Wasted Worries

Raymond S. Spears

BAD man was Bert Lambers. He had always been bad; he made his living that a way. He knew when he walked the street or road bank at Forked Tree folks would turn to look at him. Being looked at was a heap of satisfaction; it was fame.

Shelling, trapping, shooting, fishing—lots of ways presented themselves to Bert for a reasonable living. His preference was to let the others do the work. His model was the gentlemen honeybees, the drones. There he lived on Silverfish River, with the Bottoms spreading around him in all directions. Up and downstream were shanty boats in the eddies, and tents on the bars and banks.

He woke up in the morning hearing wild turkeys gobble; the mocking birds sang for the dancing of his dreams; he'd shoot gray squirrels off the pecan and hickory trees up the bank. Feeling real hungry for a good dinner he would drop down the eddy to the Paiute boat, walk on board without being asked, and sit down at the cabin table. Mrs. Paiute, while her man turned pale, brought on hot bread, baked fish, or roast meat to feed the bully. Lambers would curse if he didn't have sorghum with his bread.

Then again, needing entertainment, he would row up the eddy to Wilby's tent and tell Wilby to play his fiddle. Wilby, being peaceable, would play till his arm almost dropped off from the ache of sawing away. Lambers would walk into the motion-picture house at Forked Tree and see the play without paying the entrance fee, and neither the ticket seller, the ticket taker, nor even the town marshal would interfere with him.

Now a man like that is bad. Crossing him is not a task for any ordinary citizen, 'Course, if Lambers went too far, anybody would likely lose his temper about it and teach the fellow a lesson. But nobody ever had taught Lambers a lesson.

Lambers' daytime and candlelight doings were ordinary, honest enough, and just what he called pleasantries. After dark nobody knew what he did do. Folks had their suspicions. When Alp Clime found a pearl, which was allowed to be worth four hundred dollars cash anywhere in the world, and showed it around people talked a lot.

The next night Alp woke up suddenly about midnight to find a man in his tent. A little round bull's-eye flash light stared Alp in the face, blinding him. At the same time he saw a man with a long canvas coat, made out of an old tent, and a black bag cap, painted white around the eyeholes.

“I come yeah to git that pearl, Alp,” the man announced. “I got use for hit!”

Alp considered some whether the pearl was worth more'n being shot. He yielded the pearl and let it go at that. The midnight raider took his departure, breathing warnings of death in the dark if Alp ever thought anything about the matter again. Alp held his peace. He was just a youngster, twenty years old, and had always been peaceable.

Next day, and for many days afterward, Bert Lambers wasn't anywhere around, When he returned he had new store clothes, a new automatic pistol, a broad-brimmed hat—and a broad Meeting Alp on the eddy, skiff to skiff, he told the button sheller that it was a free river and asked how many tons of shells he had ready to sell?

Alp 'lowed twenty tons, which at forty dollars a ton was right much. Bert did some figuring, nodded, and went away. Alp knew that voice, knew that tone of talk, knew what the mean scoundrel meant. Alp was just a plain sheller, friendly, clever, kindly, harboring no mean feelings against anybody in the world. His pile of shells, a half work was eight hundred dolars, because he had been faithful and had found a good long bed where others hadn't been so industrious. It meant a good deal to him. The cash would hold down a good place in a bank. It would buy good gasoline, and he could go drifting on the high tides, catching logs, and perhaps drift-away boats.

“He 'lows to take my shell money when I get it, the same as he took my pearl,” Alp Clime told himself, and the thought made him dejected.

season's

Lambers, the bad man, had a fine shanty boat, built of spruce and pine timbered. He had handy lines, hoop nets, traps, guns, rifles, and all kinds of shanty-boat faring things. He had a big emicruiser launch and a skiff boat, with an outboard motor. He had a canoe, and he could pole the canoe standing up in it. Alp had seen him going down the eddy in the moonlight and made no mistake in calling Lambers a first-class riverman, if he was ad. Lambers had a thousand-dollar shanty-boat outfit, with not an honest dollar from the stakes in the banks to the anchor line over the stern of his cabin deck.

Every day or two Lambers would come down the river and say:

“Sold yo' shells yet, Alp?”

“Not yet,” Alp would reply.

