“Not that I—” I began, hastily.
“Of course you don’t,” said Bud warmly. “You know better. You’ve lived
here before. Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we had ’em here.
We only had two or three laws, such as against murder before witnesses,
and being caught stealing horses, and voting the Republican ticket. But
how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state.
Them legislators set up there at Austin and don’t do nothing but make
laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state.
I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work
and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to
repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I’m for the old days when law and order
meant what they said. A law was a law, and a order was a order.”
“But—” I began.
“I was going on,” continued Bud, “while this coffee is boiling, to
describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of once in
the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a six-shooter
instead of a supreme court.
“You’ve heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run from
the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know, there was
cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was this: when a
cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper
reporters and only give them the number of cattle he actually owned,
they wrote him up for a baron. When he bought ’em champagne wine and
added in the amount of cattle he had stole, they called him a king.
“Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king’s ranch
comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New York or Kansas
City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a squad to ride about with
’em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning when they was
coming, and drive the deer out of their way. Among the bunch was a
black-eyed girl that wore a number two shoe. That’s all I noticed about
her. But Luke must have seen more, for he married her one day before
the _caballard_ started back, and went over on Canada Verde and set up
a ranch of his own. I’m skipping over the sentimental stuff on purpose,
because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And Luke takes me along
with him because we was old friends and I handled cattle to suit him.
“I’m skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or wanted to
see any of it—but three years afterward there was a boy kid stumbling
and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke’s ranch. I never
had no use for kids; but it seems they did. And I’m skipping over much
what followed until one day out to the ranch drives in hacks and
buckboards a lot of Mrs. Summers’s friends from the East—a sister or so
and two or three men. One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one
looked like nothing; and the other one had on corkscrew pants and spoke
in a tone of voice. I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of voice.
“I’m skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides
up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves that
was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits at
the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs. In a
little while Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his
Mexican hands, and they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles; and
mighty soon out comes one of the sisters or so and some of the two or
three men. But two of the two or three men carries between ’em the
corkscrew man who spoke in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in
one of the wagons. And they all might have been seen wending their way
away.
“‘Bud,’ says Luke to me, ‘I want you to fix up a little and go up to
San Antone with me.’
“‘Let me get on my Mexican spurs,’ says I, ‘and I’m your company.’
“One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with Mrs.
Summers and the kid. We rides to Encinal and catches the International,
and hits San Antone in the morning. After breakfast Luke steers me
straight to the office of a lawyer. They go in a room and talk and then
come out.
“‘Oh, there won’t be any trouble, Mr. Summers,’ says the lawyer. ‘I’ll
acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the matter will be
put through as promptly as possible. Law and order reigns in this state
as swift and sure as any in the country.’
“‘I’ll wait for the decree if it won’t take over half an hour,’ says
Luke.
“‘Tut, tut,’ says the lawyer man. ‘Law must take its course. Come back
day after to-morrow at half-past nine.’
“At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a folded
document. And Luke writes him out a check.
“On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the
size of a kitchen door latch on it and says:
“‘Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.’
“‘Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,’ says
I, ‘it looks to me like a split. Couldn’t the lawyer man have made it a
strike for you?’
“‘Bud,’ says he, in a pained style, ‘that child is the one thing I have
to live for. _She_ may go; but the boy is mine!—think of it—I have
cus-to-dy of the child.’
“‘All right,’ says I. ‘If it’s the law, let’s abide by it. But I
think,’ says I, ‘that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary clemency,
or whatever is the legal term, in our case.’
“You see, I wasn’t inveigled much into the desirableness of having
infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell
for so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with
that sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All
the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling that
decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it and
reading off to me the sum and substance of it. ‘Cus-to-dy of the child,
Bud,’ says he. ‘Don’t forget it—cus-to-dy of the child.’
“But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court obviated,
_nolle prossed_, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and the kid was
gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for San
Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the nearest station with
her trunks and the youngster.
“Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its emoluments.
“‘It ain’t possible, Bud,’ says he, ‘for this to be. It’s contrary to
law and order. It’s wrote as plain as day here—“Cus-to-dy of the
child.”’
“‘There is what you might call a human leaning,’ says I, ‘toward
smashing ’em both—not to mention the child.’
“‘Judge Simmons,’ goes on Luke, ‘is a incorporated officer of the law.
She can’t take the boy away. He belongs to me by statutes passed and
approved by the state of Texas.’
“‘And he’s removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,’ says
I, ‘by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us praise the
Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies—’ I begins; but I see
Luke don’t listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a fresh horse
and starts back again for the station.
“He come back two weeks afterward, not saying much.
“‘We can’t get the trail,’ says he; ‘but we’ve done all the
telegraphing that the wires’ll stand, and we’ve got these city rangers
they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime, Bud,’ says he,
‘we’ll round up them cows on Brush Creek, and wait for the law to take
its course.’”
“And after that we never alluded to allusions, as you might say.
“Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke was
made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy. Now, don’t
get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office deputy doing sums in
a book or mashing letters in a cider press. In them days his job was to
watch the back windows so nobody didn’t plug the sheriff in the rear
while he was adding up mileage at his desk in front. And in them days I
had qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada
County, and schoolbooks, and all the whiskey you wanted, and the
Government built its own battleships instead of collecting nickels from
the school children to do it with. And, as I say, there was law and
order instead of enactments and restrictions such as disfigure our
umpire state to-day. We had our office at Bildad, the county seat, from
which we emerged forth on necessary occasions to soothe whatever
fracases and unrest that might occur in our jurisdiction.
“Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff, I want
to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them days. Luke was
what you would call one of the most conscious men in the world. He
never knew much book law, but he had the inner emoluments of justice
and mercy inculcated into his system. If a respectable citizen shot a
Mexican or held up a train and cleaned out the safe in the express car,
and Luke ever got hold of him, he’d give the guilty party such a
reprimand and a cussin’ out that he’d probable never do it again. But
once let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut
a wire fence, or otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada
County, Luke and me would be on ’em with habeas corpuses and smokeless
powder and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette.
“We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I’ve known
persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and
buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches at
the railroad station without being shot at or even roped and drug about
by the citizens of the town.
“Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of
training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was always
looking ahead to the time when he’d quit sheriffing. What he wanted to
do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work under the porch and
have hens scratching in the yard. The one main thing in his mind seemed
to be the yard.
“‘Bud,’ he says to me, ‘by instinct and sentiment I’m a contractor. I
want to be a contractor. That’s what I’ll be when I get out of office.’
“‘What kind of a contractor?’ says I. ‘It sounds like a kind of a
business to me. You ain’t going to haul cement or establish branches or
work on a railroad, are you?’
“‘You don’t understand,’ says Luke. ‘I’m tired of space and horizons
and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is
reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you
can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,’ says
Luke.
