During the next week Catty got more than twenty churn catalogues, and
the way we studied them you would have thought we were trying to pass
some kind of an examination. Every spare minute we got we read about
churns and looked at pictures of the insides of churns and compared
churns to see how they were alike and how they were different. It’s
funny how easy it is to study something you don’t have to. We could have
learned a grammar by heart with the work we put on churns—but that would
have been _work_. It’s too bad the school can’t make a fellow enjoy
studying like we did. If the school would only give a fellow a definite
_object_ for studying everything I’d learn twice as much three times as
easy.
But I guess we got to be about the greatest experts in the world on
churns. We knew them inside and out and up and down and sideways and
wideways. We got so we could take a section of a churn and cover up the
name of it, and we could tell just what it was and what churn it came
out of—as easy as pie. Catty was better at it than I was. I’ll bet you
could blindfold him and stick the plunger or the handle of a churn under
his nose, and he could tell what it was just by the smell. It came in
mighty handy, too, you can bet.
“Now,” says Catty, “we got to see that churn of Kinderhook’s.”
“Yes,” says I, “we have. Sounds easy. Let’s jest walk up and look at it.
He’ll be tickled to death to have us.”
Catty grinned sort of drylike. “We’re a-goin’ to see that churn,” says
he, “if we have to eat a hole through the wall.”
“S’pose he really keeps it in his room?”
“Bet he sleeps with it under his pillow.”
“Then we better not go to look at it at night,” says I.
“Let’s kind of sort of snoop around the hotel,” says he, “and get the
lay of the land.”
So we went down to the hotel and walked all around it and looked at it
outside as careful as we could, but that was about as good as looking at
the outside of an egg to see what colored chicken would hatch out of it.
We didn’t know what floor Mr. Kinderhook’s room was on, nor what side of
the hotel.
“We kin ask,” says I.
“And have folks wonderin’ why we want to know,” says Catty. “The best
part of this whole mess is that Kinderhook don’t suspect _we_ suspect.
He hain’t got no idee anybody’s thinkin’ he hain’t a good and great man.
That makes it easier. If he don’t know somebody’s watchin’ him he won’t
take so much pains to hide up what he’s doin’.”
“Sounds reasonable,” says I.
“But I guess maybe we kin edge around and find out without askin’
straight out,” says he.
“I hain’t much good at edgin’,” says I. “You do it.”
“Come on, then,” says he, and we went into the hotel office and stood
around like we just come in for nothing in particular, and sort of
gradual we got over to the desk. “Nice mornin’,” says Catty to the
clerk. “Fine,” says the clerk, sort of grinnin’. “Was you lookin’ for a
room with a bath?”
“Us!” says Catty, surprised-like. “Jest a room with a bath? That the
best you got? Huh!... When we stay in a hotel it hain’t no measly room
with a bath we take. No, sirree! We git a whole mess of rooms and baths,
maybe three or four bedrooms, so’s when we git tired of sleepin’ in one
we kin take to another; and we have settin’-rooms and standin’-rooms
and, in hotels where we don’t like the cookin’, we have our own kitchen.
That’s us, mister. Now what you got that might suit us?”
“We’re just out of kitchens,” says the clerk. “Usually we keep eighteen
or twenty extry kitchens up-stairs for p’tic’lar guests, so’s they kin
boil their own eggs soft. But they’re occupied now. Best we kin let you
have is a parlor with two bedrooms off’n it—and a piece of the hall if
that hain’t enough. All our regular palatial suites is rented.”
“Who to?” says Catty.
“There’s a large party of folks by the name of Mr. Kinderhook that’s
taken ’em,” says the clerk. “He’s usin’ more room to sleep in than a
whole minstrel troupe.”
“I heard he took a lot of rooms,” says Catty. “Must cost him a sight of
money.”
“Guess he’s got it to spend.”
“Um!... Wonder he didn’t buy him a hotel,” says Catty, “and fix it up to
suit him.”
“Say,” said the clerk, “I calc’late he’s goin’ to. I heard him talkin’
it up last night. Says, says he, that this town, with its new
manufacturin’ industries, ought to have a fine hotel. Yes, sir, and says
he, he guessed maybe he’d build one as soon as the factory was done and
runnin’. I’ve struck him for the job of clerkin’.”
