THE TOUGH CUSTOMER
Well, we all had a good time at dinner, and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar made a
speech and gave Jibby Jones the rod and reel, and Jibby made us laugh by
saying we mustn’t blame him for winning the prize, because it wasn’t his
fault he had an extra good nose; he said it was his Grandfather
Parmenter’s fault, that he had inherited the nose from. Then Wampus’s
Uncle Oscar said that it was all right to say “nose,” but that the kind
of “nose” Jibby used was brains, and that--on the river or off the
river--the fellow that had brains and used them always stood the best
chance of winning.
So we ate fried fish until we couldn’t eat any more, and then we sat
around outside until bedtime, and I tied Rover to one of the posts under
our cottage, and we all went home and to bed.
Maybe I had eaten too much fried fish. Anyway, I lay awake awhile and
heard Orpheus Cadwallader waddling past the house, going his rounds to
see that everything was all right, and I heard Rover get up and walk to
the end of his rope and wag his tail at Orpheus. His tail thumped
against one of the posts, and I knew he was wagging it.
A little while later, Rover began to howl, and he is one of the loudest
howlers in the world, I guess. The moon was one of the things he was
fondest of howling at; he seemed to think it was hung in the sky as an
insult to dogs. Whenever there was a moon and Rover saw it, he howled.
And the other thing that made him howl was being tied up. He would stand
being tied up for an hour or so, because he expected I would come and
untie him, but, if he was tied for much longer than an hour, he felt
hurt and miserable and neglected, and he would begin to howl. He would
begin with an “Arr-oo------” and hang on to the “oo” until it quivered
and trembled, and everybody within a mile wondered if it was ever going
to stop, and got nervous, and tossed in bed, and swore. And then Rover
would take another breath and begin another “Arr-oo------” longer and
louder than ever. And keep it up all night, unless somebody went and
untied him.
The reason I tied Rover that night was because he is a wandering dog. He
likes to explore. And what he likes to explore for is dead fish, mostly,
and the deader the better. If you didn’t tie him up at night, he would
wander off until he found a dead fish, and then he would roll in it. The
deader the fish was, the better he liked it; he thought it was
perfumery, I guess. He would wander for miles around our island, and
even swim across the slough to Oak Island and wander there, hunting a
dead fish to perfume himself with. And he was such an affectionate and
loving dog, and so proud of himself when he was all perfumed up, that
mother and the rest of us just hated him when he was that way.
If I had known Rover was coming up that day, I would have gone around
the shore of our island and the shore of Oak Island and got rid of all
the dead fish, but Rover’s coming was a surprise, and we had had the
fishing-prize contest that day, so all there was to do was to tie him up
and let him howl. His howling was pretty bad, but it wasn’t as bad as
dead fish, which is about the worst thing there is.
Well, after Orpheus Cadwallader passed our cottage again, going back, I
turned over on my stomach and hoped I’d go to sleep, and I expected
Rover would have a fine all-night howl, but all of a sudden he stopped
howling and began to bark. It was his angry “Woof! woof!” bark, with a
mean snarl at the end, which meant somebody was around who had no
business to be around.
I sat up in bed, and I could feel the old cottage joggle as Rover jerked
at his rope, and then, suddenly, the rope broke and off Rover went,
barking to beat the band, full tilt toward the slough back of our
cottages. About halfway there, I should judge, he came up with what had
set him to barking. I heard a rough voice say, “Get away from here! Get
away from here!” and a club thumping on Rover’s back, and more barking,
and swearing, and then Rover yipped, and began to scream--if you can
call it that--the way a dog does when it is hurt, or has its paw run
over by a wagon, or breaks a toe.
In a second I was out of bed and getting into my clothes, and I heard
Rover come yipping and whining back toward the cottage. I did not have
many clothes to put on, and in a couple of seconds I was downstairs, and
by the time I was out there and Rover was whining at my feet, Wampus and
his Uncle Oscar and Skippy and Tad and Jibby were out there, too, and we
heard Orph Cadwallader coming running as fast as such a fat man could.
