I’ll bet you’ve forgotten all about Spragg, the Eagle Center Clarion man. If you have, you want to remember him again, for the time was coming fast when he would be right on hand like a case of mumps. Not that mumps are generally on hand. When I had them they reached from one ear right around to the other, and Mark Tidd didn’t have half so much face as I did.

Well, one day about the time the contest was getting nicely started up I saw Spragg in town. He’d waited till things cooled down, and was there at the hotel, nosing around just as if nothing had happened.

“Howdy-do, Mr. Spragg!” says I, with my face as sober as a judge. “Hope you’re feelin’ well and gittin’ all the exercise you need.”

“I’m feelin’ well,” says he, “but I’m short of exercise. I’ll git it, though, and don’t you lose sight of that. You kids think you’re pretty smart, but my name’s spelled S-p-r-a-g-g, see?”

“No,” says I, not seeing at all. What did that have to do with it, I wondered; but, just for luck, I thought I’d josh him a little. “I thought your name was spelled M-u-d. Looked like that awhile back.”

“Go on,” says he. “Keep heapin’ it up. Perty soon I’ll have enough ag’in’ you boys to make it worth my while to git even. And when I set out to git even I do it with a plane,” says he.

“Reg’lar carpenter, hain’t you? I didn’t know but a man with a name spelled like yours would even things off with a butter-knife, or maybe a nursin’-bottle.”

“You better move away from here,” says he, “before I lose my temper.”

“Huh!” says I, moving off where I’d have a good start if he came after me. “Folks that loses their temper in Wicksville gen’ally gits all the help they want findin’ it ag’in.”

“Go ahead,” says he; “get all the laugh you can out of it now. In another day or two you’ll be laughin’ crossways of your mouth. What would you smart newspaper kids say to a daily in Wicksville, eh? Reg’lar city daily. Guess that would sort of put the lid on that old weekly of yours, wouldn’t it? Spragg is my name. Begins with a capital S, remember that.”

I wasn’t going to let on to him that what he said worried me, so I said to him: “You’d have to be spryer ’n you be now to git out a daily. The way you move around I guess a monthly’s about your speed.”

He made a move after me and I scooted down the street to tell Mark. He wasn’t in, though, and Tallow said he and Plunk had gone out to see Rock at the farm.

“When he comes back,” says I, “he’ll have all the rock he wants, and it looks to me like it would be rock bottom. We’re goin’ to be up against a daily paper here.”

An hour after in comes Mark and Plunk.

“B-been studyin’ the yard there at Rock’s,” says he, “and I c-c-can’t make head nor tail to that message of Mr. Wigglesworth’s. Found the cat, all right, and w-w-walked where she l-looked. M-measured off a hunderd and six feet, but there we come to n-ninety degrees in the shade. Stumped us. Found the shade, all right, but it wasn’t ninety degrees. Held a t-thermometer, and it wasn’t but sixty-seven.”

“It’s goin’ to be ninety degrees in the shade of this office,” says I. “Spragg’s back and is goin’ to start a daily to run us out of business.”

“How d’you know?” says he.

“Spragg says so,” I told him.

“Hum!” says he. “I sort of d-doubt it. Spragg don’t look like he had money enough or gumption enough.”

“Maybe somebody’s backin’ him,” says I.

“Might be,” says he. “Guess I b-b-better look into it.”

So he and I went out together, leaving Plunk and Tallow to mind the office.

“A d-daily,” says he, “would have hard sleddin’ here. Don’t b’lieve it would make a go. But while Spragg was t-tryin’ it he might hurt us a lot. Two newspapers in a little town l-like this can’t m-make money.”

“Neither can one,” says I. “Anyhow we hain’t got rich. Might as well be two as one, so far’s I can see.”

“The Trumpet’s goin’ to pay,” says he, and he shut his jaw tight, like he does when he’s made up his mind to do something or bust. “Spragg or no Spragg, we’re goin’ to make a reg’lar paper of the Trumpet—and git money out of it. Don’t go gittin’ limp in the s-s-spine,” he says.

It don’t take long in Wicksville to find out what’s going on, because there isn’t much going on, anyhow, and as soon as something turns up and one man hears of it, why, he can’t rest or eat till he’s run all over peddling it to everybody he sees. And every man he tells has to start out the same way, so in a half-hour from the time a thing starts almost everybody in town is out looking for somebody to tell it to. That’s what makes it so hard to run a newspaper. Everybody knows everything he reads in the paper as soon as the editor does. I guess about the only reason folks subscribe to the Trumpet at all is to see if their own name is mentioned, or to say to somebody else: “Huh! There hain’t never no news in this paper. I knew every doggone thing printed in it two days before the paper come out.”

