By Holland Wright.
The advertising agent had done his worst. He had subsidized the county
paper, crowding out valuable editorials to make room for pictures of the
yawning hippopotamus and the unconventional summer girl. Every barn
within five miles was decorated with big red pictures and big black
letters, all telling of the wonders exhibited by the Grand Combination
of Railroad Circuses.
Hodges was but an advertising agent—a ruthless purveyor of publicity.
Callous to æsthetic emotions, blind to the beauties of nature, his
conscience was dead to the vandalism of highway advertising. Having
bedaubed the smiling face of nature in the vicinity of Johnsonville, he
was ready to advance on Jonesboro.
“Hello!” he said, stepping briskly into Elrod’s livery stable, “have you
got a team that can snatch me into Jonesboro in four hours?”
“That’s just what we have,” said old Bill Elrod—“Truthful Bill,” the
boys called him.
“Well, I mean exactly what I say,” said Hodges. “Exactly four hours. I
know it’s a hard drive, and I’m willing to pay a dollar or two extra if
you can do it.”
“That’s all right, stranger,” said Truthful. “You’ve come to the right
place. I’ve got a pair of plugs that can put you there to the minute.”
“Well, hitch ’em up,” said Hodges. “I’ve got no time to spare.”
Old Elrod called to a stable boy to harness the grays, while he went out
to get old Eli Wetherford to drive. He took Eli off into a corner of the
blacksmith shop, to give him his instructions.
“See here, Eli, that lunatic of a bill-poster wants to be took to
Jonesboro in four hours.”
“Well,” said Eli, “it’ll take ever’ minute of six hours to make the
trip, but if he’s dead set on doin’ it in four, you’d better give him
all kinds of encouragement. If he goes over to see Hopkins & Brown,
they’ll agree to put him through in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll ’tend to that,” said Truthful. “I want you to drive him. If I send
a boy, that feller will hustle him along fast enough to kill my horses,
in spite of all I can do. Now I want you to take him and dash away with
him like you was goin’ for a doctor. When you git to the first
toll-gate, you can be talkin’ so fast he won’t think about the time o’
day no more till he hears the town clock strike in Jonesboro.”
“Jerusalem!” said Eli: “I ain’t no funnygraph, to be talkin’ a man blind
for six hours on a stretch.”
“Oh, you’ll make it easy enough,” said Truthful. “I’ll put a pint of
good liquor under the seat.”
“Well, now,” said Eli, persuasively, “if you could just make it a quart,
so the stranger can take a nip now and then, it would encourage him
powerful.”
“All right,” said Elrod. “I’ll put in a full quart of the best in town.
And say, Eli, try to make up some yarn about advertisin’. The hotel
clerk says this looney ain’t interested in nothin’ else.”
Thus it happened that when they passed the tollgate, old Eli, who is a
bachelor, was telling Hodges of an imaginary wife, who kept him poor by
reading advertisements and buying patent medicines.
“I do believe,” he said, “my old woman would have a fit any day if she
should happen to read a double-column advertisement of a real good fit
medicine.”
“What kind of advertisement does she seem to like best?” asked Hodges.
“Well, you see,” said Eli, “they ain’t a blessed thing the matter with
her, so she likes advertisements that calls for ever’-day symptoms—You
know some advertisements says if it makes you dizzy to stan’ on your
head fifteen minutes, and if you feel warm in the summer time and cold
in winter, you’ve got the very ailment that their bitters’ll cure. Ever’
time she sees a advertisement of that kind it costs old Eli a dollar,”
and the indulgent husband of the extravagant hypochondriac solaced
himself with a dose of his own favorite prescription.
[Illustration:
“Try to make up some yarn about advertisin’.”
]
When they were half way to Jonesboro, they met Hank Binford, and Eli
thought it would add some personal interest to a romance he had in mind
to make Hank its hero. True, the hero must have a wife and a comfortable
fortune, while Hank had neither, but that was immaterial, as the
listener was a stranger in a strange land.
“Notice that feller we jest passed? That’s Hank Binford. He’s one of our
leadin’ citizens. Owns half the houses in town, and a fine
four-hundred-acre farm in the river bottom. Well, sir, when he married,
five years ago, he didn’t own two shirts, and he was drunk half of the
time. It’s a strange thing, but one little four dollar advertisement
changed him into a prosperous citizen, with money in the bank.”
