"Danny," he says, "you don"t mean to tell me you can"t read anything at all?"
"I never told you nothing of the kind."
He picks out a label.
"If you can read so fast, what"s that?" he asts.
She is a pink one. I thinks to myself; she either is corn salve or else she ain"t corn salve. And it ain"t natcheral he will pick corn salve, fur he would think I would say that first off. So I"m betting it ain"t.
I takes a chancet on it.
"That," says I, "is mighty easy reading. That is Siwash Injun Sagraw." I lost.
"It"s corn salve," he says. "And Great Scott! They call this the twentieth century!"
"I never called it that," says I, sort o" mad-like. Fur I was feeling bad Doctor Kirby had found out I was such a ignoramus.
"Where ignorance is bliss," says he, "it is folly to be wise. But all the same, I"m going to take your education in hand and make you drink of life"s Peruvian springs." Or some spring like that it was.
And the doctor, he done it. Looey said it wouldn"t be no use learning to read. He"d done a lot of reading, he said, and it never helped him none.
All he ever read showed him this feller Hamlet was right, he said, when he wrote Shakespeare"s works, and they wasn"t much use in anything, without you had a lot o" money. And they wasn"t no chancet to get that with all these here trusts around gobbling up everything and stomping the poor man into the dirt, and they was lots of times he wisht he was a Injun sure enough, and not jest a medical one, fur then he"d be a free man and the bosses and the trusts and the railroads and the robber tariff couldn"t touch him. And then he shut up, and didn"t say nothing fur a hull hour, except oncet he laughed.
Fur Doctor Kirby, he says, winking at me: "Looey, here, is a nihilist."
"Is he," says I, "what"s that?" And the doctor tells me about how they blow up dukes and czars and them foreign high-mucky-mucks with dynamite.
Which is when Looey laughed.
Well, we jogged along at a pretty good gait fur several hours, and we stayed that night at a Swede"s place, which the doctor paid him fur everything in medicine, only it took a long time to make the bargain, fur them Swedes is always careful not to get cheated, and hasn"t many diseases. And the next night we showed in a little town, and done right well, and took in considerable money. We stayed there three days and bought a tent and a sheet-iron stove and some skillets and things and some provisions, and a suit of duds for me.
Well, we went on, and we kept going on, and they was bully times. We"d ease up careful toward a town, and pick us out a place on the edge, where the hosses could graze along the side of the road; and most ginerally by a piece of woods not fur from that town, and nigh a crick, if we could. Then we"d set up our tent. After we had everything fixed, I"d put on my Injun clothes and Looey his"n, and we"d drive through the main store street of the town at a purty good lick, me a-holt of the reins, and the doctor all togged out in his best clothes, and Looey doing a Injun dance in the midst of the wagon. I"d pull up the hosses sudden in front of the post-office or the depot platform or the hotel, and the people would come crowding around, and the doctor he"d make a little talk from the wagon, and tell everybody they would be a free show that night on that corner, and fur everybody to come to it. And then we"d drive back to camp, lickitysplit.
Purty soon every boy in town would be out there, kind o" hanging around, to see what a Injun camp was like. And the farmers that went into and out of town always stopped and pa.s.sed the time of day, and the Injun camp got the hull town all worked up as a usual thing; and the doctor, he done well, fur when night come every one would be on hand. Looey and me, every time we went into town, had on our Injun suits, and the doctor, he wondered why he hadn"t never thought up that scheme before.
Sometimes, when they was lots of people ailing in a town, and they hadn"t been no show fur quite a while, we"d stay five or six days, and make a good clean-up. The doctor, he sent to Chicago several times fur alcohol in barrels, "cause he was selling it so fast he had to make new Sagraw. And he had to get more and more bottles, and a hull satchel full of new Sagraw labels printed.
And all the time the doctor was learning me education. And shucks! they wasn"t nothing so hard about it oncet you"d got started in to reading things. I jest natcherally took to print like a duck to water, and inside of a month I was reading nigh everything that has ever been wrote. He had lots of books with him and every time a new sockdologer of a word come along and I learnt how to spell her and where she orter fit in to make sense it kind o" tickled me all over. And many"s the time afterward, when me and the doctor had lost track of each other, and they was quite a spell people got to thinking I was a tramp, I"ve went into these here Andrew Carnegie libraries in different towns jest as much to see if they had anything fitten to read as fur to keep warm.
Well, we went easing over toward the Indiany line, and we was having a purty good time. They wasn"t no work to do you could call really hard, and they was plenty of vittles. Afternoons we"d lazy around the camp and swap stories and make medicine if we needed a batch, and josh back and forth with the people that hung around, and loaf and doze and smoke; or mebby do a little fishing if we was nigh a crick.
And nights after the show was over it was fun, too. We always had a fire, even if it was a hot night, fur to cook by in the first place, and fur to keep mosquitoes off, and to make things seem more cheerful.
