Bunch Grass Part 34

Mrs. Greiffenhagen said in the same hard monotone: "Mr. Greiffenhagen, either these men leave this house or I do."

The storekeeper led his wife aside and whispered to her. She nodded none too graciously, and he hurried from the room.

"Wheer's he goin'?" asked Pete.

"He's goin' up ter the ranch-house," said Mrs. Greiffenhagen spitefully, "ter fetch the Professor."

"Very right an' proper," yawned Pete. "Would it be trespa.s.sin' too much on yer kindness to ask for three gla.s.ses? It's time we downed some more medicine, an' I don't like to drink outer the bottle in this yere parlour."

Mrs. Greiffenhagen folded her hands. She had been heard to declare in public that if she were dying, and a thimbleful of whisky would restore her to health and Mr. Greiffenhagen, she would not swallow it.

The three men took more medicine. Presently Mamie supported Dan to the sofa; Edna was sitting on the floor with Jimmie's head on her lap.

Mrs. Greiffenhagen glared at Pete, who from time to time kissed his hand to her. Not till she heard footsteps on the porch outside did the good lady rise from her chair. She opened the door to admit her husband. He reeled in.

"You too!" she said in a freezing voice.

Greiffenhagen explained. The boys were really poisoned, and whisky must be poured down their throats till stronger remedies arrived. The Professor, Ajax, and Uncle Jake were riding to San Lorenzo upon a wild-goose chase. He added that the boss was driving down with more whisky.

Within a few minutes I arrived with the whisky; and Mrs. Greiffenhagen was constrained to unbend. It was decided to put the men to bed, pending the arrival of the Professor. Two vaqueros were galloping after him in the hope of overtaking him before he had gone too far.

Dan was undressed and placed in Miss Willing's muslin-curtained bed; Jimmie who would not permit his clothes to be removed, was laid upon the couch of Edna Parkinson. Pete was carried into the Greiffenhagen bedroom, and deposited, boots and all, upon a spotless white bedspread.

"Jiminy Christmas," said Greiffenhagen, "ain't it awful!"

At regular intervals the medicine was administered. Finally, what the Professor had desired came to pa.s.s. The three men lay senseless, breathing stertorously. To achieve this result more than a gallon of the best whisky had been used! Mamie and Edna began to exhibit symptoms of hysteria.

"I'll never leave my Dan--never!" declared Mamie, when it was suggested that she should return to the parlour.

"Jimmie, dear," sobbed Edna, "if you'll promise me not to die, I'll never speak to Mr. Greenberg again!"

At about six the next morning Pete Holloway woke up. He opened his eyes, groaned deeply, and closed them again.

"How are you feeling, Pete?" said I.

Pete groaned again, for memory of all that had pa.s.sed came to him.

With a tremendous effort he said--

"I'm dyin'!"

And he looked it.

In Miss Parkinson's bower, Jimmie Barker was saying faintly: "Kiss me good-bye, Edna; the hour has come!"

Shortly before, Mamie had whispered to Dan: "Darling, can you forgive me?" And he had replied fervently: "Mame, if Jack Rice kin make you happy, you take him."

Greiffenhagen had tried to administer more medicine. The boys refused to touch it. Pete expressed the feelings of the others when he muttered: "I ain't goin' to cross the Jordan drunk!"

It seemed to me that the three men were sinking. Mrs. Greiffenhagen, an impa.s.sioned pessimist, was of opinion that they couldn't last another hour!

At nine, when our nerves had been strained to breaking-point, Ajax and a big-bearded stranger galloped up to Greiffenhagen's house.

"It's Doc. Elkins, of San Lorenzy," said a hired man.

"The boys are sinking!" sobbed Mrs. Greiffenhagen. "Where is the Professor?"

"I left him in San Lorenzo."

Elkins and Ajax rushed upstairs and into the Greiffenhagen bedroom.

Elkins glanced at Pete, felt his pulse, and then said deliberately--

"My man, you're dying of sheer funk! You've poisoned yourself with nothing more deadly than good Kentucky whisky! In six hours you'll be perfectly well again."

Pete heard, and pulled himself together. It struck him that this was not the first time that he had felt nearly dead after imbibing much whisky.

"But the Perfessor?" he asked feebly.

"Professor Adam Chawner," said Elkins in a clear voice, "is in a strait-waistcoat at the County Hospital. He will get over this, but not so quickly as you will. He is quite mad for the moment about a deadly microbe which only exists in his imagination."

The part.i.tions in most Californian houses are indecently thin. As Elkins's voice died away--and Pete said afterwards it was like a strain of heavenly music--a feeble cheer was heard from the chamber usually occupied by Miss Mary Willing.

"Jimmie," cried Dan, "air you dead yet?"

"Not quite," came an attenuated whisper from the other side of the pa.s.sage.

"We'll live to be married, old socks," continued Dan in a robuster voice, "but I've got the worst dose o' p.r.i.c.kly heat you ever saw."

The following day our three friends were riding the range. Six months afterwards, Professor Adam Chawner resumed his work at the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute.

XII

THE BABE

One of the Britishers who came to Paradise was an Irishman, the son of an archdeacon with a large family and a small income. He was a strapping fellow, strong and st.u.r.dy as a camel--and quite as obstinate. He always spoke affectionately of his people, but I fancy they were not deeply grieved when he left England. I dare say he was troublesome at home; you know what that means. However, he was warmly welcomed in Paradise, for he brought with him two hundred pounds in cash, and a disposition to spend it as quickly as possible. Ajax christened him The Babe, because he had a milk-and-roses complexion, and a babe's capacity for, and love of, liquid refreshment. Perhaps the archdeacon thought that the West was a sort of kindergarten, where children like The Babe are given, at small expense, object-lessons and exercises peculiarly adapted to young and plastic minds. In Central America certain tribes living by the seaboard throw their children into the surf, wherein they sink or learn to swim, as the Fates decree. Some sink.

When The Babe's two hundred pounds were spent, he came to us and asked for a job. He said, I remember, that he was the son of an archdeacon, and that he could trust us to bear that in mind. We were so impressed by his guileless face and c.o.c.k-a-hoop a.s.surance, that we had not the heart to turn him away.

At the end of a fortnight Ajax took pencil and paper, and computed what The Babe had cost us. He had staked a valuable horse; he had smashed a patent reaper; he had set fire to the ranch, and burnt up five hundred acres of bunch gra.s.s; and he had turned some of our quiet domestic cows into wild beasts, because--as he put it--he wished to become a vaquero. He said that the billet of foreman would just suit his father's son.

"The equivalent of what The Babe has destroyed," said my brother Ajax, "if put out at compound interest, five per cent., would in a hundred years amount to more than fifty thousand pounds."

"I'm awfully sorry," murmured The Babe.

"I fear," observed Ajax to me later, "that we cannot afford to nurse this infant."