Varney had transacted his business and gone, “an’ e’ tells int’restin’
lies, too. It beats me how ’e does ’em. It’s a sort o’ natural gift,
like singin’ an’ drawin’ pitchers, an’ I love to hear ’im throw it. Most
liars ’ud stop when they seen it wasn’t soakin’ in an’ people was git’n
weak, but the Perfessor keeps right on ’till the goose flesh comes. Say,
Pop, you an’ me’ll have to ferment sump’n to drown ’im with when ’e
blows ’round ’ere ag’in. Let’s tell ’im one that’ll put ’im out o’
business for six months.”
“All right, Bill, you be thinkin’ of it. You’re sump’n of a past master
yourself. I’m goin’ home to rest. I got enough for one day.”
Varney chuckled quietly to himself as he crossed the bridge, for with
his story he had woven a web of many meshes, and to it he hoped time
would bring valuable spoil. He knew that he could rely on Sophy’s
cupidity and insatiable curiosity to “start something,” and when he came
again it was his intention to amplify and strengthen the ground work he
had laid.
A week later the firm by whom Josh was employed received a mysterious
letter asking all about him. It came from the county seat, and was
afterwards ascertained to have been written by one of Sophy’s
acquaintances, undoubtedly at her instigation. This was a characteristic
and favorite form of strategy with Sophy, and was quite recognizable to
Josh when the letter was shown to him. The reply that he suggested was
sent by his obliging employers. It contained the assurance that Mr.
Varney was a gentleman of high repute. He had sold their goods for
several years, and they considered his honesty and ability above
question.
In due course of time Sophy began to agitate the idea of getting “some
of those wonderful white foreign turkeys” that she had “accidentally
heard about” into the neighborhood. She thought that the club ought to
take the matter up.
Bill assured her that “the Perfessor was handin’ out bunk the day that
things was bein’ accident’ly overheard inside, an’ anything from ’im ’ud
be ’bout like what ’e put over at the Thanksgivin’ shoot.”
This spirit of opposition only stimulated Sophy, and the subtle Josh had
calculated on it to a nicety. He knew that the seed was now in fertile
soil and he calmly awaited the harvest.
In a month he came again, and incidentally mentioned that his friend who
wrote him about the Himalayan white turkeys had arrived in New York. He
had started home with three birds, but two of them had been sickened by
the roll of the ship on the way over, and had died just before getting
into port. The one that survived the voyage was the remarkable gobbler
that was in the picture he had shown on his last trip to the store.
“This bird’ll cause a lot of excitement in this country,” he declared.
“They call ’im Hyder Ali, an’ ’e’s named after a famous Mohametan
general that fought in Asia a good many years ago. This man Hyder Ali
pretty nearly cleaned the English out of India once an’ they had a hot
time getting ’im canned. There’s been ships an’ perfumery an’ race
horses an’ brands o’ cigars an’ lots of other things named after ’im. He
was one of the most famous men that ever lived in that part of the
world.”
By degrees the imaginative and romantic Josh succeeded in creating an
atmosphere of avid interest in everything relating to Hyder Ali, the
marvellous fowl from beyond the briny seas, and he intended to intensify
this atmosphere to the point of precipitation at the proper time.
A couple of weeks later Varney told Posey that he had bought the
Himalayan gobbler from his friend, but did not know what to do with him
for a week or ten days, as the man that was going to take care of it for
him was away. It was arranged that the gobbler was to be brought to the
store and temporarily installed in the chicken yard near the barn.
On the following Saturday afternoon, when Josh well knew that there
would be a full attendance at Posey’s, that gay and debonair gentleman
came in a light spring wagon. He was accompanied by a young man with a
thick “O’Merican” accent, who drove the rig, and whom he introduced as
Mr. Flaherty. Interest immediately centered on the big box, perforated
with many auger holes, that stood in the wagon back of the seat.
The vehicle was followed by the agitated and curious crowd, as it was
driven back to the chicken yard. The box was tenderly removed and placed
inside the wire netting enclosure by Varney and Flaherty.
The appearance of Hyder Ali had been skilfully timed. The composite
effect of Varney’s discourses on the subject of this wondrous bird had
been to produce psychologic conditions that he considered quite perfect
for his dark purposes. He knew that the halo of prestige and romance,
that had been patiently made to glow around Hyder Ali, would become
still brighter when that peerless bird burst dramatically upon the
rustic stage.
