Up came trotting a brisk little man with a notebook in one hand, a
stubby lead-pencil in the other, a look of importance spread over
his flushed features, and on his breast a broad, blue ribbon,
inscribed: "Chief Marshal."
"Smyrna has drawed number five for the squirt," he announced,
"fallerin' Vienny. Committee on tub contests has selected Colonel
Gideon Ward as referee."
Hiram's eyes began to blaze, and Cap'n Sproul growled oaths under
his breath. During the weeks of their growing intimacy the Cap'n had
detailed to his friend the various phases of Colonel Gideon's
iniquity as displayed toward him. Though the affairs of Hiram Look
had not yet brought him into conflict with the ancient tyrant of
Smyrna, Hiram had warmly espoused the cause and the grudge of the
Cap'n.
"I'll bet a thousand dollars against a jelly-fish's hind leg that
he begged the job so as to do you," whispered Sproul. "I ain't been
a brother-in-law of his goin' on two years not to know his shenanigan.
It's a plot."
"Who picked out that old cross between a split-saw and a bull-thistle
to umpire this muster?" shouted the foreman of the Ancients, to the
amazement of the brisk little man.
"Why, he's the leadin' man in this section, and a Smyrna man at that,"
explained the marshal. "I don't see how your company has got any kick
comin'. He's one of your own townsmen."
"And that's why we know him better than you do," protested Hiram,
taking further cue from the glowering gaze of Cap'n Sproul. "You put
him out there with the tape, and you'll see--"
"'Peace and politeness, and everybody happy,'" quoted Uncle Trufant,
maliciously. The serenity had departed from Foreman Look's face.
"You don't pretend to tell me, do ye, that the Smyrna Ancients are
afraid to have one of their own citizens as a referee?" demanded the
brisk little man suspiciously. "If that's so, then there must be
something decayed about your organization."
"I don't think they're down here to squirt accordin' to the rules
made and pervided," went on the ancient Vienna satirist. "They've
brought Bostin bags and a couple of wimmen, and are goin' to have
a quiltin'-bee. P'raps they think that Kunnel Gid Ward don't know
a fish-bone stitch from an over-and-over. P'raps they think Kunnel
Ward ain't ladylike enough for 'em."
Not only had the serenity departed from the face of Foreman Look,
the furious anger of his notoriously short temper had taken its
place.
"By the jumped-up jedux," he shouted, "you pass me any more of that
talk, you old hook-nosed cockatoo, and I'll slap your chops!"
The unterrified veteran of the Viennese brandished his cane to
embrace the throng of his red-shirted townsmen, who had been crowding
close to hear. At last his flint had struck the spark that flashed
with something of the good old times about it.
"And what do you suppose the town of Vienny would be doin' whilst
you was insultin' the man who was the chief of old Niag'ry Company
for twenty years?" he screamed.
"There's one elephant that I know about that would be an orphin in
about fifteen seconds," growled one of the loyal members of the
Vienna company, the lust of old days of rivalry beginning to stir
in his blood.
"Would, hey?" shouted an Ancient, with the alacrity of one who has
old-time grudges still unsettled. He put a sandwich back into his
basket untasted, an ominous sign of how belligerency was overcoming
appetite. "Well, make b'lieve I'm the front door of the orphin asylum,
and come up and rap on me!"
With a promptitude that was absolutely terrifying the two lines of
red shirts began to draw together, voices growling bodingly, fists
clinching, eyes narrowing with the reviving hatred of old contests.
The triumphal entry of the Smyrna Ancients, their display of
prosperity, their monopoly of the plaudits and attention of the
throngs, the assumption of superior caste and manners, had stirred
resentment under every red shirt in the parade. But Vienna,
hereditary foe, seemed to be the one tacitly selected for the brunt
of the conflict.
"Hiram!" pleaded his wife, running to him and patting his convulsed
features with trembling fingers. "You said this was all goin' to be
genteel. You said you were goin' to show 'em how good manners and
politeness ought to run a firemen's muster. You said you were!"
