Mullendore’s lips moved with an effort:
“There ain’t nothin’ after this.”
“Oh, my!” Teeters ejaculated in a shocked voice. “Don’t say heathen things like that! If you’d seen half of what I’ve saw you couldn’t nowise doubt.”
“There ain’t no hell—there ain’t no comin’ back.” The voice was stronger, and querulous.
Teeters wagged his head in horrified reproach.
“Mis’ Taylor, do you think the sperrits are goin’ to take holt?”
Turning to the lady who hoped to be his mother-in-law, Teeters’s eyes started in his head. He was familiar with weird gyrations of the kitchen table, and messages received through the medium of the ouija board, but he never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to as her “control” evidence itself in any such fashion as this.
With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor’s chest was rising and falling in convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in a trance.
Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did not understand, but in a vague way he regarded Mrs. Taylor as an unconscious fakir, whose spiritual communications bore the earmarks of something she had learned in a quite ordinary way.
There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeters was convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of Mullendore’s dull eyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life by an electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly between labored breaths:
“It is turgid—dark—all is confusion—spirits are assembling—they are spirits of unrest—there is no peace—no happiness. There is horror in every distorted face—they have met—violent deaths—they want to talk—they clamor to be heard—they—”
“It’s a lie!” Mullendore’s whisper was shrill, aspirate. “There ain’t no other world! There ain’t no comin’ back!”
“Clouds roll up—” she went on, “clouds of red smoke—they shut the spirits out—new ones come—dim at first—but I can’t see—yet. Wait!”
The woman’s stare seemed to carry her through and beyond the wagon cover into the invisible world she peopled with the dead. Her body was rigid; her face had the ossified gray look of stone; the labored jerks in which she spoke racked her body with the effort that it cost.
“Now—they’re coming! The smoke rolls back a bit—I see—quite plain—Oh! Oh!” A look of horror froze on her gray face, and her voice rose to a shriek. “He says he’s Mormon Joe! He cries—Confess! Confess!”
To Mullendore with his inflamed brain and nerves jangling like a network of loose wire, she seemed like a direct emissary from the place of torment, which was as real to him as the wagon in which he lay.
The half-breed had tried to convince himself by saying over and over mechanically: “There ain’t no hell—there ain’t no comin’ back—there ain’t nothin’ after this,”—but the denial was only of the lips—atavism was stronger than his will. He believed, as much as he believed that on the morrow the sun would rise, in a real and definite hell, filled with the shrieking spirits of the damned. In these final hours it had required all his weakened will to hide his fears and keep his tongue between his teeth. Now, like a man clinging by his finger tips to some small crevice in a cliff, he suddenly gave up. As he relaxed his grip he whispered with the last faint remnant of his strength:
“I own up—I set the gun—I—I—”
Teeters slipped an arm about his shoulders and raised him up.
“Where did you git it, Mullendore?”
His answer was a breath.
“Toomey.”
“One thing more—Where does Kate Prentice’s father live? His address—quick!” Teeters shook the wasted shoulders in his haste.
The muddy blue-gray iris was divided in half by the closing upper lids. Beneath the glaze there seemed a last malicious spark. Then his tongue clicked as it dropped to the back of his mouth, and Mullendore was dead.
* * *
CHAPTER XXIV
TOOMEY GOES INTO SOMETHING
Few in Prouty denied that there were forty-eight hours in the day that began about six o’clock on Saturday night and lasted until the same hour Monday morning. If there had been some way of taking a mild anesthetic to have carried them through this period, many no doubt would have resorted to it, for oblivion was preferable to consciousness during a Sunday in Prouty.
It could not, strictly, be called a Day of Rest, because there was not sufficient business during the week to make any one tired enough to need it.
When the church bells tinkled, the Episcopalians bowed patronizingly to the Presbyterians, the Presbyterians condescendingly recognized the Methodists, the Methodists, by a slight inclination of the head, acknowledged the existence of the Catholics. This done, the excitement of the day was over.
The footsteps of a chance pedestrian echoed in Main Street like some one walking in a tunnel. Children flattened their noses against the panes and looked out wistfully upon a world that had no joy in it.
The gloom of financial depression hung over Prouty like a crepe veil. If Prouty spent Sunday waiting for Monday, it spent the rest of the week waiting for something to happen. Prouty’s attitude was one of halfhearted expectancy—like a shipwrecked sailor knowing himself outside the line of travel, yet unable to resist watching the horizon for succor.
The Boosters Club still went on boosting, but its schemes for self-advertisement resembled a defective pin-wheel, which, after the first whiz, lacks the motive powers to turn further. The motive power in this instance was money. Prouty wanted money with the same degree of intensity that the parched Lazarus wanted water.
Real estate owners in Prouty regarded their property without enthusiasm, for there were few residences not ornamented with a “plaster” in the form of a mortgage. Abram Pantin’s boast that he never “held the sack” was heard but seldom, for there was more than a reasonable doubt that he was able to collect the interest on his farm mortgages, to say nothing of the principal.
