At about midnight Cap'n Sproul, snoring peaceably with wide-open
mouth, snapped upright in bed with a jerk that set his teeth into
his tongue and nearly dislocated his neck. He didn't know exactly
what had happened. He had a dizzy, dreaming feeling that he had been
lifted up a few hundred feet in the air and dropped back.
"Land o' Goshen, Aaron, what was it?" gasped his wife. "It sounded
like something blowing up!"
The hint steadied the Cap'n's wits. 'Twas an explosion--that was it!
And with grim suspicion as to its cause, he pulled on his trousers
and set forth to investigate. An old barn on his premises, a
storehouse for an overplus of hay and discarded farming tools, had
been blown to smithereens and lay scattered about under the stars.
And as he picked his way around the ruins with a lantern, cursing
the name of Luce, a far voice hailed him from the gloom of a belt
of woodland: "I ain't an outlaw, hey? I don't dast to be one, hey?
You wait and see."
About an hour later, just as the selectman was sinking into a doze,
he heard another explosion, this time far in the distance--less a
sound than a jar, as of something striking a mighty blow on the earth.
"More dynamite!" he muttered, recognizing that explosive's
down-whacking characteristic. And in the morning Hiram Look hurried
across to inform him that some miscreant had blown up an empty
corn-house on his premises, and that the explosion had shattered all
the windows in the main barn and nearly scared Imogene, the elephant,
into conniptions. "And he came and hollered into my bedroom window
that he'd show me whuther he could be an outlaw or not," concluded
the old showman. "I tell you that critter is dangerous, and you've
got to get him. Instead of quietin' down he'll be growin' worse."
There were eleven men in Smyrna, besides Zeburee Nute, who held
commissions as constables, and those valiant officers Cap'n Sproul
called into the first selectman's office that forenoon. He could not
tell them any news. The whole of Smyrna was ringing with the
intelligence that Aholiah Luce had turned outlaw and was on the
rampage.
The constables, however, could give Selectman Sproul some news. They
gave it to him after he had ordered them to surround Mr. Luce and
take him, dynamite and all. This news was to the effect that they
had resigned.
"We've talked it over," averred Lycurgus Snell, acting as spokesman,
"and we can't figger any good and reeliable way of gittin' him without
him gittin' us, if he's so minded, all in one tableau, same to be
observed with smoked glasses like an eclipse. No, s'r, we ain't in
any way disposed to taller the heavens nor furnish mince-meat
funerals. And if we don't git him, and he knows we're takin' action
agin' him, he'll come round and blow our barns up--and we ain't so
well able to stand the loss as you and Mr. Look be."
"Well, if you ain't about the nearest to knot-holes with the rims
gone off'm 'em of anything I ever see," declared the Cap'n, with fury,
"may I be used for oakum to calk a guano gunlow!"
"If you think it's a job to set any man to, you'd better go and do
it yourself," retorted Snell, bridling. "You know as well as I do,
s'leckman, that so long as 'Liah has been let alone he's only been
a plain thief, and we've got along with him here in town all
right--onpleasant and somewhat expensive, like potater-bugs. But
you seem to have gone to pushin' him and have turned him from
potater-bug into a royal Peeruvian tiger, or words to that effect,
and I don't see any way but what you'll have to tame him yourself.
There's feelin' in town that way, and people are scart, and citizens
ain't at all pleased with your pokin' him up, when all was quiet."
"Citizens ruther have it said, hey, that we are supportin' a
land-pirut here in this town, and let him disgrace us even over in
Vienny?" demanded the Cap'n.
"Which was wuss?" inquired Mr. Snell, serenely. "As it was or as it
is?"
Then the ex-constables, driven forth with contumely, went across to
the platform of Broadway's store, and discussed the situation with
other citizens, finding the opinion quite unanimous that Cap'n
Sproul possessed too short a temper to handle delicate matters with
diplomacy. And it was agreed that Aholiah Luce, weak of wit and
morally pernicious, was a delicate matter, when all sides were taken
into account.
To them appeared Aholiah Luce, striding down the middle of the street,
with that ominous sack on his shoulder.
"Be I an outlaw, or ain't I?" he shouted over and over, raising a
clamor in the quiet village that brought the Cap'n out of the town
house. "Arrest me, will ye? When ye try it there won't be nothin'
left of this town but a hole and some hollerin'."
He walked right upon the store platform and into the store, and every
one fled before him. Broadway cowered behind his counter.
"Put me up a fig o' tobacker, a pound of tea, quart o' merlasses,
ten pounds of crackers, hunk o' pork, and two cans of them salmons,"
he ordered.
