A Cool Million (14 page)

A few hours later, Mr. Whipple rode
on the scene with his load of provisions. The moment he entered the clearing he
knew that something was wrong and hurried to the cabin. There he found
Lem
with his leg still in the bear trap.

He bent over the unconscious form of
the poor, mutilated lad and was happy to discover that his heart still beat. He
tried desperately to release the trap, but failed, and was forced to carry
Lem
out of the cabin with it dangling from his leg.

Placing our hero across the pommel
of his saddle, he galloped all that night, arriving at the county hospital the
next morning.
Lem
was immediately admitted to the
ward, where the good doctors began their long fight to save the lad’s life.
They triumphed, but not before they had found it necessary to remove his leg at
the knee.

With the disappearance of Jake
Raven, there was no use in Mr. Whipple’s returning to the mine, so he remained
near
Lem
, visiting the poor boy every day. Once he
brought him an orange to eat, another time some simple wild flowers which he
himself had gathered.

Lem’s
convalescence was a long one. Before it was over all of
Shagpoke’s
funds were spent, and the ex-President was forced to work in a livery stable in
order to keep body and soul together. When our hero left the hospital, he
joined him there.

At first
Lem
had some difficulty in using the wooden leg with which the hospital authorities
had equipped him. Practice, however, makes perfect, and in time he was able to
help Mr. Whipple clean the stalls and curry the horses.

It goes without saying that the two
friends were not satisfied to remain hostlers. They both searched for more
suitable employment, but there was none to be had.

Shagpoke’s
mind was quick and fertile. One day, as he watched
Lem
show his scalped skull for the twentieth time, he was struck by an idea. Why
not get a tent and exhibit his young friend as the last man to have been
scalped by the Indians and the sole survivor of the Yuba River massacre?

Our hero was not very enthusiastic
about the plan, but Mr. Whipple finally managed to convince him that it was the
only way in which they could hope to escape from their drudgery in the livery
stable. He promised
Lem
that as soon as they had
accumulated a little money they would abandon the tent show and enter some
other business.

Out of an old piece of tarpaulin
they fashioned a rough tent. Mr. Whipple then obtained a crate of cheap
kerosene lighters from a dealer in
pedlar’s
supplies.
With this meager equipment they took to the open road.

Their method of work was very
simple. When they arrived at the outskirts of a likely town, they set up their
tent.
Lem
hid himself inside it, while Mr. Whipple
beat furiously on the bottom of a tin can with a stick.

In a short while, he was surrounded
by a crowd eager to know what the noise was about. After describing the merits
of his kerosene lighters, he made his audience a “dual” offer. For the same ten
cents, they could both obtain a cigarette lighter and enter the tent where they
would see the sole survivor of the Yuba River massacre, getting a close view of
his freshly scalped skull.

Business was not as good as they had
thought it would be. Although Mr. Whipple was an excellent salesman, the people
they encountered had very little money to spend and could not afford to gratify
their curiosity no matter how much it was aroused.

One day, after many weary months on
the road, the two friends were about to set up their tent, when a small boy
volunteered the information that there was a much bigger show being given free
at the local opera house. Realizing that it would be futile for them to try to
compete with this other attraction, they decided to visit it.

There were bills posted on every
fence, and the two friends stopped to read one of them.

FREE
FREE
FREE
Chamber of American Horrors Animate and Inanimate
Hideosities
also Chief Jake Raven COME ONE COME ALL S.
Snodgrasse
Mgr. FREE
FREE
FREE

Delighted to discover that their
red-skinned friend was still alive, they set out to find him. He was coming
down the steps of the opera house just as they arrived there, and his joy on
seeing them was very great. He insisted on their accompanying him to a
restaurant.

Over his coffee, Jake explained that
after being shot by the man from Pike County, he had crawled to the Indian
encampment. There his wounds had been healed by the use of certain medicaments
secret to the squaws of his tribe. It was this same elixir that he was now
selling in conjunction with the “Chamber of American Horrors.”

Lem
in his
turn told how he, had been scalped and how Mr. Whipple had arrived just in time
to carry him to the hospital. After listening sympathetically to the lad’s
story, Jake expressed his anger in no uncertain terms. He condemned Chief
Satinpenny
for being a hothead, and assured
Lem
and Mr. Whipple that the respectable members of the
tribe frowned on
Satinpenny’s
activities.

Although Mr. Whipple believed Jake,
he was not satisfied that the Indian rising was as simple as it seemed. “Where,”
he asked the friendly redskin, “had
Satinpenny
obtained the machine guns and whisky needed to keep’ his warriors in the field?”

Jake was unable to answer this
question, and Mr. Whipple smiled as though he knew a great deal more than he
was prepared to divulge at this time.

“I remember your administration very
well,” said
Sylvanus
Snodgrasse
to Mr. Whipple. “It will be an honor to have you and your young friend, whom I
also know and admire, in my employ.”

“Thank you,” said both
Shagpoke
and
Lem
together.

“You will spend today rehearsing
your roles and tomorrow you will appear in the pageant.”

It was through the good offices of
Jake Raven that the above interview was made possible. Realizing how poor they
were, he had suggested that the two friends abandon their own little show and
obtain positions in the one with which he was traveling.

As soon as
Shagpoke
and
Lem
left the manager’s office, an inner door
opened and through it entered a certain man. If they had seen him and had known
who he was, they would have been greatly surprised. Moreover, they would not
have been quite so happy over their new jobs.

