Part 10

The audience enjoyed my friend’s enthusiasm and seemed quite anxious to know how _I_ was enjoying it. I couldn’t enlighten it as intelligently as could have been wished, so I did the next best thing--I went out between acts to see a man--and found him so highly interesting that I forgot to go back. Suddenly remembering that my wife was still in the box, I sent an usher to inform her that I wasn’t feeling well and was waiting for her at the door. Being a wise woman, she divined the cause of my indisposition and soon joined me. She didn’t feel quite comfortable herself, and was glad to escape from--the opera.

I have forsworn society. I have bought an automobile, and if ever I go to the theater again--may the fat undertaker seize me!

A GRIM MEMENTO

My friend, Dr. Fairweather, was engaged when I called, but it so happened that I was in no hurry and could conveniently wait. I have since been glad that things happened as they did; had I not been compelled to wait and amuse myself as best I could, I probably should not have heard what to me was a most interesting story. The colored attendant who took my card and announced me to the doctor, returned and said:

“De doctah is right busy just now, suh. He says fo’ you alls to be sho to wait, cayse he wants to see you mos’ pow’ful. I reckon you alls better wait in dis yeh room, suh. De doctah says dat you must mek yo’sef to home.”

The servant ushered me into a small apartment, evidently the doctor’s “den,” and handed me the morning paper, which I proceeded to hungrily devour. The paper was the first I had seen in a month--I was just returning from my summer outing trip, and had stopped off _en route_ at P. to see my old friend Fairweather.

The doctor was detained for some time, and having finished reading my paper, I proceeded to inspect the curios with which the room was garnished. I had examined with great interest the fine collection of odd Indian relics and the queer weapons from the four quarters of the earth, and was returning to my seat by the window when a grinning human skull upon the mantel caught my eye.

It so happens that the human skull is of especial interest to me because of a certain hobby that I enjoy riding at odd moments. I am something of an enthusiast in the subjects of criminology and the relation of the contour and development of the skull to mental and moral qualities. It was with some curiosity therefore, that I picked up the skull and proceeded to critically examine it. I found it well worthy of study and regretted that I could give it only cursory attention.

The dwarfed frontal development; the great length of the face; the enormously large, protruding jaw; the huge orbits, with the great projecting bony prominences--the frontal bosses--above them; the general lightness of the bones; the unsymmetrical conformation of the face and the twisted and undeveloped dome of the skull presented a picture that is very familiar to the student of criminal anthropology.

So absorbed was I in the contemplation of the gruesome relic I held in my hands, that I was not conscious of the entrance of Dr. Fairweather until he spoke.

“Hello, old man!--riding your hobby as usual, I see. No time for your friends, I suppose.”

I grasped the doctor’s welcoming hand and replied, “Well, as you were busy, I had to kill time as best I might with this gentleman. He is a poor conversationist, hence I was compelled to utilize him in any way that I could. I must admit that I have found him very interesting--inversely to his loquacity, in fact.”

“Ah, indeed; and what do you make of him?”

“Looking for a chance to guy me, eh?” I replied. “Really, old fellow, time does not mellow you a bit. Well, guy away. I am not prepared to give you a critical dissertation on this particular skull. This much I will say, however--it has more of the ear marks of the degenerate than any I have seen for some time. The party who originally owned the skull should have been a desperado, or a hold-up man, although he may have passed the hat in church for aught I know--which may be a distinction without a difference.”

Dr. Fairweather laughed heartily. “Well, I don’t know but that I ought to resent your criticisms of the skull. I can forgive your slam at the church, but it is my duty to inform you that the gentleman of whom that skull is a relic was a very particular friend of mine.”

“Oh, then you are keeping the skull as a memento of your friend. There’s no accounting for tastes, you know,” I said, watching the doctor suspiciously out of the corner of my eye and recalling that he had as strong a predilection for practical jokes as I had for skulls.

