manuscript ain’t available for the magazine.”
Slayton stood, dazed. “Can you tell me,” he stammered, “whether or no
Miss Puff—that is my—I mean Miss Puffkin—handed in a novelette this
morning that she had been asked to read?”
“Sure she did,” answered the office boy wisely. “I heard the old man
say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, ‘Married
for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl’s Triumph.’”
“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton,
ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The
boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the
ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right,
though.”
And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript,
under the title “Love Is All,” the janitor’s comment scribbled with a
piece of charcoal:
“The –––– you say!”
XIV
THE ROADS WE TAKE
Twenty miles west of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank to
take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous
flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it.
While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, “Shark”
Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on
the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of
ordnance that they carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer
with their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as
accompanies the ejaculation “Do tell!”
At the crisp command of Shark Dodson, who was leader of the attacking
force the engineer descended to the ground and uncoupled the engine and
tender. Then John Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively held two
guns upon the engine driver and the fireman, and suggested that they
run the engine fifty yards away and there await further orders.
Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning to put such low-grade ore as the
passengers through the mill, struck out for the rich pocket of the
express car. They found the messenger serene in the belief that the
“Sunset Express” was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous
than aqua pura. While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with
the butt-end of his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the
express-car safe with dynamite.
The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The
passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for
the thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged
down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball,
with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car
and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine.
The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to
orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was
accomplished the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball’s
persuader to neutrality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle
and took a trick in the game. Mr. John Big Dog, sitting on the coal
tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a
target, and the messenger trumped him. With a ball exactly between his
shoulder blades the Creek chevalier of industry rolled off to the
ground, thus increasing the share of his comrades in the loot by
one-sixth each.
Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.
The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope into
the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing through
a thicket of chaparral brought them to open woods, where three horses
were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog,
who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers
divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two
with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discretion
through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal
that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg.
They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a council
of flight. Made secure for the present by the tortuous trail they had
travelled, the question of time was no longer so big. Many miles and
hours lay between them and the spryest posse that could follow. Shark
Dodson’s horse, with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted and
cropped thankfully of the grass along the stream in the gorge. Bob
Tidball opened the sack, drew out double handfuls of the neat packages
of currency and the one sack of gold and chuckled with the glee of a
child.
“Say, you old double-decked pirate,” he called joyfully to Dodson, “you
said we could do it—you got a head for financing that knocks the horns
off of anything in Arizona.”
“What are we going to do about a hoss for you, Bob? We ain’t got long
to wait here. They’ll be on our trail before daylight in the mornin’.”
“Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn’ll carry double for a while,”
answered the sanguine Bob. “We’ll annex the first animal we come
across. By jingoes, we made a haul, didn’t we? Accordin’ to the marks
on this money there’s $30,000—$15,000 apiece!”
“It’s short of what I expected,” said Shark Dodson, kicking softly at
the packages with the toe of his boot. And then he looked pensively at
the wet sides of his tired horse.
“Old Bolivar’s mighty nigh played out,” he said, slowly. “I wish that
sorrel of yours hadn’t got hurt.”
“So do I,” said Bob, heartily, “but it can’t be helped. Bolivar’s got
plenty of bottom—he’ll get us both far enough to get fresh mounts. Dang
it, Shark, I can’t help thinkin’ how funny it is that an Easterner like
you can come out here and give us Western fellows cards and spades in
the desperado business. What part of the East was you from, anyway?”
“New York State,” said Shark Dodson, sitting down on a boulder and
chewing a twig. “I was born on a farm in Ulster County. I ran away from
home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my coming West. I was
walkin’ along the road with my clothes in a bundle, makin’ for New York
City. I had an idea of goin’ there and makin’ lots of money. I always
felt like I could do it. I came to a place one evenin’ where the road
forked and I didn’t know which fork to take. I studied about it for
half an hour, and then I took the left-hand. That night I run into the
camp of a Wild West show that was travellin’ among the little towns,
and I went West with it. I’ve often wondered if I wouldn’t have turned
out different if I’d took the other road.”
“Oh, I reckon you’d have ended up about the same,” said Bob Tidball,
cheerfully philosophical. “It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s
inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.”
Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree.
“I’d a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn’t hurt himself, Bob,”
he said again, almost pathetically.
“Same here,” agreed Bob; “he was sure a first-rate kind of a crowbait.
But Bolivar, he’ll pull us through all right. Reckon we’d better be
movin’ on, hadn’t we, Shark? I’ll bag this boodle ag’in and we’ll hit
the trail for higher timber.”
Bob Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag and tied the mouth of it
tightly with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that
he saw was the muzzle of Shark Dodson’s .45 held upon him without a
waver.
“Stop your funnin’,” said Bob, with a grin. “We got to be hittin’ the
breeze.”
“Set still,” said Shark. “You ain’t goin’ to hit no breeze, Bob. I hate
to tell you, but there ain’t any chance for but one of us. Bolivar,
he’s plenty tired, and he can’t carry double.”
“We been pards, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three year,” Bob said
quietly. “We’ve risked our lives together time and again. I’ve always
give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I’ve heard some
queer stories about you shootin’ one or two men in a peculiar way, but
I never believed ’em. Now if you’re just havin’ a little fun with me,
Shark, put your gun up, and we’ll get on Bolivar and vamose. If you
mean to shoot—shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!”
Shark Dodson’s face bore a deeply sorrowful look. “You don’t know how
bad I feel,” he sighed, “about that sorrel of yourn breakin’ his leg,
Bob.”
The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold
ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed
itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable
house.
Truly Bob Tidball was never to “hit the breeze” again. The deadly .45
of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the
walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious
accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the “Sunset
Express,” not put to the stress of “carrying double.”
But as “Shark” Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his
view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a
mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his
eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge
of a quartered-oak desk.
I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & Decker, Wall
Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was
standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of
wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.
“Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I
had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?”
“Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to
settle his deal in X. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you
remember.”
“Yes, I remember. What is X. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?”
“One eighty-five, sir.”
“Then that’s his price.”
“Excuse me,” said Peabody, rather nervously “for speaking of it, but
I’ve been talking to Williams. He’s an old friend of yours, Mr. Dodson,
and you practically have a corner in X. Y. Z. I thought you might—that
is, I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98.
If he settles at the market price it will take every cent he has in the
world and his home too to deliver the shares.”
The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold
ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed
itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable
house.
“He will settle at one eighty-five,” said Dodson. “Bolivar cannot carry
double.”
XV
A BLACKJACK BARGAINER
The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree
himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair. The rickety little
office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street—the main
street of the town of Bethel.
Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the
mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba
gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.
The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid
shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his
chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury
room, where the “court-house gang” was playing poker. From the open
back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy
lot to the court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree
all he ever had—first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the
old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and
manhood. The “gang” had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned
drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men
who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no
longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself
accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker.
The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a
chalk-faced man hailing “from the valley,” sat at table, and the
sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.
Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office,
muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway.
After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had
flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out
at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he
saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which
he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud
between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees
survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. To the
Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left—Colonel Abner
Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State
Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree’s father. The feud had been
a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong
and slaughter.
But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was
hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself
and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen
to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep—but whiskey they
would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was
extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years. He had been a
borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would
be from lack of opportunity. One more chance—he was saying to
himself—if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win;
but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than
exhausted.
He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man
to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. There
had come from “back yan’” in the mountains two of the strangest
creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. “Back yan’,” with a
wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the
mountaineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed
gorges, the haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf’s den, and the boudoir of
the bear. In the cabin far up on Blackjack’s shoulder, in the wildest
part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years.
