he thus enacted, a love of realism was increasing within him. Early
childhood is not fastidious about the accessories of its drama--a cane
is vividly a gun which may instantly, as vividly, become a horse; but at
Penrod's time of life the lath sword is no longer satisfactory. Indeed,
he now had a vague sense that weapons of wood were unworthy to the point
of being contemptible and ridiculous, and he employed them only when he
was alone and unseen. For months a yearning had grown more and more
poignant in his vitals, and this yearning was symbolized by one of his
most profound secrets. In the inner pocket of his jacket he carried a
bit of wood whittled into the distant likeness of a pistol, but not even
Sam Williams had seen it. The wooden pistol never knew the light of day,
save when Penrod was in solitude; and yet it never left his side except
at night, when it was placed under his pillow. Still, it did not
satisfy; it was but the token of his yearning and his dream. With all
his might and main Penrod longed for one thing beyond all others. He
wanted a Real Pistol!
That was natural. Pictures of real pistols being used to magnificently
romantic effect were upon almost all the billboards in town, the year
round; and as for the "movie" shows, they could not have lived an hour
unpistoled. In the drug store, where Penrod bought his candy and soda
when he was in funds, he would linger to turn the pages of periodicals
whose illustrations were fascinatingly pistolic. Some of the magazines
upon the very library table at home were sprinkled with pictures of
people (usually in evening clothes) pointing pistols at other people.
Nay, the Library Board of the town had emitted a "Selected List of
Fifteen Books for Boys," and Penrod had read fourteen of them with
pleasure, but as the fifteenth contained no weapons in the earlier
chapters and held forth little prospect of any shooting at all, he
abandoned it halfway, and read the most sanguinary of the other fourteen
over again. So, the daily food of his imagination being gun, what wonder
that he thirsted for the Real!
He passed from the sidewalk into his own yard, with a subdued "Bing!"
inflicted upon the stolid person of a gatepost, and, entering the house
through the kitchen, ceased to bing for a time. However, driven back
from the fore part of the house by a dismal sound of callers, he
returned to the kitchen and sat down.
"Della," he said to the cook, "do you know what I'd do if you was a
crook and I had my ottomatic with me?"
Della was industrious and preoccupied. "If I was a cook!" she repeated
ignorantly, and with no cordiality. "Well, I _am_ a cook. I'm a-cookin'
right now. Either g'wan in the house where y'b'long, or git out in th'
yard!"
Penrod chose the latter, and betook himself slowly to the back fence,
where he was greeted in a boisterous manner by his wistful little old
dog, Duke, returning from some affair of his own in the alley.
"Get down!" said Penrod coldly, and bestowed a spiritless "Bing!" upon
him.
At this moment a shout was heard from the alley, "Yay, Penrod!" and the
sandy head of comrade Sam Williams appeared above the fence.
"Come on over," said Penrod.
As Sam obediently climbed the fence, the little old dog, Duke, moved
slowly away, but presently, glancing back over his shoulder and seeing
the two boys standing together, he broke into a trot and disappeared
round a corner of the house. He was a dog of long and enlightening
experience; and he made it clear that the conjunction of Penrod and Sam
portended events which, from his point of view, might be unfortunate.
Duke had a forgiving disposition, but he also possessed a melancholy
wisdom. In the company of either Penrod or Sam, alone, affection often
caused him to linger, albeit with a little pessimism, but, when he saw
them together, he invariably withdrew in as unobtrusive a manner as
haste would allow.
"What you doin'?" Sam asked.
"Nothin'. What you?"
"I'll show you if you'll come over to our house," said Sam, who was
wearing an important and secretive expression.
"What for?" Penrod showed little interest.
"Well, I said I'd show you if you came on over, didn't I?"
"But you haven't got anything I haven't got," said Penrod indifferently.
"I know everything that's in your yard and in your stable, and there
isn't a thing----"
"I didn't say it was in the yard or in the stable, did I?"
