Chapter XLI - Page 2

but in a less
violent way.]

When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better,
but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair and
gave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on the
bed again. We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar produced
pain. Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs; in an unfortunate
moment I stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony of
torture. I never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like a
maniac, and tried to snatch a revolver from the table--but I got it.
He ordered me out of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he would
kill me wherever he caught me when he got on his feet again. It was
simply a passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in
an hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too; but it angered me a little, at
the moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined to go back to
Esmeralda. I thought he was able to get along alone, now, since he was
on the war path. I took supper, and as soon as the moon rose, began my
nine-mile journey, on foot.

Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile
jaunt without baggage.

As I "raised the hill" overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes of
twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the bright
moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of the
village massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave an
exulting bound, and I said to myself, "They have made a new strike to-
night--and struck it richer than ever, no doubt." I started over there,
but gave it up. I said the "strick" would keep, and I had climbed hill
enough for one night. I went on down through the town, and as I was
passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in
and help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged she
was right--he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into one.
Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of a
success of it. I ran up the street half a block or so and routed out a
sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled with
the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour,
and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and the
doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends.

It was a little after one o'clock. As I entered the cabin door, tired
but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting by
the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers,
and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at him. He
looked at me, stolidly. I said:

"Higbie, what--what is it?"

"We're ruined--we