come to her from that terrible captain. When she knows that I sent for
you----"
"Peace, peace, Doña Carlota. Who is going to tell her, but yourself?"
"She is so shrewd, she can see through a wall, Don Abrahan."
Don Abrahan laughed again, seeming in pleasant humor for one who had
ridden so far from his bed. He pinched Doña Carlota's cheek, finding no
trouble to get his finger's full.
"A wall is another thing," he said. Doña Carlota was not quick at a
jest. She did not understand his mirth.
Roberto entered, a pistol at his belt; Simon, the teamster, stood in
the beam of Doña Carlota's candle outside the door.
"Where is the Yankee dog?" Roberto demanded, harsh, disrespectful, his
hat on his head.
"Gently," Don Abrahan cautioned. "Not so loud. Lead us to the room
where he is hidden. The house is guarded at every door, he cannot
escape."
"The house, the room?" Doña Carlota gasped in scandalized amazement.
"Do you believe, Don Abrahan, that my niece would conceal a man in her
house? Jesus save----"
"Where, then?" Roberto demanded.
"I do not know, Don Roberto, but somewhere on the ranch. The Yankee
_mayordomo_ can tell you that."
"A tree would tell as much!" Don Abrahan said. "Call Helena."
"She has heard, she is coming. There is her candle in the hall!" Doña
Carlota pressed her elbows to her sides, drew her shoulders as if
trying to shrink upon herself.
Helena appeared, lifting her candle high to peer beneath it at
the intruders upon her midnight peace. The flaring bottom of the
candlestick threw a shadow on her face, only her hair coming into the
light. She was draped in a long, dark voluminous cloak, her arms bare
in its wide sleeves, the white frill of her night-dress peeping at her
throat out of its austere envelopment.
"It is a late hour for a visit, Don Abrahan, Roberto," she said looking
from one to the other in questioning surprise. "I heard horsemen in my
patio. What does it mean?"
[Illustration]
"We have come to you for a man who has run away from a debt, like
a thief," Don Abrahan replied. "Your _mayordomo_ is hiding him on
your ranch, I have been told. It is to your authority I appeal, as a
magistrate of the law, Helena, to compel the delivery of this man."
"My _mayordomo_ is only obeying my orders," Helena replied.
She placed her candle on the deep window-sill, gathering her cloak
closer about her neck, standing so, clasping the mantle delicately, its
loose sleeve slipping down to the bend of her arm.
"You are humane, but mistaken," Don Abrahan chided her gently. "This
man is a ruffianly sailor who ran away from his ship; he has committed
a murderous assault on my son. He is entirely unworthy your protection
and tender sympathy."
"I am sorry that it was necessary for Roberto to suffer at his hands,"
she said, yet withholding from Roberto even the sympathy of her glance.
"I have talked with the young sailor, Mr. Henderson. He is a gentleman,
he does not deserve the hard usage you have given him, any more than
he does the hard name, Don Abrahan. I intended to go down and see you
about his case tomorrow."
"Then I rejoice that I have spared you so much fatigue," Don Abrahan
said, inclining his thin body in graceful obeisance, sombrero in his
hand.
"I am sure Mr. Henderson has repaid you, many times over, all that
he ever owed you legally," Helena said. "He has told me that he came
into your service in February; it is now July. You cannot rate the
services of an American with those of an ignorant peon, Don Abrahan. Be
generous; call it paid."
"What he owes me is another matter," Roberto said.
He had found the grace to remove his hat on Helena's appearance; in his
fierce show of hungry vengeance now he let it fall, the hand that had
held it clenched, the other on his pistol.
Helena surveyed him in this dramatic pose with cool curiosity, running
her eyes over him as if searching the cause of his animosity against a
man whom he had degraded to a servile station.
"Although I might forgive his debt, under such kindly argument by his
lovely advocate, that would not free him of his assault upon my son.
But you are mistaken in the matter of his debt to me; the man has lied."
"He cannot escape," Roberto said fiercely, bending toward her as he
spoke, his face flushed, his eyes drawn small.
"It is impossible for him to reach the north and join the Americans who
plot against our country there," Don Abrahan declared. "The road is
guarded well, he cannot pass."
"I doubt if he thinks of escaping--to the north, or anywhere, at
present, Don Abrahan. A man who has done no wrong has nothing to fear."
"There is no reason in the heart of youth, only fire and sympathy,"
Don Abrahan said. "Yankee men of this common type are brutes. This one
I saw strike his captain down with a broken oar, like a savage. What
weapon he held when he assaulted my son we do not know, but the bruise
of it is still to be seen on his face. No, the man cannot be permitted
to go free and unpunished. The safety of the community demands his
correction."
"He told me he struck Roberto with his hand, and no weapon," Helena
said, indignant over the charge, unwise in her revelation, as she
realized almost immediately.
"So, you have been alone with him again!" Roberto accused.
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded, turning stern face upon his son.
"I was not alone with him; John Toberman was present."
"What cruelty to say she was alone with a man!" said Doña Carlota. "The
four angels who guard her chamber are not more innocent, Don Roberto."
"Then if you will call Toberman and order him to lead us to the
sailor's hiding-place," Don Abrahan suggested, yet with the imperative
inflection of a command.
"I heard him among your men, he is not one to sleep when an invasion
like this is going on. Call at the door, or send Simon around to the
patio."
John Toberman, _mayordomo_ of the ranch, appeared at the front door
presently with Simon, who had bounded away at Don Abrahan's nod to find
him. He came into the light of Doña Carlota's candle, which she still
held in her hand, its flame on a level with her stubby nose. He was
bareheaded, his pistols were belted around him, his shirt was open on
his grizzled neck. He came into the house without ceremony, no show of
deference and little of respect, in his bearing toward Don Abrahan and
his son.
[Illustration]
Toberman was a broad-shouldered, lean Yankee, once mate of the ship
that Captain Sprague had commanded. He was sixty years of age, or more,
his heavy, bushy hair of a pepper-and-salt gray, his bearded face,
dark as a Mexican's, keen and alert. He stood in the door, severe,
questioning; a cloud of displeasure on his face.
"What does this clatter around here at this time of the night mean,
Garvanza?" he demanded, fixing the magistrate with searching eyes.
"In the name of the law to demand a fugitive who is to be judged for
his crimes," Don Abrahan replied.
"You want that young man Henderson, do you? Well, if you think you're
goin' to drag him back to work for you till the United States army
marches in here and sets the peons free, you're mistaken. If you want
to try him for slappin' your son's jaw, set the date and I'll guarantee
he'll be on hand."
"There is more than you understand," Don Abrahan said coldly. "You are
a Mexican citizen, it is treason for you to talk of an American army
taking possession of this country. Bear that in mind when you open your
mouth hastily in the future, Toberman."
Toberman seemed to grow two inches as he drew himself up, his chest
swelling with no knowing what defiance. Helena lifted her hand,
slightly, seeming to speak to him with her eyes. The blast of words
that might have knocked Don Abrahan off his feet, and haled Toberman
into court for trial on a serious charge, was checked. Toberman
contented himself with adjusting his hands on his hips, in a pose that
was at once expressive of defiance and disdain, and standing so in
silence.
"Where is the fugitive hiding?" Don Abrahan demanded.
"You're free to go and find out," said Toberman.
"The time has come to teach these Yankees who are masters of this
country," Roberto said, turning to his father in fury. "Why will you
temporize with them, permit them to throw insult and defiance in your
face? Give me permission and I will find a way to make this man answer,
and answer with respect."
"Peace!" Don Abrahan commanded, yet with more admiration than severity.
"There is a way; in due time it will be seen. Toberman, the iron hand
of the law is over you; it must not, it shall not, be defied. I will
give you until mid-day tomorrow to produce this fugitive. Go about the
business immediately."
"Don Abrahan, you have no right to come into my house with such
commands!" Helena protested.
"Garvanza, ever since the new governor has been established in the
pueblo, with the thieves and off-scourings of the Mexican prisons in
his military force, you've swelled up like a toad," Toberman said.
He moved forward a step as he spoke, his hand lifted, pointed finger
driving his words into the magistrate's face. "I'm not taking orders
from the governor, I'm not taking orders from you. I get my orders from
this little lady right here, and from nobody else."
Toberman glared around as he pronounced this defiance of the
constituted authorities, hands back again on his hips in convenient
reach of his pistols, a fearless man who had passed through many
conflicts, to whom the imminence of another was nothing but an incident
in his day.
"Don Abrahan, I will pay you what this fugitive owes you, according to
your own reckoning of it," Helena offered, drawing a little closer to
the magistrate, closing the little group in the wide, low-walled hall.
It seemed as if defiance and appeal pressed upon Don Abrahan in the
same breath.
"It cannot be permitted," Don Abrahan replied.
He retreated a step from her advance, from her white arm outstretched
in supplication for permission to do this humane service.
"He is a stranger, far from home, without money, without friends,"
she pleaded. "I will pay it in his name--seven times the amount, Don
Abrahan, if you demand it."
"It cannot be adjusted in this manner," Don Abrahan refused. "Prepare
quarters in this house for me and my son," he directed, turning
gruffly to Doña Carlota.
Doña Carlota started, her growing nervousness reaching its climax in
the order, given with such affront to the hospitality of that house.
She shifted the position of her candle to look past it at Helena,
plainly asking instructions from one whose authority she held in
greater fear than Don Abrahan's wrath.
"You will know where to accommodate them," Helena said coldly. "There
will be nothing more tonight, John," to Toberman, in kindness that had
no taint of patronage.
Toberman left the house the way he had entered, Don Abrahan's order in
little prospect of being carried out, that was plain. Doña Carlota had
hastened down the hall to open the guest rooms; Don Abrahan turned to
the door, where he leaned out peering into the dark, as if watching
Toberman. He summoned Simon in low voice, and stood there for some time
talking with his teamster in hurried manner, Simon answering with short
word here and there interspersed in hasty eagerness.
"So, you would buy a lover!" Roberto said, his breath audible in his
nostrils as he leaned to whisper the insult in Helena's ear.
Helena drew away from him, her cloak gathered close, afraid of him
for the fierce cruelty of his eyes. Roberto reached quickly, roughly
grasping her wrist where her hand held the mantle at her throat.
"There is a dagger for a heart so false!" he said.
