“Here is the address,” said the detective in a natural tone, being

deprived of an audience to foil.

Hartley took the leaf torn out of the sleuth’s dingy memorandum book.

On it were pencilled the words “Vivienne Arlington, No. 341 East ––––th

Street, care of Mrs. McComus.”

“Moved there a week ago,” said the detective. “Now, if you want any

shadowing done, Mr. Hartley, I can do you as fine a job in that line as

anybody in the city. It will be only $7 a day and expenses. Can send in

a daily typewritten report, covering—”

“You needn’t go on,” interrupted the broker. “It isn’t a case of that

kind. I merely wanted the address. How much shall I pay you?”

“One day’s work,” said the sleuth. “A tenner will cover it.”

Hartley paid the man and dismissed him. Then he left the office and

boarded a Broadway car. At the first large crosstown artery of travel

he took an eastbound car that deposited him in a decaying avenue, whose

ancient structures once sheltered the pride and glory of the town.

Walking a few squares, he came to the building that he sought. It was a

new flathouse, bearing carved upon its cheap stone portal its sonorous

name, “The Vallambrosa.” Fire-escapes zigzagged down its front—these

laden with household goods, drying clothes, and squalling children

evicted by the midsummer heat. Here and there a pale rubber plant

peeped from the miscellaneous mass, as if wondering to what kingdom it

belonged—vegetable, animal or artificial.

Hartley pressed the “McComus” button. The door latch clicked

spasmodically—now hospitably, now doubtfully, as though in anxiety

whether it might be admitting friends or duns. Hartley entered and

began to climb the stairs after the manner of those who seek their

friends in city flat-houses—which is the manner of a boy who climbs an

apple-tree, stopping when he comes upon what he wants.

On the fourth floor he saw Vivienne standing in an open door. She

invited him inside, with a nod and a bright, genuine smile. She placed

a chair for him near a window, and poised herself gracefully upon the

edge of one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde pieces of furniture that are

masked and mysteriously hooded, unguessable bulks by day and

inquisitorial racks of torture by night.

Hartley cast a quick, critical, appreciative glance at her before

speaking, and told himself that his taste in choosing had been

flawless.

Vivienne was about twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her

hair was a ruddy golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass

shining with its own lustre and delicate graduation of colour. In

perfect harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes

that looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or

the pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and

yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her

Northern clearness and frankness of line and colouring, there seemed to

be something of the tropics in her—something of languor in the droop of

her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of satisfaction

and comfort in the mere act of breathing—something that seemed to claim

for her a right as a perfect work of nature to exist and be admired

equally with a rare flower or some beautiful, milk-white dove among its

sober-hued companions.

She was dressed in a white waist and dark skirt—that discreet

masquerade of goose-girl and duchess.

“Vivienne,” said Hartley, looking at her pleadingly, “you did not

answer my last letter. It was only by nearly a week’s search that I

found where you had moved to. Why have you kept me in suspense when you

knew how anxiously I was waiting to see you and hear from you?”

The girl looked out the window dreamily.

“Mr. Hartley,” she said hesitatingly, “I hardly know what to say to

you. I realize all the advantages of your offer, and sometimes I feel

sure that I could be contented with you. But, again, I am doubtful. I

was born a city girl, and I am afraid to bind myself to a quiet

suburban life.”

“My dear girl,” said Hartley, ardently, “have I not told you that you

shall have everything that your heart can desire that is in my power to

give you? You shall come to the city for the theatres, for shopping and

to visit your friends as often as you care to. You can trust me, can

you not?”

“To the fullest,” she said, turning her frank eyes upon him with a

smile. “I know you are the kindest of men, and that the girl you get

will be a lucky one. I learned all about you when I was at the

Montgomerys’.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Hartley, with a tender, reminiscent light in his eye;

“I remember well the evening I first saw you at the Montgomerys’. Mrs.

Montgomery was sounding your praises to me all the evening. And she

hardly did you justice. I shall never forget that supper. Come,

Vivienne, promise me. I want you. You’ll never regret coming with me.

No one else will ever give you as pleasant a home.”

The girl sighed and looked down at her folded hands.

A sudden jealous suspicion seized Hartley.

“Tell me, Vivienne,” he asked, regarding her keenly, “is there

another—is there some one else?”

A rosy flush crept slowly over her fair cheeks and neck.

“You shouldn’t ask that, Mr. Hartley,” she said, in some confusion.

“But I will tell you. There is one other—but he has no right—I have

promised him nothing.”

“His name?” demanded Hartley, sternly.

“Townsend.”

“Rafford Townsend!” exclaimed Hartley, with a grim tightening of his

jaw. “How did that man come to know you? After all I’ve done for him—”

“His auto has just stopped below,” said Vivienne, bending over the

window-sill. “He’s coming for his answer. Oh I don’t know what to do!”

The bell in the flat kitchen whirred. Vivienne hurried to press the

latch button.

“Stay here,” said Hartley. “I will meet him in the hall.”

Townsend, looking like a Spanish grandee in his light tweeds, Panama

hat and curling black mustache, came up the stairs three at a time. He

stopped at sight of Hartley and looked foolish.

“Go back,” said Hartley, firmly, pointing downstairs with his

forefinger.

“Hullo!” said Townsend, feigning surprise. “What’s up? What are you

doing here, old man?”

“Go back,” repeated Hartley, inflexibly. “The Law of the Jungle. Do you

want the Pack to tear you in pieces? The kill is mine.”

“I came here to see a plumber about the bathroom connections,” said

Townsend, bravely.

“All right,” said Hartley. “You shall have that lying plaster to stick

upon your traitorous soul. But, go back.” Townsend went downstairs,

leaving a bitter word to be wafted up the draught of the staircase.

Hartley went back to his wooing.

“Vivienne,” said he, masterfully. “I have got to have you. I will take

no more refusals or dilly-dallying.”

“When do you want me?” she asked.

“Now. As soon as you can get ready.”

She stood calmly before him and looked him in the eye.

“Do you think for one moment,” she said, “that I would enter your home

while Héloise is there?”

Hartley cringed as if from an unexpected blow. He folded his arms and

paced the carpet once or twice.

“She shall go,” he declared grimly. Drops stood upon his brow. “Why

should I let that woman make my life miserable? Never have I seen one

day of freedom from trouble since I have known her. You are right,

Vivienne. Héloise must be sent away before I can take you home. But she

shall go. I have decided. I will turn her from my doors.”

“When will you do this?” asked the girl.

Hartley clinched his teeth and bent his brows together.

“To-night,” he said, resolutely. “I will send her away to-night.”

“Then,” said Vivienne, “my answer is ‘yes.’ Come for me when you will.”

She looked into his eyes with a sweet, sincere light in her own.

Hartley could scarcely believe that her surrender was true, it was so

swift and complete.

“Promise me,” he said feelingly, “on your word and honour.”

“On my word and honour,” repeated Vivienne, softly.

At the door he turned and gazed at her happily, but yet as one who

scarcely trusts the foundations of his joy.

“To-morrow,” he said, with a forefinger of reminder uplifted.

“To-morrow,” she repeated with a smile of truth and candour.

In an hour and forty minutes Hartley stepped off the train at

Floralhurst. A brisk walk of ten minutes brought him to the gate of a

handsome two-story cottage set upon a wide and well-tended lawn.

Halfway to the house he was met by a woman with jet-black braided hair

and flowing white summer gown, who half strangled him without apparent

cause.

When they stepped into the hall she said:

“Mamma’s here. The auto is coming for her in half an hour. She came to

dinner, but there’s no dinner.”

“I’ve something to tell you,” said Hartley. “I thought to break it to

you gently, but since your mother is here we may as well out with it.”

He stooped and whispered something at her ear.

