XVIII
XVIII
The Cap'n had never visited that retired part of the town called "Purgatory." He found Mr. Gammon's homestead to be a gray and unkempt farm-house from which the weather had scrubbed the paint. The front yard was bare of every vestige of grass and contained a clutter that seemed to embrace everything namable, including a gravestone.
"What be ye gettin' ready for—an auction?" growled the Cap'n, groutily, his seaman's sense of tidiness offended. "Who do you expect will bid in a second-hand gravestone?"
"It ain't second-hand," replied the owner, reprovingly, as he eased himself out of the wagon. "Mis' Gammon, my first wife, is buried there. 'Twas by her request. She made her own layin'-out clothes, picked her bearers and music, and selected the casket. She was a capable woman."
"It's most a wonder to me that he ever took the crape off'm the door-knob," remarked Hiram, in a husky aside to the Cap'n, not intending to be overheard and somewhat crestfallen to find that he had been.
"I didn't for some time, till it got faded," explained Mr. Gammon, without display of resentment. "I had the casket-plate mounted on black velvet and framed. It's in the settin'-room. I'll show it to you before you leave."
Hiram pulled his mouth to one side and hissed under shelter of his big mustache: "Well, just what a witch would want ofthatfeller, unless 'twas to make cracked ice of him, blame me if I know!"
Mr. Gammon began apprehensive survey of his domains.
"Let's go home," muttered the Cap'n, his one idea of retreat still with him. "What do you and I know about witches, anyway, even if there are such things? We've done our duty! We've been here. If he gets us to investigatin' it will be just like him to want us to dig that woman up."
His appeal was suddenly interrupted. Mr. Gammon, peering about his premises for fresh evidences of witchcraft accomplished during his absence, bellowed frantic request to "Come, see!" He was behind the barn, and they hastened thither.
"My Gawd, gents, they've witched the ca'f!" Their eyes followed the direction of his quivering finger.
A calf was placidly surveying them from among the branches of a "Sopsy-vine" apple-tree, munching an apple that he had been able to reach. Whatever agency had boosted him there had left him wedged into the crotch of the limbs so that he could not move, though he appeared to be comfortable.
"It jest takes all the buckram out of me—them sights do," wailed Mr. Gammon. "I can't climb up there and do it. One of you will have to." He pulled out a big jackknife, opened it with his yellow teeth, and extended it.
"Have to do what?" demanded Hiram.
"Cut off his ears and tail. That's the only way to get him out from under the charm."
But Hiram, squinting up to assure himself that the calf was comfortable, pushed Mr. Gammon back and made him sit down on a pile of bean-poles.
"Better put your hat between your knees," he suggested, noting the way Mr. Gammon's thin knees were jigging. "You might knock a sliver off the bones, rappin' them together that way."
He lighted one of his long cigars, his shrewd eyes searching Mr. Gammon all the time.
"Now," said he, tipping down a battered wheelbarrow and sitting on it, "there's nothin' like gettin' down to cases. We're here official. The first selectman of this town is here. Go ahead, Cap'n Sproul, and put your questions."
"Ask 'em yourself," snorted the Cap'n, with just a flicker of resentful malice; "you're the witch expert. I ain't."
"Well," retorted Hiram, with an alacrity that showed considerable zest for the business in hand, "I never shirked duty. First, what's her name again—the woman that's doin' it all?"
"I want you to come and see—" began Mr. Gammon, apparently having his own ideas as to a witch-hunt, but Hiram shook the big cigar at him fiercely.
"We ain't got time nor inclination for inspectin' coffin-plates, wax-flowers, bewitched iron kittles, balky horses, and old ganders. Who is this woman and where does she live, and what's the matter with her?"
"She's Arizima Orff, and that's her house over the rise of that land where you can see the chimblys." Mr. Gammon was perfunctory in that reply, but immediately his little blue eyes began to sparkle and he launched out into his troubles. "There's them that don't believe in witches. I know that! And they slur me and slander me. I know it. I don't get no sympathy. I—"
"Shut up!" commanded the chief of the inquisition.
"They say I'm crazy. But I know better. Here I am with rheumaticks! Don't you s'pose I know where I got 'em? It was by standin' out all het up where she had hitched me after she'd rid' me to one of the witch conventions. She—"
"Say, you look here!" roared the old showman; "you stay on earth. Don't you try to fly and take us with you. There's the principal trouble in gettin' at facts," he explained, whirling on the Cap'n. "Investigators don't get down to cases. Talk with a stutterer, and if you don't look sharp you'll get to stutterin' yourself. Now, if we don't look out, Gammon here will have us believin' in witches before we've investigated."
"You been sayin' right along that you did believe in 'em," grunted the first selectman.
