Uncle Brad Trufant stood on the post-office steps, dim and
discontented eyes on the vista of Court Street, framed in the
drooping elms.
"They don't get the pepper sass into it these days they used to,"
he said. "These last two years, if it wa'n't for the red shirts and
some one forgettin' and cussin' once in a while, you'd think they
was classes from a theological seminary marchin' to get their degrees.
I can remember when we came down from Vienny twenty years ago with
old Niag'ry, and ev'ry man was over six feet tall, and most of 'em
had double teeth, upper and lower, all the way 'round. And all wore
red shirts. And ev'ry man had one horn, and most of 'em tew. We broke
glass when we hollered. We tore up ground when we jumped. We cracked
the earth when we lit. Them was real days for firemen!"
"Ain't seen the Smyrna Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association,
Hiram Look foreman, and his new fife-and-drum corps, and the rest
of the trimmin's, have you, Uncle Brad?" drawled a man near him. "Well,
don't commit yourself too far on old Vienny till the Smyrna part of
the parade gets past. I see 'em this mornin' when they unloaded Hecly
One and the trimmin's 'foresaid, and I'd advise you to wait a spell
before you go to callin' this muster names."
It became apparent a little later that hints of this sort were having
their effect on the multitude. Even the head of the great parade,
with old John Burt, chief marshal, titupping to the grunt of brass
horns, stirred only perfunctory applause. The shouts for Avon's
stalwart fifty, with their mascot gander waddling on the right flank,
were evidently confined to the Avon excursionists. Starks, Carthage,
Salem, Vienna strode past with various evolutions--open order, fours
by the right, double-quick, and all the rest, but still the heads
turned toward the elm-framed vista of the street. The people were
expecting something. It came.
Away down the street there sounded--raggity-tag! raggity-tag!--the
tuck of a single drum. Then--pur-r-r-r!
"There's old Smyrna talkin' up!" shrilled a voice in the crowd.
And the jubilant plangor of a fife-and-drum corps burst on the
listening ears.
"And there's his pet elephant for a mascot! How's that for Foreman
Hiram Look and the Smyrna Ancients and Honer'bles?" squealed the
voice once more.
The drum corps came first, twenty strong, snares and basses rattling
and booming, the fifers with arms akimbo and cheeks like bladders.
Hiram Look, ex-showman and once proprietor of "Look's Leviathan
Circus and Menagerie," came next, lonely in his grandeur. He wore
his leather hat, with the huge shield-fin hanging down his back, the
word "Foreman" newly lettered on its curved front. He carried two
leather buckets on his left arm, and in his right hand flourished
his speaking-trumpet. The bed-wrench, chief token of the antiquity
of the Ancients, hung from a cord about his neck, and the huge bag,
with a puckering-string run about its mouth, dangled from his waist.
At his heels shambled the elephant, companion of his circus
wanderings, and whose old age he had sworn to protect and make
peaceful. A banner was hung from each ear, and she slouched along
at a brisk pace, in order to keep the person of her lord and master
within reach of her moist and wistful trunk. She wore a blanket on
which was printed: "Imogene, Mascot of the Smyrna Ancients." Imogene
was making herself useful as well as ornamental, for she was
harnessed to the pole of "Hecla Number One," and the old tub
"ruckle-chuckled" along at her heels on its little red trucks. From
its brake-bars hung the banners won in the past-and-gone victories
of twenty years of musters. Among these was one inscribed
"Champions."
And behind Hecla marched, seventy-five strong, the Ancients of
Smyrna, augmented, by Hiram Look's enterprise, until they comprised
nearly every able-bodied man in the old town.
To beat and pulse of riotous drums and shrilling fifes they were
roaring choruses. It was the old war song of the organization,
product of a quarter-century of rip-roaring defiance, crystallized
from the lyrics of the hard-fisted.
They let the bass drums accent for them.
"Here wec-come from old Sy-myrna
Here wec-come with Hecly One;
She's the prunes for a squirt, gol durn her--
We've come down for fight or fun.
Shang, de-rango! We're the bo-kay,
Don't giveadam for no one no way.
"Here wec-come--sing old A'nt Rhody!
See old Hecly paw up dirt.
Stuff her pod with rocks and sody,
Jee-ro C'ris'mus, how she'll squirt!
Rip-te-hoo! And a hip, hip, holler,
We'll lick hell for a half a dollar!"
The post-office windows rattled and shivered in the sunshine. Horses
along the line of march crouched, ducked sideways, and snorted in
panic. Women put their fingers in their ears as the drums passed.
And when at the end of each verse the Ancients swelled their
red-shirted bosoms and screamed, Uncle Trufant hissed in the ear of
his nearest neighbor on the post-office steps: "The only thing we
need is the old Vienny company here to give 'em the stump! Old Vienny,
as it used to be, could lick 'em, el'funt and all."
The Smyrna Ancients were file-closers of the parade; Hiram Look had
chosen his position with an eye to effect that made all the other
companies seem to do mere escort duty. The orderly lines of
spectators poured together into the street behind, and went elbowing
in noisy rout to the village square, the grand rallying-point and
arena of the day's contests. There, taking their warriors' ease
before the battle, the Ancients, as disposed by their assiduous
foreman, continued the centre of observation.
Uncle Brad Trufant, nursing ancient memories of the prowess of
Niagara and the Viennese, voiced some of the sentiment of the envious
when he muttered: "Eatin', allus eatin'! The only fire they can
handle is a fire in a cook-stove."
On this occasion Foreman Look had responded nobly to the well-known
gastronomic call of his Ancients. No one understood better than he
the importance of the commissary in a campaign. The dinner he had
given the Ancients to celebrate his election as foreman had shown
him the way to their hearts.
