I—BEING THE STRUGGLE OF AN AMATEUR AUTHOR TO GET A FAIR START

SPEAKING of money—and it’s a mighty popular topic—the investment of the first twenty-five cents I ever earned, all at a crack, ought to have directed my feet, my thoughts, and my future along the straight and narrow way. Ten minutes after I had galloped gleefully home with that quarter-dollar from Judge Kingsley’s hay-field, my good mother led me down to Old Maid Branscombe’s little book-store and obliged me to buy a catechism.

I earned that money by hauling a drag-rake for a whole day around behind a hay-cart, barefoot and kicking against the vicious stubbles of the shaven field. I honestly felt that I did not deserve the extra penance of the catechism. However, that first day’s work gave me my earliest respect for money—earned money. And I also remember that Judge Kingsley, when he paid me, sniffed and said I hadn’t done enough to earn twenty-five cents.

I hated to walk up to him and ask for my pay, because Celene Kingsley was within hearing; she had come down to the field to fetch him home in her pony-chaise. That’s right! You’ve guessed it! I’ll waste no words. It was only another of the old familiar cases. Barefooted, folks poor, keeping my face toward her, as a sunflower fronts the sun (though the sunflower has other reasons than hiding patches), I was in the shamed, secret, hopeless, heartaching agonies of a fifteen-year-old passion. Of course, I don’t mean that I had loved her for all that time—I’m giving my age and hers.

Yes, I hated to walk up. And the judge gave me the quarter only because he did not have any smaller change.

And really, for the times, it was considerable of a coin for a single juvenile job.

The services of youngsters in those days in Levant were paid for on a narrower scale—ten cents for lawns and a nickel for shoveling snow, and so on. And tin-peddlers were mighty stingy in their dickerings for old rubbers and junk. To get rags one had to steal ’em—our folks made rugs and guarded old remnants carefully.

So much for my first financial adventure of real moment—for the biggest coin I had ever clutched; and right now I lay down my pen for a moment and spread out two human paws which have juggled three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots as carelessly as one scruffles jackstraws. That was maverick treasure. But there’s a big difference between earned money and maverick money. If you don’t know what maverick means I’ll save you the trouble of looking the word up in the dictionary. Once on a time, in Texas, old Sam Maverick wouldn’t brand his cattle. Therefore, a maverick was a cow or steer unbranded. And to-day it means any kind of property at large which a bold man or a dishonest man may grab if he can beat other thieves to it.

I had an early taste of maverick money, and the taste was so sweet that I never have lost my hankering for more.

In the fall of that “year of the catechism” the line gale blew down the chimney which had stood after the old Pratt house was burned. I was there before the dust settled, for all the boys knew that there were wrought-iron clamps high up in the bricks. But I left the clamps to the next comers and picked up a dented tin box, rusty and dusty and soot-blackened; I shook it; it rattled and I ran away into the woods. When I had knocked the box open and looked in and spied coins I had the heart-thrilling conviction that money worries were over for me in this life. My first thought was that I would marry Celene Kingsley and settle down and live happy ever after. If there had been in the box what I thought at first there was, I could wipe my pen and close my story.

I dove both hands into the box and brought them up brimming—coins scattering and clattering back over my trembling fingers. They were big coins—and I had read much about the days of the bold pirates.

“Pieces of eight!” I whispered.

But they were not. When I had winked the mist out of my eyes I found that they were old-fashioned coppers—bung-downs they used to be called. Mixed in with them were a few copper tokens, a Pine Tree shilling, a sprinkling of Speed The Plow cents, and the only coin of any account at all was a Mexican dollar with a hole in it.

It wasn’t in my nature to bury that treasure. I knew it was pretty worthless junk, but I had a hankering to carry it about with me, to feel its drag in my pockets, to reach in and chink it when no one could hear. I walked around weighted with it as afterward I have been weighted with the leaden chunks of my diver’s dress. As early as that in my life I found that money was a burden as well as a vexation. I didn’t dare to frisk and frolic with the boys at school; I was not exploiting my new wealth; I had grounds for caution because there were plenty of Pratts left in Levant. At home I moved about so quietly that my folks thought, I reckon, that I was entering an early decline. My mother used to look at my tongue quite often and made me drink hardhack tea.

