Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy Part 7

CHAPTER XVIII.

It was the first cool and bracing morning since the extreme heat of the summer, and Uncle Ike had begun to feel like going duck shooting. He could almost smell duck feathers in the air, and he had put on an old dead-gra.s.s colored sweater, with a high collar that rubbed against his unshaven neck, and he had got out his gun to wipe it for the hundredth time since he laid it away at the close of the last season. He looked it over and petted it, and finally sat down in a rocking chair, with the gun between his knees and a few cartridges in his hand that he had found in the pocket of his sweater; and he got to thinking of the days that he had pa.s.sed, in the last half century, shooting ducks, and hoping that the clock of time could be turned back, in his case, and that he might be permitted to enjoy many years more of the sport that had given' him so much enjoyment, and contributed so greatly to his health and hardness of muscle. He was c.o.c.king the old gun and letting down the hammers in a contemplative mood, and occasionally aiming at a fly on the opposite wall, as though it was a cluck, when, the door opened and the red-headed boy, accompanied by eight other boys, armed to the teeth with such weapons as they could find, marched in and formed a line on the opposite side of the room, and at the command, "Present arms!" given by the red-headed captain, they saluted Uncle Ike. He arose from the rocking chair, placed his shotgun at a "carry," and acknowledged the salute, and said:

"If that horse pistol that No. 2 soldier has got pointed at my stomach is loaded, I want to declare that this war is over, and you can go to the cook and get your discharges, and fill out your blanks for pensions.

But now, what does this all mean? Why this martial array? Why do you break in on a peaceful man this way, a man who does not believe in shedding human gore, so early in the morning?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: We came to offer you the position of colonel 157]

"Uncle Ike," said the red-headed boy, stepping one pace to the front, and saluting with a piece of lath, "we came to offer you the position of colonel of our regiment. We have thought over all the men who have been suggested as leaders, and have concluded that you are the jim dandy, and we want you to accept."

"Well, this takes me entirely by surprise;" said Uncle Ike, as he laid the shotgun on the table; "I certainly have not sought this office.

But I cannot accept the trust until I know what is the object of the organization. Who do you propose to fight?"

"We are organized to fight the French, both with weapons and by the boycott," said the leader, swelling out his chest, and each red hair sticking up straight. "We have watched the trial of Dreyfus, and the outrage of his conviction without a particle of testimony against him, has just made us sick, and we are forming a regiment to fight Frenchmen wherever we find them. We had the first battle at daylight this morning, when a French milkman drove along, and we threw eggs at him, and his horse run away and spilled four cans of milk. We are for blood, or milk, or any old thing that Frenchmen deal in. We will not drink any French champagne, and have decided not to visit the Paris Exposition."

"Well, I swow! you have got it up your noses pretty bad, haven't you?"

said the old man as he ordered the platoon to sit down on the floor and go into camp. "It is pretty tough, the way the French treated Dreyfus, but how are you going to make your boycott work?"

"We are going to pet.i.tion the President to cut off supplies for the Paris Exposition, withdraw from partic.i.p.ation in it, and we are going to ask all the people that were intending to go to Paris to stay away."

"I see, I see," said Uncle Ike, feeling in the pocket of his old sweater, and finding a handful of leaves, twigs and plug tobacco that had acc.u.mulated there for years. "How many Jew boys have you got enlisted in your army? You know this Dreyfus trouble is a fight on the Jews, not only in France, but of the whole world. You ought to have a whole regiment of Jew boys. How many have you got?"

"Well, we haven't got any yet, but a whole lot of them are going to think about it, and ask their parents if they can join," said the captain.

"Yes, they will think about it, but they won't join," said the old man, reaching for his pipe, and lighting up for a talk. "The Jews are the most patient, peaceful people in the world. They come the nearest to acting on the theory of the Golden Rule, of any cla.s.s of people, and they are about the only people that will turn the other cheek, when hit on the jaw. They have been a.s.sailed for thousands of years, until they look upon being ostracised and trodden upon as one of the things they must expect, and they don't kick half as much as they ought to. If they had the enthusiasm and the fighting qualities of the Irish, they would take blackthorn clubs and mow a swath through France wide enough for an army to march over. Why don't you fellows wait until the Jews map out a plan of campaign, and then follow them? It is no dead sure thing that if the people of other countries boycotted France, that they would not ruin more Jews than Frenchmen, as the Jews are in business that the Exposition will make or break, while the French just sit around and drink absinthe and shout 'viva la armee!' Don't you see you may ruin the very people you want to help? Then, stop and think of another thing.

