Dick Doyle's Business Card

By Bret Harte

"Dick Doyle's Business Card" by Bret Harte. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Apr 11, 2021
• ISBN: 4064066460938

Bret Harte

Bret Harte (1836–1902) was an author and poet known for his romantic depictions of the American West and the California gold rush. Born in New York, Harte moved to California when he was seventeen and worked as a miner, messenger, and journalist. In 1868 he became editor of the Overland Monthly, a literary journal in which he published his most famous work, “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” In 1871 Harte returned east to further his writing career. He spent his later years as an American diplomat in Germany and Britain.

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Bret Harte

Dick Doyle's Business Card

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066460938

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Trent's Trust and Other Stories — Dick Doyle's Business Card

Table of Contents

The Sage Wood and Dead Flat stage coach was waiting before the station. The Pine Barrens mail wagon that connected with it was long overdue, with its transfer passengers, and the station had relapsed into listless expectation. Even the humors of Dick Boyle, the Chicago drummer,--and, so far, the solitary passenger--which had diverted the waiting loungers, began to fail in effect, though the cheerfulness of the humorist was unabated. The ostlers had slunk back into the stables, the station keeper and stage driver had reduced their conversation to impatient monosyllables, as if each thought the other responsible for the delay. A solitary Indian, wrapped in a commissary blanket and covered by a cast-off tall hat, crouched against the wall of the station looking stolidly at nothing. The station itself, a long, rambling building containing its entire accommodation for man and beast under one monotonous, shed-like roof, offered nothing to attract the eye. Still less the prospect, on the one side two miles of arid waste to the stunted, far-spaced pines in the distance, known as the Barrens; on the other an apparently limitless level with darker patches of sage brush, like the scars of burnt-out fires.

Dick Boyle approached the motionless Indian as a possible relief. YOU don't seem to care much if school keeps or not, do you, Lo?

The Indian, who had been half crouching on his upturned soles, here straightened himself with a lithe, animal-like movement, and stood up. Boyle took hold of a corner of his blanket and examined it critically.

Gov'ment ain't pampering you with A1 goods, Lo! I reckon the agent charged 'em four dollars for that. Our firm could have delivered them to you for 2 dols. 37 cents, and thrown in a box of beads in the bargain. Suthin like this! He took from his pocket a small box containing a gaudy bead necklace and held it up before the Indian.

The savage, who had regarded him--or rather looked beyond him--with the tolerating indifference of one interrupted by a frisking inferior animal, here suddenly changed his expression. A look of childish eagerness came into his gloomy face; he reached out his hand for the trinket.

Hol' on! said Boyle, hesitating for a moment; then he suddenly ejaculated, Well! take it, and one o' these, and drew a business card from his pocket, which he stuck in the band of the battered tall hat of the aborigine. There! show that to your friends, and when you're wantin' anything in our line--

The interrupting roar of laughter, coming from the box seat of the coach, was probably what Boyle was expecting, for he turned away