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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11501 ***
+
+LAUGHING BILL HYDE
+
+And Other Stories
+
+By REX BEACH
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"Rainbow's End," "Heart of the Sunset," "The Spoilers," Etc.
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "LIKE ME?" HE ASKED. PONATAH TURNED AWAY BLINDLY]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. William Hyde was discharged from Deer Lodge Penitentiary a changed
+man. That was quite in line with the accepted theory of criminal
+jurisprudence, the warden's discipline, and the chaplain's prayers.
+Yes, Mr. Hyde was changed, and the change had bitten deep; his
+humorous contempt for the law had turned to abiding hatred; his
+sunburned cheeks were pallid, his lungs were weak, and he coughed
+considerably. Balanced against these results, to be sure, were the
+benefits accruing from three years of corrective discipline at the
+State's expense; the knack of conversing through stone walls, which
+Mr. Hyde had mastered, and the plaiting of wonderful horsehair
+bridles, which he had learned. Otherwise he was the same "Laughing
+Bill" his friends had known, neither more nor less regenerate.
+
+Since the name of Montana promised to associate itself with unpleasant
+memories, Mr. Hyde determined at once to bury his past and begin life
+anew in a climate more suited to weak lungs. To that end he stuck up a
+peaceful citizen of Butte who was hurrying homeward with an armful of
+bundles, and in the warm dusk of a pleasant evening relieved him
+of eighty-three dollars, a Swiss watch with an elk's-tooth fob, a
+pearl-handled penknife, a key-ring, and a bottle of digestive tablets.
+
+Three wasted years of industry had not robbed Mr. Hyde of the
+technique of his trade, hence there was nothing amateurish or
+uproarious about the procedure. He merely back-heeled the pedestrian
+against a bill-board, held him erect and speechless by placing his
+left hand upon his victim's shoulder and pressing his left forearm
+firmly across the gentleman's apple, the while with his own dexterous
+right mit he placed the eighty-three dollars in circulation. During
+the transaction he laughed constantly. An hour later he was en route
+for the sunny South, there being good and sufficient reasons why he
+preferred that direction to any other.
+
+Arizona helped Mr. Hyde's lungs, for the random town which he selected
+was high and dry, but, unfortunately, so was Laughing Bill soon after
+his arrival, and in consequence he was forced to engage promptly in
+a new business enterprise. This time he raised a pay-roll. It was an
+easy task, for the custodian of the pay-roll was a small man with a
+kindly and unsuspicious nature. As a result of this operation Bill was
+enabled to maintain himself, for some six weeks, in a luxury to which
+of late he had been unaccustomed. At the end of this time the original
+bearer of the payroll tottered forth from the hospital and, chancing
+to overhear Mr. Hyde in altercation with a faro dealer, he was struck
+by some haunting note in the former's laughter, and lost no time in
+shuffling his painful way to the sheriff's office.
+
+Seeing the man go, Laughing Bill realized that his health again
+demanded a change of climate, and since it lacked nearly an hour of
+train time he was forced to leave on horseback. Luckily for him he
+found a horse convenient. It was a wild horse, with nothing whatever
+to indicate that it belonged to any one, except the fact that it
+carried a silver-mounted saddle and bridle, the reins of which were
+fastened to a post in front of a saloon.
+
+Mr. Hyde enjoyed the ride, for it kept him out in the open air. It
+grieved him to part with the horse, a few hours later, but being
+prodigal with personal property he presented the animal to a poor
+Mexican woman, leaving her to face any resulting embarrassments. Ten
+minutes later he swung himself under a west-bound freight, and in
+due time arrived in California, somewhat dirty and fatigued, but in
+excellent humor.
+
+Laughing Bill's adventures and his aliases during his slow progress up
+the coast form no part of this story. It might be said, with a great
+deal of truth, that he was missed, if not mourned, in many towns.
+Finally, having found the climates of California, Oregon and
+Washington uniformly unsuited to one of his habits, force of
+circumstance in the shape of numerous hand-bills adorned with an
+unflattering half-tone of himself, but containing certain undeniably
+accurate data such as diameter of skull, length of nose, angle of ear,
+and the like, drove him still north and west. Bill was a modest man;
+he considered these statistics purely personal in character; to see
+them blazoned publicly on the walls of post-offices, and in the
+corridors of county buildings, outraged his finer feelings, so he went
+away from there, in haste, as usual.
+
+Having never sailed the sea, he looked forward to such an experience
+with lively anticipation, only to be disappointed in the realization.
+It was rough off Flattery, and he suffered agonies strange and
+terrifying. In due time, however, he gained his sea legs and, being
+forever curious, even prying, he explored the ship. His explorations
+were interesting, for they took him into strange quarters--into
+the forecastle, the steerage, even into some of the first-class
+state-rooms, the doors of which had been left "on the hook" while
+their occupants were at meals. No small benefit accrued to Mr. Hyde
+from these investigations.
+
+One day during the dinner-hour, as he was occupied in admiring the
+contents of a strange suit-case, a voice accosted him over his
+shoulder, and he looked up to discover a face in the cabin window.
+Bill realized that an explanation was due, for it was evident that
+the speaker had been watching him for some little time; but under the
+circumstances, even though the face in the window was round, youthful,
+good-humored, explanations promised to be embarrassing.
+
+"How d'y?" said Mr. Hyde.
+
+"What luck?" inquired the stranger.
+
+Mr. Hyde sat back upon his heels and grinned engagingly. "Not much,"
+he confessed. "Can't find it nowhere. This guy must be a missionary."
+
+The new-comer opened the door and entered. He was a medium-sized,
+plump young man. "Oh, I say!" he protested. "Is it as bad as that?"
+Bill nodded vaguely, meanwhile carefully measuring the physical
+proportions of the interloper. The latter went on:
+
+"I saw that you knew your business, and--I was hoping you'd manage to
+find something I had missed."
+
+Mr. Hyde breathed deep with relief; his expression altered. "You been
+through ahead of me?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, several times; daily, in fact." The speaker tossed a bunch of
+keys upon the berth, saying: "Glance through the steamer-trunk while
+you're here and declare me in on anything-you find."
+
+Mr. Hyde rose to his feet and retreated a step; his look of relief was
+replaced by one of dark suspicion. As always, in moments of extremity,
+he began to laugh.
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded.
+
+"I? Why, I live here. That's my baggage. I've been through it, as
+I told you, but--" The young man frowned whimsically and lit a
+cigarette. "It doesn't diagnose. I can't find a solitary symptom of
+anything worth while. Sit down, won't you?"
+
+Mr. Hyde's manner changed for a second time. He was embarrassed,
+apologetic, crestfallen. "_Your_ cabin? Why, then--it's my mistake!"
+he declared. "I must 'a' got in the wrong flat. Mac sent me up for a
+deck of cards, but--Say, that's funny, ain't it?"
+
+He began to see the joke upon himself, and the youth echoed his
+laughter.
+
+"It _is_ funny," the latter agreed. "For Heaven's sake, don't spoil
+it. Sit down and have a smoke; I'm not going to eat you."
+
+"See here! You don't mean--? D'you think for a minute--?" Mr.
+Hyde began with rotund dignity, but the other waved his cigarette
+impatiently, saying:
+
+"Oh, drop that stuff or I'll page your friend 'Mac' and show you up."
+
+In assuming his air of outraged innocence Laughing Bill had arched
+his hollow chest and inhaled deeply. As a result he began to cough,
+whereupon his new acquaintance eyed him keenly, saying:
+
+"That's a bad bark. What ails you?"
+
+"Con," said Laughing Bill.
+
+"Pardon me. I wouldn't have smoked if I'd known." The speaker dropped
+his cigarette and placed a heel upon it. "What are you doing here?
+Alaska's no place for weak lungs."
+
+Gingerly seating himself upon the narrow settee Mr. Hyde murmured,
+wonderingly: "Say! You're a regular guy, ain't you?" He began to laugh
+again, but now there was less of a metallic quality to his merriment.
+"Yes sir, dam' if you ain't." He withdrew from his pocket a
+silver-mounted hair-brush and comb, and placed them carefully upon the
+washstand. "I don't aim to quit winner on a sport like you."
+
+"Thanks, awfully!" smiled the young man. "I'd have fought you for that
+comb and brush. Girl stuff, you understand? That's she." He pointed to
+a leather-framed photograph propped against the mirror.
+
+Laughing Bill leaned forward and studied the picture approvingly.
+"Some queen, all right. Blonde, I reckon."
+
+"Sure. You like blondes?"
+
+"Who, me? I ain't strong for no kind of women. You hate her, don't
+you?"
+
+The young man smiled more widely, his whole face lit up. "I hate her
+so much that I kissed her good-by and sailed away to make a quick
+fortune. I hope Alaska's unhealthy."
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"You see, I'm a doctor. I'm a good doctor, too, but it takes a long
+time to prove it, out in the States, and I can't wait a long time."
+
+Mr. Hyde pondered briefly. "I don't see's you got much on me, Doc," he
+said. "I frisk 'em while they're good and healthy, and you 'take' 'em
+when they're feeble. I don't see no difference to speak of."
+
+"It's an interesting viewpoint," the physician agreed, seriously
+enough, "and I respect every man's opinion. Tell me, how did you
+acquire that cough?"
+
+"Livin' in a ground-floor apartment."
+
+"What's your business?"
+
+"Harness-maker."
+
+"Hm-m! You'll do well up here." The doctor was highly entertained. "I
+understand there's a horse at Nome."
+
+"_A_ horse!"
+
+"Alaska isn't a stock country."
+
+Laughing Bill was genuinely surprised. "No horses!" he murmured. "How
+the hell do you get away?"
+
+"You don't. You stay and face the music."
+
+"Now what do you know about that?" There was a brief silence. "Well, I
+bet I'll turn my hand to something."
+
+"No doubt. You impress me as a man of resource." The doctor's eyes
+twinkled and Bill smiled. A bond of friendly understanding had already
+sprung up between the two men. "Now then, I'm interested in your case.
+I've a notion to try to cure you."
+
+"Nothing doin' on the fees. I'm a dead card."
+
+"Oh, I won't charge you anything! I'm merely interested in obscure
+ailments, and, if I'm not mistaken, you suffer from more than
+one--well, disease. I think you need curing about as badly as any man
+I ever saw."
+
+Now Laughing Bill was not skilled in subtleties, and his relief at
+extricating himself from a trying predicament banished any resentment
+he might have felt at the doctor's double meaning. Since the latter
+was a good-natured, harmless individual he decided to humor him, and
+so, after they had visited for an hour or more, Mr. Hyde discreetly
+withdrew. But, oddly enough, during the days immediately following,
+Laughing Bill grew to like the young fellow immensely. This in itself
+was a novel experience, for the ex-convict had been a "loner" all
+his-life, and had never really liked any one. Dr. Evan Thomas,
+however, seemed to fill some long-felt want in Hyde's hungry make-up.
+He fitted in smoothly, too, and despite the latter's lifelong habit of
+suspicion, despite his many rough edges, he could not manage to hold
+the young man at a distance.
+
+Thomas was of a type strange to the wanderer, he was educated, he had
+unfamiliar airs and accomplishments, but he was human and natural
+withal. He was totally ignorant of much that Mr. Hyde deemed
+fundamental, and yet he was mysteriously superior, while his
+indifferent good nature, his mild amusement at the antics of the world
+about him covered a sincere and earnest nature. He knew his business,
+moreover, and he revolutionized Bill's habits of hygiene in spite of
+the latter's protests.
+
+But the disease which ravaged Mr. Hyde's constitution had its toes dug
+in, and when the steamer touched at St. Michaels he suffered a severe
+hemorrhage. For the first time in his life Laughing Bill stood face to
+face with darkness. He had fevered memories of going over side on a
+stretcher; he was dimly aware of an appalling weakness, which grew
+hourly, then an agreeable indifference enveloped him, and for a long
+time he lived in a land of unrealities, of dreams. The day came when
+he began to wonder dully how and why he found himself in a freezing
+cabin with Doctor Thomas, in fur cap and arctic overshoes, tending
+him. Bill pondered the phenomenon for a week before he put his query
+into words.
+
+"I've had a hard fight for you, old man," the doctor explained. "I
+couldn't leave you here to die."
+
+"I guess I must 'a' been pretty sick."
+
+"Right! There's no hospital here, so I took this cabin--borrowed it
+from the Company. We don't burn much fuel, and expenses aren't high."
+
+"You been standin' off the landlord?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a considerable silence, then Bill said, fervently: "You're a
+regular guy, like I told you! But you got your pill business to attend
+to. I'm all right now, so you better blow."
+
+Thomas smiled dubiously. "You're a long way from all right, and
+there's no place to 'blow' to. The last boat sailed two weeks ago."
+
+"Last boat for where?"
+
+"For anywhere. We're here for the winter, unless the mail-carrier will
+take us to Nome, or up the Yukon, after the trails open."
+
+"I bet you'll do a good business right here, when folks see what you
+done for me," Bill ventured.
+
+"Just wait till you look at the town--deserted warehouses, some young
+and healthy watchmen, and a Siwash village. You're the only possible
+patient in all of St. Michaels."
+
+Bill lay silent for an hour, staring through the open cabin window
+at a gray curtain of falling snowflakes; then he shook his head and
+muttered:
+
+"Well, I be danged!"
+
+"Anything you want?" Thomas inquired, quickly.
+
+"I was just thinking about that gal." Bill indicated the
+leather-framed photograph which was prominently featured above the
+other bunk. "You ain't gettin' ahead very fast, are you?"
+
+This time the young medical man smiled with his lips only--his eyes
+were grave and troubled. "I've written her all the circumstances, and
+she'll understand. She's that sort of a girl." He turned cheerfully
+back to his task. "I found that I had a few dollars left, so we won't
+starve."
+
+Mr. Hyde felt impelled to confess that in his war-bag there was a roll
+of some seven hundred dollars, title to which had vested in him on the
+northward trip, together with certain miscellaneous objects of virtu,
+but he resisted the impulse, fearing that an investigation by his
+nurse might lead the latter to believe that he, Bill, was not a
+harness-maker at all, but a jewelry salesman. He determined to spring
+that roll at a later date, and to present the doctor with a very thin,
+very choice gold watch out of State-room 27. Bill carried out this
+intention when he had sufficiently recovered to get about.
+
+Later, when his lungs had healed, Bill hired the mail-man to take him
+and his nurse to Nome. Since he was not yet altogether strong, he rode
+the sled most of the way, while the doctor walked. It was a slow and
+tiresome trip, along the dreary shores of Behring Sea, over timberless
+tundras, across inlets where the new ice bent beneath their weight and
+where the mail-carrier cautiously tested the footing with the head of
+his ax. Sometimes they slept in their tent, or again in road-houses
+and in Indian villages.
+
+Every hour Laughing Bill grew stronger, and with his strength of
+body grew his strength of affection for the youthful doctor. Bill
+experienced a dog-like satisfaction in merely being near him; he
+suffered pangs when Thomas made new friends; he monopolized him
+jealously. The knowledge that he had a pal was new and thrilling; it
+gave Bill constant food for thought and speculation. Thomas was always
+gentle and considerate, but his little services, his unobtrusive
+sacrifices never went unnoticed, and they awoke in the bandit an
+ever-increasing wonderment. Also, they awoke a fierce desire to square
+the obligation.
+
+The two men laid over at one of the old Russian towns, and Thomas, as
+was his restless custom, made investigation of the native village.
+Of course Bill went with him. They had learned by this time to enter
+Indian houses without knocking, so, therefore, when they finally came
+to a cabin larger and cleaner than the rest they opened the door and
+stepped inside, quite like experienced travelers.
+
+A squaw was bent over a tub of washing, another stood beside the tiny
+frosted window staring out. Neither woman answered the greeting of the
+white men.
+
+"Must be the chief's house," Thomas observed.
+
+"Must be! I s'pose the old bird is out adding up his reindeer.
+'Sapolio Sue' is prob'ly his head wife." Laughing Bill ran an
+interested eye over the orderly interior. "Some shack, but--I miss the
+usual smell."
+
+Neither woman paid them the least attention, so they continued to talk
+with each other.
+
+"I wonder what she is washing," Doctor Thomas said, finally.
+
+The figure at the window turned, exposing the face of a comely young
+Indian girl. Her features were good, her skin was light. She eyed the
+intruders coolly, then in a well-modulated voice, and in excellent
+English, she said:
+
+"She is washing a pair of sealskin pants."
+
+Both men removed their caps in sudden embarrassment. Thomas exclaimed:
+
+"I beg your pardon! We thought this was just an ordinary native house,
+or we wouldn't have intruded."
+
+"You haven't intruded. This is 'Reindeer Mary's' house." The girl had
+again turned her back.
+
+"Are you Reindeer Mary?"
+
+"No, I am Ponatah. Mary befriended me; she lets me live with her."
+
+"Allow me to introduce Mr. Hyde. I am Doctor Thomas. We were very
+rude--"
+
+"Oh, everybody comes here." The men recognized instantly in the
+speaker's face, as well as in her voice, that education had set its
+stamp. "Will you sit down and wait for her?"
+
+"You overwhelm us." After an awkward moment the physician queried,
+"How in the world did you learn to speak such good English?"
+
+"A missionary took an interest in me when I was a little girl. He sent
+me to Carlisle."
+
+Laughing Bill had been an attentive listener, now he ventured to say:
+"I know this Carlisle. He's a swell football player, or something."
+
+Ponatah smiled, showing a row of small, white teeth. "Carlisle is an
+Indian school."
+
+"What made you come back?" Thomas inquired, curiously.
+
+Ponatah shrugged her shoulders. "There was an end to the money. What
+could I do? At first I thought I'd be able to help my people, but--I
+couldn't. They will learn from the white people, but not from one of
+their own kind."
+
+"Your parents--?"
+
+"They died when I was a baby. Mary took me in." The girl spoke in a
+flat, emotionless tone.
+
+"It must be tough to come back to this, now that you know what life
+really is," said Thomas, after a time.
+
+Ponatah's eyes were dark with tragedy when she turned them to the
+speaker. "_God!_" she cried, unexpectedly, then abruptly she faced
+the window once more. It was a moment before she went on in fierce
+resentment:
+
+"Why didn't they leave me as they found me? Why did they teach me
+their ways, and then send me back to this--this dirt and ignorance and
+squalor? Sometimes I think I can't stand it. But what can I do? Nobody
+understands. Mary can't see why I'm different from her and the others.
+She has grown rich, with her reindeer; she says if this is good enough
+for her it should be good enough for me. As for the white men who come
+through, they can't, or they won't, understand. They're hateful to me.
+Petersen, the mail-carrier, for instance! I don't know why I'm telling
+you this. You're strangers. You're probably just like Petersen."
+
+"I know why you're telling us," Thomas said, slowly. "It's because
+I--because we're _not_ like Petersen and the others; it's because
+I--we can help you."
+
+"Help me?" sneered the girl. "How?"
+
+"I don't know, yet. But you're out of place here. There's a place for
+you somewhere; I'll find it."
+
+Ponatah shook her head wearily. "Mary says I belong here, with my
+people."
+
+"No. You belong with white people--people who will treat you well."
+
+This time the girl smiled bitterly. "They have treated me worse than
+my own people have. I know them, and--I hate them."
+
+"Ain't you the sore-head, now?" Laughing Bill murmured. "You got a
+hundred-per-cent. grouch, but if the old medicine-man says he'll put
+you in right, you bet your string of beads he'll do it. He's got a
+gift for helpin' down-and-outers. You got class, Kid; you certainly
+rhinestone this whole bunch of red men. Why, you belong in French
+heels and a boodwar cap; that's how I dope you."
+
+"There must be a chance for a girl like you in Nome," Thomas
+continued, thoughtfully. "You'd make a good hand with children.
+Suppose I try to find you a place as governess?"
+
+"_Would_ you?" Ponatah's face was suddenly eager. "Children? Oh yes!
+I'd work my fingers to the bone. I--I'd do _anything_--"
+
+"Then I'll do what I can."
+
+For some time longer the three of them talked, and gradually into the
+native girl's eyes there came a light, for these men were not like the
+others she had met, and she saw the world begin to unfold before her.
+When at last they left she laid a hand upon the doctor's arm and said,
+imploringly:
+
+"You won't forget. You--promise?"
+
+"I promise," he told her.
+
+"He don't forget nothing," Bill assured her, "and if he does I'll see
+that he don't."
+
+After they had gone Ponatah stood motionless for a long time, then she
+whispered, breathlessly:
+
+"Children! Little white children! I'll be very good to them."
+
+"She's a classy quilt," Laughing Bill said, on the way back to the
+road-house.
+
+"She's as pretty as a picture, and little more than a child," the
+doctor admitted.
+
+"You made a hit. She'd do 'most anything for you." The doctor
+muttered, absent-mindedly. "She's stood off Petersen and these
+red-necks, but she'd fall for you." Mr. Hyde was insinuating.
+
+Thomas halted; he stared at his partner curiously, coldly. "Say! Do
+you think that's why I offered to help her?" he inquired.
+
+"Come clean!" The invalid winked meaningly. "You're a long ways from
+home, and I've knew fellers to do a lot worse. You can grab her, easy.
+And if you do--"
+
+Thomas grunted angrily. "I've put up with a lot from you," he said,
+then he strode on.
+
+"And if you do," the other resumed, falling into step with him, "I'll
+bust you right where you're thickest."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I'll bust you wide open. Oh, me 'n' that gal in the leather frame had
+a long talk while I was sick in St. Mikes, and she asked me to keep
+you in the middle of the trail. Well, I'm the little guy that can do
+it."
+
+"Bill!" Evan Thomas's eyes were twinkling. "I believe I'm going to
+cure you, after all," said he.
+
+Late that afternoon Mr. Hyde disappeared; he did not show up until
+after dark.
+
+"I been to see Lo, the poor squaw," he readily confessed. "She ain't
+the pure domestic leaf, she's a blend--part Rooshian, or something.
+Seems there was a gang of Rooshians or Swedes or Dagoes of some sort
+used to run this country. She says they horned into some of the best
+Injun families, and she's one of the 'overs.'"
+
+"They were Russians."
+
+"Rooshians is a kind of white people, ain't they? Well, that's how she
+come so light-complected. You remember she said our folks had treated
+her bad? It's a fact, Doc. She spilled the story, and it made a
+mouthful. It's like this: when Nome was struck a Swede feller she
+had knew staked her a claim, but she couldn't hold it, her bein' a
+squab--under age, savvy? There's something in the law that prevents
+Injuns gettin' in on anything good, too; I don't rightly recollect
+what it is, but if it's legal you can bet it's crooked. Anyhow, Uncle
+Sam lets up a squawk that she's only eighteen, goin' on nineteen, and
+a noble redskin to boot, and says his mining claims is reserved for
+Laps and Yaps and Japs and Wops, and such other furrin' slantheads of
+legal age as declare their intention to become American citizens if
+their claims turn out rich enough so's it pays 'em to do so.
+
+"Well, Ponatah's Swede friend gets himself froze, somehow, so she has
+to pass the buck. Naturally, she turns to her pals, the missionaries.
+There's a he-missionary here--head mug of the whole gang. He's a godly
+walloper, and he tears into Satan bare-handed every Sunday. He slams
+the devil around something shameful, and Ponatah thinks he's a square
+guy if ever they come square, so she asks him to re-locate her claim,
+on shares, and hold it for the joint account. Old Doctor M.E. Church
+agrees to split fifty-fifty, half to her and half to heaven, then he
+vamps to Nome and chalks his monaker over the Kid's. Now get me: the
+claim turns out good, and Ponatah's heavenly pilot makes a Mexican
+divvy--he takes the money and gives her his best wishes. He grabs
+everything, and says he never knew nobody by the name of Ponatah--he
+gets so he can't even pronounce it. He allows her face is familiar,
+but he can't place her, and the partnership idea allus was repugnant
+to him. He never was partners with nobody, understand? He blows the
+show; he bows out and leaves the Kid flat. He forsakes the Milky Way
+for the Great White one, and he's out there now, smokin' Coronas and
+wearin' a red vest under his black coat, with a diamond horseshoe
+in his tie. It looks to me like the James boys could 'a' learned
+something from this gospel hold-up."
+
+"Do you believe her story?" Thomas inquired.
+
+"She don't know enough to lie, and you can't trust a guy that wears
+his collar backwards."
+
+"She should go to court."
+
+Mr. Hyde shook his head. "I been there, often, but I never picked up a
+bet. Somehow or other courts is usually right next to jails, and you
+got to watch out you don't get in the wrong place. You can't win
+nothing in either one. I thought I'd tell you the story, so if you
+ever meet up with this shave-tail preacher and he wants a headache
+pill you can slip him some sugar-coated arsenic."
+
+In the days immediately following Doctor Thomas's arrival at Nome
+he was a busy man, but he did not forget Ponatah. He was allowed no
+opportunity of doing so, for Bill frequently reminded him of her, and
+as a result it was not long before he found a place for his charge, in
+the home of a leading merchant. Arrangements made, Bill went in search
+of the mail-carrier.
+
+Petersen was drinking with two friends at the bar of the Last Chance,
+and he pressed his late passenger to join them. But alcoholism was not
+one of Mr. Hyde's weaknesses. The best of Bill's bad habits was much
+worse than drink; he had learned from experience that liquor put a
+traitor's tongue in his head, and in consequence he was a teetotaler.
+
+"I got a job for you, Pete," he announced. "I got you another
+sled-load for your next trip. You know Ponatah?"
+
+"Ponatah? Sure Aye know 'im." Petersen. spoke with enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, bring her along when you come. Me 'n' the little Doc will
+settle."
+
+"Dat's good yob for me, all right. Vot mak' you tank she'll come? Aye
+ask her plenty tams, but she ant like me."
+
+"You slip her this billy-ducks and she'll come."
+
+Petersen pocketed the letter which Bill handed him; his eyes
+brightened; the flush in his face deepened. "You bet your gum boots
+Aye bring her. She's svell, ant she, Bill? She's yust some svell like
+white voman."
+
+"Who's this?" queried one of Petersen's companions.
+
+"Ponatah. She's jung sqvaw. Aye got eyes on dat chicken long tam
+now." The burly mail-man laughed loudly and slapped his friend on the
+shoulder.
+
+Mr. Hyde appeared to share in the general good nature. Carelessly,
+smilingly he picked up Petersen's dog-whip, which lay coiled on the
+bar; thoughtfully he weighed it. The lash was long, but the handle was
+short and thick, and its butt was loaded with shot; it had much the
+balance of a black-jack--a weapon not unknown to Mr. Hyde.
+
+"Pretty soft for you mail-men." The former speaker grinned.
+
+"Ja! Pretty soft. Aye bet Aye have good tam dis trip. Yust vait. You
+don't know how purty is Ponatah. She--"
+
+Petersen's listeners waited. They are waiting yet, for the mail-man
+never completed his admiring recital of the Indian girl's charms,
+owing to the fact that the genial Mr. Hyde without warning tapped his
+late friend's round head with the leather butt of the dog-whip. Had
+it not been for the Norseman's otter cap it is probable that a new
+mail-carrier would have taken the St. Michaels run.
+
+Petersen sat down upon his heels, and rested his forehead against the
+cool brass foot-rail; the subsequent proceedings interested him not
+at all. Those proceedings were varied and sudden, for the nearest and
+dearest of Petersen's friends rushed upon Mr. Hyde with a roar. Him,
+too, Bill eliminated from consideration with the loaded whip handle.
+But, this done, Bill found himself hugged in the arms of the other
+man, as in the embrace of a bereaved she-grizzly. Now even at his best
+the laughing Mr. Hyde was no hand at rough-and-tumble, it being his
+opinion that fisticuffs was a peculiarly indecisive and exhausting way
+of settling a dispute. He possessed a vile temper, moreover, and once
+aroused half measures failed to satisfy it.
+
+After Mr. Hyde's admirable beginning those neutrals who had seen the
+start of the affray were prepared to witness an ending equally quick
+and conclusive. They were surprised, therefore, to note that Bill put
+up a very weak struggle, once he had come to close quarters. He made
+only the feeblest resistance, before permitting himself to be borne
+backward to the floor, and then as he lay pinned beneath his opponent
+he did not even try to guard the blows that rained upon him; as a
+matter of fact, he continued to laugh as if the experience were highly
+diverting.
+
+Seeing that the fight was one-sided, the bartender hastened from his
+retreat, dragged Petersen's champion to his feet, and flung him back
+into the arms of the onlookers, after which he stooped to aid the
+loser. His hands were actually upon Bill before he understood the
+meaning of that peculiar laughter, and saw in Mr. Hyde's shaking
+fingers that which caused him to drop the prostrate victim as if he
+were a rattlesnake.
+
+"God'l'mighty!" exclaimed the rescuer. He retreated hurriedly whence
+he had come.
+
+Bill rose and dusted himself off, then he bent over Petersen, who was
+stirring.
+
+"Just give her that billy-ducks and tell her it's all right. Tell her
+I say you won't hurt her none." Then, still chuckling, he slipped into
+the crowd and out of the Last Chance. As he went he coughed and spat a
+mouthful of blood.
+
+Once the mail-carrier had been apprised of the amazing incidents which
+had occurred during his temporary inattention, he vowed vengeance in
+a mighty voice, and his threats found echo in the throats of his two
+companions. But the bartender took them aside and spoke guardedly:
+
+"You better lay off of that guy, or he'll fatten the graveyard with
+all three of you. I didn't 'make' him at first, but I got him now, all
+right."
+
+"What d'you mean? Who is he?"
+
+"His name's Hyde, 'Laughing Bill.'"
+
+"'Laughing Bill' Hyde!" One of Petersen's friends, he who had come
+last into the encounter, turned yellow and leaned hard against the
+bar. A sudden nausea assailed him and he laid tender hands upon his
+abdomen. "'Laughing Bill' Hyde! That's why he went down so easy! Why,
+he killed a feller I knew--ribboned him up from underneath, just
+that way--and the jury called it self-defense." A shudder racked the
+speaker's frame.
+
+"Sure! He's a cutter--a reg'lar gent's cutter and fitter. He'd 'a' had
+you all over the floor in another minute; if I hadn't pried you apart
+they'd 'a' sewed sawdust up inside of you like you was a doll. He had
+the old bone-handled skinner in his mit; that's why I let go of him.
+Laughing Bill! Take it from me, boys, you better walk around him like
+he was a hole in the ice."
+
+It may have been the memory of that heavy whip handle, it may have
+been the moral effect of stray biographical bits garnered here and
+there around the gambling-table, or it may have been merely a high
+and natural chivalry, totally unsuspected until now, which prompted
+Petersen to treat Ponatah with a chill and formal courtesy when he
+returned from St. Michaels. At any rate, the girl arrived in Nome with
+nothing but praise for the mail-man. Pete Petersen, so she said, might
+have his faults, but he knew how to behave like a perfect gentleman.
+
+Ponatah took up her new duties with enthusiasm, and before a month had
+passed she had endeared herself to her employers, who secretly assured
+Doctor Thomas that they had discovered a treasure and would never part
+with her. She was gentle, patient, sweet, industrious; the children
+idolized her. The Indian girl had never dreamed of a home like this;
+she was deliriously happy.
+
+She took pride in discharging her obligations; she did not forget the
+men who had made this wonder possible. They had rented a little cabin,
+and, after the fashion of men, they make slipshod efforts at keeping
+house. Since it was Ponatah's nature to serve, she found time somehow
+to keep the place tidy and to see to their comfort.
+
+Laughing Bill was a hopeless idler; he had been born to leisure and
+was wedded to indigence, therefore he saw a good deal of the girl on
+her visits. He listened to her stories of the children, he admired her
+new and stylish clothes, he watched her develop under the influence of
+her surroundings. Inasmuch as both of them were waifs, and beholden
+to the bounty of others, thy had ties in common--a certain
+mutuality--hence they came to know each other intimately.
+
+Despite the great change in her environment, Ponatah remained in many
+ways quite aboriginal. For instance, she was embarrassingly direct and
+straightforward; she entirely lacked hypocrisy, and that which puzzled
+or troubled her she boldly put into words. There came a time when Bill
+discovered that Ponatah's eyes, when they looked at him, were more
+than friendly, that most of the services she performed were aimed at
+him.
+
+Then one day she asked him to marry her.
+
+There was nothing brazen or forward about the proposal; Ponatah merely
+gave voice to her feelings in a simple, honest way that robbed her of
+no dignity.
+
+Bill laughed the proposal off. "I wouldn't marry the Queen of Sheby,"
+said he.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I ain't that kind of a bird, that's why."
+
+"What kind of a bird are you?" Ponatah eyed him with grave curiosity.
+"All men marry. I'm reading a great many books, and they're all about
+love and marriage. I love you, and I'm pretty. Is it because I'm an
+Indian--?"
+
+"Hell! That wouldn't faze me, Kiddo. You skin the white dames around
+this village. But you better cut out them books."
+
+"I'd make you a good wife."
+
+"Sure! You're aces. But I'd make a bum husband. I ain't got the breath
+to blow out a candle." Mr. Hyde chuckled; the idea of marriage plainly
+amused him. "How you know I ain't got a covey of wives?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, I know!" Ponatah was unsmiling. "I'm simple, but I can see
+through people. I can tell the good ones and the bad ones. You're a
+good man, Billy."
+
+Now this praise was anything but agreeable to Mr. Hyde, for above all
+things he abhorred so-called "good" people. Good people were suckers,
+and he prided himself upon being a wise guy, with all that was meant
+thereby.
+
+"You lay off of me, Kid," he warned, darkly, "and you muffle them
+wedding bells. You can't win nothing with that line of talk. If I
+was fifty inches around the chest, liked to work, and was fond of
+pas'ment'ries I'd prob'ly fall for you, but I ain't. I'm a good man,
+all right--to leave alone. I'll be a brother to you, but that's my
+limit." The subject was embarrassing, so he changed it. "Say! I been
+thinking about that claim of yours. Didn't you get no paper from that
+missionary?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then his word's as good as yours."
+
+"That's what the lawyer told me. I offered to give him half, but he
+wouldn't touch the case."
+
+"It was a dirty deal, but you better forget it."
+
+"I'll try," the girl promised. "But I don't forget easily."
+
+Laughing Bill's rejection of Ponatah's offer of marriage did not in
+the least affect their friendly relations. She continued to visit the
+cabin, and not infrequently she reverted to the forbidden topic, only
+to meet with discouragement.
+
+Doctor Thomas had opened an office, of course, but business was light
+and expenses heavy. Supplies were low in Nome and prices high; coal,
+for instance, was a hundred dollars a ton and, as a result, most
+of the idle citizens spent their evenings---but precious little
+else--around the saloon stoves. When April came Laughing Bill
+regretfully decided that it was necessary for him to go to work. The
+prospect was depressing, and he did not easily reconcile himself to
+it, for he would have infinitely preferred some less degraded and
+humiliating way out of the difficulty. He put up a desperate battle
+against the necessity, and he did not accept the inevitable until
+thoroughly convinced that the practice of medicine and burglary could
+not be carried on from the same residence without the risk of serious
+embarrassment to his benefactor.
+
+However, to find employment in a community where there were two men to
+one job was not easy, but happily--or unhappily--Bill had a smattering
+of many trades, and eventually there came an opening as handy-man at a
+mine. It was a lowly position, and Bill had little pride in it, for
+he was put to helping the cook, waiting on table, washing dishes,
+sweeping cabins, making beds, and the like. He had been assured that
+the work was light, and so it was, but it was also continuous. He
+could summon not the slightest interest in it until he discovered that
+this was the very claim which rightfully belonged to Ponatah. Then,
+indeed, he pricked up his ears.
+
+The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all
+winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the
+industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and
+that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to
+personally oversee the clean-ups. The ex-missionary, Bill discovered,
+had the reputation of being a tight man, and meanly suspicious in
+money matters. He reposed no confidence in his superintendent, a
+surly, saturnine fellow known as Black Jack Berg, nor in Denny Slevin,
+his foreman. So much Laughing Bill gathered from camp gossip.
+
+It soon became evident that Black Jack was a hard driver, for sluicing
+began with the first trickle of snow water--even while the ditches
+were still ice-bound--and it continued with double shifts thereafter.
+A representative of Doctor Slayforth came out from Nome to watch the
+first clean-up, and Bill, in his capacity as chambermaid, set up a cot
+for him in the cabin shared by Black Jack and Denny. While so engaged
+the latter discovered him, and gruffly ordered him to remove the cot
+to the bunk-house.
+
+"Put him in with the men," growled Slevin. "Serves the dam' spy
+right."
+
+"Spy? Is he a gum-shoe?" Mr. Hyde paused, a pillow slip between his
+teeth.
+
+"That's what! Me and Jack was honest enough to run things all
+winter, but we ain't honest enough to clean up. That's like old
+Slayforth--always lookin' to get the worst of it. I'm square, and so's
+Jack. Makes me sick, this spyin' on honest folks. Everybody knows we
+wouldn't turn a trick."
+
+Now it was Laughing Bill's experience that honesty needs no boosting,
+and that he who most loudly vaunts his rectitude is he who is least
+certain of it.
+
+"The boss must be a good man, him being a sort of psalm-singer," Bill
+ventured, guilelessly.
+
+Denny snorted: "Oh, sure! He's good, all right. He's 'most too
+good--to be true. Billy, my boy, when you've seen as many crooks as I
+have you'll know 'em, no matter how they come dressed."
+
+As he folded the cot Mr. Hyde opined that worldly experience must
+indeed be a fine thing to possess.
+
+"You go gamble on it!" Slevin agreed. "Now then, just tell that
+Hawkshaw we don't want no dam' spies in our house. We're square guys,
+and we can't stomach 'em."
+
+That evening Black Jack called upon the handy-man to help with the
+clean-up, and put him to tend the water while he and Denny, under the
+watchful eye of the owner's representative, lifted the riffles, worked
+down the concentrates, and removed them from the boxes.
+
+Bill was an experienced placer miner, so it was not many days before
+he was asked to help in the actual cleaning of the sluices. He was
+glad of the promotion, for, as he told himself, no man can squeeze a
+lemon without getting juice on his fingers. It will be seen, alas!
+that Mr. Hyde's moral sense remained blunted in spite of the refining
+influence of his association with Doctor Thomas. But Aurora dust
+was fine, and the handy-man's profits were scarcely worth the risks
+involved in taking them.
+
+One morning while Bill was cleaning up the superintendent's cabin
+he noticed a tiny yellow flake of gold upon the floor in front of
+Slevin's bed. Careful examination showed him several "colors" of the
+same sort, so he swept the boards carefully and took up the dust in
+a "blower." He breathed upon the pile, blowing the lighter particles
+away. A considerable residue of heavy yellow grains remained. With
+a grin Bill folded them in a cigarette paper and placed them in his
+pocket. But it puzzled him to explain how there came to be gold on the
+cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found
+another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded
+perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal--enough to set him to
+thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's
+bunk he could find no pay whatever.
+
+Slevin had left his hip boots in the cabin, and as Laughing Bill
+turned down their tops and set them out in the wind to dry his sharp
+eye detected several yellow pin-points of color which proved, upon
+closer investigation, to be specks of gold clinging to the wet lining.
+
+"Well, I be danged!" said Mr. Hyde. Carefully, thoughtfully, he
+replaced the boots where he had found them. The knowledge that he was
+on a hot trail electrified him.
+
+At the next clean-up Laughing Bill took less interest in his part of
+the work and more in Denny Slevin's. When the riffles were washed,
+and the loose gravel had been worked down into yellow piles of rich
+concentrates, Slevin, armed with whisk broom, paddle, and scoop,
+climbed into the sluices. Bill watched him out of a corner of his eye,
+and it was not long before his vigilance was rewarded. The hold-up
+man turned away with a feeling of genuine admiration, for he had
+seen Slevin, under the very nose of the lookout, "go south" with a
+substantial amount of gold.
+
+The foreman's daring and dexterity amazed Bill and deepened his
+respect. Slevin's work was cunning, and yet so simple as to be almost
+laughable. With his hip boots pulled high he had knelt upon one knee
+in the sluice scooping up the wet piles of gold and black iron sand,
+while Berg held a gold pan to receive it. During the process Black
+Jack had turned to address the vigilant owner's representative, and,
+profiting by the brief diversion, Bill had seen Denny dump a heaping
+scoop-load of "pay" into the gaping pocket-like top of his capacious
+rubber boot.
+
+"The sons-of-a-gun!" breathed Laughing Bill. "The double-crossing
+sons-of-a-gun! Why, it begins to look like a big summer for me."
+
+Bill slept well that night, for now that he knew the game which was
+going on he felt sure that sooner or later he would take a hand in it.
+Just how or when the hand would fall he could not tell, but that did
+not worry him in the least, inasmuch as he already held the trumps. It
+seemed that a kindly fortune had guided him to the Aurora; that fate
+had decreed he should avenge the wrongs of Ponatah. The handy-man fell
+asleep with a smile upon his lips.
+
+The first ship arrived that very evening, and the next day Doctor
+Slayforth in person appeared at the Aurora. He was a thin, restless
+man with weak and shifting eyes; he said grace at dinner, giving
+thanks for the scanty rations of hash and brown beans over which his
+hungry workmen were poised like cormorants. The Aurora had won the
+name of a bad feeder, but its owner seemed satisfied with his meal.
+Later Bill overheard him talking with his superintendent.
+
+"I'm disappointed with the clean-ups," Slayforth confessed. "The pay
+appears to be pinching out."
+
+"She don't wash like she sampled, that's a fact," said Black Jack.
+
+"I'm afraid we shall have to practise economies--"
+
+"Look here! If you aim to cut down the grub, don't try it," counseled
+Berg. "It's rotten now."
+
+"Indeed? There appeared to be plenty, and the quality was excellent. I
+fear you encourage gluttony, and nothing so interferes with work. We
+must effect a saving somehow; there is too great a variation between
+theoretical and actual values."
+
+"Huh! You better try feeding hay for a while," sourly grumbled the
+superintendent. "If you ain't getting what you aimed to get it's
+because it ain't in the cards."
+
+This conversation interested Bill, for it proved that the robbers had
+helped themselves with a liberal hand, but how they had managed to
+appropriate enough gold to noticeably affect the showing of the
+winter's work intensely mystified him; it led him to believe that
+Black Jack and Denny were out for a homestake.
+
+That such was indeed the case and that Slevin was not the only thief
+Bill soon discovered, for after the next clean-up he slipped away
+through the twilight and took stand among the alders outside the rear
+window of the shack on the hill. From his point of concealment he
+could observe all that went on inside.
+
+It was a familiar scene. By the light of an oil lamp Black Jack was
+putting the final touches to the clean-up. Two gold pans, heaped high
+with the mingled black sand and gold dust, as it came out of the
+sluices, were drying on the Yukon stove, and the superintendent was
+engaged in separating the precious yellow particles from the worthless
+material which gravity had deposited with it. This refining process
+was slow, painstaking work, and was effected with the help of a flat
+brass scoop--a "blower." By shaking this blower and breathing upon its
+contents the lighter grains of iron sand were propelled to the edge,
+as chaff is separated from wheat, and fell into a box held between the
+superintendent's knees. The residue, left in the heel of the blower
+after each blowing process, was commercial "dust," ready for the bank
+or the assay office. Doctor Slayforth, with his glasses on the end of
+his nose, presided at the gold scales, while Denny Slevin looked on.
+As the dust was weighed, a few ounces at a time, it was dumped into a
+moose-skin sack and entered upon the books.
+
+Black Jack had the light at his back, he was facing the window,
+therefore Laughing Bill commanded an unobstructed view of his
+adept manipulations. It was not long before the latter saw him
+surreptitiously drop a considerable quantity of gold out of the scoop
+and into the box between his knees, then cover it up with the black
+sand. This sleight-of-hand was repeated several times, and when
+the last heap of gold had been weighed Bill estimated that Doctor
+Slayforth was poorer by at least a hundred ounces--sixteen hundred
+dollars. There was no question about it now; these were not common
+thieves; this was becoming a regular man's game, and the stakes were
+assuming a size to give Laughing Bill a tingling sensation along his
+spine. Having discovered the _modus operandi_ of the pair, and having
+read their cards, so to speak, he next set himself to discover where
+they banked their swag. But this was by no means easy. His utmost
+vigilance went unrewarded by so much as a single clue.
+
+Berg and Slevin had a habit of riding into town on Saturday nights,
+and the next time they left the claim Bill pleaded a jumping toothache
+and set out afoot for medical attention.
+
+It was late when he arrived at Nome, nevertheless a diligent search
+of the Front Street saloons failed to locate either man. He was still
+looking for them when they came riding in.
+
+With their delayed arrival Bill's apprehensions vanished, as likewise
+did his imaginary toothache. He had feared that they were in the habit
+of bringing the gold to Nome, there perhaps to bank it with some
+friend; but now he knew that they were too cautious for that, and
+preferred instead to cache it somewhere in the hills. This simplified
+matters immensely, so Bill looked up his little doctor for a sociable
+visit.
+
+Thomas was in his office; he greeted Bill warmly.
+
+"Say! Pill-rolling must be brisk to keep you on the job till
+midnight," the latter began.
+
+"Business is rotten!" exclaimed the physician. "And it's a rotten
+business."
+
+"Nobody sick? That's tough. Open a can of typhoid germs, and I'll put
+'em in the well. Anything to stir up a little trade."
+
+"I've just balanced my books and--I've just heard from Alice."
+
+"Do the books balance?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly--nothing equals nothing--it's a perfect equilibrium.
+Alice wants me to come home and start all over, and I'm tempted to do
+so."
+
+"Ain't going to throw up your tail, are you?"
+
+"I can't get along without her." Thomas was plainly in the depths; he
+turned away and stared moodily out into the dim-lit street. It was
+midnight, but already the days were shortening, already there was an
+hour or two of dusk between the evening and the morning light.
+
+"Of course you can't get along without her," the ex-bandit agreed. "I
+seen that when I looked at her picture. Why don't you bring her in?"
+
+"Bring her in--_here_?" Thomas faced about quickly. "Humph! Not much."
+
+"Well, this ain't no doll's village, that's a fact. It's full of
+wicked men, and the women ain't wuth braggin' over. S'pose we go out
+and marry her?"
+
+"We?" Thomas smiled for the first time.
+
+"Sure. I'll stick to the bitter finish."
+
+"I'm broke, Bill."
+
+"Pshaw, now! Don't let that worry you. I got money."
+
+"You?" The doctor was surprised. "Where did you get it?"
+
+"Well, I _got_ it! That's the main thing. It was--left to me."
+
+"Honestly?"
+
+"What d'you mean, 'honestly'?"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"I dunno, exactly. You see, I ain't got it actually in my mit--"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"But I'll have it, all righto. It's just waiting for me to close down
+on it. I reckon there must be a thousand gold buzzards in the stack,
+mebby more. It's all yours."
+
+"Thanks!" said the physician, unimpressed.
+
+"Look me in the eye." Bill spoke earnestly. "Twenty thousand iron men
+ain't so bad. It'll buy a lot of doll's clothes. We can have a big
+party--I ain't kidding!" Then reading amused incredulity in his
+friend's face he demanded: "How you know I ain't got a rich uncle that
+raised me from a colt and that broke his heart at me runnin' away and
+turning out wild, and has had lawyers gunnin' for me ever since he
+knew he was gettin' old and going to croak? How you know that, eh?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't know anything about you, Bill. That's one of
+the most interesting features of our friendship."
+
+"Well, pay a little attention to me. Now then, I figger it like this:
+I got lungs like a grasshopper, and the money won't do me no good, so
+I'll stake you and Miss Alice to it."
+
+Doctor Thomas eyed the speaker curiously. "I believe you would," said
+he, after a moment.
+
+"Would I? Say! You ever seen a feather bed tied up with a rope? You
+sit tight and I'll slip you a roll just that size."
+
+"Of course you know I wouldn't take it?"
+
+"Why not? It's more'n likely it'll get me into evil company or gimme
+some bad habit, and I'll gargle off before I've had a chance to spend
+it. I ain't strong."
+
+"I'll earn what I get, Billy."
+
+"All right. If you feel like that I'll bet it for you on a crap game,
+and you can take the winnings--"
+
+"Nothing doing. I want honest money--money that I can look in the
+face."
+
+Mr. Hyde was out of patience. "All money's honest, after you get it!"
+he cried. "It's gettin' it that draws blood. I never knew the silver
+bird to fly off a dollar and scratch a guy, did you?"
+
+"I want to make money--that's why I came up to this God-forsaken
+place--but--when your uncle's draft arrives you cash it."
+
+"Ain't you the champeen bone-dome?" muttered Bill. Such an attitude
+seemed to him both senseless and quixotic, for he had never attached
+the least sentiment to money. Money was an elemental necessity,
+therefore he looked upon it with practical, unromantic eyes,
+and helped himself to it as he helped himself to such elemental
+necessities as air or water. Most of life's necessaries had fallen
+into monopolistic hands and were used to wring tribute from
+unfortunate mortals who had arrived too late to share in the graft, as
+witness, for instance, Standard Oil. So ran Bill's reasoning when he
+took the trouble to reason at all. Men had established arbitrary rules
+to govern their forays upon one another's property, to be sure, but
+under cover of these artificial laws they stole merrily, and got away
+with it. Eagles did not scruple to steal from one another, horses ate
+one another's fodder; why human beings should not do likewise had
+always puzzled Mr. Hyde. The basic principle held good in both cases,
+it seemed to him, and Doctor Thomas's refusal to share in the coming
+legacy struck him as silly; it was the result of a warped and unsound
+philosophy. But argue as he would he could not shake his friend's
+opinion of the matter.
+
+One evening, not long after his visit to town, Bill's toothache
+returned again to plague him. He raised groans and hoarse profanities,
+and then, while the crew was still at supper, he abandoned his work
+and set out in search of relief. But he did not go to Nome. Once
+out of sight of the mine he doubled back and came out behind the
+superintendent's cabin. A moment later he was stretched out in the
+narrow, dark space beneath Black Jack's bunk. Dust irritated Bill's
+lungs, therefore he had carefully swept out the place that morning;
+likewise he had thoughtfully provided himself with a cotton comforter
+as protection to his bones. He had no intention of permitting himself
+to be taken at a disadvantage, and knowing full well the painful
+consequences of discovery he opened his bone-handled pocket-knife and
+tested its keen edge with his thumb. In the interests of peace and
+good-fellowship, however, he hoped he could go through the night
+without coughing.
+
+Slevin was the first to return from supper. He went directly to his
+bunk, drew a bottle of whisky from beneath his pillow, poured himself
+a drink, and replaced the bottle. When Berg entered he went through a
+similar procedure, after which a fire was built, the men kicked off
+their boots, lit their pipes, and stretched out upon their beds.
+
+"I've been thinking it over," the superintendent began, "and you can't
+do it."
+
+"Why not?" queried Slevin. "I told his nibs I was sick of the grub."
+
+"Foremen don't quit good jobs on account of the grub. You've got to
+stick till fall; then we'll both go. We'll strike the old man for a
+raise--"
+
+"Humph! He'll let us go, quick enough, when we do that. Let's strike
+him now. I'm through."
+
+"Nothing stirring," Berg firmly declared. "We'll play out the string.
+I'm taking no chances."
+
+"Hell! Ain't we takin' a chance every day we stay here? I'm getting
+so I don't sleep. I got enough to do me; I ain't a hog. I got a bully
+corner all picked out, Jack--best corner in Seattle for a gin-mill."
+
+"It'll wait. Corners don't get up and move. No, I won't hold the
+bag for you or for anybody," declared the former speaker. "We'll go
+through, arm in arm. Once we're away clean you can do what you like.
+Me for the Argentine and ten thousand acres of long-horns. You better
+forget that corner. Some night you'll get stewed and spill the beans."
+
+"Who, me?" Slevin laughed in disdain. "Fat chance!" There was a long
+silence during which the only sound was the bubbling of a pipe. "I
+s'pose I'll have to stick, if you say so," Denny agreed finally, "but
+I'm fed up. I'm getting jumpy. I got a hunch the cache ain't safe; I
+feel like something was goin' to happen."
+
+Mr. Slevin's premonition, under the circumstances, was almost uncanny;
+it gave startling proof of his susceptibility to outside influences.
+
+"You _are_ rickety," Black Jack told him. "Why, there ain't any
+danger; nobody goes up there." Laughing Bill held his breath, missing
+not a word. "If they did we'd pick 'em up with the glasses. It's open
+country, and we'd get 'em before they got down."
+
+"I s'pose so. But the nights are getting dark."
+
+"Nobody's out at night, either, you boob. I ain't losing any slumber
+over that. And I ain't going to lose any about your quitting ahead of
+me. That don't trouble me none." Berg yawned and changed the subject.
+Half an hour later he rose, languidly undressed and rolled into his
+bed. Slevin followed suit shortly after, and the rapidity with which
+both men fell asleep spoke volumes for the elasticity of the human
+conscience.
+
+Now, Laughing Bill had come prepared to spend the night, but his
+throat tickled and he had a distressing habit of snoring, therefore he
+deemed it the part of caution to depart before he dropped off into the
+land of dreams. He effected the manoeuver noiselessly.
+
+Bill lingered at the spring hole on the following morning, and lost
+himself in an attentive study of the surrounding scenery. It was
+fairly impressive scenery, and he had a keen appreciation of nature's
+beauty, but Black Jack's words continued to puzzle him. "Nobody goes
+up there." Up where? The Aurora lay in a valley, therefore most of the
+country round about was "up"--it was open, too. The ridges were bold
+and barren, garbed only with shreds and patches of short grass and
+reindeer moss. "We'd pick 'em up with the glasses--we'd get 'em before
+they got down." Manifestly the cache was in plain sight, if one only
+knew where to look for it, but Mr. Hyde's sharp eyes took in ten
+thousand likely hiding-places, and he reasoned that it would be worse
+than folly to go exploring blindly without more definite data than he
+possessed.
+
+It was clever of the pair to hide the swag where they could oversee it
+every hour of the day, and they had chosen a safe location, too, for
+nobody wasted the effort to explore those domes and hogbacks now that
+they were known to contain no quartz. There was Anvil Mountain, for
+instance, a bold schist peak crowned with a huge rock in the likeness
+of a blacksmith's anvil. It guarded the entrance to the valley, rising
+from the very heart of the best mining section; it was the most
+prominent landmark hereabouts, but not a dozen men had ever climbed
+it, and nowadays nobody did.
+
+As Bill pondered the enigma, out from his bed in the willows came Don
+Antonio de Chiquito, a meek and lowly burro, the only member of the
+Aurora's working force which did not outrank in social importance the
+man-of-all-work. Don Antonio was the pet of the Aurora Borealis, and
+its scavenger. He ate everything from garbage to rubber boots--he was
+even suspected of possessing a low appetite for German socks. It was,
+in fact, this very democratic taste in things edible which caused
+him to remain the steadiest of Doctor Slayforth's boarders. Wisdom,
+patience, the sagacity of Solomon, lurked in Don Antonio's eyes, and
+Laughing Bill consulted him as a friend and an equal.
+
+"Tony," said he, "you've done a heap of prospecting and you know the
+business. There's a rich pocket on one of them hills. Which one is
+it?"
+
+Don Antonio de Chiquito had ears like sunbonnets; he folded them back,
+lifted his muzzle toward Anvil rock, and brayed loudly.
+
+"Mebbe you're right," said the man. He fitted the Chinese yoke to his
+skinny shoulders, and took up his burden. The load was heavy, the yoke
+bruised his bones, therefore he was moved to complain: "The idea of
+me totin' water for the very guys that stole my uncle's money! It's
+awful--the darned crooks!"
+
+It was a rainy evening when business next took Black Jack Berg and
+Denny Slevin to town. Having dined amply, if not well, they donned
+slickers, saddled a pair of horses, and set out down the creek. Few
+people were abroad, therefore they felt secure from observation when
+they swung off the trail where it bends around the foot of Anvil
+Mountain and bore directly up through the scattered alders. The grass
+was wet, the rain erased the marks of their horses' feet almost in the
+passing. Tethering their mounts in the last clump of underbrush the
+riders labored on afoot up a shallow draw which scarred the steep
+slope. The murk of twilight obscured them, but even in a good light
+they would have run small risk of discovery, for slow-moving human
+figures would have been lost against the dark background.
+
+The climb was long and arduous; both men were panting when they
+breasted the last rise and looked down into the valley where lay the
+Aurora Borealis. This was a desolate spot, great boulders, fallen from
+the huge rock overhead, lay all about, the earth was weathered by
+winter snows and summer rains. Ghostly fingers of mist writhed over
+the peak; darkness was not far distant.
+
+The robbers remained on the crest perhaps twenty minutes, then they
+came striding down. They passed within a hundred yards of Laughing
+Bill Hyde, who lay flat in the wet grass midway of their descent.
+He watched them mount and ride out of sight, then he continued his
+painful progress up the hillside.
+
+Weak lungs are not suited to heavy grades and slippery footing. Bill
+was sobbing with agony when he conquered the last rise and collapsed
+upon his face. He feared he was dying, every cough threatened a
+hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the
+familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about
+through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the
+night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps
+to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of
+the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain;
+brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of
+a pick and shovel.
+
+For once in his life Mr. Hyde looked upon these tools with favor, and
+energetically tackled the business end of a "Number 2." He considered
+pick-and-shovel work the lowest form of human endeavor; nevertheless
+he engaged in it willingly enough, and he had not dug deeply before
+he uncovered the side of a packing-case, labeled "Choice California
+Canned Fruits." Further rapid explorations showed that the box was
+fitted with a loose top, and that the interior was well-nigh filled
+with stout canvas and moose skin bags. Bill counted them; he weighed
+one, then he sat down weakly and his hard, smoke-blue eyes widened
+with amazement.
+
+"Suffering cats!" he whispered. He voiced other expletives, too, even
+more forcefully indicative of surprise. He was not an imaginative man;
+it did not occur to him to doubt his sanity or to wonder if he were
+awake, nevertheless he opened one of the pokes and incredulously
+examined its contents. "I'm dam' if it ain't!" he said, finally. "I
+should reckon they _was_ ready to quit. Argentine! Why, Jack'll bust
+the bottom out of a boat if he takes this with him. He'll drown a lot
+of innocent people." Mr. Hyde shook his head and smiled pityingly. "It
+ain't safe to trust him with it. It ain't safe--the thievin' devil!
+There's five hundred pounds if there's an ounce!" He began to figure
+with his finger on the muddy shovel blade. "A hundred thousand bucks!"
+he announced, finally. "Them boys is _all right_!"
+
+Slowly, reluctantly, he replaced the gold sacks, reburied the box, and
+placed the tools where he had found them; then he set out for home.
+
+Don Antonio de Chiquito was contentedly munching an empty oat sack,
+doubtless impelled thereto by the lingering flavor of its former
+contents, when on the following morning Bill accosted him.
+
+"Tony, I got to hand it to you," the man said, admiringly. "You're
+some pocket miner, and you speak up like a gent when you're spoken to.
+I got some nice egg-shells saved up for you." Then his voice dropped
+to a confidential tone. "We're in with a passel of crooks, Tony. Evil
+associates, I call 'em. They're bound to have a bad influence over
+us--I feel it a'ready, don't you? Well, s'pose you meet me to-night at
+the gap in the hedge and we'll take a walk?"
+
+Don Antonio appeared in every way agreeable to the proposal, but to
+make certain that he would keep his appointment Bill led him down
+into the creek bottom and tied him securely, after which he removed a
+pack-saddle and a bundle of hay from the stable. The saddle he hid in
+the brush, the hay he spread before his accomplice, with the generous
+invitation: "Drink hearty; it's on the house!" In explanation he went
+on: "It's this way, Tony; they left the elevator out of that Anvil
+skyscraper, and I can't climb stairs on one lung, so you got to be my
+six-cylinder oat-motor. We got a busy night ahead of us."
+
+That evening Laughing Bill ascended Anvil Mountain for a second time,
+but the exertion did not wind him unduly, for he made the ascent at
+the end of Don Antonio's tail. He was back in camp for breakfast, and
+despite his lack of sleep he performed his menial duties during the
+day with more than his usual cheerfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Speed up, can't you?" Slevin paused midway of the steepest slope and
+spoke impatiently to his partner below.
+
+"I'm coming," Black Jack panted. Being the heavier and clumsier of the
+two, the climb was harder for him. "You're so spry, s'pose you just
+pack this poke!" He unslung a heavy leather sack from his belt and
+gave it to Denny.
+
+"We'd ought to 'a' got an early start," the latter complained. "The
+days are gettin' short and I had a rotten fall going down, last time."
+
+Relieved of some fifteen pounds of dead, awkward weight--and nothing
+is more awkward to carry than a sizable gold sack--Berg made better
+speed, arriving at the cache in time to see Slevin spit on his hands
+and fall to digging.
+
+"Every time we open her up I get a shiver," Denny confessed, with a
+laugh. "I'm scared to look."
+
+"Humph! Think she's going to get up and walk out on us?" Berg seated
+himself, lit his pipe, and puffed in silence for a while. "We ain't
+never been seen," he declared, positively. "She's as safe as the Bank
+of England as long as you don't get drunk."
+
+"Me drunk! Ha! Me and the demon rum is divorced forever." Slevin's
+shovel struck wood and he swiftly uncovered the box, then removed its
+top. He, stood for a full minute staring into its interior, then he
+cried, hoarsely, "_Jack_!"
+
+Berg was on his feet in an instant; he strode to the excavation and
+bent over it. After a time he straightened himself and turned blazing
+eyes upon his confederate. Denny met his gaze with the glare of a man
+demented.
+
+"Wha'd I tell you?" the latter chattered. "I told you they'd get it.
+By God! They have!"
+
+He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. Far below the lights
+of the valley were beginning to twinkle, in the direction of Nome the
+cross on the Catholic church gleamed palely against the steel-gray
+expanse of Behring Sea.
+
+Berg was a man of violent temper; he choked and gasped; his face was
+bloated with an apoplectic rage. He began to growl curses deep in his
+throat. "_Who_ got it?" he demanded. "Who d'you mean by '_they_'?"
+
+"'Sh-h!" Slevin was panic-stricken; he flung out a nervous, jerky
+hand. "Mebbe they're here--now. Look out!"
+
+"Who d'you mean by '_they_'?" the larger man repeated.
+
+"I--God! I dunno! But there must 'a' been more'n one. Five hundred
+pounds! One man couldn't pack it!"
+
+"You said '_they_'!" Berg persisted in an odd tone.
+
+Slevin's madly roving gaze flew back and settled upon the discolored
+visage thrust toward him, then his own eyes widened. He recoiled,
+crying:
+
+"Look here! You don't think I--?" His words ended in a bark.
+
+"I ain't said what I think, but I'm thinkin' fast. Nobody knew it but
+us--"
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I know."
+
+Slowly Slevin settled himself. His muscles ceased jumping, his bullet
+head drew down between his shoulders. "Well, it wasn't me, so it must
+'a' been--_you_!"
+
+"Don't stall!" roared the larger man. "It won't win you anything. You
+can't leave here till you come through."
+
+"That goes double, Jack. I got my gat, too, and you ain't going to run
+out on me."
+
+"You wanted to quit. You weakened."
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+The men stared fixedly at each other, heads forward, bodies tense; as
+they glared the fury of betrayal grew to madness.
+
+"Where'd you put it?" Berg ground the words between his teeth.
+
+"I'm askin' you that very thing," the foreman answered in a thin,
+menacing voice. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he widened the distance
+between himself and his accuser. It was not a retreat, he merely drew
+himself together defensively, holding himself under control with the
+last supreme effort of his will.
+
+The tension snapped suddenly.
+
+With a harsh, wordless cry of fury Black Jack tore his six-shooter
+from its resting-place. But Slevin's right hand stirred in unison and
+it moved like light. Owing to the fact that he carried his gun beneath
+his left armpit he was the first to fire, by the fraction of a second.
+It was impossible to miss at this distance. Berg went to his knees
+as if hit by a sledge. But he fired from that position, and his shot
+caught Slevin as the latter crow-hopped nimbly. Both men were down
+now. Slevin, however, seemed made of rubber; he was up again almost
+instantly, and zigzagging toward the shelter of the nearest rocks.
+Berg emptied his Colt at the running target, then a shout burst from
+his lips as he saw Denny pitch forward out of sight.
+
+With shaking, clumsy fingers Black Jack reloaded his hot weapon. With
+his left hand pressed deep into his side he rose slowly to his feet
+and lurched forward.
+
+"You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross _me_, will yeh?" He heard the
+sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his
+tracks and peering into the gloom.
+
+"Come out!" he ordered. "Come out and own up and I'll let yeh off."
+
+There was a silence. "I see yeh!" He took unsteady aim at a shadow and
+fired. "Never mind, I'll get yeh!" After a little while he stumbled
+onward between the boulders, shouting a challenge to his invisible
+opponent. He had gone perhaps fifty feet when the darkness was stabbed
+by the blaze of Slevin's gun. Three times the weapon spoke, at little
+more than arm's-length, and Black Jack spun on his heels, then rocked
+forward limply. It was a long time before the sound of his loud, slow
+breathing ceased. Not until then did Denny Slevin move. With a rattle
+in his throat the foreman crept out from hiding and went down the
+mountain-side upon his hands and knees.
+
+It occasioned considerable speculation at the Aurora Borealis when
+neither the superintendent nor the foreman appeared for breakfast.
+Later, a telephone message to Doctor Slayforth having elicited the
+startling intelligence that neither man had been seen in town during
+the night, there came a flicker of excitement. This excitement blazed
+to white heat when Slayforth rode up on a muddy horse, accompanied by
+the town marshal and the chief of police. Followed more telephoning
+and some cross-examination. But the men were gone. They had
+disappeared.
+
+It was a mystery baffling any attempt at explanation, for there were
+no ships in the roadstead, and hence it was impossible for the pair
+to have taken French leave. While a search party was being organized
+there came word that the missing saddle-horses had been found on the
+slope of Anvil Mountain, and by the time Slayforth's party had reached
+the ground more news awaited them. Up near the head of the draw some
+one had discovered the body of Denny Slevin. There was a rush thither,
+and thence on up the trail Slevin had left, to the scene of the
+twilight duel, to Black Jack Berg and the cache in the slide.
+
+The story told itself down to the last detail; it was the story of a
+thieves' quarrel and a double killing. Doctor Slayforth fell upon
+his bag of gold as a mother falls upon her babe; he voiced loud,
+hysterical condemnation of the deed; he wept tears of mingled
+indignation and thanksgiving; he gabbled scriptural quotations about
+the wages of sin. Then, remembering that the wages of his men were
+going on, he sent them back to their work, and determined to dock half
+their morning's pay.
+
+The story of the tragedy was still the sensation of Nome when, a
+fortnight later, Laughing Bill Hyde showed up in town with the
+cheerful announcement that he had been fired. Ponatah was at the cabin
+when he arrived, and she did not try to conceal her joy at seeing him
+again.
+
+"I've been so unhappy," she told him. "You've never been out of my
+thoughts, Billy."
+
+"Ain't you got nothing better to think about than me?" he asked, with
+a smile. "Well, the psalm-shouter let me out--jerked the piller-slip
+from under me, you might say--and turned me adrift. He's got a
+high-chested, low-browed Swede in my place. It takes a guy with hair
+down to his eyebrows to be a buck chamber-maid."
+
+"The old rascal!" Ponatah's face darkened with anger. "No wonder those
+men robbed him. I wish they had taken all his gold, and escaped."
+
+"You're pretty sore on his heavenly nibs, ain't you?" Ponatah clenched
+her hands and her eyes blazed. "Well, you got this consolation, the
+Aurora ain't as rich as it was."
+
+"It would have been rich enough for us."
+
+"Us?"
+
+"Yes. You'd marry me if I were rich, wouldn't you?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't," Bill declared, firmly. "What's the use to kid you?"
+
+"Why wouldn't you? Are you ashamed of me?"
+
+Bill protested, "Say, what is this you're giving me, the third
+degree?"
+
+"If I were as rich as--well, as Reindeer Mary, wouldn't you marry me?"
+Ponatah gazed at the unworthy object of her affections with a yearning
+that was embarrassing, and Laughing Bill was forced to spar for wind.
+
+"Ain't you the bold Mary Ann--makin' cracks like that?" he chided.
+"I'm ashamed of you, honest. I've passed up plenty of frills in my
+time, and we're all better off for it. My appetite for marriage ain't
+no keener than it used to be, so you forget it. Little Doc, he's the
+marrying kind."
+
+"Oh yes. He tells me a great deal about his Alice. He's very much
+discouraged. If--if I had the Aurora I wouldn't forget him; I'd give
+him half."
+
+"Would you, now? Well, he's the one stiffneck that wouldn't take it.
+He's funny that way--seems to think money 'll bite him, or something.
+I don't know how these pullanthrofists get along, with proud people
+always spurning their gifts. He's got my nan. You take my tip, Kid,
+and cling to your coin. Salt it down for winter. That's what I'm doing
+with mine."
+
+"Are you?" Ponatah was not amused, she was gravely interested. "I
+thought you were broke, Billy."
+
+"Where'd you get that at?" he demanded. "I've always got a pinch of
+change, I have. I'm lucky that way. Now then, you run along and don't
+never try to feint me into a clinch. It don't go."
+
+Laughing Bill enjoyed a good rest in the days that followed. He rested
+hard for several weeks, and when he rested he lifted his hand to
+absolutely nothing. He was an expert idler, and with him indolence was
+but a form of suspended animation. In spite of himself, however, he
+was troubled by a problem; he was completely baffled by it, in fact,
+until, without warning and without conscious effort, the solution
+presented itself. Bill startled his cabin mate one day by the
+announcement that he intended to go prospecting.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Thomas, when the first shock of surprise had passed.
+"This country has been run over, and every inch is staked."
+
+"I bet I'll horn in somewhere. All I want is one claim where I got
+room to sling myself."
+
+"If that's all you want I'll give you a claim. It has twenty acres. Is
+that room enough?"
+
+"Plenty. Where is it?"
+
+"It's on Eclipse Creek, I believe. A patient gave it to me for a
+bill."
+
+"He won't call for a new deal if I strike it rich?"
+
+"No. I paid his fare out of the country. But why waste your valuable
+time? Your time _is_ valuable, I presume?"
+
+"Sure! I ain't got much left. You don't believe in hunches, do
+you? Well, I do. I've seen 'em come out. Look at Denny Slevin, for
+instance! I heard him say he had a hunch something unpleasant was
+going to happen to him, and it did. We'll go fifty-fifty on this
+Eclipse Creek."
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Suit yourself. Fresh air won't
+hurt you."
+
+The first frosts of autumn had arrived before Laughing Bill returned
+to town with the announcement that he had struck a prospect. Doctor
+Thomas was at first incredulous, then amazed; finally, when the
+true significance of those tiny yellow grains came home to him, his
+enthusiasm burst all bounds. He was for at once closing his office and
+joining actively in his partner's work, but Bill would not hear to
+such a thing.
+
+"Stick to the pills and powders, Doc," he counseled. "You know that
+game and I know this. It's my strike and I don't want no amachoors
+butting in. I got options on the whole creek--she's eclipsed for
+fair--'cause I don't like neighbors. You shut your trap till spring
+and sit tight, then we'll roll our packs, stomp on the fire, and call
+the dog. Old Home Week for us."
+
+"But, Billy, we can't work out that claim in one winter," protested
+the physician.
+
+"How d'you know we can't? Mebbe it's just a pocket."
+
+"We'll find other pockets. We have the whole creek--"
+
+"Say, how much d'you need to satisfy you?" Bill inquired, curiously.
+
+"I--don't know. A hundred thousand dollars, perhaps."
+
+"A hundred thousand! Whew! You got rich tastes! This ain't no
+bonanza."
+
+"But if it's any good at all it will net us that much, probably more."
+
+Bill considered briefly, then he announced: "All right, bo, I got
+your idea. When I hand you a hundred thousand iron men we quit--no
+questions, no regrets; Is that it? But you've hiked the limit on me; I
+dunno's I'll make good."
+
+By the time snow flew the tent on Eclipse Creek had been replaced by a
+couple of warm shacks, provisions had been bought, and a crew hired.
+Work commenced immediately, and it continued throughout the winter
+with Bill in charge. The gravel was lean-looking stuff, but it seemed
+to satisfy the manager, and whenever Thomas came out from town he
+received encouraging reports from his partner. Hyde ceased playing
+solitaire long enough to pan samples in his tub of snow water. Now had
+the younger man been an experienced placer miner he might have noted
+with suspicion that whenever Bill panned he chewed tobacco--a new
+habit he had acquired--and not infrequently he spat into the tub of
+muddy water. But Thomas was not experienced in the wiles and artifices
+of mine-salters, and the residue of yellow particles left in the pan
+was proof positive that the claim was making good. It did strike him
+as strange, however, that when he selected a pan of dirt and washed
+it unassisted he found nothing. At such times Bill explained
+glibly enough that no pay dump carried steady values, and that an
+inexperienced sampler was apt to get "skunked" under the best of
+circumstances. Concentrates lay in streaks and pockets, he declared.
+Then to prove his assertions Bill would help his partner pan, and
+inasmuch as he wore long finger-nails, underneath which colors of gold
+could be easily concealed, it was not surprising that he succeeded in
+finding a prospect where the doctor had failed. For fear Thomas should
+still entertain some lingering doubts, Bill occasionally sent him down
+into the shaft alone, to sample the pay streak, but in each instance
+he took pains to go down beforehand with a shot-gun and some shells of
+his own loading and to shoot a few rounds into the face of the thawed
+ground.
+
+The winter passed quickly enough, Bill's only concern arising from the
+fact that his strike had become common knowledge, and that men were
+clamoring to buy or to lease a part of the creek. It was a tiny creek,
+and he had it safely tied up under his options, therefore he was in a
+position to refuse every offer. By so doing he gained the reputation
+of being a cautious, cagey man and difficult to deal with.
+
+Bill paid off his crew out of the first spring cleanup, from the dust
+he had managed to dump into the sluices at night. Thereafter he sent
+the gold to town by Doctor Thomas, who came after it regularly. When
+he closed down the works, in June, he and his partner held bank
+deposit slips for a trifle over one hundred thousand dollars. Rumor
+placed their profits at much more.
+
+Bill saw little of Ponatah after his return to Nome, for the girl
+avoided him, and when he did see her she assumed a peculiar reserve.
+Her year and a half of intimate association with cultured people had
+in reality worked an amazing improvement in her, and people no longer
+regarded her as an Indian, but referred to her now as "that Russian
+governess," nevertheless she could retreat behind a baffling air
+of stolidity--almost of sullenness--when she chose, and that was
+precisely the mask she wore for Bill. In reality she was far from
+stolid and anything but sullen.
+
+For his part he made no effort to break down the girl's guard; he
+continued to treat her with his customary free good nature.
+
+Notwithstanding the liberal margin of profit on his winter's
+operations, Bill realized that he was still shy approximately half
+of the sum which Doctor Thomas had set as satisfactory, and when the
+latter began planning to resume work on a larger scale in the fall Mr.
+Hyde was stricken with panic. Fearing lest his own lack of enthusiasm
+in these plans and his indifference to all affairs even remotely
+concerning Eclipse Creek should awaken suspicion, he determined to
+sell out his own and his partner's interests in accordance with their
+original understanding. Without consulting Thomas he called upon
+Doctor Slayforth.
+
+The pious mine-owner was glad to see him; his manner was not at all
+what it had been when Bill worked for him. His words of greeting
+fairly trickled prune juice and honey.
+
+"Say, Doc, I got a load on my chest! I'm a strayed lamb and you being
+a sort of shepherd I turns to you," Bill began.
+
+"I trust you have not come in vain." The ex-missionary beamed
+benignly. "It has been my duty and my privilege to comfort the
+afflicted. What troubles you, William?"
+
+"There's a school of sharks in this village, and I don't trust 'em.
+They're too slick for a feller like me,"
+
+"It _is_ an ungodly place," the doctor agreed. "I have felt the call
+to work here, but my duties prevent. Of course I labor in the Lord's
+vineyard as I pass through, but--I am weak."
+
+"Me, too, and getting weaker daily." Bill summoned a hollow cough.
+"Listen to that hospital bark,' I gotta blow this place, Doc, or
+they'll button me up in a rosewood overcoat. I gotta sell Eclipse
+Creek and beat it." Again he coughed.
+
+"I am distressed. But why do you come here?"
+
+"I aim to sell out to you."
+
+"What is your price, William?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty thousand, cash."
+
+Slayforth lifted protesting palms. "My dear man--"
+
+"That's cheaper'n good advice, and you know it. I took out 'most that
+much last winter with a scowegian gang of six. Here's the bank's O.K.
+But I ain't got use for a lot of money, Doc. I wouldn't know how to
+run a vineyard like you do. All I want is a nice little corner saloon
+or a cattle ranch."
+
+"It is a large sum of money you ask. There is always an element of
+uncertainty about placer mining." Doctor Slayforth failed to conceal
+the gleam of avarice in his eyes.
+
+"Doc, take it from me; there ain't a particle of uncertainty about
+Eclipse Creek," Bill earnestly assured his hearer. "If I told you
+what's there you wouldn't believe me. But Thomas, he's got a gal and I
+got a cough. They both need attention, and he's the only guy that can
+give it. We're willing to hand you Eclipse Creek if you'll take it."
+
+There was considerable conversation, and a visit to Eclipse Creek, but
+the doctor, it proved, was willing to take any good bargain, and a few
+days later the transfer was made. When the larger part of Slayforth's
+winter's clean-up had changed hands the two partners adjourned to
+Thomas's little office.
+
+"Well!" The physician heaved a deep sigh of relief. "It's all over,
+and--I feel as if I were dreaming."
+
+"The _Oregon_ sails to-morrow. It's time to stomp on the fire."
+
+"I--I wonder if we were wise to sell out at that price," the doctor
+mused, doubtfully.
+
+"You lay a bet on it, bo. Something tells me that soul-saver will go
+bust on Eclipse Creek. I got a hunch that way." Mr. Hyde's seamy face
+wrinkled into a broad grin.
+
+"Well, I've more faith in your hunches than I used to have. You've
+been a good friend, Bill, and a square one." The speaker choked, then
+wrung his partner's hand. "I've cabled Alice to meet us. I want you to
+know her and--I want her to see that I cured you, after all."
+
+"I'd admire to meet her, but my taste has allus run more to
+brunettes," said Mr. Hyde. Then, since he abhorred emotional display,
+he continued, briskly: "Now call the dog. I'm off to buy our duckets."
+
+Laughing Bill purchased three tickets instead of two, then he went in
+search of Ponatah. It so chanced that he found her alone. Now neither
+he nor any other man had ever called upon her, therefore she was
+dumfounded at his coming.
+
+"Well, Kid," he announced, "me 'n' the Doc have sold Eclipse Creek,
+and we bow out tomorrow on the big smoke."
+
+Ponatah opened her lips, but no sound issued. She possessed a strong
+young body, but the strength, the life, seemed suddenly to go out of
+it, leaving her old and spiritless.
+
+"Got a kind word for us?" the man inquired, with a twinkle.
+
+"I'm glad you struck it rich," she murmured, dully. "You--you'll take
+care of yourself, Billy?"
+
+"Who, me? I don't s'pose so. I don't know how to take care of
+nothing." There was a moment of silence. "Like me?" he asked.
+
+Ponatah turned away blindly, but as she did so Laughing Bill put his
+hand gently upon her shoulder, saying:
+
+"Cheer up, Kid. You're going to join the troupe. I've come to get
+you."
+
+There was amazement, incredulity, in the girl's face as she lifted it
+to his. "What do you--mean?" she quavered. "Are you going to--marry
+me?"
+
+"You guessed it!" he laughed. "I been aiming to put up that job on you
+for a long time, but I had a lot of deals on my hands. I was a sort
+of power-of-attorney for a coupla simps, and it kept me busy. If
+you think the two of us can do with three lungs, why, we'll grab a
+psalm-shouter and--"
+
+"Billy! Billy!" Ponatah clung to him fiercely, hungrily. "Oh,
+Billy--I'll make you well. We'll go to Arizona, Colorado,
+Montana--where it is high and dry--"
+
+"I been to them places," he told her, dubiously, "and I 'most stopped
+breathing altogether."
+
+"New Mexico, then. You won't be ashamed of me there."
+
+"Say, Kid! I wouldn't be ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico.
+But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it
+I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she
+stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to
+time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do
+with me as you will; grab your lid; we'll join hands and be soldered
+up."
