THE SMART ALECK
Cap'n Buck Fluter, holding his watch in the approved conductor's grip,
glanced back and forth the short length of the four-five accommodation
and raised his free hand in warning:
"All aboard!"
From almost above his head it came:
"If you can't get a board get a scantlin'!"
Clustered at the White or shady end of the station, the sovereign
Caucasians of Swango rocked up against one another in the unbridled
excess of their merriment. Farther away, at the Coloured or sunny end of
the platform, the assembled representatives of the African population
guffawed loudly, though respectfully. To almost any one having the gift
of spontaneous repartee it might have occurred to suggest the
advisability of getting a plank provided you could not get a board. It
took Gash Tuttle to think up scantling.
The humourist folded his elbows on the ledge of the window and leaned
his head and shoulders out of the car, considering his people
whimsically, yet benignantly. He wore attire suitable for travelling--a
dented-in grey felt hat, adhering perilously to the rearmost slope of
his scalp; a mail-order suit of light tan, with slashed seams and rows
of buttons extending up the sleeves almost to the elbows; a
hard-surfaced tie of pale blue satin; a lavender shirt, agreeably
relieved by pink longitudinal stripings.
Except his eyes, which rather protruded, and his front teeth, which
undoubtedly projected, all his features were in a state of active
retreat--only, his nose retreated one way and his chin the other. The
assurance of a popular idol who knows no rival was in his pose and in
his poise. Alexander the Great had that look--if we may credit the
likenesses of him still extant--and Napoleon Bonaparte had it, and David
Garrick, to quote a few conspicuous examples.
Alone, of all those within hearing, Cap'n Buck Fluter did not laugh.
Indeed, he did not even grin.
"All right, black boy," he said. "Let's go from here!"
The porter snatched up the wooden box that rested on the earth, flung it
on the car platform and projected his person nimbly after it. Cap'n Buck
swung himself up the step with one hand on the rail. The engine spat out
a mouthful of hot steam and the wheels began to turn.
"Good-by, my honeys, 'cause I'm gone!" called out Mr. Tuttle, and he
waved a fawn-coloured arm in adieu to his courtiers, black and white.
"I'm a-goin' many and a-many a mile from you. Don't take in no bad money
while your popper's away."
The station agent, in black calico sleeve-protectors and celluloid
eyeshade, stretched the upper half of his body out the cubby-hole that
served him for an office.
"Oh, you Gash!" he called. "Give my love to all the ladies."
The two groups on the platform waited, all expectant for the retort.
Instantly it sped back to them, above the clacking voice of the train:
"That's all you ever would give 'em, ain't it?"
Mr. Gip Dismukes, who kept the livery stable, slapped Mr. Gene Brothers,
who drove the bus, a resounding slap on the back.
"Ain't he jest ez quick ez a flash?" he demanded of the company
generally.
The station agent withdrew himself inside his sanctum, his sides heaving
to his mirthful emotions. He had drawn a fire acknowledged to be deadly
at any range, but he was satisfied. The laugh was worth the wound.
Through the favoured section traversed by the common carrier to whose
care genius incarnate had just committed his precious person there are
two kinds of towns--bus towns and non-bus towns. A bus town lies at an
appreciable distance from the railroad, usually with a hill
intervening, and a bus, which is painted yellow, plies between town and
station. But a non-bus town is a town that has for its civic equator the
tracks themselves. The station forms one angle of the public square;
and, within plain sight and easy walking reach, the post office and at
least two general stores stand; and handily near by is a one-story bank
built of a stucco composition purporting to represent granite, thus
signifying solidity and impregnability; and a two-story hotel, white,
with green blinds, and porches running all the way across the front;
also hitch rails; a livery stable; and a Masonic Hall.
Swango belonged to the former category. It was over the hill, a hot and
dusty eighth of a mile away. So, having watched the departing four-five
accommodation until it diminished to a smudgy dot where the V of the
rails melted together and finally vanished, the assembled Swangoans
settled back in postures of ease to wait for the up train due at
three-eight, but reported two hours and thirty minutes late. There would
still be ample time after it came and went to get home for supper.
The contemptuous travelling man who once said that only three things
ever happened in Swango--morning, afternoon and night--perpetrated a
libel, for he wilfully omitted mention of three other daily events: the
cannon-ball, tearing through without stopping in the early forenoon; the
three-eight up; and the four-five down.
So they sat and waited; but a spirit of depression, almost of sadness,
affected one and all. It was as though a beaming light had gone out of
their lives. Ginger Marable, porter and runner of the Mansard House,
voiced the common sentiment of both races as he lolled on a baggage
truck in the sunshine, with his cap of authority, crowned by a lettered
tin diadem, shoved far back upon his woolly skull.
"Dat Mistah Gashney Tuttle he sho is a quick ketcher," stated Ginger
with a soft chuckle. "W'ite an' black--we suttinly will miss Mistah
Tuttle twell he gits back home ag'in."
Borne away from his loyal subjects to the pulsing accompaniment of the
iron horse's snorted breath, the subject of this commentary extended
himself on his red plush seat and considered his fellow travellers with
a view to honing his agile fancy on the whetstones of their duller
mentalities. On the whole, they promised but poor sport. Immediately in
front of him sat a bride and groom, readily recognisable at a glance for
what they were--the bride in cream-coloured cashmere, with many ribbons;
the groom in stiff black diagonals, with braided seams, and a white lawn
tie. A red-faced man who looked as though he might be a deputy sheriff
from somewhere slept uneasily one seat in the rear. He had his shoes
off, revealing gray yarn socks. His mouth was ajar, and down in his
throat he snored screechily, like a planing mill. The youngest member
of a family group occupying two seats just across the aisle whimpered
a desire. Its mother rummaged in a shoebox containing, among other
delicacies, hard-boiled eggs, salt and pepper mixed and enveloped in
a paper squill, blueberry pie, leaking profusely, and watermelon-rind
preserves, and found what she sought--the lower half of a fried chicken
leg. Satisfied by this gift the infant ceased from fretful repining,
sucking contentedly at the meat end; and between sucks hammered
contentedly with the drumstick on the seat back and window ledge,
leaving lardy smears there in the dust.
