SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.
There was an egg-supper in the country store at Brayville. Mr. Mandluff,
the tall and raw-boned Hoosier who kept the store, was not unwilling to
have the boys get up an egg supper now and then in his store after he
had closed the front-door at night. For you must know that an egg-supper
is a peculiar Western institution. Sometimes it is a most enjoyable
institution--when it has its place in a store where there is no Kentucky
whisky to be had. But in Brayville, in the rather miscellaneous
establishment of the not very handsome and not very graceful Mr.
Mandluff, an egg-supper was not a great moral institution. It was
otherwise, and profanely called by its votaries a camp-meeting; it would
be hard to tell why, unless it was that some of the insiders grew very
happy before it was over. For an egg-supper at Mandluff's store was to
Brayville what an oyster-supper at Delmonico's is to New York. It was
one tenth hard eggs and nine tenths that beverage which bears the name
of an old royal house of France.
How were the eggs cooked? I knew somebody would ask that impertinent
question. Well, they were not fried, they were not boiled, they were
not poached, they were not scrambled, they were not omeletted, they were
not roasted on the half-shell, they were not stuffed with garlic and
served with cranberries, they were not boiled and served with anchovy
sauce, they were not "_en salmi_." I think I had better stop there, lest
I betray my knowledge of cookery. It is sufficient to say that they were
not cooked in any of the above-named fashions, nor in any other way
mentioned in Catharine Beecher's or Marion Harland's cookbooks. They
were baked _à la mode_ backwoods. It is hardly proper for me to give a
recipe in this place, that belongs more properly to the "Household
Departments" of the newspapers. But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell
something about cooking, which Prof. Blot does not know, I may say that
they were broken and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top
of the old box-stove. By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was
burned to ashes, but the egg came off clean and nice from the stove, and
made as palatable and indigestible an article for a late supper as one
could wish. It only wanted the addition of Mandluff's peculiar whisky to
make it dissipation of the choicest kind. For the more a dissipation
costs in life and health, the more fascinating it is.
There was an egg-supper, as I said, at Mandluff's store. There was to be
a "camp-meeting" in honor of Norman Anderson's successful return to his
liberty and his cronies. It gave Norman, the greatest pleasure to return
to a society where it was rather to his credit than otherwise that he
had gone on a big old time, got caught, and been sent adrift by the old
hunk that had tried to make him study Latin.
The eggs were baked in the true "camp-meeting" style, the whisky was
drunk, and--so was the company. Bill Day's rather red eyes grew redder,
and his nose shone with delight as he shuffled the greasy pack of
"kyerds." The maudlin smile crossed the habitually melancholy lines of
his face in a way that split and splintered his visage into a curious
contradiction of emotions.
"H--a--oo--p!" He shouted, throwing away the cards over the heads of his
companions. "Ha--oop! boys, thish is big--hoo! hoo! ha--oop! I say is
big. Let's do somethin'!"
Here there was a confused cry that "it _was_ big, and that they had
better do somethin' or 'nother."
"Let's blow up the ole school-house," said Bill Day, who was not
friendly to education.
"I tell you what," said Bob Short, who was dealing the cards in another
set--"I tell you what," and Bob winked his eyes vigorously, and looked
more solemn and wise than he could have looked if it had not been for
the hard eggs and the whisky--"I tell you what," said Bob a third time,
and halted, for his mind's activity was a little choked by the fervor of
his emotions--"I tell you what, boys--"
"Wal," piped Jim West in a cracked voice, "you've told us _what_ four
times, I 'low; now s'pose you tell us somethin' else."
"I tell you what, boys," said Bob Short, suddenly remembering his
sentence, "don't let's do nothin' that'll git us into no trouble
arterwards. Ef we blow up the school-house we'll be 'rested fer bigamy
or--or--what d'ye call it?"
"For larson," said Bill Day, hardly able to restrain another whoop.
"No, 'taint larson," said Bob Short, looking wiser than a chief-justice,
"it's arsony. Now I say, don't let's go to penitentiary for no--no
larson--no arsony, I mean."
"Ha--oop!" said Bill. "Let's do somethin' ludikerous. Hurrah for arsony
and larson! Dog-on the penitentiary! Ha--oop!"
[Illustration: SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.]
"Let's go fer the Dutchman," said Norman Anderson, just drunk enough to
be good-naturedly murderous and to speak in dialect. "Gus is turned out
to committin' larson by breakin' into people's houses an' has run off.
Now let's tar and feather the ole one. Of course, he's a thief. Dutchmen
always is, I 'low. Clark township don't want none of 'em, I'll be
dog-oned if it do," and Norman got up and struck his fist on
the counter.
"An' they won't nobody hurt you; you see, he's on'y a Dutchman," said
Bob Short "Larson on a Dutchman don't hold."
"I say, let's hang him," said Bill Day. "Ha--oop! Let's hang him, or do
somethin' else ludikerous!"
"I wouldn't mind," grinned Norman Anderson, delighted at the turn things
had taken. "I'd just like to see him hung."
"So would I," said Bill Day, leaning over to Norman. "Ef a Dutchman wash
to court my sishter, I'd--"
"He'd be a fool ef he did," piped Jim West. For Bill Day's sister was a
"maid not vendible," as Shakespeare has it.
