a bear hunt, he bit like a bass, and the whole bunch went off in a
buckboard one morning with guns, lunches, hounds, bottles, and all kinds
of ammunition. They didn't let me go but when the crowd came back about
midnight, and they carried dad up to his room, and sent for a doctor,
one of the horse race men who went along told me all about it.

[Illustration: “Dad was up on a limb praying, his gun on the ground and
his coattails chewed by the wild pigs.”]

“He said they went out in a canebrake and stationed dad on a runway for
bear, and put in the dogs about a mile away in the swamp, and they left
him there for five hours, and when they went to where he was, there was
a drove of wild hogs, or peccaries, under a tree, and dad was up, on
a limb praying, his gun on the ground; his coat was chewed by the wild
pigs, and the wild animals were jumping up to eat his shoes. The fellows
hid behind trees and listened to dad confess his sins, and pray, and
promise to do better, and be a good man, and when a wild pig would gnash
his teeth and make a jump at him, he would talk swear words at the pig,
and then he would put up his hands and ask forgiveness, and promise to
lead a different life, and say what a fool he was to be off down here in
the sunny south being eaten alive by wild hogs, when he ought to be home
enjoying religion. Just as dad was about to die there on the limb of
a shagbark hickory, the fellows behind the trees touched off a small
dynamite cartridge and threw it under the tree, and when it exploded the
wild hogs ran away, dad fell off the limb, and he was rescued. He was
a sight, for sure, when they brought him to the hotel; his clothes were
torn off, his stomach lacerated, and when he was stuck together with
plasters, and I was alone with him, he said he was as good a bear hunter
as ever came down the pike, but he never worked in a slaughter house,
and didn't know anything about slaughtering pigs, and besides, if he
ever got out again, and able to use a gun, he would put that bunch of
hunters that took him out in the canbrakes under the sod. He said while
he sat up the tree praying for strength to endure the ordeal he had a
revelation that there wasn't a bear within a hundred miles, and that
those fellows had the hogs trained to scare visitors to Hot Springs, so
they could be easy to rob. He said one fellow borrowed $50 off him to
pay into the state treasury for wear and tear on the wild hogs. Well,
dad had forgotten about the monkey-wrench in his system, and I guess we
are going to enjoy ourselves here in the old-fashioned way. Yours all
right,

“Hennery.”

CHAPTER XIII.

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Trouble with a New Breakfast Food--Dad
Rides a Bucking Broncho.

San Antonio, Texas.--My Dear Chum: Dad and I left Hot Springs because
the man who kept the hotel where we stopped got prejudiced against me. I
suppose I did carry the thing a little too far. You see dad has got
into this breakfast food habit, and reads all the advertisements that
describe new inventions of breakfast food, and he has got himself so
worked up over the bran mash that he is losing appetite for anything
substantial, and he is getting weak and nutty. Ma told me when I went
away with dad that she wanted me to try my best to break dad of the
breakfast food habit, and I promised to do it. Say, kid, if you ever
expect to succeed in life, you have got to establish a reputation for
keeping your promises. Truth is mighty, and when anybody can depend upon
a boy to do as he agrees his fortune is made. Dad saw a new breakfast
food advertised in an eastern magazine, and as the hotel people only
kept thirty or forty kinds of mockingbird food for guests, dad made me
go out to the groceries and round up the new kind. I brought a box to
the table at breakfast, and dad fell over himself to fill his saucer,
and then he offered some to eight boarders that sat at our table. Dad
had been bragging for a week about how he had adopted the breakfast food
fad, first for his health, and then to get even with the beef trust. He
had convinced the boarders at our table that it was a patriotic duty of
every citizen to shut down on eating meat until the criminal meat trust
was ruined.

[Illustration: “Hennery, I Feel as Though Your Dad Was not Very Long for
This World.” ]

“The breakfast food I put up on dad was some pulverized cork that I got
at a grocery out of a barrel of California grapes. It looked exactly
like other breakfast food, but you'd a died to see dad and several
invalid Southern colonels, and two women who were at the table, pour
cream on that pulverized cork, and springle sugar on it, and try to
get the pulverized cork to soak up the cream, but the particles of
cork floated on top of the cream, and acted alive. An old confederate
colonel, who had called dad a dam yankee ever since we had been there,
and always acted as though he was on the point of drawing a gun, took
the first mouthful, and after chewing it a while he swallowed as though
his throat was sore, but he got it down, and ordered a cocktail, and
looked mad at dad. Dad noticed that the others were having difficulty in
masticating the food, and so he pitched in and ate his food and said
it was the finest he ever tasted, but the rest of the crowd only took a
spoonful or two, and et fruit. One woman who is there to be cured of the
habit of betting on the races, got the cork in amongst her false teeth
and it squeaked when she chewed, like pulling a cork out of a beer
bottle. They all seemed to want to please dad, and so they munched
away at the cork, until the woman with the false teeth had to leave the
table, then a colonel went out, and then all quit the table except
dad and I, and by that time dad felt as though he had swallowed a life
preserver, and he said to me:

“'Hennery, either the baths or the climate, or something has upset me,
and I feel as though your dad was not very long for this world. Before
I die I want you to confess to me what that stuff is that I have been
eating, and I can die in peace!'

“I told him that he had wanted a light breakfast, and I though there was
nothing quite so light as cork, and that he was full clear to the muzzle
with pulverized cork, and he couldn't sink any more when he took a bath.
Dad turned pale and we went out in the office and found that all the
people who sat at our table, and ate breakfast food were in the hands of
doctors, and dad went in the room with them, and each had a doctor, and
how they got it out of them I don't know, as I was busy organizing a
strike among the bell boys. I told them they could double their wages
by striking at exactly at ten o'clock, when all the boarders wanted
cocktails sent to their rooms.

[Illustration: Dad Among the Cowboys.]

