“The—the what?”
“Ole Kaiser Bill. Say, you was down there quite a little spell, an’ they won’t let me go down. What does a wireless plant look like, Anderson?”
* * * *
That evening Marshal Crow sat on the porch in front of Lamson’s store, smoking a fine cigar, presented to him by Harry Squires, reporter for the Banner. He had a large audience. Indeed, he was obliged to raise his voice considerably in order to reach the outer rim.
He had been called a hero, a fearless officer, and a lot of other pleasant things, by the astonished United States marshals, and he had been given to understand that he would hear from Washington before long. Mr. Bacon (Kurt von Poppenblitz) and Mr. Bonaparte (Conrad Bloom) had also called him something, but he didn’t mind. His erstwhile partners, with their four or five henchmen, were now well on their way to limbo, and Mr. Crow was regaling his hearers with the story. During the first recital (this being either the ninth or tenth), Alf Reesling had been obliged to prompt him—a circumstance readily explainable when one stops to consider the effect of the murderous blow Mr. Crow had received.
“’Course,” said Anderson, “they did fool me at first. But I wasn’t long gittin’ onto ’em. I used to sneak up there and investigate ever’ now an’ ag’in. Finally I got onto the fact that they was German spies—I got positive proof of it. I can’t tell you just what it is, ’cause it’s government business. Then I finds out they got a wireless plant all in order, an’ ready to relay messages to the coast o’ Maine, from some’eres out west. So today, I goes over to Justice Robb’s and gits a warrant for intoxication. That was to make it legal fer me to bust into their shanty if necessary. Course, the drunk charge was only a blind, as I told the U. S. marshal. I went right straight to that underground den o’ their’n, an’ afore they knowed what was up, I leaped down on ’em. Fust thing I done was to put the big and dangerous one horse de combat. He was the one I was worried about. I knocked him flat an’ then went after t’other one. He let on like he was surrenderin’. He fooled me, I admit—’cause I don’t know anything ’bout wireless machinery. All of a sudden he give me a wireless shock—out o’ nowhere, you might say—an’ well, by cracky, I thought it was all over. ‘Course, I realize now it was foolish o’ me to try to go up there an’ take them two desperadoes single-handed, but I—What’s that, Bud?”
“Mrs. Crow sent me to tell you if you didn’t come home to supper this minute, you wouldn’t git any,” called out a boy from the outskirts of the crowd.
“That’s the second wireless shock you’ve had today, Anderson,” said Harry Squires, drily, and slowly closed one eye.
THE BEST MAN WINS!
Anderson Crow Meets His Waterloo and His Marne
For sixteen consecutive years Anderson Crow had been the Marshal of Tinkletown. A hiatus of two years separated this period of service from another which, according to persons of apparently infallible memory, ran through an unbroken stretch of twenty-two years. Uncle Gid Luce stoutly maintained—and with some authority—that anybody who said twenty-two years was either mistaken or lying. He knew for a positive fact that it was only twenty-one for the simple reason that at the beginning of the Crow dynasty a full year elapsed before Anderson could be convinced that he actually had been victorious at the polls over his venerable predecessor, ex-marshal Bunker, who had served uninterruptedly for something like thirty years before him.
It took the wisest men in town nearly a year to persuade the incredulous Mr. Bunker that he had been defeated, and also to prove to Mr. Crow that he had been elected. Neither one of ’em would believe it.
It was the consensus of opinion, however, that Anderson Crow had served, all told, thirty-eight years, the aforesaid hiatus being the result of a decision on his part to permanently abandon public life in order to carry on his work as a private detective. Mr. Ed. Higgins held the office for two years and then retired, claiming that there wasn’t any sense in Tinkletown having two marshals and only paying for one. And, as the salary and perquisites were too meagre to warrant a division, and the duties of office barely sufficient to keep one man awake, he arrived at the only conclusion possible: it was only fair that he should split even with Anderson.
After thinking it over for some time, he decided that about the best way to solve the problem was for him to take the pay and allow Anderson to do the work,—an arrangement that was eminently satisfactory to the entire population of Tinkletown.
Elections were held biennially. Every two years, in the spring, as provided by statute, the voters of Tinkletown—unless otherwise engaged—ambled up to the polling place in the rear of Hawkins’s Undertaking Emporium and voted not only for Anderson Crow, but for a town clerk, a justice of the peace, and three selectmen. No one ever thought of voting for any one except Mr. Crow. Once, and only once, was there an opposition candidate for the office of Town Marshal. It is on record that he did not receive a solitary vote.
Republicans and Democrats voted for Anderson with persistent fidelity, and while there were notable contests for the other offices at nearly every election, no one bothered himself about the marshal-ship.
The regular election was drawing near. Marshal Crow was mildly concerned,—not about himself, but on account of the tremendous battle that was to be waged for the office of town clerk. Henry Wimpelmeyer, the proprietor of the tanyard, had come out for the office, and was spending money freely. The incumbent, Ezra Pounder, had had a good deal of sickness in his family during the winter, and was in no position to be bountiful.
Moreover, Ezra was further handicapped by the fact that nearly every voter in Tinkletown owed money to Henry Wimpelmeyer. Inasmuch as it was just the other way round with Ezra, it may be seen that his adversary possessed a sickening advantage. Mr. Wimpelmeyer could afford to slap every one on the back and jingle his pocketful of change in the most reckless fashion. He did not have to dodge any one on the street, not he.
Anderson Crow was a strong Pounder man. He was worried. Henry Wimpelmeyer had openly stated that if he were elected he would be pleased to show his gratitude to his friends by cancelling every obligation due him!
He was planning to run on what was to be called the People’s ticket. Ezra was an Anderson Crow republican. Tinkletown itself was largely republican. The democrats never had a chance to hold office except when there was a democratic president at Washington. Then one of them got the post-office, and almost immediately began to show signs of turning republican so that he could be reasonably certain of reappointment at the end of his four years.
Anderson Crow lay awake nights trying to evolve a plan by which Henry Wimpelmeyer’s astonishing methods could be overcome. That frank and unchallenged promise to cancel all debts was absolutely certain to defeat Ezra. So far as the marshal knew, no one owed Henry more than five dollars—in most cases it was even less—but when you sat down and figured up just how much Henry would ever realize in hard cash on these accounts, even if he waited a hundred years, it was easy to see that the election wasn’t going to cost him a dollar.
For example, Alf Reesling had owed him a dollar and thirty-five cents for nearly seven years. Alf admitted that the obligation worried him a great deal, and it was pretty nearly certain that he would jump at the chance to be relieved. Other items: Henry Plumb, two dollars and a quarter; Harvey Shortfork, ninety cents; Ben Pickett, a dollar-seventy-five; Rush Applegate, three-twenty; Lum Gillespie, one-fifteen,—and so on, including Ezra Pounder himself, who owed the staggering sum of eleven dollars and eighty-two cents. There was, after all, some consolation in the thought that Ezra would be benefited to that extent by his own defeat.
Naturally, Mr. Crow gave no thought to his own candidacy. No one was running against him, and apparently no one ever would. Therefore, Mr. Crow was in a position to devote his apprehensions exclusively to the rest of the ticket, and to Ezra Pounder in particular.
He could think of but one way to forestall Mr. Wimpelmeyer, and that was by digging down into his own
pocket and paying in cash every single cent that the electorate of Tinkletown owed “the dad-burned Shylark!” He even went so far as to ascertain—almost to a dollar—just how much it would take to save the honour of Tinkletown, finding, after an investigation, that $276.82 would square up everything, and leave Henry high and dry with nothing but the German vote to depend upon. There were exactly twenty-two eligible voters in town with German names, and seven of them professed to be Swiss the instant the United States went into the war.
Mr. Crow was making profound calculation on the back of an envelope when Alf Reesling, the town drunkard, came scuttling excitedly around the corner from the Banner office.
“Gee whiz!” gasped Alf, “I been lookin’ all over fer you, Anderson.”
“Say, can’t you see I’m busy? Now, I got to begin all over ag’in. Move on, now—”
“Have you heard the latest?” gulped Alf, grabbing him by the arm.
“What ails you, Alf? Wait a minute! No, by gosh, it’s more like onions. For a second I thought you’d—”
“I’m as sober as ever,” interrupted Alf hotly.
“That’s what you been sayin’ fer twenty years,” said Anderson.
“Well, ain’t I?”
