CHAPTER III.—HOW FORKED TONGUE WAS BURNED.
The time is long, long ago. Ugly Elk is the great chief of the Sioux, an’ he’s so ugly an’ his face so hideous, he makes a great laugh wherever he goes. But the people are careful to laugh when the Ugly Elk’s back is toward them. If they went in front of him an’ laugh, he’d go among them with his stone war-axe; for Ugly Elk is sensitive about his looks.
Ugly Elk is the warchief of the Sioux an’ keeps his camp on the high bluffs that mark the southern border of the Sioux country where he can look out far on the plains an’ see if the Pawnees go into the Sioux hills to hunt. Should the Pawnees try this, then Ugly Elk calls up his young men an’ pounces on the Pawnees like a coyote on a sage hen, an’ when Ugly Elk gets through, the Pawnees are hard to find.
It turns so, however, that the Pawnees grow tired. Ugly Elk’s war yell makes their knees weak, an’ when they see the smoke of his fire they turn an’ run. Then Ugly Elk has peace in his tepees on the bluffs, an’ eats an’ smokes an’ counts his scalps an’ no Pawnee comes to anger him. An’ the Sioux look up to him as a mighty fighter, an’ what Ugly Elk says goes as law from east to west an’ no’th to south throughout the country of the Sioux.
Ugly Elk has no sons or daughters an’ all his squaws are old an’ dead an’ asleep forever in their rawhides, high on pole scaffolds where the wolves can’t come. An’ because Ugly Elk is lonesome an’ would hear good words about his lodge an’ feel that truth is near, he asks his nephew, Running Water, to live with him when now the years grow deep an’ deeper on his head. The nephew is named Running Water because there is no muddiness of lies about him, an’ his life runs clear an’ swift an’ good. Some day Running Water will be chief, an’ then they will call him Kill-Bear, because he once sat down an’ waited until a grizzly came up; an’ when he had come up, Running Water offered him the muzzle of his gun to bite; an’ then as the grizzly took it between his jaws, Running Water blew off his head. An’ for that he was called Kill-Bear, an’ made chief. But that is not for a long time, an’ comes after Ugly Elk has died an’ been given a scaffold of poles with his squaws.
Ugly Elk has his heart full of love for Running Water an’ wants him ever in his sight an’ to hear his voice. Also, he declares to the Sioux that they must make Running Water their chief when he is gone. The Sioux say that if he will fight the Pawnees, like Ugly Elk, until the smoke of his camp is the smoke of fear to the Pawnees, he shall be their chief. An’ because Running Water is as bold as he is true, Ugly Elk accepts the promise of the Sioux an’ rests content that all will be as he asks when his eyes close for the long sleep.
But while Ugly Elk an’ Running Water are happy for each other, there is one whose heart turns black as he looks upon them. It is Forked Tongue, the medicine man; he is the cousin of Ugly Elk, an’ full of lies an’ treachery. Also, he wants to be chief when that day comes for Ugly Elk to die an’ go away. Forked Tongue feels hate for Running Water, an’ he plans to kill him.
Forked Tongue talks with Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, an’ who has once helped Forked Tongue with his medicine. Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is very wise; also he wants revenge on Forked Tongue, who promised him a bowl of molasses an’ then put a cheat on him.
When Forked Tongue powwows with Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear thinks now he will have vengeance on Forked Tongue, who was false about the molasses. Thereupon, he rests his head on his paw, an’ makes as if he thinks an’ thinks; an’ after a long while he tells Forked Tongue what to do.
“Follow my word,” says Moh-Kwa, “an’ it will bring success.”
But Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, doesn’t say to whom “success” will come; nor does Forked Tongue notice because liars are ever quickest to believe, an’ there is no one so easy to deceive as a treacherous man. Forked Tongue leaves Moh-Kwa an’ turns to carry out his su’gestions.
Forked Tongue talks to Ugly Elk when they’re alone an’ touches his feelings where they’re sore.
“The Running Water laughs at you,” says Forked Tongue to Ugly Elk. “He says you are more hideous than a gray gaunt old wolf, an’ that he must hold his head away when you an’ he are together. If he looked at you, he says, you are so ugly he would laugh till he died.”
Then the Ugly Elk turned to fire with rage.
“How will you prove that?” says Ugly Elk to Forked Tongue.
Forked Tongue is ready, for Moh-Kwa has foreseen the question of Ugly Elk.
“You may prove it for yourself,” says Forked Tongue. “When you an’ Running Water are together, see if he does not turn away his head.”
That night it is as Forked Tongue said. Running Water looks up at the top of the lodge, or down at the robes on the ground, or he turns his back on Ugly Elk; but he never once rests his eyes on Ugly Elk or looks him in the face. An’ the reason is this: Forked Tongue has told Running Water that Ugly Elk complained that Running Water’s eye was evil; that his medicine told him this; an’ that he asked Forked Tongue to command Running Water not to look on him, the Ugly Elk, for ten wakes an’ ten sleeps, when the evil would have gone out of his eye.
“An’ the Ugly Elk,” says Forked Tongue, “would tell you this himse’f, but he loves you so much it would make his soul sick, an’ so he asks me.”
Running Water, who is all truth, does not look for lies in any mouth, an’ believes Forked Tongue, an’ resolves for ten sleeps an’ ten wakes not to rest his eyes on Ugly Elk.
