THE BULL CALLED EMILY
We were sitting at a corner table in a certain small restaurant hard by
where Sixth Avenue's L structure, like an overgrown straddlebug, wades
through the restless currents of Broadway at a sharpened angle. The dish
upon which we principally dined was called on the menu _Chicken a la
Marengo_. We knew why. Marengo, by all accounts, was a mighty tough
battle, and this particular chicken, we judged, had never had any
refining influences in its ill-spent life. From its present defiant
attitude in a cooked form we figured it had pipped the shell with a
burglar's jimmy and joined the Dominecker Kid's gang before it shed its
pin-feathers. There were two of us engaged in the fruitless attack upon
its sinewy tissues--the present writer and his old un-law-abiding
friend,--Scandalous Doolan.
For a period of minutes Scandalous wrestled with the thews of one of the
embattled fowl's knee-joints. After a struggle in which the honours
stood practically even, he laid down his knife and flirted a thumb
toward a bottle of peppery sauce which stood on my side of the table.
"Hey, bo," he requested, "pass the liniment, will you? This sea gull's
got the rheumatism."
The purport of the remark, taken in connection with the gesture which
accompanied it, was plain enough to my understanding; but for the nonce
I could not classify the idiom in which Scandalous couched his request.
It could not be Underworld jargon; it was too direct and at the same
time too picturesque. Moreover, the Underworld, as a rule, concerns
itself only with altering such words and such expressions as strictly
figure in the business affairs of its various crafts and pursuits. Nor
to me did it sound like the language of the circus-lot, for in such case
it probably would have been more complex. So by process of elimination I
decided it was of the slang code of the burlesque and vaudeville stage,
with which, as with the other two, Scandalous had a thorough
acquaintance. I felt sure, then, that something had set his mind to
working backward along the memory-grooves of some one or another of his
earlier experiences in the act-producing line of endeavour, and that,
with proper pumping, a story might be forthcoming. As it turned out, I
was right.
"Where did you get that one, Scandalous?" I asked craftily. "Your own
coinage, or did you borrow it from somebody else?"
He only grinned cryptically. After a bit he hailed the attendant waiter,
who because he plainly suffered from fallen arches had already been
rechristened by Scandalous as Battling Insteps.
"Say, Battling," he said, "take away the emu; he's still the undefeated
champion of the ages. Tidy him up a little and serve him to the next guy
that feels like he needs exercise more'n he does nourishment. The gravy
may be mussed up a trifle, but the old ring-general ain't lost an ounce.
I fought him three rounds and didn't put a bruise on him."
"Couldn't I bring you somethin' else?" said the waiter. "The Wiener
Schnitzel with noodles is very----"
"Nix," said Scandalous; "if the cassowary licked us, what chance would
we stand against the bison? That'll be all for the olio; I'll go right
into the after-show now. Slip me a dipper of straight chicory and one of
those Flor de Boiled Dinners, and then you can break the bad news to my
pal here." By this I knew he meant that he craved a cup of black coffee
and one of the domestic cigars to which he was addicted, and that I
could pay the check.
He turned to me:
"How're you goin' to finish your turn?" he asked. "They've got mince pie
here like Mother Emma Goldman used to make. Only you want to be careful
it don't explode in your hand."
I shook my head. "I'll nibble at these," I said, "until you get
through." And I reached for a little saucer of salted peanuts that
lurked in the shadow of the bowl containing the olives and the celery.
For this, you should know, was a table d'hote establishment, and no such
place is complete without its drowned olives and its wilted celery.
"Speaking of peanuts," he said, "I don't seem to care deeply for such. I
lost my taste for them dainties quite some time back."
"What was the occasion?" I prompted, for I saw the light of reminiscence
smouldering in his eye.
"It wasn't no occasion," he said; "it was a catastrophe. Did I ever
happen to tell you about the time I furnished the financial backing for
Windy Jordan and his educated bull, and what happened when the blow-off
came?"
