broken pane, calculating to hold it till we got through; then we went
there and bent over that deadly cheese and took a grip on the box.
Thompson nodded “All ready,” and then we threw ourselves forward with all
our might; but Thompson slipped, and slumped down with his nose on the
cheese, and his breath got loose. He gagged and gasped, and floundered
up and made a break for the door, pawing the air and saying hoarsely,
“Don’t hender me! –gimme the road! I’m a-dying; gimme the road!”
Out on the cold platform I sat down and held his head a while, and he
revived. Presently he said,
“Do you reckon we started the Gen’rul any?”
I said no; we hadn’t budged him.
“Well, then, that idea’s up the flume. We got to think up something
else. He’s suited wher’ he is, I reckon; and if that’s the way he feels
about it, and has made up his mind that he don’t wish to be disturbed,
you bet he’s a-going to have his own way in the business. Yes, better
leave him right wher’ he is, long as he wants it so; becuz he holds all
the trumps, don’t you know, and so it stands to reason that the man that
lays out to alter his plans for him is going to get left.”
But we couldn’t stay out there in that mad storm; we should have frozen
to death. So we went in again and shut the door, and began to suffer
once more and take turns at the break in the window. By and by, as we
were starting away from a station where we had stopped a moment Thompson.
pranced in cheerily, and exclaimed,
“We’re all right, now! I reckon we’ve got the Commodore this time. I
judge I’ve got the stuff here that’ll take the tuck out of him.”
It was carbolic acid. He had a carboy of it. He sprinkled it all around
everywhere; in fact he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese and
all. Then we sat down, feeling pretty hopeful. But it wasn’t for long.
You see the two perfumes began to mix, and then–well, pretty soon we
made a break for the door; and out there Thompson swabbed his face with
his bandanna and said in a kind of disheartened way,
“It ain’t no use. We can’t buck agin him. He just utilizes everything
we put up to modify him with, and gives it his own flavor and plays it
back on us. Why, Cap., don’t you know, it’s as much as a hundred times
worse in there now than it was when he first got a-going. I never did
see one of ’em warm up to his work so, and take such a dumnation interest
in it. No, Sir, I never did, as long as I’ve ben on the road; and I’ve
carried a many a one of ’em, as I was telling you.”
We went in again after we were frozen pretty stiff; but my, we couldn’t
stay in, now. So we just waltzed back and forth, freezing, and thawing,
and stifling, by turns. In about an hour we stopped at another station;
and as we left it Thompson came in with a bag, and said,–
“Cap., I’m a-going ,to chance him once more,–just this once; and if we
don’t fetch him this time, the thing for us to do, is to just throw up
the sponge and withdraw from the canvass. That’s the way I put it up.”
He had brought a lot of chicken feathers, and dried apples, and leaf
tobacco, and rags, and old shoes, and sulphur, and asafoetida, and one
thing or another; and he, piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the
middle of the floor, and set fire to them.
When they got well started, I couldn’t see, myself, how even the corpse
could stand it. All that went before was just simply poetry to that
smell,–but mind you, the original smell stood up out of it just as
sublime as ever,–fact is, these other smells just seemed to give it a
better hold; and my, how rich it was! I didn’t make these reflections