Part 25 (1/2)

Colonel Ward blinked without appearing to understand.

But the foreman of the Smyrna Ancients immediately made it evident that he had evolved a peculiar method of dealing with the case in hand. He drove Imogene straight at the goggling referee.

”Up that tree!” roared Hiram. ”She'll kill you if you don't.”

Indeed, the elephant was brandis.h.i.+ng her trunk in a ferocious manner.

A ladder was leaning against a near-by elm, and Colonel Ward, almost under the trudging feet of the huge beast, tossed dignity to the winds.

He ran up the ladder, and Imogene, responding to a cuff on her head, promptly dragged it away from the tree.

”Only three minutes left to get Hecla into position,” Hiram shouted.

”Referee says so. Lively with her!”

Around and around in a circle he kept Imogene shambling, driving the crowd back from the tree. The unhappy Colonel was marooned there in solitary state.

At first the Vienna company showed a hesitating inclination to interfere with the placing of Hecla, suspecting something untoward in the astonis.h.i.+ng elevation of the referee. But even Uncle Trufant was slow to a.s.sume the responsibility of interfering with a company's right of contest.

The Ancients located their engine, coupled the hose, and ran it out with alacrity.

”Colonel Ward,” shouted Hiram, ”you've tried to do it, but you can't.

If it's got to be dog eat dog, and no gents need apply at a firemen's muster, then here's where we have our part of the lunch. Did you measure in twenty extry feet up to your spit mark? Speak up! A quick answer turneth away the hose!”

By this time the crew was gently working the brakes of old Hecla.

The hose quivered, and the four men at the nozzle felt it twitching as the water pressed at the closed valve. They were grinning, for now they realized the nature of their foreman's mode of persuasion.

Vienna realized it, too, for with a howl of protest her men came swarming into the square.

”Souse the hide off'm the red-bellied sons of Gehenna!” Hiram yelled, and the hos.e.m.e.n, obedient to the word, swept the hissing stream on the enemy.

Men who will face bullets will run from hornets.

Men who will charge cannon can be routed by water.

The men at the brakes of old Hecla pumped till the tub jigged on her trucks like a fantastic dancer. To right, to left, in whoos.h.i.+ng circles, or dwelling for an instant on some particularly obstreperous Vienna man, the great stream played. Some were knocked flat, some fell and were rolled bodily out of the square by the stream, others ran wildly with their arms over their heads. The air was full of leather hats, spinning as the water struck them. Every now and then the hos.e.m.e.n elevated the nozzle and gave Colonel Gideon Ward his share. A half-dozen times he nearly fell off his perch and flapped out like a rag on a bush.

”It certainly ain't no place for ladies!” communed Hiram with himself, gazing abroad from his elevated position on Imogene's neck. ”I thought it was once, but it ain't.”

”Colonel Gideon Ward,” he shouted to the limp and dripping figure in the tree, ”do you own up?”

The Colonel withdrew one arm to shake his fist at the speaker, and narrowly saved himself by instantly clutching again, for the crackling stream tore at him viciously.

”We'll drownd ye where ye hang,” roared the foreman of the Ancients, ”before we'll let you or any other pirate rinky-d.i.n.k us out of what belongs to us.”

Like some Hindu magician transplanted to Yankeedom he bestrode the neck of his elephant, and with his hand summoned the waving stream to do his will. Now he directed its spitting force on the infuriated Colonel; now he put to flight some Vienna man who plucked up a little fleeting courage.

And at last Colonel Ward knuckled. There was nothing else to do.

”I made a mistake,” he said, in a moment of respite from the stream.