I shook my head and in silence hearkened.
"It makes quite an earful," he continued. "Business for gents in my
profession was very punk here on the Main Stem that season. By reason of
the dishonest police it was mighty hard for an honest grafter to make a
living. It certainly was depressing to trim an Ezra for his roll and
then have to cut up the net proceeds with so many central-office guys
that you had to go back and borrow car-fare from the sucker to get home
on. Besides, I was somewhat lonely and low in my peace of mind on
account of my regular side-kick the Sweet Caps Kid being in the
hospital. He'd made the grievous mistake of trying to sell a
half-interest in the Aquarium to a visiting Swede. Right in the middle
of the negotiations something came up that made the Swede doubtful that
all was not well, and he betrayed his increasing misgivings by hauling
out a set of old-fashioned genuine antique brass knucks and nicking up
Sweet Caps' scalp to such an extent my unfortunate companion had to
spend three weeks on the flat of his back in the casualty ward, with a
couple of doctors coming in every morning to replace the divots. Pending
his recovery, I was sort of figuring on visiting Antioch, Gilead, Zion
and other religious towns up State with a view of selling the haymakers
some Bermuda oats for their fall planting, when along came Windy Jordan
and broached a proposition.
"This here Windy Jordan was one of them human draughts; hence the name.
At all hours there was a strong breeze blowing out of him in the form of
words. If he wasn't conversing, it was a sign he had acute sore throat.
But to counteract that fault he was the sole proprietor of the smartest
and the largest bull on this side of the ocean, which said bull answered
to the name of Emily."
"Did you say a bull?" I asked.
"Sure I said a bull. Why not? Ain't you wise to what a bull is?"
"Certainly I am, but a bull named Emily----"
"Listen, little one: To them that follow after the red wagon and the
white top, all elephants is bulls, disregardless of genders, just the
same as all regular bulls is he-cows to refined maiden ladies residin'
in New England and points adjacent. Only, show-people ain't got any
false modesty that way. In the show-business a bull is a bull, whether
it's a lady-bull or a gentleman-bull. So very properly this here bull,
being one of the most refined and cultured members of her sex, answers
to the Christian name of Emily.
"Well, this Emily is not only the joy and the pride of Windy Jordan's
life, but she's his entire available assets. Bull and bulline, she'd
been with him from early childhood. In fact, Windy was the only parent
Emily ever knew, she having been left a helpless orphan on account of a
railroad wreck to the old Van Orten shows back yonder in
eighteen-eighty-something. So Windy, he took her as a prattling infant
in arms when she didn't weigh an ounce over a ton and a half, and he
adopted her and educated her and pampered her and treated her as a
member of his own family, only better, until she repaid him by becoming
not only the largest bull in the business but the most highly
cultivated.
"Emily knew nearly everything there was to know, and what she didn't
know she suspected very strongly. Likewise, as I came to find out later,
she was extremely grateful for small favours and most affectionate by
nature. To be sure, being affectionate with a bull about the size and
general specifications of a furniture-car had its drawbacks. She was
liable to lean up against you in a playful, kittenish kind of a way, and
cave in most of your ribs. It was like having a violent flirtation with
a landslide to venture up clost to Emily when she was in one of her
tomboy moods. I've know' her to nudge a friend with one of her front
elbows and put both his shoulder-blades out of socket. But she never
meant no harm by it, never. It was just a little way she had.
"It seems like Windy and Emily were aiming to join out that season with
a tent-show, but the deal fell through some way, and for the past few
weeks Windy had been infesting a lodging-house for members of the
profession over here on East Eleventh Street, and Emily had been in a
livery barn down in Greenwich Village, just naturally eating her old
India-rubber head off. Windy, having run low as to coin, wasn't able to
pay up Emily's back board, and the liveryman was holding her for the
bill.
