At the behest of Aconite, the party refrained from expressions of more
than mild interest at the Norris Basin. Aconite assured them that they
ought to save their strong expressions for things farther on. The Poet
wrote some verses for the purpose of creating a legend to account for
the fact that the Monarch Geyser ceased to spout some ten years ago. But
when he came to the Growler, and the Hurricane, and the new Roaring
Holes, which are really gigantic steam whistles, he dismounted from his
Pegasus and threaded his way through the dead forest--killed by escaping
steam--in a trance of wonder. But Aconite's advice to economize language
until the Lower Geyser Basin should be reached was followed so far as
superlatives were concerned. Night found them scattered, and it was only
when they took the road once more that the party was whole again. The
Artist stopped the surrey at the Gibbon Paint Pots so that he might use
some of their bubbling sediment as a pigment with which to paint a
souvenir picture for each of the party. Cañons, boiling springs and
waterfalls--rocks, mountains, wild beauty on every hand--all these they
were assured were inconsiderable parts of the prelude to the marvels
awaiting them at the next halt. But when they came to the crossing of
Nez Percè Creek, the Bride expressed a desire to wait, to stop, to rest
her eyes and quiet her spirits before anything more striking should be
imposed upon her powers of observation.
"I fell like Olger the Dane and King Desiderio, when they watched on the
tower for Charlemagne; and if we go on, I shall, like Olger, fall 'as
one dead at Desiderio's feet!'"
The Poet looked in the Bride's eyes, and nodded sympathetically. Mr.
Driscoll pondered the mysteries of the Bride's statement for a while,
and threw down his lines.
"If that's the way the Bride feels," said he, "we'll stop here and grub
our systems up a little."
"The champion hard-luck story of this or any other age," said the
Colonel, as they lighted their pipes after dinner, "was enacted right up
this creek in that Nez Percè uprising wherein I fought and bled and
died."
"More matter for myths," said the Artist. "Let's have it, e'en though it
be as dolorous as the tale of the Patient Griselda."
"I don't recall more of Griselda's story," said the Colonel, "than that
she was given the worst of it by her husband, the king. But this Nez
Percè Creek story isn't any tale of the perfidy of our nearest and
dearest, but of things just unanimously breaking bad for a man from
Radersburg, Mr. Cowan. He and his wife and some friends were camped down
here a couple of miles at the Lower Geyser Basin, right close by the
Fountain Geyser, just beyond the hotel--only there wasn't any hotel yet
for thirty years. Chief Joseph and his Nez Percès came through trying to
get away from the United States. They picked up the Cowan party, and
brought them right along where we now are, and a few miles up this
creek, where Joseph, Looking-Glass, and the other chiefs held a
conference and decided to let the Cowan party go, after destroying their
transportation system by cutting the spokes out of their buggies. This
they did, and the Indians went on. Some of the bucks, feeling that it
was careless of the chiefs to overlook a bet like this, came back, and
in process of correcting their leaders' mistake shot Mr. Cowan in the
thigh--which was bad luck Item one. He slipped from his horse, stunned
by the shock, and his wife ran to him and tried to shelter him from
further harm. But in spite of her efforts another Indian shot him in the
head, holding his rifle so close that the powder burned the flesh. He
was not killed, however, though all parties to the affair supposed he
was, and Mrs. Cowan was removed from the corpse to which she clung, and
carried away by her friends. You see, the Indians were not unanimously
for these killings, and allowed most of the whites to go. The Indians
threw a cord or so of rocks on Cowan's head and went on with a
consciousness of good work well and thoroughly done.
"Cowan revived, pulled his head from among the rocks, and drew himself
to a standing posture by the limb of a tree. An Indian happening along,
shot him with much care in the back, and left him for dead again.
"Cowan, however, refused to die, and though without food, and wounded in
the thigh, the head, and the back, and with his head hammered to a jelly
by the rocks thrown on it, started to crawl back to camp. He met
Indians, and hid from them. He crawled day after day--being unable to
walk a step. He had a chance--for an uninjured man--to catch a Nez
Percè pony which had been abandoned, but could not walk. Hard luck,
indeed! He met a body of friendly Bannock scouts who would have taken
care of him, but he supposed them to be hostiles and hid from them.
