The Cap'n had never visited that retired part of the town called
"Purgatory." He found Mr. Gammon's homestead to be a gray and unkempt
farm-house from which the weather had scrubbed the paint. The
front yard was bare of every vestige of grass and contained a clutter
that seemed to embrace everything namable, including a gravestone.
"What be ye gettin' ready for--an auction?" growled the Cap'n,
groutily, his seaman's sense of tidiness offended. "Who do you expect
will bid in a second-hand gravestone?"
"It ain't second-hand," replied the owner, reprovingly, as he eased
himself out of the wagon. "Mis' Gammon, my first wife, is buried there.
'Twas by her request. She made her own layin'-out clothes, picked
her bearers and music, and selected the casket. She was a capable
woman."
"It's most a wonder to me that he ever took the crape off'm the
door-knob," remarked Hiram, in a husky aside to the Cap'n, not
intending to be overheard and somewhat crestfallen to find that he
had been.
"I didn't for some time, till it got faded," explained Mr. Gammon,
without display of resentment. "I had the casket-plate mounted on
black velvet and framed. It's in the settin'-room. I'll show it to
you before you leave."
Hiram pulled his mouth to one side and hissed under shelter of his
big mustache: "Well, just what a witch would want of _that_ feller,
unless 'twas to make cracked ice of him, blame me if I know!"
Mr. Gammon began apprehensive survey of his domains.
"Let's go home," muttered the Cap'n, his one idea of retreat still
with him. "What do you and I know about witches, anyway, even if there
are such things? We've done our duty! We've been here. If he gets
us to investigatin' it will be just like him to want us to dig that
woman up."
His appeal was suddenly interrupted. Mr. Gammon, peering about his
premises for fresh evidences of witchcraft accomplished during his
absence, bellowed frantic request to "Come, see!" He was behind the
barn, and they hastened thither.
"My Gawd, gents, they've witched the ca'f!" Their eyes followed the
direction of his quivering finger.
A calf was placidly surveying them from among the branches of a
"Sopsy-vine" apple-tree, munching an apple that he had been able to
reach. Whatever agency had boosted him there had left him wedged into
the crotch of the limbs so that he could not move, though he appeared
to be comfortable.
"It jest takes all the buckram out of me--them sights do," wailed
Mr. Gammon. "I can't climb up there and do it. One of you will have
to." He pulled out a big jackknife, opened it with his yellow teeth,
and extended it.
"Have to do what?" demanded Hiram.
"Cut off his ears and tail. That's the only way to get him out from
under the charm."
But Hiram, squinting up to assure himself that the calf was
comfortable, pushed Mr. Gammon back and made him sit down on a pile
of bean-poles.
"Better put your hat between your knees," he suggested, noting the
way Mr. Gammon's thin knees were jigging. "You might knock a sliver
off the bones, rappin' them together that way."
He lighted one of his long cigars, his shrewd eyes searching Mr.
Gammon all the time.
"Now," said he, tipping down a battered wheelbarrow and sitting on
it, "there's nothin' like gettin' down to cases. We're here official.
The first selectman of this town is here. Go ahead, Cap'n Sproul,
and put your questions."
"Ask 'em yourself," snorted the Cap'n, with just a flicker of
resentful malice; "you're the witch expert. I ain't."
"Well," retorted Hiram, with an alacrity that showed considerable
zest for the business in hand, "I never shirked duty. First, what's
her name again--the woman that's doin' it all?"
"I want you to come and see--" began Mr. Gammon, apparently having
his own ideas as to a witch-hunt, but Hiram shook the big cigar at
him fiercely.
"We ain't got time nor inclination for inspectin' coffin-plates,
wax-flowers, bewitched iron kittles, balky horses, and old ganders.
Who is this woman and where does she live, and what's the matter with
her?"
"She's Arizima Orff, and that's her house over the rise of that land
where you can see the chimblys." Mr. Gammon was perfunctory in that
reply, but immediately his little blue eyes began to sparkle and he
launched out into his troubles. "There's them that don't believe in
witches. I know that! And they slur me and slander me. I know it.
I don't get no sympathy. I--"
"Shut up!" commanded the chief of the inquisition.
"They say I'm crazy. But I know better. Here I am with rheumaticks!
Don't you s'pose I know where I got 'em? It was by standin' out all
het up where she had hitched me after she'd rid' me to one of the
witch conventions. She--"
"Say, you look here!" roared the old showman; "you stay on earth.
Don't you try to fly and take us with you. There's the principal
trouble in gettin' at facts," he explained, whirling on the Cap'n.
"Investigators don't get down to cases. Talk with a stutterer, and
if you don't look sharp you'll get to stutterin' yourself. Now, if
we don't look out, Gammon here will have us believin' in witches
before we've investigated."
