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[Illustration: "But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"]
THE BOY SCOUT
AND OTHER STORIES FOR BOYS
BY
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1891, 1903, 1912, 1914, 1917, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, as a friend and fellow author has written of him,
was "youth incarnate," and there is probably nothing that he wrote of
which a boy would not some day come to feel the appeal. But there are
certain of his stories that go with especial directness to a boy's heart
and sympathies and make for him quite unforgettable literature. A few of
these were made some years ago into a volume, "Stories for Boys," and
found a large and enthusiastic special public in addition to Davis's
general readers; and the present collection from stories more recently
published is issued with the same motive. This book takes its title from
"The Boy Scout," the first of its tales; and it includes "The Boy Who
Cried Wolf," "Blood Will Tell," the immortal "Gallegher," and "The Bar
Sinister," Davis's famous dog story. It is a fresh volume added to what
Augustus Thomas calls "safe stuff to give to a young fellow who likes to
take off his hat and dilate his nostrils and feel the wind in his face."
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Boy Scout 3
The Boy Who Cried Wolf 42
Gallegher 82
Blood Will Tell 158
The Bar Sinister 212
ILLUSTRATIONS
"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?" Frontispiece
Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped fingers
into straight lines, and saluted 8
"For God's sake," Hade begged, "let me go" 128
"Why, it's Gallegher," said the night editor 156
In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a
catcher's glove 184
She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder 210
"He's a coward! I've done with him" 230
For a long time he kneels in the sawdust 282
THE BOY SCOUT
AND OTHER STORIES FOR BOYS
THE BOY SCOUT
A Rule of the Boy Scouts is every day to do some one a good turn. Not
because the copy-books tell you it deserves another, but in spite of
that pleasing possibility. If you are a true Scout, until you have
performed your act of kindness your day is dark. You are as unhappy as
is the grown-up who has begun his day without shaving or reading the New
York _Sun_. But as soon as you have proved yourself you may, with a
clear conscience, look the world in the face and untie the knot in your
kerchief.
Jimmie Reeder untied the accusing knot in his scarf at just ten minutes
past eight on a hot August morning after he had given one dime to his
sister Sadie. With that she could either witness the first-run films at
the Palace, or by dividing her fortune patronize two of the nickel shows
on Lenox Avenue. The choice Jimmie left to her. He was setting out for
the annual encampment of the Boy Scouts at Hunter's Island, and in the
excitement of that adventure even the movies ceased to thrill. But Sadie
also could be unselfish. With a heroism of a camp-fire maiden she made a
gesture which might have been interpreted to mean she was returning the
money.
"I can't, Jimmie!" she gasped. "I can't take it off you. You saved it,
and you ought to get the fun of it."
"I haven't saved it yet," said Jimmie. "I'm going to cut it out of the
railroad fare. I'm going to get off at City Island instead of at Pelham
Manor and walk the difference. That's ten cents cheaper."
Sadie exclaimed with admiration:
"An' you carryin' that heavy grip!"
"Aw, that's nothin'," said the man of the family.
"Good-by, mother. So long, Sadie."
To ward off further expressions of gratitude he hurriedly advised Sadie
to take in "The Curse of Cain" rather than "The Mohawks' Last Stand,"
and fled down the front steps.
He wore his khaki uniform. On his shoulders was his knapsack, from his
hands swung his suitcase and between his heavy stockings and his
"shorts" his kneecaps, unkissed by the sun, as yet unscathed by
blackberry vines, showed as white and fragile as the wrists of a girl.
As he moved toward the "L" station at the corner, Sadie and his mother
waved to him; in the street, boys too small to be Scouts hailed him
enviously; even the policeman glancing over the newspapers on the
news-stand nodded approval.
"You a Scout, Jimmie?" he asked.
"No," retorted Jimmie, for was not he also in uniform? "I'm Santa Claus
out filling Christmas stockings."
The patrolman also possessed a ready wit.
"Then get yourself a pair," he advised. "If a dog was to see your
legs----"
Jimmie escaped the insult by fleeing up the steps of the Elevated.