But there is one impulse in the male animal which is not easily controlled by prudence; it’s that cursed itch to make a show in front of the female of the species—in front of the special one, the selected one, the beloved one. Some sort of a jimcrack-peddler came into the school-yard one noon, and Celene Kingsley, daughter of a plutocrat, tendered a big, shiny silver dollar and the man could not change it for her. I walked up, trembling with both pride and panic, and said, trying my best to act the part of a matter-of-fact bank on two legs, “Let me handle it for you!” It was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and my voice was only a weak squawk.

When she turned to me and opened her big, blue eyes, I was nigh to running away.

The boys and girls came crowding around, and I couldn’t blame them for showing interest; the sight of a Levant Sidney with money on him was a new one in town.

I had separated from the coppers the aristocrats of my hoard, the Pine Tree shilling and the Mexican dollar, by wrapping them in a wisp of paper. I brought them out first.

“I don’t know exactly what they are worth in real money,” I told her. “But you can have ’em at half price.”

She had been considerably surprised before, but now she was plain dumfounded. That system of changing a dollar was brand new.

Then I dredged a trousers pocket and produced a handful of the bung-down coppers. I began to count them down on a corner of the school-house steps.

“Somebody get a wheelbarrow,” advised one of the boys. “That’s the only way she’ll ever tug-a-lug her change home.”

“Really, you needn’t bother,” she said, stammering a little. “No, don’t trouble yourself. I have changed my mind about buying anything.”

They all laughed.

“That isn’t money,” said the jimcrack man. “I’d never take that stuff for my goods.”

A girl ran up and grabbed into the coppers I had been, heaping on the stone. She was a Pratt.

“Ross Sidney, you stole that money,” she squealed. “It was in my granny’s notion-box. We couldn’t find it after she died. You stole it!”

“I didn’t steal it—I found it,” I told her. But all the courage had gone out of me.

“You ain’t the first thief to lie about your stealings.”

“But I did find it—I found it after the chimney blew down.”

“You knew it was ours. You didn’t bring it to us—that’s stealing.”

“It might have been put there before—”

“It was my granny’s money. Don’t you suppose I know? She saved old coppers.” She spread down her handkerchief and began to pile the coins upon it.

There did not seem to be any room for argument. In my shame I fell to wondering how I had ever convinced myself that this money was treasure-trove. I dug down and gave her the rest of it. Instead of proudly showing myself a person of means before Celene Kingsley I was. barely escaping the suspicion of being a thief.

“If it belongs to the Pratts you’re welcome to it,” I said. “I don’t want anything which belongs to somebody else.”

“You’d better remember as much the next time you find money,” snapped the Pratt girl. “Your conscience will be easier when you die.”

They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash—that’s so! When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters of the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what that Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine, my face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley.

I think I know what my main mistake was in my first attempts at writing this tale; I tried to tell the story as if it had happened to somebody else and the thing was stiffer than a mud-caked tug-line and squealed like a rusty windlass. Of course, I hate to be saying “I” here, there, and everywhere—but there’ll come a place in my tale—you’ll think of it if ever you get as far as that—where there’d be nothing to the story unless you could see with my eyes and feel with my hands. So, bear with me and I’ll reel off the yarn as best I know how, making no apologies after this confession.

Oh, about that first maverick money I ran afoul of! I never saw that money again, of course.

But I did happen to meet Ben Pratt right in front of Judge Kingsley’s house. I’ll not say how big Ben Pratt was, because you’ll think this is only a bragging story. He called me a thief and I decided it was about time to show Levant that the name was not a popular one with me.

I licked him:

Judge Kingsley rushed out with a horsewhip and lashed us apart just as I was finishing Ben up.

“Young Sidney, you’re a cheeky, tough, brazen character,” said the judge. I did not answer him.

