Luke McGovern’s. He left it outside Cronin’s while he went in to get a
drink, and he took too much, and me father told me to drive it round to
the stable for him. I’m Cronin’s son. McGovern ain’t in no condition to
drive. You can see yourself how he’s been misusing the horse. He puts
it up at Bachman’s livery stable, and I was just going around there
now.”
Gallegher’s knowledge of the local celebrities of the district confused
the zealous officer of the peace. He surveyed the boy with a steady
stare that would have distressed a less skilful liar, but Gallegher
only shrugged his shoulders slightly, as if from the cold, and waited
with apparent indifference to what the officer would say next.
In reality his heart was beating heavily against his side, and he felt
that if he was kept on a strain much longer he would give way and break
down. A second snow-covered form emerged suddenly from the shadow of
the houses.
“What is it, Reeder?” it asked.
“Oh, nothing much,” replied the first officer. “This kid hadn’t any
lamps lit, so I called to him to stop and he didn’t do it, so I
whistled to you. It’s all right, though. He’s just taking it round to
Bachman’s. Go ahead,” he added, sulkily.
“Get up!” chirped Gallegher. “Good-night,” he added, over his shoulder.
Gallegher gave an hysterical little gasp of relief as he trotted away
from the two policemen, and poured bitter maledictions on their heads
for two meddling fools as he went.
“They might as well kill a man as scare him to death,” he said, with
an attempt to get back to his customary flippancy. But the effort was
somewhat pitiful, and he felt guiltily conscious that a salt, warm tear
was creeping slowly down his face, and that a lump that would not keep
down was rising in his throat.
“‘Tain’t no fair thing for the whole police force to keep worrying at
a little boy like me,” he said, in shame-faced apology. “I’m not doing
nothing wrong, and I’m half froze to death, and yet they keep a-nagging
at me.”
It was so cold that when the boy stamped his feet against the footboard
to keep them warm, sharp pains shot up through his body, and when he
beat his arms about his shoulders, as he had seen real cabmen do, the
blood in his finger-tips tingled so acutely that he cried aloud with
the pain.
He had often been up that late before, but he had never felt so sleepy.
It was as if some one was pressing a sponge heavy with chloroform near
his face, and he could not fight off the drowsiness that lay hold of
him.
He saw, dimly hanging above his head, a round disc of light that seemed
like a great moon, and which he finally guessed to be the clock-face
for which he had been on the lookout. He had passed it before he
realized this; but the fact stirred him into wakefulness again,
and when his cab’s wheels slipped around the City Hall corner, he
remembered to look up at the other big clock-face that keeps awake over
the railroad station and measures out the night.
He gave a gasp of consternation when he saw that it was half-past
two, and that there was but ten minutes left to him. This, and the
many electric lights and the sight of the familiar pile of buildings,
startled him into a semi-consciousness of where he was and how great
was the necessity for haste.
He rose in his seat and called on the horse, and urged it into a
reckless gallop over the slippery asphalt. He considered nothing else
but speed, and looking neither to the left nor right dashed off down
Broad Street into Chestnut, where his course lay straight away to the
office, now only seven blocks distant.
Gallegher never knew how it began, but he was suddenly assaulted by
shouts on either side, his horse was thrown back on its haunches, and
he found two men in cabmen’s livery hanging at its head, and patting
its sides, and calling it by name. And the other cabmen who have their
stand at the corner were swarming about the carriage, all of them
talking and swearing at once, and gesticulating wildly with their whips.
They said they knew the cab was McGovern’s and they wanted to know
where he was, and why he wasn’t on it; they wanted to know where
Gallegher had stolen it, and why he had been such a fool as to drive it
into the arms of its owner’s friends; they said that it was about time
that a cab-driver could get off his box to take a drink without having
his cab run away with, and some of them called loudly for a policeman
to take the young thief in charge.
Gallegher felt as if he had been suddenly dragged into consciousness
out of a bad dream, and stood for a second like a half-awakened
somnambulist.
