Should your curiosity invite it, and the more since I promised you the story, we will now, my friends, go about the telling of that one operation in underground silk. It is not calculated to foster the pride of an old man to plunge into a relation of dubious doings of his youth. And yet, as I look backward on that one bit of smuggling of which I was guilty, so far as motive was involved, I exonerate myself. I looked on the government, because of the South’s conquest by the North, and that later ruin of myself through the machinations of the Revenue office, as both a political and a personal foe. And I felt, not alone morally free, but was impelled besides in what I deemed a spirit of justice to myself, to wage war against it as best I might. It was on such argument, where the chance proffered, that I sought wealth as a smuggler. I would deplete the government—forage, as it were, on the enemy—thereby to fatten my purse.
As my hair has whitened with the sifting frosts of years, I confess that my sophistries of smuggling seem less and less plausible, while smuggling itself loses whatever of romantic glamour it may once have been invested with, or what little color of respect to which it might seem able to lay claim. This tale shall be told in simplest periods. That is as should be; for expression should ever be meek and subjugated when one’s story is the mere story of a cheat. There is scant room in such recital for heroic phrase. Smuggling, and paint it with what genius one may, can be nothing save a skulking, hiding, fear-eaten trade. There is nothing about it of bravery or dash. How therefore and avoid laughter, may one wax stately in any telling of its ignoble details?
When, following my unfortunate crash in tobacco, I had cleared away the last fragment of the confusion that reigned in my affairs, I was driven to give my nerves a respite and seek a rest. For three months I had been under severest stress. When the funeral was done—for funeral it seemed to me—and my tobacco enterprise and those hopes it had so flattered were forever laid at rest, my soul sank exhausted and my brain was in a whirl. I could neither think with clearness nor plan with accuracy. Moreover, I was prey to that depression and lack of confidence in myself, which come inevitably as the corollary of utter weariness.
Aware of this personal condition, I put aside thought of any present formulation of a future. I would rest, recover poise, and win back that optimism that belongs with health and youth.
This was wisdom; I was jaded beyond belief; and fatigue means dejection, and dejection spells pessimism, and pessimism is never sagacious nor excellent in any of its programmes.
For that rawness of the nerves I speak of, many apply themselves to drink; some rush to drugs; for myself, I take to music. It was midwinter, and grand opera was here. This was fortunate. I buried myself in a box, and opened my very pores to those nerve-healthful harmonies.
In a week thereafter I might call myself recovered. My soul was cool, my eye bright, my mind clear and sensibly elate. Life and its promises seemed mightily refreshed.
No one has ever called me superstitious and yet to begin my course-charting for a new career, I harked back to the old Astor House. It was there that brilliant thought of tobacco overtook me two years before. Perhaps an inspiration was to dwell in an environment. Again I registered, and finding it tenantless, took over again my old room. Still I cannot say, and it is to that hostelry’s credit, that my domicile at the Astor aided me to my smuggling resolves. Those last had growth somewhat in this fashion:
I had dawdled for two hours over coffee in the café—the room and the employment which had one-time brought me fortune—but was incapable of any thought of value. I could decide on nothing good. Indeed, I did naught save mentally curse those revenue miscreants who, failing of blackmail, had destroyed me for revenge.
Whatever comfort may lurk in curses, at least they carry no money profit; so after a fruitless session over coffee and maledictions, I arose, and as a calmative, walked down Broadway.
At Trinity churchyard, the gates being open, I turned in and began ramblingly to twine and twist among the graves. There I encountered a garrulous old man who, for his own pleasure, evidently, devoted himself to my information. He pointed out the grave of Fulton, he of the steamboats; then I was shown the tomb of that Lawrence who would “never give up the ship;” from there I was carried to the last low bed of the love-wrecked Charlotte Temple.
My eye at last, by the alluring voice and finger of the old guide, was drawn to a spot under the tower where sleeps the Lady Cornbury, dead now as I tell this, hardby two hundred years. Also I was told of that Lord Cornbury, her husband, once governor of the colony for his relative, Queen Anne; and how he became so much more efficient as a smuggler and a customs cheat, than ever he was as an executive, that he lost his high employ.
Because I had nothing more worthy to occupy my leisure, I listened—somewhat listlessly, I promise you, for after all I was thinking on the future, not the past, and considering of the living rather than those old dead folk, obscure, forgotten in their slim graves—I listened, I say, to my gray historian; and somehow, after I was free of him, the one thing that remained alive in my memory was the smuggling story of our Viscount Cornbury.
Among those few acquaintances I formed during my brief prosperity, was one with a gentleman named Harris, who owned apartments under mine on Twenty-second Street. Harris was elegant, educated, traveled, and apparently well-to-do of riches. Busy with my own mounting fortunes, the questions of who Harris was? and what he did? and how he lived? never rapped at the door of my curiosity for reply.
One night, however, as we sat over a late and by no means a first bottle of wine, Harris himself informed me that he was employed in smuggling; had a partner-accomplice in the Customs House, and perfect arrangements aboard a certain ship. By these last double advantages, he came aboard with twenty trunks, if he so pleased, without risking anything from the inquisitiveness or loquacity of the officers of the ship; and later debarked at New York with the certainty of going scatheless through the customs as rapidly as his Inspector partner could chalk scrawlingly “O. K.” upon his sundry pieces of baggage.
Coming from Old Trinity, still mooting Corn-bury and his smugglings, my thoughts turned to Harris. Also, for the earliest time, I began to consider within myself whether smuggling was not a field of business wherein a pushing man might grow and reap a harvest. The idea came to me to turn “free-trader.” The government had destroyed me; I would make reprisal. I would give my hand to smuggling and spoil the Egyptian.
At once I sought Harris and over a glass of champagne—ever a favorite wine with me—we struck agreement. As a finale we each put in fifteen thousand dollars, and with the whole sum of thirty thousand dollars Harris pushed forth for Europe while I remained behind. Harris visited Lyons; and our complete investment was in a choicest sort of Lyons silk. The rich fabrics were packed in a dozen trunks—not all alike, those trunks, but differing, one from another, so as to prevent the notion as they stood about the wharf that there was aught of relationship between them or that one man stood owner of them all.
It is not needed to tell of my partner’s voyage of return. It was without event and one may safely abandon it, leaving its relation to Harris himself, if he be yet alive and should the spirit him so move. It is enough for the present purpose that in due time the trunks holding our precious silk-bolts, with Harris as their convoy, arrived safe in New York.
I had been looking for the boat’s coming and was waiting on the wharf as her lines and her stagings were run ashore.
Our partner, the Inspector, and who was to enjoy a per cent, of the profits of the speculation, was named Lorns. He rapidly chalked “O. K.” with his name affixed to the end of each several trunk and it thereupon with the balance of inspected baggage was promptly piled upon the wharf.
