we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to
be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but
maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think
he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbors. Anyhow,
he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father
demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”
Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have
emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that
Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around
his head.
I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like
a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the
size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened
himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot
water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water
on his head for half an hour.
By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you
know who my favorite Biblical character is?”
“Take it easy,” says I. “You’ll come to your senses presently.”
“King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will
you, Sam?”
I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.
“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I’ll take you straight home. Now, are
you going to be good, or not?”
“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old
Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t
send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.”
“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and Mr. Bill to
decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on
business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are
sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”
I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told
him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the
cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been
regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter
to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it
should be paid.
“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I’ve stood by you without batting an eye
in earthquakes, fire, and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages,
police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. I never lost my nerve
yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me
going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”
“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the boy
amused and quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old
Dorset.”
Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red
Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down,
guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the
ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. “I ain’t
attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental
affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for
anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk
of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred
dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.”
So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran
this way:
“_Ebenezer Dorset, Esq._:
“We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless
for you or the most skillful detectives to attempt to find him.
Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you
are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his
return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and
in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter described. If you agree
to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger
to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the
road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards
apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side.
At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be
found a small pasteboard box.
“The messenger will place the answer in this box and return
immediately to Summit.
“If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as
stated, you will never see your boy again.
“If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe
and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not
accede to them no further communication will be attempted.
“TWO DESPERATE MEN.”
I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was
about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:
“Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was
gone.”
“Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind
of a game is it?”
“I’m the Black Scout,” says Red Chief, “and I have to ride to the
stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I’m tired of
playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.”
“All right.” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will
help you foil the pesky savages.”
“What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.
“You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down on your hands and
knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?”
“You’d better keep him interested,” said I, “till we get the scheme
going. Loosen up.”
Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a
rabbit’s when you catch it in a trap.
“How far is it to the stockade, kid?” he asks, in a husky manner of
voice.
“Ninety miles,” says the Black Scout. “And you have to hump yourself to
get there on time. Whoa, now!”
The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his heels in his side.
“For Heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can.
I wish we hadn’t made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit
kicking me or I’ll get up and warm you good.”
I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post-office and store,
talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says
that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s
boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought
some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed
peas, posted my letter surreptitiously, and came away. The postmaster
said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to
Summit.
When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I
explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there
was no response.
So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.
In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out
into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid,
stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill
stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.
The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.
“Sam,” says Bill, “I suppose you’ll think I’m a renegade, but I
couldn’t help it. I’m a grown person with masculine proclivities and
habits of self-defence, but there is a time when all systems of egotism
and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is
off. There was martyrs in old times,” goes on Bill, “that suffered
death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of
’em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been.
I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a
limit.”
“What’s the trouble, Bill?” I asks him.
“I was rode,” says Bill, “the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring
an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand
ain’t a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to
explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a road can run both
ways, and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only
stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him
down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the
knees down; and I’ve got to have two or three bites on my thumb and
hand cauterized.
“But he’s gone”—continues Bill—“gone home. I showed him the road to
Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I’m
sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to
the madhouse.”
Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and
growing content on his rose-pink features.
“Bill,” says I, “there isn’t any heart disease in your family, is
there?”
“No,” says Bill, “nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?”
“Then you might turn around,” says I, “and have a look behind you.”
Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down
plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little
sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him
that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that
we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset
fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid
a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese
war with him as soon as he felt a little better.
I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being
caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional
kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left—and the
money later on—was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on
all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to
come for the note, they could see him a long way off crossing the
fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in
that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to
arrive.
Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle,
locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a
folded piece of paper into it, and pedals away again back toward Summit.
I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down
the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the
woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the
note, got near the lantern, and read it to Bill. It was written with a
pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:
“_Two Desperate Men._
“_Gentlemen_: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the
ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high
in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I
am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay
me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off
your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbors believe
he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to
anybody they saw bringing him back.
Very respectfully,
“EBENEZER DORSET.”
“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent——”
But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in
his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.
“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve
got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in
Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a
spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let
the chance go, are you?”
“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has
somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom, and
make our get-away.”
We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his
father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for
him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door.
Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen
hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original
proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into
Dorset’s hand.
When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started
up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to
Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.
“How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.
“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I
can promise you ten minutes.”
“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross the Central,
Southern, and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for
the Canadian border.”
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as
I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch
up with him.
THE FRESHMAN FULL-BACK
BY
RALPH D. PAINE
The chief interest in “The Freshman Full-Back” is that of character.
The action has real dramatic quality and is staged with the local color
of a college contest. But the great value of the action is ethical,
for it shows that one may “wrest victory from defeat” and that it is a
shameful thing to be a “coward and a quitter.”
