The boys scouted round quite a bit the next few days, listening for the shot and hoping to come on what was left; but they soon forgot it. Me? I knew one side of Herman by that time. I knew he would be the most careful boy in every suicide he committed. If I'd been a life-insurance company it wouldn't have counted against him so much as the coffee habit or going without rubbers.
And—sure enough—about two months later the dead one come to life. Herman rollicked in one night with news that he had wandered far into the hills till he found the fairest spot on earth; that quickly made him forget his great sorrow. His fairest spot was a half section of bad land a hopeful nester had took up back in the hills. It had a little two-by-four lake on it and a grove of spruce round the lake; and Herman had fell in love with it like with Eloise.
He'd stay with the nester, who was half dead with lonesomeness, so that even a German looked good to him, and wrote to his uncle in Cincinnati for money to buy the place. And now I'd better hurry over and see it, because it was Wagner's Sylvan Glen, with rowing, bathing, fishing, and basket parties welcome. Yes, sir! It goes to show you can't judge a German like you would a human.
I laughed at first; but no one ever got to Herman that way. He was firm and delighted. That Sylvan Glen was just the finest resort anywhere round! Why, if it was within five miles of Cincinnati or Munich it would be worth a million dollars! And so on. It done no good to tell him it was not within five miles of these towns and never would be. And it done less good to ask him where his customers was coming from, there not being a soul nearer him than twenty miles, and then only scattered ranchers that has got their own idea of a good time after the day's work is over, which positively is not riding off to anybody's glen, no matter how sylvan.
"The good people will come soon enough. You'll see!" says Herman. "They soon find out the only place for miles round where they can get a good pig's knuckle, or blood sausage and a glass Rhine wine—or maybe beer—after a hard day's work. I got a fine boat on the lake—they can row and push all round over the water; and I'm getting a house put up with vines on it, like a fairy palace, and little tables outside! You see! The people will come when they hear!"
That was Herman. He never stopped to ask where they was coming from. He'd make the place look like a Dutch beer garden and they'd just have to come from somewhere, because what German ever saw a beer garden that didn't have people coming to it? I reckoned up that Herman would have enough custom to make the place pay, the quick rate our country is growing, in about two hundred and forty-five or fifty years.
So that's Wagner's Sylvan Glen you seen advertised. It's there all right; and Herman is there, waiting for trade, with a card back of his little bar that says, in big letters: Keep Smiling! I bet if you dropped in this minute you'd find him in a black jacket and white apron, with a bill of fare wrote in purple ink. He thinks people will soon drop in from twenty miles off to get a cheese sandwich or a dill pickle, or something.
Two of the boys was over this last June when he had his grand opening. They was the only person there except a man from Surprise Valley that was looking for stock and got lost. Buck Devine says the place looked as swell as something you'd see round Chicago.
Herman has a scow on the pond, and a dozen little green tables outside under the spruce trees, with all the trees white-washed neatly round the bottoms, and white-washed stones along the driveway, and a rustic gate with Welcome to Wagner's Sylvan Glen! over it. And he's got some green tubs with young spruces planted in 'em, standing under the big spruces, and everything as neat as a pin.
Everyone thinks he's plumb crazy now, even if they didn't when he said Eloise Plummer was as beautiful as the morning star. But you can't tell. He's getting money every month from his uncle in Cincinnati to improve the place. He's sent the uncle a photo of it and it must look good back in Cincinnati, where you can't see the surrounding country.