Orph had his shotgun, and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar had a pistol, and Jibby
had brought along an electric torch. We looked at Rover’s foot and saw
it was hurt pretty bad, and that one of his ears was cut where it had
been hit, and we were all pretty mad. Nobody had a right to be on our
island but us, and most of the time nobody was there but the women and
us kids and Orph Cadwallader, and tramps had no business there. They
were too dangerous.
So Wampus’s Uncle Oscar took the electric torch from Jibby and said:
“You boys stay back here; this is a man’s job. Orph and I will attend to
this!”
So the five of us, Jibby and Wampus and Tad and Skippy and I, we went
along with Orph and Wampus’s uncle. I held the piece of rope that was
tied around Rover’s neck, and he limped along, whining. We made quite a
procession, and when we looked back we could see that all the cottages
were lighted up. Everybody was out of bed. You couldn’t expect us to
stay back when there was so much excitement.
We went through the woods and, before we had gone very far, the light
from the electric torch picked out two men who were standing waist-deep
in the stinging nettles under the trees, waiting for us to come up to
them. It was easy to guess that they had started away from where Rover
had met them, and that they had then heard us and stopped. And that was
not like river-rats or tramps who had come to snoop around and steal
what they could and then get away again. That kind come in skiffs, and,
if you see them, they scoot for their skiffs and row away as fast as
they can. But these men waited for us.
“What’s this mean? What you doing on this island? What you hurt this dog
for?” Wampus’s Uncle Oscar asked when we came up to the men.
They were river-rats, all right, or tramps, or toughs of some kind; you
could tell that by their looks. And one was the toughest-looking
customer I ever did see! He had only one eye and that was an ugly
one--keen and wicked-looking. His right hand had only two fingers and a
thumb, and there were three deep scars across his face. He had a regular
pirate’s bunch of black whiskers, and all he needed was a red sash with
a couple of pistols stuck in it, and a cutlass, and a red handkerchief
tied around his head, and a pair of brass rings in his ears, to look
like a real pirate. And when he moved out from the nettles we saw he had
one wooden leg--scarred and chipped as if he had used it to break rocks.
His mate, the other man, was smaller and meaner-looking, if anybody
could look meaner. He looked like a rat--sneaky-looking. We called him
the Rat when we talked about him afterward. So when Wampus’s uncle
shouted at them, they looked at us.
“That’s all right, boss; that’s all right!” the Tough Customer said. “No
harm meant. Pardner and I don’t mean no harm. We didn’t know anybody was
on this island. We wouldn’t do no harm.”
“What did you try to kill that dog for, then?” Wampus’s uncle asked, and
no fooling, either.
“Well, he come at us, boss,” the Tough Customer said. “We was just
walking through here and the dog come at us. So I took a swipe at him
with a club. Anybody would, boss, when a dog comes at him that way.”
“Well, you look here!” Wampus’s uncle said. “This is a private island,
owned by folks, and nobody is allowed on it. And no nonsense about it,
either. You get off, and you stay off, or you’re liable to get shot, or
worse. You get off this island now, and you stay off it hereafter.”
“Yes, sure, boss!” the Tough Customer said. “We’ll do that; we don’t
mean no harm; we wouldn’t touch anything, anyhow.”
And that might have been all right, but just then something went
“Arr-awk--arr-awk!”--and anybody would have known it was a chicken.
Orpheus Cadwallader made about five steps, and grabbed the Rat, and
stuck his hand into the Rat’s shirt, and, sure enough, in the back of
the Rat’s shirt was one of Orpheus’s own chickens. It gave a flop of its
wings and scooted for its coop, making big flying leaps and scolding as
it went. So Orph made a swipe at the Rat with the end of his gun, but
the Rat dodged, and then turned and ran as hard as his legs could carry
him. Orph let fly with both barrels of his shotgun, but there were too
many trees; he did not even pepper the Rat.
