"Don't you realize what's going on here?" demanded Selectman Grant, his weapon in the hook of his arm.

"No!" a.s.serted Mr. Harnden.

"I know a blamed sight better! You can't look at this deputy sheriff without turning redder than one of the apples in that fake picture book of yours. You know what you have been doing in this town."

The selectman's tone was offensively harsh and loud. Mr. Harnden was moved to show a little spirit, having been cornered--and feeling protected by the presence of an officer of the law. "I have been doing business!"

"Scooping in town orders, you mean!"

"Taking them in the due course of my business, Mr. Selectman. I had a right to do it!"

"And what did you do with those orders?"

"I pa.s.sed them on--still in the course of my business."

"And you don't know into whose hands they have come?"

"Oh no!"

The selectman stepped close to the carriage and brandished his gun.

"While this town was staggering along, trying to find a way out, only a h.e.l.lion would take and make a club out of those orders and hit us the last and final clip with 'em. You've done it, Harnden! For the sake of the dirty money you've done it. They were letting those orders rest easy till we could get the legislature and have things put into some condition where we'd know what's what. Through your work some land pirate has got hold of those town orders. There isn't a cent in the town treasury. You know it."

He whirled away from Harnden and shook the gun at the deputy sheriff.

"I sha'n't believe your law, Dowd, till I've been and talked with Squire Hexter."

"Go and talk! But in the meantime a good lawyer has told me what to do and has given me the doc.u.ments, and I'm not trying the case in your dooryard. I have levied on those oxen and I shall take 'em along."

"Do you hear that, Harnden? That's what you have done to your town,"

bellowed the infuriated selectman. "He says there's a law allowing a creditor to levy on the property of any citizen of a town to satisfy a judgment. Judgment has been secured on those town orders. They are jumping on me first."

"It's what the lawyer told me to do," insisted the officer. "'Start with the selectman,' says he. 'That shows the others where they get off.'

Grant, I'm here with the papers and the right to act." He advanced close to the selectman, waggling admonitory forefinger. "I've been excusing your feelings. I don't blame you! This is tough. It's the penalty you pay for living in such a town. But I don't propose to stand for any more of that gunplay. Hand it over!"

Grant hesitated. The officer s.n.a.t.c.hed away the gun, broke it down, and pulled out the undischarged sh.e.l.l. He put that into his pocket and shoved the gun under the seat of a wagon. "You can have this gun back after the war is over. Now to business! You claim that the oxen are exempt because you have no horses. All right! I see you have a dozen cows. I'll take three of those. I'm fair, you see! You're only ent.i.tled to one cow. But keep nine. I'm going to spread the thing around town till I have enough to satisfy this judgment. It's for one hundred and ninety dollars. What say, now? Do you want to pay a fine for obstructing an officer?"

Selectman Grant shook his head. The flame of his rage had died down into sullen rancor. He went along to Harnden's carriage and suddenly nipped that gentleman's nose between toil-calloused index and middle fingers.

"They tell me there's no law against doing this," he said between his yellow, hard-set teeth, as he twisted at the nose, while Harnden's eyes ran water. "If there is a law, I hope you'll stay handy by in this town and prosecute while we're heating the tar and getting the feathers ready."

Sheriff Dowd took advantage of Selectman Grant's preoccupation with Harnden. He gave off orders to his helpers and they lowered the bars of the barnyard and started away with the cows.

There was a general disintegration of the group. Mrs. Grant led the lamenting womenfolk into the house. Mr. Harnden did not really extricate his nose; Grant twisted so violently that he broke his own grip, and his victim laced the whip under the horse's belly and escaped.

Within ten minutes Selectman Grant was whipping his own horse in a direction opposite to that which Harnden had taken. Mr. Grant was hot after law.

Squire Hexter gave him the law, and cold comfort.

"They can do it, Jared. Outsiders can get hold of unpaid town orders and put on the screws if they're that heartless. It isn't done once in a dog's age. But, as I say, it can be done when a creditor is ugly enough.

Harnden didn't say, did he, just who brought the orders?"

"I wouldn't have believed him if he did say! But he didn't say."