By as mighty an effort of self-control as he ever exercised in his
life, Hiram managed to gulp back the sulphurous vilification he had
ready at his tongue's end, and paused a moment.
"That's right! I did say it!" he bellowed, his eyes sweeping the crowd
over his wife's shoulder. "And I mean it. It sha'n't be said that
the Smyrna Ancients were anything but gents. Let them that think a
bunged eye and a bloody nose is the right kind of badges to wear away
from a firemen's muster keep right on in their hellish career. As
for us"--he tucked his wife's arm under his own--"we remember there's
ladies present."
"Includin' the elephant," suggested the irrepressible Uncle Trufant,
indicating with his cane Imogene "weaving" amiably in the sunshine.
Cap'n Sproul crowded close and growled into the ear of the venerable
mischief-maker: "I don't know who set you on to thorn this crowd of
men into a fight, and I don't care. But there ain't goin' to be no
trouble here, and, if you keep on tryin' to make it, I'll give you
one figger of the Portygee fandle-dingo."
"What's that?" inquired Uncle Trufant, with interest.
"An almighty good lickin'," quoth the peacemaker. "I ain't a member
of a fire company, and I ain't under no word of honor not to fight."
The two men snapped their angry eyes at each other, and Uncle Trufant
turned away, intimidated for the moment. He confessed to himself that
he didn't exactly understand how far a seafaring man could be trifled
with.
Vienna gazed truculently on Smyrna for a time, but Smyrna, obeying
their foreman's adjurations, mellowed into amiable grins and went
on with their lunches.
"Where's that Spitz poodle with the blue ribbon?" inquired the Cap'n
of Hiram, having reference to the brisk little man and his side
whiskers. "It don't appear to me that you pounded it into his head
solid enough about our not standin' for Gid Ward."
In the stress of other difficulties Hiram had forgotten the dispute
that started the quarrel.
"Don't let's have any more argument, Hiram," pleaded his wife.
"She's right, Cap'n," said the foreman. "Standin' up for your rights
is good and proper business, but it's a darn slippery place we're
tryin' to stand on. Let the old pirate referee. We can outsquirt 'em.
He won't dast to cheat us. I'm goin' to appoint you to represent
Smyrna up there at the head of the stream. Keep your eye out for a
square deal."
"I don't know a thing about squirtin', and I won't get mixed in,"
protested the Cap'n. But the members of the Smyrna company crowded
around him with appeals.
"There's only this to know," urged Hiram. "The judges lay down sheets
of brown paper and measure to the farthest drop. All you've got to
do is keep your eye out and see that we get our rights. You'll only
be actin' as a citizen of our town--and as first selectman you can
insist on our rights. And you can do it in a gentlemanly way,
accordin' to the programme we've mapped out. Peace and
politeness--that's the motto for Smyrna."
And in the end Cap'n Sproul allowed himself to be persuaded.
But it was scarcely persuasion that did it.
It was this plaintive remark of the foreman: "Are you goin' to stand
by and see Gideon Ward do us, and then give you the laugh?"
Therefore the Cap'n buttoned his blue coat tightly and trudged up
to where the committee was busy with the sheets of brown paper,
weighting them with stones so that the July breeze could not flutter
them away.
Starks, Carthage, and Salem made but passable showing. They seemed
to feel that the crowd took but little interest in them. The listless
applause that had greeted them in the parade showed that.
Then, with a howl, half-sullen, half-ferocious, Vienna trundled old
Niagara to the reservoir, stuck her intake pipe deep in the water,
and manned her brake-beams. To the surprise of the onlookers her
regular foreman took his station with the rest of the crew. Uncle
Brad Trufant, foreman emeritus, took command. He climbed slowly upon
her tank, braced himself against the bell-hanger, and shook his cane
in the air.
