"SAMSON AGONISTES"
As Revere and Barry walked down the hill the soul of the younger man
was filled with light-hearted joy. He talked gayly to the old sailor,
who had speedily joined him; and although the monologue--since Barry
had said nothing--could not have been called a conversation, Richard
did not heed his silence.
It was but a short distance from the house to the ship, but in the
brief time required for the passage Barry lived over his life, or that
part of it at least which was of moment. As life is compassed in
instants to the drowning, so in these seconds through his mental
vision swept the past. He saw again the admiral as he had seen him in
the prime of manhood; he recalled once more the blue-eyed, sunny
little baby he had held so tenderly in his unfamiliar arms; who, in
the society of the two men, had grown to be a woman whom he loved. The
days and years of happy companionship, of humble and faithful service
on the one hand, of kind and generous recognition on the other, passed
before him with incredible swiftness.
The thought moved him to a sudden tenderness. As his eyes fell upon
the gay, debonair figure walking so carelessly by his side, he
hesitated. For a moment his determination wavered. Revere did not look
or act like a scoundrel, perhaps; but with equal swiftness came the
terrible evidence of those papers, those damning papers in the locker!
The ship, the maiden! The one was to be sold, the other betrayed.
Under God, that should never be! And he had kissed her. He was bound
to another. And she loved him and had wept before him. This trifler
was breaking her heart.
Every laugh that rang in his ears in his changed mood added intensity
to his malign purpose. He was no murderer, though. He believed
himself a chosen instrument in God's hand to effect a mighty
purpose,--salvation to those he loved.
Alas! humanity is never so hopelessly blind as when it does wrong,
believing that God sanctions it for some longed-for end.
The two men stopped as they reached the ship.
"It's just here, sir," said the old sailor, hoarsely. "I've been
examinin' her all mornin'. The supports is rottin' away. I think a
touch'll send her down. Would you mind goin' in there an' takin' a
look?"
He pointed toward a place on the keel enclosed between two rows of
weather-worn timbers, which supported, or helped to support, the body
of the ship. It was the place where, the night before, he and Emily
had pledged their hearts to each other and solemnly plighted their
troth. Revere recognized the spot, of course, with a thrill of
recollection; but of course he made no mention of the fact. Barry knew
it, however, and for that reason he had chosen it. The choice was part
of his revenge. Where Revere had loved--or trifled--there he should
die!
"Looks bad, doesn't it?" Revere said, walking into the _cul-de-sac_ so
carefully prepared for him, and stooping down and laying his finger on
the mouldering keel.
Barry promptly followed him and stood between the outermost
stanchions, barring the exit. The unconscious Revere was completely
enclosed. The keel on the rotting ways was in front of him, on either
side the close rows of supports, overhead the mighty floor of the
ship, back of him the huge form of Captain Barry. He suspected
nothing, however,--how should he?--until he turned to go back after
his brief examination, when he was greatly surprised to find the way
blocked.
His situation beneath the ship was such that he could not even stand
upright, but was forced to remain in a crouching position of great
disadvantage before the sailor. The old man stood with his arms
extended from stanchion to stanchion, a perfect tower of strength and
determination. It was useless for Revere, even if he had realized at
that moment what was about to happen, to attempt to move him by force.
In his weakened state he could do nothing. Even at his best he was no
match for the huge old giant barring his way.
The old man's face was engorged with blood, his jaw was set rigidly,
and a little fleck of foam hung upon his nether lip. There was such a
glare of demoniac rage in his eyes, such an expression of mortal
bitterness and malevolent antipathy in his grim and forbidding
countenance, that the heart of the young man, though he was as brave a
sailor as ever trod a deck, sank within him. He was fairly appalled by
this display of sinister and unsuspected passion.
"My God, man!" cried Revere. "What's the matter? Stand aside!"
"No, sir, you can't pass me. I'll never stand aside. Say a prayer,
for, as there's a ship above you an' a God that favors no traitors,
your hour is come."
His usually rough voice, harsher than ever on account of his emotion,
was shaking with passion.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean to kill you where you stand, where you kissed her last night,
you traitor, you dog, you that disgraces your uniform, you that sells
my ship, mine! You that robs the old admiral of life, that betrays
Miss Emily, that breaks her heart! You thought to play with that
child. But I know you! I found your orders. I read 'em, curse you! To
sell the ship,--God! my ship, that I've lived on, that I've loved, for
twenty-five years! I read your letters writ by that woman you're goin'
to marry! I saw you kiss Miss Emily, I saw her go from you cryin'!
Tears for you, damn you! You've got to die, an' I'll die with you!
You'll have the company of a better man to hell, where you belong!"
The old man's voice rose almost to a scream as he recounted the ideas
which had goaded him to this madness. The torrential sentences of the
grim indictment fairly burst from his lips with ever-increasing force
and fury. Revere heard him in a daze of surprise, at first scarcely
comprehending the man's meaning; yet, after all, his words explained
many things. As soon as the lieutenant found voice he protested.
"Barry, I swear to you----"
"Silence! It's too late to swear!"
Revere was brave; he fain would not die without a struggle for his
life. Indeed, he had not divined the manner of his death; but before
he could spring forward, Barry, as if he understood what he was about
to do, said, ruthlessly,--
"Stand where you are! If you move, I'll kick you to death like a dog!"
He could easily have done it, as the advantage of position was with
him. Rather anything than that, thought Revere, shuddering at the
brutality of it. A prisoner, he could do nothing. The man was mad. If
he chose to carry out his purpose, whatever it might be, the young man
was helpless.
"Very well, Barry," he said, instantly accepting the situation, and
summoning all his resolution to meet the inevitable, though his cheeks
and lips were white, "you saved my life once, you may take it back
now. I wish I could die standing, but if I cannot, why kneeling is as
good a way as any for a man to meet his Maker. You tell me to say a
prayer. Here it is. May God have mercy on your soul and on my soul,
and may He keep the child. That's all."
Not moving from his position, the old man began kicking at the
stanchions. The one on the right was defective, and gave way and fell
at the first blow. A shiver seemed to run through the ship; Richard,
for the first time, divined what was about to happen. He looked
forward and aft. The effective supports were all gone; some rotten
ones remained, outwardly intact, but bound to go under almost any
pressure; the few sound ones left had been carefully sawed almost
through. Why had he not noticed it? The whole ship, therefore,
practically rested on a single stout stanchion toward which Barry had
already turned. It was a splendid piece of timber, and Barry had put
it in himself a year before. When that came down, the ship would crash
into ruins and bury them beneath it.
As the prop upon the right had fallen, the hope leaped into his mind
that he might get away through the gap; but Barry reached down and
grasped him by the collar with one hand the instant the way was open,
and held him firmly while he turned his attention to the other
stanchion. It was hopeless for Revere to attempt anything.
Strange as it may seem, there was a certain admiration for the sailor
in Revere's mind, even in that frightful moment. He realized that the
attack upon him was not inspired by any petty cause. Given the belief
of the sailor, it was natural; he respected him for his desire to stop
what he believed to be base treachery; and Revere could have loved him
for his willingness to sacrifice himself to prevent what he conceived
to be a crime against the life of the admiral, the happiness of Emily,
and the existence of the ship.
"Barry," said Revere, calmly,--he was quite master of himself now,--as
the old man struck the last sound support a heavy blow with his foot,
"I must tell you, not because I am afraid to die, or because I fear
you, but to acquit myself of evil purpose in your mind, that my
engagement with that other woman is broken; that not an hour ago, in
my mother's presence, the admiral promised to give me his
granddaughter to be my wife."
"The ship?" cried Barry, hoarsely, as he felt his vengeance slipping
away from him, the cause itself being taken.
"I offered to buy it myself and leave it standing until it fell."
Men do not often lie in the very presence of death, and truth spoke in
the younger man's voice,--truth so clear that it pierced the tortured
soul of the jealous, mad, broken sailor. But, like many another man
convinced against his will, he refused to accept these statements. It
was a device, a cunning attempt to stay his hand and gain a life. He
would not heed.
"I don't believe you, damn you!" he said, kicking furiously at the
stanchion.
The last blow loosened it. Under the tremendous pressure from above,
the stick began slowly, very slowly, to slide on its wooden shoe. Its
motion was scarcely perceptible, yet it moved. Barry released his hold
on it, took a single backward step, and Revere rose to his feet. Barry
instantly grappled him with both hands. Revere was as a child in that
iron grasp. He did not struggle. He would preserve his dignity in the
face of death, and to attempt to escape would have been futile,
anyway. The two faces confronted one another, the sailor's convulsed
with anguish and rage, the officer's pale, but smiling a little; both
equally determined.
Forward and aft the rotten or sawed supports were giving way in quick
succession. Above them the ship was trembling and shivering from stem
to stern. A strange creaking was heard. A moaning cry, swelling into a
deep groan of anguish that had a sound of despair unspeakable in it.
The death-song of the ship! It was coming down on the ways! Moving
toward the water at last!
Fascinated, Revere turned his face upward and watched the shivering
frame above his head, murmuring, as he did so, Emily's name. The huge
bulk seemed to rise in the air for a second. To his distorted vision
it appeared to sway back and forth, up and down, yet it had scarcely
begun to move.
Ah! was it upon them?
It all happened in a few seconds. In another it would be over. Revere
closed his eyes.
At that instant a scream fraught with terrible agony broke upon the
ears of the two men.
"The ship is falling!" cried Emily's voice, high-pitched, shrill with
mortal terror. "Richard! What are you doing? Oh, God! Captain Barry,
save him!"
"Would that she might have been spared this!" flashed into Revere's
mind. He would have called to her had not something happened
instantly.
The voice awakened the dormant reason in the old man's being. She
loved this boy; perhaps he had told the truth.
"Save him! save him!"
The words rang in his ears. He had never disobeyed a command of hers.
