Members of the Family

“A spade’s all he’ll need now.”

Overhearing this with some still unconquered piece of his mind, Scipio made one last remark: “I ain’t going to die for years and years.”

Upon this his head had rolled over, and no further statements came from him for--I forget how long. Yet somehow, we all believed that last remark of his.

“Since I’ve known him,” said the Virginian, “I have found him a truthful man.”

“Which don’t mean,” Honey Wiggin put in, “that he can’t lie when he ought to.”

Judge Henry always sent his hurt cow-punchers to the nearest surgical aid, which in this case was the hospital on the reservation. Here then, one afternoon, Scipio lay, his body still bound tight at a number of places, but his brain needing no bandages whatever; he was able to see one friend for a little while each day. It was almost time for this day’s visitor to go, and the visitor looked at his watch.

“Oh, don’t do that!” pleaded the man in bed. “I’m not sick any more.”

“You will be sick some more if you keep talking,” replied the Virginian.

“Thinkin’ is a heap more dangerous, if y’u can’t let it out,” Scipio urged. “I’m not half through tellin’ y’u about Horacles.”

“Did his mother name him that?” inquired the Virginian.

“Naw! but his mother brought it on him. Didn’t y’u know? Of course you don’t often get so far north in the Basin as the Agency. His name is Horace Pericles Byram. Well, the Agent wasn’t going to call his assistant store-clerk all that, y’u know, not even if he has got an uncle in the Senate of the United States. Couldn’t spare the time. Days not long enough. Not even in June. So everybody calls him Horacles now. He’s reconciled to it. But I ain’t. It’s too good for him. A heap too good. I’ve knowed him all my life, and I can’t think of a name that’s not less foolish than he is. Well, where was I? I was tellin’ y’u how back in Gallipol_eece_ he couldn’t understand anything. Not dogs. Not horses. Not girls.”

“Do you understand girls?” the Virginian interrupted.

“Better’n Horacles. Well, now it seems he can’t understand Indians. Here he is sellin’ goods to ’em across the counter at the Agency store. I could sell twiced what he does, from what they tell me. I guess the Agent has begun to discover what a trick the Uncle played him when he unloaded Horacles on him. Now why did the Uncle do that?”

Scipio stopped in his rambling discourse, and his brows knitted as he began to think about the Uncle. The Virginian once again looked at his watch, but Scipio, deep in his thoughts, did not notice him. “Uncle,” he resumed to himself, half aloud, “Uncle was the damnedest scoundrel in Gallipol_eece_.--Say!” he exclaimed suddenly, and made an eager movement to sit up. “Oh Lord!” he groaned, sinking back. “I forgot.--What’s your hurry?”

But the Virginian had seen the pain transfix his friend’s face, and though that face had instantly smiled, it was white. He stood up. “I’d ought to get kicked from here to the ranch,” he said, remorsefully. “I’ll get the doctor.”

Vainly the man in bed protested; his visitor was already at the door.

“I’ve not told y’u about his false teeth!” shrieked Scipio, hoping this would detain him. “And he does tricks with a rabbit and a bowl of fish.”

But the guest was gone. In his place presently the Post surgeon came, and was not pleased. Indeed, this excellent army doctor swore. Still, it was not the first time that he had done so, nor did it prove the last; and Scipio, it soon appeared, had given himself no hurt. But in answer to a severe threat, he whined:--

“Oh, ain’t y’u goin’ to let me see him to-morro’?”

“You’ll see nobody to-morrow except me.”

“Well, that’ll be seein’ nobody,” whined Scipio, more grievously.

The doctor grinned. “In some ways you’re incurable. Better go to sleep now.” And he left him.

Scipio did not go to sleep then, though by morning he had slept ten healthful hours, waking with the Uncle still at the centre of his thoughts. It made him again knit his brows.

“No, you can’t see him to-day,” said the doctor, in reply to a request.

“But I hadn’t finished sayin’ something to him,” Scipio protested. “And I’m well enough to see my dead grandmother.”

“That I’ll not forbid,” answered the doctor. And he added that the Virginian had gone back to Sunk Creek with some horses.

“Oh, yes,” said Scipio. “I’d forgot. Well, he’ll be coming through on his way to Billings next week. You been up to the Agency lately? Yesterday? Well, there’s going to be something new happen. Agent seem worried or anything?”

“Not that I noticed. Are the Indians going on the war-path?”

“Nothing like that. But why does a senator of the United States put his nephew in that store? Y’u needn’t to tell me it’s to provide for him, for it don’t provide. I thought I had it figured out last night, but Horacles don’t fit. I can’t make him fit. He don’t understand Injuns. That’s my trouble. Now the Uncle must know Horacles don’t understand. But if he didn’t know?” pursued Scipio, and fell to thinking.

“Well,” said the doctor indulgently, as he rose, “it’s good you can invent these romances. Keeps you from fretting, shut up here alone.”

“There’d be no romances here,” retorted Scipio. “Uncle is exclusively hard cash.” The doctor departed.

At his visit next morning, he was pleased with his patient’s condition. “Keep on,” said he, “and I’ll let you sit up Monday for ten minutes. Any more romances?”

“Been thinkin’ of my past life,” said Scipio.

The doctor laughed long. “Why, how old are you, anyhow?” he asked at length.

“Oh, there’s some lovely years still to come before I’m thirty. But I’ve got a whole lot of past life, all the same.” Then he pointed a solemn, oracular finger at the doctor. “What white man savvys the Injun? Not you. Not me. And I’ve drifted around some, too. The map of the United States has been my home. Been in Arizona and New Mexico and among the Siwashes--seen all kinds of Injun--but I don’t savvy ’em. I know most any Injun’s better’n most any white man till he meets the white man. Not smarter, y’u know, but better. And I do know this: You take an Injun and let him be a warrior and a chief and a grandfather who has killed heaps of white men in his day--but all that don’t make him grown up. Not like we’re grown up. He stays a child in some respects till he’s dead. He’ll believe things and be scared at things that ain’t nothin’ to you and me. You take Old High Bear right on this reservation. He’s got hair like snow and eyes like an eagle’s and he can sing a war-song about fights that happened when our fathers were kids. But if you want to deal with him, you got to remember he’s a child of five.”

“I do know all this,” said the doctor, interested. “I’ve not been twenty years on the frontier for nothing.”

“Horacles don’t know it,” said Scipio. “I’ve saw him in the store all season.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “see you to-morrow. I’ve some new patients in the ward.”

“Soldiers?”

“Soldiers.”