“What you scratching yourself on the chest for?” said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy stood with one hand inside his vest, digging as though his life depended on his doing a good job. “Is there anything the matter with you that soap and water will not cure?” and the old man punched the boy in the ribs with a great big, hard thumb, as big as a banana.
“Uncle Ike, how long will a porous plaster stay on, and isn't there any way to stop its itching? I have had one on for seventeen days and nights, and it seems to be getting worse all the time,” said the boy, as he dug away at his chest.
“Good heavens, take it off quick!” said Uncle Ike, as he laid his lighted pipe down on the table, on a nice, clean cloth, and the ashes and fire spilled out, and burned a hole in it. “You will die of mortification. Those plasters are only intended to be used as posters for a day or two. What in the name of common sense have you worn it seventeen days for? Let's rip it off.”
“No, I have got to wear it eighteen days more,” said the boy, with a look of resignation. “Now, don't laugh, Uncle Ike, will you? You see my girl has gone to the seashore to be gone five weeks, and she gave me a tintype and told me to wear it next my heart till she got back, and I thought I could get it nearer my heart by putting it right against the skin, and putting a porous plaster over it, and by gum, I can feel her on my heart every minute. Now don't laugh, Uncle.”
Here, This Plaster Has Got to Be Removed 111
“Well, I guess not,” said Uncle Ike, as he put out the fire on the table-cloth, and smoked a little while to settle his thoughts. “Here, this plaster has got to be removed before the fatal day of her return, or you will be holding down a job as a red-headed angel. Now, open your shirt,” and the old man reached in and got a corner of the plaster, and gave a jerk that caused every hair on the boy's head to raise up and crack like a whiplash, while the tintype of the girl, covered with crude India rubber and medicated glue, dropped on the floor, and the boy turned pale and yelled bloody murder. “Now, don't ever do that again. A picture in your inside pocket is near enough to the heart for all practical purposes. Next, you will be swallowing her picture in the hope that it will lodge near your heart. Now I got something serious to talk with you about. One of the park policemen was here this morning looking for you. He said some of you boys just raised merry hades at the park concert last night. What did you do?”
“Just flushed quails,” said the boy, as he buttoned his shirt, and gave the sore spot a parting dig. “We played we were hunting quail, and we had more fun than you ever saw.”
“There are no quail in the park,” said Uncle Ike, as he looked curiously at the boy through the smoke.
“Here, this plaster has got to be removed before the fatal day of her return,” and puffed until his cheeks sank in, and the tears came to his eyes. “What is this quail fable, anyway?”
“You see,” said the boy, as he took a piece of ice out of the water pitcher and held it in his bosom, where the plaster came off, “when there is an evening concert at the park, the boys and girls go off in couples and sit under the trees in the dark, or on the grass, where no one can see them very well, and they take hold of hands and put their arms around each other, and all the time they are scared for fear they will be caught, and ordered to quit. Well, us boys go around in the dark, and when we see a couple in that way, one boy comes to a point, like a dog, another boy walks up to the couple and flushes them, and as they get up quick to go somewhere else, I blow up a paper bag and bust it, and they start off on a run. Say, Uncle Ike, it is fun. We chased one couple clear to the lake.”
“You did, did you, you little imp?” said the old man, as his sympathies were aroused for the young people who were disturbed at a critical time. “Don't let me ever hear of your flushing any more couples, or I'll flush you the first time I catch you with your girl. How would you like to be flushed? The parks are the only places many young people have to talk love to each other, and it is cruel to disturb them by bursting paper bags in their vicinity. If I was mayor I would build a thousand little summer houses in the parks, just big enough for a poor young couple to sit in, and talk over the future, and I would set policemen to watch out that nobody disturbed them, and if one of you ducks come along, I would have you thrown in the lake. The idea of a boy who is in love the way you pretend to be, having no charity for others, makes me sick, I'll bet none of those you flushed last night had it so bad they had tintypes of the girls glued on their hearts with a porous plaster. Bah! you meddler!” and the old man stamped his foot on the floor, and the boy looked ashamed.
“Well, that's the last time I will mix in another fellow's love affair,” said the boy, as he climbed up on Uncle Ike's knee.
“Now, I want to talk to you seriously,” said the boy, as he looked up into Uncle Ike's round, smooth, red and smiling face. “Us boys have been reading about the serious condition of our country, when its wealthy citizens are leaving it and going abroad to live. Do you think, uncle, that William Waldorf Astor's deserting this country, and joining England, is going to cause this country to fail up in business? In case of war with England, do you think he would fight this country?”
