Chapter 15

"A man that didn't understand electricity and the forces of nature, and that real brains of a genius are a regular dynamo, might think that I done that with my breath. But there is a strange power about me. All it needs is capital to develop it. You've got the capital, you gents. This ain't any far-away investment. It's right here at home. I'm all business when it comes to business." He stuck up a grimy finger. "You've got to concede the mysterious power because you've seen it for yourselves. Now you come over to my house with me and I'll show you a few inventions that I've been able to put into shape in spite of the damnable combination of the trusts."

He slid off the porch and started away, beckoning them after him with the battered derby.

"I've heard 'em buzz in my time, too," sneered Hiram, pushing back his plug hat, "but that hummin' is about the busiest yet. He could hold a lighted taller candle in his hand and jump off'm a roof and think he was a comet."

But the Cap'n did not seem to be disposed to echo this scorn.

"This here I've got may be only a notion, and it prob'ly is," he said, knotting his gray brows, "and it don't seem sensible. First sight of him you wouldn't think he could be used. But when I laid eyes on old Dot-and-carry-one there, and when he grabbed into this thing the way he did just as I was thinkin' hard of what Colonel Gid Ward has done to me, it came over me that I was goin' to find a use for him."

"How?" persisted the utilitarian Hiram.

"Don't have the least idea," confessed the Cap'n. "It's like pickin' up a stockin' full of wet mud and walkin' along hopin' that you'll meet the man you want to swat with it. I'm goin' to pick him up."

He stumped off the piazza and followed Mr. Bodge. And Hiram, stopping to relight his cigar, went along, too, reflecting that when a man has plenty of time on his hands he can afford to spend a little of it on the gratification of curiosity.

The first exhibits in the domain of Bodge were not cheering or suggestive of value. For instance, from among the litter in a tumble-down shop Mr. Bodge produced something in the shape of a five-pointed star that he called his "Anti-stagger Shoe."

"I saw old Ike Bradley go past here with a hard-cider jag that looped over till its aidges dragged on the ground," he explained. "I tied cross-pieces onto his feet and he went along all level. Now see how a quick mind like mine acts? Here's the anti-stagger shoe. To be kept in all city clubs and et cetry. Let like umbrellas. Five places in each shoe for a man to shove his foot. Can't miss it. Then he starts off braced front, sides, and behind."

Hiram sniffed and the Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the "Anti-stagger Shoe."

The "Patent Cat Identifier and Introducer," exhibited in actual operation in the Bodge home, attracted more favorable attention from inspecting capital. Mr. Bodge explained that this device allowed a hard-working man to sleep after he once got into bed, and saved his wife from running around nights in her bare feet and getting cold and incurring disease and doctors' bills. It was an admitted fact in natural history, he stated, that the uneasy feline is either yowling to be let out or meowing on the window-sill to be let in. With quiet pride the inventor pointed to a panel in the door, hinged at the top. This permitted egress, but not ingress.

"An ordinary, cheap inventor would have had the panel swing both ways," said Mr. Bodge, "and he would have a kitchen full of strange cats, with a skunk or two throwed in for luck. You see that I've hinged a pane of winder-glass and hitched it to a bevelled stick that tips inward. Cat gets up on the sill outside and meows. Dog runs to the winder and stands up to see, and puts his paws on the stick because it's his nature for to do so. Pane tips in. If it's our cat, dog don't stop her comin' in. If it's a strange cat--br-r-r, wow-wow! Off she goes!"

Mr. Bodge noted with satisfaction the gleam of interest in capital's eyes.

"You can reckon that at least a million families in this country own cats--and the nature of cats and dogs can be depended on to be the same," said Mr. Bodge. "It's a self-actin' proposition, this identifier and introducer; that means fortunes for all concerned just as soon as capital gets behind it. And I've got five hundred bigger partunts wrasslin' around in my head."

But Cap'n Sproul continued to be absorbed in thought, as though the solution of a problem still eluded him.

"But if capital takes holt of me," proceeded Mr. Bodge, "I want capital to have the full layout. There ain't goin' to be no reserves, the same as there is with most of these cheatin' corporations these days. You come with me."

They followed him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either hand he stumped about on the sward until the crotch suddenly turned downward.

