Mr. Scraggs Intervenes

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Title:     Mr. Scraggs Intervenes
Author: Henry Wallace Phillips [More Titles by Phillips]

"There was a man," said Mr. Scraggs, "who said, 'Deliver me from my friends.' Now, I ain't goin' so far as to say I indorse that statement, nor I ain't standin' still so strong as to say I don't. But I know this: An enemy will do something for you every time, whilest most friends won't, and, moreover, I ain't ever had any enemy who furnished me with as much light entertainment as my friend Pete.

"I am speakin' from this here point of view. The real joyousness of life consists of being busy. We won't take no vote on the subjeck; we'll just admit it. Hence an enemy, that is an enemy, when you be in good health and able for to look after the enemy part from your side, is a great source of innercent amusement. A man gets so durn practical, he don't take no interest in all the pleasant rocks and bushes strewed over the country by the beneficent hand of Providence. He shacks along on his little old cayuse, with his mind occupied on how many things he can't do next, and he gits plumb disgusted. But suppose there's a chance of an able-bodied enemy, aided and abetted with a gun, a-hidin' behind each and every one of them rocks and bushes? Don't life take on an interest? I bet you money! The imaginations of that man's mind gets started up. Life becomes full of chances. The man, he's interested in his life because the other feller wants to take it away from him. A good enemy in a lonesome country means more to that man than her best friend's widower means to a maiden aunt. You bet.

"Red and me differs there, I know, but his idees gets sifted through that crop of red alfalfa he wears, whilest I present a clean proposition to any idee that comes boundin' o'er the lee, or to wind'ard, or any direction she chooses to bound. Yessir; when I begin to feel that life ain't worth livin' give me an enemy or a friend like Pete Douglass.

"It ain't for me to poke no fun at Pete's looks. There's a place where a humarious turn of mind orter stop. Pete's looks was too serious for any man to get comic about. It appeared as if his features had been blowed on to his face by a gale of wind; his whiskers had a horrified expression, like they'd made their escape if they hadn't been fastened on, and he was double-jointed in every point of the compass. When he stood up straight he give you more the impression of sittin' down then a man sick a-bed could. I dunno how it come, but everything old Pete looked like, seemed precisely the reverse.

"The way I got acquainted with Pete was when he put his hard coin agin a French tin-horn's race-track game. There was little horses running around a board, and you put your money where you thought it would win, but you never thought right, because the Dago had a stick under the table that pulled them races to suit his fancy.

"It stood to reason that taking money off'n a man who'd play such a game was inhumanity in the first degree, so when Pete's last dollar departed I entered that horse-race with a gun, just as I had no business to, and I says to the tin-horn, 'Look-a-here, you put that money across the board, or I'll play a tune on you,' and so he shouldn't think I was interferin' out of an idle curiosity, I pointed the weapon at him.

"'O-rrr righ'!' says he; 'Tooty-sweet.' I lost a good deal of patience on the spot. You see, it seemed like he was tryin' to be entertaining. I say, by way of an amoosin' remark, that I'm goin' to play a tune on that tin-horn, and he gayly tells me to toot sweet! Well, I don't want to harrow your feelin's. Anyway, Pete got his money and Frenchy returned to the land where his style of remarks was more appreciated, a little later.

"So Pete, he grasps my hand with tears in his eyes and considerable blood on his nose, where I'd accidently hit him with the Dago, and he says I'm his friend forever, and he'll show me what friendship really means. That's why I'm inclined to say that for rest and recreation I'll take an enemy. Whether our friend and brother, Mr. Douglass, was the luckiest or unluckiest man on earth, I've never been able to figger out. He personally explored the bottom of every old prospeck hole in the country. He was romantic by disposition, Pete was, and loved to go for walks at night. If he didn't turn up for breakfast I took down the coil of rope and proceeded until I found the right hole, because you could bet as safe that he was at the bottom of one of 'em as you could that the bottom itself was there.

"When I asked him, 'How come you to do it, Pete?' he allus answered, 'I dunno; I got to thinkin' about somethin'.' If anything valooable had occurred to Pete, whilest he was in one of them thinking spells, he'd have been one of these here geniuses.

