Chapter XIII: Enemies Shake Hands

An hour later Tom was between the sheets of his bed, feeling, as he declared, quite comfortable, thanks, although his left arm was bound and wrapped and there was a strong odor of liniment in Number 7. The injury, said the doctor, was superficial. In falling down the shaft he had probably struck against the ladder, and while he might easily have broken a bone, he had, in fact, only sustained a bruise which, while it extended from shoulder to elbow and was already beginning to promise the color effect of an Italian sunset, would not trouble him after two or three days. It was rather the effect of the shock and the half hour or more in icy water that the physician feared, and so Tom was relegated to bed until the next morning, with stern instructions not to budge therefrom on any account. Wayne, too, had been dosed, under protest, but he had not been sent to bed. As for Jerry, he felt oddly played out, but he had fought shy of the doctor. Lame muscles did not, in Jerry’s judgment, call for medicine.

After the doctor’s departure Jerry drew a chair across to the side of Tom’s bed and lowered himself into it very cautiously, rather expecting to hear his legs and back creak like a rusty well wheel. He was surprised and relieved to find that they didn’t. Tom viewed him with an apologetic smile. “Rather a bother, aren’t I, Jerry?” he said. Jerry studied his hands a moment.

“Well, I reckon I can’t call you that,” he replied, “but you certainly had me worried, Tom!”

“I’m afraid I did.” Tom nodded gravely. “Had myself worried, too. I didn’t expect you’d get me out, Jerry; not until you heaved that beam down. I guess I couldn’t have lasted much longer.” He looked reflectively at the first and second fingers of his right hand. They were so swollen that he could bend them but a little. “Those fingers got so there wasn’t any feeling in them and they kept letting go of that spike without me knowing it. Guess that spike saved my life, for I don’t believe I’d have kept afloat. My clothes got so heavy I couldn’t stay up, and having only one arm to work with made it harder. I fancy I owe a debt of gratitude to the man, whoever he was, who forgot to drive the spike all the way in. Maybe the four o’clock whistle blew after he’d given it a couple of taps,” added Tom whimsically.

“The first thing that saved your life,” said Jerry, “was the water. If the shaft hadn’t been flooded you’d have been a goner the minute you struck the bottom.”

“That’s so. Guess I owe the fact that I’m in bed here to a number of things, including you and Sortwell and Lory Browne. How’d it happen that Sortwell fetched me up, Jerry?” Jerry explained and Tom looked thoughtful. “Mighty nice of him,” he said after a moment. “I wish you’d ask him to come up sometime this evening if you see him.”

Jerry nodded. “I’ll see him at supper. Doctor Heidler says we were right about that mine, Tom. It was dug during the Civil War to get iron for the Confederate Army. There was a furnace about three miles up the road where they crushed the ore and got the iron out of it. Then the Yanks came along and the Rebs covered the mine up with branches and the Yanks never found it. He says they mined that clay iron along the river and wherever they could get it. Says they’re still mining it some place around here and that it’s a fine ore for steel. Wonder if we was to pump the water out could we find some more of it down there, Tom.”

“What do you want it for?”

“To sell,” answered Jerry. “Maybe we could get rich.”

“And maybe we couldn’t,” laughed Tom. “I guess if there was any money in mining iron up there some one would be doing it right now.”

“Well, the Doctor says folks don’t know the mine’s there.”

“I know it,” replied Tom grimly. “And let me tell you, Jerry, you couldn’t get me back in that tunnel for a million dollars!”

“Hm-hm. Anyway, I reckon it’d take a heap of money to get it started again. We’d have to build a road and everything. How’s your arm?”

“Pretty fair. It hurts some, but it isn’t bad if I keep it still. _Ouch!_”

“What you move it for, if you knowed――knew it was going to hurt you?” asked Jerry. “Ain’t you got nary sense at all?”

“I’ve got a sense of feeling, all right,” laughed Tom. “Say, don’t think you’ve got to stick up here and play nurse, old man. I’m all right. Just find me something to read and run along.”

But Jerry shook his head. “I ain’t feeling awful lively,” he answered. “Anyway, I ain’t hankerin’ to do no running! Reckon I’ll sit around awhile.”

“I should think you’d be mighty near dead,” said Tom sympathetically.

“Well, I’m feeling some lame. You see, pulling on that rope was sort of hard. You wasn’t any feather, and all the time I was scairt to death for fear we’d let you drop!”

“And then you had to pull Sortwell up, too!”

“Yes, but he sort of helped himself; climbed quite a piece on the ladder.” Jerry chuckled. “Reckon we’ll have to chip in and buy a new lantern. Wayne, he dropped the one he had, coming up.”

“I guess that won’t break us,” laughed Tom.

After a moment Jerry asked somewhat embarrassedly: “Say, want I should read to you?”

