WITH CAPTAIN NYMPHUS BODFISH OF THE “EFFORT”
Old Zibe Haines walked out one day,
And a barbed wire fence it stopped his way.
Never climbed over, never crawled through,
But he bit that wire right plumb in two.
--Ballads of “Gumption.”
Hiram Look was approaching Palermo village and letting his horse
walk up the long Witch-Run hill. He was in the middle of the seat of a
brand-new top carriage. His elbows were on his knees and he was gazing
at the reflection of himself in the bright dasher of the carriage.
Occasionally he broke out into mellow chucklings.
“I’d have given ten dollars if Phin and all close pers’nal friends had
been there with me to see it,” he soliloquised. “Me behind the wistery
on the porch of the widder’s, a-takin’ it all in, and he not knowin’
I was there! Phew! Lemme git out a few more of them laughs I’ve had to
swaller!”
He leaned back and haw-hawed boisterously, to the renewed astonishment
of the horse, who stopped and bent his head around to gaze at his
master.
“G’long!” shouted the showman. “I’ve told you all about it three times
already on the way down. I had to tell some one.”
When the horse plodded on he set his elbows on his knees again and went
on with his delighted monologue. He was rolling it again over his tongue
with smacks of relish.
“Yess’r, I had him dead to rights! Had the very letters he’s been
writin’ to that other string to his bow. And then to have him whine to
the widder that he’d writ’ ’em ’cause he felt sometimes that she
was gittin’ ready to throw him over and he didn’t want to git left
altogether! Why, the dum fool! To tumble down like that at the first
puff she give him! Me? Why, I’d ’a’ lied till there was six inches
of glare ice in Tophet! I’d ’a’ said I didn’t know how to write! I’d
’a’ said that I’d been sassin’ Jim the Penman’s grandmother and he was
gittin’ back at me. But he jest caved. I allus knowed he was a fool.
“And me a-settin’ there with my thumb in my vest armhole, takin’ it all
in and fattin’ on the ribs! Why, I’ve heard men git down and beg, I’ve
seen dogs set up on end and whine for a bone, I’ve seen a cat coax for
milk-strainin’s, but never nothin’ like the way that man got down and
rolled over and jumped through and played dead for that widder.
“Cap Nymp’ Bodfish, you kicked me once, and ’twas in the face and eyes
of the public, and you was due to git a lot of trouble. I might have
kicked you back; I might have gone on and broke a few of your arms and
legs and et cet’ry. But it wouldn’t have been a scientific job like
this. No, s’r, it wouldn’t have been real soul-satisfyin’. I never got
no great consolation out of lickin’ a man.”
Hiram sighed at his recollections in that line. But his face cleared
immediately.
“Him with his tongue out and his mouth all made up for that twenty
thousand and the widder! Him as had made his brags about her, and now
has got to face the grinnin’s and the sneerin’s! It will be lin-g’rin’
agony, that’s what it will.
“Lordy mighty, will I ever forgit the face he made up when he see me
behind that wistery! O-h-h-h, I shall wake up in the night and laugh
till I set the roosters to crowin’. Him a-drivin’ out of the yard with
the widder givin’ him a few final lambastes with her tongue and me
a-stickin’ my head out through the wistery. He a-tumin’ ’round to git
a last look at her and seein’ me and realisin’ then--yass’r, realisin’!
And his wheel ketched on a post and he fell down into the bottom of the
waggon and began to push against the post like he was tryin’ to shove
off a dory--clean forgittin’ he was in a team! Oh, what a state that
man’s mind must have been in!”
Hiram rolled to and fro on the carriage seat in an ecstasy of mirth.
“Never’ll forgit what she said to him then.
“‘Take your reins and back up,’ says she. ‘I don’t want people
’round here to think you’re drunk as well as a complete fool, you old
hump-backed, tarfingered garsoline tank! A pretty farmer you’d make--and
don’t know a waggon from a dory! Git out of my yard and don’t never let
me set eyes on you ag’in. I’ve got a man as is a man,’ and she pointed
to me, and I swow I couldn’t help it! I set my thumb to my nose and give
him the real, old-fashioned waggle. Ow, haw, haw! Ow, haw, haw!”
“And then she come right to me and give me a pat on the back and
says: ‘It didn’t need any of them writin’s to make me give him his
come-uppance, Mr. Look. I never give a snap of my finger for him,
anyway, since I met you. Ow, hee-hee!”
“You seem to be feelin’ ’bout as gay as they make ‘em,” called a voice
from the roadside.
Hiram started up and wiped the tears of merriment from his eyes.
Two men were standing by the highway fence, men whose solemn faces were
streaked by perspiration. One of them carried a small rifle. The other
was “Sawed-Off” Purday, the Palermo deputy-sheriff. He was armed with a
club.