This stranger was none other than
the fat man in the Chesterfield overcoat, Operative 6348XM, or Comrade Z as he
was known at a different address. His presence in
Snodgrasse’s
office is explained by the fact that the “Chamber of American Horrors, Animate
and Inanimate
Hideosities
,” although it appeared to
be a museum, was in reality a bureau for disseminating propaganda of the most
subversive nature. It had been created and financed to this end by the same
groups that employed the fat man.

Snodgrasse
had become one of their agents because of his inability to sell his “poems.”
Like many another “poet,” he blamed his literary failure on the American public
instead of on his own lack of talent, and his desire for revolution was really
a desire for revenge. Furthermore, having lost faith in himself, he thought it
his duty to undermine the nation’s faith in itself.

As its name promised, the show was
divided into two parts, “animate” and “inanimate.” Let us first briefly
consider the latter, which consisted of innumerable objects culled from the
popular art of the country and of an equally large number of manufactured
articles of the kind detested so heartily by Chief
Satinpenny
.

(“Can this be a coincidence?” Mr.
Whipple was later to ask.)

The hall which led to the main room
of the “inanimate” exhibit was lined with sculptures in plaster. Among the most
striking of these was a Venus de Milo with a clock in her abdomen, a copy of
Power’s “Greek Slave” with elastic bandages on all her joints, A Hercules
wearing a small, compact truss.

In the center of the principal salon
was a gigantic hemorrhoid that was lit from within by electric lights. To give
the effect of throbbing pain, these lights went on and off.

All was not medical, however. Along
the walls were tables on which were displayed collections of objects whose
distinction lay in the great skill with which their materials had been
disguised. Paper had been made to look like wood, wood like rubber, rubber like
steel, steel like cheese, cheese like glass, and, finally, glass like paper.

Other tables carried instruments
whose purposes were dual and sometimes triple or even sextuple. Among the most
ingenious were pencil sharpeners that could also be used as
earpicks
,
can openers as hair brushes. Then, too, there was a large variety of objects
whose real uses had been cleverly camouflaged. The visitor saw flower pots that
were really
victrolas
, revolvers that held candy,
candy that held collar buttons and so forth.

The “animate” part of the show took
place in the auditorium of the opera house. It was called “The Pageant of
America or A Curse on Columbus,” and consisted of a series of short sketches in
which Quakers were shown being branded, Indians brutalized and cheated, Negroes
sold, children sweated to death.
Snodgrasse
tried to
make obvious the relationship between these sketches and the “inanimate”
exhibit by a little speech in which he claimed that the former had resulted in
the latter. His arguments were not very convincing, however.

The “pageant” culminated in a small
playlet
which I will attempt to set down from memory. When
the curtain rises, the audience sees the comfortable parlor of a typical
American home. An old, white-haired grandmother is knitting near the fire while
the three small sons of her dead daughter play together on the floor. From a radio
in the corner comes a rich, melodic voice.

Radio: “The Indefatigable Investment
Company of Wall Street wishes its unseen audience all happiness, health and
wealth, especially the latter. Widows, orphans, cripples, are you getting a
large enough return on your capital? Is the money left by your departed ones
bringing you all that they desired you to have in the way of comforts? Write or
telephone…”

Here the stage becomes dark for a
few seconds. When the lights are bright again, we hear the same voice, but see
that this time it comes from a sleek, young salesman. He is talking to the old
grandmother. The impression given is that of a snake and a bird. The old lady
is the bird, of course.

Sleek Salesman: “Dear Madam, in
South America
lies
the fair, fertile land of
Iguania
. It is a marvelous country, rich in minerals and
oil. For five thousand dollars—yes, Madam, I’m advising you to sell all your
Liberty Bonds—you will get ten of our Gold
Iguanians
,
which yield seventeen per centum per annum. These bonds are secured by a first
mortgage on all the natural resources of
Iguania
.”

Grandmother: “But I…”

Sleek Salesman: “You will have to
act fast, as we have only a limited number of Gold
Iguanians
left. The ones I am offering you are part of a series set aside by our company
especially for widows and orphans. It was necessary for us to do this because
otherwise the big banks and mortgage companies would have snatched up the
entire issue.”

Grandmother: “But I…”

The Three Small Sons: “Goo, goo…”

Sleek Salesman: “Think of these
kiddies, Madam. Soon they will be ready for college. They will want
Brooks
suits and banjos and fur coats like the other boys.
How will you feel when you have to refuse them these things because of your
stubbornness?”

Here the curtain falls for a change
of scene. It rises again on a busy street. The old grandmother is seen lying in
the gutter with her head pillowed against the curb. Around her are arranged her
three grandchildren, all very evidently dead of starvation.

Grandmother (feebly to the people
who hurry past): “We are starving. Bread…bread…”

No one pays any attention to her and
she dies.

An idle breeze plays mischievously
with the rags draping the four corpses. Suddenly it whirls aloft several sheets
of highly engraved paper, one of which is blown across the path of two
gentlemen in silk hats, on whose vests huge dollar signs are embroidered. They
are evidently millionaires.

First Millionaire (picking up
engraved paper): “Hey, Bill, isn’t this one of your
Iguanian
Gold Bonds?”
( He
laughs.)

Second Millionaire (echoing his
companion’s laughter): “Sure enough. That’s from the special issue for widows
and orphans. I got them out in 1928 and they sold like hot cakes.
( He
turns the bond over in his hands, admiring it.) I’ll
tell you one thing,
George,
it certainly pays to do a
good printing job.”