An hour later, with his valise in one hand and staff in the other, he
was tramping up the Boston Post Road and breathing heavily. The day was
cruelly hot. Before his eyes, over an interminable stretch of asphalt,
the heat waves danced and flickered. Already the knapsack on his
shoulders pressed upon him like an Old Man of the Sea; the linen in the
valise had turned to pig iron, his pipe-stem legs were wabbling, his
eyes smarted with salt sweat, and the fingers supporting the valise
belonged to some other boy, and were giving that boy much pain. But as
the motor-cars flashed past with raucous warnings, or, that those who
rode might better see the boy with bare knees, passed at "half speed,"
Jimmie stiffened his shoulders and stepped jauntily forward. Even when
the joy-riders mocked with "Oh, you Scout!" he smiled at them. He was
willing to admit to those who rode that the laugh was on the one who
walked. And he regretted--oh, so bitterly--having left the train. He was
indignant that for his "one good turn a day" he had not selected one
less strenuous. That, for instance, he had not assisted a frightened old
lady through the traffic. To refuse the dime she might have offered, as
all true Scouts refuse all tips, would have been easier than to earn it
by walking five miles, with the sun at ninety-nine degrees, and carrying
excess baggage. Twenty times James shifted the valise to the other hand,
twenty times he let it drop and sat upon it.
And then, as again he took up his burden, the Good Samaritan drew near.
He drew near in a low gray racing-car at the rate of forty miles an
hour, and within a hundred feet of Jimmie suddenly stopped and backed
toward him. The Good Samaritan was a young man with white hair. He wore
a suit of blue, a golf cap; the hands that held the wheel were disguised
in large yellow gloves. He brought the car to a halt and surveyed the
dripping figure in the road with tired and uncurious eyes.
[Illustration: Jimmie dropped the valise, forced his cramped fingers
into straight lines, and saluted.]
"You a Boy Scout?" he asked.
With alacrity for the twenty-first time Jimmie dropped the valise,
forced his cramped fingers into straight lines, and saluted.
The young man in the car nodded toward the seat beside him.
"Get in," he commanded.
When James sat panting happily at his elbow the old young man, to
Jimmie's disappointment, did not continue to shatter the speed limit.
Instead, he seemed inclined for conversation, and the car, growling
indignantly, crawled.
"I never saw a Boy Scout before," announced the old young man. "Tell me
about it. First, tell me what you do when you're not scouting."
Jimmie explained volubly. When not in uniform he was an office-boy and
from pedlers and beggars guarded the gates of Carroll and Hastings,
stock-brokers. He spoke the names of his employers with awe. It was a
firm distinguished, conservative, and long-established. The white-haired
young man seemed to nod in assent.
"Do you know them?" demanded Jimmie suspiciously. "Are you a customer of
ours?"
"I know them," said the young man. "They are customers of mine."
Jimmie wondered in what way Carroll and Hastings were customers of the
white-haired young man. Judging him by his outer garments, Jimmie
guessed he was a Fifth Avenue tailor; he might be even a haberdasher.
Jimmie continued. He lived, he explained, with his mother at One Hundred
and Forty-sixth Street; Sadie, his sister, attended the public school;
he helped support them both, and he now was about to enjoy a well-earned
vacation camping out on Hunter's Island, where he would cook his own
meals and, if the mosquitoes permitted, sleep in a tent.
"And you like that?" demanded the young man. "You call that fun?"
"Sure!" protested Jimmie. "Don't _you_ go camping out?"
"I go camping out," said the Good Samaritan, "whenever I leave New
York."
Jimmie had not for three years lived in Wall Street not to understand
that the young man spoke in metaphor.
"You don't look," objected the young man critically, "as though you were
built for the strenuous life."
Jimmie glanced guiltily at his white knees.
"You ought ter see me two weeks from now," he protested. "I get all
sunburnt and hard--hard as anything!"
The young man was incredulous.
"You were near getting sunstroke when I picked you up," he laughed. "If
you're going to Hunter's Island why didn't you take the Third Avenue to
Pelham Manor?"