There had been a demand for drays, I remember, and on this day when our silks came in, I was able to procure but one. The ship did not dock until late in the afternoon, and at eight o’clock of a dark, foggy April evening, there still remained one of our trunks—the largest of all, it was—on the wharf. The dray had departed with the second load for that concealing loft in Reade Street which, during Harris’ absence, I had taken to be used as the depot of those smuggling operations wherein we might become engaged. I had made every move with caution; I had never employed our real names not even with the drayman.
As I tell you, the dray was engaged about the second trip. This last large silk-trunk was left behind perforce; pile it how one might there had been no safe room for it on the already overloaded dray. The drayman promised to return and have it safely in our loft that night.
For myself, I was from first to last lounging about the wharf, overseeing the going away of our goods. Harris, so soon as I gave him key and street-number, had posted to Reade Street to attend the silk’s reception.
Waiting for the coming back of the conveying dray proved but a slow, dull business, and I was impatiently, at the hour I’ve named, walking up and down, casting an occasional glance at the big last trunk where it stood on end, a bit drawn out and separated from the common mountain of baggage wherewith the wharf was piled.
One of the general inspectors, a man I had never seen but whom I knew, by virtue of his rank, to be superior to our chalk-wielding coparcener, also paced the wharf and appeared to bear me company in a distant, non-communicative way. This customs captain and myself, save for an under inspector named Quin, had the dock to ourselves. The boat was long in and most land folk had gotten through their concern with her and wended homeward long before. There were, however, many passengers of emigrant sort still held aboard the ship.
As I marched up and down, Lorns came ashore and pretended some business with his superior officer. As he returned to the ship and what duties he had still to perform there, he made a slight signal to both myself and his fellow inspector, Quin, to follow him. I was well known to Lorns, having had several talks with him, while Harris was abroad. Quin I had never met; but it quickly appeared that he was a confidant of Lorns, and while without money interest in our affairs was ready to bear helping hand should the situation commence to pinch.
Quin and I went severally and withal carelessly aboard ship, and not at all as though we were seeking Lorns. This was to darken the chief, whom we both surmised to be the cause of Lorn’s signal.
Once aboard and gathered in a dark corner, Lorns began at once:
“Let me do the talking,” said Lorns with a nervous rapidity that at once enlisted the ears of Quin and myself. “Don’t interrupt, but listen. The chief suspects that last trunk. I can tell it by the way he acts. A bit later, when I come ashore, he’ll ask to have it opened. Should he do so, we’re lost; you and I.” This last was to me. Then to Quin: “Do you see that long, bony Swiss, with the boots and porcelain pipe? He’s in an ugly mood, doesn’t speak English, and within one minute after you return to the wharf, he and I will be entangled in a rough and tumble riot. I’ll attend to that. The row will be prodigious. The chief will be sent for to settle the war, and when he leaves the wharf, Quin, don’t wait; seize on that silk trunk and throw it into the river. There’s iron enough clamped about the corners to sink it; besides, it’s packed so tightly it’s as heavy as lead, and will go to the bottom like an anvil. Then from the pile pull down some trunk similar to it in looks and stand it in its place. It’ll go in the dark. Give the new trunk my mark, as the chief has already read the name on the trunk. Go, Quin; I rely on you.”
“You can trust me, my boy,” retorted Quin, cheerfully, and turning on his heel, he was back on the wharf in a moment, and apparently busy about the pile of baggage.
Suddenly there came a mighty uproar aboard ship. Lorns and the Swiss, the latter already irate over some trouble he had experienced, were rolling about the deck in a most violent scrimmage, the Swiss having decidedly the worst of the trouble. The chief rushed up the plank; Lorns and the descendant of Tell and Winkelried, were torn apart; and then a double din of explanation ensued. After ten minutes, the chief was able to straighten out the difficulty—whatever its pretended cause might be I know not; for I held myself warily aloof, not a little alarmed by what Lorns had communicated—and repaired again to his station upon the wharf.
As the chief came down the plank, Quin, who had not been a moment behind him in going aboard to discover the reasons of the riot, followed. Brief as was that moment, however, during which Quin had lingered behind, he had made the shift suggested by Lorns; the silk trunk was under the river, a strange trunk stood in its stead.
As the chief returned, he walked straight to this suspected trunk and tipped it down with his foot. Then to Quin:
“Ask Lorns to stephere.”
Quin went questing Lorns; shortly Lorns and Quin came back together. The chief turned in a brisk, sharp, official way to Lorns:
“Did you inspect this trunk?”
“I did,” said Lorns, looking at the chalk marks as if to make sure.
“Open it!”
No keys were procurable; the owners, Lorns said, had long since left the docks. But Lorns suggested that he get hammer and cold-chisel from the ship.
The trunk was opened and found free and innocent of aught contraband. The chief wore a puzzled, dark look; he felt that he’d been cheated, but he couldn’t say how. Therefore, being wise, the chief gulped, said nothing, and as life is short and he had many things to do, soon after left the docks and went his way.
“That was a squeak!” said Lorns when we were at last free of the dangerous chief. “Quin, I thank you.”
“That’s all right,” retorted Quin, with a grin; “do as much for me some time.”
That night, with the aid of a river pirate, our trunk, jettisoned by the excellent Quin, was fished up; and being tight as a drum, its contents had come to little harm with the baptism. At last, our dozen silk trunks—holding a treasure of thirty thousand dollars and whereon we looked to clear a heavy profit—were safe in the Reade Street loft; and my hasty heart, which had been beating at double speed since that almost fatal interference, slowed to normal.
One might now suppose our woes were at an end, all danger over, and nothing to do but dispose of that shimmering cargo to best advantage. Harris and I were of that spirit-lifting view; we began on the very next day to feel about for customers.
Harris, whose former smuggling exploits had dealt solely with gems, knew as little of silk as did I. Had either been expert he might have foreseen a coming peril into whose arms we in our blindness all but walked. No, our troubles were not yet done. We had escaped the engulfing suck of Charybdis, only to be darted upon by those six grim mouths of her sister monster, Scylla, over the way.
Well do I recall that morning. I had seen but two possible purchasers of silks when Harris overtook me. His eye shone with alarm. Lorns had run him down with the news—however he himself discovered it, I never knew—that another danger yawned.
Harris hurried me to our Reade Street lair and gave particulars.
“It seems,” said Harris, quite out of breath with the speed we’d made in hunting cover, “that Stewart is for America the sole agent of these particular brands of silk which we’ve brought in. Some one to whom we’ve offered them has notified the Stewart company. At this moment and as we sit here, the detectives belonging to Stewart, and for all I may guess, the whole Central Office as well, are on our track. They want to discover who has these silks; and how they came in, since the customs records show no such importations. And there’s a dark characteristic to these silks. Each bolt has its peculiar, individual selvage. Each, with a sample of its selvage, is registered at the home looms. Could anyone get a snip of a selvage he could return with it to Lyons, learn from the manufacturers’ book just when it was woven, when sold, and to whom. I can tell you one thing,” observed Harris, as he concluded his story, “we’re in a bad corner.”
