CHAPTER XXI
"WORMAN! WORMAN!"
Business which had to do with the cache they had lifted from Tuckerdetained Pinkey in town longer than expected. He returned in the nightand did not get up when the triangle jangled for breakfast. In fact, itwas well into the forenoon when he appeared, only to learn that MissEyester had gone off with old Mr. Penrose to look at an eagle's nest.
"What did he do that for?" Pinkey demanded of Wallie.
"I presume he wanted her company," Wallie replied, composedly,entertained by the ferocity of Pinkey's expression.
"Is he a dude or is he a duder that he has to go guidin' people to seesights they prob'ly don't want to look at?"
"She seemed willing enough to go," Wallie answered.
Pinkey sneered:
"Mebbe I'd better git me a blue suit with brass buttons and stand aroundand open gates and unsaddle fer 'em."
Wallie regarded his partner calmly.
"Pinkey, you're _jealous_."
"Jealous! Me jealous of an old Methuselah that don't know enough to makea mark in the road?" Unconsciously Pinkey's hand sought his eyebrows, ashe laughed hollowly. "Why, I could show her a barrel of eagles' nests! Iknow whur there's a coyote den with pups in it! I know whur there's apetrified tree and oceans of Injun arrer heads, if she'd jest waited.But if anybody thinks I'm goin' to melt my boot-heels down taggin' aworman, they're mistaken!" Pinkey stamped off to the bunk-house andslammed the door behind him.
"Where's Pinkey?" The question was general when it was observed that hischair was vacant at dinner.
"Still reposing, I imagine," Wallie answered, humorously.
Mrs. Budlong commented:
"A night ride like that must be very fatiguing."
"Oh, very." Wallie winked at himself figuratively, thinking that the 99per cent. alcoholic content of one of Mr. Tucker's bottles undoubtedlyaccounted for his weariness.
"You are sure he's not ill?" inquired Miss Eyester. She had not enjoyedher revenge upon Pinkey, for going away without telling her, as much asshe had anticipated; besides, the eagle's nest turned out to be a crows'nest with no birds in it, and that was disappointing.
Mr. Hicks, who frequently joined in the conversation when anythinginterested him, snorted from the kitchen doorway:
"Ill? You couldn't make him 'ill' with a club with nails in it--thatfeller."
"Oh, how dread-ful!" Aunt Lizzie clasped her hands, and looked at thebrutal cook reprovingly.
"Perhaps one of us had better awaken him," Miss Eyester suggested. "Heshould eat something."
"Hor! Hor! Hor!" Mr. Hicks laughed raucously. "Maybe he don't feel likeeating. Let him alone and he'll come out of it."
Miss Eyester resented the aspersion the meaning of which was now plainto everybody, and said with dignity, rising:
"If no one else will call him, I shall."
"Rum has been the curse of the nation," observed Mr. Budlong to whomeven a thimbleful gave a headache.
"I wish I had a barrel of it," growled old Mr. Penrose. "When I get homeI'm going to get me a worm and make moonshine."
"Oh, how dread-ful!"
"'Tain't," Mr. Penrose contradicted Aunt Lizzie, curtly.
"'Tis!" retorted Aunt Lizzie.
They glared at each other balefully, and while everybody waited to hearif she could think of anything else to say to him, Miss Eyester returnedpanting:
"The door's locked and there's a towel pinned over the window."
"No!" They exclaimed in chorus, and looked at Wallie. "Do you supposeany thing's happened?"
"He locked the door because he does not want to be disturbed, and thetowel is to keep the light out," Mr. Stott deduced.
"Of _course_!" They all laughed heartily and admired Mr. Stott'sshrewdness.
"Any fool would have thought of that," growled Mr. Penrose.
"You think you know everything," said Aunt Lizzie, in whom his threat tomake moonshine and break the law still rankled.
"I know quite a lot, if I could just think of it," replied Mr. Penrosealmost good-naturedly.
