Allow me to congratulate you, madam,"--extending his hand,--"on having secured one of the finest dogs in America. And you also, Mr. Fryback, on having a wife who is such a discriminating judge of thoroughbreds."
Mr. Fryback looked a trifle startled, but said nothing.
"If you ever come to our town, Mr. Crow, I hope you will look us up,"
broke in Mr. Fox. "Our place is about two miles out in the country. By the way, has Mrs. Crow a good dog--I mean one that she can be proud of?"
"She has a thoroughbred setter," said Marshal Crow, compressing his lips.
"A hundred dollars is a lot of money fer a dog," murmured Mr. Fryback.
He met his wife"s eye for a second and then added: "But, of course, my wife has just lost one that was worth a thousand dollars, so--I guess it ain"t so much, after all."
"Marmaduke was a really wonderful dog, Mrs. Fox," vouchsafed Mort"s wife, a.s.suming a sad and pensive expression.
"I am sure he must have been," said Mrs. Fox.
"One hundred dollars is very cheap, sir, for a thoroughbred Boston terrier in these days," said Mr. Fox. "Isn"t that so, Mr. Crow?"
"Cheap as dirt," said Anderson.
"Mortimer, will you please give Mr. Fox the money?" said Mrs. Fryback.
"And, by the way, Mr. Crow, I hope you take down all those reward notices at once. I wouldn"t know what to do with Marmaduke now, even if some one did bring him back to me."
"I know what I"d order you to do with him," said Anderson, meeting Mort"s melancholy gaze at last.
"What, may I inquire?"
"I"d order you to bury him," said the town marshal, speaking in his capacity as chairman of the Board of Health.
Mrs. Fryback looked at him steadily for a second or two, and then slowly closed an eye.
SHADES OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN!
It wasn"t often that Marshal Crow acknowledged that he was in a quandary. When he _did_ find himself in that rare state of mind, he invariably went to Harry Squires, the editor of the _Banner_, for counsel--but never for advice. He had in the course of a protracted career as preserver of the peace and dignity of Tinkletown, found himself confronted by seemingly unsolvable mysteries, but he always had succeeded in unravelling them, one way or another, to his own complete satisfaction. Only the grossest impudence on the part of the present chronicler would permit the tiniest implication to creep into this or any other chapter of his remarkable history that might lead the reader to suspect that he did not solve them to the complete satisfaction of any one else. So, quite obviously, the point is not one to be debated.
Now, as nearly every one knows, Tinkletown is a temperance place. There is no saloon there,--unless, of course, one chooses to be rather nasty about Brubaker"s Drugstore. Away back in the Seventies,--soon after the Civil War, in fact,--an enterprising but misguided individual attempted to establish a bar-room at the corner of Main and Sickle Streets. He opened the Sunlight Bar and for one whole day and night revelled in the conviction that he had found a silver mine. The male population of Tinkletown, augmented by a swarm of would-be inebriates from all the farms within a radius of ten miles, flocked to the Sunlight Bar and proceeded to get gloriously and collectively drunk on the contents of the two kegs of lager beer that const.i.tuted an experimental stock in trade.
The next morning the women of Tinkletown started in to put the Sunlight Bar out of business. They did not, as you may suspect, hurl stones at the place, neither did they feloniously enter and wreak destruction with axes, hatchets and hoe-handles. Not a bit of it. They were peaceful, law-abiding women, not sanguinary amazons. What they did was perfectly simple.
It is possible, even probable, that they were the pioneer "pickets" of our benighted land. At any rate, bright and early on the second day of the Sunlight Bar, the ladies of Tinkletown brought their knitting and their sewing down to the corner of Main and Sickle streets and sat themselves down in front of the shrinking "silver mine." They came with rocking-chairs, and camp-chairs, and milk-stools, and benches, too, and instead of chanting a doleful lay, they chattered in a blithe and merry fashion. There was no going behind the fact, however, that these smiling, complacent women formed the Death Watch that was to witness the swift, inevitable finish of the Sunlight Bar.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _These smiling, complacent women formed the Death Watch that was to witness the swift, inevitable finish of the Sunlight Bar_]
They came in relays, and they stayed until the lights went out in the desolate house of cheer. The next day they were on hand again, and the next, and still the next. Fortunately for them, but most unluckily for the proprietor of the Sunlight Bar, the month was August: they could freeze him out, but he couldn"t freeze them out.
