Читать книгу Where Your Treasure Is - Holman Day - Страница 8

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I WAS awake so long in the night I overslept next morning, of course. Breakfast had been cleared away by the time I got dressed and was down-stairs.

I had made up my mind to have a run-in with my uncle, but I was starting with a disadvantage. Coming late to breakfast in that busy household amounted almost to a crime, and the look of disgust my aunt Lucretia set on my face made my courage drop tail. She was never amiable, and she considered me an intruder in the family, as well I knew.

“I have left your doughnuts and coffee in the but’ry—and your uncle wants you in the stable.” She turned her back and went on with what she was doing at the stove.

I ate the doughnuts on my way to the stable, trying to whip up my rancor. I expected to be received with a hoot and a howl, and depended on those spurs to start my own temper on the gallop.

Uncle Deck was just pushing a bottle back into the oats in the bin. He slammed down the cover and wiped his mouth and grinned at me. He was in the best of good humor. I was chewing on food his money had bought, and, I repeat, he was as pleasant as a basket of chips. In the face of that I couldn’t screw a mean word out of myself.

“She sure was some operator with her claws,” he remarked. But he wouldn’t listen to my indignant explanation; he plainly had his own business on his mind that morning, and it was business which seemed to be affording much satisfaction. He gave me a push toward the harness-room, the sanctum where he performed most of his deviltry in horse matters.

In that harness-room was hitched the worst-looking old pelter of a plug I had ever laid eyes on.

Uncle Deck put his hands on his hips and swapped looks between myself and the horse. He was master of a certain kind of cheap, horse-jockey patter which he employed at fairs when he wanted to call a crowd around. He struck a pose and “orated.”

“Having a knowledge of hoss pedigree, relatives, previous condition of servitude, religious preferences, and other matters pertaining to, and so forth, even going back to the fact that the hoss Bucephalorus, that was owned by the late Aleck the Great, cocked his left hind leg when he stood in the stall, had a nicked right ear, and a wind-gall puff behind each fore shoulder, I want to say that I reckon that never before was there gathered, collected, and assembled on four legs every kind of a pimple, bump, wheeze, scratch, spavin, horn ail, hock bunch, trick, and bobblewhoop, that’s laid down by old Medicombobulus, in his book entitled ‘Things a Hoss Can Get Along Without.’ I call this ancient Gothic ruin ‘Carpenter Boy,’ sired by Pod Auger, dammed by Hemlock Maid—and, in fact, damned by everybody who has ever owned him. Speed is developed in him by feeding the celebrated spiral oats, produced by crossing shoe-pegs with bed-springs, which in process of being digested uncoil and carry the animile in leaps like the mountain-goat.”

After that outburst I definitely, in my own mind, set forward to some future date the matter of an understanding with my uncle.

“How did it ever happen that anybody could unload this on you?” I asked him.

“Because I went out hunting for it, sonny. It was the worst I could do on short notice. If it had looked worse and had had more ailments and outs I would have paid more for it. Now ask no more questions, but lend a hand to what I tell you to do.”

I have no time to go into the details of what my uncle Deck did to that equine framework, but if I could describe it all I’d be furnishing considerable of a handbook for the uses of tricky horse-swappers. I had helped in many similar jobs in that back room of his stable, but I had never seen him put so much art and soul into the work before; he seemed to have special reasons for his painstaking toil. He chuckled whenever he secured a particularly good result; at times he gritted his teeth and swore under his breath regarding some party whom he did not name. But I gathered that this transformation of a horse was intended as satisfaction of one of his bitterest grudges.

He had everything to do with in that horse beauty-parlor of his. There were ointments and colorings, false hair for mane and tail, skin-patches and disguises for puffs and swellings. But still the horse remained gaunt; the rafters of his ribs suggested that he needed to be shingled in. To my general wonderment as to what my uncle was about, anyway, was now added more lively curiosity; how was this living skeleton to be disguised as to skinniness? I found out before long. My uncle put on the poor brute a bridle with a wicked twist-bit and told me to hold him, no matter how much he kicked about.

