only one I could think of; so I slipped out of the house and went acrost
the street to a grocery store where there was a pay station, and I
called him up on the telephone and ast him to help me out a little. It
wasn't no more than right that he should, was it, seein' as he was
responsible for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't been for him in
the first place I wouldn't never 'a' got into all that trouble. I talked
with him over the telephone at his office and he said he'd do somethin'
for me. He said he'd send me some money that evenin' or else he'd bring
it round himself. But he didn't do neither one. And Vic Magner, she kept
on doggin' after me for her board money.
"I telephoned him again the next mornin'; but before I could say more'n
two words to him he got mad and told me to quit botherin' him, and he
rung off. That was day before yistiddy. When I got back to the house Vic
Magner come to me, and I couldn't give her no satisfaction. So about six
o'clock in the evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I didn't have
nowheres to go and only eight dollars and ninety cents left--I'd spent a
dime telephoning so, before I got out I took and wrote Rod Bullard a
note, and when I got outside I give a little nigger boy fifteen cents to
take it to him. I told him in the note I was out in the street, without
nowheres to go, and that if he didn't meet me that night and do
somethin' for me I'd jest have to come to his office. I said for him to
meet me at eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street Alley. That give
me two hours to wait. I walked round and round, packin' my baggage.
"Then I come by a pawnstore and seen a lot of pistols in the window, and
I went in and I bought one for two dollars and a half. The pawnstore man
he throwed in the shells. But I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard--jest
to skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin' myself too. Then I walked
round some more till I was plum' wore out.
"When eight o'clock come I was waitin' where I said, and purty soon he
come along. As soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder he bulged
up to me. He was mighty mad. He called me out of my name and said I
didn't have no claims on him--a whole lot more like that--and said he
didn't purpose to be bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him notes
and callin' on him for money. I said somethin' back, and then he made
like he was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had that pistol in my
hand all the time, holdin' it behind my skirt. And I pulled it and I
pointed it like I was goin' to shoot--jest to skeer him, though, and
make him do the right thing by me. I jest simply pointed it at
him--that's all. I didn't have no idea it would go off without you
pulled the hammer back first!
"Then it happened! It went off right in my hand. And he said to me: 'Now
you've done it!'--jest like that. He walked away from me about ten feet,
and started to lean up against a tree, and then he fell down right smack
on his face. And I grabbed up my baggage and run away. I wasn't sorry
about him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute since--ain't that
funny? But I was awful skeered!"
Rocking her body back and forth from the hips, she put her hands up to
her face. Major Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting eddy of
confused thoughts. Perhaps it was the clearest possible betrayal of his
utter unfitness for his new vocation in life that not until that very
moment when the girl had halted her narrative did it come to him--and it
came then with a sudden jolt--that here he had one of those monumental
news stories for which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be willing to
barter his right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It was a
scoop, as those young fellows had called it--an exclusive confession of
a big crime--a thing that would mean much to any paper and to any
reporter who brought it to his paper. It would transform a failure into
a conspicuous success. It would put more money into a pay envelope. And
he had it all! Sheer luck had brought it to him and flung it into his
lap.
Nor was he under any actual pledge of secrecy. This girl had told it to
him freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keep
her secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it to
other strangers--or else somebody would betray her. And surely this
sickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside the
strong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men would
convict her of murder--the thought was incredible. She would be kindly
dealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined that these would
have been the inevitable conclusions of any one of those ambitious young
men at the office. He bent forward.
"What did you do then, ma'am?" he asked.
"I didn't know what to do," she said, dropping her hands into her lap.
"I run till I couldn't run no more, and then I walked and walked and
walked. I reckin I must 'a' walked ten miles. And then, when I was jest
about to drop, I come past this house. There was a light burnin' on the
porch and I could make out to read the sign on the door, and it said
Lodgers Taken.
"So I walked in and rung the bell, and when the woman came I said I'd
jest got here from the country and wanted a room. She charged me two
dollars a week, in advance; and I paid her two dollars down--and she
showed me the way up here.
"I've been here ever since, except twice when I slipped out to buy me
somethin' to eat at a grocery store and to git some newspapers. At first
I figgered the police would be a-comin' after me; but they didn't--there
wasn't nobody at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And I was skeered Vic
Magner might tell on me; but I guess she didn't want to run no risk of
gittin' in trouble herself--that Captain Brennan, of the Second
Precinct, he's been threatenin' to run her out of town the first good
chance he got. And there wasn't none of the other girls there that
knowed I ever knew Rod Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested yit.
"Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin' to do but think and cry, I
made up my mind I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that there
pistol out and I put it up to my head and I said to myself that all I
had to do was jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't hurt
me but a secont--and maybe not that long. But I couldn't do it,
mister--I jest couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted to die,
and yit I wanted to live too. All my life I've been jest that way--first
thinkin' about doin' one thing and then another, and hardly ever doin'
either one of 'em.
"Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin' if I could jest tell
somebody about it that maybe after that I'd feel easier in my mind. And
right that very minute you come and knocked on the door, and I knowed it
was a sign--I knowed you was the one for me to tell it to. And so I've
done it, and already I think I feel a little bit easier in my mind. And
so that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd take that pistol away
with you when you go--I don't never want to see it again as long as I
live."
She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon the bed. The major's short
arm made a gesture toward the cheap suitcase.
"I observe," he said, "that your portmanteau is packed as if for a
journey. Were you thinking of leaving, may I ask?"
"My which?" she said. "Oh, you mean my baggage! Yes; I ain't never
unpacked it since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to my home--I got
a stepsister livin' there and she might take me in--only after payin'
for this room I ain't got quite enough money to take me there; and now I
don't know as I want to go, either. If I kin git my strength back I
might stay on here--I kind of like city life. Or I might go up to
Cincinnati. A girl that I used to know here is livin' there now and she
wrote to me a couple of times, and I know her address--it was backed on
the envelope. Still, I ain't sure--my plans ain't all made yit.
Sometimes I think I'll give myself up, but most generally I think I
won't. I've got to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or another,
because I ain't got but a little over three dollars left out of what I
had."
She sank her head in the pillow wearily, with her face turned away from
him. The major stood up. Into his side coat pocket he slipped the
revolver that had snuffed out the late and unsavory Rodney Bullard's
light of life, and from his trousers pocket he slowly drew forth his
supply of ready money. He had three silver dollars, one quarter, one
dime, and a nickel--three-forty in all. Contemplating the disks of metal
in the palm of his hand, he did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. This
was Thursday night now. Saturday afternoon at two he would draw a pay
envelope containing twelve dollars. Meantime he must eat. Well, if he
stinted himself closely a dollar might be stretched to bridge the gap
until Saturday. The major had learned a good deal about the noble art of
stinting these last few weeks.
On the coverlet alongside the girl he softly piled two of the silver
dollars and the forty cents in change. Then, after a momentary
hesitation, he put down the third silver dollar, gathered up the forty
cents, slid it gently into his pocket and started for the door, the
loose planks creaking under his tread. At the threshold he halted.
"Good night, Miss La Mode," he said. "I trust your night's repose may be
restful and refreshing to you, ma'am."
She lifted her face from the pillow and spoke, without turning to look
at him.
"Mister," she said, "I've told you the whole truth about that thing and
I ain't goin' to lie to you about anythin' else. I didn't come from
Indianapolis, Indiana, like I told you. My home is in Swainboro', this
state--a little town. You might know where it is? And my real name ain't
La Mode, neither. I taken it out of a book--the La Mode part--and I
always did think Blanche was an awful sweet name for a girl. But my real
name is Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm much obliged to you fer
listenin', and I ain't goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin' if I
kin help it."
As the major gently closed her door behind him he heard her give a long,
sleepy sigh, like a tired child. Back in his own room he glanced about
him, meanwhile feeling himself over for writing material. He found in
his pockets a pencil and a couple of old letters, whereas he knew he
needed a big sheaf of copy paper for the story he had to write. Anyway,
there was no place here to do an extended piece of writing--no desk and
no comfortable chair. The office would be a much better place.
The office was only a matter of two or three blocks away. The negro
watchman would be there; he stayed on duty all night. Using the corner
of his washstand for a desk, the major set down his notes--names,
places, details, dates--upon the backs of his two letters. This done, he
settled his ancient hat on his head, picked up his cane, and in another
minute was tiptoeing down the stairs and out the front doorway. Once
outside, his tread took on the brisk emphasis of one set upon an
important task and in a hurry to do it.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later Major Stone sat at his desk in the empty city room of
the Evening Press. Except for Henry, the old black night watchman, there
was no other person in the building anywhere. Just over his head an
incandescent bulb blazed, bringing out in strong relief the major's
intent old face, mullioned with crisscross lines. A cedar pencil, newly
sharpened, was in his fingers; under his right hand was a block of clean
copy paper. His notes lay in front of him, the little stubnosed pistol
serving as a paper weight to hold the two wrinkled envelopes flat.
Through the loop of the trigger guard the words, Gussie Stammer, alias
Blanche La Mode, showed. Everything was ready.