“Yes, that is precisely it,” replied the doctor seriously. “I have two mementos of my dead friend; one--post mortem--you hold in your hand; the other--ante mortem--is here,” and he threw back from his forehead the long, wavy, dark hair in which threads of silver were beginning to show and pointed to a long, livid, jagged scar that traversed his left temple.

I looked at the doctor in surprise. Although I had known him for many years, I had never noticed his disfigurement.

“I don’t think I ever told you the story, did I?” continued the doctor.

I replied in the negative, assuring my friend that nothing could please me better than to hear him tell it.

“Well, I’m through with patients for to-day, and if you will do me the honor of dining with me at the club, I shall be most happy to relate it to you.”

* * * * *

“You will remember that I was formerly engaged in general practice in the little town of R---- in Northern Minnesota. My field was an arduous one and I could not select my patients--on the contrary, I was mighty glad when they condescended to select me. It’s quite different now; I can be ‘in’ or ‘out,’ as I may elect, when patients ring my bell. Better than all, I can ask an old friend to dine with me at the club. There _is_ a club, thank heaven, and there is also the wherewithal nowadays.”

“I was fortunate enough, early in my practice, to receive an appointment as the local surgeon of the St. Paul road for our little town.

“The position was a sinecure in a way, but I captured an occasional accident case that paid something, and the position of surgeon to the railroad gave me a certain amount of prestige among the country folk around. Then too, I had an annual pass over the road, and that helped some. It would have helped more if I had had time to ride and money for meals on the dining cars. Small though my railroad practice was, however, I had occasion to thank the Lord that I was a railroad surgeon and that one of my patients had a good memory, before I was done with the job.

“The winter of ’80 and ’81 was a hard one, and practice was not a simple, lightsome game. It seemed to me that when I had important work to do, my patient was always a long way off in some out of the way farm house, or at a crossing station where the trains ran every other week.

“The day before Christmas I received a call to attend a gunshot injury, about fifty miles from my home. The weather was abominable, being cold and stormy enough to make the hungriest and most ambitious young surgeon hesitate to face it. They get the blizzards from that devilish Medicine Hat at first hand up there, you, know--the raw stuff in the way of weather. But needs must when patients called, and as there was nothing to do but face the music I took the first and only available train for X----.

“My patient lived some miles away from the little hen coop of a station, the several stores and half a dozen houses that constituted the little town. A couple of young country yokels, eighteen or twenty years of age, met me at the train with a buck-board. There was just snow enough drifting to make the roads almost impassable here and there, but not enough for sleighing, so that the trip was not the pleasantest I had ever experienced.

“It was supper time before I had finished with the wounded man, and I was as hungry as a Sioux Indian on a long trail in the Bad Lands. I was very glad to participate in the humble but abundant meal.

“Supper over, I was informed that there was just time to catch the south bound train--then to the buckboard and miserable roads again; the gawky country boys who had met me at the train still doing the honors. When we arrived at the station, what was my disgust to learn that my train was fully two hours late.

“The prospect of spending the entire evening at a little tumble down way station waiting for a belated train was too uninviting for adequate description. As the storm was increasing every moment and the fierce wind was piling up the snow drifts higher and higher across the railroad tracks, there was no certainty that the expected train would come at all. My prospects for getting home that night were certainly dubious--locomotives stalled in snow drifts were sufficiently familiar to me to make me decidedly uneasy.

“My friends, the country boys, seeing my predicament, offered to stay with me until the train came, and although I protested feebly against their discommoding themselves to such an extent, I inwardly rejoiced when they showed their sincerity by insisting on remaining. Alas! had I but known the horrible thing that was soon to happen, I should have returned to their home with them rather than to have allowed the poor fellows to indulge their whole-souled notions of courtesy and hospitality.

“A cheery fire was burning in the stuffy little drum stove in the center of the common waiting room, and being pretty well chilled after our long, weary ride, I huddled up as close to it as I could without igniting my clothing. The two young farmers meanwhile inaugurated a playful wrestling bout which answered well in lieu of the fire in starting up their circulation.

