g
eneral william henry harrison belcher, member of congress from the ninety-sixth kansas district, sat in his room at his hotel one evening, with his feet upon the table, a cigar in his mouth, and a glass containing a mysterious liquid preparation beside him.
in appearance the general was a man of mark. his thick gray hair covered a noble head; his nose was large and curved in bold lines indicating strength; his face was closely shaven and rather inclined to pallor. he had eyes that seemed to pierce the person upon whom they rested, and when he used his feet to stand upon, instead of devoting them to purely ornamental purposes, as at present, his figure appeared tall and slender and comely. those who did not know the general imagined, when they saw him in the capitol, that he was some distinguished statesman upon whom rested the weight of a nation’s business. those who knew him, on the contrary, were aware that he was a man of no education, no skill in higher politics, and no principles worth mentioning. he271 had begun life as a mule-driver on the plains, but one day he contrived to obtain a contract for supplying a certain indian agency with cattle. the government paid him for fat steers, and he furnished the oldest and leanest cows he could find west of the mississippi, and when they were weighed in pairs, he and his drover stood on the scale each time so as to bring the aggregate weight up to a comfortable figure. he made a small fortune at this business, and then he bought his way into the legislature, and subsequently into congress, his purpose being not so much to give his suffering country the benefit of his skill as a legislator, as to open for himself larger opportunities to acquire wealth at his country’s expense. he had succeeded in several enterprises of the kind which had engaged his attention since he came to washington, and now he was devoting attention to his great scheme for seizing the pottawatomie reservation as a matter of retributive justice to its savage owners. as he sat in his room, thinking upon the subject, he heard a knock at the door.
“come in!” said the general.
achilles smith entered.
“hello, kill!” said the general, still keeping his feet upon the table. “take a chair.”
mr. smith sat down.
“what’ll you have?” asked the general.
“cocktail.”
272 “mix one.”
mr. smith prepared the beverage, placed himself swiftly outside of it, elevated his feet until they rested close to those of the general, and said,—
“well, how does the old thing work?”
“oh, pretty well! tolerable! the committee have promised to consider your case to-morrow, and i want you to be on hand, ready to tell your story. you’ve got it straight, i reckon?”
“yes, i know it by heart.”
“let’s see. your theory is that you were scalped by a pottawatomie indian in 1862. now, where is that scalp?”
“in my trunk. between ourselves, you know, i bought it of an indian in laramie year before last.”
“very well. now, what is the name of the indian who scalped you?”
“jumping antelope, a chief.”
“under what circumstances?”
“i was trying to convert him by reading the scriptures to him.”
“see here, kill, isn’t that a little thin? he couldn’t understand the language, you know. i’m afraid that won’t wash.”
“i translated it as i went along.”
“s’pos’n’ the committee ask you to prove that you know the language?”
“i’ll get off some gibberish, and you can assure273 them that you recognize it as pure pottawatomie.”
“very well. now, what particular part of the—the—scriptures were you reading to him?”
“i dunno. let’s see; what are some of the books?”
“don’t ask me; i’m not very well posted. we used to have a bible out in the kansas legislature, to swear members on, but they always kept a string tied around it, and after it was stolen a rumor got around that the clerk swore a whole house of representatives in on kidderminster’s digest of the state laws.”
“jonah’s the only book i recall very distinctly now.”
“that’ll do, if you can remember something in it. i connect it indistinctly with reminiscences of a whale.”
“yes. well, i was trying to convert that indian by reading to him about jonah and the whale, when he rose up suddenly and began fumbling about my hair with a carving-knife.”
“the committee may go into detail. now, why did he do this? is the narrative calculated in any way to excite the nervous system of an untutored child of the forest?”
“no-no-no!”
“nothing in it about depriving persons of their hair? don’t say jonah was scalped, hey?”
274 “no.”
“did your assailant accompany the act with any conversation?”
“he merely remarked ‘how!’ and i thought i caught some rather indistinct reference to the happy hunting grounds; but i’ll only swear to ‘how.’”
