Part 22

"I don't care who marries her. She's a widder and can marry any one she's got a mind to. I didn't come back here to mix in. She's welcome to the property I left her. There was a will. It's hers. I've been administered on according to law. All I want is that school-house back from the town. That's mine by law."

Cap'n Sproul sat down once more.

"Well," he said at last, with some indignation, "if you was dead and wanted to stay dead and leave a widder and property and let her get married again, and all that--what in the name of the yaller-bellied skate-fish have ye come ghostin' round here for to tip everything upside down and galley-west after it's been administered on and settled? And it gets town business all mixed up!"

The thin man smiled a wistful smile.

"The poet says: 'Where'er we roam, the sky beneath, the heart sighs for its native heath.' That's the sentiment side of it. But there's a practical side. There's the school-house. It was worth passing this way to find out whether the town had abandoned it--and I reckoned it had, and I reckoned right. I have presentiments that come true. I reckoned that probably the relict would put a stone in the graveyard for me. I have a presentiment that I shall die twice more, staying dead the fifth time I pass away. That will be here in this town, and the gravestone won't be wasted."

While the first selectman was still trying to digest this, the thin man opened his valise. He took out a nickel plate that bore his name.

"This is my casket-plate," he explained, forcing the grisly object into the resisting hands of the Cap'n. "Friends ordered it for me the first time I died. I've carried it with me ever since."

"It must be a nice way of passin' a rainy Sunday," said the Cap'n, sarcastically, pushing the plate back across the table; "set and look at that and hum a pennyr'yal hymn! It's sartinly a rollickin' life you're leadin', Mister Crymble."

Mr. Crymble did not retort. On the contrary he asked, mildly, gazing on the scattered sheets of paper containing the selectman's efforts at town-report composition, "Do you write poetry, sir?"

"Not by a--by a--" gasped the Cap'n, seeking ineffectually for some phrase to express his ineffable disgust.

"I was in hopes you did," continued Mr. Crymble, "for I would like a little help in finishing my epitaph. I compose slowly. I have worked several years on this epitaph, but I haven't finished it to suit me. What I have got done reads":

He unfolded a dirty strip of paper and recited:

"There is no sting in death; Below this stone there lies A man who lost his mortal breath Three times--"

Mr. Crymble looked up from the paper.

"I have thought of 'And death defies.' But that might sound like boasting."

"End it up, 'And still he lies,'" growled Cap'n Sproul. But the thin man meekly evaded the sarcasm.

"That would be a repetition of the rhyme," he objected. "I see you were right when you said you did not write poetry."

"P'r'aps I ain't no poet," cried the Cap'n, bridling. "But I'm the first selectman of this town, and I've got considerable to do with runnin' it and keepin' things straightened out. You may be dead, but you ain't buried yet. I've got two errunts for you. You go hunt up Bat Reeves and tell him that the weddin' next Tuesday is all off, and for good reasons--and that you're one of the reasons, and that there are nine others just as good but which you haven't got time to repeat. Then you go home to your wife and settle down, throw away that coffin-plate, tear up that epitaph, and stop this dyin' habit. It's a bad one to get into."

"I won't do any such thing," returned the prodigal, stubbornly. "I lived fifteen years with a woman that wouldn't let me smoke, busted my cider jug in the cellar, jawed me from sun-up till bedtime, hid my best clothes away from me like I was ten years old, wouldn't let me pipe water from the spring, and stuck a jeroosly water-pail under my nose every time I showed in sight of the house. I haven't died three times, all by violent means, not to stay dead so far's she's concerned. Now you tell me where to get the key to that school-house and I'll move in."

For the first time in their conversation Mr. Crymble dropped his meek manner. His little eyes blazed. His drooping mouth snarled and his yellow teeth showed defiantly. Cap'n Sproul always welcomed defiance. It was the thin man's passive resignation at the beginning of their acquaintance that caused the Cap'n to poke the ash-stick back under the stove. Now he buttoned his pea-jacket, pulled his hat down firmly, and spat first into one fist and then the other.

