"Show me," said I; "I'm from Missouri! It's too easy to be square. She won't pan!"
"Dat bane hellufa pile money f'r vidder," said Pete when we were alone.
"Ten thousan' f'r Brady, an' twelf f'r spine! Ay git yob vork f'r her in mine!"
"You wild Skandihoovian," said I, "that's _your_ spine!"
"Mae spine?" he grinned. "Ay gass not! Dat leg-yerkin' bane only effidence. Dat spine bane vidder's!"
I couldn't make him see that it was his personal spine, and the locomotor must be attaxing. He smiled his fool smile and brought things to comfort Mrs. Brady's last days. But she knew, and took him to Father Mangan, and Pete commenced studying the catechism against the time of death; but it didn't take. The circuit between the Swedenwegian intellect and the Irish plan of salvation looks like it's grounded and don't do business.
"Very well said," commented the Groom. "I couldn't have put it more engenerically myself."
One night the lawyer asked me to tell "the Petersons," as he called them, that some New Yorker had stuck an intervention or mandamus into the cylinder and stopped the court's selling machinery. "We may be delayed a year or so," said he. Pete had gone to the widow's with a patent washboard that was easy on the spine, and I singlefooted up, too.
And there was that yellow-mustached Norsky holding the widow on his lap, bridging the chasm between races in great shape. He flinched some, and his neck got redder, but she fielded her position in big league form, and held her base.
"Bein' as the poor man is not long f'r this wicked world," said she, "an' such a thrue man, swearin' as the l'yer wanted, I thought whoile the crather stays wid us--"
"Sure," said I. "Congrats! When's the merger?"
"Hey?" says Pete.
"The nuptials," said I. "The broom-stick jumping."
The widow got up and explained that the espousals were hung up till Pete could pass his exams with Father Mangan.
"Marriage," said she, "is a sacrilege, and not lightly recurred. Oh, the thrials of a young widdy, what wid Swedes, and her sowl, an' the childer that may be--Gwan wid ye's, ye divvle ye!"
Now there was a plot for a painter: the widow thinking Pete on the blink spinally, and he soothing her last days, all on account of a patellar reflex that an ambulance chaser took advantage of--and the courts full of quo-warrantoes and things to keep the Jackleg from selling a listed mine, with hoisting-works and chlorination-tanks!
I got this letter from Pete, or the widow, I don't know which [displaying a worn piece of paper], about the third year after that.
Here's what it says:
"Ve haf yust hat hell bad time, savin' yer prisence, and Ay skal skip for tjiens of climit to gude pless Ay gnow in Bad Lands.
Lawyer faller sell mine fer 10 tousan to vidder, an thin, bad cess to him, sells it agin to Pete fer 12000$ an git 2 stifkit off sheriff an say hae keep dem fer fees, an Ay gnok him in fess an take stifkit. Hae say hae tell mae spine bane O K all tem, an thrittened to jug Pete, an the back of me hand and the sole of me fut to the likes of him, savin' yer prisence, an Fader Mangan call me big towhead chump an kant lern catty kismus an marry me to vidder, an Pete, God bliss him, promised to raise the family in Holy Church, but no faller gnow dem tings Bfour hand, an Ay tank ve hike to dam gude pless in Bad Lands vun yare till stifkit bane ripe an Mine belong vidder an Ay bane Yeneral Manager an yu pit Boss vit gude yob in Yune or Yuly next, yours truely, an may the Blessid Saints purtect ye, PETER PETERSON.
"P. S. Vidder Brady mae vife git skar an sine stifkit fer Brady to lawyer faller like dam fool vooman trik an sattle vit him, but Ay tink dat leg-yerkin bane bad all sem an yump to Bad Lands if we dodge inyunction youre frend. PETE."
"So they got married," said Aconite.
Just the way I figured it.
Well, this lunger sleuthed me out when I was prospecting alone next summer.
"Hello, Bill," said he, abrupt-like. "Cook a double supply of bacon."
"Sure," I said. "Got any eating tobacco, Lungy?"
"Bill," said he, after we had fed our respective faces, "did you ever wonder why that Swede received such prompt recognition without controversy for his absent patellar reflex?"
"Never wonder about anything else," said I. "Why?"
"It was this way," said he. "The crowd that robbed Sile Wilson found they had sold too much stock, and quit mining ore to run it down so they could buy it back. Some big holders hung on, and they had to make the play strong. So they went broke for fair, and let Brady's widow and Pete and a lot of others get judgments, and they bought up the certificates of sale. D'ye see?"
"Kind of," said I. "It'll come to me all right."
"It was a stock market harvest of death," said Lungy. "The judgments were to wipe out all the stock. This convinces me that the vein is hidden and not lost, as you said."
"I thought I mentioned the fact," said I, "that Brady showed me the ore-chute."
"That's why I'm here," said he. "I want you to find Pete Peterson for me."
"Why?" I said.
"Because," answered Addison, "he's got the junior certificate."
"Give me the grips and passwords," I demanded; "the secret work of the order may clear it up."
"Listen," said he. "Each certificate calls for a deed to the mine the day it's a year old; but the younger can redeem from the older by paying them off--the second from the first, the third from the second, and so on."
"Kind of rotation pool," said I, "with Pete's claim as ball fifteen?"
"Yes," said he; "only the mine itself has the last chance. But they think they know that Pete won't turn up, and they gamble on stealing the mine with the Brady certificate. Your perspicacity enables you to estimate the importance of Mr. Peterson."
"My perspicacity," I said, giving it back to him cold, "informs me that some jackleg lawyer has been and bunked Pete out of the paper long since. And he couldn't pay off what's ahead of him any more'n he could buy the Homestake? Come, there's more than this to the initiation!"
"Yes, there is," he admitted. "You remember Lucy, of course? No one could forget her! Well, her father and I are in on a secret pool of his friends, they to find the money, we to get this certificate."
"Where does Lucy come in?" said I.
"I get her," he replied, coloring up. "And success makes us all rich!"
I never said a word. Lungy was leery that I was soft on Lucy--I might have been, easy enough--and sat looking at me for a straight hour.
"Can you find him for me?" said he, at last.
"Sure!" said I.
He smoked another pipeful and knocked out the ashes.
"Will you?" said he, kind of wishful.
"If you insult me again," I hissed, "I'll knock that other lung out!
Turn in, you fool, and be ready for the saddle at sun-up!"
We rode two days in the country that looks like the men had gone out when they had the construction work on it half done, when a couple of horsemen came out of a draw into the canon ahead of us.
"The one on the pinto," said I, "is the perspiration specialist."