When Ugly Elk notices how Running Water will not look on him, he chokes with anger, for he remembers he is hideous an’ believes that Running Water laughs as Forked Tongue has told him. An’ he grows so angry his mind is darkened an’ his heart made as night. He seeks out the Forked Tongue an’ says:
“Because I am weak with love for him, I cannot kill him with my hands. What shall I do, for he must die?”
Then Forked Tongue makes a long think an’ as if he is hard at work inside his head. Then he gives this counsel to Ugly Elk:
“Send to your hunters where they are camped by the river. Say to them by your runner to seize on him who comes first to them in the morning, an’ tie him to the big peeled pine an’ burn him to death with wood. When the runner is gone, say to Running Water that he must go to the hunters when the sun wakes up in the east an’ ask them if they have killed an’ cooked the deer you sent them. Since he will be the first to come, the hunters will lay hands on Running Water an’ tie him an’ burn him; an’ that will put an end to his jests an’ laughter over your ugliness.”
Ugly Elk commands the Antelope, his runner, to hurry with word to the hunters to burn him to death who shall come first to them in the morning. Then he makes this word to Running Water that he must go to the hunters when the sun comes up an’ ask if they have killed an’ cooked the deer he sent them. Ugly Elk scowls like a cloud while he gives his directions to Running Water, but the boy does not see since his eyes are on the ground.
As the sun comes up, Running Water starts with the word of Ugly Elk to the hunters. But Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is before him for his safety. Moh-Kwa knows that the way to stop a man is with a woman, so he has brought a young squaw of the lower Yellowstone who is so beautiful that her people named her the Firelight. Moh-Kwa makes the Firelight pitch camp where the trail of Running Water will pass as he goes to the hunters. An’ the Wise Bear tells her what to say; an’ also to have a turkey roasted, an’ a pipe an’ a soft blanket ready for Running Water.
When Running Water sees the Firelight, she is so beautiful he thinks it is a dream. An’ when she asks him to eat, an’ fills the redstone pipe an’ spreads a blanket for him, the Running Water goes no further. He smokes an’ rests on the blanket; an’ because the tobacco is big medicine, Running Water falls asleep with his head in the lap of the Firelight.
When Forked Tongue knows that Running Water has started for the hunters, he waits. Then he thinks:
“Now the hunters, because I have waited long, have already burned Running Water. An’ I will go an’ see an’ bring back one of the shin-bones to show Ugly Elk that he will never return.”
Forked Tongue travels fast; an’ as he runs by the lodge of the Firelight, while it is a new lodge to him, he does not pause, for the lodge is closed so that the light will not trouble Running Water where he lies asleep with his head in the lap of the Firelight.
Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is behind a tree as Forked Tongue trots past, an’ he laughs deep in his hairy bosom; for Moh-Kwa likes revenge, an’ he remembers how he was cheated of his bowl of molasses.
Forked Tongue runs by Moh-Kwa like a shadow an’ never sees him, an’ cannot hear him laugh.
When Forked Tongue comes to the hunters, they put their hands on him an’ tie him to the peeled pine tree. As they dance an’ shout an’ pile the brush an’ wood about him, Forked Tongue glares with eyes full of fear an’ asks: “What is this to mean?” The hunters stop dancing an’ say: “It means that it is time to sing the death song.” With that they bring fire from their camp an’ make a blaze in the twigs an’ brush about Forked Tongue; an’ the flames leap up as if eager to be at him—for fire hates a liar—an’ in a little time Forked Tongue is burned away an’ only the ashes are left an’ the big bones, which are yet white hot.
The sun is sinking when Running Water wakes an’ he is much dismayed; but the Firelight cheers him with her dark eyes, an’ Moh-Kwa comes from behind the tree an’ gives him good words of wisdom; an’ when he has once more eaten an’ drunk an’ smoked, he kisses the Firelight an’ goes forward to the hunters as the Ugly Elk said.
An’ when he comes to them, he asks:
“Have you killed an’ cooked the deer which was sent you by the Ugly Elk?” An’ the hunters laugh an’ say: “Yes; he is killed an’ cooked.” Then they take him to the peeled pine tree, an’ tell him of Forked Tongue an’ his fate; an’ after cooling a great shin-bone in the river, they wrap it in bark an’ grass an’ say:
“Carry that to the Ugly Elk that he may know his deer is killed an’ cooked.”
While he is returning to Ugly Elk much disturbed, Moh-Kwa tells Running Water how Forked Tongue made his evil plan; an both Running Water when he hears, an’ Ugly Elk when he hears, can hardly breathe for wonder. An’ the Ugly Elk cannot speak for his great happiness when now that Running Water is still alive an’ has not made a joke of his ugliness nor laughed. Also, Ugly Elk gives Moh-Kwa that bowl of molasses of which Forked Tongue would cheat him.
The same day, Moh-Kwa brings the Firelight to the lodge of Ugly Elk, an’ she an’ Running Water are wed; an’ from that time she dwells in the tepee of Running Water, even unto the day when he is named Kill-Bear an’ made chief after Ugly Elk is no more.
“It is ever,” said the Jolly Doctor, beaming from one to another to observe if we enjoyed Sioux Sam’s story with as deep a zest as he did, “it is ever a wondrous pleasure to meet with these tales of a primitive people. They are as simple as the romaunts invented and told by children for the amusement of each other, and yet they own something of a plot, though it be the shallowest.”