Harder luck still! After crawling seven or eight miles, which took
several days, he reached his old camp and there was reunited to his
faithful dog, which at first snapped at and then welcomed him.
"At the camp his first good luck came--he found matches, coffee and some
food--not to mention the dog, which I venture to state helped him almost
as much as the provisions. Next day he met some scouts sent out to trail
the hostiles and incidentally with instructions to bury Cowan--but they
praised him instead. They fixed him up as well as they could, and left
him by their camp-fire to await the coming of General Howard with the
main body of troops. The ground was peaty, and full of dead vegetable
matter, and after a nap, Cowan awakened to find that the earth all about
him was on fire, and wounded as he was he had to roll out of the fire
zone, getting burned scandalously as he rolled."
"Here," said the Hired Man. "You tell the rest of this to marines!"
"I'm telling you," said the Colonel, "the historic truth. General Howard
came along and the surgeons gave Cowan all the care they were able to
afford him. They took him up to Bottler's Ranch, north of the Park, and
there Mrs. Cowan rejoined the remains and fragments of her still living
spouse. They went to Bozeman after a while, carrying Cowan in a wagon.
At the top of the hill down which they had to go, the neck-yoke broke
and the horses ran away, and spilled Cowan out on the rocks and the
generally unyielding surface of Montana. A conveyance was brought from
Bozeman, and the much-murdered man was taken to a hotel."
"Thank God!" breathed the Poet. "Even a Montana hotel was a sweet boon
as bringing the end of these troubles."
"Who said it was the end?" inquired the Colonel. "It wasn't. In the
hotel at Bozeman his hoodoo haunted him. People flocked to the hotel to
see him. If the vaudeville stage had been invented then in its present
form, he could have made a fortune. They crowded into his room and sat
on his bed. The bed collapsed, and Cowan was hurled to the floor and
killed again. The hotel-keeper, seeing that even a cat's supply of lives
must be about used up, ordered the crowd out of the place. He said he
thought of throwing Cowan out, too, being afraid his hotel would burn
up, or be blown away, or something, with such a Jonah aboard. But Cowan
succeeded in getting home. They asked him if he didn't often think of
his soul's salvation while enduring all these sufferings and passing
through all these perils. 'Not by a damned sight!' said the
unreconstructed sinner. 'I had more important things to think of!'"
"And all that took place right here?" asked the Bride.
"Here and hereabouts," answered the Colonel. "I was here about the time,
and I know."
"If Jim Bridger," said Aconite, "had narrated them adventures, what
would folks have said? And yet, the Colonel's correct. The tale are
true!"
"Here's where you can sleep under a roof, Bride," said the Hired Man, as
they made camp at the Lower Geyser Basin.
"So you don't want the rest of the story?" she queried.
"Ma'am," said the Hired Man. "We should all be darned sorry to lose you
from the camp; but--"
"But me no buts," said the Bride. "I stay with the--with--the what do
you call it, Mr. Driscoll, that I'm staying with?"
"The outfit, Miss Bride," said Aconite. "And the outfit's shore
honored." And after the tasks of camp had been done, amid the strange
and daunting surroundings of the wonderful geyser basin, when the camp
reached that lull that precedes slumber, and which over all the world,
whether on prairie, in forest, or on desert, is devoted to tobacco,
music and tales, the Bride went on with her story.
THE TRIUMPH OF BILLY HELL
THE SECOND PART OF THE BRIDE'S STORY
The Pruntys live near Saint Joe, where they have a town and stockyards
and grain-elevators, and thousands and thousands of acres of land all of
their own, just like mediæval barons--only instead of having a castle
with a donjon-keep with battlements and mysterious oubliettes and
drizzly cells and a moat, they live in a great wooden house with
verandas all round, and of a sort of composite architecture--Billy says
that it is Queen Anne in front and Mary Ann at the rear--and hot and
cold water in every room, and with a stone windmill-tower with a wheel
on the top that you couldn't possibly put in a picture, it is so round
and machiney-looking. Old Mr. Prunty says it cost twenty-seven thousand
five hundred and eighty-three dollars and thirty-six cents--says it
every chance he gets, without the variation of a cent. The Pruntys are
scandalously rich. Their riches bought them a place in this play.
