there's be'n no gettin' on with him at all. Thim Sunday papers 've
toorned his head. He's all blather about his rights an' his wrongs. Th'
other moornin' didn't I try to get on his bus from the wrong side o' the
crossin', an' he bawls at me: 'Th' other side! Th' other side! Yuh're no
better than any one ilse!' An' I had to chase through the mud after him!
The little wizened runt! He's talkin' like an arnachist! An' that's why
he smashed me dish. He'll have no one say 'No' to 'im.... Ah, Mrs.
Byrne, niver marry a man older than yersilf."
"Thank yuh," Mrs. Byrne replied with hoarse sarcasm. "I'm not likely to,
at my age." She added, consolingly: "Cregan's young fer his years.
Drivin' a Fift' Avenah bus is fine, preservin', outdoor work."
"It is _that!_" And Mrs. Cregan's tone remarked that the fact was the
more to be deplored. "He'll be crankier an' crabbeder the older he
grows." She dipped to her coffee and swallowed hard.
Mrs. Byrne had screwed up her eyes to squint at an idea that could not
well be looked in the face. When she spoke it was to say slyly: "God
forbid! But they do go off sometimes in a puff. He looks as if he'd live
fer long enough, thank Heaven. But yuh never can tell."
[Illustration]
Mrs. Cregan blinked, held her hand for a moment, and then began hastily
to fill her mouth with food. The silence that ensued was long enough to
take on an appearance of guilt.
It was long enough, too, for Mrs. Byrne to "contrive a procedure."
"Yuh never can tell," she began, "unless yuh have doin's with the
devil--like them gipsies that see what's comin' by lookin' in the flat
o' yer hand. There's one o' them aroun' the corner, an' they say she
told Minnie Doyle the name o' the man she was to marry. An' he married
her, at that!" Mrs. Cregan looked blank. Mrs. Byrne leaned forward to
her. "I never whispered it to a livin' soul but yerself--but it was her
told Mrs. Gunn that her last was to be a boy. A good month ahead! An'
when she saw it was true she had no peace o' mind till she heard the
priest say the words over the poor child an' saw that the sprinkle o'
holy water didn't bubble off him like yuh'd sprinkled it on a hot
stove." Mrs. Cregan's vacant regard had slowly gathered a gleam of
startled intelligence. "An' if I was yerself, Mrs. Cregan--not knowin'
where I was to go to, ner how I was to live--I'd go an' have a talk with
her before I went further, d'yuh see?"
"God forbid! 'Tis a mortal sin."
"'Tis not. When I told Father Dumphy what I'd done, he called me an ol'
fool an' gave me an extry litany fer penance. What's a litany!"
"I'd be scared o' me life!"
"Yuh w'd not. Come along with me. I was goin'. I got troubles o' me own.
Never mind that. There's nothin' to be scared of. Nothin' at all. No
one'll see us. I been there meself, many's the time, an' no one knows
it."
III
Mrs. Byrne entered the "reception rooms" of Madame Wampa, "clairvoyant,
palmist, and card-reader," with the propitiatory smile of the woman who
knows she is doing wrong but is prepared to argue that there is "no
great harm into it." She was followed by Mrs. Cregan, as guiltily
reverential as if she were an altar boy who had been persuaded to join
in some mischievous trespass on the "sanctuary." Madame Wampa received
them, professionally insolent in her indifference. Mrs. Byrne explained
that she wanted only a "small card reading" for twenty-five cents.
Madame Wampa said curtly: "Sit down!"
They sat down.
She had been a music-hall singer when her husband was a sleight-of-hand
artist, "The Great Malino, the Wizard of Milan." Her voice had long
since left her; she had nothing of her beauty but its yellow ruins; and
her life was made up of the consideration of two great grievances:
first, that her husband was always idle, and second, that her landlord
overcharged her for her rooms on account of the nature of her
"business."
[Illustration: MADAME WAMPA]
She saw nothing in Mrs. Byrne and Mrs. Cregan but their inability to
help her pay her rent. She said: "I give a full trance readin' with
names, dates, and all questions answered, for a dollar, or a full card
readin' for fifty cents. It's impossible to tell much for a quarter."
Mrs. Byrne shook her head.
Madame Wampa said "Very well," in a tone of haughty resignation. She
turned to a booth that had been made of turkey-red chintz in one corner
of the room. She lit a small red lamp and sat down before a little
bamboo table. A toy angel from a Christmas tree hung above her. A
stuffed alligator sat up, on its hind legs, beside her--a porcelain bell
hung on a red ribbon about its neck--to grin with a cheerful uncanniness
on the rigmaroles of magic.
She said: "Come!"
Mrs. Byrne entered the gipsy tent, and Mrs. Cregan was left alone in the
atmosphere of a bespangled past reduced to its lowest terms of
imposture. There were strings of Indian corn hanging from the ceiling,
Chinese coins and rabbits' feet on the walls, a horseshoe wrapped in
tinfoil over the door, and a collection of absurdly grotesque
bric-a-brac on shelves and tables. There were necklaces of lucky beads
for sale, and love charms in the shape of small glass hearts enclosing
imitation shamrocks, and dream books and manuals of palmistry and gipsy
cards for fortune-telling, and photographs of Madame Wampa in a gorgeous
evening dress trimmed with feathers. Over all was a smoky odor of
kerosene from an oil heater.
Mrs. Cregan looked from side to side with a vaguely worried feeling that
it must take a power of dusting and wiping to keep such a clutter of
things clean; and this feeling gradually rose into her consciousness
above the dull stupefaction of her grief.
Madame Wampa, in the chintz tent, recited without expression: "Though
you travel east or west, may your luck be the best." She dropped her
voice to a toneless mutter about a "journey," and some papers that were
to be signed, and a "false" dark woman who pretended to be Mrs. Byrne's
friend, but would do her an injury.
Mrs. Cregan sat as if she were waiting for her turn to enter a
confessional, her hands folded, her head dropped. She heard Mrs. Byrne
whispering hoarsely, but she did not listen.
Madame Wampa said, at last, wearily: "Very well. Send her in."
She shuffled her cards and sighed. She was professionally acquainted
with many griefs, and she took her toll of them. They meant no more to
her than sickness does to a quack. She looked up at Mrs. Cregan's
entrance almost absent-mindedly.
But there was, at once, something so helplessly stricken about the
woman's plump despair, so infantile, so touchingly ridiculous, that
Madame Wampa even smiled faintly and moved the bamboo table to let Mrs.
Cregan squeeze into the chair that waited her. She sat down and held out
her money in her palm. Madame Wampa took her hand. "I will tell you,"
she said. "I will see it in your hand."
She crossed the palm three times with the coin, and began in the
monotonous voice and with the expressionless face of the fakir: "You are
married. Many years. I see many years. You have not been happy. Monday
is your unlucky day. Do not begin anything on Monday. You are thinkin'
of takin' a journey--somethin'--some change. It will not end well. You
had better remain without the change--whatever it is. There is a man--a
man who has horses--who drives horses, perhaps. I see horses. He will
meet with an accident--I think, a runaway--a collision, perhaps. He will
be hurt. He will be--hurt. Yes. He is an old man. It will be bad. He may
die. Perhaps. He is a relative--related to you. You must beware of
animals. One will do you an injury. You will never be rich--but
comfortable. The best of your life is comin'. You will have your wish."
She had finished, but Mrs. Cregan did not move. She had drawn back in
her chair. Her mouth had loosened; her hand lay limp on the table; all
her intelligence seemed to have concentrated in her eyes in an
expression of guilty and horrified surprise. She said faintly: "Is't
Cregan?"
Madame Wampa shrugged one shoulder in her red kimono. "The lines do not
say." She blew out the lamp and rose from the table. "That is all. It is
impossible to tell much for a quarter. I give a full trance readin',
with names, dates, and all questions answered----"
Mrs. Cregan "blessed" herself,--with the sign of the cross,--gasped,
"God forgi' me!" and blundered out into the room. Mrs. Byrne cried:
"What's wrong?" Mrs. Cregan did not hear. She stampeded to the door in
the ponderous fright of a panic-stricken elephant. Her one thought was
to find a place where she might get on her knees.... Cregan! It was
himself! It was Dinny! Killed, maybe! She had blasphemed against the
Church and Father Dumphy, and she must pray. She must pray for herself
and for Cregan. She would "take back" everything she had said. She would
never leave him. She would be good.
Mrs. Byrne tugged at her cape. "Whist! Whist! What's come over yuh,
woman? What is it?"
"It's Dinny!"
That was all that could be had out of her. Even when she reached her
home again, and Mrs. Byrne followed her in, afraid of leaving the
frightened woman alone lest she should "blab" the whole secret to the
first person she met,--even then Mrs. Cregan could not speak until she
had gathered up the broken dishes and propped the broken chair against
the wall, as frantically as if she were trying to conceal the evidence
of a crime. Then she sank down on a sofa and burst into tears. "The poor
creature!" she wept. "The poor ol' man. Poor Dinny!"
Mrs. Byrne folded her arms. "Mary Cregan," she said, in hoarse disgust,
"when yuh've done makin' a fool o' yerself, I'll trouble yuh to listen
to _me_. _Now!_ If y' ever breathe a word o' this to Cregan, he'll laugh
himself blind! Mind yuh that! He'll not believe yuh. No one'll believe
yuh. No one! An' if yuh don't want somethin' turrible to happen, yuh'll
say nothin', but yuh'll behave yerself like a decent married woman an'
go to church an' say yer prayers against trouble. That woman with the
cards says whatever th' old Nick puts into her head to say."
Mrs. Cregan cried: "She saw it in me hand!"
Mrs. Byrne drew herself up like a prophetess. "Dip yer hand in holy
water, an' yuh'll hear no more of it. Now, then. Behave yerself."
"I was wishin' it!" she wailed. "I was wishin' somethin' 'd happen to
him to leave me free here in m' own home!"
"An' that," Mrs. Byrne said, "is the judgment o' heaven on yuh fer
carin' more fer yer dishes than yuh did fer yer husband. Yuh're a good
manager, Mrs. Cregan, but yuh've been a dang poor wife. Think of yer man
first an' yer house after, an' yuh'll be a happier woman, I tell yuh."
"I will that. I will," Mrs. Cregan wept, "if he's spared to me."
"Never fear," Mrs. Byrne said drily. "He'll be spared to yuh."
* * * * *
And he _has_ been spared to her. At first he was suspicious of her
subdued manner and remorseful gentleness; and for a long time he
watched her, very warily, with an eye for treachery. Then he understood
that she had succumbed to his masterful handling of her, and he was
masculinely proud of his conquest.
[Illustration: "MRS. CREGAN SAT AS IF SHE WERE WAITING FOR HER TURN TO
ENTER A CONFESSIONAL."]
Mrs. Cregan is beginning to hope that she has warded off the predicted
bad fortune by her devoutness, but she still has her fears. "Twas the
doin's o' the divil," she says to Mrs. Byrne.
"He had a hand in it, no doubt," Mrs. Byrne agrees. "An' how's Cregan?"
she says, "Well, I'm glad o' that.... An' the new dishes?... Good luck
to them. Yuh're off early to church again."
YOUNG HENRY AND THE OLD MAN
BY JOHN M. OSKISON
The ranchman and I were discussing courage. I had that day seen young
Henry Thomas mount and ride a horse which had bucked in a way to impress
the imagination. I spoke of it.
"Was it the gray?" queried Brunner, and when I said it was, he scoffed.
"That horse is trained to buck just the way young Henry wants him, and
he hobbles the stirrups."
Brunner's scepticism was disappointing. I ventured to speak of another
instance that seemed to illustrate the nerve of Henry Thomas:
"Didn't he help capture the 'Kep' Queen bunch of outlaws a few years
ago? I've heard he showed nerve then."
"I reckon you have." Brunner glanced across at me, then stooped to dig a
live coal out of the ashes. He held it for half a minute before packing
it into the bowl of his pipe, shifting it imperceptibly in his toughened
hand as he studied the backlog. When his tobacco was burning steadily,
he spoke:
"I can tell you the truth about young Henry--and the old man, too." I
thought his tone changed. "Twenty-four years ago I came to this Indian
country. For twelve years I rode with the posses as a deputy marshal and
for twelve years now I've been running cattle here on Cabin Creek. I've
been all over the Territory. I know every man in the Cherokee Nation
that ever handled a hot iron. And I know young Henry Thomas, too.
"It was in 1882 that Queen 'went bad,' and began to hold up trains on
the 'Katy' and 'Frisco roads. All of that fall and winter we were after
him and his gang, but we never got a sight of them. They were 'goers'
all right, and when we came up to a two-weeks-old camp-fire they'd
built, we thought we were lucky.
"For six months after the first of the year they did nothing. We heard
that Queen was in California. Then, in June, 1883, while I was at
Muscogee, I got a telegram from 'Cap' White asking me to report at once
to him at Red Oak. Paden Tolbert and I caught the eleven o'clock train
up, dropping off at Red Oak at one in the morning. 'Cap' met us, told us
he had two men ready, and that the five of us would start for Pryor
Creek at once.
"It was a fifteen-mile ride. We planned to pick up four men from the
ranches on the way down, and get to 'Kep' Queen's camp at daylight. We
had been told that there were five men in the camp, that they had been
in the Pryor Creek woods for two days, and that it was their plan to
hold up the flyer from the north next evening. 'Cap' White was sure of
his information, and he had decided upon the men he wanted from the
ranches. The two Thomases--old man Henry and young Henry--were picked
out, for there was no one else in the family except a younger brother of
eighteen, who has since died. 'Bud' Ryder and Jim Kelso were the other
two--both good on horses and handy with a gun.
"'Cap' was proud of his posse when he finally got us together. The
Thomases came out and joined us like bees a-swarming. The young fellow
was all up in the air with excitement, like a boy going to a circus. He
was so brash that at first we couldn't keep him from riding on ahead of
the rest of us; you'd think he wanted to bring in the bunch all by
himself.
"That was all right; brash, eager young fellows ain't always so brave
when trouble begins, but they steady into good fighters. It's hard
enough to get 'em that want to go after a man like 'Cap' Queen at all."
Brunner told me then of the fight in the woods at daybreak. It was his
summary of young Henry Thomas that interested me.
One of the men whom White took from Red Oak led the posse to the camp on
Pryor Creek. It was on a ledge on a hillside. The fires had been built
under a jutting rock. Only a bush wren could have hidden its nest more
completely--Bruce had been lucky in spying it out. He told White that
there was but one unprotected approach--a long unused trail that led
down from the cliff-top and ended in a briar tangle fifty feet above the
ledge. That trail, it was evident, 'Kep' Queen did not know existed.
Young Thomas had ridden with Brunner, seeking him out, as the novice
always seeks out the veteran, to practise his valorous speeches upon.
For four hours young Thomas talked about bravery, with illustrations.
From one incident to another he skipped, for the history of outlawry
west of St. Louis, in the last generation, was more familiar to him than
many another topic he had gathered from books. Brunner could have set
him right on the facts many times, but what was the use?
After a time the youngster's monologue became a sort of soothing hum,
for which the other was grateful. "I was cross and sleepy and chilly and
nervous," Brunner explained, "and the boy's gabble rested me."
I gathered that the young man was more excited than he cared to confess,
even to himself. He talked, as others whistle, to "keep up his courage."
Yet the implication that he needed distraction or stimulation would have
angered him. Youth and courage are twins, or should be, and a man of
twenty-two takes it for granted. At forty, a man may confess to turning
tail and yet save his self-respect. I had heard Brunner tell of "back
downs" that would have shamed a young village constable, and it had
never occurred to me to question his courage.
It was only in the last mile of their ride that the chatter of young
Thomas really became audible to Brunner.
"I woke up," he said, "and actually listened to him. I don't remember
exactly what he was saying, but this was the idea: 'All of you fellows
that chase outlaws make too much fuss about it.' Well, some of us do,
though the newspapers and the wind-bags that follow us around make ten
times the fuss we do. He went on to say that the only way to nab a
horse-thief or an express robber was to go right up to him, don't you
know, like the little boy went up to the sign-post that he thought was a
ghost.
"It's a good theory and generally works. I told him so, and then
apologized for doing any other way. The way I thought about this
business of a deputy marshal's was the way an old soldier thinks about
war. I was hired to get the criminals, and not to be caught by the
criminals, to shoot the bad man, if I had to, but not to be shot by the
bad man if there was any way to help it. One way to help it is to run
and hide. It's a good way, too, for I've tried it."
The young man roused Brunner's curiosity. It was possible that he might
be of the exceptional breed that puts a fine theory to the test of
action.
"I decided to watch him," the ranchman told me, "and see if he would
play up to his big talk. When we left our ponies, half a mile from the
camp, I pretended to argue with 'Cap' White, told him he ought to leave
young Thomas with the horses and not get such a boy as that all shot
up. 'Cap' caught my point and begged him to stay, but, of course, he
wouldn't hear of it. 'I'll stick to Brunner,' says he.
"'All right,' says I, 'come on.'
"When we started afoot, we trailed out single file, and I noticed that
old man Thomas waited for the boy and me to pass him, dropping in right
behind his son. 'Cap' was in front, then Bruce, then Paden Tolbert, then
Ryder and Kelso, and then I and the Thomases. The old man was at the
tail of the procession.
"Old man Thomas was the kind that you never think about one way or the
other. You said to yourself that he would do his share, whatever it
amounted to, and you wouldn't have to bother about him. That's your
notion of him, ain't it?"
It _was_ my notion of the older Thomas. I don't think a more commonplace
looking man ever lived. Brunner told me that he had not changed in
fourteen years.
"'Young Henry swells around and talks big; the old man he says nothing
and chaws tobacco,' That's the way people size 'em up around here."
Brunner thus confirmed my own impression of the pair.
"What a man can see out of the back of his head," Brunner went on, "is a
lot different from what comes in front of his eyes. He feels a lot that
don't make a sound and that ain't visible. I did see, out of the corner
of my eye, that young Henry Thomas was dropping behind me little by
little, but I didn't see why it was he moved up again. I know why,
though. The old man had ordered him up--not in words, you understand,
for I could have heard a whisper in the still dawn, the way we were
snaking it over the trail. From that time on, every foot of the way, the
old man drove the boy. You ask me how, and I can't tell you. There
wasn't a word, not a motion that I could see, but all the time it was
one man driving the other as plain as could be. And it wasn't easy. I
felt that young Henry was worse than balky, that he would have broke
through the bushes and run off screaming if that old man had taken his
eyes off of him for ten seconds.
"A quarter of a mile it was, and we went slow--twenty feet forward
picking our way, then the eight of us would stop to listen. If you ever
get a chance, ask young Henry how long that trail was. If he don't stop
to think, he'll tell you we crawled through the bushes for five miles,
but if he remembers his part as the hero of the fight, he'll say, 'Oh,
we sneaked a hundred yards or so before lighting into Queen's bunch.'"
The trail from above ended in a briar tangle fifty feet up the hill
from the ledge on which four of the five outlaws slept. The fifth man,
posted as a sentry, was on the lower trail, somewhere out of sight of
the party led by "Cap" White. When the deputies came up to the briars,
therefore, they could see no one. As soon as the four sleepers came out
of shelter, however, White's men could cover them with their guns.
What had to be done, obviously, was to rouse the four outlaws without
revealing the presence of the deputies above. It could be done by some
one in the woods below the ledge. But the outpost was down there to
reckon with. They could not all be trapped merely by waiting, for they
would come out, after waking, one by one; and White wanted the whole
bunch.
It was decided that three men should be sent, by a round-about trail,
down to the creek; that they should follow it up until they got opposite
to the ledge; and that they should then rouse the sleeping men. They
were also to find the sentry and capture him. The risk was that the
sentry might discover the three first and spoil the chance to take him.
The detail might be dangerous, though with luck it should prove easy.
Brunner was assigned to lead the three. Young Thomas and Kelso were
named by White as the other two, but Brunner, who had been aware of that
duel on the trail, said he preferred the old man to Jim Kelso.
They beat back for a short distance, then, separating, dropped down the
steep hillside to the creek. In open order, they went forward quietly,
slowly; they might come upon 'Kep' Queen's outpost at any turn. Now and
then they came in sight of one another. Each time Brunner saw that the
old man was edging closer to his son. Still there was no word
spoken--only a grim old man's gray eyes were fixed upon a young man's
shifting, over-bright eyes, and the young man moved on, cautiously.
Brunner held close to the creek bank; the old man was twenty yards away
and moving farther out as he approached his son. So they advanced,
abreast, until they came out upon the trail leading up to the ledge.
Then Brunner saw old man Thomas run, with short, noiseless steps, to
young Henry's side and point up the trail. Hidden from both and out of
sight of what had attracted the old man's attention, Brunner yet knew
what was happening. Farther up the trail was the sentry, half asleep in
the chill dawn.
Brunner saw, as he himself came up cautiously, that the old man was
whispering to young Henry. He grasped the boy's arm, half-shoving him
forward and pointing with his rifle. The youngster moved a step, then
turned with a look of utter panic on his face. His father's eyes glared;
a sort of savage anger blazed on his face. From his grip on young
Henry's arm, the old man's hand sprang to the boy's throat. There was
one fierce, terrible shake, a sort of gurgling scream that expressed
terror, and protest, too, but which was scarcely audible to Brunner,
twenty feet away. In the tone of a man enraged to the point of madness,
old man Thomas snapped out:
"Go on, you confounded whelp!"
Young Henry shook himself free, his terror replaced by a sudden,
resentful anger. Fifty yards away the sentry nodded, his back against a
tree and his gun across his lap. Brunner saw the man now, and stepped
aside to cover him as young Henry approached. But there was no need of
that. The boy was swift and noiseless; before the outlaw could wake or
move, his gun was in Henry's hand, and he heard the command, "hands up!"
The sentry was quick-witted. He couldn't shoot, but he could yell.
Brunner, however was ready for that. He began to bawl a reveler's song,
popular with cowboys on a spree, and old man Thomas joined him. From
above, it sounded as if a drunken riot had broken out, in which the
outpost's warning shout became only a meaningless discord. The babel
brought the four sleeping men out of their blankets. They listened a
moment, then stepped out in view of the posse in the briars.
As Brunner came up, old man Thomas turned to face him. On his seamed
face the sweat had almost dried, but when he shoved his hat up with his
forearm, his sleeve came away from his forehead damp. The compelling
glitter in the gray eyes turned to a challenging stare. Brunner met it,
then glanced up the trail towards young Thomas and his captive.
"He got him all right," said Brunner.
"Yes," the old man triumphed, "my boy got him. He captured 'Kep' Queen
himself."