Sundry Accounts

"Don't mention it," he said generously, "don't mention it. It teks a purformer to understand another purformer's feelin's. So I therefo' teken it 'pon myse'f to nomernate you fur the gran' marshal and also ez the proper one to sound the buglin' blasts endurin' of the turnout. Seems lak somebody else would 'a' had the sense to do so, but w'en they wuzn't nobody w'ich did so, I steps in. But right soon afterwards I gits to stedyin' 'bout the hoss you'll be ridin', an' it's been worryin' me quite some little – the question of the hoss."

"I been thinkin' concernin' of 'at very same thing," confessed Cephus Fringe.

"Is that possible?" exclaimed Cump Glass with well-simulated surprise. "Well, suh, smart minds shorely runs in the same grooves, ez the sayin' goes. Yas, suh, settin' yonder after I made that motion, I sez to myse'f, I sez, 'Glass, you done started this thing an' you must see it th'ough. 'Twon't never do in this world fur the gran' marshal to be stuck up 'pon the top side of a skittish, skeery liver'-stable hoss that'll mebbe start cuttin' up right in the smack middle of things and distrac' the gran' marshal's mind frum his business.' I seen that happen mo' times 'en onct, wid painful results. I s'pose, tho, you kin ride mighty nigh ary hoss they is, can't you, Purfessor?"

"Well, I could do so onct," stated Cephus in the manner of one who formerly had followed rough-riding for a calling, "but leadin' a public life fur so long, lak I has, I ain't had much time fur private pleasures. 'Sides w'ich, ef I'm goin' sound the notes I'll be needin' both hands free fur my instermint."

"Puzzactly the same thought w'ich came to me, jes' lak I'm tellin' it to you," agreed Cump. "It teks a musician to think of things w'ich an ordinary pusson wouldn't never dream of. So, fur the las' hour or so I been castin' about in my mind an' jes' a minute ago the idee come to me. I feels shore I kin arrange wid a frien' of mine to he'p us out. I s'pose you is acquainted with this yere Jeffy Poindexter?"

"I has met him," said Cephus with chill creeping into his tones. "An' I has observed him present yere the last two-three nights. But I ain't aimin' to ax no favors frum him."

"You ain't needin' to," said Cump. "I'll 'tend to that myse'f. Besides, Purfessor, you is sizin' up Jeffy Poindexter wrong. He's went an' 'sperienced a change of heart in his feelin's tow'ds whut's goin' on yere. Furthermo'" – and here he favored his flattered listener with a confidential and a meaning wink – "he got sense 'nuff, Jeffy has, to know w'en he's crowded plum out of the runnin' by somebody w'ich is mo' swiftly gaited 'en whut he is, an' natchelly he crave to stand in well wid a winner. Naw, suh, that Jeffy, he'd be most highly overjoyed to haul off an' lend a helpin' hand, ef by so doin' he mout put you onder a favor to him."

Cephus sniffed, half disarmed but wavering.

"Wharin' could he he'p out? He ain't ownin' no private string of ridin'-hosses so fur ez I've took note of."

"The w'ite man he wuks fur is got one an' Jeffy gits the borrowin' use of her – it's a mare – w'enever he want to, ez I knows frum whut he tells me an' frum whut I seen. Purfessor, that mare is jes' natchelly ordained an' cut out fur peradin' – broad ez a feather-tick, gentle ez the onborn lamb, an' mouty nigh pyure white – perzactly the right color fur a gran' marshal's hoss. Crowds ain't goin' pester that lady-mare none. Music ain't goin' disturb her none whutsoever, neither."

"Whut's her reg'lar gait?"

"Her reg'lar gait is standin' still. But w'en she's travelin' at her bestest speed she uses the cemetery walk. See that mare goin' pas' you w'en she's in a hurry an' you say to yo'se'f, you say, 'Yere you is, bound fur de buryin'-groun', but how come you got separated frum the hearse?' Purfessor, that mare's entitled Christian name is Mittie May. Did you ever hear of ary thing on fo' laigs, ur two, w'ich answered to the name of Mittie May that wuz tricky?"

"Better be mouty sure," said the cautious Cephus, concerned for the safety and dignity of the creature which he held most dear of all on this earth. "'Member, I'll be needin' both hands free – 'twon't be no time fur me to go jerkin' on the reins w'en my saxophone is requirin' to be played."

