Mechanic's Lien

OLD Sam Johnson strums his banjo softly as the night shadows play hide and seek across the barred windows of the jail house. In the distance a range of the Allegheny foothills weaves southward ; a new moon shines blue and gold beneath a storm cloud. Old Sam sings:

‘It’s a funny thing,’ says he, ‘how these old songs remind a feller of things that happen around him. This song now, if you take the sobs out of it, is a good starter for Sim Brawley. Any of you fellers know Sim?’

‘Sure,’ says Del Carter. ‘You mean the guy with the teeth and the bald head that runs the store at the mouth of Painter Branch.’

‘That’s the doctor.’

‘Well, if that guy ever gives his love to any Nellie, Jack, somethin’ is wrong somewhere. Down our way they say he’s the ugliest man in the county — and the orn’riest.’

‘A man,’ says Sam Johnson, ‘don’t have to be no Romeo to fall in love.’

I

Sim Brawley for as long as I can remember (says Sam Johnson) looks about the same as he does to-day. He’s over seventy now, I expect, but forty-odd years ago he’s bald as a red onion, and his front teeth stick out till it seems like his throat begins outside his face. People that see Sim for the first time have a sinkin’ feelin’ in the pits of their stummicks like they eat green watermelon, but after a while they get used to him.

He’s a storekeeper at various places up and down this river all his life, and if God gives him an ugly map to begin with He makes up for it by givin’ Sim the schemin’est head in the valley. I don’t mean he’s a man like Joe Taylor, that makes his way by force of brain power, for Sim is as different from Joe Taylor as a pestilence is different from a hurricane. Joe takes what he wants and the Devil can have the rest. Sim gets along by pryin’ a little here and squeezin’ a little there, hopin’ that folks won’t notice it. He’s the born schemer of little things, the kind of a man it will do more good to make five dollars on a cow trade than to merge some railroads.

I remember one time John Rumbaw, that’s dead now, gives me the low-down on how Sim makes part of that fifty thousand dollars he’s supposed to lay away. John, if you remember, ain’t blessed with more brains than the law allows. One day I am ridin’ by John’s place on some of Joe Taylor’s business, when John comes out and stops me.

‘Sam,’ says he, ‘I want you to figger out somethin’. About a month ago I kill a hog, and take it down to Sim Brawley, and sell it to him for eight dollars. Sim says, “I won’t pay you now. We’ll just put this eight dollars on your account.” I don’t owe him nothin’, but I say it’s all right with me. So he marks somethin’ down in his book, and now he sends me a bill for eight dollars for the hog. How does that happen ? ’

I figure it happens because Sim will do things like that, and say so. ‘Now, John,’ says I, ‘you don’t owe Sim Brawley for this hog. You ought to see that. He owes you. The thing for you to do is to take this bill down to him and tell him if he don’t give you credit for that hog you are goin’ to sue him. That’ll bring him around. See if it don’t.’

John says he will do it.

About a week after this I see John again, and he says, ‘ Well, in a way he pays me for that hog, and in a way he don’t.’

‘Meanin’ what?’

‘When I go down to him with this bill,’ says he, ‘ Sim says he don’t know how he makes a mistake of that kind. Of course, I sell the hog to him. The only thing he can see to do, says he, since I owe him eight dollars accordin’ to the bill and he owes me eight dollars for the hog, is to give each other receipts in full payment. That will straighten the whole thing up on his books. We do so, and while it seems to figger out right, still I don’t get no money for the hog.’

There is just one kind of schemin’, though, that Sim don’t have much success with. He don’t do much good snarin’ himself a wife, or at least that’s the case down to the year of our Lord 1907. It ain’t so much because Sim’s as ugly as a mud fence — for ugliness, if you notice, ain’t no real bar to matrimony — as it is because the women don’t fall for his brand of courtship. Gettin’ a woman, to Sim, is like makin’ a horse trade; he has to do a lot of headwork. He tries the marriage bureaus without gettin’ further than the Charleston depot to meet a woman that turns back as soon as she lays eyes on him, and he tries to blackmail the Widow Sherril that’s havin’ an affair with the Deputy Sheriff, and all he gets is a black eye. These things don’t discourage Sim, but he don’t get a real good break till the time of the HandleyCalhoun case.