How the cold drops spangled my brows! I began to wish with much heart that I’d never met Harris, nor heard, that Trinity churchyard day, of Cornbury and his smuggling methods of gathering gold.
There was one ray of hope; neither Harris nor I had disclosed our names, nor the whereabouts or quantity of the silks; and as each had been dealing with folk with whom he’d never before met, we were both as yet mysteries unsolved.
Nor were we ever solved. Harris and I kept off the streets during daylight hours for a full month. We were not utterly idle; we unpleasantly employed ourselves in trimming away that telltale selvage.
Preferring safety to profit, we put forth no efforts to realize on our speculations for almost a year. By that time the one day’s wonder of “Who’s got Stewart’s silks?” had ceased to disturb the mercantile world and the grand procession of dry goods interest passed on and over it.
At last we crept forth like felons—as, good sooth! we were—and disposed of our mutilated silks to certain good folk whose forefathers once ruled Palestine. These gentry liked bargains, and were in no wise curious; they bought our wares without lifting an eyebrow of inquiry, and from them constructed—though with that I had no concern—those long “circulars,” so called, which were the feminine joy a third of a century gone.
As to Harris and myself; what with delays, what with expenses, what with figures reduced to dispose of our plunder, we got evenly out. We got back our money; but for those fear-shaken hours of two separate perils, we were never paid.
I smuggled no more. Still, I did not relinquish my pious purpose to despoil that public treasury Egyptian quoted heretofore. Neither did I give up the Customs as a rich field of illicit endeavor. But my methods changed. I now decided that I, myself, would become an Inspector, like unto the useful Lorns, and make my fortune from the opulent inside. I procured the coveted appointment, for I could bring power to bear, and later I’ll tell you of The Emperor’s Cigars.
When I was in my room that night, making ready for bed, I could still hear the soft, cold fingers of the snow upon the pane. What a storm was that! Our landlord who had been boy and man and was now gray in that old inn, declared how he had never witnessed the smothering fellow to it.
The following day, while still and bright and no snow to fall, showed a temperature below zero. The white blockade still held us fast, and now the desperate cold was come to be the ally of the snow. Departure was never a question.
As we kicked the logs into a cheerful uproar of sparks, and drew that evening about the great fireplace, it was the Old Cattleman to break conversational ground.
“Do you-all know,” said he, “I shore feels that idle this evenin’ it’s worse’n scand’lous—it’s reedic’lous.” Here he threw himself back in his armchair and yawned. “Pardon these yere demonstrations of weariness, gents,” he observed; “they ain’t aimed at you none. That’s the fact, though; this amazin’ sensation of bein’ held a prisoner is beginnin’ to gnaw at me a heap. Talk of ‘a painted ship upon a painted ocean,’ like that poem sharp wrote of! Why that vessel’s sedyoolously employed compared to us!”
“You should recall,” remarked the Jolly Doctor, “how somewhere it is said that whatever your hand finds to do, you should do it with all your heart. Now, I would say the counsel applies to our present position. Since we must needs be idle, let us be idle heartily and happily, and get every good to lie hidden in what to me, at least, is a most pleasant companionship.”
“I shore unites with you,” responded the Old Cattleman, “in them script’ral exhortations to do things with all your heart. It was Wild Bill Hickox’s way, too; an’ a Christian adherence to that commandment, not only saves Bill’s life, but endows him with the record for single-handed killin’s so far as we-all has accounts.”
“Is it a story?” asked the Red Nosed Gentleman. “Once in a while I relish a good blood and thunder tale.”
“It’s this a-way,” said the Old Cattleman. “Bill’s hand is forced by the Jake McCandlas gang. Bill has ’em to do; an’ rememberin’, doubtless, the Bible lessons of his old mother back in Illinois, he shore does ’em with all his heart, as the good book says. This yere is the story of ‘The Wiping Out of McCandlas.’”
Tell you-all a tale of blood? It shore irritates me a heap, gents, when you eastern folks looks allers to the west for stories red an’ drippin’ with murder. Which mighty likely now the west is plenty peaceful compared with this yere east itse’f. Thar’s one thing you can put in your mem’randum book for footure ref’rence, an’ that is, for all them years I inhabits Arizona an’ Texas an’ sim’lar energetic localities, I never trembles for my life, an’ goes about plumb furtive, expectin’ every moment is goin’ to be my next that a-way, ontil I finds myse’f camped on the sunrise side of the Alleghenies.
Nacherally, I admits, thar has been a modicum of blood shed west an’ some slight share tharof can be charged to Arizona. No, I can’t say I deplores these killin’s none. Every gent has got to die. For one, I’m mighty glad the game’s been rigged that a-way. I’d shore hesitate a lot to be born onless I was shore I’d up an’ some day cash in. Live forever? No, don’t confer on me no sech gloomy outlook. If a angel was to appear in our midst an’ saw off on me the news that I was to go on an’ on as I be now, livin’ forever like that Wanderin’ Jew, the information would stop my clock right thar. I’d drop dead in my moccasins.
It don’t make much difference, when you gives yourse’f to a ca’m consid’ration of the question as to when you dies or how you dies. The important thing is to die as becomes a gent of sperit who has nothin’ to regret. Every one soon or late comes to his trail’s end. Life is like a faro game. One gent has ten dollars, another a hundred, another a thousand, and still others has rolls big enough to choke a cow. But whether a gent is weak or strong, poor or rich, it’s written in advance that he’s doomed to go broke final. He’s doomed to die. Tharfore, when that’s settled, of what moment is it whether he goes broke in an hour, or pikes along for a week—dies to-day or postpones his funeral for years an’ mebby decades?
Holdin’ to these yere views, you can see without my tellin’ that a killin’, once it be over, ain’t likely to harass me much. Like the rest of you-all, I’ve been trailin’ out after my grave ever since I was foaled—on a hunt for my sepulcher, you may say—an’ it ought not to shock me to a showdown jest because some pard tracks up ag’inst his last restin’ place, spreads his blankets an’ goes into final camp before it come my own turn.
But, speakin’ of killin’s, the most onusual I ever hears of is when Wild Bill Hickox cleans up the Jake McCandlas gang. This Bill I knows intimate; he’s not so locoed as his name might lead a gent to concloode. The truth is, he’s a mighty crafty, careful form of sport; an’ he never pulled a gun ontil he knew what for an’ never onhooked it ontil he knew what at.
An’ speakin’ of the latter—the onhookin’ part—that Wild Bill never missed. That’s his one gift; he’s born to make a center shot whenever his six-shooter expresses itse’f.
This McCandlas time is doorin’ them border troubles between Missouri an’ Kansas. Jest prior tharunto, Bill gets the ill-will of the Missouri outfit by some gun play he makes at Independence, then the eastern end of the old Santa Fe trail. What Bill accomplishes at Independence is a heap effectual an’ does him proud. But it don’t endear him none to the Missouri heart. Moreover, it starts a passel of resentful zealots to lookin’ for him a heap f’rocious, an’ so he pulls his freight.