“That’s the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he’d had
bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on
the ranch. It seemed like he’d forgotten about it. I wondered how, with
his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of lattice-work, he’d
seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken
away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn’t
a man you could ask about such things as he didn’t refer to in his own
conversation.
“I reckon he’d put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I’ve
read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic and
fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of
that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting
pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or teaching school—something to
make ’em forget. Well, I guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he
couldn’t paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves
and in making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well
armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.
“One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors
from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner
station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking
after mines and such. There was five of ’em—four solid parties, with
gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the
hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.
“This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots
bring West with ’em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple
of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun he
had buckled around his waist.
“I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that
they didn’t locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of
Murchison’s store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang
of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law
and order when he wasn’t there.
“After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the train was
waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all
antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest or
come too near him. He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all them
tenderfoots—he didn’t know a law-and-order town when he saw it.
“By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the Crystal
Palace _chili-con-carne_ stand in Bildad. Pedro was a man who liked to
amuse himself; so he kind of herd rides this youngster, laughing at
him, tickled to death. I was too far away to hear, but the kid seems to
mention some remarks to Pedro, and Pedro goes up and slaps him about
nine feet away, and laughs harder than ever. And then the boy gets up
quicker than he fell and jerks out his little pearl-handle, and—bing!
bing! bing! Pedro gets it three times in special and treasured portions
of his carcass. I saw the dust fly off his clothes every time the
bullets hit. Sometimes them little thirty-twos cause worry at close
range.
“The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I goes
up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away his gun. But
the first thing I knew that _caballard_ of capitalists makes a break
for the train. One of ’em hesitates in front of me for a second, and
kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against my chin, and I sort of
laid down on the platform and took a nap. I never was afraid of guns;
but I don’t want any person except a barber to take liberties like that
with my face again. When I woke up, the whole outfit—train, boy, and
all—was gone. I asked about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he
would recover provided his wounds didn’t turn out to be fatal.
“When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was
mad all over.
“‘Why’n’t you telegraph to San Antone,’ he asks, ‘and have the bunch
arrested there?’
“‘Oh, well,’ says I, ‘I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy was
what I had took up just then.’ That capitalist sure knew how to
gesticulate with his hands.
“Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the depot a
card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of some _hombre_
called Scudder in New York City.
“‘Bud,’ says Luke, ‘I’m going after that bunch. I’m going there and get
the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back. I’m sheriff of
Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts while
I’m able to draw a gun. And I want you to go with me. No Eastern Yankee
can shoot up a respectable and well-known citizen of Bildad, ’specially
with a thirty-two calibre, and escape the law. Pedro Johnson,’ says
Luke, ‘is one of our most prominent citizens and business men. I’ll
appoint Sam Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I’m
away, and you and me will take the six forty-five northbound to-morrow
evening and follow up this trail.’
“‘I’m your company,’ says I. ‘I never see this New York, but I’d like
to. But, Luke,’ says I, ‘don’t you have to have a dispensation or a
habeas corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far
for rich men and malefactors?’
“‘Did I have a requisition,’ says Luke, ‘when I went over into the
Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for holding up
the International? Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse
comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in
Hidalgo? It’s my business to keep order in Mojada County.’
“‘And it’s my business as office deputy,’ says I, ‘to see that business
is carried on according to law. Between us both we ought to keep things
pretty well cleaned up.’
“So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his
mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for New
York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was too short
for six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and the conductor had
to keep us from getting off at every town that had five-story houses in
it. But we got there finally; and we seemed to see right away that he
was right about it.
“‘Luke,’ says I, ‘as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it don’t
look to me like this place is properly and legally in the jurisdiction
of Mojada County, Texas.’
“‘From the standpoint of order,’ says he, ‘it’s amenable to answer for
its sins to the properly appointed authorities from Bildad to
Jerusalem.’
“‘Amen,’ says I. ‘But let’s turn our trick sudden, and ride. I don’t
like the looks of this place.’
“‘Think of Pedro Johnson,’ says Luke, ‘a friend of mine and yours shot
down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very door!’
“‘It was at the door of the freight depot,’ says I. ‘But the law will
not be balked at a quibble like that.’
“We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next morning I
goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom and hunts for
Luke. It ain’t no use. It looks like San Jacinto day in San Antone.
There’s a thousand folks milling around in a kind of a roofed-over
plaza with marble pavements and trees growing right out of ’em, and I
see no more chance of finding Luke than if we was hunting each other in
the big pear flat down below Old Fort Ewell. But soon Luke and me runs
together in one of the turns of them marble alleys.
“‘It ain’t no use, Bud,’ says he. ‘I can’t find no place to eat at.
I’ve been looking for restaurant signs and smelling for ham all over
the camp. But I’m used to going hungry when I have to. Now,’ says he,
‘I’m going out and get a hack and ride down to the address on this
Scudder card. You stay here and try to hustle some grub. But I doubt if
you’ll find it. I wish we’d brought along some cornmeal and bacon and
beans. I’ll be back when I see this Scudder, if the trail ain’t wiped
out.’
“So I starts foraging for breakfast. For the honour of old Mojada
County I didn’t want to seem green to them abolitionists, so every time
I turned a corner in them marble halls I went up to the first desk or
counter I see and looks around for grub. If I didn’t see what I wanted
I asked for something else. In about half an hour I had a dozen cigars,
five story magazines, and seven or eight railroad time-tables in my
pockets, and never a smell of coffee or bacon to point out the trail.
“Once a lady sitting at a table and playing a game kind of like pushpin
told me to go into a closet that she called Number 3. I went in and
shut the door, and the blamed thing lit itself up. I set down on a
stool before a shelf and waited. Thinks I, ‘This is a private
dining-room.’ But no waiter never came. When I got to sweating good and
hard, I goes out again.
“‘Did you get what you wanted?’ says she.
“‘No, ma’am,’ says I. ‘Not a bite.’
“‘Then there’s no charge,’ says she.
“‘Thanky, ma’am,’ says I, and I takes up the trail again.
“By and by I thinks I’ll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of them
boys with blue clothes and yellow buttons in front, and he leads me to
what he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the first thing I lays my
eyes on when I go in is that boy that had shot Pedro Johnson. He was
setting all alone at a little table, hitting a egg with a spoon like he
was afraid he’d break it.
“I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks insulted and
makes a move like he was going to get up.
“‘Keep still, son,’ says I. ‘You’re apprehended, arrested, and in
charge of the Texas authorities. Go on and hammer that egg some more if
it’s the inside of it you want. Now, what did you shoot Mr. Johnson, of
Bildad, for?’
“And may I ask who you are?’ says he.
“‘You may,’ says I. ‘Go ahead.’