Don Abrahan turned from the door as Roberto flung her hand away
with such gesture of contempt, such complete abandonment, that the
magistrate stood stiffly, his limbs checked in their function by his
great amazement.
"This is not well," he said sternly.
"False!" Helena repeated in scorn. "Who is it that has mooned and
sighed under windows, and caught flowers thrown by coquettes--and
worse? What have I heard from the capital of the doings of Don Roberto
that would turn my heart to him or make him dear? Roberto, if there
ever was any obligation to you on my part, I have been absolved from it
long ago."
"You were betrothed to me; it was a holy compact," Roberto said.
His voice shook with sickness of the shame he believed had been put
upon him; he stood clenching his hands and scowling, ready, it seemed,
to begin the chastisement that he had threatened.
"This is folly," Don Abrahan said, attempting to soothe their young
passion with the unction of his steady word. "All the world knows there
was a betrothal between you two, years ago."
[Illustration]
"It wasn't of my making," Helena reminded him, bitterly accusing in
the recollection of that bargain and conveyance, after the country's
custom. "What you and my father arranged between you when I was a child
cannot bind me now, Don Abrahan. I repudiate it, I throw it in your
face!"
"It cannot be done so lightly," Don Abrahan said, thinking of the lands
and herds, and the gold that the Yankee captain had plucked out of air
like a magician, all now in the hands of this girl, all now about to
take wing and fly out of his family's reach forever. "It cannot be done
so easily, Helena. There is much to consider before pulling down shame
upon my house, disgrace upon your own."
"Disgrace! And she would buy a lover for a price!" Roberto groaned,
burning already in the fire of humiliation.
"It is only the--the--disgraceful sort you know so well, Roberto, who
have love to sell for a price," she said. "Don Abrahan, I leave you to
your repose."
"Youth is too quick," said Don Abrahan regretfully, as Helena
disappeared down the dark hall, leaving her candle on the window-sill
to light them to such repose as the night's upheaval had left them.
"Tomorrow you will repair the damage with soft words."
"Tomorrow," said Roberto portentously, "it will be another thing. I
am no longer a boy. I have grown the teeth of a man this night; I can
bite."
CHAPTER IX
DON ROBERTO BITES
Roberto found the air of his room stifling, the confinement of its
walls oppressive. It seemed that the teeth of a man, which he had
become cognizant of possessing only that night ached for something to
fasten upon and try their strength, urging him out into the open with
savage restlessness.
His door opened into the wide patio between the wings of the house,
where an immense pepper tree rose high above the roof, its softly
draped foliage blue-tinted in the moonlight like a vast, still smoke.
There was no light in the house as Roberto stood a little while in the
patio drowned in the gloom of the great tree's shadow; if Helena's
conscience troubled her on account of this night's rebellion, she hid
the shame of it in the dark.
That was as it should be, Roberto thought. It would have been
satisfying to him to know that she was bowed in remorseful shame at her
prayers; he suspected, with resentful anger, that she was asleep in her
bed.
All was as quiet outside the house as within. The men who had ridden
from the ranch, but few in number, mean-spirited fellows all, excepting
Simon alone, had found places to stretch themselves and sleep. It was
nothing to them whether Gabriel Henderson went free or was taken,
nothing to them whether the power and dignity of Don Abrahan's house
rose or fell. Vengeful, bitter, contemptuous of them all, Roberto went
to the front of the house and into the broad road that passed before
it, the fire of his passion burning the desire for sleep.
[Illustration]
Along this road a little way toward the north he walked, striding
rapidly, his spurs clicking at his heels. The land in this valley
was sandy, soft, almost white as snow in the bright moonlight, far
different from the black, tenuous adobe of his father's homestead.
Between the little groves of robles which grew in this rich valley the
erratic highway ran, the royal road, the king's highway, of the old
mission days. The Indians made it first between their villages, long
before the zeal of the Franciscan fathers brought them to that shore;
the traffic of the missionaries broadened it, and gave it the dignity
of its name.
Roberto felt that his heart was nested in this valley, toward which he
had yearned sometimes among the dissipations of the capital. He had
intended, all the years of his betrothal to Helena, to establish the
dignity of his house here on the land that the Yankee captain, who had
been accepted as an equal of the best in that country, had acquired by
grant for some service to the Mexican government, real or contrived,
which was forgotten now. But the land remained, no matter for the
evanescent memory of those who gave it or him who received. It yielded
as no other ranch in that part of the country under the wise management
of John Toberman, who had given up herding ships on the sea for the
herding of cattle on the land.
It was a wrench to give up that plantation, with its green _vegas_, its
stream of living water that came down from the mountains to refresh the
great herds, its groves of oak and sycamore trees, its barley and wheat
fields, its mansion by the roadside. Yet honor was dearer to a man than
lands and herds. At least custom made it so, Roberto said, beginning
to feel his anger against Helena diminish in weighing it against what
it would cost him. Custom was wrong in many things, as the constant
abandonment of old usages proved. Custom was cruel when it separated a
man from his dreams and desires in such manner as this.
Roberto's feet found a slower pace, the boiling turmoil of his anger
cooled, as these considerations assailed him. Helena was only guilty
of being modern; the Yankee blood of that old captain had drowned the
Castilian in her veins. It was wrong to judge her by the standards of
that country, as it would be wrong for him to throw away a fortune on
no sounder proof than this. It was a thing to pace slowly up and down
here in the shadow of the roadside oaks and consider, hands behind the
back like a thinking man.
A man must leave home, hunger for it, sigh for it, to return and
perceive its beauties hitherto unknown, to feel its friendliness as he
felt it here tonight. His heart rose in him, a tenderness of poetic
feeling blended out the last shred of his anger, as he stood in the
moonlight at the margin of the oak trees' shade, viewing the beauty of
that place.
In the south stood the low chain of hills separating this broad valley
from that in which the pueblo of Los Angeles lay; close at hand on the
north, higher mountains rose, the crumbling granite ledges on their
rough sides and summits glistening like snow.
Dark, repellant, the canyons of these mountains appeared, rough and
unfriendly their steep and mangy slopes. No trees graced them, little
verdure. They seemed the great cinder-heap of a burning world that
the sea had rushed upon and extinguished in some long-distant age.
Even with their austerity chastened in the moonlight, there was no
invitation to man in the face they presented.
[Illustration]
Yet Roberto knew that their sides were covered with low-growing shrubs,
with sweet-scented plants, with sage and holly and honey-bearing
flowers, which left a man's clothing perfumed by their touch when he
threaded the tangle of their barring limbs. Green things grew there
which sheep and cattle fattened on; the sage-bloom called the bees
to gather such honey as never gladdened man's tongue in any other
land. There was a great beneficence, a gentle kindness, even in the
forbidding hills.
To the east Roberto could not see far, the vision hemmed by trees, but
there he knew the valley came down to a point, like a river flowing
between the hills. To the west it broadened for miles, closing again
before coming quite to the sea. In that direction the road turned from
San Fernando Mission, threading to Santa Barbara and, in its weary
course, to Monterey.
It was clear in the valley this night, not a curl of mist drifted along
the hills, a sweet languor in its placidity that embraced a man and
made him glad. He could dissemble, he could put pride aside, stoop
to soft words to beguile a foolish girl's ear, for the blessings of
that place. This knowledge that he had teeth to bite made a man wiser,
fortified his courage like a pistol in the belt.
With these reflections over him, the thought of his vengeance against
Gabriel Henderson put aside for that hour, Roberto walked on up the
road, thinking nothing of the time, sleep a stranger to his eyes. There
grew mesquite and screw-bean by the roadside, cactus and chaparral, and
grass in bunches that put up tall plumes. Soon Roberto was far beyond
sight of the ranch-house, his eyes on the white road, the weight of his
new manhood upon him making him grave.
Roberto was startled out of his meditations by the beat of a horse's
feet in the road to the north. Before the rider came in sight around
one of the goat-path windings of the highway, Roberto knew that the
horse had been ridden hard, and far. He stood in the middle of the
road, curious to know who had come from a distance in such pressure,
whither he was bound, and the mission that urged him to ride in haste
through the night.
The rider halted suddenly when he rounded the turn of the road, seeing
his way blocked by a man. He seemed to hesitate for a moment between
advance and flight. Roberto, prickling with a keen suspicion that all
was not honest with the rider, hailed him.
"Advance!" he said, in commanding voice.
The rider lifted his right hand in signal that he understood, and came
forward slowly.
"Can you direct me to the Sprague ranch?" he inquired, in the speech of
a common man. Roberto saw that he wore the dress of a cattle-herder.
His carriage in the saddle fixed him as one of that calling.
"It is close by," Roberto replied, laying hold of the bridle rein as a
man might do a friend's. Yet there was nothing of friendliness in the
young man's bearing; much of suspicious severity, and question of the
other's right to pass. "Who is it you have business with there at this
late hour?"
"It is a man's own business, whatever it may be," the horseman replied,
undisturbed by Roberto's hostility. "Would you deny a man the road,
like a bandit?"
"I am a kinsman of Miss Sprague, I have the right to stop any stranger
who comes looking for her at this hour of the night. If your business
is honest, you will not hesitate to tell me what it is."
"You might be her brother?"
"No, not her brother. I am a distant relative, but my authority is not
to be questioned."
"Only a distant relative!" said the rider, with a short laugh. "But you
stop a man in the road with a pistol under your fingers. If you were a
near relative, a brother or a cousin, maybe you would shoot a man if he
even looked in the lady's direction? You are too quick for me, young
gentleman. Let go my bridle--I must be on my way."
He seemed to hold Roberto in little seriousness, in trifling account.
His teeth flashed in a quick smile; he sat in a posture of graceful
indulgence, one hand on his hip, his bridle reins held high in the
other.
"Who sent you?" Roberto demanded with all the sternness of his
privileged class.
"A man with fingers on his hands, and money in them to pay for what he
wanted. That's enough for me to know; it will have to be enough for
you."
"Where do you come from, impertinent scoundrel?"
"Have you heard of Monterey, little man?" the cattle-herder asked,
patronizingly insolent, as a free man who knows his strength and
despises that of another. "Well then, I come from Monterey. I bring
letters for the young lady. Whether they are from a lover, that is
another thing. Now let go my bridle--permit me."
