THE GYPO QUEEN
JOSHUA’S fingers fumbled with the straps of the roller-skates, and his
ears felt hot. Girls had meant little to him. There had been a couple
or more mild affairs, but the flame had died down within a day or two.
This was different. In the winking of an eyelash Joshua Cole was head
over heels in love. And how it hurt!
At last there remained no further excuse for him to keep on bended knee
before her. The skates were adjusted; he must needs stand up and face
those deadly eyes again. Like unto an Oriental topaz was their color,
and her hair was bronze and hung down her back in a long, thick rope.
He struggled to his feet at last, and, miserable beyond measure, lifted
his eyes. He found that the long, reddish lashes were hiding hers and
that the pink of May blossoms was in her cheeks. They were brown, too,
those cheeks, and the pink blended with the brown to form a color
combination utterly bewildering. He thought that the skin of Pocahontas
must have looked like that--just why he could not have said.
“Ye’re all fixed now, I guess,” he mumbled in crackling tones. “C’n you
skate?”
“A little,” she replied, without lifting her glance to his. “I’m just
learning.”
And now Joshua Cole did the boldest thing in his life when he asked:
“Du-d’ye want me to teach you?”
A moment’s hesitation, then, with a laugh: “Uh-huh--I don’t care.”
Awkwardly he helped her up on her skates and took her hands. And
then they glided out onto the floor. Round and round he guided
her, searching desperately for words. Their silence was long and
embarrassing, but at last the girl broke it.
“You can skate fine, can’t you? I wish I could, but I’ve not been
trying long.”
“I’m pretty good at it, I guess,” he said not proudly. “I never saw you
here before. I come lots. Almost every afternoon when school’s out.”
“I’ve not been here often,” she helped on the conversation. “And I
don’t go to school.”
“Don’t they make you?”
“No. My mother teaches me. We’re here and there. I live in a camp down
by the railroad tracks.”
“A camp? What kind of a camp?”
“I guess you wouldn’t know if I was to tell you,” she laughed. She
laughed almost every time she spoke, thought Joshua; and, while it was
a merry little trill, it bore as well a note of nervousness. She seemed
to find conversation as much of an effort as Joshua was finding it.
“Tell me anyway,” he begged.
“It’s a gypo camp.”
“That’s a funny word. What’s gypo mean?”
“Oh, it would take too long to tell.”
“No ’twouldn’t. Go on! Won’tcha?”
“Well, a gypo camp is-- Oh, I can’t tell you here! There’s so much to
tell.”
“Le’s quit skatin’ and set down a while.”
“I don’t care.”
He guided her to a bench, and they sat down three feet apart.
“Go on tell me, now,” he pleaded.
“Well, it’s railroad work--building railroads, you know. A gypo man’s
a little contractor--you know what I mean--not a little _man_, but a
little contractor that don’t amount to much. He’s got a little outfit
and he takes sub-contracts from the big fellows. My father’s a gypo
man, and they call the camp of a man like him a gypo camp. I’m a gypo
queen.”
“What’s that?”
“Well,” she amplified, “a gypo queen is a gypo man’s daughter. That’s
easy. Sometimes they call a gypo man a shanty man, and then his camp is
a shanty camp and his daughter is a shanty queen. It’s all the same.
It’s hobo lingo.”
“What d’ye do down there?”
“Well, I work some--a little. And my mother teaches me. She’s well
educated. You see, there isn’t much chance for me to go to regular
school, as we hardly ever stay in one place longer than three months.
Then sometimes my mother lets me come up here to skate. Sometimes I
drive horses on a slip, too. Do you know what that is?”
Joshua shook his head.
“Well, it’s just a dirt scraper. When you load it they call it sticking
pigs. It’s lots of fun. And sometimes it’ll flip up and jerk out o’
your hands, and you lose your load and all. I can drive pretty well.
We’re almost through on the job we’re on now, and then Pa says we’re
going West. We’ve been on the double-track job, you know--working just
out o’ town.”
“I’m on my way West, too,” Joshua informed her importantly.
“Don’t you go to school?”
“Did till to-day. Then they fired me.”
“Expelled you! What for?”
Joshua began the story of Madmallet’s tyranny and his own disgrace, and
the Oriental-topaz eyes glowed warmly as she listened to every word.
