Friar Tuck Part 34

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A STRANGE ALLIANCE

After this we tied Badger-face in bed an' kept watch of him. He kept on gettin' stronger all the time, an' a good percent of his meanness came back with his strength. Sometimes he'd spend hours tauntin'

Horace an' the Friar; but they didn't mind it any more 'n if Badger had been a caged beast. Then one night he concluded to try cussin'. He started in to devise somethin' extra fancy in the way o' high-colored profanity; but he hadn't gone very far on this path, before Olaf came in as black as a thunder cloud.

"Do you want to be whipped with a whip?" he demanded.

"Naw, I don't want to be whipped with a whip," sez Badger-face.

"Then you stop swearin'," sez Olaf. "We been to enough trouble about you, and I don't intend to have my wife listen to any more o' your swearin'. If you don't stop it, I whip all your skin off. You say you want to die-I whip you to death before your very eyes."

Badger heaved at his ropes a time or two, an' then he realized his weakness, sank back on the bed, an' the tears rolled down his cheeks.

He fair sobbed. "You're a set o' cowards," he yelled, "the whole pack o' you! You wouldn't let me die, and now you threaten to whip me to death. I dare any one of ya to shoot me-you yellow-hearted cowards!"

"I care not for what you say I am," said Olaf. "You know if I am a coward, and you know if I keep my word. I say to you, slow an'

careful, that if you yell swear words again in my house, I whip your hide off."

Well, this had a quietin' influence on Badger's conversation; but he fretted himself a good deal as to what we intended to do with him.

Finally one day when he began to look a little more like a live man than a skeleton, Horace sez to him: "Badger, you said you didn't have any friends, an' it must be true, 'cause not one of your own outfit has ever been to see you, not even Ty Jones."

"Ty Jones don't stay out here through the winter," sez Badger-face.

"If he'd been here, he'd have squared things up for this, one way or another."

"Where does he go?" asked Horace.

"I don't know," sez Badger-face.

Horace asked Olaf about it, and Olaf said 'at Ty Jones allus pulled out in December, an' didn't come back until March.

Then Horace came in and sat by Badger again. "I've got a proposition to make to you," sez he, "and you think it over before you answer. I have plenty o' money; but I've wasted most o' my life, sittin' down.

If you are sick of livin' like a wolf, I'll pay your expenses and half again as much as Ty Jones is payin' you, and all you'll have to agree to is to go along as a sort of handy-man for me. I think we can get to be purty good friends, but that can wait. I intend to ramble around wherever my notions take me. If you'll give your word to be as decent as you can, I'll give my word to stand by you as far as I'm able. Your life is forfeit to me, an' if you'll do your part, I intend to make the balance of it worth while to ya. Now, don't answer me; but think it over an' ask all the questions you want to. I'll answer true what I do answer; but I won't answer any 'at I don't want to."

If Horace had crept in an' cut off his two ears, Badger wouldn't have been any more surprised. Well, none of us would, as far as that goes; though why we should let anything 'at Horace chose to do surprise us by this time is more 'n I know.

He an' Badger talked it over complete for several days, Horace agreein' that he wouldn't ask Badger to go anywhere the army or the law was likely to get him an' not to make him do any stunts 'at would make him look foolish. He told Horace 'at he had served one enlistment an' got a top-notch discharge, an' had then took on again; but a drunken officer had him tied on a spare artillery wheel because Badger had laughed when the officer had fallen off his horse into a mud puddle. He said they had laid the wheel on the ground and him across it, the small of his back restin' on the hub o' the wheel, an' his arms an' legs spread an' tied to the rim, an' had kept him there ten hours. He said that he had deserted the first chance he got; but he refused to tell what had happened to the officer afterward.

Finally Badger said he would take up Horace's proposition; an' Horace called Olaf in to see if Badger was speakin' true. This was the first Badger had ever heard about Olaf's eyes seein' soul-flames; but he said 'at this explained a lot to him he hadn't understood before. Olaf looked at him careful; an' Badger held up his right hand an' said that as long as Horace treated him square, he would be square with Horace, even to the point of givin' up his life for him.

"He is speakin' true," sez Olaf; and from that very minute, Badger-face became a different man, an' Horace took off the ropes.

"You do look some like a badger with that b.u.m beard on," sez Horace; "but I don't like this name, and I want you to pick out a new one.

Pick out some Christian name, your own or any other; but now that you are startin' on a new life, it will help to have a new name."

Badger-face studied over this a long time, but he couldn't root up any name to suit him so he told Horace to pick out a name, and he'd agree to wear it.

"Well," sez Horace, after he'd give it a good thinkin' over, "I think I'll call you Promotheus."

Badger looked at him purty skeptical. "I don't intend to take no Greaser name," sez he. "Is that Mexican?"

