  Old Zibe Haines walked out one day, And a barbed wire fence it stopped his way. Never climbed over, never crawled through, But he bit that wire right plumb in two. —Ballads of “Gumption.” Hiram Look was approaching Palermo village and letting his horse walk up the long Witch-Run hill. He was in the middle of the seat of a brand-new top carriage. His elbows were on his knees and he was gazing at the reflection of himself in the bright dasher of the carriage. Occasionally he broke out into mellow chucklings. “I’d have given ten dollars if Phin and all close pers’nal friends had been there with me to see it,” he soliloquised. “Me behind the wistery on the porch of the widder’s, a-takin’ it all in, and he not knowin’ I was there! Phew! Lemme git out a few more of them laughs I’ve had to swaller!” He leaned back and haw-hawed boisterously, to the renewed astonishment of the horse, who stopped and bent his head around to gaze at his master. “G’long!” shouted the showman. “I’ve told you all about it three times already on the way down. I had to tell some one.” When the horse plodded on he set his elbows on his knees again and went on with his delighted monologue. He was rolling it again over his tongue with smacks of relish. “Yess’r, I had him dead to rights! Had the very letters he’s been writin’ to that other string to his bow. And then to have him whine to the widder that he’d writ’ ’em ’cause he felt sometimes that she was gittin’ ready to throw him over and he didn’t want to git left altogether! Why, the dum fool! To tumble down like that at the first puff she give him! Me? Why, I’d ’a’ lied till there was six inches of glare ice in Tophet! I’d ’a’ said I didn’t know how to write! I’d ’a’ said that I’d been sassin’ Jim the Penman’s grandmother and he was gittin’ back at me. But he jest caved. I allus knowed he was a fool. “And me a-settin’ there with my thumb in my vest armhole, takin’ it all in and fattin’ on the ribs! Why, I’ve heard men git down and beg, I’ve seen dogs set up on end and whine for a bone, I’ve seen a cat coax for milk-strainin’s, but never nothin’ like the way that man got down and rolled over and jumped through and played dead for that widder. “Cap Nymp’ Bodfish, you kicked me once, and ’twas in the face and eyes of the public, and you was due to git a lot of trouble. I might have kicked you back; I might have gone on and broke a few of your arms and legs and et cet’ry. But it wouldn’t have been a scientific job like this. No, s’r, it wouldn’t have been real soul-satisfyin’. I never got no great consolation out of lickin’ a man.” Hiram sighed at his recollections in that line. But his face cleared immediately. “Him with his tongue out and his mouth all made up for that twenty thousand and the widder! Him as had made his brags about her, and now has got to face the grinnin’s and the sneerin’s! It will be lin-g’rin’ agony, that’s what it will. “Lordy mighty, will I ever forgit the face he made up when he see me behind that wistery! O-h-h-h, I shall wake up in the night and laugh till I set the roosters to crowin’. Him a-drivin’ out of the yard with the widder givin’ him a few final lambastes with her tongue and me a-stickin’ my head out through the wistery. He a-tumin’ ’round to git a last look at her and seein’ me and realisin’ then—yass’r, realisin’! And his wheel ketched on a post and he fell down into the bottom of the waggon and began to push against the post like he was tryin’ to shove off a dory—clean forgittin’ he was in a team! Oh, what a state that man’s mind must have been in!” Hiram rolled to and fro on the carriage seat in an ecstasy of mirth. “Never’ll forgit what she said to him then. “‘Take your reins and back up,’ says she. ‘I don’t want people ’round here to think you’re drunk as well as a complete fool, you old hump-backed, tarfingered garsoline tank! A pretty farmer you’d make—and don’t know a waggon from a dory! Git out of my yard and don’t never let me set eyes on you ag’in. I’ve got a man as is a man,’ and she pointed to me, and I swow I couldn’t help it! I set my thumb to my nose and give him the real, old-fashioned waggle. Ow, haw, haw! Ow, haw, haw!” “And then she come right to me and give me a pat on the back and says: ‘It didn’t need any of them writin’s to make me give him his come-uppance, Mr. Look. I never give a snap of my finger for him, anyway, since I met you. Ow, hee-hee!” “You seem to be feelin’ ’bout as gay as they make ‘em,” called a voice from the roadside. Hiram started up and wiped the tears of merriment from his eyes. Two men were standing by the highway fence, men whose solemn faces were streaked by perspiration. One of them carried a small rifle. The other was “Sawed-Off” Purday, the Palermo deputy-sheriff. He was armed with a club. “Guess you must have heard the news about your friend,” said Purday, with accent on the last word. “Nothin’ else would make you any more tickleder. P’raps you’ve seen him along the ro’d. If you