When Pa had begun to forge to the front in Peoria, where he began, he
had all the knack he ever possessed for getting business, but he didn't
have much money. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't confess this
here. So he went to old Mr. Prunty, with whom he had become acquainted
while he was putting in a town lighting-plant in the Prunty private
village, and showed him how remunerative it would be to put money into
Pa's business. This Mr. Prunty did, and I once saw the balance-sheet
showing the profits he made. They were something frightful to a mind
alive to the evils of the concentration of wealth--and the necessity of
dividing with other people; but I shouldn't care so much for _that_, I
am afraid, if it hadn't brought us into relations with Enos Prunty,
Junior, who was brought up to the business of taking over the
Mid-Continent Electric Company, and incidentally, me. The very idea!
I must not be disingenuous any more, and therefore I will admit that at
one time I should have consented to the merger if it hadn't been for
Enos' perfectly impossible name. Not that I loved him; not at all. But
he wasn't bad looking, and he had overcome a good deal of the Prunty
_gaucherie_--I should think he ought to, the schools he had been
through--and a girl really does like to think of trousseaux, and
establishments and the like. One day, though, I hired a card-writer on
the street to write out for me the name, "Mrs. Enos Prunty, Jr.," upon
looking at which I fled as from a pestilence, and threw it into the
grate, and had a fire kindled, although it was one of those awful days
when the coroner never can tell whether it was the heat or the humidity.
I had met Billy in the restaurant the day before.
But Pa liked Enos, and sort of treated the matter as if it were all
arranged; and when Billy came into the spotlight as our social
superior--which the Helmerstons would be by any of the old and outworn
standards--I began to pet Pa one evening, and ask him how he liked Mr.
Helmerston; whereupon Pa exploded with a terrific detonation, and said
he wanted the relations of Mr. Helmerston with the Blunt family confined
strictly to the field of business; that he hated and despised all the
insufferable breed of dubs--I never could get Pa to say "cad"--who crept
into employments like spies, under false pretenses, and called an
Institute of Technology a "Tech," and looked down on better electricians
who had come up by hard knocks. And Pa insisted that a man must have
been pretty tough who had acquired in college circles from the Atlantic
to the Missouri the _nom de guerre_ of "Billy Hell."
Pa is a good business man, and has exceptional facilities for looking up
people's records; but it seemed a little sneaky to use them on Billy,
and to know so much, when we were so sure he never suspected a thing. I
told him so, too, but all he said was "Huh." I was very angry, and when
Mr. Prunty, Junior, came to see me next time I repulsed his addresses
with such scorn that he went away in a passion. He said he laid no claim
to being a human being, but he was, at least, a member of the animal
kingdom, and that my way of treating him would have been inhuman had he
been a toadstool. I retorted that I'd concede him a place among the
mushrooms--fancy _my_ twitting any one of mushroomery! But the
old-family attitude of the Helmerstons was getting into my mental
system.
Pa, in the meantime, was preparing to shunt Billy off to Mexico to
superintend the installation of the Guadalanahuato power plant--a two
years' job--at a splendid salary. But our Mr. Burns went over to the
Universal Electric Company (after we had made him what he was!) and Mr.
Aplin proved quite incapable of running the business, although he was
_such_ a genius in watts and farads and ohms and the coefficient of
self-induction, and Billy was simply forked into the general charge of
the main office, against his will, and shockingly against Pa's.
I forgot to say that Pa was ill, and confined to his room for a long
time. This touches a tender spot in Pa's feelings, but the truth must be
told; and you must understand that all his illness came from an
ingrowing toe-nail. He had to have an operation, and then he had to stay
in the house because it wouldn't heal; and there he was, using language
which is really scandalous for a good church-worker like Pa, while Billy
attended to the business.
