Chapter 24

But neither alternative, nor the time allowed for acceptance, seemed to please Mr. Luce. In sudden, weak anger at being thus cornered after long immunity, he anathematized all authority as 'twas vested in the first selectman of Smyrna. Several men passing in the highway held up their horses and listened with interest.

Emboldened by his audience, spurred to desperate measures, Mr. Luce kicked out one of his rubber boots at the advancing Cap'n. The Cap'n promptly grasped the extended leg and yanked. Mr. Luce came off his perch and fell on his back in the mud, and Constable Nute straddled him instantly and held him down. With an axe that he picked up at the dooryard woodpile, Cap'n Aaron hammered out the new door-frame, paying no heed to Mr. Luce's threats or Mrs. Luce's maledictions.

"I don't know the law on it, nor I don't care," he muttered between his teeth as he toiled. "All I know is, that stove belongs to T. Taylor, of Vienny, and he's goin' to have it."

And when the new boarding lay around him in splinters and the door was wide once more, he led the way into the kitchen.

"You undertake to throw that hot water on me, Mis' Luce," he declared, noting what her fury was prompting, "and you'll go right up through that roof, and it won't be no millennium that will boost you, either."

The stove man and Hiram followed him in and the disinterested onlookers came, too, curiosity impelling them. And as they were Smyrna farmers who had suffered various and aggravating depredations by this same Aholiah Luce, they were willing to lend a hand even to lug out a hot stove. The refulgent monarch of the kitchen departed, with the tin of biscuit still browning in its interior, passed close to the cursing Mr. Luce, lying on his back under Nute's boring knee, and then with a lusty "Hop-ho! All together!" went into T. Taylor's wagon.

Mr. Luce, freed now as one innocuous, leaped up and down in a perfect ecstasy of fury. "You've squdged me too fur. You've done it at last!" he screamed, with hysteric iteration. "You've made me a desp'rit' outlaw."

"Outlaw! You're only a cheap sneak-thief!"

"That's right, Cap'n Sproul," remarked the constable. "He can't even steal hens till it's dark and they can't look at him. If they turned and put their eye on him he wouldn't dare to touch 'em."

"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" shrieked Mr. Luce. The vast injury that had been done him, this ruthless assault on his house, his humiliation in public, and now these wanton taunts, whipped his weak nature into frenzy. Cowards at bay are the savagest foes. Mr. Luce ran amuck!

Spurring his resolution by howling over and over: "I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey? I'll show ye!" he hastened with a queer sort of stiff-legged gallop into the field, tore away some boarding, and descended into what was evidently a hiding-place, a dry well. A moment, and up he popped, boosting a burden. He slung it over his shoulder and started toward them, staggering under its weight. It was a huge sack, with something in it that sagged heavily.

"Nice sort of an outlaw he'll make--that woodchuck!" observed Constable Nute with a cackle of mirth.

The first selectman and his supporters surveyed the approach of the furious Mr. Luce with great complacency. If Mr. Luce had emerged with a shot-gun in his fist and a knife in his teeth he might have presented some semblance of an outlaw. But this bow-legged man with a sack certainly did not seem savage. Hiram offered the humorous suggestion that perhaps Mr. Luce proposed to restore property, and thereby causing people to fall dead with astonishment would get his revenge on society.

"I warned ye and you wouldn't listen," screamed the self-declared pariah. "I said there was such a thing as squdgin' me too fur. Ye didn't believe it. Now mebbe ye'll believe that!"

He had halted at a little distance from them, and had set down his sack. He dove into it and held up a cylinder, something more than half a foot long, a brown, unassuming cylinder that certainly didn't have anything about its looks to call out all the excitement that was convulsing Mr. Luce.

"Pee-ruse that!" squealed he. "_There's_ a lead-pencil that will write some news for ye." He shook the cylinder at them. "And there's plenty more of 'em in this bag." He curled his long lip back. "Daminite!" he spat. "I'll show ye whuther I'm an outlaw or not."

"And I know where you stole it," bawled one of the bystanders indignantly. "You stole all me and my brother bought and had stored for a season's blastin'. Constable Nute, I call on you to arrest him and give me back my property."

