Kilo. Part 12

Mrs. Tarbro-Smith, receiving a letter from the editor of MURRAY'S MAGAZINE, had learned at length that Clarence was not typical Iowa, and she had transferred her field of study to Kilo on his recommendation.

She meant to spend the rest of the season there, and hoped Miss Sally would take her to board. She found that Miss Sally would be glad, indeed, to have her company, and Mrs. Smith did not think it necessary to mention that she was looking for local color and types. She was pleased when she heard that Eliph' Hewlitt, who had so interested her, was "working" Kilo.

As Eliph' Hewlitt walked toward the hotel he felt that another opportunity had been lost--thrown away--by his inability to avoid Jarby's Encyclopedia as a topic, and for one moment he came as near giving up Miss Sally as he ever came to giving up anything. In that moment he saw the simplicity of his courts.h.i.+p, as he had imagined it would be, resolve itself into a tangled affair, as all these new individualities entered into it. Instead of being a mere matter between himself and Miss Sally, it was involving men and women, one after the other. It seemed to become a fight between himself, a singer stranger in Kilo, and an endless chain of interested citizens. Already there was Pap Briggs, who hated book agents; the Colonel and Skinner, who hoped to win Miss Sally; Mrs. Smith, who would serve as a defense against Eliph's attacks; and, as he walked down the street, he seemed to see in every man, woman, and child, a possible ally of either the Colonel or Skinner.

But he tucked his sample copy of Jarby's under his arm more securely, and braced up his courage. He even whistled as he approached the hotel, but, when he glanced up at the attorney's office and saw Toole and the Colonel with their head together, he stopped whistling. If Toole was going to take either side, Eliph' would have liked to claim him. Toole was a smart man.

Toole and the Colonel left Miss Sally's with the attorney well pleased, and his enigmatic smile rested on his face as he led the Colonel to his office. He handed him a chair, and made him take a cigar, and then turned and faced him.

"Now," he said, "what are you going to do with those what-do-you-call-'ems?"

"Them fire-extinguishers?" said the Colonel, licking the cigar around and around before lighting it. "Well, I ain't had much time to think that over yet. A feller can't decide on a thing like that all at once.

It ain't likely no one in Kilo would buy a fire-extinguisher like them, all nickel-plated, if they had their senses about 'em. 'Twouldn't be natural. I might raffle 'em off, only n.o.body'd be likely to buy chances on a fire-extinguisher. I might take 'em down to Jefferson, but I don't see as that would do much good, n.o.body'd be likely to buy fire-extinguishers off of me down there."

"No," said the attorney, turning to his table and looking over some papers, with an appearance of interest, "No, I guess not. I don't see that you can do much of anything with them, unless you use them for ornaments. It seems a pity that Miss Briggs didn't go to Skinner for advice about that box, instead of you, doesn't it?"

The Colonel stopped with a lighted match half way to his cigar.

"What do you mean?" he asked, red in the face. "Do you mean that puffy old beef-cutter's got more sense than what I have, young man?"

"Oh, no," said the attorney, carelessly. "Not at all. I was just thinking that if Skinner HAD opened that box, and HAD found fire-extinguishers in it, it would have been a fine chance for him to say to Miss Briggs, 'Madam, I am building in this town an opera house, known as Skinner's Opera House. The safety of the people of Kilo demands fire-extinguishers in Skinner's Opera House. I will take those four nickel-plated appliances and install them in my opera house, and allow you ten dollars apiece for them, cash or meat.' But, of course,"

continued the attorney innocently, "you can't do that; you haven't built an opera house."

The Colonel's little eyes peered at the attorney, and they were filled with cunning. Across his hard mouth a smile crept and broadened until he had to lay his hand across it, it was so indecently wide and exultant.

"Skinner is no fool," continued the attorney. "As soon as he hears that Miss Briggs has those four things he will probably rush right up to her house and offer to buy them. It would be a great feather in his cap with her, if he could get the credit of having thought of it. I shouldn't wonder if he had heard of what was in that box by this time. It seems a pity, doesn't it, that he should get all the credit after you have done all the work?"

