and meadows of Long Island. The days and the years roll by
uneventfully within its quiet precincts. Nothing more exciting than
the arrival of a party of fishermen from the city, on a vain hunt for
perch in the ponds that lie hidden among its groves and feed the
Brooklyn waterworks, troubles the every-day routine of the village.
Two great railroad wrecks are remembered thereabouts, but these are
already ancient history. Only the oldest inhabitants know of the
earlier one. There hasn't been as much as a sudden death in the town
since, and the constable and chief of police--probably one and the
same person--haven't turned an honest or dishonest penny in the whole
course of their official existence. All of which is as it ought to be.
But at last something occurred that ought not to have been. The
village was aroused at daybreak by the intelligence that a robbery had
been committed overnight, and a murder. The house of Gabriel Dodge, a
well-to-do farmer, had been sacked by thieves, who left in their trail
the farmer's murdered dog. Rover was a collie, large for his kind, and
quite as noisy as the rest of them. He had been left as an outside
guard, according to Farmer Dodge's awkward practice. Inside, he might
have been of use by alarming the folks when the thieves tried to get
in. But they had only to fear his bark; his bite was harmless.
The whole of Valley Stream gathered at Farmer Dodge's house to watch,
awe-struck, the mysterious movements of the police force as it went
tiptoeing about, peeping into corners, secretly examining tracks in
the mud, and squinting suspiciously at the brogans of the bystanders.
When it had all been gone through, this record of facts bearing on the
case was made:--
Rover was dead.
He had apparently been smothered.
With the hand, not a rope.
There was a ladder set up against the window of the spare bedroom.
That it had not been there before was evidence that the thieves had
set it up.
The window was open, and they had gone in.
Several watches, some good clothes, sundry articles of jewellery, all
worth some six or seven hundred dollars, were missing and could not
be found.
In conclusion, the constable put on record his belief that the thieves
who had smothered the dog and set up the ladder had taken the
property.
The solid citizens of the village sat upon the verdict in the store,
solemnly considered it, and agreed that it was so. This point settled,
there was left only the other: Who were the thieves? The solid
citizens by a unanimous decision concluded that Inspector Byrnes was
the man to tell them.
So they came over to New York and laid the matter before him, with a
mental diagram of the village, the house, the dog, and the ladder at
the window. There was just the suspicion of a twinkle in the corner of
the inspector's eye as he listened gravely and then said:--
"It was the spare bedroom, wasn't it?"
"The spare bedroom," said the committee, in one breath.
"The only one in the house?" queried the inspector, further.
"The only one," responded the echo.
"H'm!" pondered the inspector. "You keep hands on your farm, Mr.
Dodge?"
Mr. Dodge did.
"Sleep in the house?"
"Yes."
"Discharged any one lately?"
The committee rose as one man, and, staring at each other with bulging
eyes, said "Jake!" all at once.
"Jakey, b'gosh!" repeated the constable to himself, kicking his own
shins softly as he tugged at his beard. "Jake, by thunder!"
Jake was a boy of eighteen, who had been employed by the farmer to do
chores. He was shiftless, and a week or two before had been sent away
in disgrace. He had gone no one knew whither.
The committee told the inspector all about Jake, gave him a minute
description of him,--of his ways, his gait, and his clothes,--and went
home feeling that they had been wondrous smart in putting so sharp a
man on the track he would never have thought of if they hadn't
mentioned Jake's name. All he had to do now was to follow it to the
end, and let them know when he had reached it. And as these good men
had prophesied, even so it came to pass.
Detectives of the inspector's staff were put on the trail. They
followed it from the Long Island pastures across the East River to the
Bowery, and there into one of the cheap lodging-houses where thieves
are turned out ready-made while you wait. There they found Jake.
They didn't hail him at once, or clap him into irons, as the constable
from Valley Stream would have done. They let him alone and watched
awhile to see what he was doing. And the thing that they found him
doing was just what they expected: he was herding with thieves. When
they had thoroughly fastened this companionship upon the lad, they
arrested the band. They were three.
They had not been locked up many hours at Headquarters before the
inspector sent for Jake. He told him he knew all about his dismissal
by Farmer Dodge, and asked him what he had done to the old man. Jake
blurted out hotly, "Nothing" and betrayed such feeling that his
questioner soon made him admit that he was "sore on the boss." From
that to telling the whole story of the robbery was only a little way,
easy to travel in such company as Jake was in then. He told how he had
come to New York, angry enough to do anything, and had "struck" the
Bowery. Struck, too, his two friends, not the only two of that kind
who loiter about that thoroughfare.
