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Plain Mary Smith
A Romance of Red Saunders
By Henry Wallace Phillips
With Illustrations
By Martin Justice
New York
The Century Co.
1905
Copyright, 1905, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1905, by
FRANK LESLIE PUBLISHING HOUSE
(Incorporated)
_Published October, 1905_
THE DE VINNE PRESS
[Illustration: "I grabbed cans of tomatoes, and pasted the heap"]
CONTENTS
I "BUT WASN'T IT A GORGEOUS SMASH!"
II "THE VILLAGE PRIDE"
III SANDY GRAY
IV THE FIGHT
V "ON MY BUREAU WAS A KNIFE--"
VI "I'M MARY SMITH"
VII "SAVE ME, ARTHUR!"
VIII ARCHIE OUT OF ASPINWALL
IX ENTER BROTHER BELKNAP
X "YOUR LIFE, IF YOU HURT HIM!"
XI SAXTON'S STORY
XII BILL MEETS A RELATIVE
XIII RED MAKES A FEW REMARKS
XIV BROTHER BELKNAP'S REVOLUTION
XV TOMATOES BY THE QUART
XVI RED PLAYS TRUMPS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"I grabbed cans of tomatoes, and pasted the heap"
"'You git married and shuck them clothes'"
"'You fight that boy fair'"
"I left home ... mother and father both waving me good-by in the road"
"The _Matilda_ saw a whale, or something, and shied"
"He grabbed up his wooden box and made a miracle"
"'Still wearing your legs cut short, I see'"
"I laid two strong hands on Archie's mane"
"I crowded my victim down against the saddle with my left hand"
PLAIN MARY SMITH
A ROMANCE OF RED SAUNDERS
I
"BUT WASN'T IT A GORGEOUS SMASH!"
Old Foster used to say the reason some women married men they entirely
should not was because nature tried to even up all round. Very likely
that's it, but it's a rocky scheme for the Little Results. When my
mother married my father, it was the wonder of the neighborhood. I don't
fully understand it to this day, as many things as I've seen.
She was a beautiful, tall, kind, proud woman, who walked as if she owned
the world and loved it; from her I get my French blood. Was there a dog
got his foot run over? Here he comes for mother, hollering and
whimpering, showing her the paw and telling her all about it, sure she'd
understand. And she did. 'Twixt her and the brutes was some kind of
sympathy that did away with need of words. Doggy'd look at her with
eyebrows up and wigwag with his tail, "Left hind leg very painful. Fix
it, but touch lightly, _if_ you please."
Father was a gaunt, big man, black and pale; stormy night to her
sunshine. A good man, estimated by what he didn't do (which is a queer
way to figure goodness), but a powerful discourager on the active side.
He believed in Hell first, last, and all the time; I think he felt some
scornful toward the Almighty for such a weak and frivolous institution
as Heaven. How much of this was due to his own nature, and how much to
the crowd he traveled with, I don't know. He had to have it in him to go
with them; still, I like to think they led him off. Left to mother's
influence, he'd have been a different man--more as I remembered him when
I was a little chap. This "church" of his was down on everything that
had a touch of color, a pleasant sound, or a laugh in it: all such was
wickedness. I remember how I got whaled for kissing Mattie. A boy that
wouldn't kiss Mattie if she'd let him should have been trimmed to a
peak. However, I got whaled for anything and everything. In this he was
supported by his fellow church-members, most of 'em high-cheek-boned men
with feverish eyes, like himself. "Take heed to the word, Brother
Saunders," they'd say: "'Spare the rod and spoil the child.'" So
father'd refuse to spare the rod, and he'd spoil me for the time being,
anyhow.
They weren't all men of that stamp, though. You can't get a crowd of
fools to hold together unless there's a rascal to lead them. Anker was
the boss of the business--and a proper coyote he was. A little man, him;
long-nosed and slit-eyed; whispered, mostly, from behind his hand. He
had it in for me, most particular. First place, I nicknamed him "Canker"
and it stuck; next place, one day me and Tom, Mattie's brother, being
then about sixteen apiece, come up from swimming and stopped at Anker's
patch to pull a turnip. While we sat there, cutting off slices and
enjoying it, never thinking of having harmed the man, Anker slides out
to us, so quiet we couldn't hear him till he was right there, and calls
us a pair of reprobates and thieves. I never liked the sound of that
word "thief." He got the turnip. He'd have got worse, too, but Tom slung
the sleeve of his shirt around my neck and choked me down.
The turnip sent him to grass. As he got up, smiling with half his mouth,
and wiping turnip off his manly brow, "You'll regret this, young man,"
says he; "some day you'll be sorry for this."
Poor Tom had his hands full holding me. "Well, you'd better run along,"
says he; "for if this shirt gives way, _you'll_ regret it to-day."
Anker was a man to give advice, generally. When he cast an eye on me,
foaming and r'aring, he concluded he'd take the same, for once, and
ambled out of that.
He kept his word, though. He made me regret it. You'd hardly believe a
man near fifty years old would hold a grudge against a sixteen-year-old
boy hard enough to lie about him on every occasion, and poison the boy's
father's mind, would you? That's the facts. He stirred the old man up by
things he "really didn't like to tell, you know, but felt it his painful
duty"--and so forth. Yes, sir; he made me regret it plenty. You might
say he broke our home up. And so, if ever I meet that gentleman in the
hereafter, above or below, him and me is going to have some kind of a
scuffle--but shucks! There's no use getting excited over it at my age.
The good Lord's attended to his case all right, without any help from
me.
In all kinds of little things mother and father were separated by miles.