His wife screamed. Her mother came running into the hall. The

dark-haired woman screamed again—the joyful scream of a well-beloved

and petted woman.

“Oh, mamma!” she cried ecstatically, “what do you think? Vivienne is

coming to cook for us! She is the one that stayed with the Montgomerys

a whole year. And now, Billy, dear,” she concluded, “you must go right

down into the kitchen and discharge Héloise. She has been drunk again

the whole day long.”

VII

SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW

The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our

brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in

hand with sociology in the summer fields.

Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that

it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship

going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length, the convexity of the

earth hid from our view all but the vessel’s topmast. But we picked up

a telescope and looked, and saw the decks and hull again. Then the wise

men said: “Oh, pshaw! anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the

equator and the ecliptic proves it.” We could not see this through our

telescope, so we remained silent. But it stands to reason that, if the

world were round, the queues of Chinamen would stand straight up from

their heads instead of hanging down their backs, as travellers assure

us they do.

Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory is the fact that

all of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More

justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of

baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in

life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a

bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate—and sit

upon a bench.

The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may have sailed the rim of a

watery circle back to the same port again. The truly great return at

the high tide of their attainments to the simplicity of a child. The

billionaire sits down at his mahogany to his bowl of bread and milk.

When you reach the end of your career, just take down the sign “Goal”

and look at the other side of it. You will find “Beginning Point”

there. It has been reversed while you were going around the track.

But this is humour, and must be stopped. Let us get back to the serious

questions that arise whenever Sociology turns summer boarder. You are

invited to consider the scene of the story—wild, Atlantic waves,

thundering against a wooded and rock-bound shore—in the Greater City of

New York.

The town of Fishampton, on the south shore of Long Island, is noted for

its clam fritters and the summer residence of the Van Plushvelts.

The Van Plushvelts have a hundred million dollars, and their name is a

household word with tradesmen and photographers.

On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door

of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk,

instructed the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the

walls, and whizzed away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray

alone in the shade—Amaryllis not being in their class. If you are a

subscriber to the _Toadies’ Magazine_, you have often—You say you are

not? Well, you buy it at a news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is

not wise to you. But he knows about it all. HE knows—HE knows! I say

that you have often seen in the _Toadies’ Magazine_ pictures of the Van

Plushvelts’ summer home; so it will not be described here. Our business

is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the

century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson

of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage

patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.

One afternoon young Haywood Van Plushvelt strolled out between the

granite gate posts of “Dolce far Niente”—that’s what they called the

place; and it was an improvement on dolce Far Rockaway, I can tell you.

Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and his

prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon him its

direfullest. He was the product of private tutors. Even under his first

hobby-horse had tan bark been strewn. He had been born with a gold

spoon, lobster fork and fish-set in his mouth. For which I hope, later,

to submit justification, I must ask your consideration of his

haberdashery and tailoring.

Young Fortunatus was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat,

white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, of the well-known “immaculate”

trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender,

neat, bamboo cane.

Down Persimmon Street (there’s never tree north of Hagerstown, Md.)

came from the village “Smoky” Dodson, fifteen and a half, worst boy in

Fishampton. “Smoky” was dressed in a ragged red sweater, wrecked and

weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the

“serviceable” brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free

exercise, darkened wide areas of his face. “Smoky” carried a baseball

bat, and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his

trousers pocket. Haywood stopped and passed the time of day.

“Going to play ball?” he asked.

“Smoky’s” eyes and countenance confronted him with a frank

blue-and-freckled scrutiny.

“Me?” he said, with deadly mildness; “sure not. Can’t you see I’ve got

a divin’ suit on? I’m goin’ up in a submarine balloon to catch

butterflies with a two-inch auger.

“Excuse me,” said Haywood, with the insulting politeness of his caste,

“for mistaking you for a gentleman. I might have known better.”

“How might you have known better if you thought I was one?” said

“Smoky,” unconsciously a logician.

“By your appearance,” said Haywood. “No gentleman is dirty, ragged and

a liar.”

“Smoky” hooted once like a ferry-boat, spat on his hand, got a firm

grip on his baseball bat and then dropped it against the fence.

“Say,” said he, “I knows you. You’re the pup that belongs in that swell

private summer sanitarium for city-guys over there. I seen you come out

of the gate. You can’t bluff nobody because you’re rich. And because

you got on swell clothes. Arabella! Yah!”

“Ragamuffin!” said Haywood.

“Smoky” picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder.

“Dare you to knock it off,” he challenged.

“I wouldn’t soil my hands with you,” said the aristocrat.

“’Fraid,” said “Smoky” concisely. “Youse city-ducks ain’t got the sand.

I kin lick you with one-hand.”

“I don’t wish to have any trouble with you,” said Haywood. “I asked you

a civil question; and you replied, like a—like a—a cad.”

“Wot’s a cad?” asked “Smoky.”

“A cad is a disagreeable person,” answered Haywood, “who lacks manners

and doesn’t know his place. They sometimes play baseball.”

“I can tell you what a mollycoddle is,” said “Smoky.” “It’s a monkey

dressed up by its mother and sent out to pick daisies on the lawn.”

“When you have the honour to refer to the members of my family,” said

Haywood, with some dim ideas of a code in his mind, “you’d better leave

the ladies out of your remarks.”

“Ho! ladies!” mocked the rude one. “I say ladies! I know what them rich

women in the city does. They drink cocktails and swear and give parties

to gorillas. The papers say so.”

Then Haywood knew that it must be. He took off his coat, folded it

neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and

began to unknot his blue silk tie.

“Hadn’t yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?” taunted “Smoky.” “Wot

yer going to do—go to bed?”

“I’m going to give you a good trouncing,” said the hero. He did not

hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He

remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave

it two columns, first page. And the _Toadies’ Magazine_ had a special

article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the

Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.

“Wot’s trouncing?” asked “Smoky,” suspiciously. “I don’t want your old

clothes. I’m no—oh, you mean to scrap! My, my! I won’t do a thing to

mamma’s pet. Criminy! I’d hate to be a hand-laundered thing like you.

“Smoky” waited with some awkwardness for his adversary to prepare for

battle. His own decks were always clear for action. When he should spit

upon the palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to “You may fire

now, Gridley.”

The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up.

“Smoky” waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be

conducted according to Fishampton’s rules of war. These allowed combat

to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse and insult

gradually increasing in emphasis and degree. After a round of these

“you’re anothers” would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the

advance across the “dare” line drawn with a toe on the ground. Next

light taps given and taken, these also increasing in force until

finally the blood was up and fists going at their best.

But Haywood did not know Fishampton’s rules. Noblesse oblige kept a

faint smile on his face as he walked slowly up to “Smoky” and said:

“Going to play ball?”

“Smoky” quickly understood this to be a putting of the previous

question, giving him the chance to make practical apology by answering

it with civility and relevance.

“Listen this time,” said he. “I’m goin’ skatin’ on the river. Don’t you

see me automobile with Chinese lanterns on it standin’ and waitin’ for

me?”

Haywood knocked him down.

“Smoky” felt wronged. To thus deprive him of preliminary wrangle and

objurgation was to send an armoured knight full tilt against a crashing

lance without permitting him first to caracole around the list to the

flourish of trumpets. But he scrambled up and fell upon his foe, head,

feet and fists.

The fight lasted one round of an hour and ten minutes. It was

lengthened until it was more like a war or a family feud than a fight.

Haywood had learned some of the science of boxing and wrestling from

his tutors, but these he discarded for the more instinctive methods of

battle handed down by the cave-dwelling Van Plushvelts.

So, when he found himself, during the mêlée, seated upon the kicking

and roaring “Smoky’s” chest, he improved the opportunity by vigorously

kneading handfuls of sand and soil into his adversary’s ears, eyes and

mouth, and when “Smoky” got the proper leg hold and “turned” him, he

fastened both hands in the Plushvelt hair and pounded the Plushvelt

head against the lap of mother earth. Of course, the strife was not

incessantly active. There were seasons when one sat upon the other,

holding him down, while each blew like a grampus, spat out the more

inconveniently large sections of gravel and earth, and strove to subdue

the spirit of his opponent with a frightful and soul-paralyzing glare.

At last, it seemed that in the language of the ring, their efforts

lacked steam. They broke away, and each disappeared in a cloud as he

brushed away the dust of the conflict. As soon as his breath permitted,

Haywood walked close to “Smoky” and said:

“Going to play ball?”

“Smoky” looked pensively at the sky, at his bat lying on the ground,

and at the “leaguer” rounding his pocket.

“Sure,” he said, offhandedly. “The ‘Yellowjackets’ plays the ‘Long

Islands.’ I’m cap’n of the ‘Long Islands.’”

“I guess I didn’t mean to say you were ragged,” said Haywood. “But you

are dirty, you know.”

“Sure,” said “Smoky.” “Yer get that way knockin’ around. Say, I don’t

believe them New York papers about ladies drinkin’ and havin’ monkeys

dinin’ at the table with ’em. I guess they’re lies, like they print

about people eatin’ out of silver plates, and ownin’ dogs that cost

$100.”

“Certainly,” said Haywood. “What do you play on your team?”

“Ketcher. Ever play any?”

“Never in my life,” said Haywood. “I’ve never known any fellows except

one or two of my cousins.”

“Jer like to learn? We’re goin’ to have a practice-game before the

match. Wanter come along? I’ll put yer in left-field, and yer won’t be

long ketchin’ on.”

“I’d like it bully,” said Haywood. “I’ve always wanted to play

baseball.”

The ladies’ maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners

with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created

by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt,

was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded

that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers

swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as

short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The _Toadies’ Magazine_ got out a

Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning

with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs’ ball—illustrated

with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers,

educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin

call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man.

One afternoon I was reclining under the trees near the shore at

Fishampton in the esteemed company of an eminent, bald-headed young

sociologist. By way of note it may be inserted that all sociologists

are more or less bald, and exactly thirty-two. Look ’em over.

The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as the most important

“uplift” symptom of a generation, and as an excuse for his own

existence.

Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now came

the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shouting,

about the diamond.

“There,” said the sociologist, pointing, “there is young Van

Plushvelt.”

I raised myself (so far a cosycophant with Mary Ann) and gazed.

Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground. He was dressed in a ragged red

sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and

trousers of the “serviceable” brand. Dust clinging to the moisture

induced by free exercise, darkened wide areas of his face.

“That is he,” repeated the sociologist. If he had said “him” I could

have been less vindictive.

On a bench, with an air, sat the young millionaire’s chum.

He was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat white straw

hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, linen of the well-known “immaculate” trade

mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat

bamboo cane.

I laughed loudly and vulgarly.

“What you want to do,” said I to the sociologist, “is to establish a

reformatory for the Logical Vicious Circle. Or else I’ve got wheels. It

looks to me as if things are running round and round in circles instead

of getting anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” asked the man of progress.

“Why, look what he has done to ‘Smoky’,” I replied.

“You will always be a fool,” said my friend, the sociologist, getting

up and walking away.

VIII

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down

South, in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea

struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of

temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called

Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and

self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we

needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot

scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps

of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural

communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project

ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send

reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We

knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than

constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or

two in the _Weekly Farmers’ Budget_. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named

Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage

fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.

The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour

of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to

catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a

ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense

cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There

we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy

past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a

kitten on the opposite fence.

“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy

and a nice ride?”

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.

“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill,

climbing over the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at

last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We

took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake.

After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away,

where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his

features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance

of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two

buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me

when I come up, and says:

“Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the

terror of the plains?

“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining

some bruises on his shins. “We’re playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo

Bill’s show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town

hall. I’m Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief’s captive, and I’m to be

scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard.”

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of

camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive

himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced

that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at

the stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and

gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like

this:

“I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet ’possum

once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up

sixteen of Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there any

real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees

moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so

red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed

Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t like girls. You dassent catch toads

unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round?

Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six

toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it

take to make twelve?”

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and

pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber

for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a

war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill

terrorized from the start.

“Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?”

“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go to

school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again,

Snake-eye, will you?”

“Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the cave a while.”

“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my

life.”

We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread down some wide blankets

and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid he’d run

away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his

rifle and screeching: “Hist! pard,” in mine and Bill’s ears, as the

fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young

imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell

into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and

chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from

Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps,

such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply

indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they

see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong,

desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s

chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the

sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously

and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the

sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But,

from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of

the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy

was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I

remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at

the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit

my pipe and leaned against a rock.

“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked Bill.

“Me?” says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought

sitting up would rest it.”

“You’re a liar!” says Bill. “You’re afraid. You was to be burned at

sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could

find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out

money to get a little imp like that back home?”

“Sure,” said I. “A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents

dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go

up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.”

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the

contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy

yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the

countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful

landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was

dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings

of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of

somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward

surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. “Perhaps,” says I to

myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away

the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!” says I, and

I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it,

breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half

as big as a cocoanut.

“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and

then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun

about you, Sam?”

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument.

“I’ll fix you,” says the kid to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red

Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!”

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped

around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

“What’s he up to now?” says Bill, anxiously. “You don’t think he’ll run

away, do you, Sam?”

“No fear of it,” says I. “He don’t seem to be much of a home body. But

we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be

much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but

maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think

he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours.

Anyhow, he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his

father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”

Just then we heard a kind Of war-whoop, such as David might have

emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that

Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around

his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a

horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the

size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened

himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot

water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water

on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you

know who my favourite Biblical character is?”

“Take it easy,” says I. “You’ll come to your senses presently.”

“King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will

you, Sam?”

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles

rattled.

“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I’ll take you straight home. Now, are

you going to be good, or not?”

“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old

Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t

send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.”

“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and Mr. Bill to

decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on

business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are

sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told

him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the

cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been

regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter

to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it

should be paid.

“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I’ve stood by you without batting an eye

in earthquakes, fire and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages,

police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet

till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me

going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”

“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the boy

amused and quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old

Dorset.”

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red

Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down,

guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the

ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. “I ain’t

attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental

affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for

anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of

freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred

dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.”

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran

this way:

_Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:_

We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is

useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find

him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored

to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills

for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the

same spot and in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter

described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing

by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After

crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three

large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the

wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the

fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small

pasteboard box.

The messenger will place the answer in this box and return

immediately to Summit.

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as

stated, you will never see your boy again.

If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe

and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do

not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

TWO DESPERATE MEN.

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was

about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

“Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was

gone.”

“Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind

of a game is it?”

“I’m the Black Scout,” says Red Chief, “and I have to ride to the

stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I’m tired of

playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.”

“All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will

help you foil the pesky savages.”

“What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.

“You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down on your hands and

knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?”

“You’d better keep him interested,” said I, “till we get the scheme

going. Loosen up.”

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a

rabbit’s when you catch it in a trap.

“How far is it to the stockade, kid?” he asks, in a husky manner of

voice.

“Ninety miles,” says the Black Scout. “And you have to hump yourself to

get there on time. Whoa, now!”

The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his heels in his side.

“For Heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I

wish we hadn’t made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit

kicking me or I’ll get up and warm you good.”

I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the postoffice and store,

talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says

that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s

boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought

some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed

peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster

said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to

Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I

explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there

was no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await

developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out

into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid,

stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill

stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.

The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.

“Sam,” says Bill, “I suppose you’ll think I’m a renegade, but I

couldn’t help it. I’m a grown person with masculine proclivities and

habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism

and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is

off. There was martyrs in old times,” goes on Bill, “that suffered

death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of

’em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I

tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a

limit.”

“What’s the trouble, Bill?” I asks him.

“I was rode,” says Bill, “the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring

an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand

ain’t a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to

explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a road can run both

ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only

stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him

down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the

knees down; and I’ve got to have two or three bites on my thumb and

hand cauterized.

“But he’s gone”—continues Bill—“gone home. I showed him the road to

Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I’m

sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to

the madhouse.”

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and

growing content on his rose-pink features.

“Bill,” says I, “there isn’t any heart disease in your family, is

there?

“No,” says Bill, “nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?”

“Then you might turn around,” says I, “and have a took behind you.”

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down

plump on the round and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little

sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that

my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we

would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell

in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a

weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese

war with him is soon as he felt a little better.

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being

caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional

kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left—and the

money later on—was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all

sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come

for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or

in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree

as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle,

locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a

folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down

the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the

woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the

note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a

pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:

_Two Desperate Men.

Gentlemen:_ I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the

ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little

high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition,

which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny

home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree

to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the

neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for

what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.

Very respectfully,

EBENEZER DORSET.

“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent—”

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in

his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.

“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve

got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in

Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a

spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let

the chance go, are you?”

“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has

somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and

make our get-away.”

We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his

father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for

him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.

It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door.

Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen

hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original

proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into

Dorset’s hand.

When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up

a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to

Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous

plaster.

“How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.

“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I

can promise you ten minutes.”

“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross the Central,

Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for

the Canadian border.”

And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as

I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch

up with him.

IX

THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY

Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of

the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of

mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding

woods: Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and country.

In May nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember that

we are not gods, but overconceited members of her own great family. She

reminds us that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the

donkey; lineal scions of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but

cousins-german to the cooing doves, the quacking ducks and the

housemaids and policemen in the parks.

In May Cupid shoots blindfolded—millionaires marry stenographers; wise

professors woo white-aproned gum-chewers behind quick-lunch counters;

schoolma’ams make big bad boys remain after school; lads with ladders

steal lightly over lawns where Juliet waits in her trellissed window

with her telescope packed; young couples out for a walk come home

married; old chaps put on white spats and promenade near the Normal

School; even married men, grown unwontedly tender and sentimental,

whack their spouses on the back and growl: “How goes it, old girl:”

This May, who is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance given

in honour of the fair débutante, Summer, puts the kibosh on us all.

Old Mr. Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up straight in his

invalid’s chair. He had the gout very bad in one foot, a house near

Gramercy Park, half a million dollars and a daughter. And he had a

housekeeper, Mrs. Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence

each. They have it.

When May poked Mr. Coulson he became elder brother to the turtle-dove.

In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths,

geraniums and pansies. The breeze brought their odour into the room.

Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath of the

flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The

liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old

Mr. Coulson’s nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false

enchantress May was done.

Across the park to the olfactories of Mr. Coulson came other

unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong

to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt,

underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas,

Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on

newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled

happily everywhere outdoors. Never trust May.

Mr. Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot,

and pounded a bell on the table by his side.

In came Mrs. Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty

and foxy.

“Higgins is out, sir,” she said, with a smile suggestive of vibratory

massage. “He went to post a letter. Can I do anything for you, sir?”

“It’s time for my aconite,” said old Mr. Coulson. “Drop it for me. The

bottle’s there. Three drops. In water. D–––– that is, confound Higgins!

There’s nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for want

of attention.”

Mrs. Widdup sighed deeply.

“Don’t be saying that, sir,” she said. “There’s them that would care

more than any one knows. Thirteen drops, you said, sir?”

“Three,” said old man Coulson.

He took his dose and then Mrs. Widdup’s hand. She blushed. Oh, yes, it

can be done. Just hold your breath and compress the diaphragm.

“Mrs. Widdup,” said Mr. Coulson, “the springtime’s full upon us.”

“Ain’t that right?” said Mrs. Widdup. “The air’s real warm. And there’s

bock-beer signs on every corner. And the park’s all yaller and pink and

blue with flowers; and I have such shooting pains up my legs and body.”

“‘In the spring,’” quoted Mr. Coulson, curling his mustache, “‘a y––––

that is, a man’s—fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’”

“Lawsy, now!” exclaimed Mrs. Widdup; “ain’t that right? Seems like it’s

in the air.”

“‘In the spring,’” continued old Mr. Coulson, “‘a livelier iris shines

upon the burnished dove.’”

“They do be lively, the Irish,” sighed Mrs. Widdup pensively.

“Mrs. Widdup,” said Mr. Coulson, making a face at a twinge of his gouty

foot, “this would be a lonesome house without you. I’m an—that is, I’m

an elderly man—but I’m worth a comfortable lot of money. If half a

million dollars’ worth of Government bonds and the true affection of a

heart that, though no longer beating with the first ardour of youth,

can still throb with genuine—”

The loud noise of an overturned chair near the portières of the

adjoining room interrupted the venerable and scarcely suspecting victim

of May.

In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony, durable, tall,

high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five,

in-the-neighbourhood-of-Gramercy-Parkish. She put up a lorgnette. Mrs.

Widdup hastily stooped and arranged the bandages on Mr. Coulson’s gouty

foot.

“I thought Higgins was with you,” said Miss Van Meeker Constantia.

“Higgins went out,” explained her father, “and Mrs. Widdup answered the

bell. That is better now, Mrs. Widdup, thank you. No; there is nothing

else I require.”

The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss

Coulson.

“This spring weather is lovely, isn’t it, daughter?” said the old man,

consciously conscious.

“That’s just it,” replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat

obscurely. “When does Mrs. Widdup start on her vacation, papa?”

“I believe she said a week from to-day,” said Mr. Coulson.

Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at the window gazing,

toward the little park, flooded with the mellow afternoon sunlight.

With the eye of a botanist she viewed the flowers—most potent weapons

of insidious May. With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne she

withstood the attack of the ethereal mildness. The arrows of the

pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her

unthrilled bosom. The odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in

the unexplored recesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows

gave her a pain. She mocked at May.

But although Miss Coulson was proof against the season, she was keen

enough to estimate its power. She knew that elderly men and

thick-waisted women jumped as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of

May, the merry mocker of the months. She had heard of foolish old

gentlemen marrying their housekeepers before. What a humiliating thing,

after all, was this feeling called love!

The next morning at 8 o’clock, when the iceman called, the cook told

him that Miss Coulson wanted to see him in the basement.

“Well, ain’t I the Olcott and Depew; not mentioning the first name at

all?” said the iceman, admiringly, of himself.

As a concession he rolled his sleeves down, dropped his icehooks on a

syringa and went back. When Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson

addressed him he took off his hat.

“There is a rear entrance to this basement,” said Miss Coulson, “which

can be reached by driving into the vacant lot next door, where they are

excavating for a building. I want you to bring in that way within two

hours 1,000 pounds of ice. You may have to bring another man or two to

help you. I will show you where I want it placed. I also want 1,000

pounds a day delivered the same way for the next four days. Your

company may charge the ice on our regular bill. This is for your extra

trouble.”

Miss Coulson tendered a ten-dollar bill. The iceman bowed, and held his

hat in his two hands behind him.

“Not if you’ll excuse me, lady. It’ll be a pleasure to fix things up

for you any way you please.”

Alas for May!

About noon Mr. Coulson knocked two glasses off his table, broke the

spring of his bell and yelled for Higgins at the same time.

“Bring an axe,” commanded Mr. Coulson, sardonically, “or send out for a

quart of prussic acid, or have a policeman come in and shoot me. I’d

rather that than be frozen to death.”