“‘I suppose you’re on,’ says this kid, without batting his eyes. ‘But
what are you eating? Here, waiter!’ he calls out, raising his finger.
‘Take this gentleman’s order.
“‘A beefsteak,’ says I, ‘and some fried eggs and a can of peaches and a
quart of coffee will about suffice.’
“We talk awhile about the sundries of life and then he says:
“‘What are you going to do about that shooting? I had a right to shoot
that man,’ says he. ‘He called me names that I couldn’t overlook, and
then he struck me. He carried a gun, too. What else could I do?’
“‘We’ll have to take you back to Texas,’ says I.
“‘I’d like to go back,’ says the boy, with a kind of a grin—‘if it
wasn’t on an occasion of this kind. It’s the life I like. I’ve always
wanted to ride and shoot and live in the open air ever since I can
remember.’
“‘Who was this gang of stout parties you took this trip with?’ I asks.
“‘My stepfather,’ says he, ‘and some business partners of his in some
Mexican mining and land schemes.’
“‘I saw you shoot Pedro Johnson,’ says I, ‘and I took that little
popgun away from you that you did it with. And when I did so I noticed
three or four little scars in a row over your right eyebrow. You’ve
been in rookus before, haven’t you?’
“‘I’ve had these scars ever since I can remember,’ says he. ‘I don’t
know how they came there.’
“‘Was you ever in Texas before?’ says I.
“‘Not that I remember of,’ says he. ‘But I thought I had when we struck
the prairie country. But I guess I hadn’t.’
“‘Have you got a mother?’ I asks.
“‘She died five years ago,’ says he.
“Skipping over the most of what followed—when Luke came back I turned
the kid over to him. He had seen Scudder and told him what he wanted;
and it seems that Scudder got active with one of these telephones as
soon as he left. For in about an hour afterward there comes to our
hotel some of these city rangers in everyday clothes that they call
detectives, and marches the whole outfit of us to what they call a
magistrate’s court. They accuse Luke of attempted kidnapping, and ask
him what he has to say.
“‘This snipe,’ says Luke to the judge, ‘shot and wilfully punctured
with malice and forethought one of the most respected and prominent
citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing laid
himself liable to the penitence of law and order. And I hereby make
claim and demand restitution of the State of New York City for the said
alleged criminal; and I know he done it.’
“‘Have you the usual and necessary requisition papers from the governor
of your state?’ asks the judge.
“‘My usual papers,’ says Luke, ‘was taken away from me at the hotel by
these gentlemen who represent law and order in your city. They was two
Colt’s .45’s that I’ve packed for nine years; and if I don’t get ’em
back, there’ll be more trouble. You can ask anybody in Mojada County
about Luke Summers. I don’t usually need any other kind of papers for
what I do.’
“I see the judge looks mad, so I steps up and says:
“‘Your Honor, the aforesaid defendant, Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff of
Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a man as ever threw a rope or upheld
the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the Union. But he—’
“The judge hits his table with a wooden hammer and asks who I am.
“Bud Oakley,’ says I. ‘Office deputy of the sheriff’s office of Mojada
County, Texas. Representing,’ says I, ‘the Law. Luke Summers,’ I goes
on, ‘represents Order. And if Your Honor will give me about ten minutes
in private talk, I’ll explain the whole thing to you, and show you the
equitable and legal requisition papers which I carry in my pocket.’
“The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in his
private room. In there I put the whole thing up to him in such language
as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces the verdict that the
young man is delivered into the hands of the Texas authorities; and
calls the next case.
“Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, I’ll tell you how
the thing wound up in Bildad.
“When we got the prisoner in the sheriff’s office, I says to Luke:
“‘You, remember that kid of yours—that two-year old that they stole
away from you when the bust-up come?’
“Luke looks black and angry. He’d never let anybody talk to him about
that business, and he never mentioned it himself.
“‘Toe the mark,’ says I. ‘Do you remember when he was toddling around
on the porch and fell down on a pair of Mexican spurs and cut four
little holes over his right eye? Look at the prisoner,’ says I, ‘look
at his nose and the shape of his head and—why, you old fool, don’t you
know your own son?—I knew him,’ says I, ‘when he perforated Mr. Johnson
at the depot.’
“Luke comes over to me shaking all over. I never saw him lose his nerve
before.
“‘Bud,’ says he. ‘I’ve never had that boy out of my mind one day or one
night since he was took away. But I never let on. But can we hold him?—
Can we make him stay?— I’ll make the best man of him that ever put his
foot in a stirrup. Wait a minute,’ says he, all excited and out of his
mind—‘I’ve got some-thing here in my desk—I reckon it’ll hold legal
yet—I’ve looked at it a thousand times—“Cus-to-dy of the child,”’ says
Luke—‘“Cus-to-dy of the child.” We can hold him on that, can’t we?
Le’me see if I can find that decree.’
“Luke begins to tear his desk to pieces.
“‘Hold on,’ says I. ‘You are Order and I’m Law. You needn’t look for
that paper, Luke. It ain’t a decree any more. It’s requisition papers.
It’s on file in that Magistrate’s office in New York. I took it along
when we went, because I was office deputy and knew the law.’
“‘I’ve got him back,’ says Luke. ‘He’s mine again. I never thought—’
“‘Wait a minute,’ says I. ‘We’ve got to have law and order. You and me
have got to preserve ’em both in Mojada County according to our oath
and conscience. The kid shot Pedro Johnson, one of Bildad’s most
prominent and—’
“‘Oh, hell!’ says Luke. ‘That don’t amount to anything. That fellow was
half Mexican, anyhow.’”
XXII.
TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY
In behalf of Sir Walter’s soothing plant let us look into the case of
Martin Burney.
They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the Harlem
River. The grub-boat of Dennis Corrigan, sub-contractor, was moored to
a tree on the bank. Twenty-two men belonging to the little green island
toiled there at the sinew-cracking labour. One among them, who wrought
in the kitchen of the grub-boat was of the race of the Goths. Over them
all stood the exorbitant Corrigan, harrying them like the captain of a
galley crew. He paid them so little that most of the gang, work as they
might, earned little more than food and tobacco; many of them were in
debt to him. Corrigan boarded them all in the grub-boat, and gave them
good grub, for he got it back in work.
Martin Burney was furthest behind of all. He was a little man, all
muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too
light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam
shovel.
The work was hard. Besides that, the banks of the river were humming
with mosquitoes. As a child in a dark room fixes his regard on the pale
light of a comforting window, these toilers watched the sun that
brought around the one hour of the day that tasted less bitter. After
the sundown supper they would huddle together on the river bank, and
send the mosquitoes whining and eddying back from the malignant puffs
of twenty-three reeking pipes. Thus socially banded against the foe,
they wrenched out of the hour a few well-smoked drops from the cup of
joy.
