Death of Red Peril: A Tragic Melodrama

I

JOHN brought his off eye to bear on me: —

What do them old coots down to the store do? Why, one of ’em will think up a horse that’s been dead forty year and then they’ll set around remembering this and that about that horse until they’ve made a resurrection of him. You’d think he was a regular Grattan Bars, the way they talk, telling one thing and another, when a man knows if that horse had n’t ’ve had a breeching to keep his tail end off the ground he could hardly have walked from here to Boonville.

A horse race is a handsome thing to watch if a man has his money on a sure proposition. My pa was always a great hand at a horse race. But when he took to a boat and my mother he did n’t have no more time for it. So he got interested in another sport.

Did you ever hear of racing caterpillars? No? Well, it used to be a great thing on the canawl. My pa used to have a lot of them insects on hand every fall, and the way he could get them to run would make a man have his eyes examined.

The way we raced caterpillars was to set them in a napkin ring on a table, one facing one way and one the other. Outside the napkin ring was drawed a circle in chalk three feet acrost. Then a man lifted the ring and the handlers was allowed one jab with a darning needle to get their caterpillars started. The one that got outside the chalk circle the first was the one that won the race.

I remember my pa tried out a lot of breeds, and he got hold of some pretty fast steppers. But there was n’t one of them could equal Red Peril. To see him you would n’t believe he could run. He was all red and kind of stubby, and he had a sort of a wart behind that you’d think would get in his way. There was n’t anything fancy in his looks. He’d just set still studying the ground and make you think he was dreaming about last year’s oats; but when you set him in the starting ring he’d hitch himself up behind like a man lifting on his galluses, and then he’d light out for glory.

Pa come acrost Red Peril down in Westernville. Ma’s relatives resided there, and it being Sunday we’d all gone in to church. We was riding back in a hired rig with a dandy trotter, and Pa was pushing her right along and Ma was talking sermon and clothes, and me and my sister was setting on the back seat playing poke your nose, when all of a sudden Pa hollers, ’Whoa!’ and set the horse right down on the breeching. Ma let out a holler and come to rest on the dashboard with her head under the horse. ‘My gracious land!’ she says.

‘ What’s happened? ’ Pa was out on the other side of the road right down in the mud in his Sunday pants, a-wropping up something in his yeller handkerchief. Ma begun to get riled. ‘What you doing, Pa?’ she says. ‘What you got there?’ Pa was putting his handkerchief back into his inside pocket. Then he come back over the wheel and got him a chew. ‘ Leeza,’ he says, ’I got the fastest caterpillar in seven counties. It’s an act of Providence I seen him, the way he jumped the ruts.’ ‘It’s an act of God I ain’t laying dead under the back end of that horse,’ says Ma. ‘I’ve gone and spoilt my Sunday hat.’ ‘Never mind,’ says Pa; ‘Red Peril will earn you a new one.’ Just like that he named him. He was the fastest caterpillar in seven counties.

When we got back onto the boat, while Ma was turning up the supper, Pa set him down to the table under the lamp and pulled out the handkerchief. ‘You two devils stand there and there,’ he says to me and my sister, ‘and if you let him get by I’ll leather the soap out of you.’

So we stood there and he undid the handkerchief, and out walked one of them red, long-haired caterpillars. He walked right to the middle of the table, and then he took a short turn and put his nose in his tail and went to sleep.

‘ Who’d think that insect could make such a break for freedom as I seen him make?’ says Pa, and he got out a empty Brandreth box and filled it up with some towel and put the caterpillar inside. ‘He needs a rest,’ says Pa. ‘He needs to get used to his stall. When he limbers up I’ll commence training him. Now then,’ he says, putting the box on the shelf back of the stove, ‘don’t none of you say a word about him.’

He got out a pipe and set there smoking and figuring, and we could see he was studying out just how he’d make a world-beater out of that bug. ‘What you going to feed him?’ asks Ma. ‘If I wasn’t afraid of constipating him,’ Pa says, ‘I’d try him out with milkweed.’

Next day we hauled up the Lansing Kill Gorge. Ned Kilbourne, Pa’s driver, come aboard in the morning, and he took a look at that caterpillar. He took him out of the box and felt his legs and laid him down on the table and went clean over him. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘he don’t look like a great lot, but I’ve knowed some of that red variety could chug along pretty smart.’ Then he touched him with a pin. It was a sudden sight.