“‘how!’ they always say that. it indicates almost anything, from ferocious animosity to a desire to borrow plug tobacco. then he took your hair, did he?”
“sawed it right out, and would have murdered me if i had not fled.”
“you dropped the bible when you ran?”
“yes, after snatching my scalp from his hand.”
“well, kill, i think maybe that yarn’ll pass. it’s not first-rate, but there are three men in the committee who want my vote for claims of theirs, and i have an idea they’ll back us through thick and thin. my boy, don’t call me a prophet if we don’t snatch that reservation before the session’s out. it looks to me like a sure thing.”
“i’d like to be as sure of something else i’m after,” said smith, rather sadly.
“what’s that?”
“the m’duffy girl.”
“you shall have her, kill, you shall have her. the old lady has promised me, positively.”
“i thought so myself at first, but there is another man in the way now.”
275 “who is he?”
“oh, a one-legged army man. she’s taken a fancy to him, her mother tells me. he has a leg up here in the medical museum, and she fell in love with that first and it spread to the rest of him afterwards, gradually.”
“that’s original, anyhow.”
“wants to paint that preserved leg in her picture. going to dovetail it on to washington. if he can get the leg out of the museum she promises to marry him.”
“well, i’ll put a stop to that. i’ll introduce a bill forfeiting to the government for ever all the odd legs in the museum. kill, you mind what i tell you, and pandora shall make you her model instead of this military ruin who is sparking her.”
“i’d like to feel certain of that.”
“you may; depend on me. a man with my war record needn’t fear to offer himself to any—what is this fellow? major, hey?—well, i’ll risk offending any major in the service.”
“i didn’t know you had any war record.”
“ain’t i a general?”
“oh, i know, but you can’t throw a brick in the street without mowing down a couple of generals—peace men from principle.”
“but i have seen war, my boy! i was in the army, only as a captain, i admit. but i smelt powder. kill, i was distinguished for one thing:276 other officers always lost their men, but i never had a fight that i didn’t bring out one-third more men than i took in.”
“you ought to have been promoted. was it your war record that took you to congress?”
“no, sir; it was brains—pure intellect—that did that. you know my district? not a railroad in it. not enough business to pay for the grease on the engines if there was a railroad. of course, under such circumstances, the one thing all the people want worse than anything else is a railroad. people always want what they can’t get.”
“of course.”
“so as soon as i was nominated i hired four hundred men, divided them into squads, fitted them out with rods and chains and theodolites and other surveying apparatus, and started them all over the district, pretending to run lines. a squad would burst into a man’s potato-patch and go to work. the owner would rush out and say, ‘what in thunder you fellows a-doin’ in that potato-patch?’ and they’d say, ‘we’re surveying the route for old belcher’s railroad.’ then the man would fly into the house and tell his wife that belcher was going to run a railroad through his property, and they’d go wild with joy. kill, i carried that district by fifteen hundred majority over a man who under other circumstances would have beaten me out of my boots.”
277 “that was genius, sir! nothing but pure genius.”
“i think so; genius for statesmanship; not such statesmanship as they have in the played-out despotisms of europe, but the kind that is needed in a new country.”
“i say, belcher, how would it do for you and me to go around and call on old mrs. m’duffy? i’ve a notion to go.”
“i’m willing. maybe we can settle the case of that dilapidated major.”
mrs. m’duffy was at home when the general and mr. smith called, and she received them with much cordiality.
the conversation naturally turned at an early moment to the subject of smith’s claim.
“by the way, mr. smith,” said mrs. m’duffy, “your claim rests, i think you said, upon the fact that you were scalped? your head has not that appearance.”
“oh, no! you see, madam, that in the lapse of years the wound has healed; a new scalp has gradually formed, so that now i appear to be merely bald. i have the original scalp at home in my trunk.”
“how very interesting. were you ever scalped, general?”
“no, ma’am, never. my custom has been to take scalps, not to lose them.”
“the general is an old indian fighter,” observed achilles.
