Читать книгу Danny's Own Story - Don Marquis - Страница 12

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I slowed down when I got to the schoolhouse, and both them fellers piled in.

“I guess I better turn north fur about a mile and then turn west, Doctor Kirby,” I says, “so as to make a kind of a circle around that town.”

“Why, so, Rube?” he asts me.

“Well,” I says, “we left it going east, and they'll foller us east; so don't we want to be going west while they're follering east?”

Looey, he agreed with me. But he said it wouldn't be much use, fur we would likely be ketched up with and took back and hung or something, anyhow. Looey could get the lowest in his sperrits sometimes of any man I ever seen.

“Don't be afraid of that,” says the doctor. “They are not going to follow us. They know they didn't get this property by due process of law. They aren't going to take the case into a county court where it will all come out about the way they robbed a couple of travelling men with a fake trial.”

“I guess you know more about the law'n I do,” I says. “I kind o' thought mebby we stole them hosses.”

“Well,” he says, “we got 'em, anyhow. And if they try to arrest us without a warrant there'll be the deuce to pay. But they aren't going to make any more trouble. I know these country crooks. They've got no stomach for trouble outside their own township.”

Which made me feel considerable better, fur I never been of the opinion that going agin the law done any one no good.

They looks around in that wagon, and all their stuff was there—Jake Smith and the squire having kep' it all together careful to make things seem more legal, I suppose—and the doctor was plumb tickled, and Looey felt as cheerful as he ever felt about anything. So the doctor says they has everything they needs but some ready money, and he'll get that sure, fur he never seen the time he couldn't.

“But, Looey,” he says, “I'm done with country hotels from now on. They've got the last cent they ever will from me—at least in the summer time.”

“How you going to work it?” Looey asts him, like he hasn't no hopes it will work right.

“Camp out,” says the doctor. “I've been thinking it all over.” Then he turns to me. “Rube,” he says, “where are you going?”

“Well,” I says, “I ain't pinted nowhere in pertic'ler except away from that town we just left. Which my name ain't Rube, Doctor Kirby, but Danny.”

“Danny what?” asts he.

“Nothing,” says I, “jest Danny.”

“Well, then, Danny,” says he, “how would you like to be an Indian?”

“Medical?” asts I, “or real?”

“Like Looey,” says he.

I tells him being a medical Injun and mixed up with a show like his'n would suit me down to the ground, and asts him what is the main duties of one besides the blankets and the feathers.

“Well,” he says, “this camping-out scheme of mine will take a couple of Indians. Instead of paying hotel and feed bills we'll pitch our tent,” he says, “at the edge of town in each sweet Auburn of the plains. We'll save money and we'll be near the throbbing heart of nature. And an Indian camp in each place will be a good advertisement for the Sagraw. You can look after the horses and learn to do the cooking and that kind o' thing. And maybe after while,” he says, kind o' working himself up to where he thought it was going to be real nice, “maybe after while I will give you some insight into the hidden mysteries of selling Siwash Indian Sagraw.”

“Well,” says I, “I'd like to learn that.”

“Would you?” says he, kind o' laughing at himself and me too, and yet kind o' enthusiastic, “well, then, the first thing you have to do is learn how to sell corn salve. Any one that can sell corn salve can sell anything. There's a farmhouse right over there, and I'll give you your first lesson right now. Rummage around in that satchel there under the seat and get me a tin box and some corn salve labels.”

I found a lot of labels, and some boxes too. The labels was all different sizes, but barring that they all looked about the same to me. Whilst I was sizing them up he asts me agin was they any corn salve ones in there.

“What colour label is it, Doctor Kirby?” I asts him. Fur they was blue labels and white labels and pink labels.

He looks at me right queer. “Can't you read the labels?” he says, right sharp.

“Well,” I says, “I never been much of a reader when it comes to different kind of medicines.”

“Corn salve is spelled only one way,” says he.

“That's right,” I says, “and you'd think I orter be able to pick out a common, ordinary thing like corn salve right off, wouldn't you?”

“Danny,” he says, “you don't mean to tell me you can't read anything at all?”

“I never told you nothing of the kind.”

He picks out a label.

“If you can read so fast, what's that?” he asts.

She is a pink one. I thinks to myself; she either is corn salve or else she ain't corn salve. And it ain't natcheral he will pick corn salve, fur he would think I would say that first off. So I'm betting it ain't. I takes a chancet on it.

“That,” says I, “is mighty easy reading. That is Siwash Injun Sagraw.” I lost.

“It's corn salve,” he says. “And Great Scott! They call this the twentieth century!”

“I never called it that,” says I, sort o' mad-like. Fur I was feeling bad Doctor Kirby had found out I was such a ignoramus.

“Where ignorance is bliss,” says he, “it is folly to be wise. But all the same, I'm going to take your education in hand and make you drink of life's Peruvian springs.” Or some spring like that it was.

And the doctor, he done it. Looey said it wouldn't be no use learning to read. He'd done a lot of reading, he said, and it never helped him none. All he ever read showed him this feller Hamlet was right, he said, when he wrote Shakespeare's works, and they wasn't much use in anything, without you had a lot o' money. And they wasn't no chancet to get that with all these here trusts around gobbling up everything and stomping the poor man into the dirt, and they was lots of times he wisht he was a Injun sure enough, and not jest a medical one, fur then he'd be a free man and the bosses and the trusts and the railroads and the robber tariff couldn't touch him. And then he shut up, and didn't say nothing fur a hull hour, except oncet he laughed.

Fur Doctor Kirby, he says, winking at me: “Looey, here, is a nihilist.”

“Is he,” says I, “what's that?” And the doctor tells me about how they blow up dukes and czars and them foreign high-mucky-mucks with dynamite. Which is when Looey laughed.