It is not many months ago that a Jew cadet at West Point was hazed and abused and ostracised by the other cadets, and had his life made such a burden that he had to resign and go home, heart-broken to a heart-broken mother. That was almost as bad as the Dreyfus case as far as it went.

How can the President boycott France for abusing Jews when our own army officers, that are to be, have shown a meanness that will size up pretty fairly with the French army devils. I'll tell you, boys, what you do.

Let your sympathy go out to Dreyfus, and all his people, but don't go off half-c.o.c.ked. Wait until the representative Jews of this country decide what it is their duty to do in this case, and then join them, and help them, whether it is to fight or to pray. If they conclude to sit down, and look sorry, and turn the other cheek, and be swatted some more, you be sorry also. If they decide to get on their ears, and fight, with money, or guns, or boycott, you do as you like about helping them out. But if you read, in a day or two, that France has borrowed a few more millions of Rothschild, to pay off these officers who have persecuted Dreyfus, you can make up your minds that it is a good deal like our politics here at home, mighty badly mixed. Now you go and get me a wash basin of hot soft water, and some rags, and I will clean this gun, and you disband your army, and appoint a good Jew for colonel, and when he says the affair is ripe for a fight you can spiel," and the old man took the gun apart and prepared to clean it.

"Atten-shun!" shouted the red-headed boy to his army, and each soldier jumped up off the carpet and stood erect as possible. "I will now disband you, and deliver my farewell address." Then he whispered to Uncle Ike, and the old man handed him a half dollar, when the captain gave the money to a boy who seemed to be second in command, and added, "Go and buy you some ice-cream soda, and be prepared to respond to the call to arms at a minute's notice. If France does not pardon Dreyfus, and I can get a lot of Jew boys to join us, we won't do a thing to France. Break ranks! Git!" and the boys went outdoors and made a rush for a soda fountain.

"Now, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he watched his army going clown the street, "I have got a favor to ask of you. I want you to give me music lessons."

"Well, I'll be bunkoed," said Uncle Ike, as he began to pull the sweater off over his head. "I can't sing anything but 'Marching Through Georgia.' What you want music lessons for?"

"Well, sir, I'll tell you, if you won't laugh at me," said the boy, blushing. "You see, my girl has got back from the seash.o.r.e, where she has been taking salt-water baths. She was too fresh, but she is salty enough now, and her face and arms are tanned just like these Russia leather moccasins. You couldn't tell her from an Indian, only she doesn't smell like buckskin. She has been taking lessons all summer at a conservatory of music, and she can sing away up so high that when she strikes a high note and gargles on it, it makes your hair raise right up, and bristle, it is so full of electricity. She has got a tenor voice that----"

"Hold on, hold on, you have got all mixed up," said the old man. "She does not gargle. That is called warbling, or trilling, or trolling, or something. And no girl has a tenor voice. She must be a soprano."

"Well, that's what I want to take music lessons for, so I can talk with her intelligently about her music. Why, last night we were at a party, and I turned the music while she played and sang, and I got the wrong page, and got her all tangled up, and when she got through, and the people were telling her how beautiful she sang, I told her she had the most beautiful ba.s.s voice I ever saw, and she was so mad she wouldn't speak to me, so I want you to teach me which is tenor, and which is baritone, and which is that other thing, you know, Uncle Ike."

"Yes, I think I do," said the old man as he turned his head away to keep from laughing. "You want to learn to be a he Patti, in four easy lessons. Why, you couldn't learn enough about music to be in her cla.s.s in fourteen years. What you want to do is to look wise, and applaud when anybody gets through singing, and say bravo, and beautiful, and all that, but not give yourself away by commenting on the technique, see?"

"Stopper! Backerup! What is technique on a girl, Uncle Ike?" asked the red-headed boy, as his eyes stuck out like peeled onions. "I have been around girls ever since I was big enough to go home alone after seeing them home, without being afraid of spooks, but I hope to die if I ever saw a technique."