Out of the opened door of the box there came, with delicate mincing
steps and regal mien, what, to that crowd, was almost a celestial
vision. He was an enormous bird. With the exception of his eyes, he was
pure white, even to his carunculated neck wattle and comb. The eyes were
of a deep pink, and gleamed like iridescent opals in their snowy
setting. The slender comb dangled and hung jauntily on one side, like
the tassle on a Turkish fez, and it imparted a rakish oriental air. The
head was crowned with a dainty little wisp of airy feathers that would
have fluttered the heart of the most obdurate of hen turkeys. The
shifting light revealed pearly half-tones in the snowy raiment. He was
immaculate and would hardly have seemed out of place on a pedestal. Many
strange and queer things have stood on pedestals in this world, both in
fact and fancy, and Hyder Ali would have ranked very far from the lower
end of the scale.
He paused on being released from what to him must have been a
humiliating confinement, looked disdainfully at his surroundings, and
nonchalantly acquired a fat green tomato worm that decorated a nearby
leaf.
He walked slowly, and with lordly dignity, about the enclosure,
apparently conscious of the wonder and admiration he was attracting. He
seemed like some rare exotic—entirely foreign to the strange environment
into which an indiscriminate fate had thrust him.
“Let joy be unconfined! We’ve got Hyder Ali!” shouted Bill, half
sarcastically, as he joined the awe stricken crowd. He had arrived too
late to witness the unloading, but he was impressed with the fact that
Varney had, at least in some measure, “made good.” However, the demon of
distrust still lingered in his heart. He had never seen or heard of
anything that looked like Hyder Ali before, but was disposed to restrain
his enthusiasm and await further developments.
Sophy Perkins came late in the afternoon and was in a highly flustered
state. She spent a long time at the chicken yard with her wistful eyes
riveted on the distinguished guest. To own that bird would crown her
futile and disappointed life with bliss. She longed for its possession
as one who beseeches fate for the unattainable.
Seemingly in response to her fervent gaze, Hyder Ali spread his tail
feathers into vast fan-like forms over his downy back. His pink eyes
glistened with alluring and changing beams from amid the fluffy white
array of distended plumage, as he turned slowly round and round, posed,
and strutted, quite human like, before Sophy’s bewildered vision.
His prolonged gobbles, as he majestically patrolled the chicken pen, had
for her an ineffable musical charm.
She had once read a syndicated story in a newspaper magazine supplement,
in which reincarnation and transmigration of souls figured in a
supernatural and flesh creepy plot. After she had heard Josh Varney’s
allusion to reincarnation in his first talk with us at the store, she
had hunted it up and reread it carefully. In the woful and sobby tale a
beautiful princess and her affinity discovered that they had once loved
as shell-fish, and through countless ages had periodically met in other
strange forms, which did not happen to be identical until the time of
the story, when they met in a phosphorescent light in the dusty tomb of
a Manchu ancestor.
During her second day’s visit to Hyder Ali a mysterious and indefinable
thrill had crept into Sophy’s sterile heart. She pondered much over the
resistless fascination that the bird exercised over her, and suddenly
became obsessed with the idea that this was possibly the reincarnation
of a soul mate that she might have had in some far off previous
existence, somewhere in the star swept æons that were gone, that had
drifted through the ages in various forms, until predestination had
again brought them face to face. She had a hazy idea of the theory of
reincarnation, but she had an instinctive feeling that, if there was
anything of that sort, this was probably it, and a long lost affinity
was before her.
The “loose wires in her upper story” that Rat Hyatt had mentioned at the
turkey shoot began to rattle hopelessly on the subject of the white
gobbler.
Into her mind there came a desperate resolve to acquire that bird, by
fair means or foul. All of her persistence, and every form of artifice
and cunning of which she was capable would thenceforth be devoted to
that end.
After Hyder Ali had sojourned a week in Posey’s pen, attended with
adoration, and fed with selected worms, corn meal mush, and other
dainties by the faithful Sophy, Mr. Flaherty came with his little spring
wagon and took him away. He said that the man who was to keep him for
Mr. Varney had returned home, but he did not say where he lived.
Thus was Hyder Ali dangled temptingly before the Turkey Club, and
tantalizingly whisked from sight. Varney was eagerly questioned when he
came again, but his manner was very reserved. He seemed willing to talk
volubly on any subject but the gobbler, the only thing anybody wanted to
hear about. He finally said that he had paid three hundred dollars for
the bird and intended to exhibit him at the county fairs in various
parts of the state during the fall, charging a small admission fee to
make it profitable.