They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the
hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had
dealt with him pronounced him “crazy as a loon.” He acknowledged no
occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he “moonshined”
occasionally by way of diversion. Once the “revenues” had dragged him
from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he
had been sent to state’s prison for two years. Released, he popped back
into his hole like an angry weasel.
Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into
Blackjack’s bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner.
One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd
prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey’s cabin. Pike lifted his
squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on
the chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the
unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence
of anything resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the
Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their
thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a
mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica
underlying the said property.
When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered
in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow
prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to
set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a
certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small
cannon—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in
price—might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible
trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers
forever.
But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the
applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an
ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs.
Garvey’s bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty
years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been
the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing
among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of
vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the
means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of
her sex—to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the
hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly
vetoed Pike’s proposed system of fortifications, and announced that
they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.
And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of
Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey’s preference for one of
the large valley towns and Pike’s hankering for primeval solitudes.
Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions
comportable with Martella’s ambitions, and was not entirely without
recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting
advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make
it advisable.
Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree’s
feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old
Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the
spendthrift’s shaking hands.
Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees
sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by
the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his
fathers.
A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with
something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the
cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a
slothful gray horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the
middle of the street as it neared Goree’s office, and stopped in the
gutter directly in front of his door.
On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth,
his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was
a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in
a skin-tight silk dress of the description known as “changeable,” being
a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a
much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street.
However Martella Garvey’s heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of
her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had
carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had
imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his
hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings
were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountain-side. She
could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the
stillest of nights.
Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only
faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his
whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose
unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the
transformed, the recently civilized.
The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts
upon Garvey’s soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man’s
countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile
as a statue’s. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to
the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account
for the visit.
“Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?” he inquired.
“Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me
with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo’ old place, and she likes the
neighbourhood. Society is what she ’lows she wants, and she is gettin’
of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to
see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The
best folks hev axed her to differ’nt kinds of doin’s. I cyan’t say, Mr.
Goree, that sech things suits me—fur me, give me them thar.” Garvey’s
huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains.
“That’s whar I b’long, ’mongst the wild honey bees and the b’ars. But
that ain’t what I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar’s somethin’ you got
what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy.”
“Buy!” echoed Goree. “From me?” Then he laughed harshly. “I reckon you
are mistaken about that. I reckon you are mistaken about that. I sold
out to you, as you yourself expressed it, ‘lock, stock and barrel.’
There isn’t even a ramrod left to sell.”
“You’ve got it; and we ’uns want it. ‘Take the money,’ says Missis
Garvey, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’”
Goree shook his head. “The cupboard’s bare,” he said.
“We’ve riz,” pursued the mountaineer, undeflected from his object, “a
heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner
every day. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society.
But there’s somethin’ we need we ain’t got. She says it ought to been
put in the ’ventory ov the sale, but it tain’t thar. ‘Take the money,
then,’ says she, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’”
“Out with it,” said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient.
Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing
his unblinking eyes upon Goree’s.
“There’s a old feud,” he said distinctly and slowly, “’tween you ’uns
and the Coltranes.”
Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious
breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from “back yan’” knew it as
well as the lawyer did.
“Na offense,” he went on “but purely in the way of business. Missis
Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the
mountains hev ’em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the
Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin’ on feuds f’om
twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo’ uncle,
Jedge Paisley Goree, ’journed co’t and shot Len Coltrane f’om the
bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f’om the po’ white trash. Nobody
wouldn’t pick a feud with we ’uns, no mo’n with a fam’ly of tree-toads.
Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We ’uns ain’t
quality, but we’re buyin’ into it as fur as we can. ‘Take the money,
then,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy Mr. Goree’s feud, fa’r and
squar’.’”
The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a
roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.
“Thar’s two hundred dollars, Mr. Goree; what you would call a fa’r
price for a feud that’s been ’lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar’s
only you left to cyar’ on yo’ side of it, and you’d make mighty po’
killin’. I’ll take it off yo’ hands, and it’ll set me and Missis Garvey
up among the quality. Thar’s the money.”
The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself,
writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed
Garvey’s last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the court-house
could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot,
for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated
across the square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood
on Goree’s brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from
under the table, and filled a tumbler from it.
“A little corn liquor, Mr. Garvey? Of course you are joking about—what
you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn’t it? Feuds. Prime,
two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged—two hundred, I believe you
said, Mr. Garvey?”
Goree laughed self-consciously.
The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and drank the whisky
without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded
the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and
took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and
taste.
“Two hundred,” repeated Garvey. “Thar’s the money.”
A sudden passion flared up in Goree’s brain. He struck the table with
his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He
flinched as if something had stung him.
“Do you come to me,” he shouted, “seriously with such a ridiculous,
insulting, darned-fool proposition?”
“It’s fa’r and squar’,” said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out
his hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own
flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger at
himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that were
being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged gentleman
to an anxious chafferer recommending his goods.
“Don’t be in a hurry, Garvey,” he said, his face crimson and his speech
thick. “I accept your p-p-proposition, though it’s dirt cheap at two
hundred. A t-trade’s all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are
s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey?”
Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. “Missis Garvey will be
pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a
scrap ov writin’, Mr. Goree, you bein’ a lawyer, to show we traded.”
Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in his
moist hand. Everything else suddenly seemed to grow trivial and light.
“Bill of sale, by all means. ‘Right, title, and interest in and to’ . .
. ‘forever warrant and—’ No, Garvey, we’ll have to leave out that
‘defend,’” said Goree with a loud laugh. “You’ll have to defend this
title yourself.”
The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him,
folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket.
Goree was standing near the window. “Step here,” he said, raising his
finger, “and I’ll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he
goes, down the other side of the street.”
The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in
the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect,
portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long,
double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high
silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree
glanced at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here
was its counterpart. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the
moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs.
“Is that him? Why, that’s the man who sent me to the pen’tentiary
once!”
“He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly. “And, by the
way, he’s a first-class shot.”
“I kin hit a squirrel’s eye at a hundred yard,” said Garvey. “So that
thar’s Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin’. I’ll take
keer ov this feud, Mr. Goree, better’n you ever did!”
He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight
perplexity.
“Anything else to-day?” inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. “Any family
traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low
as the lowest.”
“Thar was another thing,” replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, “that
Missis Garvey was thinkin’ of. ’Tain’t so much in my line as t’other,
but she wanted partic’lar that I should inquire, and ef you was
willin’, ‘pay fur it,’ she says, ‘fa’r and squar’.’ Thar’s a buryin’
groun’, as you know, Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo’ old place, under the
cedars. Them that lies thar is yo’ folks what was killed by the
Coltranes. The monyments has the names on ’em. Missis Garvey says a
fam’ly buryin’ groun’ is a sho’ sign of quality. She says ef we git the
feud, thar’s somethin’ else ought to go with it. The names on them
monyments is ‘Goree,’ but they can be changed to ourn by—”
“Go! Go!” screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out
both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking. “Go,
you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his
ancestors—go!”
The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he
was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish
celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the
vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown
wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the
court-house.
At three o’clock in the morning they brought him back to his office,
shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county
clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man “from the
valley” acting as escort.
“On the table,” said one of them, and they deposited him there among
the litter of his unprofitable books and papers.
“Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he’s liquored up,” sighed
the sheriff reflectively.
“Too much,” said the gay attorney. “A man has no business to play poker
who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped to-night.”
“Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain’t had
a cent fur over a month, I know.”
“Struck a client, maybe. Well, let’s get home before daylight. He’ll be
all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the
cranium.”