"You can walk, Crymble, if you're a mind to and will go quiet," he announced, measuring the other's gaunt frame with contemptuous eye. "I'd rather for your sake that the citizens would see you walkin' up there like a man. But if you won't walk, then I'll pick you up and stick you behind my ear like a lead-pencil and take you there."

"Where?"

"To your house. Where else should a husband be goin' that's been gallivantin' off for twenty years?"

And detecting further recalcitrancy in the face of his visitor, he pounced on him, scrabbled up a handful of cloth in the back of his coat, and propelled him out of doors and up the street. After a few protesting squawks Mr. Crymble went along.

An interested group of men, who had bolted out of Broadway's store, surveyed them as they passed at a brisk pace.

"By the sacred codfish!" bawled Broadway, "if that ain't Dep Crymble! How be ye, Dep?"

Mr. Crymble lacked either breath or amiability. He did not reply to the friendly greeting. Cap'n Sproul did that for him enigmatically. "He's back from paradise on his third furlough," he cried.

"And bound to hell," mourned Mr. Crymble, stumbling along before the thrust of the fist at his back.

XXVI

The Crymble place was a full half mile outside the village of Smyrna, but Cap'n Sproul and his victim covered the distance at a lively pace and swung into the yard at a dog-trot. Batson Reeves was just blanketing his horse, for in his vigorous courtship forenoon calls figured regularly.

"My Gawd!" he gulped, fronting the Cap'n and staring at his captive with popping eyes, "I knowed ye had a turrible grudge agin' me, Sproul, but I didn't s'pose you'd go to op'nin' graves to carry out your spite and bust my plans."

"He didn't happen to be anchored," retorted the Cap'n, with cutting reference to the granite statue in Smyrna's cemetery. "Ahoy, the house, there!"

Mrs. Crymble had been hastening to the door, the sound of her suitor's wagon-wheels summoning her. A glimpse of the tall figure in the yard, secured past the leaves of the window geraniums, brought her out on the run.

Mrs. Delora Crymble, whose natural stock of self-reliance had been largely improved by twenty years of grass-widowhood, was not easily unnerved.

But she staggered when searching scrutiny confirmed the dreadful suspicion of that first glimpse through the geraniums. For precaution's sake Cap'n Sproul still held Mr. Crymble by the scrabbled cloth in the back of his coat, and that despairing individual dangled like a manikin. But he braced his thin legs stubbornly when the Cap'n tried to push him toward the porch.

"If married couples are goin' to act like this on judgment mornin'," muttered the mediator, "it will kind o' take the edge off'm the festivities. Say, you two people, why don't you hoorah a few times and rush up and hug and kiss and live happy ever after?"

But as soon as Mrs. Crymble could get her thin lips nipped together and her hands on her hips she pulled herself into her accustomed self-reliant poise.

"It's you, is it, you straddled-legged, whittled-to-a-pick-ed northin' of a clothes-pin, you? You've sneaked back to sponge on me in your old age after runnin' off and leavin' me with a run-down farm and mortgidge! After sendin' me a marked copy of a paper with your death-notice, and after your will was executed on and I wore mournin' two years and saved money out of hen profits to set a stun' in the graveyard for you! You mis'sable, lyin' 'whelp o' Satan!"

"There wa'n't no lie to it," said Mr. Crymble, doggedly. "I did die. I died three times--all by violent means. First time I froze to death, second--"

"Let up on that!" growled the Cap'n, vigorously shaking Mr. Crymble. "This ain't no dime-novel rehearsal. It's time to talk business!"

"You bet it's time to talk business!" affirmed the "widow." "I've paid off the mortgidge on this place by hard, bone labor, and it's willed to me and the will's executed, and now that you've been proved dead by law, by swanny I'll make you prove you're alive by law before you can set foot into this house."

"And I'll go and buy the law for you!" cried Batson Reeves, stripping the blanket off his horse. "I'll drive straight to my brother Alcander's law office, and he'll find law so that a hard-workin' woman can't be robbed of her own."

