When Egypt Went Broke, Holman Day [free ereaders .txt] 📗

the dim room was afforded by the big lamp at the Squire's elbow. He spread the sheet on the table in the lamp's circle of radiance. "Boys, _The Hornet_ is out and it looks as if it has a barb in its stinger," he stated, and then paused while he fixed his spectacles upon his nose.
Vaniman, sitting close by, felt that a glance at a public sheet was not invading privacy.
A smutted heading in wood type was smeared across the top of the page. It counseled:
VOTE FOR BRITT. GIVE PHARAOH HIS KINGLY CROWN
There was a broad, blank space in one of the upper corners of the sheet. Under the space was this explanation:
Portrait of Tasper Britt, with his latest improvements. But, on second thought, out of regard for the feelings of our readers, we omit the portrait.
The Squire, getting control of emotions which the observing Jones and his associates noted with rising interest, demurely explained to them the layout of the page after he had carefully inspected the sheet.
Then Squire Hexter began to read aloud, in a tone whose twist of satire gave the text its full flavor:
"We hasten to proclaim in the land of Egypt that Pharaoh Britt has reached for the scepter, though he had not loosed his grip on the gouge. You will know him here and hereafter by his everlasting grip on the gouge. He will take that gouge to Tophet with him. Then it will be heated red-hot and he will prance around hell astraddle of it. But in the meantime he is hot after the honors of this world. Give him his crown, say we. He has prepared a nice, new hair mattress on his brow where the diadem will rest easy. Under his coat of arms--to wit, a yellow he-goat rampant in a field of purple thistles--let him write the word 'Victory.'"
The men in that room were Yankees, with a sense of humor as keen as a new bush scythe.
The Squire sat back and wiped his spectacles and beamed on their laughter. Then he read on down the column, through the biting satire to the bitter end, having an audience whose hilarity would have delighted a vaudeville performer's soul.
Therefore, it was with inspired unction that the reader delivered the "tag lines" of the screed.
"We confess that we have a selfish purpose in paying this affectionate, brotherly tribute to Pharaoh. When he has deigned to refer to us in the past he has called us 'Useless' Britt. Now, if this tribute has the effect that we devoutly hope for, Pharaoh may be of a mind to give us back our right name. We ask nothing else in the way of recompense."
The Squire folded the paper carefully and put it away in his breast pocket with the manner of one caching a treasure. "Boys, what are you waiting for?" he inquired, with an affectation of surprise.
Their wide grins narrowed into the creases of wonderment of their own.
Hexter patted his breast where he had stowed away the paper. "Egypt has a literary light, a journalist who wields a pen of power, a shoemaker philosopher. And modest--not grasping! See how little he asks for himself. Why not give him a real present? Why not--"
Spokesman Jones perceived what the counsel was aiming at and ecstatically shouted, "Gid-dap!"
"Why not use real sandpaper?" urged the squire, with innocent mildness.
Jones whirled and drove his delegation ahead of him from the room, both hands upraised, fingers and thumbs snapping loud cracks as if he were urging his horses up Burkett Hill with snapping whip. The men went tramping down the outside stairs, bellowing the first honest-to-goodness laughter that Egypt had heard for many a day.
Squire Hexter leaped up and grabbed his hat and coat from their hooks. "Come on, boy! It looks as if there's going to be a nominating bee at _The Hornet_ office--and we mustn't miss any of the buzzing."
The two followed close on the heels of the noisy delegation.
Usial Britt opened his door and stood in the frame of light after Jones had halted his clamorous crowd. The amateur publicist rolled his inky hands in his apron and showed doubt that was growing into alarm.
"Hold your nippety pucket, Usial," counseled Hexter, calling over the heads of the men. "The boys had me guessing, too, a few minutes ago. But this isn't a lynching bee."
However, while the crowd laughed and others came hastening to the scene, and while Spokesman Jones was trying to make himself heard above the uproar, an element was added which seemed to discount the Squire's reassuring words.
Tasper Britt rushed out from Files's tavern and stood on the porch. He had one of the papers in his hand. He ripped the paper to tatters and strewed about him the bits and stamped on the litter. He shrieked profanity. Then he leaped off the porch.
In the tavern yard was "Gid-dap" Jones's stage pung. Britt yanked the big whip from its socket and bounced across the street, untangling the lash.
"No, you don't!" bellowed Jones, getting in the way and making grabs at the whip. "Not with my own private persuader! Get aholt of him, men! Down him. Don't let him whale the representative we're going to send from the town of Egypt!"
That declared hint of what was afoot put the last touch on Tasper Britt's fury. He fought savagely to force his way through the men.
The voice of Usial checked the melee. He shouted with a compelling quality in his tone. As the man on whom they proposed to bestow the town's highest honor, he had already acquired new authority. The men loosed Tasper Britt.
"This is between brothers," said Usial. He had stepped from his doorway. He stood alone. "What outsider dares to interfere?"