In past years Mr. Luce had always slunk into Broadway's store
apologetically, a store-bill everlastingly unpaid oppressing his
spirits. Now he bellowed autocratic command, and his soul swelled
when he saw Broadway timorously hastening to obey.
"I'll show 'em whuther I'm an outlaw or not," he muttered. "And I
wisht I'd been one before, if it works like this. The monarch of the
Injies couldn't git more attention," he reflected, as he saw the
usually contemptuous Broadway hustling about, wrapping up the goods.
He saw scared faces peering in at him through the windows. He swung
the sack off his shoulder, and bumped it on the floor with a flourish.
"My Lord-amighty, be careful with that!" squawked Broadway, ducking
down behind the counter.
"You 'tend to business and make less talk, and you won't git hurt,"
observed Mr. Luce, ferociously. He pointed at the storekeeper the
stick of dynamite that he carried in his hand. And Mr. Broadway hopped
up and bestirred himself obsequiously.
"I don't know whuther I'll ever pay for these or not," announced Mr.
Luce, grabbing the bundles that Broadway poked across the counter
as gingerly as he would feed meat to a tiger. He stuffed them into
his sack. "I shall do jest as I want to about it. And when I've et
up this grub in my lair, where I propose to outlaw it for a while,
I shall come back for some more; and if I don't git it, along with
polite treatment, I'll make it rain groc'ries in this section for
twenty-four hours."
"I didn't uphold them that smashed in your door," protested the
storekeeper, getting behind the coffee-grinder.
"I've been squdged too fur, that's what has been done," declared Mr.
Luce, "and it was your seleckman that done it, and I hold the whole
town responsible. I don't know what I'm li'ble to do next. I've showed
_him_--now I'm li'ble to show the town. I dunno! It depends."
He went out and stood on the store platform, and gazed about him with
the air of Alexander on the banks of the Euphrates. For the first
time in his lowly life Mr. Luce saw mankind shrink from before him.
It was the same as deference would have seemed to a man who had earned
respect, and the little mind of Smyrna's outlaw whirled dizzily in
his filbert skull.
"I don't know what I'll do yit," he shouted, hailing certain faces
that he saw peering at him. "It was your seleckman that done it--and
a seleckman acts for a town. I reckon I shall do some more blowin'
up."
He calmly walked away up the street, passing Cap'n Sproul, who stood
at one side.
"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" jeered Mr. Luce.
"You don't dare to set down that sack," roared the selectman. "I'll
pay ye five hundred dollars to set down that sack and step out there
into the middle of that square--and I call on all here as witnesses
to that offer," he cried, noting that citizens were beginning to
creep back into sight once more. "Five hundred dollars for you, you
bow-legged hen-thief! You sculpin-mouthed hyena, blowing up men's
property!"
"Hold on," counselled Mr. Luce. "You're goin' to squdgin' me ag'in.
I've been sassed enough in this town. I'm goin' to be treated with
respect after this if I have to blow up ev'ry buildin' in it."
"It ain't safe to go to pokin' him up," advised Mr. Nute from afar.
"I should think you'd 'a' found that out by this time, Cap'n Sproul."
"I've found out that what ain't cowards here are thieves,'" roared
the Cap'n, beside himself, ashamed, enraged at his impotence before
this boastful fool and his grim bulwark. His impulse was to cast
caution to the winds and rush upon Luce. But reflection told him that,
in this flush of his childish resentment and new prominence, Luce
was capable of anything. Therefore he prudently held to the side of
the road.
"The next time I come into this village," said Mr. Luce, "I don't
propose to be called names in public by any old salt hake that has
pounded his dollars out of unfort'nit' sailors with belayin'-pins.
I know your record, and I ain't afeard of you!"
"There'll be worse things happen to you than to be called names."
"Oh, there will, hey?" inquired Mr. Luce, his weak passion flaming.
"Well, lemme give you jest one hint that it ain't safe to squdge me
too fur!"
He walked back a little way, lighted the fuse of the stick of dynamite
that he carried, and in spite of horrified appeals to him, cast over
the shoulders of fleeing citizens, he tossed the wicked explosive
into the middle of the square and ran.
In the words of Mr. Snell, when he came out from behind the
watering-trough: "It was a corn-cracker!"
A half-hour later Mr. Nute, after sadly completing a canvass of the
situation, headed a delegation that visited Cap'n Sproul in the
selectman's office, where he sat, pallid with rage, and cursing.
"A hundred and seventeen lights of glass," announced Mr. Nute,
"includin' the front stained-glass winder in the meetin'-house and
the big light in Broadway's store. And it all happened because the
critter was poked up agin'--and I warned ye not to do it, Cap'n."
