A Waif of the Mountains

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

On that fourth night the thirst of the fellow was a raging fever. He drank copious draughts of spring water, but all the help it gave was to fill him up. The insatiate craving remained and could not be soothed. It seemed as if every nerve was crying out for the stimulant which it was denied.

“The only time I ever went through anything like this,” he said to himself, “was twenty years ago, when a party of us were lost in the Death Valley. Three of 59 ’em died of thirst, and I come so nigh it that it makes me shudder to think of it even at this late day.”

A wonderful experience came to Wade Ruggles. To his unbounded amazement, he noticed a sensible diminution, on the fifth day, of his thirst. It startled him at first and caused something in the nature of alarm. He feared some radical change had taken place in his system which threatened a dangerous issue. When this misgiving passed, it was succeeded by something of the nature of regret. One consoling reflection from the moment his torture began, was the reward which Al Bidwell had named, that is,––the glorious enjoyment of fully quenching his terrific craving, but, if that craving diminished, the future bliss must shrink in a corresponding ratio, and that was a calamity to make a man like him shudder.

On the evening of the fifth day, he ventured for the first time during his penal term, to enter the Heavenly Bower. He wished to test his self-control. When he sat quietly and saw his friends imbibing, and was yet able to restrain himself from a headlong rush to join them, he knew that beyond all question, his fearful appetite had lost a part of its control over him. Still he believed it was only a temporary disarrangement, and that the following day would bring a renewal of his thirst, with all its merciless violence.

But lo! on the sixth morning, the appetite was 60 weaker than ever. His craving was so moderate that, after a deep draught of mountain spring water, he was hardly conscious of any longing for liquor. He seemed to be losing his memory of it.

“I don’t understand it,” he mused, keeping the astonishing truth to himself; “It’s less than a week ago that I was one of the heaviest drinkers in New Constantinople, and if anyone had told me of this, I would have been sure he’d lost his senses, which the same may be what’s the matter with me.”

But there was no awakening of his torment during the day, and when he lay down at night, he was disturbed by strange musings.

“If we had a doctor in the place, I would ask him to tell me what it means. The queerest thing ’bout the whole bus’ness is that I feel three thousand per cent. better. I wonder if it can be on ’count of my not swallerin’ any of Ortigies’ pison which the same he calls Mountain Dew. I guess it must be that.”

But that night he was restless, and gradually his thoughts turned into a new channel. A momentous problem presented itself for solution.

“If I’ve improved so much after goin’ six days without drinkin’, won’t I feel a blamed sight better, if I try it for six weeks––six months––six years––forever.”