"Mrs. Mehitabel Thirteenth Scraggs opened up on me a few mornings after that, and my latest acquisition instantly laid hold of her by the hair of her head and beat her with a fryin'-pan till Number Thirteen had to take to her feet and stay that way for a week.

"'You _will_ talk to my ol' man like that, will _you_?' says Bridget. 'Well, mind you this, now! If he nades batin' _I'll_ bate him, but fur anny skimpy, yaller critter like yerself to so much as give him a sa.s.sy look I'll construe as a mortial offense.

Run along, now, run along, and git him his breakfas', or I'll strangle ye with me foot!'

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You _will_ talk to my ol' man like that, will _you_?"]

"No," said Mr. Scraggs, sadly. "I wasn't no worse off. If so it hadn't 'a' been Bridget took a drop too much at the drug-store one night, and another drop too much over the edge of the canon on the way home, I reckon I'd had some good out of life. But it wasn't to be, it wasn't to be. Drowned in the bud by the inflooence of that cussed unlucky number, thirteen."

VI

MR. SCRAGGS INTERVENES

"There was a man," said Mr. Scraggs, "who said, 'Deliver me from my friends.' Now, I ain't goin' so far as to say I indorse that statement, nor I ain't standin' still so strong as to say I don't.

But I know this: An enemy will do something for you every time, whilest most friends won't, and, moreover, I ain't ever had any enemy who furnished me with as much light entertainment as my friend Pete.

"I am speakin' from this here point of view. The real joyousness of life consists of being busy. We won't take no vote on the subjeck; we'll just admit it. Hence an enemy, that is an enemy, when you be in good health and able for to look after the enemy part from your side, is a great source of innercent amus.e.m.e.nt. A man gets so durn practical, he don't take no interest in all the pleasant rocks and bushes strewed over the country by the beneficent hand of Providence. He shacks along on his little old cayuse, with his mind occupied on how many things he can't do next, and he gits plumb disgusted. But suppose there's a chance of an able-bodied enemy, aided and abetted with a gun, a-hidin' behind each and every one of them rocks and bushes? Don't life take on an interest? I bet you money! The imaginations of that man's mind gets started up. Life becomes full of chances. The man, he's interested in his life because the other feller wants to take it away from him. A good enemy in a lonesome country means more to that man than her best friend's widower means to a maiden aunt.

You bet.

"Red and me differs there, I know, but his idees gets sifted through that crop of red alfalfa he wears, whilest I present a clean proposition to any idee that comes boundin' o'er the lee, or to wind'ard, or any direction she chooses to bound. Yessir; when I begin to feel that life ain't worth livin' give me an enemy or a friend like Pete Dougla.s.s.

"It ain't for me to poke no fun at Pete's looks. There's a place where a humarious turn of mind orter stop. Pete's looks was too serious for any man to get comic about. It appeared as if his features had been blowed on to his face by a gale of wind; his whiskers had a horrified expression, like they'd made their escape if they hadn't been fastened on, and he was double-jointed in every point of the compa.s.s. When he stood up straight he give you more the impression of sittin' down then a man sick a-bed could. I dunno how it come, but everything old Pete looked like, seemed precisely the reverse.

"The way I got acquainted with Pete was when he put his hard coin agin a French tin-horn's race-track game. There was little horses running around a board, and you put your money where you thought it would win, but you never thought right, because the Dago had a stick under the table that pulled them races to suit his fancy.

"It stood to reason that taking money off'n a man who'd play such a game was inhumanity in the first degree, so when Pete's last dollar departed I entered that horse-race with a gun, just as I had no business to, and I says to the tin-horn, 'Look-a-here, you put that money across the board, or I'll play a tune on you,' and so he shouldn't think I was interferin' out of an idle curiosity, I pointed the weapon at him.

"'O-rrr righ'!' says he; 'Tooty-sweet.' I lost a good deal of patience on the spot. You see, it seemed like he was tryin' to be entertaining. I say, by way of an amoosin' remark, that I'm goin'

to play a tune on that tin-horn, and he gayly tells me to toot sweet! Well, I don't want to harrow your feelin's. Anyway, Pete got his money and Frenchy returned to the land where his style of remarks was more appreciated, a little later.

