“They won’t rip through very far,� Miss Wiggin flung at him. “There’s a trap just outside the village, watched by a deputy sheriff and two constables. Your old governor will be nabbed and pulled up before my father, who will soak him with a fine. And I hope dad soaks him good,� she finished, laughing, and doing so with a vindictiveness that seemed to afford her untold relief and satisfaction.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRAPPERS.
Jeremiah Small, constable of the town of Greenbush, sat on the top rail of the roadside fence and wedged a load of fine cut into the bowl of a burned, blackened, odorous corncob pipe, packing it down with a decidedly dirty thumb. From his perch he could look over the top of a cluster of low sumacs and keep watch upon a point on the hillside where the highway wound into view. He could also see, somewhat nearer, a tall and lonely elm tree, past which the road ran in a broadside curve.
“Weeping� Buzzell, another constable, was sitting on the ground in the shade of the sumacs, leaning against the fence, and occasionally wiping his red-rimmed and watery eyes with a faded and mussed bandanna handkerchief. His jaws worked wearily at a quid of tobacco, the presence of which was further advertised by the unmistakable stains at the corners of his doleful and flabby mouth. He had chosen his lowly position for comfort, and because his companion was far better adapted to the task of outlook.
“I tell you, ’Miah,� sniffed Buzzell, “this here job is jest about played out. A dollar-sixty a day ain’t no livin’ pay for a hard-workin’ man, and that’s all we git outside commissions on the fines the jedge imposes, and the deputy sheruff gits the biggest whack at them. We have to be pacified with what comes outer the little end o’ the horn. Yis-tidday my share was thutty-two cents, and so fur to-day we ain’t nabbed only one motor-cycle feller who come through by accident, havin’ got off the road to Damascus. I’m gittin’ discouraged.�
Constable Small made a final poke at the pipe bowl, and glanced down at the complaining individual. “Never knowed you to tackle any job that you didn’t git discouraged over in a short time, Silas,� he averred contemptuously. “Gittin’ discouraged is your long suit. You’ve been discouraged all your life.�
Buzzell moved his slouching shoulders resentfully. “Mebbe that’s so, ’Miah, but I ain’t never had no luck, like some folks. When I was swore in as constable and put on this job, there was an av’rage of eighteen or twenty merchines a day that went through town regardless of speed regerlations. Business was lively, and I sorter guessed my luck had turned. But now them there automobile fellers has got wise and sent out warnin’s and posted notices in all the garrages round about cautionin’ folks to keep away from Greenbush, and they’re goin’ round by the way of Damascus or Cherryfield, and leavin’ us to twiddle our thumbs. My opinion, it’s hurt the town, too; Greenbush is deader’n a salted herrin’.�
Small lifted a broganed foot and struck a match on the leg of his trousers, after which he held it up until his wheezing pipe was lit.
“Better not go makin’ that kind of talk in the hearin’ of Jedge Wiggin,� he warned, pulling hard at the rebellious corncob. “If you done so, he’d tell you what in a hurry, and you’d lose your badge so quick it’d make your head swim. You know him, Silas. He ain’t got no use for automobiles nohow, and when he announced that he perposed to enforce the speed regerlations without fear or favor, he sartainly meant it. He’d slap a fine onter the President of the United States if he was to go scootin’ through town faster’n the speed limit allows.�
“Mebbe he would,� said Buzzell. “He’s so hard-headed and sot it would be just like him. Jest because he’s alwus been a hoss owner and a hoss-man, he’s down on automobiles in gen’ral and ev’rybody that has anything to do with ’em. I reckon that’s whyhe wants to be representative to the legislator, he wants to go there to put through some kind of a bill to restrict the use of them merchines to certain roads so that the drivers of hosses can have the other roads to themselves. That’s jest how old-fashioned the jedge is.