Hoosier Mosaics Part 3

Heartily tired of the fair, burning with rage, and jealousy, and despair, but still vaguely hoping against hope for some better luck from some visionary source, Jack strolled about, chewing the bitter cud of his feelings, his hands up to his elbows in his trowser pockets and his soul up to its ears in the flood of discontent. He puckered his mouth into whistling position, but it refused to whistle. He felt as if he had a corn cob crossways in his throat. The wind blew his new hat off and a mule kicked the top out of the crown.

"Only a half a dollah! Who's the next lucky man?" cried the prize package fellow. "I'm now going to sell a new sort of packages, each of which, beside the usual amount of choice candy, contains a piece of jewelry of pure gold! Who takes the first chance for only a half a dollah?"

"'Ere's your mule!" answered Bill Powell, as with Minny still clinging to his arm, he pushed through the crowd and handed up the money.

"Bravely done!" shouted the crier; "see what a beautiful locket and chain! Luck's a fortune! And who's the next to invest? Come right along and don't be afraid of a little risk! Only a half a dollah!"

Jack saw Bill put the glittering chain round Minny's neck and fasten the locket in her belt; saw the eyes of the sweet girl gleam proudly, gratefully; saw black spots dancing before his own eyes; saw Bill swagger and toss his head. He turned dizzily away, whispering savagely, "Dern 'im!"

Just here let me say that such an expression is not a profane one. I once saw a preacher kick at a little dog that got in his way on the sidewalk. The minister's foot missed the little dog and hit an iron fence, and the little dog bit the minister's other leg and jumped through the fence. The minister performed a _pas de zephyr_ and very distinctly said "Dern 'im!" Wherefore I don't think it can be anything more than a mere puff of fretfulness.

After this Jack was for some time standing near the entrance to the "gla.s.s-works," a place where transparent steam engines and wonderful fountains were on exhibition. He felt a grim delight in tantalizing himself with looking at the pictures of these things and wis.h.i.+ng he had money enough to pay the entrance fee. He saw persons pa.s.s in eagerly and come out calm and satisfied--men with their wives and children, young men with girls on their arms, prominent among whom were Bill and Minny, and one dapper sportsman even bought a ticket for his setter, and, patting the brute on the head, took him in.

"Onery nor a dog!" hissed Jack, shambling off, and once more taking a long deep dive under the surface of the crowd. A ground swell cast him again near the vender of prize packages.

"Only a half a dollah!" he yelled; "come where fortune smiles, and cares and poverty take flight, for only a half a dollah!"

"Jist fifty cents more'n I've got about my clothes!" replied Jack, and the bystanders, taking this for great wit, joined in a roar of laughter, while with a grim smile the desperate youth pa.s.sed on till he found himself near the toe mark of a shooting gallery, where for five cents one might have two shots with an air gun. He stood there for a time watching a number of persons try their marksmans.h.i.+p. It was small joy to know that he was a fine off-hand shot, so long as he had not a nickel in his pocket, but still he stood there wis.h.i.+ng he might try his hand.

"Cl'ar the track here! Let this 'ere lady take a shoot!" cried a familiar voice; and a way was opened for Bill Powell and Minny Hart. The little maiden was placed at the toe mark and a gun given to her. She handled the weapon like one used to it. She raised it, shut one eye, took deliberate aim and fired.

"Centre!" roared the marker, as to the sound of a bell the funny little puppet leaped up and grinned above the target. Every body standing near laughed and some of the boys cheered vociferously. Minny looked sweeter than ever. Jack Trout felt famished. He begged a chew of tobacco of a stranger, and, grinding the weed furiously, walked off to where the yellow pavilion with its painted air-boats was whirling its cargoes of happy boys and girls round and round for the "Small sum of ten cents." A long, lean, red-headed fellow in one of the boats was paying for a ride of limitless length by sc.r.a.ping on a miserable fiddle. To Jack this seemed small labor for so much fun. How he envied the fiddler as he flew round, trailing his tunes behind him!

"Wo'erp there! Stop yer old merchine! We'll take a ride ef ye don't keer!"