"Would it be satisfactory to the citizens if I pulled my wallet and
settled the damage?" inquired the first selectman, with baleful
blandness in his tones.
Mr. Nute did not possess a delicate sense of humor or of satire. He
thoughtfully rubbed his nose.
"Reely," he said, "when you git it reduced right down, that critter
ain't responsible any more'n one of them dynamite sticks is
responsible, and if it hadn't been for you lettin' him loose and then
pokin' him, contrary to warnin', them hundred and seventeen lights
of glass wouldn't--"
"Are there any left?" asked Cap'n Sproul, still in subdued tones.
"About as many more, I should jedge," replied Mr. Nute.
"Well, I simply want to say," remarked the Cap'n, standing up and
clinching his fists, "that if you ever mention responsibility to me
again, Nute, I'll take you by the heels and smash in the rest of that
glass with you--and I'll do the same with any one else who don't know
enough to keep his yawp shut. Get out of here, the whole of you, or
I'll begin on what glass is left in this town house."
They departed silently, awed by the menace of his countenance, but
all the more bitterly fixed in their resentment.
That night two more hollow "chunks" shook the ground of Smyrna, at
intervals an hour separated, and morning light showed that two
isolated barns had been destroyed.
Mr. Luce appeared in the village with his sack, quite at his ease,
and demanded of Broadway certain canned delicacies, his appetite
seeming to have a finer edge to correspond with his rising courage.
He even hinted that Broadway's stock was not very complete, and that
some early strawberries might soften a few of the asperities of his
nature.
"I ain't never had a fair show on eatin'," he complained to the
apprehensive storekeeper. "It's been ten years that my wife ain't
got me a fair and square meal o' vittles. She don't believe in cookin'
nothin' ahead nor gettin' up anything decent. She's a Go-upper and
thinks the end of the world is li'ble to come any minit. And the way
I figger it, not havin' vittles reg'lar has give me dyspepsy, and
dyspepsy has made me cranky, and not safe to be squdged too fur. And
that's the whole trouble. I've got a hankerin' for strorb'ries. They
may make me more supple. P'raps not, but it's wuth tryin'."
He tossed the cans into his sack in a perfectly reckless manner, until
Broadway was sick and hiccuping with fear. "Love o' Lordy," he
pleaded, "don't act that way. It's apt to go off--go off any time.
I know the stuff better'n you do--I've dealt in it. Ain't I usin'
you square on goods?"
"Mebbe so," admitted Mr. Luce. "Fur's you know, you are. But the
trouble with me is my disposition. It ain't been made supple yet.
If you've got in stock what my appetite craves I may be more supple
next time I come."
He dug a tender strip out of the centre of a hanging codfish, and
walked out. Parading his ease of spirits and contempt for humanity
in general, he stood on the platform and gnawed at the fish and gazed
serenely on the broken windows.
"I done it," he mumbled, admiringly. "I showed 'em! It won't take
much more showin', and then they'll let me alone, and I'll live happy
ever after. Wonder is I hadn't reelized it before. Tail up, and
everybody stands to one side. Tail down, and everybody is tryin' to
kick you. If it wa'n't for that streak in human nature them devilish
trusts that I've heard tell of couldn't live a minit." He saw men
standing afar and staring at him apprehensively. "That's right, ding
baste ye," he said, musingly, "look up to me and keep your distance!
It don't make no gre't diff'runce how it's done, so long as I can
do it."
And after further triumphant survey of the situation, he went away.
"Hiram," said Cap'n Sproul, with decision, turning from a long survey
of Mr. Luce's retreating back through a broken window of the town
house, "this thing has gone jest as far as it's goin'."
"Well," declared the showman with some bitterness, "to have them
that's in authority stand round here and let one bow-legged lunatic
blow up this whole town piecemeal ain't in any ways satisfyin' to
the voters. I hear the talk, and I'm givin' it to you straight as
a friend."
"I've got my plan all made," said the first selectman. "I want you
as foreman to call out the Ancient and Honer'ble Firemen's
Association and have 'em surround them woods, and we'll take him."
"We will, hey?" demanded Hiram, pushing back his plug hat and
squinting angrily. "What do you think that firemen's association is
for, anyway?"
"Never knew it to do anything but eat free picnics and give social
dances," retorted the Cap'n. "I didn't know but it was willin' to
be useful for once in its life."
"Slur noted!" said Hiram, with acerbity. "But you can't expect us
to pull you out of a hole that you've mismanaged yourself into. You
needn't flare, now, Cap'n. It's been mismanaged, and that's the
sentiment of the town. I ain't twittin' you because I've lost
property. I'm talkin' as a friend."
