Next morning we made a pretty careful search of the whole mill, but we
didn’t find anybody, and nothing had been damaged. The only thing we
could think of was that somebody must have been sent in there by
Wiggamore to smash something up, but had been frightened away by us. The
thing that had us guessing was where he vanished to. He had been in that
place up-stairs when we went up, and he must have been there when we
were. He didn’t go down the stairs, because Binney never left the top
step and nobody passed him. I guess he was a magician, all right,
whoever he was. It sort of worried us, but there didn’t seem to be
anything we could do about it except keep our eyes open.
Mark said right off, as soon as we got a minute to spare, that the thing
for us to keep in mind was George Piggins. He said it wasn’t “Pike’s
Peak or bust” with us, but “George Piggins or bust,” and he let on he
didn’t look with no special pleasure on busting. I guess nobody else
would that was any place around him. There was too much of him to bust.
If he did it he’d be spread all over a couple of counties.
“Well,” says I, “let’s start looking for George. I’ll begin by lookin’
in the jail and under my bed. If he hain’t neither of those places I’m
hanged if I know where he can be.”
“Plunk,” says Mark, “that come clost to bein’ f-f-funny. I ’most laughed
right out.”
“It was funny,” says I. “Trouble with you is you hain’t been brought up
to see a joke.”
“Maybe,” says he, “I can’t see a j-joke that _is_, but I’m perty average
sure to see when one hain’t. And that one,” says he, “was a star
m-member of the Hain’t family.”
“All right,” says I, “you spring a joke and see how you make out.”
“When I s-spring one,” says he, “it’ll be a joke, you can bet. I won’t
just shoot off somethin’ on the chance somebody’ll laugh. I’ll study
over it some, and kind of try it out in my mind, and maybe repeat it out
loud to myself a couple of times to see how it sounds when I say it.
That’s the way to do with jokes. Jokes is like dollars. A good dollar is
worth a hundred cents, but a bad dollar is apt to get you s-s-shut up in
jail. Or eggs,” says he. “You don’t have to crack a joke to tell if it’s
bad, like you do an egg.”
“I suppose,” says I, “_that_ was a joke?”
“There’s folks would call it sich,” says he.
“Aw, come on,” says Binney. “Quit your jawin’ like old wimmin at a
knittin’-bee and git to work. What’s goin’ to be done?”
“I wisht I knew,” says Mark.
“If we found him he wouldn’t come back,” says Binney. “He’d be afraid of
the sheriff.”
Mark slapped his leg. “There’s somethin’ for us to d-d-do,” says he. “We
kin fix it so George dast come back.”
So he sent Binney after the mail, and Tallow to order in a car to make a
shipment, and him and I went off to see the deputy sheriff, whose name
was Whoppleham. Mostly you could find him down by the blacksmith shop
pitching horseshoes. He was about the best horseshoe-pitcher in the
county. He was there, all right, pitching with old Jim Battershaw, and
they was down on their knees measuring from the peg to a couple of
horseshoes with a piece of string to find out which was the nearest, and
quarreling about it as if it was the most important thing that had
happened in the world since Noah built his ark. We waited for them to
decide which horseshoe was nearest, but they couldn’t decide, and they
wouldn’t call it even. I calc’late they’d have gone for the county
surveyor to measure them up scientific if just then Battershaw’s
setter-dog and Whoppleham’s shepherd-dog hadn’t got tired of waiting and
started an argument of their own. It was quite considerable of an
argument, and it come swinging and clawing and snarling right across the
lot to where the horseshoes was and settled down to business there. The
way them dogs clawed into the ground and kicked up the dust was a
caution, and old Battershaw and Whoppleham dancing around the edge of
it, hollering like all-git-out and trying to stop it.
Well, all of a sudden the setter give up the ship and tucked his tail
between his legs and scooted, with the shepherd after him lickety-split.
When they was gone and we looked at the peg and the horseshoes there
wasn’t anything left to argue about. Those dogs had kicked them galley
west and come nigh to digging up the peg. It was a fine thing for both
those men, because it gave them something to argue about all the rest of
their lives, with no chance of having the argument settled. I’ll bet
that in ten years they’ll still be slanging and sassing each other about
that game, each of them insisting his horseshoe was the nearest. That’s
the kind of old coots they are.
Well, it gave Mark his chance to speak to Whoppleham, and he done so.
“Mr. Sheriff,” says he, “kin I s-s-speak to you for a m-minute?”
“I’m busy,” says the sheriff.
“This is official b-b-business,” says Mark.