II

All of you fellers, I expect, are too young to remember the HandleyCalhoun case, so I’ll tell you about it. There is once a lumberman in this country named Julian Handley, that operates sawmills mostly over on the head of Eighteen-Mile Creek. Along about 1900 Julian is gettin’ well along in years and his wife is dead, so he quits the lumber business and builds himself a nice house down the river below Midway. He is a big, healthy, rough-and-tumble man that likes the women, and he always keeps a goodlookin’ woman at his house to do the housework. Julian Handley’s housekeepers cause a lot of gossip among the womenfolks around the country, but because Julian is open-hearted and donates heavy to the Baptist preacher, folks say it’s his own business.

Late in the fall of 1906 he’s got a girl keepin’ house for him by the name of Lillie Calhoun. People says it’s a cinch she don’t amount to much, or she won’t be there, but just the same this Lillie Calhoun is a mighty fine-lookin’ young woman. She’s a blonde, with big blue eyes and a pretty complexion, and some of the men say they see the value of makin’ lots of money in the lumber business.

Maybe Lillie will be just another one of Old Man Handley’s housekeepers if it ain’t for a mighty strange occurrence. While she’s there, a man huntin’ rabbits out in the Handley orchard one mornin’ finds Old Julian sittin’ at the foot of an apple tree with an axe at his side and his skull split wide open — dead as a doornail. Then, the first thing you know, they’ve got Lillie Calhoun charged with the murder.

This is one of the times when I am pullin’ my customary sixty days for breakin’ up a church meetin’, so that I’m here when they fetch Lillie to the jail house. There’s a big crowd outside at the time, and they act ugly. Some of the women spit at Lillie and say she ought to be strung up on that maple that they use sometimes for the lynchin’s.

The jailer locks her up in the other cell block all alone. You know what that means. Nobody to talk to, nothin’ to do the livelong day but walk back and forth — and think and think. At the end of forty-eight hours they bring her out to question her; but she won’t confess, and back she goes — in solitary.

Sittin’ over here with nothin’ to do but strum the banjo and sit out the rest of my sixty days that don’t amount to much nohow, I can’t help feelin’ sorry for Lillie. So I tell Zack Twombley, that’s jailer then, that I think maybe Lillie is goin’ to commit suicide, because I hear some funny sounds over there in the night; and Zack says that won’t do at all, for he can’t have no women committin’ suicide in his jail house. The thing he’d better do, says he, is to put me and Ike Moses on the trusty list, so we can keep an eye on her. He does so, and we spend some time over at the other cell block, parkin’ our chairs against the wall.

This Ike Moses is a feller I’d tell you more about if I had the time, for he’s got a strange story. When this happens, he’s only twenty-one, a big, burly, handsome feller with blue eyes and broad shoulders, and he gets in jail because he shoots a school-teacher in the foot at a square dance. Shootin’ that school-teacher, though, is a mistake, for Ike is drunk at the time and is tryin’ to shoot his own foot. He’s the very same man that goes West later on and makes a million dollars in the oil business.

Well, Ike and me stick close to Lillie for a few days, but we don’t break no ice with her, because she thinks the officers put us over there to get somethin’ on her. It ain’t in the nature of things, though, that she can high-hat us forever, so one mornin’ Ike says, ‘Lillie, you will look a darn sight better if you put on a little powder occasionally and fix yourself up a little. You ain’t no old woman yet, by no means.’

It seems like she ain’t thought of that before, for she goes back in her cell, and after a while she comes out again lookin’ a lot better. ‘You boys look honest to me,’ says she. ‘I’m goin’ to let you in on somethin’.’

Then she tells us there is somethin’ mighty fishy about this murder. She don’t know who does it, but the reason they fasten it on her, says she, is because they find a new-dug hole in the orchard with nineteen hundred dollars in gold and her own ring in it. It’s a funny thing about that ring — it’s been lost for a week before the murder happens. The only person around the house when the ring disappears is Preacher Sniveley, the Baptist parson, and he’s the very man that commits suicide the day after the murder.

Ike and me remember about the preacher’s suicide, but nobody don’t connect him with the murder because they say he does it on account of such a horrible thing takin’ place among his own flock. What Lillie says, and the way she says it, makes me think maybe there is somethin’ more to that side of the story. Of course, the preacher bein’ dead complicates matters, for naturally there ain’t no eyewitnesses.

‘What you need to do, Lillie,’ says Ike, ‘is to get yourself a lawyer, and a good one.’

Then she tells us somethin’. She ain’t got no money to hire a lawyer, and she can’t tell her family because they don’t know what kind of a life she’s been leadin’, and think she’s doin’ honest work.