“It does seem to be getting cool, Sir,” said Higgins. “I hadn’t noticed

it before. I’ll close the window, Sir.”

“Do,” said Mr. Coulson. “They call this spring, do they? If it keeps up

long I’ll go back to Palm Beach. House feels like a morgue.”

Later Miss Coulson dutifully came in to inquire how the gout was

progressing.

“’Stantia,” said the old man, “how is the weather outdoors?”

“Bright,” answered Miss Coulson, “but chilly.”

“Feels like the dead of winter to me,” said Mr. Coulson.

“An instance,” said Constantia, gazing abstractedly out the window, “of

‘winter lingering in the lap of spring,’ though the metaphor is not in

the most refined taste.”

A little later she walked down by the side of the little park and on

westward to Broadway to accomplish a little shopping.

A little later than that Mrs. Widdup entered the invalid’s room.

“Did you ring, Sir?” she asked, dimpling in many places. “I asked

Higgins to go to the drug store, and I thought I heard your bell.”

“I did not,” said Mr. Coulson.

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Widdup, “I interrupted you sir, yesterday when

you were about to say something.”

“How comes it, Mrs. Widdup,” said old man Coulson sternly, “that I find

it so cold in this house?”

“Cold, Sir?” said the housekeeper, “why, now, since you speak of it it

do seem cold in this room. But, outdoors it’s as warm and fine as June,

sir. And how this weather do seem to make one’s heart jump out of one’s

shirt waist, sir. And the ivy all leaved out on the side of the house,

and the hand-organs playing, and the children dancing on the

sidewalk—’tis a great time for speaking out what’s in the heart. You

were saying yesterday, sir—”

“Woman!” roared Mr. Coulson; “you are a fool. I pay you to take care of

this house. I am freezing to death in my own room, and you come in and

drivel to me about ivy and hand-organs. Get me an overcoat at once. See

that all doors and windows are closed below. An old, fat,

irresponsible, one-sided object like you prating about springtime and

flowers in the middle of winter! When Higgins comes back, tell him to

bring me a hot rum punch. And now get out!”

But who shall shame the bright face of May? Rogue though she be and

disturber of sane men’s peace, no wise virgins cunning nor cold storage

shall make her bow her head in the bright galaxy of months.

Oh, yes, the story was not quite finished.

A night passed, and Higgins helped old man Coulson in the morning to

his chair by the window. The cold of the room was gone. Heavenly odours

and fragrant mildness entered.

In hurried Mrs. Widdup, and stood by his chair. Mr. Coulson reached his

bony hand and grasped her plump one.

“Mrs. Widdup,” he said, “this house would be no home without you. I

have half a million dollars. If that and the true affection of a heart

no longer in its youthful prime, but still not cold, could—”

“I found out what made it cold,” said Mrs. Widdup, leaning against his

chair. “’Twas ice—tons of it—in the basement and in the furnace room,

everywhere. I shut off the registers that it was coming through into

your room, Mr. Coulson, poor soul! And now it’s Maytime again.”

“A true heart,” went on old man Coulson, a little wanderingly, “that

the springtime has brought to life again, and—but what will my daughter

say, Mrs. Widdup?”

“Never fear, sir,” said Mrs. Widdup, cheerfully. “Miss Coulson, she ran

away with the iceman last night, sir!”

X

A TECHNICAL ERROR

I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more

overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or

honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an

Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and

inaccessory during the fact.

I was on a visit to Sam Durkee’s ranch, where I had a great time

falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower

jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about

twenty-five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect

equanimity, though often with reluctance.

Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum. I was

told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of

each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more

Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family was

growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them. But I gathered

that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and

aimed at the division of their enemies’ suspenders in the back—partly,

perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than

one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been

harmed. In those days—and you will find it so yet—their women were

safe.

Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I

expect to sell this story to, I should say, “Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a

fiancée.”) Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to

each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all

couples do who are and have or aren’t and haven’t. She was tolerably

pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He

introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for

him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates.

Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived

on a gallop between the two places.

One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small,

with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries about the

business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cognominally.

He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his yellow shoes

and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I rode in for the mail.

He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed rather improbable.

There were active times on the ranch, just then, and Sam was too busy

to go to town often. As an incompetent and generally worthless guest,

it devolved upon me to ride in for little things such as post cards,

barrels of flour, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and—letters from

Ella.

One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and

a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a

yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as

ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit. I knew that this

information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam’s soul, so I refrained

from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my return.

But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of

Simmons, an old-time pal of Sam’s, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher,

rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he

would talk. When he did make oration, his words were these:

“Say, Sam, there’s been a description of a galoot miscallin’ himself

Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the

past two weeks. You know who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben

Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle

Newt shot last February. You know what he done this morning? He killed

your brother Lester—shot him in the co’t-house yard.”

I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush,

chewed it gravely, and said:

“He did, did he? He killed Lester?”

“The same,” said Simmons. “And he did more. He run away with your girl,

the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know,

so I rode out to impart the information.”

“I am much obliged, Jim,” said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his

mouth. “Yes, I’m glad you rode Out. Yes, I’m right glad.”

“Well, I’ll be ridin’ back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store

don’t know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the back.”

“Shot him in the back?”

“Yes, while he was hitchin’ his hoss.”

“I’m much obliged, Jim.”

“I kind of thought you’d like to know as soon as you could.”

“Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?”

“Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store.”

“And you say—”

“Yes, Sam. Everybody seen ’em drive away together in a buckboard, with

a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin’

the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They’ll be hard to

overtake right away.”

“And which—”

“I was goin’ on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there’s

no tellin’ which forks they’ll take—you know that.”

“All right, Jim; much obliged.”

“You’re welcome, Sam.”

Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty

yards away he reined up and called back:

“You don’t want no—assistance, as you might say?”

“Not any, thanks.”

“I didn’t think you would. Well, so long!”

Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried

piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to

swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite “The Gipsy’s Curse.” The

few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This

one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the

stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco’s thrilling

melodramas demanded instead.

“I wonder,” said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, “if the

cook has any cold beans left over!”

He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered

him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into

Sam’s private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the

saddles of his favourite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out

of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling “The Cowboy’s

Lament” abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the

ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.

Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have

observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict

etiquette belonging. You must not mention the word or refer to the

subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible

than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found,

later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that

belongs solely to the West.

It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and I

were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.

“Nothing like a good meal before a long ride,” said Sam. “Eat hearty.”

I had a sudden suspicion.

“Why did you have two horses saddled?” I asked.

“One, two—one, two,” said Sam. “You can count, can’t you?”

His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The

thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur

to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice.

It was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat

more beans.

In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were

Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben

Tatum’s steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he

had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours,

born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was

creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.

I knew that Ben Tatum’s card to play was flight—flight until he came

within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew

that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it

might lead.

During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of

beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never

had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some

subjects too big even for the words in the “Unabridged.” Knowing this

phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I

overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed

at exactly the right place—laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight

of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour

to have suppressed those anecdotes.

Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we

stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table.

In the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their

meal, but looked around at times uneasily.

The girl was dressed in brown—one of these smooth, half-shiny,

silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe

they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down

to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers

adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed

very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere.

There they were—the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we

were—the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary

who writes these words.

For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose

the killing instinct. For one moment he joined the force of

combatants—orally.

“What are you waiting for, Sam?” I said in a whisper. “Let him have it

now!”

Sam gave a melancholy sigh.

“You don’t understand; but _he_ does,” he said. “_He_ knows. Mr.

Tenderfoot, there’s a rule out here among white men in the Nation that

you can’t shoot a man when he’s with a woman. I never knew it to be

broke yet. You _can’t_ do it. You’ve got to get him in a gang of men or

by himself. That’s why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that’s Mr.

