Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1880 — THE ODD EGG. [ARTICLE]

THE ODD EGG.

Tim Ditng-er of lluving Thirteen ton Dozen. Ho was rather tall aud bony, and showed a heavy, dragging limp in his right Jog as he sidled up to the bar. His clothes had worn smooth on the cuir and collar, and were disposed to ventilate at the elbow, but were still sufficient to keep out ordinarily cold weather. With a not ungraceful movement, and a sleight that oonld only come of long practice, he dropped a well chewed quid into his left hand, which lie placed behind him, leaning forward with liis right elbow on the bar. “Egg-nogg? no, thank you. Jest a leetle whisky straight, barkeep’, no sugar. I know it’s liable to occasion remark shyin’ at egg-nogg—so near the holiday season, too—and it’s very kind and perjito in you, stranger, calling on me to come for’ard hero with these other gentlemen—an’ egg-nogg bein’ the drink of the crowd—it’s not the do-se-do to refuse, but the truth is, I hain’t et a egg or tackled any fruit of that description fur goin’ on six years. Sing’lar, you think? Well, I’ve got my reasons. P’raps you never knowed Dave Gilchrist? No ? Well, me an’ Dave was 010 pards. We was both in the same regiment in the lust war. I’m older’n Dave. He was only a boy when he was shot through the limgs at Stone river. Well, I nussed him through it, an’ after the war we both cum here to Indiany. I never was much account for farmin’, but I went to work on Dave’s fa her’s farm. “Dave was a mighty good-lookin’ young feller, and his lather owned a quarter-section of as good land as the sun ever shines on, with just two heirs, Dave and his sister Artemesia—’Meeshy for short —and the gals began to purr round him like cats ’round a cream crock. I soon saw lie was hooked, an’ by a glass widder tv ho hadn’t been in the neighborhood but a few weeks. She hadn’t seen me, but I had her, and knowed her from the jump. Well, I tried to reason with him to give her up She knowed every keerd in the matrimonial deck, as it were, and she could stock the deal on him every time. Then says I to him : You don’t want to marry a woman with a husband liable to turn up at auy minute like Euick Atden in the play.’ “ ‘ What’s that to you ?’ says he. “ ‘ Much,’ says I. ‘ I’ve been married an’ divorced, an’ know the ropes.’ “Well, it was party tough fur him. but he' said he’d give her up. But he couldn’t stay there, he said. “‘Got to get her out of my mind, somehow, aud the best way is to put a thousand miles between me and her,’ says he. “ ‘ I’ve got a brother,’ says I, thinkiu’ of him all to wunst—hadn’t thought of him afore for years —‘a brother out in Washington Territory, a steady feller, not a bit like me; and, if you say the word, Dave, your old pard as recommends the vermifuge will help you take it.’

“So wo packed up our traps one uiglit, very sudden, an’ Dave left a letter to his sister Meeshy, an’ I writ one to the widder. We intended to go to California, and from there to Washington Territory, but, when wo got to ’Frisco, we changed our minds, and went down to Arizony, and went into the mines. Well, wo went there, and were gettin’ along purty well, when Davo took down with the rumatiz. Stranger, you don’t know what the square John Henry rumatiz is, and you never will till you get it in the mines. Dave poked along for several months—couldn’t work, couldn’t even wait on himself—an’ the little money we had begin to melt away. I knowed he’d never get well there. So one day lup an’ tells him, ‘l’m a-goin’to California.’ At this he moans out that he’d never a-thought I’d give him the dirty shake that way, after the years we’d been together, and broke down cryin’ like a baby. Dave was a game boy, you I) ’tcher your boots, but, when we git weak an’ low, stranger, sometimes the best ofus’ll squeal. ‘You jist turn off that hydrant,’ says I; ‘ wo’re both goin’ together.’ “ ‘ But I can’t walk,’ says Dave. “‘What’s the dif?’says I; ‘you can ride, an’ here’s y’r mule. You’ll go if I have to carry you every step of the way.’ “So off we starts. Well, wc got to Los Angeles, on the coast, in four weeks, an’ it was no time at all after that before Dave begin to pick up. Then wo went up to ’Frisco, the boy still improvin’, an’ from there we worked our way to Fort Klamath, in Southwestern Oregon. Then I told Dave we’d rasseled ’round about long enough; that I was goin’ to see my brother, who lived inWashington Territory, about twenty miles from Walla Walla. Dave had got tolerable hearty, but do you suppose he’d stopped frettin’ about that widder? Not a bit—he still had her on the brain bigger’n a straw stack. Now an’ then, when he’d get blue, he’d give mo the wire edge of his tongue for havin’ drug him away from Indiany. But we started for Walla Walla, cat-a-cornered acrost Oregon, an’ follerin’ the trail a clean 400 mile. We walked it all, every step of the way. I had to carry most of the traps myself, for Dave was

