Chapter 3

"Don't you believe it," said he. "I bet you fifty cents you are the only person in Tinkletown that's in bed at this minute. They're all _afraid_ to go to bed, Eva, an' you can't blame 'em. Nobody knows I've got them desperadoes bound hand and foot and guarded by a whole regiment of U. S. troops, specially deputized for the occasion."

"YOU ARE INVITED TO BE PRESENT"

Anderson Crow sat on the porch of the post-office, ruminating over the epidemic that had assailed Tinkletown with singular virulence, and, in a sense, enthusiasm. Not that there was anything sinister or loathsome about the plague. Far from it, he reflected, because it had broken out so soon after his bitter comments on the prolonged absence of the slightest symptom, or indication that a case was even remotely probable. And here he was, holding in his hand four fresh and unmistakable signs that the contagion was spreading. In short, he had just received and opened four envelopes addressed to Mr. and Mrs. A. Crow, and each contained an invitation to a wedding.

Alf Reesling, commonly known as the town drunkard, sat on the top step, whittling.

"No law against gittin' married, is there, constable?" he inquired.

"I don't know much about this new eugenric law," mused Mr. Crow, gingerly pulling at his whiskers. "So fer as I know, it ain't been violated up here."

"What's the harm, anyway? You was sayin' yourself only the other day that it's a crime the way the young fellers in this town _never_ git married. Just set around the parlour stoves all winter holdin' hands, and on the front steps all summer----"

"Like as not the gosh-derned cowards heard what I said and got up spunk enough to tackle matrimony," interrupted the venerable town marshal. "June seems to be a good month fer weddin's everywhere else in the world except right here in Tinkletown. The last one we had was in December, and that was two years ago. Annie Bliss and Joe Hodges. Now we're goin' to have 'em so thick and fast there won't be an unmarried man in the place, first thing you know. Up to date, me and Mrs. Crow have had seventeen printed invitations, and I don't know how many by word o' mouth. Fellers that never even done any courtin', so fer as I know, are gittin' married to girls that ain't had a beau since the Methodist revival in nineteen-ten. They all got religion then, male and female, and there's nothin' like religion to make people think they ought to have somebody to share their repentance with."

"George Hoover's been goin' with Bessie Slayback ever sence McKinley beat Bryan in 'ninety-six. Swore he'd never git married till we had another democratic president. We've had one fer more'n four years and now he says he never dreamed there'd be another one, so he didn't think it was worth while to save up enough to git married on. You don't happen to have a bid there fer his weddin', have you, Anderson? That would be too much to expect, I guess."

"How old do you make out Bessie is, Alf?" asked Mr. Crow, shuffling the envelopes until he found the one he wanted. He removed the card, printed neatly by the _Tinkletown Banner_ Press, and squinted at it through his spectacles.

"Forty-nine," said Alf, promptly. "Twenty-sixth of last January."

"Well, poor old George'll have to do his settin' in Sofer's store after the third o' June," said the other, chuckling. "She has threw him over, as my daughter would say."

"What's that?"

"Yep. Bessie's goin' to be married next Sunday to Charlie Smith."

"Fer the Lord's sake!" gasped Alf. "How c'n that be? Charlie's got a wife an' three grown children."

"'Tain't old Charlie. It's young Charlie," said Anderson, looking hard at the invitation. "'Charles Elias Smith, Junior,' it says."

Alf was speechless. He merely stared while the town marshal made mental calculations.

"She's twenty-six years older'n he is, Alf."

"There must be some mistake," muttered Alf.

"Not if you're sure she's forty-nine," said Anderson. "Subtract twenty-three from forty-nine and you have twenty-six, with nothin' to carry. Besides, old Charlie's middle name is Bill."

"Well, I'll be dog-goned," said Alf, in a weak voice.

"And here's another'n'," said Anderson, passing a card to his companion.

Alf read: "'The son and daughter of Mrs. Ellen Euphemia Ricketts request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their mother to Mr. Pietro Emanuel Cocotte, on June 1, 1917, at twelve o'clock noon at the family residence, No. 17 Lincoln Street, Tinkletown, New York.' Well, I'll be--" Alf interrupted himself to repeat one of the names. "Who is this Pietro Emanuel Cocotte? I never heard of--"

"Petey Sickety," said Anderson.

"The sprinklin'-cart driver?"

"The same," said the marshal, his lips tightening. He had once tried to arrest the young man for "disturbing the peace," and had been obliged to call upon the crowd for help.