The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye
to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through
the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint
gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching,
white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the
table’s débris, and turned his face from the window. His movement
dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his
eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking
higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly,
smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane.
A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to
make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of
these two families faced each other in peace. Goree’s eyelids puckered
as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he
smiled serenely.
“Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?” he said calmly.
“Do you know me, Yancey?” asked Coltrane.
“Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end.”
So he had—twenty-four years ago; when Yancey’s father was his best
friend.
Goree’s eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. “Lie
still, and I’ll bring you some,” said he. There was a pump in the yard
at the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the
click of its handle, and the bubbling of the falling stream. Coltrane
brought a pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink.
Presently Goree sat up—a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax
soiled and crumpled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He
tried to wave one of his hands toward the colonel.
“Ex-excuse—everything, will you?” he said. “I must have drunk too much
whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table.” His brows knitted
into a puzzled frown.
“Out with the boys awhile?” asked Coltrane kindly.
“No, I went nowhere. I haven’t had a dollar to spend in the last two
months. Struck the demijohn too often, I reckon, as usual.”
Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder.
“A little while ago, Yancey,” he began, “you asked me if I had brought
Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren’t quite awake then, and must
have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I want
you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old
playmate, and to my old friend’s son. They know that I am going to
bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome
as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay
until you are yourself again, and as much longer as you will. We heard
of your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we
agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will
you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with
me?”
“Trouble!” said Goree, opening his eyes wide. “There was never any
trouble between us that I know of. I’m sure we’ve always been the best
friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home as I am—a
drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and gambler—”
He lurched from the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin
tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked
to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple
mountain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting
upon the genuineness of the invitation.
Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in
the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber
from a high mountain-side to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once
invented a device for this purpose—a series of slides and chutes upon
which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow,
delighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread
upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in
demonstration of what he could and would do.
The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again
toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his
thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like
carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the
progress he had made.
Bethel received the surprise of its existence that afternoon when a
Coltrane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by
side they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down
across the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had
brushed and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he
was unsteady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the
contemplation of some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood,
relying upon the influence of changed surroundings to restore his
equilibrium.
Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a
collapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The
colonel, foreseeing such a condition, had provided a small flask of
whisky for the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it
almost with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and
by he was recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he
pulled up his horse suddenly, and said:
“I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I
get that money?”
“Take it easy, Yancey. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We’ll go
fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping
there like bullfrogs. We’ll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a
picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham
sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?”
Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so
Goree retired again into brooding silence.
By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between
Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree
place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road
was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The
tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom.
The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopæia. The glades were dark with
mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and
laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage,
exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze.
Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the
spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of
Painter’s Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and
Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock
he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to
him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the
music of “Home, Sweet Home.”
They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused there
to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was
a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream.
Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house
was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the
fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense.
At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and
saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with
pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent
swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple
orchard in the direction of the house, zig-zagging among the trees.
“That’s Garvey,” said Coltrane; “the man you sold out to. There’s no
doubt but he’s considerably cracked. I had to send him up for
moonshining once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I
believed him irresponsible. Why, what’s the matter, Yancey?”
Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. “Do I
look queer, too?” he asked, trying to smile. “I’m just remembering a
few more things.” Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. “I
recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars.”
“Don’t think of it,” said Coltrane cheerfully. “Later on we’ll figure
it all out together.”
They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill
Goree stopped again.
“Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel?” he
asked. “Sort of foolish proud about appearances?”
The colonel’s eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of
flax and the faded slouch hat.
“It seems to me,” he replied, mystified, but humouring him, “I remember
a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair,
and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge.”
“Right you are,” said Goree eagerly. “And it’s in me yet, though it
don’t show. Oh, I’m as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as
Lucifer. I’m going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a
little matter.”
“Speak out, Yancey. We’ll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue
Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella’s
peacock’s tail to wear in your hat.”
“I’m in earnest. In a few minutes we’ll pass the house up there on the
hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a
century. Strangers live there now—and look at me! I am about to show
myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar.
Colonel Coltrane, I’m ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your
coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a
foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I
pass the old place.”
“Now, what does this mean?” said Coltrane to himself, as he compared
his companion’s sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange
request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as
if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange.
The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him
with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly
the same size—rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were
between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree
looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel
had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on
Goree’s disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat.
“Now,” said Goree, taking up the reins, “I’m all right. I want you to
ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can
get a good look at me. They’ll see I’m no back number yet, by any
means. I guess I’ll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow.
Let’s ride on.”
He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he
had been requested.
Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were
turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and
hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself,
“Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?”
It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he
saw what he had been looking for—a puff of white smoke, coming from the
thick cedars in one corner. He toppled so slowly to the left that
Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with
one arm.
The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet
where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would
pass—through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane’s black frock coat.
Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses
kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel’s arm kept him steady. The
little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile
away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon
Coltrane’s fingers, which held his bridle.
“Good friend,” he said, and that was all.
Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, considering
all things, the best showing that was in his power.
XVI
THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT
Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway
all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the
manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their
argument had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager’s gaze. It was
midnight, and the restaurant was filled with patrons from the theatres
of that district. Some among the dispersed audiences must have
recognized among the quarrelsome sextet the faces of the players
belonging to the Carroll Comedy Company.
Four of the six made up the company. Another was the author of the
comedietta, “A Gay Coquette,” which the quartette of players had been
presenting with fair success at several vaudeville houses in the city.
The sixth at the table was a person inconsequent in the realm of art,
but one at whose bidding many lobsters had perished.
Loudly the six maintained their clamorous debate. No one of the Party
was silent except when answers were stormed from him by the excited
ones. That was the comedian of “A Gay Coquette.” He was a young man
with a face even too melancholy for his profession.
The oral warfare of four immoderate tongues was directed at Miss
Clarice Carroll, the twinkling star of the small aggregation. Excepting
the downcast comedian, all members of the party united in casting upon
her with vehemence the blame of some momentous misfortune. Fifty times
they told her: “It is your fault, Clarice—it is you alone who spoilt
the scene. It is only of late that you have acted this way. At this
rate the sketch will have to be taken off.”
Miss Carroll was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a
vivacity that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a
scorching denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly
menaced the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would
have been a scream had it not possessed so pure a musical quality. She
hurled back at the attacking four their denunciations in tones sweet,
but of too great carrying power for a Broadway restaurant.
Finally they exhausted her patience both as a woman and an artist. She
sprang up like a panther, managed to smash half a dozen plates and
glasses with one royal sweep of her arm, and defied her critics. They
rose and wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked a trifle
sadder and disinterested. The manager came tripping and suggested
peace. He was told to go to the popular synonym for war so promptly
that the affair might have happened at The Hague.
Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign with his hand and a waiter
slipped out of the door. In twenty minutes the party of six was in a
police station facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant.
“Disorderly conduct in a restaurant,” said the policeman who had
brought the party in.
The author of “A Gay Coquette” stepped to the front. He wore
nose-glasses and evening clothes, even if his shoes had been tans
before they met the patent-leather-polish bottle.
“Mr. Sergeant,” said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, “I would
like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are
performing in a little play that I have written, in company with a
friend and myself were having a little supper. We became deeply
interested in the discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible
for a scene in the sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece
is about to become a failure. We may have been rather noisy and
intolerant of interruption by the restaurant people; but the matter was
of considerable importance to all of us. You see that we are sober and
are not the kind of people who desire to raise disturbances. I hope
that the case will not be pressed and that we may be allowed to go.”
“Who makes the charge?” asked the sergeant.