Cap'n Buck--captain by virtue of having a regular passenger run--came
through the car, collecting tickets. At no time particularly long on
temper, he was decidedly short of it to-day. He was fifteen minutes
behind his schedule--no unusual thing--but the locomotive was
misbehaving. Likewise a difference of opinion had arisen over the proper
identity of a holder of mileage in the smoker. He halted alongside Gash
Tuttle, swaying on his legs to the roll and pitch of the car floor.
"Tickets?" he demanded crisply.
"Wee gates, Cap," answered the new passenger jovially. "How does your
copperosity seem to sagashuate this evenin'?"
"Where goin'?" said Fluter, ignoring the pleasantry. "I'm in a hurry.
What station?"
"Well," countered the irrepressible one, "what stations have you got?"
Cap'n Buck Fluter's cold eye turned meaningly toward the bell cord,
which dipped like a tired clothesline overhead, and he snapped two
fingers peevishly.
"Son," he said almost softly, "don't monkey with me. This here ain't my
day for foolin'!"
Favoured son of the high gods though he was, Gash Tuttle knew instantly
now that this was indeed no day for fooling. Cap'n Buck was not a large
man, but he had a way of growing to meet and match emergencies. He
handled the Sunday excursions, which was the acid test of a trainman's
grit. Coltish youths, alcoholically keened up or just naturally high
spirited, who got on his train looking for trouble nearly always got off
looking for a doctor. As regards persons wishful of stealing a ride,
they never tried to travel with Cap'n Buck Fluter oftener than once.
Frequently, for a period of time measurable by days or weeks, they were
in no fit state to be travelling with any one except a trained nurse.
Gash Tuttle quit his fooling. Without further ado--whatever an ado
is--he surrendered his ticket, receiving in exchange a white slip with
punchmarks in it, to wear in his hatband. Next came the train butcher
bearing chewing gum, purple plums in paper cornucopias, examples of the
light literature of the day, oranges which were overgreen, and bananas
which were overripe, as is the way with a train butcher's oranges and
bananas the continent over. In contrast with the conductor's dourness
the train butcher's mood was congenially inclined to persiflage.
After an exchange of spirited repartee, at which the train butcher by an
admiring shake of the head tacitly confessed himself worsted, our hero
purchased a paper-backed work entitled, "The Jolly Old Drummer's Private
Joke Book." This volume, according to the whispered confidences of the
seller, contained tales of so sprightly a character that even in sealed
covers it might be sent by mail only at the sender's peril; moreover,
the wink which punctuated this disclosure was in itself a promise of the
spicy entertainment to be derived from perusal thereof. The price at
present was but fifty cents; later it would go up to a dollar a copy;
this, then, was a special and extraordinary rate.
The train continued on its course--not hurriedly, but with reasonable
steadfastness and singleness of purpose. After much the same fashion the
sun went down. The bride repeatedly whisked cindery deposits off her
cashmered lap; the large-faced man, being awakened by one of his own
snores, put on his shoes and indulged in fine-cut tobacco, internally
applied; but the youngest passenger now slept all curled up in a moist
little bundle, showing an expanse of plump neck much mottled by
heat-rash, and clutching in one greased and gritted fist the denuded
shank-bone of a chicken with a frieze of gnawed tendons adhering to its
larger joint.
At intervals the train stopped at small way stations, bus or non-bus in
character as the case might be, to let somebody off or somebody on.
Cap'n Buck now made his trips carrying his lantern--the ornate
nickel-plated one that had been awarded to him in the voting contest for
the most popular trainman at the annual fair and bazaar of True Blue
Lodge of the Junior Order of American Mechanics. It had his proper
initials--J. J. F.--chased on its glass chimney in old English script,
very curlicue and ornamental. He carried it in the crook of his left
elbow with the handle round his biceps; and when he reached the end of
his run he would extinguish its flame, not by blowing it out but by a
quick, short, expert jerk of his arm. This is a trick all conductors
seek to acquire; some of them succeed.
Twilight, the stage manager of night, had stolen insidiously on the
scene, shortening up the backgrounds and blurring the perspectives; and
the principal character of this tale, straining his eyes over the fine
print, had reached the next to the last page of "The Jolly Old Drummer's
Private Joke Book" and was beginning to wonder why the postal
authorities should be so finicky in such matters and in a dim way to
wish he had his fifty cents back, when with a glad shriek of relief the
locomotive, having bumped over a succession of yard switches, drew up
under a long open shed alongside a dumpy brick structure. To avoid any
possible misunderstanding this building was labelled Union Depot in
large letters and at both ends.
Being the terminus of the division, it was the train's destination and
the destination of Mr. Tuttle. He possessed himself of an imitation
leather handbag and descended on solid earth with the assured manner of
a seasoned and experienced traveller. Doubtless because of the flurry
created by the train's arrival and the bustling about of other arrivals
his advent created no visible stir among the crowd at the terminal. At
least he noticed none. Still, these people had no way of knowing who he
was.
