XI
The county paper always comes on Thursday. This was Thursday. Elmer Spiker sat behind the stove, in a secluded corner, the light of the lamp on the counter falling over his left shoulder on the leading column of locals. Elmer was reading. There was a store rule forbidding him to read aloud, which caused him much hardship, for as he worked his way slowly down the column, his right eye and left ear kept twitching and twitching as though trying to keep time with his lips.
Josiah Nummler's long pole rested on the counter at his side, and his great red hands were spread out to drink in the heat from the glowing bowl of the stove.
"It's a-blowin' up most a-mighty, ain't it?" he said, cheerfully. "Any news, Elmer?"
"Oh now, go home," grunted Mr. Spiker, rolling his pipe around so the burning tobacco scattered over his knees. "See what you've done!" he snapped angrily, brushing away the sparks.
"I didn't notice you was in the middle of a word, Elmer, really I didn't," pleaded old Mr. Nummler.
"I wasn't in the middle of a word," retorted Elmer, as he drove his little finger into his pipe in an effort to save some of the tobacco. "I was just beginnin' a new piece. Things is gittin' so there ain't a place left in this town for a man to read in peace and comfort. Here I am, tryin' to post up on the local doin's, on polytics and religion, and ringin' in my ears all the time is 'lickin' the teacher, lickin' the teacher, lickin' the teacher.' S'pose every man here did lick the teacher in his time—what of it, I says, what of it?"
"Yes, what of it?" said I, closing the door with a bang.
I was plodding home from Mary's. She had hummed me out at last, and I had tucked Tim's letter in my pocket and hobbled back to the village. The light in the store had drawn me aside and I stopped a moment just to look in. The store is always a fascinating place. There is always something doing there, and I opened the door a crack to hear what was under discussion. Catching the same refrain that troubled Elmer Spiker, I entered.
"What of it?" I demanded, facing the company. "I don't believe there is a man here who ever thrashed the teacher."
Theophilus Jones raised himself from the counter on which he was leaning, and waved a lighted candle above his head.
"Here comes the teacher—make way for the teacher!"
Josiah Nummler pounded the floor with his long pole.
"See the conquerin' hero comes," he cried. "A place for him—a place for him!" And with the point of his stick he drove the six men on the bench so close together as to give me an excellent seat.
"Thrice welcome, noble he-ro, as Perry Thomas says!" shouted Aaron Kallaberger, thrusting his hand into his bosom in excellent imitation of the orator.
"He's lookin' pretty spry yet, ain't he, boys?" said Isaac Bolum. He stood before me, leaning over till his hands clasped his knees, and peered into my face, smiling. "The teacher ain't changed a bit."
"Thank you for the reception," said I. "But explain. What's this all about?"
Elmer Spiker folded the county paper and came around to our side of the stove. There he struck his favorite attitude, which was always made most effective by the endless operation of putting his spectacles in their case—pulling them out—waving them—ad infinitum. For in our valley spectacles are the sceptre of the sovereign intellect.
"They was talkin' about lickin' the teacher," Elmer said, "and sech talkin' I never heard. It was the nonsensicalest yet. The way them boys was tellin' about the teachers they had knowed made me feel for your life when I seen you come in. I thought they'd fall on you like so many wolves."
"Now see here, Elmer Spiker," shouted Henry Holmes, "that's an injestice. I never said I'd licked the teacher when I was a boy. I only said I'd tried it."
"You give me to understand that the teacher was dead now," returned Elmer severely.
"He is," cried Henry.
"And you claim you done it."
"I done it," shouted Mr. Holmes, pounding the floor with his cane. "I done it! You think I'm a murderer? Why, old Gilbert Spoonholler was ninety-seven year old when he went away. He was only forty when him and me had it out."
"That's different," said Elmer calmly. "I understood from your original account that he died in battle."
"I tho't so too, Henery," put in Isaac Bolum. "You misled me, complete. 'Here,' says I, 'at last I have met a man who has licked the teacher.' And all the time you was tellin' about it, we was admirin' you—Joe Nummler and me—and now we finds Gil Spoonholler lived fifty-seven year after that terrible struggle."
