A Waif of the Mountains

“I don’t want any one to plead for me! I ain’t pleading fur myself! I can take my medicine like a man; if there’s any galoot here–”

He suddenly checked himself with an apprehensive glance at the door of the rear room, and then resumed in a more subdued voice:

“I insist that Al Bidwell shall suffer for his onspeakable crime and me too, ’cause mine was onspeakabler. Jedgin’ from the evidence that showed itself, I must have awoke the little gal from peaceful slumber, by them awful words of mine.”

He paused and looked inquiringly at the chairman, who calmly returned his gaze, without speaking. It was Parson Brush who interposed:

“I should like to ask, Mr. Dawson, whether the supposition of Mr. Ruggles has any foundation in fact.”

“It has; when I asked Nellie what caused her to awake, she said it was Mr. Ruggles when he used those bad words.”

“Just what I thought!” exclaimed Ruggles, as if he enjoyed heaping fire upon his own head; “there ain’t any depth of infamy which I hain’t reached. For me to try to sneak out now, when I made such a–(Here he again threw a startled glance at the rear of the room) would be to do something which Wade Ruggles never done in his variegated career of nigh onto forty years. All I ask is that you’ll git through it as soon as you kin and fix our terms of imprisonment or our deaths and hev done with it.”

Al Bidwell took an unworthy delight in prodding the man who had been so severe upon him.

“I beg humbly to suggest to the gent that there are plenty of places in the mountains where he can make a jump of a thousand feet or two into the kenyons. Wouldn’t it be a good idee fur the gent to try it?”

“I will if you’ll join me,” retorted Wade, turning upon him like a flash.

“I’ll let you try it first and see how it works,” replied Bidwell, so crushed that he remained silent henceforward.

“Since I am chairman,” said Dawson, with becoming dignity, “it is my duty to listen to suggestions and to hear motions. What is your pleasure, gentlemen?”

No one in looking at the countenance of Maurice Dawson would have suspected he was extracting the keenest enjoyment from these proceedings, yet such was the fact. There was something so intensely ludicrous in the whole business, that only by assuming preternatural gravity could he refrain from breaking into merriment. His policy was to egg on the discussion until the company were ready for a decision, when he would interpose with the proposal to wipe out the whole matter and begin over again. The earnestness of Wade Ruggles, however, threatened to check anything of that nature. He was on his feet several times until Budge Isham, who shrewdly suspected the sentiments of the chairman, protested.

“With all due respect to the parson, to Ruggles and to Bidwell, it strikes me, Mr. Chairman, that they should give the rest of us a show. We have listened to their yawping until it has grown monotonous. Having told us a dozen times, more or less, that he wants us to punish him all he deserves, Mr. Ruggles ought to let it rest with that; but he shouldn’t forget,” added Budge, with the solemn manner which always marked his waggery, “that, if we took him at his word, he would be kicking vacancy this minute. However, this hasn’t anything to do with his general cussedness, but concerns his offence against the young lady. That is all there is before the house, and I insist that we confine ourselves to that–”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been insistin’ on?” demanded Wade Ruggles.

“There you go again! I have the floor, and you have no parliamentary right to interrupt me with your frivolous remarks. Am I correct, Mr. Chairman?”

“You are most unquestionably; proceed.”

“Well, to bring this tiresome matter to a close, I move that Mr. Bidwell be deprived of the bar privileges of the Heavenly Bower for a period of four days, and that the same be denied to Mr. Ruggles for a period of one week. Did I hear a groan?” asked Budge, looking round at the two men, who were trying bravely to bear up under the threatened punishment.

Both shook their heads, afraid to trust their voices by way of reply.

“If the gentlemen will permit me,” said the chairman, “I should like to say a few words.”

“I am sure we shall be glad to hear from Mr. Dawson,” remarked the parson.

“Thank you. What I had in mind is this:–It is creditable to your honor that you should pledge yourselves to refrain from unbecoming language in the hearing of my little girl, for you cannot help being her instructors, no matter how much you may wish it were otherwise. But you are magnifying the matter. I am sure every man of you will strive just as hard, without being incited thereto by the fear of punishment. I would beg to suggest–”

He paused, for, looking at Wade Ruggles, he saw it was useless to go further. Bidwell would have been glad to receive leniency, but his partner in crime was immovable, and it would not do to punish one and allow the other to go free. Dawson was wise enough to accept the situation promptly.

“You have heard the penalties suggested for the offences of the two gentlemen accused. All who favor such punishment will show it by raising their right hands.”

Every man in the room, except the chairman, voted in the affirmative.