It’s mebby six months later when Bill is holdin’ down a stage station some’eres over in Kansas—it’s about a day’s ride at a road-gait from Independence—for Ben Holiday’s overland line. Thar’s the widow of acompadreof Bill who has a wickeyup about a mile away, an’ one day Bill gets on his hoss, Black Nell, an’ goes romancin’ over to see how the widow’s gettin’ on. This Black Nell hoss of Bill’s is some cel’brated. Black Nell is tame as a kitten an’ saveys more’n a hired man. She’d climb a pa’r of steps an’ come sa’n-terin’ into a dance hall or a hurdy gurdy if Bill calls to her, an’ I makes no doubt she’d a-took off her own saddle an’ bridle an’ gone to bed with a pa’r of blankets, same as folks, if Bill said it was the proper antic for a pony.
It’s afternoon when Bill rides up to pow-wow with this relict of his pard. As he comes into the one room—for said wickeyup ain’t palatial, an’ consists of one big room, that a-way, an’ a jim-crow leanto—Bill says:
“Howdy, Jule?” like that.
“Howdy, Bill?” says the widow. “’Light an’ rest your hat, while I roam ’round an’ rustle some chuck.” This widow has the right idee.
While Bill is camped down on a stool waitin’ for the promisedcarnean’ flap-jacks, or whatever may be the grub his hostess is aimin’ to on-loose, he casts a glance outen the window. He’s interested at once. Off across the plains he discerns the killer, McCandlas an’ his band p’intin’ straight for the widow’s. They’re from Missouri; thar’s ’leven of ’em, corral count, an’ all “bad.” As they can see his mare, Black Nell, standin’ in front of the widow’s, Bill argues jestly that the McCandlas outfit knows he’s thar; an’ from the speed they’re makin’ in their approach, he likewise dedooces that they’re a heap eager for his company.
Bill don’t have to study none to tell that thar’s somebody goin’ to get action. It’s likely to be mighty onequal, but thar’s no he’p; an’ so Bill pulls his gun-belt tighter, an’ organizes to go as far as he can. He has with him only one six-shooter; that’s a severe setback. Now, if he was packin’ two the approaching war jig would have carried feachers of comfort. But he’s got a nine-inch bowie, which is some relief. When his six-shooter’s empty, he can fall back on the knife, die hard, an’ leave his mark.
As Bill rolls the cylinder of his gun to see if she’s workin’ free, an’ loosens the bowie to avoid delays, his eye falls on a rifle hangin’ above the door.
“Is it loaded, Jule?” asks Bill.
“Loaded to the gyards,” says the widow.
“An’ that ain’t no fool of a piece of news, neither,” says Bill, as he reaches down the rifle. “Now, Jule, you-all better stampede into the cellar a whole lot ontil further orders. Thar’s goin’ to be heated times ’round yere an’ you’d run the resk of gettin’ scorched.”
“I’d sooner stay an’ see, Bill,” says the widow. “You-all knows how eager an’ full of cur’osity a lady is,” an’ here the widow beams on Bill an’ simpers coaxin’ly.
“An’ I’d shore say stay, Jule,” says Bill, “if you could turn a trick. But you sees yourse’f, you couldn’t. An’ you’d be in the way.”
Thar’s a big burrow out in the yard; what Kansas people deenominates as a cyclone cellar. It’s like a cave; every se’f-respectin’ Kansas fam’ly has one. They may not own no bank account; they may not own no good repoote; but you can gamble, they’ve got a cyclone cave.
Shore, it ain’t for ornament, nor yet for ostentation. Thar’s allers a breeze blowin’ plenty stiff across the plains. Commonly, it’s strenyous enough to pick up a empty bar’l an’ hold it ag’inst the side of a buildin’ for a week. Sech is the usual zephyr. Folks don’t heed them none. But now an’ then one of these yere cyclones jumps a gent’s camp, an’ then it’s time to make for cover. Thar’s nothin’ to be said back to a cyclone. It’ll take the water outen a well, or the money outen your pocket, or the ha’r off your head; it’ll get away with everything about you incloodin’ your address. Your one chance is a cyclone cellar; an’ even that refooge ain’t no shore-thing, for I knowed a cyclone once that simply feels down an’ pulls a badger outen his hole. Still, sech as the last, is onfrequent.
The widow accepts Bill’s advice an’ makes for the storm cave. This leaves Bill happy an’ easy in his mind, for it gives him plenty of room an’ nothin’ to think of but himse’f. An’ Bill shore admires a good fight.
He don’t have long to wait after the widow stampedes. Bill hears the sweep of the ’leven McCandlas hosses as they come chargin’ up. No, he can’t see; he ain’t quite that weak-minded as to be lookin’ out the window.
As the band halts, Bill hears McCandlas say:
“Shore, gents; that’s Wild Bill’s hoss. We’ve got him treed an’ out on a limb; to-morry evenin’ we’ll put that long-ha’red skelp of his in a showcase in Independence.” Then McCandlas gives a whoop, an’ bluffs Bill to come out. “Come out yere, Bill; we needs you to decide a bet,” yells McCandlas. “Come out; thar’s no good skulkin’.”
“Say, Jake,” retorts Bill; “I’ll gamble that you an’ your hoss thieves ain’t got the sand to come after me. Come at once if you comes; I despises delays, an’ besides I’ve got to be through with you-all an’ back to the stage station by dark.”
“I’ll put you where thar ain’t no stage lines, Bill, long before dark,” says McCandlas. An’ with that he comes caperin’ through the window, sash, glass, an’ the entire lay-out, as blithe as May an’ a gun in each hand.
Bill cuts loose the Hawkins as he’s anxious to get the big gun off his mind. It stops McCandlas, “squar’ in the door,” as they says in monte; only it’s the window. McCandlas falls dead outside.
“An’ I’m sorry for that, too,” says Bill to him-se’f. “I’m preemature some about that shot. I oughter let Jake come in. Then I could have got his guns.”
When McCandlas goes down, the ten others charges with a whoop. They comes roarin’ through every window; they breaks in the door; they descends on Bill’s fortress like a ’possum on a partridge nest!
An’ then ensoos the busiest season which any gent ever cuts in upon. The air is heavy with bullets an’ thick with smoke. The walls of the room later looks like a colander.
It’s a mighty fav’rable fight, an’ Bill don’t suffer none in his repoote that Kansas afternoon. Faster than you can count, his gun barks; an’ each time thar’s a warrior less. One, two, three, four, five, six; they p’ints out after McCandlas an’ not a half second between ’em as they starts. It was good luck an’ good shootin’ in combination.
It’s the limit; six dead to a single Colt’s! No gent ever approaches it but once; an’ that’s a locoed sharp named Metzger in Raton. He starts in with Moulton who’s the alcade, an’ beefs five an’ creases another; an’ all to the same one gun. The public, before he can reload, hangs Metzger to the sign in front of the First National Bank, so he don’t have much time to enjoy himse’f reviewin’ said feats.