To them he told his story while waiting in the "hotel" for something
to turn up, and they showed him a way to get square with the old man
for what he had done to him. The farmer had money and property he
would hate to lose. Jake knew the lay of the land, and could steer
them straight; they would take care of the rest. "See?" said they.
Jake saw, and the sight tempted him. But in his mind's eye he saw also
Rover and heard him bark. How could he be managed?
"He will come to me if I call him," pondered Jake, while his two
companions sat watching his face, "but you may have to kill him. Poor
Rover!"
"You call the dog and leave him to me," said the oldest thief, and
shut his teeth hard. And so it was arranged.
That night the three went out on the last train, and hid in the woods
down by the gatekeeper's house at the pond, until the last light had
gone out in the village and it was fast asleep. Then they crept up by
a back way to Farmer Dodge's house. As expected, Rover came bounding
out at their approach, barking furiously. It was Jake's turn then.
"Rover," he called softly, and whistled. The dog stopped barking and
came on, wagging his tail, but still growling ominously as he got
scent of the strange men.
"Rover, poor Rover," said Jake, stroking his shaggy fur and feeling
like the guilty wretch he was; for just then the hand of Pfeiffer, the
thief, grabbed the throat of the faithful beast in a grip as of an
iron vice, and he had barked his last bark. Struggle as he might, he
could not free himself or breathe, while Jake, the treacherous Jake,
held his legs. And so he died, fighting for his master and his home.
In the morning the ladder at the open window and poor Rover dead in
the yard told of the drama of the night.
The committee of farmers came over and took Jake home, after
congratulating Inspector Byrnes on having so intelligently followed
their directions in hunting down the thieves. The inspector shook
hands with them and smiled.
HOW JIM WENT TO THE WAR
Jocko and Jim sat on the scuttle-stairs and mourned; times were out of
joint with them. Since an ill wind had blown one of the recruiting
sergeants for the Spanish War into the next block, the old joys of the
tenement had palled on Jim. Nothing would do but he must go to the
war.
The infection was general in the neighborhood. Even base-ball had lost
its savor. The Ivy nine had disbanded at the first drum-beat, and had
taken the fever in a body. Jim, being fourteen, and growing "muscle"
with daily pride, "had it bad." Naturally Jocko, being Jim's constant
companion, developed the symptoms too, and, to external appearances,
thirsted for gore as eagerly as a naturally peace-loving, long-tailed
monkey could.
Jocko had belonged to an Italian organ-grinder in the days of "the
persecution," when the aldermen issued an edict, against monkeys. Now
he was "hung up" for rent, unpaid. And, literally, he remained hung up
most of the time, usually by his tail from the banisters, in which
position he was able both to abet the mischief of the children, and
to elude the stealthy grabs of their exasperated elders by skipping
nimbly to the other side.
The tenement was one of the old-fashioned kind, built for a better
use, with wide, oval stairwell and superior opportunities for
observation and escape. Jocko inhabited the well by day, and from it
conducted his raids upon the tenants' kitchens with an impartiality
which, if it did not disarm, at least had stayed the hand of vengeance
so far.
That he gave great provocation not even his stanchest boy friend could
deny. His pursuit of information was persistent. The sight of Jocko
cracking stolen eggs on the stairs to see the yolk run out and then
investigating the empty shell with grave concern was cheering to the
children, but usually provoked a shower of execrations and
scrubbing-brushes from the despoiled households.
When the postman's call was heard in the hall, Jocko was on hand to
receive the mail. Once he did receive it, the impartial zeal with
which he distributed the letters to friend and foe brought forth more
scrubbing-brushes, and Jocko retired to his attic aerie, there to
ponder with Jim, his usual companion when in disgrace, the relation
of eggs and letters and scrubbing-brushes in a world that seemed all
awry to their simple minds.
The sense was heavy upon them this day as they sat silently brooding
on the stairs, Jim glum and hopeless, with his arms buried to the
elbow in his trousers pockets, Jocko, a world of care in his wrinkled
face, humped upon the step at his shoulder with limp tail. The rain
beat upon the roof in fitful showers, and the April storm rattled the
crazy shutters, adding to the depression of the two.
