 | Fire Fight Fire |  |
HARDLY had Dr. Deane Miller landed at the Dorian Club's boat-house to take on more supplies for the rest of his hunting-trip, when Merle, the pop-eyed negro boy, thrust into his hand a telegram marked "Rush."
Dr. Miller ripped open the envelope with a large, well-tanned forefinger, and this message flashed into his brain:
The doctor pursed his lips into a "Whee-e-ew!" of annoyed surprise, and shoved back his canvas hunting-cap. His curly hair — he hated it — lay heavily clustered on his forehead; his eyes ached with the sunlight and the glare of the Lower Bay; he was dog-tired all over. Decidedly this message did not please him. He turned it over meditatively, as if he might find on the other side some solution to the difficulties of a twenty-mile train-ride and a delicate operation at the other end, without even so much as a change of raiment; but the blank yellow paper offered him no counsel.
"Hang this!" he grumbled, striking the paper with his big left hand. "Hang it! Can't a fellow clear out for a couple of weeks to shoot ducks and try to forget a girl" — he groaned at certain memories — "without this sort of thing yanking him back to work again? If I was what she called me — a coward — I'd fake up some excuse, or say I never got the message; Merle, here, isn't above money and without price — but no, guess I'll have to cut for town."
Out came his watch. Twelve minutes to train-time — no, the electrics couldn't possibly do it.
"Here, Merle, you blackbird!" he commanded, weighing a half-dollar suggestively in his broad palm. "You bring me a telegraph-blank and rustle me up a cab the quickest you ever did in your life! While it's coming, fix me a basket with sandwiches and a bottle of — no, I can't even have that if I'm to operate! Well, make it 'Pollinaris! Scoot, now, you calcined charcoal!"
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