XIV
Up came trotting a brisk little man with a notebook in one hand, a stubby lead-pencil in the other, a look of importance spread over his flushed features, and on his breast a broad, blue ribbon, inscribed: "Chief Marshal."
"Smyrna has drawed number five for the squirt," he announced, "fallerin' Vienny. Committee on tub contests has selected Colonel Gideon Ward as referee."
Hiram's eyes began to blaze, and Cap'n Sproul growled oaths under his breath. During the weeks of their growing intimacy the Cap'n had detailed to his friend the various phases of Colonel Gideon's iniquity as displayed toward him. Though the affairs of Hiram Look had not yet brought him into conflict with the ancient tyrant of Smyrna, Hiram had warmly espoused the cause and the grudge of the Cap'n.
"I'll bet a thousand dollars against a jelly-fish's hind leg that he begged the job so as to do you," whispered Sproul. "I ain't been a brother-in-law of his goin' on two years not to know his shenanigan. It's a plot."
"Who picked out that old cross between a split-saw and a bull-thistle to umpire this muster?" shouted the foreman of the Ancients, to the amazement of the brisk little man.
"Why, he's the leadin' man in this section, and a Smyrna man at that," explained the marshal. "I don't see how your company has got any kick comin'. He's one of your own townsmen."
"And that's why we know him better than you do," protested Hiram, taking further cue from the glowering gaze of Cap'n Sproul. "You put him out there with the tape, and you'll see—"
"'Peace and politeness, and everybody happy,'" quoted Uncle Trufant, maliciously. The serenity had departed from Foreman Look's face.
"You don't pretend to tell me, do ye, that the Smyrna Ancients are afraid to have one of their own citizens as a referee?" demanded the brisk little man suspiciously. "If that's so, then there must be something decayed about your organization."
"I don't think they're down here to squirt accordin' to the rules made and pervided," went on the ancient Vienna satirist. "They've brought Bostin bags and a couple of wimmen, and are goin' to have a quiltin'-bee. P'raps they think that Kunnel Gid Ward don't know a fish-bone stitch from an over-and-over. P'raps they think Kunnel Ward ain't ladylike enough for 'em."
Not only had the serenity departed from the face of Foreman Look, the furious anger of his notoriously short temper had taken its place.
"By the jumped-up jedux," he shouted, "you pass me any more of that talk, you old hook-nosed cockatoo, and I'll slap your chops!"
The unterrified veteran of the Viennese brandished his cane to embrace the throng of his red-shirted townsmen, who had been crowding close to hear. At last his flint had struck the spark that flashed with something of the good old times about it.
"And what do you suppose the town of Vienny would be doin' whilst you was insultin' the man who was the chief of old Niag'ry Company for twenty years?" he screamed.
"There's one elephant that I know about that would be an orphin in about fifteen seconds," growled one of the loyal members of the Vienna company, the lust of old days of rivalry beginning to stir in his blood.
"Would, hey?" shouted an Ancient, with the alacrity of one who has old-time grudges still unsettled. He put a sandwich back into his basket untasted, an ominous sign of how belligerency was overcoming appetite. "Well, make b'lieve I'm the front door of the orphin asylum, and come up and rap on me!"
With a promptitude that was absolutely terrifying the two lines of red shirts began to draw together, voices growling bodingly, fists clinching, eyes narrowing with the reviving hatred of old contests. The triumphal entry of the Smyrna Ancients, their display of prosperity, their monopoly of the plaudits and attention of the throngs, the assumption of superior caste and manners, had stirred resentment under every red shirt in the parade. But Vienna, hereditary foe, seemed to be the one tacitly selected for the brunt of the conflict.
"Hiram!" pleaded his wife, running to him and patting his convulsed features with trembling fingers. "You said this was all goin' to be genteel. You said you were goin' to show 'em how good manners and politeness ought to run a firemen's muster. You said you were!"
By as mighty an effort of self-control as he ever exercised in his life, Hiram managed to gulp back the sulphurous vilification he had ready at his tongue's end, and paused a moment.
"That's right! I did say it!" he bellowed, his eyes sweeping the crowd over his wife's shoulder. "And I mean it. It sha'n't be said that the Smyrna Ancients were anything but gents. Let them that think a bunged eye and a bloody nose is the right kind of badges to wear away from a firemen's muster keep right on in their hellish career. As for us"—he tucked his wife's arm under his own—"we remember there's ladies present."
"Includin' the elephant," suggested the irrepressible Uncle Trufant, indicating with his cane Imogene "weaving" amiably in the sunshine.
Cap'n Sproul crowded close and growled into the ear of the venerable mischief-maker: "I don't know who set you on to thorn this crowd of men into a fight, and I don't care. But there ain't goin' to be no trouble here, and, if you keep on tryin' to make it, I'll give you one figger of the Portygee fandle-dingo."
