“Do you want to live or die? It’s nothing to me, you understand, one way or the other.”
“I want to live to be a hundred.”
“You’re making a poor start. How old are you now?”
“Well-turned of twenty.”
“You’ll be worn out by thirty.”
“What if I am? I’ll have lived, won’t I? There won’t be much I’ll miss. I’ll have seen more and done more and drunk more than you could do by the time you’re forty, old cock,” bragged the other. “Made my little pile, too, and spent it as I made it. Wine, women, and song. Say, Doc, if you’ve got any likely looking young females coming along, just let young Silverhorn know. I keep an eye on ’em, watch ’em filling out.” He made a grossly offensive gesture. “That filly of old Sharkskin Latham’s now—she’s beginning to have a look in her eye already. And your little poppet of a Jerrold rib; give her a couple of years.”
“That’s enough,” said Horace, revolted.
Silverhorn laughed. “Mealymouth, hey? How much does your little job come to?”
“Half a dollar.”
“Dear money, but worth it. Don’t forget about the gals, Doc.
Hi, dandy, derry-O!
I had a little fairy-O!
Here’s your four bits. So, fare ye well, my bonnie young lad, for I’m off to Fiddler’s Green.”
Gazing with disaffection after his departing caller, then with affection upon the first cash fee of his office practice, Horace felt like framing the small, handsomely engraved note as a memento. He might as well have done so. It was “Niagara money,” the issue of a bank which had passed peacefully away six months before.
– 7 –
We should Always lend a Helping Hand. This is our Christian Duty; sometimes it is Fun.
(DINTY’S DIARY)
Miasmas hung, soft and dank, above the valley when Horace paid his second visit to the labor camp. He found Old Bill Shea making his evening round with a smudge-box dangling under his chin. The hollow log, stuffed with damp leaves and sodden chips, exuded a protective cloud of smoke against the teeming insect life of the night. The Irishman was in sour humor.
“Six of my men quit me yesterday,” he said. “The rest are grumblin’ like bears with sore bums.”
“What’s wrong?”
“They claim the place is unchancy. Just because a few weaklin’s are sick.”
“How many?”
“I don’t exactly know,” said the overseer, coughing in the fumes that wreathed his head. “Take a look for yourself.”
Horace went into the nearest bunkhouse. Two of the occupants, groaning with dysentery, got up and staggered out as he entered. An invalid who had just taken a long pull at a bottle of fiery Jamaica Ginger set it down and said sullenly, “It’s the grub.”
The cook’s head popped up. “You’re a goddam liar,” he yelled. “The Eagle, itself, don’t serve no better.”
“It’s good enough to the taste,” admitted the sufferer. “What I say is, something’s poisonin’ us.”
“It rips the guts out of you,” confirmed another.
A chorus of voices detailed painful symptoms with unpleasing particularity. Shea withdrew, taking his guest with him.
“What can you do with a passle like them?” said he disgustedly. “Poison, my rump!”
Inwardly Horace considered the complaint probably well founded. He had his own notion of the nature of the poison. Last year in the Great Marshes he had seen dysentery run like a raging flame through the camps, always worst where conditions were foulest. He was committed in his mind to the revolutionary and unpopular theory of a logical connection between filth and disease, promulgated by the erudite if heretical Dr. David Hosack of New York.
He walked over to take a look and a sniff at the weltering latrine, then paced the distance to the nearest eating table. Less than seven yards. With the wind in the right direction odors would be borne across—and how much more than odors? Or were the stenches themselves a form of miasma, pullulating with disease? He did not know. Nobody knew. But it might well be so.
He advised the overseer to lay in a stock of blackberry brandy and balmwort.
The depth of Shea’s honest concern for the contract was proved by his hinting that there might be an arrangement to pay the young doctor something. However, Horace did not anticipate getting rich out of it. He would do well if, at the end, he were not out of pocket for the cost of his medicines, as he already was at Poverty’s Pinch.