It was thrilling to have her watching him so, and Joshua may be excused
if he made himself appear something of a bold, bad outlaw.
“Would you ’a’ smashed him?” she wanted to know.
“You bet yer neck I would,” said Joshua. “Can’t come nothin’ like that
on me. I wonder if I--if I--now-- Could I get a job, d’ye s’pose, and
go West with your father’s gypo thing? Me and Les?”
“Is Les your brother’s name?”
“Lester. Us kids call ’im Les. My name’s Joshua. I don’t like that
name, do you? Nobody wants an ole Bible name like that, do they?”
“Uh-uh--I don’t mind it,” she told him.
Then a silence fell between them. It grew more tense as time went on,
with the eyes of both abased. Then said she of the bronze-gold hair:
“You haven’t asked me my name, have you?”
Helpful little flirt! Long before Joshua would have asked it had he
dared.
“I will now,” he said. “What is it?”
“It’s Madge.”
“Madge what?”
“You didn’t tell me _your_ last name. You tell first.”
“Cole, then.”
“And mine’s Mundy. And you’ll think my father has a funny nickname. The
hobos call a nickname a monaker. Pa’s is Bloodmop.”
“That’s a corker!” Joshua enthused. “Why they call ’im that?”
“Well, he’s got a very heavy head of fiery-red hair. The stiffs say it
looks like a mop that’s been used to clean up blood after a murder.
They’re awfully funny, some of them. My hair’s a little red, too. Ma’s
is black, and they say that’s how comes mine to be like it is, with
Pa’s so red and Ma’s so black. Your hair’s black, isn’t it? And your
eyes are almost blue. That’s kinda funny, don’t you think?”
“Uh-huh--it’s awfully funny,” Joshua agreed. “Where’d you learn so many
funny words?”
“In camp.”
“But you didn’t say whether your father’d take me and Les out West with
’im.”
“What could you do?”
“We could do anything,” he told her with assurance. “We’d oughta be
able to drive a team if you can.”
“But I just do it for fun. And you’d have to do it all day long. I
guess you’re both too young”--she looked at him speculatively--“to
work all day on a job like that. But one of you might be water boy.
That’s about all there is for a kid to do in a construction camp that’s
workin’ in dirt. If we were rockmen, you might get a job as powder
monkey, and carry powder to the dynos and drills to the blacksmith shop
to be sharpened. You didn’t say how old you are.”
“I’m pretty near fifteen,” said Joshua. (He lacked nine months of being
fifteen.) “How old are you?”
“Eleven, but I’m large for my age. How old’s your brother?”
“Who, Les? Why, le’s see. I guess he’s about thirteen. I ferget. Say,
I’ll go get him. And don’t you think there’d be a chance for us?”
“I could speak to Pa about it. It’s lots o’ fun--traveling with a
construction outfit. You take all the stock with you, you know--the
horses and mules. I mean you ride on the same train with them. We
always go in a converted boxcar, and--”
“What’s that? Where’d the boxcar get converted--at a revival meetin’?”
“Aw, you’re just trying to be funny! A converted boxcar is one made
over so that people can live in it. There’s a place for a stove, and
bunks with curtains along each side. And next to it a flatcar is
hooked on, and that’s your wood-yard--or if you burn coal, it’s your
coal-yard. Just like a back yard at home, you know. And while the
freight train is traveling you go over the tops of the cars and feed
and water the mules and horses every day. It’s just like a farm on
wheels. I’ve walked over the top of a freight train lots of times--when
it was going pretty fast, too. And once when we moved from Ohio to a
new job in Louisiana we had chickens on the flatcar, and a cow that
gave milk in one of the boxcars. Pa milked her every day--morning and
night. Don’t you think you’d like to travel that way?”
“I _guess_ I _would_! Will yeh ask yer father about what I told
you--Les an’ me goin’ along? We’ll work like the dickens--honest!”
“Uh-huh--sure I will. I don’t mind.”
“Then I’ll go get Les and tell ’im”--and Joshua stooped to remove his
skates.
But a search of the spectators’ seats revealed no Lester humped up with
his misery.
Joshua grew apprehensive. Had his brother taken this opportunity to
sneak home and face punishment? In his heart he felt that this was what
had happened. He hurried back to Madge.