“Commonly, too, they teach a moral lesson,” spoke up the Sour Gentleman, “albeit from what I know of savage morals they would not seem to have had impressive effect upon the authors or their Indian listeners. You should know something of our Indians?”
Here the Sour Gentleman turned to the Old Cattleman, who was rolling a fresh cigar in his mouth as though the taste of tobacco were a delight.
“Me, savey Injuns?” said the Old Cattleman. “Which I knows that much about Injuns it gets in my way.”
“What of their morals, then?” asked the Sour Gentleman.
“Plumb base. That is, they’re plumb base when took from a paleface standp’int. Lookin’ at ’em with the callous eyes of a savage, I reckons now they would mighty likely seem bleached a whole lot.”
Discussion rambled to and fro for a time, and led to a learned disquisition on fables from the Jolly Doctor, they being, he said, the original literature of the world. With the end of it, however, there arose a request that the Sour Gentleman follow the excellent examples of the Jolly Doctor and Sioux Sam.
“But I’ve no invention,” complained the Sour Gentleman. “At the best I could but give you certain personal experiences of my own; and those, let me tell you, are not always to my credit.”
“Now I’ll wager,” spoke up the Red Nosed Gentleman, “now I’ll wager a bottle of burgundy—and that reminds me I must send for another, since this one by me is empty—that your experiences are quite as glorious as my own; and yet, sir,”—here the Red Nosed Gentleman looked hard at the Sour Gentleman as though defying him to the tiltyard—“should you favor us, I’ll even follow you, and forage in the pages of my own heretofore and give you a story myself.”
“That is a frank offer,” chimed in the Jolly Doctor.
“There is no fault to be found with the offer,” said the Sour Gentleman; “and yet, I naturally hesitate when those stories of myself, which my poverty of imagination would compel me to give you, are not likely to grace or lift me in your esteem.”
“And what now do you suppose should be the illustrative virtues of what stories I will offer when I tell you I am a reformed gambler?”
This query was put by the Red Nosed Gentleman. The information thrown out would seem to hearten the Sour Gentleman not a little.
“Then there will be two black sheep at all events,” said the Sour Gentleman.
“Gents,” observed the Old Cattleman, decisively, “if it’ll add to the gen’ral encouragement, I’ll say right yere that in Arizona I was allowed to be some heinous myse’f. If this is to be a competition in iniquity, I aims to cut in on the play.”
“Encouraged,” responded the Sour Gentleman, with just the specter of a vinegar smile, “by the assurance that I am like to prove no more ebon than my neighbors, I see nothing for it save to relate of the riches I made and lost in queer tobacco. I may add, too, that this particular incident carries no serious elements of wrong; it is one of my cleanest pages, and displays me as more sinned against than sinning.”
CHAPTER IV.—THAT TOBACCO UPSET.
When the war was done and the battle flags of that confederacy which had been my sweetheart were rolled tight to their staves and laid away in mournful, dusty corners to moulder and be forgot, I cut those buttons and gold ends of braid from my uniform, which told of me as a once captain of rebels, and turned my face towards New York. I was twenty-one at the time; my majority arrived on the day when Lee piled his arms and surrendered to Grant at Appomatox. A captain at twenty-one? That was not strange, my friends, in a time when boys of twenty-two were wearing the wreath of a brigadier. The war was fought by boys, not men;—like every other war. Ah! I won my rank fairly, saber in fist; so they all said.
Those were great days. I was with O’Ferrell. There are one hundred miles in the Shenandoah, and backwards and forwards I’ve fought on its every foot. Towards the last, each day we fought, though both armies could see the end. We, for our side, fought with the wrath of despair; the Federals, with the glow of triumph in plain sight. Each day we fought; for if we did not go riding down the valley hunting Sheridan, the sun was never over-high when he rode up the valley hunting us. Those were brave days! We fought twice after the war was done. Yes, we knew of Richmond’s fall and that the end was come. But what then? There was the eager foe; there were we, sullen and ripe and hot with hate. Why should we not fight? So it befell that I heard those gay last bugles that called down the last grim charge; so it came that I, with my comrades, made the last gray line of battle for a cause already lost, and fought round the last standards of a confederacy already dead. Those were, indeed, good days—those last scenes were filled with the best and bravest of either side.
No; I neither regret nor repent the rebellion; nor do I grieve for rebellion’s failure. All’s well that well ends, and that carnage left us the better for it. For myself, I came honestly by my sentiments of the South. I was born in Virginia, of Virginians. One of my youthful recollections is how John Brown struck his blow at Harper’s Ferry; how Governor Wise called out that company of militia of which I was a member; and how, as we stood in the lamp-lighted Richmond streets that night, waiting to take the road for Harper’s Ferry, an old grotesque farmerish figure rushed excitedly into our midst. How we laughed at the belligerent agriculturist! No, he was no farmer; he was Wilkes Booth who, with the first whisper of the news, had come hot foot from the stage of Ford’s Theater in his costume of that night to have his part with us. But all these be other stories, and I started to tell, not of the war nor of days to precede it, but about that small crash in tobacco wherein I had disastrous part.