+
+Laughing Bill stared after the girl as she hurried away; musingly he
+said: "The little Doc got in on no pair, for it was all her coin, of
+course. But she'd 'a' had to split, fifty-fifty, with a lawyer, so it
+ain't a bad deal all around."
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTH WIND'S MALICE
+
+
+It had snowed during the night, but toward morning it had grown cold;
+now the sled-runners complained and the load dragged heavily. Folsom,
+who had been heaving at the handle-bars all the way up the Dexter
+Creek hill, halted his dogs at the crest and dropped upon the sled,
+only too glad of a breathing spell. His forehead was wet with sweat;
+when it began to freeze in his eyebrows he removed his mittens and
+wiped away the drops, then watched them congeal upon his fingers.
+Yes, it was all of thirty below, and a bad morning to hit the trail,
+but--Folsom's face set itself--better thirty below in the open than
+the frigid atmosphere of an unhappy home.
+
+Harkness, who had led the way up the hill, plodded onward for a time
+before discovering that his companion had paused; then, through the
+ring of hoar frost around his parka hood, he called back:
+
+"I'll hike down to the road-house and warm up."
+
+Folsom made no answer, he did not even turn his head. Taciturnity was
+becoming a habit with him, and already he was beginning to dislike his
+new partner. For that matter he disliked everybody this morning.
+
+Below him lay the level tundra, merging indistinguishably with the
+white anchor-ice of Behring Sea; beyond that a long black streak of
+open water, underscoring the sky as if to emphasize the significance
+of that empty horizon, a horizon which for many months would remain
+unsmudged by smoke. To Folsom it seemed that the distant stretch of
+dark water was like a prison wall, barring the outside world from him
+and the other fools who had elected to stay "inside."
+
+Fools? Yes; they were all fools!
+
+Folsom was a "sour-dough." He had seen the pranks that Alaskan winters
+play with men and women, he had watched the alteration in minds and
+morals made by the Arctic isolation, and he had considered himself
+proof against the malice that rides the north wind--the mischief that
+comes with the winter nights. He had dared to put faith in his perfect
+happiness, thinking himself different from other men and Lois superior
+to other wives, wherefore he now called himself a fool!
+
+Sprawled beside the shore, five miles away, was Nome, its ugliness of
+corrugated iron, rough boards, and tar paper somewhat softened by the
+distance. From the jumble of roofs he picked out one and centered his
+attention upon it. It was his roof--or had been. He wondered, with a
+sudden flare of wrathful indignation, if Lois would remember that fact
+during his absence. But he banished this evil thought. Lois had pride,
+there was nothing common about her; he could not believe that she
+would affront the proprieties. It was to spare that very pride of
+hers, even more than his own, that he had undertaken this adventure to
+the Kobuk; and now, as he looked back upon Nome, he told himself that
+he was acting handsomely in totally eliminating himself, thus allowing
+her time and freedom in which to learn her heart. He hoped that before
+his return she would have chosen between him and the other man.
+
+It was too cold to remain idle long. Folsom's damp body began
+to chill, so he spoke to his team and once more heaved upon the
+handle-bars.
+
+Leaving the crest of the ridge behind, the dogs began to run; they
+soon brought up in a tangle at the road-house door. When Harkness
+did not appear in answer to his name Folsom entered, to find his
+trail-mate at the bar, glass in hand.
+
+"Put that down!" Folsom ordered, sharply.
+
+Harkness did precisely that, then he turned, wiping his lips with
+the back of his hand. He was a small, fox-faced man; with a grin he
+invited the new-comer to "have one."
+
+"Don't you know better than to drink on a day like this?" the latter
+demanded.
+
+"Don't worry about me. I was raised on 'hootch,'" said Harkness.
+
+"It's bad medicine."
+
+"Bah! I'll travel further drunk than--" Harkness measured his critic
+with an insolent eye--"than some folks sober." He commenced to warm
+himself at the stove, whereupon the other cried, impatiently:
+
+"Come along. We can't stop at every cabin."
+
+But Harkness was in no hurry, he consumed considerable time. When
+he finally followed Folsom out into the air the latter, being in a
+peculiarly irritable mood, warned him in a voice which shook with
+anger:
+
+"We're going to start with an understanding. If you take another drink
+during the daytime I'll leave you flat."
+
+"Rats! How you aim to get to the Kobuk without me?" asked Harkness.
+
+"I'll manage somehow."
+
+The smaller man shot a startled glance at the speaker, then his
+insolence vanished. "All right, old top," he said, easily. "But don't
+cut off your nose to spite your face. Remember, I promised if you'd
+stick to me you'd wear gold-beaded moccasins." He set off at a trot,
+with the dogs following.
+
+This fellow Harkness had come with the first snow into Nome, bearing
+news of a strike on the Kobuk, and despite his braggadocio he had made
+rather a good impression. That luck which favors fools and fakers had
+guided him straight to Folsom. He had appeared at a psychological
+moment in the latter's affairs, two disastrous seasons having almost
+broken Folsom and rendered him eager to grasp at anything which
+promised quick returns; moreover, the latter had just had a serious
+quarrel with his wife. Harkness had offered a half interest in his
+Kobuk claims for a grubstake and a working partner, and, smarting
+under the unaccustomed sting of domestic infelicity, the other had
+accepted, feeling sure in his own mind that Lois would not let him
+leave her when the time came to go. But the time had come, and Lois
+had offered no objection. She had acted strangely, to be sure, but she
+had made no effort to dissuade him. It seemed as if the proposal to
+separate for the winter had offended rather than frightened her. Well,
+that was the way with women; there was no pleasing them; when you
+tried to do the decent thing by them they pretended to misunderstand
+your motives. If you paid them the compliment of utter confidence they
+abused it on the pretext that you didn't love them; if you allowed
+your jealousy to show, they were offended at your lack of trust.
+
+So ran the husband's thoughts. He hoped that six months of widowhood
+would teach Lois her own mind, but it hurt to hit the trail with
+nothing more stimulating than a listless kiss and a chill request to
+write when convenient. Now that he was on his way he began to think of
+the pranks played by malicious nature during the long, dark nights,
+and to wonder if he had acted wisely in teaming up with this footless
+adventurer. He remembered the malice that rides the winter winds, the
+mischief that comes to Arctic widows, and he grew apprehensive.
+
+The travelers put up that night at the Tin Road-house, a comfortless
+shack sheathed with flattened kerosene cans, and Folsom's irritation
+at his new partner increased, for Harkness was loud, boastful, and
+blatantly egotistical, with the egotism that accompanies dense
+ignorance.
+
+The weather held cold, the snow remained as dry as sand, so they made
+slow progress, and the husband had ample time to meditate upon his
+wrongs, but the more he considered them the less acutely they smarted
+him and the gentler became his thoughts of Lois. The solitudes were
+healing his hurt, the open air was cooling his anger.
+
+At Kougarok City, a miserable huddle of cottonwood cabins, Harkness
+escaped his partner's watchful eye and got drunk. Folsom found the
+fellow clinging to the bar and entertaining a crowd of loafers with
+his absurd boastings. In a white fury he seized the wretch, dragged
+him from the room, and flung him into his bunk, then stood guard over
+him most of the night.
+
+It was during the quieter hours when the place rumbled to snores that
+Folsom yielded to his desire to write his wife, a desire which had
+been growing steadily. He was disgusted with Harkness, disappointed
+with the whole Kobuk enterprise, and in a peculiarly softened mood,
+therefore, he wrote with no attempt to conceal his yearning, homesick
+tenderness.
+
+But when he read the letter in the morning it struck him as weak and
+sentimental, just the sort of letter he would regret having written if
+it should transpire that Lois did not altogether share his feelings.
+So he tore it up.
+
+Those were the days of faint trails and poor accommodations; as yet
+the road to the Arctic was little traveled and imperfectly known, so
+Harkness acted as guide. He had bragged that he knew every inch of the
+country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and
+faulty--a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and
+no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to
+fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed
+him with it, but Harkness scoffed at the idea.
+
+Leaving the last road-house behind them, they came into a hilly
+section of great white domes, high hog-backs, and ramifying creeks,
+each one exactly like its neighbor; two days' travel through this,
+according to Harkness, should have brought them to the Imnachuck,
+where there was food and shelter again. But when they pitched camp for
+the second night Folsom felt compelled to remind his partner that they
+were behind their schedule, and that this was the last of their grub.
+
+"Are you sure you're going right?" he inquired.
+
+"Sure? Of course I'm sure. D'you think I'm lost?"
+
+Folsom fed some twisted willow-tops into the sheet-iron stove. "I
+wouldn't recommend you as a pathfinder," said he. "You said we'd sleep
+out one night. This is two, and to-morrow we'll walk hungry."
+
+"Well, don't blame me!" challenged the other. "I'm going slow on your
+account."
+
+Now nothing could have galled Folsom more than a reflection upon
+his ability to travel. His lips whitened, he was upon the point of
+speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's
+personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled
+against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little
+coxcomb by the throat and squeeze the arrogance out of him as juice is
+squeezed out of a lemon. There is flesh for which one's fingers itch.
+
+"I notice you're ready to camp when I am," the larger man muttered.
+"Understand, this is no nice place to be without grub, for it's liable
+to storm any hour, and storms last at this season."
+
+"Now don't get cold feet." Harkness could be maddeningly patronizing
+when he chose. "Leave it to me. I'll take you a short cut, and we'll
+eat lunch in a cabin to-morrow noon."
+
+But noon of the next day found Harkness still plodding up the river
+with the dogs close at his heels. The hills to the northward were
+growing higher, and Folsom's general knowledge of direction told him
+that they were in danger of going too far.
+
+"I think the Imnachuck is over there," said he.
+
+Harkness hesitated, then he nodded: "Right-o! It's just over that
+low saddle." He indicated a sweeping hillside ahead, and a half-mile
+further on he left the creek and began to climb. This was heavy work
+for the dogs, and mid-afternoon came before the partners had gained
+the summit only to discover that they were not upon a saddleback
+after all, but upon the edge of a vast rolling tableland from which a
+fanlike system of creeks radiated. In all directions was a desolate
+waste of barren peaks.
+
+Folsom saw that the sky ahead was thick and dark, as if a storm
+impended, and realizing only too well the results of the slightest
+error in judgment he called to Harkness. But the latter pretended
+not to hear, and took advantage of the dogs' fatigue to hurry out of
+earshot. It was some time before the team overhauled him.
+
+"Do you know where you are?" Folsom inquired.
+
+"Certainly." Harkness studied the panorama spread before him. "That
+blue gulch yonder is the Imnachuck." He pointed to a valley perhaps
+four miles away.
+
+A fine snow began to sift downward. The mountain peaks to the
+northward became obscured as by thin smoke, the afternoon shortened
+with alarming swiftness. Night, up here with a blizzard brewing, was
+unthinkable, so after a while the driver called another halt.
+
+"Something informs me that you're completely lost," he said, mildly.
+
+"Who, me? There she is." Harkness flung out a directing hand once
+more.
+
+Folsom hesitated, battling with his leaping desires, and upon that
+momentary hesitation hinged results out of all proportions to the
+gravity of the situation--issues destined to change the deepest
+channels of his life. Folsom hesitated, then he yielded to his
+impulse, and the luxury of yielding made him drunk. He walked around
+the sled, removing his mittens with his teeth as he went. Without a
+word he seized his companion by the throat and throttled him until his
+eyes protruded and his face grew black and bloated. He relaxed his
+stiff fingers finally, then he shook the fellow back to consciousness.
+
+"Just as I thought," he cried, harshly. "That's not the gulch you
+pointed out before. You're lost and you won't admit it."
+
+Harkness pawed the air and fought for his breath. There was abject
+terror in his eyes. He reeled away, but saw there was no safety in
+flight.
+
+"Own up!" Folsom commanded.
+
+"You--said this was the way," the pathfinder whimpered. "You made
+me--turn off--" Folsom uttered a growl and advanced a step, whereupon
+his victim gurgled: "D-don't touch me! That's the Imnachuck, so help
+me God! I'm--I'm almost sure it is."
+
+"_Almost_!" The speaker stooped for his mittens and shook the snow out
+of them; he was still struggling to control himself. "Look here, Mr.
+Know-It-All, I've never been here before, and you have; somewhere in
+your thick skull there must be some faint remembrance of the country.
+You got us into this fix, and I'm going to give you one more chance
+to get us out of it. Don't try to think with your head, let your feet
+think for you, and maybe they'll carry you to the right gulch. If they
+don't--" Folsom scanned the brooding heavens and his lips compressed.
+"We're in for a storm and--we'll never weather it. Take one look while
+there's light to see by, then turn your feet loose and pray that they
+lead you right, for if they don't, by God, I'll cut you loose!"
+
+It soon proved that memory lay neither in Harkness's head nor in his
+feet; when he had veered aimlessly about for half an hour, evidently
+fearing to commit himself to a definite course, and when the wind came
+whooping down, rolling a twilight smother ahead of it, Folsom turned
+his dogs into the nearest depression and urged them to a run. The
+grade increased, soon brittle willow-tops brushed against the speeding
+sled: this brush grew higher as the two men, blinded now by the gale,
+stumbled onward behind the team. They emerged from the gulch into a
+wider valley, after a while, and a mile further on the dogs burst
+through a grove of cottonwoods and fetched up before a lighted cabin
+window.
+
+Harkness pulled back his parka hood and cried, boastfully: "What did I
+tell you? I knew where I was all the time." Then he went in, leaving
+his partner to unhitch the team and care for it.
+
+Friendships ripen and enmities deepen quickly on the trail, seeds of
+discord sprout and flourish in the cold. Folsom's burst of temper had
+served to inflame a mutual dislike, and as he and Harkness journeyed
+northward that dislike deepened into something akin to hatred, for the
+men shared the same bed, drank from the same pot, endured the same
+exasperations. Nothing except their hope of mutual profit held
+them together. In our careless search for cause and effect we are
+accustomed to attribute important issues to important happenings,
+amazing consequences to amazing deeds; as a matter of fact it is the
+trivial action, the little thing, the thing unnoticed and forgotten
+which bends our pathways and makes or breaks us.
+
+Harkness was a hare-brained, irresponsible person, incapable of
+steadiness in thought or action, too weak to cherish actual hatred,
+too changeable to nurse a lasting grudge. It is with such frail
+instruments that prankish fate delights to work, and, although he
+never suspected it, the luxury of yielding to that sudden gust of
+passion cost Folsom dear.
+
+Arrived finally at the Kobuk the miner examined the properties covered
+by his option, and impressed by the optimism of the men who had made
+the gold discovery he paid Harkness the price agreed upon. The deal
+completed, he sent the fellow back to Candle Creek, the nearest
+post, for supplies. Folsom's mood had altogether changed by now, so,
+strangling his last doubt of Lois, he wrote her as he had written at
+Kougarok City, and intrusted the letter to his associate.
+
+Harkness, promptly upon his arrival at Candle, got drunk. He stayed
+drunk for three days, and it was not until he was well started on his
+way back to the Kobuk that he discovered Folsom's letter still in his
+pocket.
+
+Now, to repeat, the man was not malicious, neither was he bad, but as
+he debated whether he should back-track there came to him the memory
+of his humiliation on the Imnachuck divide.
+
+So! His brains were in his feet, eh? Folsom had strangled him until he
+kicked, when, all the time, they had been on the right trail. Harkness
+felt a flash of rage, like the flare of loose gunpowder, and in the
+heat of it he tore the letter to atoms. It was a womanish, spiteful
+thing to do, and he regretted it, but later when he greeted the
+husband he lied circumstantially and declared he had given the missive
+into the hands of the mail-carrier on the very hour of his departure.
+By this time, doubtless, it was nearly to Nome. Soon thereafter
+Harkness forgot all about the incident.
+
+Folsom was a fast worker. He hired men and cross-cut the most
+promising claim. Bed-rock was shallow, and he soon proved it to be
+barren, so he went on to the next property. When he had prospected
+this claim with no better results than before he wrote his wife
+confessing doubts of the district and voicing the fear that his
+winter's work would be wasted. Again he let his pen run as it would;
+the letter he gave to a neighbor who was leaving for Candle Creek in
+the morning.
+
+Folsom's neighbor was a famous "musher," a seasoned, self-reliant man,
+thoroughly accustomed to all the hazards of winter travel, but ten
+miles from his destination he crossed an inch-deep overflow which
+rendered the soles of his muk-luks slippery, and ten yards further on,
+where the wind had laid the glare-ice bare, he lost his footing. He
+fell and wrenched his ankle and came hobbling into Candle half an hour
+after the monthly mail for Nome had left.
+
+Three weeks later Folsom wrote his wife for the third time, and again
+a month after that. All three letters joined company in Candle Creek;
+for meanwhile the mail-man's lead dog had been killed in a fight with
+a big malamute at Lane's Landing, causing its owner to miss a trip.
+Now dog-fights are common; by no logic could one attribute weighty
+results to the loss of a sixty-pound leader, but in this instance it
+so happened that the mail-carrier's schedule suffered so that his
+contract was canceled.
+
+Meanwhile a lonely woman waited anxiously in Nome, and as the result
+of a stranger's spite, a wet muk-luk, and a vicious malamute her
+anxiety turned to bitterness and distrust.
+
+It is never difficult to forward mail in the north, for every "musher"
+is a postman. When news came to Candle Creek that the Government
+service had been discontinued the storekeeper, one end of whose bar
+served as post-office, sacked his accumulated letters and intrusted
+them to some friends who were traveling southward on the morrow. The
+trader was a canny man, but he loved to gamble, so when his friends
+offered to bet him that they could lower the record from Candle to
+Nome he went out into the night, sniffed the air and studied the
+stars, then laid them a hundred dollars that they could not.
+
+Excited to recklessness by this wager the volunteer mail-men cut
+down their load. They left their stove and tent and grub-box behind,
+planning to make a road-house every night except during the long jump
+from the Imnachuck to Crooked River. They argued that it was worth a
+hundred dollars to sleep once under the open sky.
+
+The fruits of that sporting enterprise were bitter; the trader won his
+bet, but he never cashed it in. Somewhere out on the high barrens a
+storm swooped down upon the travelers. To one who has never faced an
+Arctic hurricane it seems incredible that strong men have died within
+call of cozy cabins or have frozen with the lashings of their sleds
+but half untied. Yet it is true. The sudden awful cold, the shouting
+wind, the boiling, blinding, suffocating rush of snow; the sweaty
+clothes that harden into jointless armor; the stiff mittens and the
+clumsy hands inside--these tell a tale to those who know.
+
+The two mail-carriers managed to get into their sleeping-bags, but the
+gale, instead of drifting them over with a protective mantle of snow,
+scoured the mountain-side bare to the brittle reindeer moss, and they
+began to freeze where they lay. Some twenty hours they stood it, then
+they rose and plunged ahead of the hurricane like bewildered cattle.
+The strongest man gave up first and lay down, babbling of things
+to eat. His companion buried him, still alive, and broke down the
+surrounding willow-tops for a landmark, then he staggered on. By some
+miracle of good luck, or as a result of some unsuspected power of
+resistance, he finally came raving into the Crooked River Road-house.
+When the wind subsided they hurried him to Nome, but he was
+frightfully maimed and as a result of his amputations he lay gabbling
+until long after the spring break-up.
+
+Folsom did not write again. In fact, when no word came from Lois, he
+bitterly regretted the letters he had written. He heard indirectly
+from her; new-comers from Nome told him that she was well, but that
+was all. It was enough. He did not wish to learn more.
+
+Spring found him with barely enough money to pay his way back. He was
+blue, bitter, disheartened, but despite the certainty that his
+wife had forsaken him he still cherished a flickering hope of a
+reconciliation. Strangely enough he considered no scheme of vengeance
+upon the other man, for he was sane and healthy, and he loved Lois too
+well to spoil her attempt at happiness.
+
+It so happened that the Arctic ice opened up later this spring than
+for many seasons; therefore the short summer was well under way before
+the first steam-schooner anchored off the Kobuk. Folsom turned his
+back upon the wreck of his high hopes, his mind solely engaged with
+the problem of how to meet Lois and ascertain the truth without undue
+embarrassment to her and humiliation to himself. The prospect of
+seeing her, of touching her, of hearing her voice, affected him
+painfully. He could neither eat nor sleep on the way to Nome, but
+paced the deck in restless indecision. He had come to consider himself
+wholly to blame for their misunderstanding, and he wished only for a
+chance to win back her love, with no questions asked and no favors
+granted.
+
+When there were less than fifty miles to go the steamer broke her
+shaft. There was no particular reason why that shaft should break,
+but break it did, and for eighteen hours--eighteen eternities to
+Folsom--the ship lay crippled while its engine-room crew labored
+manfully.
+
+Folsom had been so long in the solitudes that Nome looked like a
+big city when he finally saw it. There were several ships in the
+roadstead, and one of them was just leaving as the Kobuk boat came to
+anchor. She made a splendid sight as she gathered way.
+
+The returning miner went ashore in the first dory and as he stepped
+out upon the sand a friend greeted him:
+
+"Hello there, old settler! Where you been all winter?"
+
+"I've been to the Kobuk," Folsom told him.
+
+"Kobuk? I hear she's a bum."
+
+"'Bum' is right. Maybe she'll do to dredge some day."
+
+"Too bad you missed the _Oregon_; there she goes now." The man pointed
+seaward.
+
+"Too bad?"
+
+"Sure! Don't you know? Why, Miz Folsom went out on her!"
+
+Folsom halted; after a momentary pause he repeated, vaguely, "Went
+out?"
+
+"Exactly. Didn't you know she was going?"
+
+"Oh yes--of course! The _Oregon_!" Folsom stared at the fading plume
+of black smoke; there was a curious brightness in his eyes, his face
+was white beneath its tan. "She sailed on the _Oregon_ and I missed
+her, by an hour! That broken shaft--" He began to laugh, and turning
+his back upon the sea he plodded heavily through the sand toward the
+main street.
+
+Folsom found no word from his wife, his house was empty; but he
+learned that "the man" had also gone to the States, and he drew his
+own conclusions. Since Lois had ordered her life as she saw fit there
+was nothing to do but wait and endure--doubtless the divorce would
+come in time. Nevertheless, he could not think of that broken shaft
+without raving.
+
+Being penniless he looked for work, and his first job came from a
+small Jewish merchant, named Guth, who offered him a hundred dollars
+to do the assessment work on a tundra claim. For twenty days Folsom
+picked holes through frozen muck, wondering why a thrifty person like
+Guth would pay good money to hold such unpromising property as this.
+
+The claim was in sight of Nome, and as Folsom finished his last day's
+labor he heard bells ringing and whistles blowing and discovered that
+the town was ablaze. He hurried in to find that an entire block in
+the business center of the city had been destroyed and with it Guth's
+little store, including all its contents. He found the Jew in tears.
+
+"What a misfortune!" wailed the merchant. "Ruined, absolutely--and by
+a match! It started in my store--my little girl, you understand?
+And now, all gone!" He tore his beard and the tears rolled down his
+cheeks.
+
+The little man's grief was affecting, and so Folsom inquired more
+gently than he intended, "I'm sorry, of course, but how about my money
+for the Lulu assessment?"
+
+"Money? There's your money!" Guth pointed sadly into the smoldering
+ruins. "Go find it--you're welcome to anything I have left. Gott! What
+a country! How can a man get ahead, with no insurance?"
+
+Folsom laughed mirthlessly. His hard luck was becoming amusing and
+he wondered how long it would last. He had counted on that hundred
+dollars to get away from Nome, hoping to shake misfortune from his
+heels, but a match in the hands of a child, like that broken propeller
+shaft, had worked havoc with his plans. Well, it was useless to cry.
+
+To the despairing Hebrew he said: "Don't lose your grip, old man. Buck
+up and take another start. You have your wife and your little girl, at
+least, and you're the sort who makes good."
+
+"You think so?" Guth looked up, grateful for the first word of
+encouragement he had heard.
+
+"It's a cinch! Only don't lose your courage."
+
+"I--I'll do what's right by you, Mr. Folsom," declared the other.
+"I'll deed you a half interest in the Lulu."
+
+But Folsom shook his head. "I don't want it. There's nothing there
+except moss and muck and salmon berries, and it's a mile to bed-rock.
+No, you're welcome to my share; maybe you can sell the claim for
+enough to make a new start or to buy grub for the wife and the kid.
+I'll look for another job."
+
+For a month or more the lonesome husband "stevedored," wrestling
+freight on the lighters, then he disappeared. He left secretly, in the
+night, for by now he had grown fanciful and he dared to hope that he
+could dodge his Nemesis. He turned up in Fairbanks, a thousand miles
+away, and straightway lost himself in the hills.
+
+He had not covered his tracks, however, for bad luck followed him.
+
+Now no man starves in Alaska, for there is always work for the
+able-bodied; but whatever Folsom turned his hand to failed, and by and
+by his courage went. He had been a man of consequence in Nome; he
+had made money and he had handled other men, therefore his sense of
+failure was the bitterer.
+
+Meanwhile, somewhere in him there remained the ghost of his faith
+in Lois, the faintly flickering hope that some day they would come
+together again. It lay dormant in him, like an irreligious man's
+unacknowledged faith in God and a hereafter, but it, too, vanished
+when he read in a Seattle newspaper, already three months old, the
+announcement of his wife's divorce. He flinched when he read that it
+had been won on the grounds of desertion, and thereafter he shunned
+newspapers.
+
+Spring found him broke, as usual. He had become bad company and men
+avoided him. It amused him grimly to learn that a new strike had been
+made in Nome, the biggest discovery in the camp's history, and to
+realize that he had fled just in time to miss the opportunity of
+profiting by it. He heard talk of a prehistoric sea-beach line, a
+streak of golden sands which paralleled the shore and lay hidden below
+the tundra mud. News came of overnight fortunes, of friends grown
+prosperous and mighty. Embittered anew, Folsom turned again to the
+wilderness, and he did not reappear until the summer was over. He came
+to town resolved to stay only long enough to buy bacon and beans, but
+he had lost his pocket calendar and arrived on a Sunday, when the
+stores were closed.
+
+Even so little a thing as the loss of that calendar loomed big in the
+light of later events, for in walking the streets he encountered a
+friend but just arrived from the Behring coast.
+
+The man recognized him, despite his beard and his threadbare mackinaws
+and they had a drink together.
+
+"I s'pose you heard about that Third Beach Line?" the new-comer
+inquired. Folsom nodded. "Well, they've opened it up for miles, and
+it's just a boulevard of solid gold. 'Cap' Carter's into it big, and
+so are the O'Brien boys and Old Man Hendricks. They're lousy with
+pay."
+
+"I did the work on a tundra claim," said Folsom; "the Lulu--"
+
+"The _Lulu_!" Folsom's friend stared at him. "Haven't you heard about
+the Lulu? My God! Where you been, anyhow? Why, the Lulu's a mint! Guth
+is a millionaire and he made it all without turning a finger."
+
+Folsom's grip on the bar-rail tightened until his knuckles were white.
+
+"I'm telling you right, old man; he's the luckiest Jew in the country.
+He let a lay to McCarthy and Olson, and they took out six hundred
+thousand dollars, after Christmas."
+
+"Guth offered me a--half interest in the Lulu when his store burned
+and--I turned it down. He's never paid me for that assessment work."
+
+The Nomeite was speechless with amazement. "The son-of-a-gun!" he
+said, finally. "Well, you can collect now. Say! That's what he meant
+when he told me he wanted to see you. Guth was down to the boat when I
+left, and he says: 'If you see Folsom up river tell him to come back.
+I got something for him.' Those were his very words. That little Jew
+aims to pay you a rotten hundred so you won't sue him for an interest.
+By Gorry, I wouldn't take it! I'd go back and make him do the right
+thing. I'd sue him. I'd bust him in the nose! A half interest--in the
+Lulu! My God!" The speaker gulped his drink hastily.
+
+After consideration, Folsom said: "He'll do the right thing. Guth
+isn't a bad sort."
+
+"No. But he's a Jew; trust him to get his."
+
+"I wouldn't ask him to do more than pay his debt. You see I refused
+his offer."
+
+"What of that? I'd give it a try, anyhow, and see if he wouldn't
+settle. There's lots of lawyers would take your case. But say, that's
+the toughest tough-luck story I ever heard. You've sure got a jinx on
+you."
+
+"I'm going back, but I won't sue Guth. I'm sick of Alaska; it has
+licked me. I'm going out to God's country."
+
+Folsom indeed acknowledged himself beaten. The narrow margin by which
+he had missed reward for his work and his hardships bred in him such
+hatred for Alaska that he abruptly changed his plans. He had no heart,
+perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all
+measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what
+straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken
+piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him
+payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by
+his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog,
+and the storekeeper's wager.
+
+Folsom carried cord-wood to pay for a deck passage down river. He
+discovered en route that Guth had really tried to get in touch with
+him, and in fact appeared greatly concerned over his failure to do so,
+for at Tanana he received another message, and again at St. Michaels.
+He was grimly amused at the little Jew's craftiness, yet it sorely
+offended him to think that any one should consider him such a welcher.
+He had no intention of causing trouble, for he knew he had no legal
+claim against the fellow, and he doubted if he possessed even a moral
+right to share in the Lulu's riches. To play upon the Hebrew's fears,
+therefore, savored of extortion. Nevertheless, he was in no agreeable
+frame of mind when he arrived at his destination and inquired for
+Guth.
+
+The new-made millionaire was in his office; Folsom walked in
+unannounced. He had expected his arrival to create a scene, and he was
+not disappointed. But Guth's actions were strange, they left the new
+arrival dazed, for the little man fell upon him with what appeared to
+be exuberant manifestations of joy.
+
+"Mr. Folsom!" he cried. "You have come! You got my letters, eh? Well,
+I wrote you everywhere, but I was in despair, for I thought you must
+be dead. Nobody knew what had become of you."
+
+"I got your message in Fairbanks."
+
+"You heard about the Lulu, eh? Gott! She's a dandy."
+
+"Yes. I can hardly believe it. So, you're rich. Well, I congratulate
+you, and now I can use that hundred."
+
+Guth chuckled. "Ha! You will have your joke, eh? But the Lulu is no
+joke. Come, we will go to the bank; I want them to tell you how much
+she has yielded. You'll blame me for leasing her, but how was I to
+know what she was?"
+
+"I--Why should I blame--" Folsom stared at the speaker. "It's none of
+my business what the Lulu has yielded. In fact, I'll sleep better if I
+don't know."
+
+Little Guth paused and his mouth opened. After a moment he inquired,
+curiously: "Don't you understand?" There was another pause, then he
+said, quietly, "I'm a man of my word."
+
+Folsom suddenly saw black, the room began to spin, he passed his hand
+across his eyes. "Wait! Let's get this straight," he whispered.
+
+"It is all very simple," Guth told him. "We are equal partners in
+the Lulu--we have been, ever since the day my store burned. It was a
+little thing you said to me then, but the way you said it, the fact
+that you didn't blame me, gave me new heart. Did you think I'd renig?"
+When Folsom found no answer the other nodded slowly. "I see. You
+probably said, 'That Guth is a Jew and he'll do me up if he can.'
+Well, I am a Jew, yes, and I am proud of it; but I am an honest man,
+too, like you."
+
+Folsom turned to the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm,
+but with his other hand he groped for that of the Hebrew.
+
+The story of the Lulu is history now; in all the north that mine is
+famous, for it made half a dozen fortunes. In a daze, half doubting
+the reality of things, Folsom watched a golden stream pour into his
+lap. All that winter and the next summer the Lulu yielded wondrously,
+but one of the partners was not happy, his thoughts being ever of the
+woman who had left him. Prosperity gave him courage, however, and when
+he discovered that Lois had not remarried he determined to press his
+luck as a gambler should.
+
+When the second season's sluicing was over and the ground had frozen
+he went outside.
+
+The day after he sailed Lois arrived in Nome, on the last boat. She
+was older, graver; she had heard of the Lulu, but it was not that
+which had brought her back. She had returned in spite of the Lulu to
+solve an aching mystery and to learn the why of things. Her husband's
+riches--she still considered him her husband--merely made the task
+more trying.
+
+Advised that Folsom had passed almost within hailing distance of her,
+she pressed her lips together and took up her problem of living. The
+prospect of another lonely Alaskan winter frightened her, and yet
+because of the Lulu she could not return by the ship she had come on.
+Now that Folsom was a Croesus she could not follow him too closely--he
+might misunderstand. After all, she reflected, it mattered little to
+her where she lived.
+
+Guth called at her cabin, but she managed to avoid seeing him, and
+somehow continued to avoid a meeting.
+
+Late in December some travelers from Candle Creek, while breaking a
+short cut to the head of Crooked River, came upon an abandoned sled
+and its impedimenta. Snow and rain and summer sun had bleached its
+wood, its runners were red streaks of rust, its rawhide lashings had
+been eaten off, but snugly rolled inside the tarpaulin was a sack
+of mail. This mail the travelers brought in with them, and the Nome
+newspapers, in commenting upon the find, reprinted the story of that
+tragic fight for life in the Arctic hurricane, now almost forgotten.
+
+Folsom's three letters reached their destination on Christmas Day.
+They were stained and yellow and blurred in places, for they were
+three years old, but the woman read them with eyes wide and wondering,
+and with heart-beats pounding, for it seemed that dead lips spoke to
+her. Ten minutes later she was standing at Guth's door, and when he
+let her in she behaved like one demented. She had the letters hidden
+in her bosom, and she would not let him see them, but she managed to
+make known the meaning of her coming.
+
+"You know him," she cried, hysterically. "You made him rich. You've
+lived alongside of him. Tell me then, has he--has he--changed? These
+letters are old. Does he still care, or--does he hate me, as he
+should?"
+
+Guth smiled; he took her shaking hands in his, his voice was gentle.
+"No, no! He doesn't hate you. He has never mentioned your name to me,
+or to any one else, so far as I know, but his money hasn't satisfied
+him. He is sad, and he wants you. That is what took him to the States,
+I'm sure."
+
+Lois sank into a chair, her face was white, her twisting fingers
+strained at each other. "I can't understand. I can't make head or tail
+of it," she moaned. "It seems that I wronged him, but see what ruin he
+has made for me! Why? Why--?"
+
+"Who can understand the 'why' of anything?" inquired the little
+Hebrew. "I've heard him curse the perversity of little things, and
+rave at what he called the 'malice of the north wind.' I didn't dare
+to ask him what he meant, but I knew he was thinking of the evil which
+had come between you two. Who was to blame, or what separated you, he
+never told me. Well, his bad luck has changed, and yours, too; and I'm
+happy. Now then, the wireless. You can talk to him. Let us go."
+
+An hour later a crackling message was hurled into the empty Christmas
+sky, a message that pulsed through the voids, was relayed over ice and
+brine and drifted forests to a lonely, brooding man three thousand
+miles away.
+
+The answer came rushing back:
+
+"Thank God! Am starting north tomorrow. Love and a million kisses.
+Wait for me."
+
+Folsom came. Neither ice nor snow, neither winter seas nor trackless
+wastes, could daunt him, for youth was in his heart and fire ran
+through his veins. North and west he came by a rimy little steamer, as
+fast as coal could drive her, then overland more than fifteen hundred
+miles. His record stands unbroken, and in villages from Katmai to the
+Kuskokwim the Indians tell of the tall white man with the team of
+fifteen huskies who raced through as if a demon were at his heels; how
+he bored headlong into the blizzards and braved January's fiercest
+rage; how his guides dropped and his dogs died in their collars. That
+was how Folsom came.
+
+He was thin and brown, the marks of the frost were bitten deep into
+his flesh when, one evening in early March, he drove into Nome. He
+had covered sixty miles on the last day's run, and his team was
+staggering. He left the dogs in their harnesses, where they fell, and
+bounded through the high-banked streets to Lois's cabin.
+
+It was growing dark, a light gleamed from her window; Folsom glimpsed
+her moving about inside. He paused to rip the ice from his bearded
+lips, then he knocked softly, three times.
+
+As he stood there a gentle north wind fanned him. It was deadly cold,
+but it was fresh and clean and vastly invigorating. There was no
+malice in it.
+
+At his familiar signal he heard the clatter of a dish, dropped from
+nerveless fingers, he heard a startled voice cry out his name, then he
+pressed the latch and entered, smiling.
+
+
+
+
+HIS STOCK IN TRADE
+
+
+"The science of salesmanship is quite as exact as the science of
+astronomy," said Mr. Gross, casting his eyes down the table to see
+that he had the attention of the other boarders, "and much more
+intricate. The successful salesman is as much an artist in his line as
+the man who paints pictures or writes books."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing so artistic as writing books," protested Miss
+Harris, the manicurist. "Nothing except acting, perhaps. Actors are
+artistic, too. But salesmen! I meet lots in my business, and I'm not
+strong for them."
+
+Mr. Gross smiled at her indulgently; it was an expression that became
+him well, and he had rehearsed it often.
+
+"The power to sell goods is a talent, my dear Miss Harris, just like
+the power to invent machinery or to rule a city, or--or--to keep a set
+of books. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Green?"
+
+Mrs. Green, the landlady, a brown, gray woman in black, smiled
+frigidly. "You're _so_ original, Mr. Gross," said she, "it's a
+pleasure to hear you, I'm sure."
+
+Gross was an impressive talker, due to the fact that he plagiarized
+office platitudes; he ran on pompously, dropping trade mottoes and
+shop-worn bits of philosophy until young Mitchell, unable longer to
+endure the light of admiration he saw in Miss Harris's eyes, rolled
+up his napkin to the size of a croquette and interrupted by noisily
+shoving back his chair and muttering under his breath:
+
+"That stuff comes on printed cards. They give it away."
+
+Mrs. Green called to him, "It's bread pudding, Mr. Mitchell, and very
+nice."
+
+"Thanks! My gout is bad again," he said, at which some of the more
+frivolous-minded boarders snickered.
+
+"Mitchell is a bright boy--in many ways," Gross remarked, a moment
+later, "but he's too fresh. I don't think he'll last long at the
+office."
+
+Instead of climbing to his hall kennel on the fourth floor rear, Louis
+Mitchell went out upon the rusty little porch of the boarding-house
+and sat down on the topmost step, reflecting gloomily that a clerk has
+small chance against a head bookkeeper.
+
+Life at Mrs. Green's pension--she called it that, rates six dollars
+up, terms six dollars down--had not been the same for the youthful
+hermit of the hall bedroom since Gross had met him and Miss Harris in
+the park a few Sundays before and, falling under the witchery of the
+manicurist's violet eyes, had changed his residence to coincide with
+theirs. Gross now occupied one of the front rooms, and a corresponding
+place in the esteem of those less fortunate boarders to whom the mere
+contemplation of ten dollars a week was an extravagance. Mitchell had
+long adored the blonde manicurist, but once the same roof sheltered
+her and the magnificent head bookkeeper, he saw his dream of love and
+two furnished rooms with kitchenette go glimmering.
+
+Time was when Miss Harris had been content with Sundays in the park,
+vaudeville--first balcony--on Wednesdays, and a moving picture now and
+then. These lavish attentions, coupled with an occasional assault upon
+some delicatessen establishment, had satisfied her cravings for the
+higher life. Now that Gross had appeared and sown discord with his
+prodigality she no longer cared for animals and band concerts, she had
+acquired the orchestra-seat habit, had learned to dance, and, above
+all, she now possessed a subtle refinement in regard to victuals. She
+criticized Marlowe's acting, and complained that cold food gave her
+indigestion. No longer did she sit the summer evenings out with
+Mitchell, holding his hand in her lap and absent-mindedly buffing his
+nails, warning him in sweet familiarity that his cuticle was "growing
+down." In consequence of her defection, fierce resentment smoldered in
+the young man's breast. He was jealous; he longed to out-squander
+the extravagant Mr. Gross; he lusted to spend money in unstinted
+quantities, five dollars an evening if or when necessary.
+
+But there seemed little hope of his ever attaining such a purse-proud
+position, for while he loomed fairly large in the boarding-house
+atmosphere of Ohio Street--or had so loomed until the advent of the
+reckless bookkeeper--he was so small a part of the office force of
+Comer & Mathison, jobbers of railway supplies, as to resemble nothing
+multiplied by itself. He received twelve dollars a week, to be sure,
+for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times;
+but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his
+envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any
+office-boy who did not stutter could have held his job.
+
+When at seven forty-five Miss Harris appeared upon the porch with her
+hat and gloves and two-dollar-ticket air, and tripped gaily away in
+company with Mr. Gross, young Mitchell realized bitterly that the cost
+of living had increased and that it was up to him to raise his salary
+or lose his lady.
+
+He recalled Gross's words at supper-time, and wondered if there really
+could be a science to business; if there could be anything to success
+except hard work. Mr. Comer, in his weekly talks to the office
+force, had repeatedly said so--whence the origin of the bookkeeper's
+warmed-over wisdom--but Mitchell's duties were so simple and so
+constricted as to allow no opening for science, or so, at least, it
+seemed to him. How could he be scientific, how could he find play for
+genius when he sat at the end of a telephone wire and answered routine
+questions from a card? Every day the General Railway Sales Manager
+gave him a price-list of the commodities which C. & M. handled, and
+when an inquiry came over the 'phone all he was required, all he
+was permitted, to do was to read the figures and to quote time of
+delivery. If this resulted in an order the Sales Manager took the
+credit. An open quotation, on the other hand, made Mitchell the
+subject of brusque criticism for offering a target to competitors, and
+when he lost an order he was the goat, not the General Railway Sales
+Manager.
+
+No one around the office was too lowly to exact homage from the
+quotation clerk, and no one was tongue-tied in the matter of
+criticism, hence his position was neither one of dignity nor one
+that afforded scope for talent in the money-making line. And yet if
+salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must
+be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by
+acquiring it. What if he were buckled to the end of a wire? Human
+nature is the same, face to face or voice to voice; surely then, if
+he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere
+string of words over a telephone. Heretofore he had been working
+wholly with his fingers, his ear-drums, and his vocal cords; he
+determined henceforth to exercise his intelligence, if he had any. It
+was indeed high time, for Miss Harris was undoubtedly slipping away,
+lured by luxuries no clerk could afford, and, moreover, he, Mitchell,
+was growing old; in a scant two years he would be able to vote. He
+began forthwith to analyze the situation.
+
+There wasn't much to it. His telephone calls came almost wholly
+from the purchasing departments of the various railroads. Daily
+requisitions were filled by the stenographers in those railway
+offices, young ladies who through their long experience were allowed
+to attend to the more unimportant purchases. It was in quoting prices
+on these "pick-ups" that Mitchell helloed for eight hours a day.
+Of course no large orders ever came over his wire, but this small
+business carried an unusual profit for supply houses like Comer &
+Mathison, and in consequence it was highly prized.
+
+After a period of intense and painful thought the young man realized,
+for the first time, that it was not the telephone itself which asked
+for price and time of delivery, but a weak, imaginative human being,
+like himself, at the other end of the wire. He reasoned further that
+if he could convince that person that the voice from Conner & Mathison
+likewise issued from a human throat, then it might be possible to get
+away, in a measure at least, from the mechanical part of the business
+and establish altogether new relations. If there were really a
+science to salesmanship, it would work at long distance as well as at
+collar-and-elbow holds, and Mitchell's first task, therefore, should
+be to project his own personality into the railroad offices. He went
+to bed still trying to figure the matter out.
+
+His opportunity to test his new-born theory came on the following
+morning when an irritable female voice over at the Santa Fé asked the
+price on twenty kegs of rivets.
+
+"Good morning, Santa Fe-male," he answered, cheerily.
+
+There was a moment of amazed silence, then the young lady snapped:
+"'Good morning'? What is this, the Weather Bureau? I want Comer &
+Mathison."
+
+"Gee! Can't a fellow display a little courtesy in business?" Mitchell
+inquired. "I'd rather be nice to you than not."
+
+"All right, Mr. Comer," the voice replied, sarcastically. "Make a nice
+price on those rivets--and cut out the kidding."
+
+"Listen; my name's not Comer; it's Mitchell. I'm not kidding, either.
+I want you to ask for me whenever you call up. Every little bit helps,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, I see. You want the carriage man to call your number. All right,
+Mitch. If you're out at lunch with Mr. Carnegie the next time I want a
+dozen number ten sheets I'll have you paged at the Union League Club."
+
+If the speaker liked this kind of blank verse, she had called up the
+right supply house, for Mitchell came back with:
+
+"Say, if I ever get _your_ number, I'll do the calling, Miss Santa
+Fé."
+
+"_W-what_?" came the startled reply.
+
+"I mean what I say. I'd love to call--"
+
+"Is that so? Well, I do all the calling for our, family, and I'm going
+to call you right now. What's the price of those rivets?"
+
+"Two sixty-five."
+
+"Too high! Good-by."
+
+"Wait a minute." Mitchell checked the lady before she could "plug out"
+on him. "Now that you've got those rivets out of your system, may I
+get personal for an instant?"
+
+"Just about an instant."
+
+"I could listen to _you_ all day."
+
+"Oops, Horace; he loves me!" mocked the lady's voice.
+
+"See here, I'm a regular person--with references. I've been talking to
+you every day for six months, so I feel that we're acquainted. Some
+pleasant evening, when your crew of hammock gladiators palls on you,
+let me come around and show you the difference."
+
+"What difference?"
+
+"I'll show you what a real porch-climber is like."
+
+"Indeed! I'll think it over."
+
+Ten minutes later Miss Santa Fe called up again.
+
+"Hello! I want Mitchell, the junior partner."
+
+"This is Mitchell."
+
+"Did you say those rivets were two-fifty?"
+
+"Should they be?"
+
+"They should."
+
+"They are."
+
+"Ship them to Trinidad."
+
+"That's bully of you, Miss Santa Claus. I want to--" But the wire was
+dead.
+
+Mitchell grinned. Personality did count after all, and he had proved
+that it could be projected over a copper wire.
+
+An hour later when Miss Northwestern called him for a price on
+stay-bolt iron she did not ring off for fifteen minutes, and at the
+end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having
+another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at
+the C. & E.I., Mitchell learned that the purchasing agent was at West
+Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky;
+that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan,
+although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she'd been to
+Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland
+and was a prince with his money, but drank; and that the price on
+corrugated iron might be raised ten cents without doing any damage.
+
+On the following afternoon Murphy, the Railroad Sales Manager, stopped
+on his way past Mitchell's desk to inquire:
+
+"Say, have you been sending orchids to Miss Dunlap over at the Santa
+Fe? I was in there this morning, and she wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"Did you boost me?" Louis inquired. "It won't hurt your sales to plug
+my game."
+
+"She said you and she are 'buddies' over the wire. What did she mean?"
+
+"Oh, wire pals, that's all. What kind of a looker is she, Mr. Murphy?"
+
+The Sales Manager shrugged his shoulders. "She looks as if she was
+good to her mother." Then he sauntered away.
+
+Mitchell, in the days that followed, proceeded to become acquainted
+with the Big Four, and in a short time was so close to the Lackawanna
+that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times
+in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he
+was busy, threatened to hang crêpe on the round-house if he were not
+summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab.
+
+Within a week he became the most thoroughly telephoned person in the
+office, and had learned the tastes, the hopes, the aims, and the
+ambitions of his respective customers. Miss C. & E.I., for instance,
+whose real name was Gratz, was a bug on music; Miss Northwestern was
+literary. She had read everything Marion Crawford ever wrote, and
+considered her the greatest writer Indiana had produced, but was sorry
+to learn from Mitchell that her marriage to Capt. Jack Crawford had
+turned out so unhappily--some men were brutes, weren't they? There was
+a hidden romance gnawing at the Big Four's heart, and Phoebe Snow
+had a picture of James K. Hackett on her desk and wanted to start a
+poultry farm. The Santa Fé had been married once, but had taken her
+maiden name, it was so much pleasanter in business.
+
+As Mitchell's telephone orders piled up, day after day, Murphy began
+to treat him more like an employee than a "hand," and finally offered
+him a moderate expense account if he cared to entertain his railroad
+trade. When the young man's amazement at this offer had abated
+sufficiently for him to accept he sent the office-boy around to the
+Santa Fe on the run, instructing him to size up Miss Dunlap and
+report. It was the first order he had ever issued in the office, and
+the news spread quickly that he had been "raised."
+
+Mr. Gross took occasion to congratulate the despised underling with
+pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat
+it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a letter-press on his
+dome.
+
+When the office-boy reappeared he turned in a laconic report, "She's a
+peach!"
+
+Mitchell sweated the lad for further details, then nearly strained a
+tendon in getting to the telephone booth.
+
+"Hello, Miss Dunlap," he called. "Are you tied up for to-night?"
+
+"I'm knot. The k is silent."
+
+"Will you go to the theater with me?"
+
+"Nickelodeon?"
+
+"No, Montgomery and Stone."
+
+The lady muttered something unintelligible, then she tittered
+nervously. "Those top balconies make me dizzy."
+
+"How about the orchestra--sixth row? Could you keep your head there?"
+
+"You must own a bill-board."
+
+"No, it's a bank-book; same initials, you see. I'm an heiress."
+
+"See here, Mitch"--Miss Dunlap became serious--"you're a good little
+copper-wire comedian, but I don't know you nor your people."
+
+"Well, I come from one of the oldest families in Atwood, Michigan, and
+that town was settled over thirty years ago."
+
+"But you don't know me," the lady demurred.
+
+"I do, too. You're a tall blonde, gray eyes, blue dress; you have a
+dimple--"
+
+"Well, I declare! All right, then; seven-thirty to-night, six hundred
+and twelve Filbert Street, fourth apartment, and many thanks."
+
+Fifteen minutes before the appointed time Louis Mitchell was fidgeting
+nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water "walk-up" known as
+Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes.
+Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the
+back-drop for a "Pity the Blind" card; but promptly on the minute
+he punched the button at the fourth apartment. An instant later he
+realized that no matter how he looked he had it on Miss Dunlap by
+eighty per cent.
+
+She was a blonde, to be sure, for the time being, and by the grace of
+H_{2}O_{2}. One glance convinced her caller of two things--_viz_.,
+that his office-boy did not care much for peaches, and that the Santa
+Fé purchasing agent had a jealous wife. The most that possibly could
+be said in praise of Miss Dunlap's appearance was that she was the
+largest stenographer in Chicago. Then and there, however, her caller
+qualified as a salesman; he smiled and he chatted in a free and easy
+way that had the lady roped, thrown, and lashed to his chariot in
+three minutes by her alarm-clock.
+
+They went to the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone
+did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a
+laughing hyena. Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent
+to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a
+stick in his hand. She gushed, but so does Old Faithful. Anyhow, the
+audience enjoyed her greatly.
+
+At supper Mitchell secured parking space for his companion at the
+Union Café, and there he learned how a welsh rabbit may be humiliated
+by a woman. During the _débâcle_ he fingered the money in his pocket,
+then shut his eyes and ordered a bottle of champagne, just to see if
+it could be done. Contrary to his expectation, the waiter did not
+swoon; nor was he arrested. Root-beer had been Mitchell's main
+intoxicant heretofore, but as he and the noisy Miss Dunlap sipped the
+effervescing wine over their ice-cream, they pledged themselves to
+enjoy Monday evenings together, and she told him, frankly:
+
+"Mitch, you're the nickel-plated entertainer, and I'll never miss
+another Monday eve unless I'm in the shops or the round-house. You
+certainly have got class."
+
+At breakfast Miss Harris regarded Lotus darkly, for Mr. Gross had told
+her just enough to excite her curiosity.
+
+"Where were you last night?" she inquired.
+
+"I went to a show."
+
+"Were the pictures good?"
+
+"They don't have pictures at the Grand."
+
+"Oh--h!" The manicurist's violet eyes opened wide. "Louis--you _drank_
+something. You're awful pale. What was it?"
+
+"Clicquot! That's my favorite brand."
+
+Miss Harris clutched the table-cloth and pulled a dish into her lap.
+After a moment she said: "Maybe you'll take me somewhere to-night. We
+haven't been out together for the longest time."
+
+"Oh, I see! This is Gross's night at the Maccabbees', isn't it?" Louis
+gloated brutally over her confusion. "Sorry, but I'll probably have to
+entertain some more customers. The firm is keeping me busy."
+
+At the office things went most pleasantly for the next few weeks;
+sixty per cent. of the city's railroad business came to Comer &
+Mathison; the clerks began to treat Mitchell as if he were an equal;
+even Gross lost his patronizing air and became openly hateful, while
+Murphy--Louis no longer called him Mister--increased his assistant's
+expense account and confided some of his family affairs to the latter.
+Mr. Comer, the senior partner, began to nod familiarly as he passed
+the quotation clerk's desk.
+
+Nor were Louis's customers all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap. Phoebe
+Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern
+took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue. He gave them
+each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were
+taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris.
+But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, he soon
+began to call the waiters at Rector's by their given names, and a
+number of the more prominent cab-drivers waved at him.
+
+One morning when, for the tenth successive time, he slid into his
+desk-chair an hour late, Mr. Comer bowed to him, not only familiarly,
+but sarcastically, then invited him to step into his private office
+and see if he could locate the center of the carpet. It was a
+geometrical task that Louis had been wishing to try for some time.
+
+The senior partner began with elaborate sarcasm. "I notice you're
+not getting down until nine o'clock lately, Mr. Mitchell. Is your
+automobile out of order?"
+
+"I have no automobile, Mr. Comer," the youth replied, respectfully.
+
+"No? I'm surprised. Well, if eight sharp is too early, you may set
+your time."
+
+Mitchell tried his best to appear disconcerted. "You know I'm busy
+every evening with my trade," said he.
+
+"Nonsense. I've seen you out with a different dressmaker every night
+that I've been down-town."
+
+"Those are not dressmakers, they are stenographers from the railroad
+offices. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with me, but I'm glad you
+called me in, for I've been meaning to speak to you about this very
+thing. You see, I have practically all the railroad business in the
+city, and it takes too much of my time keeping it lined up. I have no
+leisure of my own. I'll quit Saturday night, if convenient."
+
+Mr. Comer grunted like a man who has stepped off a flight of stairs
+one step too soon. "I didn't know it was really business. Of course,
+if it is, why, you needn't quit--exactly--"
+
+"I'm afraid I'll have to." Mitchell dropped his eyes demurely. "I've
+had a number of offers, and in justice to myself--"
+
+"Offers? _You_? How much?"
+
+"One hundred a month and expenses."
+
+Mr. Comer removed his glasses, he polished them carefully, then he
+readjusted them and leaned forward, looking the young man over from
+head to foot, as if he had never until this moment seen more than his
+vague outlines.
+
+"Um-m! You're nineteen years old, I believe!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, then, an hour's delay won't be serious. Now you go back to
+your desk and send Mr. Murphy here. I'll let you know shortly whether
+Saturday night or this noon will be convenient."
+
+It was perhaps a half-hour before lunch-time when Mr. Comer again
+called for Mitchell, greeting him with the gruff inquiry:
+
+"See here, do you think I'm going to advance you from twelve to
+twenty-five a week at one clip?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Humph! I'm not. I had a talk with Murphy. I think he's a liar, but
+I'm going to make it fifteen hundred a year and expenses. Now get busy
+and work your 'trade' for all it's worth."
+
+Young Mitchell's knees wabbled, but, having learned the value of a
+black mask and a gun, he went through his victim thoroughly while he
+had him down.
+
+"I'd like a traveling position the first of the year, sir, if you
+don't mind."
+
+"All right! If you hold your present gait I'll give you the Western
+roads. Anything else you'd like? Well, then, git!"
+
+That day Louis switched from the narrow-countered bakery-lunch route
+to regular standard-gauge restaurants; he ordered clothes like a
+bookmaker's bride and he sent a cubic foot of violets to Miss Harris.
+At dinner-time he patronized Mr. Gross so tantalizingly that the
+latter threatened to pull his nose out until it resembled a yard of
+garden hose.
+
+The whole boarding-house was agog at Mitchell's good fortune and
+Miss Harris smiled on him in a manner reminiscent of the good old
+ante-bookkeeper--one might say "ante-vellum"--days. She hinted that
+Mr. Gross's company did not wholly satisfy her soul-hunger, and even
+confessed that she was lonely; but this was Mitchell's Rock Island
+evening, and although the frank surrender in Miss Harris's eyes caused
+him to gasp as if he were slowly settling into a barrel of ice-water,
+he tore himself from her side.
+
+Louis's batting average would have reached one thousand had it not
+been for the Monon. Miss Day, the young lady there, had a vocabulary
+limited to "Hello," "Too high," and "Good-by," and it became
+particularly galling to learn that the fellow at James & Naughten's
+was pulling down the business, so Mitchell went to Murphy with a
+proposition which showed that his mental growth had kept pace with his
+financial advancement.
+
+"You need a new stenographer," he declared.
+
+"Oh, do I? Why do I need a new stenographer, Mr. Bones?"
+
+"Well, it would be a good investment, and I know a corker."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Miss Day, of the Monon."
+
+"I didn't know you cared for Miss Day."
+
+"I don't. That's the reason I want her to work for you."
+
+Murphy coughed slightly, then he agreed. "You're learning the game.
+We'll give her a three-dollar raise, and take her on."
+
+Shortly thereafter Mitchell began to get acquainted with the new Miss
+Monon along the right lines, and gave her Thursday nights. She was a
+great improvement over Miss Day; she was, in fact, quite different
+from any of the others. She was small and winsome, and she didn't care
+to run around. She liked her home, and so did Mitchell after he had
+called a few times. Before long he began to look forward eagerly
+to Thursday nights and Miss Monon's cozy corner with its red-plush
+cushions--reminiscent of chair-cars, to be sure--and its darkness
+illumined dimly by red and green signal lamps. Many a pleasant evening
+the two spent there, talking of locomotive planished iron, wire
+nails, and turnbuckles, and the late lunch Miss Monon served beat the
+system's regular buffet service a city block. Of course they lit the
+red fire in front of James & Naughten's and turned the green light
+Mitchell's way. He had the right of way on the Monon after that, and
+other salesmen were side-tracked.
+
+But this was too easy to last. Human affairs never run smoothly; it is
+a man's ability to surmount the hummocks and the pressure ridges that
+enables him to penetrate to the polar regions of success. The first
+inkling of disaster came to Mitchell when Miss Dunlap began to tire
+of the gay life and chose to spend her Monday evenings at home, where
+they might be alone together. She spoke of the domestic habits she had
+acquired during her brief matrimonial experience; she boldly declared
+that marriage was the ideal state for any man, and that two could live
+as cheaply as one, although personally she saw no reason why a girl
+should quit work the instant she became a wife, did he? She confessed
+that Monday evenings had become so pleasant that if Louis could
+arrange to drop in on Fridays also, the week would be considerably
+brightened thereby and her whole disposition improved. Now Fridays
+were cinched tightly to the Big Four, but the young man dared not
+acknowledge it, so he confessed that all his evenings except Monday
+were taken up with night school, whereupon Miss Dunlap, in order
+to keep abreast of his mental development, decided to take a
+correspondence course in Esperanto.
+
+It transpired also that his attentions toward the Lackawanna had
+been misconstrued, for one night when Phoebe bade him adieu in the
+vestibule she broke down and wept upon his shoulder, saying that his
+coldness hurt her. She confessed that a rate clerk in the freight
+department wanted to marry her, and she supposed she'd have to accept
+his dastardly proposal because a girl couldn't go on working all
+her life, could she? Then Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., following a
+red-letter night at Grand Opera, succeeded by a German pancake and a
+stein at the Edelweiss and a cab-ride home, took Louis gravely to task
+for his extravagance and hinted that he ought to have a permanent
+manager who took an interest in him, one who loved music as he did and
+whose tastes were simple and Teutonic.
+
+When the literary lady of the Northwestern declined a trip to the
+White City and began to read Marion Crawford aloud to him Louis awoke
+to the gravity of the situation.
+
+But before he had worked the matter out in his own mind that rate
+clerk of whom Miss Lackawanna had spoken dropped in at Comer &
+Mathison's, introduced himself to Mitchell and told him, with a degree
+of firmness which could not be ignored, that his attentions to Miss
+Phoebe Snow were distasteful. He did not state to whom. Louis's caller
+had the physical proportions of a "white hope," and he wasted few
+words. He had come to nail up a vacate notice, and he announced simply
+but firmly that Miss Snow's Wednesday evenings were to be considered
+open time thereafter, and if Mitchell elected to horn his way in it
+was a hundred-to-one shot that he'd have to give up solid foods for a
+month or more and take his nourishment through a glass tube.
+
+Nor were the young man's troubles confined to the office. Miss Harris,
+it seemed, had seen him with a different lady each night she and Mr.
+Gross had been out, and had drawn her own conclusions, so, therefore,
+when he tried to talk to her she flared up and called him a dissipated
+roué, and threatened to have the head bookkeeper give him a thrashing
+if he dared to accost her again.
+
+Now the various apartments where Mitchell had been calling, these past
+months, were opulently furnished with gifts from the representatives
+of the various railway supply houses of the city, each article being
+cunningly designed to cement in the mind of the owner a source of
+supply which, coupled with price and delivery, would make for good
+sales service. He was greatly surprised one day to receive a brass
+library lamp from the Santa Fé the initial destination of which had
+evidently been changed. Then came a mission hall-clock in the original
+package, redirected in the hand of Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., and
+one day the office-boy from the Lackawanna brought him a smoking-set
+for which Miss Phoebe Snow had no use. Gifts like these piled
+up rapidly, many of them bearing witness to the fact that their
+consignment originated from Mitchell's very rivals in the railroad
+trade. Judging from the quantity of stuff that ricocheted from the
+Santa Fé it was Miss Dunlap's evident desire to present him with a
+whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible. Louis's desk
+became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green's became filled
+with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-à-brac. He
+acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of
+his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers
+was the best in Chicago.
+
+Miss Harris continued to ignore him, however, and he learned with a
+jealous pang that she was giving Mr. Gross a gratuitous course of
+facial massage and scalp treatments. No longer did Mitchell entertain
+his trade; they entertained him. They tried to help him save his
+money, and every evening he was forced to battle for his freedom.
+
+In desperation he finally went to Murphy begging quick promotion to a
+traveling position, but the Sales Manager told him there was no chance
+before the first of the year, then asked him why he had lost his grip
+on the Lackawanna business.
+
+As a matter of fact, since Miss Phoebe's rate clerk had declared
+himself Mitchell had slipped a few Wednesday nights, trusting to
+hold the Lackawanna trade by virtue of his past performances, but he
+realized in the light of Murphy's catechism that eternal visiting is
+the price of safety. He sighed, therefore, and called up the lady,
+then apprehensively made a date.
+
+That visit issued in disaster, as he had feared. The rate clerk,
+gifted with some subtle second sight, had divined his treachery and
+was waiting. He came to meet the caller gladly, like a paladin. Louis
+strove to disarm the big brute by the power of the human eye, then
+when that did not work he explained, politely, earnestly, that his
+weekly calls were but part and parcel of his business, and that there
+was nothing in his mind so remote as thoughts of matrimony. But the
+rate clerk was a stolid, a suspicious person, and he was gnawed by
+a low and common jealousy. Reason failing, they came together,
+amalgamating like two drops of quicksilver.
+
+On the following morning Mitchell explained to Mr. Comer that
+in stepping out of the bathtub he had slipped and wrenched both
+shoulders, then while passing through the dark hall had put his face
+into mourning by colliding with an open door. His ankles he had
+sprained on the way down-town.
+
+About nine-thirty Miss Dunlap called up, but not to leave an order.
+When she had finally rung off Louis looked dazedly at the wire to see
+if the insulation had melted. It seemed impossible that rubber and
+gutta-percha could withstand such heat as had come sizzling from the
+Santa Fé. From what the lady had said it required no great inductive
+powers to reason that the rate clerk had told all. Coming victorious
+to Miss Lackawanna's door to have his knuckles collodionized he had
+made known in coarse, triumphant language the base commercialism of
+his rival.
+
+The result had been that Phoebe arose in her wrath. Just to verify the
+story she had called up the other railroad offices this morning,
+and the hideous truth had come out. It had come out like a herd of
+jack-rabbits ahead of a hound. Miss Dunlap was shouting mad, but
+Phoebe herself, when she called up, was indignant in a mean, sarcastic
+manner that hurt. The Northwestern rang Mitchell to say good-by
+forever and to hope his nose was broken; the Big Four promised that
+her brother, who was a puddler in the South Chicago steel mills, would
+run in and finish the rate clerk's job; Miss Gratz, of the C.&E.I.,
+was tearfully plaintive and, being German, spoke of suicide. Of course
+all business relations with these offices were at an end.
+
+During that whole day but one 'phone order came, and that was from
+Miss Monon. Mitchell had been steeling himself to hear from her, but
+it seemed that she took the whole thing as rather a good joke. She
+told him she had known all the time why he came to see her, and when
+he reminded her that it was Thursday she invited him to call if he
+thought it worth while.
+
+When he saw Miss Harris at supper-time and undertook to explain his
+black eyes she assured him coldly that he and his ebony gig-lamps
+mattered nothing in her young life, as evidence of which she flashed a
+magnificent three-quarter carat diamond solitaire on her third finger.
+She and Mr. Gross expected to be married inside of two or three years
+if all went well, she told him.
+
+At eight o'clock, disguised behind a pair of blue goggles, Louis
+headed for Miss Monon's door, glad that the cozy corner was so dimly
+lighted. When he arrived she bathed his battle-scarred features with
+hamamelis, which is just the same as Pond's Extract, but doesn't cost
+so much, and told him the other girls had acted foolishly. She was
+very sweet and gentle with him and young Mitchell, imperfect as was
+his vision, saw something in her he had never seen before.
+
+A week went by, during which it seemed that all the railroads except
+the Monon had suddenly gone out of business. It was as if a strike had
+been declared. Another week passed and Mitchell's sales were scarcely
+noticeable, so Mr. Comer called him in to ask:
+
+"Is your 'phone disconnected?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you know the price of our goods?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Don't you sleep well at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then what has become of those pick-ups?"
+
+"I seem to have lost--my trade."
+
+"Your 'trade'! Bah! Young man, you've been dissipating. That expense
+account turned your head. You've been blowing in our money on your
+friends and you've let your customers go. If you can't hold the
+railroad business we'll get some fellow who can. Cut out your
+sewing-circle wine suppers and your box parties to the North Shore
+débutantes and get busy. You've got a week to make good. One week."
+
+There wasn't the slightest chance, and Mitchell told Miss Monon
+so when Thursday came around. He told her all about that promised
+position on the road and what it meant to him, and then he told her
+that beginning Monday he'd have to hunt a new berth at twelve dollars
+per. She was very quiet, very sympathetic--so sympathetic, in fact,
+that he told her some other things which no young man on a diminishing
+salary should tell. She said little at the moment, but she did
+considerable thinking, and she got busy on her 'phone early the next
+morning. The first number she called was the Santa Fé's. When she had
+finished talking with Miss Dunlap that hempen-haired sentimentalist
+was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and blowing her nose,
+assuring Miss Monon, at the same time, that she was a dear and that
+it was all right now that she knew the truth. Miss Monon blushed
+prettily, thanked her, and confessed that she had felt it coming on
+for some time. Thereupon they took turns calling the others, from the
+Big Four to the C.&E.I., with the result that Mitchell's wire began to
+heat up.
+
+Phoebe Snow called him to say that she hadn't meant what she said,
+that he was a good old scout, and that the rate clerk was sorry also,
+and wanted to stand treat for a Dutch lunch. Then she left an order
+for a ton and a half of engine bolts.
+
+Miss Gratz cried a little when she heard Mitchell's voice and told him
+to make his own price on forty kegs of washers and suit himself about
+delivery.
+
+Miss Dunlap confessed that it was her pride which had spoken, and,
+anyhow, she knew altogether too much about marriage to take another
+chance. She'd rather have one man friend than three husbands.
+
+One by one the flock returned, and Saturday night Mitchell sent five
+pounds of chocolates and a sheaf of red roses to the one who had made
+it all come out right. He got his share of business after that, and
+when the holidays came they brought him his promotion.
+
+Murphy, who knew most of the facts, was the first to congratulate him.
+"Jove!" he said, "that little Monon lady saved your bacon, didn't she?
+By. the way, you never told me what her name was."
+
+Young Mitchell's cheeks assumed a shell-pink shade as he replied: "It
+doesn't matter what her name was, it's Mitchell now. We were married
+yesterday and--all the roads were represented at the wedding."
+
+
+
+
+WITH BRIDGES BURNED
+
+
+Louis Mitchell knew what the telegram meant, even though it was brief
+and cryptic. He had been expecting something of the sort ever since
+the bottom dropped out of the steel business and prices tobogganed
+forty dollars a ton. Nevertheless, it came as an undeniable shock, for
+he had hoped the firm would keep him on in spite of hard times. He
+wondered, as he sadly pocketed the yellow sheet, whether he had in him
+the makings of a good life-insurance agent, or if he had not better
+"join out" with a medicine show. This message led him to think his
+talents must lie along the latter line. Certainly they did not lie in
+the direction of metal supplies.
+
+He had plenty of time to think the situation over, however, for it is
+a long jump from Butte to Chicago; when he arrived at the latter place
+he was certain of only one thing, he would not stand a cut in salary.
+Either Comer & Mathison would have to fire him outright or keep him on
+at his present wage; he would not compromise as the other salesmen had
+done and were doing.
+
+Twenty-five hundred a year is a liberal piece of money where people
+raise their own vegetables, but to a man traveling in the West it is
+about equal to "no pair." Given two hundred dollars a month and a fair
+expense account a salesman can plow quite a respectable furrow around
+Plymouth Rock, but out where they roll their r's and monogram their
+live stock he can't make a track. Besides the loss of prestige and all
+that went with it, there was another reason why young Mitchell could
+not face a cut. He had a wife, and she was too new, too wonderful;
+she admired him too greatly to permit of such a thing. She might, she
+doubtless would, lose confidence in him if he took a step backward,
+and that confidence of hers was the most splendid thing in Mitchell's
+life. No, if Comer & Mathison wanted to make any change, they would
+have to promote him. Ten minutes with the "old man," however, served
+to jar this satisfactory determination to its foundation. Mr. Comer
+put the situation clearly, concisely.
+
+"Business is rotten. We've got to lay all the younger men off or we'll
+go broke," he announced.
+
+"But--I'm married," protested the young salesman.
+
+"So am I; so is Mathison; so are the rest of the fellows. But, my boy,
+this is a panic. We wouldn't let you go if we could keep you."
+
+"I can sell goods--"
+
+"That's just it; we don't want you to. Conditions are such that we
+can't afford to sell anything. The less business we do the fewer
+losses we stand to make. Good Lord, Louis, this is the worst year the
+trade has ever known!"
+
+"B-but--I'm married," blankly repeated Mitchell.
+
+Comer shook his head. "We'd keep you in a minute if there was any way
+to do it. You go home and see the wife. Of course if you can show
+us where you're worth it, we'll let you stay; but--well, you can't.
+There's no chance. I'll see you to-morrow."
+
+Ordinarily Mitchell would not have allowed himself the extravagance
+of a cab, but to-day the cars were too slow. He wondered how the girl
+would take this calamity, their very first. As a matter of fact, she
+divined the news even before he had voiced his exuberant greetings,
+and, leading him into the neat little front room, she curled up at his
+side, demanding all the reasons for his unexpected recall. He saw that
+she was wide-eyed and rather white. When he had broken the bad news
+she inquired, bravely:
+
+"What is your plan, boy?"
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I mean it. What can I do? I don't know anything except the steel
+business. I can lick my weight in wildcats on my own ground--but--"
+The wife nodded her blonde head in complete agreement. "But that lets
+me out," he concluded, despondently. "I can sell steel because I know
+it from the ground up; it's my specialty."
+
+"Oh, we mustn't think about making a change."
+
+"I've handled more big jobs than any man of my age and experience on
+the road, and yet--I'm fired." The husband sighed wearily. "I built
+that big pipe line in Portland; I sold those smelters in Anaconda, and
+the cyanide tanks for the Highland Girl. Yes, and a lot of other jobs,
+too. I know all about the smelter business, but that's no sign I can
+sell electric belts or corn salve. We're up against it, girlie."
+
+"Have people quit building smelters?"
+
+"They sure have--during this panic. There's nothing doing anywhere."
+
+The wife thought for a moment before saying, "The last time you were
+home you told me about some Western mining men who had gone to South
+Africa--"
+
+"Sure! To the Rand! They've made good, too; they're whopping big
+operators, now."
+
+"You said there was a large contract of some sort coming up in
+London."
+
+"Large! Well, rather! The Robinson-Ray job. It's the biggest ever, in
+my line. They're going to rebuild those plants the Boers destroyed. I
+heard all about it in Montana."
+
+"Well!" Mrs. Mitchell spoke with finality. "That's the place for you.
+Get the firm to send you over there."
+
+"Um-m! I thought about that, but it scared me out. It's too big. Why,
+it's a three-million-dollar job. You see, we've never landed a large
+foreign contract in this country as yet." Mitchell sat up suddenly.
+"But say! This panic might--" Then he relaxed. "Oh, what's the use?
+If there were a chance the firm wouldn't send me. Comer would go
+himself--he'd take the whole outfit over for a job like that. Besides,
+it's too big a thing for our people; they couldn't handle it."
+
+Mrs. Mitchell's eyes were as round as buttons. "Three million dollars'
+worth of steel in one contract! Do you think you could land it if you
+went?"
+
+"It's my line of work," the young man replied, doubtfully. "I'll bet
+I know more about cyanide tanks than any salesman in Europe, and if I
+had a decent price to work on--"
+
+"Then it's the chance we've been waiting for."
+
+The girl scrambled to her feet and, fetching a chair, began to talk
+earnestly, rapidly. She talked for a long time, until gradually the
+man's gray despondency gave way to her own bright optimism. Nor was
+it idle theory alone that she advanced; Mitchell found that she knew
+almost as much about the steel business as he did, and when she had
+finished he arose and kissed her.
+
+"You've put new heart into me, anyhow. If you're game to do your
+share, why--I'll try it out. But remember it may mean all we've got in
+the bank, and--" He looked at her darkly.
+
+"It's the biggest chance we'll ever have," she insisted. "It's worth
+trying. Don't let's wait to get rich until we are old."
+
+When Mr. Comer returned from lunch he found his youngest salesman
+waiting for him, and inside of ten minutes he had learned what
+Mitchell had on his mind. With two words Comer blew out the gas.
+
+"You're crazy," said he.
+
+"Am I? It's worth going after."
+
+"In the first place no big foreign job ever came to America--"
+
+"I know all that. It's time we got one."
+
+"In the second place Comer & Mathison are jobbers."
+
+"I'll get a special price from Carnegie."
+
+"In the third place it would cost a barrel of money to send a man to
+England."
+
+Mitchell swallowed hard. "I'll pay my own way."
+
+Mr. Comer regarded the speaker with genuine astonishment. "_You'll_
+pay your way? Why, you haven't got any money."
+
+"I've got a thousand dollars--or the wife has. It's our nest-egg."
+
+"It would take five thousand to make the trip."
+
+"I'll make it on one. Yes, and I'll come back with that job. Don't you
+see this panic makes the thing possible? Yes, and I'm the one man
+to turn the trick; for it's right in my line. I'll see the Carnegie
+people at Pittsburgh. If they quote the right price I'll ask you for a
+letter, and that's all you'll have to do. Will you let me go?"
+
+"What sort of a letter?"
+
+"A letter stating that I am your general sales manager."
+
+The steel merchant's mouth fell open.
+
+"Oh, I only want it for this London trip," Mitchell explained. "I
+won't use it except as a credential. But I've got to go armed, you
+understand. Mr. Comer, if I don't land that Robinson-Ray contract, I
+won't come back. I--I couldn't, after this. Maybe I'll drive a 'bus--I
+hear they have a lot of them in London."
+
+"Suppose, for instance, you should get the job on a profitable basis;
+the biggest job this concern ever had and one of the biggest ever let
+anywhere--" Mr. Comer's brow was wrinkled humorously. "What would you
+expect out of it?"
+
+Mitchell grinned. "Well, if I signed all those contracts as your
+general sales manager, I'd probably form the habit."
+
+"There's nothing modest about you, is there?" queried the elder man.
+
+"Not a thing. My theory of business is that a man should either be
+fired or promoted. If I get that job I'll leave it to you to do what's
+right. I won't ask any questions."
+
+"The whole thing is utterly absurd," Mitchell's employer protested.
+"You haven't a chance! But--Wait!" He pressed a button on his desk.
+"We'll talk with Mathison."
+
+Louis Mitchell took the night train for Pittsburgh. He was back in
+three days, and that afternoon Mr. Comer, in the privacy of his own
+office, dictated a letter of which no carbon copy was preserved. He
+gave it to the young man with his own hand, and with these words:
+"You'd better think it over carefully, my boy. It's the most idiotic
+thing I ever heard of, and there isn't one chance in a million. It
+won't do you any good to fail, even on a forlorn hope like this."
+
+But Mitchell smiled. "I can't fail--I'm married." Then when the other
+seemed unimpressed by this method of reasoning, he explained: "I guess
+you never saw my wife. She says I can do it."
+
+It was only to this lady herself that Mitchell recited the details of
+his reception at Pittsburgh, and of the battle he had fought in the
+Carnegie office. The Carnegie men had refused to take him seriously,
+had laughed at him as at a mild-mannered lunatic.
+
+"But I got my price," he concluded, triumphantly, "and it sure looks
+good to me. Now for the painful details and the sad good-bys."
+
+"How long will you be gone?" his wife inquired.
+
+"I can't stay more than a month, the bank-roll is too small."
+
+"Oo-oo-h! A month! London is a long way off." Mrs. Mitchell's voice
+broke plaintively and her husband's misgivings at once took fire.
+
+"If I fail, as they all feel sure I will, what then?" he inquired.
+"I'll be out of a job! I'll be a joke in the steel business; I'll be
+broke. What will you do?"
+
+She gave him a ravishing, dimpled smile, and her eyes were brave once
+more. "Why, I haven't forgotten my shorthand, and there are always the
+department stores." In a high, querulous tone she cried "Ca--a--sh!"
+then laughed aloud at his expression. "Oh, it wouldn't hurt me any.
+But--you won't fail--you can't! We're going to be rich. Now, we'll
+divide our grand fortune." She produced a roll of currency from her
+purse and took four twenty-dollar bills from it.
+
+"Only eighty dollars?" he queried.
+
+"It's more than enough for me. You'll be back in a month." She thrust
+the remaining notes into his hand. "It's our one great, glorious
+chance, dear. Don't you understand?"
+
+Faith, hope and enthusiasm, the three graces of salesmanship, thrive
+best in bright places. Had it not been for his wife's cheer during
+those final hours young Mitchell surely would have weakened before it
+came time to leave on the following day. It was a far cry to London,
+and he realized 'way back in his head that there wasn't one chance in
+a million of success. He began to doubt, to waver, but the girl seemed
+to feel that her lord was bound upon some flaring triumph, and even
+at the station her face was wreathed in smiles. Her blue eyes were
+brimming with excitement; she bubbled with hopeful, helpful advice;
+she patted her husband's arm and hugged it to her. "You're going to
+win, boy. You're going to win," she kept repeating. For one moment
+only--at the actual parting--she clung to him wildly, with all her
+woman's strength, then, as the warning cry sounded, she kissed him
+long and hungrily, and fairly thrust him aboard the Pullman. He did
+not dream how she wilted and drooped the instant he had gone.
+
+As the train pulled out he ran back to the observation car to wave
+a last farewell, and saw her clinging to the iron fence, sobbing
+wretchedly; a desolate, weak little girl-wife mastered by a thousand
+fears. She was too blind with tears to see him. The sight raised a
+lump in the young husband's throat which lasted to Fort Wayne.
+
+"Poor little thoroughbred," he mused. "I just can't lose, that's all."
+
+The lump was not entirely gone when the luncheon call came, so
+Mitchell dined upon it, reasoning that this kind of a beginning
+augured well for an economical trip.
+
+Now that he was away from the warmth of his wife's enthusiasm
+contemplation of his undertaking made the salesman rather sick. If
+only he were traveling at the firm's expense, if only he had something
+to fall back upon in case of failure, if only Comer & Mathison were
+behind him in any way, the complexion of things would have been
+altogether different. But to set out for a foreign land with no
+backing whatever in the hope of accomplishing that which no American
+salesman had ever been able to accomplish, and to finance the
+undertaking out of his own pocket on a sum less than he would have
+expected for cigarette money--well, it was an enterprise to test
+a fellow's courage and to dampen the most youthful optimism. His
+proposal to the firm to win all or lose all, he realized now, had
+been in the nature of a bluff, and the firm had called it. There was
+nothing to do, therefore, but go through and win; there could be no
+turning back, for he had burned his bridges.
