Danny's Own Story
by Don Marquis · English · Gutenberg #587 · 418,644 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Danny's Own Story
Author: Don Marquis
Release date: July 1, 1996 [eBook #587]
Most recently updated: August 3, 2016
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/587
Credits: Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANNY'S OWN STORY ***
Produced by Judith Boss
DANNY'S OWN STORY
By Don Marquis
TO
MY WIFE
CHAPTER I
HOW I come not to have a last name is a question that has always had
more or less aggervation mixed up with it. I might of had one jest
as well as not if Old Hank Walters hadn't been so all-fired, infernal
bull-headed about things in gineral, and his wife Elmira a blame sight
worse, and both of em ready to row at a minute's notice and stick to it
forevermore.
Hank, he was considerable of a lusher. One Saturday night, when he come
home from the village in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket that
was setting on his front steps. Then he got up and drawed back his foot
unsteady to kick it plumb into kingdom come. Jest then he hearn Elmira
opening the door behind him, and he turned his head sudden. But the kick
was already started into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it.
And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and steps on himself. That
basket lets out a yowl.
"It's kittens," says Hank, still setting down and staring at that there
basket. All of which, you understand, I am a-telling you from hearsay,
as the lawyers always asts you in court.
Elmira, she sings out:
"Kittens, nothing! It's a baby!"
And she opens the basket and looks in and it was me.
"Hennerey Walters," she says--picking me up, and shaking me at him like
I was a crime, "Hennerey Walters, where did you get this here baby?" She
always calls him Hennerey when she is getting ready to give him fits.
Hank, he scratches his head, for he's kind o' confuddled, and thinks
mebby he really has brought this basket with him. He tries to think of
all the places he has been that night. But he can't think of any place
but Bill Nolan's saloon. So he says:
"Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all day." And then he kind o'
rouses up a little bit, and gets surprised and says:
"That a BABY you got there, Elmira?" And then he says, dignified: "So
fur as that's consarned, Elmira, where did YOU get that there baby?"
She looks at him, and she sees he don't really know where I come from.
Old Hank mostly was truthful when lickered up, fur that matter, and she
knowed it, fur he couldn't think up no lies excepting a gineral denial
when intoxicated up to the gills.
Elmira looks into the basket. They was one of them long rubber tubes
stringing out of a bottle that was in it, and I had been sucking that
bottle when interrupted. And they wasn't nothing else in that basket but
a big thick shawl which had been wrapped all around me, and Elmira
often wore it to meeting afterward. She goes inside and she looks at
the bottle and me by the light, and Old Hank, he comes stumbling in
afterward and sets down in a chair and waits to get Hail Columbia for
coming home in that shape, so's he can row back agin, like they done
every Saturday night.
Blowed in the glass of the bottle was the name: "Daniel, Dunne and
Company." Anybody but them two old ignoramuses could of told right off
that that didn't have nothing to do with me, but was jest the company
that made them kind of bottles. But she reads it out loud three or four
times, and then she says:
"His name is Daniel Dunne," she says.
"And Company," says Hank, feeling right quarrelsome.
"COMPANY hain't no name," says she.
"WHY hain't it, I'd like to know?" says Hank. "I knowed a man oncet
whose name was Farmer, and if a farmer's a name why ain't a company a
name too?"
"His name is Daniel Dunne," says Elmira, quietlike, but not dodging a
row, neither.
"AND COMPANY," says Hank, getting onto his feet, like he always done
when he seen trouble coming. When Old Hank was full of licker he knowed
jest the ways to aggervate her the worst.
She might of banged him one the same as usual, and got her own eye
blacked also, the same as usual; but jest then I lets out another big
yowl, and she give me some milk.
I guess the only reason they ever kep' me at first was so they could
quarrel about my name. They'd lived together a good many years and
quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and was running out of
subjects. A new subject kind o' briskened things up fur a while.
But finally they went too far with it one time. I was about two years
old then and he was still calling me Company and her calling me Dunne.
This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and likes to kill her,
and it gets him scared. But she gets around agin after a while, and they
both see it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.
"Elmira, I give in," says Hank. "His name is Dunne."
"No," says she, tender-like, "you was right, Hank. His name is Company."
So they pretty near got into another row over that. But they finally
made it up between em I didn't have no last name, and they'd jest call
me Danny. Which they both done faithful ever after, as agreed.
Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to lamm me considerable, him
and his wife not having any kids of their own to lick. He lammed me when
he was drunk, and he whaled me when he was sober. I never helt it up
agin him much, neither, not fur a good many years, because he got me
used to it young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else. Hank's wife,
Elmira, she used to lick him jest about as often as he licked her, and
boss him jest as much. So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally
got to have something to cuss around and boss, so's to keep himself
from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like
that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and he kind o' knowed it, way
down deep in his inmost gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have
me around.
But they was one thing he never sot no store by, and I got along now to
where I hold that up agin him more'n all the lickings he ever done. That
was book learning. He never had none himself, and he was sot agin it,
and he never made me get none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd
of whaled me fur that. Hank's wife, Elmira, had married beneath her, and
everybody in our town had come to see it, and used to sympathize with
her about it when Hank wasn't around. She'd tell em, yes, it was so.
Back in Elmira, New York, from which her father and mother come to our
part of Illinoise in the early days, her father had kep' a hotel,
and they was stylish kind o' folks. When she was born her mother was
homesick fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so she named
her Elmira.
But when she married Hank, he had considerable land. His father had left
it to him, but it was all swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted
more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers done the same when he was a
boy. But Hank, he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was growing up,
cause he liked to tinker around and to show how stout he was. Then,
when he married Elmira Appleton, he had to go to work practising that
perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing about farming. He'd
sell fifteen or twenty acres, every now and then, and they'd be high
times till he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get some new
clothes.
But when I was found on the door step, the land was all gone, and Hank
was practising reg'lar, when not busy cussing out the fellers that had
bought the land. Fur some smart fellers had come along, and bought up
all that swamp land and dreened it, and now it was worth seventy or
eighty dollars an acre. Hank, he figgered some one had cheated him.
Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn too, only they'd ruther
hunt ducks and have fish frys than to dig ditches. All of which I hearn
Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n once when I was growing
up, and they all says: "How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira!"
And then she'd kind o' spunk up and say, thanks to glory, she'd kep' her
pride.
Well, they was worse places to live in than that there little town, even
if they wasn't no railroad within eight miles, and only three hundred
soles in the hull copperation. Which Hank's shop and our house set in
the edge of the woods jest outside the copperation line, so's the city
marshal didn't have no authority to arrest him after he crossed it.
They was one thing in that house I always admired when I was a kid. And
that was a big cistern. Most people has their cisterns outside their
house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain water off the roof and
scoots it into them. Ourn worked the same, but our cistern was right in
under our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with leather hinges
opened into it right by the kitchen stove. But that wasn't why I was
so proud of it. It was because that cistern was jest plumb full of
fish--bullheads and red horse and sunfish and other kinds.
Hank's father had built that cistern. And one time he brung home some
live fish in a bucket and dumped em in there. And they growed. And they
multiplied in there and refurnished the earth. So that cistern had got
to be a fambly custom, which was kep' up in that fambly for a habit.
It was a great comfort to Hank, fur all them Walterses was great fish
eaters, though it never went to brains. We fed em now and then, and
throwed back in the little ones till they was growed, and kep' the dead
ones picked out soon's we smelled anything wrong, and it never hurt the
water none; and when I was a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living
in a house like that.
Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old, Hank come home from the
bar-room. He got to chasing Elmira's cat cause he says it was making
faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira was
over to town, and I was scared. She had always told me not to fool
around there none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there I'd be
a corpse quicker'n scatt.
So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash, being only a little
feller, and awful scared because Elmira had always made it so strong,
I hadn't no sort of unbelief but what Hank was a corpse already. So I
slams the trap door shut over that there cistern without looking in,
fur I hearn Hank flopping around down in there. I hadn't never hearn
a corpse flop before, and didn't know but what it might be somehow
injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take no chances.
So I went out and played in the front yard, and waited fur Elmira. But
I couldn't seem to get my mind settled on playing I was a horse, nor
nothing. I kep' thinking mebby Hank's corpse is going to come flopping
out of that cistern and whale me some unusual way. I hadn't never been
licked by a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is, anyhow,
being young and comparitive innocent. So I sneaks back in and sets
all the flatirons in the house on top of the cistern lid. I hearn some
flopping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's corpse is trying to
jump up and is falling back into the water, and I hearn Hank's voice,
and got scareder yet. And when Elmira come along down the road, she seen
me by the gate a-crying, and she asts me why.
"Hank is a corpse," says I, blubbering.
"A corpse!" says Elmira, dropping her coffee which she was carrying home
from the gineral store and post-office. "Danny, what do you mean?"
I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then I hadn't said nothing
about Hank being a corpse. And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing
more. So when she grabs holt of me and asts me agin what did I mean
I blubbered harder, jest the way a kid will, and says nothing else. I
wisht I hadn't set them flatirons on that door, fur it come to me all at
oncet that even if Hank HAS turned into a corpse I ain't got any right
to keep him in that cistern.
Jest then Old Mis' Rogers, which is one of our neighbours, comes by,
while Elmira is shaking me and yelling out what did I mean and how did
it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's corpse?
And Mis' Rogers she says, "What's Danny been doing now, Elmira?" me
being always up to something.
Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she gives a whoop and then
hollers out: "Hank is dead!" and throws her apern over her head and sets
right down in the path and boo-hoos like a baby. And I bellers louder.
Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing more. She seen she had a
piece of news, and she's bound to be the first to spread it, like they
is always a lot of women wants to be in them country towns. She run
right acrost the road to where the Alexanderses lived. Mis' Alexander,
she seen her coming and unhooked the screen door, and Mis' Rogers she
hollers out before she reached the porch:
"Hank Walters is dead."
And then she went footing it up the street. They was a black plume on
her bunnet which nodded the same as on a hearse, and she was into and
out of seven front yards in five minutes.
Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to where we was, and she
kneels down and puts her arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back
and forth in the path, and she says:
"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen him not more'n an hour ago."
"Danny seen it all," says Elmira.
Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know what happened and how it
happened and where it happened. But I don't want to say nothing about
that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:
"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and that's
how he done it," I says.
"And you seen him?" she says. I nodded.
"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to oncet.
But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest
bawled some more.
"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis' Alexander. I nodded my head
agin and let it go at that.
"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander. I nodded agin. I hadn't meant
to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not
meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that,
and get him scared the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, "so
long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's
the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or not?" Fur I hadn't
had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be
dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither, except they had
funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort of
a big disadvantage from the way Elmira always says keep away from that
cistern door or I'll be one. But if they was going to be a funeral in
our house, I'd feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have em every
day in our town, and we hadn't never had one of our own.
So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and
Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a tagging along behind
holding onto Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few
minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told come filing into that room,
one at a time, looking sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late
getting there because she stopped to put on her bunnet she always wore
to funerals with the black Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had
sent her from Chicago.
When they found out Hank had come home with licker in him and done it
himself, they was all excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands which sets moaning in
a chair. And they all asts me questions as to what I seen him do, which
if they hadn't I wouldn't have told em the lies I did. But they egged me
on to it.
Says one woman: "Danny, you seen him do it in the blacksmith shop?"
I nodded.
"But how did he get in?" sings out another woman. "The door was locked
on the outside with a padlock jest now when I come by. He couldn't of
killed himself in there and locked the door on the outside."
I didn't see how he could of done that myself, so I begun to bawl agin
and said nothing at all.
"He must of crawled through that little side window," says another one.
"It was open when I come by, if the door WAS locked. Did you see him
crawl through the little side window, Danny?"
I nodded. They wasn't nothing else fur me to do.
"But YOU hain't tall enough to look through that there window," says
another one to me. "How could you see into that shop, Danny?"
I didn't know, so I didn't say nothing at all; I jest sniffled.
"They is a store box right in under that window," says another one.
"Danny must have clumb onto that store box and looked in after he seen
Hank come down the road and crawl through the window. Did you scramble
onto the store box and look in, Danny?"
I jest nodded agin.
"And what was it you seen him do? How did he kill himself?" they all
asts to oncet.
_I_ didn't know. So I jest bellers and boo-hoos some more. Things was
getting past anything I could see the way out of.
"He might of hung himself to one of the iron rings in the jists above
the forge," says another woman. "He clumb onto the forge to tie the rope
to one of them rings, and he tied the other end around his neck, and
then he stepped off'n the forge. Was that how he done it, Danny?"
I nodded. And then I bellered louder than ever. I knowed Hank was down
in that there cistern, a corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time;
but they kind o' got me to thinking mebby he was hanging out in the shop
by the forge, too. And I guessed I'd better stick to the shop story, not
wanting to say nothing about that cistern no sooner'n I could help it.
Pretty soon one woman says, kind o' shivery:
"I don't want to have the job of opening the door of that blacksmith
shop the first one!"
And they all kind o' shivered then, and looked at Elmira. They says to
let some of the men open it. And Mis' Alexander, she says she'll run
home and tell her husband right off.
And all the time Elmira is moaning in that chair. One woman says Elmira
orter have a cup o' tea, which she'll lay off her bunnet and go to the
kitchen and make it fur her. But Elmira says no, she can't a-bear to
think of tea, with poor Hennerey a-hanging out there in the shop. But
she was kind o' enjoying all that fuss being made over her, too. And all
the other women says:
"Poor thing!" But all the same they was mad she said she didn't want any
tea, for they all wanted some and didn't feel free without she took it
too. Which she said she would after they'd coaxed a while and made her
see her duty.
So they all goes out to the kitchen, bringing along some of the best
room chairs, Elmira coming too, and me tagging along behind. And the
first thing they noticed was them flatirons on top of the cistern door.
Mis' Primrose, she says that looks funny. But another woman speaks up
and says Danny must of been playing with them while Elmira was over
town. She says, "Was you playing they was horses, Danny?"
I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time, but I says I was
playing horses with them, fur I couldn't see no use in hurrying things
up. I was bound to get a lamming purty soon anyhow. When I was a kid I
could always bet on that. So they picks up the flatirons, and as they
picks em up they come a splashing noise in the cistern. I thinks to
myself, Hank's corpse'll be out of there in a minute. One woman, she
says:
"Goodness gracious sakes alive! What's that, Elmira?"
Elmira says that cistern is mighty full of fish, and they is some great
big ones in there, and it must be some of them a-flopping around. Which
if they hadn't of been all worked up and talking all to oncet and all
thinking of Hank's body hanging out there in the blacksmith shop they
might of suspicioned something. For that flopping kep' up steady, and a
lot of splashing too. I mebby orter mentioned sooner it had been a dry
summer and they was only three or four feet of water in our cistern, and
Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big hairy chest. So when Elmira says
the cistern is full of fish, that woman opens the trap door and looks
in. Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him out. He allows he'll keep
quiet in there and make believe he is drowned and give her a good scare
and make her sorry fur him. But when the cistern door is opened, he
hears a lot of clacking tongues all of a sudden like they was a hen
convention on. He allows she has told some of the neighbours, and he'll
scare them too. So Hank, he laid low. And the woman as looks in sees
nothing, for it's as dark down there as the insides of the whale what
swallered Noah. But she leaves the door open and goes on a-making tea,
and they ain't skeercly a sound from that cistern, only little, ripply
noises like it might have been fish.
Pretty soon a woman says:
"It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?" Elmira she kicked some
more, but she took hern. And each woman took hern. And one woman,
a-sipping of hern, she says:
"The departed had his good pints, Elmira."
Which was the best thing had been said of Hank in that town fur years
and years.
Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself on being honest, no matter
what come, and she ups and says:
"I don't believe in no hippercritics at a time like this, no more'n no
other time. The departed wasn't no good, and the hull town knowed it;
and Elmira orter feel like it's good riddance of bad rubbish and them is
my sentiments and the sentiments of rightfulness."
All the other women sings out:
"W'y, MIS' PRIMROSE! I never!" And they seemed awful shocked. But down
in underneath more of em agreed than let on. Elmira she wiped her eyes
and she said:
"Hennerey and me has had our troubles. They ain't any use in denying
that, Mis' Primrose. It has often been give and take between us and
betwixt us. And the hull town knows he has lifted his hand agin me
more'n oncet. But I always stood up to Hennerey, and I fit him back,
free and fair and open. I give him as good as he sent on this here
earth, and I ain't the one to carry no annermosities beyond the grave. I
forgive Hank all the orneriness he done me, and they was a lot of it, as
is becoming unto a church member, which he never was."
And all the women but Mis' Primrose, they says:
"Elmira Appleton, you HAVE got a Christian sperrit!" Which done her a
heap of good, and she cried considerable harder, leaking out tears as
fast as she poured tea in. Each one on em tries to find out something
good to say about Hank, only they wasn't much they could say. And Hank
in that there cistern a-listening to every word of it.
Mis' Rogers, she says:
"Afore he took to drinking like a fish, Hank Walters was as likely
looking a young feller as I ever see."
Mis' White, she says:
"Well, Hank he never was a stingy man, nohow. Often and often White has
told me about seeing Hank, after he'd sold a piece of land, treating the
hull town down in Nolan's bar-room jest as come-easy, go-easy as if it
wasn't money he orter paid his honest debts with."
They set there that-a-way telling of what good pints they could think of
fur ten minutes, and Hank a-hearing it and getting madder and madder
all the time. The gineral opinion was that Hank wasn't no good and
was better done fur, and no matter what they said them feelings kep'
sticking out through the words.
By and by Tom Alexander come busting into the house, and his wife, Mis'
Alexander, was with him.
"What's the matter with all you folks," he says. "They ain't nobody
hanging in that there blacksmith shop. I broke the door down and went
in, and it was empty."
Then they was a pretty howdy-do, and they all sings out:
"Where's the corpse?"
And some thinks mebby some one has cut it down and took it away, and all
gabbles to oncet. But for a minute no one thinks mebby little Danny has
been egged on to tell lies. Little Danny ain't saying a word. But Elmira
she grabs me and shakes me and she says:
"You little liar, you, what do you mean by that tale you told?"
I thinks that lamming is about due now. But whilst all eyes is turned on
me and Elmira, they comes a voice from that cistern. It is Hank's voice,
and he sings out:
"Tom Alexander, is that you?"
Some of the women scream, for some thinks it is Hank's ghost. But one
woman says what would a ghost be doing in a cistern?
Tom Alexander, he laughs and he says:
"What in blazes you want to jump in there fur, Hank?"
"You dern ijut!" says Hank, "you quit mocking me and get a ladder, and
when I get out'n here I'll learn you to ast what did I want to jump in
here fur!"
"You never seen the day you could do it," says Tom Alexander, meaning
the day he could lick him. "And if you feel that way about it you can
stay there fur all of me. I guess a little water won't hurt you none."
And he left the house.
"Elmira," sings out Hank, mad and bossy, "you go get me a ladder!"
But Elmira, her temper riz up too, all of a sudden.
"Don't you dare order me around like I was the dirt under your feet,
Hennerey Walters," she says.
At that Hank fairly roared, he was so mad. He says:
"Elmira, when I get out'n here I'll give you what you won't fergit in a
hurry. I hearn you a-forgiving me and a-weeping over me, and I won't be
forgive nor weeped over by no one! You go and get that ladder."
But Elmira only answers:
"You wasn't sober when you fell into there, Hennerey Walters. And now
you can jest stay in there till you get a better temper on you!" And all
the women says: "That's right, Elmira; spunk up to him!"
They was considerable splashing around in the water fur a couple of
minutes. And then, all of a sudden, a live fish come a-whirling out
of that hole, which he had ketched it with his hands. It was a big
bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened into spikes,
and it lands kerplump into Mis' Rogers's lap, a-wiggling, and it kind
o' horns her on the hands, and she is that surprised she faints. Mis'
Primrose, she gets up and pushes that fish back into the cistern with
her foot from the floor where it had fell, and she says right decided:
"Elmira Walters, that was Elmira Appleton, if you let Hank out'n that
cistern before he has signed the pledge and promised to jine the church
you're a bigger fool 'n I take you to be. A woman has got to make a
stand!" With that she marches out'n our house.