"Why, good gosh, he don't earn more'n ten dollars a week and he sends half of that back to Sweden," said Alf.

"Europe," corrected Anderson, patiently. He had put up with a good deal of ignorance on the part of Alf during a long and watchful acquaintanceship.

"Anyhow," said the town drunkard, arising in some haste, "I guess I'll be gittin' home. Maybe I ain't too late." He was moving off with considerable celerity.

"Too late for what?" called out Anderson.

"That measley, good-fer-nothin' Gates boy dropped in to see my girl Queenie last night. First time he's ever done it, but, by criminy, the way they're speedin' things up around here lately there's no tellin' what c'n happen in twenty-four hours."

"Hold on a minute, Alf. I'll walk along with you. Now, see here, Alf,"--Mr. Crow laid a kindly, encouraging hand on the other's shoulder as they ambled down the main street of the village--"no matter what happens, you mustn't let it git the best of you. Keep straight, old feller. Don't touch a drop o'--"

Mr. Reesling stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk. "Dog-gone it, Anderson--leggo of my arm. Do you want everybody to think you're takin' me to jail, or home to my poor wife, or somethin' like that? It'll be all over town in fifteen minutes if you--"

"'Tain't my fault if you've got a reputation, Alf," retorted the town marshal sorrowfully.

"Well, it ain't my fault either," declared Alf. "Look at me. I ain't had a drink in twenty-three years, and what good does it do me? Every time a stranger comes to town people point at me an' say, 'There goes the town drunkard.' Oh, I've heerd 'em. I ain't deef. An' besides, ain't they always preachin' at me an' about me at the Methodist an' Congregational churches? Ain't they always tellin' the young boys that they got to be careful er they'll be like Alf Reesling? An' what's it all come from? Comes from the three times I got drunk back in the fall of 'ninety-three when my cousin was here from Albany fer a visit. I _had_ to entertain him, didn't I? An' there wasn't any other way to do it in this jerk-water town, was there? An' ever since then the windbags in this town have been prayin' fer me an' pityin' my poor wife. That's what a feller gits fer livin' in a--"

"Now, now!" admonished Anderson soothingly. "Don't git excited, Alf. You deserve a lot o' credit. Ain't many men, I tell you, could break off sudden like that, an'--"

"Oh, you go to grass!" exclaimed Alf hotly.

Anderson inspected him closely. "Lemme smell your breath, Alf Reesling," he commanded.

"What's the use?" growled Alf. "Wouldn't last fer twenty-three years, would it?"

"Well, you talk mighty queer," said the marshal, unconvinced. He couldn't imagine such a thing as a strictly sober man telling him to go to grass. He was the most important man in Tinkletown.

Further discussion was prevented by the approach of Mr. Crow's daughter, Susie, accompanied by a tall, pink-faced young man in a resplendent checked suit and a dazzling red necktie. They came from Brubaker's popular drugstore and ice-cream "parlour," two doors below.

"Hello, Pop," said Susie gaily, as the couple sauntered past their half-halting seniors.

"H'are you, Mr. Crow?" was the young man's greeting, uttered with the convulsive earnestness of sudden embarrassment. "Fine day, ain't it?"

Mr. Crow said that it was, and then both he and Alf stopped short in their tracks and gazed intently at the backs of the young people. Even as they stared, a fiery redness enveloped the ears of Susie's companion. A few steps farther on he turned his head and looked back. Something that may be described as sheepish defiance marked that swift, involuntary glance.

Mr. Reesling broke the silence. There was a worried, sympathetic note in his voice.

"Got on his Sunday clothes, Anderson, and this is only Wednesday. Beats the Dutch, don't it?"

"I wonder--" began Mr. Crow, and then closed his lips so tightly and so abruptly that his sparse chin whiskers stuck out almost horizontally.

He started off briskly in the wake of the young people. Alf, forgetting his own apprehensions in the face of this visible manifestation, shuffled along a few paces behind.

Miss Crow and her companion turned the corner below and were lost to view.

"By gosh," said Alf, suddenly increasing his speed until he came abreast of the other; "you better hurry, Anderson. Justice Robb's in his office. I seen his feet in the winder a little while ago."

"They surely can't be thinkin' of--" Mr. Crow did not complete the sentence.