“Me,” said a white-aproned voice in the rear. “De restaurant sent me
to. De gang was raisin’ a rough-house and breakin’ dishes.”
“The dishes were paid for,” said the playwright. “They were not broken
purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for spoiling
the scene, Miss—”
“It’s not true, sergeant,” cried the clear voice of Miss Clarice
Carroll. In a long coat of tan silk and a red-plumed hat, she bounded
before the desk.
“It’s not my fault,” she cried indignantly. “How dare they say such a
thing! I’ve played the title rôle ever since it was staged, and if you
want to know who made it a success, ask the public—that’s all.”
“What Miss Carroll says is true in part,” said the author. “For five
months the comedietta was a drawing-card in the best houses. But during
the last two weeks it has lost favour. There is one scene in it in
which Miss Carroll made a big hit. Now she hardly gets a hand out of
it. She spoils it by acting it entirely different from her old way.”
“It is not my fault,” reiterated the actress.
“There are only two of you on in the scene,” argued the playwright
hotly, “you and Delmars, here—”
“Then it’s his fault,” declared Miss Carroll, with a lightning glance
of scorn from her dark eyes. The comedian caught it, and gazed with
increased melancholy at the panels of the sergeant’s desk.
The night was a dull one in that particular police station.
The sergeant’s long-blunted curiosity awoke a little.
“I’ve heard you,” he said to the author. And then he addressed the
thin-faced and ascetic-looking lady of the company who played “Aunt
Turnip-top” in the little comedy.
“Who do you think spoils the scene you are fussing about?” he asked.
“I’m no knocker,” said that lady, “and everybody knows it. So, when I
say that Clarice falls down every time in that scene I’m judging her
art and not herself. She was great in it once. She does it something
fierce now. It’ll dope the show if she keeps it up.”
The sergeant looked at the comedian.
“You and the lady have this scene together, I understand. I suppose
there’s no use asking you which one of you queers it?”
The comedian avoided the direct rays from the two fixed stars of Miss
Carroll’s eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking down at his patent-leather toes.
“Are you one of the actors?” asked the sergeant of a dwarfish youth
with a middle-aged face.
“Why, say!” replied the last Thespian witness, “you don’t notice any
tin spear in my hands, do you? You haven’t heard me shout: ‘See, the
Emperor comes!’ since I’ve been in here, have you? I guess I’m on the
stage long enough for ’em not to start a panic by mistaking me for a
thin curl of smoke rising above the footlights.”
“In your opinion, if you’ve got one,” said the sergeant, “is the frost
that gathers on the scene in question the work of the lady or the
gentleman who takes part in it?”
The middle-aged youth looked pained.
“I regret to say,” he answered, “that Miss Carroll seems to have lost
her grip on that scene. She’s all right in the rest of the play,
but—but I tell you, sergeant, she can do it—she has done it equal to
any of ’em—and she can do it again.”
Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating.
“Thank you, Jimmy, for the first good word I’ve had in many a day,” she
cried. And then she turned her eager face toward the desk.
“I’ll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. I’ll show them whether
I can do that scene. Come, Mr. Delmars; let us begin. You will let us,
won’t you, sergeant?”
“How long will it take?” asked the sergeant, dubiously.
“Eight minutes,” said the playwright. “The entire play consumes but
thirty.”
“You may go ahead,” said the sergeant. “Most of you seem to side
against the little lady. Maybe she had a right to crack up a saucer or
two in that restaurant. We’ll see how she does the turn before we take
that up.”
The matron of the police station had been standing near, listening to
the singular argument. She came nigher and stood near the sergeant’s
chair. Two or three of the reserves strolled in, big and yawning.
“Before beginning the scene,” said the playwright, “and assuming that
you have not seen a production of ‘A Gay Coquette,’ I will make a brief
but necessary explanation. It is a
musical-farce-comedy—burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss
Carroll’s rôle is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless
coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part
of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so
that she may preserve and present the same coquettish idea.
“Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll’s acting is
called the ‘gorilla dance.’ She is costumed to represent a wood nymph,
and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla—played by Mr.
Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set.
“That used to get four and five recalls. The main thing was the acting
and the dance—it was the funniest thing in New York for five months.
Delmars’s song, ‘I’ll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home,’ while he and Miss
Carroll were cutting hide-and-seek capers among the tropical plants,
was a winner.”
“What’s the trouble with the scene now?” asked the sergeant.
“Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it,” said the playwright
wrathfully.
With a wide gesture of her ever-moving arms the actress waved back the
little group of spectators, leaving a space in front of the desk for
the scene of her vindication or fall. Then she whipped off her long tan
cloak and tossed it across the arm of the policeman who still stood
officially among them.
Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the
tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was
like a humming-bird—green and golden and purple.
And then she danced a fluttering, fantastic dance, so agile and light
and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll
Comedy Company broke into applause at the art of it.
And at the proper time Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking the
uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled
sergeant himself gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They
danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand from all.
Then began the most fantastic part of the scene—the wooing of the nymph
by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself—eccentric and prankish,
with the nymph in coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the
gorilla as he sang “I’ll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home.”
The song was a lyric of merit. The words were nonsense, as befitted the
play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into
it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words.
During one verse of the song the wood nymph performed the grotesque
evolutions designed for the scene. At the middle of the second verse
she stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze
dreamily into the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla’s last leap
had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand,
until he had finished the haunting-lyric that was set in the absurd
comedy like a diamond in a piece of putty.
When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of
tears with both hands.
“There!” cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; “there you
have it, sergeant. For two weeks she has spoiled that scene in just
that manner at every performance. I have begged her to consider that it
is not Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing. Do you wonder now at our
impatience? Tears for the gorilla song! The play is lost!”
Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared
suddenly, and pointed a desperate finger at Delmars.
“It is you—you who have done this,” she cried wildly. “You never sang
that song that way until lately. It is your doing.”
“I give it up,” said the sergeant.
And then the gray-haired matron of the police station came forward from
behind the sergeant’s chair.
“Must an old woman teach you all?” she said. She went up to Miss
Carroll and took her hand.
“The man’s wearing his heart out for you, my dear. Couldn’t you tell it
the first note you heard him sing? All of his monkey flip-flops
wouldn’t have kept it from me. Must you be deaf as well as blind?
That’s why you couldn’t act your part, child. Do you love him or must
he be a gorilla for the rest of his days?”
Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning glance
of her eye. He came toward her, melancholy.
“Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?” she asked, with a catching breath.
“I did,” said the comedian. “It is true. I didn’t think there was any
use. I tried to let you know with the song.”
“Silly!” said the matron; “why didn’t you speak?”
“No, no,” cried the wood nymph, “his way was the best. I didn’t know,
but—it was just what I wanted, Bobby.”
She sprang like a green grasshopper; and the comedian opened his arms,
and—smiled.
“Get out of this,” roared the desk sergeant to the waiting waiter from
the restaurant. “There’s nothing doing here for you.”
XVII
ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH
The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the
Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail:
JUDGE:
When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other hard
things, you called me a rattlesnake. Maybe I am one—anyhow, you hear me
rattling now. One year after I got to the pen, my daughter died
of—well, they said it was poverty and the disgrace together. You’ve got
a daughter, Judge, and I’m going to make you know how it feels to lose
one. And I’m going to bite that district attorney that spoke against
me. I’m free now, and I guess I’ve turned to rattlesnake all right. I
feel like one. I don’t say much, but this is my rattle. Look out when I
strike.
Yours respectfully,
RATTLESNAKE.