"Northin' of the sort!" declared Hiram. "I was only showin' you that when you rose up and hollered that there never was any witches you didn't know what you were talkin' about."
While Cap'n Sproul was still blinking at him, trying to comprehend the exact status of Hiram's belief, that forceful inquisitor, who had been holding his victim in check with upraised and admonitory digit, resumed:
"Old maid or widder?"
"Widder."
"Did deceased leave her that farm, title clear, and well-fixed financially?"
"Yes," acknowledged Mr. Gammon.
"Now," Hiram leaned forward and wagged that authoritative finger directly under the other's case-knife nose, "what was it she done to you to make you get up this witch-story business about her? Here! Hold on!" he shouted, detecting further inclination on the part of Mr. Gammon to rail about his bedevilment. "You talk good Yankee common sense! Down to cases! What started this? You can't fool me, not for a minute! I've been round the world too much. I know every fake from a Patagonian cockatoo up to and including the ghost of Bill Beeswax. She done something to you. Now, what was it?"
Mr. Gammon was cowed. He fingered his dewlap and closed and unclosed his lips.
"Out with it!" insisted Hiram. "If you don't, me and the selectman will have you sued for slander."
"Up to a week ago," confessed Mr. Gammon, gazing away from the blazing eyes of Hiram into the placid orbs of the calf in the tree, "we was goin' to git married. Farms adjoined. She knowed me and I knowed her. I've been solemn since Mis' Gammon died, but I've been gittin' over it. We was goin' to jine farms and I was goin' to live over to her place, because it wouldn't be so pleasant here with Mis' Gammon—"
He hesitated, and ducked despondent head in the direction of the front yard.
"Well, seconds don't usually want to set in the front parlor window and read firsts' epitaphs for amusement," remarked Hiram, grimly. "What then?"
"Well, then all at once she wouldn't let me into the house, and she shooed me off'm her front steps like she would a yaller cat, and when I tried to find out about it that young Haskell feller that she's hired to do her chores come over here and told me that he wasn't goin' to stay there much longer, 'cause she had turned witch, and had put a cluck onto the cat when the old hen—"
"'Tend to cases! 'Tend to cases!" broke in Hiram, impatiently.
"And about that time the things began to act out round my place, and the Haskell boy told me that she was braggin' how she had me bewitched."
"And you believed that kind of infernal tomrot?" inquired the showman, wrathfully. Somewhat to the Cap'n's astonishment, Hiram seemed to be taking only a sane and normal view of the thing.
"I did, after I went over and taxed her with it, and she stood off and pointed her shotgun at me and said that yes, she was a witch, and if I didn't get away and keep away she would turn me into a caterpillar and kill me with a fly-spanker. There! When a woman says that about herself, what be ye goin' to do—tell her she's a liar, or be a gent and believe her?" Mr. Gammon was bridling a little.
Hiram looked at "Cheerful Charles" and jerked his head around and stared at the Cap'n as though hoping for some suggestion. But the selectman merely shook his head with a pregnant expression of "I told you so!"
Hiram got up and stamped around the tree to cover what was evidently momentary embarrassment. All at once he kicked at something in the grass, bent over and peered at it, looked up at the calf, then picked up the object on the ground and stuffed it deep into his trousers pocket.
"You said that chore feller's name was Haskell, hey?" he demanded, returning and standing over Mr. Gammon.
"Simmy Haskell," said the other.
"Well, now, what have you done tohim?"
"Nothin'—never—no, sir—never nothin'!" insisted Mr. Gammon, with such utter conviction that Hiram forebore to question further. He whirled on his heel and started away toward the chimney that poked above the rise of land.
"Come along!" he called, gruffly, over his shoulder, and the two followed.
It was a trim little place that was revealed to them. A woman in a sunbonnet was on her knees near some plants in the cozy front yard, and a youth was wheeling apples up out of the orchard.
The youth set down his barrow and surveyed them with some curiosity as they came up to him, Hiram well ahead, looming with all his six feet two, his plug-hat flashing in the sun. Hiram did not pause to palter with the youth. He grabbed him by the back of the neck with one huge hand, and with the other tapped against the Haskell boy's nose the object he had picked up from the grass.
"Next time you put a man's calf up a tree look out that you don't drop your knife in the wrassle."
"'Tain't my knife!" gasped the accused.
"Lie to me, will ye? Lie to me—a man that's associated with liars all my life? Not your knife, when your name is scratched on the handle? And don't you know that two officers stood right over behind the stone wall and saw you do it? Because you wasn't caught in your cat-yowlin' round and your ox-chain foolishness and your other didoes, do you think you can fool a detective like me? You come along to State Prison! Iwasintendin' to let you off if you owned up and told all you know—but now that you've lied to me, come along to State Prison!"