"Why not?" demanded Alf. "Everybody else is. And it would be just like that Schultz boy to do it without an invitation. Ever since this war's been goin' on them Schultzes have been blowin' about always bein' prepared fer anything. German efficiency's what they're always throwin' up to people. I bet he's been over to the county seat an' got a license to--"

Anderson interrupted him with a snort. He put his hand on his right hip pocket, where something bulged ominously, and quickened his pace.

"I been watchin' these Schultzes fer nearly a year," said he, "an' the whole caboodle of 'em are spies."

They turned the corner. Susie and her companion were on the point of disappearing in a doorway fifty yards down Sickle Street.

Anderson slowed up. He removed his broad felt hat with the gold cord around it, and mopped his forehead.

"That's the tin-type gallery," he said, a little out of breath.

"Worse an' more of it," said Alf. "That's the surest sign I know of. It never fails. Mollie an' me had our'n taken the day before we was married an'--an'--why, it's almost the same as a certificat', Anderson."

"Now, you move on, Alf," commanded the marshal. "How many times I got to tell you not to loiter aroun' the streets? Move on, I say."

"Aw, now, Anderson--"

"I'll have to run you in, Alf. The ord'nance is very p'ticular, an' that notice stuck up on the telephone pole over there means you more'n anybody else. No loiterin'."

"If you need any evidence ag'in that Schultz boy, just call on me," said Alf generously. "I seen him commit an atrocity last week."

"What was it?"

"He give that little Griggs girl a lift in his butcher wagon," said Alf darkly.

Anderson scowled. "The sooner we run these cussed Germans out o' town the better off we'll be."

Alf ambled off, casting many glances over his shoulder, and the marshal crossed the street and entered Hawkins's Undertaking and Embalming establishment, from a window of which he had a fair view of the "studio."

Presently Susie and young Schultz emerged, giggling and snickering over the pink objects they held in their hands. They sauntered slowly, shoulder to shoulder, in the direction of Main Street.

Mr. Hawkins was in the middle of one of his funniest stories when Anderson got up and walked out hurriedly. The undertaker had a reputation as a wit. He was the life of the community. He radiated optimism, even when most depressingly employed. And here he was telling Anderson Crow a brand-new story he had heard at a funeral over in Kirkville, when up jumps his listener and "lights out" without so much as a word. Mr. Hawkins went to the door and looked out, expecting to see a fight or a runaway horse or a German airplane. All he saw was the marshal not two doors away, peering intently into a show-window, while from across the street two young people regarded him with visible amusement. For a long time thereafter the undertaker sat in his office and stared moodily at the row of caskets lining the opposite wall. Could it be possible that he was losing his grip?

Miss Crow and Mr. Otto Schultz resumed their stroll after a few moments, and the marshal, following their movements in the reflecting show-window, waited until they were safely around the corner. Then he retraced his steps quickly, passed the undertaker's place, and turned into the alley beyond. Three minutes later, he entered Main Street a block above Sickle Street, and was leaning carelessly against the Indian tobacco sign in front of Jackson's cigar store, when his daughter and her companion bore down upon his left flank.

Mr. Alf Reesling was a few paces behind them.

As they came within earshot, young Schultz was saying in a suspiciously earnest manner:

"You better come in and have anodder sody, Susie."

Just then their gaze fell upon Mr. Crow.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Susie, startled.

"By cheminy!" fell from Otto's wide-open mouth. He blinked a couple of times. "Is--is that you?" he inquired, incredulously.

"You mean _me_?" asked Anderson, with considerable asperity.

"Sure," said Otto, halting.

"Can't you see it's me?" demanded Mr. Crow.

"But you ain'd here," said the perplexed young man, getting pinker all the time. "You're aroundt in Sickle Street."

"Alf!" called out Anderson. "Look here a minute. Is this me?" He spoke with biting sarcasm.

Mr. Reesling regarded him with some anxiety.

"You better go home, Anderson," he said. "This sun is a derned sight hotter'n you think."

"Didn't we see you a minute ago around in Sickle Street, Pop?" inquired Susie. "Looking in that hair-dresser's window?"

"Maybe you did and maybe you didn't," replied Mr. Crow, shrewdly. Then, with thinly veiled significance: "I'm purty busy lookin' into a good many things nowadays." He favoured Otto with a penetrating glance. "Ever sence the U. S. A. declared war on Germany, Mr. Otto Schultz."

"How aboudt that sody, Miss Susie?" said Otto, in a pained sort of voice.

"You'd better be saving your money, Otto," she advised, with such firmness that her father looked at her sharply.

"Oh, spiffles!" said Otto, getting still redder.