Take the case of old Eli Perkins, the tin-peddler, for instance. Mother
used to love to buy things from Eli, to hear him bargain and squirm,
trying his best to give you a wrong steer, without lying right out.
"Well, now, Mis' Saunders," he'd say, "I ain't sayin' _myself_ thet thet
pan is solerd tin; I'm on'y repeatin' of what I bin tolt. I du' know es
it _be_ solerd tin; mebbe not. In thet case, of course, it ain't wuth
nineteen cents, es I was sayin', but about, about ... well, well, now!
I'll tell you what I'll do, ma'am. I'll say fourteen cents and a few of
them Baldwins to take the taste out 'n my mouth--can't do no fairer than
thet now, kin I? Yassam--well, nuthin' more _to_-day? Thankee, ma'am."
And Eli'd drive off, leaving mother and me highly entertained. But
father'd scowl when his eye fell on Eli. It seems that the poor old cuss
was a child of the devil, because he would take Chief Okochohoggammee's
Celebrated Snaggerroot Indian Bitters for some trouble Eli felt drawing
toward him and tried to meet in time. When Eli got an overdose of the
chief's medicine he had one song. Then you heard him warble:
"Retur-n-n-n-i-n' from mar-r-r-ket,
Thebutterneggsallsold,
And--will you be so kind, young man,
And tie 'em up for _ME_?
Yaas I will, yaas I will, w'en we git UPon the hill.
And we joggled erlong tergether singin'
TOORAL-I-YOODLE-I-AAAAAAAAAAAAY!!"
Well, sir, to hear it, and to see Eli, with his head bent back near to
break off, his old billy-goat whisker wagging to the tune, was to obtain
a pleasant memory. The way that "TOORAL-I-YOODLE-I-AY" come out used to
start old Dandy Jim, the horse, on a dead run.
Another offspring of the same split-hoof parent was Bobby Scott, the
one-legged sailorman that used to whittle boats for us boys when he was
sober, and go home from the tavern Saturday nights at the queerest gait
you ever saw, playing his accordion and scattering pennies to the kids.
I always liked any kind of music; pennies didn't come my way so
often--how were you going to make me believe Old Bob was a wicked
sinner? I didn't, nor that Eli was neither. I thought a heap of both of
'em.
But railroading was what gave me the first wrench from the home tree. It
happened one evening I wandered over the hills to the end of the little
jerk-line that ran our way, and watched the hostler put the engine in
the shed for the night. It was a small tea-pot of an engine that one of
our Western 'Guls could smear all over the track and never know there'd
been an accident, but, man! she looked big to me. And the hostler! Well,
I classed him with the lad that hooked half-dollars out of the air at
the Sunday-school show, and took a rabbit out of Judge Smalley's hat.
But the hostler was a still more wonderful man. I tried to figure if
he'd ever speak to me, and what I should do if he did. Every time I got
the chores done early, I skipped it over to the railroad, till finally
the hostler he sees a long-legged boy eating him with his eyes, and he
says:
"Hello, bub!"
I scuffed my feet and said, "Good morning."
The hostler spit careful over the top of the switch and says, with one
eye shut, "Like a ride?"
Well!!
Howsomever, it seemed manners to me to refuse all pleasant propositions,
so I said "no" and prepared to slide away. But he was a wise man.
"Better come down to the shed," he says. So I climbed aboard with no
more talk.
"This is the throttle," says he. "You pull that and she goes: try it."
Notwithstanding I expected that engine to explode and scatter us the
minute a strange hand was laid on her, I wrastled my nerve together and
moved the lever a tiny bit. "Chow!" says the old engine,
"Chow-chow-chow!" and I near had a fit with pride and scaredness. It
_is_ a great sensation to hold them big critters under your hand. I
never knew an engineer yet that got rid of it entirely.
So there was me, white in the face with grandeur, hogging the engine
into the shed. I couldn't sleep much that night. When I did doze off, it
was to travel a great many miles a minute on a road-bed laid flat
against the side of a mountain, with an engine that had wash-tubs for
drivers, and was run by winding up by a crank, like the old clock in the
hall. Lord! how I whizzed around the turns! Grinding away like a
lunatic, until the road ended--just ended, that's all, and off we went
into the air. From that on I had business at the railroad every evening
I could get off.
I went over to my engine one night. There wasn't a soul around. My
friend was as ingenious a Yank as ever helped make this world a factory.
He'd got up a scheme for a brake, almost the identical thing with the
air-brake they use to-day, except Jerry took pressure into his
brake-pistons straight from the boiler. He spent every cent he had to
get one made and put on his pusher. How he used to explain it to me, and
tell me what we'd do when he sold his patent! For he was a great friend
of mine, Jerry was, and I knew the workings of that brake as well as he
did himself. The reason he wasn't around was that he'd taken the pusher
down the line to show his scheme to some railroad people. So there stood
an engine all alone--the one I was used to, I thought--and it occurred
to me there'd be no particular harm if I got aboard and moved her up and
down the track a foot or two--you see, I'd never had her single-handed.