Then all the women sings out:
"Send fur Brother Cartwright! Send fur Brother Cartwright!"
And they sent me scooting acrost town to get him quick. Which he was the
preacher of the Baptist church and lived next to it. And I hadn't got no
lamming yet!
CHAPTER II
I never stopped to tell but two, three folks on the way to Brother
Cartwright's, but they must of spread it quick. 'Cause when I got back
home with him it seemed like the hull town was there. It was along about
dusk by this time, and it was a prayer-meeting night at the church.
Mr. Cartwright told his wife to tell the folks what come to the
prayer-meeting he'd be back before long, and to wait fur him. Which she
really told them where he had went, and what fur. Mr. Cartwright
marches right into the kitchen. All the chairs in our house was into the
kitchen, and the women was a-talking and a-laughing, and they had sent
over to Alexanderses for their chairs and to Rogerses for theirn. Every
oncet in a while they would be a awful bust of language come up from
that hole where that unreginerate old sinner was cooped up in.
I have travelled around considerable since them days, and I have mixed
up along of many kinds of people in many different places, and some
of 'em was cussers to admire. But I never hearn such cussing before or
since as old Hank done that night. He busted his own records and riz
higher'n his own water marks for previous times. I wasn't nothing but
a little kid then, and skeercly fitten fur to admire the full beauty of
it. They was deep down cusses, that come from the heart. Looking back
at it after all these years, I can believe what Brother Cartwright said
himself that night, that it wasn't natcheral cussing and some higher
power, like a demon or a evil sperrit, must of entered into Hank's human
carkis and give that turrible eloquence to his remarks. It busted out
every few minutes, and the women would put their fingers into their ears
till a spell was over. And it was personal, too. Hank, he would listen
until he hearn a woman's voice that he knowed, and then he would let
loose on her fambly, going backwards to her grandfathers and downwards
to her children's children. If her father had once stolen a hog, or her
husband done any disgrace that got found out on him, Hank would put it
all into his gineral remarks, with trimmings onto it.
Brother Cartwright, he steps up to the hole in the floor when he first
comes in and he says, gentle-like and soothing, like a undertaker when he
tells you where to set at a home funeral:
"Brother Walters."
"Brother!" Hank yells out, "don't ye brother me, you sniffling,
psalm-singing, yaller-faced, pigeon-toed hippercrit, you! Get me a
ladder, gol dern you, and I'll come out'n here and learn you to brother
me, I will." Only that wasn't nothing to what Hank really said to that
preacher; no more like it than a little yaller, fluffy canary is like a
buzzard.
"Brother Walters," says the preacher, ca'am but firm, "we have all
decided that you ain't going to come out of that cistern till you sign
the pledge."
And Hank tells him what he thinks of pledges and him and church doings,
and it wasn't purty. And he says if he was as deep in eternal fire as
what he now is in rain-water, and every fish that nibbles at his toes
was a preacher with a red-hot pitchfork a-jabbing at him, they could jab
till the hull hereafter turned into snow afore he'd ever sign nothing a
man like Mr. Cartwright give him to sign. Hank was stubborner than any
mule he ever nailed shoes onto, and proud of being that stubborn. That
town was a awful religious town, and Hank he knowed he was called the
most onreligious man in it, and he was proud of that too; and if any one
called him a heathen it jest plumb tickled him all over.
"Brother Walters," says that preacher, "we are going to pray for you."
And they done it. They brought all them chairs close up around that
cistern, in a ring, and they all kneeled down there, with their heads
on 'em, and they prayed fur Hank's salvation. They done it up in style,
too, one at a time, and the others singing out, "Amen!" every now and
then, and they shed tears down onto Hank. The front yard was crowded
with men, all a-laughing and a-talking and chawing and spitting tobacco
and betting how long Hank would hold out. Old Si Emery, that was the
city marshal, and always wore a big nickel-plated star, was out there
with 'em. Si was in a sweat, 'cause Bill Nolan, that run the bar-room,
and some more of Hank's friends, or as near friends as he had, was out
in the road. They says to Si he must arrest that preacher, fur Hank is
being gradual murdered in that there water, and he'll die if he's helt
there too long, and it will be a crime. Only they didn't come into the
yard to say it amongst us religious folks. But Si, he says he dassent
arrest no one because it is outside the town copperation; but he's
considerable worried too about what his duty orter be.
Pretty soon the gang that Mrs. Cartwright has rounded up at the
prayer-meeting comes stringing along in. They had all brung their hymn
books with them, and they sung. The hull town was there then, and they
all sung, and they sung revival hymns over Hank. And Hank he would jest
cuss and cuss. Every time he busted out into another cussing spell they
would start another hymn. Finally the men out in the front yard got
warmed up too, and begun to sing, all but Bill Nolan's crowd, and they
give Hank up for lost and went away disgusted.
The first thing you knowed they was a reg'lar revival meeting there, and
that preacher was preaching a reg'lar revival sermon. I been to more'n
one camp meeting, but fur jest natcherally taking holt of the hull human
race by the slack of its pants and dangling of it over hell-fire, I
never hearn nothing could come up to that there sermon. Two or three old
backsliders in the crowd come right up and repented all over agin on the
spot. The hull kit and biling of 'em got the power good and hard, like
they does at camp meetings and revivals. But Hank, he only cussed. He
was obstinate, Hank was, and his pride and dander had riz up. Finally he
says:
"You're taking a ornery, low-down advantage o' me, you are. Let me out'n
this here cistern and I'll show you who'll stick it out longest on dry
land, dern your religious hides!"
Some of the folks there hadn't had no suppers, so after all the other
sinners but Hank had either got converted or else sneaked away, some of
the women says why not make a kind of love feast out of it, and bring
some vittles, like they does to church sociables. Because it seems
likely Satan is going to wrastle all night long, like he done with the
angel Jacob, and they ought to be prepared. So they done it. They went
and they come back with vittles and they made up hot coffee and they
feasted that preacher and theirselves and Elmira and me, all right in
Hank's hearing.
And Hank was getting hungry himself. And he was cold in that water. And
the fish was nibbling at him. And he was getting cussed out and weak and
soaked full of despair. And they wasn't no way fur him to set down and
rest. And he was scared of getting a cramp in his legs, and sinking down
with his head under water and being drownded. He said afterward he'd of
done the last with pleasure if they was any way of suing that crowd fur
murder. So along about ten o'clock he sings out:
"I give in, gosh dern ye! I give in. Let me out and I'll sign your pesky
pledge!"
Brother Cartwright was fur getting a ladder and letting him climb out
right away. But Elmira, she says:
"Don't you do it, Brother Cartwright; don't you do it. You don't know
Hank Walters like I does. If he oncet gets out o' there before he's
signed that pledge, he won't never sign it."
So they fixed it up that Brother Cartwright was to write out a pledge
on the inside leaf of the Bible, and tie the Bible onto a string, and a
lead pencil onto another string, and let the strings down to Hank,
and he was to make his mark, fur he couldn't write, and they was to be
pulled up agin. Hank, he says all right, and they done it. But jest as
Hank was making his mark on the leaf of the book, that preacher done
what I has always thought was a mean trick. He was lying on the floor
with his head and shoulders into that hole as fur as he could, holding
a lantern way down into it, so as Hank could see. And jest as Hank made
that mark he spoke some words over him, and then he says:
"Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and you are a member of the
church."
You'd a thought Hank would of broke out cussing agin at being took
unexpected that-a-way, fur he hadn't really agreed to nothing but
signing the pledge. But nary a cuss. He jest says: "Now, you get that
ladder."
They got it, and he clumb up into the kitchen, dripping and shivering.
"You went and baptized me in that water?" he asts the preacher. The
preacher says he has.
"Then," says Hank, "you done a low-down trick on me. You knowed I has
made my brags I never jined no church nor never would jine. You knowed
I was proud of that. You knowed that it was my glory to tell of it, and
that I set a heap of store by it in every way. And now you've went and
took it away from me! You never fought it out fair and square, neither,
man playing to outlast man, like you done with this here pledge, but you
sneaked it in on me when I wasn't looking."
They was a lot of men in that crowd that thought the preacher had went
too far, and sympathized with Hank. The way he done about that hurt
Brother Cartwright in our town, and they was a split in the church,
because some said it wasn't reg'lar and wasn't binding. He lost his
job after a while and become an evangelist. Which it don't make no
difference what one of them does, nohow.
But Hank, he always thought he had been baptized reg'lar. And he never
was the same afterward. He had made his life-long brags, and his pride
was broke in that there one pertic'ler spot. And he sorrered and grieved
over it a good 'eal, and got grouchier and grouchier and meaner and
meaner, and lickered oftener, if anything. Signing the pledge couldn't
hold Hank. He was worse in every way after that night in the cistern,
and took to lamming me harder and harder.
CHAPTER III
Well, all the lammings Hank laid on never done me any good. It seemed
like I was jest natcherally cut out to have no success in life, and no
amount of whaling could change it, though Hank, he was faithful. Before
I was twelve years old the hull town had seen it, and they wasn't
nothing else expected of me except not to be any good.
That had its handy sides to it, too. They was lots of kids there that
had to go to school, but Hank, he never would of let me done that if I
had ast him, and I never asted. And they was lots of kids considerably
bothered all the time with their parents and relations. They made 'em go
to Sunday School, and wash up reg'lar all over on Saturday nights, and
put on shoes and stockings part of the time, even in the summer, and
some of 'em had to ast to go in swimming, and the hull thing was
a continuous trouble and privation to 'em. But they wasn't nothing
perdicted of me, and I done like it was perdicted. Everybody 'lowed
from the start that Hank would of made trash out'n me, even if I hadn't
showed all the signs of being trash anyhow. And if they was devilment
anywhere about that town they all says, "Danny, he done it." And like as
not I has. So I gets to be what you might call an outcast. All the kids
whose folks ain't trash, their mothers tells 'em not to run with me no
more. Which they done it all the more fur that reason, on the sly, and
it makes me more important with them.
But when I gets a little bigger, all that makes me feel kind o' bad
sometimes. It ain't so handy then. Fur folks gets to saying, when I
would come around:
"Danny, what do YOU want?"
And if I says, "Nothing," they would say:
"Well, then, you get out o' here!"
Which they needn't of been suspicioning nothing like they pertended they
did, fur I never stole nothing more'n worter millions and mush millions
and such truck, and mebby now and then a chicken us kids use to roast in
the woods on Sundays, and jest as like as not it was one of Hank's hens
then, which I figgered I'd earnt it.
Fur Hank, he had streaks when he'd work me considerable hard. He never
give me any money fur it. He loafed a lot too, and when he'd loaf I'd
loaf. But I did pick up right smart of handiness with tools around that
there shop of his'n, and if he'd ever of used me right I might of turned
into a purty fair blacksmith. But it wasn't no use trying to work fur
Hank. When I was about fifteen, times is right bad around the house fur
a spell, and Elmira is working purty hard, and I thinks to myself:
"Well, these folks has kind o' brung you up, and you ain't never done
more'n Hank made you do. Mebby you orter stick to work a little more
when they's a job in the shop, even if Hank don't."
Which I tried it fur about two or three years, doing as much work around
the shop as Hank done and mebby more. But it wasn't no use. One day
when I'm about eighteen, I seen awful plain I'll have to light out from
there. They was a circus come to town that day. I says to Hank:
"Hank, they is a circus this afternoon and agin to-night."
"So I has hearn," says Hank.
"Are you going to it?" says I.
"I mout," says Hank, "and then agin I moutn't. I don't see as it's no
consarns of yourn, nohow." I knowed he was going, though. Hank, he never
missed a circus.
"Well," I says, "they wasn't no harm to ast, was they?"
"Well, you've asted, ain't you?" says Hank.
"Well, then," says I, "I'd like to go to that there circus myself."
"They ain't no use in me saying fur you not to go," says Hank, "fur you
would go anyhow. You always does go off when you is needed."
"But I ain't got no money," I says, "and I was going to ast you could
you spare me half a dollar?"
"Great Jehosephat!" says Hank, "but ain't you getting stuck up! What's
the matter of you crawling in under the tent like you always done? First
thing I know you'll be wanting a pair of these here yaller shoes and a
stove-pipe hat."
"No," says I, "I ain't no dude, Hank, and you know it. But they is
always things about a circus to spend money on besides jest the circus
herself. They is the side show, fur instance, and they is the grand
concert afterward. I calkelated I'd take 'em all in this year--the hull
dern thing, jest fur oncet."
Hank, he looks at me like I'd asted fur a house 'n' lot, or a million
dollars, or something like that. But he don't say nothing. He jest
snorts.
"Hank," I says, "I been doing right smart work around the shop fur two,
three years now. If you wasn't loafing so much you'd a noticed it more.
And I ain't never ast fur a cent of pay fur it, nor--"
"You ain't wuth no pay," says Hank. "You ain't wuth nothing but to eat
vittles and wear out clothes."
"Well," I says, "I figger I earn my vittles and a good 'eal more. And as
fur as clothes goes, I never had none but what Elmira made out'n yourn."
"Who brung you up?" asts Hank.
"You done it," says I, "and by your own say-so you done a dern poor job
at it."
"You go to that there circus," says Hank, a-flaring up, "and I'll
lambaste you up to a inch of your life. So fur as handing out money fur
you to sling it to the dogs, I ain't no bank, and if I was I ain't no
ijut. But you jest let me hear of you even going nigh that circus lot
and all the lammings you has ever got, rolled into one, won't be
a measly little sarcumstance to what you WILL get. They ain't no
leather-faced young upstart with weepin'-willow hair going to throw up
to me how I brung him up. That's gratitood fur you, that is!" says Hank.
"If it hadn't of been fur me giving you a home when I found you first,
where would you of been now?"
"Well," I says, "I might of been a good 'eal better off. If you hadn't
of took me in the Alexanderses would of, and then I wouldn't of been
kep' out of school and growed up a ignoramus like you is."
"I never had no trouble keeping you away from school, I notice," says
Hank, with a snort. "This is the first I ever hearn of you wanting to go
there."
Which was true in one way, and a lie in another. I hadn't never wanted
to go till lately, but he'd of lammed me if I had of wanted to. He
always said he would. And now I was too big and knowed it.
Well, Hank, he never give me no money, so I watches my chancet that
afternoon and slips in under the tent the same as always. And I lays low
under them green benches and wiggled through when I seen a good chancet.
The first person I seen was Hank. Of course he seen me, and he shook
his fist at me in a promising kind of way, and they wasn't no trouble
figgering out what he meant. Fur a while I didn't enjoy that circus to
no extent. Fur I was thinking that if Hank tries to lick me fur it I'll
fight him back this time, which I hadn't never fit him back much yet fur
fear he'd pick up something iron around the shop and jest natcherally
lay me cold with it.
I got home before Hank did. It was nigh sundown, and I was waiting in
the door of the shop fur Elmira to holler vittles is ready, and Hank
come along. He didn't waste no time. He steps inside the shop and he
takes down a strap and he says:
"You come here and take off your shirt."
But I jest moves away. Hank, he runs in on me, and he swings his strap.
I throwed up my arm, and it cut me acrost the knuckles. I run in on him,
and he dropped the strap and fetched me an openhanded smack plumb on the
mouth that jarred my head back and like to of busted it loose. Then I
got right mad, and I run in on him agin, and this time I got to him, and
wrastled with him.
Well, sir, I never was so surprised in all my life before. Fur I hadn't
had holt on him more'n a minute before I seen I'm stronger than Hank
is. I throwed him, and he hit the ground with considerable of a jar, and
then I put my knee in the pit of his stomach and churned it a couple.
And I thinks to myself what a fool I must of been fur better'n a year,
because I might of done this any time. I got him by the ears and I
slammed his head into the gravel a few times, him a-reaching fur my
throat, and a-pounding me with his fists, but me a-taking the licks and
keeping holt. And I had a mighty contented time fur a few minutes there
on top of Hank, chuckling to myself, and batting him one every now and
then fur luck, and trying to make him holler it's enough. But Hank is
stubborn and he won't holler. And purty soon I thinks, what am I going
to do? Fur Hank will be so mad when I let him up he'll jest natcherally
kill me, without I kill him. And I was scared, because I don't want
neither one of them things to happen. Whilst I was thinking it over,
and getting scareder and scareder, and banging Hank's head harder and
harder, some one grabs me from behind.
They was two of them, and one gets my collar and one gets the seat of
my pants, and they drug me off'n him. Hank, he gets up, and then he sets
down sudden on a horse block and wipes his face on his sleeve, which
they was considerable blood come onto the sleeve.
I looks around to see who has had holt of me, and it is two men. One
of them looks about seven feet tall, on account of a big plug hat and a
long white linen duster, and has a beautiful red beard. In the road
they is a big stout road wagon, with a canopy top over it, pulled by two
hosses, and on the wagon box they is a strip of canvas. Which I couldn't
read then what was wrote on the canvas, but I learnt later it said, in
big print:
SIWASH INDIAN SAGRAW. NATURE'S UNIVERSAL MEDICINAL SPECIFIC. DISCOVERED
BY DR. HARTLEY L. KIRBY AMONG THE ABORIGINES OF OREGON.
On account of being so busy, neither Hank nor me had hearn the wagon
come along the road and stop. The big man in the plug hat, he says, or
they was words to that effect, jest as serious:
"Why are you mauling the aged gent?"
"Well," says I, "he needed it considerable."
"But," says he, still more solemn, "the good book says to honour thy
father and thy mother."
"Well," I says, "mebby it does and mebby it don't. But HE ain't my
father, nohow. And he ain't been getting no more'n his come-uppings."
"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," the big man remarks, very serious.
Hank, he riz up then, and he says:
"Mister, be you a preacher? 'Cause if you be, the sooner you have druv
on, the better fur ye. I got a grudge agin all preachers."
That feller, he jest looks Hank over ca'am and easy and slow before he
answers, and he wrinkles up his face like he never seen anything like
Hank before. Then he fetches a kind o' aggervating smile, and he says:
"Beneath a shady chestnut tree
The village blacksmith stands.
The smith, a pleasant soul is he
With warts upon his hands--"
He stares at Hank hard and solemn and serious while he is saying that
poetry at him. Hank fidgets and turns his eyes away. But the feller
touches him on the breast with his finger, and makes him look at him.
"My honest friend," says the feller, "I am NOT a preacher. Not right
now, anyhow. No! My mission is spreading the glad tidings of good
health. Look at me," and he swells his chest up, and keeps a-holt
of Hank's eyes with his'n. "You behold before you the discoverer,
manufacturer, and proprietor of Siwash Indian Sagraw, nature's own
remedy for Bright's Disease, rheumatism, liver and kidney trouble,
catarrh, consumption, bronchitis, ring-worm, erysipelas, lung fever,
typhoid, croup, dandruff, stomach trouble, dyspepsia--" And they was a
lot more of 'em.
"Well," says Hank, sort o' backing up as the big man come nearer and
nearer to him, jest natcherally bully-ragging him with them eyes, "I got
none of them there complaints."
The doctor he kind o' snarls, and he brings his hand down hard on Hank's
shoulder, and he says:
"There are more things betwixt Dan and Beersheba than was ever dreamt
of in thy sagacity, Romeo!" Or they was words to that effect, fur that
doctor was jest plumb full of Scripter quotations. And he sings out
sudden, giving Hank a shove that nearly pushes him over: "Man alive!" he
yells, "you DON'T KNOW what disease you may have! Many's the strong man
I've seen rejoicing in his strength at the dawn of day cut down like the
grass in the field before sunset," he says.
Hank, he's trying to look the other way, but that doctor won't let his
eyes wiggle away from his'n. He says very sharp:
"Stick out your tongue!"
Hank, he sticks her out.
