"Aha, Colonel," he exclaimed, in a slightly sneering tone, "bright and cheery as ever, I see. I thought I"d like to have you drop in and scatter a little sunshine. Sit down. Have a pipe?"
Colonel Witham, accepting the proffered clay and and the essentials for loading it, sat back in a chair, and puffed away solemnly, without deigning to answer the other"s bantering.
James Ellison continued figuring at his desk.
"Well," said Colonel Witham after some ten minutes had pa.s.sed, "Suppose you didn"t get me down here just to smoke. What d"ye want?"
"Oh, I"m coming to that right away," replied Ellison, still writing.
"You know what I want, I guess." He turned abruptly in his seat, and his keen face shaded with anger. He pointed a long lean finger in the direction of the town of Benton. "You know "em, Dan Witham," he said, "as well as I do. Though you didn"t get skinned as I did. You didn"t go down to town, as I did twenty odd years ago, with eight thousand dollars, and come back cleaned out. You didn"t invest in mines and things they said were good as gold, and have "em turn out rubbish. You didn"t lose a fortune and have to start all over again. But you know em, eh?"
Colonel Witham nodded a.s.sent, and added mentally, "Yes, and I know you, too. Benton don"t have the only sharp folks."
"And now," added James Ellison, "when I"ve got some of it back by hard work, you know how I keep it from them, and from others, too. Well, here"s some more of the papers. The mill and a good part of the farm and some more land "round here go to you this time. All right, eh? You get your pay on commission. Here"s the deeds conveying it all to you--for valuable consideration--valuable consideration, see?"
The miller gave a prodigious wink at his visitor, and laughed.
"You don"t mind being thought pretty comfortably fixed, eh--all these properties put in your name? Don"t do you any harm, and people around here think you"re mighty smart. Your deeds from me are all recorded, eh?
People look at the record, and what do they see? All this stuff in your name. Well, what do I get out of that? You know. There are some claims they don"t bother me with, because they think I"m not so rich as I am.
There"s property out of their reach, if anything goes wrong with some business I"m in.
"Why? Well, we know why, all right, you and I. Here"s the deeds of the same property which you give back to me. Only I don"t have them put on record. I keep them hidden--up my sleeve--clear up my sleeve, don"t I?"
"You keep "em hidden all right, I guess," responded Colonel Witham; and made a mental observation that he"d like to know where the miller really did hide them.
"So here they are," continued the miller. "It"s a little more of the same game. The property"s all yours--and it isn"t. You"ll oblige, of course, for the same consideration?"
Colonel Witham nodded a.s.sent, and the business was closed.
And, some time later, as Colonel Witham plodded up the road again, he uttered audibly the wish he had formed when he had sat in the miller"s office.
"I"d like to know where he keeps those deeds hidden," he said, apparently addressing his remark to a clump of weeds that grew by the roadside. The weeds withholding whatever information they may have had on the question, Colonel Witham snipped their heads off with a vicious sweep of his stick, and went on. "I don"t know as it would do me any good to know," he continued, "but I"d just like to know, all the same."
And James Ellison, his visitor departed, wandered about for some time through the rooms of his mill. One might have thought, from the sly and confidential way in which he drew an eye-lid down now and again, as he pa.s.sed here and there, that the wink was directed at the mill itself, and that the crazy old structure was really in its owner"s confidence; that perhaps the mill knew where the miller hid his papers.
At all events, James Ellison, sitting down to his supper table that evening, was in a genial mood.
"Lizzie," he said, smiling across the table at his wife, "I saw an old beau of yours to-day--Dan Witham. He didn"t send any love to you, though."
"No," responded Mrs. Ellison, and added, somewhat seriously, "and he has no love for you, either. I hope you don"t have much business dealing with him."
"Ho, he"s all right, is Dan Witham," returned her husband. "He"s gruff, but he"s not such a bad sort. Those old times are all forgotten now."
