From Place to Place Part 29

"In about ten minutes, though, I'm struck by the fact that Emily's original outburst of enthusiasm appears slightly on the wane. It seems to me she ain't reaching out for the free-will offerings with quite so much eagersomeness as she was displaying a spell back. Also I takes notice that the wrinkles in her tum-tum are filling out so that she's beginning to lose some of that deflated or punctured look so common amongst bulls.

"Still, I don't have no apprehensions, but thinks to myself that any bull which can eat half a ton of hay for breakfast certainly is competent to take in a couple of wagon-loads of peanuts for five o'clock tea. Even at that I figgers that it won't do no harm to coach Emily along a little.

"'Go to it, baby mine,' I says to her. 'You ain't hardly started. Here's a chance,' I says, 'to establish a new world's record for peanuts.'

"That remark appears to spur her up for a minute or so, but something seems to keep on warning me that her heart ain't in the work to the extent it has been. Windy don't see nothing out of the way, he being congenially engaged in shooting off his face, but I'm more or less concerned by certain mighty significant facts. For one thing, Emily ain't eatin' sacks and all any more; she's emptying the peanuts out and throwing the paper bags aside. Likewise her work ain't clean and smooth like it was. Her underlip is swinging down, and she's beginning to drool loose goobers off the lower end of it, and her low but intelligent forehead is all furrowed up as if with deep thought.

"Observing all of which, I says to myself, I says: 'If ever Emily should start to cramp, the world's cramping record is also in a fair way to be busted this afternoon. I certainly do hope,' I says, 'that Emily don't go and get herself overextended.'

"You see, I'm trusting for the best, because I realises that it wouldn't do to call off the reception right in the middle of it on account of the disappointment amongst the tiny tots that ain't pa.s.sed in review yet and the general ill-feeling that's sure to follow.

"I should say about two hundred tiny tots have gone by, with maybe five hundred more still in line waiting their turn, when there halts in front of Emily a fancy-dressed tiny tot which he must've been the favourite tiny tot of the richest man in town, because he's holding in his hands a bag of peanuts fully a foot deep. It couldn't of cost a cent less'n half a dollar, that bag. Emily reaches for the contribution, fondles it for a second or two and starts to upend it down her throat; and then with a low, sad, hopeless cry she drops it on the stage and sort of shrugs her front legs forward and stands there with her head bent and her ears twitching same as if she's listening for something that's still a long ways off but coming closter fast. And at that precise instant I sees the first cramp start from behind her right-hand shoulder-blade and begin to work south. Say, it was just like being present at the birth of an earthquake.

"Moving slow and deliberate, Emily turns around in her tracks, s.h.i.+vering all over, and then I sees the cramp ripple along until it reaches her cargo-hold and strikes inward. It lifts all four of her feet clean off the floor, and when she comes down again, she comes down travelling.

There's some scenery in her way, and some furniture and props and one thing and other, but she don't trouble to go round 'em. She goes through 'em, as being a more simple and direct way, and a minute later she steps out through the stage entrance into the crowded marts of trade with half of a centre door fancy hung around her neck. Me and Windy is trailing along, urging her to be ca'm but keeping at a reasonably safe distance while doing so. Behind us as we comes forth we can hear the voices of many tiny tots upraised in skeered cries.

"Being a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the business section is fairly well crowded with people, and I suppose it's only natural that the unexpected appearance upon the main street of the largest bull in captivity, wearing part of a cottage set for a collar and making sounds through her snout like a switch-engine in distress, should cause some surprised comment amongst the populace. In fact, I should say the surprised comment might of been heard for fully half a mile away.

"Emily hesitates as she reaches the sidewalk, as though she ain't decided yet in her own mind just where she'll go, and then her agonised eye falls on all them peanut-roasters standing in a double row alongside the curbings on both sides of the street. The Italian and Greek gents who owns 'em are already departing hence in a hurried manner, but they've left their outfits behind, and right away it's made plain to me by her actions that Emily regards the sight as a part of a general conspiracy to feed her some peanuts when she already has more peanuts than what she really required for personal use. She reaches out for the first peanut-machine in the row, curls her trunk around it and slams it against a brick wall so hard that it immediately begins to look something like a flivver car which has been in a severe collision and something like a tin accordion that's had hard treatment from a careless owner. With this for a beginning, Emily starts in to get real rough with them roasters. For about three minutes it's rainin' hot charcoal and hot peanuts and wooden wheels and metal cranks and sheet-iron drums all over that part of the fair city.

"Having put the enemy's batteries out of commission, Emily now swings around and heads back in the opposite direction with everybody giving her plenty of room. I heard afterward that some citizens went miles out of their way in order to give her room. Emily's snout is aimed straight up as though she's craving air, and her tail is standing straight out behind, stiff as a poker except that about every few seconds a painful quiver runs through it from the end that's nearest Emily to the end that's furtherest away from her. Windy is hoofing it along about fifty feet back of her, uttering soothing remarks and entreating her to listen to reason, and I'm trailing Windy; but for oncet Emily don't hearken none to her master's voice.