“Guess you must have heard the news about your friend,” said Purday,
with accent on the last word. “Nothin’ else would make you any more
tickleder. P’raps you’ve seen him along the ro’d. If you have we’ll be
much obleeged for a clue.”
“Seen who?” demanded Hiram, thinking at first that the men referred to
Captain Nymphus Bodfish. He eyed their weapons and felt a qualm of fear,
for he didn’t know what the exasperated skipper might have prepared for
him.
“Klebe Willard.”
“Klebe Willard!” There was relief as well as astonishment in Hiram’s
tone.
“Well, there’s been hell to pave and no pitch hot down in the village,”
said Doughty, nothing loath to impart sensational news. “There’s four
possys out after Cap Willard and this is one of ’em. He’s took to the
woods somewheres and there ain’t no knowin’ where. But I reckon I’ll
catch him if I only get onto one clue,” he added, confidently. “No one
ever got away from me yet. Howsomever, it’s leg-weary work, this cuttin’
acrost pastures and plowed land. You say you ain’t seen hide nor hair of
him?”
“I ain’t said nothin’ about it,” retorted Hiram. “But I ain’t seen him,
if that’s what you’re after. Why in Tophet don’t you tell a man what the
critter has done instead of standin’ there and chawin’ ter-backer with
that infernal eight-day motion?”
“It ain’t altogether clear jest what it was all about,” related Doughty,
calmly. “All that’s known is that Klebe come whoopin’ into the village
from Square Harbour to-day and tore into his father’s office and then
come out and hot-footed home as though Old Nick was after him. In an
hour or so the old Judge went down to Klebe’s house, and it seems from
what the neighbours say that Klebe had been tea-in’ up in the meantime
and jawin Myry, and a little while after the Judge come in he got to
goin’ it worse about somethin’ or other. There ain’t much head nor tail to
stories, but as near as I can find out he went to lick the old man,
bein’ crazy drunk, I reckon, and Myry stepped in between, and he floored
the two of ’em and kicked over one of the young ones and took to the
woods howlin’ like a looservee. It’s bad bus’ness.”
Purday spat far and sighed dolefully.
“Your brother and Sylvene has sort of took charge there to Klebe’s
house,” the deputy went on. “The old Judge ‘come to’ ’fore I left the
village. But the doc says Myry is in a turrible bad way with the tunk
she got. It won’t be none surprisin’ if murder comes out of it. It’s a
glister for the Willard fam’ly, that’s what it is!”
He shifted his club to the other hand and started over the fence.
“Come along, Bragg,” he commanded. “It’s more’n li’ble that he kept to
the Bunganuck ridge.”
Hiram had no desire to ask further questions. He lashed his hors’e and
rattled away toward the village at his best speed.
It had been one of those unseasonably hot May days, humid and
sweltering, with thunder-heads boiling above the horizon and a menace in
the steaming quietness of nature.
When Hiram turned in at the yard of the Look place the low sun was
dipping behind an ominously purple curtain in the west, and there was a
jarring growl of thunder behind the hills.
His brother was not at home.
“He may need old Hime for somethin’ or other,” he muttered as
“Figger-Four” Avery bobbed into the barn leading the horse. “It ain’t
especially the place for me to go buttin’ in, under the circumstances,
but I’m a right-hand man for Phin when he needs help, and he knows it
now.”
He hurried away down the street, casting an occasional glance over his
shoulder at the purple-black curtain of cloud. “It looks as though it
was goin’ to be a ripper,” he commented.
In the yard of the Kleber Willard place little groups of villagers were
talking in hushed tones.
“How be they now inside there, Uncle Buck?” inquired Hiram,
solicitously.
“Them that’s still inside is in a mighty bad way,” replied the old
man, grimly. He added yet more grimly, “And them that’s outside is most
likely wuss off than that.”
“Them that’s outside!” repeated Hiram, smartly.
“That’s what I said. After the Judge come round into his senses they
thought it was all right to leave him on the sofy till they got ready
to take him home, and in the gen’ral confusion here he’s got away. Took
both of Klebe’s young ones with him, the little boy and the little girl,
and Lord only knows where he’s got to. I tell ye ’twa’n’t safe to
leave him alone! An old man with the bang he got ’side of the head
ain’t gittin’ back into his right senses all in a minit.”
“What are you standin’ around here for, all of ye?” indignantly demanded
Hiram, raising his voice. “Why ain’t you out tryin’ to find the lost?”
“Why ain’t _you?_” retorted Uncle Lysimachus. “There’s fifty gone after
’em already and the ro’d is still open. They didn’t take it with
’em.”
The Squire had heard his brother’s voice in the yard and he came to the
door, his face haggard and grief-stricken.
“It’s an awful thing, brother,” he murmured when Hiram hastened to him.
“Myra is still insensible and the doctor fears a fracture of the skull.
But my worst fear now is for Judge Willard and the children.”