Jim broke the silence when a blast fiercer than the rest shook the old
house. "'Tain't right," he said dolefully, "I know it ain't, Jock!
There's Tom and Foley gone off an' 'listed, and them only four years
older nor me. What's four years?" This with a sniff of contempt.
Jocko gazed straight ahead. Four years of scrubbing-brushes and
stealthy grabs at his tail on the stairs! To Jocko they were a long,
long time.
"An' dad!" wailed Jim, unheeding. "I hear him tell Mr. Murphy himself
that he was a drummer-boy in the war, and he won't let me at them
dagoes!"
A slightly upward curl of Jocko's tail testified to his sympathy.
"I seen 'em march to de camp with their guns and drums." There was a
catch in Jim's voice now. "And Susie's feller was there in
soger-clo'es, Jock--soger-clo'es!"
Jim broke down in desolation and despair at the recollection. Jocko
hitched as close to him as the step would let him, and brought his
shaggy side against the boy's jacket in mute compassion. So they sat
in silence until suddenly Jim got up and strode across the floor
twice.
"Jock," he said, stopping short in front of his friend, "I know what
I'll do. Jock, do you hear? I know what I'm going to do!"
Jocko sat up straight, erected his tail into a huge interrogation
point, cocked his wise little head on one side, and regarded his ally
expectantly. The storm was over, and the afternoon sun sent a ray
slanting across the floor.
"I'm going anyhow! I'll run away, Jock! That's what I'll do! I'll get
a whack at them dagoes yet!"
Jim danced a gleeful breakdown on the patch of sunlight, winding up by
making a grab for Jocko, who evaded him by jumping over his head to
the banister, where he became an animated pinwheel in approval of the
new mischief. They stopped at last, out of breath.
"Jock," said the boy, considering his playmate approvingly, "you will
make a soldier yourself yet. Come on, let's have a drill! This way,
Jock, up straight! Now, attention! Right hand--salute!" Jocko exactly
imitated his master, and so learned the rudiments of the soldier's art
as Jim knew it.
"You'll do, Jock," he said, when the dusk stole into the attic, "but
you can't go this trip. Good-by to you. Here goes for the soger camp!"
There was surprise in the tenement when Jim did not come home for
supper; as the evening wore on the surprise became consternation. His
father gave over certain preparations for his reception which, if Jim
had known of them, might well have decided him to stick to "sogering,"
and went to the police station to learn if the boy had been heard of
there. He had not, and an alarm which the Sergeant sent out discovered
no trace of him the next day.
Jim was lost, but how? His mother wept, and his father spent weary
days and nights inquiring of every one within a distance of many
blocks for a red-headed boy in "knee-pants" and a base-ball cap. The
grocer's clerk on the corner alone furnished a clew. He remembered
giving Jim two crackers on the afternoon of the storm and seeing him
turn west. The clew began and ended there. Slowly the conviction
settled on the tenement that Jim had really run away to enlist.
"I'll enlist him!" said his father; and the tenement acquiesced in the
justice of his intentions and awaited developments. And all the time
Jocko kept Jim's secret safe.
Jocko had troubles enough of his own. Jim's friendship and quick wit
had more than once saved the monkey; for despite of harum-scarum ways,
the boy with the sunny smile was a general favorite. Now that he was
gone, the tenement rose in wrath against its tormentor; and Jocko
accepted the challenge.
All his lawless instincts were given full play. Even of the banana man
at the street stand who had given him peanuts when trade was good, or
sold them to him in exchange for pilfered pennies, he made an enemy by
grabbing bananas when his back was turned. Mrs. Rafferty, on the
second floor rear, one of his few champions, he estranged by
exchanging the "war extra" which the carrier left at the door for her,
for the German paper served to Mrs. Schultz, her pet aversion on the
floor below. Mrs. Rafferty upset the wash-tub in her rage at this
prank.
"Ye imp," she shrieked, laying about her with a wet towel, "wid yer
hathen Dootch! It's that yer up to, is it?" and poor Jocko paid dearly
for his mistake.
As he limped painfully to his attic retreat, his bitterest reflection
might have been that even the children, his former partners in every
plot against the public peace, had now joined in the general assault
upon him. Truly, every man's hand was raised against Jocko, and in the
spirit of Ishmael he entered on his crowning exploit.