Judge Derwent threw the letter carelessly aside. It was nothing new to
receive such epistles from desperate men whom he had been called upon
to judge. He felt no alarm. Later on he showed the letter to
Littlefield, the young district attorney, for Littlefield’s name was
included in the threat, and the judge was punctilious in matters
between himself and his fellow men.
Littlefield honoured the rattle of the writer, as far as it concerned
himself, with a smile of contempt; but he frowned a little over the
reference to the Judge’s daughter, for he and Nancy Derwent were to be
married in the fall.
Littlefield went to the clerk of the court and looked over the records
with him. They decided that the letter might have been sent by Mexico
Sam, a half-breed border desperado who had been imprisoned for
manslaughter four years before. Then official duties crowded the matter
from his mind, and the rattle of the revengeful serpent was forgotten.
Court was in session at Brownsville. Most of the cases to be tried were
charges of smuggling, counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and
violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a
young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy
marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been
suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the
first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz
languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for
trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit dollar and
handed it to the district attorney in his office in the court-house.
The deputy and a reputable druggist were prepared to swear that Ortiz
paid for a bottle of medicine with it. The coin was a poor counterfeit,
soft, dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the day before
the morning on which the docket would reach the case of Ortiz, and the
district attorney was preparing himself for trial.
“Not much need of having in high-priced experts to prove the coin’s
queer, is there, Kil?” smiled Littlefield, as he thumped the dollar
down upon the table, where it fell with no more ring than would have
come from a lump of putty.
“I guess the Greaser’s as good as behind the bars,” said the deputy,
easing up his holsters. “You’ve got him dead. If it had been just one
time, these Mexicans can’t tell good money from bad; but this little
yaller rascal belongs to a gang of counterfeiters, I know. This is the
first time I’ve been able to catch him doing the trick. He’s got a girl
down there in them Mexican jacals on the river bank. I seen her one day
when I was watching him. She’s as pretty as a red heifer in a flower
bed.”
Littlefield shoved the counterfeit dollar into his pocket, and slipped
his memoranda of the case into an envelope. Just then a bright, winsome
face, as frank and jolly as a boy’s, appeared in the doorway, and in
walked Nancy Derwent.
“Oh, Bob, didn’t court adjourn at twelve to-day until to-morrow?” she
asked of Littlefield.
“It did,” said the district attorney, “and I’m very glad of it. I’ve
got a lot of rulings to look up, and—”
“Now, that’s just like you. I wonder you and father don’t turn to law
books or rulings or something! I want you to take me out
plover-shooting this afternoon. Long Prairie is just alive with them.
Don’t say no, please! I want to try my new twelve-bore hammerless. I’ve
sent to the livery stable to engage Fly and Bess for the buckboard;
they stand fire so nicely. I was sure you would go.”
They were to be married in the fall. The glamour was at its height. The
plovers won the day—or, rather, the afternoon—over the calf-bound
authorities. Littlefield began to put his papers away.
There was a knock at the door. Kilpatrick answered it. A beautiful,
dark-eyed girl with a skin tinged with the faintest lemon colour walked
into the room. A black shawl was thrown over her head and wound once
around her neck.
She began to talk in Spanish, a voluble, mournful stream of melancholy
music. Littlefield did not understand Spanish. The deputy did, and he
translated her talk by portions, at intervals holding up his hand to
check the flow of her words.
“She came to see you, Mr. Littlefield. Her name’s Joya Treviñas. She
wants to see you about—well, she’s mixed up with that Rafael Ortiz.
She’s his—she’s his girl. She says he’s innocent. She says she made the
money and got him to pass it. Don’t you believe her, Mr. Littlefield.
That’s the way with these Mexican girls; they’ll lie, steal, or kill
for a fellow when they get stuck on him. Never trust a woman that’s in
love!”
“Mr. Kilpatrick!”
Nancy Derwent’s indignant exclamation caused the deputy to flounder for
a moment in attempting to explain that he had misquoted his own
sentiments, and then he went on with the translation:
“She says she’s willing to take his place in the jail if you’ll let him
out. She says she was down sick with the fever, and the doctor said
she’d die if she didn’t have medicine. That’s why he passed the lead
dollar on the drug store. She says it saved her life. This Rafael seems
to be her honey, all right; there’s a lot of stuff in her talk about
love and such things that you don’t want to hear.”
It was an old story to the district attorney.
“Tell her,” said he, “that I can do nothing. The case comes up in the
morning, and he will have to make his fight before the court.”
Nancy Derwent was not so hardened. She was looking with sympathetic
interest at Joya Treviñas and at Littlefield alternately. The deputy
repeated the district attorney’s words to the girl. She spoke a
sentence or two in a low voice, pulled her shawl closely about her
face, and left the room.
“What did she say then?” asked the district attorney.
“Nothing special,” said the deputy. “She said: ‘If the life of the
one’—let’s see how it went—‘_Si la vida de ella á quien tu amas_—if the
life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.’”
Kilpatrick strolled out through the corridor in the direction of the
marshal’s office.
“Can’t you do anything for them, Bob?” asked Nancy. “It’s such a little
thing—just one counterfeit dollar—to ruin the happiness of two lives!
She was in danger of death, and he did it to save her. Doesn’t the law
know the feeling of pity?”
“It hasn’t a place in jurisprudence, Nan,” said Littlefield,
“especially _in re_ the district attorney’s duty. I’ll promise you that
the prosecution will not be vindictive; but the man is as good as
convicted when the case is called. Witnesses will swear to his passing
the bad dollar which I have in my pocket at this moment as ‘Exhibit A.’
There are no Mexicans on the jury, and it will vote Mr. Greaser guilty
without leaving the box.”
The plover-shooting was fine that afternoon, and in the excitement of
the sport the case of Rafael and the grief of Joya Treviñas was
forgotten. The district attorney and Nancy Derwent drove out from the
town three miles along a smooth, grassy road, and then struck across a
rolling prairie toward a heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond
this creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they
were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their
right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward
the woods at a tangent, as if he had come up behind them.
“I’ve seen that fellow somewhere,” said Littlefield, who had a memory
for faces, “but I can’t exactly place him. Some ranchman, I suppose,
taking a short cut home.”
They spent an hour on Long Prairie, shooting from the buckboard. Nancy
Derwent, an active, outdoor Western girl, was pleased with her
twelve-bore. She had bagged within two brace of her companion’s score.
They started homeward at a gentle trot. When within a hundred yards of
Piedra Creek a man rode out of the timber directly toward them.
“It looks like the man we saw coming over,” remarked Miss Derwent.
As the distance between them lessened, the district attorney suddenly
pulled up his team sharply, with his eyes fixed upon the advancing
horseman. That individual had drawn a Winchester from its scabbard on
his saddle and thrown it over his arm.
“Now I know you, Mexico Sam!” muttered Littlefield to himself. “It was
you who shook your rattles in that gentle epistle.”
Mexico Sam did not leave things long in doubt. He had a nice eye in all
matters relating to firearms, so when he was within good rifle range,
but outside of danger from No. 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and
opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.
The first shot cracked the back of the seat within the two-inch space
between the shoulders of Littlefield and Miss Derwent. The next went
through the dashboard and Littlefield’s trouser leg.
The district attorney hustled Nancy out of the buck-board to the
ground. She was a little pale, but asked no questions. She had the
frontier instinct that accepts conditions in an emergency without
superfluous argument. They kept their guns in hand, and Littlefield
hastily gathered some handfuls of cartridges from the pasteboard box on
the seat and crowded them into his pockets.
“Keep behind the horses, Nan,” he commanded. “That fellow is a ruffian
I sent to prison once. He’s trying to get even. He knows our shot won’t
hurt him at that distance.”