I heaped coals of fire on Pa's head by staying with him hours and hours
every day, and reading to him, until he asked me for goodness' sake to
stop until he got the cross-talk out of his receiver. I said I'd be glad
to dispense with all his cross talk, and he said: "There, now, don't
cry"--and we had a regular love feast. Pa was a little difficult at this
period. However, that day he got more confidential than he ever was
before, and told me that serious business troubles were piling up, and
worried him. We were likely, he said, to be spared the disgrace of dying
rich. This was irony, for Pa despises this new idea that one should
apologize for one's success.
He went on to tell me that Mr. Prunty had always had the most stock in
the Mid-Continent, and that now that Enos had got so conceited about
being able to run the business, and not being allowed to, the Pruntys
seemed to want the whole thing, and hinted around about withdrawing, or
buying Pa out.
I have this scene all in my mind for the play, with me sitting in "a dim
religious light" and listening to the recital of our ruin and crying
over Pa's sore foot. I did cry a good deal about this, truly, for I knew
perfectly well that it was the nasty way I had treated Enos that made
them so mean; but I still wished from the bottom of my heart that he
would come back so I could search my soul for worse things to do to
him. I told Billy about this trouble, and explained that Pa couldn't
possibly raise money to buy out the Pruntys, and that they could be
calculated upon not to pay Pa anything like what his stock was worth.
"I see," said Billy, "you are being squeezed by the stronger party."
He was looking out of the window in an abstracted sort of way, but he
came to when I answered that, personally, I hadn't been conscious of
anything of the sort.
When the conversation got around to the business again, Billy told me
that Goucher--a Missourian that the Pruntys had injected into the
business, and who was perfectly slavish in his subserviency to Enos--had
been quizzing around Billy, trying to find out what ailed Pa, and if it
was anything serious.
"I didn't like the little emissary," said Billy, "and so I told him that
Mr. Blunt was precariously ill, with a complication of Bright's disease
in its tertiary stage, and locomotor ataxia. He wrote down the Bright's
disease and asked me how to spell the other. I told him that the
Bright's disease would probably terminate fatally before he could master
so much orthography; and still he didn't tumble! Goucher went away
conscious of having performed well an important piece of work. I can't
help thinking now that this incident has more significance than I then
supposed."
He sat puckering up his brows for a long time, and I let him pucker.
At last he said: "Dolly, I shouldn't a bit wonder if they are trying to
take some advantage of a dying man. I can see how they work the problem
out. 'Here is a sick man,' they say, 'who has been doing the work of
half a dozen for twenty years. He is going to pieces physically. If he
has some fatal disease, and knows it, we can settle with him, and make
him pay a few hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of getting his
daughter's inheritance disentangled from a business which she can't run,
and in which she will be at the mercy of--of people with whom her
relations are a little strained. But first, we'll find out just how sick
he is, and whether he's likely to get well soon, or at all.' And so they
send Goucher mousing about; and he reports Bright's disease, and
something else he can't spell, and they make an appointment with
Helmerston for to-morrow morning to find out more about it, Mr. Goucher
not being very clear. And your father's rather fierce manner of hiding
what his ailment really is makes them all the more suspicious."
"You tell them," said I, firing up, "that Pa is still able--"
But I saw that Billy had one of those epoch-making ideas which mark the
crises of history, and I stopped spellbound. He finally struck himself a
fearful blow upon the knee, and said that he had it, and one looking at
him could easily believe it. Then he explained to me his plan for
discomfiting the Pruntys and hoisting them by their own petard. This is
deeply psychological, being based upon an intuitive perception of what a
Prunty would do when he believed certain things and had money at stake.
"I must take responsibility in this," said Billy, squaring his
shoulders, "and bet my job on my success, and put our happiness in
jeopardy. But, if we win, Mr. Blunt can never again say that I am an
engineer only, with no head for practical business; and I shall have
outlived the disgrace of my Tech training--and the nickname. You must
handle your father, and keep me informed of any engagement the Pruntys
make with him. I must do the rest. And, if I lose, it's back to climbing
poles again!"
I asked Billy if I couldn't do something in line work, and he said I
might carry the pliers. And when I said I meant it, he behaved
beautifully, and called me his angel, and--and violated the rules, you
know--and went away in a perfect frenzy of determination. I felt a
solemn joy in spying on Pa and reporting to Billy. It seemed like a
foretaste of a life all bound up and merged with his. And this is what
took place:
The elder Mr. Prunty called on Billy and said he was appalled at the
news Mr. Goucher brought that Mr. Blunt had Bright's disease; and was
there any hope that the doctors might be mistaken?
