Jasper County Democrat, Volume 12, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1909 — A STORY WITH TEETH [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A STORY WITH TEETH

Introducing a Mysterious Woman With a Strange Mission. By M. QUAD. [Copyright, 1909, by Associated Literary Press.] The village of Brinkly was and Is today a place of about 1,200 Inhabitants, and the country Is thickly settled with farmers for seven miles around before coming to another village, bus” only one_ dentist has ever made It pay there since the place was founded. He didn’t stay but a couple of months, but he carried away a roll of money as large as a log. It wouldn’t be polite to say that the villager and the farmer do not give proper attention to their teeth, but they are never in a great hurry about It They hate to part with the old roots and snags and keep putting off the evil day when they have got to get Into the executioner’s chair. It might have been said of Brinkly and the surrounding country that not an adult had a good set of teeth and that up to a certain day no one was giving dentistry any serious thought. Then on a Monday morning a change took place. A traveling dentist who had his office in a van drove into town and opened shop. For two days no one went near him, although he hung out a sign of the most painless kind of painful dentistry. Then a strange woman arrived. She was dark complexioned, dressed like a gypsy and passed fbr one. She was a mysterious woman on a mysterious errand. She had come to that locality to search for a great buried treasure. She couldn’t search for it by her lonesome, ns the spirits guarding it had put a ban on her, but the gold was to be found through some one else. That some one else must have a tooth drawn to propitiate the spirits. Then he would be led to the treasure and would whack up with her. The hours for finding the treasure were between midnight and 2 o’clock in the morning, and the searcher must on no consideration say a word to any one about what he was after. If not finding the

treasure the first night he must have a second tooth pulled. He might have to lose three, but that would be the end. Had the woman gone about among the women telling this yarn she would have been laughed out of their houses. She did exactly the contrary. She interviewed the men. Her very first victim was known as the hardest headed old chap for fifteen miles around. He was so stingy and mean that when he had the mumps he refused to let any of his neighbors catch them free of cost. He bit at once. If there was any buried treasure around there he wanted his half of it. fhdeed, he wanted it all if he could get it He had heard about the traveling dentist, and within two hours of his talk with the woman he was at the van. It was 60 cents a pull, and the dentist selected a front tooth that might have continued business for several years longer. The pulling hurt like blazes, but as the man carried the molar away in bis pocket he felt that the treasure was his. On a Sunday night, which was a week ahead, he was to stand alongside of an elm tree and watch for the flash of a firefly. Two feet under ground beneath the flash the box of gold would be found. The next day the dentist pulled teeth for no less than five different men. Some of them met each other at the van and made all sorts of excuses for being there. Deacon Spooner said he had been thinking of parting with a tooth for the last fifteen years, and Elder Tompkins said that he had a loose tooth that bad prevented him from eating boiled dinners ever since he became a widower, Each had a slight suspicion of the other, but tried to act carelessly and gave no information. The dentist numbered farmers as well ns villagers among the callers, and when Saturday night came he could figure that he had performed on forty-eight men. On Sunday night between the hours named those fortyeight men were looking for elm trees and fireflies. The village was pretty well shaded by elms, but there were not enough to go round. In some" Instances two men found themselves un-

der the same elm. Then they lied tc each other like troopers as they watched for fireflies. The firefly Is seen only on a certain night when the weather hi[s some quality about it that calls them out, and this was one of the months when they are never seen at all. None of-the searchers took this Into consideration, but waited and watched and grew nervous as they thought of the treasure. Before 10 o’clock Monday forenoon the dentist had men waiting while others were beiflg served. There were some among them that had come to lose their first tooth and otHers to lose their second. The fellow was a lightning puller, but there were two or three patients left over when darkness fell and he closed his van. The new ones on this day had been told by the woman to stand under beech trees. There was just as big a crowd on Tuesday, and it was not fairly disposed of until Thursday. Of course it had got noised around the village that there was something up, but not a man peached. There was something more than suspicion among them now, and the only way was to lie to each other. They did lie. Men who had always scorned the slightest evasion now came out and lied as easily as if they had always made It a business. They lied to each other and to their wives, and some of them had three teeth drawn all at once; so as to have the bulge on the one and two tooth fellows. Half a mile west of the village was a beech grove. Outside of that there wasn’t a beech tree within two miles. On Sunday night more than 100 men were in that grove before the clocks were through striking midnight. They rubbed elbows and they crowded each other. Some pretended that they were walking in their sleep and others that they were looking for stray hogs or cows. When an hour had gone by some one saw or thought he saw a light moving about beyond the creek that skirted one side of the grove. There were a yell and a rush. As men ran they punched and kicked each other. They even jumped upon each other’s back. Fifty men fell into the creek and fifty more on top of Them. It was a grand battle royal, from which no one escaped scathless. Next day some of the crowd wanted to consult the woman and get closer particulars; but, though they drove all over the country, she was not to be found. And then arose another complication. Fifty men, disregarding Sunday nights and elm and beech trees, began a daytime hunt for the treasure. They even went so far as to spade up each other’s garden. It was three days before the search ended and the excitement died away, and then the bamboozled began to think of their teeth, though, strangely enough, they did not connect the gypsy woman with the loss of them. The dentist was ready. He could replace teeth as well as displace them. He sent for an assistant and had all the work he could do for two months, and his prices were just double those charged in the city. lie didn't get quite all he had operated on before, but it is still contended in Brinkly that he went to Europe, bought an old castle and is still reveling in power and luxury. Now and then In the firefly season a man goes out at midnight and leans against an elm or beech tree, but if guided to any certain spot the most he finds by digging is an old oysten»can or the skull of a dead and gone horse.

THERE WERE A TELL AND A RUSH.