"There's runnin' water there," announced the wizard, stabbing the soil with his peg-leg. "I can locate a well anywhere, any place. When I use willer for a wand it will twist in my hands till the bark peels off. You see, I'm full of it--whatever it is. I showed you that much with the whisker. I started in easy with you. It makes me dizzy sometimes to foller myself. I have to be careful and let out a link at a time, or I'd take folks right off'm their feet. Now you come with me and keep cool--or as cool as you can, because I'm goin' to tell you something that will give you sort of a mind-colic if you ain't careful how you take it in."

He pegged ahead of them, led the way around behind a barn that was skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with excitement vibrating his streaming whiskers.

"This, now," he declared, "is just as though I took you into a national bank, throwed open the safe door, and said: 'Gents, help yourselves!'"

He drew a curious object out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper. It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had clutched the "legs" of the apple-tree wand.

"One of you lay some gold and silver down on the ground," he requested. "I'd do it, but I ain't got a cent in my pocket."

Hiram obeyed, his expression plainly showing his curiosity.

When Mr. Bodge advanced and stood astride over the money, the cow's horn turned downward and the whalebone strips twisted.

"It's a divinin'-rod to find buried treasure," said Mr. Bodge; "and it's the only one in the world like it, because I made it myself, and I wouldn't tell an angel the secret of the stuff I've plugged in there. You see for yourself what it will do when it comes near gold or silver."

Hiram turned a cold stare on his wistful eagerness.

"I don't know what you've got in there, nor why it acts that way," said the showman, "but from what I know about money, the most of it's well taken care of by the men that own it; and just what good it's goin' to do to play pointer-dog with that thing there, and go round and flush loose change and savin's-banks, is more than I can figger."

Mr. Bodge merely smiled a mysterious and superior smile.

"Cap'n Sproul," said he, "in your seafarin' days didn't you used to hear the sailormen sing this?" and he piped in weak falsetto:

"Oh, I've been a ghost on Cod Lead Nubble, Sence I died--sence I died. I buried of it deep with a lot of trouble, And the chist it was in was locked up double, And I'm a-watchin' of it still on Cod Lead Nubble, Sence I died--sence I died."

"It's the old Cap Kidd song," admitted the Cap'n, a gleam of new interest in his eyes.

"As a seafarin' man you know that there was a Cap'n Kidd, don't you?"

Cap'n Sproul wagged nod of assent.

"He sailed and he sailed, and he robbed, and he buried his treasure, ain't that so?"

"I believe that's the idea," said the Cap'n, conservatively.

"And it's still buried, because it ain't been dug up, or else we'd have heard of it. Years ago I read all that hist'ry ever had to say about it. I said then to myself, 'Bodge,' says I, 'if the treasure of old Cap Kidd is ever found, it will be you with your wonderful powers that will find it!' I always said that to myself. I know it now. Here's the tool." He shook the cow's horn under the Cap'n's nose.

"Why ain't you been down and dug it up?" asked Hiram, with cold practicality.

"Diggin' old Cap Kidd's treasure ain't like digging a mess of potaters for dinner, Mr. Look. The song says 'Cod Lead Nubble.' Old Cap Kidd composed that song, and he put in the wrong place just to throw folks off'm the track. But if I had capital behind me I'd hire a schooner and sail round them islands down there, one after the other; and with that power that's in me I could tell the right island the minute I got near it. Then set me ashore and see how quick this divinin'-rod would put me over that chist! But it's buried deep. It's goin' to take muscle and grit to dig it up. But the right crew can do it--and that's where capital comes in. Capital ain't ever tackled it right, and that's why capital ain't got hold of that treasure."

"I reckon I'll be movin' along," remarked Hiram, with resentment bristling the horns of his mustache; "it's the first time I ever had a man pick me out as a candidate for a gold brick, and the feelin' ain't a pleasant one."

But the Cap'n grasped his arm with detaining grip.

"This thing is openin' up. It ain't all clear, but it's openin'. I had instink that I could use him. But I couldn't figger it. It ain't all straightened out in my mind yet. But when you said 'gold brick' it seemed to be clearer."

Hiram blinked inquiringly at his enigmatic friend.