He would not now. Too late! There was a terrible grating sound; the
last stanchion was grinding in its wooden shoe; it was sliding faster!
In another moment the ship would be upon them! He had turned his head
as the first cry had met his ear, and had seen in one swift glance
Emily and another woman not a hundred feet away. Emily was bending
forward, her hands outstretched, struggling. She would have run to
them under the ship had not the other woman held her firmly,
protectingly. Both girls were white as death.
Barry seized Revere by the collar and threw him violently far from
him. The young man pitched downward and fell headlong on the grass in
the direction of the two women. The ground sloped abruptly away toward
the water on that side of the ship. In that same instant the sailor
threw up two great arms and caught the impending ship. He took the
place of the quivering, buckling, sliding oaken timber. For a second
he stood there in mighty majesty, a pillar of strength and resolution,
a tower of flesh and blood, sustaining a ship-of-the-line, a human
stanchion, magnificent in the frenzied, awful expression of a power
superhuman. Rigid, unbreakable, indomitable, he shored up the
ship,--Atlas holding the world!
"Go!" he gasped.
Revere, who had risen instantly, stepped toward him as if to assist
him.
"Go! Can't hold----"
It had come. Angry at the momentary check, the ship fell upon the man
as an avalanche falls upon the mountain. Beneath it the mighty knees
were bowing, the stubborn back bending, the great arms trembling.
Revere sprang backward and slipped far down the slope.
As he fell he caught sight of burning eyes from a face white as the
sea-froth, of lips set and bloodless, of jaws clinched, of sweat
standing upon a bronzed forehead--picture impressed upon his soul
forever!
There was a mighty roaring, detonating crash and all was over.
Crushed were the mighty arms, beaten down the massive shoulders,
broken the iron knees. The life of the man went out in the fall, and
the blood of his heart rippled along the blocks of the keel. With a
concussion like the discharge of a battery, the mighty war-monster
collapsed into a shapeless mass of timber, burying beneath it the man
who had loved it best. The ship that had been his own was nothing but
a heap of ruins above his still heart.
A cloud of dust rose and hung over the wreck in the quiet air.
War was to have been the trade of that ship-of-the-line. Blood should
have run upon her white decks, death she should have dealt out and
received, great battles should have made her famous, heroic men should
have written her name eternally on the red pages of her country's
history. Now it was finished; and yet, in the ending at least, there
had been a slight fulfilment of her destiny--to kill.
No struggle could have been more superb than the quiet one just over;
no effort more magnificent, no conflict more terrible, than that
between the man and the ship. No ship had ever claimed a nobler victim
than Barry, after all, and no fate could have been more fitting than
that which had come to man and ship together in the end.
The old war-vessel had lived through the still ages of peace, had
survived the long period of decay, had endured the disintegrating
assaults of time, only to accomplish her manifest purpose of
destruction as she fell.
And the hand that had loved her was the hand that had laid her low!
With dreadful feelings in their hearts, the three stood looking at the
ruins of the ship.
"Barry! Captain Barry!" screamed Emily, wildly. "Where is he?"
"There!" gasped Revere, hoarsely.
"And is there no hope?"
"None. He is gone forever. My God, wasn't it terrible? He held up the
ship!"
"Grandfather!" cried the girl, distraught. "Let us run to him."
The old man still sat on the porch, staring at what had been the
object of his gaze for so many years. There was a peaceful, yet
sorrowful, look upon his face. He had seen the ship fall; he realized
that his hour had come. He was fronting death and he knew it, yet he
was as calm as he had been when he had fronted death many times years
before. They gathered about him, understanding, helpless.
"Ay," he said, "the cruise is over. Where's Barry?"
"Under the ship, sir."
"And a good end! Strike the flag. I've lost my last command."
Instantly Revere ran to the foot of the staff and silently cast off
the halliards. As the little blue flag of a rear-admiral, with its
white stars, came floating gracefully, reluctantly, down from the
masthead where it had flown so long, the veteran slowly and painfully
rose to his feet. With his right hand he lifted the sword of the
_Constitution_, with his old vigor and his old grace he bared the
blade and brought it up before him in graceful salute, while the flag
fell into Revere's arms.
"Come aboard, sir," he said, softly, as if to an Eternal Captain.
He stood erect a moment and then sank gently back into the chair. For
the first time in his life he forgot the weapon in his hand. The sword
fell clattering at his feet. The emblem of power, authority, and rank,
all now slipping from him, lay neglected where it fell. A smile
quivered upon his lips, but otherwise he sat still and quiet, looking
out into the future. A few seconds. The light faded from his eyes, the
life left his heart. The ship had fallen, the flag was down. It was
the end.
The old man had entered the last haven, dropped anchor in the final
harbor. The little breeze which lifted his white hairs so tenderly had
wafted his soul into another country, a better--that is, an heavenly!
With a low cry, Emily threw herself on her knees before him.
Down on Ship House Point a light, a flame, burst out amid the torn and
shattered timbers. In a few moments the ruins of the now unheeded ship
were blazing furiously. Barry had cunningly planned it so that the
ship, after it had buried him, should be his funeral pyre.
Fitting it might have been, thought Revere in his heart, as he looked
at the flames roaring up from the ship, if the body of the admiral,
like that of the Vikings of old, might have been laid upon its burning
timbers.
* * * * *
L'ENVOI.
When he was buried, his country, recognizing his merit and remembering
his services again, sent its best to honor him in death. Admiral
Farragut, with a brilliant staff, was there. He was of the navy of the
present, Revere represented the navy of the future, and both stood
together at the grave of the navy of the past.
They buried him on the high hill overlooking Ship House Point. Down on
the Point, at the admiral's feet as it were, and just where the ship
had stood, Revere erected a huge block of rough granite which bore
this inscription:
JOHN BARRY,
Chief Boatswain's Mate of the
United States Ship-of-the-Line _Susquehanna_,
Who perished in the fall of that ship, September 20th, 1865.
"_Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friends._"
In the lofty character of his motives, in the atonement of his
self-sacrifice, in the greatness of his end, his purpose of
destruction was forgotten.
When his naval duties permitted, Emily and Richard often came back to
the old white house on the hill in the summer, and to Charles Stewart
Revere, John Barry Revere, little Emily Revere, and Richard Revere,
Junior, it was the most fascinating spot on earth. They stand with
their father by the huge Celtic cross which marks the admiral's
resting-place, and hear again the story of the sword of the
_Constitution_, destined one day to be drawn against the country in
which it had been made. Or--and this they like even better--they sit
with their mother (lovelier in Richard's eyes with every passing year)
beneath the shadow of the mighty rock on the Point, while she tells
them stories of old John Barry, and how at the last he held up the
ship.
_Part II_
VERACIOUS TALES OF VARIOUS SORTS
"When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
Men will believe, because they love the lie;
But truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
Must have some solemn proof to pass her down."
CHURCHILL
"'Tis strange--but true, for truth is always strange,
Stranger than fiction."
BYRON
"Variety's the very spice of life."
COWPER
Copyright, 1900 and 1902, by J. B. Lippincott Company.
Copyright, 1901 and 1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1902, by Henry T. Coates & Company.
Copyright, 1902, by The Golden Rule Company.
Copyright, 1902, by Daily Story Company.
Copyright, 1902, by Cyrus Townsend Brady.
COUPS DE THEATRE
"The world's a theatre, the earth a stage,
Which God and Nature do with actors fill."
THOMAS HEYWOOD
A VAUDEVILLE TURN
COMEDY
"My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on,
Judge not the play before the play is done:
The plot has many changes: every day
Speaks a new scene: the last act crowns the play."
FRANCIS QUARLES
The most popular theatre in America, according to the advertisements,
where nothing was played but the "continuous," was packed from parquet
to top gallery with a perspiring crowd of pleasure-seekers one hot
August night. The papers had said--_via_ the society columns, of
course--that everybody was out of town for the summer, and
incidentally, therefore, that all the ordinary places of amusement
were closed, except _Les Varietes_. However, the city was not quite
deserted; for, of the anchored ninety-nine hundredths of the
population, all who could do so, apparently in despair of other
amusement, and attracted by the popular prices, had crowded into "the
home of refined vaudeville," as it was called on the programme. The
house was fluttering with fans; most of the spectators and actors felt
as though they were slowly deliquescing in perspiration, but, on the
whole, the audience seemed to be enjoying it.
The usual _melange_--how natural and appropriate it seems to use
French words when treating of the vaudeville!--of entertainments
entirely suited even to a Mrs. Boffin, become a world-wide type of
matronly modesty and virtue--had been provided by the high-minded and
scrutinizing management. Ladies in short skirts capered nimbly over
the stage to the "lascivious pleasing" of the banjo; gentlemen with
one leg rode marvellously endowed bicycles in impossible ways;
tumblers frisked and frolicked about without the slightest regard
either for temperature or gravitation; happy tramps,--at least the
announcements said they were happy,--whose airy, carefully tattered
garments were in entire consonance with the heated atmosphere,
delivered themselves of speeches full of rare old humor and fairly
bristling with Boeotian witticisms. There were men singers and women
singers, musical cranks, freak piano-players, monologue artists,
burlesquers, and then a little play,--at least they said it was a
play.
So with these multifarious stirrers-up-of-varied-emotions the evening
drew toward its close. Finally, just before the biograph went through
its eye-shattering, soul-distressing performance, the little boy who
walked solemnly across the stage before each turn with such a queer,
self-important strut that the regular patrons--those who came early
and brought their luncheon--felt disappointed when he took a vacation,
set out upon the racks, provided on either side of the proscenium arch
for the purpose, a tablet bearing the name "Mademoiselle Helene."
When the curtain rose thereafter the stage was set for a woodland. The
lights were turned thrillingly low, so that the expectant audience
were scarcely aware how the tiny little body, whom they saw standing
in the full blaze of the calcium-light ray suddenly flashed upon her
from the mysterious apparatus in the balcony, had reached the centre
of the stage.