"Well, there ain't anything in your house," returned Penrod frankly,
"that I'd walk two feet to look at--not a thing!"
"Oh, no!" Sam assumed mockery. "Oh, no, you wouldn't! You know what it
is, don't you? Yes, you do!"
Penrod's curiosity stirred somewhat.
"Well, all right," he said, "I got nothin' to do. I just as soon go.
What is it?"
"You wait and see," said Sam, as they climbed the fence. "I bet _your_
ole eyes'll open pretty far in about a minute or so!"
"I bet they don't. It takes a good deal to get me excited, unless it's
sumpthing mighty----"
"You'll see!" Sam promised.
He opened an alley gate and stepped into his own yard in a manner
signaling caution--though the exploit, thus far, certainly required
none--and Penrod began to be impressed and hopeful. They entered the
house, silently, encountering no one, and Sam led the way upstairs,
tiptoeing, implying unusual and increasing peril. Turning, in the upper
hall, they went into Sam's father's bedroom, and Sam closed the door
with a caution so genuine that already Penrod's eyes began to fulfill
his host's prediction. Adventures in another boy's house are trying to
the nerves; and another boy's father's bedroom, when invaded, has a
violated sanctity that is almost appalling. Penrod felt that something
was about to happen--something much more important than he had
anticipated.
Sam tiptoed across the room to a chest of drawers, and, kneeling,
carefully pulled out the lowest drawer until the surface of its
contents--Mr. Williams' winter underwear--lay exposed. Then he fumbled
beneath the garments and drew forth a large object, displaying it
triumphantly to the satisfactorily dumbfounded Penrod.
It was a blue-steel Colt's revolver, of the heaviest pattern made in the
Seventies. Mr. Williams had inherited it from Sam's grandfather (a small
man, a deacon, and dyspeptic) and it was larger and more horrible than
any revolver either of the boys had ever seen in any picture, moving or
stationary. Moreover, greenish bullets of great size were to be seen in
the chambers of the cylinder, suggesting massacre rather than mere
murder. This revolver was Real and it was Loaded!
Both boys lived breathlessly through a magnificent moment.
"Leave me have it!" gasped Penrod. "Leave me have hold of it!"
"You wait a minute!" Sam protested, in a whisper. "I want to show you
how I do."
"No; you let me show you how _I_ do!" Penrod insisted; and they scuffled
for possession.
"Look out!" Sam whispered warningly. "It might go off."
"Then you better leave me have it!" And Penrod, victorious and flushed,
stepped back, the weapon in his grasp. "Here," he said, "this is the way
I do: You be a crook; and suppose you got a dagger, and I----"
"I don't want any dagger," Sam protested, advancing. "I want that
revolaver. It's my father's revolaver, ain't it?"
"Well, _wait_ a minute, can't you? I got a right to show you the way I
_do_, first, haven't I?" Penrod began an improvization on the spot. "Say
I'm comin' along after dark like this--look, Sam! And say you try to
make a jump at me----"
"I won't!" Sam declined this role impatiently. "I guess it ain't your
father's revolaver, is it?"
"Well, it may be _your_ father's but it ain't yours," Penrod argued,
becoming logical. "It ain't either's of us revolaver, so I got as much
right----"
"You haven't either. It's my fath----"
"_Watch_, can't you--just a minute!" Penrod urged vehemently. "I'm not
goin' to keep it, am I? You can have it when I get through, can't you?
Here's how _I_ do: I'm comin' along after dark, just walkin' along this
way--like this--look, Sam!"
Penrod, suiting the action to the word, walked to the other end of the
room, swinging the revolver at his side with affected carelessness.
"I'm just walkin' along like this, and first I don't see you," continued
the actor. "Then I kind of get a notion sumpthing wrong's liable to
happen, so I---- No!" He interrupted himself abruptly. "No; that isn't
it. You wouldn't notice that I had my good ole revolaver with me. You
wouldn't think I had one, because it'd be under my coat like this, and
you wouldn't see it." Penrod stuck the muzzle of the pistol into the
waistband of his knickerbockers at the left side and, buttoning his
jacket, sustained the weapon in concealment by pressure of his elbow.