"You been sayin' right along that you did believe in 'em," grunted
the first selectman.
"Northin' of the sort!" declared Hiram. "I was only showin' you that
when you rose up and hollered that there never was any witches you
didn't know what you were talkin' about."
While Cap'n Sproul was still blinking at him, trying to comprehend
the exact status of Hiram's belief, that forceful inquisitor, who
had been holding his victim in check with upraised and admonitory
digit, resumed:
"Old maid or widder?"
"Widder."
"Did deceased leave her that farm, title clear, and well-fixed
financially?"
"Yes," acknowledged Mr. Gammon.
"Now," Hiram leaned forward and wagged that authoritative finger
directly under the other's case-knife nose, "what was it she done
to you to make you get up this witch-story business about her? Here!
Hold on!" he shouted, detecting further inclination on the part of
Mr. Gammon to rail about his bedevilment. "You talk good Yankee
common sense! Down to cases! What started this? You can't fool me,
not for a minute! I've been round the world too much. I know every
fake from a Patagonian cockatoo up to and including the ghost of Bill
Beeswax. She done something to you. Now, what was it?"
Mr. Gammon was cowed. He fingered his dewlap and closed and unclosed
his lips.
"Out with it!" insisted Hiram. "If you don't, me and the selectman
will have you sued for slander."
"Up to a week ago," confessed Mr. Gammon, gazing away from the blazing
eyes of Hiram into the placid orbs of the calf in the tree, "we was
goin' to git married. Farms adjoined. She knowed me and I knowed her.
I've been solemn since Mis' Gammon died, but I've been gittin' over
it. We was goin' to jine farms and I was goin' to live over to her
place, because it wouldn't be so pleasant here with Mis' Gammon--"
He hesitated, and ducked despondent head in the direction of the
front yard.
"Well, seconds don't usually want to set in the front parlor window
and read firsts' epitaphs for amusement," remarked Hiram, grimly.
"What then?"
"Well, then all at once she wouldn't let me into the house, and she
shooed me off'm her front steps like she would a yaller cat, and when
I tried to find out about it that young Haskell feller that she's
hired to do her chores come over here and told me that he wasn't goin'
to stay there much longer, 'cause she had turned witch, and had put
a cluck onto the cat when the old hen--"
"'Tend to cases! 'Tend to cases!" broke in Hiram, impatiently.
"And about that time the things began to act out round my place, and
the Haskell boy told me that she was braggin' how she had me
bewitched."
"And you believed that kind of infernal tomrot?" inquired the showman,
wrathfully. Somewhat to the Cap'n's astonishment, Hiram seemed to
be taking only a sane and normal view of the thing.
"I did, after I went over and taxed her with it, and she stood off
and pointed her shotgun at me and said that yes, she was a witch,
and if I didn't get away and keep away she would turn me into a
caterpillar and kill me with a fly-spanker. There! When a woman says
that about herself, what be ye goin' to do--tell her she's a liar,
or be a gent and believe her?" Mr. Gammon was bridling a little.
Hiram looked at "Cheerful Charles" and jerked his head around and
stared at the Cap'n as though hoping for some suggestion. But the
selectman merely shook his head with a pregnant expression of "I told
you so!"
Hiram got up and stamped around the tree to cover what was evidently
momentary embarrassment. All at once he kicked at something in the
grass, bent over and peered at it, looked up at the calf, then picked
up the object on the ground and stuffed it deep into his trousers
pocket.
"You said that chore feller's name was Haskell, hey?" he demanded,
returning and standing over Mr. Gammon.
"Simmy Haskell," said the other.
"Well, now, what have you done to _him_?"
"Nothin'--never--no, sir--never nothin'!" insisted Mr. Gammon, with
such utter conviction that Hiram forebore to question further. He
whirled on his heel and started away toward the chimney that poked
above the rise of land.
"Come along!" he called, gruffly, over his shoulder, and the two
followed.
It was a trim little place that was revealed to them. A woman in a
sunbonnet was on her knees near some plants in the cozy front yard,
and a youth was wheeling apples up out of the orchard.
The youth set down his barrow and surveyed them with some curiosity
as they came up to him, Hiram well ahead, looming with all his six
feet two, his plug-hat flashing in the sun. Hiram did not pause to
palter with the youth. He grabbed him by the back of the neck with
one huge hand, and with the other tapped against the Haskell boy's
nose the object he had picked up from the grass.
"Next time you put a man's calf up a tree look out that you don't
drop your knife in the wrassle."
"'Tain't my knife!" gasped the accused.