“Well, you kids can borrow more trouble about this poor old country of ours than the men who own it can borrow. Astor! Why, boy, his deserting his country will have about as much effect as it would for that man working in the street to pack up his household goods and move to Indiana. Do you suppose this state would tip up sideways if he should quit running that scraper and move out of the state? Not much. The Astors have been rich so long that they are un-American. It is not the natural condition of an American to be rich. When a man gets too rich, he is worried as to what to do with his money. There is no great enjoyment that the very rich can have in this country that the poor cannot have a little of. The first thing a very rich man acquires is a bad stomach. He becomes too lazy to' take exercise, and lets a hired man take exercise for him. He looks at his money, and thinks of his stomach. In Astor's case there was nothing in this country that he could enjoy, not even sleep. Nobody respected him any more than they did every other honest man. Only a few toadies would act toward him as though he was a world's wonder, on account of his wealth. People with souls, and health, and good nature, in the West, got rich as he, and went to New York, and knew how to spend money and have fun, and do good with it; and Astor couldn't understand it. He wanted to be considered the only, but he never had learned how to blow in money to make others happy. If he gave to the poor, an agent did it for him, and squeezed it, and made a memorandum and showed it to him once a year, and he frowned, and his stomach ached, and he took a pill, and sighed. I suppose two girls from California, daughters of an old Roman of the mines and the railroads, who died too soon, a senator with a soul, taught Astor how to do good with money, and maybe scared him out of the country. Those girls seemed to, know where there was a chance for suffering among the poor, and they kept people in their employ on the run to get to places before the bread was all gone, until half a million of the people that only knew there was an Astor by the signs on buildings for rent, knew these Fair girls by sight, and worshiped them as they passed. The girls are married now, but they give just the same, and wherever they are in the world there is the crowd, and there is the love of those who believe them angels. Astor could not find any one to love him for any good he ever did that did not have rent or interest as the object, and he went away where a man is respected in a half-way manner, in proportion to the money he spends on royalty, in imitating royalty, and he will run a race there, and get tired of it; and some day, if he lives, he will come back to this country in the steerage, as his ancestors did, and take out his first papers and vote, and maybe he will be happy. The only way for a rich man to be very happy is to find avenues for getting his congested wealth off his mind, where it will cause some one who is poor and suffering to look up to him, and say that riches have not spoiled him. But to inherit money and go through life letting it accumulate, and not finding any avenue where it can leak out and be caught in the apron of a needy soul, is tough. No, you boys need not worry about the desertion of Astor. If we have a war with Great Britain, you would find Astor taking a night trip across the channel, and France would draw him in the lottery. One foreigner who landed in this country the day Astor sailed away, will be of more value in peace or war than Astor could be if he had remained.”
“Gosh!” said the boy, as he got up out of Uncle Ike's lap, “if you are not a comfort! Between that porous plaster, and Astor's going to England, and my girl at the seashore, I was about down with nervous prostration, but I am all right now,” and the redheaded boy went out to round up the gang and tell them the country was all safe enough, as long as they had Uncle Ike to run it.
“Well, you are a sight!” said Uncle Ike, as the red-headed boy came in the room, all out of breath, his shirt unbuttoned and his hair wet and dripping, and his face so clean that it was noticeable. “Why don't you make your toilet before you come into a gentleman's room? Where you been, anyway?”
“Been in swimming at the old swimming hole,” said the boy, as he finished buttoning his shirt, and sat down to put on his shoes and stockings, which he had carried in his hat. “Had more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Stole the clothes of a boy, and left him a paper flour sack to go home in. Wait a minute and you will see him go by,” and the boy rushed to the window and yelled to Uncle Ike to come and see the fun.
Nothing on But a Flour Sack 119
Presently a boy came down the street from toward the river with nothing on but a flour sack. He had cut holes in the bottom to put his feet through, and pulled it up to his body, and the upper part covered his chest to the arms, which were bare and sunburned, and the boy was marching along the street as unconcerned as possible, while all who saw him were laughing.
“What did you do that for?” said Uncle Ike, as he called to the boy to come in.
“Just for a joke,” said the red-headed boy, laughing, and jollying the boy dressed in the flour sack, as he came in at Uncle Ike's invitation.
“Well, that is a good enough joke for two,” said Uncle Ike. “Now take off your clothes and change with this boy, and put on the flour sack yourself,” and he superintended the change, until the other boy had on a full suit of clothes, and the red-headed boy had on the flour sack. “Now I want you to go to the grocery and get me a paper of tobacco.”
