"'You behave yourself, you old idiot, or I'll do you personal harm,' says she.

"'Thank you, thank you for them sweet words, spoke by somebody _alive_, anyhow,' says I. 'And this much more, Mrs. Scraggs,' says I, 'before we part. If ever you hear me complain of anythin'

concernin' you ladies just you say "Oggsouash" to me and hold your hand, so, to indicate an empty gla.s.s.

"'Good-night, Susanna--Merry Christmas,' says I. 'On my word of honor, there has been one moment of my life when I was glad to see you.'

"And I left her standin' there, with the candle in her hand, paralyzed.

"And I can conclood, as I suggested in the beginning, that I had not foresaw one item of these occurrences when I risked that collar-b.u.t.ton."

IV

THE SIEGE OF THE DRUG STORE

"Once upon a time, when I was scarcely married at all, you might say," began Mr. Scraggs, "I quit workin' for a livin' and started a scientific school."

"_You_ did?" cried Red, after one astonished second vanished in the past.

"Yes, sir," replied Mr. Scraggs, "I did. _It_ was for the investigation and pursuit of this, here doctrine of chances. The idee was to put a little box full of playin'-cards on the table, and draw them forth one at a time, to see just how they'd fall.

Some of the students got that interested they bet on the results."

"Oh!" said Charley, "I took a course in that one winter myself.

Did you always draw _one_ card at a time out'n that box, Zeke?"

"So help me, Bob! I did," returned Mr. Scraggs most earnestly.

"Hence I didn't get rich. It sometimes happened that a Wild Wolf from Up the Creek would breeze in, full of rum, plumb foolishness, and money. Oh, man! High or low, red or black, odd or even, coppered or open, on the corner or let her rip, last turn and in the middle, from soda-card to hock, them brier-whiskered sons-of-guns would whipsaw my poor little bank till there wasn't much left of her but sawdust. Yes, sir," mourned Mr. Scraggs, "I made enough out of the early birds to eat, but them Roarin' Bears from Bruindale uset sometimes to apply the flat of their hands to my seat of learning till the sparks flew out of my eyes. In short, this sportin' life was too much up and down hill for me. No sooner would I git ready to declare a dividend than one of my outside customers would come in and take that dividend and wipe both feet on it, roll on it, stomp it, fly ten foot in the air and come down on it, bite chunks out of it, and then I'd light a match, gather the crumbs from the floor, and wisht I could git holt of something at once easy and reliable.

"Well, there was a friend of mine lived at the Transcontinental Hotel. The part.i.tion between his room and mine didn't come clear to the ceiling, so when I arrived home late I uset to heave a boot over on top of him and have a chin. He was a nice feller, Hadds.

A pale, thin sort of man, very red-headed--that is to say, not red-headed like some parties I have known, but a sort of bashful red, that would ha' been different if it could; and he wore eight large freckles on his face. There would have been more if there had been more room. Hadds was then workin' for the railroad company, but not happy. He was in the dispatcher's office, and I'd hear him holler in his nightmares, 'There they go! Bang!

Everybody killed! I always expected it!'

"You see, he lived in fear of running two excursion trains together. Nervous cuss--oh, awful! Not without reason, neither.

Seems when he was at college he studied chemistry. Always experimentin'. Mixed two things that was born to live apart.

Hadds left simooltaniously with that corner of the buildin'. He didn't stop till he reached the Transcontinental Hotel.

"Hadds worked at me to start a drug store with him. He'd saved some out of his wages, and he knew I had a fluctuatin' roll. He says, 'You're goin' bust some day, young man--why don't you quit it? You come with me and we'll make a decent thing. It's mighty lucky for the gang that they swill patent medicines instead of lettin' that Jones up the street give' em a quick finish over the prescription counter. That pill-wrangler couldn't tell the difference between an auger-hole riffle-board and a porous plaster if there wasn't a label on the box. Jeeminnetticus!' says Hadds, 'when he mixes coffin varnish for a man you'd think he was scramblin' eggs. Come on, Washy,' he says, 'while you got the price. You'd like the business.'