"So Pete, he grasps my hand with tears in his eyes and considerable blood on his nose, where I'd accidently hit him with the Dago, and he says I'm his friend forever, and he'll show me what friendship really means. That's why I'm inclined to say that for rest and recreation I'll take an enemy. Whether our friend and brother, Mr.

Dougla.s.s, was the luckiest or unluckiest man on earth, I've never been able to figger out. He personally explored the bottom of every old prospeck hole in the country. He was romantic by disposition, Pete was, and loved to go for walks at night. If he didn't turn up for breakfast I took down the coil of rope and proceeded until I found the right hole, because you could bet as safe that he was at the bottom of one of 'em as you could that the bottom itself was there.

"When I asked him, 'How come you to do it, Pete?' he allus answered, 'I dunno; I got to thinkin' about somethin'.' If anything valooable had occurred to Pete, whilest he was in one of them thinking spells, he'd have been one of these here geniuses.

"When a saw mill sent a slab sailin', or bust a belt, Pete was at the center of the disturbed districk. He fell off every foot log in ten miles; why, he was drowned fourteen times in three weeks!

"The bar we was workin' had a tunnel about a hundred foot long.

Follerin' the pay streak made us turn at right angles, so it was dark back there. One day Mr. Pete was pushin' the car whilest I got dinner and his candle burned out. He takes a stick of giant powder, puts cap and fuse on it, lights it careful, jabs it in a frame for a candle, and trots for outdoors with the car--never knowin' anything onusual had took place. Just as I slapped the last flapjack and straightened up to yell, 'Come and get it!' here come Pete and the car like magic right acrosst the creek, followed by the most dust I ever see in my life.

"I watched him end-over-ending as he come, and I couldn't get near enough to the happenings to even wonder why.

"He landed on top of a quakin' asp and the car rolled over the dinner.

"I ain't declarin' that I was perfectly reasonable; I was surprised. When I was young and soople I've done twenty-odd foot in a running jump, but to see a man jump two hundred foot and carry a hand-car along with him was a branch of sport new to me, and perticler when done by a man like Pete.

"'Why,' says I, as I climb the tree and helped him down, 'however did you come to do it?'

"'I dunno, Zeke,' says he, 'honest to Gosh'--Pete never used a cuss-word--'honest to Gosh,' says he; 'I dunno. The last I remember was thinkin' why this here law of gravitation couldn't be made to work as a man wanted it, when "b.u.mp" says somethin' behind me, and I went right along, as you see. I tried to figger it out, comin', but turning handsprings made me dizzy.'

"These are points to show life as lived by my friend Pete Dougla.s.s.

His autogeography would be plumb full of happenin's. At first sight, lookin' careless, you'd say, 'Why, here's the most unforchinit cuss I ever heard about,' but on a sober thought, to a man accustomed to havin' sober thoughts, it seemed as if there was luck in the bank, to pull through such performances and live to tell the tale.

"I mentioned this idee to Pete.

"'Why'' says he, 'I should holler horray every time I'm most killed,' he says. 'Is that what you mean?'

"'Look-a-here,' says I, 'I'm able to mean all I'm capable of meanin' without any outside help. I mean you're the great human paradox--less human and more paradox then I've seen advertised at a circus--and whilest you're perpetual dodging one horn or t'other of a dilemma, any friend of yours is getting bunked square between the two. If anything 'ud keep a man from being selfish, you would,'

says I. 'D----d if I ain't spent two-thirds of my time and drawed some on the last, fishin' you out of messes. Now,' I says to him, 'why don't you get married and settle up?'

"Dear friends and brothers, that was just a piece of pursyflage. I know women better than any man I ever met that I felt knew less.

I've seen wimmen so foolish I wouldn't believe anything more foolish could exist, if it hadn't a-been I'd seen still more foolish wimmen with these same eyes. But a woman who'd marry Pete was beyond my expectations. It took a lady with a turble brain-power and a deliberate intention to arrive at that state of mind; so when Pete says to me, 'That's just what I be goin' to do, Zeke,' he had me swallowing my breath.

"I gathered my fadin' strength and gained perticlers.

"Seems there was a lady 'bout thirty or forty years older than she oncet had been, who did plain washin' for the Royal Soverign Prince boys. The R. S. P. mine was run rather irregular. The boys took the clean-ups for wages, and the owner took the proceeds from stock he sold as dividends. I may mention there was less in clean-ups than there was in stock, so the future Mrs. P. Dougla.s.s was buckin'

fate in the shape of a brace game. They was an awful nice set of boys, the Royal Soverign Princes, but when you divide thirty dollars and fifty cents amongst fifteen men for a month's wages, the washer-lady can't expect city prices.