There was such vengefulness and authority in the big man's visage that the Haskell boy wilted in unconditional surrender.
"He got me into the scrape. I'll tell on him. I don't want to go to State Prison," he wailed, and then confession flowed from him with the steady gurgle of water from a jug. "He come to me, and he says, says he, 'He won't ever be no kind of a boss for you. If he marries her you'll get fed on bannock and salt pork. He's sourer'n bonny-clabber and meaner'n pig-swill. Like enough he won't keep help, anyway, and will let everything go to rack and ruin, the same as he has on his own place. I'm the one to stick to,' says he. 'I've got a way planned, and all I need is your help and we'll stand together,' he says, 'and here's ten dollars in advance.' And I took it and done what he planned. I needed the money, and I done it. He says to me that we'll do things to him to make him act crazy, and we'll tell her that he's dangerous, and then you can tell him, says he, that she's turned witch, and is doin' them things to him; ''cause a man that has got his first wife buried in front of his doorstep is fool enough to believe most anything,' says he."
"Well," remarked Hiram, after a long breath, "this 'sezzer,' whoever he may be, when he got to sezzin', seems to have made up his mind that there was one grand, sweet song of love in this locality that was goin' to be sung by a steam-calliope, and wind up with boiler bustin'."
"Why in devilnation don't you ask him who 'twas that engineered it?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, his eyes blazing with curiosity.
"An official investigation," declared Hiram, with a relish he could not conceal, as he returned the Cap'n's earlier taunt upon that gentleman himself, "is not an old maids' quiltin'-bee, where they throw out the main point as soon's they get their hoods off, and then spend the rest of the afternoon talkin' it over. Things has to take their right and proper course in an official investigation.I'mthe official investigator."
He turned on Mr. Gammon.
"What do you think now, old hearse-hoss? Have you heard enough to let you in on this? Or do you want to be proved out as the original old Mister Easymark, in a full, illustrated edition, bound in calf? So fur's I'm concerned, I've heard enough on that line to make me sick."
This amazing demolishment of his superstition left Mr. Gammon gasping. Only one pillar of that mental structure was standing. He grabbed at it.
"I didn't believe she was the witch till she told me so herself," he stammered. "She never lied to me. I believed what she told me with her own mouth."
The Haskell boy, still in the clutch of Hiram, evidently believed that the kind of confession that was good for the soul was full confession.
"I told her that the time you was dangerousest was when any one disputed with you about not havin' the witches. I told her that if you ever said anything she'd better join in and agree with you, and humor you, 'cause that's the only way to git along with crazy folks."
For the first time in many years color showed in the drab cheeks of the melancholy Mr. Gammon. Two vivid red spots showed that, after all, it was blood, not water, that flowed in his veins.
"Dod lather you to a fritter, you little freckle-faced, snub-nosed son of seco!" he yelped, shrilly. "I've been a mild and peaceable man all my life, but I'm a good mind to—I'm a good mind to—" He searched his meek soul for enormities of retribution, and declared: "I'm a good mind to skin you, hide, pelt, and hair. I'll cuff your ears up to a pick, any way!" But Hiram pushed him away when he advanced.
"There! That's the way to talk up, Gammon," he said, encouragingly. "You are showin' improvement. Keep on that way and you'll get to be quite a man. I was afraid you wasn't anything but a rusty marker for a graveyard lot. If you don't keep your back upsomein this world, you're apt to get your front knocked in. But I can't let you lick the boy! This investigation is strictly official and according to the law, and he's turned State's evidence. It's the other critter that you want to be gettin' your muscle up for—the feller that was tryin' to get the widder and the property away from you. All the other evidence now bein' in, you may tell the court, my son, who was that 'sezzer.' You sha'n't be hurt!"
"It was Mister Batson Reeves, the second selectman," blurted the youth.
There are moments in life when language fails, when words are vain; when even a whisper would take the edge from a situation. Such a moment seemed that one when Hiram Look and Cap'n Sproul gazed at each other after the Haskell boy had uttered that name.
After a time Hiram turned, seized the boy by the scruff of his coat, and dragged him up to the front-yard fence, where the widow was gazing at them with increasing curiosity.
"Haskell boy," commanded Hiram, "tell her—tell her straight, and do it quick."
And when the confession, which went more glibly the second time, was concluded, the investigator gave the culprit a toss in the direction of the Gammon farm, and shouted after him: "Go get that calf down out of that apple-tree, and set down with him and trace out your family relationship. You'll probably find you're first cousins."
Mrs. Orff had sunk down weakly on a bed of asters, and was staring from face to face.
"Marm," said Hiram, taking off his plug hat and advancing close to the fence, "Cap'n Sproul and myself don't make it our business to pry into private affairs, or to go around this town saving decent wimmen from Batson Reeves. But we seem to have more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of that stamp?"