“They struck all right, and the breakfast food people had all got pumped
out, and then it came my turn. Dad gave me a licking, the boarders
kicked at me, the landlord ordered me out of the house, and the striking
bell boys who had their places filled in ten minutes, chased me all over
town, and when I got back to the hotel dad had bought tickets to San
Antonio, because the doctor told him to get out on the prairies and take
horseback exercise to shake the pulverized cork and the monkey-wrench
out of his system, and everybody threw stones at the buss that we rode
to the depot in. Gosh, but I hate a town where genius has no chance
against the mob element. The worst was that woman with the false teeth,
because she lost them somewhere, and had to hold her handkerchief over
her mouth while she called me names when the porter took me by the
collar and the pants and flung me into the buss. Dad told the porter,
when he handed out the regular 'tip,' that he would have made it large
if the porter had taken an axe to me. Dad is getting so funny he almost
makes me laugh.

“Well, kid, we arrived here next day, and got acclimated before night.
Dad bought a wide gray cowboy hat, with a leather strap for a band, and
began to pose as a regular old rough rider, and told everybody at the
hotel that he was going to buy a ranch, and run for congress. Everybody
here is willing a northern man should buy a ranch, but when he talks
about running for Congress they look sassy at him, but dad can look
just as sassy as anybody here. He told all around that he was a cavalry
veteran of the war, and wanted to get a horse to ride that would stir up
his patriotic instincts and his liver, and all his insides, and a real
kind man steered dad to a livery stable, and I knew by the way the
natives winked at each other that they were going to let him have a
horse that would jounce him all right.

“They saddled up a real nice pony for me, but when they led out the
horse for dad I knew that trouble was coming. The horse was round
shouldered on the back, and when they put the saddle on the horse humped
up and coughed most pitiful, and when they fastened the cinch the horse
groaned and the crowd all laughed, A negro boy asked me if my old man
was ever on a horse before, and when I told him that dad had eaten
horses in the army, the boy said that horse would eat him, 'cause he was
a bucker from Buckersville in the western part of the state.

[Illustration: “Dad Began to Pose as a Regular Old Rough Rider.”]

I told dad the horse was a dangerous bucker, but he tipped his hat on
one side and said he had broken more bucking bronchos than those Texas
livery men ever saw. Dad borrowed a pair of these Mexican spurs with a
wheel in them as big as a silver dollar, and the men held the horse by
the bridle while dad got on, and I must say he got on like he knew how.
He asked which was the road to Houston, and we started out of town.

“Well, sir, I have been in a good many runaways, and I was filling a
soda fountain once when it exploded, and I have been on a toboggan
when it run into a cow, and I have been to a church sociable when a boy
turned some rats loose, and a terrier went after them right among the
women, but I never was so paralyzed as I was to see dad and that horse
try to stay together. The first two miles out of town the horse walked,
and acted as though it was going to die, and my pony would get away
ahead and have to wait for dad and the camel to come up. Dad was mad
because they gave him such a slow horse.

“'What are those things on your heels for?' I says to dad. 'Why don't
you run the spokes into his slats?' I said, just to be sociable.

“'Never you mind me,' says dad. 'After I have looked at the scenery a
while I will open the throttle on this dromedary, and we will go and
visit the Pyramids.'

“I was a little ahead and I did not catch dad in the act of kicking open
the throttle, but I heard something that sounded like a freight train
wreck, and dad and the horse went by me like a horse race, only that
horse was not on the ground half the time, and he didn't go straight
ahead, but just lowered his head between his legs and jumped in the air
and came down stifflegged and then jumped sideways, and changed ends and
did it all over again, all over the prairie, and dad was a sight. His
eyes stuck out, and his teeth rattled, and every time the horse came
down on his feet dad seemed to get shorter, as though his spine was
being telescoped up into his hat. I think dad would have fallen off the
first jump, only he had rammed the spurs in amongst the horse's ribs,
and couldn't get them out. Gee, but you never saw such actions, unless
you have seen a horse go plum crazy. The horse kept giving dad new fancy
side steps, and jumps until dad yelled to me to get a gun and shoot him
or the horse, and he didn't care which. I yelled to dad to loosen up on
the bridle, and let the horse run lengthways instead of sideways, and I
guess he did, for the horse lit out for some musquite trees and before I
could get there the horse had run under a limb and scraped dad off, and
when I got there dad was lying under a tree, trying to pray and swear
all to wonst, and his spurs were all blood and hair, and things a horse
wears on the inside of his self, and the horse was standing not far
away, eating grass, and looking at dad. If dad had had his revolver
along he would have killed the horse, but the horse seemed to know he
had been fooling with an unarmed man. I got dad righted up, and he rode
my pony to town, and I had to lead the bucking horse, and he eat some of
the cloth out of my pants.

[Illustration: Dad on a Bucking Broncho.]

“Say, this is a bully place down here; just as quiet and sunshiny as
can be, only dad is in a hospital for a week or so, having operations
on where the horse let him drop once in a while on the saddle, and the
livery man made dad buy the horse 'cause he said dad had ripped his
sides out with the spurs. Dad says we will have a picnic when he gets
out of the hospital. He is going to buy some dynamite and take the horse
out on the prairie and blow him up. Dad is _so_ fond of dumb animals. I
got your letter about your being in love. Gee, but you can't afford it
on your salary.

“Yours quite truly,

“HENNERY.”

CHAPTER XIV.

The Bad Boy and his Dad Return from Texas--The Boy Tells the Groceryman
About the Excitement at San Antonio.

The old groceryman sat on an up-turned half bushel measure in front of
the store drying his old-fashioned boots. As he fried the soles in front
of the red hot stove, there was an odor of burnt leather, but he did not
notice it, as the other odors natural to the dirty old grocery seemed
to be in the majority. The door opened quietly and the old man got up to
wait on a possible customer, when the bald boy rushed in and dropped on
the floor the queerest animal the old man and the cat had ever seen. The
cat got up on the counter on a pile of brown wrapping paper, curved its
back and purmeyowed, and the strange animal jumped into a half barrel
of dried apples and began to dig with all four feet, as though to make a
bed to lie in.

