Part 15

“Have a drink with me,” he suggested, although it had struck him that Mr. Byers had been drinking before dinner.

“I'm agreeable,” responded Byers promptly; “but,” with a glance at the crowded bar-room, “couldn't we go somewhere, jest you and me, and have a quiet confab?”

“I reckon. But ye must wait till we get her off.”

Mr. Byers started slightly, but it appeared that the impedimental sex in this case was the coach, which, after a slight feminine hesitation, was at last started. Whereupon Mr. Langworthy, followed by a negro with a tray bearing a decanter and glasses, grasped Mr. Byers's arm, and walked along a small side veranda the depth of the house, stepped off, and apparently plunged with his guest into the primeval wilderness.

It has already been indicated that the site of the Big Flume Hotel had been scantily cleared; but Mr. Byers, backwoodsman though he was, was quite unprepared for so abrupt a change. The hotel, with its noisy crowd and garish newness, although scarcely a dozen yards away, seemed lost completely to sight and sound. A slight fringe of old tin cans, broken china, shavings, and even of the long-dried chips of the felled trees, once crossed, the two men were alone! From the tray, deposited at the foot of an enormous pine, they took the decanter, filled their glasses, and then disposed of themselves comfortably against a spreading root. The curling tail of a squirrel disappeared behind them; the far-off tap of a woodpecker accented the loneliness. And then, almost magically as it seemed, the thin veneering of civilization on the two men seemed to be cast off like the bark of the trees around them, and they lounged before each other in aboriginal freedom. Mr. Byers removed his restraining duster and undercoat. Mr. Langworthy resigned his dirty white jacket, his collar, and unloosed a suspender, with which he played.

“Would it be a fair question between two fa'r-minded men, ez hez lived alone,” said Mr. Byers, with a gravity so supernatural that it could be referred only to liquor, “to ask ye in what sort o' way did Mrs. Byers show her temper?”

“Show her temper?” echoed Abner vacantly.

“Yes--in course, I mean when you and Mrs. Byers was--was--one? You know the di-vorce was for in-com-pat-ibility of temper.”

“But she got the divorce from me, so I reckon I had the temper,” said Langworthy, with great simplicity.

“Wha-at?” said Mr. Byers, putting down his glass and gazing with drunken gravity at the sad-eyed yet good-humoredly tolerant man before him. “You?--you had the temper?”

“I reckon that's what the court allowed,” said Abner simply.

Mr. Byers stared. Then after a moment's pause he nodded with a significant yet relieved face. “Yes, I see, in course. Times when you'd h'isted too much o' this corn juice,” lifting up his glass, “inside ye--ye sorter bu'st out ravin'?”

But Abner shook his head. “I wuz a total abstainer in them days,” he said quietly.

Mr. Byers got unsteadily on his legs and looked around him. “Wot might hev bin the general gait o' your temper, pardner?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

“Don't know. I reckon that's jest whar the incompatibility kem in.”

“And when she hove plates at your head, wot did you do?”

“She didn't hove no plates,” said Abner gravely; “did she say she did?”

“No, no!” returned Byers hastily, in crimson confusion. “I kinder got it mixed with suthin' else.” He waved his hand in a lordly way, as if dismissing the subject. “Howsumever, you and her is 'off' anyway,” he added with badly concealed anxiety.

“I reckon: there's the decree,” returned Abner, with his usual resigned acceptance of the fact.

“Mrs. Byers wuz allowin' ye wuz thinkin' of a second. How's that comin' on?”

“Jest whar it was,” returned Abner. “I ain't doin' anything yet. Ye see I've got to tell the gal, naterally, that I'm di-vorced. And as that isn't known hereabouts, I don't keer to do so till I'm pretty certain. And then, in course, I've got to.”

“Why hev ye 'got to'?” asked Byers abruptly.

“Because it wouldn't be on the square with the girl,” said Abner. “How would you like it if Mrs. Byers had never told you she'd been married to me? And s'pose you'd happen to hev bin a di-vorced man and hadn't told her, eh? Well,” he continued, sinking back resignedly against the tree, “I ain't sayin' anythin' but she'd hev got another di-vorce, and FROM you on the spot--you bet!”

“Well! all I kin say is,” said Mr. Byers, lifting his voice excitedly, “that”--but he stopped short, and was about to fill his glass again from the decanter when the hand of Abner stopped him.

“Ye've got ez much ez ye kin carry now, Byers,” he said slowly, “and that's about ez much ez I allow a man to take in at the Big Flume Hotel. Treatin' is treatin', hospitality is hospitality; ef you and me was squattin' out on the prairie I'd let you fill your skin with that pizen and wrap ye up in yer blankets afterwards. But here at Big Flume, the Stage Kempenny and the wimen and children passengers hez their rights.” He paused a moment, and added, “And so I reckon hez Mrs. Byers, and I ain't goin' to send you home to her outer my house blind drunk. It's mighty rough on you and me, I know, but there's a lot o' roughness in this world ez hez to be got over, and life, ez far ez I kin see, ain't all a clearin'.”

Perhaps it was his good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker's manner affected Mr. Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken fervor. “Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish Byersh is like troo fr'en',” he said thickly. “I wosh only goin' to shay that wotever Mish Byersh wosh--even if she wosh wife o' yours--she wosh--noble woman! Such a woman,” continued Mr. Byers, dreamily regarding space, “can't have too many husbands.”

“You jest sit back here a minit, and have a quiet smoke till I come back,” said Abner, handing him his tobacco plug. “I've got to give the butcher his order--but I won't be a minit.” He secured the decanter as he spoke, and evading an apparent disposition of his companion to fall upon his neck, made his way with long strides to the hotel, as Mr. Byers, sinking back against the trees, began certain futile efforts to light his unfilled pipe.

Whether Abner's attendance on the butcher was merely an excuse to withdraw with the decanter, I cannot say. He, however, dispatched his business quickly, and returned to the tree. But to his surprise Mr. Byers was no longer there. He explored the adjacent woodland with non-success, and no reply to his shouting. Annoyed but not alarmed, as it seemed probable that the missing man had fallen in a drunken sleep in some hidden shadows, he returned to the house, when it occurred to him that Byers might have sought the bar-room for some liquor. But he was still more surprised when the barkeeper volunteered the information that he had seen Mr. Byers hurriedly pass down the side veranda into the highroad. An hour later this was corroborated by an arriving teamster, who had passed a man answering to the description of Byers, “mor' 'n half full,” staggeringly but hurriedly walking along the road “two miles back.” There seemed to be no doubt that the missing man had taken himself off in a fit of indignation or of extreme thirst. Either hypothesis was disagreeable to Abner, in his queer sense of responsibility to Mrs. Byers, but he accepted it with his usual good-humored resignation.