The major hesitated, though. He readjusted his paper and fidgeted his
pencil. He scratched his head and pulled at the little tuft of goatee
under his lower lip. Like many a more experienced author, Major Stone
was having trouble getting under way. He had his own ideas about a
fitting introductory paragraph. Coming along, he had thought up a full
sonorous one, with a biblical injunction touching on the wages of sin
embodied in it; but, on the other hand, there was to be borne in mind
the daily-dinned injunction of Devore that every important news item
should begin with a sentence in which the whole story was summed up.
Finally Major Stone made a beginning. He covered nearly a sheet of
paper.
Then, becoming suddenly dissatisfied with it, he tore up what he had
written and started all over again, only to repeat the same operation.
Two salty drops rolled down his face and fell upon the paper, and
instantly little twin blistered blobs like tearmarks appeared on its
clear surface. They were not tears, though--they were drops of sweat
wrung from the major's brow by the pains of creation. Again he poised
his pencil and again he halted it in the air--he needed inspiration. His
gaze rested absently upon the pistol; absently he picked it up and began
examining it.
It was a cheap, rusted, second-hand thing, poorly made, but no doubt
deadly enough at close range. He unbreeched it and spun the cylinder
with his thumb and spilled the contents into his palm--four loaded
shells, suety and slick with grease, and one that had been recently
fired; and it was discolored and flattened a trifle. Each of the four
loaded shells had a small cap like a little round staring eye set in the
exact center of its flanged butt-end, but the eye of the fifth shell was
punched in. He turned the empty weapon in his hands, steadying its
mechanism, and as he did so a scent of burnt powder, stale and dead,
came to him out of the fouled muzzle. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed
at it.
It had been many a long day since the major had had that smell in his
nostrils--many a long, long day. But there had been a time when it was
familiar enough to him. Even now it brought the clamoring memories of
that far distant time back to him, fresh and vivid. It stimulated his
imagination, quickening his mind with big thoughts. It recalled those
four years when he had fought for a principle, and had kept on fighting
even when the substance of the thing he fought for was gone and there
remained but the empty husks. It recalled those last few hopeless months
when the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost cause; when the forty
cents he now carried in his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when the
sorry house where he lodged now would have seemed a palace; when,
without prospect or hope of reward or victory, he had piled risk upon
risk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice, and through it all had borne
it all without whimper or complaint--fighting the good fight like a
soldier, keeping the faith like a gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!
The major had his inspiration now, right enough. He knew just what he
would write; knew just how he would write it. He laid down the pistol
and the shells and squared off and straightway began writing. For two
hours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word,
stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a
machine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script.
Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter.
Just before one o'clock he finished. The completed manuscript, each page
of the twenty-odd pages properly numbered, lay in a neat pile before
him. He scooped up the pistol shells and stored them in an inner breast
pocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer, slipped the emptied
revolver well back under a riffle of papers and clippings and closed the
drawer and locked it. His notes he tore into squares, and those squares
into smaller squares--and so on until the fragments would tear no finer,
but fluttered out between his fingers in a small white shower like stage
snow.
He shoved his completed narrative back under the roll-top of Devore's
desk, where the city editor would see it the very first thing when he
came to work; and as he straightened up with a little grunt of
satisfaction and stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linen
shirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the plaited front, from
collarband almost to waistline.
He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful stare, plucking at the gaping
tear with his graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head mournfully.
Yet as he stepped out into the street, bound for his lodgings, he jarred
his heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk, snapping gait of a man
who has tackled a hard job and has done it well, and is satisfied with
the way he has done it.
* * * * *
Under a large black head the major's story was printed in the Fourth of
July edition of the Evening Press. It ran full two columns and lapped
over into a third column. It was an exhaustive--and exhausting--account
of the Fall of Vicksburg.
VI
THE EXIT OF ANSE DUGMORE
When a Kentucky mountaineer goes to the penitentiary the chances are
that he gets sore eyes from the white walls that enclose him, or quick
consumption from the thick air that he breathes. It was entirely in
accordance with the run of his luck that Anse Dugmore should get them
both, the sore eyes first and then the consumption.
There is seldom anything that is picturesque about the man-killer of the
mountain country. He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect and the
delightfully studied vernacular with which an inspired school of fiction
has invested our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle of belted
accouterment goes with him, no gift of deadly humor adorns his equally
deadly gun-play. He does his killing in an unemotional, unattractive
kind of way, with absolutely no regard for costume or setting. Rarely is
he a fine figure of a man.
Take Anse Dugmore now. He had a short-waisted, thin body and abnormally
long, thin legs, like the shadow a man casts at sunup. He didn't have
that steel-gray eye of which we so often read. His eyes weren't of any
particular color, and he had a straggly mustache of sandy red and no
chin worth mentioning; but he could shoot off a squirrel's head, or a
man's, at the distance of a considerable number of yards.