It looked like the rear end of that caterpillar was racing the front end, but it could n’t never quite get by. Afore either Ned or Pa could get a move Red Peril had made a turn around the sugar bowl and run solid aground in the butter dish.

Pa let out a loud swear. ‘Look out he don’t pull a tendon,’ he says. ‘Butter’s a bad thing. A man has to be careful. Jeepers,’ he says, picking him up and taking him over to the stove to dry, ‘I’ll handle him myself. I don’t want no rumsoaked bezabors dishing my beans.’

‘I did n’t mean harm, Will,’ says Ned. ‘I was just curious.’

There was something extraordinary about that caterpillar. He was intelligent. It seemed he just could n’t abide the feel of sharp iron. It got so that if Pa reached for the lapel of his coat Red Peril would light out. It must have been he was tender. I said he had a sort of a wart behind, and I guess he liked to find it a place of safety.

We was all terrible proud of that bird. Pa took to timing him on the track. He beat all known time holler. He got to know that as soon as he crossed the chalk he would get back safe in his quarters. Only when we tried sprinting him across the supper table, if he saw a piece of butter he’d pull up short and bolt back where he come from. He had a mortal fear of butter.

Well, Pa trained him three nights. It was a sight to see him there at the table, a big man with a needle in his hand, moving the lamp around and studying out the identical spot that caterpillar wanted most to get out of the needle’s way. Pretty soon he found it, and then he says to Ned, ‘I’ll race him agin all comers at all odds.’ ‘Well, Will,’says Ned, ‘I guess it’s a safe proposition.’

II

We hauled up the feeder to Forestport and got us a load of potatoes. We raced him there against Charley Mack, the bank-walker’s, Leopard Pillar, one of them tufted breeds with a row of black buttons down the back. The Leopard was well liked and had won several races that season, and there was quite a few boaters around that fancied him. Pa argued for favorable odds, saying he was racing a maiden caterpillar; and there was a lot of money laid out, and Pa and Ned managed to cover the most of it. As for the race, there was n’t anything to it. While we was putting him in the ring— one of them birchbark and sweet grass ones Indians make — Red Peril did n’t act very good. I guess the smell and the crowd kind of upset him. He was nervous and kept fidgeting with his front feet; but they had n’t more’n lifted the ring than he lit out under the edge as tight as he could make it, and Pa touched him with the needle just as he lepped the line. Me and my sister was supposed to be in bed, but Ma had gone visiting in Forestport and we’d snuck in and was under the table, which had a red cloth onto it, and I can tell you there was some shouting. There was some could n’t believe that insect had been inside the ring at all; and there was some said he must be a cross with a dragon fly or a side-hill gouger; but old Charley Mack, that’d worked in the camps, said he guessed Red Peril must be descended from the caterpillars Paul Bunyan used to race. He said you could tell by the bump on his tail, which Paul used to put on all his caterpillars, seeing as how the smallest pointed object he could hold in his hand was a peavy.

Well, Pa raced him a couple of more times and he won just as easy, and Pa cleared up close to a hundred dollars in three races. That caterpillar was a mammoth wonder, and word of him got going and people commenced talking him up everywhere, so it was hard to race him around these parts.

But about that time the lock keeper of Number One on the feeder come across a pretty swift article that the people round Rome thought high of. And as our boat was headed down the gorge, word got ahead about Red Peril, and people began to look out for the race.

We come into Number One about four o’clock, and Pa tied up right there and went on shore with his box in his pocket and Red Peril inside the box. There must have been ten men crowded into the shanty, and as many more again outside looking in the windows and door. The lock tender was a skinny bezabor from Stittville, who thought he knew a lot about racing caterpillars; and, come to think of it, maybe he did. His name was Henry Buscerck, and he had a bad tooth in front he used to suck at a lot.

Well, him and Pa set their caterpillars on the table for the crowd to see, and I must say Buscerck’s caterpillar was as handsome a brute as you could wish to look at, bright bay with black points and a short fine coat. He had a way of looking right and left, too, that made him handsome. But Pa did n’t bother to look at him. Red Peril was a natural marvel, and he knew it.