III

Ike and me think it’s a shame the girl can’t hire no lawyer, specially when maybe she ain’t guilty, and Ike says it looks like we will have to do somethin’. He don’t know what, says he, but somethin’ will turn up and we will give Lillie a lift. The next day he goes down town, for, bein’ a trusty, he can get out occasionally, and when he comes back he says, ‘Sam, I think I see the way to do somethin’ for Lillie, but I can’t tell you because it’s secret. I ’m mentionin’ this so that if you see somethin’ you can’t understand, you will know it’s all right.'

This is O. K. by me, and I fade out of sight while Ike and Lillie talk a long time together. Whatever it is he tells her, there is a lot of business connected with it, for I see he is always goin’ down town durin’ the next few days, and comin’ back with his pockets filled with legal-lookin’ papers. Him and Lillie go over these papers mighty careful. Finally the paper carryin’ stops, and one mornin’ here comes Old Lawyer Sprinston of Charleston, than which there ain’t a slicker criminal lawyer in the country. I see then that Ike ain’t dabblin’ in no twopenny business.

Of course, Ike knows I am powerful interested in Lillie’s case the same as he is, so when Sprinston leaves he says to me, ‘You see what’s goin’ on, Sam. Well, I just want to tell you that Sprinston says it looks to him like he can bring her off slick as a whistle, provided they give him a free hand and don’t crab about the expense. Seems like he means Lillie has got to have a lot of new clothes and so forth. I’ve got it all arranged about the expense, so everything looks fine.’

That’s good news all right, and I am wonderin’ how Ike pulls a deal of this kind when Sim Brawley shows up at the jail house and asks to talk to Lillie. Then I see right off what Ike is up to. I see, too, that Ike has got a head on him remindful of Joe Taylor himself. He remembers how Sim is always layin’ plots to get himself a wife, and here is a courtship made to Sim’s order. Not only that — here is a chance for Sim to grab himself off a girl that Old Julian Handley, that has a taste in these matters, has handpicked for himself.

Of course, no woman but one in Lillie’s straits will dicker with Sim, but it’s a kind of godsend to her because everybody is against her, and that has a lot to do with jury trials if you ain’t got a lawyer to make them see the other side.

What worries me more than anything else is the way Ike is mixed up in this business. Anybody that deals with Sim in any way, accordin’ to my way of thinkin’, has got about ninety-nine chances in a hundred of comin’ out on the raw end of the deal. So, while Sim and Lillie is talkin’ it over, I call Ike off to one side, and say, ‘Ike, I don’t aim to butt into your business, but after all I ain’t dumb nor blind, and things is pretty plain. What I aim to ask you is, do you have any dealin’s before this with Sim Brawley?’

‘Once,’ says Ike. ‘Last summer my old man lets me have enough money to buy a shanty boat that’s half sunk up at Raymond City, and I spend a week or two fixin’ her up. Me and another boy is gettin’ ready to make a trip up to Marmet, and we buy six boards from Sim to repair the boat. When we’re all stocked up and ready to leave, I’m just goin’ over to Sim’s to pay him for the boards when the constable comes out and attaches the boat. Sim Brawley sends him, he says, because Sim has got a mechanic’s lien on this boat for two dollars’ worth of lumber. It costs me and my old man together about fifteen dollars to get it straightened up, and at that Sim almost gets the boat.’

‘Well, if that’s the case,’ says I, ‘I don’t need to tell you to watch your step when you’re dealin’ with Sim. If I remember right, you’re in line to inherit a good farm one of these days, and I would n’t do nothin’ that would give Sim a come-back.’

‘I’ll remember what you say,’ says Ike, ‘though I don’t think you understand just what it means to Sim to get himself a wife. Look at this.’

With that he pulls out his pocketbook and shows me ten crisp five-dollar bills.

‘And that’s only half of it,’ says he. ‘The day they’re married I get fifty more, accordin’ to the written contract. It’s my job, you see, to kind of represent Sim here at the jail house, and to see that Lillie don’t get no cold feet.’

‘So, then,’ says I, ’he’s really goin’ to marry her. I thought maybe it was another housekeepin’ agreement.’

‘Not at all,’ says Ike. ‘Sim wants a wife. The agreement is they will be married as soon as the trial is over if she comes clear, or as soon as Lillie gets free again if she’s convicted. Sim says he can afford to wait, even if they give her a life sentence.’

‘Well, just the same,’ say I, ‘don’t forget about that mechanic’s lien, and don’t hook yourself for somethin’ else.’

‘I’ll try not to,’ says Ike.