Mr. Crow was all ears. Alf Reesling burned his fingers on a match he held too long in the hot, still air some six or eight inches from the bowl of his pipe.

"Well, getting married is no joke," said Susie, shaking her pretty head solemnly.

Otto took a deep breath. "You bet you it ain'd," he said, with feeling. That seemed to give him courage. He took off his straw hat, and, as he ran his finger around the moist "sweat-band," he blurted out: "I don't mind if you tell your fadder, Susie. Go and tell him."

"Tell him yourself," said Susie.

"As I was saying a few minutes ago," said Otto ingenuously, "the only obchection I had to your tellin' your fadder was that I didn't want everybody in town to know it before I could get home and tell my mother yet."

"Don't go away, Alf," said Mr. Crow, darkly. "I'll need you as a witness. I hereby subpoena you as a witness to what's goin' to happen in less'n no time. Now, Mr. Otto Schultz, spit it out."

Otto disgorged these cyclonic words:

"I'm going to get married, Mr. Crow, that's all."

Mr. Crow was equally explicit and quite as brief.

"Only over my dead body," he shouted, and then turned upon Susie. "You go home, Susan Crow! Skedaddle! Get a move on, I say. I'll nip this blamed German plot right in the beginning. Do you hear me, Susan--"

Susan stared at him. "Hear you?" she cried. "They can hear you up in the graveyard. What on earth's got into you, Pop? What--"

"You'll see what's got into me, purty derned quick," said Anderson, and pointed his long, trembling forefinger at the amazed Mr. Schultz, who had dropped his hat and was stooping over to retrieve it without taking his eyes from the menacing face of the speaker.

It had rolled in the direction of Mr. Alf Reesling. That gentleman obligingly stopped it with his foot. After removing his foot, he undertook to return the hat without stooping at all, the result being that it sped past Otto and landed in the middle of the street some twenty feet away.

"So you think you c'n git married without my consent, do you?" demanded Anderson, witheringly. "You think you c'n sneak around behind my back an'--"

"I ain'd sneakin' aroundt behind anybody's back," broke in Otto, straightening up. "I don't know what you are talking aboud, Mr. Crow,--and needer do you," he added gratuitously. "What for do I haf to get your consent to get married for? I get myself's consent and my girl's consent and my fadder's consent--Say!" His voice rose. "Don't you think I am of age yet?"

"If you talk loud like that, I'll run you in fer disturbin' the peace, young feller," warned Anderson, observing that a few of Tinkletown's citizens were slowly but surely surrendering squatter's rights to chairs and soap-boxes on the shady side of the block. "Just you keep a civil tongue in--"

"You ain'd answered my question yet," insisted Otto, with increased vigour.

"Here's your hat, Otto," said Alf Reesling in a conciliatory voice. He was brushing the article with the sleeve of his coat. "A horse must'a' stepped on it or somethin'. I never see--"

"Ain'd I of age, Mr. Crow?" bellowed Otto. "Didn't I vote for you at the last--"

"That ain't the question," interrupted Anderson sharply. "The question is, is the girl of age?" He favoured his sixteen-year-old daughter with a fiery glance.

Otto Schultz's broad, flat face became strangely pinched. There was something positively apoplectic in the hue that spread over it.

"Oh, Pop!" shrieked Susie, a peal of laughter bursting from her lips. Instantly, however, her two hands were pressed to her mouth, stifling the outburst.

Otto gave her a hurt, surprised--and unmistakably horrified--look. Then a silly grin struggled into existence.

"Maybe she don'd tell the truth aboud her age yet, Mr. Crow," he said huskily. "Women always lie aboud their ages. Maybe she lie aboud hers."

Anderson flared. "Don't you dare say my daughter lies about her age--or anything else," he roared.

"Whose daughter?" gasped Otto.

"Mine!"

"But she ain'd your daughter."

"_What!_ Well, of all the--"

Words failed Mr. Crow. He looked helplessly, appealingly at Alf Reesling, as if for support.

Mr. Reesling rose to the occasion.

"Do you mean to insinuate, Otto Schultz, that--" he began as he started to remove his coat.

By this time Susie felt it was safe to trust herself to speech. She removed her hands from her mouth and cried out:

"He isn't talking about me, Pop," she gasped. "It's Gertie Bumbelburg."

"Sure," said Otto hastily.

Mr. Crow still being speechless, Alf suspended his belligerent preparations, and cocking one eye calculatingly, settled the matter of Miss Bumbelburg's age with exasperating accuracy.

