2,472
words
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 of incident as the longest
of Trollope's novels. But lured, he will divulge. Therefore I cast many
and divers flies upon the current of his thoughts before I feel a nibble.
"I notice," says I, "that the Western farmers, in
spite of their prosperity, are running after their old populistic idols
again."
"It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad,
maple trees and the Connemaugh River. I know something about farmers. I
thought I struck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker
proved to me I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker,' said Andy.
'He's the man that's shoved into the front row among bullets, ballots and
the ballet. He's the funny‑bone and gristle of the country,' said
Andy, 'and I don't know who we would do without him.'
“One morning me and
Andy wakes up with sixty‑eight cents between us in a yellow pine
hotel on the edge of the predigested hoecake belt of southern Indiana. How
we got off the train there the night before I can't tell you; for she went
through the village so fast that what looked like a saloon to us through
the car window turned out to be a composite view of a drug store and a
water tank two blocks apart. Why we got off at the first station we could,
belongs to a little oroide gold watch and Alaska diamond deal we failed to
pull off the day before, over the Kentucky line.
"When I woke up I heard roosters crowing, and smelt something
like the fumes of nitro-muriatic acid and heard something heavy fall on
the floor below us, and a man swearing.
"
'Cheer up, Andy,' says I. 'We're in a rural community.
Somebody has just tested a gold brick downstairs. We'll go out and
get what's coming to us from a farmer; and then yoicks! and away.'
"Farmers
was always a kind of reserve fund to me. Whenever I was in hard luck I'd
go to the crossroads, hook a finger in a farmer's, suspender, recite the
prospectus of my swindle in a mechanical kind of way, look over what he
had, give him back his keys, whetstone, and papers that was of no value
except to owner, and stroll away without asking any questions. Farmers are
not fair game to me as high up in OUT business as me and Andy was; but
there was times when we found 'em useful just as Wall Street does the
Secretary of the Treasury now and then.
"When we went downstairs we saw we was in the midst of the
finest farming section we ever see. About two miles away on a hill
was a big white house in a grove surrounded by a widespread
agricultural agglomeration of fields and barns and pastures and outhouses.
" 'Whose house is that?' we asked the landlord.
" 'That,' says he, 'is the domicile and the arboreal,
terrestrial and horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett, one of
our county's most progressive citizens.'
"After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left,
casts the horoscope of the rural potentate.
" 'Let me go alone,' says 1. 'Two of us against one farmer
would look as 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 only collecting redates from the rutabagraisers. What bait are you
going to use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.
"
'Oh,' says I, 'the first thing that come to hand in the suit case. I
reckon I'll take along some of the new income tax receipts; and the recipe
for making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; and the order
blanks for the McGuffey's readers, which afterwards turn out to be
McCormick 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 on Ezra.
And, say, Jeff, make that succotash fancier give you nice, clean new
bills. It's a disgrace to our Department of Agriculture, Civil Service and
Pure Food Law the kind of stuff some of these farmers hand out to us. I've
had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundles of microbe cultures
captured out of a Red Cross ambulance.'
"So,
I goes to a livery stable and hires a buggy on my looks. I drove out to
the Plunkett farm and hitched. There was a man sitting on the front steps
of the house. He had on a white flannel suit, a diamond ring, golf cap and
a pink ascot tie. 'Summer boarder,' says I to myself.
" '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
the rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man with the Hoe.' When I
looked at this farmer, the little devices I had in my pocket for buncoing
the pushed-back brows seemed as hopeless as trying to shake down the Beef
Trust with a mittimus and a parlor rifle.
" 'Well,' says he, looking at me close, 'speak up. I see the
left pocket of your coat sags a good deal. Out with the goldbrick first.
I'm rather more interested in the bricks than I am in the trick
sixty day notes and the lost silver mine story.'
"I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas
of ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my
handkerchief off it."
" 'One dollar and eighty cents,'
says the farmer, hefting it in his hand. 'Is it a trade?'
" 'The lead in it is worth more than that,' says I, dignified.
I put it back in my pocket.
" 'All right,'
says he. 'But I sort of wanted it for the collection I'm starting. I got a
$5000 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 of
lonesome here sometimes. I think that's New York calling.'
"We
went inside. The room looked like a Broadway stockbroker's—light-oak
desks, two 'phones, Spanish leather upholstered chairs and couches, oil
paintings in gilt frames a foot deep and a ticker hitting off the news in
one corner.
" 'Hello, hello!' says the funny farmer. 'Is that the Regent
Theatre? Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre. Reserve four orchestra
seats for Friday evening—my usual ones. Yes; Friday—goodbye.'
