Mr. Loammi Crowther plodded up the road. Mr. Eleazar Bodge stumped
down the road.
They arrived at the gate of Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of
Smyrna, simultaneously.
Bathed in the benignancy of bland Indian summer, Cap'n Sproul and
his friend Hiram Look surveyed these arrivals from the porch of the
Sproul house.
At the gate, with some apprehensiveness, Mr. Bodge gave Mr. Crowther
precedence. As usual when returning from the deep woods, Mr. Crowther
was bringing a trophy. This time it was a three-legged lynx, which
sullenly squatted on its haunches and allowed itself to be dragged
through the dust by a rope tied into its collar.
"You needn't be the least mite afeard of that bobcat," protested Mr.
Crowther, cheerily; "he's a perfick pet, and wouldn't hurt the infant
in its cradle."
The cat rolled back its lips and snarled. Mr. Bodge retreated as
nimbly as a man with a peg-leg could be expected to move.
"I got him out of a trap and cured his leg, and he's turrible
grateful," continued Mr. Crowther.
But Mr. Bodge trembled even to his mat of red beard as he backed away.
"Him and me has got so's we're good friends, and I call him
Robert--Bob for short," explained the captor, wistfully.
"You call him off--that's what you call him," shouted Mr. Bodge. "I
hain't had one leg chawed off by a mowin'-machine to let a cust hyeny
chaw off the other. Git out of that gateway. I've got business here
with these gents."
"So've I," returned Mr. Crowther, meekly; and he went in, dragging
his friend.
"I done your arrunt," he announced to the Cap'n. "I cruised them
timberlands from Dan to Beersheby, and I'm ready to state facts and
figgers."
"Go ahead and state," commanded the Cap'n.
"I reckon it better be in private," advised the other, his pale-blue
eyes resting dubiously on Hiram.
"I ain't got no secrets from him," said the Cap'n, smartly. "Break
cargo!"
"You'll wish you heard it in private," persisted Mr. Crowther, with
deep meaning. "It ain't northin' you'll be proud of."
"I'll run along, I guess!" broke in the old showman. "It may be
something--"
"It ain't," snapped the Cap'n. "It's only about them timberlands that
my wife owned with her brother, Colonel Gideon Ward. Estate wasn't
divided when the old man Ward died, and since we've been married I've
had power of attorney from my wife to represent her." His jaw-muscles
ridged under his gray beard, and his eyes narrowed in angry
reminiscence.
"We've had two annual settlements, me and her brother. First time
'twas a free fight--next time 'twas a riot--third time, well, if
there had been a third time I'd have killed him. So I saved myself
from State Prison by dividin' accordin' to the map, and then I sent
Crowther up to look the property over. There ain't no secret. You
sit down, Hiram."
"Considerin' the man, I should think you'd have done your lookin'
over before you divided," suggested the showman. He scented doleful
possibilities in Mr. Crowther's mien.
"If I'd done business with him fifteen minutes longer by the clock
I'd have been in prison now for murder--and it would have been a
bloody murder at that," blurted the Cap'n. "It had to be over and
done with short and sharp. He took half. I took half. Passed papers.
He got away just before I lost control of myself. Narrowest escape
I ever had. All I know about the part I've got is that it's well wooded
and well watered."
"It is," agreed Mr. Crowther, despondently. "It's the part where the
big reservoir dam flows back for most twenty miles. You can sail all
over it in a bo't, and cut toothpicks from the tops of the
second-growth birch. He collected all the flowage damages. He's
lumbered the rest of your half till there ain't northin' there but
hoop poles and battens. All the standin' timber wuth anything is on
his half. I wouldn't swap a brimstun' dump in Tophet for your half."
"How in the devil did you ever let yourself get trimmed that way?"
demanded Hiram. "It's all right for ten-year-old boys to swap
jack-knives, sight unseen, but how a man grown would do a thing like
you done I don't understand."
"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, gloomily. "I reckon about all I was
thinkin' of was lettin' him get away before I had blood on my hands.
I'm afraid of my own self sometimes. And it's bad in the family when
you kill a brother-in-law. I took half. He took half. Bein' a
sailorman, I reckoned that land was land, acre for acre."