They had stopped the cab under an electric light, and its glare shone
coldly down upon the trampled snow and the faces of the men around him.
Gallegher bent forward, and lashed savagely at the horse with his whip.
“Let me go,” he shouted, as he tugged impotently at the reins. “Let me
go, I tell you. I haven’t stole no cab, and you’ve got no right to stop
me. I only want to take it to the _Press_ office,” he begged. “They’ll
send it back to you all right. They’ll pay you for the trip. I’m not
running away with it. The driver’s got the collar—he’s ’rested—and
I’m only a-going to the _Press_ office. Do you hear me?” he cried, his
voice rising and breaking in a shriek of passion and disappointment.
“I tell you to let go those reins. Let me go, or I’ll kill you. Do you
hear me? I’ll kill you.” And leaning forward, the boy struck savagely
with his long whip at the faces of the men about the horse’s head.
Some one in the crowd reached up and caught him by the ankles, and with
a quick jerk pulled him off the box, and threw him on to the street.
But he was up on his knees in a moment, and caught at the man’s hand.
“Don’t let them stop me, mister,” he cried, “please let me go. I didn’t
steal the cab, sir. S’help me, I didn’t. I’m telling you the truth.
Take me to the _Press_ office, and they’ll prove it to you. They’ll pay
you anything you ask ’em. It’s only such a little ways now, and I’ve
come so far, sir. Please don’t let them stop me,” he sobbed, clasping
the man about the knees. “For Heaven’s sake, mister, let me go!”
* * * * *
The managing editor of the _Press_ took up the india-rubber
speaking-tube at his side, and answered, “Not yet” to an inquiry the
night editor had already put to him five times within the last twenty
minutes.
Then he snapped the metal top of the tube impatiently, and went
upstairs. As he passed the door of the local room, he noticed that the
reporters had not gone home, but were sitting about on the tables and
chairs, waiting. They looked up inquiringly as he passed, and the city
editor asked, “Any news yet?” and the managing editor shook his head.
The compositors were standing idle in the composing-room, and their
foreman was talking with the night editor.
“Well?” said that gentleman, tentatively.
“Well,” returned the managing editor, “I don’t think we can wait; do
you?”
“It’s a half-hour after time now,” said the night editor, “and we’ll
miss the suburban trains if we hold the paper back any longer. We
can’t afford to wait for a purely hypothetical story. The chances are
all against the fight’s having taken place or this Hade’s having been
arrested.”
“But if we’re beaten on it——” suggested the chief. “But I don’t think
that is possible. If there were any story to print, Dwyer would have
had it here before now.”
The managing editor looked steadily down at the floor.
“Very well,” he said, slowly, “we won’t wait any longer. Go ahead,” he
added, turning to the foreman with a sigh of reluctance. The foreman
whirled himself about, and began to give his orders; but the two
editors still looked at each other doubtfully.
As they stood so, there came a sudden shout and the sound of people
running to and fro in the reportorial rooms below. There was the tramp
of many footsteps on the stairs, and above the confusion they heard the
voice of the city editor telling some one to “run to Madden’s and get
some brandy, quick.”
No one in the composing-room said anything; but those compositors who
had started to go home began slipping off their overcoats, and every
one stood with his eyes fixed on the door.
It was kicked open from the outside, and in the doorway stood a
cab-driver and the city editor, supporting between them a pitiful
little figure of a boy, wet and miserable, and with the snow melting
on his clothes and running in little pools to the floor. “Why,
it’s Gallegher,” said the night editor, in a tone of the keenest
disappointment.
Gallegher shook himself free from his supporters, and took an unsteady
step forward, his fingers fumbling stiffly with the buttons of his
waistcoat.
“Mr. Dwyer, sir,” he began faintly, with his eyes fixed fearfully on
the managing editor, “he got arrested—and I couldn’t get here no
sooner, ’cause they kept a-stopping me, and they took me cab from under
me—but—” he pulled the note-book from his breast and held it out with
its covers damp and limp from the rain, “but we got Hade, and here’s
Mr. Dwyer’s copy.”