Having sat out his office hours in loneliness the next day, he visited the Pinch late in the afternoon. He was not the day’s only messenger of mercy to the submerged populace. A self-recruited band from Miss Agatha Levering’s Bible Class was on the job. They called themselves the Little Sunbeams Cluster. Dinty Jerrold, Happalonia Vallance and Wealthia Latham were the leading spirits. A close-knit, determined and predatory trio, they ranged town, country and waterway, seeking whom they might succor. In their first week of official activity they rescued a wounded deer from Ganargwa Creek, adopted two families of destitute kittens, restored Bill Simmons, the town drunkard, to the bosom of his unreceptive family when all concerned would have preferred to let him sleep it off in the ditch, released a dozen fur animals from as many traps, to the righteous wrath of the trappers (Happalonia got bitten by a coon in the process), got into trouble by harboring in the Latham smokehouse a runaway apprentice for whom there was an advertised reward of six cents, and by various endeavors established themselves as ministering angels in their own eyes and pesky nuisances in public opinion.
As there was always somebody hungry, destitute, sick or fugitive at the Pinch, it was a port of call for the Sunbeams whenever they happened to think of it. Somewhere Wealthia had picked up the rumor of smallpox, and, upon her communicating it to her fellows, the little band was off to see about it.
The warning on the door gave them no pause.
“It don’t mean us,” said Dinty confidently. “Heaven protects the bearers of mercy. We’ve got a motto on our wall that says so.”
All three entered. The sick woman’s attendant had gone out, leaving her in a semi-stupor.
“Look how red her face is,” said Happalonia.
“I think she ought to be bled,” opined Dinty. “If I had a lancet I could do it. Or a leech. You girls go and catch some.”
They demurred. They didn’t like leeches, horrid, squirmy things. Wealthia was all for medicines, and opened up the basket which contained their surreptitiously acquired stock. Dinty went over them.
“Iron phosphate—I wish I could remember what that’s good for.… Seneca oil—they gave me that once, and I had an awful pain. Powdered vetch—that’s for hydrophobia, I think. But maybe not. Anyway, she hasn’t got hydrophobia.… Squills—those are for the rattles. She hasn’t rattled once, or even coughed.… Treacle and sulphur—My Ma says nobody was ever the worse for taking treacle and sulphur.… And feverwort. I’m sure she’s got a fever. You lift her up, Happy. You hold her nose, Wealthy. I wonder how much water I ought to mix with it.”
The struggle with the half-unconscious sufferer was still indecisive when Horace Amlie arrived.
“What on earth!” he began.
“We’re ministering unto her,” explained Dinty.
“Get out of here,” commanded Horace. “All of you. Wait for me outside.”
The three Sunbeams withdrew in good order. After ten minutes the physician emerged with a grave expression.
“Is she going to die?” asked Happalonia in awed tones.
“No. Stand over there and answer me.” He ranged them in a correctional line against the wall. “Can’t you read?” he demanded pointing at the door-sign.
Dinty brightly explained that they were under special angelic protection. Horace muttered so shocking a disparagement of the angels’ prophylactic power against smallpox that Happalonia shivered.
“Have you been vaccinated?” he snapped, pointing a monitory finger at Dinty and letting it swing like
a muzzle upon the others.
“No,” said Dinty.
“No,” echoed Wealthia.
Happalonia looked terrified and snuffled.
“I shall vaccinate all of you at once,” he declared.
Happalonia uttered a loud wail.
“I don’t care,” said Dinty.
Wealthia shrank back. “Pa wouldn’t like that, without my asking him,” she said uncertainly.
“Where is your father?”
“Gone up to look at the Gerundigut canal cut.”
“My Pa went with him,” put in Dinty. “Ma, too. They won’t be back till tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow may be too late,” said Horace decisively. “This is no case for delay. Get into my wagon.”
He drove them to his office. Seating them, he took a small, bright lancet from his box. At the sight of him testing the edge upon his thumb, Happalonia rose, and, with a strangled yelp, bolted through the door and down the street.
“Pooh!” said Dinty. “She’s a cowardy-custard. I’m not afraid.” She bared her arm, quaking.