"Arrest me, hey?" repeated Mr. Luce. In one hand he shook aloft the stick of dynamite, with its dangling fuse that grimly suggested the detonating cap at its root. In the other hand he clutched a bunch of matches. "You start in to arrest me and you'll arrest two miles straight up above here, travellin' a hundred miles a minit."

"There ain't any grit in him, Nute," mumbled Cap'n Sproul. "Jest give a whoop and dash on him."

"That sounds glib and easy," demurred the prudent officer, "but if that man hasn't gone clean loony then I'm no jedge. I don't reckon I'm goin' to charge any batteries."

"You'll do what I tell you to! You're an officer, and under orders."

"You told me once to take up Hiram Look's el'funt and put her in the pound," remonstrated the constable. "But I didn't do it, and I wasn't holden to do it. And I ain't holden to run up and git blowed to everlastin' hackmetack with a bag of dynamite."

"Look here, Nute," cried the Cap'n, thoroughly indignant and shifting the contention to his officer--entirely willing to ignore Mr. Luce's threats and provocations--"I haven't called on you in a tight place ever in my life but what you've sneaked out. You ain't fit for even a hog-reeve. I'm going to cancel your constable appointment, that's what I'll do when I get to town hall."

"I'll do it right now," declared the offended Mr. Nute, unpinning his badge. "Any time you've ordered me to do something sensible I've done it. But el'funts and lunatics and dynamite and some of the other jobs you've unlo'ded onto me ain't sensible, and I won't stand for 'em. You can't take me in the face and eyes of the people and rake me over." He had noted that the group in the highway had considerably increased. "I've resigned."

Mr. Luce was also more or less influenced and emboldened and pricked on by being the centre of eyes. As long as he seemed to be expected to give a show, he proposed to make it a good one. His flaming eyes fell on T. Taylor, busy over the stove, getting it ready for its journey back to Vienna. Mr. Taylor, happy in the recovery of his property, was paying little attention to outlaws or official disputes. He had cleaned out the coals and ashes, and having just now discovered the tin of biscuit, tossed it away. This last seemed too much for Mr. Luce's self-control.

"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" he cried, hoarsely. "That stove is too good for me, is it? My wife's biskits throwed into the mud and mire!"

He lighted the fuse of the dynamite, ran to the team and popped the explosive into the stove oven and slammed the door. Then he flew to his sack, hoisted it to his shoulder and staggered back toward the dry well.

At this critical juncture there did not arise one of those rare spirits to perform an act of noble self-sacrifice. There have been those who have tossed spluttering bombs into the sea; who have trodden out hissing fuses. But just then no one seemed to care for the exclusive and personal custody of that stick of dynamite.

All those in teams whipped up, yelling like madmen, and those on foot grabbed on behind and clambered over tailboards. Cap'n Sproul, feeling safer on his own legs than in Hiram's team, pounded away down the road with the speed of a frantic Percheron. And in all this panic T. Taylor, only dimly realizing that there was something in his stove that was going to cause serious trouble, obeyed the exhortations screamed at him, cut away his horse, straddled the beast's back and fled with the rest.

The last one in sight was Mrs. Luce, who had shown serious intentions of remaining on the spot as though she feared to miss anything that bore the least resemblance to the coming of the last great day. But she suddenly obeyed her husband, who was yelling at her over the edge of the hole, and ran and fell in by his side.

Missiles that screamed overhead signalized to the scattered fugitives the utter disintegration of T. Taylor's stove. The hearth mowed off a crumbly chimney on the Luce house, and flying fragments crushed out sash in the windows of the abandoned main part. Cap'n Sproul was the first one to reappear, coming from behind a distant tree. There was a hole in the ground where T. Taylor's wagon had stood.

"Daminite!" screamed a voice. Mr. Luce was dancing up and down on the edge of his hole, shaking another stick of the explosive. "I'll show ye whuther I'm an outlaw or not! I'll have this town down on its knees. I'll show ye what it means to squdge me too fur. I give ye fair warnin' from now on. I'm a desp'rit' man. They'll write novels about me before I'm done. Try to arrest me, will ye? I'll take the whole possy sky-hootin' with me when ye come." He was drunk with power suddenly revealed to him.

He lifted the sack out of the hole and, paying no heed to some apparent expostulations of Mrs. Luce, he staggered away up the hillside into the beech growth, bowed under his burden. And after standing and gazing for some time at the place where he disappeared, the first selectman trudged down the road to where Hiram was waiting for him, soothing his trembling horse.

