Ken said, “Uh-hah!” again, kind of coughing and stroking his mouth. Then, he went on to say that I really had a problem, a ‘real’ problem. “I can see how it might even upset a high sheriff like you, Nick, with all the pre-occu-pations of your great office.”

“You got to help me, Ken,” I said. “I’m getting plumb frazzled out of my wits.”

“And I’m ‘going’ to help you,” Ken nodded. “I ain’t never let a brother officer down yet, and I ain’t about to begin now.”

So he told me what to do, and I did it. I sneaked out to the privy late that night, and I loosened a nail here and there, and I shifted the floor boards around a bit. The next morning, I was up early, all set to spring into action when the proper time came.

Well, sir, the fella that used the privy most was Mr. J.S. Dinwiddie, the bank president. He’d use it on the way home to lunch and on the way back from lunch, and on the way home at night and on the way in in the morning. Well, sometimes he’d pass it up, but never in the morning. By the time he’d got that far from his house his grits and gravy were working on him, and he just couldn’t get to the privy fast enough.

He went rushing in that morning, the morning after I’d done my tampering—a big fat fella in a high white collar and a spanking new broadcloth suit. The floor boards went out from under him, and down into the pit. And he went down with them.

Smack down into thirty years’ accumulation of night soil.

Naturally, I had him fished out almost as fast as he went in. So he wasn’t really hurt none, just awful messed up. But I never saw one man so mad in all my borned days.

He hopped up and down and sideways, waving his fists and flinging his arms around, and yelling blue murder. I tried to toss some water over him to get the worst of the filth off. But the way he was hopping around and jumping every which way, I couldn’t do much good. I’d throw the water at him in one place, and he’d be in another. And cuss! You never heard anything like it, and him a deacon in the church!

The county commissioners came running out,along with the other office holders, all of ‘em pretty jittery to see the town’s most important citizen like that. Mr. Dinwiddie recognized them somehow, although it’s hard to see how he could with all that gunk in his eyes. And if he could have found a club, I swear he’d’ve clubbed ‘em.

He cussed ‘em up one side and down the other. He swore he’d file felony charges against them for criminal negligence. He yelled that he was going to file personal damage suits against them for wilfully perpetuating a public hazard.

About the only person he had a kind word for was me. He said that a man like me could run the county by himself, and that he was going to see that all the other officials were recalled, because they were just a needless expense and a menace to life and limb as well.