So I started easy, and reversed her, and played around that way for a
while, till naturally I got venturesome. One stunt that Jerry and I
loved to try was to check her up short with his patent brake. The poor
old pusher never got put to bed without being stood on end a half-dozen
times; that suggested to me that I'd slam her down on the shed doors and
see how near I could come to them without hitting. I backed 'way off,
set her on the corner, yanked the throttle, and we boiled for the shed,
me as satisfied with myself as could be. I didn't leave much margin for
stopping, so there wasn't a lot of track left when I reached down for
the brake-lever, and found--it wasn't there! If some day you reach for
something and find your right arm's missing, you'll know how I felt. In
the little bit of time before the smash, there wasn't a scrap of my
brain working--and then, Holy Jeeroosalum! How we rammed that shed! The
door fell over, cleaning that engine to the boiler; stack, bell,
sand-box, and whistle lay in the dust, and all of the cab but where I
sat. Quicker'n lightning we bulled through the other end, and the rest
of the cab left there. How it come I didn't get killed, I don't
know--all that remained of the shed was a ruin, and that had a list to
port that would have scart a Cape-Horner. I woke up then and threw her
over kerbang, but she went into the bunker squirting fire from her
drivers. I shut her down, took one despairing look, and says out loud,
"I guess I'll go home."
I felt about as bad as falls to the lot of man at any age. Jerry was
sure to get into trouble over it; he'd make a shrewd guess at who did
it, whether I told or not, and his confidence in me would be a thing of
the past--nothing but black clouds on the sky-line, whilst inside of me
some kind of little devil was hollering all the time, "But wasn't it a
gorgeous smash!"
I went home and to bed that night without speaking, resolved to let my
misfortunes leak out when they got ready. That's the kind of resolution
I've never been able to keep--I've got to face a thing, got to get it
done with, swallow my medicine, and clean the table for a new deal.
Next morning I told father. You can imagine how easy it was--me
stumbling and stuttering while he sat there, still as if he'd been
painted for the occasion.
"Have you entirely finished?" says he, when the sound of my words hit my
ears with such a lonesome feeling that I quit talking.
"Yes, sir," I says, "that's about all of it."
"Well, William, I see you're determined to make our name a disgrace
through the community," he begins again. That was out of whooping range
from the truth. I hadn't determined to do anything to our name, nor
nothing else, when I got aboard that engine. Far from me had it been to
determine anything, so I filed a protest.
"Why, father," I says, "it was an accident--it was just as if you'd
hopped into a neighbor's wagon, not noticing the head-stall wasn't on
the horse, and the critter'd run away, and things--" Here again I run
down with a buzz. He wasn't paying the least heed to the sense of what I
said. It only interrupted him. He sailed right on, explaining how I was
the most undiluted scoundrel of his acquaintance, an all-wool villain of
the closest weave, built to hold sin like a Navajo blanket does water.
Now I understand that the old gentleman did think a lot of me, and, of
course, wanted me to be as near like him as possible, as representing
the highest style of man--it was his disappointment he poured on me, not
his judgment. But then, I was sixteen by the clock, and I thought, of
all the fool laying-outs I'd heard, that crossed the rope an easy first.
I wanted to respect my father; you can't guess how much I wanted to, but
when he insisted on talking like Eli Perkins's mule, it simply wasn't
possible. He stood there, black and sullen, and I stood there, red and
sullen.
"Get yourself ready to go with me," he says, turns on his heel, and
walks to the house, his hands clasped behind his back, and his big head
leant forrard,--a fine, powerful chunk of a man, all right. Oh, Lord!
What he could have been if he'd listened to mother instead of Anker!
There wasn't a man in this county more respected, nor whose word was
better thought of on any subject outside of his own family, and that
hydrophobia of a doctrine of his. Honest? Why, he was the savings-bank
of the place. All the old hayseeds around there turned their surplus in
to him to take care of, instead of putting it in a sock,--and I want you
to understand that the real old Yankee farmer, with tobacco juice on his
whiskers, was a man you'd fool just once in a lifetime, and you'd sit up
more'n one night to figure how you got the best of it, then.
Well, down him and me goes to the railroad office, and I have to tell my
tale. I begged hard to be allowed to leave Jerry out of it, but no--that
wouldn't do: it would be a lie. I always stood ready to lie to any
extent to help a friend. I think that hurt me worse than the rest of it.
After some parleying around the offices, we were shown up into a private
room. There sat three men, officers of the company, and Jerry.
My father made few words of his part, simply saying he stood prepared to
pay all damages, although he could ill afford it, and that I would tell
the story.
First off, I was embarrassed, but soon I was flying my arms around, and
letting 'em know all about it, as if we'd played together for years.
Two of those men had been boys once; they had an almighty hard job to
keep an official face on, as some of my interest in engineering, and my
satisfaction in having made a corking old bust-up of her while I was at
it, crept into my discourse. The third man was in an ugly state of
liquor. He let out on me, although the others said, "Come! Come!"
Father's face was something to look at when he saw the only man that
sided with him was three-quarters loaded.
After giving me a blast, this bucko, who I believe was president of the
company, kind of falls over on his desk and opens up on Jerry, while my
heart broke entirely. He was about as reasonable toward Jerry as my
father had been toward me. The other two bit their lips, as if they
weren't going to stand for a whole lot more; everybody that knew Jerry,
liked him.
Howsomever, Jeremiah was a prophet in his own country. He belonged to
that tribe of Yankees that don't seem to be born very fast these days,
but long may they wave! the good-natured, able kind that feared the face
of no man nor the hoof of no jackass, and always had something to say
that wrecked the situation.
He walks carefully over to the side of the room to where the spittoon
was, so's he could talk with freedom, and sidles easily back again, and
says he, "Mr. Hawkins, you've lit on me like a sparrow-hawk. If I
thought you was in condition to make a speech, I'd feel tolerable cast
down. As it is, I advise you to go out and take another snifter,--I
appeal from Caesar drunk to Caesar drunker." Well, sir, those other two
let out a yell and fell on the floor; the old president, he r'ars up
with massacre in his eye for a minute, and then it got the best of him.
