THE HANDY MAN GETS BUSY
If you think the Senator had had anything to do with the terrible
events of the Rim Rocks, you are jumping to conclusions and must surely
have failed to follow the activities of Mr. Bat Brydges the morning
after the tragedy.
The first newspaper office that the handy man visited was owned by the
Senator. That was easy. Bat went into the reporters' long room where
the typewriters usually clicked. This morning they were silent. The
men were out on their assignments. The news editor was taking a
message over the telephone. Bat sat down on the table and waited. The
news editor was thin-faced and nervous and alert and immaculately
groomed. Bat was round-faced and sleepy-eyed--tortoise-shell eyes--and
all that prevented his suit from looking positively slovenly was that
his own ample avoirdupois filled every wrinkle.
The news editor adjusted his glasses to his nose and answered, "Yes,
Yes," impatiently over the telephone.
"It's a parson," he explained with an irritable snap of his black eyes
towards Bat.
Bat smiled sleepily. "Thinks you're hungering and thirsting for news
of his flock, does he?"
"No, blank it," snapped the news editor.
"It's another kind of flock that's worrying us this morning."
Bat's smile faded to a sly haze in his sleepy eyes.
"What has the old boy got to say?"
"How do you know he is old?" snapped the news editor.
Bat didn't volunteer on that point.
"Ask him what his name is," suggested Brydges.
"What did you say the name was? Matthews--Matthews--is that it? Wait,
please!" The news-editor put his hand over the mouth piece of the
telephone.
"Know anything about him, Bat?"
"I should say I do! Choke it off! He's staying with Missionary
Williams at the Indian School, and you know about how much love is lost
between Williams and Moyese."
"But we can't possibly suppress this, Bat. It will be all over the
country."
"Better see whose ox is gored," advised Brydges.
"But we've got to get this, Brydges! The stage driver's told one of my
men, already! Every bar-room buffer in the country side will know it
by night."
"Then you had better get it straight," advised Bat.
The news-man looked in space through eyes narrowed to an arrow. Bat
watched sleepily. "If we choke this old chap's account off, can you
give one to us?"
"Got it in my pocket! I've just come in on the stage!"
"I thought you came down in a motor with the Senator? Didn't he take
the morning limited for Washington?"
"Well, the darn thing broke down so often it was bad as the stage.
Anyway, I've got the story for you--"
"Senator O. K. it?" The news-man hung the telephone receiver up, still
keeping his hand over the mouth piece.
"Lord, no!" Bat slid off the table, tore the sheets from his note book
and handed the story of the Rim Rocks across to the editor.
"What do you take the Senator for? He knows nothing about it; but it's
in his constituency, and I guess his own paper should see that the
account which goes in is straight."
The news-editor hoisted his foot to the seat of a chair and stood
racing his eyes through sheet after sheet of Brydges's copy. Bat
lighted a cigar, put his hands in his pockets and pivoted on his heels.
There was the squeak, squeak, squeak of a child's new boots coming up
the first flight of stairs; and a squeak, squeak, squeak up the second
flight of stairs; and a little girl, not twelve years old, resplendent
in such tawdry finery as might have stepped out of an East End London
pawn shop, presented herself framed in the doorway of the reporter's
room. She plainly belonged to the immigrant section of Smelter City.
The news-editor never took his eyes from Bat's copy. They were eyes
made for drilling holes into the motives behind facts. Bat emitted a
whistle that was a laugh.
"Hullo," he said. "I knew they were coming on younger every year; but
I didn't know we had gone into the kindergarten business yet. You
don't want a job? Now don't tell me you want a job?"
The little person lifted a pair of very sober eyes beneath the brim of
some faded plush headgear.
"Is thus th' rha-porther's room?"
"Sure! you bet!" Bat wheeled on both heels. The little person looked
at him very steadily and solemnly.
"A' wannt," she said in that mongrel dialect of German-American and
Cockney-English, "A wawnt an iteem."
"Sure," says Bat, "nothing easier."
"Wull thur be eny chaarge?"
"Not for ladies," says Bat, saluting, hand to hat, and grinning more
sleepily than ever.
"Then, A wull guve it t' y': wull y' write it, sor?"
"Sure!" Bat squared himself to one of the reporters' high desks.
"Mestriss Leez-y O'Fannigan," dictated the little publicity agent.
"Miss O'Funny Girl," with a look to his fat cheeks as of a bag blown
full of air.
"No Sor, O'Fan-ni-gan-"
"Perhaps," said Bat, "You'd like to know we're in the same boat, except
that you're seeking exactly what I'm trying to avoid, Miss O'Finnigan?"