+
+When one enters a race-horse in a contest he puts the animal in good
+condition, he grooms it, he feeds it the best the stable affords,
+he trains and exercises it carefully. Mitchell had never owned a
+race-horse, but he reasoned that similar principles should apply to a
+human being under similar conditions. He had entered a competition,
+therefore he decided to condition himself physically and mentally for
+the race. A doped pony cannot run, neither can a worried salesman sell
+goods.
+
+In line with this decision, he took one of the best state-rooms on the
+_Lucania_, and denied himself nothing that the ship afforded. Every
+morning he took his exercise, every evening a rub-down. He trained
+like a fighter, and when he landed he was fit; his muscles were
+hard, his stomach strong, his brain clear. He went first-class from
+Liverpool to London; he put up at the Metropole in luxurious quarters.
+When he stopped to think about that nine hundred and twenty, already
+amazingly shrunken, he argued bravely that what he had spent had gone
+to buy condition powders.
+
+On the way across he had posted himself so far as possible about the
+proposed Robinson-Ray plant. He learned that there were to be fifteen
+batteries of cyanide tanks, two high--eighty-four in all--supported
+by steel sub- and super-structures; the work to be completed at
+Krugersdorpf, twenty miles out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
+The address of the company was No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street.
+Threadneedle Street was somewhere in London, and London was the
+capital of a place called England.
+
+He knew other African contracts were under consideration, but he
+dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon
+this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early
+trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful,
+unceasing energy that would not let him rest.
+
+The first evening in London he fattened himself for the fray with a
+hearty dinner, then he strove to get acquainted with his neighbors and
+his environment. The nervous force within him needed outlet, but he
+was frowned upon at every quarter. Even the waiter at his table made
+it patent that his social standing would not permit him to indulge
+in the slightest intimacy with chance guests of the hotel, while the
+young Earl who had permitted Mitchell to register at the desk declined
+utterly to go further with their acquaintance. Louis spent the evening
+at the Empire, and the next morning, which was Sunday, he put in on
+the top of a 'bus, laying himself open to the advances of anybody who
+cared to pay him the slightest attention. But he was ignored; even
+the driver, who spoke a foreign language, evidently considered him a
+suspicious character. Like a wise general, Louis reconnoitered No.
+42-1/2 Threadneedle Street during the afternoon, noting the lay of the
+land and deciding upon modes of transportation to and from. Under
+the pressure of circumstance he chose a Cannon Street 'bus, fare
+"tuppence."
+
+Now garrulity is a disease that must either break out or strike inward
+with fatal results. When Sunday night came, Mitchell was about ready
+to fare forth with gun and mask and take conversation away from
+anybody who had it to spare. He had begun to fear that his vocal cords
+would atrophy.
+
+He was up early, had breakfasted, and was at 42-1/2 Threadneedle
+Street promptly at nine, beating the janitor by some twenty minutes.
+During the next hour and a half he gleaned considerable information
+regarding British business methods, the while he monotonously pounded
+the sidewalk.
+
+At nine-thirty a scouting party of dignified office-boys made a
+cautious approach. At nine-thirty-five there came the main army of
+clerks, only they were not clerks, but "clarks"--very impressive
+gentlemen with gloves, spats, sticks, silk hats and sack coats. At
+this same time, evidently by appointment, came the charwomen--"char"
+being spelled s-c-r-u-b, and affording an example of how pure English
+has been corrupted out in the Americas.
+
+After the arrival of the head "clarks" and stenographers at
+nine-forty-five, there ensued fifteen minutes of guarded conversation
+in front of the offices. During this time the public issues of the day
+were settled and the nation's policies outlined. At ten o'clock the
+offices were formally opened, and at ten-thirty a reception was
+tendered to the managers who arrived dressed as for any well-conducted
+afternoon function.
+
+To Mitchell, who was accustomed to the feverish, football methods of
+American business life, all this was vastly edifying and instructive;
+it was even soothing, although he was vaguely offended to note that
+passers-by avoided him as if fearful of contamination.
+
+Upon entering 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street, he was halted by an
+imperious office-boy. To him Louis gave his card with a request that
+it be handed to Mr. Peebleby, then he seated himself and for an hour
+witnessed a parade of unsmiling, silk-hatted gentlemen pass in and out
+of Mr. Peebleby's office. Growing impatient, at length, he inquired of
+the boy;
+
+"Is somebody dead around here or is this where the City Council
+meets?"
+
+"I beg pardon?" The lad was polite in a cool, superior way.
+
+"I say, what's the idea of the pall-bearers?"
+
+The youth's expression froze to one of disapproval and suspicion.
+
+"I mean the parade. Are these fellows Congress- or minstrel-men?"
+
+His hearer shrugged and smiled vacuously, then turned away, whereupon
+Mitchell took him firmly by the arm.
+
+"Look here, my boy," he began. "There seems to be a lot of information
+coming to both of us. Who are these over-dressed gentlemen I see
+promenading back and forth?"
+
+"Why--they're callers, customers, representatives of the firms we do
+business with, sir."
+
+"Is this Guy Fawkes Day?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Are these men here on business? Are any of them salesmen, for
+instance?"
+
+"Yes, sir; some of them. Certainly, sir."
+
+"To see Mr. Peebleby about the new construction work?"
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"So, you're letting them get the edge on me."
+
+"I beg pardon?"
+
+"Never mind, I merely wanted to assure you that I have some olive
+spats, a high hat, and a walking-stick, but I left them at my hotel.
+I'm a salesman, too. Now then let's get down to business. I've come
+all the way from America to hire an office-boy. I've heard so much
+about English office-boys that I thought I'd run over and get one.
+Would you entertain a proposition to go back to America and become my
+partner?"
+
+The boy rolled his eyes; it was plain that he was seriously alarmed.
+"You are ragging me, sir," he stammered, uncertainly.
+
+"Perish the thought!"
+
+"I--I--Really, sir--"
+
+"I pay twenty-five dollars a week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in
+your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have
+some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver
+dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked
+in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that Mr. Peebleby might
+be at leisure if Mr. Mitchell had another card.
+
+"Never mind the card; I can't trust you with another one. Just show me
+the trail and I'll take it myself. That's a way we have in America."
+
+A moment later he was knocking at a door emblazoned, "Director
+General." Without awaiting an invitation, he turned the knob and
+walked in. Before the astonished Mr. Peebleby could expostulate he had
+introduced himself and was making known his mission.
+
+Fortunately for Mitchell, Englishmen are not without a sense of
+humor. The announcement that this young man had come all the way from
+Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., to bid on the Krugersdorpf work struck Mr.
+Peebleby as amusing. Not only was the idea in itself laughable, but
+also the fact that a mere beardless youth should venture to figure on
+a contract of such gigantic proportions quite convulsed the Director
+General, and in consequence he smiled. Then fearing that his dignity
+had been jeopardized, he announced politely but firmly that the
+proposition was absurd, and that he had no time to discuss it.
+
+"I've come for that job, and I'm going to take it back with me,"
+Mitchell averred, with equal firmness. "I know more about this class
+of work than any salesman you have over here, and I'm going to build
+you the finest cluster of cyanide tanks you ever saw."
+
+"May I ask where you obtained this comprehensive knowledge of tank
+construction?" Mr. Peebleby inquired, with some curiosity.
+
+"Sure!" Mitchell ran through a list of jobs with which the Director
+General could not have been unfamiliar. He mentioned work that caused
+that gentleman to regard him more respectfully. For a time questions
+and answers shot back and forth between them.
+
+"I tell you, that is my line," Mitchell declared, at length. "I'll
+read any blueprints you can offer. I'll answer any queries you can
+formulate. I'm the accredited representative of a big concern, and I'm
+entitled to a chance to figure, at least. That courtesy is due me."
+
+"I dare say it is," the other reluctantly agreed. "I'm very busy, but
+if that is the quickest way to end the discussion I'll give you the
+prints. I assure you, nevertheless, it is an utter waste of your time
+and mine." He pushed a button and five minutes later a clerk staggered
+back into the room with an armful of blueprints that caused Mitchell
+to gasp.
+
+"The bid must be in Thursday at ten-thirty," Peebleby announced.
+
+"Thursday? Why, good Lord! That's only three days, and there's a
+dray-load of drawings!"
+
+"I told you it was a waste of time. You should have come sooner."
+
+Mitchell ran through the pile and his heart grew sick with dismay.
+There were drawings of tanks, drawings of substructures and
+superstructures in every phase of construction--enough of them
+to daunt a skilled engineer. He realized that he had by no means
+appreciated the full magnitude of this work, in fact had never figured
+on a job anything like this one. He could see at least a week's hard,
+constant labor ahead of him--a week's work to be done in three days.
+There was no use trying; the time was too short; it was a physical
+impossibility to formulate an intelligent proposition in such a
+short length of time. Then to Mitchell's mind came the picture of
+a wretched, golden-haired girl clinging to the iron fence of the
+Pennsylvania depot. He gathered the rolls into his arms.
+
+"At ten-thirty, Thursday," said he.
+
+"Ten-thirty, sharp."
+
+"Thank you. I'll have my bid in."
+
+His muscles ached and his knees were trembling even before he had
+reached the street. When he tried to board a 'bus he was waved away,
+so he called a cab, piled his blueprints inside of it, and then
+clambered in on top of them. He realized that he was badly frightened.
+
+To this day the sight of a blueprint gives Louis Mitchell a peculiar
+nausea and a fluttering sensation about the heart. At three o'clock
+the next morning he felt his way blindly to his bed and toppled upon
+it, falling straightway into a slumber during which he passed through
+monotonous, maddening wastes of blue and white, over which ran
+serpentine rows of figures.
+
+He was up with the dawn and at his desk again, but by four that
+afternoon he was too dazed, too exhausted to continue. His eyes were
+playing him tricks, the room was whirling, his hand was shaking until
+his fingers staggered drunkenly across the sheets of paper. Ground
+plans, substructures, superstructures, were jumbled into a frightful
+tangle. He wanted to yell. Instead he flung the drawings about the
+room, stamped savagely upon them, then rushed down-stairs and devoured
+a table d'hôte dinner. He washed the meal down with a bottle of red
+wine, smoked a long cigar, then undressed and went to bed amid the
+scattered blueprints. He slept like a dead man.
+
+He arose at sun-up, clear-headed, calm. All day he worked like a
+machine, increasing his speed as the hours flew. He took good care to
+eat and drink, and, above all, to smoke at regular intervals, but he
+did not leave his room. By dark he had much of the task behind him; by
+midnight he began to have hope; toward dawn he saw the end; and when
+daylight came he collapsed.
+
+He had deciphered the tank and superstructure plans on forty-five sets
+of blueprints, had formulated a proposition, exclusive of substructure
+work, basing a price per pound on the American market then ruling,
+f.o.b. tidewater, New York. He had the proposition in his pocket
+when he tapped on the ground-glass door of Mr. Peebleby's office at
+ten-twenty-nine Thursday morning.
+
+The Director General of the great Robinson-Ray Syndicate was genuinely
+surprised to learn that the young American had completed a bid in so
+short a time, then requested him, somewhat absent-mindedly, to leave
+it on his desk where he could look it over at his leisure.
+
+"Just a moment," said his caller. "I'm going to sit down and talk to
+you again. How long have you been using cyanide tanks, Mr. Peebleby?"
+
+"Ever since they were adopted." Mr. Peebleby was visibly annoyed at
+this interruption to his morning's work.
+
+"Well, I can give you a lot of information about them."
+
+The Director General raised his brows haughtily. "Ah! Suggestions,
+amendments, improvements, no doubt."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"In all my experience I never sent out a blueprint which some youthful
+salesman could not improve upon. Generally the younger the salesman
+the greater the improvement."
+
+In Mitchell's own parlance he "beat Mr. Peebleby to the punch." "If
+that's the case, you've got a rotten line of engineers," he frankly
+announced.
+
+"Indeed! I went over those drawings myself. I flattered myself that
+they were comprehensive and up-to-date." Mr. Peebleby was annoyed,
+nevertheless he was visibly interested and curious.
+
+"Well, they're not," the younger man declared, eying him boldly.
+"For instance, you call for cast-iron columns in your sub-and
+super-structures, whereas they're obsolete. We've discarded them. What
+you save in first cost you eat up, twice over, in freight. Not only
+that, but their strength is a matter of theory, not of fact. Then,
+too, in your structural-steel sections your factor of safety is
+wrongly figured. To get the best results your lower tanks are twenty
+inches too short and your upper ones nine inches too short. For
+another thing, you're using a section of beam which is five per cent.
+heavier than your other dimensions call for."
+
+The Director General sat back in his chair, a look of extreme
+alertness replacing his former expression.
+
+"My word! Is there anything else?" He undertook to speak mockingly,
+but without complete success.
+
+"There is. The layout of your platework is all wrong--out of line with
+modern practice. You should have interchangeable parts in every tank.
+The floor of your lower section should be convex, instead of flat, to
+get the run-off. You see, sir, this is my line of business."
+
+"Who is your engineer?" inquired the elder man. "I should like to talk
+to him."
+
+"You're talking to him now. I'm him--it--them. I'm the party! I told
+you I knew the game."
+
+There was a brief silence, then Mr. Peebleby inquired, "By the way,
+who helped you figure those prints?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"You did that _alone_, since Monday morning?" The speaker was
+incredulous.
+
+"I did. I haven't slept much. I'm pretty tired."
+
+There was a new note in Mr. Peebleby's voice when he said: "Jove! I've
+treated you badly, Mr. Mitchell, but--I wonder if you're too tired to
+tell my engineers what you told me just now? I should like them to
+hear you."
+
+"Trot them in." For the first time since leaving this office three
+days before, Mitchell smiled. He was getting into his stride at last.
+After all, there seemed to be a chance.
+
+There followed a convention of the draftsmen and engineers of the
+Robinson-Ray Syndicate before which an unknown American youth
+delivered an address on "Cyanide Tanks. How to Build Them; Where to
+Buy Them."
+
+It was the old story of a man who had learned his work thoroughly and
+who loved it. Mitchell typified the theory of specialization; what he
+knew, he knew completely, and before he had more than begun his talk
+these men recognized that fact. When he had finished, Mr. Peebleby
+announced that the bids would not be opened that day.
+
+The American had made his first point. He had gained time in which
+to handle himself, and the Robinson-Ray people had recognized a new
+factor in the field. When he was again in the Director General's room,
+the latter said:
+
+"I think I will have you formulate a new bid along the lines you have
+laid down."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You understand, our time is up. Can you have it ready by Saturday,
+three days from now?"
+
+Mitchell laughed. "It's a ten days' job for two men."
+
+"I know, but we can't wait."
+
+"Then give me until Tuesday; I'm used to a twenty-four-hour shift
+now. Meanwhile I'd like to leave these figures here for your chief
+draftsman to examine. Of course they are not to be considered
+binding."
+
+"Isn't that a bit--er--foolish?" inquired Peebleby? "Aren't you
+leaving a weapon behind you?"
+
+"Yes, but not the sort of a weapon you suspect," thought Mitchell.
+"This is a boomerang." Aloud, he answered, lightly: "Oh, that's all
+right. I know I'm among friends."
+
+When his request was granted he made a mental note, "Step number two!"
+
+Again he filled a cab with drawings, again he went back to the
+Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures--back to the
+monotony of tasteless meals served at his elbow.
+
+But there were other things besides his own bid to think of now.
+Mitchell knew he must find what other firms were bidding on the job,
+and what prices they had bid. The first promised to require some
+ingenuity, the second was a Titan's task.
+
+Salesmanship, in its highest development, is an exact science. Given
+the data he desired, Louis Mitchell felt sure he could read the
+figures sealed up in those other bids to a nicety, but to get that
+data required much concentrated effort and much time. Time was what he
+needed above all things; time to refigure these myriad drawings, time
+to determine when the other bids had gone in, time to learn trade
+conditions at the competitive plants, time to sleep. There were not
+sufficient hours in the day for all these things, so he rigidly
+economized on the least important, sleep. He laid out a program
+for himself; by night he worked in his room, by day he cruised for
+information, at odd moments around the dawn he slept. He began to feel
+the strain before long. Never physically robust, he began to grow blue
+and drawn about the nostrils. Frequently his food would not stay down.
+He was forced to drive his lagging spirits with a lash. To accomplish
+this he had to think often of his girl-wife. Her letters, written
+daily, were a great help; they were like some God-given cordial that
+infused fresh blood into his brain, new strength into his flagging
+limbs. Without them he could not have held up.
+
+With certain definite objects in view he made daily trips to
+Threadneedle Street. Invariably he walked into the general offices
+unannounced; invariably he made a new friend before he came out.
+Peebleby seemed to like him; in fact asked his opinion on certain
+forms of structure and voluntarily granted the young man two days of
+grace. Two days! They were like oxygen to a dying man.
+
+Mitchell asked permission to talk to the head draftsman and received
+it, and following their interview he requested the privilege of
+dictating some notes regarding the interview. In this way he met the
+stenographer. When he had finished with her he flipped the girl a gold
+sovereign, stolen from the sadly melted nine hundred and twenty.
+
+As Mitchell was leaving the office the Director General yielded to a
+kindly impulse and advised his new acquaintance to run over to Paris
+and view the Exposition.
+
+"You can do your figuring there just as well as here," said he.
+"I don't want your trip from Chicago to be altogether wasted, Mr.
+Mitchell."
+
+Louis smiled and shook his head. "I can't take that Exposition back
+with me, and I can take this contract. I think I'll camp with my bid."
+
+In the small hours of that night he made a discovery that
+electrified him. He found that the most commonly used section in his
+specifications, a twelve-inch I-beam, was listed under the English
+custom as weighing fifty-four pounds per foot, whereas the
+standardized American section, which possessed the same carrying
+strength, weighed four pounds less. Here was an advantage of eight
+per cent. in cost and freight! This put another round of the ladder
+beneath him; he was progressing well, but as yet he had learned
+nothing about his competitors.
+
+The next morning he had some more dictation for Peebleby's
+stenographer, and niched another sovereign from his sad little
+bank-roll. When the girl gave him his copy he fell into conversation
+with her and painted a picture of Yankeeland well calculated to keep
+her awake nights. They gossiped idly, she of her social obligations,
+he of the cyanide-tank business--he could think of nothing else to
+talk about. Adroitly he led her out. They grew confidential. She
+admitted her admiration for Mr. Jenkins from Edinburgh. Yes, Mr.
+Jenkins's company was bidding on the Krugersdorpf job. He was much
+nicer than Mr. Kruse from the Brussels concern, and, anyhow, those
+Belgian firms had no chance at this contract, for Belgium was
+pro-Boer, and--well, she had heard a few things around the office.
+
+Mitchell was getting "feed-box" information. When he left he knew
+the names of his dangerous competitors as well as those whom, in all
+likelihood, he had no cause to fear. Another step! He was gaining
+ground.
+
+In order to make himself absolutely certain that his figures would be
+low, there still remained three things to learn, and they were matters
+upon which he could afford to take no slightest chance of mistake.
+He must know, first, the dates of those other bids; second, the
+market-price of English steel at such times; and, third, the cost of
+fabrication at the various mills. The first two he believed could
+be easily learned, but the third promised to afford appalling
+difficulties to a man unfamiliar with foreign methods and utterly
+lacking in trade acquaintances. He went at them systematically,
+however, only to run against a snag within the hour. Not only did he
+fail to find the answer to question number one, but he could find no
+market quotations whatever on structural steel shapes such as entered
+into the Krugersdorpf job.
+
+He searched through every possible trade journal, through reading
+rooms and libraries, for the price of I-beams, channels, Z-bars, and
+the like; but nowhere could he even find mention of them. His failure
+left him puzzled and panic-stricken; he could not understand it. If
+only he had more time, he reflected, time in which to learn the usages
+and the customs of this country. But time was what he had not. He was
+tired, very tired from his sleepless nights and hours of daylight
+strain--and meanwhile the days were rushing past.
+
+While engaged in these side labors, he had, of course, been working
+on his draftsmen friends, and more assiduously even than upon his
+blue-prints. On Tuesday night, with but one more day of grace ahead of
+him, he gave a dinner to all of them, disregarding the fact that his
+bank-roll had become frightfully emaciated.
+
+For several days after that little party blue-printing in the
+Robinson-Ray office was a lost art. When his guests had dined and had
+settled back into their chairs, Mitchell decided to risk all upon one
+throw. He rose, at the head of the table, and told them who he was. He
+utterly destroyed their illusions regarding him and his position with
+Comer & Mathison, he bared his heart to those stoop-shouldered, shabby
+young men from Threadneedle Street and came right down to the nine
+hundred and twenty dollars and the girl. He told them what
+this Krugersdorpf job meant to him and to her, and to the four
+twenty-dollar bills in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
+
+Those Englishmen listened silently. Nobody laughed. Perhaps it was the
+sort of thing they had dreamed of doing some day, perhaps there were
+other girls in other tiny furnished flats, other hearts wrapped up in
+similar struggles for advancement. They were good mathematicians, it
+seemed, for they did not have to ask Mitchell how the nine hundred
+and twenty was doing, or to inquire regarding the health of the other
+eighty. One of them, a near-sighted fellow with thick lenses, arose
+with the grave assertion that he had taken the floor for the purpose
+of correcting a popular fallacy; Englishmen and Yankees, he declared,
+were not cousins, they were brothers, and their interests ever had
+been and ever would be identical. He said, too, that England wanted
+to do business with America, and as for this particular contract, not
+only did the British nation as a whole desire America to secure it,
+but the chaps who bent over the boards at No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle
+Street were plugging for her tooth and nail. His hollow-chested
+companions yelled their approval of this statement, whereupon Mitchell
+again arose, alternately flushing and paling, and apologized for what
+had happened in 1776. He acknowledged himself ashamed of the 1812
+affair, moreover, and sympathized with his guests over their present
+trouble with the Boers. When he had finished they voted him the best
+host and the best little cyanide tank-builder known to them--and then
+everybody tried to tell him something at once.
+
+They told him among other things that every bid except his had been in
+for two weeks, and that they were in the vault under the care of Mr.
+Pitts, the head draftsman. They promised to advise him if any new bids
+came in or if any changes occurred, and, most important of all, they
+told him that in England all structural steel shapes, instead of being
+classified as in America, are known as "angles," and they told him
+just how and where to find the official reports giving the price of
+the same for every day in the year.
+
+The word "angles" was the missing key, and those official market
+reports formed the lock in which to fit it. Mitchell had taken several
+mighty strides, and there remained but one more step to take.
+
+When his guests had finally gone home, swearing fealty, and declaring
+this to be the best dinner they had ever drunk, he hastened back to
+his room, back to the desert of blueprints and to the interminable
+columns of figures, and over them he worked like a madman.
+
+He slept two hours before daylight, then he was up and toiling again,
+for this was his last day. Using the data he had gathered the night
+before, he soon had the price of English and Scottish steel at the
+time the last bids were closed. Given one thing more--namely, the cost
+of fabrication in these foreign shops, and he would have reduced this
+hazard to a certainty, he would be able to read the prices contained
+in those sealed bids as plainly as if they lay open before him. But
+his time had narrowed now to hours.
+
+He lunched with John Pitts, the head draughtsman, going back to pick
+up the boomerang he had left the week before.
+
+"Have you gone over my first bid?" he asked, carelessly.
+
+"I have--lucky for you," said Pitts. "You made a mistake."
+
+"Indeed! How so?"
+
+"Why, it's thirty per cent. too low. It would be a crime to give you
+the business at those figures."
+
+"But, you see, I didn't include the sub-structure. I didn't have time
+to figure that." Mitchell prayed that his face might not show his
+eagerness. Evidently it did not, for Pitts walked into the trap.
+
+"Even so," said he; "it's thirty per cent. out of the way. I made
+allowance for that."
+
+The boomerang had finished its flight!
+
+Once they had separated, Mitchell broke for his hotel like a
+hunted man. He had made no mistake in his first figures. The great
+Krugersdorpf job was his; but, nevertheless, he wished to make himself
+absolutely sure and to secure as much profit as possible for Comer
+& Mathison. Without a handsome profit this three-million-dollar job
+might ruin a firm of their standing.
+
+In order to verify Pitts's statement, in order to swell his proposed
+profits to the utmost, Mitchell knew he ought to learn the "overhead"
+in English mills; that is, the fixed charges which, added to shop
+costs and prices of material, are set aside to cover office expenses,
+cost of operation, and contingencies. Without this information
+he would have to go it blind, after a fashion, and thereby risk
+penalizing himself; with it he could estimate very closely the amounts
+of the other bids and insure a safe margin for Comer & Mathison. In
+addition to this precaution he wished to have his own figures checked
+up, for even under normal conditions, if one makes a numerical error
+in work of this sort, he is more than apt to repeat it time and again,
+and Mitchell knew himself to be deadly tired--almost on the verge
+of collapse. He was inclined to doze off whenever he sat down; the
+raucous noises of the city no longer jarred or startled him, and his
+surroundings were becoming unreal, grotesque, as if seen through the
+spell of absinthe. Yes, it was necessary to check off his figures.
+
+But who could he get to do the work? He could not go to Threadneedle
+Street. He thought of the Carnegie representative and telephoned him,
+explaining the situation and his crying need, only to be told that
+no one in that office was capable of assisting him. He was referred,
+however, to an English engineer who, it was barely possible, could
+handle the job. In closing, the Carnegie man voiced a vague warning:
+
+"His name is Dell, and he used to be with one of the Edinburgh
+concerns, so don't let him know your inside figures. He might spring a
+leak."
+
+A half-hour later Mitchell, his arms full of blue-prints, was in Mr.
+Dell's office. But the English engineer hesitated; he was very busy;
+he had numerous obligations. Mitchell gazed over the threadbare rooms
+and hastily estimated how much of the nine hundred and twenty dollars
+would be left after he had paid his hotel bill. What there was to do
+must be done before the next morning's sun arose.
+
+"This job is worth ten sovereigns to me if it is finished tonight," he
+declared, briskly.
+
+Mr. Dell hesitated, stumbled, and fell. "Very well. We'll begin at
+once," said he.
+
+He unrolled the blue-prints, from a drawer he produced a sliding-rule.
+He slid this rule up; he slid it down; he gazed through his glasses
+at space; he made microscopic Spencerian figures in neat rows and
+columns. He seemed to pluck his results from the air with necromantic
+cunning, and what had taken the young man at his elbow days and nights
+of cruel effort to accomplish--what had put haggard lines about his
+mouth and eyes--the engineer accomplished in a few hours by means
+of that sliding-rule. Meanwhile, with one weary effort of will, his
+visitor summoned his powers and cross-examined him adroitly. Here was
+the very man to supply the one missing link in the perfect chain;
+but Mr. Dell would not talk. He did not like Americans nor American
+methods, and he made his dislike apparent by sealing his lips.
+Mitchell played upon his vanity at first, only to find the man wholly
+lacking in conceit. Changing his method of attack, Mitchell built a
+fire under Mr. Dell. He grilled everything British, the people, their
+social customs, their business methods, even English engineers, and
+he did it in a most annoying manner. Mr. Dell began to perspire.
+He worked doggedly on for a while, then he arose in defense of his
+country, whereupon Mitchell artfully shifted his attack to English
+steel-mills. The other refuted his statements flatly. At length the
+engineer was goaded to anger, he became disputative, indignant,
+loquacious.
+
+When Louis Mitchell flung himself into the dark body of his cab,
+late that evening, and sank his legs knee-deep into those hateful
+blue-prints, he blessed that engineer, for Dell had told him all he
+wished to know, all he had tried so vainly to discover through other
+sources. The average "overhead" in British mills was one hundred and
+thirty per cent., and Dell _knew_.
+
+The young man laughed hysterically, triumphantly, but the sound was
+more like a tearful hiccough. To-morrow at ten-thirty! It was nearly
+over. He would be ready. As he lolled back inertly upon the cushions
+he mused dreamily that he had done well. In less than two weeks, in a
+foreign country, and under strange conditions, without acquaintance or
+pull or help of any sort, he had learned the names of his competitive
+firms, the dates of their bids, and the market prices ruling on every
+piece of steel in the Krugersdorpf job when those bids were figured.
+He had learned the rules governing English labor unions; he knew all
+about piece-work and time-work, fixed charges and shop costs, together
+with the ability of every plant figuring on the Robinson-Ray contract
+to turn out the work in the necessary time. All this, and more, he
+had learned legitimately and without cost to his commercial honor.
+Henceforth that South-African contract depended merely upon his own
+ability to add, subtract, and multiply correctly. It was his just as
+surely as two and two make four--for salesmanship is an exact science.
+
+The girl would be very happy, he told himself. He was glad that she
+could never know the strain it had been.
+
+Again, through the slow, silent hours of that Wednesday night,
+Mitchell fought the fatigue of death, going over his figures
+carefully. There were no errors in them.
+
+Dawn was creeping in on him when he added a clean thirty-per-cent.
+profit for his firm, signed his bid, and prepared for bed. But he
+found that he could not leave the thing. After he had turned in he
+became assailed by sudden doubts and fears. What if he had made a
+mistake after all? What if some link in his chain were faulty? What if
+some other bidder had made a mistake and underfigured? Such thoughts
+made him tremble. Now that it was all done, he feared that he had been
+overconfident, for could it really be possible that the greatest steel
+contract in years would come to him? He grew dizzy at the picture of
+what it meant to him and to the girl.
+
+He calmed himself finally and looked straight at the matter, sitting
+up in bed, his knees drawn up under his chin. While so engaged he
+caught sight of his drawn face in the mirror opposite and started
+when he realized how old and heavy with fatigue it was. He determined
+suddenly to shave that profit to twenty-nine per cent. and make
+assurance doubly sure, but managed to conquer his momentary panic.
+Cold reasoning told him that his figures were safe.
+
+Louis Mitchell was the only salesman in Mr. Peebleby's office that
+morning who did not wear a silk hat, pearl gloves, and spats. In
+consequence the others ignored him for a time--but only for a time.
+Once the proposals had been read, an air of impenetrable gloom spread
+over the room. The seven Scotch, English, and Belgian mourners stared
+cheerlessly at one another and then with growing curiosity at the
+young man from overseas who had underbid the lowest of them by six
+thousand pounds sterling, less than one per cent. After a while they
+bowed among themselves, mumbled something to Mr. Peebleby, and
+went softly out in their high hats, their pearl gloves, and their
+spats--more like pall-bearers now than ever.
+
+"Six hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling!"
+said the Director General. "By Jove, Mitchell, I'm glad!" They shook
+hands. "I'm really glad."
+
+"That's over three million dollars in real money," said the youth.
+"It's quite a tidy little job."
+
+Peebleby laughed. "You've been very decent about it, too. I hope to
+see something of you in the future. What?"
+
+"You'll see my smoke, that's all."
+
+"You're not going back right away?"
+
+"To-morrow; I've booked my passage and cabled the girl to meet me in
+New York."
+
+"My word! A girl! She'll be glad to hear of your success."
+
+"Oh, I've told her already. You see, I knew I'd won."
+
+The Director General of the Robinson-Ray Syndicate stared in open
+amazement, but Mitchell hitched his chair closer, saying:
+
+"Now let's get at those signatures. I've got to pack."
+
+That night Louis Mitchell slept with fifteen separate contracts under
+his pillow. He double-locked the door, pulled the dresser in front of
+it, and left the light burning. At times he awoke with a start and
+felt for the documents. Toward morning he was seized with a sudden
+fright, so he got up and read them all over for fear somebody had
+tampered with them. They were correct, however, whereupon he read them
+a second time just for pleasure. They were strangely interesting.
+
+On the _Deutschland_ he slept much of the way across, and by the
+time Liberty Statue loomed up he could dream of other things than
+blue-prints--of the girl, for instance.
+
+She had enough left from the eighty dollars to bring her to New York
+and to pay for a week's lodging in West Thirty-fourth Street, though
+how she managed it Mitchell never knew. She was at the dock, of
+course. He knew she would be. He expected to see her with her arms
+outstretched and with the old joyous smile upon her dimpled face, and,
+therefore, he was sorely disappointed when he came down the gang-plank
+and she did not appear. He searched high and low until finally he
+discovered her seated over by the letter "M," where his trunk was
+waiting inspection. There she was, huddled up on a coil of rope,
+crying as if her heart would break; her nerve was gone, along with the
+four twenty-dollar bills; she was afraid to face him, afraid there had
+been an error in his cablegram.
+
+Not until she lay in his arms at last, sobbing and laughing, her
+slender body all aquiver, did she believe. Then he allowed her to feel
+the fifteen contracts inside his coat. Later, when they were in a cab
+bound for her smelly little boarding-house, he showed them to her. In
+return she gave him a telegram from his firm--a telegram addressed as
+follows:
+
+Mr. LOUIS MITCHELL,
+
+General Sales Manager, Comer & Mathison, New York City.
+
+The message read:
+
+That goes. COMER.
+
+Mitchell opened the trap above his head and called up to the driver:
+"Hey, Cabbie! We've changed our minds. Drive us to the Waldorf--at a
+gallop."
+
+
+
+
+WITH INTEREST TO DATE
+
+
+This is the tale of a wrong that rankled and a great revenge. It is
+not a moral story, nor yet, measured by the modern money code, is it
+what could be called immoral. It is merely a tale of sharp wits
+which clashed in pursuit of business, therefore let it be considered
+unmoral, a word with a wholly different commercial significance.
+
+Time was when wrongs were righted by mace and battle-ax, amid fanfares
+and shoutings, but we live in a quieter age, an age of repression,
+wherein the keenest thrust is not delivered with a yell of triumph nor
+the oldest score settled to the blare of trumpets. No longer do the
+men of great muscle lord it over the weak and the puny; as a rule
+they toil and they lift, doing unpleasant, menial duties for
+hollow-chested, big-domed men with eye-glasses. But among those very
+spindle-shanked, terra-cotta dwellers who cower at draughts and eat
+soda mints, the ancient struggle for supremacy wages fiercer than
+ever. Single combats are fought now as then, and the flavor of victory
+is quite as sweet to the pallid man back of a roll-top desk as to the
+swart, bristling baron behind his vizored helmet.
+
+The beginning of this story runs back to the time Henry Hanford went
+with the General Equipment Company as a young salesman full of hope
+and enthusiasm and a somewhat exaggerated idea of his own importance.
+He was selling shears, punches, and other machinery used in the
+fabrication of structural steel. In the territory assigned to him, the
+works of the Atlantic Bridge Company stuck up like a sore thumb, for
+although it employed many men, although its contracts were large and
+its requirements numerous, the General Equipment Company had never
+sold it a dollar's worth of anything.
+
+In the course of time Hanford convinced himself that the Atlantic
+Bridge Company needed more modern machinery, so he laid siege to
+Jackson Wylie, Sr., its president and practical owner. He spent all of
+six months in gaining the old man's ear, but when he succeeded he
+laid himself out to sell his goods. He analyzed the Atlantic Bridge
+Company's needs in the light of modern milling practice, and
+demonstrated the saving his equipment would effect. A big order and
+much prestige were at stake, both of which young Hanford needed
+badly at the time. He was vastly encouraged, therefore, when the
+bridge-builder listened attentively to him.
+
+"I dare say we shall have to make a change," Mr. Wylie reluctantly
+agreed. "I've been bothered to death by machinery salesmen, but you're
+the first one to really interest me."
+
+Hanford acknowledged the compliment and proceeded further to elaborate
+upon the superiority of the General Equipment Company's goods over
+those sold by rival concerns. When he left he felt that he had Mr.
+Wylie, Sr., "going."
+
+At the office they warned him that he had a hard nut to crack; that
+Wylie was given to "stringing" salesmen and was a hard man to close
+with, but Hanford smiled confidently. Granting those facts, they
+rendered him all the more eager to make this sale; and the bridge
+company really did need up-to-date machinery.
+
+He instituted an even more vigorous selling campaign, he sent much
+printed matter to Mr. Wylie, Sr., he wrote him many letters. Being a
+thoroughgoing young saleman, he studied the plant from the ground up,
+learning the bridge business in such detail as enabled him to talk
+with authority on efficiency methods. In the course of his studies he
+discovered many things that were wrong with the Atlantic, and spent
+days in outlining improvements on paper. He made the acquaintance of
+the foremen; he cultivated the General Superintendent; he even met Mr.
+Jackson Wylie, Jr., the Sales Manager, a very polished, metallic young
+man, who seemed quite as deeply impressed with Hanford's statements as
+did his father.
+
+Under our highly developed competitive system, modern business is done
+very largely upon personality. From the attitude of both father and
+son, Hanford began to count his chickens. Instead of letting up,
+however, he redoubled his efforts, which was his way. He spent so much
+time on the matter that his other work suffered, and in consequence
+his firm called him down. He outlined his progress with the Atlantic
+Bridge Company, declared he was going to succeed, and continued to
+camp with the job, notwithstanding the firm's open doubts.
+
+Sixty days after his first interview he had another visit with Wylie,
+senior, during which the latter drained him of information and made an
+appointment for a month later. Said Mr. Wylie:
+
+"You impress me strongly, Hanford, and I want my associates to hear
+you. Get your proposition into shape and make the same talk to them
+that you have made to me."
+
+Hanford went away elated; he even bragged a bit at the office, and the
+report got around among the other salesmen that he really had done the
+impossible and had pulled off something big with the Atlantic. It was
+a busy month for that young gentleman, and when the red-letter day at
+last arrived he went on to Newark to find both Wylies awaiting him.
+
+"Well, sir, are you prepared to make a good argument?" the father
+inquired.
+
+"I am." Hanford decided that three months was not too long a time to
+devote to work of this magnitude, after all.
+
+"I want you to do your best," the bridge-builder continued,
+encouragingly, then he led Hanford into the directors' room, where, to
+his visitor's astonishment, some fifty men were seated.
+
+"These are our salesmen," announced Mr. Wylie. He introduced Hanford
+to them with the request that they listen attentively to what the
+young man had to say.
+
+It was rather nervous work for Hanford, but he soon warmed up and
+forgot his embarrassment. He stood on his feet for two long hours
+pleading as if for his life. He went over the Atlantic plant from end
+to end; he showed the economic necessity for new machinery; then he
+explained the efficiency of his own appliances. He took rival types
+and picked them to pieces, pointing out their inferiority. He showed
+his familiarity with bridge work by going into figures which bore out
+his contention that the Atlantic's output could be increased and at
+an actual monthly saving. He wound up by proving that the General
+Equipment Company was the one concern best fitted to effect the
+improvement.
+
+It had taken months of unremitting toil to prepare himself for this
+exposition, but the young fellow felt he had made his case. When he
+took up the cost of the proposed instalment, however, Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., interrupted him.
+
+"That is all I care to have you cover," the latter explained. "Thank
+you very kindly, Mr. Hanford."
+
+Hanford sat down and wiped his forehead, whereupon the other stepped
+forward and addressed his employees.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "you have just listened to the best argument I
+ever heard. I purposely called you in from the road so that you might
+have a practical lesson in salesmanship and learn something from an
+outsider about your own business. I want you to profit by this talk.
+Take it to heart and apply it to your own customers. Our selling
+efficiency has deteriorated lately; you are getting lazy. I want you
+to wake up and show better results. That is all. You might thank this
+young gentleman for his kindness."
+
+When the audience had dispersed, Hanford inquired, blankly, "Don't you
+intend to act on my suggestions?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Mr. Wylie, in apparent surprise. "We are doing nicely,
+as it is. I merely wanted you to address the boys."
+
+"But--I've spent three months of hard labor on this! You led me to
+believe that you would put in new equipment."
+
+The younger Wylie laughed, languidly exhaling a lungful of cigarette
+smoke. "When Dad gets ready to purchase, he'll let you know," said he.
+
+Six months later the Atlantic Bridge Company placed a mammoth order
+with Hanford's rival concern, and he was not even asked to figure on
+it.
+
+That is how the seeds of this story were sown. Of course the facts got
+out, for those Atlantic salesmen were not wanting in a sense of humor,
+and Hanford was joshed in every quarter. To make matters worse,
+his firm called him to account for his wasted time, implying that
+something was evidently wrong with his selling methods. Thus began a
+lack of confidence which quickly developed into strained relations.
+The result was inevitable; Hanford saw what was coming and was wise
+enough to resign his position.
+
+But it was the ridicule that hurt him most. He was unable to get
+away from that. Had he been at all emotional, he would have sworn a
+vendetta, so deep and lasting was the hurt, but he did not; he merely
+failed to forget, which, after all, is not so different.
+
+It seemed queer that Henry Hanford should wind up in the bridge
+business himself, after attempting to fill several unsatisfactory
+positions, and yet there was nothing remarkable about it, for that
+three months of intense application at the Atlantic plant had given
+him a groundwork which came in handy when the Patterson Bridge Company
+offered him a desk. He was a good salesman; he worked hard and in
+time he was promoted. By and by the story was forgotten--by every
+one except Henry Hanford. But he had lost a considerable number of
+precious years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When it became known that the English and Continental structural
+shops were so full of work that they could not figure on the mammoth
+five-million-dollar steel structure designed to span the Barrata River
+in Africa, and when the Royal Commission in London finally advertised
+broadcast that time was the essence of this contract, Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., realized that his plant was equipped to handle the job in
+magnificent shape, with large profit to himself and with great renown
+to the Wylie name. He therefore sent his son, Jackson Wylie, the
+Second, now a full-fledged partner, to London armed with letters to
+almost everybody in England from almost everybody in America.
+
+Two weeks later--the Patterson Bridge Company was not so aggressive
+as its more pretentious rival--Henry Hanford went abroad on the same
+mission, but he carried no letters of introduction for the very good
+reason that he possessed neither commercial influence nor social
+prestige. Bradstreets had never rated him, and _Who's Who_ contained
+no names with which he was familiar.
+
+Jackson Wylie, the Second had been to London frequently, and he was
+accustomed to English life. He had friends with headquarters at
+Prince's and at Romano's, friends who were delighted to entertain so
+prominent an American; his letters gave him the entree to many of the
+best clubs and paved his way socially wherever he chose to go.
+
+It was Hanford's first trip across, and he arrived on British soil
+without so much as a knowledge of English coins, with nothing in
+the way of baggage except a grip full of blue-prints, and with no
+destination except the Parliament buildings, where he had been led
+to believe the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission was eagerly and
+impatiently awaiting his coming. But when he called at the Parliament
+buildings he failed not only to find the Commission, but even to
+encounter anybody who knew anything about it. He did manage to locate
+the office, after some patient effort, but learned that it was nothing
+more than a forwarding address, and that no member of the Commission
+had been there for several weeks. He was informed that the Commission
+had convened once, and therefore was not entirely an imaginary body;
+beyond that he could discover nothing. On his second visit to the
+office he was told that Sir Thomas Drummond, the chairman, was inside,
+having run down from his shooting-lodge in Scotland for the day. But
+Sir Thomas's clerk, with whom Hanford had become acquainted at the
+time of his first call, informed him that Mr. Jackson Wylie, the
+Second, from America, was closeted with his lordship, and in
+consequence his lordship could not be disturbed. Later, when Hanford
+got more thoroughly in touch with the general situation, he began to
+realize that introductions, influence, social prestige would in all
+probability go farther toward landing the Barrata Bridge than mere
+engineering, ability or close figuring--facts with which the younger
+Wylie was already familiar, and against which he had provided. It also
+became plain to Hanford as time went on that the contract would of
+necessity go to America, for none of the European shops were in
+position to complete it on time.
+
+Owing to government needs, this huge, eleven-span structure had to be
+on the ground within ninety days from the date of the signing of the
+contract, and erected within eight months thereafter. The Commission's
+clerk, a big, red-faced, jovial fellow, informed Hanford that price
+was not nearly so essential as time of delivery; that although the
+contract glittered with alluring bonuses and was heavily weighted
+with forfeits, neither bonuses nor forfeitures could in the slightest
+manner compensate for a delay in time. It was due to this very fact,
+to the peculiar urgency of the occasion, that the Commissioners were
+inclined to look askance at prospective bidders who might in any way
+fail to complete the task as specified.
+
+"If all that is true, tell me why Wylie gets the call?" Hanford
+inquired.
+
+"I understand he has the very highest references," said the
+Englishman.
+
+"No doubt. But you can't build bridges with letters of introduction,
+even in Africa."
+
+"Probably not. But Sir Thomas is a big man; Mr. Wylie is one of his
+sort. They meet on common ground, don't you see?"
+
+"Well, if I can't arrange an interview with any member of the
+Commission, I can at least take you to lunch. Will you go?"
+
+The clerk declared that he would, indeed, and in the days that
+followed the two saw much of each other. This fellow, Lowe by name,
+interested Hanford. He was a cosmopolite; he was polished to the
+hardness of agate by a life spent in many lands. He possessed a cold
+eye and a firm chin; he was a complex mixture of daredeviltry and
+meekness. He had fought in a war or two, and he had led hopes quite
+as forlorn as the one Hanford was now engaged upon. It was this bond,
+perhaps, which drew the two together.
+
+In spite of Lowe's assistance Hanford found it extremely difficult,
+nay, almost impossible, to obtain any real inside information
+concerning the Barrata Bridge; wherever he turned he brought up
+against a blank wall of English impassiveness: he even experienced
+difficulty in securing the blue-prints he wanted.
+
+"It looks pretty tough for you," Lowe told him one day. "I'm afraid
+you're going to come a cropper, old man. This chap Wylie has the rail
+and he's running well. He has opened an office, I believe."
+
+"So I understand. Well, the race isn't over yet, and I'm a good
+stayer. This is the biggest thing I ever tackled and it means a lot to
+me--more than you imagine."
+
+"How so?"
+
+Hanford recited the story of his old wrong, to Lowe's frank amazement.
+
+"What a rotten trick!" the latter remarked.
+
+"Yes! And--I don't forget."
+
+"You'd better forget this job. It takes pull to get consideration from
+people like Sir Thomas, and Wylie has more than he needs. A fellow
+without it hasn't a chance. Look at me, for instance, working at a
+desk! Bah!"
+
+"Want to try something else?"
+
+"I do! And you'd better follow suit."
+
+Hanford shook his head. "I never quit--I can't. When my chance at this
+bridge comes along--"
+
+Lowe laughed.
+
+"Oh, the chance will come. Chances always come; sometimes we don't see
+them, that's all. When this one comes I want to be ready. Meanwhile, I
+think I'll reconnoiter Wylie's new office and find out what's doing."
+
+Day after day Henry Hanford pursued his work doggedly, seeing much of
+Lowe, something of Wylie's clerk, and nothing whatever of Sir Thomas
+Drummond or the other members of the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission.
+He heard occasional rumors of the social triumphs of his rival,
+and met him once, to be treated with half-veiled amusement by that
+patronizing young man. Meanwhile, the time was growing short and
+Hanford's firm was not well pleased with his progress.
+
+Then the chance came, unexpectedly, as Hanford had declared chances
+always come. The remarkable thing in this instance was not that the
+veiled goddess showed her face, but that Hanford was quick enough
+to recognize her and bold enough to act. He had taken Lowe to the
+Trocadero for dinner, and, finding no seats where they could watch the
+crowd, he had selected a stall in a quiet corner. They had been there
+but a short time when Hanford recognized a voice from the stall
+adjacent as belonging to the representative of the Atlantic Bridge
+Company. From the sounds he could tell that Wylie was giving a
+dinner-party, and with Lowe's aid he soon identified the guests as
+members of the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission. Hanford began to
+strain his ears.
+
+As the meal progressed this became less of an effort, for young
+Wylie's voice was strident. The Wylie conversation had ever been
+limited largely to the Wylies, their accomplishments, their purposes,
+and their prospects; and now having the floor as host, he talked
+mainly about himself, his father, and their forthcoming Barrata Bridge
+contract. It was his evident endeavor this evening to impress his
+distinguished guests with the tremendous importance of the Atlantic
+Bridge Company and its unsurpassed facilities for handling big jobs.
+A large part of young Wylie's experience had been acquired by
+manipulating municipal contracts and the aldermen connected therewith;
+he now worked along similar lines. Hanford soon learned that he was
+trying in every way possible to induce Drummond and his associates
+to accompany him back to America for the purpose of proving
+beyond peradventure that the Atlantic could take care of a
+five-million-dollar contract with ease.
+
+"As if they'd go!" Lowe said, softly. "And yet--by Jove! he talks as
+if he had the job buttoned up."
+
+The Englishman was alert, his dramatic instinct was at play;
+recognizing the significance of Wylie's offer and its possible bearing
+upon Hanford's fortunes, he waved the waiter away, knowing better than
+to permit the rattle of dishes to distract his host's attention.
+
+Meanwhile, with clenched teeth and smoldering eyes Henry Hanford heard
+his rival in the next compartment identify the State of New Jersey by
+the fact that the works of the Atlantic Bridge Company were located
+therein, and dignify it by the fact that the Jackson Wylies lived
+there.
+
+"You know, gentlemen," Wylie was saying, "I can arrange the trip
+without the least difficulty, and I assure you there will be no
+discomfort. I am in constant cipher communication with my father, and
+he will be delighted to afford you every courtesy. I can fix it up by
+cable in a day."
+
+Hanford arose with a silent gesture to his guest, then, although the
+meal was but half over, he paid the bill. He had closed his campaign.
+Right then and there he landed the great Barrata Bridge contract.
+
+Lowe, mystified beyond measure by his friend's action, made no comment
+until they were outside. Then he exclaimed:
+
+"I say, old top, what blew off?"
+
+Hanford smiled at him queerly. "The whole top of young Wylie's head
+blew off, if he only knew it. It's my day to settle that score, and
+the interest will be compounded."
+
+"I must be extremely stupid."
+
+"Not at all. You're damned intelligent, and that's why I'm going to
+need your help." Hanford turned upon the adventurer suddenly. "Have
+you ever been an actor?"
+
+Lowe made a comical grimace. "I say, old man, that's pretty rough. My
+people raised me for a gentleman."
+
+"Exactly. Come with me to my hotel. We're going to do each other a
+great favor. With your help and the help of Mr. Jackson Wylie the
+Second's London clerk, I'm going to land the Barrata Bridge."
+
+Hanford had not read his friend Lowe awrong, and when, behind locked
+doors, he outlined his plan, the big fellow gazed at him with
+amazement, his blue eyes sparkling with admiration.
+
+"Gad! That appeals to me. I--think I can do it." There was no timidity
+in Lowe's words, merely a careful consideration of the risks involved.
+
+Hanford gripped his hand. "I'll attend to Wylie's clerk," he declared.
+"Now we'd better begin to rehearse."
+
+"But what makes you so positive you can handle his clerk?" queried
+Lowe.
+
+"Oh, I've studied him the same way I've studied you! I've been doing
+nothing else for the last month."
+
+"Bli' me, you're a corker!" said Mr. Lowe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back in Newark, New Jersey, Jackson Wylie, Sr., was growing impatient.
+In spite of his son's weekly reports he had begun to fret at the
+indefinite nature of results up to date. This dissatisfaction it was
+that had induced him to cable his invitation to the Royal Commission
+to visit the Atlantic plant. Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., had a mysterious
+way of closing contracts once he came in personal contact with the
+proper people. In the words of his envious competitors, he had "good
+terminal facilities," and he felt sure in his own mind that he could
+get this job if only he could meet some member of that Commission who
+possessed the power to act. Business was bad, and in view of his son's
+preliminary reports he had relied upon the certainty of securing this
+tremendous contract; he had even turned work away so that his plant
+might be ready for the rush, with the result that many of his men now
+were idle and that he was running far below capacity. But he likewise
+had his eye upon those English bonuses, and when his associates rather
+timidly called his attention to the present state of affairs he
+assured them bitingly that he knew his business. Nevertheless, he
+could not help chafing at delay nor longing for the time to come to
+submit the bid that had lain for a month upon his desk. The magnitude
+of the figures contained therein was getting on Mr. Wylie's nerves.
+
+On the tenth of May he received a cablegram in his own official cipher
+which, translated, read:
+
+Meet Sir Thomas Drummond, Chairman Royal Barrata Bridge Commission,
+arriving Cunard Liner _Campania_, thirteenth, stopping Waldorf.
+Arrange personally Barrata contract. Caution.
+
+The cablegram was unsigned, but its address, "Atwylie," betrayed not
+only its destination, but also the identity of its sender. Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., became tremendously excited. The last word conjured up
+bewildering possibilities. He was about to consult his associates when
+it struck him that the greatest caution he could possibly observe
+would consist of holding his own tongue now and henceforth. They had
+seen fit to criticize his handling of the matter thus far; he decided
+he would play safe and say nothing until he had first seen Sir Thomas
+Drummond and learned the lay of the land. He imagined he might then
+have something electrifying to tell them. He had "dealt from the
+bottom" too often, he had closed too many bridge contracts in his
+time, to mistake the meaning of this visit, or of that last word
+"caution."
+
+During the next few days Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., had hard work to hold
+himself in, and he was at a high state of nervous tension when, on
+the morning of the fourteenth day of May, he strolled into the
+Waldorf-Astoria and inquired at the desk for Sir Thomas Drummond.
+
+There was no Sir Thomas stopping at the hotel, although a Mr. T.
+Drummond from London had arrived on the _Campania_ the day before. Mr.
+Jackson Wylie placed the heel of his right shoe upon the favorite corn
+of his left foot and bore down upon it heavily. He must be
+getting into his dotage, he reflected, or else the idea of a
+five-million-dollar job had him rattled. Of course Sir Thomas would
+not use his title.
+
+At the rear desk he had his card blown up through the tube to "Mr. T.
+Drummond," and a few moments later was invited to take the elevator.
+
+Arriving at the sixth floor, he needed no page to guide him; boots
+pointed his way to the apartment of the distinguished visitor as plainly
+as a lettered sign-board; boots of all descriptions--hunting-boots,
+riding-boots, street shoes, lowshoes, pumps, sandals--black ones and tan
+ones--all in a row outside the door. It was a typically English display.
+Evidently Sir Thomas Drummond was a personage of the most extreme
+importance and traveled in befitting style, Mr. Wylie told himself.
+Nothing was missing from the collection, unless perhaps a pair of rubber
+hip-boots.
+
+A stoop-shouldered old man with a marked accent and a port-wine nose
+showed Mr. Wylie into a parlor where the first object upon which
+his active eyes alighted was a mass of blue-prints. He knew these
+drawings; he had figured on them himself. He likewise noted a hat-box
+and a great, shapeless English bag, both plastered crazily with hotel
+and steamship labels hailing from every quarter of the world. It was
+plain to be seen that Sir Thomas was a globe-trotter.
+
+"Mr. Drummond begs you to be seated," the valet announced, with what
+seemed an unnecessary accent on the "mister," then moved silently out.
+
+Mr. Wylie remarked to himself upon the value of discreet servants.
+They were very valuable; very hard to get in America. This must be
+some lifelong servitor in his lordship's family.
+
+There was no occasion to inquire the identity of the tall, florid
+Englishman in tweeds who entered a moment later, a bundle of estimates
+in his hand. "Sir Thomas Drummond, Chairman of the Royal Barrata
+Bridge Commission," was written all over him in large type.
+
+His lordship did not go to the trouble of welcoming his visitor, but
+scanned him frigidly through his glasses.
+
+"You are Mr. Jackson Wylie, Senior?" he demanded, abruptly.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"President of the Atlantic Bridge Company, of Newark, New Jersey?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"You received a cablegram from your son in London?"
+
+"Yes, your lordship."
+
+Sir Thomas made a gesture as if to forego the title. "Let me see it,
+please."
+
+Mr. Wylie produced the cablegram, and Drummond scanned it sharply.
+Evidently the identification was complete.
+
+"Does any one besides your son and yourself know the contents of this
+message?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"You have not told any one of my coming?"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Very well." Sir Thomas appeared to breathe easier; he deliberately
+tore the cablegram into small bits, then tossed the fragments into
+a wastepaper basket before waving his caller to a chair. He still
+remained very cold, very forceful, although his stiff formality had
+vanished.
+
+"Do you understand all about this bridge?" he inquired.
+
+Wylie senior took the cue of brusqueness and nodded shortly.
+
+"Can you build it in the time specified?"
+
+"With ease."
+
+"Have you submitted your bid?"
+
+"Not yet. I--"
+
+"What is the amount of your proposal?"
+
+The president of the Atlantic Bridge Company gasped. This was the
+boldest, the coldest work he had ever experienced. Many times he had
+witnessed public officials like Sir Thomas Drummond approach this
+delicate point, but never with such composure, such matter-of-fact
+certainty and lack of moral scruple. Evidently, however, this
+Englishman had come to trade and wanted a direct answer. There was no
+false pose, no romance here. But Jackson Wylie, Sr., was too shrewd a
+business man to name a rock-bottom price to begin with. The training
+of a lifetime would not permit him to deny himself a liberal leeway
+for hedging, therefore he replied, cautiously:
+
+"My figures will be approximately £1,400,000 sterling." It was his
+longest speech thus far.
+
+For what seemed an hour to the bridge-builder Sir Thomas Drummond
+gazed at him with a cold, hard eye, then he folded his papers,
+rolled up his blue-prints, placed them in the big traveling-bag, and
+carefully locked it. When he had finished he flung out this question
+suddenly:
+
+"Does that include the Commissioners?"
+
+Up to this point Mr. Jackson Wylie had spoken mainly in monosyllables;
+now he quit talking altogether; it was no longer necessary. He merely
+shook his head in negation. He was smiling slightly.
+
+"Then I shall ask you to add £200,000 sterling to your price," his
+lordship calmly announced. "Make your bid £1,600,000 sterling, and
+mail it in time for Wednesday's boat. I sail on the same ship.
+Proposals will be opened on the twenty-fifth. Arrange for an English
+indemnity bond for ten per cent. of your proposition. Do not
+communicate in any manner whatsoever with your son, except to forward
+the sealed bid to him. He is not to know of our arrangement. You will
+meet me in London later; we will take care of that £200,000 out of the
+last forty per cent. of the contract price, which is payable thirty
+days after completion, inspection, and acceptance of the bridge. You
+will not consult your associates upon leaving here. Do I make myself
+clear? Very well, sir. The figures are easy to remember: £1,600,000;
+£1,400,000 to you. I am pleased with the facilities your plant offers
+for doing the work. I am confident you can complete the bridge on
+time, and I beg leave to wish you a very pleasant good day."
+
+Jackson Wylie, Sr., did not really come to until he had reached
+the street; even then he did not know whether he had come down the
+elevator or through the mail-chute. Of one thing only was he certain:
+he was due to retire in favor of his son. He told himself that
+he needed a trip through the Holy Land with a guardian and a
+nursing-bottle; then he paused on the curb and stamped on his corn for
+a second time.
+
+"Oh, what an idiot I am!" he cried, savagely. "I could have
+gotten £1,600,000 to start with, but--by gad, Sir Thomas is the
+coldest-blooded thing I ever went against! I--I can't help but admire
+him."
+
+Having shown a deplorable lack of foresight, Mr. Wylie determined to
+make up for it by an ample display of hindsight. If the profits on the
+job were not to be so large as they might have been, he would at
+least make certain of them by obeying instructions to the letter. In
+accordance with this determination, he made out the bid himself, and
+he mailed it with his own hand that very afternoon. He put three blue
+stamps on the envelope, although it required but two. Then he called
+up an automobile agency and ordered a foreign town-car his wife had
+admired. He decided that she and the girls might go to Paris for the
+fall shopping--he might even go with them, in view of that morning's
+episode.
+
+For ten days he stood the pressure, then on the morning of the
+twenty-fourth he called his _confrères_ into the directors' room, that
+same room in which young Hanford had made his talk a number of years
+before. Inasmuch as it was too late now for a disclosure to affect the
+opening of the bids in London, he felt absolved from his promise to
+Sir Thomas.
+
+"Gentlemen, I have the honor to inform you," he began, pompously,
+"that the Barrata Bridge is ours! We have the greatest structural
+steel job of the decade." His chest swelled with justifiable pride.
+
+"How? When? What do you mean?" they cried.
+
+He told them of his mysterious but fruitful interview at the Waldorf
+ten days previously, enjoying their expressions of amazement to the
+full; then he explained in considerable detail the difficulties he had
+surmounted in securing such liberal figures from Sir Thomas.
+
+"We were ready to take the contract for £1,300,000, as you will
+remember, but by the exercise of some diplomacy"--he coughed
+modestly--"I may say, by the display of some firmness and
+independence, I succeeded in securing a clean profit of $500,000 over
+what we had expected." He accepted, with becoming diffidence, the
+congratulations which were showered upon him. Of course, the news
+created a sensation, but it was as nothing to the sensation that
+followed upon the receipt of a cablegram the next day which read:
+
+ATWYLIE,
+
+Newark, New Jersey.
+
+Terrible mistake somewhere. We lost. Am coming home to-day.
+
+Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., also went home that day--by carriage, for,
+after raving wildly of treachery, after cursing the name of some
+English nobleman, unknown to most of the office force, he collapsed,
+throwing his employees into much confusion. There were rumors of
+an apoplectic stroke; some one telephoned for a physician; but the
+president of the Atlantic Bridge Company only howled at the latter
+when he arrived.
+
+What hit the old man hardest was the fact that he could not explain to
+his associates--that he could not even explain to himself, for that
+matter. He could make neither head nor tail of the affair; his son was
+on the high seas and could not be reached; the mystery of the whole
+transaction threatened to unseat his reason. Even when his sorrowing
+heir arrived, a week after the shock, the father could gather nothing
+at first except the bare details.
+
+All he could learn was that the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission
+had met on the twenty-fifth day of May, for the second time in its
+history, with Sir Thomas Drummond in the chair. In the midst of an
+ultra-British solemnity the bids had been opened and read--nine of
+them--two Belgian, one German, two French, one English, one Scottish,
+and two American.
+
+The only proposals that conformed to the specifications in every
+respect were the last named. They were perfect. The Atlantic Bridge
+Company, of Newark, New Jersey, offered to do the work as specified
+for £1,600,000 sterling. The Patterson Bridge Company, through its
+authorized agent, Mr. Henry Hanford, named a price of £1,550,000. The
+rest was but a matter of detail.
+
+Having concluded this bald recital, Jackson Wylie, the Second, spread
+his hands in a gesture of despair. "I can't understand it," he said,
+dolefully. "I thought I had it cinched all the time."
+
+"_You_ had it cinched!" bellowed his father. "_You_! Why, you ruined
+it all! Why in hell did you send him over here?"
+
+"I? Send who? What are you talking about?"
+
+"That man with the boots! That lying, thieving scoundrel, Sir Thomas
+Drummond, of course."
+
+The younger Wylie's face showed blank, uncomprehending amazement. "Sir
+Thomas Drummond was in London all the time I was there. I saw him
+daily," said he.
+
+Not until this very moment did the president of the Atlantic Bridge
+Company comprehend the trap he had walked into, but now the whole
+hideous business became apparent. He had been fooled, swindled, and in
+a way to render recourse impossible; nay, in a manner to blacken his
+reputation if the story became public. He fell actually ill from the
+passion of his rage and not even a long rest from the worries of
+business completely cured him. The bitter taste of defeat would not
+down. He might never have understood the matter thoroughly had it not
+been for a missive he received one day through the mail. It was a bill
+from a London shoe-store for twelve pairs of boots, of varying styles,
+made out to Henry Hanford, and marked "paid."
+
+Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., noted with unspeakable chagrin that the last
+word was heavily under-scored in ink, as if by another hand. Hanford's
+bill was indeed paid, and with interest to date.
+
+
+
+
+THE CUB REPORTER
+
+
+Why he chose Buffalo Paul Anderson never knew, unless perhaps it
+had more newspapers than Bay City, Michigan, and because his ticket
+expired in the vicinity of Buffalo. For that matter, why he should
+have given up an easy job as the mate of a tugboat to enter the
+tortuous paths of journalism the young man did not know, and, lacking
+the introspective faculty, he did not stop to analyze his motives. So
+far as he could discover he had felt the call to higher endeavor, and
+just naturally had heeded it. Such things as practical experience and
+educational equipment were but empty words to him, for he was young
+and hopeful, and the world is kind at twenty-one.
+
+He had hoped to enter his chosen field with some financial backing,
+and to that end, when the desire to try his hand at literature had
+struck him, he had bought an interest in a smoke-consumer which a
+fireman on another tugboat had patented. In partnership with the
+inventor he had installed one of the devices beneath a sawmill boiler
+as an experiment. Although the thing consumed smoke surprisingly well,
+it likewise unharnessed such an amazing army of heat-units that it
+melted the crown-sheet of the boiler; whereupon the sawmill men, being
+singularly coarse and unimaginative fellows, set upon the patentee and
+his partner with ash-rakes, draw-bars, and other ordinary, unpatented
+implements; a lumberjack beat hollowly upon their ribs with a peavy,
+and that night young Anderson sickened of smoke-consumers, harked anew
+to the call of journalism, and hiked, arriving in Buffalo with seven
+dollars and fifty cents to the good.
+
+For seven dollars, counted out in advance, he chartered a furnished
+room for a week, the same carrying with it a meal at each end of the
+day, which left in Anderson's possession a superfluity of fifty cents
+to be spent in any extravagance he might choose.
+
+Next day he bought a copy of each newspaper and, carefully scanning
+them, selected the one upon which to bestow his reportorial gifts.
+This done, he weighed anchor and steamed through the town in search of
+the office. Walking in upon the city editor of _The Intelligencer_, he
+gazed with benevolent approval upon that busy gentleman's broad back.
+He liked the place, the office suited him, and he decided to have his
+desk placed over by the window.
+
+After a time the editor wheeled, displaying a young, smooth, fat face,
+out of which peered gray-blue eyes with pin-point pupils.
+
+"Well?" he queried.
+
+"Here I am," said Anderson.
+
+"So it appears. What do you want?"
+
+"Work."
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"Newspapering."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"Anything."
+
+"Well, well!" cried the editor. "You don't look much like a newspaper
+man."
+
+"I'm not one--yet. But I'm going to be."
+
+"Where have you worked?"
+
+"Nowhere! You see, I'm really a playwright."
+
+The editor's face showed a bit of interest. "Playwright, eh? Anderson!
+Anderson!" he mused. "Don't recall the name."
+
+"No," said Paul; "I've never written any plays yet, but I'm going
+to. That's why I want to sort of begin here and get the hang of this
+writing game."
+
+A boy entered with some proofs at that moment and tossed them upon
+the table, distracting the attention of the newspaper man. The latter
+wheeled back to his work and spoke curtly over his shoulder.
+
+"I'm not running a school of journalism. Good-by."
+
+"Maybe you'd like me to do a little space work--?"
+
+"I'd never like you. Get out. I'm busy."
+
+Anderson retired gracefully, jingling his scanty handful of nickels
+and dimes, and a half-hour later thrust himself boldly in upon another
+editor, but with no better result. He made the rounds of all the
+offices; although invariably rebuffed he became more firmly convinced
+than ever that journalism was his designated sphere.
+
+That night after dinner he retired to his room with the evening
+papers, wedged a chair against his bed, and, hoisting his feet upon
+the wash-stand, absorbed the news of the day. It was ineffably sweet
+and satisfying to be thus identified with the profession of letters,
+and it was immeasurably more dignified than "tugging" on the Saginaw
+River. Once he had schooled himself in the tricks of writing, he
+decided he would step to higher things than newspaper work, but for
+the present it was well to ground himself firmly in the rudiments of
+the craft.
+
+In going through the papers he noted one topic which interested him, a
+"similar mystery" story on the second page. From what he could gather,
+he judged that much space had already been given to it; for now,
+inasmuch as no solution offered, the item was dying slowly, the major
+portion of each article being devoted to a rehash of similar unsolved
+mysteries.
+
+Anderson read that the body of the golden-haired girl still lay at the
+Morgue, unidentified. Bit by bit he pieced together the lean story
+that she was a suicide and that both the police and the press had
+failed in their efforts to unearth the least particle of information
+regarding her. In spite of her remarkable beauty and certain unusual
+circumstances connected with her death investigation had led nowhere.
+
+On the following day Anderson again walked into the editorial-rooms
+of _The Intelligencer_ and greeted the smooth, fat-faced occupant
+thereof.
+
+"Anything doing yet?" he inquired.
+
+"Not yet," said the newspaper man, with a trace of annoyance in his
+voice. As the applicant moved out he halted him at the door with the
+words: "Oh! Wait!"
+
+Anderson's heart leaped. After all, he thought, perseverance would--
+
+"Not yet, nor soon." The editor smiled broadly, and Paul realized that
+the humor in those pin-point eyes was rather cruel.
+
+Five other calls he made that day, to be greeted gruffly in every
+instance except one. One man encouraged him slightly by saying:
+
+"Come back next week; I may have an opening then."
+
+In view of the "pay-as-you-enter" policy in vogue at Anderson's
+boarding-house he knew there could be no next week for him, therefore
+he inquired:
+
+"How about a little space work in the meantime? I'm pretty good at
+that stuff."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Surest thing you know."
+
+"Did you ever do any?"
+
+"No. But I'm good, just the same."
+
+"Huh!" the editor grunted. "There's no room now, and, come to think of
+it, you needn't bother to get around next week. I can't break in new
+men."
+
+That evening young Anderson again repaired to his room with his
+harvest of daily papers, and again he read them thoroughly. He was by
+no means discouraged as yet, for his week had just begun--there
+were still five days of grace, and prime ministers have been made
+overnight, nations have fallen in five days. Six calls a day for five
+days, that meant thirty chances for a job. It was a cinch!
+
+Hidden away among the back pages once more he encountered the
+golden-haired-girl story, and although one paper featured it a bit
+because of some imaginary clue, the others treated it casually, making
+public the information that the body still lay at the Morgue, a
+silent, irritating thing of mystery.
+
+On the third day Paul made his usual round of calls. He made them more
+quickly now because he was recognized, and was practically thrown out
+of each editorial sanctum. His serenity remained unruffled, and
+his confidence undisturbed. Of all the six editors, Burns, of _The
+Intelligencer_, treated him worst, adding ridicule to his gruffness, a
+refinement of cruelty which annoyed the young steamboat man. Anderson
+clenched his hard-knuckled hand and estimated the distance from
+editorial ear to point of literary chin, but realized in time that
+steamboat methods were out of place here in the politer realms of
+journalism.
+
+Four times more he followed his daily routine, and on Monday morning
+arose early to avoid his landlady. His week was up, his nickels and
+dimes were gone, nevertheless he spent the day on his customary
+rounds. He crept in late at night, blue with the cold and rather dazed
+at his bad luck; he had eaten nothing since the morning before, and
+he knew that he dared not show up at the breakfast-table the next
+morning. For the time being discouragement settled upon him; it
+settled suddenly like some heavy smothering thing; it robbed him of
+hope and redoubled his hunger. He awoke at daylight, roused by the
+sense of his defeat, then tiptoed out while yet the landlady was abed,
+and spent the day looking for work along the water-front. But winter
+had tied up the shipping, and he failed, as he likewise failed at
+sundry employment agencies where he offered himself in any capacity.
+
+At noon he wandered into the park, and, finding a sheltered spot,
+sunned himself as best he could. He picked up the sheets of a
+wind-scattered paper and read until the chill December afternoon
+got into his bones and forced him to his feet. The tale of the
+unidentified girl at the Morgue recurred to him when he read the
+announcement that she would be buried two days later in the Potter's
+Field. Perhaps the girl had starved for lack of work, he reflected.
+Perhaps hunger and cold had driven her to her death. Certainly those
+two were to blame for many a tragedy calculated to mystify warmly clad
+policemen and well-fed reporters.
+
+When he stole, shivering, into his bleak bedroom, late that night, he
+found a note pinned upon his pillow. Of course the landlady needed her
+rent--all landladies were in need of money--and of course he would get
+out in the morning. He was glad she had not turned him out during the
+day, for this afforded him sanctuary for another night at least. After
+to-morrow it would be a park bench for his.
+
+He left his valise behind in the morning, rather lamenting the fact
+that the old lady could not wear the shirts it contained, and hoping
+that she would realize a sufficient sum from their sale to pay his
+bill.
+
+It was late afternoon when he commenced his listless tramp toward the
+newspaper offices. Since Burns had become his pet aversion, he saved
+him for the last, framing a few farewell remarks befitting the death
+of hopes like his, and rehearsing an exit speech suitable to mark his
+departure from the field of letters.
+
+When he finally reached _The Intelligencer_ editorial-rooms, Burns
+rounded on him angrily.
+
+"For the love of Mike! Are you here again?" he demanded.
+
+"I thought you might like to have some space work--"
+
+"By heavens! You're persistent."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We editors are an unfeeling lot, aren't we?" the fat young man
+inquired. "No temperament, no appreciation." He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"Give me a job," Anderson cried, his voice breaking huskily. "I'll
+make good. I'll do anything."
+
+"How long do you intend to keep bothering me?" questioned Burns.
+
+Anderson's cheeks were blue and the backs of his legs were trembling
+from weakness, but he repeated, stolidly: "Give me a job. I--I won't
+bother you after that. I'll make good, see if I don't."
+
+"You think well of yourself, don't you?"
+
+"If you thought half as well of me as I do," Paul assured him, "I'd be
+your star reporter."
+
+"Star hell!" testily cried the editor. "We haven't got such a thing.
+They don't know they're alive, except on pay-day. Look at this blond
+girl at the Morgue--they've wasted two weeks on that case." He paused
+suddenly, then his soft lips spread, showing his sharp, white teeth.
+Modifying his tone, he continued: "Say, I rather like you, Anderson,
+you're such a blamed nuisance. You've half convinced me that you're a
+genius."
+
+The younger man's hunger, which had given up in despair, raised its
+head and bit into his vitals sharply.
+
+"Maybe I--"
+
+"I've a notion to give you a chance."
+
+"That's all I want," the caller quavered, in a panic. "Just give me a
+toe-hold, that's all," His voice broke in spite of his effort to
+hold it steady. Burns wasn't a bad sort, after all; just grouchy and
+irritable. Perhaps this was merely his way.
+
+Burns continued: "Well, I will give you an assignment, a good
+assignment, too, and if you cover it I'll put you on permanently. I'll
+do more than that, I'll pay you what we pay our best man, if you make
+good. That's fair, isn't it?"
+
+He smiled benignly, and the soon-to-be reporter's wits went capering
+off in a hysterical stampede. Anderson felt the desire to wring the
+fellow's hand.
+
+"All that counts in this office is efficiency," the latter went on.
+"We play no favorites. When a man delivers the goods we boost him;
+when he fails we fire him. There's no sentiment here, and I hold my
+job merely because I'm the best man in the shop. Can you go to work
+to-night?"
+
+"Why--why--yes, sir!"
+
+"Very well. That's the spirit I like. You can take your time on the
+story, and you needn't come back till you bring it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Now pay attention, here it is. About two weeks ago a blond girl
+committed suicide in a Main Street boarding-house. The body's down at
+the Morgue now. Find out who she is." He turned back to his desk and
+began to work.
+
+The hungry youth behind him experienced a sudden sinking at the
+stomach. All at once he became hopelessly empty and friendless, and he
+felt his knees urging him to sit down. He next became conscious
+that the shoulders of Mr. Burns were shaking a bit, as if he had
+encountered a piece of rare humor. After an instant, when Anderson
+made no move to go, the man at the desk wheeled about, exposing a
+bloated countenance purple with suppressed enjoyment.
+
+"What's the matter?" he giggled. "Don't you want the job? I can't tell
+you any more about the girl; that's all we know. The rest is up to
+you. You'll find out everything, won't you? Please do, for your own
+sake and the sake of _The Intelligencer_. Yes, yes, I'm sure you will,
+because you're a good newspaper man--you told me so yourself." His
+appreciation of the jest threatened to strangle him.
+
+"Mr. Burns," began the other, "I--I'm up against it. I guess you don't
+know it, but I'm hungry. I haven't eaten for three days."
+
+At this the editor became positively apoplectic.
+
+"Oh yes--yes, I do!" He nodded vigorously. "You show it in your face.
+That's why I went out of my way to help you. He! He! He! Now you run
+along and get me the girl's name and address while I finish this
+proof. Then come back and have supper with me at the Press Club."
+Again he chortled and snickered, whereupon something sullen and fierce
+awoke in young Anderson. He knew of a way to get food and a bed and a
+place to work even if it would only last thirty days, for he judged
+Burns was the kind of man who would yell for the police in case of an
+assault. Paul would have welcomed the prospect of prison fare, but he
+reasoned that it would be an incomplete satisfaction merely to mash
+the pudgy face of Mr. Burns and hear him clamor. What he wanted at
+this moment was a job; Burns's beating could hold over. This suicide
+case had baffled the pick of Buffalo's trained reporters; it had
+foiled the best efforts of her police; nevertheless, this fat-paunched
+fellow had baited a starving man by offering him the assignment. It
+was impossible; it was a cruel joke, and yet--there might be a chance
+of success. Even while he was debating the point he heard himself say:
+
+"Very well, Mr. Burns. If you want her name I'll get it for you."
+
+He crammed his hat down over his ears and walked out, leaving the
+astonished editor gazing after him with open mouth.
+
+Anderson's first impulse had been merely to get out of Burns's office,
+out of sight of that grinning satyr, and never to come back, but
+before he had reached the street he had decided that it was as well to
+starve striving as with folded hands. After all, the dead girl had a
+name.
+
+Instead of leaving the building, he went to the files of the paper
+and, turning back, uncovered the original story, which he cut out with
+his pen-knife, folded up, and placed in his pocket. This done, he
+sought the lobby of a near-by hotel, found a seat near a radiator, and
+proceeded to read the clipping carefully.
+
+It was a meager story, but it contained facts and was free from the
+confusion and distortions of the later accounts, which was precisely
+what he wished to guard against. Late one afternoon, so the story
+went, the girl had rented a room in a Main Street boarding-house, had
+eaten supper and retired. At eleven o'clock the next day, when she did
+not respond to a knock on her door, the room had been broken into and
+she had been found dead, with an empty morphine-bottle on the bureau.
+That was all. There were absolutely no clues to the girl's identity,
+for the closest scrutiny failed to discover a mark on her clothing
+or any personal articles which could be traced. She had possessed no
+luggage, save a little hand-satchel or shopping-bag containing a few
+coins. One fact alone stood out in the whole affair. She had paid for
+her room with a two-dollar Canadian bill, but this faint clue had been
+followed with no result. No one knew the girl; she had walked out of
+nowhere and had disappeared into impenetrable mystery. Those were the
+facts in the case, and they were sufficiently limited to baffle the
+best efforts of Buffalo's trained detective force.
+
+It would seem that there can be no human creature so obscure as to
+have neither relatives, friends, nor acquaintances, and yet this
+appeared to be the case, for a full description of this girl had
+been blazoned in the papers of every large city, had been exposed in
+countless country post-offices, and conveyed to the police of every
+city of the States and Canada. It was as if the mysterious occupant of
+the Morgue had been born of the winter wind on that fateful evening
+two weeks before. The country had been dragged by a net of publicity,
+that marvelous, fine-meshed fabric from which no living man is small
+or shrewd enough to escape, and still the sad, white face at the
+Morgue continued to smile out from its halo of gold as if in gentle
+mockery.
+
+For a long time Paul Anderson sat staring into the realms of
+speculation, his lips white with hunger, his cheeks hollow and
+feverish from the battle he had waged. His power of exclusion was
+strong, therefore he lost himself to his surroundings. Finally,
+however, he roused himself from his abstraction and realized the irony
+of this situation. He, the weakest, the most inexperienced of all the
+men who had tried, had been set to solve this mystery, and starvation
+was to be the fruit of his failure.
+
+He saw that it had begun to snow outside. In the lobby it was warm and
+bright and vivid with jostling life; the music of a stringed orchestra
+somewhere back of him was calling well-dressed men and women in to
+dinner. All of them seemed happy, hopeful, purposeful. He noted,
+furthermore, that three days without food makes a man cold, even in
+a warm place, and light-headed, too. The north wind had bitten him
+cruelly as he crossed the street, and now as he peered out of the
+plate-glass windows the night seemed to hold other lurking horrors
+besides. His want was like a burden, and he shuddered weakly,
+hesitating to venture out where the wind could harry him. It was a
+great temptation to remain here where there was warmth and laughter
+and life; nevertheless, he rose and slunk shivering out into the
+darkness, then laid a course toward the Morgue.
+
+While Anderson trod the snowy streets a slack-jowled editor sat at
+supper with some friends at the Press Club, eating and drinking
+heartily, as is the custom of newspaper men let down for a moment from
+the strain of their work. He had told a story, and his caustic way
+of telling it had amused his hearers, for each and every one of them
+remembered the shabby applicant for work, and all of them had wasted
+baffling hours on the mystery of this girl with the golden hair.
