At the beginning of June, when school closed, Thea had
told Wunsch that she didn't know how much prac-
ticing she could get in this summer because Thor had his
worst teeth still to cut.
"My God! all last summer he was doing that!" Wunsch
exclaimed furiously.
"I know, but it takes them two years, and Thor is slow,"
Thea answered reprovingly.
The summer went well beyond her hopes, however. She
told herself that it was the best summer of her life, so far.
Nobody was sick at home, and her lessons were uninter-
rupted. Now that she had four pupils of her own and made
a dollar a week, her practicing was regarded more seriously
by the household. Her mother had always arranged things
so that she could have the parlor four hours a day in sum-
mer. Thor proved a friendly ally. He behaved handsomely
about his molars, and never objected to being pulled off
into remote places in his cart. When Thea dragged him
over the hill and made a camp under the shade of a bush
or a bank, he would waddle about and play with his blocks,
or bury his monkey in the sand and dig him up again.
Sometimes he got into the cactus and set up a howl, but
usually he let his sister read peacefully, while he coated
his hands and face, first with an all-day sucker and then
with gravel.
Life was pleasant and uneventful until the first of Sep-
tember, when Wunsch began to drink so hard that he was
unable to appear when Thea went to take her mid-week
lesson, and Mrs. Kohler had to send her home after a tear-
ful apology. On Saturday morning she set out for the
Kohlers' again, but on her way, when she was crossing the
ravine, she noticed a woman sitting at the bottom of the
gulch, under the railroad trestle. She turned from her path
and saw that it was Mrs. Tellamantez, and she seemed to
be doing drawn-work. Then Thea noticed that there was
something beside her, covered up with a purple and yellow
Mexican blanket. She ran up the gulch and called to Mrs.
Tellamantez. The Mexican woman held up a warning finger.
Thea glanced at the blanket and recognized a square red hand
which protruded. The middle finger twitched slightly.
"Is he hurt?" she gasped.
Mrs. Tellamantez shook her head. "No; very sick. He
knows nothing," she said quietly, folding her hands over
her drawn-work.
Thea learned that Wunsch had been out all night, that
this morning Mrs. Kohler had gone to look for him and
found him under the trestle covered with dirt and cinders.
Probably he had been trying to get home and had lost his
way. Mrs. Tellamantez was watching beside the uncon-
scious man while Mrs. Kohler and Johnny went to get help.
"You better go home now, I think," said Mrs. Tella-
mantez, in closing her narration.
Thea hung her head and looked wistfully toward the
blanket.
"Couldn't I just stay till they come?" she asked. "I'd
like to know if he's very bad."
"Bad enough," sighed Mrs. Tellamantez, taking up her
work again.
Thea sat down under the narrow shade of one of the
trestle posts and listened to the locusts rasping in the hot
sand while she watched Mrs. Tellamantez evenly draw
her threads. The blanket looked as if it were over a
heap of bricks.
"I don't see him breathing any," she said anxiously.
"Yes, he breathes," said Mrs. Tellamantez, not lifting
her eyes.
It seemed to Thea that they waited for hours. At last
they heard voices, and a party of men came down the
hill and up the gulch. Dr. Archie and Fritz Kohler came
first; behind were Johnny and Ray, and several men from
the roundhouse. Ray had the canvas litter that was kept at
the depot for accidents on the road. Behind them trailed
half a dozen boys who had been hanging round the depot.
When Ray saw Thea, he dropped his canvas roll and
hurried forward. "Better run along home, Thee. This is
ugly business." Ray was indignant that anybody who
gave Thea music lessons should behave in such a manner.
Thea resented both his proprietary tone and his superior
virtue. "I won't. I want to know how bad he is. I'm not
a baby!" she exclaimed indignantly, stamping her foot into
the sand.
Dr. Archie, who had been kneeling by the blanket, got
up and came toward Thea, dusting his knees. He smiled
and nodded confidentially. "He'll be all right when we
get him home. But he wouldn't want you to see him like
this, poor old chap! Understand? Now, skip!"
