Anderson Crow, Detective Part 20

"A bed to sleep in, you ninny!" she cried. "You're going to sleep in the same bed you've been sleeping in for forty years. What are you talking about? Ain't you going to sleep with me if I appoint you deputy marshal?"

"Certainly," Anderson made haste to a.s.sure her. "Unofficially, o'

course," he went on, with profound regard for the ethics involved.

"Well, I'll think it over," she said wearily. "Don't bother me now, you two; can't you see I'm making apple b.u.t.ter?"

"I hope you will consent to run, Mrs. Crow," put in the wily Mr.

Squires, "if only for the sake of showing Minnie St.i.tzenberg that it won't do her any good to be saying things about--well, about anybody in particular." He concluded very lamely.

"Has that woman been saying things about me?" demanded Mrs. Crow.

"I ought to have sense enough to keep my mouth shut," said Harry, scowling darkly. Catching the astonished look on Anderson's face, he hastily suggested that they "beat it."

Out in the front yard Anderson halted him. "Has Minnie been saying anything about my wife, Harry Squires?"

Harry first looked over his shoulder and then winked. "Not that I know of," he said, chuckling. "But I guess it's safe to go ahead and print the ticket with Mrs. Crow's name on it."

Never in all its sedentary existence had Tinkletown experienced a livelier campaign.

"If you vote for Minnie St.i.tzenberg, I'll never speak to you again," was the common argument of the Crowites, and "Don't you ever try to look me in the face again if you vote for that old Mrs. Crow," was the slogan of the opposition.

Mrs. Crow conducted her own campaign.

Anderson discovered to his great dismay that his meals were not only irregular in the matter of time, but frequently did not materialize at all. His wife and daughters neglected him completely. On three separate occasions after waiting until nearly eight o'clock for his supper, he strolled disconsolately over to the equally abandoned home of Alf Reesling.

"I'm a mighty poor cook," confessed Alf on the first occasion, a hungry, hara.s.sed look in his eyes. "But anything's better'n starvin', ain't it?"

"It sh.o.r.e is," said Anderson with feeling.

"I ain't seen a petticoat around my house since half-past nine this mornin'," lamented Alf, upsetting a pan of milk while trying to get a plate of cold ham out of the icebox. "It's terrible."

"Lemme take your knife, Alf. I'll peel the pertatoes--if you'll tell me where they are."

"I don't know where anything is," said Alf, leaning dejectedly against the kitchen sink.

"Well," said Anderson, "let's look."

"If the election was a week further off, I'd give up an' go to drinkin'

again," said Alf on another occasion. "I'd sooner drink myself to death than starve. Starvation is a terrible end, Anderson. Worse than hangin', they say."

"Only four days more," sighed Anderson, clipping off a hunk of bologna.

"My wife says if I'll hold out till after election, she won't never leave the kitchen ag'in long as she lives."

"That's what mine says. Sherman was only half right. War may be h.e.l.l for men, but, by gosh, women are h.e.l.l for war. An' that's what it is--war, Anderson, war to the hilt. Every woman in town's got her knife out an', my G.o.d, how they're slashin' each other! There won't be a whole woman left."

"Well, I'd be satisfied with half a one," mused Anderson, a faraway look in his eyes.

The day before the election, Mrs. Crow played her trump card. She had treasured an open boast made years before by the disappointed old maid who now opposed her. Minnie, before attaining years of discretion and still smarting under the failures of youth, had spitefully announced that she was a spinster from choice. With great scorn she had stated, while sitting on Mrs. Crow's porch, that she would die an old maid a hundred times over sooner than marry any one in Tinkletown. And, she added, the best proof that she meant what she said was the fact that nearly every man in town had asked her to marry him before he asked any one else!

The news spread like wildfire the instant Mrs. Crow released it. Mrs.

Crow's veracity was not a thing to be questioned.

When the returns were all in, Mrs. Crow was found to have received 573 votes (women included), out of a total of 601 cast. Miss St.i.tzenberg held the German vote solid, including seven from her own s.e.x who could afford to disregard the slander because they had been safely married in Germany long before coming to Tinkletown.

The day after the new marshal's induction into office Anderson appeared with his star glittering so brightly that it dazzled the eye. His shoes were polished, his clothes brushed and--shocking to relate--his trousers creased. In all his career as marshal he had never gone to such extremes as this. He was, however, not in a happy frame of mind. His customary aplomb was missing.

"Well, of all the--" began Alf Reesling. Then, before Anderson could put in a word of warning, he shouted to the group in front of Lamson's store: "Hey! Look at the dude!"

