“Let cats and dogs delight to fight,
For ’tis their cross-patch natur’ to;
To wallop humans is not right,
But—wal, there’s things ye have to do!”
—From “Meditations of Deacon Burgess.”
The next morning the Squire was busy at the cook-stove at daybreak. He had joyfully turned old Aunt Rhoda over to Hiram’sménage, and he relished the idea that he could resume his own way of living. As he tied on his canvas apron he reflected contritely that perhaps he was feeling a bit too good about being alone again. It wasn’t wholly brotherly.
Then in his mind he laid it all to Aunt Rhoda’s cooking.
She had frizzled the bacon into black chips and fried the steak until it would do for a boot-tap, and when the Squire had expostulated, had defiantly told him that he’d better stick to his law books and not try to tell her, after sixty years at the cook-stove, how to get up “a mess of vittles.” She had obliged him to eat huge hot dinners at noon that made him as sleepy as a stuffed anaconda for hours as he sat in his arm-chair in the office, trying to read his books. She had expected him to make out a supper on plum preserves and hot cream of tartar biscuits, and he had already felt the first gnawings of dyspepsia.
“Now for my steak!” he said aloud. It was a generous slice, thick as a cushion and bordered with the cream-hued fat that Aunt Rhoda obstinately threw away when she pared his steak into thinner slices in order to fry them into parchment-like strips.
It sizzled on the grid cheerily, the coffee—with its heaping “measure for the pot” and two for himself—gave forth an odour that promised better than the old housekeeper’s slaty-hued brew, and he was just cracking his eggs for his omelet when there was a rap at the door.
The Squire called an invitation over his shoulder, and the visitor came in. It was the Mayo youth. His hair, that was usually slicked so smoothly, was tousled and it hung in strings about his face. He had evidently run all the way up the street, for he was out of breath and panted with open mouth like a dog as he thrust toward the Squire a bit of paper that he pinched by one corner.
“Lay it down on the table,” directed the lawyer, shortly. “Can’t you see that both my hands are full?”
The young man stumbled toward him and shoved the paper into his hands, evidently unconscious that the Squire had spoken. It fell into the bowl and the lawyer picked it out gingerly, muttering his ire.
Mayo then grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, trying to utter intelligible speech, but he could only blubber and hiccup.
“You infernal calf,” stormed the lawyer; “sit down in that chair and get your breath and let me alone!” He pushed the youth across the room and plumped him down with a thud that snapped his open jaws together.
“She’s gug-gug-gone, Squire Look!” Mayo managed to squeak.
The lawyer shook the paper to free it of the egg, looking ruefully toward his bowl as he did so. Then he read the note, his brows knotting.
“Deer Wart: my laddy mother has come for me & i have had to go with hur. i have gorn into a brighter wurld. soe yon needent hunt for me corse i shant ever be found, with love Rissy.”
“She’s dead,” squalled the husband, staggering to his feet. “She’s jumped into the water somewhere. You know ev’rything, Squire.7 You’re the only friend I’ve truly got to find her for me.” He seized the lawyer by the arm and tried to drag him away.
“Sit down, I tell you!” commanded the Squire, and again he thrust the young man down into the chair. He read the letter again.
“Have you shown this to anyone else?” he demanded.
“No, not to a soul. I’ve run right to you, Squire. I know you can find her, but she’s dead. Oh, where has she gone?”
“She may have gone straight up or she may have gone straight down,” growled the lawyer. “What are you sitting there gaping and goggling like that for? When did she go? When did you miss her? Did she take her clothes?”
“I woke up this morning and found her gone,” wailed the youth. “She went in the night. She’s dead. She’s gone with her lady mother jest as she said she’d do.”
“If you ever say lady mother to me again I’ll cuff your ears,” stormed the Squire. “Or if you mention this to anyone until I give you permission I’ll boot you clear to Brickett’s store and back again. Do you think you understand that?”
“Yes,” whimpered the youth.
“Not to a soul! Finding your wife depends on it.”
“Can’t I go drag in the Potter brook?”
“You stay here in this house. You are going to eat some of this breakfast first of all.”
“I never can eat nothin’ more till she’s found,” wailed Mayo, with a canine whine in his nose.
But when the meal was on the table the Squire hustled him to a chair beside it and roared at him until he ate.
“It will never do for me to say one word of sympathy to the poor devil,” he pondered as he eyed the pitiful creature munching his food.
“If I loosen one bit he’ll be climbing all over me like a hungry dog. The only way to handle him is to cuff him when he stands up on his hind legs.”
While the Squire ate he pondered.
“She went with Cap Nymphus Bodfish on the packet, that’s how she went.”
He glanced at the clock.
“Eight,” he mused. “Half the time since he has put in his auxiliary power Bodfish doesn’t sail until nine. If he got away early this morning it signifies something, that’s all! It isn’t the first time King Bradish has hired him for dirty work.”