In order to get the Union Depot closer to the railroad it had been
necessary to place it some distance away from the heart of things; even
so, metropolitan evidences abounded. A Belt Line trolley car stood
stationary, awaiting passengers; a vociferous row of negro hackmen were
kept in their proper places by a uniformed policeman; and on the horizon
to the westward a yellow radiance glowed above an intervening comb of
spires and chimneys, showing where the inhabitants of the third largest
second-class city in the state made merry at carnival and street fair,
to celebrate the dedication and opening of their new Great White Way--a
Great White Way seven blocks long and spangled at sixty-foot intervals
with arc lights disposed in pairs on ornamental iron standards. Hence
radiance.
Turning westward, therefore, Mr. Tuttle found himself looking along a
circumscribed vista of one-story buildings with two-story fronts--that
is to say, each wooden front wall extended up ten or fifteen feet above
the peak of the sloping roof behind it, so that, viewed full-on, the
building would have the appearance of being a floor taller than it
really was. To add to the pleasing illusion certain of these
superstructures had windows painted elaborately on their slab surfaces;
but to one seeking a profile view the false work betrayed a razor-like
thinness, as patently flat and artificial as stage scenery.
Travellers from the Eastern seaboard have been known to gibe at this
transparent artifice. Even New York flat dwellers, coming direct from
apartment houses which are all marble foyers and gold-leaf elevator
grilles below and all dark cubby-holes and toy kitchens above, have been
known to gibe; which fact is here set forth merely to prove that a sense
of humour depends largely on the point of view.
To our Mr. Tuttle such deceits were but a part of the ordered
architectural plan of things, and they moved him not. What did interest
him was to note that the nearmost of these bogusly exalted buildings
displayed, above swinging twin doors, a cluster of lights and a sign
testifying that this was the First Chance Saloon. Without looking he
sensed that the reverse of that Janus-faced sign would advertise this
same establishment as being the Last Chance. He did not know about
Janus, but he did know about saloons that are handily adjacent to union
depots. Moreover, an inner consciousness advised him that after a dry
sixty-mile trip he thirsted amain. He took up his luggage and crossed
the road, and entered through the knee-high swinging doors.
There was a bar and a bar mirror behind it. The bar was decorated at
intervals with rectangles of fly paper, on the sticky surfaces of which
great numbers of flies were gummed fast in a perished or perishing
state; but before they became martyrs to the fad of sanitation these
victims had left their footprints thickly on the mirror and on the
fringes of coloured tissue paper that dangled from the ceiling. In a
front corner, against a window, was a lunch counter, flanked on one side
by stools and serving as a barricade for an oil stove and shelves of
cove oysters in cans, and hams and cheeses for slicing, and vinegar
cruets and pepper casters and salt cellars crusted with the saline
deposits of the years. A solitary patron was lounging against the bar in
earnest conversation with the barkeeper; but the presiding official of
the food-purveying department must have been absent on business or
pleasure, for of him there was no sign.
Gash Tuttle ordered a beer. The barkeeper filled a tall flagon with brew
drawn from the wood, wiped the clinging froth from its brim with a
spatulate tool of whittled cedar, and placed the drink before the
newcomer, who paid for it out of a silver dollar. Even as Mr. Tuttle
scooped in his change and buried the lower part of his face in the
circumference of the schooner he became aware that the other customer
had drawn nearer and was idly rattling a worn leather cup, within which
dice rapped against the sides like little bony ghosts uneasy to escape
from their cabinet at a séance.
The manipulator of the dice held a palm cupped over the mouth of the cup
to prevent their escape. He addressed the barkeeper:
"Flem," he said, "you're such a wisenheimer, I'll make you a
proposition: I'll shake three of these here dice out, and no matter whut
they roll I'll betcha I kin tell without lookin' whut the tops and
bottoms will come to--whut the spots'll add up to."
The other desisted from rinsing glassware in a pail beneath the bar.
"Which is that?" he inquired sceptically. "You kin tell beforehand whut
the top and bottom spots'll add up?"
"Ary time and every time!"
"And let me roll 'em myself?"
"And let you roll 'em yourself--let anybody roll 'em. I don't need to
touch 'em, even."
"How much'll you risk that you kin do that, Fox?" Roused greed was in
the speaker's tone.
"Oh, make it fur the drinks," said Fox--"jest fur the drinks. I ain't
aimin' to take your money away frum you. I got all the money I need."
For the first time he seemed to become aware of a third party and he
turned and let a friendly hand fall on the stranger's shoulder. "Tell
you whut, Flem, we'll make it drinks fur this gent too. Come on,
brother," he added; "you're in on this. It's my party if I lose, which
I won't, and ole Flem's party if he loses, which he shore will."
It was the warmth of his manner as much as the generosity of his
invitation that charmed Mr. Tuttle. The very smile of this man Fox
invited friendship; for it was a broad smile, rich in proteids and
butterfats. Likewise his personality was as attractively cordial as
his attire was striking and opulent.
"'Slide or slip, let 'er rip!'" said Mr. Tuttle, quoting the poetic
words of a philosopher of an earlier day.
"That's the talk!" said Fox genially. He pushed the dice box across the
bar. "Go to it, bo! Roll them bones! The figure is twenty-one!"
From the five cubes in the cup the barkeeper eliminated two. He agitated
the receptacle violently and then flirted out the three survivors on the
wood. They jostled and crocked against one another, rolled over and
stopped. Their uppermost faces showed an ace, a six and a five.
"Twelve!" said Flem.
"Twelve it is," echoed Fox.
"A dozen raw," confirmed Gash Tuttle, now thoroughly in the spirit of
it.
"All right, then," said Fox, flashing a beam of admiration toward the
humourist. "Now turn 'em over, Flem--turn 'em over careful."
Flem obeyed, displaying an ace, a deuce and a six.
"And nine more makes twenty-one in all!" chortled Fox triumphantly.