“Hope you git it. When’s he goin’ to git out of them rooms?”
“Dunno.”
“Soon’s he does we’ll take ’em,” says Catty, “if you’ll fix ’em up a
bit. Maybe we won’t like the furniture.”
“We aim to please. All you got to do is tell us what you want.”
“First,” says Catty, “you’ll have to fetch ’em a flight down-stairs. I’m
gittin’ so’s I hate to climb stairs. Fetch ’em down to the second
floor.”
“That’s where they be now,” says the clerk.
“And we like our rooms lookin’ right over Main Street, and not to the
side over nobody’s meat-market.”
“What give you the idee Kinderhook’s rooms was on the side? Not them;
they’re front corner rooms. Parlor in the corner, big one, and other
rooms along the front.”
“That’s all right, then,” says Catty. “Don’t s’pose we kin take a look
at the furniture, so’s if we don’t like it you kin be orderin’ in what
we want?”
“No chance,” says the clerk. “Kinderhook don’t let nobody into those
rooms, and he sets by and keeps his eye on the chambermaid when she’s
makin’ the beds.”
“Well,” says Catty, “if we can’t we can’t. Much obleeged. Let us know
the minute we kin move in.”
“I sure will,” says the clerk, and we went out, slow, but tickled. Catty
had found out just what we wanted to know and nobody in the world could
have told he had been trying to find out. We knew now just where
Kinderhook’s rooms were, and that was something. But, after all, when
you come to think of it, it wasn’t such a lot, after all. There’s a heap
of difference between knowing bees has a hive in a certain tree and
gittin’ the honey out of it without gittin’ stung.
When we got out on the porch there was Captain Winton and Mr. Wade
talking to Kinderhook, and we stood where we could sort of hear what
they was saying.
“Apparently,” says Captain Winton, “you have been persuaded to part with
quite a little of your stock, Mr. Kinderhook.”
“Why, yes,” says he. “I’ve got about all the money a man can reasonably
use, and it looked as if I ought to give the people here a chance to
make some, too. I didn’t intend to sell a share, but I’ve got to like
this town and the people and I’d like to help them and have them for
partners, as it were.”
“Does you credit,” says Captain Winton, “and I’m sure the town is much
obliged. It will mean quite a little money.”
“Quite a little,” says Kinderhook.
“Some of us have been talking it over,” says Captain Winton, “and we’ve
dropped in to make a sort of proposition to you. You understand we mean
no reflection upon you, no criticism whatever, but inasmuch as this town
is going to invest a great deal of money on your bare word, as it were,
we feel, before we hand over the cash, that we ought to be assured of
the efficiency of your churn.” Kinderhook looked at him a minute and
then smiled as pleased as could be. “Why, certainly you should be,” says
he.
“What we think you should do is to give a public demonstration of your
churn.”
“By all means,” says Mr. Kinderhook.
“And the folks rather think that no money should be paid over to you
until they know the churn will work.”
“They’re perfectly right,” says Mr. Kinderhook.
“So here’s what our proposition is. The folks will pay the money into
the bank, and you will deposit the stock with the bank. Then you give a
demonstration of the churn, and the minute a committee says the churn
will do what you say it will the bank will deliver the stock to the
purchasers and the money to you.”
“I should have proposed exactly that if you hadn’t. I should have done
so before, but I didn’t come here to sell stock, you understand. The
people were so eager to buy—”
“Of course,” says Captain Winton. “When will you be ready to give your
demonstration?”
“Whenever you gentlemen notify me you are ready. You must give me a day
or so to make preparations, because when I demonstrate this churn I want
to do it to a turn.”
“Very well,” says Captain Winton, “and thank you.”
They all shook hands and that ended it. Catty and I walked off, and
Catty says: “We got to act pretty quick. No tellin’ what day they’ll
have that demonstration, and we got to be ready.”
“Looks so,” says I.
“We got to see that churn.”
“You bet,” says I.
“Second floor, on the corner,” says Catty.
We went over to the livery-stable because we liked to talk to Pazzy
Bills, the bus-driver, when we didn’t have anything else special to do.
Pazzy was a mighty nice man and about the best quoit-pitcher in the
county. He said that quoit-pitching was really his business and that he
just drove the bus for exercise. Said hanging on to the lines was just
the thing that kept his arm in condition to throw horseshoes right.