"That's right!" assented Jimmie eagerly. "But I wanted to save the ten
cents so's to send Sadie to the movies. So I walked."
The young man looked his embarrassment.
"I beg your pardon," he murmured.
But Jimmie did not hear him. From the back of the car he was dragging
excitedly at the hated suitcase.
"Stop!" he commanded. "I got ter get out. I got ter _walk_."
The young man showed his surprise.
"Walk!" he exclaimed. "What is it--a bet?"
Jimmie dropped the valise and followed it into the roadway. It took some
time to explain to the young man. First, he had to be told about the
scout law and the one good turn a day, and that it must involve some
personal sacrifice. And, as Jimmie pointed out, changing from a slow
suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. He
had not earned the money, Jimmie argued; he had only avoided paying it
to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude
of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he must walk.
"Not at all," protested the young man. "You've got it wrong. What good
will it do your sister to have you sunstruck? I think you _are_
sunstruck. You're crazy with the heat. You get in here, and we'll talk
it over as we go along."
Hastily Jimmie backed away. "I'd rather walk," he said.
The young man shifted his legs irritably.
"Then how'll this suit you?" he called. "We'll declare that first 'one
good turn' a failure and start afresh. Do me a good turn."
Jimmie halted in his tracks and looked back suspiciously.
"I'm going to Hunter's Island Inn," called the young man, "and I've lost
my way. You get in here and guide me. That'll be doing me a good turn."
On either side of the road, blotting out the landscape, giant hands
picked out in electric-light bulbs pointed the way to Hunter's Island
Inn. Jimmie grinned and nodded toward them.
"Much obliged," he called, "I got ter walk." Turning his back upon
temptation, he wabbled forward into the flickering heat waves.
The young man did not attempt to pursue. At the side of the road, under
the shade of a giant elm, he had brought the car to a halt and with his
arms crossed upon the wheel sat motionless, following with frowning eyes
the retreating figure of Jimmie. But the narrow-chested and knock-kneed
boy staggering over the sun-baked asphalt no longer concerned him. It
was not Jimmie, but the code preached by Jimmie, and not only preached
but before his eyes put into practice, that interested him. The young
man with white hair had been running away from temptation. At forty
miles an hour he had been running away from the temptation to do a
fellow mortal "a good turn." That morning, to the appeal of a drowning
Caesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That
answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had
sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power
racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or
philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not
escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him
again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled
past saw at the side of the road a car with her engine running, and
leaning upon the wheel, as unconscious of his surroundings as though he
sat at his own fireplace, a young man who frowned and stared at nothing.
The half-hour passed and the young man swung his car back toward the
city. But at the first roadhouse that showed a blue-and-white telephone
sign he left it, and into the iron box at the end of the bar dropped a
nickel. He wished to communicate with Mr. Carroll, of Carroll and
Hastings; and when he learned Mr. Carroll had just issued orders that he
must not be disturbed, the young man gave his name.
The effect upon the barkeeper was instantaneous. With the aggrieved air
of one who feels he is the victim of a jest he laughed scornfully. "What
are you putting over?" he demanded.
The young man smiled reassuringly. He had begun to speak and, though
apparently engaged with the beer-glass he was polishing, the barkeeper
listened.
Down in Wall Street the senior member of Carroll and Hastings also
listened. He was alone in the most private of all his private offices,
and when interrupted had been engaged in what, of all undertakings, is
the most momentous. On the desk before him lay letters to his lawyer, to
the coroner, to his wife; and hidden by a mass of papers, but within
reach of his hand, an automatic pistol. The promise it offered of swift
release had made the writing of the letters simple, had given him a
feeling of complete detachment, had released him, at least in thought,
from all responsibilities. And when at his elbow the telephone coughed
discreetly, it was as though some one had called him from a world from
which already he had made his exit.
Mechanically, through mere habit, he lifted the receiver.
The voice over the telephone came in brisk staccato sentences.
