Mr. Otto Schultz was married on Saturday to Miss Bumbelburg. He was the only candidate in town who was worth suing for breach of promise. Miss Bumbelburg, having waited many years for her chance, was not to be frightened by a Presidential proclamation. The duration of the war meant nothing to her. She had unlimited faith in the Kaiser. When the war was over he would come over to the United States and revoke all the silly old laws. And she was so positive about it that, after a rather heated interview in the home of Mr. Schultz, senior, that gentleman admitted it would be cheaper for her to come and live with them after the wedding than to present her with the thousand dollars she demanded in case Otto preferred war to peace.
Mr. Crow, on the 5th of June, strode proudly, efficiently, up and down Main Street, always stopping at the registration booth to slap former fiancés on the back and encourage them with such remarks as this:
“That’s right, son. If you’ve got to fight, fight for your country.”
To Mr. Alf Reesling he confided:
“I tell you what, Alf, when this here Kaiser comes up ag’inst me he strikes a snag. He couldn’t ‘a’ started his plot in a worse place than here in Tinkletown. Gosh, with all you hear about German efficiency, you’d ‘a’ thought he’d ‘a’ knowed better, wouldn’t you?”
THE PERFECT END OF A DAY
Anderson Crow Gets One on the Kaiser
A long, low-lying bank of almost inky-black clouds hung over a blood-red horizon. The sun of a warm, drowsy September day was going to bed beyond the scallop of hills.
Suddenly the red in the sky, as if fanned by an angry wind, blazed into a rigid flame; catching the base of the coal-black cloud it turned its edges into fire; and as the flame burnt itself out, the rich yellow of gold came to glorify the triumphant cloud. The nether edge seemed to dip into a lake, the shores of which were molten gold and upon whose surface craft of ever-changing colours lay moored for the coming night.
Anderson Crow, Marshal of Tinkletown, leaned upon his front-yard fence and listened to the rhapsodic comments of Miss Sue Becker on the passing panorama. Miss Becker, who had contributed several poems to the columns of the Tinkletown Banner, and more than once had exhibited encouraging letters from the editors of McClure’s, Scribner’s, Harper’s, and other magazines, was always worth listening to, for, as every one knows, she was the first, and, so far as revealed, the only literary genius ever created within the precincts of Tinkletown.
“You’ll have to write a piece about it, Sue,” said Anderson, shifting his spare frame slightly.
“No mortal pen, Mr. Crow, could do justice to the grandeur, the overpowering splendour of that vista,” said she.
Anderson took another look at the sunset,—a more or less stealthy one, it must be confessed, out of the corner of his eye. Sunsets were not much in his line.
“It’s a great vister,” he acknowledged. “I don’t know as I can think of a word that will rhyme with it, though.”
“There is such a thing as blank verse, Mr. Crow,” said Miss Becker, smiling in a most superior way.
Mr. Crow was thinking. “Blister wouldn’t be bad,” he announced. “Something about the vister causin’ a blister. I don’t know as you are aware of the fact, Sue, but I wrote consider’ble poetry when I was a young feller. Mrs. Crow’s got ’em all tied up in a pink ribbon. It’s a mighty funny thing that she won’t even show ’em to anybody.”
“Oh, but they are sacred,” said Miss Becker feelingly, as she looked over the rims of her spectacles at a spot in the sky some forty-five degrees above the steeple of the Congregational Church down the street.
“I don’t know as I meant ’em to be sacred at the time,” said he; “but there wasn’t anything in ’em that was unfittin’ for a young lady to read.”
“You don’t understand. What could be more sacred than the outpourings of love? What more—”
“’Course it was a good many years ago,” Mr. Crow was quick to explain.
“Love’s young dream,” chided Miss Becker coyly.
Mr. Crow twisted his sparse grey beard with unusual tenderness. “Beats all, don’t it, Sue, what a poet’ll do when he’s tryin’ to raise a moustache?”
“I am sure I don’t know,” said Miss Becker stiffly.
“Speakin’ about sunsets,” said he hastily, after a quick glance at her shaded upper lip, “how’s your pa? I heard he had a sinkin’ spell yestiday.”
