The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  The Chicago man bought some cannon firecrackers, and I bought a cow’s liver, and hitched it to a rope, and hid it in the back seat, and my Chicago friend and I took the back seat, and we got dad in the seat behind the driver, and started about an hour before dark out in the country, through a piece of woods that looked quite wolfy. On the way out the driver let his horses run away a few times, like you have seen in Russian pictures, and dad was beginning to sit up and take notice, and seemed to act like a man who expects every minute to be thrown over a precipice and mixed up with dead horses. Dad touched the driver once on the coat-tail and told him not to hurry so confounded fast, and the driver thought he was complaining because it was too slow, and he gave a Comanche yell and threw the lines into the air, and the horses just skedaddled, and run into a snow bank and tipped over the sledge, and piled us out on top of dad, but dad only said: “This is getting good.”

  We righted up, and dad wanted to know where all the pups came from that we had passed. I had been throwing out pieces of meat into the road for a mile or so, and the dogs were having a picnic. It was getting pretty dark by this time, and we started back to town, and I threw out my liver, fastened to the rope, and the Chicago man, who had given the driver a drink of vodka when we tipped over, told him, in Russian, that when the dogs began to follow us, to get hold of the liver, to yell “wolves,” and give the team the rein, for a five-mile run, and yell all the time, because we wanted to give the old gentleman a good time.

  Well, uncle, I would have given anything if you could have seen dad, when the dogs began to chase that liver, and bark and fight each other. The driver yelled something in Russian, and pointed back with his whip, the Chicago man said: “My God, we are pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves, and there is no hope for us,” and I began to cry, and implored dad, if he loved me, to save me.

  Dad stood up in the sledge and looked back, and saw the wolves, and he was scared, but he said the only thing to do was to throw something overboard for them to be chewing on while we got away, but he sat down and pulled a robe over his head and his lips were moving, but I do not know whom he was addressing.

  The Chicago man touched off a couple of cannon firecrackers behind the sledge, but that only kept the dogs back for a minute, and dad said probably the best thing to do was to throw me overboard and let them eat me, and I said: “Nay, nay, Pauline,” and then I think dad fainted away, for he never peeped again until the team had run away a lot more, and I cut my liver rope, and when we got into the suburbs of St. Petersburg the dogs had overtaken the liver, and were fighting over it.

  The driver had to pull up his horses as we struck the town, and dad must have got a whiff of the driver’s vodka, because he come to, and we got to the hotel all right, and I thought dad would simply die in his tracks, but the ride and the excitement did him good, and he wanted to buy a gun and go out wolf hunting the next day, but our tickets were bought and we shall get out of this terrible country to-morrow.

  Dad woke me, up in the night and wanted to know if I saw him when he pulled his knife and wanted to get out and fight the pack of wolves single-handed. I am not much of a liar, but I told him I remembered it well, and it demonstrated to me that he was as brave a man as the czar, “the Little Jack Rabbit,” as his people call him.

  Well, thanks to my wolf hunt, dad is all right again, and now we shall go to some country where there is peace. I don’t know where we will find it, but if such a country exists, your little Henry will catch on, if dad’s money holds out.

  Yours, covered with Gore.

  Hennery.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  Dad Wears His Masonic Fez in Constantinople—They Find the Turks Sensitive on the Dog Question—A College Yell for the Sultan Sends Him Into a Fit.

  Constantinople, Turkey.—

  My Dear Old “Shriner”—We got out of Russia just in time to keep from being arrested or blown up with a bomb. Dad wanted to go to Moscow, because he saw a picture once of Moscow being destroyed by fire by Napoleon, or somebody, and he wanted to see if they had ever built the town up again, but I felt as though something serious was going to, happen in that country if we didn’t look out, and so I persuaded dad to go to Turkey, and the day we started for Constantinople we got the news that the Nihilists had thrown a bomb under the carriage of the Grand Duke Sergius and blew him and the carriage into small pieces not bigger than a slice of summer sausage, and they had to sweep his remains up in a dustpan and bury them in a two-quart fruit jar. Wouldn’t that jar you?

