  There once was a Quaker, Orasmus Nute, With a physog. as stiff as a cowhide boot, And he skippered a ship from Georgetown, Maine, In the ’way back days of the pirates’ reign. And the story I tell it has to do With Orasmus Nute and a black flag crew— The tale of the upright course he went In the face of a certain predicament. —Ballad of “Orasmus Nute.” There was at least one secret in his life that “Fig-ger-Four” Avery kept. He never told what inspired Imogene to make her dash for liberty. Squire Phin didn’t exactly understand the tableau he had beheld, and charitably refrained from mentioning to his brother how music, as rendered by Uncle Wharff, failed to soothe the savage breast. As for Hiram, he did not seem to be interested enough to ask any questions. Whenever he mentioned the elephant’s escapade to Peak, he referred to the affair with a sort of grim blithesomeness. Weeks afterward, when the first damp, swirling snow of winter was clotting itself on the windows of the little sitting-room, he sat for a long time, figuring in a grimy account book with a stubby lead pencil. Every once in a while he chuckled. “J. B. Sawtelle,” he murmured, “items: four begonies and three geraniums mashed in front yard, one washin’ scattered hoorah-ste’-boy—say, Sime, Imogene with a night gown on one tush and a pair of J. B.‘s flannel drawers flyin’ distress from the other, and sheddin’ assorted articles such as found on a well-regulated clothes-line, as she hurrooped down through the beech growth, must have been worth double the price of a high-dive feature.” His shoulders, hunched in the rocking-chair, shook with suppressed mirth. Peak, his slippered feet resting on the rail of the Franklin stove, surveyed the shoulders and the back of Hiram’s head with scowling disapproval. “Some might think you relished chances to throw away money,” he growled, with a freedom of criticism accorded the favourite. Simon now appeared to be settled as a fixture in the showman’s household. The old horse Joachim had died with the first frosts, and the battered van lurched under one of the poplars, exposed to the beating of the elements. “What bills do you think Imogene incurred on that trip—now, jest for a guess?” demanded Hiram, in high good humour. “I’ve been figgerin’ it for fun.” “It reely must be a good deal like a joke book,” observed Peak, with fine satire. “I can set and pee-ruse them figgers,” said Hiram, slapping the little book on his knee and chuckling afresh, “and think how Imogene must have looked passin’ through them way stations, as you might say, and then think how them farmers and old maids and women-folks run and squawked and hollered, and I get fuller of tickles inside than a settin’ hen is full of clucks. The trouble with you is, Sime, you ain’t got no humour.” “Well, I’ve had mostly troubles in my time, and I ain’t got no forty thousand dollars in the bank, either,” said Peak, sourly. “Say, you’ve been twittin’ me about that forty thousand a good deal lately,” snorted Hiram, glaring around over the back of the rocking-chair. “You ain’t begretchin’ me my own, be ye?” “Ev’ry man’s welcome to all he’s got, for all o’ me. I ain’t ever had nothin’. I don’t ever expect to have anything. But I tell ye, a man don’t gain in the long run by slingin’ his money around too permiscuous.” Hiram whirled in his chair and put his little book into his pocket. “For more’n a fortnit now, Sime, you’ve been slurrin’ more or less. You’ve got some kind of a duflicker’s egg that you’re settin’ on. Now come off’n the nest and if you’ve got any cacklin’ to do, out with it so that I can join in!” Simon was too certain of his position as a favourite to be backed down. “I guess if speech of the people is correct,” he replied sturdily, “it’s well enough known why you’re ticklin’ out when you think of Imogene’s trip up-country.” “F’r instance, now,” suggested Hiram, his face very hard. Peak bent and poked the fire, sniffing disdainfully. “F’r instance, I said,” repeated the showman. “Say, look-a-here, Hime,” snapped Peak, whirling in his chair in his turn, “do you think for a minute that I don’t know why you’ve been makin’ all these trips up-country lately—and you a-sayin’ that you’ve got to go up and transact a little more bus’ness about them damages of Imogene’s? Now it’s about time to take some of the cuss of the thing off’n that elephant.” “F’r instance, I said!” yelled Hiram, standing up and clacking his fingers imperiously under Peak’s nose. “Out with it!” “Don’t you suppose I know that you’re courtin’ that tow-headed widder that’s got a farm and twenty thousand dollars in the bank? Do you think that you can fool me that’s summered and wintered with you? You’re courtin’ her, that’s what you’re doin’, and you’re layin’ it all off onto that elephant. Now don’t give me no more flim-flam. ’Tain’t professional. It’s pickin’ me up for a sucker.” The narrow eyes of the giant