“He’s better.” A moment later, with fine scorn: “His sun hasn’t set yet, Mr. Crow.”
“Beats all how he hangs on, don’t it? Eighty-seven last birthday, an’ spry as a man o’ fifty up to—” He broke off to devote his attention to a couple of strangers farther down the tree-lined street: two men who approached slowly on the plank sidewalk, pausing every now and then to peer inquiringly at the front doors of houses along the way.
Miss Sue Becker, whose back was toward the strangers, allowed her poetic mind to resume its interest in the sunset.
“Golden cloudlets float upon a coral—What did you say, Mr. Crow?”
“Ever see ’em before, Sue?”
“Hundreds of times. They remind me of the daintiest, fleeciest puffs of—”
“I’m talkin’ about those men comin’ up the street,” said the old town marshal sharply.
Miss Becker abandoned the transient sunset for something more durable. Forty-odd summers had passed over her head.
For one professedly indifferent to the opposite sex, Miss Becker went far toward dislocating her neck when Anderson Crow mentioned the approach of a couple of strange men.
“I’ve never seen either of them before, Mr. Crow,” she said, a little jump in her voice.
“That settles it,” said Anderson, putting on his spectacles.
“Settles what?”
“Proves they ain’t been in Tinkletown more’n twenty minutes,” he replied, much too promptly to suit Miss Becker, who favoured him with a look he wouldn’t have forgotten in a long time if he had had eyes in the back of his head. “They must be lookin’ for some one,” he went on, squinting narrowly. “Good-bye, Sue. See you tomorrer, I suppose.”
“I’m not going yet, Mr. Crow,” she said, moving a little closer to the fence. “You don’t suppose I’m going to let those men pursue me all the way home, do you?”
“They don’t look like kidnappers,” he said. “Besides, it ain’t dark enough yet.”
“Just what do you mean by that, Anderson Crow?” she snapped.
“What do I mean by what?” he inquired in some surprise.
“By what you just said.”
“I mean you’re perfectly safe as long as it’s daylight,” he retorted. “What else could I mean?”
The two strangers were quite near by this time—near enough, in fact, to cause Miss Becker to lower her voice as she said:
“They’re awfully nice looking gentlemen, ain’t they?”
Evidently Mr. Crow’s explanation had satisfied her, for she was smiling with considerable vivacity as she made the remark. Up to that instant she had neglected her back hair. Now she gracefully, lingeringly fingered it to see if it was properly in place. In doing so, she managed to drop her parasol.
To her chagrin, Marshal Crow took that occasion to behave in a most incredible manner. It is quite probable that he forgot himself. In any case, he picked up the parasol and returned it to her, snatching it, in fact, almost from beneath the foot of the nearest stranger.
“Oh, thank you—thank you kindly, Mr. Crow,” she giggled, and proceeded to let it slip out of her fingers again. “Oh, how stupid! How perfectly clumsy—”
“Did I hear you addressed as Mr. Crow?” inquired the foremost of the two strangers, halting abruptly. He was a tall, florid man of forty or thereabouts, with a deep and not unpleasant voice. His companion was also tall but very gaunt and sallow. He wore huge round spectacles, hooked over his ears. Both were well dressed, one in grey flannel, the other in blue serge.
“You did,” said the town marshal,
straightening up. “You dropped your umbrell’ ag’in, Sue,” he added. “Yes, sir, my name’s Crow.”
Miss Becker waited a few seconds and then picked up the parasol.
“The celebrated Anderson Crow?” asked the man with the glasses, opening his eyes a little wider.
Mr. Crow suddenly remembered that he was in his shirt-sleeves. His faded blue sack-coat—”undress,” he called it—hung limp and neglected on the gate-post.
“More or less,” he admitted, wishing to goodness he had on his best pair of “galluses” instead of the ones he was wearing.
“Marshal of Tinkletown, I believe?” said the florid stranger, raising his eyebrows slightly.