Sophy was anxious to know if he would sell the bird, and, after talking
it all over with her, the reluctant Josh consented to a “grand raffle”
for the turkey, provided three hundred chances could be sold at one
dollar each. He felt that exhibiting the bird around the country might
be a good deal of a job, although he regarded it as a fine thing from a
financial point of view. If he was to part with Hyder Ali he would
rather that he would remain with his friends along the river, as he was
very fond of all of them, and they might talk over the county fair idea
later.
It was agreed that when all of the chances were sold the drawing should
be held under the auspices of the Turkey Club in the yard back of
Posey’s store, where Hyder Ali was to be brought.
Numbered tickets, corresponding to the names in Sophy’s sales book were
to be deposited in a hat. Josh Varney, as the owner of the turkey, was
to hold the hat. Sophy was to be blindfolded, and to draw forth the
tickets one by one, until the contents of the hat were exhausted. They
were to be handed to somebody else who would call off the numbers and
cancel them in the book. The last ticket in the hat was to win Hyder
Ali.
The chances were all sold within a week, some purchasers taking as many
as a dozen. Just before the supply was gone Josh and his friend Flaherty
each took ten and the book was declared closed.
Sophy was only able to buy seven, but she hoped that they would be
sufficient for her purpose.
Every able bodied person, and some who were not, who lived within ten
miles and could by any means get to the store, was there on the day of
the drawing.
Hyder Ali arrived in his perforated box and was reinstalled in the
chicken yard, where he walked about in lonely majesty, while his destiny
was in the balance—the cynosure of many anxious and covetous eyes.
A platform had been improvised with four big drygoods boxes in the yard,
high enough for everybody to see what was going on. Mr. Varney stood on
it and announced the conditions. He acknowledged the receipt of the
proceeds of the raffle, and stated that the bird now belonged to the
winner.
The three hundred numbered tickets were then produced by Sophy. She
handed them to Varney to deposit in the ancient plug hat that Pop
Wilkins had obligingly loaned for the occasion, in accordance with time
honored custom. Pop, with the sun reflecting from his bald head, stood
on the platform, adjusted his brass rimmed spectacles, and made ready to
call off the cancellations.
Varney ran through the tickets several times and counted them to see if
they were all there. His numbers were from 281 to 290. He mixed the
tickets over thoroughly inside the hat with his hand, and the
blindfolded Sophy began drawing. She had carefully bent all of her own
tickets in such a way as to enable her to identify them by touch, and
had no doubt that she would own Hyder Ali within the next twenty
minutes. There was excited buying and selling, at big premiums, of
numbers remaining in the hat as the contest narrowed down, and there
were frequent delays in the drawing to accommodate the speculators. Six
of Sophy’s tickets had come out. None of them were bent and cold chills
raced up and down her spine. Her agile and nervous fingers had carefully
avoided a well bent ticket near one side of the grimy interior of the
hat. When she drew out a flat ticket next to it, she learned to her
horror that it was her last number. With a faint heart she reached for
the other, hoping that there had been some error in her count, but the
last ticket was number 294, and it belonged to Mr. Flaherty.
It was evident to her that the wily Josh had discovered the bent
tickets, and while he was handling them over inside the hat he had
managed to straighten them all and bend Flaherty’s. Whatever other
artifice Josh might have had in reserve had he not discovered the bunch
of bent tickets will always be a mystery, but he certainly had no
intention of leaving Hyder Ali in the river country.
Sophy removed the handkerchief, under which she had found no difficulty
in peeking during the drawing, and looked upon Josh.
Human eyes have seldom glittered with the venomous and deadly glow that
he now saw in Sophy’s orbs. Such eyes might have blazed through a
labyrinth in a jungle upon one who had seized a tiger cub. Backed by
courage the look would have portended murder.
Sophy at once realized the hopelessness of her position, for no specious
protest was possible. She had encountered an adept in an art in which
she was but a tyro. It was all over and she was compelled to smother her
impotent wrath.
To the crowd, ignorant of the little drama on the platform, everything
had seemed entirely regular. None of them had ever had a ghost of a
chance of getting the turkey, but they were good natured losers. Pop
Wilkins carefully restored the old stovepipe hat to his shining dome.
While regretting that he had not won Hyder Ali and that that remarkable
bird from foreign lands was not to remain in the community, he declared
that there was now nothing to do but congratulate the winner.