Then Uncle Deck brought out a bit of board into which shoe-pegs had been set thickly. He began to clap the pegged board against the horse’s skin. I had my work cut out for me after that, I can tell you. The pain must have been excruciating, for the bradding-pegs raised blisters. In a little while the ribs were hidden by this new and deceptive plumpness. The horse took on the appearance of an animal which had been well cared for in the food line. And he certainly displayed the spirit of Phoebus’s nigh wheel-horse. His nostrils snorted furiously and his eyes flamed. It seemed incredible that this animal with flowing mane and tail, with round barrel and smooth limbs, was the decrepit old creature I had seen on my arrival in the room.

Lastly, my uncle Deck oiled the horse from stem to stem, smoothing the hair into place, and then stood and admired his handiwork.

“Now let’s see what the needle will do for style and knee action,” he said. He gave the horse a jab with the hypodermic—I had seen him do that at horse-trots just before the race was started. He hitched a long rope into the bridle and led the animal out into the yard. In a few moments the horse was prancing and curveting and whickering like a blueblood of youth and spirit.

“But he won’t last this way!” I said.

My uncle turned withering side-glance on me. “Do you think you’re telling me something I didn’t know? Of course he won’t last. I don’t want him to last. If he would pop like a blown-up paper bag when I got ready to have it happen I’d like it all the better. But, as it is, it’ll be bad enough. Don’t you know a good name for him out of some of those books you have read, son?”

But while I was hesitating my uncle dipped in with his usual impatience.

“I have thought of it already! ‘Judge,’ that’s his name. When she hears Trufant call him ‘Judge’ the coincidence will catch her interest, likely enough. She will prick up her ears!”

Right then I pricked up my own ears. I understood mighty sudden. I had seen the writing tacked on the notice-board in the post-office the day before. Judge Kingsley had let it be known that he was in the market for a driving-horse, suitable for use by ladies. I had read it with mingled emotions, realizing that Celene Kingsley had grown to girlhood out of childhood; no longer a pony-cart for her!

“But he’ll never buy a horse from you?” I blurted, staring at my uncle.

“Who won’t?”

“Judge Kingsley.”

“Probably he wouldn’t if he thought it came from me. But I’m baiting a hook that he’ll swallow or I’m no guesser.”

My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me.

“Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out a few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night, around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’ has got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.”

“I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected.

My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers.

“A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on his weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh will be bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss—there’s no doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets out of sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse frolicked. “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, and peepers! Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the bridle, and led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll slip you ten dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.”

I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought.

I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, I’m sure of it.

But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his home, under his thumb.

“You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, and girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung around the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous horse.

I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be sure, the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But the horse was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my thoughts. Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag that I had helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that some of my promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the matter of old Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There was such a thing as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the situation. But to allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little sanctuary where I enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme which must ruin forever all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, these were sacrifices I did not feel called on to undergo. I had my own pride to consider. I no longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene Kingsley. What was in me was a romantic hope that she would think on me once in a while when I was far, far away—remembering that I was her slave in what she asked and that I had asked nothing of her.

However, to have her memories of me mixed in with thoughts of the horse-trading cheat which I had connived at was reflection unendurable.

I went to the wood-shed and secured an ax. It occurred to me that when a horse had so many bumps on him, one more and a deadly bump on his forehead would not attract much attention; furthermore, my uncle seemed to think that the animal’s course was nearly run.

I faced the brute. His ears were hanging in despondency. His eyes were dropping tears; those blisters must have been stinging like the martyr’s skin under the shirt of fire. When I looked on that woe all my resolution left me. I dropped the ax. There were tears in my own eyes. I felt as if he were my brother in common sorrow. So I went to the cellar and fetched apples and carrots and fed them into his gratefully slobbering mouth until he sighed and spraddled his legs and went to sleep.

Constable Nute came for me during the day.

“There ain’t any subpeny to this, young Sidney,” he informed me. “If you feel too guilty to face Judge Kingsley, who is making an informal investigation, you needn’t come.”

“I am not guilty. I’m not afraid to face the judge.” And I went along. There was no one else in his office. He had been calling in persons and examining them one by one. I was alone with him after Nute left.

I gave in my version of what had happened the night before and declared that I had had nothing whatever to do with putting notions into the noddle of the village fool.