Billy told him that the recent progress in bacteriological science, with
which Mr. Prunty was no doubt fully conversant, seemed to make the
diagnosis a cinch. By this he meant that they were sure about it.
"I see," said the driver. "I've heared the word afore."
He used a term that Mr. Prunty understood, Billy said, owing to his
having done business all his life with reference to it.
Mr. Prunty suggested that people live a long time with Bright's disease,
sometimes.
Billy, who is really a great actor, here grew mysterious, and told Mr.
Prunty that, being mixed up with Mr. Blunt in business, it seemed a pity
that he, Mr. Prunty, should have the real situation concealed from him,
and that, as a matter of fact, Mr. Blunt's most pronounced outward
symptom was a very badly ulcerated index toe. This of Billy's own
knowledge, and Mr. Prunty might depend upon it.
Mr. Prunty studied on this for a long time, and then remarked that he
had known several people to recover from sore toes.
Billy then pulled a book--a medical work he had borrowed--from under the
desk, and showed Mr. Prunty a passage in which it was laid down that
people's toes come off sometimes, in a most inconvenient way, in the
last stages of Bright's disease. Mr. Prunty read the whole page,
including a description of the way that dread disease ruins the
complexion, by making it pasty and corpselike, and then laid the book
down with conviction in his eyes.
"From this," said he, motioning at the book with his glasses, "it would
seem to be all off."
"If it's Bright's disease," said Billy, "that causes this lesion of the
major lower digit, the prognosis is, no doubt, extremely grave. But
while there's life, you know--"
"Yes," answered Mr. Prunty, "that is a comfort, of course. Does he know
what ails him?"
"He is fully aware of his condition," said Billy, "but, unfortunately,
not yet resigned to it." (I should think not.)
"I see you have been studying this thing out," said Mr. Prunty, "as
exactly as if it had been an engineering problem; and I want to say, Mr.
Helmerston, that I like your style. If we ever control this business the
future of such careful and competent and far-sighted men as yourself--in
fact, I may say _your_ future--will be bright and assured. Have you any
more information for me as to this--this sad affair of Blunt's?"
Billy thanked him, and said he hadn't, at present, and Mr. Prunty went
away, trying to look sad. Billy went to the bank in Pa's name and
arranged for a lot of money to be used in acquiring the Prunty stock, if
it should be needed. The stock was worth twice as much, and the bank
people knew it, and couldn't have believed, of course, that we would get
it for _that_. Then the Pruntys made an engagement with me for Pa over
the telephone, for a certain hour of a certain day, and I told Billy.
"The time has come," said Billy, when the plot began thickening in this
way, "for Little Willie to beard the lion in his den. Smuggle me into
the room an hour before the Pruntys are due, darling, and we'll cast the
die."
I was all pale and quivery when I kissed Billy--in that sort of serious
way in which we women kiss people we like, when we tell them to come
back with their shields or on them--and pushed him into the room.
I heard all they said. It was dark in there, and Pa thought at first
that it was a Prunty. Pa was sitting in the Morris chair, with his foot
on a rest.
"That you, Enos?" said he. "Help yourself to a chair. I'm kind of laid
up for repairs."
"It's Helmerston," said Billy. "I called to talk to you about this
affair with Mr. Prunty. I have some information which may be of value to
you."
Pa sat as still as an image for perhaps a minute. I could almost hear
his thoughts. He was anathematizing Billy mentally for butting in, but
he was too good a strategist to throw away any valuable knowledge.
"Well," said he at last, "I'm always open to valuable information. Turn
it loose!"
Then Billy told him all you know, and a good deal more, which I shall
not here state, because it is not necessary to the scenario, and I did
not understand it, anyhow. There was some awfully vivid conversation at
times, though, when Pa went up into the air at what Billy had done, and
Billy talked him down.
"Do you mean to say, you--you young lunatic," panted Pa, "that you've
told Prunty that he's got a living corpse to deal with, when I need all
the prestige I've won with him to hold my own?"