sparkled with suspicion and with the jealousy of the companion who is being supplanted and realises it. For a little while Hiram stood and glared at him and then sat down in his chair again. Either a sense of guilt, craft or desire to placate a friend caused him to moderate his demeanour. “See here, Sime,” he began, lighting a cigar to keep himself in countenance, “you have figgered the thing all wrong. You know I ain’t a marryin’ man. You and me neither of us is. I want you to live with me and you’re goin’ to.” “I should think that the both of us has suffered enough from women as it is,” grumbled the giant. “Both of us knows the other’s troubles with ’em. And now for you to go and ram yourself right into the bramble-bush again, and me here to advise you, makes me mad and disgusted. I’m thinkin’ of you first of all, Hime. I ain’t selfish. But I can see jest how it’s goin’ to be: you’re goin’ to git hitched and then the first thing she’ll do will be to put the spittoon in the woodshed and kick me out-doors. I thought you knowed more than to do it—I honest thought so.” Peak bowed his head in grief. “In my whole life long I never was judged right yet by any human bein’,” wailed Hiram. “And now here you go off the handle jest like the rest. You know what Nymp’ Bodfish done to me. You know what I propose to do to Nymp’ Bodfish. That’s all there is to it. He wants her and the twenty thousand, and he’d ’a’ had her a year ago if he wasn’t hangin’ off about bein’ a farmer. He wants her to sell and put the money into a schooner, and he’s jest as much reckonin’ on that as on flood tide when the moon’s right. His heart is set on it. I’m goin’ to make him the sickest man ’tween here and the North Pole.” “There was a man once that give an elephant a chaw of terbacker,” related Simon, “and when the doctors was tryin’ to fit some of the least mussed-up pieces together at the hospital, he opened his eyes and said: ‘It was a good one on the elephant, wasn’t it?’ and then give one hiccup and died.” “If you was only jest—well, say, ‘Figger-Four,’ and made such talk to me,” snarled Hiram, “I’d drive you right down through the floor there, like I’d drive a tent peg. But I’m willin’ to argue with you, Sime, and if that don’t show that I’m a friend of yours, then I don’t know what does.” He wiped his flushed face. “You understand, I can’t bust this thing in a minit.” “Didn’t you yourself ketch him right in a caper that would queer him with any decent woman—lug-gin’ off another man’s wife ’cause he was hired to?” “Don’t you know that would be givin’ away the trouble of the young Mayos—and them livin’ together now like turtledoves?” roared Hiram. “Look at my brother Phin—one of God’s own gentlemen, if there ever was one. Him a-breakin’ his heart and misjudged and old Willard’s girl passin’ him by be-. cause he smashed King Bradish before her face and eyes—and Bradish with the last word to her! Don’t you suppose my brother could square himself with her by just one word of what he knows? But will he do it after he has passed ’Rissy Mayo his word that so long as she behaves herself he won’t give her away to any livin’ soul? You can say he’s a fool if you want to, but I tell ye, Sime, when a man has got as far along in life as Phin has without breakin’ his solemn word, you can’t blame him if he’d rather gnaw himself inside than have those whom he gives away scorch him outside.” He had furiously puffed his cigar down to the end. Now he lighted another. “I never approved of him carin’ a snap for the Willard girl, Sime. I don’t like her. I don’t like the breed. But this lovin’ of folks ain’t to be regulated jest the way you’d like to have it. If my brother can keep his mouth shut about King Bradish’s rottenness when, as you might say, it’s a wife at stake for him, then I guess I can keep still when it’s only a grudge that I’m workin’.” “Then it ain’t no wife in your case?” pursued Peak, suspiciously. “I tell ye, all I can do now is to hint,” insisted Hiram, evading the main question. “I’ve jest got her on the anxious seat. It’s the way I struck up her interest first of all. I couldn’t have got near her with a ten-foot pole if I hadn’t got her curiosity started by hints. Then, of course, she wanted to know what I meant and I’ve been puttin’ her off ever since. You never saw a woman so worked up as she is, Sime—never. She can’t hardly stand it till I come again. Then she lets into me to tell her all about Cap Bodfish. She don’t want to leave go of him till she knows definite. I reckon she wants to have him around so as to peel him when she does find out that there really is something in what I hint.” The showman chuckled again. “And it’s kind of what you might call a lingerin’ death for him—one of the slow kind like bein’ gnawed by ants. Ev’ry time he goes up to see her she don’t know whuther to love him or club him off’n the premises—and she blows hot and she