"Shut your noise, you damn fools," says he to the others; then to Jerry,
"With the loan of your arm, I'll fill your prescription." So off he
toddles to the door. When he got there he turned around, and fixed upon
my father a stern but uncertain eye.
"_I'm_ drunk with liquor, sir," says he, "and there's recovery in that
case; but _you're_ drunk on your own virtue,--may God have mercy on your
soul! Take the boy home and use him right,--there is no bill to pay."
II
"THE VILLAGE PRIDE"
Well, mother gave me a long talking to, after that. Not scolding, but
conversation, just as if I was a human being. Somehow it's easier to get
along with me that way.
I reckon I averaged three sessions a week in the woodshed, but father
might as well have walloped a lime-kiln, for all the tears he drew out
of me.
Yet let mother talk to me in her quiet way--easy and gentle, the words
soaking in, and the first thing you knew, I had a lump in my throat, and
some blamed thing got in my eyes.
I wanted to do what was right by all of them, I certainly did. It was a
misfit all round, there's where the trouble come. Father couldn't
possibly enter into my feelings. Sixteen I was, staggering with
strength, red-headed, and aching to be at something all the time. It
ain't in reason I could remember to put one foot before the
other--right-left, right-left, day in and day out.
Then, as soon as I'd cleaned up all the boys in our place, every young
man for miles around who made pretensions to being double-handed came to
find what I was made of.
It's all right to say don't fight, but when this young man slouched
along and cast disparagin' eyes in my direction, it was plain somebody
had to be hurt, and it might as well not be me.
Honest, I'd rather have been in the woods, fishing, or just laying on my
back, watching the pines swinging over me, so slow, so regular, tasting
the smell of 'em, and fancying I was an Injun or Mr. Ivanhoe, or
whatever idee was uppermost at the time, than out in the dusty road,
smiting my fellow-man. But if you should be mean enough to ask me if I
took no pleasure in the art of assault and battery, I'd have to admit a
slight inclination.
Not that I wanted to hurt anybody, either--small malice there was in
those mix-ups! I reckon, with the other lad, as with me, it was more a
case of doing your little darnedest--of letting out all you held, once
in so often--that made the interest.
But father was powerful opposed to scrapping, and, of course, mother
didn't like it, neither. The only place a woman likes a row is in a
book.
Women is fond of bargains. They like a fine fight with no bills to pay.
It was a little that way with mother. This time she was talking to me,
she brought up for my instruction Great-grandfather Saunders, who fought
in the Revolution. He was one of 'em that clubbed their muskets at
Bunker Hill. When they asked the old man about it afterward he said he
acted that way because he was too darned scart to run. Howsomever, he
was a fair-to-medium quarrelsome old gentleman when his blood was up.
Mother carefully explained to me that was different--_he_ was fighting
for his country. Yet, at the same time, I recollect seeing a letter the
old man wrote, calling his neighbors a lot of rum-swilling,
psalm-singing hypocrites. Now a man's neighbors are his country. I think
Grandpa Saunders liked a row, myself.
Next, mother told me about my French forebears, and a nice peaceful lot
they were, for sure. The head of the outfit--the Sieur De La
Tour--sassed the king himself to his teeth--he didn't care no more about
a king than I do--unless it happened to match on a two-card draw. There
was some racket about a friend of Many-times-great-grandfather De La
Tour's offending the king. He took refuge with the old man, while
the king sent the sheriff after him. "You must yield him to the
king!" says the sheriff. "Not to any king under God!" says
Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour. Hence, trouble. My! How
mother's eyes shone when she repeated that proud answer. Yet suppose I
sassed father like that? There's something about distance lending
enchantment to the view. Well, they downed the old man, although he
stacked the posse around him in great shape. Meantime his friend was
using both feet to acquire some of that distance to lend enchantment to
the view, I just spoke of.
One thing stuck out in these old-timers. Whatever their faults might be,
meanness wasn't one of 'em. Therefore I indorsed the lot. I left her
that day determined to be such a son as anybody would be proud of. Why,
in half an hour's time I was wondering how I could make the virtuous
jobs last. Already my chest swelled, as I see myself pointed to on the
street as a model boy.
My first stagger at being the Village Pride come off next day--Sunday.
It would take a poet to describe how much I didn't like Sunday, and a
large, black-whiskered poet, at that. Man! Sitting in that little old
church of a warm day, with the bees bumbling outside, and all kinds of
smells coaxing, coaxing me to the woods, and a kind of uneasy, dry
feeling of the skin, that only the water-hole by the cider-mill could
cure. Then to know, too, that the godless offspring of the unregenerate
were at that minute diving from the dam--chow!--into the slippery cool
water--and me the best diver in the crowd....
I wriggled, squirmed my fingers into knots, and let my fancy roam.
Roaming fancy was my one amusement in church.
We had the kind of minister who roars one minute and whispers the next.
I always imagined he shouted as loud as he dared, short of waking the
baby. I never was done being surprised, after he'd hissed the conclusion
through his teeth in a way that should have sent chills down your
backbone, to hear him rattle off a bunch of notices as fast as he could
talk.
I couldn't get interested in the sermon, so my mind wandered. At times
an elephant sneaked through the back door and blew a barrel of water
down the preacher's back. Then there was the monkey. He skipped gaily
from pew to pew, yanking the women's bonnets off, pulling the men's
hair, hanging from the roof-beams by his tail, and applying a
disrespectful thumb to his nose. That elephant and monkey got to be as
real as anything. Sometimes they'd jump into life when I wasn't thinking
of 'em at all.