“I don’t know what you do when I’m not watchin’ you.”
“Well, all I got to say is I never felt more like takin’ a drink. An’ you’ll feel like it, too, when you hear the latest. Maybe you’ll drop dead er somethin’. Serve you right, too, by jiminy, the way you keep insinyating about—”
“Go on an’ tell me. Don’t talk all day. Just tell me. That’s all you’re called on to do.”
“Well,” sputtered Alf. “Some one’s come out ag’in you fer marshal. I seen the item they’re printin’ over at the Banner office. Seen the name an’ everything.”
Anderson blinked two or three times, reached for his whiskers and missed them, and then roared:
“You must be crazy, Alf! By thunder, I hate to do it, but I’ll have to put you in a safe—”
“You just wait an’ see if I’m—”
“—safe place where you can’t harm nobody. You oughtn’t to be runnin’ round at large like this. Here! Leggo my arm! What the dickens are you tryin’ to—”
“Come on! I’ll show you!” exclaimed Alf. “I’ll take you right around to the Banner office an’—say, didn’t you know the People’s Party nominated a full ticket las’ night over at Odd Fellers’ Hall?”
Anderson submitted himself to be led—or rather dragged—around the corner into Sickle Street.
Several business men aroused from mid-morning lassitude allowed their chairs to come down with a thump upon divers mercantile porches, and fell in behind the two principal citizens of Tinkletown. Something terrible must have happened or Marshal Crow wouldn’t be summoned in any such imperative manner as this.
“What’s up, Anderson?” called out Mort Fryback, the hardware dealer, wavering on one leg while he reached frantically behind him for his crutch. Mort was always looking for excitement. He hadn’t had any to speak of since the day he created the greatest furor the town had experienced in years by losing one of his legs under an extremely heavy kitchen stove.
“Is there a fire?” shouted Mr. Brubaker, the druggist, half a block away.
* * * *
Mr. Jones, proprietor of the Banner Job Printing office, obligingly produced the “galley-proof” of the account of the People’s Convention, prepared by his “city editor,” Harry Squires, for the ensuing issue of the weekly. Mr. Squires himself emerged from the press-room, and sarcastically offered his condolences to Anderson Crow.
“Well, here’s a pretty howdy-do, Anderson,” he said, elevating his eye-shade to a position that established a green halo over a perfectly pink pate.
“Howdy-do,” responded Anderson, with unaccustomed politeness. He was staring hard at the dirty strip of paper which he held to the light.
“Didn’t I tell you?” exclaimed Alf Reesling triumphantly. “There she is, right before your eyes.”
Mr. Reesling employed the proper gender in making this assertion. “She” was right before the eyes of every one who cared to look. Anderson slowly read off the “ticket.” His voice cracked deplorably as he pronounced the last of the six names that smote him where he had never been smitten before.
Clerk—Henry Wimpelmeyer
Justice of the Peace—William Kiser
Selectman, First District—Otto Schultz
Selectman, Second District—Conrad Blank
Selectman, Third District—Christopher Columbus Callahan
Marshal—Minnie Stitzenberg.
A long silence followed the last syllable in Minnie’s name, broken at last by Marshal Crow, who turned upon Harry Squires and demanded:
“What do you mean, Harry Squires, by belittlin’ a woman’s name in your paper like this? She c’n sue for libel. You got no right to make fun of a respectable, hard-workin’ woman, even though she did make a derned fool of herself gittin’ up that pertition to have me removed from office.”
“Well, that’s what she’s still trying to do,” said Harry.
“What say?”
“I say she’s still trying to remove you from office. She’s going to get your hide, Anderson, for arresting her when she tried to make that Suffrage speech in front of the town hall last fall.”
“I had a right to arrest her. She was obstructin’ the public thoroughfare.”
“That’s all right, but she said she had as much right to block the street as you had. You made speeches all over the place.”
“Yes, but I made ’em in good American English, an’ she spoke half the time in German. How in thunder was I to know what she was sayin’? She might ‘a’ been sayin’ somethin’ ag’in the United States Government, fer all I knew.”
“Well, anyhow, she’s going to get your scalp for it, if it’s in woman’s power to do it.”
