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Page 40
Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the
total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents.
"That's the right kind of a law," remarked Finch, as he carefully
broke some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly
come off within a few days--"the law of supply and demand. But
they've both got to work together. I'll bet," he went on, with his
dry smile, "she'll get jelly beans with that nickel--she likes 'em.
What's supply if there's no demand for it?"
"What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously.
''Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was Shane came in and
bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now."
BURIED TREASURE
There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still
until they are called upon specifically to rise?
I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my
patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and
bucket-shops--parted soon with my money in many ways. But there
remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not
played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the
delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof-
prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable
promise.
But, going back from my theme a while--as lame pens must do--I was a
fool of the sentimental soft. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was hers.
She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano,
beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic
witchery of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull,
Texas prairie-town. She had a spirit and charm that could have
enabled her to pluck rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium
or any other sporty kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not
paint the picture for her.
You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have and to hold. I wanted
her to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in
places where they cannot be found of evenings.
May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles.
He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or
buzz or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist,
or words to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying
fish of the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and
calling 'em names.
He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as a
fine specimen of the racibus humanus because she saw that he had food
at times, and put his clothes on right side before, and kept his
alcohol-bottles filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absent-
minded.
There was another besides myself who thought May Martha Mangum one to
be desired. That was Goodloe Banks, a young man just home from
college. He had all the attainments to be found in books--Latin,
Greek, philosophy, and especially the higher branches of mathematics
and logic.
If it hadn't been for his habit of pouring out this information and
learning on every one that he addressed, I'd have liked him pretty
well. But, even as it was, he and I were, you would have thought,
great pals.
We got together every time we could because each of us wanted to pump
the other for whatever straws we could to find which way the wind blew
from the heart of May Martha Mangum--rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe
Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is the way of
rivals.
You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, culture, rowing,
intellect, and clothes. I would have put you in mind more of baseball
and Friday-night debating societies--by way of culture--and maybe of a
good horseback rider.
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