I 
American Agriculturist, November 22, 1924 
365 
The Trouble Maker 
By E. R. Eastman 
CHAPTER VII 
L EAVING old George, the Whip Man, 
Jim walked down the midway. 
The ball game or the speech-making had 
not yet begun and the folks were wander¬ 
ing back and forth in quest of novelty 
and amusement. Country boys loitered 
along swinging hands blissfully with 
their “best girls,” while conversation 
between them was somewhat slowed up 
by the newly made sticky taffy on which 
they chewed industriously. The cheerful 
rattle of the soft-drink bottles mingled 
with the popping of the corks constantly 
enticed nickles from the pockets of the 
hot and thirsty crowd. The merry-go- 
round, with its tunes ten years behind 
the times, surrounded by a pushing, 
jostling crowd of hilarious children, all 
added to the jollity of the holiday spirit. 
While it was rather early in the season 
for crop and vegetable exhibits, a trip 
through the exhibition halls reminded 
Jim again of the ability of farmers to 
produce, and produce well. Great yellow 
pumpkins and squash, any one of which 
would have taxed his strength to carry 
far; early varieties of husk corn and the 
green stalks of the silage corn rising 
fifteen feet in the air; colorful apples of 
every variety, pears, peaches, grapes, and 
in fact nearly everything which can be 
grown in the north temperate zone filled 
the halls and the booths to overflowing, 
all striking proof that farmers could, if 
necessary, still live, and live well, as their 
fathers lived before them, from the 
products that they themselves grew on 
their own farms. 
B ECOMING tired, Jim left the ex¬ 
hibits and wandered over to the 
race-track. Faintly above the noise of 
the midway he could hear the approach 
of beating drums and on the other end of 
the grounds he could see the Speed town 
band coming through the entrance gate. 
Resplendent in their uniforms with 
shining instruments gleaming in the 
morning sunshine, they swung across the 
lot and came up the race-track toward 
Jim. A body of uniformed men, large or 
small, marching to drums stirs one of the 
strongest and most elemental emotions of 
men. If religion is an appeal to all that 
is noble and uplifting in our natures, then 
the insistent and powerful call of the 
drum and of music is indeed true religion. 
“Come!” it says, “Come! Come 
along with me! Come! Come! Come 
along with me! Leave that earthy body 
of yours and come with me to the land of 
spirit, to the land of beauty and ex¬ 
altation and happiness, where all things 
are right!” 
Against that call of the drums of the 
band, the attractions of the midway paled 
and the people rushed toward the track 
to hear and see the village band march¬ 
ing up the track to their stand. Most of 
the crowd knew the boys who played in 
the band. Many worked with them in 
the same fields, or in the village stores. 
But the bandsman now was not plain 
Joe Barrett, the farmer, or Henry Under¬ 
wood, the mail carrier. They were 
instead, somehow, some kind of higher 
beings who marched in uniform to the call 
of the drums. Lucky indeed, you were 
if they saw you as they marched by, and 
gave you a brief nod of recognition! 
A S THE band came near where Jim 
stood, there was an extra rattle of 
drums and then the opening strains of a 
march. Watching them go by, Jim, with 
a blur in his eyes and a lump in his throat, 
thought of that older brother who had 
once played in a country band and had 
inarched gaily by to the call of the drum. 
Perhaps now in the Unknown Somewhere, 
Charlie was still in line, keeping cheerful 
step to the onward beat of the drum: 
“Come! Come! Come along with me! 
Come! Come! Come along with me!” 
With the band in its stand, the crowd 
flocked back to the midway and Jim 
drifted along with it, nodding to ac¬ 
quaintances here and there, and stopping 
often to visit with friends. 
Suddenly, someone slapped him on the 
shoulder so hard as almost to knock him 
from under his hat. Turning around, 
somewhat irritated, he saw Bill Mead 
grinning at him. Bill had found a drink 
or two and was feeling, as he expressed it, 
“mighty fit.” 
“ Come over here, Jim,” he said. “ Got 
a little somethin’ I want to let you in on.” 
“I don’t want a drink, Bill, thank you 
just the same.” 
“Drink nothin’,” snorted Bill. “Who 
said anything about drink, you darn fool? 
If I had one, s’pose I’d give it away?” 
“Well, what’s bitin’ you then?” 
B ILL was always interesting. He could 
always be depended upon to furnish 
entertainment, and just then Jim was 
willing to be entertained. 
“W’hat ails you. Bill?” he repeated. 
Bill was hauling him to one side. 
“Wait till we get out of this cussed 
crowd and I’ll tell you. 