Rifle an’ six-shooter empty; seven dead an’ done, an’ four to take his knife an’ talk it over with! That’s the situation when Bill pulls his bowie an’ starts to finish up.
It shore ain’t boy’s play; the quintette who’s still prancin’ about the field is as bitter a combination as you’d meet in a long day’s ride. Their guns is empty, too; an’ they, like Bill, down to the steel. An’ thar’s reason to believe that the fight from this p’int on is even more interestin’ than the part that’s gone before. Thar’s no haltin’ or hangin’ back; thar ain’t a bashful gent in the herd. They goes to the center like one man.
Bill, who’s as quick an’ strong as a mountain lion, with forty times the heart an’ fire, grips one McCandlas party by the wrist. Thar’s a twist an’ a wrench an’ Bill onj’ints his arm.
That’s the last of the battle Bill remembers. All is whirl an’ smoke an’ curse an’ stagger an’ cut an’ stab after that, with tables crashin’ an’ the wreck an’ jangle of glass.
But the end comes. Whether the struggle from the moment when it’s got down to the bowies lasts two minutes or twenty, Bill never can say. When it’s over, Bill finds himse’f still on his feet, an’ he’s pushin’ the last gent off his blade. Split through the heart, this yere last sport falls to the floor in a dead heap, an’ Bill’s alone, blood to both shoulders.
Is Bill hurt? Gents, it ain’t much likely he’s put ’leven fightin’ men into the misty beyond, the final four with a knife, an’ him plumb scatheless! No, Bill’s slashed so he wouldn’t hold hay; an’ thar’s more bullets in his frame than thar’s pease in a pod. The Doc who is called in, an’ who prospects Bill, allers allowed that it’s the mistake of his life he don’t locate Bill an’ work him for a lead mine.
When the battle is over an’ peace resoomes its sway, Bill begins to stagger. An’ he’s preyed on by thirst. Bill steadies himse’f along the wall; an’ weak an’ half blind from the fogs of fightin’, he feels his way out o’ doors.
Thar’s a tub of rain-water onder the eaves; it’s the only thing Bill’s thinkin’ of at the last. He bends down to drink; an’ with that, faints an’ falls with his head in the tub.
It’s the widow who rescoos Bill; she emerges outen her cyclone cellar an’ saves Bill from drownin’. An’ he lives, too; lives to be downed years afterward when up at Deadwood a timid party who don’t dare come ’round in front, drills Bill from the r’ar. But what can you look for? Folks who lives by the sword will perish by the sword as the scripters sets forth, an’ I reckons now them warnin’s likewise covers guns.
“And did that really happen?” asked the Red Nosed Gentleman, drawing a deep breath.
“It’s as troo as that burgundy you’re absorbin’,” replied the Old Cattleman.
“I can well believe it,” observed the Sour Gentleman; “a strong hour makes a strong man. Did this Wild Bill Hickox wed the widow who pulled him out of the tub?”
“Which I don’t think so,” returned the Old Cattleman. “If he does, Bill keeps them nuptials a secret. But it’s a cinch he don’t. As I says at the jump, Bill is a mighty wary citizen an’ not likely to go walkin’ into no sech ambuscade as a widow.”
“You do not think, then,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, “that a wife would be a blessing?”
“She wouldn’t be to Wild Bill Hickox,” said the Old Cattleman. “Thar is gents who ought never to wed, an’ Bill’s one. He was bound to be killed final; the game law was out on Bill for years. Now when a gent is shore to cash in that a-way, why should he go roundin’ up a wife? Thar oughter be a act of congress ag’in it, an’ I onderstand that some sech measure is to be introdooced.”
“Passing laws,” remarked the Jolly Doctor, “is no such easy matter, now, as passing the bottle.” Here the Jolly Doctor looked meaningly at the Red Nosed Gentleman, who thereupon shoved the burgundy into the Jolly Doctor’s hand with all conceivable alacrity. Like every good drinker, the Red Nosed Gentleman loved a cup companion. “There was a western person,” went on the Jolly Doctor, “named Jim Britt, who came east to have a certain law passed; he didn’t find it flowers to his feet.”
“What now was the deetails?” said the Old Cattleman. “The doin’s an’ plottin’s an’ doubleplays of them law-makin’ mavericks in congress is allers a heap thrillin’ to me.”
“Very well,” responded the Jolly Doctor; “let each light a fresh cigar, for it’s rather a long story, and when all are comfortable, I’ll give you the history of ‘How Jim Britt Passed His Bill.’”
Last Chance was a hamlet in southeastern Kansas. Last Chance, though fervid, was not large. Indeed, a cowboy in a spirit of insult born of a bicker with the town marshal had said he could throw the loop of his lariat about Last Chance and drag it from the map with his pony. However, this was hyperbole.
Jim Britt was not the least conspicuous among the men of Last Chance. Withal, Jim Britt was much diffused throughout the commerce of that village and claimed interests in a dozen local establishments, from a lumber yard to a hotel. Spare of frame, and of an anxious predatory nose, was Jim Britt; and his gray eyes ever roving for a next investment; and the more novel the enterprise, the more leniently did Jim Britt regard it. The new had for him a fascination, since he was in way and heart an Alexander and hungered covetously for further worlds to conquer. Thus it befell that Jim Britt came naturally to his desire to build a railway when the exigencies of his affairs opened gate to the suggestion.
Jim Britt became the proprietor of a lead mine—or was it zinc?—in southeastern Missouri, and no mighty distance from his own abode of Last Chance. The mine was somewhat thrust upon Jim Britt by Fate, since he accepted it for a bad debt. It was “lead mine or nothing,” and Jim Britt, whose instincts, like Nature, abhorred a vacuum, took the mine. It was a good mine, but a drawback lurked in the location; it lay over the Ozark Hills and far away from any nearest whistle of a railroad.
This isolation taught Jim Britt the thought of connecting his mine by rail with Last Chance; the latter was an easiest nearest point, and the route offered a most accommodating grade. A straight line, or as the crow is said to fly but doesn’t, would make the length of the proposed improvement fifty miles. When done, it would serve not only Jim Britt’s mine, but admirably as a feeder for the Fort Scot and Gulf; and Jim Britt foresaw riches in that. Altogether, the notion was none such desperate scheme.
There was a side serious, however, which must be considered. The line would cross the extreme northeast angle of the Indian Territory, or as it is styled in those far regions, the “Nation,” and for this invasion of redskin holdings the consent of the general government, through its Congress assembled, must be secured.
Jim Britt; far from being depressed, said he would go to Washington and get it; he rather reveled in the notion. Samantha, his wife, shook her head doubtfully.
“Jim Britt,” said Samantha, severely, “you ain’t been east since Mr. Lincoln was shot. You know no more of Washington than a wolf. I’d give that railroad up; and especially, I’d keep away from Congress. Don’t try to braid that mule’s tail”—Samantha was lapsing into the metaphor common of Last Chance—“don’t try to braid that mule’s tail. It’ll kick you plumb out o’ the stall.”