"One night it happened Bitter Water Simpson was borne on the wings of evening to my place of business, and he calculated that the last two cards in the box would come out, queen first, trey next. He was so sure he inquired about the theory of limits.

"'The limit,' says I, 'is the clothes and contents, body and immortal soul of E. G. W. Scraggs. You slam your wad down and I'll cash it.'

"It had occurred to me there was no use foolin' longer. If I busted this gun-fighter I went into the drug business; if he busted me I'd take a walk.

"He laid down one thousand dollars' worth of Government promises, and I took a long breath, drew forth, first trey, next queen, removed his money from the table with a light, sure touch, threw the layout in the stove, blew out the lamp, remarked that the bank was closed, and stood prepared to deal in chemicals instead of playin'-cards.

"Simpson was surprised. 'Ain't I goin' to get satisfaction?' says he.

"'If it's to be had on the prescription counter you do,' says I.

'Otherwise, I prefer to stay satisfied myself.'

"It would have been better if he'd refrained from abusing me. I was younger then, and while not in the least quarrelsome, yet such talk as Simpson talked to me was entirely uncalled for. Besides that, he got festive with guns. I relieved him of his guns and sat him on the stove till he promised to behave. n.o.body ever heard me kick when them fellers nailed me to the burnin' oak for anywhere's up to five hundred a night. Howsomever, it wound up amiable; I staked Simmy to a new pair of pants, and kept him in spendin' money till ridin' again appeared among the possibilities. I never could get used to people pullin' guns on me.

"So, then, there was a drug store goin' in no time. Both me and Hadds was happy as could be, and workin' like a pair of mules.

When we had things fixed, and a sign 'Hadds & Scraggs' in gold letters four foot high, I felt I really was a prominent citizen.

But dear friends and brothers, always there's somebody handy with a fly to stick in your ointment. Once I went down street to see how that sign looked a little ways off, and up rides a puncher.

"'Hadds & Scraggs!' says he: 'I wonder what kind of merchandise them is? Well, I must take a Hadds and a Scraggs home to show the boys.'

"He knocked every bit of poetry out of that sign. Howsomever, poetry ain't the chief business of a drug store, and when you come to the practical side we done mighty well. We got in a line of patent medicines with pretty red and blue labels that took the popular taste. As there was a minin' boom over the hill, our line of gold pans and gunpowder went well. A new seeder brought in some money, and with rubber boots, snowshoes, baseb.a.l.l.s, carpenters'

tools, spectacles, lumber, and an agency for a self-binder as side issues, I see myself getting on in the world.

"'Tweren't long before n.o.body'd think of buyin' a faro layout or a deck of cards elsewhere than at our store, and as for perfumed soap and perfumery, why, I think our feller-citizens must have et the one and drunk the other, for we unloaded by the box and pailful.

When we'd count the kitty nights, 'Didn't I tell you?' Hadds would holler. 'Put your feet in my tracks and you'll wear diamonds!'

"And I guess I would if it hadn't been for a lady. There's a woman in it, nine times out of ten, when a man's ruined; and the other time there's a man in it. If neither one nor t'other's in it it's a durned uninterestin' occurrence, anyhow. Yes, sir; we come under the double-cross kindness of a female major.

"One night--Sufferin' Ichabod! but that was a night.'--we were jerried to a standstill in one half-hour, or thirty minutes, by the clock.