"Wull dance t' night--" continued the little publicity seeker.
"Will she dance in her copper-toe boots?" asks Bat.
"Wull dance at the H---- i-o-f lodge meetin' at--"
"That'll do, get her out of this," ordered the news-man. "It grows
worse every day. Every damphool thinks the world is aching for an
interview with himself, from the mining fakirs to the Shanty Town
brats: it's seeped down to the kids. You go home, kid, and tell your
mother to spank you special extra--"
They heard the fat little legs stumping down the stairs. "That kid
belongs to Shanty Town. She dances for the bar room buffers now;
she'll dance later, like you and me, Bat, for bigger bluffers. Freedom
of the press! Damn it, I'm sick of the bunco game, Bat--"
"Draw it easy," drawled Bat. "If you're sick of it, it's dead easy to
get out. I guess the kid is doing the same thing as you and me: 'Give
us this day our daily bread.' How's the story? Will you give it a
flare head?"
"Will there be any charge?" ironically repeated the news-man.
"Not for Moyese," smiled the handy man sleepily, "and say, if I were
you, I'd do one of two things, get rid of my conscience or get a tonic
for my nerves."
The telephone rang. The news-man ran to the receiver and a moment
later slammed it back on the hook.
"Old frump, giving namby pamby talks on woman's influence in politics
without votes." The news editor spat aimlessly.
Bat tapped the story of the Rim Rocks with his pencil. "Well," he
asked.
"We'll give this flare."
The news man put heavy underscores in blue beneath the words TEN
THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD, BY THE VALLEY CATTLE ASSOCIATION FOR PROOF OF
THE PERPETRATORS OF LAST NIGHT'S VILE CRIME.
"We'll put this in red! God! The Senator is an artist! I like having
to lick the hand that leashes me."
"And feeds you, eh?" added Bat.
Beneath the flare heading followed a statement of facts (more or less)
to the effect that in an altercation between the drovers of some
outside cattlemen and the herders belonging to the MacDonald ranch, the
sheep herd had been hustled--("I like your alliterations, Bat, it gives
flavor of quality," commented the news-man with a snap of his black
eyes,) too close to the edge of the Rim Rocks with the unintended and
tragical result that several hundred sheep had been shoved over the
battlements. ("What I like specially is what you don't give,"
commented the news-man.)
There was not a word about broken backs and slashed lambs and
disemboweled ewes; nor of what had been found on the Upper Mesas. As a
sort of addendum it was stated that a boy belonging to the Mission
school had lost his life in the melee.
"Anyway, we're in style! Way to tell a thing now adays is to turn all
around it, and not tell anything at all. Auto suggestion, eh, Bat?"
Bat's fat cheeks blew up in the explosion of a bursting paper bag.
"You bet it's auto all right. If you'd heard the old man talking all
the way down on the iniquity of the thing: he kept it going harder than
the buzz wagon."
"Better inform a breathlessly eager public that he's gone to
Washington?"
"Here, I've got that, too! He dictated that straight, 'for the express
purpose of taking up the whole question of eliminating the grazing
areas from the National Forests when it will be possible for the State
authorities to protect the live stock interests,'" Bat handed across
the second item.
"What in thunder have the National Forests to do with the Rim Rock
massacre?" The newsman looked up through his glasses.
"And who in thunder is going to ask that?"
Bat tapped the last item sharply with his pencil. "They'll read _that_
and they'll read the other, and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts nine men
out of ten will begin jawing and spouting and arguing that if there
were _no_ National Forests, there would be no Range Wars. If they draw
a false impression, that's the public's look out. If we weren't
dealing with damphools, we couldn't fool 'em."
"But it didn't happen on the National Forests."
"But it's only the tenth man who will stop to think that out. You put
in one of those big middle page cartoons--National Forests with the
Federal sign board, KEEP OFF, the sheep being massacred inside the sign
board and the State sheriff unable to go in and stop it--"
"But you didn't say massacred! You said they accidently went over the
edge."
"But it's only the tenth man will stop to think that. You run the
cartoon, see?" said Bat, and, though he asked it as a question, if
sounded final. The news-man went tearing back to the front editorial
rooms. Bat went whistling down stairs, two steps at a bounce. At the
half-way landing, he paused.
"Say," he yelled up, "you can use the same old cartoon; 'Keep Off the
Grass,' you know."
"Eh?--right," crossly from the front room.
"And say?"
The news-man came out and leaned over the upper railing.
"Don't forget to take that tonic for your nerves."