He started up and took his hat from the hook. “Wat,” he said, “you stay here and wash up my dishes and make yourself useful until I come back. Don’t you stir out of this house and don’t you say a word to anyone about your wife being gone. If you disobey me I’ll quit you.”
He hurried out of the house and down the street.
It was necessary to go almost to the packet’s berth to determine whether she was there, for the elms loomed high along the shore road. No masts showed above the storehouse when he came in sight of it, but to assure himself the Squire walked out on the wharf and peered around the corner of the building. The packet’s berth was empty and there was no sign of her on the narrow sea line at the mouth of the cove.
“Hard-Times” Wharff stood by one of the hawser piles, looking to sea.
“I wisht I was a garsoline ingine instead of a weather-vane, Squire Look,” confessed the old man, regretfully. “The wind it bloweth where it listeth, sayeth the Scriptur’s, but”—he sucked his tongue to imitate the explosions of an engine, “tchock! tchock! tchock! Garsoline don’t have to wait and list. It can go any time, day or night. I wisht I knowed better how it works, but Nymp’ Bodfish wouldn’t let me aboard this mornin’ to see how it does it.”
“Did he get away early, Uncle Aquarius?”
“I was down here at four to see whuther the sunrise was goin’ to be pink or yaller, ’cause you know a yaller sunrise follerin’ on sun-dogs means——”
“Let the weather stand for a moment,” broke in the Squire, a bit impatiently. “What time was it when Bodfish sailed?”
“Break o’ day, no wind but garsoline, oil on the heave, and ‘Hard-Times’ went aboard with him wrapped in a shawl. And he wouldn’t let me come on to see the tchock, tchock, tchocker.”
The Squire’s suspicions required no further confirmation. He hastened away up the wharf.
“The sneak!” he hissed through set teeth. “The pup!” But he did not refer to Captain Nymphus Bodfish of the “Effort.”
The man that was in his mind was just tying his horse at the post in front of Brickett’s store, and as the Squire approached, hurrying up the road, he shook the dust from his gloves and started leisurely along ahead of him, blandly oblivious of the other, to all appearances.
“Good-morning, Bradish,” said the lawyer, curtly, as he came up behind him. He slackened his pace for a moment. Then he set his lips as though to hold back something that he had intended to say, and hastened past.
“Business seems to be rushing with you this morning,” observed Bradish, with his tantalising drawl. The Squire walked on.
“I say, Look!” The man’s tone was insolent. The lawyer’s evident anxiety to avoid him spurred his bravado. “You’ve put your nose into my affairs this time so far that you can’t pull it out by dodging me.” The Squire held up and the man came close to him. “What do you mean, Bradish?”
“I mean that the other evening you made me the laughing-stock of the gossips of this town by stepping in between me and the lady I was escorting. You have compromised her, and now her father——”
“Look here, my fellow,” roared the lawyer, “my family isn’t a very patient one, and you have got to about your limit with me. I never intended to pass another word with you, for it’s getting to be dangerous for both of us. But when you talk of my companionship, compromising any lady, I’m going to put you before your own eyes as just what you are in a community. You’re a low-lived, dirty hound that this very morning has stolen another man’s wife and sent her away by Bodfish’s underground railroad, as you’ve done once before if the truth were known.” Bradish’s face was purple with rage, but he looked the Squire straight in the eye.
“So you’ve become a lunatic along with your other qualifications! Now tell me what you mean or I’ll post you for a blackmailer.”
“I mean,” blurted the lawyer, “that it is your money that has hired Bodfish to carry Rissy Mayo out of town to-day, and it’s your money that she has in her pocket to pay railroad fare from Square Harbour to the place where you’re sending her.”
Bradish snapped his fingers under his accuser’s nose.
“That for your slander!” he cried. He started along the walk, but whirled and came close to Look. “There’s one thing I want to say to you,” he growled, “and it’s this—you seem bound and determined to plaster me with slander and it’s beneath my dignity to defend myself. And now you are working up a plot against me. You have heard that I was going to leave to-night for New York on business for Judge Willard and myself, and——”
“I have heard nothing of the sort,” retorted the Squire, his eyes gleaming dangerously.
“I say you have, and you must know I am going to his house now to discuss it. But no matter about that. I say you have engineered a plot against me, Look. You have fired that girl out of town and now you’ll turn around to-morrow and take advantage of a business trip that I must make and assert that I have run away with her. But I want to tell you now”—in his passion he drove his palm down on the lawyer’s shoulder—“if you dare to insinuate such a thing I’ll put you into State prison for criminal libel. I shall at once explain your dirty trick to Judge Willard and his daughter. And”—he drew back and looked at the Squire with malice in his eyes—“I shall furthermore tell Judge Willard what interest you have in this Mayo woman whom you have married off to a fool in order to hide your own guilt, you cheap apology for a man and lawyer.”
The Squire stood immovable and stared at the man, his lips moving wordlessly. But language refused to come.
For a few crowded seconds he almost admired the impudence of Bradish’s bluff, yet its masterly audacity fairly paralysed him.
