University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.

THERE was an egg-supper in the country store at
Brayville. Mr. Mandluff, the tall and rawboned
Hoosier who kept the store, was not unwilling to
have the boys get up an egg supper now and then in
his store after he had closed the front-door at night.
For you must know that an egg-supper is a peculiar Western
institution. Sometimes it is a most enjoyable institution—when
it has its place in a store where there is no Kentucky whisky
to be had. But in Brayville, in the rather miscellaneous establishment
of the not very handsome and not very graceful Mr.
Mandluff, an egg-supper was not a great moral institution. It
was otherwise, and profanely called by its votaries a camp-meeting;
it would be hard to tell why, unless it was that some of
the insiders grew very happy before it was over. For an egg-supper
at Mandluff's store was to Brayville what an oyster-supper
at Delmonico's is to New York. It was one tenth hard
eggs and nine tenths that beverage which bears the name of an
old royal house of France.

How were the eggs cooked? I knew somebody would ask
that impertinent question. Well, they were not fried, they were

not boiled, they were not poached, they were not scrambled, they
were not omeletted, they were not roasted on the half-shell,
they were not stuffed with garlic and served with cranberries,
they were not boiled and served with anchovy sauce, they were
not “en salmi.” I think I had better stop there, lest I betray
my knowledge of cookery. It is sufficient to say that they were
not cooked in any of the above-named fashions, nor in any other
way mentioned in Catharine Beecher's or Marion Harland's cook-books.
They were baked à la mode backwoods. It is hardly
proper for me to give a recipe in this place, that belongs more
properly to the “Household Departments” of the newspapers.
But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell something about cooking,
which Prof. Blot does not know, I may say that they were broken
and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top of the old
box-stove. By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was
burned to ashes, but the egg came off clean and nice from the
stove, and made as palatable and indigestible an article for a late
supper as one could wish. It only wanted the addition of Mandluff's
peculiar whisky to make it dissipation of the choicest
kind. For the more a dissipation costs in life and health, the
more fascinating it is.

There was an egg-supper, as I said, at Mandluff's store. There
was to be a “camp-meeting” in honor of Norman Anderson's
successful return to his liberty and his cronies. It gave Norman
the greatest pleasure to return to a society where it was rather
to his credit than otherwise that he had gone on a big old time,
got caught, and been sent adrift by the old hunk that had tried
to make him study Latin.

The eggs were baked in the true “camp-meeting” style, the
whisky was drunk, and—so was the company. Bill Day's rather

red eyes grew redder, and his nose shone with delight as he
shuffled the greasy pack of “kyerds.” The maudlin smile crossed
the habitually melancholy lines of his face in a way that split
and splintered his visage into a curious contradiction of emotions.

“H—a—oo—p!” he shouted, throwing away the cards over
the heads of his companions. “Ha—oop! boys, thish is big—
hoo! hoo! ha—oop! I say is big. Let's do somethin'!”

Here there was a confused cry that “it was big, and that they
had better do somethin' or 'nother.”

“Let's blow up the ole school-house,” said Bill Day, who was
not friendly to education.

“I tell you what,” said Bob Short, who was dealing the cards
in another set—“I tell you what,” and Bob winked his eyes vigorously,
and looked more solemn and wise than he could have
looked if it had not been for the hard eggs and the whisky—
“I tell you what,” said Bob a third time, and halted, for his
mind's activity was a little choked by the fervor of his emotions
—“I tell you what, boys—”

“Wal,” piped Jim West in a cracked voice, “you've told us
what four times, I 'low; now s'pose you tell us somethin' else.”

“I tell you what, boys,” said Bob Short, suddenly remembering
his sentence, “don't let's do nothin' that'll git us into no
trouble arterwards. Ef we blow up the school-house we'll be
'rested fer bigamy or—or—what d'ye call it?”

“For larson,” said Bill Day, hardly able to restrain another
whoop.

“No, 'taint larson,” said Bob Short, looking wiser than a
chief-justice, “it's arsony. Now I say, don't let's go to penitentiary
for no—no larson—no arsony, I mean.”

“Ha—oop!” said Bill. “Let's do somethin' ludikerous.

[ILLUSTRATION]

SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.

[Description: 555EAF. Page 157. In-line engraving of a man holding a deck of playing cards, with his hand on a table, surrounded by four other men. ] Hurrah for arsony and larson! Dog-on the penitentiary!
Ha—oop!”

“Let's go fer the Dutchman,” said Norman Anderson, just
drunk enough to be good-naturedly murderous and to speak in dialect.
“Gus is turned out to committin' larson by breakin' into people's
houses an' has run off. Now let's tar and feather the ole
one. Of course, he's a thief. Dutchmen always is, I 'low. Clark

township don't want none of 'em, I'll be dog-oned if it do,”
and Norman got up and struck his fist on the counter.

“An' they won't nobody hurt you; you see, he's on'y a
Dutchman,” said Bob Short. “Larson on a Dutchman don't
hold.”

“I say, let's hang him,” said Bill Day. “Ha—oop! Let's
hang him, or do somethin' else ludikerous!”

“I wouldn't mind,” grinned Norman Anderson, delighted at
the turn things had taken. “I'd just like to see him hung.”

“So would I,” said Bill Day, leaning over to Norman. “Ef
a Dutchman wash to court my sishter, I'd—”

“He'd be a fool ef he did,” piped Jim West. For Bill Day's
sister was a “maid not vendible,” as Shakespeare has it.