"The only man I ever heard of as bein' done wuss," continued Mr.
Crowther, "was a city feller that bought a quarter section of
township 'Leven for a game-preserve, and found when he got up there
that it was made up of Misery Bog and the south slope of Squaw Mountain,
a ledge, and juniper bushes. The only game that could stay there was
swamp-swogons, witherlicks, and doodywhackits."
"What's them?" inquired the Cap'n, as though he hoped that he might
at least have these tenants on his worthless acres.
"Woods names for things that there ain't none of," vouchsafed Mr.
Crowther. "You owe me for twenty-two days' work, nine shillin's a
day, amountin' to--"
"Here! Take that and shut up!" barked the Cap'n, shoving bills at
him. Then he wagged a stubby finger under Mr. Crowther's nose. "Now
you mark well what I say to you! This thing stays right here among
us. If I hear of one yip comin' from you about the way I've been done,
I'll come round to your place and chop you into mince-meat and feed
you to that animile there!"
"Oh, I'm ashamed enough for you so that I won't ever open my mouth,"
cried Mr. Crowther. He went out through the gate, dragging his sulky
captive.
"And you needn't worry about me, neither," affirmed Mr. Bodge, who
had been standing unnoted in the shadow of the woodbine.
"Of course," he continued, "I ain't got so thick with either of you
gents as some others has in this place, never likin' to push myself
in where I ain't wanted. But I know you are both gents and willin'
to use them right that uses you right."
It was not exactly a veiled threat, but it was a hint that checked
certain remarks that the Cap'n was about to address to the
eavesdropper.
Mr. Bodge took advantage of the truce, and seated himself on the edge
of the porch, his peg-leg sticking straight out in forlorn nakedness.
"Investments is resky things in these days, Cap'n Sproul.
Gold-mines--why, you can't see through 'em, nor the ones that run
'em. And mark what has been done to you when you invested in the forest
primeval! I knowed I was comin' here at just the right time. I've
got a wonderful power for knowin' them things. So I came. I'm here.
You need a good investment to square yourself for a poor one. Here
it is!" He pulled off his dented derby and patted his bald head.
"Skatin'-rink?" inquired the Cap'n, sarcastically.
"Brains!" boomed Mr. Bodge, solemnly. "But in these days brains have
to be backed with capital. I've tried to fight it out, gents, on my
own hook. I said to myself right along, 'Brains has got to win in
the end, Bodge. Keep on!' But have they? No! Five hundred partunts,
gents, locked up in the brains of Eleazar Bodge! Strugglin' to get
out! And capital pooled against me! Ignoramuses foolin' the world
with makeshifts because they've got capital behind 'em to boost them
and keep others down--and Bodge with five hundred partunts right here
waitin'." Again he patted the shiny sphere shoved above the riot of
hair and whiskers.
The Cap'n scrutinized the surface with sullen interest.
"They'd better stay inside, whatever they are you're talkin' about,"
he growled. "They couldn't pick up no kind of a livin' on the
outside."
"Gents, do you know what's the most solemn sound in all nature?" Mr.
Bodge went on. "I heard it as I came away from my house. It was my
woman with the flour-barrel ended up and poundin' on the bottom with
the rollin'-pin to get out enough for the last batch of biscuit. The
long roll beside the graves of departed heroes ain't so sad as that
sound. I see my oldest boy in the dooryard with the toes of his boots
yawed open like sculpins' mouths. My daughter has outgrown her dress
till she has to wear two sets of wristers to keep her arms warm--and
she looks like dressed poultry. And as for me, I don't dare to set
down enough to get real rested, because my pants are so thin I'm
afraid I can't coax 'em along through next winter. I've come to the
place, gents, where I've give up. I can't fight the trusts any longer
without some backin'. I've got to have somebody take holt of me and
get what's in me out. I reelize it now. It's in me. Once out it will
make me and all them round me rich like a--a--"
When Mr. Bodge halted for a simile Hiram grunted under his breath:
"Like a compost heap."
