by Mike Ashley
“No,” I replied.
“And you ain’t lonesome,” he observed. “Lots o’ people never heard of him; and never will. But in his way, he had this Burbank party skinned a league. I’ll tell yer about him if yer got time,” he volunteered.
I had the time, plenty of it; and I so said. Whereat, taking a long draught from the glass at his elbow, and wiping his trailing moustache on the back of his hand, he began:
“Back in ninety-nine I was prospecting around through Californy, looking for gold but finding nothing but sore feet and a thirst. Fate was sure handing me out a deal from the bottom of the deck, and I was redooced at length to one burrer, loaded with a shovel, and the habiliments I was standing in. I retained said shovel and raiments only because I couldn’t sell ’em and said burrer only because I couldn’t give him away.
“Well, one afternoon I’m tramping along with despair in my heart and even less in my stomach, wondering weakly whether there’s enough meat on the burrer to pay for mending the teeth I’m liable to break picking it off, when suddenly I comes to a turn in the trail and there before me spreads a vegetationous valley full of the most fullsome verdure that ever you see.
“In the middle of this valley there stands a ’dobe mansion and all around it the most amazing collection of sheds and shacks that ever you laid your lamps on. They was some high ones and some low ones and some long ones and some short ones. And what with the house, they all looks like a big Buff Cochin hen surrounded by a bunch of the most ill-assorted chickens that ever was.
“However, I ain’t hypercritical. ‘Where there’s life, there’s beans,’ says I to myself. ‘And if a party desire to deface the beauteous visage of Nature by sticking around on it a lot of five-and-ten-cent-store edifices, it ain’t none of my funeral as long’s I can get a handout. Git up, there, Gehenna,’ says I to the burrer; and we prepares to teeter down into the aforesaid verdant valley.
“Halfway down the hill there’s another bend in the trail. And as we comes around this, I stops short while the burrer does even better – for he turns a back somersault; and then sets there on the shovel too frightened to bat an eye.
“The one glimpse I has is plenty sufficient. I stands back to trying to make my convolutions convolute.
“‘I’ve heard about hunger bringing on hallucinations in a gent,’ I thinks to myself, ‘but never in a burrer. So maybe he sees all them delusions as well as me.’
“This thought gives me hope, and sufficient courage to look again; which I does.
“Before me, meandering saloobriously across the plain, is the worst looking collection of fauna that ever made merry in an Inebriates’ Home. It was sure a psychopathic ward assemblage, and then some. Four-footed things with wings, and two-footed ones without, and birds with hair on ’em, and fishes with laigs – great suffering Jemima! It was sure enough to make a party pin blue ribbons on himself until he couldn’t see out, and take up his residence permanent in the cellar of the headquarters of the WCTU.
“With my eyes bugged out so’s you could ’a’ knocked ’em off with a stick, I watched the procession out of sight and then turned to the burrer. He was setting there with a faraway look in his eyes, talking to himself.
“‘Come on, Gehenna,’ says I, nudging him gently with my shoe spikes. ‘Le’s get a move on ourselves toward yon villa and put an end to this debauch of starvation that we’ve been on; for if we’re seeing things like that today, tomorrow will behold us making suicide pacts and picking mud turtles out of each other’s hair.”
“Poor Gehenna has all he can do to get up on his pins, and we’re a very shaky pair as we wends our way onward to the Edison concrete villa aforementioned which looked as though it had been made in an ice cream mould and poured out before it had time to set properly.
“As we nears the colony of joovenile houses that I have before alooded to, I sees that they’re all coops and cages of different kinds. Some of ’em has barred winders, some of ’em hasn’t. Some of ’em’s empty. Some of ’em’s full. But I keeps my eyes resolutely to the fore; for I ain’t takin’ no chances. When a party has set on the edge of his bed for weeks at a time, throwing his boots at a blue jellyfish with pink wings and a plug hat, he learns that curiosity is a curse and he don’t pay no attention to no zoölogical exotic until it trips him up. But the burrer, being denied the valyooable data that is mine, immediately begins to rubber like an up-Stater in a sightseeing truck with the result that he becomes so obsessed with terrifying fears that his laigs won’t work, and I has to carry him the rest of the way. And as we comes around the corner, we sees, setting before the door, an old man teaching a large hornpout to set up on its hind laigs and beg.