“In one corner of the room was a curtained recess, containing the station master’s bed, to which the owner had apparently retired early, as evidenced by the brassy, nasally whistling snores which from time to time rent the air of the stuffy apartment, making the environment rather cheerful and homelike.

“I had been warming myself before the fire for fully an hour--the country lads had grown tired of their rough play and had seated themselves on a rough bench in the corner of the room, where they were nodding and occasionally snoring an intermittent, shrill falsetto accompaniment to the station master’s ruder and less musical bass. I had just discovered that I myself was growing sleepy and was about to seat myself with my back to the wall, yield to the pressure of fatigue and join the sleeping chorus when I was brought back to earth in a very unceremonious fashion.

“‘Hands up, there!’

“I turned slowly and gazed sleepily in the direction of the voice. The two country youths awoke with a start and sat staring, more stupidly than I if possible, in the same direction.

“‘Hands up, there, and be d--d quick about it!’

“I began to comprehend, and my hands, impelled by a will which for the time being was more masterly than my own, raised themselves, almost automatically, straight up in the air in the most orthodox fashion known to the annals of highway robbery. The country boys rose slowly to their feet and mechanically followed suit.

“The sleep-fog and the psychic confusion of surprise gradually cleared away, and I saw the tableau clearly--so clearly that, ‘an’ I should live a thousand years I’d not forget it’.

“Standing in the open door of the little station were two tough looking men. The taller of the two, the owner of the voice that had so unmusically and ruthlessly aroused us, was a man considerably over six feet in height, raw-boned, broad-shouldered, big-hatted, and roughly dressed, with a coarse red beard that evidently was much the worse for wear in regions where barbers are a scarce commodity. His eyes were of that cold steely grey color which makes one think twice before running counter to the wishes of the man to whom they belong.

“The ruffian held in either hand a cow boy’s pet, a long barreled Colt’s 45--the kind our fathers loved; the kind that has made American history, and especially the ‘bad men’ who adorn its pages.

“Say, old man, did you ever have a healthy, well favored, full stomached Colt’s 45 pointed at you in real earnest? Well, if you haven’t you can’t appreciate how I felt. I didn’t have to see that the hammers of those particular guns were raised to the proper angle and ready for business; it was also entirely unnecessary to waste any valuable time in speculating as to whether they were loaded or not. I actually _felt_ that those guns were at full cock and loaded to the muzzle--‘chock a block’. The muzzles of the weapons were more capacious than I had believed it possible for pistols to be, and deep down in each of their yawning throats I fancied I could see a huge conical ball, ready for flight in my direction. It was as though I were tied hand and foot and laid upon the track at the mouth of a railroad tunnel from which an express train was thundering down upon me at the rate of a mile a minute.

“Not knowing anything of the desperado’s power of self-control my own self-possession was hard to maintain--I imagined that his fingers were a little trembly, as though he were tempted to pull the trigger and have done with it, but was struggling with himself in the effort to restrain the savage impulse. I mentally resolved that I would neither do nor say anything which should disturb his poise or ruffle his equanimity.

“Ugh! I could actually hear the rush of the displaced air and impelling gases as the bullets started from their hiding places in the breeches of those mighty pistols and, swifter than lightning, flew toward me. I even fancied I could feel the impact of the cruel missiles with my flesh, and the moist warmth of the escaping blood as they rent my skin and muscles.

“Our hands being elevated to an angle which was satisfactory to the spokesman of the bandits, he turned to his companion and said:

“‘Go through ’em, Bob, and hustle it up. The train’ll be here before we can say Jack Robinson. Take that feller with the whiskers an’ spectacles first. Easy, now, gents; take your medicine, and don’t you bat an eye--if you don’t want a hole plugged through ye big enough for a cat to crawl into without bloodyin’ her whiskers.’