The pavilion was stopped, a boat lowered for Bill Powell and Minny Hart, who got in side by side, and the fiddler struck up the tune of "Black-eyed Susie." Jack watched that happy couple go round and round, till, by the increased velocity, their two faces melted into one, which was neither Bill's nor Minny's--it was Luck's!

"He's got one outo me," muttered Jack; "I've got no money, can't fiddle for a ride, nor nothin', and I don't keer a ding what becomes o' me, nohow!"

With these words Jack wended his way to a remote part of the fair ground, where, under gay awnings, the sutlers had spread their tempting variety of cakes, pies, fruits, nuts and loaves. Here were persons of all ages and sizes--men, women and children--eating at well supplied tables. The sight was a fascinating one, and, though seeing others eat did not in the least appease his own hunger, Jack stood for a long time watching the departure of pies and the steady lessening of huge pyramids of sweet cakes. He particularly noticed one little table that had on its centre a huge peach pie, which table was yet unoccupied. While he was actually thinking over the plan of eating the pie and trusting to his legs to bear him beyond the reach of a dun, Bill and Minny sat down by the table and proceeded to discuss the delicious, red-hearted heap of pastry. At this point Bill caught Jack's eye:

"Come here, Jack," said he; "this pie's more'n we can eat, come and help us."

"Yes, come along, Jack," put in Minny in her sweetest way; "I want to tell you what a lot of fun we've had, and more than that, I want to know why you didn't come back and take me into the show!"

"I ain't hungry," muttered Jack, "and besides I've got to go see a feller."

He turned away almost choking.

"Bill's got me. 'Taint no use talkin', I'm played out for good. I'm a trumped Jack!"

He smiled a sort of flinty smile at his poor wit, and shuffled aimlessly along through the densest clots of the crowd.

And it so continued to happen, that wherever Jack happened to stop for any considerable length of time he was sure to see Bill and Minny enjoying some rare treat, or disappearing in or emerging from some place of amus.e.m.e.nt.

At last, driven to desperation, he determined on trying to borrow a dollar from his father. He immediately set about to find the old gentleman; a task of no little difficulty in such a crowd. It was Jack's forlorn hope, and it had a gloomy outlook; for old 'Squire Trout was thought by competent judges to be the stingiest man in the county. But hoping for the best, Jack hunted him here, there and everywhere, till at length he met a friend who said he had seen the 'Squire in the act of leaving the fair ground for home just a few minutes before.

Taking no heed of what folks might say, Jack, on receiving this intelligence, darted across the ground, out at the gate and down the road at a speed worthy of success; but alas! his hopes were doomed to wilt. At the first turn of the road he met a man who informed him that he had pa.s.sed 'Squire Trout some three miles out on his way home, which home was full nine miles distant!

Panting, crestfallen, defeated, done for, poor Jack slowly plodded back to the fair ground gate, little dreaming of the new trouble that awaited him there.

"Ticket!" said a gruff voice as he was about to pa.s.s in. He recoiled, amazed at his own stupidity, as he recollected that he had not thought to get a check as he went out! He tried to explain, but it was no go.

"You needn't try that game on me," said the gatekeeper. "So just plank down your money or stay outside."

Then Jack got furious, but the gatekeeper remarked that he had frequently "hearn it thunder afore this!"

Jack smiled like a corpse and turned away. Going a short distance down the road he climbed up and sat down on top of the fence of a late mown clover field. Then he took out his jack-knife and began to whittle a splinter plucked from a rail. His face was gloomy, his eyes l.u.s.treless.

Finally he stretched himself, hungry, jealous, envious, hateful, on top of the fence with his head between the crossed stakes. His face thus upturned to heaven, he watched two crows drift over, high up in the torrid reaches of autumn air, hot as summer, even hotter, and allowed his lips free privilege to anathematize his luck. For a long time he lay thus, dimly conscious of the blue bird's song and the water-like ripple of the gra.s.s in the fence corners. "Minny, Minny Hart, Minny!" sang the meadow larks, and the burden of the gra.s.shopper's ditty was----"Only a half a dollah!"

All at once there arose from the fair ground a mighty chorus of yells, that went echoing off across the country to the bluffs of Wild-cat Creek and died far off in the woods toward Greentown. Jack did not raise his head, but lay there in a sort of morose stupor, knowing well that whatever the sport might be, he had no hand in it.