"So, hearing some way that I'm fairly well upholstered with currency, he
comes to me and suggests that if I'll dig up what's necessary to get
Emily out of hock, he can snare a line of bookings in vaudeville, and
we'll all three go out on the two-a-day together, him as trainer and me
as manager and Emily as the principal attraction. The proceeds is to be
cut up fifty-fifty as between me and him.
"The notion don't sound like such a bad one. That was back in the days
when refined vaudeville was running very strongly to trained-animal acts
and leading ladies that had quit leading but hadn't found out about it
yet. Nowadays them ex-queens of tragedy can go into the movies and draw
down so much money that if they only get half as much as they say
they're getting, they're getting almost twice as much as anybody would
give 'em; but them times, vaudeville was their one best bet. And next to
emotional actrines who could emosh twicet daily for twenty minutes on a
stretch, without giving way anywhere, a good trained-animal turn had the
call. It might be a troupe of educated Potomac shad or an educated ape
or a city-broke Gila monster or a talking horse or what not. In our case
'twas Emily, the bull.
"First thing, we goes down to the livery-stable where Emily is spending
the Indian summer and consuming half her weight in dry provender every
twenty-four hours. The proprietor of this here fodder-emporium is named
McGuire, and when I tells him I'm there to settle Emily's account in
full, he carries on as though entirely overcome by joyfulness--not that
he's got any grudge against Emily, understand, but for other good and
abundant sufficiencies. He states that so far as Emily's personal
conduct is concerned, during her enforced sojourn in his midst, she's
always deported herself like a perfect lady. But she takes up an awful
lot of room, and one of the hands is now on the verge of nervous
prostration from overexertions incurred in packing hay to her, and, it
seems she's addicted to nightmares. She gets to dreaming that a mouse
nearly an inch and a half long is after her,--all bulls is terrible
afraid, you know, that some day a mouse is going to come along and eat
'em,--and when she has them kind of delusions, she cries out in her
sleep and tosses around and maybe knocks down a couple of steel beams or
busts in a row of box-stalls or something trivial like that. Then, right
on top of them petty annoyances, McGuire some days previous has made the
mistake of feeding Emily peanuts, which peanuts, as he then finds out,
is her favourite tidbit.
"'Gents,' says McGuire to me and Windy Jordan, 'I shore did make the
error of my life when I done that act of kindness. I merely meant them
peanuts as a special treat, but Emily figures it out that they're the
start of a fixed habit,' he says. 'Ever since then, if I forget to bring
her in her one five-cent bag of peanuts per diem, per day, she calls
personally to inquire into the oversight. She waits very patient and
ladylike until about eleven o'clock in the morning, and if I ain't made
good by then, she just pulls up her leg hobble by the roots and drops in
on me to find out what's the meaning of the delay.
"'She ain't never rough nor overbearing, but it interferes with trade
for me to be sitting here in my office at the front of the stable
talking business with somebody, and all of a sudden the front half of
the largest East Indian elephant in the world shoves three or four
thousand pounds of herself in at that side door and begins waving her
trunk around in the air, meanwhile uttering fretful, complaining sounds.
I've lost two or three customers that way,' he says. 'They get right up
and go away sudden,' he says, 'and they don't never come back no more,
not even for their hats and umbrellas. They send for 'em.
"'That ain't the worst of it,' he says. Yesterday,' he says, 'I rented
out my whole string of coaches and teams for a burial turnout over here
on McDougal Street. Being as it's a big occasion, I'm driving the first
carriage containing the sorrowing family of deceased. Naturally, with a
job like that on my hands, I don't think about Emily at all; my mind's
all occupied up with making the affair pass off in a tasty and pleasant
fashion for all concerned. Well, the cortege is just leaving the late
residence of the remainders, when around the corner comes bulging Emily,
followed at a suitable distance by eight or nine thousand of the
populace. She's missed me, and she wants her peanuts, and she's been
trailing me; and now, by heck, she's found me.