"See yer," said Bill, trying in vain to draw his coat. "Looky yer,
Jeems; ef you say anythin' agin Ann Marier, I'll commit the wust larson
on you you ever seed."
"I didn't say nothin' agin Ann Marier," squeaked Jim. "I was talkin'
agin the Dutch."
"Well, that'sh all right Ha--oop! Boys, let's do somethin', larson or
arsony or--somethin'."
A bucket of tar and some feathers were bought, for which young Anderson
was made to pay, and Bill Day insisted on buying fifteen feet of rope.
"Bekase," as he said, "arter you git the feathers on the bird, you
may--you may want to help him to go to roosht you know, on a hickory
limb. Ha--oop! Come along, boys; I say let's do somethin' ludikerous, ef
it's nothin' but a little larson."
And so they went galloping down the road, nine drunken fools. For it is
one of the beauties of lynch law, that, however justifiable it may seem
in some instances, it always opens the way to villainous outrages. Some
of my readers will protest that a man was never lynched for the crime of
being a Dutchman. Which only shows how little they know of the intense
prejudice and lawless violence of the early West. Some day people will
not believe that men have been killed in California for being Chinamen.
Of the nine who started, one, the drunkest, fell off and broke his arm;
the rest rode up in front of the cabin of Gottlieb Wehle. I do not want
to tell how they alarmed the mother at her late sewing and dragged
Gottlieb out of his bed. I shudder now when I recall one such outrage to
which I was an unwilling witness. Norman threw the rope round Gottlieb's
neck and declared for hanging. Bill Day agreed. It would be so
ludikerous, you know!
"Vot hash I tun? Hey? Vot vor you dries doo hanks me already, hey?"
cried the honest German, who was willing enough to have the end of the
world come, but who did not like the idea of ascending alone, and in
this fashion.
Mrs. Wehle pushed her way into the mob and threw the rope off her
husband's neck, and began to talk with vehemence in German. For a moment
the drunken fellows hung back out of respect for a woman. Then Bill Day
was suddenly impressed with the fact that the duty of persuading Mrs.
Wehle to consent to her husband's execution devolved upon him.
"Take keer, boys; let me talk to the ole woman. I'll argy the case."
"You can't speak Dutch no more nor a hoss can," squeaked Jeems West.
"Blam'd ef I can't, though. Hyer, ole woman, firshta Dutch?"
"Ya."
"Now," said Bill, turning to the others in triumph, "what did I tell
you? Well, you see, your boy August is a thief."
"He's not a teef!" said the old man.
"Shet up your jaw. I say he is. Now, your ole man's got to be hung."
"Vot vor?" broke in Gottlieb.
"Bekase it's all your own fault. You hadn't orter be a Dutchman."
Here the crowd fell into a wrangle. It was not so easy to hang a man
when such a woman stood there pleading for him. Besides, Bob Short
insisted that hanging was arsony in the first degree, and they better
not do it. To this Bill Day assented. He said he 'sposed tar and
feathers was only larson in the second degree. And then it would be rale
ludikerous. And now confused cries of "Bring on the tar!" "Where's the
feathers?" "Take off his clothes!" began to be raised. Norman stood out
for hanging. Drink always intensified his meanness. But the tar couldn't
be found. The man whom they had left lying by the roadside with a broken
arm had carried the tar, and had been well coated with it himself in
his fall.
"Ha-oop!" shouted Bill Day. "Let's do somethin'. Dog-on the arsony!
Let's hang him as high as Dan'el."
And with that the rope was thrown over Gottlieb's, neck and he was
hurried off to the nearest tree. The rope was then put over a limb, and
a drunken half-dozen got ready to pull, while Norman Anderson adjusted
the noose and valiant Bill Day undertook to keep off Mrs. Wehle.
"All ready! Pull up! Ha-oop!" shouted Bill Day, and the crowd pulled,
but Mrs. Wehle had slipped off the noose again, and the volunteer
executioners fell over one another in such a way as to excite the
derisive laughter of Bill Day, who thought it perfectly ludikerous. But
before the laugh had finished, the indignant Gottlieb had knocked Bill
Day over and sent Norman after him. The blow sobered them a little, and
suddenly destroyed Bill's ambition to commit "arsony," or do anything
else ludikerous. But Norman was furious, and under his lead Wehle's arms
were now bound with the rope and a consultation was held, during which
little Wilhelmina pleaded for her father effectively, and more by her
tears and cries and the wringing of her chubby hands than by any words.
Bill Day said he be blamed of that little Dutch gal's takin' on so
didn't kinder make him foul sorter scrimpshous you know. But the mob
could not quit without doing something. So it was resolved to give
Gottlieb a good ducking in the river and send him into Kentucky with a
warning not to come back. They went down the ravine past Andrew's castle
to the river. Mrs. Wehle followed, believing that her husband would be
drowned, and little Wilhelmina ran and pulled the alarm and awakened the
Backwoods Philosopher, who soon threw himself among them, but too late
to dissuade them from their purpose, for Andrew's own skiff, the
"Grisilde" by name, with three of the soberest of the party, had already
set out to convey Wehle, after one hasty immersion, to the other shore,
while the rest stood round hallooing like madmen to prevent any alarm
that Wehle might raise attracting attention on the other side.