XXX
At about midnight Cap'n Sproul, snoring peaceably with wide-open mouth, snapped upright in bed with a jerk that set his teeth into his tongue and nearly dislocated his neck. He didn't know exactly what had happened. He had a dizzy, dreaming feeling that he had been lifted up a few hundred feet in the air and dropped back.
"Land o' Goshen, Aaron, what was it?" gasped his wife. "It sounded like something blowing up!"
The hint steadied the Cap'n's wits. 'Twas an explosion—that was it! And with grim suspicion as to its cause, he pulled on his trousers and set forth to investigate. An old barn on his premises, a storehouse for an overplus of hay and discarded farming tools, had been blown to smithereens and lay scattered about under the stars. And as he picked his way around the ruins with a lantern, cursing the name of Luce, a far voice hailed him from the gloom of a belt of woodland: "I ain't an outlaw, hey? I don't dast to be one, hey? You wait and see."
About an hour later, just as the selectman was sinking into a doze, he heard another explosion, this time far in the distance—less a sound than a jar, as of something striking a mighty blow on the earth.
"More dynamite!" he muttered, recognizing that explosive's down-whacking characteristic. And in the morning Hiram Look hurried across to inform him that some miscreant had blown up an empty corn-house on his premises, and that the explosion had shattered all the windows in the main barn and nearly scared Imogene, the elephant, into conniptions. "And he came and hollered into my bedroom window that he'd show me whuther he could be an outlaw or not," concluded the old showman. "I tell you that critter is dangerous, and you've got to get him. Instead of quietin' down he'll be growin' worse."
There were eleven men in Smyrna, besides Zeburee Nute, who held commissions as constables, and those valiant officers Cap'n Sproul called into the first selectman's office that forenoon. He could not tell them any news. The whole of Smyrna was ringing with the intelligence that Aholiah Luce had turned outlaw and was on the rampage.
The constables, however, could give Selectman Sproul some news. They gave it to him after he had ordered them to surround Mr. Luce and take him, dynamite and all. This news was to the effect that they had resigned.
"We've talked it over," averred Lycurgus Snell, acting as spokesman, "and we can't figger any good and reeliable way of gittin' him without him gittin' us, if he's so minded, all in one tableau, same to be observed with smoked glasses like an eclipse. No, s'r, we ain't in any way disposed to taller the heavens nor furnish mince-meat funerals. And if we don't git him, and he knows we're takin' action agin' him, he'll come round and blow our barns up—and we ain't so well able to stand the loss as you and Mr. Look be."
"Well, if you ain't about the nearest to knot-holes with the rims gone off'm 'em of anything I ever see," declared the Cap'n, with fury, "may I be used for oakum to calk a guano gunlow!"
"If you think it's a job to set any man to, you'd better go and do it yourself," retorted Snell, bridling. "You know as well as I do, s'leckman, that so long as 'Liah has been let alone he's only been a plain thief, and we've got along with him here in town all right—onpleasant and somewhat expensive, like potater-bugs. But you seem to have gone to pushin' him and have turned him from potater-bug into a royal Peeruvian tiger, or words to that effect, and I don't see any way but what you'll have to tame him yourself. There's feelin' in town that way, and people are scart, and citizens ain't at all pleased with your pokin' him up, when all was quiet."
"Citizens ruther have it said, hey, that we are supportin' a land-pirut here in this town, and let him disgrace us even over in Vienny?" demanded the Cap'n.
"Which was wuss?" inquired Mr. Snell, serenely. "As it was or as it is?"
Then the ex-constables, driven forth with contumely, went across to the platform of Broadway's store, and discussed the situation with other citizens, finding the opinion quite unanimous that Cap'n Sproul possessed too short a temper to handle delicate matters with diplomacy. And it was agreed that Aholiah Luce, weak of wit and morally pernicious, was a delicate matter, when all sides were taken into account.
To them appeared Aholiah Luce, striding down the middle of the street, with that ominous sack on his shoulder.
"Be I an outlaw, or ain't I?" he shouted over and over, raising a clamor in the quiet village that brought the Cap'n out of the town house. "Arrest me, will ye? When ye try it there won't be nothin' left of this town but a hole and some hollerin'."
He walked right upon the store platform and into the store, and every one fled before him. Broadway cowered behind his counter.
"Put me up a fig o' tobacker, a pound of tea, quart o' merlasses, ten pounds of crackers, hunk o' pork, and two cans of them salmons," he ordered.