As though dazed, the barkeeper shook his head.
"Well, Foxey, ole pardner, you shore got me that time," he confessed
begrudgingly. "Whut'll it be, gents? Here, I reckin the cigars is on me
too, after that." From a glass-topped case at the end of the bar
alongside Gash Tuttle he produced a full box and extended it hospitably.
"The smokes is on the house--dip in, gents. Dip in. Try an Old Hickory;
them's pure Tampas--ten cents straight."
He drew the beers--large ones for the two, a small one for himself--and
raised his own glass to them.
"Here's to you and t'ward you!" he said.
"Ef I hadn't a-met you I wouldn't a-knowed you," shot back Gash Tuttle
with the lightning spontaneity of one whose wit moves in boltlike
brilliancy; and at that they both laughed loudly and, as though dazzled
by his flashes, bestowed on him the look that is ever the sweetest
tribute to the jester's talents.
The toast to a better acquaintance being quaffed and lights exchanged,
the still nonplussed Flem addressed the winners:
"Well, boys, I thought I knowed all there was to know about dice--poker
dice and crap dice too; but live and learn, as the feller says. Say,
Fox, put me on to that trick--it'll come in handy. I'll ketch Joe on it
when he gits back," and he nodded toward the lunch counter.
"You don't need to know no more'n you know about it already," expounded
Fox. "It's bound to come out that way."
"How is it bound to come out that way?"
"Why, Flem, it's jest plain arithmetic; mathematics--that's all. Always
the tops and bottoms of ary three dice come to twenty-one. Here, gimme
that cup and I'll prove it."
In rapid succession, three times, he shook the cubes out. It was indeed
as the wizard had said. No matter what the sequence, the complete tally
was ever the same--twenty-one.
"Now who'd 'a' thought it!" exclaimed Flem delightedly. "Say, a feller
could win a pile of dough workin' that trick! I'd 'a' fell fur some real
money myself."
"That's why I made it fur the drinks," said the magnanimous Fox. "I
wouldn't put it over on a friend--not for no amount; because it's a
sure-thing proposition. It jest naturally can't lose! I wouldn't 'a'
tried to skin this pardner here with it even if I'd 'a' thought I
could." And once more his hand fell in flattering camaraderie on a
fawn-coloured shoulder. "I know a regular guy that's likewise a wise guy
as soon as I see him. But with rank strangers it'd be plumb different.
The way I look at it, a stranger's money is anybody's money----"
He broke off abruptly as the doorhinges creaked. A tall, thin individual
wearing a cap, a squint and a cigarette, all on the same side of his
head, had entered. He stopped at the lunch counter as though desirous of
purchasing food.
"Sh-h! Listen!" Fox's subdued tones reached only the barkeeper and Mr.
Tuttle. "That feller looks like a mark to me. D'ye know him, Flem?"
"Never seen him before," whispered back Flem after a covert scrutiny of
the latest arrival.
"Fine!" commented Fox, speaking with rapidity, but still with low-toned
caution. "Jest to test it, let's see if that sucker'll fall. Here"--he
shoved the dice cup into Gash Turtle's grasp--"you be playin' with the
bones, sorter careless. You kin have the first bet, because I've already
took a likin' to you. Then, if he's willin' to go a second time, I'll
take him on fur a few simoleons." The arch plotter fell into an attitude
of elaborate indifference. "Go ahead, Flem; you toll him in."
Given a guarantee of winning, and who among us is not a born gamester?
Gash Tuttle's cheeks flushed with sporting blood as he grabbed for the
cup. All his corpuscles turned to red and white chips--red ones mostly.
As for the barkeeper, he beyond doubt had the making of a born
conspirator in him. He took the cue instantly.
"Sorry, friend," he called out, "but the grub works is closed down
temporary. Anything I kin do fur you?"
"Well," said the stranger, edging over, "I did want a fried-aig
sandwich, but I might change my mind. Got any cold lager on tap?"
"Join us," invited Fox; "we're jest fixin' to have one. Make it beer all
round," he ordered the barkeeper without waiting for the newcomer's
answer.
Beer all round it was. Gash Tuttle, too eager for gore to more than sip
his, toyed with the dice, rolling them out and scooping them up again.
"Want to shake for the next round, anybody?" innocently inquired the
squint-eyed person, observing this byplay.
"The next round's on the house," announced Flem, obeying a wink of
almost audible emphasis from Fox.
"This here gent thinks he's some hand with the bones," explained Fox,
addressing the stranger and flirting a thumb toward Gash Tuttle. "He was
sayin' jest as you come in the door yonder that he could let anybody
else roll three dice, and then he could tell, without lookin' even, whut
the tops and bottoms would add up to?"
"Huh?" grunted the squinty-eyed man. "Has he got any money in his
clothes that says he kin do that? Where I come frum, money talks." He
eyed Gash Tuttle truculently, as though daring him to be game.
"My money talks too!" said Mr. Tuttle with nervous alacrity. He felt in
an inner vest pocket, producing a modest packet of bills. All eyes were
focused on it.
"That's the stuff!" said Fox with mounting enthusiasm. "How much are you
two gents goin' to bet one another? Make it fur real money--that is, if
you're both game!"
"If he don't touch the dice at all I'll bet him fur his whole roll,"
said the impetuous newcomer.
"That's fair enough, I reckin," said Fox. "Tell you whut--to make it
absolutely fair I'll turn the dice over myself and Flem'll hold the
stakes. Then there can't be no kick comin' from nobody whatsoever, kin
there?" He faced their prospective prey. "How strong are you?" he
demanded, almost sneeringly. "How much are you willin' to put up against
my pardner here?"