"All the same," declared the cook, scouring a frying-pan in the doorway,"it's not like him to go to all that trouble just to sleep. I'll go upand see if I can raise him."
Even in the dining room they could hear Mr. Hicks banging on the doorwith the frying-pan, and calling. He returned in a few minutes.
"There's something queer about it. It's still as a graveyard. He ain'tsnoring."
"Could he have made way with himself?" Mr. Appel's tone was sepulchral.
"Oh-h-h!" Miss Eyester gasped faintly.
"Perhaps he has merely locked the door and he is outside," Mr. Stottsuggested.
"I'll go down and see if I can notice his legs stickin' out of the crickanywhere," said Mr. Hicks, briskly.
"It is very curious--very strange indeed," they declared solemnly,though they all continued eating spare-ribs--a favourite dish with TheHappy Family.
The cook, returning, said in a tone that had a note of disappointment."He ain't drowned."
"Is his horse in the corral?" asked Wallie.
Mr. Hicks took observations from the doorway and reported that it was,which deepened the mystery.
Since no human being, unless he was drugged or dead, could sleep throughthe cook's battering with the frying-pan, Wallie himself grew anxious.He recalled Pinkey's gloom of the evening before he had gone to Prouty."I wisht I'd died when I was little," he remembered his saying.
Also Pinkey's moroseness of the morning and the ferocity of hisexpression took on special significance in the light of his strangeabsence. Instinctively Wallie looked at Miss Eyester. That young ladywas watching him closely and saw his gravity. Unexpectedly she burstinto tears so explosively that Mrs. Budlong moved back the bread plateeven as she tried to comfort her.
"I know something has happened! I _feel_ it! When Aunt Sallie choked ona fish-bone at Asbury Park I knew it before we got the wire. I'm sort ofclairvoyant! Please excuse me!" Miss Eyester left the table, sobbing. Itseemed heartless to go on eating when Pinkey, the sunshine of the ranch,as they suddenly realized, might be lying cold in death in thebunk-house, so they followed solemnly--all except Mrs. Henry Appel, wholingered to pick herself out another spare-rib, which she took with herin her fingers.
They proceeded in a body to the bunk-house, where Wallie applied his eyeto the keyhole and found it had been stuffed with something. Thisconfirmed his worst suspicions. Nobody could doubt now but thatsomething sinister had happened.
Mr. Penrose, who had been straining his eyes at the window, peeringthrough a tiny space between the towel and the window frame, declared hesaw somebody moving. This, of course, was preposterous, for if alivePinkey would have made a sound in response to their clamour, so nobodypaid any attention to his assertion.
"We'll have to burst the door in," said Mr. Stott in his masterfulmanner, but Wallie already had run for the axe for that purpose.
Mrs. Appel, alternately gnawing her bone and crying softly, begged themnot to let her see him if he did not look natural, while Miss Eyesterleaned against the door-jamb in a fainting condition.
"Maybe I can bust it with my shoulder," said Mr. Hicks, throwing hisweight against the door.
Immediately, as the lock showed signs of giving, a commotion, ashuffling, was heard, a sound as if a shoulder braced on the inside wasresisting.
There was a second's astonished silence and then a chorus of voicesdemanded:
"Let us in! Pinkey! What _is_ the matter?"
The answer was an inarticulate, gurgling sound that was blood-curdling.
"He's cut his wind-pipe and all he can do is gaggle!" cried Mr. Hicks,excitedly, and made a frenzied attack on the door that strained the lockto the utmost.
If the noise he made was any criterion it was judged that Pinkey's headmust be nearly severed from his body--which made the resistance hedisplayed all the more remarkable. He was a madman, of course--that wastaken for granted--and the ladies were warned to places of safet
y lesthe come out slashing right and left with a razor.