"So you think I haven't got any; you think I'm just a man comin' along,
and so you----"
Sam advanced. "Well, you've had your turn," he said. "Now, it's mine.
I'm goin' to show you how I----"
"_Watch_ me, can't you?" Penrod wailed. "I haven't showed you how _I_
do, have I? My goodness! Can't you watch me a minute?"
"I _have_ been! You said yourself it'd be my turn soon as you----"
"My goodness! Let me have a _chance_, can't you?" Penrod retreated to
the wall, turning his right side toward Sam and keeping the revolver
still protected under his coat. "I got to have my turn first, haven't
I?"
"Well, yours is over long ago."
"It isn't either! I----"
"Anyway," said Sam decidedly, clutching him by the right shoulder and
endeavoring to reach his left side--"anyway, I'm goin' to have it now."
"You said I could have my turn out!" Penrod, carried away by
indignation, raised his voice.
"I did not!" Sam, likewise lost to caution, asserted his denial loudly.
"You did, too."
"You said----"
"I never said anything!"
"You said---- Quit that!"
"Boys!" Mrs. Williams, Sam's mother, opened the door of the room and
stood upon the threshold. The scuffling of Sam and Penrod ceased
instantly, and they stood hushed and stricken, while fear fell upon
them. "Boys, you weren't quarreling, were you?"
"Ma'am?" said Sam.
"Were you quarreling with Penrod?"
"No, ma'am," answered Sam in a small voice.
"It sounded like it. What was the matter?"
Both boys returned her curious glance with meekness. They were summoning
their faculties--which were needed. Indeed, these are the crises which
prepare a boy for the business difficulties of his later life. Penrod,
with the huge weapon beneath his jacket, insecurely supported by an
elbow and by a waistband which he instantly began to distrust,
experienced distressful sensations similar to those of the owner of too
heavily insured property carrying a gasoline can under his overcoat and
detained for conversation by a policeman. And if, in the coming years,
it was to be Penrod's lot to find himself in that precise situation, no
doubt he would be the better prepared for it on account of this present
afternoon's experience under the scalding eye of Mrs. Williams. It
should be added that Mrs. Williams's eye was awful to the imagination
only. It was a gentle eye and but mildly curious, having no remote
suspicion of the dreadful truth, for Sam had backed upon the chest of
drawers and closed the damnatory open one with the calves of his legs.
Sam, not bearing the fatal evidence upon his person, was in a better
state than Penrod, though when boys fall into the stillness now assumed
by these two, it should be understood that they are suffering. Penrod,
in fact, was the prey to apprehension so keen that the actual pit of his
stomach was cold.
Being the actual custodian of the crime, he understood that his case was
several degrees more serious than that of Sam, who, in the event of
detection, would be convicted as only an accessory. It was a lesson, and
Penrod already repented his selfishness in not allowing Sam to show how
he did, first.
"You're sure you weren't quarreling, Sam?" said Mrs. Williams.
"No, ma'am; we were just talking."
Still she seemed dimly uneasy, and her eyes swung to Penrod.
"What were you and Sam talking about, Penrod?"
"Ma'am?"
"What were you talking about?"
Penrod gulped invisibly.
"Well," he murmured, "it wasn't much. Different things."
"What things?"
"Oh, just sumpthing. Different things."
"I'm glad you weren't quarreling," said Mrs. Williams, reassured by this
reply, which, though somewhat baffling, was thoroughly familiar to her
ear. "Now, if you'll come downstairs, I'll give you each one cookie and
no more, so your appetites won't be spoiled for your dinners."