“O, gosh, I don't want to go out in the street with this flour sack on. Some dog will chase me, and the people will make fun of me,” said the boy, with an entirely new view of a practical joke.
“But you go all the same,” said Uncle Ike, taking down a leather strap that he sharpened his razor on, and driving the boy outdoors. “Bring back this boy's clothes, also,” and he sat down and waited for the boy to return. He came back after awhile with the tobacco and the clothes, followed by a lot of other boys, and after the two had changed clothes, and all had enjoyed a good laugh, Uncle Ike said: “Boys, playing practical jokes is a good deal like jumping on a man when he is down. You will notice that the weaker boy always has the joke played on him. Boys always combine against the weak boy. The boy that can whip any of you never has to wear a flour sack home from the swimming hole, does he? Any joke that you can take turns at having played on you is fair, but when you combine against the weak, you become a monopoly, or a trust. When I was a boy we used to tie the clothes of the biggest and meanest boy in knots, and if he couldn't take a joke we all turned in and mauled him. After this, if there is to be any jokes, let the biggest boy take his turn first, and then I don't care how soon the others take their dose, but this trust business has got to be broke up,” and Uncle Ike patted the boys, on the head and said they could go and have all the fun they wanted to.
“Speaking of trusts, Uncle Ike, I thought you said, a spell ago, that the trusts would be brought up with a round turn,” said the red-headed boy, reading, as he glanced at a heading in a morning paper, “but here is an article says that a thousand million billion dollars have been invested in trusts in New Jersey, and the manager of one of the biggest trusts says nobody can do anything to stop them. He says: 'What are you going to do about it?'”
“Well,” said Uncle Ike, as he filled the air with strong tobacco smoke, and his eyes snapped like they did when he was mad, “you wait. I am older than you are. I remember when old Bill Tweed, the great robber of New York, who had stolen millions of dollars from the city, and was in his greatest power, became arrogant, and asked the people what they were going to do about it. When people think they are invincible they always ask what anybody is going to do about it. When a bully steps on the foot of a quiet and inoffensive man, purposely to get into a row, he looks at his victim in an impudent manner and says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and the victim gets up deliberately and thrashes the ground with the bully. The people got mad at Tweed when he said that, and they chased him over the world, and landed him in the penitentiary, where he died. That will be the fate of some of these trust magnates. The foundation of the trust is corruption. Its trade mark was uttered years ago by a great railroad man who said, 'The public be d——d.' That expression is in the mind of every man connected with a trust. He turns the thumbscrews on the public, raises prices, and if they complain, he says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and if anybody says the public cannot stand it, they say 'the public be blessed,' or the other thing. Now, wait. The public will be making laws, and the first law that is made will be one that sends a man to the penitentiary who robs through a trust. If three men combine to rob it is a conspiracy. If a hundred or a thousand combine to rob seventy million people, it is treason. You wait, boys, and you will hear a noise one of these days when the people speak, and you will hear trust magnates who fail to get across the ocean before the tornado of public indignation strikes, begging for mercy. Now, gosh blast you, run away. You have got me to talking again,” and Uncle Ike lighted his pipe and shut up like a clam, while the boys went out looking for trouble.
Uncle Ike had been dozing and smoking, and fixing his fishing tackle, and oiling his gun, and whistling, and trying to sing, all alone, for an hour, after the boys had gone out to have fun, and when he saw them coming in the gate, two of them carrying a big striped watermelon, and the others watching that it did not fall on the ground, he was rather glad the boys had come back, and he opened the door and went out on the porch and met them.
“S-h-h!” said the red-headed boy, as Uncle Ike thumped the melon with his hard old middle finger, to see if it was ripe. “Don't say a word. Let's get it inside the house, quick, and you carve it, Uncle,” and they brought it in and laid it on the table, and the boys looked down the street as though they were expecting some one.