“So!” said Wampus’s uncle. “That’s the idea, is it? Well, we’ll just see
you off the island right here and now. Where’s your boat?”
The Tough Customer looked at the pistol Wampus’s uncle carried, and I
guess he decided that Wampus’s uncle wouldn’t shoot a man in the back,
not unless he ran, anyway, and he turned and stumped off toward the bank
of the slough until he came to the path, and then he turned down the
path a hundred yards, and all of us following him.
There was a place there where the arum and pickerel weed came close to
the shore, but the water was two or three feet deep, and tied to a tree
there was a shanty-boat--one of the smallest and worst old shanty-boats
I ever saw. It did not look over ten feet long, and it wasn’t more than
five feet wide, with not a window in it, and the deck not over two feet
wide. The boards of which it was made were thin and old and warped, and
the only power was a ten-foot pole with a board nailed on one end.
When he came to the shanty-boat, the Tough Customer stopped to untie his
shore line and threw it aboard. He did not say another word. He took his
ten-foot pole from the roof of the shanty-boat and braced it against the
shore and pushed, and the boat slithered among the weeds and glided out
from the shore.
We stood and watched until the shanty-boat was out in the middle of the
slough, where the current caught it and swung it slowly downstream. Then
the Tough Customer rested and looked toward us, and swore at us strong
and steady for a long while, and Wampus’s uncle said it was all over,
and we went home. I looked Rover’s paw and ear over, and saw they were
not so bad, so I tied him up again and went to bed. Of course, mother
asked all about what had happened, and said she had been frightened when
she heard the gunshots, but she was glad everything was all right and
the tramps were off the island.
The next morning there was only one thing for me to do if I wanted to
have mother let me keep Rover on the Island, and that was to explore for
dead fish and get them out of the way. So we all went--all five of us
boys. We went down the chute side of the island first, but we didn’t
find a single dead fish, because all the folks know about Rover, and
they don’t leave any dead dogfish or other kinds on shore when they
catch them. So we got as far as the end of the island, downstream, and
started along up the slough side of the island, and all of a sudden
Wampus stopped short.
“Look there,” he said, bending down and pointing. “There’s that Tough
Customer’s shanty-boat. He didn’t quit the island. He only floated down
and landed lower down.”
We all bent low and saw the shanty-boat. It was in a sort of small cove,
where the willows must have hid it from the slough, and I don’t suppose
anybody could have seen it from the island except from the very spot
where we were.
“Come on!” I whispered. “Let’s go and get Orph and your Uncle Oscar, and
tell them.”
But Jibby Jones put out a hand and held me back.
“This doesn’t look right,” he said, shaking his head. “This looks evil
to me. Those men were told to get off the island, and they said they
would get off the island, and there’s no honest reason why they should
be on the island. All they had to do when they were out in the slough
last night was to let their shanty-boat drift and they would have gone
on down past here. They must mean some devilment on the island, and we
ought to know what it is.”
Well, that seemed reasonable, and Jibby said what we must do. We must
crawl up through the willows and investigate. The only trouble was
Rover. I couldn’t tie him to a tree because he would howl, and, if I
dragged him through the willows, he would see the shanty-boat and bark,
and, if I turned him loose, he would probably jump all around and go to
the shanty-boat and scare the Tough Customer and the Rat into fits. But
Jibby fixed that. He said the thing for me to do was to take Rover and
go back and get Orph Cadwallader and Wampus’s uncle. So I went.
Jibby and the boys crawled as close to the shanty-boat as they could,
Indian fashion, and lay in the willows, and they were in luck, because
the Tough Customer and the Rat were talking.
“No, sir!” the Tough Customer was saying. “I don’t stay on any island
where caretakers go around with shotguns, shooting them off any time of
the day or night.”
“I don’t see that you’ve got any kick to make about shotguns,” the Rat
said, in his whining voice. “I’m the one that got shot at.”