The little miss was apparently not more than six years old. She had
short white stockings on her plump little pink legs, and her dainty
feet were covered with black ankle ties. She wore fluffy little pink
and white skirts like a ballet-dancer, and with her little bare arms
she blew graceful kisses to the audience as she bounded before it.
With her sweet blue eyes, her golden hair, she made a beautiful
picture, as she pirouetted around the stage on the tips of her ten
little toes, kicking up her little legs, bending her back, wriggling
her skirts in imitation of older and more sophisticated
performers,--to put it mildly,--which would have been more amusing if
it had not been a little pitiful.
So little, so cool, so sweet, so fresh, so innocent she seemed, that
in the hot theatre on that hot night no wonder a great, rapturous
"oh-h-h!" of delight and approbation burst from feminine lips--and
masculine ones, too, if the truth be told. As the little maid in
perfect silence continued her dance, exclamations of admiration rose
from the audience, and when she finished her first turn and stopped
panting, bowing, hand-kissing, the theatre rang with hand-clapping.
Though some of the fathers and mothers in the audience, with thoughts
of their own little folk, murmured under breaths, "What a pity! She
ought to be at home in bed!" the witchery of her movements and the
charm of her face were as strong upon them as they were upon the
others; more so--they had children of their own.
As she stopped and stood alone on the large stage after her final
_pas_, bowing again and again and throwing more kisses in that sweetly
infantile way, there was a commotion among the people enjoying
"standing room only" in the passage-way at the back of the parquet. A
tall, broad-shouldered man forced himself through the crowd, in spite
of angry remonstrances and rude resistance, and ran down the aisle.
His pale face was working with emotion, his eyes shining.
"Nellie!" he cried as he ran, in a voice that vibrated above the
applause in the theatre. "Don't you know me? Nellie! Nellie!" he
continued, stretching out his arms toward the little girl.
The noise of clapping hands died away as if by magic, as they heard
the cry, full of love and longing. The man stopped in full view of the
great audience. The little girl, hearing the cry, with one hand still
in the air where the kisses had stopped half blown away, looked at the
man over the footlights, half-dazed, apparently, by the situation.
"Papa! Papa!" she cried, suddenly awakening to life and bounding
toward him. "Papa, take me home!" Every soul in the hushed theatre
heard the words in the sweet treble of childhood.
[Illustration: "Papa! Papa!" she cried, "take me home!"]
"Where's your mother, baby?" asked the man, apparently oblivious of
everything but the little lass.
"She's dead, papa," answered the child, brushing her little hand
across her eyes. "I'm so glad you've found me. Oh, take me away!"
"I will! I will!" said the man, desperately, forcing his way toward
the stage.
Two of the ushers and an officer had hurried down the aisle and seized
him by the arms. The piano-player rose from his neglected instrument
and caught him also.
"Let me go!" roared the man, shoving them aside with superhuman
strength, apparently. "She's my daughter, I tell you! I will have
her!"
The lights on the stage were suddenly turned up. A hard-featured man
came forward and grasped the child by the arm.
"What's all this row?" he cried; "I'm the manager of Mademoiselle
Helene. Her mother left the child with me. She gets good food and
clothes and is well taken care of. What more does she want?"
"I want my papa! Oh, I want you!" cried the little girl.
"And you shall have me, dear."
"No," said the man on the stage, roughly, "she shall not!"
"Gentlemen," cried the other man, turning about and facing the
audience. "Friends, there is my little daughter. Her mother ran away
from me, left me. I haven't seen Nellie for two years. I just happened
in here to-night and recognized her, and----"
"Give him his daughter," broke out a burly man in the third row of the
parquet, rising in his seat as he spoke and shaking his fist at the
man on the stage, "or----"
The house was in a perfect uproar now. The women in tears, the men
screaming with flushed, excited faces.
"Let him have her!"
"Give her up!"
"Let the child go with her father!"
"Shame! Shame!"
"Mob him!"
"Lynch the wretch!"
The man on the stage fairly quailed before this outburst of popular
passion; the ushers and officer had released the other man, but before
he could take a step the local manager appeared on the stage in the
midst of the confusion. Lifting his hand to the crowd, he finally
succeeded in stilling the tumult.
"I have heard it all!" he cried, as soon as he could command
attention. "This theatre don't want to part father and daughter. Give
the child to the man. And get out of here!" he added, turning fiercely
and shaking his fist at the hard-featured man on the stage.
The latter let go the child's arm and shrank back in the wings,
followed by the jeers of the crowd. Then the local manager took the
little girl in his arms, stepped over the footlights, and handed her
to the man who had claimed her.
He lifted her up, kissed her, and pressed her tenderly to his breast.
She clasped her little arms around his neck and dropped her head on
his shoulder with a low cry of content.
"Thank you, sir!" said the man to the manager; "thank you all, ladies
and gentlemen! Oh, I have got her back again!"
He turned with his precious burden and walked rapidly down the aisle,
passed out of the door, and disappeared in the night.
The house rang with cheers. Men and women stood up and clapped and
applauded and yelled like mad. When a semblance of order was restored,
the local manager dismissed the audience. As he said, none of the
performers were in condition to go on further after the little tragedy
they had witnessed, which had ended so happily, after all. Nor was the
audience in a mood for any more vaudeville after the bit of real life
in which they had participated.
* * * * *
"How did it go off, Bill?" asked the brown-haired man of the local
manager in the office half an hour later.
"Fine!" said the manager. "It was the greatest act I ever saw. You did
splendidly, old man. I congratulate you."
"It has only one disadvantage," remarked the hard-featured man: "you
can only do it once in each town. It's only good for one-night
stands."
"And didn't Nellie do it well?" returned the other.
"She did that," replied the local manager; "she couldn't have done it
better! It almost made me weep myself."
"That child's a born actress," said the hard-featured man; "she'll be
a treasure some day, sure."
"She's a treasure now," replied the local manager. "What a pity we
couldn't do it over to-night!"
"Do you know, men," said the brown-haired man, "I feel real guilty
somehow. Seems like such a fraud----"
"Nonsense, Bill!" interrupted the manager, yet with a note of sympathy
in his tone.
"Rot!" commented hard features, not the least comprehending.
"Where is she now?" asked the other, shaking his head dubiously, still
uncertain and unconvinced.
"Her father and mother took her home right after the performance, and
I hope she is fast asleep in her bed by this time, like a good little
girl," continued the manager. "Here's your check, Bill. Be on hand
Monday night when we open at X----"
THE LAST TRIBUTE TO HIS GENIUS
TRAGEDY
"I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ."
SHAKESPEARE
The crime had been one of peculiar atrociousness. While the little old
man who kept the quaint curiosity-shop down on Linden Street seemed to
have few or no friends, he was blessed with a great many
acquaintances, especially among the people of the better class, for
whom it was quite a fad to visit the dingy, shabby little store, with
its assortment of bric-a-brac, mouldy books, articles of virtu, and
antiques, genuine or spurious, valuable or worthless, all heaped about
in promiscuous confusion.
Indeed, the "Major" was not the least curious object in the
collection. Few people knew that the title represented gallant and
youthful soldiering in Rebellion days before he shrivelled and dried
up in the musty little shop. When, therefore, he was found dead among
his raffle of goods, about half after seven on a summer evening, with
his brains brutally beaten out by a hammer, which lay by his side, the
greatest excitement was manifested everywhere. That a man should be
murdered in a store on one of the main thoroughfares of the city at
that hour and in that way; that the murderer should make his escape by
the front door, which was left open, were in themselves sufficiently
remarkable facts to engage widespread attention.
Rewards were offered by the city government; the metropolitan police
force, supplemented by the best detectives that could be imported, who
were paid by private subscription, worked upon the case in vain. No
clew presented itself, nothing whatever was discovered. The contents
of the shop were finally sold at auction and the store was closed. The
estate, which was surprisingly small, contrary to the general
opinion,--which, in fact, consisted merely of the proceeds of the sale
of the goods,--was administered in the interests of some distant
connections, and the whole affair after a short time was practically
forgotten. Yet somewhere on the earth a man wandered with the guilt of
murder heavy on his soul.
* * * * *
When it was announced in the advertisements that Sir Henry Irving, the
great English actor, was to play _The Bells_ on Thursday night,
society--and those not within the charmed circle who could scrape
together the unusual price demanded by the elaborate nature of Sir
Henry's staging--anticipated a great intellectual treat. To see the
character of Matthias interpreted by such a master of the tragic art
could hardly be called entertaining, of course, yet anything which
takes us out of the humdrum routine of every-day life and quickens the
blood that beats with such commonplace sluggishness ordinarily is most
desirable. It is easy, therefore, to understand the avidity with which
the opportunity for paying the unusual price for being shocked and
terrified was welcomed.
The play, with its damnable iteration of chiming sleigh-bells and its
awful portrayal of the struggles of a crime-stained human soul against
diabolic memories, proceeded with that wonderful smoothness and
effectiveness for which Sir Henry's productions were famous. After the
short intermission at the close of the second act, the audience, most
of whom were familiar with the story, settled themselves with
delicious thrills of foreboding anticipation to witness the dreadful
and harrowing denouement in which the murderer's dream--that the crime
of years is at last exposed and the brand of guilt is fixed upon his
honored brow--is exhibited on the stage in all its terrific realism.
The house, including the stage, was totally dark. A weird, ghastly
beam of light thrown from the wings fell fitfully upon the face of Sir
Henry,--no, of Matthias himself. The great actor's identity was lost,
merged, forgotten in the character he portrayed. Not another thing
could be perceived in the theatre. The gaze of every man and woman and
child in that vast assemblage was concentrated upon that beautiful,
mobile, terrible face. The silence with which the audience listened to
that piercing, shuddering voice out of the darkness was oppressive.
