"These are my friends, Jimmie Barker and Pete Holloway. They helped
open up that derned spring. They drank a plenty of the water. Jimmie,
here, couldn't git enough of it. They've the same symptoms as I hev."
Jimmie and Pete writhed.
"Pins and needles all over," said Pete.
"Went to sleep on an ants' nest onst," said Jimmie faintly. "This is a
heap worse."
"Heaven help you!" ejaculated the Professor.
"'Pears to me," said Dan solemnly, "from what you said just now, we're
in the mulligatawny."
The Professor muttered something encouraging, but he remembered the
cow.
"To bed with you," he commanded.
Within half-an-hour everyone on the ranch had heard the news. The
Professor alone remained monumentally impassive.
"All that is humanly possible shall be done," he affirmed.
"And your treatment?" said I.
"I have no drugs here, but already I have despatched a man to San
Lorenzo for strychnia, which in the first stage is invaluable.
Meantime I must do what I can with whisky. Have you plenty of whisky?"
"Yes, but----"
"I want a gallon of it."
"Of course you are aware--you know, I mean----"
The Professor waved a powerful arm; beneath his shaggy brows his grey
eyes sparkled angrily.
"I know what I am doing," he said sharply, "and I cannot waste
valuable time imparting to a layman knowledge gathered during a
lifetime. The whisky, please--_at once_."
I obeyed meekly. Five minutes later, the Professor was walking towards
the bunk-house with a gallon demijohn tucked under his arm. A quarter
of an hour afterwards he might have been seen returning. His eyes were
positively snapping with vigour and excitement, for he loved a fight
for a fight's sake. Ajax met him.
"Professor," he said, "I don't want you to impart the knowledge of a
lifetime to me, but do, please, tell us something. We are on edge with
anxiety."
The man of science melted. With a shrug of his massive shoulders, he
said, mildly for him--
"My dear sir, I will try to gratify a not unreasonable curiosity. I
did not wish to alarm you prematurely this morning, but the worst has
happened. The silicious fragments in that confounded earth have
lacerated terribly the mucous membranes of these three unfortunate
young men. That in itself is a matter of small importance. The mucous
membrane is most delicate, but it has quite amazing capacities of
repairing itself. The point is this. The water in that spring, and--
I'll be perfectly frank--the water in most of the surface springs in
this particular locality, is simply swarming with pathogenic germs,
and amongst them I identified this morning the as yet unnamed
_coccus_ which I had the honour to discover, and which is as
deadly as the _coma bacillus_ of Asiatic cholera, or--shall I
say?--the highly specialised venom of the rattlesnake."
"Great Scot!"
"This _coccus_, my dear friend, increases and multiplies under
certain conditions. It exacts a highly lacerated condition of the
mucous membrane into which it burrows. Fortunately it is rare;
fortunately, also, it is seldom found in water which has filtered
through diatomaceous earth; for these fossilised deposits are only
found here and there, and, as a rule, not near water."
"They are three good fellows."
"I hope to pull them through," said the Professor stoutly. "For the
moment there is nothing more to be done. They are in bed, and, not to
put a fine point on it, half-drunk. Alcohol stupefies the
_cocci_, but it does not destroy them. I shall pour whisky down
their throats till the drugs I have ordered arrive from San Lorenzo. I
have told your foreman that my patients are not to be disturbed. After
supper I shall administer another dose of whisky."
An hour later, the Professor, accompanied by me, returned to the bunk-
house.
"I hope to find them asleep," he said. "I gave them enough alcohol to
induce stupor."
"How much?"
"At least a quart."