Each week Burney grew deeper in debt. Corrigan kept a small stock of
goods on the boat, which he sold to the men at prices that brought him
no loss. Burney was a good customer at the tobacco counter. One sack
when he went to work in the morning and one when he came in at night,
so much was his account swelled daily. Burney was something of a
smoker. Yet it was not true that he ate his meals with a pipe in his
mouth, which had been said of him. The little man was not discontented.
He had plenty to eat, plenty of tobacco, and a tyrant to curse; so why
should not he, an Irishman, be well satisfied?
One morning as he was starting with the others for work he stopped at
the pine counter for his usual sack of tobacco.
“There’s no more for ye,” said Corrigan. “Your account’s closed. Ye are
a losing investment. No, not even tobaccy, my son. No more tobaccy on
account. If ye want to work on and eat, do so, but the smoke of ye has
all ascended. ’Tis my advice that ye hunt a new job.”
“I have no tobaccy to smoke in my pipe this day, Mr. Corrigan,” said
Burney, not quite understanding that such a thing could happen to him.
“Earn it,” said Corrigan, “and then buy it.”
Burney stayed on. He knew of no other job. At first he did not realize
that tobacco had got to be his father and mother, his confessor and
sweetheart, and wife and child.
For three days he managed to fill his pipe from the other men’s sacks,
and then they shut him off, one and all. They told him, rough but
friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest
forthcoming to a fellow-man desiring it, but that beyond the immediate
temporary need requisition upon the store of a comrade is pressed with
great danger to friendship.
Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney.
Sucking the corpse of his deceased dudheen, he staggered through his
duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first
time that the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men bereft of a
pleasure might have recourse to other delights, but Burney had only two
comforts in life. One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope that
there would be no Speedways to build on the other side of Jordan.
At meal times he would let the other men go first into the grub-boat,
and then he would go down on his hands and knees, grovelling fiercely
upon the ground where they had been sitting, trying to find some stray
crumbs of tobacco. Once he sneaked down the river bank and filled his
pipe with dead willow leaves. At the first whiff of the smoke he spat
in the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he knew on
Corrigan—one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and
ended with the Corrigans that shall hear the trumpet of Gabriel blow.
He began to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul. Even
murder occurred to him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went
without the taste of tobacco—he who had smoked all day and thought the
night misspent in which he had not awakened for a pipeful or two under
the bedclothes.
One day a man stopped at the boat to say that there was work to be had
in the Bronx Park, where a large number of labourers were required in
making some improvements.
After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away from
the maddening smell of the others’ pipes. He sat down upon a stone. He
was thinking he would set out for the Bronx. At least he could earn
tobacco there. What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man’s
work was worth his keep. But then he hated to go without getting even
with the hard-hearted screw who had put his pipe out. Was there any way
to do it?
Softly stepping among the clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths, who
worked in the kitchen. He grinned at Burney’s elbow, and that unhappy
man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt, growled
at him: “What d’ye want, ye—Dago?”
Tony also contained a grievance—and a plot. He, too, was a Corrigan
hater, and had been primed to see it in others.
“How you like-a Mr. Corrigan?” he asked. “You think-a him a nice-a
man?”
“To hell with ’m,” he said. “May his liver turn to water, and the bones
of him crack in the cold of his heart. May dog fennel grow upon his
ancestors’ graves, and the grandsons of his children be born without
eyes. May whiskey turn to clabber in his mouth, and every time he
sneezes may he blister the soles of his feet. And the smoke of his
pipe—may it make his eyes water, and the drops fall on the grass that
his cows eat and poison the butter that he spreads on his bread.”
Though Tony remained a stranger to the beauties of this imagery, he
gathered from it the conviction that it was sufficiently anti-Corrigan
in its tendency. So, with the confidence of a fellow-conspirator, he
sat by Burney upon the stone and unfolded his plot.
It was very simple in design. Every day after dinner it was Corrigan’s
habit to sleep for an hour in his bunk. At such times it was the duty
of the cook and his helper, Tony, to leave the boat so that no noise
might disturb the autocrat. The cook always spent this hour in walking
exercise. Tony’s plan was this: After Corrigan should be asleep he
(Tony) and Burney would cut the mooring ropes that held the boat to the
shore. Tony lacked the nerve to do the deed alone. Then the awkward
boat would swing out into a swift current and surely overturn against a
rock there was below.
“Come on and do it,” said Burney. “If the back of ye aches from the
lick he gave ye as the pit of me stomach does for the taste of a bit of
smoke, we can’t cut the ropes too quick.”
“All a-right,” said Tony. “But better wait ’bout-a ten minute more.
Give-a Corrigan plenty time get good-a sleep.”
They waited, sitting upon the stone. The rest of the men were at work
out of sight around a bend in the road. Everything would have gone
well—except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to
decorate the plot with its conventional accompaniment. He was of
dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined the appendage to
villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage. He pulled from his
shirt bosom a long, black, beautiful, venomous cigar, and handed it to
Burney.
“You like-a smoke while we wait?” he asked.
Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a rat.
He laid it to his lips like a long-lost sweetheart. When the smoke
began to draw he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his
gray-red moustache curled down over the cigar like the talons of an
eagle. Slowly the red faded from the whites of his eyes. He fixed his
gaze dreamily upon the hills across the river. The minutes came and
went.
“’Bout time to go now,” said Tony. “That damn-a Corrigan he be in the
reever very quick.”
Burney started out of his trance with a grunt. He turned his head and
gazed with a surprised and pained severity at his accomplice. He took
the cigar partly from his mouth, but sucked it back again immediately,
chewed it lovingly once or twice, and spoke, in virulent puffs, from
the corner of his mouth:
“What is it, ye yaller haythen? Would ye lay contrivances against the
enlightened races of the earth, ye instigator of illegal crimes? Would
ye seek to persuade Martin Burney into the dirty tricks of an indecent
Dago? Would ye be for murderin’ your benefactor, the good man that
gives ye food and work? Take that, ye punkin-coloured assassin!”
The torrent of Burney’s indignation carried with it bodily assault. The
toe of his shoe sent the would-be cutter of ropes tumbling from his
seat.
Tony arose and fled. His vendetta he again relegated to the files of
things that might have been. Beyond the boat he fled and away-away; he
was afraid to remain.
Burney, with expanded chest, watched his late co-plotter disappear.
Then he, too, departed, setting his face in the direction of the Bronx.
In his wake was a rank and pernicious trail of noisome smoke that
brought peace to his heart and drove the birds from the roadside into
the deepest thickets.
XXIII.
THE CALIPH AND THE CAD
Surely there is no pastime more diverting than that of mingling,
incognito, with persons of wealth and station. Where else but in those
circles can one see life in its primitive, crude state unhampered by
the conventions that bind the dwellers in a lower sphere?
