Twelve Men

This particular hoax related to that silly old bugaboo of our boyhood days, the escaped and wandering wild man, ferocious, blood-loving, terrible. I knew nothing of it until Peter, one Sunday afternoon when we were off for a walk a year or two after he had arrived in Newark, suddenly announced apropos of nothing at all, “Dreiser, I’ve just hit upon a great idea which I am working out with some of the boys down on our paper. It’s a dusty old fake, but it will do as well as any other, better than if it were a really decent idea. I’m inventing a wild man. You know how crazy the average dub is over anything strange, different,‘terrible.’ Barnum was right, you know. There’s one born every minute. Well, I’m just getting this thing up now. It’s as good as the sacred white elephant or the blood- sweating hippopotamus. And what’s more, I’m going to stage it right here in little old Newark—and they’ll all fall for it, and don’t you think they won’t,” and he chuckled most ecstatically.

“For heaven’s sake, what’s coming now?” I sighed.

“Oh, very well. But I have it all worked out just the same. We’re beginning to run the preliminary telegrams every three or four days—one from Ramblersville, South Jersey, let us say, another from Hohokus, twenty-five miles farther on, four or five days later. By degrees as spring comes on I’ll bring him north—right up here into Essex County—a genuine wild man, see, something fierce and terrible. We’re giving him long hair like a bison, red eyes, fangs, big hands and feet. He’s entirely naked—or will be when he gets here. He’s eight feet tall. He kills and eats horses, dogs, cattle, pigs, chickens. He frightens men and women and children. I’m having him bound across lonely roads, look in windows at night, stampede cattle and drive tramps and peddlers out of the country. But say, wait and see. As summer comes on we’ll make a regular headliner of it. We’ll give it pages on Sunday. We’ll get the rubes to looking for him in posses, offer rewards. Maybe some one will actually capture and bring in some poor lunatic, a real wild man. You can do anything if you just stir up the natives enough.”

I laughed. “You’re crazy,” I said. “What a low comedian you really are, Peter!”

Well, the weeks passed, and to mark progress he occasionally sent me clippings of telegrams, cut not from his pages, if you please, but from such austere journals as the Sun and World of New York, the North American of Philadelphia, the Courant of Hartford, recording the antics of his imaginary thing of the woods. Longish articles actually began to appear here and there, in Eastern papers especially, describing the exploits of this very elusive and moving demon. He had been seen in a dozen fairly widely distributed places within the month, but always coming northward. In one place he had killed three cows at once, in another two, and eaten portions of them raw! Old Mrs. Gorswitch of Dutchers Run, Pennsylvania, returning from a visit to her daughter-in-law, Annie A. Gorswitch, and ambling along a lonely road in Osgoroola County, was suddenly descended upon by a most horrific figure, half man, half beast, very tall and with long hair and red, all but bloody eyes who, looking at her with avid glance, made as if to seize her, but a wagon approaching along the road from another direction, he had desisted and fled, leaving old Mrs. Gorswitch in a faint upon the ground. Barns and haystacks had been fired here and there, lonely widows in distant cotes been made to abandon their homes through fear…. I marveled at the assiduity and patience of the man.

One day in June or July following, being in Newark and asking Peter quite idly about his wild man, he replied, “Oh, it’s great, great! Couldn’t be better! He’ll soon be here now. We’ve got the whole thing arranged now for next Sunday or Saturday—depends on which day I can get off. We’re going to photograph him. Wanto come over?”

“What rot!” I said. “Who’s going to pose? Where?”

“Well,” he chuckled, “come along and see. You’ll find out fast enough. We’ve got an actual wild man. I got him. I’ll have him out here in the woods. If you don’t believe it, come over. You wouldn’t believe me when I said I could get the natives worked up. Well, they are. Look at these,” and he produced clippings from rival papers. The wild man was actually being seen in Essex County, not twenty-five miles from Newark. He had ravaged the property of people in five different States. It was assumed that he was a lunatic turned savage, or that he had escaped from a circus or trading-ship wrecked on the Jersey coast (suggestions made by Peter himself). His depredations, all told, had by now run into thousands, speaking financially. Staid residents were excited. Rewards for his capture were being offered in different places. Posses of irate citizens were, and would continue to be, after him, armed to the teeth, until he was captured. Quite remarkable developments might be expected at any time … I stared. It seemed too ridiculous, and it was, and back of it all was smirking, chuckling Peter, the center and fountain of it!

“You dog!” I protested. “You clown!” He merely grinned.

Not to miss so interesting a denouement as the actual capture of this prodigy of the wilds, I was up early and off the following Sunday to Newark, where in Peter’s apartment in due time I found him, his rooms in a turmoil, he himself busy stuffing things into a bag, outside an automobile waiting and within it the staff photographer as well as several others, all grinning, and all of whom, as he informed me, were to assist in the great work of tracking, ambushing and, if possible, photographing the dread peril.

“Yes, well, who’s going to be him?” I insisted.

“Never mind! Never mind! Don’t be so inquisitive,” chortled Peter. “A wild man has his rights and privileges, as well as any other. Remember, I caution all of you to be respectful in his presence. He’s very sensitive, and he doesn’t like newspapermen anyhow. He’ll be photographed, and he’ll be wild. That’s all you need to know.”

In due time we arrived at as comfortable an abode for a wild man as well might be. It was near the old Essex and Morris Canal, not far from Boonton. A charming clump of brush and rock was selected, and here a snapshot of a posse hunting, men peering cautiously from behind trees in groups and looking as though they were most eager to discover something, was made. Then Peter, slipping away—I suddenly saw him ambling toward us, hair upstanding, body smeared with black muck, daubs of white about the eyes, little tufts of wool about wrists and ankles and loins—as good a figure of a wild man as one might wish, only not eight feet tall.

“Peter!” I said. “How ridiculous! You loon!”

“Have a care how you address me,” he replied with solemn dignity. “A wild man is a wild man. Our punctilio is not to be trifled with. I am of the oldest, the most famous line of wild men extant. Touch me not.” He strode the grass with the air of a popular movie star, while he discussed with the art director and photographer the most terrifying and convincing attitudes of a wild man seen by accident and unconscious of his pursuers.

“But you’re not eight feet tall!” I interjected at one point.

“A small matter. A small matter,” he replied airily. “I will be in the picture. Nothing easier. We wild men, you know—”

Some of the views were excellent, most striking. He leered most terribly from arras of leaves or indicated fright or cunning. The man was a good actor. For years I retained and may still have somewhere a full set of the pictures as well as the double-page spread which followed the next week.

Well, the thing was appropriately discussed, as it should have been, but the wild man got away, as was feared. He went into the nearby canal and washed away all his terror, or rather he vanished into the dim recesses of Peter’s memory. He was only heard of a few times more in the papers, his supposed body being found in some town in northeast Pennsylvania—or in the small item that was “telegraphed” from there. As for Peter, he emerged from the canal, or from its banks, a cleaner if not a better man. He was grinning, combing his hair, adjusting his tie.