278 “i was not aware of the fact,” said mrs. m’duffy. “you are familiar therefore with the plains. did you ever visit the pottawatomie reservation—mr. smith’s prospective property?”
“frequently, ma’am. it’s the handsomest tract of ground east of the rocky mountains.”
“you propose to live on it, when you get it, do you not, mr. smith?”
“on part of it. half goes to the general; then i shall reserve 5000 acres for myself and dispose of the remainder to settlers. if i am successful in my suit with your daughter i shall build a house in the centre of my 5000 acres, and we will live there. we shall have plenty of elbow-room. she can paint pictures as big as all out-of-doors, and bigger.”
“pandora is so fond of the open country.”
“yes, madam, she can get half a dozen squaws to do her housework, so that she can have all her time to herself. i am going to arrange it so that she can shoot grizzly bears from the parlor window, if she wants to; and as for wardrobe!—well, i intend to buy all our clothes in new york, and they’ll be of a kind that’ll cause every woman on the old pottawatomie reservation to turn green with envy.”
“pandora ought to appreciate your kindness,” said mrs. m’duffy; “but she is a strange girl, and, i fear, thinks more of her art than of the matters that commonly engage a young girl’s attention.”
279 “by the way, ma’am, how is the great picture coming on?”
“slowly. pandora made the handle of the hatchet more than twice as thick as the tree, and she had to alter it. a connoisseur, a friend of hers, also pointed out to her that in fore-shortening washington’s right leg she had made his foot appear to be resting upon a mountain upon the other side of the river. corrections of this kind require time.”
“she must hurry up, ma’am; she must hurry up,” said the general; “i have everything fixed to obtain the consent of congress to its purchase by the government. i am going to press the resolution as soon as i hear that she has accepted smith.”
“you are too kind. do you think it is likely to be favorably received? mrs. easby told me yesterday that judge cudderbury said that if george washington could have foreseen pandora’s picture he would have had incorporated into the constitution of the united states a section making it a felony to represent him as within a thousand miles of a cherry-tree. but then the judge, you know, has a daughter who professes to be an artist.”
“jealousy, ma’am! sheer jealousy. the judge knows no more about art, anyhow, than a colorado mule knows about the sidereal system. now, my opinion, mrs. m’duffy, is, that old michael-what’s-his-name,280 over there in rome, couldn’t hold a candle to your daughter in the matter of covering canvas.”
as the general was speaking, the door opened, and pandora entered. she spoke politely, but coldly, to the visitors, and after the passage of a few remarks about the condition of the weather, the general withdrew, mrs. m’duffy followed him to the hall to bid him adieu, and mr. smith remained with pandora.
it occurred to achilles that if mrs. m’duffy should happen to fail to return this would be an uncommonly good opportunity to speak of the state of his feelings. the thought pleased him, but it gave him some embarrassment.
“miss pandora,” he said, “i am glad to hear that you are succeeding so nicely with your picture.”
“thank you; it is making some progress. i have been delayed by a few trifling alterations.”
“is the central figure completed yet?”
“not quite finished. i did not feel sure about the left leg, and i shall make some studies before i paint it in.”
“if you have any difficulty with that portion of the figure, why not omit it? put in a bush, or a stone, or the trunk of a fallen tree, so as to hide the leg. congress will accept it all the same.”
“art scorns such devices. and, besides, it would be rather too ridiculous to represent washington281 standing astride of a log while he is cutting down a cherry-tree.”
“true! true! that did not occur to me. what you really want is a good model. i think i could recommend one.”
“i have one already, thank you.”
“indeed! a plaster of paris one?”
“no; a real one.”
“a real one?”
“the property of a friend of mine; a gentleman.”
“on or off?”
“off.”
“humph! that seems to me—a—a—rather a queer offering to a lady.”
“do you think so?”
“i am a plain man, not used to flattering women, but if i wished to express my regard for a lady i would offer her my heart instead of my leg.”
“it would be dreadful if the lady happened not to want any portion of you, wouldn’t it?”