Ben Tatum! One of the ‘pretty men’! I’ll cut him out of the herd before

they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!”

After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam haunted

lobby and stairway and halls half the night, in some mysterious way the

fugitives eluded him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the brown

dress with the accordion-plaited skirt and the dapper young man with

the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with the prancing nags, were

gone.

It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed.

Once again we overtook them on a road. We were about fifty yards

behind. They turned in the buckboard and looked at us; then drove on

without whipping up their horses. Their safety no longer lay in speed.

Ben Tatum knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was

the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would

have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had

something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It

seemed likely that he was no coward.

So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead of

precipitating conflict between man and man. But not willingly or

consciously. She is oblivious of codes.

Five miles farther, we came upon the future great Western city of

Chandler. The horses of pursuers and pursued were starved and weary.

There was one hotel that offered danger to man and entertainment to

beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at the ringing of

a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long ago.

The dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie.

Just as we were eating apple pie—how Ben Davises and tragedy impinge

upon each other!—I noticed Sam looking with keen intentness at our

quarry where they were seated at a table across the room. The girl

still wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the veil

drawn down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with his close

cropped head held low.

“There’s a code,” I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, “that

won’t let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder,

there ain’t one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a

man!”

And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped a

Colt’s automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into

the body that the brown dress covered—the brown dress with the lace

collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt.

The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose

life a woman’s glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms

stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum

from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the

opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code.

XI

SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE

Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married

existence with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs.

Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they

were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a

name and accommodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living

as expensively as the couple on the next floor above who had twice

their income; and their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferry-boat

and first acquaintance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice

with their names attached to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M.

Santos-Dumont.

Turpin’s income was $200 per month. On pay day, after calculating the

amounts due for rent, instalments on furniture and piano, gas, and

bills owed to the florist, confectioner, milliner, tailor, wine

merchant and cab company, the Turpins would find that they still had

$200 left to spend. How to do this is one of the secrets of

metropolitan life.

The domestic life of the Turpins was a beautiful picture to see. But

you couldn’t gaze upon it as you could at an oleograph of “Don’t Wake

Grandma,” or “Brooklyn by Moonlight.”

You had to blink when looked at it; and you heard a fizzing sound just

like the machine with a “scope” at the end of it. Yes; there wasn’t

much repose about the picture of the Turpins’ domestic life. It was

something like “Spearing Salmon in the Columbia River,” or “Japanese

Artillery in Action.”

Every day was just like another; as the days are in New York. In the

morning Turpin would take bromo-seltzer, his pocket change from under

the clock, his hat, no breakfast and his departure for the office. At

noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono,

airs, and the water to boil for coffee.

Turpin lunched downtown. He came home at 6 to dress for dinner. They

always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom,

from terrace to table d’hôte, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from café

to casino, from Maria’s to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life

in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears

dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the

wedding march you now hear only “Come with the Gypsy Bride.” You rarely

dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and,

besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir

silver sugar bowl to blow over.

The Turpins were therefore happy. They made many warm and delightful

friends, some of whom they remembered the next day. Their home life was

an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of the Book of

Bluff.

There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was getting

away with too much money. If you belong to the near-swell class in the

Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the end of

the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that you,

yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become of

the other $50. So you suspect your wife. And perhaps you give her a

hint that something needs explanation.

“I say, Vivien,” said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying in

rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, “you’ve been

creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month’s

honorarium. You haven’t been paying your dressmaker anything on

account, have you?”

There was a moment’s silence. No sounds could be heard except the

breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of

Vivien’s fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons. Claude

Turpin, sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the

convolutions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely

face of his wife.

“Claudie, dear,” said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and

testing the unresponsive curling irons, “you do me an injustice. Mme.

Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor

ten dollars on account.”

Turpin’s suspicions were allayed for the time. But one day soon there

came an anonymous letter to him that read:

Watch your wife. She is blowing in your money secretly. I was a

sufferer just as you are. The place is No. 345 Blank Street. A word to

the wise, etc.

A MAN WHO KNOWS.

Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that

he lived in.

“My precinct is as clean as a hound’s tooth,” said the captain. “The

lid’s shut down as close there as it is over the eye of a Williamsburg

girl when she’s kissed at a party. But if you think there’s anything

queer at the address, I’ll go there with ye.”

On the next afternoon at 3, Turpin and the captain crept softly up the

stairs of No. 345 Blank Street. A dozen plain-clothes men, dressed in

full police uniforms, so as to allay suspicion, waited in the hall

below.

At the top of the stairs was a door, which was found to be locked. The

captain took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. The two men

entered.

They found themselves in a large room, occupied by twenty or

twenty-five elegantly clothed ladies. Racing charts hung against the

walls, a ticker clicked in one corner; with a telephone receiver to his

ear a man was calling out the various positions of the horses in a very

exciting race. The occupants of the room looked up at the intruders;

but, as if reassured by the sight of the captain’s uniform, they

reverted their attention to the man at the telephone.

“You see,” said the captain to Turpin, “the value of an anonymous

letter! No high-minded and self-respecting gentleman should consider

one worthy of notice. Is your wife among this assembly, Mr. Turpin?”

“She is not,” said Turpin.

“And if she was,” continued the captain, “would she be within the reach

of the tongue of slander? These ladies constitute a Browning Society.

They meet to discuss the meaning of the great poet. The telephone is

connected with Boston, whence the parent society transmits frequently

its interpretations of the poems. Be ashamed of yer suspicions, Mr.

Turpin.”

“Go soak your shield,” said Turpin. “Vivien knows how to take care of

herself in a pool-room. She’s not dropping anything on the ponies.

There must be something queer going on here.”

“Nothing but Browning,” said the captain. “Hear that?”

“Thanatopsis by a nose,” drawled the man at the telephone.

“That’s not Browning; that’s Longfellow,” said Turpin, who sometimes

read books.

“Back to the pasture!” exclaimed the captain. “Longfellow made the

pacing-to-wagon record of 7.53 ’way back in 1868.”

“I believe there’s something queer about this joint,” repeated Turpin.

“I don’t see it,” said the captain.

“I know it looks like a pool-room, all right,” persisted Turpin, “but

that’s all a blind. Vivien has been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I

believe there’s some under-handed work going on here.”

A number of racing sheets were tacked close together, covering a large

space on one of the walls. Turpin, suspicious, tore several of them

down. A door, previously hidden, was revealed. Turpin placed an ear to

the crack and listened intently. He heard the soft hum of many voices,

low and guarded laughter, and a sharp, metallic clicking and scraping

as if from a multitude of tiny but busy objects.

“My God! It is as I feared!” whispered Turpin to himself. “Summon your

men at once!” he called to the captain. “She is in there, I know.”

At the blowing of the captain’s whistle the uniformed plain-clothes men

rushed up the stairs into the pool-room. When they saw the betting

paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to

know why they had been summoned.

But the captain pointed to the locked door and bade them break it down.

In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried. Into

the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels.

The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin’s mind. Nearly a score

of women—women expensively and fashionably clothed, many beautiful and

of refined appearance—had been seated at little marble-topped tables.

When the police burst open the door they shrieked and ran here and

there like gayly plumed birds that had been disturbed in a tropical

grove. Some became hysterical; one or two fainted; several knelt at the

feet of the officers and besought them for mercy on account of their

families and social position.

A man who had been seated behind a desk had seized a roll of currency

as large as the ankle of a Paradise Roof Gardens chorus girl and jumped

out of the window. Half a dozen attendants huddled at one end of the

room, breathless from fear.

Upon the tables remained the damning and incontrovertible evidences of

the guilt of the habituées of that sinister room—dish after dish heaped

high with ice cream, and surrounded by stacks of empty ones, scraped to

the last spoonful.

