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Finally, Belding and Worden dragged him expostulating into his chair, whereupon Dibbott and Bowers very earnestly, and with much applause, expressed what the meeting really felt. After which the resolution was put calling upon the town council to confirm the agreement, and without any delay whatever.
The fiend that lurked in the bowers of Eden, and made its flowers dim with the smoke of fraternal blood, is whispering in your ear. Beware, my son, beware. Every sigh and tear caused by the indulgence of unhallowed passion, cries as loud to Almighty God for vengeance as Abel's reeking blood. Come, Gabriella, I leave him to reflection and prayer. I leave him to God and his own soul.
Of such mettle normally were the New Babylonians who took their leisured way beneath the fluted columns of the court-house into Shelby's rally; but this audience felt itself more than normally temperate and judicial. Despite Mrs. Hilliard, despite the Hon. Seneca Bowers, despite Shelby's own striving, it had come less to encourage than to try and weigh. The high places were immutably fixed.
"Euchre!" she said, looking at him defiantly. "Two-handed euchre! We have played, as nearly as I can estimate, fifteen hundred games, in which he has held both bowers and the ace of trumps or something equally victorious I should say fourteen hundred times. Oh!" she cried, with an expression of loathing, "may I never, never, never see a card again as long as I live!"
I did not witness this accident, and when Campbell reported the matter I am reported to have said, "What a silly ass!" This may have been true, for coming all the way from Bombay to join us and then immediately falling down the hatch did seem a bit careless. However, when Campbell added that Bowers had not hurt himself my enthusiasm returned and I said, "What a splendid fellow!"
"Inherits a comfortable property, goes to an expensive college, dawdles through Europe, and then comes home to play carpet knight and read poetry to girls. Why doesn't he go to work?" Bowers made no reply to the gibe. He was watching Ruth. Presently in his slow way he checked off her qualifications:
She had just come down from Burnt Basin and was not in too good a humor. Bowers, who was staying with Mullendore, came out of the wagon when he heard her and asked: "How was it lookin'?" "The spring was trampled to a bog," she said in an exasperated voice, "and the range is covered with bare spots where that dry-farmer has salted his cattle.
A virulent case of spotted fever, it was pronounced by "Doc" Fussel, who doubted that he would recover. "I'd knock him in the head and put him to bed with a shovel, if 'twere me," Bowers had grumbled when he had helped move Pete Mullendore over to Kate's headquarters. "We've got to make him talk," Kate had replied grimly. "We've got to get the truth somehow, Bowers, before he goes."
The supposed "ball-room," above, developed into a gymnasium and entertainment hall, with a rostrum and curtains, where lectures, concerts, pictured views, and little dramas might be given; and surrounding this were roof balconies, with palms, vines, and potted plants, making them into bowers of beauty and coolness.
He laid about him like one inspired; nothing could withstand his envenomed tooth. Like some savage beast got into the garden of the fabled Hesperides, he made clear work of it, root and branch, with white, foaming tusks "Laid waste the borders, and o'erthrew the bowers." The havoc was amazing, the desolation was complete.
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