The American Claimant

  CHAPTER III.

  Mrs. Sellers returned, now, with her composure restored, and began toask after Hawkins's wife, and about his children, and the number ofthem, and so on, and her examination of the witness resulted in acircumstantial history of the family's ups and downs and driftings toand fro in the far West during the previous fifteen years. There wasa message, now, from out back, and Colonel Sellers went out there inanswer to it. Hawkins took this opportunity to ask how the world hadbeen using the Colonel during the past half-generation.

  "Oh, it's been using him just the same; it couldn't change its way ofusing him if it wanted to, for he wouldn't let it."

  "I can easily believe that, Mrs. Sellers."

  "Yes, you see, he doesn't change, himself--not the least little bit inthe world--he's always Mulberry Sellers."

  "I can see that plain enough."

  "Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful,no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just aswell as if he was the shiningest success."

  "They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging andaccommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy toask help of him, or favors--you didn't feel shy, you know, or havethat wish--you--didn't--have--to--try feeling that you have with otherpeople."

  "It's just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he's beenshamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a ladderto climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn't need him anymore. For a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded, because heshrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about it--and soI used to think now he's learned something and he'll be more carefulhereafter--but laws! in a couple of weeks he's forgotten all about it,and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come and put up apoor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots on."

  "It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes."

  "Oh, no, I'm used to it; and I'd rather have him so than the other way.When I call him a failure, I mean to the world he's a failure; he isn'tto me. I don't know as I want him different much different, anyway.I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but Ireckon I'd do that just the same, if he was different--it's my make. ButI'm a good deal less snarly and more contented when he's a failure thanI am when he isn't."

  "Then he isn't always a failure," said Hawking, brightening.

  "Him? Oh, bless you, no. He makes a strike, as he calls it, from time totime. Then's my time to fret and fuss. For the money just flies--firstcome first served. Straight off, he loads up the house with cripples andidiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor wrecks thatother people don't want and he does, and then when the poverty comesagain I've got to clear the most of them out or we'd starve; and thatdistresses him, and me the same, of course.

  "Here's old Dan'l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of thetimes that we got bankrupted before the war--they came wanderingback after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations,helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for therest of this earthly pilgrimage--and we so pinched, oh so pinched forthe very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide, andthe way he received them you'd have thought they had come straight downfrom heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said, 'Mulberrywe can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't feed them.' Helooked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out?--and they've cometo me just as confident and trusting as--as--why Polly, I must havebought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given mynote, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am Igoing to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they're so poor, andold, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut himoff, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly, 'We'llkeep them--the Lord will provide.' He was glad, and started to blurtout one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked himselfin time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and years andyears ago. Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet."

  "But don't they do your housework?"

  "Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and perhapsthey think they do do some of it. But it's a superstition. Dan'l waitson the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'llsee one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that'sbecause there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabbleinto. And they're always around at meals, for the same reason. But thefact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them,and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care of them."

  "Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think."

  "It's no name for it. They quarrel together pretty much all thetime--most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist andJinny's a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special Providencesand Dan'l don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a free-thinker--andthey play and sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter justeternally and forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and thinkthe world of Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiledways and foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're happy enough if itcomes to that. And I don't mind--I've got used to it. I can get used toanything, with Mulberry to help; and the fact is, I don't much care whathappens, so long as he's spared to me."

  "Well, here's to him, and hoping he'll make another strike soon."

  "And rake in the lame, the halt and the blind, and turn the house intoa hospital again? It's what he would do. I've seen aplenty of that andmore. No, Washington, I want his strikes to be mighty moderate ones therest of the way down the vale."

  "Well, then, big strike or little strike, or no strike at all, here'shoping he'll never lack for friends--and I don't reckon he ever willwhile there's people around who know enough to--"

  "Him lack for friends!" and she tilted her head up with a frankpride--"why, Washington, you can't name a man that's anybody that isn'tfond of him. I'll tell you privately, that I've had Satan's own time tokeep them from appointing him to some office or other. They knew he'd nobusiness with an office, just as well as I did, but he's the hardest manto refuse anything to a body ever saw. Mulberry Sellers with an office!laws goodness, you know what that would be like. Why, they'd come fromthe ends of the earth to see a circus like that. I'd just as lieves bemarried to Niagara Falls, and done with it." After a reflective pauseshe added--having wandered back, in the interval, to the remark thathad been her text: "Friends?--oh, indeed, no man ever had more; and suchfriends: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Johnston, Longstreet, Lee--many's thetime they've sat in that chair you're sitting in--" Hawkins was out ofit instantly, and contemplating it with a reverential surprise, and withthe awed sense of having trodden shod upon holy ground--

  "They!" he said.