“Take that animalcule, or whatever it is, out of them apples,” said the
old groceryman, picking up a fire-poker. “What is it, and where did it
come from, and when did you get back, and how is your pa, and why didn't
you stay away, and what do you want here anyway?” and the old man eyed
the animal and the bad boy, expecting to be bitten by one and bilked by
the other.

“That's a prairie dog from Texas, if you are not posted in
ornicothology,” said the boy, as he took the prairie dog up and put him
on the counter near the cat. “Dad is all right, only we were driven out
of Texas by the board of health.”

“I told that pirate chum of yours when he read me your letter, that you
would last in Texas just about a week, and that you would be shipped
home in a box. They are not as tolerant with public nuisances down south
as we are here. But what did you do there to get the board of health
after you?” and the old man pushed the cat's back down level, and held
her tail so she couldn't eat the prairie dog.

“Well, sir, it was the condemnedest outrage that ever was,” said the
boy, as he gave the prairie dog some crackers and cheese. “You see, dad
told me I could pick up some pet animals while I was in Texas, and I
got quite a collection while dad was in the hospital. Here is one in my
pocket,” and the boy took a horned toad out of his pocket, about as big
as a soft-shelled crab, and put it in the old groceryman's hand.

[Illustration: “That's a Prairie Dog from Texas.” ]

“Condemn you, don't you put a poisonous reptile in my hand,” said the
odd man, as he dropped the ugly-looking toad on the floor, and got
behind the show case, while the boy laughed fit to kill. “Now tell your
story and vamoose, by ginger, or I will ring for the patrol wagon. You
would murder a man in his own house, and laugh at his spasms.”

“O, get out, that toad and this prairie dog are as harmless as your old
cat there,” said the boy, as he watched the old man tremble as though
he had jim-jams. “I have got a tarantula and a diamond-back rattlesnake
that will pizen you, though. I'll tell you about our getting fired out
of Texas, if you will stand still a minute. You see, I had my collection
of pets in my room at the hotel, and I had the bell boys bribed, and the
chambermaid would only come in our room while I was there to watch the
pets. The night dad got back from the hospital, where he went to grow
some new bones and things on his insides, after he rode the bucking
broncho, a man got me the prettiest little animal you ever saw, sort of
white and black, about the size of a cat, and I took it to the room and
put it under the bed in a box the man gave me. Dad had gone to bed, and
was snoring so you could cut it with a knife.”

“Say, you knew that animal was a skunk all the time, now tell me, didn't
you,” said the old groceryman. “You was a fool to take it, when you knew
what a skunk will do.”

“Yes, I thought it was a skunk, all right,” said the boy, “but the
man told me the animal had been vaccinated, and wouldn't ever make any
trouble for any one, and he would warrant it. I thought a warranted
skunk was all right, and so I went to bed in a cot next to dad's bed. I
guess it was about daylight when skunks want to suck eggs, that he began
to scratch the box, and squeak, and I was afraid it would wake dad up,
so I reached down and took off the cover of the box. From that very
identical moment the trouble began. Dad heard something in the room and
he rose up in bed and the animal sat on the foot of the bed and looked
at dad. Dad said 'scat,' and threw a pillow at my pet, and then all was
chaos. I never exactly smelled chaos, but I know it when I smell it.
O, O, but you'd a dide to see dad. He turned blue and green, and said,
'Hennery, someone has opened a jack pot, call for the police!' I rushed
for the indicator where you ring for bell boys, and cocktails, and
things, and touched all the buttons, and then got in bed and pulled
a quilt over my head, and dad went into a closet where my snakes and
things were, and the vaccinated skunk kept on doing the same as he did
to dad, and I though I should die. Dad heard my snake rattle his self in
the box, and he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder, and he got
into my box of horned toads, and my young badger scratched dad's bare
feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a
fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on
the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from
the outside and turned the hose on dad, then the police came and broke
in the door, and the landlord was along, and the porter, and all the
chambermaids, and everybody. I had turned in all the alarms there were,
and everybody came quick. The skunk met the policemen halfway,
and saluted them as polite as could be, and they fell back for
reinforcements; dad got into his pants and yelled that he was stabbed,
and I don't know what didn't happen. Finally the policemen got my skunk
under a blanket and walked on him, and he was squashed, but, by gosh,
they can never use that blanket again, and I told 'em so.”

[Illustration: “Dad Heard Something at Night and Rose Up in Bed.”]

[Illustration: “Dad Stepped on My Prairie Dog and Yelled Murder.”]

“It's a wonder they didn't put a blanket over you and kill you too,”
 said the old groceryman, as he moved away from the horned toad, which
the boy had placed on the counter. “What did they do to you then? What
way did your dad explain it? How long did you remain at the hotel after
that?”

“We didn't stay hardly any after that,” said the boy, as he pushed the
prairie dog along the counter toward the groceryman's cat, hoping to get
them to fighting. “The landlord said we dam yankees were too strenuous
for his climate, and if we didn't get out of the house in fifteen
minutes he would get a gun and see about it, and he left two policemen
to see that we got away. Dad tried to argue the question with the
landlord, after all the windows had been opened in the house. He said he
had come to Texas for a quiet life, to get away from the climate of
the north, but he had no idea any landlord would turn animals into a
gentleman's room, and he would sue for damages; but the bluff did not
work, and we left San Antonio on a freight train, under escort of the
police, and the board of health. Say, that freight train smelled like it
had a hot box, but nobody suspected us. When we got most to New Orleans
dad said, 'Hennery, I hope this will be a lesson to you,' and I told him
two more such lessons would kill his little boy dead.”

[Illustration: “We Left Under Escort of the Police.”]

“What did you do with your clothes?” said the groceryman, as he snuffed
around, as though he thought he could smell something.

“O, we bought new clothes in New Orleans, and let our old ones out of
the window of a hotel with a rope. A man picked them up, and they sent
him to the quarantine for smallpox patients. O, we came out all right,
but it was a close call. Say, I bet this prairie dog can lick your cat
in a holy minute,” and the boy pushed the dog against the cat, said “sik
em,” and the cat scratched the dog, the dog yelled and bit the cat,
the cat run up the shelves, over the canned goods, and tipped over some
bottles of pickles, and the old groceryman got crazy, while the boy
took his prairie dog under his arm, and his horned toad in his hand and
started to go out.