“Excuse me,” said Anderson, conscious of a certain disparaging note in the speaker’s voice, which he quite naturally laid to the “galluses.” Without turning his back toward them he retrieved his coat from the gate-post, remembering in time that those “plaguey” suspenders had played him false that day and Alf Reesling had volunteered to “tie a knot in ’em,” somewhere in the back. “I could fine myself five dollars fer goin’ without my uniform,” said he, as he slipped an arm into one sleeve. “It’s one of my hide-boundest rules,” and his other arm went in—not without a slight twinge, for he had been experiencing a touch of rheumatism in that shoulder. “Yes, sir, I’m the Marshal o’ Tinkletown,” he added, indicating the bright nickel star that gleamed resplendent among an assortment of glittering and impressive dangling emblems.
The man with the spectacles peered intently at the collection on Mr. Crow’s breast.
“You appear to be almost everything else as well, Mr. Crow,” said he, respectfully.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to be going,” put in Miss Becker at this juncture. “Give my love to the girls, Mr. Crow.”
She moved off up the board-walk, her back as stiff as a ramrod. Any one with half an eye could see that she was resolved not to drop the parasol again. No savage warrior on battle bent ever gripped his club with greater determination.
“So long,” was all that Marshal Crow could spare the time to say. “Yes sir,” he went on, making a fine show of stifling a yawn, “yes, sir, I’ve had a few triflin’ honours in my day. You gentlemen lookin’ fer any one in partic’lar?”
“Not now,” said the florid one. “We’ve found him.”
The spectacled man had his nose quite close to Mr. Crow’s badges. He read them off, in the voice and manner of one tremendously impressed. “Grand Army of the Republic. Sons of the American Revolution. Sons of Veterans. Tinkletown Battlefield Association. New York Imperial Detective Association. Bramble County Horse-Thief Detective Association. Chief of Fire Department. And what, may I ask, is the little round button at the top?”
The marshal was astonished. “Don’t you know what that is?”
“It doesn’t appear to have any lettering—”
“It don’t have to have any. That’s an American Red Cross button.”
“So it is,—so it is,” cried the other hastily. “How stupid of me.”
“And this one on the other lapel is a Liberty Loan button,—one hundred dollars is what it represents, if anybody should ast you.”
“I recognized it at once, sir. I have one of my own.” He raised his hand to his own lapel. “Why, hang it all, I forgot to remove it from my other coat this morning.”
“Well,” said Anderson drily, “there ‘pears to be some advantage in havin’ only one coat.”
“Mr. Marshal,” cut in the larger man brusquely, “we came to see you in regard to a matter of great importance—and, I may add, privacy. Having heard of your reputation for cleverness and infallibility—”
“As everybody in the land has heard,” put in the other.
“—we desire your co-operation in an undertaking of considerable magnitude. Quite frankly, I do not see how we can succeed without your valuable assistance. You—”
“Hold on! If you’re tryin’ to get me to subscribe to a set of books, so’s my name at the head of the list will drag other suckers into—”
“Not at all, sir—not at all. We are not book-agents, Mr. Marshal.”
“Well, what are ye?”
“Metallurgists,” said the florid one.
“I see, I see,” said Anderson, who didn’t see at all. “You started off just like a book-agent, er a lightnin’-rod salesman.”
“My name is Bacon,—George Washington Bacon,—and my friend bears an even nobler monicker, if that be possible. He is Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte—a direct descendant of both of those illustrious gentlemen.”
“You don’t say! I didn’t know Lincoln was any connection of Bonaparte’s.”
“It isn’t generally known,” the descendant informed him, with becoming modesty.
“Well, I’m seventy-three years old an’ I never heard—”
“Seventy-three!” gasped Mr. Bonaparte, incredulously. “I don’t believe it. You can’t be more than fifty, Mr. Crow.”
“Do you suppose I fought in the Union Army before I was born?” demanded Mr. Crow. “Where’d I get this G. A. R. badge, lemme ast you? An’ you don’t think the citizens of this here town would elect a ten-year-old boy to the responsible position of town marshal, do you? Why, gosh snap it, I been Marshal o’ Tinkletown fer forty years—skippin’ two years back in the nineties when I retired in favour of Ed Higgins, owin’ to a misunderstandin’ concernin’ my health—an’—”
“It is incredible, sir. You are the youngest-looking man for your years I’ve ever seen. But we are digressing. Proceed, Mr. Bacon. Pardon the interruption.”