"The technique," said Uncle Ike, looking wise, "is what we musicians call the--the--get there, Eli. You know when a girl is singing, and gets away up on a high note, and keeps getting it down finer all the time, until it is not much bigger than a cambric needle, and she draws in a whole lot of air, and just fools with that wee bit of a note, and draws it out fine like a silk thread, and keeps letting go of it a little at a time until it seems as though it was a mile long, and the audience stops talking and eating candy, and just holds its breath, and listens for her to bite it off, and she wiggles with it, and catches another breath when it is keeping right on, and it seems so sweet and smooth that you can almost see angels hovering around up in the roof, and she stands there with her beautiful eyes shining like stars, and her face wreathed in smiles, and that little note keeps paying out like a silk fish line with a four-pound ba.s.s running away with the bait, and the audience gets red in the face for not breathing, and when everybody thinks she is going to keep on all night, or bust and fill the house with little notes that smell of violets, she wakes up, raises her voice two or three degrees higher, and finds a note that is more beautiful still, but which is as rare as the bloom of a century plant, so rare and radiant that she can't keep it long without spoiling, and just as you feel like dying in your tracks and going, to heaven where they sing that way all the time, she shakes that note into little showers of crystal musical snowflakes, and then raises her voice one note higher just for a second, and backs away with a low bow and a sweet smile, and the audience is dumb for a minute, and when it comes to, and she has almost gone behind the scenes, everybody cheers, and waves handkerchiefs, and stands up and yells until she comes back and does it over again, that is technique."

"Well, sir, my girl has got a technique just like that. She can sing the socks right off of----"

"Oh, hold on; don't work any of your slang into this musical discussion.

When you want to know anything about music, or falling in love, or farming, come to your Uncle Ike. Office hours from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m.

No cure no pay. If you are not satisfied your money will be cheerfully refunded," and the old man got an oil can and begun to oil the old shotgun, while the boy started to sing "Killarney" in a ba.s.s voice, and Uncle Ike drew the gun on him and said: "If you are looking for trouble, sing in that buzz-saw voice in my presence. I could murder a person that sang like that."

CHAPTER XIX.

Uncle Ike was leaning over the gate late in the afternoon, waiting for the red-headed boy and some of his chums to come back from the State fair. He had gone to the fair with them, and gone around to look at the stock with them, and had staked them for admission to all the side shows, and when they had come out of the last side show, and were hungry, he had bought a mess of hot wiener sausages for them, and while they were eating them somebody yelled that the balloon was going to go up, and the boys grabbed their wieners and run across the fair grounds, losing Uncle Ike; and being tired, and not caring to see a young girl go up a mile in the air, and come down with a parachute, with a good prospect of flattening herself on the hard ground, he had concluded to go home before the crowd rushed for the cars, and here he was at the gate waiting for the boys, saddened because a pickpocket had taken his watch and a big seal fob that had been in the family almost a hundred years. As he waited for the boys to come back he smoked hard, and wondered what a pickpocket wanted to fool an old man for, a man who would divide his money with any one out of luck, and he wondered what they could get on that poor old silver watch, that never kept time that could be relied on, and a tear came to his eye as he thought of some jeweler melting up that old fob that his father and grandfather used to wear before him, and he wondered if the boys would guy him for having his pocket picked, he, who had mixed up with the world for half a century and never been touched. It was almost dark when the red-headed boy and his partners in crime, came down the sidewalk, so tired their shoes interfered, and they stubbed their toes on the holes in the walk, even.

"Well, I s'pose you ducks spent every cent you had and had to walk five miles from the fair ground," said Uncle Ike, as he opened the gate and let them fall inside and drop on the gra.s.s, their shoes covered with dust, and their clothes the same. He invited them in to supper, but the peanuts, the popcorn, the waffles, the lemonade, the cider and the wieners had been plenty for them, and it did not seem as though they ever wanted to eat a mouthful again.

"Where is your fob and watch?" said the redheaded boy, as he noticed that the big stomach of the old man carried no ornament.

"Well, I decided this afternoon that it did not become a man of my age to be wearing gaudy jewelry," said Uncle Ike, "and hereafter you have got to take your uncle just as he is, without any ornaments. The watch never did keep time much, and I have had enough of guessing whether it was 1 o'clock or 3."

"Never going to wear it any more?" asked the red-headed boy, with a twinkle in his eye.

"No, I guess not," said Uncle Ike, as he heaved a sigh.