Sim is mighty well pleased with things in general after his talk with Lillie. He comes back to us with his bald head shinin’ like a possum’s jaws in pokeberry time, and he says, ‘Ike, my boy, I’m mighty well satisfied with you. Step over here a minute.’

Ike steps over, and Sim does somethin’ I’m satisfied he never does before or since. He slips Ike a silver dollar!

‘Keep up the good work,’ says he. ‘There’s more where that comes from.’

IV

Well, it ain’t so long after this till the Grand Jury meets, and of course they bring in an indictment of murder against Lillie. In them times the Grand Jury meets just three days before the openin’ day of court. There ain’t no other murder cases on that docket, so they set Lillie’s case for the first day of court. It so happens that Ike’s time is up the day the Grand Jury meets, and that very same evenin’ Old Sprinston shows up at the jail house for quite a visit.

Sprinston has got an outfit with him that costs somebody plenty of money. There’s a hairdresser and a manicurist among his attendants, but the thing that never before is seen in this jail house is a whole wagon load of dresses, hats, stockin’s and shoes, and other women’s garments, fresh from Hamburger’s Department Store. I can see Sim Brawley screwin’ up his face and lookin’ sidewise when he casts his eye on the bill for this rig-out.

Sprinston has the women work on Lillie first, but when it comes to tryin’ on the clothes he won’t let nobody else in the cell block, and sends the women back to Charleston. It takes him a good two hours to get Lillie outfitted the way he wants her, and after that he spends most of the next three days over there talkin’ to her. Sometimes he loses his temper, and we can hear him over here swearin’ a blue streak.

‘Now, for God’s sake,’ says he, ‘remember to tip that hat a little to the left. Watch your hands, woman. Don’t grip them that way. Hold them like this, with the little finger pointing upward. That’s better. Now, let’s see you walk. God Almighty, woman, you ain’t carrying a bag of turnips. Pull your chin up.’

As near as we can figger out over here, Sprinston is riggin’ Lillie out to play the part of a grand lady, and he coaches her the same as if it’s a minstrel show. We can’t see how she takes it, but it must be all right, for the Sunday afternoon before the first day of court Sprinston is over there five hours, and when he leaves he says, ‘Well, Lillie, I want you to forget all the nasty things I say to you, and remember you’re a lady. We’re goin’ to keep this black outfit. You look good in it. The trial comes off to-morrow. Look your best. Keep your chin up, and when you’re tellin’ the story, remember to tell it the way I show you. I think I’m goin’ to like you. Good night.’

When Sprinston says he thinks he is goin’ to like somebody, they must do mighty well, for in spite of the way he can make a jury cry its eyes out he’s the meanest-talkin’ lawyer in the country to his clients. More than one man he represents tells me afterwards that he ain’t half as much scared of the judge or the jury as he is of Sprinston. It seems like if a witness don’t say what Sprinston wants him to, the way Sprinston wants him to, there is liable to be assault and battery right there in the courtroom.

V

The next day is court day, and there’s a big crowd here same as usual, only this time the crowd is bigger than ever on account of a woman bein’ tried for murder. The way the country boys gather out there in the alley and stare at us here inside makes me figger there must be a thousand people on the grounds, includin’ a newspaper reporter from Charleston. Of course there is a lot of other business to be attended to durin’ the mornin’, so they don’t get down to Lillie’s case till afternoon. In the meantime Sprinston is with Lillie, givin’ her the finishin’ touches. He has the newspaper man take her picture in her new outfit, so she gets a big headline the next mornin’.

While Sprinston is inside, I notice Sim Brawley and Ike Moses pacin’ up and down the courthouse lawn together. Sim wants to get inside for a word with Lillie, and every now and then he comes to the window to look in. This makes Sprinston mad after a while, and maybe he don’t blow up. He gives Sim a cussin’ that you can hear from here to the mouth of Long Branch, talkin’ so mean that even some of the jailbirds get the jimjams. He was a sight — that Sprinston.

After Sim goes away, Ike Moses comes over to talk to me through the window. He asks me what I think of his new store suit, and I tell him it looks to me like Sim Brawley’s best. He laughs, and says I guess right the first time. Then he looks mysterious, and mentions somethin’ about steppin’ high, wide, and handsome, because he’s ridin’ Brown Beauty, his old man’s best saddle horse.