+
+"I guess I put a crimp in him," giggled Mr. Burns. "I gave him a
+chance to show those talents he recommends so highly."
+
+"The Morgue, on a night like this, is a pretty dismal place for a
+hungry man," said one of the others. "It's none too cheerful in the
+daytime."
+
+The others agreed, and Burns wabbled anew in his chair in appreciation
+of his humor.
+
+Young Anderson had never seen a morgue, and to-night, owing to his
+condition, his dread of it was child-like. It seemed as if this
+particular charnel-house harbored some grisly thing which stood
+between him and food and warmth and hope; the nearer he drew to it the
+greater grew his dread. A discourteous man, shrunken as if from the
+chill of the place, was hunched up in front of a glowing stove. He
+greeted Anderson sourly:
+
+"Out into that courtyard; turn to the left--second door," he directed.
+"She's in the third compartment."
+
+Anderson lacked courage to ask the fellow to come along, but stumbled
+out into a snow-filled areaway lighted by a swinging incandescent
+which danced to the swirling eddies.
+
+Compartment! He supposed bodies were kept upon slabs or tables, or
+something like that. He had steeled himself to see rows of unspeakable
+sights, played upon by dripping water, but he found nothing of the
+sort.
+
+The second door opened into a room which he discovered was colder than
+the night outside, evidently the result of artificial refrigeration.
+He was relieved to find the place utterly bare except for a sort of
+car or truck which ran around the room on a track beneath a row of
+square doors. These doors evidently opened into the compartments
+alluded to by the keeper.
+
+Which compartment had the fellow said? Paul abruptly discovered that
+he was rattled, terribly rattled, and he turned back out of the place.
+He paused shortly, however, and took hold of himself.
+
+"Now, now!" he said, aloud. "You're a bum reporter, my boy." An
+instant later he forced himself to jerk open the first door at his
+hand.
+
+For what seemed a full minute he stared into the cavern, as if
+petrified, then he closed the door softly. Sweat had started from his
+every pore. Alone once more in the great room, he stood shivering.
+"God!" he muttered. This was newspaper training indeed.
+
+He remembered now having read, several days before, about an Italian
+laborer who had been crushed by a falling column. To one unaccustomed
+to death in any form that object, head-on in the obscurity of the
+compartment, had been a trying sight. He began to wonder if it were
+really cold or stiflingly hot.
+
+The boy ground his teeth and flung open the next door, slamming it
+hurriedly again to blot out what it exposed. Why didn't they keep them
+covered? Why didn't they show a card outside? Must he examine every
+grisly corpse upon the premises?
+
+He stepped to the third door and wrenched it open. He knew the girl at
+once by her wealth of yellow hair and the beauty of her still, white
+face. There was no horror here, no ghastly sight to weaken a man's
+muscles and sicken his stomach; only a tired girl asleep. Anderson
+felt a great pity as he wheeled the truck opposite the door and
+reverently drew out the slab on which the body lay. He gazed upon her
+intently for some time. She was not at all as he had pictured her, and
+yet there could be no mistake. He took the printed description from
+his pocket and reread it carefully, comparing it point by point. When
+he had finished he found that it was a composite word photograph,
+vaguely like and yet totally unlike the person it was intended to
+portray, and so lacking in character that no one knowing the original
+intimately would have been likely to recognize her from it.
+
+So that was why no word had come in answer to all this newspaper
+publicity. After all, this case might not be so difficult as it had
+seemed; for the first time the dispirited youth felt a faint glow of
+encouragement. He began to formulate a plan.
+
+Hurriedly he fumbled for his note-book, and there, in that house
+of death, with his paper propped against the wall, he wrote a
+two-hundred-word description; a description so photographically exact
+that to this day it is preserved in the Buffalo police archives as a
+perfect model.
+
+He replaced the body in its resting-place and went out. There was no
+chill in him now, no stumbling nor weakness of any sort. He had found
+a starting-point, had uncovered what all those trained newspaper men
+had missed, and he felt that he had a chance to win.
+
+Twenty minutes later Burns, who had just come in from supper, turned
+back from his desk with annoyance and challenge in his little, narrow
+eyes.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I think I've got her, Mr. Burns."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Anyhow, I've got a description that her father or her mother or
+her friends can recognize. The one you and the other papers printed
+disguised her so that nobody could tell who she was--it might have
+covered a hundred girls."
+
+Rapidly, and without noting the editor's growing impatience, Paul read
+the two descriptions, then ran on, breathlessly:
+
+"All we have to do is print ten or twenty thousand of these and mail
+them out with the morning edition--separate sheets, posters, you
+understand?--so they can be nailed up in every post-office within two
+hundred miles. Send some to the police of all the cities, and we'll
+have a flash in twenty-four hours."
+
+Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man
+over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence,
+his stare, were eloquent.
+
+"Why? Why not?" Anderson demanded, querulously. "I tell you this
+description isn't right. It--it's nothing like her, nothing at all."
+
+"Say! I thought I'd seen the last of you," growled the corpulent man.
+"Aren't you on to yourself yet?"
+
+"Do you--mean that your talk this evening don't go?" Paul demanded,
+quietly. "Do you mean to say you won't even give me the chance you
+promised?"
+
+"No! I don't mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told _you_
+to identify this girl. I didn't agree to do it. What d'you think this
+paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don't care who or
+what this girl is unless there's a story in her. We're not running a
+job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females.
+Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say--don't you know that no two men
+can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What's the
+difference whether her hair is burnished gold or 'raw gold' or her
+eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!"
+
+"But I tell you--"
+
+"What's her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That's what I
+want to know. I'd look fine, wouldn't I, circularizing a dead story?
+Wouldn't that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and
+playwright, I'm getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you
+needn't come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself
+plain?"
+
+It was anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of
+petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve
+some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be,
+who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way
+village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in
+it this girl would go to the Potter's Field and her people would never
+know. And yet, by Heaven, they _would_ know! Something told him there
+_was_ a story back of this girl's death, and he swore to get it. With
+a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult
+to himself, replied:
+
+"Very well. I've got you this time."
+
+"Humph!" Burns grunted, viciously.
+
+"I don't know how I'll turn the trick, but I'll turn it." For the
+second time that evening he left the office with his jaws set
+stubbornly.
+
+Paul Anderson walked straight to his boarding-house and bearded his
+landlady. "I've got a job," said he.
+
+"I'm very glad," the lady told him, honestly enough. "I feared you
+were going to move out."
+
+"Yes!" he repeated. "I've got a job that carries the highest salary
+on the paper. You remember the yellow-haired girl who killed herself
+awhile ago?" he asked.
+
+"Indeed I do. Everybody knows about that case."
+
+"Well, it got too tough for the police and the other reporters, so
+they turned it over to me. It's a bully assignment, and my pay starts
+when I solve the mystery. Now I'm starved; I wish you'd rustle me some
+grub."
+
+"But, Mr. Anderson, you're bill for this week? You know I get paid
+in--"
+
+"Tut, tut! You know how newspapers are. They don't pay in advance, and
+I can't pay you until they pay me. You'll probably have to wait until
+Saturday, for I'm a little out of practice on detective stuff. But
+I'll have this thing cleared up by then. You don't appreciate--you
+_can't_ appreciate--what a corking assignment it is."
+
+Anderson had a peculiarly engaging smile, and five minutes later he
+was wrecking the pantry of all the edibles his fellow-boarders had
+overlooked, the while his landlady told him her life's history, wept
+over the memory of her departed husband, and confessed that she hoped
+to get out of the boarding-house business some time.
+
+A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast put the young man in fine
+fettle, and about ten o'clock he repaired to a certain rooming-house
+on Main Street, the number of which he obtained from the clipping in
+his pocket.
+
+A girl answered his ring, but at sight of him she shut the door
+hurriedly, explaining through the crack:
+
+"Mrs. MacDougal is out and you can't come in."
+
+"But I want to talk to you."
+
+"I'm not allowed to talk to reporters," she declared. "Mrs. MacDougal
+won't let me."
+
+A slight Scotch accent gave Anderson his cue. "MacDougal is a good
+Scotch name. I'm Scotch myself, and so are you." He smiled his
+boarding-house smile, and the girl's eyes twinkled back at him.
+"Didn't she tell you I was coming?"
+
+"Why, no, sir. Aren't you a reporter?"
+
+"I've been told that I'm not. I came to look at a room."
+
+"What room?" the girl asked, quickly. "We haven't any vacant rooms."
+
+"That's queer," Anderson frowned. "I can't be mistaken. I'm sure Mrs.
+MacDougal said there was one."
+
+The door opened slowly. "Maybe she meant the one on the second floor."
+
+"Precisely." An instant later he was following his guide up-stairs.
+
+Anderson recognized the room at a glance, from its description, but
+the girl did not mention the tragedy which had occurred therein, so
+he proceeded to talk terms with her, prolonging his stay as long as
+possible, meanwhile using his eyes to the best advantage. He invented
+an elaborate ancestry which he traced backward through the pages of
+_Scottish Chiefs_, the only book of the sort he had ever read, and by
+the time he was ready to leave the girl had thawed out considerably.
+
+"I'll take the room," he told her, "and I'm well pleased to get it. I
+don't see how such a good one stands vacant in this location."
+
+There was an instant's pause, then his companion confessed: "There's a
+reason. You'll find it out sooner or later, so I may as well tell you.
+That's where the yellow-haired girl you hear so much about killed
+herself. I hope it won't make any difference to you, Mr.--"
+
+"Gregor. Certainly not. I read about the case. Canadian, wasn't she?"
+
+"Oh yes! There's no doubt of it. She paid her rent with a Canadian
+bill, and, besides, I noticed her accent. I didn't tell the reporters,
+however, they're such a fresh lot."
+
+Paul's visit, it appeared, had served to establish one thing, at
+least, a thing which the trained investigators had not discovered.
+Canadian money in Buffalo was too common to excite comment, therefore
+none of them had seen fit to follow out that clue of the two-dollar
+bill.
+
+"The papers had it that she was some wealthy girl," the former speaker
+ran on, "but I know better."
+
+"Indeed? How do you know?"
+
+"Her hands! They were good hands, and she used them as if she knew
+what they were made for."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"No. She seemed very sad and didn't say much. Of course I only saw her
+once."
+
+Anderson questioned the girl at some further length, but discovered
+nothing of moment, so he left, declaring that he would probably move
+into the room on the following day.
+
+Prom the rooming-house he went directly to the Morgue, and for a
+second time examined the body, confining his attention particularly to
+the hands. The right one showed nothing upon which to found a theory,
+save that it was, indeed, a capable hand with smooth skin and
+well-tended nails; but on examining the left Paul noted a marked
+peculiarity. Near the ends of the thumb and the first finger the skin
+was roughened, abrased; there were numerous tiny black spots
+beneath the skin, which, upon careful scrutiny, he discovered to be
+microscopic blood-blisters.
+
+For a long time he puzzled over this phenomenon which had escaped all
+previous observers, but to save him he could invent no explanation for
+it. He repaired finally to the office of the attendant and asked for
+the girl's clothes, receiving permission to examine a small bundle.
+
+"Where's the rest?" he demanded.
+
+"That's all she had," said the man.
+
+"No baggage at all?"
+
+"Not a thing but what she stood up in. The coroner has her jewelry and
+things of that sort."
+
+Anderson searched the contents of the bundle with the utmost care, but
+found no mark of any sort. The garments, although inexpensive, were
+beautifully neat and clean, and they displayed the most marvelous
+examples of needlework he had ever seen. Among the effects was a plush
+muff, out of which, as he picked it up, fell a pair of little knitted
+mittens--or was there a pair? Finding but the one, he shook the muff
+again, then looked through the other things.
+
+"Where's the other mitten?" he inquired.
+
+"There 'ain't been but the one," the attendant told him.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"See here, do you think I'm trying to hold out a yarn mitten on you?
+I say there 'ain't been but the one. I was here when she came, and I
+know."
+
+Discouraged by the paucity of clues which this place offered, Anderson
+went next to the coroner's office.
+
+The City Hall newspaper squad had desks in this place, but Paul paid
+no attention to them or to their occupants. He went straight to the
+wicket and asked for the effects of the dead girl.
+
+It appeared that Burns had told his practical joke broadcast, for
+the young man heard his name mentioned, and then some one behind him
+snickered. He paid no attention, however, for the clerk had handed him
+a small leather bag or purse, together with a morphine-bottle, about
+the size and shape of an ordinary vaseline-bottle. The bag was cheap
+and bore no maker's name or mark. Inside of it was a brooch, a ring, a
+silver chain, and a slip of paper. Stuck to the bottom of the reticule
+was a small key. Paul came near overlooking the last-named article,
+for it was well hidden in a fold near the corner. Now a key to an
+unknown lock is not much to go on at best, therefore he gave his
+attention to the paper. It was evidently a scrap torn from a sheet of
+wrapping-paper, and bore these figures in pencil:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+While he was reading these figures Paul heard a reporter say, loudly,
+"Now that I have written the paper, who will take it?"
+
+Another answered, "I will."
+
+"Who are you?" inquired the first voice.
+
+"Hawkshaw, the detective."
+
+Anderson's cheeks flushed, but he returned the bag and its contents
+without comment and walked out, heedless of the laughter of the
+six reporters. The injustice of their ridicule burnt him like a
+branding-iron, for his only offense lay in trying the impossible.
+These fellows had done their best and had failed, yet they jeered at
+him because he had tackled a forlorn hope. They had taken the trail
+when it was hot and had lost it; now they railed at him when he took
+it cold.
+
+All that afternoon he tramped the streets, thinking, thinking, until
+his brain went stale. The only fresh clues he had discovered thus
+far were the marks on finger and thumb, the fact that the girl was a
+Canadian, and that she had possessed but one mitten instead of two.
+This last, for obvious reasons, was too trivial to mean anything, and
+yet in so obscure a case it could not be ignored. The fact that she
+was a Canadian helped but little, therefore the best point upon which
+to hang a line of reasoning seemed to be those black spots on the left
+hand. But they stumped Anderson absolutely.
+
+He altered his mental approach to the subject and reflected upon the
+girl's belongings. Taken in their entirety they showed nothing save
+that the girl was poor, therefore he began mentally to assort them,
+one by one. First, clothes. They were ordinary clothes; they betrayed
+nothing. Second, the purse. It was like a million other purses and
+showed no distinguishing mark, no peculiarity. Third, the jewelry. It
+was cheap and common, of a sort to be found in any store. Fourth, the
+morphine-bottle. Paul was forced likewise to dismiss consideration of
+that. There remained nothing but the scrap of paper, torn from the
+corner of a large sheet and containing these penciled figures:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+It was a simple sum in subtraction, a very simple sum indeed; too
+simple, Anderson reflected, for any one to reduce to figures unless
+those figures had been intended for a purpose. He recalled the face
+at the morgue and vowed that such a girl could have done the sum
+mentally. Then why the paper? Why had she taken pains to tear off a
+piece of wrapping-paper, jot down figures so easy to remember,
+and preserve them in her purse? Why, she did so because she was
+methodical, something answered. But, his alter ego reasoned, if she
+had been sufficiently methodical to note a trivial transaction so
+carefully, she would have been sufficiently methodical to use some
+better, some more methodical method. She would not have torn off a
+corner of thick wrapping-paper upon which to keep her books. There was
+but one answer, memorandum!
+
+All right, memorandum it was, for the time being. Now then, in what
+business could she have been engaged where she found it necessary to
+keep memoranda of such inconsiderable sums? Oh, Lord! There were a
+million! Paul had been walking on thin ice from the start; now it gave
+way beneath him, so he abandoned this train of thought and went back
+once more to the bundle of clothes. Surely there was a clue concealed
+somewhere among them, if only he could find it. They were poor
+clothes, and yet, judging by their cut, he fancied the girl had looked
+exceedingly well in them--nay, even modish. She had evidently spent
+much time on them, as the beautiful needlework attested. At this point
+Anderson's mind ran out on to thin ice again, so he reverted to the
+girl herself for the _n_th time. She was Canadian, her hands were
+useful, there were tiny blood-blisters on the left thumb and index
+finger, and the skin was roughened and torn minutely, evidently by
+some sharp instrument. What instrument? He answered the question
+almost before he had voiced it. A needle, of course!
+
+Paul stopped in his walk so abruptly that a man poked him in the back
+with a ladder; but he paid no heed, for his mind was leaping. That
+thickening of the skin, those tiny scratches, those blood-blisters,
+those garments without mark of maker, yet so stylish in cut and so
+carefully made, and furthermore that memorandum:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+"Why, she was a dressmaker!" said Anderson, out loud. He went back
+over his reasoning, but it held good--so good that he would have
+wagered his own clothes that he was right. Yes, and those figures
+represented some trifling purchases or commission--for a customer, no
+doubt.
+
+It followed naturally that she was not a Buffalo dressmaker, else she
+would have been identified long since; nor was it likely that she came
+from any city, for her clothes had not given him the impression of
+being city-made, and, moreover, the publicity given to the case
+through the press, even allowing for the fact that the printed
+description had been vague, would have been sure to uncover her
+identity. No, she was a Canadian country seamstress.
+
+The young man's mind went back a few years to his boyhood on a
+Michigan farm, where visiting dressmakers used to come and stay by the
+week to make his mother's clothes. They usually carried a little
+flat trunk filled with patterns, yard sticks, forms, and other
+paraphernalia of the trade. Paul remembered that the owners used to
+buy the cloths and materials at the country stores, and render a
+strict accounting thereof to his mother. Well, where was the trunk
+that went with this country dressmaker?
+
+The question of baggage had puzzled him from the start. Had the girl
+been possessed of a grip or bundle of any kind at the time of her
+death that question would have been answered. But there was absolutely
+nothing of the sort in her room. Her complete lack of luggage had
+made him doubt, at first, that she was an out-of-town visitor; but,
+following his recent conclusions, he decided now that directly the
+opposite was true. She had come to Buffalo with nothing but a trunk,
+otherwise she would have taken her hand-luggage with her to the Main
+Street rooming-house. It remained to find that trunk.
+
+This problem threatened even greater difficulties than any hitherto,
+and Paul shivered as the raw Lake wind searched through his clothes.
+He wondered if it had been as cold as this when the girl arrived in
+Buffalo. Yes, assuredly. Then why did she go out with only one mitten?
+His reason told him that the other one had been lost by the police.
+But the police are careful, as a rule. They had saved every other
+article found in the girl's possession, even to a brooch and pin and
+scrap of paper. Probably the girl herself had lost it. But country
+dressmakers are careful, too; they are not given to losing mittens,
+especially in cold weather. It was more reasonable to believe that she
+had mislaid it among her belongings; inasmuch as those belongings,
+according to Paul's logic, were doubtless contained in her trunk, that
+was probably where the missing mitten would be found. But, after all,
+had she really brought a trunk with her?
+
+Like a flash came the recollection of that key stuck to the bottom of
+the girl's leather purse at the coroner's office. Ten minutes later
+Paul was back at the City Hall.
+
+For a second time he was greeted with laughter by the reportorial
+squad; again he paid no heed.
+
+"Why, you saw those things not two hours ago," protested the coroner's
+clerk, in answer to his inquiry.
+
+"I want to see them again."
+
+"Well, I'm busy. You've had them once, that's enough."
+
+"Friend," said Anderson, quietly, "I want those things and I want them
+quick. You give them to me or I'll go to the man higher up and get
+them--and your job along with them."
+
+The fellow obeyed reluctantly. Paul picked the key loose and examined
+it closely. While he was thus engaged, one of the reporters behind him
+said:
+
+"Aha! At last he has the key to the mystery."
+
+The general laughter ceased abruptly when the object of this banter
+thrust the key into his pocket and advanced threateningly toward the
+speaker, his face white with rage. The latter rose to his feet; he
+undertook to execute a dignified retreat, but Anderson seized him
+viciously, flung him back, and pinned him against the wall, crying,
+furiously:
+
+"You dirty rat! If you open your face to me again, I'll brain you, and
+that goes for all of this death-watch." He took in the other five men
+with his reddened eyes. "When you fellows see me coming, hole up.
+Understand?"
+
+His grip was so fierce, his mouth had such a wicked twist to it, that
+his victim understood him perfectly and began to grin in a sickly,
+apologetic fashion. Paul reseated the reporter at his desk with
+such violence that a chair leg gave way; then he strode out of the
+building.
+
+For the next few hours Anderson tramped the streets in impotent anger,
+striving to master himself, for that trifling episode had so upset him
+that he could not concentrate his mind upon the subject in hand. When
+he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and
+farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow
+the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours
+were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract,
+subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light of inductive
+reasoning.
+
+"Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk?" he
+repeated, tirelessly. Could it be in some other rooming-house? No. If
+the girl had disappeared from such a place, leaving her trunk behind,
+the publicity would have uncovered the fact. It might be lying in the
+baggage-room of some hotel, to be sure; but Paul doubted that, for the
+same reason. The girl had been poor, too; it was unlikely that she
+would have gone to a high-priced hotel. Well, he couldn't examine all
+the baggage in all the cheap hotels of the city--that was evident.
+Somehow he could not picture that girl in a cheap hotel; she was too
+fine, too patrician. No, it was more likely that she had left her
+trunk in some railroad station. This was a long chance, but Paul took
+it.
+
+The girl had come from Canada, therefore Anderson went to the Grand
+Trunk Railway depot and asked for the baggage-master. There were other
+roads, but this seemed the most likely.
+
+A raw-boned Irish baggage-man emerged from the confusion, and of a
+sudden Paul realized the necessity of even greater tact here than he
+had used with the Scotch girl, for he had no authority of any sort
+behind him by virtue of which he could demand so much as a favor.
+
+"Are you a married man?" he inquired, abruptly.
+
+"G'wan! I thought ye wanted a baggage-man," the big fellow replied.
+
+"Don't kid me; this is important."
+
+"Shure, I am, but I don't want any accident insurance. I took a chance
+and I'm game."
+
+"Have you any daughters?"
+
+"Two of them. But what's it to ye?"
+
+"Suppose one of them disappeared?"
+
+The baggage-man seized Anderson by the shoulder; his eyes dilated;
+with a catch in his voice he cried:
+
+"Love o' God, speak out! What are ye drivin' at?"
+
+"Nothing has happened to your girls, but--"
+
+"Then what in hell--?"
+
+"Wait! I had to throw a little scare into you so you'd understand what
+I'm getting at. Suppose one of your girls lay dead and unidentified
+in the morgue of a strange city and was about to be buried in the
+Potter's Field. You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Are ye daft? Or has something really happened? If not, it's a damn
+fool question. What d'ye want?"
+
+"Listen! You'd want her to have a decent burial, and you'd want her
+mother to know how she came to such a pass, wouldn't you?"
+
+The Irishman mopped his brow uncertainly. "I would that."
+
+"Then listen some more." Paul told the man his story, freely,
+earnestly, but rapidly; he painted the picture of a shy, lonely girl,
+homeless, hopeless and despondent in a great city, then the picture of
+two old people waiting in some distant farmhouse, sick at heart and
+uncertain, seeing their daughter's face in the firelight, hearing
+her sigh in the night wind. He talked in homely words that left the
+baggage-man's face grave, then he told how Burns, in a cruel jest, had
+sent a starving boy out to solve the mystery that had baffled the best
+detectives. When he had finished his listener cried:
+
+"Shure it was a rotten trick, but why d'ye come here?"
+
+"I want you to go through your baggage-room with me till we find a
+trunk which this key will fit."
+
+"Come on with ye. I'm blamed if I don't admire yer nerve. Of course
+ye understand I've no right to let ye in--that's up to the
+station-master, but he's a grouchy divil." The speaker led Paul into
+a room piled high with trunks, then summoned two helpers. "We'll move
+every dam' wan of them till we fit your little key," he declared; then
+the four men fell to.
+
+A blind search promised to be a job of hours, so Paul walked down the
+runway between the piles of trunks, using his eyes as he went. At
+least he could eliminate certain classes of baggage, and thus he might
+shorten the search; but half-way down the row he called sharply to the
+smashers:
+
+"Come here, quick!" At his tone they came running. "Look! that one in
+the bottom row!" he cried. "That's it. Something tells me it is."
+
+On the floor underneath the pile was a little, flat, battered tin
+trunk, pathetically old-fashioned and out of place among its more
+stylish neighbors; it was the kind of trunk Paul had seen in his
+mother's front room on the farm. It was bound about with a bit of
+rope.
+
+His excitement infected the others, and the three smashers went at the
+pile, regardless of damage. Anderson's suspense bid fair to choke him;
+what if this were not the one? he asked himself. But what if it were
+the right one? What if this key he clutched in his cold palm should
+fit the lock? Paul pictured what he would see when he lifted the lid:
+a collection of forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, a tape measure,
+and somewhere in it a little black yarn mitten. He prayed blindly for
+courage to withstand disappointment.
+
+"There she is," panted his Irish friend, dragging the object out into
+the clear. The other men crowded closer. "Come on, lad. What are ye
+waitin' for?"
+
+Anderson knelt before the little battered trunk and inserted the key.
+It was the keenest moment he had ever lived. He turned the key; then
+he was on his feet, cold, calm, his blue eyes glittering.
+
+"Cut those ropes. Quick!" he ordered. "We're right."
+
+The man at his side whipped out a knife and slashed twice.
+
+"Come close, all of you," Paul directed, "and remember everything we
+find. You may have to testify."
+
+He lifted the lid. On the top of the shallow tray lay a little black
+yarn mitten, the mate to that one in the city Morgue.
+
+Anderson smiled into the faces of the men at his side. "That's it," he
+said, simply.
+
+The tall Irishman laid a hand on his shoulder, saying: "Yer all right,
+boy. Don't get rattled,"
+
+Paul opened the till and found precisely the paraphernalia he had
+expected: there were forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, and a tape
+measure. In the compartment beneath were some neatly folded clothes,
+the needlework of which was fine, and in one corner a bundle of
+letters which Anderson examined with trembling fingers. They were
+addressed to "Miss Mabel Wilkes, Highland, Ontario, Canada, Care of
+Captain Wilkes."
+
+The amateur detective replaced the letters carefully; he closed and
+locked the trunk; then he thanked his companions.
+
+"If I had a dollar in the world," said he, "I'd ask you boys to have a
+drink, but I'm broke." Then he began to laugh foolishly, hysterically,
+until the raw-boned man clapped him on the back again.
+
+"Straighten up, lad. Ye've been strained a bit too hard. I'll
+telephone for the cops."
+
+In an instant Paul was himself. "You'll do nothing of the sort," he
+cried. "Why, man, you'll spoil the whole thing. I've worked this out
+alone, and if the police hear of it they'll notify all the papers and
+I'll have no story. Burns won't give me that job, and I'll be hungry
+again."
+
+"True! I forgot that fat-headed divil of an editor. Well, you say the
+word and nobody won't know nothin' from us. Hey, boys?"
+
+"Sure not," the other men agreed. This lad was one of their kind; he
+was up against it and fighting for his own, therefore they knew how to
+sympathize. But Paul had been seized with terror lest his story might
+get away from him, therefore he bade them a hasty good-by and sped
+up-town. His feet could not carry him swiftly enough.
+
+Burns greeted him sourly when he burst into the editorial sanctum. It
+was not yet twenty-four hours since he had sent this fellow away with
+instructions not to return.
+
+"Are you back again?" he snarled. "I heard about your assaulting Wells
+down at the City Hall. Don't try it on me or I'll have you pinched."
+
+Paul laughed lightly. "I don't have to fight for my rights any more."
+
+"Indeed! What are you grinning about? Have you found who that girl
+is?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"_What?_" Burns's jaw dropped limply; he leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Yes, sir! I've identified her."
+
+The fat man was at first incredulous, then suspicious. "Don't try any
+tricks on me," he cried, warningly. "Don't try to put anything over--"
+
+"Her name is Mabel Wilkes. She is the daughter of Captain Wilkes, of
+Highland, Ontario. She was a country dressmaker and lived with her
+people at that place. Her trunk is down at the Grand Trunk depot with
+the rest of her clothes in it, together with the mate to the mitten
+she had when she killed herself. I went through the trunk with the
+baggage-master, name Corrigan. Here's the key which I got from her
+purse at the coroner's office."
+
+Burns fixed his round eyes upon the key, then he shifted them slowly
+to Anderson's face. "Why--why--this is amazing! I--I--" He cleared his
+throat nervously. "How did you discover all this? Who told you?"
+
+"Nobody told me. I reasoned it out."
+
+"But how--Good Lord! Am I dreaming?"
+
+"I'm a good newspaper man. I've been telling you that every day. Maybe
+you'll believe me now."
+
+Burns made no reply. Instead, he pushed a button and Wells, of the
+City Hall squad, entered, pausing abruptly at sight of Anderson.
+Giving the latter no time for words, Mr. Burns issued his
+instructions. On the instant he was the trained newspaper man again,
+cheating the clock dial and trimming minutes: his words were sharp and
+decisive.
+
+"That suicide story has broken big and we've got a scoop. Anderson has
+identified her. Take the first G.T. train for Highland, Ontario, and
+find her father, Captain Wilkes. Wire me a full story about the girl
+Mabel, private life, history, everything. Take plenty of space. Have
+it in by midnight."
+
+Wells's eyes were round, too; they were glued upon Paul with a
+hypnotic stare, but he managed to answer, "Yes, sir!" He was no longer
+grinning.
+
+"Now, Anderson," the editor snapped, "get down-stairs and see if you
+can write the story. Pile it on thick--it's a corker."
+
+"Very good, sir, but I'd like a little money," that elated youth
+demanded, boldly. "Just advance me fifty, will you? Remember I'm on
+top salary."
+
+Burns made a wry face. "I'll send a check down to you," he promised,
+"but get at that story and make it a good one or I'll fire you
+tonight."
+
+Anderson got. He found a desk and began to write feverishly. A
+half-hour later he read what he had written and tore it up. Another
+half-hour and he repeated the performance. Three times he wrote the
+tale and destroyed it, then paused, realizing blankly that as a
+newspaper story it was impossible. Every atom of interest surrounding
+the suicide of the girl grew out of his own efforts to solve the
+mystery. Nothing had happened, no new clues had been uncovered, no one
+had been implicated in the girl's death, there was no crime. It was
+a tale of Paul Anderson's deductions, nothing more, and it had no
+newspaper value. He found he had written about himself instead of
+about the girl.
+
+He began again, this time laboriously eliminating himself, and when he
+had finished his story it was perhaps the poorest journalistic effort
+ever written.
+
+Upon lagging feet he bore the copy to Burns's office. But the editor
+gave him no time for explanation, demanding, fiercely:
+
+"Where's that check I sent you?"
+
+"Here it is." The youth handed it to him. "Make a mistake?"
+
+"I certainly did." Burns tore up the check before saying, "Now you get
+out, you bum, and stay out, or take the consequences."
+
+"Get out? What for?"
+
+"You know what for." Burns was quivering with rage. "You ran a good
+bluff and you nearly put it over; but I don't want to advertise myself
+as a jackass, so I shan't have you pinched unless you come back."
+
+"Come back? I intend to stay. What's the matter?"
+
+"I had an idea you were fourflushing," stormed the editor, "so I went
+down to the G.T. depot myself. There's no trunk of the sort there;
+Corrigan never saw you or anybody like you. Say, why didn't you walk
+out when you got that check? What made you come back?"
+
+Anderson began to laugh softly. "Good old Corrigan! He's all right,
+isn't he? Well, he gets half of that check when you rewrite it, if I
+don't laugh myself to death before I get to the bank."
+
+"What d'you mean?" Burns was impressed by the other's confidence.
+
+"Nothing, except that I've found one square man in this village. One
+square guy is a pretty big percentage in a town the size of Buffalo.
+Corrigan wouldn't let you see the depot if I wasn't along. Put on your
+coat and come with me--yes, and bring a couple of hired men if it will
+make you feel any better."
+
+At the depot he called the baggage-master to him, and said:
+
+"Mr. Corrigan, this is Mr. Burns, the city editor of _The
+Intelligencer_."
+
+"That's what he told me," grinned the Irishman, utterly ignoring the
+young editor; "but you didn't give him no references, and I wouldn't
+take a chance."
+
+Burns maintained a dignified silence; he said little even when the
+contents of the trunk were displayed to him. Nor did he open his mouth
+on the way back to the office. But when he was seated at his desk and
+had read Anderson's copy he spoke.
+
+"This is the rottenest story ever turned in at this office," said he.
+
+"I know it is," Paul agreed, frankly, then explained his difficulty in
+writing it.
+
+"I'll do it myself," Burns told him. "Now, you go home and report
+to-morrow."
+
+A very tired but a very happy young man routed out the landlady of a
+cheap boarding-house that night and hugged her like a bear, explaining
+joyously that he had done a great big thing. He waltzed her down the
+hall and back, while she clutched wildly at her flapping flannel
+wrapper and besought him to think of her other boarders. He waltzed
+her out of her bedroom slippers, gave her a smacking big kiss on her
+wrinkled cheek, then left her, breathless and scandalized, but all
+aflutter.
+
+The city had read the story when Anderson awoke the next morning, for
+_The Intelligencer_ had made a clean "beat," and Burns had played up
+the story tremendously, hence it was with jumping pulses that Paul
+scanned the front page of that journal. The further he read, however,
+the greater grew his indignation.
+
+The history of Mabel Wilkes, under the magic touch of Burns, had,
+to be sure, become a wonderful, tragic story; but nowhere in it was
+mention made of Paul Anderson. In the patient and ingenious solution
+of the mystery of the girl's identity no credit was given to him. The
+cleverness and the perseverance of _The Buffalo Intelligencer_ was
+exploited, its able reportorial staff was praised, its editorial
+shrewdness extolled, but that was all. When he had concluded reading
+the article Anderson realized that it was no more than a boost for the
+city editor, who it was plain to be seen, had uncovered the story
+bit by bit, greatly to the confusion of the police and the detective
+bureau.
+
+It astounded as well as angered Paul to realize how cleverly Burns had
+covered him up, therefore the sense of injustice was strong in him
+when he entered the office. His enemy recognized his mood, and seemed
+to gloat over it.
+
+"That was good work you did," he purred, "and I'll keep you on as long
+as you show ability. Of course you can't write yet, so I'll let you
+cover real-estate transactions and the market. I'll send for you when
+you're needed."
+
+Anderson went back to his desk in silent rage. Real estate! Burns
+evidently intended to hold him down. His gloomy meditations were
+somewhat lightened by the congratulations of his fellow-reporters, who
+rather timidly ventured to introduce themselves. They understood the
+facts and they voiced a similar indignation to his. Burns had played
+him a rotten trick, they agreed. Not content with robbing his new
+reporter of the recognition which was justly his, the fellow was
+evidently determined to vent his spite in other ways. Well, that was
+like Burns. They voiced the opinion that Anderson would have a tough
+job getting through interference of the kind that their editor would
+throw in his way.
+
+Hour after hour Paul sat around the office nursing his disappointment,
+waiting for Burns to send him out. About two o'clock Wells hurried
+into the office, bringing with him the afternoon papers still wet from
+the press. In his eyes was an unwonted sparkle. He crossed directly to
+Anderson and thrust out his palm.
+
+"Old man, I want to shake with you," said he. "And I want to apologize
+for being a rotter."
+
+Paul met him half-way, and the fellow went on:
+
+"Burns gave us the wrong tip on you--said you were a joke--that's why
+we joshed you. But you showed us up, and I'm glad you did."
+
+"Why--thank you!" stammered the new reporter, upon whom this manly
+apology had a strong effect. "It--it was more luck than anything."
+
+"Luck nothing! You're a genius, and it's a dirty shame the way the
+boss tried to steal your credit. However, it seems he overreached
+himself." Wells began to laugh.
+
+"_Tried_ to steal it! Good Lord! he did steal it! How do you mean he
+overreached himself?"
+
+"Haven't you seen the afternoon papers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well! Read 'em!" Mr. Wells spread his papers out before Paul, whose
+astonished eyes took in for a second time the story of the Wilkes
+suicide. But what a story!
+
+He read his own name in big, black type; he read head-lines that told
+of a starving boy sent out on a hopeless assignment as a cruel joke;
+he read the story as it had really occurred, only told in the third
+person by an author who was neither ashamed nor afraid to give
+credit where it was due. The egotistical pretense of _The Buffalo
+Intelligencer_ was torn to shreds, and ridicule was heaped upon its
+editor. Paul read nervously, breathlessly, until Wells interrupted
+him.
+
+"I'm to blame for this," said he. "I couldn't stand for such a crooked
+deal. When I got in this morning and saw what that fat imbecile had
+done to you I tipped the true facts off to the others--all of the
+facts I knew. They got the rest from Corrigan, down at the Grand Trunk
+depot. Of course this means my job, if the old man finds it out; but I
+don't give a damn."
+
+As yet Anderson was too dazed to grasp what had happened to him, but
+the other continued:
+
+"The boys have had it in for Burns, on the quiet, for months, and now
+I guess they're even."
+
+"I--I don't know how to thank you," stammered Anderson.
+
+"Don't try. You're a born reporter, and the other papers will give you
+a job even if the baby hippo in yonder fires you."
+
+A boy touched Paul on the arm with the announcement, "Mr. Burns wants
+to see you."
+
+"Oho!" cried Wells. "He's got the bad news. Gee! I'd like to hear what
+he says. I'll bet he's biting splinters out of his desk. Let me know
+what comes off, will you?"
+
+When Anderson entered the office of his editor he was met by a
+white-faced man whose rage had him so by the throat that speech for a
+moment was impossible. Beneath Mr. Burns's feet, and strewn broadcast
+about the room, were the crumpled sheets of the afternoon papers.
+Burns glared at the newcomer for a moment, then he extended a shaking
+finger, crying, furiously:
+
+"You did this!"
+
+"Did what?"
+
+"You put up this job. You made a fool of me!"
+
+"No, sir! I did not. Your parents saw to that."
+
+"Don't tell me you didn't, you--you damned ungrateful--" Burns seemed
+about to assault his reporter, but restrained himself. "You're fired!
+Do you understand? Fired--discharged."
+
+"Say, Burns--"
+
+"Not a word. I'm done with you. I--"
+
+"Just a minute," young Anderson cried, in a tone that stilled the
+other. "I'm fired, am I, for something I didn't do? Very well!
+I'm glad of it, for now you can't stand in my way. You tried to
+double-cross me and failed. You robbed me of what was mine and got
+caught at it. You're a big man, in your way, Burns, but some day
+people will tell you that the biggest thing you ever did was to fire
+Paul Anderson. That's how small you'll be, and that's how big I'm
+going to grow. You've 'welched' on your own word; but there's one
+thing you gave me that you can't take away, and that's the knowledge
+that I'm a newspaper man and a good one. Now just one thing more: I'm
+broke today, but I'm going to lick you as soon as I save up enough for
+the fine."
+
+With studied insolence the speaker put on his hat, slammed the door
+behind him, and walked out of _The Intelligencer_ office, leaving the
+apoplectic editor thereof secure in the breathless knowledge that for
+once in his life he had heard the truth spoken. Mr. Burns wondered how
+long it would take that young bully to save up ten dollars and costs.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+"There is but one remedy for your complaint." Doctor Suydam settled
+deeper into his chair. "Marry the girl."
+
+"That is the only piece of your professional advice I ever cared to
+follow. But how?"
+
+"Any way you can--use force if necessary--only marry her. Otherwise I
+predict all sorts of complications for you--melancholia, brain-fag,
+bankruptcy--"
+
+Austin laughed. "Could you write me a prescription?"
+
+"Oh, she'll have you, Bob. You don't seem to realize that you are a
+good catch."
+
+Austin finished buckling his puttee before rising to his full height.
+"That doesn't mean anything to her. She doesn't need to make a catch."
+
+"Nonsense! She's just like all the others, only richer and nicer. Go
+at her as if she were the corn-market; she won't be half so hard to
+corner. You have made a name for yourself, and a blamed sight more
+money than you deserve; you are young--comparatively, I mean."
+
+The elder man stroked his shock of iron-gray hair for answer.
+
+"Well, at any rate you are a picturesque personage, even if you can't
+wear riding-clothes."
+
+"Doesn't a man look like the devil in these togs?" Austin posed
+awkwardly in front of a mirror.
+
+"There's only one person who can look worse in riding-clothes than a
+man--that's a woman."
+
+"What heresy, particularly in a society doctor! But I agree with you.
+I learned to ride on her account, you know. As a matter of fact, I
+hate it. The sight of a horse fills me with terror."
+
+Doctor Suydam laughed outright at this. "She tells me that you have a
+very good seat."
+
+"Really!" Austin's eyes gleamed suddenly. "You know I never had
+a chance to ride when I was a youngster--in fact, I never had an
+opportunity to do anything except work. That's what makes me so crude
+and awkward. What I know I have picked up during the last few years."
+
+"You make me tired!" declared the former. "You aren't--"
+
+"Oh, I don't skate on waxed floors nor spill tea, nor clutch at my
+chauffeur in a tight place, but you know what I mean. I feel lonesome
+in a dress-suit, a butler fills me with gloom, and--Well, I'm not one
+of you, that's all."
+
+"Perhaps that's what makes a hit with Marmion. She's used to the other
+kind."
+
+"It seems to me that I have always worked," ruminated the former
+speaker. "I don't remember that I ever had time to play, even after
+I came to the city. It's a mighty sad thing to rob a boy of his
+childhood; it makes him a dull, unattractive sort when he grows up.
+I used to read about people like Miss Moore, but I never expected to
+know them until I met you. Of course, that corn deal rather changed
+things."
+
+"Well, I should rather say it did!" Suydam agreed, with emphasis.
+
+"The result is that when I am with her I forget the few things I have
+done that are worth while, and I become the farm-hand again. I'm
+naturally rough and angular, and she sees it."
+
+"Oh, you're too sensitive! You have a heart like a girl underneath
+that saturnine front of yours, and while you look like the Sphinx,
+you are really as much of a kid at heart as I am. Where do you ride
+to-day?"
+
+"Riverside Drive."
+
+"What horse is she riding?"
+
+"Pointer."
+
+The doctor shook his head. "Too many automobiles on the Drive. He's a
+rotten nag for a woman, anyhow. His mouth is as tough as a stirrup,
+and he has the disposition of a tarantula. Why doesn't she stick to
+the Park?"
+
+"You know Marmion."
+
+"Say, wouldn't it be great if Pointer bolted and you saved her life?
+She couldn't refuse you then."
+
+Austin laughed. "That's not exactly the way I'd care to win her.
+However, if Pointer bolted I'd probably get rattled and fall off my
+own horse. I don't like the brutes. Come on, I'm late."
+
+"That's right," grumbled the other, "leave me here while you make
+love to the nicest girl in New York. I'm going down to the office and
+amputate somebody."
+
+They descended the single flight to the street, where Austin's groom
+was struggling with a huge black.
+
+"It's coming pretty soft for you brokers," the doctor growled, as his
+companion swung himself into the saddle. "The next time I get a friend
+I'll keep him to myself."
+
+Austin leaned forward with a look of grave anxiety upon his rugged
+features and said: "Wish me luck, Doc. I'm going to ask her to-day."
+
+"Good for you, old fellow." There was great fondness in the younger
+man's eyes as he wrung the rider's hand and waved him adieu, then
+watched him disappear around the corner.
+
+"She'll take him," he mused, half aloud. "She's a sensible girl even
+if all New York has done its best to spoil her." He hailed a taxicab
+and was hurried to his office.
+
+It was perhaps two hours later that he was called on the telephone.
+
+"Hello! Yes, yes! What is it?" he cried, irritably. "Mercy Hospital!
+_What_?" The young physician started. "Hurt, you say? Run-away? Go on,
+quick!" He listened with whitening face, then broke in abruptly: "Of
+course he sent for me. I'll be right up."
+
+He slammed the receiver upon its hook and, seizing his hat, bolted out
+through a waiting-room full of patients. His car was in readiness, and
+he called to his chauffeur in such tones that the fellow vaulted to
+his seat.
+
+"Go up Madison Avenue; there's less traffic there. And for God's sake
+_hurry_!"
+
+During two years' service with New York's most fashionable physician
+the driver had never received a command like this, and he opened up
+his machine. A policeman warned him at Thirty-third Street and the car
+slowed down, at which Suydam leaned forward, crying, roughly:
+
+"To hell with regulations! There's a man dying!"
+
+The last word was jerked from him as he was snapped back into his
+seat. Regardless of admonitory shouts from patrolmen, the French
+car sang its growing song, while truck-drivers bellowed curses
+and pedestrians fled from crossings at the scream of its siren. A
+cross-town car blocked them, and the brakes screeched in agony, while
+Doctor Suydam was well-nigh catapulted into the street; then they were
+under way again, with the car leaping from speed to speed. It was the
+first time the driver had ever dared to disregard those upraised,
+white-gloved hands, and it filled his joy-riding soul with exultation.
+A street repair loomed ahead, whereupon, with a sickening skid, they
+swung into a side street; the gears clashed again, and an instant
+later they shot out upon Fifth Avenue. At the next corner they lay
+motionless in a blockade, while the motor shuddered; then they dodged
+through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were
+whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer
+stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle,
+then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding
+machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be
+greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and
+told of a doctor's urgency.
+
+Inside, Doctor Suydam, pallid of face and shaking in a most
+unprofessional manner, was bending over a figure in riding-clothes,
+the figure of a tall, muscular man who lay silent, deaf to his words
+of greeting.
+
+They told him all there was to tell in the deadly, impersonal way
+of hospitals, while he nodded swift comprehension. There had been a
+runaway--a woman on a big, white-eyed bay, that had taken fright at an
+automobile; a swift rush up the Driveway, a lunge over the neck of
+the pursuing horse, then a man wrenched from his saddle and dragged
+beneath cruel, murderous hoofs. The bay had gone down, and the woman
+was senseless when the ambulance arrived, but she had revived and
+had been hurried to her home. In the man's hand they had found the
+fragment of a bridle rein gripped with such desperation that they
+could not remove it until he regained consciousness. He had asked
+regarding the girl's safety, then sighed himself into oblivion again.
+They told Suydam that he would die.
+
+With sick heart the listener cursed all high-spirited women and
+high-strung horses, declaring them to be works of the devil, like
+automobiles; then he went back to the side of his friend, where other
+hands less unsteady were at work.
+
+"Poor lonely old Bob!" he murmured. "Not a soul to care except Marmion
+and me, and God knows whether she cares or not."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Robert Austin did not die, although the attending surgeons said
+he would, said he should, in fact, unless all the teachings of their
+science were at fault. He even offended the traditions of the hospital
+by being removed to his own apartments in a week. There Suydam, who
+had watched him night and day, told him that Miss Moore had a broken
+shoulder and hence could not come to see him.
+
+"Poor girl!" said Austin, faintly. "If I'd known more about horses I
+might have saved her."
+
+"If you'd known more about horses you'd have let Pointer run,"
+declared his friend. "Nobody but an idiot or a Bob Austin would have
+taken the chance you did. How is your head?"
+
+The sick man closed his eyes wearily. "It hurts all the time. What's
+the matter with it?"
+
+"We've none of us been able to discover what isn't the matter with it!
+Why in thunder did you hold on so long?"
+
+"Because I--I love her, I suppose."
+
+"Did you ask her to marry you?" Suydam had been itching to ask the
+question for days.
+
+"No, I was just getting to it when Pointer bolted. I--I'm slow at such
+things." There was a moment's pause. "Doc, what's the matter with my
+eyes? I can't see very well."
+
+"Don't talk so much," ordered the physician. "You're lucky to be here
+at all. Thanks to that copper-riveted constitution of yours, you'll
+get well."
+
+But it seemed that the patient was fated to disappoint the predictions
+of his friend as well as those of the surgeons at Mercy Hospital. He
+did not recover in a manner satisfactory to his medical adviser, and
+although he regained the most of his bodily vigor, the injury to his
+eyes baffled even the most skilled specialists.
+
+He was very brave about it, however, and wrung the heart of Doctor
+Suydam by the uncomplaining fortitude with which he bore examination
+after examination. Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic
+atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and
+meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in
+the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an
+unschooled farm-boy to a position of eminence in the business world,
+went slowly blind. The shadows crept in upon him with a deadly,
+merciless certainty that would have filled the stoutest heart with
+gloom, and yet he maintained a smiling stoicism that deceived all but
+his closest associates. To Doctor Suydam, however, the incontestable
+progress of the malady was frightfully tragic. He alone knew the man's
+abundant spirits, his lofty ambitions, and his active habits. He alone
+knew of the overmastering love that had come so late and was
+destined to go unvoiced, and he raved at the maddening limits of his
+profession. In Austin's presence he strove to be cheerful and to
+lighten the burden he knew was crushing the sick man; but at other
+times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check
+the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of. In time,
+however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned
+himself to the worst. He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion
+Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness
+he could muster, of her part in this calamity. But Austin would not
+hear of it.
+
+"She doesn't dream of the truth," the invalid told him. "And I don't
+want her to learn. She thinks I'm merely weak, and it grieves her
+terribly to know that I haven't recovered. If she really knew--it
+might ruin her life, for she is a girl who feels deeply. I want to
+spare her that; it's the least I can do."
+
+"But she'll find it out some time."
+
+"I think not. She comes to see me every day--"
+
+"Every day?"
+
+"Yes. I'm expecting her soon."
+
+"And she doesn't know?"
+
+Austin shook his head. "I never let her see there's anything the
+matter with my sight. She drives up with her mother, and I wait for
+her there in the bay-window. It's getting hard for me to distinguish
+her now, but I recognize the hoofbeats--I can tell them every time."
+
+"But--I don't understand."
+
+"I pretend to be very weak," explained the elder man, with a guilty
+flush. "I sit in the big chair yonder and my Jap boy waits on her. She
+is very kind." Austin's voice grew husky. "I'm sorry to lose sight of
+the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children--they're growing
+indistinct. I--I like children. I've always wanted some for myself.
+I've dreamed about--that." His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful
+smile. "I guess that is all over with now."
+
+"Why?" questioned Suydam, savagely. "Why don't you ask her to marry
+you, Bob? She couldn't refuse--and God knows you need her."
+
+"That's just it; she couldn't refuse. This is the sort of thing a
+fellow must bear alone. She's too young, and beautiful, and fine to be
+harnessed up to a worn-out old--cripple."
+
+"Cripple!" The other choked. "Don't talk like that. Don't be so blamed
+resigned. It tears my heart out. I--I--why, I believe I feel this more
+than you do."
+
+Austin turned his face to the speaker with a look of such tragic
+suffering that the younger man fell silent.
+
+"I'm glad I can hide my feelings," Austin told him, slowly, "for that
+is what I have to do every instant she is with me. I don't wish to
+inflict unnecessary pain upon my friends, but don't you suppose I know
+what this means? It means the destruction of all my fine hopes, the
+death of all I hold dear in the world. I love my work, for I am--or I
+was--a success; this means I must give it up. I'm strong in body and
+brain; this robs me of my usefulness. All my life I have prayed that
+I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means
+I must give her up and be lonely all my days. I must grope my way
+through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me. Do you know
+how awful the darkness is?" He clasped his hands tightly. "I must go
+hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me. Just
+at the crowning point of my life I've been snuffed out. I must fall
+behind and see my friends desert me."
+
+"Bob!" cried the other, in shocked denial.
+
+"Oh, you know it will come to that. People don't like to feel pity
+forever tugging at them. I've been a lonely fellow and my friends are
+numbered. For a time they will come to see me, and try to cheer me up;
+they will even try to include me in their pleasures; then when it is
+no longer a new story and their commiseration has worn itself out they
+will gradually fall away. It always happens so. I'll be 'poor Bob
+Austin,' and I'll go feeling my way through life an object of pity, a
+stumbling, incomplete thing that has no place to fill, no object to
+work for, no one to care. God! I'm not the sort to go blind! Where's
+the justice of it? I've lived clean. Why did this happen to me? Why?
+Why? I know what the world is; I've been a part of it. I've seen the
+spring and the autumn colors and I've watched the sunsets. I've looked
+into men's faces and read their souls, and when you've done that you
+can't live in darkness. I can't and--I won't!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'm going away."
+
+"When? Where?"
+
+"When I can no longer see Marmion Moore and before my affliction
+becomes known to her. Where--you can guess."
+
+"Oh, that's cowardly, Bob! You're not that sort. You mustn't! It's
+unbelievable," his friend cried, in a panic.
+
+Austin smiled bitterly. "We have discussed that too often, and--I'm
+not sure that what I intend doing is cowardly. I can't go now, for the
+thing is too fresh in her memory, she might learn the truth and hold
+herself to blame; but when she has lost the first shock of it I shall
+walk out quietly and she won't even suspect. Other interests will come
+into her life; I'll be only a memory. Then--" After a pause he went
+on, "I couldn't bear to see her drop away with the rest."
+
+"Don't give up yet," urged the physician. "She is leaving for the
+summer, and while she is gone we'll try that Berlin chap. He'll be
+here in August."
+
+"And he will fail, as the others did. He will lecture some clinic
+about me, that's all. Marmion will hear that my eyes have given out
+from overwork, or something like that. Then I'll go abroad, and--I
+won't come back." Austin, divining the rebellion in his friend's
+heart, said, quickly: "You're the only one who could enlighten her,
+Doc, but you won't do it. You owe me too much."
+
+"I--I suppose I do," acknowledged Suydam, slowly. "I owe you more than
+I can ever repay--"
+
+"Wait--" The sick man raised his hand, while a sudden light blazed up
+in his face. "She's coming!"
+
+To the doctor's trained ear the noises of the street rose in a
+confused murmur, but Austin spoke in an awed, breathless tone, almost
+as if he were clairvoyant.
+
+"I can hear the horses. She's coming to--see me."
+
+"I'll go," exclaimed the visitor, quickly, but the other shook his
+head.
+
+"I'd rather have you stay."
+
+Austin was poised in an attitude of the intensest alertness, his
+angular, awkward body was drawn to its full height, his lean face was
+lighted by some hidden fire that lent it almost beauty.
+
+"She's getting out of the carriage," he cried, in a nervous voice;
+then he felt his way to his accustomed arm-chair. Suydam was about to
+go to the bay-window when he paused, regarding his friend curiously.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+The blind man had begun to beat time with his hand, counting under his
+breath: "One! Two! Three!--"
+
+"She'll knock when I reach twenty-five. 'Sh! 'sh!" He continued his
+pantomime, and Suydam realized that from repeated practice Austin had
+gauged to a nicety the seconds Marmion Moore required to mount the
+stairs. This was his means of holding himself in check. True to
+prediction, at "Twenty-five" a gentle knock sounded, and Suydam opened
+the door.
+
+"Come in, Marmion."
+
+The girl paused for the briefest instant on the threshold, and the
+doctor noted her fleeting disappointment at seeing him; then she took
+his hand.
+
+"This _is_ a surprise," she exclaimed. "I haven't seen you for ever so
+long."
+
+Her anxious glance swept past him to the big, awkward figure against
+the window's light. Austin was rising with apparent difficulty, and
+she glided to him.
+
+"Please! Don't rise! How many times have I told you not to exert
+yourself?"
+
+Suydam noted the gentle, proprietary tone of her voice, and it amazed
+him.
+
+"I--am very glad that you came to see me." The afflicted man's voice
+was jerky and unmusical. "How are you to-day, Miss?"
+
+"He shouldn't rise, should he?" Miss Moore appealed to the physician.
+"He is very weak and shouldn't exert himself."
+
+The doctor wished that his friend might see the girl's face as he saw
+it; he suddenly began to doubt his own judgment of women.
+
+"Oh, I'm doing finely," Austin announced. "Won't you be seated?" He
+waved a comprehensive gesture, and Suydam, marveling at the manner
+in which the fellow concealed his infirmity, brought a chair for the
+caller.
+
+"I came alone to-day. Mother is shopping," Miss Moore was saying.
+"See! I brought these flowers to cheer up your room." She held up a
+great bunch of sweet peas. "I love the pink ones, don't you?"
+
+Austin addressed the doctor. "Miss Moore has been very kind to me; I'm
+afraid she feels it her duty--"
+
+"No! No!" cried the girl.
+
+"She rarely misses a day, and she always brings flowers. I'm very fond
+of bright colors."
+
+Suydam cursed at the stiff formality in the man's tone. How could any
+woman see past that glacial front and glimpse the big, aching
+heart beyond? Austin was harsh and repellent when the least bit
+self-conscious, and now he was striving deliberately to heighten the
+effect.
+
+The physician wondered why Marmion Moore had gone even thus far in
+showing her gratitude, for she was not the self-sacrificing kind. As
+for a love match between two such opposite types, Suydam could not
+conceive of it. Even if the girl understood the sweet, simple nature
+of this man, even if she felt her own affections answer to his, Suydam
+believed he knew the women of her set too well to imagine that she
+could bring herself to marry a blind man, particularly one of no
+address.
+
+"We leave for the mountains to-morrow," Marmion said, "so I came to
+say good-by, for a time."
+
+"I--shall miss your visits," Austin could not disguise his genuine
+regret, "but when you return I shall be thoroughly recovered. Perhaps
+we can ride again."
+
+"Never!" declared Miss Moore. "I shall never ride again. Think of the
+suffering I've caused you. I--I--am dreadfully sorry."
+
+To Suydam's amazement, he saw the speaker's eyes fill with tears. A
+doubt concerning the correctness of his surmises came over him and he
+rose quickly. After all, he reflected, she might see and love the real
+Bob as he did, and if so she might wish to be alone with him in this
+last hour. But Austin laughed at his friend's muttered excuse.
+
+"You know there's nobody waiting for you. That's only a pretense to
+find livelier company. You promised to dine with me." To Miss Moore he
+explained: "He isn't really busy; why, he has been complaining for an
+hour that the heat has driven all his patients to the country, and
+that he is dying of idleness."
+
+The girl's expression altered curiously. She shrank as if wounded; she
+scanned the speaker's face with startled eyes before turning with a
+strained smile to say:
+
+"So, Doctor, we caught you that time. That comes from being a
+high-priced society physician. Why don't you practise among the
+masses? I believe the poor are always in need of help."
+
+"I really have an engagement," Suydam muttered.
+
+"Then break it for Mr. Austin's sake. He is lonely and--I must be
+going in a moment."
+
+The three talked for a time in the manner all people adopt for a
+sick-room, then the girl rose and said, with her palm in Austin's
+hand:
+
+"I owe you so much that I can never hope to repay you, but you--you
+will come to see me frequently this season. Promise! You won't hide
+yourself, will you?"
+
+The blind man smiled his thanks and spoke his farewell with
+meaningless politeness; then, as the physician prepared to see her to
+her carriage, Miss Moore said:
+
+"No! Please stay and gossip with our invalid. It's only a step."
+
+She walked quickly to the door, flashed them a smile, and was gone.
+
+Suydam heard his patient counting as before.
+
+"One! Two! Three--!"
+
+At "Twenty-five" the elder man groped his way to the open bay-window
+and bowed at the carriage below. There came the sound of hoofs and
+rolling wheels, and the doctor, who had taken stand beside his friend,
+saw Marmion Moore turn in her seat and wave a last adieu. Austin
+continued to nod and smile in her direction, even after the carriage
+was lost to view; then he felt his way back to the arm-chair and sank
+limply into it.
+
+"Gone! I--I'll never be able to see her again."
+
+Suydam's throat tightened miserably. "Could you see her at all?"
+
+"Only her outlines; but when she comes back in the fall I'll be as
+blind as a bat." He raised an unsteady hand to his head and closed his
+eyes. "I can stand anything except that! To lose sight of her dear
+face--" The force of his emotion wrenched a groan from him.
+
+"I don't know what to make of her," said the other. "Why didn't you
+let me go, Bob? It was her last good-by; she wanted to be alone with
+you. She might have--"
+
+"That's it!" exclaimed Austin. "I was afraid of myself; afraid I'd
+speak if I had the chance." His voice was husky as he went on. "It's
+hard--hard, for sometimes I think she loves me, she's so sweet and so
+tender. At such times I'm a god. But I know it can't be; that it is
+only pity and gratitude that prompts her. Heaven knows I'm uncouth
+enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness. I play
+a part--the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is
+breaking." He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish
+eyes once more. "It's cruelly hard. I can't keep it up."
+
+The other man laid a hand on his shoulder, saying: "I don't know
+whether you're doing right or not. I half suspect you are doing
+Marmion a bitter wrong."
+
+"Oh, but she can't--she _can't_ love me!" Austin rose as if
+frightened. "She might yield to her impulse and--well, marry me, for
+she has a heart of gold, but it wouldn't last. She would learn some
+time that it wasn't real love that prompted the sacrifice. Then I
+should die."
+
+The specialist from Berlin came, but he refused to operate, declaring
+bluntly that there was no use, and all during the long, hot summer
+days Robert Austin sat beside his open window watching the light
+die out of the world, waiting, waiting, for the time to make his
+sacrifice.
+
+Suydam read Marmion's cheery letters aloud, wondering the while at the
+wistful note they sounded now and then. He answered them in his own
+handwriting, which she had never seen.
+
+One day came the announcement that she was returning the first week in
+October. Already September was partly gone, so Austin decided to sail
+in a week. At his dictation Suydam wrote to her, saying that the
+strain of overwork had rendered a long vacation necessary. The doctor
+writhed internally as he penned the careful sentences, wondering if
+the hurt of the deliberately chosen words would prevent her sensing
+the truth back of them. As days passed and no answer came he judged it
+had.
+
+The apartment was stripped and bare, the trunks were packed on the
+afternoon before Austin's departure. All through the dreary mockery of
+the process the blind man had withstood his friend's appeal, his stern
+face set, his heavy heart full of a despairing stubbornness. Now,
+being alone at last, he groped his way about the premises to fix them
+in his memory; then he sank into his chair beside the window.
+
+He heard a knock at the door and summoned the stranger to enter, then
+he rose with a gasp of dismay. Marmion Moore was greeting him with
+sweet, yet hesitating effusiveness.
+
+"I--I thought you were not coming back until next week," he stammered.
+
+"We changed our plans." She searched his face as best she could in the
+shaded light, a strange, anxious expression upon her own. "Your letter
+surprised me."
+
+"The doctor's orders," he said, carelessly. "They say I have broken
+down."
+
+"I know! I know what caused it!" she panted. "You never recovered from
+that accident. You did not tell me the truth. I've always felt that
+you were hiding something from me. Why? Oh, why?"
+
+"Nonsense!" He undertook to laugh, but failed in a ghastly manner.
+"I've been working too hard. Now I'm paying the penalty."
+
+"How long will you be gone?" she queried.
+
+"Oh, I haven't decided. A long time, however." His tone bewildered
+her. "It is the first vacation I ever had; I want to make the most of
+it."
+
+"You--you were going away without saying good-by to--your old
+friends?" Her lips were white, and her brave attempt to smile would
+have told him the truth had he seen it, but he only had her tone to go
+by, so he answered, indifferently:
+
+"All my arrangements were made; I couldn't wait."
+
+"You are offended with me," Miss Moore said, after a pause. "How have
+I hurt you? What is it; please? I--I have been too forward, perhaps?"
+
+Austin dared not trust himself to answer, and when he made no sign the
+girl went on, painfully:
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't want to seem bold. I owe you so much; we were
+such good friends--" In spite of her efforts her voice showed her
+suffering.
+
+The man felt his lonely heart swell with the wild impulse to tell her
+all, to voice his love in one breathless torrent of words that would
+undeceive her. The strain of repression lent him added brusqueness
+when he strove to explain, and his coldness left her sorely hurt.
+His indifference filled her with a sense of betrayal; it chilled the
+impulsive yearning in her breast. She had battled long with herself
+before coming and now she repented of her rashness, for it was plain
+he did not need her. This certainty left her sick and listless,
+therefore she bade him adieu a few moments later, and with aching
+throat went blindly out and down the stairs.
+
+The instant she was gone Austin leaped to his feet; the agony of death
+was upon his features. Breathlessly he began to count:
+
+"One! Two! Three--!"
+
+He felt himself smothering, and with one sweep of his hand ripped the
+collar from his throat.
+
+"Five! Six! Seven--!"
+
+He was battling like a drowning man, for, in truth, the very breath of
+his life was leaving him. A drumming came into his ears. He felt that
+he must call out to her before it was too late. He was counting aloud
+now, his voice like the moan of a man on the rack.
+
+"Nine! Ten--!"
+
+A frenzy to voice his sufferings swept over him, but he held himself.
+Only a moment more and she would be gone; her life would be spared
+this dark shadow, and she would never know, but he--he would indeed be
+face to face with darkness.
+
+Toward the last he was reeling, but he continued to tell off the
+seconds with the monotonous regularity of a timepiece, his every power
+centered on that process. The idea came to him that he was counting
+his own flickering pulse-throbs for the last time. With a tremendous
+effort of will he smoothed his face and felt his way to the open
+window, for by now she must be entering the landau. A moment later
+and she would turn to waft him her last adieu. Her last! God! How the
+seconds lagged! That infernal thumping in his ears had drowned the
+noises from the street below. He felt that for all time the torture of
+this moment would live with him.
+
+Then he smiled! He smiled blindly out into the glaring sunlight, and
+bowed. And bowed and smiled again, clinging to the window-casing to
+support himself. By now she must have reached the corner. He freed one
+hand and waved it gaily, then with outflung arms he stumbled back into
+the room, the hot tears coursing down his cheeks.
+
+Marmion Moore halted upon the stairs and felt mechanically for her
+gold chatelaine. She recalled dropping it upon the center-table as she
+went forward with hands outstretched to Austin; so she turned back,
+then hesitated. But he was leaving to-morrow; surely he would
+not misinterpret the meaning of her reappearance. Summoning her
+self-control, she remounted the stairs quickly.
+
+The door was half ajar as she had left it in her confusion. Mustering
+a careless smile, she was about to knock, then paused. Austin was
+facing her in the middle of the room, beating time. He was counting
+aloud--but was that his voice? In the brief instant she had been gone
+he had changed astoundingly. Moreover, notwithstanding the fact that
+she stood plainly revealed, he made no sign of recognition, but merely
+counted on and on, with the voice of a dying man. She divined that
+something was sadly amiss; she wondered for an instant if the man had
+lost his senses.
+
+She stood transfixed, half-minded to flee, yet held by some pitying
+desire to help; then she saw him reach forward and grope his way
+uncertainly to the window. In his progress he stumbled against a
+chair; he had to feel for the casing. Then she knew.
+
+Marmion Moore found herself inside the room, staring with wide,
+affrighted eyes at the man whose life she had spoiled. She pressed her
+hands to her bosom to still its heavings. She saw Austin nodding down
+at the street below; she saw his ghastly attempt to smile; she heard
+the breath sighing from his lungs and heard him muttering her name.
+Then he turned and lurched past her, groping, groping for his chair.
+She cried out, sharply, in a stricken voice:
+
+"Mr. Austin!"
+
+The man froze in his tracks; he swung his head slowly from side to
+side, as if listening.
+
+"What!" The word came like the crack of a gun. Then, after a moment,
+"Marmion!" He spoke her name as if to test his own hearing. It was the
+first time she had ever heard him use it.
+
+She slipped forward until within an arm's-length of him, then
+stretched forth a wildly shaking hand and passed it before his
+unwinking eyes, as if she still disbelieved. Then he heard her moan.
+
+"Marmion!" he cried again. "My God! little girl, I--thought I heard
+you go!"
+
+"Then this, _this_ is the reason," she said. "Oh-h-h!"
+
+"What are you doing here? Why did you come back?" he demanded,
+brutally.
+
+"I forgot my--No! God sent me back!"
+
+There was a pause, during which the man strove to master himself; then
+he asked, in the same harsh accents:
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"Long enough to see--and to understand."
+
+"Well, you know the truth at last. I--have gone--blind." The last word
+caused his lips to twitch. He knew from the sound that she was weeping
+bitterly. "Please don't. I've used my eyes too much, that is all. It
+is--nothing."
+
+"No! No! No!" she said, brokenly. "Don't you think I understand? Don't
+you think I see it all now? But why--why didn't you tell me? Why?"
+When he did not answer she repeated: "God sent me back. I--I was not
+meant to be so unhappy."
+
+Austin felt himself shaken as if by a panic. He cried, hurriedly:
+"You see, we've been such good friends. I knew it would distress you.
+I--wanted to spare you that! You were a good comrade to me; we were
+like chums. Yes, we were chums. No friend could have been dearer to me
+than you, Miss Moore. I never had a sister, you know. I--I thought of
+you that way, and I--" He was struggling desperately to save the girl,
+but his incoherent words died on his lips when he felt her come close
+and lay her cheek against his arm.
+
+"You mustn't try to deceive me any more," she said, gently. "I was
+here. I know the truth, and--I want to be happy."
+
+Even then he stood dazed and disbelieving until she continued:
+
+"I know that you love me, and that I love you."
+
+"It is pity!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. "You don't mean it."
+
+But she drew herself closer to him and turned her tear-stained face up
+to his, saying, wistfully, "If your dear eyes could have seen, they
+would have told you long ago."
+
+"Oh, my love!" He was too weak to resist longer. His arms were
+trembling as they enfolded her, but in his heart was a gladness that
+comes to but few men.
+
+"And you won't go away without me, will you?" she questioned,
+fearfully.
+
+"No, no!" he breathed. "Oh, Marmion, I have lost a little, but I have
+gained much! God has been good to me."
+
+
+
+
+THE REAL AND THE MAKE-BELIEVE
+
+
+On his way down-town Phillips stopped at a Subway news-stand and
+bought all the morning papers. He acknowledged that he was vastly
+excited. As he turned in at the stage door he thrilled at sight of
+the big electric sign over the theater, pallid now in the morning
+sunshine, but symbolizing in frosted letters the thing for which he
+had toiled and fought, had hoped and despaired these many years. There
+it hung, a dream come true, and it read, "A Woman's Thrall, By Henry
+Phillips."
+
+The stage-door man greeted him with a toothless smile and handed him a
+bundle of telegrams, mumbling: "I knew it would go over, Mr. Phillips.
+The notices are swell, ain't they?"
+
+"They seem to be."
+
+"I ain't seen their equal since 'The Music Master' opened. We'll run a
+year."
+
+This differed from the feverish, half-hysterical praise of the
+evening before. Phillips had made allowances then for the spell of a
+first-night enthusiasm and had prepared himself for a rude awakening
+this morning--he had seen too many plays fail, to put much faith
+in the fulsomeness of first-nighters--but the words of the doorman
+carried conviction. He had felt confident up to the last moment, to be
+sure, for he knew he had put his life's best work into this drama, and
+he believed he had written with a master's cunning; nevertheless, when
+his message had gone forth a sudden panic had seized him. He had begun
+to fear that his judgment was distorted by his nearness to the play,
+or that his absorption in it had blinded him to its defects. It was
+evident now, however, that these fears had been ill-founded, for no
+play could receive such laudatory reviews as these and fail to set
+New-Yorkers aflame.
+
+Certain printed sentences kept dancing through his memory: "Unknown
+dramatist of tremendous power," "A love story so pitiless, so true,
+that it electrifies," "The deep cry of a suffering heart," "Norma
+Berwynd enters the galaxy of stars."
+
+That last sentence was the most significant, the most wonderful of
+all. Norma Berwynd a star! Phillips could scarcely credit it; he
+wondered if she had the faintest notion of how or why her triumph had
+been effected.
+
+The property man met him, and he too was smiling.
+
+"I just came from the office," he began. "Say! they're raving. It's
+the biggest hit in ten years."
+
+"Oh, come now! It's too early for the afternoon papers--"
+
+"The papers be blowed! It's the public that makes a play; the whole
+town knows about this one already. It's in and over, I tell you;
+we'll sell out tonight. Believe me, this is a knock-out--a regular
+bull's-eye. It won't take no government bonds to bridge us over the
+next two weeks."
+
+"Did you get the new props?"
+
+"Sure! The electrician is working on the drop light for the first act;
+we'll have a better glass crash tonight, and I've got a brand-new
+dagger. That other knife was all right, but Mr. Francis forgot how to
+handle it."
+
+"Nevertheless, it's dangerous. We came near having a real tragedy last
+evening. Don't let's take any more chances."
+
+"It wasn't my fault, on the level," the property man insisted.
+"Francis always 'goes up' at an opening."
+
+"Thank Heaven the papers didn't notice it."
+
+"Huh! We could _afford_ to kill an actor for notices like them. It
+would make great advertising and please the critics. Say! I knew this
+show was a hit."
+
+Under the dim-lit vault of the stage Phillips found the third-act
+scenery set for the rehearsal he had called, then, having given his
+instructions to the wardrobe woman, he drew a chair up before a bunch
+light and prepared to read for a second time the morning reviews.
+
+He had attempted to read them at breakfast, but his wife--The
+playwright sighed heavily at the memory of that scene. Léontine had
+been very unjust, as usual. Her temper had run away with her again and
+had forced him to leave the house with his splendid triumph spoiled,
+his first taste of victory like ashes in his mouth. He was, in a way,
+accustomed to these endless, senseless rows, but their increasing
+frequency was becoming more and more trying, and he was beginning to
+doubt his ability to stand them much longer. It seemed particularly
+nasty of Léontine to seize upon this occasion to vent her open dislike
+of him--their relations were already sufficiently strained. Marriage,
+all at once, assumed a very lopsided aspect to the playwright; he had
+given so much and received so little.
+
+With an effort he dismissed the subject from his mind and set himself
+to the more pleasant task of looking at his play through the eyes of
+the reviewers.
+
+They had been very fair, he decided at last. Their only criticism
+was one which he had known to be inevitable, therefore he felt no
+resentment.
+
+"Norma Berwynd was superb," he read; "she combined with rare beauty
+a personality at once bewitching and natural. She gave life to her
+lines; she was deep, intense, true; she rose to her emotional heights
+in a burst of power which electrified the audience. We cannot but
+wonder why such an artist has remained so long undiscovered."
+
+The dramatist smiled; surely that was sufficient praise to compensate
+him for the miserable experience he had just undergone. He read
+further:
+
+"Alas, that the same kind things cannot be said of Irving Francis,
+whose name is blazoned forth in letters of fire above the theater. He
+has established himself as one of America's brightest stars; but the
+rôle of John Danton does not enhance his reputation. In his lighter
+scenes he was delightful, but his emotional moments did not ring true.
+In the white-hot climax of the third act, for instance, which is the
+big scene of the play, he was stiff, unnatural, unconvincing. Either
+he saw Miss Berwynd taking the honors of stardom away from him and
+generously submerged his own talent in order to enhance her triumph,
+or it is but another proof of the statement that husband and wife do
+not make convincing lovers in the realm of the make-believe. It was
+surely due to no lack of opportunity on his part--"
+
+So the writer thought Irving Francis had voluntarily allowed his wife
+to rival him. Phillips smiled at this. Some actors might be capable
+of such generosity, but hardly Irving Francis. He recalled the man's
+insistent demands during rehearsals that the 'script be changed to
+build up his own part and undermine that of his wife; the many heated
+arguments which had even threatened to prevent the final performance
+of the piece. Irving's egotism had blinded him to the true result
+of these quarrels, for although he had been given more lines, more
+scenes, Phillips had seen to it that Norma was the one to really
+profit by the changes. Author and star had been upon the verge
+of rupture more than once during that heartbreaking period of
+preparation, but Phillips was supremely glad now that he had held
+himself in control. Léontine's constant nagging had borne fruit, after
+all, in that it had at least taught him to bite down on his words, and
+to smile at provocation.
+
+Yes! Norma Berwynd was a star in spite of herself, in spite of her
+husband. She was no longer merely the wife of Irving Francis, the
+popular idol. Phillips was glad that she did not know how long it had
+taken him to effect her independence, nor the price he had paid for
+it, since, under the circumstances, the truth could help neither of
+them.
+
+He was aroused from his abstraction by the rustle of a woman's
+garments, and leaped to his feet with a glad light in his eyes, only
+to find Léontine, his wife, confronting him.
+
+"Oh!" he said; then with an effort, "What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I didn't know you were coming down-town."
+
+"Whom were you expecting?" Léontine mocked, with that slight accent
+which betrayed her Gallic origin.
+
+"No one."
+
+She regarded him with fixed hostility. "I came down to see your
+rehearsal. You don't object, I hope?"
+
+"Why should I object?" Phillips turned away with a shrug. "I'm
+surprised, that's all--after what you said this morning. Isn't your
+interest in the play a trifle--tardy?"
+
+"No! I've been greatly interested in it all the time. I read it
+several times in manuscript."
+
+"Indeed! I didn't know that. It won't be much of a rehearsal this
+morning; I'm merely going to run over the third act with Mr. and Mrs.
+Francis."
+
+"You can rehearse her forty years and she'll never play the part."
+
+"The critics don't agree with you; they rave over her. If Francis
+himself--"
+
+Mrs. Phillips uttered an exclamation of anger. "Oh, of course, _she_
+is perfect! You wouldn't give me the part, would you? No. You gave it
+to her. But it's mine by rights; I have the personality."
+
+"I wrote it for her," said the husband, after a pause. "I can't see
+you in it."
+
+"Naturally," she sneered. "Well, _I_ can, and it's not too late to
+make the change. I'll replace her. My name will help the piece."
+
+"Léontine!" he exclaimed, in amazement. "What are you talking about?
+The play is a tremendous success as it is, and Miss Berwynd is a big
+hit. I'd be crazy to make a change."
+
+"You won't give me the part?"
+
+"Certainly not. You shouldn't ask it."
+
+"Doesn't Léontine Murat mean more to the public than Norma Berwynd?"
+she demanded.
+
+"Until last night, yes. To-day--well, no. She has created this rôle.
+Besides--you--couldn't play the part."
+
+"And why not, if you please?"
+
+"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Léontine."
+
+"Go on!" she commanded, in a voice roughened by passion.
+
+"In the first place you're not--young enough." The woman quivered. "In
+the second place, you've grown heavy. Then, too, your accent--"
+
+She broke out at him furiously. "So! I'm old and fat and foreign. I've
+lost my beauty. You think so, eh? Well, other men don't. I'll show you
+what men think of me--"
+
+"This is no time for threats," he interrupted, coldly.
+
+"Bah! I don't threaten." Seizing him by the arm, she swung him about,
+for she was a large woman and still in the fullest vigor of her
+womanhood. "Listen! You can't fool me. I know why you wrote this play.
+I know why you took that girl and made a star of her. I've known the
+truth all along."
+
+"You have no cause to--"
+
+"Don't lie!" she stormed at him. "I can read you like a book. But I
+won't stand for it." She flung his arm violently from her and turned
+away.
+
+"I think you'd better go home," he told her. "You'll have the stage
+hands talking in a minute."
+
+She laughed disagreeably, ignoring his words. "I watched you write
+this play! I have eyes, even if Irving Francis is blind. It's time he
+knew what is going on."
+
+"There is nothing going on," Phillips cried, heatedly; but his wife
+merely shrugged her splendid shoulders and, opening her gold vanity
+case, gave her face a deft going over with a tiny powder puff. After
+a time the man continued: "I could understand your attitude if
+you--cared for me, but some years ago you took pains to undeceive me
+on that point."
+
+Léontine's lip curled, and she made no answer.
+
+"This play is a fine piece of property; it will bring us a great deal
+of money; it is the thing for which I have worked years."
+
+"I am going to tell Francis the truth about you and his wife!" she
+said.
+
+"But there's nothing to tell," the man insisted, with an effort to
+restrain himself. "Besides, you must know the result if you start a
+thing like that. He'll walk out and take his wife with him. That would
+ruin--"
+
+"Give me her part."
+
+"I won't be coerced," he flared up, angrily. "You are willing to
+ruin me, out of pique, I suppose, but I won't permit it. This is the
+biggest thing I ever did, or ever will do, perhaps; it means honor and
+recognition, and--you're selfish enough to spoil it all. I've never
+spoken to Norma Berwynd in any way to which her husband or you could
+object. Therefore I resent your attitude."
+
+"My attitude! I'm your wife."
+
+He took a turn across the stage, followed by her eyes. Pausing before
+her at length, he said, quietly: "I've asked you to go home and now
+I insist upon it. If you are here when I return I shall dismiss the
+rehearsal. I refuse to allow our domestic relations to interfere with
+my business." He strode out to the front of the house and then paced
+the dark foyer, striving to master his emotions. A moment later he
+saw his wife leave the stage and assumed that she had obeyed his
+admonitions and gone home.
+
+The property-man appeared with an armful of draperies and mechanical
+appliances, interrupting his whistling long enough to call out.