They ran and locked themselves in the kitchen, where they could lookthrough the window--all except Miss Eyester, who declared dramaticallythat she had no further interest in life anyhow and wished to die by hishand, knowing herself responsible for what had happened.
Wallie, breathless from running, arrived with the axe, which he handedto Mr. Hicks, who called warningly as he swung it:
"Stand back, Pinkey!--I'm comin'!"
The door crashed and splintered, and when it opened, Mr. Hicks fell inwith it.
He fell out again almost as quickly, for there was Pinkey with theglaring eyes of a wild man, his jaws open, and from his mouth thereissued a strange white substance.
"He's frothin'!" Mr. Hicks yelled shrilly. "He's got hydrophoby! Lookout for him everybody!"
"G-gg-ggg-ough!" gurgled Pinkey.
"Who bit you, feller?" the cook asked, soothingly.
"G-ggg-gg-ough!" was the agonized answer.
"We'll have to throw and hog-tie him." Mr. Hicks looked around to see ifthere was a rope handy.
"Don't let him snap at you," called Mr. Stott from a safe distance. "Ifit gets in your blood, you're goners."
The cook who, as Pinkey advanced shaking his head and making vehementgestures, had retreated, was suddenly enlightened:
"That ain't froth--it's plaster o' Paris--I bet you! Wait till I get astick and poke it!"
Pinkey nodded.
"That's it!" Mr. Hicks cried, delightedly: "He's takin' a cast of hisgooms--I told him about it."
The look he received from Pinkey was murderous.
"How are we going to get it out?" Wallie asked in perplexity.
"It's way bigger than his mouth," said Mr. Appel, and old Mr. Penrosesuggested humorously: "You might push it down and make him swallow it."
"Maybe you could knock a little off at a time or chisel it," venturedMr. Budlong. "It's hard as a rock," feeling of it. "You'll have to crackit."
"It's like taking a hook out of a cat-fish," said the cook, facetiously."Say, can you open your mouth any wider?"
Pinkey made vehement signs that his mouth was stretched to the limit.
"It's from ear to ear now, you might say," observed Mr. Budlong. "If yougo to monkeying you'll have the top of his head off."
"If I could just get my fist up in the roof somehow and then pry down onit." The size of Mr. Hicks' fist, however, made the suggestionimpractical.
"I believe I can pick it off little by little with a hairpin or a pairof scissors or something." Miss Eyester spoke both confidently andsympathetically.
Pinkey nodded, his eyes full of gratitude and suffering.
"Don't laugh at him," she pleaded, as they now were howlinguproariously. "Just leave us alone and I'll manage it somehow."
It proved that Miss Eyester was not over-sanguine for, finally, with theaid of divers tools and implements, Pinkey was able to spit out the lastparticle of the plaster of Paris.
"I s'pose the story'll go all over the country and make me ridic'lous,"he said, gloomily. Feeling the corners of his mouth tenderly: "I thoughtat first I'd choke to death before I'd let anybody see me. What I'll doto that cook," his eyes gleaming, "won't stand repeatin'. And if anybodydast say 'teeth' to me----"
"Whatever made you do it?"
Too angry for finesse, Pinkey replied bluntly:
"I done it fer you. I thought you'd like me better if I had teeth, andnow I s'pose you can't ever look at me without laughin'."
Miss Eyester flipped a bit of plaster from his shirtsleeve with herthumb and finger.
"I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings, ever."
"Never?"
"Never."
"Then don't you go ridin' again with that old gummer."
"Do you care, really?" shyly.
"I'll tell the world I do!"
Miss Eyester fibbed without a pang of conscience:
"I never dreamed it."
"I thought you wouldn't look at anybody unless they had money--you bein'rich 'n' ever'thing."
"In the winter I earn my living cataloguing books in a public library. Ihate it."
Pinkey laid an arm about her thin shoulders.
"Say, what's the chanct of gittin' along with you f'rever an' ever?"
"Pretty good," replied Miss Eyester, candidly.