“That’s what we done at the turkey shoot last year,” remarked Bill in an
undertone, as we watched the perforated box being loaded on to
Flaherty’s spring wagon.
Varney tactfully refrained from assisting in the loading. “I hate to
part with that bird,” he declared, “but business is business an’ there
’e goes!”
Sophy continued to look upon him with a steely and viperous glare, but
he did not appear to notice her. They each knew that the other
thoroughly understood the situation, and there were no ethics that were
debatable. Sophy knew that Flaherty was a man of straw, and that she had
been skilfully robbed of the fruits of her chicanery. Varney regarded
her discomfiture with the generous benevolence of a victor.
Sophy believed that all moral logic, and every other kind of logic,
entitled her to Hyder Ali. She considered that in addition to the loss
of the bird, she had been swindled out of the seven dollars she had paid
for her worthless chances.
She justified her own dishonesty to herself by the conviction that she
had worked hard enough for the club to have the turkey anyway, and as
long as some ticket had to be left until the last, it might just as well
be her’s as anybody’s. It was all a matter of chance anyway, and, as it
turned out it would have been much better for everybody if Hyder Ali
could have been kept in the neighborhood with her instead of being taken
away. She considered that she had suffered a great injustice, and that a
defenseless woman should be thus robbed and maltreated was to her the
acme of outrage.
Varney had his own rig with him and left for the county seat soon after
Flaherty and his spring wagon had departed in an opposite direction. The
precious pair was gone—with Hyder Ali, and two hundred and eighty
dollars of tangible profits.
A melodious gobble was faintly heard far away on the road while Flaherty
was still in sight. It might have been a wail of sorrow and farewell.
“I s’pose,” remarked Bill, “that Hyder Ali’s yellin’ fer help. He’s
prob’ly ’fraid them two jay birds’ll send ’im back to them Brummins an’
that Bungspout Swammy fish net man in India, where ’e’ll git ’is crop
chilled with them frozen frogs, but ’e needn’t worry. I didn’t buy no
chances fer I didn’t think there’d be any show for a white man with Josh
an’ Sophy up on them boxes, an’ they wasn’t. I thought they was goin’ to
be sump’n doin’ when I seen Sophy eyein’ Josh. She looked like she
wanted to squirt some lye at ’im. Sophy’s got a bad eye. She c’n sour a
pan o’ milk that’s twenty feet off by jest lookin’ at it in a cert’n
way.
“Them kewpies ’ave finished the cookin’ this time an’ we’re done good
an’ brown. I don’t think they’ll be ’round any more ’less Josh comes to
sell us a striped elephant next year, an’ if ’e does I ’spose we’ll buy
it. I don’t think we wanted that misquito fatted bird anyway. He didn’t
look to me like ’e was healthy.”
Sophy was ill for a couple of weeks and visited the store but rarely
during the rest of the summer.
“She looks like she’d been licked,” observed Rat Hyatt. “She don’t seem
to have no pep any more. I met ’er on the bridge the other day, an’ when
I spoke to ’er she answered as nice an’ polite as anybody, instead o’
lookin’ at me like I was a skunk, an’ pass’n on the way she used to do.”
During the latter part of August Sophy chanced to see a copy of a weekly
paper that was published in a small town about fifty miles away. In it
was an announcement of a “grand raffle,” to be held the following week,
“for a wonderful white turkey imported from Siberia at great expense,
the like of which has never been seen or heard of in this country.”
The article went on to say that “this is a great event that is about to
take place in our midst, and ye editor blushingly owns to the soft
impeachment of having taken ten chances with his hard earned pelf. We
hope to win the splendid prize, but if we fail we respectfully ask
anybody who is in arrears on their subscription to please call at our
holy editorial sanctum with some mazuma, for though ye ed. toys with the
trailing skirts of fickle fortune, yet must he eat.”
Sophy kept her own counsel and prevailed on Pop Wilkins to lend her his
horse and two seated buggy for a few days to enable her to visit a sick
relative who lived some distance away. She was gone a week, and when she
returned Hyder Ali was in the buggy. His beautiful head protruded
inquiringly from the top of a gunny sack in which he was carefully
secured. Sophy drove home with her prize, returned the rig to the
obliging Pop, and walked loftily into the store, on her way back, to
make some purchases.
She was a changed woman, and victory was on her brow. She greeted the
loiterers about the store, but, as Posey expressed it, “she spoke from
above.”