"Any amount! Any amount!" snapped back the other, squinting past Fox at
Gash Tuttle's roll until one eye was a button and the other a
buttonhole. "Twenty-five--thirty--thirty-five--as much as forty dollars.
That's how game I am."
Avarice gnawed at the taproots of Gash Tuttle's being, but caution
raised a warning hand. Fifteen was half of what he had and thirty was
all. Besides, why risk all on the first wager, even though there was no
real risk? A person so impulsively sportive as this victim would make
a second bet doubtlessly. He ignored the stealthy little kick his
principal accomplice dealt him on the shin. "I'll make it fur fifteen,"
he said, licking his lips.
"If that's as fur as you kin go, all right," said the slit-eyed man,
promptly posting his money in the outstretched hand of the barkeeper,
who in the same motion took over a like amount from the slightly
trembling fingers of the challenger.
Squint-eye picked up the dice cup and rattled its occupants.
"Come on now!" he bantered Gash Tuttle. "Whut'll they add up, tops and
bottoms?"
"Twenty-one!" said Mr. Tuttle.
"Out they come, then!"
And out they did come, dancing together, tumbling and somersaulting, and
finally halting--a deuce, a trey and a four.
"Three and two is five and four is nine," Gash Tuttle read off the pips.
"Now turn 'em over!" he bade Fox. "That's your job--turn 'em over!" He
was all tremulous and quivery inside.
In silence Fox drew the nearest die toward him and slowly capsized it.
"Four," he announced.
He flipped the deuce end for end, revealing its bottom: "Five!"
He reached for the remaining die--the four-spot. Dragging it toward him,
his large fingers encompassed it for one fleeting instance, hiding it
from view entirely; then he raised his hand: "Six!"
"Makin' twenty-one in all," stuttered Gash Tuttle. He reached for the
stakes.
"Nix on that quick stuff!" yelled his opponent, and dashed his hand
aside. "The tops come to nine and the bottoms to fifteen--that's
twenty-four, the way I figger. You lose!" He pouched the money
gleefully.
Stunned, Gash Tuttle contemplated the upturned facets of the three dice.
It was true--it was all too true! Consternation, or a fine imitation of
that emotion, filled the countenances of Flem and of Fox.
"That's the first time I ever seen that happen," Fox whispered in the
loser's ear. "Bet him again--bet high--and git it all back. That's the
ticket!"
Mr. Tuttle shook his head miserably, but stubbornly. For this once, in
the presence of crushing disaster, the divine powers of retort failed
him. He didn't speak--he couldn't!
"Piker money! Piker money!" chanted the winner. "Still, ever' little bit
helps--eh, boys?"
And then and there, before Gash Tuttle's bulging and horrified eyes, he
split up the winnings in the proportion of five for Flem and five for
Fox and five for himself. Of a sudden the loser was shouldered out of
the group. He looked not into friendly faces, but at contemptuous backs
and heaving shoulders. The need for play acting being over, the play
actors took their ease and divided their pay. The mask was off.
Treachery stood naked and unashamed.
Reaching blindly for his valise, Gash Tuttle stumbled for the door, a
load lying on his daunted spirit as heavy as a stone. Flem hailed him.
"Say, hold on!" He spoke kindly. "Ain't that your quarter yonder?"
He pointed to a coin visible against the flat glass cover of the cigar
case.
"Sure it is--it's yourn. I seen you leave it there when I give you the
change out of that dollar and purposed to tell you 'bout it at the time,
but it slipped my mind. Go on and pick it up--it's yourn. You're welcome
to it if you take it now!"
Automatically Gash Tuttle reached for the quarter--small salvage from a
great and overwhelming loss. His nails scraped the glass, touching only
glass. The quarter was cunningly glued to its underside. Surely this
place was full of pitfalls. A guffawed chorus of derision rudely smote
his burning ears.
"On your way, sucker! On your way!" gibed the perfidious Fox, swinging
about with his elbows braced against the bar and a five-dollar bill held
with a touch of cruel jauntiness between two fingers.
"Whut you got in the gripsack--hay samples or punkins?" jeered the
exultant Slit-Eye.
"Yes; whut is the valise fur?" came Flem's parting taunt.
Under their goadings his spirit rallied.
"Cat's fur, to make kittens' britches!" he said. Then, as a final shot:
"You fellers needn't think you're so derned smart--I know jest exactly
how you done it!"
He left them to chew on that. The parting honours were his, he felt, but
the spoils of war--alas!--remained in the camp of the enemy. Scarcely
twenty minutes at the outside had elapsed since his advent into city
life, and already one-half of the hoarded capital he had meant should
sustain him for a whole gala week was irretrievably gone, leaving behind
an emptiness, a void as it were, which ached like the socket of a newly
drawn tooth.
Vague, formless thoughts of reprisal, of vengeance exacted an
hundredfold when opportunity should fitly offer, flitted through his
numbed brain. Meantime though adventure beckoned; half a mile away or
less a Great White Way and a street fair awaited his coming. That
saffron flare against the sky yonder was an invitation and a promise.
Sighing, he shifted his valise from one hand to the other.
The Belt Line car, returning stationward, bore him with small loss of
time straightway to the very centre of excitement; to where bunting
waved on store fronts and flag standards swayed from trolley poles,
converting the County Square into a Court of Honour, and a myriad
lights glowed golden russet through the haze of dust kicked up by the
hurrying feet of merrymaking thousands. Barkers barked and brass bands
brayed; strange cries of man and beast arose, and crowds eddied to and
fro like windblown leaves in a gusty November. And all was gaiety and
abandon. From the confusion certain sounds detached themselves, becoming
intelligible to the human understanding. As for example:
"Remembah, good people, the cool of the evenin' is the time to view the
edgycated ostritch and mark his many peculiarities!"