weak in the chest, and had to go light. Dave had on a pair of moccasins; I had a heavy pair of boots. Dave carried the revolver; I carried the double-bar-reled shot-gun an’ the other traps. Purty soon his moccasins cut to pieces, an’ J gave him my boots, which made it easier for him. That’s a mighty lonesome trail from Klamath to Walla Walla, and people are sprinkled over it about as thick as gold nuggets is here. We didn’t have much money, and sometimes were two days together without food. Then we’d take up a notch or two in our belts, to reef in our stomachs to suit the supply of grub, aud go ahead. One day we’d jist crossed the Oregon line, an’ was nearin’ Walla Walla, when we see a thin curl of smoke risin’ above the timber. I knowed from the wind in it that that smoke didn’t come from any open fire, but came through a chimley, an’ we soon sighted a cabin in a clearin’. Then up flies a big, yaller rooster an’ gives a liow-de-do that put more strange feelin’s in me than I’d hed fur a long time—poetry and music together, you know. Carried me back to the days when I was a boy on the old farm, an’ a lump came to my throat an’ my eyes got moist. What do you suppose Dave said ? Says he: ‘Jim, well have eggs for dinner, as sure as the Lord made little apples.’ “ ‘ Tne very thing I was thinkin’ of,’ savs I. “The door of the cabin was open, so we didn’t have to knock, an’ a nice, tidy woman, with a fresh white biled apron, asked us in. Her man was in the field back of the house, and he and a hired man came to see us. Travelers aie scarce out there. The woman saw that we were hungry—wo hadn’t hed anything to eat for two days but a handful of parched corn. She said she was sorry there was so little in the house, an’ all that sort of tiling, but would try to get something up. Dave asked if she hadn’t eggs, and a dozen packages of chat fruit, biled with the husks ou, would bo agreeable. Two round-eyed, tow-headed boys were sent out to liud ’em.

“Well, there they was, heaped up before us on a plate, iu their nice white kivers—a dozen of ’em—an’ Dave an’ mo pitched in. That wasn’t all the meal, though, fur there was jerked venison, an’ as good bread as ever was turned out of a pan, an giuewine yallar butter. But it was the eggs that ketched me. Eggs an’ civilization go hand in hand an’shoulder to shoulder. Did you ever think of that? We started in on a egg apiece. “My first egg just struck the spot, an’ I let out my belt a couple of notches, an’ took egg number two. Dave lifted his second one the same time. So w r e kep’ company, egg fur egg, right along. At the fifth or fourth egg, I don’t know which, Dave says: ‘Jim, this reminds me of old times. I used to have a little bow-legged, hump backed hen I got off one of the Brazier boys—Bill Brazier, dead now; killed out on the piks, east of Gray’s mill; thro wed off’n his horse down the steep hill there, an’ struck his head on a bowlder.’,, “Then we both reached for the plate. “I reckoned he’d lost count while tollin’his story, so I says: ‘Go slow, old boy, that egg’s mine.’ “‘Not much,’ says lie, ‘you’re off your nest.’ “This was too much. I flared right up. To think he’d tried to bilk an old pard outen a egg, after all that pard had done fur him, soured me cleau to my heels. You i-ee, I’d shared everything with him, drug him through his sickness, ’tended him like a woman, an’ now to have him come the hog game on me! The devil was in me, an’ 1 drawed the revolver; it was lay in’ on the floor between us, an’ was goin’ to let daylight through him, when the woman screamed, aud the man of the house spoke up. This brought me to myself; but I tell you I had him down fine. We both got up from the table, leavin’ the last egg on tue plate, Dave takiu’ the shot-gun from the place where it was leanin’ outside the door. I scorned to take any a (vantage of him then, mad as I was, an’ gave him a fair chance to git the gun. We walked ou fur a quarter of a mile without speaking, each looking out of the corner of our eye for fear the other’d get the drop. ‘ Dave,’ says I, ‘ this business has got to be settled.’ “ ‘ Yes,’ says he, ‘and some other thing has got to be settled, too. I might have been an bonest, liappy married man in Indiany this minute if it hadn’t been for you, instead of the tramp I now am. It wae my money you wanted to bring you to Californy, and you made me run away from the only woman I over loved.’ “‘Your money, you say; your money. Do you want me to tell you who the only woman you ever loved is? She’s my divorced wife.’