“That’s my fine girl!” said Horace and brought the blood.
Wealthia watched the process with protruding eyes. Sensing her apprehension, Dinty said in a resolute quaver, “It didn’t hurt a bit.”
Nevertheless, the older girl, when her turn came, fainted dead away and must be brought around with a burnt feather and a whiff of ammonia.
“Wealthy’s so ladylike,” said Dinty, proud of her friend’s delicacy.
Wealthia went home, but her companion lingered.
“Mistress Crego says you’re destined for great riches. She read it in the leaves. She’s named a mandrake root after you and keeps it over her door for your good fortune. She says the canal is coming soon and bringing sickness to many and luck to one, and you’re the one.”
Dinty’s eyes began to rove about the room, and fixed themselves upon a vacant space above the desk.
“My sampler’s half finished,” said she. “It would look elegant right there.” She solicitously rubbed her arm. “I’d better hurry and get it done before I’m too sore to work.”
Quaila Crego’s reading of the tea leaves stuck in Horace’s mind. Perhaps his luck did lie with the canal. In any case, it promised more than his home practice, which was practically nil. He foreshortened his dates and made his third camp call on a Thursday.
“It’s here,” said Old Bill at sight of him.
Horace followed him between the files of bunks. Twenty of the diggers were bed-ridden, burning with the fever or shaking with the alternate ague. The chattering of their teeth made a dreary and familiar sound in the murk. To those who would take it, he administered the approved remedy of Peruvian bark decoction in brandy which, alone of the medically advised cures, he had found reasonably efficacious. When he had finished, Shea invited him into his tiny hut for a drop of the ardent.
“Genter Latham’d better get me some more men,” said he grimly.
About to reply, Horace halted the tin cup in mid-course to his lips, staring, with transfixed attention at the wall beneath the hooded candle.
There, at a right angle to the boarding, a black and swollen mosquito stood “on her head,” as Quaila Crego had put it, in the singular posture of the anopheles, not for many years yet to be scientifically determined as host and bearer of malaria.
– 8 –
It is Foolish to tell a Lie and Foolisher to get Found out.
(DINTY’S DIARY)
Two little girls with sore arms reported at the Polite Academy on Monday morning. Though yearning to exhibit her honorable wounds, Dinty refrained lest the news spread and involve Wealthia Latham in trouble at home. For her friend had immediately enjoined secrecy upon her.
“Pa would be cruel mad,” said she.
“At you?”
“Oh, no! Pa’s never mad at me. Or, if he is, he gets right over it,” purred Wealthia, conscious of her power. “But he might get awful mad at Dr. Amlie and do something terrible.”
“What would he do?”
“I don’t know. He horsewhipped a man once for doing something he didn’t like.”
“You’ll have to tell him, though. He’s sure to find out,” warned Dinty.
“I’ll tell him a bee stung me,” said Wealthia.
To Dinty’s disgruntlement, Wealthia’s spot was more inflamed and interesting than her own. Horace, after examining their arms two or three times, told them that everything was proceeding satisfactorily, and dismissed the matter from his mind. He assumed that both had informed their parents, and that there would be no trouble over his taking matters into his own hands. Dinty, indeed, had owned up to her father under injunction of secrecy; she did not want her mother to know.
When the pair, playing in the Latham back yard, saw their medical friend approach the front door of the mansion, they were dismayed. They might have saved their fears. Dr. Amlie’s mission was only remotely medical. He was there upon Decker Jessup’s insistence that, for business reasons if for no others, he ought to identify himself with one of the local congregations.
“Genter Latham is the man for you,” the cobbler had said.
“What church does he represent?” Horace had not been impressed with any special religiosity in the great man’s make-up.
“Any and all,” was the cobbler’s reply. “No dollar rolls in this town but that cashhawk must try to turn it into his own pocket. He’s a factor-of-all-trades, religion included. Medicine, too, if you could show him a profit on it.”