[Illustration]
The man leaned as he spoke, laying hold of Roberto's wrist to remove
his hand from the rein. His cool insolence, his impertinent disregard
of any force that his challenger might use to prevent his going, seemed
to Roberto a mighty insult to his new manhood, as it doubtless was
intended to be.
"Get down!" Roberto commanded, presenting his pistol at the rider's
ribs.
"Presently--at the lady's door," the messenger replied, his teeth white
in the moonlight as he laughed.
With the words he set spur to his horse, waking in the agony of the
cruel thrust the spirit that seemed beaten out of the weary animal. It
bounded forward, the dust of its high-flung hooves in Roberto's face.
The chaparral echoed with a sound strange and discordant in the
placidity of that night. Don Roberto had snapped his teeth.
CHAPTER X
THE MAGISTRATE SPEAKS
"I only know that Don Roberto has killed a man, that they have brought
his body wrapped in tentcloth and laid it near the olive press, under
the trees. That is all I know."
Doña Carlota was not greatly moved by the event. Dead men had come
in her way before, and men who had fallen by violence. She was less
agitated in the relation of this news than over the prospect last night
that her betrayal of the American's presence on the ranch might be
discovered by her niece. She was keen enough to see that the agitation
had passed to the other side of the hearth, so to speak. It was
Helena's face that grew white, and set in little lines of pain, when
this news of Don Roberto's exploit was related.
"You didn't hear them say who it was, when, where, it happened?" Helena
inquired.
She sat as she had started from sleep at her aunt's summons to hear
this news, the bedclothes flung aside, her hair showering on her
shoulders, dread and anxiety staring from her eyes.
"It may be the one they came to find. It was of about that length--I
saw it as they carried it by the window. I'll send Rosa with coffee----"
"No. But, Auntie Carlota, ask them. Find out who it was, why it was
that Roberto----"
"There is Don Abrahan calling me, roaring again like a bear. These men!
What a trouble!"
Doña Carlota left hurriedly, the sound of Don Abrahan's voice welling
as she opened Helena's chamber door.
"Doña Carlota, Doña Carlota!" the summons sounded. And fainter, as
the door closed, as if he had turned his back, "Doña Carlota!" with
impatient clapping of the hands.
Doña Carlota made no haste to appear before her kinsman and learn
his pleasure. She stood a moment at Helena's door, a look of supreme
satisfaction in her face, crossed the hall to the door opening into the
patio and stood a little while looking at the tender morning sun in the
leaves of the pepper tree.
"I was right, I was justified; my conscience is clear," she said. "Yes,
Don Abrahan. I am here, I am here."
Helena hastened her toilet, oppressed by a dread that made her morning
dark. Sleep had been long coming to her last night; she had lain
planning and devising, her mind flooded by this breaking down of
traditional submission. When sleep came, it had locked her fast, she
had heard nothing of the coming and going when the body of the slain
man was brought and laid beneath the olive trees. Had she slept while
they hunted this trusting stranger and killed him at her very door?
The thought wrung her heart with poignant regret. It seemed equal to
betrayal to offer a man sanctuary that she could not insure, a refuge
that had become a trap. She had not looked deep enough into Doña
Carlota's crafty eyes when she related this tragic intelligence;
not deep enough to see that her purpose was only one of leading her
young ward on to the betrayal of what hid in her heart. Now Doña
Carlota knew; she knew better than Helena herself, or more than Helena
would have owned, at least, if confronted with the demand of her own
conscience.
Doña Carlota was back at Helena's door while she was still braiding
her hair. This time with a summons from Don Abrahan that amounted
to a command. As quickly as she could dress she was to attend the
pleasure of Don Abrahan in the parlor. It must be something terrible,
Doña Carlota said, now unmistakably alarmed. There was a look in Don
Abrahan's face to make a woman's heart sink low.
Don Abrahan sat at a small table near the window, papers spread before
him; Roberto waited at the door like a butler, closing it behind Helena
sharply when she entered, shutting Doña Carlota out with summary
rudeness. Don Abrahan rose, tall, gaunt, his roomy clothing loose upon
his limbs. Helena stood in questioning hesitation, looking from Don
Abrahan to his son. She seemed a stranger in her own house, these two
had taken such authoritative control.
[Illustration]
Don Abrahan turned his hand in slow, graceful motion to a chair,
remaining standing in his punctilious way of deferential grace until
she was seated. Roberto stood with his back to the door, his pistol at
his side.
This house was not so pretentious as Don Abrahan's, there being nothing
grand in its proportions at all, compared with the bright and beautiful
homes which stand in that same valley today. It was a squat, flat
building of gray adobe, severely simple, conforming in all particulars
with the traditional plan of houses of the gentry in California of that
period, following the older traditions of an older land. The form was
that of a letter E without the centre bar. All rooms faced upon the
patio, with doors admitting to it. In the front of the house there was
the hall in the centre, a room on either hand; in the wings the kitchen
and sleeping rooms.
The parlor in which this small party gathered this morning was not a
large room. The morning sun did not brighten it, the house facing the
west. Its cedar beams across the ceiling, its dark draperies and sombre
furnishings gave it a solemnity fitting to a solemn hour.
And this seemed to Helena a most solemn and portentous hour, indeed.
Don Abrahan's face was grave, his demeanor judicially severe. Roberto,
standing with arms folded on his breast, appeared like one waiting to
enforce the judgment of some stern and pitiless court. They might have
been officers of the Holy Inquisition, Helena thought, judged by the
unsympathetic harshness of their faces, their fixed determination upon
the business that lay in their hands.
Don Abrahan sat silent a little spell, drawing the written sheets of
paper together before him, arranging them in a way that seemed to tell
of his thoughts being detached from the action of his hands. Helena's
heart was laboring as if it lay under a stone; her limbs trembled, her
hands were cold. She did not know that Don Abrahan was a master of
suspense; that every movement of his hand was calculated, every moment
of silence gauged against the perturbation of her breast.
"There is a matter of gravity on our hands, Helena, my desired,"
Don Abrahan began, his measured words, his slowly lifted head, his
deliberate, searching eyes, all adding to the weight of that cold stone
which seemed pressing upon the warmth of her redundant heart. "If I
have your permission, I will speak."
"Assuredly, Don Abrahan."
"We spoke last night, Helena, of your betrothal to my son."
Don Abrahan paused; his eyes sought the papers on the table, the first
of which he lifted, seeming to read beneath.
"That is ended, Don Abrahan," Helena said, the tremor of her heart in
her words.
"It is a heavy thing to speak of lightly, and in haste, as I said last
night, my dear. Let us go back a little way, let us reconsider. Do you
realize the affront, the humiliation, the insult, you are laying on my
son, my house, by this hasty, capricious act?"
"There is neither insult nor humiliation intended, sir. I realize that
I could not be happy with your son. That is the first consideration. I
could not honor him, love him, or even respect him, as a woman should
the man she marries."
Helena's spirit began to lift, the dread to ease its compression on her
bosom. She looked Don Abrahan in the eyes, a flush enlivening her pale
cheeks.
"In what way has my son forfeited his claim upon your respect, my love?"
"I told you last night."
"Rumors may easily grow into slanders between here and the capital,"
Don Abrahan said, in stern reproval. "If we are to credit all our
suspicions, believe all we hear, accept every small circumstance as
damning evidence, we will soon drive happiness and tranquility out of
our lives. Who of us is pure in all things? Who has not transgressed?"
"The source of my information cannot be impeached," Helena replied.
"If you have called this solemn court to try me, Don Abrahan, you have
exceeded any and all authority that I grant to your position and your
years. I am free, I am in my right mind. I will not marry Roberto. You
cannot force me to it, even with your valiant son guarding the door!"
"The small frivolities, the mild indiscretions--all this the world
grants a man in his youth, Helena. It is different with a man."
"Let it pass; there will be many ready to accept the defense. As for
me, I cannot, Don Abrahan."
"It is strange that you should come to this conclusion at this late
hour, Helena. There was no word of it before the last day of the
fiesta."
"Two days after I left your house, Don Abrahan, letters came from my
friends in the capital. But I doubt, even without the things revealed
to me----"
"Lies, slanders," said Don Abrahan, disdain in the swelling of his
nostrils, the rocking of his head. "Have I not been young? It is the
fashion to slander such."
"Your son has an able advocate, Don Abrahan," she said, smiling a bit
scornfully. "Do we have to go on with the discussion, only to come to
nothing in the end?"
"It is soon done," Don Abrahan declared with sudden sternness, rising
to his feet. "My son stands ready to forget the past, out of his great
and honorable love for you."
Helena sprang up.
"Generous gentleman!" she mocked. "And if I refuse to marry him, the
penalty will be publicity, disgrace."
[Illustration]
"No. A gentleman learns early in life when to keep silent," Don Abrahan
returned.
"You will reconsider your hasty words?"
"No!"
"You will think slowly, and speak slower. My son forgives the escapade
of the oak tree."
"Forgives! What absolution can he show for his own crimes?"
"He will forget what has passed, he will accept this restored compact
as if you never had broken it by word or deed."
"How magnificent!"
"Do you yield?"
"No, Don Abrahan, I do not yield. There is no act of purgation, there
is no fire of penance, that can cleanse him in my sight. To add to his
other crimes, it is said he killed a man last night. Who was it? Why
was it done, here at my very door?"
"We are coming to that," Don Abrahan said.
He motioned her to her chair again, an invitation that passed unheeded.
Seeing that she did not sit, he remained standing, lifting the papers
from the table.
"It becomes necessary to tell you now what I have known these three
days," Don Abrahan said. "The insolent aggressions of the Americans
have driven our patient nation to resent them at last. War has been
declared; battles have been fought on the Rio Grande. The triumphant
Mexican army is sweeping forward to Washington. The man whom my son
challenged in the road last night was a spy, carrying intelligence to
spies. This correspondence before me was taken from him. Part of it was
addressed to you."
Don Abrahan held up the written sheets, half a dozen or so in number.
Helena put out her hand quickly, more in appeal than demand. Don
Abrahan pressed the correspondence against his breast, denying her,
lifting a checking hand. His face was forbidding, his accusing voice
was cold.
"I have suspected Toberman a long time of plotting with the Americans
and traitors in the North, but I lacked absolute proof until this day.
It was beyond the limit of reason to include you, Helena."