"What's that?" inquired Uncle Trufant, with interest.
"An almighty good lickin'," quoth the peacemaker. "I ain't a member of a fire company, and I ain't under no word of honor not to fight."
The two men snapped their angry eyes at each other, and Uncle Trufant turned away, intimidated for the moment. He confessed to himself that he didn't exactly understand how far a seafaring man could be trifled with.
Vienna gazed truculently on Smyrna for a time, but Smyrna, obeying their foreman's adjurations, mellowed into amiable grins and went on with their lunches.
"Where's that Spitz poodle with the blue ribbon?" inquired the Cap'n of Hiram, having reference to the brisk little man and his side whiskers. "It don't appear to me that you pounded it into his head solid enough about our not standin' for Gid Ward."
In the stress of other difficulties Hiram had forgotten the dispute that started the quarrel.
"Don't let's have any more argument, Hiram," pleaded his wife.
"She's right, Cap'n," said the foreman. "Standin' up for your rights is good and proper business, but it's a darn slippery place we're tryin' to stand on. Let the old pirate referee. We can outsquirt 'em. He won't dast to cheat us. I'm goin' to appoint you to represent Smyrna up there at the head of the stream. Keep your eye out for a square deal."
"I don't know a thing about squirtin', and I won't get mixed in," protested the Cap'n. But the members of the Smyrna company crowded around him with appeals.
"There's only this to know," urged Hiram. "The judges lay down sheets of brown paper and measure to the farthest drop. All you've got to do is keep your eye out and see that we get our rights. You'll only be actin' as a citizen of our town—and as first selectman you can insist on our rights. And you can do it in a gentlemanly way, accordin' to the programme we've mapped out. Peace and politeness—that's the motto for Smyrna."
And in the end Cap'n Sproul allowed himself to be persuaded.
But it was scarcely persuasion that did it.
It was this plaintive remark of the foreman: "Are you goin' to stand by and see Gideon Ward do us, and then give you the laugh?"
Therefore the Cap'n buttoned his blue coat tightly and trudged up to where the committee was busy with the sheets of brown paper, weighting them with stones so that the July breeze could not flutter them away.
Starks, Carthage, and Salem made but passable showing. They seemed to feel that the crowd took but little interest in them. The listless applause that had greeted them in the parade showed that.
Then, with a howl, half-sullen, half-ferocious, Vienna trundled old Niagara to the reservoir, stuck her intake pipe deep in the water, and manned her brake-beams. To the surprise of the onlookers her regular foreman took his station with the rest of the crew. Uncle Brad Trufant, foreman emeritus, took command. He climbed slowly upon her tank, braced himself against the bell-hanger, and shook his cane in the air.
"Look at me!" he yelled, his voice cracking into a squall. "Look at me and remember them that's dead and gone, your fathers and your grands'rs, whose old fists used to grip them bars right where you've got your hands. Think of 'em, and then set your teeth and yank the 'tarnal daylights out of her. Are ye goin' to let me stand here—me that has seen your grands'rs pump—and have it said that old Niag'ry was licked by a passul of knittin'-work old-maids, led by an elephant and a peep-show man? Be ye goin' to let 'em outsquirt ye? Why, the wimmen-folks of Vienny will put p'isen in your biscuits if you go home beat by anything that Smyrna can turn out. Git a-holt them bars! Clench your chaws! Now, damye, ye toggle-j'inted, dough-fingered, wall-eyed sons of sea-cooks, give her tar—give—her—tar!"
It was the old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna seemed to endorse his opinion.
With the foreman marking time with "Hoomp!—hoomp!" they began to surge at the bars, arms interlaced, hands, brown and gristly, covering the leather from end to end. The long, snaking hose filled and plumped out with snappings.
Uncle Trufant flung his hat afar, doubled forward, and with white hair bristling on his head began to curse horribly. Occasionally he rapped at a laggard with his cane. Then, like an insane orchestra-leader, he sliced the air about his head and launched fresh volleys of picturesque profanity.
Old Niagara rocked and danced. The four hosemen staggered as the stream ripped from the nozzle, crackling like pistol discharges. There was no question as to Uncle Trufant's ability to get the most out of the ancient pride of Vienna. He knew Niagara's resources.
"Ease her!" he screamed, after the first dizzy staccato of the beams. "Ease her! Steady! Get your motion! Up—down! Up—down! Get your motion! Take holt of her! Lift her! Now—now—now! For the last ounce of wickin' that's in ye! Give her—hell!"
It was the crucial effort. Men flung themselves at the beams. Legs flapped like garments on a clothes-line in a crazy gale. And when Uncle Trufant clashed the bell they staggered away, one by one, and fell upon the grass of the square.