When I arrived in New York my hopes were high, as youth’s hopes commonly are. But, however high my hope, my pocket was light and my prospects nothing. Never will I forget how the mere sensation of the great city acted on me like a stimulant. The crowd and the breezy rush of things were as wine. Then again, to transplant a man means ever a multiplication of spirit. It was so with me; the world and the hour and I were all new together, and never have I felt more fervor of enterprise than came to me those earliest New York days. But still, I must plan and do some practical thing, for my dollars, like the hairs of my head, were numbered.
It was my seventh New York morning. As I sat in the café of the Astor House, my eye was caught by a news paragraph. The Internal Revenue law, with its tax of forty cents a pound on tobacco, had gained a construction, and the department’s reading of the law at once claimed my hungriest interest. No tobacco grown prior to the crop of ’66 was to be affected by the tax; that was the decision.
Aside from my saber-trade as a cavalryman, tobacco was that thing whereof I exhaustively knew. I was a tobacco adept from the hour when the seed went into the ground, down to the perfumed moment when the perfect leaf exhaled in smoke. Moreover, I was aware of a trade matter in the nature of a trade secret, which might be made of richest import.
During those five red years of war, throughout the tobacco regions of the south, planting and harvesting, though crippled, had still gone forward. The fires of battle and the moving lines of troops had only streaked those regions; they never wholly covered or consumed them. And wherever peace prevailed, the growing of tobacco went on. The harvests had been stored; there was no market—no method of getting the tobacco out. To be brief, as I read the internal revenue decision above quoted, on that Astor House morning, I knew that scattered up and down Virginia and throughout the rest of the kindom of tobacco, the crops of full five years were lying housed, mouldy and mildewed, for the most part, and therefore cheap to whoever came with money in his hands. For an hour I sat over my coffee and made a plan.
There was a gentleman, an old college friend of my father. He was rich, avoided business and cared only for books. I had made myself known to him on the day of my arrival; he had asked me, over a glass of wine, to let him hear from me as time and my destinies took unto themselves direction. For my tobacco plan I must have money; and I could think of no one save my father’s friend of the books.
When I was shown into the old gentleman’s library, I found him deeply held with Moore’s Life of Byron. As he greeted me, he kept the volume in his left hand with finger shut in the page. Evidently he trusted that I would not remain long and that he might soon return to his reading.
The situation chilled me; I began my story with slight belief that its end would be fortunate. I exposed my tobacco knowledge, laid bare my scheme of trade, and craved the loan of five thousand dollars on the personal security—not at all commercial—of an optimist of twenty-one, whose only employment had been certain boot-and-saddle efforts to overthrow the nation. I say, I had scant hope of obtaining the aid I quested. I suffered disappointment. I was dealing with a gentleman who, however much he might grudge me a few moments taken from Byron, was willing enough to help me with money. In truth, he seemed relieved when he had heard me through; and he at once signed a check with a fine flourish, and I came from his benevolent presence equipped for those tobacco experiments I contemplated.
It is not required that I go with filmy detail into a re-count of my enterprise. I began safely and quietly; with my profits I extended myself; and at the end of eighteen months, I had so pushed affairs that I was on the highway to wealth and the firm station of a millionaire.
I had personally and through my agents bought up those five entire war-crops of tobacco. Most of it was still in Virginia and the south, due to my order; much of it had been already brought to New York. By the simple process of steaming and vaporizing, I removed each trace of mould and mildew, and under my skillful methods that war tobacco emerged upon the market almost as sweet and hale as the best of our domestic stock; and what was vastly in its favor, its flavor was, if anything, a trifle mild.
In that day of leaf tobacco, the commodity was marketed in one-hundred-pound bales. My bales were made with ninety-two pounds of war tobacco, sweated free of any touch of mildew; and eight pounds of new tobacco, the latter on the outside for the sake of color and looks. Thus you may glimpse somewhat the advantage I had. Where, at forty cents a pound, the others paid on each bale of tobacco a revenue charge of forty dollars, I, with only eight pounds of new tobacco, paid but three dollars and twenty cents. And I had cornered the exempted tobacco. Is it wonder I began to wax rich?
Often I look over my account books of those brilliant eighteen months. When I read that news item on the Astor House morning I’ve indicated, I had carefully modeled existence to a supporting basis of ten dollars a week. When eighteen months later there came the crash, I was permitting unto my dainty self a rate of personal expenditure of over thirty thousand dollars a year. I had apartments up-town; I was a member of the best clubs; I was each afternoon in the park with my carriage; incidentally I was languidly looking about among the Vere de Veres of the old Knickerbockers for that lady who, because of her superlative beauty and wit and modesty coupled with youth and station, was worthy to be my wife. Also, I recall at this period how I was conceitedly content with myself; how I gave way to warmest self-regard; pitied others as dullards and thriftless blunderers; and privily commended myself as a very Caesar of Commerce and the one among millions. Alas! “Pride goeth”—you have read the rest!
It was a bright October afternoon. My cometlike career had subsisted for something like a year and a half; and I, the comet, was growing in size and brilliancy as time fled by. My tobacco works proper were over towards the East River in a brick warehouse I had leased; to these, which were under the superintendence of a trusty and expert adherent whom I had brought north from Richmond, I seldom repaired. My offices—five rooms, fitted and furnished to the last limit of rosewood and Russia leather magnificence—were down-town.