Thea ran down the gulch and looked back only once, to
see them lifting the canvas litter with Wunsch upon it,
still covered with the blanket.
The men carried Wunsch up the hill and down the road
to the Kohlers'. Mrs. Kohler had gone home and made up
a bed in the sitting-room, as she knew the litter could not
be got round the turn in the narrow stairway. Wunsch was
like a dead man. He lay unconscious all day. Ray Ken-
nedy stayed with him till two o'clock in the afternoon,
when he had to go out on his run. It was the first time he
had ever been inside the Kohlers' house, and he was so
much impressed by Napoleon that the piece-picture formed
a new bond between him and Thea.
Dr. Archie went back at six o'clock, and found Mrs.
Kohler and Spanish Johnny with Wunsch, who was in a
high fever, muttering and groaning.
"There ought to be some one here to look after him
to-night, Mrs. Kohler," he said. "I'm on a confinement
case, and I can't be here, but there ought to be somebody.
He may get violent."
Mrs. Kohler insisted that she could always do anything
with Wunsch, but the doctor shook his head and Spanish
Johnny grinned. He said he would stay. The doctor
laughed at him. "Ten fellows like you couldn't hold him,
Spanish, if he got obstreperous; an Irishman would have
his hands full. Guess I'd better put the soft pedal on him."
He pulled out his hypodermic.
Spanish Johnny stayed, however, and the Kohlers went
to bed. At about two o'clock in the morning Wunsch rose
from his ignominious cot. Johnny, who was dozing on the
lounge, awoke to find the German standing in the middle of
the room in his undershirt and drawers, his arms bare, his
heavy body seeming twice its natural girth. His face was
snarling and savage, and his eyes were crazy. He had risen
to avenge himself, to wipe out his shame, to destroy his
enemy. One look was enough for Johnny. Wunsch raised
a chair threateningly, and Johnny, with the lightness of a
PICADOR, darted under the missile and out of the open win-
dow. He shot across the gully to get help, meanwhile leav-
ing the Kohlers to their fate.
Fritz, upstairs, heard the chair crash upon the stove.
Then he heard doors opening and shutting, and some one
stumbling about in the shrubbery of the garden. He and
Paulina sat up in bed and held a consultation. Fritz slipped
from under the covers, and going cautiously over to the
window, poked out his head. Then he rushed to the door
and bolted it.
"MEIN GOTT, Paulina," he gasped, "he has the axe, he
will kill us!"
"The dresser," cried Mrs. Kohler; "push the dresser
before the door. ACH, if you had your rabbit gun, now!"
"It is in the barn," said Fritz sadly. "It would do no
good; he would not be afraid of anything now. Stay you in
the bed, Paulina." The dresser had lost its casters years
ago, but he managed to drag it in front of the door. "He
is in the garden. He makes nothing. He will get sick again,
may-be."
Fritz went back to bed and his wife pulled the quilt
over him and made him lie down. They heard stumbling
in the garden again, then a smash of glass.
"ACH, DAS MISTBEET!" gasped Paulina, hearing her hot-
bed shivered. "The poor soul, Fritz, he will cut himself.
ACH! what is that?" They both sat up in bed. "WIEDER!
ACH, What is he doing?"
The noise came steadily, a sound of chopping. Paulina
tore off her night-cap. DIE BAUME, DIE BAUME! He is cut-
ting our trees, Fritz!" Before her husband could prevent
her, she had sprung from the bed and rushed to the win-
dow. "DER TAUBENSCHLAG! GERECHTER HIMMEL, he is chopping
the dove-house down!"
Fritz reached her side before she had got her breath
again, and poked his head out beside hers. There, in the
faint starlight, they saw a bulky man, barefoot, half
dressed, chopping away at the white post that formed the
pedestal of the dove-house. The startled pigeons were
croaking and flying about his head, even beating their
wings in his face, so that he struck at them furiously with
the axe. In a few seconds there was a crash, and Wunsch
had actually felled the dove-house.
