The Skipper and the Skipped, Holman Day [book recommendations for teens TXT] 📗

labor under the weight of her rider, a half-dozen men rushed out and anchored her. The dog growled, dodged the men's kicking feet, and went back under the stand.
"What is this, jedges, a dog-fight or a hoss-trot?" raved Todd, staggering in front of the stand and quivering his thin arms above his head. "Whose is that dog? I've got a right to kill him, and I'm going to. Show yourself over that rail, you old sausage, with a plug hat on it, and tell me what you mean by a send-off like that! What did I tell ye, trustees? It's happened. I'll kill that dog."
"I want you to understand," bellowed the Honorable Bickford, using the megaphone, "you are talking about my dog--a dog that is worth more dollars than that old knock-kneed plug of yours has got hairs in her mane. Put your hand on that dog, and you'll go to State Prison."
"Then I'll bet a thousand dollars to a doughnut ye set that dog on me," howled Marengo. "I heard ye siss him!"
The Honorable J. Percival seemed to be getting more into the spirit of the occasion.
"You're a cross-eyed, wart-nosed liar!" he retorted, with great alacrity.
"I'll stump ye down here," screamed Todd. "I can lick you and your dog, both together."
"If I was in your place," said "Judge" Hiram Look, his interest in horse-trotting paling beside this more familiar phase of sport, "I'd go down and cuff his old chops. You'll have the crowd with you if you do."
But Mr. Bickford, though trembling with rage, could not bring himself to correlate fisticuffs and dignity.
"He is a miserable, cheap horse-jockey, and I shall treat him with the contempt he deserves," he blustered. "If it hadn't been for my dog his old boneyard could never have gone twice around the track, anyway."
The crowds on the grand stand were bellowing: "Trot hosses! Shut up! Trot hosses!"
"Er--what other races have we?" inquired the Honorable J. Percival, as blandly as his violated feelings would allow.
"We haven't had any yet," cried a new voice in the stand--the wrathful voice of Trustee Silas Wallace, of the horse department. After quite a struggle he had managed to tip President Kitchen off the trap-door and had ascended. "We never will have any, either," he shouted, shaking his finger under the president's nose. "What did I tell you would happen? We'll be reported to the National Association."
The crowd across the way roared and barked like beasts of prey, and the insistent and shrill staccato of Marengo Todd sounded over all.
Cap'n Sproul deliberately and with much decision took off his silk hat and held it toward the Honorable Bickford.
"I resign!" he said. "I was shanghaied into this thing against my good judgment, and it's come out just as I expected it would. It ain't no place for me, and I resign!"
"It isn't any place for gentlemen," agreed Mr. Bickford, ignoring the proffered hat. "We seem to be thrown in among some very vulgar people," he went on, his ear out for Marengo's taunts, his eyes boring Trustee Wallace. "It is not at all as I supposed it would be. You cannot expect us to be patrons of the races under these circumstances, Mr. Kitchen. You will please call our barouche. We leave in great displeasure."
"I don't give a red hoorah how you leave, so long as you leave before you've busted up this fair--trot programmy and all," retorted Mr. Wallace, bridling. "I've got three men waitin' ready to come into this stand. They don't wear plug hats, but they know the diff'runce between a dog-fight and a hoss-trot."
"Take this! I don't want it no more," insisted the Cap'n, stung by this repeated reference to plug hats. He poked the head-gear at Mr. Bickford. But that gentleman brushed past him, stumped down the stairs, and strode into the stretch before the stand, loudly calling for the carriage.
Marengo Todd, accepting his sudden and defiant appearance as gage of battle, precipitately withdrew, leaping the fence and disappearing under the grand-stand.
It was five minutes or more ere the barouche appeared, Mr. Parrott requiring to be coaxed by President Kitchen to haul the three disgraced dignitaries away. He seemed to sniff a mob sentiment that might damage his vehicle.
Mr. Bickford's two associates followed him from the stand, the Cap'n abashed and carrying the tall hat behind his back, Hiram Look muttering disgusted profanity under his long mustache.
"I want to say, gentlemen," cried Mr. Bickford, utilizing the interval of waiting to address the throng about him, "that you have no right to blame my dog. He is a valuable animal and a great family pet, and he only did what it is his nature to do."
Marengo Todd was edging back into the crowd, his coat off and something wrapped in the garment.
"Blame no creature for that which it is his nature to do," said Mr. Bickford. "He was attacked first, and he used the weapons nature provided."
"Fam'ly pets, then, has a right to do as it is their nature for to do?" squealed Todd, working nearer.
Mr. Bickford scornfully turned his back on this vulgar railer. The carriage was at hand.
"How about pets known as medder hummin'-birds?" demanded Todd.
The Cap'n was the first in. Hiram came next, kicking out at the amiable Hector, who would have preceded him. When the Honorable J. Percival stepped in, some one slammed the carriage-door so quickly on his heels that his long-tailed coat was caught in the crack.
Todd forced his way close to the carriage as it was about to start. His weak nature was in a state of anger bordering on the maniacal.
"Here's some more family pets for you that ain't any dangerouser than them you're cultivatin'. Take 'em home and study 'em."
He climbed on the wheel and shook out of the folds of his coat a hornets' nest that he had discovered during his temporary exile under the grand-stand. It dropped into Mr. Bickford's lap, and with a swat of his coat Todd crushed it where it lay. It was a coward's revenge, but it was an effective one.
Mr. Bickford leaped, either in pain or in order to pursue the fleeing Marengo, and fell over the side of the carriage. His coat-tail held fast in the door, and suspended him, his toes and fingers just touching the ground. When he jumped he threw the nest as far as he could, and it fell under the horses. Hiram endeavored to open the hack-door as the animals started--but who ever yet opened a hack-door in a hurry?
Cap'n Aaron Sproul's first impulse was the impulse of the sailor who beholds dangerous top-hamper dragging at a craft's side in a squall. He out with his big knife and cut off the Honorable Bickford's coat-tails with one mighty slash, and that gentleman rolled in the dust over the hornets' nest, just outside the wheels, as the carriage roared away down the stretch.
Landlord Parrott was obliged to make one circuit of the track before he could control his steeds, but the triumphal rush down the length of the yelling grand-stand was an ovation that Cap'n Sproul did not relish. He concealed the hateful plug hat between his knees, and scowled straight ahead.
Parrott did not go back after the Honorable Bickford.
The loyal and apologetic Kitchen assisted 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 embarrassed 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, muffled 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 sass 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 classes 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 glass