In the storm of his feelings words seemed useless. The thought of his own impotence of defence, with this assailant in possession of Judge Willard’s ear and confidence, the memory of his own sorrows of waiting, the woes of the Mayo youth, whirled in his brain like torches. His fist tightened into a hard lump, his arm throbbed and itched, and the next moment, with a grunt, the Squire struck forward.
For the first and last time in his life Squire Phineas Look knocked a man down, and for one wild moment the primal Adam in him gloried in the act. He stood above Bradish with his arm poised and his fist smarting.
Then he looked up and beheld Sylvena Willard gazing at the miserable scene from the piazza of the big house.
And he held down his head and walked away up the street, the hot flush of shame on his face, a sob in his throat, and the gray blur of tears replacing the red blur that had flamed there a moment before. He glanced back once and saw Bradish going to her with his handkerchief pressed to his face.
Hiram and his new friend were taking the air on the porch when he came into the yard of the Look place. He tried to avoid them, but his brother called to him.
“We saw you do it, Phin,” he said. “’Twas good work, but what had he done to you?”
“Oh, Hiram,” mourned the Squire, “don’t make light of a terrible deed. Oh, the Look temper—the Look temper! Thank God there are none of the blood to follow us.”
He stumbled into the house with the feeble step of an old man.
“Allus was bound to grab right in,
That was the cut of old Seth Blinn.
Finger was stuck in ev’ry pie
Or else he’d know the reason why;
But when he quit how people swore,
For things was wuss’n they was before.”
—Ballads of “Queer Capers.”
By Judas,” remarked Hiram, admiringly, to Peak for the tenth time since they had observed the astonishing contretemps in the road, “I’m proud of that brother of mine. I didn’t know ’twas in him. I was afraid he was only lawyer and nothin’ else.”
He relighted his cigar. “I’ve got to own up to you, Sime, that we wasn’t gettin’ along together the best that ever was. I thought he had got soaked with too many sissy notions, and there’s nothin’ that makes a circus man so sick as sissy notions. You know that! But I tell you, Sime, if he can do a job like that and only holds out now as he’s commenced, him and me is goin’ to get along fine after this.”
“He seemed to be feelin’ awful bad when he went into the house,” remarked Peak, solicitously.
“I didn’t notice it,” cried Hiram; “well, if that’s the case, he’s got to be chirked up. I don’t want him to lose any of his grip.”
And he hurried around the corner and entered the kitchen.
“What’s the matter, Phin?” he cried, bluffly. “There’s something on and you might as well out with it. It’s the Looks together against the world—and you know what the family is!”
“Enough of that, Hiram!” roared the Squire, thumping the table at which he sat deep in thought, as his brother came in. Dishes fell off and were smashed on the floor. He kicked the fragments impatiently. “The Looks are rowdies, plug-uglies and street brawlers, and we ought to be ashamed to lift our heads in the presence of decency and refinement. The trouble with you is, you’re too much of a fool to know that you’re cheap—that we’re all cheap. That’s the word—cheap!”
But Hiram’s good nature was not to be disturbed that morning.
“You’re one of the good old breed, even if you are chewed up just this minute,” he replied cheerfully. “And whatever’s goin’ on now I’m goin’ to be in it, Phin, and you can’t shake me. I’m your brother and you can’t cut me out. Now, what is it?”
It was not to be resisted, this frank and honest anxiety to be of use, and the Squire was sorely in need of counsel and aid. With a glance at the Mayo youth; who was rubbing listlessly away at a saucepan, his misty and unseeing gaze fixed on the far hills framed in the kitchen windows, the lawyer drew his brother out of the room into the yard.
“What’s the matter with your friend, Phin?” inquired the showman. “He acts like a wax figger with clock-work in him.”
The lawyer explained rapidly.
“You ain’t goin’ to stop her, be ye?” asked Hiram when he had listened.
“I’m not goin’ to let that hound break up that little family,” insisted the Squire. “Look at that poor, heart-broken boy in that kitchen and then tell me if he is to be robbed in such a fashion.”
“Oh, he’ll beller like a new-weaned calf for a day or so,” said Hiram, calmly. “But he’ll get over it and be better off, like the rest of us,” he added with bitterness. “I’ll go and tell him a few things and show up what women are in this world and give him a couple horns of whisky and in an hour I’ll have him singin’ ‘Glory, hallelujah,’ and glad she’s gone.” He started away briskly, but the lawyer pulled him back roughly.
“One member of our family has tried an experiment on that poor devil and it has half-killed him. Now don’t you go in there and finish the job. You’re not an expert on heart matters, Hime.”
“Well, I’ll fetch her back, then,” cried Hiram, unabashed. “You can have anything you want. It’s only to say the word.”
The Squire looked at him.
“Bodfish won’t land her this side of the railroad at Square Harbour, of course?” asked Hiram.
“Bodfish isn’t a deep knave,” said the lawyer. “He simply got away early to avoid observation at this end. He will land her there probably for the one-o’clock train, west.”