There was a certain Caliph of Bagdad who was accustomed to go down
among the poor and lowly for the solace obtained from the relation of
their tales and histories. Is it not strange that the humble and
poverty-stricken have not availed themselves of the pleasure they might
glean by donning diamonds and silks and playing Caliph among the haunts
of the upper world?
There was one who saw the possibilities of thus turning the tables on
Haroun al Raschid. His name was Corny Brannigan, and he was a truck
driver for a Canal Street importing firm. And if you read further you
will learn how he turned upper Broadway into Bagdad and learned
something about himself that he did not know before.
Many people would have called Corny a snob—preferably by means of a
telephone. His chief interest in life, his chosen amusement, and his
sole diversion after working hours, was to place himself in
juxtaposition—since he could not hope to mingle—with people of fashion
and means.
Every evening after Corny had put up his team and dined at a
lunch-counter that made immediateness a specialty, he would clothe
himself in evening raiment as correct as any you will see in the palm
rooms. Then he would betake himself to that ravishing, radiant roadway
devoted to Thespis, Thais, and Bacchus.
For a time he would stroll about the lobbies of the best hotels, his
soul steeped in blissful content. Beautiful women, cooing like doves,
but feathered like birds of Paradise, flicked him with their robes as
they passed. Courtly gentlemen attended them, gallant and assiduous.
And Corny’s heart within him swelled like Sir Lancelot’s, for the
mirror spoke to him as he passed and said: “Corny, lad, there’s not a
guy among ’em that looks a bit the sweller than yerself. And you
drivin’ of a truck and them swearin’ off their taxes and playin’ the
red in art galleries with the best in the land!”
And the mirrors spake the truth. Mr. Corny Brannigan had acquired the
outward polish, if nothing more. Long and keen observation of polite
society had gained for him its manner, its genteel air, and—most
difficult of acquirement—its repose and ease.
Now and then in the hotels Corny had managed conversation and temporary
acquaintance with substantial, if not distinguished, guests. With many
of these he had exchanged cards, and the ones he received he carefully
treasured for his own use later. Leaving the hotel lobbies, Corny would
stroll leisurely about, lingering at the theatre entrance, dropping
into the fashionable restaurants as if seeking some friend. He rarely
patronized any of these places; he was no bee come to suck honey, but a
butterfly flashing his wings among the flowers whose calyces held no
sweets for him. His wages were not large enough to furnish him with
more than the outside garb of the gentleman. To have been one of the
beings he so cunningly imitated, Corny Brannigan would have given his
right hand.
One night Corny had an adventure. After absorbing the delights of an
hour’s lounging in the principal hotels along Broadway, he passed up
into the stronghold of Thespis. Cab drivers hailed him as a likely
fare, to his prideful content. Languishing eyes were turned upon him as
a hopeful source of lobsters and the delectable, ascendant globules of
effervescence. These overtures and unconscious compliments Corny
swallowed as manna, and hoped Bill, the off horse, would be less lame
in the left forefoot in the morning.
Beneath a cluster of milky globes of electric light Corny paused to
admire the sheen of his low-cut patent leather shoes. The building
occupying the angle was a pretentious _café_. Out of this came a
couple, a lady in a white, cobwebby evening gown, with a lace wrap like
a wreath of mist thrown over it, and a man, tall, faultless,
assured—too assured. They moved to the edge of the sidewalk and halted.
Corny’s eye, ever alert for “pointers” in “swell” behaviour, took them
in with a sidelong glance.
“The carriage is not here,” said the lady. “You ordered it to wait?”
“I ordered it for nine-thirty,” said the man. “It should be here now.”
A familiar note in the lady’s voice drew a more especial attention from
Corny. It was pitched in a key well known to him. The soft electric
shone upon her face. Sisters of sorrow have no quarters fixed for them.
In the index to the book of breaking hearts you will find that Broadway
follows very soon after the Bowery. This lady’s face was sad, and her
voice was attuned with it. They waited, as if for the carriage. Corny
waited too, for it was out of doors, and he was never tired of
accumulating and profiting by knowledge of gentlemanly conduct.
“Jack,” said the lady, “don’t be angry. I’ve done everything I could to
please you this evening. Why do you act so?”
“Oh, you’re an angel,” said the man. “Depend upon woman to throw the
blame upon a man.”
“I’m not blaming you. I’m only trying to make you happy.”
“You go about it in a very peculiar way.”
“You have been cross with me all the evening without any cause.”
“Oh, there isn’t any cause except—you make me tired.”
Corny took out his card case and looked over his collection. He
selected one that read: “Mr. R. Lionel Whyte-Melville, Bloomsbury
Square, London.” This card he had inveigled from a tourist at the King
Edward Hotel. Corny stepped up to the man and presented it with a
correctly formal air.
“May I ask why I am selected for the honour?” asked the lady’s escort.
Now, Mr. Corny Brannigan had a very wise habit of saying little during
his imitations of the Caliph of Bagdad. The advice of Lord
Chesterfield: “Wear a black coat and hold your tongue,” he believed in
without having heard. But now speech was demanded and required of him.
“No gent,” said Corny, “would talk to a lady like you done. Fie upon
you, Willie! Even if she happens to be your wife you ought to have more
respect for your clothes than to chin her back that way. Maybe it ain’t
my butt-in, but it goes, anyhow—you strike me as bein’ a whole lot to
the wrong.”
The lady’s escort indulged in more elegantly expressed but fetching
repartee. Corny, eschewing his truck driver’s vocabulary, retorted as
nearly as he could in polite phrases. Then diplomatic relations were
severed; there was a brief but lively set-to with other than oral
weapons, from which Corny came forth easily victor.
A carriage dashed up, driven by a tardy and solicitous coachman.
“Will you kindly open the door for me?” asked the lady. Corny assisted
her to enter, and took off his hat. The escort was beginning to
scramble up from the sidewalk.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Corny, “if he’s your man.”
“He’s no man of mine,” said the lady. “Perhaps he—but there’s no chance
of his being now. Drive home, Michael. If you care to take this—with my
thanks.”
Three red roses were thrust out through the carriage window into
Corny’s hand. He took them, and the hand for an instant; and then the
carriage sped away.
Corny gathered his foe’s hat and began to brush the dust from his
clothes.
“Come along,” said Corny, taking the other man by the arm.
His late opponent was yet a little dazed by the hard knocks he had
received. Corny led him carefully into a saloon three doors away.
“The drinks for us,” said Corny, “me and my friend.”
“You’re a queer feller,” said the lady’s late escort—“lick a man and
then want to set ’em up.”
“You’re my best friend,” said Corny exultantly. “You don’t understand?
Well, listen. You just put me wise to somethin’. I been playin’ gent a
long time, thinkin’ it was just the glad rags I had and nothin’ else.