"You's right there," agreed Cump. "Twouldn't never do, neither, fur you to slip off an' mebbe git yo'se'f crippled up. Whar would this yere pertracted meetin' be then? Lemme think. Ah, hah! I got it – the notion jes' come to me. Purfessor, listen yere." He placed his lips close to the other's ear and spoke perhaps fifty words in a confidential whisper. In token of approval and acquiescence the Professor warmly clasped the right hand of this forethoughted Glass.

After such a manner was Cephus Fringe, all unwittingly, thrust into the pit which had been digged for him.

At the point where the narrative was broken into for the interpolation of the episode now set forth, the head of the parade, as will be remembered, was just coming abreast of the old show-grounds. Now, the head of the parade was Cephus Fringe, and none other. One glance at him, upon a white steed, all glorious in high hat and frock coat and with that wide crimson sash dividing his torso in two parts, would have proved that to the most ignorant. As for his palfrey, she ambled along as though Eighth of August celebrations and a saxophone blaring between her drooping ears, and jubilating crowds and all that singing behind her, and all these carnival barkers shouting alongside her, had been her daily portion since first she was foaled into the world. The compound word lady-like would be the word fittest to describe her.

Not twenty feet from her, close up to where the abutting common met the straggling brick pavement, stood the battered Flyin' Jinny of Gumbo Rollins. It was nearermost to the street-line of all the attractions provided by Æsop Loving and his associates. Here, on the site which he had chosen, was Gumbo Rollins himself, competently in charge. At the precise moment when Mittie May and her proud rider had reached a point just opposite him, Gumbo Rollins elected to set his device in motion and with it the steam-organ which was part and parcel of the thing's organism. Really he might have waited a bit.

Lured by the prospect of beholding something for nothing, most of his consistent patrons temporarily had deserted him to flock out into the roadway and witness the passing by of the Sin Killer's cohorts. Two infatuated lovers, country darkies, sat with arms entwined in a rickety wooden chariot. Here and there a piccaninny clung to the back of a spotted wooden pony or a striped wooden zebra. These, for the moment, were his only customers; nevertheless Gumbo Jones Rollins swung a lever and started the machinery. The merry-go-round moved with a shriek of steam; the wheezy organ began spouting forth the introductory bars of a rollicking galop, a tune so old that its very name had been forgotten, although the air of it lived anonymously.

As though she had been bee-stung, Mittie May flung up her head. She arched her neck and pranced with all four of her feet. She spun about, scattering those of the pedestrian classes who hemmed her so closely in. Unmindful of a sudden anxious command from her rider, she swung her foreparts this way and that. She was looking for it. It must be directly hereabouts somewhere. In those ancient days of her youthful vagabondage it had always been close at hand when that tune – her own tune – was played.

Then above the heads of the crowd she saw it – a scuffed circlet of earth measuring exactly fifty-two feet across and marking the location where the middle ring had been builded when Runyon & Bulger's Mighty United Railroad Shows pitched their tents on the occasion of their annual Spring engagement. That had been in early May and this was summer's third month; the attrition of the weather had worn down the sharp edges of that low turfen parapet; by rights, too, there should have been much sawdust and much smell of the same and a center pole rising like one lone blasted tree from the exact middle of a circular island of this sawdust; there should have been a ringmaster and at least two clowns and an orderly clutter of paraphernalia. Nevertheless there before her was the middle ring. And the music had started. And Mittie May answered the cue which had lived in her brain for fifteen long years and more, just as always she answered it, or sought to, when that tune smote her eardrums.

The startled spectators gave backward and to either side in scrambling retreat as she lunged forward, cleaving a passage for herself to the proper spot of entrance. She whisked in. Around the ring she sped, her hoofs drumming against the flanks of the ring-back, her barrel slanting far over in obedience to the laws of centripetal force, her tail rippling out behind her like a homebound pennon in a fair breeze – around and around and yet again and then some more.

To be sure there were irregularities in the procedure. Upon her back, springily erect, there should have been a jaunty equestrian swinging a gay pink leg in air and anon uttering the traditional Hoop-la. Instead there was a heavy bulk which embraced her neck with two strong arms, which wallowed about on her spinal column, which continually cried out entreaties, threats, commands, even profanities. Yet with Mittie May, as with most of us, habit was stronger than all else. She knew her duty as of old. She did it. Accommodating her gait to the quickening measures of the music, she stretched her legs, passing out of a rolling gallop into a hard run. Yet one more thing, or rather the lack of it, perplexed her. Attendants should be bringing forth knockdown fence-panels for her to leap over and hoops of paper for her rider to leap through. Never mind; out of her imagination she would supply these missing details when the proper moment came. She'd hurdle the hurdles which weren't there. Meanwhile she knew what to do – around and around and around, right willingly, right blithely went Mittie May.