  When dad heard about that you couldn’t have kept him in Russia on a bet, and so we let the authorities have all the money we had, giving some to each man who held us up, until we got out of the country, and then we took the first long breath we had taken since we struck the Godforsaken country of the czar. If the bombs hold out I do not think there will be a quorum left in Russia in a year, either czars, dukes or anything except peasants on the verge of starvation and workingmen who have not the heart to work. I wouldn’t take the whole of Russia as a gift, and have to dodge bombs night and day.

  Say, old man, you never dreamed that I knew all about you and dad joining the Masons that time, but I watched you and dad giving each other signs and grips, and whispering passwords into each other’s ears, in the grocery, nights, after you had locked up. I thought, at the time, that you and dad were planning a burglary, but when you both went to the lodge one night and stayed till near morning, and dad came home with a red Turkish fez and told ma that you and he had joined the shrine, which was the highest degree in Masonry, and you and he were nobles, and all that rot, I was on to you bigger than a house, and you couldn’t fool me when you and dad winked at each other and talked about crossing the hot sands of the desert.

  Well, dad brought his red fez along, ’cause I think he expected he would meet shriners all over the world, that he could borrow money of. When we struck Constantinople and dad saw that every last one of the Turks wore a red fez, he felt as though he had got among shriners, and he got his fez out of his trunk and he wears it all the time.

  Dad acts as familiar with the Turks here as though he owned a harem. We go to the low streets, about as wide as a street car, where Turks are selling things, with dad wearing his fez, and he begins to make motions and give grand hailing signs of distress, and the Turks look at him as though he had robbed a bank, and they charge enormous prices for everything, and dad pays with a smile, thinking his brother Masons are fairly giving things away. He looks upon all men who wear the fez as his brothers, and they look at him as though he was crazy in the head.

  The only trouble is that dad insists on talking to the women here without an introduction, and a woman in Turkey had rather die than have a Christian dog look at her. Dad was buying some wormy figs of a merchant, who was seated on the floor of his shop, and giving him signs, when a curtain behind the Turk was pulled one side and a woman with beautiful eyes and her face covered with a veil, came out with a cup of coffee for the Turk. Dad shook hands with her, and said: “Your husband and I belong to the same lodge,” and he was going to go inside and visit the family, when the woman drew a small dagger out of the folds of her dress, and the Turk drew one of these scimeters, and it looked for a moment as though I was going to be a half orphan, particularly when dad put his hand on her shoulder and petted it, and smiled one of those masher smiles which he uses at home, and said: “My good woman, you must not get in the habit of jabbing your husband’s friends with this crooked cutlery, though to be killed by so handsome a woman would indeed be a sweet death,” but the bluff did not go, and the woman disappeared behind the curtain, and dad had the frantic husband to deal with.

  I have never seen a human being look as murderous as that Turk did as he drew his thumb across the blade of his knife, drew up his lip and snarled like a dog that has been bereaved of a promising bone by a brother dog that was larger.

  The Turk looked through his teeth, and his eyes seemed to act like small arc lights, that were to show him where
to cut dad, and dad began to turn pale, and looked scared.

  “Give him the grand hailing sign of distress,” said I as dad leaned against a barrel of dried prunes. Dad said he had forgotten the sign, and then I told him the only way out of it, alive, would be to buy something, so dad picked up a little jim-crack worth about ten cents, and gave the Turk a five-dollar gold piece, and while the Turk went in behind the curtain to get the change I told dad now was the time to skip, and you ought to have seen dad make a sprint out the door and around a corner, and up another street, while I followed him, and we got away from the danger of being stabbed, but dad got his foot into it again before we had gone a block.

