The Skipper and the Skipped Part 22

Parrott did not go back after the Honorable Bickford.

The loyal and apologetic Kitchen a.s.sisted that gentleman to rise, brushed off his clothes--what were left of them--and carried him to "Bickburn Towers" in his buggy, with Hector wagging sociably in the dust behind.

Mr. Bickford fingered the ragged edge of his severed coat-tails, and kept his thoughts to himself during his ride.

When the old lady Sampson called at the Towers next day with a subscription paper to buy a carpet for the Baptist vestry, James informed her that Mr. Bickford had gone out West to look after his business interests.

When Hiram Look set Cap'n Aaron Sproul down at his door that afternoon he emphasized the embarra.s.sed silence that had continued during the ride by driving away without a word. Equally as saturnine, Cap'n Sproul walked through his dooryard, the battered plug hat in his hand, paying no heed to the somewhat agitated questions of his wife. She watched his march into the corn-field with concern.

She saw him set the hat on the head of a scarecrow whose construction had occupied his spare hours, and in which he felt some little pride.

But after surveying the result a moment he seemed to feel that he had insulted a helpless object, for he took the hat off, spat into it, and kicked it into shapeless pulp. Then he came back to the house and grimly asked his wife if she had anything handy to take the poison out of hornet stings.

XIII

In Newry, on the glorious Fourth of July, the Proud Bird of Freedom wears a red shirt, a shield hat, and carries a speaking-trumpet clutched under one wing. From the court-house--Newry is the county's shire town--across to the post-office is stretched the well-worn banner:

WELCOME TO THE COUNTY'S BRAVE FIRE-LADDIES

That banner pitches the key for Independence Day in Newry. The shire patriotically jangles her half-dozen bells in the steeples at daylight in honor of Liberty, and then gives Liberty a stick of candy and a bag of peanuts, and tells her to sit in the shade and keep her eye out sharp for the crowding events of the annual firemen's muster.

This may be a cavalier way of treating Liberty, but perhaps Liberty enjoys it better than being kept on her feet all day, listening to speeches and having her ear-drums split by cannon. Who knows? At all events, Newry's programme certainly suits the firemen of the county, from Smyrna in the north to Carthage in the south. And the firemen of the county and their women are the ones who do their shopping in Newry! Liberty was never known to buy as much as a ribbon for her kimono there.

So it's the annual firemen's muster for Newry's Fourth! Red shirts in the forenoon parade, red language at the afternoon tub-trials, red fire in the evening till the last cheer is yawped.

So it was on the day of which this truthful chronicle treats.

Court Street, at ten, ante-meridian, was banked with eager faces.

Band music, m.u.f.fled and mellow, away off somewhere where the parade was forming! Small boys whiling away the tedium of waiting with snap-crackers. Country teams loaded to the edges, and with little Johnny scooched on a cricket in front, hustling down the line of parade to find a nook. Anxious parents scuttling from side to side of the street, dragging red-faced offspring with the same haste and uncertainty hens display to get on the other side of the road--having no especial object in changing, except to change. Chatter of voices, hailings of old friends who signified delighted surprise by profanity and affectionate abuse. Everlasting wailings of penny squawkers!

Behold Newry ready for its annual: "See the Conquering Heroes Come!"

Uncle Brad Trufant stood on the post-office steps, dim and discontented eyes on the vista of Court Street, framed in the drooping elms.

"They don't get the pepper sa.s.s into it these days they used to,"

he said. "These last two years, if it wa'n't for the red shirts and some one forgettin' and cussin' once in a while, you'd think they was cla.s.ses from a theological seminary marchin' to get their degrees.

I can remember when we came down from Vienny twenty years ago with old Niag'ry, and ev'ry man was over six feet tall, and most of 'em had double teeth, upper and lower, all the way 'round. And all wore red shirts. And ev'ry man had one horn, and most of 'em tew. We broke gla.s.s when we hollered. We tore up ground when we jumped. We cracked the earth when we lit. Them was real days for firemen!"

"Ain't seen the Smyrna Ancient and Honorable Firemen's a.s.sociation, Hiram Look foreman, and his new fife-and-drum corps, and the rest of the trimmin's, have you, Uncle Brad?" drawled a man near him. "Well, don't commit yourself too far on old Vienny till the Smyrna part of the parade gets past. I see 'em this mornin' when they unloaded Hecly One and the trimmin's 'foresaid, and I'd advise you to wait a spell before you go to callin' this muster names."

It became apparent a little later that hints of this sort were having their effect on the mult.i.tude. Even the head of the great parade, with old John Burt, chief marshal, t.i.tupping to the grunt of bra.s.s horns, stirred only perfunctory applause. The shouts for Avon's stalwart fifty, with their mascot gander waddling on the right flank, were evidently confined to the Avon excursionists. Starks, Carthage, Salem, Vienna strode past with various evolutions--open order, fours by the right, double-quick, and all the rest, but still the heads turned toward the elm-framed vista of the street. The people were expecting something. It came.

Away down the street there sounded--raggity-tag! raggity-tag!--the tuck of a single drum. Then--pur-r-r-r!

"There's old Smyrna talkin' up!" shrilled a voice in the crowd.

And the jubilant plangor of a fife-and-drum corps burst on the listening ears.

"And there's his pet elephant for a mascot! How's that for Foreman Hiram Look and the Smyrna Ancients and Honer'bles?" squealed the voice once more.

