The Skipper and the Skipped Part 57

About an hour later, just as the selectman was sinking into a doze, he heard another explosion, this time far in the distance--less a sound than a jar, as of something striking a mighty blow on the earth.

"More dynamite!" he muttered, recognizing that explosive's down-whacking characteristic. And in the morning Hiram Look hurried across to inform him that some miscreant had blown up an empty corn-house on his premises, and that the explosion had shattered all the windows in the main barn and nearly scared Imogene, the elephant, into conniptions. "And he came and hollered into my bedroom window that he'd show me whuther he could be an outlaw or not," concluded the old showman. "I tell you that critter is dangerous, and you've got to get him. Instead of quietin' down he'll be growin' worse."

There were eleven men in Smyrna, besides Zeburee Nute, who held commissions as constables, and those valiant officers Cap'n Sproul called into the first selectman's office that forenoon. He could not tell them any news. The whole of Smyrna was ringing with the intelligence that Aholiah Luce had turned outlaw and was on the rampage.

The constables, however, could give Selectman Sproul some news. They gave it to him after he had ordered them to surround Mr. Luce and take him, dynamite and all. This news was to the effect that they had resigned.

"We've talked it over," averred Lycurgus Snell, acting as spokesman, "and we can't figger any good and reeliable way of gittin' him without him gittin' us, if he's so minded, all in one tableau, same to be observed with smoked gla.s.ses like an eclipse. No, s'r, we ain't in any way disposed to taller the heavens nor furnish mince-meat funerals. And if we don't git him, and he knows we're takin' action agin' him, he'll come round and blow our barns up--and we ain't so well able to stand the loss as you and Mr. Look be."

"Well, if you ain't about the nearest to knot-holes with the rims gone off'm 'em of anything I ever see," declared the Cap'n, with fury, "may I be used for oak.u.m to calk a guano gunlow!"

"If you think it's a job to set any man to, you'd better go and do it yourself," retorted Snell, bridling. "You know as well as I do, s'leckman, that so long as 'Liah has been let alone he's only been a plain thief, and we've got along with him here in town all right--onpleasant and somewhat expensive, like potater-bugs. But you seem to have gone to pus.h.i.+n' him and have turned him from potater-bug into a royal Peeruvian tiger, or words to that effect, and I don't see any way but what you'll have to tame him yourself.

There's feelin' in town that way, and people are scart, and citizens ain't at all pleased with your pokin' him up, when all was quiet."

"Citizens ruther have it said, hey, that we are supportin' a land-pirut here in this town, and let him disgrace us even over in Vienny?" demanded the Cap'n.

"Which was wuss?" inquired Mr. Snell, serenely. "As it was or as it is?"

Then the ex-constables, driven forth with contumely, went across to the platform of Broadway's store, and discussed the situation with other citizens, finding the opinion quite unanimous that Cap'n Sproul possessed too short a temper to handle delicate matters with diplomacy. And it was agreed that Aholiah Luce, weak of wit and morally pernicious, was a delicate matter, when all sides were taken into account.

To them appeared Aholiah Luce, striding down the middle of the street, with that ominous sack on his shoulder.

"Be I an outlaw, or ain't I?" he shouted over and over, raising a clamor in the quiet village that brought the Cap'n out of the town house. "Arrest me, will ye? When ye try it there won't be nothin'

left of this town but a hole and some hollerin'."

He walked right upon the store platform and into the store, and every one fled before him. Broadway cowered behind his counter.

"Put me up a fig o' tobacker, a pound of tea, quart o' merla.s.ses, ten pounds of crackers, hunk o' pork, and two cans of them salmons,"

he ordered.

In past years Mr. Luce had always slunk into Broadway's store apologetically, a store-bill everlastingly unpaid oppressing his spirits. Now he bellowed autocratic command, and his soul swelled when he saw Broadway timorously hastening to obey.

"I'll show 'em whuther I'm an outlaw or not," he muttered. "And I wisht I'd been one before, if it works like this. The monarch of the Injies couldn't git more attention," he reflected, as he saw the usually contemptuous Broadway hustling about, wrapping up the goods.

He saw scared faces peering in at him through the windows. He swung the sack off his shoulder, and b.u.mped it on the floor with a flourish.

"My Lord-amighty, be careful with that!" squawked Broadway, ducking down behind the counter.

"You 'tend to business and make less talk, and you won't git hurt,"

observed Mr. Luce, ferociously. He pointed at the storekeeper the stick of dynamite that he carried in his hand. And Mr. Broadway hopped up and bestirred himself obsequiously.

"I don't know whuther I'll ever pay for these or not," announced Mr.