Marshal Crow had drawn himself up to his full height,—a good six feet,—and, expanding under the influence of a just pride, his chest came perilously near to dislodging a couple of brass buttons. His keen little grey eyes snapped brightly in their deep sockets; his sparse chin whiskers, responding to the occasion, bristled noticeably. Employing his thumb and forefinger, he first gave his beard a short caress, after which he drew it safely out of line and expectorated thinly between his teeth with such astounding accuracy that both of the strangers stared. His objective was a narrow slit in the tree-box across the sidewalk.
“I couldn’t do that in a thousand years,” said Mr. Bacon, deeply impressed.
“You could do it in half that time if you lived in Tinkletown,” was Anderson’s cryptic return. “You ought to see Ed Higgins. He’s our champeen. His specialty is knot-holes. Ed c’n hit—”
“Are you interested in metallurgy, Mr. Crow?” broke in Mr. Bacon, a little rudely.
Anderson pondered a few seconds, squinting at the tree-tops. The two strangers waited his reply with evident concern.
“Sometimes I am, an’ sometimes I ain’t,” said he at last, very seriously. He even went so far as to shake his head slowly, as if to emphasize the fact that he had made a life-long study of the subject and had not been able to arrive at a definite conclusion.
“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Bonaparte. “That proves, Mr. Crow, that you are a man of very great discernment, very great discernment indeed.”
Mr. Crow brightened perceptibly. “I have to know a little of everything in my line of work, Mr. Lincoln.”
Mr. Bonaparte made no attempt to correct him. As a matter of fact, for a moment or two he was in some doubt himself; it was only after indulging in a hasty bit of mental jugglery that he decided his friend couldn’t possibly have introduced him as Bonaparte Abraham Lincoln, or Abraham Bonaparte Lincoln. He wished, however, that he had paid a little closer attention when Mr. George Washington Bacon arranged his names for him.
“We should like to have a few minutes’ private conversation with you, Mr. Marshal,” said Bacon, lowering his voice.
“Fire away, gents.”
“I—ahem!—I said private, Mr. Crow.”
“Well, if it’s anything you don’t want the birds to hear, I guess we’d better go up to the house. If you don’t mind that woodpecker up yander an’ them two sparrers out there in the road, I guess th
is is about as private a place as you’ll find in Tinkletown.”
“Haven’t you—an office, Mr. Crow?” demanded Mr. Bacon.
“Yes, but it ain’t private. Whenever I’ve got anything private to ‘tend to—er even think about—I allus go out in the middle of the street. Shoot ahead; nobody’ll hear you.”
“It will take some little time,” explained Mr. Bonaparte, anxiously. “Have you had your dinner?”
Anderson looked at him keenly. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Mr. Bonaparte means supper,” explained Mr. Bacon. “He is a bit excited, Mr. Crow.”
“He must be,” agreed Anderson, glancing at his watch. “Half-past six. Go ahead. We won’t be interrupted now till it’s time to go to bed.”
The two strangers in Tinkletown drew still closer—so close, indeed, that the town marshal, having had his pocket picked once or twice at the County Fair, fell back a little from the fence.
“You must be careful to show no sign of surprise, Mr. Crow,” said Bacon. “What I am about to say to you may startle you, but you—”
Anderson reassured him with a gesture.
“Perceed,” he said.
Whereupon the spokesman, Mr. Bacon, did a tale unfold that caused the town marshal to lie awake nearly all night and to pop out of bed the next morning fully an hour earlier than usual. For the time being, however, he succeeded so admirably in simulating indifference that the men themselves were not only surprised but a trifle disturbed. He wasn’t conducting himself at all as they had expected. At the conclusion of this serious fifteen minutes’ recital,—rendered into paragraphs by Anderson’s frequent interruptions,—the eager Mr. Bonaparte exclaimed:
“Well, Mr. Crow, doesn’t it completely bowl you over?”
“What’s that? Bowl me over? I should say not! Why, I knowed fer I can’t tell you how long that there’s gold up yander in my piece of timberland on Crow’s Mountain. Knowed it ever since I was a boy.”
His hearers blinked rapidly for a few seconds.
“Really?” murmured Mr. Bacon.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 266