In past years Mr. Luce had always slunk into Broadway's store apologetically, a store-bill everlastingly unpaid oppressing his spirits. Now he bellowed autocratic command, and his soul swelled when he saw Broadway timorously hastening to obey.
"I'll show 'em whuther I'm an outlaw or not," he muttered. "And I wisht I'd been one before, if it works like this. The monarch of the Injies couldn't git more attention," he reflected, as he saw the usually contemptuous Broadway hustling about, wrapping up the goods.
He saw scared faces peering in at him through the windows. He swung the sack off his shoulder, and bumped it on the floor with a flourish.
"My Lord-amighty, be careful with that!" squawked Broadway, ducking down behind the counter.
"You 'tend to business and make less talk, and you won't git hurt," observed Mr. Luce, ferociously. He pointed at the storekeeper the stick of dynamite that he carried in his hand. And Mr. Broadway hopped up and bestirred himself obsequiously.
"I don't know whuther I'll ever pay for these or not," announced Mr. Luce, grabbing the bundles that Broadway poked across the counter as gingerly as he would feed meat to a tiger. He stuffed them into his sack. "I shall do jest as I want to about it. And when I've et up this grub in my lair, where I propose to outlaw it for a while, I shall come back for some more; and if I don't git it, along with polite treatment, I'll make it rain groc'ries in this section for twenty-four hours."
"I didn't uphold them that smashed in your door," protested the storekeeper, getting behind the coffee-grinder.
"I've been squdged too fur, that's what has been done," declared Mr. Luce, "and it was your seleckman that done it, and I hold the whole town responsible. I don't know what I'm li'ble to do next. I've showed him—now I'm li'ble to show the town. I dunno! It depends."
He went out and stood on the store platform, and gazed about him with the air of Alexander on the banks of the Euphrates. For the first time in his lowly life Mr. Luce saw mankind shrink from before him. It was the same as deference would have seemed to a man who had earned respect, and the little mind of Smyrna's outlaw whirled dizzily in his filbert skull.
"I don't know what I'll do yit," he shouted, hailing certain faces that he saw peering at him. "It was your seleckman that done it—and a seleckman acts for a town. I reckon I shall do some more blowin' up."
He calmly walked away up the street, passing Cap'n Sproul, who stood at one side.
"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" jeered Mr. Luce.
"You don't dare to set down that sack," roared the selectman. "I'll pay ye five hundred dollars to set down that sack and step out there into the middle of that square—and I call on all here as witnesses to that offer," he cried, noting that citizens were beginning to creep back into sight once more. "Five hundred dollars for you, you bow-legged hen-thief! You sculpin-mouthed hyena, blowing up men's property!"
"Hold on," counselled Mr. Luce. "You're goin' to squdgin' me ag'in. I've been sassed enough in this town. I'm goin' to be treated with respect after this if I have to blow up ev'ry buildin' in it."
"It ain't safe to go to pokin' him up," advised Mr. Nute from afar. "I should think you'd 'a' found that out by this time, Cap'n Sproul."
"I've found out that what ain't cowards here are thieves,'" roared the Cap'n, beside himself, ashamed, enraged at his impotence before this boastful fool and his grim bulwark. His impulse was to cast caution to the winds and rush upon Luce. But reflection told him that, in this flush of his childish resentment and new prominence, Luce was capable of anything. Therefore he prudently held to the side of the road.
"The next time I come into this village," said Mr. Luce, "I don't propose to be called names in public by any old salt hake that has pounded his dollars out of unfort'nit' sailors with belayin'-pins. I know your record, and I ain't afeard of you!"
"There'll be worse things happen to you than to be called names."
"Oh, there will, hey?" inquired Mr. Luce, his weak passion flaming. "Well, lemme give you jest one hint that it ain't safe to squdge me too fur!"
He walked back a little way, lighted the fuse of the stick of dynamite that he carried, and in spite of horrified appeals to him, cast over the shoulders of fleeing citizens, he tossed the wicked explosive into the middle of the square and ran.
In the words of Mr. Snell, when he came out from behind the watering-trough: "It was a corn-cracker!"
A half-hour later Mr. Nute, after sadly completing a canvass of the situation, headed a delegation that visited Cap'n Sproul in the selectman's office, where he sat, pallid with rage, and cursing.
"A hundred and seventeen lights of glass," announced Mr. Nute, "includin' the front stained-glass winder in the meetin'-house and the big light in Broadway's store. And it all happened because the critter was poked up agin'—and I warned ye not to do it, Cap'n."