“Oh!... Hum!... Official, eh? Somebody been breakin’ the law hereabouts?
Out with it, young feller. Sheriff Whoppleham’s the man for you.” He
pointed down to the star on his suspenders and says: “The people has
confidence in me, I guess, or they wouldn’t never have put me into this
here position of trust and confidence. I guess they knew who would be
able to clean out the criminals of these parts. They knowed a
venturesome man when they seen one, and a man that wouldn’t stop at
nothin’ in the int’rests of justice. What crime’s been did, and who done
it?”
“We want to s-s-speak about George Piggins,” says Mark.
“Have you seen that there crim’nal? Eh? Where’s he hidin’? I know he’s
dangerous and desprit, but be I hesitatin’? Be I timid? I guess not.
Sheriff Whoppleham would be willin’ to face Jesse James and drag him to
jail by the whiskers. Lucky for them Western bandits I never went out
there to mix in. I’d have cleaned ’em up perty quick.”
“We don’t know where he is,” says Mark, “but we want to talk to you
about f-f-fixin’ up that hog-stealin’ so he can come home and not be
molested.”
“Fix it? How?”
“Well, Mr. Hooker’s got back his hog and no harm’s been done. We
f-f-figgered maybe you would be willin’ to call it square and let George
come home if he promised never to do it again.”
“Huh!” says the sheriff. “What’s everybody so doggone int’rested into
George for, all of a sudden? Nobody was excited about him none a spell
back, but now it looks like everybody seen all to once that there wasn’t
no harm in him and he ought to be let home without havin’ to suffer for
bein’ a miscreant. What’s the meanin’ of it?”
“Has somebody else been to see about him?” says Mark.
“I should smile,” says the sheriff. “Why, this mornin’ there was a
reg’lar delegation, and who d’you s’pose come along with them but Hooker
himself? Yes, sir. And they wanted the charge should be dropped and
George let home. I says to ’em that my job was ketchin’ dangerous
crim’nals, not pardonin’ ’em, and that they’d have to thrash it out with
the prosecutin’ attorney. So they went off to do that.... What I want to
know is, how do they expect a officer of the law to do his duty and
bring crim’nals to justice if folks goes around gettin’ ’em let off by
prosecutin’ attorneys? How? Eh? Well, then. They’re cuttin’ into my
trade, that’s what, and I hain’t goin’ to stand for it. I’m goin’ out to
ketch George Piggins before he gits pardoned, that’s what I be, and I’m
a-goin’ to drag him to jail dead or alive. When I git him there they can
do like they please, but _my_ duty’ll be did.”
Well, we saw there wasn’t any good hanging around there, so we went
along, and Mark was looking pretty serious.
“Wiggamore means b-business,” says he. “He hain’t lettin’ any grass grow
under his feet, is he?”
“Calc’late it was Wiggamore that tried to get George out of trouble?”
“Of course it was,” says he, “and he’ll do it, too. Well, let him. That
saves us the t-trouble. While he’s botherin’ with that, we can be
l-lookin’ for George.”
“I wonder if Miss Piggins knows where he is?”
“’Tain’t likely,” says Mark. “I don’t b’lieve it, but we kin keep an eye
on her. George was always a powerful hungry f-feller, and if she knows
and he’s anywheres around, we’ll see her sneakin’ out with a basket of
grub.”
“She’d do it at night,” says I.
“Yes,” says he.
“So there’s nothin’ for us to do but wait,” says I.
“You n-never make no money waitin’,” says Mark. “We got to be d-d-doin’
somethin’.”
“We’ll be kept busy to-day loadin’ that car.”
“Yes, and if we g-g-git an order for bowls and things from that firm
Zadok told us about, why, we’ll be busier ’n ever,” says he.
So we went back to the mill, and Binney was there, and so was Tallow.
The mail had come and there was a letter giving us an order for bowls
and turned stuff and asking us to ship at once. Mark said the prices was
as good as he expected, and better, and that if we could keep on getting
such prices we would make a nice lot of money.
“How about a car?” he says to Tallow.
“Can’t git none,” says Tallow.
“Why can’t we git one? We got to git one.”
“Nobody in Wicksville can git one, nor nobody on this branch, seems
like. Somethin’s happened somewheres and there hain’t no cars, and if
there was we couldn’t have any, because the railroad has let on to the
agent here that he dassen’t accept any shipments to the city. He said it
was an embargo.”
“Embargo,” says Mark, “I wonder what one of them is?”
“Why,” says Tallow, “an embargo means when the railroad won’t let you
ship to a place or from a place or somethin’ like that.”