Well, that’s why it wasn’t hard for us to find out that Spragg really was planning to start a daily paper in town, nor to figger out that he didn’t have much money to start it with himself. He was trying to start what he called a co-operative paper. Co-operative means that one man gets a lot of other men to put their money into a thing with the idea that they’ll all get some good out of it, whereas nobody gets anything but the fellow that starts it.

Spragg’s notion was to put in a little money himself and to have the merchants and business folks in town put in the rest. His argument was that there was money in running a newspaper, and the money was made out of the advertising. So, if the men that put in the advertisements and paid money for them owned the newspaper themselves, why, they would just be paying the money to themselves, and the subscribers would pay the cost of getting out the paper. So the advertisers would be getting their advertisements practically for nothing. It sounded dangerous to me.

I guess it worried Mark some, too, for if merchants could get their advertising in a daily practically without costing them a cent, what would they spend any money in the Trumpet for?

Spragg was just talking the thing up, but he was talking a lot, and it looked like he had the business men interested. Where Spragg came in was that he was to be the editor and have a salary and a share of the profits.

Mark went and sat down on my steps and began to whittle like he always does when he’s got a puzzle on his mind. He whittled and whittled and didn’t say a word for an hour. Then he looked at me out of his twinkling little eyes that you could hardly see over his fat cheeks and says:

“I guess Spragg’s idee is to get these f-f-fellers all into the paper. They’ll p-put their money in to start it, and p-perty soon they’ll see that their advertisements hain’t free. Not by a big s-sight. And p-perty soon they’ll get disgusted and along Spragg’ll come and buy their shares of the paper dirt cheap. He f-f-figgers to come out at the other end with a daily p-paper that didn’t cost him hardly anything. And then he’ll be where he can m-make some money.”

“Yes,” says I, “because by that time, with all the stores not givin’ us any advertisements, we’ll be busted.”

“That,” says he, “is how Spragg f-f-figgers it. But,” says he, “I figger it some d-different.”

“How do you figger it?” says I.

“I f-f-figger,” says he, stuttering like a gas engine just starting up on a cold morning, “that he hain’t ever g-goin’ to start any paper at all, and that we’re goin’ to keep all the business we’ve got, and that Mr. Spragg’ll wisht he never heard of Wicksville or of the Trumpet or of us.”

“Sounds good,” says I, “and I’ve seen you pull out of a lot of deep holes, but this one looks to me like it would be too much for you. I guess this time, Mark, you’re up against it hard.”

“Binney,” says he, “if Spragg b-beats us then you can p-paint a sign sayin’ ‘idiot’ and pin it on my b-back, and I’ll wear it a month.”

You notice he said “us.” That was just like him always. He wasn’t what you’d call modest, but he was square with us other fellows that didn’t think as quick and as shrewd as he did. We all got the credit for what was done if he could fix it that way. But I don’t believe many folks were fooled by it. They knew Mark Tidd and they knew us.

“You can always catch f-f-folks with a scheme,” says he, “that makes ’em think they’re gettin’ somethin’ for n-nothin’. But,” he says, “I hain’t ever seen anybody git somethin’ without pay in’ about what it was worth.”

“Yes,” says I, “if you coop a watermelon out of Deacon Burgess’s garden, why, you pay for it by tearin’ your pants on his barb-wire fence, or by gittin’ the stummick ache.”

“That’s about the idee,” says he.

“What you goin’ to do first?” I says.

“Haven’t f-figgered it out yet,” says he. Then he went to talking about the contest.

“How many subscriptions have we got in?” says he.

“Lemme see,” says I, “this is the third day it’s been goin’ and yesterday we had seventy. Tallow said we got in twenty-six this morning. That makes ninety-six.”

“Huh!” says he. “They hain’t got warmed up yet. But we’ll get ’em good perty soon. They’ll start comin’ strong.”

We walked down the street and in front of the post-office was a crowd standing around a couple of men that was arguing so you could have heard them in the next township. Mark and I ran over to see what was going on, because newspaper men always ought to be right where things are happening. We edged into the crowd and found out it was Mr. Strubber and Mr. Bobbin, and they was quarreling about how smart their wives was.