"Things was slack this evening n.o.body in the store but Hadds, Keno Jim and me, throwin' poker dice for cigars, when the door opens and here come Major Pumpey and his wife from the army post. We were not glad to see the Major. He was a little, p.u.s.s.y, red-faced, pop-eyed man, pompous as a banty rooster, with black whiskers and a mustache like a cat. He had a voice on him like barrels rolling in a brewery vault. It would surprise you quite a little to hear that number ten voice come a-roarin' out of that number two man. The Major used to corral everything he wanted and say, 'Charge it!' two octaves below a bull's beller, Bein' a military person, he was fond of charges; me and Hadds, bein' plain civilians, weren't. We charged it and we charged it, but that there Major's defenses were impregnerville. I had told Hadds that the next time Pumpey said 'Charge it' I was goin' to take him at his word, then and there, and rush him along on his ear till I felt better. But, of course, now his wife was along I couldn't.

"She was just as different from the Major as anything could be: a tall, pale, rangey woman, kind-hearted and good-natured as they make 'em, but with a pair of nose-grabber specks, and a way of letting her hands flop at the wrist, whilest she talked in a high gobbley-gobble style, like singin' a tuneless tune. They made a pair to draw to. The Lord only knows what you'd got if you filled.

My! And the general effect of that lady! She wore her hair in an omelet, and looked as if she'd been put in her clothes by a boiler explosion.

"There was another powerful difference between them two. The Major he gazed on the wine when it was any color at all. He didn't care so much for decoration as he did for quant.i.ty. He pa.s.sed his time in bein' tee'd, tee-heed, or teeterin'. On the other hand, his lady couldn't stand plain raw water. Honest, friends and brothers!

I ain't stringin'! I have it on the word of their striker that Mrs. Pumpey couldn't be induced to take a drink of water unless it was boiled, and as for spirited liquors--Oh, murder! Don't mention it!

"As the Major entered I observed upon his person a kind of uprightness that no sober man ever had, varied with quick little steps sideways, for no good visible reason, and when he comes up to the counter he grabs it with both hands and says, 'How do--gla'

meecher--hot, ain't it?'

"I admitted it was hot, told him I was glad to meet him, too, and as this last wasn't no more than a plain lie I asked the lady quick what we could do for her.

"Perfumery was wanted, so I pa.s.sed the bottles out. Mrs. Major would take a lady-like sniff and say, 'Dee-lee-shus! Ha-oow do eeyou lieek that, Ma-JAW?'

"And when de major laid his hands on the right one of the numerous bottles floatin' in the atmosphere about him he'd hold it a yard off, give a snort like a buzz-saw striking a knot, and after a minute's silence roar, 'Ain't that nice, b-y-y-y GOSH!' and slam the bottle down.

"It was tryin' on the nerves. First place, the way he come out with that 'b-y-y-y Gosh!' hit you in the pit of the stomach like standin' alongside a ba.s.s-drum, and it was only a question of time when he slammed one of them bottles through the show case. So I flagged Hadds for help, and the two of us plied the lady with perfumery so fast that the Major couldn't get his oar in, at which he cut loose for himself, wanderin' around behind the counter, smellin' of every bottle on the shelves.

"It ain't everything in a drug store has as pleasant a greetin' for your nose as perfumery, and once or twice, when I looked around, to kind of keep cases on him, I see the Major had struck a shock. But at last he come across a sample that pleased him. I saw him swig a good lungful of it, and his mouth opened wide with delight.

"'Well, I guess you'll be amused for a while,' thinks I. So I paid no more attention.

"The next thing Hadds looks up. 'Here!' he yells; 'drop that!

That's chloroform, you bull-head!'

"The call come too late--leastways, to work as intended. The Major dropped the bottle, but he also dropped himself, two shelves, and about six dozen gla.s.s jars of everything you ever heard of. Powers of darkness! Flat on his back laid the hero of many charges, whilest over his manly form and face trickled cough mixture, Canady balsam, liniment, sugar syrup, castor oil, and more sticky, oily, messy kinds of stuff than I'll ever tell you. The worst of it was that a bottle of carmine had landed last in the wreck and, bustin', flew over everything. As there wasn't a dry spot for a rod it looked like the Major had done a turn of bleedin' at every vein same as the young man we used to read about at school. In fact it was much worse than that. It appeared to be the most awful tragedy any one man ever was concerned in.