“Have you got a match?” sez Tank, lookin’ around with a start. Horace took a burnin’ stick from the fire, and Tank lit his pipe with it; and from that on Horace kept a lighted stick handy.
“How in thunder did you get to sleep that night in the gorge?” demanded Horace, who was gettin’ impatient.
“Well,” sez Tank, “after I had told this unobligin’ little cuss exactly what I thought of him, he pulled out a gun and tried to shoot me—actually tried to shoot me in his own cabin, where I was his guest. My feelin’s were hurt worse ’n they’d ever been hurt before; but still I tried to calm myself; and if it hadn’t been for my nerves, I’d have gone out into that gorge in the dead o’ night, and never set eyes on his evil face again; but I couldn’t get control of myself, so I took his gun away from him and knocked him down with it. When he regained consciousness, he was in a repentant mood; and he consented to rub my head.
“He rubbed my head a while an’ I sank into a dreamless, health-given repose; but as soon as I was asleep, the traitorious sneak crept out an’ started to run. I fled after him as swift as I could, an’ caught him about two A. M. I had to twist his arms to make him come back with me; but when I had once got him back to the shack, I tied him good an’ tight, an’ made him rub my brow again. When he’d rub slow an’ gentle, I’d sleep peaceful an’ quiet; but the minute he’d quit, why, I’d wake up again; so he rubbed an’ rubbed an’ rubbed”—Tank smoothed his left hand gentle with his right, an’ spoke slow an’ whispery—“an’ I slept an’ slept an’ slept an’—”
The darn cuss said it so soothin’ an’ natural, that hanged if I didn’t fall asleep myself, though the last I remember, I was bitin’ my lips so I could stay awake an’ see the fun. I must have been asleep full an hour before I was woke up by Tank’s voice, raised in anger. I stuck my nose out o’ the tarp, an’ there was Tank kneelin’ straddle o’ the other bed which he had rolled up in the shape of a man. Horace was standin’ close by with his hands on his hips an’ lookin’ altogether droopy.
“I raised his head from the floor, like this,” said Tank, illustratin’ with the bed, “an’ then I beat it down on the planks o’ the floor; an’ then I raised it up again, an’ then I beat it down, an’ then I raised it up—”
I had to stuff a corner o’ the soogan into my mouth to keep from laughin’ out loud at the expression in Horace’s eyes; but Tank kept raisin’ that poor head an’ beatin’ it down again for so long that I fell asleep again without intendin’ to.
The next time I woke up Horace was speakin’. He was so earnest about it that at first I thought he had been weepin’; but he was simply tryin’ to make his voice winnin’ an’ persuadish.
“I’ll rub it,” he sez. “I’ll rub it soft an’ gentle, just like you say you want it rubbed. Come on, let me rub it.” I looked at Tank with his free eye rollin’ about as though it was follerin’ the antics of a delirious mosquito; and I’d just about as soon have rubbed the brow of a porcupine; but Horace was all perked up with sympathy.
“No,” sez Tank, sadly. “You’re a guest, an’ it wouldn’t be polite. If you was a stranger, now, why, I’d choke your heart out but what I made you rub it; but not a guest. No, I couldn’t do that. I’d wake Happy up an’ make him rub it; but he allus sleeps with a gun under his head, an’ he’s apt to shoot before he’s full awake.”