"Oh, he'll find it, all right!" agreed the Cap'n, sarcastically. "And if he don't find it ready-made he'll gum together a hunk to fit the case. But in the mean time, here's a man--" he checked himself and swung Mr. Crymble's hatchet face close to his own. "How much money have you got?" he demanded. "Have you come back here strapped?"

"I ain't got any money," admitted Mr. Crymble, "but I own a secret how to cure stutterin' in ten lessons, and with that school-house that--"

"You don't dock in any school-house nor you don't marine railway into our poorhouse, not to be a bill of expense whilst I'm first selectman," broke in Cap'n Sproul with decision. "That's official, and I've got a license to say it."

"You think you've got a license to stick your nose into the business of every one in this town because you're first selectman," roared Reeves, whipping out of the yard; "but I'll get a pair of nippers onto that old nose this time."

"Here's your home till further orders," said the Cap'n, disregarding the threat, "and into it you're goin'."

He started Mr. Crymble toward the steps.

Mrs. Crymble was pretty quick with the door, but Cap'n Sproul was at the threshold just in time to shove the broad toe of his boot between door and jamb. His elbows and shoulders did the rest, and he backed in, dragging Mr. Crymble, and paid no attention whatever to a half-dozen vigorous cuffs that Mrs. Crymble dealt him from behind. He doubled Mr. Crymble unceremoniously into a calico-covered rocking-chair, whipped off the hard hat and hung it up, and took from Mr. Crymble's resisting hands the little valise that he had clung to with grim resolution.

"Now, said Cap'n Sproul, you are back once more in your happy home after wanderin's in strange lands. As first selectman of this town I congratulate you on gettin' home, and extend the compliments of the season." He briskly shook Mr. Crymble's limp hand--a palm as unresponsive as the tail of a dead fish. "Now," continued the Cap'n, dropping his assumed geniality, "you stay here where I've put you. If I catch you off'm these primises I'll bat your old ears and have you arrested for a tramp. You ain't northin' else, when it comes to law. I'm a hard man when I'm madded, Crymble, and if I start in to keelhaul you for disobeyin' orders you'll--" The Cap'n did not complete the sentence, but he bent such a look on the man in the chair that he trembled through all his frail length.

"I wisht I could have stayed dead," whimpered Mr. Crymble, thoroughly spirit-broken.

"It might have been better all around," agreed the Cap'n, cheerfully. "But I ain't no undertaker. I'm a town official, sworn to see that paupers ain't poked off onto the taxpayers. And if you want to keep out of some pretty serious legal trouble, Mis' Crymble, you'll mind your p's and q's--and you know what I mean!"

Feeling a little ignorant of just what the law was in the case, Cap'n Sproul chose to make his directions vague and his facial expression unmistakable, and he backed out, bending impartial and baleful stare on the miserable couple.

When he got back to the town office he pen-printed a sign, "Keep Out," tacked it upon the outer door, set the end of his long table against the door for a barricade, and fell to undisturbed work on the figures. And having made such progress during the day that his mind was free for other matters in the evening, he trudged over to Neighbor Hiram Look's to smoke with the ex-showman and detail to that wondering listener the astonishing death-claims of the returned Mr. Crymble.

"Grampy Long-legs, there, may think he's dead and may say he's dead," remarked Hiram, grimly, "but it looks to me as though Bat Reeves was the dead one in this case. He's lost the widder."

Cap'n Sproul turned luminous gaze of full appreciation on his friend.

"Hiram," he said, "we've broke up a good many courtships for Reeves, you and me have, but, speakin' frankly, I'd have liked to see him get that Crymble woman. If she ain't blood kin to the general manager of Tophet, then I'm all off in pedigree, I don't blame Crymble for dyin' three times to make sure that she was a widder. If it wasn't for administerin' town business right I'd have got him a spider-web and let him sail away on it. As it is, I reckon I've scared him about twenty-four hours' worth. He'll stick there in torment for near that time. But about noon to-morrow he'll get away unless I scare him again or ball-and-chain him with a thread and a buckshot."

