The Snake-Oil Dickens Man. Ross Gilfillan
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had a wire from Syracuse. They pulled this trick there last month. Those boys are long gone and our money with them.’
What could I say? I had been taken in as they had. We had all believed these nattily-dressed and sweet-talking gentlemen and I was the bigger fool than they. But because I had swelled myself up like the cock of the yard and had talked myself blue about Mr D’Orleans and acted like I had the ear of Barnum himself, I had done half these swindlers’ work for them.
Eckert could see that I was only a dupe and most of the faces I recognised were in agreement but many were by no means satisfied and I was shoved and kicked as I retreated before them out of the alley and into the windy street where I began to run, intent upon putting the shame of it all as far behind me as I could. But then someone coming out the hotel spotted me and hollered ‘There’s Billy Talbot making a run for it!’ and the bar emptied and it looked like I had half the town hard upon my heels.
I ran the length of Main Street, making hard progress against the tearing wind and saw that some of my pursuers had already left off the chase and returned to the bar but a gang of young bucks, no doubt hot with whisky, were gaining upon me, calling like hounds on the trail of a runaway slave.
I turned down a side street and leapt a fence and then another, trampling flowers and vegetables, my heart bursting and my breath short. I fled through the open gate of the brewery, vaulted barrels and lost precious moments as I located the gap in its back fence and then found myself on open ground, nothing but the distant hills and a great dark cloud before me. Still I was pursued: dangerous marshlands lay off to the east and from the west came the cries of another pack of hunters and so I ran on, hopelessly, unbelieving that this was happening to me, yet certain that a dreadful fate would overtake me at any moment.
‘We got him,’ someone shouted and finding myself on a road once more, I stumbled on, slowed by the wind that shot through my shirt and found ways through my ribs, and bowed my head down against the buckshot of wind-blown dust. I forced my way against the gale, my steps becoming leaden with fatigue and I knew that the end was near. I could go on no longer.
And then I was aware of being a part of a rampant confusion of noise and thought that my exertions had brought me to the edge of madness and that I had begun to hallucinate, for amongst the apocalyptic din of the wind I thought I heard music.
I looked up and shading my brow, perceived that I was in the midst of a massive cloud of wind-driven garbage. The weird sounds were still audible but I could hear nothing of the men behind. I stopped and sank to my knees, finished.
Out of the darkest part of the storm, vague and shadowy forms materialised and took shape and I doubted my raw and streaming eyes, which now beheld the strangest, the most extraordinary of sights. A great giant of a man, taller by far than anyone I had seen before, mounted upon a camel and at his side a tiny midget, upon an animal whose like I had not seen but which evidently recognised my kind, for it spat at me as it passed.
I
I SHOULD BE at other work than this. In the lobby beyond my office door are probably a whole roomful of people, half of whom will be awaiting my pleasure only so they may press more money upon me. They would have me sponsor this or endorse that, or simply do nothing so that they may further their own schemes. I pray that my loyal secretary and guardian of my secrets, Miss Tummel, will protect me from such distractions a little while longer.
But even she can impede my progress. She has reminded me that there is a speech I am to prepare and must give to the greatest of our great land. Its acceptance will inevitably result in the filling of the coffers of my associates and of my own purse too. However, compared with the tonguey rhetoric which was once my stock-in-trade and which might have earned me fifty or a couple of hundred dollars, or a few months in jail, it will be a poor affair. You who have the priceless leisure to read books for your own diversion may take me for a robber at least but if I commit robberies now, they are done in your name.
While we talk of robberies, I have one for you now. Readers of popular fiction may consider this a paltry affair: the theft has already been committed and there has been no fancy-play with six-guns. I’m sorry for that – if you prefer something more racy, you must open a dime novel or a daily newspaper.
A discovery was made while I lay asleep in Elijah’s room. D’Orleans had closed up the ticket office pretty sharpish; no one knew why. Then a couple of rounders had galloped through town, hollering about Barnum’s caravan coming up the road from the east. Soon after, riders and folk in buggies and on foot were streaming out of town to meet him, no matter that a wild wind was all but blowing them back into town. The rest of the populace found shelter and waited for the zephyr to blow itself out. Sometime during this, D’Orleans and Wilkes took themselves and the money out of town, most likely on stolen horses.
And P.T. Barnum did come to Hayes, Missouri, though I doubt it’s well-documented. The whole procession of gaily-painted covered wagons, teams of thoroughbred horses, great swaying stages packed with men and women inside and on top; freaks of nature on horseback and astride camels, Indians in the boots of coaches, huge carts piled high with cages of outlandish animals and ropes and tackle, canvas and abundance of mysterious contrivance, came quickly upon us and as quickly passed right on through.
We watched them rush headlong past, drivers whipping on the beasts with cries of ‘Hi-yi!’ and ‘G’lang!’ through crowds who had turned out to see Barnum arrive and you can imagine the kind of feelings that were abroad when it was realised that not only had the townspeople been swindled of their money but P.T. Barnum wasn’t even going to stop in Hayes anyway. The Barnum circus, looking neither tuckered nor travel-stained, as the efficient machine had unloaded from hired freight cars just down the line, shoved for the next town, where they mounted a memorable show and those who could still afford to follow him and see it, said it was wondrous to behold.
I don’t know that Barnum already had intelligence of something amiss in our town but he sure seemed in an uncommon hurry to put some dirt between him and Hayes. At least, that was the verdict of the informal inquiry held in the lobby of the Particular Hotel, the next morning. A deputation of citizens had arrived, headed by Judge Eckert and Sheriff McCulloch.
‘Maybe we was swindled by Barnum,’ someone said. ‘And it was all like we thought. The smooth-talking feller was Barnum himself.’
‘Don’t be so foolish,’ said McCulloch, ‘Barnum ain’t the man to do nothing of that sort. Fact of the matter is, he never planned to stop in Hayes and was only makin’ for the next place. We was a passel o’ fools to get taken in like we did, but it wan’t Barnum’s fault.’
‘They must have been considerable smart fellers to get the drop on us,’ said Old Henry.
‘Smart?’ said a deputy. ‘I’ll say they were. Why, those two boys were probably the slickest, sharpest operators as ever palmed a silver dollar. Didn’t you hear they did the exact same as this in Syracuse? And they’re double-smart people, in Syracuse.’
Others nodded and murmured their agreement, consoled in part, that they had been some taken in by the best. As we had appeared closely connected with the swindlers, Merriweather and I were keenly questioned. I told my story a number of times, repeating and enlarging on details I had given before and was believed in the end, in a grudging sort of a way, but not before I had been accused, sniped at and generally made to feel like the biggest fool in a ship of the same. That I might have easily borne for I felt as much myself but what had unnerved me during the ordeal was the entrance of Mrs Bullock and her daughter, Cissy, who swept past me and took seats at the back of the crowd. When I had been interrogated, derided and sent about my work, the crowd listened to Merriweather as he protested his innocence and neatly attached any remaining blame and suspicion to my coat-tails.
I hung about the doorway, waiting for the crowd to disperse, that I might exchange a word with Cissy: her mother was a placid woman, generally amiable and not as decided in her opinions of me as was her husband. I had every hope of being able to wish her and Cissy a good day, a brief exchange which would have