On the top floor of the rear house was Mrs. Hoffman, a quiet German
tenant, who had heretofore escaped Jocko's unwelcome attentions. Now,
in his banishment to the upper regions, he bestowed them upon her with
an industry to which she objected loudly, but in vain. Shut off from
his accustomed base of supplies, he spent his hours watching her
kitchen from the fire-escape, and if she left it but for a minute, he
was over the roof and, by way of the shutter, in her flat, foraging
for food.
In the battles that ensued, when Mrs. Hoffman surprised him, some of
her spare crockery was broken without damage to the monkey. Vainly did
she turn the key of her ice-box and think herself safe. Jocko had
watched her do it, and turned it, too, on his next trip, with results
satisfactory to himself. The climax came when he was discovered
sitting at the open skylight, under which Mrs. Hoffman and her husband
were working at their tailoring trade, calmly puffing away at Mr.
Hoffman's cherished meerschaum, and leisurely picking the putty from
the glass and dropping it upon the heads of the maddened couple.
The old German's terror and emotion at the sight nearly choked him.
"Jocko," he called, with shaking voice, "you fool monkey! Jocko!
Papa's pet! Come down mit mine pipe!"
But Jocko merely brandished the pipe, and shook it at the tailor with
a wicked grin that showed all his sharp little teeth. Mrs. Hoffman
wanted to call a policeman and the board of health, but the thirst for
vengeance suggested a more effective plan to the tailor.
"Wait! I fix him! I fix him good!" he vowed, and forthwith betook
himself to the kitchen, where stood the ice-box.
From his attic lookout Jocko saw the tailor take from the ice-box a
bottle of beer, and drawing the cork with careful attention to detail,
partake of its contents with apparent relish. Finally the tailor put
back the bottle and went away, after locking the ice-box, but leaving
the key in the lock.
His step was yet on the stairs when the monkey peered through the
window, reached the ice-box with a bound and turned the key. There was
the bottle, just as the tailor had left it. Jocko held it as he had
seen him do, and pulled the cork. It came out easily. He held the
bottle to his mouth. After a while he put it down, and thoughtfully
rubbed the pit of his stomach. Then he took another pull, following
directions to the letter.
The last ray of the evening sun stole through the open window as Jocko
arose and wandered unsteadily toward the bedroom, the door of which
stood ajar. There was no one within. On the wall hung Mrs. Hoffman's
brocade shawl and Sunday hat. Jocko had often watched her put them on.
Now he possessed himself of both, and gravely carried them to his
attic.
In the early twilight such a wail of bereavement arose in the rear
house that the tenants hurried from every floor to learn what was the
matter. It was Mrs. Hoffman, bemoaning the loss of her shawl and
Sunday hat.
A hurried search left no doubt who was the thief. There was the open
window, and the empty bottle on the door by the ice-box. Jocko's hour
of expiation had come. In the uproar that swelled louder as the angry
crowd of tenants made for the attic, his name was heard coupled with
direful threats. Foremost in the mob was Jim's father, with the stick
he had peeled and seasoned against the boy's return. In some way, not
clear to himself, he connected the monkey with Jim's truancy, and it
was something to be able to avenge himself on its hairy hide.
But Jocko was not in the attic. The mob ranged downstairs, searching
every nook and getting angrier as it went. The advance-guard had
reached the first floor landing, when a shout of discovery from one of
the boy scouts directed all eyes to the wall niche at the turn of the
stairs.
There, in the place where the Venus of Milo or the winged Mercury had
stood in the days when wealth and fashion inhabited Houston Street,
sat Jocko, draped in Mrs. Hoffman's brocade shawl, her Sunday hat
tilted rakishly on one side, and with his tail at "port-arms" over his
left shoulder. He blinked lazily at the foe and then his head tilted
forward under Mrs. Hoffman's hat.
"Saints presarve us!" gasped Mrs. Rafferty, crossing herself. "The
baste is drunk!"
Yes, Jocko was undeniably tipsy. For one brief moment a sense of the
ludicrous struggled with the just anger of the mob. That moment
decided the fate of Jocko. There came a thunderous rap at the door,
and there stood a policeman with Jim, the runaway, in his grasp.
"Does this boy--" he shouted, and stopped short, his gaze riveted upon
the monkey. Jim, shivering with apprehension, all desire to be a
soldier gone out of him, felt rather than saw the whole tenement
assembled in judgment, and he the culprit. He raised his tear-stained
face and beheld Jocko mounting guard. Policeman, camp, failure, and
the expected beating were all alike forgotten. He remembered only the
sunny attic and his pranks with Jocko, their last game of soldiering.