“I'll drop in some day and have some fun with you,” says the boy.

“If you do I will stab you with a cheese knife,” said the groceryman as
he picked up the broken glass.

CHAPTER XV.

The Bad Boy's Joke with a Stuffed Rattlesnake--He Tells the Old
Groceryman About his Dad's Morbid Appetite.

The old groceryman was sitting on the counter, with his legs stretched
lengthwise, his heels resting on a sack of flour, and his back against
a pile of wrapping paper, his eyes closed, his pipe gone out, and the
ashes sifting from it on the cat that was asleep in his lap. He was
waiting for a customer to come in and buy something to start the day's
business. He had sprinkled the floor and swept the dirt up in a corner,
and he was sleepy. There was a crash in front of the door, a barrel of
axe handles and garden tools had been tipped over on the sidewalk, the
door opened with a jerk and closed with a slam, and the bad boy came in
with a long paper bax, perforated with holes, slammed it on the counter
beside the groceryman's legs, and yelled:

“Wake up, Rip Van Winkle, the day of judgment has come, and you are
still buried. You get a move on you or the procession will go off and
leave you. Say, are you afraid of rattlesnakes?” and the bad boy shook
the paper box, when an enormous rattle came from within, as though a
snake had shaken its tail good and plenty.

“Great Scott, boy, I believe you have got a rattlesnake in that box,”
 and he jumped off the counter and grabbed an iron fire poker, while the
boy got out his knife to cut the string on the box. “Now, look here, I
am suffering from nervous prostration, and a snake turned loose in
this store would settle it with me. I am at your mercy, but by the holy
smoke, if I am bitten by that snake I will kill you and your old snake.
Now take that box out of here,” and the old man picked up a hatchet and
got behind a barrel.

“Well, wouldn't that skin you,” said the bad boy, as he sharpened his
knife on a piece of old cheese, and felt of the edge. “Here you have
been telling me for years what a brave man you were, and how you were
not afraid of anything that wore hair, and now you have fits because a
little five-foot rattlesnake, with only ten rattles on, makes a formal
call on you. Gee, but you are a squaw. Why, there is no danger in the
bite of a rattlesnake, since science has taken the matter up. All you
got to do, when a snake bites you and you begin to turn black, is to
drink a couple of quarts of whisky, and bind a poultice of limberg
cheese on the wound, and go to bed for a week or ten days, and you come
out all right,” and the bad boy began to cut the string.

“Now, let up until I wait on these customers,” said the old man, as he
went to the door and let in a committee of women who were to buy some
supplies for a church sociable. The women lined up on each side of the
store, looking at the canned things on the shelves, and the old man was
trying to be polite, when the bad boy opened the box and laid on the
floor a stuffed rattlesnake that was as natural as life, and touched a
rattle box in his pocket, and the trouble began. The women saw the snake
curled up, ready to spring, and they all went through the door at once,
tipping over everything that was loose, and screaming, while the old
man, when he saw the snake, got into the front show window and trembled
and yelled for the police. A policeman rushed in the store and when he
saw the snake he backed out of the door, and the bad boy sat down on
a box and began to eat some raisins out of a box, as though he was not
particularly interested in the commotion.

“Arrest that boy with the snake,” said the groceryman.

“Come out of that wid your menagerie,” said the policeman, shaking his
club.

[Illustration: “Arrest That Boy with the Rattlesnake,” Said the
Groceryman.]

“Come in and get the snake if you want it,” said the boy, “I don't want
it any more, anyway,” and he took the stuffed snake up by the head and
laid it across his lap, and began to shake the rattles, and laugh at the
groceryman and the policeman, and the crowd that had collected in front
of the store. The policeman came in laughing, and the old groceryman
crawled out of the show window, and all breathed free again, and finally
the policeman went and drove the crowd away, and went on his beat again,
after shaking his club at the boy; the groceryman, the snake and the
cat remained in the store. The groceryman took a swig out of a bottle
of whisky, to settle his nerves, and the took up his snake and pushed it
towards the cat, which ran up a stepladder and yowled.

“Do you know, I kind of like you,” said the old groceryman, as he went
up behind the bad boy and took him by the throat, “and I think it would
be a great thing for the community if I should just choke you to death.
You are worse than a mad dog, and you are just ruining my business.”

“I will give you just ten seconds to take you hand off my neck,” said
the bad boy, pulling out a dollar watch, “and when the time is up, and
you have not let loose of me, I will turn loose a couple of live snakes
I have in my pocket, and some tarantulas, and you will probably be
bitten and swell up like a poisoned pup, and die under the counter.”

“All right, let's be friends,” said the old man, as he let go of the bad
boy. “If your parents and the rest of the community can stand having
you around, alive, probably it is my duty to be a martyr, and stand
my share, but you are very trying to the nerves. By the way, put that
confounded stuffed snake in the ice box, and sit down here and tell me
something. I saw your father on the street yesterday, and he is a sight.
His stomach is twice as big around as it was, and he looks troubled.
What has got into him?”

“Well, I'll tell you, dad has got what they call a morbid appetite.
Whatever you do, old skate, don't you ever get a morbid appetite.”

“What is a morbid appetite?” asked the old man; as he peeled a banana
and began to eat it. “I can always eat anything that is not tied down,
but I don't know about this morbid business.”