"And you don't know the man who secured judgment?"

"Never heard of him."

"I will try to trace the matter, Jared. No, keep your wallet in your pocket. There's no charge. It's a case where the interests of the citizens in general are concerned. I'm the regularly elected town agent, as you know!" The Squire smiled. "I'll take a town order for my pay."

He looked out of the window. "It's about time for somebody else to come larruping up here after law! Don't hurry, Jared! Wait and hear what's happened to the neighbors!"

The selectman sat gloomily, elbows squared on his knees, and waited.

Almost opposite the Squire's office the rattle-te-bang business on Britt's premises was going on.

"I wonder whether Tasper will dare to go ahead and build his palace after he hears the latest news," suggested the Squire. "You must be told, Jared, that after the live stock of the town has been thinned down to the essentials permitted by law, then the farms and general real estate can be levied on."

Grant lifted his haggard face and stared at the Squire. "Then, outside of the cook stove and my clothes, I don't know whether I'm worth a blasted cent, hey? They can dreen me slow with a gimlet, or let it out all at once with a pod auger, can they? That's what the law can do _to_ me, you say! What can it do _for_ me, Squire Hexter?"

"Well, Jared, they'll take your cows over to the shire and auction them off for what they'll bring. You can sue this town and recover the real value of the cows, along with interest at twelve per cent. That is to say, you can get judgment against the town for that amount."

"And then I can go over to my neighbor's and grab away any loose property I can find of his?"

"You can do it!"

"Look here, Squire, that makes it nothing except a game of 'tag, you're it,' and a case of 'I've got my fingers crossed'! The whole of us running around in circles, and the lawyers picking up all the loose change we drop from our pockets. Where do we wind up?"

The Squire shook his head slowly and reached down and stroked one of Eli's ears. "Eli was telling me that Jones thought he had invented perpetual motion when he tied a piece of liver to a pup's tail and set the pup to revolving; but the pup wore out."

Grant sat for some minutes and harkened to the bang of the hammers across the way. "I don't understand how a fa.r.s.eeing man like Tasp Britt dares to build a good house here," he growled.

"Oh, the pup may be worn out by the time it is finished--or those towers may mean that he intends to list it as a meetinghouse and have it exempted from taxation, Jared. We shall see!"

But whatever it was that the selectman saw, as he sat there and stared at the wall of Squire Hexter's office, it evidently was not serving in the way of comfort.

The Squire's prediction about other seekers for law was fulfilled before long. The deputy sheriff had proceeded on his travels. The afflicted parties came up the Squire's stairs. Arden Young reported that three of his best cows were driven away. George Jordan and his cousin J. O.

Jordan each surrendered two faithful moolies. It was plain that Sheriff Dowd proposed to make sure that there was auction material enough to yield one hundred and ninety dollars, along with the costs.

"Jared," suggested the notary, "you'd better have an accounting and find out how many of those town orders were issued when the reckless spirit was on. Somebody has decided to milk the old town. It is being done scientifically, seeing that this first mess is so modest. But we need to know about how many messes we're expected to give down."

Inside of a fortnight there were two more milkings.

At about that time Tasper Britt started proceedings to foreclose a couple of mortgages. The debtors despondently declared that they would not attempt to redeem the property; they told Britt that he could have it for what he could get out of it. The usurer tried to show disinclination to take over real estate in Egypt, but he did not make a very good job of the pretense. He had the air of a man who expected to be obliged to tussle for something, but had had the something dropped into his grasp when he merely touched the holder's knuckles.

Britt had a map of the town in his office desk. He began to color sections with a red crayon. According to Mr. Britt's best judgment in the matter, he was in a fine way to own a whole town--a barony six miles square--at an extremely reasonable figure. From the selectman down, n.o.body seemed to feel that Egypt property was worth anything. As to beginning suits against the town, n.o.body felt like paying lawyers' fees and piling up costs. It was like tilting against a fog bank. And in a veritable fog bank of doubt and despair the unhappy Egyptians wandered around and around.

CHAPTER XXII

THE TAUT STRING SNAPS