+
+"Here's the new hangings, Mr. Phillips, and the Oriental rugs. I've
+got the dagger, too." He held a gleaming object on high. "Believe me,
+it's some Davy Crockett. There's a newspaper guy out back and he wants
+your ideas on the American drama. I told him they were great. Will you
+see him?"
+
+"Not now. Tell him to come back later."
+
+"Say! That John Danton is some character. Why don't you let him have
+the gal?"
+
+"Because--well, because it doesn't happen in real life, and I've tried
+to make this play real, more than anything else."
+
+When Norma Berwynd and her husband arrived Phillips had completely
+regained his composure, and he greeted them cordially. The woman
+seemed awed, half-frightened, by her sudden rise to fame. She seemed
+to be walking in a dream, and a great wonder dwelt in her eyes. As for
+Francis, he returned the author's greeting curtly, making it plain
+that he was in no agreeable temper.
+
+"I congratulate you, Phillips," he said. "You and Norma have become
+famous overnight."
+
+The open resentment in his tone angered the playwright and caused him
+to wonder if their long-deferred clash was destined to occur this
+morning. He knew himself to be overwrought, and he imagined Francis to
+be in no better frame of mind; nevertheless, he answered, pacifically:
+
+"If that is so we owe it to your art."
+
+"Not at all. I see now what I failed to detect in reading and
+rehearsing the piece, and what you neglected to tell me, namely, that
+this is a woman's play. There's nothing in it for me. There's nothing
+in my part."
+
+"Oh, come now! The part is tremendous; you merely haven't got the most
+out of it as yet."
+
+Francis drew himself up and eyed the speaker coldly. "You're quoting
+the newspapers. Pray be more original. You know, of course, how I
+stand with these penny-a-liners; they never have liked me, but as for
+the part--" He shrugged. "I can't get any more out of it than there is
+in it."
+
+"Doubtless that was my fault at rehearsals. I've called this one so we
+can fix up the weak spot in the third act."
+
+"Well! We're on time. Where are the others?" Francis cast an inquiring
+glance about.
+
+"I'll only rehearse you and Mrs. Francis."
+
+"Indeed!" The former speaker opened his mouth for a cutting rejoinder,
+but changed his mind and stalked away into the shadowy depths of the
+wings.
+
+"Please make allowances for him," Norma begged, approaching Phillips
+in order that her words might not be overheard. "I've never seen him
+so broken up over anything. He is always unstrung after an opening,
+but he is--terrible, this morning."
+
+There was trouble, timidity, and another indefinable expression in the
+woman's eyes as they followed the vanishing figure of her husband;
+faint lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, lines which had
+no place in the face of a happily married woman. She was trembling,
+moreover, as if she had but recently played some big, emotional rôle,
+and Phillips felt the old aching pity for her tugging at his heart. He
+wondered if those stories about Francis could be true.
+
+"It has been a great strain on all of us," he told her. "But you? How
+do you feel after all this?" He indicated the pile of morning papers,
+and at sight of them her eyes suddenly filled with that same wonder
+and gladness he had noticed when she first arrived.
+
+"Oh-h! I--I'm breathless. Something clutches me--here." She laid
+her hand upon her bosom. "It's so new I can't express it yet,
+except--well, all of my dreams came true in a night. Some fairy waved
+her wand and, lo! poor ugly little me--" She laughed, although it was
+more like a sob. "I had no idea my part was so immense. Had you?"
+
+"I had. I wrote it that way. My dreams, also, came true."
+
+"But why?" A faint flush stole into her cheeks. "There are so many
+women who could have played the part better than I. You had courage to
+risk your piece in my hands, Mr. Phillips."
+
+"Perhaps I knew you better than you knew yourself." She searched his
+face with startled curiosity. "Or better at least than the world knew
+you. Tell me, there is something wrong? I'm afraid he--resents your--"
+
+"Oh no, no!" she denied, hastily, letting her eyes fall, but not
+before he had seen them fill again with that same expression of pain
+and bewilderment. "He's--not himself, that's all. I--You--won't
+irritate him? Please! He has such a temper."
+
+Francis came out of the shadows scowling. "Well, let's get at it,"
+said he.
+
+Phillips agreed. "If you don't mind we'll start with your entrance. I
+wish you would try to express more depth of feeling, more tenderness,
+if you please, Mr. Francis. Remember, John Danton has fought this love
+of his for many years, undertaking to remain loyal to his wife. He
+doesn't dream that Diane returns his love, for he has never spoken,
+never even hinted of his feelings until this instant. Now, however,
+they are forced into expression. He begins reluctantly, frightened at
+the thing which makes him speak, then when she responds the dam breaks
+and his love over-rides his will power, his loyalty, his lifelong
+principles; it sweeps him onward and it takes her with him. The truth
+appals them both. They recognize its certain consequences and yet they
+respond freely, fiercely. You can't overplay the scene, Mr. Francis."
+
+"Certainly I can overplay it," the star declared. "That's the danger.
+My effects should come from repression."
+
+"I must differ with you. Repressive methods are out of place here. You
+see, John Danton loses control of himself--"
+
+"Nonsense!" Francis declared, angrily.
+
+"The effectiveness of the scene depends altogether upon its--well, its
+savagery. It must sweep the audience off its feet in order that the
+climax shall appear logical."
+
+"Nonsense again! I'm not an old-school actor, and I can't chew
+scenery. I've gained my reputation by repressive acting, by
+intensity."
+
+"This is not acting; this is real life."
+
+Francis's voice rose a tone in pitch, and his eyes flashed at this
+stubborn resistance to his own set ideas.
+
+"Great heavens, Phillips! Don't try to tell me my own business.
+People don't behave that way in real life; they don't explode under
+passion--not even jealousy or revenge; they are reserved. Reserve!
+That's the real thing; the other is all make-believe."
+
+Seeing that it was useless to argue with the man, Phillips said
+nothing more, so Francis and his wife assumed their positions and
+began their lines.
+
+It was a long scene and one demanding great force to sustain. It was
+this, in fact, which had led to the choice of Irving Francis for the
+principal rôle, for he was a man of tremendous physical power. He had
+great ability, moreover, and yet never, even at rehearsals, had he
+been able to invest this particular scene with conviction. Phillips
+had rehearsed him in it time and again, but he seemed strangely
+incapable of rising to the necessary heights. He was hollow,
+artificial; his tricks and mannerisms showed through like familiar
+trade marks. Strangely enough, the girl also had failed to get the
+most out of the scene, and this morning, both star and leading woman
+seemed particularly cold and unresponsive. They lacked the spark, the
+uplifting intensity, which was essential, therefore, in desperation,
+Phillips finally tried the expedient of altering their "business," of
+changing positions, postures, and crosses; but they went through the
+scene for a second time as mechanically as before.
+
+Knowing every line as he did, feeling every heart throb, living and
+suffering as John Danton was supposed to be living and suffering,
+Phillips was nearly distracted. To him this was a wanton butchery of
+his finest work. He interrupted, at last, in a heart-sick, hopeless
+tone which sorely offended the already irritated Francis.
+
+"I'm--afraid it's no use. You don't seem to get it."
+
+"What is it I don't get?" roughly demanded the actor.
+
+"You're not genuine--either of you. You don't seem to feel it."
+
+"Humph! We're married!" said the star, so brutally that his wife
+flushed painfully. "I tell you I get all it's possible to get out of
+the scene. You wrote it and you see a lot of imaginary values; but
+they're not there. I'm no superman--no god! I can't give you more than
+the part contains."
+
+"Look at it in this light," Phillips argued, after a pause. "Diane is
+a married woman; she, too, is fighting a battle; she is restrained by
+every convention, every sense of right, every instinct of wifehood and
+womanhood. Now, then, you must sweep all that aside; your own fire
+must set her ablaze despite--"
+
+"I? _I_ must do all this?" mocked the other, furiously. "Why must _I_
+do it all? Make Norma play up to me. She underplays me all the time;
+she's not in my key. That's what's the matter--and I'm damned tired of
+this everlasting criticism."
+
+There was a strained silence, during which the two men faced each
+other threateningly, and a panic seized the woman.
+
+She managed to say, uncertainly: "Perhaps I--should play up to you,
+Irving."
+
+"On the contrary, I don't think the fault is yours," Phillips said,
+stiffly.
+
+Again there was a dramatic silence, in which there was no element of
+the make-believe. It was the clash of two strong men who disliked each
+other intensely and whose masks were slipping. Neither they nor the
+leading woman detected a figure stealing out from the gloom, as if
+drawn by the magnetism of their anger.
+
+"My fault, as usual," Francis sneered. "Understand this, Phillips, my
+reputation means something to me, and I won't be forced out of a good
+engagement by a--well, by you or by any other stage manager."
+
+Phillips saw that same fearful look leap into the woman's eyes, and it
+checked his heated retort. "I don't mean to find fault with you," he
+declared, evenly. "I have the greatest respect for your ability as an
+actor, but--"
+
+The star tossed his massive head in a peculiarly aggravating manner.
+"Perhaps you think you can play the part better than I?"
+
+"Irving! _Please_!" breathed his wife.
+
+"Show me how it should be done, if you feel it so strongly."
+
+"Thank you, I will," Phillips answered, impulsively. "I'm not an
+actor, but I wrote this piece. What's more, I lived it before I wrote
+it. It's my own story, and I think I know how it should be played."
+
+Francis smiled mockingly. "Good!" said he; "I shall learn something."
+
+"Do you mind?" The author turned to the real Diane, and she shook her
+head, saying, uncertainly:
+
+"It's--very good of you."
+
+"Very well. If you will hold the manuscript, Mr. Francis, I'll try to
+show what I feel the scene lacks. However, I don't think I'll need any
+prompting. Now, then, we'll begin at John Danton's entrance."
+
+With the mocking smile still upon his lips, Francis took the
+manuscript and seated himself upon the prompter's table.
+
+It was by no means remarkable that Henry Phillips should know
+something about acting, for he had long been a stage manager, and in
+emergencies he has assumed a good many divergent rôles. He felt no
+self-consciousness, therefore, as he exchanged places with Francis;
+only an intense desire to prove his contentions. He nerved himself to
+an unusual effort, but before he had played more than a few moments he
+forgot the hostile husband and began to live the part of John Danton
+as he had lived it in the writing, as he invariably lived it every
+time he read the play or saw it acted.
+
+Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the
+written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain
+by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts
+expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden,
+hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same
+mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and
+left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had
+acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in
+solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He
+found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he
+was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a rôle of his
+creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he
+had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the
+real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in
+timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman
+and stirred her to a new response.
+
+As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with
+astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was
+indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had
+served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and
+to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the
+spectacle held him enthralled.
+
+Norma Berwynd was not slow to appreciate the truth. Accustomed
+thoroughly to every phase of the make-believe world in which she
+dwelt, she recognized unerringly in the new John Danton's words and
+actions something entirely unreal and apart from the theatrical. The
+conviction that Henry Phillips was not acting came to her with a
+blinding suddenness, and it threw her into momentary confusion, hence
+her responses were mechanical. But soon, without effort on her part,
+this embarrassment fell away and she in turn began to blaze. The flame
+grew as Phillips breathed upon it. She realized wildly that her heart
+had always hungered for words like these, and that, coming from his
+lips, they carried an altogether new and wondrous meaning; that they
+filled some long-felt, aching want of which she had been ignorant
+until this moment. The certainty that it was Phillips himself who
+spoke, and not a mere character of his creation, filled her with an
+exultant recklessness. She forgot her surroundings, her husband's
+presence, even the fact that the lines she spoke were not of her own
+making.
+
+Never had the scene been played like this. It grew vital, it took on
+a tremendous significance. No one could have observed it and remained
+unresponsive. Francis let fall the manuscript and stared at the actors
+wonderingly. Since he was an actor, nothing was so real to him,
+nothing so thrilling, as the make-believe. He realized that this was
+indeed a magnificent exhibition of the artificial. With parted lips
+and pulse athrob he followed the wooing of that imaginary John Danton,
+in whom he could see no one but himself.
+
+After a time he became conscious of a presence at his side, and heard
+some one breathing heavily. Turning with a start, he found Léontine
+Phillips at his shoulder. She, too, was aroused, but in her sneering
+visage was that which brought the actor abruptly out of his spell. She
+had emerged from the shadows noiselessly, and was leaning forward, her
+strong hands gripping the edge of the table littered with its many
+properties.
+
+Mrs. Phillips had played emotional scenes herself, but never with such
+melodramatic intensity as she now unconsciously displayed. Her whole
+body shook as with an ague, her dark face was alive with a jealous fury
+which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The
+truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the
+author, which had been momentarily forgotten--momentarily lost in his
+admiration of the artist--rose up anew, and he recognized this occult
+spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality,
+not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the
+make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a
+smothered cry.
+
+Léontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through
+livid lips.
+
+Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a
+cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could
+not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Léontine plucked at his sleeve
+and whispered again:
+
+"You _fool_!"
+
+Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a
+man throttled. Léontine could feel his muscles stiffen.
+
+But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of
+the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can
+tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart
+pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his
+arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned;
+her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce,
+impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.
+
+Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him
+paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his
+ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man
+who had played his part, he awoke.
+
+"She knows he loves her," Léontine was saying. "You let him tell her
+in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"
+
+Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they
+rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She
+also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it
+forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she
+breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.
+
+It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which
+aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw
+him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save
+the latter.
+
+The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage
+fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly
+driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then staggered, and,
+half sliding through the woman's sheltering embrace, crumpled limply
+into a massive upholstered chair. He, too, was dazed by the sudden
+transition from his real world to his make-believe.
+
+When his eyes cleared he saw Norma Berwynd struggling with her
+husband, interposing her own slender body in his path. Francis was
+cursing her foully for her unfaithfulness; his voice was thick and
+brutal.
+
+"Yes! It's true!" she cried, with hysterical defiance. "I never knew
+till now; but it's true! It's _true_!"
+
+"You've killed him!" Léontine chattered, shrilly, and emerged from the
+shadows, her dark features ashen, her eyes ringed with white. Mrs.
+Francis turned from her husband and flung her arms about the recumbent
+man, calling wildly to him.
+
+The dénouement had come with such swiftness that it left all four of
+them appalled at their actions. Seeing what his brief insanity had led
+him into, Francis felt his strength evaporate; his face went white,
+his legs buckled beneath him. He scanned the place wildly in search of
+means of escape.
+
+"My God! My God!" Léontine was repeating. "Why doesn't somebody come?"
+
+Now that his brain had cleared, and he knew what hand had smitten him,
+and why, Phillips was by far the calmest of the four. He saw the knife
+at his feet and smiled, for no steel could rob him of that gladness
+which was pulsing through his veins. He was still smiling when he
+stooped and picked up the weapon. He arose, lifting Norma to her feet;
+then his hand slid down and sought hers.
+
+"You needn't worry," he said to Francis. "You see--this is the new
+dagger I got for the end of the act."
+
+He held it out in his open palm for all of them to see, and they noted
+that it was strangely shortened--that the point of the sliding blade
+was barely exposed beneath the hilt.
+
+Francis wiped his wet face, then shuddered and cursed weakly with
+relief, meanwhile groping at the prompter's table for support. "Sold!
+A prop knife!" he cried.
+
+"You--you're not really--" Norma swayed forward with eyes closed.
+
+Léontine laughed.
+
+"By God! I meant it," the star exclaimed, uncertainly. "You can't
+deny--" He gasped and tugged at his collar.
+
+"I believe there is nothing to deny," the author said, quietly. He
+looked first at his wife, then at his enemy, and then down at the
+quivering, white face upturned to his. "There is nothing to deny, is
+there?" he inquired of Norma.
+
+"Nothing!" she said. "I--I'm glad to know the truth, that's all."
+
+Francis glared first at one, then at the other, and as he did so he
+began to realize the full cost of his action. When it came home to
+him in terms of dollars and cents, he showed his true character by
+stammering:
+
+"I--I made a frightful mistake. I'm--not myself; really, I'm not. It
+was your wife's fault." In a panic he ran on, unmindful of Léontine's
+scorn. "She did it, Mr. Phillips. She gave me the knife. She whispered
+things--she made me--I--I'm very sorry--Mr. Phillips, and I'll play
+the part the way you want it. I will, indeed."
+
+Léontine met her husband's look defiantly; hence it was as much to her
+as to the cringing actor that the playwright said:
+
+"Your salary will go on as usual, under your contract, Mr.
+Francis--that is, until the management supplies you with a new play;
+but I'm the real John Danton, and I shall play him tonight and
+henceforth."
+
+"Then, I'm--discharged? Norma--d'you hear that? We're canceled.
+Fired!"
+
+"No, Miss Berwynd's name will go up in lights as the star, if she
+cares to stay," said Phillips. "Do you wish to remain?" He looked down
+at the woman, and she nodded.
+
+"Yes, oh yes!" she said. "I _must_ stay. I daren't go back." That
+hunted look leaped into her eyes again, and Phillips recognized it now
+as fear, the abject physical terror of the weaker animal. "I want to
+go--forward--not backward, if there is any way."
+
+"I'll show you the way," he told her, gently. "We'll find it
+together."
+
+He smiled reassuringly, and with a little gasping sigh she placed her
+hand in his.
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING ELK
+
+
+Up from the valley below came the throb of war drums, the faint rattle
+of shots, and the distant cries of painted horsemen charging. From
+my vantage-point on the ridge I had an unobstructed view of the
+encampment, a great circle of tepees and tents three miles in
+circumference, cradled in a sag of the timberless hills. The sounds
+came softly through the still Dakota air, and my eye took in every
+sharp-drawn detail of the scene--ponies grazing along the creek
+bottom, children playing beneath the blue smoke of camp-fires, the
+dense crowd ringed about a medicine pole in their center, intent on a
+war-dance.
+
+Five thousand Sioux were here in all their martial splendor. They were
+painted and decked and trapped for war, living again their days of
+plenty, telling anew their tales of might, and repeating on a mimic
+scale their greatest battles. Five days the feasting had continued;
+five mornings had I been awakened at dawn to see a thousand ochered,
+feathered horsemen come thundering down upon the camp, their horses
+running flat, their rifles popping, while the valley rocked to their
+battle-cries and to the answering clamor of the army which rode forth
+to meet them. Five sultry days had I spent wandering unnoticed,
+ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but
+unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and
+the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a
+million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul,
+through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told
+in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race,
+to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer
+dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the
+sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man,
+for a word in my own tongue.
+
+It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe
+assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount
+the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the
+reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of
+the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was
+a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell
+of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an
+ever-increasing pile of bones.
+
+I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a
+slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and
+standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets
+of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down
+again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired
+much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red
+man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.
+
+It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and
+descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance
+away from my tent, for next to it another had been erected during my
+absence. It was a tiny affair with a rug in front of it, and upon the
+rug stood a steamer-chair.
+
+"Hello, inside!" I shouted, then ran forward, straddling papooses and
+shouldering squaws out of my way.
+
+"Hello!" came an answer, and out through the flap was thrust the head
+of my friend, the Government doctor.
+
+"Gee! I'm glad to see you!" I said as I shook his hand. "I'm as
+lonesome as a deaf mute at a song recital."
+
+"I figured you would be," said the doctor, "so I came out to see the
+finish of the feast and to visit with you. I brought some bread from
+the Agency."
+
+"Hoorah! White bread and white conversation! I'm hungry for both."
+
+"What's the matter? Won't the Indians talk to you?"
+
+"I guess they would if they could, but they can't. I haven't found one
+among the whole five thousand who can understand a word I say. Your
+Government schools have gone back in the betting with me, Doc. You
+must keep your graduates under lock and key."
+
+"They can all speak English if they want to--that is, the younger
+ones. Some few of the old people are too proud to try, but the others
+can talk as well as we can, until they forget."
+
+"Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe
+it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet
+on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress
+which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal;
+he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've
+tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."
+
+My friend called to the warrior: "Hey, Tom! Come here a minute."
+The Indian came, and the doctor continued, "When do you hold the
+horse-races, Thomas?"
+
+"To-morrow, at four o'clock, unless it rains," said the fellow.
+He spoke in an odd, halting dialect, but his words were perfectly
+understandable.
+
+"Are you going to ride?"
+
+"No; my race-horse is sick."
+
+As the ocher-daubed figure vanished into the dusk the old man turned
+to me, saying, "College man."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yes. B.A. He's a graduate."
+
+"Impossible!" I declared. "Why, he talks like a foreigner, or as if he
+were just learning our language."
+
+"Exactly. In another three years he'll be an Indian again, through and
+through. Oh, the reservation is full of fellows like Tom." The
+doctor heaved a sigh of genuine discouragement. "It's a melancholy
+acknowledgment to make, but our work seems to count for almost
+nothing. It's their blood."
+
+"Perhaps they forget the higher education," said I; "but how about the
+Agency school, where you teach them to farm and to sew and to cook, as
+well as to read and to write? Surely they don't forget that?"
+
+"I've heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver
+sounding orations; then I've seen those same young fellows, three
+months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers. It's
+a common thing for our 'sweet girl graduates' to lay off their white
+commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats,
+for the shawl and the moccasin. We teach them to make sponge-cake and
+to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon. Of
+course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than
+they learn."
+
+"Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts,"
+I acknowledged. "He's sort of a hero with us. I remember several
+successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead."
+
+"I know!" My friend laughed shortly. "I saw some of them. If you like,
+however, I'll tell you how it really happens. I know a story."
+
+When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running
+Elk. The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird
+music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at
+intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter. On either hand the
+campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily
+until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness. It
+was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.
+
+"I've grown gray in this service," the old man began, "and the longer
+I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference
+between the Indian race and ours. I've about reached the conclusion
+that it's due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood. One
+race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic.
+The white man is ever developing, he's always advancing, always
+expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward. It is only
+a matter of time until he will vanish utterly. He's different from the
+negro. The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops. Some
+people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as
+to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set.
+The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious
+conflict between the blacks and the whites. But the red man differs
+from both. To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth.
+Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with
+an intellect quite as keen as the white man's, and with an open
+articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain.
+Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw
+which I have labored thirty years to find.
+
+"I have a theory--you know all old men have theories--that it is
+a physical thing, as tangible as that osseous constriction of the
+cranium which holds the negro in subjection, and that if I could lay
+my finger on it I could raise the Indian to his ancient mastery and
+to a dignified place among the nations; I could change them from a
+vanishing people into a race of rulers, of lawgivers, of creators. At
+least that used to be my dream.
+
+"Some years ago I felt that I was well on my way to success, for I
+found a youth who offered every promise of great manhood. I studied
+him until I knew his every trait and his every strength--he didn't
+seem to have any weaknesses. I raised him according to my own ideas;
+he became a tall, straight fellow, handsome as a bronze statue of a
+god. Physically he was perfect, and he had a mind as fine as his body.
+He had the best blood of his nation in him, being the son of a war
+chief, and he was called Thomas Running Elk. I educated him at the
+Agency school under my own personal supervision, and on every occasion
+I studied him. I spent hours in shaping his mind and in bending him
+away from the manners and the habits of his tribe. I taught him to
+think like a white man. He responded like a growing vine; he became
+the pride of the reservation--a reserved but an eager youth, with an
+understanding and a wit beyond that of most white boys of his age.
+Search him as rigorously as I might, I couldn't find a single flaw. I
+believed I was about to prove my theory.
+
+"Running Elk romped through our school, and he couldn't learn fast
+enough; when he had finished I sent him East to college, and, in order
+to wean him utterly away from the past, instead of sending him to
+an Indian school I arranged for him to enter one of the big Eastern
+universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant
+association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise
+him to a higher level. Well, it worked. He led his classes as a
+stag leads a herd. He was a silent, dignified, shadowy figure; his
+fellow-students considered him unapproachable, nevertheless they
+admired and they liked him. In all things he excelled; but he was
+best, perhaps, in athletics, and for this I took the credit--a Jovian
+satisfaction in my work.
+
+"News of his victories on track and field and gridiron came to me
+regularly, for his professors were interested in my experiment. As for
+the boy himself, he never wrote; it was not his nature. Nor did he
+communicate with his people. He had cut himself off from them, and I
+think he looked down upon them. At intervals his father came to the
+Agency to inquire about Running Elk, for I did not allow my protégé
+to return even during vacations. That was a part of my plan. At my
+stories of his son's victories the father made no comment; he merely
+listened quietly, then folded his blanket about him and slipped away.
+The old fellow was a good deal of a philosopher; he showed neither
+resentment nor pleasure, but once or twice I caught him smiling oddly
+at my enthusiasm. I know now what was in his mind.
+
+"It was in Running Elk's senior year that a great thing came to him,
+a thing I had counted upon from the start. He fell in love. A girl
+entered his life. But this girl didn't enter as I had expected, and
+when the news reached me I was completely taken aback. She was a girl
+I had dandled on my knees as a child, the only daughter of an old
+friend. Moreover, instead of Running Elk being drawn to her, as I had
+planned, she fell desperately in love with him.
+
+"I guess the gods were offended at my presumption and determined by
+one hair's-breadth shift to destroy the balance of my whole structure.
+They're a jealous lot, the gods. I didn't understand, at that time,
+how great must have been the amusement which I offered them.
+
+"You've heard of old Henry Harman? Yes, the railroad king. It was his
+daughter Alicia. No wonder you look incredulous.
+
+"In order to understand the story you'll have to know something about
+old Henry. You'll have to believe in heredity. Henry is a self-made
+man. He came into the Middle West as a poor boy, and by force of
+indomitable pluck, ability, and doggedness he became a captain of
+industry. We were born on neighboring farms, and while I, after a
+lifetime of work, have won nothing except an underpaid Government
+job, Henry has become rich and mighty. He had that indefinable,
+unacquirable faculty for making money, and he became a commanding
+figure in the financial world. He's dominant, he's self-centered, he's
+one-purposed; he's a rough-hewn block of a man, and his unbounded
+wealth, his power, and his contact with the world have never smoothed
+nor rounded him. He's just about the same now as when he was a section
+boss on his own railroad. His daughter Alicia is another Henry Harman,
+feminized. Her mother was a pampered child, born to ease and enslaved
+to her own whims. No desire of hers, however extravagant, ever went
+ungratified, and right up to the hour of her death old Henry never
+said no to her--partly out of a spirit of amusement, I dare say, and
+partly because she was the only unbridled extravagance he had ever
+yielded to in all his life. Well, having sowed the wind, he reaped the
+whirlwind in Alicia. She combined the distinguishing traits of both
+parents, and she grew up more effectively spoiled than her mother.
+
+"When I got a panicky letter from one of Running Elk's professors
+coupling her name vaguely with that of my Indian, I wavered in
+my determination to see this experiment out; but the analyst is
+unsentimental, and a fellow who sets out to untangle the skein of
+nature must pay the price, so I waited.
+
+"That fall I was called to Washington on department business--we
+were fighting for a new appropriation--and while there I went to the
+theater one night. I was extremely harassed, and my mind was filled
+with Indian matters, so I went out alone to seek an evening's relief,
+not caring whither my feet took me.
+
+"The play was one of those you spoke of; it told the story of a young
+Indian college man in love with a white girl. Whether or not it was
+well written I don't know; but it seemed as if the hand of destiny had
+led me to it, for the hero's plight was so similar to the situation of
+Running Elk that it seemed almost uncanny, and I wondered if this play
+might afford me some solution of his difficulty.
+
+"You will remember that the Indian in the play is a great football
+hero, and a sort of demi-god to his fellows. He begins to consider
+himself one of them--their equal--and he falls in love with the sister
+of his chum. But when this fact is made known his friends turn
+against him and try to show him the barrier of blood. At the finish a
+messenger comes bearing word that his father is dead and that he has
+been made chief in the old man's place. He is told that his people
+need him, and although the girl offers to go with him and make her
+life his, he renounces her for his duty to the tribe.
+
+"Well, it was all right up to that point, but the end didn't help me
+in shaping the future of Running Elk, for his father was hale, hearty,
+and contented, and promised to hang on in that condition as long as we
+gave him his allowance of beef on Issue Day.
+
+"That night when I got back to the hotel I found a long-distance
+call from old Henry Harman. He had wired me here at the Agency, and,
+finding I was in Washington, he had called me from New York. He didn't
+tell me much over the 'phone, except that he wanted to see me at once
+on a matter of importance. My work was about finished, so I took the
+train in the morning and went straight to his office. When I arrived I
+found the old fellow badly rattled. There is a certain kind of worry
+which comes from handling affairs of importance. Men like Henry Harman
+thrive upon it; but there's another kind which searches out the joints
+in their coats of mail and makes women of them. That's what Henry was
+suffering from.
+
+"'Oh, Doc, I'm in an awful hole!' he exclaimed. 'You're the only man
+who can pull me out. It's about Alicia and that damned savage of
+yours.'
+
+"'I knew that was it,' said I.
+
+"'If you've heard about it clear out there,' Harman declared, with a
+catch in his voice, 'it's even worse than I thought.' He strode up and
+down his office for a few moments; then he sank heavily into his chair
+and commenced to pound his mahogany desk, declaring, angrily:
+
+"'I won't be defied by my own flesh and blood! I won't! That's
+all there is to it. I'm master of my own family. Why, the thing's
+fantastic, absurd, and yet it's terrible! Heavens! I can't believe
+it!'
+
+"'Have you talked with Alicia?'
+
+"'Not with her, _to_ her. She's like a mule. I never saw such a will
+in a woman. I--I've fought her until I'm weak. Where she got her
+temper I don't know.' He collapsed feebly and I was forced to smile,
+for there's only one thing stubborn enough to overcome a Harman's
+resistance, and that is a Harman's desire.
+
+"'Then it isn't a girlish whim?' I ventured.
+
+"'_Whim!_ Look at me!' He held out his trembling hands. 'She's licked
+me, Doc. She's going to marry that--that--' He choked and muttered,
+unintelligibly: 'I've reasoned, I've pleaded, I've commanded. She
+merely smiles and shrugs and says I'm probably right, in the abstract.
+Then she informs me that abstract problems go to pieces once in a
+while. She says this--this--Galloping Moose, this yelping ghost-dancer
+of yours, is the only real man she ever met.'
+
+"'What does he have to say?'
+
+"'Humph!' grunted Harman. 'I offered to buy him off, but he threatened
+to serve me up with dumplings and wear my scalp in his belt. Such
+insolence! Alicia wouldn't speak to me for a week.'
+
+"'You made a mistake there,' said I. 'Running Elk is a Sioux. As for
+Alicia, she's thoroughly spoiled. She's never been denied any single
+thing in all her life, and she has your disposition. It's a difficult
+situation.'
+
+"'Difficult! It's scandalous--hideous!'
+
+"'How old is Alicia?'
+
+"'Nineteen. Oh, I've worn out that argument! She says she'll wait. You
+know she has her own money, from her mother.'
+
+"'Does Running Elk come to your house?'
+
+"At this my old friend roared so fiercely that I hastened to say:
+'I'll see the boy at once. I have more influence with him than anybody
+else.'
+
+"'I hope you can show him how impossible, how criminal, it is to ruin
+my girl's life.' Harman said this seriously. 'Yes, and mine, too,
+for that matter. Suppose the yellow newspapers got hold of this!' He
+shuddered. 'Doc, I love that girl so well that I'd kill her with my
+own hands rather than see her disgraced, ridiculed--'
+
+"'Tut, tut!' said I. 'That's pride--just plain, selfish pride.'
+
+"'I don't care a damn what it is, I'd do it. I earned my way in the
+world, but she's got blue blood in her and she was born to a position;
+she goes everywhere. When she comes out she'll be able to marry into
+the best circles in America. She could marry a duke, if she wanted to.
+I'd buy her one if she said the word. Naturally, I can't stand for
+this dirty, low-browed Injun.'
+
+"'He's not dirty,' I declared, 'and he's not as low-browed as some
+foreigner you'd be glad to pick out for her.'
+
+"'Well, he's an Injun,' retorted Harman, 'and that's enough. We've
+both seen 'em tried; they all drop back where they started from. You
+know that as well as I do.'
+
+"'I don't know it,' said I, thinking of my theories. 'I've been using
+him to make an experiment, but--the experiment has gotten away from
+me. I dare say you're right. I wanted him to meet and to know white
+girls, but I didn't want him to marry one--certainly not a girl like
+Alicia. No, we must put a stop to this affair. I'll see him right
+away.'
+
+"'To-morrow is Thanksgiving,' said Henry. 'Wait over and go up with us
+and see the football game.'
+
+"'Are you going?'
+
+"Harman grimaced. 'Alicia made me promise. I'd rather take her than
+let her go with friends--there's no telling what she might do.'
+
+"'Why let her go at all?' I objected.
+
+"The old fellow laughed mirthlessly. 'Why _let_ her? Running Elk plays
+full-back! How _stop_ her? We'll pick you up at your hotel in the
+morning and drive you up in the car. It's the big game of the year.
+You'll probably enjoy it. I won't!'
+
+"Miss Harman seemed glad to see me on the following day. She must have
+known that I was in her father's confidence, but she was too well
+schooled to show it. As we rode out in the big limousine I undertook
+to study her, but the reading of women isn't my game. All I could see
+was a beautiful, spirited, imperious girl with the Harman eyes and
+chin. She surprised me by mentioning Running Elk of her own free will;
+she wasn't the least bit embarrassed, and, although her father's face
+whitened, she preserved her quiet dignity, and I realized that she was
+in no wise ashamed of her infatuation. I didn't wonder that the old
+gentleman chose to accompany her to this game, although he must
+have known that the sight of Running Elk would pain him like a
+branding-iron.
+
+"It was the first great gridiron battle I had ever seen, and so I was
+unprepared for the spectacle. The enthusiasm of that immense crowd
+astonished me, and in spite of the fact that I had come as a tired old
+man, it got into my veins until my heart pounded and my pulses leaped.
+The songs, the shouts, the bellows of that multitude were intensely
+thrilling, for youth was in them. I grew young again, and I was half
+ashamed of myself until I saw other people of my own age who had also
+become boys and girls for the day. And the seriousness of it! Why, it
+was painful! Not one of those countless thousands was a disinterested
+spectator; they were all intensely partisan, and you'd have thought
+life or death hung on the victory.
+
+"Not one, did I say? There was one who held himself aloof from all the
+enthusiasm. Old Henry sat like a lump of granite, and out of regard
+for him I tried to restrain myself.
+
+"We had a box, close to the side lines, with the _élite_ of the East
+on either hand--people whose names I had read. They bowed and smiled
+and waved to our little party, and I felt quite important.
+
+"You've probably seen similar games, so there's no need of my
+describing this one, even if I could. It was my first experience,
+however, and it impressed me greatly. When the teams appeared I
+recognized Running Elk at a distance. So did the hordes of madmen
+behind us, and I began to understand for the first time what it was
+that the old man in the seat next to mine was combating.
+
+"A dancing dervish in front of the grandstand said something through a
+megaphone, then he waved a cane, whereupon a tremendous barking, 'Rah!
+Rah! Rah!' broke out. It ended with my Sioux boy's name, and I wished
+the old chief back in Dakota were there to see his son and to witness
+the honor done him by the whites.
+
+"Quite as impressive to me as this demonstration was the death-like
+silence which settled over that tremendous throng when the teams
+scattered out in readiness. The other side kicked off, and the ball
+sailed high and far. As it settled in its downward flight, I saw a
+lithe, tall shadow of a man racing toward it, and I recognized my
+boy. I'd lost his position for the moment, but I knew that hungry,
+predatory stride which devoured the yards as if he were a thing of the
+wind. He was off with the ball in the hollow of his arm, right back
+into the heart of his enemies, dodging, darting, leaping, twisting,
+always advancing. They tore his interference away from him, but,
+nevertheless, he penetrated their ranks and none of them could lay
+hands upon him. He was running free when tackled; his assailant
+launched himself with such savage violence that the sound of their
+impact came to us distinctly. As he fell I heard Alicia Harman gasp.
+Then the crowd gave tongue.
+
+"From that time on to the finish of the game my eyes seldom left
+Running Elk, and then only long enough to shoot covert glances at my
+companions.
+
+"Although the skill of my young Sioux overtopped that of all the other
+contestants, the opposing team played as one man; they were like
+a wonderful, well-oiled piece of machinery, and--they scored. All
+through the first half our side struggled to retaliate, but at the
+intermission they had not succeeded.
+
+"So far Running Elk hadn't noticed our presence, but when the teams
+returned for the second half he saw us. He didn't even know that I was
+in the East; in fact, he hadn't laid eyes on me for more than three
+years. The sight of me there in the box with Alicia and her father
+must have been an unpleasant shock to him; my face must have seemed an
+evil omen; nevertheless, he waved his hand at me and smiled--one of
+his rare, reserved smiles. I couldn't help marveling at the fellow's
+physical beauty.
+
+"I had been secretly hoping that his side would be defeated, so that
+Miss Harman might see him for once as a loser; but the knowledge of
+our presence seemed to electrify him, and by the spark of his own
+magnetism he fired his fellows until they commenced to play like
+madmen; I have no doubt they were precisely that. His spirit was like
+some galvanic current, and he directed them with a master mind. He was
+a natural-born strategist, of course, for through him ran the blood of
+the craftiest race of all the earth, the blood of a people who have
+always fought against odds, to whom a forlorn hope is an assurance
+of victory. On this day the son of a Sioux chief led the men of
+that great university with the same skill that Hannibal led his
+Carthaginian cohorts up to the gates of Rome. He led them with the
+cunning of Chief Joseph, the greatest warrior of his people. He was
+indefatigable, irresistible, magnificent--and he himself tied the
+score.
+
+"In spite of myself I joined madly in the cheering; but the boy didn't
+let down. Now that his enemies recognized the source of their peril,
+they focused upon him all their fury. They tried to destroy him. They
+fell upon him like animals; they worried and they harried and they
+battered him until I felt sick for him and for the girl beside me,
+who had grown so faint and pale. But his body was of my making; I had
+spent careful years on it, and although they wore themselves out, they
+could not break Running Elk. He remained a fleeting, an elusive thing,
+with the vigor of a wild horse. He tackled their runners with the
+ferocity of a wolf.
+
+"It was a grand exhibition of coolness and courage, for he was
+everywhere, always alert and always ready--and it was he who won the
+game.
+
+"There came some sort of a fumble, too fast for the eye to follow, and
+then the ball rolled out of the scrimmage. Before we knew what had
+happened, Running Elk was away with it, a scattered field ahead of
+him.
+
+"I dare say you have heard about that run, for it occurred in the last
+three minutes of play, and is famous in football annals to this day,
+so I'm told. It was a spectacular performance, apparently devised by
+fate to make more difficult the labors of old Henry and me. Every
+living soul on those high-banked bleachers was on his feet at the
+finish, a senseless, screaming demon. I saw Alicia straining forward,
+her face like chalk, her very lips blanched, her whole high-strung
+body aquiver. Her eyes were distended, and in them I saw a look which
+told me that this was no mere girlish whim, that this was more than
+the animal call of youth and sex. Running Elk had become a fetish to
+her.
+
+"The father must likewise have recognized this, for as we passed out
+he stammered into my ear:
+
+"'You see, Doc, the girl's mad. It's awful--awful. I don't know what
+to do.'
+
+"We had become momentarily separated from her, and therefore I urged
+him: 'Get her away, quick, no matter how or where. Use force if you
+have to, but get her out of this crowd, this atmosphere, and keep her
+away. I'll see _him_ to-night.'
+
+"The old fellow nodded. 'I--I'll kidnap her and take her to Europe,'
+he mumbled. 'God! It's awful!'
+
+"I didn't go back to the city with the Harmans; but I told Alicia
+good-by at the running-board of the machine. I don't think she heard
+me.
+
+"Running Elk was glad to see me, and I spent that evening with him. He
+asked all about his people; he told me of his progress, and he spoke
+lightly of his victory that day. But sound him as I would, I could
+elicit no mention of Alicia Harman's name. He wasn't much of a talker,
+anyhow, so at last I was forced to bring up the subject myself. At my
+first word the silence of his forefathers fell upon him, and all he
+did was listen. I told him forcibly that any thoughts of her were
+ridiculous and impossible.
+
+"'Why?' said he, after I had finished.
+
+"I told him a thousand reasons why; I recounted them cruelly,
+unfeelingly, but he made no sign. As a matter of fact, I don't think
+he understood them any more than he understood the affair itself. He
+appeared to be blinded, confused by the splendor of what had come to
+him. Alicia was so glorious, so different, so mysterious to him, that
+he had lost all sense of perspective and of proportion. Recognizing
+this, I descended to material things which I knew he could grasp.
+
+"'I paid for your education,' said I, 'and it is almost over with. In
+a few months you'll be turned out to make your own living, and then
+you'll encounter this race prejudice I speak of in a way to effect
+your stomach and your body. You're a poor man, Running Elk, and you've
+got to earn your way. Your blood will bar you from a good many means
+of doing it, and when your color begins to affect your earning
+capacity you'll have all you can do to take care of yourself. Life
+isn't played on a gridiron, and the first thing you've got to do is
+to make a man of yourself. You've got no right to fill your head with
+dreams, with insane fancies of this sort.'
+
+"'Yes, sir!' said he, and that was about all I could get out of him.
+His reticence was very annoying.
+
+"I didn't see him again, for I came West the next day, and the weeks
+stretched into months without word of him or of the others.
+
+"Shortly before he was due to return I was taken sick--the one big
+illness of my life, which came near ending me, which made me into the
+creaking old ruin that I am. They sent me away to another climate,
+where I got worse, then they shifted me about like a bale of goods,
+airing me here and there. For a year and a half I hung over the edge,
+one ailment running into another, but finally I straightened out a bit
+and tottered back into Washington to resume operations.
+
+"For six months I hung around headquarters, busied on department
+matters. I had lost all track of things out here, meanwhile, for the
+agent had been changed shortly after I left, and no one had taken
+the trouble to keep me posted; but eventually I showed up on the
+reservation again, reaching here on the first of July, three days
+before the annual celebration of the people.
+
+"Many changes had occurred in my two years' absence, and there was no
+one to bring me gossip, hence I heard little during the first day or
+two while I was picking up the loose ends of my work. One thing I did
+find out, however--namely, that Running Elk had come straight home
+from college, and was still on the reserve. I determined to look him
+up during the festival.
+
+"But on the morning of the Fourth I got the surprise of my life. The
+stage from the railroad brought two women, two strange women, who came
+straight to my office--Alicia Harman and her French maid.
+
+"Well, I was fairly knocked endwise; but Alicia was as well-poised and
+as self-contained as on that Thanksgiving morning in New York when
+she and old Henry had picked me up in their automobile--a trifle more
+stunning and a bit more determined, perhaps. Oh, she was a splendid
+creature in the first glory of her womanhood, a perfectly groomed and
+an utterly spoiled young goddess. She greeted me graciously, with that
+queenly air of all great ladies.
+
+"'Where is your father?' I asked, as she laid off her dust-coat.
+
+"'He's in New York,' said she. 'I'm traveling alone.'
+
+"'And where have you been all this time?'
+
+"'In Europe, mainly; Rome, Naples, Cairo, India, St. Petersburg,
+London--all about, in fact. Father took me abroad the day after
+Thanksgiving--you remember? And he has kept me there. But I came of
+age two weeks ago.'
+
+"'Two weeks!' I ejaculated.
+
+"'Yes, I took the first ship after my birthday. I've been traveling
+pretty constantly ever since. This is a long way from the world out
+here, isn't it?' She looked around curiously.
+
+"'From your world, yes,' said I, and when she offered nothing further
+I grew embarrassed. I started to speak; then, noting the maid, I
+hesitated; but Alicia shook her head faintly.
+
+"'Lisette doesn't understand a word of English,' said she.
+
+"'Why have you come out here, Alicia?' I inquired. I was far more ill
+at ease than she.
+
+"'Do you need to ask?' She eyed me defiantly. 'I respected father's
+wishes when I was in my minority. I traveled and studied and did all
+the tiresome things he commanded me to do--as long as he had the right
+to command. But when I became my own mistress I--took my full freedom.
+He made his life to suit himself; I intend to make mine to suit
+myself. I'm sorry I can't please him, but we don't seem to see things
+the same way, and I dare say he has accepted the inevitable.'
+
+"'Then you consider this--this move you evidently contemplate as
+inevitable?'
+
+"She lifted her dainty brows. 'Inevitable isn't a good word. I wish a
+certain thing; I have wished it from the first; I have never ceased
+for an instant to wish it; I feel that I must have it; therefore, to
+all intents and purposes, it is inevtable. Anyhow, I'm going to have
+it.'
+
+"'You have--er--been in communication with--'
+
+"'Never! Father forbade it.'
+
+"'Then how did you know he is here?'
+
+"'He wrote me when he left college. He said he was coming home. I've
+heard nothing since. He is here, isn't he?'
+
+"'So I believe. I haven't seen him yet; you know I've been away
+myself.'
+
+"'Will you take me to him?'
+
+"'Have you really weighed this thing?' I remonstrated. 'Do you realize
+what it means?'
+
+"'Please don't.' She smiled wearily. 'So many people have tried to
+argue me out of my desires. I shall not spoil my life, believe me; it
+is too good a thing to ruin. That is precisely why I'm here.'
+
+"'If you insist.' I gave in reluctantly. 'Of course I'll put myself
+at your service. We'll look for him to-morrow.' All sorts of wild
+expedients to thwart a meeting were scurrying through my mind.
+
+"'We'll go to-day,' said she.
+
+"'But--'
+
+"'At once! If you're too busy I'll ask somebody else--'
+
+"'Very well!' said I. 'We'll drive out to the encampment.' And I sent
+for my buckboard.
+
+"I was delayed in spite of myself until nearly sundown, and meanwhile
+Alicia Harman waited in my office, pacing the floor with ill-concealed
+impatience. Before starting I ventured one more remonstrance, for I
+was filled with misgivings, and the more I saw of this girl the more
+fantastic and unnatural this affair seemed. But the unbridled impulses
+of her parents were bearing fruit, and no one could say her nay. She
+afforded the most illuminating study in heredity that I have ever
+witnessed.
+
+"We didn't say much during our fifteen-mile drive, for I was worried
+and Alicia was oddly torn between apprehension and exultation. We had
+left the French maid behind. I don't know that any woman ever went to
+her lover under stranger circumstances or in greater perturbation of
+spirit than did this girl, behind whom lay a generation of selfishness
+and unrestraint.
+
+"It was well along in the evening when we came over the ridge and saw
+the encampment below us. You can imagine the fairy picture it made
+with its myriad of winking fires, with the soft effulgence of a
+thousand glowing tents, and with the wonderful magic of the night over
+it all. As we drew nearer, the unusual sounds of a strange merrymaking
+came to us--the soft thudding of drums, the weird melody of the
+dances, the stir and the confusion of crowded animal life. In the
+daylight it would have been sufficiently picturesque, but under the
+wizard hand of the darkness it became ten times more so.
+
+"When I finally tied my horses and led the girl into the heart of it I
+think she became a bit frightened, for these Indians were the Sioux of
+a bygone day. They were barbaric in dress and in demeanor.
+
+"I guided her through the tangle of tepees, through glaring fire-lit
+circles and through black voids where we stumbled and had to feel our
+way. We were jostled and elbowed by fierce warriors and by sullen
+squaws. At every group I asked for Running Elk, but he was merely one
+of five thousand and nobody knew his whereabouts.
+
+"The people have ever been jealous of their customs, and as a result
+we were frequently greeted by cold looks and sudden silences.
+Recognizing this open resentment, my companion let down a thick
+automobile veil which effectually hid her face. Her dust-coat was long
+and loose and served further to conceal her identity.
+
+"At one time we came upon a sight I would gladly have spared her--the
+spectacle of some wrinkled hags strangling a dog by the light of a
+fire. The girl at my side stifled a cry at the apparition.
+
+"'What are they doing?' she gasped.
+
+"'Preparing the feast,' I told her.
+
+"'Do they--really--'
+
+"'They do,' said I. 'Come!' I tried to force her onward, but she would
+not stir until the sacrifice had been dragged to the flames, where
+other carcasses were singeing among the pots and kettles. From every
+side came the smell of cooking meat, mingled with the odor of burning
+hair and flesh. I could hear Miss Harman panting as we went on.
+
+"We circled half the great hoop before we came upon the trail of our
+man, and were directed to a near-by tepee, upon the glowing walls of
+which many heads were outlined in silhouette, and from which came the
+monotonous voice of a story-teller.
+
+"I don't know what hopes the girl had been nursing; she must have
+looked upon these people not as kindred of Running Elk, but rather as
+his servants, his slaves. Realizing that her quest was nearly ended,
+her strength forsook her and she dropped behind me. The entrance to
+the tepee was congested by those who could not find space inside, but
+they rose silently, upon recognizing me, and made room. I lifted the
+flap and peered within, clearing a view for Miss Harman.
+
+"We beheld a circle of half-naked braves in full war regalia,
+squatting haunch to haunch, listening to a story-teller. In front of
+them was a confusion of blackened pails and steaming vessels, into
+which they dipped with their naked fingers. Their faces were streaked
+with paint, their lips were greasy with traces of the dish, the air
+of the place was reeking from their breaths. My eyes were slower than
+Alicia's, and so I did not distinguish our quarry at first, although a
+slow sigh at my ear and a convulsive clutch at my arm told me that he
+was there.
+
+"And then I, too, saw Running Elk. It was he who was talking, to whom
+the others listened. What a change two years had wrought! His voice
+was harsh and guttural, his face, through the painted daubs and
+streaks, was coarser and duller than when I had seen him. His very
+body was more thin and shrunken.
+
+"He finished his tale while we stared at him; the circle broke into
+commendatory grunts, and he smiled in childlike satisfaction at the
+impression he had made. He leaned forward and, scrutinizing the litter
+of sooty pots, plunged his hand into the nearest one.
+
+"Miss Harman stumbled back into the crowd and her place was taken by a
+squaw.
+
+"'Running Elk,' I called, over the heads of those next the entrance,
+and, seeing my face against the night, he arose and came out, stepping
+over the others.
+
+"'How do you do?' I said. 'You haven't forgotten me, have you?'
+
+"He towered head and shoulders above me, his feather head-dress adding
+to his stature. The beaded patterns of his war-harness stood out dimly
+in the half-light.
+
+"'No, no! I will never forget you, doctor. You--you have been sick.'
+The change in his speech was even more noticeable when he turned
+his tongue to English. He halted over his words and he mouthed them
+hesitatingly.
+
+"'Yes, pretty sick. And you, what are you doing?'
+
+"'I do what the rest do,' said he. 'Nothing! I have some horses and a
+few head of cattle, that is all.'
+
+"'Are you satisfied?' I demanded, sharply. He eyed me darkly for an
+instant, then he answered, slowly:
+
+"'I am an Indian. I am satisfied.'
+
+"'Then education didn't do you any good, after all?' I was offended,
+disappointed; I must have spoken gruffly.
+
+"This time he paused a long while before he replied.
+
+"'I had dreams,' said he, 'many dreams, and they were splendid; but
+you told me that dreams were out of place in a Sioux, so I forgot
+them, along with all the things I had learned. It is better so.'
+
+"Alicia Harman called me in a voice which I did not recognize, so I
+shook hands with Running Elk and turned away. He bowed his head and
+slunk back through the tepee door, back into the heart of his people,
+back into the past, and with him went my experiment. Since then I have
+never meddled with the gods nor given them cause to laugh at me."
+
+The doctor arose and stretched himself, then he entered his tent for
+a match. The melancholy pulse of the drums and the minor-keyed chant
+which issued out of the night sounded like a dirge sung by a dying
+people.
+
+"What became of Running Elk?" I inquired.
+
+The old man answered from within. "That was he I asked about the
+horse-races. He's the man you couldn't understand, who wouldn't talk
+to you. He's nearly an Indian again. Alicia Harman married a duke."
+
+
+
+
+THE MOON, THE MAID, AND THE WINGED SHOES
+
+
+The last place I locked wheels with Mike Butters was in Idaho. I'd
+just sold a silver-lead prospect and was proclaimin' my prosperity
+with soundin' brass and ticklin' symbols. I was tuned up to G and
+singin' quartettes with the bartender--opery buffet, so to speak--when
+in Mike walked. It was a bright morning out-side and I didn't
+reco'nize him at first against the sunlight.
+
+"Where's that cholera-morbus case?" said he.
+
+"Stranger, them ain't sounds of cramps," I told him. "It's me singin'
+'Hell Amongst the Yearlin's.'" Then I seen who he was and I fell among
+him.
+
+When we'd abated ourselves I looked him over.
+
+"What you doin' in all them good clothes?" I inquired.
+
+"I'm a D.D.S."
+
+"Do tell! All I ever took was the first three degrees. Gimme the grip
+and the password and I'll believe you."
+
+"That ain't a Masonic symbol," said he. "I'm a dentist--a bony fido
+dentist, with forceps and a little furnace and a gas-bag and a
+waitin'-rooms". He swelled up and bit a hang-nail off of his cigar.
+
+"Yep! A regular toothwright."
+
+Naturally I was surprised, not to say awed. "Have you got much of a
+practice?" I made bold to ask.
+
+"Um-m--It ain't what it ought to be, still I can't complain. It takes
+time to work into a fashionable clienteel. All I get a whack at now is
+Injuns, but I'm gradually beginnin' to close in on the white teeth."
+
+Now this was certainly news to me, for Mike was a foot-racer, and a
+good one, too, and the last time I'd seen him he didn't know nothing
+about teeth, except that if you ain't careful they'll bite your
+tongue. I figured he was lyin', so I said:
+
+"Where did you get your degree--off of a thermometer?"
+
+"Nothing of the tall. I run it down. I did, for a God's fact. It's
+like this: three months ago I crep' into this burg lookin' for a
+match, but the professions was overcrowded, there bein' fourteen
+lawyers, a half-dozen doctors, a chiropodist, and forty-three
+bartenders here ahead of me, not to speak of a tooth-tinker. That
+there dentist thought he could sprint. He come from some Eastern
+college and his pa had grub-staked him to a kit of tools and sent him
+out here to work his way into the confidences and cavities of the
+Idahobos.
+
+"Well, sir, the minute I seen him I realized he was my custard. He
+wore sofy cushions on his shoulders, and his coat was cut in at the
+back. He rolled up his pants, too, and sometimes he sweetened the view
+in a vi'lent, striped sweater. I watered at the mouth and picked my
+teeth over him--he was that succ'lent.
+
+"He'd been lookin' down on these natives and kiddin' 'em ever since he
+arrived, and once a week, reg'lar, he tried to frame a race so's he
+could wear his runnin'-pants and be a hero. I had no trouble fixin'
+things. He was a good little runner, and he done his best; but when I
+breasted the tape I won a quick-claim deed to his loose change, to a
+brand-new office over a drug-store, and to enough nickel-plated pliers
+for a wire-tapper. I staked him to a sleeper ticket, then I moved into
+his quarters. The tools didn't have no directions on 'em, but I've
+figgered out how to use most of 'em."
+
+"I gather that this here practice that you're buildin' up ain't
+exactly remunerative," I said to Mike.
+
+"Not yet it ain't, but I'm widenin' out. There ain't a day passes that
+I don't learn something. I was out drummin' up a little trade
+when your groans convinced me that somebody in here had a jumpin'
+toothache. If you ain't busy, mebbe you can help me get a patient."
+
+This particular saloon had about wore out its welcome with me, so I
+was game for any enterprise, and I allowed a little patient-huntin'
+would prob'ly do me good. I drawed my six gun and looked her over.
+
+"It's a new sport, but I bet I'll take to it," said I. "What d'you do,
+crease 'em or cripple 'em?"
+
+"Pshaw! Put up that hearse ticket," Mike told me. "Us doctors don't
+take human life, we save it."
+
+"I thought you said you was practisin' on Injuns."
+
+"Injuns is human. For a fact! I've learned a heap in this business.
+Not that I wouldn't bust one if I needed him, but it ain't necessary.
+Come, I'll show you."
+
+This here town had more heathens than whites in it, and before we'd
+gone a block I seen a buck Injun and his squaw idlin' along, lookin'
+into the store winders. The buck was a hungry, long-legged feller, and
+when we neared him Mike said to me:
+
+"Hist! There's one. I'll slip up and get him from behind. You grab him
+if he runs."
+
+This method of buildin' up a dental practice struck me as some
+strange, but Butters was a queer guy and this was sort of a rough
+town. When he got abreast of Mr. Lo, Mike reached out and garnered him
+by the neck. The Injun pitched some, but Mike eared him down finally,
+and when I come up I seen that one side of the lad's face was swelled
+up something fearful.
+
+"Well, well," said I. "You've sure got the dentist's eye. You must
+have spied that swellin' a block away."
+
+Mike nodded, then he said: "Poor feller! I'll bet it aches horrible.
+My office is right handy; let's get him in before the marshal sees
+us."
+
+We drug the savage up-stairs and into Mike's dental stable, then we
+bedded him down in a chair. He protested considerable, but we got him
+there in a tollable state of preservation, barring the fact that he
+was skinned up on the corners and we had pulled a hinge off from the
+office door.
+
+"It's a shame for a person to suffer thataway," Mike told me; "but
+these ignorant aborigines ain't educated up to the mercies of science.
+Just put your knee in his stummick, will you? What could be finer than
+to alleviate pain? The very thought in itself is elevatin'. I'm in
+this humanity business for life--Grab his feet quick or he'll kick out
+the winder."
+
+"Whoa!" I told the Injun. "Plenty fix-um!" I poked the swellin' on his
+face and he let out a yelp.
+
+"It's lucky we got him before multiplication set in," Mike assured me.
+"I lay for 'em that-away at the foot of the stairs every day; but this
+is the best patient I've had. I've a notion to charge this one."
+
+"Don't you charge all of 'em?" I wanted to know.
+
+"Nope. I got a tin watch off of one patient when he was under gas, but
+the most of 'em ain't worth goin' through. You got to do a certain
+amount of charity work."
+
+"Don't look like much of a business to me," I said.
+
+"There's something about it I like," Mike told me. "It sort of grows
+on a feller. Now that you're here to help catch 'em, I calc'late to
+acquire a lot of skill with these instruments. I've been playin' a
+lone hand and I've had to take little ones that I could handle."
+
+When Mike produced a pair of nickel-plated nail-pullers, Mr. Injun
+snorted like a sea-lion, and it took both of us to hold him down; but
+finally I tied his hair around the head-rest and we had him. His mane
+was long and I put a hard knot in it, then I set on his moccasins
+while Doctor Butters pried into his innermost secrets.
+
+"There she is--that big one." Mike pointed out a tooth that looked
+like the corner monument to a quartz claim.
+
+"You're on the wrong side," I told him.
+
+"Mebbe I am. Here's one that looks like it would come loose easier."
+Mike got a half-Nelson over in the east-half-east quarter-section of
+the buck's mouth and throwed his weight on the pliers.
+
+The Injun had pretty well wore himself out by this time, and when
+he felt those ice-tongs he just stiffened out--an Injun's dead game
+that-away; he won't make a holler when you hurt him. His squaw was
+hangin' around with her eyes poppin' out, but we didn't pay no
+attention to her.
+
+Somehow Mike's pinchers kept jumpin' the track and at every slip a new
+wrinkle showed in the patient's face--patient is the right word, all
+right--and we didn't make no more show at loosenin' that tusk than as
+if we'd tried to pull up Mount Bill Williams with a silk thread. At
+last two big tears come into the buck's eyes and rolled down his
+cheeks. First time I ever seen one cry.
+
+Now that weakness was plumb fatal to him, for right there and then he
+cracked his plate with his missus. Yes, sir, he tore his shirt-waist
+proper. The squaw straightened up and give him a look--oh, what a
+look!
+
+"Waugh!" she sniffed. "Injun heap big squaw!" And with that she
+swished out of the office and left him flat. Yes, sir, she just blew
+him on the spot.
+
+I s'pose Mike would have got that tooth somehow--he's a perseverin'
+party--only that I happened to notice something queer and called him
+off.
+
+"Here, wait a minute," said I, and I loosened him from the man's
+chest. Mike was so engorsed in the pursuit of his profession that he
+was astraddle of his patient's wishbone, gougin' away like a quartz
+miner. "Take your elbow out of his mouth and lemme talk to him a
+minute." When the savage had got his features together, I said to him,
+"How you catch um bump, hey?" And I pointed to his jaw.
+
+"Bzz-zz-zz!" said he.
+
+I turned to Doctor Butters. "Hornet!" I declared.
+
+When Mike had sized up the bee-sting he admitted that my diagnosis
+was prob'ly correct. "That's the trouble with these patients," he
+complained. "They don't take you into their confidence. Just the same,
+I'm goin' to attend to his teeth, for there's no tellin' when I'll
+catch another one."
+
+"What's wrong with his teeth?" I questioned. "They look good to me,
+except they're wore down from eatin' camus. If he was a horse I'd
+judge him to be about a ten-year-old."
+
+"You never can tell by lookin' at teeth what's inside of 'em. Anyhow,
+a nice fillin' would set 'em off. I ain't tried no fillin's yet. Gimme
+that Burley drill."
+
+I wheeled out a kind of sewing-machine; then I pedaled it while Mike
+dug into that Injun's hangin' wall like he had a round of holes to
+shoot before quittin'-time. This here was more in my line, bein' a
+hard-rock miner myself, and we certainly loaded a fine prospect of
+gold into that native's bi-cuspidor. We took his front teeth because
+they was the easiest to get at.
+
+It was just like I said, this Injun's white keys was wore off short
+and looked like they needed something, so we laid ourselves out to
+supply the want. We didn't exactly fill them teeth; we merely riveted
+on a sort of a plowshare--a gold sod-cutter about the size of your
+finger-nail. How Mike got it to stick I don't know, but he must have
+picked up quite a number of dentist's tricks before I came. Anyhow,
+there she hung like a brass name-plate, and she didn't wabble hardly
+at all. You'd of been surprised to see what a difference it made in
+that redskin's looks.
+
+We let our patient up finally and put a lookin'-glass in his hand. At
+first he didn't know just what to make of that fillin'; but when he
+seen it was real gold a grin broke over his face, his chest swelled
+up, and he walked out of the office and across the street to a novelty
+store. In a minute out he came with a little round lookin'-glass and a
+piece of buckskin, and the last we seen of him he was hikin' down the
+street, grinnin' into that mirror as happy as a child and polishin'
+that tusk like it had started to rust.
+
+"Which I sure entitle a gratifyin' operation," said Mike.
+
+"I'm in no ways proud of the job," I told him. "I feel like I'd salted
+a mine."
+
+Well, me and Mike lived in them dental parlors for a couple of weeks,
+decoyin' occasional natives into it, pullin', spilin', fillin', and
+filin' more teeth than a few, but bimeby the sport got tame.
+
+One day Mike was fakin' variations on his guitar, and I was washin'
+dishes, when I said: "This line is about as excitin' as a game of
+jack-straws. D'you know it's foot-racin' time with the Injuns?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sure. They're gettin' together at old Port Lewis to run races this
+week. One tribe or the other goes broke and walks home every year. If
+we could meet up with the winnin' crowd, down on the La Plata--"
+
+I didn't have to say no more, for I had a hackamore on Mike's
+attention right there, and he quit climbin' the "G" string and put up
+his box.
+
+The next day we traded out of the tooth business and rode south down
+the old Navajo trail. We picked a good campin' spot--a little "flat"
+in a bend of the river where the grazin' was good--and we turned the
+ponies out.
+
+We didn't have to wait long. A few evenings later, as we et supper we
+heard a big noise around the bend and knew our visitors was comin'.
+They must of had three hundred head of horses, besides a big outfit of
+blankets, buckskin, baskets, and all the plunder that an Injun outfit
+travels with. At sight of us in their campin'-place they halted, and
+the squaws and the children rode up to get a look at us.
+
+I stepped out in front of our tent and throwed my hand to my forehead,
+shading my eyes--that's the Injun sign of friendship. An old chief and
+a couple of warriors rode forrad, Winchester to pommel, but, seein' we
+was alone, they sheathed their guns, and we invited 'em to eat.
+
+It didn't take much urgin'. While we fed hot biscuits to the head men
+the squaws pitched camp.
+
+They was plumb elated at their winnin' up at Fort Lewis, and the
+gamblin' fever was on 'em strong, so right after supper they invited
+us to join 'em in a game of Mexican monte. I let Mike do the
+card-playin' for our side, because he's got a pass which is the
+despair of many a "tin-horn." He can take a clean Methodist-Episcopal
+deck, deal three hands, and have every face card so it'll answer to
+its Christian name. No, he didn't need no lookout, so I got myself
+into a game of "bounce the stick," which same, as you prob'ly know, is
+purely a redskin recreation. You take a handful of twigs in your hand,
+then throw 'em on to a flat rock endways, bettin' whether an odd or an
+even number will fall outside of a ring drawed in the dirt. After a
+couple of hours Mike strolled up and tipped me the wink that he'd
+dusted his victims.
+
+"Say," he began, "there's the niftiest chicken down here that I ever
+see."
+
+"Don't start any didos with the domestic relations of this tribe," I
+told him, "or they'll spread us out, and spread us thin. Remember,
+you're here on business bent, and if you bend back and forrads, from
+business to pleasure, and versy visa, you'll bust. These people has
+scrooplous ideas regardin' their wives and I respect 'em."
+
+"She ain't married," Mike told me. "She's the chief's daughter, and
+she looks better to me than a silver mine."
+
+Durin' that evening we give the impression that we was well heeled, so
+the tribe wasn't in no hurry to break camp on the following morning.
+
+Along about noon I missed Mike, and I took a stroll to look for him. I
+found him--and the chief's daughter--alongside of a shady trout pool.
+She was weavin' a horsehair bracelet onto his wrist, and I seen the
+flash of his ring on her finger. Mike could travel some.
+
+He was a bit flustered, it seemed to me, and he tried to laugh the
+matter off, but the girl didn't. There was something about the look
+of her that I didn't like. I've seen a whole lot of trouble come from
+less than a horsehair bracelet. This here quail was mebbe seventeen;
+she was slim and shy, and she had big black eyes and a skin like
+velvet. I spoke to Mike in words of one syllable, and I drug him away
+with me to our tent.
+
+That afternoon some half-grown boys got to runnin' foot-races and Mike
+entered. He let 'em beat him, then he offered to bet a pony that they
+couldn't do it again. The kids was game, and they took him quick. Mike
+faked the race, of course, and lost his horse, that bein' part of our
+progam.
+
+When it was all over I seen the chief's daughter had been watchin' us,
+but she didn't say nuthin'. The next mornin', however, when we got up
+we found a bully pinto pony tied to one of our tent stakes.
+
+"Look who's here," said I. "Young Minnie Ha-ha has made good your
+losin's."
+
+"That pony is worth forty dollars," said Mike.
+
+"Sure. And you're as good as a squaw-man this minute. You're
+betrothed."
+
+"Am I?" The idy didn't seem to faze Mike. "If that's the case," said
+he, "I reckon I'll play the string out. I sort of like it as far as
+I've gone."
+
+"I wish she'd gave us that cream-colored mare or hers," I said. "It's
+worth two of this one."
+
+"I'll get it to-day," Mike declared. And sure enough, he lost another
+foot-race, and the next morning the cream-colored mare was picketed in
+front of our tent.
+
+Well, this didn't look good to me, and I told Mike so. I never was
+much of a hand to take money from women, so I served a warnin' on
+him that if we didn't get down to business pretty quick and make our
+clean-up I proposed to leave him flat on his back.
+
+That day the young men of the tribe did a little foot-runnin', and
+Mike begged 'em to let him in. It was comical to see how pleased
+they was. They felt so sure of him that they began pro-ratin' our
+belongin's among one another. They laid out a half-mile course, and
+everybody in camp went out to the finish-line to see the contest and
+to bet on it. The old chief acted as judge, bookmaker, clerk of the
+course, referee, and stakeholder. I s'pose by the time the race was
+ready to start there must of been fifty ponies up, besides a lot of
+money, but the old bird kept every wager in his head. He rolled up a
+couple of blankets and placed 'em on opposite sides of the track, and
+showed us by motions that the first man between 'em would be declared
+the winner. All the money that had been bet he put in little piles on
+a blanket; then he give the word to get ready.
+
+I had no trouble layin' our money at one to five, and our ponies at
+the same odds; then, when everything was geared up, I called Mike from
+his tent. Say, when he opened the fly and stepped out there was a
+commotion, for all he had on was his runnin'-trunks and his spiked
+shoes. The Injuns was in breech-cloths and moccasins, and, of course,
+they created no comment; but the sight of a half-nekked white man was
+something new to these people, and the first flash they got at Mike's
+fancy togs told 'em they'd once more fell a victim to the white man's
+wiles.
+
+They was wise in a minute, and some of the young hot-bloods was for
+smokin' us up, but the chief was a sport--I got to give the old bird
+credit. He rared back on his hind legs and made a stormy palaver;
+as near as I could judge he told his ghost-dancers they'd been
+cold-decked, but he expected 'em to take their medicine and grin, and,
+anyhow, it was a lesson to 'em. Next time they'd know better'n to
+monkey with strangers. Whatever it was he said, he made his point, and
+after a right smart lot of powwowin' the entertainment proceeded. But
+Mike and me was as popular with them people as a couple of polecats at
+a picnic.
+
+Mike certainly made a picture when he lined up at the start; he stood
+out like a marble statue in a slate quarry. I caught a glimpse of the
+chief's daughter, and her eyes was bigger than ever, and she had her
+hands clinched at her side. He must have looked like a god to her;
+but, for that matter, he was a sight to turn any untamed female heart,
+whether the owner et Belgian hare off of silver service or boiled
+jack-rabbit out of a coal-oil can. Women are funny thataway.
+
+It's a pot-hunter's maxim never to win by a big margin, but to nose
+out his man at the finish. This Mike did, winnin' by a yard; then he
+acted as if he was all in--faked a faint, and I doused him with a
+sombrero of water from the creek. It was a spectacular race, at that,
+for at the finish the runners was bunched till a blanket would of
+covered 'em. When they tore into the finish I seen the chief's girl do
+a trick. Mike was runnin' on the outside, and when nobody was watchin'
+her the little squaw kicked one of them blanket bundles about two feet
+down the course, givin' Mike that much the "edge." She done it clever
+and it would have throwed a close race.
+
+Them savages swallered their physic and grinned, like the chief had
+told 'em, and they took it standin' up. They turned over the flower of
+their pony herd to us, not to mention about six quarts of silver money
+and enough blankets to fill our tent. The old chief patted Mike on the
+back, then put both hands to his temples with his fingers spread out,
+as much as to say, "He runs like a deer."
+
+Bimeby a buck stepped up and begun makin' signs. He pointed to the sun
+four times, and we gathered that he wanted us to wait four days until
+he could go and get another man.
+
+Mike tipped me the wink, sayin': "They're goin' after the champeen of
+the tribe. That phony faint of mine done it. Will we wait? Why,
+say, we'd wait four years, wouldn't we? Sweet pickin's, I call it.
+Champeen, huh?"
+
+"For me, I'd wait here till I was old folks," I said. "I don't aim to
+leave these simple savages nothin'. Nothin' at all, but a lot of idle
+regrets."
+
+Well, sir, there was a heap of excitement in that camp for the next
+three days. All them Injuns done, was to come and look at Mike and
+feel of his legs and argue with one another. The first night after the
+race Mike tuned up his guitar, and later on I heard snatches of the
+"Spanish Fandango" stealin' up from the river bank. I knew what was
+on; I knew without lookin' that the old chief's girl was right there
+beside him, huggin' her knees and listenin' with both ears. I didn't
+like to think about it, for she was a nice little yearlin', and it
+looked to me like Mike was up to his usual devilment. Seemed like a
+low-down trick to play on an injunoo like her, and the more I studied
+it the warmer I got. It was a wonderful night; the moonlight drenched
+the valley, and there was the smell of camp-fires and horses over
+everything--just the sort of a night for a guitar, just the sort of a
+night to make your blood run hot and to draw you out into the glitter
+and make you race with your shadow.
+
+When Mike moseyed in, along about ten o'clock, he was plumb loco;
+the moon-madness was on him strong. His eyes was as bright as silver
+coins, and his voice had a queer ring to it.
+
+"What a night!" said he. "And what a life this is Lord! I'm tired of
+pot-huntin'. I've trimmed suckers till I'm weary; I've toted a gold
+brick in my pocket till my clothes bag. I'm sick of it. I'm goin' to
+beat this Injun champeen, take my half of our winnin's, sell off the
+runty ones, and settle down."
+
+"Where do you aim to settle?" I inquired.
+
+"Oh, anywhere hereabouts. These are good people, and I like 'em."
+
+"You mean you're goin' to turn out with the Injuns?" I inquired, with
+my mouth open. Mike had led so sudden that he had me over the ropes.
+
+"I'm goin' to do that very little thing," he declared. "I dunno how to
+talk much Navajo, but I'm learnin' fast, and she got my meanin'. We
+understand each other, and we'll do better as time goes on. She calls
+me 'Emmike'! Sweet, ain't it?" He heaved a sigh, then he gargled a
+laugh that sounded like boilin' mush. "It ain't often a feller like me
+gets a swell little dame that worships him. Horses, guns, camp-fires!
+Can you beat it?"
+
+"If that squaw had a soft palate or a nose like a eeclair, you
+wouldn't be so keen for this simple life," I told him. "She has
+stirred up your wickedness, Mike, and you've gone nutty. You're
+moon-crazy, that's all. You cut it out."
+
+I argued half the night; but the more I talked the more I seen that
+Mike was stuck to be a renegade. It's a fact. If he hadn't of been
+a nice kid I'd of cut his hobbles and let him go; but--pshaw! Mike
+Butters could run too fast to be wasted among savages, and, besides,
+it's a terrible thing for a white man to marry an Injun. The red never
+dies out in the woman, but the white in the man always changes into a
+dirty, muddy red. I laid awake a long while tryin' to figger out a way
+to block his game, but the only thing I could think of was to tie him
+up and wear out a cinch on him. Just as I was dozin' off I had an idy.
+I didn't like it much at first; I had to swaller hard to down it, but
+the more I studied it the better it looked, so for fear I'd weaken I
+rolled over and went to sleep.
+
+Mike was in earnest, and so was the girl; that much I found out
+the next day. And she must of learned him enough Navajo to propose
+marriage with, and he must of learned her enough English to say "yes,"
+for she took possession of our camp and begun to order me around.
+First thing she lugged our Navajo blankets to the creek, washed 'em,
+then spread 'em over some bushes and beat 'em with a stick until they
+were as clean and soft as thistle-down. I'll admit she made a pleasant
+picture against the bright colors of them blankets, and I couldn't
+altogether blame Mike for losin' his head. He'd lost it, all right.
+Every time she looked at him out of them big black eyes he got as
+wabbly as clabber. It was plumb disgustin'.
+
+That evenin' he give her a guitar lesson. Now Mike himself was a sad
+musician, and the sound of him fandangoin' uncertainly up and down the
+fretful spine of that instrument was a tribulation I'd put up with on
+account of friendship, pure and simple, but when that discord-lovin'
+lady cliff-dweller set all evenin' in our tent and scraped
+snake-dances out of them catguts with a fish-bone, I pulled my freight
+and laid out in the moonlight with the dogs.
+
+Mike's infatuation served one purpose, though; he spent so much time
+with the squab that it give me an opportunity to work out my scheme.
+That guitar lesson showed me that vig'rous measures was necessary, so
+I dug up a file, a shoemaker's needle and some waxed thread, all of
+which we had in our kit.
+
+On the fourth morning there was a stir in the camp, and we knew that
+the courier had got back with his runner. Pretty soon the whole
+village stormed up to our tent in a body.
+
+"Let's go out and look him over," I said.
+
+"What's the use of lookin' at him?" Mike inquired. "All Injuns look
+alike--except one."
+
+I pulled back the tent fly and stepped out; then I called to Mike, for
+the first thing I seen was that gold fillin' of ours. Yes, sir, right
+there, starin' me in the eye, was the sole and shinin' monument to
+me and Mike's brief whirl at the science of dentistry. The face
+surroundin' it was stretched wide and welcome, and the minute this
+here new-comer reco'nized me, he drawed back his upper lip and pointed
+proudly to his ornament, then he dug up his lookin'-glass and his
+polishin'-rag and begun to dust it off. It was plain to be seen that
+he thought more of it than his right eye. And it impressed the other
+Injuns, too; they crowded up and studied it. They took turns feelin'
+of it, especially the squaws, and I bet if we'd had our dentist outfit
+with us we could of got rich right there. The chief's daughter, in
+particular, was took with the beauties of that gew-gaw, and she made
+signs to us that she wanted one just like it.
+
+"I never noticed he was so rangy," Mike told me, when he'd sized up
+the new arrival. "Say, this guy looks good. He's split plumb to the
+larynx and I bet he can run, for all of that wind-shield."
+
+I noticed that Mike was pretty grave when he come back in the tent,
+and more than once that day I caught him lookin' at the champeen, sort
+of studyin' him out. But for that matter this new party was gettin'
+his full share of attention; everywhere he went there was a trail of
+kids at his heels, and every time he opened his mouth he made a hit
+with the grown folks. The women just couldn't keep their eyes offen
+him, and I seen that Mike was gettin' pretty sore.
+
+In the evenin' he made a confession that tipped off the way his mind
+was workin'. "This is the first time I ever felt nervous before a
+race," said he. "Mebbe it's because it's goin' to be my last race;
+mebbe it's because that Injun knows me and ain't scared of me. Anyhow,
+I'm scared of _him_. That open-faced, Elgin-movement buck has got me
+tickin' fast."
+
+"That ain't what's got your goat," I told him.
+
+"Your cooin' dove is dazzled by that show of wealth, and you know it."
+
+"Hell! She's just curious, that's all. She's just a kid. I--I wish I'd
+of known who he was when I treated him. I'd of drove a horse-shoe nail
+in his knee."
+
+But all the same Mike looked worried.
+
+It rained hard that night, and the next morning the grass was pretty
+wet. Mike tried it, first thing, and come back grinnin' till the top
+of his head was an island.
+
+"That sod is so slippery old Flyin' Cloud can't get a good stride in
+his moccasins. Me, I can straddle out and take holt with my spikes.
+Them spikes is goin' to put us on easy street. You see! I don't care
+how good he is, they're goin' to give me four hundred head of broncs
+and a cute little pigeon to look out for 'em. Me, I'm goin' to lay
+back and learn to play the guitar. I'm goin' to learn it by note."
+
+"You sure got the makin's of a squaw-man," I told him. "Seems like
+I've over-read your hand. I used to think you had somethin' in you
+besides a appetite, but I was wrong. You're plumb cultus, Mike."
+
+"Don't get sore," he grinned. "I got my chance to beat the game and
+I'm goin' to take it. I can't run foot-races, and win 'em, all my
+life. Some day I'll step in my beard and sprain my ankle. Ambition's
+a funny thing. I got the ambition to quit work. Besides, she--you
+know--she's got a dimple you could lay your finger in. You'd ought to
+hear her say 'Emmike'; it's certainly cute."
+
+We bet everything we had--everything except that pinto pony and the
+cream-colored mare. I held them two out, for I figgered we was goin'
+to need 'em and need 'em bad, if my scheme worked out.
+
+The course--it was a quarter-mile, straight-away--was laid out along
+the bottom-land where the grass was thick and short. Me and the chief
+and his girl set on a blanket among the little piles of silver, and
+the rest of the merry villagers lined up close to the finish-line. We
+white men had been the prime attraction up till now, but it didn't
+take me long to see that we wasn't any more. Them people was all
+wrapped up in the lad with the gold name-plate, and they was rootin'
+for him frantic. Last thing he done was to give his eighteen-carat
+squaw-catcher the once-over with his buckskin buffer, then he shined
+it at the chief's girl and trotted down to the startin'-line. I
+noticed that she glued her big-and-liquids on him and kept 'em there.
+
+It was beautiful to watch those two men jockey for a start; the Injun
+was lean and hungry and mighty smart--but Mike was smarter still. Of
+course he got the jump.
+
+It was a pretty start, and Mike held his lead for fifty yards or more.
+I'll admit I was worked up. I've had my heart in my mouth so often
+over his races that it's wore smooth from swallerin', but this time it
+just wouldn't go down. Our dental patient was runnin' an awful race,
+but it looked like Mike had him; then, just as the boy settled down
+and reached out into that long, strong stride of his'n, something
+happened. He slipped. He would have fell, except that he caught
+himself. The next second he slipped again, and Mr. "Man in Love with a
+Gold Fillin'" passed him.
+
+With that them Injuns begun to speak. Some of their yells brought
+hunks of throat with 'em, and that whole region begun to echo as far
+south as the Rio Bravo.