On this particular autumn afternoon, as I went forth to my brougham for a roll to my apartments, the accountant placed in my hands a statement which I’d asked for and which with particular exactitude set forth my business standing. I remember it exceeding well. As I trundled up-town that golden afternoon, I glanced at those additions and subtractions which told my opulent story. Briefly, my liabilities were ninety thousand dollars; and I was rich in assets to a money value of three hundred and twelve thousand dollars. The ninety thousand was or would be owing on my tobacco contracts south, and held those tons on tons of stored, mildewed war tobacco, solid to my command. As I read the totals and reviewed the items, I would not have paid a penny of premium to insure my future. There it was in black and white. I knew what I had done; I knew what I could do. I was master of the tobacco situation for the next three years to come. By that time, I would have worked up the entire fragrant stock of leaf exempt from the tax; also by that time, I would count my personal fortune at a shadow over three millions. There was nothing surer beneath the sun. At twenty-six I would retire from trade and its troubles; life would lie at my toe like a kick-ball, and I would own both the wealth and the supple youth to pursue it into every nook and corner of pleasurable experience. Thus ran my smug reflections as I rolled northward along Fifth avenue to dress for dinner on that bright October day.
It was the next afternoon, and I had concluded a pleasant lunch in my private office when Mike, my personal and favorite henchman, announced a visitor. The caller desired to see me on a subject both important and urgent.
“Show him in!” I said.
There slouched into the room an awkward-seeming man of middle age; not poor, but roughly dressed. No one would have called him a fop; his clothes, far astern of the style, fitted vilely; while his head, never beautiful, was made uglier with a shock of rudely exuberant hair and a stubby beard like pig’s bristles. It was an hour when there still remained among us, savages who oiled their hair; this creature was one; and I remember how the collar of his rusty surtout shone like glass with the dripped grease.
My ill-favored visitor accepted the chair Mike placed for him and perched uneasily on its edge. When we were alone, I brought him and his business to instant bay. I was anxious to free myself of his presence. His bear’s grease and jaded appearance bred a distaste of him.
“What is it you want?” My tones were brittle and sharp.
The uncouth caller leered at me with a fashion of rancid leer—I suppose even a leer may have a flavor. Then he opened with obscure craft—vaguely, foggily. He wanted to purchase half my business. He would take an account of stock; give me exact money for one-half its value; besides, he would pay me a bonus of fifty thousand dollars.
If this unkempt barbarian had come squarely forth and told me his whole story; if, in short, I had known who he was and whom he came from, there would have grown no trouble. I would have gulped and swallowed the pill; we would have dealt; I’d have had a partner and been worth one and one-half million instead of three millions when my fortune was made. But he didn’t. He shuffled and hinted and leered, and said over and over again as he repeated his offer:
“You need a partner.”
But beyond this he did not go; and of this I could make nothing, and I felt nothing save a cumulative resentment that kept growing the larger the longer he stayed. I told him I desired none of his partnership. I told him this several divers times; and each time with added vigor and a rising voice. To the last he persistently and leeringly retorted his offer; always concluding, like another Cato, with his eternal Delenda est Carthago.
“You need a partner!”
Even my flatterers have never painted me as patient, and at twenty-three my pulse beat swift and hot. And it came to pass that on the heels of an acrid ten minutes of my visitor, I brought him bluntly up.
“Go!” I said. “I’ve heard all I care to hear. Go; or I’ll have you shown the door!”
It was of no avail; the besotted creature held his ground.
I touched a bell; the faithful Mike appeared. It took no more than a wave of the hand; Mike had studied me and knew my moods. At once he fell upon the invader and threw him down stairs with all imaginable spirit.
Thereupon I breathed with vast relief, had the windows lifted because of bear’s grease that tainted the air, and conferred on the valorous Celt a reward of two dollars.
Who was this ill-combed, unctuous, oily, cloudy, would-be partner? He was but a messenger; two months before he had resigned a desk in the Washington Treasury—for appearances only—to come to me and make the proffer. After Mike cast him forth, he brushed the dust from his knees and returned to Washington and had his treasury desk again. He was a mere go-between. The one he stood for and whose plans he sought to transact was a high official of revenue. This latter personage, of whose plotting identity back in the shadows I became aware only when it was too late, noting my tobacco operations and their profits and hawk-hungry for a share, had sent me the offer of partnership. I regret, for my sake as well as his own, that he did not pitch upon a more sagacious commissioner.
Now fell the bolt of destruction. The morning following Mike’s turgid exploits with my visitor, I was met in the office door by the manager. His face was white and his eyes seemed goggled and fixed as if their possessor had been planet-struck. I stared at him.
“Have you read the news?” he gasped.
“What news?”
“Have you not read of the last order?”
Over night—for my visitor, doubtless, wired his discomfiture—the Revenue Department had reversed its decision of two years before. The forty cents per pound of internal revenue would from that moment be demanded and enforced against every leaf of tobacco then or thereafter to become extant; and that, too, whether its planting and its reaping occurred inter arma or took place beneath the pinions of wide-spreading peace. The revenue office declared that its first ruling, exempting tobacco grown during the war, had been taken criminal advantage of; and that thereby the nation in its revenue rights had been sorely defeated and pillaged by certain able rogues—meaning me. Therefore, this new rule of revenue right and justice.
Now the story ends. Under these changed, severe conditions, when I was made to meet a tax of forty dollars where I’d paid less than a tithe of it before, I was helpless. I couldn’t, with my inferior tobacco, engage on even terms against the new tobacco and succeed. My strength had dwelt in my power to undersell. This power was departed away; my locks as a Sampson were shorn.