"Let 'em rip!" he muttered, "Bill's got me!"

Presently the wagons and other vehicles began to leave the ground, from one of which he caught the sound of a sweet, familiar voice. He looked just in time to get a glimpse of Mr. Hart's wagon, and in it, side by side, Bill Powell and Minny! A cloud of yellow dust soon hid them, and turning away his head, happening to glance upward, Jack saw, just disappearing in a thin white cloud, the golden disc of Le Papillon's balloon!

He immediately descended from his perch and began plodding his way home, muttering as he did so----

"Dast the luck! Ding the prize package feller! Doggone Bill Powell!

Blame the old b'loon! Dern everybody!"

It was long after nightfall when he reached his father's gate. Hungry, weak, foot-sore, collapsed, he leaned his chin on the top rail of the gate and stood there for a moment while the starlight fell around him, sifted through the dusky foliage of the old beech trees, and from the far dim caverns of the night a voice smote on his ear, crying out tenderly, mockingly, persuasively----

"Only a half a dollah!"

And Jack slipped to his room and went supperless to bed, often during the night muttering, through the interstices of his sleep----"Bill's got me!"

BIG MEDICINE.

The corner brick storehouse--in fact the only brick building in Jimtown--was to be sold at auction; and, consequently, by ten o'clock in the morning, a considerable body of men had collected near the somewhat dilapidated house, directly in front of which the auctioneer, a fat man from Indianapolis, mounted on an old goods box, began crying, partly through his tobacco-filled mouth and partly through his very unmusical nose, as follows:--

"Come up, gentlemen, and examine the new, beautiful and commodious property I now offer for sale! Walk round the house, men, and view it from every side. Go into it, if you like, up stairs and down, and then give me a bid, somebody, to start with. It is a very desirable house, indeed, gentlemen."

With this preliminary puff, the speaker paused and glanced slowly over his audience with the air of a practiced physiognomist. The crowd before him was, in many respects, an interesting one. Its most prominent individual, and the hero of this sketch, was Dave Cook, sometimes called Dr. Cook, but more commonly answering to the somewhat savage sounding sobriquet of Big Medicine--a man some thirty-five years of age, standing six feet six in his ponderous boots; broad, bony, muscular, a real giant, with a strongly marked Roman face, and brown, s.h.a.ggy hair. He was dressed in a soiled and somewhat patched suit of b.u.t.ternut jeans, topped off with a wide rimmed wool hat, wonderfully battered, and lopped in every conceivable way. He wore a watch, the chain of which, depending from the waistband of his pants, was of iron, and would have weighed fully a pound avoirdupois. He stood quite still, near the auctioneer, smoking a clay pipe, his herculean arms folded on his breast, his feet far apart. As for the others of the crowd, they were, taken collectively, about such as one used always to see in the "dark corners"

of Indiana, such as Boone county used to be before the building of any railroads through it, such as the particular locality of Jimtown was before the ditching law and the I. B. & W. Railway had lifted the fog and enlightened the miasmatic swamps and densely timbered bog lands of that region of elms, burr oaks, frogs and herons. Big Medicine seemed to be the only utterly complacent man in the a.s.sembly. All the others discovered evidences of much inward disturbance, muttering mysteriously to each other, and casting curious, inquiring glances at an individual, a stranger in the place, who, with a pair of queer green spectacles astride his nose, and his arms crossed behind him, was slowly sauntering about the building offered for sale, apparently examining it with some care. His general appearance was that of a well dressed gentleman, which of itself was enough to excite remark in Jimtown, especially when an auction was on hand, and everybody felt jolly.

"Them specs sticks to that nose o' his'n like a squir'l to a knot!" said one.

"His pantaloons is ruther inclined to be knock-kneed," put in an old, grimy sinner leaning on a single barrelled shot gun.

"Got lard enough onto his hair to shorten a mess o' pie crust," added a liver colored boy.

"Walks like he'd swallered a fence rail, too," chimed in a humpbacked fellow split almost to his chin.

"Chaws mighty fine terbacker, you bet."