"I didn't really like him as well—as well as—" quavered the widow, her eyes on the appealing orbs of Mr. Gammon; "but I was told I was in danger, and he wanted to be my protector."
"Protector!" sneered Hiram. "Since he's been a widderer he's been tryin' to court and marry every woman in the town of Smyrna that's got a farm and property. We know it. We can prove it. All he wants is money! You've just escaped by luck, chance, and the skin of your teeth from a cuss that northin' is too low for him to lay his hand to. What do you think of a man that, in order to make trouble and disgrace for his neighbors, will dress up in his dead wife's clothes and snoop around back doors and write anonymous letters to confidin' wimmen?"
"My Lawd!" gasped the widow.
"We caught him at it! So, as I say, you've escaped from a hyena. Now, Mr. Gammon only needs a wife like you to get him out of the dumps."
Mr. Gammon wiped tears from his cheeks and gazed down on her.
"Charles," she said, gently, "won't you come into the house for a few minits? I want to talk to you!"
But as Mr. Gammon was about to obey joyously, Hiram seized his arm.
"Just a moment," he objected. "We'll send him right in to you, marm, but we've got just a little matter of business to talk over with him."
And when they were behind the barn he took Mr. Gammon by his coat-collar with the air of a friend.
"Gammon," said he, "what are you goin' to do to him? Me and the Cap'n are interested. He'll be comin' here this evenin'. He'll be comin' to court. Now, what are you goin' to do?"
There was an expression on Mr. Gammon's face that no one had ever seen there before. His eyes were narrowed. His pointed tongue licked his lips. His thin hair bristled.
"What are you goin' to do to him?"
"Lick him!" replied Mr. Gammon. It was laconic, but it sounded like a rat-tail file on steel.
"You can do it!" said Hiram, cheerfully. "The Cap'n and I both have done it, and it's no trouble at all. I was in hopes you'd say that!"
"Lick him till his tongue hangs out!" said Mr. Gammon, with bitterer venom.
"That will be a good place to lay for him; right down there by the alders," suggested the Cap'n, pointing his finger.
"Yes, sir, lick him till his own brother won't know him." And Mr. Gammon clicked together his bony fists, as hard as flints.
"And that's another point!" said Hiram, hastily. "You've seen to-day that I'm a pretty shrewd chap to guess. I've been round the world enough to put two and two together. Makin' man my study is how I've got my property. Now, Gammon, you've got that writin' by Squire Alcander Reeves. When you said 'brother' it reminded me of what I've been ponderin'. Bat Reeves has been making the Widder Orff matter a still hunt. His brother wasn't on. When you went to the squire to complain, squire saw a chance to get the Cap'n into a law scrape—slander, trespass, malicious mischief—something! Them lawyers are ready for anything!"
"Reg'lar sharks!" snapped the selectman.
"Now," continued Hiram, "after you've got Bat Reeves licked to an extent that will satisfy inquirin' friends and all parties interested, you hand that writin' to him! It will show him that his blasted fool of a lawyer brother, by tryin' to feather his own nest, has lost him the widder and her property, got him his lickin', and put him into a hole gen'rally. Tell him that if it hadn't been for that paper drivin' us out here northin' would have been known."
Hiram put up his nose and drew in a long breath of prophetic satisfaction.
"And if I'm any judge of what 'll be the state of Bat Reeves's feelin's in general when he gets back to the village, the Reeves family will finish up by lickin' each other—and when they make a lawsuit out of that it will be worth while wastin' a few hours in court to listen to. How do you figger it, Cap'n?"
"It's a stem-windin', self-actin' proposition that's wound up, and is now tickin' smooth and reg'lar," said the Cap'n, with deep conviction. "They'll both get it!"
And they did.
Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Hiram Look shook hands on the news before nine o'clock the next morning.
XIX
XIX
Mr. Loammi Crowther plodded up the road. Mr. Eleazar Bodge stumped down the road.
They arrived at the gate of Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of Smyrna, simultaneously.
Bathed in the benignancy of bland Indian summer, Cap'n Sproul and his friend Hiram Look surveyed these arrivals from the porch of the Sproul house.
At the gate, with some apprehensiveness, Mr. Bodge gave Mr. Crowther precedence. As usual when returning from the deep woods, Mr. Crowther was bringing a trophy. This time it was a three-legged lynx, which sullenly squatted on its haunches and allowed itself to be dragged through the dust by a rope tied into its collar.
"You needn't be the least mite afeard of that bobcat," protested Mr. Crowther, cheerily; "he's a perfick pet, and wouldn't hurt the infant in its cradle."
The cat rolled back its lips and snarled. Mr. Bodge retreated as nimbly as a man with a peg-leg could be expected to move.