“I don’t care who got shot at,” the Tough Customer said. “Four or five
barrels of cider wouldn’t pay me for getting my hide full of birdshot,
not if it was the hardest cider on earth. And you don’t know that they
hid the cider on this island--you only think so. It may be on any island
in the whole river. You just forget that cider, pardner, and let’s get
to hunting that treasure I know about.”
“Well, it ain’t playing me square,” the Rat whined. “A bargain is a
bargain, and the bargain was that, if I paid my money and bought this
shanty-boat, you would help me find that cider first, and help me get
away with it and sell it. And I as good as know it was on this island
them barrels of cider was hid. And, if so, on this island is where we
want to be.”
“And get shot full of birdshot or, maybe, buckshot,” sneered the Tough
Customer. “Why, man alive! just now after these island folks is all
roused up is no time to hunt around on this island for a few pesky
barrels of cider. They’ll all be carrying shotguns for the next month or
so. No, sir! Now is the time to stay away from this island. We can come
back later on if you want to, but now is the time to be hunting that
land pirate’s treasure.”
“You don’t know how much it is, and you don’t know where it is, and you
don’t even know if there is any,” complained the Rat.
“All right!” said the Tough Customer. “Maybe I know more than you think
I do. Maybe I ain’t told you all I know yet. Maybe I thought I would
just wait and see if you was a reasonable cuss and willing to do the
wise thing, or if you was a sort of idiot that would want to hang around
an island and get shot full of buckshot and bullets for a few barrels of
no-account cider. How about that?”
“’Tain’t right! ’Tain’t right!” the Rat complained. “Pardners ought to
be fair and square and tell all. Next thing you’ll be saying you won’t
split half and half.”
“Half and half was what I said, and half and half holds good,” said the
Tough Customer. “And this will, maybe, be a big thing. I’ll play fair
with you if you play fair with me. Will you play fair? Hope to die and
may your throat be cut, if you don’t?”
“Hope to die and may my throat be cut if I don’t!” said the Rat. “Fair
and square, or may the dogs eat us!”
“Now, that’s talking,” said the Tough Customer. “Look here, now!”
They heard him feeling around among the boards of the shanty-boat,
inside and nearest the corner to the boys.
“I got a map of the whole business,” the Tough Customer said. “You
didn’t know that, did you? It’s been right there in that split board
back of the lantern ever since I come aboard this boat. And you would
never have seen it if you hadn’t played fair and square with me, you
bet! Gimme that board there to spread it out on.”
They heard the Rat move around and then the Tough Customer spoke again.
“When I was down there in Helena, like I told you,” he said, “they stuck
me in jail for ten days for being a vagrant, and there was a fellow in
my cell with me, see? A red-headed fellow with a scar over one eye. And
he shines up to me about the second day, and says I’m the sort of man
he’s looking for. He says he knows where pirate’s treasure is, and he’s
getting up a gang to go and get it. Only, he’s in jail for three months
for stealing a hog, you understand? And he needs somebody that’s going
to be free soon, to make some preparations and one thing and another. So
he shows me this map that he stole off an old nigger down there.”
[Illustration: a map]
“This map?” said the Rat.
“This map, which was drawed by the land pirate’s own brother to show
where the treasure was,” said the Tough Customer. “So I said I’d go in
with him, and he explained all he knew about the map, and the night
before I was turned loose I stole the map off him, and I dropped it
through the window. And the next day, when I was turned loose, I went
around under the window and picked up the map and beat it for up here as
fast as I could. Because this here word on the back of the map is the
key word. ‘Riverbank,’ see? That’s the place to go to, to start out
from, to find the treasure.”
“Well, you couldn’t be much nearer,” said the Rat.
“All right! And here’s the map itself,” said the Tough Customer. “You
say you know places hereabouts; what do you make of it?”
“Let me get a good look at it,” said the Rat. “Why, pshaw! It looks
plain enough! Here’s the river, because it is marked ‘river.’ And this
bent business is a slough coming into the river. And this crooked line
would be a creek emptying into the slough.”