But why spin out the hideous story? My market was choked up; a cataract of creditors came upon me; my liabilities seemed to swell while my assets grew sear and shrunken. Under the shaking jolt of that last new revenue decision, my fortunes came tumbling like a castle of cards.
After three months, I dragged myself from beneath the ruin of my affairs and stood—rather totteringly—on my feet again. I was out of business. I counted up my treasure and found myself, debtless and unthreatened, master of some twenty thousand dollars.
And what then? Twenty thousand dollars is not so bad. It is not three millions; nor even half of three millions; but when all is said, twenty thousand is not so bad! I gave up my rich apartments, sold my horses, looked no more for a female Vere de Vere with intent her to espouse, and turned to smuggling. I had now a personal as well as a regional grudge against government. The revenue had cheated me; I would in revenge cheat the revenue. I became a smuggler. That, however, is a tale to tell another day.
“And now,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, dipping deeply into his burgundy, as if for courage, “I’ll even keep my promise. I’ll tell a story of superstition and omen; also how I turned in my infancy to cards as a road to wealth. Cards as a method to arrive by riches is neither splendid nor respectable, but I shall make no apologies. I give you the story of The Sign of The Three.”
CHAPTER V.—THE SIGN OF THREE.
Such confession may come grotesquely enough from one of education and substance, yet all the day long I’ve been thinking on omens and on prophecies. It was my servant who brought it about. He, poor wretch! appeared in my chamber this morning with brows of terror and eyes of gloom. He had consulted a gypsy sorceress, whom the storm drove to cover in this tavern, and crossed the palm of her greed with a silver dollar to be told that he would die within the year. Information hardly worth the fee, truly! And the worst is, the shrinking fool believes the forebode and is already set about mending his lean estates for the change. What is still more strange, I, too, regard the word of this snow-blown witch—whoever the hag may be—and can no more eject her prophecies from my head than can the scared victim of them.
This business of superstition—a weakness for the supernatural—belongs with our bone and blood. Reason is no shield from its assaults. Look at Sir Thomas More; chopped on Tower Hill because he would believe that the blessed wafers became of the Savior’s actual flesh and blood! And yet, Sir Thomas wrote that most thoughtful of works, “Utopia,” and was cunning enough of a hard-headed politics to succeed Wolsey as Chancellor.
Doubtless my bent to be superstitious came to me from my father. He was a miner; worked and lived on Tom’s Run; and being from Wales, and spending his days in gloomy caverns of coal, held to those fantastic beliefs of his craft in elves and gnomes and brownies and other malignant, small folk of Demonland. However, it becomes not me to find fault with my ancestor nor speak lightly of his foibles. He was a most excellent parent; and it is one of my comforts, and one which neither my money nor my ease could bring, that I was ever a good son.
As I say, my father was a miner of coal. Each morning while the mines were open, lamp in hat, he repaired deep within the tunneled belly of the hill across from our cottage and with pick and blast delved the day long. This mine was what is called a “rail mine,” and closed down its work each autumn to resume again in the spring. These beginnings and endings of mine activities depended on the opening and closing of navigation along the Great Lakes. When the lakes were open, the mines were open; when November’s ice locked up the lakes, it locked up the mines as well, and my father and his fellows of the lamp were perforce idle until the warmth of returning spring again freed the keels and south breezes refilled the sails of commerce. As this gave my father but five to six months work a year; and as—at sixty cents a ton and pay for powder, oil, fuse and blacksmithing—he could make no more than forty dollars a month, we were poor enough.
Even the scant money he earned we seldom really fingered. The little that was not cheated out of my father’s hands by the sins of diamond screens and untrue weights and other company tricks, was pounced on in advance by the harpies of “company store” and “company cottage,” and what coins came to our touch never soared above the mean dignity of copper. Poor we were! a family of groats and farthings! poor as Lamb’s “obolary Jew!”
It is not worth while for what I have in mind to dwell in sad extent on the struggles of my father or the aching shifts we made in my childhood to feed and clothe the life within our bodies. And yet, in body at least, I thrived thereby. I grew up strong and muscular; I boxed, wrestled and ran; was proficient as an athlete, and among other feats and for a slight wager—which was not made with my money, I warrant you!—swam eighteen miles in fresh water one Sunday afternoon.
While my muscles did well enough, our poverty would have starved my mind were it not for the parish priest. The question of books and schools for me was far beyond my father’s solution; he was eager that I be educated, but the emptiness of the family fisc forbade. It was then the good parish priest stepped forward and took me in earnest hand. Father Glennon deemed himself no little of an athlete, and I now believe that it was my supremacy in muscle among the boys of my age that first drew his eyes to me. Be that as it may, he took my schooling on himself; and night and day while I abode on Tom’s Run—say until my seventeenth year—I was as tightly bound to the priest’s books as ever Prometheus to his rock. And being a ready lad, I did my preceptor proud.
The good priest is dead now; I sought to put a tall stone above him but the bishop refused because it was too rich a mark for the dust of an humble priest. I had my way in part, however; I bought the plot just across the narrow gravel walk from the grave that held my earliest, best friend, and there, registering on its smooth white surface my debt to Father Glennon, stands the shaft. I carved on it no explanation of the fact that it is only near and not over my good priest’s bones. Those who turn curious touching that matter may wend to the bishop or to the sexton, and I now and then hear that they do.