“All right, Bob,” said Nancy steadily. “I’m not afraid. But you come
close, too. Whoa, Bess; stand still, now!”
She stroked Bess’s mane. Littlefield stood with his gun ready, praying
that the desperado would come within range.
But Mexico Sam was playing his vendetta along safe lines. He was a bird
of different feather from the plover. His accurate eye drew an
imaginary line of circumference around the area of danger from
bird-shot, and upon this line he rode. His horse wheeled to the right,
and as his victims rounded to the safe side of their equine breast-work
he sent a ball through the district attorney’s hat. Once he
miscalculated in making a détour, and over-stepped his margin.
Littlefield’s gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked his head to the
harmless patter of the shot. A few of them stung his horse, which
pranced promptly back to the safety line.
The desperado fired again. A little cry came from Nancy Derwent.
Littlefield whirled, with blazing eyes, and saw the blood trickling
down her cheek.
“I’m not hurt, Bob—only a splinter struck me. I think he hit one of the
wheel-spokes.”
“Lord!” groaned Littlefield. “If I only had a charge of buckshot!”
The ruffian got his horse still, and took careful aim. Fly gave a snort
and fell in the harness, struck in the neck. Bess, now disabused of the
idea that plover were being fired at, broke her traces and galloped
wildly away. Mexican Sam sent a ball neatly through the fulness of
Nancy Derwent’s shooting jacket.
“Lie down—lie down!” snapped Littlefield. “Close to the horse—flat on
the ground—so.” He almost threw her upon the grass against the back of
the recumbent Fly. Oddly enough, at that moment the words of the
Mexican girl returned to his mind:
“If the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael
Ortiz.”
Littlefield uttered an exclamation.
“Open fire on him, Nan, across the horse’s back. Fire as fast as you
can! You can’t hurt him, but keep him dodging shot for one minute while
I try to work a little scheme.”
Nancy gave a quick glance at Littlefield, and saw him take out his
pocket-knife and open it. Then she turned her face to obey orders,
keeping up a rapid fire at the enemy.
Mexico Sam waited patiently until this innocuous fusillade ceased. He
had plenty of time, and he did not care to risk the chance of a
bird-shot in his eye when it could be avoided by a little caution. He
pulled his heavy Stetson low down over his face until the shots ceased.
Then he drew a little nearer, and fired with careful aim at what he
could see of his victims above the fallen horse.
Neither of them moved. He urged his horse a few steps nearer. He saw
the district attorney rise to one knee and deliberately level his
shotgun. He pulled his hat down and awaited the harmless rattle of the
tiny pellets.
The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned limp
all over, and slowly fell from his horse—a dead rattlesnake.
At ten o’clock the next morning court opened, and the case of the
United States versus Rafael Ortiz was called. The district attorney,
with his arm in a sling, rose and addressed the court.
“May it please your honour,” he said, “I desire to enter a _nolle
pros._ in this case. Even though the defendant should be guilty, there
is not sufficient evidence in the hands of the government to secure a
conviction. The piece of counterfeit coin upon the identity of which
the case was built is not now available as evidence. I ask, therefore,
that the case be stricken off.”
At the noon recess Kilpatrick strolled into the district attorney’s
office.
“I’ve just been down to take a squint at old Mexico Sam,” said the
deputy. “They’ve got him laid out. Old Mexico was a tough outfit, I
reckon. The boys was wonderin’ down there what you shot him with. Some
said it must have been nails. I never see a gun carry anything to make
holes like he had.”
“I shot him,” said the district attorney, “with Exhibit A of your
counterfeiting case. Lucky thing for me—and somebody else—that it was
as bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil,
can’t you go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives?
Miss Derwent wants to know.”
XVIII
A NEWSPAPER STORY
At 8 A. M. it lay on Giuseppi’s news-stand, still damp from the
presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the
opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a
theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.
This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an
educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and
_vade mecum_.
From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One was
in simple and chaste but illuminating language directed to parents and
teachers, deprecating corporal punishment for children.
Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a
notorious labour leader who was on the point of instigating his clients
to a troublesome strike.
The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained and
aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public
guardians and servants.
Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store
of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid
out by the editor of the heart-to-heart column in the specific case of
a young man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love,
teaching him how he might win her.
Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young lady
inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright eyes,
rosy cheeks and a beautiful countenance.
One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief “personal,”
running thus:
DEAR JACK:—Forgive me. You were right. Meet me corner Madison and —th
at 8.30 this morning. We leave at noon.
PENITENT.
At 8 o’clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam of
unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he
passed Giuseppi’s stand. A sleepless night had left him a late riser.
There was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup
of coffee to be crowded into the interval.
He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed his
paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour. At the
next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair of new
gloves. Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned back
fuming.
Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and
the paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek. He
was holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and looking
into two penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart.
“Dear Jack,” she said, “I knew you would be here on time.”
“I wonder what she means by that,” he was saying to himself; “but it’s
all right, it’s all right.”
A big wind puffed out of the west, picked up the paper from the
sidewalk, opened it out and sent it flying and whirling down a side
street. Up that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel
buggy, the young man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for a
recipe that he might win her for whom he sighed.
The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against
the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay
mingled with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for four
blocks. Then a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony, the
buggy became matchwood as foreordained, and the driver rested very
quietly where he had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain
brownstone mansion.
They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one who
made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes,
bending over and saying, “Oh, it was you; it was you all the time,
Bobby! Couldn’t you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and—”
But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper.
Policeman O’Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic.
Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he
stood a few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Café.
One headline he spelled out ponderously: “The Papers to the Front in a
Move to Help the Police.”
But, whisht! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the crack
of the door: “Here’s a nip for ye, Mike, ould man.”
Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman O’Brine
receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart,
refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view with
pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had blessed his
labours.
Policeman O’Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the arm
of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he took
the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she had
written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable
touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look
for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a
discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get
some braid. Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of the paper Johnny
had brought. When she walked the rustling sound was an exact imitation
of the real thing.
On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped to
talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at $5 a yard could make
the sound that she heard when Gladys moved. The Brown girl, consumed by
jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with pinched lips.
Gladys proceeded toward the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like
jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle,
vivifying, smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the
beauty editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer in
the paper, I believe, about cultivating kind feelings toward others in
order to make plain features attractive.
The labour leader against whom the paper’s solemn and weighty editorial
injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked up
the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic of
silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it
was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that
enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage.
The labour leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with
table, pencil and paper and glued himself to his puzzle.
Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed place,
other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favour of
arbitration, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted.
Subsequent editions of the paper referred, in coloured inks, to the
clarion tone of its successful denunciation of the labour leader’s
intended designs.
The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the
proving of its potency.
When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed
the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had
been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as
are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended
a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been
said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in
that morning’s issue, and no doubt it had its effect.
After this can any one doubt the power of the press?
XIX
TOMMY’S BURGLAR
At ten o’clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with
the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She
detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She
pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall
asleep over one of St. George Rathbone’s novels on the third floor, but
she was overruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.
The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must
have action and not too much description in a 2,000-word story.
In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a
brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the
silver-closet.
Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light.
The dark velvet portières parted to admit a fair-haired boy of eight in
pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.
“Are you a burglar?” he asked, in a sweet, childish voice.
“Listen to that,” exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. “Am I a
burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three-days’ growth of bristly
beard on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and
let me grease the bit, so I won’t wake up your mamma, who is lying down
with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia who has been
faithless to her trust.”
“Oh, dear,” said Tommy, with a sigh. “I thought you would be more
up-to-date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the
pantry for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to
hear De Reszke. But that isn’t my fault. It only shows how long the
story has been knocking around among the editors. If the author had
been wise he’d have changed it to Caruso in the proofs.”