"
'I run over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the farmer,
hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indianapolis,
spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way, and get home in
time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours later. Oh, the
pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period is getting
geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don't-Blow-Out-the-Gas
Association, don't you think, Mr. Bunk?'
" 'I seem to perceive,' says I, 'a kind of hiatus in the
agrarian traditions in which, heretofore, I have reposed confidence.'
"
'Sure, Bunk' says he. 'The yellow primrose on the river's brim is getting
to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of the Language 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 me see 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. Now wait. No; I don't want
that horse. What? No; not at any price. He interferes; and he's
windbroken. Good-bye.'
"
'Now, Bunk,' says the farmer, 'do you begin to realize that agriculture
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-date agriculturist napping.
It's Saturday, the Fourteenth, on the farm, you bet. Now, look here, and
see how we keep up with the day's doings.'
"He
shows me a machine on a table with two things for your ears like the penny-in-the-slot
affairs. I puts it on and listens. A female voice starts up reading
headlines of murders, accidents, and other political casualties.
"
'What you hear,' says the farmer, 'is a synopsis of today's news in the
New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco papers. It is wired in to
our rural News Bureau and served hot to subscribers. On this table you see
the principal dailies and weeklies of the country. Also a special service
of advance sheets of the monthly magazines.'
"I
picks up one sheet and sees that it's headed: 'Special Advance Proofs. In
July, 1909, the Century will say'—and so forth.
"The
farmer rings up somebody—his manager, I reckon—and tells him to let
the herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the 900-acre field in
wheat: and to have 200 extra cans ready at the station for the milk
trolley car. Then he passes the Henry Clays and sets out a bottle of green
chartreuse, and goes over and looks at the ticker tape.
" '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. I told you
not to waste your time.'
"After
a while he says: 'Bunk, if you don't mind my telling you, your company
begins to cloy slightly. I've got to write an article on the Chimera of
Communism for a magazine, and attend a meeting of the Race Track
Association this afternoon. Of course you understand by now that you
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 the buggy. The
horse turned round and took me back to the hotel. I hitched him 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 of sagaciousness.'
"
'I don't understand it,' say I, humming a sad and foolish little song to
cover my humiliation.
"Andy
walks up and down the room for a long time, biting the left end of his
mustache as he does when in the act of thinking.
"
'Jeff,' says he, finally, 'I believe your story of this expurgated rustic;
but I am not convinced. It looks incredulous to me that he could not have
inoculated himself against all the preordained systems of bucolic bunco.
Now, you never regarded me as a man of special religious proclivities, did
you, Jeff?' says Andy.
"
'Well,' says I, 'No. But,' says I, not to wound his feelings, 'I have also
observed many church members whose said proclivities were not so outwardly
developed that they would show on a white handkerchief if you 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 livelihood to men like me and you. Else
why was we given brains? It is my belief that the manna that the
Israelites lived on for forty years in the wilderness was only a
figurative word for farmers; and they kept up the practice to this day.
And now,' says Andy, 'I am going to test my theory "Once a farmer,
always a come-on," in spite of the veneering and the orifices that a
spurious civilization has brought to him.'
"
'You'll fail, same as I did,' says I. 'This one's shook off the shackles
of the sheep-fold. He's entrenched behind the advantages of electricity,
education, literature and intelligence.'
"
'I'll try,' said Andy. 'There are certain Laws of Nature that Free Rural
Delivery can't overcome.'
"Andy fumbles around awhile in the closet and comes out
dressed in a suit with brown and yellow checks as big as your hand. His
vest is red with blue dots, and he wears a high silk hat. I noticed he'd
soaked his sandy mustache in a kind of blue ink.
‘Great Barnums?' says 1. 'You're a ringer for a circus
thimble-rig man.'
"
'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come back. I
won't be long.'
"Two
hours afterwards Andy steps in the room and lays a wad of money on the
table.
" 'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' says he. 'Let me tell
you. He was 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 on
the table. I whistled a tune or two, and then I started up the old
formula.
" 'Step up lively, gentleman,' says I, 'and watch the little
ball. It costs you nothing to
look. There you see it, and there you don't.
Guess where the little joker is. The quickness of the hand deceives
the eye.'
"
'I steals a look at the farmer man. I see the sweat coming out on his
forehead. He goes over and closes the front door and watches me some more.
Directly he says: "I'll bet you twenty I can pick the shell the
ball's under now."
"
'After that,' goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate. He only had
$860 in 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 in years. It brings up happy old days when I was only a
farmer and not an agriculturist. 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 ahead and amuse themselves with politics. Farming's a lonesome
life; and they've been against the shell game before."
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