“Read to me?” Tom’s tone expressed amusement, but then, realizing that Jerry was very much in earnest, very desirous of doing something to entertain him, he added: “Why, yes, I’d like it, Jerry. What have you got to read?”

“Reckon I can find something. Ever read about how the English folks come――came to Virginia?” Jerry picked up a volume of history and looked anxiously at Tom.

“I dare say I’ve read something about it,” answered the invalid, “but I guess I’ve forgotten most of it. Let’s have it. By the way, you’re going in heavy for American history, aren’t you? I see a new book on the table about every day.”

Jerry nodded. “It――it’s mighty interestin’,” he said. “I didn’t know what a lot of history there was till I started readin’ up about it. It’s as good as a storybook, too. Take it from the time those Spaniards came, right along down, Tom, and it’s right excitin’ reading. I’ll begin where I left off this morning, about the settlement of Jamestown.”

“Fine!” said Tom. But there was a note of resignation in his voice. Yet, although Jerry mispronounced many words and read in a queer singsong fashion, Tom was surprised to find that he was enjoying it quite as much as Jerry was, and a whole hour fled by very quickly. Then, while twilight took possession of the room, they talked over what had been read and Tom discovered that Jerry held very sensible views on a great number of things.

When it came time for him to go across to supper Jerry pulled the table nearer Tom’s bed so that he might read by the light there, freshened his pillow and added a second from his own bed, drew the clothes straight in a fussy, painstaking and awkward way and acted for all the world like a nurse or an anxious parent. Even when he had piled all the available reading matter beside the bed and had placed a glass of water on the table within easy reach and had the door knob in his hand he turned for a final critical survey.

“Ain’t anything else you want, is there?” he asked solicitously.

“No,” answered Tom gravely, “not unless it’s a basket of fruit and some calf’s-foot jelly. Beat it, you idiot! Any one would think I was dying, the way you fuss around here!”

Jerry only grinned. “I’ll come back with your supper just as soon as I can,” he said. “Reckon there’s anything you have a cravin’ for, Tom?”

“Not a thing but some food, and a lot of it. Only, don’t skimp your own supper, old son. I can wait.”

But he didn’t have to wait long, for almost, as it seemed, before he had got well started on a magazine story, there was a fumbling outside the door and Jerry was back with a napkin-covered tray. Then the chair beside the bed must be cleared and fresh water must be brought and, if Jerry could have had his way, Tom would have been fed by hand! But Tom asserted himself and drove the other away and got on very nicely, after Jerry had fixed a baked potato for him, with the five fingers available. And while he ate Jerry sat by and smiled broadly and told him all the school news he had managed to pick up and delivered several messages of condolence, ending with: “And I seen――saw Wayne Sortwell, and he’s coming over after awhile.”

Tom’s evident enjoyment of his repast was visibly affected by the last announcement, and he paused with a fork halfway between plate and mouth to stare for an instant somewhat dubiously at Jerry.

“I say, Jerry, what am I going to say to him?” he asked.

“About what?” inquired the other innocently.

“Gee, you know! Last time I talked to him I was trying to punch his head. The――the situation looks a trifle embarrassing, what?”

“Well, I reckon Wayne ain’t holdin’ nothing against you, Tom. And I reckon you can’t be holding noth――anything against him, after what happened this afternoon. So I’d say there wasn’t much cause for feeling ticklish.”

“No, I suppose not.” Tom’s face cleared and the work continued its interrupted progress. “I guess all I’ve got to do is thank him. I rather wish it had been Lory instead of him, but I dare say it doesn’t matter.”

“Reckon he sort of wished it was Lory instead of him when he started down on that rope,” answered Jerry dryly.

“Oh, well, you know what I mean,” muttered Tom. “If you don’t like a fellow you somehow sort of hate to have to thank him for anything, even saving your life!”

“Well, maybe if he does it a couple more times you’ll kind of get over disliking him,” said Jerry mildly.

“Oh, shut up!” laughed Tom. “Here, take this tray away, will you? I feel a whole lot better, Jerry.”

Jerry viewed the tray and nodded. “Reckon if you don’t,” he answered, “there’s been a heap of victuals wasted!”

About eight o’clock, after Jerry had made a trip to the Hall with the empty tray and returned, there came a knock on the door of Number 7 and Wayne Sortwell came in. Whether he or Tom was the more embarrassed Jerry couldn’t determine. Fortunately for both, however, Jerry’s presence removed some of the awkwardness from the situation. Wayne threw a somewhat fearful glance at the farther bed as the door closed behind him and then greeted Jerry most effusively, almost as if the two, friends of many years, were meeting after a long and cruel separation. Wayne found an awful lot of things to say to Jerry, and said them in a hushed, sick-room voice entirely inappropriate in a chamber where the supposed invalid had recently demolished a hearty repast. But at last, having exhausted Jerry as a subject and found a place for his cap, he made his way circuitously to where Tom, smiling in a rather silly fashion, was secretly dreading his advent.