The news-man told Bat to go any where he pleased; but it was all in the
day's work with Mr. Bat Brydges. He didn't go. The handy man went
straight across to the paper in opposition. The news-man went back to
the front room and stood thinking. He didn't curse Bat nor emit fumes
of the sulphurous place to which he had invited Brydges. He was
contemplating what he called his "kids"; and he was figuring the next
payment due on the Smelter City lots in which he had been speculating.
Evidently, these were the news-man's tonic; for he at once did what he
described as "bucking it" and called down the speaking tube for the
press man to put on the old cartoon.
The opposition paper required more finesse on the part of the handy
man. Bat strolled as if it were a matter of habit into the telegraph
editor's room, where he lolled back in one of the two empty chairs. It
was still early and the wires were silent. Bat laid one cigar at the
editor's place and took a fresh one for himself.
"Hullo, Bat," bubbled the telegraph man, dashing from the composing
room in his shirt sleeves, "We've just been having a yell of an
argument about the elements of success." He seated himself and whipped
out a match to light the cigar. Bat was clicking his cigar case open
and shut. This editor was all nerves too. Nerves seemed to go with
the job; but these nerves were not jangled. He leaned back in his
swing chair with one boot against the desk. "What makes a man
successful, anyway? It isn't ability. Your news-man across the way
could buy our office out with brains; but gee whitaker, he's worse than
a dose of bitters! Now take your Senator, he hasn't either the
education or the brains of lots of our cub reporters, here!" He paused
nibbling his cigar end. "Yet, he's successful. We aren't, except in a
sort of doggon-hack-horse way. You're next to the old man, Bat, what
do you say makes him successful?"
Bat clicked the cigar case shut and put it in his pocket.
"Two things: he's a specialist; he delivers the goods no other man can
deliver; and he doesn't fool any time away by bucking into a buzz saw,
fighting windmills and that sort of thing, way you fellows 'agin the
Government' do."
The telegraph man removed his cigar.
"What do you mean by 'delivers the goods no other man can deliver'? Do
you mean the pork barrel?"
"No," said Bat, "I don't, though the pork barrel is a d--ee--d
essential part of the game. Here's what I mean; when you came to this
Valley, there was nothing doing. We had mines; but we hadn't a
smelter! Well, Senator got the coking coal for a smelting site and the
big developers came in. Other men couldn't, wouldn't or didn't dare to
do it! He did it. He delivered the goods and got the big fellows
interested."
"He stole 'em, those coal lands. He jugged 'em thro' Land Office
records with false entries." The telegraph man had lowered his voice.
"We don't call 'em stolen when it's been the making of the Valley."
"No, because the Smelter is a sacred cow mustn't be touched for the
sake of the grease."
"Then, there was nothing doing in lumber; big fellows wouldn't come in
and develop. Well, Moyese got 'em the timber tracts for a song. Other
men couldn't, wouldn't or didn't dare. He delivered the goods--"
"The courage of the highwayman," commented the wire editor with a puff.
"We don't call it that when it helps the Valley," corrected the handy
man.
"No, it's another sacred bovine; mustn't be touched for fear of the
axle grease. See? I've got a list of 'em--public lands, through
freights, water power, smelter, lumber deals," the telegraph man opened
his table drawer and held out a scrawled list. "If you call that
delivering the goods, I call it filling the barrel. What's the other
factor for success?"
"Not bucking into a buzz saw. The world is mostly made of barkers and
builders. You fellows spend all the time barking. Then you wonder
there's nothing to show in the way of a building."
The telegraph wires began to click and the girl operator came in with
some tissue sheets.
"Fight in Frisco--that goes," commented the telegraph editor dashing in
the "ands" and "buts" and the punctuation. He stuck the slip on the
printer's hook. "Wedding in Newport--"
"That goes," laughed the handy man, "There's no sacred cow about that."
The telegraph man wrote headings for the dispatches and stuck them on
the hook for the printer's boy.
"Speaking of sacred cows, it isn't exactly cows, but it's in the stock
line all right--what do you know about that business last night up on
Rim Rocks? Stage driver has been blazing it all round town--"
"Stage driver's a liar," emphatically declared Brydges.
"Been trying to get the news for an hour; the wires are cut. Can't get
'em by phone. Think I'll send a man up to-night with a photographer."
"Oh, I wouldn't," drawled Bat sleepily. "It isn't worth it. I've just
come down. Whole row's over. You can't get a dub in the Valley to
open his mouth. Same old gag we've used for the last ten years,
'heavily armed band of masked men,' 'scene like a butcher's shambles,'
and that guy of a sheriff 'scouring the hills for the miscreants.'
I'll bet he's under his bed scared blue."
"Who did it?"