“We never used to ask any questions when I was a boy, when a melon suddenly showed up, and nobody knew from whence it came,” said Uncle Ike, as he put both hands on the melon and pressed down upon it, and listened to it crack. “Do you know, if a person takes potatoes, or baled hay, that does not belong to him, it is stealing, but if a melon elopes with a boy, or several boys, the melon is always considered guilty of contributory negligence,” and the old man laughed and winked at the boys. “But a house is no place to eat a melon in, and a knife is not good enough to cut a melon. Now, you fetch that melon out in the garden, by the cucumber vines, and I will show you the conditions that should surround a melon barbecue,” and the old man led the way to the garden, followed by the boys, and he got them seated around in the dirt, with the growing corn on one side, a patch of sunflowers on another, a crabapple tree on one side, giving a little shade where they sat, and the alley fence on the other. The boys were anxious to begin, and each produced a toad-stabber, but Uncle Ike told them to put away the knives, and said:
“The only way to eat a melon is to break it by putting your knee on it, and taking the chunks and running your face right down into it. A nigger is the only natural melon eater. There,” said he, as he crushed the brittle melon rind into a dozen pieces, and spread it open, red, and juicy, and glorious. “Now 'fall in,' as we used to say in the army,” and the boys each grabbed a piece and began to eat and drink out of the rind, the juice smearing their faces and running down on their shirt bosoms, and Uncle Ike taking a piece of the core in his hands and trying to eat as fast as the boys did, the red and sticky juice trickling through his fingers, and the pulp painting pictures around his dear old mouth, and up his cheeks to his ears, while he tried to tell them of a day during the war when he was on the skirmish line going through a melon patch, and how the order came to lie down, and every last soldier dropped beside a melon, broke it with his bayonet, and filled himself, while the bullets whistled, and how they were all sick afterwards, and had to go to the rear because the people who owned the melons had put croton oil in them.
“Gosh, but this is great!” said the red-headed boy, as he stopped eating long enough to loosen his belt.
“You bet!” said one of the other boys; “Uncle Ike is a James dandy,” and he looked up and bowed to a boy with an apron on, who came into the garden with a piece of paper in his hand, which he handed to Uncle Ike.
“What is this, a telegram?” says Uncle Ike, as he takes it with his sticky fingers and feels for his glasses.
“No, it is the bill for the melon——50 cents,” said the grocer's boy.
“Bunkoed, by gosh!” says Uncle Ike, as he looks around at the laughing boys who have played it on him.
“Don't ever ask where a melon comes from,” said the red-headed boy.
“Sawed a gold brick on me, you young bunko-steerers,” says Uncle Ike, as he wipes his hands on some mustard and feels in his pocket for the change; “but it was worth it, by ginger,” and he pays for the melon, they all go in the house and wash the melon off their hands and faces, the old man lights his pipe and says: “Boys, come around here to-morrow and play this trick on Aunt Almira, and I'll set up the root beer.”
“Say, where you been all day?” asked Uncle Ike of the red-headed boy, as he showed up late in the afternoon, chewing a gob of gum so big that it made his ear ache. “Here, I've been waiting all day for you, with so many things on my mind to tell you about that I have had to make memorandums,” and the old man took out his knife and shaved some tobacco off a plug, rolled it in his hands and scraped it into the pipe, and lit up for a long talk.
“I been working,” said the boy, as he took some pieces of chocolate out of his pocket and offered them to his uncle. “I am working for a syndicate, and have got a soft snap, with all the money I can spend,” and the boy shook the pennies in his pocket so they sounded like emptying a collection plate.
“Working for a syndicate, a-hem!” said the old man. “A syndicate is a great thing, if you are the syndicate, but if you work for it you get left, that's all. Now tell me about it. What you doing for a syndicate, and who furnishes you the money to spend? Tell me, so I can see whether it is honest. Somehow I can't feel that a syndicate means any good to a boy.”
“It is this way, Uncle Ike,” said the boy, as he threw away his gum and took another stick out of his pocket, and chewed it until he fairly drooled, “you know these slot machines in the depots and hotels, where people put in a penny and pull out a knob and get a stick of gum or a chocolate, or some peppermint drops. Well, the syndicate wants a boy to go around and put in pennies, and get the prizes, when people are looking on, so as to get them interested, so they will put in pennies, see?”
“Sure! You are a sort of capper for a gum bunko game, eh? Rope in the people and get them next to a good thing,” said Uncle Ike, looking at the boy over his glasses. “What particular talent does this new business bring to the front? Do you make speeches to the people, encouraging them to invest their hard-earned pennies in your great scheme for the amelioration of the condition of the down-trodden, or what do you do? Tell me how the thing works.”