have we’ll be much obleeged for a clue.” “Seen who?” demanded Hiram, thinking at first that the men referred to Captain Nymphus Bodfish. He eyed their weapons and felt a qualm of fear, for he didn’t know what the exasperated skipper might have prepared for him. “Klebe Willard.” “Klebe Willard!” There was relief as well as astonishment in Hiram’s tone. “Well, there’s been hell to pave and no pitch hot down in the village,” said Doughty, nothing loath to impart sensational news. “There’s four possys out after Cap Willard and this is one of ’em. He’s took to the woods somewheres and there ain’t no knowin’ where. But I reckon I’ll catch him if I only get onto one clue,” he added, confidently. “No one ever got away from me yet. Howsomever, it’s leg-weary work, this cuttin’ acrost pastures and plowed land. You say you ain’t seen hide nor hair of him?” “I ain’t said nothin’ about it,” retorted Hiram. “But I ain’t seen him, if that’s what you’re after. Why in Tophet don’t you tell a man what the critter has done instead of standin’ there and chawin’ ter-backer with that infernal eight-day motion?” “It ain’t altogether clear jest what it was all about,” related Doughty, calmly. “All that’s known is that Klebe come whoopin’ into the village from Square Harbour to-day and tore into his father’s office and then come out and hot-footed home as though Old Nick was after him. In an hour or so the old Judge went down to Klebe’s house, and it seems from what the neighbours say that Klebe had been tea-in’ up in the meantime and jawin Myry, and a little while after the Judge come in he got to goin’ it worse about somethin’ or other. There ain’t much head nor tail to stories, but as near as I can find out he went to lick the old man, bein’ crazy drunk, I reckon, and Myry stepped in between, and he floored the two of ’em and kicked over one of the young ones and took to the woods howlin’ like a looservee. It’s bad bus’ness.” Purday spat far and sighed dolefully. “Your brother and Sylvene has sort of took charge there to Klebe’s house,” the deputy went on. “The old Judge ‘come to’ ’fore I left the village. But the doc says Myry is in a turrible bad way with the tunk she got. It won’t be none surprisin’ if murder comes out of it. It’s a glister for the Willard fam’ly, that’s what it is!” He shifted his club to the other hand and started over the fence. “Come along, Bragg,” he commanded. “It’s more’n li’ble that he kept to the Bunganuck ridge.” Hiram had no desire to ask further questions. He lashed his hors’e and rattled away toward the village at his best speed. It had been one of those unseasonably hot May days, humid and sweltering, with thunder-heads boiling above the horizon and a menace in the steaming quietness of nature. When Hiram turned in at the yard of the Look place the low sun was dipping behind an ominously purple curtain in the west, and there was a jarring growl of thunder behind the hills. His brother was not at home. “He may need old Hime for somethin’ or other,” he muttered as “Figger-Four” Avery bobbed into the barn leading the horse. “It ain’t especially the place for me to go buttin’ in, under the circumstances, but I’m a right-hand man for Phin when he needs help, and he knows it now.” He hurried away down the street, casting an occasional glance over his shoulder at the purple-black curtain of cloud. “It looks as though it was goin’ to be a ripper,” he commented. In the yard of the Kleber Willard place little groups of villagers were talking in hushed tones. “How be they now inside there, Uncle Buck?” inquired Hiram, solicitously. “Them that’s still inside is in a mighty bad way,” replied the old man, grimly. He added yet more grimly, “And them that’s outside is most likely wuss off than that.” “Them that’s outside!” repeated Hiram, smartly. “That’s what I said. After the Judge come round into his senses they thought it was all right to leave him on the sofy till they got ready to take him home, and in the gen’ral confusion here he’s got away. Took both of Klebe’s young ones with him, the little boy and the little girl, and Lord only knows where he’s got to. I tell ye ’twa’n’t safe to leave him alone! An old man with the bang he got ’side of the head ain’t gittin’ back into his right senses all in a minit.” “What are you standin’ around here for, all of ye?” indignantly demanded Hiram, raising his voice. “Why ain’t you out tryin’ to find the lost?” “Why ain’t you?” retorted Uncle Lysimachus. “There’s fifty gone after ’em already and the ro’d is still open. They didn’t take it with ’em.” The Squire had heard his brother’s voice in the yard and he came to the door, his face haggard and grief-stricken. “It’s an awful thing, brother,” he murmured when Hiram hastened to him. “Myra is still insensible and the doctor fears a fracture of the skull. But my worst fear now is for Judge Willard and the children.” He cast a troubled look at the sky. “Doesn’t anyone get a word from them?” he asked wistfully. “You hold the fort here, Phin,” returned Hiram with bluff assurance. “I’ll find ’em if I have to rake from here to Smyrna with a fine-toothed comb. I’m gittin’ to be the greatest finder you ever see, Phin. I found the Mayo girl, I found myself at last, I found a woman to-day who’ll have me, and now I’ll find the ones you want or die tryin’. Don’t you worry, Phin. It’s old Hime for ’em now.” He started away on the trot, with no very clear idea of what he would do first, but anxious to be moving. Brickett was standing with shoulder set against the side of his door, one eye on the shower that was crawling up the sky, the other on a man who sat in a waggon before the store and who endeavoured to engage him in conversation. “Hard-Times” Wharff was in his favourite position on one corner of the platform, his sharp nose tilted toward the heavens and his long hair waving in the first whispers from the approaching tempest. A man who was on the other corner of the platform stepped down as the showman came up. This person accosted Hiram brusquely. “I’ve got a little bus’ness with you, mister,” he said. It was Captain Nymphus Bodfish, saturnine and resolute. Hiram was about to return an impatient retort about “other matters to attend to just then,” when he caught a word of the conversation between Brickett and the man in the waggon. “Donno who it could be, I’m sure,” said Brickett. “I allus knew there was some fools up this way,” said the man, with rough jest, “but I didn’t reckon that any of them was fool enough to start in a dory right out past Cod Head in the teeth o’ that thing comin’ up there.” He nodded a languid head at the big cloud. “I tell ye,” insisted Bodfish, pressing close to Hiram, “your’n and my bus’ness will have to be ‘tended to right now.” “Did you say that you saw a dory makin’ out past Cod Head?” shouted Hiram at the man in the waggon, looking past and over Bodfish with an utter disregard that made the skipper grit his teeth. “’Ep! Saw it as I was comin’ up the Cove ro’d,” returned the man. “I donno who in sanup it can be,” repeated Brickett. “With fifty men huntin’ for Judge Coll Willard and them two young ones, that old man wand’rin’ somewheres out his senses, you ain’t got brains enough to guess who it is in that dory?” fairly screamed Hiram. “It’s blastnation lucky for you, Ase Brickett, that a man don’t need to do any thinkin’ to run his lungs, or you’d die for lack of air.” “I say I’ve got bus’ness——” recommenced Bodfish. “Yes, and I’ve got bus’ness with you!” barked Hiram, rushing at him so furiously that Bodfish staggered back. “This is the bus’ness: You come with me as fast as your legs will take you and start that old garsoline plunker of your’n. Hiper!” “Not on your life! Not for you!” roared Bodfish. “I’ll fight you to a standstill first!” Hiram did not waste words with the man. He drove both his broad hands against his breast, rushed him backward to the store wall and choked him until his tongue lolled. “Will ye? Will ye go?” he kept saying. But each time he loosened his grip the skipper only cursed or cried for help. He was struggling madly all the time, but Hiram’s strength and passion were too much for him. “I don’t b’lieve in abusin’ no man,” observed Brickett from his door. “I reckon you’d better let that man go, Hime Look. You can’t sass and browbeat and bang round ev’ry one in this place.” “You fools,” panted Hiram, “Judge Willard and those children are in that dory. There is no one else who would try to go out of this place into that storm. It’s Judge Willard, I tell you! You are goin’ to take me out, Nymp’ Bodfish, if I have to tear you apart and lug you down to your packet in pound packages. I’ll kill the man that interferes. Will you go, I say?” He fell upon the skipper with such desperate fury that when he again released his clutch the man staggered away dizzily in his iron grip. They disappeared around the corner of the storehouse and in a little while the sharp “plock-plock” of the Effort’s engine barked in the interim of the thunder crashes. “Them Looks is sartinly the desp’ritest critters when they git started I ever see,” remarked the man in the waggon, after he had watched the two men out of sight. “Well, if he weighed bigger’n that el’phunt of his he wouldn’t lug me and my own bo’t off on no such wild-goose chase as he’s goin’ on,” growled Brickett, getting ready to shut his big doors. He was apparently unconvinced regarding the occupants of the dory. “That was about the biggest piece of nerve I ever saw showed out, and I’ve seen some good ones in my day.” “And I’ve seen some good old showers in my time,” remarked the man in the waggon, picking up his reins. “But”—a crackling explosion interrupted him—-“this is sartinly the king of old lingers.” He larruped his horse around the corner into the shed, for the big trees were beginning to twist and moan and the big drops to lash the dust.
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