"Lie to me, will ye? Lie to me--a man that's associated with liars
all my life? Not your knife, when your name is scratched on the
handle? And don't you know that two officers stood right over behind
the stone wall and saw you do it? Because you wasn't caught in your
cat-yowlin' round and your ox-chain foolishness and your other
didoes, do you think you can fool a detective like me? You come along
to State Prison! I _was_ intendin' to let you off if you owned up
and told all you know--but now that you've lied to me, come along
to State Prison!"
There was such vengefulness and authority in the big man's visage
that the Haskell boy wilted in unconditional surrender.
"He got me into the scrape. I'll tell on him. I don't want to go to
State Prison," he wailed, and then confession flowed from him with
the steady gurgle of water from a jug. "He come to me, and he says,
says he, 'He won't ever be no kind of a boss for you. If he marries
her you'll get fed on bannock and salt pork. He's sourer'n
bonny-clabber and meaner'n pig-swill. Like enough he won't keep help,
anyway, and will let everything go to rack and ruin, the same as he
has on his own place. I'm the one to stick to,' says he. 'I've got
a way planned, and all I need is your help and we'll stand together,'
he says, 'and here's ten dollars in advance.' And I took it and done
what he planned. I needed the money, and I done it. He says to me
that we'll do things to him to make him act crazy, and we'll tell
her that he's dangerous, and then you can tell him, says he, that
she's turned witch, and is doin' them things to him; ''cause a man
that has got his first wife buried in front of his doorstep is fool
enough to believe most anything,' says he."
"Well," remarked Hiram, after a long breath, "this 'sezzer,' whoever
he may be, when he got to sezzin', seems to have made up his mind
that there was one grand, sweet song of love in this locality that
was goin' to be sung by a steam-calliope, and wind up with boiler
bustin'."
"Why in devilnation don't you ask him who 'twas that engineered it?"
demanded Cap'n Sproul, his eyes blazing with curiosity.
"An official investigation," declared Hiram, with a relish he could
not conceal, as he returned the Cap'n's earlier taunt upon that
gentleman himself, "is not an old maids' quiltin'-bee, where they
throw out the main point as soon's they get their hoods off, and then
spend the rest of the afternoon talkin' it over. Things has to take
their right and proper course in an official investigation. _I'm_
the official investigator."
He turned on Mr. Gammon.
"What do you think now, old hearse-hoss? Have you heard enough to
let you in on this? Or do you want to be proved out as the original
old Mister Easymark, in a full, illustrated edition, bound in calf?
So fur's I'm concerned, I've heard enough on that line to make me
sick."
This amazing demolishment of his superstition left Mr. Gammon
gasping. Only one pillar of that mental structure was standing. He
grabbed at it.
"I didn't believe she was the witch till she told me so herself,"
he stammered. "She never lied to me. I believed what she told me with
her own mouth."
The Haskell boy, still in the clutch of Hiram, evidently believed
that the kind of confession that was good for the soul was full
confession.
"I told her that the time you was dangerousest was when any one
disputed with you about not havin' the witches. I told her that if
you ever said anything she'd better join in and agree with you, and
humor you, 'cause that's the only way to git along with crazy folks."
For the first time in many years color showed in the drab cheeks of
the melancholy Mr. Gammon. Two vivid red spots showed that, after
all, it was blood, not water, that flowed in his veins.
"Dod lather you to a fritter, you little freckle-faced, snub-nosed
son of seco!" he yelped, shrilly. "I've been a mild and peaceable
man all my life, but I'm a good mind to--I'm a good mind to--" He
searched his meek soul for enormities of retribution, and declared:
"I'm a good mind to skin you, hide, pelt, and hair. I'll cuff your
ears up to a pick, any way!" But Hiram pushed him away when he
advanced.
"There! That's the way to talk up, Gammon," he said, encouragingly.
"You are showin' improvement. Keep on that way and you'll get to be
quite a man. I was afraid you wasn't anything but a rusty marker for
a graveyard lot. If you don't keep your back up _some_ in this world,
you're apt to get your front knocked in. But I can't let you lick
the boy! This investigation is strictly official and according to
the law, and he's turned State's evidence. It's the other critter
that you want to be gettin' your muscle up for--the feller that was
tryin' to get the widder and the property away from you. All the other
evidence now bein' in, you may tell the court, my son, who was that
'sezzer.' You sha'n't be hurt!"
"It was Mister Batson Reeves, the second selectman," blurted the
youth.
There are moments in life when language fails, when words are vain;
when even a whisper would take the edge from a situation. Such a
moment seemed that one when Hiram Look and Cap'n Sproul gazed at each
other after the Haskell boy had uttered that name.
After a time Hiram turned, seized the boy by the scruff of his coat,
and dragged him up to the front-yard fence, where the widow was gazing
at them with increasing curiosity.
