The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
"Monk he noo 'fear'd ze dog," grinned the Italian. "Monk he whup ze
dog."
"Vot's dat?" exclaimed Billy Buch--"Vot's dat, man, you say? Mine
Gott, I bet ten to one dat Ponyparte eats him oop!"
To prove it Bonaparte ran at the monkey savagely. But the monkey ran
up on the Italian's shoulder, where he grinned at the dog.
The Italian smiled. Then he ran his hand into a dirty leathern belt
which he carried around his waist--and slowly counted out some gold
coins. With a smile fresh as the skies of Italy, full of all
sweetness, gentleness and suavity:
"Cover zees, den, py Gar!"
Billy gasped and grasped Jud around the neck where he clung, with his
Dutch smile frozen on his lips. Jud, with collapsed under jaw, looked
sheepishly around. Bonaparte tried to stand, but he, too, sat down in
a heap.
The crowd cheered the Italian.
"We will do it, suh," said Jud, who was the first to recover, and who
knew he would get his part of it from Billy.
"Ve vill cover eet," said Billy, with ashen face.
"We will!" barked Bonaparte, recovering his equilibrium and snarling
at the monkey.
There was a sob and a wail on the outskirts of the crowd.
"Oh, don't let him kill the monkey--oh, don't!"
It was Ozzie B.
Archie B. ran hastily around to him, made a cross mark in the road
with his toe and spat in it.
"You're a fool as usual, Ozzie B.," he said, shaking his brother.
"Can't you see that Italian knows what he's about? If he'd risk that
twenty, much as he loves money, he'd risk his soul. _Venture pee-wee
under the bridge--bam--bam--bam!_"
Ozzie B. grew quieter. Somehow, what Archie B. said always made
things look differently. Then Archie B. came up and whispered in his
ear: "I'm fur the monkey--the Lord is on his side."
Ozzie B. thought this was grand.
Then Archie B. hunted for his Barlow pocket knife. Around his neck,
tied with a string, was a small greasy, dirty bag, containing a piece
of gum asafoetida and a ten-dollar gold piece. The asafoetida was worn
to keep off contagious diseases, and the gold piece, which
represented all his earthly possessions, had been given him by his
grandmother the year she died.
Archie B. was always ready to "swap sight under seen." He played
marbles for keeps, checkers for apples, ran foot-races for stakes,
and even learned his Sunday School lessons for prizes.
The Italian still stood, smiling, when a small red-headed boy came up
and touched him on the arm. He put a ten-dollar gold piece into the
Italian's hand.
"Put this in for me, mister--an' make 'em put up a hundred mo'. I
want some of that lucre."
The Italian was touched. He patted Archie B.'s head:
"Breens," he said, "breens uppa da."
Again he shook the gold in the face of Jud and Bill.
"Now bring on ze ten to one, py Gar!"
The cheers of the crowd nettled Billy and Jud.
"Jes' wait till we come back," said Jud. "'He laughs bes' who laughs
las'.'"
They retired for consultation.
Bonaparte followed.
Within the bar-room they wiped the cold perspiration from their faces
and looked speechlessly into each other's eyes. Billy spoke first.
"Mine Gott, but we peek it oop in de road, Jud?"
"It seems that way to me--a dead cinch."
Bonaparte was positive--only let him get to the monkey, he said with
his wicked eyes.
Billy looked at Bonaparte, big, swarthy, sinewy and savage. He
thought of the little monkey.
"Dees is greet!--dees is too goot!--Jud, we peek it oop in de road,
heh?"
"I'm kinder afraid we'll wake an' find it a dream, Billy--hurry up.
Get the cash."
Billy was thoughtful: "Tree hun'd'd dollars--Jud--eef--eef--" he
shook his head.
"Now, Billy," said Jud patronizingly--"that's nonsense. Bonaparte
will eat him alive in two minutes. Now, he bein' my dorg, jes' you
put up the coin an' let me in on the ground floor. I'll pay it
back--if we lose--" he laughed. "_If_ we lose--it's sorter like
sayin' if the sun don't rise."
"Dat ees so, Jud, we peek eet oop in de road. But eef we don't peek
eet oop, Billy ees pusted!"
"Oh," said Jud, "it's all like takin' candy from your own child."
The news had spread and a crowd had gathered to see the champion dog
of the Tennessee Valley eat up a monkey. All the loafers and
ne'er-do-wells of Cottontown were there. The village had known no
such excitement since the big mill had been built.
They came up and looked sorrowfully at the monkey, as they would
look in the face of the dead. But, considering that he had so short a
time to live, he returned the grin with a reverence which was
sacrilegious.
"So han'sum--so han'sum," said Uncle Billy Caldwell, the squire. "So
bright an' han'sum an' to die so young!"
"It's nothin' but murder," said another.
This proved too much for Ozzie B.--
"Don't--d-o-n-'t--let him kill the monkey," he cried.
There was an electric flash of red as Archie B. ran around the tree
and kicked the sobs back into his brother.
"Just wait, Ozzie B., you fool."
"For--what?" sobbed Ozzie.
"For what the monkey does to Bonaparte," he shouted triumphantly.
The crowd yelled derisively: "_What the monkey does to
Bonaparte--that's too good?_"
"Boy," said Uncle Billy kindly--"don't you know it's ag'in
nachur--why, the dorg'll eat him up!"
"That's rot," said Archie B. disdainfully. Then hotly: "Yes, it wus
ag'in nachur when David killed Goliath--when Sampson slew the lion,
and when we licked the British. Oh, it wus ag'in nachur then, but it
looks mighty nach'ul now, don't it? Jes' you wait an' see what the
monkey does to Bonaparte. I tell you, Uncle Billy, the Lord's on the
monkey's side--can't you see it?"