“First place,” said Bill, when they got 
where they could talk, “I thought I 
wasn’t goin’ to have no fun at all at this 
gosh-danged old fair. Got started wrong- 
end-to, this morning.” 
“How’s that?” asked Jim. 
“Well, I’ve always held this fair 
charges too much admission. Two bits is 
two bits. Have to milk a lot of cows for 
old Johnny Ball to earn twenty-five 
cents. Ma always told me to be savin’, 
too. So this mornin’ ’stead of cornin’ in 
at the gate and payin’ good coin of the 
realm to them grafters, I sneaked down 
the backside of the grounds and clum over 
the high, tight-board fence.” 
“It’s a wonder you didn’t get caught,” 
said Taylor 
“Gosh hang it! That’s just what did 
happen. When I lit on the inside. I'll be 
liornswoggled if there wasn’t old Jerry 
Snaggs, one of them fair cops, settin’ on a 
stump waitin’ fer me big as a coffin! I 
started to go away from there as fast as I 
could, but the danged old gooseberry 
hollered fer me to stop or he’d shoot. 
Wouldn’t know no better than to pop 
away either, so I put on the brakes and 
the old tin sojer came up and said he was 
goin’ to run me in. 
“I told him I wasn't aimin’ to stay to 
see his cussed bunch of swindlers anyway, 
that I’d just dropped in as ’t were fer a 
minute while I was lookin’ fer some 
strayed young stock, and if he’d let me 
go, I’d drop right back out again.” 
“Well, did he?” 
“The dod-rotted old pepper-pod said 
he was lookin’ fer strayed stock, too, and 
that by heck, he’d found one—found a 
breechy jackass that had strayed right 
over the top of the fair ground fence!” 
“Then he put you in the coop, I 
suppose.” 
“No, the old blue-bellied Presbyterian 
took me up to the gate and made me pay 
a whole dollar for a family ticket! What 
do you know about that—me with a 
family ticket, and no family and no 
prospects of none!” 
“What are you kicking about?” asked 
Jim. “I think you got off mighty lucky. 
Had no business climbing over the fence 
anyway.” 
“ Mebbe so, but it took me a long time 
to earn that dollar to get in here with, and 
now I’m goin’ to raise a little ruction 
’fore I git out. And that brings me to 
what I really sot out to tell you in the 
fust place. You seen this wild man show 
down on this here midway?” 
“I saw where it is,” said Jim. “I saw 
the pen and heard the barker, but didn’t 
go inside.” 
Bill stepped up closer and lowered his 
voice. 
“Well, I did, and what do you think I 
found?” 
“A real wild man, maybe.” 
“Wild man nothin’! I found an 
imitation and a danged poor one at that. 
What’s more, I knew him!” 
“What!” said Jim. “You knew him?” 
“Yes, sir, I knew him.” 
“Do you mean to tell me you associated 
with wild niggers in your younger days, 
Bill?” 
“Hain’t no nigger. His face is all 
painted up and he’s got some special 
false teeth with long tusks colored black. 
Over his dirty, worthless hide they’ve 
drawn on some kind of a close-fittin’ 
jacket covered with straggly hair. 
“Yes, sir, that ‘wild man right from 
darkest Africa,’ steppin’ around in there 
and snortin’ and gnashin’ his teeth hain’t 
nobody but old Hank Harkness, from 
over Cadwell Settlement way. I used to 
work with him when I was a boy.” 
Bill laid a hairy hand on Jim’s arm, and 
bringing his rather odorous mouth close 
to Jim’s ear, he whispered: 
“Now, Jimmy, what do you say we 
have some fun?” 
When Jim said, “How?”, Bill spent the 
next five minutes outlining a plan to the 
grinning boy. 
At the end. Bill said, “Well, what 
about it?” 
“All right. I’ll go you,” said Taylor. 
“ Well, then go borrow a cop’s badge for 
a few minutes from one of them police¬ 
men and come right back here.” 
J IM went to a friend who had been 
sworn in as a special officer during the 
fair, borrowed his badge and came back. 
Bill pinned the badge out of sight under 
Jim’s coat, and the two men paid their 
dimes and climbed the circular platform 
that inclosed the “dangerous and terrible 
Human-devouring Wild Man from Dark¬ 
est Africa.” 
Ranged around the railing, looking 
down on the wild man were perhaps 
fifty men, women and children, com¬ 
menting in subdued voices on the horrible 
creature who was gnashing his tusks and 
clanking a chain as he roamed, some¬ 
times on all fours and sometimes erect, 
back and forth in the small circular 
inclosure. 
When the two conspirators had squeezed 
into a narrow place next to the railing. 
Bill said in a loud voice: 
“‘Pears to me that I’ve seen that there 
wild man before. Looks sort of familiar 
like.” 