“Simple matter, then. Telephone the police to arrest her and lock her up till we come.”
“And have the scandal and gossip and disgrace spread from here to Hackenny, and theOracleand people’s mouths full of it! That would be saving the reputation of the Mayo family with a vengeance, Hiram.”
The showman took off his tall hat and fondled the bare spot on his head.
“Oh, it’s got to be a fly-by-night, come-back-by-dark job, eh?” he observed. “Disappearin’ lady trick! Touch the button and she’s gone. Touch the button and back she comes. You only think she’s gone and she ain’t been gone at all! A very pretty little trick—-and thank you kindly for your attention, ladies and gents, one and all!”
“It isn’t any time to joke, Hiram,” complained the Squire. “I must ride across country and get that girl. The old mare can’t do it. Will you lend me one of your horses?”
“No.”
The showman turned a quizzical gaze into his brother’s pained and puzzled eyes.
“Now you think I’m a hog, don’t you, Phin? But I ain’t. I’m your brother Hime, gruff and tough, but always ready in a time of trouble when the famly’s concerned. Now you just stay here and keep your wax figger in there from falling down and bustin’ in two and lettin’ all that’s inside him run out. You understand! You want the celebrated invisible lady trick worked at Square Harbour, eh? Then you for your job and me for mine! There are some things thatyoucan’t tellmehow to do.”
He trotted clumsily around the corner and entered into earnest conversation with Peak on the piazza. Both men hurried to the barn.
Squire Phin gazed after them with some anxiety. He had often had good reason to doubt Hiram’s tact. He dreaded to have that hot-headed individual start on a mission where so much finesse was required. And yet he hesitated about undertaking the task himself and leaving the blundering and irresponsible husband to stir up the village, as he certainly would do if left to his own devices.
The youth was at the sink, still rubbing the same saucepan.
“He might stand there till night unless some one poked him,” mused the Squire. “I must take chances that Hime can manage him while I’m gone. I can’t let anyone else do the job at the other end. It needs——”
He had been pondering the matter longer than he had realised. The tumult of gruff shoutings in the barn and in the rear, where the circus equipment was stored, in its new building, had been increasing. Now around the corner of the barn, with clank of whiffle-tree and jingle of harness and ruck-te-chuck of axle boxes, came one of the vans, smart in new paint and varnish. Four horses were drawing it.
Across the yard they came on the trot. Hiram and his friend loomed on the box, and their plug hats loomed above them.
“She’ll come back invisible, Phin,” called Hiram, swirling his whip above his head to uncoil the lash.
“You’re not going after that girl in any such outlandish fashion,” roared the Squire, running from the door-stoop.
“Don’t bother us,” shouted Hiram, and he cracked the lash over the heads of the rearing leaders. “We’ve got less than four hours to make twenty-five miles and there ain’t time for conversation. You for your job, me for mine.”
The Squire was obliged to leap back out of the way of the plunging horses. But he ran after the van as it roared down into the road, yelling appeal and protest.
“We’ll fix it,” Hiram shrieked over his shoulder as the horses began to gallop.
The Squire stopped in the middle of the road, shaking his fists after the turn-out as it went around the bend at the alders in a cloud of dust.
“Fix it, you damnable fool!” he gasped in his impotent rage. “You’ll fix it forever. Of all the infernal idiots in the way of a brother that a man ever had! Roaring through Square Harbour with a circus cart and four horses! Oh! Oh!”
In his fury—the Look fury of which he was so ashamed—he kicked a stone out of the soil, picked it up and cast it after the distant van, which was now far out of sight.
“A secret errand,” he muttered, blushing at his juvenile act. “It will be a wonder if he doesn’t get out hand-bills.”
Avery’s voice behind him made him turn quickly.
“I’m pesky glad you’ve driv’ the two of ’em out of town,” he said, with grim satisfaction. “There wa’n’t either of ’em any good to the place, and I’m sayin’ it to you, even if one of ’em is your own brother.”
The Squire walked back into the yard without replying. “Figger-Four” hopped along beside him.
“I’ve come up to resign,” he continued. “I wish I could have told him so to his face. I was goin’ to inform him that I wouldn’t work another hour for him, not if he was the Great Kajam of Pee-ru and paid me five dollars a second. He owes me two dollars and a half as it is, and I want you to collect it for me, Squire.”
“My brother hasn’t gone away,” snapped the lawyer from the door-stoop. He wanted the man to leave.
“If that wa’n’t goin’ away, then what do you call it?” squealed Avery, snapping up to his full height and pointing his hand at the turn of the road. “He wasn’t comin’, was he, with his four hosses and his circus cart?”
“You go home and keep still,” commanded the Squire. “Hiram will be here to-morrow and will pay you if he owes you anything.”
He went into the kitchen and slammed the door.