No; I did not go into the coal holes. My father forbade it, and I lacked the inclination as well. By nature I was a speculator, a gambler if you will. I like uncertainties; I would not lend money at five hundred per cent., merely because one knows in advance the measure of one’s risks and profits. I want a chance to win and a chance to lose; for I hold with the eminent gamester Charles Fox that while to win offers the finest sensation of which the human soul is capable, the next finest comes when you lose. Congenitally I was a courtier of Fortune and a follower of the gospel of chance. And this inborn mood has carried me through a score of professions until, as I tell you this, I have grown rich and richer as a stock speculator, and hang over the markets a pure gambler of the tape. I make no apology; I simply point to the folk who surround me.
My vocation of a gambler—for what else shall one call a speculator of stocks?—has doubtless fattened my tendencies towards the superstitious. I’ve witnessed much surely, that should go to their strengthening. Let me tell you a story somewhat in line with the present current of my thoughts; it may reach some distance to teach you with Horatio that there be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. After all, it is the cold record of one of a hundred score of incidents that encourage my natural belief in the occult.
There is a gentleman of stocks—I’ve known him twenty years—and he has a weakness for the numeral three. Just how far his worship of that sacred number enters into his business life no one may certainly tell; he is secretive and cautious and furnishes no evidence on the point that may be covered up. Yet this weakness, if one will call it so, crops up in sundry fashions. His offices are suite three, in number thirty-three Blank street; his telephones are 333 and 3339 respectively; his great undertakings are invariably deferred in their commencements until the third of the month.
His peculiar and particular fetich, however, is a chain of three hundred and thirty-three gold beads. It is among the wonders of the street. This was made for him and under his direction by Tiffany, and cost one workman something over a year of his life in its construction. It is all hand and hammer work, this chain; and on each bead is drawn with delicate and finished art a gypsy girl’s head. Under a microscope this gypsy face is perfect and the entire jewel worthy the boast of the Tiffany house as a finest piece of goldbeater’s work turned out in modern times.
It is a listless, warm evening at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Our believer in “Three” is gathered casually with two of his friends. There is no business abroad; those missions which called our gentleman of the gypsy chain up-town are all discharged; he is off duty—unbuckled, as it were, in cheerful, light converse over a bottle of wine. Let us name our friend of the Three, “James of the Beads;” while his duo of comrades may be Reed and Rand respectively.
Such is man’s inconsistency that James of the Beads is railing at Reed who has told—with airs of veneration if not of faith—of a “system,” that day laid bare to him, warranted to discover in excellent rich advance, the names of the winning horses in next day’s races. James of the Beads laughs, while Reed feebly defends his credulity in lending the countenance of half belief to the “system” he describes.
Then a sudden impulse takes James of the Beads. His face grows grave while his eye shows deepest thought.
“To-morrow is the third of the month?” observes James of the Beads. Now with emphasis: “Gentlemen, I’ll show you how to select a horse.” Then to Reed, who holds in his hands the racing list: “Look for to-morrow’s third race!” Reed finds it.
“What is the third horse?”
“Roysterer.”
“Roysterer!” repeats James of the Beads. “Good! There are nine letters in the name; three syllables; three r’s!”
Then James of the Beads seizes with both hands, in a sort of ecstatic catch as catch can, on the gypsy chain of magic. He holds a bead between the thumb and fore-finger of each hand. Softly he counts the little yellow globes between.
“Thirty-three!” ejaculates James of the Beads. Deeper lights begin to shine in his eye. One test of the chain, however, is not enough. He must make three. A second time he takes a bead between each fore-finger and thumb; on this trial the two beads are farther apart. Again he counts, feeling each golden bullet with his finger’s tip as the tally proceeds.
“Sixty-six!”
There arrives a glow on the brow of James of the Beads to keep company with the gathering sparkle of his eye. The questioning of the witch-chain goes on. Again he seizes the beads; again he tells the number.
“Ninety-nine!”
The prophecy is made; the story of success is foretold. James of the Beads is on fire; he springs to his feet. Rand and Reed regard him in silence, curiously. He walks to a window and sharply gazes out on the lamp-sprinkled evening.
“Twenty-third street! Fifth avenue! Broadway!” he mutters. “Still three—always three!”
Unconsciously James of the Beads seeks the window-shade with his hand. He would raise it a trifle; it is low and interrupts the eye as he stands gazing into the trio of thoroughfares. The tassel he grasps is old and comes off in his fingers. James of the Beads turns his glance on the tassel.
“That, too, has its meaning,” says James of the Beads, “if only we might read it.”
The tassel is a common, poor creature of worsted yarns and strands wrapped about a clumsy mold of wood. James of the Beads scans it narrowly as it lies in his hand. At last he turns it, and the fringe falls away from the wooden mold. There is a little “3” burned upon the wood. James of the Beads exhibits this sacred sign to Reed and Rand; the while his excited interest deepens. Then he counts the strands of worsted which constitute the fringe. There are eighty-one!
“Three times three times three times three!” and James of the Beads draws a deep breath.
Who might resist these spectral manifestations of “Three!” James of the Beads turns from the window like one whose decision is made. Without a word he takes a slip of paper from his pocket book and going to the table writes his name on its back. It is a pleasant-seeming paper, this slip; and pleasantly engraved and written upon. No less is it than a New York draft drawn on the City National Bank by a leading Chicago concern for an even one hundred thousand dollars. James of the Beads places it in the hands of Rand.