“Why, my work is all pantomime. The man who hired me said I had a face that was worth a fortune. I go up to a slot machine, and act as though I never saw such a thing before. Then I monkey around, and seem to be puzzled, and my face looks serious, and the people in the depot waiting for trains gather around and watch me, and when the jays are all ripe, ready to pick, I put a penny in the slot, draw out a stick of gum, put it in my mouth, and then I smile one of those broad smiles, like this, and the people begin to put in pennies, and they surround the machine, and money just flows in, until their train goes, when another crowd comes in and I work them on the chocolate slot, and just blow in pennies belonging to the syndicate that owns the machines. Oh, it's a great snap, Uncle Ike. You ought to go into it,” and the boy threw away his gum and went to eating chocolate.
“Is that so? My face would be my fortune, too, would it?” said Uncle Ike, who was beginning to show that he was mad. “And what salary does the syndicate pay you for your valuable services as a piece of human fly paper?”
“O, they don't pay me any salary,” said the boy, as he took out a handful of syndicate pennies and poured them from one hand into another, to show the old man that he had wealth. “I don't ask anything for my services. I just get pay in fun, and have all the gum, and chocolate, and lemon drops that I can eat. The man told me it would be an experience that would be valuable to me in after life, being in the eye of the public, leading the people. He said this would be the making of me, and open up a career that would astonish my friends. Don't you think so, Uncle? Can't you see a change in me since I went to work for the syndicate?”
“Well, I don't know but I do,” said Uncle Ike, as he pondered over the remarks of the boy. “You begin to look more bilious, probably on account of the chocolate you have eaten, to deceive the people at the depot into the idea that it is good stuff. And perhaps this experience will be the opening of a career. If you can, by your actions, cause strangers to run up against a slot machine, I don't see why you couldn't, in time, be a pretty good capper for a three-card monte game, where you could pick out the right card, and the jay loses his money. If this is the kind of business you have selected for a career, it will not be long before you will be in demand as a bunko-steerer. You would be invaluable, with that innocent face of yours, in roping in strangers to a robbers' roost, where they would be fleeced and thrown down stairs on their necks. With about two days more experience on a slot machine, some gold-brick swindler will come along and raise the syndicate out on your salary, and put you on the road selling gold bricks. Starting in business as a fakir, you will rise to become a barker for a sideshow, graduate into bunko and gold bricks, and if you are not sent to the penitentiary, there is a great opening for you as a promoter of a trust in the air we breathe. We shall have to part company. My reputation is dear to me. I have never turned a jack from the bottom when I had one to go in seven-up, and to associate with a boy who will rope people to buy mouldy gum, and be an advance agent of prosperity as recorded on a slot machine, is too much, and I bid you good-bye. I have loved you, but it was because you were innocent and tried to do the fair thing, but—good-bye,” and the old man laid down his pipe, picked up his hat and started for the door.
“Hold on, Uncle Ike,” said the boy, taking the handful of pennies out of his pocket and laying them on the table, “I didn't know it was so bad. I won't do it any more. Come back, please.”
“Well, I got to go downtown,” said the old man, “and I will be back in an hour. In the meantime you write out a letter of resignation to the syndicate. Say that you find a diet of decayed chocolate and glucose candy is sapping the foundation of your manhood, and that your Uncle Ike has offered you a position on the staff of a gold-brick syndicate,” and the old man went out, leaving the boy to write his resignation.
“Well, how is my decoy duck, and has he sent in his resignation?” said the old man, as he came in a little later and found writing material and pennies on the table, and the boy lying on the lounge looking pale and sick. “What is this? Sick the first time you have to resign an office? That won't do. You never will make a politician if you can't write out a resignation without having it go to your head,” and the old man sat down by the boy and found that he was as sick as a horse, his face white, and cold perspiration on his upper lip among the red hairs, and on his brow among the freckles. The boy's bosom was heaving, and his stomach was clearly the seat of the disease, and suddenly the boy rushed out of the room, into, the bathroom, and there was a noise such as is frequently heard on steamboat excursions. The old man thought it was the chocolate and gum that had made the boy sick, until he looked at his pipe on the table, which was smoking, although he had been away an hour or more.
Been Trying to Smoke the Old Man's Pipe, Eh 129
“Been trying to smoke the old man's pipe, eh?” said he, as the boy staggered out of the bathroom so weak he could hardly stand, “Well, that plug tobacco in the pipe is a little strong for a bunko-steerer, but I suppose you thought if you were going to be a business man, and leave me, you ought to take with you some of my bad habits. Let me fill the pipe with some of this mild switchman's delight, and you try that,” and he brought the pipe near to the boy.