And this:
"The big red hots! The g-e-r-reat big, juicy, sizzlin' red hots! The
eriginal hot-dog sand-wige--fi' cents, halluf a dime, the twentieth part
of a dollah! Here y'are! Here y'are! The genuwine Mexican hairless
Frankfurter fer fi' cents!"
And this:
"Cornfetti! Cornfetti! All the colours of the rainbow! All the pleasures
of the Maudie Graw! A large full sack for a nickel! Buy cornfetti and
enjoy yourselves."
And so on and so forth.
The forlorn youth, a half-fledged school-teacher from a back district,
who had purchased the county rights of a patent razor sharpener from a
polished gentleman who had had to look at the map before he even knew
the name of the county, stood on a dry-goods box at the corner of
Jefferson and Yazoo, dimly regretful of the good money paid out for
license and unsalable stock, striving desperately to remember and
enunciate the patter taught him by the gifted promoter. For the
twentieth time he lifted his voice, essaying his word-formula in husky
and stuttering accents for the benefit of swirling multitudes, who never
stopped to listen:
"Friends, I have here the Infallible Patent Razor Sharpener. 'Twill
sharpen razors, knives, scissors, scythe blades or any edged tool. If
you don't believe it will----" He paused, forgetting the tag line; then
cleared his throat and improvised a finish: "If you don't believe it
will--why, it will!" It was a lame conclusion and fruitful of no sales.
How different the case with a talented professional stationed half a
block down the street, who nonchalantly coiled and whirled and threw
a lasso at nothing; then gathered in the rope and coiled and threw it
again, always at nothing at all, until an audience collected, being
drawn by a desire to know the meaning of a performance seemingly so
purposeless. Then, dropping the rope, he burst into a stirring panegyric
touching on the miraculous qualifications of the Ajax Matchless Cleaning
and Washing Powder, which made bathing a sheer pleasure and household
drudgery a joy.
Never for one moment abating the flow of his eloquence, this person
produced a tiny vial, held it aloft, uncorked it, shook twenty drops of
its colourless fluid contents on the corrugated surface of a seemingly
new and virgin sponge; then gently kneaded and massaged the sponge
until--lo and behold!--lather formed and grew and mounted and foamed, so
that the yellow lump became a mass of creamy white suds the size of a
peck measure, and from it dripped huge bubbles that foamed about his
feet and expired prismatically, as the dolphin was once believed to
expire, leaving smears upon the boards whereon the operator stood.
Thereat dimes flowed in on him in clinking streams, and bottles of the
Matchless flowed from him until, apparently grown weary of commerce, he
abandoned his perch, avowedly for refreshment, but really--this being a
trade secret--to rub shavings of soft yellow soap into the receptive
pores of a fresh sponge and so make it ready against the next
demonstration.
Through such scenes Gash Tuttle wandered, a soul apart. He was of the
carnival, but not in it--not as yet. With a pained mental jolt he
observed that about him men of his own age wore garments of a novel and
fascinating cut. By contrast his own wardrobe seemed suddenly grown
commonplace and prosaic; also, these city dwellers spoke a tongue that,
though lacking, as he inwardly conceded, in the ready pungency of his
own speech, nevertheless had a saucy and attractive savour of novelty in
its phrasing. Indeed, he felt lonely. So must a troubadour of old have
felt when set adrift in an alien and hostile land. So must the shining
steel feel when separated from the flint on which it strikes forth its
sparks of fire. I take it a steel never really craves for its flint
until it parts from it.
As he wormed through a group of roistering youth of both sexes he
tripped over his own valise; a wadded handful of confetti struck him
full in the cheek and from behind him came a gurgle of laughter. It was
borne in on him that he was the object of mirth and not its creator. His
neck burned. Certainly the most distressing situation which may beset a
humourist follows hard on the suspicion that folks are laughing--not
with him, but at him!
He hurried on as rapidly as one might hurry in such crowded ways. He was
aware now of a sensation of emptiness which could not be attributed
altogether to the depression occasioned by his experience at the First
and Last Chance Saloon; and he took steps to stay it. He purchased and
partook of hamburger sandwiches rich in chopped onions.
Later it would be time to find suitable lodgings. The more alluring of
the pay-as-you-enter attractions were yet to be tested. By way of a
beginning he handed over a ten-cent piece to a swarthy person behind a
blue pedestal, and mounting eight wooden steps to a platform he passed
behind a flapping canvas curtain. There, in company with perhaps a dozen
other patrons, he leaned over a wooden rail and gazed downward into a
shallow tarpaulin-lined den where a rather drowsy-appearing, half-nude
individual, evidently of Ethiopian antecedents, first toyed with some
equally drowsy specimens of the reptile kingdom and then partook
sparingly and with no particular avidity of the tail of a very small
garter snake.
Chance, purely, had led Gash Tuttle to select the establishment of Osay
rather than that of the Educated Ostrich, or the Amphibious Man, or
Fatima the Pearl of the Harem, for his first plunge into carnival
pleasures; but chance is the hinge on which many moving events swing. It
was so in this instance.
Osay had finished a light but apparently satisfying meal and the
audience was tailing away when Gash Tuttle, who happened to be the
rearmost of the departing patrons, felt a detaining touch on his arm. He
turned to confront a man in his shirtsleeves--a large man with a
pock-marked face, a drooping moustache and a tiger-claw watch charm on
his vest. It was the same man who, but a minute before, had delivered a
short yet flattering discourse touching the early life and manners and
habits of the consumer of serpents--in short, the manager of the show
and presumably its owner.
"Say!" began this gentleman.