Finally they send for Lillie to go to her trial. On her way to the courtroom, as she passes this block, I see her for the first time since Sprinston starts his lessons, and for a minute I can’t hardly believe my own eyes, I am used to seem’ Lillie as she is when me and Ike sits over by her cell block. Then she’s just a pretty country girl with a heavy head of blond hair and a pair of light blue eyes that look appealin’. Her dress is calico with white flowers on it. Now she’s dressed in black silk from head to foot. Sprinston must do somethin’ to her eyes, because they are dark blue, and her face even has got a different shape. It’s the clothes, I suppose. Maybe she ain’t no prettier than she is before, but she sure is different. She looks like one of them pictures in the fashion magazines, only more so. As for lookin’ like a loose woman, you can pick her for innocence itself.

I don’t get to hear none of the trial personally, — though I can see a whole lot of what’s goin’ on, — but Zack Twombley tells me later that Lillie ain’t no mistress of Old Man Handley at all. It seems like she’s his niece, and comes of a good family in Philadelphia. Old Man Handley comes from Philadelphia, or somewhere out there, in the first place, so there ain’t nobody to dispute it. As to that buried money with her ring in it, it does look kind of fishy that Lillie would bury her own ring with the money, when that would be sure to direct attention to her. It looks like a clumsy frame-up.

The result is what happens lots of times when feelin’ runs high after a crime is committed. After bein’ out seven minutes, the jury comes in with a verdict of ‘Not Guilty.’

VI

When we hear what the verdict is, I naturally keep my eye peeled for what is comin’ around the corner of the courthouse, for I know Lillie is contracted to marry herself to Sim Brawley as soon as the trial is over — if she comes clear. Now that it’s all over, I can’t help feelin’ nearly as sorry for her as I do before. Down in my heart I won’t blame her much if she won’t go through with it, but of course she does take Sim’s help at a time when nobody else will help her. If it is anybody else but Sim, maybe they will act noble at the last minute and tell her she don’t need to go through with it if she don’t want to. But not Sim. He’ll be right there in the front row with his contract.

I don’t have to wait long, for in a few minutes here comes Lillie, and Sim, and Ike Moses, and the jailer, and a lean-faced Baptist preacher by the name of Henson. Sim has his contract in his hand. They all go in the front room of the jail house, and pretty soon the jailer comes in and says they want me to be a witness.

This weddin’ is one I always remember, not only because it’s Sim Brawley’s weddin’, but also because there’s only one other weddin’ I know of in this jail house. The other one is another story. The jailer’s wife, not knowin’ about the arrangements ahead of time, brings in three sprigs of mountain laurel, and puts on a white apron. Everybody else, which means the bride and the groom, the jailer, the preacher, Ike Moses, and myself, is in the clothes he wears durin’ the day. It strikes me, I remember, that Sim Brawley ought to fix himself up a little better for his weddin’.

Lillie is the prettiest I ever see her. Her color is natural now, and it goes well with her black clothes and yellow hair. She’s all smiles, too, about comin’ off with the jury, though God only knows what she can smile about when she looks at Sim. Sim is beamin’ at everybody; Ike is in fine fettle; but the preacher looks like he ain’t had a good meal for a month.

While the jailer’s wife is huntin’ up the family Bible so the preacher can do the job brown, Ike calls me off to one side. ‘You remember what I tell you about Sim promisin’ to give me fifty dollars when the knot is tied,’ says he. ‘Well, I want you to stick around. I’m goin’ to ask him for it.’

‘ Better ask him ahead of time,’ say I. ‘He ain’t likely to be generous afterwards.’

‘No, I’ll wait till the proper time, accordin’ to the contract. But I want you to be there to back me up in case he tries to get out of it.’

The jailer’s wife finds the Bible by this time, though what the preacher wants with it I never find out, for he don’t use it for nothin’ except a stummick poultice. He just takes the Bible in his hands, folds his hands over his stummick, and makes a speech.

‘Brethren and sisters,’ says he, ‘we are gathered here to join this man and this woman in the bonds of holy matrimony. The Holy Writ says it is not good for man to be alone, and it is because they do not like to be alone that this man and this woman are about to be married. This is accordin’ to the Scriptures.’

Of course, the preacher don’t mean nothin’ funny by this, but what he says about Sim not wantin’ to be alone sure hits the mark. I can’t hardly keep from laughin’ out loud when I think how hard and how long Sim has been tryin’ to keep from bein’ alone. What makes it worse is I catch Zack Twombley’s eye and see he is thinkin’ the same thing. But I manage finally to keep from laughin’ out, and the preacher goes on with his fine speech about the holy state of matrimony.

Finally he gets down to the part where he says, ‘Do you, Simeon Brawley, take this woman,’ and so forth; and almost before I know it the weddin’ is over.