Buscerck was a sly, twirpish man, and he must’ve heard about Red Peril — right from the beginning, as it turned out; for he laid oul the course in yeller chalk. They used Pa’s ring, a big silver one he’d bought secondhand just for Red Peril. They laid out a lot of money, and Dennison Smith lifted the ring. The way Red Peril histed himself out from under would raise a man’s blood pressure twenty notches. I swear you could see the hair lay down on his back. Why, that black-pointed bay was left nowhere! It did n’t seem like he moved. But Red Peril was just gathering himself for a fast finish over the line when he seen it was yeller. He reared right up; he must’ve thought it was butter, by Jeepers, the way he whirled on his hind legs and went the way he’d come. Pa begun to get scared, and he shook his needle behind Red Peril, but that caterpillar was more scared of butter than he ever was of cold steel. He passed the other insect afore he’d got halfway to the line. By Cripus, you’d ought to’ve heard the cheering from the Forestport crews. The Rome men was green. But when he got to the line, danged if that caterpillar did n’t shy agin and run around the circle twicet, and then it seemed like his heart had gone in on him, and he crept right back to the middle of the circle and lay there hiding his head. It was the pitifullest sight a man ever looked at. You could almost hear him moaning, and he shook all over.

I’ve never seen a man so riled as Pa was. The water was running right out of his eyes. He picked up Red Peril and he says, ‘This here’s no race.’ He picked up his money and he says, ‘The course was illegal, with that yeller chalk.’ Then he squashed the other caterpillar, which was just getting ready to cross the line, and he looks at Buscerck and says, ‘What’re you going to do about that?’

Buscerck says, ‘I’m going to collect my money. My caterpillar would have beat.’

‘If you want to call that a finish you can,’ says Pa, pointing to the squashed bay one, ‘ but a baby could see he’s still got to reach the line. Red Peril got to wire and come back and got to it again afore your hayseed worm got half his feet on the ground. If it was any other man owned him,’ Pa says, ‘I’d feel sorry I squashed him.’

He stepped out of the house, but Buscerck laid a-hold of his pants and says, ‘You got to pay, Hemstreet. A man can’t get away with no such excuses in the city of Rome.’

Pa did n’t say nothing. He just hauled off and sunk his fist, and Buscerck come to inside the lock, which was at low level right then. He waded out the lower end and he says, ‘I’ll have you arrested for this.’ Pa says, ‘All right; but if I ever catch you around this lock again I’ll let you have a feel with your other eye.’

Nobody else wanted to collect money from Pa, on account of his build, mostly, so we went back to the boat. Pa put Red Peril to bed for two days. It took him all of that to get over his fright at the yeller circle. Pa even made us go without butter for a spell, thinking Red Peril might know the smell of it. He was such an intelligent, thinking animal, a man could n’t tell nothing about him.

III

But next morning the sheriff comes aboard and arrests Pa with a warrant and takes him afore a justice of the peace. That was old Oscar Snipe. He’d heard all about the race, and I think he was feeling pleasant with Pa, because right off they commenced talking breeds. It would have gone off good only Pa’d been having a round with the sheriff. They come in arm in arm, singing a Hallelujah meeting song; but Pa was polite, and when Oscar says, ‘What’s this?’ he only says, ‘Well, well.’

‘I hear you’ve got a good caterpillar,’ says the judge.

‘Well, well,’ says Pa. It was all he could think of to say.

‘What breed is he?’ says Oscar, taking a chew.

‘Well,’ says Pa, ‘well, well.’

Ned Kilbourne says he was a red one.

‘That’s a good breed,’ says Oscar, folding his hands on his stummick and spitting over his thumbs and between his knees and into the sandbox all in one spit. ‘I kind of fancy the yeller ones myself. You ’re a connesewer,’ he says to Pa, ‘and so’m I, and between connesewers I’d like to show you one. He’s as neat a stepper as there is in this county.’

‘Well, well,’says Pa, kind of cold around the eyes and looking at the lithograph of Mrs. Snipe done in a hair frame over the sink.

Oscar slews around and fetches a box out of his back pocket and shows us a sweet little yeller one.

‘There she is,’ he says, and waits for praise.

‘She was a good woman,’ Pa said after a while, looking at the picture, ‘if any woman that’s four times a widow can be called such.’

‘Not her,’ says Oscar. ‘It’s this yeller caterpillar.’

Pa slung his eyes on the insect which Oscar was holding, and it seemed like he’d just got an idee.