“If the Looks can’t act out hogs when they’re a mind to, then I don’t want a cent,” growled Avery, scowling at the door. “But they ain’t goin’ to cheat me out of two dollars and a half, not if the court knows herself, and she thinks she do.”
After another surly look at the closed door he went around the barn. The other vans were in their usual place.
“There’s property enough left. I can sue and attach,” pondered the creditor.
“Another thing about Hime, he’s a durn liar,” he went on mumbling. “He’s been telling me right along that his el’phunt is so much in love with him that she’d make a kick-up if he went away and left her. She ain’t makin’ no great stir near as I can see.”
He peered in through the big door at the rear of the barn.
Imogene had evidently been roused from her ordinary contemplative and calm mood by the routing out of the horses and their hasty departure. She stood now, twitching her ears impatiently and listening with an occasional hollow grunt of distrust. She peered at the four empty stalls with uneasiness in her little eyes and surveyed the four horses that still remained, with something like reassurance. Then she listened some more. It was evident, even to so obtuse an observer as Avery, that she was momentarily expecting the showman to come back for the other horses, and so long as they remained she considered them proof that she was not abandoned.
Avery decided that this was so, muttering his convictions to himself as he stood and watched her.
“I’m a blame good mind to try her,” he said. “I don’t believe she gives a tophet for him, any more’n anyone else in the world does. I can prove him out a liar along with the rest, and I’ll tell the folks so. I’ll run him into the ground! You watch me! There’s folks that think as how they can set on Sam Av’ry, but I’ll show ’em that they can’t—not, and keep their reppytations. I’m only a poor cripple and I can’t fight the way some folks do, but I’ve got a tongue in my head, and as soon as I’ve proved some things you jest watch me.”
Thus soliloquising, he led the four horses, one by one, out of the barn through the rear door, knotted their halters around their necks and sent them down into the field with a slap on the flank. They frolicked away, glad of a run in the open.
When the last one went out of the barn the elephant said good-bye with a melancholy “roomp.” She surged once more at her chains and the sill beams creaked. Then she settled back and eyed Avery hopefully when he came close to her.
“He’s allus told me you was more’n half human,” said Avery, addressing her. “It’s prob’ly more of his lies. I’ve heard him talkin’ to you and he said you could understand human language. Another lie prob’ly. But if you can understand, then take this and chaw on it a spell; your man has run away and them’s his horses gone a-chasin’ after him, as you can see for yourself. He ain’t never comin’ back any more. He’s robbed four banks and killed three men and you ought to be ashamed of him. They’re goin’ to build a treadle for you and make you run a thrash-in’ machine and earn your livin’. There! If you can understand human talk there’s something that will int’rest you for a minit or two.”
He stood back and gazed at her triumphantly.
The animal had been lifting her feet uneasily for some moments. Now she gazed out through the door where the horses had disappeared and moaned pitifully. With the sagacity of a veteran she seemed to sniff the fact that her master was not on the premises. To assure herself she raised her trunk and began to trumpet the call that he had always answered. After each echoing roar she hearkened. No reply came, and each succeeding appeal was more insistent and more frantic.
Avery backed to the door with considerable precipitancy.
The elephant began to crouch and strain at her chains. The old beams creaked more ominously and there were crackings.
“I was only foolin’ you, Imogene,” Avery faltered. “He ain’t gone at all.”
The elephant stood up on her hind legs and tugged at the chains that confined her fore feet. One of them snapped.
“Honest to Gawd!” shouted “Figger-Four.” The situation frightened him. Palermo with a wild elephant rampant in it would hear of his visit to the barn and would suspect and blame him. Imogene thrashed about more viciously.
“There ain’t a word of truth in what I said about him. He’s right handy.” But when she snapped one of the hind-leg chains he quavered, “He was lyin’ to me! She don’t understand what you say to her!”’
He ran out to see where the horses were, thinking that their return might reassure the great beast. But they were far down in the field, scampering about. There was the “yawk” of drawing nails within, and the side of the barn shivered.
“She’s a-goin’ to get loose! She’s goin’ to rip us all to pieces!”
He hopped around to the front of the barn in the frantic hope that some kind of aid would present itself. “Hard-Times” Wharff, with an instinct that never failed when there was trouble on, stood across the road, his gaze on the barn.
Then came an inspiration to “Figger-Four.” Since Imogene had settled in Palermo he had taken especial interest in all literature relating to elephants. He suddenly remembered an item he had seen in the miscellany of the countyOracle.
It was stated there that elephants were singularly susceptible to the soothing influence of music.
“Have you got your flute along, ’Quarius?” squalled Avery.
The human weather-vane pulled it out and waved it.
“Then, for the Lord’s sake, hurry acrost here with it. You may save lives and property.”
It was at that moment that Squire Phin realised that something out of the ordinary was occurring on his premises. He came out of the kitchen-door just in time to behold “Figger-Four” and “Hard-Times” hustling around the corner of the barn. A moment later he heard the melancholy and wavery notes of the flute, and hurried into the barn by the way of the tie-up door just in time to witness the climax of Avery’s attempt at elephant-taming.
