The Skipper and the Skipped Part 59

"Goin' to put my wife in the poorhouse, hey?" he squalled.

Cap'n Sproul scored three. "She got at him and unloaded!" he murmured.

"And it fixed him, if I know cowards."

"She's goin' to be a widder, hey? I'm afeard o' daminite, hey? I'll show ye!" He swung the sack from his shoulder, and held it up in both hands for the retreating populace to see. "I jest as soon flam this whole thing down here in the ro'd. I jest as soon kick it. I jest as soon set on it and smoke my pipe. I'm an outlaw and I ain't afeard of it. You use me right and let my wife alone, or I'll show ye."

Cap'n Sproul, sailor-habit always strong with him, had for a long time kept one of his telescopes hanging beside a window in the town office. He took this down and studied the contour of the b.u.mps that swelled Mr. Luce's sack. His survey seemed to satisfy him. "Tone of his talk is really enough--but the shape of that bag settles it with me."

The next moment all of Smyrna that happened to be in sight of the scene gasped with horror on beholding the first selectman walk out of the town house and stalk directly across the square toward the dynamiter.

"You go back," screamed Mr. Luce, "or I'll flam it!"

But no longer was Mr. Luce's tone dauntless and ferocious. The Cap'n's keen ear caught the coward's note of querulousness, for he had heard that note many times before in his stormy a.s.sociation with men. He chuckled and walked on more briskly.

"I'll do it--I swear I will!" said Mr. Luce, but his voice was only a weak piping.

In spite of itself Smyrna stopped, groaned, and squatted where it stood when Mr. Luce swung the sack and launched it at the intrepid selectman. As he threw it, the outlaw turned to run. The Cap'n grabbed the sack, catapulted it back, and caught the fleeing Mr. Luce squarely between the shoulders; and he went down on his face with a yell of pain. The next moment Smyrna saw her first selectman kicking a bleating man around and around the square until the man got down, lifted up his hands, and bawled for mercy.

And when Smyrna flocked around, the Cap'n faced them, his fist twisted in Mr. Luce's collar.

"This critter belongs in State Prison, but I ain't goin' to send him there. He's goin' onto our poor-farm, and he's goin' to work for the first time in his life, and he'll keep to work till he works up some of the bill he owes this town. He's a pauper because his wife has called on. But I ain't dependin' on law. I'm runnin' this thing myself.

I've shown ye that I can run it. And if any of you quitters and cowards have got anything to say why my sentence won't be carried out, now is the time to say it."

He glowered into their faces, but no one said anything except Zeburee Nute, who quavered: "We allus knowed you was the smartest man that ever came to this town, and--"

"Close that mouth!" yelped Cap'n Sproul. "It's worse than an open hatch on a superphosphate schooner."

"You dare to leave that town farm, you or your wife either," the selectman went on, giving Mr. Luce a vigorous shake, "and I'll have you in State Prison as quick as a grand jury can indict. Nute, you hitch and take him down there, and tell the boss he's to work ten hours a day, with one hour's noonin', and if he don't move fast enough, to get at him with a gad."

Mr. Luce, cowed, trembling, appealing dumbly for sympathy, was driven away while the first selectman was picking up the sack that still lay in the village square. Without a moment's hesitation he slit it with his big knife, and emptied its contents into a hole that the spring frosts had left. Those contents were simply rocks.

"In the name of Joanthus Cicero!" gasped Broadway, licking his dry lips. "How did you figger it?"

The Cap'n finished kicking the sack down into the hole beside the rocks, clacked shut his knife-blade, and rammed the knife deep into his trousers pocket.

"When you critters here in town get to be grown up to be more than ten years old," he grunted, surveying the gaping graybeards of Smyrna, "and can understand man's business, I may talk to you. Just now I've got something to attend to besides foolishness."

And he trudged back into the town house, with his fellow-citizens staring after him, as the populace of Rome must have stared after victorious Caesar.

x.x.xI

For some weeks the town of Smyrna had been witnessing something very like a bear-baiting.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman, again played the role of the bear, as he had on occasions previous.

They had stalked him; they had flanked him; they had surrounded him; they had driven him to centre; he was at bay, bristling with a sullen rage that was excusable, if viewed from the standpoint of an earnest town officer. Viewed from the standpoint of the populace, he was a selfish, cross-grained old obstructionist.

Here was the situation: By thrift and shrewd management he had acc.u.mulated during his reign nearly enough funds to pay off the town debt and retire interest-bearing notes. He had proposed to make that feat the boast and the crowning point of his tenure of office. He had announced that on a certain day he would have a bonfire of those notes in the village square. After that announcement he had listened for plaudits. What he did hear were resentful growls from taxpayers who now discovered that they had been a.s.sessed more than the running expenses of the town called for; and they were mad about it. The existence of that surplus seemed to worry Smyrna. There were many holders of town notes for small amounts, a safe investment that paid six per cent. and escaped taxation. These people didn't want to be paid. In many cases their fathers had loaned the money to the town, and the safe and sound six per cent. seemed an heirloom too sacred to be disturbed.