“Scientists say a morbid appetite is one that don't know when it has got
enough. Dad likes good things, but he wants all there is on the table.
Now, at New Orleans, before we came home, dad and I went in a restaurant
to get some oysters, and you know the oysters there are the biggest
in the world. When we got there dad was hungry, and the thought of raw
oysters on the half shell made him morbid. He had a blue point appetite,
and ordered four dozen on the half shell, for himself, and one dozen
for me. Well, you would have dropped dead in your tracks if you had been
there. Six waiters brought on the five dozen oysters, and each oyster
was as big as a pie plate. Six dozen oysters would cover this floor from
the door to the ice box. Dad almost fainted when he saw them, but his
pride was at stake, and he made up his mind if he didn't eat them all
the waiters would think he was a tenderfoot, and so he started in.
The first oyster was as big as a calf's liver, and nobody but a sword
swallower could ever have got it down. Dad cut one oyster into quarters,
and got away with it, and after a while he murdered another, and after
he had eaten three he wanted to go home and leave them. Then is the time
his little boy got in his work. I told dad that if he didn't eat all the
oysters the waiters and the people would mob him, that it was a deadly
offense to order oysters and not eat them, and that they would probably
kill us both before we got out of the place. He said, 'Hennery, I don't
like oysters like I used to, and it seems to me I couldn't eat another
one to save my life, but if, as you say, we are in a country where a
man's life is held so cheaply, by the great horn spoons, I will eat
every oyster in the house, and the Lord have mercy on me.' I told him
that was about the size of it, and he would eat or die, and maybe he
would die anyway, and just then a wicked-looking negro with a big oyster
knife came to the table and looked ugly at dad and said, 'Have another
dozen?' and dad said, 'Yes,' and then he began to eat as though his life
depended on it, and I could hear the great wads of oysters strike with a
dull thud on exposed places inside of dad, and before he got up from the
table he had eaten them all, and he told the man we would be in again
to lunch after awhile. Dad is the bravest man I ever saw, and don't you
forget it. He would have come out all right, I suppose, and lived, if it
hadn't been for his devilish morbid appetite for travel and adventure.
Quick as we got out of the oyster place dad wanted to take a steamboat
ride down the river to the Eades Jetties at the mouth of the river, and
we went on board, and had a nice ride down to the mouth. After we had
looked over the jetties where Eades made an artificial canal big enough
for the largest ocean steamers to come up to New Orleans, the passengers
wanted the captain to run the boat outside the bar, into the blue ocean,
where the waves come from. Gee, but I hope I may live long enough to
forget the ride. We hadn't got a boat's length outside the bar before
the boat began to roll and toss, and I held on to dad's hand, and wished
I was dead. I told him my little tummy ached, and I wanted a lemon.
Dad said my little tummy, with its three oysters in it, was not worth
mentioning, and told me to look at him. Talk about your Mount Pelee, and
your Vesuvius, those volcanoes were tame and uninteresting, compared to
dad, leaning over the railing, and shouting words at the sharks in the
water. Why? he just doubled up like a jack knife, one minute, and then
straightened up like an elephant standing on its hind legs in a circus,
the next minute, and he kept saying, 'Ye-up,' and all the passengers
said 'poor man.' I told them he was not so poor, for he owned a brewery
at home. Dad finally went to sleep with his arm and head over the rail,
and his body hanging limp, down on deck. The boat turned around and went
back into the mouth of the river, and the passengers were thanking the
captain for giving them such a lovely ride, when I thought I would wake
dad up, and so I touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he didn't
want a few dozen more raw oysters, and he yelled murder, and began to
have hydrophobia again, and bump himself. You know the way people do
when they are dissatisfied with the medicine the doctor gives. Well, we
got back to New Orleans, and dad took a hack to the hotel, and told
the driver not to pass any saloon where there were oyster shells on the
sidewalk. We came home next day. Well, I guess I will get my snake out
of the ice box, and go home and comfort dad. But wait a minute till that
Irishman puts that chunk of ice in the ice box, and see if he notices
the snake.” Just then there was a sound as if a house had fallen, a
two hundred pound cake of ice struck the floor, and the Irishman came
running through the grocery with his ice tongs waving, and yelling,
“There's a rattlesnake in yer ice box, mister, and ye can go to h--l for
yer ice.” The groceryman looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the
groceryman, the cat looked at both, the boy took his snake under his arm
and went out, and the old man said:

[Illustration: “Each Oyster Was as Big as a Pie Plate.”]

“Well, you are the limit. Call again, and bring an anaconda, and a
man-eating tiger,” and he went and scraped up the ice.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in Yellowstone Park and How
Brave Dad Was.

The old groceryman was down on his knees, with a wet cloth, swabbing up
something from the floor with one hand, while he held his nose with the
other, his back toward the door, when suddenly the door opened with a
bank, striking the old man in the back, knocking him over and landing
him with his head in a basket of strictly fresh eggs, breaking at least
a dozen of them, and filling the air with an odor that was unmistakable;
and the bad boy followed the door into the grocery.

“What's your notion of taking a nap, with a basket of stale eggs for a
pillow,” said the bad boy, as he took the old man by the arm and raised
him up, and looked at him with a grin that was tantalizing. “What is it,
sewer gas? My, but the board of health won't do a thing to you if the
inspector happens in here. Those eggs must have been mislaid by a hen
that had a diseased mind,” and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne out
of the show case and began to sprinkle the floor, and squirted some of
it on the old man's clothes.

“Say, do you know I bought those eggs of a man dressed like a farmer,
who came in here yesterday with his pants in his boots, and smelling as
though he had just come out of his cow stable?” said the old groceryman,
as he took a piece of coffee sack and wiped yellow egg off his whiskers.
“And yet they are old enough to attend caucuses. I tell you that you
have got to watch a farmer the same as you do a crook, or he will get
the best of you. And to think I sold four dozen of those eggs to
a church sociable committee that is going to make ice cream for a
celebration to-night. But what in thunder do you come in here for, like
a toboggin, and knock me all over the floor, into eggs, when you could
come in gently and save a fellow's life; and me a sick man, too. Ever
since that explosion, when we tried to see how they blow up battleships,
I have had nervous prostration, and I am just about sick of this
condemned foolishness. I like to keep posted on current events, and want
to learn how things are going on outside in the world, and I realize
that for an old man to associate with a bright boy like you keeps him
young, but, by ginger, when I think how you have done me up several
times, I sometimes think I better pick out a boy that is not so
strenuous, so you can tell your Pa I rather he wouldn't trade here any
more, for him to keep you away from here. It is hard on me, I know,
but life is dear to all of us, and the life insurance company that I am
contributing to has notified me that if I don't quit having you around
they will cancel my policy. Now, you may say farewell, and get out of
here forever, and I will try and pull along with the cat, and such boys
as come in here to be sociable. Go on now,” and the old groceryman threw
the eggs out in the alley, and washed his whiskers at the sink.