"When a saw mill sent a slab sailin', or bust a belt, Pete was at the center of the disturbed districk. He fell off every foot log in ten miles; why, he was drowned fourteen times in three weeks!

"The bar we was workin' had a tunnel about a hundred foot long. Follerin' the pay streak made us turn at right angles, so it was dark back there. One day Mr. Pete was pushin' the car whilest I got dinner and his candle burned out. He takes a stick of giant powder, puts cap and fuse on it, lights it careful, jabs it in a frame for a candle, and trots for outdoors with the car--never knowin' anything onusual had took place. Just as I slapped the last flapjack and straightened up to yell, 'Come and get it!' here come Pete and the car like magic right acrosst the creek, followed by the most dust I ever see in my life.

"I watched him end-over-ending as he come, and I couldn't get near enough to the happenings to even wonder why.

"He landed on top of a quakin' asp and the car rolled over the dinner.

"I ain't declarin' that I was perfectly reasonable; I was surprised. When I was young and soople I've done twenty-odd foot in a running jump, but to see a man jump two hundred foot and carry a hand-car along with him was a branch of sport new to me, and perticler when done by a man like Pete.

"'Why,' says I, as I climb the tree and helped him down, 'however did you come to do it?'

"'I dunno, Zeke,' says he, 'honest to Gosh'--Pete never used a cuss-word--'honest to Gosh,' says he; 'I dunno. The last I remember was thinkin' why this here law of gravitation couldn't be made to work as a man wanted it, when "bump" says somethin' behind me, and I went right along, as you see. I tried to figger it out, comin', but turning handsprings made me dizzy.'

"These are points to show life as lived by my friend Pete Douglass. His autogeography would be plumb full of happenin's. At first sight, lookin' careless, you'd say, 'Why, here's the most unforchinit cuss I ever heard about,' but on a sober thought, to a man accustomed to havin' sober thoughts, it seemed as if there was luck in the bank, to pull through such performances and live to tell the tale.

"I mentioned this idee to Pete.

"'Why'' says he, 'I should holler horray every time I'm most killed,' he says. 'Is that what you mean?'

"'Look-a-here,' says I, 'I'm able to mean all I'm capable of meanin' without any outside help. I mean you're the great human paradox--less human and more paradox then I've seen advertised at a circus--and whilest you're perpetual dodging one horn or t'other of a dilemma, any friend of yours is getting bunked square between the two. If anything 'ud keep a man from being selfish, you would,' says I. 'D----d if I ain't spent two-thirds of my time and drawed some on the last, fishin' you out of messes. Now,' I says to him, 'why don't you get married and settle up?'

"Dear friends and brothers, that was just a piece of pursyflage. I know women better than any man I ever met that I felt knew less. I've seen wimmen so foolish I wouldn't believe anything more foolish could exist, if it hadn't a-been I'd seen still more foolish wimmen with these same eyes. But a woman who'd marry Pete was beyond my expectations. It took a lady with a turble brain-power and a deliberate intention to arrive at that state of mind; so when Pete says to me, 'That's just what I be goin' to do, Zeke,' he had me swallowing my breath.

"I gathered my fadin' strength and gained perticlers.

"Seems there was a lady 'bout thirty or forty years older than she oncet had been, who did plain washin' for the Royal Soverign Prince boys. The R. S. P. mine was run rather irregular. The boys took the clean-ups for wages, and the owner took the proceeds from stock he sold as dividends. I may mention there was less in clean-ups than there was in stock, so the future Mrs. P. Douglass was buckin' fate in the shape of a brace game. They was an awful nice set of boys, the Royal Soverign Princes, but when you divide thirty dollars and fifty cents amongst fifteen men for a month's wages, the washer-lady can't expect city prices.