"Say yourself," flashed Gash, feeling himself on safe ground once more;
"your mouth's open."
The man grinned in appreciation of the thrust--a wincing grin, as though
owning himself beaten in the very first sally.
"All right, old scout," he said jovially, "I will. Come back here where
nobody can't hear me while I say it." He drew the younger man to the
inner side of the platform and sank his voice to a confidential rumble.
"Soon as I seen you comin' in I says to myself, 'That's the party I'm
lookin' for.' You don't live here in this town, do you?"
Gash Tuttle shook his head and started to speak, but the big man was
going on. Plainly he was not one to waste time in idle preliminaries:
"That's the way I doped it. You're in the profesh, ain't you? You've
been workin' this street-fair game somewhere, ain't you?"
"No," Gash Tuttle confessed, yet somehow at the same time feeling
flattered.
"Well, that just goes to show how a guy can be fooled," said the Osay
man. "I'd 'a' swore you was on to all the ropes in this biz. Anyway,
I know just by the cut of your jib you're the party I'm lookin' for.
That's why I braced you. My name's Fornaro; this here is my outfit. I
want somebody to throw in with me--and I've made up my mind you're the
party I'm lookin' for."
Once bitten, twice shy; and Gash Tuttle's fifteen-dollar bite was still
raw and bleeding. He started to pull away.
"I wouldn't choose to invest in anything more until I'd looked it over,"
he began. The large man grasped him by his two lapels and broke in on
him, drowning out the protest before it was well started.
"Who said anything about anybody investin' anything?" he demanded. "Did
I? No. Then listen to me a minute--just one minute. I'm in a hurry my
own self and I gotta hand you this proposition out fast."
Sincerity was in his tone; was in his manner too. Even as he spoke his
gaze roved past Gash Tuttle toward the tarpaulin draperies which
contributed to their privacy, and he sweat freely; a suetlike dew
spangled his brow. There was a noise outside. He listened intently, then
fixed a mesmerising stare on Gash Tuttle and spoke with great rapidity
and greater earnestness:
"You see, I got some other interests here. Besides this pit show, I'm
a partner in a store pitch and a mitt-joint; and, what with everything,
I'm overworked. That's the God's truth--I'm overworked! What I need is
a manager here. And soon as I seen how you handled yourself I says to
myself, 'That's the party I want to hire for manager.' What did you say
your name was?"
"Tuttle--Gashney P. Tut----"
"That's enough--the Tuttle part will do for me. Now, Tuttle, set down
that there keister of yours--that gripsack--and listen. I gotta go down
the street for a half hour--maybe an hour--and I want you to take
charge. You're manager while I'm gone--the joint is yours till I git
back. And to-night, later on, we'll fix up a deal together. If you
think you like the job we'll make a reg'lar arrangement; we'll make it
permanent instid of temporary. See?"
"But--but----"
"But nothin'! I want to find out if my first judgment about you is
correct. See? I want to make a test. See? That's it--a test. You ain't
goin' to have much to do, first off. The nigger is all right s'long as
he gits his dope." He motioned toward the canvas-lined retreat where
Osay now dozed heavily among the coils of his somnolent pets. "And
Crummy--that's my outside man--kin handle the front and make the spiel,
and take in what money comes in. I'll mention to him as I'm leavin' that
you're in charge. Probably I'll be back before time for the next
blow-off. All you gotta do is just be manager--that's all; and if
anybody comes round askin' for the manager, you're him. See?"
His impetuosity was hypnotising--it was converting; nay, compelling. It
was enough to sweep any audience off its feet, let alone an audience of
one. Besides, where lives the male adult between the ages of nine and
ninety who in his own mind is not convinced that he has within him the
making of a great and successful amusement purveyor? Still, Gash Tuttle
hesitated. The prospect was alluring, but it was sudden--so sudden.
As though divining his mental processes, the man Fornaro added a
clinching and a convincing argument.
"To prove I'm on the dead level with you, I'm goin' to pay you for your
time--pay you now, in advance--to bind the bargain until we git the
details all fixed up." He hauled out a fair-sized wad of currency and
from the mass detached a frayed green bill. "I'm goin' to slip you a
she-note on the spot."
"A which?"
"A she-note--two bones. See?"
He forced the money into the other's palm. As Gash Tuttle automatically
pocketed the retainer he became aware that this brisk new associate of
his, without waiting for any further token of agreement on his part,
already was preparing to surrender the enterprise into his keeping.
Fornaro backed away from him and dropped nimbly down off the back of the
platform where there was a slit in the canvas wall; then turned and,
standing on tiptoe to bring his mouth above the level of the planking,
spoke the parting admonition in hasty tones:
"Remember now, you're the boss, the main guy, the whole cheese! If
anybody asts you tell 'em you're the manager and stick to it."
The canvas flapped behind him and he was gone. And Gash Tuttle, filled
with conflicting emotions in which reawakened pride predominated, stood
alone in his new-found kingdom.
Not for long was he alone, however. To be exact, not for more than half
a minute at the very most. He heard what he might have heard before had
his ears been as keenly attuned as the vanished Fornaro's were. He
heard, just outside, voices lifted conflictingly in demand, in
expostulation, in profane protest and equally profane denunciation of
something or other. A voice which seemed to be that of the swarthy man
denominated as Crummy gave utterance to a howl, then instantly dimmed
out, as though its owner was moving or being moved from the immediate
vicinity with unseemly celerity and despatch. Feet drummed on the wooden
steps beyond the draperies. Something heavy overturned or was overthrown
with a crash.
And as Mr. Tuttle, startled by these unseemly demonstrations, started
toward the front entrance of his domain the curtain was yanked violently
aside and a living tidal wave flowed in on him, dashing high and wide.