"A hundred and seventeen feet, eight inches and one-half!" came the yell down the line, and at the word Vienna rose on her elbows and bawled hoarse cheers.
The cheer was echoed tumultuously, for every man in the crowd of spectators knew that this was full twenty feet better than the record score of all musters—made by Smyrna two years before, with wind and all conditions favoring.
"That's what old times and old-fashioned cussin' can do for ye," declared Uncle Trufant.
A man—a short, squat man in a blue coat—came pelting down the street from the direction of the judges. It was Cap'n Aaron Sproul. People got out of his way when they got a glimpse of the fury on his face. He tore into the press of Smyrna fire-fighters, who were massed about Hecla, their faces downcast at announcement of this astonishing squirt.
"A hunderd and seventeen northin'! A hunderd and seventeen northin'!" Cap'n Sproul gasped over and over. "I knowed he was in to do us! I see him do it! It wa'n't no hunderd and seventeen! It's a fraud!"
"You're a liar!" cried Uncle Trufant, promptly. But the Cap'n refused to be diverted into argument.
"I went up there to watch Gid Ward, and I watched him," he informed the Ancients. "The rest of 'em was watchin' the squirt, but I was watchin' that land-pirut. I see him spit on that paper twenty feet further'n the furthest drop of water, and then he measured from that spit. That's the kind of a man that's refereein' this thing. He's here to do us! He's paying off his old town-meetin' grudge!"
"Oh, I can't think that of my brother!" cried the Cap'n's wife.
"Remember, Hiram, that you've agreed—" began the cautious spouse of the foreman, noting with alarm the rigid lines beginning to crease her husband's face.
"There ain't no mistake about his measurin' to that spit?" demanded Hiram of the Cap'n, in the level tones of one already convinced but willing to give the accused one a last chance.
"He done it—I swear he done it."
"I'd thought," pursued the foreman of the Ancients, "that a firemen's muster could be made genteel, and would make a pleasant little trip for the ladies. I was mistaken." At the look in his eyes his wife began eager appeal, but he simply picked her up and placed her in the van from which the lunch-baskets had been taken. "There's Mis' Look," he said to the Cap'n. "She'll be glad to have the company of Mis' Sproul."
Without a word the Cap'n picked up Louada Murilla and placed her beside the half-fainting Mrs. Look. Hiram closed the doors of the van.
"Drive out about two miles," he ordered the man on the box, "and then let the ladies git out and pick bokays and enjoy nature for the rest of the afternoon. It's—it's—apt to be kind of stuffy here in the village."
And the van rumbled away down the street toward the vista framed in the drooping elms.
"Now, gents," said Hiram to his men, "if this is a spittin'-at-a-crack contest instead of a tub-squirt, I reckon we'd better go to headquarters and find out about it."
But at Smyrna's announced determination to raid the referee, Vienna massed itself in the way. It began to look like the good old times, and the spectators started a hasty rush to withdraw from the scene.
But Vienna was too openly eager for pitched battle.
To stop then and give them what they had been soliciting all day seemed too much like gracious accommodation in the view of Foreman Look. His business just at that moment was with Colonel Gideon Ward, and he promptly thought of a way to get to him.
At a signal the intelligent Imogene hooped her trunk about him and hoisted him to her neck. Then she started up the street, brandishing the trunk before her like a policeman's billy and "roomping" in hoarse warning to those who encumbered her path.
A charge led by an elephant was not in the martial calculations of the Viennese. They broke and fled incontinently.
Perhaps Colonel Gideon Ward would have fled also, but the crowd that had gathered to watch the results of the hose-play was banked closely in the street.
"Make way!" bellowed Foreman Look. "There's only one man I want, and I'm goin' to have him. Keep out of my road and you won't get hurt. Now, Colonel Gideon Ward," he shouted, from his grotesque mount, as that gentleman, held at bay partly by his pride and partly by the populace, came face to face with him, "I've been in the circus business long enough to know a fake when I see one. You've been caught at it. Own up!"
The Colonel snorted indignantly and scornfully.
"You don't own up, then?" queried Hiram.
"I'll give you five minutes to stop circusin' and get your tub astraddle that reservoir," snapped the referee.
"It occurs to me," went on Hiram, "that you can spit farther if you're up a tree. We want you to do your best when you spit for us."
Colonel Ward blinked without appearing to understand.
But the foreman of the Smyrna Ancients immediately made it evident that he had evolved a peculiar method of dealing with the case in hand. He drove Imogene straight at the goggling referee.
"Up that tree!" roared Hiram. "She'll kill you if you don't."
Indeed, the elephant was brandishing her trunk in a ferocious manner. A ladder was leaning against a near-by elm, and Colonel Ward, almost under the trudging feet of the huge beast, tossed dignity to the winds. He ran up the ladder, and Imogene, responding to a cuff on her head, promptly dragged it away from the tree.
