MR. BLACKFORD’S TROUBLE
Bitter at heart was Joe Strong as he walked slowly into his room and
shut the door. This was a common form of punishment with the deacon,
since he had given up his frequent whippings of Joe.
Just what effect the old man thought it had on the youth to send him to
his room it is hard to tell. But Joe had often been sent there to sit in
loneliness, often without a meal, or at best with bread and water. At
times the deacon declared bread and water was all Joe could have, but
Mrs. Blackford had a kinder heart, and she would butter the slices she
brought up to Joe.
“Well, I had the row all right,” mused Joe, as he sat down in the chair
near a window. “It was just as I expected. As if I could help getting my
suit scorched!”
From his window Joe could look across the fields to the fireworks
factory, now mostly a heap of ruins. He thought of the professor he had
saved, and he also thought of what Mr. Crabb had said of Joe’s father
and mother.
“If you were only alive now,” thought Joe, with a sigh, “things would be
different. I’d be with you in the circus, and what great times we’d have
together!”
With shining eyes, in which there was a small trace of tears, Joe gazed
off into the distance. He realized that his feelings were getting the
best of him.
“Come, come, old man!” he told himself. “This won’t do! Not at all! Not
for a minute! You’ve got to brace up!”
He arose, raised his arms, and, taking off his coat, began to go through
some simple gymnastic exercises. Even under his shirt one could see the
ripple and play of his superb muscles. Joe was not the sort of athlete
that develops into a “strong man.” He was more of the all-around type,
though he did possess unusual strength for a youth of his age. He could
use it to advantage, too. The trapeze was his favorite, though he could
do some startling feats on the flying rings and the horizontal bars.
“There, I feel better!” Joe announced, as he sat down, breathing a
little faster because of the rapid exercise he had taken. “But I do wish
I had a regular gym. I could work myself up in better shape. But what’s
the use of wishing.”
He could hear, from downstairs, the murmur of the voices of his
foster-father and mother.
“Talking about me, I suppose,” mused Joe. “Trying to decide what
punishment to inflict. Well, I know one thing, and that is if he tries
to give me a whipping I won’t stand it! No, sir! That’s the limit! He
scolded me enough, and he humiliates me by sending me up here, as if I
were some five-year-old child. But that’s as far as I’ll let him go! He
shan’t beat me!
“If he does—if he does, I’ll——”
Joe paused in his thinking. Again his gaze wandered off toward the
burned factory, and again he saw, in fancy, the huddled form of the
magician. “That’s what I’ll do!” exclaimed Joe, this time half aloud. “I
won’t wait for him to give me a beating, which I think he’s planning to
do. No, sir, I won’t wait for that. I’m glad I thought of it. It’s about
the only thing left for me to do. I’ve about reached the limit.”
Joe went to his closet and took out a suit of clothes. It was his
“best,” kept for Sundays and special occasions. Then he went to his
bureau and began to look among the drawers.
“The only thing is about getting this suit back to Tom,” mused Joe.
“I’ll have to do that. If I left it here they might not give it to him.”
He paused to listen once more to the murmur of voices below him. The
deacon’s dull and rumbly and his wife’s shriller.
“Still at it!” said Joe grimly.
From a far and dark corner of the closet Joe brought out an old valise.
It had not often been used, for Joe seldom traveled. Deacon Blackford
had no money to waste on such “foolishness.”
“That’ll hold about all I’ll want to take with me,” Joe mused. “Now, the
next question is, can I get out of here without their suspecting? Of
course, I’ll have to do it after dark.”
Joe went to a window and looked out. What he saw satisfied him.
“I wouldn’t be much of a climber if I couldn’t get down that,” he
murmured with a smile.
“It isn’t as if this were the first trouble we’d had,” mused Joe, “nor
the first time he’d punished me unjustly.”
Joe spoke the truth. Though doing what he thought was the best for his
foster-son, Mr. Blackford was a harsh man. And he did not seem to
realize that Joe was growing up. He made no allowances for that.
“I’m going to quit,” Joe told himself. “I’m going to light out. I
haven’t much money,” and he looked at the sum in a box that, since he
was a little fellow, had served him as a “bank.”