“But as to this society of young vandals which has been disgracing the village? Certain members of the gang have confessed to me that you are the organizer and the ringleader.”

“And I confess that I was leader at first,” I owned up to him, just as manfully as I could. Then I told him about Mr. Bird. “When I realized that I was making a mistake I stopped being leader. I have had nothing to do with the society since.”

He had a way of shooting speech out through his pinched nostrils with a sort of a jew’s-harp twang. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a good looking over.

“Becoming an angel overnight by the natural piety of the Sidney disposition, eh? Young man, you are lying to me! Now tell me the real reason why you quit your devilishness.”

I had no mind to tell him, and I was silent.

“You had another reason, didn’t you? A better reason?”

I confessed that I had. But I wouldn’t tell him what it was, even when he raised his voice to me and pounded on the table with his fist. If he had been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man would have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I knew that Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself by talking to me.

“You can’t tell the truth—you won’t tell the truth—for the truth isn’t in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the boys who have owned up.”

“I knew there were sneaks in the crowd—that’s another reason I had for getting out, Judge Kingsley.”

“If anything else happens in this village we shall know where to place the blame.”

“It isn’t fair, Judge Kingsley!” I remonstrated. “I’m not getting a square deal in this thing. I know that old Nute has been talking to you the way he calked to me last night. They are all bound to put the blame on to me.”

“I know for myself.”

“No, sir! You don’t know for yourself. You say I can’t tell the truth! I’ll show you that I can, even when it’s to my own hurt—yes, sir, to my awful hurt! You have advertised for a horse, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“My uncle is going to send around a man dressed in woman’s clothes—this very evening—so as to fool you in the dusk with the worst fraud ever propped on four legs.”

That confession didn’t help me a bit and I ought to have had sense enough to know it before I opened my mouth. I had made the judge more thoroughly angry than ever; I had offended his pride as a shrewd business man.

“What cock-and-bull yam is this? Do you think I can be fooled by cheap horse-jockey tricks? You young fool, what do you mean by insulting me?”

“You just wait till you see the horse,” I retorted. “I helped fix him and I didn’t know him, myself, after the job was done. But I don’t want to see you gulled, Judge Kingsley. I am following new ways from now on. You know my uncle and how I am beholden to him! When I open up to you about him it ought to show you that I want to be honest, no matter how much the truth is going to harm me.”

“There’s no decency in this town—not even honor among thieves,” snarled the judge. He pointed to the door. “That’s all for now, young Sidney! Remember for yourself—and tell others—that the grand jury sits in this county within a fortnight! Upon actions from now on depends what the county prosecutor will be inclined to do.”

Judge Kingsley’s office was a sort of ell affair built out from the side of his mansion. When I left it I ducked around to the rear of the house and made off down through the orchard, having no relish to show my clawed face to the public. I had my day to myself and I did not hurry; I had many things to ponder on.

All at once I heard the sound of somebody running on the turf behind me. I turned and faced Celene. I curved my forearm across my countenance, ashamed of my appearance, her own flushed cheeks were so radiantly beautiful!

“I know how it happened. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said, graciously.

“They ste’boyed him on to me!” I told her. “I have tried to make ’em stop their tricks, just as I promised you. So they did this to put me in wrong. Your father is hard on me! I tried to make him understand that I——well, I wanted—”

“I overheard—I couldn’t help overhearing.” Then her cheeks grew rosier. “I’ll own up. I listened at the door. I wanted to know. And that’s why I came after you. You have kept our little secret and I know you have done your best in other ways. So that’s why I’m here. I want to thank you. And—I—Well, I think that’s all!”

It seemed to finish it as far as I was concerned, too; I couldn’t pump a word up out of myself. So we stood there and looked up into the trees.

“Father has been talking to them to-day,” she said, after a time. “Perhaps they are warned now and won’t be up to any more mischief. And they ought to be sorry for what they have done to you. I think you can have a lot of influence over them after this.”

“I don’t know about that. I’m going away from here.”

That statement astonished her just as much as it astonished me. I had not thought of announcing my departure ten seconds before; it had not been in my mind that I was going away. But all of a sudden the memory of what I had told the judge about the horse popped into my thoughts. Considering what would be my uncle’s state of mind after the exposure, I reckon the going-away idea followed as naturally as the right answer in a sum of addition.