But Jim Britt was firm; the mule simile in no sort abated him.
0199
“But what could you do with Congress?” persisted Samantha; “you, a stranger and alone?”
Jim Britt argued that one determined individual could do much; energy wisely employed would overcome mere numbers. He cited the ferocious instance of a dim relative of his own, a vivacious person yclept Turner, who because of injuries fancied or real, hung for years about the tribal flanks of the Comanches and potted their leading citizens. This the vigorous Turner kept up until he had corralled sixty Comanche top-nots; and the end was not yet when the Comanches themselves appealed to their agent for protection. They said they couldn’t assemble for a green corn dance, or about a regalement of baked dog, without the Winchester of the unauthorized Turner barking from some convenient hill; the squaws would then have nothing left but to wail the death song of some eminent spirit thus sifted from their midst. When they rode to the hill in hunt of Turner, he would be miles away on his pony, and adding to his safety with every jump. The Comanches were much disgusted, and demanded the agent’s interference.
Upon this mournful showing, Turner was brought in and told to desist; and as a full complement of threats, which included among their features a trial at Fort Smith and a gibbet, went with the request, Turner was in the end prevailed on to let his Winchester sleep in its rack, and thereafter the Comanches danced and devoured dog unscared. The sullen Turner said the Comanches had slain his parent long ago; the agent expressed regrets, but stuck for it that even with such an impetus a normal vengeance should have run itself out with the conquest of those sixty scalps.
Jim Britt told this story of Turner to Samantha; and then he argued that as the Comanches were made to feel a one-man power by the industrious Turner, so would he, Jim Britt, for all he stood alone, compel Congress to his demands. He would take that right of way across the Indian Territory from between their very teeth. He was an American citizen and Congress was his servant; in this wise spake Jim Britt.
“That’s all right,” argued the pessimistic Samantha; “that’s all right about your drunken Turner; but he had a Winchester. Now you ain’t goin’ to tackle Congress with no gun, Jim Britt.”
Despite the gloomy prophecies of Samantha, whom Jim Britt looked on as a kind of Cassandra without having heard of Cassandra, our would-be railroad builder wound up the threads and loose ends of his Last Chance businesses, and having, as he described it, “fixed things so they would run themselves for a month,” struck out for Washington. Jim Britt carried twenty-five hundred dollars in his pocket, confidence in his heart, and Samantha’s forebode of darkling failure in his ears.
While no fop and never setting up to be the local Brummel, Jim Britt’s clothes theretofore had matched both his hour and environment, and held their decent own in the van of Last Chance fashion. But the farther Jim Britt penetrated to the eastward in his native land, the more his raiment seemed to fall behind the age; and at the last, when he was fairly within the gates of Washington, he began to feel exceeding wild and strange. Also, it affected him somewhat to discover himself almost alone as a tobacco chewer, and that a great art preserved in its fullness by Last Chance had fallen to decay along the Atlantic. These, however, were questions of minor moment, and save that his rococo garb drove the sensitive Jim Britt into cheap lodgings in Four-and-one-half Street, instead of one of the capital’s gilded hotels, they owned no effect.
This last is set forth in defence against an imputation of parsimony on the side of Jim Britt. He was one who spent his money like a king whenever and wherever his education or experience pointed the way. It was his clothes of a remote period to make him shy, else Jim Britt would have shrunk not from the Raleigh itself, but climbed and clambered and browsed among the timberline prices of its grill-room, as safe and satisfied as ever browsed mountain goat on the high levels of its upland home. Yea, forsooth! Jim Britt, like a sailor ashore, could spend his money with a free and happy hand.
Jim Britt, acting on a hint offered of his sensibilities, for a first step reclothed himself from a high-priced shop; following these improvements, save for the fact that he appalled the eye as a trifle gorgeous, he might not have disturbed the sacred taste of Connecticut Avenue itself. In short, in the matter of garb, Jim Britt, while audible, was down to date.
With the confidence born of his new clothes—for clothes in some respects may make the man—Jim Britt sate him down to study Congress. He deemed it a citadel to be stormed; not lacking in military genius he began to look it over for a weak point.
These adventures of Jim Britt now about a record, occurred, you should understand, almost a decade ago. In that day there should have been eighty-eight senators and three hundred and fifty-six representatives, albeit, by reason of death or failure to elect, a not-to-be-noticed handful of seats were vacant.
By an industrious perusal of the Congressional directory, wherein the skeleton of each House was laid out and told in all its divers committee small-bones, Jim Britt began to understand a few of the lions in his path. For his confusion he found that Congress was sub-divided into full sixty committees, beginning with such giant conventions as the Ways and Means, Appropriations, Military, Naval, Coinage, Weights and Measures, Banking and Currency, Indian, Public Lands, Postal, and Pensions, and dwindling down to ignoble riffraff—which owned each a chairman, a committee room, a full complement of clerks and messengers, and an existence, but never convened—like the Committee on Acoustics and Ventliation, and Alcoholic Liquor Traffic.
Jim Britt learned also of the Sergeants at Arms of Senate and House, and how these dignitaries controlled the money for those bodies and paid the members their salaries. Incidentally, and by way of gossip, he was told of that House Sergeant who had levanted with the riches entrusted to his hands, and left the broken membership, gnashing its teeth in poverty and impotent gloom, unable to draw pay.
Then, too, there was a Document Room where the bills and resolutions were kept when printed. Also, about each of the five doors of House and Senate, when those sacred gatherings were in session, there were situated a host of messengers, carried for twelve hundred dollars a year each on the Doorkeeper’s rolls. It was the duty and pleasure of these myrmidons to bring forth members into the corridors, to the end that they be refreshed with a word of counsel from constituents who had traveled thither for that purpose; and in the finish to lend said constituents money to return home.
Jim Britt, following these first connings of the directory, went personally to the capitol, and from the galleries, leaning his chin on the rail the while, gazed earnestly on greatness about the transaction of its fame. These studies and personally conducted tours, and those conversations to be their incident which came off between Jim Britt and chance-blown folk who fell across his pathway, enlarged Jim Britt’s store of information in sundry fashions. He discovered that full ten thousand bills and resolutions were introduced each Congress; that by virtue of a mere narrowness of time not more than five per cent, of this storm of business could be dealt with, the other ninety-five, whether for good or ill, being starved to death for lack of occasion. The days themselves were no longer than five working hours since Congress convened at noon.