“Huh!” says Strubber. “Your wife wouldn’t never have dared to git into a contest with my wife if she hadn’t been forced. She was cornered and dassen’t back down.”

“Strubber,” says Bobbin, “I hain’t denyin’ your wife has her p’ints. There’s ways where she can beat my wife all holler. Why, when it comes to takin’ the broom and chasin’ her husband around the house Mrs. Bobbin wouldn’t even tackle the job at all. She knows without tryin’ that Mrs. Strubber kin beat her good and plenty there.”

“You mean,” hollered Strubber, “that my wife chases me with a broom? You dast say that? Why, you miserable little swiggle-legged, goggle-eyed, slumgullion, Mrs. Strubber’s as gentle as a lamb! Yes, sir, she’s all brain, that’s what she is. If you was to take Mrs. Strubber’s brain out and lay it on top of that thing your wife calls a brain, it ’u’d be like coverin’ a pea with a bushel basket.”

“Sure!” says Bobbin. “It’s big all right, but you’re right when you compare it to a bushel basket. It’s as thin and empty as any bushel basket in Michigan.”

Strubber pretended to look at Bobbin careful, and then he laughed out loud. “Folks tells me,” says he, “that you really eat the stuff Mrs. Bobbin cooks.”

“You bet I do,” says Bobbin.

“Lookin’ at you,” says Strubber, “I’m prepared to admit it. Nothin’ else would make you look that way. I always wondered what made you sich a peeked, ornery, yaller-complected, funny-lookin’ little runt like you be. You must ’a’ had a tough constitution when you got married, or you wouldn’t never have survived all these years—if what you be can be called survivin’. As for me, I guess I’d rather not ’a’ survived at all as to be what that cookin’ has made of you.”

“Huh!” says Bobbin. “I hain’t no tub of lard like you be. What I git is good wholesome food that makes muscles and brain. You get fed on sloppy stuff to fatten you. You know what we feed hogs, don’t you, eh? Gather it up out of pails at folks’ back doors. It fats up the hogs, too. Well, Mrs. Strubber, she uses that same method on you.”

“Be you comparin’ my wife’s cookin’ to swill?” yelled Strubber, wabbling all over like a bowl of jelly he was that mad.

“Not comparin’,” says Bobbin. “And what goes for Mrs. Strubber goes for all the rest of them Lit’ry Circle wimmin.”

“Eh? What’s that?” bellowed another man from the crowd. “I want you should know my wife b’longs to that Lit’ry Circle, and the finest wimmin in town does. Wimmin b’longs to that that would be ashamed to be one of them Home Culturers. Why, nobody b’longs to the Home Culturers but folks the Lit’ry Circle wimmin wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with.”

“Is that so?” another fellow shouted, and began working close to the row. “My wife’s a Home Culturer, and if you think I’ll stand by to let a spindle-shanked, knock-kneed, bald-headed, squint-eyed wampus like you say sich things, why, you’re mighty badly mistook. Listen here. ’Tain’t doin’ no good to stand here fightin’ about our wives. There’s a contest on to see which ones is the best. I don’t need no contest to tell me. But us men better shut up and let the contest go ahead. Then you Lit’ry Circle fellers will have to hunt your holes. Why, doggone you, them Home Culturers will git two subscriptions to your one. Hear me. And when it comes to cookin’ and gittin’ up a meal of vittles—well, jest wait, that’s all I got to say.”

He turned around and began to push out of the crowd, and so did the other men. I guess they judged they was gettin’ perty close to a fight, and that jest talking wouldn’t answer the purpose much longer. I notice that men is willing to stand and rave and tear and talk jest so long as it hain’t likely to go any farther. But the minute things begins to look like business, and spectators is all keyed up to see a fight, why, the talking stops and the folks that started it all begins to disappear fast. Mostly a man that talks won’t fight, and a man that fights keeps his mouth tight shut.

Mark and I went along toward the office.

“L-l-looks to me,” says he, grinning like all git out, “as if f-folks was beginnin’ to git a bit het up over the contest.”

“Yes,” says I. “I hope both sides don’t turn to and get het up at us. If they do,” says I, “the South Pole is about the only place we’ll be safe, and maybe not there.”

“I don’t care,” says he, “as long as it gits us s-s-subscriptions.”

Which was just exactly like him. Results was what counted.