"You're wrong there; good cut's a first-rate thing—catches the women, and I want to tell you that unless you catch the women you don't catch anybody. Well, good day."
Almost as soothing as a melody was his passing footstep down the stairs. But he halted, and I heard him talking to someone who evidently was coming up. I was afraid that he had turned to come back, and I stood in a tremor of dread, when in stepped old Zack Mason, the steamboat pilot. "Hah, united we stood and divided we went up!" he cried, grasping my hand. "How are you?—first-rate, I know. Oh, this climate will bring a man out of the kinks if he isn't killed instantly. All this atmosphere needs is a few minutes' start. A man can grow a set of new lungs down here. How are you, anyway? Didn't hurt me much—made a trip since then on a snag-boat. Tickled to death to see you again. How are you, anyway?"
During all this time he held me with a grip so tight as to assure me that not even an explosion could blow us apart. And whenever I attempted to tell him how I was, or to impress him with my share of the pleasure derived from our meeting, he gripped me tighter, to hold me under the outpour of his congratulations. "Felt like a brother had left me that day when you were snatched out of my hand. Said to myself, as I flew through the air, 'he's got a little bit the start of me and I don't believe I'll ever see him again.' And last night, when I got home and heard you were around all right, I went straight over to old Jim Bradley's and swallowed a drink as long as a pelican's neck. I want to tell you that Jim's got the stuff right there in his house—been here ever since the Mississippi River was a creek; and he's got licker older than Adam's off ox. And I'll tell you what we'll do this minute—we'll go right over there and take a snort as loud as the sneeze of a hippopotamus."
By this time I had forced him back into his chair, but he showed such a keenness to get at me again that I had to remind him that I had been but a short time out of bed.
"Well, now, I'd about forgotten that," he declared. "But I don't want you to handle me after you get plum back at yourself. You are as strong as a panther right now. But that's neither here nor there. The question is, will you come over with me to see old Jim? I've got a lay-off for about a week, and I've got to have a little fun as I go along. Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow you may be blowed up. And we'll see old Joe Vark over there. Joe's got a shoeshop right down here—best shoemaker that ever pounded the hide of a steer—works till he gets ready to have fun, and then he whoops it up. He's smarter than a serpent, even if he ain't always as harmless as a dove. They started a little public library here once, and the first thing they knew old Joe had nearly all the books stacked up in his shop; and he read them, too. Come on and we'll go down to old Jim Bradley's; and he's all right, too. What do you say?"
"To tell you the truth, I'd rather go with you than to do almost anything; it would fit me like a glove; but I can't. I've had to quit. One drink would mean a spree, and that would ruin everything."
"Yes, but here," he insisted, "the liquor that Bradley keeps won't put a man off on a spree. It's a fact. It would take a man two weeks to get drunk on it, and by that time he'd have enough. Come on."
"No, I can't go."
"Well, if you can't drink without taking too much I'm the last man in the world to persuade you. Glad to see you, anyway. And I reckon you're going to give us a first-rate line of shows. Met the Senator just now and he told me. He's another man that can't drink. I can drink and I can let it alone—that is, I know I can drink, and I think I can let it alone. Well," he said, getting up and taking my hand, "I'm glad to have seen you again, anyway. Take care of yourself, and when your first show opens up I'll come round with the boys and we'll whoop things up."