Best Short Stories - [45]

‘As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two times in a man’s life when he does this — when he’s dead broke, and when he’s rich.

‘Now and then the most legitimate business runs out of luck. It was out in Arkansas I made the wrong turn at a cross-road, and drives into this town of Peavine by mistake. It seems I had already assaulted and disfigured Peavine the spring of the year before. I had sold $600 worth of young fruit trees there — plums, cherries, peaches and pears. The Peaviners were keeping an eye on the country road and hoping I might pass that way again. I drove down Main street as far as the Crystal Palace drugstore before I realized I had committed ambush upon myself and my white horse Bill.

‘The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and began a conversation that wasn’t entirely disassociated with the subject of fruit trees. A committee of ’em ran some trace-chains through the armholes of my vest, and escorted me through their gardens and orchards.

‘Their fruit trees hadn’t lived up to their labels. Most of ’em had turned out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet’s nest and half of an old corset-cover.

‘The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of town. They took my watch and money on account; and they kept Bill and the wagon as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees put forth an Amsden’s June peach I might come back and get my things. Then they took off the trace chains and jerked their thumbs in the direction of the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope[70] for the swollen rivers and impenetrable forests.

‘When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an unidentified town on the A., T. & S. F. railroad.[71] The Peaviners hadn’t left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing — they wasn’t after my life — and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and perspicacity.

‘And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the town; and off of it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards in a cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and interjections. I see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed more for Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile in spite of it all that made Phoebe Snow’s job look like a chimney-sweep’s.

‘“Fall off?” says I.

‘“Nunk,” says he. “Got off. Arrived at my destination. What town is this?”

‘“Haven’t looked it up on the map yet,” says I. “I got in about five minutes before you did. How does it strike you?”

‘“Hard,” says he, twisting one of his arms around. “I believe that shoulder — no, it’s all right.”

‘He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes, when out of his pocket drops a fine, nine-inch burglar’s steel jimmy. He picks it up and looks at me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.

‘“Brother,” says he, “greetings. Didn’t I see you in Southern Missouri last summer selling colored sand at half-a-dollar a teaspoonful to put into lamps to keep the oil from exploding?”

‘“Oil,” says I, “never explodes. It’s the gas that forms that explodes.” But I shakes hands with him, anyway.

‘“My name’s Bill Bassett,” says he to me, “and if you’ll call it professional pride instead of conceit, I’ll inform you that you have the pleasure of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gum-shoe on ground drained by the Mississippi River.”

‘Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags as artists in kindred lines will do. It seems he didn’t have a cent, either, and we went into close caucus. He explained why an able burglar sometimes had to travel on freights by telling me that a servant girl had played him false in Little Rock, and he was making a quick get-away.

‘“It’s part of my business,” says Bill Bassett, “to play up to the ruffles when I want to make a riffle as Raffles. ’Tis loves that makes the bit go ’round. Show me a house with a swag in it and a pretty parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spilling truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin under my chin, while the police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady’s nephew teaches a Bible class. I first make an impression on the girl,” says Bill, “and when she lets me inside I make an impression on the locks. But this one in Little Rock done me,” says he. “She saw me taking a trolley ride with another girl, and when I came ’round on the night she was to leave the door open for me it was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs. But, no sir. She had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah,[72]” says Bill Bassett.

‘It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the girl emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top-riders of a tally-ho, and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and depot. As he had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure, but he made a train that was just pulling out.