"Yes," said Dick promptly."You said twenty thousand dollars wasn't goin' to be thrown around recklessly.You said Cyrus had suthin' better to do with his capital," super-added Dick with gratuitous mendacity."I disremember now what partickler investment you said he was goin' to make with it," he continued, appealing with easy indifference to his friend.
Of course Wingate did not reply, but looked at the "Fool," who, with a troubled face, was rubbing his legs softly.After a pause, he turned deprecatingly toward his visitors.
"Ye didn't enny of ye ever hev a sort of tremblin' in your legs, a kind o' shakiness from the knee down? Suthin'," he continued, slightly brightening with his topic,--"suthin' that begins like chills, and yet ain't chills? A kind o' sensation of goneness here, and a kind o' feelin' as it you might die suddint?--when Wright's Pills don't somehow reach the spot, and quinine don't fetch you?""No!" said Wingate with a curt directness, and the air of authoritatively responding for his friends,--"no, never had.You was speakin' of this yer investment.""And your bowels all the time irregular?" continued Hawkins, blushing under Wingate's eye, and yet clinging despairingly to his theme, like a shipwrecked mariner to his plank.
Wingate did not reply, but glanced significantly at the rest.
Hawkins evidently saw this recognition of his mental deficiency, and said apologetically, "You was saying suthin' about my investment?""Yes," said Wingate, so rapidly as to almost take Hawkins's breath away,--"the investment you made in"--"Rafferty's Ditch," said the "Fool" timidly.
For a moment, the visitors could only stare blankly at each other.
"Rafferty's Ditch," the one notorious failure of Five Forks!--Rafferty's Ditch, the impracticable scheme of an utterly unpractical man!--Rafferty's Ditch, a ridiculous plan for taking water that could not be got to a place where it wasn't wanted!--Rafferty's Ditch, that had buried the fortunes of Rafferty and twenty wretched stockholders in its muddy depths!
"And thet's it, is it?" said Wingate, after a gloomy pause.
"Thet's it! I see it all now, boys.That's how ragged Pat Rafferty went down to San Francisco yesterday in store-clothes, and his wife and four children went off in a kerridge to Sacramento.
Thet's why them ten workmen of his, ez hadn't a cent to bless themselves with, was playin' billiards last night, and eatin'
isters.Thet's whar that money kum frum,--one hundred dollars to pay for the long advertisement of the new issue of ditch stock in the "Times" yesterday.Thet's why them six strangers were booked at the Magnolia hotel yesterday.Don't you see? It's thet money--and that 'Fool'!"
The "Fool" sat silent.The visitors rose without a word.
"You never took any of them Indian Vegetable Pills?" asked Hawkins timidly of Wingate.
"No!" roared Wingate as he opened the door.
"They tell me, that, took with the Panacea,--they was out o' the Panacea when I went to the drug-store last week,--they say, that, took with the Panacea, they always effect a certin cure." But by this time, Wingate and his disgusted friends had retreated, slamming the door on the "Fool" and his ailments.
Nevertheless, in six months the whole affair was forgotten: the money had been spent; the "Ditch" had been purchased by a company of Boston capitalists, fired by the glowing description of an Eastern tourist, who had spent one drunken night at Five Forks; and I think even the mental condition of Hawkins might have remained undisturbed by criticism, but for a singular incident.
It was during an exciting political campaign, when party-feeling ran high, that the irascible Capt.McFadden of Sacramento visited Five Forks.During a heated discussion in the Prairie Rose Saloon, words passed between the captain and the Hon.Calhoun Bungstarter, ending in a challenge.The captain bore the infelicitous reputation of being a notorious duellist and a dead-shot.The captain was unpopular.The captain was believed to have been sent by the opposition for a deadly purpose; and the captain was, moreover, a stranger.I am sorry to say that with Five Forks this latter condition did not carry the quality of sanctity or reverence that usually obtains among other nomads.There was, consequently, some little hesitation when the captain turned upon the crowd, and asked for some one to act as his friend.To everybody's astonishment, and to the indignation of many, the "Fool" stepped forward, and offered himself in that capacity.I do not know whether Capt.McFadden would have chosen him voluntarily; but he was constrained, in the absence of a better man, to accept his services.
The duel never took place.The preliminaries were all arranged, the spot indicated; the men were present with their seconds; there was no interruption from without; there was no explanation or apology passed--but the duel did not take place.It may be readily imagined that these facts, which were all known to Five Forks, threw the whole community into a fever of curiosity.The principals, the surgeon, and one second left town the next day.
Only the "Fool" remained.HE resisted all questioning, declaring himself held in honor not to divulge: in short, conducted himself with consistent but exasperating folly.It was not until six months had passed, that Col.Starbottle, the second of Calhoun Bungstarter, in a moment of weakness, superinduced by the social glass, condescended to explain.I should not do justice to the parties, if I did not give that explanation in the colonel's own words.I may remark, in passing, that the characteristic dignity of Col.Starbottle always became intensified by stimulants, and that, by the same process, all sense of humor was utterly eliminated.