Say—you’re a swell, ain’t you? Well, you trot in that class, I guess. I
don’t; but I found out one thing—I’m a gentleman, by—and I know it now.
What’ll you have to drink?”
XXIV.
THE DIAMOND OF KALI
The original news item concerning the diamond of the goddess Kali was
handed in to the city editor. He smiled and held it for a moment above
the wastebasket. Then he laid it back on his desk and said: “Try the
Sunday people; they might work something out of it.”
The Sunday editor glanced the item over and said: “H’m!” Afterward he
sent for a reporter and expanded his comment.
“You might see General Ludlow,” he said, “and make a story out of this
if you can. Diamond stories are a drug; but this one is big enough to
be found by a scrubwoman wrapped up in a piece of newspaper and tucked
under the corner of the hall linoleum. Find out first if the General
has a daughter who intends to go on the stage. If not, you can go ahead
with the story. Run cuts of the Kohinoor and J. P. Morgan’s collection,
and work in pictures of the Kimberley mines and Barney Barnato. Fill in
with a tabulated comparison of the values of diamonds, radium, and veal
cutlets since the meat strike; and let it run to a half page.”
On the following day the reporter turned in his story. The Sunday
editor let his eye sprint along its lines. “H’m!” he said again. This
time the copy went into the waste-basket with scarcely a flutter.
The reporter stiffened a little around the lips; but he was whistling
softly and contentedly between his teeth when I went over to talk with
him about it an hour later.
“I don’t blame the ‘old man’,” said he, magnanimously, “for cutting it
out. It did sound like funny business; but it happened exactly as I
wrote it. Say, why don’t you fish that story out of the w.-b. and use
it? Seems to me it’s as good as the tommyrot you write.”
I accepted the tip, and if you read further you will learn the facts
about the diamond of the goddess Kali as vouched for by one of the most
reliable reporters on the staff.
Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow lives in one of those decaying but venerated
old red-brick mansions in the West Twenties. The General is a member of
an old New York family that does not advertise. He is a globe-trotter
by birth, a gentleman by predilection, a millionaire by the mercy of
Heaven, and a connoisseur of precious stones by occupation.
The reporter was admitted promptly when he made himself known at the
General’s residence at about eight thirty on the evening that he
received the assignment. In the magnificent library he was greeted by
the distinguished traveller and connoisseur, a tall, erect gentleman in
the early fifties, with a nearly white moustache, and a bearing so
soldierly that one perceived in him scarcely a trace of the National
Guardsman. His weather-beaten countenance lit up with a charming smile
of interest when the reporter made known his errand.
“Ah, you have heard of my latest find. I shall be glad to show you what
I conceive to be one of the six most valuable blue diamonds in
existence.”
The General opened a small safe in a corner of the library and brought
forth a plush-covered box. Opening this, he exposed to the reporter’s
bewildered gaze a huge and brilliant diamond—nearly as large as a
hailstone.
“This stone,” said the General, “is something more than a mere jewel.
It once formed the central eye of the three-eyed goddess Kali, who is
worshipped by one of the fiercest and most fanatical tribes of India.
If you will arrange yourself comfortably I will give you a brief
history of it for your paper.”
General Ludlow brought a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a
cabinet, and set a comfortable armchair for the lucky scribe.
“The Phansigars, or Thugs, of India,” began the General, “are the most
dangerous and dreaded of the tribes of North India. They are extremists
in religion, and worship the horrid goddess Kali in the form of images.
Their rites are interesting and bloody. The robbing and murdering of
travellers are taught as a worthy and obligatory deed by their strange
religious code. Their worship of the three-eyed goddess Kali is
conducted so secretly that no traveller has ever heretofore had the
honour of witnessing the ceremonies. That distinction was reserved for
myself.
“While at Sakaranpur, between Delhi and Khelat, I used to explore the
jungle in every direction in the hope of learning something new about
these mysterious Phansigars.
“One evening at twilight I was making my way through a teakwood forest,
when I came upon a deep circular depression in an open space, in the
centre of which was a rude stone temple. I was sure that this was one
of the temples of the Thugs, so I concealed myself in the undergrowth
to watch.
“When the moon rose the depression in the clearing was suddenly filled
with hundreds of shadowy, swiftly gliding forms. Then a door opened in
the temple, exposing a brightly illuminated image of the goddess Kali,
before which a white-robed priest began a barbarous incantation, while
the tribe of worshippers prostrated themselves upon the earth.
“But what interested me most was the central eye of the huge wooden
idol. I could see by its flashing brilliancy that it was an immense
diamond of the purest water.
“After the rites were concluded the Thugs slipped away into the forest
as silently as they had come. The priest stood for a few minutes in the
door of the temple enjoying the cool of the night before closing his
rather warm quarters. Suddenly a dark, lithe shadow slipped down into
the hollow, leaped upon the priest; and struck him down with a
glittering knife. Then the murderer sprang at the image of the goddess
like a cat and pried out the glowing central eye of Kali with his
weapon. Straight toward me he ran with his royal prize. When he was
within two paces I rose to my feet and struck him with all my force
between the eyes. He rolled over senseless and the magnificent jewel
fell from his hand. That is the splendid blue diamond you have just
seen—a stone worthy of a monarch’s crown.”
“That’s a corking story,” said the reporter. “That decanter is exactly
like the one that John W. Gates always sets out during an interview.”
“Pardon me,” said General Ludlow, “for forgetting hospitality in the
excitement of my narrative. Help yourself.”
“Here’s looking at you,” said the reporter.
“What I am afraid of now,” said the General, lowering his voice, “is
that I may be robbed of the diamond. The jewel that formed an eye of
their goddess is their most sacred symbol. Somehow the tribe suspected
me of having it; and members of the band have followed me half around
the earth. They are the most cunning and cruel fanatics in the world,
and their religious vows would compel them to assassinate the
unbeliever who has desecrated their sacred treasure.
“Once in Lucknow three of their agents, disguised as servants in a
hotel, endeavoured to strangle me with a twisted cloth. Again, in
London, two Thugs, made up as street musicians, climbed into my window
at night and attacked me. They have even tracked me to this country. My
life is never safe. A month ago, while I was at a hotel in the
Berkshires, three of them sprang upon me from the roadside weeds. I
saved myself then by my knowledge of their customs.”
“How was that, General?” asked the reporter.
“There was a cow grazing near by,” said General Ludlow, “a gentle
Jersey cow. I ran to her side and stood. The three Thugs ceased their
attack, knelt and struck the ground thrice with their foreheads. Then,
after many respectful salaams, they departed.”
“Afraid the cow would hook?” asked the reporter.
“No; the cow is a sacred animal to the Phansigars. Next to their
goddess they worship the cow. They have never been known to commit any
deed of violence in the presence of the animal they reverence.”
“It’s a mighty interesting story,” said the reporter. “If you don’t
mind I’ll take another drink, and then a few notes.”