"Haskell boy," commanded Hiram, "tell her--tell her straight, and
do it quick."
And when the confession, which went more glibly the second time, was
concluded, the investigator gave the culprit a toss in the direction
of the Gammon farm, and shouted after him: "Go get that calf down
out of that apple-tree, and set down with him and trace out your
family relationship. You'll probably find you're first cousins."
Mrs. Orff had sunk down weakly on a bed of asters, and was staring
from face to face.
"Marm," said Hiram, taking off his plug hat and advancing close to
the fence, "Cap'n Sproul and myself don't make it our business to
pry into private affairs, or to go around this town saving decent
wimmen from Batson Reeves. But we seem to have more or less of it
shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was
the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and
broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him,
and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man
of that stamp?"
"I didn't really like him as well--as well as--" quavered the widow,
her eyes on the appealing orbs of Mr. Gammon; "but I was told I was
in danger, and he wanted to be my protector."
"Protector!" sneered Hiram. "Since he's been a widderer he's been
tryin' to court and marry every woman in the town of Smyrna that's
got a farm and property. We know it. We can prove it. All he wants
is money! You've just escaped by luck, chance, and the skin of your
teeth from a cuss that northin' is too low for him to lay his hand
to. What do you think of a man that, in order to make trouble and
disgrace for his neighbors, will dress up in his dead wife's clothes
and snoop around back doors and write anonymous letters to confidin'
wimmen?"
"My Lawd!" gasped the widow.
"We caught him at it! So, as I say, you've escaped from a hyena. Now,
Mr. Gammon only needs a wife like you to get him out of the dumps."
Mr. Gammon wiped tears from his cheeks and gazed down on her.
"Charles," she said, gently, "won't you come into the house for a
few minits? I want to talk to you!"
But as Mr. Gammon was about to obey joyously, Hiram seized his arm.
"Just a moment," he objected. "We'll send him right in to you, marm,
but we've got just a little matter of business to talk over with him."
And when they were behind the barn he took Mr. Gammon by his
coat-collar with the air of a friend.
"Gammon," said he, "what are you goin' to do to him? Me and the Cap'n
are interested. He'll be comin' here this evenin'. He'll be comin'
to court. Now, what are you goin' to do?"
There was an expression on Mr. Gammon's face that no one had ever
seen there before. His eyes were narrowed. His pointed tongue licked
his lips. His thin hair bristled.
"What are you goin' to do to him?"
"Lick him!" replied Mr. Gammon. It was laconic, but it sounded like
a rat-tail file on steel.
"You can do it!" said Hiram, cheerfully. "The Cap'n and I both have
done it, and it's no trouble at all. I was in hopes you'd say that!"
"Lick him till his tongue hangs out!" said Mr. Gammon, with bitterer
venom.
"That will be a good place to lay for him; right down there by the
alders," suggested the Cap'n, pointing his finger.
"Yes, sir, lick him till his own brother won't know him." And Mr.
Gammon clicked together his bony fists, as hard as flints.
"And that's another point!" said Hiram, hastily. "You've seen to-day
that I'm a pretty shrewd chap to guess. I've been round the world
enough to put two and two together. Makin' man my study is how I've
got my property. Now, Gammon, you've got that writin' by Squire
Alcander Reeves. When you said 'brother' it reminded me of what I've
been ponderin'. Bat Reeves has been making the Widder Orff matter
a still hunt. His brother wasn't on. When you went to the squire to
complain, squire saw a chance to get the Cap'n into a law
scrape--slander, trespass, malicious mischief--something! Them
lawyers are ready for anything!"
"Reg'lar sharks!" snapped the selectman.
"Now," continued Hiram, "after you've got Bat Reeves licked to an
extent that will satisfy inquirin' friends and all parties
interested, you hand that writin' to him! It will show him that his
blasted fool of a lawyer brother, by tryin' to feather his own nest,
has lost him the widder and her property, got him his lickin', and
put him into a hole gen'rally. Tell him that if it hadn't been for
that paper drivin' us out here northin' would have been known."
Hiram put up his nose and drew in a long breath of prophetic
satisfaction.
"And if I'm any judge of what 'll be the state of Bat Reeves's feelin's
in general when he gets back to the village, the Reeves family will
finish up by lickin' each other--and when they make a lawsuit out
of that it will be worth while wastin' a few hours in court to listen
to. How do you figger it, Cap'n?"
"It's a stem-windin', self-actin' proposition that's wound up, and
is now tickin' smooth and reg'lar," said the Cap'n, with deep
conviction. "They'll both get it!"
And they did.
Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Hiram Look shook hands on the news before nine
o'clock the next morning.