The doctor, he takes some glasses out'n his pocket and puts 'em on, and
he fetches a long look at her. Then he opens his mouth like he was going
to say something, and shuts it agin like his feelings won't let him. He
puts his arm across Hank's shoulder affectionate and sad, and then he
turns his head away like they was some one dead in the fambly. Finally,
he says:
"I thought so. I saw it. I saw it in your eyes when I first drove up. I
hope," he says, very mournful, "I haven't come too late!"
Hank, he turns pale. I was getting sorry fur Hank myself. I seen now why
I licked him so easy. Any one could of told from that doctor's actions
Hank was as good as a dead man already. But Hank, he makes a big effort,
and he says:
"Shucks! I'm sixty-eight years old, doctor, and I hain't never had a
sick day in my life." But he was awful uneasy too.
The doctor, he says to the feller with him: "Looey, bring me one of the
sample size."
Looey brung it, the doctor never taking his eyes off'n Hank. He handed
it to Hank, and he says:
"A whiskey glass full three times a day, my friend, and there is a good
chance for even you. I give it to you, without money and without price."
"But what have I got?" asts Hank.
"You have spinal meningitis," says the doctor, never batting an eye.
"Will this here cure me?" says Hank.
"It'll cure ANYTHING," says the doctor.
Hank he says, "Shucks," agin, but he took the bottle and pulled the cork
out and smelt it, right thoughtful. And what them fellers had stopped
at our place fur was to have the shoe of the nigh hoss's off hind foot
nailed on, which it was most ready to drop off. Hank, he done it fur a
regulation, dollar-size bottle and they druv on into the village.
Right after supper I goes down town. They was in front of Smith's Palace
Hotel. They was jest starting up when I got there. Well, sir, that
doctor was a sight. He didn't have his duster onto him, but his
stove-pipe hat was, and one of them long Prince Alferd coats nearly to
his knees, and shiny shoes, but his vest was cut out holler fur to show
his biled shirt, and it was the pinkest shirt I ever see, and in the
middle of that they was a diamond as big as Uncle Pat Hickey's wen,
what was one of the town sights. No, sir; they never was a man with more
genuine fashionableness sticking out all over him than Doctor Kirby. He
jest fairly wallered in it.
I hadn't paid no pertic'ler attention to the other feller with him when
they stopped at our place, excepting to notice he was kind of slim
and blackhaired and funny complected. But I seen now I orter of looked
closeter. Fur I'll be dad-binged if he weren't an Injun! There he set,
under that there gasoline lamp the wagon was all lit up with, with
moccasins on, and beads and shells all over him, and the gaudiest turkey
tail of feathers rainbowing down from his head you ever see, and a
blanket around him that was gaudier than the feathers. And he shined and
rattled every time he moved.
That wagon was a hull opry house to itself. It was rolled out in front
of Smith's Palace Hotel without the hosses. The front part was filled
with bottles of medicine. The doctor, he begun business by taking out a
long brass horn and tooting on it. They was about a dozen come, but they
was mostly boys. Then him and the Injun picked up some banjoes and sung
a comic song out loud and clear. And they was another dozen or so
come. And they sung another song, and Pop Wilkins, he closed up the
post-office and come over and the other two veterans of the Grand Army
of the Republicans that always plays checkers in there nights come along
with him. But it wasn't much of a crowd, and the doctor he looked sort
o' worried. I had a good place, right near the hind wheel of the wagon
where he rested his foot occasional, and I seen what he was thinking. So
I says to him:
"Doctor Kirby, I guess the crowd is all gone to the circus agin
to-night." And all them fellers there seen I knowed him.
"I guess so, Rube," he says to me. And they all laughed 'cause he called
me Rube, and I felt kind of took down.
Then he lit in to tell about that Injun medicine. First off he told how
he come to find out about it. It was the father of the Injun what
was with him had showed him, he said. And it was in the days of his
youthfulness, when he was wild, and a cowboy on the plains of Oregon.
Well, one night he says, they was an awful fight on the plains of
Oregon, wherever them is, and he got plugged full of bullet holes. And
his hoss run away with him and he was carried off, and the hoss was
going at a dead run, and the blood was running down onto the ground. And
the wolves smelt the blood and took out after him, yipping and yowling
something frightful to hear, and the hoss he kicked out behind and
killed the head wolf and the others stopped to eat him up, and while
they was eating him the hoss gained a quarter of a mile. But they et him
up and they was gaining agin, fur the smell of human blood was on the
plains of Oregon, he says, and the sight of his mother's face when she
ast him never to be a cowboy come to him in the moonlight, and he knowed
that somehow all would yet be well, and then he must of fainted and he
knowed no more till he woke up in a tent on the plains of Oregon. And
they was an old Injun bending over him and a beautiful Injun maiden was
feeling of his pulse, and they says to him:
"Pale face, take hope, fur we will doctor you with Siwash Injun Sagraw,
which is nature's own cure fur all diseases."
They done it. And he got well. It had been a secret among them there
Injuns fur thousands and thousands of years. Any Injun that give away
the secret was killed and rubbed off the rolls of the tribe and buried
in disgrace upon the plains of Oregon. And the doctor was made a blood
brother of the chief, and learnt the secret of that medicine. Finally
he got the chief to see as it wasn't Christian to hold back that
there medicine from the world no longer, and the chief, his heart was
softened, and he says to go.
"Go, my brother," he says, "and give to the pale faces the medicine
that has been kept secret fur thousands and thousands of years among the
Siwash Injuns on the plains of Oregon."
And he went. It wasn't that he wanted to make no money out of that there
medicine. He could of made all the money he wanted being a doctor in the
reg'lar way. But what he wanted was to spread the glad tidings of good
health all over this fair land of ourn, he says.
Well, sir, he was a talker, that there doctor was, and he knowed more
religious sayings and poetry along with it, than any feller I ever
hearn. He goes on and he tells how awful sick people can manage to get
and never know it, and no one else never suspicion it, and live along
fur years and years that-a-way, and all the time in danger of death. He
says it makes him weep when he sees them poor diluted fools going around
and thinking they is well men, talking and laughing and marrying and
giving in to marriage right on the edge of the grave. He sees dozens of
'em in every town he comes to. But they can't fool him, he says. He can
tell at a glance who's got Bright's Disease in their kidneys and who
ain't. His own father, he says, was deathly sick fur years and years and
never knowed it, and the knowledge come on him sudden like, and he died.
That was before Siwash Injun Sagraw was ever found out about. Doctor
Kirby broke down and cried right there in the wagon when he thought of
how his father might of been saved if he was only alive now that that
medicine was put up into bottle form, six fur a five-dollar bill so long
as he was in town, and after that two dollars fur each bottle at the
drug store.
He unrolled a big chart and the Injun helt it by that there gasoline
lamp, so all could see, turning the pages now and then. It was a map of
a man's inside organs and digestive ornaments and things. They was red
and blue, like each organ's own disease had turned it, and some of 'em
was yaller. And they was a long string of diseases printed in black
hanging down from each organ's picture. I never knowed before they was
so many diseases nor yet so many things to have 'em in.
Well, I was feeling purty good when that show started. But the doc,
he kep' looking right at me every now and then when he talked, and I
couldn't keep my eyes off'n him.
"Does your heart beat fast when you exercise?" he asts the crowd. "Is
your tongue coated after meals? Do your eyes leak when your nose is
stopped up? Do you perspire under your arm pits? Do you ever have a
ringing in your ears? Does your stomach hurt you after meals? Does your
back ever ache? Do you ever have pains in your legs? Do your eyes blur
when you look at the sun? Are your teeth coated? Does your hair come out
when you comb it? Is your breath short when you walk up stairs? Do your
feet swell in warm weather? Are there white spots on your finger nails?
Do you draw your breath part of the time through one nostril and part
of the time through the other? Do you ever have nightmare? Did your
nose bleed easily when you were growing up? Does your skin fester when
scratched? Are your eyes gummy in the mornings? Then," he says, "if you
have any or all of these symptoms, your blood is bad, and your liver is
wasting away."
Well, sir, I seen I was in a bad way, fur at one time or another I had
had most of them there signs and warnings, and hadn't heeded 'em, and I
had some of 'em yet. I begun to feel kind o' sick, and looking at them
organs and diseases didn't help me none, either. The doctor, he lit out
on another string of symptoms, and I had them, too. Seems to me I had
purty nigh everything but fits. Kidney complaint and consumption both
had a holt on me. It was about a even bet which would get me first. I
kind o' got to wondering which. I figgered from what he said that I'd
had consumption the LONGEST while, but my kind of kidney trouble was an
awful SLY kind, and it was lible to jump in without no warning a-tall
and jest natcherally wipe me out QUICK. So I sort o' bet on the
kidney trouble. But I seen I was a goner, and I forgive Hank all his
orneriness, fur a feller don't want to die holding grudges.
Taking it the hull way through, that was about the best medicine show I
ever seen. But they didn't sell much. All the people what had any money
was to the circus agin that night. So they sung some more songs and
closed early and went into the hotel.
CHAPTER IV
Well, the next morning I'm feeling considerable better, and think mebby
I'm going to live after all. I got up earlier'n Hank did, and slipped
out without him seeing me, and didn't go nigh the shop a-tall. Fur now
I've licked Hank oncet I figger he won't rest till he has wiped that
disgrace out, and he won't care a dern what he picks up to do it with,
nuther.
They was a crick about a hundred yards from our house, in the woods,
and I went over there and laid down and watched it run by. I laid awful
still, thinking I wisht I was away from that town. Purty soon a squirrel
comes down and sets on a log and watches me. I throwed an acorn at him,
and he scooted up a tree quicker'n scatt. And then I wisht I hadn't
scared him away, fur it looked like he knowed I was in trouble. Purty
soon I takes a swim, and comes out and lays there some more, spitting
into the water and thinking what shall I do now, and watching birds and
things moving around, and ants working harder'n ever I would agin unless
I got better pay fur it, and these here tumble bugs kicking their loads
along hind end to.
After a while it is getting along toward noon, and I'm feeling hungry.
But I don't want to have no more trouble with Hank, and I jest lays
there. I hearn two men coming through the underbrush. I riz up on my
elbow to look, and one of them was Doctor Kirby and the other was Looey,
only Looey wasn't an Injun this morning.
They sets down on the roots of a big tree a little ways off, with their
backs toward me, and they ain't seen me. So nacherally I listened to
what they was jawing about. They was both kind o' mad at the hull world,
and at our town in pertic'ler, and some at each other, too. The doctor,
he says:
"I haven't had such rotten luck since I played the bloodhound in a Tom
Show--Were you ever an 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' artist, Looey?--and a justice
of the peace over in Iowa fined me five dollars for being on the street
without a muzzle. Said it was a city ordinance. Talk about the gentle
Rube being an easy mark! If these country towns don't get the wandering
minstrel's money one way they will another!"
"It's your own fault," says Looey, kind o' sour.
"I can't see it," says Doctor Kirby. "How did I know that all these
apple-knockers had been filled up with Sykes's Magic Remedy only two
weeks ago? I may have been a spiritualistic medium in my time now and
then," he says, "and a mind reader, too, but I'm no prophet."
"I ain't talking about the business, Doc, and you know it," says Looey.
"We'd be all right and have our horses and wagon now if you'd only stuck
to business and not got us into that poker game. Talk about suckers!
Doc, for a man that has skinned as many of 'em as you have, you're the
worst sucker yourself I ever saw."
The doctor, he cusses the poker game and country towns and medicine
shows and the hull creation and says he is so disgusted with life he
guesses he'll go and be a preacher or a bearded lady in a sideshow. But
Looey, he don't cheer up none. He says:
"All right, Doc, but it's no use talking. You can TALK all right. We all
know that. The question is how are we going to get our horses and wagon
away from these Rubes?"
I listens some more, and I seen them fellers was really into bad
trouble. Doctor Kirby, he had got into a poker game at Smith's Palace
Hotel the night before, right after the show. He had won from Jake
Smith, which run it, and from the others. But shucks! it never made no
difference what you won in that crowd. They had done Doctor Kirby and
Looey like they always done a drummer or a stranger that come along to
that town and was fool enough to play poker with them. They wasn't a
chancet fur an outsider. If the drummer lost, they would take his money
and that would be all they was to it. But if the drummer got to winning
good, some one would slip out'n the hotel and tell Si Emery, which was
the city marshal. And Si would get Ralph Scott, that worked fur Jake
Smith in his livery stable, and pin a star onto Ralph, too. And they
would be arrested fur gambling, only them that lived in our town would
get away. Which Si and Ralph was always scared every time they done it.
Then the drummer, or whoever it was, would be took to the calaboose, and
spend all night there.
In the morning they would be took before Squire Matthews, that was
justice of the peace. They would be fined a big fine, and he would get
all the drummer had won and all he had brung to town with him besides.
Squire Matthews and Jake Smith and Windy Goodell and Mart Watson, which
the two last was lawyers, was always playing that there game on drummers
that was fool enough to play poker. Hank, he says he bet they divided it
up afterward, though it was supposed them fines went to the town. Well,
they played a purty closte game of poker in our little town. It was jest
like the doctor says to Looey:
"By George," he says, "it is a well-nigh perfect thing. If you lose you
lose, and if you win you lose."
Well, the doctor, he had started out winning the night before. And Si
Emery and Ralph Scott had arrested them. And that morning, while I had
been laying by the crick and the rest of the town was seeing the fun,
they had been took afore Squire Matthews and fined one hundred and
twenty-five dollars apiece. The doctor, he tells Squire Matthews it
is an outrage, and it ain't legal if tried in a bigger court, and they
ain't that much money in the world so fur as he knows, and he won't pay
it. But, the squire, he says the time has come to teach them travelling
fakirs as is always running around the country with shows and electric
belts and things that they got to stop dreening that town of hard-earned
money, and he has decided to make an example of 'em. The only two
lawyers in town is Windy and Mart, which has been in the poker game
theirselves, the same as always. The doctor says the hull thing is a
put-up job, and he can't get the money, and he wouldn't if he could, and
he'll lay in that town calaboose and rot the rest of his life and eat
the town poor before he'll stand it. And the squire says he'll jest take
their hosses and wagon fur c'latteral till they make up the rest of the
two hundred and fifty dollars. And the hosses and wagon was now in the
livery stable next to Smith's Palace Hotel, which Jake run that too.
Well, I thinks to myself, it IS a dern shame, and I felt sorry fur them
two fellers. Fur our town was jest as good as stealing that property.
And I felt kind o' shamed of belonging to such a town, too. And I thinks
to myself, I'd like to help 'em out of that scrape. And then I seen
how I could do it, and not get took up fur it, neither. So, without
thinking, all of a sudden I jumps up and says:
"Say, Doctor Kirby, I got a scheme!"
They jumps up too, and they looks at me startled. Then the doctor kind
o' laughs and says:
"Why, it's the young blacksmith!"
Looey, he says, looking at me hard and suspicious:
"What kind of a scheme are you talking about?"
"Why," says I, "to get that outfit of yourn."
"You've been listening to us," says Looey. Looey was one of them
quiet-looking fellers that never laughed much nor talked much. Looey,
he never made fun of nobody, which the doctor was always doing, and I
wouldn't of cared to make fun of Looey much, either.
"Yes," I says, "I been laying here fur quite a spell, and quite
natcheral I listened to you, as any one else would of done. And mebby I
can get that team and wagon of yourn without it costing you a cent."
Well, they didn't know what to say. They asts me how, but I says to
leave it all to me. "Walk right along down this here crick," I says,
"till you get to where it comes out'n the woods and runs acrost the road
in under an iron bridge. That's about a half a mile east. Jest after the
road crosses the bridge it forks. Take the right fork and walk another
half a mile and you'll see a little yaller-painted schoolhouse setting
lonesome on a sand hill. They ain't no school in it now. You wait there
fur me," I says, "fur a couple of hours. After that if I ain't there
you'll know I can't make it. But I think I'll make it."
They looks at each other and they looks at me, and then they go off a
little piece and talk low, and then the doctor says to me:
"Rube," he says, "I don't know how you can work anything on us that
hasn't been worked already. We've got nothing more we can lose. You go
to it, Rube." And they started off.
So I went over town. Jake Smith was setting on the piazza in front of
his hotel, chawing and spitting tobacco, with his feet agin the railing
like he always done, and one of his eyes squinched up and his hat over
the other one.
"Jake," I says, "where's that there doctor?"
Jake, he spit careful afore he answered, and he pulled his long,
scraggly moustache careful, and he squinched his eyes at me. Jake was a
careful man in everything he done.
"I dunno, Danny," he says. "Why?"
"Well," I says, "Hank sent me over to get that wagon and them hosses of
theirn and finish that job."
"That there wagon," says Jake, "is in my barn, with Si Emery watching
her, and she has got to stay there till the law lets her loose." I
figgered to myself Jake could use that team and wagon in his business,
and was going to buy her cheap offn the town, what share of her he
didn't figger he owned already.
"Why, Jake," I says, "I hope they ain't been no trouble of no kind that
has drug the law into your barn!"
"Well, Danny," he says, "they HAS been a little trouble. But it's about
over, now, I guess. And that there outfit belongs to the town now."
"You don't say so!" says I, surprised-like. "When I seen them men last
night it looked to me like they was too fine dressed to be honest."
"I don't think they be, Danny," says Jake, confidential. "In my opinion
they is mighty bad customers. But they has got on the wrong side of the
law now, and I guess they won't stay around here much longer."
"Well," says I, "Hank will be glad."
"Fur what?" asts Jake.
"Well," says I, "because he got his pay in advance fur that job and now
he don't have to finish it. They come along to our place about sundown
yesterday, and we nailed a shoe on one hoss. They was a couple of
other hoofs needed fixing, and the tire on one of the hind wheels was
beginning to rattle loose."
I had noticed that loose tire when I was standing by the hind wheel the
night before, and it come in handy now. So I goes on:
"Hank, he allowed he'd fix the hull thing fur six bottles of that Injun
medicine. Elmira has been ailing lately, and he wanted it fur her. So
they handed Hank out six bottles then and there."
"Huh!" says Jake. "So the job is all paid fur, is it?"
"Yes," says I, "and I was expecting to do it myself. But now I guess
I'll go fishing instead. They ain't no other job in the shop."
"I'll be dinged if you've got time to fish," says Jake. "I'm expecting
mebby to buy that rig off the town myself when the law lets loose of it.
So if the fixing is paid fur, I want everything fixed."
"Jake," says I, kind of worried like, "I don't want to do it without
that doctor says to go ahead."
"They ain't his'n no longer," says Jake.
"I dunno," says I, "as you got any right to make me do it, Jake. It
don't look to me like it's no harm to beat a couple of fellers like them
out of their medicine. And I DID want to go fishing this afternoon."
But Jake was that careful and stingy he'd try to skin a hoss twicet if
it died. He's bound to get that job done, now.
"Danny," he says, "you gotto do that work. It ain't HONEST not to. What
a young feller like you jest starting out into life wants to remember is
to always be honest. Then," says Jake, squinching up his eyes, "people
trusts you and you get a good chancet to make money. Look at this here
hotel and livery stable, Danny. Twenty years ago I didn't have no more'n
you've got, Danny. But I always went by them mottoes--hard work and
being honest. You GOTTO nail them shoes on, Danny, and fix that wheel."
"Well, all right, Jake," says I, "if you feel that way about it. Jest
give me a chaw of tobacco and come around and help me hitch 'em up."
Si Emery was there asleep on a pile of straw guarding that property. But
Ralph Scott wasn't around. Si didn't wake up till we had hitched 'em up.
He says he will ride around to the shop with me. But Jake says:
"It's all right, Si. I'll go over myself and fetch 'em back purty soon."
Which Si was wore out with being up so late the night before, and goes
back to sleep agin right off.
Well, sir, they wasn't nothing went wrong. I drove slow through the
village and past our shop. Hank come to the door of it as I went past.
But I hit them hosses a lick, and they broke into a right smart trot.