‘Fast?’ he says, deep down. ‘That thing run! Why, a snail with the stringhalt could spit in his eye.’

Old Oscar come to a boil quick.

‘Evidence. Bring me the evidence.’

He spit, and he was that mad he let his whole chew get away from him without noticing. Buscerck says, ‘Here,’ and takes his hand off’n his right eye.

Pa never took no notice of nothing after that but the eye. It was the shiniest black onion I ever see on a man. Oscar says, ‘Forty dollars!’ And Pa pays and says, ‘It’s worth it.’

But it don’t never pay to make an enemy in horse racing or caterpillars, as you will see, after I’ve got around to telling you.

Well, we raced Red Peril nine times after that, all along the Big Ditch, and you can hear to this day — yes, sir — that there never was a caterpillar alive could run like Red Peril. Pa got rich onto him. He allowed to buy a new team in the spring. If he could only’ve started a breed from that bug, his fortune would’ve been made and Henry Ford would’ve looked like a bent nickel alongside of me to-day. But caterpillars are n’t built like Ford cars. We beat all the great caterpillars of the year, and it being a time for a late winter, there was some fast running. We raced the Buffalo Big Blue and Fenwick’s Night Mail and Wilson’s Joe of Barneveld. There was n’t one could touch Red Peril. It was close into October when a crowd got together and brought up the Black Arrer of Ava to race us, but Red Peril beat him by an inch. And after that there was n’t a caterpillar in the state would race Pa’s.

He was mighty chesty them days and had come to be quite a figger down the canawl. People come aboard to talk with him and admire Red Peril; and Pa got the idea of charging five cents a sight, and that made for more money even if there was n’t no more running for the animile. He commenced to get fat.

And then come the time that comes to all caterpillars. And it goes to show that a man ought to be as careful of his enemies as he is lending money to friends.

IV

We was hauling down the Lansing Kill again and we’d just crossed the aqueduct over Stringer Brook when the lock keeper, that minded it and the lock just below, come out and says there was quite a lot of money being put up on a caterpillar they’d collected down in Rome.

Well, Pa went in and he got out Red Peril and tried him out. He was fat and his stifles acted kind of stiff, but you could see with half an eye he was still fast. His start was a mite slower, but he made great speed once he got going.

‘He’s not in the best shape in the world,’ Pa says, ‘and if it was any other bug I would n’t want to run him. But I’ll trust the old brute,’ and he commenced brushing him up with a toothbrush he’d bought a-purpose.

‘Yeanh,’ says Ned. ‘It may not be right, but. we’ve got to consider the public.’

By what happened after, we might have known that we’d meet up with that caterpillar at Number One Lock; but there was n’t no sign of Buscerck, and Pa was so excited at racing Red Peril again that I doubt if he noticed where he was at all. He was all rigged out for the occasion. He had on a black hat and a new red boating waistcoat, and when he busted loose with his horn for the lock you’d have thought he wanted to wake up all the deef-and-dumbers in seven counties. We tied by the upper gates and left the team to graze; and there was quite a crowd on hand. About nine morning boats was tied along the towpath, and all the afternoon boats waited. People was hanging around, and when they heard Pa whanging his horn they let out a great cheer. He took off his hat to some of the ladies, and then he took Red Peril out of his pocket and everybody cheered some more.

‘Who owns this here caterpillar I’ve been hearing about?’ Pa asks. ‘Where is he? Why don’t he bring out his pore contraption?’

A feller says he’s in the shanty.

‘What’s his name?’ says Pa.

‘Martin Henry’s running him. He’s called the Horned Demon of Rome.’

‘Dinged if I ever thought to see him at my time of life,’ says Pa. And he goes in. Inside there was a lot of men talking and smoking and drinking and laying money faster than leghorns can lay eggs, and when Pa comes in they let out a great howdy, and when Pa put down the Brandreth box on the table they crowded round; and you’d ought to ’ve heard the mammoth shout they give when Red Peril climbed out of his box. And well they might. Yes, sir!

You can tell that caterpillar’s a thoroughbred. He’s shining right down to the root of each hair. He’s round, but he ain’t too fat. He don’t look as supple as he used to, but the folks can’t tell that. He’s got the winner’s look, and he prances into the centre of the ring with a kind of delicate canter that was as near single footing as I ever see a caterpillar get to. By Jeepers Cripus! I felt proud to be in the same family as him, and I was n’t only a little lad.