But Billy explained that he'd taken the liberty of thinking the whole
thing out; and, anyhow, had merely refrained from removing a mistaken
notion from Prunty's mind.
"But," said he, "you can assure him when he gets here that you are
really in robust health."
"Assure him!" roared Pa. "He'd be dead sure I was trying to put myself
in a better light for the dicker. I couldn't make him believe anything
at all. I know Prunty."
Billy said that the psychology of the situation was plain. Mr. Prunty
was convinced that Pa was in such a condition that he never could go
back to the office, and could no more take sole ownership of the
Mid-Continent than a baby could enter a shot-putting contest. What would
they do when it came to making propositions? They would offer something
that they were sure a case in the tertiary stage couldn't accept. They
would probably offer to give or take a certain price for the stock.
Believing that Pa wasn't in position to buy, but was really forced to
sell, they would name a frightfully low price, so that when Pa accepted
it perforce they would be robbing him out of house and home, almost.
This was the way with these shrewd traders always, and to whipsaw a
dying man would be nuts for a man like Prunty. (I am here falling into
Billy's dialect when he was in deadly earnest.) Then the conversation
grew mysterious again with Pa listening, and once admitting that "that
would be like old Enos."
"But he'll back out," said Pa, "if he's thief enough ever to start in."
"Have him make a memorandum in writing, and sign it," answered Billy.
"But," rejoined Pa, in a disgusted way, as if to ask why he condescended
to argue with this young fool, "you don't know Prunty. Unless he has
the cash in hand he'll go to some lawyer and find a way out."
"I thought of that, too," said Billy; "and so I took the liberty of
going to the bank and getting the cash--for temporary use, you know."
"I like your nerve!" moaned Pa angrily. "Do you know, young man, that
you've built up a situation that absolutely forces me to adopt your fool
plans? Absolutely infernal nonsense! To imagine it possible to get the
Prunty stock at any such figures is--" And Pa threw up wild hands of
desperation to an unpitying sky.
"Is it possible to imagine," said Billy, "such a thing as the Pruntys
trying to get your stock at that figure? That's the thing I'm looking
for and counting on." And when Pa failed to reply, but only chewed his
mustache, Billy went on: "I thought the logic of the situation would
appeal to you," said he. "And now let us set the stage. The time is
short."
And then came the most astounding thing, and the thing that showed
Billy's genius. First he took out the electric-light bulbs of the
electrolier, and screwed in others made of a sort of greenish
glass--just a little green tinge in it. He took some stage appliances
and put just a little shade of dark under Pa's eyes, and at the corners
of his mouth; and when the green lights were turned on Pa had the most
ghastly, ghostly, pasty, ghoulish look any one ever saw. I was actually
frightened when I came in: it was as bad as Doctor Jekyll turned to Mr.
Hyde. Pa looked rather cheap while Billy was doing this, but the time
was getting short, and he was afraid the Pruntys would come bursting in
and catch them at it. Billy placed Pa right under the green lights, and
shaded them so that the rest of us received only the unadulterated
output of the side lamps. Then they arranged their cues, and Billy
stepped into the next room. As he went, Pa swore for the first time
since he quit running the line-gang, when, he claims, it was necessary.
"If this goes wrong, as it will," he hissed through his livid lips,
"I'll kick you from here to the city-limits if it blows the plug in the
power-house!"
"Very well, sir," answered Billy--and the footman announced the Pruntys.
I was as pale as a ghost, and my eyes were red, and the look of things
was positively sepulchral when they came in, Enos tagging at his
father's heels as if he was ashamed. The footman turned on the light,
and almost screamed as he looked at poor Pa, with the pasty green in
his complexion, and the cavernous shadows under his eyes. Billy had seen
to it that the Pruntys had had plenty of literature on the symptoms of
Bright's disease, and I could see them start and exchange looks as Pa's
state dawned on them.
"I'm sorry to see you in this condition," said Mr. Prunty, after Pa had
weakly welcomed them and told them to sit down.
"What condition?" snapped Pa, the theatricality wearing off. "I'm all
right, if it wasn't for this blamed toe!"