"I got him out of a trap and cured his leg, and he's turrible grateful," continued Mr. Crowther.
But Mr. Bodge trembled even to his mat of red beard as he backed away.
"Him and me has got so's we're good friends, and I call him Robert—Bob for short," explained the captor, wistfully.
"You call him off—that's what you call him," shouted Mr. Bodge. "I hain't had one leg chawed off by a mowin'-machine to let a cust hyeny chaw off the other. Git out of that gateway. I've got business here with these gents."
"So've I," returned Mr. Crowther, meekly; and he went in, dragging his friend.
"I done your arrunt," he announced to the Cap'n. "I cruised them timberlands from Dan to Beersheby, and I'm ready to state facts and figgers."
"Go ahead and state," commanded the Cap'n.
"I reckon it better be in private," advised the other, his pale-blue eyes resting dubiously on Hiram.
"I ain't got no secrets from him," said the Cap'n, smartly. "Break cargo!"
"You'll wish you heard it in private," persisted Mr. Crowther, with deep meaning. "It ain't northin' you'll be proud of."
"I'll run along, I guess!" broke in the old showman. "It may be something—"
"It ain't," snapped the Cap'n. "It's only about them timberlands that my wife owned with her brother, Colonel Gideon Ward. Estate wasn't divided when the old man Ward died, and since we've been married I've had power of attorney from my wife to represent her." His jaw-muscles ridged under his gray beard, and his eyes narrowed in angry reminiscence.
"We've had two annual settlements, me and her brother. First time 'twas a free fight—next time 'twas a riot—third time, well, if there had been a third time I'd have killed him. So I saved myself from State Prison by dividin' accordin' to the map, and then I sent Crowther up to look the property over. There ain't no secret. You sit down, Hiram."
"Considerin' the man, I should think you'd have done your lookin' over before you divided," suggested the showman. He scented doleful possibilities in Mr. Crowther's mien.
"If I'd done business with him fifteen minutes longer by the clock I'd have been in prison now for murder—and it would have been a bloody murder at that," blurted the Cap'n. "It had to be over and done with short and sharp. He took half. I took half. Passed papers. He got away just before I lost control of myself. Narrowest escape I ever had. All I know about the part I've got is that it's well wooded and well watered."
"It is," agreed Mr. Crowther, despondently. "It's the part where the big reservoir dam flows back for most twenty miles. You can sail all over it in a bo't, and cut toothpicks from the tops of the second-growth birch. He collected all the flowage damages. He's lumbered the rest of your half till there ain't northin' there but hoop poles and battens. All the standin' timber wuth anything is on his half. I wouldn't swap a brimstun' dump in Tophet for your half."
"How in the devil did you ever let yourself get trimmed that way?" demanded Hiram. "It's all right for ten-year-old boys to swap jack-knives, sight unseen, but how a man grown would do a thing like you done I don't understand."
"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, gloomily. "I reckon about all I was thinkin' of was lettin' him get away before I had blood on my hands. I'm afraid of my own self sometimes. And it's bad in the family when you kill a brother-in-law. I took half. He took half. Bein' a sailorman, I reckoned that land was land, acre for acre."
"The only man I ever heard of as bein' done wuss," continued Mr. Crowther, "was a city feller that bought a quarter section of township 'Leven for a game-preserve, and found when he got up there that it was made up of Misery Bog and the south slope of Squaw Mountain, a ledge, and juniper bushes. The only game that could stay there was swamp-swogons, witherlicks, and doodywhackits."
"What's them?" inquired the Cap'n, as though he hoped that he might at least have these tenants on his worthless acres.
"Woods names for things that there ain't none of," vouchsafed Mr. Crowther. "You owe me for twenty-two days' work, nine shillin's a day, amountin' to—"
"Here! Take that and shut up!" barked the Cap'n, shoving bills at him. Then he wagged a stubby finger under Mr. Crowther's nose. "Now you mark well what I say to you! This thing stays right here among us. If I hear of one yip comin' from you about the way I've been done, I'll come round to your place and chop you into mince-meat and feed you to that animile there!"
"Oh, I'm ashamed enough for you so that I won't ever open my mouth," cried Mr. Crowther. He went out through the gate, dragging his sulky captive.
"And you needn't worry about me, neither," affirmed Mr. Bodge, who had been standing unnoted in the shadow of the woodbine.
"Of course," he continued, "I ain't got so thick with either of you gents as some others has in this place, never likin' to push myself in where I ain't wanted. But I know you are both gents and willin' to use them right that uses you right."
It was not exactly a veiled threat, but it was a hint that checked certain remarks that the Cap'n was about to address to the eavesdropper.