"Pete had gained a holt on this lady's affections by falling into the flume and allowin' himself to be piped over the waste-gate.

She took care of him for three weeks, at the end of which time Pete arose, renewed, refreshed, and more full of determined uselessness than ever. Any woman will love any man that bothers her enough. A man's idee of romance is to do what he wants to, or to be comfortable; a woman's idee of romance is to feel that she's obliged to do what she really wants to do, under such circ.u.mstances as will allow her to call it a great sackerfice, or to be made uncomfortable, which is her real notion of comfort. You have only to look at a woman's housekeepin' to reelize the restfulness she finds in keepin' things disturbed all the time. I have looked upon the housekeepin' of enough Mrs. Scraggses to be able to speak with the v'ice of experience, if not the v'ice of wisdom.

"So Mrs. Maggy Watson, the lady of which I heretofore speak, become unamored of Pete during the time he was such a pesky nuisance around the place, an' when he writ her, later, that he thought they'd orter form a close corporation an' issue the holy bonds of matrimony, why, she writ him straight back again that the scheme had been in her mind for some time, and she'd 'a' mentioned it to him only it seemed like meddlin' in his personal affairs.

"First off, it seems a-kind of unjust.i.tude that a man like me should have a load of Mrs. Scraggses forced on him, whilest a man like Pete gets the kindest and obliginest sort of woman; but after all, I was able to take care of myself, and that bunch of wild cats, too, for a while, and Pete certainly needed a lady with a good disposition. You'll allus find, on investigatin' things, that they ain't a mite worse than you thought they was. Mighty often it is the h.o.r.n.y-handed foot of misfortune that kicks a man into the green pastures of prosperity--the only question is: kin he eat gra.s.s?

"So it come about with Pete, all along the line. He'd gone and got married so ordinary it wouldn't attracted n.o.buddy's attention, only he was so overjoyed to find that I took sides with him that he sa.s.shayed gayly forth for firewood and cut himself in the small of the back with the ax. Don't ask me how he done it, It's the only case on record. Pete was thinkin' of somethin' at the time, and could only remember a sudden pain in the back. So Pete was laid on the bed of sufferin' oncet more, him bein' so uset to it he took it without a holler, only this time he thought it was prutty serious.

"'Zeke,' says he, 'I've come to the cash-up so frequent I dunno just what's about to happen, but if it should be I was goin' to die for fair this time, I want Maggy to git my money, and I want you to take it to her.'

"'All right, Pete, I will,' says I.

"'Shack along, then,' says he.

"Pete mixed me some. 'I ain't goin' to leave you like this,' I says.

"'Yes, you be, too,' he says, sa.s.sy as thunder. 'The only time I kin git what I want is when I'm sick a-bed. I ain't goin' to rest happy nor do nothin'--not eat nor drink--till I know that woman has the c.h.i.n.k. I can't say I've made a great job of livin', but I'm goin' to die like a house a-fire, if so the play comes that way,'

he says. 'You put a little grub and water nigh me, and I'll just figger on being a full-sized man for oncet; you don't understand what a power of good it does me to think about it,' says he.

"Well, he had me to a standstill. It was cussed to leave a hurt man all alone, but I could easy appreciate the way he felt. If a man can't take no pride in himself the hull blamed business comes down to shovelin' dirt for nothin'.

"'Pete, I'll do it,' I says, and I shook hands with him.

"'Now, see that!' says he. 'That's the first time you've ever treated me like an ekal, Zeke; and I can tell you I don't like to be pitied no more'n any other man. G.o.d knows there wouldn't 'a'

been a perter monkey in the bunch, if so it hadn't come I was scart, or thinkin' of somethin' else, when a hot-box arrived. The good Lord took the trouble to make me, and it seems kind of onjustifiable for me to prove He plumb wasted His time. You tell Maggy I done it for her. I ain't hidin' my light under a bushel, because I need it to see by. Ouch!' says he. 'This racket hurts!'

"I reckon it did. I sewed him up with a piece of deer-sinew and a darning-needle. Never was a great hand at tailorin', nohow, and Pete's hide was that tough I mostly had to pound the needle through with a chunk of wood.