"L-l-isten, Virgil! Are you a medicine man?"
"Aw, don't pay no attention to superstitious talk like that—"
"But I gotta have help! They're after me!" And he told all.
"Well!" said Hathaway doubtfully. "I'll see what I can do. But they're Iroquois spooks, and don't think much of us Algonquins. Got some tobacco? All right, pull down the shades."
Hathaway took Pringle's tobacco pouch and opened his shattered screen door. He threw a pinch of tobacco into the dark and chanted in bad Seneca:
All eight Gahunga imps materialized on the lawn. Hathaway sternly ordered them to come inside. When they were in, he questioned them:
"What have you little twerps been up to now?"
Gaga squirmed. "We was only trying to do Miss Scott a favor," he said. "She wants to put on a good spook show. So we help. She don't like this old punkin Pringle. All right, we throw a scare into him. We wasn't going to hurt him none."
"You know you was let come up here for your vacations only if you didn't use your stone-throwing powers," Hathaway said. "And you know what Eitsinoha does to little imps who don't behave."
"Eitsinoha?" cried Gaga. "You wouldn't tell her!"
"Dunno, yet. You deserve it."
"Please, mister, don't say nothing! We won't throw even a sand-grain! I swear by Iuskeha! Let us go, and we'll head right back to Cattaraugus!"
Hathaway turned to the quivering Pringle. "Changed your mind about raising my rent, Dan?"
"I'll lower it! Five Dollars!"
"Ten?"
"Seven and a half!"
"Okay. Gaga, you and your boys can disappear. But stick around. And don't do anything, understand, unless I tell you to." The Gahunga vanished.
Pringle recovered some of his usual self-assurance and said:
"Thanks, Virgil! Don't know what I'd have done without you."
"That's all right, Dan. You better not say anything about this, though. Remember, being a medicine man is a kind of joke among us Indians, like being the High Exalted Potentate of one of those there lodges."
"I understand. So they were doing her a favor, huh? It would be bad enough to have my son marry a phony medium, but I can see where a real one would be worse. No sale, and you can tell her I said so. And Harvey'll do what I say, because he has to in order to eat."
"But—" said Hathaway. He wanted to defend Barbara Scott; to tell Pringle that even if she was a crooked medium in a mild way, she was still better than that no-count son of his.
"What?" said Pringle.
"Nahthing." Hathaway reconsidered; everything was working out fine. Barbara would get over her crush on that big loafer, finish her college, and be able to drop the medium racket. Why stir things up? "Goodnight, Dan."
He hadn't done badly, thought Hathaway as he locked up, considering that he had only been in the medicineman business a couple of days. He must take a trip out to Tonawanda in the fall and look up Charlie Catfish. Maybe the thing had commercial possibilities.
THE HARDWOOD PILE
Tins is a world wherein virtue often goes unrewarded. If R. B. Wilcox had not been such a moral man, he might have gotten the true story of the haunted woodpile for his book on the lore and legends of upstate New York. Mr. Wilcox's morals, alone, were not responsible for his failure to get the inside dope. There was also the fact that carroty-red hair did not appeal to him.
The hair belonged to Miss Aceria Jones, the hostess at The Pines. This was a self-styled tea room in the village of Gahato, county of Herkimer, State of New York. The Pines, despite the misleading sobriquet of "tea room," served liquor of all degrees of hardness and had a passable dance orchestra. Not the least of its attractions was Miss Aceria Jones. She was an uncommonly pretty girl, looking rather like a plane hostess.
R. B. Wilcox had landed at The Pines in the course of his prowl around the country -after lore and legends. After dinner he tried to collect some material. The restaurateur, a Mr. Earl Delacroix, was out; so the writer tackled Miss Jones. She gave him a little lore on the theory and practice of hostessing in an Adirondack sawmill town, but nothing that could be called a legend. To his questions about the haunted woodpile, she replied that she paid no attention to such silly stories.
In the hope of squeezing a little usable copy out of his charming questionee, Wilcox tried praise: "I'm surprised that you live up here in the sticks. I should think with your looks you could get a job in the city."
"You mean Utica?"
"New York."
"No, I would not like that. No trees."
"You're crazy about trees?"
"Well, some trees. If there was a job in a place with a Norway maple in front of it, I would take it at once."
"A what in front of the place?"
"A Norway maple—Acer platanoides. Do you know of a place that has one such?"
"... uh ... no. But I don't know much about trees. Is that a native species?"
"No, a European."
"Wouldn't another species do?"
"No; it must be that. I cannot explain. But, Mr. Wilcox, it would mean much to me." She rolled her large eyes meltingly at him.
Wilcox's morals began to assert themselves. He said stiffly: "I'm afraid I don't know what I could do for you."
"You could find a nice, clean place that has a job open, and a Norway maple growing in front of it. If you did, I would like you very, very much." Another roll of the optics.
At the second "very," Wilcox could fairly feel his morals tugging him toward the door. He, or rather his morals, may have been doing Miss Jones an injustice. But he did not stay to investigate this melancholy redhead's passion for Norway maples, or her definition of "very." He paused only long enough to assure Miss Jones that he would let her know if he heard of anything. Then he passed out of the restaurant and out of this tale.
To get a proper perspective, we must go back to 1824. In that year there landed in New York a dark, paunchy, dignified man who said he was August Rudli of Zurich, Switzerland. He was, he said, a member of an old Swiss banking family, and also related to the Wittelsbachs, so that he was about forty-third in line for the Bavarian throne. He had been a colonel under Napoleon-he had a medal to prove it-and, finding the banking business too stuffy, had taken his share of the family fortune and come to America.
But it must be recorded that Herr Rudli's story contained one or two inexactitudes. He was related neither to the Wittelsbachs nor to any family of bankers. He had seen no military service; the medal was a phony. He had been in the banking business, but not in the way he had said. He had risen by sheer merit to the post of cashier. Thereupon, on a dark and stormy night, he had walked off with all the assets not securely nailed down.
As people were seldom if ever extradited across the Atlantic in those days, at least for embezzlement, Herr Rudli might have enjoyed the fruits of his enterprise for years, if he had not fallen in with an even slicker article. This article, one John A. Spooner, separated Rudli from most of his cash for a "country estate" consisting of several thousand acres of granite ridges, bog holes, and black flies in the Adirondacks. Rudli spent most of the rest in having a road run in, a biggish house built, and gewgaws imported from Europe to furnish the house. Among the more puzzling importations were two young Norway maples, which were planted in front of the house. Rudli's tract was already covered by a dense mixed forest consisting partly of sugar maple, red maple, and silver maple, the first of which grow at least as large and as fast as any European maple. But Rudli had his own ideas about being a country gentleman, and the planting of imported trees evidently formed part of them.