The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1894-03-30
HE POSED AS A BAD MAN.
Had a Right to Be Lynched, Maybe, but
Net That Way,

Net That Way.
'There isn't any kind of doubt that One
Ear Dodge was an all round nuisance and
internal annoyance to the boys and maybe
had right to be lynched, but it doesn't
seem to me that I'd have lynched him just
the way they did" said Orrin Boyes of New
Mexico. ut may be, too, that they didn't
intend to lynch him. But anyhow, he was
lynched, and said then, and l say now,
that it wasn't done exactly regular.
Dodge wanted to pass as a bad man
the worst kind of bad man-but he wasn't,
and that's what made him so unpopular.
He couldn't originate anything bad at all.
He could steal a horse or run off cattle,
but he did it in the regular commonplace,
sneaking way that every dirty Indian thief
does it, and not by some stroke of genius
that would have marked him as a chap
worth cultivating. He could fill himself
with rum on the slightest provocation, but
even that never brought any spark Of
smartness out of him.
HE was a secondhand bad man. He
was simply copyist. He carried this to
such an extent that he even tried that
hackneyed, played out, discarded bit of
cowboy playfulness that was once looked
upon as fixing at once the title of bad man
on the cheerful chap who tried 1.-THE fore.
ing of tenderfoot at the point of revolv-
er to drink liquor he didn't want. Dodge
made an effort at this trick one night at
Lordsburg. Instead of the tenderfoot trem.
blinGly swallowing the liquor he laid hands
on Bob He took his revolver away from
him and then good naturally whacked one
of the would be bad mans ears off close to
his head with his hunting knife.
AFTER that Bob lost caste faster than
ever. He became known as One Ear Dodge,
and he got lots of hints that folks around
there only wanted one thing to make them
perfectly contented and happy, and that
thing was One Ear Dodge's perpetual alb.
sence. But he wouldn't take hints and got
to be bigger nuisance than ever. There
was big cattle ranch just over the line in
Old Mexico, and one day lot of stray cat
tie came strolling in among us. Their
brands showed that they belonged on the
Mexican ranch. One Ear Dodge had been
unusually disagreeable for a day or two
and was hanging around, ugly and broke.
When the boys saw whose cattle the stray
were, they said it would be good thing u
get One Ear to drive them back to theit
"'Sther anything in it? snorted Dodge.
Big reward in it, of course was the re
ply.
1.-The upshot of it was that One Ear 20,
on his pony, rounded up the strays and
started with them for their owners ranch
After he had been gone an hour or so on
of the boys said, as if he had just happene,
to think of it:
lone Ear will have to drive them cattle
onto and across that Mexican range befor
he gets to the ranch, won't hep
1.-THE reply was that he would
eff any of them Mexican ranchers should
see him doing it they might think it looked
mightn't they?'
Naturally they might was the reply.
But maybe they won't see him..
THAT was all there was said on the SUI
ject just then. One Ear Dodge didn't com.
back that day nor the next. Along toward
night the next day some of the boys cam,
again.
We'll, said one of them, 4 guess the,
must "a seen One Ear
Looks that way was the quiet reply.
"Then the subject was dropped. Two OF
three days later word came from over the
border that some Mexican ranchers had
and strung up one cared cattle
thief, taken in the act.
Yes, they seen One Ear said one OF
the boys. 4 was afeerd maybe they would
"And said then, and l say now, that
maybe One Ear had right to be lynched,
but l wouldn't have done it that way. II
wasn't regular. New York Sun.