SPEAKING of money--and it’s a mighty popular topic--the investment of
the first twenty-five cents I ever earned, all at a crack, ought to
have directed my feet, my thoughts, and my future along the straight and
narrow way. Ten minutes after I had galloped gleefully home with that
quarter-dollar from Judge Kingsley’s hay-field, my good mother led me
down to Old Maid Branscombe’s little book-store and obliged me to buy a
catechism.
I earned that money by hauling a drag-rake for a whole day around behind
a hay-cart, barefoot and kicking against the vicious stubbles of the
shaven field. I honestly felt that I did not deserve the extra penance
of the catechism. However, that first day’s work gave me my earliest
respect for money--earned money. And I also remember that Judge
Kingsley, when he paid me, sniffed and said I hadn’t done enough to earn
twenty-five cents.
I hated to walk up to him and ask for my pay, because Celene Kingsley
was within hearing; she had come down to the field to fetch him home in
her pony-chaise. That’s right! You’ve guessed it! I’ll waste no words.
It was only another of the old familiar cases. Barefooted, folks poor,
keeping my face toward her, as a sunflower fronts the sun (though the
sunflower has other reasons than hiding patches), I was in the shamed,
secret, hopeless, heartaching agonies of a fifteen-year-old passion. Of
course, I don’t mean that I had loved her for all that time--I’m giving
my age and hers.
Yes, I hated to walk up. And the judge gave me the quarter only because
he did not have any smaller change.
And really, for the times, it was considerable of a coin for a single
juvenile job.
The services of youngsters in those days in Levant were paid for on a
narrower scale--ten cents for lawns and a nickel for shoveling snow, and
so on. And tin-peddlers were mighty stingy in their dickerings for old
rubbers and junk. To get rags one had to steal ’em--our folks made
rugs and guarded old remnants carefully.
So much for my first financial adventure of real moment--for the biggest
coin I had ever clutched; and right now I lay down my pen for a moment
and spread out two human paws which have juggled three million dollars’
worth of gold ingots as carelessly as one scruffles jackstraws. That was
maverick treasure. But there’s a big difference between earned money and
maverick money. If you don’t know what maverick means I’ll save you the
trouble of looking the word up in the dictionary. Once on a time, in
Texas, old Sam Maverick wouldn’t brand his cattle. Therefore, a maverick
was a cow or steer unbranded. And to-day it means any kind of property
at large which a bold man or a dishonest man may grab if he can beat
other thieves to it.
I had an early taste of maverick money, and the taste was so sweet that
I never have lost my hankering for more.
In the fall of that “year of the catechism” the line gale blew down
the chimney which had stood after the old Pratt house was burned. I was
there before the dust settled, for all the boys knew that there were
wrought-iron clamps high up in the bricks. But I left the clamps to
the next comers and picked up a dented tin box, rusty and dusty and
soot-blackened; I shook it; it rattled and I ran away into the woods.
When I had knocked the box open and looked in and spied coins I had the
heart-thrilling conviction that money worries were over for me in this
life. My first thought was that I would marry Celene Kingsley and settle
down and live happy ever after. If there had been in the box what I
thought at first there was, I could wipe my pen and close my story.
I dove both hands into the box and brought them up brimming--coins
scattering and clattering back over my trembling fingers. They were big
coins--and I had read much about the days of the bold pirates.
“Pieces of eight!” I whispered.
But they were not. When I had winked the mist out of my eyes I found
that they were old-fashioned coppers--bung-downs they used to be called.
Mixed in with them were a few copper tokens, a Pine Tree shilling, a
sprinkling of Speed The Plow cents, and the only coin of any account at
all was a Mexican dollar with a hole in it.
It wasn’t in my nature to bury that treasure. I knew it was pretty
worthless junk, but I had a hankering to carry it about with me, to feel
its drag in my pockets, to reach in and chink it when no one could hear.