Could one's attention have been distracted from that stage he might
have caught the quickening intake of deep breaths, or here and there
marked the low, quivering sighs with which nervous people, under the
influence of that terrible portrayal of the agony of remorse and
apprehension at detected murder, trembled, watched, and waited.
Yet there was nothing actually to be seen in the opera-house but the
face of the actor, or sometimes a white, ghastly hand and a dim, dark
suggestion of a body writhing in mortal torture, so keen as almost to
pass belief, in a _tour de force_ of unwilling confession. The
detachment was perfect, the illusion was complete; there before them
was a soul in judgment.
As the man was forced, under the influence of a higher power than his
own, to describe the murder, the base violation of hospitality, the
blow of the axe that killed a guest, by which fifteen years before he
had laid the foundation of his fortune; as he was constrained to act
again before his judges in hypnotic trance the awful happenings of the
tragedy of that Christmas Eve, of which none had suspected him; and
when, on being released from the spell, his confession was read to him
by the court, and the realization came to him that the fabric of
respectability which he had carefully created upon the shifting sand
of murder had crashed into nothing,--who, that has seen it, or heard
it, will ever forget the fearful anguish and despair of that wrecked
soul?
As Matthias fell prostrate at the feet of the judges, moaning in utter
desolation and abandonment, the appalling stillness was suddenly
broken, and this time the sound came not from the stage. Out of the
darkness of the auditorium a thin, high voice, fraught with a note of
torture more real and intense, if possible, than that which the
marvellous skill of the actor had produced, was hurled into the great
vault of the theatre.
"No, no," it cried; "you are wrong. It was a hammer!"
The surprise of the audience for the moment held them still, while the
voice shrieked out in the darkness,--
"It is enough! I'll confess. Guilty, oh, my God, guilty! It was I! The
murder--light, for God's sake, light!"
A woman screamed suddenly. People rose to their feet. One of those
strange, swaying movements which bespeak a panic ran through the
crowd. Matthias on the stage rose instantly, faced about, and walked
toward the dark footlights, a genuine horror in his soul this time,
for no human voice that he had ever heard had carried such mortal pain
as that which had just spoken. The theatre was filled with a babel of
voices. Confused shouts and cries came from all sides.
"Lights, lights!"
"What is it?"
"Go on with the performance!"
At that instant the lights were turned up. There, in the middle aisle,
a few rows from the orchestra rail, a tall, thin man, his haggard face
white with emotion, his eyes staring, his teeth clinched 'neath
bloodless lips, stood swaying unsteadily to and fro. His hands
uplifted as if to ward off a blow, he stood utterly oblivious of
everything but Matthias. From the chair beside him a woman with a face
scarcely less white, in which were mingled incredulity, surprise, and
horror, reached her arms up to him as if to save him.
"I can't stand it any longer!" cried the man, staring up at Matthias.
"You've done it. I'll confess all! It has torn me to pieces!" he
screamed, clutching at his throat. "The Major--I beat him to death
with his hammer, like you did, for his money. I took it from his
person. I knew it was there. I was his friend, his only friend. My
God! There was no place to burn his body. He's always at my feet. He's
staring at me now by you on the stage!"
Sir Henry shrank away involuntarily as the man went on.
"Pity, pity!" he wailed, staggering, stumbling forward, falling upon
his knees nearer to Sir Henry. "Mercy!" he whispered at last, yet with
such distinctness that they heard him in every corner of the theatre.
He knelt with his hands outstretched toward the stage, waiting for
reprieve, sentence, condemnation,--God knows what.
The audience stared likewise with suspended hearts from the great but
mimic figure of murder on one side of the footlights to the greater
and real figure of murder upon the other. As they gazed the man
wavered forward again, sank lower, his hands fell, but before he
collapsed completely, an officer of the law, the first to recover his
wits in the presence of the catastrophe, ran down the aisle and
pounced upon him. Grasping his shoulder, he cried,--
"You're my prisoner. I arrest you!"
"Too late," whispered the man; "I'm--going--going--to plead--in
another--court."
He pitched forward and fell on his face--dead. And a woman, dry-eyed
with horror, old love surviving honor, respect, righteousness, knelt
by his side, took his head in her arms, and strove to kiss away from
his brow the mark of Cain.
So the mystery of the Major's murder was solved at last, and Sir
Henry, as he thought it over in his chamber that night, realized that
he had received the greatest tribute that mortal man could pay to his
acting. His art had been so perfect--he had appeared the incarnation
of terror, remorse, and retribution--that to that struggling soul he
had been as the voice of conscience,--nay, as the very voice of God.
For the man had actually given way, broken down, and confessed a
secret crime under the mighty spell of his acting, and, as the
criminal in the play, had died in the confession!
OUT OF THE WEST
"The sun sets fair in that Western land,
Romance rides over the plains;
There hearts are gay at the close of day,--
Man's duty's done, God reigns."
WARREN GILES
IN OKLAHOMA
AN IDYL OF THE PRAIRIE IN THREE FLIGHTS
"The sun lay dying in the west,
The fresh breeze fanned my brow,
I rode the steed I loved the best--
Would I were riding now."
I.--THE FIRST FLIGHT
Most written stories end with a wedding, actual or prospective; but
this story, like most stories in real life, begins with one. The
little old stone church in Manhattan, Kansas, was crowded to the doors
one June afternoon. The gray-haired President, the younger men and
women of the faculty, and a small sprinkling of the towns-people were
there; but the great mass of the congregation was made up of the
students of the State Agricultural College, which was situated on a
gentle hill just outside the town. It was Graduation Day, and the day
on which Sue Belle Seville and Samuel Maxwell had elected to get
married.
Samuel was a Kansas boy, Sue Belle a Kentucky girl. They were both
orphans and both graduates from the college that day in the same
class: Samuel from the agricultural and mechanical department, Sue
Belle from the housekeeping, culinary, domestic sciences, and other of
the many departments feminine. Maxwell was a manly, energetic, capable
fellow, a good student, and a young man who, given an equal chance,
should make a fine farmer. On that day he was the envy of all the
young men of marriageable age in the college.
His bride to be, while she seemed made for better things than the
ineffably monotonous drudgery of an ordinary farmer's wife, was
nevertheless skilled enough, capable enough, resolute enough, to
master her lot and be happy in it whatever it might be. She was a
handsome girl, tall, straight, strong, black-haired, blue-eyed, with
the healthiest whiteness in her face that one could imagine.
The brief wedding ceremony was soon over. Old Dr. Fairman, the
President, gave the bride away in his usual courtly and distinguished
manner, and as the village organist played the wedding-march on the
sweet-toned old organ, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Maxwell passed out of the
church, followed by all of the congregation. At the end of the long
cinder foot-path extending from the church-door under the double row
of trees to the street stood a brand-new Studebaker wagon filled with
household goods. Two stout, well-conditioned horses were harnessed to
it, while two others, a good mare and a handsome young horse, a
three-year-old colt, were fastened to the tail-board by long
hitching-straps. The wagon had been transformed by a canvas canopy
over the bed into what was popularly known as a "prairie schooner."
The new canvas was white as snow in the sunlight.
Maxwell handed his wife to the seat on the front, pitched quarters to
the negro boys who had been holding the horses' heads, gathered up the
reins, and, amid a storm of cheers and a shower of rice--especially
appropriate to an agricultural college, by the way--and other
manifestations of joy and delight, drove away on the wedding journey.
The watchers followed with their eyes the wagon lumbering slowly down
the main street until it crossed the bridge over the Kansas River and
disappeared among the hills to the southward.
After settling the expenses of their college course and paying for
their outfit, the two young people found themselves in possession of
some two thousand dollars between them; more than enough, they
fancied, backed as it was--or should I say led?--by two stout hearts
and by four strong young arms, to wrest a livelihood--nay, a fortune,
perhaps--from the prairies of the West.
An old, old story, this. A pair of home-builders going out into a new
land to conquer or die; to establish another outpost of civilization
on the distant frontier, or to fail. A man and a woman who had taken
their all in their hands to consecrate it by their toil to the service
of humanity, and to stake their happiness on the success of their
endeavor. True builders of the nation, they! Pickets they were, going
ahead of the advance guard of the army of civilization's marchers,
which, untold ages ago, started in some secluded nook in the far
Orient, and, impelled by an irresistible desire for conquest, in
successive waves of emigration, has at last compassed the globe,
rolled around the world. Leaders, these two, of that mighty deluge of
men and women for whom the sun of hope is ever rising,--but rising in
the West.
Never was such a wedding journey. It was springtime in the most
bountiful and fertile year that had come to the great State for a
generation. The way of the lovers, as they plodded ever southward and
westward, led them now past vast fields of yellowing wheat already
beginning to ripen for the thresher. Sometimes they drove for miles
through towering walls of broad-bladed, cool, green corn; sometimes
the trail led them over the untilled, treeless prairies covered with
tall, nodding sunflowers in all their gorgeous golden bloom,--blossoms
which gave the State a name; and not infrequently their way would take
them alongside a limpid river, in that happy season bank full from the
frequent rains, where the winding road would be overhung by great
trees.
They stopped at night at the different little towns through which
their way passed, and once in a while they enjoyed the hearty welcome
of a lone farm-house. Sometimes they hired a negro boy to drive the
wagon from one stopping-place to another, while they mounted the two
led horses and galloped over the prairie. Samuel rode well, but to see
Sue Belle on that spirited young steed of hers was to see the
perfection of dashing horsemanship. An instinctive judge of
horse-flesh, she had bought that three-year-old herself. He was a
chestnut sorrel with a white blaze on his face, and white forefeet, as
handsome and spirited as his mistress. In honor of her native State,
she called him Kentucky.