"Pete had gained a holt on this lady's affections by falling into the flume and allowin' himself to be piped over the waste-gate. She took care of him for three weeks, at the end of which time Pete arose, renewed, refreshed, and more full of determined uselessness than ever. Any woman will love any man that bothers her enough. A man's idee of romance is to do what he wants to, or to be comfortable; a woman's idee of romance is to feel that she's obliged to do what she really wants to do, under such circumstances as will allow her to call it a great sackerfice, or to be made uncomfortable, which is her real notion of comfort. You have only to look at a woman's housekeepin' to reelize the restfulness she finds in keepin' things disturbed all the time. I have looked upon the housekeepin' of enough Mrs. Scraggses to be able to speak with the v'ice of experience, if not the v'ice of wisdom.

"So Mrs. Maggy Watson, the lady of which I heretofore speak, become unamored of Pete during the time he was such a pesky nuisance around the place, an' when he writ her, later, that he thought they'd orter form a close corporation an' issue the holy bonds of matrimony, why, she writ him straight back again that the scheme had been in her mind for some time, and she'd 'a' mentioned it to him only it seemed like meddlin' in his personal affairs.

"First off, it seems a-kind of unjustitude that a man like me should have a load of Mrs. Scraggses forced on him, whilest a man like Pete gets the kindest and obliginest sort of woman; but after all, I was able to take care of myself, and that bunch of wild cats, too, for a while, and Pete certainly needed a lady with a good disposition. You'll allus find, on investigatin' things, that they ain't a mite worse than you thought they was. Mighty often it is the horny-handed foot of misfortune that kicks a man into the green pastures of prosperity--the only question is: kin he eat grass?

"So it come about with Pete, all along the line. He'd gone and got married so ordinary it wouldn't attracted nobuddy's attention, only he was so overjoyed to find that I took sides with him that he sasshayed gayly forth for firewood and cut himself in the small of the back with the ax. Don't ask me how he done it, It's the only case on record. Pete was thinkin' of somethin' at the time, and could only remember a sudden pain in the back. So Pete was laid on the bed of sufferin' oncet more, him bein' so uset to it he took it without a holler, only this time he thought it was prutty serious.

"'Zeke,' says he, 'I've come to the cash-up so frequent I dunno just what's about to happen, but if it should be I was goin' to die for fair this time, I want Maggy to git my money, and I want you to take it to her.'

"'All right, Pete, I will,' says I.

"'Shack along, then,' says he.

"Pete mixed me some. 'I ain't goin' to leave you like this,' I says.

"'Yes, you be, too,' he says, sassy as thunder. 'The only time I kin git what I want is when I'm sick a-bed. I ain't goin' to rest happy nor do nothin'--not eat nor drink--till I know that woman has the chink. I can't say I've made a great job of livin', but I'm goin' to die like a house a-fire, if so the play comes that way,' he says. 'You put a little grub and water nigh me, and I'll just figger on being a full-sized man for oncet; you don't understand what a power of good it does me to think about it,' says he.

"Well, he had me to a standstill. It was cussed to leave a hurt man all alone, but I could easy appreciate the way he felt. If a man can't take no pride in himself the hull blamed business comes down to shovelin' dirt for nothin'.

"'Pete, I'll do it,' I says, and I shook hands with him.

"'Now, see that!' says he. 'That's the first time you've ever treated me like an ekal, Zeke; and I can tell you I don't like to be pitied no more'n any other man. God knows there wouldn't 'a' been a perter monkey in the bunch, if so it hadn't come I was scart, or thinkin' of somethin' else, when a hot-box arrived. The good Lord took the trouble to make me, and it seems kind of onjustifiable for me to prove He plumb wasted His time. You tell Maggy I done it for her. I ain't hidin' my light under a bushel, because I need it to see by. Ouch!' says he. 'This racket hurts!'

"I reckon it did. I sewed him up with a piece of deer-sinew and a darning-needle. Never was a great hand at tailorin', nohow, and Pete's hide was that tough I mostly had to pound the needle through with a chunk of wood.

"Well, I fixed him comfortable as I could, and prepared to start.

"'Zeke,' says he, 'don't'--he kinder swallered hard--'don't be no longer'n you kin help,' says he. There come a tear in his eye. 'An' take my respects to Maggy,' says he.

