“I wish to glory he hadn’t come along,” I sez to Horace. “I fear we’re goin’ to have trouble; but chances are that a good night’s rest’ll quiet him, all right.”
Purty soon Tank came back, lit his pipe, an’ sat facin’ Horace with his lookin’ eye, an’ everything else in the landscape with his free one. “You know how it is with nerves,” he sez to Horace. “You perhaps, of all them I have ever met up with, know how strained and twisted nerves fill a man’s heart with murder, set his teeth on edge and put the taste of blood in his throat; so I’m goin’ to tell the whole o’ that horrid experience, which I have never yet confided to a livin’ soul before. Have you got a match?”
Tank’s pipe allus went out at the most interestin’ times; and he couldn’t no wise talk without smokin’. We all knew this; so whenever Tank got headed away on a tale, we heaved questions at him, just to see how many matches we could make him burn. He’d light a match and hold it to his pipe; but he allus lit off an idee with the match, and when he’d speak out the idee, he’d blow out the match. Or else he’d be so took up by his own talkin’, he’d hold the match until it burnt his fingers; then, without shuttin’ off his discourse, he’d moisten the fingers on his other hand, take the burnt end of the match careful, and hold it until it was plumb burnt up, without ever puttin’ it to his pipe. I didn’t want to waste matches on this trip so I told Horace to hand Tank his cigar. Horace had already wasted two cigars, besides the ones he had given us; and I wanted him to get to the sulphur ones as soon as convenient.
Tank’s mind was preoccupied with the tale we had made up; so he took Horace’s fresh cigar, lit his pipe by it, threw the cigar into the fire, and said moodily: “He was unobligin’. Yes, that cross-grained old miner was unobligin’. Of course, I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been nervous; but I say now, as I’ve allus thought, that he brought it on himself by bein’ unobligin’.”
Tank’s gloomy tones had wakened Horace up complete; and as he started to light another cigar, I got ready for bed. “You two have already got nerves,” I sez to ’em; “but I don’t want to catch ’em, so I’ll sleep alone, and you can bunk together.” I unrolled my tarp close to the fire and crawled into it, intendin’ to take my rest while I listened to Tank unfold his story.
It was a clean, fresh night, just right for sleepin’; and it almost seemed a shame to put that innocent little Eastener through his treatment; but it was for his own good so I stretched out with a sigh o’ content, and looked at the other two by the fire.
Horace was short and fat around the middle with stringy arms and legs. He wore some stuff he called side-burns on his face. They started up by his ears, curved along his jaws and were fastened to the ends of his stubby mustache. He kept ’em cropped short and, truth to tell, they were an evil-lookin’ disfigurement, though he didn’t seem to feel a mite o’ shame at wearin’ ’em. His face was full o’ trouble, and yet he was so sleepy he had to hitch his eyebrows clear up to his hair to keep his eyes open. Tank’s face never did have what could rightly be called expressions. His features used to fall into different kinds o’ convulsions; but they were so mussed up it was impossible to read ’em. I looked at these two a minute, and then I had to pull my head under the tarp to keep from laughin’.
[CHAPTER EIGHT—A CASE OF NERVES]
“I was all alone,” sez Tank. “I had been up in the Spider Water country lookin’ for a favorite ridin’ pony; but my hoss broke a leg, and I packed my saddle and stuff on my head until my nerves began to swell. Then I threw the stuff away and hunted for a human. I roamed for weeks without comin’ across a white man, and my nerves got worse an’ worse. You know how it is with nerves; how they set up that dull ache along the back o’ your spinal cord until you get desperate, and long to bite and scratch and tear your feller-bein’s to pieces—well, I had ’em worse this time ’n ever I had ’em before; and they loosened up my brain-cells until my self-control oozed out and I longed to fling myself over a cliff. Have you got a match?”
Horace passed over his fresh cigar, and Tank lit his pipe and tossed this cigar into the fire also. Horace looked at it sadly for a moment; but he was game, and lit another.