“After focusing my already bugged eyes on this new spectacle, I begins to wonder if Gehenna himself is trooly reel. So I kicks him; and when he kicks me back, and I find it hurts, I’m delighted beyond words.
“So I smiles on the old party with deep sympathy and feller-feeling.
“That’s right,’ I says, encouragingly. ‘Humour yerself. When you get ’em as bad as that, it ain’t a particle of use to try to kill ’em. So jest set down and have a good time with ’em and byme-bye they’ll go away.’
“‘What’s the matter with you?’ asks the old man, sort o’ peevish-like.
“‘I don’t know,’ I says to the old party, ‘whether it’s stomachache or backache that’s ailing me. All I can tell yer is that I ain’t tasted food for so long that I’ve forgot even the smell of onions.’
“‘Lie down, Lucy,’ says the old man to the hornpout; and as the last named settles down comfortable with its head between its fore paws, the old party climbs up onto his feet. ‘Come on in the house,’ he says, ‘an’ I’ll see ’f I can get a snack for yer.’
“Taking Gehenna under my arm for company, I follers him into the house.
“The old man watches me thoughtfully as I loads into my shrunken frame four dollars’ worth of pork and beans and biscuits.
“‘I hopes my pets ain’t frightened you,’ he says, at len’th, apologetically, combing his whiskers with his fingers.
“‘Oh, not at all,’ I rejoins, p’litely. ‘I’ve had ’em myself, several times. They’re unpleasant, but not necessarily dangerous. And if you’ll swear off gradually, say cutting down half a pint a day at first, and then slowly increasing the stringency, it’s surprising how quick you’ll get rid of ’em.’
“He brushes my well-meant suggestions aside with an impatient wave of the hand and, stooping over, takes from the floor a long, bloo snake with green wings and three sets of laigs.
“‘Do you see this?’ he says.
“‘Yes,’ I replies. ‘And I may as well confess that it’s the first time I ever knowed delirium trimmings was contagious.’
“‘Feel of it,’ he says. ‘It won’t hurt you.’
“I grins.
“‘I know it,’ I says, ‘and good reason why. It ain’t there. I wore out three pairs of shoes and put my shoulder out of joint on two separate occasions finding out that simple fact.’
“‘Try,’ he says, shoving the snake at me.
“‘Why, sure,’ I says, ‘if it’ll please yer any.’
“I puts my hand out, confidently expecting it to go right through the snake and flat on the table. But it don’t. And I gives a yell that sends Gehenna scuttling under the stove and falls plumb over backward in my chair.
“‘Easy,’ says the old party. ‘They ain’t no danger.’
“‘Ain’t, eh!’ I says, a trifle peevishly, I fear, ‘I know that well enough. But it’s the strain on yer credulousness that I objects to,’ and I goes back three steps to get a flying start.
“‘Well, set down and have a piece of prune pie,’ he says.
“Jest at that juncshure, for a piece o’ pie, prune or otherwise, I’d have set down in the middle of a school of gryphons and gargoyles and been glad of the chance. So I done it. And the old party, after slicing me out a wedge of the succulent provender afore
said, sets down opposite me again.
“‘I,’ he says, at len’th, impressively, puttin’ down the snake and taking out of his vest pocket a creation that looked like a smallpox microbe magnified one million times, ‘am Vertigo Smith.’
“‘I don’t wonder,’ I says. ‘Was the name bestowed or acquired?’
“‘It was give me by my payrents,’ he rejoins, ‘who was well-intentioned parties, but sadly illiterate. They seen it in a almanac and, thinkin’ it sounded good, they gives it to me.’
“He continues:
“‘I,’ he says, ‘am a second Burbank. Or ruther, I should say, Burbank is a second me. For he deals with senseless and inanimate things like flowers and trees and froot and cord wood and such futile and contemptible inyootilities, while I devote my tireless energies and unlimitless genius to the animile kingdom. Them,’ and he waves his hand blithely at the snake and the smallpox germ, ‘are some of my eggsperiments. This,’ he goes on, patting the microbe gently, ‘is the result of mixing the life blood of the scorpion with that of the cockroach, and again crossing the combination with the tarantula. I eggs-pect in time to be able to instil into this lovely little creature the instinc’s and flesh of the sloothhound and finally of my cultivated rhinoceros, passing on my way through the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the grizzly bear, the rattlesnake, the Gila monster, and the panther.’