  Nobody in Constantinople ever hurries, or goes off a walk, so when the people saw an old man, with a fez on his head, running amuck, as they say here, followed by a beautiful boy, they began to crawl into their holes, thinking dad was crazy, but when we were passing a sausage store, where about 20 dogs were asleep in the street, and dad kicked half a dozen dogs and yelled, “get out, you hounds,” that settled it, and they knew he was wrong in the head, and they yelled for the police, and we were pulled for fast driving, and taken before a Turkish justice of the peace, followed by the whole crowd.

  The justice did not wear a fez, but had on a turban, so dad did not give him any signs, but after jabbering a while they sent for an interpreter, who could talk pigeon English, and then dad had a trial, and I acted as his lawyer. I told about how dad had tried to be kind and genial to another man’s wife, and how, in his hurry to get away from the murderous husband he fell over a mess of dogs, and that he was a distinguished American, who was in Turkey to negotiate a loan to the sultan.

  Say, that fixed them, and they all made salams to dad, and bowed all over themselves, and the justice of the peace prayed to Allah, and the interpreter said we could go, but to be careful about touching a Turkish woman or a dog, particularly a dog, as the Turks were very sensitive on the dog question. So we went out of the courtroom and wandered around the town, and you can bet that dad didn’t look at any more women, though they were everywhere with veils that covered their faces so nothing but their eyes could be seen.

  Gee, but you never saw such eyes as these Turkish women have. They are big and black, and they go right through you, and clinch on the other side. Dad says the facilities for getting into trouble are better in Constantinople than any place we have been, as the men look like bandits and the women look like executioners. Dad thanked me for helping him out of that scrape by claiming he was the agent of a financial syndicate that wanted to lend money to the sultan. If I had said dad was a collecting agency, to make the sultan pay up, they would have sentenced him to be boiled in oil.

  Well, we thought we had been in trouble before, but we are in it now worse than ever. We heard at the hotel that at 11 o’clock in the morning the sultan would pass by in a carriage, with an escort, on the way to a mosque, to pray to Allah, and everybody could see the sultan, so we got a place on a balcony, and at the appointed time the procession came in sight. It was imposing, but solemn, and the people on both sides of the street acted like they do in America when the funeral of a great man is passing. No man spoke, and all looked as though they expected, if they moved, to be arrested and have a stone tied to their feet and thrown into the Bosphorus, the way they kill one of the sultan’s wives when she flirts with a stranger.

  We watched the soldiers, and finally the carriage of the sultan came, and in it was a dried up man, with liver complaint, with a nose like an eagle, and eyes like shoe buttons. He looked as though death would be a relief, and yet he seemed afraid of it, and there was no sound of welcome, such as there would be if Roosevelt was riding down Michigan avenue at Chicago, on the way to the stockyards to pray to Armour, instead of to Allah.

  You could have heard a pin drop. I said: “Dad, this is too solemn, even for a sultan. Let’s give him the university yell, and show that mummy that he has got two friends in Constantinople, anyway.” “Here she goes,” says dad, and we leaned over the railing, just as the sultan’s carriage was right in front of us and not ten feet away, and in that oppressive silence dad and I opened up, “U-Rah-Rah-Wis-Con-Sin, zip-boom-Ah!” and then we started to sing, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-Night.”

  Well, if any man in the crowd had touched off a bomb, there could have been no greater consternation. The sultan turned pale, as pale as so yellow a man could, and became faint, and fell over into the arms of a general who sat beside him, the Bazi Bazouks on horseback began to ride up and down the street, the crowd scattered, the sultan’s carriage was turned around and rushed back to the palace, with the ruler of Turkey having a fit, and about a hundred soldiers came up on the veranda, where dad and I had broke up the procession, and they lit on dad like buzzards on a dead horse, and took possession of the hotel, and began to search our baggage.

  One Turk choked dad until his tongue hung out of his mouth, and another took me by the ear and stretched it out so it was long as a mule’s ear, and they took us to a bastile and dad says it is all up with us now, because they will drown us like a mess of kittens in a bag, and all because we woke them up with a football yell in the wrong place.

  Well, we might as well wind up our career here as anywhere. Good-by, old man. You will see our obituary in the papers.