"Attention!" he piped at the top of his shrill voice. "Right
hand--salute!"
At the word of command Jocko straightened up like a veteran, looked
sleepily around, and raising his right paw, saluted in military
fashion. The movement pushed the hat back on his head, and gave a
swaggering look to the forlorn figure that was irresistibly comical.
It was too much for the spectators. With a yell of laughter, the
tenement abandoned vengeance. Peal after peal rang out, in which the
policeman, Jim, and his father joined, old scores forgotten and
forgiven.
The cyclone of mirth aroused Jocko. He made a last groping effort to
collect his scattered wits, and met the eyes of Jim at the foot of the
stairs. With a joyful squeal of recognition he gave it up, turned one
mighty, inebriated somersault and went flying down, shedding Mrs.
Hoffman's garments to the right and left in his flight, and landed
plump on Jim's shoulder, where he sat grinning general amnesty, while
a rousing cheer went up for the two friends.
The slate was wiped clean. Jim had come home from the war.
A BACKWOODS HERO
I had started out to explore the Magnetawan River from our camp on
Lake Wahwaskesh toward the Georgian Bay, thirty miles south, but
speedily found my way blocked by the canal rapids. The river there
rushes through a deep and narrow cañon strewn with sharp rocks, a
perilous pass at all times for the most expert canoeist. We did not
attempt it, but, making a landing in Deep Bay, took the safer portage
around. At the end of a two-mile tramp we reached a clearing at the
foot of the cañon where the loggers had camped at one time. Black bass
and partridge go well together when a man is hungry, and there was
something so suggestive of birds about the place that I took a turn
around with my gun, while Aleck looked after the packs. Poking about
on the edge of the clearing, in the shadow of some big pines which the
lumbermen had spared, I came suddenly upon the most unlikely thing of
all in that wilderness, miles from any human habitation--a
burying-ground! Two mounds, each with a weather-beaten board for a
headstone, were all it contained; just heaps of sand with a few
withered shrubs upon them. But a stout fence of cedar slabs, roughly
fashioned into pickets, to keep prowling animals away, hedged them
in--evidence that some one had cared. "Ormand Morden," I read upon one
of the boards, cut deep to last with a jack-knife. The other, nailed
up in the shape of a cross, bore the name "M. McDonald." The date
under both names was the same: June 8, 1899.
What tragedy had happened here in the deep woods a year before? Even
while the question was shaping itself in my mind, it was answered by
another discovery. Slung on the fence at the foot of one grave was a
pair of spiked shoes; at the foot of the other the dead man's
shoepacks with sand and mud in them. Two river-drivers, then; drowned
in the rapids probably. I remembered the grave on Deadman's Island,
hard by the favorite haunt of the bass, which was still kept up after
thirty years, even as the memory of its lonely tenant lived on the
lake where another generation of woodsmen had replaced his. But what
was the old black brier-wood pipe doing on the head-rail between the
two graves? I looked about me with an involuntary start as I noticed
that the ashes of the last smoke were still in the bowl, expecting I
hardly knew what in the ghostly twilight of the forest.
Over our camp fire that evening Aleck set my fears at rest and told me
the story of the two graves, a tale of every-day heroism of the kind
of which life on the frontier has many to tell, to the credit of our
poor human nature. He was "cadging" supplies to the camp that winter
and was a witness at first hand of what happened.
Morden and "Mike" McDonald were "bunkies" in a gang of river-drivers
that had been cutting logs on the Deer River near its junction with
the Magnetawan. Morden was the older, and had a wife and children in
the settlements "up north." He had been working his farm for a spell
and had gone back reluctantly to shantying because he needed the money
in a slack season. But he could see his way ahead now. When at night
they squatted by the fire in their log hut and took turns at the one
pipe they had between them, he spoke hopefully to his chum of the days
that were coming. Once this drive of logs was in, that was the end of
it for him. He would live like a man after that with the old woman and
the kids. Mike listened and smoked in silence. He was a man of few
words. But there was between them a strong bond of sympathy, despite
the disparity in their age and belief. McDonald was a Catholic and
single. Younger by ten years than the other, he was much the stronger
and abler, the athlete of a camp where there were no weaklings.