"It was what I was thinkin' of--gold brick," the Cap'n went on. "I thought that prob'ly you knew some stylish and reliable gold-bricker--havin' met same when you was travellin' round in the show business."

Replying to Mr. Look's indignant snort Cap'n Sproul hastened to say: "Oh, I don't mean that you had any gold-bricker friends, but that you knew one I could hire. Probably, though, you don't know of any. Most like you don't. I realize that the gold-bricker idea ain't the one to use. There's the trouble in findin' a reliable one. And even when the feller got afoul of him, the chances are the old land-pirut would steal the brick. This here"--jabbing thumb at Mr. Bodge--"is fresher bait. I believe the old shark will gobble it if he's fished for right. What's your idea?"

"Well, generally speakin'," drawled Hiram, sarcastically, "it is that you've got softenin' of the brain. I can't make head or tail out of anything that you're sayin'."

Cap'n Sproul waked suddenly from the reverie in which he had been talking as much to himself as to Hiram.

"Say, look here, you can understand this, can't you, that I've been done out of good property--buncoed by a jeeroosly old hunk of hornbeam?"

"Oh, I got bulletins on that, all right," assented Hiram.

"Well, from what you know of me, do you think I'm the kind of a man that's goin' to squat like a hen in a dust-heap and not do him? Law? To Tophet with your law! Pneumony, lightnin', and lawyers--they're the same thing spelled different. I'm just goin' to do him, that's all, and instink is whisperin' how." He turned his back on the showman and ran calculating eye over Mr. Bodge.

"I don't hardly see how that old hair mattress there is goin' to be rung in on the deal," growled Hiram.

"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, frankly; "not so fur as the details appear to me just now. But there's something about him that gives me hopes." He pulled out his wallet, licked his thumb, and peeled off a bill.

"Bodge, so fur's I can see now, you seem to be a good investment. I don't know just yet how much it is goin' to take to capitalize you, but here's ten dollars for an option. You understand now that I'm president of you, and my friend here is sekertary. And you're to keep your mouth shut."

Mr. Bodge agreed with effusive gratitude, and capital went its way. The inventor chased after them with thumping peg-leg to inquire whether he should first perfect the model of the "cat identifier," or develop his idea of an automatic chore-doer, started by the rooster tripping a trigger as he descended to take his matutinal sniff of air.

"You just keep in practise with that thing," commanded the Cap'n, pointing to the cow's horn.

"I don't see even yet how you are goin' to do it," remarked Hiram, as they separated a half-hour later at Cap'n Sproul's gate.

"Nor I," said the Cap'n; "but a lot of meditation and a little prayer will do wonders in this world, especially when you're mad enough."

XX

The night seemed to afford counsel, for the next day Cap'n Sproul walked into the dooryard of Colonel Gideon Ward with features composed to an almost startling expression of amiability. The Colonel, haunted by memories and stung by a guilty conscience, appeared at the door, and his mien indicated that he was prepared for instant and desperate combat.

At the end of a half-hour's discourse, wholly by the Cap'n, his face had lost a measure of its belligerency, but sullen fear had taken its place. For Cap'n Sproul's theme had been the need of peace and mutual confidence in families, forbearance and forgetfulness of injuries that had been mutual. The Cap'n explained that almost always property troubles were the root of family evils, and that as soon as property disputes were eliminated in his case, he at once had come to a realizing sense of his own mistakes and unfair attitude, and had come to make frank and manly confession, and to shake hands. Would the Colonel shake hands?

The Colonel shook hands apprehensively, bending back and ready to duck a blow. Would the Colonel consent to mutual forgiveness, and to dwell thereafter in bonds of brotherly affection? The Colonel had only voiceless stammerings for reply, which the Cap'n translated to his own satisfaction, and went away, casting the radiance of that startling amiability over his shoulder as he departed. Colonel Ward stared after the pudgy figure as long as it remained in sight, muttering his boding thoughts.

It required daily visits for a week to make satisfactory impress on the Colonel's mistrustful fears, but the Cap'n was patient. In the end, Colonel Ward, having carefully viewed this astonishing conversion from all points, accepted the amity as proof of the guileless nature of a simple seaman, and on his own part reciprocated with warmth--laying up treasures of friendship against that possible day of discovery and wrath that his guilty conscience suggested.