“Must have been a pretty good ad. Tell me about it,” said Hodges,
moistening his lips with a half pint of whiskey, and settling down
comfortably to listen.
Eli took a long pull at the bottle, and began his story. Even with the
bottle of inspiration at his elbow, he could not expect to invent his
story quite as fast as he could talk, so he told it with due
deliberation and great impressiveness.
“When Tildy Maclin married Hank Binford, her folks all said if she
didn’t have no more sense than to tie to such a drinkin’, gamblin’ cuss,
she would deserve all she got, and mighty apt to git all she deserved.
Tildy said Hank would settle down and do all right, and the other
Maclins all predicted, mighty confident, that he’d do all wrong. Well,
sir, I never did perfess to be no prophet, so naturally of course I
couldn’t foresee in advance just what Tildy would make out of Hank. It
appeared to me he might turn out as well as Tildy expected, or full as
bad as her folks hoped, and neither way, it needn’t surprise nobody that
knows what a powerful sight of human nature there is in a average man.
“Well, Tildy she managed to keep Hank tolerable straight for about a
year. He’d go for months without so much as takin’ a dram, and when he
did start in for a spree she always managed to git him straight before
he could manage to git plum heedless drunk, and it begun to look like
she had him safe, and would finally land him in old Rehoboth church.
“But, as I was sayin’, you can’t most always tell for certain just what
a man critter is goin’ to do, so I wasn’t overly surprised to hear, one
day, that Hank had took advantage of Tildy’s visit to her Wilson County
kin, and had filled up with red liquor, and was down to Ike Denman’s
grocery playin’ poker with Eb Wetherford and Eli Scoggins and Devil Bill
Anderson. That is to say, Hank thought he was playin’, though in reality
he was only bein’ played; him bein’ plum drunk and the other boys
tolerable sober. One or two of Hank’s friends had dropped in, kinder
incidentally, and tried to steer him outside, but of course they didn’t
have no luck. ’Long about sundown, next day, I saw Tildy drive up to her
gate and ’light, and in about a pair of minutes Miss Sallie Kate
Slemmons followed her in, lookin’ powerful pleased, and I didn’t feel no
sort of uneasiness but what Tildy would hear the news.
[Illustration:
Bill just went sailin’ down the road with a armful of ’em, a-strowin’
’em to the wind.
]
“Well, early Saturday mornin’ I happened to be goin’ right by the
grocery, and I thought I’d jest step in and pass the time o’ day with
Ike, seein’ as I wasn’t in no particular rush. I found Ike all alone by
hisself, and he invited me to have somethin’, and I excused myself at
first, as men will, and after a while I inquired if the game was still
on, and what was the prospects for Hank to lose out, and go home and see
Tildy, and hear all about his Wilson County kin folks. Ike said he
hadn’t kept the run of the game and didn’t know how Hank stood, but he
seemed to imagine that Hank wasn’t in no swivet to swap news with Tildy.
“Ike said Bunk Wetherford had come in early Friday night and took Eb
home, and for a while it looked like the game was broke up; but Eli had
bantered one of the Edwards boys to take Eb’s place, and he went up and
took a hand, and the game broke out in a fresh place, and at last
accounts, looked like it might last till all the spots was wore off the
cards. I told Ike I’d go up and advise Hank that Tildy had come home.
“‘All right,’ says he, ‘walk right up. I don’t git no takeout from the
game, and I’m more’n willin’ to see it broke up any time. I don’t like
to interfere myself, jest because it would look like the boys wasn’t
welcome here, so I jest lets ’em do mostly as they like, so long as they
pays for what they gits, and don’t break nothin’.’
“So I went up and looked on a while, and tried to ketch Hank’s eye, but
I could see ’twas no use. He was feelin’ his licker, and talkin’
powerful smart, and losin’ good hard-earned money just as cheerful as if
money growed on trees and he owned all the timber land. After a while
Denman come up to the head of the stairs, a-grinnin’ all over his face,
and motioned me to come to the door. I went over and he handed me a
printed poster, about two foot square, and containin’ the followin’
advertisement in big, black type:
‘LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN:
ONE YOUNG MAN!
About 28 years old, 5 ft. 10 in. High, Weighs about 140 lbs., Tow
Headed, Sandy Complected, Weak-eyed, and When Sober answers to the name
of