"Would it be satisfactory to the citizens if I pulled my wallet and settled the damage?" inquired the first selectman, with baleful blandness in his tones.
Mr. Nute did not possess a delicate sense of humor or of satire. He thoughtfully rubbed his nose.
"Reely," he said, "when you git it reduced right down, that critter ain't responsible any more'n one of them dynamite sticks is responsible, and if it hadn't been for you lettin' him loose and then pokin' him, contrary to warnin', them hundred and seventeen lights of glass wouldn't—"
"Are there any left?" asked Cap'n Sproul, still in subdued tones.
"About as many more, I should jedge," replied Mr. Nute.
"Well, I simply want to say," remarked the Cap'n, standing up and clinching his fists, "that if you ever mention responsibility to me again, Nute, I'll take you by the heels and smash in the rest of that glass with you—and I'll do the same with any one else who don't know enough to keep his yawp shut. Get out of here, the whole of you, or I'll begin on what glass is left in this town house."
They departed silently, awed by the menace of his countenance, but all the more bitterly fixed in their resentment.
That night two more hollow "chunks" shook the ground of Smyrna, at intervals an hour separated, and morning light showed that two isolated barns had been destroyed.
Mr. Luce appeared in the village with his sack, quite at his ease, and demanded of Broadway certain canned delicacies, his appetite seeming to have a finer edge to correspond with his rising courage. He even hinted that Broadway's stock was not very complete, and that some early strawberries might soften a few of the asperities of his nature.
"I ain't never had a fair show on eatin'," he complained to the apprehensive storekeeper. "It's been ten years that my wife ain't got me a fair and square meal o' vittles. She don't believe in cookin' nothin' ahead nor gettin' up anything decent. She's a Go-upper and thinks the end of the world is li'ble to come any minit. And the way I figger it, not havin' vittles reg'lar has give me dyspepsy, and dyspepsy has made me cranky, and not safe to be squdged too fur. And that's the whole trouble. I've got a hankerin' for strorb'ries. They may make me more supple. P'raps not, but it's wuth tryin'."
He tossed the cans into his sack in a perfectly reckless manner, until Broadway was sick and hiccuping with fear. "Love o' Lordy," he pleaded, "don't act that way. It's apt to go off—go off any time. I know the stuff better'n you do—I've dealt in it. Ain't I usin' you square on goods?"
"Mebbe so," admitted Mr. Luce. "Fur's you know, you are. But the trouble with me is my disposition. It ain't been made supple yet. If you've got in stock what my appetite craves I may be more supple next time I come."
He dug a tender strip out of the centre of a hanging codfish, and walked out. Parading his ease of spirits and contempt for humanity in general, he stood on the platform and gnawed at the fish and gazed serenely on the broken windows.
"I done it," he mumbled, admiringly. "I showed 'em! It won't take much more showin', and then they'll let me alone, and I'll live happy ever after. Wonder is I hadn't reelized it before. Tail up, and everybody stands to one side. Tail down, and everybody is tryin' to kick you. If it wa'n't for that streak in human nature them devilish trusts that I've heard tell of couldn't live a minit." He saw men standing afar and staring at him apprehensively. "That's right, ding baste ye," he said, musingly, "look up to me and keep your distance! It don't make no gre't diff'runce how it's done, so long as I can do it."
And after further triumphant survey of the situation, he went away.
"Hiram," said Cap'n Sproul, with decision, turning from a long survey of Mr. Luce's retreating back through a broken window of the town house, "this thing has gone jest as far as it's goin'."
"Well," declared the showman with some bitterness, "to have them that's in authority stand round here and let one bow-legged lunatic blow up this whole town piecemeal ain't in any ways satisfyin' to the voters. I hear the talk, and I'm givin' it to you straight as a friend."
"I've got my plan all made," said the first selectman. "I want you as foreman to call out the Ancient and Honer'ble Firemen's Association and have 'em surround them woods, and we'll take him."
"We will, hey?" demanded Hiram, pushing back his plug hat and squinting angrily. "What do you think that firemen's association is for, anyway?"
"Never knew it to do anything but eat free picnics and give social dances," retorted the Cap'n. "I didn't know but it was willin' to be useful for once in its life."
"Slur noted!" said Hiram, with acerbity. "But you can't expect us to pull you out of a hole that you've mismanaged yourself into. You needn't flare, now, Cap'n. It's been mismanaged, and that's the sentiment of the town. I ain't twittin' you because I've lost property. I'm talkin' as a friend."