The Colonel looked at the noncommittal face of the attorney, and smiled again. This was a sort of cunning he could appreciate, and he leaned over and gave Toole a sly poke in the ribs, to show him that he understood. Toole looked at him with a blank face, and at this the Colonel slapped his knee, and uttered a mirthful noise that was like the sound of a man choking. He clapped his greasy hat on his mat of hair and went out, pausing at the door to look back and grin at the attorney once more.

Mr. Skinner was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a roast. He had just cut off a piece of suet, which he held in his plump read hand as he listened to the Colonel's proposition to sell him four nickel-plated fire-extinguishers at ten dollars each. Perhaps the Colonel spoke to impetuously; to commandingly.

Skinner held the lump of suet offensively near the Colonel's nose as he answered.

"Fire-extinguishers!" he laughed. "Me buy fire-extinguishers? I wouldn't give THAT for them."

He shook the suet before the Colonel's eyes.

"No, sir!" he sneered. "I wouldn't give THAT for them. And I throw that away!"

"Skinner," said the Colonel, growing dangerously red in the face, "don't you shake no meat in MY face like that! Don't you dare do it! I won't have no butcher shake meat in MY face. You low-down beef-killer. That's all you are, a beef-killer."

"Mebby," admitted the butcher indifferently. "Mebby I am, but I don't buy no fire-extinguishers. And I don't take much stock in agents for them, neither. No. Nor in gold bricks. Nor green good. No."

The Colonel raised his fist and brought it down on the butcher's counter so hard that the meat scales danced, and the indicator jerked nervously across the face of the dial, weighing a half pound of anger. The butcher leaned back against the shopping block, and gently caressed the handle of his cleaver. He pointed to the door with his other hand.

"Git out!" he said, and the Colonel scowled but went.

On his way home the Colonel bethought himself of a good excuse to stop at Miss Sally's. He had left his ax there, and he went to the back door, this not being a formal call. Miss Sally came to the door when he knocked, and brought him the ax, and he took the opportunity to say a bad word for Skinner, and he was astounded to find that she sympathized with Skinner on his refusal to buy the fire-extinguishers.

"I don't wonder at it," she said, "seeing he has put so much money on that opery house already. He's done a lot for this town that n.o.body else would ever have thought of doin'. Mr Skinner's a very public-spirited citizen, and to think he made it all out of sellin' meat! It must be a good business. I guess you'll have to excuse me now, Colonel Guthrie, I've got visitors down from Clarence."

The Colonel's steps dragged as he walked home. Never had Miss Sally said so many good words for his rival. She had almost rebuffed his good offices in the attempt to sell the fire-extinguishers, and had praised Skinner to his face.

Early the next morning he "dropped up" into the office of Attorney Toole, and as that young man lay back in his chair, with his feet on his desk, he told him the whole story. The attorney smiled. This was the kind of split in the ranks of the Citizens' Party that he had hoped to promote.

"After that, Colonel," he said, when the Colonel had told him that Skinner had ordered him out of the shop, "you ought to MAKE him buy them."

"I wisht I could, dog take him!" cried the Colonel. "I'd like to make him eat 'em."

"Colonel," said Toole, "I see you are, as always, guided by a spirit of conservative kindness. You hesitate to force that butcher to do what he does not want to do. The feeling does you honor, but is it business? You hesitate even when you see how easily your could force him to do what he is in duty bound to do to protect the lives of our trustful citizens.

I admire your gentleness, but I deplore your unbusinesslike moderation.

You lack public spirit."

The Colonel grinned savagely. He felt that the attorney was teasing him, but he could not quite tell how.

"You," said Toole easily, "knowing that our town council can, and should, pa.s.s an ordinance compelling all owners of opera houses to install nickel-plated fire-extinguishers--to install four of them in each opera house in Kilo--for the protection of our people, hesitate to ask them to pa.s.s such an ordinance. You hesitate because you do not wish to appear malevolent toward a rival. Now, don't you?"

"Me be kind to that fat, pig-stealing, sausage-grinding----" snorted the Colonel, but the attorney stopped him with a lifted hand.

"Just what I said," exclaimed the attorney. "You are too kind; too considerate; too regardful of his feelings. But would he be so kind and considerate and regardful of your feelings, if he was in your place?"

He lowered his feet and his voice, and placed his hand on the Colonel's knee.

"No!" he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "No!" he cried loudly and defiantly. "No!

