"Huh! That's it, is it?" he muttered, and noting that Cap'n Sproul seemed to be recovering his self-possession, he preferred not to wait for the threats and extorted pledge that his natural craftiness scented. He dove out.

"Where be ye goin' to?" demanded Hiram, checking the savage rush of the Cap'n.

"Catch him and make him shet his chops about this, if I have to spike his old jaws together."

"It ain't no use," said Hiram, gloomily, setting his shoulders against the door. "You'd only be makin' a show and spectacle in front of the wimmen. And after that they'd squat the whole thing out of him, the same as you'd squat stewed punkin through a sieve." He bored the Cap'n with inquiring eye. "You wasn't tellin' me that you held a morgidge on that tavern real estate." There was reproach in his tones.

"No, and you wasn't tellin' me that you had a bill of sale of the fixin's and furniture," replied the Cap'n with acerbity. "How much did you let him have?"

"Fifteen hunderd," said Hiram, rather shamefacedly, but he perked up a bit when he added: "There's three pretty fair hoss-kind."

"If there's anything about that place that's spavined any worse'n them hosses it's the bedsteads," snorted the other capitalist. "He's beat you by five hundred dollars. If you should pile that furniture in the yard and hang up a sign, 'Help yourself,' folks wouldn't haul it off without pay for truckin'."

"Le's see!" said Hiram, fingering his nose, "was it real money or Confederate scrip that _you_ let him have on _your_ morgidge?"

"Thutty-five hunderd ain't much on the most central piece of real estate in this village," declared the Cap'n, in stout defence.

"It's central, all right, but so is the stomach-ache," remarked Hiram, calmly. "What good is that land when there ain't been a buildin' built in this town for fifteen years, and no call for any? As for the house, I'll bet ye a ten-cent cigar I can go over there and push it down--and I ain't braggin' of my strength none, either."

The Cap'n did not venture to defend his investment further. He stared despondently through the window at the seamed roof and weather-worn walls that looked particularly forlorn and dilapidated on that gray March day.

"I let him have money on it when the trees was leaved out, and things look different then," he sighed.

"And I must have let him have it when I was asleep and dreamin' that Standard Ile had died and left his money to me," snorted the showman.

"I ain't blamin' you, Cap, and you needn't blame me, but the size of it is you and me has gone into partnership and bought a tavern, and didn't know it. If they had let Parrott alone he might have wiggled out of the hole after a while."

"It ain't wuth a hoorah in a hen-pen if it ain't run as a tavern,"

stated the Cap'n. "I ain't in favor of rum nor sellin' rum, and I knew that Ferd was sellin' a little suthin' on the sly, but he told me he was goin' to repair up and git in some summer boarders, and I was lettin' him work along. There ain't much business nor look-ahead to wimmen, is there?" he asked, sourly.

"Not when they bunch themselves in a flock and get to squawkin',"

agreed his friend.

"I don't know what they are doin' over there now," averred the first selectman, "but before they set fire to it or tear the daylights out, and seein' as how it's our property accordin' to present outlook, I reckon we'd better go over and put an eye on things. They prob'ly think it belongs to Ferd."

"Not since that bean-pole with a tin badge onto it got acrost there with its mouth open," affirmed Hiram, with decision, "and if he ain't told 'em that we bought Ferd out and set him up in the rum business, he's lettin' us out easier than I figger on."

The concerted glare of eyes that fairly a.s.sailed them when they somewhat diffidently ventured into the office of the tavern indicated that Hiram was not far off in his "figgerin'." The embarra.s.sed self-consciousness of Constable Nute, staring at the stained ceiling, told much. The indignant eyes of the women told more.

Mr. Parrott's brother was a sea-captain who had sent him "stuffed"

natural-history curios from all parts of the world, and Mr. Parrott had arranged a rather picturesque interior. Miss Philamese Nile, president of the W.T.W.'s, stood beneath a dusty alligator that swung from the ceiling, and Cap'n Sproul, glancing from one to the other, confessed to himself that he didn't know which face looked the most savage.

She advanced on him, forefinger upraised.

"Before you go to spreadin' sail, marm," said the Cap'n, stoutly, "you'd better be sure that you ain't got holt of the down-haul instead of the toppin'-lift."