“Be quiet,” hissed the burglar, under his breath. “If you raise an
alarm I’ll wring your neck like a rabbit’s.”
“Like a chicken’s,” corrected Tommy. “You had that wrong. You don’t
wring rabbits’ necks.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?” asked the burglar.
“You know I’m not,” answered Tommy. “Don’t you suppose I know fact from
fiction. If this wasn’t a story I’d yell like an Indian when I saw you;
and you’d probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk.”
“I see,” said the burglar, “that you’re on to your job. Go on with the
performance.”
Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him.
“Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no
friends?”
“I see what you’re driving at,” said the burglar, with a dark frown.
“It’s the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is
going to lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib
where there’s a kid around, it happens.”
“Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef that
the butler has left on the dining table?” said Tommy. “I’m afraid it’s
growing late.”
The burglar accommodated.
“Poor man,” said Tommy. “You must be hungry. If you will please stand
in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat.”
The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of
wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly.
“It’s only been an hour,” he grumbled, “since I had a lobster and a
pint of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let
a fellow have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds.”
“My papa writes books,” remarked Tommy.
The burglar jumped to his feet quickly.
“You said he had gone to the opera,” he hissed, hoarsely and with
immediate suspicion.
“I ought to have explained,” said Tommy. “He didn’t buy the tickets.”
The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone.
“Why do you burgle houses?” asked the boy, wonderingly.
“Because,” replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. “God bless
my little brown-haired boy Bessie at home.”
“Ah,” said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, “you got that answer in the wrong
place. You want to tell your hard-luck story before you pull out the
child stop.”
“Oh, yes,” said the burglar, “I forgot. Well, once I lived in
Milwaukee, and—”
“Take the silver,” said Tommy, rising from his chair.
“Hold on,” said the burglar. “But I moved away.” I could find no other
employment. For a while I managed to support my wife and child by
passing confederate money; but, alas! I was forced to give that up
because it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a
burglar.”
“Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?” asked Tommy.
“I said ‘burglar,’ not ‘beggar,’” answered the cracksman.
“After you finish your lunch,” said Tommy, “and experience the usual
change of heart, how shall we wind up the story?”
“Suppose,” said the burglar, thoughtfully, “that Tony Pastor turns out
earlier than usual to-night, and your father gets in from ‘Parsifal’ at
10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my
own little boy Bessie, and—”
“Say,” said Tommy, “haven’t you got that wrong?”
“Not on your coloured crayon drawings by B. Cory Kilvert,” said the
burglar. “It’s always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling
to the pale-cheeked burglar’s bride. As I was saying, your father opens
the front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches
that you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard
classmate he starts back in—”
“Not in surprise?” interrupted Tommy, with wide, open eyes.
“He starts back in the doorway,” continued the burglar. And then he
rose to his feet and began to shout “Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah,
rah, rah!”
“Well,” said Tommy, wonderingly, “that’s, the first time I ever knew a
burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even
in a story.”
“That’s one on you,” said the burglar, with a laugh. “I was practising
the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is
about the only thing that will make it go.”
Tommy looked his admiration.
“You’re on, all right,” he said.
“And there’s another mistake you’ve made,” said the burglar. “You
should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your
mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie.”
“But she didn’t give it to me to take to Bessie,” said Tommy, pouting.
“Come, come!” said the burglar, sternly. “It’s not nice of you to take
advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know
what I mean. It’s mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs,
anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all
the swag I’m allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces
that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a
little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted
of molasses candy, too. I’ve a good notion to tie this table cover over
your head and keep on into the silver-closet.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t,” said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees.
“Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you’ve got
to preserve the unities.”
“So’ve you,” said the burglar, rather glumly. “Instead of sitting here
talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth, what
you’d like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the
top of your voice.”
“You’re right, old man,” said Tommy, heartily. “I wonder what they make
us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s
neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a
full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of
skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the
burglars act! You’d think editors would know—but what’s the use?”
The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.
“Well, let’s get through with it,” he said. “God bless you, my little
boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie
shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I
shall never burglarize another house—at least not until the June
magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on
me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn and
buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.”
“You haven’t got all the kicks coming to you,” sighed Tommy, crawling
out of his chair. “Think of the sleep I’m losing. But it’s tough on
both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really
rob somebody. Maybe you’ll have the chance if they dramatize us.”
“Never!” said the burglar, gloomily. “Between the box office and my
better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken and
the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I’ll always be broke.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tommy, sympathetically. “But I can’t help myself any
more than you can. It’s one of the canons of household fiction that no
burglar shall be successful. The burglar must be foiled by a kid like
me, or by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal,
Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the
coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story.”
“Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now,” said the burglar, taking
up his lantern and bracebit.
“You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle of wine with
you for Bessie and her mother,” said Tommy, calmly.
“But confound it,” exclaimed the burglar, in an annoyed tone, “they
don’t want it. I’ve got five cases of Château de Beychsvelle at home
that was bottled in 1853. That claret of yours is corked. And you
couldn’t get either of them to look at a chicken unless it was stewed
in champagne. You know, after I get out of the story I don’t have so
many limitations. I make a turn now and then.”
“Yes, but you must take them,” said Tommy, loading his arms with the
bundles.
“Bless you, young master!” recited the burglar, obedient. “Second-Story
Saul will never forget you. And now hurry and let me out, kid. Our
2,000 words must be nearly up.”
Tommy led the way through the hall toward the front door. Suddenly the
burglar stopped and called to him softly: “Ain’t there a cop out there
in front somewhere sparking the girl?”
“Yes,” said Tommy, “but what—”
“I’m afraid he’ll catch me,” said the burglar. “You mustn’t forget that
this is fiction.”
“Great head!” said Tommy, turning. “Come out by the back door.”
XX
A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT
The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.
At the end of that time it was worth it.
Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would
have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of
extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the
prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita
McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown
Sheep Ranch.
There came riding on red roan steeds—or, to be more explicit, on a
paint and a flea-bitten sorrel—two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and
the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the
Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature.
His name was simply Johnny McRoy.
It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable
Rosita’s admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at
the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps’-eyes
that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of
Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy
galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled.
Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race.
He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious,
vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside
their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion.
Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and sixshooters,
the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of
the herders of kine.
But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon
it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed.
“I’ll give you a Christmas present,” he yelled, shrilly, at the door,
with his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an
offhand shot.
His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane’s right ear. The
barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the
bride’s had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers
somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had
been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at
table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great
promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy,
spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white
petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita’s
head.
The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was
considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding.
In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing
in the direction of Mr. McRoy.
“I’ll shoot better next time,” yelled Johnny; “and there’ll be a next
time.” He backed rapidly out the door.
Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the
success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy’s
bullet from the darkness laid him low.
The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for,
while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement, it
was a decided misdemeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he
was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard
him quote the line “Christmas comes but once a year” to the guests.
But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and
away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the
concealing chaparral.
That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the “bad man”
of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss
McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him
for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the
life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He
would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the
slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of
the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly
blood-thirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture
him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican
who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of
eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels
depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom
he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.
Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and
daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons
of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the
object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to
give each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of good he
may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a
throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season,
and this is the way it happened.
One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from
the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous
degree.
One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom,
for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio
Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in
his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with
dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere
beneath his ice and iron.
“I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his
usual mild drawl, “to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got
to give. I’m going to ride over to-morrow night and shoot Madison Lane
in his own house. He got my girl—Rosita would have had me if he hadn’t
cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?”