"Then I guess we can draw cuts for the old rattle-box," said the boy, as he pulled the watch and fob out of his pants pocket.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where did you get that watch 167]

"Here! where did you get that watch?" said Uncle Ike, in excitement. "I thought a pickpocket on the trolley car got it, and I was hot. Say, that is one of the best watches in this town. Where did you find it? Did the police get the man?"

"Oh, police nothin'," said the boy. "Say, Uncle Ike, you were the easiest mark on the fair ground. There you stood, looking up at the kites, with your hands behind your back, like a jay from way back, and I knew somebody would get your watch; so I just reached up and took it, and left you standing there. I wanted to teach you a lesson. Don't ever wear your jewelry at a fair. Here's your old ticker. Sounds as though it had palpitation of the heart," and the boy handed it to the old man.

"Well, by gum! To think I should live all these years, and go through what I have, and then have an amateur pickpocket take me for a Reuben, and go through me! But how did you like the great agricultural display?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the boy, taking off his shoes and emptying the sand out. "It seems to me the farmers ought to be encouraged. I wonder how many hundred dollars it cost to hire that girl to go up in a balloon; and what good could that exhibition do the farmers? If that girl's parachute hadn't parachuted at the proper time, and she had come down and been killed, wouldn't the people have been so horrified they would never go to another fair, and couldn't the state have been sued for damages for hiring her to kill herself?"

"Oh, maybe," said the old man, winding up his watch a lot ahead, and holding it to his ears to see if it had heart disease, as the boy had intimated. "But, you see, people have got to be amused. It has got so there is not the inspiration in looking at vegetables that there used to be, and the patchwork quilt does not draw like a house afire. The farmers are not going to blow in money to exhibit things for a blue ribbon, and the wealthy people who have fancy stock take the premiums and advertise their business. Money is paid for exhibits that more properly belong to the circus and the vaudeville, that ought to be paid in premiums to farmers who raise things. We hire a balloonist, believing that she will fall and kill herself before the season is over. We take the chance that she will kill herself at our fair, but if she does not, and is killed at some cheap fair, somewhere else, we feel that we are abused, and have been trifled with. What interested you the most at the fair?" asked the old man.

"The wieners," said the boys, all at once. And the red-headed boy added: "When a feller is so hungry his eyes look straight ahead, and he can't turn them in the sockets, there is nothing like a hot wiener to start things moving, and the man who invented wieners ought to have a chromo.

By gosh, I am going to bed," and the boys all started for their resting places, while Uncle Ike felt of his stomach where the fob rested, and looked as happy as though he had never been robbed.

"Come on, Mr. Train-robber," said Uncle Ike the next morning, as the boy showed up in the breakfast room, and the old man held up his hands as he supposed pa.s.sengers did when train-robbers attacked a train. "Go through me, condemn you, and take every last dollar I have got. I have brought you up to be an honest boy, and you turn out to be a pickpocket, and rob me of my watch. Oh, I tell you, no old bachelor ever had so much trouble bringing up a boy as I have. Now, I expect you will graduate in burglary, bunko, and politics, won't you?" and the old man looked at the laughing boy with such pride that the boy knew he was only fooling.

"No, if I went into burglary and kindred industries, I could never find such easy marks to practice on as dear old Uncle Ike," and the boy put his arms around the old man and asked him what time it was, and the Uncle grabbed his fob as though he was not sure whether it was there or not. "Now, let's eat breakfast," and they sat down together, and Aunt Almira poured the coffee, while Uncle Ike looked over the morning paper.

"You can disband your army, and let them go back to the paths of peace, for Dreyfus has been pardoned," said the old man. "I knew that they would pardon that man."

"Now, wouldn't that kill you," said the boy, as he sampled two or three pieces of canteloupe to find one to his taste. "That breaks up my scheme to fight the French. Uncle Ike, I have about made up my mind to lead a different life and become a minister, and preach, and go to sociables, and just have a dandy time. Say, it's a snap to be a minister, and only have to preach an hour Sunday, and have all the week to go fishing and hunting. What denomination would you advise me to become a minister of?"

"Well," said Uncle Ike, as he dropped a few lumps of sugar into his coffee, and looked at the boy across the table, "from the color of your hair, and your constant talk about falling in love every time you see a pretty girl, and the manner in which you take up a collection every time you see me anywhere, I should say you would make a pretty fair Mormon.