blows cold all in one minit, and if he ain’t the wust puzzled man that ever tried to box compass in the sea of matrimony, then I’ll eat the celluloid peel in a side-show lemonade.” “Don’t he suspect what it all means?” inquired Peak, beginning to appreciate the situation with the malice of a man who has been fooled and enjoys seeing others in the same boat. “Keeps a-grabbin’ ev’ry which way like a man that hears a moskeeter buzzin’ round him in the night,” giggled Hiram. “I’ve set right in the other room sev’ral times and he didn’t know I was there, and I’ve heard him coax and beg and guess and promise and almost blubber, and me behind the door in t’other room swellin’ up and swellin’ up and then lettin’ it out through my nose easy, and then swellin’ up again. I don’t believe I shall be able to stand very much of that. I’m li’ble to bust some time.” “I should think it would be well wuth list’nin’ to,” agreed Peak. Then he said artlessly: “I like fun myself. Why can’t I go along with you after this? Then there won’t be no such thing as her gettin’ her cobweb around you.” “You talk as though I was runnin’ matinÉes up-country,” said Hiram, the red on his bristly cheeks. He detected Peak’s selfish apprehension, and the giant’s gaze shifted under his scowl. “I never had any trouble in runnin’ my own bus’ness yet and I don’t expect to have to call in understudies right away.” In considerable dudgeon he marched along to a narrow secretary in the corner and began to mumble figures in an undertone as he went over his accounts. Peak sat gazing into the fire, twirling his huge thumbs thoughtfully. The sound of some one stamping off snow on the porch broke upon the silence of the two. The visitor came in without knocking and, fumbling his way along the dark entry, opened the sitting-room door. It was old Sumner Badger, the wet snow splotching his faded overcoat. “’Pears to be one o’ these ’ere sticky storms,” he observed amiably, pulling a chair up before the stove. “Yes, seems to hang to you like dollar bills do,” retorted Hiram, snapping around from the secretary and squinting over his glasses. Then he went on with his figuring, talking half aloud. Badger surveyed the back of his head for some time and then said: “It’s about that money you want to borrow of me, Capt’in.” Badger always bestowed this title in moments when he wanted to placate. “Then you’ve collected from Willard, have you?” inquired Hiram, gruffly, over his shoulder. “Huh, you’ve been long enough about it. Ever since last fall.” “Well, I’ve seen the Jedge,” faltered Badger; “jest come from his office to here. He says the town can’t raise no money to take up town notes not till town meetin’ in March. He says it will be made all right to me if I’ll wait. Now he give me to understand that I’d git seven per cent, all hunky if I didn’t hurry things and—no, s’r, honest to Lucifer if I said a word about your wantin’ the money,” he expostulated as Hiram swung angrily to face him. “I told you I’d kill you if you did,” roared Hiram. “And I didn’t, Capt’in! No, s’r, when it’s money concerned I can keep my mouth shet. Ain’t I kept it shet all these years about the Jedge havin’ it?” “Let’s see!” remarked Hiram, with a sly look in his eye, as though he wished to test this Palermo voter. “How much money does Palermo owe, anyway?” “I don’t have the least idee,” blandly returned Badger, crossing his knees. “We all trust the Jedge to ’tend to that. He knows.” “So you are goin’ to let your money stay with the Judge, hey?” “Well—blorh hum! Well, as I was sayin’, Jedge Willard seems to be perfickly square about makin’ it right and—and—well, Capt’in, nat’rally it’s—it’s bus’ness—well, to make it an object to shift you might—-there’s the taxes, too——” “You old harker,” cried Hiram, irefully, “what you want me to say is that I’ll pay you eight per cent.! ‘You’ve been whifflin’ back and forth for two months between Judge Willard and me. I thought you got all ready to die a while ago. What are you waitin’ for—to place your money out at eight per cent, first?” “I ain’t goin’ to die,” blurted Badger. “A man’s got the right to change his mind, ain’t he? And they’ve found out about that Mis’ Achorn. She used a wax hand to make folks believe ’twas some one dead that was touchin’ ’em and—-” “Shet up!” barked Hiram. “Do you think I’ve been in the circus line thirty years to need to have fakes explained to me? It’s bus’ness I want to talk with you, Sum. Don’t you read your town report, you fool? Don’t you know that Judge Willard says there over his name that this town owes only a little over two thousand dollars? And yet you know, yourself, that he has borrowed seven thousand from you on a town note! Don’t you stop to think about those things? And now I’ll tell you something to make your hair curl! I have found out that there are twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of town notes held around