Sure enough, he was, load and all; and 'twould have astonished you to see what fust-class fancywork his sister and the rest of the squaws turned out. Jacobs bought the whole lot, and ordered more; said he'd take all the tribe could scare up; and old Gingerbread—his American name, so he said, was Rose, Solomon Rose—went away happy. When I found what Jim Henry had paid him for the plunder, I didn't blame Rose for bein' joyful.
But Jacobs didn't care. He was all excitement and hurrah again. He had a new addition made to the Exchange sign. 'Twas "The Old Colony Women's Exchange, Curio Room, and Indian Exhibit" now; and inside of two days the Burke Smythes and their friends was callin' reg'lar, the auto parties was rollin' up to the door, and the money was rollin' in. Injun embroidery was somethin' new; and the summer gang snapped at it like bullfrogs at a red rag.
Then that partner of mine was seized violent with another rush of ideas to the head. I'm blessed if he didn't hire old Rose—the "Last of the Mohicans," he called him, among other ridiculous and outlandish names—to spend his days in that Injun Exchange loft. Paid him ten dollars a week, he did, just to set there and look the part. 'Twas a sinful waste of money, 'cordin' to my notion; but Jim Henry shut me up like a huntin'-case watch—with a snap.
"Who said he could sell?" he wanted to know. "I didn't, did I? I don't know that he can't—he's shrewd enough when it comes to sellin' us the stuff he brings with him; but if he don't sell a fifty-cent article—"
"Which he won't," I interrupted; "for there's nothin' less than two-seventy-five in the robbers' den, and you know it. How you have the face to charge—"
"Will you be quiet?" he wanted to know. "As I say, whether he sells or not, he's wuth his wages twice over. Can't you understand? Just oblige me by rubbin' your brains with scourin' soap or somethin', and try to understand. All the auto bunch ain't lambs; some of them—the males especially—are a fairly cagey collection; and there's been doubts expressed concernin' the genuineness of our Injun exhibit. But with old Uncas—with the Last of the Mohicans himself right on deck as a livin' guarantee, why, we could sell clam-shells as small change from Sittin' Bull's wampum belt, and never raise a sacrilegious question even from a Unitarian freethinker. It's a cinch."
"See here, Jim Henry," says I, "if this thing's a fraud, I won't have anything to do with it."
"Neither will I," says he, emphatic. "Frauds don't pay, not in the long run. But grandmother's genuine antiques and the A-number-one, Simon-pure embroideries of the noble red man—or woman—pay, and don't you forget it."
They did pay; and old Mohican himself was a payin' investment, too, in spite of my doubts and Jeremiah prophesyin'. He made a ten-strike with every female that hit that loft. They said he was so "quaint," and "odd," and "pathetic." Mrs. Burke Smythe vowed there was somethin' "big" and "great" about him—meanin' his nose or his boots, I presume likely—and, somehow or other, though he didn't look like a salesman, he sold. And every week or so he'd take a day off and go back home, to return with a fresh supply of tidies, and lace, and gimcracks. I changed my mind about Injuns. I see right off that all the yarns I'd read about 'em was lies. They didn't murder nor scalp their enemies—they smothered 'em with lamp mats.
And 'twa'n't fancywork alone that the Rose critter fetched back from these home v'yages of his. He struck an "antique" vein somewheres in the reservation; and not a week went by that he didn't resurrect an old bedstead or a table or a spinnin' wheel or somethin', and fetched 'em down in an old wagon towed by an old white horse. The "children of the forest"—which was another of Jim Henry's names for the Injuns and half-breeds—didn't give up these things for nothin'; far from it. We had to pay as much as if they was made of solid silver; but we sold 'em at gold prices, so that part was all right.