On its crest, propelled by irresistible cosmic forces, rode, as it were,
a slouch-hatted man with a nickel-plated badge on his bosom, and at this
person's side was a lanky countryman of a most threatening demeanour;
and behind them and beyond them came a surging sea of faces--some
hostile, some curious, and all excited.
"Who's in charge here?" shouted the be-badged man.
"Me--I am," began Gash Tuttle. "I'm the manager. What's wanted?"
"You are! I 'rest you in the name of the law for runnin' a skin game!"
the constable whooped gleefully--"on a warrant swore out less 'en a hour
ago."
And with these astounding words he fixed his fingers, grapple-hook
fashion, in the collar of the new manager's coat; so that as Gash
Tuttle, obeying a primal impulse, tried to back away from him, the back
breadth of the coat bunched forward over his head, giving him the
appearance of a fawn-coloured turtle trying to retreat within its own
shell. His arms, hampered by sleeves pulled far down over the hands,
winnowed the air like saurian flippers, wagging in vain resistance.
Holding him fast, ignoring his muffled and inarticulate protests, the
constable addressed the menacing countryman:
"Is this here the one got your money?"
"No, 'tain't. 'Twas a big ugly feller, with mushtashes; but I reckin
this here one must've helped. Lemme search him."
"Hands off the prisoner!" ordered the constable, endeavouring to
interpose his bulk between maddened accuser and wriggling captive.
He spoke too late and moved too slowly. The countryman's gouging hands
dived into Mr. Tuttle's various pockets and were speedily out again in
the open; and one of them held money in it--paper and silver.
"Here 'tis!" barked the countryman, exultant now. "This here two-dollar
bill is mine--I know it by this here red-ink mark." He shuffled out the
three remaining bills and stared at them a moment in stupefaction, and
his yelp of joy turned to a bellow of agonised berserk rage. "I had two
hundred and twenty-eight dollars in cash, and here ain't but seventeen
dollars and sixty cents! You derned sharper! Where's the rest of my
mortgage money that yore gang beat me out of?"
He swung a fearsome flail of an arm and full in Gash Tuttle's chest he
landed a blow so well aimed, so vigorous, that by its force the
recipient was driven backward out of his coat, leaving the emptied
garment in the constable's clutches; was driven still further back until
he tottered on the rear edge of the platform and tumbled off into space,
his body tearing away a width of canvas wall and taking it along with
him as he disappeared.
Perhaps it was because he fell so hard that he bounced up so
instantaneously. He fought himself free of the smothering folds of dusty
tarpaulin and turned to flee headlong into the darkness. He took three
flying steps and tripped over the guy rope of the next tent. As he fell
with stunning violence into the protecting shadows he heard pursuit roll
over the platform past Osay, thud on the earth, clatter on by him and
die away in the distance to the accompaniment of cheers, whoops and the
bloodthirsty threats of the despoiled countryman.
* * * * *
If one has never stolen a ride on a freight train the task presents
difficulties and dangers. Still, it may be done, provided one is
sufficiently hard pressed to dare its risks and risk its discomforts.
There is one especially disagreeable feature incident to the
experience--sooner or later discovery is practically inevitable.
Discovery in this instance came just before the dawn, as the freight
lumbered through the swampy bottoms of Obion Creek. A sleepy and
therefore irritable brakeman found, huddled up on the floor of an empty
furniture car, a dark heap, which, on being stirred with a heavy
boot-toe, moved and moaned and gave forth various other faint signs of
life. So, as the locomotive slowed down for the approach to the trestle,
he hoisted the unresisting object and with callous unconcern shoved it
out of the open car door on to the sloping bank of the built-up right of
way--all this occurring at a point just beyond where a white marker post
gleamed spectrally in the strengthening light of the young summer day,
bearing on its planed face the symbol, S-3--meaning by that, three miles
to Swango Junction.
At sunup, forty minutes later, a forlorn and shrunken figure,
shirt-sleeved, hatless and carrying no baggage whatsoever, quit the
crossties and, turning to the left from the railroad track some rods
above the station, entered, with weary gait, a byway leading over the
hill to the town beyond. There was a drooping in the shoulders and a
dragging of the mud-incrusted legs, and the head, like Old Black Joe's,
was bending low.
The lone pedestrian entered the confines of Swango proper, seeking, even
at that early hour, such backways as seemed most likely to be empty of
human life. But as he lifted his leaden feet past the Philpotts place,
which was the most outlying of local domiciles, luck would have it that
Mr. Abram Philpotts should be up and stirring; in fact, Mr. Philpotts,
being engaged in the milk and butter business, was out in his barn
hitching a horse to a wagon. Chancing to pass a window of the barn he
glanced out and saw a lolled head bobbing by above the top of his back
fence.
"Hey there!" he called out. "Hey, Gash, what air you doin' up so early
in the mornin'?"
With a wan suggestion of the old familiar sprightliness the answer came
back, comically evasive:
"That's fur me to know and fur you to find out!"
Overcome, Mr. Philpotts fell up against his stable wall, feebly slapping
himself on the legs with both hands.
"Same old Gashney!" he gurgled. "They can't nobody ever git ahead of
you, kin they boy?"
The words and the intent of the tribute reached beyond the palings.
Their effect was magical; for the ruler was in his realm again, back
among his loyal, worshipful subjects. The bare head straightened; the
wearied legs unkinked; the crushed and bruised spirit revived. And
Gashney Tuttle, king of jesters, re-crowned, proceeded jauntily on his
homeward way, with the wholesome plaudits of Mr. Philpotts ringing in
his gratified ears and the young sun shining, golden, in his face.