“He--he’s gone,” he announced, in sepulchral tones. “And I--I guess
I’ll have to be goin’, too. I gotta see what he’s done. I’m afraid
he’s got scared out and gone home and spoiled it all. When’ll I see ye
again, Ma-Madge?”
“Why, I’ll be here to-morrow, I guess.”
“About this time?”
“I guess so--uh-huh.”
“Well, then I’ll see you again. And ask yer father what I told you
to--you know--about goin’ West.”
“All right; I’ll ask him.”
“Well, then, gu-good-by.”
“Good-by,” she said demurely.
Joshua slowed his steps when he entered that part of Hathaway’s
residential district in which the Cole home was situated. It was not
yet four o’clock in the afternoon, and the spring sun was shining
brightly overhead. Everything was quiet, and the stillness awed him a
little, for now, more than ever, he realized the grave step that he had
taken. But his spirits refused moroseness; it was such a day in spring
as calls insistently to adventurers--a day for boys to dream of pirates
and desert islands, and caravans forging slowly toward vague frontiers.
So Joshua put behind him all thoughts of his predicament and let his
mind dwell on Madge Mundy and a freight train traveling West, with a
certain car that had for an auxiliary a flatcar with all the familiar
appurtenances of one’s own back yard.
At the corner of his block he came to a halt. He did not wish to be
seen by any of the neighbors. He stood there, irresolute, watching the
front of his home, which was about all that he could see. If only he
dared sneak around to the kitchen door and confide in Zida. But this
comprised too great a risk.
For perhaps half an hour he loitered about the corner, hoping for sight
of his deserting brother. He wanted to make sure that Lester had been
unfaithful before wiping him forever out of his glowing plans for the
future. But he saw nothing of Lester, and was without a scheme for
finding out what he wished to know, when the pupils homeward hound from
school came trooping toward him.
Across the street a cellar door stood open invitingly. Joshua hurried
over, and, as no one was about, quickly hid himself in the dark
passageway. He kept his head below the level of the street until he
heard the familiar voices of his gang--the squeaky tones of “Did”
Eustace, the boastful voice of “Spud” Mulligan, and others well known
to him.
Then he raised his head and looked across the street, to see five of
his particular friends loitering along, shoving one another off the
sidewalk, pushing one against another, or jerking neckties until the
knots became so tight that fingers could scarce undo them.
“Spud! Oh, Spud!” he called cannily; and as the group turned, he left
the cellarway and ran across the street.
“Oh, lookut who got fired!” began the volley of greetings. “Gysh, kid!
Whatcha been doin’? Whatja dad haveta say? I’ll betcha ye got yours,
all right, all right! Say, boy, you sure stood up to Ole Hothatchet!
Gysh!”
“Listen, Spud!” said Joshua, grasping his friend’s shirt and
interrupting the general clatter of admiration. “Do somethin’ f’r me?”
“Sure,” said Spud readily. “Whatcha want, Cole?”
“Les, he backed out, I think--he quit me down at the rink. We was goin’
West--had everythin’ fixed. And then he turned me down. That’s what
I think, anyway. But I wanta know f’r sure. You go to the house an’
ring the bell and ast if he’s there. Just pretend like you don’t know
nothin’--see? Don’t let on or anythin’. Just say: ‘Mrs. Cole, I’d like
to see Les a minute, if he’s home.’ And if he’s there she’ll tell ye.
Go on--do that f’r me, Spud! Won’tcha? Aw, gwan an’ do it. I’ll do
somethin’ f’r you sometime.”
Spud hesitated a little, assailed by a boy’s natural dislike for
approaching the parent of one of his friends on a delicate matter. But
in the end he gave in; and the rest went around the corner and peeked
out while he importantly retraced his steps down the street and crossed
to the Cole house.
The watchers saw him reach out his hand to press the bell button beside
the front door. They saw him standing there in a waiting attitude, and
knew by his uneasiness as displayed by leg movements the moment that
the door was opened. They were unable to see Mrs. Cole, and did not
know whether she or Zida had answered the bell until Spud scraped off
his disreputable cap and came clattering down the stairs. He ran up the
street and rounded the corner, where the eager gang awaited him.
“He’s home, all right, all right,” he announced. “All’t yer mother’d
say was: ‘Yes, he’s home, but he can’t come out.’ You fellas know what
that means. He’s locked up. Say, he’ll get his!”