“The fellow who was officiating as lieutenant for the gentleman with the artillery was a tough-looking proposition for his inches, but such a little runt that even the moral suasion of the 45’s did not blunt the edge of my humiliation when he proceeded to ‘go through’ me.

“But the ignominy and shame of my embarrassing position had not yet reached the climax. I was raging inwardly and wishing that I could have a fair field and no favor with either or both of the bandits--I used to be pretty handy myself, you know--but I did not lose my self-control during the dextrous and speedy search of my person. A pair of walloping big guns is a great inhibitor of the warlike spirit.

“I had not collected my fee in the gunshot case, hence the process of ‘going through’ me was not very productive of spoils. My pockets were as empty of cash as those of a lamb after a busy day on ‘Change. A Waterbury watch, about two dollars in small change, a not very elaborate set of surgical instruments, a jack-knife, a bunch of keys, my wife’s photograph, and an annual pass on the St. Paul road constituted my available assets.

“The robber was simply furious when he took account of stock. Dashing the stuff upon the floor he ripped out:

“‘D--n you for a no account cuss, anyhow! I’ll just give you one for luck.’

“With this the ruffian suddenly caught me by the shoulders and, wheeling me to the right about, kicked me full upon the pride center! What little weight the fellow had was in that kick and I recollect that the hurt to my anatomy and the still greater injury to my self-respect was not unmingled with surprise. I never before knew how hard such a little chap could kick. It was like a blow from a hydraulic ram. It jarred me so that a plate with several false upper teeth was dislodged from my mouth, and fell upon the floor.

“The kick the bandit had given me was alone sufficient to impel me to do murder--my breed does not placidly submit to blows--but the betrayal of a secret which I had guarded carefully, even from my wife, was the last straw in my burden of humiliation. I could take a bite of crow, but I could not bolt him, beak, claws, feathers and all. So enraged was I that I completely forgot the man behind the guns.

“In the rear of the stove was a shelf upon which stood numerous things essential to even a bachelor’s housekeeping. Among these various properties a brace of old fashioned flat irons caught my eye. I rushed to the shelf, grabbed an iron and hurled it at my enemy’s head, just missing him by a hair’s breadth.

“Whether because he was taken by surprise or not, I do not know, but the bandit made no attempt to draw a weapon. He stood with mouth agape, stupidly gazing at me until, having missed my aim with the iron, I rushed at him like an infuriated bull; he then aroused himself to the emergency and clinched for safety, and we went to the floor together, the highwayman underneath. As I went down I caught a glimpse of the station agent with a six shooter in his hand, peering cautiously out between the curtains of the partition behind which he had been sleeping, apparently seeking an opportunity for a pot shot.

“With the downfall of the nearer robber the country boys regained their power of motion--and alas! forgot those awful guns and rushed awkwardly to my assistance.

“The desperado with the guns came into action simultaneously with the farmer lads. There were two shots, so close together that there seemed to be but one report! The two unfortunate youths fell dead across us two who were struggling upon the floor, their blood spouting over me in hot gushes. They fell with their full weight crushing me, so inertly that I was compelled to heave them off with my shoulders and elbows.

“The murder of those poor boys brought me to my senses, and then came an acute realization of the imminence of my own danger--I well knew at whom the next shot would be fired. With the realization of my danger my furious anger vanished; I regained my usual presence of mind and my thinking apparatus began to work again.

“Putting in practice a trick well known on the wrestling mat, I threw one arm around the neck of my foe, choking him into absolute helplessness. With the other arm I rolled him over like a trussed Christmas turkey, so that his body was between me and the danger of a salute from the 45’s. As I turned him over a shot rang out. The ball narrowly escaped putting an end to the battle. It was a lucky shot for me in more ways than one--it not only missed me, but struck the stove, ricocheted and smashed the hanging-lamp with which the room was dimly lighted. There was now no light save from the open door of the stove.