She stood, evidently expecting them to precede her. To linger might
renew vague suspicion, causing it to become more definite; and boys
preserve themselves from moment to moment, not often attempting to
secure the future. Consequently, the apprehensive Sam and the
unfortunate Penrod (with the monstrous implement bulking against his
ribs) walked out of the room and down the stairs, their countenances
indicating an interior condition of solemnity. And a curious shade of
behavior might have here interested a criminologist. Penrod endeavored
to keep as close to Sam as possible, like a lonely person seeking
company, while, on the other hand, Sam kept moving away from Penrod,
seeming to desire an appearance of aloofness.
"Go into the library, boys," said Mrs. Williams, as the three reached
the foot of the stairs. "I'll bring you your cookies. Papa's in there."
Under her eye the two entered the library, to find Mr. Williams reading
his evening paper. He looked up pleasantly, but it seemed to Penrod that
he had an ominous and penetrating expression.
"What have you been up to, you boys?" inquired this enemy.
"Nothing," said Sam. "Different things."
"What like?"
"Oh--just different things."
Mr. Williams nodded; then his glance rested casually upon Penrod.
"What's the matter with your arm, Penrod?"
Penrod became paler, and Sam withdrew from him almost conspicuously.
"Sir?"
"I said, What's the matter with your arm?"
"Which one?" Penrod quavered.
"Your left. You seem to be holding it in an unnatural position. Have you
hurt it?"
Penrod swallowed. "Yes, sir. A boy bit me--I mean a dog--a dog bit me."
Mr. Williams murmured sympathetically: "That's too bad! Where did he
bite you?"
"On the--right on the elbow."
"Good gracious! Perhaps you ought to have it cauterized."
"Sir?"
"Did you have a doctor look at it?"
"No, sir. My mother put some stuff from the drug store on it."
"Oh, I see. Probably it's all right, then."
"Yes, sir." Penrod drew breath more freely, and accepted the warm cookie
Mrs. Williams brought him. He ate it without relish.
"You can have only one apiece," she said. "It's too near dinner-time.
You needn't beg for any more, because you can't have 'em."
They were good about that; they were in no frame of digestion for
cookies.
"Was it your own dog that bit you?" Mr. Williams inquired.
"Sir? No, sir. It wasn't Duke."
"Penrod!" Mrs. Williams exclaimed. "When did it happen?"
"I don't remember just when," he answered feebly. "I guess it was day
before yesterday."
"Gracious! How did it----"
"He--he just came up and bit me."
"Why, that's terrible! It might be dangerous for other children," said
Mrs. Williams, with a solicitous glance at Sam. "Don't you know whom he
belongs to?"
"No'm. It was just a dog."
"You poor boy! Your mother must have been dreadfully frightened when you
came home and she saw----"
She was interrupted by the entrance of a middle-aged colored woman. "Miz
Williams," she began, and then, as she caught sight of Penrod, she
addressed him directly, "You' ma telefoam if you here, send you home
right away, 'cause they waitin' dinner on you."
"Run along, then," said Mrs. Williams, patting the visitor lightly upon
his shoulder; and she accompanied him to the front door. "Tell your
mother I'm so sorry about your getting bitten, and you must take good
care of it, Penrod."
"Yes'm."
Penrod lingered helplessly outside the doorway, looking at Sam, who
stood partially obscured in the hall, behind Mrs. Williams. Penrod's
eyes, with a veiled anguish, conveyed a pleading for help as well as a
horror of the position in which he found himself. Sam, however, pale and
determined, seemed to have assumed a stony attitude of detachment, as if
it were well understood between them that his own comparative innocence
was established, and that whatever catastrophe ensued, Penrod had
brought it on and must bear the brunt of it alone.
"Well, you'd better run along, since they're waiting for you at home,"
said Mrs. Williams, closing the door. "Good-night, Penrod."
. . . Ten minutes later Penrod took his place at his own dinner-table,
somewhat breathless but with an expression of perfect composure.
