Part 34 (1/2)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A STRANGE ALLIANCE
After this we tied Badger-face in bed an' kept watch of him. He kept on gettin' stronger all the time, an' a good percent of his meanness came back with his strength. Sometimes he'd spend hours tauntin'
Horace an' the Friar; but they didn't mind it any more 'n if Badger had been a caged beast. Then one night he concluded to try cussin'. He started in to devise somethin' extra fancy in the way o' high-colored profanity; but he hadn't gone very far on this path, before Olaf came in as black as a thunder cloud.
”Do you want to be whipped with a whip?” he demanded.
”Naw, I don't want to be whipped with a whip,” sez Badger-face.
”Then you stop swearin',” sez Olaf. ”We been to enough trouble about you, and I don't intend to have my wife listen to any more o' your swearin'. If you don't stop it, I whip all your skin off. You say you want to die-I whip you to death before your very eyes.”
Badger heaved at his ropes a time or two, an' then he realized his weakness, sank back on the bed, an' the tears rolled down his cheeks.
He fair sobbed. ”You're a set o' cowards,” he yelled, ”the whole pack o' you! You wouldn't let me die, and now you threaten to whip me to death. I dare any one of ya to shoot me-you yellow-hearted cowards!”
”I care not for what you say I am,” said Olaf. ”You know if I am a coward, and you know if I keep my word. I say to you, slow an'
careful, that if you yell swear words again in my house, I whip your hide off.”
Well, this had a quietin' influence on Badger's conversation; but he fretted himself a good deal as to what we intended to do with him.
Finally one day when he began to look a little more like a live man than a skeleton, Horace sez to him: ”Badger, you said you didn't have any friends, an' it must be true, 'cause not one of your own outfit has ever been to see you, not even Ty Jones.”
”Ty Jones don't stay out here through the winter,” sez Badger-face.
”If he'd been here, he'd have squared things up for this, one way or another.”
”Where does he go?” asked Horace.
”I don't know,” sez Badger-face.
Horace asked Olaf about it, and Olaf said 'at Ty Jones allus pulled out in December, an' didn't come back until March.
Then Horace came in and sat by Badger again. ”I've got a proposition to make to you,” sez he, ”and you think it over before you answer. I have plenty o' money; but I've wasted most o' my life, sittin' down.
If you are sick of livin' like a wolf, I'll pay your expenses and half again as much as Ty Jones is payin' you, and all you'll have to agree to is to go along as a sort of handy-man for me. I think we can get to be purty good friends, but that can wait. I intend to ramble around wherever my notions take me. If you'll give your word to be as decent as you can, I'll give my word to stand by you as far as I'm able. Your life is forfeit to me, an' if you'll do your part, I intend to make the balance of it worth while to ya. Now, don't answer me; but think it over an' ask all the questions you want to. I'll answer true what I do answer; but I won't answer any 'at I don't want to.”
If Horace had crept in an' cut off his two ears, Badger wouldn't have been any more surprised. Well, none of us would, as far as that goes; though why we should let anything 'at Horace chose to do surprise us by this time is more 'n I know.
He an' Badger talked it over complete for several days, Horace agreein' that he wouldn't ask Badger to go anywhere the army or the law was likely to get him an' not to make him do any stunts 'at would make him look foolish. He told Horace 'at he had served one enlistment an' got a top-notch discharge, an' had then took on again; but a drunken officer had him tied on a spare artillery wheel because Badger had laughed when the officer had fallen off his horse into a mud puddle. He said they had laid the wheel on the ground and him across it, the small of his back restin' on the hub o' the wheel, an' his arms an' legs spread an' tied to the rim, an' had kept him there ten hours. He said that he had deserted the first chance he got; but he refused to tell what had happened to the officer afterward.
Finally Badger said he would take up Horace's proposition; an' Horace called Olaf in to see if Badger was speakin' true. This was the first Badger had ever heard about Olaf's eyes seein' soul-flames; but he said 'at this explained a lot to him he hadn't understood before. Olaf looked at him careful; an' Badger held up his right hand an' said that as long as Horace treated him square, he would be square with Horace, even to the point of givin' up his life for him.
”He is speakin' true,” sez Olaf; and from that very minute, Badger-face became a different man, an' Horace took off the ropes.
”You do look some like a badger with that b.u.m beard on,” sez Horace; ”but I don't like this name, and I want you to pick out a new one.
Pick out some Christian name, your own or any other; but now that you are startin' on a new life, it will help to have a new name.”
Badger-face studied over this a long time, but he couldn't root up any name to suit him so he told Horace to pick out a name, and he'd agree to wear it.
”Well,” sez Horace, after he'd give it a good thinkin' over, ”I think I'll call you Promotheus.”
Badger looked at him purty skeptical. ”I don't intend to take no Greaser name,” sez he. ”Is that Mexican?”