+
+My scheme had worked, all right. You see, when Mike was doin' his
+heavy courtin' I'd planted my ace in the hole; I'd took off the outer
+soles of his runnin'-shoes and filed the spikes almost in two, close
+up to the plate. When I sewed the leather back on, it never showed,
+but the minute he struck his gait they broke with him and he begin to
+miss his pull. He might have won at that, for he's got the heart of a
+lion, but I s'pose the surprise did as much as anything else to
+beat him. It made my heart bleed to see the fight he put up, but he
+finished six feet to the bad and fell across the mark on his face,
+sobbin' like a child. It's the game ones that cry when they're licked;
+analyze a smilin' loser and you'll find the yellow streak. I lifted
+him to his feet, but he was shakin' like a bush in the wind.
+
+"Them shoes!" he wailed. "Them damned shoes!" Then he busted out again
+and blubbered like a kid.
+
+Right then I done some actin'; but, pshaw! anybody can act when he has
+to. If I'd of overplayed my hand a nickel's worth he'd of clumb up me
+like a rat up a rafter and there would of been human reminders all
+over that neighborhood. Not but what I would have got him eventually,
+bein' as I had my side-arms, but I liked Mike and I wouldn't kill
+nobody if I was sober.
+
+It happened that he fell right at the feet of the chief's girl, and
+when I lifted him up he seen her. But, say, it must have been a shock
+to him. Her eyes was half shut, her head was throwed back, and she was
+hissin' like a rattlesnake. Mike stiffened and sort of pawed at her,
+but she drawed away just like that other squaw in our dentist office
+had drawed away from her liege lord and master.
+
+"Waugh! White man heap squaw!" said she, and with that she flirted her
+braids and turned to the winner of the race. She went up to him and
+lifted his lip with her thumb like she just had to have another look
+at his gold tooth, then she smiled up into his face and they walked
+away together without a glance in our direction.
+
+Mike follered a step or two, then he stopped and stared around at the
+crowd. It was a big minute for him, and for me, too, and I'll prob'ly
+never forget the picture of that pantin' boy at bay among them
+grinnin' barbarians. The curs was yappin' at his heels, the squaws
+was gigglin' and makin' faces, the bucks was showin' their teeth and
+pointin' at his tears.
+
+Mike never said a word. He just stooped down and peeled off his
+runnin'-shoes, then he throwed 'em as far as he could, right out into
+the river. "Who the hell would marry a dame like that?" he sobbed.
+"She's stuck on his jewelry."
+
+"Come on, lad," said I; and I led him to our tent. Then, while he put
+on his clothes, I saddled the pinto pony and the cream-colored mare,
+for it was six days to the railroad.
+
+
+
+
+FLESH
+
+I
+
+
+Should you chance, in crossing a certain mountain pass in southern
+Catalonia, to find yourself poised above a little valley against the
+opposite side of which lies a monastery, look to the heights above
+it. Should you piece out from among the rocks the jagged ruins of a
+castle, ask its name. Your guide will perhaps inform you that those
+blackened stones are called "The Teeth of the Moor," and if he knows
+the story he will doubtless tell it to you, crossing himself many
+times during the recital. In all probability, however, he will merely
+shrug his shoulders and say it is a place of bad repute, nothing more.
+
+Even the monks of the monastery, who are considered well versed in
+local history, have forgotten the reason for the name, although they
+recall the legend that once upon a time the castle harbored a haughty
+Moslem lord. Few of them ever heard the story of Joseph the Anchorite,
+and how he sought flesh within its portals; those who have will not
+repeat it. Time was, however, when the tale was fresh, and it runs
+this wise:
+
+Away back in the reign of Abderamus the Just, First Caliph of the
+West, Hafiz, a certain warlike Moor, amazed at the fertility of
+this region, established on the edge of the plateau a stronghold of
+surprising security. His house he perched upon the crest of the cliff
+overlooking the valley below. It was backed by verdant, sun-kissed
+slopes which quickly yielded tribute in such quantity as to render
+him rich and powerful. Hafiz lived and fought and died beneath the
+Crescent banner, leaving in his place a son, who likewise waged war to
+the northward on behalf of the Prophet and all True Believers, at the
+same time farming his rich Catalonian acres.
+
+Generations came and went, and, although the descendants of Hafiz
+waxed strong, so also did the power of the hated Christians. Living
+as they did upon the very fringe of the Mussulman empire, the
+Moors beheld with consternation the slow encroachment of the
+Unbelievers--more noticeable here than farther to the southward.
+At intervals these enemies were driven back, but invariably they
+reappeared, until at length, upon the plain beneath the castle, monks
+came and built a monastery which they called San Sebastian. Beneath
+the very eyes of Abul Malek, fourth descendant of Hafiz, they raised
+their impious walls; although he chafed to wreak a bloody vengeance
+for this outrage, his hands were tied by force of circumstance.
+Wearied with interminable wars, the Moorish nation had sought respite;
+peace dozed upon the land. Men rested and took from the earth new
+strength with which to resume the never-ending struggle between the
+Crescent and the Cross, wherefore Abul Malek's rage availed him
+nothing. From his embrasured windows he beheld the cassocked enemies
+of his creed passing to and fro about their business; he heard his
+sacred hour of prayer desecrated by their Christian bells, and could
+do no more than revile them for dogs, the while he awaited the will of
+Allah. It was scant comfort for a man of his violent temper.
+
+But the truce threatened never to be broken. Years passed and still
+peace continued to reign. Meanwhile the Moor fed upon his wrongs and,
+from incessant brooding over them, became possessed of a fury more
+fanatical, more poisonous even than had been engendered by his many
+battles.
+
+Finally, when the wrong had bit too deep for him to endure, he
+summoned all his followers, and selecting from their number one
+hundred of the finest horsemen, he bade them make ready for a journey
+to Cordova; then in their presence he kissed the blue blade of his
+scimitar and vowed that the shackles which had hampered him and them
+would be struck off.
+
+For many days there ensued the bustle and the confusion of a great
+preparation in the house of the Moor; men came and went, women sewed
+and cleaned and burnished; horses were groomed, their manes were
+combed and their hoofs were polished; and then one morning, ere the
+golden sun was an hour high, down the winding trail past the monastery
+of San Sebastian, came a brilliant cavalcade. Abul Malek led, seated
+upon an Arabian steed whiter than the clouds which lay piled above the
+westward mountains. His two sons, Hassam and Elzemah, followed astride
+horses as black as night--horses the distinguished pedigrees of which
+were cited in the books of Ibn Zaid. Back of them came one hundred
+swarthy warriors on other coal-black mounts, whose flashing sides
+flung back the morning rays. Their flowing linen robes were like the
+snow, and from their turbans gleamed gems of value. Each horseman bore
+at his girdle a purse, a kerchief, and a poinard; and in their purses
+lay two thousand dinars of gold. Slaves brought up the rear of
+the procession, riding asses laden with bales, and they led fifty
+blood-red bays caparisoned as for a tournament.
+
+With scowling glances at the monastery the band rode on across the
+valley, climbed to the pass, and disappeared. After many days they
+arrived at Cordova, then when they had rested and cleansed themselves,
+Abul Malek craved audience of the Caliph, Aboul-Abbas El Hakkam. Being
+of distinguished reputation, his wish was quickly granted; and on the
+following day in the presence of the Hadjeb, the viziers, the white
+and black eunuchs, the archers, and the cuirassiers of the guard, he
+made a gift to his sovereign of those hundred northern horsemen and
+their mounts, those fifty blooded bays and their housings, those bales
+of aloe-wood and camphor, those silken pieces and those two thousand
+dinars of yellow Catalonian gold. This done, he humbly craved a
+favor in return, and when bade to speak, he began by telling of the
+indignities rendered him by the monks of San Sebastian.
+
+"Five generations my people have dwelt upon our lands, serving the
+true God and His Prophet," he declared, with quivering indignation;
+"but now those idolaters have come. They gibe and they mock at me
+beneath my very window. My prayers are broken by their yammerings;
+they defile my casement, and the stench of their presence assails my
+nostrils."
+
+"What do you ask of me?" inquired the Caliph.
+
+"I ask for leave to cleanse my doorstep."
+
+The illustrious Moslem shook his head, whereat Abul Malek cried:
+
+"Does not the Koran direct us to destroy the unbelieving and the
+impious? Must I then suffer these infidels to befoul my garden?"
+
+"God is merciful; it is His will that for a time the Unbelievers shall
+appear to flourish," said the Caliph. "We are bound by solemn compact
+with the kings of Leon and Castile to observe an armistice. That
+armistice we shall observe, for our land is weary of wars, our men are
+tired, and their scars must heal. It is not for you or for me to say:
+'This is good, or this is evil.' Allah's will be done!"
+
+Abul Malek and his sons returned alone to their mountains, but when
+they reined in at the door of their castle the father spat venomously
+at the belfried roof of the monastery beneath and vowed that he would
+yet work his will upon it.
+
+Now that the Law forbade him to make way with his enemies by force, he
+canvassed his brain for other means of effecting their downfall; but
+every day the monks went on with their peaceful tasks, unmindful of
+his hatred, and their impious religion spread about the countryside.
+Abul Malek's venom passed them by; they gazed upon him with gentle
+eyes in which there was no spleen, although in him they recognized a
+bitter foe.
+
+As time wore on his hatred of their religion became centered upon the
+monks themselves, and he undertook by crafty means to annoy them. Men
+said these Christian priests were good; that their lives were spent in
+prayer, in meditation, and in works of charity among the poor; tales
+came to the Moor of their spiritual existence, of their fleshly
+renunciation; but at these he scoffed. He refused to credit them.
+
+"Pah!" he would cry, tugging at his midnight beard; "how can these men
+be aught but liars, when they live and preach a falsehood? Their creed
+is impious, and they are hypocrites. They are not superior beings,
+they are flesh like you or me. They have our passions and our faults,
+but a thousand times multiplied, for they walk in darkness and dwell
+in hypocrisy. Beneath their cassocks is black infamy; their hearts are
+full of evil--aye, of lust and of every unclean thing. Being false to
+the true God, they are false to themselves and to the religion they
+profess; and I will prove it." Thus ran his reasoning.
+
+In order to make good his boast Abul Malek began to study the
+monks carefully, one after another. He tried temptation. A certain
+gross-bellied fellow he plied with wine. He flattered and fawned upon
+the simple friar; he led him into his cellars, striving to poison
+the good man's body as well as his mind; but the visitor partook in
+moderation, and preached the gospel of Christ so earnestly that the
+Saracen fled from his presence, bathing himself in clean water to be
+rid of the pollution.
+
+Next he laid a trap for the Abbot himself. He selected the fairest of
+his slaves, a well-rounded woman of great physical charm, and bribed
+her with a girdle of sequins. She sought out the Abbot and professed
+a hunger for his creed. Bound thus by secrecy to the pious man, she
+lured him by every means at her command. But the Abbot had room for no
+passion save the love of Christ, and her wiles were powerless against
+this armor.
+
+Abul Malek was patient; he renewed his vow to hold the false religion
+up to ridicule and laughter, thinking, by encompassing the downfall
+of a single advocate, thus to prove his contention and checkmate its
+ever-widening influence. He became obsessed by this idea; he schemed
+and he contrived; he used to the utmost the powers of his Oriental
+mind. From his vantage-point above the cloister he heard the monks
+droning at their Latin; his somber glances followed them at their
+daily tasks. Like a spider he spun his web, and when one victim broke
+through it he craftily repaired its fabric, luring another into its
+meshes.
+
+At times he shared his vigil with his daughter Zahra, a girl of
+twelve, fast growing into womanhood; and since she had inherited
+his wit and temperament, he taught her to share his hatred of the
+black-robed men.
+
+This Moorish maiden possessed the beauty of her mother, who had died
+in childbirth; and in honor of that celebrated favorite of Abderamus
+III. she had been christened "Flower of the World." Nor was the title
+too immoderate, as all men who saw her vowed. Already the hot sun of
+Catalonia had ripened her charms, and neighboring lords were beginning
+to make extravagant overtures of marriage. But seeing in her a
+possible weapon more powerful than any he had yet launched against the
+monks of San Sebastian, the father refused to consider even the best
+of them. He continued to keep her at his side, pouring his hatred into
+her ears until she, too, was ablaze with it.
+
+Zahra was in her fourteenth year when Abul Malek beheld, one day, a
+new figure among those in the courtyard of the monastery below. Even
+from his eminence the Saracen could see that this late-comer was
+a giant man, for the fellow towered head and shoulders above his
+brethren. Inquiry taught him that the monk's name was Joseph. Nor was
+their meeting long delayed, for a sickness fell among the people of
+the valley, and Abul Malek, being skilled in medicine, went out to
+minister among the poor, according to his religion. At the sick-bed of
+a shepherd the two men came face to face.
+
+Joseph was not young, nor was he old, but rather he had arrived at the
+perfect flower of his manhood, and his placid soul shone out through
+features of unusual strength and sweetness. In him the crafty Moor
+beheld a difference which for a time was puzzling. But eventually he
+analyzed it. The other monks had once been worldly men--they showed it
+in their faces; the countenance of Fray Joseph, on the contrary, was
+that of a boy, and it was without track of temptation or trace of
+evil. He had lived a sheltered life from his earliest youth, so it
+transpired, and Abul Malek rejoiced in the discovery, it being his
+belief that all men are flesh and that within them smolder flames
+which some day must have mastery. If this monk had never let his youth
+run free, if he had never met temptation and conquered it, those
+pent-up forces which inhabit all of us must be gathering power, year
+by year, and once the joint of this armor had been found, once it
+could be pierced, he would become earthly like other men, and his
+false religion would drop away, leaving him naked under the irksome
+garb of priesthood.
+
+Accordingly, the Moor tested Fray Joseph, as he had tested the Abbot
+and the others, but to no avail, and he was in despair, until one day
+the secret of his failure was unexpectedly revealed.
+
+Being busied with his accounts, he had repaired to the shade of a
+pomegranate grove near the cliff, the better to escape the heat; while
+so engaged up the path from the monastery came the good brother. Just
+abreast of Abul Malek's point of vantage Joseph paused to listen. A
+songbird was trilling wondrously and the monk's face, raised toward
+the pomegranate trees, became transfigured. He changed as if by
+magic; his lips parted in a tender smile, his figure grew tense with
+listening; not until the last note had died away did he move. Then
+a great breath stirred his lungs, and with shining eyes and rapt
+countenance he went on into the fields.
+
+Abul Malek rose, his white teeth gleaming through his beard.
+
+"Allah be praised!" he exclaimed. "It is music!" And rolling up his
+papers, he went into the house.
+
+Early on the following morning another cavalcade filed down past the
+monastery of San Sebastian; but this procession was in great contrast
+to the one that had gone by five years before. Instead of gaily
+caparisoned warriors, it was composed mainly of women and slaves, with
+a mere handful of guards to lead the way. There were bondmaidens and
+seamstresses, an ancient nurse and a tutor of languages; while astride
+of a palfrey at her father's side rode the youthful lady of the
+castle. Her veil was wet upon her cheeks, her eyes were filled with
+shadows; yet she rode proudly, like a princess.
+
+Once more the train moved past the sun-baked walls of the monastery,
+across the plain to the mountain road that led to the land of bounty
+and of culture. Late that afternoon Brother Joseph learned from the
+lips of a herdsman that the beauteous Zahra, flower of all the Moorish
+race, had gone to Cordova to study music.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Abul Malek once more rode home alone to his castle; but this time as
+he dismounted at his door he smiled at the monastery below.
+
+Four years crept by, during which the Saracen lord brooded over the
+valley and the monk Joseph went his simple way, rendering service
+where he could, preaching, by the example of his daily life and his
+unselfish devotion, a sermon more powerful than his lips could utter.
+Through it all the Moor watched him carefully, safeguarding him as a
+provident farmer fattens a sheep for the slaughter. Once a year the
+father rode southward to Cordova, bringing news with his return that
+delighted the countryside, news that penetrated even the walls of San
+Sebastian and filled the good men therein with gladness. It seemed
+that the maiden Zahra was becoming a great musician. She pursued her
+studies in the famous school of Ali-Zeriab, and not even Moussali
+himself, that most gifted of Arabian singers, could bring more tender
+notes from the lute than could this fair daughter of Catalonia. Her
+skill transcended that of Al Farabi, for the harp, the tabor, and the
+mandolin were wedded to her dancing fingers; and, most marvelous of
+all, her soul was so filled with poetry that her verses were sung from
+Valencia to Cadiz. It was said that she could move men to laughter, to
+tears, to deeds of heroism--that she could even lull them to sleep by
+the potency of her magic. She had once played before the Caliph under
+amazing circumstances.
+
+The Prince of True Believers, so ran the story, had quarreled with
+his favorite wife, and in consequence had fallen into a state of
+melancholy so deep as to threaten his health and to alarm his
+ministers. Do what they would, he still declined, until in despair the
+Hadjeb sent for Zahra, daughter of Abul Malek. She came, surrounded by
+her servants, and sang before El Hakkam. So cunningly did she contrive
+her verses, so tender were her airs, so potent were her fluttering
+fingers, that those within hearing were moved to tears, and the
+unhappy lover himself became so softened that he sped to the arms of
+his offended beauty and a reconciliation occurred. In token of his
+gratitude he had despatched a present of forty thousand drachmas of
+gold to the singer, and her renown went broadcast like a flame.
+
+When Abul Malek heard of this he praised his God, and, gathering his
+horsemen, he set out to bring his daughter home, for the time was
+ripe.
+
+One evening in early spring, that magic season when nature is most
+charming, Fray Joseph, returning to his cell, heard from behind a
+screen of verdure alongside his path a woman singing. But was this
+singing? he asked himself. Could mortal lips give birth to melody like
+this? It was the sighing of summer winds through rustling leaves, the
+music of crystal brooks on stony courses, the full-throated worship
+of birds. Joseph listened, enthralled, like a famished pilgrim in the
+desert. His simple soul, attuned to harmonies of the woodland, leaped
+in answer; his fancy, starved by years of churchly rigor, quickened
+like a prisoner at the light of day. Not until the singer had ceased
+did he resume his way, and through his dreams that night ran the song
+of birds, the play of zephyrs, the laughter of bubbling springs.
+
+A few evenings later he heard the voice again, and paused with lips
+apart, with heart consumed by eagerness. It was some slave girl busied
+among the vines of Abul Malek, he decided, for she translated all the
+fragmentary airs that float through summer evenings--the songs of
+sweethearts, the tender airs of motherhood, the croon of distant
+waterfalls, the voice of sleepy locusts--and yet she wove them into an
+air that carried words. It was most wonderful.
+
+Joseph felt a strong desire to mingle his voice with the singer's, but
+he knew his throat to be harsh and stiff from chanting Latin phrases.
+He knew not whither the tune would lead, and yet, when she sang, he
+followed, realizing gladly that she voiced the familiar music of his
+soul. He was moved to seek her out and to talk with her, until he
+remembered with a start that she was a woman and he a priest.
+
+Each night he shaped his course so as to bring him past the spot
+where the mysterious singer labored, and in time he began to feel the
+stirring of a very earthly curiosity, the which he manfully fought
+down. Through the long, heated hours of the day he hummed her airs and
+repeated her verses, longing for the twilight hour which would bring
+the angel voice from out the vineyard. Eventually the girl began to
+sing of love, and Joseph echoed the songs in solitude, his voice as
+rasping and untrue as that of a frog.
+
+Then, one evening, he heard that which froze him in his tracks. The
+singer accompanied herself upon some instrument the like of which he
+had never imagined. The music filled the air with heavenly harmony,
+and it set him to vibrating like a tautened string; it rippled
+forth, softer than the breeze, more haunting than the perfume of the
+frangipani. Joseph stood like a man in a trance, forgetful of all
+things save these honeyed sounds, half minded to believe himself
+favored by the music of the seraphim.
+
+Never had he dreamed of such an intoxication. And then, as if to
+intensify his wild exultation, the maiden sang a yearning strain of
+passion and desire.
+
+The priest began to tremble. His heart-beats quickened, his senses
+became unbridled; something new and mighty awoke within him, and he
+was filled with fever. His huge thews tightened, his muscles swelled
+as if for battle, yet miracle of miracles, he was melting like a child
+in tears! With his breath tugging at his throat, he turned off the
+path and parted the verdure, going as soundlessly as an animal; and
+all the while his head was whirling, his eyes took note of nothing. He
+was drawn as by a thousand invisible strings, which wound him toward
+the hidden singer.
+
+But suddenly the music ended in a peal of rippling laughter and there
+came the rustle of silken garments. Fray Joseph found himself in a
+little open glade, so recently vacated that a faint perfume still
+lingered to aggravate his nostrils. Beyond stretched the vineyard of
+the Moor, a tangle of purpling vines into the baffling mazes of which
+the singer had evidently fled.
+
+So she had known of his presence all along, the monk reflected,
+dizzily. It followed, therefore, that she must have waited every
+evening for his coming, and that her songs had been sung for him. An
+ecstasy swept over him. Regaining the path, he went downward to the
+monastery, his brain afire, his body tingling.
+
+Joseph was far too simple for self-analysis, and he was too enchanted
+by those liquid strains to know what all this soul confusion foretold;
+he merely realized that he had made the most amazing of discoveries,
+that the music of the spheres had been translated for his privileged
+ears, that a door had opened allowing him to glimpse a glory hidden
+from other mortals. It was not the existence of the singer, but of the
+music, that excited him to adoration. He longed to possess it, to take
+it with him, and to cherish it like a thing of substance, to worship
+it in his solitude.
+
+The song had been of love; but, after all, love was the burden of his
+religion. Love filled the universe, it kept the worlds a-swinging, it
+was the thing that dominated all nature and made sweet even the rigid
+life of an anchorite. It was doubtless love which awoke this fierce
+yet tender yearning in him now, this ecstasy that threatened to
+smother him. Love was a holy and an impersonal thing, nevertheless it
+blazed and melted in his every vein, and it made him very human.
+
+Through all that night Fray Joseph lay upon his couch, rapt, thankful,
+wondering. But in the morning he had changed. His thoughts became
+unruly, and he recalled again that tantalizing perfume, the shy tones
+of that mischief laughter. He began to long intensely to behold the
+author of this music-magic, to behold her just once, for imagination
+graced her with a thousand witching forms. He wished ardently, also,
+to speak with her about this miracle, this hidden thing called melody,
+for the which he had starved his life, unknowingly.
+
+As the afternoon aged he began to fear that he had frightened her,
+and therefore when he came to tread his homeward path it was with a
+strange commingling of eagerness and of dread. But while still at a
+distance, he heard her singing as usual, and, nearing the spot, he
+stopped to drink in her message. Again the maiden sang of love; again
+the monk felt his spirit leaping as she fed his starving soul even
+more adroitly than she fingered the vibrant strings. At last her wild,
+romantic verses became more unrestrained; the music quickened until,
+regardless of all things, Fray Joseph burst the thicket asunder and
+stood before her, huge, exalted, palpitant.
+
+"I, too, have sung those songs," he panted, hoarsely. "That melody has
+lived in me since time began; but I am mute. And you? Who are you?
+What miracle bestowed this gift--?"
+
+He paused, for with the ending of the song his frenzy was dying and
+his eyes were clearing. There, casting back his curious gaze, was a
+bewitching Moorish maid whose physical perfection seemed to cause the
+very place to glow. The slanting sunbeams shimmered upon her silken
+garments; from her careless hand drooped an instrument of gold and of
+tortoise-shell, an instrument strange to the eyes of the monk. Her
+feet were cased in tiny slippers of soft Moroccan leather; her limbs,
+rounded and supple and smooth as ivory, were outlined beneath wide
+flowing trousers which were gathered at the ankles. A tunic of finest
+fabric was flung back, displaying a figure of delicate proportions,
+half recumbent now upon the sward.
+
+The loveliness of Moorish women has been heralded to the world; it is
+not strange that this maid, renowned even among her own people, should
+have struck the rustic priest to dumbness. He stood transfixed; and
+yet he wondered not, for it was seemly that such heavenly music should
+have sprung from the rarest of mortals. He saw that her hair, blacker
+than the night, rippled in a glorious cascade below her waist, and
+that her teeth embellished with the whiteness of alabaster the
+vermilion lips which smiled at him.
+
+That same intoxicating scent, sweeter than the musk of Hadramaut,
+enveloped her; her fingers were jeweled with nails which flashed in
+rivalry with their burden of precious stones as she toyed with the
+whispering strings.
+
+For a time she regarded the monk silently.
+
+"I am Zahra," she said at length, and Joseph thrilled at the tones of
+her voice. "To me, all things are music."
+
+"Zahra! 'Flower of the World,'" he repeated, wonderingly. After an
+instant he continued, harshly, "Then you are the daughter of the
+Moor?"
+
+"Yes. Abul Malek. You have heard of me?"
+
+"Who has not? Aye, you were rightly called 'Flower of the World.'
+But--this music! It brought me here against my will; it pulls at me
+like straining horses. Why is that? What wizardry do you possess? What
+strange chemistry?"
+
+She laughed lightly. "I possess no magic art. We are akin, you and I.
+That is all. You, of all men, are attuned to me."
+
+"No," he said, heavily. "You are an Infidel, I am a Christian. There
+is no bond between us."
+
+"So?" she mocked. "And yet, when I sing, you can hear the nightingales
+of Aden; I can take you with me to the fields of battle, or to the
+innermost halls of the Alhambra. I have watched you many times,
+Brother Joseph, and I have never failed to play upon your soul as I
+play upon my own. Are we not, then, attuned?"
+
+"Your veil!" he cried, accusingly. "I have never beheld a Moorish
+woman's face until now."
+
+Her lids drooped, as if to hide the fire behind them, and she replied,
+without heeding his words: "Sit here, beside me. I will play for you."
+
+"Yes, yes!" he cried, eagerly. "Play! Play on for me! But--I will
+stand."
+
+Accordingly she resumed her instrument; and o'er its strings her
+rosy fingers twinkled, while with witchery of voice and beauty she
+enthralled him. Again she sang of love, reclinging there like an
+_houri_ fit to grace the paradise of her Prophet; and the giant monk
+became a puppet in her hands. Now, although she sang of love, it was a
+different love from that which Joseph knew and worshiped; and as she
+toyed with him his hot blood warred with his priestly devotion until
+he was racked with the tortures of the pit. But she would not let him
+go. She lured him with her eyes, her lips, her luscious beauty, until
+he heard no song whatever, until he no longer saw visions of spiritual
+beatitude, but flesh, ripe flesh, aquiver and awake to him.
+
+A cry burst from him. Turning, he tore himself away and went crashing
+blindly through the thicket like a bull pursued. On, on he fled, down
+to the monastery and into the coolness of his cell, where, upon the
+smooth, worn flags, he knelt and struggled with this evil thing which
+accursed his soul.
+
+For many days Joseph avoided the spot which had witnessed his
+temptation; but of nights, when he lay spent and weary with his
+battle, through the grating of his window came the song of the Saracen
+maid and the whisper of her golden lute. He knew she was calling to
+him, therefore he beat his breast and scourged himself to cure his
+longing. But night after night she sang from the heights above, and
+the burden of her song was ever the same, of one who waited and of one
+who came.
+
+Bit by bit she wore down the man's resistance, then drew him up
+through the groves of citron and pomegrante, into the grape fields;
+time and again he fled. Closer and closer she lured him, until one day
+he touched her flesh--woman's flesh--and forgot all else. But now it
+was her turn to flee.
+
+She poised like a sunbeam just beyond his reach, her bosom heaving,
+her lips as ripe and full as the grapes above, her eyes afire with
+invitation. In answer to his cry she made a glowing promise, subtle,
+yet warm and soft, as of the flesh.
+
+"To-night, when the moon hangs over yonder pass, I shall play on the
+balcony outside my window. Beneath is a door, unbarred. Come, for I
+shall be alone in all the castle, and there you will find music made
+flesh, and flesh made music." Then she was gone.
+
+The soul of the priest had been in torment heretofore, but chaos
+engulfed it during the hours that followed. He was like a man bereft
+of reason; he burned with fever, yet his whole frame shook as from a
+wintry wind. He prayed, or tried to, but his eyes beheld no vision
+save a waiting Moorish maid with hair like night, his stammering
+tongue gave forth no Latin, but repeated o'er and o'er her parting
+promise:
+
+"There you will find music made flesh and flesh made music."
+
+He realized that the foul fiend had him by the throat, and undertook
+to cast him off; but all the time he knew that when the moon came,
+bringing with it the cadence of a song, he would go, even though his
+going led to perdition. And go he did, groveling in his misery. His
+sandals spurned the rocky path when he heard the voice of Zahra
+sighing through the branches; then, when he had reached the castle
+wall, he saw her bending toward him from the balcony above.
+
+"I come to you," she whispered; and an instant later her form showed
+white against the blackness of the low stone door in front of him.
+There, in the gloom, for one brief instant, her yielding body met his,
+her hands reached upward and drew his face down to her own; then out
+from his hungry arms she glided, and with rippling laughter fled into
+the blackness.
+
+"Zahra!" he cried.
+
+"Come!" she whispered, and when he hesitated, "Do you fear to follow?"
+
+"Zahra!" he repeated; but his voice was strange, and he tore at the
+cloth that bound his throat, stumbling after her, guided only by her
+voice.
+
+Always she was just beyond his reach; always she eluded him; yet never
+did he lose the perfume of her presence nor the rustle of her silken
+garments. Over and over he cried her name, until at last he realized
+from the echo of his calling that he had come into a room of great
+dimensions and that the girl was gone.
+
+For an instant he was in despair, until her voice reached him from
+above:
+
+"I do but test you, Christian priest. I am waiting."
+
+"'Flower of the World,'" he stammered, hoarsely. "Whence lead the
+stairs?"
+
+"And do you love me, then?" she queried, in a tone that set him all
+ablaze.
+
+"Zahra," he repeated, "I shall perish for want of you."
+
+"How do you measure this devotion?" she insisted, softly. "Will it
+cool with the dawn, or are you mine in truth forever and all time?"
+
+"I have no thought save that of you. Come, Light of my Soul, or I
+shall die."
+
+"Do you then adore me above all things, earthly and heavenly, that you
+forsake your vows? Answer, that my arms may enfold you."
+
+He groaned like a man upon a rack, and the agony of that cry was proof
+conclusive of his abject surrender.
+
+Then, through the dead, black silence of the place there came a
+startling sound. It was a peal of laughter, loud, evil, triumphant;
+and, as if it had been a signal, other mocking voices took it up,
+until the great vault rang to a fiendish din.
+
+"Ho! Hassam! Elzemah! Close the doors!" cried the voice of Abul Malek.
+"Bring the lights."
+
+There followed a ponderous clanging and the rattle of chains, the
+while Fray Joseph stood reeling in his tracks. Then suddenly from
+every side burst forth the radiance of many lamps. Torches sprang into
+flame, braziers of resin wood began to smoke, flambeaux were lit, and,
+half blinded by the glare, the Christian monk stood revealed in the
+hall of Abul Malek.
+
+He cast his eyes about, but on every side he beheld grinning men of
+swarthy countenance, and at sight of his terror the hellish merriment
+broke forth anew, until the whole place thundered with it. Facing
+him, upon an ornamental balcony, stood the Moor, and beside him, with
+elbows on the balustrade and face alight with sinister enjoyment,
+stood his daughter.
+
+Stunned by his betrayal, Joseph imploringly pronounced her name, at
+which a fresh guffaw resounded. Then above the clamor she inquired,
+with biting malice:
+
+"Dost thou any longer doubt, oh, Christian, that I adore thee?"
+At this her father and her brothers rocked back and forth, as if
+suffocated by the humor of this jest.
+
+The lone man turned, in mind to flee, but every entrance to the hall
+was closed, and at each portal stood a grinning Saracen. He bowed his
+shaven head, and his shame fell slowly upon him.
+
+"You have me trapped," he said. "What shall my punishment be?"
+
+"This," answered the Moorish lord; "to acknowledge once again, before
+us all, the falseness of your faith."
+
+"That I have never done; that I can never do," said Joseph.
+
+"Nay! But a moment ago you confessed that you adored my daughter above
+all things, earthly or heavenly. You forswore your vows for her.
+Repeat it, then."
+
+"I have sinned before God; but I still acknowledge Him and crave His
+mercy," said the wretched priest.
+
+"Hark you, Joseph. You are the best of monks. Have you ever done evil
+before this night?"
+
+"My life has been clean, but the flesh is weak. It was the witchcraft
+of Satan in that woman's music. I prayed for strength, but I was
+powerless. My soul shall pay the penalty."
+
+"What sort of God is this who snares His holiest disciple, with the
+lusts of the flesh?" mocked Abul Malek. "Did not your prayers mount
+up so high? Or is His power insufficient to forestall the devil? Bah!
+There is but one true God, and Mohammed is His Prophet. These many
+years have I labored to rend your veil of holiness asunder and
+to expose your faith to ridicule and laughter. This have I done
+to-night."
+
+"Stop!" cried the tortured monk. "Bring forth a lance."
+
+"Nay! Nay! You shall hear me through," gloated Abul Malek; and again
+Joseph bowed his tonsured head, murmuring:
+
+"It is my punishment."
+
+Ringed about thus by his enemies, the priest stood meekly, while the
+sweat came out upon his face; as the Saracen mocked and jeered at him
+he made no answer, except to move his lips in whispered grayer. Had it
+not been for this sign they might have thought him changed to stone,
+so motionless and so patient did he stand. How long the baiting lasted
+no one knew; it may have been an hour, then Joseph's passive silence
+roused the anger of the overlord, who became demoniac in his rage.
+His followers joined in harrying the victim, until the place became a
+babel. Finally Elzemah stepped forward, torch in hand, and spat upon
+the giant black-robed figure.
+
+The monk's face whitened, it grew ghastly; but he made no movement.
+Then in a body the infidels rushed forth to follow the example of
+Abul Malek's son. They swarmed about the Christian, jeering, cursing,
+spitting, snatching at his garments, until their master cried:
+
+"Enough! The knave has water in his veins. His blood has soured.
+Deserted by his God, his frame has withered and his vigor fled."
+
+"Yes," echoed his daughter. "He is great only in bulk. Had he been a
+Man I might have loved him; but the evil has fled out of him, leaving
+nothing but his cassock. Off with his robe, Elzemah. Let us see if
+aught remains."
+
+With swift movement her brother tore at the monk's habit, baring his
+great bosom. At this insult to his cloth a frightful change swept over
+the victim. He upheaved his massive shoulders, his gleaming head rose
+high, and in the glaring light they saw that his face had lost all
+sweetness and humility; it was now the visage of a madman. All fleshly
+passion stored through thirty years of cloister life blazed forth,
+consuming reason and intelligence; with a sweep of his mighty arms he
+cleared a space about him, hurling his enemies aside as if they were
+made of straw. He raised his voice above the din, cursing God and men
+and Moors. As they closed in upon him he snatched from the hands of a
+lusty slave a massive wrought-iron brazier, and whirling it high above
+his head, he sent its glowing coals flying into the farthest corners
+of the room. Then with this weapon he laid about him right and left,
+while men fell like grain before the reaper.
+
+"At him!" shouted Abul Malek, from his balcony. "Pull down the weapons
+from the walls! The fool is mad!"
+
+Zahra clutched at her father's sleeve and pointed to a distant corner,
+where a tongue of flame was licking the dry woodwork and hangings.
+Her eyes were flashing and her lips were parted; she bent forward,
+following the priest with eagerness.
+
+"Allah be praised!" she breathed. "He is a Man!"
+
+Elzemah strove to sheathe his poinard in the monk's bare breast, but
+the brazier crushed him down. Across the wide floor raged the contest,
+but the mighty priest was irresistible. Hassam, seeing that the priest
+was fighting toward the balcony, flung himself upon the stairs, crying
+to his father and his sister to be gone. By now the castle echoed with
+a frightful din through which arose a sinister crackling. The light
+increased moment by moment, and there came the acrid smell of smoke.
+
+Men left the maniac to give battle to the other fury. Some fled to the
+doors and fought with their clumsy fastenings, but as they flung
+them back a draught sucked through, changing the place into a raging
+furnace.
+
+With his back against the stairs, Hassam hewed at the monk with his
+scimitar; he had done as well had he essayed to fell an oak with a
+single blow. Up over him rushed the giant, to the balcony above, where
+Abul Malek and his daughter stood at bay in the trap of their own
+manufacture. There, in the glare of the mounting flames, Fray Joseph
+sank his mighty fingers through the Moor's black beard.
+
+The place by now was suffocating, and the roar of the conflagration
+had drowned all other sounds. Men wrapped their robes about their
+heads and hurled themselves blindly at the doors, fighting with one
+another, with the licking flames, with the dead that clogged the
+slippery flags. But the maid remained. She tore at the tattered
+cassock of the priest, crying into his ear:
+
+"Come, Joseph! We may yet escape."
+
+He let the writhing Abul Malek slip from out his grasp and peered at
+her through the smother.
+
+"Thou knowest me not?" she queried. "I am Zahra." Her arms entwined
+his neck for a second time that night, but with a furious cry he
+raised his hands and smote her down at his feet, then he fled back to
+the stairs and plunged down into the billows that raged ahead of the
+fresh night wind.
+
+The bells of San Sebastian were clanging the alarm, the good monks
+were toiling up the path toward the inferno which lit the heavens,
+when, black against the glare, they saw a giant figure approaching. It
+came reeling toward them, vast, mighty, misshapen. Not until it was in
+their very midst did they recognize their brother, Joseph. He was
+bent and broken, he was singed of body and of raiment, he gibbered
+foolishly; he passed them by and went staggering to his cell. Long ere
+they reached the castle it was but a seething mountain of flame; and
+in the morning naught remained of Abul Malek's house but heated ruins.
+
+Strange tales were rife concerning the end of the Moor and of his
+immediate kin, but the monks could make little out of them, for they
+were garbled and too ridiculous for belief. No Mussulman who survived
+the fire could speak coherently of what had happened in the great
+hall, nor could Fray Joseph tell his story, for he lay stricken with a
+malady which did not leave him for many weeks. Even when he recovered
+he did not talk; for although his mind was clear on most matters, nay,
+although he was as simple and as devout as ever, a kind Providence had
+blotted out all memory of Zahra, of his sin, and of the temptation
+that had beset his flesh.
+
+So it is that even to this day "The Teeth of the Moor" remains a term
+of mystery to most of the monks of San Sebastian.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11501 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #11501 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11501)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories, by Rex
+Beach
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories
+
+Author: Rex Beach
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2004  [eBook #11501]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAUGHING BILL HYDE AND OTHER
+STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Josephine Paolucci, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LAUGHING BILL HYDE
+
+And Other Stories
+
+By REX BEACH
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"Rainbow's End," "Heart of the Sunset," "The Spoilers," Etc.
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "LIKE ME?" HE ASKED. PONATAH TURNED AWAY BLINDLY]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. William Hyde was discharged from Deer Lodge Penitentiary a changed
+man. That was quite in line with the accepted theory of criminal
+jurisprudence, the warden's discipline, and the chaplain's prayers.
+Yes, Mr. Hyde was changed, and the change had bitten deep; his
+humorous contempt for the law had turned to abiding hatred; his
+sunburned cheeks were pallid, his lungs were weak, and he coughed
+considerably. Balanced against these results, to be sure, were the
+benefits accruing from three years of corrective discipline at the
+State's expense; the knack of conversing through stone walls, which
+Mr. Hyde had mastered, and the plaiting of wonderful horsehair
+bridles, which he had learned. Otherwise he was the same "Laughing
+Bill" his friends had known, neither more nor less regenerate.
+
+Since the name of Montana promised to associate itself with unpleasant
+memories, Mr. Hyde determined at once to bury his past and begin life
+anew in a climate more suited to weak lungs. To that end he stuck up a
+peaceful citizen of Butte who was hurrying homeward with an armful of
+bundles, and in the warm dusk of a pleasant evening relieved him
+of eighty-three dollars, a Swiss watch with an elk's-tooth fob, a
+pearl-handled penknife, a key-ring, and a bottle of digestive tablets.
+
+Three wasted years of industry had not robbed Mr. Hyde of the
+technique of his trade, hence there was nothing amateurish or
+uproarious about the procedure. He merely back-heeled the pedestrian
+against a bill-board, held him erect and speechless by placing his
+left hand upon his victim's shoulder and pressing his left forearm
+firmly across the gentleman's apple, the while with his own dexterous
+right mit he placed the eighty-three dollars in circulation. During
+the transaction he laughed constantly. An hour later he was en route
+for the sunny South, there being good and sufficient reasons why he
+preferred that direction to any other.
+
+Arizona helped Mr. Hyde's lungs, for the random town which he selected
+was high and dry, but, unfortunately, so was Laughing Bill soon after
+his arrival, and in consequence he was forced to engage promptly in
+a new business enterprise. This time he raised a pay-roll. It was an
+easy task, for the custodian of the pay-roll was a small man with a
+kindly and unsuspicious nature. As a result of this operation Bill was
+enabled to maintain himself, for some six weeks, in a luxury to which
+of late he had been unaccustomed. At the end of this time the original
+bearer of the payroll tottered forth from the hospital and, chancing
+to overhear Mr. Hyde in altercation with a faro dealer, he was struck
+by some haunting note in the former's laughter, and lost no time in
+shuffling his painful way to the sheriff's office.
+
+Seeing the man go, Laughing Bill realized that his health again
+demanded a change of climate, and since it lacked nearly an hour of
+train time he was forced to leave on horseback. Luckily for him he
+found a horse convenient. It was a wild horse, with nothing whatever
+to indicate that it belonged to any one, except the fact that it
+carried a silver-mounted saddle and bridle, the reins of which were
+fastened to a post in front of a saloon.
+
+Mr. Hyde enjoyed the ride, for it kept him out in the open air. It
+grieved him to part with the horse, a few hours later, but being
+prodigal with personal property he presented the animal to a poor
+Mexican woman, leaving her to face any resulting embarrassments. Ten
+minutes later he swung himself under a west-bound freight, and in
+due time arrived in California, somewhat dirty and fatigued, but in
+excellent humor.
+
+Laughing Bill's adventures and his aliases during his slow progress up
+the coast form no part of this story. It might be said, with a great
+deal of truth, that he was missed, if not mourned, in many towns.
+Finally, having found the climates of California, Oregon and
+Washington uniformly unsuited to one of his habits, force of
+circumstance in the shape of numerous hand-bills adorned with an
+unflattering half-tone of himself, but containing certain undeniably
+accurate data such as diameter of skull, length of nose, angle of ear,
+and the like, drove him still north and west. Bill was a modest man;
+he considered these statistics purely personal in character; to see
+them blazoned publicly on the walls of post-offices, and in the
+corridors of county buildings, outraged his finer feelings, so he went
+away from there, in haste, as usual.
+
+Having never sailed the sea, he looked forward to such an experience
+with lively anticipation, only to be disappointed in the realization.
+It was rough off Flattery, and he suffered agonies strange and
+terrifying. In due time, however, he gained his sea legs and, being
+forever curious, even prying, he explored the ship. His explorations
+were interesting, for they took him into strange quarters--into
+the forecastle, the steerage, even into some of the first-class
+state-rooms, the doors of which had been left "on the hook" while
+their occupants were at meals. No small benefit accrued to Mr. Hyde
+from these investigations.
+
+One day during the dinner-hour, as he was occupied in admiring the
+contents of a strange suit-case, a voice accosted him over his
+shoulder, and he looked up to discover a face in the cabin window.
+Bill realized that an explanation was due, for it was evident that
+the speaker had been watching him for some little time; but under the
+circumstances, even though the face in the window was round, youthful,
+good-humored, explanations promised to be embarrassing.
+
+"How d'y?" said Mr. Hyde.
+
+"What luck?" inquired the stranger.
+
+Mr. Hyde sat back upon his heels and grinned engagingly. "Not much,"
+he confessed. "Can't find it nowhere. This guy must be a missionary."
+
+The new-comer opened the door and entered. He was a medium-sized,
+plump young man. "Oh, I say!" he protested. "Is it as bad as that?"
+Bill nodded vaguely, meanwhile carefully measuring the physical
+proportions of the interloper. The latter went on:
+
+"I saw that you knew your business, and--I was hoping you'd manage to
+find something I had missed."
+
+Mr. Hyde breathed deep with relief; his expression altered. "You been
+through ahead of me?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, several times; daily, in fact." The speaker tossed a bunch of
+keys upon the berth, saying: "Glance through the steamer-trunk while
+you're here and declare me in on anything-you find."
+
+Mr. Hyde rose to his feet and retreated a step; his look of relief was
+replaced by one of dark suspicion. As always, in moments of extremity,
+he began to laugh.
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded.
+
+"I? Why, I live here. That's my baggage. I've been through it, as
+I told you, but--" The young man frowned whimsically and lit a
+cigarette. "It doesn't diagnose. I can't find a solitary symptom of
+anything worth while. Sit down, won't you?"
+
+Mr. Hyde's manner changed for a second time. He was embarrassed,
+apologetic, crestfallen. "_Your_ cabin? Why, then--it's my mistake!"
+he declared. "I must 'a' got in the wrong flat. Mac sent me up for a
+deck of cards, but--Say, that's funny, ain't it?"
+
+He began to see the joke upon himself, and the youth echoed his
+laughter.
+
+"It _is_ funny," the latter agreed. "For Heaven's sake, don't spoil
+it. Sit down and have a smoke; I'm not going to eat you."
+
+"See here! You don't mean--? D'you think for a minute--?" Mr.
+Hyde began with rotund dignity, but the other waved his cigarette
+impatiently, saying:
+
+"Oh, drop that stuff or I'll page your friend 'Mac' and show you up."
+
+In assuming his air of outraged innocence Laughing Bill had arched
+his hollow chest and inhaled deeply. As a result he began to cough,
+whereupon his new acquaintance eyed him keenly, saying:
+
+"That's a bad bark. What ails you?"
+
+"Con," said Laughing Bill.
+
+"Pardon me. I wouldn't have smoked if I'd known." The speaker dropped
+his cigarette and placed a heel upon it. "What are you doing here?
+Alaska's no place for weak lungs."
+
+Gingerly seating himself upon the narrow settee Mr. Hyde murmured,
+wonderingly: "Say! You're a regular guy, ain't you?" He began to laugh
+again, but now there was less of a metallic quality to his merriment.
+"Yes sir, dam' if you ain't." He withdrew from his pocket a
+silver-mounted hair-brush and comb, and placed them carefully upon the
+washstand. "I don't aim to quit winner on a sport like you."
+
+"Thanks, awfully!" smiled the young man. "I'd have fought you for that
+comb and brush. Girl stuff, you understand? That's she." He pointed to
+a leather-framed photograph propped against the mirror.
+
+Laughing Bill leaned forward and studied the picture approvingly.
+"Some queen, all right. Blonde, I reckon."
+
+"Sure. You like blondes?"
+
+"Who, me? I ain't strong for no kind of women. You hate her, don't
+you?"
+
+The young man smiled more widely, his whole face lit up. "I hate her
+so much that I kissed her good-by and sailed away to make a quick
+fortune. I hope Alaska's unhealthy."
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"You see, I'm a doctor. I'm a good doctor, too, but it takes a long
+time to prove it, out in the States, and I can't wait a long time."
+
+Mr. Hyde pondered briefly. "I don't see's you got much on me, Doc," he
+said. "I frisk 'em while they're good and healthy, and you 'take' 'em
+when they're feeble. I don't see no difference to speak of."
+
+"It's an interesting viewpoint," the physician agreed, seriously
+enough, "and I respect every man's opinion. Tell me, how did you
+acquire that cough?"
+
+"Livin' in a ground-floor apartment."
+
+"What's your business?"
+
+"Harness-maker."
+
+"Hm-m! You'll do well up here." The doctor was highly entertained. "I
+understand there's a horse at Nome."
+
+"_A_ horse!"
+
+"Alaska isn't a stock country."
+
+Laughing Bill was genuinely surprised. "No horses!" he murmured. "How
+the hell do you get away?"
+
+"You don't. You stay and face the music."
+
+"Now what do you know about that?" There was a brief silence. "Well, I
+bet I'll turn my hand to something."
+
+"No doubt. You impress me as a man of resource." The doctor's eyes
+twinkled and Bill smiled. A bond of friendly understanding had already
+sprung up between the two men. "Now then, I'm interested in your case.
+I've a notion to try to cure you."
+
+"Nothing doin' on the fees. I'm a dead card."
+
+"Oh, I won't charge you anything! I'm merely interested in obscure
+ailments, and, if I'm not mistaken, you suffer from more than
+one--well, disease. I think you need curing about as badly as any man
+I ever saw."
+
+Now Laughing Bill was not skilled in subtleties, and his relief at
+extricating himself from a trying predicament banished any resentment
+he might have felt at the doctor's double meaning. Since the latter
+was a good-natured, harmless individual he decided to humor him, and
+so, after they had visited for an hour or more, Mr. Hyde discreetly
+withdrew. But, oddly enough, during the days immediately following,
+Laughing Bill grew to like the young fellow immensely. This in itself
+was a novel experience, for the ex-convict had been a "loner" all
+his-life, and had never really liked any one. Dr. Evan Thomas,
+however, seemed to fill some long-felt want in Hyde's hungry make-up.
+He fitted in smoothly, too, and despite the latter's lifelong habit of
+suspicion, despite his many rough edges, he could not manage to hold
+the young man at a distance.
+
+Thomas was of a type strange to the wanderer, he was educated, he had
+unfamiliar airs and accomplishments, but he was human and natural
+withal. He was totally ignorant of much that Mr. Hyde deemed
+fundamental, and yet he was mysteriously superior, while his
+indifferent good nature, his mild amusement at the antics of the world
+about him covered a sincere and earnest nature. He knew his business,
+moreover, and he revolutionized Bill's habits of hygiene in spite of
+the latter's protests.
+
+But the disease which ravaged Mr. Hyde's constitution had its toes dug
+in, and when the steamer touched at St. Michaels he suffered a severe
+hemorrhage. For the first time in his life Laughing Bill stood face to
+face with darkness. He had fevered memories of going over side on a
+stretcher; he was dimly aware of an appalling weakness, which grew
+hourly, then an agreeable indifference enveloped him, and for a long
+time he lived in a land of unrealities, of dreams. The day came when
+he began to wonder dully how and why he found himself in a freezing
+cabin with Doctor Thomas, in fur cap and arctic overshoes, tending
+him. Bill pondered the phenomenon for a week before he put his query
+into words.
+
+"I've had a hard fight for you, old man," the doctor explained. "I
+couldn't leave you here to die."
+
+"I guess I must 'a' been pretty sick."
+
+"Right! There's no hospital here, so I took this cabin--borrowed it
+from the Company. We don't burn much fuel, and expenses aren't high."
+
+"You been standin' off the landlord?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a considerable silence, then Bill said, fervently: "You're a
+regular guy, like I told you! But you got your pill business to attend
+to. I'm all right now, so you better blow."
+
+Thomas smiled dubiously. "You're a long way from all right, and
+there's no place to 'blow' to. The last boat sailed two weeks ago."
+
+"Last boat for where?"
+
+"For anywhere. We're here for the winter, unless the mail-carrier will
+take us to Nome, or up the Yukon, after the trails open."
+
+"I bet you'll do a good business right here, when folks see what you
+done for me," Bill ventured.
+
+"Just wait till you look at the town--deserted warehouses, some young
+and healthy watchmen, and a Siwash village. You're the only possible
+patient in all of St. Michaels."
+
+Bill lay silent for an hour, staring through the open cabin window
+at a gray curtain of falling snowflakes; then he shook his head and
+muttered:
+
+"Well, I be danged!"
+
+"Anything you want?" Thomas inquired, quickly.
+
+"I was just thinking about that gal." Bill indicated the
+leather-framed photograph which was prominently featured above the
+other bunk. "You ain't gettin' ahead very fast, are you?"
+
+This time the young medical man smiled with his lips only--his eyes
+were grave and troubled. "I've written her all the circumstances, and
+she'll understand. She's that sort of a girl." He turned cheerfully
+back to his task. "I found that I had a few dollars left, so we won't
+starve."
+
+Mr. Hyde felt impelled to confess that in his war-bag there was a roll
+of some seven hundred dollars, title to which had vested in him on the
+northward trip, together with certain miscellaneous objects of virtu,
+but he resisted the impulse, fearing that an investigation by his
+nurse might lead the latter to believe that he, Bill, was not a
+harness-maker at all, but a jewelry salesman. He determined to spring
+that roll at a later date, and to present the doctor with a very thin,
+very choice gold watch out of State-room 27. Bill carried out this
+intention when he had sufficiently recovered to get about.
+
+Later, when his lungs had healed, Bill hired the mail-man to take him
+and his nurse to Nome. Since he was not yet altogether strong, he rode
+the sled most of the way, while the doctor walked. It was a slow and
+tiresome trip, along the dreary shores of Behring Sea, over timberless
+tundras, across inlets where the new ice bent beneath their weight and
+where the mail-carrier cautiously tested the footing with the head of
+his ax. Sometimes they slept in their tent, or again in road-houses
+and in Indian villages.
+
+Every hour Laughing Bill grew stronger, and with his strength of
+body grew his strength of affection for the youthful doctor. Bill
+experienced a dog-like satisfaction in merely being near him; he
+suffered pangs when Thomas made new friends; he monopolized him
+jealously. The knowledge that he had a pal was new and thrilling; it
+gave Bill constant food for thought and speculation. Thomas was always
+gentle and considerate, but his little services, his unobtrusive
+sacrifices never went unnoticed, and they awoke in the bandit an
+ever-increasing wonderment. Also, they awoke a fierce desire to square
+the obligation.
+
+The two men laid over at one of the old Russian towns, and Thomas, as
+was his restless custom, made investigation of the native village.
+Of course Bill went with him. They had learned by this time to enter
+Indian houses without knocking, so, therefore, when they finally came
+to a cabin larger and cleaner than the rest they opened the door and
+stepped inside, quite like experienced travelers.
+
+A squaw was bent over a tub of washing, another stood beside the tiny
+frosted window staring out. Neither woman answered the greeting of the
+white men.
+
+"Must be the chief's house," Thomas observed.
+
+"Must be! I s'pose the old bird is out adding up his reindeer.
+'Sapolio Sue' is prob'ly his head wife." Laughing Bill ran an
+interested eye over the orderly interior. "Some shack, but--I miss the
+usual smell."
+
+Neither woman paid them the least attention, so they continued to talk
+with each other.
+
+"I wonder what she is washing," Doctor Thomas said, finally.
+
+The figure at the window turned, exposing the face of a comely young
+Indian girl. Her features were good, her skin was light. She eyed the
+intruders coolly, then in a well-modulated voice, and in excellent
+English, she said:
+
+"She is washing a pair of sealskin pants."
+
+Both men removed their caps in sudden embarrassment. Thomas exclaimed:
+
+"I beg your pardon! We thought this was just an ordinary native house,
+or we wouldn't have intruded."
+
+"You haven't intruded. This is 'Reindeer Mary's' house." The girl had
+again turned her back.
+
+"Are you Reindeer Mary?"
+
+"No, I am Ponatah. Mary befriended me; she lets me live with her."
+
+"Allow me to introduce Mr. Hyde. I am Doctor Thomas. We were very
+rude--"
+
+"Oh, everybody comes here." The men recognized instantly in the
+speaker's face, as well as in her voice, that education had set its
+stamp. "Will you sit down and wait for her?"
+
+"You overwhelm us." After an awkward moment the physician queried,
+"How in the world did you learn to speak such good English?"
+
+"A missionary took an interest in me when I was a little girl. He sent
+me to Carlisle."
+
+Laughing Bill had been an attentive listener, now he ventured to say:
+"I know this Carlisle. He's a swell football player, or something."
+
+Ponatah smiled, showing a row of small, white teeth. "Carlisle is an
+Indian school."
+
+"What made you come back?" Thomas inquired, curiously.
+
+Ponatah shrugged her shoulders. "There was an end to the money. What
+could I do? At first I thought I'd be able to help my people, but--I
+couldn't. They will learn from the white people, but not from one of
+their own kind."
+
+"Your parents--?"
+
+"They died when I was a baby. Mary took me in." The girl spoke in a
+flat, emotionless tone.
+
+"It must be tough to come back to this, now that you know what life
+really is," said Thomas, after a time.
+
+Ponatah's eyes were dark with tragedy when she turned them to the
+speaker. "_God!_" she cried, unexpectedly, then abruptly she faced
+the window once more. It was a moment before she went on in fierce
+resentment:
+
+"Why didn't they leave me as they found me? Why did they teach me
+their ways, and then send me back to this--this dirt and ignorance and
+squalor? Sometimes I think I can't stand it. But what can I do? Nobody
+understands. Mary can't see why I'm different from her and the others.
+She has grown rich, with her reindeer; she says if this is good enough
+for her it should be good enough for me. As for the white men who come
+through, they can't, or they won't, understand. They're hateful to me.
+Petersen, the mail-carrier, for instance! I don't know why I'm telling
+you this. You're strangers. You're probably just like Petersen."
+
+"I know why you're telling us," Thomas said, slowly. "It's because
+I--because we're _not_ like Petersen and the others; it's because
+I--we can help you."
+
+"Help me?" sneered the girl. "How?"
+
+"I don't know, yet. But you're out of place here. There's a place for
+you somewhere; I'll find it."
+
+Ponatah shook her head wearily. "Mary says I belong here, with my
+people."
+
+"No. You belong with white people--people who will treat you well."
+
+This time the girl smiled bitterly. "They have treated me worse than
+my own people have. I know them, and--I hate them."
+
+"Ain't you the sore-head, now?" Laughing Bill murmured. "You got a
+hundred-per-cent. grouch, but if the old medicine-man says he'll put
+you in right, you bet your string of beads he'll do it. He's got a
+gift for helpin' down-and-outers. You got class, Kid; you certainly
+rhinestone this whole bunch of red men. Why, you belong in French
+heels and a boodwar cap; that's how I dope you."
+
+"There must be a chance for a girl like you in Nome," Thomas
+continued, thoughtfully. "You'd make a good hand with children.
+Suppose I try to find you a place as governess?"
+
+"_Would_ you?" Ponatah's face was suddenly eager. "Children? Oh yes!
+I'd work my fingers to the bone. I--I'd do _anything_--"
+
+"Then I'll do what I can."
+
+For some time longer the three of them talked, and gradually into the
+native girl's eyes there came a light, for these men were not like the
+others she had met, and she saw the world begin to unfold before her.
+When at last they left she laid a hand upon the doctor's arm and said,
+imploringly:
+
+"You won't forget. You--promise?"
+
+"I promise," he told her.
+
+"He don't forget nothing," Bill assured her, "and if he does I'll see
+that he don't."
+
+After they had gone Ponatah stood motionless for a long time, then she
+whispered, breathlessly:
+
+"Children! Little white children! I'll be very good to them."
+
+"She's a classy quilt," Laughing Bill said, on the way back to the
+road-house.
+
+"She's as pretty as a picture, and little more than a child," the
+doctor admitted.
+
+"You made a hit. She'd do 'most anything for you." The doctor
+muttered, absent-mindedly. "She's stood off Petersen and these
+red-necks, but she'd fall for you." Mr. Hyde was insinuating.
+
+Thomas halted; he stared at his partner curiously, coldly. "Say! Do
+you think that's why I offered to help her?" he inquired.
+
+"Come clean!" The invalid winked meaningly. "You're a long ways from
+home, and I've knew fellers to do a lot worse. You can grab her, easy.
+And if you do--"
+
+Thomas grunted angrily. "I've put up with a lot from you," he said,
+then he strode on.
+
+"And if you do," the other resumed, falling into step with him, "I'll
+bust you right where you're thickest."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I'll bust you wide open. Oh, me 'n' that gal in the leather frame had
+a long talk while I was sick in St. Mikes, and she asked me to keep
+you in the middle of the trail. Well, I'm the little guy that can do
+it."
+
+"Bill!" Evan Thomas's eyes were twinkling. "I believe I'm going to
+cure you, after all," said he.
+
+Late that afternoon Mr. Hyde disappeared; he did not show up until
+after dark.
+
+"I been to see Lo, the poor squaw," he readily confessed. "She ain't
+the pure domestic leaf, she's a blend--part Rooshian, or something.
+Seems there was a gang of Rooshians or Swedes or Dagoes of some sort
+used to run this country. She says they horned into some of the best
+Injun families, and she's one of the 'overs.'"
+
+"They were Russians."
+
+"Rooshians is a kind of white people, ain't they? Well, that's how she
+come so light-complected. You remember she said our folks had treated
+her bad? It's a fact, Doc. She spilled the story, and it made a
+mouthful. It's like this: when Nome was struck a Swede feller she
+had knew staked her a claim, but she couldn't hold it, her bein' a
+squab--under age, savvy? There's something in the law that prevents
+Injuns gettin' in on anything good, too; I don't rightly recollect
+what it is, but if it's legal you can bet it's crooked. Anyhow, Uncle
+Sam lets up a squawk that she's only eighteen, goin' on nineteen, and
+a noble redskin to boot, and says his mining claims is reserved for
+Laps and Yaps and Japs and Wops, and such other furrin' slantheads of
+legal age as declare their intention to become American citizens if
+their claims turn out rich enough so's it pays 'em to do so.
+
+"Well, Ponatah's Swede friend gets himself froze, somehow, so she has
+to pass the buck. Naturally, she turns to her pals, the missionaries.
+There's a he-missionary here--head mug of the whole gang. He's a godly
+walloper, and he tears into Satan bare-handed every Sunday. He slams
+the devil around something shameful, and Ponatah thinks he's a square
+guy if ever they come square, so she asks him to re-locate her claim,
+on shares, and hold it for the joint account. Old Doctor M.E. Church
+agrees to split fifty-fifty, half to her and half to heaven, then he
+vamps to Nome and chalks his monaker over the Kid's. Now get me: the
+claim turns out good, and Ponatah's heavenly pilot makes a Mexican
+divvy--he takes the money and gives her his best wishes. He grabs
+everything, and says he never knew nobody by the name of Ponatah--he
+gets so he can't even pronounce it. He allows her face is familiar,
+but he can't place her, and the partnership idea allus was repugnant
+to him. He never was partners with nobody, understand? He blows the
+show; he bows out and leaves the Kid flat. He forsakes the Milky Way
+for the Great White one, and he's out there now, smokin' Coronas and
+wearin' a red vest under his black coat, with a diamond horseshoe
+in his tie. It looks to me like the James boys could 'a' learned
+something from this gospel hold-up."
+
+"Do you believe her story?" Thomas inquired.
+
+"She don't know enough to lie, and you can't trust a guy that wears
+his collar backwards."
+
+"She should go to court."
+
+Mr. Hyde shook his head. "I been there, often, but I never picked up a
+bet. Somehow or other courts is usually right next to jails, and you
+got to watch out you don't get in the wrong place. You can't win
+nothing in either one. I thought I'd tell you the story, so if you
+ever meet up with this shave-tail preacher and he wants a headache
+pill you can slip him some sugar-coated arsenic."
+
+In the days immediately following Doctor Thomas's arrival at Nome
+he was a busy man, but he did not forget Ponatah. He was allowed no
+opportunity of doing so, for Bill frequently reminded him of her, and
+as a result it was not long before he found a place for his charge, in
+the home of a leading merchant. Arrangements made, Bill went in search
+of the mail-carrier.
+
+Petersen was drinking with two friends at the bar of the Last Chance,
+and he pressed his late passenger to join them. But alcoholism was not
+one of Mr. Hyde's weaknesses. The best of Bill's bad habits was much
+worse than drink; he had learned from experience that liquor put a
+traitor's tongue in his head, and in consequence he was a teetotaler.
+
+"I got a job for you, Pete," he announced. "I got you another
+sled-load for your next trip. You know Ponatah?"
+
+"Ponatah? Sure Aye know 'im." Petersen. spoke with enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, bring her along when you come. Me 'n' the little Doc will
+settle."
+
+"Dat's good yob for me, all right. Vot mak' you tank she'll come? Aye
+ask her plenty tams, but she ant like me."
+
+"You slip her this billy-ducks and she'll come."
+
+Petersen pocketed the letter which Bill handed him; his eyes
+brightened; the flush in his face deepened. "You bet your gum boots
+Aye bring her. She's svell, ant she, Bill? She's yust some svell like
+white voman."
+
+"Who's this?" queried one of Petersen's companions.
+
+"Ponatah. She's jung sqvaw. Aye got eyes on dat chicken long tam
+now." The burly mail-man laughed loudly and slapped his friend on the
+shoulder.
+
+Mr. Hyde appeared to share in the general good nature. Carelessly,
+smilingly he picked up Petersen's dog-whip, which lay coiled on the
+bar; thoughtfully he weighed it. The lash was long, but the handle was
+short and thick, and its butt was loaded with shot; it had much the
+balance of a black-jack--a weapon not unknown to Mr. Hyde.
+
+"Pretty soft for you mail-men." The former speaker grinned.
+
+"Ja! Pretty soft. Aye bet Aye have good tam dis trip. Yust vait. You
+don't know how purty is Ponatah. She--"
+
+Petersen's listeners waited. They are waiting yet, for the mail-man
+never completed his admiring recital of the Indian girl's charms,
+owing to the fact that the genial Mr. Hyde without warning tapped his
+late friend's round head with the leather butt of the dog-whip. Had
+it not been for the Norseman's otter cap it is probable that a new
+mail-carrier would have taken the St. Michaels run.
+
+Petersen sat down upon his heels, and rested his forehead against the
+cool brass foot-rail; the subsequent proceedings interested him not
+at all. Those proceedings were varied and sudden, for the nearest and
+dearest of Petersen's friends rushed upon Mr. Hyde with a roar. Him,
+too, Bill eliminated from consideration with the loaded whip handle.
+But, this done, Bill found himself hugged in the arms of the other
+man, as in the embrace of a bereaved she-grizzly. Now even at his best
+the laughing Mr. Hyde was no hand at rough-and-tumble, it being his
+opinion that fisticuffs was a peculiarly indecisive and exhausting way
+of settling a dispute. He possessed a vile temper, moreover, and once
+aroused half measures failed to satisfy it.
+
+After Mr. Hyde's admirable beginning those neutrals who had seen the
+start of the affray were prepared to witness an ending equally quick
+and conclusive. They were surprised, therefore, to note that Bill put
+up a very weak struggle, once he had come to close quarters. He made
+only the feeblest resistance, before permitting himself to be borne
+backward to the floor, and then as he lay pinned beneath his opponent
+he did not even try to guard the blows that rained upon him; as a
+matter of fact, he continued to laugh as if the experience were highly
+diverting.
+
+Seeing that the fight was one-sided, the bartender hastened from his
+retreat, dragged Petersen's champion to his feet, and flung him back
+into the arms of the onlookers, after which he stooped to aid the
+loser. His hands were actually upon Bill before he understood the
+meaning of that peculiar laughter, and saw in Mr. Hyde's shaking
+fingers that which caused him to drop the prostrate victim as if he
+were a rattlesnake.
+
+"God'l'mighty!" exclaimed the rescuer. He retreated hurriedly whence
+he had come.
+
+Bill rose and dusted himself off, then he bent over Petersen, who was
+stirring.
+
+"Just give her that billy-ducks and tell her it's all right. Tell her
+I say you won't hurt her none." Then, still chuckling, he slipped into
+the crowd and out of the Last Chance. As he went he coughed and spat a
+mouthful of blood.
+
+Once the mail-carrier had been apprised of the amazing incidents which
+had occurred during his temporary inattention, he vowed vengeance in
+a mighty voice, and his threats found echo in the throats of his two
+companions. But the bartender took them aside and spoke guardedly:
+
+"You better lay off of that guy, or he'll fatten the graveyard with
+all three of you. I didn't 'make' him at first, but I got him now, all
+right."
+
+"What d'you mean? Who is he?"
+
+"His name's Hyde, 'Laughing Bill.'"
+
+"'Laughing Bill' Hyde!" One of Petersen's friends, he who had come
+last into the encounter, turned yellow and leaned hard against the
+bar. A sudden nausea assailed him and he laid tender hands upon his
+abdomen. "'Laughing Bill' Hyde! That's why he went down so easy! Why,
+he killed a feller I knew--ribboned him up from underneath, just
+that way--and the jury called it self-defense." A shudder racked the
+speaker's frame.
+
+"Sure! He's a cutter--a reg'lar gent's cutter and fitter. He'd 'a' had
+you all over the floor in another minute; if I hadn't pried you apart
+they'd 'a' sewed sawdust up inside of you like you was a doll. He had
+the old bone-handled skinner in his mit; that's why I let go of him.
+Laughing Bill! Take it from me, boys, you better walk around him like
+he was a hole in the ice."
+
+It may have been the memory of that heavy whip handle, it may have
+been the moral effect of stray biographical bits garnered here and
+there around the gambling-table, or it may have been merely a high
+and natural chivalry, totally unsuspected until now, which prompted
+Petersen to treat Ponatah with a chill and formal courtesy when he
+returned from St. Michaels. At any rate, the girl arrived in Nome with
+nothing but praise for the mail-man. Pete Petersen, so she said, might
+have his faults, but he knew how to behave like a perfect gentleman.
+
+Ponatah took up her new duties with enthusiasm, and before a month had
+passed she had endeared herself to her employers, who secretly assured
+Doctor Thomas that they had discovered a treasure and would never part
+with her. She was gentle, patient, sweet, industrious; the children
+idolized her. The Indian girl had never dreamed of a home like this;
+she was deliriously happy.
+
+She took pride in discharging her obligations; she did not forget the
+men who had made this wonder possible. They had rented a little cabin,
+and, after the fashion of men, they make slipshod efforts at keeping
+house. Since it was Ponatah's nature to serve, she found time somehow
+to keep the place tidy and to see to their comfort.
+
+Laughing Bill was a hopeless idler; he had been born to leisure and
+was wedded to indigence, therefore he saw a good deal of the girl on
+her visits. He listened to her stories of the children, he admired her
+new and stylish clothes, he watched her develop under the influence of
+her surroundings. Inasmuch as both of them were waifs, and beholden
+to the bounty of others, thy had ties in common--a certain
+mutuality--hence they came to know each other intimately.
+
+Despite the great change in her environment, Ponatah remained in many
+ways quite aboriginal. For instance, she was embarrassingly direct and
+straightforward; she entirely lacked hypocrisy, and that which puzzled
+or troubled her she boldly put into words. There came a time when Bill
+discovered that Ponatah's eyes, when they looked at him, were more
+than friendly, that most of the services she performed were aimed at
+him.
+
+Then one day she asked him to marry her.
+
+There was nothing brazen or forward about the proposal; Ponatah merely
+gave voice to her feelings in a simple, honest way that robbed her of
+no dignity.
+
+Bill laughed the proposal off. "I wouldn't marry the Queen of Sheby,"
+said he.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I ain't that kind of a bird, that's why."
+
+"What kind of a bird are you?" Ponatah eyed him with grave curiosity.
+"All men marry. I'm reading a great many books, and they're all about
+love and marriage. I love you, and I'm pretty. Is it because I'm an
+Indian--?"
+
+"Hell! That wouldn't faze me, Kiddo. You skin the white dames around
+this village. But you better cut out them books."
+
+"I'd make you a good wife."
+
+"Sure! You're aces. But I'd make a bum husband. I ain't got the breath
+to blow out a candle." Mr. Hyde chuckled; the idea of marriage plainly
+amused him. "How you know I ain't got a covey of wives?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, I know!" Ponatah was unsmiling. "I'm simple, but I can see
+through people. I can tell the good ones and the bad ones. You're a
+good man, Billy."
+
+Now this praise was anything but agreeable to Mr. Hyde, for above all
+things he abhorred so-called "good" people. Good people were suckers,
+and he prided himself upon being a wise guy, with all that was meant
+thereby.
+
+"You lay off of me, Kid," he warned, darkly, "and you muffle them
+wedding bells. You can't win nothing with that line of talk. If I
+was fifty inches around the chest, liked to work, and was fond of
+pas'ment'ries I'd prob'ly fall for you, but I ain't. I'm a good man,
+all right--to leave alone. I'll be a brother to you, but that's my
+limit." The subject was embarrassing, so he changed it. "Say! I been
+thinking about that claim of yours. Didn't you get no paper from that
+missionary?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then his word's as good as yours."
+
+"That's what the lawyer told me. I offered to give him half, but he
+wouldn't touch the case."
+
+"It was a dirty deal, but you better forget it."
+
+"I'll try," the girl promised. "But I don't forget easily."
+
+Laughing Bill's rejection of Ponatah's offer of marriage did not in
+the least affect their friendly relations. She continued to visit the
+cabin, and not infrequently she reverted to the forbidden topic, only
+to meet with discouragement.
+
+Doctor Thomas had opened an office, of course, but business was light
+and expenses heavy. Supplies were low in Nome and prices high; coal,
+for instance, was a hundred dollars a ton and, as a result, most
+of the idle citizens spent their evenings---but precious little
+else--around the saloon stoves. When April came Laughing Bill
+regretfully decided that it was necessary for him to go to work. The
+prospect was depressing, and he did not easily reconcile himself to
+it, for he would have infinitely preferred some less degraded and
+humiliating way out of the difficulty. He put up a desperate battle
+against the necessity, and he did not accept the inevitable until
+thoroughly convinced that the practice of medicine and burglary could
+not be carried on from the same residence without the risk of serious
+embarrassment to his benefactor.
+
+However, to find employment in a community where there were two men to
+one job was not easy, but happily--or unhappily--Bill had a smattering
+of many trades, and eventually there came an opening as handy-man at a
+mine. It was a lowly position, and Bill had little pride in it, for
+he was put to helping the cook, waiting on table, washing dishes,
+sweeping cabins, making beds, and the like. He had been assured that
+the work was light, and so it was, but it was also continuous. He
+could summon not the slightest interest in it until he discovered that
+this was the very claim which rightfully belonged to Ponatah. Then,
+indeed, he pricked up his ears.
+
+The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all
+winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the
+industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and
+that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to
+personally oversee the clean-ups. The ex-missionary, Bill discovered,
+had the reputation of being a tight man, and meanly suspicious in
+money matters. He reposed no confidence in his superintendent, a
+surly, saturnine fellow known as Black Jack Berg, nor in Denny Slevin,
+his foreman. So much Laughing Bill gathered from camp gossip.
+
+It soon became evident that Black Jack was a hard driver, for sluicing
+began with the first trickle of snow water--even while the ditches
+were still ice-bound--and it continued with double shifts thereafter.
+A representative of Doctor Slayforth came out from Nome to watch the
+first clean-up, and Bill, in his capacity as chambermaid, set up a cot
+for him in the cabin shared by Black Jack and Denny. While so engaged
+the latter discovered him, and gruffly ordered him to remove the cot
+to the bunk-house.
+
+"Put him in with the men," growled Slevin. "Serves the dam' spy
+right."
+
+"Spy? Is he a gum-shoe?" Mr. Hyde paused, a pillow slip between his
+teeth.
+
+"That's what! Me and Jack was honest enough to run things all
+winter, but we ain't honest enough to clean up. That's like old
+Slayforth--always lookin' to get the worst of it. I'm square, and so's
+Jack. Makes me sick, this spyin' on honest folks. Everybody knows we
+wouldn't turn a trick."
+
+Now it was Laughing Bill's experience that honesty needs no boosting,
+and that he who most loudly vaunts his rectitude is he who is least
+certain of it.
+
+"The boss must be a good man, him being a sort of psalm-singer," Bill
+ventured, guilelessly.
+
+Denny snorted: "Oh, sure! He's good, all right. He's 'most too
+good--to be true. Billy, my boy, when you've seen as many crooks as I
+have you'll know 'em, no matter how they come dressed."
+
+As he folded the cot Mr. Hyde opined that worldly experience must
+indeed be a fine thing to possess.
+
+"You go gamble on it!" Slevin agreed. "Now then, just tell that
+Hawkshaw we don't want no dam' spies in our house. We're square guys,
+and we can't stomach 'em."
+
+That evening Black Jack called upon the handy-man to help with the
+clean-up, and put him to tend the water while he and Denny, under the
+watchful eye of the owner's representative, lifted the riffles, worked
+down the concentrates, and removed them from the boxes.
+
+Bill was an experienced placer miner, so it was not many days before
+he was asked to help in the actual cleaning of the sluices. He was
+glad of the promotion, for, as he told himself, no man can squeeze a
+lemon without getting juice on his fingers. It will be seen, alas!
+that Mr. Hyde's moral sense remained blunted in spite of the refining
+influence of his association with Doctor Thomas. But Aurora dust
+was fine, and the handy-man's profits were scarcely worth the risks
+involved in taking them.
+
+One morning while Bill was cleaning up the superintendent's cabin
+he noticed a tiny yellow flake of gold upon the floor in front of
+Slevin's bed. Careful examination showed him several "colors" of the
+same sort, so he swept the boards carefully and took up the dust in
+a "blower." He breathed upon the pile, blowing the lighter particles
+away. A considerable residue of heavy yellow grains remained. With
+a grin Bill folded them in a cigarette paper and placed them in his
+pocket. But it puzzled him to explain how there came to be gold on the
+cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found
+another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded
+perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal--enough to set him to
+thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's
+bunk he could find no pay whatever.
+
+Slevin had left his hip boots in the cabin, and as Laughing Bill
+turned down their tops and set them out in the wind to dry his sharp
+eye detected several yellow pin-points of color which proved, upon
+closer investigation, to be specks of gold clinging to the wet lining.
+
+"Well, I be danged!" said Mr. Hyde. Carefully, thoughtfully, he
+replaced the boots where he had found them. The knowledge that he was
+on a hot trail electrified him.
+
+At the next clean-up Laughing Bill took less interest in his part of
+the work and more in Denny Slevin's. When the riffles were washed,
+and the loose gravel had been worked down into yellow piles of rich
+concentrates, Slevin, armed with whisk broom, paddle, and scoop,
+climbed into the sluices. Bill watched him out of a corner of his eye,
+and it was not long before his vigilance was rewarded. The hold-up
+man turned away with a feeling of genuine admiration, for he had
+seen Slevin, under the very nose of the lookout, "go south" with a
+substantial amount of gold.
+
+The foreman's daring and dexterity amazed Bill and deepened his
+respect. Slevin's work was cunning, and yet so simple as to be almost
+laughable. With his hip boots pulled high he had knelt upon one knee
+in the sluice scooping up the wet piles of gold and black iron sand,
+while Berg held a gold pan to receive it. During the process Black
+Jack had turned to address the vigilant owner's representative, and,
+profiting by the brief diversion, Bill had seen Denny dump a heaping
+scoop-load of "pay" into the gaping pocket-like top of his capacious
+rubber boot.
+
+"The sons-of-a-gun!" breathed Laughing Bill. "The double-crossing
+sons-of-a-gun! Why, it begins to look like a big summer for me."
+
+Bill slept well that night, for now that he knew the game which was
+going on he felt sure that sooner or later he would take a hand in it.
+Just how or when the hand would fall he could not tell, but that did
+not worry him in the least, inasmuch as he already held the trumps. It
+seemed that a kindly fortune had guided him to the Aurora; that fate
+had decreed he should avenge the wrongs of Ponatah. The handy-man fell
+asleep with a smile upon his lips.
+
+The first ship arrived that very evening, and the next day Doctor
+Slayforth in person appeared at the Aurora. He was a thin, restless
+man with weak and shifting eyes; he said grace at dinner, giving
+thanks for the scanty rations of hash and brown beans over which his
+hungry workmen were poised like cormorants. The Aurora had won the
+name of a bad feeder, but its owner seemed satisfied with his meal.
+Later Bill overheard him talking with his superintendent.
+
+"I'm disappointed with the clean-ups," Slayforth confessed. "The pay
+appears to be pinching out."
+
+"She don't wash like she sampled, that's a fact," said Black Jack.
+
+"I'm afraid we shall have to practise economies--"
+
+"Look here! If you aim to cut down the grub, don't try it," counseled
+Berg. "It's rotten now."
+
+"Indeed? There appeared to be plenty, and the quality was excellent. I
+fear you encourage gluttony, and nothing so interferes with work. We
+must effect a saving somehow; there is too great a variation between
+theoretical and actual values."
+
+"Huh! You better try feeding hay for a while," sourly grumbled the
+superintendent. "If you ain't getting what you aimed to get it's
+because it ain't in the cards."
+
+This conversation interested Bill, for it proved that the robbers had
+helped themselves with a liberal hand, but how they had managed to
+appropriate enough gold to noticeably affect the showing of the
+winter's work intensely mystified him; it led him to believe that
+Black Jack and Denny were out for a homestake.