Cap'n Sproul's too-zealous thrift annoyed his townsmen. To have the town owe money made individual debtors feel that owing money was not a particularly heinous offence. To have the town free of debt might start too enterprising rivalry in liquidation.

Therefore, for the first time in his life, Consetena Tate found one of his wild notions adopted, and gasped in profound astonishment at the alacrity of his townsmen. Consetena Tate had unwittingly stumbled upon a solution of that "surplus" difficulty. He wasn't thinking of the surplus. He was too utterly impractical for that.

He was a tall, gangling, effeminate, romantic, middle-aged man whom his parents still supported and viewed with deference as a superior personality. He was Smyrna's only literary character.

He made golden weddings gay with lengthy epics that detailed the lives of the celebrants; he brought the dubious cheer of his verses to house-warmings, church sociables, and other occasions when Smyrna found itself in gregarious mood; he soothed the feelings of mourners by obituary lines that appeared in print in the county paper when the mourners ordered enough extra copies to make it worth the editor's while. Added to this literary gift was an artistic one.

Consetena had painted half a dozen pictures that were displayed every year at the annual show of the Smyrna Agricultural Fair and Gents'

Driving a.s.sociation; therefore, admiring relatives accepted Mr.

Tate as a genius, and treated him as such with the confident prediction that some day the outside world would know him and appreciate him.

A flicker of this coming fame seemed to dance on Consetena's polished brow when he wrote a piece for the county paper, heralding the fact that Smyrna was one hundred years old that year.

Mr. Tate, having plenty of leisure to meditate on those matters, had thought of this fact before any one else in town remembered it. He wrote another article urging that the town fittingly celebrate the event. The Women's Temperance Workers discussed the matter and concurred. It would give them an opportunity to have a tent-sale of food and fancy-work, and clear an honest penny.

The three churches in town came into the project heartily. They would "dinner" hungry strangers in the vestries, and also turn an honest penny. The Smyrna Ancient and Honorable Firemen's a.s.sociation, Hiram Look foreman, was very enthusiastic. A celebration would afford opportunity to parade and hold a muster.

The three uniformed secret societies in town, having an ever-lurking zest for public exhibition behind a bra.s.s-band, canva.s.sed the prospect delightedly. The trustees of the Agricultural Fair and Gents' Driving a.s.sociation could see a most admirable opening for a June horse-trot.

In fact, with those inducements and with motives regarding the "surplus" spurring them on secretly, all the folks of Smyrna rose to the occasion with a long, loud shout for the celebration--and suggested that the "surplus" be expended in making a holiday that would be worth waiting one hundred years for.

After that shout, and as soon as he got his breath, the voice of First Selectman Aaron Sproul was heard. He could not make as much noise as the others, but the profusion of expletives with which he garnished his declaration that the town's money should not be spent that way made his talk well worth listening to.

It was then that the bear-baiting began.

Every society, every church, every organization in town got after him, and Hiram Look--a betrayal of long friends.h.i.+p that touched the Cap'n's red anger into white heat--captained the whole attack.

The final clinch was in the town office, the Cap'n at bay like the boar in its last stronghold, face livid and hairy fists flailing the scattered papers of his big table. But across the table was Hiram Look, just as intense, the unterrified representative of the proletariat, his finger jabbing the air.

"That money was paid into the treasury o' this town by the voters,"

he shouted, "and, by the Sussanified heifer o' Nicodemus, it can be spent by 'em! You're talkin' as though it was your own private bank-account."

"I want you to understand," the Cap'n shouted back with just as much vigor--"it ain't any jack-pot, nor table-stakes, nor prize put up for a raffle. It's town money, and I'm runnin' this town."

"Do you think you're an Emp'ror Nero?" inquired Hiram, sarcastically.

"And even that old cuss wa'n't so skin-tight as you be. He provided sports for the people, and it helped him hold his job. Hist'ry tells you so."

"There ain't any hist'ry about this," the selectman retorted with emphasis. "It's here, now, present, and up to date. And I can give you the future if you want any predictions. That money ain't goin'

to be throwed down a rat-hole in any such way."

"Look here, Cap'n Sproul," said the showman, grinding his words between his teeth, "you've been talkin' for a year past that they'd pushed this job of selectman onto you, and that you didn't propose to hold it."

"Mebbe I did," agreed the Cap'n. "Most like I did, for that's the way I feel about it."

"Then s'pose you resign and let me take the job and run it the way it ought to be run?"