"I was born the way I am--with something about me that the common
run of men don't have. How is it my brains gallop when other brains
creep? It's that mysterious force in me. Seein' is believin'. Proof
is better than talkin'. Cap'n Sproul, you just take hold of one of
my whiskers and yank it out. Take any one, so long's it's a good
lengthy one."
His tone was that of a sleight-of-hand man offering a pack of cards
for a draw.
The Cap'n obeyed after Mr. Bodge had repeated his request several
times, shoving his mat of beard out invitingly.
Mr. Bodge took the whisker from the Cap'n's hand, pinched its butt
firmly between thumb and forefinger and elevated it in front of his
face. It stuck straight up. Then it began to bend until its tip almost
touched his lips. A moment thus and it bent in the other direction.
"There!" cried Mr. Bodge, triumphantly. "Thomas A. Edison himself
couldn't do that with one of his whiskers."
"You're right," returned Hiram, gravely. "He'd have to borrow one."
"A man that didn't understand electricity and the forces of nature,
and that real brains of a genius are a regular dynamo, might think
that I done that with my breath. But there is a strange power about
me. All it needs is capital to develop it. You've got the capital,
you gents. This ain't any far-away investment. It's right here at
home. I'm all business when it comes to business." He stuck up a grimy
finger. "You've got to concede the mysterious power because you've
seen it for yourselves. Now you come over to my house with me and
I'll show you a few inventions that I've been able to put into shape
in spite of the damnable combination of the trusts."
He slid off the porch and started away, beckoning them after him with
the battered derby.
"I've heard 'em buzz in my time, too," sneered Hiram, pushing back
his plug hat, "but that hummin' is about the busiest yet. He could
hold a lighted taller candle in his hand and jump off'm a roof and
think he was a comet."
But the Cap'n did not seem to be disposed to echo this scorn.
"This here I've got may be only a notion, and it prob'ly is," he said,
knotting his gray brows, "and it don't seem sensible. First sight
of him you wouldn't think he could be used. But when I laid eyes on
old Dot-and-carry-one there, and when he grabbed into this thing the
way he did just as I was thinkin' hard of what Colonel Gid Ward has
done to me, it came over me that I was goin' to find a use for him."
"How?" persisted the utilitarian Hiram.
"Don't have the least idea," confessed the Cap'n. "It's like pickin'
up a stockin' full of wet mud and walkin' along hopin' that you'll
meet the man you want to swat with it. I'm goin' to pick him up."
He stumped off the piazza and followed Mr. Bodge. And Hiram, stopping
to relight his cigar, went along, too, reflecting that when a man
has plenty of time on his hands he can afford to spend a little of
it on the gratification of curiosity.
The first exhibits in the domain of Bodge were not cheering or
suggestive of value. For instance, from among the litter in a
tumble-down shop Mr. Bodge produced something in the shape of a
five-pointed star that he called his "Anti-stagger Shoe."
"I saw old Ike Bradley go past here with a hard-cider jag that looped
over till its aidges dragged on the ground," he explained. "I tied
cross-pieces onto his feet and he went along all level. Now see how
a quick mind like mine acts? Here's the anti-stagger shoe. To be kept
in all city clubs and et cetry. Let like umbrellas. Five places in
each shoe for a man to shove his foot. Can't miss it. Then he starts
off braced front, sides, and behind."
Hiram sniffed and the Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently
active, but not concerned in any way with the "Anti-stagger Shoe."
The "Patent Cat Identifier and Introducer," exhibited in actual
operation in the Bodge home, attracted more favorable attention from
inspecting capital. Mr. Bodge explained that this device allowed a
hard-working man to sleep after he once got into bed, and saved his
wife from running around nights in her bare feet and getting cold
and incurring disease and doctors' bills. It was an admitted fact
in natural history, he stated, that the uneasy feline is either
yowling to be let out or meowing on the window-sill to be let in.
With quiet pride the inventor pointed to a panel in the door, hinged
at the top. This permitted egress, but not ingress.