It is my nature to take a big lot from all women, considerable from some men, and devilish little from most men. I had nothing at all to say to Celene Kingsley’s father, even though I was rubbing half a dozen swelling welts where his whip had connected with the back of my neck.

“You come of a tough family,” stated the judge.

Right then my uncle Deck arrived at the party; he had been watching the thing from the tavern porch.

“What’s that you say about our family?” he asked the judge.

“I don’t care to stand here and quarrel with you, Decker Sidney.”

“When you horsewhip my dead brother’s boy in the main street you’ll come pretty nigh to having a quarrel with me, seeing that his own father can’t protect him.”

“I merely came out here and stopped a fight which was disgracing our village.”

“It’s a nice thing for one of the ‘forty thieves’ to talk about disgracing a village,” said my uncle.

As young as I was I knew what was meant when folks called Judge Kinglsey one of the forty thieves. He belonged to the syndicate that had grabbed the State’s principal railroad away from the original shareholders; there was political shenanigan and a good deal of foreclosure trickery. I never understood the details, but the fact remained that the syndicate got the railroad.

“A cheap slur from a cheap man,” said the judge, walking away.

I can’t say that I resented that remark very deeply, though I suppose family loyalty should have prompted me to do so. I never in my life came close to my uncle Deck when he did not have the smell of liquor on his breath: On each side of his nose there was a patch of perfectly lurid crimson. He was a horse-trader and he made considerable money.

“That slur of yours is a high-priced one,” my uncle shouted. “I have my eye on you, you old hypocrite. There’ll come a day when that slur will cost you more than you can afford to pay. That’s how high-priced it is, Judge Kingsley.”

I didn’t know what my uncle meant then.

It was a wicked time for me when I did find out, a long while afterward.

II—ENDING WITH A MEETING ON PURGATORY HILL

MY mother was a good woman—a thrifty, kindly, helpful woman, a good neighbor, in spite of her poverty.

My short temper, my cheeky disposition, my generally ready impulse to grab in on short notice, all belong to the Sidney side, I guess. All we know of the family has come down by word of mouth, and I suspect that the first rovers who came over in the old days when New England was really new were pretty tough characters who had plenty of original nerve to start with and then developed more as occasion required. Well, some of that sort had to come on ahead and smooth things with the ax and crowbar—yes, and with the musket, so that the country could get a good running start.

My mother was a good neighbor, I repeat. Up in the attic, hanging in dried bunches from the beams, were spearmint, thoroughwort, hardback, mullein, pennyroyal, and other pasture herbs which she sent me forth to gather. Her thoroughwort syrup was guaranteed to cure any case of whooping-cough—and she gave freely to all who came to her.

My father was a helpful sort of a man in his own way. He used to volunteer as boss of all the barn-raising bees in our section—but his enemies, made up of a considerable army of the men whom he had licked in his life, said, behind his back, that the only reason he had for helping at a barn-raising was to show off by running the ridgepole first of all the crew, and then to start the regular free fight. He fell off a ridge-pole one day and my mother was widowed.

I take it that her chief ambition in life was to tame the Sidney disposition in me—that earnest desire explaining my involuntary investment in the catechism. My mother’s axioms and teachings would have made excellent addenda and foot-notes for any catechism. Always did she counsel me to count ten before speaking angry word or performing angry act; I don’t remember that I ever did as she told me, though the Lord Himself knows how much I have suffered in my life on account of that lack of self-restraint. Two days after I bought the catechism my good mother thought it was having its effect on my nature. She saw a boy heave a rock at me in our door-yard and I stood perfectly motionless and speechless.

“That’s right, my own son! Count your ten!” she called to me.

But just at that moment a bumblebee was crawling around over my bare foot and I was in no mind to disturb him. Therefore, my enemy was enabled to collect a full supply of rock ammunition and to defy and rout me when at last I was free from the restraint of the bumblebee. It would have been the same if I had waited to count ten. Somehow, as the world is constituted, I have never taken much stock in this watchful-waiting game while your enemy is hustling to pile up his ammunition and you know he is doing so. I may be wrong. Maybe this story of mine will show that I’m wrong. But I hear you say, let’s get on to the story!