"'Shaw, Pete!' says I. 'Now, don't you go borrowin' no trouble--that's so easy to git without collaterial, it ain't worth the time. I'll be back imejate.' I patted him on the shoulder and he squeezed my hand hard.

"'No man could be a better pardner than you be, Zeke,' says he. 'I ain't a mite afraid of nothin' when that bald head of your'n is in sight, an' you understand a feller--it's a tough play for a rooster that don't come by sand natural.'

"'You got plenty of sand, Pete,' says I, 'all the trouble is, you let it git choked in your hoppers. By-by.' And away I went, slopin' fast, with Pete's forty-eight dollars down in my jeans.

"I was so took up with his affairs I didn't watch out careful, and that ain't wise in a hard-luck country. All of a suddent I hears a v'ice say, 'Puttee hands light uppee!' Sounds like I'd struck a day nursery, but that ain't so, for just before I hears them words there popped out from behind a rock a Chinaman--not, by no means, one of these here little Charlie-boys that does your wash and gives you a ticket with picters of strange insecks painted on it, but a whoopin', smashin' old Tartar pirate, seven foot by three, with mustaches like two tails of a small hoss, and cheekbones you could hang your hat on. More'n that, he was armed and equipped with two hoss-pistols as required by circumstances.

"That tired feelin' come over me, and I stretched; yessir, the hands of E. G. W. Scraggs went up toward the sky.

"My yaller friend next requested me to produce. Well, now, that was Pete's money. I'd 'a' took a chance at v'ilent physicule exercises, but I see the time had come to talk.

"'My Christian friend and brother,' says I, 'before we converse upon the root of all evil, let me put you on to the fact that my name is E. G. W. Scraggs.'

"'Ah!' says he, backin' up, 'Sclaggsee!'

"'Sclaggsee!' I hollers, and we near met on the spot. 'Don't you say that agin!'

"'Ah!' says he.

"I noticed his guns was wobblin'.

"'Ah!' says I. 'You're darned right. Now, I'll make you this proposition. I got forty-eight dollars in my pocket that don't belong to me. If we let things slide by as if they had not happened I'll give you two dollars for the use of that money until Tuesday next--pay you fifty dollars next Tuesday, at Jimmy Holt's place--get me?'

"'Gettee money now,' says he, cunnin'.

"'_P'raps_,' says I, 'but you won't be in condition to spend it for some time.' He rolled his eye off'n me, and at that instant Mary Ann, the faithfullest gun that ever stood between me and a gentleman whose intentions weren't good, appeared upon the scene.

"'Don'tee shootee, Sclaggsee!' he screeches.

"'You call me "Sclaggsee" oncet more, and I won't leave nothin' of you but a rim,' says I. 'As for the other proposition, it goes--Tuesday next. Jimmy Holt's place, I put you in hand fifty dollars, you cock-eyed, yaller, mispronouncin' blasphemy on a heathen idol! Although I ain't been near enough to a cherry tree to cut one down, the word of Ezekiel George Washington Scraggs is as good as the Father of his Country,' says I. 'He beat me at that last game, but I can stick to my sayin' like a porous plaster. You get the money; I will lie for the fun of the thing, but not for no dirty fifty dollars,' says I. 'You goin' toward town?'

"'Yes,' says he.

"'Well, git your plug, and we'll amble along together.'

"So we rode in, right cheerful, instead of quar'lin'. I made him come along to Maggy's cabin, to show it weren't a bluff about the money.

[Illustration: "So we rode in, right cheerful."]

"Poor Maggy, she wipes her eye on her apron, and says she'll start for our camp at oncet.

"I called the Chinaman aside, confidential. "'You take care of lady!' I shrieks at him. 'Lady--you take care!' I dunno why it is you think if you holler loud enough you can make a man understand anything, but it's a fact.

"My chink bobs his head. 'Take clare laly,' he says.

"'Yaas!' says I. 'I rustley monnellee!'

"He bobs his head again.

"'Lusselleemonellee!' he answers, kind of vacant.

