Part 18 (2/2)
”Gimme a drink of water! Gimme a chew of tobacco! Gimme anything to take the taste of _mouse_ out'n my mouth. Wallie,” solemnly, ”men have died fer less'n that in this country. If I thought you'd done that on purpose I'd slit your throat from ear to ear and leave you.”
”I thought I was very particular and cut off everything that looked suspicious,” said Wallie, meekly, ”I must have missed something.”
”You sh.o.r.e did! And,” Pinkey demanded, ”what might them horrors be on the platter? Them teeth are mighty familiar.”
Wallie quavered:
”Prairie-dog--I was experimenting to see if they were edible.”
”Leave me out in the air again!” Pinkey groaned as he swallowed a drink of water. ”And I pa.s.sed up a turkey dinner to come and eat with you!”
”Shan't I cook you some bacon?” asked Wallie, contritely.
”I doubt if I ever feel like eatin' agin, but if the cake's thawed out I'll try a chunk of it to take my mind off that stuffin'.”
Wallie opened the can of pineapple he had been treasuring and Pinkey helped himself freely to the Christmas cake.
”They must be about four meals in one of them slices, the way it feels inside of me,” the latter commented, nibbling delicately on a ring of pineapple he held in his fingers.
”It's fruit-cake, and rich; you're not supposed to eat so much of it,”
Wallie said, sharply.
Pinkey raised his eyebrows and regarded Wallie attentively as he continued to nibble.
”Looks like you're turrible touchy about her cookin', and swelled up over gittin' a Christmas present,” he remarked, finally. ”You needn't be, because she made eight other cement bricks jest like this one and sent 'em around to fellers she's sorry for.”
”Oh, did she!” Wallie e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, crestfallen.
”Yes, indeed,” Pinkey went on, complacently, feeling a glow of satisfaction at Wallie's lengthened countenance; ”she does it every Christmas. She's kind to the pore and sufferin', but it don't mean nothin' more than a dollar she'd drop in a hat somebody was pa.s.sin'.”
Noting the deep gloom which immediately settled upon Wallie, Pinkey could think of the prairie-dogs with more equanimity.
CHAPTER XII
THE WATER WITCH
In former days Wallie had wished for a yacht, his own stables, and such luxuries, but now he wanted a well with far greater intensity than he had desired those extravagances.
The all-important question had been whether he could at present afford it, with his money vanis.h.i.+ng like a belated s...o...b..nk. Then, while he had been debating, Rufus Reed appeared at such a timely moment that it had seemed providential.
Mr. Reed, lately arrived from Illinois, was now sitting with his feet on the stove-hearth and so close to the coals that the cabin was strong with the odour of frying rubber, and declaring modestly:
”I may say, without braggin', that I have made an enormous success since I gave up my flour and feed store and took to well-diggin' as a perfession. By acci-dent I discovered that I was peculiarly gifted.”
Watching the smoke rising from Rufus's arctics and speculating as to what might be the composition of his soles that he could endure so much heat without discomfort, Wallie inquired politely:
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