Elmira, she come onto the porch and I waved my hand at her. She put her
hand up to her forehead to shut out the sun and jest stared. She didn't
know I was waving her farewell. Hank, he yelled something at me, but I
never hearn what. I licked them hosses into a gallop and went around the
turn of the road. And that's the last I ever seen or hearn of Hank or
Elmira or that there little town.
CHAPTER V
I slowed down when I got to the schoolhouse, and both them fellers piled
in.
"I guess I better turn north fur about a mile and then turn west, Doctor
Kirby," I says, "so as to make a kind of a circle around that town."
"Why, so, Rube?" he asts me.
"Well," I says, "we left it going east, and they'll foller us east; so
don't we want to be going west while they're follering east?"
Looey, he agreed with me. But he said it wouldn't be much use, fur we
would likely be ketched up with and took back and hung or something,
anyhow. Looey could get the lowest in his sperrits sometimes of any man
I ever seen.
"Don't be afraid of that," says the doctor. "They are not going to
follow us. THEY know they didn't get this property by due process of
law. THEY aren't going to take the case into a county court where it
will all come out about the way they robbed a couple of travelling men
with a fake trial."
"I guess you know more about the law'n I do," I says. "I kind o' thought
mebby we stole them hosses."
"Well," he says, "we got 'em, anyhow. And if they try to arrest us
without a warrant there'll be the deuce to pay. But they aren't going
to make any more trouble. I know these country crooks. They've got no
stomach for trouble outside their own township."
Which made me feel considerable better, fur I never been of the opinion
that going agin the law done any one no good.
They looks around in that wagon, and all their stuff was there--Jake
Smith and the squire having kep' it all together careful to make things
seem more legal, I suppose--and the doctor was plumb tickled, and Looey
felt as cheerful as he ever felt about anything. So the doctor says they
has everything they needs but some ready money, and he'll get that sure,
fur he never seen the time he couldn't.
"But, Looey," he says, "I'm done with country hotels from now on.
They've got the last cent they ever will from me--at least in the summer
time."
"How you going to work it?" Looey asts him, like he hasn't no hopes it
will work right.
"Camp out," says the doctor. "I've been thinking it all over." Then he
turns to me. "Rube," he says, "where are you going?"
"Well," I says, "I ain't pinted nowhere in pertic'ler except away from
that town we just left. Which my name ain't Rube, Doctor Kirby, but
Danny."
"Danny what?" asts he.
"Nothing," says I, "jest Danny."
"Well, then, Danny," says he, "how would you like to be an Indian?"
"Medical?" asts I, "or real?"
"Like Looey," says he.
I tells him being a medical Injun and mixed up with a show like his'n
would suit me down to the ground, and asts him what is the main duties
of one besides the blankets and the feathers.
"Well," he says, "this camping-out scheme of mine will take a couple of
Indians. Instead of paying hotel and feed bills we'll pitch our tent,"
he says, "at the edge of town in each sweet Auburn of the plains. We'll
save money and we'll be near the throbbing heart of nature. And an
Indian camp in each place will be a good advertisement for the Sagraw.
You can look after the horses and learn to do the cooking and that kind
o' thing. And maybe after while," he says, kind o' working himself up to
where he thought it was going to be real nice, "maybe after while I will
give you some insight into the hidden mysteries of selling Siwash Indian
Sagraw."
"Well," says I, "I'd like to learn that."
"Would you?" says he, kind o' laughing at himself and me too, and yet
kind o' enthusiastic, "well, then, the first thing you have to do is
learn how to sell corn salve. Any one that can sell corn salve can sell
anything. There's a farmhouse right over there, and I'll give you your
first lesson right now. Rummage around in that satchel there under the
seat and get me a tin box and some corn salve labels."
I found a lot of labels, and some boxes too. The labels was all
different sizes, but barring that they all looked about the same to me.
Whilst I was sizing them up he asts me agin was they any corn salve ones
in there.
"What colour label is it, Doctor Kirby?" I asts him. Fur they was blue
labels and white labels and pink labels.
He looks at me right queer. "Can't you read the labels?" he says, right
sharp.
"Well," I says, "I never been much of a reader when it comes to
different kind of medicines."
"Corn salve is spelled only one way," says he.
"That's right," I says, "and you'd think I orter be able to pick out a
common, ordinary thing like corn salve right off, wouldn't you?"
"Danny," he says, "you don't mean to tell me you can't read anything at
all?"
"I never told you nothing of the kind."
He picks out a label.
"If you can read so fast, what's that?" he asts.
She is a pink one. I thinks to myself; she either is corn salve or else
she ain't corn salve. And it ain't natcheral he will pick corn salve,
fur he would think I would say that first off. So I'm betting it ain't.
I takes a chancet on it.
"That," says I, "is mighty easy reading. That is Siwash Injun Sagraw." I
lost.
"It's corn salve," he says. "And Great Scott! They call this the
twentieth century!"
"I never called it that," says I, sort o' mad-like. Fur I was feeling
bad Doctor Kirby had found out I was such a ignoramus.
"Where ignorance is bliss," says he, "it is folly to be wise. But all
the same, I'm going to take your education in hand and make you drink of
life's Peruvian springs." Or some spring like that it was.
And the doctor, he done it. Looey said it wouldn't be no use learning to
read. He'd done a lot of reading, he said, and it never helped him none.
All he ever read showed him this feller Hamlet was right, he said, when
he wrote Shakespeare's works, and they wasn't much use in anything,
without you had a lot o' money. And they wasn't no chancet to get that
with all these here trusts around gobbling up everything and stomping
the poor man into the dirt, and they was lots of times he wisht he was
a Injun sure enough, and not jest a medical one, fur then he'd be a
free man and the bosses and the trusts and the railroads and the robber
tariff couldn't touch him. And then he shut up, and didn't say nothing
fur a hull hour, except oncet he laughed.
Fur Doctor Kirby, he says, winking at me: "Looey, here, is a nihilist."
"Is he," says I, "what's that?" And the doctor tells me about how they
blow up dukes and czars and them foreign high-mucky-mucks with dynamite.
Which is when Looey laughed.
Well, we jogged along at a pretty good gait fur several hours, and we
stayed that night at a Swede's place, which the doctor paid him fur
everything in medicine, only it took a long time to make the bargain,
fur them Swedes is always careful not to get cheated, and hasn't many
diseases. And the next night we showed in a little town, and done right
well, and took in considerable money. We stayed there three days and
bought a tent and a sheet-iron stove and some skillets and things and
some provisions, and a suit of duds for me.
Well, we went on, and we kept going on, and they was bully times. We'd
ease up careful toward a town, and pick us out a place on the edge,
where the hosses could graze along the side of the road; and most
ginerally by a piece of woods not fur from that town, and nigh a crick,
if we could. Then we'd set up our tent. After we had everything fixed,
I'd put on my Injun clothes and Looey his'n, and we'd drive through the
main store street of the town at a purty good lick, me a-holt of the
reins, and the doctor all togged out in his best clothes, and Looey
doing a Injun dance in the midst of the wagon. I'd pull up the hosses
sudden in front of the post-office or the depot platform or the hotel,
and the people would come crowding around, and the doctor he'd make a
little talk from the wagon, and tell everybody they would be a free show
that night on that corner, and fur everybody to come to it. And then
we'd drive back to camp, lickitysplit.
Purty soon every boy in town would be out there, kind o' hanging around,
to see what a Injun camp was like. And the farmers that went into and
out of town always stopped and passed the time of day, and the Injun
camp got the hull town all worked up as a usual thing; and the doctor,
he done well, fur when night come every one would be on hand. Looey
and me, every time we went into town, had on our Injun suits, and the
doctor, he wondered why he hadn't never thought up that scheme before.
Sometimes, when they was lots of people ailing in a town, and they
hadn't been no show fur quite a while, we'd stay five or six days, and
make a good clean-up. The doctor, he sent to Chicago several times fur
alcohol in barrels, 'cause he was selling it so fast he had to make new
Sagraw. And he had to get more and more bottles, and a hull satchel full
of new Sagraw labels printed.
And all the time the doctor was learning me education. And shucks! they
wasn't nothing so hard about it oncet you'd got started in to reading
things. I jest natcherally took to print like a duck to water, and
inside of a month I was reading nigh everything that has ever been
wrote. He had lots of books with him and every time a new sockdologer of
a word come along and I learnt how to spell her and where she orter fit
in to make sense it kind o' tickled me all over. And many's the time
afterward, when me and the doctor had lost track of each other, and they
was quite a spell people got to thinking I was a tramp, I've went into
these here Andrew Carnegie libraries in different towns jest as much to
see if they had anything fitten to read as fur to keep warm.
Well, we went easing over toward the Indiany line, and we was having a
purty good time. They wasn't no work to do you could call really hard,
and they was plenty of vittles. Afternoons we'd lazy around the camp and
swap stories and make medicine if we needed a batch, and josh back and
forth with the people that hung around, and loaf and doze and smoke; or
mebby do a little fishing if we was nigh a crick.
And nights after the show was over it was fun, too. We always had a
fire, even if it was a hot night, fur to cook by in the first place, and
fur to keep mosquitoes off, and to make things seem more cheerful.
They ain't nothing so good as hanging round a campfire. And they ain't
nothing any better than sleeping outdoors, neither. You roll up in your
blanket with your feet to the fire and you get to wondering things about
things afore you go to sleep. The silentness jest natcherally swamps
everything after a while, and then all them queer little noises
you never hear in the daytime comes popping and poking through the
silentness, or kind o' scratching their way through it sometimes, and
makes it kind o' feel more silent than ever. And if you are nigh a
crick, purty soon it will sort of get to talking to you, only you can't
make out what it's trying to say, and you get to wondering about that,
too. And if you are in a tent and it rains and the tent don't leak, that
rain is a kind of a nice thing to listen to itself. But if you can see
the stars you get to wondering more'n ever. They come out and they is
so many of them and they are so fur away, and yet they are so kind o'
friendly-like, too, if you happen to be feeling purty good. But if you
ain't feeling purty good, jest lay there and look at them stars long
enough; and then mebby you'll see it don't make no difference whether
you're feeling good or not, fur they got a way o' making your private
troubles look mighty small. And you get to wondering why that is, too,
fur they ain't human; and it don't stand to reason you orter pay no
attention to them, one way nor the other. They is jest there, like trees
and cricks and hills. But I have often noticed that the things that is
jest there has got a way of seeming more friendly than the things that
has been built and put there. You can look at a big iron bridge or a
grain elevator or a canal all day long, and if you're feeling blue it
don't help you none. It was jest put there. Or a hay stack is the same
way. But you go and lazy around in the grass when you're down on your
luck and kind o' make remarks to a crick or a big, old walnut tree, and
before long it gets you to feeling like it didn't make no difference
how you felt, anyhow; fur you don't amount to nothing by the side of
something that was always there. You get to thinking how the hull world
itself was always here, and you sort o' see they ain't nothing important
enough about yourself to worry about, and presently you will go to
sleep and forget it. The doctor says to me one time them stars ain't
any different from this world, and this is one of them. Which is a fool
idea, as any one can see. He had a lot of queer ideas like that, Doctor
Kirby had. But they ain't nothing like sleeping out of doors nights to
make you wonder the kind of wonderings you never will get any answer to.
Well, I never cared so much fur houses after them days. They was bully
times, them was. And I was kind of proud of being with a show, too.
Many's the time I have went down the street in that there Injun suit,
and seen how the young fellers would of give all they owned to be me.
And every now and then you would hear one say when you went past:
"Huh, I know him! That's one of them show fellers!"
One afternoon we pitches our tent right on the edge of a little town
called Athens. We was nigh the bank of a crick, and they was a grove
there. We was camped jest outside of a wood-lot fence, and back in
through the trees from us they was a house with a hedge fence all around
it. They was apple trees and all kind of flower bushes and things inside
of the hedge. The second day we was there I takes a walk back through
the wood-lot, and along past the house, and they was one of these here
early harvest apple trees spilling apples through a gap in the fence.
Them is a mighty sweet and juicy kind of apple, and I picks one up and
bites into it.
"I think you might have asked for it," says some one.
CHAPTER VI
I looks up, and that was how I got acquainted with Martha. She was
eating one herself, setting up in the tree like a boy. In her lap was a
book she had been reading. She was leaning back into the fork two limbs
made so as not to tumble.
"Well," I says, "can I have one?"
"You've eaten it already," she says, "so there isn't any use begging for
it now."
I seen she was a tease, that girl, and I would of give anything to of
been able to tease her right back agin. But I couldn't think of nothing
to say, so I jest stands there kind o' dumb like, thinking what a dern
purty girl she was, and thinking how dumb I must look, and I felt my
face getting red. Doctor Kirby would of thought of something to say
right off. And after I got back to camp I would think of something
myself. But I couldn't think of nothing bright, so I says:
"Well, then, you give me another one!"
She gives the core of the one she has been eating a toss at me. But I
ketched it, and made like I was going to throw it back at her real hard.
She slung up her arm, and dodged back, and she dropped her book.
I thinks to myself I'll learn that girl to get sassy and make me feel
like a dumb-head, even if she is purty. So I don't say a word. I jest
picks up that book and sticks it under my arm and walks away slow with
it to where they was a stump a little ways off, not fur from the crick,
and sets down with my back to her and opens it. And I was trying all the
time to think of something smart to say to her. But I couldn't of done
it if I was to be shot. Still, I thinks to myself, no girl can sass me
and not get sassed back, neither.
I hearn a scramble behind me which I knowed was her getting out of that
tree. And in a minute she was in front of me, mad.
"Give me my book," she says.
But I only reads the name of the book out loud, fur to aggervate her. I
had on purty good duds, but I kind of wisht I had on my Injun rig then.
You take the girls that always comes down to see the passenger train
come into the depot in them country towns and that Injun rig of mine and
Looey's always made 'em turn around and look at us agin. I never wisht
I had on them Injun duds so hard before in my life. But I couldn't think
of nothing bright to say, so I jest reads the name of that book over to
myself agin, kind o' grinning like I got a good joke I ain't going to
tell any one.
"You give me my book," she says agin, red as one of them harvest apples,
"or I'll tell Miss Hampton you stole it and she'll have you and your
show arrested."
I reads the name agin. It was "The Lost Heir." I seen I had her good and
teased now, so I says: "It must be one of these here love stories by the
way you take on over it."
"It's not," she says, getting ready to cry. "And what right have you got
in our wood-lot, anyhow?"
"Well," I says, "I was jest about to move on and climb out of it when
you hollered to me from that tree."
"I didn't!" she says. But she was mad because she knowed she HAD spoke
to me first, and she was awful sorry she had.
"I thought I hearn you holler," I says, "but I guess it must of been a
squirrel." I said it kind o' sarcastic like, fur I was still mad with
myself fur being so dumb when we first seen each other. I hadn't no idea
it would hurt her feelings as hard as it did. But all of a sudden she
begins to wink, and her chin trembled, and she turned around short, and
started to walk off slow. She was mad with herself fur being ketched in
a lie, and she was wondering what I would think of her fur being so bold
as to of spoke first to a feller she didn't know.
I got up and follered her a little piece. And it come to me all to oncet
I had teased her too hard, and I was down on myself fur it.
"Say," I says, kind of tagging along beside of her, "here's your old
book."
But she didn't make no move to take it, and her hands was over her face,
and she wouldn't pull 'em down to even look at it.
So I tried agin.
"Well," I says, feeling real mean, "I wisht you wouldn't cry. I didn't
go to make you do that."
She drops her hands and whirls around on me, mad as a wet hen right off.
"I'm not! I'm not!" she sings out, and stamps her feet. "I'm not
crying!" But jest then she loses her holt on herself and busts out and
jest natcherally bellers. "I hate you!" she says, like she could of
killed me.
That made me kind of dumb agin. Fur it come to me all to oncet I liked
that girl awful well. And here I'd up and made her hate me. I held the
book out to her agin and says:
"Well, I'm mighty sorry fur that, fur I don't feel that-a-way about you
a-tall. Here's your book."
Well, sir, she snatches that book and she gives it a sling. I thought it
was going kersplash into the crick. But it didn't. It hit right into the
fork of a limb that hung down over the crick, and it all spread out when
it lit, and stuck in that crotch somehow. She couldn't of slung it that
way on purpose in a million years. We both stands and looks at it a
minute.
"Oh, oh!" she says, "what have I done? It's out of the town library and
I'll have to pay for it."
"I'll get it fur you," I says. But it wasn't no easy job. If I shook
that limb it would tumble into the crick. But I clumb the tree and eased
out on that limb as fur as I dast to. And, of course, jest as I got holt
of the book, that limb broke and I fell into the crick. But I had the
book. It was some soaked, but I reckoned it could still be read.
I clumb out and she was jest splitting herself laughing at me. The
wet on her face where she had cried wasn't dried up yet, and she was
laughing right through it, kind o' like the sun does to one of these
here May rainstorms sometimes, and she was the purtiest girl I ever
seen. Gosh!--how I was getting to like that girl! And she told me I
looked like a drowned rat.
Well, that was how Martha and me was interduced. She wasn't more'n
sixteen, and when she found out I was a orphan she was glad, fur she was
one herself. Which Miss Hampton that lived in that house had took her to
raise. And when I tells her how I been travelling around the country all
summer she claps her hands and she says:
"Oh, you are on a quest! How romantic!"
I asts her what is a quest. And she tells me. She knowed all about them,
fur Martha was considerable of a reader. Some of them was longer and
some of them was shorter, them quests, but mostly, Martha says, they was
fur a twelvemonth and a day. And then you are released from your vow
and one of these here queens gives you a whack over the shoulder with a
sword and says: "Arise, Sir Marmeluke, I dub you a night." And then it
is legal fur you to go out and rescue people and reform them and spear
them if they don't see things your way, and come between husband and
wife when they row, and do a heap of good in the world. Well, they was
other kind of quests too, but mostly you married somebody, or was dubbed
a night, or found the party you was looking fur, in the end. And Martha
had it all fixed up in her own mind I was in a quest to find my father.
Fur, says she, he is purty certain to be a powerful rich man and more'n
likely a earl.
The way I was found, Martha says, kind o' pints to the idea they was a
earl mixed up in it somewhere. She had read a lot about earls, and knew
their ways. Mebby my mother was a earl's daughter. Earl's daughters is
the worst fur leaving you out in baskets, going by what Martha said. It
is a kind of a habit with them, fur they is awful proud people. But it
was a lucky way to start life, from all she said, that basket way. There
was Moses was left out that way, and when he growed up he was made a
kind of a president of the hull human race, the same as Ruzevelt, and
figgered out the twelve commandments. Martha would of give anything if
she could of only been found in a basket like me, I could see that. But
she wasn't. She had jest been left a orphan when her folks died. They
wasn't even no hopes she had been changed at birth fur another one. But
I seen down in under everything Martha kind o' thought mebby one of them
nights might come a-prancing along and wed her in spite of herself, or
she would be carried off, or something. She was a very romanceful kind
of girl.
When I seen she had it figgered out I was in a quest fur some
high-mucky-muck fur a dad, I didn't tell her no different. I didn't take
much stock in them earls and nights myself. So fur as I could see they
was all furriners of one kind or another. But that thing of being into a
quest kind of interested me, too.
"How would I know him if I was to run acrost him?" I asts her.
"You would feel an Intangible Something," she says, "drawing you toward
him."
I asts her what kind of a something. I make out from what she says it is
some like these fellers that can find water with a piece of witch hazel
switch. You take a switch of it between your thumbs and point it up.
Then you shut your eyes and walk backwards. When you get over where the
water is the witch hazel stick twists around and points to the ground.
You dig there and you get a good well. Nobody knows jest why that
stick is drawed to the ground. It is like one of these little whirlygig
compasses is drawed to the north. It is the same, Martha says, if you is
on a quest fur a father or a mother, only you have got to be worthy of
that there quest, she says. The first time you meet the right one you
are drawed jest like the witch hazel. That is the Intangible Something
working on you, she says. Martha had learnt a lot about that. The book
that had fell in the crick was like that. She lent it to me.