This Sunday, however, I made a manful stand against temptation. As soon
as the elephant peeked through the door, I took a long breath and forced
him out. I didn't let the monkey much more 'n bob his head over Deacon
Anker's pew, although one of my pet delights was when he grabbed the
deacon's top-knot and twisted it into a rope.
And my reward for an honest try was to listen to as lovely a tale of
treachery and unladylike behavior as I can remember. The sermon was
about a Mrs. Jael. She took in one of the enemy, fed him fine, and while
he was asleep, grabbed a hammer and a railroad spike and nailed him to
the floor by his head. Whilst I was revolving in my mind how, and on
what person, I could best apply these teachings, another thought
occurred to me.
"Mother!" I whispers, pulling her sleeve.
"Sssh!" says she; "what is it, Will?"
"You never could have done that," I says.
She squeezed my hand and whispered back, "You're right, Will," with an
approving smile.
"No," says I, still full of my discovery, "you'd have pounded your
thumb."
Her face went ten different ways and then she snorted right out. It was
a scandal. It took her so by surprise she couldn't get the best of it,
so we two had to leave the church. When we got outside she sat down and
laughed for five minutes.
"Whatever does possess you to say such things?" she says. "It was
dreadful!"
Next day father patted me on the back with a nice limber sapling, for
misbehavior in church. This caused the first show of rebellion I ever
saw in mother.
She came out to the woodshed when court was in session.
"I'd like to speak to you a minute," she says to father.
"I have no time now," he answers short.
"I'd like to speak to you a minute," repeats mother: there was a hint of
Many-times-great-grandfather De La Tour in her tones. Father considered
for a minute; then laid down the club and went out. First they talked
quietly. Next, I heard mother--not because she spoke loud, but because
there was such a push behind the words:
"I am as much a culprit as he is," she says; "why not use the whip on
me?"
Father talked strong about being master in his own house, and like that.
It was bluff--boy that I was, I caught the hollow ring of it. Yet mother
changed her tone instantly. She turned gently to argument. "You _are_
the master," she says; "but would you make your own son a slave? Why do
you treat mistakes as crimes? Why do you expect a man's control in a
sixteen-year-old boy? I have never asked for much, but now I ask--"
They walked so far away I couldn't hear what she asked. I didn't care.
She was on my side; I'll swear I didn't feel the ridges on my back.
When father returned and said, "Well, you can go now," I left that
woodshed a happy boy.
I made up my mind even stronger to be a monument of behavior. Whether it
was mother's talk, or that I did really keep out of scrapes, at least I
got through the week without a thrashing.
Then come Sunday again. My Sunday-school teacher was a maiden lady by
the name of Mehitabel Demilt--aunt to Thomas F., my present partner.
Miss Hitty wasn't much to look at. Growing her nose had absorbed most of
her vitality, and her years was such she could have looked on a good
part of mankind right motherly, if she'd been inclined that way.
Howsomever, she wore the styles of sweet sixteen, and whenever a man
come around she frisked like a clothes-horse.
But a kinder woman never lived. When with the boys she dropped her
tomfoolery, too. Trouble was, them young clothes stood for all she
dreamt of--give them dreams the go-by, and the race was lost for poor
Miss Hitty. Feathers flyin' and ribbons streaming, she made herself
believe she was still in the running; without 'em, she knew only too
well what it was to be a lonely, long-nosed, forsaken, homely old maid.
I don't blame her a particle. Her finery stood to her like whisky to a
busted man. Take a little wine for your stomachache, and a few clothes
for your heartache.
A trifle gay for father's crowd was Miss Hitty, but they didn't dast to
say a word. She belonged to one of our best families, and her
brother-in-law, who could be as ungodly a man under provocation as you
ever see, held a mortgage on the church. He'd 'a' dumped the outfit into
the snows of winter, and never a second thought, if they didn't treat
Miss Hitty right. So they overlooked things and gave her the Bible class
to run. Mighty nice to us boys she was; she certainly was. Curious mix
of part child and part horse-sense woman. The woman savvied her place
all right, but the child part couldn't stand for the pain of it.
If there was anything that made Miss Hitty warlike it was cruelty. Seems
the Mrs. Jael sermon riled her plumb through. I suppose, perhaps, she
didn't understand how any woman could be so recklessly extravagant as to
drive a nail through a sound man's head, and spoil him. Miss Hitty might
have spiked his coat-tails to the floor, but his head? Never. Joshing
aside, she beat the tom-tom over that sermon, giving us boys a medicine
talk that sticks still: how we were all fools not to make the earth as
pleasant as we could, so long 's we got to live here. It seemed
reasonable. I thought about it all that night, trying to find a subject
to make better and happier, as Miss Hitty said.
Before I went to sleep I'd located my victim. First thing in the morning
I went and told mother all about it. You know I'm medium enthusiastic
over what I'm going to do, so I was laying it off to her in great shape,
when I brought up short, seeing her eyes full of tears. I plumped down
and hugged her.
"What's the matter? I didn't mean to make you cry," I says, feeling it
was my luck to do the wrong thing, and not half try.
"I'm not crying, little boy," she says; "I'm only one of those ladies in
the books who don't want their true-loves to go to war." She kissed me.
We often used to play parts of those books, so I took it just as she
said, thinking it astonishing how well she acted the part; not much
realizing what it meant to a mother who loved her boy, and knew he meant
no harm, to have him clubbed all the time. But she shook off the tears
right away.
"Arise!" says she, laughing, and putting a flower in my coat. "Arise,
Sir William of the Hot Heart! Go thy way and conquer."
So I giggled and looked simple, give her one of them boys' kisses that
would come under the head of painful operations to anybody but a mother,
and skipped, as graceful as legs four foot long would permit, to my new
job.