“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you
can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house to-morrow night. I see old
man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have
Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the
festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t
you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr.
Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”
“I’m going,” repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison
Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long
time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was
married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I
could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h––––l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll
get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get
him.”
“There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t
you go and surrender to the sheriff?”
“I’ll get him,” said the Kid.
Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of
far-away frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed
faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.
When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch-house were brightly
lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of
three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer
ranches.
At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other
cowboys employed on his ranch.
“Now, boys,” said Lane, “keep your eyes open. Walk around the house and
watch the road well. All of you know the ‘Frio Kid,’ as they call him
now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions.
I’m not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She’s been afraid
he’d come in on us every Christmas since we were married.”
The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were making
themselves comfortable inside.
The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised
Rosita’s excellent supper, and afterward the men scattered in groups
about the rooms or on the broad “gallery,” smoking and chatting.
The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all
were they pleased when Santa Claus himself in magnificent white beard
and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys.
“It’s my papa,” announced Billy Sampson, aged six. “I’ve seen him wear
’em before.”
Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was
passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking.
“Well, Mrs. Lane,” said he, “I suppose by this Christmas you’ve gotten
over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven’t you? Madison and I have
talked about it, you know.”
“Very nearly,” said Rosita, smiling, “but I am still nervous sometimes.
I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing
us.”
“He’s the most cold-hearted villain in the world,” said Berkly. “The
citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like
a wolf.”
“He has committed awful crimes,” said Rosita, “but—I—don’t—know. I
think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always
bad—that I know.”
Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in
muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through.
“I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane,” he said. “I was
just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband.
But I’ve left one for you, instead. It’s in the room to your right.”
“Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus,” said Rosita, brightly.
Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler
air of the yard.
She found no one in the room but Madison.
“Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?” she
asked.
“Haven’t seen anything in the way of a present,” said her husband,
laughing, “unless he could have meant me.”
The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into
the post-office at Loma Alta.
“Well, the Frio Kid’s got his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the
postmaster.
“That so? How’d it happen?”
“One of old Sanchez’s Mexican sheep herders did it!—think of it! the
Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along
past his camp about twelve o’clock last night, and was so skeered that
he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was
that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a
regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid
playing Santy!”
XXI
A LITTLE LOCAL COLOUR
I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New
York scenes and incidents—something typical, I told him, without
necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an “i.”
“Oh, for your writing business,” said Rivington; “you couldn’t have
applied to a better shop. What I don’t know about little old New York
wouldn’t make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I’ll put you right in the middle
of so much local colour that you won’t know whether you are a magazine
cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?”
Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth,
preference and incommutability.
I told him that I would be glad to accept his escort and guardianship
so that I might take notes of Manhattan’s grand, gloomy and peculiar
idiosyncrasies, and that the time of so doing would be at his own
convenience.
“We’ll begin this very evening,” said Rivington, himself interested,
like a good fellow. “Dine with me at seven, and then I’ll steer you up
against metropolitan phases so thick you’ll have to have a kinetoscope
to record ’em.”
So I dined with Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh
street, and then we set forth in pursuit of the elusive tincture of
affairs.
As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near the
steps in earnest conversation.
“And by what process of ratiocination,” said one of them, “do you
arrive at the conclusion that the division of society into producing
and non-possessing classes predicates failure when compared with
competitive systems that are monopolizing in tendency and result
inimically to industrial evolution?”
“Oh, come off your perch!” said the other man, who wore glasses. “Your
premises won’t come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply
bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical
conclusions skallybootin’ into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can’t pull
my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and
Hyndman and Kautsky—what are they?—shines! Tolstoi?—his garret is full
of rats. I put it to you over the home-plate that the idea of a
cooperative commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive systems
simply takes the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia of the
roopteetoop! The skookum house for yours!”
I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.
“Oh, come ahead,” said Rivington, somewhat nervously; “you don’t want
to listen to that.”
“Why, man,” I whispered, “this is just what I do want to hear. These
slang types are among your city’s most distinguishing features. Is this
the Bowery variety? I really must hear more of it.”
“If I follow you,” said the man who had spoken first, “you do not
believe it possible to reorganize society on the basis of common
interest?”
“Shinny on your own side!” said the man with glasses. “You never heard
any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe
it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of
mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin
banqueting canister isn’t exactly ready to join the Bible class. You
can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up
from the Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully
old bloke like Cobden or some wise guy like old Ben Franklin to sashay
up to the front and biff the nigger’s head with the baseball. Do you
catch my smoke? What?”
Rivington pulled me by the arm impatiently.
“Please come on,” he said. “Let’s go see something. This isn’t what you
want.”
“Indeed, it is,” I said resisting. “This tough talk is the very stuff
that counts. There is a picturesqueness about the speech of the lower
order of people that is quite unique. Did you say that this is the
Bowery variety of slang?”
“Oh, well,” said Rivington, giving it up, “I’ll tell you straight.
That’s one of our college professors talking. He ran down for a day or
two at the club. It’s a sort of fad with him lately to use slang in his
conversation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is talking to
is one of New York’s famous social economists. Now will you come on.
You can’t use that, you know.”
“No,” I agreed; “I can’t use that. Would you call that typical of New
York?”
“Of course not,” said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you
see the difference. But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery
slang I’ll take you down where you’ll get your fill of it.”
“I would like it,” I said; “that is, if it’s the real thing. I’ve often
read it in books, but I never heard it. Do you think it will be
dangerous to go unprotected among those characters?”
“Oh, no,” said Rivington; “not at this time of night. To tell the
truth, I haven’t been along the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as
well as I do Broadway. We’ll look up some of the typical Bowery boys
and get them to talk. It’ll be worth your while. They talk a peculiar
dialect that you won’t hear anywhere else on earth.”
Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second street car and then south
on the Third avenue line.
At Houston street we got off and walked.
“We are now on the famous Bowery,” said Rivington; “the Bowery
celebrated in song and story.”
We passed block after block of “gents’” furnishing stores—the windows
full of shirts with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows
were neckties and no shirts. People walked up and down the sidewalks.
“In some ways,” said I, “this reminds me of Kokomono, Ind., during the
peach-crating season.”
Rivington was nettled.
“Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows,” said he, “with a
large roll of money, and see how quickly the Bowery will sustain its
reputation.”
“You make impossible conditions,” said I, coldly.
By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart of the
Bowery. There was a policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew.
“Hallo, Donahue!” said my guide. “How goes it? My friend and I are down
this way looking up a bit of local colour. He’s anxious to meet one of
the Bowery types. Can’t you put us on to something genuine in that
line—something that’s got the colour, you know?”
Policeman Donahue turned himself about ponderously, his florid face
full of good-nature. He pointed with his club down the street.
“Sure!” he said huskily. “Here comes a lad now that was born on the
Bowery and knows every inch of it. If he’s ever been above Bleecker
street he’s kept it to himself.”
A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was
sauntering toward us with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman
Donahue stopped him with a courteous wave of his club.
“Evening, Kerry,” he said. “Here’s a couple of gents, friends of mine,
that want to hear you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel
’em off a few yards?”
“Certainly, Donahue,” said the young man, pleasantly. “Good evening,
gentlemen,” he said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked off on
his beat.
“This is the goods,” whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow.
“Look at his jaw!”
“Say, cull,” said Rivington, pushing back his hat, “wot’s doin’? Me and
my friend’s taking a look down de old line—see? De copper tipped us off
dat you was wise to de bowery. Is dat right?”
I could not help admiring Rivington’s power of adapting himself to his
surroundings.