He cast a troubled look at the sky.
“Doesn’t anyone get a word from them?” he asked wistfully.
“You hold the fort here, Phin,” returned Hiram with bluff assurance.
“I’ll find ’em if I have to rake from here to Smyrna with a
fine-toothed comb. I’m gittin’ to be the greatest finder you ever see,
Phin. I found the Mayo girl, I found myself at last, I found a woman
to-day who’ll have me, and now I’ll find the ones you want or die
tryin’. Don’t you worry, Phin. It’s old Hime for ’em now.”
He started away on the trot, with no very clear idea of what he would do
first, but anxious to be moving.
Brickett was standing with shoulder set against the side of his door,
one eye on the shower that was crawling up the sky, the other on a man
who sat in a waggon before the store and who endeavoured to engage him
in conversation. “Hard-Times” Wharff was in his favourite position on
one corner of the platform, his sharp nose tilted toward the heavens and
his long hair waving in the first whispers from the approaching tempest.
A man who was on the other corner of the platform stepped down as the
showman came up. This person accosted Hiram brusquely.
“I’ve got a little bus’ness with you, mister,” he said.
It was Captain Nymphus Bodfish, saturnine and resolute.
Hiram was about to return an impatient retort about “other matters to
attend to just then,” when he caught a word of the conversation between
Brickett and the man in the waggon.
“Donno who it could be, _I’m_ sure,” said Brickett.
“I allus knew there was _some_ fools up this way,” said the man, with
rough jest, “but I didn’t reckon that any of them was fool enough to
start in a dory right out past Cod Head in the teeth o’ that thing
comin’ up there.”
He nodded a languid head at the big cloud.
“I tell ye,” insisted Bodfish, pressing close to Hiram, “your’n and my
bus’ness will have to be ‘tended to right now.”
“Did you say that you saw a dory makin’ out past Cod Head?” shouted
Hiram at the man in the waggon, looking past and over Bodfish with an
utter disregard that made the skipper grit his teeth.
“’Ep! Saw it as I was comin’ up the Cove ro’d,” returned the man.
“I donno who in sanup it can be,” repeated Brickett.
“With fifty men huntin’ for Judge Coll Willard and them two young ones,
that old man wand’rin’ somewheres out his senses, you ain’t got brains
enough to guess who it is in that dory?” fairly screamed Hiram. “It’s
blastnation lucky for you, Ase Brickett, that a man don’t need to do any
thinkin’ to run his lungs, or you’d die for lack of air.”
“I say I’ve got bus’ness----” recommenced Bodfish.
“Yes, and I’ve got bus’ness with _you!_” barked Hiram, rushing at him so
furiously that Bodfish staggered back. “This is the bus’ness: You come
with me as fast as your legs will take you and start that old garsoline
plunker of your’n. Hiper!”
“Not on your life! Not for you!” roared Bodfish. “I’ll fight you to a
standstill first!”
Hiram did not waste words with the man. He drove both his broad hands
against his breast, rushed him backward to the store wall and choked him
until his tongue lolled.
“Will ye? Will ye go?” he kept saying.
But each time he loosened his grip the skipper only cursed or cried for
help. He was struggling madly all the time, but Hiram’s strength and
passion were too much for him.
“I don’t b’lieve in abusin’ no man,” observed Brickett from his door.
“I reckon you’d better let that man go, Hime Look. You can’t sass and
browbeat and bang round ev’ry one in this place.”
“You fools,” panted Hiram, “Judge Willard and those children are in that
dory. There is no one else who would try to go out of this place into
that storm. It’s Judge Willard, I tell you! You are goin’ to take me
out, Nymp’ Bodfish, if I have to tear you apart and lug you down to your
packet in pound packages. I’ll kill the man that interferes. Will you
go, I say?”
He fell upon the skipper with such desperate fury that when he again
released his clutch the man staggered away dizzily in his iron grip.
They disappeared around the corner of the storehouse and in a little
while the sharp “plock-plock” of the _Effort’s_ engine barked in the
interim of the thunder crashes.
“Them Looks is sartinly the desp’ritest critters when they git started I
ever see,” remarked the man in the waggon, after he had watched the two
men out of sight.
“Well, if he weighed bigger’n that el’phunt of his he wouldn’t lug
me and my own bo’t off on no such wild-goose chase as he’s goin’ on,”
growled Brickett, getting ready to shut his big doors. He was apparently
unconvinced regarding the occupants of the dory. “That was about the
biggest piece of nerve I ever saw showed out, and I’ve seen some good
ones in my day.”
“And I’ve seen some good old showers in _my_ time,” remarked the man in
the waggon, picking up his reins. “But”--a crackling explosion
interrupted him---“this is sartinly the king of old lingers.”
He larruped his horse around the corner into the shed, for the big trees
were beginning to twist and moan and the big drops to lash the dust.