“How long is it goin’ to l-last?”
“Maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe all the year,” says Tallow. “There
hain’t enough cars to go around, and the railroad yards in the city is
crowded with cars that they can’t git men to unload, and that kind of
thing.”
“Hum!” says Mark. “Perty kettle of fish. Embargo. How in tunket be we
g-g-goin’ to send out stuff, then, I’d like to know?”
“We hain’t goin’ to,” says Tallow.
“But we g-got to. We jest _got_ to.”
“They won’t let us.”
“There must be some kind of a way. We got to ship as f-f-fast as we
manufacture, and get the money back, or we can’t pay the men and keep
goin’. If we was held back from shippin’ for two weeks we would be
b-busted.”
“And Wiggamore would get the dam and the mill,” says I.
“He hain’t got ’em yet,” says Mark, “and he hain’t g-goin’ to get ’em.”
“What’ll we do,” says I, “drag our chair stock and bowls and things
around in carts? It would take quite a spell to git a car-load to the
city, or even to Bostwick, that way.”
“I don’t know _how_ we’re goin’ to do it, but we’re goin’ to. You
f-fellers git to work and I’ll go and f-figger on this. We got to hit on
some scheme, and we got to hit on it right off. These here goods has got
to be shipped immediate, because we got to have the money.”
So he went and sat down in the office, and I could see him pinching his
cheek and pulling his ear like he always does when he is puzzling out
something. He kept at it more than an hour, and then I saw him come out
and get a piece of wood and take out his jack-knife to whittle. At that
I got scairt, for he never whittles till he’s in the last ditch. When
everything else fails he takes to his jack-knife, and when he does that
it’s time to get worried.
He whittled and whittled and whittled, and nothing come of it. You see,
he hadn’t ever had any experience with railroads, and he didn’t know
what kind of a scheme would work with them.
He didn’t go home to dinner, but just called to me to stop at his house
and fetch him a snack. I knew what a snack meant for him, so I fetched
back three ham sandwiches and three jelly sandwiches and two apples and
a banana and a piece of apple pie and a piece of cherry pie and a hunk
of cake and about a quart of milk. He went at them sort of deliberate
and gradual, but the way they disappeared was enough to make you think
he was some kind of a magician. Before you knew it the whole lot was
gone and he was looking down into the basket kind of sorrowful.
“What’s the m-matter, Plunk?” says he. “Was they short of grub at home?
Seems like the edge hain’t hardly gone off’n my appetite.”
“You’ve et enough to keep me for a week,” says I.
“Huh!” says he. “Well, a f-feller kin think better when he’s hungry,
they say.”
Hungry! I swan to Betsy if he hadn’t et a square meal for three grown
men.
He went to whittling again. About three o’clock he come out and says,
“Plunk, we got to go to the city.”
“What for?” says I.
“To git f-freight-cars,” says he.
“And fetch ’em home in our pockets, I s’pose,” says I.
“Maybe,” says he. “Git enough clothes to stay all night. We’ll catch the
five-o’clock t-train.”
“But what you goin’ to do?”
“I hain’t sure. But there’s somebody up to those head offices of the
r-r-railroad company that’s got a right to give us cars. I’m goin’ to
f-f-find out who it is, even if it’s the President of the United States,
and I’m goin’ to find some way to make him give ’em to us.”
“They wouldn’t ever let a couple of kids in to see the head men,” says
I.
“They will,” says he.
“How d’you know?” says I.
“Because,” says he, “I’ll make ’em.”
“Don’t bite off more ’n you kin chaw,” says I.
“Look here,” says he, “are you g-g-goin’ to lay down on this job?
Because if you be I kin take Tallow or Binney. They won’t git cold
f-f-feet.”
“I’ll stick,” says I, “but we hain’t got a chance.”
“Anybody’s always got a chance,” says he. “Folks can make chances.
Anything that’s p-p-possible kin be done if you stick to it and use your
head. This here is p-possible and it’s necessary. I’m goin’ to git them
freight-cars.”
That was just like him. You couldn’t scare him and you couldn’t
discourage him. He would stick to anything till you sawed him loose. I
guess maybe there was some bulldog in him, or something. Maybe he had
had a meal of glue some day and that made him stick to things. I don’t
think I’ve ever seen him when he showed that he was discouraged, and I
really don’t believe he ever was discouraged. No, sir; he got so
interested in trying to do whatever it was that he wanted to do that he
forgot all about how hard it was. And I guess that’s a good idea.