The Gentle Grafter Page 3

  MODERN RURAL SPORTS

  Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly,for a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid ofincident as the longest of Trollope's novels. But lured, he willdivulge. Therefore I cast many and divers flies upon the current ofhis thoughts before I feel a nibble.

  "I notice," said I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of theirprosperity, are running after their old populistic idols again."

  "It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple treesand the Connemaugh river. I know something about farmers. I thought Istruck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker proved tome I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker,' said Andy. 'He'sthe man that's shoved into the front row among bullets, ballots andthe ballet. He's the funny-bone and gristle of the country,' saidAndy, 'and I don't know who we would do without him.'

  "One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixty-eight cents between usin a yellow pine hotel on the edge of the pre-digested hoe-cake beltof Southern Indiana. How we got off the train there the night beforeI can't tell you; for she went through the village so fast that whatlooked like a saloon to us through the car window turned out to be acomposite view of a drug store and a water tank two blocks apart. Whywe got off at the first station we could, belongs to a little oroidegold watch and Alaska diamond deal we failed to pull off the daybefore, over the Kentucky line.

  "When I woke up I heard roosters crowing, and smelt something like thefumes of nitro-muriatic acid, and heard something heavy fall on thefloor below us, and a man swearing.

  "'Cheer up, Andy,' says I. 'We're in a rural community. Somebody hasjust tested a gold brick downstairs. We'll go out and get what'scoming to us from a farmer; and then yoicks! and away.'

  "Farmers was always a kind of reserve fund to me. Whenever I wasin hard luck I'd go to the crossroads, hook a finger in a farmer'ssuspender, recite the prospectus of my swindle in a mechanical kind ofa way, look over what he had, give him back his keys, whetstone andpapers that was of no value except to owner, and stroll away withoutasking any questions. Farmers are not fair game to me as high up inour business as me and Andy was; but there was times when we found 'emuseful, just as Wall Street does the Secretary of the Treasury now andthen.

  "When we went down stairs we saw we was in the midst of the finestfarming section we ever see. About two miles away on a hill was abig white house in a grove surrounded by a wide-spread agriculturalagglomeration of fields and barns and pastures and out-houses.

  "'Whose house is that?' we asked the landlord.

  "'That,' says he, 'is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrialand horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett, one of ourcounty's most progressive citizens.'

  "After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left, casts thehoroscope of the rural potentate.

  "'Let me go alone,' says I. 'Two of us against one farmer would lookas one-sided as Roosevelt using both hands to kill a grizzly.'

  "'All right,' says Andy. 'I like to be a true sport even when I'm onlycollecting rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you goingto use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.

  "'Oh,' I says, 'the first thing that come to hand in the suit case. Ireckon I'll take along some of the new income tax receipts, and therecipe for making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; andthe order blanks for the McGuffey's readers, which afterwards turn outto be McCormick's reapers; and the pearl necklace found on the train;and a pocket-size goldbrick; and a--'

  "'That'll be enough,' says Andy. 'Any one of the lot ought to land onEzra. And say, Jeff, make that succotash fancier give you nice, clean,new bills. It's a disgrace to our Department of Agriculture, CivilService and Pure Food Law the kind of stuff some of these farmers handout to use. I've had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundlesof microbe cultures captured out of a Red Cross ambulance.'

  "So, I goes to a livery stable and hires a buggy on my looks. I droveout to the Plunkett farm and hitched. There was a man sitting on thefront steps of the house. He had on a white flannel suit, a diamondring, golf cap and a pink ascot tie. 'Summer boarder,' says I tomyself.

  "'I'd like to see Farmer Ezra Plunkett,' says I to him.

  "'You see him,' says he. 'What seems to be on your mind?'

  "I never answered a word. I stood still, repeating to myself therollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man with the Hoe.' WhenI looked at this farmer, the little devices I had in my pocket forbuncoing the pushed-back brows seemed as hopeless as trying to shakedown the Beef Trust with a mittimus and a parlor rifle.

  "'Well,' says he, looking at me close, 'speak up. I see the left pocketof your coat sags a good deal. Out with the goldbrick first. I'm rathermore interested in the bricks than I am in the trick sixty-day notesand the lost silver mine story.'

  "I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas ofratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped myhandkerchief off it.

  "'One dollar and eighty cents,' says the farmer hefting it in hishand. 'Is it a trade?'

  "'The lead in it is worth more than that,' says I, dignified. I put itback in my pocket.

  "'All right,' says he. 'But I sort of wanted it for the collection I'mstarting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.'

  "Just then a telephone bell rings in the house.

  "'Come in, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'and look at my place. It's kind oflonesome here sometimes. I think that's New York calling.'

  "We went inside. The room looked like a Broadway stockbroker's--lightoak desks, two 'phones, Spanish leather upholstered chairs andcouches, oil paintings in gilt frames a foot deep and a ticker hittingoff the news in one corner.

  "'Hello, hello!' says this funny farmer. 'Is that the Regent Theatre?Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre. Reserve four orchestraseats for Friday evening--my usual ones. Yes; Friday--good-bye.'

  "'I run over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says thefarmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer atIndianapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the YappianWay, and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eighthours later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwellingperiod is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of theDon't-Blow-Out-the-Gas Association, don't you think, Mr. Bunk?'

  "'I seem to perceive,' says I, 'a kind of hiatus in the agrariantraditions in which heretofore, I have reposed confidence.'

  "'Sure, Bunk,' says he. 'The yellow primrose on the river's brim isgetting to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of theLanguage of Flowers with deckle edges and frontispiece.'