“yes; but suppose i should offer her the pottawatomie reservation besides, do you think she would refuse?”
“you had better undertake the investigation yourself. how can i know?”
“i will undertake it now. i offer my heart to you! i offer the reservation also. i love you, pandora. oh, how i love you! will you be my wife?”
“mr. smith, it is impossible.”
282 “no, not impossible, pandora. not impossible. do not say that; it will kill me. listen! have you ever dreamed of a home upon the wide and boundless prairie? a sweet little home, two stories and an attic, painted white with green shutters, where you can see eighteen miles in a straight line, where two hundred acres in potatoes lie beneath your very window, and where you can hunt the bounding buffalo and the prairie-hen without going off the estate; and where copper-colored servant girls can be had for two dollars a month and found? have you ever dreamed of such a home?”
“never.”
“it is to it i would bear you as my bride. come with me! be mine! i cannot offer you the enervating luxuries of the depraved and decaying east, but together we can feast upon jerked beef and buffalo tongues; together we can drink draughts from the artesian well in the cellar; together we will sit beneath the tree by the front door, the only one within twenty-seven miles, and together we can watch the dog chasing the jackass-rabbits across the sage brush. be mine, and i will stock the pantry with rations from the nearest indian agency, where i have a friend; i will buy you a suave and gentle mule for you to exercise yourself on, and you may have canvas enough to paint general washingtons and lord cornwallises as high as church283 steeples, and i will guarantee that congress shall bid them in as fast as you turn them out. will you, pandora? do you like the promise? oh, say that you love me!”
“mr. smith, i cannot. i am very sorry, but to tell the truth plainly, i am engaged to another gentleman.”
“to dunwoody?”
“i did not mention his name, sir.”
“but i know him! a one-legged major! and you refuse me for him?”
“i refuse you; that is enough.”
“oh, very well, miss m’duffy. i understand you. i will bid you a very good evening. i hope you will not have occasion to regret your decision.”
“certainly i shall not! good evening, sir!”
as achilles passed out through the hall he encountered major dunwoody, who was just placing his hat upon the rack. achilles looked back at him for a second, scowling with rage and mortification, and then as he rushed into the open air, he said to himself,—
“never mind, you hopping, mud-headed, military humbug. i’ll settle your case before you’re many days older.”
and then mr. smith went home to bed.
pandora greeted the major with a joyful smile.
“darling,” said the major, “who was that person i passed in the hall as i came in?”
284 “that was achilles smith, the man of whom i told you. he proposed to me a few moments before you came in.”
“he did, did he?” exclaimed the major savagely. “i wish i had known it. i would have kicked him down the steps.”
“but how could you, dearest, with only one leg?”
“true!” said the major. “but i could have thrashed him with my cane. so he wants to marry you, does he?”
“yes, and mother thinks i ought to accept him.”
“and you have firmly made up your mind to marry me?” asked the major, fondly.
“yes, dear,” said pandora, with a roguish smile, “but only when you have succeeded in getting for me your disconnected leg. you will try to get it for me soon, henry, won’t you?”
“i am trying now, my sweet. colonel dabney, of the maine delegation, has already introduced to the house of representatives a bill appropriating my leg to me.”
“how splendid!”
“and he says it will pass promptly, so that i can obtain the leg within less than two months. we’ll be married right off then, won’t we?”
“at once. but i’m afraid, henry, mr. smith and general belcher will oppose colonel dabney’s bill if they hear of it.”
285 “i’ll brain both of them if they do,” said the major. “no, i won’t brain smith; he has no brains. and now, pandora, darling, let us talk of something else. are you sure, my dearest, that you love me very, very, very much?”
“oh, henry! ten thousand, thousand times more than i can ever tell you. i—”
a person passing the parlor door at this juncture might have heard a sharp sound resembling somewhat that made by the tearing of a piece of muslin. the conversation need not be quoted at greater length. it appeared to give the most intense pleasure to the major and pandora, but talk of that kind is usually rather dreary for outside parties; so we will lower the curtain here.