“How are you feeling, Hartley?” asked Wayne in a hoarse whisper.

“Fine, thanks.” Tom, to prove the fact, fairly roared the reply, and Wayne actually jumped. Jerry, looking on soberly enough, though secretly amused, retired discreetly behind a book. But, of course, merely concealing one’s face doesn’t render one deaf, and he had no trouble in hearing the rest of the brilliant dialogue.

“That’s great,” declared Wayne with much heartiness. Then ensued a distressing silence during which Tom cleared his throat and Jerry had difficulty in keeping from shuffling his feet for very nervousness.

“Of course,” said Tom finally, “my arm――――”

“Yes, of course!” Wayne seized on the topic eagerly. “Gee, we thought you’d busted it. I said to Lory, ‘There goes a mighty good third baseman.’”

“What you really said,” remarked Jerry pleasantly, “was, ‘There goes the best third baseman in years.’”

“Did I?” Wayne laughed embarrassedly. “Well, something like that. I――we certainly were mighty relieved when the doctor said it wasn’t a break, Hartley.”

“Yes, so was I. I don’t mind it, really. It doesn’t hurt much. If I keep it still it’s all right.” He seemed most anxious to convince the visitor of his freedom from discomfort, and the visitor seemed quite as anxious to be convinced.

“That’s great, isn’t it?” he replied with vast enthusiasm. “I’d think it would hurt a whole lot. Jerry says the skin’s all sort of purple all the way down.”

“Sort of blue, more,” said Tom. “Guess I hit it on that ladder when I fell.”

“Must have. Well, it was certainly a mighty good thing you weren’t killed. Gee, that was a pretty deep hole! I thought I’d never get――――” He stopped suddenly. Perhaps, since he had been unconscious, Tom didn’t know who had gone down for him, and in that case Wayne surely had no wish to enlighten him. “What I mean is I thought the hole didn’t have any bottom!”

“Yes.” Tom made a funny noise in his throat. Then: “I asked Jerry to ask you to come up here, Sortwell, so’s I could――could tell you how very much obliged――I mean how very grateful――――”

“Oh, gosh, that’s all right!” interrupted Wayne hurriedly. “Any fellow’d have done it. Mighty glad to, you know. Funny if I wasn’t, I guess! It wasn’t any stunt. Rather fun, really. Going down on a rope like that. Sort of fireman’s stunt, eh?”

Tom had waited patiently and now he went on. “Wanted to tell you that I’m awfully grateful, Sortwell. You saved my life――――”

“Oh, rot!” exclaimed Wayne, laughing derisively. “Jerry did that. All I did was to slip down and tie a rope to you. Gosh, that wasn’t anything at all, was it, Jerry?”

“Reckon it was about what any fellow that had the courage would have done for a friend,” replied Jerry.

A moment of dense silence followed, while Jerry’s eyes danced behind the book. Then, somewhat explosively, Wayne said: “Sure! Well, I must be on my way. Mighty glad to find you so――so chipper, Hartley. See you again soon. I dare say you’ll be playing again in a week, maybe.”

“Before that, I think. The right arm’s all right, you know. Much obliged for coming up, Sortwell. I――I guess you understand that it’s rather hard for me to thank you the way I want to, and――and that I’m sorry I’ve been so――――” Tom’s voice trailed into silence.

“Sure! That’s all right! I guess we were both sort of――of crazy, eh? Well, so long.”

Without seeing, Jerry knew that Wayne had extended a hand impulsively and that Tom had taken it.

“Good-night, Sortwell,” said Tom.

Wayne backed into the table, laughed uncertainly, found his cap and reached the door. Jerry got up and found the knob for him, and the visitor, with a “Good-night, Jerry,” was gone. Jerry closed the door and looked thoughtfully at Tom.

“Long time ago,” he said presently, “there was a feud between the Boyds and the Treadwells, and one day Tom Boyd shot at ‘Cub’ Treadwell and plumb missed him, and Cub, he didn’t miss. And some one went ahead to break the news to Tom Boyd’s wife while the others was toting Tom home. ‘Dead?’ she says. ‘Yes’m, plumb dead.’ ‘You say Tom missed him?’ ‘Yes’m, missed him bad.’ She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she shook her head. ‘Well, I always told him that old gun warn’t no good to shoot with. Reckon it’ll larn him a lesson!’”

Tom laughed. “What’s that mean, you chump?”

“Nothing, except I’m like Tom Boyd’s wife. I believe in looking on the bright side of things.”

“Go ahead! Out with it!”

Jerry smiled whimsically. “I was just thinking that even if it hurted――hurt your arm, maybe that fall knocked some hate out of you.”