"That letter I sent this morning? Forget it. Tear it up. I've been
thinking and I'm going to take a chance. I've decided to back you boys,
and I know you'll make good. I'm speaking from a roadhouse in the Bronx;
going straight from here to the bank. So you can begin to draw against
us within an hour. And--hello!--will three millions see you through?"
From Wall Street there came no answer, but from the hands of the
barkeeper a glass crashed to the floor.
The young man regarded the barkeeper with puzzled eyes.
"He doesn't answer," he exclaimed. "He must have hung up."
"He must have fainted!" said the barkeeper.
The white-haired one pushed a bill across the counter. "To pay for
breakage," he said, and disappeared down Pelham Parkway.
Throughout the day, with the bill, for evidence, pasted against the
mirror, the barkeeper told and retold the wondrous tale.
"He stood just where you're standing now," he related, "blowing in
million-dollar bills like you'd blow suds off a beer. If I'd knowed it
was _him_, I'd have hit him once, and hid him in the cellar for the
reward. Who'd I think he was? I thought he was a wire-tapper, working a
con game!"
Mr. Carroll had not "hung up," but when in the Bronx the beer-glass
crashed, in Wall Street the receiver had slipped from the hand of the
man who held it, and the man himself had fallen forward. His desk hit
him in the face and woke him--woke him to the wonderful fact that he
still lived; that at forty he had been born again; that before him
stretched many more years in which, as the young man with the white hair
had pointed out, he still could make good.
The afternoon was far advanced when the staff of Carroll and Hastings
were allowed to depart, and, even late as was the hour, two of them were
asked to remain. Into the most private of the private offices Carroll
invited Gaskell, the head clerk; in the main office Hastings had asked
young Thorne, the bond clerk, to be seated.
Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must
remain seated.
"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run
this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have
happened. It _hasn't_ happened, but we've had our lesson. And after
this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tell
us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation. When I
thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a
sea-voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers. But
now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let them
go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotia
and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call it
the Royal Suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month. The boat
sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her."
* * * * *
The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of his
waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled.
"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millie
and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"
A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her
husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a cure
for sea-sickness.
Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees,
Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering up
incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the
floor.
"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royal
suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"
Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.
"No!" he explained, "I'm not sea-sick _now_. The medicine I want is
to be taken later. I _know_ I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the
Pavonia isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."
He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he
suggested.
"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night
in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our
flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."
John nodded his head proudly.
"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all the
people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the parks."
"I was thinking of your brother--and Grace," said Millie. "They've been
married only two weeks now, and they're in a stuffy hall bedroom and
eating with all the other boarders. Think what our flat would mean to
them; to be by themselves, with eight rooms and their own kitchen and
bath, and our new refrigerator and the gramophone! It would be Heaven!
It would be a real honeymoon!"
Abandoning the drug clerk, John lifted Millie in his arms and kissed
her, for next to his wife nearest his heart was the younger brother.
* * * * *
The younger brother and Grace were sitting on the stoop of the
boarding-house. On the upper steps, in their shirt-sleeves, were the
other boarders; so the bride and bridegroom spoke in whispers. The air
of the cross street was stale and stagnant; from it rose exhalations of
rotting fruit, the gases of an open subway, the smoke of passing
taxicabs. But between the street and the hall bedroom, with its odors of
a gas-stove and a kitchen, the choice was difficult.
"We've got to cool off somehow," the young husband was saying, "or you
won't sleep. Shall we treat ourselves to ice-cream sodas or a trip on
the Weehawken ferry-boat?"
"The ferry-boat!" begged the girl, "where we can get away from all these
people."
A taxicab with a trunk in front whirled into the street, kicked itself
to a stop, and the head clerk and Millie spilled out upon the pavement.
They talked so fast, and the younger brother and Grace talked so fast,
that the boarders, although they listened intently, could make nothing
of it.
They distinguished only the concluding sentences:
"Why don't you drive down to the wharf with us," they heard the elder
brother ask, "and see our royal suite?"
But the younger brother laughed him to scorn.
"What's your royal suite," he mocked, "to our royal palace?"