"That's twice this mornin' you've passed me that 'friend' handbill,"
raged the selectman. "Advertisin' yourself, be ye? And then leavin'
me in the lurch! This is a friendly town, that's what it is.
Constables, voters, firemen, and you yourself dump the whole burden
of this onto me, and then stand back and growl at me! Well, if this
thing is up to me alone and friendless and single-handed, I know what
I'm goin' to do!" His tone had the grate of file against steel.
"What?" inquired his friend with interest.
"Get a gun and go out and drop that humpbacked old Injy-cracker!"
But Hiram protested fervently.
"Where would you shoot him?" he cried. "You don't know where to find
him in them woods. You'd have to nail him here in the village, and
besides its bein' murder right in the face and eyes of folks, you'd
put a bullet into that sack o' dynamite and blow ev'ry store,
meetin'-house, and school-house in Smyrna off'm the map. You give
that up, or I'll pass the word and have you arrested, yourself, as
a dangerous critter."
He went away, still protesting as long as he was in hearing.
Cap'n Sproul sat despondent in his chair, and gazed through the
broken window at other broken windows. Ex-Constable Nute presented
himself at the pane outside and said, nervously chewing tobacco: "I
reckon it's the only thing that can be done now, Cap'n. It seems to
be the general sentiment."
With a flicker of hope irradiating his features, Cap'n Sproul
inquired for details.
"It's to write to the President and get him to send down a hunk of
the United States Army. You've got to fight fire with fire."
Without particular display of passion, with the numb stolidity of
one whose inner fires have burned out, the selectman got up and threw
a cuspidor through the window at his counsellor, and then seated
himself to his pondering once more.
That afternoon Mrs. Aholiah Luce came walking into the village, spent,
forlorn, and draggled. She went straight to the town office, and
seated herself in front of the musing first selectman.
"I've come to call on for town help," she said. "I haven't got scrap
nor skred to eat, and northin' to cook it with. You've gone to work
and put us in a pretty mess, Mister S'leckman. Makin' my husband an
outlaw that's took to the woods, and me left on the chips!"
The Cap'n surveyed her without speaking--apparently too crushed to
make any talk. In addition to other plagues, it was now plain that
he had brought a pauper upon the town of Smyrna.
"So I call on," she repeated, "and I need a whole new stock of
groc'ries, and something to cook 'em with."
And still the Cap'n did not speak. He sat considering her, his brows
knitted.
"I'm a proud woman nat'rally," she went on, "and it's tough to have
to call on 'cause the crowned heads of earth has oppressed the meek
and the lowly."
Cap'n Sproul trudged across the room, and took down a big book
inscribed "Revised Statutes." He found a place in the volume and
began to read in an undertone, occasionally looking over his specs
at her.
"It's as I thought it was," he muttered; "when one member of a family,
wife or minor children, call on for town aid, whole family can be
declared paupers till such time as, and so forth." He banged the big
book shut. "Interestin' if true--and found to be true. Law to use
as needed. So you call on, do you, marm?" he queried, raising his
voice. "Well, if you're all ready to start for the poor-farm, come
along."
"I ain't goin' onto no poor-farm," she squealed. "I call on, but I
want supplies furnished."
"Overseer of the poor has the say as to what shall be done with
paupers," announced the Cap'n. "I say poor-farm. They need a good,
able-bodied pauper woman there, like you seem to be. The other wimmen
paupers are bedridden."
"My husband will never let me be took to the poorhouse and kept
there."
"Oh, there ain't goin' to be any trouble from that side. You're right
in line to be a widder most any time now."
"Be you goin' to kill 'Liah?" she wailed.
"It will be a self-actin' proposition, marm. I ain't got any very
special grudge against him, seein' that he's a poor, unfortunate
critter. I'm sorry, but so it is." He went on with great appearance
of candor. "You see, he don't understand the nature of that stuff
he's luggin' round. It goes off itself when it gets about so warm.
It's comin' warmin' weather now--sun gettin' high--and mebbe next
time he starts for the village the bust will come."
"Ain't any one goin' to warn him?"
"I can't find it's set down in my duties, marm; and from the acts
of the gen'ral run of cowards in this town I don't reckon any one
else will feel called on to get near enough to him to tell him. Oh
no! He'll fire himself like an automatic bomb. Prob'ly to-morrow.
By the looks of the sky it's goin' to be a nice, warm day."
She backed to the door, her eyes goggling.
"I ain't got any hard feelin's at all, marm. I pity you, and here's
a ten-dollar bill that I'll advance from the town. I reckon I'll wait
till after you're a widder before I take you to the poorhouse."