Pazzy was pitching against the blacksmith when we got there, and we
watched them a spell. While the blacksmith was throwing Pazzy talked to
us.
“Glad to see you takin’ a interest into the greatest game in the world,”
says he. “There hain’t no game like quaites.” (Pazzy and ’most everybody
called it “quaites” instead of “quoits” in our town, but when I’m
writing it down I have to spell it right, don’t I? or folks would get
the idee I didn’t know nothing much about right grammar and spelling. I
do. You can tell it by the way I’ve wrote about this story.)
“Yes, sirree, Bob!” says Pazzy, “a feller that kin pitch quaites first
class is as good as anybody. There hain’t nothin’ he couldn’t do if he
was to set his hands to it. You gimme a quaite-player every time.
Whenever I vote for a President of the U-nited States I says to myself,
says I, ‘Does he look like he could pitch a horseshoe?’ If he does I
vote for him, and if he don’t _I_ don’t. There’s been elections when I
wouldn’t vote for either man ’cause they didn’t have the build for
it.... One thing I don’t take to about this here Kinderhook that folks
is so crazy about. He won’t even look at a game. No, sir. He’ll walk
right by without so much as turnin’ his head. ‘’Tain’t right,’ says I,
‘and I don’t care who hears me. Any man that don’t like to watch this
here game hain’t to be trusted.’”
“Catty and me has a set of shoes,” says I. “We’re practisin’ up, and one
of these days we’re a-goin’ to come down and challenge _you_.
“Now that’s the way to talk. Seems like boys nowadays is more int’rested
into foolish games like baseball and football and that kind of a thing
where you smack a little ball over a fish-net with a whang-dingus.
Hain’t the int’rest in quaites there was once. Glad you’re bein’ brought
up right.”
Just then one of the men that worked around the hotel came over and says
to Pazzy: “Hitch up a team right off for Mr. Kinderhook. He aims to
drive over to Litchfield. Wants to git started at once.”
“You tell Kinderhook not to bust off no buttons,” says Pazzy. “I’ll
hitch when this game’s over and not before—not for Gen’ral Jackson nor
the Siamese Twins.”
So Pazzy finished the game and then he hitched up pretty slow, and says
to Catty and me that he couldn’t bear the sight of a man that didn’t
pitch quaites, and would we just as soon drive the rig to the hotel. “If
that man was to say a word derog’tory to quaites in my hearin’,” says
Pazzy, “I dunno what I might up and do. I don’t trust myself,” says he,
“not when a man takes liberties with sich a sacred institution as
quaites.... And more ’n that,” says he, “he didn’t git my best team, not
by a long shot. He wants to git to Litchfield fast, does he. Ho!...
These hosses ’ll get him there, but I’m dog-goned if it ’ll be fast
enough to blow off his hair.”
We climbed in and drove to the hotel, and there was Mr. Kinderhook, with
a big package, waiting on the steps. As he got in he says: “In this box,
gentlemen, is the model 379 of my churn. I am taking it to Litchfield to
give it a final examination in the machine-shop there. I wish it to be
in perfect condition for the demonstration.”
Catty looked at me and I looked at him, and without a word we set off on
a run for Pazzy Bills’s.
“Pazzy,” says Catty, “if I was to tell you that I had to have somethin’
and that it was important and that there was good reasons why I couldn’t
tell you why I had to have it, would you lemme take it?”
“Sounds puzzlin’,” says Pazzy, “but I calc’late I git your meanin’.
Yes,” he said, after thinking a minute. “I calc’late I’d trust you and
Wee-wee more ’n a leetle—bein’ quaite-players like you be.”
“We’ve got to have a horse that kin beat Kinderhook’s to Litchfield,”
says Catty, “and we got to git started ahead of him—and he’s jest
drivin’ away from the hotel now.”
“Kinderhook! If you got any scheme ag’in’ Kinderhook you kin have my
whole stable!”
In about two seconds he had a horse into a light buggy and we was
driving out of town across the upper bridge and going pretty fast, so we
could get to the fork of the road ahead of Kinderhook. We got there,
too, for we could just see him coming behind us.
“Well,” says I, “now we’re here, and _he’s_ here, and what be we goin’
to do about it?”
“We’re goin’ to look over that churn before he gits it to Litchfield,”
says Catty.