“I had supposed that your outlook—your position with your uncle—was very promising,” she said. “The town needs smart men.”

The fact that she had spent one thought upon my condition interested me more than the implied compliment.

“If I stay with him I’ll only be a country cheat and horse-dickerer. I want to be something else,” I told her. “This very day my uncle is trying to put up a job on your father. I have told the judge about it.”

“I heard you. It was another reason why I wanted to speak to you—to encourage you in being honest. There’s no need of father bringing you into the matter at all. It would only make trouble between your uncle and you. I’ll speak to father.”

“You’d better not, for then you’d be making trouble for yourself. I’d rather take all the blame of it.”

We stood and looked at each other for a long time.

“I’m not a coward,” she said.

“But it will come out about me blabbing—some way it will come out. There’s no need of you being in the scrape. I’m going away, and I may as well go flying while I’m about it!”

“I hope—” she said, and that was as far as she got. I know how I was feeling inside and perhaps my feelings showed too plainly on that striped face of mine. She looked scared and turned and hurried away. I didn’t know whether she hoped I’d stay in Levant or hoped I’d do well wherever I might roam. I watched her out of sight and she did not turn to look at me. I couldn’t exactly figure that out—whether she didn’t want to give me a last glance or didn’t dare to.

I fingered in my vest pocket while she was running away; when she disappeared I pulled out a packet and opened it. There were three rings in it. One was a coral ring; I bought it when I was fifteen and paid thirty cents for it. I never had the courage to give it to her when we were at school. There was a silver ring which I bought a year later when my circumstances were a little better—better than my courage. Lastly, there was a gold ring which I had secured in a dicker soon after our meeting on Purgatory Hill. I am not going to discourse on the fool impulse which prompted me to buy those rings and stick them in my vest pocket. Nor will I say anything concerning another impulse which made me wrap the rings up and drop them into a cleft in the trunk of an apple-tree. If I did not dare to give them to her, at least I could leave them on her premises. Then I went by back ways to my uncle’s house.

Before I was out of sight of Judge Kingsley’s mansion I looked behind me several times. I didn’t know but I might see a flutter of a handkerchief from some window, for a vague and queer kind of hope was still in me. I saw no flutter, but I did see a strange man who was strolling along my trail. I was too busy with other thoughts to wonder who he might be.

I found my uncle admiring the transmogrified horse.

“I have been whetting the old hellion’s appetite,” he said, and I knew by the expression on his face that he was referring to Judge Kingsley. “I have had half a dozen fellows from the back districts drive one old skate after another into his dooryard, and inside of an hour he’ll have a chance to inspect a few more skeletons and bone-piles. By nightfall he’ll be hungry for a peek at something which doesn’t look as if it would have to be pushed on casters by iron reins. Oh, he’s hungry! He’ll swallow this one.”

More than ever was I coming to understand into what complicated and precious gears I had flung my trig—and what the consequences to me were likely to be.

“Now come out into the harness-room,” commanded my uncle. “I want you to have a look at the Queen of Sheby.”

I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had no doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled up about him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil partly draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe.

“I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like this the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a scolding woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.”

“You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you, right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and reach into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let me see you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.”

Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. He kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like the judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man dressed up like a woman.

“I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said, facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m a good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and hectored and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.”

“I’ll kill you if you do—I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.”

He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle.

“You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you old angleworm.”

After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me.

“I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face is smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.”

“I’ll not turn any such trick,” I said. I was angry in a moment. So was he.

“You will if I tell you to.”

“I won’t; and I’ll say further that I don’t think much of this business, anyway.”

“Nor I—and that’s two against one,” declared Runnels, the tip of his thin nose beginning to glow as if new courage had hung out a banner.

Liquor had also given my uncle’s temper an edge of its own; he cuffed Runnels until that lamenting “lady’s” hat fell off. I jumped up and ran away into the fields, for I knew that Uncle Deck was merely warming up on “Squealing John”; as chief mutineer, I was ticketed for the real bout. I lurked about in the pine grove till after sunset. Then I stole back into the village with all the stealth of a criminal.