I walked around weighted with it as afterward I have been weighted with
the leaden chunks of my diver’s dress. As early as that in my life I
found that money was a burden as well as a vexation. I didn’t dare to
frisk and frolic with the boys at school; I was not exploiting my new
wealth; I had grounds for caution because there were plenty of Pratts
left in Levant. At home I moved about so quietly that my folks thought,
I reckon, that I was entering an early decline. My mother used to look
at my tongue quite often and made me drink hardhack tea.
But there is one impulse in the male animal which is not easily
controlled by prudence; it’s that cursed itch to make a show in front
of the female of the species--in front of the special one, the selected
one, the beloved one. Some sort of a jimcrack-peddler came into the
school-yard one noon, and Celene Kingsley, daughter of a plutocrat,
tendered a big, shiny silver dollar and the man could not change it for
her. I walked up, trembling with both pride and panic, and said, trying
my best to act the part of a matter-of-fact bank on two legs, “Let me
handle it for you!” It was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and
my voice was only a weak squawk.
When she turned to me and opened her big, blue eyes, I was nigh to
running away.
The boys and girls came crowding around, and I couldn’t blame them for
showing interest; the sight of a Levant Sidney with money on him was a
new one in town.
I had separated from the coppers the aristocrats of my hoard, the Pine
Tree shilling and the Mexican dollar, by wrapping them in a wisp of
paper. I brought them out first.
“I don’t know exactly what they are worth in real money,” I told her.
“But you can have ’em at half price.”
She had been considerably surprised before, but now she was plain
dumfounded. That system of changing a dollar was brand new.
Then I dredged a trousers pocket and produced a handful of the bung-down
coppers. I began to count them down on a corner of the school-house
steps.
“Somebody get a wheelbarrow,” advised one of the boys. “That’s the only
way she’ll ever tug-a-lug her change home.”
“Really, you needn’t bother,” she said, stammering a little. “No, don’t
trouble yourself. I have changed my mind about buying anything.”
They all laughed.
“That isn’t money,” said the jimcrack man. “I’d never take that stuff
for my goods.”
A girl ran up and grabbed into the coppers I had been, heaping on the
stone. She was a Pratt.
“Ross Sidney, you stole that money,” she squealed. “It was in my
granny’s notion-box. We couldn’t find it after she died. You stole it!”
“I didn’t steal it--I found it,” I told her. But all the courage had
gone out of me.
“You ain’t the first thief to lie about your stealings.”
“But I did find it--I found it after the chimney blew down.”
“You knew it was ours. You didn’t bring it to us--that’s stealing.”
“It might have been put there before--”
“It was my granny’s money. Don’t you suppose I know? She saved old
coppers.” She spread down her handkerchief and began to pile the coins
upon it.
There did not seem to be any room for argument. In my shame I fell
to wondering how I had ever convinced myself that this money was
treasure-trove. I dug down and gave her the rest of it. Instead of
proudly showing myself a person of means before Celene Kingsley I was.
barely escaping the suspicion of being a thief.
“If it belongs to the Pratts you’re welcome to it,” I said. “I don’t
want anything which belongs to somebody else.”
“You’d better remember as much the next time you find money,” snapped
the Pratt girl. “Your conscience will be easier when you die.”
They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash--that’s so!
When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters
of the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what
that Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine,
my face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest
humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley.
I think I know what my main mistake was in my first attempts at writing
this tale; I tried to tell the story as if it had happened to somebody
else and the thing was stiffer than a mud-caked tug-line and squealed
like a rusty windlass. Of course, I hate to be saying “I” here, there,
and everywhere--but there’ll come a place in my tale--you’ll think of
it if ever you get as far as that--where there’d be nothing to the story
unless you could see with my eyes and feel with my hands. So, bear with
me and I’ll reel off the yarn as best I know how, making no apologies
after this confession.
Oh, about that first maverick money I ran afoul of! I never saw that
money again, of course.
But I did happen to meet Ben Pratt right in front of Judge Kingsley’s
house. I’ll not say how big Ben Pratt was, because you’ll think this is
only a bragging story. He called me a thief and I decided it was about
time to show Levant that the name was not a popular one with me.