An hour later, had the boarders listened outside the flat of the head
clerk, they would have heard issuing from his bathroom the cooling
murmur of running water and from his gramophone the jubilant notes of
"Alexander's Ragtime Band."
When in his private office Carroll was making a present of the royal
suite to the head clerk, in the main office Hastings, the junior
partner, was addressing "Champ" Thorne, the bond clerk. He addressed him
familiarly and affectionately as "Champ." This was due partly to the
fact that twenty-six years before Thorne had been christened Champneys
and to the coincidence that he had captained the football eleven of one
of the Big Three to the championship.
"Champ," said Mr. Hastings, "last month, when you asked me to raise your
salary, the reason I didn't do it was not because you didn't deserve it,
but because I believed if we gave you a raise you'd immediately get
married."
The shoulders of the ex-football captain rose aggressively; he snorted
with indignation.
"And why should I _not_ get married?" he demanded. "You're a fine
one to talk! You're the most offensively happy married man I ever met."
"Perhaps I know I am happy better than you do," reproved the junior
partner; "but I know also that it takes money to support a wife."
"You raise me to a hundred a week," urged Champ, "and I'll make it
support a wife whether it supports me or not."
"A month ago," continued Hastings, "we could have _promised_ you a
hundred, but we didn't know how long we could pay it. We didn't want you
to rush off and marry some fine girl----"
"Some fine girl!" muttered Mr. Thorne. "The Finest Girl!"
"The finer the girl," Hastings pointed out, "the harder it would have
been for you if we had failed and you had lost your job."
The eyes of the young man opened with sympathy and concern.
"Is it as bad as that?" he murmured.
Hastings sighed happily.
"It _was_," he said, "but this morning the Young Man of Wall Street
did us a good turn--saved us--saved our creditors, saved our homes,
saved our honor. We're going to start fresh and pay our debts, and we
agreed the first debt we paid would be the small one we owe you. You've
brought us more than we've given, and if you'll stay with us we're going
to 'see' your fifty and raise it a hundred. What do you say?"
Young Mr. Thorne leaped to his feet. What he said was: "Where'n hell's
my hat?"
But by the time he had found the hat and the door he mended his manners.
"I say, 'thank you a thousand times,'" he shouted over his shoulder.
"Excuse me, but I've got to go. I've got to break the news to----"
He did not explain to whom he was going to break the news; but Hastings
must have guessed, for again he sighed happily and then, a little
hysterically, laughed aloud. Several months had passed since he had
laughed aloud.
In his anxiety to break the news Champ Thorne almost broke his neck. In
his excitement he could not remember whether the red flash meant the
elevator was going down or coming up, and sooner than wait to find out
he started to race down eighteen flights of stairs when fortunately the
elevator-door swung open.
"You get five dollars," he announced to the elevator man, "if you drop
to the street without a stop. Beat the speed limit! Act like the
building is on fire and you're trying to save me before the roof falls."
Senator Barnes and his entire family, which was his daughter Barbara,
were at the Ritz-Carlton. They were in town in August because there was
a meeting of the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber Company, of
which company Senator Barnes was president. It was a secret meeting.
Those directors who were keeping cool at the edge of the ocean had been
summoned by telegraph; those who were steaming across the ocean, by
wireless.
Up from the equator had drifted the threat of a scandal, sickening,
grim, terrible. As yet it burned beneath the surface, giving out only an
odor, but an odor as rank as burning rubber itself. At any moment it
might break into flame. For the directors, was it the better wisdom to
let the scandal smoulder, and take a chance, or to be the first to give
the alarm, the first to lead the way to the horror and stamp it out?
It was to decide this that, in the heat of August, the directors and the
president had foregathered.
Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle
Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask her
to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all he
cared to know.
A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he
could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he
earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until he
received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.
"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.
Thorne had evaded the direct question.
"There is too much of it," he said.
"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
galoches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. And
what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat?"
Thorne shook his head unhappily.
"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
the way they get the raw material."