"Well," said the old showman, with a vigorous exhalation of breath to mark relief, "get in here and let's go home. Accordin' to my notion, replevinin' and outlawin' ain't neither sensible or fashionable or healthy. Somethin' that looked like a stove-cover and sounded like a howlaferinus only just missed me by about two feet. That critter's dangerous to be let run loose. What are you goin' to do about him?"

"Ketch him," announced the Cap'n, sturdily.

"Well," philosophized Hiram, "smallpox is bad when it's runnin' round loose, but it's a blastnation sight worse when it's been ketched. You're the head of the town and I ain't, and I ain't presumin' to advise, but I'd think twice before I went to runnin' that bag o' dynamite into close corners. Luce ain't no account, and no more is an old hoss-pistol, but when a hoss-pistol busts it's a dangerous thing to be close to. You let him alone and mebbe he'll quiet down."

But that prophecy did not take into account the state of mind of the new outlaw of Smyrna.

XXX

At about midnight Cap'n Sproul, snoring peaceably with wide-open mouth, snapped upright in bed with a jerk that set his teeth into his tongue and nearly dislocated his neck. He didn't know exactly what had happened. He had a dizzy, dreaming feeling that he had been lifted up a few hundred feet in the air and dropped back.

"Land o' Goshen, Aaron, what was it?" gasped his wife. "It sounded like something blowing up!"

The hint steadied the Cap'n's wits. 'Twas an explosion--that was it! And with grim suspicion as to its cause, he pulled on his trousers and set forth to investigate. An old barn on his premises, a storehouse for an overplus of hay and discarded farming tools, had been blown to smithereens and lay scattered about under the stars. And as he picked his way around the ruins with a lantern, cursing the name of Luce, a far voice hailed him from the gloom of a belt of woodland: "I ain't an outlaw, hey? I don't dast to be one, hey? You wait and see."

About an hour later, just as the selectman was sinking into a doze, he heard another explosion, this time far in the distance--less a sound than a jar, as of something striking a mighty blow on the earth.

"More dynamite!" he muttered, recognizing that explosive's down-whacking characteristic. And in the morning Hiram Look hurried across to inform him that some miscreant had blown up an empty corn-house on his premises, and that the explosion had shattered all the windows in the main barn and nearly scared Imogene, the elephant, into conniptions. "And he came and hollered into my bedroom window that he'd show me whuther he could be an outlaw or not," concluded the old showman. "I tell you that critter is dangerous, and you've got to get him. Instead of quietin' down he'll be growin' worse."

There were eleven men in Smyrna, besides Zeburee Nute, who held commissions as constables, and those valiant officers Cap'n Sproul called into the first selectman's office that forenoon. He could not tell them any news. The whole of Smyrna was ringing with the intelligence that Aholiah Luce had turned outlaw and was on the rampage.

The constables, however, could give Selectman Sproul some news. They gave it to him after he had ordered them to surround Mr. Luce and take him, dynamite and all. This news was to the effect that they had resigned.

"We've talked it over," averred Lycurgus Snell, acting as spokesman, "and we can't figger any good and reeliable way of gittin' him without him gittin' us, if he's so minded, all in one tableau, same to be observed with smoked glasses like an eclipse. No, s'r, we ain't in any way disposed to taller the heavens nor furnish mince-meat funerals. And if we don't git him, and he knows we're takin' action agin' him, he'll come round and blow our barns up--and we ain't so well able to stand the loss as you and Mr. Look be."

"Well, if you ain't about the nearest to knot-holes with the rims gone off'm 'em of anything I ever see," declared the Cap'n, with fury, "may I be used for oakum to calk a guano gunlow!"

"If you think it's a job to set any man to, you'd better go and do it yourself," retorted Snell, bridling. "You know as well as I do, s'leckman, that so long as 'Liah has been let alone he's only been a plain thief, and we've got along with him here in town all right--onpleasant and somewhat expensive, like potater-bugs. But you seem to have gone to pushin' him and have turned him from potater-bug into a royal Peeruvian tiger, or words to that effect, and I don't see any way but what you'll have to tame him yourself. There's feelin' in town that way, and people are scart, and citizens ain't at all pleased with your pokin' him up, when all was quiet."