+
+That such was indeed the case and that Slevin was not the only thief
+Bill soon discovered, for after the next clean-up he slipped away
+through the twilight and took stand among the alders outside the rear
+window of the shack on the hill. From his point of concealment he
+could observe all that went on inside.
+
+It was a familiar scene. By the light of an oil lamp Black Jack was
+putting the final touches to the clean-up. Two gold pans, heaped high
+with the mingled black sand and gold dust, as it came out of the
+sluices, were drying on the Yukon stove, and the superintendent was
+engaged in separating the precious yellow particles from the worthless
+material which gravity had deposited with it. This refining process
+was slow, painstaking work, and was effected with the help of a flat
+brass scoop--a "blower." By shaking this blower and breathing upon its
+contents the lighter grains of iron sand were propelled to the edge,
+as chaff is separated from wheat, and fell into a box held between the
+superintendent's knees. The residue, left in the heel of the blower
+after each blowing process, was commercial "dust," ready for the bank
+or the assay office. Doctor Slayforth, with his glasses on the end of
+his nose, presided at the gold scales, while Denny Slevin looked on.
+As the dust was weighed, a few ounces at a time, it was dumped into a
+moose-skin sack and entered upon the books.
+
+Black Jack had the light at his back, he was facing the window,
+therefore Laughing Bill commanded an unobstructed view of his
+adept manipulations. It was not long before the latter saw him
+surreptitiously drop a considerable quantity of gold out of the scoop
+and into the box between his knees, then cover it up with the black
+sand. This sleight-of-hand was repeated several times, and when
+the last heap of gold had been weighed Bill estimated that Doctor
+Slayforth was poorer by at least a hundred ounces--sixteen hundred
+dollars. There was no question about it now; these were not common
+thieves; this was becoming a regular man's game, and the stakes were
+assuming a size to give Laughing Bill a tingling sensation along his
+spine. Having discovered the _modus operandi_ of the pair, and having
+read their cards, so to speak, he next set himself to discover where
+they banked their swag. But this was by no means easy. His utmost
+vigilance went unrewarded by so much as a single clue.
+
+Berg and Slevin had a habit of riding into town on Saturday nights,
+and the next time they left the claim Bill pleaded a jumping toothache
+and set out afoot for medical attention.
+
+It was late when he arrived at Nome, nevertheless a diligent search
+of the Front Street saloons failed to locate either man. He was still
+looking for them when they came riding in.
+
+With their delayed arrival Bill's apprehensions vanished, as likewise
+did his imaginary toothache. He had feared that they were in the habit
+of bringing the gold to Nome, there perhaps to bank it with some
+friend; but now he knew that they were too cautious for that, and
+preferred instead to cache it somewhere in the hills. This simplified
+matters immensely, so Bill looked up his little doctor for a sociable
+visit.
+
+Thomas was in his office; he greeted Bill warmly.
+
+"Say! Pill-rolling must be brisk to keep you on the job till
+midnight," the latter began.
+
+"Business is rotten!" exclaimed the physician. "And it's a rotten
+business."
+
+"Nobody sick? That's tough. Open a can of typhoid germs, and I'll put
+'em in the well. Anything to stir up a little trade."
+
+"I've just balanced my books and--I've just heard from Alice."
+
+"Do the books balance?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly--nothing equals nothing--it's a perfect equilibrium.
+Alice wants me to come home and start all over, and I'm tempted to do
+so."
+
+"Ain't going to throw up your tail, are you?"
+
+"I can't get along without her." Thomas was plainly in the depths; he
+turned away and stared moodily out into the dim-lit street. It was
+midnight, but already the days were shortening, already there was an
+hour or two of dusk between the evening and the morning light.
+
+"Of course you can't get along without her," the ex-bandit agreed. "I
+seen that when I looked at her picture. Why don't you bring her in?"
+
+"Bring her in--_here_?" Thomas faced about quickly. "Humph! Not much."
+
+"Well, this ain't no doll's village, that's a fact. It's full of
+wicked men, and the women ain't wuth braggin' over. S'pose we go out
+and marry her?"
+
+"We?" Thomas smiled for the first time.
+
+"Sure. I'll stick to the bitter finish."
+
+"I'm broke, Bill."
+
+"Pshaw, now! Don't let that worry you. I got money."
+
+"You?" The doctor was surprised. "Where did you get it?"
+
+"Well, I _got_ it! That's the main thing. It was--left to me."
+
+"Honestly?"
+
+"What d'you mean, 'honestly'?"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"I dunno, exactly. You see, I ain't got it actually in my mit--"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"But I'll have it, all righto. It's just waiting for me to close down
+on it. I reckon there must be a thousand gold buzzards in the stack,
+mebby more. It's all yours."
+
+"Thanks!" said the physician, unimpressed.
+
+"Look me in the eye." Bill spoke earnestly. "Twenty thousand iron men
+ain't so bad. It'll buy a lot of doll's clothes. We can have a big
+party--I ain't kidding!" Then reading amused incredulity in his
+friend's face he demanded: "How you know I ain't got a rich uncle that
+raised me from a colt and that broke his heart at me runnin' away and
+turning out wild, and has had lawyers gunnin' for me ever since he
+knew he was gettin' old and going to croak? How you know that, eh?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't know anything about you, Bill. That's one of
+the most interesting features of our friendship."
+
+"Well, pay a little attention to me. Now then, I figger it like this:
+I got lungs like a grasshopper, and the money won't do me no good, so
+I'll stake you and Miss Alice to it."
+
+Doctor Thomas eyed the speaker curiously. "I believe you would," said
+he, after a moment.
+
+"Would I? Say! You ever seen a feather bed tied up with a rope? You
+sit tight and I'll slip you a roll just that size."
+
+"Of course you know I wouldn't take it?"
+
+"Why not? It's more'n likely it'll get me into evil company or gimme
+some bad habit, and I'll gargle off before I've had a chance to spend
+it. I ain't strong."
+
+"I'll earn what I get, Billy."
+
+"All right. If you feel like that I'll bet it for you on a crap game,
+and you can take the winnings--"
+
+"Nothing doing. I want honest money--money that I can look in the
+face."
+
+Mr. Hyde was out of patience. "All money's honest, after you get it!"
+he cried. "It's gettin' it that draws blood. I never knew the silver
+bird to fly off a dollar and scratch a guy, did you?"
+
+"I want to make money--that's why I came up to this God-forsaken
+place--but--when your uncle's draft arrives you cash it."
+
+"Ain't you the champeen bone-dome?" muttered Bill. Such an attitude
+seemed to him both senseless and quixotic, for he had never attached
+the least sentiment to money. Money was an elemental necessity,
+therefore he looked upon it with practical, unromantic eyes,
+and helped himself to it as he helped himself to such elemental
+necessities as air or water. Most of life's necessaries had fallen
+into monopolistic hands and were used to wring tribute from
+unfortunate mortals who had arrived too late to share in the graft, as
+witness, for instance, Standard Oil. So ran Bill's reasoning when he
+took the trouble to reason at all. Men had established arbitrary rules
+to govern their forays upon one another's property, to be sure, but
+under cover of these artificial laws they stole merrily, and got away
+with it. Eagles did not scruple to steal from one another, horses ate
+one another's fodder; why human beings should not do likewise had
+always puzzled Mr. Hyde. The basic principle held good in both cases,
+it seemed to him, and Doctor Thomas's refusal to share in the coming
+legacy struck him as silly; it was the result of a warped and unsound
+philosophy. But argue as he would he could not shake his friend's
+opinion of the matter.
+
+One evening, not long after his visit to town, Bill's toothache
+returned again to plague him. He raised groans and hoarse profanities,
+and then, while the crew was still at supper, he abandoned his work
+and set out in search of relief. But he did not go to Nome. Once
+out of sight of the mine he doubled back and came out behind the
+superintendent's cabin. A moment later he was stretched out in the
+narrow, dark space beneath Black Jack's bunk. Dust irritated Bill's
+lungs, therefore he had carefully swept out the place that morning;
+likewise he had thoughtfully provided himself with a cotton comforter
+as protection to his bones. He had no intention of permitting himself
+to be taken at a disadvantage, and knowing full well the painful
+consequences of discovery he opened his bone-handled pocket-knife and
+tested its keen edge with his thumb. In the interests of peace and
+good-fellowship, however, he hoped he could go through the night
+without coughing.
+
+Slevin was the first to return from supper. He went directly to his
+bunk, drew a bottle of whisky from beneath his pillow, poured himself
+a drink, and replaced the bottle. When Berg entered he went through a
+similar procedure, after which a fire was built, the men kicked off
+their boots, lit their pipes, and stretched out upon their beds.
+
+"I've been thinking it over," the superintendent began, "and you can't
+do it."
+
+"Why not?" queried Slevin. "I told his nibs I was sick of the grub."
+
+"Foremen don't quit good jobs on account of the grub. You've got to
+stick till fall; then we'll both go. We'll strike the old man for a
+raise--"
+
+"Humph! He'll let us go, quick enough, when we do that. Let's strike
+him now. I'm through."
+
+"Nothing stirring," Berg firmly declared. "We'll play out the string.
+I'm taking no chances."
+
+"Hell! Ain't we takin' a chance every day we stay here? I'm getting
+so I don't sleep. I got enough to do me; I ain't a hog. I got a bully
+corner all picked out, Jack--best corner in Seattle for a gin-mill."
+
+"It'll wait. Corners don't get up and move. No, I won't hold the
+bag for you or for anybody," declared the former speaker. "We'll go
+through, arm in arm. Once we're away clean you can do what you like.
+Me for the Argentine and ten thousand acres of long-horns. You better
+forget that corner. Some night you'll get stewed and spill the beans."
+
+"Who, me?" Slevin laughed in disdain. "Fat chance!" There was a long
+silence during which the only sound was the bubbling of a pipe. "I
+s'pose I'll have to stick, if you say so," Denny agreed finally, "but
+I'm fed up. I'm getting jumpy. I got a hunch the cache ain't safe; I
+feel like something was goin' to happen."
+
+Mr. Slevin's premonition, under the circumstances, was almost uncanny;
+it gave startling proof of his susceptibility to outside influences.
+
+"You _are_ rickety," Black Jack told him. "Why, there ain't any
+danger; nobody goes up there." Laughing Bill held his breath, missing
+not a word. "If they did we'd pick 'em up with the glasses. It's open
+country, and we'd get 'em before they got down."
+
+"I s'pose so. But the nights are getting dark."
+
+"Nobody's out at night, either, you boob. I ain't losing any slumber
+over that. And I ain't going to lose any about your quitting ahead of
+me. That don't trouble me none." Berg yawned and changed the subject.
+Half an hour later he rose, languidly undressed and rolled into his
+bed. Slevin followed suit shortly after, and the rapidity with which
+both men fell asleep spoke volumes for the elasticity of the human
+conscience.
+
+Now, Laughing Bill had come prepared to spend the night, but his
+throat tickled and he had a distressing habit of snoring, therefore he
+deemed it the part of caution to depart before he dropped off into the
+land of dreams. He effected the manoeuver noiselessly.
+
+Bill lingered at the spring hole on the following morning, and lost
+himself in an attentive study of the surrounding scenery. It was
+fairly impressive scenery, and he had a keen appreciation of nature's
+beauty, but Black Jack's words continued to puzzle him. "Nobody goes
+up there." Up where? The Aurora lay in a valley, therefore most of the
+country round about was "up"--it was open, too. The ridges were bold
+and barren, garbed only with shreds and patches of short grass and
+reindeer moss. "We'd pick 'em up with the glasses--we'd get 'em before
+they got down." Manifestly the cache was in plain sight, if one only
+knew where to look for it, but Mr. Hyde's sharp eyes took in ten
+thousand likely hiding-places, and he reasoned that it would be worse
+than folly to go exploring blindly without more definite data than he
+possessed.
+
+It was clever of the pair to hide the swag where they could oversee it
+every hour of the day, and they had chosen a safe location, too, for
+nobody wasted the effort to explore those domes and hogbacks now that
+they were known to contain no quartz. There was Anvil Mountain, for
+instance, a bold schist peak crowned with a huge rock in the likeness
+of a blacksmith's anvil. It guarded the entrance to the valley, rising
+from the very heart of the best mining section; it was the most
+prominent landmark hereabouts, but not a dozen men had ever climbed
+it, and nowadays nobody did.
+
+As Bill pondered the enigma, out from his bed in the willows came Don
+Antonio de Chiquito, a meek and lowly burro, the only member of the
+Aurora's working force which did not outrank in social importance the
+man-of-all-work. Don Antonio was the pet of the Aurora Borealis, and
+its scavenger. He ate everything from garbage to rubber boots--he was
+even suspected of possessing a low appetite for German socks. It was,
+in fact, this very democratic taste in things edible which caused
+him to remain the steadiest of Doctor Slayforth's boarders. Wisdom,
+patience, the sagacity of Solomon, lurked in Don Antonio's eyes, and
+Laughing Bill consulted him as a friend and an equal.
+
+"Tony," said he, "you've done a heap of prospecting and you know the
+business. There's a rich pocket on one of them hills. Which one is
+it?"
+
+Don Antonio de Chiquito had ears like sunbonnets; he folded them back,
+lifted his muzzle toward Anvil rock, and brayed loudly.
+
+"Mebbe you're right," said the man. He fitted the Chinese yoke to his
+skinny shoulders, and took up his burden. The load was heavy, the yoke
+bruised his bones, therefore he was moved to complain: "The idea of
+me totin' water for the very guys that stole my uncle's money! It's
+awful--the darned crooks!"
+
+It was a rainy evening when business next took Black Jack Berg and
+Denny Slevin to town. Having dined amply, if not well, they donned
+slickers, saddled a pair of horses, and set out down the creek. Few
+people were abroad, therefore they felt secure from observation when
+they swung off the trail where it bends around the foot of Anvil
+Mountain and bore directly up through the scattered alders. The grass
+was wet, the rain erased the marks of their horses' feet almost in the
+passing. Tethering their mounts in the last clump of underbrush the
+riders labored on afoot up a shallow draw which scarred the steep
+slope. The murk of twilight obscured them, but even in a good light
+they would have run small risk of discovery, for slow-moving human
+figures would have been lost against the dark background.
+
+The climb was long and arduous; both men were panting when they
+breasted the last rise and looked down into the valley where lay the
+Aurora Borealis. This was a desolate spot, great boulders, fallen from
+the huge rock overhead, lay all about, the earth was weathered by
+winter snows and summer rains. Ghostly fingers of mist writhed over
+the peak; darkness was not far distant.
+
+The robbers remained on the crest perhaps twenty minutes, then they
+came striding down. They passed within a hundred yards of Laughing
+Bill Hyde, who lay flat in the wet grass midway of their descent.
+He watched them mount and ride out of sight, then he continued his
+painful progress up the hillside.
+
+Weak lungs are not suited to heavy grades and slippery footing. Bill
+was sobbing with agony when he conquered the last rise and collapsed
+upon his face. He feared he was dying, every cough threatened a
+hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the
+familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about
+through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the
+night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps
+to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of
+the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain;
+brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of
+a pick and shovel.
+
+For once in his life Mr. Hyde looked upon these tools with favor, and
+energetically tackled the business end of a "Number 2." He considered
+pick-and-shovel work the lowest form of human endeavor; nevertheless
+he engaged in it willingly enough, and he had not dug deeply before
+he uncovered the side of a packing-case, labeled "Choice California
+Canned Fruits." Further rapid explorations showed that the box was
+fitted with a loose top, and that the interior was well-nigh filled
+with stout canvas and moose skin bags. Bill counted them; he weighed
+one, then he sat down weakly and his hard, smoke-blue eyes widened
+with amazement.
+
+"Suffering cats!" he whispered. He voiced other expletives, too, even
+more forcefully indicative of surprise. He was not an imaginative man;
+it did not occur to him to doubt his sanity or to wonder if he were
+awake, nevertheless he opened one of the pokes and incredulously
+examined its contents. "I'm dam' if it ain't!" he said, finally. "I
+should reckon they _was_ ready to quit. Argentine! Why, Jack'll bust
+the bottom out of a boat if he takes this with him. He'll drown a lot
+of innocent people." Mr. Hyde shook his head and smiled pityingly. "It
+ain't safe to trust him with it. It ain't safe--the thievin' devil!
+There's five hundred pounds if there's an ounce!" He began to figure
+with his finger on the muddy shovel blade. "A hundred thousand bucks!"
+he announced, finally. "Them boys is _all right_!"
+
+Slowly, reluctantly, he replaced the gold sacks, reburied the box, and
+placed the tools where he had found them; then he set out for home.
+
+Don Antonio de Chiquito was contentedly munching an empty oat sack,
+doubtless impelled thereto by the lingering flavor of its former
+contents, when on the following morning Bill accosted him.
+
+"Tony, I got to hand it to you," the man said, admiringly. "You're
+some pocket miner, and you speak up like a gent when you're spoken to.
+I got some nice egg-shells saved up for you." Then his voice dropped
+to a confidential tone. "We're in with a passel of crooks, Tony. Evil
+associates, I call 'em. They're bound to have a bad influence over
+us--I feel it a'ready, don't you? Well, s'pose you meet me to-night at
+the gap in the hedge and we'll take a walk?"
+
+Don Antonio appeared in every way agreeable to the proposal, but to
+make certain that he would keep his appointment Bill led him down
+into the creek bottom and tied him securely, after which he removed a
+pack-saddle and a bundle of hay from the stable. The saddle he hid in
+the brush, the hay he spread before his accomplice, with the generous
+invitation: "Drink hearty; it's on the house!" In explanation he went
+on: "It's this way, Tony; they left the elevator out of that Anvil
+skyscraper, and I can't climb stairs on one lung, so you got to be my
+six-cylinder oat-motor. We got a busy night ahead of us."
+
+That evening Laughing Bill ascended Anvil Mountain for a second time,
+but the exertion did not wind him unduly, for he made the ascent at
+the end of Don Antonio's tail. He was back in camp for breakfast, and
+despite his lack of sleep he performed his menial duties during the
+day with more than his usual cheerfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Speed up, can't you?" Slevin paused midway of the steepest slope and
+spoke impatiently to his partner below.
+
+"I'm coming," Black Jack panted. Being the heavier and clumsier of the
+two, the climb was harder for him. "You're so spry, s'pose you just
+pack this poke!" He unslung a heavy leather sack from his belt and
+gave it to Denny.
+
+"We'd ought to 'a' got an early start," the latter complained. "The
+days are gettin' short and I had a rotten fall going down, last time."
+
+Relieved of some fifteen pounds of dead, awkward weight--and nothing
+is more awkward to carry than a sizable gold sack--Berg made better
+speed, arriving at the cache in time to see Slevin spit on his hands
+and fall to digging.
+
+"Every time we open her up I get a shiver," Denny confessed, with a
+laugh. "I'm scared to look."
+
+"Humph! Think she's going to get up and walk out on us?" Berg seated
+himself, lit his pipe, and puffed in silence for a while. "We ain't
+never been seen," he declared, positively. "She's as safe as the Bank
+of England as long as you don't get drunk."
+
+"Me drunk! Ha! Me and the demon rum is divorced forever." Slevin's
+shovel struck wood and he swiftly uncovered the box, then removed its
+top. He, stood for a full minute staring into its interior, then he
+cried, hoarsely, "_Jack_!"
+
+Berg was on his feet in an instant; he strode to the excavation and
+bent over it. After a time he straightened himself and turned blazing
+eyes upon his confederate. Denny met his gaze with the glare of a man
+demented.
+
+"Wha'd I tell you?" the latter chattered. "I told you they'd get it.
+By God! They have!"
+
+He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. Far below the lights
+of the valley were beginning to twinkle, in the direction of Nome the
+cross on the Catholic church gleamed palely against the steel-gray
+expanse of Behring Sea.
+
+Berg was a man of violent temper; he choked and gasped; his face was
+bloated with an apoplectic rage. He began to growl curses deep in his
+throat. "_Who_ got it?" he demanded. "Who d'you mean by '_they_'?"
+
+"'Sh-h!" Slevin was panic-stricken; he flung out a nervous, jerky
+hand. "Mebbe they're here--now. Look out!"
+
+"Who d'you mean by '_they_'?" the larger man repeated.
+
+"I--God! I dunno! But there must 'a' been more'n one. Five hundred
+pounds! One man couldn't pack it!"
+
+"You said '_they_'!" Berg persisted in an odd tone.
+
+Slevin's madly roving gaze flew back and settled upon the discolored
+visage thrust toward him, then his own eyes widened. He recoiled,
+crying:
+
+"Look here! You don't think I--?" His words ended in a bark.
+
+"I ain't said what I think, but I'm thinkin' fast. Nobody knew it but
+us--"
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I know."
+
+Slowly Slevin settled himself. His muscles ceased jumping, his bullet
+head drew down between his shoulders. "Well, it wasn't me, so it must
+'a' been--_you_!"
+
+"Don't stall!" roared the larger man. "It won't win you anything. You
+can't leave here till you come through."
+
+"That goes double, Jack. I got my gat, too, and you ain't going to run
+out on me."
+
+"You wanted to quit. You weakened."
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+The men stared fixedly at each other, heads forward, bodies tense; as
+they glared the fury of betrayal grew to madness.
+
+"Where'd you put it?" Berg ground the words between his teeth.
+
+"I'm askin' you that very thing," the foreman answered in a thin,
+menacing voice. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he widened the distance
+between himself and his accuser. It was not a retreat, he merely drew
+himself together defensively, holding himself under control with the
+last supreme effort of his will.
+
+The tension snapped suddenly.
+
+With a harsh, wordless cry of fury Black Jack tore his six-shooter
+from its resting-place. But Slevin's right hand stirred in unison and
+it moved like light. Owing to the fact that he carried his gun beneath
+his left armpit he was the first to fire, by the fraction of a second.
+It was impossible to miss at this distance. Berg went to his knees
+as if hit by a sledge. But he fired from that position, and his shot
+caught Slevin as the latter crow-hopped nimbly. Both men were down
+now. Slevin, however, seemed made of rubber; he was up again almost
+instantly, and zigzagging toward the shelter of the nearest rocks.
+Berg emptied his Colt at the running target, then a shout burst from
+his lips as he saw Denny pitch forward out of sight.
+
+With shaking, clumsy fingers Black Jack reloaded his hot weapon. With
+his left hand pressed deep into his side he rose slowly to his feet
+and lurched forward.
+
+"You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross _me_, will yeh?" He heard the
+sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his
+tracks and peering into the gloom.
+
+"Come out!" he ordered. "Come out and own up and I'll let yeh off."
+
+There was a silence. "I see yeh!" He took unsteady aim at a shadow and
+fired. "Never mind, I'll get yeh!" After a little while he stumbled
+onward between the boulders, shouting a challenge to his invisible
+opponent. He had gone perhaps fifty feet when the darkness was stabbed
+by the blaze of Slevin's gun. Three times the weapon spoke, at little
+more than arm's-length, and Black Jack spun on his heels, then rocked
+forward limply. It was a long time before the sound of his loud, slow
+breathing ceased. Not until then did Denny Slevin move. With a rattle
+in his throat the foreman crept out from hiding and went down the
+mountain-side upon his hands and knees.
+
+It occasioned considerable speculation at the Aurora Borealis when
+neither the superintendent nor the foreman appeared for breakfast.
+Later, a telephone message to Doctor Slayforth having elicited the
+startling intelligence that neither man had been seen in town during
+the night, there came a flicker of excitement. This excitement blazed
+to white heat when Slayforth rode up on a muddy horse, accompanied by
+the town marshal and the chief of police. Followed more telephoning
+and some cross-examination. But the men were gone. They had
+disappeared.
+
+It was a mystery baffling any attempt at explanation, for there were
+no ships in the roadstead, and hence it was impossible for the pair
+to have taken French leave. While a search party was being organized
+there came word that the missing saddle-horses had been found on the
+slope of Anvil Mountain, and by the time Slayforth's party had reached
+the ground more news awaited them. Up near the head of the draw some
+one had discovered the body of Denny Slevin. There was a rush thither,
+and thence on up the trail Slevin had left, to the scene of the
+twilight duel, to Black Jack Berg and the cache in the slide.
+
+The story told itself down to the last detail; it was the story of a
+thieves' quarrel and a double killing. Doctor Slayforth fell upon
+his bag of gold as a mother falls upon her babe; he voiced loud,
+hysterical condemnation of the deed; he wept tears of mingled
+indignation and thanksgiving; he gabbled scriptural quotations about
+the wages of sin. Then, remembering that the wages of his men were
+going on, he sent them back to their work, and determined to dock half
+their morning's pay.
+
+The story of the tragedy was still the sensation of Nome when, a
+fortnight later, Laughing Bill Hyde showed up in town with the
+cheerful announcement that he had been fired. Ponatah was at the cabin
+when he arrived, and she did not try to conceal her joy at seeing him
+again.
+
+"I've been so unhappy," she told him. "You've never been out of my
+thoughts, Billy."
+
+"Ain't you got nothing better to think about than me?" he asked, with
+a smile. "Well, the psalm-shouter let me out--jerked the piller-slip
+from under me, you might say--and turned me adrift. He's got a
+high-chested, low-browed Swede in my place. It takes a guy with hair
+down to his eyebrows to be a buck chamber-maid."
+
+"The old rascal!" Ponatah's face darkened with anger. "No wonder those
+men robbed him. I wish they had taken all his gold, and escaped."
+
+"You're pretty sore on his heavenly nibs, ain't you?" Ponatah clenched
+her hands and her eyes blazed. "Well, you got this consolation, the
+Aurora ain't as rich as it was."
+
+"It would have been rich enough for us."
+
+"Us?"
+
+"Yes. You'd marry me if I were rich, wouldn't you?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't," Bill declared, firmly. "What's the use to kid you?"
+
+"Why wouldn't you? Are you ashamed of me?"
+
+Bill protested, "Say, what is this you're giving me, the third
+degree?"
+
+"If I were as rich as--well, as Reindeer Mary, wouldn't you marry me?"
+Ponatah gazed at the unworthy object of her affections with a yearning
+that was embarrassing, and Laughing Bill was forced to spar for wind.
+
+"Ain't you the bold Mary Ann--makin' cracks like that?" he chided.
+"I'm ashamed of you, honest. I've passed up plenty of frills in my
+time, and we're all better off for it. My appetite for marriage ain't
+no keener than it used to be, so you forget it. Little Doc, he's the
+marrying kind."
+
+"Oh yes. He tells me a great deal about his Alice. He's very much
+discouraged. If--if I had the Aurora I wouldn't forget him; I'd give
+him half."
+
+"Would you, now? Well, he's the one stiffneck that wouldn't take it.
+He's funny that way--seems to think money 'll bite him, or something.
+I don't know how these pullanthrofists get along, with proud people
+always spurning their gifts. He's got my nan. You take my tip, Kid,
+and cling to your coin. Salt it down for winter. That's what I'm doing
+with mine."
+
+"Are you?" Ponatah was not amused, she was gravely interested. "I
+thought you were broke, Billy."
+
+"Where'd you get that at?" he demanded. "I've always got a pinch of
+change, I have. I'm lucky that way. Now then, you run along and don't
+never try to feint me into a clinch. It don't go."
+
+Laughing Bill enjoyed a good rest in the days that followed. He rested
+hard for several weeks, and when he rested he lifted his hand to
+absolutely nothing. He was an expert idler, and with him indolence was
+but a form of suspended animation. In spite of himself, however, he
+was troubled by a problem; he was completely baffled by it, in fact,
+until, without warning and without conscious effort, the solution
+presented itself. Bill startled his cabin mate one day by the
+announcement that he intended to go prospecting.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Thomas, when the first shock of surprise had passed.
+"This country has been run over, and every inch is staked."
+
+"I bet I'll horn in somewhere. All I want is one claim where I got
+room to sling myself."
+
+"If that's all you want I'll give you a claim. It has twenty acres. Is
+that room enough?"
+
+"Plenty. Where is it?"
+
+"It's on Eclipse Creek, I believe. A patient gave it to me for a
+bill."
+
+"He won't call for a new deal if I strike it rich?"
+
+"No. I paid his fare out of the country. But why waste your valuable
+time? Your time _is_ valuable, I presume?"
+
+"Sure! I ain't got much left. You don't believe in hunches, do
+you? Well, I do. I've seen 'em come out. Look at Denny Slevin, for
+instance! I heard him say he had a hunch something unpleasant was
+going to happen to him, and it did. We'll go fifty-fifty on this
+Eclipse Creek."
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Suit yourself. Fresh air won't
+hurt you."
+
+The first frosts of autumn had arrived before Laughing Bill returned
+to town with the announcement that he had struck a prospect. Doctor
+Thomas was at first incredulous, then amazed; finally, when the
+true significance of those tiny yellow grains came home to him, his
+enthusiasm burst all bounds. He was for at once closing his office and
+joining actively in his partner's work, but Bill would not hear to
+such a thing.
+
+"Stick to the pills and powders, Doc," he counseled. "You know that
+game and I know this. It's my strike and I don't want no amachoors
+butting in. I got options on the whole creek--she's eclipsed for
+fair--'cause I don't like neighbors. You shut your trap till spring
+and sit tight, then we'll roll our packs, stomp on the fire, and call
+the dog. Old Home Week for us."
+
+"But, Billy, we can't work out that claim in one winter," protested
+the physician.
+
+"How d'you know we can't? Mebbe it's just a pocket."
+
+"We'll find other pockets. We have the whole creek--"
+
+"Say, how much d'you need to satisfy you?" Bill inquired, curiously.
+
+"I--don't know. A hundred thousand dollars, perhaps."
+
+"A hundred thousand! Whew! You got rich tastes! This ain't no
+bonanza."
+
+"But if it's any good at all it will net us that much, probably more."
+
+Bill considered briefly, then he announced: "All right, bo, I got
+your idea. When I hand you a hundred thousand iron men we quit--no
+questions, no regrets; Is that it? But you've hiked the limit on me; I
+dunno's I'll make good."
+
+By the time snow flew the tent on Eclipse Creek had been replaced by a
+couple of warm shacks, provisions had been bought, and a crew hired.
+Work commenced immediately, and it continued throughout the winter
+with Bill in charge. The gravel was lean-looking stuff, but it seemed
+to satisfy the manager, and whenever Thomas came out from town he
+received encouraging reports from his partner. Hyde ceased playing
+solitaire long enough to pan samples in his tub of snow water. Now had
+the younger man been an experienced placer miner he might have noted
+with suspicion that whenever Bill panned he chewed tobacco--a new
+habit he had acquired--and not infrequently he spat into the tub of
+muddy water. But Thomas was not experienced in the wiles and artifices
+of mine-salters, and the residue of yellow particles left in the pan
+was proof positive that the claim was making good. It did strike him
+as strange, however, that when he selected a pan of dirt and washed
+it unassisted he found nothing. At such times Bill explained
+glibly enough that no pay dump carried steady values, and that an
+inexperienced sampler was apt to get "skunked" under the best of
+circumstances. Concentrates lay in streaks and pockets, he declared.
+Then to prove his assertions Bill would help his partner pan, and
+inasmuch as he wore long finger-nails, underneath which colors of gold
+could be easily concealed, it was not surprising that he succeeded in
+finding a prospect where the doctor had failed. For fear Thomas should
+still entertain some lingering doubts, Bill occasionally sent him down
+into the shaft alone, to sample the pay streak, but in each instance
+he took pains to go down beforehand with a shot-gun and some shells of
+his own loading and to shoot a few rounds into the face of the thawed
+ground.
+
+The winter passed quickly enough, Bill's only concern arising from the
+fact that his strike had become common knowledge, and that men were
+clamoring to buy or to lease a part of the creek. It was a tiny creek,
+and he had it safely tied up under his options, therefore he was in a
+position to refuse every offer. By so doing he gained the reputation
+of being a cautious, cagey man and difficult to deal with.
+
+Bill paid off his crew out of the first spring cleanup, from the dust
+he had managed to dump into the sluices at night. Thereafter he sent
+the gold to town by Doctor Thomas, who came after it regularly. When
+he closed down the works, in June, he and his partner held bank
+deposit slips for a trifle over one hundred thousand dollars. Rumor
+placed their profits at much more.
+
+Bill saw little of Ponatah after his return to Nome, for the girl
+avoided him, and when he did see her she assumed a peculiar reserve.
+Her year and a half of intimate association with cultured people had
+in reality worked an amazing improvement in her, and people no longer
+regarded her as an Indian, but referred to her now as "that Russian
+governess," nevertheless she could retreat behind a baffling air
+of stolidity--almost of sullenness--when she chose, and that was
+precisely the mask she wore for Bill. In reality she was far from
+stolid and anything but sullen.
+
+For his part he made no effort to break down the girl's guard; he
+continued to treat her with his customary free good nature.
+
+Notwithstanding the liberal margin of profit on his winter's
+operations, Bill realized that he was still shy approximately half
+of the sum which Doctor Thomas had set as satisfactory, and when the
+latter began planning to resume work on a larger scale in the fall Mr.
+Hyde was stricken with panic. Fearing lest his own lack of enthusiasm
+in these plans and his indifference to all affairs even remotely
+concerning Eclipse Creek should awaken suspicion, he determined to
+sell out his own and his partner's interests in accordance with their
+original understanding. Without consulting Thomas he called upon
+Doctor Slayforth.
+
+The pious mine-owner was glad to see him; his manner was not at all
+what it had been when Bill worked for him. His words of greeting
+fairly trickled prune juice and honey.
+
+"Say, Doc, I got a load on my chest! I'm a strayed lamb and you being
+a sort of shepherd I turns to you," Bill began.
+
+"I trust you have not come in vain." The ex-missionary beamed
+benignly. "It has been my duty and my privilege to comfort the
+afflicted. What troubles you, William?"
+
+"There's a school of sharks in this village, and I don't trust 'em.
+They're too slick for a feller like me,"
+
+"It _is_ an ungodly place," the doctor agreed. "I have felt the call
+to work here, but my duties prevent. Of course I labor in the Lord's
+vineyard as I pass through, but--I am weak."
+
+"Me, too, and getting weaker daily." Bill summoned a hollow cough.
+"Listen to that hospital bark,' I gotta blow this place, Doc, or
+they'll button me up in a rosewood overcoat. I gotta sell Eclipse
+Creek and beat it." Again he coughed.
+
+"I am distressed. But why do you come here?"
+
+"I aim to sell out to you."
+
+"What is your price, William?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty thousand, cash."
+
+Slayforth lifted protesting palms. "My dear man--"
+
+"That's cheaper'n good advice, and you know it. I took out 'most that
+much last winter with a scowegian gang of six. Here's the bank's O.K.
+But I ain't got use for a lot of money, Doc. I wouldn't know how to
+run a vineyard like you do. All I want is a nice little corner saloon
+or a cattle ranch."
+
+"It is a large sum of money you ask. There is always an element of
+uncertainty about placer mining." Doctor Slayforth failed to conceal
+the gleam of avarice in his eyes.
+
+"Doc, take it from me; there ain't a particle of uncertainty about
+Eclipse Creek," Bill earnestly assured his hearer. "If I told you
+what's there you wouldn't believe me. But Thomas, he's got a gal and I
+got a cough. They both need attention, and he's the only guy that can
+give it. We're willing to hand you Eclipse Creek if you'll take it."
+
+There was considerable conversation, and a visit to Eclipse Creek, but
+the doctor, it proved, was willing to take any good bargain, and a few
+days later the transfer was made. When the larger part of Slayforth's
+winter's clean-up had changed hands the two partners adjourned to
+Thomas's little office.
+
+"Well!" The physician heaved a deep sigh of relief. "It's all over,
+and--I feel as if I were dreaming."
+
+"The _Oregon_ sails to-morrow. It's time to stomp on the fire."
+
+"I--I wonder if we were wise to sell out at that price," the doctor
+mused, doubtfully.
+
+"You lay a bet on it, bo. Something tells me that soul-saver will go
+bust on Eclipse Creek. I got a hunch that way." Mr. Hyde's seamy face
+wrinkled into a broad grin.
+
+"Well, I've more faith in your hunches than I used to have. You've
+been a good friend, Bill, and a square one." The speaker choked, then
+wrung his partner's hand. "I've cabled Alice to meet us. I want you to
+know her and--I want her to see that I cured you, after all."
+
+"I'd admire to meet her, but my taste has allus run more to
+brunettes," said Mr. Hyde. Then, since he abhorred emotional display,
+he continued, briskly: "Now call the dog. I'm off to buy our duckets."
+
+Laughing Bill purchased three tickets instead of two, then he went in
+search of Ponatah. It so chanced that he found her alone. Now neither
+he nor any other man had ever called upon her, therefore she was
+dumfounded at his coming.
+
+"Well, Kid," he announced, "me 'n' the Doc have sold Eclipse Creek,
+and we bow out tomorrow on the big smoke."
+
+Ponatah opened her lips, but no sound issued. She possessed a strong
+young body, but the strength, the life, seemed suddenly to go out of
+it, leaving her old and spiritless.
+
+"Got a kind word for us?" the man inquired, with a twinkle.
+
+"I'm glad you struck it rich," she murmured, dully. "You--you'll take
+care of yourself, Billy?"
+
+"Who, me? I don't s'pose so. I don't know how to take care of
+nothing." There was a moment of silence. "Like me?" he asked.
+
+Ponatah turned away blindly, but as she did so Laughing Bill put his
+hand gently upon her shoulder, saying:
+
+"Cheer up, Kid. You're going to join the troupe. I've come to get
+you."
+
+There was amazement, incredulity, in the girl's face as she lifted it
+to his. "What do you--mean?" she quavered. "Are you going to--marry
+me?"
+
+"You guessed it!" he laughed. "I been aiming to put up that job on you
+for a long time, but I had a lot of deals on my hands. I was a sort
+of power-of-attorney for a coupla simps, and it kept me busy. If
+you think the two of us can do with three lungs, why, we'll grab a
+psalm-shouter and--"
+
+"Billy! Billy!" Ponatah clung to him fiercely, hungrily. "Oh,
+Billy--I'll make you well. We'll go to Arizona, Colorado,
+Montana--where it is high and dry--"
+
+"I been to them places," he told her, dubiously, "and I 'most stopped
+breathing altogether."
+
+"New Mexico, then. You won't be ashamed of me there."
+
+"Say, Kid! I wouldn't be ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico.
+But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it
+I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she
+stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to
+time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do
+with me as you will; grab your lid; we'll join hands and be soldered
+up."
+
+Laughing Bill stared after the girl as she hurried away; musingly he
+said: "The little Doc got in on no pair, for it was all her coin, of
+course. But she'd 'a' had to split, fifty-fifty, with a lawyer, so it
+ain't a bad deal all around."
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTH WIND'S MALICE
+
+
+It had snowed during the night, but toward morning it had grown cold;
+now the sled-runners complained and the load dragged heavily. Folsom,
+who had been heaving at the handle-bars all the way up the Dexter
+Creek hill, halted his dogs at the crest and dropped upon the sled,
+only too glad of a breathing spell. His forehead was wet with sweat;
+when it began to freeze in his eyebrows he removed his mittens and
+wiped away the drops, then watched them congeal upon his fingers.
+Yes, it was all of thirty below, and a bad morning to hit the trail,
+but--Folsom's face set itself--better thirty below in the open than
+the frigid atmosphere of an unhappy home.
+
+Harkness, who had led the way up the hill, plodded onward for a time
+before discovering that his companion had paused; then, through the
+ring of hoar frost around his parka hood, he called back:
+
+"I'll hike down to the road-house and warm up."
+
+Folsom made no answer, he did not even turn his head. Taciturnity was
+becoming a habit with him, and already he was beginning to dislike his
+new partner. For that matter he disliked everybody this morning.
+
+Below him lay the level tundra, merging indistinguishably with the
+white anchor-ice of Behring Sea; beyond that a long black streak of
+open water, underscoring the sky as if to emphasize the significance
+of that empty horizon, a horizon which for many months would remain
+unsmudged by smoke. To Folsom it seemed that the distant stretch of
+dark water was like a prison wall, barring the outside world from him
+and the other fools who had elected to stay "inside."
+
+Fools? Yes; they were all fools!
+
+Folsom was a "sour-dough." He had seen the pranks that Alaskan winters
+play with men and women, he had watched the alteration in minds and
+morals made by the Arctic isolation, and he had considered himself
+proof against the malice that rides the north wind--the mischief that
+comes with the winter nights. He had dared to put faith in his perfect
+happiness, thinking himself different from other men and Lois superior
+to other wives, wherefore he now called himself a fool!
+
+Sprawled beside the shore, five miles away, was Nome, its ugliness of
+corrugated iron, rough boards, and tar paper somewhat softened by the
+distance. From the jumble of roofs he picked out one and centered his
+attention upon it. It was his roof--or had been. He wondered, with a
+sudden flare of wrathful indignation, if Lois would remember that fact
+during his absence. But he banished this evil thought. Lois had pride,
+there was nothing common about her; he could not believe that she
+would affront the proprieties. It was to spare that very pride of
+hers, even more than his own, that he had undertaken this adventure to
+the Kobuk; and now, as he looked back upon Nome, he told himself that
+he was acting handsomely in totally eliminating himself, thus allowing
+her time and freedom in which to learn her heart. He hoped that before
+his return she would have chosen between him and the other man.
+
+It was too cold to remain idle long. Folsom's damp body began
+to chill, so he spoke to his team and once more heaved upon the
+handle-bars.
+
+Leaving the crest of the ridge behind, the dogs began to run; they
+soon brought up in a tangle at the road-house door. When Harkness
+did not appear in answer to his name Folsom entered, to find his
+trail-mate at the bar, glass in hand.
+
+"Put that down!" Folsom ordered, sharply.
+
+Harkness did precisely that, then he turned, wiping his lips with
+the back of his hand. He was a small, fox-faced man; with a grin he
+invited the new-comer to "have one."
+
+"Don't you know better than to drink on a day like this?" the latter
+demanded.
+
+"Don't worry about me. I was raised on 'hootch,'" said Harkness.
+
+"It's bad medicine."
+
+"Bah! I'll travel further drunk than--" Harkness measured his critic
+with an insolent eye--"than some folks sober." He commenced to warm
+himself at the stove, whereupon the other cried, impatiently:
+
+"Come along. We can't stop at every cabin."
+
+But Harkness was in no hurry, he consumed considerable time. When
+he finally followed Folsom out into the air the latter, being in a
+peculiarly irritable mood, warned him in a voice which shook with
+anger:
+
+"We're going to start with an understanding. If you take another drink
+during the daytime I'll leave you flat."
+
+"Rats! How you aim to get to the Kobuk without me?" asked Harkness.
+
+"I'll manage somehow."
+
+The smaller man shot a startled glance at the speaker, then his
+insolence vanished. "All right, old top," he said, easily. "But don't
+cut off your nose to spite your face. Remember, I promised if you'd
+stick to me you'd wear gold-beaded moccasins." He set off at a trot,
+with the dogs following.
+
+This fellow Harkness had come with the first snow into Nome, bearing
+news of a strike on the Kobuk, and despite his braggadocio he had made
+rather a good impression. That luck which favors fools and fakers had
+guided him straight to Folsom. He had appeared at a psychological
+moment in the latter's affairs, two disastrous seasons having almost
+broken Folsom and rendered him eager to grasp at anything which
+promised quick returns; moreover, the latter had just had a serious
+quarrel with his wife. Harkness had offered a half interest in his
+Kobuk claims for a grubstake and a working partner, and, smarting
+under the unaccustomed sting of domestic infelicity, the other had
+accepted, feeling sure in his own mind that Lois would not let him
+leave her when the time came to go. But the time had come, and Lois
+had offered no objection. She had acted strangely, to be sure, but she
+had made no effort to dissuade him. It seemed as if the proposal to
+separate for the winter had offended rather than frightened her. Well,
+that was the way with women; there was no pleasing them; when you
+tried to do the decent thing by them they pretended to misunderstand
+your motives. If you paid them the compliment of utter confidence they
+abused it on the pretext that you didn't love them; if you allowed
+your jealousy to show, they were offended at your lack of trust.
+
+So ran the husband's thoughts. He hoped that six months of widowhood
+would teach Lois her own mind, but it hurt to hit the trail with
+nothing more stimulating than a listless kiss and a chill request to
+write when convenient. Now that he was on his way he began to think of
+the pranks played by malicious nature during the long, dark nights,
+and to wonder if he had acted wisely in teaming up with this footless
+adventurer. He remembered the malice that rides the winter winds, the
+mischief that comes to Arctic widows, and he grew apprehensive.
+
+The travelers put up that night at the Tin Road-house, a comfortless
+shack sheathed with flattened kerosene cans, and Folsom's irritation
+at his new partner increased, for Harkness was loud, boastful, and
+blatantly egotistical, with the egotism that accompanies dense
+ignorance.
+
+The weather held cold, the snow remained as dry as sand, so they made
+slow progress, and the husband had ample time to meditate upon his
+wrongs, but the more he considered them the less acutely they smarted
+him and the gentler became his thoughts of Lois. The solitudes were
+healing his hurt, the open air was cooling his anger.
+
+At Kougarok City, a miserable huddle of cottonwood cabins, Harkness
+escaped his partner's watchful eye and got drunk. Folsom found the
+fellow clinging to the bar and entertaining a crowd of loafers with
+his absurd boastings. In a white fury he seized the wretch, dragged
+him from the room, and flung him into his bunk, then stood guard over
+him most of the night.
+
+It was during the quieter hours when the place rumbled to snores that
+Folsom yielded to his desire to write his wife, a desire which had
+been growing steadily. He was disgusted with Harkness, disappointed
+with the whole Kobuk enterprise, and in a peculiarly softened mood,
+therefore, he wrote with no attempt to conceal his yearning, homesick
+tenderness.
+
+But when he read the letter in the morning it struck him as weak and
+sentimental, just the sort of letter he would regret having written if
+it should transpire that Lois did not altogether share his feelings.
+So he tore it up.
+
+Those were the days of faint trails and poor accommodations; as yet
+the road to the Arctic was little traveled and imperfectly known, so
+Harkness acted as guide. He had bragged that he knew every inch of the
+country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and
+faulty--a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and
+no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to
+fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed
+him with it, but Harkness scoffed at the idea.
+
+Leaving the last road-house behind them, they came into a hilly
+section of great white domes, high hog-backs, and ramifying creeks,
+each one exactly like its neighbor; two days' travel through this,
+according to Harkness, should have brought them to the Imnachuck,
+where there was food and shelter again. But when they pitched camp for
+the second night Folsom felt compelled to remind his partner that they
+were behind their schedule, and that this was the last of their grub.
+
+"Are you sure you're going right?" he inquired.
+
+"Sure? Of course I'm sure. D'you think I'm lost?"
+
+Folsom fed some twisted willow-tops into the sheet-iron stove. "I
+wouldn't recommend you as a pathfinder," said he. "You said we'd sleep
+out one night. This is two, and to-morrow we'll walk hungry."
+
+"Well, don't blame me!" challenged the other. "I'm going slow on your
+account."
+
+Now nothing could have galled Folsom more than a reflection upon
+his ability to travel. His lips whitened, he was upon the point of
+speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's
+personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled
+against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little
+coxcomb by the throat and squeeze the arrogance out of him as juice is
+squeezed out of a lemon. There is flesh for which one's fingers itch.
+
+"I notice you're ready to camp when I am," the larger man muttered.
+"Understand, this is no nice place to be without grub, for it's liable
+to storm any hour, and storms last at this season."
+
+"Now don't get cold feet." Harkness could be maddeningly patronizing
+when he chose. "Leave it to me. I'll take you a short cut, and we'll
+eat lunch in a cabin to-morrow noon."
+
+But noon of the next day found Harkness still plodding up the river
+with the dogs close at his heels. The hills to the northward were
+growing higher, and Folsom's general knowledge of direction told him
+that they were in danger of going too far.
+
+"I think the Imnachuck is over there," said he.
+
+Harkness hesitated, then he nodded: "Right-o! It's just over that
+low saddle." He indicated a sweeping hillside ahead, and a half-mile
+further on he left the creek and began to climb. This was heavy work
+for the dogs, and mid-afternoon came before the partners had gained
+the summit only to discover that they were not upon a saddleback
+after all, but upon the edge of a vast rolling tableland from which a
+fanlike system of creeks radiated. In all directions was a desolate
+waste of barren peaks.
+
+Folsom saw that the sky ahead was thick and dark, as if a storm
+impended, and realizing only too well the results of the slightest
+error in judgment he called to Harkness. But the latter pretended
+not to hear, and took advantage of the dogs' fatigue to hurry out of
+earshot. It was some time before the team overhauled him.
+
+"Do you know where you are?" Folsom inquired.
+
+"Certainly." Harkness studied the panorama spread before him. "That
+blue gulch yonder is the Imnachuck." He pointed to a valley perhaps
+four miles away.
+
+A fine snow began to sift downward. The mountain peaks to the
+northward became obscured as by thin smoke, the afternoon shortened
+with alarming swiftness. Night, up here with a blizzard brewing, was
+unthinkable, so after a while the driver called another halt.
+
+"Something informs me that you're completely lost," he said, mildly.
+
+"Who, me? There she is." Harkness flung out a directing hand once
+more.
+
+Folsom hesitated, battling with his leaping desires, and upon that
+momentary hesitation hinged results out of all proportions to the
+gravity of the situation--issues destined to change the deepest
+channels of his life. Folsom hesitated, then he yielded to his
+impulse, and the luxury of yielding made him drunk. He walked around
+the sled, removing his mittens with his teeth as he went. Without a
+word he seized his companion by the throat and throttled him until his
+eyes protruded and his face grew black and bloated. He relaxed his
+stiff fingers finally, then he shook the fellow back to consciousness.
+
+"Just as I thought," he cried, harshly. "That's not the gulch you
+pointed out before. You're lost and you won't admit it."
+
+Harkness pawed the air and fought for his breath. There was abject
+terror in his eyes. He reeled away, but saw there was no safety in
+flight.
+
+"Own up!" Folsom commanded.
+
+"You--said this was the way," the pathfinder whimpered. "You made
+me--turn off--" Folsom uttered a growl and advanced a step, whereupon
+his victim gurgled: "D-don't touch me! That's the Imnachuck, so help
+me God! I'm--I'm almost sure it is."
+
+"_Almost_!" The speaker stooped for his mittens and shook the snow out
+of them; he was still struggling to control himself. "Look here, Mr.
+Know-It-All, I've never been here before, and you have; somewhere in
+your thick skull there must be some faint remembrance of the country.
+You got us into this fix, and I'm going to give you one more chance
+to get us out of it. Don't try to think with your head, let your feet
+think for you, and maybe they'll carry you to the right gulch. If they
+don't--" Folsom scanned the brooding heavens and his lips compressed.
+"We're in for a storm and--we'll never weather it. Take one look while
+there's light to see by, then turn your feet loose and pray that they
+lead you right, for if they don't, by God, I'll cut you loose!"
+
+It soon proved that memory lay neither in Harkness's head nor in his
+feet; when he had veered aimlessly about for half an hour, evidently
+fearing to commit himself to a definite course, and when the wind came
+whooping down, rolling a twilight smother ahead of it, Folsom turned
+his dogs into the nearest depression and urged them to a run. The
+grade increased, soon brittle willow-tops brushed against the speeding
+sled: this brush grew higher as the two men, blinded now by the gale,
+stumbled onward behind the team. They emerged from the gulch into a
+wider valley, after a while, and a mile further on the dogs burst
+through a grove of cottonwoods and fetched up before a lighted cabin
+window.
+
+Harkness pulled back his parka hood and cried, boastfully: "What did I
+tell you? I knew where I was all the time." Then he went in, leaving
+his partner to unhitch the team and care for it.
+
+Friendships ripen and enmities deepen quickly on the trail, seeds of
+discord sprout and flourish in the cold. Folsom's burst of temper had
+served to inflame a mutual dislike, and as he and Harkness journeyed
+northward that dislike deepened into something akin to hatred, for the
+men shared the same bed, drank from the same pot, endured the same
+exasperations. Nothing except their hope of mutual profit held
+them together. In our careless search for cause and effect we are
+accustomed to attribute important issues to important happenings,
+amazing consequences to amazing deeds; as a matter of fact it is the
+trivial action, the little thing, the thing unnoticed and forgotten
+which bends our pathways and makes or breaks us.
+
+Harkness was a hare-brained, irresponsible person, incapable of
+steadiness in thought or action, too weak to cherish actual hatred,
+too changeable to nurse a lasting grudge. It is with such frail
+instruments that prankish fate delights to work, and, although he
+never suspected it, the luxury of yielding to that sudden gust of
+passion cost Folsom dear.
+
+Arrived finally at the Kobuk the miner examined the properties covered
+by his option, and impressed by the optimism of the men who had made
+the gold discovery he paid Harkness the price agreed upon. The deal
+completed, he sent the fellow back to Candle Creek, the nearest
+post, for supplies. Folsom's mood had altogether changed by now, so,
+strangling his last doubt of Lois, he wrote her as he had written at
+Kougarok City, and intrusted the letter to his associate.
+
+Harkness, promptly upon his arrival at Candle, got drunk. He stayed
+drunk for three days, and it was not until he was well started on his
+way back to the Kobuk that he discovered Folsom's letter still in his
+pocket.
+
+Now, to repeat, the man was not malicious, neither was he bad, but as
+he debated whether he should back-track there came to him the memory
+of his humiliation on the Imnachuck divide.
+
+So! His brains were in his feet, eh? Folsom had strangled him until he
+kicked, when, all the time, they had been on the right trail. Harkness
+felt a flash of rage, like the flare of loose gunpowder, and in the
+heat of it he tore the letter to atoms. It was a womanish, spiteful
+thing to do, and he regretted it, but later when he greeted the
+husband he lied circumstantially and declared he had given the missive
+into the hands of the mail-carrier on the very hour of his departure.
+By this time, doubtless, it was nearly to Nome. Soon thereafter
+Harkness forgot all about the incident.
+
+Folsom was a fast worker. He hired men and cross-cut the most
+promising claim. Bed-rock was shallow, and he soon proved it to be
+barren, so he went on to the next property. When he had prospected
+this claim with no better results than before he wrote his wife
+confessing doubts of the district and voicing the fear that his
+winter's work would be wasted. Again he let his pen run as it would;
+the letter he gave to a neighbor who was leaving for Candle Creek in
+the morning.
+
+Folsom's neighbor was a famous "musher," a seasoned, self-reliant man,
+thoroughly accustomed to all the hazards of winter travel, but ten
+miles from his destination he crossed an inch-deep overflow which
+rendered the soles of his muk-luks slippery, and ten yards further on,
+where the wind had laid the glare-ice bare, he lost his footing. He
+fell and wrenched his ankle and came hobbling into Candle half an hour
+after the monthly mail for Nome had left.
+
+Three weeks later Folsom wrote his wife for the third time, and again
+a month after that. All three letters joined company in Candle Creek;
+for meanwhile the mail-man's lead dog had been killed in a fight with
+a big malamute at Lane's Landing, causing its owner to miss a trip.
+Now dog-fights are common; by no logic could one attribute weighty
+results to the loss of a sixty-pound leader, but in this instance it
+so happened that the mail-carrier's schedule suffered so that his
+contract was canceled.
+
+Meanwhile a lonely woman waited anxiously in Nome, and as the result
+of a stranger's spite, a wet muk-luk, and a vicious malamute her
+anxiety turned to bitterness and distrust.
+
+It is never difficult to forward mail in the north, for every "musher"
+is a postman. When news came to Candle Creek that the Government
+service had been discontinued the storekeeper, one end of whose bar
+served as post-office, sacked his accumulated letters and intrusted
+them to some friends who were traveling southward on the morrow. The
+trader was a canny man, but he loved to gamble, so when his friends
+offered to bet him that they could lower the record from Candle to
+Nome he went out into the night, sniffed the air and studied the
+stars, then laid them a hundred dollars that they could not.
+
+Excited to recklessness by this wager the volunteer mail-men cut
+down their load. They left their stove and tent and grub-box behind,
+planning to make a road-house every night except during the long jump
+from the Imnachuck to Crooked River. They argued that it was worth a
+hundred dollars to sleep once under the open sky.
+
+The fruits of that sporting enterprise were bitter; the trader won his
+bet, but he never cashed it in. Somewhere out on the high barrens a
+storm swooped down upon the travelers. To one who has never faced an
+Arctic hurricane it seems incredible that strong men have died within
+call of cozy cabins or have frozen with the lashings of their sleds
+but half untied. Yet it is true. The sudden awful cold, the shouting
+wind, the boiling, blinding, suffocating rush of snow; the sweaty
+clothes that harden into jointless armor; the stiff mittens and the
+clumsy hands inside--these tell a tale to those who know.
+
+The two mail-carriers managed to get into their sleeping-bags, but the
+gale, instead of drifting them over with a protective mantle of snow,
+scoured the mountain-side bare to the brittle reindeer moss, and they
+began to freeze where they lay. Some twenty hours they stood it, then
+they rose and plunged ahead of the hurricane like bewildered cattle.
+The strongest man gave up first and lay down, babbling of things
+to eat. His companion buried him, still alive, and broke down the
+surrounding willow-tops for a landmark, then he staggered on. By some
+miracle of good luck, or as a result of some unsuspected power of
+resistance, he finally came raving into the Crooked River Road-house.
+When the wind subsided they hurried him to Nome, but he was
+frightfully maimed and as a result of his amputations he lay gabbling
+until long after the spring break-up.
+
+Folsom did not write again. In fact, when no word came from Lois, he
+bitterly regretted the letters he had written. He heard indirectly
+from her; new-comers from Nome told him that she was well, but that
+was all. It was enough. He did not wish to learn more.
+
+Spring found him with barely enough money to pay his way back. He was
+blue, bitter, disheartened, but despite the certainty that his
+wife had forsaken him he still cherished a flickering hope of a
+reconciliation. Strangely enough he considered no scheme of vengeance
+upon the other man, for he was sane and healthy, and he loved Lois too
+well to spoil her attempt at happiness.
+
+It so happened that the Arctic ice opened up later this spring than
+for many seasons; therefore the short summer was well under way before
+the first steam-schooner anchored off the Kobuk. Folsom turned his
+back upon the wreck of his high hopes, his mind solely engaged with
+the problem of how to meet Lois and ascertain the truth without undue
+embarrassment to her and humiliation to himself. The prospect of
+seeing her, of touching her, of hearing her voice, affected him
+painfully. He could neither eat nor sleep on the way to Nome, but
+paced the deck in restless indecision. He had come to consider himself
+wholly to blame for their misunderstanding, and he wished only for a
+chance to win back her love, with no questions asked and no favors
+granted.
+
+When there were less than fifty miles to go the steamer broke her
+shaft. There was no particular reason why that shaft should break,
+but break it did, and for eighteen hours--eighteen eternities to
+Folsom--the ship lay crippled while its engine-room crew labored
+manfully.
+
+Folsom had been so long in the solitudes that Nome looked like a
+big city when he finally saw it. There were several ships in the
+roadstead, and one of them was just leaving as the Kobuk boat came to
+anchor. She made a splendid sight as she gathered way.
+
+The returning miner went ashore in the first dory and as he stepped
+out upon the sand a friend greeted him:
+
+"Hello there, old settler! Where you been all winter?"
+
+"I've been to the Kobuk," Folsom told him.
+
+"Kobuk? I hear she's a bum."
+
+"'Bum' is right. Maybe she'll do to dredge some day."
+
+"Too bad you missed the _Oregon_; there she goes now." The man pointed
+seaward.
+
+"Too bad?"
+
+"Sure! Don't you know? Why, Miz Folsom went out on her!"
+
+Folsom halted; after a momentary pause he repeated, vaguely, "Went
+out?"
+
+"Exactly. Didn't you know she was going?"
+
+"Oh yes--of course! The _Oregon_!" Folsom stared at the fading plume
+of black smoke; there was a curious brightness in his eyes, his face
+was white beneath its tan. "She sailed on the _Oregon_ and I missed
+her, by an hour! That broken shaft--" He began to laugh, and turning
+his back upon the sea he plodded heavily through the sand toward the
+main street.
+
+Folsom found no word from his wife, his house was empty; but he
+learned that "the man" had also gone to the States, and he drew his
+own conclusions. Since Lois had ordered her life as she saw fit there
+was nothing to do but wait and endure--doubtless the divorce would
+come in time. Nevertheless, he could not think of that broken shaft
+without raving.
+
+Being penniless he looked for work, and his first job came from a
+small Jewish merchant, named Guth, who offered him a hundred dollars
+to do the assessment work on a tundra claim. For twenty days Folsom
+picked holes through frozen muck, wondering why a thrifty person like
+Guth would pay good money to hold such unpromising property as this.
+
+The claim was in sight of Nome, and as Folsom finished his last day's
+labor he heard bells ringing and whistles blowing and discovered that
+the town was ablaze. He hurried in to find that an entire block in
+the business center of the city had been destroyed and with it Guth's
+little store, including all its contents. He found the Jew in tears.
+
+"What a misfortune!" wailed the merchant. "Ruined, absolutely--and by
+a match! It started in my store--my little girl, you understand?
+And now, all gone!" He tore his beard and the tears rolled down his
+cheeks.
+
+The little man's grief was affecting, and so Folsom inquired more
+gently than he intended, "I'm sorry, of course, but how about my money
+for the Lulu assessment?"
+
+"Money? There's your money!" Guth pointed sadly into the smoldering
+ruins. "Go find it--you're welcome to anything I have left. Gott! What
+a country! How can a man get ahead, with no insurance?"
+
+Folsom laughed mirthlessly. His hard luck was becoming amusing and
+he wondered how long it would last. He had counted on that hundred
+dollars to get away from Nome, hoping to shake misfortune from his
+heels, but a match in the hands of a child, like that broken propeller
+shaft, had worked havoc with his plans. Well, it was useless to cry.
+
+To the despairing Hebrew he said: "Don't lose your grip, old man. Buck
+up and take another start. You have your wife and your little girl, at
+least, and you're the sort who makes good."
+
+"You think so?" Guth looked up, grateful for the first word of
+encouragement he had heard.
+
+"It's a cinch! Only don't lose your courage."
+
+"I--I'll do what's right by you, Mr. Folsom," declared the other.
+"I'll deed you a half interest in the Lulu."
+
+But Folsom shook his head. "I don't want it. There's nothing there
+except moss and muck and salmon berries, and it's a mile to bed-rock.
+No, you're welcome to my share; maybe you can sell the claim for
+enough to make a new start or to buy grub for the wife and the kid.
+I'll look for another job."
+
+For a month or more the lonesome husband "stevedored," wrestling
+freight on the lighters, then he disappeared. He left secretly, in the
+night, for by now he had grown fanciful and he dared to hope that he
+could dodge his Nemesis. He turned up in Fairbanks, a thousand miles
+away, and straightway lost himself in the hills.
+
+He had not covered his tracks, however, for bad luck followed him.
+
+Now no man starves in Alaska, for there is always work for the
+able-bodied; but whatever Folsom turned his hand to failed, and by and
+by his courage went. He had been a man of consequence in Nome; he
+had made money and he had handled other men, therefore his sense of
+failure was the bitterer.
+
+Meanwhile, somewhere in him there remained the ghost of his faith
+in Lois, the faintly flickering hope that some day they would come
+together again. It lay dormant in him, like an irreligious man's
+unacknowledged faith in God and a hereafter, but it, too, vanished
+when he read in a Seattle newspaper, already three months old, the
+announcement of his wife's divorce. He flinched when he read that it
+had been won on the grounds of desertion, and thereafter he shunned
+newspapers.
+
+Spring found him broke, as usual. He had become bad company and men
+avoided him. It amused him grimly to learn that a new strike had been
+made in Nome, the biggest discovery in the camp's history, and to
+realize that he had fled just in time to miss the opportunity of
+profiting by it. He heard talk of a prehistoric sea-beach line, a
+streak of golden sands which paralleled the shore and lay hidden below
+the tundra mud. News came of overnight fortunes, of friends grown
+prosperous and mighty. Embittered anew, Folsom turned again to the
+wilderness, and he did not reappear until the summer was over. He came
+to town resolved to stay only long enough to buy bacon and beans, but
+he had lost his pocket calendar and arrived on a Sunday, when the
+stores were closed.
+
+Even so little a thing as the loss of that calendar loomed big in the
+light of later events, for in walking the streets he encountered a
+friend but just arrived from the Behring coast.
+
+The man recognized him, despite his beard and his threadbare mackinaws
+and they had a drink together.
+
+"I s'pose you heard about that Third Beach Line?" the new-comer
+inquired. Folsom nodded. "Well, they've opened it up for miles, and
+it's just a boulevard of solid gold. 'Cap' Carter's into it big, and
+so are the O'Brien boys and Old Man Hendricks. They're lousy with
+pay."
+
+"I did the work on a tundra claim," said Folsom; "the Lulu--"
+
+"The _Lulu_!" Folsom's friend stared at him. "Haven't you heard about
+the Lulu? My God! Where you been, anyhow? Why, the Lulu's a mint! Guth
+is a millionaire and he made it all without turning a finger."
+
+Folsom's grip on the bar-rail tightened until his knuckles were white.
+
+"I'm telling you right, old man; he's the luckiest Jew in the country.
+He let a lay to McCarthy and Olson, and they took out six hundred
+thousand dollars, after Christmas."
+
+"Guth offered me a--half interest in the Lulu when his store burned
+and--I turned it down. He's never paid me for that assessment work."
+
+The Nomeite was speechless with amazement. "The son-of-a-gun!" he
+said, finally. "Well, you can collect now. Say! That's what he meant
+when he told me he wanted to see you. Guth was down to the boat when I
+left, and he says: 'If you see Folsom up river tell him to come back.
+I got something for him.' Those were his very words. That little Jew
+aims to pay you a rotten hundred so you won't sue him for an interest.
+By Gorry, I wouldn't take it! I'd go back and make him do the right
+thing. I'd sue him. I'd bust him in the nose! A half interest--in the
+Lulu! My God!" The speaker gulped his drink hastily.
+
+After consideration, Folsom said: "He'll do the right thing. Guth
+isn't a bad sort."
+
+"No. But he's a Jew; trust him to get his."
+
+"I wouldn't ask him to do more than pay his debt. You see I refused
+his offer."
+
+"What of that? I'd give it a try, anyhow, and see if he wouldn't
+settle. There's lots of lawyers would take your case. But say, that's
+the toughest tough-luck story I ever heard. You've sure got a jinx on
+you."
+
+"I'm going back, but I won't sue Guth. I'm sick of Alaska; it has
+licked me. I'm going out to God's country."
+
+Folsom indeed acknowledged himself beaten. The narrow margin by which
+he had missed reward for his work and his hardships bred in him such
+hatred for Alaska that he abruptly changed his plans. He had no heart,
+perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all
+measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what
+straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken
+piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him
+payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by
+his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog,
+and the storekeeper's wager.
+
+Folsom carried cord-wood to pay for a deck passage down river. He
+discovered en route that Guth had really tried to get in touch with
+him, and in fact appeared greatly concerned over his failure to do so,
+for at Tanana he received another message, and again at St. Michaels.
+He was grimly amused at the little Jew's craftiness, yet it sorely
+offended him to think that any one should consider him such a welcher.
+He had no intention of causing trouble, for he knew he had no legal
+claim against the fellow, and he doubted if he possessed even a moral
+right to share in the Lulu's riches. To play upon the Hebrew's fears,
+therefore, savored of extortion. Nevertheless, he was in no agreeable
+frame of mind when he arrived at his destination and inquired for
+Guth.
+
+The new-made millionaire was in his office; Folsom walked in
+unannounced. He had expected his arrival to create a scene, and he was
+not disappointed. But Guth's actions were strange, they left the new
+arrival dazed, for the little man fell upon him with what appeared to
+be exuberant manifestations of joy.
+
+"Mr. Folsom!" he cried. "You have come! You got my letters, eh? Well,
+I wrote you everywhere, but I was in despair, for I thought you must
+be dead. Nobody knew what had become of you."
+
+"I got your message in Fairbanks."
+
+"You heard about the Lulu, eh? Gott! She's a dandy."
+
+"Yes. I can hardly believe it. So, you're rich. Well, I congratulate
+you, and now I can use that hundred."
+
+Guth chuckled. "Ha! You will have your joke, eh? But the Lulu is no
+joke. Come, we will go to the bank; I want them to tell you how much
+she has yielded. You'll blame me for leasing her, but how was I to
+know what she was?"
+
+"I--Why should I blame--" Folsom stared at the speaker. "It's none of
+my business what the Lulu has yielded. In fact, I'll sleep better if I
+don't know."
+
+Little Guth paused and his mouth opened. After a moment he inquired,
+curiously: "Don't you understand?" There was another pause, then he
+said, quietly, "I'm a man of my word."
+
+Folsom suddenly saw black, the room began to spin, he passed his hand
+across his eyes. "Wait! Let's get this straight," he whispered.
+
+"It is all very simple," Guth told him. "We are equal partners in
+the Lulu--we have been, ever since the day my store burned. It was a
+little thing you said to me then, but the way you said it, the fact
+that you didn't blame me, gave me new heart. Did you think I'd renig?"
+When Folsom found no answer the other nodded slowly. "I see. You
+probably said, 'That Guth is a Jew and he'll do me up if he can.'
+Well, I am a Jew, yes, and I am proud of it; but I am an honest man,
+too, like you."
+
+Folsom turned to the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm,
+but with his other hand he groped for that of the Hebrew.
+
+The story of the Lulu is history now; in all the north that mine is
+famous, for it made half a dozen fortunes. In a daze, half doubting
+the reality of things, Folsom watched a golden stream pour into his
+lap. All that winter and the next summer the Lulu yielded wondrously,
+but one of the partners was not happy, his thoughts being ever of the
+woman who had left him. Prosperity gave him courage, however, and when
+he discovered that Lois had not remarried he determined to press his
+luck as a gambler should.
+
+When the second season's sluicing was over and the ground had frozen
+he went outside.
+
+The day after he sailed Lois arrived in Nome, on the last boat. She
+was older, graver; she had heard of the Lulu, but it was not that
+which had brought her back. She had returned in spite of the Lulu to
+solve an aching mystery and to learn the why of things. Her husband's
+riches--she still considered him her husband--merely made the task
+more trying.
+
+Advised that Folsom had passed almost within hailing distance of her,
+she pressed her lips together and took up her problem of living. The
+prospect of another lonely Alaskan winter frightened her, and yet
+because of the Lulu she could not return by the ship she had come on.
+Now that Folsom was a Croesus she could not follow him too closely--he
+might misunderstand. After all, she reflected, it mattered little to
+her where she lived.
+
+Guth called at her cabin, but she managed to avoid seeing him, and
+somehow continued to avoid a meeting.
+
+Late in December some travelers from Candle Creek, while breaking a
+short cut to the head of Crooked River, came upon an abandoned sled
+and its impedimenta. Snow and rain and summer sun had bleached its
+wood, its runners were red streaks of rust, its rawhide lashings had
+been eaten off, but snugly rolled inside the tarpaulin was a sack
+of mail. This mail the travelers brought in with them, and the Nome
+newspapers, in commenting upon the find, reprinted the story of that
+tragic fight for life in the Arctic hurricane, now almost forgotten.
+
+Folsom's three letters reached their destination on Christmas Day.
+They were stained and yellow and blurred in places, for they were
+three years old, but the woman read them with eyes wide and wondering,
+and with heart-beats pounding, for it seemed that dead lips spoke to
+her. Ten minutes later she was standing at Guth's door, and when he
+let her in she behaved like one demented. She had the letters hidden
+in her bosom, and she would not let him see them, but she managed to
+make known the meaning of her coming.
+
+"You know him," she cried, hysterically. "You made him rich. You've
+lived alongside of him. Tell me then, has he--has he--changed? These
+letters are old. Does he still care, or--does he hate me, as he
+should?"
+
+Guth smiled; he took her shaking hands in his, his voice was gentle.
+"No, no! He doesn't hate you. He has never mentioned your name to me,
+or to any one else, so far as I know, but his money hasn't satisfied
+him. He is sad, and he wants you. That is what took him to the States,
+I'm sure."
+
+Lois sank into a chair, her face was white, her twisting fingers
+strained at each other. "I can't understand. I can't make head or tail
+of it," she moaned. "It seems that I wronged him, but see what ruin he
+has made for me! Why? Why--?"
+
+"Who can understand the 'why' of anything?" inquired the little
+Hebrew. "I've heard him curse the perversity of little things, and
+rave at what he called the 'malice of the north wind.' I didn't dare
+to ask him what he meant, but I knew he was thinking of the evil which
+had come between you two. Who was to blame, or what separated you, he
+never told me. Well, his bad luck has changed, and yours, too; and I'm
+happy. Now then, the wireless. You can talk to him. Let us go."
+
+An hour later a crackling message was hurled into the empty Christmas
+sky, a message that pulsed through the voids, was relayed over ice and
+brine and drifted forests to a lonely, brooding man three thousand
+miles away.
+
+The answer came rushing back:
+
+"Thank God! Am starting north tomorrow. Love and a million kisses.
+Wait for me."
+
+Folsom came. Neither ice nor snow, neither winter seas nor trackless
+wastes, could daunt him, for youth was in his heart and fire ran
+through his veins. North and west he came by a rimy little steamer, as
+fast as coal could drive her, then overland more than fifteen hundred
+miles. His record stands unbroken, and in villages from Katmai to the
+Kuskokwim the Indians tell of the tall white man with the team of
+fifteen huskies who raced through as if a demon were at his heels; how
+he bored headlong into the blizzards and braved January's fiercest
+rage; how his guides dropped and his dogs died in their collars. That
+was how Folsom came.
+
+He was thin and brown, the marks of the frost were bitten deep into
+his flesh when, one evening in early March, he drove into Nome. He
+had covered sixty miles on the last day's run, and his team was
+staggering. He left the dogs in their harnesses, where they fell, and
+bounded through the high-banked streets to Lois's cabin.
+
+It was growing dark, a light gleamed from her window; Folsom glimpsed
+her moving about inside. He paused to rip the ice from his bearded
+lips, then he knocked softly, three times.
+
+As he stood there a gentle north wind fanned him. It was deadly cold,
+but it was fresh and clean and vastly invigorating. There was no
+malice in it.
+
+At his familiar signal he heard the clatter of a dish, dropped from
+nerveless fingers, he heard a startled voice cry out his name, then he
+pressed the latch and entered, smiling.
+
+
+
+
+HIS STOCK IN TRADE
+
+
+"The science of salesmanship is quite as exact as the science of
+astronomy," said Mr. Gross, casting his eyes down the table to see
+that he had the attention of the other boarders, "and much more
+intricate. The successful salesman is as much an artist in his line as
+the man who paints pictures or writes books."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing so artistic as writing books," protested Miss
+Harris, the manicurist. "Nothing except acting, perhaps. Actors are
+artistic, too. But salesmen! I meet lots in my business, and I'm not
+strong for them."
+
+Mr. Gross smiled at her indulgently; it was an expression that became
+him well, and he had rehearsed it often.
+
+"The power to sell goods is a talent, my dear Miss Harris, just like
+the power to invent machinery or to rule a city, or--or--to keep a set
+of books. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Green?"
+
+Mrs. Green, the landlady, a brown, gray woman in black, smiled
+frigidly. "You're _so_ original, Mr. Gross," said she, "it's a
+pleasure to hear you, I'm sure."
+
+Gross was an impressive talker, due to the fact that he plagiarized
+office platitudes; he ran on pompously, dropping trade mottoes and
+shop-worn bits of philosophy until young Mitchell, unable longer to
+endure the light of admiration he saw in Miss Harris's eyes, rolled
+up his napkin to the size of a croquette and interrupted by noisily
+shoving back his chair and muttering under his breath:
+
+"That stuff comes on printed cards. They give it away."
+
+Mrs. Green called to him, "It's bread pudding, Mr. Mitchell, and very
+nice."
+
+"Thanks! My gout is bad again," he said, at which some of the more
+frivolous-minded boarders snickered.
+
+"Mitchell is a bright boy--in many ways," Gross remarked, a moment
+later, "but he's too fresh. I don't think he'll last long at the
+office."
+
+Instead of climbing to his hall kennel on the fourth floor rear, Louis
+Mitchell went out upon the rusty little porch of the boarding-house
+and sat down on the topmost step, reflecting gloomily that a clerk has
+small chance against a head bookkeeper.
+
+Life at Mrs. Green's pension--she called it that, rates six dollars
+up, terms six dollars down--had not been the same for the youthful
+hermit of the hall bedroom since Gross had met him and Miss Harris in
+the park a few Sundays before and, falling under the witchery of the
+manicurist's violet eyes, had changed his residence to coincide with
+theirs. Gross now occupied one of the front rooms, and a corresponding
+place in the esteem of those less fortunate boarders to whom the mere
+contemplation of ten dollars a week was an extravagance. Mitchell had
+long adored the blonde manicurist, but once the same roof sheltered
+her and the magnificent head bookkeeper, he saw his dream of love and
+two furnished rooms with kitchenette go glimmering.
+
+Time was when Miss Harris had been content with Sundays in the park,
+vaudeville--first balcony--on Wednesdays, and a moving picture now and
+then. These lavish attentions, coupled with an occasional assault upon
+some delicatessen establishment, had satisfied her cravings for the
+higher life. Now that Gross had appeared and sown discord with his
+prodigality she no longer cared for animals and band concerts, she had
+acquired the orchestra-seat habit, had learned to dance, and, above
+all, she now possessed a subtle refinement in regard to victuals. She
+criticized Marlowe's acting, and complained that cold food gave her
+indigestion. No longer did she sit the summer evenings out with
+Mitchell, holding his hand in her lap and absent-mindedly buffing his
+nails, warning him in sweet familiarity that his cuticle was "growing
+down." In consequence of her defection, fierce resentment smoldered in
+the young man's breast. He was jealous; he longed to out-squander
+the extravagant Mr. Gross; he lusted to spend money in unstinted
+quantities, five dollars an evening if or when necessary.
+
+But there seemed little hope of his ever attaining such a purse-proud
+position, for while he loomed fairly large in the boarding-house
+atmosphere of Ohio Street--or had so loomed until the advent of the
+reckless bookkeeper--he was so small a part of the office force of
+Comer & Mathison, jobbers of railway supplies, as to resemble nothing
+multiplied by itself. He received twelve dollars a week, to be sure,
+for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times;
+but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his
+envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any
+office-boy who did not stutter could have held his job.
+
+When at seven forty-five Miss Harris appeared upon the porch with her
+hat and gloves and two-dollar-ticket air, and tripped gaily away in
+company with Mr. Gross, young Mitchell realized bitterly that the cost
+of living had increased and that it was up to him to raise his salary
+or lose his lady.
+
+He recalled Gross's words at supper-time, and wondered if there really
+could be a science to business; if there could be anything to success
+except hard work. Mr. Comer, in his weekly talks to the office
+force, had repeatedly said so--whence the origin of the bookkeeper's
+warmed-over wisdom--but Mitchell's duties were so simple and so
+constricted as to allow no opening for science, or so, at least, it
+seemed to him. How could he be scientific, how could he find play for
+genius when he sat at the end of a telephone wire and answered routine
+questions from a card? Every day the General Railway Sales Manager
+gave him a price-list of the commodities which C. & M. handled, and
+when an inquiry came over the 'phone all he was required, all he
+was permitted, to do was to read the figures and to quote time of
+delivery. If this resulted in an order the Sales Manager took the
+credit. An open quotation, on the other hand, made Mitchell the
+subject of brusque criticism for offering a target to competitors, and
+when he lost an order he was the goat, not the General Railway Sales
+Manager.
+
+No one around the office was too lowly to exact homage from the
+quotation clerk, and no one was tongue-tied in the matter of
+criticism, hence his position was neither one of dignity nor one
+that afforded scope for talent in the money-making line. And yet if
+salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must
+be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by
+acquiring it. What if he were buckled to the end of a wire? Human
+nature is the same, face to face or voice to voice; surely then, if
+he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere
+string of words over a telephone. Heretofore he had been working
+wholly with his fingers, his ear-drums, and his vocal cords; he
+determined henceforth to exercise his intelligence, if he had any. It
+was indeed high time, for Miss Harris was undoubtedly slipping away,
+lured by luxuries no clerk could afford, and, moreover, he, Mitchell,
+was growing old; in a scant two years he would be able to vote. He
+began forthwith to analyze the situation.