I mean to do so at once; but if I have paused to pull the curtain aside from my family and my character a bit you may be able to understand some parts of the story a mite better, because, in spite of that catechism, in spite of mother-influence, and perhaps mother-goodness deep down in me, I have butted into adventures which you will not find set down in the volumes of any well-conducted Sunday-school library.

I didn’t have my mother long, after my fifteenth birthday.

I was her sole heir; five minutes before she closed her eyes she gave me all her little fortune—to wit, the sweetest smile good mother ever left to bless memory of her, a pat on my hand, a few whispered words in my ear.

And then Uncle Deck took me in hand to make a man of me, so he said.

He wasn’t all bad—don’t understand me as saying that. He would pass a sleepless night if he failed to cheat a man in a horse trade, but he would sell his shirt before he would allow any old folks in our town to go onto the poor-farm. He would sneak around with wood and groceries after dark, that big, red face of his like a harvest moon, and when they would start to thank him he would curse the miserable old creatures so horribly that my blood used to run cold. He prided himself on language which, so he said, “would break up a Sunday-school picnic if a little bird sat overhead and twittered it out of a tree.” He saved his choicest profanity for his comments on Judge Zebulon Kingsley. His hatred went far back. I don’t know what started it. Perhaps it began in the natural antipathy such a man as Uncle Deck would entertain for a cold, proud, punctilious, professedly religious man like the judge. Uncle Deck would have it that the judge was a hypocrite, a thief at heart, and my uncle’s constant boast was that some

day he would show the judge up; but all that vaporing seemed to be silly spite, without foundation. Judge Kingsley was our rich man; he had been judge of probate, and after retiring from that office he was trusted with funds as a sort of private banker; folks whose estates he had handled as judge just naturally insisted on his keeping control; and he had been town treasurer of Levant for years.

I hated to hear my uncle rave on about such a man; it was as irritating as the barking of a cur.

I have said that my uncle was a horse-trader. Rather, he was a general country dickerer, if you know the kind. He dealt in everything from a sheet of fly-paper to a clap of thunder. He had car-loads of horses sent to him from the West and peddled those to farmers, taking cash or bills of sale or produce or second-hand furniture or anything else which he could turn in a trade. He set me to peddling and collecting, and it was a mean job. At first I used to believe everything which debtors or sellers would tell me, and the result was that Uncle Deck bawled me out most dreadfully; and thus being abused by both parties, I got so at last that I believed nobody.

Therefore I was in a fair way to be made just the sort of man Uncle Deck desired me to be.

And continually, after I was sufficiently hardened, he impressed on me that I mustn’t be bothering him all the time, asking this and that about running the business. I must act for myself and then report to him when he called for an accounting. You shall see how his trying to make a man of me in this fashion turned me into ways which neither he nor I could have forecast. Don’t tell me that the activities of this life are very much a matter of individual election, after all. To be sure, a man might elect to live a hermit and might get away with the job in good shape; but if a person throws himself into the ruck of the living, into the running of humanity, he’ll be apt to find himself leaping from crag to crag because he has been shooed or jarred.

I ran up against one Juvenal Bird, newly come to town from the rural fastnesses of Vienna plantation—plantation meaning an unorganized township. I had never heard of Mr. Bird, and when he came within range of my vision I rather wondered because I had not; he seemed to be a person of some importance. To be sure, his frock suit was rusty and his plug-hat was fuzzy, but the garb was distinctive.

Mr. Bird was in search of furniture and I showed him our second-hand stock; he ordered liberally and largely—especially largely. He took the biggest stove, the largest bedsteads, the most expansive tables, and bureaus of breadth. That plug-hat impressed me. When he told me to send the goods out to his house on the Tumble-dick Road, and to call for the pay at my convenience, I did not presume to ask for an advance instalment, after our usual custom.

I promptly found out that this was one affair of business with which I should have bothered my busy uncle, who knew all the cheats of the section.