Luce, grabbing the bundles that Broadway poked across the counter as gingerly as he would feed meat to a tiger. He stuffed them into his sack. "I shall do jest as I want to about it. And when I've et up this grub in my lair, where I propose to outlaw it for a while, I shall come back for some more; and if I don't git it, along with polite treatment, I'll make it rain groc'ries in this section for twenty-four hours."

"I didn't uphold them that smashed in your door," protested the storekeeper, getting behind the coffee-grinder.

"I've been squdged too fur, that's what has been done," declared Mr.

Luce, "and it was your seleckman that done it, and I hold the whole town responsible. I don't know what I'm li'ble to do next. I've showed _him_--now I'm li'ble to show the town. I dunno! It depends."

He went out and stood on the store platform, and gazed about him with the air of Alexander on the banks of the Euphrates. For the first time in his lowly life Mr. Luce saw mankind shrink from before him.

It was the same as deference would have seemed to a man who had earned respect, and the little mind of Smyrna's outlaw whirled dizzily in his filbert skull.

"I don't know what I'll do yit," he shouted, hailing certain faces that he saw peering at him. "It was your seleckman that done it--and a seleckman acts for a town. I reckon I shall do some more blowin'

up."

He calmly walked away up the street, pa.s.sing Cap'n Sproul, who stood at one side.

"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" jeered Mr. Luce.

"You don't dare to set down that sack," roared the selectman. "I'll pay ye five hundred dollars to set down that sack and step out there into the middle of that square--and I call on all here as witnesses to that offer," he cried, noting that citizens were beginning to creep back into sight once more. "Five hundred dollars for you, you bow-legged hen-thief! You sculpin-mouthed hyena, blowing up men's property!"

"Hold on," counselled Mr. Luce. "You're goin' to squdgin' me ag'in.

I've been sa.s.sed enough in this town. I'm goin' to be treated with respect after this if I have to blow up ev'ry buildin' in it."

"It ain't safe to go to pokin' him up," advised Mr. Nute from afar.

"I should think you'd 'a' found that out by this time, Cap'n Sproul."

"I've found out that what ain't cowards here are thieves,'" roared the Cap'n, beside himself, ashamed, enraged at his impotence before this boastful fool and his grim bulwark. His impulse was to cast caution to the winds and rush upon Luce. But reflection told him that, in this flush of his childish resentment and new prominence, Luce was capable of anything. Therefore he prudently held to the side of the road.

"The next time I come into this village," said Mr. Luce, "I don't propose to be called names in public by any old salt hake that has pounded his dollars out of unfort'nit' sailors with belayin'-pins.

I know your record, and I ain't afeard of you!"

"There'll be worse things happen to you than to be called names."

"Oh, there will, hey?" inquired Mr. Luce, his weak pa.s.sion flaming.

"Well, lemme give you jest one hint that it ain't safe to squdge me too fur!"

He walked back a little way, lighted the fuse of the stick of dynamite that he carried, and in spite of horrified appeals to him, cast over the shoulders of fleeing citizens, he tossed the wicked explosive into the middle of the square and ran.

In the words of Mr. Snell, when he came out from behind the watering-trough: "It was a corn-cracker!"

A half-hour later Mr. Nute, after sadly completing a canva.s.s of the situation, headed a delegation that visited Cap'n Sproul in the selectman's office, where he sat, pallid with rage, and cursing.

"A hundred and seventeen lights of gla.s.s," announced Mr. Nute, "includin' the front stained-gla.s.s winder in the meetin'-house and the big light in Broadway's store. And it all happened because the critter was poked up agin'--and I warned ye not to do it, Cap'n."

"Would it be satisfactory to the citizens if I pulled my wallet and settled the damage?" inquired the first selectman, with baleful blandness in his tones.

Mr. Nute did not possess a delicate sense of humor or of satire. He thoughtfully rubbed his nose.

"Reely," he said, "when you git it reduced right down, that critter ain't responsible any more'n one of them dynamite sticks is responsible, and if it hadn't been for you lettin' him loose and then pokin' him, contrary to warnin', them hundred and seventeen lights of gla.s.s wouldn't--"

"Are there any left?" asked Cap'n Sproul, still in subdued tones.

"About as many more, I should jedge," replied Mr. Nute.

"Well, I simply want to say," remarked the Cap'n, standing up and clinching his fists, "that if you ever mention responsibility to me again, Nute, I'll take you by the heels and smash in the rest of that gla.s.s with you--and I'll do the same with any one else who don't know enough to keep his yawp shut. Get out of here, the whole of you, or I'll begin on what gla.s.s is left in this town house."

They departed silently, awed by the menace of his countenance, but all the more bitterly fixed in their resentment.