As they progressed farther and farther southwestward the land became
more open, the farm-houses were greater distances apart, cultivated
fields less frequent, the towns were fewer in number and diminishing
in size, the rivers grew smaller and smaller, and trees almost
vanished from the landscape. Finally, away out in Cimarron County,
where the railroad stopped and civilization ended, they reached their
journey's end. Such a wedding-trip they had enjoyed, such a honeymoon
they had spent!
They bought a bit of flower-decked prairie, a quarter section crossed
in one corner by a little creek flowing southward until it joined a
larger steam flowing into the Arkansas River. The chosen land mostly
lay on the south side of a slight elevation from which they could
survey the grass-mantled plains melting into the unbroken horizon
miles and miles away. The country about was entirely uncultivated and
had been mainly given over to cattle-raising; it was a dozen miles to
the nearest house and fifteen to the town of Apache, the county-seat.
How still was that vast expanse of gently undulating land of which
they were the centre! An ocean caught in a quiet moment, and every
smoothly rolling wave petrified, motionless. How vast was the
firmament above them! To lie in the grass at night and stare up into
its blue unclouded distance filled with stars--shone they ever so
gloriously anywhere else on the globe?--was to reduce one's self to a
vanishing point in the infinite universe of God. Lonely? Yes, to
ordinary people, perhaps, but not to these two home-builders. They
were young, they were together, they were lovers, and they had to do
prosaic, God-given labor.
So they pitched their stakes upon the verdant hill, and, toiling early
and late, built there for themselves and those to come a home. With
iron share they tore the virgin sod; with generous hands they sowed
the seed; with all the hope of youth and love bourgeoning and
blossoming in their breasts, they began the earth-old process of
wresting a living from the tillage of the soil. "In the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread." So ran the primal truth. Ah, yes, but this
time counted not a curse but a privilege, and enjoyed not without but
within an Eden.
II.--THE SECOND FLIGHT
Spring-time again upon the farm, and they were bidding it good-by.
Five years have dragged away, years filled with little but
misfortune--years of freezing winters, burning summers, drought, or
storm. Five lean years of failure, unprecedented but true. A long,
deadly, paralyzing struggle with that terrible minatory face of nature
which, thank God! is usually turned away from humanity, else we could
not bear the sight. The sun had beaten upon the farm and burnt it up,
the parasites had swarmed over the field and eaten it down, the winter
cold had frozen the life out of it, the fierce storms had swept over
it and torn it away,--winter and summer had been alike against them.
Last fall the deadly mortgage had grown from the little hand-breadth
cloud until it had covered the land, blanketed it, blighted it, filled
earth and sky to them. It was over. They had toiled for naught, and no
profit had they taken of all their labor under the sun. They were
beaten at last.
Once more the old Studebaker wagon. Within it a haggard, dogged,
disappointed man,--yet indomitable; a woman still young, robbed
forever of the brightness of youth, yet striving to nourish a spark of
the old hope,--a mother, too. Two little children clung to her,
healthy, lusty, strong, happy; they had neither known nor suffered.
There was the same old team between the "tugs," sobered, quieted,
saddened like their master, perhaps, and Kentucky. Kentucky was leaner
than he should be, not so well nourished as they would like to have
him, but his spirit was unabated. He, at least, had not been beaten
down.
So they set forth again. "Once more into the breach," brave pair. Life
insistently craves bread. Men must work; ay, and women too, though
they may weep as well. There were the little children, oh, father and
mother! treasure of health and teaching must be laid up for them. The
old cause must be tried out yet again. Farewell to defeat, farewell to
failure, farewell to the old. Let us stir up hope again, look forward
into the future, deserve a triumph. All had been lost but love; that
had not failed, and while God is it cannot. It is a mighty talisman
with which to attempt the morrow. So armed, they started out again.
With one hundred dollars in his pocket, a small lot of household
necessaries, a stove, some blankets, etc., and Kentucky, Samuel
Maxwell and Sue Belle and the two children started out in the wagon
again to have another wrestle with fortune. They determined to go to
the Kansas-Indian Territory border and try to secure free land in
Oklahoma Territory, which was to be opened for settlement that summer.
They hated the prairie where they had lived now. It was associated
with their ruin, eloquent of their future. That season bade fair to be
as bountiful a time as had been the year of their arrival, but they
could not stay. They had pulled up the stakes, and nothing was left
for them but to go on. Indeed, they were wishful to do so, and had
they known that, as it happened, the five years of starvation,
drought, and failure were to be succeeded by twice as many years of
abounding plenty, they would not have stayed. They loathed the spot.
They could not have remained anyway. Another man held the farm and
succeeded where they had failed, reaping where they had sown.
It was late summer when they reached Solomon City, from which they had
elected to make the run into the hitherto forbidden land. The place
was filled with all sorts and conditions of men and women attracted by
the possibility of getting a quarter section or a town lot practically
free in the Cherokee strip; there were half a million of them on the
border-line! And there, too, were congregated the human vultures that
live to prey upon the crowd.
The distribution of the lots and sections was to be made on the
principle of first come first served. All seekers for locations were
to line up on the edge of the strip on a given date at a certain hour,
and when a signal was given they were to rush into the Nation, drive a
stake in a quarter section, or in a town lot at the places where the
towns had previously been surveyed and lots plotted and staked out by
the government, throughout the vast body of land in the Indian
Territory thrown open for settlement. Then they were to hold their
places, living in tents and shanties, until they could erect houses
and prove their claims.
Samuel intended to ride Kentucky into the strip and take his chance at
a town lot. He had had enough of farms. Not many miles below Solomon
City, on the railroad running through the "strip,"--as the land was
called,--the future town of Newlands had been laid out by the
surveyors. It was a paper town as yet, but the day after the run would
see it suddenly become a city, and good lots would probably be of
value. If he could get a good one it might be worth several thousand
dollars, and he could start again. It was a desperate chance, but he
had to take it; there was nothing else.
Ill fortune was not yet done with them, however, for in scrambling
down the bank of the river to get water for his team, the unfortunate
man fell and broke his arm. He climbed up to the wagon, sank down on
the dry grass beside it, and gave way. Sue Belle stood by with white
face as the local doctor bound up his arm, but she did not cry. She
felt that she had other things to do, that she must play the man, and
that she could not indulge in the womanly luxury of weeping.
"I'm not crying, doctor, because it hurts," said Samuel, brushing away
his tears with his uninjured arm; "but because this seems to be just
the last straw in our bad luck. We were married five years ago, and we
bought a farm in Cimarron. I'm a good farmer, I was born on a farm and
raised on it, and I was trained in the Agricultural College in Kansas.
I know the thing theoretically and practically, too, but everything
failed us. We've lost everything, and we came here in the hope of
getting something out of the strip. God's forgot us, I guess."
The doctor had seen many cases like that in the Southwest, and, though
his heart was profoundly touched, he could do nothing.
That night Samuel lay awake in the wagon almost forgetting the pain in
his arm wondering what would become of them. He had lugged out his old
leather purse and counted the money that was left,--ten dollars! That
was all that stood between them and starvation! The strip was to be
opened to-morrow, the run would take place then. What, in God's name,
could he do?
"Sam," said Sue Belle, lying awake by his side, "don't give way so!"
"Give way, dear!" he groaned. "How can I help it? Ten dollars between
you and the children and starvation! This town here can't help any
one. These people around us can't Look at them! They're as poor as we
are. Five years of crop failure has hit them as hard as it has hit us.
The run takes place to-morrow, and I can't ride. I did hope that I
could get a town lot in Newlands. I don't believe that anything here
can outrun Kentucky; but now--oh, my God! my God!"
"Sam dear, I'll ride Kentucky."
She spoke resolutely, having thought quickly, and her mind was made
up.
"We've got no side-saddle," answered the man; "you know we sold it."
"I can ride astride," said the woman, having covered this point also
in her mind. "I used to ride that way when I was a girl. I've done it
hundreds of times, and I can make better time that way now."
"But, dear, you're a woman, and----"
"I can wear your clothes, dear. I'm almost as tall as you are. They'll
be rather large, but----"
"Oh, Sue Belle, I can't allow you to go in there alone, in all that
crowd, with----"
"I've got to do it, Sam! It's our last chance. It's for the children,
not ourselves. We could die. We've done our best. But think of them!"
She rose from her bed and crept over to the back of the wagon where
the little boy and girl lay sprawling side by side in the dreamless
sleep of childhood. She pushed from the baby brows the curly hair
matted with perspiration, and stooped and kissed them. She felt so
strong, so brave, so resolute, as if the burden which she had hitherto
shared with Samuel, or from which he had tried to spare her, had
suddenly fallen upon her own shoulders, and in some strange way that
she had been given strength to bear it.
Long time that night husband and wife talked over the situation. In
the face of her determination the man could not do otherwise than give
consent. In the morning, making him as comfortable as she could, she
plodded up through the dust to the city and bought from the wondering
shopkeeper a pair of high boots that fitted her, since it would be
impossible for her to use her husband's huge ones. At Sam's insistent
demand, she also hired for five dollars a poor stranded negro, who
looked honest and faithful, to drive the wagon after her into the
strip. That exhausted their ready money.
It was half after eleven o'clock when she returned to the wagon. The
doctor had been there, and had done what he could for her fevered
husband, but his arm still pained fearfully. He was up, however,--he
had to be,--and seated on the dusty grass in the shadow of the canvas
top. The children were playing about him. Bidding the negro boy hitch
up the team, Sue Belle slipped under the wagon-cover and dropped the
curtain. When she came out her tall form was encased in her husband's
only remaining suit of clothes. She wore a soft felt hat with her hair
tightly twisted under it. A loose shirt, trousers, and the new boots
completed her costume. Womanlike, she had tied a blue silk
handkerchief--last treasure-trove from her trousseau--around her neck.
There was a painful flush upon her thin face and her eyes were filled
with tears.