“I’m ag’in any female citizen of this here town that subscribes to a German paper printed in New York City an’ refuses to read the Banner,” declared Anderson loudly—and with all the astuteness of the experienced politician. “An’ what’s more,” pursued Anderson scornfully, “I’m ag’in that whole ticket. There’s only one American on it, an’ he was a Democrat up to las’ Sunday. Besides, it’s ag’in the law to nominate Minnie Stitzenberg.”
“Why?” demanded Harry Squires.
“Ain’t she a woman?”
“Certainly she is.”
“Well, ain’t that ag’in the law? A woman ain’t got no right to run for nothin’,” said Anderson. “She ain’t—”
“She ain’t, eh? Didn’t you walk up to the polls last fall and vote to give her the right?” demanded Harry. “Didn’t every dog-goned man in this town except Bill Wynkoop vote for suffrage? Well, then, what are you kicking about? She’s got as much right to run for marshal as you have, old Sport, and if what she says is true, every blessed woman in Tinkletown is going to vote for her.”
Marshal Crow sat down, a queer, dazed look in his eyes.
“By gosh, I—I never thought they’d act like this,” he murmured.
Every man in the group was asking the same question in the back of his startled brain: “Has my wife gone an’ got mixed up in this scheme of Minnie’s without sayin’ anything to me?” Visions of feminine supremacy filled the mental eye of a suddenly perturbed constituency. The realization flashed through every mind that if the women of Tinkletown stuck solidly together, there wasn’t the ghost of a chance for the sex that had been in the saddle since the world began. An unwitting, or perhaps a designing, Providence had populated Tinkletown with at least twenty more women than men!
* * * *
Alf Reesling was the first to speak. He addressed the complacent Mr. Squires:
“I know one woman that ain’t goin’ to vote for Minnie Stitzenberg,” said he, somewhat fiercely.
“What are you going to do?” inquired Harry mildly. “Kill her?”
“Nothin’ as triflin’ as that,” said Alf. “I’m goin’ to tell my wife if she votes for Minnie I’ll pack up and leave her.”
“Minnie’s sure of one vote, all right,” was Harry’s comment.
Fully ten minutes were required to convince the marshal that Minnie Stitzenberg was a bona fide candidate.
Anderson finally arose, drew himself to his full height, lifted his chin, and faced the group with something truly martial in his eye.
“Feller citizens,” he began solemnly, “the time has come for us men to stand together. We got to pertect our rights. We got to let the women know that they can’t come between us. For the last million years we have been supportin’ an’ pertectin’ and puttin’ up with all sorts of women, an’ we got to give ’em to understand that this is no time for them to git it into their heads they can support and pertect us. Everybody, includin’ the women, knows there’s a great war goin’ on over in Europe. Us men are fightin’ that war. We’re bleedin’ an’ dyin’ an’ bein’ captured by the orneriest villains outside o’ hell—as the feller says. I’m not sayin’ the women ain’t doin’ their part, mind you. They’re doin’ noble, an’ you couldn’t git me to say a thing ag’in women as women. They’re a derned sight better’n we are. That’s jest the point. We got to keep ’em better’n we are, an’ what’s more to the point, we don’t want ’em to find out they’re better’n we are. Just as soon as they git to be as overbearin’ an’ as incontrollable as we are, then there’s goin’ to be thunder to pay. I’m willin’ to work, an’ fight, an’ die fer my wife an’ my daughters, but I’m derned if I like the idee of them workin’ an’ fightin’ ag’in me. I’m willin’ the women should vote. But they oughtn’t to run out an’ vote ag’in the men the first chance they git. When this war’s over an’ there ain’t no able-bodied men left to run things, then you bet the women will be derned glad we fixed things so’s they won’t never have to worry about goin’ to war with the ding-blasted ravishers over in Germany. If the time ever comes—an’ it may, if they keep killin’ us off over there—when the women have to run this here government, they’ll find it’s a man-sized job, an’ that we took care of it mighty well up to the time we got all shot to pieces preservin’ humanity, an’ civilization, an’ all the women an’ children the Germans didn’t git a chance to butcher because we wouldn’t let ’em. Now, I’m ready any time to knuckle under to a man that’s better’n I am. But I’m dog-goned if I’m willin’ to admit that Minnie Stitzenberg’s that man! Yes, sir, gentlemen, we men have got to stand together!”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 268