“And then the rest of the crowd that always likes to see a man took in would laugh and Hime would go on cheerful as a cricket. But if he’d had less cheek he’d have got rid’ on a rail out of ev’ry fair ground.” He closed down the little “pepper-pot” cover over his pipe bowl.
“Then there was Hime’s dancin’ turkey,” he went on, apparently enjoying his recollections hugely. “For two or three years after that he was ’round with a fiddle and turkey and a sheet of tin. He’d put the turkey on the tin with nettin’ around and set behind and fiddle ‘Speed the Plough,’ and keep moving a lamp back and forth under that tin with his toe, and the old gobbler would have to tip-toe Nancy mighty lively to hunt for the cool places. Looked like he was jiggin’. I’m knowin’ to it that he cleaned up sev’ral thousand dollars on that ‘dancin’ turkey,’ as he called it.
“All the time his father couldn’t do nothin’ with him! Kind of a good-meanin’ chap, Hime allus was, though. Lib’ral with his money. Come easy, went easy. Drove a nice team. Girls all liked him. No girl caught him, though, till little Myry Austin got into long dresses. Hime was nigh onto thirty then, and had gone into a general dickerin’ bus’ness about the same as King Bradish does in town now; sold produce on commission, you know, and handled farmin’ tools, and so forth. He got to be real likely them days, and he reelly did think an awful sight of that Austin girl. It straightened him all out, havin’ her take a likin’ to him, and ’twas all understood in P’lermo as bein’ settled between ’em. And then what did young Klebe Willard do but come back from college with a cap on the back of his head ’bout as big as a cooky and his hair puffed out in front and puttin’ on more airs than a pigeon on a ridgepole. And havin’ nothin’ else to do he cut out Hime, and Hime didn’t know it for a long time, ’cause Klebe done his courtin’ on the sly on account of the old man. And when Hime did find it out—last one almost in the village, as us’ly happens in them cases, and got the mitten—well, you talk about goin’ to Tophet at an angle of forty-five with the track greased! Nothin’ but cards and hoorah-ste’boy, and tryin’ to make believe he didn’t care. I swanny, ’twas pitiful when you knowed what was underneath.”
Amazeen sighed and bored his cane into the soil, his elbows on his knees.
“There was excuses for him, most of us knowed that!” volunteered Uncle Buck.
“And as though he hadn’t done enough in breakin’ up the engagement—which wa’n’t no trouble, seein’ that Hime was so much older and she only kind o’ silly and teetered up by havin’ a dude like Judge Willard’s boy show her attention—Klebe had to go and sass Hime one ev’nin’ right here in front of this store—-that was when old Bruce owned it. Hime was pretty well tea-ed up—drinkin’ some, you understand, along with the rest—and he drove up here, leaned back and looked a long time at Klebe, who was standin’ on the platform smokin’ a cigarette. ‘I bought her ev’rything I could think of,’ says Hime, ‘but she had to go dicker for a poodle-dog and trade herself off, even swap!’
“Now with Hime so wrought up and all that, Klebe ought to have passed along, but he thought he had a tongue-walloper’s license, bein’ Coll Willard’s boy, and started in and called Hime ev’rything he could lay tongue to and then pitched into the Look fam’ly, root and branch in general; called old Look an ignorant clod-hopper, and said that sendin’ Phin to college was about like tryin’ to gold-plate an Early-Rose potater. And then he barked right out there in public—bein’ dizzy-headed by that time, I reckon—that all Myry Austin had cared about Hime, anyway, was to watch him perform ’round her, same as boys spit on a stick and throw it into a mill-pond for Towser to fetch back. And when Hime still set there takin’ it, Klebe was startin’ in on things that was worse still, when Hime came over his waggon wheel like a pick’rel after a skip-bait and—well, when ’twas over Klebe Willard had marks on his face that will always be there. Hime picked him up—everyone was too scared to mess in—and lugged him on his back to Judge Willard’s and throwed him over the fence about where he boosted the old man to-day, and hollered: ‘Here’s something to feed to your cat!’ Then he came back and got into his team before old Constable Denslow had got so he could speak.
“‘I shall have to arrest you, Hime,’ he says, ‘as I reckon you’ve killed him!’
“‘Arrest hell!’ says Hime. ‘I tried to kill him!’ And he slashed old Denslow across the face with his whip and went out of the village, hootin’ and gallopin’ his horse, with eighteen hundred or two thousand dollars owin’ to people ’round here. And since that night Hime Look ain’t been seen in this village till yesterday, and from what was dropped by word o’ mouth ’tween him and Phin, it’s pretty plain he ain’t been heard from by his fam’ly, either.”
He checked his garrulous narration in order to relight his pipe.