"I can't just fetch my memory back to that particular incident, Henery," said Josiah, "but my recollection is that Gil Spoonholler held the school-house agin all comers, and that's sayin' a good deal, for we was tough as hickory when we was young."
"The modern boys is soft," Aaron Kallaberger declared. "They regards the teacher in a friendlier light than they used to. They are weakenin'. The military sperrit's dyin' out. The spectacle is conquerin' the sword."
[Illustration: Aaron Kallaberger.]
This was too direct a slap at Elmer Spiker to pass unnoticed; Elmer was too old an arguer to use any ponderous weapon in return. He even smiled as he punctuated his sentences with his battered spectacle-case.
"You never said a truer word, Aaron. It allus was true. It allus will be true. It's just as true to-day as when Henery Holmes tackled old Gilbert Spoonholler, as when Isaac Bolum yander argyed with Luke Lampson that five times eleven was forty-five; as when you refused to admit to the same kind teacher that Harrisburg was the capital of Pennsylwany."
"And as to-day when William Belkis—" Theophilus Jones was acting strangely. He was bowing politely at me.
I was mystified. Why at a time like this I should be treated as a subject of so much distinction was a puzzle, and I was about to demand an explanation, when Josiah Nummler interrupted.
"It's true," he said. "Teachers ain't changed and the boys ain't changed. I'm eighty year old within a week, and all my life I've heard boys blowin' about how they was goin' to lick the teacher, and I've heard old men tell how they done it years and years before—but I've never seen an eye-witness—what I wants is an eye-witness."
"You've been talkin' to Elmer Spiker," said Henry Holmes, plaintively. "He's convinced you. He'd convince anybody of anything. He's got me so dad-twisted I can't mind no more whether I went to school even."
"You never showed no signs, Henery." Isaac Bolum spoke very quietly.
"I guess you otter know it as well as anybody," Henry retorted angrily. "Your ma was allus askin' me to take care of you, and you was a nuisance, too, you was, Isaac. You was allus a-blubberin' and a-swallerin' somethin'. You mind the time you swallered my copper cent, don't you? You mind the fuss your ma made to my ma about it, don't you? Why, she formulated regular charges that I 'tempted to pizon you—she did, and——"
"Don't rake up them old, old sores," said Josiah Nummler soothingly, "Ike'll give you back your copper cent, Henery."
"All Ike's property to-day ain't as val'able to me now as that cent was then," Mr. Holmes answered solemnly. "It was the val'ablest cent I ever owned. I never expect to have another I'd hate so to see palpitatin' in Isaac Bolum's th'oat between his Adam's apple and his collar-band."
"We're gittin' away from the subject," said Josiah. "You're draggin' up a personal quarrel between you and Isaac Bolum, when we was discussin' the great problem that confronts every scholar in his day—that of thrashin' the teacher."
"It's a problem no scholar ever solved in the history of this walley, anyway," declared Elmer Spiker.
"It ain't on the records," said Kallaberger.
"There are le-gends," Isaac Bolum said. He pointed at Henry Holmes with his thumb. "Sech as his."
"Yes," said Josiah Nummler, "we have sech le-gends, comin' mostly from the Indians and Henery Holmes. But there's one I got from my pap when I was a boy, and I allus thought it one of the most be-yutiful fairy stories I ever heard—of course exceptin' them in the Bible. It was about Six Stars school, here, and the boy's name was Ernest, and the teacher's Leander. It was told to my pap by his pap, so you can see that as a le-gend it was older than them of Henery Holmes."
"It certainly sounds more interestin'," exclaimed Isaac Bolum.
Old Mr. Holmes started to protest, but Aaron Kallaberger quieted him with an offering of tobacco. By the time his pipe was going, Josiah was well into his story.