"Gertie's a little past forty-two," he announced. "Born in March, 1875, just back o' where Sid Martin's feed-store used to be."

The marshal had recovered his composure.

"That's sufficient," he said, accepting Alf s testimony with a profound air of dignity. "There ain't no law against anybody marryin' a woman old enough to be his mother."

"Everybody in town give Gertie up long ago," added Alf, amiably. "Only goes to show that while there's life there's hope. I'd 'a' swore she was on the shelf fer good. How'd you happen to pick her, Otto?"

"She's all right," growled Otto uncomfortably. Then he added, with considerable acerbity: "I'm goin' to tell her you said she was forty-two, Alf Reesling."

"Well, ain't she?" demanded Alf, bristling.

"No, she ain'd," replied Otto. "She's twendy-nine."

"Come, come," put in Anderson sternly. "None o' this now! Move on, Alf! No scrappin' on the public thoroughfares o' Tinkletown. You're gettin' more and more rambunctious every day, Alf."

"He ought to be ashamed of himself, speakin' by a lady when he knows he's in such a condition," said Otto, turning from the unfortunate Alf to Miss Crow. "Ain'd that so, Susie?"

"Don't answer, Susie," said Mr. Crow, quickly. "This is no time to side in with Germany."

"I'm as good an American as you are already," cried Otto, goaded beyond endurance.

Mr. Crow smiled tolerantly. "Git out! Let's hear you say 'vinegar'."

"Winegar," said Otto triumphantly. "I can say it as good as you can yet."

Anderson nudged Mr. Reesling, and chuckled.

"That's the way to spot 'em," he said significantly.

"There's a better way than that," said Alf.

"How's that?"

Alf whispered in the marshal's ear.

Anderson shook his head. "But where are you goin' to get the weenywurst, Alf?"

"Come on, Otto," said Susie, impatiently. "I have an engagement."

They moved off rapidly, passing the ice-cream parlour without hesitating.

"D'you hear that?" said Alf, after a moment. "She said she was engaged."

That night Anderson Crow, town marshal, superintendent of streets, chief of the fire department, post-commander of the G. A. R., truant officer, dog-catcher, member of the American Horse-thief Detective Association, member of the Universal Detective Bureau, chairman of Tinkletown Battlefield Society, etc., lay awake until nearly nine o'clock, seeking a solution to the astonishing problem that confronted Tinkletown and its environs.

* * * * *

Late reports, received by telephone just before retiring, ran the number of prospective marriages up to twenty-eight. His daughters, Susie and Caroline--the latter the eldest of a family of six and secretly approaching the age of thirty-two--confided to him that they had had eleven and three proposals respectively. A singular feature of the craze was the unanimity of impulse affecting men between the ages of twenty and thirty, and the utter absence of concentration on the part of the applicants. It was of record that some of them proposed to as many as five or six young women before being finally accepted. Rashness appeared to be the watchword. The matrimonial stampede swept caution and consequences into a general heap, and delivered a community of the backwardness that threatened to become a menace to posterity.

As Anderson Crow lay in his bed, he tried to enumerate on his fingers the young men who remained unpledged. Starting with his thumb he got as far as the third finger of his left hand and then, being sleepy and the effort a trying one, he lost track of those already counted and had to begin all over again, with the maddening result that he could go no further than the second finger. One of the eligibles had slipped his mind completely. The whole situation was harrowing.

"Fer instance," he ruminated aloud, oblivious of the fact that his wife was sound asleep, "what is a feller like Newt Blossom goin' to keep a wife on, I'd like to know. He c'n hardly keep himself in chewin' tobaccer as it is, an' as fer the other necessities of life he wouldn't have any of 'em if his mother wasn't such a dern' fool about him. The idee of him tryin' to get our Susie to marry him--an' Carrie too, fer that matter--w'y, I git in a cold sweat every time I think of it."

He shook his wife vigorously.

"Say, Ma," he said, yawning, "I just thought o' somethin' I want you to remember in the mornin'. Wake up."

"All right," she mumbled, sleepily. "What is it?"

But Mr. Crow was now fast asleep himself.

* * * * *

Early the next morning he entered the kitchen, where he found Caroline helping her mother with the breakfast.

Mrs. Crow paused in the act of paring slices from a side of bacon. She eyed her husband inimically.

"See here, Anderson, you just got to put a stop to all this foolishness."