Until he was past thirty he played merely an incidental part in the
tribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and its
principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. He
was getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring rise
when word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of his
immediate clan and the upholder of his family's honor.
"Yore paw an' yore two brothers was laywaid this mawnin' comin' 'long
Yaller Banks togither," was the message brought by a breathless bearer
of news. "The wimmenfolks air totin' 'em home now. Talt, he ain't dead
yit."
From a dry spot behind a log Anse lifted his rifle and started over the
ridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eats
up the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when he
sat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his
crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of
this one killed and that one maimed; for this he had been schooled when
he practised with rifle and revolver until, even as a boy, his aim had
become as near an infallible thing as anything human gets to be; for
this he had been schooled still more when he rode, armed and watchful,
to church or court or election. Its coming found him ready.
Two days he ranged the ridges, watching his chance. The Tranthams were
hard to find. They were barricaded in their log-walled strongholds, well
guarded in anticipation of expected reprisals, and prepared in due
season to come forth and prove by a dozen witnesses, or two dozen if so
many should be needed to establish the alibi, that they had no hand in
the massacre of the Dugmores.
But two days and nights of still-hunting, of patiently lying in wait
behind brush fences, of noiseless, pussy-footed patrolling in likely
places, brought the survivor of the decimated Dugmores his chance. He
caught Pegleg Trantham riding down Red Bird Creek on a mare-mule. Pegleg
was only a distant connection of the main strain of the enemy. It was
probable that he had no part in the latest murdering; perhaps doubtful
that he had any prior knowledge of the plot. But by his name and his
blood-tie he was a Trantham, which was enough.
A writer of the Western school would have found little in this encounter
that was really worth while to write about. Above the place of the
meeting rose the flank of the mountain, scarred with washes and scantily
clothed with stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed through
like the hide of a mangy hound. The creek was swollen by the April rains
and ran bank-full through raw, red walls. Old Pegleg came cantering
along with his rifle balanced on the sliding withers of his mare-mule,
for he rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man and fat for a
mountaineer. A ten-year-old nephew rode behind him, with his short arms
encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with
a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband
together at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showing
his naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its worn
brass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled down
straight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and a
soiled white-yarn sock falling down into the wrinkled and gaping top of
an ancient congress gaiter.
From out of the woods came Anse Dugmore, bareheaded, crusted to his
knees with dried mud and wet from the rain that had been dripping down
since daybreak. A purpose showed in all the lines of his slouchy frame.
Pegleg jerked his rifle up, but he was hampered by the boy's arms about
his middle and by his insecure perch upon the peaks of the slab-sided
mule. The man afoot fired before the mounted enemy could swing his
gunbarrel into line. The bullet ripped away the lower part of Pegleg's
face and grazed the cheek of the crouching youngster behind him. The
white-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping mule and
instantly scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. The rifle dropped
out of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward on the mule's neck,
grabbing out with blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped two paces
forward to free his eyes of the smoke, which eddied back from his
gunmuzzle into his face, and fired twice rapidly. The mule was bouncing
up and down, sideways, in a mild panic. Pegleg rolled off her, as inert
as a sack of grits, and lay face upward in the path, with his arms wide
outspread on the mud. The mule galloped off in a restrained and
dignified style until she was a hundred yards away, and then, having
snorted the smells of burnt powder and fresh blood out of her nostrils,
she fell to cropping the young leaves off the wayside bushes, mouthing
the tender green shoots on her heavy iron bit contentedly.
For a long minute Anse Dugmore stood in the narrow footpath, listening.
Then he slid three new shells into his rifle, and slipping down the bank
he crossed the creek on a jam of driftwood and, avoiding the roads that
followed the little watercourse, made over the shoulder of the mountain
for his cabin, two miles down on the opposite side. When he was gone
from sight the nephew of the dead Trantham rolled out of his hiding
place and fled up the road, holding one hand to his wounded cheek and
whimpering. Presently a gaunt, half-wild boar pig, with his spine arched
like the mountains, came sniffing slowly down the hill, pausing
frequently to cock his wedge-shaped head aloft and fix a hostile eye on
two turkey buzzards that began to swing in narrowing circles over one
particular spot on the bank of the creek.
The following day Anse sent word to the sheriff that he would be coming
in to give himself up. It would not have been etiquette for the sheriff
to come for him. He came in, well guarded on the way by certain of his
clan, pleaded self-defense before a friendly county judge and was locked
up in a one-cell log jail. His own cousin was the jailer and ministered
to him kindly. He avoided passing the single barred window of the jail
in the daytime or at night when there was a light behind him, and he
expected to "come clear" shortly, as was customary.