Prairie Folks | Page 2

a
childish pride in the fact of its newness.
The stranger mused. "A lovely place for a sign," he said, as his eyes
wandered across its shining yellow broadside.
Uncle Ethan stared, unmindful of the bugs crawling over the edge of
his pan. His interest in the pots of paint deepened.
"Couldn't think o' lettin' me paint a sign on that barn?" the stranger
continued, putting his locked hands around one knee, and gazing away
across the pig-pen at the building.
"What kind of a sign? Gol darn your skins!" Uncle Ethan pounded the
pan with his paddle and scraped two or three crawling abominations off
his leathery wrist.
It was a beautiful day, and the man in the wagon seemed unusually
loath to attend to business. The tired ponies slept in the shade of the
lombardies. The plain was draped in a warm mist, and shadowed by
vast, vaguely defined masses of clouds--a lazy June day.

"Dodd's Family Bitters," said the man, waking out of his abstraction
with a start, and resuming his working manner. "The best bitter in the
market." He alluded to it in the singular. "Like to look at it? No trouble
to show goods, as the fellah says," he went on hastily, seeing Uncle
Ethan's hesitation.
He produced a large bottle of triangular shape, like a bottle for pickled
onions. It had a red seal on top, and a strenuous caution in red letters on
the neck, "None genuine unless 'Dodd's Family Bitters' is blown in the
bottom."
"Here's what it cures," pursued the agent, pointing at the side, where, in
an inverted pyramid, the names of several hundred diseases were
arranged, running from "gout" to "pulmonary complaints," etc.
"I gol! she cuts a wide swath, don't she?" exclaimed Uncle Ethan,
profoundly impressed with the list.
"They ain't no better bitter in the world," said the agent, with a
conclusive inflection.
"What's its speshy-ality? Most of 'em have some speshy-ality."
"Well--summer complaints--an'--an'--spring an' fall troubles--tones ye
up, sort of."
Uncle Ethan's forgotten pan was empty of his gathered bugs. He was
deeply interested in this man. There was something he liked about him.
"What does it sell fur?" he asked, after a pause.
"Same price as them cheap medicines--dollar a bottle--big bottles, too.
Want one?"
"Wal, mother ain't to home, an' I don't know as she'd like this kind. We
ain't been sick f'r years. Still, they's no tellin'," he added, seeing the
answer to his objection in the agent's eyes. "Times is purty close, too,
with us, y' see; we've jest built that stable "----

"Say, I'll tell yeh what I'll do," said the stranger, waking up and
speaking in a warmly generous tone. "I'll give you ten bottles of the
bitter if you'll let me paint a sign on that barn. It won't hurt the barn a
bit, and if you want 'o, you can paint it out a year from date. Come,
what d' ye say?"
"I guess I hadn't better."
The agent thought that Uncle Ethan was after more pay, but in reality
he was thinking of what his little old wife would say.
"It simply puts a family bitter in your home that may save you fifty
dollars this comin' fall. You can't tell."
Just what the man said after that Uncle Ethan didn't follow. His voice
had a confidential purring sound as he stretched across the wagon-seat
and talked on, eyes half shut. He straightened up at last, and concluded
in the tone of one who has carried his point:
"So! If you didn't want to use the whole twenty-five bottles y'rself, why!
sell it to your neighbors. You can get twenty dollars out of it easy, and
still have five bottles of the best family bitter that ever went into a
bottle."
It was the thought of this opportunity to get a buffalo-skin coat that
consoled Uncle Ethan as he saw the hideous black letters appearing
under the agent's lazy brush.
It was the hot side of the barn, and painting was no light work. The
agent was forced to mop his forehead with his sleeve.
"Say, hain't got a cooky or anything, and a cup o' milk handy?" he said
at the end of the first enormous word, which ran the whole length of the
barn.
Uncle Ethan got him the milk and cooky, which he ate with an
exaggeratedly dainty action of his fingers, seated meanwhile on the
staging which Uncle Ripley had helped him to build. This lunch

infused new energy into him, and in a short time "DODD'S FAMILY
BITTERS, Best in the Market," disfigured the sweet-smelling pine
boards.
* * * * *
Ethan was eating his self-obtained supper of bread and milk when his
wife came home.
"Who's been a-paintin' on that barn?" she demanded,