"Same old gang of outside grazers, drovers who skipped the State line.
I succeeded in getting their names after a good deal of trouble."
"You did, did you? Then give us a stick about it, will you? Date it
special at the Rim Rocks! Trouble is, if I do send a man up, business
office will kick at the expense account; for there's nothing in it; and
that kind of news hurts the Valley."
So Mr. Bat Brydges wrote forty lines of two paragraphs in which he
warned the public that this sort of thing had to stop; the West would
not stand for interference from outside cattlemen who were trying to
wrest the range away from local grazers. There followed the names of
six men concerned in the Rim Rock fray. Whose names they were, neither
Bat nor anyone else knew. Also Mr. Sheriff Flood was not described as
"a guy" nor pictured as reposing under his bed. He might have been a
walking arsenal of defence for the Valley. According to Mr. Bat
Brydges, Sheriff Flood was busy on the case and had wired the
authorities of the adjoining States to be on the look out for the
guilty parties. There followed a description of the guilty parties
photographed accurately from Mr. Bat Brydges's retina.
The third newspaper office was the least easy for the handy man's
tactics. The editor was an independent of the fiery order. Bat
avoided the editor and tackled a young reporter at the noon hour.
"What do you say to a spin in the 40 h. p. to-night?" he asked.
"What's on?"
The youth was reading an ink-smudged galley proof.
Bat sat down on the desk where he could read over the other's shoulder.
The proof reeked of "gore" and "shambles" and "heavily armed masked
men" and rifle shots thick as hail stones with a sheriff careening over
the Mesas at break neck speed slathered with zeal for law.
"What reforms are you jollying along now?" asked Bat.
"We'll jolly you fellows when this comes out."
"I've always said if I were his Satanic Majesty and wished to defeat
the goody-goodies, I wouldn't bother fighting 'em! I'd take an
afternoon nap and let them buck themselves by their lies and
bickerings."
The youth ran his eye down the galley proof.
"Who filled you up with this dope?" Brydges lowered his voice to an
altogether amused and very confidential key.
"What's the matter with it?"
"Matter? There's nothing right about it."
"Goes all the same. Got snap! It's good stuff."
"Stuffing, you mean," corrected the handy man. "Say, where ever did
you get it? Talk of stuff? Somebody has mistaken you for a spring
chicken."
"Got it straight. It's all right! Fellow from the English colony--"
"English Colony? Those Rookeries--Mother Carey's chickens. Do you
know what that Rookery gang is? A lot of gambling toughs, remittance
doughheads--"
"That doesn't spoil a ripping good story! I'm going to wire a column
to Chicago."
"No, you're not," contradicted Brydges. "That kind of thing hurts the
State more than ten thousand dollars will advertise it. You go over
your advertising columns my boy--"
"All right! It's up to you?"
Bat whistled and swung the galley proofs between his knees.
"Doesn't matter what you say out here. Everybody knows your rag sheet
will contradict to-morrow what you say to-day in headings red and long
as a lead pencil. You'll contradict in a little hidden paragraph
tucked away among the ads., and I guess we know which are the ads. out
here; but, if you want any more dope on inside stuff, don't you send
that East! You have applied for a job on our paper twice. If you want
one, don't you send that East! What do they pay you, anyway?"
The youth paused to estimate; and youth's hopes are ever high.
"That's worth a hundred to me!"
"No, you don't! They pay you six and ten and sometimes two, but it's
worth a hundred if you keep it out, nice crisp little bills, my boy.
Call for you to-night at five; but don't you play that story up."
It was then and there Bat showed himself a past master. He sauntered
out of the office humming.
"Say, Brydges," called the youth, "what's wrong with this account,
anyway?"
"All wrong," reiterated Brydges stepping back. "Wasn't a man lost his
life. Wasn't a man on the Range at the time, only a kid got in the way
of a stampede! Here, I'll give it to you straight! I've just come
down from the Valley! You tell what happened down in Mesa and Garfield
counties ten years ago, and up in Wyoming last spring! Give it to the
other States. Don't give your own State a black eye! Come on out and
have something with me, and I'll fix you up as we feed."
So when the Independent's fiery columns came out with red scare heads
and gory recital full of reference to "something rotten in the State of
Denmark" and "damnable rascality," there was only one emasculated
innocuous column given to the local event, but seven columns were
steeped with the bloody details of sheep massacres and stock raids and
Range Wars in other states in "the good old gun-toting days."
Bat's last act that day was to send a telegram care of the East-bound
Limited to Senator Moyese. It read, "All local papers out highly
gratulatory references your efforts to punish guilty parties."