Helena was not thinking of herself that moment; she was not crushed
and confounded as her silence might be misunderstood. Her heart was
beating fast, the warm blood was surging into her brain, quickening it
to all the alert resourcefulness that was her heritage. Toberman had
escaped, Toberman was safe, thank God! That was her thought, that was
her exultation. Toberman was riding free. For herself and her peril,
she had no thought.
"Perilous as your situation is, Helena," Don Abrahan said, "there is a
door open to your salvation. You are young, you are under the influence
of this man who has had your affairs in his hands since your father's
death. He has misled you, he has brought you to this unwittingly,
he----"
"No, Don Abrahan," she denied, lifting her head proudly.
There was something in her voice, the ring of it, the proud defiance,
that started Roberto out of his pose before the door. His folded arms
fell to his sides, his fingers shaped as if to snatch a weapon. He
moved a step toward her, his eyes distended in astonishment of the
spirit revealed.
[Illustration]
"I offer you this door," Don Abrahan said, unheeding her defiance.
"I trust in my heart you will accept the exit from this most grave
situation. Let this compact between you and my son continue, let us
proceed at once to the priest and celebrate the marriage. My son has
begged me to offer you this out of the manly love he bears you, Helena,
and from no other consideration. Accept, and you will be relieved of
this taint of treason. It will be an easy matter in such case to place
the burden of guilt where it belongs, on the head of the traitor who
involved you in this, innocently, we----"
"Roberto, forgive me!" Helena begged, turning to the young man
impulsively, a light in her eyes that he never had seen before. "I have
misjudged you. You must have a true, an honorable affection for me to
offer me this."
"May God judge between us!" said Roberto, with such feeling that his
words trembled on his lips.
"There is something in you better than I knew," she confessed, the
honesty of her nature not permitting the covering of one little spark
of gratitude. "I thought all the time you were anxious only to have my
money and my lands, but this--but this I----"
"The lands? Curse them! The gold? Sink it in hell!" Roberto said,
flinging his arms wide, his head thrown back in his dramatic fervor.
"Forgive me if I have wronged you by word or thought, Roberto. There is
much in you that is manly, much, I am sure, that is good. I owe you the
confession of that much. But the compact cannot be renewed. We stand
parted, never to unite. I would not buy my life with the betrayal of a
friend."
"Think--" Roberto began to plead.
"What a cowardly thing it would be," she seemed to conclude for him,
but with a far different thought.
"If you refuse, it means loss of your estate, degradation,
imprisonment, perhaps death," Don Abrahan warned.
"Let it be so, then. I do refuse."
"What is this man, this alien who plays citizen for the purpose of
introducing the enemy into this country, to you?" Roberto asked,
perplexed, baffled, not able to understand. "Let him bear the blame, as
he deserves to bear it. Nobody will believe you guilty."
"But I am guilty," she said, proud in the confession. "I have prayed
for this war, I have prayed for the day when the United States army
would march into this land and----"
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded in stern, loud voice.
"The cruelties and injustices, the oppression of the strong, the misery
of the poor--all this would come to an end, all of it will come to an
end, when the United States army marches here!"
"Helena Sprague, as a magistrate of the republic I arrest you on the
charge of treason," Don Abrahan solemnly declared. "I seize your
lands and properties in the name of the republic; I lay hold upon
your cattle, your goods, your money, your effects, in the name of the
republic. Such as spurn mercy when it is offered, must burn in the fire
of justice."
"Take them, then, and my life if the republic wants it!" she said. She
turned to Roberto, who stood by torn between loyalty to his country and
love for its betrayer. "Toberman, is he gone, is he safe?" she asked.
"Toberman is under arrest, safely kept," Don Abrahan answered her. "I
have sent to the pueblo for the military. Tomorrow Toberman will be
shot as a spy."
CHAPTER XI
THE VALOR OF SIMON
Henderson had waited all that day in the appointed place for Toberman,
who was to bring him news of what he had learned regarding the
feasibility of escaping out of that country by the northern road. It
was within half an hour of sunset now, and no sign of Toberman.
Although he was well equipped with horse, pistol and clothing which
Toberman had supplied him, out of his own resources, the overseer had
given him to understand, placing the fugitive under no obligation on
that score to the owner of the ranch, Henderson hesitated over making
a start toward Monterey. Since coming to the Sprague ranch he had
learned more of Abrahan Garvanza's power and influence in that part of
California. A feudal baron never lived who could stretch a longer arm.
The governor of California, now stationed at Los Angeles, that pueblo
having been made the capital lately, was a man under Don Abrahan's
control. The forty soldiers who garrisoned the capital, given the
choice between service in this distant land and completing their
sentences for various felonies in the prisons at home, were at the beck
and call of Don Abrahan, the general in command being a relative of the
Garvanza family, owing his station to its wide influence.
[Illustration]
Toberman had told Henderson, and Helena Sprague had confirmed it, that
the news of his escape from Don Abrahan's enforced service would have
been carried to Monterey by the third day, incredible as it appeared
to him. News spread with great rapidity among the Indians and lawless
Mexicans who worked on the cattle ranches, and Don Abrahan had posted a
reward of twenty dollars, gold, for the fugitive's capture and return.
Twenty dollars gold on the California coast in those pastoral days was
equal to four head of cattle. A laborer would toil many months to earn
that much. A _vaquero_ did not gain a sum like it in half a year's
riding after the herds. It would not be a matter of enmity toward him,
Henderson understood, but the plain business one of making a handsome
sum of money quickly, that would set the hand of every man, high and
low, between Los Angeles and Monterey against his passage.
But there was an obscure way through the mountains, Toberman had told
him, long and rough, that might lead to freedom if a trustworthy guide
could be found. There seemed to be none in his employ whom he would
trust in that capacity. It was on this business that Toberman had
engaged to return this day and report.
Henderson watched the valley for his coming from the peak of a hill
which seemed a mountain that had sunk into the earth, a feature common
to those rugged foothills. There was spread in the broad valley,
running up into the inlets of the canyons, a haze of such density that
it seemed as if the sea must have swept in to reclaim its ancient
domain. This was as blue as the smoke of wood-fires, the Indian summer
haze of other lands intensified until it seemed almost palpable; blue
as the upper ether of the clearest October skies.
This strange inflooding of what seemed smoke from mysterious and
hidden fires obscured the view of the valley, where it stood at a
level against the walls of the hills as definitely marked as water.
Above this level the little mountains stood clear and sharp. Henderson
gazed out over this transformation, moved by a strange feeling of
friendliness and desire for this land.
An hour ago the sun had fallen brightly upon garish shoulder of
scrub-patched hill, upon yellow break of sand in the valley among the
green. It had revealed harshly the forbidding features of the country,
as daylight strips an aged beauty of her sad pretense. Now a veil had
been drawn; the sublimity of the change was such as hurt the heart with
longings for the sympathetic vibration that could quiver with it and
make it wholly understood.
Henderson gave up his vigil on the hilltop at dusk, returning to
his camp. This was a little hut built of boulders from a mountain
stream, laid together with mud, a sheep herder's shelter against the
winter rains. The place was a sequestered canyon, many miles from
the homestead of the ranch, unfrequented by herdsmen at this season.
Toberman had assured the fugitive that he might rest in security there
until his affairs took a better turn.
This feeling, doubtful at first, had gradually laid its spell over
Henderson as the days passed without sight of any human invasion.
Toberman had conducted him to the place secretly, at night, by cunning
ways which he believed left no track. Henderson's surprise was the
greater, as a consequence of all this caution, to find Simon sitting
placidly in the cabin door when he came down from watching the valley
for Toberman.
[Illustration]
Simon sat with his long knees updrawn, hands idly hooked in front of
them, in the patient, immobile fashion such as becomes a habit in
people only who have served long in subjugation and waited without
hope. The tragedy of his race was in his pose, the watcher who had been
set over other men's treasures, none of which he ever was destined to
touch or share. But in Simon's case, at least, it was only a racial
trait. There was nothing of humility in him, even in the presence of
Don Abrahan, although of patience for long and unrewarded vigils he
must have owned his share.
He rose at Henderson's approach, unfolding his thin length with
considerable spryness, advancing with hand extended in demonstration of
keen friendship.
"Is it you, my little friend Gabriel?" he hailed, great pleasure in his
voice. "I thought you were dead, I thought the wolves had made a dinner
on you. Come on, my boy. How are you, how have you passed?"
Henderson's horse was picketed some distance down the canyon; Simon was
directly in the way between them. Henderson distrusted the friendly
show, although Simon appeared to be unarmed and quite genuine in his
expression of pleasure.
Henderson replied to the flood of affectionate inquiry that all was
well with him; asked of Simon's family, according to the custom, shook
hands with him, accepted a cigarette. He wondered whether Toberman had
betrayed him, dismissing the suspicion at once as unworthy.
He could not know, certainly, of the little talk between Don Abrahan
and Simon the night before, or of the small pieces of gold that had
passed from the patron's hand in the dark. He could not have known,
indeed, that the old men who sit in the sun, wrapped in introspection,
see more than passes by them in the road.
"So, then, all is forgiven, my little Gabriel," Simon hastened to
explain, with evidence of great joy in his news. "Don Abrahan has sent
me, on the directions for finding you that the good John Toberman gave
us. I have come with Don Abrahan's forgiveness in my hand for the wrong
you did the good patron in running away from him. As for the little
blow you gave Roberto, there is nobody in thirty miles that does not
say bravo to that good deed."
"Toberman told you where to come, did he?"
Henderson questioned that declaration; it set a new current of
suspicion and distrust running. Yet, on the other hand, Toberman
might have sent Simon, saving himself the time from his activities
that the journey would take. It seemed only the natural thing for a
man of Toberman's consequence to do. He could not be expected to ride
messenger in a matter that had lost its bottom like a barrel in the sun.
It must be that Don Abrahan had seen a new light. Perhaps the
long-expected news had come from the north that the United States
had seized California and added it to its domain. In such case, Don
Abrahan's forgiveness would find a ready explanation.
"He says to tell you," Simon replied, "that there is no longer any need
for you to think of going away to the north, and Don Abrahan speaks
in the same voice. Don Abrahan says he will get you a ticket home in
a ship that is in the harbor now, loading hides. It is a Boston ship,
with such trees sticking out of it that it made my head swim to look at
the tops of them. Yes. I, myself, saw this ship three days ago at the
harbor. So you will return?"
"Are you here alone, Simon? There's no treachery in this?"