"I"m not so certain of that, James," said Mrs. Ellison.
CHAPTER VI
CAPTURING AN INDIAN
Tim Reardon, a barefoot, sunburned urchin, who might be perhaps twelve years old, judging from his diminutive figure, and anywhere from that to fifteen, by the shrewdness of his face, stood, with arms akimbo, gazing in rapturous admiration at a bill-board. It was a gorgeous and thrilling sight that met his eyes. Lines in huge coloured letters, extending across the top of the board, proclaimed the subject of the display:
Bagley & Blondin"s Gigantic Circus Two Colossal Aggregations in One Stupendous--Startling--Scintillating Moral--Scientific Applauded by all the Crowned Heads of Europe.
The pictorial nightmare that bore evidence to the veracity of these a.s.sertions was indeed wonderful and convincing. A trapeze performer, describing a series of turns in the air that would clearly take him from one end of the long bill-board to the other, was in manifest peril, should he miss the swinging trapeze at the finish of his flight, of landing within the wide open jaws of an enormous hippopotamus--designated in the picture as, "The Behemoth of Holy Writ."
An alligator, sitting upright, and bearing the legend that he was one of the "Sacred Crocodiles of the Nile, to which the Indian Mothers Throw Their Babes," was leering with a hopeful smile at the proximity of a be-spangled lady equestrian, balanced on the tip of one toe upon the back of a galloping horse.
The jungle element was generously supplied by troops of trumpeting elephants, tigers with tails lashing, bloated serpents dangling ominously from the overhanging tree branches, while bands of lean and angular monkeys jabbered and chattered throughout all the picture.
Little Tim heaved a sigh.
"Gee!" he exclaimed. "I"d like to see that Royal Bengal tiger that ate up three of his keepers alive."
Little Tim, fired with the very thought, and emulative of an athlete in distorted att.i.tude and gaudy fleshings, proceeded to turn himself upside down and walk upon his hands, waving his bare feet fraternally at the pictured gymnasts. He found himself suddenly caught by the ankles, however, and slung roughly across someone"s shoulder.
"h.e.l.lo, Tim," said his captor, good naturedly, "going to join the circus?"
Little Tim grinned, sheepishly.
"Guess not, Jack," he replied. "Say, wouldn"t you like to see that tiger eat up a keeper?"
Jack Harvey laughed, setting Tim on his feet again.
"I"ll bet that tiger isn"t as great a man-eater as old Witham," he said.
"They put that in to make people think he"s awful fierce, so they"ll go to the show. You going?"
Tim Reardon, thrusting his hands into his pockets and closing his fingers on a single five cent piece, three wire nails and a broken bladed jack-knife, looked expressively at Harvey.
"I dunno," he replied. "P"raps so."
Jack Harvey took the hint.
"Come along with us," he said. "Where"s the rest of the crew?"
"They"re going--got the money," said Tim.
Harvey looked surprised. His crew, so called because the three other members of it besides Tim Reardon had sailed with him on his sloop in Samoset bay, were generally hard up.
"All right," said Harvey, "you can go with Henry Burns and George Warren and me. Come on. Let"s go down town and see the parade."
The blare of trumpets and the clashing of bra.s.s was shaking the very walls of the city of Benton. A steam calliope, shrieking a tune mechanically above the music of the band and the roar of carts, was frightening farmers" horses to the point of frenzy. Handsome, sleek horses, stepping proudly, were bearing their gaily dressed riders in cavalcade. And the rumble of the heavy, gilded carts gave an undertone to the sound. Bagley & Blondin"s great moral and scientific show was making its street parade, prior to the performance.
Tim Reardon stood between Henry Burns and Jack Harvey on a street corner, with George Warren close by. Tim Reardon"s eyes seemed likely to pop clean out of his head.
"There he is! There he is, Jack!" he exclaimed all at once, fairly gasping with excitement.
"Who is?" asked Harvey.