here by just such old blind moles as you are that he has told to keep still. Lord knows how many more there are. I don’t imagine that some would let it out if you took a knife to ’em.” He wiped the perspiration from his face and gazed at Badger as though he expected the information to wilt him. The avenger of the wrongs of the Looks was not entirely ready with the thunderbolt that he was forging for the town treasurer of Palermo, but the serenity of the dollar-blinded Badger exasperated him. For a test he wanted to see how one citizen of Palermo would receive the disclosure. “I tell you your treasurer is fooling the whole of ye!” he shouted. “He has stolen from your town.” The creditor blinked at him. “Now will you sit by and let him fool you with his talk of makin’ it right? Now will you try to screw eight per cent, out of me who’s tryin’ to bring him to the ring bolt? Now will you hand that note over to me or pitch in and collect it yourself?” To Hiram’s intense astonishment Badger slowly leaned forward, set his elbows on his knees, began to tap his finger-tips together, winked one eye, and smiled shrewdly and composedly. “Don’t you worry none about Coll Willard,” he said. “He’s a financier.” He rolled the word over his tongue. “His folks was financiers before him. Nobody can’t fool him. He’s sly. So’m I. He’s ready to help the sly folks. You’ve got money, but you ain’t no financier. You’re jest a circus man. And we ain’t your monkeys, here in P’lermo. If you want your nuts pulled out of the fire, pull ’em out yourself.” Hiram got up and stamped around the room in an ecstasy of rage. “I’m a good mind to let you all go to Tophet by the short cut, your tails tied together with kerosened rags,” he gasped. “Here I am, givin’ up time and money to save this town from being lugged into bankruptcy, and what do I get? I get laughed at! Damn it!” he stormed, “there’s your last town report! Look for yourself! He’s lied there under oath.” With the words he threw a pamphlet into Badger’s lap. The old man promptly tossed the report upon the table. “You’d better stop tryin’ to work out your old grudge on Jedge Willard,” he advised, with a bland sapience that made the showman grit his teeth. “If he finds out that you’re a-slanderin’ him he’s li’ble to have the law on ye.” “If I should stand up in town meetin’ and call on you to rise and say whether or not you hold a town note for seven thousand dollars, I suppose you’ll lie, won’t you?” “I shall allus stand behind the man who has allus helped to put some extry dollars in my pocket,” said the old man, stiffly. Hiram seized him by the arm, hustled him to the door and thrust him out into the entry. “If you wasn’t rank poison I’d chop you up and feed you to Imogene,” he shouted as he slammed the door. “If you come into my house again I’ll take chances and do it.” The door opened promptly and the unterrified Badger poked in his head. “I don’t s’pose you’re goin’ back on your brother Phin as a legal adviser, be ye?” he inquired. “Well, he advised me to hang onto my town note for a while and keep still till I heard from him. It wa’n’t two hours ago that he told me the same thing. Now I——” But when Hiram clutched a chair with a threatening motion Badger fled. “Sime,” said the showman, “I’m blasted glad I had them carts painted up. It’s me and you for the road again next season, both of us with our knives out for blood and our little tin dippers held ready to catch it. I’m sick of tryin’ to do favours for anyone. I never saw such an ungrateful town as this one is.” He looked sullenly out into the driving snow. “The band seems to be doin’ well,” said Peak. “They’re havin’ three rehearsals a week and are pretty nigh blowin’ their lungs out. You can’t ask nothin’ better from the band than what you’re gittin’.” Hiram turned from the window and gave his friend and confidant a long and searching stare. “Peak,” said he, “sometimes when you talk to me I think you’re in with the rest a-tryin’ to do me.” Simon surveyed him with eyes mutely expostulating. “Other times I think you are a dummed fool. You can take your pick. Now I am goin’ out to associate with some one that ain’t tryin’ to pick my pocket the whole dog-blessed time nor spreadin’ on hair-oil talk when it ain’t called for.” He trudged out to the barn where Imogene was spending the winter in dignified ease, occupying a corner of the building that had been sheathed and boarded for her comfort. Here “Figger-Four” Avery tended a little air-tight stove, relegated to the post of menial. Hiram sat in silent communion with Imogene until the dusk came down. Once in a while he fed to her a lump of candy. Each time she curved down her trunk he poked a thick finger against it roguishly. “I’ll bet ye know who sent ’em to ye—now, don’t ye?” he would chuckle, when Imogene gazed down on him with amiable blinkings.
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