on an east-bound train i went into the smoker and found jefferson peters, the only man with a brain west of the wabash river who can use his cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time.
jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. he is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage. his favorite disguise is that of the target-bird at which the spendthrift or the reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential dollars. he is readily vocalized by tobacco; so, with the aid of two thick and easy-burning brevas, i got the story of his latest autolycan adventure.
"in my line of business," said jeff, "the hardest thing is to find an upright, trustworthy, strictly honorable partner to work a graft with. some of the best men i ever worked with in a swindle would resort to trickery at times.
"so, last summer, i thinks i will go over into this section of country where i hear the serpent has not yet entered, and see if i can find a partner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but not yet contaminated by success.
"i found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a layout. the inhabitants hadn't found that adam had been dispossessed, and were going right along naming the animals and killing snakes just as if they were in the garden of eden. they call this town mount nebo, and it's up near the spot where kentucky and west virginia and north carolina corner together. them states don't meet? well, it was in that neighborhood, anyway.
"after putting in a week proving i wasn't a revenue officer, i went over to the store where the rude fourflushers of the hamlet lied, to see if i could get a line on the kind of man i wanted.
"'gentlemen,' says i, after we had rubbed noses and gathered 'round the dried-apple barrel. 'i don't suppose there's another community in the whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively permeated than this. life here, where all the women are brave and propitious and all the men honest and expedient, must, indeed, be an idol. it reminds me,' says i, 'of goldstein's beautiful ballad entitled "the deserted village," which says:
'ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
what art can drive its charms away?
the judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.
for i'm to be queen of the may.'
"'why, yes, mr. peters,' says the storekeeper. 'i reckon we air about as moral and torpid a community as there be on the mounting, according to censuses of opinion; but i reckon you ain't ever met rufe tatum.'
"'why, no,' says the town constable, 'he can't hardly have ever. that air rufe is shore the monstrousest scalawag that has escaped hangin' on the galluses. and that puts me in mind that i ought to have turned rufe out of the lockup before yesterday. the thirty days he got for killin' yance goodloe was up then. a day or two more won't hurt rufe any, though.'
"'shucks, now,' says i, in the mountain idiom, 'don't tell me there's a man in mount nebo as bad as that.'
"'worse,' says the storekeeper. 'he steals hogs.'
"i think i will look up this mr. tatum; so a day or two after the constable turned him out i got acquainted with him and invited him out on the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.
"what i wanted was a partner with a natural rural make-up to play a part in some little one-act outrages that i was going to book with the pitfall & gin circuit in some of the western towns; and this r. tatum was born for the role as sure as nature cast fairbanks for the stuff that kept eliza from sinking into the river.
"he was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that aunt harriet used to play with when she was a child. his hair waved a little bit like the statue of the dinkus-thrower at the vacation in rome, but the color of it reminded you of the 'sunset in the grand canon, by an american artist,' that they hang over the stove-pipe holes in the salongs. he was the reub, without needing a touch. you'd have known him for one, even if you'd seen him on the vaudeville stage with one cotton suspender and a straw over his ear.
"i told him what i wanted, and found him ready to jump at the job.
"'overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of manslaughter,' says i, 'what have you accomplished in the way of indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that you could point to, with or without pride, as an evidence of your qualifications for the position?'
"'why,' says he, in his kind of southern system of procrastinated accents, 'hain't you heard tell? there ain't any man, black or white, in the blue ridge that can tote off a shoat as easy as i can without bein' heard, seen, or cotched. i can lift a shoat,' he goes on, 'out of a pen, from under a porch, at the trough, in the woods, day or night, anywhere or anyhow, and i guarantee nobody won't hear a squeal. it's all in the way you grab hold of 'em and carry 'em atterwards. some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler of pig-pens, 'i hope to become reckernized as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.'
"'it's proper to be ambitious,' says i; 'and hog-stealing will do very well for mount nebo; but in the outside world, mr. tatum, it would be considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on bay state gas. however, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. we'll go into partnership. i've got a thousand dollars cash capital; and with that homeward-plods atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a few shares of soon parted, preferred, in the money market.'
"so i attaches rufe, and we go away from mount nebo down into the lowlands. and all the way i coach him for his part in the grafts i had in mind. i had idled away two months on the florida coast, and was feeling all to the ponce de leon, besides having so many new schemes up my sleeve that i had to wear kimonos to hold 'em.