And, with her, around and around went also Prof. Cephus Fringe, but not willingly and by no means blithely. He shed his high hat and with it all lingering essences of his dignity. One of Mittie May's feet squashed down on the high hat and it folded up like a condensed time-card. He lost the last vestige of his vanishing authority when he lost his saxophone. The Professor did not understate the case when he had intimated that he was somewhat out of practice at equestrian exercises. Stark terror convulsed his frame; instinct of self-preservation made him careless of the language he used. Indeed, a good deal of the language he used was bounced right out of him.

Haply perhaps for him – and surely nothing else that happened was for him haply circumstanced – most of the naughty words reached no ears save those of Mittie May. There were sounds which drowned them – sounds which began with a fluttered outcry of alarm, which progressed to a great gasp of astonishment, which swelled and rippled into a titter, which grew into a vast rocking roar of unrestrained joyousness. Children shrieked, old women cackled, old men wheezed, adults guffawed, strong men rolled upon the earth in uncontrollable outbursts of thunderous mirth. As though stricken in all his members, Gumbo Rollins fell alongside his whirling Flyin' Jinny, but failed not, even in that excess of his mounting hysteria, to see to it that the steam-driven organ continued to grind out the one tune of its repertoire. The members of the choir forgot that their mission was to sing. They were too busy laughing to sing. And high and clear above the chorus of their glad outcry rose the soprano gurglings of Ophelia Stubblefield as she leaned for support up against somebody.

You ask, Why did not Prof. Cephus Fringe fall off of Mittie May? He tried to. At first he sought only to stay on; then after a bit he sought to get off; he couldn't. The cause for his staying on was revealed when Mittie May took the first of those mental hazards of hers. As she rose grandly into space to clear the imagined top-rail of the imagined panel and with hind heels drawn well in under her, descended and continued on her circling way, a keen-eyed spectator, all bent double though he was, alongside the ring, and beating himself in the short ribs, caught a flashing glimpse of a strong but narrow strap which bound the rider's ankles to the saddle-girth and which, through the ordered march of the parade, had been safely hidden from view behind the ornament housings of the broad Spanish stirrups. Cump Glass had done his fiendish work well; those straps strained, but they held.

"Name of Glory!" shouted out the observer. "He done tie hisse'f on! He done tie hisse'f – " Overcome he choked.

With a great sweeping, swooping heave Mittie May made the last leap. And then at the precise second when the music stopped, the leathern thongs parted, and as the burden on her tumbled off and lay struggling in the dust, Mittie May swerved from the ring and, magically and instantaneously becoming once more Judge Priest's staidly respectable old buggy-mare, stood waiting for Jeff Poindexter to come and lead her out of all this shrieking, whooping jam of folks back to her stable. And Jeff came. He had been there all the time. It was against his supporting frame that Ophelia had slanted limply the while she laughed.

Here the curtain is lowered for two seconds to denote the passage of two days. At its rise Jeff Poindexter and Gumbo Rollins are discovered sitting side by side on the back step of a cabin in the Plunket's Hill neighborhood.

"An' so they ain't nobody seen him sence?" It is Jeff who is speaking.

"So they tells me," answers Gumbo. "Ain't nary soul seen hair nur hide of him frum the moment he riz out 'en that ring an' tuk his foot in his hand an' marviled further. Yas, suh, the pertracted meetin' will have to worry 'long the best way it kin 'thout its champion purty man. Well, sometimes it seems lak these things turns out fur the bes'. It suttin'ly would damage his lacinated feelin's still mo' ef he wus yere an' heared folks all over town callin' him the Jazzed-up Circus Rider."

"I got a better name fur him 'en that," says Jeff, "Whiffletit."

"W'ich?" asks Gumbo.

Seemingly Jeff has not heard his friend's question. In an undertone, and as though seeking to recall the words of a given formula, he communes with himself, "Fust you baits him wid the cheese. An' 'en w'en he nibble the cheese, he git all swelled up an' 'en whilst he's flappin' helpless you leans over the side of the boat an jes' natchelly laffs him to death."

