“I ain’t goin’ to die,” blurted Badger. “A man’s got the right to change his mind, ain’t he? And they’ve found out about that Mis’ Achorn. She used a wax hand to make folks believe ’twas some one dead that was touchin’ ’em and—-”
“Shet up!” barked Hiram. “Do you think I’ve been in the circus line thirty years to need to have fakes explained to me? It’s bus’ness I want to talk with you, Sum. Don’t you read your town report, you fool? Don’t you know that Judge Willard says there over his name that this town owes only a little over two thousand dollars? And yet you know, yourself, that he has borrowed seven thousand from you on a town note! Don’t you stop to think about those things? And now I’ll tell you something to make your hair curl! I have found out that there are twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of town notes held around here by just such old blind moles as you are that he has told to keep still. Lord knows how many more there are. I don’t imagine that some would let it out if you took a knife to ’em.”
He wiped the perspiration from his face and gazed at Badger as though he expected the information to wilt him. The avenger of the wrongs of the Looks was not entirely ready with the thunderbolt that he was forging for the town treasurer of Palermo, but the serenity of the dollar-blinded Badger exasperated him. For a test he wanted to see how one citizen of Palermo would receive the disclosure.
“I tell you your treasurer is fooling the whole of ye!” he shouted. “He has stolen from your town.” The creditor blinked at him. “Now will you sit by and let him fool you with his talk of makin’ it right? Now will you try to screw eight per cent, out of me who’s tryin’ to bring him to the ring bolt? Now will you hand that note over to me or pitch in and collect it yourself?”
To Hiram’s intense astonishment Badger slowly leaned forward, set his elbows on his knees, began to tap his finger-tips together, winked one eye, and smiled shrewdly and composedly.
“Don’t you worry none about Coll Willard,” he said. “He’s a financier.” He rolled the word over his tongue. “His folks was financiers before him. Nobody can’t fool him. He’s sly. So’m I. He’s ready to help the sly folks. You’ve got money, but you ain’t no financier. You’re jest a circus man. And we ain’t your monkeys, here in P’lermo. If you want your nuts pulled out of the fire, pull ’em out yourself.”
Hiram got up and stamped around the room in an ecstasy of rage.
“I’m a good mind to let you all go to Tophet by the short cut, your tails tied together with kerosened rags,” he gasped. “Here I am, givin’ up time and money to save this town from being lugged into bankruptcy, and what do I get? I get laughed at! Damn it!” he stormed, “there’s your last town report! Look for yourself! He’s lied there under oath.”
With the words he threw a pamphlet into Badger’s lap. The old man promptly tossed the report upon the table.
“You’d better stop tryin’ to work out your old grudge on Jedge Willard,” he advised, with a bland sapience that made the showman grit his teeth. “If he finds out that you’re a-slanderin’ him he’s li’ble to have the law on ye.”