“You are a nice-looking duck,” said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy
came into the sitting-room with a black' eye and a scratch across his
nose, and one thumb tied up in a rag, but looking as well, otherwise,
as could be expected. “What you been doing? Run over by a trolley car or
anything?”
“Nope,” said the boy, as he looked in the mirror to see how his eye was
coloring, with all the pride of a man who is coloring a meerschaum; “I
just had a fight. Licked a boy, that's all,” and he put his hand to his
head, where a lock of his red hair had been pulled out.
“You look as though you had licked a boy,” said the old man taking
a good look at the blue spot around the boy's eye. “I suppose he is
telling his folks how he licked you, too. My experience has been that
in these boys' fights you can't tell which licks until you hear both
stories. What was it about, anyway?”
“He lied about you, Uncle Ike, and I choked him until he said 'peunk,'
and then I let him up, but he wouldn't apologize, and said he would
leave it to you, if what he said was true or not, and here he comes
now,” and the red-headed boy opened the door and ushered in a boy about
his own size, with two black eyes and a piece peeled off his cheek, and
one arm in a sling.
“Which is Jeffries?” asked Uncle Ike, as he filled his pipe, and looked
over the two companions who had been scrapping.
[Illustration: Which is Jeffries 63]
“He is Jeffries,” said the visitor, “and I am Fitzsimmons, but I want to
have another go at him, unless we leave it to arbitration,” and the boy
looked at the red-headed boy with blood in his eye, and at Uncle Ike
with a look of no particular admiration.
“Well, what was the cause of the row?” said Uncle Ike, as he took a
chair between the two boys, lit his pipe, and smiled as he saw the marks
of combat on their persons.
“He said you used to be a drunkard, Uncle Ike, and had been to the
Keeley cure, and I called him a liar, and then we mixed up.”
“That's about the size of it,” said the other boy; “now, which was
right?”
Uncle Ike smoked up and filled the room so it looked like camping out
and cooking over a fire made of wet wood, and thought a long time, and
looked very serious, and the red-headed boy could see they were in for a
talk. Finally the old man said:
“Boys, you are both right and both wrong, and I'll tell you all about
it. I never was a drunkard, and never drank much, but I have been to the
cure all the same. It was this way: I had a friend who was one of the
best men that ever lived, only he got a habit of drinking too much, and
no one seemed able to reason with him. He wouldn't take advice from his
own mother, his wife, or me, or anybody. He was just going to the devil
on a gallop, and it was only a question of a year or two when he would
die. I loved that man like a brother, but he would get mad the minute
I spoke of his drinking, and I quit talking to him, though I wanted
to save him. I have smoked dog-leg tobacco many a night till after
midnight, trying to study a way to save the only man in the world that
I ever actually loved, and I finally got it down fine. I began to act as
though I was half drunk whenever I saw my friend, spilled whisky on my
coat sleeves, and acted disreputable, and got a few good fellows to
talk with him about what a confounded wreck I was getting to be; and he
actually got to pitying me, and finally got disgusted with me; and one
day he said to me that I was a disgrace, and was making more different
kinds of a fool of myself than any drunkard he ever met. I got mad at
him, and told him to attend to his own business and left him. Then the
boys got to telling him that the only way to save me was to get me to
go to a cure; and, do you know, that good fellow that I would have given
the world to save, came to me and urged me to, take the cure; and
at first I was indignant that he should interfere in my affairs, and
finally he said he would go if I would. Then we struck a bargain, and
went to Dwight, and took the medicine. The boys had told the doctors
the story, and they only gave me one shot in the arm; but that came
near killing me, because it almost broke me of using tobacco. Well, I
remained there ten days, and, while they were pretending to cure me,
they were curing my friend sure enough, putting the gold cure into
his system with injections and drinks, while I didn't get anything but
ginger ale; and when we were discharged cured, I was the happiest man
in the world, except my friend, who was happier. He was not only cured
himself, and an honor to his family, but he thought he had saved me from
a drunkard's grave. That's the story, boys, and now you get up and shake
hands, and don't fight any more over your Uncle Ike,” and the old man
patted them both on the head, and they shook hands and laughed at each
other's black eyes. As the red-headed boy showed his late antagonist to
the door, he turned to his uncle and said:
“Uncle Ike, if you have ever held up a railroad train, or robbed a bank,
or stolen horses, or done anything that would cause you to be arrested,
I beg of you to tell me of it now, so if anybody abuses you in my
presence I won't get into a fight every time,” and the boy put his arm
around his Uncle Ike and hugged him, and added, “You were a thoroughbred
when you bilked that friend of yours to take the cure.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Uncle Ike, “that reminds me of the battle of
Chickamauga. When Bragg's forces were----”
“Fire! Fire!” yelled the red-headed boy, and he rushed out of doors and
left the old man talking to his pipe.
