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'Charge It': Keeping Up With Harry, a fiction by Irving Bacheller |
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Chapter 10. In Which Socrates Breaks The Drag And Tandem Monopoly In Pointview |
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_ CHAPTER X. IN WHICH SOCRATES BREAKS THE DRAG AND TANDEM MONOPOLY IN POINTVIEW "Harry's father came often for a smoke and talk with me after dinner, and his favorite subject was Harry. As a subject of conversation, Harry was more successful than the average crime. In this respect he resembled a divorce or a murder. That's how it happened that Harry got on my mind. He is one of the most skilful riders of the human mind that I know of. He was wearing us out, and we were all bucking to get him off. Well, his father was thinking about him while I was thinking about the rest of Pointview. It was another case of Rome and Caesar. Harry's last achievement was to accuse his father of being the fossiliferous remnant of an ancient time. "'The truth is, Harry hasn't enough competition in his line,' I suggested, one evening. 'The other boys are doing well, but they don't keep up with him. "'You know after I left college, in my youth, I spent a couple of years in Wyoming. Well, Mary Ann Crowder was the only single lady within a hundred miles, and she was the most obstreperous damn critter that I ever saw. She had a monopoly an' knew it, an' wasn't decently polite. Put on more style than a nigger at a cakewalk. Though she had red hair an' only one eye, some of the boys used to ride sixty miles for a visit with her. Then they had to swim the Snake River and maybe wrestle with a tame bear that was loose in the dooryard. By and by a man with two unmarried daughters moved on to a ranch near us, and then Mary Ann began to be polite. She suddenly became a human being, an' killed the bear, an' moved across the river an' married the first man that proposed, and lived happily ever after. "'What we need here is another drag and tandem.' "'Get what you need, and I'll pay the bills,' said Harry's father. "So I went to a sale in New York, bought my drag and tandem-cart, and had them shipped to Pointview. Our local sign-painter put a crest or, rather, a kind of royal hatchment, on the panels of both. Then I sold them for next to nothing to a local livery on conditions. Its new owner agreed to use the drag for chowder-parties, and to break the worst-looking nags in his stable to drive tandem on the cart. "Tommy Ruggles, a smart-looking knight of the currycomb, whose first name was a kitchen word in Pointview, sprang to my assistance. He had curly hair, and a good deal of natural cuteness, and was, moreover, 'a divvle with the girls.' He contracted with me to take a selected list of female servants for an airing in the tandem-cart. He was to get a royalty of five dollars a head on every servant that was properly aired, with a small premium on red ones. "He began with Big Bertha, our worthy German countess. Tommy had a playful humor, and cracked his long whip over the rough-harnessed nags and merrily tooted his horn as the rig lumbered along through the main streets of our village. Many laughed and many wondered, while an army of noisy kids followed and hung on behind. "Tommy got his second girl, who was hit on the head with a ripe tomato, and then it was all over. The girls wouldn't stand for it. The sport had become too exciting. Tommy told me how he had invited Bridget Maloney, and she had said: 'Na-a-ah! Do yez take me for an idiot? Sure every rotten egg in the town would be jumpin' at me.' "It suggested an idea. As the imitation idiots had given out, we would try the real thing. So I 'phoned the manager of our thriving idiot asylum on the Post Road and arranged to have Tommy take one of his patients every day for a drive in the cart. Why shouldn't all the idiots enjoy themselves? Fresh air would be good for them. It would turn the cart into a charity which would cover a part of my sins. I asked for the better class of idiots--the quiet ones, who had sense enough to appreciate a good thing. The parade began and continued day after day. "Harry had retired his tandem after Tom, with a stiff-backed idiot by his side, had clattered after him through the village behind the two spavined nags to the amusement of many people. He had kept up with Harry. "Soon that kind of a rig was known as the Idiot Wagon. Then Tommy resigned; it was more than he could stand. He said he was willing to do any honest work for money, but not that. He said that the idiots imagined themselves rich, and put on so much style that it made the whole thing ridiculous. "'Never mind--it's the habit of idiots,' I said. "'One of 'em thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte, an' calls me his man, and wears a plug hat and sits as straight as a ramrod, and bows to the people when they laugh at him,' said Tommy. 'Some of 'em get stuck on the cart, and it's a fight to get 'em out of it. I tell ye, I'm sick o' the job. The sight o' that cart makes me feel nutty.' "'Never mind, Tom,' I said; 'you've been a public benefactor, and you and the cart are entitled to an honorable discharge.' "Every bright day the drag was tooling over the road with picnic-parties on their way to one of the popular beaches. Our local lodges and political clubs, and now and then a load of Italians, were able to enjoy the luxury which had been the exclusive delight of Harry and the fluffy maidens of Pointview. "Drags an' tandems are all right if you don't go too far with 'em. We were just in time to prevent them from becoming tools of degeneration in our village." _ |
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