"Citizens ruther have it said, hey, that we are supportin' a land-pirut here in this town, and let him disgrace us even over in Vienny?" demanded the Cap'n.

"Which was wuss?" inquired Mr. Snell, serenely. "As it was or as it is?"

Then the ex-constables, driven forth with contumely, went across to the platform of Broadway's store, and discussed the situation with other citizens, finding the opinion quite unanimous that Cap'n Sproul possessed too short a temper to handle delicate matters with diplomacy. And it was agreed that Aholiah Luce, weak of wit and morally pernicious, was a delicate matter, when all sides were taken into account.

To them appeared Aholiah Luce, striding down the middle of the street, with that ominous sack on his shoulder.

"Be I an outlaw, or ain't I?" he shouted over and over, raising a clamor in the quiet village that brought the Cap'n out of the town house. "Arrest me, will ye? When ye try it there won't be nothin' left of this town but a hole and some hollerin'."

He walked right upon the store platform and into the store, and every one fled before him. Broadway cowered behind his counter.

"Put me up a fig o' tobacker, a pound of tea, quart o' merlasses, ten pounds of crackers, hunk o' pork, and two cans of them salmons," he ordered.

In past years Mr. Luce had always slunk into Broadway's store apologetically, a store-bill everlastingly unpaid oppressing his spirits. Now he bellowed autocratic command, and his soul swelled when he saw Broadway timorously hastening to obey.

"I'll show 'em whuther I'm an outlaw or not," he muttered. "And I wisht I'd been one before, if it works like this. The monarch of the Injies couldn't git more attention," he reflected, as he saw the usually contemptuous Broadway hustling about, wrapping up the goods.

He saw scared faces peering in at him through the windows. He swung the sack off his shoulder, and bumped it on the floor with a flourish.

"My Lord-amighty, be careful with that!" squawked Broadway, ducking down behind the counter.

"You 'tend to business and make less talk, and you won't git hurt," observed Mr. Luce, ferociously. He pointed at the storekeeper the stick of dynamite that he carried in his hand. And Mr. Broadway hopped up and bestirred himself obsequiously.

"I don't know whuther I'll ever pay for these or not," announced Mr. Luce, grabbing the bundles that Broadway poked across the counter as gingerly as he would feed meat to a tiger. He stuffed them into his sack. "I shall do jest as I want to about it. And when I've et up this grub in my lair, where I propose to outlaw it for a while, I shall come back for some more; and if I don't git it, along with polite treatment, I'll make it rain groc'ries in this section for twenty-four hours."

"I didn't uphold them that smashed in your door," protested the storekeeper, getting behind the coffee-grinder.

"I've been squdged too fur, that's what has been done," declared Mr. Luce, "and it was your seleckman that done it, and I hold the whole town responsible. I don't know what I'm li'ble to do next. I've showed _him_--now I'm li'ble to show the town. I dunno! It depends."

He went out and stood on the store platform, and gazed about him with the air of Alexander on the banks of the Euphrates. For the first time in his lowly life Mr. Luce saw mankind shrink from before him. It was the same as deference would have seemed to a man who had earned respect, and the little mind of Smyrna's outlaw whirled dizzily in his filbert skull.

"I don't know what I'll do yit," he shouted, hailing certain faces that he saw peering at him. "It was your seleckman that done it--and a seleckman acts for a town. I reckon I shall do some more blowin' up."

He calmly walked away up the street, passing Cap'n Sproul, who stood at one side.

"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" jeered Mr. Luce.

"You don't dare to set down that sack," roared the selectman. "I'll pay ye five hundred dollars to set down that sack and step out there into the middle of that square--and I call on all here as witnesses to that offer," he cried, noting that citizens were beginning to creep back into sight once more. "Five hundred dollars for you, you bow-legged hen-thief! You sculpin-mouthed hyena, blowing up men's property!"

"Hold on," counselled Mr. Luce. "You're goin' to squdgin' me ag'in. I've been sassed enough in this town. I'm goin' to be treated with respect after this if I have to blow up ev'ry buildin' in it."

"It ain't safe to go to pokin' him up," advised Mr. Nute from afar. "I should think you'd 'a' found that out by this time, Cap'n Sproul."