  "Oh, indeed, yes, a many and a many a time."

  He continued to gaze at the chair fascinated, magnetized; and for oncein his life that continental stretch of dry prairie which stood for hisimagination was afire, and across it was marching a slanting flamefrontthat joined its wide horizons together and smothered the skies withsmoke. He was experiencing what one or another drowsing, geographicallyignorant alien experiences every day in the year when he turns a dulland indifferent eye out of the car window and it falls upon a certainstation-sign which reads "Stratford-on-Avon!" Mrs. Sellers wentgossiping comfortably along:

  "Oh, they like to hear him talk, especially if their load is gettingrather heavy on one shoulder and they want to shift it. He's all air,you know,--breeze, you may say--and he freshens them up; it's a trip tothe country, they say. Many a time he's made General Grant laugh--andthat's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his eye lightsup and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was artillery.You see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and unprejudicedthat he fits in anywhere and everywhere. It makes him powerful goodcompany, and as popular as scandal. You go to
the White House when thePresident's holding a general reception--sometime when Mulberry's there.Why, dear me, you can't tell which of them it is that's holding thatreception."

  "Well, he certainly is a remarkable man--and he always was. Is hereligious?"

  "Clear to his marrow--does more thinking and reading on that subjectthan any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes around over the wholefield, too; nothing bigoted about him."

  "What is his religion?"

  "He--" She stopped, and was lost for a moment or two in thinking, thenshe said, with simplicity, "I think he was a Mohammedan or somethinglast week."

  Washington started down town, now, to bring his trunk, for thehospitable Sellerses would listen to no excuses; their house must be hishome during the session. The Colonel returned presently and resumed workupon his plaything. It was finished when Washington got back.

  "There it is," said the Colonel, "all finished."

  "What is it for, Colonel?"

  "Oh, it's just a trifle. Toy to amuse the children."

  Washington examined it.

  "It seems to be a puzzle."

  "Yes, that's what it is. I call it Pigs in the Clover. Put them in--seeif you can put them in the pen."

  After many failures Washington succeeded, and was as pleased as a child.

  "It's wonderfully ingenious, Colonel, it's ever so clever andinteresting--why, I could play with it all day. What are you going to dowith it?"

  "Oh, nothing. Patent it and throw it aside."

  "Don't you do anything of the kind. There's money in that thing."

  A compassionate look traveled over the Colonel's countenance, and hesaid:

  "Money--yes; pin money: a couple of hundred thousand, perhaps. Notmore."

  Washington's eyes blazed.

  "A couple of hundred thousand dollars! do you call that pin money?"

  The colonel rose and tip-toed his way across the room, closed a doorthat was slightly ajar, tip-toed his way to his seat again, and said,under his breath:

  "You can keep a secret?"

  Washington nodded his affirmative, he was too awed to speak.

  "You have heard of materialization--materialization of departedspirits?"

  Washington had heard of it.

  "And probably didn't believe in it; and quite right, too. The thingas practised by ignorant charlatans is unworthy of attention orrespect--where there's a dim light and a dark cabinet, and a parcel ofsentimental gulls gathered together, with their faith and their shuddersand their tears all ready, and one and the same fatty degeneration ofprotoplasm and humbug comes out and materializes himself into anybodyyou want, grandmother, grandchild, brother-in-law, Witch of Endor,John Milton, Siamese twins, Peter the Great, and all such franticnonsense--no, that is all foolish and pitiful. But when a man that iscompetent brings the vast powers of science to bear, it's a differentmatter, a totally different matter, you see. The spectre that answersthat call has come to stay. Do you note the commercial value of thatdetail?"

  "Well, I--the--the truth is, that I don't quite know that I do. Do youmean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more generalsatisfaction, and so enhance the price--of tickets to the show--"

  "Show? Folly--listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, foryou are going to need it. Within three days I shall have completed mymethod, and then--let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels.Washington, within three days--ten at the outside--you shall see me callthe dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?--they shallwalk forever, and never die again. Walk with all the muscle and springof their pristine vigor."

  "Colonel! Indeed it does take one's breath away."

  "Now do you see the money that's in it?"

  "I'm--well, I'm--not really sure that I do."

  "Great Scott, look here. I shall have a monopoly; they'll all belong tome, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York. Wages,four dollars a day. I'll replace them with dead ones at half the money."

  "Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that. F-o-u-r thousand dollars aday. Now I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?"

  "Haven't they--up to this time?"

  "Well, if you put it that way--"

  "Put it any way you want to. Modify it to suit yourself, and my ladsshall still be superior. They won't eat, they won't drink--don't needthose things; they won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensedrum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bandsof toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot andknife them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to getmore than a momentary satisfaction out of that."