“Take it away, take it away,” said a weak voice, coming from under a pillow on the lounge. “Oh, Uncle Ike, I will never touch a pipe again. You look so happy when you are smoking that I thought I would like to learn, so I lit the pipe, and drew on it, and the smoke wouldn't come, and I drew in my breath whole length, as I do when I dive off a spring board, and the whole inside of the pipe came into my mouth, and I swallowed the whole business, and pretty soon it felt as though a pin-wheel had been touched off inside of me, and the sparks flew out of my nose, and the smoke came out of my ears, and they turned on the water in my eyes, and my mouth puckered up and acted salivated, like I had eaten choke-cherries, and pretty soon the pin-wheel in my stomach began to run down, and I thought I was going to stop celebrating, when the pin-wheel seemed to touch off a nigger-chaser, and it went to fizzing all around inside of me, up into my lungs, and down around my liver, and it called at all my vital parts and registered its name, and when the nigger-chaser seemed to be dying it touched off an internal skyrocket, and s-i-z-boom—that was when I went in the bathroom, 'cause I was afraid of the stick. Say, Uncle Ike, does anyone ever die from smoking plug tobacco?”
“Oh, yes, about half of them die, when they smoke it the first time. When their eyes roll up, like yours, and they cease to be hungry, and feel as though they had rather lie clown than stand up, they don't last very long,” and the old man looked serious, and reached for his pipe and a match, and said: “Any last message you want to send to anybody; any touching good-bye? If you do, whisper it to me, and I will write your dying statement.”
“Don't light that dum pipe!” said the boy, rolling over and looking like a seasick ghost, as Uncle Ike was about to scratch a match on his trousers. “Here is the address of my girl. Write to her that I am dead. That I died thinking of her, and smelling of plug tobacco. Put it in that I died of appendicitis, or something fashionable, and say that eight doctors performed eight operations on me, but peritonitis had set in, and there was no use, but that they cut a swath in me big enough to drive an automobile through. I had rather she would think of me as dying a heroic death, than dying smoking plug tobacco. And, say, Uncle Ike, after you have written her, don't make a mistake and send my resignation to the syndicate to her. O, God! but it is hard to die so young,” and the boy went to sleep on the lounge, and Uncle Ike went to taking the kinks out of a fish line, knowing that when the boy woke up he wouldn't be dead worth a cent. About half an hour later the boy rolled over, opened his big eyes, sat up, and stared around, and Uncle Ike said:
“Now, you go in the bath-room and wash your face in cold water, and you will be all right,” and the boy did so, and came back with almost a smile on his face, and he looked at the papers on the table, and said:
“Uncle Ike, you didn't send that appendicitis story to my girl, did you? Gosh, but I am all right now, and I am not going to die.”
“No, I didn't send it; but next time I will, by ginger,” and the old man laughed. “Here, have a smoke on me,” but the boy went out in the open air and kicked himself.
It was a beautiful, hot, sunny morning, and after breakfast Uncle Ike came out on the porch in his shirt sleeves, and with a pair of old hunting shoes on, and his shirt sleeves rolled up, showing the sleeves of a red flannel undershirt, a kind he always wore, winter and summer. He leaned against the post of the porch, lit his pipe, and looked away toward the hazy, hot horizon, and thought of old days that had been brought to his mind the day before, when he saw the parade of a Wild West show. The old man was a '49er, who went across the plains for gold when the country was young, and the yells of the Indians had made him nervous, as they did half a century ago. He had staked the red-headed boy and several of his chums to go to the show, and was waiting for them to show up and report. He stepped down on the lawn and took up the nozzle of a sprinkler and turned it on a lilac bush, when suddenly there was a yell that was unmistakably that of a Comanche Indian; and he stopped and looked at the bush, and could plainly see a moccasin and a leg with buckskin fringe on it, and he knew the boys were laying for him, to scalp him and have fun with him; so he held the nozzle as his only protection against the bloodthirsty band of savages, headed by Chief Red Head, his nephew, but a bad Indian when off the reservation. From behind an evergreen tree down by the gate there came a blood-curdling yell, which was evidently from the throat of “Watermelon Jim,” a neighbor's boy, while from the wild cucumber vine on the south porch came a noise like that of a pack of wolves breakfasting on a fawn.
“Surrender!” shouted a damp voice from behind the lilac bush, where the hose was turned. “Surrender, or we burn down your ranch over your head!” and a painted Indian, with red, short hair showing under the feather, crawled toward a rosebush, where it was dry.