"Is it very bad?" asked Mr. Prunty.
"It won't heal," growled Pa, and the visitors exchanged glances again.
"But you didn't come here to discuss sore toes. Let's get down to
business."
Then Mr. Prunty, in a subdued and sort of ministerial voice, explained
to Pa that he was getting along in years, and that Pa wasn't long--that
is, that Pa was getting along in years, too--and both parties would, no
doubt, be better satisfied if their interests were separated. Therefore
he had decided to withdraw his capital from the business, and place it
in some other enterprise which would give his son a life work along
lines laid out in his education and training. He didn't want to sell
his stock to the Universal Electric Company as he had a chance to do (Pa
started fiercely here, for he was afraid of the Universal Electric);
although the old agreement by which neither party was to sell out to a
competitor was probably no longer binding; and so they had come as man
to man to talk adjustment.
"But," says Pa, "this takes me by surprise. I don't quite see my way
clear to taking on such a load as carrying all the stock would be.
Mid-Continent stock is valuable."
They exchanged glances again, as much as to say that Pa was evidently
anxious to sell rather than buy, and was crying the stock up
accordingly, so as to get as much money as he could for me before he
died.
"We may not be so grasping as you think," said Mr. Prunty; and then
nothing was said for quite a while.
Pa was looking awfully sick, and Mr. Prunty was just exuding love and
kindness and magnanimity from every pore.
"You had some proposition thought out," interrogated Pa, feeling
anxiously for his own pulse, "or you wouldn't have come. What is it,
Prunty?"
"Well," answered Mr. Prunty, gazing piercingly at Pa, as if to ask if
such a cadaverous person _could_ possibly take on the sole control of
the Mid-Continent even if he had the money--"well, we had thought of it
a little, that's a fact. We thought we'd make you an offer to buy or
sell--"
"Hurrah for Billy!" my heart shouted. For this was just what he said
would happen. But, instead of hurrahing, I came to the front and gave Pa
a powder. It was mostly quinine, and was dreadfully bitter.
"To buy or sell," went on Mr. Prunty, "at a price to be named by us. If
it's a reasonable figure, take our stock and give us our money. If it's
too high, why, sell us yours. That's fair, ain't it?"
Pa lay back and looked green and groaned. He was doing it nobly.
"What is fair in some circumstances," he moaned, "is extortion in
others; and I--er--yes, I suppose it would be called fair. What's your
give-or-take price, Prunty?"
"We are willing," said Mr. Prunty, "to give or take seventy-five for the
stock."
Pa was so still that I had to rouse him, and Mr. Prunty repeated his
offer.
"I--I'm getting a little forgetful," said Pa, "and I'd like to have you
put it in writing, so I can consider it, and be sure I have it right,
you know."
The Pruntys consulted again, and again they came forward. Enos wrote
down the proposition, and Mr. Prunty signed it. I didn't understand it
very well, and the strain was so frightful that I expected to fly all to
pieces every instant, but I didn't.
When Enos handed the paper to Pa, Pa cleared his throat in a kind of
scraping way, and in stepped Billy with a great box under his arm.
"Mr. Helmerston," said Pa, as calmly as General Grant at--any place
where he was especially placid--"I want you and my daughter to be
witnesses to the making of the proposition in this writing, from Mr.
Prunty to me."
Billy read the paper, and said he understood that it was a give-or-take
offer of seventy-five for all the stock of the Mid-Continent. Mr. Prunty
said yes, looking rather dazed, and not so sympathetic.
"I accept the proposition," snapped Pa, his jaw setting too awfully firm
for the tertiary stage. "I'll take your stock at seventy-five.
Helmerston, pay 'em the money!"
Billy had the cash in ten-thousand-dollar bundles; and I was so
fascinated at the sight of so much treasure being passed over like
packages of bonbons, that for a while I didn't see how funny Mr. Prunty
was acting. When I did look, he was holding his nose in the air and
gasping like one of Aunt Maria's little chickens with the pip. He seemed
to have a sort of progressive convulsions, beginning low down in
wrigglings of the legs, and gradually moving upward in jerks and gurgles
and gasps, until it went off into space in twitchings of his mouth and
eyes and nose and forehead. Enos had the bundles of money counted, and a
receipt written, before he noticed that his father was having these
fits, and then _he_ seemed scared. I suppose these people have a sort of
affection for each other, after all.