Well, that all sounded kind of reasonable to me. I seen that witch hazel
work myself. Old Blindy Wolfe, whose eyes had been dead fur so many
years they had turned plumb white, had that gift, and picked out all the
places fur wells that was dug in our neighbourhood at home. And I makes
up my mind I will watch out fur that feeling of being drawed wherever I
goes after this. You can't tell what will come of them kind of things.
So purty soon Martha has to milk the cow, and I goes along back to camp
thinking about that quest and about what a purty girl she is, which we
had set there talking so long it was nigh sundown and my clothes had
dried onto me.
When I got over to camp I seen they must be something wrong. Looey was
setting in the grass under the wagon looking kind of sour and kind of
worried and watching the doctor. The doctor was jest inside the tent,
and he was looking queer too, and not cheerful, which he was usually.
The doctor looks at me like he don't skeercly know me. Which he don't.
He has one of them quiet kind of drunks on. Which Looey explains is
bound to come every so often. He don't do nothing mean, but jest gets
low-sperrited and won't talk to no one. Then all of a sudden he will go
down town and walk up and down the main streets, orderly, but looking
hard into people's faces, mostly women's faces. Oncet, Looey says, they
was big trouble over it. They was in a store in a good-sized town, and
he took hold of a woman's chin, and tilted her face back, and looked at
her hard, and most scared her to death, and they was nearly being a riot
there. And he was jailed and had to pay a big fine. Since then Looey
always follers him around when he is that-a-way.
Well, that night Doctor Kirby is too fur gone fur us to have our show.
He jest sets and stares and stares at the fire, and his eyes looks like
they is another fire inside of his head, and he is hurting outside and
in. Looey and me watches him from the shadders fur a long time before
we turns in, and the last thing I seen before I went to sleep was him
setting there with his face in his hands, staring, and his lips moving
now and then like he was talking to himself.
The next day he is asleep all morning. But that day he don't drink
any more, and Looey says mebby it ain't going to be one of the reg'lar
pifflicated kind. I seen Martha agin that day, too--twicet I has talks
with her. I told her about the doctor.
"Is he into a quest, do you think?" I asts her.
She says she thinks it is remorse fur some crime he has done. But I
couldn't figger Doctor Kirby would of done none. So that night after the
show I says to him, innocent-like:
"Doctor Kirby, what is a quest?" He looks at me kind of queer.
"Wherefore," says he, "this sudden thirst for enlightenment?"
"I jest run acrost the word accidental-like," I told him.
He looks at me awful hard, his eyes jest natcherally digging into me.
I felt like he knowed I had set out to pump him. I wisht I hadn't tried
it. Then he tells me a quest is a hunt. And I'm glad that's over with.
But it ain't. Fur purty soon he says:
"Danny, did you ever hear of Lady Clara Vere de Vere?"
"No," I says, "who is she?"
"A lady friend of Lord Tennyson's," he says, "whose manners were above
reproach."
"Well," I says, "she sounds kind of like a medicine to me."
"Lady Clara," he says, "and all the other Vere de Veres, were people
with manners we should try to imitate. If Lady Clara had been here last
night when I was talking to myself, Danny, her manners wouldn't have let
her listen to what I was talking about."
"I didn't listen!" I says. Fur I seen what he was driving at now with
them Vere de Veres. He thought I had ast him what a quest was because he
was on one. I was certain of that, now. He wasn't quite sure what he had
been talking about, and he wanted to see how much I had hearn. I thinks
to myself it must be a awful funny kind of hunt he is on, if he only
hunts when he is in that fix. But I acted real innocent and like my
feelings was hurt, and he believed me. Purty soon he says, cheerful
like:
"There was a girl talking to you to-day, Danny."
"Mebby they was," I says, "and mebby they wasn't." But I felt my face
getting red all the same, and was mad because it did. He grinned kind of
aggervating at me and says some poetry at me about in the spring a young
man's frenzy likely turns to thoughts of love.
"Well," I says, kind of sheepish-like, "this is summer-time, and purty
nigh autumn." Then I seen I'd jest as good as owned up I liked Martha,
and was kind of mad at myself fur that. But I told him some more about
her, too. Somehow I jest couldn't help it. He laughs at me and goes on
into the tent.
I laid there and looked at the fire fur quite a spell, outside the tent.
I was thinking, if all them tales wasn't jest dern foolishness, how I
wisht I would really find a dad that was a high-muckymuck and could come
back in an automobile and take her away. I laid there fur a long, long
time; it must of been fur a couple of hours. I supposed the doctor had
went to sleep.
But all of a sudden I looks up, and he is in the door of the tent
staring at me. I seen he had been in there at it hard agin, and
thinking, quiet-like, all this time. He stood there in the doorway of
the tent, with the firelight onto his face and his red beard, and his
arms stretched out, holding to the canvas and looking at me strange and
wild. Then he moved his hand up and down at me, and he says:
"If she's fool enough to love you, treat her well--treat her well. For
if you don't, you can never run away from the hell you'll carry in your
own heart."
And he kind of doubled up and pitched forward when he said that, and
if I hadn't ketched him he would of fell right acrost the fire. He was
plumb pifflicated.
CHAPTER VII
Martha wouldn't of took anything fur being around Miss Hampton, she
said. Miss Hampton was kind of quiet and sweet and pale looking, and
nobody ever thought of talking loud or raising any fuss when she was
around. She had enough money of her own to run herself on, and she kep'
to herself a good deal. She had come to that town from no one knowed
where, years ago, and bought that place. Fur all of her being so gentle
and easy and talking with one of them soft, drawly kind of voices,
Martha says, no one had ever dared to ast her about herself, though they
was a lot of women in that town that was wishful to.
But Martha said she knowed what Miss Hampton's secret was, and she
hadn't told no one, neither. Which she told me, and all the promising I
done about not telling would of made the cold chills run up your back,
it was so solemn. Miss Hampton had been jilted years ago, Martha said,
and the name of the jilter was David Armstrong. Well, he must of been
a low down sort of man. Martha said if things was only fixed in this
country like they ought to be, she would of sent a night to find that
David Armstrong. And that would of ended up in a mortal combat, and the
night would have cleaved him.
"Yes," says I, "and then you would of married that there night, I
suppose."
She says she would of.
"Well," says I, "mebby you would of and mebby you wouldn't of. If he
cleaved David Armstrong, that night would likely be arrested fur it."
Martha says if he was she would wait outside his dungeon keep fur years
and years, till she was a old woman with gray in her hair, and every day
they would give lingering looks at each other through the window bars.
And they would be happy thata-way. And she would get her a white dove
and train it so it would fly up to that window and take in notes to him,
and he would send notes back that-away, and they would both be awful sad
and romanceful and contented doing that-a-way fur ever and ever.
Well, I never took no stock in them mournful ways of being happy. I
couldn't of riz up to being a night fur Martha. She expected too much of
one. I thought it over fur a little spell without saying anything, and
I tried to make myself believe I would of liked all that dove business.
But it wasn't no use pertending. I knowed I would get tired of it.
"Martha," I says, "mebby these here nights is all right, and mebby they
ain't. I never seen one, and I don't know. And, mind you, I ain't saying
a word agin their way of acting. I can't say how I would of been myself,
if I had been brung up like them. But it looks to me, from some of the
things you've said about 'em, they must have a dern fool streak in 'em
somewheres."
I was kind of jealous of them nights, I guess, or I wouldn't of run 'em
down that-a-way behind their backs. But the way she was always taking on
over them was calkelated to make me see I wasn't knee-high to a duck in
Martha's mind when one of them nights popped into her head. When I run
'em down that-a-way, she says to the blind all things is blind, and if I
had any chivalry into me myself I'd of seen they wasn't jest dern fools,
but noble, and seen it easy. And she sighed, like she'd looked fur
better things from me. When I hearn her do that I felt sorry I hadn't
come up to her expectances. So I says:
"Martha, it's no use pertending I could stay in one of them jails and
keep happy at it. I got to be outdoors. But I tell you what I can do,
if it will make you feel any better. If I ever happen to run acrost this
here David Armstrong, and he is anywheres near my size, I'll lick him
fur you. And if he's too hefty fur me to lick him fair," I says, "and
I get a good chancet I will hit him with a piece of railroad iron fur
you."
Of course, I knowed I would never find him. But what I said seemed to
brighten her up a little.
"But," says I, "if I went too fur with it, and was hung fur it, how
would you feel then, Martha?"
Well, sir, that didn't jar Martha none. She looked kind of dreamy and
said mebby she would go and jine a convent and be a nun. And when she
got to be the head nun she would build a chapel over the tomb where I
was buried in. And every year, on the day of the month I was hung on,
she would lead all the other nuns into that chapel, and the organ would
play mournful, and each nun as passed would lay down a bunch of white
roses onto my tomb. I reckon that orter made me feel good, but somehow
it didn't.
So I changed the subject, and asts her why I ain't seen Miss Hampton
around the place none. Martha says she has a bad sick headache and ain't
been outside the house fur four or five days. I asts her why she don't
wait on her. But she don't want her to, Martha says. She's been staying
in the house ever since we been in town, and jest wants to be let alone.
I thinks all that is kind of funny. And then I seen from the way Martha
is answering my questions that she is holding back something she would
like to tell, but don't think she orter tell. I leaves her alone and
purty soon she says:
"Do you believe in ghosts?"
I tell her sometimes I think I don't believe in 'em, and sometimes I
think I do, but anyhow I would hate to see one. I asts her why does she
ast.
"Because," she says, "because--but I hadn't ought to tell you."
"It's daylight," I says; "it's no use being scared to tell now."
"It ain't that," she says, "but it's a secret."
When she said it was a secret, I knowed she would tell. Martha liked
having her friends help her to keep a secret.
"I think Miss Hampton has seen one," she says, finally, "and that her
staying indoors has something to do with that."
Then she tells me. The night of the day after we camped there, her and
Miss Hampton was out fur a walk. We didn't have any show that night.
They passed right by our camp, and they seen us there by the fire, all
three of us. But they was in the road in the dark, and we was all in the
light, so none of the three of us seen them. Miss Hampton was kind of
scared of us, first glance, fur she gasped and grabbed holt of Martha's
arm all of a sudden so tight she pinched it. Which it was very natcheral
that she would be startled, coming across three strange men all of a
sudden at night around a turn in the road. They went along home, and
Martha went inside and lighted a lamp, but Miss Hampton lingered on the
porch fur a minute. Jest as she lit the lamp Martha hearn another little
gasp, or kind of sigh, from Miss Hampton out there on the porch. Then
they was the sound of her falling down. Martha ran out with the lamp,
and she was laying there. She had fainted and keeled over. Martha said
jest in the minute she had left her alone on the porch was when Miss
Hampton must of seen the ghost. Martha brung her to, and she was looking
puzzled and wild-like both to oncet. Martha asts her what is the matter.
"Nothing," she says, rubbing her fingers over her forehead in a helpless
kind of way, "nothing."
"You look like you had seen a ghost," Martha tells her.
Miss Hampton looks at Martha awful funny, and then she says mebby she
HAS seen a ghost, and goes along upstairs to bed. And since then she
ain't been out of the house. She tells Martha it is a sick headache, but
Martha says she knows it ain't. She thinks she is scared of something.
"Scared?" I says. "She wouldn't see no more ghosts in the daytime."
Martha says how do I know she wouldn't? She knows a lot about ghosts of
all kinds, Martha does.
Horses and dogs can see them easier than humans, even in the daytime,
and it makes their hair stand up when they do. But some humans that have
the gift can see them in the daytime like an animal. And Martha asts me
how can I tell but Miss Hampton is like that?
"Well, then," I says, "she must be a witch. And if she is a witch why is
she scared of them a-tall?"
But Martha says if you have second sight you don't need to be a witch to
see them in the daytime.
Well, you can never tell about them ghosts. Some says one thing and some
says another. Old Mis' Primrose, in our town, she always believed in 'em
firm till her husband died. When he was dying they fixed it up he was
to come back and visit her. She told him he had to, and he promised. And
she left the front door open fur him night after night fur nigh a year,
in all kinds of weather; but Primrose never come. Mis' Primrose says he
never lied to her, and he always done jest as she told him, and if he
could of come she knowed he would; and when he didn't she quit believing
in ghosts. But they was others in our town said it didn't prove nothing
at all. They said Primrose had really been lying to her all his life,
because she was so bossy he had to lie to keep peace in the fambly,
and she never ketched on. Well, if I was a ghost and had of been Mis'
Primrose's husband when I was a human, I wouldn't of come back neither,
even if she had of bully-ragged me into one of them death-bed promises.
I guess Primrose figgered he had earnt a rest.
If they is ghosts, what comfort they can get out of coming back where
they ain't wanted and scaring folks is more'n I can see. It's kind of
low down, I think, and foolish too. Them kind of ghosts is like these
here overgrown smart alecs that scares kids. They think they are mighty
cute, but they ain't. They are jest foolish. A human, or a ghost either,
that does things like that is jest simply got no principle to him. I
hearn a lot of talk about 'em, first and last, and I ain't ready to say
they ain't no ghosts, nor yet ready to say they is any. To say they is
any is to say something that is too plumb unlikely. And too many people
has saw them fur me to say they ain't any. But if they is, or they
ain't, so fur as I can see, it don't make much difference. Fur they
never do nothing, besides scaring you, except to rap on tables and tell
fortunes, and such fool things. Which a human can do it all better and
save the expense of paying money to one of these here sperrit mediums
that travels around and makes 'em perform. But all the same they has
been nights I has felt different about 'em myself, and less hasty to run
'em down. Well, it don't do no good to speak harsh of no one, not even a
ghost or a ordinary dead man, and if I was to see a ghost, mebby I would
be all the scareder fur what I have jest wrote.
Well, with all the talking back and forth we done about them ghosts we
couldn't agree. That afternoon it seemed like we couldn't agree about
anything. I knowed we would be going away from there before long, and I
says to myself before I go I'm going to have that girl fur my girl, or
else know the reason why. No matter what I was talking about, that idea
was in the back of my head, and somehow it kind of made me want to
pick fusses with her, too. We was setting on a log, purty deep into the
woods, and there come a time when neither of us had said nothing fur
quite a spell. But after a while I says:
"Martha, we'll be going away from here in two, three days now."
She never said nothing.
"Will you be sorry?" I asts her.
She says she will be sorry.
"Well," I says, "WHY will you be sorry?"
I thought she would say because _I_ was going. And then I would be
finding out whether she liked me a lot. But she says the reason she will
be sorry is because there will be no one new to talk to about things
both has read. I was considerable took down when she said that.
"Martha," I says, "it's more'n likely I won't never see you agin after I
go away."
She says that kind of parting comes between the best of friends.
I seen I wasn't getting along very fast, nor saying what I wanted to
say. I reckon one of them Sir Marmeluke fellers would of knowed what to
say. Or Doctor Kirby would. Or mebby even Looey would of said it better
than I could. So I was kind of mad with myself, and I says, mean-like:
"If you don't care, of course, I don't care, neither."
She never answered that, so I gets up and makes like I am starting off.
"I was going to give you some of them there Injun feathers of mine to
remember me by," I tells her, "but if you don't want 'em, there's plenty
of others would be glad to take 'em."
But she says she would like to have them.
"Well," I says, "I will bring them to you tomorrow afternoon."
She says, "Thank you."
Finally I couldn't stand it no longer. I got brave all of a sudden, and
busted out: "Martha, I--I--I--"
But I got to stuttering, and my braveness stuttered itself away. And I
finishes up by saying:
"I like you a hull lot, Martha." Which wasn't jest exactly what I had
planned fur to say.
Martha, she says she kind of likes me, too.
"Martha," I says, "I like you more'n any girl I ever run acrost before."
She says, "Thank you," agin. The way she said it riled me up. She said
it like she didn't know what I meant, nor what I was trying to get out
of me. But she did know all the time. I knowed she did. She knowed I
knowed it, too. Gosh-dern it, I says to myself, here I am wasting all
this time jest TALKING to her. The right thing to do come to me all of
a sudden, and like to took my breath away. But I done it. I grabbed her
and I kissed her.
Twice. And then agin. Because the first was on the chin on account of
her jerking her head back. And the second one she didn't help me none.
But the third time she helped me a little. And the ones after that she
helped me considerable.
Well, they ain't no use trying to talk about the rest of that afternoon.
I couldn't rightly describe it if I wanted to. And I reckon it's none of
anybody's business.
Well, it makes you feel kind of funny. You want to go out and pick on
somebody about four sizes bigger'n you are and knock the socks off'n
him. It stands to reason others has felt that-a-way, but you don't
believe it. You want to tell people about it one minute. The next minute
you have got chills and ague fur fear some one will guess it. And you
think the way you are about her is going to last fur always.
That evening, when I was cooking supper, I laughed every time I was
spoke to. When Looey and I was hitching up to drive down town to give
the show, one of the hosses stepped on his foot and I laughed at that,
and there was purty nigh a fight. And I was handling some bottles and
broke one and cut my hand on a piece of glass. I held it out fur a
minute dumb-like, with the blood and medicine dripping off of it, and
all of a sudden I busted out laughing agin. The doctor asts if I am
crazy. And Looey says he has thought I was from the very first, and some
night him and the doctor will be killed whilst asleep. One of the things
we have every night in the show is an Injun dance, and Looey and I sings
what the doctor calls the Siwash war chant, whirling round and round
each other, and making licks at each other with our tommyhawks, and
letting out sudden wild yips in the midst of that chant. That night I
like to of killed Looey with that tommyhawk, I was feeling so good. If
it had been a real one, instead of painted-up wood, I would of killed
Looey, the lick I give him. The worst part of that was that, after the
show, when we got back to camp and the hosses was picketed out fur the
night, I had to tell Looey all about how I felt fur an explanation of
why I hit him.
Which it made Looey right low in his sperrits, and he shakes his head
and says no good will come of it.
"Did you ever hear of Romeo and Joliet?" he says:
"Mebby," I says, "but what it was I hearn I can't remember. What about
them?"
"Well," he says, "they carried on the same as you. And now where are
they?"
"Well," I says, "where are they?"
"In the tomb," says Looey, very sad, like they was closte personal
friends of his'n. And he told me all about them and how Young Cobalt had
done fur them. But from what I could make out it all happened away back
in the early days. And shucks!--I didn't care a dern, anyhow. I told him
so.
"Well," he says, "It's been the history of the world that it brings
trouble." And he says to look at Damon and Pythias, and Othello and the
Merchant of Venus. And he named about a hundred prominent couples like
that out of Shakespeare's works.
"But it ends happy sometimes," I says.
"Not when it is true love it don't," says Looey. "Look at Anthony and
Cleopatra."
"Yes," I says, sarcastic like, "I suppose they are in the tomb, too?"
"They are," says Looey, awful solemn.
"Yes," I says, "and so is Adam and Eve and Dan and Burrsheba and all
the rest of them old-timers. But I bet they had a good time while they
lasted."
Looey shakes his head solemn and sighs and goes to sleep very mournful,
like he has to give me up fur lost. But I can't sleep none myself.
So purty soon I gets up and puts on my shoes and sneaks through the
wood-lot and through the gap in the fence by the apple tree and into
Miss Hampton's yard.
It was a beauty of a moonlight night, that white and clear and clean you
could almost see to read by it, like all of everything had been scoured
as bright as the bottom of a tin pan. And the shadders was soft and
thick and velvety and laid kind of brownish-greeney on the grass. I
flopped down in the shadder of some lilac bushes and wondered which was
Martha's window. I knowed she would be in bed long ago, but---- Well, I
was jest plumb foolish that night, and I couldn't of kept away fur any
money. That moonlight had got into my head, it seemed like, and made
me drunk. But I would rather be looney that-a-way than to have as much
sense as King Solomon and all his adverbs. I was that looney that if I
had knowed any poetry I would of said it out loud, right up toward that
window. I never knowed why poetry was made up before that night. But the
only poetry I could think of was about there was a man named Furgeson
that lived on Market Street, and he had a one-eyed Thomas cat that
couldn't well be beat. Which it didn't seem to fit the case, so I didn't
say her.