Pa waits for the admiration to die down, and he lays out his money, and he says to Martin Henry, ‘Let’s see your ring-boned swivel-hocked imitation of a bug.'

Martin answers, ‘Well, he ain’t much to look at, maybe, but you’ll be surprised to see how he can push along.’

And he lays down the dangedest lump of worm you ever set your eyes on. It’s the kind of insect a man might expect to see in France or one of them furrin lands. It’s about two and a half inches long and stands only half a thumbnail at the shoulder. It’s green and as hairless as a newborn egg, and it crouches down squinting around at Red Peril like a man with sweat in his eye. It ain’t natural nor refined to look at such a bug, let alone race it.

When Pa seen it, he let out a shout and laughed. He could n’t talk from laughing.

But the crowd did n’t say a lot, having more money on the race than ever was before or since on a similar occasion. It was so much that even Pa commenced to be serious. Well, they put ’em in the ring together and Red Peril kept over on his side with a sort of intelligent dislike. He was the brainiest article in the caterpillar line I ever knowed. The other one just hunkered down with a mean look in his eye.

Millard Thompson held the ring. He counted, ‘ One — two — three — and off.’ Some folks said it was the highest he knew how to count, but he always got that far anyhow, even if it took quite a while for him to remember what figger to commence with.

The ring come off and Pa and Martin Henry sunk their needles — at least they almost sunk them, for just then them standing close to the course seen that Horned Demon sink his horns into the back end of Red Peril. He was always a sensitive animal, Red Peril was, and if a needle made him start you can think for yourself what them two horns did for him. He cleared twelve inches in one jump — but then he sot right down on his belly, trembling.

‘Foul!’ bellers Pa. ‘My ’pillar’s fouled.’

‘It ain’t in the rule book,’ Millard says.

‘It’s a foul!’ yells Pa; and all the Forestport men yell, ‘Foul! Foul!’

But it was n’t allowed. The Horned Demon commenced walking to the circle — he could n’t move much faster than a barrel can roll uphill, but he was getting there. We all seen two things, then. Red Peril was dying, and we was losing the race. Pa stood there kind of foamy in his beard, and the water running right out of both eyes. It’s an awful thing to see a big man cry in public. But Ned saved us. He seen Red Peril was dying, the way he wiggled, and he figgered, with the money he had on him, he’d make him win if he could.

He leans over and puts his nose into Red Peril’s ear, and he shouts, ‘My Cripus, you’ve gone and dropped the butter!’

Something got into that caterpillar’s brain, dying as he was, and he let out the smallest squeak of a hollering fright I ever listened to a caterpillar make. There was a convulsion got into him. He looked like a three-dollar mule with the wind colic, and then he gave a bound. My holy! How that caterpillar did rise up. When he come down again, he was stone dead, but he lay with his chin across the line. He’d won the race. The Horned Demon was blowing bad and only halfway to the line. . . .

Well, we won. But I think Pa’s heart was busted by the squeal he heard Red Peril make when he died. He could n’t abide Ned’s face after that, though he knowed Ned had saved the day for him. But he put Red Peril’s carcase in his pocket with the money and walks out.

And there he seen Buscerck standing at the sluices. Pa stood looking at him. The sheriff was alongside Buscerck and Oscar Snipe on the other side, and Buscerck guessed he had the law behind him.

‘Who owns that Horned Demon?’ says Pa.

‘Me,’says Buscerck with a sneer. ’He may have lost, but he done a good job doing it.’

Pa walks right up to him.

‘I’ve got another forty dollars in my pocket,’ he says, and he connected sizably.

Buscerck’s boots showed a minute. Pretty soon they let down the water and pulled him out. They had to roll a couple of gallons out of him afore they got a grunt. It served him right. He’d played foul. But the sheriff was worried, and he says to Oscar, ‘Had I ought to arrest Will?’ (Meaning Pa.)

Oscar was a sporting man He could n’t abide low dealing. He looks at Buscerck there, shaping his belly over the barrel, and he says, ‘Water never hurt a man. It keeps his hide from cracking.’ So they let Pa alone. I guess they did n’t think it was safe to have a man in jail that would cry about a caterpillar. But then they had n’t lived alongside of Red Peril like us.