Cape Cod Stories Part 9

The heavens be thanked!"

Well, 'twas a sacred sort of time. The town folks tiptoed away, the men looking solemn but glad, and the women swabbing their deadlights and saying how affecting 'twas, and so on. Oh, you could see that show would do business THAT night, if it never did afore.

The manager got after Jonadab and me later on, and did his best to pump us, but he didn't find out much. He told us that Montague belonged to the Uncle Tom's Cabin Company, and that he'd disappeared a fortni't or so afore, when they were playing at Hyannis. Eva was his wife, and the child was their little boy. The bloodhounds knew him, and that's why they chased him so.

"What was you two yelling 'Stop thief!' after him for?" says he. "Has he stole anything?"

We says "No."

"Then what did you want to get him for?" he says.

"We didn't," says Jonadab. "We wanted to get rid of him. We don't want to see him no more."

You could tell that the manager was puzzled, but he laughed.

"All right," says he. "If I know anything about Maggie--that's Mrs.

Schmults--he won't get loose ag'in."

We only saw Montague to talk to but once that day. Then he peeked out from under the winder shade at the hotel and asked us if we'd told anybody where he'd been. When he found we hadn't, he was thankful.

"You tell Petey," says he, "that he's won the whole pot, kitty and all.

I don't think I'll visit him again, nor Belle, neither."

"I wouldn't," says I. "They might write to Maudina that you was a married man. And old Stumpton's been praying for something alive to shoot at," I says.

The manager gave Jonadab and me a couple of tickets, and we went to the show that night. And when we saw Booth Hank Montague parading about the stage and defying the slave hunters, and telling 'em he was a free man, standing on the Lord's free soil, and so on, we realized 'twould have been a crime to let him do anything else.

"As an imitation poet," says Jonadab, "he was a kind of mildewed article, but as a play actor--well, there may be some that can beat him, but _I_ never see 'em!"

THE MARE AND THE MOTOR

Them Todds had got on my nerves. 'Twas Peter's ad that brought 'em down.

You see, 'twas 'long toward the end of the season at the Old Home, and Brown had been advertising in the New York and Boston papers to "bag the leftovers," as he called it. Besides the reg'lar hogwash about the "breath of old ocean" and the "simple, cleanly living of the bygone days we dream about," there was some new froth concerning hunting and fis.h.i.+ng. You'd think the wild geese roosted on the flagpole nights, and the bluefish clogged up the bay so's you could walk on their back fins without wetting your feet--that is, if you wore rubbers and trod light.

"There!" says Peter T., waving the advertis.e.m.e.nt and crowing gladsome; "they'll take to that like your temp'rance aunt to brandy cough-drops.

We'll have to put up barbed wire to keep 'em off."

"Humph!" grunts Cap'n Jonadab. "Anybody but a born fool'll know there ain't any shooting down here this time of year."

Peter looked at him sorrowful. "Pop," says he, "did you ever hear that Solomon answered a summer hotel ad? This ain't a Chautauqua, this is the Old Home House, and its motto is: 'There's a new victim born every minute, and there's twenty-four hours in a day.' You set back and count the clock ticks."

Well, that's 'bout all we had to do. We got boarders enough from that ridiculous advertis.e.m.e.nt to fill every spare room we had, including Jonadab's and mine. Me and the cap'n had to bunk in the barn loft; but there was some satisfaction in that--it give us an excuse to get away from the "sports" in the smoking room.

The Todds was part of the haul. He was a little, dried-up man, single, and a minister. Nigh's I could find out, he'd given up preaching by the request of the doctor and his last congregation. He had a notion that he was a mighty hunter afore the Lord, like Nimrod in the Bible, and he'd come to the Old Home to bag a few gross of geese and ducks.

His sister was an old maid, and slim, neither of which failings was from choice, I cal'late. She wore eye-gla.s.ses and a veil to "preserve her complexion," and her idee seemed to be that native Cape Codders lived in trees and ate cocoanuts. She called 'em "barbarians, utter barbarians."

Whenever she piped "James" her brother had to drop everything and report on deck. She was skipper of the Todd craft.

Them Todds was what Peter T. called "the limit, and a chip or two over."

The other would-be gunners and fishermen were satisfied to slam shot after sandpeeps, or hook a stray sculpin or a hake. But t'wa'n't so with brother James Todd and sister Clarissa. "Ducks" it was in the advertising, and nothing BUT ducks they wanted. Clarissa, she commenced to hint middling p'inted concerning fraud.

Finally we lost patience, and Peter T., he said they'd got to be quieted somehow, or he'd do some shooting on his own hook; said too much Toddy was going to his head. Then I suggested taking 'em down the beach somewheres on the chance of seeing a stray coot or loon or something--ANYTHING that could be shot at. Jonadab and Peter agreed 'twas a good plan, and we matched to see who'd be guide. And I got stuck, of course; my luck again.

So the next morning we started, me and the Reverend James and Clarissa in the Greased Lightning, Peter's new motor launch. First part of the trip that Todd man done nothing but ask questions about the launch; I had to show him how to start it and steer it, and the land knows what all. Clarissa set around doing the heavy contemptuous and turning up her nose at creation generally. It must have its drawbacks, this roosting so fur above the common flock; seems to me I'd be thinking all the time of the b.u.mp that was due me if I got shoved off the perch.

Well, by and by Lonesome Huckleberries' shanty hove in sight, and I was glad to see it, although I had to answer a million questions about Lonesome and his history.