"As I hope to have two teeth when I am ninety, I am here alone,
Gabriel."
"Where is your horse?"
"Down there in the canyon with yours, like a man that has come to
dinner with his friend."
"And Don Abrahan said he'd let it all pass, the little trouble with
Roberto, and everything?"
"Don Abrahan said, 'Tell my little son, Gabriel, that all is
forgiven.' He said the ship would sail in three days. We must hurry,
Gabriel."
"First, we can't do better than imitate our horses," Henderson said,
his confidence growing, suspicion all but dispelled. "Let's get some
supper before we start, Simon. I'm hungry; your news is good for the
appetite."
Although largely assured by Simon's manner of open honesty, Henderson
watched him closely. He had heard the mule driver air his peculiar
morals often enough to ground deep and abiding distrust of his ability
to do anything exactly straightforward. Simon was apparently unarmed,
but Henderson suspected that a pistol was concealed somewhere in his
loose clothing, ready to his hand.
"Don Abrahan has come to Helena Sprague's ranch, where he is waiting
to welcome you and take you to his breast," Simon said, sitting in the
light of the little fire after the hastily-prepared supper had been
eaten. "We think he has found out something about you, that you are the
son of a family, or something grand."
"And Roberto, is he there?"
"Roberto went on to Monterey today, I heard it said. What dark night it
is here in the hills!"
[Illustration]
"It will be darker before it's lighter. We'd better go."
"Yes, the ship will not wait, Don Abrahan will wonder at our delay.
What was that?"
Simon started, listening, hand lifted to impose silence.
"Coyotes, very likely," Henderson replied, unconcerned. "They come
around here at night."
"It sounded like a horse." Simon rose, leaning into the dark, listening
hard, "If mine has got loose!"
He walked away a little distance, going softly, almost immediately
disappearing in the dark, which was deeper for the wooded side of the
canyon forming the background of the camp. Henderson heard him swearing
presently around the corner of the hut, disturbing the bushes softly as
if he sought a passage through.
"A bird in the bushes, I think," Simon said, turning back. "Do you
leave your fire uncovered these dry days?"
"I drown it," Henderson said.
"Go ahead, then; we must get down out of this dark place. Don Abrahan
will think I'm slower than seven doctors."
Henderson took up the pail to pour what water it contained over the
dying fire. He was standing with it poised, held in both hands, when
something came toward him from Simon's direction with the swishing
sound of a bird's wing. Quick as the leaping of his intuitive warning
that treachery was afoot behind him, Henderson stooped and sprang aside.
But Simon, with all the _vaquero's_ cunning in casting the lariat, had
planned his part too carefully, and risked too much, to fail. The rope
fell true to calculation, tightening with Simon's vicious jerk, binding
Henderson's arms to his body, one impotent hand within a few inches of
his pistol. Simon threw all his sinewy strength into the struggle that
followed, cutting Henderson's resistance short by dragging him to the
ground. In a moment additional coils of rope webbed the over-trustful
sailor as a spider binds a bug.
Nothing was said between the men while this treacherous capture and
desperate resistance were going forward. Now, when Simon had his prize
securely tied and thrown on the ground, he stirred up the fire, added
branches of dry cedar, and blew it to a blaze.
"So I, without a pistol on my body, take this smart Yankee and tie him
like a hog," Simon boasted, great and arrogant satisfaction in his
voice. He lifted his arms to display his body free of a belted pistol,
and sat down near the fire, his back against a small tree.
"I'll remember this treachery, Simon, in the day that will come,"
Henderson said.
"The day that is coming for you is one when Roberto will cut you to
pieces with his whip," Simon sneered. "Well, there is no hurry now. We
will wait till daylight comes, then ride down the canyon. It would be
foolish to arrive at midnight, for Don Abrahan would be asleep."
Simon smoked a while, legs stretched toward the fire, blowing smoke
luxuriously, chin lifted high.
"What did I say to them when I left my pistol behind, all the foolish
ones looking at me like men whose jaws were out of joint? I said, 'I
need no pistol for this work. I am going to catch a Yankee, and that is
not the same as a man.' When they see me come back with you, tied like
a pig for sale in the plaza! seven doctors, what a laugh!"
(_To be continued in the next issue of_ SHORT STORIES)
[Illustration]
THE PACKET ADMIRAL
BY WARREN ELLIOT CARLETON
_Author of "The Final Test," "The Harpoon Heritage," etc._
THE TRADITION OF THE SEA DIES HARD AMONG THE YANKEE SKIPPERS OF THE
OLD SCHOOL--AND THE TRADITION IS FAITHFULLY LIVED UP TO
"Jumpin' Jehossyfat! I didn't know there was that many!"
Captain Ed Pierce preened his bushy gray mustache, his brown eyes
staring at the six two-masted schooners comprising the Crosby fleet.
Beside him, on the deck of the Boston and Howesport packet schooner,
_Bessie Barker_, Captain Bert Blackmer also studied them. The Crosby
fleet was lying at anchor in the "cowyard," the sheltered outer harbor
of the decadent Cape Cod fishing town of Howesport.
"Looks like they mean business, don't it?" Captain Ed commented. "Bert,
seems like perhaps you'd be wise to sell out while the sellin's good."
Captain Bert bit his lip. There was good sense in what Captain Ed had
suggested. Captain Ed was shrewd. His investments had brought him
opulence, made him Howesport's wealthiest citizen. Yes, Captain Ed's
opinion was always worth weighing.
Captain Bert's tall, erect, thin yet sinewy frame, legs thrust wide
apart, would have graced the quarterdeck of a finer craft than even
the trim _Bessie Barker_. For twenty years he had successfully carried
on the shipping business between Howesport and Boston. It was hard
for him to give up now. His black hair and short beard, draping bold
aquiline features, were turning gray. The old muscular strength of the
days when he was in the South American trade had diminished with his
increasing years, which had now piled up to sixty-four.
When he had discarded the _Mary Chilton_ and bought the _Bessie Barker_
two years ago, he had thought, "She'll last a lifetime. A few years
more of service, and then--life ashore. Perhaps owner of a fleet of
packets----"
He had never thought of such a thing as competition. People had laughed
at him when he started the packet business twenty years ago. Howesport
had the railroad. At best, it was a dead port.
"He'll never make it pay," they had said, and in derision had dubbed
him "the Packet Admiral."
Yet he had made it pay. It hadn't made him rich like Captain Ed, but
give him a few years' lease of life and with business growing as it
had lately, and--Well, he _would_ be an admiral, of a line of packets
plying between various ports and bringing him a small fortune, perhaps
even wealth. That was all he asked--a few more years like the last
five. But now--the Crosby Company.
"They've sold stock in town, too," said Captain Bert. "Mis' Mehitable
Barnes fired a broadside into my hull this afternoon by informin' me
that she'd bought twenty shares of it."
"Lord sakes--that so? I didn't know she was that well-to-do."
"She ain't. Took about her last cent. Seems she knows Crosby--he used
to come here summers--and he coaxed her into it. Misrepresented things
to her, too. Didn't tell her they intend to operate a packet business
against me and cut my throat, in addition to their regular coastwise
shippin'. No; Crosby outlined it to her wholly as a fleet of coastwise
schooners."
"I vum!"
"Mehitable usually tells me all her business. But she sorter kept this
a secret from everybody. You know women do that--once in a while."
"Folks here have said you've been kinder courtin' her late years. Funny
she ain't let the cat out o' the bag 'fore this."
"Oh--just intimate friends, that's all." Captain Bert cleared his
throat. "Still, for her it may be a good investment. But cripes! The
air was sizzlin' when I told her Crosby's goin' to put a packet on
'tween here and Boston to compete with me!" he chuckled.
"Didn't like it, eh?"
"She vowed she'd git rid of them shares and give Crosby a piece of her
mind to boot. But I told her to hang on to 'em, that it's an ill wind
that blows nobody good, and she sorter calmed down. But I left her nigh
cryin'."
A stalwart fellow jumped aboard from the wharf.
"Well, nigh supper time. Guess I'll be goin'," said Captain Ed,
stepping on the rail and hoisting himself on to Robbins Wharf. "Looks
like you're competin' against an awful stack of capital, Bert. But keep
up your courage if you do fight it out. What you told the widder 'bout
that ill wind might apply to you, too."
Whistling, Captain Ed walked down the wharf.
[Illustration]
"The _Mary Chilton's_ all ready, Cap'n," spoke the big newcomer in a
deep voice. He pointed over his shoulder at the old schooner, unused
and falling to pieces on the other side of Robbins Wharf. "Everything's
ready, sir," he repeated while Captain Bert hesitated before answering.
"All right, Bill."
Bill Hyde's speech and appearance--bulldog jaw, swarthy face and curly
black hair sticking out from a shabby blue yachting cap--branded him a
Yankee, but foreign to the Cape. Captain Bert had hired him two weeks
ago at a Boston agency, after a long list of drunkards, thieves, and
even one murderer who had sailed with him as his sole companion, first
on the old _Mary Chilton_, and subsequently on the _Bessie Barker_. The
captain liked Bill. He was frank, decisive, still exuberant with youth,
and an all-round good shipmate. And the customer Bill had found him in
Gloucester for the decrepit _Mary Chilton_----
"We'll clear for Gloucester in the _Mary Chilton_ right away," said
the captain, "and come back on the mornin' train so's we can take the
_Bessie_ to Boston tomorrow afternoon. You're sure, Bill, this customer
you've got me ain't goin' to be disappointed in his bargain?"
"Disappointed? 'Course not. He isn't buying a yacht. Old hulks are what
he always buys for hauling stone. He'll have her hull fixed up and
she'll do well enough for a barge."
Across the harbor over the Herringbone a sandy strip of land running
parallel to the Howesport waterfront and sheltering the outer harbor,
the sun had set, only the rim of its globe now peering above the
horizon. The decaying old fish piers on both sides of Robbins Wharf
loomed hoary, deserted and sinister, ghosts of palmier days. Not a
sound broke the silence save the squawk of a passing gull and the wash
of the sea on the sides of the schooner.
Captain Blackmer still stood with a Napoleonic pose, looking out toward
the vanishing sun.
"If 'twa'n't for the Widder Barnes," he remarked when its last radiance
had faded and night shrouded the after-glow, "I'd be tempted to sail
out and scuttle that whole Crosby fleet."
