True Grit

by Charles Portis

I did not get my mean streak from him.

There is trash for you.

Chaney was a tenant and Papa felt responsibility. He was his brother’s keeper. Does that answer your question?

He might have taken the time to saddle the horse or hitched up three spans of mules to a Concord stagecoach and smoked a pipe as it seems no one in that city was after him. He had mistaken the drummers for men. “The wicked flee when none pursueth.”

When the conductor came through he said, “Get that trunk out of the aisle, nigger!” I replied to him in this way: “We will move the trunk but there is no reason for you to be so hateful about it.”

it was not Oklahoma across the river then but the Indian Territory.

I said, “That is my father.” I stood there looking at him. What a waste! Tom Chaney would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell!

Writing could be better here. Then again, the narrator is an older woman recalling this; there is some distance.

told

Notice her high handed way with Yarnell.

The sheriff said, “I have no authority in the Indian Nation. He is now the business of the U.S. marshals.”

The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork.

I said, “Where can I find this Rooster?”

I had my father’s business to attend to.

the others paid little attention to him, being occupied with their food like hogs rooting in a bucket.

She has disdain for many people .

“He will find plenty of his own stamp there,” said he. “Birds of a feather. It is a sink of crime. Not a day goes by but there comes some new report of a farmer bludgeoned, a wife outraged, or a blameless traveler set upon and cut down in a sanguinary ambuscade. The civilizing arts of commerce do not flourish there.”

The marshal travels about friendless and alone in that criminal nation. Every man’s hand is against him there save in large part for that of the Indian who has been cruelly imposed upon by felonious intruders from the States.”

“There can be no settlement after I leave this office,” said I. “It will go to law.”

She has true grit.

the most wicked men in the world. They had ridden the “hoot-owl trail” and tasted the fruits of evil and now justice had caught up with them to demand payment. You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

Indian Territory which was a refuge for desperadoes from all over the map.

But the magazines of today do not know a good story when they see one. They would rather print trash.

I was surprised when an old one-eyed jasper that was built along the lines of Grover Cleveland went up and was sworn. I say “old.” He was about forty years of age.

If there ever was a man with black murder in his countenance it was Odus Wharton. He was a half-breed with

Creeks are good Indians, they say, but a Creek-white like him or a Creek-Negro is something else again.

I said, “They tell me you are a man with true grit.”

“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”

“You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister.” “I never said you could.” “These shitepoke lawyers think you can but you can’t. All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be.

Thank God for the Harrison Narcotics Law.

Gives a good sense of the narrator and the time when she is narrating it.

She made trouble for herself because she would never say what she meant but only blush and talk around it.

he had a smug grin that made you nervous when he turned it on you.

“He is a crafty one.” “I thought him slow-witted myself.” “That was his act.” “It was a good one. Are you some kind of law?”

“Yes, that is the thing to do,” said LaBoeuf. “You need a Federal man. I am thinking along those lines myself. I need someone who knows the ground and can make an arrest out there that will stand up. You cannot tell what the courts will do these days.

Criminal investigation is sordid and dangerous and is best left in the hands of men who know the work.”

He stood up and said, “Earlier tonight I gave some thought to stealing a kiss from you, though you are very young, and sick and unattractive to boot, but now I am of a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.” “One would be as unpleasant as the other,” I replied.

“You are powerful young for a horsetrader,” said LaBoeuf. “Not to mention your sex.” “Yes, and you are powerful free for a stranger,” said I.

Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.

If you don’t have no schooling you are up against it in this country, sis. That is the way of it. No sir, that man has no chance any more. No matter if he has got sand in his craw, others will push him aside, little thin fellows that have won spelling bees back home.”

I will own I was somewhat afraid of them although they were not, as you may imagine, wild Comanches with painted faces

civilized Creeks and Cherokees and Choctaws from Mississippi and Alabama who had owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy and wore store clothes.

LaBoeuf was off his horse before you could say “Jack Robinson,” and at my side. He pulled me from the saddle and threw me to the ground, facedown. He twisted one of my arms behind me and put his knee in my back. I kicked and struggled but the big Texan was too much for me.

Rooster remained on his horse. He sat up there in the saddle and rolled a cigarette and watched.

Put your switch away, LaBoeuf. She has got the best of us.”

Rooster pulled his cedar-handled revolver and cocked it with his thumb and threw down on LaBoeuf. He said, “It will be the biggest mistake you ever made, you Texas brush-popper.”

I was determined not to give them anything to chaff me about.

Election. They do not fully accept it. I confess it is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Read

Sunrise was only a pale yellow glow through the overcast but such as it was it found us mounted and moving once again.

People from those countries are usually Catholics if they are anything. They love candles and beads.

Really hear the present narrator's voice here.

Here is what was in his eyes: confusion.

She took my boy with her too. He never did like me anyhow. I guess I did speak awful rough to him but I didn’t mean nothing by it.

“I don’t like this kind of talk. It is like women talking.”

LaBoeuf said, “There is something in what she says, Cogburn. I think she has done fine myself. She has won her spurs, so to speak. That is just my personal opinion.”

“I regret that shooting,” said he. “Mr. Ross was decent to me but he ought not to have meddled in my business. I was drinking and I was mad through and through. Nothing has gone right for me.”