Mr. Bodge took advantage of the truce, and seated himself on the edge of the porch, his peg-leg sticking straight out in forlorn nakedness.
"Investments is resky things in these days, Cap'n Sproul. Gold-mines—why, you can't see through 'em, nor the ones that run 'em. And mark what has been done to you when you invested in the forest primeval! I knowed I was comin' here at just the right time. I've got a wonderful power for knowin' them things. So I came. I'm here. You need a good investment to square yourself for a poor one. Here it is!" He pulled off his dented derby and patted his bald head.
"Skatin'-rink?" inquired the Cap'n, sarcastically.
"Brains!" boomed Mr. Bodge, solemnly. "But in these days brains have to be backed with capital. I've tried to fight it out, gents, on my own hook. I said to myself right along, 'Brains has got to win in the end, Bodge. Keep on!' But have they? No! Five hundred partunts, gents, locked up in the brains of Eleazar Bodge! Strugglin' to get out! And capital pooled against me! Ignoramuses foolin' the world with makeshifts because they've got capital behind 'em to boost them and keep others down—and Bodge with five hundred partunts right here waitin'." Again he patted the shiny sphere shoved above the riot of hair and whiskers.
The Cap'n scrutinized the surface with sullen interest.
"They'd better stay inside, whatever they are you're talkin' about," he growled. "They couldn't pick up no kind of a livin' on the outside."
"Gents, do you know what's the most solemn sound in all nature?" Mr. Bodge went on. "I heard it as I came away from my house. It was my woman with the flour-barrel ended up and poundin' on the bottom with the rollin'-pin to get out enough for the last batch of biscuit. The long roll beside the graves of departed heroes ain't so sad as that sound. I see my oldest boy in the dooryard with the toes of his boots yawed open like sculpins' mouths. My daughter has outgrown her dress till she has to wear two sets of wristers to keep her arms warm—and she looks like dressed poultry. And as for me, I don't dare to set down enough to get real rested, because my pants are so thin I'm afraid I can't coax 'em along through next winter. I've come to the place, gents, where I've give up. I can't fight the trusts any longer without some backin'. I've got to have somebody take holt of me and get what's in me out. I reelize it now. It's in me. Once out it will make me and all them round me rich like a—a—"
When Mr. Bodge halted for a simile Hiram grunted under his breath: "Like a compost heap."
"I was born the way I am—with something about me that the common run of men don't have. How is it my brains gallop when other brains creep? It's that mysterious force in me. Seein' is believin'. Proof is better than talkin'. Cap'n Sproul, you just take hold of one of my whiskers and yank it out. Take any one, so long's it's a good lengthy one."
His tone was that of a sleight-of-hand man offering a pack of cards for a draw.
The Cap'n obeyed after Mr. Bodge had repeated his request several times, shoving his mat of beard out invitingly.
Mr. Bodge took the whisker from the Cap'n's hand, pinched its butt firmly between thumb and forefinger and elevated it in front of his face. It stuck straight up. Then it began to bend until its tip almost touched his lips. A moment thus and it bent in the other direction.
"There!" cried Mr. Bodge, triumphantly. "Thomas A. Edison himself couldn't do that with one of his whiskers."
"You're right," returned Hiram, gravely. "He'd have to borrow one."
"A man that didn't understand electricity and the forces of nature, and that real brains of a genius are a regular dynamo, might think that I done that with my breath. But there is a strange power about me. All it needs is capital to develop it. You've got the capital, you gents. This ain't any far-away investment. It's right here at home. I'm all business when it comes to business." He stuck up a grimy finger. "You've got to concede the mysterious power because you've seen it for yourselves. Now you come over to my house with me and I'll show you a few inventions that I've been able to put into shape in spite of the damnable combination of the trusts."
He slid off the porch and started away, beckoning them after him with the battered derby.
"I've heard 'em buzz in my time, too," sneered Hiram, pushing back his plug hat, "but that hummin' is about the busiest yet. He could hold a lighted taller candle in his hand and jump off'm a roof and think he was a comet."
But the Cap'n did not seem to be disposed to echo this scorn.
"This here I've got may be only a notion, and it prob'ly is," he said, knotting his gray brows, "and it don't seem sensible. First sight of him you wouldn't think he could be used. But when I laid eyes on old Dot-and-carry-one there, and when he grabbed into this thing the way he did just as I was thinkin' hard of what Colonel Gid Ward has done to me, it came over me that I was goin' to find a use for him."
"How?" persisted the utilitarian Hiram.
"Don't have the least idea," confessed the Cap'n. "It's like pickin' up a stockin' full of wet mud and walkin' along hopin' that you'll meet the man you want to swat with it. I'm goin' to pick him up."