They ain"t nothing so good as hanging round a campfire. And they ain"t nothing any better than sleeping outdoors, neither. You roll up in your blanket with your feet to the fire and you get to wondering things about things afore you go to sleep. The silentness jest natcherally swamps everything after a while, and then all them queer little noises you never hear in the daytime comes popping and poking through the silentness, or kind o" scratching their way through it sometimes, and makes it kind o" feel more silent than ever. And if you are nigh a crick, purty soon it will sort of get to talking to you, only you can"t make out what it"s trying to say, and you get to wondering about that, too. And if you are in a tent and it rains and the tent don"t leak, that rain is a kind of a nice thing to listen to itself. But if you can see the stars you get to wondering more"n ever. They come out and they is so many of them and they are so fur away, and yet they are so kind o"
friendly-like, too, if you happen to be feeling purty good. But if you ain"t feeling purty good, jest lay there and look at them stars long enough; and then mebby you"ll see it don"t make no difference whether you"re feeling good or not, fur they got a way o" making your private troubles look mighty small. And you get to wondering why that is, too, fur they ain"t human; and it don"t stand to reason you orter pay no attention to them, one way nor the other. They is jest there, like trees and cricks and hills. But I have often noticed that the things that is jest there has got a way of seeming more friendly than the things that has been built and put there. You can look at a big iron bridge or a grain elevator or a ca.n.a.l all day long, and if you"re feeling blue it don"t help you none. It was jest put there. Or a hay stack is the same way. But you go and lazy around in the gra.s.s when you"re down on your luck and kind o" make remarks to a crick or a big, old walnut tree, and before long it gets you to feeling like it didn"t make no difference how you felt, anyhow; fur you don"t amount to nothing by the side of something that was always there. You get to thinking how the hull world itself was always here, and you sort o" see they ain"t nothing important enough about yourself to worry about, and presently you will go to sleep and forget it. The doctor says to me one time them stars ain"t any different from this world, and this is one of them. Which is a fool idea, as any one can see. He had a lot of queer ideas like that, Doctor Kirby had. But they ain"t nothing like sleeping out of doors nights to make you wonder the kind of wonderings you never will get any answer to.
Well, I never cared so much fur houses after them days. They was bully times, them was. And I was kind of proud of being with a show, too.
Many"s the time I have went down the street in that there Injun suit, and seen how the young fellers would of give all they owned to be me.
And every now and then you would hear one say when you went past:
"Huh, I know him! That"s one of them show fellers!"
One afternoon we pitches our tent right on the edge of a little town called Athens. We was nigh the bank of a crick, and they was a grove there. We was camped jest outside of a wood-lot fence, and back in through the trees from us they was a house with a hedge fence all around it. They was apple trees and all kind of flower bushes and things inside of the hedge. The second day we was there I takes a walk back through the wood-lot, and along past the house, and they was one of these here early harvest apple trees spilling apples through a gap in the fence.
Them is a mighty sweet and juicy kind of apple, and I picks one up and bites into it.
"I think you might have asked for it," says some one.
CHAPTER VI
I looks up, and that was how I got acquainted with Martha. She was eating one herself, setting up in the tree like a boy. In her lap was a book she had been reading. She was leaning back into the fork two limbs made so as not to tumble.
"Well," I says, "can I have one?"
"You"ve eaten it already," she says, "so there isn"t any use begging for it now."
I seen she was a tease, that girl, and I would of give anything to of been able to tease her right back agin. But I couldn"t think of nothing to say, so I jest stands there kind o" dumb like, thinking what a dern purty girl she was, and thinking how dumb I must look, and I felt my face getting red. Doctor Kirby would of thought of something to say right off. And after I got back to camp I would think of something myself. But I couldn"t think of nothing bright, so I says:
"Well, then, you give me another one!"
She gives the core of the one she has been eating a toss at me. But I ketched it, and made like I was going to throw it back at her real hard.
She slung up her arm, and dodged back, and she dropped her book.
I thinks to myself I"ll learn that girl to get sa.s.sy and make me feel like a dumb-head, even if she is purty. So I don"t say a word. I jest picks up that book and sticks it under my arm and walks away slow with it to where they was a stump a little ways off, not fur from the crick, and sets down with my back to her and opens it. And I was trying all the time to think of something smart to say to her. But I couldn"t of done it if I was to be shot. Still, I thinks to myself, no girl can sa.s.s me and not get sa.s.sed back, neither.
I hearn a scramble behind me which I knowed was her getting out of that tree. And in a minute she was in front of me, mad.
"Give me my book," she says.
But I only reads the name of the book out loud, fur to aggervate her. I had on purty good duds, but I kind of wisht I had on my Injun rig then.
You take the girls that always comes down to see the pa.s.senger train come into the depot in them country towns and that Injun rig of mine and Looey"s always made "em turn around and look at us agin. I never wisht I had on them Injun duds so hard before in my life. But I couldn"t think of nothing bright to say, so I jest reads the name of that book over to myself agin, kind o" grinning like I got a good joke I ain"t going to tell any one.
"You give me my book," she says agin, red as one of them harvest apples, "or I"ll tell Miss Hampton you stole it and she"ll have you and your show arrested."
I reads the name agin. It was "The Lost Heir." I seen I had her good and teased now, so I says: "It must be one of these here love stories by the way you take on over it."
"It"s not," she says, getting ready to cry. "And what right have you got in our wood-lot, anyhow?"
"Well," I says, "I was jest about to move on and climb out of it when you hollered to me from that tree."
"I didn"t!" she says. But she was mad because she knowed she HAD spoke to me first, and she was awful sorry she had.
"I thought I hearn you holler," I says, "but I guess it must of been a squirrel." I said it kind o" sarcastic like, fur I was still mad with myself fur being so dumb when we first seen each other. I hadn"t no idea it would hurt her feelings as hard as it did. But all of a sudden she begins to wink, and her chin trembled, and she turned around short, and started to walk off slow. She was mad with herself fur being ketched in a lie, and she was wondering what I would think of her fur being so bold as to of spoke first to a feller she didn"t know.
I got up and follered her a little piece. And it come to me all to oncet I had teased her too hard, and I was down on myself fur it.
"Say," I says, kind of tagging along beside of her, "here"s your old book."
But she didn"t make no move to take it, and her hands was over her face, and she wouldn"t pull "em down to even look at it.