"Oh, if only it is not the trees next!" prayed Paulina.
"The dove-house you can make new again, but not DIE
BAUME."
They watched breathlessly. In the garden below Wunsch
stood in the attitude of a woodman, contemplating the
fallen cote. Suddenly he threw the axe over his shoulder
and went out of the front gate toward the town.
"The poor soul, he will meet his death!" Mrs. Kohler
wailed. She ran back to her feather bed and hid her face
in the pillow.
Fritz kept watch at the window. "No, no, Paulina," he
called presently; "I see lanterns coming. Johnny must
have gone for somebody. Yes, four lanterns, coming along
the gulch. They stop; they must have seen him already.
Now they are under the hill and I cannot see them, but I
think they have him. They will bring him back. I must
dress and go down." He caught his trousers and began
pulling them on by the window. "Yes, here they come,
half a dozen men. And they have tied him with a rope,
Paulina!"
"ACH, the poor man! To be led like a cow," groaned
Mrs. Kohler. "Oh, it is good that he has no wife!" She
was reproaching herself for nagging Fritz when he drank
himself into foolish pleasantry or mild sulks, and felt that
she had never before appreciated her blessings.
Wunsch was in bed for ten days, during which time he
was gossiped about and even preached about in Moonstone.
The Baptist preacher took a shot at the fallen man from
his pulpit, Mrs. Livery Johnson nodding approvingly
from her pew. The mothers of Wunsch's pupils sent him
notes informing him that their daughters would discontinue
their music-lessons. The old maid who had rented him her
piano sent the town dray for her contaminated instrument,
and ever afterward declared that Wunsch had ruined its
tone and scarred its glossy finish. The Kohlers were unre-
mitting in their kindness to their friend. Mrs. Kohler made
him soups and broths without stint, and Fritz repaired the
dove-house and mounted it on a new post, lest it might be
a sad reminder.
As soon as Wunsch was strong enough to sit about in his
slippers and wadded jacket, he told Fritz to bring him
some stout thread from the shop. When Fritz asked what
he was going to sew, he produced the tattered score
of "Orpheus" and said he would like to fix it up for a little
present. Fritz carried it over to the shop and stitched it
into pasteboards, covered with dark suiting-cloth. Over
the stitches he glued a strip of thin red leather which he got
from his friend, the harness-maker. After Paulina had
cleaned the pages with fresh bread, Wunsch was amazed to
see what a fine book he had. It opened stiffly, but that was
no matter.
Sitting in the arbor one morning, under the ripe grapes
and the brown, curling leaves, with a pen and ink on the
bench beside him and the Gluck score on his knee, Wunsch
pondered for a long while. Several times he dipped the pen
in the ink, and then put it back again in the cigar box in
which Mrs. Kohler kept her writing utensils. His thoughts
wandered over a wide territory; over many countries and
many years. There was no order or logical sequence in his
ideas. Pictures came and went without reason. Faces,
mountains, rivers, autumn days in other vineyards far
away. He thought of a FUSZREISE he had made through the
Hartz Mountains in his student days; of the innkeeper's
pretty daughter who had lighted his pipe for him in the
garden one summer evening, of the woods above Wiesba-
den, haymakers on an island in the river. The round-
house whistle woke him from his reveries. Ah, yes, he was
in Moonstone, Colorado. He frowned for a moment and
looked at the book on his knee. He had thought of a great
many appropriate things to write in it, but suddenly he
rejected all of them, opened the book, and at the top of
the much-engraved title-page he wrote rapidly in purple
ink:--
EINST, O WUNDER!--
A. WUNSCH.
MOONSTONE, COLO.
SEPTEMBER 30, 18--
Nobody in Moonstone ever found what Wunsch's first
name was. That "A" may have stood for Adam, or August,
or even Amadeus; he got very angry if any one asked him.
He remained A. Wunsch to the end of his chapter there.
When he presented this score to Thea, he told her that in
ten years she would either know what the inscription
meant, or she would not have the least idea, in which case
it would not matter.