“I don’t understand how …” Horace had begun when his mentor broke in,
“The Baptist church wants a bell to its steeple. Where’s the money to come from? Genter Latham. The Episcopalians need new pews. Genter Latham’s money will cost them only ten percent, for the sake of dear religion. The Presbyterian roof must be mended. Make out a note to Genter. For security the churches gives him a lien on their pews, and he pockets the rentals until principal and interest are paid off, and credits himself with a mortgage on Heaven into the bargain for abating his usual twelve percent moneyhire. Don’t let him nick you for a fancy price.”
Horace found the financier on the side veranda of his elegant, matched cobblestone mansion, in conversation with Lawyer Ephraim Upcraft. Mr. Latham listened, nodded and briskly rattled off his quotations: a well-placed pew in the Baptist Church, seven dollars, Methodist or Episcopalian, six-fifty, Presbyterian, eight. This did not strike the applicant as conforming to the law of supply and demand, since he knew that both Methodist and Baptist congregations were larger than the Presbyterian. Mr. Latham gravely explained that the latter comprised more of the leading people of the community and therefore commanded a higher rate.
“However, the Episcopalian edifice is specially draughty in winter,” he observed with a shrewd twinkle. “Perhaps you’d prefer that creed.”
“I fail to perceive the precise denominational significance of a draught,” said Horace.
“Monday colds,” said Mr. Latham tersely. “Money in a doctor’s pocket.”
“It’s immoral and irreligious to expose worshipers to such risks,” declared Horace.
Lawyer Upcraft said austerely, “Would you not trust to the protection of Heaven, young sir?”
“Not for heating purposes,” replied Horace with a grin. “I’ve always understood that to be the specialty of the other locality.”
Genter Latham cackled. “One for the devil. Come to think of it, though, Murchison has got the Episcopalians and the Baptists sewed to the lining of his medicine bags. You’d better try for the Presbyterians or the Methodists. Didn’t someone tell me you were a Presbyterian member? Will you take a pew from date? I have an excellent one at disposal. It directly adjoins Mr. Levering’s,” he added in smiling afterthought.
“The Rev. Theron Strang is a powerful and uplifting exhorter,” said Mr. Upcraft. “You will profit by his discourses.”
Horace paid over his money with a qualm for his diminishing store of ca
sh, and took up his beaver when his host detained him.
“You’ve been visiting my camp.”
“Yes. Did Shea tell you?”
“You pumped him full of notions. He’s after me to make changes. Changes cost money.”
“So does sickness.”
“You said that at Squire Jerrold’s. I thought you a windy young fool. Now I’m not so sure.”
Horace waited.
“Have you visited Jerrold’s camp?”
“No. I hear two of his men have died. Bloody flux. You’ll be lucky if you don’t fare worse. Your camp isn’t fit for humans to live in.”
Instead of the expected outbreak of wrath, Horace found himself under a thoughtful regard. Genter Latham said, “Half of Jerrold’s men are looking for healthier jobs. That sort of panic spreads. I don’t want it among my loafers. Will you take five dollars a week, medicines included, to look after the men?”
It was a close bargain. But it meant at least the backbone of a reasonable subsistence. Horace accepted without undue elation. Professional conscience impelled him to give his new employer fair warning.
“You’re in for a bad time with the fever, I fear, Mr. Latham.”
“Why so?”
“The miasmas that rise every night from the valley.”
“I’ve heard enough of that trash,” barked the magnate. “You’re after me to move the buildings,” he charged. “Is that it?”
“It might save a great deal of sickness.”
“Well, I won’t do it, and be damned to your crazy ideas! You stick to your own line. Physick ’em when they’re sick; get ’em on their feet and back to work; that’s the way to earn your wages.”
Horace said quietly, “I don’t believe I’m the man for you, Mr. Latham.”
(Now, he thought, it’s all over. Five dollars a week tossed over my shoulder, and where am I to find any other chance as good?)
Mr. Latham took it calmly. “Independent, huh? Well, I’m not unfriendly to independence—when it doesn’t go too far. Just you dose your patients and leave the running of the camp to me. We’ll try it out for two weeks. At the end of that time, if you don’t suit me, I’ll pay up and no harm done. Eh?”
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