[Illustration: Landed With His Head in a Basket of Strictly Fresh Eggs.]

“Oh, I guess not,” said the boy, as he sat down on a tin cracker box and
began to eat figs out of a box. “I know something about the law myself,
and if you drive me away, you could be arrested for breach of promise,
and arson, and you would go to the penitentiary. It was all I could do
to make the police believe you didn't set this old shebang afire to get
the insurance, and my being here has drawn more custom to your store
than the quality of your goods would warrant. No, sir, I stay right
here, and advise with you, and keep you out of trouble. If I went home
and told dad what you said he would fall in a fit, and would sue you for
damages for ruining my reputation, if he didn't come over here with a
club and take it out of your hide. Dad can stand a good many things,
but when anybody insults one of our family, dad gets violent, and he had
rather kill a man than eat. You read about their finding the body of
a man in an alley, with his head crushed? Well, I don't want to say
anything, but it is rumored that dad was seen near that alley the night
before, and that man chased me once for throwing snow balls at him. We
move in good society, and are looked upon as good citizens, but dad's
temper gets worse every year. Can I stay around here more or less, or do
I have to go out into the world, branded as a criminal, because an old
fool fell into a basket of his own eggs? Say, now, answer up quick,” and
the bad boy sharpened a match with a big dirk knife and picked fig seeds
out of his teeth.

“Oh, sugar, no; you don't need to go,” said the old groceryman, as he
came up to the boy, wiping the soapsuds off, and trying to smile. “I was
only joshing you, and, honestly, I enjoy you. Life is a dreary burden
when you are away. Somehow I have got so my blood gets thick, and my
appetite fails, when you are away from town, and when you play some low
down trick on me, while I seem mad at the time, it does me good, starts
the circulation, and when you go away I seem a new man, and laugh, and
feel like I had been off on a vacation, fishing, or something. It was a
great mistake that I did not have a family of boys to keep me mad part
of the time, because a man that never has anything to make him mad is no
good. I envy your dad in having you around constantly to keep his blood
in circulation. I suppose you are responsible for his being, at his age,
as spry as a boy. He told me when he and you got back from Yellowstone
park last summer that the trip did him a world of good, and that he got
so he could climb a tree--just shin right up like a cat, and that you
were the bravest boy he ever saw, said that you would fight a bear as
quick as eat. Such a boy I am proud to call my friend. What was it about
your fighting bears, single-handed, with no weapon but empty tomato
cans? You ought to be in the history books. Your dad said bravery run in
the family.”

“Oh, get out. Did dad tell you about that bear story?” said the bad boy,
as he sharpened his knife on his boot. “Well, you'd a dide right there,
if you could have seen dad.

[Illustration: “You Ought to Have Seen Dad's Short Legs Carry Him to a
Tree.”]

He is one of these men that is brave sort of intermittent, like folks
have fever. Half the time he is a darn coward, but when you don't expect
it, for instance when the pancakes are burned, or the steak is raw, and
his dyspepsia seems to work just right, he will flare up and sass the
cook, and I don't know of anything braver than that; but ordinarily he
is meek as a lam. I think the stomach has a good deal to do with a man's
bravery. You take a soldier in battle, and if he is hungry he is full of
fight, but you fill him up with baked beans and things and he is willing
to postpone a fight, and he don't care whether there is any fight at all
or not. I think the trip through Yellowstone park took the tar out of
dad. Those geysers throwing up hot water, apparently right out of the
hot place the preachers tell about, seemed to set him to thinking that
may be he had got nearer h--l, on a railroad pass, than he had ever
expected to get. He told me, one day, when we stood beside old Faithful
geyser, and the hot water belched up into the air a hundred feet, that
all it wanted was for the lid to be taken off, and h--l would be yawning
right there, and he was going to try to lead a different life, and if he
ever got out of that park alive he should go home and join every church
in town, and he should advise ministers to get the sinners to take a
trip to the park, if they wanted to work religion into them. Dad would
wake up in the night, at the hotels in the park, when a geyser went off
suddenly, and groan, and cross himself, as he had seen religious people
do, and tell me that in a few days more we would be safe out of the d--n
place, and you would never catch him in it again.

“Well, there is one hotel where a lot of bears come out of the woods in
the evening, to eat the garbage that is thrown out from the hotel. They
are wild bears, all right, but they have got so tame that they come
right near folks, and don't do anything but eat garbage and growl,
and fight each other. The cook told me about it, and said there was no
danger, 'cause you could take a club and scare them into the woods.

“We got to the hotel in the afternoon, and dad went to our room to say
his prayers, and take a nap, and had his supper taken to the room, and
he was so scared at the awful surroundings in the park that he asked a
blessing on the supper, though it was the bummest supper I ever struck.
After dark I told dad we better go out and take a walk and inspect the
scenery, 'cause it was all in the bill, and if you got a bum supper and
didn't get the scenery you were losing money on the deal. I saw the man
emptying the garbage and I knew the bears would be getting in their work
pretty soon, so I took dad and we walked away off, and he talked about
how God had prepared that park as a warning to sinners of what was to
come, and I knew his system was sort of running down, and I knew he
needed excitement, a shock or something to make a reaction, so I steered
him around by the garbage pile.

[Illustration: “I Studied the Bears for Awhile and Let Dad Yell for the
Police.”]