"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
enlightenment----"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There
it is terrible! _That_ is slavery. But there are no slaves on the
Amazon. The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the
trees the way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me
about it often."
Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend were
among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily as
he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave to
others. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the man
she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would not rest until she
learned the reason why.
One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of
the Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who are
offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her
father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were
true it was the first he had heard of it.
Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved
most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good
opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he
assured her he at once would order an investigation.
"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agents
can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."
In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.
"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."
That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber
Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in the
Ritz-Carlton. They were due to arrive in half an hour, and while Senator
Barnes awaited their coming Barbara came to him. In her eyes was a light
that helped to tell the great news. It gave him a sharp, jealous pang.
He wanted at once to play a part in her happiness, to make her grateful
to him, not alone to this stranger who was taking her away. So fearful
was he that she would shut him out of her life that had she asked for
half his kingdom he would have parted with it.
"And besides giving my consent," said the rubber king, "for which no one
seems to have asked, what can I give my little girl to make her remember
her old father? Some diamonds to put on her head, or pearls to hang
around her neck, or does she want a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue?"
The lovely hands of Barbara rested upon his shoulders; her lovely face
was raised to his; her lovely eyes were appealing, and a little
frightened.
"What would one of those things cost?" asked Barbara.
The question was eminently practical. It came within the scope of the
senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer
darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily:
"Anything you like," he said; "a million dollars?"
The fingers closed upon his shoulders. The eyes, still frightened, still
searched his in appeal.
"Then for my wedding-present," said the girl, "I want you to take that
million dollars and send an expedition to the Amazon. And I will choose
the men. Men unafraid; men not afraid of fever or sudden death; not
afraid to tell the truth--even to _you_. And all the world will
know. And they--I mean _you_--will set those people free!"
Senator Barnes received the directors with an embarrassment which he
concealed under a manner of just indignation.
"My mind is made up," he told them. "Existing conditions cannot
continue. And to that end, at my own expense, I am sending an expedition
across South America. It will investigate, punish, and establish
reforms. I suggest, on account of this damned heat, we do now adjourn."
That night, over on Long Island, Carroll told his wife all, or nearly
all. He did not tell her about the automatic pistol. And together on
tiptoe they crept to the nursery and looked down at their sleeping
children. When she rose from her knees the mother said, "But how can I
thank him?"
By "him" she meant the Young Man of Wall Street.
"You never can thank him," said Carroll; "that's the worst of it."
But after a long silence the mother said: "I will send him a photograph
of the children. Do you think he will understand?"
Down at Seabright, Hastings and his wife walked in the sunken garden.
The moon was so bright that the roses still held their color.
"I would like to thank him," said the young wife. She meant the Young
Man of Wall Street. "But for him we would have lost _this_."
Her eyes caressed the garden, the fruit-trees, the house with wide,
hospitable verandas. "To-morrow I will send him some of these roses,"
said the young wife. "Will he understand that they mean our home?"
At a scandalously late hour, in a scandalous spirit of independence,
Champ Thorne and Barbara were driving around Central Park in a taxicab.
"How strangely the Lord moves, his wonders to perform," misquoted
Barbara. "Had not the Young Man of Wall Street saved Mr. Hastings, Mr.
Hastings could not have raised your salary; you would not have asked me
to marry you, and had you not asked me to marry you, father would not
have given me a wedding-present, and----"
"And," said Champ, taking up the tale, "thousands of slaves would still
be buried in the jungles, hidden away from their wives and children, and
the light of the sun and their fellow men. They still would be dying of
fever, starvation, tortures."
He took her hand in both of his and held her finger-tips against his
lips.
"And they will never know," he whispered, "when their freedom comes,
that they owe it all to _you_."
* * * * *
On Hunter's Island Jimmie Reeder and his bunkie, Sam Sturges, each on
his canvas cot, tossed and twisted. The heat, the moonlight, and the
mosquitoes would not let them even think of sleep.
"That was bully," said Jimmie, "what you did to-day about saving that
dog. If it hadn't been for you he'd ha' drownded."
