JOHN HENRY'S COUNTRY COP.
Ahead of me, plodding along the pike under the moonlight, were
Bunch and his cadaverous captor, the former bowed in sorrow or
anger, probably both, and the latter with head erect, haughty as a
Roman conqueror.
Bunch's make-up was a troubled dream. Over a pair of hand-me-down
trousers, eight sizes too large for him, he wore a three-dollar
ulster. On his head was an automobile cap, and his face was
covered with a bunch of eelgrass three feet deep. He was surely
all the money.
As I drew near I could hear Mr. Diggs expatiating on crime in
general and housebreaking in particular, and I fancied I could also
hear Bunch boiling and seething within.
[Illustration: Aunt Martha--a Short, Stout Bundle of Good Nature.]
"Mr. Buggular," Diggs was saying, "I don't know just what your home
trainin' was as a child, but they's a screw loose somewhere or
you'd a'never been brought to this here harrowful perdickyment,
nohow. I s'pose you jest started in nat'rally to be a heenyus
maleyfactor early in life, huh? You needn't to answer if you're
afeared it'll incrimigate you, but I s'pose you took to it when a
boy, pickin' pockets or suthin' like that, huh?"
"Oh, cut it out, you old goat, and don't bother me!" snapped Bunch,
just as I joined them.
"A dangerous maleyfactor," said Diggs to me, as he tightened his
grip on Bunch's arm; "but they ain't no call for you to assist the
course of justice, because if the dern critter starts to run I'll
pump him chuck full of lead. He's been a'tellin' me he started on
the downward path to predition as a child-stealer."
"I told you nothing, you old tadpole," shrieked Bunch, unable to
contain himself longer.
"Very well," said Harmony, soothingly, "they ain't no call for you
to say nothin' more that'll incrimigate you before the bar of
Justice. Steady, now, or I'll tap you with this here cane!"
"Brace up, good old sport; I'll get you out of this in a jiffy," I
whispered to Bunch at the first opportunity, and he gave me a
cold-storage look that chased the chills all over me.
Presently we arrived at the little brick structure which
Jiggersville proudly called its calaboose, and after much fumbling
of keys, Mr. Diggs opened the jackpot and we all stayed.
The yap policeman was for taking Bunch right back to the donjon
cell in the rear, but with a $5 bill I secured a stay of
proceedings.
My forehead was damp with perspiration so I took off my hat and
laid it on the bench in the little court room where Bunch sat
moodily and with bowed head.
Then I coaxed the rural Vidocq over in the corner and gave him a
game of talk that I thought would warm his heart, but he listened
in dumbness and couldn't see "no sense in believing the maleyfactor
was anythin' more'n a derned cuss, nohow!"
"I have every reason to believe that we have made a mistake," I
said to Harmony in a hoarse whisper. "From an envelope dropped by
this party in my house I am lead to believe that he's a respectable
gentleman who entered my premises quite by mistake."
The chin whiskers owned and engineered by Diggs bobbed up and down
as he chewed a reflective cud, but he couldn't see the matter in my
light at all.
I had used all kinds of arguments and was just about to give up in
despair when a voice in the doorway caused us both to turn.
There stood Bunch Jefferson, the real fellow, looking as fresh as a
daisy.
"What's the trouble, John?" he asked, smiling benignly on Diggs.
While I was talking to the representative of the law, Mr. Slick saw
his opportunity and grabbed it by the hind leg. He had quietly
reached the door, and once outside the sledding was excellent.
Bunch had his business suit on under the burglar make-up. It
didn't take him two minutes to work the shine darbies over his
hands. He then peeled off the ulster and the tuppeny trousers,
and throwing these and the Svengalis over the fence, he was home
again from the Bad Lands.
The transformation scene was made complete by the fact that Bunch
was now wearing my hat.
In answer to Bunch's question, the redoubtable Diggs smiled
indulgently and said with pride-choked tones, "A maleyfactor, sir,
caught in the meshes of the law and hauled before this here trybune
of Justice by these hands!"
The eagle eye of Diggs was now triumphantly sighted along the arm
and over the bony hand to where the criminal was supposed to be,
but when the gaze finally rested on an empty bench the expression
of pained surprise on the old man-hunter's map was calculated to
make a hen cackle.
Diggs rushed over to the bench, turned it upside down, looked
behind the chairs, and then, emitting a roar that rattled the
rafters, he hustled back to see if by any chance the prisoner had
locked himself up in a cell.
Bunch gave the old geezer the minnehaha and yelled, "Say! you with
the me-ya-ya's on the chin! Did somebody give you the hot-foot and
make a quick exit?"
Diggs was now in full eruption and heavy showers of Reub lava rose
from his vocal organs and fell all over the place, while he
thrashed around the calaboose in a frenzy of excitement.
"Maybe you're sending out a general alarm about that human meteor
that passed me on the pike a few minutes ago?" Bunch suggested.
Diggs turned and eyed him in open-mouthed silence.
"A mutt with a pink ulster and one of those pancakes on his head
like the drivers of the gasoline carts wear," Bunch suggested.
"It's him! it's the maleyfactor!" exclaimed Harmony, tightening his
grip on the night stick; "which way did the derned cuss go?"
Bunch pointed due south-east, and with a howl of rage Diggs sprang
forward and bounced down the pike like a hungry kangaroo on its way
to a lunch counter.
I began to wrap up my enjoyment and send it forth in short gurgles
of merriment until Bunch pressed the button and the scene was
changed to Greenland's Icy Mountains.
"Funny, isn't it?" he sneered; "regular circus, with yours in
haste, Bunch Jefferson, to do the grand and lofty tumbling! I'm
the Patsy, oh, maybe! It was a fine play, all right, but I didn't
expect you to stack the cards!"
"On the level, Bunch, believe me, it wasn't my fault," I spluttered.
"Not your fault," he snapped back; "then I suppose it was mine! I
suppose I fell down the elevator shaft just to please mother, eh?
Maybe you think I dropped into the excavation just to pass the time
away? Have you an idea that I dove down into the earth because I
wanted to get back to the mines? Wasn't your fault, indeed! Maybe
you think I fell in the well simply because I wanted to give an
imitation of the old oaken bucket, yes?"
I tried to tell him all about Tacks and the ghost story, but he
wouldn't stand for it.
"You should have been waiting for me on the stairs," he argued,
unreasonably, rubbing one of the bruises in his choice collection,
"Didn't you catch me early in the evening being chased from pillar
to post by everything in the neighborhood that had legs long enough
to run? When I tried to hide in the corner of a farm over there, a
bull dog came up on rubber shoes and bit his initials on some of my
personal property before I could crawl through the fence. Every
time I showed up on the pike that human accident that breathes like
a man and talks like a rabbit chased me eight miles there and back.
The first time I tried to approach the infernal house I fell over a
grindstone and signed checks in the gravel with my nose.
Hereafter, when you want a burglar, pick somebody your own size.
I'm going to hunt a hospital and get sewed together again."
I put on all steam and tried to square myself, but Bunch only shook
his head and said I was outlawed.
"You can't run on my race track," he exclaimed as he started for
the depot; "that last race was crooked and you stood in with the
dope mixer."
I watched him down the hill until he disappeared in the station,
then, sad at heart, I trudged back to the old homestead that had
caused all my trouble.
It was now broad daylight, but nowhere within my line of vision
could I get a peep of the doughty Diggs.
No doubt he was still cutting across lots trying to head off the
"maleyfactor."