"An ordinary, cheap inventor would have had the panel swing both
ways," said Mr. Bodge, "and he would have a kitchen full of strange
cats, with a skunk or two throwed in for luck. You see that I've hinged
a pane of winder-glass and hitched it to a bevelled stick that tips
inward. Cat gets up on the sill outside and meows. Dog runs to the
winder and stands up to see, and puts his paws on the stick because
it's his nature for to do so. Pane tips in. If it's our cat, dog don't
stop her comin' in. If it's a strange cat--br-r-r, wow-wow! Off she
goes!"
Mr. Bodge noted with satisfaction the gleam of interest in capital's
eyes.
"You can reckon that at least a million families in this country own
cats--and the nature of cats and dogs can be depended on to be the
same," said Mr. Bodge. "It's a self-actin' proposition, this
identifier and introducer; that means fortunes for all concerned
just as soon as capital gets behind it. And I've got five hundred
bigger partunts wrasslin' around in my head."
But Cap'n Sproul continued to be absorbed in thought, as though the
solution of a problem still eluded him.
"But if capital takes holt of me," proceeded Mr. Bodge, "I want
capital to have the full layout. There ain't goin' to be no reserves,
the same as there is with most of these cheatin' corporations these
days. You come with me."
They followed him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched
limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either
hand he stumped about on the sward until the crotch suddenly turned
downward.
"There's runnin' water there," announced the wizard, stabbing the
soil with his peg-leg. "I can locate a well anywhere, any place. When
I use willer for a wand it will twist in my hands till the bark peels
off. You see, I'm full of it--whatever it is. I showed you that much
with the whisker. I started in easy with you. It makes me dizzy
sometimes to foller myself. I have to be careful and let out a link
at a time, or I'd take folks right off'm their feet. Now you come
with me and keep cool--or as cool as you can, because I'm goin' to
tell you something that will give you sort of a mind-colic if you
ain't careful how you take it in."
He pegged ahead of them, led the way around behind a barn that was
skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with
excitement vibrating his streaming whiskers.
"This, now," he declared, "is just as though I took you into a
national bank, throwed open the safe door, and said: 'Gents, help
yourselves!'"
He drew a curious object out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper.
It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were
inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had
clutched the "legs" of the apple-tree wand.
"One of you lay some gold and silver down on the ground," he requested.
"I'd do it, but I ain't got a cent in my pocket."
Hiram obeyed, his expression plainly showing his curiosity.
When Mr. Bodge advanced and stood astride over the money, the cow's
horn turned downward and the whalebone strips twisted.
"It's a divinin'-rod to find buried treasure," said Mr. Bodge; "and
it's the only one in the world like it, because I made it myself,
and I wouldn't tell an angel the secret of the stuff I've plugged
in there. You see for yourself what it will do when it comes near
gold or silver."
Hiram turned a cold stare on his wistful eagerness.
"I don't know what you've got in there, nor why it acts that way,"
said the showman, "but from what I know about money, the most of it's
well taken care of by the men that own it; and just what good it's
goin' to do to play pointer-dog with that thing there, and go round
and flush loose change and savin's-banks, is more than I can figger."
Mr. Bodge merely smiled a mysterious and superior smile.
"Cap'n Sproul," said he, "in your seafarin' days didn't you used to
hear the sailormen sing this?" and he piped in weak falsetto:
"Oh, I've been a ghost on Cod Lead Nubble,
Sence I died--sence I died.
I buried of it deep with a lot of trouble,
And the chist it was in was locked up double,
And I'm a-watchin' of it still on Cod Lead Nubble,
Sence I died--sence I died."
"It's the old Cap Kidd song," admitted the Cap'n, a gleam of new
interest in his eyes.
"As a seafarin' man you know that there was a Cap'n Kidd, don't you?"
Cap'n Sproul wagged nod of assent.
"He sailed and he sailed, and he robbed, and he buried his treasure,
ain't that so?"
"I believe that's the idea," said the Cap'n, conservatively.
"And it's still buried, because it ain't been dug up, or else we'd
have heard of it. Years ago I read all that hist'ry ever had to say
about it. I said then to myself, 'Bodge,' says I, 'if the treasure
of old Cap Kidd is ever found, it will be you with your wonderful
powers that will find it!' I always said that to myself. I know it
now. Here's the tool." He shook the cow's horn under the Cap'n's nose.