THE FRESHMAN FULL-BACK[12]
The boyish night city editor glanced along the copy-readers’ table and
petulantly exclaimed:
“Isn’t that spread head ready yet, Mr. Seeley? It goes on the front
page and we are holding open for it. Whew, but you are slow. You ought
to be holding down a job on a quarterly review.”
A portly man of middle age dropped his pencil and turned heavily in his
chair to face the source of this public humiliation. An angry flush
overspread his face and he chewed at a grayish mustache as if fighting
down rebellion. His comrades at the long table had looked up from their
work and were eyeing the oldest copy-reader with sympathetic uneasiness
while they hoped that he would be able to hold himself in hand. The
night city editor felt the tension of this brief tableau and awaited
the threatened outbreak with a nervous smile. But Seeley jerked his
green eyeshade so low that his face was partly in eclipse, and wheeled
round to resume his task with a catch of the breath and a tone of
surrender in his reply.
“The head will be ready in five minutes, sir. The last pages of the
story are just coming in.”
A much younger man, at the farther end of the table, whispered to his
neighbor:
“That’s cheap and nasty, to call down old man Seeley as if he were
a cub reporter. He may have lost his grip, but he deserves decent
treatment for what he has been. Managing editor of this very sheet,
London correspondent before that, and the crack man of the staff when
most of the rest of us were in short breeches. And now Henry Harding
Seeley isn’t any too sure of keeping his job on the copy-desk.”
“That’s what the New York newspaper game can do to you if you stick at
it too long,” murmured the other. “Back to the farm for mine.”
It was long after midnight when these two put on their coats and bade
the city editor’s desk a perfunctory “Good-night.”
They left Henry Harding Seeley still slumped in his chair, writing with
dogged industry.
“He’s dead tired, you can see that,” commented one of the pair as they
headed for Broadway, “but, as usual, he is grinding out stuff for the
Sunday sheet after hours. He must need the extra coin mighty bad. I
came back for my overcoat at four the other morning, after the poker
game, and he was still pegging away just like that.”
Other belated editors and reporters of the _Chronicle_ staff drifted
toward the elevator, until the gray-haired copy-reader was left alone
in the city room as if marooned. Writing as steadily as if he were a
machine warranted to turn out so many words an hour, Seeley urged his
pencil until the last page was finished. Then he read and corrected the
“story,” slipped it through a slit in a door marked “Sunday Editor,”
and trudged out, while the tower clock was striking three.
Instead of seeking the chop-house, wherein the vivacious and tireless
youth of the staff were wont to linger over supper, he turned into a
side street and betook himself to a small café as yet unfrequented by
the night-owls of journalism. Seeley was a beaten man, and he preferred
to nurse his wounds in a morbid isolation. His gait and aspect were
those of one who was stolidly struggling on the defensive, as if
hostile circumstances had driven him into a corner where he was making
his last stand.
Through the years of his indomitable youth as a reporter of rare
ability and resourcefulness, he had never spared himself. Burning the
candle at both ends, with a vitality which had seemed inexhaustible,
he had won step after step of promotion until, at forty, he was made
managing editor of that huge and hard-driven organization, the _New
York Chronicle_. For five years of racking responsibility Henry Harding
Seeley had been able to maintain the pace demanded of his position.
Then came an error of judgment—a midnight decision demanded of a
fagged mind—and his O. K. was scrawled upon the first sheet of a
story of embezzlement in Wall Street. By an incredible blunder the
name of the fugitive cashier was coupled with that of the wrong bank.
Publication of the _Chronicle_ story started a terrific run on this
innocent institution, which won its libel suit against the newspaper in
the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.
The managing editor, two reporters, and the copy-reader who had handled
the fatal manuscript, were swept out of the building by one cyclonic
order from the owner thereof. Henry Seeley accepted his indirect
responsibility for the disaster in grim, manly fashion, and straightway
sought another berth befitting his journalistic station. But his one
costly slip was more than a nine-days’ scandal along Park Row, and
other canny proprietors were afraid that he might hit them in the very
vital regions of their pockets. Worse than this, his confidence in
himself had suffered mortal damage. The wear and tear of his earlier
years had left him with little reserve power, and he went to pieces in
the face of adverse fortune.
“Worked out at forty-five,” was the verdict of his friends, and they
began to pity him.
The will to succeed had been broken, but Seeley might have rallied had
not his wife died during the ebb-tide of his affairs. She had walked
hand in hand with him since his early twenties, her faith in him had
been his mainstay, and his happiness in her complete and beautiful.
Bereft of her when he stood most in need of her, he seemed to have no
more fight in him, and, drifting from one newspaper office to another,
he finally eddied into his old “shop” as a drudging copy-reader and an
object of sympathy to a younger generation.
