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Luckily Fräulein Wasserhaus had gone off to Brunswick to visit a relative soon after Deming's advent, so she was not in Wiesenstrasse to encounter this joyous climax and Gard's preparations for his eventful journey. Elsa acted as one overjoyed. It was what she had yearned for and what filled the measure of her Teutonic maiden nature.
Not one that had not the memory of some secret kindness stored away in his heart. It was Blackie who had furnished the money that had sent Deming's sick wife west. It had been Blackie who had rescued Schmidt time and again when drink got a strangle-hold. Blackie had always said: "Fire Schmidt! Not much! Why, Schmidt writes better stuff drunk than all the rest of the bunch sober."
Duncan wondered a little what a 'square meal' might be, but he was getting somewhat used to the prevalence in the West of those figurative forms of expression which we call slang. So he took it for granted that "square meals" were for some reason preferable to meals of any other geometrical form, and answered simply that he would look up Mrs. Deming's house after business hours should be over.
Oddly enough Frau Bucher, despite all her bluntness, never let a hint out of the bag of her franknesses before Kirtley. After Jim Deming's second riotous invasion of Villa Elsa, when there had been confirmed the abject and tumultuous surrender of the two ladies, mind, body and soul, to mere money, prostrate at the feet of an American "pig," Gard experienced a numbness of heart.
Deming's "old man" was possessed of wealth derived from oil wells. But although Jim's pockets had always been stuffed with money, he had never been able to get through high school or enter college. Hang it all, he didn't take to books like Kirtley and all such intellectual boys. It was the fault of his dad and mam. They had petted and spoiled him an only child.
They seemed to share a prime joke that wanted to bubble up and over, yet held a restraint upon themselves that was eased by digs in one another's ribs, in laughs when one stumbled or hiccoughed. But Hansen was stolid as ever, and the hunters had evidently not shared the stolen liquor. Only Deming's eyes roved over the group of men as they gathered round for their cups and pannikins of food.
Rainey could not trace these mutterings to Deming's instigation, but he suspected the hunter. There was no poker; all hands were too tired for play. The ice in which the schooner was packed began to show signs of disintegration. The surface rotted by day and froze again by night and this destroyed its compactness.
They escorted him out with a military precision and flourish. He congratulated himself on the easy way he had got through with it. He must have somehow managed it pretty well. Two days later, in the evening, an attendant from the Intelligence Office ushered himself into Deming's room without announcement. He bore a summons for the next day. "Well, of all the damned fools!"
We went into camp in a piece of woods. While here quite a number of the men were taken with a sudden dizziness, and would fall while drilling. The first orderly of my company was William H. Spencer. He was promoted to First Lieutenant of Deming's Company, and later on to the Captaincy of Brooks's Company. His promotion advanced my best friend, Isaac Plumb, Jr., to first sergeant.
He called out Herein! whereat a person in uniform strode in and stuck into Deming's hands a majestic communication from which he made out with some difficulty that he was peremptorily ordered to appear at Police Headquarters at eleven that forenoon.
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