Sheepish husbands and sons pa.s.sed them by, usually on the opposite sidewalk, but not one of them had the hardihood to extend a helping hand to the expiring saloon. At the end of a week, the Sunlight Bar drew its last breath. It died of starvation. The only mourner at its bier was the bewildered saloon-keeper, who engaged a dray to haul the remains to Boggs City, the County seat, and it was he who said, as far back as 1870, that he was in favour of taking the vote away from the men and giving it exclusively to the women.
Tinkletown, according to the sage observations of Uncle Dad Simms, was rarely affected by the unsettling problems of the present day. This talk about "labour unrest" was ridiculous, he said. If the remainder of the world was anything like Tinkletown, labour didn"t do much except rest.
It was getting so that if a workin"-man had very far to walk to "git" to his job, he had to step along purty lively if he wanted to arrive there in plenty of time to eat his lunch and start back home again. And as for "this here prohibition question," he didn"t take any stock in it at all.
Tinkletown had got along without liquor for more than a hundred years and he guessed it could get along for another century or two without much trouble, especially as it was only ten miles to Boggs City where you could get all you wanted to drink any day in the week. Besides, he argued, loudly and most violently, being so deaf that he had to strain his own throat in order to hear himself, there wasn"t anybody in Tinkletown except Alf Reesling that ever wanted a drink, and even Alf wouldn"t take it when you offered it to him.
But in spite of Uncle Dad"s sage conclusions, it was this very prohibition question that was disturbing Anderson Crow. He sauntered into the _Banner_ office late one afternoon in May and planked himself down in a chair beside the editor"s desk. There was a troubled look in his eyes, which gave way to vexation after he had made three or four fruitless efforts to divert the writer"s attention from the sheet of "copy paper" on which he was scribbling furiously.
"How do you spell beverage, Anderson?" inquired Mr. Squires abruptly.
"What kind of beverage?" demanded Mr. Crow.
"Any kind, just so it"s intoxicating. Never mind, I"ll take a chance and spell it the easiest way. That"s the way the dictionary spells it, so I guess it"s all right. Well, sir, what"s on your mind?--besides your hat, I mean. You look worried."
"I am worried. Have you any idee as to the size of the apple crop in this neighbourhood last summer and fall, Harry?"
"Not the least."
"Well, sir, it was the biggest we"ve had since 1902, "specially the fall pickin."
"What"s the idea? Do you want me to put something in the _Banner_ about Bramble County"s b.u.mper crop of pippins?"
"No. I just want to ask you if there"s anything in this new prohibition amendment against apple cider?"
"Not that I"m aware of."
"Well, do you know it"s impossible to buy a good eatin" or cookin" apple in this town today, Harry Squires?"
"You don"t say so! In spite of the big crop last fall?"
"You could buy all you wanted last week, by the bushel or peck or barrel,--finest, juiciest apples you ever laid your eyes on."
"Well, I don"t like apples anyway, so it doesn"t mean much in my life."
Anderson was silent for a moment or two, contemplating his foot with singular intentness.
"Was you ever drunk on hard cider?" he inquired at last,--transferring his gaze to the rapidly moving hand that held the pencil.
The reporter jabbed a period,--or "full stop," as they call it in a certain form of literature,--in the middle of a sentence, and looked up with sudden interest.
"Yes," he said, with considerable force. "I"ll never forget it. You can get tighter on hard cider than anything else I know of."
"Well, there you are," exclaimed the Marshal, banging his gnarled fist on the arm of the chair. "And as far as I c"n make out, there ain"t no law ag"inst cider stayin" in the barrel long enough to get good and hard, an" what"s more, there ain"t no law ag"ainst sellin" cider, hard or sweet, is there?"
"I get your point, Anderson. And I also get your deductions concerning the mysterious disappearance of all the apples in Tinkletown. Apparently we are to have a shortage of dried apples this year, with an overflow of hard cider instead. By George, it"s interesting, to say the least. Looks as though an apple orchard is likely to prove more valuable than a gold mine, doesn"t it?"
"Yes, sir! "Specially if you"ve got trees that bear in the fall. Fall apples make the best cider. They ain"t so mushy. And as fer the feller that owns a cider-press, why, dog-gone it, he ought to be as rich as Crowsis."
"I seem to recall that you have a cider-press on your farm on Crow"s Mountain,--and a whacking good orchard, too. Are you thinking of resigning as Marshal of Tinkletown?"
"What say?"