"And why stop because of the Widow Barnes?" asked Bill, suddenly
interested. "I'm game to do it. I don't want to see you done out
of business by that Crosby outfit. Jobs are scarce, and I'm quite
satisfied with this one. Will you give me leave to dispose of those
schooners for you?"
"Why, of course not! I just--was thinkin'--how anybody _might_ do
it--that's all."
"It would be easy as----"
"Let's drop the subject. Come on aboard the _Mary_, Bill."
But the thought of striking underhandedly at the Crosby fleet was
planted in Captain Bert's brain. The schooners had all been towed to
Howesport from the shipyards by tugboats. It was doubtful whether their
crews were yet organized; probably only a few men kept watch on the
vessels while they lay in the Cowyard waiting for the Crosby Company to
begin shipping operations.
"I've knocked around the water long enough to know that a new company
like this Crosby outfit has fired all its ammunition in its opening
shot," insisted Bill, while they prepared the _Mary Chilton_ for
clearing Robbins Wharf. "Who ever heard of a new company in coastwise
shipping starting out bang with six vessels? Two would be a plenty, for
an opener. And they're all brand new two-masters, too. Must have cost
a bunch of money. Cap'n, if we dispose of those schooners somehow, the
Crosby Company is dead."
Captain Bert was silent a moment. It did seem logical. But the
widow--she was so tormented scrupulous. Being honest, doing nobody
wrong--that was about all he heard when he took frequent suppers and
Sunday dinners with her. He had even dreamed that some day, if the
packet business held good, he would make those meals permanent fixtures
in his life by marrying the widow.
"Those old barrels in the hold--they're some the _Mary's_ owner-to-be
asked me to fetch him," continued Bill. "There's a lot of dunnage in
there with them. Lord, the _Mary's_ a regular floating junk shop!"
"She always was," drily commented the captain. "Leaks, rolls, and the
deck is so rotten in places you'd go through if you stepped out a
hornpipe. Any man who can sell her ought to be Secretary of the Navy."
It was nine o'clock when the _Mary Chilton_ cast off and headed under
full sail down the harbor toward Cape Cod Bay. There was no moon, and
a thin fog blew over the water in a fair June breeze. Captain Blackmer
stood aft at the wheel. Bill was puttering around, first in the
foc'sle, then in the hold.
The southwesterly breeze began to pick up off-shore. Dead ahead in the
fog veil loomed the six schooners. Salt water politics! Captain Bert
recollected that he had played them before. There was the time, when
he was an A. B., that the old bark _Shannon Magec_ rammed the Dutch
brig off the Brazilian coast, and he and the rest of the crew looted
her cargo. He had never told Widow Barnes about that. Then, too, there
were other things he had never told her--but what she didn't know
wouldn't harm her.
[Illustration]
Bill came up from the hold. He peered off through the fog toward the
Crosby fleet.
"Lordy!" he exclaimed, coming aft toward the captain. "If we'd moored
them ourselves we couldn't have placed them better for disposing of
'em. Look at 'em! Less than eight fathoms between 'em. Now ain't that
just like a fool tugboat skipper and a company of greenhorns!"
Captain Bert bit his lip. Was he a coward? He--guided by the silly
sentiments of a woman, a woman who had never gone to sea, who didn't
own a packet that was to be run out of business; a woman who had bought
shares in that damned Crosby fleet.
Bill had gone back to the hold. The captain hated to think of having to
give up the packet and of losing his genial new shipmate. He recalled
the former mates whom he had shipped on his two schooners. He thought
of how this new one had taken hold, his ability as a navigator, his
reliability as a companion. Bill had suggested striking at the Crosby
fleet largely to safeguard his own job. But in so doing also to
stabilize the captain's packet business. And if the widow were deprived
of the money she had invested in the Crosby Company, it would make her
all the more willing to be his wife--when he was ready to ask her.
Out of the hold wriggled a little braid of smoke. A small cloud puffed
from the open hatch, followed by a dense black column that might have
streamed from the funnel of an ocean liner. Bill emerged, coughing, and
the crackling of burning wood sounded from below.
"God almighty!" shouted the captain. "What have you done?"
"The small boat's close to the companion," replied Bill calmly,
designating the dinghy aft. "Head for the Crosby fleet--the nearest
schooner."
"You damned traitor!" snarled the captain, starting forward. Bill
blocked his way.
"I'm doing this--for you," he declared. "Those empty tar barrels
in the hold--the _Mary's_ doomed. So is the Crosby fleet. It's
self-preservation for you, sir. Such things have happened accidentally
before. Nobody will ever suspect that this didn't. Get out the way;
give me the wheel!"
Captain Bert felt himself shoved aside by a quick-moving giant who
dashed to the wheel and swung it--then the lurch of the schooner--the
creaking of the boom. Flames from the hold licked out of the hatch, and
smoke poured to leeward toward the fleet.
"--the wind's right--their position's right. They're fresh with paint
and varnish. Good-by, old Crosby fleet!" sang the fiend at the wheel.
Captain Bert was upon him. He had been a skilled fighter in his day.
He struck out with his left fist at Bill's grinning face. But the mate
stepped nimbly aside, ducked, and letting go the wheel, floored the
captain with an uppercut to the chin.
"No time for fooling!" Bill roared. "Stay there, and do what I tell
you. I'm in command until we've seen this thing through."
The ancient _Mary Chilton_ was a floating tinder box above her
waterline. So rapidly did the flames catch on to the decks and
bulkheads, it was doubtful whether a man could stay at the wheel long
enough to bear down on the first schooner of the down-wind fleet.
"She's a floating hell!" bellowed Bill above the crackle and roar of
the fire. "Get on your feet, old man! I need you. This is no one-man
job."
Captain Bert, still groggy, his mind clouded by the blow Bill had
given him, crawled to his feet. The smoke stifled him. Yes; Bill was
right--it was not a one-man job. It wasn't a job for any man. Bill's
eyes ran tears. Black smoke rolling out of the companionway shrouded
him.
"Here--the wheel--take it!" Bill choked. Captain Bert grasped its
spokes and held it steady, holding his breath in the dense smoke as
long as he could, then stepping aside to clearer air, exhaling quickly
and breathing again.
The wind, as if a partner in Bill's scheme, moved the smoke off the
port quarter. Dimly, but looming more distinctly, the captain discerned
the first schooner ahead. By standing at the starboard side of the
wheel, Bill and he could keep their eyes on the fleet.
"Look!" Captain Blackmer's eyes were focused on the bow of the first
schooner. There stood a man waving his arms. Another form in oilskins
stood near him.
"They're all safe," encouraged Bill. "We're getting away with it fine.
Fire--the wind took us--we lost control. Hold her steady! See--they've
got a dinghy in the water--" pointing at the small boat floating beside
the big schooner.
"But--but look! Look at that name on her bow! Read it!"
The bow of the schooner ahead was aglow with the red light from the
_Mary Chilton_.
"_Mehitable Barnes_," read Bill aloud. "You damned old fool, give me
the wheel!"
[Illustration]
Captain Bert swung the wheel and held on, even after Bill had pounced
on him, bearing him to the deck under his greater strength. Like rivets
the captain's fingers clung, Bill clawing at them, tearing at them, to
wrench them from their hold. Fire tore through the rigging. The blazing
craft heeled to starboard, flames shriveling sails and snapping stays
and halyards. Over the heads of the two men struggling at the wheel
the crimson curtain spread, swept by the rush of the wind at the quick
veering movement of the vessel.
It was sheets of flame and not canvas that carried the schooner on her
course out of the shadow of the _Mehitable Barnes_. Men shouted on the
_Mehitable's_ bow as the _Mary Chilton_ floundered past. Blistering
heat bore down from the blazing mainsail upon the contestants for the
wheel, surged up from below, like the ends of fiendish tongs, gripping
the two between.
But Captain Bert did not hear the curses of his mate; did not even
wince at Bill's nails clawing at his hands that grasped the wheel. All
he felt--all he was conscious of--was the swirl of water from the sides
of the ungainly _Mary Chilton_ mingled with the crackle and roar from
below and overhead--her sluggish departure from the Crosby fleet lying
increasingly but slowly astern. And somewhere in the distance that dim
gray shore-line of the Herringbone showed faintly through illuminated
fog and smoke--it seemed miles and miles away. Then the mainsail
descended in a streamer of fire, and the oppressive weight of Bill
rolled off his back.
The form of a man groveled at his feet. Captain Bert pulled himself up
by the wheel.
"Bill!" he raved. "Bill--you damned scoundrel! I've beaten you!
_Beaten you!_ Look astern. Not a schooner of 'em even scorched. Come,
Bill--your trick at the wheel now. But you can't turn back. Our canvas
is all burnt away. What's left won't hold a paper-bagful of wind."
The captain's face smarted as with the stings of a thousand bees. His
eyes--were they burned out? He couldn't really see now. He rather
felt the presence of the crumpled mate, roasting on the gridiron of a
quarterdeck. Into his arms he gathered the limp body, ran with it, he
knew not where. His feet tangled in a line. He fell--and water closed
over his head.
Yet was it water? The fire itself had not been so hot. He had scarcely
felt the heat of the schooner's blazing wood and mainsail that had
encompassed him--but this! It was boiling pitch, scalding him to the
marrow. But he clung to the man in his arms, and they bobbed up to the
surface together, the captain gasping for breath in the open air.
He knew it was salt water--cold salt water--that scalded his hot flesh.
The man he clung to must be dead. It would do him no good even if the
captain swam with him to the distant Herringbone. Was it worth while
to drag a dead body with him, a body that would hinder his own chances
of saving himself? Yes, he must do it. Bill was a scoundrel, but there
might be a spark of life in him yet. Even a scoundrel--any human
being--was worth saving. It was the law of the sea.
The line binding his leg, he kicked to disengage it. A dark shadow
moved in the red light of the water. It was the boat, the dinghy which
Bill had left near the companion for their getaway. Clinging to Bill
with one hand, he hauled at the line with the other. Finding that he
made no progress, he fastened his teeth into Bill's charred shirt and
hauled on the line hand over hand. As he suspected, it was fast to the
dinghy.
Over the gunwale of the small boat he threw one arm, supporting Bill
with the other. To leeward, safely out of the Cowyard, drifted the
glowing fragment of the _Mary Chilton's_ hull. But the other light--it
was brighter. It illumined the entire wide harbor like day, from the
Herringbone to the Howesport waterfront. A yellow light, almost like a
big lamp.