"Can't you _ever_ come home without being telephoned for?" demanded his
father.
"Yes, sir." And Penrod added reproachfully, placing the blame upon
members of Mr. Schofield's own class, "Sam's mother and father kept me,
or I'd been home long ago. They would keep on talkin', and I guess I had
to be _polite_, didn't I?"
His left arm was as free as his right; there was no dreadful bulk
beneath his jacket, and at Penrod's age the future is too far away to be
worried about. The difference between temporary security and permanent
security is left for grown people. To Penrod, security was security, and
before his dinner was half eaten his spirit had become fairly serene.
Nevertheless, when he entered the empty carriage-house of the stable, on
his return from school the next afternoon, his expression was not
altogether without apprehension, and he stood in the doorway looking
well about him before he lifted a loosened plank in the flooring and
took from beneath it the grand old weapon of the Williams family. Nor
did his eye lighten with any pleasurable excitement as he sat himself
down in a shadowy corner and began some sketchy experiments with the
mechanism. The allure of first sight was gone. In Mr. Williams'
bed-chamber, with Sam clamoring for possession, it had seemed to Penrod
that nothing in the world was so desirable as to have that revolver in
his own hands--it was his dream come true. But, for reasons not
definitely known to him, the charm had departed; he turned the cylinder
gingerly, almost with distaste; and slowly there stole over him a
feeling that there was something repellent and threatening in the heavy
blue steel.
Thus does the long-dreamed Real misbehave--not only for Penrod!
More out of a sense of duty to bingism in general than for any other
reason, he pointed the revolver at the lawn-mower, and gloomingly
murmured, "Bing!"
Simultaneously, a low and cautious voice sounded from the yard outside,
"Yay, Penrod!" and Sam Williams darkened the doorway, his eye falling
instantly upon the weapon in his friend's hand. Sam seemed relieved to
see it.
"You didn't get caught with it, did you?" he said hastily.
Penrod shook his head, rising.
"I guess not! I guess I got _some_ brains around me," he added, inspired
by Sam's presence to assume a slight swagger. "They'd have to get up
pretty early to find any good ole revolaver, once I got _my_ hands on
it!"
"I guess we can keep it, all right," Sam said confidentially. "Because
this morning papa was putting on his winter underclothes and he found it
wasn't there, and they looked all over and everywhere, and he was pretty
mad, and said he knew it was those cheap plumbers stole it that mamma
got instead of the regular plumbers he always used to have, and he said
there wasn't any chance ever gettin' it back, because you couldn't tell
which one took it, and they'd all swear it wasn't them. So it looks like
we could keep it for our revolaver, Penrod, don't it? I'll give you half
of it."
Penrod affected some enthusiasm. "Sam, we'll keep it out here in the
stable."
"Yes, and we'll go huntin' with it. We'll do lots of things with it!"
But Sam made no effort to take it, and neither boy seemed to feel
yesterday's necessity to show the other how he did. "Wait till next
Fourth o' July!" Sam continued. "Oh, oh! Look out!"
This incited a genuine spark from Penrod.
"Fourth o' July! I guess she'll be a little better than any
firecrackers! Just a little 'Bing! Bing! Bing!' she'll be goin'. 'Bing!
Bing! Bing!'"
The suggestion of noise stirred his comrade. "I'll bet she'll go off
louder'n that time the gas-works blew up! I wouldn't be afraid to shoot
her off _any_ time."
"I bet you would," said Penrod. "You aren't used to revolavers the way
I----"
"You aren't, either!" Sam exclaimed promptly. "I wouldn't be any more
afraid to shoot her off than you would."
"You would, too!"
"I would not!"
"Well, let's see you then; you talk so much!" And Penrod handed the
weapon scornfully to Sam, who at once became less self-assertive.
"I'd shoot her off in a minute," Sam said, "only it might break
sumpthing if it hit it."
"Hold her up in the air, then. It can't hurt the roof, can it?"