Anderson, very red in the face, declined a seat on a soap box.

"If I'd knowed she was goin' to act like this, I'd a voted ag'in her myself," he said rather wanly. "She started in bossin' me the very minute she got my place as marshal. She's laid down the law to me, an', by crickety, she says if I'm goin' to be her deputy I've got to look like this every day. Look at them shoes! And these pants! No, I can't set down. I don't dare risk sp'ilin' the creases my daughter Susie put in 'em 'fore I was up this mornin'."

VICIOUS LUCIUS

Lucius Fry lived up back of the Power-house on the outskirts of Tinkletown. He had a wife, two children and a horse and buggy. For a great many years he had led a quiet, peaceful, even suppressed existence. Being a rather smallish, bony sort of man, with a large Adam's apple and bow legs, he was an object of considerable scorn not only to his acquaintances but to his wife and children, and after a fashion, to his horse.

The latter paid absolutely no attention to him when he said "Get-ap," or when he applied the "gad"; she neither obeyed the command nor resented the chastis.e.m.e.nt. She jogged along in her own sweet way quite as if he were nowhere in the vicinity. His wife abused him, and his children ignored him. No one, it would appear, had the slightest use or respect for Lucius Fry.

He was, by profession, a well-digger. The installation of a water-works system in Tinkletown had made him a well-digger in name only. For a matter of five or six years, barring the last six months, he had been in the employ of his wife. She took in washing, and it was his job to collect and deliver the "wash" three times a week. In return for this he received board and lodging and an occasional visit to the moving-picture theatre. One of his daughters clerked in the five-and-ten-cent store, and the other, aged twelve, was errand girl to Miss Angie Nixon, the fashionable dressmaker.

Lucius had married very much above him, so to speak. That is to say, his wife was something like nine or ten inches the taller of the two. When they appeared on the street together,--which was seldom,--you could see him only if you chanced to be on _that_ side of her. Mrs. Fry was nearly six feet tall and very wide, but Lucius was not much over five feet two.

He had a receding chin that tried to secrete itself behind a scant, dun-colored crop of whiskers, cultivated by him with two purposes in view; first, to provide shelter for his shrinking chin, and second, to avoid the arduous and unnecessary task of shaving.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _When they appeared on the street together_]

Roughly speaking, Lucius was a shiftless creature. It had long been the consensus of opinion--freely expressed throughout Tinkletown--that he did not amount to a tinker's dam.

However that may be, some six or seven months prior to the incidents about to be related, Mr. Fry himself wrought a tremendous and unbelievable change in the foregoing opinion. Almost in the wink of an eyelash he pa.s.sed through a process of transmogrification that not only bewildered him but caused the entire community to sit up and take notice of him.

It all came about in the oddest sort of way. For a number of years Lucius had been in the habit of currying the old grey mare on Sat.u.r.day mornings. Away back in his mind lurked an hereditary respect for the Sabbath. He wanted old Peggy to be as clean as possible on Sunday--observing the same principle, no doubt, that induces a great many people to take a bath on Sat.u.r.day night. Moreover, he changed the bedding in her stall on Sat.u.r.days, employing a pitchfork and a spade.

For a number of years Peggy had put up with these attentions, responding amiably to his directions--such as "Get over, dern ye," or "Whoa, back,"

"Stan' still, can't ye?" and so on.

One never-to-be-forgotten Sat.u.r.day morning in the spring of the year, Peggy happened to be peevish. The cause of her peevishness was a swarm of intensely active flies. Mr. Fry was accustomed to an occasional swish of her tail across his face. He even welcomed it, for the flies bothered him almost as much as they did Peggy. On mornings when he felt unusually tired, he was rather grateful to Peggy for including him in the sweep of her tail.

But on this particular morning the exasperated nag planted one of her hoofs on Mr. Fry's toes while he was engaged in brushing out the kinks in her mane.

Mrs. Fry happened to be in the stable at the time, seeing if the hens had mislaid anything in the hay. She was astonished by the roar of a mighty oath, followed almost instantly by a thunderous thump on the barrel-like anatomy of the family horse. A second or two later Peggy's head came in for a resounding whack, and the stream of profanity increased to a torrent.

Springing to her feet, the surprised lady cast a startled glance over the manger into the stall. Her husband had old Peggy backed up against the part.i.tion and was preparing to deliver a third blow with the spade when she called out to him: "Stop it, you little fool!"

Mr. Fry's attention was diverted. Peggy was spared the impending blow.