The captain's heart sank. He clung grimly to the boat and the limp
body, and turned his head toward the Crosby fleet. The _Mehitable
Barnes_ was a sheet of leaping, crackling fire from stem to stern!
The captain stared, fascinated. And even while he watched, the flames
jumped to the next schooner. The wind caught the fire and swept it in
a sheet of gold the length and breadth of the fleet. One after the
other, four of the schooners burst into flames. The fifth and sixth,
in the path of the cyclone of swirling fire, were already smoking like
smoldering logs.
But he--he had a bigger proposition on his hands now than watching a
fleet burn up. The inert form he supported wriggled slightly--its mouth
breathed, feebly spat out water. If it weren't for Bill he could crawl
over the gunwale into the dinghy, run ashore to the Herringbone--but
what then? Nothing but the memory of the disaster he had caused
by first putting such an idea in Bill's head. He could never look
Mehitable in the eyes again. His rivalry with the Crosby Company, the
mysterious sailing of the _Mary Chilton_ at night--who would believe
his story of Bill's treachery? He could end it all by letting go of
the dinghy and sinking--with Bill. Yet Bill was alive. The law of the
sea----
But why should he rescue Bill? Bill had deliberately planned and
executed the whole disaster; planned it even before the captain had
mentioned scuttling the fleet, evidenced by the tar barrels. Why should
the _Mary Chilton's_ buyer, a stone carrier, want tar barrels? The
captain had done his best to avoid the _Mehitable_--fought for it,
almost died for it. It was Bill's doing, the whole outrageous business.
Yet Bill had done it for him. Wrong, to be sure, but still out of a
sort of devotion--such devotion as a savage might show to his chief. A
fellow who would do that for his skipper was worth saving. Captain Bert
gripped the gunwale and Bill with an iron clutch and let the waves and
wind do the rest.
[Illustration]
He knew that he must be badly burned; that Bill's burns must be even
worse. Bill had been buried in the burning mainsail when it fell. Bill
had caught it all on his back, thus shielding the captain while they
struggled.
There were boats headed from Howesport village to the burning fleet.
On the Herringbone the captain made out lights moving back and forth.
He wondered whether the men he had glimpsed on the schooner were safe.
No doubt the lights on the Herringbone were those men hauling up their
boats.
If he could only get Bill into his own boat, get into it himself. It
would be so much easier. The strain of holding up a man and clinging
to the gunwale at the same time, with that scalding water tingling
through every pore of his tender body--it was telling on him. But the
Herringbone looked nearer, its illumined shore-line showing white less
than a mile away.
A mile! One mile or one hundred miles, Captain Bert knew that his
strength was unequal to his task. The man held up by his arm locked
with the captain's moaned, and his puffed eyes opened, narrow slits
encased in swollen, sooty flesh.
"You--you--I thought--" he gasped. "The Crosby fleet----"
"Never mind them," said the captain tenderly. "We've got a mile to go
yet. Take it easy."
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
"The _Mary Chilton_?"
"Oh--her!" disgustedly. "She's all right. So are the Crosby vessels."
"You lie! They're burned--every one of them!" He turned his head with
a great effort and looked toward the paling flare of what had been the
Crosby fleet.
But Captain Bert was interested in the gray sloop bearing down on them.
He needed his strength, even that which he would spend in the effort of
speaking.
"Bill," he nevertheless exclaimed, "can't you--grab the
gun'le--yourself? My arm--it's about gone. My back----"
Bill groaned and stiffly raised one arm from the water, but it fell
back heavily. Captain Bert gritted his teeth and his fingers tightened
on the gunwale until it seemed that they must gouge into the wood.
That was what had tired him--holding on to the gunwale. It wasn't
Bill's dead weight that exhausted him. It was the resistance of the
jerking little boat upon which their lives depended. Either the light
of the burning schooners was dimming fast, or the fog was thickening.
The water rippling in the glow grew hazy. It was as if they were
rising, he and Bill--rising into a cloud. Dizziness--nausea--scalding
water, torturing salt water like acid--the onrushing gray sloop
expanding to gigantic proportions like an inflating balloon--voices....
He couldn't stand it. His fingers fell from the gunwale, and water
closed soothingly over his head.
* * * * *
The fog lifted ... two men were talking. Captain Bert looked into the
sharp, pale features of a stranger with a small black mustache. The
stranger was bending over him, daubing his chest and arms with grease.
The wood the captain was lying on was the quarterdeck of Captain Ed
Pierce's sloop, and Captain Ed stood nearby at the wheel.
Captain Bert felt cool. He smelt camphor. And the gladdening thought
that he was not seriously burned was checked by the sight of a heap of
canvas lying at his side.
"Bill!" he spoke in a far-away voice. "Where's Bill?"
But he knew well enough that the canvas hid what had been Bill.
"But why torment him? Cap'n Bert never done it," declared Captain Ed.
"I've known him since we was boys----"
The stranger checked him, and addressing Captain Bert, asked, "Why did
you burn the Crosby fleet?" The abruptness of the question brought
Captain Bert to his senses.
"I ain't so sure I did," he replied.
"But your schooner was afire. It ran into them----"
"That's a lie!" insisted Captain Bert. "If my schooner had rammed
one of the fleet, how come it she fetched up to the east'ard of the
Cowyard? A burnin' schooner that rams a vessel ain't likely to recover
herself and make a half-turn against the wind."
"By gum, that's right!" agreed Captain Ed. "I told ye Bert never done
it----"
"And the light--did ye notice?" Captain Bert went on. "'Twas yellow
and the _Mary's_ was red. The _Mehitable_ never caught fire from the
_Mary_. She was set afire from the inside. Part of that yellow light
was kerosene."
The stranger looked at Captain Ed and smiled.
"I admit the idea of scuttlin' the fleet come to me," Captain Bert
went on, "but I never sanctioned Bill to set the _Mary_ afire. He done
it without my knowin'. Said he'd got a customer for the old hulk in
Gloucester--got me to sail there with her tonight."
"A fake trip," put in Captain Ed. The stranger held up a hand to
restrain him.
[Illustration]
"I fought for the wheel when he set the _Mary_ afire--and I got it.
I sheered the _Mary_ off from the fleet, and 'twas while Bill and me
fought for the wheel that the mains'l fell blazin' on Bill--and I done
my best to save him----"
"It was that burn on his back that killed Bill," Captain Ed explained.
"Mr. Clyde, as a friend of Cap'n Bert's, I forbid ye to tantalize him
any longer."
"I'm accepting your orders," smiled the stranger. "Cap'n Blackmer,
don't think we're blind to what you did. We were trailing the _Mary
Chilton_ in the fog. We saw everything that happened."
"You trailed us!"
"We've suspected it all along. The Crosby Company had sunk too much
money in its fleet."
"That's what Bill told me." Captain Bert's eyes were wide.
"The Crosby Company was left bankrupt with a fleet it could not get
rid of, although they succeeded in keeping the news from getting out.
It had no capital to operate such a fleet with, but the vessels were
insured up to the last dollar of their value."
"Tell him about Bill," interposed Captain Ed.
"Wait." And to Captain Bert again, "The Brisfield Insurance Company
sent me as its inspector to keep the fleet under observation while it
was in this harbor. Cap'n Pierce is a stockholder in the insurance
company. So as soon as I got here--about an hour or so ago on the night
train from Boston--I looked him up."
"I'd be in consider'ble money if ye'd come an hour or so sooner,"
commented Captain Ed. "But go on."
"Cap'n Ed said you were starting for Gloucester in an old hulk you'd
discarded--with a new mate--and we agreed it looked suspicious. So we
trailed you in his sloop."
Captain Bert sat bolt upright.
"We stayed to wind'ard of the Crosby fleet to make observations," Mr.
Clyde went on. "That's why we didn't pick you up earlier. The last
we saw of you and Bill, you were fighting for the wheel with fire all
around you. We had to get complete evidence that the Crosby fleet was
set afire from the inside of the _Mehitable_."
"Tell him about--" insisted Captain Ed.
"Oh yes--Bill." The stranger paused and glanced at the form shrouded
with canvas. "Well, Bill was Crosby's professional crook who did all
his dirty work for him. You see, Crosby has done this sort of thing
before--got up companies, failed, and usually ended by collecting full
insurance after his establishment had burned up. This is his first
marine venture. All his others were in business ashore. But we got
inside information on his past record--and Bill's--that opened our
eyes."
"Then Bill was workin' for him--and against me--all the time?"
"Using you for the goat, to lay the burning of the fleet on to you,"
said Mr. Clyde. "Bill got his just reward tonight."
"And how about the insurance?" Captain Bert's voice was husky.
"Not a cent will be paid. We saw the _Mehitable_ set on fire from
her foc'sle when the Mary sheered off from her. We saw the escape of
the men who did it. Our next step will be to get the goods on Crosby
himself."
[Illustration]
"But the Widder Barnes--all her money is tied up in the Crosby
Company," protested Captain Bert.
"Don't worry about her," exploded Captain Ed. "It's me who's stung--not
her. I bought all her shares in the Crosby Company after I left you
this afternoon."
"Godfrey!"
"Serves me right, too, for judgin' the strength of that Crosby Company
by the show their fleet made in the harbor. That ill wind of yourn
sorter shifted, Bert, and left me becalmed.
"But you, Bert," he added with determination, "you pop the question to
the widder as soon as your feet hit dry land. Say, she'd 'a' given me
that Crosby stock free gratis if I hadn't had a two-thousand-dollar
check all made out to her in my hand. With her luck and your judgment,
you'll form a team that will make you a packet admiral yet!"
[Illustration]
HENRY HORNBONE'S ONE-MAN WAR
BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER
_Author of "White Collar Stuff," "Pitch," etc._
PREJUDICES OF THE OLD-TIMERS DIE HARD. BUT A RAILROAD IS A POWERFUL
THING FOR ONE OLD-TIMER TO FIGHT--AND WHEN OTHERS ENTER THE FEUD,
THINGS BEGIN TO LOOK DIFFERENT
In his sooty kitchen with the coal oil lamp sending a plume of smoke
aloft and four kittens rolling under the three-legged stove, Henry
Hornbone sat and went through the motions of a man eating his supper.