I told the Todds that, so fur as nationality was concerned he was a little of everything, like a picked-up dinner; princ.i.p.ally Eyetalian and Portugee, I cal'late, with a streak of Gay Head Injun. His real name's long enough to touch bottom in the s.h.i.+p channel at high tide, so folks got to calling him "Huckleberries" because he peddles them kind of fruit in summer. Then he mopes around so with nary a smile on his face, that it seemed right to tack on the "Lonesome." So "Lonesome Huckleberries"

he's been for ten years. He lives in the patchwork shanty on the beach down there, he is deaf and dumb, drives a liver-colored, balky mare that no one but himself and his daughter Becky can handle, and he has a love for bad rum and a temper that's landed him in the Wellmouth lock-up more than once or twice. He's one of the best gunners alongsh.o.r.e and at this time he owned a flock of live decoys that he'd refused as high as fifteen dollars apiece for. I told all this and a lot more.

When we struck the beach, Clarissa, she took her paint box and umbrella and mosquito 'intment, and the rest of her cargo, and went off by herself to "sketch." She was great on "sketching," and the way she'd use up good paint and spile nice clean paper was a sinful waste. Afore she went, she give me three fathom of sailing orders concerning taking care of "James." You'd think he was about four year old; made me feel like a hired nurse.

James and me went perusing up and down that beach in the blazing sun looking for something to shoot. We went 'way beyond Lonesome's shanty, but there wa'n't n.o.body to home. Lonesome himself, it turned out afterward, was up to the village with his horse and wagon, and his daughter Becky was over in the wood on the mainland berrying. Todd was a cheerful talker, but limited. His favorite remark was: "Oh, I say, my deah man." That's what he kept calling me, "my deah man." Now, my name ain't exactly a Claude de Montmorency for prettiness, but "Barzilla" 'll fetch ME alongside a good deal quicker'n "my deah man," I'll tell you that.

We frogged it up and down all the forenoon, but didn't git a shot at nothing but one stray "squawk" that had come over from the Cedar Swamp.

I told James 'twas a canvasback, and he blazed away at it, but missed it by three fathom, as might have been expected.

Finally, my game leg--rheumatiz, you understand--begun to give out. So I flops down in the shade of a sand bank to rest, and the reverend goes poking off by himself.

I cal'late I must have fell asleep, for when I looked at my watch it was close to one o'clock, and time for us to be getting back to port. I got up and stretched and took an observation, but further'n Clarissa's umbrella on the skyline, I didn't see anything stirring. Brother James wa'n't visible, but I jedged he was within hailing distance. You can't see very fur on that point, there's too many sand hills and hummocks.

I started over toward the Greased Lightning. I'd gone only a little ways, and was down in a gully between two big hummocks, when "Bang!

bang!" goes both barrels of a shotgun, and that Todd critter busts out hollering like all possessed.

"Hooray!" he squeals, in that squeaky voice of his. "Hooray! I've got 'em! I've got 'em!"

Thinks I, "What in the nation does the lunatic cal'late he's shot?" And I left my own gun laying where 'twas and piled up over the edge of that sand bank like a cat over a fence. And then I see a sight.

There was James, hopping up and down in the beach gra.s.s, squealing like a Guinea hen with a sore throat, and waving his gun with one wing--arm, I mean--and there in front of him, in the foam at the edge of the surf, was two ducks as dead as Nebuchadnezzar--two of Lonesome Huckleberries'

best decoy ducks--ducks he'd tamed and trained, and thought more of than anything else in this world--except rum, maybe--and the rest of the flock was digging up the beach for home as if they'd been telegraped for, and squawking "Fire!" and "Murder!"

Well, my mind was in a kind of various state, as you might say, for a minute. 'Course, I'd known about Lonesome's owning them decoys--told Todd about 'em, too--but I hadn't seen 'em nowhere alongsh.o.r.e, and I sort of cal'lated they was locked up in Lonesome's hen house, that being his usual way when he went to town. I s'pose likely they'd been feeding among the beach gra.s.s somewheres out of sight, but I don't know for sartin to this day. And I didn't stop to reason it out then, neither. As Scriptur' or George Was.h.i.+n'ton or somebody says, "'twas a condition, not a theory," I was afoul of.

"I've got 'em!" hollers Todd, grinning till I thought he'd swaller his own ears. "I shot 'em all myself!"

"You everlasting--" I begun, but I didn't get any further. There was a rattling noise behind me, and I turned, to see Lonesome Huckleberries himself, setting on the seat of his old truck wagon and glaring over the hammer head of that balky mare of his straight at brother Todd and the dead decoys.

For a minute there was a kind of tableau, like them they have at church fairs--all four of us, including the mare, keeping still, like we was frozen. But 'twas only for a minute. Then it turned into the liveliest moving picture that ever _I_ see. Lonesome couldn't swear--being a dummy--but if ever a man got profane with his eyes, he did right then.

Next thing I knew he tossed both hands into the air, clawed two handfuls out of the atmosphere, reached down into the cart, grabbed a pitch-fork and piled out of that wagon and after Todd. There was murder coming and I could see it.

"Run, you loon!" I hollers, desperate.

James didn't wait for any advice. He didn't know what he'd done, I cal'late, but he jedged 'twas his move. He dropped his gun and put down the sh.o.r.e like a wild man, with Lonesome after him. I tried to foller, but my rheumatiz was too big a handicap; all I could do was yell.