The town was at a stage when merely to eat and go on wearing clothes was cause for self-congratulation. It was conceded that a person who could exist in Prouty could live anywhere. Its citizens seemed to partake of the nature of the cactus that, grubbed up and left for dead, always manages somehow to get its roots down again.
The Prouty Grit still called the attention of the world to the country’s natural resources, but Mr. Butefish’s editorials had a hollow ring, like the “spiel” of the sideshow barker, who talks in anticipation of a swift kick from a dissatisfied patron.
Major Prouty, who had hoped to die in his boots, picturesquely, had passed away quietly in his bed with acute indigestion from eating sour-dough sinkers of his own manufacture. It was cold the day he was buried, so not many went to the funeral, and the board which had been put up to mark his grave, until the town could afford a suitable monument, had blown over. A “freighter” had repaired his brake block with a portion of the marker, so no one except the grave digger was sure where the Major lay.
Jasper Toomey at this period of his career was engaged in the real estate business. About ninety per cent of Prouty’s residences were listed with him. In the beginning, while taking descriptions of the properties and making a confidential note of the lowest possible sums which would be accepted, he was busy and optimistic. But, this completed, business subsided suddenly. His few inquiries for properties came from buyers who had no cash available. The breath he expended in “working up deals” which came to nothing when the critical point was reached would have floated a balloon.
Toomey had no office, but conducted his affairs in winter from the chair by the radiator in the southwest corner of the Prouty House. In summer, he moved to the northeast corner of the veranda. To borrow
five dollars nowadays was a distinct achievement, and his sallow face had taken on the habitual expression of a hungry wolf waiting for strays and weaklings. Mrs. Toomey still anticipated the day when “Jap would get into something.”
As much worse as was Sunday than Monday, just so much worse was winter than summer in Prouty. Winter meant more coal, warmer clothes, high-priced food, and a period of hibernating until it was over. So it was in a kind of panic that Prouty suddenly realized that fall had come and another winter would soon be upon them. Thus, in a mood of desperation, the officers of the Boosters Club sent out notice of an important meeting to its members. It was urged most earnestly that each should come prepared to offer a new suggestion for the improvement of financial conditions in Prouty. The fact that the need was thus publicly admitted evidenced the urgency of the situation.
It seemed as though every plan that human ingenuity could devise had been already discussed, and shelved for the very excellent reason that there never was any capital with which to give the projects a try-out. While the members subscribed with glad and openhanded generosity, to collect the subscriptions was another matter.
Heretofore suggestions had come sporadically; now it was believed that as the concentrated wills of powerful minds are alleged to have moved inanimate objects, somewhat in the same fashion concerted effort on the part of the Boosters Club might result in something tangible.
The meeting was called for Monday night, and with only twenty-four hours in which to think of something for Prouty’s salvation, the heads of households taxed their brains diligently for an original idea to offer.
No such perturbation obtained in the Toomey family, however, where Mr. and Mrs. Toomey chattered in gay excitement, the like of which they had not experienced since their memorable trip to Chicago. With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Toomey swaggered, resembling nothing so much as a pheasant strutting and drumming on a log for his mate’s edification, and, not unlike the female bird of sober coloring, Mrs. Toomey looked and listened with a return of much of her old-time admiration, though the cause for Toomey’s present state of exultation was, in its inception, due to her own suggestion.
“I’ll show these pinheads something,” Toomey boasted. “The day’ll come,” he levelled at his wife an impressive finger, “when they’ll nudge each either and say, 'There goes Toomey’s Dog!'”
Mrs. Toomey sighed happily, “It’s like a story!”
“Nothing comes to you unless you go after it,” Toomey declared, in the voice of a man who has succeeded and is giving the benefit of his experience to the less fortunate.
“I wish you could be there when I spring it,” he chortled.
Yet the occasion for this rare exuberance in the Toomey family was merely a few courteous lines signed “John Prentiss,” inside the businesslike blue-gray envelope resting conspicuously on top of the clock on the mantelpiece. They had read and re-read it, extracting from it the last ounce of encouragement possible.
Mrs. Toomey had come across John Prentiss’s card in a drawer she was cleaning and the thought had come to her that therein lay a possibility which never had been tested. After all these years it might not be possible to reach him, and when he was found it might not be possible to derive any benefit from the scant acquaintance, but it was worth trying, and if there was a way, Jap would find it, so she had shown him the card and he had joined her in marveling at their negligence.
After due reflection, Toomey had written to Prentiss recalling the circumstances of their meeting and the fact that he had evidenced an interest in their country, and renewing his invitation for a visit. He went at some length into the details of the defunct irrigation project at Prouty, which if properly completed and managed was a sure and big winner. He had options on stock which gave him the controlling interest, he stated, and had little doubt that the remainder could be acquired easily. He urged Prentiss to come at his earliest convenience and look it over.
Toomey sent the letter to the hotel in Chicago which Prentiss had given as one of his permanent addresses and it was duly forwarded. After the lapse of a reasonable time, the answer had come from Denver. It had contained proper expressions of appreciation for the invitation, a wish to be remembered cordially to Mrs. Toomey, and concluded with the statement that his desire to see that section of the country had in no wise abated and, if possible, he would do so in the early winter, at which time he would be glad to look into the merits of the irrigation project.