"'Emily gives a loud, glad snort of recognition, wheels herself around
and then falls in alongside the front hack and gets ready to accompany
us, all the time poking her snout over at me and uttering plaintive
remarks in East Indian to me. Gents,' he says, 'you can see for
yourselves, a thing like that, occurring right at the beginning of a
funeral procession, is calculated to distract popular attention away
from the main attraction. Under the circumstances I wouldn't blame no
corpse on earth for feeling jealous--let alone a popular and prominent
corpse like this here one was, a party that had been a district leader
at Tammany Hall in his day, and after that the owner of the most
fashionable retail liquor store in the entire neighbourhood, and who's
now riding along with solid silver handles up and down both sides, and
style just wrote all over him. Here, with an utter disregard for
expense, he's putting on all this dog for his last public appearance,
and a strange elephant comes along and grabs the show right away from
him.
"'The bereaved family don't care for it, neither. I gathers as much from
the remarks they're making out of the windows of the coach. But Emily
just won't take a hint. She sticks along until I stops the procession
and goes in a guinea fruitstore on the next block and buys her a bag of
peanuts. That's all she wants. She takes it, and she leaves us and goes
on back to the stable.
"'But, as the feller says, it practically ruined the entire day for them
berefts. I lost their patronage right there--and them a nice sickly
family, too. A lot of the friends and relatives also resented it; they
were telling me so all the way back from the cemet'ry. There ain't no
real harm in Emily, and I've got powerfully attached to her, but taking
one thing with another, I ain't regretting none that you've come down
all organised financially to take her out of pawn. You have my best
wishes, and so has she.'
"So we settles up the account to date, which the same makes quite a nick
in the bank-roll, and then we goes back to the rear of the stable where
Emily is quartered, and she falls on Windy's neck, mighty nigh
dislocating it, and he introduces me to Emily, and we shakes hands
together,--I means trunks,--and then Windy unshackles her, and she
follows us along just as gentle as a kitten to them freight-yards over
on Tenth Avenue where her future travelling home is waiting for her.
It's a box-car, with one end rigged up with bunks as a boudoir for me
and Windy, and the rest of it fitted out as a private stateroom for
Emily.
"From that time on, for quite a spell, we're just the same as one big
happy family, as we goes a-jauntily touring from place to place.
"We're playin' the Big Time, which means week stands and no hard jumps.
Emily's a hit, a knock-out and a riot wherever she appears. She knows it
too, but success don't go to her head, and she don't never get no
attacks of this here complaint which they calls temper'ment. I always
figgered out that temper'ment, when a grand wopra singster has it, is
just plain old temper when it afflicts a bricklayer. I don't know what
form it would take if it should seize on a bull, but Emily appears to be
absolutely immune. Give her a ton of hay and one sack of peanuts a day,
and she's just as placid as a great gross of guinea pigs. Behind the
scenes she never makes no trouble, but chums with the stage-hands and
even sometimes with the actors, thus proving that she ain't stuck up.
"When the time comes for Emily to do her turn, she just goes ambling on
behind Windy and cuts up more didoes than any trick-mule that ever
lived. She smokes a pipe, and she toots on a brass horn, and waits on
table while Windy pretends to eat, and stands on her head, and plays
baseball with him and so forth and so on, for fifteen minutes, winding
up by waving the Amurikin flag over her head. But all this time she's
keeping one eye on me, where I'm standing in the wings with a sack of
peanuts in my pocket waiting for her to come off. Every time she works
over toward my side of the stage, she makes little hoydenish remarks to
me in her native language. It ain't long until I can make out everything
she says. I've been pedling the bull too long not to be able to
understand it when spoke by a native.
"For upwards of two months things goes along just beautiful. Then we
strikes a town out in Illinois where business ain't what it used to be,
if indeed it ever was. Along about the middle of the week the young
feller that's doing the press-work for the house comes to me and asks me
if I ain't got an idea in my system that might make a good press-stunt.