"I'm interested in freaks," said Hiram, "and I'll take this case off your hands and see that the livin' skeleton don't get away until we decide to bury him or put him in a show where he can earn an honest livin'. Skeletons ain't what they used to be for a drawin'-card, but I know of two or three punkin circuiters that might take him on."

In view of that still looming incubus of the unfinished town report, Cap'n Sproul accepted Hiram's offer with alacrity.

"It ain't that I care so much about the critter himself," he confided, "but Bat Reeves has got his oar in the case, and by to-morrow the whole town will be watchin' to see which gets the upper hands."

"I'll camp there," promised Hiram, "and I don't reckon they can do old dead-and-alive to any great extent whilst I've got my eye on 'em."

Cap'n Sproul barricaded his door again the next day and disregarded ordinary summons at the portal. But along in the afternoon came one who, after knocking vainly, began to batter with fists and feet, and when the first selectman finally tore open the door with full determination to kick this persistent disturber off the steps, he found Hiram Look there. And Hiram Look came in and thumped himself into a chair with no very clearly defined look of triumph on his face.

"He ain't dead again, is he?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, apprehensively.

"No, he ain't, and that's where he loses," replied the old showman. He chafed his blue nose and thumped his feet on the floor to warm them. It was plain that he had been long exposed to the December wind.

"Law," announced Hiram, "has got more wrinkles in it than there are in a fake mermaid's tail. Do you know what kind of a game they've gone to work and rigged up on your friend, the human curling-tongs? The widder has got him to doin' chores again. It seems that she was always strong on keepin' him doin' chores. He's peckin' away at that pile of wood that's fitted and lays at the corner of the barn. He's luggin' it into the woodshed, and three sticks at a time make his legs bend like corset whalebones. Looks like he's got a good stiddy job for all winter--and every once in a while she comes out and yaps at him to prod him up."

"Well, that gets him taken care of, all right," said the Cap'n, with a sigh of relief.

"Yes, he's taken care of," remarked Hiram, dryly. "But you don't understand the thing yet, Cap'n. On top of that woodpile sets Bat Reeves, lappin' the end of a lead-pencil and markin' down every time old water-skipper there makes a trip."

"Well, if it amuses him, it takes care of him, too," said the Cap'n.

"Looks innercent, childlike, and sociable, hey?" inquired the showman, sarcastically. "Well, you just listen to what I've dug up about that. Bat Reeves has bought the strip of ground between the woodpile and the shed door by some kind of a deal he's rigged up with the widder, and with Alcander Reeves advisin' as counsel. And he's got a stake set in the middle of that piece of ground and on that stake is a board and on that board is painted: 'Trespassing Forbidden on Penalty of the Law.' And him and that woman, by Alcander Reeves's advice, are teaming that old cuss of a husband back and forth acrost that strip and markin' down a trespass offence every time he lugs an armful of wood."

The Cap'n blinked his growing amazement.

"And the scheme is," continued Hiram, "to have old law shark of an Alcander, as trial justice, sentence the livin' skeleton on each separate trespass offence, fine and imprisonment in default of payment. Why, they've got enough chalked down against him now to make up a hundred years' sentence, and he's travellin' back and forth there as innercent of what they're tryin' to do as is the babe unborn."

"Can they do any such infernal thing as that in law?" demanded the Cap'n.

"Blamed if I know. But I never see northin' yet they couldn't do in law, if they see you comin' and got the bind on you."

"Law!" roared Cap'n Sproul, clacking his hard fist on the table rim. "Law will tie more knots in a man's business than a whale can tie in a harpoon-line. There ain't no justice in it--only pickin's and stealin's. Why, I had a mate once that was downed on T wharf in Bos'n and robbed, and they caught the men, and the mate couldn't give witness bonds and they locked him up with 'em, and the men got away one night and wa'n't ever caught, and the result was the mate served a jail sentence before they got his bonds matter fixed. It was just the same as a jail sentence. He had to stay there."