"I sot down. 'Twas clear he didn't have no idee of my conversation. So we went over it for two hours, me drawin' maps and wigglin' my fingers, and makin' faces to illustrate a man with an ax-cut in the small of his back, and a lone widder-woman takin' care of him, till at last, by bringin' hands, face, and feet all into the game, with a small hunk of kerfoozled English language here and there, a light broke on his heathen soul. He near bobbed his head off.

"'Me makee all lightee for Sclaggsee, you bettee, hellee dammee!' says he.

"He was that earnest I overlooked the name. 'Good,' says I. 'Now, Charlie, you cut wood, haul water, and keep things goin' out there and your fifty is waitin' for you on Tuesday.'

"Maggy did a crow-hop when she found she had to travel with the chink, but I told her it was O.K., so she got aboard an Injin pony and off they goes to Pete.

"Well, dear friends and brothers, I sincerely hope you've never had to raise fifty dollars in a busted camp. The boys done the best they could, but a can of corn had to stand for fifty cents, and a pair of pants that would take Tartar Charlie somewheres about the knees drew a credit of two-fifty. Four iron knives and a busted coffee-pot stood for a case, and a pair of scissors with one blade broke half off, and a mouth-organ that only sounded in spots, was equal to two iron dollars. I got eighteen fifty in cash and the balance was junk.

"'Well,' says I, 'he's no better'n a road-agent, and I can't help it, nohow.'

"For all that, I sot in Jim Holt's place of a Tuesday afternoon feelin' low-spirited when I looked at the heap, when who comes sailin' in at the door but Tartar Charlie, wearin' a grin that took two turns and a half around his face.

"'Laly comee!' says he. 'Petee comee!'

"'On what?' says I, ashamed to show surprise to a yaller Chinaman.

"'Joss man fetchee!' says he.

"'Certainly!' says I. 'That's what he ought to do; don't get excited.' I did my wonderin' about the joss man in private. 'Sit down, Charlie.'

"So Charlie, he sot down and watched me rifflin' the cards.

"'Playee poker?' says he.

"'As a relaxiation, Charles,' says I. 'Poker is a business for gentlemen of means--gottee nomonee!'

"'Me stakee you,' says he. 'Likee poker.'

"So Jim and some of the other boys come over, and Charlie and me begun to draw cards. After we dubbed through a few deals, gettin' on to each other's play, I see Charlie stow away a pair of aces. Now, ordinarly, I'd complained, but, under the circumstances, it didn't appear to me to be the decent thing to do, so I motioned to Jim, and he slid me a pack with the same sort of backs.

"After that you never in all your borned days see such hands on a poker table. Why, a king-full wasn't worth raisin' back on. A set of fours was the least a man could have confidence in, and only if it was on his own deal, at that.

"Howsomever, havin' a hull pack at my disposal, whilest Charlie could only use his hold-outs, I worked him down to tin cans of vegetables, the busted coffee-pot, and the pants.

"He, bein' as game as any white man, jack-potted the lot. It was just draw cards and show down for the money. Darned if he didn't get the best of me.' How I come to pick out the queen of diamonds to match a straight club flush is one of them things that won't be revealed till Judgment Day. There wasn't nobuddy more surprised than me. This brought us down to even Stevens, and I felt irritated, so I come back at him with one play for the bunch. He agreed, and I dealt him four aces, pat. I was going to draw to fill my straight color. I snaked out the three I had on my knee, and was just goin' to insert 'em where they'd do the most good, when Pete's v'ice says: 'Well, Zeke!'

"It was a joyful v'ice, but I knowed he'd seen my play. I dropped them cards.

"'One minute, Pete,' says I. I called across the table to Charlie, 'Show openers and win!' And when he laid down them bullets I'd give him with my own hands, my heart broke inside me. But I couldn't stand for a crooked play seen by Old Pete.

"I hopped up from the table and shook his hand, I shook Maggy's hand, where she stood, smilin' bashful, and then I shook the hand of a strange gent in black clothes, whose name was Mr. Somethin'-or-other.

"Pete explained to me that the gent was a minister travelin' through the country, who'd offered him and Maggy a ride to town. 'We thought we might as well get hitched at the same time,' says Pete, 'and I sure wanted to see you, Zeke.'