“Ladies,” said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoners, “I’ll

not hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and

good standing in the community, with hard-working husbands and childer

at home. But I’ll read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the next

room there’s a 20-to-1 shot just dropped in under the wire three

lengths ahead of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands’

money instead of helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid’s on the

ice-cream freezer in this precinct.”

Claude Turpin’s wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He led

her to their apartment in stern silence. There she wept so remorsefully

and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot his just

anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien in his

arms and forgave her.

“Darling,” she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted

through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, “I know I

done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a

millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt some

strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only

eleven saucers.”

“Say no more,” said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving

curls.

“And you are sure that you fully forgive me?” asked Vivien, gazing at

him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue.

“Almost sure, little one,” answered Claude, stooping and lightly

touching her snowy forehead with his lips. “I’ll let you know later on.

I’ve got a month’s salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old

steeplechase to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you

are It again—see?”

XII

THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE

Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office

smoking his elder-stem pipe. Half-way to the zenith the Cumberland

range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered

down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly.

Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of

dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The cart

stopped at the Justice’s door, and the two climbed down. Ransie was a

narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The

imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armour.

The woman was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown

desires. Through it all gleamed a faint protest of cheated youth

unconscious of its loss.

The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake

of dignity, and moved to let them enter.

“We-all,” said the woman, in a voice like the wind blowing through pine

boughs, “wants a divo’ce.” She looked at Ransie to see if he noted any

flaw or ambiguity or evasion or partiality or self-partisanship in her

statement of their business.

“A divo’ce,” repeated Ransie, with a solemn nod. “We-all can’t git

along together nohow. It’s lonesome enough fur to live in the mount’ins

when a man and a woman keers fur one another. But when she’s a-spittin’

like a wildcat or a-sullenin’ like a hoot-owl in the cabin, a man ain’t

got no call to live with her.”

“When he’s a no-’count varmint,” said the woman, “without any especial

warmth, a-traipsin’ along of scalawags and moonshiners and a-layin’ on

his back pizen ’ith co’n whiskey, and a-pesterin’ folks with a pack o’

hungry, triflin’ houn’s to feed!”

“When she keeps a-throwin’ skillet lids,” came Ransie’s antiphony, “and

slings b’ilin’ water on the best coon-dog in the Cumberlands, and sets

herself agin’ cookin’ a man’s victuals, and keeps him awake o’ nights

accusin’ him of a sight of doin’s!”

“When he’s al’ays a-fightin’ the revenues, and gits a hard name in the

mount’ins fur a mean man, who’s gwine to be able fur to sleep o’

nights?”

The Justice of the Peace stirred deliberately to his duties. He placed

his one chair and a wooden stool for his petitioners. He opened his

book of statutes on the table and scanned the index. Presently he wiped

his spectacles and shifted his inkstand.

“The law and the statutes,” said he, “air silent on the subjeck of

divo’ce as fur as the jurisdiction of this co’t air concerned. But,

accordin’ to equity and the Constitution and the golden rule, it’s a

bad barg’in that can’t run both ways. If a justice of the peace can

marry a couple, it’s plain that he is bound to be able to divo’ce ’em.

This here office will issue a decree of divo’ce and abide by the

decision of the Supreme Co’t to hold it good.”

Ransie Bilbro drew a small tobacco-bag from his trousers pocket. Out of

this he shook upon the table a five-dollar note. “Sold a b’arskin and

two foxes fur that,” he remarked. “It’s all the money we got.”

“The regular price of a divo’ce in this co’t,” said the Justice, “air

five dollars.” He stuffed the bill into the pocket of his homespun vest

with a deceptive air of indifference. With much bodily toil and mental

travail he wrote the decree upon half a sheet of foolscap, and then

copied it upon the other. Ransie Bilbro and his wife listened to his

reading of the document that was to give them freedom:

“Know all men by these presents that Ransie Bilbro and his wife, Ariela

Bilbro, this day personally appeared before me and promises that

hereinafter they will neither love, honour, nor obey each other,

neither for better nor worse, being of sound mind and body, and accept

summons for divorce according to the peace and dignity of the State.

Herein fail not, so help you God. Benaja Widdup, justice of the peace

in and for the county of Piedmont, State of Tennessee.”

The Justice was about to hand one of the documents to Ransie. The voice

of Ariela delayed the transfer. Both men looked at her. Their dull

masculinity was confronted by something sudden and unexpected in the

woman.

“Judge, don’t you give him that air paper yit. ’Tain’t all settled,

nohow. I got to have my rights first. I got to have my ali-money.

’Tain’t no kind of a way to do fur a man to divo’ce his wife ’thout her

havin’ a cent fur to do with. I’m a-layin’ off to be a-goin’ up to

brother Ed’s up on Hogback Mount’in. I’m bound fur to hev a pa’r of

shoes and some snuff and things besides. Ef Rance kin affo’d a divo’ce,

let him pay me ali-money.”

Ransie Bilbro was stricken to dumb perplexity. There had been no

previous hint of alimony. Women were always bringing up startling and

unlooked-for issues.

Justice Benaja Widdup felt that the point demanded judicial decision.

The authorities were also silent on the subject of alimony. But the

woman’s feet were bare. The trail to Hogback Mountain was steep and

flinty.

“Ariela Bilbro,” he asked, in official tones, “how much did you ’low

would be good and sufficient ali-money in the case befo’ the co’t.”

“I ’lowed,” she answered, “fur the shoes and all, to say five dollars.

That ain’t much fur ali-money, but I reckon that’ll git me to up

brother Ed’s.”

“The amount,” said the Justice, “air not onreasonable. Ransie Bilbro,

you air ordered by the co’t to pay the plaintiff the sum of five

dollars befo’ the decree of divo’ce air issued.”

“I hain’t no mo’ money,” breathed Ransie, heavily. “I done paid you all

I had.”

“Otherwise,” said the Justice, looking severely over his spectacles,

“you air in contempt of co’t.”

“I reckon if you gimme till to-morrow,” pleaded the husband, “I mout be

able to rake or scrape it up somewhars. I never looked for to be

a-payin’ no ali-money.”

“The case air adjourned,” said Benaja Widdup, “till to-morrow, when

you-all will present yo’selves and obey the order of the co’t.

Followin’ of which the decrees of divo’ce will be delivered.” He sat

down in the door and began to loosen a shoestring.

“We mout as well go down to Uncle Ziah’s,” decided Ransie, “and spend

the night.” He climbed into the cart on one side, and Ariela climbed in

on the other. Obeying the flap of his rope, the little red bull slowly

came around on a tack, and the cart crawled away in the nimbus arising

from its wheels.

Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup smoked his elder-stem pipe. Late in

the afternoon he got his weekly paper, and read it until the twilight

dimmed its lines. Then he lit the tallow candle on his table, and read

until the moon rose, marking the time for supper. He lived in the

double log cabin on the slope near the girdled poplar. Going home to

supper he crossed a little branch darkened by a laurel thicket. The

dark figure of a man stepped from the laurels and pointed a rifle at

his breast. His hat was pulled down low, and something covered most of

his face.

“I want yo’ money,” said the figure, “’thout any talk. I’m gettin’

nervous, and my finger’s a-wabblin’ on this here trigger.”

“I’ve only got f-f-five dollars,” said the Justice, producing it from

his vest pocket.

“Roll it up,” came the order, “and stick it in the end of this here

gun-bar’l.”

The bill was crisp and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trembling

found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this

with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle.

“Now I reckon you kin be goin’ along,” said the robber.

The Justice lingered not on his way.

The next day came the little red bull, drawing the cart to the office

door. Justice Benaja Widdup had his shoes on, for he was expecting the

visit. In his presence Ransie Bilbro handed to his wife a five-dollar

bill. The official’s eye sharply viewed it. It seemed to curl up as

though it had been rolled and inserted into the end of a gun-barrel.