"There's an inspiration comes to me and I suggests to him that maybe he
might go ahead and make an announcement that following the Saturday
matinee, Emily the Pluperfect, Ponderous, Pachydermical Performer,
direct from the court of the reigning Roger of Simla County, India, will
hold a reception on the stage to meet her little friends, each and every
one of whom will be expected to bring her a bag of peanuts.
"'That listens all right,' says this lad, 'providing she likes peanuts.'
"'Providing she likes 'em?' I says. 'Son,' I says, 'if that bull ever
has to take the cure for the drug-habit, it'll be on account of peanuts.
If you don't think she likes peanuts, a dime will win you a trip to the
Holy Lands,' I says. 'Why,' I says, 'Emily's middle name is _Peanuts_.
Offhand,' I says, 'I don't know precisely how many peanuts there are,' I
says, 'because if I ever heard the exact figures, I've forgot 'em, but
I'd like to lay you a little eight to five that Emily can chamber all
the peanuts in the world and then set down right where she happens to
be, to wait for next year's crop to come onto the market. That's how
much she cares for peanuts,' I says.
"Well, that convinces him, and he hurries off to write his little piece
about Emily's peanut reception. The next day, which is Friday, the
announcement is in both the papers. Saturday after lunch when I strolls
round to the show-shop for the matinee, one glance around the corner
from the stage entrance proves to me that our little social function is
certainly starting out to be a success. The street in front is lined on
both sides with dagos with peanut-stands, selling peanuts to the
population as fast as they can pass 'em out; and there's a long line,
mainly kids, at the box-office. I goes on in and takes a flash at the
front of the house through the peephole in the curtain, and the place is
already jam full. If there's one kid out there, there's a thousand, and
every tiny tot has got a sack of peanuts clutched in his or her chubby
fist, as the case may be. And say, listen: there's a smell in the air
like a prairie fire running through a Georgia goober-king's plantation.
"I goes back to where Emily is hitched, and she's weaving to and fro on
her legs and watering at the mouth until she just naturally can't
control her own riparian rights. She's done smelt that smell too.
"'Honey gal,' I says to her, 'it shore looks to me like you're due to
get your fullupances of the succulential ground-pea of the Sunny
Southland this day.'
"She's so grateful she tries to kiss me, but I ducks. All through her
turn she dribbles from the chin like a defective fire-hydrant, and I
can tell that she ain't got her mind on her business. She's too busy
thinking about peanuts. When she's got through and taken her bows, the
manager leaves the curtain up and Emily steps back behind a rope that a
couple of the hands stretches acrosst the stage, with me standing on one
side of her and Windy on the other; and then a couple more hands shoves
a wooden runway acrosst the orchestra rail down into one of the side
aisles; and then the house-manager invites Emily's young friends to
march up the runway and crosst over from left to right, handing out
their free-will offerings to her as they pass.
"During this pleasant scene, as the manager explains, Emily's dauntless
owner, the world-famous Professor Zendavesta Jordan, meaning Windy, will
lecture on the size, dimensions, habits and quaint peculiarities of this
wondrous creature. That last part suits Windy right down to the ground,
him being, as I told you before, the kind of party who's never so happy
as when he's started his mouth and gone away and left it running.
"For maybe a half a minute after the house-manager finishes his little
spiel, the kids sort of hang back. Then the rush starts; and take it
from me, little one, it's some considerable rush. Here they come up that
runway--tiny tots in blue, and tiny tots in red, and tiny tots in white;
tiny tots with their parents, guardians or nurses, and tiny tots
without none; tiny tots that are beginning to outgrow the tiny tottering
stage, and other varieties of tiny tots too numerous to mention. And
clutched in each and every tiny tot's chubby hand is a bag of peanuts,
five-cent size or ten-cent size, but mostly five-cent size. As Emily
sees 'em coming, she smiles until she looks in the face like one of
these here old-fashioned red-brick Colonial fireplaces, with an
overgrown black Christmas stocking hanging down from the centre of the
mantel.
