouting: "O, you hussey! you're caught at last!" and were plying their cowhides with fearful effect.

            A pile of red hair lay on the floor in an instant, and the three women were locked together, spitting, sputtering, and clawing like a trio of cats.

            Brown and Jones recognized their wives and at once understood the whole business.  In a moment they were over the counter. Each man grasped his wife and, in spite of her struggles, drew her away, when the young Lady customer, thus left at liberty, darted hatless and almost hairless into the street, shouting: "Police! Police!"

            Here was a go. Brown undertook to hold the two wives, while Jones dashed out into the street after the young lady, who was still hysterically screaming:  "Police! Police!"

            Mrs. Jones was wild at being held fast by Mr. Brown.  She called him all manner of bad names and at last began clawing at his face and eyes with the ferocity of a tigress.

            Seeing this, Mrs. Brown soon had both of her hands into the hair of Mrs. Jones.  In a moment that lady was left bald-headed as a babe.

            Brown was found to have a good deal of business on his hands when Jones and a policeman appeared on the scene bringing with them the young lady, who was scared very nearly out of her wits.

            "Gentlemen, I hope you will have the goodness to explain this here racket?" said the policeman.  "What is it all about?"

            Both men began talking, when the policeman said: "One at a time, if you please, and we'll get at the bottom of the business all the sooner."

            Brown then told of finding the switch, and the joke he had played on Jones with the hairs extracted from it, and to prove to the two wives that he was telling the truth he produced what remained of the hair. "But what I can't understand," said he, "is why my wife should feel so very venomous about the matter."

            "I can," said Jones, and then proceeded to explain in what way he had detected Brown's little trick and how he had paid him back in his own coin.

            "And so there was no woman coming here, after all?" cried both wives in a breath.

            "Not the shadow of one!" said the two husbands.

            It was then from the two wives, "Dear George" and "Dear Charles," and "how foolishly we have acted in being so hasty — how we have wronged you!"

            "And how you have both wronged me!" cried the young lady, now thoroughly recovered from her fright, but blazing like a meteor with anger.

            "Oh, you dear, good girl! you poor, dear creature! we have indeed done you a great wrong, and we beg your pardon a thousand times!" cried the two wives. "You shall go home with us at once and hereafter you'll have no better friends than we shall show ourselves to be to you."

            But the young lady would not have it.  Her voice was now for war.  She gathered up her cataract or rather bonfire of hair, clapped it upon her head in the best shape she could, and, as she sailed out of the store she assured the two wives and all hands that they would soon hear from her and from her father and from her father's lawyer.

            Brown and Jones then sent their wives home, notwithstanding that they wished to remain and make further explanations.  Being left alone, the two partners gazed at each other for a time in silence, when Brown said: "What a nice cunning pair of jokers we are!"

            "It is dangerous to play with fire," said Jones, "and I believe red hair even when it is not attached to its native soil, is the next thing to it!"