“Figger-Four” was holding Uncle Wharff at the big door almost by main force, and the old man, in spite of his fright, was trying his best to play. But his goggling eyes were too busy with the distracted Imogene, who was now occupied with her last leg-chain, which was attached to an upright beam supporting an end of the scaffold. Amidst her hollow roarings the feeble tones of the flute wailed like a cricket’s chirpings in a tornado.
If anything were needed to add to the exasperation of the desolated Imogene it was this mocking presence in the barn-door. With a last plunge she pulled the beam from under the scaffold and made for the door, sweeping her trunk at the men in her path. But the dragging log impeded her for a moment until she shook it out of the bight of chain. Avery and Uncle Wharff rolled over the driveway and crawled under the barn, and Imogene strode down across the field pursuing the horses.
“Perhaps I didn’t play the right tune,” the Squire heard “Hard-Times” gasp under the bam in reply to an angry growl from Avery. But he didn’t wait to interrogate them. That elephant was abroad, evidently with mind determined on mischief, and he felt that his first duty was to secure a band of elephant hunters in the village and start them on the trail.
When he turned into the street from the yard the parrot vigorously snapped a bar of his cage and yelled after him, “Hey, Rube!”
This final and unconscious touch of satire was too much for Squire Phin’s sense of the ludicrous. He turned in his tracks and surveyed the old homestead behind the poplars.
“Headquarters of the Look Brothers’ Grand Consolidated Circus and Menagerie,” he muttered, a smile creasing his cheeks even while he frowned.
“I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or swear damnation!”
Then he hurried on to round up his elephant posse.
“I’m a serious-minded man,
I have sailed from old Cape Ann
For fifty years, and I’ve braved as much as ary a mortal can.
I ain’ afraid of the stormy sea,
Nor critters that swim it, whatever they be,
But a witch of a woman is what floors me.”
—Sea-song of the “Baches of Bucksport.”
The Palermo packet, “Effort,” rocked slowly on the refuse-strewn ooze in her berth at Merrithew’s wharf, Square Harbour, her gray, weather-streaked sides rubbing at the barnacles on the piles. On the upper step of her cuddy companionway sat her skipper, Captain Nymphus Bodfish, rubbing his raspy palm over his bristly gray beard, the little curls of which were much like barnacles, too.
“I tell ye, set quiet,” he growled down the companionway. “I ain’t run packet here for ten years not to know when trains leave or not to know how to telefoam for a hack when I want one. That hack will be here ha’f-past twelve and it will get you to the deppo plenty in time.”
In a little while the complaining whine of a woman’s voice came up the companionway again. The captain impatiently twitched at a leather chain and flipped a big silver watch out of his pocket.
“Ten minits arter twelve, if ye’ve got to know,” he grumbled. “And it was eight minits arter twelve when you asked before. Now I ain’t no town clock to set here passin’ down time to ye ev’ry second or two. I say you’ll get to that deppo. So set quiet.”
But in a little while the complaining voice came up once more—the voice of a woman who was hoarse with much weeping.
“It ain’t no time now to be wishin’ that,” he snapped impatiently. “Your wishin’ wants to be all done up ahead when you make up your mind to run away from your husband. It’s all been fixed and arranged and you’ve agreed to do thus and so, and now there ain’t nothin’ to do but set quiet, set quiet, I tell you.”
Rather abstractedly he fingered in his waistcoat pocket and pulled the corner of a bill above its edge. He noted with fresh satisfaction, though he had looked at that bill at least a dozen times during the forenoon, that the figures in the corner were “20.”
“Yes, it’s all been fixed and arranged,” he repeated with additional firmness, “and you said you’d go and you’ve gone, so now what is the use of cry-babyin’?” He craned his neck and looked up the long alley that led from the wharf to the street. “Hack will prob’ly git here a little ahead of time,” he muttered, “and I’ll be blamenation glad if it does. There’s nothin’ so cussed aggravatin’ to have ’round as a woman that can’t keep her mind set on one thing more’n fourteen seconds at a time. It will be good riddance when her gown-tail goes over the rail.” Again the voice complained below.
“Now I want a puffick understandin’ about this thing,” snarled Captain Bodfish. “You want to stop whifflin’ back and forth, like a sheet at come-about, and fill full on one tack or t’other. When that hack comes you want to be ready to step into it, free will and no caterwaulin’s. I don’t propose to lug you out. It’s your own bus’ness and ’tain’t mine. But I’ve contracted to git you to that deppo and you’ve taken par-sage with that understandin’—and it’s to that deppo that I deliver you. Then you can go to Tophet, home or Hackenny so soon’s you’re off’n my hands.”
The voice came promptly when he finished. There was a question.
“No, s’r! Not a dum word of advice from me,” barked the skipper. “You’ve rooted your own hole and now you lay in it. I don’t never advise folks about their own business. If I said to go back to Wat Mayo or said to run away to where King Bradish is sendin’ you, you’d wish you’d done t’other, whatever one you done, and then I’d get the blame.”