"No," sez Horace. "That's Greek; an' the original Promotheus was an all around top-notcher. He was a giant, so you couldn't complain none on your size; he rebelled again' the powers, so you couldn't call him a dog-robber; but the thing 'at you two are closest together in, is your infernal stubbornness. They tried to break Promotheus down by chainin' him to a rock while the vultures fed on his liver, but they couldn't make him give in. 'Pity the slaves who take the yoke,' sez he; 'but don't pity me who still have my own self-respect.'"

Badger-face was so blame weak that his eyes filled up with tears at this; an' the only way he could straighten himself up was to put a few florid curses on his own thumby left-handedness; but Olaf had gone after some wood, so it didn't start anything. "I'll take that name,"

sez he, "an' I'll learn how to spell an' p.r.o.nounce it as soon as I can; but you've diluted down my blood so confounded thin with your doggone, sloppy milk diet that I'm a long way from havin' that feller's grit, right at this minute."

Horace stood over Badger-face, an' pointed his finger at him, fierce.

"Listen to me," sez he. "The next time you heave out an insult to milksops or milk diets, I'll sing you my entire song-to the very last word."

We set up a howl; but Badger-face didn't realize all he was up against when he took on with Horace, so he only smiled in a sickly way, an'

looked puzzled.

"I'll tell ya what I'm willin' to do, d.i.n.ky," said he, as soon as we stopped our noise; "now that I've took a new name, I don't need to wear this sort of a beard any more, an', if ya want me to, I'll trim it up the same fool way 'at you wear yours; an' I'll wear gla.s.ses, too, if you say the word."

"We'll wait first to see how you look in a biled s.h.i.+rt," sez Horace; "but in honor of your new name, I'm goin' to let you have some deer-meat soup for your dinner, an' a bone to gnaw on."

We had a regular feast that day, and called Badger-face Promotheus every time we could think up an excuse; so as to have practice on the name. The Friar did his best to take part; but I knew every line in his face, and it hurt me to see him fightin' at himself.

After dinner we took a walk together; but we didn't talk none until we had climbed the rim, fought the wind for a couple of hours, an'

started back again. It was his plan to think of some big, common chunk of life when he was in trouble, so as to take his mind as much as possible off himself; and he started to talk about Horace an'

Promotheus. He even laughed a little at the combination which Promotheus Flannigan an' Horace Walpole Bradford would make when they settled down on the East again.

"The more I think it over," said the Friar, "the plainer I can see that most of our sorrow an' pain and savageness comes from our custom of punis.h.i.+n' the crops instead of the farmers. Look at the possibilities the' was in Promotheus when he started out. He has a strong nature, and in spite of his life, he still has a lot o' decent humanity in him. Who can tell what he might have been, if his good qualities had been cultivated instead o' smothered?"

"That's true enough," sez I; "and look at Horace, too. They simply let him wither up for forty years, and yet all this time he had in him full as much devilment as Promotheus himself."

"Oh, we waste, we waste, we waste!" exclaimed the Friar. "Instead o'

usin' the strength and vigor of our manhood in a n.o.ble way, we let some of it rust and decay, and some of it we use for our own destruction. The outlaw would have been the hero with the same opportunity, and who can tell what powers lie hidden behind the mask of idleness!"

"Well, that's just it," sez I. "A human bein' is like a keg o' black stuff. For years it may sit around perfectly harmless; and only when the right spark pops into it can we tell whether it's black sand or blastin' powder. Even Horace, himself, thought he was black sand; but he turned out to be a mighty high grade o' powder."

We walked on a while without talkin'; but the Friar was wrastlin' with his own thoughts, an' finally he stopped an' asked me as solemn as though I was the boss o' that whole country: "If you had started a lot o' work, and part of it promised to yield a rich harvest with the right care, and part of it looked as though it might sink back to worse than it had been in the beginnin'-is there anything in the world which could make you give it up?"

The Friar knew my life as well as I did; so I didn't have to do any pertendin' with him. "Yes," I sez, "the right woman would."

The Friar didn't do any pertendin' with me either. He stood, shakin'

his head slowly from side to side. "I wish I knew, I wish I knew," he said.

We walked on again, an' when we came in sight o' the cabin, I sez to him, in order to give him a chance to free his mind if he saw fit: "Horace told me what he knew about it."

"Yes, I know," sez the Friar; "but no one knew very much. She was a splendid brave girl, Happy. I had known her when she was a little girl and I a farmer boy. I was much older than she was, but I was allus interested in her. There wasn't one thing they could say against her-and yet they drove her out o' my life. I thought she was dead, I heard that she was dead; so I buried her in my heart, and came out here where life was strong and young, because I could not work back there. I tried to work in the slums of the cities; but I could not conquer my own bitterness, with the rich wastin' and the poor starvin'

all about me. I have found joy in my life out here; but she has come to life again with that picture, and once more I am at war with myself."

"Well, I'll bet my eyes, Friar," sez I, "that you find the right answer; but I haven't got nerve enough to advise ya-though I will say that if it was me, I'd pike out an' look for the girl."

"I wish I knew, I wish I knew," was all the Friar said.