But the Justice refrained from comment. It is true that other bills

might be inclined to curl. He handed each one a decree of divorce. Each

stood awkwardly silent, slowly folding the guarantee of freedom. The

woman cast a shy glance full of constraint at Ransie.

“I reckon you’ll be goin’ back up to the cabin,” she said, along ’ith

the bull-cart. There’s bread in the tin box settin’ on the shelf. I put

the bacon in the b’ilin’-pot to keep the hounds from gittin’ it. Don’t

forget to wind the clock to-night.”

“You air a-goin’ to your brother Ed’s?” asked Ransie, with fine

unconcern.

“I was ’lowin’ to get along up thar afore night. I ain’t sayin’ as

they’ll pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain’t nowhar

else fur to go. It’s a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be

goin’. I’ll be a-sayin’ good-bye, Ranse—that is, if you keer fur to say

so.”

“I don’t know as anybody’s a hound dog,” said Ransie, in a martyr’s

voice, “fur to not want to say good-bye—’less you air so anxious to git

away that you don’t want me to say it.”

Ariela was silent. She folded the five-dollar bill and her decree

carefully, and placed them in the bosom of her dress. Benaja Widdup

watched the money disappear with mournful eyes behind his spectacles.

And then with his next words he achieved rank (as his thoughts ran)

with either the great crowd of the world’s sympathizers or the little

crowd of its great financiers.

“Be kind o’ lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ranse,” he said.

Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the

sunlight. He did not look at Ariela.

“I ’low it might be lonesome,” he said; “but when folks gits mad and

wants a divo’ce, you can’t make folks stay.”

“There’s others wanted a divo’ce,” said Ariela, speaking to the wooden

stool. “Besides, nobody don’t want nobody to stay.”

“Nobody never said they didn’t.”

“Nobody never said they did. I reckon I better start on now to brother

Ed’s.”

“Nobody can’t wind that old clock.”

“Want me to go back along ’ith you in the cart and wind it fur you,

Ranse?”

The mountaineer’s countenance was proof against emotion. But he reached

out a big hand and enclosed Ariela’s thin brown one. Her soul peeped

out once through her impassive face, hallowing it.

“Them hounds shan’t pester you no more,” said Ransie. “I reckon I been

mean and low down. You wind that clock, Ariela.”

“My heart hit’s in that cabin, Ranse,” she whispered, “along ’ith you.

I ai’nt a-goin’ to git mad no more. Le’s be startin’, Ranse, so’s we

kin git home by sundown.”

Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup interposed as they started for the

door, forgetting his presence.

“In the name of the State of Tennessee,” he said, “I forbid you-all to

be a-defyin’ of its laws and statutes. This co’t is mo’ than willin’

and full of joy to see the clouds of discord and misunderstandin’

rollin’ away from two lovin’ hearts, but it air the duty of the co’t to

p’eserve the morals and integrity of the State. The co’t reminds you

that you air no longer man and wife, but air divo’ced by regular

decree, and as such air not entitled to the benefits and ’purtenances

of the mattermonal estate.”

Ariela caught Ransie’s arm. Did those words mean that she must lose him

now when they had just learned the lesson of life?

“But the co’t air prepared,” went on the Justice, “fur to remove the

disabilities set up by the decree of divo’ce. The co’t air on hand to

perform the solemn ceremony of marri’ge, thus fixin’ things up and

enablin’ the parties in the case to resume the honour’ble and elevatin’

state of mattermony which they desires. The fee fur performin’ said

ceremony will be, in this case, to wit, five dollars.”

Ariela caught the gleam of promise in his words. Swiftly her hand went

to her bosom. Freely as an alighting dove the bill fluttered to the

Justice’s table. Her sallow cheek coloured as she stood hand in hand

with Ransie and listened to the reuniting words.

Ransie helped her into the cart, and climbed in beside her. The little

red bull turned once more, and they set out, hand-clasped, for the

mountains.

Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup sat in his door and took off his

shoes. Once again he fingered the bill tucked down in his vest pocket.

Once again he smoked his elder-stem pipe. Once again the speckled hen

swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly.

XIII

A SACRIFICE HIT

The editor of the _Hearthstone Magazine_ has his own ideas about the

selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret;

in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany

desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his

gold-rimmed eye-glasses.

“The _Hearthstone_,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers.

We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from

types of the various classes of our readers.”

That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:

When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his

pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the

day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator

man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has

luncheon, the man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper,

the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train,

the ticket-chopper at Sixty ––––th street, the cook and maid at his

home—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the

_Hearthstone Magazine_. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the

time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed

over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later

the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers

the verdict of his assorted readers.

This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the

circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful

record of speed.

The _Hearthstone_ Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to

be found on several successful works—all recommended, says the editor,

by the _Hearthstone’s_ army of volunteer readers. Now and then

(according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the

_Hearthstone_ has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on

the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be

famous sellers when brought out by other houses.

For instance (the gossips say), “The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham” was

unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy

unanimously rejected “The Boss”; “In the Bishop’s Carriage” was

contemptuously looked upon by the street-car conductor; “The

Deliverance” was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department

whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home;

“The Queen’s Quair” came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is

the book.”

But nevertheless the _Hearthstone_ adheres to its theory and system,

and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely

scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial

office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to

the _Hearthstone_ Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has

expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.

This method of the _Hearthstone_ was well known to Allen Slayton when

he wrote his novelette entitled “Love Is All.” Slayton had hung about

the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was

acquainted with the inner workings of every one in Gotham.

He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS.

around among different types of people for reading, but that the

stories of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor’s

stenographer. Another of the editor’s peculiar customs was to conceal

invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a

glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports.

Slayton made “Love Is All” the effort of his life. He gave it six

months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure

love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate—a prose poem that set

the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high

above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of

heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He

would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame

in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have

offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have

realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the

_Hearthstone_.

Slayton finished “Love Is All,” and took it to the _Hearthstone_ in

person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate

building, presided under by a janitor.

As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a

potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton’s hat, and

smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the

utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and

sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying

hair followed the missile. The janitor’s foot slipped on the tiled

floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman

pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.

Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as

Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor

got to his feet, blown and humiliated.

“This is married life,” he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised

humour. “That’s the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about.

Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don’t snitch to the tenants about

this, will yer? I don’t want to lose me job.”

Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the

offices of the _Hearthstone_. He left the MS. of “Love Is All” with the

editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the

end of a week.

Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck

him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring

his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about

carrying it into execution.

Miss Puffkin, the _Hearthstone_ stenographer, boarded in the same house

with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing,

sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time

before.

The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that

the editor of the _Hearthstone_ relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s

judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her

taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour

novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of “Love

Is All” was love at first sight—the enrapturing, irresistible,

soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his

or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should

impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!—would she not

surely indorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly

to the editor of the _Hearthstone_ the novelette “Love Is All”?

Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre.

The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the

boarding-house. He quoted freely from “Love Is All”; and he wound up

with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame

dancing in his head.

But Slayton did not stop at love-making. This, he said to himself, was

the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the

limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big

Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.

Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow,

Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe,

Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks,

De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist,

Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of

literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to

carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!

On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the

_Hearthstone_ office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor

had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.

“Was there anything—er—that—er—you particularly fancied in the stories

you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart.

“There was one—a novelette, that I liked so much,” said his wife. “I

haven’t read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true

to life.”

That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the _Hearthstone_ office. He

felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the

_Hearthstone_, literary reputation would soon be his.

The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not

for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor

except at rare intervals.

Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the

exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his

forthcoming success.

He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the

sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more

than the bulk of a thousand checks.