III
SANDY GRAY
The saying, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,"
oughtn't to be taken too literal. For instance, if Foster was sick abed,
nothing could please him more than reading about how Professor So-and-so
had mixed a little of this acid and a squirt of that other truck, and
found out what his highly esteemed friend Herr Doctor Professor
Schmittygeshucks said about the results wasn't true at all. And such
thrilling stories. Week on end you could feed Fos that and keep him
happy. Now, when Fos boiled this stuff down to my understanding, I was
interested, too; but, right off the bat, I shouldn't care for it if I
was sick. I'd rather hear something about the beauteous maid and her
feller. Or a tune on the guitar. Or a little chin concerning the way
Baldy Smith tried to play six cards in a jack-pot, and what happened to
Baldy almost instantly afterward. No, sir, you can't stick too close to
doing what you'd like to have done to you, because tastes differ.
The foundation on which I put my plan for increasing human happiness was
the queerest little cuss you ever did see. A kid about twelve years old,
who looked to be a hundred and ten even before Sammy Perkins shot his
eye out and shrunk him up on one side. It was an accident, of course.
Sammy'd saved nigh a year, till he had three dollars and seventy-five
cents gathered in a heap to buy a bored-out army musket. Then he invited
Sandy Gray to go with him; they started to rid the country of wild
critters. They walked and they walked, but Heaven mercifully preserved
the rabbits. So it become time for lunch, and also Sandy was now an
Injun, whilst Sammy was Iron-jawed Pete, the Nightmare of the Red Man.
Iron-jawed Pete says to Chief Sandy Eagle-bird, "Pick up chips! Make a
fire!" But the haughty soul of the noble savage riz at the notion. Be
darned if he'd pick up chips. "All right," says Iron-jawed Pete, "then
I'll shoot you." And, the gun not being loaded, he promptly blew Sandy
full of bird-shot. I've heard about these wonderful destroyers--cannon a
quarter of a mile long, that shoot bullets the size of hogsheads with
force enough to knock a grasshopper off a spear of wheat at twenty-three
and one third miles; and while I'm somewhat impressed, I can't but feel
there's nothing like the old-fashioned, reliable, unloaded gun. Who ever
heard of man, woman, or child missing with a gun that wasn't loaded? If
I was a leader of a forlorn hope in particularly sad conditions, I'd say
to my trusty men, "Boys, them guns ain't loaded," and instantly close a
contract at so much a ton for removing the remnants of the enemy.
It cost Sammy's father many a dollar to square it with Gray's folks.
They were a hard outfit, anyhow--what is called white trash down South.
The father used to get drunk, come home, break the furniture, and throw
the old woman out of the house; that is, if she didn't happen to be
drunk at the time. In the last case, he come home, got the furniture
broke on him, and was thrown out of the house.
It wasn't an ideal home, like Miss Doolittle is always talking about.
The kids gave Sandy a wide berth after the shooting, but my sympathies
went out to him. He was a good opening, you see. I want to state right
here, though, it wasn't all getting my name up. All my life I've had a
womanish horror of men or animals with their gear out of order. I'd walk
ten mile to dodge a cripple. And this here Sandy, with his queer little
hop, and his little claw hands, and his twist to one side, and his long
nose, and his little black eyes, and his black hair hanging in streaks
down on his yaller and dirt-colored face, looked like nothing else on
earth so much as a boiled pet crow.
When I jumped over the Grays' back fence, I see my friend Sandy playing
behind the ruin they called a barn. Execution was the game he played. He
had a gallows fixed up real natural. Just as I come up he was hanging a
cat.
"The Lord have mercy on your soul!" squeaks Sandy, pulling the drop.
Down goes the cat, wriggling so natural she near lost a half a dozen of
her lives before I recovered enough to interfere. I resisted a craving
to kick Mr. Sandy over the barn, and struck in to amuse him at something
else. First off, he hung back, but by and by I had him tearing around
lively, because we were aboard ship with a storm coming up to port, a
pirate to sta'bbud, breakers forrud, and a rocky coast aft. Anybody
would step quick under them conditions. So Sandy he moseyed aloft and
hollered down the pirates was gaining on us, the storm approaching fast,
the breakers breaking worse than ever, and the rock-bound coast holding
its own. I hastily mounted three cord wood cannon, reefed the barn door,
and battened down the hatches in the chicken-coop, without a hen being
the wiser.
We were in the most interesting part when an unexpected enemy arrived on
the scene, in the person of Sandy's mother, and did us in a single pass.
She saw him up in the tree; she give me one glare and begun to talk.
I climbed the fence and went home. All the way back I felt this was a
wicked and ungrateful world. The more I thought about it, the worse I
felt. I wanted to get to my own room without mother's seeing me, but she
came to the head of the stair when I was half up. "Well, son," she says,
smiling so it didn't seem quite such a desert, "how did you make out
with the little Gray boy?"
"Oh, not anything special," says I, airily, hoping to pass by.
"Come in and tell me," she says. So I went in, hedging at first, but
limbering up when she stroked my hair. Finally my wrongs come out hot
and fast. I told about his hanging the cat, and made it as bad as I
could. I enlarged upon the care and pains I spent in leading him into
better ways.
"And, then," says I, "just as we were having a good time, that mother of
his comes out. And what do you suppose she says?"
Mother rubbed her hand over her mouth, swallowed once or twice, and
managed to look as serious as anything. "I can't imagine," she answers;
"you tell me."
I shook my finger. "Can I say exactly what that woman said?"
"Yes."
