Somethin’ Ludikerous
“Let’s go fer the Dutchman,” said Norman Anderson, just drunk enough to be good-naturedly murderous and to speak in dialect. “Gus is turned out to committin’ larson by breakin’ into people’s houses an’ has run off. Now let’s tar and feather the ole one. Of course, he’s a thief. Dutchmen always is, I ’low. Clark township don’t want none of ’em, I’ll be dog-oned if it do,” and Norman got up and struck his fist on the counter.
“An’ they won’t nobody hurt you; you see, he’s on’y a Dutchman,” said Bob Short “Larson on a Dutchman don’t hold.”
“I say, let’s hang him,” said Bill Day. “Ha—oop! Let’s hang him, or do somethin’ else ludikerous!”
“I wouldn’t mind,” grinned Norman Anderson, delighted at the turn things had taken. “I’d just like to see him hung.”
“So would I,” said Bill Day, leaning over to Norman. “Ef a Dutchman wash to court my sishter, I’d—”
“He’d be a fool ef he did,” piped Jim West. For Bill Day’s sister was a “maid not vendible,” as Shakespeare has it.
“See yer,” said Bill, trying in vain to draw his coat. “Looky yer, Jeems; ef you say anythin’ agin Ann Marier, I’ll commit the wust larson on you you ever seed.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ agin Ann Marier,” squeaked Jim. “I was talkin’ agin the Dutch.”
“Well, that’sh all right Ha—oop! Boys, let’s do somethin’, larson or arsony or—somethin’.”
A bucket of tar and some feathers were bought, for which young Anderson was made to pay, and Bill Day insisted on buying fifteen feet of rope. “Bekase,” as he said, “arter you git the feathers on the bird, you may—you may want to help him to go to roosht you know, on a hickory limb. Ha—oop! Come along, boys; I say let’s do somethin’ ludikerous, ef it’s nothin’ but a little larson.”
And so they went galloping down the road, nine drunken fools. For it is one of the beauties of lynch law, that, however justifiable it may seem in some instances, it always opens the way to villainous outrages. Some of my readers will protest that a man was never lynched for the crime of being a Dutchman. Which only shows how little they know of the intense prejudice and lawless violence of the early West. Some day people will not believe that men have been killed in California for being Chinamen.
Of the nine who started, one, the drunkest, fell off and broke his arm; the rest rode up in front of the cabin of Gottlieb Wehle. I do not want to tell how they alarmed the mother at her late sewing and dragged Gottlieb out of his bed. I shudder now when I recall one such outrage to which I was an unwilling witness. Norman threw the rope round Gottlieb’s neck and declared for hanging. Bill Day agreed. It would be so ludikerous, you know!
“Vot hash I tun? Hey? Vot vor you dries doo hanks me already, hey?” cried the honest German, who was willing enough to have the end of the world come, but who did not like the idea of ascending alone, and in this fashion.
Mrs. Wehle pushed her way into the mob and threw the rope off her husband’s neck, and began to talk with vehemence in German. For a moment the drunken fellows hung back out of respect for a woman. Then Bill Day was suddenly impressed with the fact that the duty of persuading Mrs. Wehle to consent to her husband’s execution devolved upon him.
“Take keer, boys; let me talk to the ole woman. I’ll argy the case.”
“You can’t speak Dutch no more nor a hoss can,” squeaked Jeems West.
“Blam’d ef I can’t, though. Hyer, ole woman, firshta Dutch?”
“Ya.”
“Now,” said Bill, turning to the others in triumph, “what did I tell you? Well, you see, your boy August is a thief.”
“He’s not a teef!” said the old man.
“Shet up your jaw. I say he is. Now, your ole man’s got to be hung.”
“Vot vor?” broke in Gottlieb.
“Bekase it’s all your own fault. You hadn’t orter be a Dutchman.”
Here the crowd fell into a wrangle. It was not so easy to hang a man when such a woman stood there pleading for him. Besides, Bob Short insisted that hanging was arsony in the first degree, and they better not do it. To this Bill Day assented. He said he ‘sposed tar and feathers was only larson in the second degree. And then it would be rale ludikerous. And now confused cries of “Bring on the tar!” “Where’s the feathers?” “Take off his clothes!” began to be raised. Norman stood out for hanging. Drink always intensified his meanness. But the tar couldn’t be found. The man whom they had left lying by the roadside with a broken arm had carried the tar, and had been well coated with it himself in his fall.
“Ha-oop!” shouted Bill Day. “Let’s do somethin’. Dog-on the arsony! Let’s hang him as high as Dan’el.”
And with that the rope was thrown over Gottlieb’s, neck and he was hurried off to the nearest tree. The rope was then put over a limb, and a drunken half-dozen got ready to pull, while Norman Anderson adjusted the noose and valiant Bill Day undertook to keep off Mrs. Wehle.
“All ready! Pull up! Ha-oop!” shouted Bill Day, and the crowd pulled, but Mrs. Wehle had slipped off the noose again, and the volunteer executioners fell over one another in such a way as to excite the derisive laughter of Bill Day, who thought it perfectly ludikerous. But before the laugh had finished, the indignant Gottlieb had knocked Bill Day over and sent Norman after him. The blow sobered them a little, and suddenly destroyed Bill’s ambition to commit “arsony,” or do anything else ludikerous. But Norman was furious, and under his lead Wehle’s arms were now bound with the rope and a consultation was held, during which little Wilhelmina pleaded for her father effectively, and more by her tears and cries and the wringing of her chubby hands than by any words. Bill Day said he be blamed of that little Dutch gal’s takin’ on so didn’t kinder make him foul sorter scrimpshous you know. But the mob could not quit without doing something. So it was resolved to give Gottlieb a good ducking in the river and send him into Kentucky with a warning not to come back. They went down the ravine past Andrew’s castle to the river. Mrs. Wehle followed, believing that her husband would be drowned, and little Wilhelmina ran and pulled the alarm and awakened the Backwoods Philosopher, who soon threw himself among them, but too late to dissuade them from their purpose, for Andrew’s own skiff, the “Grisilde” by name, with three of the soberest of the party, had already set out to convey Wehle, after one hasty immersion, to the other shore, while the rest stood round hallooing like madmen to prevent any alarm that Wehle might raise attracting attention on the other side.