And then he asked, with a queer note in his voice, partly of dread and
partly of hope, “ Am I in time, sir?”
The managing editor took the book, and tossed it to the foreman, who
ripped out its leaves and dealt them out to his men as rapidly as a
gambler deals out cards.
Then the managing editor stooped and picked Gallegher up in his arms,
and, sitting down, began to unlace his wet and muddy shoes.
Gallegher made a faint effort to resist this degradation of the
managerial dignity; but his protest was a very feeble one, and his head
fell back heavily on the managing editor’s shoulder.
To Gallegher the incandescent lights began to whirl about in circles,
and to burn in different colors; the faces of the reporters kneeling
before him and chafing his hands and feet grew dim and unfamiliar, and
the roar and rumble of the great presses in the basement sounded far
away, like the murmur of the sea.
And then the place and the circumstances of it came back to him again
sharply and with sudden vividness.
Gallegher looked up, with a faint smile, into the managing editor’s
face. “You won’t turn me off for running away, will you?” he whispered.
The managing editor did not answer immediately. His head was bent, and
he was thinking, for some reason or other, of a little boy of his own,
at home in bed. Then he said, quietly, “Not this time, Gallegher.”
Gallegher’s head sank back comfortably on the older man’s shoulder, and
he smiled comprehensively at the faces of the young men crowded around
him. “You hadn’t ought to,” he said, with a touch of his old impudence,
“‘cause—I beat the town.”
THE JUMPING FROG
BY
MARK TWAIN
This is a story typical of American humor. As William Lyon Phelps
says, “The essentially American qualities of common-sense, energy,
good-humor, and Philistinism fairly shriek from his [Mark Twain’s]
pages.”—_Essays on Modern Novelists._
THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS[14] COUNTY[15]
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from
the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and
inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested
to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion
that _Leonidas W._ Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew
such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old
Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous _Jim_ Smiley,
and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating
reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to
me. If that was the design, it succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of
the dilapidated tavern in the decaying mining camp of Angel’s, and
I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of
winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He
roused up, and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had
commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of
his boyhood named _Leonidas W._ Smiley—_Rev. Leonidas W._ Smiley,
a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a
resident of Angel’s Camp. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me
anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many
obligations to him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with
his chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative
which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he
never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned
his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of
enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a
vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly
that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or
funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and
admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in _finesse_. I
let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.
“Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le—well, there was a feller here once
by the name of _Jim_ Smiley, in the winter of ’49—or maybe it was the
spring of ’50—I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes
me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume
warn’t finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was
the curiosest man about always betting on anything that turned up you
ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he
couldn’t he’d change sides. Any way that suited the other man would
suit _him_—any way just so’s he got a bet, _he_ was satisfied. But
still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he ’most always come out winner. He
was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn’t be no solit’ry
thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and take ary
side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race,
you’d find him flush or you’d find him busted at the end of it; if
there was a dogfight, he’d bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d
bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there
was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly
first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg’lar to
bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about
here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug
start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to
get to—to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would
foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where
he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys
here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never
made no difference to _him_—he’d bet on _any_ thing—the dangdest
feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick once, for a good while,
and it seemed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one morning he
come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was
consid’able better—thank the Lord for his inf’nite mercy—and coming
on so smart that with the blessing of Prov’dence she’d get well yet;
and Smiley, before he thought, says: ’Well, I’ll resk two-and-a-half
she don’t anyway.’
“Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute
nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was
faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all
she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the
consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or
three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at
the fag end of the race she’d get excited and desperate like, and come
cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber,
sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side among the fences,
and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with her
coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and _always_ fetch up at
the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down.
“And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you’d think
he warn’t worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a
chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a
different dog; his under-jaw’d begin to stick out like the fo’castle of
a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces.
