To be sure, Magistrate Matt Dallam, out in the country, could not hope to be present except in the spirit, he having been bedridden for years. Garnett Hinton, the youngest enlisted member of Company B, was in feeble health away off yonder in the Panhandle of Texas. It was not reasonable to expect him to make the long trip back home. On the tenth Mr. Napoleon B. Crump was called to Birmingham, Alabama, where a ne’er-do-well son-in-law had entangled himself in legal difficulties, arising out of a transaction involving a dubious check, with a yet more dubious signature on it. He might get back in time – and then again he might not.
On the other hand, Second Lieutenant Charley Garrett wrote up from his plantation down in Mississippi that he would attend if he had to walk – a mere pleasantry of speech, inasmuch as Lieutenant Garrett had money enough to charter for himself a whole railroad train should he feel so inclined. And, from his little farm in Mims County, Chickasaw Reeves sent word he would be there, too, no matter what happened. The boys could count on him, he promised.
Tallying up twenty-four hours or so ahead of the big night, the arrangements committee, consisting of Doctor Lake, Professor Lycurgus Reese and Mr. Herman Felsburg, made certain of fifteen diners, and possibly sixteen, and gave orders accordingly to the proprietor of the Richland House; but Mr. Nap Crump was detained in Birmingham longer than he had expected, and Judge Priest received from Lieutenant Charley Garrett a telegram reading as follows:
“May the Lord be with you! – because I can’t. Rheumatism in that game leg of mine, – it!”
The excisions, it developed, were the work of the telegraph company.
Then, right on top of this, another disappointment piled itself – I have reference now to the sudden and painful indisposition of Chickasaw Reeves. Looking remarkably hale and hearty, considering his sixty-eight years, Mr. Reeves arrived in due season on the eleventh, dressed fit to kill in his Sunday best and a turndown celluloid collar and a pair of new shoes of most amazing squeakiness. After visiting, in turn, a considerable number of old friends and sharing, with such as them as were not bigoted, the customary and appropriate libations, he dropped into Sherill’s Bar at a late hour of the evening for a nightcap before retiring.
At once his fancy was drawn to a milk punch, the same being a pleasant compound to which he had been introduced an hour or so earlier. This milk punch seemed to call for another, and that one for still another. As the first deep sip of number three creamily saluted his palate, Mr. Reeves’ eyes, over the rim of the deep tumbler, fell on the free lunch displayed at the far end of the bar. He was moved to step down that way and investigate.
The milk punches probably would not have mattered – or the cubes of brick cheese, or the young onions, or the pretzels, or the pickled beets and pigs’ feet. Mr. Reeves’ seasoned and dependable gastric processes were amply competent to triumph over any such commonplace combination of food and drink. Undoubtedly his undoing was directly attributable to a considerable number of little slickery fish, belonging, I believe, to the pilchard family – that is to say, they are pilchards while yet they do swim and disport themselves hither and yon in their native element; but when caught and brined and spiced and oiled, and put in cans for the export trade, they take on a different name and become, commercially speaking, something else.
Mr. Reeves did not notice them at first. He had sampled one titbit and then another; finally his glance was arrested by a dish of these small, dainty appearing creatures. A tentative nibble at the lubricated tail of a sample specimen reassured him as to the gastronomic excellence of the novelty. He stayed right there until the dish was practically empty. Then, after one more milk punch, he bade the barkeeper good night and departed.
Not until three o’clock the following afternoon was Mr. Reeves able to receive any callers – except only Doctor Lake, whose visits until that hour had been in a professional rather than in a social capacity. Judge Priest, coming by invitation of the sufferer, found Mr. Reeves’ room at the hotel redolent with the atmospheres of bodily distress. On the bed of affliction by the window was stretched the form of Mr. Reeves. He was not exactly pale, but he was as pale as a person of Mr. Reeves’ habit of life could be and still retain the breath of life.
“Well, Chickasaw, old feller,” said Judge Priest, “how goes it? Feelin’ a little bit easier than you was, ain’t you?”
The invalid groaned emptily before answering in wan and wasted-away tone.
“Billy,” he said, “ef you could ‘a’ saw me ‘long ‘bout half past two this mornin’, when she first come on me, you’d know better’n to ask sech a question as that. First, I wus skeered I wus goin’ to die. And then after a spell I wus skeered I wusn’t. I reckin there ain’t nobody nowheres that ever had ez many diff’runt kinds of cramps ez me and lived to tell the tale.”
“That’s too bad,” commiserated the judge. “Was it somethin’ you et or somethin’ you drunk?”
“I reckin it wus a kind of a mixture of both,” admitted Mr. Reeves. “Billy, did you ever make a habit of imbibin’ these here milk punches?”
“Well, not lately,” said Judge Priest.
“Well, suh,” stated Mr. Reeves, “you’d be surprised to know how tasty they kin make jest plain ordinary cow’s milk ef they take and put some good red licker and a little sugar in it, and shake it all up together, and then sift a little nutmaig seasonin’ onto it – you would so! But, after you’ve drunk maybe three-four, I claim you have to be sorter careful ‘bout whut you put on top of ‘em. I’ve found that much out.
“I reckin it serves me right, though. A country-jake like me oughter know better’n to come up here out of the sticks and try to gormandise hisse’f on all these here fancy town vittles. It’s all right, mebbe, fur you city folks; but my stomach ain’t never been educated up to it. Hereafter I’m a-goin’ to stick to hawg jowl and cawn pone, and things I know ‘bout. You hear me – I’m done! I’ve been cured.
“And specially I’ve been cured in reguards to these here little pizenous fishes that look somethin’ like sardeens, and yit they ain’t sardeens. I don’t know what they call ‘em by name; but it certainly oughter be ag’inst the law to leave ‘em settin’ round on a snack counter where folks kin git to ‘em. Two or three of ‘em would be dangerous, I claim – and I must ‘a’ et purty nigh a whole school.”
Again Mr. Reeves moaned reminiscently.
“Well, from the way you feel now, does it look like you’re goin’ to be able to come to the blow-out to-night?” inquired Judge Priest. “That’s the main point. The boys are all countin’ on you, Chickasaw.”
“Billy,” bemoaned Mr. Reeves, “I hate it mightily; but even ef I wus able to git up – which I ain’t – and git my clothes on and git down to the Richland House, I wouldn’t be no credit to yore party. From the way I feel now, I don’t never ag’in want to look vittles in the face so long ez I live. And, furthermore, ef they should happen to have a mess of them there little greasy minners on the table I know I’d be a disgrace to myse’f right then and there. No, Billy; I reckin I’d better stay right where I am.”
Thus it came to pass that, when the members of Company B sat down together in the decorated dining room of the Richland House at eight o’clock that evening, the chair provided for Mr. Chickasaw Reeves made a gap in the line. Judge Priest was installed in the place of honour, where Lieutenant Garrett, by virtue of being ranking surviving officer, would have enthroned himself had it not been for that game leg of his. From his seat at the head, the judge glanced down the table and decided in his own mind that, despite absentees, everything was very much as it should be. At every plate was a little flag showing, on a red background, a blue St. Andrew’s cross bearing thirteen stars. At every plate, also, was a tall and aromatic toddy. Cocktails