Hiram was fully as doleful in regard to the possibilities of the law.

"Once they get old Soup-bone behind bars on them trespass cases," he said, "he'll stay there, all right. They'll fix it somehow--you needn't worry. I reckon they'll be arrestin' him any minute now. They've got cases enough marked down."

"We'll see about that," snapped the Cap'n.

He buttoned his jacket and hurried into Hiram's team, which was at the door. And with Hiram as charioteer they made time toward the Crymble place. Just out of the village they swept past Constable Zeburee Nute, whose slower Dobbin respectfully took the side of the highway.

"Bet ye money to mushmelons," mumbled Hiram as they passed, "he's got a warrant from old Alcander and is on his way to arrest."

"I know he is," affirmed the Cap'n. "Every time he sticks that old tin badge on the outside of his coat he's on the war-path. Whip up, Hiram!"

From afar they spied the tall figure of Dependence Crymble passing wraithlike to and fro across the yard.

"Thirty days per sashay!" grunted Hiram. "That's the way they figger it."

Batson Reeves would have scrambled down from the top of the woodpile when he saw Cap'n Sproul halt Crymble in his weary labor and draw him to one side. But Hiram suggested to Mr. Reeves that he better stay up, and emphasized the suggestion by clutching a stick of stove-wood in each hand.

"Crymble," huskily whispered the Cap'n, "I put ye here out of a good meanin'--meanin' to keep ye out of trouble. But I'm afraid I've got ye into it."

"I told ye what she was and all about it," complained Mr. Crymble, bitterly.

"It ain't 'she,' it's--it's--" The Cap'n saw the bobbing head of Nute's Dobbin heaving into sight around distant alders. "All is, you needn't stay where I put ye."

Mr. Crymble promptly dropped the three sticks of wood that he was carrying.

"But I don't want you to get too far off till I think this thing over a little," resumed the Cap'n. "There ain't no time now. You ought to know this old farm of your'n pretty well. You just go find a hole and crawl into it for a while."

"I'll do it," declared Mr. Crymble, with alacrity. "I knew you'd find her out. Now that you're with me, I'm with you. I'll hide. You fix 'em. 'Tend to her first." He grabbed the Cap'n by the arm. "There's a secret about that barnyard that no one knows but me. Blind his eyes!"

He pointed to Mr. Reeves. There was no time to delve into Mr. Crymble's motives just then. There was just time to act. The blank wall of the ell shut off Mrs. Crymble's view of the scene. Constable Nute was still well down the road. There was only the basilisk Mr. Reeves on the woodpile. Cap'n Sproul grabbed up a quilt spread to air behind the ell, and with a word to Hiram as he passed him he scrambled up the heap of wood. Hiram followed, and the next moment they had hoodwinked the amazed Mr. Reeves and held him bagged securely in the quilt.

The Cap'n, with chin over his shoulder, saw Mr. Crymble scuff aside some frozen dirt in a corner of the barnyard, raise a plank with his bony fingers and insert his slender figure into the crevice disclosed, with all the suppleness of a snake. The plank dropped over his head, and his hiding-place was hidden. But while he and Hiram stood looking at the place where Mr. Crymble had disappeared, there sounded a muffled squawk from the depths, there was the dull rumble of rocks, an inward crumbling of earth where the planks were, a puff of dust, and stillness.

"Gawd A'mighty!" blurted Hiram, aghast, "a dry well's caved in on him."

"I told him to find a hole and crawl into it," quavered the Cap'n, fiddling trembling finger under his nose, "but I didn't tell him to pull the hole in after him."

Mr. Reeves, left free to extricate himself from the quilt, bellowed to Mrs. Crymble and addressed the astonished Nute, who just then swung into the yard.

"They murdered that man, and I see 'em do it!" he squalled, and added, irrelevantly, "they covered my head up so I couldn't see 'em do it."

Mrs. Crymble, who had been dignifiedly keeping the castle till the arrival of the constable, swooped upon the scene with hawk-like swiftness.