"Up comes the first and foremost of the tiny tots. The Santy Claus
stocking reaches out and annexes the free-will offering. There's a faint
crunching sound; that there sack of peanuts has went to the bourne from
out which no peanut, up until that time, has ever been known to return;
and Emily is smiling benevolently and reaching out for the next sack.
And behind the second kid is the third kid, and behind the third kid
still more kids, and as far as the human eye can reach, there ain't
nothing on the horizon of that show-shop but just kids--kids and
peanuts.
"It certainly was a beauteous spectacle to behold so many of the dear
little ones advancing up that runway with peanuts. To myself I says: 'I
guess I'm a bad little suggester, eh, what? Here's Emily getting all
this free provender and Windy talking his fool head off and the house
getting all this advertising and none of us out a cent for any part of
it.'
"In about ten minutes, though, I'm struck by the fact that Emily's
original outburst of enthusiasm appears slightly on the wane. It seems
to me she ain't reaching out for the free-will offerings with quite so
much eagersomeness as she was displaying a spell back. Also I takes
notice that the wrinkles in her tum-tum are filling out so that she's
beginning to lose some of that deflated or punctured look so common
amongst bulls.
"Still, I don't have no apprehensions, but thinks to myself that any
bull which can eat half a ton of hay for breakfast certainly is
competent to take in a couple of wagon-loads of peanuts for five o'clock
tea. Even at that I figgers that it won't do no harm to coach Emily
along a little.
"'Go to it, baby mine,' I says to her. 'You ain't hardly started. Here's
a chance,' I says, 'to establish a new world's record for peanuts.'
"That remark appears to spur her up for a minute or so, but something
seems to keep on warning me that her heart ain't in the work to the
extent it has been. Windy don't see nothing out of the way, he being
congenially engaged in shooting off his face, but I'm more or less
concerned by certain mighty significant facts. For one thing, Emily
ain't eatin' sacks and all any more; she's emptying the peanuts out and
throwing the paper bags aside. Likewise her work ain't clean and smooth
like it was. Her underlip is swinging down, and she's beginning to
drool loose goobers off the lower end of it, and her low but intelligent
forehead is all furrowed up as if with deep thought.
"Observing all of which, I says to myself, I says: 'If ever Emily should
start to cramp, the world's cramping record is also in a fair way to be
busted this afternoon. I certainly do hope,' I says, 'that Emily don't
go and get herself overextended.'
"You see, I'm trusting for the best, because I realises that it wouldn't
do to call off the reception right in the middle of it on account of the
disappointment amongst the tiny tots that ain't passed in review yet and
the general ill-feeling that's sure to follow.
"I should say about two hundred tiny tots have gone by, with maybe five
hundred more still in line waiting their turn, when there halts in front
of Emily a fancy-dressed tiny tot which he must've been the favourite
tiny tot of the richest man in town, because he's holding in his hands a
bag of peanuts fully a foot deep. It couldn't of cost a cent less'n half
a dollar, that bag. Emily reaches for the contribution, fondles it for a
second or two and starts to upend it down her throat; and then with a
low, sad, hopeless cry she drops it on the stage and sort of shrugs her
front legs forward and stands there with her head bent and her ears
twitching same as if she's listening for something that's still a long
ways off but coming closter fast. And at that precise instant I sees the
first cramp start from behind her right-hand shoulder-blade and begin
to work south. Say, it was just like being present at the birth of an
earthquake.
"Moving slow and deliberate, Emily turns around in her tracks, shivering
all over, and then I sees the cramp ripple along until it reaches her
cargo-hold and strikes inward. It lifts all four of her feet clean off
the floor, and when she comes down again, she comes down travelling.
There's some scenery in her way, and some furniture and props and one
thing and other, but she don't trouble to go round 'em. She goes through
'em, as being a more simple and direct way, and a minute later she steps
out through the stage entrance into the crowded marts of trade with half
of a centre door fancy hung around her neck. Me and Windy is trailing
along, urging her to be ca'm but keeping at a reasonably safe distance
while doing so. Behind us as we comes forth we can hear the voices of
many tiny tots upraised in skeered cries.