“Say, before he knew it we were right in the midst of about nine bears,
grizzlies, cinnamon bears, black bears, and all of them raised up and
said, 'Whoof!' and they growled, and, by gosh, just as quick as I could
run this knife into your liver, I missed dad. He just yelled: 'Hennery,
this is the limit, and here is where your poor old dad sprints for tall
timber,' and he made for a tree, and I yelled: 'Hurry up, dad!' and he
said: 'I ain't walking, am I?' and you ought to have seen his short legs
carry him to the tree, and help him skin up it. I have seen squirrels
climb trees, when a dog was after them, but they were slow compared
to dad. When he got up to a limb he yelled to me to come on up, as he
wanted to give me a few last instructions about settling his estate,
but I told him I was going to play I was Daniel in the lion's den, so I
studied the bears for a while and let dad yell for the police, and then
I picked up an armful of tomato cans and made a rush for the bears, and
yelled and threw cans at them, and pretty soon every bear went off into
the woods, growling and scrapping with each other, and I told dad to
come down and I would save him at the risk of my life. Dad came down as
quick as he went up, and I took his arm and led him to the hotel, and
when we got to the room he would have collapsed, only I gave him a big
drink of whiskey, and then he braced up and said: 'Hennery, when it
comes to big game, you and I are the wonders of the world. You are
brave, and I am discreet, and we make a team hard to beat.' I told dad
he covered himself with glory, but that he left most of his pants on the
tree, but he said he didn't care for a few pants when he had a boy that
was the bravest that ever came down the pike. When we got home alive he
didn't join the church, but he gave me a gold watch. Well, I'll have to
depart,” and the bad boy went out and left the old groceryman thinking
of the hereafter.

CHAPTER XVII.

The Bad Boy and the Groceryman Illustrate the Russia-Japanese War--The
Bad Boy Tells About Dad's Efforts to Raise Hair by the “Sunshine”
 Method.

The old groceryman had a war map spread out on the counter, and for an
hour he had stood up in front of it, reading a morning paper, with his
thumb on Port Arthur, his fingers covering the positions occupied by
the Japanese and Russian forces in Manchuria, and his face working worse
than the face of the Czar eating a caviar sandwich and ordering troops
to the far east, at the same time shying at dynamite bombs of nihilists.
There was a crash in front of the grocery and the old man jumped behind
a barrel, thinking Port Arthur had been blown up, and the Russian fleet
torpedoed.

“Hello, Matsuma, you young monkey,” said the old man, as the bad boy
burst the door open and rushed in with a shovel at shoulder arms, and
came to “present arms” in front of the old man, who came from behind the
barrel and acknowledged the salute. “Say, now honest did you put that
chunk of ice in the stove the day you skipped out last?”

“Sure Mike!” said the boy, as he ran the shovel under the cat that was
sleeping by the stove, and tossed her into a barrel of dried apples.
“I wanted to demonstrate to you, old Michaelovitski, the condition of
things at Vladivostok, where you candle-eating Russians are bottled
up in the ice, and where we Japanese are going to make you put on your
skates and get away to Siberia. What are you doing with the map of the
seat of war?”

[Illustration: Came to Present Arms.]

“Oh, I was only trying to figure out the plan of campaign, and find out
where the Japanese would go to when they are licked,” said the old man.
“This thing is worrying me. I want to see Russia win, and I think our
government ought to send to them all the embalmed beef we had left from
the war with Spain, but if we did you monkey Japanese would capture it,
and have a military funeral over it, and go on eating fish and rice.
When this country was in trouble, in 1864, the Russians sent a fleet
of warships to New York and notified all Europe to stand back and look
pleasant, and by the great horn spoons, I am going to stand by Russia
or bust. I would like to be over there at Port Arthur and witness an
explosion of a torpedo under something. Egad, but I glory in the smell
of gunpowder. Now, say, here is Port Arthur, by this barrel of dried
apples, and there is Mushapata, by the ax handle barrel, see?”

“Well, you and I are just alike,” said the boy. “Let's have a sham
battle, right here in the grocery. Get down that can of powder.”

“'Taint against the law, is it?” said the old man as he handed down a
tin cannister of powder. “I want excitement, and valuable information,
but I don't want to unduly excite the neighbors.”

“Oh, don't worry about the neighbors,” said the boy, as he poured a
little powder under the barrel of dried apples. “Now, as you say, this
is Port Arthur. This chest of Oolong tea represents a Japanese cruiser
outside the harbor. This box of codfish represents a Russian fort, see?
and the stove represents a Russian cruiser. This barrel of ax handles
is the Russian army, entrenched behind the bag of coffee. Now, we put a
little powder under all of thems and lay a train from one to the other,
and now you get out a few of those giant firecrackers you had left over
from last Fourth of July, and a Roman candle, and we can illustrate the
whole business so Alexovitch and Ito would take to the woods.”

“No danger, is there?” said the old groceryman, as he brought out the
fireworks, looking as happy and interested as the bad boy did. “I want
to post myself on war in the far east, but I don't want to do anything
that would occasion remark.”

“Oh, remark nothing,” said the boy, as he fixed a firecracker under a
barrel of rice, another under a tin can of soda crackers, and got the
Roman candle ready to touch off at the stove. “It will not make any
more fuss than faking a flash-light photograph. Just a
piff--s--s--sis--boom--and there you are, full of information.”

“Well, let-er-go-Galiagher,” said the old man, sort of reckless like,
as he got behind the cheese box. “Gol darn the expense, when you want to
illustrate your ideas of war.”