"I've found out that what ain't cowards here are thieves,'" roared the Cap'n, beside himself, ashamed, enraged at his impotence before this boastful fool and his grim bulwark. His impulse was to cast caution to the winds and rush upon Luce. But reflection told him that, in this flush of his childish resentment and new prominence, Luce was capable of anything. Therefore he prudently held to the side of the road.

"The next time I come into this village," said Mr. Luce, "I don't propose to be called names in public by any old salt hake that has pounded his dollars out of unfort'nit' sailors with belayin'-pins. I know your record, and I ain't afeard of you!"

"There'll be worse things happen to you than to be called names."

"Oh, there will, hey?" inquired Mr. Luce, his weak passion flaming. "Well, lemme give you jest one hint that it ain't safe to squdge me too fur!"

He walked back a little way, lighted the fuse of the stick of dynamite that he carried, and in spite of horrified appeals to him, cast over the shoulders of fleeing citizens, he tossed the wicked explosive into the middle of the square and ran.

In the words of Mr. Snell, when he came out from behind the watering-trough: "It was a corn-cracker!"

A half-hour later Mr. Nute, after sadly completing a canvass of the situation, headed a delegation that visited Cap'n Sproul in the selectman's office, where he sat, pallid with rage, and cursing.

"A hundred and seventeen lights of glass," announced Mr. Nute, "includin' the front stained-glass winder in the meetin'-house and the big light in Broadway's store. And it all happened because the critter was poked up agin'--and I warned ye not to do it, Cap'n."

"Would it be satisfactory to the citizens if I pulled my wallet and settled the damage?" inquired the first selectman, with baleful blandness in his tones.

Mr. Nute did not possess a delicate sense of humor or of satire. He thoughtfully rubbed his nose.

"Reely," he said, "when you git it reduced right down, that critter ain't responsible any more'n one of them dynamite sticks is responsible, and if it hadn't been for you lettin' him loose and then pokin' him, contrary to warnin', them hundred and seventeen lights of glass wouldn't--"

"Are there any left?" asked Cap'n Sproul, still in subdued tones.

"About as many more, I should jedge," replied Mr. Nute.

"Well, I simply want to say," remarked the Cap'n, standing up and clinching his fists, "that if you ever mention responsibility to me again, Nute, I'll take you by the heels and smash in the rest of that glass with you--and I'll do the same with any one else who don't know enough to keep his yawp shut. Get out of here, the whole of you, or I'll begin on what glass is left in this town house."

They departed silently, awed by the menace of his countenance, but all the more bitterly fixed in their resentment.

That night two more hollow "chunks" shook the ground of Smyrna, at intervals an hour separated, and morning light showed that two isolated barns had been destroyed.

Mr. Luce appeared in the village with his sack, quite at his ease, and demanded of Broadway certain canned delicacies, his appetite seeming to have a finer edge to correspond with his rising courage. He even hinted that Broadway's stock was not very complete, and that some early strawberries might soften a few of the asperities of his nature.

"I ain't never had a fair show on eatin'," he complained to the apprehensive storekeeper. "It's been ten years that my wife ain't got me a fair and square meal o' vittles. She don't believe in cookin' nothin' ahead nor gettin' up anything decent. She's a Go-upper and thinks the end of the world is li'ble to come any minit. And the way I figger it, not havin' vittles reg'lar has give me dyspepsy, and dyspepsy has made me cranky, and not safe to be squdged too fur. And that's the whole trouble. I've got a hankerin' for strorb'ries. They may make me more supple. P'raps not, but it's wuth tryin'."

He tossed the cans into his sack in a perfectly reckless manner, until Broadway was sick and hiccuping with fear. "Love o' Lordy," he pleaded, "don't act that way. It's apt to go off--go off any time. I know the stuff better'n you do--I've dealt in it. Ain't I usin' you square on goods?"

"Mebbe so," admitted Mr. Luce. "Fur's you know, you are. But the trouble with me is my disposition. It ain't been made supple yet. If you've got in stock what my appetite craves I may be more supple next time I come."

He dug a tender strip out of the centre of a hanging codfish, and walked out. Parading his ease of spirits and contempt for humanity in general, he stood on the platform and gnawed at the fish and gazed serenely on the broken windows.