The Gentle Grafter

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"'It's proper to be ambitious,' says I; 'and hog-stealing will do very
well for Mount Nebo; but in the outside world, Mr. Tatum, it would be
considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State
Gas. However, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. We'll go into
partnership. I've got a thousand dollars cash capital; and with that
homeward-plods atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a
few shares of Soon Parted, preferred, in the money market.'

"So I attaches Rufe, and we go away from Mount Nebo down into the
lowlands. And all the way I coach him for his part in the grafts I had
in mind. I had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was
feeling all to the Ponce de Leon, besides having so many new schemes
up my sleeve that I had to wear kimonos to hold 'em.

"I intended to assume a funnel shape and mow a path nine miles wide
though the farming belt of the Middle West; so we headed in that
direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley
Brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into
town and pounding the Belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as
artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I
never pass a circus without pulling the valve-cord and coming down for
a little Key West money; so I engaged a couple of rooms and board for
Rufe and me at a house near the circus grounds run by a widow lady
named Peevy. Then I took Rufe to a clothing store and gent's-outfitted
him. He showed up strong, as I knew he would, after he was rigged up
in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. Me and old Misfitzky stuffed him
into a bright blue suit with a Nile green visible plaid effect, and
riveted on a fancy vest of a light Tuskegee Normal tan color, a red
necktie, and the yellowest pair of shoes in town.

"They were the first clothes Rufe had ever worn except the gingham
layette and the butternut top-dressing of his native kraal, and he
looked as self-conscious as an Igorrote with a new nose-ring.

"That night I went down to the circus tents and opened a small shell
game. Rufe was to be the capper. I gave him a roll of phony currency
to bet with and kept a bunch of it in a special pocket to pay his
winnings out of. No; I didn't mistrust him; but I simply can't
manipulate the ball to lose when I see real money bet. My fingers go
on a strike every time I try it.

"I set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to
guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds
gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter
one another to bet. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed
up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives
to get them started. But, no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times
walking about and looking at the side-show pictures with his mouth
full of peanut candy; but he never came nigh.

"The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a
capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with only
forty-two dollars of the unearned increment, while I had been counting
on yanking the yeomen for two hundred at least. I went home at eleven
and went to bed. I supposed that the circus had proved too alluring
for Rufe, and that he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but I
meant to give him a lecture on general business principles in the
morning.

"Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress
I hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster
screeching with green-apple colic. I opens my door and calls out in
the hall for the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, I says:
'Mrs. Peevy, ma'am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so
that honest people can get their rest?'

"'Sir,' says she, 'it's no child of mine. It's the pig squealing that
your friend Mr. Tatum brought home to his room a couple of hours ago.
And if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, I'd appreciate
your stopping its mouth, sir, yourself, if you please.'

"I put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society
and went into Rufe's room. He had gotten up and lit his lamp, and
was pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingy-white,
half-grown, squealing pig.

"'How is this, Rufe?' says I. 'You flimflammed in your part of the
work to-night and put the game on crutches. And how do you explain the
pig? It looks like back-sliding to me.'

"'Now, don't be too hard on me, Jeff,' says he. 'You know how long
I've been used to stealing shoats. It's got to be a habit with me. And
to-night, when I see such a fine chance, I couldn't help takin' it.'

"'Well,' says I, 'maybe you've really got kleptopigia. And maybe when
we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more
remunerative misconduct. Why you should want to stain your soul with
such a distasteful, feeble-minded, perverted, roaring beast as that I
can't understand.'

"'Why, Jeff,' says he, 'you ain't in sympathy with shoats. You don't
understand 'em like I do. This here seems to me to be an animal of
more than common powers of ration and intelligence. He walked half
across the room on his hind legs a while ago.'

"'Well, I'm going back to bed,' says I. 'See if you can impress it
upon your friend's ideas of intelligence that he's not to make so much
noise.'

"'He was hungry,' says Rufe. 'He'll go to sleep and keep quiet now.'

"I always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper whenever
I happen to be within the radius of a Hoe cylinder or a Washington
hand-press. The next morning I got up early, and found a Lexington
daily on the front porch where the carrier had thrown it. The first
thing I saw in it was a double-column ad. on the front page that read
like this:


FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

The above amount will be paid, and no questions asked,
for the return, alive and uninjured, of Beppo, the famous
European educated pig, that strayed or was stolen from
the side-show tents of Binkley Bros.' circus last night.

Geo. B. Tapley, Business Manager.
At the circus grounds.


"I folded up the paper flat, put it into my inside pocket, and went to
Rufe's room. He was nearly dressed, and was feeding the pig the rest
of the milk and some apple-peelings.

"'Well, well, well, good morning all,' I says, hearty and amiable. 'So
we are up? And piggy is having his breakfast. What had you intended
doing with that pig, Rufe?'