  "Just then the telephone calls him again.

  "'Hello, hello!' says he. 'Oh, that's Perkins, at Milldale. I told you$800 was too much for that horse. Have you got him there? Good. Let mesee him. Get away from the transmitter. Now make him trot in a circle.Faster. Yes, I can hear him. Keep on--faster yet. ... That'll do.Now lead him up to the phone. Closer. Get his nose nearer. There. Nowwait. No; I don't want that horse. What? No; not at any price. Heinterferes; and he's windbroken. Goodbye.'

  "'Now, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'do you begin to realize thatagriculture has had a hair cut? You belong in a bygone era. Why,Tom Lawson himself knows better than to try to catch an up-to-dateagriculturalist napping. It's Saturday, the Fourteenth, on the farm,you bet. Now, look here, and see how we keep up with the day'sdoings.'

  "He shows me a machine on a table with two things for your ears likethe penny-in-the-slot affairs. I puts it on and listens. A femalevoice starts up reading headlines of murders, accidents and otherpolitical casualities.

  "'What you hear,' says the farmer, 'is a synopsis of to-day's news inthe New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco papers. It is wiredin to our Rural News Bureau and served hot to subscribers. On thistable you see the principal dailies and weeklies of the country. Alsoa special service of advance sheets of the monthly magazines.'

  "I picks up one sheet and sees that it's
headed: 'Special AdvanceProofs. In July, 1909, the _Century_ will say'--and so forth.

  "The farmer rings up somebody--his manager, I reckon--and tells him tolet that herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the 900-acrefield in wheat; and to have 200 extra cans ready at the station forthe milk trolley car. Then he passes the Henry Clays and sets out abottle of green chartreuse, and goes over and looks at the tickertape.

  "'Consolidated Gas up two points,' says he. 'Oh, very well.'

  "'Ever monkey with copper?' I asks.

  "'Stand back!' says he, raising his hand, 'or I'll call the dog. Itold you not to waste your time.'

  "After a while he says: 'Bunk, if you don't mind my telling you, yourcompany begins to cloy slightly. I've got to write an article on theChimera of Communism for a magazine, and attend a meeting of the RaceTrack Association this afternoon. Of course you understand by now thatyou can't get my proxy for your Remedy, whatever it may be.'

  "Well, sir, all I could think of to do was to go out and get in thebuggy. The horse turned round and took me back to the hotel. I hitchedhim and went in to see Andy. In his room I told him about this farmer,word for word; and I sat picking at the table cover like one bereft ofsagaciousness.

  "'I don't understand it,' says I, humming a sad and foolish littlesong to cover my humiliation.

  "Andy walks up and down the room for a long time, biting the left endof his mustache as he does when in the act of thinking.

  "'Jeff,' says he, finally, 'I believe your story of this expurgatedrustic; but I am not convinced. It looks incredulous to me that hecould have inoculated himself against all the preordained systemsof bucolic bunco. Now, you never regarded me as a man of specialreligious proclivities, did you, Jeff?' says Andy.

  "'Well,' says I, 'No. But,' says I, not to wound his feelings, 'I havealso observed many church members whose said proclivities were not sooutwardly developed that they would show on a white handkerchief ifyou rubbed 'em with it.'

  "'I have always been a deep student of nature from creation down,'says Andy, 'and I believe in an ultimatum design of Providence.Farmers was made for a purpose; and that was to furnish a livelihoodto men like me and you. Else why was we given brains? It is my beliefthat the manna that the Israelites lived on for forty years in thewilderness was only a figurative word for farmers; and they kept upthe practice to this day. And now,' says Andy, 'I am going to test mytheory "Once a farmer, always a come-on," in spite of the veneeringand the orifices that a spurious civilization has brought to him.'

  "'You'll fail, same as I did,' says I. 'This one's shook off theshackles of the sheep-fold. He's entrenched behind the advantages ofelectricity, education, literature and intelligence.'

  "'I'll try,' said Andy. 'There are certain Laws of Nature that FreeRural Delivery can't overcome.'

  "Andy fumbles around awhile in the closet and comes out dressed in asuit with brown and yellow checks as big as your hand. His vest is redwith blue dots, and he wears a high silk hat. I noticed he'd soakedhis sandy mustache in a kind of blue ink.

  "'Great Barnums?' says I. 'You're a ringer for a circus thimblerigman.'

  "'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I comeback. I won't be long.'

  "Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a wad of moneyon the table.

  "'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said he. 'Let me tell you. Hewas in. He looked me over and began to guy me. I didn't say a word,but got out the walnut shells and began to roll the little ball onthe table. I whistled a tune or two, and then I started up the oldformula.

  "'Step up lively, gentlemen,' says I, 'and watch the little ball. Itcosts you nothing to look. There you see it, and there you don't.Guess where the little joker is. The quickness of the hand deceivesthe eye.

  "'I steals a look at the farmer man. I see the sweat coming out on hisforehead. He goes over and closes the front door and watches me somemore. Directly he says: "I'll bet you twenty I can pick the shell theball's under now."

  "'After that,' goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate. He onlyhad $860 cash in the house. When I left he followed me to the gate.There was tears in his eyes when he shook hands.

  "'"Bunk," says he, "thank you for the only real pleasure I've had inyears. It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not anagriculturalist. God bless you."'"

  Here Jeff Peters ceased, and I inferred that his story was done.

  "Then you think"--I began.

  "Yes," said Jeff. "Something like that. You let the farmers go aheadand amuse themselves with politics. Farming's a lonesome life; andthey've been against the shell game before."