"He would _not_!" said Sammy with punctilious regard for the truth;
"it wasn't deep enough."
"Well, the scout-master ought to know," argued Jimmie; "he said it was
the best 'one good turn' of the day!"
Modestly Sam shifted the limelight so that it fell upon his bunkie.
"I'll bet," he declared loyally, "_your_ 'one good turn' was a
better one!"
Jimmie yawned, and then laughed scornfully.
"Me," he scoffed, "I didn't do nothing. I sent my sister to the movies."
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with
the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill
where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie knew
people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not
deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and
secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known
it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve
for "stalking" and "path-finding," not to boast of others for
"gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had General
Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
Sniffen would have been one. Because by birth he was a boy, and by
inheritance a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of the
county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with
Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of
the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach road
to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of his
hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and
rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
weasels will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
cowpaths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
familiar as his own kitchen garden.
Nor explain why, when you could not see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale"
sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see in the highest branches a last
year's bird's nest.
Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's
axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before
in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he
would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
"But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure
himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still
Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that
when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. "Mebbe dad
told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed
it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book."
The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the
week-end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides
being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of
the Country Club, was also a local "councilman" for the Round Hill
Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In
deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen
in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was
his peroration that made trouble.
"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with
Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You
can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and
then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven
and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.
I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet,
"that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to
find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what
extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows,
the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down
on their maps the wells and streams."
As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the
door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. "Keep your eyes open!" he commanded.
"Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your
sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be
prepared!'"
That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
saw spiked helmets.
Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, "you'll talk on 'Votes
for Women.' After what you said to-night every real-estate agent who
dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites."
"_You_ are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now,
and you're trying to buy the other half."
"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know
_why_ I am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it
is trouble. The Italians make charges against my best friends for
over-speeding, and I have to fine them, and my best friends bring
charges against the Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians
they send me Black Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to
issue a warrant for a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will
turn out to be a millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton
and wants to 'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so
hot at being arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and
try to break into the Piping Rock Club. And it will be your fault!"
The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie liked
to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the top
of a hill and, on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in the
fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why on
his sleeve was the badge for "stalking"? But always to have to make
believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix,
when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one
just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent to
seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a
week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his
flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he most
delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his
energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.
The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but
the enemy of his country.
In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked
the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and
he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor
from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian
arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant
gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor
to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where
one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor was
delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week
following Jimmie was again disappointed.
On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting
in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book,
and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of New
York City. Seven millions of people without water! Without firing a
shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and at
the risk of his life, by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he
followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam, was
the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the
Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From
the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man
working along upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American,
and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the
German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was
only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was
only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin
was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect a
fountain and raise goldfish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him his
troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. "My advice to you,
Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a
very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for
him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before
you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."
So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a
new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young
man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to
be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and,
from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie
mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not
been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed
that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been
forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered
Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
"Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now,
or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"
Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when
did you have your breakfast?"
"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite,
and I lost myself. But I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the shortest
way back to Bedford?"
"The first road to your right," said Jimmie.
"Is it far?" asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
evident.
"It's a half-hour's walk," said Jimmie.
"If I live that long," corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut
him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance, and
then, diving into the wood that lined the road, "stalked" him. From
behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one
in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a
runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he
heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who
knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad
shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by
the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed
the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered,
that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also
reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road,
he approached warily. But he was too late. There was a sound like the
whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been
hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was at
the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward
Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut State
license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like
arrow-heads.
For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty
miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him
south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread
tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as
in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he
catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset
as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the
skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous as
a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until
the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was in
no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face
east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to
splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into
the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen it,
there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time
for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the top
of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone
wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath
to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was
tripping and tumbling. Joyfully it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned
hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie
shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the
coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
"You wait!" he shouted. "I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun."
Next time was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over the
chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
or other devices."
He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested
more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of
the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen
he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What
he had seen was his warrant--plus the shotgun.
As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent grew
hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and
Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires
had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the
car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy on
the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car?
Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did
not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked
that hill.