"Look at me!" he yelled, his voice cracking into a squall. "Look at
me and remember them that's dead and gone, your fathers and your
grands'rs, whose old fists used to grip them bars right where you've
got your hands. Think of 'em, and then set your teeth and yank the
'tarnal daylights out of her. Are ye goin' to let me stand here--me
that has seen your grands'rs pump--and have it said that old Niag'ry
was licked by a passul of knittin'-work old-maids, led by an elephant
and a peep-show man? Be ye goin' to let 'em outsquirt ye? Why, the
wimmen-folks of Vienny will put p'isen in your biscuits if you go
home beat by anything that Smyrna can turn out. Git a-holt them bars!
Clench your chaws! Now, damye, ye toggle-j'inted, dough-fingered,
wall-eyed sons of sea-cooks, give her tar--_give_--_her_--_tar!_"
It was the old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned
foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the
most scurrilous abuse of his men--and the immediate efforts of Vienna
seemed to endorse his opinion.
With the foreman marking time with "Hoomp!--hoomp!" they began to
surge at the bars, arms interlaced, hands, brown and gristly,
covering the leather from end to end. The long, snaking hose filled
and plumped out with snappings.
Uncle Trufant flung his hat afar, doubled forward, and with white
hair bristling on his head began to curse horribly. Occasionally he
rapped at a laggard with his cane. Then, like an insane
orchestra-leader, he sliced the air about his head and launched fresh
volleys of picturesque profanity.
Old Niagara rocked and danced. The four hosemen staggered as the
stream ripped from the nozzle, crackling like pistol discharges.
There was no question as to Uncle Trufant's ability to get the most
out of the ancient pride of Vienna. He knew Niagara's resources.
"Ease her!" he screamed, after the first dizzy staccato of the beams.
"Ease her! Steady! Get your motion! Up--down! Up--down! Get your
motion! Take holt of her! Lift her! Now--now--_now!_ For the last
ounce of wickin' that's in ye! Give her--_hell!_"
It was the crucial effort. Men flung themselves at the beams. Legs
flapped like garments on a clothes-line in a crazy gale. And when
Uncle Trufant clashed the bell they staggered away, one by one, and
fell upon the grass of the square.
"A hundred and seventeen feet, eight inches and one-half!" came the
yell down the line, and at the word Vienna rose on her elbows and
bawled hoarse cheers.
The cheer was echoed tumultuously, for every man in the crowd of
spectators knew that this was full twenty feet better than the record
score of all musters--made by Smyrna two years before, with wind and
all conditions favoring.
"That's what old times and old-fashioned cussin' can do for ye,"
declared Uncle Trufant.
A man--a short, squat man in a blue coat--came pelting down the street
from the direction of the judges. It was Cap'n Aaron Sproul. People
got out of his way when they got a glimpse of the fury on his face.
He tore into the press of Smyrna fire-fighters, who were massed about
Hecla, their faces downcast at announcement of this astonishing
squirt.
"A hunderd and seventeen northin'! A hunderd and seventeen
northin'!" Cap'n Sproul gasped over and over. "I knowed he was in
to do us! I see him do it! It wa'n't no hunderd and seventeen! It's
a fraud!"
"You're a liar!" cried Uncle Trufant, promptly. But the Cap'n refused
to be diverted into argument.
"I went up there to watch Gid Ward, and I watched him," he informed
the Ancients. "The rest of 'em was watchin' the squirt, but I was
watchin' that land-pirut. I see him spit on that paper twenty feet
further'n the furthest drop of water, and then he measured from that
spit. That's the kind of a man that's refereein' this thing. He's
here to do us! He's paying off his old town-meetin' grudge!"
"Oh, I can't think that of my brother!" cried the Cap'n's wife.
"Remember, Hiram, that you've agreed--" began the cautious spouse
of the foreman, noting with alarm the rigid lines beginning to crease
her husband's face.
"There ain't no mistake about his measurin' to that spit?" demanded
Hiram of the Cap'n, in the level tones of one already convinced but
willing to give the accused one a last chance.
"He done it--I swear he done it."