"'Yes,' says Maggy. 'It wouldn't seem right to get married without you bein' there, Mr. Scraggs. To think of what you've done for Pete! And that Charley High-ball there is just the blessedest angel that ever was! Why, he got some stuff in the woods and put it on Pete's back, and made him well in a minute, you might say. And there warn't nothin' he wouldn't do for us. And I'm just the happiest woman ever was,' says Maggy, wipin' her eyes on her apron some more.

"'Well!' says I, brisk, tryin' to forgit that lost fifty. 'Why don't you and Pete sign the pledge right here and now?--how's that, friend?' I asks the minister.

"'Why, ah! says he. 'Ah! It doesn't seem quite the proper place--'

"'What's the matter with this place?' says Jim. He took a great pride in his saloon. He had glass mirrors up that cost him a hundred plunks apiece. 'If you think,' says he, 'that there's a prettier little joint in town than this, why, don't let me keep you.'

"That minister was cut out fer the business. He hedged his bet so quick, I admired him.

"'That's just it,' he says loud and hearty. 'I look upon matrimony as a solemn affair, and I was afraid our friends would be distracted from the seriousness of the ceremony by the surroundings.'

"'Don't say a word!' says Jim, wavin' his hand. 'You have put the next round on me; but I guess Pete and Maggy has had seriousnesses enough, just as she slides--heh?'

"'You're talkin' blue checks, Jim,' says Maggy, through her apron. 'I don't reckon I'll ever get too gay to hurt me, nor Pete, nuther.'

"'Very well,' says the minister--and we had the weddin'. Charlie High-ball burnt punk that smelled strong but fine, and swung his arms, Jim and the rest of the boys sayin' 'amen' every time there come a stop, and all the proceedin's goin' on grand, till the preacher got to the last of it, and then Pete broke in:

"'I copper that statement,' says he. 'I wouldn't run against you for the world, old man, but here I got to. We ain't "man" and wife, for I ain't never been a man since I growed up: Maggy, she's the man and wife both. Say "husband and wife," to oblige.'

"The preacher looked at Pete mighty kind.

"'Husband and wife,' says he. Then Maggy busted out, 'He's the best man that ever lived!' says she.

"'May you live long and happy years together,' says the preacher, and he had a different look on his face--more's if it was a pleasure instead of business he was attendin' to.

"Whilest we stood there, kinder awk'ard, Charley made a high play. He gathered all his winnings in a heap. 'For laly,' says he, makin' her a bow.

"Maggy, she cried. Everybody'd been so good to her, she said, and she weren't able to turn a hand for her part, and so forth, and we was all kind of pleasantly miserable for a while, till Jim sings out, 'Here, this ain't no weddin' hilarity--guide right to the bar!'

"There we all lined up, Charlie High-ball and all.

"'What'll you have, sir?' says Jim, askin' the minister first out of manners.

"'The same as the rest,' says the minister like a man.

"'Mr. Scraggs?' says Jim.

"'Ginger ale, says I. And every man and woman took ginger ale, which is a beverage that 'ud drive a man to drink. Howsomever, we showed that preacher he didn't hold over us, speck nor color, when it come to a showdown. And he savvied the play, too. He watched the line drinkin' its ginger ale.

"'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I'm glad to know you--I think I'll stay in your town a while, but now'--and he kind of twinkled around the eyes--'I hope you will excuse me.' With that he vanished, leaving us to take a little antidote for that there ginger ale.

"And Pete and Maggy? Well, dear friends and brothers, you never saw nothin' like it--they think as much of each other as two men would! And the way Pete can iron a b'iled shirt is a wonder. . . . Yaas; he found his job at last; plain and decorative ironin'. Often I've seen Maggy, holdin' up a batch of clo's, with pride just oozin' out of her, and heard her say, 'There ain't a person in these here United States that kin slip a flatiron over dry-goods the way my Pete kin.'"

[The end]
Henry Wallace Phillips's short story: Mr. Scraggs Intervenes

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