Sam, with a desperate expression, lifted the revolver at arm's length.
Both boys turned away their heads, and Penrod put his fingers in his
ears--but nothing happened. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "Why don't
you go on if you're goin' to?"
Sam lowered his arm. "I guess I didn't have her cocked," he said
apologetically, whereupon Penrod loudly jeered.
"Tryin' to shoot a revolaver and didn't know enough to cock her! If I
didn't know any more about revolavers than that, I'd----"
"There!" Sam exclaimed, managing to draw back the hammer until two
chilling clicks warranted his opinion that the pistol was now ready to
perform its office. "I guess she'll do all right to suit you _this_
time!"
"Well, why'n't you go ahead, then; you know so much!" And as Sam raised
his arm, Penrod again turned away his head and placed his forefingers
in his ears.
A pause followed.
"Why'n't you go ahead?"
Penrod, after waiting in keen suspense, turned to behold his friend
standing with his right arm above his head, his left hand over his left
ear, and both eyes closed.
"I can't pull the trigger," said Sam indistinctly, his face convulsed as
in sympathy with the great muscular efforts of other parts of his body.
"She won't pull!"
"She won't?" Penrod remarked with scorn. "I'll bet _I_ could pull her."
Sam promptly opened his eyes and handed the weapon to Penrod.
"All right," he said, with surprising and unusual mildness. "You try
her, then."
Inwardly discomfited to a disagreeable extent, Penrod attempted to talk
his own misgivings out of countenance.
"Poor 'ittle baby!" he said, swinging the pistol at his side with a fair
pretense of careless ease. "Ain't even strong enough to pull a trigger!
Poor 'ittle baby! Well, if you can't even do that much, you better watch
me while _I_----"
"Well," said Sam reasonably, "why don't you go on and do it then?"
"Well, I _am_ goin' to, ain't I?"
"Well, then, why don't you?"
"Oh, I'll do it fast enough to suit _you_, I guess," Penrod retorted,
swinging the big revolver up a little higher than his shoulder and
pointing it in the direction of the double doors, which opened upon the
alley. "You better run, Sam," he jeered. "You'll be pretty scared when I
shoot her off, I guess."
"Well, why don't you _see_ if I will? I bet you're afraid yourself."
"Oh, I am, am I?" said Penrod, in a reckless voice--and his finger
touched the trigger. It seemed to him that his finger no more than
touched it; perhaps he had been reassured by Sam's assertion that the
trigger was difficult. His intentions must remain in doubt, and probably
Penrod himself was not certain of them; but one thing comes to the
surface as entirely definite--that trigger was not so hard to pull as
Sam said it was.
_Bang!_ _Wh-a-a-ack._ A shattering report split the air of the stable
and there was an orifice of remarkable diameter in the alley door. With
these phenomena, three yells, expressing excitement of different kinds,
were almost simultaneous--two from within the stable and the third from
a point in the alley about eleven inches lower than the orifice just
constructed in the planking of the door. This third point, roughly
speaking, was the open mouth of a gayly dressed young colored man whose
attention, as he strolled, had been thus violently distracted from some
mental computations he was making in numbers, including, particularly,
those symbols of ecstasy or woe, as the case might be, seven and eleven.
His eye at once perceived the orifice on a line enervatingly little
above the top of his head; and, although he had not supposed himself so
well known in this neighborhood, he was aware that he did, here and
there, possess acquaintances of whom some such uncomplimentary action
might be expected as natural and characteristic. His immediate procedure
was to prostrate himself flat upon the ground, against the stable doors.
In so doing, his shoulders came brusquely in contact with one of them,
which happened to be unfastened, and it swung open, revealing to his
gaze two stark-white white boys, one of them holding an enormous pistol
and both staring at him in stupor of ultimate horror. For, to the glassy
eyes of Penrod and Sam, the stratagem of the young colored man, thus
dropping to earth, disclosed, with awful certainty, a slaughtered body.