"Only three minutes left to get Hecla into position," Hiram shouted. "Referee says so. Lively with her!"
Around and around in a circle he kept Imogene shambling, driving the crowd back from the tree. The unhappy Colonel was marooned there in solitary state.
At first the Vienna company showed a hesitating inclination to interfere with the placing of Hecla, suspecting something untoward in the astonishing elevation of the referee. But even Uncle Trufant was slow to assume the responsibility of interfering with a company's right of contest.
The Ancients located their engine, coupled the hose, and ran it out with alacrity.
"Colonel Ward," shouted Hiram, "you've tried to do it, but you can't. If it's got to be dog eat dog, and no gents need apply at a firemen's muster, then here's where we have our part of the lunch. Did you measure in twenty extry feet up to your spit mark? Speak up! A quick answer turneth away the hose!"
By this time the crew was gently working the brakes of old Hecla. The hose quivered, and the four men at the nozzle felt it twitching as the water pressed at the closed valve. They were grinning, for now they realized the nature of their foreman's mode of persuasion.
Vienna realized it, too, for with a howl of protest her men came swarming into the square.
"Souse the hide off'm the red-bellied sons of Gehenna!" Hiram yelled, and the hosemen, obedient to the word, swept the hissing stream on the enemy.
Men who will face bullets will run from hornets.
Men who will charge cannon can be routed by water.
The men at the brakes of old Hecla pumped till the tub jigged on her trucks like a fantastic dancer. To right, to left, in whooshing circles, or dwelling for an instant on some particularly obstreperous Vienna man, the great stream played. Some were knocked flat, some fell and were rolled bodily out of the square by the stream, others ran wildly with their arms over their heads. The air was full of leather hats, spinning as the water struck them. Every now and then the hosemen elevated the nozzle and gave Colonel Gideon Ward his share. A half-dozen times he nearly fell off his perch and flapped out like a rag on a bush.
"It certainly ain't no place for ladies!" communed Hiram with himself, gazing abroad from his elevated position on Imogene's neck. "I thought it was once, but it ain't."
"Colonel Gideon Ward," he shouted to the limp and dripping figure in the tree, "do you own up?"
The Colonel withdrew one arm to shake his fist at the speaker, and narrowly saved himself by instantly clutching again, for the crackling stream tore at him viciously.
"We'll drownd ye where ye hang," roared the foreman of the Ancients, "before we'll let you or any other pirate rinky-dink us out of what belongs to us."
Like some Hindu magician transplanted to Yankeedom he bestrode the neck of his elephant, and with his hand summoned the waving stream to do his will. Now he directed its spitting force on the infuriated Colonel; now he put to flight some Vienna man who plucked up a little fleeting courage.
And at last Colonel Ward knuckled. There was nothing else to do.
"I made a mistake," he said, in a moment of respite from the stream.
"You spit on the paper and measured in twenty extry feet jest as Cap'n Aaron Sproul said you did," insisted Hiram. "Say that, and say it loud, or we'll give old Hecly the wickin' and blow you out of that tree."
And after ineffectual oaths the Colonel said it—said it twice, and the second time much the louder.
"Then," bellowed the triumphant Hiram, "the record of old Hecly Number One still stands, and the championship banner travels back to Smyrna with us to-night, jest as it travelled down this mornin'."
"Hain't you goin' to squirt?" asked some one posted safely behind a distant tree.
"If you'd been payin' 'tention as you ought to be you'd have jest seen us squirtin'," replied the foreman of the Ancients with quiet satire. "And when we squirt, we squirt to win."
Cap'n Aaron Sproul turned away from a rapt and lengthy survey of Colonel Ward in the tree.
"Did you ever ride on an elephant, Cap'n Sproul?" inquired Hiram.
"Never tried it," said the seaman.
"Well, I want you to come up here with me. Imogene will h'ist you. I was thinkin', as it's gettin' rather dull here in the village just now"—Hiram yawned obtrusively—"we'd go out and join the ladies. I reckon the company'd like to go along and set on the grass, and pee-ruse nature for a little while, and eat up what's left in them lunch-baskets."
Ten minutes later the Smyrna Ancients and Honorables took their departure down the street bordered by the elms. Hiram Look and Cap'n Aaron Sproul swayed comfortably on Imogene's broad back. The fife-and-drum corps followed, and behind marched the champions, dragging Hecla Number One on its ruckling trucks.
Then, with the bass drums punctuating and accenting, they sang:
"Rip-te-hoo! And a hip, hip, holler!
We'll lick hell for a half a dollar!"
And it wasn't till then that some bystander tore his attention away long enough to stick a ladder up the elm-tree and let Colonel Gideon Ward scrape his way despondently down.