"Well," says I, imitating Mrs. Gray, voice and all--voice like a
horse-fiddle, head stuck front, and elbows wide apart--"well," I says,
"she looked up the tree and saw Sandy. 'Sandy Gra-a-y!' she hollers;
'Sandy Gray! You one-eyed, warp-sided, nateral-born fool! What you mean,
playing with that Bill Saunders? You come in this house quick, afore you
git you' other gol-damn eye knocked out!'"
Mother dropped her sewing and had a fit on the spot. That made me mad
for a minute. Then I laughed, too.
"Don't give up, Will," says mother. "It takes time to learn to do the
right thing. You kiss your mother and forget all about it--you didn't
want Mrs. Gray to pay you for amusing Sandy, anyway, did you?"
"Of course not," I replies. "But she needn't of.... Darn him, he was
hanging a cat!"
Mother went off the handle again.
"Perhaps you _like_ people who hang cats?" I says, very scornful, the
sore spot hurting again.
"Now, Will, don't be silly!" says mother. "Try again; think how funny it
would have seemed to you, if it had happened to any one else."
"That's so," I admits, my red hair smoothing down. "Well, I'll try
again; but no more Sandy Grays."
IV
THE FIGHT
The next day my friend Mrs. Gray waylaid father, and told him fervently
she didn't want me teachin' her Sandy none of my fool tricks.
And the old gentleman read me the riot act trimmed me to a peak, by word
of mouth. There's where me and righteous conduct near parted company.
I'm afraid I sassed the old man a little. I was awful sore, you know.
Anyway, it wound up unpleasant. Father wouldn't listen to my side, as
usual, and I'll leave it to any man that's tried to do the right thing
and had it explode with him to realize how I felt. Boys have feelings.
There's lots of folk don't believe it, but I've studied boys to a
certain extent, and I'm willing to bet small sums they're almost like
persons in that respect.
I got ugly under the pressure. Then I beat the head near off Anker's
slimy little whelp, as the only relief in sight. That was dead wrong. He
was 'way smaller 'n me, and hadn't done nothing at the time to deserve
it. I went on father's principle that although no immediate cause was
visible, yet there was plenty in the past and future to lick him for, so
I lammed his both eyes black, bunged up his nose, and sent him hollering
home. He met our schoolteacher on the way. Mr. Judson and I come
together fairly regular, yet we liked each other. He was a square man,
Samuel Judson, and he knew kids from thirty years' experience. He never
made but one mistake with me, and he come out and begged my pardon
before the whole school for that. Father sneered at his doing it--saying
a teacher ought to uphold discipline, and to beg a boy's pardon was just
inviting all kinds of skulduggery. Howsomever, Sammy Judson won me by
that play. When he put the gad on me it was with the best of feelings on
both sides. I can see the old lad now, smiling a thin little smile, sort
of sourcastic, yet real kind underneath, whilst he twiddled the switch
in his hands.
"Just let me trim a certain amount of foolishness out of you, and you'll
make a fine man--a _fine_ man, William," he'd say. And perhaps you think
that small thin gentleman didn't know how to make a hickory bite! He
could get every tender spot, by instinct.
Well, he met young Mr. Anker, as I was saying, and asked him what ailed
him. Algy explained the foul way I treated him, careful not to let the
tale lose anything.
"Ah!" says Sammy, "and what was this for?"
"For nothing at all--not a thing!"
Sammy looks at him from under his shaggy eyebrows. "I've often longed to
thrash you for that same reason," says he, and marches on.
But lovely Peter! Father handed me back my mistreating Algy with
interest on the investment. Pheeew! And talk! I was the most cowardly
brute in the country--to assault and batter a poor, nice, gentlemanly
little boy--a great big hulking scoundrel like myself--why, it passed
all crimes in history. Old Uncle Nero scratching the fiddle, while the
fire-insurance companies tore their hair, was a public benefactor
compared to me.
That passed. I was only hindered, not stopped, in my reckless career of
Village Pride. I'm a kind of determined cuss. But Fate sprung a stuffed
deck on me. I did a piece of reforming really worth doing, but it cost
me my home. Moreover, I was perfectly innocent of the intention. Don't
it beat the devil? To tell it longhand, the play come up like this:
We had a party in our town who deserved a statue in the Hall--Mary Ann
McCracken by name. She was a Holy Terror. Never before nor since have I
seen anything like Mary Ann. I reckon she had about sixty years to her
credit, and two hundred pounds to show for 'em. She ran a dairy up on
the hill, doing her own milking and delivering, with only one
long-suffering man to help out. I always remember that man walking
around with one hand flying in the air, talking to himself, but when
Miss Mary Ann said in her bass voice, "Pete! You Pete!" "Yessum,
yessum!" says Pete as polite as possible.
The old lady used to bend slowly toward you, as if taking aim with her
nose, and she fired her remarks through and through you. She'd sprung a
plank somewhere, and had a little list to the side, but not at all
enough so she couldn't take care of her own business and any other
body's that come her way. When she went by father's house she used to
roar, "Hark, froom the toomb--a doooleful sound!" because she hated
everything concerning father's church, from the cellar to the
lightning-rod. One day she was talking to mother, that she happened to
like, snorting scornful, as was her custom, when father had the bad luck
to appear on the scene.
"Adele Delatter," says Mary Ann, "what made you marry that man?"
pointing a finger at father like a horse-pistol. "What made you marry
him, heh? heh? Don't you answer me. Hunh. He ain't got blood in his
veins at all; he turns decent vittels to vinegar. Hah. His mother's milk
curddled in his stummick." She humped up her back and shook both fists.