He stumped off the piazza and followed Mr. Bodge. And Hiram, stopping to relight his cigar, went along, too, reflecting that when a man has plenty of time on his hands he can afford to spend a little of it on the gratification of curiosity.
The first exhibits in the domain of Bodge were not cheering or suggestive of value. For instance, from among the litter in a tumble-down shop Mr. Bodge produced something in the shape of a five-pointed star that he called his "Anti-stagger Shoe."
"I saw old Ike Bradley go past here with a hard-cider jag that looped over till its aidges dragged on the ground," he explained. "I tied cross-pieces onto his feet and he went along all level. Now see how a quick mind like mine acts? Here's the anti-stagger shoe. To be kept in all city clubs and et cetry. Let like umbrellas. Five places in each shoe for a man to shove his foot. Can't miss it. Then he starts off braced front, sides, and behind."
Hiram sniffed and the Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the "Anti-stagger Shoe."
The "Patent Cat Identifier and Introducer," exhibited in actual operation in the Bodge home, attracted more favorable attention from inspecting capital. Mr. Bodge explained that this device allowed a hard-working man to sleep after he once got into bed, and saved his wife from running around nights in her bare feet and getting cold and incurring disease and doctors' bills. It was an admitted fact in natural history, he stated, that the uneasy feline is either yowling to be let out or meowing on the window-sill to be let in. With quiet pride the inventor pointed to a panel in the door, hinged at the top. This permitted egress, but not ingress.
"An ordinary, cheap inventor would have had the panel swing both ways," said Mr. Bodge, "and he would have a kitchen full of strange cats, with a skunk or two throwed in for luck. You see that I've hinged a pane of winder-glass and hitched it to a bevelled stick that tips inward. Cat gets up on the sill outside and meows. Dog runs to the winder and stands up to see, and puts his paws on the stick because it's his nature for to do so. Pane tips in. If it's our cat, dog don't stop her comin' in. If it's a strange cat—br-r-r, wow-wow! Off she goes!"
Mr. Bodge noted with satisfaction the gleam of interest in capital's eyes.
"You can reckon that at least a million families in this country own cats—and the nature of cats and dogs can be depended on to be the same," said Mr. Bodge. "It's a self-actin' proposition, this identifier and introducer; that means fortunes for all concerned just as soon as capital gets behind it. And I've got five hundred bigger partunts wrasslin' around in my head."
But Cap'n Sproul continued to be absorbed in thought, as though the solution of a problem still eluded him.
"But if capital takes holt of me," proceeded Mr. Bodge, "I want capital to have the full layout. There ain't goin' to be no reserves, the same as there is with most of these cheatin' corporations these days. You come with me."
They followed him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either hand he stumped about on the sward until the crotch suddenly turned downward.
"There's runnin' water there," announced the wizard, stabbing the soil with his peg-leg. "I can locate a well anywhere, any place. When I use willer for a wand it will twist in my hands till the bark peels off. You see, I'm full of it—whatever it is. I showed you that much with the whisker. I started in easy with you. It makes me dizzy sometimes to foller myself. I have to be careful and let out a link at a time, or I'd take folks right off'm their feet. Now you come with me and keep cool—or as cool as you can, because I'm goin' to tell you something that will give you sort of a mind-colic if you ain't careful how you take it in."
He pegged ahead of them, led the way around behind a barn that was skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with excitement vibrating his streaming whiskers.
"This, now," he declared, "is just as though I took you into a national bank, throwed open the safe door, and said: 'Gents, help yourselves!'"
He drew a curious object out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper. It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had clutched the "legs" of the apple-tree wand.
"One of you lay some gold and silver down on the ground," he requested. "I'd do it, but I ain't got a cent in my pocket."
Hiram obeyed, his expression plainly showing his curiosity.
When Mr. Bodge advanced and stood astride over the money, the cow's horn turned downward and the whalebone strips twisted.
"It's a divinin'-rod to find buried treasure," said Mr. Bodge; "and it's the only one in the world like it, because I made it myself, and I wouldn't tell an angel the secret of the stuff I've plugged in there. You see for yourself what it will do when it comes near gold or silver."
Hiram turned a cold stare on his wistful eagerness.
"I don't know what you've got in there, nor why it acts that way," said the showman, "but from what I know about money, the most of it's well taken care of by the men that own it; and just what good it's goin' to do to play pointer-dog with that thing there, and go round and flush loose change and savin's-banks, is more than I can figger."
Mr. Bodge merely smiled a mysterious and superior smile.
"Cap'n Sproul," said he, "in your seafarin' days didn't you used to hear the sailormen sing this?" and he piped in weak falsetto:
"Oh, I've been a ghost on Cod Lead Nubble,Sence I died—sence I died.I buried of it deep with a lot of trouble,And the chist it was in was locked up double,And I'm a-watchin' of it still on Cod Lead Nubble,Sence I died—sence I died."