"Whut-all is you mumblin'?" demands Gumbo Rollins, puzzled by these seemingly unrelated and irrelevant mouthings. "Is you crazy?"

"Yas," concurs Jeff, "crazy lak the king of the weazels."

CHAPTER IX

PLENTIFUL VALLEY

"So this here head brakeman, the same being a large, coarse, hairy, rectangular person with a square-toed jaw and a square-jawed toe, he up and boots the two of us right off this here freight train."

My old and revered friend, Scandalous Doolan, is much addicted to opening a narrative smack down the middle, as though it were an oyster, and then, by degrees, working both ways – toward the start and the finish. So it did not greatly surprise me that without preface, dedication, index or chapter-heading, he should suddenly introduce a head brakeman and a freight train into a conversation which until that moment had dealt with topics not in the least akin to these. Indeed, knowing him as I did, it seemed to me all the better reason why I should promptly incline the greedy ear, for over and above his eccentricities in the matter of launching a subject, Mr. Doolan is the only member of his calling I ever saw who talks in real life as all the members of his calling are fondly presumed to talk, in story-books and on the stage.

I harkened, therefore, saying nothing, and sure enough, having dealt for a brief passage of time with the incident of a certain enforced departure from a certain as yet unnamed common carrier, he presently retraced his verbal footsteps and began at the beginning.

I quote in full:

"Yes, sir, that's what he does. Refusing to listen to reason, this here head brakeman, which anybody could tell just by looking at him that he didn't have no heart a-tall and no soul, so as you could notice it, he just red lights us off into the peaceful and sun-lit bosom of the rooral New York State landscape. But before reaching the landscape it becomes necessary for us to slide down a grade of a perpendicular character, and in passing I am much pleased to note that the right-of-way is self-trimmed to match the prevalent style of scenery, with maybe a few cinders interspersed for decorations. There is one class of travelers which prefers a road-bed rock-ballasted, and these is those which goes on trains from place to place. There's another kind which likes a road-bed done in the matched or natural materials, and them's the kind which goes off trains from time to time. And us two, being for the moment in this class, we are much gratified by the circumstance.

"And we sits up and dusts ourselves off in a nonchalant manner while the little old choo-choo continues upon her way to Utica, Syracuse, and all points west, leaving me and the Sweet Caps Kid with all the bright world before us, and nothing behind us but the police force.

"For some months previous to this, me and the Sweet Caps Kid has been sojourning in that favored metropolis which is bounded on one side by a loud Sound and on the other by a steep Bluff, and is doing her constant best at all times to live up to the surroundings. Needless to say, I refer to little Noo Yawk, the original haunt of the come-on and the native habitat of the sure thing, where the jays bite freely and the woods are full of fish. We have been doing very well there – very, very well, considering. What with working the nuts on the side streets right off Broadway and playing a little three-card monte down round Coney in the cool of the evening and once in a while selling a sturdy husbandman from over Jersey way a couple of admission tickets to Central Park, we have found no cause to complain at the business depression. It sure looks to us like confidence has been restored and any time she seems a little backward we take steps to restore her some ourselves. But all of a sudden, something seems to tell me that we oughter be moving.

"You know how them mysterious premonitions comes to a feller. A little bird whispers to you, or you have a dream, or else you walk into the mitt-joint and hand a he-note to a dark complected lady wearing a red kimono and a brown mustache, and she takes a flash at your palm and seems to see a dark man coming with a warrant, followed by a trip up a great river to a large stone building like a castle. Or else Headquarters issues a general alarm, giving names, dates, personal description, size of reward and place where last seen. This time it's a general alarm. From what I could gather, a downcasted Issy Wisenheimer has been up to the front parlor beefing about his vanishing bankroll and his disappearing breast-pin. You wouldn't think a self-respecting citizen of a great Republic like this'n would carry on so over thirty-eight dollars in currency and a diamond so yeller it woulda been a topaz if it had been any yellower. But such was indeed the case. I gleans a little valuable information from a friendly barkeeper who's got a brother-in-law at the Central Office, and so is in position to get hold of much interesting and timely chit-chat before it becomes common gossip throughout the neighborhood. So then I takes the Sweet Caps Kid off to one side and I says to him, I says:

"'Kiddo,' I says, 'listen: I've got a strong presentiment that we should oughter be going completely away from here. If we don't, the first thing you know some plain-clothes bull with fallen arches and his neck shaved 'way up high in the back will be coming round asking us to go riding with him down town into the congested district, and if we declines the invitation, like as not he'll muss our clothes all up. Do you seem to get my general drift?' I says.