Lambers would go on down, first in his canoe, then in his skiff, then in the cruiser, if there was good water over the shoals. It was plainly to be seen that Lambers was growing impatient. He would look at that fine pile, shaped up on the bottom level, ready for the scales of the buyer. But twenty tons of shells don't pack around as easily a eight hundred dollars in cash.

“Well, when's the buyer coming?” Lambers demanded angrily. “Seem like yo's hanging on fo' higher prices, Alp? What dif'rence does that make? Not much—why don't yo'-all sell those shells? Somebody'll come along some time, take 'em into a barge, and steal 'em on ye!”

Alp made no reply. It was true—some one might.

“Theh's no law down yeah, yo' know,” Lambers said menacingly, “'ceptin' this!”

He showed the badly frightened boy the automatic pistol. It was homely, hard-worn weapon. Rust on it, and Lambers hadn't taken much care of it as he should have done. In a few short weeks, neglect had turned a good weapon into a poor one, and a reliable gun into one on which it was dangerous to depend for loot, let alone for life. Alp wet his lips.

“Hit's law!” Lambers repeated. “This yeah gun's law. Theh's no law but a gun down this Silverfish Riveh—yo' know that?”

“Yas, suh,” Alp admitted; and, he replied he looked the bad man in the eyes.

Lambers turned impatiently away to drive down the eddy in his skiff where he had invited himself to a fine roast of razorback, which Tom Fyse had killed the night before at a feeding back in the brakes. Lambers had more than food that night when he returned upstream, poling us canoe, he was singing loudly. He was shouting a river song:

Lying awake, worried and full of dread, Alp heard the singer going by, the canoe making not the least sound, and only the voice bellowing in the gray night like an evil haunt of the dark bottomlands. As the canoe came opposite, the song stopped. The glide, silent as a cat's tread, was more dreadful than the song.

Alp was helpless. He had no place togo to. If he ran off down the river in his skiff, the bannister boat would delay him, and the outlaw would overtake him. The day the shell buyer came would be followed by dark night. With night—then what?

Peaceably, friendly, faithful, hard-working, never protesting much about anything in the world, Alp Clime had no enemies and few friends. Lambers wasn't an enemy even—he was sort of patron of the industry of others. At the same time the bad man was becoming indignant. He took to coming down every day to look at the shell pile and estimate its growth. Alp was daily heaping up shells and the daily shuck, adding hundreds of pounds, averaging a thousand pounds a day, made the pile thirty tons, instead of twenty.

“Pays a man to wait!” Lambers remarked cheerfully as he noticed the increase, “Why, ho law! Yo'all makes two thousand dollars a summer season! That's jes' the shells. Besides that, theh's slugs an' pearls—a four-hundred-dollar pearl, too!”

He scowled at the youth. He had not considered that phase of the matter before. This young scoundrel, living all by himself, was making more money than a white-collar store clerk—he was making fifty dollars a week for a whole year, and working only eight or nine months during low waters. Lambers always did despise plutocrats, men of wealth, folks that made lots of money! Their industry was a criticism of him. He didn't brook criticism from any man. He glared at the unfortunate youth, who shrank from that weasel hatefulness as from the bane of a moccasin snake.

Lambers laughed boisterously. Seeing men shrink from him was part of the joy of living. He drove away this time in his outboard motor skiff. He was a skilled motor man. He could take a tin can, a pair of oars, and a quart of coal oil, it was said, and make a motor engine that would breast the river current. As he plowed away, he pulled his automatic to shoot a few whacks at half-wild hogs that had come to the bank to drink. Alp, watching him, saw that the automatic didn't immediately go off, for the man had to jerk it, fuss with it, and finally when it did get to shoot, one bullet fell ten feet short, the other hit a tree trunk six feet above the hogs, and not till the fourth or fifth shot did he see a shot hit anywhere near the fleeing and squealing hogs.

Alp went on board his tent, reached into his cupboard, and pulled out his own greasy revolvers. They were .32 caliber, seven-inch-barrel weapons, so heavy with grease that they slipped in his hands. He wiped them off and walked back into the woods. He carried them, one in each hand, and when a big fox squirrel started up a tree twenty-six steps away, he pulled to shoot, right and left. As the fox squirrel ran, he saw the bullets splintering and breaking the rough bark of the big oak tree. At the fifth shot the squirrel curled back on itself, clung a moment; then fell tumbling to the ground.