“Never!” said Uncle Ike, as he bit the stem of his pipe, and smiled at the boys who were peeking out from behind the different hiding places. “Your Uncle Ike often dies, but he never surrenders,” and he cocked the nozzle of the lawn sprinkler, and stood ready for the attack.
The red-headed Indian lit a parlor match and held it aloft, which was apparently a smoke signal, for an Indian behind the porch appeared and suddenly a swish was heard in the air, and a piece of clothesline with a noose in it came near going over Uncle Ike's head; so near that it broke his clay pipe, leaving the stem between his lips.
“Ah, ha! You will, will you? Vamoose!” said Uncle Ike, as he turned the hose on the Indian with the lasso, and drove him behind the porch with water dripping down his calico shirt, taking the color out. Then an Indian near the gate began to fire blank cartridges with a toy pistol and Uncle Ike put his elbow up in front of his face, as he said afterward, to save his beauty, and Uncle Ike started toward that Indian, dragging the hose, and shouting, “Take to the chaparral, condemn you, or I will drown you out like a gopher!”
Take to the Chaparral, Condemn You 137
For a moment there was an ominous silence. The Indians had withdrawn behind the currant bushes, but Uncle Ike knew enough of Indian warfare to know that the silence was only temporary. Suddenly there was a blazing and crackling, and a big smoke from the back of the house, and it seemed the redskins had set fire to the house, the hired girl yelled fire and murder, and came out with a pail of water, while the chief yelled “Charge!” and in a minute Uncle Ike was surrounded by the tribe, his legs tied with the clothesline, though he fought with the garden hose until there was not a dry rag on one of the boys or himself.
“Burn him at the stake!” shouted a little shrimp who carries papers every afternoon, after school, as he wiped the red paint off his cheek on to his bare arm, and shook water out of his trousers leg.
“No, let's hold him for a ransom,” said the redheaded boy. “Aunt Almira will give us enough to buy a melon, and make us a pail of lemonade, if we let this gray-haired old settler off without scalping him.”
“Chief, spare me, please,” said Uncle Ike, as he sat up in a puddle of water on the battle ground, with his legs tied. “I am the mother of eleven orphan children. O, spare me! and don't walk on that pipe of mine on the grass there, with your moccasins. I will compromise this thing myself, and pay the ransom. Here is a dollar. Go and buy melons, and we will have a big feed right here. But what was the fire behind the house, and is it put out?”
“The ransom is agreed to,” said the red-headed boy, as he took off his string of feathers, and gave a yell, hitting his lips with the back of his hand so it would “gargle,” “and the fire is out. We put some kerosene on an empty beer case, that was all.” So Uncle Ike handed over the dollar, and was released, while a boy who had washed his paint off was sent to a grocery after a melon. Then they wiped the mud off Uncle Ike, and all went upon the porch, a new pipe of peace was provided, and they talked about the Wild West show of the night before, while Uncle Ike did the most of the smoking of the pipe of peace, though he wiped the stem once and handed it to the red-headed chief to take a whiff, but the chief, after his experience with plug tobacco cholera a few days before, declined with thanks.
“What interested you most at the show?” said Uncle Ike, puffing away, as he sat on the floor of the porch, and leaned his back against one of the posts. “When you go to a show you always want to get your mind on something that makes an impression on you.”
“Well, sir,” said the boy who had worked the lasso on Uncle Ike, “the way these Mexicans handled the lariat struck me the hardest, only they look so darned lazy. They just wait for a horse to get in the right place, and then pull up. I would like to see them chase something, and catch it by the leg, that was trying to get away. But the Cossacks! O, my! couldn't they ride, standing up, or dragging on the ground with one foot in the stirrup. Gosh! if Russia turned about a million of those Cossacks loose on China, they wouldn't do a thing to John Chinaman.”
“The Indians got me,” said another boy, as he took off a moccasin and hung it up in the sun to dry, after his fight to the death with Uncle Ike's waterworks. “I would like to be an Indian, or a squaw, and never have anything to do but travel with a show, and yell. They just have a soft snap, dressing up in feathers, and paint, and buckskin, and living on the fat of the land, and yelling ki-yi! in a falsetto voice.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said the red-headed boy, “what struck me as the most exciting was the battle of San Juan hill. Say, did you see our boys just walk right up to the Spaniards, in the face of a perfect hailstorm of blank cartridges, with a gatling gun stuttering smokeless powder, and the boys in blue firing volleys, and the rough riders walking on foot, and the Spaniards just falling back, and pretty soon we went right over them, and down came the Spanish flag, and then the Stars and Stripes went up, and there was where I yelled so the roof ripped. But what made me cry was to see Old Glory and the British flag get together, every little while, and float side by side, and seem to be grown together as one flag, and everybody seemed glad. What you think about things, Uncle Ike? Don't sit there and smoke up, all the time, but tell us what you think about the American and British flags waving together so much lately. Are you in favor of an alliance? Do you want to be an assistant Englishman, Uncle Ike?”
