James Milton Sherrod said he had a peculiar experience once while he was
in camp on the Poudre in Colorado.
“We went over from Larmy,” said he, “in July, eight years ago--four of us.
There was me and Charcoal Brown, and old Joe and young Joe Connoy. We had
just got comfortably down on the Lower Fork, out of the reach of everybody
and sixty miles from a doctor, when Charcoal Brown got sick. Wa'al we had
a big time of it. You can imagine yourself somethin' about it. Long in the
night Brown began to groan and whoop and holler, and I made a diagnosis of
him. He didn't have much sand anyhow. He was tryin' to git a pension from
the government on the grounds of desertion and failure to provide, and
some such a blame thing or another, so I didn't feel much sympathy fur
him. But when I lit the gas and examined him, I found that he had a large
fever on hand, and there we was without a doggon thing in the house but a
jug of emigrant whiskey and a paper of condition powders fur the mule. I
was a good deal rattled at first to know what the dickens to do fur him.
The whiskey wouldn't do him any good, and, besides, if he was goin' to
have a long spell of sickness we needed it for the watchers.
[Illustration: MAKING USE OF A DUDE.]
“Wa'al, it was rough. I'd think of a thousand things that was good fur
fevers, and then I'd remember that we hadn't got 'em. Finally old Joe says
to me, 'James, why don't ye soak his feet?' says he. 'Soak nuthin',' says
I; 'what would ye soak 'em in?' We had a long-handle frying-pan, and we
could heat water in it, of course, but it was too shaller to do any good,
anyhow; so we abandoned that synopsis right off. First I thought I'd try
the condition powders in him, but I hated to go into a case and prescribe
so recklessly. Finally I thought of a case of rheumatiz that I had up in
Bitter Creek years ago, and how the boys filled their socks full of hot
ashes and put 'em all over me till it started the persbyterian all over me
and I got over it. So we begun to skirmish around the tent for socks, and
I hope I may be tee-totally skun if there was a blame sock in the whole
syndicate. Ez fur me, I never wore 'em, but I did think young Joe would be
fixed. He wasn't though. Said he didn't want to be considered proud and
high strung, so he left his socks at home.
[Illustration: CHARCOAL BROWN'S REPROACHES.]
“Then we begun to look around and finally decided that Brown would die
pretty soon if we didn't break up the fever, so we concluded to take all
the ashes under the camp-fire, fill up his cloze, which was loose, tie his
sleeves at the wrists, and his pants at the ankles, give him a dash of
condition powders and a little whiskey to take the taste out of his mouth,
and then see what ejosted nature would do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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