He half rose and craned his neck again. It was at the noon hour and the drays were silent and the hum of business had ceased in the storehouses along the wharf. In the stillness he heard the rapid roll of some heavy vehicle on the stones of the street to which the alley admitted.
“Here comes your hack,” he said.
The voice rose in shrill protest.
“Yes, you willgo, too!” he bawled, angrily. “I ain’t goin’ to have you left on my hands. It ain’t in the bargain.”
The next moment four horses swung around the corner into the alley.
“Jee-hosophat!” whistled the skipper. “They’re sartinly putting on style in the hackin’ line.”
Then the van appeared, but it was too far away for Captain Bodfish to see just what it was.
“Blast ’em,” he snorted, “I didn’t telefoam for no furnitur’ to be moved.” He clumped across the deck and stood at the rail, peering under his palm.
Captain Nymphus Bodfish of the packet “Effort” had never met Hiram Look, having scornfully refused to “go up and hang ’round a peep-show.” He was not familiar, as were his townsmen, with the showman’s vans and horses.
His slow comprehension did not connect this apparition in Square Harbour with anything that could have come out of Palermo.
“They’re both of ’em wearin’ plug hats,” he soliloquised as the outfit came rattling down the alley, “but ’tain’t no hearse, painted and gew-gawed up like that.”
The equipage made a gallant sweep past the end of the storehouse near the packet’s berth and halted at the edge of the dock. Hiram leisurely tucked away his whip in the socket beside the seat, passed the reins to Peak and jumped to the ground.
“We didn’t have to waste a minute askin’ the way, Cap,” he remarked, cheerfully. “I find that the ‘Effort’ puts up at the same old dock, even if youarea new skipper.”
“Ain’t anything very new about ten years o’ runnin’,” returned Bodfish, rather surlily, for the stranger’s easy familiarity nettled him.
“Well, it makes you new to me,” said Hiram. “Howsomever, I ain’t got time to swap a great deal of talk.” He pulled out his watch. “I’ve got thutty-five minutes to git to the station if she ain’t here. If she is here I want her.”
Captain Bodfish’s jaw dropped in his astonishment, and his rolling eye now caught for the first time the lettering on the upper panel of the van: “Leviathan Circus and Menagerie, H. Look, Prop.”
“Yes,” went on Hiram, noting the skipper’s gathering scowl, “we’ve come round by land per the Inlet road, crooked as an angle-worm and up and down like a dash chum. It took sweat and axle-grease, but we’re here, Cap, glad to see you and wishin’ you all the compliments of the season. Now, brief and to the point—is the lady aboard that you took out of Palermo this mornin’?”
“None o’ your bus’ness,” replied Captain Bodfish, promptly and emphatically.
“Then I’ll come aboard and look. That’ll save me time and you the wear and tear on your mouth.”
But Captain Bodfish leaped to the gang-plank and straddled himself there.
“No you don’t come aboard no packet o’ mine,” he cried.
“Oh, then she’s here,” said Hiram. “They’re easy, these mossback fellers, Sime,” he added, turning to Peak. “It’s the old pickpocket trick. Jab a jay in the crowd and he flaps his hand onto where he’s carrying his wallet. Then all you have to do is to pick it.”
Bodfish’s rage was gathering fast.
Hiram stepped upon the wharf-end of the plank.
“I say ye can’t come aboard,” shouted the skipper. “You ain’t no policeman and you ain’t no custom officer.” He pulled a marline-spike from a knot of rope at the rail. “You come in reach of me, you circus man, and I’ll drive that plug hat down so fur oh your shoulders that folks will have to slice it off with a can-opener.”
“Ain’t your works gittin’ a little heated?” sarcastically queried Hiram. “Now, there’s a young woman aboard that bo’t that I’ve come after, and I’m goin’ to have her. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. You think you can stop me. I know you can’t. Now you’d better come over to my opinion of the case, Cap’n Nymp’ Bodfish, and save further wear and tear.”
But the irate captain only stepped out on the plank and whirled his spike. “You ain’t got your pitchfork to-day, and you ain’t got no Klebe Willard to deal with, either.”
“No, but I’ve got my grapplers,” shouted Hiram, and before the skipper could stir stump he snapped forward, grabbed the gang-plank and jerked it toward him. At the same time he tipped it and the captain of the “Effort” went down ’longside with a “kerplunko” that sent the turbid water above the wharf’s edge like the spout of a geyser. Hiram made two bounds, one to the rail and one to the deck.
“Here, Mayo woman,” he cried, as he clumped down the companionway into the dim cabin, “no arguments, no back talk.”
He seized her by the arm, rushed her up the steps and to the rail, and fairly tossed her across the space to the wharf, over the head of Captain Bodfish, who was blowing water from his mouth and nose, and clambering painfully up the side of the craft.