“See yer,” said Bill, trying in vain to draw his coat. “Looky
yer, Jeems; ef you say anythin' agin Ann Marier, I'll commit
the wust larson on you you ever seed.”

“I didn't say nothin' agin Ann Marier,” squeaked Jim. “I
was talkin' agin the Dutch.”

“Well, that'sh all right. Ha—oop! Boys, let's do somethin',
larson or arsony or—somethin'.”

A bucket of tar and some feathers were bought, for which
young Anderson was made to pay, and Bill Day insisted on
buying fifteen feet of rope. “Bekase,” as he said, “arter you git
the feathers on the bird, you may—you may want to help him to
go to roosht you know, on a hickory limb. Ha—oop! Come
along, boys; I say let's do somethin' ludikerous, ef it's nothin'
but a little larson.”

And so they went galloping down the road, nine drunken
fools. For it is one of the beauties of lynch law, that, however
justifiable it may seem in some instances, it always opens the

way to villainous outrages. Some of my readers will protest
that a man was never lynched for the crime of being a Dutchman.
Which only shows how little they know of the intense
prejudice and lawless violence of the early West. Some day
people will not believe that men have been killed in California
for being Chinamen.

Of the nine who started, one, the drunkest, fell off and broke
his arm; the rest rode up in front of the cabin of Gottlieb Wehle.
I do not want to tell how they alarmed the mother at her
late sewing and dragged Gottlieb out of his bed. I shudder
now when I recall one such outrage to which I was an unwilling
witness. Norman threw the rope round Gottlieb's neck and
declared for hanging. Bill Day agreed. It would be so ludikerous,
you know!

“Vot hash I tun? Hey? Vot vor you dries doo hanks me
already, hey?” cried the honest German, who was willing enough
to have the end of the world come, but who did not like the idea
of ascending alone, and in this fashion.

Mrs. Wehle pushed her way into the mob and threw the rope
off her husband's neck, and began to talk with vehemence in
German. For a moment the drunken fellows hung back out of
respect for a woman. Then Bill Day was suddenly impressed
with the fact that the duty of persuading Mrs. Wehle to consent
to her husband's execution devolved upon him.

“Take keer, boys; let me talk to the ole woman. I'll argy
the case.”

“You can't speak Dutch no more nor a hoss can,” squeaked
Jeems West.

“Blam'd ef I can't, though. Hyer, ole woman, firshta
Dutch?”

“Ya.”

“Now,” said Bill, turning to the others in triumph, “what
did I tell you? Well, you see, your boy August is a thief.”

“He's not a teef!” said the old man.

“Shet up your jaw. I say he is. Now, your ole man's got
to be hung.”

“Vot vor?” broke in Gottlieb.

“Bekase it's all your own fault. You hadn't orter be a
Dutchman.”

Here the crowd fell into a wrangle. It was not so easy to
hang a man when such a woman stood there pleading for him.
Besides, Bob Short insisted that hanging was arsony in the first
degree, and they better not do it. To this Bill Day assented.
He said he 'sposed tar and feathers was only larson in the
second degree. And then it would be rale ludikerous. And
now confused cries of “Bring on the tar!” “Where's the feathers?”
“Take off his clothes!” began to be raised. Norman
stood out for hanging. Drink always intensified his meanness.
But the tar couldn't be found. The man whom they had left
lying by the roadside with a broken arm had carried the tar,
and had been well coated with it himself in his fall.

“Ha-oop!” shouted Bill Day. “Let's do somethin'. Dog-on
the arsony! Let's hang him as high as Dan'el.”

And with that the rope was thrown over Gottlieb's neck and
he was hurried off to the nearest tree. The rope was then put
over a limb, and a drunken half-dozen got ready to pull, while
Norman Anderson adjusted the noose and valiant Bill Day undertook
to keep off Mrs. Wehle.

“All ready! Pull up! Ha-oop!” shouted Bill Day, and the
crowd pulled, but Mrs. Wehle had slipped off the noose again,

and the volunteer executioners fell over one another in such a
way as to excite the derisive laughter of Bill Day, who thought
it perfectly ludikerous. But before the laugh had finished,
the indignant Gottlieb had knocked Bill Day over and sent
Norman after him. The blow sobered them a little, and suddenly
destroyed Bill's ambition to commit “arsony,” or do anything
else ludikerous. But Norman was furious, and under
his lead Wehle's arms were now bound with the rope and a consultation
was held, during which little Wilhelmina pleaded for
her father effectively, and more by her tears and cries and the
wringing of her chubby hands than by any words. Bill Day said
he be blamed ef that little Dutch gal's takin' on so didn't kinder
make him feel sorter scrimpshous you know. But the mob could
not quit without doing something. So it was resolved to give
Gottlieb a good ducking in the river and send him into Kentucky
with a warning not to come back. They went down the ravine
past Andrew's castle to the river. Mrs. Wehle followed, believing
that her husband would be drowned, and little Wilhelmina
ran and pulled the alarm and awakened the Backwoods Philosopher,
who soon threw himself among them, but too late to
dissuade them from their purpose, for Andrew's own skiff, the
“Grisilde” by name, with three of the soberest of the party,
had already set out to convey Wehle, after one hasty immersion,
to the other shore, while the rest stood round hallooing like madmen
to prevent any alarm that Wehle might raise attracting attention
on the other side.