The wild man pausdu a moment and 
turned an uneasy eye to as to get a good 
look at Bill. 
“See,” said Bill. “(He knows me, too. 
Now, let’s see, let me think where I’ve 
seen him before. Reminds me some way 
of old Hank Harkness who used to live 
over Cadwell Settlement way.” 
What Has Happened in the Story Thus Far 
B RADLEY, the young county agent, has taken Dorothy to the county 
fair, and Jim Taylor, her childhood sweetheart, goes by himself. 
Jim, after much thought about the unfairness of farm conditions, has 
started to talk organized rebellion among the dairymen around him 
and his bitterest opponent is old Johnny Ball, Dorothy’s father. So 
when Bradley confides to Jim his love for Dorothy, the young farmer 
feels that everything is going against him. 
However, he goes to the fair, where he expects to talk with neighbors 
about a new organization, the Dairymen’s League. He stops to listen 
to “George the Whip Man,” an old-time trader, who amuses a growing 
crowd. 
B Y THIS time, Bill had the close 
attention of everyone in the crowd, 
and it was also plain that he had the wild 
man worried. 
“Have reason to remember that there 
Harkness, too,” he drawled on. “Lent 
him a dollar once and never got it back, 
by heck. Might’ve let me in his blasted 
old show free anyway.” 
The wild man edged over as closely to 
Bill as he could get and those nearby 
were very much surprised to hear him say 
to Bill in a low voice: 
“Shut up, you dinged fool, and go 
away from here!” 
“Hear that, folks?” said Bill. “You 
all ought to pay me for making this wild 
man talk. Uses English, too. Probably 
learned it from the missionaries in wildest 
Africa. Then again,” he added, “he 
might’ve picked it up farmin’ down Cad¬ 
well Settlement way.” 
By this time even the children in the 
crowd knew that something unusual was 
going on, and everyone was laughing and 
crowding closer to watch the horse-play. 
Those who had come first made no move 
to go away, and the crowd was constantly 
increased by new recruits. 
The wild man was plainly uncertain as 
to how to handle the situation. Should 
he plead with Bill to go away, or should he 
treat him with lofty disdain? He decided 
upon the latter course, and put much new 
energy into raving up and down in his en¬ 
closure, moaning and bellowing and 
stamping his feet in a loud and vain 
effort to distract the crowd’s attention 
from Bill’s comments. 
B UT Bill had called the cows from the 
pasture for too many years to have 
his raucous voice easily drowned out by 
even a wild man, and in spite of the 
racket, the crowd had no difficulty in 
hearing his running comment. 
“Yes, sir, the more I look at this 
specimen, the more I feel as if I’d met an 
old friend. Them ears, now, f’r instance. 
Just look at them, folks. Bigger than 
cauliflower, they be. Come to think of it 
Hank Harkness had ears just like ’em. 
And that nose, now; I’d know it any¬ 
where, even in darkest Africa! Come to 
think of it, too, old Hank was so danged 
homely that he wouldn’t need much 
changin’ to make him look wild.” 
The frantic creature in the pen again 
edged over under Bill and looking up at 
him said sotto voce: 
“If you’ll go away from here and go 
away fast. I’ll give you ten dollars.” 
“Come to remember,” continued Bill, 
paying no attention to the interruption, 
“Hank Harkness was always sort of wild, 
too. Seems as though I recall some story 
about Hank gettin’ drunk a year or so ago 
and tryin’ to rob a store. Disappeared 
right after that and the officer’s been 
lookin’ fer poor Hank ever since.” 
“By George, that’s right,” said Jim, 
catching the cue. “We’ve been lookin’ 
for the fellow that robbed that store for 
over a year.” 
All the crowd, including the wild man, 
turned to stare at Jim. 
“I’m the sheriff, you know,” he added, 
throwing back his coat and giving them 
a glimpse of his badge, “and I’m cer¬ 
tainly obliged to you, sir,” turning to 
Bill, “for locating this Harkness for me.” 
Then to the dazed man in the pit 
below, Jim said, pointing to his badge: 
“Henry Harkness, in the name of the 
people of the State of New York, I 
arrest you. Will you come with me 
peacefully, or shall I put the irans on?” 
Harkness took one long startled look at 
the badge of authority and with a hoarse 
bellow of rage and fear, he plunged under 
the platform, lit running on the ground 
on the other side, hit the earth about 
three times between his pen and the out¬ 
side fair ground fence, and before the 
amazed crowd had quite realized what 
had happened, the wild man, scaling the 
high board fence, disappeared on the other 
side, and those parts knew him no more. 
(Continued on page 370) 