“It isn’t worth while to put the negative. The accused have heard the verdict, which is that Mr. Bidwell shall not drink a drop of anything except water or coffee for a period of four days, dating from this moment, while Mr. Ruggles is to undergo the same penalty for a period of one week.”

“That’s right,” growled Bidwell; “for he drank about half of what was in the bottle only a few minutes ago.”

“And you would have drunk it all,” retorted Ruggles, “if you’d knowed what was coming.”

CHAPTER V

A HUNDRED FOLD

All this may seem a trifling matter to the reader who does not understand the real punishment suffered by these two men, who, like all the rest of their companions, had been accustomed to the use of ardent spirits for many years. There was no deprivation which they could not have borne with less distress, but their great consolation was that both knew the penalty was fully deserved, and they would not have complained had it been made more severe.

“I tell you,” said Bidwell, at the end of the fourth day, when he had celebrated his release from purgatory, “it pays, Ruggles.”

“What pays?”

“The reward you git for all this. At the end of a week you’ll have a thirst that you wouldn’t take a thousand dollars fur.”

“But the week isn’t much more’n half gone and I’d sell my thirst mighty cheap now.”

“Don’t you do it! Hold fast to it.”

“That’s what I’m doing, ’cause I can’t help myself. Howsumever it’s the thirst that’s holding fast to me.”

“That’s the beauty of it; it’ll git stronger and stronger, and then it’s so big that you can’t well handle it. It seems to me that ten minutes after I’ve had a drink, I’m thirsty agin, which reminds me; I’d like to invite you, Wade.”

“Invite all you want to, ’cause it won’t do any more hurt than good; don’t let me keep you,” added Ruggles, observing the longing eyes his friend cast in the direction of the Heavenly Bower. Bidwell moved off with pretended reluctance, out of consideration for the feelings of his friend, but once inside, he gave another demonstration of the truth of his remarks concerning thirst.

As for Ruggles, only he who has been similarly placed can appreciate his trial. No man is so deserving of sympathy as he who is making a resolute effort to conquer the debasing appetite that has brought him to the gutter.

On that fourth night the thirst of the fellow was a raging fever. He drank copious draughts of spring water, but all the help it gave was to fill him up. The insatiate craving remained and could not be soothed. It seemed as if every nerve was crying out for the stimulant which it was denied.

“The only time I ever went through anything like this,” he said to himself, “was twenty years ago, when a party of us were lost in the Death Valley. Three of ’em died of thirst, and I come so nigh it that it makes me shudder to think of it even at this late day.”

A wonderful experience came to Wade Ruggles. To his unbounded amazement, he noticed a sensible diminution, on the fifth day, of his thirst. It startled him at first and caused something in the nature of alarm. He feared some radical change had taken place in his system which threatened a dangerous issue. When this misgiving passed, it was succeeded by something of the nature of regret. One consoling reflection from the moment his torture began, was the reward which Al Bidwell had named, that is,–the glorious enjoyment of fully quenching his terrific craving, but, if that craving diminished, the future bliss must shrink in a corresponding ratio, and that was a calamity to make a man like him shudder.

On the evening of the fifth day, he ventured for the first time during his penal term, to enter the Heavenly Bower. He wished to test his self-control. When he sat quietly and saw his friends imbibing, and was yet able to restrain himself from a headlong rush to join them, he knew that beyond all question, his fearful appetite had lost a part of its control over him. Still he believed it was only a temporary disarrangement, and that the following day would bring a renewal of his thirst, with all its merciless violence.

But lo! on the sixth morning, the appetite was weaker than ever. His craving was so moderate that, after a deep draught of mountain spring water, he was hardly conscious of any longing for liquor. He seemed to be losing his memory of it.

“I don’t understand it,” he mused, keeping the astonishing truth to himself; “It’s less than a week ago that I was one of the heaviest drinkers in New Constantinople, and if anyone had told me of this, I would have been sure he’d lost his senses, which the same may be what’s the matter with me.”

But there was no awakening of his torment during the day, and when he lay down at night, he was disturbed by strange musings.

“If we had a doctor in the place, I would ask him to tell me what it means. The queerest thing ’bout the whole bus’ness is that I feel three thousand per cent. better. I wonder if it can be on ’count of my not swallerin’ any of Ortigies’ pison which the same he calls Mountain Dew. I guess it must be that.”

But that night he was restless, and gradually his thoughts turned into a new channel. A momentous problem presented itself for solution.

“If I’ve improved so much after goin’ six days without drinkin’, won’t I feel a blamed sight better, if I try it for six weeks–six months–six years–forever.”