You've pulled
the wrong tooth!" cried she, and so he had.
I seized a jug of red wine which stood near by, and poured out a
gobletful, which she drank. The blood came freely from her mouth,
and I feared something dreadful had happened.
Fisher declared she had shown him the wrong tooth, and was
perfectly willing to try again. I could not witness the second
attempt, so I put the candle down and fled.
The stout-hearted and confiding girl allowed the second trial,
and between the steamboat agent, the Lieutenant, and the red
wine, the aching molar was finally extracted.
This was a serious and painful occurrence. It did not cause any
of us to laugh, at the time. I am sure that Ellen, at least,
never saw the comical side of it.
When it was all over, I thanked Fisher, and Jack beamed upon me
with: "You see, Mattie, my case of instruments did come in handy,
after all."
Encouraged by success, he applied for a pannier of medicines, and
the Ehrenberg citizens soon regarded him as a healer. At a
certain hour in the morning, the sick ones came to his office,
and he dispensed simple drugs to them and was enabled to do much
good. He seemed to have a sort of intuitive knowledge about
medicines and performed some miraculous cures, but acquired
little or no facility in the use of the language.
I was often called in as interpreter, and with the help of the
sign language, and the little I knew of Spanish, we managed to
get an idea of the ailments of these poor people.
And so our life flowed on in that desolate spot, by the banks of
the Great Colorado.
I rarely went outside the enclosure, except for my bath in the
river at daylight, or for some urgent matter. The one street
along the river was hot and sandy and neglected. One had not only
to wade through the sand, but to step over the dried heads or
horns or bones of animals left there to whiten where they died,
or thrown out, possibly, when some one killed a sheep or beef.
Nothing decayed there, but dried and baked hard in that
wonderful air and sun.
Then, the groups of Indians, squaws and halfbreeds loafing around
the village and the store! One never felt sure what one was to
meet, and although by this time I tolerated about everything that
I had been taught to think wicked or immoral, still, in
Ehrenberg, the limit was reached, in the sights I saw on the
village streets, too bold and too rude to be described in these
pages.
The few white men there led respectable lives enough for that
country. The standard was not high, and when I thought of the
dreary years they had already spent there without their families,
and the years they must look forward to remaining there, I was
willing to reserve my judgement.
CHAPTER XXI
WINTER IN EHRENBERG
We asked my sister, Mrs. Penniman, to come out and spend the
winter with us, and to bring her son, who was in most delicate
health. It was said that the climate of Ehrenberg would have a
magical effect upon all diseases of the lungs or throat. So, to
save her boy, my sister made the long and arduous trip out from
New England, arriving in Ehrenberg in October.
What a joy to see her, and to initiate her into the ways of our
life in Arizona! Everything was new, everything was a wonder to
her and to my nephew. At first, he seemed to gain perceptibly,
and we had great hopes of his recovery.
It was now cool enough to sleep indoors, and we began to know
what it was to have a good night's rest.
But no sooner had we gotten one part of our life comfortably
arranged, before another part seemed to fall out of adjustment.
Accidents and climatic conditions kept my mind in a perpetual
state of unrest.
Our dining-room door opened through two small rooms into the
kitchen, and one day, as I sat at the table, waiting for Jack to
come in to supper, I heard a strange sort of crashing noise.
Looking towards the kitchen, through the vista of open doorways,
I saw Ellen rush to the door which led to the courtyard. She
turned a livid white, threw up her hands, and cried, "Great God!
the Captain!" She was transfixed with horror.
I flew to the door, and saw that the pump had collapsed and gone
down into the deep sulphur well. In a second, Jack's head and
hands appeared at the edge; he seemed to be caught in the debris
of rotten timber. Before I could get to him, he had scrambled
half way out. "Don't come near this place," he cried, "it's all
caving in!"
And so it seemed; for, as he worked himself up and out, the
entire structure feel in, and half the corral with it, as it
looked to me.
Jack escaped what might have been an unlucky bath in his sulphur
well, and we all recovered our composure as best we could.
Surely, if life was dull at Ehrenberg, it could not be called
exactly monotonous. We were not obliged to seek our excitement
outside; we had plenty of it, such as it was, within our walls.
My confidence in Ehrenberg, however, as a salubrious
dwelling-place, was being gradually and literally undermined. I
began to be distrustful of the very ground beneath my feet. Ellen
felt the same way, evidently, although we did not talk much about
it. She probably longed also for some of her own kind; and when,
one morning, we went into the dining-room for breakfast, Ellen
stood, hat on, bag in hand, at the door. Dreading to meet my
chagrin, she said: "Good-bye, Captain; good-bye, missis, you've
been very kind to me.