"Being a Saturday afternoon, the business section is fairly well crowded
with people, and I suppose it's only natural that the unexpected
appearance upon the main street of the largest bull in captivity,
wearing part of a cottage set for a collar and making sounds through her
snout like a switch-engine in distress, should cause some surprised
comment amongst the populace. In fact, I should say the surprised
comment might of been heard for fully half a mile away.
"Emily hesitates as she reaches the sidewalk, as though she ain't
decided yet in her own mind just where she'll go, and then her agonised
eye falls on all them peanut-roasters standing in a double row alongside
the curbings on both sides of the street. The Italian and Greek gents
who owns 'em are already departing hence in a hurried manner, but
they've left their outfits behind, and right away it's made plain to me
by her actions that Emily regards the sight as a part of a general
conspiracy to feed her some peanuts when she already has more peanuts
than what she really required for personal use. She reaches out for the
first peanut-machine in the row, curls her trunk around it and slams it
against a brick wall so hard that it immediately begins to look
something like a flivver car which has been in a severe collision and
something like a tin accordion that's had hard treatment from a careless
owner. With this for a beginning, Emily starts in to get real rough with
them roasters. For about three minutes it's rainin' hot charcoal and hot
peanuts and wooden wheels and metal cranks and sheet-iron drums all over
that part of the fair city.
"Having put the enemy's batteries out of commission, Emily now swings
around and heads back in the opposite direction with everybody giving
her plenty of room. I heard afterward that some citizens went miles out
of their way in order to give her room. Emily's snout is aimed straight
up as though she's craving air, and her tail is standing straight out
behind, stiff as a poker except that about every few seconds a painful
quiver runs through it from the end that's nearest Emily to the end
that's furtherest away from her. Windy is hoofing it along about fifty
feet back of her, uttering soothing remarks and entreating her to listen
to reason, and I'm trailing Windy; but for oncet Emily don't hearken
none to her master's voice.
"Out of the tail of my eye I see a fat lady start to faint, and when
she's right in the middle of the faint, change her mind about it and do
a back flip into a plumber's shop, the purtiest you ever seen. I see a
policeman dodge out from behind a lamp-post as Emily approaches, and
reach for his gun. I yells to him not to shoot, but it's unnecessary
advice, because he's only chucking his hardware away so's to lighten him
up for a couple of hundred yards of straightaway sprinting. I see Emily
make a side-swipe with her nozzle at a stout gent who's in the act of
climbing a telegraph-pole hand over hand. She misses the seat of his
pants by a fraction of an inch, and as he reaches the first cross-arm
out of her reach, and drapes his form acrosst it, the reason for her
sudden animosity towards him is explained. A glass jar falls out of one
of his hip pockets and is dashed to fragments on the cruel bricks far
below, and its contents is then seen to be peanut butter.
"I sees these things as if in a troubled dream, and then, all of a
sudden, me and Emily are all alone in a deserted city. Exceptin' for us
two, there ain't a soul in sight nowheres. Even Windy has mysteriously
vanished. And now Emily, in passing along, happens to look inside a
fruitstore, and through the window her unhappy glance rests upon a bin
full of peanuts. So she just presses her face against the pane like
_Little Mary_ in the po'm, and at that the entire front end of that
establishment seems to give away in a very simultaneous manner, and
Emily reaches in through the orifices and plucks out the contents of
that there store, including stock, fixtures and good will, and throws
'em backward over her shoulder in a petulant and hurried way. But I
takes notice that she throws the bin of peanuts much farther than the
grapefruit or the pineapples or the glass show-cases containing the
stick candy. The proprietor must of been down in the cellar at the
moment, else I judge she'd of fetched him forth too.