"Why ain't you been down and dug it up?" asked Hiram, with cold
practicality.
"Diggin' old Cap Kidd's treasure ain't like digging a mess of
potaters for dinner, Mr. Look. The song says 'Cod Lead Nubble.' Old
Cap Kidd composed that song, and he put in the wrong place just to
throw folks off'm the track. But if I had capital behind me I'd hire
a schooner and sail round them islands down there, one after the
other; and with that power that's in me I could tell the right island
the minute I got near it. Then set me ashore and see how quick this
divinin'-rod would put me over that chist! But it's buried deep. It's
goin' to take muscle and grit to dig it up. But the right crew can
do it--and that's where capital comes in. Capital ain't ever tackled
it right, and that's why capital ain't got hold of that treasure."
"I reckon I'll be movin' along," remarked Hiram, with resentment
bristling the horns of his mustache; "it's the first time I ever had
a man pick me out as a candidate for a gold brick, and the feelin'
ain't a pleasant one."
But the Cap'n grasped his arm with detaining grip.
"This thing is openin' up. It ain't all clear, but it's openin'. I
had instink that I could use him. But I couldn't figger it. It ain't
all straightened out in my mind yet. But when you said 'gold brick'
it seemed to be clearer."
Hiram blinked inquiringly at his enigmatic friend.
"It was what I was thinkin' of--gold brick," the Cap'n went on. "I
thought that prob'ly you knew some stylish and reliable
gold-bricker--havin' met same when you was travellin' round in the
show business."
Replying to Mr. Look's indignant snort Cap'n Sproul hastened to say:
"Oh, I don't mean that you had any gold-bricker friends, but that
you knew one I could hire. Probably, though, you don't know of any.
Most like you don't. I realize that the gold-bricker idea ain't the
one to use. There's the trouble in findin' a reliable one. And even
when the feller got afoul of him, the chances are the old land-pirut
would steal the brick. This here"--jabbing thumb at Mr. Bodge--"is
fresher bait. I believe the old shark will gobble it if he's fished
for right. What's your idea?"
"Well, generally speakin'," drawled Hiram, sarcastically, "it is
that you've got softenin' of the brain. I can't make head or tail
out of anything that you're sayin'."
Cap'n Sproul waked suddenly from the reverie in which he had been
talking as much to himself as to Hiram.
"Say, look here, you can understand this, can't you, that I've been
done out of good property--buncoed by a jeeroosly old hunk of
hornbeam?"
"Oh, I got bulletins on that, all right," assented Hiram.
"Well, from what you know of me, do you think I'm the kind of a man
that's goin' to squat like a hen in a dust-heap and not do him? Law?
To Tophet with your law! Pneumony, lightnin', and lawyers--they're
the same thing spelled different. I'm just goin' to do him, that's
all, and instink is whisperin' how." He turned his back on the showman
and ran calculating eye over Mr. Bodge.
"I don't hardly see how that old hair mattress there is goin' to be
rung in on the deal," growled Hiram.
"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, frankly; "not so fur as the details appear
to me just now. But there's something about him that gives me hopes."
He pulled out his wallet, licked his thumb, and peeled off a bill.
"Bodge, so fur's I can see now, you seem to be a good investment.
I don't know just yet how much it is goin' to take to capitalize you,
but here's ten dollars for an option. You understand now that I'm
president of you, and my friend here is sekertary. And you're to keep
your mouth shut."
Mr. Bodge agreed with effusive gratitude, and capital went its way.
The inventor chased after them with thumping peg-leg to inquire
whether he should first perfect the model of the "cat identifier,"
or develop his idea of an automatic chore-doer, started by the
rooster tripping a trigger as he descended to take his matutinal
sniff of air.
"You just keep in practise with that thing," commanded the Cap'n,
pointing to the cow's horn.
"I don't see even yet how you are goin' to do it," remarked Hiram,
as they separated a half-hour later at Cap'n Sproul's gate.
"Nor I," said the Cap'n; "but a lot of meditation and a little prayer
will do wonders in this world, especially when you're mad enough."