  Your repentant,

  Hennery.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  The Bad Boy and His Dad Meet the Cream of the Harem—“Little Egypt” Does a Dancing Stunt—The Sultan Wants to Send Fifty Wives to the President.

  Constantinople, Turkey.—

  My Dear Grocer-pasha: When I wrote you last I thought you would be in mourning for dad and I before this, as there seemed nothing for the Turks to do but to kill us after we had stampeded the sultan and all his soldiers by giving them a university yell, but after we had been confined in a sort of jail over night, dad and I had a heart to heart talk, and my diplomacy saved us for the time being. I told dad that what we wanted to do was to tell the Turks that dad represented the American people, and had a communication to make to the sultan personally, which would make him rich and happy.

  Well, say, they bit like a bass, and the next day they took us before the sultan at the palace. Dad dug up a package of blank gold mining stock in a mine that he was going to promote, though the mine was only a small hole in the ground, and the stock had been offered for one cent a share, the par value being a hundred dollars, so a man who got a share for a cent would, when the mine got to paying, get a hundred dollars for every cent he invested.

  Dad filled out one of the stock certificates for 1,000,000 shares, which would represent a capital equal to all the debts of Turkey, and we went before the sultan, and we couldn’t have been treated better if we had owned a brewery. Dad told his story to the sultan through an interpreter, while I looked around at the gorgeous surroundings and tried to think of something to do to wake them up.

  Dad said he came right fresh from the American people, and was authorized by his mining company to present the sultan with untold millions, for pure love of the Turkish people, whom they had seen riding and leading camels at the Chicago world’s fair, and dad produced the stock certificate for 1,000,000 shares of stock in the Golden Horn Gold Mining and Smelting company, and took out a handful of $20 gold pieces and showed them to the crowd as specimens of gold that came from our mine.

  He said our people did not expect anything in return, but just desired the good will of the Turkish empire. He said that President Roosevelt desired him to present his warmest regards to the sultan, and to invite him to visit America, and if he would consent to do so, an American war vessel would be furnished for him and the white house would be turned over to him for his harem, and dad said the president wanted him particularly to impress upon the sultan that if he came he must bring his folks, all his wives that would be apt to size up for beauty with our American women.

  Well, you ought to have seen that sickly looking sultan brace up when dad handed him
the millions of mining stock, and he grabbed the paper like an old clothes buyer would grab a dress suit that a wife had sold for 60 cents, belonging to her husband. He also wanted to see the gold that dad had shown as coming from the mine, and when dad showed him the yellow boys he took them as souvenirs and put them in his girdle, and then I thought dad would faint, but he kept his nerve like a poker player betting on a bobtail flush.

  The sultan asked so many questions about America that I was afraid dad would get all balled up, but he kept his nerve, and lied as though he was on the witness stand trying to save his life. Dad told the sultan he was authorized by the American people to inquire into the industries of Turkey, and what he particularly desired was an insight into the harems, as a national institution, because many American people were gradually adopting the customs of the orient, and he desired to report to congress as to whether we should adopt the customs of Turkey with her dried prunes and dates with worms in, and her attar of roses made of pig’s lard; her fez, to cure baldness, and her outlandish pants and peaked red Morocco shoes, and her harems.

  The sultan said he would like to show us a little bunch of the cream of the harem, who would do a stunt in the way of dancing, to celebrate the good feeling of the American people, and the visit of the distinguished statesman and gold miner to his realm, and dad said the sultan couldn’t turn his stomach with no cream of the harem, only they must keep their hands off him, and the sultan promised he should be as safe as a “unique,” whatever that is.

  Dad and I had hired knee breeches and things of a masquerade ball store, and we didn’t look half bad when the crowd of shieks and things formed a crescent around the sultan, who sat in a sort of barber’s chair with an awning over it, and they sounded a hewgag or something, and about a dozen pretty fine looking females, dressed like the ballet in a vaudeville show, came in and began to dance before the sultan.