He would not! He would use the influence you have with the city council and the mayor to have an ordinance pa.s.sed making YOU put fire-extinguishers in YOUR opera house, and compel YOU to buy them of HIM. But you will not use your huge influence with Mayor St.i.tz and the city council. You hesitate."

Toole shook his head sadly; he almost wept out the last word, he seemed so heartbroken to see the Colonel hesitate.

"Why hesitate?" he asked. "If I were not a stranger in town, as I may say, I should beg you not to hesitate. I should beg you to act. I should beg you to think of the lives of poor, helpless women and children. I should beg you, for humanity's sake, to go to the honorable mayor and city council, and appeal to them to pa.s.s an ordinance compelling this Skinner to buy nickel-plated fire-extinguishers. To compel him, Colonel!

But I have nothing to say."

He shuffled the legal-looking papers that littered his desk. The Colonel's eyes had narrowed to fine points of hate-instilled cunning as the attorney proceeded.

"What have we come to," asked the attorney sadly, "when the leading citizens of a town like Kilo neglect their duty? Are there no true citizens left to show the mayor and city council their plain duty?"

When the Colonel had the thing put to him in this light he did not hesitate. He knew St.i.tz, the mayor, and he knew that St.i.tz had full control of the city council. What St.i.tz told it to do the city council did, and the Colonel believed he had a right to dictate what St.i.tz should tell it, for he had suggested the name of St.i.tz as candidate for mayor, and, with Skinner, had helped elect him. He went at once to the mayor, and laid the case before him.

Mayor Johann St.i.tz was an honest, upright shoemaker, and owned his own building. It had once been a street car in Franklin, and when the horse cars were superseded by electric cars, St.i.tz had bought this car at auction, and had paid ten dollars to have it hauled to Kilo. It had not been a very good car when it left the shops before it made its first trip, and the ten years of running off the track and being boosted on again had not improved it much. It was in pretty bad shape when St.i.tz picked it up for eighteen dollars, and it had deteriorated greatly since it had been doing duty as a cobbler's shop, but St.i.tz liked it. The tiny car stove that stood midway of one of the seats was all he needed in cold weather, and the seats along the sides were a continuous spread of cobblers' seats. He could cobble all the way up one side of the car and all the way back the other, and when he had customers waiting he always had a seat to give them. He and the whole city council could hold a caucus in the car, and all have seats, and in the evenings he could take a stool out on his front or back porch and smoke a pipe in peace. His car stood side by side with the round topped wagon of the traveling photographer, who had not traveled since his felloes gave out on that very lot six years before.

The city officers of the Citizens' Party, being of an independent part, were so independent that they were worried and chafed by their independence. No one but a man in office knows the real blessedness of having the set beliefs and an traditions of a regular party to fall back upon. The independence of the independents made their work more difficult; it compelled them to decide things for themselves, and then everybody complained of what they did. No independent is ever satisfied with what another independent does, and they lost even the satisfaction of knowing that they were pleasing their own part, which a properly service Democrat or Republican is rather apt to be sure of. In this state of things the six councilmen had thrown their burdens of decision to St.i.tz. They cast the whole burden on him, saying, "Ask St.i.tz. He's mayor. What he says, we'll do." And St.i.tz never would say.

As the Colonel entered the mayor's shoe shop St.i.tz was reading a magazine, which he laid beside him on the car seat while he listened to the Colonel. A pile of similar magazines lay beside him on the seat.

They were the missionary offerings of Doc Weaver, who was interested in whatever was latest in religion, government or popular science. They were magazines telling of the munic.i.p.al corruption of "New York, The Vile," "Philadelphia, Defiled but Happy," "Chicago, the Base," and "St.

Louis, the Decayed." Doc Weaver had given them to Mayor St.i.tz to show him the evil of graft, and to keep his administration clean and pure.

When the Colonel had laid before the mayor his request for an ordinance compelling all opera house owners in Kilo to install and maintain four nickel-plated fire-extinguishers in each opera house, the mayor beamed on him through his iron-rimmed spectacles.

"Ho! Ho-o!" he exclaimed, "it is to make Mister Skinner buy some fire-extinguishers, yes? So shall my city council pa.s.s an ordinance, yes? Um!"

He smiled broadly at the Colonel, and then nodded.

"For how much you graft me?" he asked blandly.