Mr. Scraggs Part 8

"The Majoress resumed her mysterious smile.

"'Why not?' says she.

"The young feller opened his mouth twice, but nothin' to suit the occasion seemed to occur to him. He wheeled and tried to walk off dignified, but the matches snappin' under his feet spoiled the effect.

"'By-by!' says the Majoress; 'come again!'

"She grabbed a tray of mouth-organs and heaved it after him; they scattered like a shrapnel sh.e.l.l. The young feller didn't wait to close the door. We heard him gallopin' up the board walk like he was needin' fresh air. We stood stock still for a matter of five seconds, I reckon; Hadds and me scart to move, and the Majoress with her brow wrinkled in thought. All of a suddent, with no more warnin' than a streak of lightnin', she burst out cryin'. 'Oh, oh, oh!' says she, 'how I have been deceived in men!' Then to relieve her feelin's she got to work with both hands.

"There was a genuine Sand-hill cloudburst of hair-brushes and combs, porous plasters, tooth-powder, tooth-brushes, pomade, soap, Jew's-harps, playin'-cards and the old Boy knows what all. It struck me then what a waste of time it was for a citizen to get loaded and tear the linin' out of a saloon; the place where you can really get the worth of your time and money is a drug store. Hadds and me made one desp'rate plunge for her through the terrific fire she kept up. I don't suppose that lady could hit a barn with a rock, unless she was inside of it, under ordinary conditions; but I'll bet she didn't miss one out of a possible ten that night. She caught me under the eye with a mouth-organ, on top of the head with a jar of tooth-powder, whilest smaller articles flew off'n me in all directions.

"Hadds took holt of her hands and talked implorin'.

"'Please, ma'am!' says he, 'please? Don't throw things around like that! Remember they cost money! We can't sell tooth-brushes after you've strewed the floor with 'em! I ask you please! Please!'

"'Villain!' says she haughtily. 'How dast you put your evil hands on me?'

"'Hadds,' says I, 'leggo the lady. We pa.s.s. Let us retire behind the prescription counter and bear up like men. There's only one thing on earth that E. G. W. Scraggs is willin' to admit has him trimmed to a peak, and you see that same before you now. 'Twas ever thus since childhood's hour, when my maiden Aunt Susan took the raisin' of me. Take any form thou wilt but this, and my firm nerve ain't goin' to tremble; but stacked again this form, my nerve is floppin' like a hotel wash in a hurricane.'

"So I slung Hadds over my shoulder and we went behind the prescription counter.

"I tried to distract his mind by tellin' him a funny story.

However, the rip-split-smash outside kind of jumbled three yarns into one. Besides, Hadds was foamin' so it was all I could do to keep him from goin' over and kickin' the Major, who still was oblivious to surroundings, and enwrapped in the gentle art of sneezin'. Then there come a fearful b.u.mp from outside. I knew by that a showcase was no more.

"'Zeke!' yells Hadds, 'think of somethin' before that woman has us all in.'

"'Haddsy, old horse,' I says, 'we've only got one show. If we can create a diversion we win. My head's that rumpled, the only thing strikes me is for us to go out there and play cat-fight. Holler, and meaowl, and spit, and screech, and jump around till she can't help but look at us. That's the way I uset to amuse the twins when they needed killin'; of course we'll look like a pair of fools----'

"'Yes!' hollers Hadds. 'What do we look like now? You get three guesses!'

"'Come along!' says I.

"Well, dear friends and brothers, our hearts was in that diversion, let alone the stake we'd invested in the store. If you don't think one bald-headed E. G. W. Scraggs and one red-headed Tommy Hadds put up a high-grade article of cat-fight I don't know how I'm goin' to prove to the contrary; but it was so.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Put up a high-grade article of cat-fight."]

"Why, we buck-jumped four foot in the air, sideways, edgeways and straight pitch-and-teeter; we mi-auwed, and scratched, and tore and rolled over, and kicked with our hind legs, and such yells was never heard in a human habitation before nor since.

"It worked. The Mayoress stopped and leaned over the counter.

"'Warm it up, Hadds!' I whispers. 'We got her lookin'!'

"So then we rollicked for a ramps. I see the Majoress smile; she p'inted her finger toward us.

"'S-sick 'em!' says she. 'Sick 'em, Towser!'

"It would have been all right; we was playin' on velvet, and could have led that woman out of the store as easy as anything if that concussed Major hadn't 'a' come to in the wrong place.

"I caught one glimpse of him holdin' tight with both hands to a shelf, with his eyes jumpin' out of his head and his face as white as flour.