“I am peaceable!” Alp thought to himself. “I don't look for trouble with any man!”

Just that a way! Ten minutes later he jumped a swamp hare, one of those six-pound, long, gangling, far-jumping creatures, with ears like a young mule. Alp shot right and left, and at the third the rabbit collapsed. There was a bullet through one ear and two bullets through the body—fine, accurate, fast shooting at a moving target.

“Sho!” Alp thought to himself as he strung his game.

Three days later the shell buyer came, There was a rise in the Silverfish River and that made plenty of water for the fleet of shell boats. A towboat, drawing twenty inches of water, and having a twenty-ton capacity of shells, carried along on each side a forty-ton barge. The buyer, his automatics in his belt, a shotgun in the motor boat, on board a white mate and four negro roustabouts, came alongside the bank at the shell mound, shoved a chute up the slope, and having agreed on the price, Alp stood on one side of the steelyard tripod, while the buyer stood on the other side.

This shell buyer was honest. He gave the shellers full count on the pounds, and the scale pan exactly balanced on the weights, when empty. The shells boomed and clattered in the sheet-iron troughs.

“These are a fine line of shells, Alp!” the buyer said. “Glad you sorted out the pistol butts and fancies!, You've a ton of them—double rates on them, too! Hi-i! They're fine cutting shell! plenty large and running very nice in color”

While he talked, the darkies forked the shells into the pan, where they were weighed in eighty-pound lots. They worked fast, but it was a long job, for there were a heap of shells in that pile.

“You're sure industrious, and you've made some money,” the man said. “Why—sho! Hyar's the forty-ton basket and a half more for good measure. That's sixteen-twenty, boy! Save your money! Put it into the bank, where it'll work for you. Sho, an' eighty for the fancies. Don't let any man swindle yo' out of it! I'm glad to pay you cash. I always pays cash. How'd they run, slugs and pearls?”

“Fair—good,” Alp said slowly, “I had one, four hundred dollars. It was stole. I had others though—three dollars an ounce for seeds, plenty of baroques, ard—I haven't said—but  found a big one. It's a thousand-dollar one! I sold it, too, for that—Lawse!”

Coming down the river was Bert Lambers in his outboard motor skiff. He went on by, but looked sharply. He saw the buyer counting down twenties to Alp Clime. He looked at Alp, but after that first glance the youth did not look again.

“Take cyar of it!” the shell buyer said. “You've worked faithful, and you've earned it. Wish I could pay you more, but I have to make a profit too. These'll be in the cars to-morrow morning. S'long!”

The shell fleet swung away from the bank, the paddle wheel pounded and the current caught the barges, so they rocked off down the eddy, which was rolling yellow with the rising flood. Alp went up to the tent and sat down. He was there only a little while, however. By and by he slipped away.

He was gone when Bert Lambers stopped in at the tent. Lambers burst into the camp, gun in hand. He couldn't wait for night. He couldn't possess his soul with patience another minute. He threw open the door of the cupboard. He pawed into the trunk. He looked around for a hole where the money might have been dug in.

“I'll make that scoundred walk in fire!” he muttered angrily. “He cain't beat me that a way—that boy cain't! I'll follow him to Memphis—I'll make him draw a check, if he deposits, that money into any bank. Why, that boy's life ain't safe, treatin' me that a way! No, indeed!”

He went out and circled trying to find the boy's tracks, but there was none for him to follow. Alp Clime had gone! The fact settled heavily on the bully's consciousness. He felt that perhaps he had shown his intention too plainly. Appraising the tent and the outfit he reckoned that they were worth about two hundred dollars. A man could well afford to let two hundred dollars go to save probably two thousand dollars.

“The dad-blasted scoundrel!” Lambers grumbled. “He done left me lurchy!”

In his rage and disappointment Lambers tossed kerosene all over the tent, bedding, woodpile, and outfit. He set fire to it, and the black oil smoke billowed up beside the river, far seen along the eddy. Lambers just knew that scoundrel had gone flying. It was cunning to run away, but it hurt Lambers' feelings.

He drove an ax through the skiff and split up the bannister boat; he whaled away at the stew pan and even kicked apart the clay-dirt furnace pit. Then he threw the ax into the river.

