“Will you, though?” said the captain, with a look of admiration undisguised, except by wonder. “You’re the first friend I ever had, then. By thunder! how marrying Ettie Wedgewell did improve you, Fred! But,” and the captain’s face lengthened again, “there’s a fellow’s reputation to be considered, and where’ll mine be after it gets around that I’ve sworn off?”
“Reputation be hanged!” exclaimed Fred. “Lose it, for your wife’s sake. Besides, you’ll make reputation instead of lose it: you’ll be as famous as the Red River Raft, or the Mammoth Cave—the only thing of the kind west of the Alleghanies. As for the boys, tell them I’ve bet you a hundred that you can’t stay off your liquor for a year, and that you’re not the man to take a dare.”
“That sounds like business,” exclaimed the captain, springing to his feet.
“Let me draw up a pledge,” said Fred eagerly, drawing pen and ink toward him.
“No, you don’t, my boy,” said the captain gently, and pushing Fred out of the room and upon the guards. “Emily shall do that. Below there!—Perkins, I’ve got to go up town for an hour; see if you can’t pick up freight to pay laying-up expenses somehow. Fred, go home and get your traps; ‘now’s the accepted time,’ as your father-in-law has dinged at me, many a Sunday, from the pulpit.”
CHAPTER XIV.
SAILING UP STREAM.
As Sam Crayme strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a plan of operations against whiskey which was characterized by the apparent recklessness but actual prudence which makes for glory in steamboat captains, as it does in army commanders. As was his custom in business, he first drove at full speed upon the greatest obstacles; so it came to pass that he burst into his own house, threw his arm around his wife with more than ordinary tenderness, and then looking into her eyes with the daring born of utter desperation, said,