“‘That’ll make a fine pet when you get it finished, won’t it?’ I queries. ‘It’ll be a nice thing to replace lapdogs with.’
“He ignores my untimely facetiousness.
“‘It will add greatly to zoology,’ he asserts.
“‘And subtract greatly from anthropology,’ I suggests.
“‘And it’ll make a fine watch dog,’ he says.
“‘You’re right,’ I agrees. ‘The burglar will immediately begin to hump the dodo for first place, and that’s no lie.’
“‘Among my other interesting eggsperiments,’ he goes on, ‘was crossing a cat with a mouse. But this wasn’t entirely successful, being as when the resultant animile grew old enough to find out what it was, it chased itself to death.
“‘I have also,’ he goes on, ‘intermingled the blood of the horse and the ostrich, thereby securing a maximum of speed with a minimum of weight; and I found that the feathers that you could get off’n the horse would pay for his keep; whereby I got Edison’s newly discovered storage battery, that has been coming out sence I was a boy, beaten eighty ways for Christmas.
“‘Also, by weaving my way around through the species of Gordon setter, cow, and giraffe, I have obtained a animile meek, intelligent, that gives milk, that will do simple little errands like fetching you yer gloves and shutting the door, and that as well can be used to double advantage in the cherry-picking season.’
“‘If you could get a hen and a egg beater in that combination somewheres,’ I ventures, helpfully, for I’m getting a heap imbued with his ideas by this time, ‘and hang a bottle of good Four X around its neck, all you’d have to do would be to whistle and it would bring you an eggnog any time you was thirsty!’
“He ignores me. ‘At present,’ he says, ‘I am much interested in parasites. A parasite is a zoological antidote. Cats is parasites for mice. Dogs is parasites for cats.’
“‘I see!’ I eggsclaims. ‘Jest like drunkards is parasites for whisky, and panics is parasites for money.’
“‘That’s the idea,’ he approves, ‘except that you must stick to the fauna. Now,’ he goes on, ‘take mosquitoes for eggsample. You live, say, in Noo Jersey, or Pelham Manor, or some other badly infested State. Every time you go out on the piazza after four o’clock, you’re kep’ so busy slapping your laigs and neck that you can’t converse in anything eggscept profanity. Now jest imagine what a wonderful, priceless relief it would be if you could have, say, half a dozen mosquitoe parasites to set around on the back of your chair, or along the welts of your shoes, and nail the mosquitoes as fast as they come! And then, when bedtime had arrived, they’d set on your piller beside your head and pop every dad-blamed stygomia that tried to tap a blood vessel.’
“‘Fine!’ I agreed. ‘Immense!’
“‘I think so,’ he acquiesced, complacently. ‘We can afford to sell ’em for a quarter a piece. They’ll be self-supporting in summer and will hibernate all winter among your summer clo’es, keepin’ the moths out of ’em and living on a small quantity of camphor.’
“‘It sounds fine,’ I says. ‘It sure does!’
“‘It is fine,’ he says. ‘But there’s more money in big things. And the biggest thing of all is the diplodocus.’
“‘The what?’ says I.
“‘The diplodocus,’ he says. ‘It’s reptile,’ he says, ‘or a mammal, or a fish, or a bird, or something like that. I don’t know what it is. But I’m going to find out or bust a suspender trying. Andrew Carnegie bought the skeleton of one the other day for twenty thousand, or fifty thousand, dollars ’r something like that. And if the skeleton is worth that much, the finished product ought to be worth a million. So,’ he announced, impressively, ‘I’m going to raise a herd of ’em for the home and eggsport trade. I figure that when I get ’em to multiplying right, I’ll have a income of at least twenty or thirty million per annually. I’ll work slow and secret at first, selling stuffed ones to the natural hist’ry mooseums. Then I’ll branch out, taking in zoological gardens and circus menageries. And after they get all supplied, I can sell ’em for domestic animals. They’d be fine for moving houses or towing canal boats.’