VII

The jailer’s wife waits till the knot is tied before she breaks into tears and throws her arms around Lillie’s neck. That starts Lillie bawlin’ a little also. The two women stand there loanin’ on each other for support, with the tears rollin’ down their cheeks, while the rest of us hang around lookin’ foolish. Finally Sim says, ‘Come on, Lillie. There ain’t no use of you cryin’ that way,’ and that brings Ike Moses to life, so he steps over to Sim, holdin’ his contract before him.

‘Before you go, Sim,’ says he, ‘I want to call your attention to this little agreement in writin’ we make in regards to this weddin’. If I remember correct, you owe me fifty dollars.’

It seems like maybe Sim is a little embarrassed on account of the way the bride is cryin’, and is mighty glad to talk to Ike about the contract. The first thing he does is to show them front teeth in a big grin; then he pats Ike on the shoulder.

‘You’re a smart boy, Ike,’ says he, ‘only you don’t look far enough ahead, and you ain’t careful about little things. Now me, I’m careful about little things. I’m so careful that I have Sprinston look over all these contracts in writin’; and what do you suppose he tells me? He tells me, “Sim, they ain’t worth the paper they’re wrote on. It’s against the law in this state to make any kind of a contract affectin’ the state of marriage.” Ain’t that too bad?’

It sounds bad to me, because I figger all along that Sim is goin’ to pull a fast one at the end; so I say, ‘I expect he’s right, Ike. Seems to me I remember the judge decides that very thing in the Billups case two years ago.’

‘Not only that,’ says Sim. ‘I suppose you’re ready to turn back that money I already pay you, since you get it illegal.’

‘I ain’t so sure about that,’ says Ike, in a way that sounds to me like there is goin’ to be trouble. ‘We’ll discuss it at length in a moment.’

Then Ike turns to me, cool like, and says, ‘Open the door, Sam. Lillie, stand over there. I’ve got somethin’ to say to this feller.’

Somethin’ about him and the way he says it keeps the jailer from interferin’, though I don’t doubt but what Zack thinks it’s a raw deal anyhow, and hopes Ike will bust Sim one before he can part them. Sim don’t say nothin’ either when Lillie moves over to where Ike tells her.

‘Now, Sim,’ says Ike, restin’ his thumb on his belt line, ‘ you know, and I know, that I treat you square in this business all the way through. Maybe you think it’s easy for me to hand over the woman I’m in love with to an old skinflint like you without even tellin’ her how much I think of her. You’ve got to admit she’s white, too, the way she goes through with her part of the agreement right down to the finish. Maybe she don’t think as much of me as I do of her, but anyway she’s white. Everything is on the table, foursquare, right down to the last, till you think you pull a good one by gettin’ Lillie to marry you under a contract that won’t hold. Then you say the whole thing’s illegal and you ’re retractin’ everything but the weddin’.

‘There’s just one point of law, Sim, that you don’t inquire about. Last summer when I repair an old shanty boat and buy two dollars’ worth of lumber from you, the first thing I know you attach the boat. The justice of the peace that tries the case says, “Whenever a man does work or furnishes materials on a job, he’s entitled to a lien on the finished product till he’s paid. That’s a mechanic’s lien.” Now, in this case, I certainly do plenty of work, if I don’t furnish no materials, so I go to this same justice of the peace. He says it looks to him like I’m entitled to a lien on the finished product, and he gives me this paper to make the levy. Maybe you’ll like to see it.’

The paper is an attachment of the person of Lillie Calhoun, ‘to have and to hold her until the said Sim Brawley shall pay the said Ike Moses the sum of fifty dollars, and the costs of this case’!

Sim is so mad he can chew tenpenny nails.

‘Wait till I see Sprinston,’ says he, startin’ for the courthouse. ‘This is what comes of electin’ a half-wit to be justice of the peace. The durn fool can’t even tell the difference between a load of lumber and a woman.’

‘Maybe so,’ says Ike, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t wait for your lawyer. The woman is mine under a decree of a court. My horse is ready and waitin’ on the road down there, so I’ll be sayin’ good-bye. Mexico’s the destination; send me a postcard.’

With that, he takes Lillie by the arm and makes the fastest exit on these records. Before Sim can get his wits together enough to run to the sheriff’s office for a warrant for wife stealin’, Ike has got Lillie on the pommel of his saddle, and Brown Beauty is kickin’ up dust spots in the distance. The last we see of them, Ike turns around a minute and waves good-bye. Both of them look mighty happy.