Bringing up the rear had rumbled one of his circus-vans. Now, with
the eyes of the hungry multitude on him, he unlocked the doors and
disclosed an interior packed full of individual lunch-baskets. His
men cheered lustily and formed in line.
Foreman Look gazed on his cohorts with pride and fondness.
"Gents," he said, in a clarion voice that took all the bystanders
into his confidence, "you're never goin' to make any mistake in
followin' me. Follow me when duty calls--follow me when pleasure
speaks, and you'll always find me with the goods."
He waved his hand at the open door of the van.
Two ladies had been awaiting the arrival of the Ancients in the square,
squired by a stout man in blue, who scruffed his fingers through his
stubbly gray beard from time to time with no great ease of manner.
Most of the spectators knew him. He was the first selectman of Smyrna,
Cap'n Aaron Sproul. And when the ladies, at a signal from Foreman
Look, took stations at the van door and began to distribute the
baskets, whisperings announced that they were respectively the wives
of Cap'n Sproul and the foreman of Hecla One. The ladies wore red,
white, and blue aprons, and rosettes of patriotic hues, and their
smiling faces indicated their zest in their duties.
Uncle Trufant, as a hound scents game, sniffed Cap'n Sproul's uneasy
rebelliousness, and seemed to know with a sixth sense that only
Hiram's most insistent appeals to his friendship, coupled with the
coaxings of the women-folk, had dragged him down from Smyrna. Uncle
Trufant edged up to him and pointed wavering cane at the festive scene
of distribution.
"Seems to be spendin' his money on 'em, all free and easy, Cap'n."
The Cap'n scowled and grunted.
"It's good to have a lot of money like he's got. That's the kind of
a foreman them caterpillars is lookin' for. But if greenbacks growed
all over him, like leaves on a tree, they'd keep at him till they'd
gnawed 'em all off."
He glowered at the briskly wagging jaws and stuffed cheeks of the
feeding proteges of Foreman Look.
"I reckon he'll wake up some day, same's you did, and reelize what
they're tryin' to do to him. What you ought to done was settle in
Vienny. We've heard out our way how them Smyrna bloodsuckers have--"
Cap'n Sproul whirled on the ancient detractor, whiskers bristling
angrily. He had never been backward in pointing out Smyrna's faults.
But to have an outsider do it in the open forum of a firemen's muster
was a different matter.
"Before I started in to criticise other towns or brag about my own,
Trufant," he snorted, "I'd move over into some place where citizens
like you, that's been dead ten years and ought to be buried, ain't
walkin' round because there ain't soil enough left in town to bury
'em in." This was biting reference to Vienna's ledgy surface.
"I'd ruther walk on granite than have web feet and paddle in muck,"
retorted Uncle Trufant, ready with the ancient taunt as to the big
bog that occupied Smyrna's interior.
"Ducks are good property," rejoined the Cap'n, serenely, "but I never
heard of any one keepin' crows for pets nor raisin' 'em for market.
There ain't anything but a crow will light on your town, and they
only do it because the sight of it makes 'em faint."
Stimulated because bystanders were listening to the colloquy, Uncle
Trufant shook his cane under Cap'n Sproul's nose.
"That's what ye be in Smyrna--ducks!" he squealed. "You yourself come
to your own when ye waddled off'm the deck of a ship and settled there.
Down here to-day with an el'funt and what's left of a busted circus,
and singin' brag songs, when there ain't a man in this county but
what knows Smyrna never had the gristle to put up a fight man-fashion
at a firemen's muster. Vienny can shake one fist at ye and run ye
up a tree. Vienny has allus done it. Vienny allus will do it. Ye can't
fight!"
Hiram had cocked his ear at sound of Uncle Trufant's petulant squeal.
He thrust close to them, elbowing the crowd.
"Fight! Why, you old black and tan, what has fightin' got to do with
the makin' of a fire department? There's been too much fightin' in
years past. It's a lot of old terriers like you that had made firemen
looked down on. Your idee of fire equipment was a kag of new rum and
plenty of brass knuckles. I can show ye that times has changed! Look
at that picture there!" He waved his hairy hand at the ladies who
were distributing the last of the lunch-baskets. "That's the way to
come to muster--come like gents, act like gents, eat like gents, and
when it's all over march with your lady on your arm."
"Three cheers for the ladies!" yelled an enthusiastic member of the
Smyrna company. The cheers coming up had to crowd past food going
down, but the effect was good, nevertheless.
"That's the idea!" shouted Hiram. "Peace and politeness, and
everybody happy. If that kind of a firemen's muster don't suit Vienny,
then her company better take the next train back home and put in the
rest of the day firin' rocks at each other. If Vienny stays here she's
got to be genteel, like the rest of us--and the Smyrna Ancients will
set the pace. Ain't that so, boys?"
His men yelled jubilant assent.
Uncle Trufant's little eyes shuttled balefully.
"Oh, that's it, is it?" he jeered. "I didn't know I'd got into the
ladies' sewin'-circle. But if you've got fancy-work in them
shoppin'-bags of your'n, and propose to set under the trees this
afternoon and do tattin', I wouldn't advise ye to keep singin' that
song you marched in here with. It ain't ladylike. Better sing, 'Oh,
how we love our teacher dear!'"
"Don't you fuss your mind about us in any way, shape, or manner,"
retorted the foreman. "When we march we march, when we eat we eat,
when we sing we sing, when we squirt"--he raised his voice and glared
at the crowd surrounding--"we'll give ye a stream that the whole
Vienny fire company can straddle and ride home on like it was a
hobby-horse." And, concluding thus, he fondled his long mustaches
away from his mouth and gazed on the populace with calm pride. Caesar
on the plains of Pharsalia, Pompey triumphant on the shores of Africa,
Alexander at the head of his conquering Macedonians had not more
serenity of countenance to display to the multitude.