Naturally the neighborhood was in a ferment of curiosity.
“How’d you git ’im?” asked Bill pleasantly.
“I caught ’im on a fish line,” she replied grimly.
Beyond this she refused any explanations and her attitude was regarded
as the height of cruelty. She said it was nobody’s business but her own,
and no further light was thrown on the subject.
Early in the fall a band of gipsies came and camped on a grassy glade in
the woods not far from where Sophy lived. They remained several weeks.
The men traded horses with the nearby farmers, and the women went about
the neighborhood in their picturesque costumes, begged small articles,
and told fortunes.
One morning Sophy was horrified to find that Hyder Ali was gone. She at
once suspected the gipsies, and rushed to their camp, but the Romany
folk had departed. She found a long white feather on the ground that
undoubtedly had come from her cherished bird. She at once enlisted all
the help she could get. The assistance of the sheriff was invoked and
the trail of the gipsies was taken by a large party. They were located
about fifteen miles away. Thorough search revealed no trace of the
missing property. The gipsies were confronted with the tell-tale
feather, but denied all knowledge of it. There seemed to be nothing
further to do and the matter was dropped by the sheriff.
In November, just before the annual turkey shoot, Mr. Roscoe Plunkett,
of the firm of Plunkett & Mott, whose goods Varney had sold for several
years, came to Posey’s store to check up their account. He said that his
firm had suffered considerable losses through the shady and sinuous
methods of Varney, and that he was no longer with them. They had delved
deep into his history before he came to them and found that he had a
rancid past. It was checkered with a couple of jail confinements, but he
had managed in each case to obtain his freedom after trial. He had been
a champion rifle shot, and had given exhibitions of trick shooting in a
wild west show for a year or two. Of late he had been mixed up with a
man named Flaherty. They had found a farmer in the southern part of the
state who had an albino turkey—one of those rare freaks of nature, due
to deficient pigmentation. It was a beautiful gobbler of abnormal size.
They bought the bird for twenty-five dollars, and, since that time they
had been going about the country raffling it off. One of them had always
won it.
During the previous week a friend of Plunkett’s, who was a commercial
traveler, had written him that he had met Varney in Michigan, and that
Flaherty and the white turkey were with him.
This new light on the general cussedness and dark ways of Josh Varney
came too late to be of any benefit to Sophy. She had gone to live with
some relatives in a small town in Iowa, taking her illusions and her
bitter hatreds with her. Her henpecked husband had mercifully been
relieved of his earthly troubles, but this had not seemed to disturb her
as much as her other afflictions. She had become completely disgusted
with her surroundings, and had sought new fields for her restless
propensities.
“It’s too bad Josh don’t know she’s a widow,” remarked Bill, “fer them
two might git married now, if they wanted to.”
Bill labored long in lettering out the notice of the next annual turkey
shoot, which he tacked up in the store.
There was a full attendance when the day came. The weather was again
pleasant, the blood letting was satisfactory, and no untoward incident
marred the joy of the occasion.
When the shooting was over Bill pounded officially on a barrel top and
called the business meeting to order.
“The first thing to be done at this meet’n is to ’lect a new Chief
Gobbler, fer this one has now resigned. This chair has quit, an’ now
pays its parting respects to all the members. I say now that this chair
has been blasphemed an’ jumped on fer five years. Nothin’ has ever been
done right. Ev’rybody has cussed the chair right an’ left, an’ the chair
has never peeped or said a word back. In quit’n this hon’able office
this chair now makes answer to all them sore heads that’s been
criticize’n it fer all these years, an’ that answer is _BAH!!!!_
“Now we’ll perceed to nominations fer the chair’s successor.”
A Voice:—“I nom’nate Mr. Bill Stiles fer the ensuin’ year, an’ I move it
be made unimous.”
The Chair:—“Is there no other nominations?”
Another Voice:—“I nom’nate Mr. Josh Varney, an’ I move it be made
unimous.” (Chorus of cat calls.)
A voice from the rear:—“I move that the chair stops smokin’ when it’s
presidin’ an’ I move we adjourn!”
The Chair:—“If that feller back there thinks ’e c’n run this meet’n
better’n it’s bein’ done, let ’im come up in front. This chair’s goin’
to do its smokin’ while it’s alive instid o’ wait’n ’till afterwards
like some people. We gotta have some dignity about this thing, an’ you
fellers keep quiet! Now who makes any more nominations?”