Samuel groaned and shook his head, the negro boy gazed with mouth wide
open, his eyes rolling, and little Sue Belle shrank away from her
mother garbed in this strange manner. Kentucky, who had been given the
last measure of oats they possessed, did not recognize her until she
spoke, and then he stared at her in a wondering way as she saddled and
bridled him. A hatchet and a tent-peg tied securely to the saddle
completed her preparations. By her husband's insistence she strapped a
spur on her boot, although, as she said, she had never put a spur to
Kentucky in her life.
"You may have to do it now, dear," said Maxwell, and to please him she
complied.
Nobody paid any attention whatever to her, although the boundary was
lined, as far as eye could see and for miles beyond, with crowds of
people intending to make the run. On the very edge of the strip the
runners had assembled on horseback or muleback, on bicycles, in
buggies, sulkies, or in road wagons, and there were many dressed in
jerseys and running shoes who intended to make the run on foot. Back
of them in long lines were grouped wagons of all descriptions, mostly
filled with women and children. All sorts and conditions of men were
represented in the huge and motley throng.
It was a blazing hot day. The shifting horde raised clouds of dust
above the line, from which the bare, treeless prairie stretched away
southward for miles. There was not a soul on it except United States
cavalrymen, who were spread out in a long line, each man being placed
at a regular interval from his neighbor. To the front of the troopers,
the captain in command sat his horse, holding his watch in his left
hand to determine the correct time, while in his right he carried a
cocked revolver.
Twelve o'clock was the appointed hour. The soldiers on either side
held their loaded carbines poised carefully and looked toward the
captain, or, if too far away to see him, toward the next in line who
could. The signal for the start was to be given simultaneously over
the whole extended strip, stretching for many miles along the Kansas
border, by means of these troopers. No one was to move until the
signal was given. The soldiers had scoured the country for days to
evict the "sooners,"--those who had gone in before the appointed time
and attempted to conceal themselves that they might secure the best
lots.
Sue Belle turned and kissed the babies. Then she bent toward Samuel,
but he rose painfully to his feet and stood flushed and feverish while
he pressed her to his side with his sound arm.
"May God protect you, dear," he said, trembling with pain and
agitation.
"He will! He will!" exclaimed the woman, fervently, strong in her
endeavor. "Now be sure and have the wagon follow right after me. And
you know the doctor said he'd get you taken in some place in town as
soon as the run began; there'll be lots of room there then. I'm going
to ride straight down to Newlands and try for a town lot. They'll find
me there. They ought to be there by evening, and I'll manage somehow
till then."
"But how'll you live till I get there?"
"I can cook or wash for hire; there'll be lots to do there, and I'll
write to you at once. Don't worry about me, dear. I'm half crazy to
think of leaving you ill and alone----"
"I wish you had a revolver, Sue Belle," groaned Samuel.
"I wish I had, too," answered the woman; "but never mind, we are in
God's hands."
"Oh, Sue Belle, I can't let you go!"
"You must! I must go now! See! They're getting ready!"
She tore herself away from him and spoke to the colored boy.
"Joe," she said, "for God's sake, don't fail us! I leave you my two
little children; if you guard them safely and bring them to me
faithfully, whatever good fortune comes to us you shall share."
"'Deed I will, suh, ma'am, miss,--yes, suh," stammered the colored
boy. "I'll tek good caah on 'em, mista--lady," he added, in his
confusion.
III.--THE THIRD FLIGHT
Without another word the woman sprang on the horse and forced herself
as near the line as she could. She had lost an opportunity of getting
in the very front rank, but she knew her horse and did not care for
that. It wanted perhaps a minute to twelve o'clock, and a silence
settled down over the rude assemblage, although the excitement was at
fever heat. Pushing and jostling would gain no advantage now. The gray
old captain of cavalry sat his horse, intently gazing at his watch.
The seconds dragged and the multitude waited breathlessly. Suddenly he
closed it with a snap, lifted his pistol in the air, and before the
smoke of the discharge blew away a quick volley rang along the line.
With a sort of a roar that echoed up into the heavens for miles the
runners sprang forward. There was one mighty simultaneous surge of men
and animals, and then the line began to break. In the cloud of dust
that arose instantly, Maxwell, forgetful of his broken arm, strove
vainly to follow with his gaze Sue Belle's flying figure. The next
moment he noticed that the ground directly in front of him was
deserted. An idea flashed into his mind. Regardless of his pain, he
sprang to his feet, with his uninjured arm tore a loose bed-slat from
the wagon, and, stepping across the line, thrust it into the finest
quarter section of the strip. Nobody had thought of doing this. The
land adjoined the town of Solomon City, and could probably be sold
without delay for a good sum of money. It was his. They were saved!
Oh, why hadn't he thought of it before and prevented his wife from
making the run? But it was too late; she was gone. Calling the negro,
he had him take from the wagon a few of the boards which had been
brought along for the purpose, and nail them together in a tent shape
to make him a shelter. Laying a blanket and a quilt on the ground, and
setting a bucket of water therein, he crawled under it, knowing that
some one sent by the doctor would certainly come to him during the
day, and determined to hold his claim if he died for it. Then he bade
Joe load the children in the wagon, take them into the strip, tell his
wife of his good fortune, and bid her come back to him, if she could.
What of the woman riding on with a broken heart, yet with a grim
determination somehow to achieve fortune for her sick husband and her
children? She kept Kentucky well in hand, and yet easily passed
buggies, sulkies, runners, men on bicycles, and began to overtake the
horsemen galloping southward over the prairie. At first the dust
almost choked her. The man's saddle annoyed her, too; but as she got
into clear air, and began to get accustomed to the strangeness of her
position, she regained her self-control. She shook the reins lightly
over the horse, and he lengthened his stride and quickened his speed,
making swift progress for a long time.
Finally there was no one in front of her. To the right and left, as
far as she could see, horsemen were galloping on; back of her they
trailed in an ever-thinning mass. Most of them she was leaving
rapidly. Kentucky was of racing stock. He was three-quarter-bred and
game to the core. The sight of the other horses running by his side
inspired him. He had been ridden in a wild dash across the prairie
many a time, but never before in competition with other horses. He
took to the race instinctively, and galloped on as if he had been
trained to it from the beginning.
She had hard work to hold him, yet she knew she had a long ride before
her, and if she did not keep him well in hand he would be blown before
he went half the distance; so she held him down to it, riding warily,
watching carefully for prairie-dog holes, for if the horse should
thrust his leg into one he would break it, and that would be the end
of him and her ride as well.
So she galloped on and on, still in the front line, and with every
surging leap leaving some beaten runner behind. Now she drew ahead,
now she led the whole vast throng, and now the horse was out of hand.
He was running magnificently, but he had gotten away from her, not
viciously, but in pure joy at being free in this mad race over the
prairie. Presently she looked back. The nearest rider seemed to be
half a mile behind her. It was not necessary for her to get so far
ahead, and she tried again and again to check the horse, but without
success.
Kentucky was running his own race now. How he swept through the air!
It was magnificent! The exhilaration of the motion got into her blood.
It was long since she had had such a ride. She, too, came of racing
stock, and the habit of her sires reasserted itself in her being. For
a moment she forgot Samuel, forgot the children. She forgot everything
but that wide open prairie, the wind blowing across her face, the
rapid rise and fall of the horse as he raced madly on. Youth came back
to her and the joy of life; failure lay behind, success before. Her
heart beat faster in her breast. Kentucky gallantly carried her
forward. How long had she been riding? She could not tell. They were
not at Newlands yet, she was certain, so she raced away. After a long
time she looked back and was astonished to see two riders nearer to
her than any had been when she had looked before; all the rest were
miles behind.
The men were mounted on broncos,--the horse _par excellence_ of the
West,--wild, vagrant descendants of old Spanish breeds; animals
without blood, without birth, without beauty, without style, without
training, mean and vicious in disposition; utterly useless for a short
dash, and in an ordinary race unable to approach a thoroughbred; but
with a brutal, indomitable spirit, a capacity for unlimited endurance
and tireless ability to run long distances and live on nothing, and do
it day after day, which made them formidable and dangerous competitors
for all other horses of whatsoever quality. They were loping along
after her with an ugly yet very rapid gait, which they could keep up
all day if necessary.
Sue Belle thought Kentucky's stride was not quite so sweeping as it
had been; he seemed to be a little tired; still, he was doing his best
manfully. Although he yet held the lead, he was not built for this
kind of a run. She realized it, but there was nothing she could do to
husband his strength, nothing left her but to gallop on. And yet there
was lots of go in him yet. He was by no means done.
The prairie rolled away back of them as it was compassed by the flying
feet, and still the mighty ride went on. The first bronco was nearer
now. He was not quite a mile away, but the second was a longer
distance behind the first and falling back. The rest were nowhere. Of
all the throng only these three were in sight. Kentucky was very
tired. Surely they must be near Newlands now! The other horse was
coming up fast. She shook out the reins and called to her own. The
pursuer was nearer! He was so near that at last Kentucky realized that
he was being pursued. They were almost there! In front of them on the
horizon she saw the land-office, the station, and the hundreds of
white stakes marking the lots of the town.
The other horse was almost beside her now. Well, suppose he did win
the race? There were hundreds of lots there, and the second choice
would probably be as good as the first. Should she let him pass? No!
That was not the Kentucky way. Should the horse do it? No, again. She
leaned forward over the saddle and spoke to him; she drove the spur
into him at last. The surprised horse bounded into the air with a
sudden access of vigor, and he fairly leaped away from the bronco. It
was his final effort; when this spurt was ended he would be done for.
Would it be enough?