“It won’t take me far,” Joe mused. “I can’t travel in a Pullman car,
that’s sure. That is, not one of the regular ones. A side-door Pullman
for mine!” and Joe smiled as he thought of the tramp’s designation of a
freight car.
“And after I quit here—well, I guess I can find something to do. I ought
to be able to make my living.”
Joe laid out his money, and then, rather idly, he began palming coins,
doing various tricks with them, sending them spinning up in the air
seemingly to vanish.
“A little out of order,” Joe said, as he missed one trick. “I’ll have to
practice.”
As Joe put the money in his pocket his fingers came in contact with a
paper. He drew it out. It was the list of towns where Professor Rosello
would play.
“That’s what I’ll do,” decided the young wizard. “I’ll go to him. He
said he’d help me if he could. I don’t imagine he is very rich, but he’s
good. And if he can’t give me anything else he can advise me. I need
that, I’m thinking.”
It was now late afternoon, almost time for supper, and Joe wondered
whether he would get anything to eat.
“I’ll go whether I do or not,” he said. “I can buy something after I’m
away from here, for I sure am going.”
He could not hear his foster-parents talking now, and he wondered
whether his fate had been decided on. In such case the deacon might come
upstairs with the whip he occasionally used on Joe.
“If he comes I won’t let him in,” thought our hero, as he locked his
room door. “He’ll have to break that down to get me, and I don’t believe
he’ll do it—cost him too much for repairs. As soon as it’s dark enough,
I’ll slip out the window. No, I guess I’d better wait until they’re in
bed and asleep. No use taking chances, and I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll
wait until about midnight.”
Joe went on with his preparations for leaving home. He had no regrets,
for, after all, it had not been much of a home of late.
“If only my father and mother were alive!” Joe said softly. “It sure
would be great to travel around the country with them. My father could
show me all his new tricks, and my mother would teach me more about
horses. But there’s no use wishing.”
As Joe stood looking out through the window he saw Deacon Blackford
pass, walking down the street in the direction of the feed and grain
store which he owned.
“That’s queer,” mused Joe. “I wonder what he’s going back to the store
for at this hour. He never does that so near supper time. He must have
forgotten something. Or maybe he’s got something new in his head about
me. I wonder what he’s going back for?”
Joe might have wondered still more could he have looked into the feed
store a little later. For Deacon Blackford was in close consultation
with two men—in such close consultation that it was necessary to shut
and lock the office door.
“Well, you’ve come back, I see,” remarked one of the men. He had shifty
eyes that did not gaze straight at the person with whom he was talking.
“Yes, Denton, I’ve come back, as I said I would,” replied Mr. Blackford.
“But I tell you now, it’s no use! I’m not going to give up another
cent.”
“Will you give us the papers then?” asked the man called Denton. He
seemed to be pleading, rather than demanding.
“Give us the papers,” he went on. “We can get a little back from the
investment then. We won’t lose it all. If you won’t give us the money
give us the papers.”
“He’ll give us both, Burke, that’s what he’ll give us!” broke in the
other man. This man had a hard face, and his eyes, unlike those of his
companion, met his opponent’s boldly. But they did not have a pleasant
or safe look—those eyes. “He’ll give us both, that’s what he’ll give
us!” said this man again. “If he doesn’t he’ll suffer for it!” and he
banged his fist down on the deacon’s desk.
“Oh, go easy now, Harrison,” advised Burke Denton. “Go a bit easy.”
“No, that’s not my way!” exclaimed Jake Harrison. “What I want I’ll get,
if I have to take it out of his hide. He went into this investment with
us and——”
“But you said it would be successful, and that we’d all make money,”
whined the deacon. “I didn’t think I’d lose.”
“I told you it wasn’t a dead sure thing,” said Harrison. “You knew it
was a risk when you went into it. Now we’re in a hole, and you will have
to help us out.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you’ll be in more trouble. What we want is money enough to tide us
over, or else those papers, so we can use ’em to raise money on from
some one else. Come now, you’ve got the money and we know it. We’re
going to have it, too!” And again Harrison banged his fist down on the
desk, so that Mr. Blackford jumped.
There was a worried look on his face as he looked at the two men—one
shifty, and inclined to temporize, merely through fear of getting into
too-deep water, the other a bolder and more hardened character, it
seemed.
“Come, what do you say?” asked Harrison. “The papers or the money?”