"I'd thought," pursued the foreman of the Ancients, "that a firemen's
muster could be made genteel, and would make a pleasant little trip
for the ladies. I was mistaken." At the look in his eyes his wife
began eager appeal, but he simply picked her up and placed her in
the van from which the lunch-baskets had been taken. "There's Mis'
Look," he said to the Cap'n. "She'll be glad to have the company of
Mis' Sproul."
Without a word the Cap'n picked up Louada Murilla and placed her
beside the half-fainting Mrs. Look. Hiram closed the doors of the
van.
"Drive out about two miles," he ordered the man on the box, "and then
let the ladies git out and pick bokays and enjoy nature for the rest
of the afternoon. It's--it's--apt to be kind of stuffy here in the
village."
And the van rumbled away down the street toward the vista framed in
the drooping elms.
"Now, gents," said Hiram to his men, "if this is a
spittin'-at-a-crack contest instead of a tub-squirt, I reckon we'd
better go to headquarters and find out about it."
But at Smyrna's announced determination to raid the referee, Vienna
massed itself in the way. It began to look like the good old times,
and the spectators started a hasty rush to withdraw from the scene.
But Vienna was too openly eager for pitched battle.
To stop then and give them what they had been soliciting all day
seemed too much like gracious accommodation in the view of Foreman
Look. His business just at that moment was with Colonel Gideon Ward,
and he promptly thought of a way to get to him.
At a signal the intelligent Imogene hooped her trunk about him and
hoisted him to her neck. Then she started up the street, brandishing
the trunk before her like a policeman's billy and "roomping" in
hoarse warning to those who encumbered her path.
A charge led by an elephant was not in the martial calculations of
the Viennese. They broke and fled incontinently.
Perhaps Colonel Gideon Ward would have fled also, but the crowd that
had gathered to watch the results of the hose-play was banked closely
in the street.
"Make way!" bellowed Foreman Look. "There's only one man I want, and
I'm goin' to have him. Keep out of my road and you won't get hurt.
Now, Colonel Gideon Ward," he shouted, from his grotesque mount, as
that gentleman, held at bay partly by his pride and partly by the
populace, came face to face with him, "I've been in the circus
business long enough to know a fake when I see one. You've been caught
at it. Own up!"
The Colonel snorted indignantly and scornfully.
"You don't own up, then?" queried Hiram.
"I'll give you five minutes to stop circusin' and get your tub
astraddle that reservoir," snapped the referee.
"It occurs to me," went on Hiram, "that you can spit farther if you're
up a tree. We want you to do your best when you spit for us."
Colonel Ward blinked without appearing to understand.
But the foreman of the Smyrna Ancients immediately made it evident
that he had evolved a peculiar method of dealing with the case in
hand. He drove Imogene straight at the goggling referee.
"Up that tree!" roared Hiram. "She'll kill you if you don't."
Indeed, the elephant was brandishing her trunk in a ferocious manner.
A ladder was leaning against a near-by elm, and Colonel Ward, almost
under the trudging feet of the huge beast, tossed dignity to the winds.
He ran up the ladder, and Imogene, responding to a cuff on her head,
promptly dragged it away from the tree.
"Only three minutes left to get Hecla into position," Hiram shouted.
"Referee says so. Lively with her!"
Around and around in a circle he kept Imogene shambling, driving the
crowd back from the tree. The unhappy Colonel was marooned there in
solitary state.
At first the Vienna company showed a hesitating inclination to
interfere with the placing of Hecla, suspecting something untoward
in the astonishing elevation of the referee. But even Uncle Trufant
was slow to assume the responsibility of interfering with a company's
right of contest.
The Ancients located their engine, coupled the hose, and ran it out
with alacrity.
"Colonel Ward," shouted Hiram, "you've tried to do it, but you can't.
If it's got to be dog eat dog, and no gents need apply at a firemen's
muster, then here's where we have our part of the lunch. Did you
measure in twenty extry feet up to your spit mark? Speak up! A quick
answer turneth away the hose!"