"That's twice this mornin' you've passed me that 'friend' handbill," raged the selectman. "Advertisin' yourself, be ye? And then leavin' me in the lurch! This is a friendly town, that's what it is. Constables, voters, firemen, and you yourself dump the whole burden of this onto me, and then stand back and growl at me! Well, if this thing is up to me alone and friendless and single-handed, I know what I'm goin' to do!" His tone had the grate of file against steel.
"What?" inquired his friend with interest.
"Get a gun and go out and drop that humpbacked old Injy-cracker!"
But Hiram protested fervently.
"Where would you shoot him?" he cried. "You don't know where to find him in them woods. You'd have to nail him here in the village, and besides its bein' murder right in the face and eyes of folks, you'd put a bullet into that sack o' dynamite and blow ev'ry store, meetin'-house, and school-house in Smyrna off'm the map. You give that up, or I'll pass the word and have you arrested, yourself, as a dangerous critter."
He went away, still protesting as long as he was in hearing.
Cap'n Sproul sat despondent in his chair, and gazed through the broken window at other broken windows. Ex-Constable Nute presented himself at the pane outside and said, nervously chewing tobacco: "I reckon it's the only thing that can be done now, Cap'n. It seems to be the general sentiment."
With a flicker of hope irradiating his features, Cap'n Sproul inquired for details.
"It's to write to the President and get him to send down a hunk of the United States Army. You've got to fight fire with fire."
Without particular display of passion, with the numb stolidity of one whose inner fires have burned out, the selectman got up and threw a cuspidor through the window at his counsellor, and then seated himself to his pondering once more.
That afternoon Mrs. Aholiah Luce came walking into the village, spent, forlorn, and draggled. She went straight to the town office, and seated herself in front of the musing first selectman.
"I've come to call on for town help," she said. "I haven't got scrap nor skred to eat, and northin' to cook it with. You've gone to work and put us in a pretty mess, Mister S'leckman. Makin' my husband an outlaw that's took to the woods, and me left on the chips!"
The Cap'n surveyed her without speaking—apparently too crushed to make any talk. In addition to other plagues, it was now plain that he had brought a pauper upon the town of Smyrna.
"So I call on," she repeated, "and I need a whole new stock of groc'ries, and something to cook 'em with."
And still the Cap'n did not speak. He sat considering her, his brows knitted.
"I'm a proud woman nat'rally," she went on, "and it's tough to have to call on 'cause the crowned heads of earth has oppressed the meek and the lowly."
Cap'n Sproul trudged across the room, and took down a big book inscribed "Revised Statutes." He found a place in the volume and began to read in an undertone, occasionally looking over his specs at her.
"It's as I thought it was," he muttered; "when one member of a family, wife or minor children, call on for town aid, whole family can be declared paupers till such time as, and so forth." He banged the big book shut. "Interestin' if true—and found to be true. Law to use as needed. So you call on, do you, marm?" he queried, raising his voice. "Well, if you're all ready to start for the poor-farm, come along."
"I ain't goin' onto no poor-farm," she squealed. "I call on, but I want supplies furnished."
"Overseer of the poor has the say as to what shall be done with paupers," announced the Cap'n. "I say poor-farm. They need a good, able-bodied pauper woman there, like you seem to be. The other wimmen paupers are bedridden."
"My husband will never let me be took to the poorhouse and kept there."
"Oh, there ain't goin' to be any trouble from that side. You're right in line to be a widder most any time now."
"Be you goin' to kill 'Liah?" she wailed.
"It will be a self-actin' proposition, marm. I ain't got any very special grudge against him, seein' that he's a poor, unfortunate critter. I'm sorry, but so it is." He went on with great appearance of candor. "You see, he don't understand the nature of that stuff he's luggin' round. It goes off itself when it gets about so warm. It's comin' warmin' weather now—sun gettin' high—and mebbe next time he starts for the village the bust will come."
"Ain't any one goin' to warn him?"
"I can't find it's set down in my duties, marm; and from the acts of the gen'ral run of cowards in this town I don't reckon any one else will feel called on to get near enough to him to tell him. Oh no! He'll fire himself like an automatic bomb. Prob'ly to-morrow. By the looks of the sky it's goin' to be a nice, warm day."
She backed to the door, her eyes goggling.
"I ain't got any hard feelin's at all, marm. I pity you, and here's a ten-dollar bill that I'll advance from the town. I reckon I'll wait till after you're a widder before I take you to the poorhouse."
