Shorty McCabe Part 14

"Sho!" says he, and hands over all he had in stock. I went back on the jump. We made a wad half as big as your head, soaked it in the clove oil and rammed it down with a nail-hammer. It was the _fromage_, all right.

And say! Ever see an elephant grin and look tickled and try to say thank you? The way he talked deaf and dumb with his trunk and shook hands with us and patted us on the back was almost as human as the way a man acts when the jury brings in "Not guilty." Inside of three minutes Rajah was that kinky he tried to do a double-shuffle and nearly wrecked the barn.

It made us feel good too, and we stood around there and threw bouquets at ourselves for what we'd done.

Then the cook came out and wanted to know should she keep right on boiling them eggs or take 'em off; so we remembers about breakfast.

Callin' for a new deal on the eggs, we sent out word for 'em to fix up a tub of hot mash for Rajah and told the landlord to give our friend the best in the stable.

Rajah was fetchin' the bottom of the tub when we went out to say good-by. He stretched his trunk out after us as we went through the door. We'd climbed into the car and was just gettin' under way when we hears things smash, and looks back to see Rajah, with a section of the stable floor draggin' behind, coming after us on the gallop.

"Beat it!" says I to Goggles, and he was reachin' for the speed lever, when he sees a town constable, with a tin badge like a stove-lid, pull a bra.s.s watch on us.

"What's the limit?" shouts Pinckney.

"Ten an hour or ten dollars," says he.

"Here's your ten and costs," says Pinckney, tossing him a sawbuck. "Go ahead, Francois."

We jumped into that village ordinance at a forty-mile an hour clip and would have had Rajah hull down in about two minutes, but Pinckney had to take one last look. The poor old mutt had quit after a few jumps. He had squat in the middle of the road, lifted up his trombone frontispiece and was bellowin' out his grief like a calf that has lost its mommer.

Pinckney couldn't stand for that for a minute.

"I say now, we'll have to go back," says he. "That wail would haunt me for days if I didn't."

So back we goes to Rajah, and he almost stands on his head, he's so glad to see us again.

"We'll just have to slip away without his knowing it next time," says Pinckney. "Perhaps he will get over his grat.i.tude in an hour or so."

We unhitches Rajah from the stable floor and starts back for the hotel.

The landlord met us half-way.

"Don't you bring that critter near my place ag'in!" shouts he. "Take him away before he tears the house down."

An' no jollyin' nor green money would change that hayseed's mind. The whole population was with him too. While we were jawin' about it, along comes the town marshal with some kind of injunction warnin' us to remove Rajah, the same bein' a menace to life and property.

There wa'n't nothing for it but to sneak. We moves out of that burg at half speed, with old Rajah paddin' close behind, his trunk restin'

affectionately on the tonneau-back and a kind of satisfied right-to-home look in them little eyes of his. Made me feel like a pair of yellow shoes at a dance, but Pinckney seemed to think there was something funny about it. "'And over the hills and far away the happy Princess followed him,' as Tennyson puts it," says he.

"Tennyson was dead onto his job," says I. "But when do we annex the steam calliope and the boys in red coats with banners? We ought to have the rest of the grand forenoon parade, or else shake Rajah."

"Oh, perhaps we can find quarters for him in the next town, where he hasn't disgraced himself," says Pinckney.

Pinckney hadn't counted on the telephone, though. A posse with shot-guns and bench-warrants met us a mile out from the next place and shooed us away. They'd heard that Rajah was a man-killer and they had brought along a pound of a.r.s.enic to feed him. After they'd been coaxed from behind their barricade, though, and had seen what a gentle, confidin'

beast Rajah really was, they compromised by letting us take a road that led into the next county.

"This is gettin' sultry," says I as we goes on the side-track.

"I am enjoying it," says Pinckney. "Now let's have some road work."

Say, you ought to have seen that procession. First comes me and Pinckney, in running gear; then Rajah, hoofing along at our heels, as joyous as a chowder party; and after him Goggles, with the benzine wagon. Seems to me I've heard yarns about how grateful dumb beasts could be to folks that had done 'em a good turn, but Rajah's act made them tales seem like sarsaparilla ads. He was chock full of grat.i.tude. He was nutty over it. Seemed like he couldn't think of anything else but that wholesale toothache of his and how he'd got shut of it. He just adopted us on the spot. Whenever we stopped he'd hang around and look us over, kind of admirin', and we couldn't move a step but he was there, flappin'

his big ears and swingin' his trunk, just as though he was sayin': "Whoope-e-e, me fellers! You're the real persimmons, you are."