The porch of that house was part covered with vines, but they was kind
of gaped apart at one corner. As I laid there in the shadder of the
bushes I hearn a fluttering movement, light and gentle, on that porch.
Then, all of a sudden, I seen some one standing on the edge of the porch
where the vines was gaped apart, and the moonlight was falling onto
them. They must of come there awful soft and still. Whoever it was
couldn't see into the shadder where I laid, that is, if it was a human
and not a ghost. Fur my first thought was it might be one of them ghosts
I had been running down so that very day, and mebby the same one Miss
Hampton seen on that very same porch. I thought I was in fur it then,
mebby, and I felt like some one had whispered to the back of my neck
it ought to be scared. And I WAS scared clean up into my hair. I stared
hard, fur I couldn't take my eyes away. Then purty soon I seen if it was
a ghost it must be a woman ghost. Fur it was dressed in light-coloured
clothes that moved jest a little in the breeze, and the clothes was so
near the colour of the moonlight they seemed to kind of silver into
it. You would of said it had jest floated there, and was waiting fur to
float away agin when the breeze blowed a little stronger, or the moon
drawed it.
It didn't move fur ever so long. Then it leaned forward through the gap
in the vines, and I seen the face real plain. It wasn't no ghost, it was
a lady. Then I knowed it must be Miss Hampton standing there. Away off
through the trees our camp fire sent up jest a dull kind of a glow. She
was standing there looking at that. I wondered why.
CHAPTER VIII
The next day we broke camp and was gone from that place, and I took away
with me the half of a ring me and Martha had chopped in two. We kept on
going, and by the time punkins and county fairs was getting ripe we was
into the upper left-hand corner of Ohio. And there Looey left us.
One day Doctor Kirby and me was walking along the main street of a
little town and we seen a bang-up funeral percession coming. It must of
been one of the Grand Army of the Republicans, fur they was some of the
old soldiers in buggies riding along behind, and a big string of people
follering in more buggies and some on foot. Everybody was looking mighty
sollum. But they was one man setting beside the undertaker on the seat
of the hearse that was looking sollumer than them all. It was Looey, and
I'll bet the corpse himself would of felt proud and happy and contented
if he could of knowed the style Looey was giving that funeral.
It wasn't nothing Looey done, fur he didn't do nothing but jest set
there with his arms folded onto his bosom and look sad. But he done THAT
better than any one else. He done it so well that you forgot the corpse
was the chief party to that funeral. Looey took all the glory from him.
He had jest natcherally stole that funeral away from its rightful owner
with his enjoyment of it. He seen the doctor and me as the hearse went
by our corner, but he never let on. A couple of hours later Looey comes
into camp and says he is going to quit.
The doctor asts him if he has inherited money.
"No," says Looey, "but my aunt has given me a chancet to go into
business."
Looey says he was born nigh there, and was prowling around town the day
before and run acrost an old aunt of his'n he had forgot all about.
She is awful respectable and religious and ashamed of him being into
a travelling show. And she has offered to lend him enough to buy a
half-share in a business.
"Well," says the doctor, "I hope it will be something you are fitted
for and will enjoy. But I've noticed that after a man gets the habit of
roaming around this terrestial ball it's mighty hard to settle down and
watch his vine and fig tree grow."
Looey smiles in a sad sort of a way, which he seldom smiled fur
anything, and says he guesses he'll like the business. He says they
ain't many businesses he could take to. Most of them makes you forget
this world is but a fleeting show. But he has found a business which
keeps you reminded all the time that dust is dust and ash to ashes shalt
return. When he first went into the medicine business, he said, he was
drawed to it by the diseases and the sudden dyings-off it always kept
him in mind of. He thought they wasn't no other business could lay over
it fur that kind of comfort. But he has found out his mistake.
"What kind of business are you going into?" asts the doctor.
"I am going to be an undertaker," says Looey. "My aunt says this town
needs the right kind of an undertaker bad."
Mr. Wilcox, the undertaker that town has, is getting purty old and
shaky, Looey says, and young Mr. Wilcox, his son, is too light-minded
and goes at things too brisk and airy to give it the right kind of a
send-off. People don't want him joking around their corpses and he is
a fat young man and can't help making puns even in the presence of the
departed. Old Mr. Wilcox's eyesight is getting so poor he made a scandal
in that town only the week before. He was composing a departed's face
into a last smile, but he went too fur with it, and give the departed
one of them awful mean, devilish kind of grins, like he had died with
a bad temper on. By the time the departed's fambly had found it out,
things had went too fur, and the face had set that-a-way, so it wasn't
safe to try to change it any.
Old Mr. Wilcox had several brands of last looks. One was called:
"Bear Up, for We Will Meet Again." The one that had went wrong was his
favourite look, named: "O Death, Where is Thy Victory?"
Looey's aunt says she will buy him a partnership if she is satisfied he
can fill the town's needs. They have a talk with the Wilcoxes, and he
rides on the hearse that day fur a try-out. His aunt peeks out behind
her bedroom curtains as the percession goes by her house, and when she
sees the style Looey is giving to that funeral, and how easy it comes
to him, that settles it with her on the spot. And it seems the hull dern
town liked it, too, including the departed's fambly.
Looey says they is a lot of chancet fur improvements in the undertaking
game by one whose heart is in his work, and he is going into that
business to make a success of it, and try and get all the funeral trade
fur miles around. He reads us an advertisement of the new firm he has
been figgering out fur that town's weekly paper. I cut a copy out when
it was printed, and it is about the genteelest thing like that I even
seen, as follers:
WILCOX AND SIMMS Invite Your Patronage
This earth is but a fleeting show, and the blank-winged angels wait for
all. It is always a satisfaction to remember that all possible has been
done for the deceased.
See Our New Line of Coffins
Lined Caskets a Specialty
Lodge Work Solicited
Time and tide wait for no man, and his days are few and full of
troubles. The paths of glory lead but to the grave, and none can tell
when mortal feet may stumble.
When in Town Drop in and Inspect Our New Embalming Outfit. It is a
Pleasure to Show Goods and Tools Even if Your Family Needs no Work Done
Just Yet
Outfits for mourners who have been bereaved on short notice a specialty.
We take orders for tombstones. Look at our line of shrouds, robes, and
black suits for either sex and any age. Give us just one call, and you
will entrust future embalmings and obsequies in your family to no other
firm.
WILCOX AND SIMMS Main Street, Near Depot
The doctor, he reads it over careful and says she orter drum up trade,
all right. Looey tells us that mebby, if he can get that town educated
up to it, he will put in a creamatory, where he will burn them, too, but
will go slow, fur that there sollum and beautiful way of returning ash
to ashes might make some prejudice in such a religious town.
The last we seen of Looey was a couple of days later when we told him
good-bye in his shop. Old Mr. Wilcox was explaining to him the science
of them last looks he was so famous at when he was a younger man. Young
Mr. Wilcox was laying on a table fur Looey to practise on, and Looey was
learning fast. But he nearly broke down when he said good-bye, fur he
liked the doctor.
"Doc," he says, "you've been a good friend, and I won't never forget
you. They ain't much I can do, and in this deceitful world words is less
than actions. But if you ever was to die within a hundred miles of me,
I'd go," he says, "and no other hands but mine should lay you out. And
it wouldn't cost you a cent, either. Nor you neither, Danny."
We thanked him kindly fur the offer, and went.
The next town we come to there was a county fair, and the doctor run
acrost an old pal of his'n who had a show on the grounds and wanted to
hire him fur what he called a ballyhoo man. Which was the first I ever
hearn them called that, but I got better acquainted with them since.
They are the fellers that stands out in front and gets you all excited
about the Siamese twins or the bearded lady or the snake-charmer or the
Circassian beauties or whatever it is inside the tent, as represented
upon the canvas. The doctor says he will do it fur a week, jest fur fun,
and mebby pick up another feller to take Looey's place out there.
This feller's name is Watty Sanders, and his wife is a fat lady in his
own show and very good-natured when not intoxicated nor mad at Watty. She
was billed on the curtains outside fur five hundred and fifty pounds,
and Watty says she really does weigh nigh on to four hundred. But being
a fat lady's husband ain't no bed of rosy ease at that, Watty tells
the doctor. It's like every other trade--it has its own pertic'ler
responsibilities and troubles. She is a turrible expense to Watty on
account of eating so much. The tales that feller told of how hard he
has to hustle showing her off in order to support her appetite would of
drawed tears from a pawnbroker's sign, as Doctor Kirby says. Which he
found it cheaper fur his hull show to board and sleep in the tent, and
we done likewise.
Well, I got a job with that show myself. Watty had a wild man canvas
but no wild man, so he made me an offer and I took him up. I was from
Borneo, where they're all supposed to be captured. Jest as Doctor Kirby
would get to his talk about how the wild man had been ketched after
great struggle and expense, with four men killed and another crippled,
there would be an awful rumpus on the inside of the tent, with wild
howlings and the sound of revolvers shot off and a woman screaming. Then
I would come busting out all blacked up from head to heel with no more
clothes on than the law pervided fur, yipping loud and shaking a big
spear and rolling my eyes, and Watty would come rushing after me firing
his revolver. I would make fur the doctor and draw my spear back to jab
it clean through him, and Watty would grab my arm. And the doctor would
whirl round and they would wrastle me to the ground and I would be
handcuffed and dragged back into the tent, still howling and struggling
to break loose. On the inside my part of the show was to be wild in a
cage. I would be chained to the floor, and every now and then I would
get wilder and rattle my chains and shake the bars and make jumps at the
crowd and carry on, and make believe I was too mad to eat the pieces of
raw meat Watty throwed into the cage.
Watty had a snake-charmer woman, with an awful long, bony kind of neck,
working fur him, and another feller that was her husband and eat glass.
The show opened up with them two doing what they said was a comic turn.
Then the fat lady come on. Whilst everybody was admiring her size, and
looking at the number of pounds on them big cheat scales Watty weighed
her on, the long-necked one would be changing to her snake clothes.
Which she only had one snake, and he had been in the business so long,
and was so kind of worn out and tired with being charmed so much, it
always seemed like a pity to me the way she would take and twist him
around. I guess they never was a snake was worked harder fur the little
bit he got to eat, nor got no sicker of a woman's society than poor old
Reginald did. After Reginald had been charmed a while, it would be the
glass eater's turn. Which he really eat it, and the doctor says that
kind always dies before they is fifty. I never knowed his right name,
but what he went by was The Human Ostrich.
Watty's wife was awful jealous of Mrs. Ostrich, fur she got the idea
she was carrying on with Watty. One night I hearn an argument from the
fenced-off part of the tent Watty and his wife slept in. She was setting
on Watty's chest and he was gasping fur mercy.
"You know it ain't true," says Watty, kind of smothered-like.
"It is," says she, "you own up it is!" And she give him a jounce.
"No, darling," he gets out of him, "you know I never could bear them
thin, scrawny kind of women." And he begins to call her pet names of
all kinds and beg her please, if she won't get off complete, to set
somewheres else a minute, fur his chest he can feel giving way, and his
ribs caving in. He called her his plump little woman three or four
times and she must of softened up some, fur she moved and his voice come
stronger, but not less meek and lowly. And he follers it up:
"Dolly, darling," he says, "I bet I know something my little woman don't
know."
"What is it?" the fat lady asts him.
"You don't know what a cruel, weak stomach your hubby has got," Watty
says, awful coaxing like, "or you wouldn't bear down quite so hard onto
it--please, Dolly!"
She begins to blubber and say he is making fun of her big size, and if
he is mean to her any more or ever looks at another woman agin she will
take anti-fat and fade away to nothing and ruin his show, and it is
awful hard to be made a joke of all her life and not have no steady home
nor nothing like other women does.
"You know I worship every pound of you, little woman," says Watty,
still coaxing. "Why can't you trust me? You know, Dolly, darling, I
wouldn't take your weight in gold for you." And he tells her they never
was but once in all his life he has so much as turned his head to look
at another woman, and that was by way of a plutonic admiration, and no
flirting intended, he says. And even then it was before he had met his
own little woman. And that other woman, he says, was plump too, fur he
wouldn't never look at none but a plump woman.
"What did she weigh?" asts Watty's wife. He tells her a measly little
three hundred pound.
"But she wasn't refined like my little woman," says Watty, "and when I
seen that I passed her up." And inch by inch Watty coaxed her clean off
of him.
But the next day she hearn him and Mrs. Ostrich giggling about
something, and she has a reg'lar tantrum, and jest fur meanness goes out
and falls down on the race track, pertending she has fainted, and they
can't move her no ways, not even roll her. But finally they rousted her
out of that by one of these here sprinkling carts backing up agin her
and turning loose.
But aside from them occasional mean streaks Dolly was real nice, and I
kind of got to liking her. She tells me that because she is so fat no
one won't take her serious like a human being, and she wisht she was
like other women and had a fambly. That woman wanted a baby, too, and I
bet she would of been good to it, fur she was awful good to animals. She
had been big from a little girl, and never got no sympathy when sick,
nor nothing, and even whilst she played with dolls as a kid she knowed
she looked ridiculous, and was laughed at. And by jings!--they was
the funniest thing come to light before we left that crowd. That poor,
derned, old, fat fool HAD a doll yet, all hid away, and when she was
alone she used to take it out and cuddle it. Well, Dolly never had many
friends, and you couldn't blame her much if she did drink a little too
much now and then, or get mad at Watty fur his goings-on and kneel down
on him whilst he was asleep. Them was her only faults and I liked the
old girl. Yet I could see Watty had his troubles too.
That show busted up before the fair closed. Fur one day Watty's wife
gets mad at Mrs. Ostrich and tries to set on her. And then Mrs. Ostrich
gets mad too, and sicks Reginald onto her. Watty's wife is awful scared
of Reginald, who don't really have ambition enough to bite no one, let
alone a lady built so round everywhere he couldn't of got a grip on her.
And as fur as wrapping himself around her and squashing her to death,
Reginald never seen the day he could reach that fur. Reginald's feelings
is plumb friendly toward Dolly when he is turned loose, but she don't
know that, and she has some hysterics and faints in earnest this time.
Well, they was an awful hullaballo when she come to, and fur the sake of
peace in the fambly Watty has to fire Mr. and Mrs. Ostrich and poor old
Reginald out of their jobs, and the show is busted. So Doctor Kirby and
me lit out fur other parts agin.
CHAPTER IX
We was jogging along one afternoon not fur from a good-sized town at the
top of Ohio, right on the lake, when we run acrost some remainders of
a busted circus riding in a stake and chain wagon. They was two
fellers--both jugglers, acrobats, and tumblers--and a balloon. The
circus had busted without paying them nothing but promises fur months
and months, and they had took the team and wagon and balloon by
attachment, they said. They was carting her from the little burg the
show busted in to that good-sized town on the lake. They would sell the
team and wagon there and get money enough to put an advertisement in
the Billboard, which is like a Bible to them showmen, that they had a
balloon to sell and was at liberty.
One of them was the slimmest, lightest-footed, quickest feller you ever
seen, with a big nose and dark complected, and his name was Tobias. The
other was heavier and blonde complected. His name was Dobbs, he said,
and they was the Blanchet Brothers. Doctor Kirby and them got real well
acquainted in about three minutes. We drove on ahead and got into the
town first.
The doctor says that balloon is jest wasted on them fellers. They can't
go up in her, not knowing that trade, but still they ought to be some
way fur them to make a little stake out of it before it was sold.
The next evening we run acrost them fellers on the street, and they was
feeling purty blue. They hadn't been able to sell that team and wagon,
which it was eating its meals reg'lar in a livery stable, and they had
been doing stunts in the street that day and passing around the hat, but
not getting enough fur to pay expenses.
"Where's the balloon?" asts the doctor. And I seen he was sicking his
intellects onto the job of making her pay.
"In the livery stable with the wagon," they tells him.
He says he is going to figger out a way to help them boys. They is like
all circus performers, he says--they jest knows their own acts, and
talks about 'em all the time, and studies up ways to make 'em better,
and has got no more idea of business outside of that than a rabbit. We
all went to the livery stable and overhauled that balloon. It was an
awful job, too. But they wasn't a rip in her, and the parachute was jest
as good as new.
"There's no reason why we can't give a show of our own," says Doctor
Kirby, "with you boys and Danny and me and that balloon. What we want
is a lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball grounds,
and the chance to tap a gas main." He says he'll be willing to take a
chancet on it, even paying the gas company real money to fill her up.
What the Doctor didn't know about starting shows wasn't worth knowing.
He had even went in for the real drama in his younger days now and then.
"One of my theatrical productions came very near succeeding, too," he
says.
It was a play he says, in which the hero falls in love with a pair of
Siamese twins and commits suicide because he can't make a choice between
them.
"We played it as comedy in the big towns and tragedy in the little
ones," he says. "But like a fool I booked it for two weeks of
middle-sized towns and it broke us."
The next day he finds a lot that will do jest fine. It has been used fur
a school playgrounds, but the school has been moved and the old building
is to be tore down. He hired the place cheap. And he goes and talks the
gas company into giving him credit to fill that balloon. Which I kept
wondering what was the use of filling her, fur none of the four of
us had ever went up in one. And when I seen the handbills he had had
printed I wondered all the more. They read as follers:
Kirby's Komedy Kompany and Open Air Circus
Presenting a Peerless Personnel of Artistic Attractions
Greatest in the Galaxy of Gaiety, is
Hartley L. Kirby
Monologuist and minstrel, dancer and vaudevillian in his terpsichorean
travesties, buoyant burlesques, inimitable imitations, screaming
impersonations, refined comedy sketches and popular song hits of the
day.
The Blanchet Brothers
Daring, Dazzling, Danger-Loving, Death-Defying Demons
Joyous jugglers, acrobatic artists, constrictorial contortionists,
exquisite equilibrists, in their marvellous, mysterious, unparalleled
performances.
Umslopogus The Patagonian Chieftain
The lowest type of human intellect
This formerly ferocious fiend has so far succumbed to the softer wiles
of civilization that he is no longer a cannibal, and it is now safe to
put him on exhibition. But to prevent accidents he is heavily manacled,
and the public is warned not to come too near.
Balloon! Balloon!! Balloon!!!
The management also presents the balloon of
Prof. Alonzo Ackerman The Famous Aeronaut
in which he has made his
Wonderful Ascension and Parachute Drop
many times, reaching remarkable altitudes
Balloon! Balloon!! Balloon!!!
Saturday, 3 P. M. Old Vandegrift School Lot
Admission 50 Cents
Well, fur a writer he certainly laid over Looey, Doctor Kirby did--more
cheerful-like, you might say. I seen right off I was to be the
Patagonian Chieftain. I was getting more and more of an actor right
along--first an Injun, then a wild Borneo, and now a Patagonian.
"But who is this Alonzo Ackerman?" I asts him.
"Celebrated balloonist," says he, "and the man that invented parachutes.
They eat out of his hand."
"Where is he?" asts I.
"How should I know?" he says.
"How is he going up, then?" I asts.
The doctor chuckles and says it is a good bill, a better bill than he
thought; that it is getting in its work already. He says to me to read
it careful and see if it says Alonzo Ackerman is going up. Well, it
don't. But any one would of thought so the first look. I reckon that
bill was some of a liar herself, not lying outright, but jest hinting a
lie. They is a lot of mean, stingy-souled kind of people wouldn't never
lie to help a friend, but Doctor Kirby wasn't one of 'em.
"But," I says, "when that crowd finds out Alonzo ain't going up they
will be purty mad."
"Oh," says he, "I don't think so. The American public are a good-natured
set of chuckle-heads, mostly. If they get sore I'll talk 'em out of it."
If he had any faults at all--and mind you, I ain't saying Doctor Kirby
had any--the one he had hardest was the belief he could talk any crowd
into any notion, or out of it, either. And he loved to do it jest fur
the fun of it. He'd rather have the feeling he was doing that than the
money any day. He was powerful vain about that gab of his'n, Doctor
Kirby was.