Tasper Britt employed his freedom promptly and brutally; he leaped along the avenue the men left for him and began to lash Usial with the whip. The stolid townsfolk of Egypt stood in their tracks.
"That's the best way--let 'em fight it out," counseled Spokesman Jones. "Tasp Britt will get his, and it'll be in the family!"
But Usial merely tossed his big apron over his head and crouched and took the lashing.
"Isn't somebody going to stop that?" Vaniman demanded.
Nobody moved. Egypt had its own ideas about interference in family matters, it seemed, and had been tartly reminded of those ideas by Usial Britt himself.
But Vaniman was an outlander. He saw his employer disgracing himself; he beheld an unresisting victim cruelly maltreated.
The young man jumped on Tasper Britt and tried to hold his arms. When Britt whirled and broke loose by the twist of his quick turn and struck the cashier with the whip, Vaniman wrested away the weapon, using all his vigorous strength, and threw it far. Then he seized the frothing assailant and forced him back toward the tavern. "Mr. Britt, remember what you are--the president of our bank--a prominent man--" Vaniman gasped, protesting. "When you're yourself you'll thank me!"
But there was no sign of gratitude in Britt's countenance just then. His crazed rage was shifted to this presumptuous person who had interfered and was manhandling him; at that moment the liveliest emotion in Britt was the mordant jealousy that he had been trying to stifle. It awoke and raged, finding real excuse for the venting of its rancor on the man who had made him jealous.
"You damnation spawn of a jailbird--"
The young man had a rancor of his own that he had been holding in leash ever since he had sent Vona to fight her own battle, with his kiss on her cheek. He broke off that vitriolic taunt by dealing Britt an open-handed slap across the mouth, a blow of such force that the man went reeling backward. And when Britt beheld Vaniman's face, as the young man came resolutely along, the magnate of Egypt kept going backward of his own accord, flapping hands of protest. "Vaniman, here and now I discharge you from the bank."
"Mr. Britt, that's a matter for the vote of the directors--and I'll wait to hear from them."
Vaniman whirled from Britt, for the impulse was in him to smash his doubled fist into that hateful visage; his palm still itched; the open-handed buffet had not satisfied the tingling nerves of that hand.
Usial Britt had not hurried about raising himself from his crouching position. He was standing with his apron over his head and faced the citizens. He was smiling--an irradiating, genial, triumphant sort of smile! One might readily have taken him for the victor in a contest!
Spokesman Jones gulped. "We came--we was intending--but this hoop-te-doo--"
Usial beamed blandly and helped out Mr. Jones's efforts to express his intentions. "Yes, Brother Jones, it was quite a shower while it lasted. What were you intending to do?"
"Ask you to take the nomination for the legislature."
The crowd indorsed the request with _viva-voce_ enthusiasm.
"I certainly will. I am pleased and proud," declared Usial.
Through the circle of men came Prophet Elias, his robe trailing on his heels. He stood beside Usial and faced the bystanders. He proclaimed, "'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.'"
Somebody handed to Mr. Jones his whip and he inspected it carefully. "Of course, there's more than one way of fighting a man--and I have my own notions--but maybe I'm wrong."
"Eli has observed many a dog-fight," Squire Hexter remarked; "and, so far as he sees, the attacking dog doesn't get much out of the fracas except a ripped ear and a raw reputation in the neighborhood." He marched to Vaniman, took that perturbed young man by the arm, and said that Xoa would be waiting supper.


CHAPTER VII
SQUARED OFF AND ALL SET
As Squire Hexter and Vaniman walked on together the notary deferred comment on the recent happenings, as if he hoped that the cashier would open up on the topic. But Frank was grimly silent.
Therefore the Squire broke the ice. "What kind of a partner does Tasp Britt make in a polka, son? I saw you and him going at it pretty briskly."
"I stopped him from making a fool of himself."
"Quite a contract, boy! Quite a contract! And when you got to the matter of his purple whiskers and his lamp-mat hair--"
"I said nothing to Mr. Britt on such a ridiculous topic--certainly not, sir!"
"And yet you brag that you have stopped him from making a fool of himself," purred the Squire. "Tut! Tut! He's worse than ever. I heard him tell you that you're discharged from the bank."
"Yes, I heard him, too!"
"I didn't catch what you answered back."
"I told him I should ask the directors to decide that matter."
"Quite right! You're sure of one vote for your side--that's mine! And I think that when President Britt considers that he has no other charge against you except that you took away a horsewhip that he was using not wisely but too well--"
"I struck him across the mouth."
"Oh, I missed that," said the Squire, regretfully. "Why the pat?"
"I could not express my feelings in any other way. As to what those feelings were and why he stirred them, I'll have to ask you to excuse me, Squire Hexter. If I were going to stay in the bank I would explain the matter to you and to the directors. But I'm going to resign. Under these conditions, nobody has the right to tear the heart out of me and stick it up for a topic of conversation."
The Squire glanced sideways at the convulsed face of the cashier and opened his eyes wide; but he promptly hid his wonderment and checked an exclamation that