If Colonel Ward, striving to reciprocate, had not been so anxious to please Cap'n Sproul in all his vagaries he would have barked derisive laughter at the mere suggestion of the Captain Kidd treasure, to the subject of which the simple seaman aforesaid led by easy stages. The Colonel admitted that Mr. Bodge had located a well for him by use of a witch-hazel rod, but allowed that the buried-treasure proposition was too stiff batter for him to swallow. He did come at last to accept Cap'n Sproul's dictum that there was once a Captain Kidd, and that he had buried vast wealth somewhere--for Cap'n Sproul as a sailorman seemed to be entitled to the possession of authority on that subject. But beyond that point there was reservation that didn't fit with Cap'n Sproul's calculations.

"Blast his old pork rind!" confided the Cap'n to Hiram. "I can circle him round and round the pen easy enough, but when I try to head him through the gate, he just sets back and blinks them hog eyes at me and grunts. To get near him at all I had to act simple, and I reckon I've overdone it. Now he thinks I don't know enough to know that old Bodge is mostly whiskers and guesses. He's known Bodge longer'n I have, and Bodge don't seem to be right bait. I can't get into his wallet by first plan."

"It wasn't no kind of a plan, anyway," said Hiram, bluntly. "It wouldn't be stickin' him good and plenty enough to have Bodge unloaded onto him, just Bodge and northin' else done. 'Twasn't complicated enough."

"I ain't no good on complicated plots," mourned Cap'n Sproul.

"You see," insisted Hiram, "you don't understand dealin' with jay nature the same as I do. Takes the circus business to post you on jays. Once in a while they'll bite a bare hook, but not often. Jays don't get hungry till they see sure things. Your plain word of old Cap Kidd and buried treasure sounds good, and that's all. In the shell-game the best operator lets the edge of the shell rest on the pea carelesslike, as though he didn't notice it, and then joggles it down over as if by accident; and, honest, the jay hates to take the money, it looks so easy! In the candy-game there's nothing doin' until the jay thinks he catches you puttin' a twenty-dollar bill into the package. Then look troubled, and try to stop him from buyin' that package! You ain't done anything to show your brother-in-law that Bodge ain't a blank."

The Cap'n turned discouraged gaze on his friend. "I've got to give it up," he complained. "I ain't crook enough. He's done me, and I'll have to stay done."

Hiram tapped the ashes from his cigar, musingly surveyed his diamond ring, and at last said: "I ain't a butter-in. But any time you get ready to holler for advice from friends, just holler."

"I holler," said the Cap'n, dispiritedly.

"Holler heard by friends," snapped Hiram, briskly. "Friends all ready with results of considerable meditation. You go right over and tell your esteemed relative that you're organizin' an expedition to discover Cap Kidd's treasure, and invite him to go along as member of your family, free gratis for nothin', all bills paid, and much obleeged to him for pleasant company."

"Me pay the bills?" demanded the Cap'n.

"Money advanced for development work on Bodge, that's all! To be taken care of when Bodge is watered ready for sale. Have thorough understandin' with esteemed relative that no shares in Bodge are for sale. Esteemed relative to be told that any attempt on the trip to buy into Bodge will be considered fightin' talk. Bodge and all results from Bodge are yours, and you need him along--esteemed relative--to see that you have a square deal. That removes suspicion, and teases at the same time."

"Will he go?" asked Cap'n Sproul, anxiously.

"He will," declared Hiram, with conviction. "A free trip combined with a chance of perhaps doin' over again such an easy thing as you seem to be won't ever be turned down by Colonel Gideon Ward."

At nine o'clock that evening Cap'n Sproul knocked at Hiram Look's front door and stumped in eagerly. "He'll go!" he reported. "Now let me in on full details of plan."

"Details of plan will be handed to you from time to time as you need 'em in your business," said Hiram, firmly. "I don't dare to load you. Your trigger acts too quick."

"For a man that is handlin' Bodge, and is payin' all the bills, I don't seem to have much to do with this thing," grunted the Cap'n, sullenly.