"i intended to assume a funnel shape and mow a path nine miles wide though the farming belt of the middle west; so we headed in that direction. but when we got as far as lexington we found binkley brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into town and pounding the belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a datto bryan drama. i never pass a circus without pulling the valve-cord and coming down for a little key west money; so i engaged a couple of rooms and board for rufe and me at a house near the circus grounds run by a widow lady named peevy. then i took rufe to a clothing store and gent's-outfitted him. he showed up strong, as i knew he would, after he was rigged up in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. me and old misfitzky stuffed him into a bright blue suit with a nile green visible plaid effect, and riveted on a fancy vest of a light tuskegee normal tan color, a red necktie, and the yellowest pair of shoes in town.
"they were the first clothes rufe had ever worn except the gingham layette and the butternut top-dressing of his native kraal, and he looked as self-conscious as an igorrote with a new nose-ring.
"that night i went down to the circus tents and opened a small shell game. rufe was to be the capper. i gave him a roll of phony currency to bet with and kept a bunch of it in a special pocket to pay his winnings out of. no; i didn't mistrust him; but i simply can't manipulate the ball to lose when i see real money bet. my fingers go on a strike every time i try it.
"i set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under. the unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bet. then was when rufe ought to have single-footed up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started. but, no rufe. i'd seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the side-show pictures with his mouth full of peanut candy; but he never came nigh.
"the crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a capper is like fishing without a bait. i closed the game with only forty-two dollars of the unearned increment, while i had been counting on yanking the yeomen for two hundred at least. i went home at eleven and went to bed. i supposed that the circus had proved too alluring for rufe, and that he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but i meant to give him a lecture on general business principles in the morning.
"just after morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress i hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster screeching with green-apple colic. i opens my door and calls out in the hall for the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, i says: 'mrs. peevy, ma'am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so that honest people can get their rest?'
"'sir,' says she, 'it's no child of mine. it's the pig squealing that your friend mr. tatum brought home to his room a couple of hours ago. and if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, i'd appreciate your stopping its mouth, sir, yourself, if you please.'
"i put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society and went into rufe's room. he had gotten up and lit his lamp, and was pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingy-white, half-grown, squealing pig.
"'how is this, rufe?' says i. 'you flimflammed in your part of the work to-night and put the game on crutches. and how do you explain the pig? it looks like back-sliding to me.'
"'now, don't be too hard on me, jeff,' says he. 'you know how long i've been used to stealing shoats. it's got to be a habit with me. and to-night, when i see such a fine chance, i couldn't help takin' it.'
"'well,' says i, 'maybe you've really got kleptopigia. and maybe when we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more remunerative misconduct. why you should want to stain your soul with such a distasteful, feeble-minded, perverted, roaring beast as that i can't understand.'
"'why, jeff,' says he, 'you ain't in sympathy with shoats. you don't understand 'em like i do. this here seems to me to be an animal of more than common powers of ration and intelligence. he walked half across the room on his hind legs a while ago.'
"'well, i'm going back to bed,' says i. 'see if you can impress it upon your friend's ideas of intelligence that he's not to make so much noise.'
"'he was hungry,' says rufe. 'he'll go to sleep and keep quiet now.'
"i always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper whenever i happen to be within the radius of a hoe cylinder or a washington hand-press. the next morning i got up early, and found a lexington daily on the front porch where the carrier had thrown it. the first thing i saw in it was a double-column ad. on the front page that read like this:
five thousand dollars reward
the above amount will be paid, and no questions asked, for the return, alive and uninjured, of beppo, the famous european educated pig, that strayed or was stolen from the side-show tents of binkley bros.' circus last night.
geo. b. tapley, business manager.
at the circus grounds.
"i folded up the paper flat, put it into my inside pocket, and went to rufe's room. he was nearly dressed, and was feeding the pig the rest of the milk and some apple-peelings.
"'well, well, well, good morning all,' i says, hearty and amiable. 'so we are up? and piggy is having his breakfast. what had you intended doing with that pig, rufe?'
"'i'm going to crate him up,' says rufe, 'and express him to ma in mount nebo. he'll be company for her while i am away.'
"'he's a mighty fine pig,' says i, scratching him on the back.
"'you called him a lot of names last night,' says rufe.
"'oh, well,' says i, 'he looks better to me this morning. i was raised on a farm, and i'm very fond of pigs. i used to go to bed at sundown, so i never saw one by lamplight before. tell you what i'll do, rufe,' i says. 'i'll give you ten dollars for that pig.'
"'i reckon i wouldn't sell this shoat,' says he. 'if it was any other one i might.'
"'why not this one?' i asked, fearful that he might know something.