The drum corps came first, twenty strong, snares and ba.s.ses rattling and booming, the fifers with arms akimbo and cheeks like bladders.

Hiram Look, ex-showman and once proprietor of "Look's Leviathan Circus and Menagerie," came next, lonely in his grandeur. He wore his leather hat, with the huge shield-fin hanging down his back, the word "Foreman" newly lettered on its curved front. He carried two leather buckets on his left arm, and in his right hand flourished his speaking-trumpet. The bed-wrench, chief token of the antiquity of the Ancients, hung from a cord about his neck, and the huge bag, with a puckering-string run about its mouth, dangled from his waist.

At his heels shambled the elephant, companion of his circus wanderings, and whose old age he had sworn to protect and make peaceful. A banner was hung from each ear, and she slouched along at a brisk pace, in order to keep the person of her lord and master within reach of her moist and wistful trunk. She wore a blanket on which was printed: "Imogene, Mascot of the Smyrna Ancients." Imogene was making herself useful as well as ornamental, for she was harnessed to the pole of "Hecla Number One," and the old tub "ruckle-chuckled" along at her heels on its little red trucks. From its brake-bars hung the banners won in the past-and-gone victories of twenty years of musters. Among these was one inscribed "Champions."

And behind Hecla marched, seventy-five strong, the Ancients of Smyrna, augmented, by Hiram Look's enterprise, until they comprised nearly every able-bodied man in the old town.

To beat and pulse of riotous drums and shrilling fifes they were roaring choruses. It was the old war song of the organization, product of a quarter-century of rip-roaring defiance, crystallized from the lyrics of the hard-fisted.

They let the ba.s.s drums accent for them.

"Here wec-come from old Sy-myrna Here wec-come with Hecly One; She's the prunes for a squirt, gol durn her-- We've come down for fight or fun.

Shang, de-rango! We're the bo-kay, Don't giveadam for no one no way.

"Here wec-come--sing old A'nt Rhody!

See old Hecly paw up dirt.

Stuff her pod with rocks and sody, Jee-ro C'ris'mus, how she'll squirt!

Rip-te-hoo! And a hip, hip, holler, We'll lick h.e.l.l for a half a dollar!"

The post-office windows rattled and shivered in the sunshine. Horses along the line of march crouched, ducked sideways, and snorted in panic. Women put their fingers in their ears as the drums pa.s.sed.

And when at the end of each verse the Ancients swelled their red-shirted bosoms and screamed, Uncle Trufant hissed in the ear of his nearest neighbor on the post-office steps: "The only thing we need is the old Vienny company here to give 'em the stump! Old Vienny, as it used to be, could lick 'em, el'funt and all."

The Smyrna Ancients were file-closers of the parade; Hiram Look had chosen his position with an eye to effect that made all the other companies seem to do mere escort duty. The orderly lines of spectators poured together into the street behind, and went elbowing in noisy rout to the village square, the grand rallying-point and arena of the day's contests. There, taking their warriors' ease before the battle, the Ancients, as disposed by their a.s.siduous foreman, continued the centre of observation.

Uncle Brad Trufant, nursing ancient memories of the prowess of Niagara and the Viennese, voiced some of the sentiment of the envious when he muttered: "Eatin', allus eatin'! The only fire they can handle is a fire in a cook-stove."

On this occasion Foreman Look had responded n.o.bly to the well-known gastronomic call of his Ancients. No one understood better than he the importance of the commissary in a campaign. The dinner he had given the Ancients to celebrate his election as foreman had shown him the way to their hearts.

Bringing up the rear had rumbled one of his circus-vans. Now, with the eyes of the hungry mult.i.tude on him, he unlocked the doors and disclosed an interior packed full of individual lunch-baskets. His men cheered l.u.s.tily and formed in line.

Foreman Look gazed on his cohorts with pride and fondness.

"Gents," he said, in a clarion voice that took all the bystanders into his confidence, "you're never goin' to make any mistake in followin' me. Follow me when duty calls--follow me when pleasure speaks, and you'll always find me with the goods."

He waved his hand at the open door of the van.

Two ladies had been awaiting the arrival of the Ancients in the square, squired by a stout man in blue, who scruffed his fingers through his stubbly gray beard from time to time with no great ease of manner.

Most of the spectators knew him. He was the first selectman of Smyrna, Cap'n Aaron Sproul. And when the ladies, at a signal from Foreman Look, took stations at the van door and began to distribute the baskets, whisperings announced that they were respectively the wives of Cap'n Sproul and the foreman of Hecla One. The ladies wore red, white, and blue ap.r.o.ns, and rosettes of patriotic hues, and their smiling faces indicated their zest in their duties.

Uncle Trufant, as a hound scents game, sniffed Cap'n Sproul's uneasy rebelliousness, and seemed to know with a sixth sense that only Hiram's most insistent appeals to his friendship, coupled with the coaxings of the women-folk, had dragged him down from Smyrna. Uncle Trufant edged up to him and pointed wavering cane at the festive scene of distribution.

"Seems to be spendin' his money on 'em, all free and easy, Cap'n."

The Cap'n scowled and grunted.

"It's good to have a lot of money like he's got. That's the kind of a foreman them caterpillars is lookin' for. But if greenbacks growed all over him, like leaves on a tree, they'd keep at him till they'd gnawed 'em all off."