“Well, to stretch a short story, the old gent took a great fancy to me; and I did to him. So when he offered me a job helping him with the speciments, I took it and settled down with him in the poured-out villa. And though I was nervous at first, it wasn’t long before I got use’ to it and didn’t mind it no more’n if I’d always lived in a psychopathic ward. And Gehenna he used to have good times, too, playing with the horsetriches and the kangaroosters.
“There was a lot of animales there that I hadn’t seen. He kep’ ’em in an immense corral, around the corner of the mountain. There was some elephants he was makin’ over into mastodons and mammoths and behemoths and things, and a two-laigged rhinoceros that was as big as from here to yonder and back.
“We used some of this fancy stock to start our diplodocus with. We had one biped that was worked up through a penguin to a hippotamus that was a peach. And another creation that was composed of kangaroos, whales, and emus. And so on, by arduous, unreemitting, painstaking effort we began to get results, and after several years there came one day something that looked a whole lot like the desired fauna.
“When it got big enough to balance itself with having its head and tail resting on the ground, we stood around one day looking at it.
“‘There something wrong,’ remarked old Smith, loogoobriously. ‘It looks more like a cuspidor than a diplodocus. What’s ailin’, d’yer s’pose?’
“‘You can search me,’ I says. ‘It looks as though it had lost its last friend, and that friend owin’ it money. I don’t b’lieve it’s got enough initiative to bite if you was to stick your finger in its mouth and make faces at it.’
“Old Smith brought his hand down on his knee so hard he like to split the cap.
“‘You’ve hit it,’ he eggsclaimed. ‘It’s too mushy and meek and lowly and humble looking. All them things we bred it through was soft and lumpy animiles, like cows and hippotamuses and things. It wants a little bit o’ fervor injected into it – some stamina and gumption, by heck. We should ’a’ mixed in the rhinoceros and the rogue elephant. That would straighten it up and stiffen it out and make it a diplodocus and a diplodocus right!’
“‘That’s so,’ I agrees. ‘We’ll insert the requisite blood and sperit. This present disapp’inting speciment, though, will help us increase the stature.’
“Well, that was what we done. We got the old rogue elephant that was that cantankerous that he had to be handled with a derrick and dynamite, and the rhi
noceros who was a natural-born misanthrope and a fighter from the word go, and ’way behind that, and proceeded to go back along the fambly tree of our diplodocus and grafted them on at what we deemed suitable intervals.
“You can magine we was some eggscited as we waited. Our first diplodocus wasn’t no slouch. We’d had to build a special barn for it that was as big as the main tent of a three-ringed circus; it would take you ten minutes to walk around it and the longest ladder in the place wasn’t long enough to reach to its ridgepole. So you can imagine that our second was going to be some pumpkins. Old Smith had it all framed up that he wouldn’t let him go for a cent under half a million; and then only after he had a large fambly of descendants strewed over the valley.
“Well, he was right. That second diplodocus equaled, and even eggsceeded, our fondest hopes. He was so big that his skeleton would have made the one Carnegie bought look like an X-ray photograph of a dress form. It sure towered above its maternal ancestor like the Singer Building above the subway.
“To say that Vertigo and me was delighted is expressing it feebly. We was in transports of joy. Ecstatic happiness oozed out of us at every pore, and between, and all that morning we just took a hold of hands and danced around our new diplodocus. It was like playing Ring-Around-a-Rosy in a department store.
“Day by day we watched our creation grow and expand, both physically and mentally. Them big animiles, as a rule, are slow in machuring. But this one was right up to the speed limit. In less’n a week he could stand alone. He was weaned at three months. And after that it kep’ me and Vertigo busy fourteen hours a day rustling enough provender to keep them two diplodocuses from starving to death.
“Le’ me tell yer, it was some kind of a parlous job, was feeding them exotics. They had some dog in them somewhere, and from that the new one had a habit of wagging his tail; the old one was too puny. And Rover (we’d named the new one that) smashed the end of the house off one afternoon, in showing his gratitude for a couple of bales of hay we’d give him. Another day he knocked down three o’ them giant redwoods and an orange tree. We found some o’ the oranges four mile down the valley.