He was sitting in the dark in his parlor, thinking what he’d like to do to Middleton Martin, and racking his brains for some new dirty trick, when all of a sudden he stretched out his hand — and there was the demon-trap, which he’d completely forgotten. As soon as he touched it, the idea came into his head.
Jonas knew that Orientals know a lot of things better not known, and he figured that if they took the time to build demon-traps, those traps would most likely catch demons. Also, he knew there’d been demons and devils aplenty in Massachusetts back in the old Salem days, and that Satan himself still had business in Boston, because he’d been mixed up in it often enough. And he reasoned that if a little trap’d catch little devils, why it’d only take a great big one to catch the biggest of all.
Showing his teeth in the moonlight, Jonas walked out in the night to the Post Road, which ran right past his gate, and he looked up and down. In those days, it was straight as an arrow all the way down the valley, and he guessed that it was the track the Devil would use when he went up to Boston. Right away, he made up his mind that he’d catch him — but he wasn’t intending to waste him by chucking him, sizzling and sputtering, into the ocean — not Jonas! He was going to keep him right there in the cage till he fixed it so he could get Mary Ann.
Jonas looked at the moon, and laughed without making a sound, and he went back in the house, and woke up his two foreign servants, a man and a woman, and sent them off into town to buy stuff — lumber and silk, and red-colored paint, and cord and bamboo. Later that day, old Lem Smathers saw him hammering away in the yard like a madman, with the big trap darned near finished, but he wouldn’t tell Lem anything. It was the servants that told it next day, after it happened, because right at the last they found out what he was up to and ran off and quit him. The rest folks just figured out.
Night came, dark and angry, with storm clouds drowning the stars and hiding the moon except once in a while for just a few seconds. And Great-uncle Jonas hitched a team to his devil trap — for, making it strong, he’d built it too heavy to carry — and dragged it out, and set it up by the road right under his window. Then he went back in to stay up and watch, leaving the window propped open in spite of the weather so he could hear if anything happened. It stormed and it rained, and the wind blew and blew, and several times he had to go take a look, just in case, and he got soaked to the skin. But he didn’t think about that. Then, toward three o’clock, the sky started to clear, and gales up aloft tore the black clouds to shreds — and all of a sudden, down by the trap, Jonas heard a stumbling and stamping, and a roaring and ranting like he’d never heard in his life.
Jonas knew that the worst thing you could do, going into a deal, was to seem to be anxious, so he walked down as slow as he could, his hands in his pockets. Sure enough, there was his trap, with its little silk flags fluttering their Oriental letters in the cold breeze. And sure enough, in it, all tangled up in the strings, was the Devil.
He didn’t have hoofs or a tail, or anything like it. He was six foot tall, dark and handsome. He wore a big beaver hat, and a greatcoat, and flowers all over his vest, and a gold watch and chain. When he saw Jonas Hackett, he quit his struggling and swearing, and tried to pretend not to be mad, and actually smiled.
“Good mawnin’, suh,” he said, bowing. “Mah name is Legree. Ah’m a tobacco auctioneer from No’th Carolina, headin’ for Boston. Ah seem to have blundered into this heah Yankee contraption.”
Jonas didn’t bow back. ‘That’s right,” he agreed, “sure seems like you have. But you’re no auctioneer, no more’n I am.”
The Devil shrugged just a little, and fixed up his smile. “Ah see, suh,” he said, “that Ah’m dealin’ with a true judge of man’s nature. Ah was lyin’, suh, Ah admit it. But Ah was only tryin’ to spare the Abolitionist sentiments heahabouts. Truth is, Ah’m a slave-dealer from way down in Memphis. And now, suh, Ahll oblige you to set me free from this gadget—”
“You’re a slave-dealer, right enough,” Jonas answered, “but not like you meant it. Down South, you’d show up as a Yankee. I know you, Satan.”
At that, the Devil couldn’t help letting a wisp of steam, smoke, and flame leak out of his nostrils, and he quickly lit a cheroot trying to cover it up. Then he smiled again, a smile that would’ve scared most any man clean out of his skin. “You’d best open the door of this thing,” he suggested, “before I break it down and come get you.”
Jonas just shook his head. “If you could’ve, I guess you’d have got me already,” he said coldly.
Well, the Devil couldn’t control himself any longer, and the show he put on made all the cussing and roaring he’d gone in for before seem like nothing at all. He described the things that would happen to Jonas if he ever got out. He spouted out cinders and sparks, and smoke poured from him, and red flames; and the sulphur and brimstone smelled up the valley for days. He even took his true natural shape a few times.
But Jonas hung on, and didn’t heed him at all, because he knew he could force him into a deal. And, watching real close, after almost an hour he saw him beginning to tire.
Finally, the Devil worked himself up to a real fever pitch. He grabbed the bars of the cage, and shook them till all the ground quaked, and in a voice like thunder and lightning he bawled, “OPEN THE DOOR!”
And Jonas knew at once that the Devil was just about done. He looked him right in the eye. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said firmly. “Not for all the tea in China. No siree bob.”
There was a great dreadful hush, as if everything over the world had just stopped. Slowly, the Devil eased up. He lit another cheroot. He twirled his mustache. “Wouldn’t you?” he said with a smile. “Wouldn’t you, Jonas?”
Then and there, Jonas forgot all about Mary Ann, and what all the neighbors would say, and Middleton Martin. All he could think of was how much money there would be in that tea. “We-ell,” he said to the Devil, “maybe I would.”
“That’s fine,” said the Devil. “It’s a deal!”
Jonas backed away from the door. He knew that the Devil had to keep that sort of a bargain. “Hold on a minute. That tea’ll have to be packed in tea chests and bales, and set down right here.”
“You’re a hard man,” the Devil declared, “but you’ve got me. That’s the way it’ll be.”
“Shake,” said Great-uncle Jonas; and they shook.
And then he opened the door.
Grandma eyed me very severely. ‘That was how Jonas Hackett came to his end,” she said after a minute. “Let it be a lesson to you, boy. Don’t you ever forget it!”
“Did — did he get all that tea from the Devil?” I gasped.
“Every last bit. There was one peal of thunder, and a flash from one end of the sky to the other, and sure enough there it was.”
She paused. With a heel, she kicked at the thin inch of topsoil covering up Hackett’s Hill. Under it was a thick, dark brown leaf-mold, and some rotten wood like the corner of a broken old chest; and the smell of tannin came up as strong as could be.
We looked at the Hill, more than two hundred feet high and a thousand feet long, sitting squarely on top of where Jonas’ place used to be.