"Talk United States, Cap'n Sproul," snapped Miss Nile. "You've had your money in this pit of perdition here, you and Hiram Look, the two of you. As a town officer you've let Ferd Parrott fun a cheap, nasty rum-hole, corruptin' and ruinin' the manhood of Smyrna, and you've helped cover up this devilishness, though we, the wimmen of this town, have begged and implored on bended knee. Now, that's plain, straight Yankee language, and we want an answer in the same tongue."

Neither the Cap'n nor Hiram found any consolation at that moment in the countenances of their respective wives. Those faces were very red, but their owners looked away resolutely and were plainly animated by a stern sense of duty, bulwarked as they were by the Workers.

"We've risen for the honor of this town," continued Miss Nile.

"Well, stay up, then!" snorted the short-tempered Hiram. "Though as for me, I never could see anything very handsome in a hen tryin' to fly."

"Do you hear that?" shrilled Miss Nile. "Aren't you proud of your n.o.ble husband, Mis' Look? Isn't he a credit to the home and an ornament to his native land?"

But Hiram, when indignant, was never abashed.

"Wimmen," said he, "has their duties to perform and their place to fill--all except old maids that make a specialty of 'tending to other folks' business." He bent a withering look on Miss Nile. "Cap'n Sproul and me ain't rummies, and you can't make it out so, not even if you stand here and talk till you spit feathers. We've had business dealin's with Parrott, and business is business."

"And every grafter 'twixt here and kingdom come has had the same excuse," declared the valiant head of the Workers. "Business or no business, Ferd Parrott is done runnin' this tavern."

"There's a point I reckon you and me can agree on," said Hiram, sadly.

He gazed out to where the tracks of Mr. Parrott led away through the slush.

"And it's the sense of the women of this place that such a dirty old ranch sha'n't disgrace Smyrna any longer."

"You mean--"

"I mean shut up these doors--nail 'em--and let decent and respectable women put up the folks who pa.s.s this way--put 'em up in a decent and respectable place. That's the sense of the women."

"And it's about as much sense as wimmen show when they get out of their trodden path," cried Hiram, angrily. "You and the rest of ye think, do ye, that me and Cap'n Sproul is goin' to make a present of five thousand dollars to have this tavern stand here as a Double-yer T. Double-yer monnyment? Well, as old Ba.s.sett said, skursely, and not even as much as that!"

"Then I'd like to see the man that can run it," declared the spokeswoman with fine spirit. "We're going to back Mis' Gifford.

We're going to the train to get custom for her. We're going to warn every one against this tavern. There isn't a girl or woman in twenty towns around here who'll work in this hole after we've warned 'em what it is. Yes, sir, I'd like to see the man that can run it!"

"Well, you look at him!" shouted Hiram, slapping his breast. He noted a look of alarm on the Cap'n's face, and muttered to him under his breath: "You ain't goin' to let a pack of wimmen back ye down, be ye?"

"How be we goin' to work to run it?" whispered the Cap'n.

"That ain't the p'int now," growled Hiram. "The p'int is, we're goin'

to run it. And you've got to back me up."

"Hiram!" called his wife, appealingly, but he had no ears for her.

"You've made your threats," he stormed, addressing the leader of the Workers. "You haven't talked to us as gents ought to be talked to.

You haven't made any allowances. You haven't shown any charity.

You've just got up and tried to jam us to the wall. Now, seein' that your business is done here, and that this tavern is under new management, you'll be excused to go over and start your own place."

He opened the door and bowed, and the women, noting determination in his eyes, began to murmur, to sniff spitefully, and to jostle slowly out. Mrs. Look and Mrs. Sproul showed some signs of lingering, but Hiram suggested dryly that they'd better stick with the band.

"We'll be man and wife up home," he said, "and no twits and no hard feelin's. But just now you are Double-yer T. Double-yers and we are tavern-keepers--and we don't hitch." They went.

"Now, Nute," barked Hiram, when the constable lingered as though rather ashamed to depart with the women, "you get out of here and you stay out, or I'll cook that stuffed alligator and a few others of these tangdoodiaps here and ram 'em down them old jaws of yours."

Therefore, Constable Nute went, too.

XXVIII