She clutched the bill and ran out. He watched her scurry down the
street with satisfaction wrinkling under his beard. "It was a kind
of happy idee and it seems to be workin'," he observed. "I've allus
thought I knew enough about cowards to write a book on 'em. We'll
see!"
That night there were no alarms in Smyrna. Cap'n Sproul, walking to
his office the next forenoon, mentally scored one on the right side
of his calculations.
When he heard Mr. Luce in the village square and looked out on him,
he scored two, still on the right side. Mr. Luce bore his grisly sack,
but he did not carry a stick of dynamite in his hand.
"Goin' to put my wife in the poorhouse, hey?" he squalled.
Cap'n Sproul scored three. "She got at him and unloaded!" he murmured.
"And it fixed him, if I know cowards."
"She's goin' to be a widder, hey? I'm afeard o' daminite, hey? I'll
show ye!" He swung the sack from his shoulder, and held it up in both
hands for the retreating populace to see. "I jest as soon flam this
whole thing down here in the ro'd. I jest as soon kick it. I jest
as soon set on it and smoke my pipe. I'm an outlaw and I ain't afeard
of it. You use me right and let my wife alone, or I'll show ye."
Cap'n Sproul, sailor-habit always strong with him, had for a long
time kept one of his telescopes hanging beside a window in the town
office. He took this down and studied the contour of the bumps that
swelled Mr. Luce's sack. His survey seemed to satisfy him. "Tone of
his talk is really enough--but the shape of that bag settles it with
me."
The next moment all of Smyrna that happened to be in sight of the
scene gasped with horror on beholding the first selectman walk out
of the town house and stalk directly across the square toward the
dynamiter.
"You go back," screamed Mr. Luce, "or I'll flam it!"
But no longer was Mr. Luce's tone dauntless and ferocious. The
Cap'n's keen ear caught the coward's note of querulousness, for he
had heard that note many times before in his stormy association with
men. He chuckled and walked on more briskly.
"I'll do it--I swear I will!" said Mr. Luce, but his voice was only
a weak piping.
In spite of itself Smyrna stopped, groaned, and squatted where it
stood when Mr. Luce swung the sack and launched it at the intrepid
selectman. As he threw it, the outlaw turned to run. The Cap'n grabbed
the sack, catapulted it back, and caught the fleeing Mr. Luce
squarely between the shoulders; and he went down on his face with
a yell of pain. The next moment Smyrna saw her first selectman kicking
a bleating man around and around the square until the man got down,
lifted up his hands, and bawled for mercy.
And when Smyrna flocked around, the Cap'n faced them, his fist
twisted in Mr. Luce's collar.
"This critter belongs in State Prison, but I ain't goin' to send him
there. He's goin' onto our poor-farm, and he's goin' to work for the
first time in his life, and he'll keep to work till he works up some
of the bill he owes this town. He's a pauper because his wife has
called on. But I ain't dependin' on law. I'm runnin' this thing myself.
I've shown ye that I can run it. And if any of you quitters and cowards
have got anything to say why my sentence won't be carried out, now
is the time to say it."
He glowered into their faces, but no one said anything except Zeburee
Nute, who quavered: "We allus knowed you was the smartest man that
ever came to this town, and--"
"Close that mouth!" yelped Cap'n Sproul. "It's worse than an open
hatch on a superphosphate schooner."
"You dare to leave that town farm, you or your wife either," the
selectman went on, giving Mr. Luce a vigorous shake, "and I'll have
you in State Prison as quick as a grand jury can indict. Nute, you
hitch and take him down there, and tell the boss he's to work ten
hours a day, with one hour's noonin', and if he don't move fast enough,
to get at him with a gad."
Mr. Luce, cowed, trembling, appealing dumbly for sympathy, was
driven away while the first selectman was picking up the sack that
still lay in the village square. Without a moment's hesitation he
slit it with his big knife, and emptied its contents into a hole that
the spring frosts had left. Those contents were simply rocks.
"In the name of Joanthus Cicero!" gasped Broadway, licking his dry
lips. "How did you figger it?"
The Cap'n finished kicking the sack down into the hole beside the
rocks, clacked shut his knife-blade, and rammed the knife deep into
his trousers pocket.
"When you critters here in town get to be grown up to be more than
ten years old," he grunted, surveying the gaping graybeards of Smyrna,
"and can understand man's business, I may talk to you. Just now I've
got something to attend to besides foolishness."
And he trudged back into the town house, with his fellow-citizens
staring after him, as the populace of Rome must have stared after
victorious Caesar.