"Of course no man would really believe that the spectacle of two grown men playin' cat-fight in the ruins of a drug store, whilest his own wife looked on and said 'Sick 'em!' was anything but an optickle delusion, caused by reasons he was familiar with.

"'It's never come like this before!' hollers the Major, and then he goes down backward for the final touch, carryin' away a kerosene lamp, and the same landin' in a barrel of varnish.

"Well, sir, what with the stuff that was loose around there and the varnish, my coat tails was afire when I lugged the Major out to where Hadds was industriously savin' the Mayoress' life.

"The two hose companies got out in good shape, but a most unforchinit dispute over who was to claim first water on the fire led 'em to use axes and spanner wrenches and sections of hose on each other whilst our drug store burned green and purple and pink, neglected. Inside of ten minutes eight firemen was ready for the hospital; a good citizen took the Major and Majoress in for the night, and all that was left of our promisin' business enterprise was a small heap of wood ashes and a very bad smell.

"'Well,' says I, 'shake, Hadds; it's all over.'

"He grabbed my hand, weepin'.

"'No, it ain't, Scraggsy, Old Man Rocks,' says he. 'You stood by me n.o.ble, and I'll do the same by you.' He fumbled in his pocket.

'I've saved a complete equipment from the wreck,' says he, and with that he hauls out a couple of decks of cards and a box of poker chips. 'All is lost save honor, Zeke," says he, 'but I reckon we can raise a dollar or two on that.'

"I was so moved in my feelin's I could only shake his manly hand.

"When I could speak, says I, 'We'll rise like a couple of them Fenian birds from the ashes, pard.'

"And hope springin' eternal once more in our chests, we took a little drink at Jimmy's place and went to bed happy."

V

THE MOURNFUL NUMBER

"It's a great misfortune to be superstishyous," said Mr. Scraggs.

"Such a thing would never have troubled me if I hadn't a-learnt from experience that facts carried out the idee. Now, you take that number thirteen. There's reason for believin' it's unlucky.

One reason is, when things is all walkin' backwards folks says they're at sixes and sevens. Well, six and seven makes thirteen, so there you are."

"I ain't much more than arrived," replied Red, rubbing his head dubiously.

"I'm comin' fast," said Charley; "but don't wait for me, Zeke."

"Well, that's only speculation, anyhow," continued Mr. Scraggs indulgently; "and speculation has made heaps of trouble for piles of people if I'm to believe what I read, which I don't. But here's cold facts. I was born on the thirteenth of April, at a time when me and the country was both younger than we are now. Hadn't been for that I'd dodged considerable mishaps. It was on the thirteenth of October last, in the early mornin', that I mistook that rattlesnake for a chunk of wood and heaved him in the stove."

"Well, where's the bad luck in that?" asked Charley.

"Inquire of the snake," said Mr. Scraggs; "besides, he smelt awful.

I don't seem to be able to bring back any mornin' I cared less for breakfast than that one. Suppose you was a happy rattlesnake, Charley, with a large and promisin' fambly; suppose, now, on a frosty thirteenth of October you crawled under the cook-stove to get warm the minute the camp cook opened the door, and, before you limbered up enough to bite him, cooky lays cold and unfeelin' hands upon you and Jams you into the stove--ain't the number thirteen goin' to carry unpleasant recollections for you from that on? Bet your life. Howsomever, these are only small details. My main proof that the number thirteen ain't any better than it orter be lies in the fact that one day I married the thirteenth in Mrs.

Scraggs. If I'd never'd hearn of such a thing I'd know'd thirteen was no good from that time on. This ain't to cast reflections on the other Mrs. Scraggses, neither. I will say for them wimmen that anything simple-heartedness could do to prepare a man to meet his end cheerful they done. But Mehitabel the Thirteenth, of the reignin' family of Scraggs, was a genius. Uncle Peter Paisley uset to say that a genius was a person that could take a cork and a dryness of the throat, and with them simple ingrejents construct a case of jim-jams. More than one-quarter of the time Uncle Pete knew what he was talkin' about, too, and the rest of it he was too happy to care. Mehitabel was a sure-enough genius: she could make a domestic difficulty out of a shoestring, she could draw a fambly jar through a hole in a sock, and she could bring on civil war over the question of whether there was anything to quar'l about,

"Come Christmastime, I thought I'd leave home for a spell. There was an old friend of mine holdin' down a mine out in the hills. I knew he wouldn't have no company around, and I pined for solitude.

There is a time in the affairs of men, as Shakespeare says, when a pair of cold feet beats any hands in the deck. Keno Jim said Shakespeare said so, and Shakespeare's too dead to argue.

"'So I puts on a pair of them long, slidin' snowshoes they call 'skees' and slips for William Pemberton and the lonesome mountains.