Noncommittal, but friendly, the letter sent the blood racing through Toomey’s veins like a stiff drink of brandy. It stimulated his imagination like strong coffee and evoked the roseate dreams of hasheesh. Even Mrs. Toomey, cautious and conservative as she was by nature and through many disappointments, could not resist the contagion of her husband’s enthusiasm.
To say that Toomey looked forward with eagerness to this meeting of the Boosters Club is to express it inadequately. He counted the hours when he should be reinstated in the position which he had occupied when he first came to Prouty. Unexpressed, but none the less present, was a desire to show his teeth at those who had humiliated him by lending him money.
The Boosters Club now occupied a storeroom which it had rent free until such time as its owner should acquire a tenant. This privilege had been granted some three years previous, and there seemed no imminent danger of the club being obliged to vacate.
Behind a fly-specked window an equally fly-specked sheaf of wheat from North Dakota, and an ear of corn of gargantuan proportions from Kansas, proclaimed the Club’s belief that similar results might be obtained from the local soil—when it had water. There was a sugar beet of amazing circumference that had been raised in an adjacent county, and a bottle of sand that the Club was certain contained a rare mineral, if it were possible to get an honest assay on it. They exhibited also a can of pulverized gypsum, of which there was a sufficient quantity in sight in the vicinity to polish the brass trimmings of the world’s navies, if a “live wire” could be induced to take hold of its development. A miniature monument of rock faintly stained with copper rose in the center of the window, and a buffalo skull lent a note of historic interest.
The walls inside were decorated with the Club’s slogan, “Boost for Prouty.” The undertaker’s chairs were still doing duty, since there was so much truth in that person’s plaintive wail that “the climate was so damned healthy that nobody ever died,” there was seldom other use for them.
There was a pine table upon a raised platform, behind which Hiram Butefish remained, as before, the Club’s honored President.
In the corner was a stove which had been donated by the Methodist minister, because, presumably, of a refractory grate which it was found impossible to operate without profanity.
Into these comfortable and spacious quarters, a goodly number of Prouty’s representative citizens came singly and in squads upon the occasion of this important meeting.
Each member had kept his own solution of Prouty’s problem closely guarded, so no man knew what his neighbor had to offer until that one’s turn came to divulge it. In truth, it had been a long time since a meeting of such piquancy and interest had been called.
After some little preliminary business, Hiram Butefish, with a candor which never before had distinguished his public utterances upon this subject, declared flatly that Prouty was in a precarious, not to say desperate, condition. The county treasury was empty, the town treasury was empty, and the warrants of either had little more value than the stock certificates of an abandoned gold mine. What were they going to do about it? Should they sit quietly and starve like a lost tribe wandering in the desert? Did they wish to see their wives naked and their children hungry? No! Mr. Butefish smote the table until the crack in the water pitcher lengthened. Then by all that was Great and Good, somebody had to think of something!
Mr. Butefish had only said what everybody knew, but his manner of saying it sent a chill over every one present.
“Doc” Fussel, who
se sales during the day had been a package of rat poison and a bottle of painkiller, looked like a lemon that has lain too long in the window, when he arose and diffidently offered his suggestion for the relief of Prouty. The doctor’s voice when he was frightened had the rich sonorous tones of a mouse squeaking in the wall, and now as he ventured the suggestion that Prouty’s hope lay in raising peppermint, his voice was inaudible beyond the fifth row of chairs. In the rear of the room they caught the words “mint” and “still,” and were under the impression that he was advocating the manufacture of counterfeit money and moonshine whiskey. As a matter of fact, the doctor advised the purchase of large tracts of land which could be flooded and transformed into bogs. These bogs were to be planted in peppermint, for which, he averred, there was an insatiable demand. The world had yet to have too much peppermint. So long as there were babies there would be colic, and so long as there was colic there would be a need for peppermint; therefore, reasoning along the dotted line from A to Z, there always would be a market. Peppermint was the one industry requiring small capital which had not been overdone. He could go to Illinois and purchase a secondhand still of which he knew, at small cost. A bottling works for preparing and labeling the essence could be established in Prouty, and there was no reason why, in time, Prouty should not become the recognized peppermint center of America.
When the doctor sat down, after giving the back of the chair which he gripped a farewell wring that all but tore it loose from its sockets, Mr. Butefish arose and congratulated him upon the novelty of his suggestion and recommended that it be investigated carefully.
There was excellent reason to believe that Walter Scales, at no remote date, had been handling kerosene and saltfish, for the air in his vicinity was redolent of these commodities as he arose when called upon as the next in order.
Before speaking of the remedy for the present stagnant condition of “the fairest spot that the sun ever shone upon,” Mr. Scales stated that he wished to protest thus publicly against the practice which now obtained of pitching horseshoes in the main street of Prouty. There was nothing, he declared vehemently, which made so bad an impression upon a stranger as to see the leading citizens of a community pitching horseshoes in its principal thoroughfare.
The Fighting Shepherdess Page 25