[Illustration: The surprised horse bounded into the air with a sudden
access of vigor]
In her excitement she turned and shouted back to the man, she knew not
what, waving her hat in disdain. Presently she turned into what
appeared to be the main street. Instinctively as they ran along she
chose what seemed to be the best lot in the prospective city, and then
reined in her panting, exhausted horse; she sprang to the ground, tore
the peg and hatchet from the saddle-bow, and drove the stake in the
lot. Not a moment too soon, with not a second to spare, she had won
the race! The wild bronco came thundering upon her heels. The man
jerked his horse to his haunches by the side of the triumphant
thoroughbred, dropped a rein to the ground to keep him, sprang from
the saddle, and stepped toward her.
"I want that there lot!" he said, roughly. "It's the best lot in the
place. You kin take somethin' else."
Sue Belle rose to her feet. Her hat had fallen off in the wild ride
and her black hair floated over her shoulders. Excitement had put a
light in her eyes, color in her cheeks. She looked handsome, almost
young again,--altogether beautiful. The man was right. She could see
that she had succeeded in getting the best lot in the city. As she
stood up the man stared at her wonderingly. He was a cowboy,--fringed
trousers, bearskin chaparejos, loose shirt, broad hat, Mexican spurs,
and all.
"Good God!" he shouted. "It's a woman!"
"Yes, I am a woman," answered Sue Belle, desperately.
"Well, I'm d----d!" he burst out.
"You've ordered me away from the lot, but----" she went on, heedless
of his interruption.
"Well, gimme a kiss, sis, an' you kin stay on it," said the man, with
a hideous leer.
Sue Belle looked around desperately. She was practically alone on the
prairie save for this man and the other one, now about a mile distant.
The station and land-office were too far away for her to summon
assistance from them. She was absolutely helpless, entirely in this
man's power.
"Will you let me alone if I do?" she asked, at last.
"Oh, come, now, you're too pretty to be left alone, my dear," said the
man, coming closer.
Resisting the impulse to shriek, she faced him hatchet in hand. With
swift feminine instinct she comprehended him in a glance. He was just
an ordinary kind of a cowboy, bad when his bad side was uppermost, but
capable of all sorts of nobility and self-sacrifice if his good side
could be reached. She thought swiftly then,--she had to. She made up
her mind to appeal to him.
"Wait," she said; "don't come nearer until I speak to you. You're
right, I am a woman. I have a husband and two children. We had a
little fortune which we put into a farm in Cimarron County five years
ago. Through a succession of misfortunes we've lost every dollar. We
have nothing except a team and this horse. We came down here to try to
get something for our children. Yesterday my husband fell and broke
his arm. He was going to ride in here. He could not do it. I had to
make the run in place of him. I left him alone, back there on the edge
of the strip, with his broken arm. With the last ten dollars we had on
earth I bought these boots and employed a negro boy whom I never saw
before to bring my little children after me. I want this lot. I won it
fairly. It's the best lot in the town. But you are a man; you are
stronger than I. You may--" she flushed painfully, "kiss me if you
must,--if you will give me your word of honor that after that you will
leave me this lot. You understand that I--I--only submit to it--for
the sake of the children and for my poor husband."
Her eyes were full of tears now, as she clasped her hands, looked at
him appealingly, and waited with burning face, trembling lips, and
heaving bosom.
"Ma'am," said the cowboy, his face also flushing under his tan, as he
took off his sombrero, "I don't want no kiss. Leastways, I don't take
no kiss under these circumstances. You kin have that there lot. I jist
rode in yere fer the fun of the thing. I don't want no lot nohow.
What'd I do with it? Sell it fer booze. You beat me on the square,
though if it had been five miles farther I'd a beat you. Them Kentucky
hosses--I 'low he's a Kentucky hoss?--ain't no good fer long-distance
runnin' side this flea-bitten bronc. I don't want no lot noways. You
stay right here on that there lot, an' fer fear less'n somebody might
come along an' try to make you give it up, I'll stay with you with my
gun handy."
"Thank you and God bless you," said Sue Belle, gratefully, looking at
him with swimming eyes.
Then she put her head down on Kentucky's saddle, where the horse stood
cropping the short grass, threw her arm around his neck, and sobbed as
if her heart would break. The cowboy surveyed her in astonishment and
terror; but, before he could say anything, the second man came racing
up.
"Well, you two young fellows have the best lots in the place, I
suppose. I'll have to take what's left," said the newcomer,
cheerfully. "Great Jupiter! what's that fellow crying about?"
"'Taint a feller," said the cowboy, "it's a female, a woman."
"A woman!" exclaimed the other. "Say, you cowboy," with an ugly look
on his face, "have you been making a woman cry?"
[Illustration: "Say, you cowboy, have you been making a woman cry?"]
"I reckon I hev," answered the cowboy, nonchalantly.
"You infernal----" exclaimed the man, stepping toward him.
"Oh!" cried Sue Belle, raising her head, "he didn't. I'm crying for
joy!"
As he caught sight of her the man bowed instantly toward her with the
grace of a gentleman who recognized under any accident of clothes a
lady.
"My husband is ill," said Sue Belle, swiftly divining another friend,
one of another class, too; "he broke his arm yesterday, and I had to
take our horse and ride here for him and the two little children, and
this gentleman----"
"Lord!" said the cowboy, "I ain't no gent. I'm a cow-puncher."
"This gentleman came after me and promised to protect me from
everybody. And that is why I cried."
"Sir," said the second man, extending his hand, "I beg your pardon for
my suspicions. You are a gentleman."
"Nobody never called me one before," growled the cowboy, much
embarrassed, shaking the proffered hand awkwardly but heartily. "I
don't care fer no lot myself an' I'm goin' to hold this lot next to
hern fer the little kids."
"Well, that's just about what I came for, too. I'm a student, a senior
at Columbia College, New York, madam," he said, turning to Sue Belle,
"out here for the summer to look after some of my father's Kansas
property. I thought I'd run down here just for the fun of it. You said
you had two children, did you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Allow me. I will hold the lot on the other side of you for the other
one. So you see, with this gentleman and myself, you will be
surrounded and protected by the east and the west."
Before the afternoon was half gone all the lots in Newlands had been
appropriated, lumber had been brought in, portable houses and tents
erected, saloons opened, a daily paper started, and the young Bishop
of Oklahoma was on the ground organizing a church; the place was
actually assuming the appearance of a city even in so short a time.
The story of Sue Belle's ride had been told everywhere by her gallant
flankers, and by common consent the focus of activity for the city of
Newlands was centred about those three lots. The happy, grateful woman
could have sold them a hundred times at an increasing price had she
chosen to do so.
Late in the afternoon Joe came up with the wagon and the children. He
had been faithful to his trust. Sue Belle was very much frightened
when she learned that her husband had secured a claim. She knew he
would endeavor to hold it, and she feared extremely for him lying ill
and alone on the prairie. Leaving the children in the care of some of
the women who had followed their husbands on the trail, with the
promise of the whole town that her three lots would be held inviolate
for her, accompanied by her two faithful, self-constituted guardians,
she mounted the refreshed Kentucky again and rode back to her husband,
lying alone, half delirious, in his shed on the prairie, clinging
desperately to his quarter section.
Thus the tide changed at last and now came flooding in with fortune.
PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN
THE END OF A FRONTIER TELL
"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast
thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love
of women."
THE BIBLE
There were but two women in the camp, Martie was one of them, and
Martie was the cause of it. The statement that it was on account of
her they quarrelled, and it was through the quarrel the terrible state
of affairs was brought about, cannot be denied.
Martie and her mother--her mother was the other woman in the camp,
and, except that she had been responsible for Martie years before, she
didn't particularly count--had come to the rough little mining
settlement with Martie's father, a mining engineer, who represented
certain speculative holdings in the East which needed personal
attention.
Before they arrived the camp had been a fairly peaceable one: the boys
got drunk just about so often, once in a while there was a shooting
affair, but Medicine Dog was as orderly a camp as might have been
found in Colorado, until Martie came. It was a serpent, I believe,
that introduced the trouble in the Garden of Eden. I wonder what the
wild beasts thought of the advent of Eve. At any rate, Martie first
reformed and then disorganized Medicine Dog.
Following her arrival there was an ebullition of "boiled
shirts,"--come by express in response to telegraphic communications
with Denver, the first evidence of the reform. This was followed by
the influx of a lone Chinaman, imported for the reboiling of the said
shirts, his life, liberty, and the peaceful pursuit of his vocation
over the tubs being guaranteed him by the camp, the second evidence of
the reform. There was a consequent amelioration of manners,
proportioned to the prevalence of shirt bosom, too. "Boiled shirts"--I
use the language of the camp--are the beginning of that civilization
of which "plug hats" are the end. Medicine Dog never got that far,
except in its dreams; even Martie was not quite equal to promoting the
"plug hat."
The saloon, too, felt the good--or evil, according to the point of
view--effect of Martie's presence, and the wonderful part of it was
that Big Sam, who dispensed liquor, profanity, and on occasions, if
necessary, bullets from his "Colt's 45," from behind the bar, bore the
situation philosophically. He was as much under Martie's sway as
anybody else. That was the last evidence of the reform. And when a
preacher--a wandering missionary--came along, Big Sam cheerfully, if
temporarily, suspended business one Sunday morning and they had
services in the saloon, the preacher on the counter to conduct them,
and Martie on a table where they could all see her, with a portable
organ to lead the singing.
That was the only time Martie's presence graced the saloon. The effect
of her presence there was lasting. The boys could hardly swallow their
whiskey during that or the next day.
"It tastes as if it had sugar in it," said Dan Casey, mournfully,
subtly referring to the sweetening effect of Martie's visit. When it
came to choosing between Martie and whiskey, the difficulties of the
situation were enough to appall the stoutest heart in Medicine Dog.
Casey signified his change of heart in the matter of clothing by
trimming his beard--there was no barber in the camp yet--and by adding
a green tie to his shirt, and when MacBurns appeared with a yellow
silk streamer across his bestarched bosom, Casey took it as a direct
reflection upon his religious and political views, and for a time
Medicine Dog threatened to resume its pristine liveliness.