"He orter married _me_!" says she; "I'd 'a' fixed him! He'd orter
married ME!" She b'iled over entirely and galloped for the gate. "I'd
wring his cussed neck, if I stayed a minute longer!" she hollers. When
she got in the wagon she rumbled and "pah'd" and "humphed." Then she
stuck her red face out and yelled, "Orter married me. _I'd_ give him all
the hell he needed! Pah, pish, yah! Git out o' here, Jacky hoss, before
you take to singin' hymns!"
She's the only human being I ever met that did just exactly what he,
she, or it sweetly damned pleased to do. In that way, she's restful to
remember. Most of us have got to copper, once in a while; but nothing
above, below, nor between ever made her hedge a mill.
Well, I was walking home from Sunday-school with Miss Hitty one Sunday,
trying to get points on my new system, when who should we see bearin'
down the street, all sails set and every gun loaded, but Miss Mary Ann
McCracken! The first blast she give us was:
"Ha, Mehitabel! Gallivantin' around with the boys, now that the men's
give out, hey?"
Poor little Miss Hitty was flummexed fool-hardy. She stuttered out some
kind of answer, instead of breakin' for home.
"Oh, my! my! my!" says Mary Ann, not paying the least attention to Miss
Hitty's remarks. "My!" says she, "you'd ought to shuck them clothes.
What you wastin' your time on boys fur? You was always hombly, Hitty;
yes, but you're clean--I'll say that for you--you're _clean_. You stand
some chance yet. You git married and shuck them clothes--_but shuck them
clothes anyhow_!"
[Illustration: "'You git married and shuck them clothes'"]
You could have heard her to Willet's Mountain. And away she flew.
Miss Hitty cried all the way home. I did my best to comfort her, but
Mary Ann jabbed deep. She was child entirely when we reached her front
door, and she turned to me just like a child.
"_Must_ I wear different clothes, Will?" she says.
"Not a darn bit," says I. "Not for all the jealous, pop-eyed old
Jezebels in ten townships."
She stood a moment, relieved, but still doubtful. "I don't know but what
I _should_," she said. Then I got in the argument that went every time,
on every question, in those parts. "Why, Miss Hitty!" I says, "how you
talk! Think of the cost of it!"
She was so grateful she threw both arms and her parasol around my neck
and kissed me then and there. "I won't!" she says, stamping her foot, "I
won't! I won't!" and she swept into the house real spirited, like a
high-strung mouse.
So it come I was Miss Hitty's champion.
Algy Anker happened to see Miss Hitty kiss me, and, of course, I heard
from it. All the gay wags in town took a fly out of me. Even old Eli led
me mysteriously to one side and whispered he believed in helping young
fellers, so, when I was getting my outfit--he winked--why, he'd make a
big reduction in tinware. I stood most of the gaffing pretty well,
although I couldn't stop at any place without adding to the collection
of rural jokes, but at last one man stepped over the line that separates
a red-head from war.
There was always a crowd of country loafers around the tavern. A city
loafer ain't like a country loafer. The city loafer is a blackguard that
ain't got a point in his favor, except that he's different from the
country loafer.
One day I had to go by the tavern and I see Mick Murphy tilted back in
his chair, hat over eyes, thumbs in suspenders; big neck busting his
shirt open, big legs busting through the pants' legs, big feet busting
through the ends of his curved-up shoes, and a week's growth of
pig-bristles busting out of his red face. Mick was the bold bully of the
rough crowd--fellers from twenty to twenty-five. He worked till he got
money enough to buy whisky, then he got drunk and licked somebody.
The course of such lads is pretty regular. Mick was about a year from
robbing hen-roosts. Next to hen-roosts comes holding up the lone farmer.
Then the gang gets brash entirely, two or three are killed, and the rest
land in the pen. You wouldn't believe hardly what kiddish minds these
ignorant, hulking brutes have sometimes, nor how, sometimes, they come
to the front, big, bigger than life-size. A painter wouldn't waste a
minute putting down Mick Murphy as a thing of beauty. Little bits of
eyes, near hid with whisky bloat; big puffy lips, stained with tobacco
juice till they looked like the blood was coming through; dirty-handed,
dirty-clothed, and dirty-mouthed--yah! And still--well, when I remember
how that bulldozer went up a burning flight of stairs, tore a burning
door off with them big dirty hands, and brought a little girl down
through a wallow of flames, taking the coat off his back to wrap around
her, and how the pride of the man come out when the mother stumbled
toward him, calling on God to reward him, and he straightened under the
pain and said, "Ah, that's all right, ledy! 'F your ol' man'll stand a
drink an' a new shirt we'll call it square." The son-of-a-gun never left
his bed for six weeks--why, he was broiled all down one side--why, when
I remember that, I can't call up such a disgust for old Mick.
As I said, I see Mick Murphy leaning back in his chair at the tavern. Of
course, he had a word to say about me and Miss Hitty. Now, the bare
sight of Mick used to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck and
growls boil inside of me. I just naturally disliked that man. So I
sassed him plenty. He got mad and threatened to slap my face. I sassed
him more, and he _did_ slap my face. In one twenty-fifth of a second I
caught him on his rum-bouquet and sent him plumb off his feet--not bad
for a sixteen-year-old, when you consider the other party was an
accomplished rough-houser. Yes, sir, he went right down, clean, more
from the quickness than the stuff behind the blow, as I hadn't anywheres
near grew into my strength yet. The tavern crowd set up a roar, and then
jumped to interfere, for Mick he roared, too, and made to pull me apart.
The onlookers wouldn't stand for it. They weren't such high-toned gents,
but a contest between a leggy kid and a powerful man looked too far off
the level.