"Of all the teachers that ever tot in Six Stars this here Leander was the most fe-rocious. He was six foot two inches tall in his stockin's, and weighed no more than one hundred and thirty pound, stripped, but he was wiry. His arms was like long bands of iron. His legs was like hickory saplin's, and when he wasn't usin' them he allus kept them wound round the chair, so as to unspring 'em at a moment's notice and send himself flyin' at the darin' scholar. His face was white and all hung with hanks of black hair; his eyes was one minute like still intellectual pools and the next like burnin' coals of fire—that was my pap's way of puttin' it. Ernest was just his opposite. He was a chunky boy with white hair and pale eyes. He was a nice boy when let alone, but in the whole fifteen years of his life he'd never had no call to bound Kansas or tell the capital of Californy outside of school hours, so he regarded Leander with a fierce and childlike hatred. But Ernest had a noble streak in him, too. For himself he would 'a' suffered in silence. It was the constant oppression of the helpless little ones that saddened him. It was maddenin' to have to sit silent every day while tiny girls, no older than ten, was being hounded from one end of the g'ography to the other. He seen small boys, shavers under eight, scratchin' holes in their heads with slate-pencils, tryin' to make out why two and two was four; he seen girls, be-yutiful young girls of his own age, drove almost to distraction by black-boards full of diagrams from the grammar-book. And allus before him, the inspirin' note of the whole systematic system of torturin' the young, was the rod; broodin' over it all, like a black cloud, was Leander's repytation, was the memory of the boys as had gone before. For years Ernest bore all this. Then come a time when he was called to a position of responsibility in the school. One after another, the biggest boys had fallen. A few had gradyeated. Others had argyed with the teacher and become as broken reeds, was stedyin' regular and bein' polite like. In them years, whether he wanted it or not, Ernest had rose up. His repytation was spotless. His age entitled him to the Fifth Reader class, but he was still spellin' out words in the Third; fractions was only a dream to him, and he couldn't 'a' told you the difference between a noun and a wild carrot. But through it all he'd been so humble and polite that Leander looked on him as a kind of half-witted lamb."
[Illustration: Leander.]
"This here is the longest fairy story I ever heard tell of," said Elmer Spiker, "We haven't even had a sign of the prin-cess."
"And there is a prin-cess in this here le-gend," returned Josiah. "She was a be-yutiful one, too. Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley. She had the reddish hair of the Binns and the pearl-blue eyes of the Rummelsbergers from over the mountains. Her ma was a Rummelsberger. She wasn't too spare, nor was she too fleshy; she was just rounded right; and when she smiled—ah, boys, when Pinky Binn smiled at Ernest from behind her g'ography his heart went like its spring had broke. Yet he never showed it. It would have been ruination for him to let it be known by sign or act that Pinky Binn was other than the general class of weemen; for is there anything worse than weemen in general? It's the exceptions, allus the exceptions, raises trouble with a man. Pinky Binn was Ernest's exception. But the time of his great trial come, and he was true. He stepped forth in his right light before all the school; he showed himself what he was—the gentle lover, the masterful fighter, the heroic-est scholar Six Stars school had ever seen."
[Illustration: "Her name was Pinky Binn, a dotter of the house of Binn, the Binns of Turkey Walley.">[
"He whipped the teacher, I know," cried Henry Holmes. "I told you, Ike—he licked the teacher."
"This here is a fairy story, Henery," returned Isaac reprovingly.
"Even in a fairy story it 'ud be ridiculous to let a boy of fifteen beat a trained teacher," said Josiah Nummler. "He didn't quite, and it come this way. Leander asked Pinky Binn if he had eleven apples and multiplied them by five how many was they left. She says sixty-five. 'Figure it out agin,' he says, wery stern. So she works her fingers and her lips a-while, like she was deef and dumb. 'Five-timsone is five,' she says, 'and five-timsone agin is five and one to carry is six—sixty-five,' she says. 'Well, I'll be Scotch-Irished,' says Leander gittin' wery angry. 'Sech obtusety' (Leander allus used fancy words) 'is worthy of Ernest yander.' He pinted his long finger at Ernest and says, 'How much is five times eleven apples? Ernest gits up and faces the teacher, wery ca'am and wery quiet. 'Sixty-five,' says he. 'It's fifty-five,' Leander shouts. Then says Ernest, wery cool, 'Pinky Binn says it's sixty-five, and Pinky Binn ain't no storyteller, and you hadn't otter call her one.' That takes all the talk out of the teacher. He just sets there wrappin' his legs round the chair and glarin'. Ernest's voice rings clear above the school now, like the Declaration of Independence. 'In Turkey Walley, teacher,' he says, 'five times eleven apples is sixty-five. They raises bigger apples there.'