“The man with the guns, still bent upon assisting his friend and incidentally exterminating me, at once came to close quarters. Standing over our struggling forms, he endeavored to put a shot where it would do his cause the most good. He shot twice, but fired wide, so great was his fear of hitting his confederate.

“Never was my mind or muscle more active. I thought of the station master and his six shooter. ‘My God! Will he never fire?’ I exclaimed mentally. Meanwhile I twisted my helpless foe about like a bundle of rags. From side to side I rolled him--always with a view to keeping his body between me and danger. Suddenly there was a blinding flash, fairly in my face--and then came oblivion!

“How long I lay insensible I have no means of knowing. When I recovered consciousness I found myself lying where I had fallen when I went to the floor with the highwayman. Beside me, so near that I could touch them with my hand, lay the dead bodies of my late companions. I could just discern their rigid outlines in the dim light from the stove.

“As my senses grew more acute I became aware of an intense burning pain in the left side of my head, and felt a stream of warm fluid which I at once recognized as blood, trickling freely down my face. I touched the painful spot with my fingers, and knew at once what had happened--I had been shot through the temple! The serious nature of the injury would have suggested itself to the merest tyro. You may imagine how I felt, knowing as you do the extensive experience I had had with gunshot wounds. There did not seem to be one chance in a hundred that the ball had failed to penetrate my brain. Realizing this, I was only too well aware of the probably desperate character of my wound.

“I tried to rise, and after several painful efforts succeeded in raising myself on my elbow, only immediately to fall helplessly back to the floor again. As I lay there half dazed, and fearfully exhausted from the shock and loss of blood, I realized in a hazy sort of way that there was nothing to do but await the coming of assistance.

“I recalled in a confused fashion the vision of the station master and his gun, and wondered what had become of him and why he had not fired at the bandits during the fight. That he had fled from the scene of battle did not occur to me. It subsequently transpired, however, that the gallant fellow was too frightened to fire at the desperadoes and that, after several attempts to muster up courage enough to pull the trigger on them, he had dropped his weapon and fled incontinently through a rear window.

“I finally became apathetic and indifferent as to my fate--an experience by no means unusual to persons who have suffered from shock and great loss of blood--and lapsed into almost complete unconsciousness.

“How long I lay there upon the floor in my half dead condition is a matter for conjecture. I was finally aroused to full consciousness by the sound of voices and the noise of many feet at the door of the station. I heard some one say:

“‘I don’t think they both got away, boys. I only seen one feller run. Perhaps one o’ them men they was holdin’ up got one of ’em; there was a hull lot o’ shootin’ goin’ on.’

“‘We’d better go kind o’ careful, then,’ said another. ‘If there’s any of ’em in there, they may have just one kick left in ’em.’

“In my confused state of mind the significance of what I heard was entirely lost upon me. I knew only that help was at hand and felt that I must get to it.

“Struggling to my feet by a mighty effort I tottered to the door through which the feeble rays of a lantern in the hands of one of the crowd were gleaming. Reaching the door, I stumbled over the threshold and fairly fell into the arms of several men who were apparently too startled to follow the example of the rest of the crowd, which had scattered the instant my form appeared in the doorway.

“I was immediately thrown to the ground and pinned there by a big strapping fellow, who in his excitement very nearly finished the bandit’s work by squeezing what little breath I had remaining completely out of me.

“‘I’ve got him, boys!’ cried the man, who I afterward learned was the station master. The crowd recovered its nerve, returned to action and proceeded to inspect the capture, apparently losing all interest in further investigation of conditions inside the station.

“In the crowd were several women, who, with the curiosity and enterprise characteristic of the “weaker” sex in mobs, succeeded in pushing themselves in front of the men. As the man with the lantern turned the light full upon me, there was a cry from one of the women.

“‘That’s him, that’s the big robber! I seen him through the winder of our house when they passed by. I’d know him anywhere!’

“I began to realize that I was in danger and, fully aroused, endeavored to make myself heard. My efforts were futile, however, and I merely received a choking for my pains.