The four of us took around about five thousand bills. The doctor says
they is nothing like giving yourself a chancet. And Saturday morning we
got the balloon filled up so she showed handsome, tugging away there at
her ropes. But we had a dern mean time with that balloon, too.
The doctor says if we have good luck there may be as many as three, four
hundred people.
But Jerusalem! They was two, three times that many. By the time the
show started I reckon they was nigh a thousand there. The doctor and
the Blanchet Brothers was tickled. When they quit coming fast the doctor
left the gate and made a little speech, telling all about the wonderful
show, and the great expense it was to get it together, and all that.
They was a rope stretched between the crowd and us. Back of that was the
Blanchet Brothers' wagon and our wagon, and our little tent. I was jest
inside the tent with chains on. Back of everything else was the balloon.
Well, the doctor he done a lot of songs and things as advertised. Then
the Blanchet Brothers done some of their acts. They was really fine
acts, too. Then come some more of Doctor Kirby's refined comedy, as
advertised. Next, more Blanchet. Then a lecture about me by the doctor.
All in all it takes up about an hour and a half. Then the doctor makes
a mighty nice little talk, and wishes them all good afternoon, thanking
them fur their kind intentions and liberal patronage, one and all.
"But when will the balloon go up?" asts half a dozen at oncet.
"The balloon?" asts Doctor Kirby, surprised.
"Balloon! Balloon!" yells a kid. And the hull crowd took it up and
yelled: "Balloon! Balloon! Balloon!" And they crowded up closte to that
rope.
Doctor Kirby has been getting off the wagon, but he gets back on her,
and stretches his arms wide, and motions of 'em all to come close.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "please to gather near--up here,
good people--and listen! Listen to what I have to say--harken to the
utterings of my voice! There has been a misunderstanding here! There has
been a misconstruction! There has been, ladies and gentlemen, a woeful
lack of comprehension here!"
It looked to me like they was beginning to understand more than he meant
them to. I was wondering how it would all come out, but he never lost
his nerve.
"Listen," he says, very earnest, "listen to me. Somehow the idea seems
to have gone forth that there would be a balloon ascension here this
afternoon. How, I do not know, for what we advertised, ladies and
gentlemen, was that the balloon used by Prof. Alonzo Ackerman, the
illustrious aeronaut, would be UPON EXHIBITION. And there she is, ladies
and gentlemen, there she is, for every eye to see and gladden with the
sight of--right before you, ladies and gentlemen--the balloon of Alonzo
Ackerman, the wonderful voyager of the air, exactly as represented.
During their long career Kirby and Company have never deceived the
public. Others may, but Kirby and Company are like Caesar's wife--Kirby
and Company are above suspicion. It is the province of Kirby's Komedy
Kompany, ladies and gentlemen, to spread the glad tidings of innocent
amusement throughout the length and breadth of this fair land of ours.
And there she is before you, the balloon as advertised, the gallant ship
of the air in which the illustrious Ackerman made so many voyages before
he sailed at last into the Great Beyond! You can see her, ladies and
gentlemen, straining at her cords, anxious to mount into the heavens
and be gone! It is an education in itself, ladies and gentlemen, a moral
education, and well worth coming miles to see. Think of it--think of
it--the Ackerman balloon--and then think that the illustrious Ackerman
himself--he was my personal friend, ladies and gentlemen, and a true
friend sticketh closer than a brother--the illustrious Ackerman is dead.
The balloon, ladies and gentlemen, is there, but Ackerman is gone to his
reward. Look at that balloon, ladies and gentlemen, and tell me if you
can, why should the spirit of mortals be proud? For the man that rode
her like a master and tamed her like she was a dove lies cold and dead
in a western graveyard, ladies and gentlemen, and she is here, a useless
and an idle vanity without the mind that made her go!"
Well, he went on and he told a funny story about Alonzo, which I don't
believe they ever was no Alonzo Ackerman, and a lot of 'em laughed;
and he told a pitiful story, and they got sollum agin, and then another
funny story. Well, he had 'em listening, and purty soon most of the
crowd is feeling in a good humour toward him, and one feller yells out:
"Go it--you're a hull show yourself!" And some joshes him, but they
don't seem to be no trouble in the air. When they all look to be in a
good humour he holds up a bill and asts how many has them. Many has. He
says that is well, and then he starts to telling another story. But
in the middle of the story that hull dern crowd is took with a fit of
laughing. They has looked at the bill closet, and seen they is sold, and
is taking it good-natured. And still shouting and laughing most of them
begins to start along off. And I thought all chancet of trouble was over
with. But it wasn't.
Fur they is always a natcheral born kicker everywhere, and they was one
here, too.
He was a lean feller with a sticking out jaw, and one of his eyes was in
a kind of a black pocket, and he was jest natcherally laying it off to
about a dozen fellers that was in a little knot around him.
The doctor sees the main part of the crowd going and climbs down off'n
the wagon. As he does so that hull bunch of about a dozen moves in under
the rope, and some more that was going out seen it, and stopped and come
back.
"Perfessor," says the man with the patch over his eye to Doctor Kirby,
"you say this man Ackerman is dead?"
"Yes," says the doctor, eying him over, "he's dead."
"How did he die?" asts the feller.
"He died hard, I understand," says the doctor, careless-like.
"Fell out of his balloon?"
"Yes."
"This aeronaut trade is a dangerous trade, I hear," says the feller with
the patch on his eye.
"They say so," says Doctor Kirby, easy-like.
"Was you ever an aeronaut yourself?" asts the feller.
"No," says the doctor.
"Never been up in a balloon?"
"No."
"Well, you're going up in one this afternoon!"
"What do you mean?" asts Doctor Kirby.
"We've come out to see a balloon ascension--and we're going to see it,
too."
And with that the hull crowd made a rush at the doctor.
Well, I been in fights before that, and I been in fights since then. But
I never been in no harder one. The doctor and the two Blanchet brothers
and me managed to get backed up agin the fence in a row when the rush
come. I guess I done my share, and I guess the Blanchet brothers done
theirn, too. But they was too many of 'em for us--too dern many. It
wouldn't of ended as quick as it did if Doctor Kirby hadn't gone clean
crazy. His back was to the fence, and he cleaned out everything in front
of him, and then he give a wild roar jest like a bull and rushed that
hull gang--twenty men, they was--with his head down. He caught two
fellers, one in each hand, and he cracked their heads together, and he
caught two more, and done the same. But he orter never took his back
away from that fence. The hull gang closed in on him, and down he went
at the bottom of a pile. I was awful busy myself, but I seen that pile
moving and churning. Then I made a big mistake myself. I kicked a feller
in the stomach, and another feller caught my leg, and down I went. Fur
a half a minute I never knowed nothing. And when I come to I was all
mashed about the face, and two fellers was sitting on me.
The crowd was tying Doctor Kirby to that parachute. They straddled
legs over the parachute bar, and tied his feet below it. He was still
fighting, but they was too many fur him. They left his arms untied, but
they held 'em, and then--
Then they cut her loose. She went up like she was shot from a gun, and
as she did Doctor Kirby took a grip on a feller's arm that hadn't let
loose quick enough and lifted him plumb off'n the ground. He slewed
around on the trapeze bar with the feller's weight, and slipped head
downward. And as he slipped he give that feller a swing and let loose
of him, and then ketched himself by the crook of one knee. The feller
turned over twicet in the air and landed in a little crumpled-up pile on
the ground, and never made a sound.
The fellers that had holt of me forgot me and stood up, and I stood up
too, and looked. The balloon was rising fast. Doctor Kirby was trying to
pull himself up to the trapeze bar, twisting and squirming and having
a hard time of it, and shooting higher every second. I reckoned he
couldn't fall complete, fur where his feet was tied would likely hold
even if his knee come straight--but he would die mebby with his head
filling up with blood. But finally he made a squirm and raised himself a
lot and grabbed the rope at one side of the bar. And then he reached and
got the rope on the other side, and set straddle of her. And jest as he
done that the wind ketched the balloon good and hard, and she turned out
toward Lake Erie. It was too late fur him to pull the rope that sets the
parachute loose then, and drop onto the land.
I rushed out of that schoolhouse yard and down the street toward the
lake front, and run, stumbling along and looking up. She was getting
smaller every minute. And with my head in the air looking up I was
running plumb to the edge of the water before I knowed it.
She was away out over the lake now, and awful high, and going fast
before the wind, and the doctor was only a speck. And as I stared at
that speck away up in the sky I thought this was a mean world to live
in. Fur there was the only real friend I ever had, and no way fur me to
help him. He had learnt me to read, and bought me good clothes, and made
me know they was things in the world worth travelling around to see, and
made me feel like I was something more than jest Old Hank Walters's dog.
And I guessed he would be drownded and I would never see him agin now.
And all of a sudden something busted loose inside of me, and I sunk
down there at the edge of the water, sick at my stomach, and weak and
shivering.
CHAPTER X
I didn't exactly faint there, but things got all mixed fur me, and when
they was straightened out agin I was in a hospital. It seems I had
been considerable stepped on in that fight, and three ribs was broke. I
knowed I was hurting, but I was so interested in what was happening to
the doctor the hull hurt never come to me till the balloon was way out
over the lake.
But now I was in a plaster cast, and before I got out of that I was in a
fever. I was some weeks getting out of there.
I tried to get some word of Doctor Kirby, but couldn't. Nothing had been
heard of him or the balloon. The newspapers had had stuff about it fur a
day or two, and they guessed the body might come to light sometime. But
that was all. And I didn't know where to hunt nor how.
The hosses and wagon and tent and things worried me some, too. They
wasn't mine, and so I couldn't sell 'em. And they wasn't no good to me
without Doctor Kirby. So I tells the man that owns the livery stable to
use the team fur its board and keep it till Doctor Kirby calls fur it,
and if he never does mebby I will sometime.
I didn't want to stay in that town or I could of got a job in the livery
stable. They offered me one, but I hated that town. I wanted to light
out. I didn't much care where to.
Them Blanchet Brothers had left a good share of the money we took in
at the balloon ascension with the hospital people fur me before they
cleared out. But before I left that there town I seen they was one thing
I had to do to make myself easy in my mind. So I done her.
That was to hunt up that feller with his eye in the patch. It took me
a week to find him. He lived down near some railroad yards. I might of
soaked him with a coupling link and felt a hull lot better. But I didn't
guess it would do to pet and pamper my feelings too much. So I does it
with my fists in a quiet place, and does it very complete, and leaves
that town in a cattle car, feeling a hull lot more contented in my mind.
Then they was a hull dern year I didn't stay nowhere very long, nor
work at any one job too long, neither. I jest worked from place to place
seeing things--big towns and rivers and mountains. Working here and
there, and loafing and riding blind baggages and freight trains between
jobs, I covered a lot of ground that year, and made some purty big
jumps, and got acquainted with some awful queer folks, first and last.
But the worst of that is lots of people gets to thinking I am a hobo.
Even one or two judges in police courts I got acquainted with had that
there idea of me. I always explains that I am not one, and am jest
travelling around to see things, and working when I feels like it, and
ain't no bum. But frequent I am not believed. And two, three different
times I gets to the place where I couldn't hardly of told myself from a
hobo, if I hadn't of knowed I wasn't one.
I got right well acquainted with some of them hobos, too. As fur as I
can see, they is as much difference in them as in other humans. Some
travels because they likes to see things, and some because they hates to
work, and some because they is in the habit and can't stop it. Well, I
know myself it's purty hard after while to stop it, fur where would you
stop at? What excuse is they to stop one place more'n another? I met all
kinds of 'em, and oncet I got in fur a week with a couple of real Johnny
Yeggs that is both in the pen now. I hearn a feller say one time there
is some good in every man. I went the same way as them two yeggmen a
hull dern week to try and find out where the good in 'em was. I guess
they must be some mistake somewheres, fur I looked hard and I watched
closet and I never found it. They is many kinds of hobos and tramps,
perfessional and amachure, and lots of kinds of bums, and lots of young
fellers working their way around to see things, like I was, and lots of
working men in hard luck going from place to place, and all them kinds
is humans. But the real yeggman ain't even a dog.
And oncet I went all the way from Chicago to Baltimore with a serious,
dern fool that said he was a soshyologest, whatever them is, and was
going to put her all into a book about the criminal classes. He worked
hard trying to get at the reason I was a hobo. Which they wasn't no
reason, fur I wasn't no hobo. But I didn't want to disappoint that
feller and spoil his book fur him. So I tells him things. Things not
overly truthful, but very full of crime. About a year afterward I was
into one of these here Andrew Carnegie lib'aries with the names of the
old-time presidents all chiselled along the top and I seen the hull
dern thing in print. He said of me the same thing I have said about them
yeggmen. If all he met joshed that feller the same as me, that book must
of been what you might call misleading in spots.
One morning I woke up in a good-sized town in Illinoise, not a hundred
miles from where I was raised, without no money, and my clothes not much
to look at, and no job. I had been with a railroad show fur about two
weeks, driving stakes and other rough work, and it had went off and left
me sleeping on the ground. Circuses never waits fur nothing nor cares a
dern fur no one. I tried all day around town fur to get some kind of a
job. But I was looking purty rough and I couldn't land nothing. Along in
the afternoon I was awful hungry.
I was feeling purty low down to have to ast fur a meal, but finally I
done it.
I dunno how I ever come to pick out such a swell-looking house, but I
makes a little talk at the back door and the Irish girl she says, "Come
in," and into the kitchen I goes.
"It's Minnesota you're working toward?" asts she, pouring me out a cup
of coffee.
She is thinking of the wheat harvest where they is thousands makes fur
every fall. But none of 'em fur me. That there country is full of them
Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians, and they gets into the field before
daylight and stays there so long the hired man's got to milk the cows by
moonlight.
"I been acrost the river into I'way," I says, "a-working at my trade,
and now I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more."
"What might your trade be?" she asts, sizing me up careful; and I thinks
I'll hand her one to chew on she ain't never hearn tell of before.
"I'm a agnostic by trade," I says. I spotted that there word in a
religious book one time, and that's the first chancet I ever has to try
it on any one. You can't never tell what them reg'lar sockdologers is
going to do till you tries them.
"I see," says she. But I seen she didn't see. And I didn't help her
none. She would of ruther died than to let on she didn't see. The Irish
is like that. Purty soon she says:
"Ain't that the dangerous kind o' work, though!"
"It is," I says. And says nothing further.
She sets down and folds her arms, like she was thinking of it, watching
my hands closet all the time I was eating, like she's looking fur scars
where something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Purty soon she
says:
"Me brother Michael was kilt at it in the old country. He was the most
vinturesome lad of thim all!"
"Did it fly up and hit him?" I asts her. I was wondering w'ether she is
making fun of me or am I making fun of her. Them Irish is like that, you
can never tell which.
"No," says she, "he fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what
it is yourself." And the next thing I know I'm eased out o' the back
door and she's grinning at me scornful through the crack of it.
So I was walking slow around toward the front of the house thinking how
the Irish was a great nation, and what shall I do now, anyhow? And I
says to myself: "Danny, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and
leave you asleep in this here town with nothing over you but a barbed
wire fence this morning. Fur what ARE you going to do next? First thing
you know, you WILL be a reg'lar tramp, which some folks can't be made
to see you ain't now." And jest when I was thinking that, a feller comes
down the front steps of that house on the jump and nabs me by the coat
collar.
"Did you come out of this house?" he asts.
"I did," I says, wondering what next.
"Back in you go, then," he says, marching me forward toward them front
steps, "they've got smallpox in there."
I like to of jumped loose when he says that.
"Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, mister," I tells him. But he
twisted my coat collar tight and dug his thumbs into my neck, all the
time helping me onward with his knee from behind, and I seen they wasn't
no use pulling back. I could probable of licked that man, but they's no
system in mixing up with them well-dressed men in towns where they think
you are a tramp. The judge will give you the worst of it.
He rung the door bell and the girl that opened the door she looked kind
o' surprised when she seen me, and in we went.
"Tell Professor Booth that Doctor Wilkins wants to see him again,"
says the man a-holt o' me, not letting loose none. And we says nothing
further till the perfessor comes, which he does, slow and absent-minded.
When he seen me he took off his glasses so's he could see me better, and
he says:
"What is that you have there, Doctor Wilkins?"
"A guest for you," says Doctor Wilkins, grinning all over hisself. "I
found him leaving your house. And you being under quarantine, and me
being secretary to the board of health, and the city pest-house being
crowded too full already, I'll have to ask you to keep him here till
we get Miss Margery onto her feet again," he says. Or they was words to
that effect, as the lawyers asts you.
"Dear me," says Perfesser Booth, kind o' helpless like. And he
comes over closet to me and looks me all over like I was one of them
amphimissourian lizards in a free museum. And then he goes to the foot
of the stairs and sings out in a voice that was so bleached-out and
flat-chested it would of looked jest like him himself if you could of
saw it--"Estelle," he sings out, "oh, Estelle!"
Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big
brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no
spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her
face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was
a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had
hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was
a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me
shiver, while the doctor and the perfessor jaws about whose fault it is
the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening
she says to the perfessor: "You had better go back to your laboratory."
And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.
"What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?" the kid asts her.
"What would YOU suggest, William, Dear?" asts his aunt. I ain't feeling
very comfortable, and I was getting all ready jest to natcherally bolt
out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be
no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox.
Fur I had riccolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated
a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsive medical advice, me being
fur a while doing some work on the city pavements through a mistake
about me in the police court.
William Dear looks at me like it was the day of judgment and his job was
to keep the fatted calves separate from the goats and prodigals, and he
says:
"If I were you, Aunt Estelle, the first thing would be to get his hair
cut and his face washed and then get him some clothes."
"William Dear is my friend," thinks I.
She calls James, which was a butler. James, he buttles me into a
bathroom the like o' which I never seen afore, and then he buttles me
into a suit o' somebody's clothes and into a room at the top o' the
house next to his'n, and then he comes back and buttles a comb and brush
at me. James was the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he
says that account of me not being respectable I will have my meals alone
in the kitchen after the servants has eat.
The first thing I knowed I been in that house more'n a week. I eat and I
slept and I smoked and I kind of enjoyed not worrying about things fur
a while. The only oncomfortable thing about being the perfessor's guest
was Miss Estelle. Soon's she found out I was a agnostic she took charge
o' my intellectuals and what went into 'em, and she makes me read things
and asts me about 'em, and she says she is going fur to reform me. And
whatever brand o' disgrace them there agnostics really is I ain't found
out to this day, having come acrost the word accidental.
Biddy Malone, which was the kitchen mechanic, she says the perfessor's
wife's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on,
and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss Margery, the little
kid that's sick. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay
there, too. They's been some talk, anyhow, about Mrs. Booth and a
musician feller around that there town. But Biddy, she likes Mrs. Booth,
and even if it was true, which it ain't Biddy says, who could of blamed
her? Fur things ain't joyous around that house the last year, since Miss
Estelle's come there to live. The perfessor, he's so full of scientifics
he don't know nothing with no sense to it, Biddy says. He's got more
money'n you can shake a stick at, and he don't have to do no work, nor
never has, and his scientifics gets worse and worse every year. But
while scientifics is worrying to the nerves of a fambly, and while his
labertory often makes the house smell like a sick drug store has crawled
into it and died there, they wouldn't of been no serious row on between
the perfessor and his wife, not ALL the time, if it hadn't of been fur
Miss Estelle. She has jest natcherally made herself boss of that there
house, Biddy says, and she's a she-devil. Between all them scientifics
and Miss Estelle things has got where Mrs. Booth can't stand 'em much
longer.
I didn't blame her none fur getting sore on her job, neither. You
can't expect a woman that's purty, and knows it, and ain't no more'n
thirty-two or three, and don't look it, to be serious intrusted in
mummies and pickled snakes and chemical perfusions, not ALL the time.