"I'll give you something to do. To-morrow you go round town and hire half a dozen men--say, Jackson Denslow, Zeburee Nute, Brad Wade, Seth Swanton, Ferd Parrott, and Ludelphus Murray. Be sure they're all members of the Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association."

"Hire 'em for what?"

"Treasure-huntin' crew. I'll go with you. I'm their foreman, and I can make them keep their mouths shut. I'll show you later why we'll need just those kind of men."

The Cap'n took these orders with dogged resignation.

"Next day you'll start with Bodge and charter a packet in Portland for a pleasure cruise--you needin' a sniff of salt air after bein' cooped up on shore for so long. Report when ready, and I'll come along with men and esteemed relative."

"It sounds almighty complicated for a plot," said the Cap'n. In his heart he resented Hiram's masterfulness and his secretiveness.

"This ain't no timber-land deal," retorted Hiram, smartly, and with cutting sarcasm. "You may know how to sail a ship and lick Portygee sailors, but there's some things that you can afford to take advice in."

On the second day Cap'n Sproul departed unobtrusively from Smyrna, with the radiant Mr. Bodge in a new suit of ready-made clothes as his seat-mate in the train.

Smyrna perked up and goggled its astonishment when Hiram Look shipped his pet elephant, Imogene, by freight in a cattle-car, and followed by next train accompanied by various tight-mouthed members of the Smyrna fire department and Colonel Gideon Ward.

Cap'n Sproul had the topmast schooner _Aurilla P. Dobson_ handily docked at Commercial Wharf, and received his crew and brother-in-law with cordiality that changed to lowering gloom when Hiram followed ten minutes later towing the placid Imogene, and followed by a wondering concourse of men and boys whom his triumphal parade through the streets from the freight-station had attracted. With a nimbleness acquired in years of touring the elephant came on board.

Cap'n Sproul gazed for a time on this unwieldy passenger, surveying the arrival of various drays laden with tackle, shovels, mysterious boxes, and baled hay, and then took Hiram aside, deep discontent wrinkling his forehead.

"I know pretty well why you wanted Gid Ward along on the trip. I've got sort of a dim idea why you invited the Hecly fire department; and perhaps you know what we're goin' to do with all that dunnage on them trucks. But what in the devil you're goin' to do with that cust-fired old elephant--and she advertisin' this thing to the four corners of God's creation--well, it's got my top-riggin' snarled."

"Sooner you get your crew to work loadin', sooner you'll get away from sassy questions," replied Hiram, serenely, wagging his head at the intrusive crowd massing along the dock's edge. And the Cap'n, impressed by the logic of the advice, and stung by the manner in which Hiram had emphasized "sassy questions," pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes, and became for once more in his life the autocrat of the quarter-deck.

An hour later the packet was sluggishly butting waves with her blunt bows in the lower harbor, Cap'n Sproul hanging to the weather-worn wheel, and roaring perfectly awful profanity at the clumsy attempts of his makeshift crew.

"I've gone to sea with most everything in the line of cat-meat on two legs," he snarled to Hiram, who leaned against the rail puffing at a long cigar with deep content, "but I'll be billy-hooed if I ever saw six men before who pulled on the wrong rope every time, and pulled the wrong way on every wrong rope. You take them and--and that elephant," he added, grimly returning to that point of dispute, "and we've got an outfit that I'm ashamed to have the Atlantic Ocean see me in company with."

"Don't let that elephant fuss you up," said Hiram, complacently regarding Imogene couched in the waist.

"But there ain't northin' sensible you can do with her."

Hiram cocked his cigar pertly.

"A remark, Cap'n Sproul, that shows you need a general manager with foresight like me. When you get to hoistin' dirt in buckets she'll be worth a hundred dollars an hour, and beat any steam-winch ever operated."

Again the Cap'n felt resentment boil sourly within him. This doling of plans and plot to him seemed to be a reflection on his intelligence.

"Reckon it's buried deep, do you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, his eyes straight ahead.

"It's buried deep," said Hiram, with conviction. "It's buried deep, because there's a lot of it, and it was worth while to bury it deep. A man like Cap Kidd wa'n't scoopin' out a ten-foot hole and buryin' a million dollars and goin' off and leavin' it to be pulled like a pa'snip by the first comer."