“Has that battle of Chickamauga been fought out to a finish yet?” said
the red-headed boy, as he stuck his head in the door after the imaginary
fire alarm that he had created to escape Uncle Ike's war history, “for
if it is ended I want to come in, but I can't stand gore, and your war
stories are so full of blood that you must have had to swim in it.”
“Oh, you don't know a hero when you see one,” said the old man, as he
straightened up and saluted the boy in a military manner, only that he
used his left hand instead of his right hand.
“Well, I'll tell you,” said the boy as he got inside the room and
stood with his hand on the door knob, ready to escape if Uncle Ike
got excited. “You old veterans make me sick. I have heard nothing for
fifteen years except war talk, old war talk, back number war talk, about
how you old fellows put down the rebellion, and suffered, and fought,
and all that rot. Why, I heard a bugler who enlisted for the Spanish
war, and who only got as far as Jacksonville, say that you fellows that
put down the rebellion in 1864 were just a mob, and that you didn't have
any fighting, and that the Southern people were only fooling you, and
that you didn't suffer like the Spanish war heroes did, and that you
just had a picnic from start to finish. The bugler said he wouldn't ask
any better fun than to fight the way you fellows did, when you had all
you wanted to eat, good beds to sleep on, and servants to carry your
guns, and cook for you. The bugler said you fellows all get pensions
just for making an excursion through the Southern resorts, while the
heroes of the Spanish war, who fought a foreign country to a standstill,
and went without food, and got malaria, are without pensions, and just
existing on the record they made fighting for their country----” and
the boy stopped nagging the old man when he noticed that Uncle Ike was
turning blue in the face, and choking to keep down his wrath.
“Where is this heroic bugler of the Spanish war?” said Uncle Ike, trying
to be calm, but actually frothing at the mouth. “Bring him here, and let
me hear him say these things, condemn him, and I will take him across my
knee and I will knock the wind out of him, so that he can never gather
enough in his carcass to blow another bugle. Why, confound him, he is a
liar. The war of the rebellion was a war, not a country schuetzenfest,
with a chance to go home every night and sleep in a feather bed, and get
a Turkish bath. The whole Spanish war, except what the navy did, was not
equal to an outpost skirmish in '63. Of course, the rough riders and
the weary walkers did a nice job going up San Juan hill, but we had a
thousand such fights in the rebellion. After that skirmish there was
nothing done by the army at Santiago, but to sit down in the mud and
wait for the Spaniards to eat their last cracker, and kill their last
dog and eat it, and then surrender. Ask that bugler to tell you where he
found, in his glorious career as a wind instrument in the Spanish war,
any Grants, Shermans, Sheridans, Logans, Pap Thomases, McClellans,
Kilpatricks, Custers, McPhersons, Braggs, and hundreds of such heroes.
What has the bugler got to show for his war? Shafter! And Alger! And
all of them quarreling over the little bone of victory that was not big
enough for a meal for our old generals of the war of the rebellion. And
he talks about our pensions, the young kid. He probably wears corsets.
Why, we didn't get pensions until we got so old we couldn't get up
alone. His gang of Jacksonville heroes will probably get pensions when
they are old enough. Bring that bugler in here some day, and don't
let him know what he is going to run up against, and I will give you a
dollar, and I will let you see me dust the carpet with him,” and the old
man sat down and fanned himself, while the boy looked scared for fear
Uncle Ike was going to have a fit. “Why, at the battle of Pea Ridge,
when a minie ball struck me, when I was on the firing line----”
“Keno,” said the red-headed boy, as he went through the window head
first, and over the picket fence on his stomach, and disappeared down
the street.