"It's the old Cap Kidd song," admitted the Cap'n, a gleam of new interest in his eyes.
"As a seafarin' man you know that there was a Cap'n Kidd, don't you?"
Cap'n Sproul wagged nod of assent.
"He sailed and he sailed, and he robbed, and he buried his treasure, ain't that so?"
"I believe that's the idea," said the Cap'n, conservatively.
"And it's still buried, because it ain't been dug up, or else we'd have heard of it. Years ago I read all that hist'ry ever had to say about it. I said then to myself, 'Bodge,' says I, 'if the treasure of old Cap Kidd is ever found, it will be you with your wonderful powers that will find it!' I always said that to myself. I know it now. Here's the tool." He shook the cow's horn under the Cap'n's nose.
"Why ain't you been down and dug it up?" asked Hiram, with cold practicality.
"Diggin' old Cap Kidd's treasure ain't like digging a mess of potaters for dinner, Mr. Look. The song says 'Cod Lead Nubble.' Old Cap Kidd composed that song, and he put in the wrong place just to throw folks off'm the track. But if I had capital behind me I'd hire a schooner and sail round them islands down there, one after the other; and with that power that's in me I could tell the right island the minute I got near it. Then set me ashore and see how quick this divinin'-rod would put me over that chist! But it's buried deep. It's goin' to take muscle and grit to dig it up. But the right crew can do it—and that's where capital comes in. Capital ain't ever tackled it right, and that's why capital ain't got hold of that treasure."
"I reckon I'll be movin' along," remarked Hiram, with resentment bristling the horns of his mustache; "it's the first time I ever had a man pick me out as a candidate for a gold brick, and the feelin' ain't a pleasant one."
But the Cap'n grasped his arm with detaining grip.
"This thing is openin' up. It ain't all clear, but it's openin'. I had instink that I could use him. But I couldn't figger it. It ain't all straightened out in my mind yet. But when you said 'gold brick' it seemed to be clearer."
Hiram blinked inquiringly at his enigmatic friend.
"It was what I was thinkin' of—gold brick," the Cap'n went on. "I thought that prob'ly you knew some stylish and reliable gold-bricker—havin' met same when you was travellin' round in the show business."
Replying to Mr. Look's indignant snort Cap'n Sproul hastened to say: "Oh, I don't mean that you had any gold-bricker friends, but that you knew one I could hire. Probably, though, you don't know of any. Most like you don't. I realize that the gold-bricker idea ain't the one to use. There's the trouble in findin' a reliable one. And even when the feller got afoul of him, the chances are the old land-pirut would steal the brick. This here"—jabbing thumb at Mr. Bodge—"is fresher bait. I believe the old shark will gobble it if he's fished for right. What's your idea?"
"Well, generally speakin'," drawled Hiram, sarcastically, "it is that you've got softenin' of the brain. I can't make head or tail out of anything that you're sayin'."
Cap'n Sproul waked suddenly from the reverie in which he had been talking as much to himself as to Hiram.
"Say, look here, you can understand this, can't you, that I've been done out of good property—buncoed by a jeeroosly old hunk of hornbeam?"
"Oh, I got bulletins on that, all right," assented Hiram.
"Well, from what you know of me, do you think I'm the kind of a man that's goin' to squat like a hen in a dust-heap and not do him? Law? To Tophet with your law! Pneumony, lightnin', and lawyers—they're the same thing spelled different. I'm just goin' to do him, that's all, and instink is whisperin' how." He turned his back on the showman and ran calculating eye over Mr. Bodge.
"I don't hardly see how that old hair mattress there is goin' to be rung in on the deal," growled Hiram.
"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, frankly; "not so fur as the details appear to me just now. But there's something about him that gives me hopes." He pulled out his wallet, licked his thumb, and peeled off a bill.
"Bodge, so fur's I can see now, you seem to be a good investment. I don't know just yet how much it is goin' to take to capitalize you, but here's ten dollars for an option. You understand now that I'm president of you, and my friend here is sekertary. And you're to keep your mouth shut."
Mr. Bodge agreed with effusive gratitude, and capital went its way. The inventor chased after them with thumping peg-leg to inquire whether he should first perfect the model of the "cat identifier," or develop his idea of an automatic chore-doer, started by the rooster tripping a trigger as he descended to take his matutinal sniff of air.
"You just keep in practise with that thing," commanded the Cap'n, pointing to the cow's horn.
"I don't see even yet how you are goin' to do it," remarked Hiram, as they separated a half-hour later at Cap'n Sproul's gate.
"Nor I," said the Cap'n; "but a lot of meditation and a little prayer will do wonders in this world, especially when you're mad enough."