There was one son, strong, bright, eager, and by dint of driving
his eternally wearied brain overtime, the father had been able to
send him to Yale, his own alma mater. More or less pious deception
had led young Ernest Seeley to believe that his father had regained
much of his old-time prestige with the _Chronicle_ and that he had
a hand in guiding its editorial destinies. The lad was a Freshman,
tremendously absorbed in the activities of the autumn term, and his
father was content that he should be so hedged about by the interests
of the campus world as to have small time or thought for the grizzled,
taciturn toiler in New York.
This was the kind of man that trudged heavily into the little German
café of an early morning after his long night’s slavery at the
copy-desk. His mind, embittered and sensitive to slights like a raw
nerve, was brooding over the open taunt of the night city editor, who
had been an office boy under him in the years gone by. From force of
habit he seated himself at a table in the rear of the room, shunning
the chance of having to face an acquaintance. Unfolding a copy of the
city edition, which had been laid on his desk damp from the press-room,
Seeley scanned the front page with scowling uneasiness, as if fearing
to find some blunder of his own handiwork. Then he turned to the
sporting page and began to read the football news.
His son Ernest had been playing as a substitute with the university
eleven, an achievement which stirred the father’s pride without moving
his enthusiasm. And the boy, chilled by his father’s indifference, had
said little about it during his infrequent visits to New York. But
now the elder Seeley sat erect, and his stolid countenance was almost
animated as he read, under a New Haven date line:
“The Yale confidence of winning the game with Princeton to-morrow has
been shattered, and gloom enshrouds the camp of the Elis to-night.
Collins, the great full-back, who has been the key-stone of Yale’s
offensive game, was taken to the infirmary late this afternoon. He
complained of feeling ill after the signal practice yesterday; fever
developed overnight, and the consulting physicians decided that he
must be operated on for appendicitis without delay. His place in the
Princeton game will be filled by Ernest Seeley, the Freshman, who
has been playing a phenomenal game in the back-field, but who is so
lacking in experience that the coaches are all at sea to-night. The
loss of Collins has swung the betting around to even money instead of
5 to 3 on Yale.”
The elder Seeley wiped his glasses as if not sure that he had read
aright.
Ernest had seemed to him no more than a sturdy infant and here he was,
on the eve of a championship football battle, picked to fight for the
“old blue.” The father’s career at Yale had been a most honorable one.
He, too, had played on the eleven and had helped to win two desperate
contests against Princeton. But all this belonged to a part of his life
which was dead and done for. He had not achieved in after years what
Yale expected of him, and his record there was with his buried memories.
Supper was forgotten while Henry Seeley wondered whether he really
wanted to go to New Haven to see his boy play. Many of his old friends
and classmates would be there and he did not wish to meet them.
And it stung him to the quick as he reflected:
“I should be very happy to see him win, but—but to see him whipped! I
couldn’t brace and comfort him. And supposing it breaks his heart to be
whipped as it has broken mine? No, I won’t let myself think that. I’m a
poor Yale man and a worse father, but I couldn’t stand going up there
to-day.”
Even more humiliating was the thought that he would shrink from asking
leave of the city editor. Saturday was not his “day off,” and he so
greatly hated to ask favors at the office, that the possibility of
being rebuffed was more than he was willing to face.
Into his unhappy meditations broke a boisterous hail:
“Diogenes Seeley, as I live. Why, you old rascal, I thought you were
dead or something. Glad I didn’t get foolish and go to bed. Here,
waiter, get busy.”
Seeley was startled, and he looked much more distressed than rejoiced
as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a
classmate. The opera-hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was cocked at a
rakish angle, his blue eye twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity,
and his aspect was utterly care-free.
“How are you, Dick?” said Seeley, with an unusual smile which
singularly brightened his face. “You don’t look a day older than when I
last saw you. Still cutting coupons for a living?”
“Oh, money is the least of my worries,” gayly rattled Mr. Giddings.
“Been doing the heavy society act to-night, and on my way home found
I needed some sauerkraut and beer to tone up my jaded system. By Jove,
Harry, you’re as gray as a badger. This newspaper game must be bad for
the nerves. Lots of fellows have asked me about you. Never see you at
the University Club, nobody sees you anywhere. Remarkable how a man can
lose himself right here in New York. Still running the _Chronicle_, I
suppose.”
“I’m still in the old shop, Dick,” replied Seeley, glad to be rid of
this awkward question. “But I work nearly all night and sleep most of
the day, and am like a cog in a big machine that never stops grinding.”
“Shouldn’t do it. Wears a man out,” and Mr. Giddings sagely nodded his
head. “Course you are going up to the game to-day. Come along with
me. Special car with a big bunch of your old pals inside. They’ll be
tickled to death to find I’ve dug you out of your hole. Hello! Is that
this morning’s paper? Let me look at the sporting page. Great team at
New Haven, they tell me. What’s the latest odds? I put up a thousand at
five to three last week and am looking for some more easy money.”
The alert eye of the volatile Richard Giddings swept down the New Haven
dispatch like lightning.
With a grievous outcry he smote the table and shouted: