The Black Cat
January 1896.
Contents
=In Solomon’s Caverns.= Charles Edward Barns.
=An Angel of Tenderfoot Hill.= Frederick Bradford.
=In Miggles’ Alley.= Herman Brownson.
=The Missing Link.= James Buckham.
=Unchallenged.= Katharine Morrow.
=Aidu.= Hero Despard.
=Mrs. Emory’s Boarder.= C. Marie Mott.
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4. Copyright 1895 by The Shortstory Publishing Co.
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The Black Cat
A Monthly Magazine of Original Short Stories.
No. 4. JANUARY, 1896. 5 cents a copy,
50 cents a year.
Entered at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., as second-class matter.
=IMPORTANT.=—The entire contents of this magazine are covered
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Copyright, 1895, by the Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights
reserved.
In Solomon’s Caverns.
BY CHARLES EDWARD BARNS.
Three men stood in the doorway of the Bohemian Club, that meeting-place
of men of the world from all over the world. It was the hour of noon,
when the human tide in this busy quarter of San Francisco is at
its height. Just as the party was about to separate, their way was
temporarily blocked by a squad of policemen, who escorted a score or more
of Chinamen handcuffed in pairs.
“What’s up?” asked one of the club-men.
“Opium smuggling,” replied the police captain.
“Speaking of opium,” said another of the trio, turning to his companions,
“reminds me of an experience that befell a traveler in the Holy Land, an
experience in which opium saved a man’s life.”
“Tell us about it.”
“It’s too long a story for the sidewalk, but if you will step upstairs
and join me in a dish of frijoles, with etceteras, I’ll tell you all
about it.”
“It happened in the ancient city of Jerusalem,” said the speaker,
after they were seated in the Bohemian’s dining-room, whose walls bore
picturesque record of many a “High and Low Jinks” in the club’s history.
“Not many people know that the famous walled hamlet stands on a shell
of rock; in other words, that there is a series of wonderful caverns
extending for some miles in an intricate chain underneath the city, and
that a little hole near the Golden Gate of the Holy Land, barely large
enough to admit a man, is the only entrance and exit. These caverns,
unlike the caves of Kentucky, were made by man. The stones which came
from them were used in the building of Solomon’s Temple, just one
thousand years before Christ. The old king employed eighty thousand men
to cut out these stones, forty thousand working by day and as many by
night, so you see that there must have been plenty of elbow room, and
you can judge of the vastness of the present caverns. You remember the
passage in 1 Kings,—that in the building of the temple ‘there was neither
hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard.’
“One lovely spring morning, this man I’m telling about, who had a passion
for out-of-the-way adventures, started for these caverns with a trusty
dragoman guide, his mind bent on exploring the subterranean chambers
further than had any one before him. In fact, he had a secret idea that
he might discover a passage leading to the cavern under the pool of
Siloam on the other side of the city; but this plan he kept to himself
until he had reached the caverns, and spent an hour or more studying
the marks left by the tools of Solomon’s workmen. When he finally
revealed his scheme, the dragoman combated with the greatest vehemence an
undertaking that, he said, might cost them their lives.
“Not at all affected by this dismal prophecy, which, in fact, added a
certain relish to the adventure, the explorer took accurate bearings, and
pressed on to what appeared to be the lowest spot in the whole series
of caverns. Here, to his amazement, his guide sat down and absolutely
refused to go farther. It was useless for his master to attempt to urge
him on by the assurance that they could not be far from the south wall,
where he hoped to find a connecting passage to the pool of Siloam. The
old chap sat immovable, declaring that to go farther, provided as they
were with but two torches and little food, meant certain death. He even
appealed to Allah to restore his master to reason.
“But, guide or no guide, the explorer was determined to hang on to his
project as a dog does to a bone. A few yards away rose a huge ledge that
promised a better view of the caverns’ unexplored depths. Directing
the dragoman to remain where he was seated and to answer whenever he
heard his master’s call, he picked up his staff and started toward the
ledge, promising that if he could find no outlet without going beyond
calling distance he would give up his search. Once on his way to the
ledge the man stopped, and, looking back to make sure that the dragoman
understood his instruction, saw the old fellow sitting just as he had
left him, the staff of his torch supported by his breast, so that the
light shone full upon him, while his hands, which were thus left free,
were rolling a cigarette, breaking an opium pill and sprinkling it into
the tobacco, as was his custom. With a loud cry, which the guide returned
in a deep guttural that resounded in a decidedly ghostly fashion in the
grim caverns, the man passed on, lighted now only by the flame of his
own torch. No sooner had he reached the high ledge than, seeing another
still higher, farther on, he started for that, calling each moment, and
as often hearing the sound of encouragement ever further and further
away. Suddenly the answer, ‘Aiya!’ rose to a shrill scream, like that of
a wounded animal. Instinctively he turned back, and called again. There
was no answer. Another and yet another cry echoed vainly down the grim
caverns. Seized with dread of some awful catastrophe, he rushed back the
way he had come. When finally he reached his starting point he found,
to his amazement, that the dragoman’s lamp was out; but by the light of
his own he could see the man still sitting there in the hollow where he
had left him, upright and motionless. Again he spoke, and again. The man
made no reply. Then, thrusting his torch forward, he caught his first
glimpse of the guide’s face, and stood rigid with terror. The bronze
countenance was of a deathly pallor; the mouth was drawn as in agony,
and the eyes were wide open,—so wide that the whites glowed through the
darkness like phosphorescent globes. At the first touch the man fell
heavily backward. As his master bent, attempting to raise the body, he
saw, to his amazement, the torch, which he had laid aside, flicker and
die. Then he understood. They were in a lake of deadly gas, which, being
heavier than the air, had settled to the bottom of the cave. He groped
for his torch, found it, and lighted it again, testing the lake of deadly
carbon. Soon he found that if he lowered the light below his hips, when
standing erect, it would go out. Thus he was half submerged in a lake of
death, where he was safe only as long as he stood upright. Malook had
seated himself, hence was literally drowned. Drawing a deep breath and
holding it, he stooped and placed his hand on the guide’s heart. The
action made him doubly sure of the deadly nature of the gas. The heart
was still, and his own almost ceased beating in the brief moment spent in
the suffocating carbon. But, even in the presence of death and danger,
the instinct of self-preservation did not fail him. In a moment he had
possessed himself of the dead man’s torch, his knapsack and luncheon, and
his staff, and then, sacrilege though it seemed, he rifled his pockets.
Here he found only tobacco and a box containing about a hundred little
pellets of opium. These last he was about to put back, but, missing the
pocket, he thrust the box into his own, and hurried to a higher and
safer place. Once there, he set himself to puzzling out his next course
of action. To make his way back to the entrance of the cave after these
miles of wandering would be impossible. He had trusted his guide too
implicitly for that. His only hope was to reach the pool of Siloam, which
he was still doggedly convinced was not far away, although of a passage
through there was no record. With this idea he started out once more,
wandering aimlessly first this way and then that, finally bringing up,
faint and exhausted, by the side of a body of still water. Grateful for
this discovery, he scooped a little into his hands, bathed his hot head,
and, as he was hungry, took a few mouthfuls of food. Finally, in the
face of danger, just as has been told of famous generals in the thick of
battle, he sat down and rolled a cigarette. The food and the tobacco,
topped by a strong pull at his brandy flask, renewed his courage, and
he set himself once more to reviewing the situation. From his extreme
fatigue, he felt convinced that he had wandered miles. His legs ached as
they never had before, and this, too, although he was accustomed to the
severest mountain climbing. Looking at his watch, he was surprised to
find that it was night in the world beyond and above him. Satisfied that
even if he came near the passage to the pool the darkness would deceive
him, he resolved to rest where he was until daybreak. An inventory of his
supplies convinced him that he might fight off starvation for three days,
but that at the extreme limit. Possessed by these frightful thoughts, he
lay back, and, overcome by fatigue, soon fell into a slumber troubled
by the most horrible dreams. In the midst of one of these nightmares he
awoke with a scream, which resounded appallingly. The sense of desolation
was almost unbearable. Indeed, if his torch had not been lighted,
he would certainly have lost his reason. He knew that madness often
preceded death under such circumstances, and in his desperation resolved
that at the first signs of a failing mind he would put an end to his
existence with his revolver. The case was desperate. Oil and food were
low; above him stretched a crust of rock from forty to one hundred feet
thick, through which no sound or ray of light from the outer world could
penetrate. As a test of his courage, he put out his torch, but found that
he could not endure the torture for long, though he resolved to inure
himself to the strain of the intense darkness and silence, at any cost.
Oil was now as precious as blood drops.
“When at last his watch told him that the night had worn away, he took
another morsel of food and a sip of brandy, rose, and started out again,
keeping close to the pool. As he walked, he heard a slight sound, like
that made by a leaping fish. Here, at last, was a chance to test his
theory. If that fish had eyes, then this cavern lake connected with the
pool of Siloam. If not—At the end of a full hour spent in searching for
the fish he finally caught the squirming thing in his hands, and brought
it to the light. It was eyeless! In his rage the man flung the ugly thing
back into the water. A moment later, however, the thought of the poverty
of his supplies sent him groping on hands and knees for the object of
his wrath, which he killed and cleaned, storing it away in his bag. He
even bagged a huge bat that, frightened by his torch, flew so near that
he brought it down with his staff, saving it as carefully as if it had
been a chicken. For all that he knew, its few drops of blood might be the
means of preserving his life.
“For three days and nights he wandered away from that pool, each
time, however, bringing up there again, as though propelled by fate.
Fortunately it was impossible for him to find his way back to the guide’s
body; that visible presence of death would undoubtedly have extinguished
the last spark of his own life. As it was, with each hour he felt his
flesh fail and his strength wane, until finally it was only by a supreme
effort that he could drag himself along. By this time he had become
so accustomed to the darkness that he lighted his torch only under
compulsion, determined to save his oil for some possible emergency. It
was while he was groping his way, unlighted, through the darkness, that
a rat ran across his path, so near that he struck at and killed it. Upon
feeling of it he found that it seemed sleek and prosperous, while its
cheeks were pouched out with what proved on examination to be kernels
of grain. This discovery, however, only aggravated his despondency, for
it convinced him that even the vermin knew the secret of the passageway
which he alone had no way of finding out. Then, driven to one of the
extremities to which desperate men are reduced, he wrote a message to the
world, spent half a day in catching another rat, tied the message to it,
and set it free, laughing meanwhile at his own folly.
“And now began the epoch in his underground existence when not only his
bodily strength but his mind itself rapidly failed him. Each hour his
excursions in search of the mythical passage became shorter and shorter,
and the idea of any land beyond this gloomy pit faded further and further
into the region of dreams. Finally he gave up any active struggle, and
lay for hours in a half-tranced condition, roused only occasionally by
the sharper pangs of hunger. In this state he lost all trace of day and
night, although he still had with him the less important record of the
hours. Even in this semi-stupor, however, he noticed that there was a
strange stir of the water every now and then for a certain period in
the twenty-four hours, and that for the same length of time there was
absolute quiet. In one of his waking intervals it suddenly occurred to
him, though why he could not explain, that this phenomenon was in some
way connected with day and night. The idea that these strange periodical
tremblings on the surface of the lake might furnish the clue to that
long-sought outlet to the world above roused him to one last effort.
Dragging himself towards the further end, whence the ripplings started,
he was rewarded by a glimpse of what seemed to be a slender thread
extending from the ceiling directly down into the lake, and which proved
upon examination to be nothing else than an iron tube some four inches in
diameter. That touch of cold metal thrilled him like an electric battery.
This pipe then—this slender thread—this well-tube—was the only connecting
link between himself and the habitations of man. But how could he make
use of this knowledge? The solution of this problem suggested itself only
when, after almost an hour spent in crouching close to the tube, with his
ear against it, he distinctly heard the force-pump working above him,
and saw the water stir as he had seen it so often. That sound went to
his heart like the battle-cry to the soldier’s. For some reason he felt
sure that the pipe would be his salvation. Throwing off his shoes and
stockings, he clambered into the icy water, and with his feet he traced
the pipe down until he found the end and actually felt the water gushing
up. Then he made his way back to his resting-place, where he sank,
exhausted with joy.
“It was not until the next day, or, at least, until after the next long
period of quiet, that he could command himself sufficiently to write the
following note by the light of the last few remaining drops of oil:—
“‘I am in the cavern underneath the city. This is the fourth or fifth day
of my entombment. My guide, Iesa Malook, is dead. As only he knew the
way out, I am lost. For God’s sake, come to the rescue! Take this to the
consul general. He will understand all. Lose no time. All my food and oil
are gone. I cannot live much longer.’
“This urgent message he signed, wrapped in a shred of handkerchief,
tied to a cork of his now empty flask, and in total darkness he dragged
himself back to the well-tube. Then he leaped into the lake with the
precious message, and, following the course of the pipe, held the packet
under the end, and felt it leave his hand and soar up through the tube to
the land of sunshine and freedom. Though nearly killed by the shock of
the icy water, he crept back to his resting-place, triumphant. He somehow
felt that with the first pumping of water his message must fall out,
attract the attention of his unknown rescuers, and that in a few hours
more he should be rescued. But he had sadly miscalculated. For three days
more he lived on the little opium pellets that he had taken from the body
of Malook. By this time his food was quite exhausted, and the effect of
the strange drug was to plunge him in the most frightful and fantastic
waking dreams. Once he dreamed that he was being garroted for the murder
of Malook; and the vision was so vivid that he felt convinced that such
an end actually awaited him if he returned to the world above, and prayed
for immediate death. Before long he was obliged to double the dose, in
order to lessen the gnawing of hunger, and the saving grace was soon
reduced to a day’s supply. These pills were his last comfort. With them
gone, he resolved upon suicide. Upon drawing his revolver, however, he
found that, straining with all his might, he lacked the strength needed
to lift the hammer. Nothing was left, then, except to swallow the three
remaining pills, which he did, with the hope that they might bring the
end. This done, he lay back motionless, and, listening to the rhythm of
his heart-beat, which sounded farther and farther away, he sank into a
slumber which he prayed and believed would be his last.
“When he awoke he was lying on the grassy slopes of the valley of the
Kedron, not far from the tomb of Absalom. It was twilight, and in the
setting sun the Mount of Olives shone like a pyramid of fire. Looking
about him, he saw that Malook’s body was lying at his side. Around him
stood a strange group, all conversing in strange tongues,—Jews with
yellow and black gowns, Russian pilgrims, Bedouins in flowing scarlet,
and English tourists in cork helmets. Suddenly some one bent over him. It
was the consul. A great joy lighted up his kind face, as he exclaimed,
‘Good God!—he has opened his eyes—he breathes!—he lives! It is a
miracle—nothing short of a miracle!’
“Yes,” concluded the speaker, as he deliberately swallowed two pellets
drawn from a small, thimble-shaped box that he had leisurely taken from
his vest pocket while speaking, “opium saved that man from starvation,
but it made him an opium fiend for life.”
An Angel of Tenderfoot Hill.
BY FREDERICK BRADFORD.
Evening service at the Blackhawk Presbyterian Church was just finished.
As the unpainted door swung open before the little body of home-bound
worshipers, a broad-shouldered, blue-eyed young man, who for the last
half hour had been patrolling the plank walk outside, strode up to the
doorway. Standing there with his back against the sash, his eyes gleaming
good-humoredly under the stares and winks of certain unregenerate members
of the congregation, Jim Hewson recalled a little grimly that the door of
a church was the last place where he would have whiled away his Sunday
half hours a year ago. But, then, a year ago he had not known Alice
Huyler. Now it seemed to him that he had never known any one else.
Alice was the organist, and would be the last to come out. Meantime,
Jim, listening dreamily to the notes of the voluntary, found his mind
drifting idly back over the past two years of his life. He remembered
how he had come to Blackhawk as the agent for the B. & S. Stage Company,
without a string or tie of any kind to bind him to place or person. He
was not a bad boy then, he thought, though he had lived in some pretty
hard sections, and maybe was a bit too familiar with their customs. It
seemed to him that he had started wrong, somehow,—had not met the right
sort of people at first. The overland stage boys were all right,—good,
big-hearted fellows,—but hardly the friends for a young man who might
some day aspire to mingle with the best society of Blackhawk—for they
had a best society there, even if it was only a mining camp. Their Four
Hundred was composed chiefly of member’s of the Presbyterian church, and
actually numbered about twoscore.
It did not take long for “pretty Jim,” as the boys affectionately called
him, to distinguish himself as a gentleman able to put away his share of
forty rod “mountain dew” and lead reckless expeditions in search of a
good time. Before he had been there two weeks he broke up a dance at old
Prouty’s hall by deliberately shooting out the candles and decorating the
ceiling with bullet holes, “just to stampede the outfit,” he said. If
this was his only object it was a dismal failure so far as the “ladies”
were concerned; they simply refused to be stampeded, but sat down in the
middle of the floor and screamed; the “gents,” however, made it a great
success by climbing over each other’s heads in frantic endeavor to be
among the first to get out of the narrow door. This brilliant stroke
of genius gave Jim such prestige among the boys that they unanimously
elected him foreman of the “Mulligan Guards Hose Company No. 1,” an
organization that served as a social club for the young men of the camp.
Their “business meetings” always ended in a free-for-all-high-old-time,
and when they went out for a practise run at their usual hour,—10
P.M.,—the knowing citizens, by common consent, went home to bed.
It was after one of these little runs somebody suggested that the
Presbyterians were having a “mush and milk debauch or strawberry
hurrah,”—he didn’t know which—over on Main Street, and he thought the
boys might be able “to enliven the proceedings a little” by “lending
their distinguished presence.” This suggestion was unfortunate, in view
of the fact that Henrich Schwer, the People’s Candidate for mayor and
the Poor Man’s Friend, had sent over to the hose house a keg of beer and
demijohn of whiskey as a “slight testimonial of his esteem,” but the idea
was promptly acted upon, and the boys all marched over to the church to
the tune of “The Mulligan Guards,” a ditty much in vogue in those days.
What they did there Jim could not now remember distinctly; he had a dim
recollection of helping to buy out a doll-baby bazaar presided over by
several pretty but embarrassed young ladies, and of somebody in his crowd
having a “difficulty” with Deacon Huyler, during which the others formed
a ring and sold pools on the fight. Anyway, he was very much ashamed
of the whole business, and testified to this the next night by asking
Stancliff, the Sunday-school superintendent,—a good young man whom he
had often, and, he was now convinced, unjustly, characterized as a weak
sister,—to take him around for the second night of the bazaar. Stancliff
was glad to do so, and Jim, in the main, enjoyed his somewhat novel
associations. The good sisters of the church, ever ready to snatch a
brand from the burning, took him up and introduced him to all the pretty
girls, incidentally relieving him of half a month’s salary for votes in
all sorts of impossible things. No, they did not introduce him to quite
all the pretty girls; there was one, a tall, slight girl in a dark dress,
with pale golden hair, brushed primly from her forehead, escaping down
her back in a single plait, child fashion, to whom, for some occult
reason, he was not presented. Moreover, though he took pains to keep as
much as possible in the neighborhood of this particular young lady, she
seemed to be perfectly oblivious to his six feet two and bright blue
eyes. Piqued by her obvious indifference, he finally asked Stancliff
for an introduction, and was gratified to see that worthy gentleman
engaged a few moments later in earnest conversation with this fair-haired
member of the Blackhawk Four Hundred. But when Stancliff finally came
back he appeared to have forgotten Jim’s request altogether, and seemed
embarrassed and annoyed about something. Jim divined what that something
was, and felt the blood rush to his neck in anger. He had been snubbed,
deliberately snubbed, and there was only one thing to do, in the ethics
of Blackhawk, and that was to “get square.”
There was a dangerous glitter in his eyes as he silently watched
Stancliff, who was trying to make a feeble joke about nothing in
particular.
“See here, Stan,” he finally said, “there’s no use of your getting red
in the face and clawin’ away from it. I know what’s the matter with you;
yer frien’ don’t want no introduction to me, won’t have it nohow; that’s
right, aint it?”
“Well, you know, last night—she was here—and the boys—of course you had
no hand in it, but you see girls—church girls—are particular, and—
“Oh, yes, I know about that; it’s all right fer as you’re concerned,
Stan; you are a bully little feller—treated me white down to the ground,
and I aint got nothin’ agin _you_. You have an onpleasant duty to
perform, an’ it comes hard, but I’ll help you out. We were—well—drowsy
last night—drowsier’n duchesses—the whole billin’ of us, and some—mind I
don’t say who—some of us made fools of ourselves and licked her dad, an’
she holds it agin _me_; thinks she’s too good to ’sociate with fellers
what has got a little hell in ther’ necks. But, Stan, don’t you let it
escape yer two-by-four mem’ry; she will know me better before the night’s
over, and its a stack of blues to whites I take her home when this
Sunday-school gymnasium lets out, see?”
To the last statement Mr. Stancliff could not subscribe. He admired Jim,
as most young men who are admittedly good admire those admittedly bad,
and envied him his supreme self-confidence, but, to tell the truth, he
expected to be Alice Huyler’s escort that night himself.
Not long after, supper was announced in an adjoining room, and the young
people passed out in couples. This was Jim’s opportunity; he purchased
two tickets, and, without hesitation, he stepped up to Alice Huyler
before Stancliff’s astonished eyes, and said: “Miss Huyler, I know you,
and you think you know me well enough not to want to know me any better;
that’s so, aint it? Well, you’re making a dead mistake. Now, I’ve two
tickets for supper, an’ I don’t want to sit alongside of an empty chair.
Will you break bread with a publican and sinner to-night?”
She did not answer at once, but looked about vaguely, as if seeking
some avenue of escape. “That’s right; think it over,” Jim went on. “I
disremember the circumstances an’ I don’t know whether he belonged to
your church or not, but there was a man down in Galilee a few thousand
years ago that went around hunting up the kind of fellers what was here
last night. I give you my word, Miss Huyler, that if you go in to supper
with me it will not stand as an introduction to-morrow unless you wish.
I came here because I wanted to do the right thing, and I want you to
help me;” then, after a pause, he added significantly, “The hose house is
still open.”
Before Alice had time to shape an excuse, Jim had her hand safely on his
arm and was in the supper room. What he said to the girl there Stancliff
never knew, but that he talked to some purpose was evident from the fact
that he walked home with her that night.
This was the beginning of their acquaintance, but, as Jim acknowledged
to himself, “he hadn’t no walk over.” Alice Huyler was a girl of
Puritan ideals of life, an earnest, consistent church member, with very
distinct, if somewhat bigoted, views of right and wrong. Jim did not
come up to her standard; she did not approve of him at all, but felt
it her Christian duty to do what she could to save his soul, and, with
a mental reservation against committing herself in any way, passively
permitted his attentions, as their acquaintance progressed. She could
not help admiring the big, handsome fellow with his strong, masterful
ways; but this weakness she justified to herself by reason of the real
good that was in him. Once she let her heart go out to him unreservedly
upon learning that he had soundly thrashed two cowboys for insulting a
poor little German woman who lived down on the school lands and earned a
precarious livelihood by taking in washing; but she repented, and vainly
tried to tear the new-born love from her heart when she heard that he,
with a dozen other “Guards,” had been arrested and fined for disturbing
a prohibition “mass meeting” to the extent of forcing the candidate to
announce from a burning dry-goods box that he was the Lone Star candidate
for “reform and free whisky.” But Jim squared himself by promptly and
vigorously denying the charge; he even went so far as to have his friend,
the editor of _The Daily Tomahawk_, print a full account of the affair,
in which it was credited to some Southsiders who had pleaded guilty and
paid fines under the names of U. S. Grant, Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Mary
Walker, and others.
But, however much Alice cared for Jim, she gave him no sign. To her
Puritan notions she joined a certain wisdom in the world’s ways, and,
like most Western maidens, was not to be lightly won; so, though Jim
had been her devoted slave for a year—first from pique and a desire to
get “square,” and later from a real fondness for the girl,—he had made
uncertain progress with his suit. Finally, moved partly by a young man’s
desire for worldly advancement, but chiefly by a dogged resolution to
break the bond that he could not untie, he had accepted a clerkship with
a rich merchant, who monopolized the business for miles around a little
border town in Western Arizona. To-night he waited to see Alice for the
last time before he went—perhaps for the last time in his life.
She came out of church presently, and smiled up into his face as she
laid her hand lightly upon his arm with an air of proprietorship. They
walked along in silence, hardly noticing the path which led them through
a kind of lovers’ byway over Tenderfoot Hill. At the summit they sat
down and looked over the camp, peaceful in the moonlight that veiled its
shortcomings.
“It seems good to be here, doesn’t it? just you and me,” Jim said,
drawing a long breath of contentment. “I feel away above the boys up here
with you.”
“I wish you could get above some of their ways, wherever you are; but
that’s too much to hope for, I suppose,” the girl replied, not too
graciously; for Jim’s manner that evening was portentous, and she was
not sure enough of her own feelings to want to hear what he might have
to say. But Jim, who had hitherto shown fight when his associates were
aspersed, now only replied wearily:—
“I know you are not fond of the gang I travel with, but their ways are
mine for the time being, an’ I’ve no call to be above them; you’re hard
on us, just the same.” Then, after a pause, he added bitterly: “It seems
to me you are always just a little flintier after a sermon. I don’t seem
to belong to the kind of crowd you people want to save; it’s only the
good ones you’re after, I guess.”
“Don’t think that,” she cried earnestly; “you wrong the church and you
are unjust to me. For my part, I would do anything in the world to make
any one better or bring a soul nearer to God. O Jim, there is so much
that is good and noble in you, why won’t you give yourself a chance? If
I could only make you understand that _you_ are the one I want to save.”
Unconsciously, she took his hand and clung to it in the fervor of her
appeal. That much Jim understood, and he promptly imprisoned her hand in
both of his, saying, “I don’t know about your saving me—I guess you had
better let that job out; but you can make me better, little one; you can
make me better with a word, and bring me so near heaven that my head
will bump the stars. It’s taking a mean advantage of you to tell you now;
and, honestly, I didn’t mean to do it, but I love you, Alice, I love you.
I was going away to-morrow without saying a word, ’cause I knowed I was a
dead loser, anyway, and I aint the kind to squeal; but just now it seemed
to me that sometime when you kinder got to thinking of the past you would
miss something, and then you’d be glad to know that Jim loves you, and
that he’s keeping you in his heart. You don’t care for it now—that’s all
right; but know it—know it good—it’s not hard to say; I love you—yes, I
love you better than—I do the gang,” he ended lamely; but quickly, fired
by the purpose of a great sacrifice for that love, he added, in a tone
that carried conviction, “and I’ll shake ’em to-morrow if you say the
word.”
For a moment Alice was stunned by the suddenness of her return to
earth; but she saw nothing incongruous in her appeal and his reply; she
could only think that he loved her and that he was going away. For a
few moments she sat without speaking, her face gleaming softly in the
moonlight, her slim fingers lying passive in the strong hand that touched
hers so reverently. Then she answered simply: “Now that you have said it,
Jim, I am not sorry, though I would have prevented it if I could. I can’t
help being glad to know that you love me—the knowledge is sweet to me; it
would be to any woman, I think; but, O Jim, I don’t know all of my own
heart; I can only say that you are very, very dear to me.”
“No, no,” she cried, as he sought to draw her to him, “not that, Jim, not
now; I want to be honest with you—with myself. You are dear to me, Jim,
it’s true, but I have no confidence in you—I can’t trust you; I am sorry,
but I can’t. That sounds hard, I know, and it’s a poor return to make for
the love you offer; but what can I say? If you could prove to me that you
care more for me than anything else it would come all right, I know, and
I’d wait for you, Jim, I’d wait years. I can’t say more than that.”
“Alice,” the man said slowly, “I don’t want you to say more than that.
I know what waiting means, an’ its only a grain of hope; but that’s
tons and tons more than I deserve. I told you that I was going away
to-morrow, and I am; but don’t feel that you drove me out of the camp;
whatever happens, you ain’t got nothing to answer for. The fact is, it’s
getting too teetotally civilized up here for me, anyway; this thing of
building in railroads and developing the country afterwards is ruining
this section for a young man. I’ve got a lay-out down in Arizona, and
I am going to play it. You think I can’t keep straight? Well, I think
I can, if it will pay dividends; and if you say, ‘Jim, come back to me
in two years, good and pious like,’ I’ll do it, Alice; I’ll do it if it
breaks me.”
“Perhaps I oughtn’t to say it,” the girl answered gently; “but it’s our
only chance. In two years, if you want to come back and say again what
you have said to-night, I’ll listen.”
When Jim went home that night he astonished Ed Saulsbury, his room-mate,
by making him a present of his silver whisky flask and writing out his
resignation as foreman of Hose Company No. 1.
Jim’s resignation was received by the boys with sincere regret, and a
committee was appointed, which prevailed upon him to defer his departure
a day, in order that they might send him away with proper honors. The
next morning the following invitation, printed upon glazed cardboard in
gold lettering, was issued:—
Mr. James Hewson,
(alias JIM)
late Foreman of the Mulligan Guards Hose Company No. 1, being
about to leave Blackhawk for the benefit of his health and
morals, and the good of the town, it is proposed by a few of
his delighted friends to give him an old-time complimentary
send-off hop, at
Prouty’s Hall,
this, Monday, evening, the tenth, to which you are respectfully
invited.
The dance was a great success, despite the fact that Jack Gillis got more
on board than was good for him, and insisted upon setting fire to the
hall, just to give Jim a chance to make a last run with the Hose Company.
* * * * *
In the barren little Arizona town of San Biciente a man struggled,
and toiled, and dreamed away the two dreary years of his probation.
True, many of the asperities of the rough life were smoothed away by
the daily increasing favor shown by Don Jose Macias, the rich merchant
with whom he lived and worked, and by the assiduous caretaking of Don
Jose’s pretty black-eyed daughter, Josfita. Moreover, the better class
natives, attracted by his aptitude in acquiring the Spanish tongue and
by the boyish _bonhomie_ that had made Jim the joy and pride of the
“Blackhawk Mulligan Guards Hose Company,” showed themselves more than
ready to initiate him into certain Mexican methods of killing any time
not occupied by his business. But, though chuses, monte, cock-fights,
and bayles were seductive sports to a young man of Jim’s temperament,
his promise to Alice was far more potent. Occasionally, to be sure, he
so far fell from grace as to try his luck at the cards or to sun himself
a little too long in Josfita’s admiring glances. Jim did not attain his
full growth as a man at one bound. But the memory of that face as he had
seen it, shining with tenderness for him, and of that voice, bidding him
prove himself worthy of her trust, was never long absent from his mind.
Alice had said that she would wait for him. That assurance was the pillar
of cloud by day and fire by night that guided this wanderer through the
desert of distasteful toil and sordid living to the promised land of life
with the woman he worshiped. And so the years dragged by.
That promised land seemed very real and near to Jim one spring morning,
two years after his arrival, when he boarded the stage that was to carry
him toward Blackhawk. Indeed, it was only an hour before that Jim,
sitting in the little room behind the shop with his patron, had rejected
an estate of earthly acres for this immaterial Canaan.
“You go back to your own country, that’s all right,” the little man had
said unctuously, pressing upon his former clerk a glass of the rare
wine reserved ordinarily for weddings and fête days. “You find it much
changed. _Poco tempo_ you come back. I like your work. You be my partner.
You lack Josfita? All right. She have two hundred thousand dollars. You
marry her, my _bien good amigo_.”
But if Jim’s eyes had glistened and Jim’s breath had come short upon his
realization of the Don’s generosity, that was simply through joy that he
had seen what stood to him for all the kingdoms of the earth unrolled
before him, and had renounced them for the woman who waited for him in
the North.
Before he went he had assured the Don both of his undying gratitude and
of his sorrow that he could not accept his offer, in a manner so delicate
that that worthy Mexican realized the full import of the young man’s
words only after Jim, seated in the rickety stage-coach, had put at least
five miles between himself and San Biciente.
Thirty-six hours later, when the evening train thundered into the big,
new brownstone railroad station at Blackhawk, the passengers watched a
little curiously the big man in the garb of a cow-puncher, who alighted
from the car and stood for a moment on the platform with the set stare
and stiff movements of one in a trance. In those two years of banishment,
hundreds of miles from railroads and newspapers, Jim’s life had been
untouched by the farthest wave of the widening sea of change. At the
end of two years San Biciente and the country about it were exactly as
he had first found them. On the day that he boarded the stage-coach at
San Biciente he himself was the same Jim, a little bigger and stronger,
perhaps, and, but for the picturesque long hair, more handsome. His
blue eyes shone complacently beneath his wide sombrero, and his broad
shoulders, under the rolling shirt collar and bright neck-handkerchief,
swung with a certain air of harmless satisfaction. In fact, it was not
until he had found himself seated in the railroad car that whirled him
over the last stage of his journey, and caught the curious glances bent
upon him by the conventionally garbed wearers of patent leather shoes and
stiff derby hats, that it occurred to Jim that he was not of the world
about him. Then, as the train bore him farther and farther, through rows
of newly erected houses, and past enormous factories, which seemed to
have sprung like magic among the familiar hills and valleys, the sparkle
faded from his eyes, and his big shoulders drooped forward. Even the gold
band on his sombrero, that had cost him a good twenty-five dollars at San
Biciente, seemed to have lost its glitter.
As he hurried up Blackhawk’s main thoroughfare, lined now with imposing
shops and warehouses, he felt that in some inexplicable way everything
had grown away from and above him. Upon the very spot where the old
engine house had stood a brownstone club house projected its imposing
front upon the street. A brick hotel, glittering with electric lights,
reared its five stories in the place of the yellow-painted corner store,
whose upstairs dance hall had been the scene of the “stampede.”
And the church,—the little unpainted church where he had met Alice, and
at whose door he had waited for her on that memorable evening two years
ago? Even on the threshold of this long-expected meeting Jim felt drawn
by an irresistible impulse towards the spot around which clustered so
many sacred memories. But as he drew near to the familiar meeting of ways
where the old church had stood the man stopped short and drew his hand
across his eyes as if to brush away a mist. The little church was gone,
wiped out of existence like a picture from a slate! Nothing but a marble
tablet, placed over the arched doorway of a pretentious granite edifice,
assured him that this was still the site of the First Presbyterian Church
of Blackhawk. At the sight of that last transformation Jim’s heart
sank. In all that delirium of progress could Alice alone have remained
unchanged? The doubt descended like a black cloud, blotting out all his
happy visions of an hour ago. As he stood irresolute, looking up and down
the street, the deep notes of an organ floated out through the open door
of the church. To Jim, standing outside in the darkness, the solemn music
seemed to promise the strengthening of his purpose and the solution of
all his doubts and anxieties. Yielding once more to that undefined but
irresistible impulse that had brought him hither, he stole through the
doorway and into the church. Service had already begun when Jim, entering
on tiptoe, seated himself in a pew near the door, reverently removing his
sombrero, which he placed on the floor next the aisle. Around him there
were flowers, and bright lights, and all the modern church’s appeals to
the unregenerate, but Jim noted with a sinking heart that among this
fashionably garbed congregation there was not a single familiar face or
figure. Again that sickening doubt descended on the man, bowing his head
with a weight like that of a physical burden, and for the time blotting
out church, and lights, and flowers. Even when the service was finished
and the congregation was dispersing to the sound of the organ’s voluntary
Jim waited, his head bowed, his eyes fixed like those of a man in a
trance—waited until the sound of a man’s voice, that seemed to speak to
him across the gulf of two years, sounded in his ears. It was Stancliff,
the Sunday-school superintendent of other days, coming down the aisle,
talking eagerly to a young woman, whose face, looking up into his own,
was hidden, but who, by token of her dress and bearing, belonged to that
invading throng whom Jim had already come to hate. As they passed the
pew where Jim still sat, the folds of the woman’s dress brushed against
his sombrero, and for a moment she looked around. In that moment Jim
saw her face. It was the face of Alice Huyler, but so changed under its
modish capote, set jauntily on the waving yellow hair, so ripened in its
expression and molding, above all, so radiant with emotions and interests
that Jim had never touched that it seemed more alien than that of any
stranger in the congregation. As he sat there waiting for the couple to
pass by him and out of the church, Jim did not attempt to define the
relations between Stancliff and Alice. He did not ask to know whether
Stancliff was husband, lover, or friend to this woman,—the woman that he
had loved and who had promised to wait for him. What he did know was that
the years had opened between himself and Alice a yawning chasm, a chasm
that no memories nor promises, however sacred, could ever bridge.
Rapt in such thoughts, he sat, half dazed, until the congregation had
dispersed and the sexton appeared to put out the lights. Then, rousing,
he fumbled for his sombrero, which had been swept under a neighboring
pew, recovered it, and, rising, passed slowly, with bowed head, out into
the night.
In Miggles’ Alley.
BY HERMAN BROWNSON.
His real name was Tim O’Hagan, but in Miggles’ Alley he was familiarly
known as Shingles. This was because, while a bootblack by profession,
he spent a large share of his life on the roof of a five-story tenement
house, tending his baby brother. On this particular occasion, however, he
rose above his callings of bootblack and nursemaid, and became a hero.
The region about Miggles’ Alley is not precisely a hotbed of heroism.
Indeed, there is probably not a corner of America in which the
poverty-stricken and depraved of all nations meet in such strength as
here, where the social sewers from the four corners of the earth seem to
empty themselves. But Shingles, looking down upon the streets from the
high plane of the tenement housetop, saw more of the color, and whirl,
and bigness of the streets than of their mud and meanness. He saw the
circus parade as it swept gleaming by. He saw the crowd pouring through
the neighboring streets,—a black river of humanity.
Best of all, he looked almost daily on the wonderful maneuvers of the
fire company, whose engine house, opposite one entrance of the tenement
house, was Shingles’ favorite resort. On those rare occasions when he was
free to ply his trade, Shingles earned several dimes and nickels, and
incidentally many golden opinions, from the good-natured fire laddies,
who recognized a kindred spirit in this mite of ten. And when chained
by duty to his post on the roof, Shingles could, if he liked, exchange
occasional salutes with the objects of his worship as they lounged in
the street below. As for those moments when the alarm gong rang, and
his friends at the engine house jumped into their places on the hose
carriage or the hook-and-ladder trucks, and were whirled off to scenes of
adventure, those were periods of combined pride and pain to Shingles.
The pride was for his comrades; the pain that he, by reason of his ten
years and absorbing occupation, was cut off from any share in these deeds
of daring. Only in make-believe could he climb ladders and rescue people
from burning buildings; and, while it was easy to play circus parade with
the baby and pussy cat in a soap-box on rollers for the band chariot, the
heroism of the fire laddie called for a greater exercise of talent.