The quarrel was compromised by Martie; for when she artfully caused
the news to be circulated that she doted on red or blue ties and could
not abide green or yellow ones, Casey and MacBurns discarded the
colors of their choice and settled the affair by wearing Martie's.
Martie wore those colors herself. She was the reddest-cheeked,
bluest-eyed, and bonniest girl that had ever come across the
mountains, so Medicine Dog swore unanimously, at any rate. As occasion
served, the various members of the camp maintained Martie's cause with
strenuous and generally fatal effect to various gentlemen from other
camps who were rashly inclined to question the assertion. Martie would
have shone anywhere in the open air, and in womanless Medicine Dog she
was a heroine, a queen. That was the beginning of disorganization,
too.
The two men hardest hit were Jack Elliott and Dick Sanderson. Elliott
was a jolly, happy-go-lucky fellow born in the East, Sanderson a
quieter man from the middle West, who complemented his companion
admirably. They worked a rich claim together on the mountain side with
good results. They were steady-going fellows and both were dead shots
with the rifle. They were great-hearted young men, who loved each
other with an affection that some men develop under certain
circumstances for one another until a woman intervenes. Martie
intervened. Both men fell in love with her, and as they were men of
education,--being fellow-graduates of the old University of
Pennsylvania,--they were not content with the mere blind adoration
which the rest of Medicine Dog exhibited. They wanted Martie, and as
the days grew longer and they knew her better, they wanted her more
and more.
Each man dreamed dreams of a house on the mountain side overlooking
the camp with Martie as its mistress and with himself as titular, if
not actual, master. There had never been a wedding celebrated in the
valley, and they were both united upon the desirability of having one.
Each one, however, wanted to be the bridegroom!
Martie recognized the difference between these two men and the rest of
the camp, although in no way did they hold themselves aloof from the
general society of Medicine Dog--that would not have been tolerated by
the rest of the boys. She realized that either of them might
legitimately aspire to her hand, for they were in an entirely
different category from the rude, humble, faithful adorers like Big
Sam and Casey and the boys, and Martie loved one of them.
But Martie was a coquette. It wasn't in a girl of Martie's temperament
to be otherwise in a camp with a hundred men in love with her, the
only other woman being Martie's mother, and she didn't count when
Martie was around. And by degrees that which neither of the men
wished, which both of them would fain have avoided, was brought about.
There was a dissolution of partnership, a rupture of old associations,
a shattering of ancient friendship. As is always the case, where both
had loved, they now hated.
I said that they were both good shots with the rifle. That hardly
describes their capacities. If the mine had failed, they could have
earned a fortune on any vaudeville stage. One of their "stunts"--as
the boys called it--was really remarkable. Such was their confidence
in each other that when one balanced a little can of whiskey on his
head and the other bored a hole through it neatly with his rifle at a
distance of sixty yards and upward the spectators hardly knew whether
to admire the nerve of the can-holder or that of the marksman the
more; although Casey deprecated the performance on account of the
liability of the whiskey to go to waste! They shot equally well, and
sometimes the one and sometimes the other held the target. It had
grown an old story to Medicine Dog, but strangers always wanted to see
the feat performed. After the rupture between them they did it no
more, of course.
It was Martie who had separated them and it was Martie who brought
them together again. Both men paid assiduous court to her, and she
positively refused under any circumstances to give either a final
answer until they became friends once more and swore to accept her
decision without prejudice to that friendship. Martie was a power, and
she had her way.
A reconciliation was effected, and the two men went back to work on
their joint claim.
Still, Martie hesitated over that decision. Some intuition told her
that no promise would avail against the satisfaction on the one hand
and the disappointment on the other when she made a choice; but make
it she must, and finally, after much hesitation, she announced that
she chose Sanderson. His joy could not quite obliterate in her mind
the impression caused by Elliott's grief. Elliott was too much of a
man, however, to make any open outcry. He believed that if Sanderson
had been out of the way he would have been successful, and his belief
was probably correct; but the matter had been decided, and he
swallowed his disappointment as best he might and bore Sanderson's
triumph in silence.
A sporty stranger came to Medicine Dog one day shortly after the
engagement was announced, and the conversation in the saloon turned
upon the marksmanship of the camp. Medicine Dog prided itself on the
ability of Elliott and Sanderson. The stranger was incredulous, and
wagers were made and the boys repaired in a body to the
Elliott-Sanderson claim and told of the bets. Neither man was anxious
for the test, but for the honor of the camp, and because of the
disappointment of the boys themselves, they felt that they could not
refuse. Each volunteered to hold the can and each urged the other to
shoot. Finally they agreed to decide the matter by tossing a
coin,--the usual method of settling mooted points.
Fate appointed Elliott to use the rifle. He seized the weapon and
started up the trail to get his distance. In that same moment a grim
and ghastly temptation, proportioned in its appeal to the strength of
his passion, entered his soul. If he killed Sanderson the field would
be free. Martie's affections were not so deeply engaged but that she
might be won. The idea whitened his lips and blanched his face and
shook his hand, and it occurred at the same moment to Sanderson. He
realized, as he walked across the clearing and backed up against a
tree, the possibilities of the situation, and his own dark face went
as white as that of his companion. But he was game. His emotion was
not fear,--at least not fear for himself,--or if it were fear, it was
for Elliott. As he prepared to receive the shot he prayed--and he was
not a praying man; nobody much at Medicine Dog was in the habit of
praying then--that Elliott might be equal to resisting the terrible
demand.
As for Elliott, his soul was torn in a perfect tempest. He could see
nothing but the fact that there before him was the man who had won the
object for which he would have given his soul, that the man was
unarmed, that if he shot him no power on earth could ever connect him
with the crime of murder, for he could swear that it was an accident.
The best of marksmen sometimes make blunders; all do not shoot with
the continued accuracy of a William Tell. Satan possessed the man's
soul for the moment. Ay, it was the woman who had tempted the man,--so
it was in the Garden of Eden,--but this time a woman innocent and
unwitting. Poor little Martie! She could not help it, after all.
These thoughts crowded the minds of the two men as they took their
stations. Elliott faced Sanderson and slowly raised his rifle. By a
violent effort he mastered his trembling as he glanced along the
polished barrel and drew the exquisite bead upon the little black spot
on the can where he was to send the bullet.
There was something in the air, in the attitude of the two men, in the
situation, which suddenly broke upon the consciousness of the
onlookers. They shifted uneasily. Finally Big Sam burst out, amid a
chorus of approval:
"For God's sake, Elliott, don't shoot! You're not in the mood to-day,
old man. We'll willin'ly lose the bet. Give the stranger his money,
boys."
It was Sanderson who broke the silence.
"What are you afraid of, Sam?" he cried, taking the can in his hands.
"By Heaven, the man doesn't live," he shouted, translating everybody's
thought in his impetuosity, "that dare charge my partner with foul
play!"
"No, no, of course not," came in expostulation from the crowd of
spectators.
"That's right, then," said Sanderson, calmly. "Go ahead, Jack. I'll
trust you."
He lifted the can again to his head, folded his arms, and faced his
friend, a little smile on his lips.
Once more Elliott lifted his gun, which he had dropped during the
conversation. This time his nerves were quite steady. He glanced along
the barrel again. Should he send a shot into that smiling face?--his
friend's face? A moment would determine. He aimed long and carefully
at the target he had selected.
The smile would have died away from Sanderson's face had he not fixed
it there with a horrible effort. Elliott again so lingered over his
aim that the men once more started to interfere. The tense situation
was more than they could bear. What was the matter?
Suddenly the devil that had possessed him released the miner.
Elliott's love for man passed his love for woman. He forgot Martie as
he faced Sanderson. His courage came back to him and his clearness of
vision.
He dropped his rifle, and before any one could stop him, although
Sanderson screamed, "For God's sake, Jack, don't do it!" and the men
surged toward him, he whipped out his pistol, pointed it at his own
breast, pulled the trigger, and fell bleeding from a mortal wound
through the right lung.
"Men," he gasped out brokenly, "you're right--I was going to
kill--him--on account of--Martie, you know, but--but he trusted me
and--I could--not. Yet I'm a murderer--in the--sight of God--and my
punishment--is--this. Dick--don't tell Martie."
There was a look of peace on his face as they gathered around him.
They drew back a little as Dick Sanderson knelt down and took him in
his arms.
"Jack, Jack!" he sobbed, "I knew your temptation, but I knew you
wouldn't shoot me, old man. You were braver than I. I don't know what
would have happened if the coin had flipped my way. Oh, Jack, I wish
to God you had killed me!"
"Now--I'm--forgiven," whispered Elliott, feebly, lifting his hand
toward the other, and then he smiled, and then it was all over.
"Gentlemen," said Sanderson, crying like a baby, as he rose to his
feet, "he died for me."
"And for Martie," added Casey.
"Yes, and for Martie."
"Stranger," said Big Sam, turning to the man who had made the wager,
"the money is yourn. I wish to God we'd never bet!"
"Gentlemen," said the stranger, "I don't take no money from no gents
w'ich is won under them circumstances, but if you gents'll come down
to the saloon and likker with me----"
"That's handsome of you, stranger, but we don't none of us git no
likker in this camp to-day. That there saloon closes in Medicine Dog
until arter the funeral of the finest and whitest-hearted gentleman
and the best shot that ever lived in this camp," said Big Sam, turning
mournfully away.
WITH GREAT GUNS AND SMALL
"A thousand glorious actions that might claim
Triumphant laurels, and immortal fame,
Confus'd in crowds of glorious actions lie,
And troops of heroes undistinguished die."
ADDISON
"Who cries that the days of daring are those that are faded far,
That never a light burns planet bright to be hailed as the
hero's star?
Let the deeds of the dead be laurelled, the brave of the elder
years,
But a song we say, for the men of to-day, who have proved
themselves their peers."
CLINTON SCOLLARD