Uncle Billy smiled and shook his head. He was interrupted by low
laughter and cheers. A villager had drawn a crude picture on a white
paste-board and was showing it around. A huge dog was shaking a
lifeless monkey and under it was written:
"What Bonaparte Done To The Monkey!"
Archie B. seized it and spat on it derisively: "Oh, well, that's the
way of the worl'," he said. "God makes one wise man to see befo', an'
a million fools to see afterwards."
The depths of life's mysteries have never yet been sounded, and one
of the wonders of it all is that one small voice praying for flowers
in a wilderness of thorns may live to see them blossom at his feet.
"I've seed stranger things than that," remarked Uncle Billy
thoughtfully. "The boy mout be right."
And now Jud and Billy were seen coming out of the store, with their
hands full of gold.
"Eet's robbery--eet's stealin'"--winked Billy at the crowd--"eet's
like takin' it from a babe--"
With one accord the crowd surged toward the back lot, where
Bonaparte, disgusted with the long delay, had lain down on a pile of
newly-blown leaves and slept. Around the lot was a solid plank fence,
with one gate open, and here in the lot, sound asleep in the
sunshine, lay the champion.
The Italian brought along the monkey in his arms. Archie B. calmly
and confidently acting as his bodyguard. Jud walked behind to see
that the monkey did not get away, and behind him came Ozzie B.
sobbing in his hiccoughy way:
"Don't let him kill the po' little thing!"
He could go no farther than the gate. There he stood weeping and
looking at the merciless crowd.
Bonaparte was still asleep on his pile of leaves. Jud would have
called and wakened him, but Archie B. said: "Oh, the monkey will
waken him quick enough--let him alone."
In the laugh which followed, Jud yielded and Archie B. won the first
blood in the battle of brains.
The crowd now stood silent and breathless in one corner of the lot.
Only Ozzie B.'s sobs were heard. In the far corner lay Bonaparte.
The Italian stooped, and unlinking the chain of the monkey's collar,
sat him on the ground and, pointing to the sleeping dog, whispered
something in Italian into his pet's ear.
The crowd scarcely drew its breath as it saw the little animal
slipping across the yard to its death.
Within three feet of the dog he stopped, then springing quickly on
Bonaparte, with a screeching, bloodcurdling yell, grabbed his stump
of a tail in both hands, and as the crowd rushed up, they heard its
sharp teeth close on Bonaparte's most sensitive member with the
deadly click of a steel trap.
The effect was instantaneous. A battery could not have brought the
champion to his feet quicker. With him came the monkey--glued
there--a continuation of the dog's tail.
Around and around went Bonaparte, snarling and howling and making
maddening efforts to reach the monkey. But owing to the shortness of
Bonaparte's tail, the monkey kept just out of reach, its hind legs
braced against the dog, its teeth and nails glued to the two inches
of tail.
Around and around whirled Bonaparte, trying to throw off the things
which had dropped on him, seemingly, from the skies. His growls of
defiance turned to barks, then to bowls of pain and finally, as he
ran near to Archie B., he was heard to break into yelps of fright as
he broke away dashing around the lot in a whirlwind of leaves and
dust.
The champion dog was running!
"Sick him, Bonaparte, grab him--turn round an' grab him!" shouted Jud
pale to his eyes, and shaking with shame.
"Seek heem, Ponyparte--O mine Gott, seek him," shouted Billy.
Jud rushed and tried to head the dog, but the champion seemed to have
only one idea in his head--to get away from the misery which brought
up his rear.
Around he went once more, then seeing the gate open, he rushed out,
knocking Ozzie B. over into the dust, and when the crowd rushed out,
nothing could be seen except a cloud of dust going down the village
street, in the hind most cloud of it a pair of little red coat tails
flapping in the breeze.
Then the little red coat tails suddenly dropped out of the cloud of
dust and came running back up the road to meet its master.
Jud watched the vanishing cloud of dust going toward the distant
mountains.
"My God--not Bonaparte--not the champion," he said.
Billy stood also looking with big Dutch tears in his eyes. He
watched the cloud of dust go over the distant hills. Then he waved
his hand sadly--
"Goot-pye, mine bac'n!"
The monkey came up grinning triumphantly.
Thinking he had done something worthy of a penny, he added to Billy
Buch's woe by taking off his comical cap and passing it around for a
collection.
He was honest in it, but the crowd took it as irony, and amid their
laughter Jud and Billy slipped away.
Uncle Billy, the stake-holder, in handing the money over to the
Italian, remarked:
"Wal, it don't look so much ag'in nachur now, after all."
"Breens uppa dar"--smiled the Italian as he put ten eagles into
Archie B.'s hand. All of which made Archie B. vain, for the crowd now
cheered him as they had jeered before.
"Come, let's go, Ozzie B.," he said. "They ain't no man livin' can
stand too much heroism."
CHAPTER XXV
A BORN NATURALIST
Archie B. trotted off, striking a path leading through the wood. It
was a near cut to the log school house which stood in an old field,
partly grown up in scrub-oaks and bushes.
Down in the wood, on a clean bar where a mountain stream had made a
bed of white sand, he stopped, pulled off his coat, counted his gold
again with eyes which scarcely believed it yet, and then turned
handsprings over and over in the white sand.
This relieved him of much of the suppressed steam which had been
under pressure for two hours. Then he sat down on a log and counted
once more his gold.
Ozzie B., pious, and now doubly so at sight of his brother's wealth,
stood looking over his shoulder:
"It was the good Lord done it," he whispered reverently, as he stood
and looked longingly at the gold.
"Of course, but I helped at the right time, that's the way the Lord
does everything here."