“I will join you,” said General Ludlow, with a courteous wave of his
hand.
“If I were you,” advised the reporter, “I’d take that sparkler to
Texas. Get on a cow ranch there, and the Pharisees—”
“Phansigars,” corrected the General.
“Oh, yes; the fancy guys would run up against a long horn every time
they made a break.”
General Ludlow closed the diamond case and thrust it into his bosom.
“The spies of the tribe have found me out in New York,” he said,
straightening his tall figure. “I’m familiar with the East Indian cast
of countenance, and I know that my every movement is watched. They will
undoubtedly attempt to rob and murder me here.”
“Here?” exclaimed the reporter, seizing the decanter and pouring out a
liberal amount of its contents.
“At any moment,” said the General. “But as a soldier and a connoisseur
I shall sell my life and my diamond as dearly as I can.”
At this point of the reporter’s story there is a certain vagueness, but
it can be gathered that there was a loud crashing noise at the rear of
the house they were in. General Ludlow buttoned his coat closely and
sprang for the door. But the reporter clutched him firmly with one
hand, while he held the decanter with the other.
“Tell me before we fly,” he urged, in a voice thick with some inward
turmoil, “do any of your daughters contemplate going on the stage?”
“I have no daughters—fly for your life—the Phansigars are upon us!”
cried the General.
The two men dashed out of the front door of the house.
The hour was late. As their feet struck the side-walk strange men of
dark and forbidding appearance seemed to rise up out of the earth and
encompass them. One with Asiatic features pressed close to the General
and droned in a terrible voice:
“Buy cast clo’!”
Another, dark-whiskered and sinister, sped lithely to his side and
began in a whining voice:
“Say, mister, have yer got a dime fer a poor feller what—”
They hurried on, but only into the arms of a black-eyed, dusky-browed
being, who held out his hat under their noses, while a confederate of
Oriental hue turned the handle of a street organ near by.
Twenty steps farther on General Ludlow and the reporter found
themselves in the midst of half a dozen villainous-looking men with
high-turned coat collars and faces bristling with unshaven beards.
“Run for it!” hissed the General. “They have discovered the possessor
of the diamond of the goddess Kali.”
The two men took to their heels. The avengers of the goddess pursued.
“Oh, Lordy!” groaned the reporter, “there isn’t a cow this side of
Brooklyn. We’re lost!”
When near the corner they both fell over an iron object that rose from
the sidewalk close to the gutter. Clinging to it desperately, they
awaited their fate.
“If I only had a cow!” moaned the reporter—“or another nip from that
decanter, General!”
As soon as the pursuers observed where their victims had found refuge
they suddenly fell back and retreated to a considerable distance.
“They are waiting for reinforcements in order to attack us,” said
General Ludlow.
But the reporter emitted a ringing laugh, and hurled his hat
triumphantly into the air.
“Guess again,” he shouted, and leaned heavily upon the iron object.
“Your old fancy guys or thugs, whatever you call ’em, are up to date.
Dear General, this is a pump we’ve stranded upon—same as a cow in New
York (hic!) see? Thas’h why the ’nfuriated smoked guys don’t attack
us—see? Sacred an’mal, the pump in N’ York, my dear General!”
But further down in the shadows of Twenty-eighth Street the marauders
were holding a parley.
“Come on, Reddy,” said one. “Let’s go frisk the old ’un. He’s been
showin’ a sparkler as big as a hen egg all around Eighth Avenue for two
weeks past.”
“Not on your silhouette,” decided Reddy. “You see ’em rallyin’ round
The Pump? They’re friends of Bill’s. Bill won’t stand for nothin’ of
this kind in his district since he got that bid to Esopus.”
This exhausts the facts concerning the Kali diamond. But it is deemed
not inconsequent to close with the following brief (paid) item that
appeared two days later in a morning paper.
“It is rumored that a niece of Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow, of New York
City, will appear on the stage next season.
“Her diamonds are said to be extremely valuable and of much historic
interest.”
XXV.
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
“In the tropics” (“Hop-along” Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to me)
“the seasons, months, fortnights, week-ends, holidays, dog-days,
Sundays, and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle that you
never know when a year has gone by until you’re in the middle of the
next one.”
“Hop-along” Bibb kept his bird store on lower Fourth Avenue. He was an
ex-seaman and beachcomber who made regular voyages to southern ports
and imported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots and
dialectic paroquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone
to him to buy a parrot to present, at Christmas, to my Aunt Joanna.
“This one,” said I, disregarding his homily on the subdivisions of
time—“this one that seems all red, white, and blue—to what genus of
beasts does he belong? He appeals at once to my patriotism and to my
love of discord in colour schemes.”
“That’s a cockatoo from Ecuador,” said Bibb. “All he has been taught to
say is ‘Merry Christmas.’ A seasonable bird. He’s only seven dollars;
and I’ll bet many a human has stuck you for more money by making the
same speech to you.”
And then Bibb laughed suddenly and loudly.
“That bird,” he explained, “reminds me. He’s got his dates mixed. He
ought to be saying ‘_E pluribus unum_,’ to match his feathers, instead
of trying to work the Santa Claus graft. It reminds me of the time me
and Liverpool Sam got our ideas of things tangled up on the coast of
Costa Rica on account of the weather and other phenomena to be met with
in the tropics.
“We were, as it were, stranded on that section of the Spanish main with
no money to speak of and no friends that should be talked about either.
We had stoked and second-cooked ourselves down there on a fruit steamer
from New Orleans to try our luck, which was discharged, after we got
there, for lack of evidence. There was no work suitable to our
instincts; so me and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the
country and such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown. It was
an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was no harbour or future
or recourse. Between steamers the town slept and drank rum. It only
woke up when there were bananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping
through dinner until the dessert.
“When me and Liverpool got so low down that the American consul
wouldn’t speak to us we knew we’d struck bed rock.
“We boarded with a snuff-brown lady named Chica, who kept a rum-shop
and a ladies’ and gents’ restaurant in a street called the _calle de
los_ Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints. When our credit played out there,
Liverpool, whose stomach overshadowed his sensations of _noblesse
oblige_, married Chica. This kept us in rice and fried plantain for a
month; and then Chica pounded Liverpool one morning sadly and earnestly
for fifteen minutes with a casserole handed down from the stone age,
and we knew that we had out-welcomed our liver. That night we signed an
engagement with Don Jaime McSpinosa, a hybrid banana fancier of the
place, to work on his fruit preserves nine miles out of town. We had to
do it or be reduced to sea water and broken doses of feed and slumber.