“Well, I don't want to be quoted much on this business,” said Uncle Ike, as he looked around at the boys, who were listening intently. “I have watched the course of England and all the countries, for over, fifty years, in their relations with this country, and the only friendship England ever showed to us was in the last war. They did us good, no doubt, and I trust I am grateful, as becomes a good citizen. It was like a big boy and little boy fighting. The big boy can whip if he is not interfered with, but a lot of boys are standing around, ready to mix in to help the little fellow. They are ready to trip up the big fellow, so the little one can jump on him, and they are getting ready to throw stones at him, and kick him on the shins. Then a big bully that they are all afraid to tackle, comes along and says: 'This little fellow picked on the big fellow, and kept nagging him till he had to fight or run. Now the little fool has got to take his medicine, and you fellows mustn't mix in, or you got me to fight. Just keep hands off, that's all.' That's all there was to it, but it came in mighty handy, and we appreciate it, but there is too much grand stand play about an alliance. In other wars with England, Germans and French and Poles have fought with us, and for us, and yet we have never felt like having an alliance with them. Do you ever take much stock in Russia, boys? Don't ever forget Russia. During our war between the North and South, we were once in a tight place. England and other countries were about to recognize the Southern Confederacy, and England was doing everything possible to break us up, furnishing privateers, and harboring confederate gunboats, and making it warm for us. Boys, your Uncle Abraham Lincoln was perspiring a good deal those days. They say he couldn't wear a collar, he sweat so. It was believed that England and several other countries were going to simultaneously recognize the Confederacy, and maybe turn in and fight us. Warships from other countries were hovering around our southern coast, and our soldiers were feeling pretty blue, the cabinet never smiled, and nobody laughed out loud except Uncle Abe, and even his laugh seemed to have a hollow, croupy sound. One day, when the strain was the greatest, and everybody felt as though there was a funeral in the family, and there were funerals in most families, a flock of warships flying the flag of Russia, steamed by Sandy Hook, and up to New York, saluted the forts and the Stars and Stripes all along up to the Battery. It seemed as though those battleships never would stop coming. They lined up all around New York, and their guns pointed toward the sea, and every Russian on board acted as though he was loaded for bear. The news went to Washington that night, and they say Uncle Abe had night sweats. The next morning a Russian admiral, who had gone over to Washington on a night train, called to pay his respects to the President, and presented him with a document in the Russian language, which had to be interpreted by the Russian minister. When it was interpreted they say old Abe danced a highland fling, and hugged the Russians and danced all hands around. That document has never been published, but it was to the effect that the Russian fleet was at the disposal of the President of the United States, to fight any country on the face of God's green earth that attempted to mix in. See? It was not long before other nations discovered that Russia had sent her fleet to stay, and every Russian on every vessel acted as though he was spoiling for a fight, and seemed to say to the world, 'Come on, condemn you!' And nobody ever came along to fight. And Uncle Abe began to be in a laughing mood, and you know the rest, if you have read up about the war. Nobody has ever suggested an alliance with Russia, and yet we are under more obligations to that old Czar than to anybody. In fact, we don't want an alliance with anybody. We want the friendship of all. If I have any more love for one country than another, I do not know which it is, only when I see a Russian, even one of those Cossacks that rode so well, I feel like taking him by the hand and telling him, when he goes home, to go up to the Winter palace and give my love to the Czar, because I always have before me the picture of that Russian fleet in New York harbor, when things were hot. England has done a similar favor during this last war, and if we had another war, and the newspapers would quit nagging him, you would find the young emperor of Germany doing something for us equally as good. So, boys, don't get stuck on one country, but give them all a chance to be good to us.”
“Gosh, Uncle Ike, I never heard anything about that Russian fleet,” said the red-headed boy. “England can go plum to thunder. I thought England was the only country that was ever even polite to us.”
“Come on, boys, let's go and play Cossack,” said one of the Indians, and they went rolling over the picket fence on their stomachs, leaving Uncle Ike to go and put on some dry clothes.