“This staggered him some. “ ‘ Well, what of that—that wouldn’t prevent her from malkim me a good wife, would it?’ “ ‘Dave Gilchrist, you was young, an’ 1 wanted to save you. I had some things in my own hie f didn't care feleven you to know. When I. first met you in the regime nt I had just served a term of two years in the Ohio penitentiary.’ “ ‘ So you’re a prison bird, are you.’ “ ‘ Yes, I’m a prison bird. I loved that woman and married her. We had scarcely been manied three months before we were both arrested charged with stealing, and the goods, a roll of black silk, was found in the house. It had been stolen from a dry-goods store one day when we were both in town. I had heerd of Itleptermaniacs—people who can’t help but take things, and I couldn’t call my wife’s offense stealing. I couldn’t bear to see her, young and delicate, go to prison; so I confessed that I myself had took it, and, on a plea of guilty, was sent up. Well, the parting between us was a bitter one, but I thought I had done my duty. But in less than six weeks that woman applied for a divorce from me, an’ got it, on the ground of my bein’ in the State prison —me, who had gone there to save her.’ “‘lf you’d told me this sooner I’d prob’iy have beleeved it. Now-1 think you’re tryin’ to pull the wool over my eyes some more.’ “ ‘ Well, stranger, this made me madder’n a bear with a gum bile, and there was nothin’ for it but blood. We both made our little arrangements in case of accident, and then each got behind a tree. My plan was to watch my chance and at the first show to let lire. Soon I see the top of his hat sticking out from the side of a tree, an’ I was about to let him have it, when one of those Injun stories came in my mind. Then I see through his little game. ‘Not much,’ says I to myself, ‘an empty hat on a ramrod to draw my fire.’ Then I stuck my head out to draw his, not havin’ much respect for a shot gun—they scatter so—an’ thinkin’ I could get my leg in again before he fired. But I didn’t. He let me have it, an’ brought me down. But I field on to the revolver, and, as I fell—he had come from behind Jiis tree—l fired, but missed. Dave threw down his gun and rushed toward me, crying like a baby. I drawed up to let him have it, but he never flinched. ‘All right, Jim, old pard, I deserve it as an ungrateful dog.’ That was too much for me, siranger, and I throwed the derned weapon away for fear somethin’ might happen. Next I knqwed Dave had his arm aroun 1 me, huggin’ me, and then—l jest got lost completely. Guess it must a’ been from loss of blood. When things came round again, I was in that cabin, and Dave,

and the man of the honse, and the tidy little woman in the white apron were standing over me, and blast my eyes if the owner of the cabin wasn’t my brother Josh, which I didn’t know him from Adam’s off ox, on account of the ha’r on his face. And I got well, all bat this limp, and Dave forgot the grass widder, married the tidy little woman’s youngest sister, and settled down only three miles from Josh. But you bet Josh’s wife has been learned a lesson she won’t soon forgifc. What? Why, not to lay out thirteen eggs for a dozen without notifyin’me. Oh, me? Why, I’m the vagabond I alius was. “ Here, barkeep’, fill these up agin.”