The great radical difference between House and Senate loomed upon Jim Britt in a contrast of powers which abode with the presiding officers of those mills to grind new laws. The president of the Senate owned few or none. He might enforce Jefferson’s rules for debates and call a recalcitrant senator to order, a call to which the recalcitrant paid little heed beyond tart remarks on his part concerning his own high determinations to yield to no gavel tyranny, coupled with a forceful though conceited assurance flung to the Senate at large, that he, the recalcitrant, knew his rights (which he never did), and would uphold them (which he never failed to do.) The Senate president named no committees; owned no control over the order of business; indeed he was limited to a vote on ties, a warning that he would clear the galleries (which was never done) when the public therein roosting, applauded, and the right to prevent two senators from talking at one and the same time. These marked the utmost measure of his influence. Any senator could get the floor for any purpose, and talk on any subject from Prester John to Sheep in the Seventeenth Century, while his strength stood. Also, and much as dogs have kennels permitted them for their habitation, the presiding officer of the Senate—in other words, the Vice-President of the nation—was given a room, separate and secluded to himself, into which he might creep when chagrin for his own unimportance should overmaster him or otherwise his woes become greater than he might publicly bear.
The House Speaker was a vastly different cock, with a louder crow and longer spur. The Speaker was a king, indeed; and an absolute monarch or an autocrat or what you will that signifies one who may do as he chooses, exercise unbridled will, and generally sit beneath the broad shadows of the vine and the fig tree of his prerogatives with none to molest him or make him afraid. The Speaker was, so to phrase it, the entire House, the other three hundred and fifty-five members acting only when he consented or compelled them, and then usually by his suggestion and always under his thumb. No bill could be considered without the Speaker’s permission; and then for so long only as he should allow, and by what members he preferred. No man could speak to a measure wanting the gracious consent of this dignitary; and no word could be uttered—at least persisted in—To which he felt distaste. The Speaker, when lengths and breadths are measured, was greater than the Moscow Czar and showed him a handless infant by comparison.
As a half-glove of velvet for his iron hand, and to mask and soften his pure autocracy—which if seen naked might shock the spirit of Americanism—there existed a Rules Committee. This subbody, whereof the Speaker was chief, carried, besides himself, but two members; and these he personally selected, as indeed he did the entire membership of every committee on the House muster-rolls. This Rules Committee, with the Speaker in absolute sway, acted with reference to the House at large as do the Board of Judges for a racecourse. It declared each day what bills should be taken up, limited debate, and to pursue the Track simile to a last word, called on this race or cleared the course of that race, and fairly speaking dry-nursed the House throughout its travels, romps and lessons.
Jim Britt discovered that in all, counting Speaker, Rules Committee, and a dozen chairmen of the great committees, there existed no more than fifteen folk who might by any stretch of veracity be said to have a least of voice in the transaction of House business. In the gagged and bound cases of the other three hundred and forty-one, and for what public good or ill to flow from them, their constituents would have fared as well had they, instead of electing these representatives, confined themselves to writing the government a letter setting forth their wants.
In reference to his own bill, Jim Britt convinced himself of two imposing truths. Anybody would and could introduce it in either House or Senate or in both at once; then, when thus introduced and it had taken the routine course to the proper committee, the situation would ask the fervent agreement of a majority in each body, to say nothing of the Speaker’s consent—a consent as hard to gain as a girl’s—to bring it up for passage.
Nor was there any security of concert. The bill might be fashionable, not to say popular, with one body, while the other turned rigid back upon it. It might live in the House to die in the Senate, or succeed in the Senate and perish in the House. There were no safety and little hope to be won in any corner, and the lone certainty to peer forth upon Jim Britt was that the chances stood immeasurably against him wherever he turned his eyes. The camel for the needle’s eye and the rich man into heaven, were easy and feasible when laid side by side with the Congressional outlook for his bill.
While Jim Britt was now sensibly cast down and pressed upon by despair, within him the eagerness for triumph grew taller with each day. For one daunting matter, should he return empty of hand, Samantha would wear the fact fresh and new upon her tongue’s end to the last closing of his eyes. It would become a daily illustration—an hourly argument in her practiced mouth.
There was one good to come to Jim Britt by his investigations and that was a good instruction. Like many another, Jim Britt, from the deceitful distance of Last Chance, had ever regarded both House and Senate as gigantic conspiracies. They were eaten of plot and permeated of intrigue; it was all chicane and surprise and sharp practice. Congress was a name for traps and gins and pits and snares and deadfalls. The word meant tunnels and trap-doors and vaults and dungeons and sinister black whatnot. Jim Britt never paused to consider wherefore Congress should, for ends either clean or foul, conceal within itself these midnight commodities of mask and dark-lantern, and go about its destiny a perennial Guy Fawkes, ready to explode a situation with a touch and blow itself and all concerned to far-spread flinders. Had he done so he might have dismissed these murky beliefs.
It is, however, never too late to mend. It began now to dawn upon Jim Britt by the morning light of what he read and heard and witnessed, that both Houses in their plan and movement were as simple as a wire fence; no more recondite than is a pair of shears. They might be wrong, but they were not intricate; they might spoil a deal of cloth in their cutting, or grow dull of edge or loose of joint and so not cut at all, but they were not mysterious. Certainly, Congress was no more a conspiracy than is a flock of geese, and a brooding hen would be as guilty of a plot and as deep given to intrigue. Congress was a stone wall or a precipice or a bridgeless gulf or chloroform or what one would that was stupefying or difficult of passage to the border of the impossible, but there dwelt nothing occult or secret or unknowable in its bowels. These truths of simplicity Jim Britt began to learn and, while they did not cheer, at least they served to clear him up.
Following two weeks of investigation, Jim Britt secured the introduction of his bill. This came off by asking; the representative from the Last Chance district performing in the one body, while one of the Kansas senators acted in the more venerable convention.
Now when the bill was introduced, printed, and in the lap of the proper committee, Jim Britt went to work to secure the bill’s report. He might as well have stormed the skies to steal a star; he found himself as helpless as a fly in amber.
About this hour in his destinies, Jim Britt made a radical and, as it turned, a decisive move. He had now grown used to Washington and Washington to him, and while folk still stared and many grinned, Jim Britt did not receive that ovation as he moved about which marked and made unhappy his earlier days in the town. Believing it necessary to his bill’s weal, Jim Britt began to haunt John Chamberlin’s house of call as then was, and to scrape acquaintance with statesmen who passed hours of ease and wine in its parlors.
In the commencement of his Chamberlin experiences Jim Britt met much to affright him. A snowy-bearded senator from Nevada sat at a table. On seeing Jim Britt smile upon him in a friendly way—he was hoping to make the senator’s acquaintance—he of the snow-beard, apropos of nothing, suddenly thundered:
“I have this day read John Sherman’s defence of the Crime of ’Seventy-Three. John Sherman contends that no crime was committed because no criminals were caught.”
This outburst so dismayed Jim Britt that he sought a far corner and no more tempted the explosiveness of Snow-Beard.
Again, Jim Britt would engage a venerable senator from Alabama in talk. He was instantly taken by the helpless button, and for a quintette of hours told of the national need of a Panama Canal, and given a list of what railroads in their venality set the flinty face of their opposition to its coming about.