  "Why, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course--"

  "Certainly--I can furnish any line of goods that's wanted. Take thearmy, for instance--now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-twomillions a year. I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the Greeks,I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten thousandveterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the ages--soldiersthat will chase Indians year in and year out on materialized horses, andcost never a cent for rations or repairs. The armies of Europe cost twobillions a year now--I will replace them all for a billion. I will digup the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish thiscountry with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain--athing that's never happened yet, since the Declaration of Independence,and never will happen till these practically dead people are replacedwith the genuine article. I will restock the thrones of Europe with thebest brains and the best morals that all the royal sepulchres of all thecenturies can furnish--which isn't promising very much--and I'll dividethe wages and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my halfand--"

  "Colonel, if the half of this is true, there's millions init--millions."

  "Billions in it--billions; that's what you mean. Why, look here; thething is so close at hand, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that ifa man were to come to me now and say, Colonel, I am a little short, andif you could lend me a couple of billion dollars for--come in!"

  This in answer to a knock. An energetic looking man bustled in with abig pocket-book in his hand, took a paper from it and presented it, withthe curt remark:

  "Seventeenth and last call--you want to out with that three dollars andforty cents this time without fail, Colonel Mulberry Sellers."

  The Colonel began to slap this pocket and that one, and feel here andthere and everywhere, muttering:

  "What have I done with that wallet?--let me see--um--not here, not there--Oh, I must have left it in the kitchen; I'll just run and--"

  "No you won't--you'll stay right where you are. And you're going todisgorge, too--this time."

  Washington innocently offered to go and look. When he was gone theColonel said:

  "The fact is, I've got to throw myself on your indulgence just this oncemore, Suggs; you see the remittances I was expecting--"

  "Hang the remittances--it's too stale--it won't answer. Come!"

  The Colonel glanced about him in despair. Then his face lighted; he ranto the wall and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo withhis handkerchief. Then he brought it reverently, offered it to thecollector, averted his face and said:

  "Take it, but don't let me see it go. It's the sole remaining Rembrandtthat--"

  "Rembrandt be damned, it's a chromo."

  "Oh, don't speak of it so, I beg you. It's the only really greatoriginal, the only supreme example of that mighty school of art which--"

  "Art! It's the sickest looking thing I--"

  The colonel was already bringing another horror and tenderly dusting it.

  "Take this one too--the gem of my collection--the only genuine FraAngelico that--"

  "Illuminated liver-pad, that's what it is. Give it here--goodday--people will think I've robbed a' nigger barber-shop."

  As he slammed the door behind him the Colonel shouted with an anguishedaccent--

  "Do please cover them up--don'
t let the damp get at them. The delicatetints in the Angelico--"

  But the man was gone.

  Washington re-appeared and said he had looked everywhere, and so hadMrs. Sellers and the servants, but in vain; and went on to say he wishedhe could get his eye on a certain man about this time--no need to huntup that pocket-book then. The Colonel's interest was awake at once.

  "What man?"

  "One-armed Pete they call him out there--out in the Cherokee country Imean. Robbed the bank in Tahlequah."

  "Do they have banks in Tahlequah?"

  "Yes--a bank, anyway. He was suspected of robbing it. Whoever did it gotaway with more than twenty thousand dollars. They offered a reward offive thousand. I believe I saw that very man, on my way east."

  "No--is that so?

  "I certainly saw a man on the train, the first day I struck therailroad, that answered the description pretty exactly--at least as toclothes and a lacking arm."

  "Why din't you get him arrested and claim the reward?"

  "I couldn't. I had to get a requisition, of course. But I meant to stayby him till I got my chance."

  "Well?"

  "Well, he left the train during the night some time."

  "Oh, hang it, that's too bad."

  "Not so very bad, either."

  "Why?"

  "Because he came down to Baltimore in the very train I was in, though Ididn't know it in time. As we moved out of the station I saw him goingtoward the iron gate with a satchel in his hand."

  "Good; we'll catch him. Let's lay a plan."

  "Send description to the Baltimore police?"

  "Why, what are you talking about? No. Do you want them to get thereward?"

  "What shall we do, then?"

  The Colonel reflected.

  "I'll tell you. Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun. Word it like this:

  "A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE."

  "Hold on. Which arm has he lost?"

  "The right."

  "Good. Now then--

  "A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left hand. Address X. Y. Z., General Postoffice, Washington. From YOU KNOW WHO."

  "There--that'll fetch him."

  "But he won't know who--will he?"

  "No, but he'll want to know, won't he?"

  "Why, certainly--I didn't think of that. What made you think of it?"

  "Knowledge of human curiosity. Strong trait, very strong trait."

  "Now I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tellthem to print it to the worth of that."