“That’s how I’d make it out,” said the Tough Customer.
“Sure!” said the Rat. “And these lines mean two roads crossing each
other, don’t they? And this is a house or barn in the lot at the
crossroads. And here’s a cross-mark--this X here. That ought to be where
the treasure is buried, hey?”
“Well, now, would it be?” asked the Tough Customer. “How about this
arrow? This arrow points right to where the road crosses the creek.
Don’t that mean that that is where the treasure is? Suppose there is a
bridge there, or a culvert. Mightn’t the money be hid there? Well, we
could look both places. How about this ‘23 miles’ and ‘Greenland’?”
“Greenland? Sure enough, that says Greenland!” said the Rat, all
excited. “Why, pardner, this is the easiest thing you ever saw! I know
where this Greenland is--Greenland is a crossroads store up the river
four or five miles from here, over on the Illinois side, just on top of
the hills. Used to be quite a village, years ago, but it’s only a store
and post-office now. Why, I can take you right there, pardner. And
there’s a creek there, too, crosses the road. Only--
“Greenland ain’t any 23 miles back from the slough, or from the river,
either. It’s only--say!”
The boys heard him slap his knee.
“Why, shucks!” he exclaimed. “That ain’t 23 miles. That’s meant for
two-three miles. Two _or_ three miles. And that’s about what this
Greenland store is back from the river.”
He let his voice fall into a mysterious whisper.
“Why, pardner,” he whispered, “this is as easy as falling off a log! We
can walk right to the spot. And that arrow don’t point to no treasure,
either. That arrow is like any other arrow on a map--it points north. It
was put there to show where north is.”
“But that would make the Mississippi River flow from east to west,”
objected the Tough Customer.
“And that’s why I say so!” declared the Rat. “Because it does flow right
spang from east to west, all the way from Derlingport to
Riverbank--thirty good miles! If that map showed a river flowing from
north to south, it would be wrong, because the Mississippi don’t flow
that way at Greenland store. You bet! All we’ve got to do is to go right
to the bank of the creek where that cross-mark is, and if that treasure
is there, we’ll find her!”
“So you’ll put off cider-hunting awhile, I guess,” said the Tough
Customer. “Gimme the map; I’ll put it back where I keep it.”
He shuffled around inside the boat, putting the map back.
“Well, now,” the Rat said, “as to putting off hunting that cider, it
seems to me, seeing we’re right here on the island, we might take a day
or two and--”
What he would have said next nobody ever knew, for here came Orph
Cadwallader and Wampus’s Uncle Oscar and Rover and I, and Orph had his
gun and an axe, and Uncle Oscar had his pistol and an axe, and they were
mad! They were mighty mad! Orph handed me his gun and up with his axe
and chopped the shore line of the shanty-boat, and swung the axe and
brought it down whang against the end of the boat. You should have seen
the boards fly! In three blows Orph had the whole end of that
shanty-boat knocked to splinters, and the Tough Customer and the Rat
were out into the water, shouting and swearing and pulling the boat
through the willows into the slough, to try to save some of it, anyway,
and Orph stooped and picked up slabs of wet driftwood and slammed them
at the two.
When the shanty-boat was out past the willow fringe, the Tough Customer
swung aboard and grabbed his pole and began poling for dear life,
shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” and then Orph slung one last slab
at them and missed by ten feet, and about all that was left of the
excitement was Rover, trying to bark his head off.
“That’s the end of _them_!” Orph said. “That’ll be the last we ever see
of those two.”
He took his gun and he and Uncle Oscar started down toward the end of
the island to watch the shanty-boat float by, and we all started down
there with them. But when Jibby had gone a few yards, he stopped short.
Then he turned back and worked his way through the willows to where the
shanty-boat had been. He picked up a broken board and bent over the
water and fished something white out from among the splinters of
houseboat.
“What is it?” I asked, and he opened it and showed me.
It was the map of the pirate’s treasure place.