compliment to France and kissed McDermott on both cheeks, in front
of the hospital staff, several American reporters, and as much of the
French army as qould be spared to do honor to the occasion. The _Croix
de Guerre_ made no impression upon McDermott, but the kiss briefly
arrested his wandering consciousness, and he cried out, starting up in
his chair and menacing the officer: “Where is me bung starter?” Then he
fainted.
A good many thousands of people in France and England and America
learned from the newspapers the story of the nondescript in the blue
overalls, who had behaved so gallantly at the crucial moment of a
crucial fight. But McDermott never did. He seldom read newspapers. No
one had been able to learn his name, so the reporters had given him a
name. They called him “Dennis.” And it was “Dennis” who got the fame and
glory. McDermott would not have identified himself with Dennis had he
seen the newspapers. When he awakened from his long, broken stupor, with
its intervals of dazed halfconsciousness, the first thing he did was to
steal away from that hospital; he left without having heard of Dennis or
of the decoration of Dennis.
There was one thing that he had experienced that did live hazily and
confusedly in his memory, however, although he could not fix it in its
relationship to any other thing. And that was the fact that he had met
Gustave Schmidt. Three or four months after he slipped away from the
hospital--a period of unchronicled wanderings, during which he had tried
unsuccessfully to enlist several times--he limped into a saloon on the
Brooklyn water front and asked Tim O'Toole, the proprietor, for his
usual. He had just got back to Brooklyn, and he carried his earthly
possessions in a bundle wrapped in brown paper.
“I hear Yordy Crowley isn't givin' his racket this year,” said
McDermott, laying his bundle on the bar and pouring out his drink.
“He is not,” said Tim. “He is in France helpin' out thim English.”
“Yordy will make a good sojer,” said McDermott. “He is a good man of his
fists.”
“The Irish is all good sojers,” said Mr. O'Toole, sententiously. “There
was that man Dinnis, now, that was in all av the papers.”
“I did not hear av him,” said McDermott. “An' phwat did he do?”
“He licked th' entire German army wan morn-in',” said O'Toole, “an'
saved England, an' the Quane of France kissed him for it. 'Twas in all
the papers. Or, maybe,” said Mr. O'Toole, “it was the King av Belg'um
kissed him for ut. Anny-way wan of thim foreign powers kissed him wid
the whole world lookin' on.”
“An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?” asked McDermott.
“He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him,” said O'Toole.
“Maybe 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time.
Some wan told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy.”
“I was that,” said McDermott. “I wint wid mules.”
“Did ye see annything av the war?”
“I did not,” said McDermott. “Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o'
racket an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin'
through th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come
near seein' some av ut, wan time.”
“An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?” inquired Tim.
“I wint to slape,” said McDermott. “The war was slapin', an' I laid
m'silf down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in
the hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or
somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an'
I slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might
have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An'
afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army
w'u'd not have me.”
“And phwy not?”
“Because av me fut.”
“And how did ye hurt y'r fut?”
“Divil a bit do I know how,” said McDermott. “I'm tellin' ye 'twas done
whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch
barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was
slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me
souse.”
“An' ye saw naught av the war?” Tim was distinctly disappointed.
“But little of ut, but little of ut,” said McDermott. “But, Timmy,--wan
thing I did whilst I was in France.”
“An' phwat was that?”
“I avened up an ould grudge,” said McDermott. He put away a second
drink, rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. “Do ye mind that
Goostave Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye
mind th' time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!”
“Phwat thin?”
“Well, thin,” said McDermott, “I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim
Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said
to him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give
him as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it
back wid me as a sooveneer av me travels in France.”
And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among
his change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the
Hôtel Fauçon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection.
Something else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye.
“An' phwat is that thing ye have there?” asked Tim.
“Divil a bit do I know phwat,” said McDermott, picking the article up
and tossing it carelessly upon the bar. “'Twas layin' by me cot in
the hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to
m'silf, an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along.”
It was the _Croix de Guerre_.
V.--Looney the Mutt
|Looney had but one object in life, one thought, one conscious motive
of existence--to find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be
different, things would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not
know.
Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much,
in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which
he had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He
could remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney
Hogan. There had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had
happened inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of
which he remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember
again, he was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him
on the head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And
now that Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he
was with Slim, Slim had not let people hit him--often. So he must find
Slim again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known.
In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from
Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost
Mutt, or as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a
dog, particularly, but he never called himself “The Mutt”; he stuck to
“Looney”; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be
right.
The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving
Looney the Mutt a “bum steer” as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a
legitimate jest.
“Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?” he would ask of hobo or
wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from
his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager
hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before.
And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and
Looney's quest would answer, like as not:
“Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin'
fer youse, Looney.” One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and
who looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at
himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying:
“I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine?
Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o'
mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since.
If youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on
his mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him
another one.'”
Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim
should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew
that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he
wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim,
who now promised him “a wallop on the mush.” For Slim had never struck
him. It was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him.
It was Slim who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect
him--once, in a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago,
Slim had knifed a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull
afternoon, flung Looney into the fire.
It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of
misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim
was hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy
possessed--he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of
a boy--was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he
thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one
should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own.
There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the
open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid
than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a
cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take
care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured,
too, and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's
for Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow--or almost
always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone.
It seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling
him the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent
even to his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest.
Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He
worked a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished
to keep him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing
enough, and had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney
was never afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs
took to him, and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good
stead in his profession.