And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw
him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson—which was
the name of the pup—Andrew Jackson would never let on but what _he_
was satisfied, and hadn’t expected nothing else—and the bets being
doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was
all up; and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by
the j’int of his hind leg and freeze to it—not chaw, you understand,
but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if
it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he
harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because they’d
been sawed off in a circular saw, and when the thing had gone along
far enough, and the money was all up, and he come to make a snatch for
his pet holt, he see in a minute how he’d been imposed on, and how the
other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ’peared surprised,
and then he looked sorter discouraged-like and didn’t try no more to
win the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as
much as to say his heart was broke, and it was _his_ fault, for putting
up a dog that hadn’t no hind legs for him to take holt of, which was
his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped off a piece and
laid down and died. It was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and
would have made a name for hisself if he’d lived, for the stuff was in
him and he had genius—I know it, because he hadn’t no opportunities
to speak of, and it don’t stand to reason that a dog could make such a
fight as he could under them circumstances if he hadn’t no talent. It
always makes me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his’n,
and the way it turned out.
“Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and
tomcats, and all them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you
couldn’t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He ketched
a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal’lated to educate
him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his
back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he _did_ learn
him, too. He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next minute
you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn
one summerset, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come
down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the
matter of ketching flies, and kep’ him in practice so constant, that
he’d nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said
all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ’most anything—and
I believe him. Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster down here on this
floor—Dan’l Webster was the name of the frog—and sing out, ’Flies,
Dan’l, flies!’ and quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and
snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag’in
as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head
with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been
doin’ any more’n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over
more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when
it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a
red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for
fellers that had travelled and been everywheres all said he laid over
any frog that ever _they_ see.
“Well, Smiley kep’ the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller—a
stranger in the camp, he was—come acrost him with his box, and says:
“‘What might it be that you’ve got in the box?’
“And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like: ’It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it ain’t—it’s only just a frog.’
“And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says: ’H’m—so ’tis. Well, what’s _he_ good for?’
“‘Well,’ Smiley says, easy and careless, ’he’s good enough for _one_
thing, I should judge—he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.’
“The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look,
and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, ’Well,’ he says,
’I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other
frog.’
“‘Maybe you don’t,’ Smiley says. ’Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don’t understand ’em; maybe you’ve had experience, and maybe you
ain’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got _my_ opinion, and
I’ll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras
county.’
“And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like,
’Well, I’m only a stranger here, and I ain’t got no frog; but if I had
a frog, I’d bet you.’
“And then Smiley says, ’That’s all right—that’s all right—if you’ll
hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get you a frog.’ And so the feller
took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s, and set
down to wait.
“So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and
then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon
and filled him full of quail shot—filled him pretty near up to his
chin—and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped
around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and
fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says:
“‘Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his forepaws
just even with Dan’l’s, and I’ll give the word.’ Then he says,
’One—two—three—_git_!’ and him and the feller touched up the frogs
from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan’l give a
heave, and hysted up his shoulders—so—like a Frenchman, but it warn’t
no use—he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he
couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good
deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn’t have no idea
what the matter was, of course.
“The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going
out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder—so—at
Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, ’Well,’ he says, ’_I_ don’t see
no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.’
“Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long
time, and at last he says, ’I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throw’d off for—I wonder if there ain’t something the matter with
him—he ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.’ And he ketched Dan’l by
the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, ’Why, blame my cats if
he don’t weigh five pound!’ and turned him upside down and he belched
out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was
the maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feller,
but he never ketched him. And——”
[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got
up to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he
said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy—I ain’t going
to be gone a second.”
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history
of the enterprising vagabond _Jim_ Smiley would be likely to afford me
much information concerning the Rev. _Leonidas W._ Smiley, and so I
started away.
At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button-holed
me and recommenced:
“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow that didn’t have no
tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and——”
However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear
about the afflicted cow, but took my leave.
THE LADY OR THE TIGER?
BY
FRANK R. STOCKTON
This is an illustration of the symmetrical plot. It challenges the
constructive imagination of the reader to search the story for the
evidence that will lead to a logical conclusion.
THE LADY OR THE TIGER?[16]