When Wunsch began to pack his trunk, both the Kohlers
were very unhappy. He said he was coming back some
day, but that for the present, since he had lost all his
pupils, it would be better for him to try some "new town."
Mrs. Kohler darned and mended all his clothes, and gave
him two new shirts she had made for Fritz. Fritz made
him a new pair of trousers and would have made him an
overcoat but for the fact that overcoats were so easy to
pawn.
Wunsch would not go across the ravine to the town until
he went to take the morning train for Denver. He said that
after he got to Denver he would "look around." He left
Moonstone one bright October morning, without telling
any one good-bye. He bought his ticket and went directly
into the smoking-car. When the train was beginning to
pull out, he heard his name called frantically, and looking
out of the window he saw Thea Kronborg standing on the
siding, bareheaded and panting. Some boys had brought
word to school that they saw Wunsch's trunk going over
to the station, and Thea had run away from school. She
was at the end of the station platform, her hair in two
braids, her blue gingham dress wet to the knees because she
had run across lots through the weeds. It had rained dur-
ing the night, and the tall sunflowers behind her were fresh
and shining.
"Good-bye, Herr Wunsch, good-bye!" she called waving
to him.
He thrust his head out at the car window and called
back, "LEBEN SIE WOHL, LEBEN SIE WOHL, MEIN KIND!" He
watched her until the train swept around the curve be-
yond the roundhouse, and then sank back into his seat,
muttering, "She had been running. Ah, she will run a
long way; they cannot stop her!"
What was it about the child that one believed in? Was
it her dogged industry, so unusual in this free-and-easy
country? Was it her imagination? More likely it was be-
cause she had both imagination and a stubborn will, curi-
ously balancing and interpenetrating each other. There
was something unconscious and unawakened about her,
that tempted curiosity. She had a kind of seriousness
that he had not met with in a pupil before. She hated
difficult things, and yet she could never pass one by.
They seemed to challenge her; she had no peace until she
mastered them. She had the power to make a great effort,
to lift a weight heavier than herself. Wunsch hoped he
would always remember her as she stood by the track,
looking up at him; her broad eager face, so fair in color,
with its high cheek-bones, yellow eyebrows and greenish-
hazel eyes. It was a face full of light and energy, of the
unquestioning hopefulness of first youth. Yes, she was
like a flower full of sun, but not the soft German flowers of
his childhood. He had it now, the comparison he had ab-
sently reached for before: she was like the yellow prickly-
pear blossoms that open there in the desert; thornier and
sturdier than the maiden flowers he remembered; not so
sweet, but wonderful.
That night Mrs. Kohler brushed away many a tear as
she got supper and set the table for two. When they sat
down, Fritz was more silent than usual. People who have
lived long together need a third at table: they know each
other's thoughts so well that they have nothing left to say.
Mrs. Kohler stirred and stirred her coffee and clattered the
spoon, but she had no heart for her supper. She felt, for
the first time in years, that she was tired of her own cook-
ing. She looked across the glass lamp at her husband and
asked him if the butcher liked his new overcoat, and
whether he had got the shoulders right in a ready-made
suit he was patching over for Ray Kennedy. After sup-
per Fritz offered to wipe the dishes for her, but she told
him to go about his business, and not to act as if she were
sick or getting helpless.
When her work in the kitchen was all done, she went out
to cover the oleanders against frost, and to take a last look
at her chickens. As she came back from the hen-house she
stopped by one of the linden trees and stood resting her
hand on the trunk. He would never come back, the poor
man; she knew that. He would drift on from new town
to new town, from catastrophe to catastrophe. He would
hardly find a good home for himself again. He would die
at last in some rough place, and be buried in the desert or
on the wild prairie, far enough from any linden tree!
Fritz, smoking his pipe on the kitchen doorstep, watched
his Paulina and guessed her thoughts. He, too, was sorry
to lose his friend. But Fritz was getting old; he had lived a
long while and had learned to lose without struggle.
Read next: PART I - FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD#Chapter 14
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