Dead Reckoning Department. I finished that in three days. There was
only one place left for it now. I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds
and Ends. To his clerk, rather–he was not there himself. There were
sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there
were seven well-favored young clerks showing them how. The young women
smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and
all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading
the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody
said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from
Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the
very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I
passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division. I had got so
accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment
I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than
two, or maybe three, times.
So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to
one of the clerks who was reading:
“Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?”
“What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean? If you mean the Chief of the
Bureau, he is out.”
“Will he visit the harem to-day?”
The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.
But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through
before another New York mail arrived. He only had two more papers left.
After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I
wanted.
“Renowned and honored Imbecile: on or about–”
“You are the beef-contract man. Give me your papers.”
He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends.
Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it–he found the
long lost record of that beef contract–he found the rock upon which so
many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply
moved. And yet I rejoiced–for I had survived. I said with emotion,
“Give it me. The government will settle now.” He waved me back, and
said there was something yet to be done first.
“Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?” said he.
“Dead.”
“When did he die?”
“He didn’t die at all–he was killed.”
“How?”
“Tomahawked.”
“Who tomahawked him?”
“Why, an Indian, of course. You didn’t suppose it was the superintendent
of a Sunday-school, did you?”
“No. An Indian, was it?”
“The same.”
“Name of the Indian?”
“His name? I don’t know his name.”
“Must have his name. Who saw the tomahawking done?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were not present yourself, then?”
“Which you can see by my hair. I was absent.
“Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?”
“Because he certainly died at that time, and have every reason to believe
that he has been dead ever since. I know he has, in fact.”
“We must have proofs. Have you got this Indian?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, you must get him. Have you got the tomahawk?”
“I never thought of such a thing.”
“You must get the tomahawk. You must produce the Indian and the
tomahawk. If Mackenzie’s death can be proven by these, you can then go
before the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting
your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to
receive the money and enjoy it. But that man’s death must be proven.
However, I may as well tell you that the government will never pay that
transportation and those traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie.
It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman’s soldiers
captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an
appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine
barrels the Indians ate.”
“Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn’t certain!
After all Mackenzie’s travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that