The boy lit the Roman candle, got behind a barrel of potatoes and turned
the spluttering Roman candle on the giant firecracker under the stove,
and when he saw the fuse of the firecracker was lighted, he turned the
torch on the powder under the barrel of dried apples, and in a second
everything went kiting; the barrel of dried apples with the cat in it
went up to the ceiling, the stove was blown over the counter, the cheese
box and the old groceryman went with a crash to the back end of the
store, the front windows blew out on the sidewalk, the store was full of
smoke, the old man rushed out the back door with his whiskers singed and
yelled “Fire!” while the bad boy fell out the front door his eye winkers
gone, and his hair singed, the cat got out with no hair to brag on, and
before they could breathe twice the fire department came clattering up
to a hydrant and soon turned the hose inside the grocery. There was not
very much fire, and after tipping over every barrel and box that had not
been blown skyhigh the firemen gave one last look at the inside of the
grocery, one last squirt at the burned and singed cat, that had crawled
into a bag of cinnamon on the top shelf, and they went away, leaving the
doors and windows open; the crowd dispersed, and the bad boy went in the
front door; peered around under the counter, pulled the cork out of a
bottle of olive oil and began to anoint himself where he had been
scorched. Hearing a shuffling of arctic overshoes filled with water, in
the back shed, and a still small voice, saying, “Well, I'll be
condemned,” he looked up and saw the red face of the old groceryman
peeking in the back door.

[Illustration: When the Fireworks Went Off in the Grocery.]

“Come in, Alexandroviski, and rub some of this sweet oil on your
countenance, and put some kerosene on your head, where the hair was.
Gee! but you are a sight! Don't you go out anywhere and let a horse see
you, or he will run away.”

“Have all the forts and warships come down yet?” said the old man,
looking up toward the ceiling, holding up his elbow to ward off any
possible descending barrel or stove lid. “I now realize the truth of
General Sherman's remark that war is hell. Gosh! how it smarts where the
skin is burnt off.

“Give me some of that salad oil,” and the old man sopped the oil on his
face and head, and the boy rubbed his lips and ears, and they looked at
each other and tried to smile, two cracked, and wrinkled and scorched
smiles, across the counter at each other. “Now, you little Japanese
monkey, I hope you are satisfied, after you have wrecked my store, and
fitted me for the hospital, and I want you to get out of here, and never
come back. By ginger, I know when I have got enough war. They can settle
that affair at Mukden, or Holoyahoo, or any old place. I wash my hands
of the whole business. Git, you Spitz. What did you pour so much powder
around the floor for? All I wanted was a little innocent illustration of
the horrors of war, not an explosion.”

“Th--at's what I wanted, too,” said the boy, as he looked up on the top
shelf at the cat, that was licking herself where the hair used to
be. “How did I know that powder would burn so quick? Say, you are
unreasonable. Do you think I will go off and leave you to die here
under the counter of bloodpoisoning, like a dog that has eaten a loaded
sausage? Never! I am going to nurse you through this thing, and bring
you out as good as new. I know how you feel towards me. Dad felt the
same way towards me, down in Florida, the time he got skun. You old
people don't seem to appreciate a boy that tries to teach you useful
nollig.”

“What about your dad getting skun in Florida? I never heard about it,”
 said the old groceryman, as he took a hand mirror and looked at his
burned face.

“Why, that was when we first got down there,” said the boy, looking at
the old man and laughing. “Gee! but you would make a boy laugh if his
lips were chapped. You look like a greased pig at a barbecue. Well, when
we struck Florida, and dad got so he could assimilate high balls,
and eat oranges off the trees, like a giraf, he said he wanted to go
fishing, and get tanned up, so we hired a boat and I rowed while dad
fished, I ask him why he didn't try that new prescription to raise hair
on his bald head that I read of in a magazine, to go bareheaded in the
sun. He ask me if anybody ever raised any hair on a bald head that way,
and I told him about Mr. Rockefeller, who had only one hair on his head,
and he played golf bareheaded and in two weeks had to have his hair
cut with a lawn mower, 'cause it made his brain ache. Dad said if
Rockefeller could raise hair by the sunshine method he could, and he
threw his straw hat overboard, and began to fish in the sun for fish and
hair. Well, you'd a dide to see dad's head after the blisters began to
raise. First, he thought the blisters was hair, but when we got back to
the hotel and he looked in a glass, he see it wasn't hair worth a cent.
His head and face looked like one of these hippopotamuses, and dad was
mad. If I could have got dad in a side show I could have made a barrel
of money, but he won't never make a show of his self, not even to make
money, he is so proud. There is more proud flesh on dad than there is on
any man I ever nursed. Well, dad ask me what was good for blisters,
and I told him lime juice was the best thing, so he sent me to get some
limes. They are a little sour thing, like a lemon, and I told him to
cut one in two and soak the juice on his head and face, and I went to
supper, 'cause dad looked so disreputable he wouldn't go to the dining
room. When I bought the limes the man gave me a green persimmon, and of
course dad got the persimmon instead of the lime, and when I came back
to our room after supper dad was in bed, yelling for a doctor. Say, you
know how a persimmon puckers your mouth up when you eat it? Well, dad
had just sopped himself with persimmon juice, and his head was puckered
up like the hide of an elephant, and his face and cheeks were drawn
around sideways, and wrinkled so I was scart. I gave him a mirror to
look at his self, and when he got one look he said: 'Hennery, it is all
over with your dad, you might just as well call in a lawyer to take my
measure for a will, and an undertaker to fill me with stuff so I will
keep till they get me home by express, with handles on. What was that
you called that fruit I sopped my head with?' and he groaned like he was
at a revival. Well, I told him he had used the persimmon instead of the
lime juice I told him to, and that I would cure him, so I got a cake of
dog soap and laundered dad, and put on stuff to take the swelling out,
and the next day he began to notice things, it would have been all right
only a chambermaid told somebody the mean old man with the pretty boy in
471 had the smallpox, and that settled it. You know in a hotel they are
offal sensitive about smallpox, 'cause all the boarders will leave if a
man has a pimple on his self, so they made dad and I go into quarantine
in a hen house for a week, and dad said it was all my fault trying to
get him to raise hair like Rockefeller. Well, I must go home and explain
to ma how I lost my hair and eye-winkers. If I was in your place I
would take a little tar and put it on where your hair was before the
explosion,” and the bad boy went out, leaving the old groceryman drawing
some tar out of the barrel, on to a piece of brown paper, and dabbling
it on his head with his finger.

[Illustration: “Dad Said If Rockefeller Could Raise Hair by the Sunshine
Method, He Could.”]

END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys, by George W. Peck