"Out of the tail of my eye I see a fat lady start to faint, and when she's right in the middle of the faint, change her mind about it and do a back flip into a plumber's shop, the purtiest you ever seen. I see a policeman dodge out from behind a lamp-post as Emily approaches, and reach for his gun. I yells to him not to shoot, but it's unnecessary advice, because he's only chucking his hardware away so's to lighten him up for a couple of hundred yards of straightaway sprinting. I see Emily make a side-swipe with her nozzle at a stout gent who's in the act of climbing a telegraph-pole hand over hand. She misses the seat of his pants by a fraction of an inch, and as he reaches the first cross-arm out of her reach, and drapes his form acrosst it, the reason for her sudden animosity towards him is explained. A gla.s.s jar falls out of one of his hip pockets and is dashed to fragments on the cruel bricks far below, and its contents is then seen to be peanut b.u.t.ter.

"I sees these things as if in a troubled dream, and then, all of a sudden, me and Emily are all alone in a deserted city. Exceptin' for us two, there ain't a soul in sight nowheres. Even Windy has mysteriously vanished. And now Emily, in pa.s.sing along, happens to look inside a fruitstore, and through the window her unhappy glance rests upon a bin full of peanuts. So she just presses her face against the pane like _Little Mary_ in the po'm, and at that the entire front end of that establishment seems to give away in a very simultaneous manner, and Emily reaches in through the orifices and plucks out the contents of that there store, including stock, fixtures and good will, and throws 'em backward over her shoulder in a petulant and hurried way. But I takes notice that she throws the bin of peanuts much farther than the grapefruit or the pineapples or the gla.s.s show-cases containing the stick candy. The proprietor must of been down in the cellar at the moment, else I judge she'd of fetched him forth too.

"Thus we continues on our way, me and Emily, in the midst of a vast but boisterous solitude,--for while we can't see the inhabitants, we can hear 'em,--until we arrive at the foot of Main Street, and there we beholds the railroad freight-depot looming before us. I can tell that Emily is wishful to pa.s.s through this structure. There ain't no opening on the nigh side of it, but that don't hinder Emily none. She gives one heave with her shoulders and makes a door and pa.s.ses on in and out again on the far side by the same methods. I arrives around the end of the shed just in time to see her slide down a steep grade through somebody's truck-garden and sink down upon her heaving flank in a little hollow. As I halts upon the brow of the hill, she looks up at me very reproachful, and I can see that her prevalent complexion is beginning to turn awful wan and pale. Son, take it from me, when a full-grown she-bull gets wan, she's probably the wannest thing there is in the world.

"'Stand back, Scandalous,' she moans to me in bull-language. 'I don't bear you no grudge,--it was a mistake in judgment on the part of all of us,--but stand back and give me room. Up till this time,' she says, 'I've been po'rly, but something seems to tell me that now I'm about to be what you might call real indisposed.'

"Which she certainly was.

"So, after a while, a part of the police force come along, stepping slow and cautious, and they halts themselves in the protecting shadows of the freight-shed or what's left of it, and they beckon me to come near 'em, and when I responds, they tell me I'm under arrest for inciting riots and disturbances and desecration of property and various other crimes and misdemeanours. I suggests to 'em that if they're really craving to arrest anybody, they should oughter begin with Emily, but they don't fall in with the idea. They marches me up to the police-station, looking over their shoulders at frequent intervals to be sure the anguished Emily ain't coming too, and when we get there, I find Windy in the act of being forcibly detained in the front office.

"Immediately after I arrived, the payoff started and continued unabated for quite a period of time. First we settled in full with the late proprietors of them defunct peanut-roasting machines; and then the owner of the wrecked fruitstore, and the man that owned the opera-house, and the stout lady who'd fainted from the waist up but was now entirely recovered, and the fleshy gent who'd climbed the telegraph-pole, and the railroad agent and some several hundred others who had claims for property damage or mental anguish or shockages to their nervous systems or shortage of breath or loss of trade or other injuries--all these were in line, waiting.

"We was reduced to a case ten-spot before the depot agent, who came last, lined up for his'n; but he took one good look and said he wouldn't be a hog about it--we could keep that ten-sp.e.c.k.e.r, and he'd be satisfied just to take over our private car in consideration of the loss inflicted by Emily to his freight-shed. I was trying to tell him how much we appreciated his kindness, but the chief of police wouldn't let me finish--said he couldn't permit that kind of language to be used in a police-station, said it might corrupt the morals of some of his young policemen.

"So everything pa.s.sed off very pleasant and satisfactory at the police-station, but Emily spent the evening and the ensuing night right where she was, voicing her regrets at frequent intervals. Along toward morning she felt easier, although sadly depleted in general appearance, and about daylight her and Windy bid me good-by and went off acrosst-country afoot, aiming to catch up with Ringbold Brothers'

circus, which was reported to be operating somewhere in that vicinity.

As for me, I'd had enough for the time being of the refined amus.e.m.e.nt business. I took my half of that lone sawbuck which was all that was left to us from our frittered and dissipated fortunes, and I started east, travelling second cla.s.s and living very frugally on the way. And that was about all that happened, worthy of note, with the exception of a violent personal dispute occurring between me and a train-butch coming out of Ashtabula."

"What was the cause?" I asked as Scandalous stood up and smoothed down his waistcoat.

"I had just one thin dime left," said Scandalous, "and I explained my predicament to the butch, saying as how I wanted what was the most filling thing he had for the price--and he offered me a sack of peanuts!"