We couldn't find a hotel where they'd take us in that night, so we had to bribe a farmer to let us use his spare bed rooms. We tethered Rajah to a big apple-tree just under our windows to keep him quiet, and let him browse on a Rose of Sharon bush. He only ripped off the rain pipe and trod a flower-bed as hard as a paved court.

At breakfast Pinckney remarks, sort of soothin':

"We might as well enjoy Rajah's society while we have it. I suppose those circus men will be after him in a few days."

Then he remembers that receipt and pulls it out. I could see something was queer by the way he screwed up his mouth. He tosses the paper over to me. Say! do you know what them two ulsteret guys had done? They'd given Pinckney a bill of sale, makin' over all rights, privileges and good-will entire.

"You're it," says I.

"So it seems," says Pinckney. "But I hardly know whether I've got Rajah or Rajah's got me."

"If I owned something I didn't want," says I, "seems to me I'd sell it.

There must be other come-ons."

"We will sell him," says Pinckney.

Well, we tried. For three or four days we didn't do anything else; and say, when I think of them days they seem like a mince-pie dream. We did our handsomest to make those Nutmeggers believe that they needed Rajah in their business, that he would be handy to have around the place. But they couldn't see it. We argued with about fifty h.o.r.n.y-handed plow-pushers, showin' 'em how Rajah could pull more'n a string of oxen a block long, and could be let out for stump-digging in summer, or as a snow-plough in winter. We tried liverymen, storekeepers, summer cottagers; but the nearest we came to making a sale was to a brewer who'd just built a new house with red and yellow fancy woodwork all over the front of it. He thought Rajah might do for a lawn ornament and make himself useful as a fountain during dry spells, but when he noticed that Rajah didn't have any tusks he said it was all off. He knew where he could buy a whole cast-iron menagerie, with all the frills thrown in, at half the price.

And we wa'n't holding Rajah at any swell figure. He was on the bargain counter when the sale began. Every day was a fifty-per-cent. clearance with us. We were closing out our line of elephants on account of retiring from business, and Rajah was a remnant.

But they wouldn't buy. Generally they threatened to set the dogs on us.

It was worse than trying to sell a cargo of fur overcoats in Panama. In time it began to leak through into our heads that Rajah wa'n't negotiable. Didn't seem to trouble him any. He was just as glad to be with us as at first, followed us around like a pet poodle, and got away with his bale of hay as regular as a Rialto hamfatter raidin' the free lunch.

"Is it a life sentence, Pinckney?" says I. "Is this twin foster-brother act to a mislaid elephant to be a continuous performance? If it is we'd better hit the circuit regular and draw our dough on salary day. For me, I'm sick of havin' folks act like we was a quarantine station. Let's anchor Rajah to something solid and skiddoo."

But Pinckney couldn't stand it to think of Rajah being left to suffer.

He was gettin' kind of sore on the business, just the same. Then he plucks a thought. We wires to a friend of his in Newport to run down to the big circus headquarters and jolly them into sending an elephant-trainer up to us.

"A trainer will know how to coax Rajah off," says he, "and perhaps he will take him as a gift."

"It's easy money," says I.

But it wasn't. That duck at Newport sends back a message that covers four sheets of yellow paper, tellin' how glad he was to get track of Pinckney again and how he must come down right away. Oh, they wanted Pinckney bad! It was like the tap of the bell for a twenty-round go with the referee missin'. Seems that Mrs. Jerry Toynbee was tryin' to pull off one of those back-yard affairs that win newspaper s.p.a.ce--some kind of a fool amateur circus--and they'd got to have Pinckney there to manage it or the thing would fush. As for the elephant-trainer, he'd forgot that.

"By Jove!" says Pinckney, real sa.s.sy like.

"That's drawin' it mild," says I. "Would you like the loan of a few able-bodied cuss-words?"

"But I have an idea," says Pinckney.

"Handcuff it," says I; "it's a case of breakin' and enterin'."

But he didn't have so much loft-room to let, after all. His first move was to hunt up a railroad station and charter a box-car. We carpets it with hay, has a man knock together a couple of high bunks in one end, and throws in some new horse-blankets.

"Now," says Pinckney, "you and I and Rajah will start for Newport on the night freight."

"Have you asked Rajah?" says I.