“You ain’t cool yet. Take another dip,” cried Hiram, and he put his broad boot down on Bodfish’s head and sent him under again.
The girl swayed dizzily on the wharf, but the showman had her in his grasp the next moment. He noted a hack bowling down the wharf and persons were sauntering that way, attracted by the unusual spectacle of a circus van. Without a moment’s hesitation he half-carried the woman to the rear of the van, threw open the double doors, pushed her in on some blankets that were spread on the floor, and closed and padlocked the opening. She was uttering sharp cries, but he put his mouth close to the crack and growled at her:
“You’re goin’ home, you little fool. But if you let one more yip out of you I’ll deliver you to the first policeman I meet and tell him you’re an eloper. Then it’s State prison for you.”
Her cries ceased and Hiram turned a bland face to the persons who had come up.
Captain Bodfish had regained his vessel and was sitting on the rail, dragging the water out of his eyes with his knuckles, and panting for breath. The showman forestalled any compromising accusations. He went close to the edge of the wharf, leaned over and said:
“Cap, you can’t afford to open your mouth. I can have you tarred and feathered here in ten minutes if I let the crowd in on what you’ve tried to do. I’m a son of a seacook on handlin’ a crowd.”
The skipper unclosed and shut his mouth like a fish, but he realised the force of that warning.
Hiram went along and prepared to climb back upon his seat. As he set his toe on the hub one of the crowd inquired suspiciously:
“If it ain’t a sassy question, mister, what was that critter that you was putting into the cart here? We heard it squawkin’, but we couldn’t see very well.” Hiram, his success making him amiable, smiled upon the bystanders.
“Gents, I am both pleased and proud to tell you that I have now in this van one of the most beautiful specimens of the five-finned American mermaid that was ever captured on our stem and rock-bound coast.”
The zeal of the barker entered his spirit. It had been a long time since he had faced an audience.
“This stupendous attraction, gents, that has just been secured for Look’s Leviathan Menagerie is the only living specimen of the American Mermaidissus in captivity to-day. She has flowing hair in which she wraps herself as in a mantle of the purest silk, and she is fresh from the royal courts of the king of the seas. She was captured off our aforesaid rocky coast by the bravest sailor that ploughs the ocean blue”—Bodfish was edging through the crowd, his face working with mighty wrath that he did not dare to give rein to. The showman beamed on him. “Yes, gents, captured in a single-handed conflict by that brave sailor, Cap’n Nymphus Bodfish, of the ‘Effort.’ And now he will be pleased to give you full particulars of that gigantic struggle in the waters of old ocean. As for me I shall have to be movin’ on to where immense and delighted audiences await me.”
He started to climb over the wheel, tipping a wink at Peak, and the crowd turned open-mouthed to Bodfish. The instant the showman’s back was turned that infuriated individual rushed forward, dealt Hiram a mighty kick, and when the showman turned, bonneted him in his tall hat, and then ran like a deer off the wharf and across the decks of a nest of fishing schooners that were packed in at one of the docks.
Hiram worked off his hat and straightened it, gazing after the fleeing Bodfish without a word. But his face was gray and rigid with rage. Then he climbed to his seat and gazed afresh on the skipper, scuttling across the decks.
“Aforesaid brave and intrepid sailor seems to have had his brain turned by his wonderful success as a mermaid capturer,” he grated. “It—it’s——” he choked and paused. “It’s too bad!” he managed to growl at last, and then snatched the reins from Peak’s hands and drove off up the alley at a stiff pace, leaving a very much mystified crowd behind him.
“We’ll get out of this place as soon as pullin’ the braid and pushin’ the webbin’ will do it,” he said to Peak as the van turned into the dingy shore street of Square Harbour. “Ev’ry one here has got eyes hung out on their cheeks like lobsters have,” he went on, glowering at the people on the sidewalks. His amiability had departed suddenly.
“What ye goin’ to do to old Tarfinger?” asked Peak, who fully understood what the showman was thinking about.
“It’s goin’ to take a good deal of prayer and meditation to plan it out, Sime,” replied Hiram, slowly and menacingly. “Do you think that many of them critters that stood round there knew who I was?”
“Ain’t your name on this cart bigger’n a fat woman sign on a side-show banner?”
Hiram ground his teeth.
“There was a man kicked me once,” he related slowly, “and there wasn’t no outsiders see him do it, either. And that man—but I ain’t any hand to brag, Sime. All I say is that such a case as this needs prayer and meditation, and a lot of it.”
They rode on in silence. There was no sound from within.
“We’ll stop up-country at some farmer’s place and bait,” said Hiram at last, “and we’ll get into Palermo after dark. The invisible lady trick will be played all right and there’s that much to say, but—I never was kicked before in the face and eyes of a public audience, to have it talked about from Clew to Erie and laughed over, and him get away! Oh, it ain’t no common case, Sime. Don’t talk to me. Let me meditate.”
Therefore the ride along the highway that swept up around the broad Inlet was one devoted wholly to introspection, both without and within the rumbling van.