“To-morrow should be the luckiest of days,” says James of the Beads. “I must not lose it. I must consider to-morrow and arrange to set afoot certain projects which I’ve had in train for some time. As to the races, Rand, take the draft and put it all on Roysterer.”
“Man alive!” remonstrates the amazed Rand; “it’s too much on one horse! Moreover, I won’t have time to get all that money down.”
“Get down what you can then,” commands James of the Beads. “Plunge! Have no fears! I tell you, so surely as the sun comes up, Roysterer will win.”
“The wise ones don’t think so,” urges Rand, who is not wedded to the mystic “Three,” and beholds nothing wondrous in that numeral. “This Roysterer is a seven for one shot.”
“And the better for us,” retorts James of the Beads. “Roysterer is to win.”
“But wouldn’t it be wiser to split this money and play part of it on Roysterer for a place?”
“Never!” declares James of the Beads. “Do you suppose I don’t know what I’m about? I’m worth a million for each year of my life, and I made every stiver of it by the very method I take to discover this horse. Can’t you see that I’m not guessing?—that I have reason for what I do? Roysterer for a place! Never! get down every splinter that Roysterer finishes first.”
“Let me ask one question,” observes the cautious Rand. “Do you know the horse?”
“Never heard of the animal in my life!” remarks James of the Beads, pouring himself a complacent glass. This he tastes approvingly. “You must pardon me, my friends, I’ve got to write a note or two. I’ve not too much time for a man with twenty things to do, and who must be in the street when business opens to-morrow. Take my word for it; get all you can on Roysterer. If we win, we’re partners; if we lose, I’m alone.”
Rand shakes sage, experienced head, while his face gathers a cynical look.
Reed and Rand take James of the Beads by the hand and then withdraw.
“What do you make of it?” asks Rand.
“The man’s infatuated!” replies Reed.
“And yet, you also believe in systems,” remarks Rand.
It is the next afternoon. The Brighton course is rampant with the usual jostling, pushing, striving, guessing, knowing, wagering, winning, losing, ignorant, exulting, deploring, profane crowd. The conservative Rand has so far obeyed the behest of James of the Beads that he has fifteen thousand dollars on Roysterer straight.
“To lose fifteen thousand won’t hurt him,” says Rand, and so consoles himself for a mad speculation whereof he has no joy.
Reed and Rand, as taking life easily, are in a box; the race over which their interest clings and clambers is called.
The horses are at the post. Roysterer does not act encouragingly; he is too sleepy—too lethargic! Starlight, the favorite, steps about, alert and springy as a cat; it should be an easy race for her if looks go for aught.
They get the word; they are “off!” The field sweeps ’round the curve. A tall man in a nearby box follows the race with a glass.
“At the quarter,” sings the tall man. “Starlight first, Blenheim second, Roysterer third!” There is a pause. Then the tall man: “At the half! Starlight first, Blenheim second, Roysterer third!” Rand turns to Reed. “He must better that,” says Rand, “or he’ll explode the superstition of our friend.” There is a wait of twenty-five seconds. Again the tall, binoculared man: “Three-quarter post! Starlight first, Blenheim second, Roysterer third—and whipping!”
“It’s as good as over,” observes Rand. “I wonder what James of the Beads will say to his witch-chain when he hears the finish.”
“It’s surprising,” remarks Reed peevishly, “that a man of his force and clear intelligence should own to such a weakness! All his life he’s followed this marvelous ‘Three’ about; and having had vast success he attributes it to the ‘Three,’ when he might as well and as wisely ascribe it to Captain Kidd or Trinity church. To-day’s results may cure him; and that’s one comfort.”
There is a sharp click as the tall man in the nearby box shuts up his glasses.
“Roysterer wins!” says the tall man.
“Got down fifteen thousand. Won one hundred and five thousand,” reads James of the Beads from Rand’s telegram sent from the track. James of the Beads is in his offices; he has just finished a victorious day, at once heavy and tumultuous with the buying and the selling of full three hundred thousand shares of stocks. “They should have wagered the full one hundred thousand and let the odds look after themselves,” he says. Then James of the Beads begins to caress the gypsy chain. “You knew,” he murmurs; “of course, you knew!” There is a note of devotion in the tones. The bead-worship goes on for a silent moment. “Only one hundred and five thousand!” ruminates James of the Beads. “I suppose Rand was afraid!”
“That is indeed a curious story,” observed the Jolly Doctor, when the Red Nosed Gentleman, being done with James of the Beads, was returning to his burgundy; “and did it really happen?”
“Of a verity, did it,” returned the Red Nosed Gentleman. “I was Rand.”
Conversation fluttered from one topic to another for a brief space, but dealt mainly with those divers superstitions that folk affect. When signs and omens were worn out, the Jolly Doctor turned upon the Old Cattleman as though to remind that ancient practitioner of cows how it would be now his right to uplift us with a reminiscence.
“No, I don’t need to be told it none,” said the Old Cattleman. “On the principle of freeze-out, it’s shore got down to me. Seein’ how this yere snow reminds me a heap of Christmas, I’ll onload on you-all how we’re aroused an’ brought to a realisin’ sense of that season of gifts once upon a time in Wolfville.”