"Father," said he--"Father, what's the matter?"
"Matter?" roared Mr. Prunty. "Does the fool ask what's the matter? Don't
you see we're done brown? Look at the basketful they brought, that we
might just as well have had as not, if it hadn't been for--Blast you,
Blunt, I'll show you you can't chisel old Enos Prunty out of his good
money like this, I will! I'll put the whole kit and boodle of yeh in
jail! That stock is worth a hundred and fifty, if it's worth a cent.
Ene, if you'll stand by like a stoughton bottle and see your old father
hornswoggled out of his eye-teeth by a college dude and this old
confidence-man, you'll never see a cent of my money, never! Do you hear,
you ass? He's no more sick than I am! That's false pretenses, ain't it?
He's got some darned greenery-yallery business on that face of his!
Ain't that false? Blunt, if you don't give me the rest in the basket
there I'll law you to the Supreme Court!"
"Hush, father," said Enos; "Aurelia's here."
"When you get everything set," said Pa, with a most exasperating smile,
"just crack ahead with your lawsuit. We'll trot you a few heats, anyhow.
You'd better take your pa away, Enos, and buy him a drink of something
cool."
"I want to compliment you, Mr. Helmerston," said Enos, quite like a
gentleman, "on the success of your little stage-business, and especially
on your careful forecast of the play of human motives. I can see that a
man with only ordinary business dishonesty, like myself, need not be
surprised at defeat by such a master of finesse as you."
He bowed toward me. Billy flushed.
"If you mean, sir--" he began.
"Oh, I mean nothing offensive," answered Enos. "I will be in the office
in the morning, and shall be ready, as secretary, to transfer this stock
on the books, previous to resigning. Come, father, we've got our
beating; but we can still have the satisfaction of being good losers.
Good-by, Miss Blunt; I wish you joy!"
Pa came out of the green light as they disappeared, limping on his
wrapped-up foot, and shouted that he had always said that Enos was a
brick, and now he knew it. I ran up to him and kissed him. Then I threw
myself into Billy's arms.
"Aurelia!" said Pa, looking as cross as a man _could_ look in such
circumstances, "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself!"
I dropped into a chair and covered up my face, while Pa went on
addressing Billy, trying to be severe on him for letting me kiss him,
and to beam on him at the same time for helping him with the Pruntys.
"Young man," said he, "I owe you a great deal. This tomfoolery happened
to work. Please to consider yourself a part of the Mid-Continent
Electric Company in any capacity you choose."
"Yes, sir," said Billy, gathering up the money. "Is that all, sir?"
"I should like to have you take Enos' place as secretary," added Pa.
"Thank you," said Billy. "I shall be pleased and honored. Is that all?
Do I still go to Mexico?"
Pa pondered and fidgeted, and acted awfully ill at ease.
"Yes," said he at last. "You're the only competent engineer we've got
who understands the plans. You'll have to go for a few months--if you
don't mind--anyhow."
"Pa," said I, "I'm tired of metal work, and I need a vacation in new and
pleasant surroundings, and--and associations. Billy is awfully pleasant
to associate with, and--and be surrounded by; and I've never, never been
in Guadalanawhat-you-may-call-it; and--and--may we Pa?"
"Young woman!" glared Pa, "who have you the effrontery to call
'Billy'?"--Pa could never acquire what he calls "the 'whom' habit."
Billy stepped manfully forward.
"You would recognize the name 'Billy,'" said he, "if it were joined with
the rather profane surname with which it is, unfortunately, connected,
'from the Atlantic to the Missouri.' Mr. Blunt, you can not be ignorant
of the sweet dream in which I have indulged myself with reference to
your daughter. I know I am unworthy of her--"
"Oh, cut that short!" said Pa. "Take this grease off my face, and remove
these infernal stage lights! There, Dolly--there! Mr. Helmerston,
er--Billy--will start for Mexico within a month. If you--if you really
want to go with him, why go!"
And so we're going, by way of Yellowstone Park.