"Thus we continues on our way, me and Emily, in the midst of a vast but
boisterous solitude,--for while we can't see the inhabitants, we can
hear 'em,--until we arrive at the foot of Main Street, and there we
beholds the railroad freight-depot looming before us. I can tell that
Emily is wishful to pass through this structure. There ain't no opening
on the nigh side of it, but that don't hinder Emily none. She gives one
heave with her shoulders and makes a door and passes on in and out again
on the far side by the same methods. I arrives around the end of the
shed just in time to see her slide down a steep grade through somebody's
truck-garden and sink down upon her heaving flank in a little hollow. As
I halts upon the brow of the hill, she looks up at me very reproachful,
and I can see that her prevalent complexion is beginning to turn awful
wan and pale. Son, take it from me, when a full-grown she-bull gets wan,
she's probably the wannest thing there is in the world.
"'Stand back, Scandalous,' she moans to me in bull-language. 'I don't
bear you no grudge,--it was a mistake in judgment on the part of all of
us,--but stand back and give me room. Up till this time,' she says,
'I've been po'rly, but something seems to tell me that now I'm about to
be what you might call real indisposed.'
"Which she certainly was.
"So, after a while, a part of the police force come along, stepping slow
and cautious, and they halts themselves in the protecting shadows of the
freight-shed or what's left of it, and they beckon me to come near 'em,
and when I responds, they tell me I'm under arrest for inciting riots
and disturbances and desecration of property and various other crimes
and misdemeanours. I suggests to 'em that if they're really craving to
arrest anybody, they should oughter begin with Emily, but they don't
fall in with the idea. They marches me up to the police-station, looking
over their shoulders at frequent intervals to be sure the anguished
Emily ain't coming too, and when we get there, I find Windy in the act
of being forcibly detained in the front office.
"Immediately after I arrived, the payoff started and continued unabated
for quite a period of time. First we settled in full with the late
proprietors of them defunct peanut-roasting machines; and then the owner
of the wrecked fruitstore, and the man that owned the opera-house, and
the stout lady who'd fainted from the waist up but was now entirely
recovered, and the fleshy gent who'd climbed the telegraph-pole, and the
railroad agent and some several hundred others who had claims for
property damage or mental anguish or shockages to their nervous systems
or shortage of breath or loss of trade or other injuries--all these were
in line, waiting.
"We was reduced to a case ten-spot before the depot agent, who came
last, lined up for his'n; but he took one good look and said he wouldn't
be a hog about it--we could keep that ten-specker, and he'd be satisfied
just to take over our private car in consideration of the loss inflicted
by Emily to his freight-shed. I was trying to tell him how much we
appreciated his kindness, but the chief of police wouldn't let me
finish--said he couldn't permit that kind of language to be used in a
police-station, said it might corrupt the morals of some of his young
policemen.
"So everything passed off very pleasant and satisfactory at the
police-station, but Emily spent the evening and the ensuing night right
where she was, voicing her regrets at frequent intervals. Along toward
morning she felt easier, although sadly depleted in general appearance,
and about daylight her and Windy bid me good-by and went off
acrosst-country afoot, aiming to catch up with Ringbold Brothers'
circus, which was reported to be operating somewhere in that vicinity.
As for me, I'd had enough for the time being of the refined amusement
business. I took my half of that lone sawbuck which was all that was
left to us from our frittered and dissipated fortunes, and I started
east, travelling second class and living very frugally on the way. And
that was about all that happened, worthy of note, with the exception of
a violent personal dispute occurring between me and a train-butch coming
out of Ashtabula."
"What was the cause?" I asked as Scandalous stood up and smoothed down
his waistcoat.
"I had just one thin dime left," said Scandalous, "and I explained my
predicament to the butch, saying as how I wanted what was the most
filling thing he had for the price--and he offered me a sack of
peanuts!"
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors corrected.
Inconsistent hyphenation was retained where a majority
consensus could not be ascertained.
Page vii, "wrs" changed to "was" (Second was April)
Page 88, "noisely" changed to "noisily" (noisily up too)