By this time the crew was gently working the brakes of old Hecla.
The hose quivered, and the four men at the nozzle felt it twitching
as the water pressed at the closed valve. They were grinning, for
now they realized the nature of their foreman's mode of persuasion.
Vienna realized it, too, for with a howl of protest her men came
swarming into the square.
"Souse the hide off'm the red-bellied sons of Gehenna!" Hiram yelled,
and the hosemen, obedient to the word, swept the hissing stream on
the enemy.
Men who will face bullets will run from hornets.
Men who will charge cannon can be routed by water.
The men at the brakes of old Hecla pumped till the tub jigged on her
trucks like a fantastic dancer. To right, to left, in whooshing
circles, or dwelling for an instant on some particularly
obstreperous Vienna man, the great stream played. Some were knocked
flat, some fell and were rolled bodily out of the square by the stream,
others ran wildly with their arms over their heads. The air was full
of leather hats, spinning as the water struck them. Every now and
then the hosemen elevated the nozzle and gave Colonel Gideon Ward
his share. A half-dozen times he nearly fell off his perch and flapped
out like a rag on a bush.
"It certainly ain't no place for ladies!" communed Hiram with himself,
gazing abroad from his elevated position on Imogene's neck. "I
thought it was once, but it ain't."
"Colonel Gideon Ward," he shouted to the limp and dripping figure
in the tree, "do you own up?"
The Colonel withdrew one arm to shake his fist at the speaker, and
narrowly saved himself by instantly clutching again, for the
crackling stream tore at him viciously.
"We'll drownd ye where ye hang," roared the foreman of the Ancients,
"before we'll let you or any other pirate rinky-dink us out of what
belongs to us."
Like some Hindu magician transplanted to Yankeedom he bestrode the
neck of his elephant, and with his hand summoned the waving stream
to do his will. Now he directed its spitting force on the infuriated
Colonel; now he put to flight some Vienna man who plucked up a little
fleeting courage.
And at last Colonel Ward knuckled. There was nothing else to do.
"I made a mistake," he said, in a moment of respite from the stream.
"You spit on the paper and measured in twenty extry feet jest as Cap'n
Aaron Sproul said you did," insisted Hiram. "Say that, and say it
loud, or we'll give old Hecly the wickin' and blow you out of that
tree."
And after ineffectual oaths the Colonel said it--said it twice, and
the second time much the louder.
"Then," bellowed the triumphant Hiram, "the record of old Hecly
Number One still stands, and the championship banner travels back
to Smyrna with us to-night, jest as it travelled down this mornin'."
"Hain't you goin' to squirt?" asked some one posted safely behind
a distant tree.
"If you'd been payin' 'tention as you ought to be you'd have jest
seen us squirtin'," replied the foreman of the Ancients with quiet
satire. "And when we squirt, we squirt to win."
Cap'n Aaron Sproul turned away from a rapt and lengthy survey of
Colonel Ward in the tree.
"Did you ever ride on an elephant, Cap'n Sproul?" inquired Hiram.
"Never tried it," said the seaman.
"Well, I want you to come up here with me. Imogene will h'ist you.
I was thinkin', as it's gettin' rather dull here in the village just
now"--Hiram yawned obtrusively--"we'd go out and join the ladies.
I reckon the company'd like to go along and set on the grass, and
pee-ruse nature for a little while, and eat up what's left in them
lunch-baskets."
Ten minutes later the Smyrna Ancients and Honorables took their
departure down the street bordered by the elms. Hiram Look and Cap'n
Aaron Sproul swayed comfortably on Imogene's broad back. The
fife-and-drum corps followed, and behind marched the champions,
dragging Hecla Number One on its ruckling trucks.
Then, with the bass drums punctuating and accenting, they sang:
"Rip-te-hoo! And a hip, hip, holler!
We'll lick hell for a half a dollar!"
And it wasn't till then that some bystander tore his attention away
long enough to stick a ladder up the elm-tree and let Colonel Gideon
Ward scrape his way despondently down.