"'I'm going to crate him up,' says Rufe, 'and express him to ma in
Mount Nebo. He'll be company for her while I am away.'

"'He's a mighty fine pig,' says I, scratching him on the back.

"'You called him a lot of names last night,' says Rufe.

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'he looks better to me this morning. I was raised
on a farm, and I'm very fond of pigs. I used to go to bed at sundown,
so I never saw one by lamplight before. Tell you what I'll do, Rufe,'
I says. 'I'll give you ten dollars for that pig.'

"'I reckon I wouldn't sell this shoat,' says he. 'If it was any other
one I might.'

"'Why not this one?' I asked, fearful that he might know something.

"'Why, because,' says he, 'it was the grandest achievement of my life.
There ain't airy other man that could have done it. If I ever have a
fireside and children, I'll sit beside it and tell 'em how their daddy
toted off a shoat from a whole circus full of people. And maybe my
grandchildren, too. They'll certainly be proud a whole passel. Why,'
says he, 'there was two tents, one openin' into the other. This shoat
was on a platform, tied with a little chain. I seen a giant and a
lady with a fine chance of bushy white hair in the other tent. I got
the shoat and crawled out from under the canvas again without him
squeakin' as loud as a mouse. I put him under my coat, and I must have
passed a hundred folks before I got out where the streets was dark. I
reckon I wouldn't sell that shoat, Jeff. I'd want ma to keep it, so
there'd be a witness to what I done.'

"'The pig won't live long enough,' I says, 'to use as an exhibit in
your senile fireside mendacity. Your grandchildren will have to take
your word for it. I'll give you one hundred dollars for the animal.'

"Rufe looked at me astonished.

"'The shoat can't be worth anything like that to you,' he says. 'What
do you want him for?'

"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't
think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I'm a
collector of pigs. I've scoured the world for unusual pigs. Over in
the Wabash Valley I've got a hog ranch with most every specimen on it,
from a Merino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me,
Rufe,' says I. 'I believe it's a genuine Berkshire. That's why I'd
like to have it.'

"'I'd shore like to accommodate you,' says he, 'but I've got the
artistic tenement, too. I don't see why it ain't art when you can
steal a shoat better than anybody else can. Shoats is a kind of
inspiration and genius with me. Specially this one. I wouldn't take
two hundred and fifty for that animal.'

"'Now, listen,' says I, wiping off my forehead. 'It's not so much a
matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is
philanthropy. Being a connoisseur and disseminator of pigs, I wouldn't
feel like I'd done my duty to the world unless I added that Berkshire
to my collection. Not intrinsically, but according to the ethics of
pigs as friends and coadjutors of mankind, I offer you five hundred
dollars for the animal.'

"'Jeff,' says this pork esthete, 'it ain't money; it's sentiment with
me.'

"'Seven hundred,' says I.

"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll crush the sentiment out
of my heart.'

"I went under my clothes for my money-belt, and counted him out forty
twenty-dollar gold certificates.

"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him up till
after breakfast.'

"I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the steam
calliope at the circus.

"'Let me tote him in for you,' says Rufe; and he picks up the beast
under one arm, holding his snout with the other hand, and packs him
into my room like a sleeping baby.

"After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever
since I got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble down to
Misfitzky's and look over some royal-purple socks. And then I got as
busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper. I
found an old Negro man with an express wagon to hire; and we tied the
pig in a sack and drove down to the circus grounds.

"I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He
was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap, with a
four-ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.

"'Are you George B. Tapley?' I asks.

"'I swear it,' says he.

"'Well, I've got it,' says I.

"'Designate,' says he. 'Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python
or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?'

"'Neither,' says I. 'I've got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in
that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this
morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it's
handy.'

"George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went
into one of the side-shows. In there was a jet black pig with a pink
ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man
was feeding to him.

"'Hey, Mac,' calls G. B. 'Nothing wrong with the world-wide this
morning, is there?'

"'Him? No,' says the man. 'He's got an appetite like a chorus girl at
1 A.M.'

"'How'd you get this pipe?' says Tapley to me. 'Eating too many pork
chops last night?'

"I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.

"'Fake,' says he. 'Don't know anything about it. You've beheld
with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of the
four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal
meal, unstrayed and unstole. Good morning.'

"I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to
drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. There I took
out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his
sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the
alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.

"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the
newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the
advertising man to his window.

"'To decide a bet,' says I, 'wasn't the man who had this ad. put in
last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?'

"'He was not,' says the man. 'He would measure about six feet by four
and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies
of the conservatory.'

"At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy's.

"'Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?' she
asks.

"'If you do, ma'am,' says I, 'you'll more than exhaust for firewood
all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the
outside of it.'

"So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, "how hard
it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner."

"But," I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, "the rule
should work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you
would not have lost--"

Jeff's look of dignified reproach stopped me.

"That don't involve the same principles at all," said he. "Mine was a
legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high--
don't Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs--what's the
difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"