HIS PA STABBED--THE GROCERY MAN SETS A TRAP IN VAIN--A BOOM
IN LINIMENT--HIS PA GOES TO THE LANGTRY SHOW--THE BAD BOY
TURNS BURGLAR--THE OLD MAN STABBED--HIS ACCOUNT OF THE FRAY--
A GOOD SINGLE HANDED LIAR.
“I hear you had burglars over to your house last night,” said the
grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and sat on the counter right
over a little gimlet hole, where the grocery man had fixed a darning
needle so that by pulling a string the needle would fly up through the
hole and run into the boy about an inch. The grocery man had been laying
for the boy about two days, and now that he had got him right over the
hole the first time, it made him laugh to think how he would make him
jump and yell, and as he edged off and got hold of the string the boy
looked unconscious of impending danger. The grocery man pulled, and the
boy sat still. He pulled again, and again, and finally the boy said:
“Yes, it is reported that we had burglars over there. O, you needn't
pull that string any more. I heard you was setting a trap for me, and
I put a piece of board inside my pants, and thought I would let you
exercise yourself. Go ahead if it amuses you. It don't hurt me.”
The grocery man looked sad, and then smiled a sickly sort of a smile,
at the failure of his plan to puncture the boy, and then he said,
“Well, how was it? The policeman didn't seem to know much about the
particulars. He said there was so much deviltry going on at your house
that nobody could tell when anything was serious, and he was inclined to
think it was a put up job.”
“Now let's have an understanding,” says the boy. “Whatever I say, you
are not to give me away. It's a go, is it? I have always been afraid of
you, because you have a sort of decayed egg look about you. You are like
a peck of potatoes with the big ones on top, a sort of a strawberry
box, with the bottom raised up, so I have thought you would go back on a
fellow. But if you won't give this away, here goes. You see, I heard Ma
tell Pa to bring up another bottle of liniment last night. When Ma corks
herself, or has a pain anywhere, she just uses liniment for all that
is out, and a pint bottle don't last more than a week. Well, I told my
chum, and we laid for Pa. This liniment Ma uses is offul hot, and almost
blisters. Pa went to the Langtry show, and did not get home till eleven
o'clock, and me and my chum decided to teach Pa a lesson. I don't think
it is right for a man to go to the theaters and not take his wife or his
little boy.
“So we concluded to burgle Pa. We agreed to lay on the stairs, and when
he came up my chum was to hit him on the head with a dried bladder,
and I was to stab him on his breast pocket with a stick, and break the
liniment bottle, and make him think he was killed.
“It couldn't have worked better if we had rehearsed it. We had talked
about burglars at supper time, and got Pa nervous, so when he came up
stairs and was hit on the head with the bladder, the first thing he said
was 'Burglars, by mighty,' and he started to go back, and I hit him on
the breast pocket, where the bottle was, and then we rushed by him, down
stairs, and I said in a stage whisper, 'I guess he's a dead man,' and we
went down cellar and up the back stairs to my room and undressed.”
[Illustration: The old man stabbed 030]
“Pa hollered to Ma that he was murdered, and Ma called me, and I came
down in my night-shirt, and the hired girl she came down, and Pa was on
the lounge, and he said his life-blood was fast ebbing away. He held his
hand on the wound, and said he could feel the warm blood trickling clear
down to his boots. I told Pa to stuff some tar into the wound, such as
he told me to put on my lip to make my mustache grow, and Pa said, 'My
boy, this is no time for trifling. Your Pa is on his last legs. When I
came up stairs I met six burglars, and I attacked them, and forced four
of them down, and was going to hold them and send for the police, when
two more, that I did not know about, jumped on me, and I was getting the
best of them when one of them struck me over the head with a crowbar,
and the other stabbed me to the heart with a butcher knife. I have
received my death wound, my boy, and my hot southern blood, that I
offered up so freely for my country in her time of need, is passing from
my body, and soon your Pa will be only a piece of poor clay. Get some
ice and put on my stomach, and all the way down, for I am burning up.'
I went to the-water pitcher and got a chunk of ice and put inside Pa's
shirt, and while Ma was tearing up an old skirt to stop the flow of
blood, I asked Pa if he felt better, and if he could describe the
villains who had murdered him. Pa gasped and moved his legs to get them
cool from the clotted blood, he said, and he went on, 'One of them was
about six foot high, and had a sandy mustache. I got him down and hit
him on the nose, and if the police find him, his nose will be broke. The
second one was thick set, and weighed about two hundred. I had him down,
and my boot was on his neck, and I was knocking two more down when I was
hit. The thick set one will have the mark of boot heels on his throat.
Tell the police when I'm gone, about the boot heel marks.'
“By this time Ma had got the skirt tore up, and she stuffed it under
Pa's shirt, right where he said he was hit, and Pa was telling us what
to do to settle his estate, when Ma began to smell the liniment, and
she found the broken bottle in his pocket, and searched Pa for the place
where he was stabbed, and then she began to laugh, and Pa got mad and
said he didn't see as a death-bed scene was such an almighty funny
affair; and then she told him he was not hurt, but that he had fallen on
the stairs and broke his bottle, and that there was no blood on him,
and he said, 'do you mean to tell me my body and legs are not bathed in
human gore?' and then Pa got up and found it was only the liniment. He
got mad and asked Ma why she didn't fly around and get something to take
that liniment off his legs, as it was eating them right through to the
bone; and then he saw my chum put his head in the door, with one gallus
hanging down, and Pa looked at me, and then he said, 'Lookahere, if I
find out it was you boys that put up this job on me, I'll make it so hot
for you that you will think liniment is ice cream in comparison.' I told
Pa it didn't look reasonable that me and my chum could be six burglars,
six feet high, with our noses broke, and boot-heel marks on our neck,
and Pa, he said for us to go to bed alfired quick, and give him a chance
to rinse of that liniment, and we retired. Say, how does my Pa strike
you as a good, single-handed liar?” and the boy went up to the counter,
while the grocery man went after a scuttle of coal.
In the meantime, one of the grocery man's best customers--a deacon in
the church--had come in and sat down on the counter, over the darning
needle, and as the grocery man came in with the coal, the boy pulled the
string, and went out door and tipped over a basket of rutabagas, while
the deacon got down off the counter with his hand clasped, and anger
in every feature, and told the grocery man he could whip him in two
minutes. The grocery man asked what was the matter, and the deacon
hunted up the source from whence the darning needle came through the
counter, and as the boy went across the street, the deacon and the
grocery man were rolling on the floor, the grocery man trying to hold
the deacon's fists while he explained about the darning needle, and that
it was intended for the boy. How it came out the boy did not wait to
see.