Shorty McCabe | Page 4

the leak."
"Why not call in a plumber?" says I.
But you couldn't chirk him up that way. He'd believed in that leaky

heart of his for years. It was his stock in trade. As near as I could make
out he'd began being an invalid about the time he should have been
hunting a job, and he'd always had some one to back him up in it until
about two months before we met him. First it was his mother, and when
she gave out his old maid sister took her turn. Her name was Joyphena.
He told us all about her; how she used to fan him when he was hot,
wrap him up when he was cold, and read to him when she couldn't
think of anything else to do. But one day Joyphena was thoughtless
enough to go off somewhere and quit living. You could see that Homer
wouldn't ever quite forgive her for that.
It was when Homer tried to find a substitute for Joyphena that his
troubles began. He'd had all kinds of nurses, but the good ones wouldn't
stay and the bad ones he'd fired. He'd tried valets, too, but none of 'em
seemed to suit. Then he got desperate and wrote out that ad. that
brought the mob down on him.
He gave us a diagram of exactly the kind of man he wanted, and from
his plans and specifications we figured out that what Homer was
looking for was a cross between a galley slave and a he-angel, some
one who would know just what he wanted before he did, and be ready
to hand it out whenever called for. And he was game to pay the price,
whatever it might be.
"You see," says Homer, "whenever I make the least exertion, or
undergo the slightest excitement, it aggravates the leak."
I'd seen lots who ducked all kinds of exertion, but mighty few with so
slick an excuse. It would have done me good to have said so, but
Leonidas didn't look at it in that way. He was a sympathizer from
headquarters; seemed to like nothin' better'n to hear Homer tell how
bad off he was.
"What you need, Fales," says Leonidas, "is the country, the calm,
peaceful country. I know a nice, quiet little place, about a hundred
miles from here, that would just suit you, and if you say the word I'll
ship you off down there early to-morrow morning. I'll give you a letter
to an old lady who'll take care of you better than four trained nurses.

She has brought half a dozen children through all kinds of sickness,
from measles to broken necks, and she's never quite so contented as
when she's trotting around waiting on somebody. I stopped there once
when I was a little hoarse from a cold, and before she'd let me go to bed
she made me drink a bowl of ginger tea, soak my feet in hot mustard
water, and bind a salt pork poultice around my neck. If you'd just go
down there you'd both be happy. What do you say?"
Homer was doubtful. He'd never lived much in the country and was
afraid it wouldn't agree with his leak. But early in the morning he was
up wantin' to know more about it. He'd begun to think of that mob of
snap hunters that was booked to show up again at ten o'clock, and it
made him nervous. Before breakfast was over he was willing to go
almost anywhere, only he was dead set that me and Leonidas should
trail along, too. So there we were, with Homer on our hands.
Well, we packed a trunk for him, called a cab, and got him loaded on a
parlor car. About every so often he'd clap his hands to his side and
groan: "Oh, my heart! My poor heart!" It was as touchin' as the
heroine's speeches to the top gallery. On the way down Leonidas gave
us a bird's-eye view of the kind of Jim Crow settlement we were
heading for. It was one of those places where they date things back to
the time when Lem Saunders fell down cellar with a lamp and set the
house afire.
The town looked it. There was an aggregation of three men, two boys
and a yellow dog in sight on Main Street when we landed. We'd wired
ahead, so the old lady was ready for us. Leonidas called her "Mother"
Bickell. She was short, about as thick through as a sugar barrel, and
wore two kinds of hair, the front frizzes bein' a lovely chestnut. But she
was a nice-spoken old girl, and when she found out that we'd brought
along a genuine invalid with a leak in his blood pump,