She clutched the bill and ran out. He watched her scurry down the street with satisfaction wrinkling under his beard. "It was a kind of happy idee and it seems to be workin'," he observed. "I've allus thought I knew enough about cowards to write a book on 'em. We'll see!"
That night there were no alarms in Smyrna. Cap'n Sproul, walking to his office the next forenoon, mentally scored one on the right side of his calculations.
When he heard Mr. Luce in the village square and looked out on him, he scored two, still on the right side. Mr. Luce bore his grisly sack, but he did not carry a stick of dynamite in his hand.
"Goin' to put my wife in the poorhouse, hey?" he squalled.
Cap'n Sproul scored three. "She got at him and unloaded!" he murmured. "And it fixed him, if I know cowards."
"She's goin' to be a widder, hey? I'm afeard o' daminite, hey? I'll show ye!" He swung the sack from his shoulder, and held it up in both hands for the retreating populace to see. "I jest as soon flam this whole thing down here in the ro'd. I jest as soon kick it. I jest as soon set on it and smoke my pipe. I'm an outlaw and I ain't afeard of it. You use me right and let my wife alone, or I'll show ye."
Cap'n Sproul, sailor-habit always strong with him, had for a long time kept one of his telescopes hanging beside a window in the town office. He took this down and studied the contour of the bumps that swelled Mr. Luce's sack. His survey seemed to satisfy him. "Tone of his talk is really enough—but the shape of that bag settles it with me."
The next moment all of Smyrna that happened to be in sight of the scene gasped with horror on beholding the first selectman walk out of the town house and stalk directly across the square toward the dynamiter.
"You go back," screamed Mr. Luce, "or I'll flam it!"
But no longer was Mr. Luce's tone dauntless and ferocious. The Cap'n's keen ear caught the coward's note of querulousness, for he had heard that note many times before in his stormy association with men. He chuckled and walked on more briskly.
"I'll do it—I swear I will!" said Mr. Luce, but his voice was only a weak piping.
In spite of itself Smyrna stopped, groaned, and squatted where it stood when Mr. Luce swung the sack and launched it at the intrepid selectman. As he threw it, the outlaw turned to run. The Cap'n grabbed the sack, catapulted it back, and caught the fleeing Mr. Luce squarely between the shoulders; and he went down on his face with a yell of pain. The next moment Smyrna saw her first selectman kicking a bleating man around and around the square until the man got down, lifted up his hands, and bawled for mercy.
And when Smyrna flocked around, the Cap'n faced them, his fist twisted in Mr. Luce's collar.
"This critter belongs in State Prison, but I ain't goin' to send him there. He's goin' onto our poor-farm, and he's goin' to work for the first time in his life, and he'll keep to work till he works up some of the bill he owes this town. He's a pauper because his wife has called on. But I ain't dependin' on law. I'm runnin' this thing myself. I've shown ye that I can run it. And if any of you quitters and cowards have got anything to say why my sentence won't be carried out, now is the time to say it."
He glowered into their faces, but no one said anything except Zeburee Nute, who quavered: "We allus knowed you was the smartest man that ever came to this town, and—"
"Close that mouth!" yelped Cap'n Sproul. "It's worse than an open hatch on a superphosphate schooner."
"You dare to leave that town farm, you or your wife either," the selectman went on, giving Mr. Luce a vigorous shake, "and I'll have you in State Prison as quick as a grand jury can indict. Nute, you hitch and take him down there, and tell the boss he's to work ten hours a day, with one hour's noonin', and if he don't move fast enough, to get at him with a gad."
Mr. Luce, cowed, trembling, appealing dumbly for sympathy, was driven away while the first selectman was picking up the sack that still lay in the village square. Without a moment's hesitation he slit it with his big knife, and emptied its contents into a hole that the spring frosts had left. Those contents were simply rocks.
"In the name of Joanthus Cicero!" gasped Broadway, licking his dry lips. "How did you figger it?"
The Cap'n finished kicking the sack down into the hole beside the rocks, clacked shut his knife-blade, and rammed the knife deep into his trousers pocket.
"When you critters here in town get to be grown up to be more than ten years old," he grunted, surveying the gaping graybeards of Smyrna, "and can understand man's business, I may talk to you. Just now I've got something to attend to besides foolishness."
And he trudged back into the town house, with his fellow-citizens staring after him, as the populace of Rome must have stared after victorious Cæsar.