His spleen wasn't vented even then, but he had nothing on which to wreak vengeance. He went up the river in his outboard skiff, with his head aching, his heart throbbing, to think that he had not waited in the woods to head off this very flight.

Lambers plowed up the river current, taking advantage of the short reverse current eddies along the banks. His own cabin boat was only half a mile distant in plain sight. He ran up to the stern of his five-hundred-dollar spruce boat; and, throwing a skillful hitch over an oak head, he stormed into his stern cabin, the kitchen. He reached into a trap in the floor, drew a large jug, a six-quart demijohn, and drank a long swig.

Then he swore loudly with details, telling himself what a fool he was, and what a fool, scoundrel, coward, Alp Clime was, not staying to face the music like a man.

“Hold on!” a voice told him, “I don't 'low no man to talk about me, much less about my daddy and mammy that a way!”

Lambers started, turned, and found himself confronting Alp Clime on his own boat.

“What! Yo' come yeah to 'vide up with me?” Lambers demanded, grinning, as he saw the youth carried no guns in his hands,

“No; I came to give yo' a fair chance to settle up fo' robbin' me of my four-hundred-dollar pearl,” the youth replied. “And now you've added to the damage, burning up my tent, camp outfit, and smashing my boats.”

“Who yo' talking to?” cried Lambers. “Yo' gone crazy?”

“I come a-settling up what yo' owe me, Bert Lambers!” Alp replied, and his face was set square, dark and scowling. The bad man knew he meant it, so the rusty old automatic with the loose barrel was pulled.

Lambers leveled it, and the shot followed on the instant. Alp had not expected that. The bully had greased, oiled, and cleaned his gun. It worked smoothly enough now, and at twelve feet it was a deadly jeopardy. Lambers was too angry to be careful. The bullet creased Alp's scalp as he drew his own guns.

He shot, and both bullets that he fired hit the river bad man in each shoulder. The automatic fell to the floor, as Lambers reached across to where the scorching blows had landed. He was scared now, with death in his face.

“I come yeah to settle up!” the sheller stuck to his text. “You-all stol a four-hundred-dollar pearl off me; you've bragged hit, an' you've scorned me. Now give me the four hundred dollars you was paid fo' hit to Memphis!”

“But—but I spent the money!” Lambers cried. “I got eighty dollars!”

“An' my camp outfit, too, that you burned, my boats you cut up!”

Lambers blinked.

“I'll take the outfit hyar, Lambers,” the sheller said. “I'll swap my tent fo' your cabin boat; I'll swap my bannister boat for yo' motorboat; I'll swap my skift fo' you' skift. We'll call hit square on the meanness yo' talked of doin' me, an' the four-hundred-dollar pearl you sold in Memphis!”

“I won't” Lambers replied, and on the instant the youth fired again.

The bullet went between the bully's left arm and his body.

“Next time I shoot yo' daid, an' let the coroner's jury sit on yo' body to see how come hit yo' done died!” the youth said imperturbably. “Theh's a table; hyar's a fountain pen I bought to Forked Tree, an' hyar's a sales blank a lawyer give me. [I filled hit all in. Yo' jest sign yo' name theh.”

Lambers, with the choice of dying and signing his name, would have signed anything on demand. As a matter of fact, he acknowledged that he had stolen the pearl, threatened the young man with death, intended to rob him, and had even determined to murder him if necessary to steal the money from the sale of the button shells, as yell as transferred his outfit.

“Theh!” Alp Clime acknowledged the act with pleasure. “Now step out theh on the stern. Now take up that pole and take that sass'frass cunner an' git to go”'

“Lawse! I'm wounded, man!”

“Wounded!” Clime laughed. “Shucks! Yo' call them li'l' creases on yo' shoulders wounds? They's scratches that didn't go in undeh the skin! Why, ho, law, man! I'll give yo' real wounds, an' you'll know the diff'rence, yes, indeed I will! My lan'—if yo' don't take that pole an' trip away down the Silverfish, I'll give yo' real wounds. Yo's powerful lucky that I had confidence in my shooting, an' that I didn't plumb yo' center instead of my bein' peaceable an' good-natured, lettin' yo' drap down the river!”

“I'm goin'.” Lambers got into the canoe and poled away downstream, promising he'd never come back.