“Now, speaking of Liverpool Sam, I don’t malign or inexculpate him to
you any more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an
Englishman gets as low as he can he’s got to dodge so that the dregs of
other nations don’t drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And if
he’s a Liverpool Englishman, why, fire-damp is what he’s got to look
out for. Being a natural American, that’s my personal view. But
Liverpool and me had much in common. We were without decorous clothes
or ways and means of existence; and, as the saying goes, misery
certainly does enjoy the society of accomplices.
“Our job on old McSpinosa’s plantation was chopping down banana stalks
and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a native
dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA
sheeting pajamas, drives ’em over to the coast and piles ’em up on the
beach.
“You ever been in a banana grove? It’s as solemn as a rathskeller at
seven a. m. It’s like being lost behind the scenes at one of these
mushroom musical shows. You can’t see the sky for the foliage above
you; and the ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it’s so still
that you can hear the stalks growing again after you chop ’em down.
“At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge of
a lagoon with the red, yellow, and black employés of Don Jaime. There
we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and
the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon until daylight with
only snatches of sleep between times.
“We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It’s just about
eighty degrees there in December and June and on Fridays and at
midnight and election day and any other old time. Sometimes it rains
more than at others, and that’s all the difference you notice. A man is
liable to live along there without noticing any fugiting of tempus
until some day the undertaker calls in for him just when he’s beginning
to think about cutting out the gang and saving up a little to invest in
real estate.
“I don’t know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through two
or three rainy spells, eight or ten hair cuts, and the life of three
pairs of sail-cloth trousers. All the money we earned went for rum and
tobacco; but we ate, and that was something.
“All of a sudden one day me and Liverpool find the trade of committing
surgical operations on banana stalks turning to aloes and quinine in
our mouths. It’s a seizure that often comes upon white men in Latin and
geographical countries. We wanted to be addressed again in language and
see the smoke of a steamer and read the real estate transfers and
gents’ outfitting ads in an old newspaper. Even Soledad seemed like a
centre of civilization to us, so that evening we put our thumbs on our
nose at Don Jaime’s fruit stand and shook his grass burrs off our feet.
“It was only twelve miles to Soledad, but it took me and Liverpool two
days to get there. It was banana grove nearly all the way; and we got
twisted time and again. It was like paging the palm room of a New York
hotel for a man named Smith.
“When we saw the houses of Soledad between the trees all my
disinclination toward this Liverpool Sam rose up in me. I stood him
while we were two white men against the banana brindles; but now, when
there were prospects of my exchanging even cuss words with an American
citizen, I put him back in his proper place. And he was a sight, too,
with his rum-painted nose and his red whiskers and elephant feet with
leather sandals strapped to them. I suppose I looked about the same.
“‘It looks to me,’ says I, ‘like Great Britain ought to be made to keep
such gin-swilling, scurvy, unbecoming mud larks as you at home instead
of sending ’em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands. We kicked
you out of America once and we ought to put on rubber boots and do it
again.’
“‘Oh, you go to ’ell,’ says Liverpool, which was about all the repartee
he ever had.
“Well, Soledad, looked fine to me after Don Jaime’s plantation.
Liverpool and me walked into it side by side, from force of habit, past
the calabosa and the Hotel Grande, down across the plaza toward Chica’s
hut, where we hoped that Liverpool, being a husband of hers, might work
his luck for a meal.
“As we passed the two-story little frame house occupied by the American
Club, we noticed that the balcony had been decorated all around with
wreaths of evergreens and flowers, and the flag was flying from the
pole on the roof. Stanzey, the consul, and Arkright, a gold-mine owner,
were smoking on the balcony. Me and Liverpool waved our dirty hands
toward ’em and smiled real society smiles; but they turned their backs
to us and went on talking. And we had played whist once with the two of
’em up to the time when Liverpool held all thirteen trumps for four
hands in succession. It was some holiday, we knew; but we didn’t know
the day nor the year.
“A little further along we saw a reverend man named Pendergast, who had
come to Soledad to build a church, standing under a cocoanut palm with
his little black alpaca coat and green umbrella.
“‘Boys, boys!’ says he, through his blue spectacles, ‘is it as bad as
this? Are you so far reduced?’
“‘We’re reduced,’ says I, ‘to very vulgar fractions.’
“‘It is indeed sad,’ says Pendergast, ‘to see my countrymen in such
circumstances.’
“‘Cut ’arf of that out, old party,’ says Liverpool. ‘Cawn’t you tell a
member of the British upper classes when you see one?’
“‘Shut up,’ I told Liverpool. ‘You’re on foreign soil now, or that
portion of it that’s not on you.’
“‘And on this day, too!’ goes on Pendergast, grievous—‘on this most
glorious day of the year when we should all be celebrating the dawn of
Christian civilization and the downfall of the wicked.’
“‘I did notice bunting and bouquets decorating the town, reverend,’
says I, ‘but I didn’t know what it was for. We’ve been so long out of
touch with calendars that we didn’t know whether it was summer time or
Saturday afternoon.’
“‘Here is two dollars,’ says Pendergast digging up two Chili silver
wheels and handing ’em to me. ‘Go, my men, and observe the rest of the
day in a befitting manner.’
“Me and Liverpool thanked him kindly, and walked away.
“‘Shall we eat?’ I asks.
“‘Oh, ’ell!’ says Liverpool. ‘What’s money for?’
“‘Very well, then,’ I says, ‘since you insist upon it, we’ll drink.’
“So we pull up in a rum shop and get a quart of it and go down on the
beach under a cocoanut tree and celebrate.
“Not having eaten anything but oranges in two days, the rum has
immediate effect; and once more I conjure up great repugnance toward
the British nation.
“‘Stand up here,’ I says to Liverpool, ‘you scum of a despot limited
monarchy, and have another dose of Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr.
Pendergast,’ says I, ‘said we were to observe the day in a befitting
manner, and I’m not going to see his money misapplied.’
“‘Oh, you go to ’ell!’ says Liverpool, and I started in with a fine
left-hander on his right eye.
“Liverpool had been a fighter once, but dissipation and bad company had
taken the nerve out of him. In ten minutes I had him lying on the sand
waving the white flag.
“‘Get up,’ says I, kicking him in the ribs, ‘and come along with me.’
“Liverpool got up and followed behind me because it was his habit,
wiping the red off his face and nose. I led him to Reverend
Pendergast’s shack and called him out.
“‘Look at this, sir,’ says I—‘look at this thing that was once a proud
Britisher. You gave us two dollars and told us to celebrate the day.
The star-spangled banner still waves. Hurrah for the stars and eagles!’
“‘Dear me,’ says Pendergast, holding up his hands. ‘Fighting on this
day of all days! On Christmas day, when peace on—’
“‘Christmas, hell!’ says I. ‘I thought it was the Fourth of July.’”
“Merry Christmas!” said the red, white, and blue cockatoo.
“Take him for six dollars,” said Hop-along Bibb. “He’s got his dates
and colours mixed.”