"'Huh,' he says, 'you talk as if there'd been a squeal.'

"'Squeal?' I says. 'Squeal? Son, you can take it from me there's been a regular season of grand opera. You and me are about to be accused of pernicious activity. What's more, they're liable to prove it. There's a movement on foot in influential quarters to provide us with board and lodgings at a place which I will not name to you in so many words on account of your weak heart. The work there,' I says, 'is regular, and the meals is served on time, and you're protected from the damp night air; but,' I says, 'the hours is too long and too confining to suit me.' I've knowed probably a thousand fellers in my time that sojourned up at Bird Center-on-the-Hudson anywhere from one to fifteen years on a stretch, and I never seen one of them yet but had some fault to find with the place.

"'Whereas, on the other hand,' I says, 'all nature seems to beckon to us. Let's you and me steal forth under the billowy blue caliber of Heaven and make hay while the haymakers are good. Let us quit the city with its temptations and its snares and its pitfalls, 'specially the last named,' I says, 'and in some peaceful spot far, far away, let us teach Uncle Joshua Whitcomb that the hand is quicker than the eye, him paying cash down in advance for the lessons. Tubby sure, the pickings has been excellent here in the shadow of the skyscrapers, and it'll probably be harder sledding out amongst the disk-harrow boys. Everybody reads the papers these days, only the Rube believes what he reads and the city guy don't. I hate to go, but I ain't comfortable where I am. When my scalp begins to itch like it does now that's a sign of a close hair-cut coming on. I've got educated dandruff,' I says, 'and it ain't never fooled me yet. In short,' I says, 'I've been handed the office to skiddoo, and in such cases I believe in skiddooing. Let us create a vacancy in these parts sine quinine– which,' I says, 'is Latin, meaning it's a bitter dose but you gotta take it.'

"'I can start right this minute,' says Sweet Caps; 'my tooth-brush is packed and all I've got to do is to put on my hat. S'pose we run up to a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, which is a nice secluded spot,' he says, 'and catch the rattler.'

"'How are you fixed for currency?' I says.

"'Fixed?' he says. 'I ain't fixed a-tall. A'int you been carrying the firm's bank-roll? Say, ain't you?'

"Well, right there I has to break the sad news to him. I does it as gentle as I could but still he seems peeved. Money has caused a lot of suffering in this world, they tell me, but I'm here to tell you the lack of it's been responsible for consider'ble many heartburnings too. Up until that minute I hadn't had the heart to tell the Sweet Caps Kid that our little joint partnership bank-roll is no longer with us. I'd been saving back them tidings for a more suitable moment, but now I has to tell him.

"It seems that the night before, I had been tiger hunting in the jungle down at Honest John Donohue's. Of course I should have knowed better than to go up against a game run by anybody calling hisself Honest John. Them complimentary monakers always work with the reverse English. You are walking along and you see a gin-mill across the street with a sign over the door which says it's Smiling Pete's Place, and you cross over and look in, and behind the bar is an old guy who ain't heard anything that really pleased him since the Martinique disaster. He's standing there with his lip stuck out like a fender on a street car, and a bung starter handy, just hoping that somebody will come in and start to start something. That's Smiling Pete. As for this here Donohue, he's so crooked he can't eat nothing such as stick candy and cheese straws without he gets cramps in his stomach. He'd take the numbers off your house. That's why they call him Honest John. I know all this, good and well, but what's a feller going to do when his is the only place in town that's open? You've got to play somewheres, ain't you? Somehow, I always was sort of drawed to faro.

"Well, you know the saying – one man's meat is another's pizen. He was my pizen and I certainly was his meat. So now, I ain't got nothing in my pockets except the linings.

"I tells the Sweet Caps Kid just how it was – how right up to the very last minute I kept expecting the luck to turn and how even then I mighta got it all back if the game-keeper hadn't been so blamed unreasonable and mercenary. When my last chip is gone I holds up a finger for a marker and tells him I'll take another stack of fifty, all blues this time, but he only looks at me sort of chilly and distrustful and remarks in a kind of a bored way that there's nothing doing.