These things, the thunders of Snow-Beard and the exhaustive settings forth of the senator from the south, pierced Jim Britt; for he reflected that if the questions of silver and Panama could not be budged for their benefit by these gentlemen of beard and long experience and who dwelt well within the breastworks of legislation, then his bill for that small right of way, and none to aid it save himself in his poor obscurity, could hope for nothing except death and burial where it lay.
There was a gentleman of Congress well known and loved as the Statesman from Tupelo. He was frequent and popular about Chamberlin’s. The Statesman from Tupelo was a humorist of celebration and one of the redeeming features of the House of Representatives. His eye fell upon the queer, ungainly form of Jim Britt, with hungry face, eyes keen but guileless, and nose of falcon curve.
The Statesman from Tupelo beheld in Jim Britt with his Gothic simplicity a self-offered prey to the spear of every joker. The Statesman from Tupelo, with a specious suavity of accent and a blandness irresistible, drew forth Jim Britt in converse. The latter, flustered, flattered, went to extremes of confidence and laid frankly bare his railroad hopes and fears which were now all fears.
The Statesman from Tupelo listened with decorous albeit sympathetic gravity. When Jim Britt was done he spoke:
“As you say,” observed the Statesman from Tupelo, “your one chance is to get acquainted with a majority of both Houses and interest them personally in your bill.”
“But how might a party do that soonest?” asked Jim Britt. “I don’t want to camp yere for the balance of my days. Besides, thar’s Samantha.”
“Certainly, there’s Samantha,” assented the Statesman from Tupelo. Then following a pause:
“I suppose the readiest method would be to give a dinner. Could you undertake that?”
“Why, I reckon I could.”
The dinner project obtained kindly foothold in the breast of Jim Britt; he had read of such banquet deeds as a boy when the papers told the splendors of Sam Ward and the Lucullian day of the old Pacific Mail. Jim Britt had had no experience of Chamberlin prices, since his purchases at that hotel had gone no farther a-field than a now-and-then cigar. He had for most part subsisted at those cheap restaurants which—for that there be many threadbare folk, spent with their vigils about Congress, hoping for their denied rights—are singularly abundant in Washington. These modest places of regale would give no good notion of Chamberlin’s, but quite the contrary. Wherefore, Jim Britt, quick with railway ardor and to get back to the far-away Samantha, took the urgent initiative, and said he would order the dinner for what night the Statesman from Tupelo deemed best, if only that potent spirit would agree to gather in the guests.
“We will have the dinner, then,” said He of Tupelo, “on next Saturday. You can tell Chamberlin; and I’ll see to the guests.”
“How many?” said Chamberlin’s steward, when he received the orders of Jim Britt.
The coming railway magnate looked at the Statesman from Tupelo.
“Say fifty,” remarked the Statesman from Tupelo.
Jim Britt was delighted. He would have liked sixty guests better, or if one might, one hundred; but fifty was a fair start. There could come other dinners, for the future holds a deal of room. In time Jim Britt might dine a full moiety of Congress. The dinner was fixed; the menu left to the steward’s ingenuity and taste; and now when the situation was thus relaid, and Saturday distant but two days, Jim Britt himself called for an apartment at Chamberlin’s, sent for his one trunk, and established himself on the scene of coming dinner action to have instant advantage of whatever offered that might be twisted to affect his lead-mine road.
The long tables for Jim Britt’s dinner were spread in a dining room upstairs. There were fifty covers, and room for twenty more should twenty come. The apartment itself was a jungle of tropical plants, and the ground plan of the feast laid on a scale of bill-threatening magnificence.
This was but right. For when the steward would have consulted the exultant Jim Britt whose florid imaginings had quite carried him off his feet, that gentleman said simply:
“Make the play with the bridle off! Don’t pinch down for a chip.”
Thereupon the steward cast aside restraint and wandered forth upon that dinner with a heart care-free and unrestrained. He would make of it a moment of terrapin and canvas-back and burgundy which time should date from and folk remember for long to the Chamberlin praise.
Saturday arrived, and throughout the afternoon Jim Britt, by grace of the good steward, who had a pride of his work and loved applause, teetered in and out of the dining room and with dancing eye and mouth ajar gave rein to admiration. It would be a mighty dinner; it would land his bill in his successful hands, and make, besides, a story to amaze the folk of Last Chance to a standstill. These be not our words; rather they flowed as the advance jubilations of Jim Britt.
There was one thought to bear upon Jim Britt to bashful disadvantage. The prospect of entertaining fifty statesmen shook his confidence and took his breath. To repair these disasters he called privily from time to time for whiskey.
It was not over-long before he talked thickly his encomiums to the steward. On his last visit to survey that fairyland of a dining room, Jim Britt counted covers laid for several hundred guests; what was still more wondrous, he believed they would come and the prospect rejoiced him. There were as many lights, too, in the chandeliers as stars of a still winter’s night, while the apartment seemed as large as a ten-acre lot and waved a broad forest of foliage.
That he might be certainly present on the arrival of the first guest—for Jim Britt knew and felt his duties as a host—Jim Britt lay down upon a lounge which, to one side, was deeply, sweetly bowered beneath the overhanging palms. Then Jim Britt went earnestly to sleep and was no more to be aroused than a dead man.
The Statesman from Tupelo appeared; by twos and threes and tens, gathered the guests; Jim Britt slept on the sleep of innocence without a dream. A steering committee named to that purpose on the spot by the Statesman from Tupelo, sought to recover Jim Britt to a knowledge of his fortunate honors. Full sixty guests were there, and it was but right that he be granted the pleasure, not to say the glory, of their acquaintance.
It was of no avail; Jim Britt would not be withdrawn from slumbers deep as death. The steering committee suspended its labors of restoration. As said the chairman in making his report, which, with a wine glass in his hand, he subsequently did between soup and fish:
“Our most cunning efforts were fruitless. We even threw water on him, but it was like throwing water on a drowned rat.”
Thus did his slumbers defend themselves, and Jim Britt snore unchecked.
But the dinner was not to flag. The Statesman from Tupelo took the head of the table and the chairman of the steering committee the foot, the repast proceeded while wine and humor flowed.
It was a dream of a dinner, a most desirable dinner, a dinner that should stand for years an honor to Jim Britt of Last Chance. It raged from eight till three. Corks and jokes were popping while laughter walked abroad; speeches were made and songs were sung. Through it all, the serene founder of the feast slept on, and albeit eloquence took up his name and twined about it flowery compliment, he knew it not. Tranquilly on his lounge he abode in dear oblivion.
Things mundane end and so did Jim Britt’s dinner. There struck an hour when the last song was sung, the last jest was made, and the last guest departed away. The Statesman from Tupelo superintended the transportation of Jim Britt to his room, and having made him safe, He of Tupelo went also out into the morning, and that famous banquet was of the perfumed past.
It dawned Wednesday before the Statesman from Tupelo called again at Chamberlin’s to ask for the excellent Jim Britt. The Statesman from Tupelo explained wherefore he was thus laggard.
“I thought,” he said to Chamberlin, “that our friend would need Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to straighten up his head.”