“Why won't you stay?” asked the farmer.
“Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres,” said Looney. And he told the farmer
about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and
feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought
might hold him.
“Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you
go travelin' all over the country,” he said.
“Huh-uh,” said Looney. “He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every
time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by.”
And then he continued, after a pause: “Slim, he was always good to me,
Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just
stayin' still an' waitin' to be found.”
They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were
out. Looney told him about Slim's star.
“I want to be the guy that does the findin',” went on Looney presently,
“because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or
six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against
a fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer
Chi that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The
rest of t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I
s'pose Slim he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them
ties till mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never
glommed him since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I
lost Slim, Mister.”
“Maybe,” suggested the farmer, “he is dead.”
“Nit,” said Looney. “He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd
be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I
told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star
wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister.”
And he went back to his own world--his world--which was a succession of
freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in dubious suburbs
near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses, jails, city
missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood, improvised
shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty
industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping
water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to
charge fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments
in vile barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or
gravel pits or abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings
and interrupted slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of
villages. Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with
the wheat harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the
metropoli, or the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he
loafed, and rustled grub and small coin from the charitably disposed.
It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember
anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so,
and whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings
whom he could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they
were stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they
might do unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts
and their strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his
associates.
He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it
came; he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding
Slim again. And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be
looking for Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark.
He was forever looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's
knife--a name, a date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow
or to wait--on freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted
telegraph poles and the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim,
always just ahead of him, as he thought, continually returning and
passing him, ever receding in the distance, left no mark, no wanderer's
pateran, behind. Looney left his own marks everywhere, but, strangely
enough, it seemed that Slim never saw them. Looney remembered that one
time when he and Slim were together Slim had wished to meet and confer
with the Burlington Crip, and had left word to that effect, penciled and
carved and sown by the speech of the mouth, from the Barbary Coast to
the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with his snaggle teeth and his
stump where a hand had been, had joined them on the Brooklyn waterfront
within two months. It had been simple, and Looney wondered why Slim
omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim was using it and
Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for stupid, and set
his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part. For Slim was
Slim, and Slim could do no wrong.
His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's
became known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished
material for an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When
ennui descended upon some chance gathering in one of the transient
hangouts--caravanserai as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests,
from coast to coast, as was ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the
Biltmore in New York to those who read this simple history--it was
customary for some wag to say:
“Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in
Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to
Washington.”
And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for
Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its
perpetrators--in Looney's swift departures.
Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes
interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And
then the jester would say, perhaps: “Why don't you get a move onto you,
Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again.”
And Looney would answer, perchance: “Slim, he ain't there now. The' was
one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two
weeks ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while
longer.”
But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told
the Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington
Crip who had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time:
“Looney, Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over
on that lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped
him off youse was here.”
Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and
had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter
he was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing
him in the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods
underneath a railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very
train, and would hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he
became more muddled and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be
better to choose this route or that, whether it would be better to stop
here a week, or go yonder with all possible speed. And from month to
month he developed more and more the questing, peering, wavering manner
of the lost dog that seeks its master.
Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld.
Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could
rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his
evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population,
and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was
dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the
Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as
he was not physically maltreated--as he often was. The occasional
crimes of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with
industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but
he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part
he did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his
stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first
opportunity.
The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough
as tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid,
and wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the
man, for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without
Looney's faculty for blundering.
He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in
reality to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati,
which the Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney
returned with the food but without the information. He had been willing
enough, for he admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was
withheld by no moral considerations from anything he was asked to do;
but he had bungled. He had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own
scoffin's there, he had talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had
even brought up from the cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range
to save the cook's back, but he actually knew less about that house, its
plan, its fastenings, its doors and basement windows than the Basher had
been able to gather with a single stroke of the eye as he loitered down
the street.
“Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?”
demanded the Basher.
“She was stringin' me along,” said Looney humbly, “an' I spilled to her
about me an' Slim.”
“Slim! ------ -------- yer, I've a mind t' croak yer!” cried the Basher.
And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally
Looney lay still upon the ground.
“'S'elp me,” said the Basher, “I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You
get up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again I _will_
croak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!”
Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then,
spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here,
he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a
yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!”
It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith
in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were
gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping
yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and
lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging
the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments,
and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder
what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times
the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion,
and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they
had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the
world.
“Wot ever _did_ become of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who
happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the
sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant
grouch.
Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious
days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who
have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual,
saying nothing.
“Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so
long?” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson
t'ree or four years ago.”
“He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last
mont'.”
And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed
to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get
the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him
before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled
circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the
attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim.
“Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?”
“A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'.
Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike.
See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.”
“He didn't neither,” said Looney again.
“T' hell he didn't? He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically.
“Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?”
Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from
the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the
apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star,
and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever
that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and
staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith.
“He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't,” he muttered, “an' I'm
gonna find him yet.”
And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may
have been in his belief.
It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in
Pennsylvania--or found some one that looked like him.
Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had
rustled himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a
day's sleep, and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps
were being lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway
depot. He purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so
dark that he could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much
danger of being seen and he was merely putting in the time until full
night came on.
While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station
platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got
out. He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made
toward the door of the waiting room.
“Slim!” cried Looney, rushing forward.
For this was Slim--it must be Slim--it was Slimmy the Match in every
feature--and yet, the car!--the clothes--the woman--the baby--the
prosperity----- _Was_ it Slim?