"'why, because,' says he, 'it was the grandest achievement of my life. there ain't airy other man that could have done it. if i ever have a fireside and children, i'll sit beside it and tell 'em how their daddy toted off a shoat from a whole circus full of people. and maybe my grandchildren, too. they'll certainly be proud a whole passel. why,' says he, 'there was two tents, one openin' into the other. this shoat was on a platform, tied with a little chain. i seen a giant and a lady with a fine chance of bushy white hair in the other tent. i got the shoat and crawled out from under the canvas again without him squeakin' as loud as a mouse. i put him under my coat, and i must have passed a hundred folks before i got out where the streets was dark. i reckon i wouldn't sell that shoat, jeff. i'd want ma to keep it, so there'd be a witness to what i done.'
"'the pig won't live long enough,' i says, 'to use as an exhibit in your senile fireside mendacity. your grandchildren will have to take your word for it. i'll give you one hundred dollars for the animal.'
"rufe looked at me astonished.
"'the shoat can't be worth anything like that to you,' he says. 'what do you want him for?'
"'viewing me casuistically,' says i, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't think that i've got an artistic side to my temper. but i have. i'm a collector of pigs. i've scoured the world for unusual pigs. over in the wabash valley i've got a hog ranch with most every specimen on it, from a merino to a poland china. this looks like a blooded pig to me, rufe,' says i. 'i believe it's a genuine berkshire. that's why i'd like to have it.'
"'i'd shore like to accommodate you,' says he, 'but i've got the artistic tenement, too. i don't see why it ain't art when you can steal a shoat better than anybody else can. shoats is a kind of inspiration and genius with me. specially this one. i wouldn't take two hundred and fifty for that animal.'
"'now, listen,' says i, wiping off my forehead. 'it's not so much a matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is philanthropy. being a connoisseur and disseminator of pigs, i wouldn't feel like i'd done my duty to the world unless i added that berkshire to my collection. not intrinsically, but according to the ethics of pigs as friends and coadjutors of mankind, i offer you five hundred dollars for the animal.'
"'jeff,' says this pork esthete, 'it ain't money; it's sentiment with me.'
"'seven hundred,' says i.
"'make it eight hundred,' says rufe, 'and i'll crush the sentiment out of my heart.'
"i went under my clothes for my money-belt, and counted him out forty twenty-dollar gold certificates.
"'i'll just take him into my own room,' says i, 'and lock him up till after breakfast.'
"i took the pig by the hind leg. he turned on a squeal like the steam calliope at the circus.
"'let me tote him in for you,' says rufe; and he picks up the beast under one arm, holding his snout with the other hand, and packs him into my room like a sleeping baby.
"after breakfast rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever since i got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble down to misfitzky's and look over some royal-purple socks. and then i got as busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper. i found an old negro man with an express wagon to hire; and we tied the pig in a sack and drove down to the circus grounds.
"i found george b. tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. he was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap, with a four-ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.
"'are you george b. tapley?' i asks.
"'i swear it,' says he.
"'well, i've got it,' says i.
"'designate,' says he. 'are you the guinea pigs for the asiatic python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?'
"'neither,' says i. 'i've got beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that wagon. i found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this morning. i'll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it's handy.'
"george b. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. we went into one of the side-shows. in there was a jet black pig with a pink ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was feeding to him.
"'hey, mac,' calls g. b. 'nothing wrong with the world-wide this morning, is there?'
"'him? no,' says the man. 'he's got an appetite like a chorus girl at 1 a.m.'
"'how'd you get this pipe?' says tapley to me. 'eating too many pork chops last night?'
"i pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.
"'fake,' says he. 'don't know anything about it. you've beheld with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of the four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal meal, unstrayed and unstole. good morning.'
"i was beginning to see. i got in the wagon and told uncle ned to drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. there i took out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.
"then i paid uncle ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the newspaper office. i wanted to hear it in cold syllables. i got the advertising man to his window.
"'to decide a bet,' says i, 'wasn't the man who had this ad. put in last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?'
"'he was not,' says the man. 'he would measure about six feet by four and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies of the conservatory.'
"at dinner time i went back to mrs. peevy's.
"'shall i keep some soup hot for mr. tatum till he comes back?' she asks.
"'if you do, ma'am,' says i, 'you'll more than exhaust for firewood all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the outside of it.'
"so there, you see," said jefferson peters, in conclusion, "how hard it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner."
"but," i began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, "the rule should work both ways. if you had offered to divide the reward you would not have lost—"
jeff's look of dignified reproach stopped me.
"that don't involve the same principles at all," said he. "mine was a legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. buy low and sell high—don't wall street endorse it? bulls and bears and pigs—what's the difference? why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"