He fished sausages out of a skillet, he cut them carefully into small
bits, he smeared oleomargarine on thick slabs of baker's bread and he
stirred sugar into his tea, one spoonful after another, but he did not
eat.
Henry was listening. His ears were listening, straining till he could
almost see them standing out batlike from his knobby old head. His
whole gaunt ridiculous body was listening, and his soul, such cramped
and curious sort of soul as he owned, stood stock still in a cold
tremor of mingled triumph and dread.
Henry was listening for the wreck of the Oriole Limited.
While he spooned sugar into his cup, staring off into the blackness
with a sort of fascinated paralysis, he was waiting for the hideous
crashing, the roar and rending, the sickening upheaval, the booming
rush of steam when the proud steel train should go hurtling into the
frozen muck of his turnip patch. Inch by inch past block after block,
he followed the Oriole Limited in his mind through the black night to
her doom. Now she would be streaking through Hodges Siding; a great
whooping serpent with a thousand gleaming eyes and a tongue of flame.
He took out his old silver watch, calculated the difference between
sun time and railroad time--speculated. Four minutes out of Hodges
now--eight minutes more. Eight minutes, and he would be even with the
B. & A.!
Nothing on earth could save the Oriole Limited. Henry had fixed
everything himself. He had turned the abandoned old switch that in the
past had served the guano factory and spiked it himself. To be certain
that nothing could prevent the destruction he planned he had put two
heavy plow beams on the rails near the switch frogs and had weighted
them down with rocks and brickbats. All this after dark and so near to
train time that there was small chance for a prowling section hand to
discover his work.
It had taken Henry eighteen years to accumulate courage enough to
spike that switch. Half his queer, isolated life had been devoted to
a lonely vendetta against the B. & A.--a one-man war which no one
beside himself suspected. Sixteen years since, when the spur to the
guano plant was first laid, Henry had made a wedge of steel, long and
sharp. Twelve years later, when the factory had yielded its malodorous
ghost and its red tin roof began to sag and the old spur track to rust,
he had begun a long series of abortive and secret attempts at train
wrecking.
Every dark and rainy night for years he had crept out through his
pie-plant row and past his humming beehives, slipped over the white
fence and spiked the switch open with a few quick, practised strokes.
But always about the time the Oriole Limited pulled out of Hodges
Siding his courage had failed him, and he had rushed out with mallet
and sledge to remove the menace he had created.
[Illustration]
Whenever a work train pulled into Elsie, Henry always suffered a cold
apprehension for fear the useless old spur would be torn up before he
had screwed up enough nerve to do his work of sabotage. But for some
reason the grass-grown length of abandoned spur remained. And now the
switch was open, grimly spiked, waiting for the arrogant engine of the
Limited to come crashing, amazed, to her tragedy.
Six minutes!
Henry tasted his tea. It was syrupy and nauseous. He spat it out
nervously, turned his eyes toward the black window and wrested them
away again by main force. He had purposely locked the door and hidden
the key in a sack of nails and bolts where it would take half an hour
to find it. The front door was locked fast also; indeed the front door
had been locked fast for so many years that it was doubtful if the
rusty old lock would turn at all.
He had taken off his shoes, carried them deliberately to the attic and
hung them over the rafters. Every precaution against a last-minute
sagging of his nerve had been taken. He had even dropped the sledge
hammer in the cistern, half to guard against his own weakness and half
as alibi. The wreck, he had decided, would be laid to train robbers
who had been operating on the B. & A. at frequent intervals. Nobody
would suspect old Henry Hornbone who fathered every deserted cat for
miles around and sat always on the front seat at prayer meeting with
his useless ear trumpet slung around his shoulder on a buckskin cord;
because nobody ever had suspected him though he had carried on his
one-man war against the road for eighteen years.
No one, not even the B. & A. officials themselves, were aware that
a state of hostilities had existed between Henry and the road since
the first surveyors had come dragging their numbered stakes through
his little peach orchard. A few engineers had laughed when they saw
the absurd old fellow in his flapping clothes standing beside the new
roadbed brandishing angry fists. But when, not long since, a trio of
gondolas had broken loose from a slow-crawling freight and gone bumping
joyfully down to the station where they crashed through fifty feet of
platform, demolished a dozen telegraph poles and a water crane, nobody
so much as thought of old Henry. Henry's very appearance was an alibi.
He looked like a motherless child, grown to man's stature, grizzled,
bewildered, eagerly friendly.
Since his boyhood Henry had been stone deaf. Such fragments of speech
as remained to him, made timorous by the vast closing in of silence,
were uttered in a shrill yell which the unthinking and strangers
assumed to be the babbling of a moron. The amused pity with which his
attempts at conversation were received had not escaped Henry's sharp
eyes, and he had grown to depend more and more upon his grin as a means
of communication with the world, and upon a jerky code of signs and
syllables.
No one would have believed that grisly plots were hatched behind the
glow of that ingenuous grin. No one in Elsie, he knew, would ever
suspect that the sharpened wedge and the plow beams were the work of
a simple, grinning old mute. He was safe enough if he could just sit
still.
Four minutes!
In four minutes he would be revenged for the invading of his little
plot of ground, which his mother had left to him, by men who had cursed
him and by steel rails and yelping engines. In four minutes he would
have been paid for the dazed wretchedness which had been his when men
with law at their backs had come and gabbled things which he could
neither hear nor comprehend, but which, it appeared, gave to the B.
& A. the little earth he had tended, gave them the right to shower
his roof with hot cinders, to slay his quince bushes with sulphurous
smoke, to rattle his puttyless window panes loose with the thunder of
locomotives.
Four minutes! He held his elbows in a grip that hurt. He twisted his
old legs about each other till they ached. His face, with its three-day
growth of sandy beard, writhed and twitched. But he sat still.
[Illustration]
Coming! Coming! He felt the first premonitory shudder of his floor
sills that told him the train had crossed the bridge below the yards.
Every pulse in him spun as though a gigantic current galvanized him.
His head roared. His chest hurt.
Nearer! Almost here! His grip held. His body grew numb.
Then something snapped. Some grim gripping gave way. He went limp. He
retched. He was old Henry Hornbone again, simple, kindly old Henry who
mothered cats.
He went through the window kicking the sash to flinders. Shoeless he
leaped like a wild old warlock through his garden, over the fence, up
to the right of way. The headlight of the Oriole Limited flared upon
him--a dancing ghost with waving arms--as the train came to a grinding
stop thirty feet from the spiked switch and the plow beams.
Charlie Sanders, who ran the Limited, sprang out of the cab. Newt
Murphy, the conductor, sprinted down the cinders. To them old Henry
waved wild hands and cackled unintelligible things. The flag-man, an
officious person, thudded ahead and discovered the open switch.
"By George, old Henry sure saved all our lives," Charlie Sanders
explained to the passengers who came swarming up. "Looka that--the way
we was running old Fifteen-eighty would have turned plumb end over end
when she hit that spur."
Henry Hornbone found himself the center of a crowd, and a hero. Men
shook his hand, women's cold, shaking fingers clapped his own. They
shouted questions at him till Newt Murphy came to his relief.
"He's deef--can't hear a thing, Henry can't. Harmless old guy, but
stone deef."
Someone was moving through the crowd gathering up money, a girl with
red hair and a little gray hat tipped over one eye. She brought the
donation to Henry in her cupped hands--little hands--bills and silver
dollars and a few quarters and halves.
"Take it," she urged, "it's for you."
Henry backed away. All his life he had been terrified in the presence
of women.
"He can't hear you, lady," explained Charlie Sanders.
"Oh--make him understand, somebody." The girl followed Henry with her
double handful of currency, but he backed further, sidling, his lips
lifted at the corners.
He was in a cold agony, a wretchedness of shaking relief and anguish
of conscience. He wanted to be let alone. He wanted to creep into his
old bed under the wool quilts, deep down where he could shut his ears
against the penetrating jeers that clanged like sleighbells in his
brain. The girl's insistence drew from him a painful burst of his rare,
dreadful speech.
"I don't want any money!" he shrilled. Then, snatching away from them,
he leaped the fence and tore through his tiny back garden. Inside his
house he jerked the blinds shut over the outraged window and sagged
down in a chair, shaking from head to foot.
"Now," he thought gloomily, "now--they'll tear up that spur. Now what
you goin' to do, Henry Hornbone? You're a dad-blamed old fool."
But something seemed to warm him as he crept half-clothed into his bed.
"Gosh, that girl had little hands," he thought aloud. "Might 'a' killed
her anyway. Might 'a' killed a lot of folks. Didn't kill 'em though.
Didn't kill anybody."
The visitor who banged on Henry's old warped front door in the morning
grew weary after a while and went around to the back. The knock on
the back door meant nothing to Henry's sealed ears, but the jar came
presently to his senses and he opened the closed shutters and thrust
out his head. The grin was absent from his grizzled face. He glowered.
He scowled till he saw that the intruder upon his doorstep was feminine
and young, that she had red hair and little hands and feet that looked
as though dancing were their chief mission in life. Then he grinned.
[Illustration]
"Key's lost," he yelled suddenly, so that the girl jumped. "Can't git
in."
She nodded and smiled. The smile and her dancing eyes and the glow of
her hair were a combination as dazzling as winter sunshine. She had
manifestly come prepared. She pulled a little pad and pencil from her
pocket and wrote rapidly.
"Can you read?"
The furious disgust in Henry's eyes was answer enough. She thought him
a plumb fool then!
"Sure, I can read," he shouted. "I ain't crazy. I'm just hard of
hearing."
Eager apology was in her smile. She scribbled rapidly.
"You are a brave man," Henry read. "You saved the lives of eighty-four
people."
He shook his head. "I ain't brave. I'm just an old fool."
She laughed at this, and it was as if the sun leaped up with a shout
and a lot of nymphs and dryads and other ladies in diaphanous veils
whirled in a mad dance on a hilltop.
"I am the new operator at Elsie." ran her next missive. "I have a pass
for you from the president of the road. You can ride anywhere you want
any time you like."
"Don't want to ride," grumbled Henry. "Don't want to go no place. Don't
want nothing to do with your railroad--no time."
He remembered then that he had neglected to put on his outer shirt and
that his red flannel undergarment was informal even for morning wear.
So he pulled in his head like a sulky old turtle.