Mebby when Mrs. Booth would ast him if he was going to take her to the
opery that night the perfessor would look up in an absent-minded sort
of way and ast her did she know them Germans had invented a new germ? It
wouldn't of been so bad if the perfessor had picked out jest one brand
of scientifics and stuck to that reg'lar. Mrs. Booth could of got use to
any ONE kind. But mebby this week the perfessor would be took hard with
ornithography and he'd go chasing humming-birds all over the front yard,
and the next he'd be putting gastronomy into William's breakfast feed.
They was always a row on over them kids, which they hadn't been till
Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth, she said they could kill their own
selves, if they wanted to, him and Miss Estelle, but she had more
right than any one else to say what went into William's and Margery's
digestive ornaments, and she didn't want 'em brung up scientific nohow,
but jest human. But Miss Estelle's got so she runs that hull house
now, and the perfessor too, but he don't know it, Biddy says, and her
a-saying every now and then it was too bad Frederick couldn't of married
a noble woman who would of took a serious intrust in his work. The kids
don't hardly dare to kiss their ma in front of Miss Estelle no more, on
account of germs and things. And with Miss Estelle taking care of their
religious organs and their intellectuals and the things like that, and
the perfessor filling them up on new invented feeds, I guess they never
was two kids got more education to the square inch, outside and in. It
hadn't worked none on Miss Margery yet, her being younger, but William
Dear he took it hard and serious, and it made bumps all over his head,
and he was kind o' pale and spindly. Every time that kid cut his finger
he jest natcherally bled scientifics. One day I says to Miss Estelle,
says I:
"It looks to me like William Dear is kind of peaked." She looks worried
and she looks mad fur me lipping in, and then she says mebby it is true,
but she don't see why, because he is being brung up like he orter be in
every way and no expense nor trouble spared.
"Well," says I, "what a kid about that size wants to do is to get out
and roll around in the dirt some, and yell and holler."
She sniffs like I wasn't worth taking no notice of. But it kind o'
soaked in, too. She and the perfessor must of talked it over. Fur the
next day I seen her spreading a oilcloth on the hall floor. And then
James comes a buttling in with a lot of sand what the perfessor has
baked and made all scientific down in his labertory. James, he pours all
that nice, clean dirt onto the oilcloth and then Miss Estelle sends fur
William Dear.
"William Dear," she says, "we have decided, your papa and I, that what
you need is more romping around and playing along with your studies. You
ought to get closer to the soil and to nature, as is more healthy for
a youth of your age. So for an hour each day, between your studies, you
will romp and play in this sand. You may begin to frolic now, William
Dear, and then James will sweep up the dirt again for to-morrow's
frolic."
But William didn't frolic none. He jest looked at that dirt in a sad
kind o' way, and he says very serious but very decided:
"Aunt Estelle, I shall NOT frolic." And they had to let it go at that,
fur he never would frolic none, neither. And all that nice clean dirt
was throwed out in the back yard along with the unscientific dirt.
CHAPTER XI
One night when I've been there more'n a week, and am getting kind o'
tired staying in one place so long, I don't want to go to bed after I
eats, and I gets a-holt of some of the perfessor's cigars and goes
into the lib'ary to see if he's got anything fit to read. Setting there
thinking of the awful remarkable people they is in this world I must of
went to sleep. Purty soon, in my sleep, I hearn two voices. Then I waked
up sudden, and still hearn 'em, low and quicklike, in the room that
opens right off of the lib'ary with a couple of them sliding doors like
is onto a box car. One voice was a woman's voice, and it wasn't Miss
Estelle's.
"But I MUST see them before we go, Henry," she says.
And the other was a man's voice and it wasn't no one around our house.
"But, my God," he says, "suppose you get it yourself, Jane!"
I set up straight then, fur Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.
"You mean suppose YOU get it," she says. I like to of seen the look she
must of give him to fit in with the way she says that YOU. He didn't say
nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and
she says, low and slow: "Henry, wouldn't you love me if I DID get it?
Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?"
"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would. Nothing can change the way
I feel. YOU know that." He said it quick enough, all right, jest the way
they does in a show, but it sounded TOO MUCH like it does on the stage
to of suited me if _I_'D been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks
before this.
I listens some more, and then I sees how it is. This is that musician
feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with
him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that.
They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em
don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: "It must be late. I bet they
was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here
first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She jest simply couldn't
get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see
Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night?
And even if she tries jest to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot
he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it."
And then I thinks, suppose she IS ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a
woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even
if they is a quarantine onto it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched
seeing them, how would any one know she was going to run off? And ain't
she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her
over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?
Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby
I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated
me purty white. And then I thinks: "I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle.
So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's
coming to him, nohow. And as fur HER, you got to let some people find
out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?"
But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my
shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors,
and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward
and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and
her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's
kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids,
and she's begging off fur more time ginerally.
Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She
was a peach.
And I couldn't blame her so much, neither, when I thought of Miss
Estelle and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years
and years world without end.
Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right
off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to
keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married
to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right
when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown,
pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too
much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of
pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big.
She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and
he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it,
and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that,
too. And jest about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me.
They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got
a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on
the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which
was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy.
First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and
Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the
room, with their backs to it.
Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair
does. Will she squeak, I wonders?
"Don't you be a fool, Jane," says the Henry feller.
Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.
"A fool?" asts Jane, and laughs. "And I'm not a fool to think of going
with you at all, then?"
That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and
part of a crumpled-up coat tail.
"But I AM going with you, Henry," says Jane. And she gets up jest like
she is going to put her arms around him.
But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the
perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes
like he's jest woke up recent, and he's got a grin onto his face that
makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.
"Excuse me," says the perfessor.
They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane
never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But
if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and
having a fit. They looks at him and he jest sets there and grins at
them.
But after a while Jane, she says:
"Well, now you KNOW! What are you going to do about it?"
Henry, he starts to say something too. But--
"Don't start anything," says the perfessor to him. "YOU aren't going to
do anything." Or they was words to that effect.
"Professor Booth," he says, seeing he has got to say something or else
Jane will think the worse of him, "I am--"
"Keep still," says the perfessor, real quiet. "I'll tend to you in a
minute or two. YOU don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me
and my wife."
When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something
into him besides science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised
herself. But she says nothing, except:
"What are you going to do, Frederick?" And she laughs one of them mean
kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a
little more, and says: "What CAN you do, Frederick?"
Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
"There's quite a number of things I COULD do that would look bad when
they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you
forces me to it." Then he says:
"You DID want to see the children, Jane?"
She nodded.
"Jane," he says, "can't you see I'm the better man?"
The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and
he didn't want to see her go. "Look at him," he says, pointing to the
feller with the brown beard, "he's scared stiff right now."
Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way
like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping
ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no
blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making
up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:
"YOU a better man? YOU? You think you've been a model husband just
because you've never beaten me, don't you?"
"No," says the perfessor, "I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been
a worse fool, maybe, than if I HAD beaten you." Then he turns to Henry
and he says:
"Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in
the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me." With which he gets
up and trots out, and I hearn him running down stairs to his labertory.
Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane
a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some
kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't
do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects
it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, "What is
that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one
else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too.
I wonder if they is any one that ain't looney sometimes?" I been
around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful
remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less
looney when the SEARCH US THE FEMM comes into the case. Which is a Dago
word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: "Who was the dead gent's lady
friend?" And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that
perfessor to come back.
Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin onto his face and a pill box
in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly:
"Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the
same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth
fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em
myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to
working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other
one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep
her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long
enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town."
Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of
it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek
on the inside like a piece of sand-paper. He was scared, Henry was.
"But YOU know which is which," Jane sings out. "The thing's not fair!"
"That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around
each other herself," says the perfessor, "and then pick out one for him
and one for me. YOU don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the
favourite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I
want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking
it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house
that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal
without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and
respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No
one can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood
anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart
failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough
away so as to make no talk." Or they was words to that effect.
He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder
if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: "No, it's
between them three." Besides, I want to see which one is going to get
that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chancet of
all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I
been misjudging him all this time.
Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.
"I won't touch 'em," she says. "I refuse to be a party to any murder of
that kind."
"Huh? You do?" says the perfessor. "But the time when you might have
refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already.
You're really the MAIN party to it.
"But do as you like," he goes on. "I'm giving him more chance than I
ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face
the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane.
If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out
these pills, one to him and then one to me. YOU must kill one or the
other of us, or else _I_'LL kill HIM the other way. And YOU had better
pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else let him
pick one out for himself," he says.
Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he
hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry
inside.
Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she
looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: "Fur God's
sake, spunk up some, and take one if it DOES kill you!" Then she says
out loud: "Henry, if you die I will die, too!"
And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If
she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur
Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or
not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor.
What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: "Mebby I better jump
in now and stop this thing." And then I thinks agin: "No, it is between
them three and Providence." Besides, I'm anxious to see who is going
to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling jest like
Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with
his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right
and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the
wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's
place I would of let them all off kind o' easy.
Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is jest looking at it and shaking.
The perfessor pulls out his watch and lays it on the table.
"It is a quarter past eleven," he says. "Mr. Murray, are you going to
make me shoot you, after all? I didn't want a scandal," he says. "It's
for you to say whether you want to eat that pill and get your even
chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting method is sure,
but it causes talk. These pills won't. WHICH?"
And he pulls a revolver. Which I suppose he had got that too when he
went down after them pills.
Henry, he looks at the gun.
Then he looks at the pill.
Then he swallers the pill.
The perfessor puts his gun back into his pocket, and then he puts his
pill into his mouth. He don't swaller it. He looks at the watch, and he
looks at Henry.
"Sixteen minutes past eleven," he says. "AT EXACTLY TWENTY-NINE MINUTES
TO TWELVE MR. MURRAY WILL BE DEAD. I got the harmless one. I can tell by
the taste."
And he put the pieces out into his hand, to show that he has chewed
his'n up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes fur a verdict from
his digestive ornaments. Then he put them pieces back into his mouth and
chewed 'em up and swallered 'em down like he was eating cough drops.
Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make
fur the door, but he falls down onto a sofa.
"This is murder," he says, weak-like. And he tries to get up again, but
this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
"It's a dern short fifteen minutes," I thinks to myself. "That perfessor
must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it
to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes."
When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top
of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was
turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she jest
gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry.
He ketches her. "Sit up, Jane," he says, with that Estelle look onto his
face, "and let us have a talk."
She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty
has got. But she can't look away from him.
And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor
had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of
loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I jest NEEDED to fetch a yell.
But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling jest like
he'd ALWAYS been there, and I'd ALWAYS been staring into that room, and
the last word any one spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
"You're a murderer," says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in
that stare-eyed way. "You're a MURDERER," she says, saying it like she
was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.
"Murder!" says the perfessor. "Did you think I was going to run any
chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted
through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and
sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing
you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine
woman like you, Jane," he says.
Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wild like, her
voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:
"It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a
murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was," she
says. Or they was words to that effect.
And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder
than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but jest wasn't
no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry.
Doctor Kirby always use to say women is made unlike most other animals
in many ways. When they is foolish about a man they can stand to have
that man killed a good 'eal better than to have him showed up ridiculous
right in front of them. They will still be crazy about the man that is
dead, even if he was crooked. But they don't never forgive the fellow
that lets himself be made a fool and lets them look foolish, too. And
when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs, and Henry comes to and
sneaks out, Jane, she never even turns her head and looks at him.
"Jane," says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, "you have a lot
o' things to forgive me. But do you suppose I have learned enough so
that we can make a go of it if we start all over again?"
But Jane she never said nothing.
"Jane," he says, "Estelle is going back to New England, as soon as
Margery gets well, and she will stay there for good."
Jane, she begins to take a little intrust then.
"Did Estelle tell you so?" she asts.
"No," says the perfessor. "Estelle doesn't know it yet. I'm going to
break the news to her in the morning."
But Jane still hates him. She's making herself hate him hard. She
wouldn't of been a human woman if she had let herself be coaxed up all
to oncet. Purty soon she says: "I'm tired." And she went out looking
like the perfessor was a perfect stranger. She was a peace, Jane was.
After she left, the perfessor set there quite a spell and smoked. And he
was looking tired out, too. They wasn't no mistake about me. I was jest
dead all through my legs.
CHAPTER XII
I was down in the perfessor's labertory one day, and that was a queer
place. They was every kind of scientifics that has ever been discovered
in it. Some was pickled in bottles and some was stuffed and some was
pinned to the walls with their wings spread out. If you took hold of
anything, it was likely to be a skull and give you the shivers or some
electric contraption and shock you; and if you tipped over a jar and
it broke, enough germs might get loose to slaughter a hull town. I was
helping the perfessor to unpack a lot of stuff some friends had sent
him, and I noticed a bottle that had onto it, blowed in the glass:
DANIEL, DUNNE AND COMPANY
"That's funny," says I, out loud.
"What is?" asts the perfessor.
I showed him the bottle and told him how I was named after the company
that made 'em. He says to look around me. They is all kinds of glassware
in that room--bottles and jars and queer-shaped things with crooked tails
and noses--and nigh every piece of glass the perfessor owns is made by
that company.
"Why," says the perfessor, "their factory is in this very town."
And nothing would do fur me but I must go and see that factory. I
couldn't till the quarantine was pried loose from our house. But when it
was, I went down town and hunted up the place and looked her over.
It was a big factory, and I was kind of proud of that. I was glad she
wasn't no measly, little, old-fashioned, run-down concern. Of course,
I wasn't really no relation to it and it wasn't none to me. But I
was named fur it, too, and it come about as near to being a fambly as
anything I had ever had or was likely to find. So I was proud it seemed
to be doing so well.
I thinks as I looks at her of the thousands and thousands of bottles
that has been coming out of there fur years and years, and will be
fur years and years to come. And one bottle not so much different from
another one. And all that was really knowed about me was jest the name
on one out of all them millions and millions of bottles. It made me feel
kind of queer, when I thought of that, as if I didn't have no separate
place in the world any more than one of them millions of bottles. If any
one will shut his eyes and say his own name over and over agin fur quite
a spell, he will get kind of wonderized and mesmerized a-doing it--he
will begin to wonder who the dickens he is, anyhow, and what he is, and
what the difference between him and the next feller is. He will wonder
why he happens to be himself and the next feller HIMSELF. He wonders
where himself leaves off and the rest of the world begins. I been that
way myself--all wonderized, so that I felt jest like I was a melting
piece of the hull creation, and it was all shifting and drifting and
changing and flowing, and not solid anywhere, and I could hardly keep
myself from flowing into it. It makes a person feel awful queer, like
seeing a ghost would. It makes him feel like HE wasn't no solider than
a ghost himself. Well, if you ever done that and got that feeling, you
KNOW what I mean. All of a sudden, when I am trying to take in all
them millions and millions of bottles, it rushed onto me, that feeling,
strong. Thinking of them bottles had somehow brung it on. The bigness
of the hull creation, and the smallness of me, and the gait at which
everything was racing and rushing ahead, made me want to grab hold of
something solid and hang on.
I reached out my hand, and it hit something solid all right. It was
a feller who was wheeling out a hand truck loaded with boxes from the
shipping department. I had been standing by the shipping department
door, and I reached right agin him.
He wants to know if I am drunk or a blanked fool. So after some talk
of that kind I borrows a chew of tobacco of him and we gets right well
acquainted.
I helped him finish loading his wagon and rode over to the freight depot
with him and helped him unload her. Lifting one of them boxes down from
the wagon I got such a shock I like to of dropped her.
Fur she was marked so many dozen, glass, handle with care, and she was
addressed to Dr. Hartley L. Kirby, Atlanta, Ga.
I managed to get that box onto the platform without busting her, and
then I sets down on top of her awful weak.
"What's the matter?" asts the feller I was with.
"Nothing," says I.
"You look sick," he says. And I WAS feeling that-a-way.
"Mebby I do," says I, "and it's enough to shake a feller up to find a
dead man come to life sudden like this."
"Great snakes, no!" says he, looking all around, "where?"
But I didn't stop to chew the rag none. I left him right there, with his
mouth wide open, staring after me like I was crazy. Half a block away I
looked back and I seen him double over and slap his knee and laugh loud,
like he had hearn a big joke, but what he was laughing at I never knew.
I was tickled. Tickled? Jest so tickled I was plumb foolish with it. The
doctor was alive after all--I kept saying it over and over to myself--he
hadn't drownded nor blowed away. And I was going to hunt him up.
I had a little money. The perfessor had paid it to me. He had give me a
job helping take care of his hosses and things like that, and wanted me
to stay, and I had been thinking mebby I would fur a while. But not now!
I calkelated I could grab a ride that very night that would put me into
Evansville the next morning. I figgered if I ketched a through freight
from there on the next night I might get where he was almost as quick as
them bottles did.
I didn't think it was no use writing out my resignation fur the
perfessor. But I got quite a bit of grub from Biddy Malone to make a
start on, fur I didn't figger on spending no more money than I had to
on grub. She asts me a lot of questions, and I had to lie to her a
good deal, but I got the grub. And at ten that night I was in an empty
bumping along south, along with a cross-eyed feller named Looney Hogan
who happened to be travelling the same way.
Riding on trains without paying fare ain't always the easy thing it
sounds. It is like a trade that has got to be learned. They is different
ways of doing it. I have done every way frequent, except one. That I
give up after trying her two, three times. That is riding the rods
down underneath the cars, with a piece of board put acrost 'em to lay
yourself on.
I never want to go ANYWHERES agin bad enough to ride the rods.
Because sometimes you arrive where you are going to partly smeared over
the trucks and in no condition fur to be made welcome to our city, as
Doctor Kirby would say. Sometimes you don't arrive. Every oncet in a
while you read a little piece in a newspaper about a man being found
alongside the tracks, considerable cut up, or laying right acrost them,
mebby. He is held in the morgue a while and no one knows who he is, and
none of the train crew knows they has run over a man, and the engineer
says they wasn't none on the track. More'n likely that feller has been
riding the rods, along about the middle of the train. Mebby he let
himself go to sleep and jest rolled off. Mebby his piece of board
slipped and he fell when the train jolted. Or mebby he jest natcherally
made up his mind he rather let loose and get squashed then get any more
cinders into his eyes. Riding the blind baggage or the bumpers gives me
all the excitement I wants, or all the gambling chancet either; others
can have the rods fur all of me. And they IS some people ackshally says
they likes 'em best.
A good place, if it is winter time, is the feed rack over a cattle car,
fur the heat and steam from all them steers in there will keep you warm.
But don't crawl in no lumber car that is only loaded about half full,
and short lengths and bundles of laths and shingles in her; fur they
is likely to get to shifting and bumping. Baled hay is purty good
sometimes. Myself, not being like these bums that is too proud to
work, I have often helped the fireman shovel coal and paid fur my ride
that-a-way. But an empty, fur gineral purposes, will do about as well as
anything.
This feller Looney Hogan that was with me was a kind of a harmless
critter, and he didn't know jest where he was going, nor why. He was
mostly scared of things, and if you spoke to him quick he shivered first
and then grinned idiotic so you wouldn't kick him, and when he talked
he had a silly little giggle. He had been made that-a-way in a reform
school where they took him young and tried to work the cussedness out'n
him by batting him around. They worked it out, and purty nigh everything
else along with it, I guess. Looney had had a pardner whose name was
Slim, he said; but a couple of years before Slim had fell overboard
off'n a barge up to Duluth and never come up agin. Looney knowed Slim
was drownded all right, but he was always travelling around looking
at tanks and freight depots and switch shanties, fur Slim's mark to be
fresh cut with a knife somewheres, so he would know where to foller and
ketch up with him agin. He knowed he would never find Slim's mark, he
said, but he kept a-looking, and he guessed that was the way he got the
name of Looney.
Looney left me at Evansville. He said he was going east from there, he
guessed. And I went along south. But I was hindered considerable, being
put off of trains three or four times, and having to grab these here
slow local freights between towns all the way down through Kentuckey.
Anywheres south of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River
trainmen is grouchier to them they thinks is bums than north of it,
anyhow. An
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