"Leander's legs unsprung. He ketched Ernest by the hair and lifted him to the platform. Boys, you otter 'a' seen it. It was David and Goliath all over agin, only fightin' fair. Havin' Leander holdin' his hair give the boy an advantage—it was two hands agin one. Leander had but the one to operate his stick with, while Ernest was drivin' both fists right into the darkness in front of him. The stick was making no impression, and some of the small boys that didn't know no better begin to cheer. Boys, you otter 'a' been there. You'd have enjoyed it, Henery. Leander seen what he needed was tactics, and his regular tactics was to hold the scholar at arm's length by the hair. He tried it and it didn't work. Ernest was usin' tactics too. He wasn't wastin' strength and beatin' his arms around. He just smiled. That smile aroused the teacher in Leander agin. He couldn't stand it. He had never had a boy do that before; he forgot himself and sailed in. Boys, that was fightin' then. You'd have enjoyed it, Henery. Still, I guess it couldn't have been much to watch, for there was nothin' to see but dust—a rollin', roarin' cloud of it, backward and forward over the platform. I don't know just what happened. Pap couldn't tell. Leander couldn't 'a' told you. Ernest couldn't 'a' told you. There was war—real war, and after it come peace."
"Ernest whipped, I know," cried Henry Holmes.
"The teacher was licked—good—good!" shouted Isaac Bolum.
"No, boys," said Josiah solemnly, "that couldn't have been. Even in fairy stories sech things couldn't happen. But when the dust cleared away, Leander's body lay along the floor, and towerin' over him, one foot on his boosom, stood the darin' scholar. I guess the teacher had been took ill."
"Mebbe it was appleplexy," suggested Elmer Spiker.
"Mebbe it was," said Josiah. "It must have been somethin' like that; but whatever it was, there stood the boy. 'You is free,' he says, addressin' the scholars. And the children broke from the seats and started for'a'd to worship him. And Pinky Binn was almost on her knees at his feet, when a strange thing happened.
"There was music. It come soft first, and hushed the school, and froze the scholars like statutes. Louder it come and louder—a heavenly choir—the melodium, the cordine, and the fiddle. Then a great white light flooded the school-room. It blinded the boys, and it blinded the girls. The music played softer and softer—the melodium, the cordine, and the fiddle—and with it, keepin' time with it, the light come softer, too; so lookin' up the scholars seen there in the celestial glow, a solemn company gethered round the boy—the he-roes of old—Hercules and General Grant, Joshuay and Washington—all the mighty fighters of history. Just one glimpse the scholars had, for the music struck up louder, and the light glowed brighter and brighter till it blinded them. Softer and softer the music come—the melodium, the cordine, and the fiddle. It sounded like marchin', they said, and they heard the tramp, tramp, tramp of the sperrit soldiers. Then there was quiet—only the roarin' of the stove and the snuffin' of the little ones. And when they looked up Leander was alone—settin' there on the platform, kind of rubbin' his eyes—alone."
There was silence in the store. Josiah Nummler's pipe was going full blast, and while the white cloud hid him from the others, I could see a gentle smile on his fat face.
"Mighty son's!" cried Henry Holmes, "that there's unpossible."
Josiah planted his pole on the floor and lifted himself to his feet.
"It's only a fairy story, Henery," he said.
"What does it illustrate?" cried Aaron Kallaberger. "Nothin', I says. We was talkin' about Mark and William Bellus, and you switches off on Leander and Ernest. To a certain pint your story agrees with what my boy told me of the doin's in the school this afternoon."
"What doing's?" I exclaimed. This talk puzzled me, and I was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.
"Why, wasn't you there?" cried Isaac Bolum. "Wasn't it you and William?"
"No," I fairly shouted. "Perry Thomas had the school."
Josiah Nummler's pole clattered to the floor, and he sank into a chair.
"I see—I see," he gasped. "Poor William!"
"I see—I see," said I. "Poor William!"
For William had felt the hand of "Doogulus!"
