He was duly supplied, and took one of the hickory chairs under the awning. Notwithstanding their reported depletion, his whiskers were still impressive, and the warm evening breeze played softly and fondly among the ample remnants. His mouth was concealed somewhere in the maze. His pointed nose and watchful furtive eyes gave his face a peculiar foxy expression.
“Its a good thing you didn’t strike a prairie fire with them whiskers, instid of a mess o’ puckerbrush,” remarked Bill, after a period of silence.
“I’m goin’ to mow ’em in a few days to cool off, an’ then raise a new crop fer next winter. They’s lots more whar them come from,” replied Wirrick. “I’ll git some whiskers that’ll make you fellers set up an’ take notice ’fore the snow flies.”
The mention of fire in connection with his whiskers must have suggested something to Wirrick, for, when he appeared without them the following week, he said that he hated a razor, couldn’t find any shears, and had “frizzled ’em off with a candle.”
Bill was shocked at his appearance.
“You look like you was half naked. I see now w’y you been keepin’ that ol’ mug o’ your’n covered up. You’ve got a bum face. You git busy an’ git all the whiskers you can right away!”
The next arrival was Swan Peterson, an aged Swede, who lived in a dilapidated shack, festooned on the inside with rusty muskrat traps, near the mouth of “Crooked Creek.” His liver had rebelled against many years of unfair treatment, and his visage was of a greenish yellow. A prodigious white moustache, that suggested a chrysanthemum in full bloom, accentuated the evidence of his ailment. He was considerably over six feet tall. The years of hardship and isolation had bent his mighty shoulders and saddened his gray eyes. Peterson was cast in a heroic mould. His ancestors were the sea wolves who roved over perilous and unknown waters, and met violent deaths, in years when the Norse legends were in the making, but their wild forays and stormy lives meant nothing to him. He had no interest in the past or traditions to uphold. All he now wanted in the world was plenty of patent medicine and whiskey to mix with it, and in a pinch, he could get along without the medicine.
The jaundiced Viking came slowly up on to the platform, looked us over languidly, and commented on the general cussedness of the weather and life’s monotonies.
“I ban har fifty years, an’ I seen the same damn thing ev’ry year all over again. It ban cold in winter an’ hot in summer. I eat an’ sleep, an’ eat an’ sleep some more, an’ work hard all day, an’ then eat an’ sleep—ev’ry day the same damn thing. I ban takin’ medicine now five years, an’ I can’t git none that’s got any kick. Mebbe I got some o’ them things that Rass Wattles says Wahoo Bitters’ll cure, but mebbe I got something else that they didn’t know about when they mixed that stuff. I find mixin’ half Wahoo an’ half whiskey ban some help, but I’m goin’ to try some other bitters an’ mix in more whiskey. That whiskey ban a good thing, an’ when I get a good thing I put a sinker on it.”
