"Perdition! have you got here with your incendiary beef contract, at
last? We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear
sir."
"Oh, that is all very well--but somebody has got to pay for that beef.
It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll confiscate this old Patent Office
and everything in it."
"But, my dear sir--"
"It don't make any difference, sir. The Patent Office is liable for that
beef, I reckon; and, liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to
pay for it."
Never mind the details. It ended in a fight. The Patent Office won.
But I found out something to my advantage. I was told that the Treasury
Department was the proper place for me to go to. I went there. I waited
two hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the
Treasury.
I said, "Most noble, grave, and reverend Signor, on or about the 10th day
of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken--"
"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you. Go to the First Auditor
of the Treasury."
I did so. He sent me to the Second Auditor. The Second Auditor sent me
to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the
Corn-Beef Division. This began to look like business. He examined his
books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract.
I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. He examined
his books and his loose papers, but with no success. I was encouraged.
During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division;
the next week I got through the Claims Department; the third week I began
and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the
Dead Reckoning Department. I finished that in three days. There was
only one place left for it now. I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds
and Ends. To his clerk, rather--he was not there himself. There were
sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there
were seven well-favored young clerks showing them how. The young women
smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and
all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading
the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody
said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from
Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the
very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I
passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division. I had got so
accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment
I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than
two, or maybe three, times.
So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to
one of the clerks who was reading:
"Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?"
"What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean? If you mean the Chief of the
Bureau, he is out."
"Will he visit the harem to-day?"
The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.
But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through
before another New York mail arrived. He only had two more papers left.
After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I
wanted.
"Renowned and honored Imbecile: on or about--"
"You are the beef-contract man. Give me your papers."
He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends.
Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it--he found the
long lost record of that beef contract--he found the rock upon which so
many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply
moved. And yet I rejoiced--for I had survived. I said with emotion,
"Give it me. The government will settle now." He waved me back, and
said there was something yet to be done first.
"Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?" said he.
"Dead."
"When did he die?"
"He didn't die at all--he was killed."
"How?"
"Tomahawked."
"Who tomahawked him?"
"Why, an Indian, of course. You didn't suppose it was the superintendent
of a Sunday-school, did you?"
"No. An Indian, was it?"
"The same."
"Name of the Indian?"
"His name? I don't know his name."
"Must have his name. Who saw the tomahawking done?"
"I don't know."
"You were not present yourself, then?"
"Which you can see by my hair. I was absent.
"Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?"
"Because he certainly died at that time, and have every reason to believe
that he has been dead ever since. I know he has, in fact."
"We must have proofs. Have you got this Indian?"
"Of course not."
"Well, you must get him. Have you got the tomahawk?"
"I never thought of such a thing."
"You must get the tomahawk. You must produce the Indian and the
tomahawk. If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go
before the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting
your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to
receive the money and enjoy it. But that man's death must be proven.
However, I may as well tell you that the government will never pay that
transportation and those traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie.
It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers
captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an
appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine
barrels the Indians ate."
"Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn't certain!
After all Mackenzie's travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that
beef; after all his trials and tribulations and transportation; after the
slaughter of all those innocents that tried to collect that bill! Young
man, why didn't the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division tell me
this?"
"He didn't know anything about the genuineness of your claim."
"Why didn't the Second tell me? why didn't the, Third? why didn't all
those divisions and departments tell me?"
"None of them knew. We do things by routine here. You have followed the
routine and found out what you wanted to know. It is the best way.
It is the only way. It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very
certain."
"Yes, certain death. It has been, to the most of our tribe. I begin to
feel that I, too, am called."
"Young man, you love the bright creature yonder with the gentle blue eyes
and the steel pens behind her ears--I see it in your soft glances; you
wish to marry her--but you are poor. Here, hold out your hand--here is
the beef contract; go, take her and be happy Heaven bless you, my
children!"
This is all I know about the great beef contract that has created so much
talk in the community. The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died. I know
nothing further about the contract, or any one connected with it. I only
know that if a man lives long enough he can trace a thing through the
Circumlocution Office of Washington and find out, after much labor and
trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if
the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously
systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile
institution.