+
+There wasn't much to it. His telephone calls came almost wholly
+from the purchasing departments of the various railroads. Daily
+requisitions were filled by the stenographers in those railway
+offices, young ladies who through their long experience were allowed
+to attend to the more unimportant purchases. It was in quoting prices
+on these "pick-ups" that Mitchell helloed for eight hours a day.
+Of course no large orders ever came over his wire, but this small
+business carried an unusual profit for supply houses like Comer &
+Mathison, and in consequence it was highly prized.
+
+After a period of intense and painful thought the young man realized,
+for the first time, that it was not the telephone itself which asked
+for price and time of delivery, but a weak, imaginative human being,
+like himself, at the other end of the wire. He reasoned further that
+if he could convince that person that the voice from Conner & Mathison
+likewise issued from a human throat, then it might be possible to get
+away, in a measure at least, from the mechanical part of the business
+and establish altogether new relations. If there were really a
+science to salesmanship, it would work at long distance as well as at
+collar-and-elbow holds, and Mitchell's first task, therefore, should
+be to project his own personality into the railroad offices. He went
+to bed still trying to figure the matter out.
+
+His opportunity to test his new-born theory came on the following
+morning when an irritable female voice over at the Santa F� asked the
+price on twenty kegs of rivets.
+
+"Good morning, Santa Fe-male," he answered, cheerily.
+
+There was a moment of amazed silence, then the young lady snapped:
+"'Good morning'? What is this, the Weather Bureau? I want Comer &
+Mathison."
+
+"Gee! Can't a fellow display a little courtesy in business?" Mitchell
+inquired. "I'd rather be nice to you than not."
+
+"All right, Mr. Comer," the voice replied, sarcastically. "Make a nice
+price on those rivets--and cut out the kidding."
+
+"Listen; my name's not Comer; it's Mitchell. I'm not kidding, either.
+I want you to ask for me whenever you call up. Every little bit helps,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, I see. You want the carriage man to call your number. All right,
+Mitch. If you're out at lunch with Mr. Carnegie the next time I want a
+dozen number ten sheets I'll have you paged at the Union League Club."
+
+If the speaker liked this kind of blank verse, she had called up the
+right supply house, for Mitchell came back with:
+
+"Say, if I ever get _your_ number, I'll do the calling, Miss Santa
+F�."
+
+"_W-what_?" came the startled reply.
+
+"I mean what I say. I'd love to call--"
+
+"Is that so? Well, I do all the calling for our, family, and I'm going
+to call you right now. What's the price of those rivets?"
+
+"Two sixty-five."
+
+"Too high! Good-by."
+
+"Wait a minute." Mitchell checked the lady before she could "plug out"
+on him. "Now that you've got those rivets out of your system, may I
+get personal for an instant?"
+
+"Just about an instant."
+
+"I could listen to _you_ all day."
+
+"Oops, Horace; he loves me!" mocked the lady's voice.
+
+"See here, I'm a regular person--with references. I've been talking to
+you every day for six months, so I feel that we're acquainted. Some
+pleasant evening, when your crew of hammock gladiators palls on you,
+let me come around and show you the difference."
+
+"What difference?"
+
+"I'll show you what a real porch-climber is like."
+
+"Indeed! I'll think it over."
+
+Ten minutes later Miss Santa Fe called up again.
+
+"Hello! I want Mitchell, the junior partner."
+
+"This is Mitchell."
+
+"Did you say those rivets were two-fifty?"
+
+"Should they be?"
+
+"They should."
+
+"They are."
+
+"Ship them to Trinidad."
+
+"That's bully of you, Miss Santa Claus. I want to--" But the wire was
+dead.
+
+Mitchell grinned. Personality did count after all, and he had proved
+that it could be projected over a copper wire.
+
+An hour later when Miss Northwestern called him for a price on
+stay-bolt iron she did not ring off for fifteen minutes, and at the
+end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having
+another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at
+the C. & E.I., Mitchell learned that the purchasing agent was at West
+Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky;
+that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan,
+although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she'd been to
+Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland
+and was a prince with his money, but drank; and that the price on
+corrugated iron might be raised ten cents without doing any damage.
+
+On the following afternoon Murphy, the Railroad Sales Manager, stopped
+on his way past Mitchell's desk to inquire:
+
+"Say, have you been sending orchids to Miss Dunlap over at the Santa
+Fe? I was in there this morning, and she wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"Did you boost me?" Louis inquired. "It won't hurt your sales to plug
+my game."
+
+"She said you and she are 'buddies' over the wire. What did she mean?"
+
+"Oh, wire pals, that's all. What kind of a looker is she, Mr. Murphy?"
+
+The Sales Manager shrugged his shoulders. "She looks as if she was
+good to her mother." Then he sauntered away.
+
+Mitchell, in the days that followed, proceeded to become acquainted
+with the Big Four, and in a short time was so close to the Lackawanna
+that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times
+in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he
+was busy, threatened to hang cr�pe on the round-house if he were not
+summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab.
+
+Within a week he became the most thoroughly telephoned person in the
+office, and had learned the tastes, the hopes, the aims, and the
+ambitions of his respective customers. Miss C. & E.I., for instance,
+whose real name was Gratz, was a bug on music; Miss Northwestern was
+literary. She had read everything Marion Crawford ever wrote, and
+considered her the greatest writer Indiana had produced, but was sorry
+to learn from Mitchell that her marriage to Capt. Jack Crawford had
+turned out so unhappily--some men were brutes, weren't they? There was
+a hidden romance gnawing at the Big Four's heart, and Phoebe Snow
+had a picture of James K. Hackett on her desk and wanted to start a
+poultry farm. The Santa F� had been married once, but had taken her
+maiden name, it was so much pleasanter in business.
+
+As Mitchell's telephone orders piled up, day after day, Murphy began
+to treat him more like an employee than a "hand," and finally offered
+him a moderate expense account if he cared to entertain his railroad
+trade. When the young man's amazement at this offer had abated
+sufficiently for him to accept he sent the office-boy around to the
+Santa Fe on the run, instructing him to size up Miss Dunlap and
+report. It was the first order he had ever issued in the office, and
+the news spread quickly that he had been "raised."
+
+Mr. Gross took occasion to congratulate the despised underling with
+pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat
+it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a letter-press on his
+dome.
+
+When the office-boy reappeared he turned in a laconic report, "She's a
+peach!"
+
+Mitchell sweated the lad for further details, then nearly strained a
+tendon in getting to the telephone booth.
+
+"Hello, Miss Dunlap," he called. "Are you tied up for to-night?"
+
+"I'm knot. The k is silent."
+
+"Will you go to the theater with me?"
+
+"Nickelodeon?"
+
+"No, Montgomery and Stone."
+
+The lady muttered something unintelligible, then she tittered
+nervously. "Those top balconies make me dizzy."
+
+"How about the orchestra--sixth row? Could you keep your head there?"
+
+"You must own a bill-board."
+
+"No, it's a bank-book; same initials, you see. I'm an heiress."
+
+"See here, Mitch"--Miss Dunlap became serious--"you're a good little
+copper-wire comedian, but I don't know you nor your people."
+
+"Well, I come from one of the oldest families in Atwood, Michigan, and
+that town was settled over thirty years ago."
+
+"But you don't know me," the lady demurred.
+
+"I do, too. You're a tall blonde, gray eyes, blue dress; you have a
+dimple--"
+
+"Well, I declare! All right, then; seven-thirty to-night, six hundred
+and twelve Filbert Street, fourth apartment, and many thanks."
+
+Fifteen minutes before the appointed time Louis Mitchell was fidgeting
+nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water "walk-up" known as
+Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes.
+Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the
+back-drop for a "Pity the Blind" card; but promptly on the minute
+he punched the button at the fourth apartment. An instant later he
+realized that no matter how he looked he had it on Miss Dunlap by
+eighty per cent.
+
+She was a blonde, to be sure, for the time being, and by the grace of
+H_{2}O_{2}. One glance convinced her caller of two things--_viz_.,
+that his office-boy did not care much for peaches, and that the Santa
+F� purchasing agent had a jealous wife. The most that possibly could
+be said in praise of Miss Dunlap's appearance was that she was the
+largest stenographer in Chicago. Then and there, however, her caller
+qualified as a salesman; he smiled and he chatted in a free and easy
+way that had the lady roped, thrown, and lashed to his chariot in
+three minutes by her alarm-clock.
+
+They went to the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone
+did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a
+laughing hyena. Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent
+to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a
+stick in his hand. She gushed, but so does Old Faithful. Anyhow, the
+audience enjoyed her greatly.
+
+At supper Mitchell secured parking space for his companion at the
+Union Caf�, and there he learned how a welsh rabbit may be humiliated
+by a woman. During the _d�b�cle_ he fingered the money in his pocket,
+then shut his eyes and ordered a bottle of champagne, just to see if
+it could be done. Contrary to his expectation, the waiter did not
+swoon; nor was he arrested. Root-beer had been Mitchell's main
+intoxicant heretofore, but as he and the noisy Miss Dunlap sipped the
+effervescing wine over their ice-cream, they pledged themselves to
+enjoy Monday evenings together, and she told him, frankly:
+
+"Mitch, you're the nickel-plated entertainer, and I'll never miss
+another Monday eve unless I'm in the shops or the round-house. You
+certainly have got class."
+
+At breakfast Miss Harris regarded Lotus darkly, for Mr. Gross had told
+her just enough to excite her curiosity.
+
+"Where were you last night?" she inquired.
+
+"I went to a show."
+
+"Were the pictures good?"
+
+"They don't have pictures at the Grand."
+
+"Oh--h!" The manicurist's violet eyes opened wide. "Louis--you _drank_
+something. You're awful pale. What was it?"
+
+"Clicquot! That's my favorite brand."
+
+Miss Harris clutched the table-cloth and pulled a dish into her lap.
+After a moment she said: "Maybe you'll take me somewhere to-night. We
+haven't been out together for the longest time."
+
+"Oh, I see! This is Gross's night at the Maccabbees', isn't it?" Louis
+gloated brutally over her confusion. "Sorry, but I'll probably have to
+entertain some more customers. The firm is keeping me busy."
+
+At the office things went most pleasantly for the next few weeks;
+sixty per cent. of the city's railroad business came to Comer &
+Mathison; the clerks began to treat Mitchell as if he were an equal;
+even Gross lost his patronizing air and became openly hateful, while
+Murphy--Louis no longer called him Mister--increased his assistant's
+expense account and confided some of his family affairs to the latter.
+Mr. Comer, the senior partner, began to nod familiarly as he passed
+the quotation clerk's desk.
+
+Nor were Louis's customers all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap. Phoebe
+Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern
+took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue. He gave them
+each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were
+taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris.
+But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, he soon
+began to call the waiters at Rector's by their given names, and a
+number of the more prominent cab-drivers waved at him.
+
+One morning when, for the tenth successive time, he slid into his
+desk-chair an hour late, Mr. Comer bowed to him, not only familiarly,
+but sarcastically, then invited him to step into his private office
+and see if he could locate the center of the carpet. It was a
+geometrical task that Louis had been wishing to try for some time.
+
+The senior partner began with elaborate sarcasm. "I notice you're
+not getting down until nine o'clock lately, Mr. Mitchell. Is your
+automobile out of order?"
+
+"I have no automobile, Mr. Comer," the youth replied, respectfully.
+
+"No? I'm surprised. Well, if eight sharp is too early, you may set
+your time."
+
+Mitchell tried his best to appear disconcerted. "You know I'm busy
+every evening with my trade," said he.
+
+"Nonsense. I've seen you out with a different dressmaker every night
+that I've been down-town."
+
+"Those are not dressmakers, they are stenographers from the railroad
+offices. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with me, but I'm glad you
+called me in, for I've been meaning to speak to you about this very
+thing. You see, I have practically all the railroad business in the
+city, and it takes too much of my time keeping it lined up. I have no
+leisure of my own. I'll quit Saturday night, if convenient."
+
+Mr. Comer grunted like a man who has stepped off a flight of stairs
+one step too soon. "I didn't know it was really business. Of course,
+if it is, why, you needn't quit--exactly--"
+
+"I'm afraid I'll have to." Mitchell dropped his eyes demurely. "I've
+had a number of offers, and in justice to myself--"
+
+"Offers? _You_? How much?"
+
+"One hundred a month and expenses."
+
+Mr. Comer removed his glasses, he polished them carefully, then he
+readjusted them and leaned forward, looking the young man over from
+head to foot, as if he had never until this moment seen more than his
+vague outlines.
+
+"Um-m! You're nineteen years old, I believe!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, then, an hour's delay won't be serious. Now you go back to
+your desk and send Mr. Murphy here. I'll let you know shortly whether
+Saturday night or this noon will be convenient."
+
+It was perhaps a half-hour before lunch-time when Mr. Comer again
+called for Mitchell, greeting him with the gruff inquiry:
+
+"See here, do you think I'm going to advance you from twelve to
+twenty-five a week at one clip?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Humph! I'm not. I had a talk with Murphy. I think he's a liar, but
+I'm going to make it fifteen hundred a year and expenses. Now get busy
+and work your 'trade' for all it's worth."
+
+Young Mitchell's knees wabbled, but, having learned the value of a
+black mask and a gun, he went through his victim thoroughly while he
+had him down.
+
+"I'd like a traveling position the first of the year, sir, if you
+don't mind."
+
+"All right! If you hold your present gait I'll give you the Western
+roads. Anything else you'd like? Well, then, git!"
+
+That day Louis switched from the narrow-countered bakery-lunch route
+to regular standard-gauge restaurants; he ordered clothes like a
+bookmaker's bride and he sent a cubic foot of violets to Miss Harris.
+At dinner-time he patronized Mr. Gross so tantalizingly that the
+latter threatened to pull his nose out until it resembled a yard of
+garden hose.
+
+The whole boarding-house was agog at Mitchell's good fortune and
+Miss Harris smiled on him in a manner reminiscent of the good old
+ante-bookkeeper--one might say "ante-vellum"--days. She hinted that
+Mr. Gross's company did not wholly satisfy her soul-hunger, and even
+confessed that she was lonely; but this was Mitchell's Rock Island
+evening, and although the frank surrender in Miss Harris's eyes caused
+him to gasp as if he were slowly settling into a barrel of ice-water,
+he tore himself from her side.
+
+Louis's batting average would have reached one thousand had it not
+been for the Monon. Miss Day, the young lady there, had a vocabulary
+limited to "Hello," "Too high," and "Good-by," and it became
+particularly galling to learn that the fellow at James & Naughten's
+was pulling down the business, so Mitchell went to Murphy with a
+proposition which showed that his mental growth had kept pace with his
+financial advancement.
+
+"You need a new stenographer," he declared.
+
+"Oh, do I? Why do I need a new stenographer, Mr. Bones?"
+
+"Well, it would be a good investment, and I know a corker."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Miss Day, of the Monon."
+
+"I didn't know you cared for Miss Day."
+
+"I don't. That's the reason I want her to work for you."
+
+Murphy coughed slightly, then he agreed. "You're learning the game.
+We'll give her a three-dollar raise, and take her on."
+
+Shortly thereafter Mitchell began to get acquainted with the new Miss
+Monon along the right lines, and gave her Thursday nights. She was a
+great improvement over Miss Day; she was, in fact, quite different
+from any of the others. She was small and winsome, and she didn't care
+to run around. She liked her home, and so did Mitchell after he had
+called a few times. Before long he began to look forward eagerly
+to Thursday nights and Miss Monon's cozy corner with its red-plush
+cushions--reminiscent of chair-cars, to be sure--and its darkness
+illumined dimly by red and green signal lamps. Many a pleasant evening
+the two spent there, talking of locomotive planished iron, wire
+nails, and turnbuckles, and the late lunch Miss Monon served beat the
+system's regular buffet service a city block. Of course they lit the
+red fire in front of James & Naughten's and turned the green light
+Mitchell's way. He had the right of way on the Monon after that, and
+other salesmen were side-tracked.
+
+But this was too easy to last. Human affairs never run smoothly; it is
+a man's ability to surmount the hummocks and the pressure ridges that
+enables him to penetrate to the polar regions of success. The first
+inkling of disaster came to Mitchell when Miss Dunlap began to tire
+of the gay life and chose to spend her Monday evenings at home, where
+they might be alone together. She spoke of the domestic habits she had
+acquired during her brief matrimonial experience; she boldly declared
+that marriage was the ideal state for any man, and that two could live
+as cheaply as one, although personally she saw no reason why a girl
+should quit work the instant she became a wife, did he? She confessed
+that Monday evenings had become so pleasant that if Louis could
+arrange to drop in on Fridays also, the week would be considerably
+brightened thereby and her whole disposition improved. Now Fridays
+were cinched tightly to the Big Four, but the young man dared not
+acknowledge it, so he confessed that all his evenings except Monday
+were taken up with night school, whereupon Miss Dunlap, in order
+to keep abreast of his mental development, decided to take a
+correspondence course in Esperanto.
+
+It transpired also that his attentions toward the Lackawanna had
+been misconstrued, for one night when Phoebe bade him adieu in the
+vestibule she broke down and wept upon his shoulder, saying that his
+coldness hurt her. She confessed that a rate clerk in the freight
+department wanted to marry her, and she supposed she'd have to accept
+his dastardly proposal because a girl couldn't go on working all
+her life, could she? Then Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., following a
+red-letter night at Grand Opera, succeeded by a German pancake and a
+stein at the Edelweiss and a cab-ride home, took Louis gravely to task
+for his extravagance and hinted that he ought to have a permanent
+manager who took an interest in him, one who loved music as he did and
+whose tastes were simple and Teutonic.
+
+When the literary lady of the Northwestern declined a trip to the
+White City and began to read Marion Crawford aloud to him Louis awoke
+to the gravity of the situation.
+
+But before he had worked the matter out in his own mind that rate
+clerk of whom Miss Lackawanna had spoken dropped in at Comer &
+Mathison's, introduced himself to Mitchell and told him, with a degree
+of firmness which could not be ignored, that his attentions to Miss
+Phoebe Snow were distasteful. He did not state to whom. Louis's caller
+had the physical proportions of a "white hope," and he wasted few
+words. He had come to nail up a vacate notice, and he announced simply
+but firmly that Miss Snow's Wednesday evenings were to be considered
+open time thereafter, and if Mitchell elected to horn his way in it
+was a hundred-to-one shot that he'd have to give up solid foods for a
+month or more and take his nourishment through a glass tube.
+
+Nor were the young man's troubles confined to the office. Miss Harris,
+it seemed, had seen him with a different lady each night she and Mr.
+Gross had been out, and had drawn her own conclusions, so, therefore,
+when he tried to talk to her she flared up and called him a dissipated
+rou�, and threatened to have the head bookkeeper give him a thrashing
+if he dared to accost her again.
+
+Now the various apartments where Mitchell had been calling, these past
+months, were opulently furnished with gifts from the representatives
+of the various railway supply houses of the city, each article being
+cunningly designed to cement in the mind of the owner a source of
+supply which, coupled with price and delivery, would make for good
+sales service. He was greatly surprised one day to receive a brass
+library lamp from the Santa F� the initial destination of which had
+evidently been changed. Then came a mission hall-clock in the original
+package, redirected in the hand of Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., and
+one day the office-boy from the Lackawanna brought him a smoking-set
+for which Miss Phoebe Snow had no use. Gifts like these piled
+up rapidly, many of them bearing witness to the fact that their
+consignment originated from Mitchell's very rivals in the railroad
+trade. Judging from the quantity of stuff that ricocheted from the
+Santa F� it was Miss Dunlap's evident desire to present him with a
+whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible. Louis's desk
+became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green's became filled
+with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-�-brac. He
+acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of
+his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers
+was the best in Chicago.
+
+Miss Harris continued to ignore him, however, and he learned with a
+jealous pang that she was giving Mr. Gross a gratuitous course of
+facial massage and scalp treatments. No longer did Mitchell entertain
+his trade; they entertained him. They tried to help him save his
+money, and every evening he was forced to battle for his freedom.
+
+In desperation he finally went to Murphy begging quick promotion to a
+traveling position, but the Sales Manager told him there was no chance
+before the first of the year, then asked him why he had lost his grip
+on the Lackawanna business.
+
+As a matter of fact, since Miss Phoebe's rate clerk had declared
+himself Mitchell had slipped a few Wednesday nights, trusting to
+hold the Lackawanna trade by virtue of his past performances, but he
+realized in the light of Murphy's catechism that eternal visiting is
+the price of safety. He sighed, therefore, and called up the lady,
+then apprehensively made a date.
+
+That visit issued in disaster, as he had feared. The rate clerk,
+gifted with some subtle second sight, had divined his treachery and
+was waiting. He came to meet the caller gladly, like a paladin. Louis
+strove to disarm the big brute by the power of the human eye, then
+when that did not work he explained, politely, earnestly, that his
+weekly calls were but part and parcel of his business, and that there
+was nothing in his mind so remote as thoughts of matrimony. But the
+rate clerk was a stolid, a suspicious person, and he was gnawed by
+a low and common jealousy. Reason failing, they came together,
+amalgamating like two drops of quicksilver.
+
+On the following morning Mitchell explained to Mr. Comer that
+in stepping out of the bathtub he had slipped and wrenched both
+shoulders, then while passing through the dark hall had put his face
+into mourning by colliding with an open door. His ankles he had
+sprained on the way down-town.
+
+About nine-thirty Miss Dunlap called up, but not to leave an order.
+When she had finally rung off Louis looked dazedly at the wire to see
+if the insulation had melted. It seemed impossible that rubber and
+gutta-percha could withstand such heat as had come sizzling from the
+Santa F�. From what the lady had said it required no great inductive
+powers to reason that the rate clerk had told all. Coming victorious
+to Miss Lackawanna's door to have his knuckles collodionized he had
+made known in coarse, triumphant language the base commercialism of
+his rival.
+
+The result had been that Phoebe arose in her wrath. Just to verify the
+story she had called up the other railroad offices this morning,
+and the hideous truth had come out. It had come out like a herd of
+jack-rabbits ahead of a hound. Miss Dunlap was shouting mad, but
+Phoebe herself, when she called up, was indignant in a mean, sarcastic
+manner that hurt. The Northwestern rang Mitchell to say good-by
+forever and to hope his nose was broken; the Big Four promised that
+her brother, who was a puddler in the South Chicago steel mills, would
+run in and finish the rate clerk's job; Miss Gratz, of the C.&E.I.,
+was tearfully plaintive and, being German, spoke of suicide. Of course
+all business relations with these offices were at an end.
+
+During that whole day but one 'phone order came, and that was from
+Miss Monon. Mitchell had been steeling himself to hear from her, but
+it seemed that she took the whole thing as rather a good joke. She
+told him she had known all the time why he came to see her, and when
+he reminded her that it was Thursday she invited him to call if he
+thought it worth while.
+
+When he saw Miss Harris at supper-time and undertook to explain his
+black eyes she assured him coldly that he and his ebony gig-lamps
+mattered nothing in her young life, as evidence of which she flashed a
+magnificent three-quarter carat diamond solitaire on her third finger.
+She and Mr. Gross expected to be married inside of two or three years
+if all went well, she told him.
+
+At eight o'clock, disguised behind a pair of blue goggles, Louis
+headed for Miss Monon's door, glad that the cozy corner was so dimly
+lighted. When he arrived she bathed his battle-scarred features with
+hamamelis, which is just the same as Pond's Extract, but doesn't cost
+so much, and told him the other girls had acted foolishly. She was
+very sweet and gentle with him and young Mitchell, imperfect as was
+his vision, saw something in her he had never seen before.
+
+A week went by, during which it seemed that all the railroads except
+the Monon had suddenly gone out of business. It was as if a strike had
+been declared. Another week passed and Mitchell's sales were scarcely
+noticeable, so Mr. Comer called him in to ask:
+
+"Is your 'phone disconnected?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you know the price of our goods?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Don't you sleep well at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then what has become of those pick-ups?"
+
+"I seem to have lost--my trade."
+
+"Your 'trade'! Bah! Young man, you've been dissipating. That expense
+account turned your head. You've been blowing in our money on your
+friends and you've let your customers go. If you can't hold the
+railroad business we'll get some fellow who can. Cut out your
+sewing-circle wine suppers and your box parties to the North Shore
+d�butantes and get busy. You've got a week to make good. One week."
+
+There wasn't the slightest chance, and Mitchell told Miss Monon
+so when Thursday came around. He told her all about that promised
+position on the road and what it meant to him, and then he told her
+that beginning Monday he'd have to hunt a new berth at twelve dollars
+per. She was very quiet, very sympathetic--so sympathetic, in fact,
+that he told her some other things which no young man on a diminishing
+salary should tell. She said little at the moment, but she did
+considerable thinking, and she got busy on her 'phone early the next
+morning. The first number she called was the Santa F�'s. When she had
+finished talking with Miss Dunlap that hempen-haired sentimentalist
+was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and blowing her nose,
+assuring Miss Monon, at the same time, that she was a dear and that
+it was all right now that she knew the truth. Miss Monon blushed
+prettily, thanked her, and confessed that she had felt it coming on
+for some time. Thereupon they took turns calling the others, from the
+Big Four to the C.&E.I., with the result that Mitchell's wire began to
+heat up.
+
+Phoebe Snow called him to say that she hadn't meant what she said,
+that he was a good old scout, and that the rate clerk was sorry also,
+and wanted to stand treat for a Dutch lunch. Then she left an order
+for a ton and a half of engine bolts.
+
+Miss Gratz cried a little when she heard Mitchell's voice and told him
+to make his own price on forty kegs of washers and suit himself about
+delivery.
+
+Miss Dunlap confessed that it was her pride which had spoken, and,
+anyhow, she knew altogether too much about marriage to take another
+chance. She'd rather have one man friend than three husbands.
+
+One by one the flock returned, and Saturday night Mitchell sent five
+pounds of chocolates and a sheaf of red roses to the one who had made
+it all come out right. He got his share of business after that, and
+when the holidays came they brought him his promotion.
+
+Murphy, who knew most of the facts, was the first to congratulate him.
+"Jove!" he said, "that little Monon lady saved your bacon, didn't she?
+By. the way, you never told me what her name was."
+
+Young Mitchell's cheeks assumed a shell-pink shade as he replied: "It
+doesn't matter what her name was, it's Mitchell now. We were married
+yesterday and--all the roads were represented at the wedding."
+
+
+
+
+WITH BRIDGES BURNED
+
+
+Louis Mitchell knew what the telegram meant, even though it was brief
+and cryptic. He had been expecting something of the sort ever since
+the bottom dropped out of the steel business and prices tobogganed
+forty dollars a ton. Nevertheless, it came as an undeniable shock, for
+he had hoped the firm would keep him on in spite of hard times. He
+wondered, as he sadly pocketed the yellow sheet, whether he had in him
+the makings of a good life-insurance agent, or if he had not better
+"join out" with a medicine show. This message led him to think his
+talents must lie along the latter line. Certainly they did not lie in
+the direction of metal supplies.
+
+He had plenty of time to think the situation over, however, for it is
+a long jump from Butte to Chicago; when he arrived at the latter place
+he was certain of only one thing, he would not stand a cut in salary.
+Either Comer & Mathison would have to fire him outright or keep him on
+at his present wage; he would not compromise as the other salesmen had
+done and were doing.
+
+Twenty-five hundred a year is a liberal piece of money where people
+raise their own vegetables, but to a man traveling in the West it is
+about equal to "no pair." Given two hundred dollars a month and a fair
+expense account a salesman can plow quite a respectable furrow around
+Plymouth Rock, but out where they roll their r's and monogram their
+live stock he can't make a track. Besides the loss of prestige and all
+that went with it, there was another reason why young Mitchell could
+not face a cut. He had a wife, and she was too new, too wonderful;
+she admired him too greatly to permit of such a thing. She might, she
+doubtless would, lose confidence in him if he took a step backward,
+and that confidence of hers was the most splendid thing in Mitchell's
+life. No, if Comer & Mathison wanted to make any change, they would
+have to promote him. Ten minutes with the "old man," however, served
+to jar this satisfactory determination to its foundation. Mr. Comer
+put the situation clearly, concisely.
+
+"Business is rotten. We've got to lay all the younger men off or we'll
+go broke," he announced.
+
+"But--I'm married," protested the young salesman.
+
+"So am I; so is Mathison; so are the rest of the fellows. But, my boy,
+this is a panic. We wouldn't let you go if we could keep you."
+
+"I can sell goods--"
+
+"That's just it; we don't want you to. Conditions are such that we
+can't afford to sell anything. The less business we do the fewer
+losses we stand to make. Good Lord, Louis, this is the worst year the
+trade has ever known!"
+
+"B-but--I'm married," blankly repeated Mitchell.
+
+Comer shook his head. "We'd keep you in a minute if there was any way
+to do it. You go home and see the wife. Of course if you can show
+us where you're worth it, we'll let you stay; but--well, you can't.
+There's no chance. I'll see you to-morrow."
+
+Ordinarily Mitchell would not have allowed himself the extravagance
+of a cab, but to-day the cars were too slow. He wondered how the girl
+would take this calamity, their very first. As a matter of fact, she
+divined the news even before he had voiced his exuberant greetings,
+and, leading him into the neat little front room, she curled up at his
+side, demanding all the reasons for his unexpected recall. He saw that
+she was wide-eyed and rather white. When he had broken the bad news
+she inquired, bravely:
+
+"What is your plan, boy?"
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I mean it. What can I do? I don't know anything except the steel
+business. I can lick my weight in wildcats on my own ground--but--"
+The wife nodded her blonde head in complete agreement. "But that lets
+me out," he concluded, despondently. "I can sell steel because I know
+it from the ground up; it's my specialty."
+
+"Oh, we mustn't think about making a change."
+
+"I've handled more big jobs than any man of my age and experience on
+the road, and yet--I'm fired." The husband sighed wearily. "I built
+that big pipe line in Portland; I sold those smelters in Anaconda, and
+the cyanide tanks for the Highland Girl. Yes, and a lot of other jobs,
+too. I know all about the smelter business, but that's no sign I can
+sell electric belts or corn salve. We're up against it, girlie."
+
+"Have people quit building smelters?"
+
+"They sure have--during this panic. There's nothing doing anywhere."
+
+The wife thought for a moment before saying, "The last time you were
+home you told me about some Western mining men who had gone to South
+Africa--"
+
+"Sure! To the Rand! They've made good, too; they're whopping big
+operators, now."
+
+"You said there was a large contract of some sort coming up in
+London."
+
+"Large! Well, rather! The Robinson-Ray job. It's the biggest ever, in
+my line. They're going to rebuild those plants the Boers destroyed. I
+heard all about it in Montana."
+
+"Well!" Mrs. Mitchell spoke with finality. "That's the place for you.
+Get the firm to send you over there."
+
+"Um-m! I thought about that, but it scared me out. It's too big. Why,
+it's a three-million-dollar job. You see, we've never landed a large
+foreign contract in this country as yet." Mitchell sat up suddenly.
+"But say! This panic might--" Then he relaxed. "Oh, what's the use?
+If there were a chance the firm wouldn't send me. Comer would go
+himself--he'd take the whole outfit over for a job like that. Besides,
+it's too big a thing for our people; they couldn't handle it."
+
+Mrs. Mitchell's eyes were as round as buttons. "Three million dollars'
+worth of steel in one contract! Do you think you could land it if you
+went?"
+
+"It's my line of work," the young man replied, doubtfully. "I'll bet
+I know more about cyanide tanks than any salesman in Europe, and if I
+had a decent price to work on--"
+
+"Then it's the chance we've been waiting for."
+
+The girl scrambled to her feet and, fetching a chair, began to talk
+earnestly, rapidly. She talked for a long time, until gradually the
+man's gray despondency gave way to her own bright optimism. Nor was
+it idle theory alone that she advanced; Mitchell found that she knew
+almost as much about the steel business as he did, and when she had
+finished he arose and kissed her.
+
+"You've put new heart into me, anyhow. If you're game to do your
+share, why--I'll try it out. But remember it may mean all we've got in
+the bank, and--" He looked at her darkly.
+
+"It's the biggest chance we'll ever have," she insisted. "It's worth
+trying. Don't let's wait to get rich until we are old."
+
+When Mr. Comer returned from lunch he found his youngest salesman
+waiting for him, and inside of ten minutes he had learned what
+Mitchell had on his mind. With two words Comer blew out the gas.
+
+"You're crazy," said he.
+
+"Am I? It's worth going after."
+
+"In the first place no big foreign job ever came to America--"
+
+"I know all that. It's time we got one."
+
+"In the second place Comer & Mathison are jobbers."
+
+"I'll get a special price from Carnegie."
+
+"In the third place it would cost a barrel of money to send a man to
+England."
+
+Mitchell swallowed hard. "I'll pay my own way."
+
+Mr. Comer regarded the speaker with genuine astonishment. "_You'll_
+pay your way? Why, you haven't got any money."
+
+"I've got a thousand dollars--or the wife has. It's our nest-egg."
+
+"It would take five thousand to make the trip."
+
+"I'll make it on one. Yes, and I'll come back with that job. Don't you
+see this panic makes the thing possible? Yes, and I'm the one man
+to turn the trick; for it's right in my line. I'll see the Carnegie
+people at Pittsburgh. If they quote the right price I'll ask you for a
+letter, and that's all you'll have to do. Will you let me go?"
+
+"What sort of a letter?"
+
+"A letter stating that I am your general sales manager."
+
+The steel merchant's mouth fell open.
+
+"Oh, I only want it for this London trip," Mitchell explained. "I
+won't use it except as a credential. But I've got to go armed, you
+understand. Mr. Comer, if I don't land that Robinson-Ray contract, I
+won't come back. I--I couldn't, after this. Maybe I'll drive a 'bus--I
+hear they have a lot of them in London."
+
+"Suppose, for instance, you should get the job on a profitable basis;
+the biggest job this concern ever had and one of the biggest ever let
+anywhere--" Mr. Comer's brow was wrinkled humorously. "What would you
+expect out of it?"
+
+Mitchell grinned. "Well, if I signed all those contracts as your
+general sales manager, I'd probably form the habit."
+
+"There's nothing modest about you, is there?" queried the elder man.
+
+"Not a thing. My theory of business is that a man should either be
+fired or promoted. If I get that job I'll leave it to you to do what's
+right. I won't ask any questions."
+
+"The whole thing is utterly absurd," Mitchell's employer protested.
+"You haven't a chance! But--Wait!" He pressed a button on his desk.
+"We'll talk with Mathison."
+
+Louis Mitchell took the night train for Pittsburgh. He was back in
+three days, and that afternoon Mr. Comer, in the privacy of his own
+office, dictated a letter of which no carbon copy was preserved. He
+gave it to the young man with his own hand, and with these words:
+"You'd better think it over carefully, my boy. It's the most idiotic
+thing I ever heard of, and there isn't one chance in a million. It
+won't do you any good to fail, even on a forlorn hope like this."
+
+But Mitchell smiled. "I can't fail--I'm married." Then when the other
+seemed unimpressed by this method of reasoning, he explained: "I guess
+you never saw my wife. She says I can do it."
+
+It was only to this lady herself that Mitchell recited the details of
+his reception at Pittsburgh, and of the battle he had fought in the
+Carnegie office. The Carnegie men had refused to take him seriously,
+had laughed at him as at a mild-mannered lunatic.
+
+"But I got my price," he concluded, triumphantly, "and it sure looks
+good to me. Now for the painful details and the sad good-bys."
+
+"How long will you be gone?" his wife inquired.
+
+"I can't stay more than a month, the bank-roll is too small."
+
+"Oo-oo-h! A month! London is a long way off." Mrs. Mitchell's voice
+broke plaintively and her husband's misgivings at once took fire.
+
+"If I fail, as they all feel sure I will, what then?" he inquired.
+"I'll be out of a job! I'll be a joke in the steel business; I'll be
+broke. What will you do?"
+
+She gave him a ravishing, dimpled smile, and her eyes were brave once
+more. "Why, I haven't forgotten my shorthand, and there are always the
+department stores." In a high, querulous tone she cried "Ca--a--sh!"
+then laughed aloud at his expression. "Oh, it wouldn't hurt me any.
+But--you won't fail--you can't! We're going to be rich. Now, we'll
+divide our grand fortune." She produced a roll of currency from her
+purse and took four twenty-dollar bills from it.
+
+"Only eighty dollars?" he queried.
+
+"It's more than enough for me. You'll be back in a month." She thrust
+the remaining notes into his hand. "It's our one great, glorious
+chance, dear. Don't you understand?"
+
+Faith, hope and enthusiasm, the three graces of salesmanship, thrive
+best in bright places. Had it not been for his wife's cheer during
+those final hours young Mitchell surely would have weakened before it
+came time to leave on the following day. It was a far cry to London,
+and he realized 'way back in his head that there wasn't one chance in
+a million of success. He began to doubt, to waver, but the girl seemed
+to feel that her lord was bound upon some flaring triumph, and even
+at the station her face was wreathed in smiles. Her blue eyes were
+brimming with excitement; she bubbled with hopeful, helpful advice;
+she patted her husband's arm and hugged it to her. "You're going to
+win, boy. You're going to win," she kept repeating. For one moment
+only--at the actual parting--she clung to him wildly, with all her
+woman's strength, then, as the warning cry sounded, she kissed him
+long and hungrily, and fairly thrust him aboard the Pullman. He did
+not dream how she wilted and drooped the instant he had gone.
+
+As the train pulled out he ran back to the observation car to wave
+a last farewell, and saw her clinging to the iron fence, sobbing
+wretchedly; a desolate, weak little girl-wife mastered by a thousand
+fears. She was too blind with tears to see him. The sight raised a
+lump in the young husband's throat which lasted to Fort Wayne.
+
+"Poor little thoroughbred," he mused. "I just can't lose, that's all."
+
+The lump was not entirely gone when the luncheon call came, so
+Mitchell dined upon it, reasoning that this kind of a beginning
+augured well for an economical trip.
+
+Now that he was away from the warmth of his wife's enthusiasm
+contemplation of his undertaking made the salesman rather sick. If
+only he were traveling at the firm's expense, if only he had something
+to fall back upon in case of failure, if only Comer & Mathison were
+behind him in any way, the complexion of things would have been
+altogether different. But to set out for a foreign land with no
+backing whatever in the hope of accomplishing that which no American
+salesman had ever been able to accomplish, and to finance the
+undertaking out of his own pocket on a sum less than he would have
+expected for cigarette money--well, it was an enterprise to test
+a fellow's courage and to dampen the most youthful optimism. His
+proposal to the firm to win all or lose all, he realized now, had
+been in the nature of a bluff, and the firm had called it. There was
+nothing to do, therefore, but go through and win; there could be no
+turning back, for he had burned his bridges.
+
+When one enters a race-horse in a contest he puts the animal in good
+condition, he grooms it, he feeds it the best the stable affords,
+he trains and exercises it carefully. Mitchell had never owned a
+race-horse, but he reasoned that similar principles should apply to a
+human being under similar conditions. He had entered a competition,
+therefore he decided to condition himself physically and mentally for
+the race. A doped pony cannot run, neither can a worried salesman sell
+goods.
+
+In line with this decision, he took one of the best state-rooms on the
+_Lucania_, and denied himself nothing that the ship afforded. Every
+morning he took his exercise, every evening a rub-down. He trained
+like a fighter, and when he landed he was fit; his muscles were
+hard, his stomach strong, his brain clear. He went first-class from
+Liverpool to London; he put up at the Metropole in luxurious quarters.
+When he stopped to think about that nine hundred and twenty, already
+amazingly shrunken, he argued bravely that what he had spent had gone
+to buy condition powders.
+
+On the way across he had posted himself so far as possible about the
+proposed Robinson-Ray plant. He learned that there were to be fifteen
+batteries of cyanide tanks, two high--eighty-four in all--supported
+by steel sub- and super-structures; the work to be completed at
+Krugersdorpf, twenty miles out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
+The address of the company was No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street.
+Threadneedle Street was somewhere in London, and London was the
+capital of a place called England.
+
+He knew other African contracts were under consideration, but he
+dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon
+this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early
+trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful,
+unceasing energy that would not let him rest.
+
+The first evening in London he fattened himself for the fray with a
+hearty dinner, then he strove to get acquainted with his neighbors and
+his environment. The nervous force within him needed outlet, but he
+was frowned upon at every quarter. Even the waiter at his table made
+it patent that his social standing would not permit him to indulge
+in the slightest intimacy with chance guests of the hotel, while the
+young Earl who had permitted Mitchell to register at the desk declined
+utterly to go further with their acquaintance. Louis spent the evening
+at the Empire, and the next morning, which was Sunday, he put in on
+the top of a 'bus, laying himself open to the advances of anybody who
+cared to pay him the slightest attention. But he was ignored; even
+the driver, who spoke a foreign language, evidently considered him a
+suspicious character. Like a wise general, Louis reconnoitered No.
+42-1/2 Threadneedle Street during the afternoon, noting the lay of the
+land and deciding upon modes of transportation to and from. Under
+the pressure of circumstance he chose a Cannon Street 'bus, fare
+"tuppence."
+
+Now garrulity is a disease that must either break out or strike inward
+with fatal results. When Sunday night came, Mitchell was about ready
+to fare forth with gun and mask and take conversation away from
+anybody who had it to spare. He had begun to fear that his vocal cords
+would atrophy.
+
+He was up early, had breakfasted, and was at 42-1/2 Threadneedle
+Street promptly at nine, beating the janitor by some twenty minutes.
+During the next hour and a half he gleaned considerable information
+regarding British business methods, the while he monotonously pounded
+the sidewalk.
+
+At nine-thirty a scouting party of dignified office-boys made a
+cautious approach. At nine-thirty-five there came the main army of
+clerks, only they were not clerks, but "clarks"--very impressive
+gentlemen with gloves, spats, sticks, silk hats and sack coats. At
+this same time, evidently by appointment, came the charwomen--"char"
+being spelled s-c-r-u-b, and affording an example of how pure English
+has been corrupted out in the Americas.
+
+After the arrival of the head "clarks" and stenographers at
+nine-forty-five, there ensued fifteen minutes of guarded conversation
+in front of the offices. During this time the public issues of the day
+were settled and the nation's policies outlined. At ten o'clock the
+offices were formally opened, and at ten-thirty a reception was
+tendered to the managers who arrived dressed as for any well-conducted
+afternoon function.
+
+To Mitchell, who was accustomed to the feverish, football methods of
+American business life, all this was vastly edifying and instructive;
+it was even soothing, although he was vaguely offended to note that
+passers-by avoided him as if fearful of contamination.
+
+Upon entering 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street, he was halted by an
+imperious office-boy. To him Louis gave his card with a request that
+it be handed to Mr. Peebleby, then he seated himself and for an hour
+witnessed a parade of unsmiling, silk-hatted gentlemen pass in and out
+of Mr. Peebleby's office. Growing impatient, at length, he inquired of
+the boy;
+
+"Is somebody dead around here or is this where the City Council
+meets?"
+
+"I beg pardon?" The lad was polite in a cool, superior way.
+
+"I say, what's the idea of the pall-bearers?"
+
+The youth's expression froze to one of disapproval and suspicion.
+
+"I mean the parade. Are these fellows Congress- or minstrel-men?"
+
+His hearer shrugged and smiled vacuously, then turned away, whereupon
+Mitchell took him firmly by the arm.
+
+"Look here, my boy," he began. "There seems to be a lot of information
+coming to both of us. Who are these over-dressed gentlemen I see
+promenading back and forth?"
+
+"Why--they're callers, customers, representatives of the firms we do
+business with, sir."
+
+"Is this Guy Fawkes Day?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Are these men here on business? Are any of them salesmen, for
+instance?"
+
+"Yes, sir; some of them. Certainly, sir."
+
+"To see Mr. Peebleby about the new construction work?"
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"So, you're letting them get the edge on me."
+
+"I beg pardon?"
+
+"Never mind, I merely wanted to assure you that I have some olive
+spats, a high hat, and a walking-stick, but I left them at my hotel.
+I'm a salesman, too. Now then let's get down to business. I've come
+all the way from America to hire an office-boy. I've heard so much
+about English office-boys that I thought I'd run over and get one.
+Would you entertain a proposition to go back to America and become my
+partner?"
+
+The boy rolled his eyes; it was plain that he was seriously alarmed.
+"You are ragging me, sir," he stammered, uncertainly.
+
+"Perish the thought!"
+
+"I--I--Really, sir--"
+
+"I pay twenty-five dollars a week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in
+your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have
+some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver
+dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked
+in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that Mr. Peebleby might
+be at leisure if Mr. Mitchell had another card.
+
+"Never mind the card; I can't trust you with another one. Just show me
+the trail and I'll take it myself. That's a way we have in America."
+
+A moment later he was knocking at a door emblazoned, "Director
+General." Without awaiting an invitation, he turned the knob and
+walked in. Before the astonished Mr. Peebleby could expostulate he had
+introduced himself and was making known his mission.
+
+Fortunately for Mitchell, Englishmen are not without a sense of
+humor. The announcement that this young man had come all the way from
+Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., to bid on the Krugersdorpf work struck Mr.
+Peebleby as amusing. Not only was the idea in itself laughable, but
+also the fact that a mere beardless youth should venture to figure on
+a contract of such gigantic proportions quite convulsed the Director
+General, and in consequence he smiled. Then fearing that his dignity
+had been jeopardized, he announced politely but firmly that the
+proposition was absurd, and that he had no time to discuss it.
+
+"I've come for that job, and I'm going to take it back with me,"
+Mitchell averred, with equal firmness. "I know more about this class
+of work than any salesman you have over here, and I'm going to build
+you the finest cluster of cyanide tanks you ever saw."
+
+"May I ask where you obtained this comprehensive knowledge of tank
+construction?" Mr. Peebleby inquired, with some curiosity.
+
+"Sure!" Mitchell ran through a list of jobs with which the Director
+General could not have been unfamiliar. He mentioned work that caused
+that gentleman to regard him more respectfully. For a time questions
+and answers shot back and forth between them.
+
+"I tell you, that is my line," Mitchell declared, at length. "I'll
+read any blueprints you can offer. I'll answer any queries you can
+formulate. I'm the accredited representative of a big concern, and I'm
+entitled to a chance to figure, at least. That courtesy is due me."
+
+"I dare say it is," the other reluctantly agreed. "I'm very busy, but
+if that is the quickest way to end the discussion I'll give you the
+prints. I assure you, nevertheless, it is an utter waste of your time
+and mine." He pushed a button and five minutes later a clerk staggered
+back into the room with an armful of blueprints that caused Mitchell
+to gasp.
+
+"The bid must be in Thursday at ten-thirty," Peebleby announced.
+
+"Thursday? Why, good Lord! That's only three days, and there's a
+dray-load of drawings!"
+
+"I told you it was a waste of time. You should have come sooner."
+
+Mitchell ran through the pile and his heart grew sick with dismay.
+There were drawings of tanks, drawings of substructures and
+superstructures in every phase of construction--enough of them
+to daunt a skilled engineer. He realized that he had by no means
+appreciated the full magnitude of this work, in fact had never figured
+on a job anything like this one. He could see at least a week's hard,
+constant labor ahead of him--a week's work to be done in three days.
+There was no use trying; the time was too short; it was a physical
+impossibility to formulate an intelligent proposition in such a
+short length of time. Then to Mitchell's mind came the picture of
+a wretched, golden-haired girl clinging to the iron fence of the
+Pennsylvania depot. He gathered the rolls into his arms.
+
+"At ten-thirty, Thursday," said he.
+
+"Ten-thirty, sharp."
+
+"Thank you. I'll have my bid in."
+
+His muscles ached and his knees were trembling even before he had
+reached the street. When he tried to board a 'bus he was waved away,
+so he called a cab, piled his blueprints inside of it, and then
+clambered in on top of them. He realized that he was badly frightened.
+
+To this day the sight of a blueprint gives Louis Mitchell a peculiar
+nausea and a fluttering sensation about the heart. At three o'clock
+the next morning he felt his way blindly to his bed and toppled upon
+it, falling straightway into a slumber during which he passed through
+monotonous, maddening wastes of blue and white, over which ran
+serpentine rows of figures.
+
+He was up with the dawn and at his desk again, but by four that
+afternoon he was too dazed, too exhausted to continue. His eyes were
+playing him tricks, the room was whirling, his hand was shaking until
+his fingers staggered drunkenly across the sheets of paper. Ground
+plans, substructures, superstructures, were jumbled into a frightful
+tangle. He wanted to yell. Instead he flung the drawings about the
+room, stamped savagely upon them, then rushed down-stairs and devoured
+a table d'h�te dinner. He washed the meal down with a bottle of red
+wine, smoked a long cigar, then undressed and went to bed amid the
+scattered blueprints. He slept like a dead man.
+
+He arose at sun-up, clear-headed, calm. All day he worked like a
+machine, increasing his speed as the hours flew. He took good care to
+eat and drink, and, above all, to smoke at regular intervals, but he
+did not leave his room. By dark he had much of the task behind him; by
+midnight he began to have hope; toward dawn he saw the end; and when
+daylight came he collapsed.
+
+He had deciphered the tank and superstructure plans on forty-five sets
+of blueprints, had formulated a proposition, exclusive of substructure
+work, basing a price per pound on the American market then ruling,
+f.o.b. tidewater, New York. He had the proposition in his pocket
+when he tapped on the ground-glass door of Mr. Peebleby's office at
+ten-twenty-nine Thursday morning.
+
+The Director General of the great Robinson-Ray Syndicate was genuinely
+surprised to learn that the young American had completed a bid in so
+short a time, then requested him, somewhat absent-mindedly, to leave
+it on his desk where he could look it over at his leisure.
+
+"Just a moment," said his caller. "I'm going to sit down and talk to
+you again. How long have you been using cyanide tanks, Mr. Peebleby?"
+
+"Ever since they were adopted." Mr. Peebleby was visibly annoyed at
+this interruption to his morning's work.
+
+"Well, I can give you a lot of information about them."
+
+The Director General raised his brows haughtily. "Ah! Suggestions,
+amendments, improvements, no doubt."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"In all my experience I never sent out a blueprint which some youthful
+salesman could not improve upon. Generally the younger the salesman
+the greater the improvement."
+
+In Mitchell's own parlance he "beat Mr. Peebleby to the punch." "If
+that's the case, you've got a rotten line of engineers," he frankly
+announced.
+
+"Indeed! I went over those drawings myself. I flattered myself that
+they were comprehensive and up-to-date." Mr. Peebleby was annoyed,
+nevertheless he was visibly interested and curious.
+
+"Well, they're not," the younger man declared, eying him boldly.
+"For instance, you call for cast-iron columns in your sub-and
+super-structures, whereas they're obsolete. We've discarded them. What
+you save in first cost you eat up, twice over, in freight. Not only
+that, but their strength is a matter of theory, not of fact. Then,
+too, in your structural-steel sections your factor of safety is
+wrongly figured. To get the best results your lower tanks are twenty
+inches too short and your upper ones nine inches too short. For
+another thing, you're using a section of beam which is five per cent.
+heavier than your other dimensions call for."
+
+The Director General sat back in his chair, a look of extreme
+alertness replacing his former expression.
+
+"My word! Is there anything else?" He undertook to speak mockingly,
+but without complete success.
+
+"There is. The layout of your platework is all wrong--out of line with
+modern practice. You should have interchangeable parts in every tank.
+The floor of your lower section should be convex, instead of flat, to
+get the run-off. You see, sir, this is my line of business."
+
+"Who is your engineer?" inquired the elder man. "I should like to talk
+to him."
+
+"You're talking to him now. I'm him--it--them. I'm the party! I told
+you I knew the game."
+
+There was a brief silence, then Mr. Peebleby inquired, "By the way,
+who helped you figure those prints?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"You did that _alone_, since Monday morning?" The speaker was
+incredulous.
+
+"I did. I haven't slept much. I'm pretty tired."
+
+There was a new note in Mr. Peebleby's voice when he said: "Jove! I've
+treated you badly, Mr. Mitchell, but--I wonder if you're too tired to
+tell my engineers what you told me just now? I should like them to
+hear you."
+
+"Trot them in." For the first time since leaving this office three
+days before, Mitchell smiled. He was getting into his stride at last.
+After all, there seemed to be a chance.
+
+There followed a convention of the draftsmen and engineers of the
+Robinson-Ray Syndicate before which an unknown American youth
+delivered an address on "Cyanide Tanks. How to Build Them; Where to
+Buy Them."
+
+It was the old story of a man who had learned his work thoroughly and
+who loved it. Mitchell typified the theory of specialization; what he
+knew, he knew completely, and before he had more than begun his talk
+these men recognized that fact. When he had finished, Mr. Peebleby
+announced that the bids would not be opened that day.
+
+The American had made his first point. He had gained time in which
+to handle himself, and the Robinson-Ray people had recognized a new
+factor in the field. When he was again in the Director General's room,
+the latter said:
+
+"I think I will have you formulate a new bid along the lines you have
+laid down."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You understand, our time is up. Can you have it ready by Saturday,
+three days from now?"
+
+Mitchell laughed. "It's a ten days' job for two men."
+
+"I know, but we can't wait."
+
+"Then give me until Tuesday; I'm used to a twenty-four-hour shift
+now. Meanwhile I'd like to leave these figures here for your chief
+draftsman to examine. Of course they are not to be considered
+binding."
+
+"Isn't that a bit--er--foolish?" inquired Peebleby? "Aren't you
+leaving a weapon behind you?"
+
+"Yes, but not the sort of a weapon you suspect," thought Mitchell.
+"This is a boomerang." Aloud, he answered, lightly: "Oh, that's all
+right. I know I'm among friends."
+
+When his request was granted he made a mental note, "Step number two!"
+
+Again he filled a cab with drawings, again he went back to the
+Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures--back to the
+monotony of tasteless meals served at his elbow.
+
+But there were other things besides his own bid to think of now.
+Mitchell knew he must find what other firms were bidding on the job,
+and what prices they had bid. The first promised to require some
+ingenuity, the second was a Titan's task.
+
+Salesmanship, in its highest development, is an exact science. Given
+the data he desired, Louis Mitchell felt sure he could read the
+figures sealed up in those other bids to a nicety, but to get that
+data required much concentrated effort and much time. Time was what he
+needed above all things; time to refigure these myriad drawings, time
+to determine when the other bids had gone in, time to learn trade
+conditions at the competitive plants, time to sleep. There were not
+sufficient hours in the day for all these things, so he rigidly
+economized on the least important, sleep. He laid out a program
+for himself; by night he worked in his room, by day he cruised for
+information, at odd moments around the dawn he slept. He began to feel
+the strain before long. Never physically robust, he began to grow blue
+and drawn about the nostrils. Frequently his food would not stay down.
+He was forced to drive his lagging spirits with a lash. To accomplish
+this he had to think often of his girl-wife. Her letters, written
+daily, were a great help; they were like some God-given cordial that
+infused fresh blood into his brain, new strength into his flagging
+limbs. Without them he could not have held up.
+
+With certain definite objects in view he made daily trips to
+Threadneedle Street. Invariably he walked into the general offices
+unannounced; invariably he made a new friend before he came out.
+Peebleby seemed to like him; in fact asked his opinion on certain
+forms of structure and voluntarily granted the young man two days of
+grace. Two days! They were like oxygen to a dying man.
+
+Mitchell asked permission to talk to the head draftsman and received
+it, and following their interview he requested the privilege of
+dictating some notes regarding the interview. In this way he met the
+stenographer. When he had finished with her he flipped the girl a gold
+sovereign, stolen from the sadly melted nine hundred and twenty.
+
+As Mitchell was leaving the office the Director General yielded to a
+kindly impulse and advised his new acquaintance to run over to Paris
+and view the Exposition.
+
+"You can do your figuring there just as well as here," said he.
+"I don't want your trip from Chicago to be altogether wasted, Mr.
+Mitchell."
+
+Louis smiled and shook his head. "I can't take that Exposition back
+with me, and I can take this contract. I think I'll camp with my bid."
+
+In the small hours of that night he made a discovery that
+electrified him. He found that the most commonly used section in his
+specifications, a twelve-inch I-beam, was listed under the English
+custom as weighing fifty-four pounds per foot, whereas the
+standardized American section, which possessed the same carrying
+strength, weighed four pounds less. Here was an advantage of eight
+per cent. in cost and freight! This put another round of the ladder
+beneath him; he was progressing well, but as yet he had learned
+nothing about his competitors.
+
+The next morning he had some more dictation for Peebleby's
+stenographer, and niched another sovereign from his sad little
+bank-roll. When the girl gave him his copy he fell into conversation
+with her and painted a picture of Yankeeland well calculated to keep
+her awake nights. They gossiped idly, she of her social obligations,
+he of the cyanide-tank business--he could think of nothing else to
+talk about. Adroitly he led her out. They grew confidential. She
+admitted her admiration for Mr. Jenkins from Edinburgh. Yes, Mr.
+Jenkins's company was bidding on the Krugersdorpf job. He was much
+nicer than Mr. Kruse from the Brussels concern, and, anyhow, those
+Belgian firms had no chance at this contract, for Belgium was
+pro-Boer, and--well, she had heard a few things around the office.
+
+Mitchell was getting "feed-box" information. When he left he knew
+the names of his dangerous competitors as well as those whom, in all
+likelihood, he had no cause to fear. Another step! He was gaining
+ground.
+
+In order to make himself absolutely certain that his figures would be
+low, there still remained three things to learn, and they were matters
+upon which he could afford to take no slightest chance of mistake.
+He must know, first, the dates of those other bids; second, the
+market-price of English steel at such times; and, third, the cost of
+fabrication at the various mills. The first two he believed could
+be easily learned, but the third promised to afford appalling
+difficulties to a man unfamiliar with foreign methods and utterly
+lacking in trade acquaintances. He went at them systematically,
+however, only to run against a snag within the hour. Not only did he
+fail to find the answer to question number one, but he could find no
+market quotations whatever on structural steel shapes such as entered
+into the Krugersdorpf job.
+
+He searched through every possible trade journal, through reading
+rooms and libraries, for the price of I-beams, channels, Z-bars, and
+the like; but nowhere could he even find mention of them. His failure
+left him puzzled and panic-stricken; he could not understand it. If
+only he had more time, he reflected, time in which to learn the usages
+and the customs of this country. But time was what he had not. He was
+tired, very tired from his sleepless nights and hours of daylight
+strain--and meanwhile the days were rushing past.
+
+While engaged in these side labors, he had, of course, been working
+on his draftsmen friends, and more assiduously even than upon his
+blue-prints. On Tuesday night, with but one more day of grace ahead of
+him, he gave a dinner to all of them, disregarding the fact that his
+bank-roll had become frightfully emaciated.
+
+For several days after that little party blue-printing in the
+Robinson-Ray office was a lost art. When his guests had dined and had
+settled back into their chairs, Mitchell decided to risk all upon one
+throw. He rose, at the head of the table, and told them who he was. He
+utterly destroyed their illusions regarding him and his position with
+Comer & Mathison, he bared his heart to those stoop-shouldered, shabby
+young men from Threadneedle Street and came right down to the nine
+hundred and twenty dollars and the girl. He told them what
+this Krugersdorpf job meant to him and to her, and to the four
+twenty-dollar bills in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
+
+Those Englishmen listened silently. Nobody laughed. Perhaps it was the
+sort of thing they had dreamed of doing some day, perhaps there were
+other girls in other tiny furnished flats, other hearts wrapped up in
+similar struggles for advancement. They were good mathematicians, it
+seemed, for they did not have to ask Mitchell how the nine hundred
+and twenty was doing, or to inquire regarding the health of the other
+eighty. One of them, a near-sighted fellow with thick lenses, arose
+with the grave assertion that he had taken the floor for the purpose
+of correcting a popular fallacy; Englishmen and Yankees, he declared,
+were not cousins, they were brothers, and their interests ever had
+been and ever would be identical. He said, too, that England wanted
+to do business with America, and as for this particular contract, not
+only did the British nation as a whole desire America to secure it,
+but the chaps who bent over the boards at No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle
+Street were plugging for her tooth and nail. His hollow-chested
+companions yelled their approval of this statement, whereupon Mitchell
+again arose, alternately flushing and paling, and apologized for what
+had happened in 1776. He acknowledged himself ashamed of the 1812
+affair, moreover, and sympathized with his guests over their present
+trouble with the Boers. When he had finished they voted him the best
+host and the best little cyanide tank-builder known to them--and then
+everybody tried to tell him something at once.
+
+They told him among other things that every bid except his had been in
+for two weeks, and that they were in the vault under the care of Mr.
+Pitts, the head draftsman. They promised to advise him if any new bids
+came in or if any changes occurred, and, most important of all, they
+told him that in England all structural steel shapes, instead of being
+classified as in America, are known as "angles," and they told him
+just how and where to find the official reports giving the price of
+the same for every day in the year.
+
+The word "angles" was the missing key, and those official market
+reports formed the lock in which to fit it. Mitchell had taken several
+mighty strides, and there remained but one more step to take.
+
+When his guests had finally gone home, swearing fealty, and declaring
+this to be the best dinner they had ever drunk, he hastened back to
+his room, back to the desert of blueprints and to the interminable
+columns of figures, and over them he worked like a madman.
+
+He slept two hours before daylight, then he was up and toiling again,
+for this was his last day. Using the data he had gathered the night
+before, he soon had the price of English and Scottish steel at the
+time the last bids were closed. Given one thing more--namely, the cost
+of fabrication in these foreign shops, and he would have reduced this
+hazard to a certainty, he would be able to read the prices contained
+in those sealed bids as plainly as if they lay open before him. But
+his time had narrowed now to hours.
+
+He lunched with John Pitts, the head draughtsman, going back to pick
+up the boomerang he had left the week before.
+
+"Have you gone over my first bid?" he asked, carelessly.
+
+"I have--lucky for you," said Pitts. "You made a mistake."
+
+"Indeed! How so?"
+
+"Why, it's thirty per cent. too low. It would be a crime to give you
+the business at those figures."
+
+"But, you see, I didn't include the sub-structure. I didn't have time
+to figure that." Mitchell prayed that his face might not show his
+eagerness. Evidently it did not, for Pitts walked into the trap.
+
+"Even so," said he; "it's thirty per cent. out of the way. I made
+allowance for that."
+
+The boomerang had finished its flight!
+
+Once they had separated, Mitchell broke for his hotel like a
+hunted man. He had made no mistake in his first figures. The great
+Krugersdorpf job was his; but, nevertheless, he wished to make himself
+absolutely sure and to secure as much profit as possible for Comer
+& Mathison. Without a handsome profit this three-million-dollar job
+might ruin a firm of their standing.
+
+In order to verify Pitts's statement, in order to swell his proposed
+profits to the utmost, Mitchell knew he ought to learn the "overhead"
+in English mills; that is, the fixed charges which, added to shop
+costs and prices of material, are set aside to cover office expenses,
+cost of operation, and contingencies. Without this information
+he would have to go it blind, after a fashion, and thereby risk
+penalizing himself; with it he could estimate very closely the amounts
+of the other bids and insure a safe margin for Comer & Mathison. In
+addition to this precaution he wished to have his own figures checked
+up, for even under normal conditions, if one makes a numerical error
+in work of this sort, he is more than apt to repeat it time and again,
+and Mitchell knew himself to be deadly tired--almost on the verge
+of collapse. He was inclined to doze off whenever he sat down; the
+raucous noises of the city no longer jarred or startled him, and his
+surroundings were becoming unreal, grotesque, as if seen through the
+spell of absinthe. Yes, it was necessary to check off his figures.
+
+But who could he get to do the work? He could not go to Threadneedle
+Street. He thought of the Carnegie representative and telephoned him,
+explaining the situation and his crying need, only to be told that
+no one in that office was capable of assisting him. He was referred,
+however, to an English engineer who, it was barely possible, could
+handle the job. In closing, the Carnegie man voiced a vague warning:
+
+"His name is Dell, and he used to be with one of the Edinburgh
+concerns, so don't let him know your inside figures. He might spring a
+leak."
+
+A half-hour later Mitchell, his arms full of blue-prints, was in Mr.
+Dell's office. But the English engineer hesitated; he was very busy;
+he had numerous obligations. Mitchell gazed over the threadbare rooms
+and hastily estimated how much of the nine hundred and twenty dollars
+would be left after he had paid his hotel bill. What there was to do
+must be done before the next morning's sun arose.
+
+"This job is worth ten sovereigns to me if it is finished tonight," he
+declared, briskly.
+
+Mr. Dell hesitated, stumbled, and fell. "Very well. We'll begin at
+once," said he.
+
+He unrolled the blue-prints, from a drawer he produced a sliding-rule.
+He slid this rule up; he slid it down; he gazed through his glasses
+at space; he made microscopic Spencerian figures in neat rows and
+columns. He seemed to pluck his results from the air with necromantic
+cunning, and what had taken the young man at his elbow days and nights
+of cruel effort to accomplish--what had put haggard lines about his
+mouth and eyes--the engineer accomplished in a few hours by means
+of that sliding-rule. Meanwhile, with one weary effort of will, his
+visitor summoned his powers and cross-examined him adroitly. Here was
+the very man to supply the one missing link in the perfect chain;
+but Mr. Dell would not talk. He did not like Americans nor American
+methods, and he made his dislike apparent by sealing his lips.
+Mitchell played upon his vanity at first, only to find the man wholly
+lacking in conceit. Changing his method of attack, Mitchell built a
+fire under Mr. Dell. He grilled everything British, the people, their
+social customs, their business methods, even English engineers, and
+he did it in a most annoying manner. Mr. Dell began to perspire.
+He worked doggedly on for a while, then he arose in defense of his
+country, whereupon Mitchell artfully shifted his attack to English
+steel-mills. The other refuted his statements flatly. At length the
+engineer was goaded to anger, he became disputative, indignant,
+loquacious.
+
+When Louis Mitchell flung himself into the dark body of his cab,
+late that evening, and sank his legs knee-deep into those hateful
+blue-prints, he blessed that engineer, for Dell had told him all he
+wished to know, all he had tried so vainly to discover through other
+sources. The average "overhead" in British mills was one hundred and
+thirty per cent., and Dell _knew_.
+
+The young man laughed hysterically, triumphantly, but the sound was
+more like a tearful hiccough. To-morrow at ten-thirty! It was nearly
+over. He would be ready. As he lolled back inertly upon the cushions
+he mused dreamily that he had done well. In less than two weeks, in a
+foreign country, and under strange conditions, without acquaintance or
+pull or help of any sort, he had learned the names of his competitive
+firms, the dates of their bids, and the market prices ruling on every
+piece of steel in the Krugersdorpf job when those bids were figured.
+He had learned the rules governing English labor unions; he knew all
+about piece-work and time-work, fixed charges and shop costs, together
+with the ability of every plant figuring on the Robinson-Ray contract
+to turn out the work in the necessary time. All this, and more, he
+had learned legitimately and without cost to his commercial honor.
+Henceforth that South-African contract depended merely upon his own
+ability to add, subtract, and multiply correctly. It was his just as
+surely as two and two make four--for salesmanship is an exact science.
+
+The girl would be very happy, he told himself. He was glad that she
+could never know the strain it had been.
+
+Again, through the slow, silent hours of that Wednesday night,
+Mitchell fought the fatigue of death, going over his figures
+carefully. There were no errors in them.
+
+Dawn was creeping in on him when he added a clean thirty-per-cent.
+profit for his firm, signed his bid, and prepared for bed. But he
+found that he could not leave the thing. After he had turned in he
+became assailed by sudden doubts and fears. What if he had made a
+mistake after all? What if some link in his chain were faulty? What if
+some other bidder had made a mistake and underfigured? Such thoughts
+made him tremble. Now that it was all done, he feared that he had been
+overconfident, for could it really be possible that the greatest steel
+contract in years would come to him? He grew dizzy at the picture of
+what it meant to him and to the girl.
+
+He calmed himself finally and looked straight at the matter, sitting
+up in bed, his knees drawn up under his chin. While so engaged he
+caught sight of his drawn face in the mirror opposite and started
+when he realized how old and heavy with fatigue it was. He determined
+suddenly to shave that profit to twenty-nine per cent. and make
+assurance doubly sure, but managed to conquer his momentary panic.
+Cold reasoning told him that his figures were safe.
+
+Louis Mitchell was the only salesman in Mr. Peebleby's office that
+morning who did not wear a silk hat, pearl gloves, and spats. In
+consequence the others ignored him for a time--but only for a time.
+Once the proposals had been read, an air of impenetrable gloom spread
+over the room. The seven Scotch, English, and Belgian mourners stared
+cheerlessly at one another and then with growing curiosity at the
+young man from overseas who had underbid the lowest of them by six
+thousand pounds sterling, less than one per cent. After a while they
+bowed among themselves, mumbled something to Mr. Peebleby, and
+went softly out in their high hats, their pearl gloves, and their
+spats--more like pall-bearers now than ever.
+
+"Six hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling!"
+said the Director General. "By Jove, Mitchell, I'm glad!" They shook
+hands. "I'm really glad."
+
+"That's over three million dollars in real money," said the youth.
+"It's quite a tidy little job."
+
+Peebleby laughed. "You've been very decent about it, too. I hope to
+see something of you in the future. What?"
+
+"You'll see my smoke, that's all."
+
+"You're not going back right away?"
+
+"To-morrow; I've booked my passage and cabled the girl to meet me in
+New York."
+
+"My word! A girl! She'll be glad to hear of your success."
+
+"Oh, I've told her already. You see, I knew I'd won."
+
+The Director General of the Robinson-Ray Syndicate stared in open
+amazement, but Mitchell hitched his chair closer, saying:
+
+"Now let's get at those signatures. I've got to pack."
+
+That night Louis Mitchell slept with fifteen separate contracts under
+his pillow. He double-locked the door, pulled the dresser in front of
+it, and left the light burning. At times he awoke with a start and
+felt for the documents. Toward morning he was seized with a sudden
+fright, so he got up and read them all over for fear somebody had
+tampered with them. They were correct, however, whereupon he read them
+a second time just for pleasure. They were strangely interesting.
+
+On the _Deutschland_ he slept much of the way across, and by the
+time Liberty Statue loomed up he could dream of other things than
+blue-prints--of the girl, for instance.
+
+She had enough left from the eighty dollars to bring her to New York
+and to pay for a week's lodging in West Thirty-fourth Street, though
+how she managed it Mitchell never knew. She was at the dock, of
+course. He knew she would be. He expected to see her with her arms
+outstretched and with the old joyous smile upon her dimpled face, and,
+therefore, he was sorely disappointed when he came down the gang-plank
+and she did not appear. He searched high and low until finally he
+discovered her seated over by the letter "M," where his trunk was
+waiting inspection. There she was, huddled up on a coil of rope,
+crying as if her heart would break; her nerve was gone, along with the
+four twenty-dollar bills; she was afraid to face him, afraid there had
+been an error in his cablegram.
+
+Not until she lay in his arms at last, sobbing and laughing, her
+slender body all aquiver, did she believe. Then he allowed her to feel
+the fifteen contracts inside his coat. Later, when they were in a cab
+bound for her smelly little boarding-house, he showed them to her. In
+return she gave him a telegram from his firm--a telegram addressed as
+follows:
+
+Mr. LOUIS MITCHELL,
+
+General Sales Manager, Comer & Mathison, New York City.
+
+The message read:
+
+That goes. COMER.
+
+Mitchell opened the trap above his head and called up to the driver:
+"Hey, Cabbie! We've changed our minds. Drive us to the Waldorf--at a
+gallop."
+
+
+
+
+WITH INTEREST TO DATE
+
+
+This is the tale of a wrong that rankled and a great revenge. It is
+not a moral story, nor yet, measured by the modern money code, is it
+what could be called immoral. It is merely a tale of sharp wits
+which clashed in pursuit of business, therefore let it be considered
+unmoral, a word with a wholly different commercial significance.
+
+Time was when wrongs were righted by mace and battle-ax, amid fanfares
+and shoutings, but we live in a quieter age, an age of repression,
+wherein the keenest thrust is not delivered with a yell of triumph nor
+the oldest score settled to the blare of trumpets. No longer do the
+men of great muscle lord it over the weak and the puny; as a rule
+they toil and they lift, doing unpleasant, menial duties for
+hollow-chested, big-domed men with eye-glasses. But among those very
+spindle-shanked, terra-cotta dwellers who cower at draughts and eat
+soda mints, the ancient struggle for supremacy wages fiercer than
+ever. Single combats are fought now as then, and the flavor of victory
+is quite as sweet to the pallid man back of a roll-top desk as to the
+swart, bristling baron behind his vizored helmet.
+
+The beginning of this story runs back to the time Henry Hanford went
+with the General Equipment Company as a young salesman full of hope
+and enthusiasm and a somewhat exaggerated idea of his own importance.
+He was selling shears, punches, and other machinery used in the
+fabrication of structural steel. In the territory assigned to him, the
+works of the Atlantic Bridge Company stuck up like a sore thumb, for
+although it employed many men, although its contracts were large and
+its requirements numerous, the General Equipment Company had never
+sold it a dollar's worth of anything.
+
+In the course of time Hanford convinced himself that the Atlantic
+Bridge Company needed more modern machinery, so he laid siege to
+Jackson Wylie, Sr., its president and practical owner. He spent all of
+six months in gaining the old man's ear, but when he succeeded he
+laid himself out to sell his goods. He analyzed the Atlantic Bridge
+Company's needs in the light of modern milling practice, and
+demonstrated the saving his equipment would effect. A big order and
+much prestige were at stake, both of which young Hanford needed
+badly at the time. He was vastly encouraged, therefore, when the
+bridge-builder listened attentively to him.
+
+"I dare say we shall have to make a change," Mr. Wylie reluctantly
+agreed. "I've been bothered to death by machinery salesmen, but you're
+the first one to really interest me."
+
+Hanford acknowledged the compliment and proceeded further to elaborate
+upon the superiority of the General Equipment Company's goods over
+those sold by rival concerns. When he left he felt that he had Mr.
+Wylie, Sr., "going."
+
+At the office they warned him that he had a hard nut to crack; that
+Wylie was given to "stringing" salesmen and was a hard man to close
+with, but Hanford smiled confidently. Granting those facts, they
+rendered him all the more eager to make this sale; and the bridge
+company really did need up-to-date machinery.
+
+He instituted an even more vigorous selling campaign, he sent much
+printed matter to Mr. Wylie, Sr., he wrote him many letters. Being a
+thoroughgoing young saleman, he studied the plant from the ground up,
+learning the bridge business in such detail as enabled him to talk
+with authority on efficiency methods. In the course of his studies he
+discovered many things that were wrong with the Atlantic, and spent
+days in outlining improvements on paper. He made the acquaintance of
+the foremen; he cultivated the General Superintendent; he even met Mr.
+Jackson Wylie, Jr., the Sales Manager, a very polished, metallic young
+man, who seemed quite as deeply impressed with Hanford's statements as
+did his father.
+
+Under our highly developed competitive system, modern business is done
+very largely upon personality. From the attitude of both father and
+son, Hanford began to count his chickens. Instead of letting up,
+however, he redoubled his efforts, which was his way. He spent so much
+time on the matter that his other work suffered, and in consequence
+his firm called him down. He outlined his progress with the Atlantic
+Bridge Company, declared he was going to succeed, and continued to
+camp with the job, notwithstanding the firm's open doubts.
+
+Sixty days after his first interview he had another visit with Wylie,
+senior, during which the latter drained him of information and made an
+appointment for a month later. Said Mr. Wylie:
+
+"You impress me strongly, Hanford, and I want my associates to hear
+you. Get your proposition into shape and make the same talk to them
+that you have made to me."
+
+Hanford went away elated; he even bragged a bit at the office, and the
+report got around among the other salesmen that he really had done the
+impossible and had pulled off something big with the Atlantic. It was
+a busy month for that young gentleman, and when the red-letter day at
+last arrived he went on to Newark to find both Wylies awaiting him.
+
+"Well, sir, are you prepared to make a good argument?" the father
+inquired.
+
+"I am." Hanford decided that three months was not too long a time to
+devote to work of this magnitude, after all.
+
+"I want you to do your best," the bridge-builder continued,
+encouragingly, then he led Hanford into the directors' room, where, to
+his visitor's astonishment, some fifty men were seated.
+
+"These are our salesmen," announced Mr. Wylie. He introduced Hanford
+to them with the request that they listen attentively to what the
+young man had to say.
+
+It was rather nervous work for Hanford, but he soon warmed up and
+forgot his embarrassment. He stood on his feet for two long hours
+pleading as if for his life. He went over the Atlantic plant from end
+to end; he showed the economic necessity for new machinery; then he
+explained the efficiency of his own appliances. He took rival types
+and picked them to pieces, pointing out their inferiority. He showed
+his familiarity with bridge work by going into figures which bore out
+his contention that the Atlantic's output could be increased and at
+an actual monthly saving. He wound up by proving that the General
+Equipment Company was the one concern best fitted to effect the
+improvement.
+
+It had taken months of unremitting toil to prepare himself for this
+exposition, but the young fellow felt he had made his case. When he
+took up the cost of the proposed instalment, however, Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., interrupted him.
+
+"That is all I care to have you cover," the latter explained. "Thank
+you very kindly, Mr. Hanford."
+
+Hanford sat down and wiped his forehead, whereupon the other stepped
+forward and addressed his employees.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "you have just listened to the best argument I
+ever heard. I purposely called you in from the road so that you might
+have a practical lesson in salesmanship and learn something from an
+outsider about your own business. I want you to profit by this talk.
+Take it to heart and apply it to your own customers. Our selling
+efficiency has deteriorated lately; you are getting lazy. I want you
+to wake up and show better results. That is all. You might thank this
+young gentleman for his kindness."
+
+When the audience had dispersed, Hanford inquired, blankly, "Don't you
+intend to act on my suggestions?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Mr. Wylie, in apparent surprise. "We are doing nicely,
+as it is. I merely wanted you to address the boys."
+
+"But--I've spent three months of hard labor on this! You led me to
+believe that you would put in new equipment."
+
+The younger Wylie laughed, languidly exhaling a lungful of cigarette
+smoke. "When Dad gets ready to purchase, he'll let you know," said he.
+
+Six months later the Atlantic Bridge Company placed a mammoth order
+with Hanford's rival concern, and he was not even asked to figure on
+it.
+
+That is how the seeds of this story were sown. Of course the facts got
+out, for those Atlantic salesmen were not wanting in a sense of humor,
+and Hanford was joshed in every quarter. To make matters worse,
+his firm called him to account for his wasted time, implying that
+something was evidently wrong with his selling methods. Thus began a
+lack of confidence which quickly developed into strained relations.
+The result was inevitable; Hanford saw what was coming and was wise
+enough to resign his position.
+
+But it was the ridicule that hurt him most. He was unable to get
+away from that. Had he been at all emotional, he would have sworn a
+vendetta, so deep and lasting was the hurt, but he did not; he merely
+failed to forget, which, after all, is not so different.
+
+It seemed queer that Henry Hanford should wind up in the bridge
+business himself, after attempting to fill several unsatisfactory
+positions, and yet there was nothing remarkable about it, for that
+three months of intense application at the Atlantic plant had given
+him a groundwork which came in handy when the Patterson Bridge Company
+offered him a desk. He was a good salesman; he worked hard and in
+time he was promoted. By and by the story was forgotten--by every
+one except Henry Hanford. But he had lost a considerable number of
+precious years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When it became known that the English and Continental structural
+shops were so full of work that they could not figure on the mammoth
+five-million-dollar steel structure designed to span the Barrata River
+in Africa, and when the Royal Commission in London finally advertised
+broadcast that time was the essence of this contract, Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., realized that his plant was equipped to handle the job in
+magnificent shape, with large profit to himself and with great renown
+to the Wylie name. He therefore sent his son, Jackson Wylie, the
+Second, now a full-fledged partner, to London armed with letters to
+almost everybody in England from almost everybody in America.
+
+Two weeks later--the Patterson Bridge Company was not so aggressive
+as its more pretentious rival--Henry Hanford went abroad on the same
+mission, but he carried no letters of introduction for the very good
+reason that he possessed neither commercial influence nor social
+prestige. Bradstreets had never rated him, and _Who's Who_ contained
+no names with which he was familiar.
+
+Jackson Wylie, the Second had been to London frequently, and he was
+accustomed to English life. He had friends with headquarters at
+Prince's and at Romano's, friends who were delighted to entertain so
+prominent an American; his letters gave him the entree to many of the
+best clubs and paved his way socially wherever he chose to go.
+
+It was Hanford's first trip across, and he arrived on British soil
+without so much as a knowledge of English coins, with nothing in
+the way of baggage except a grip full of blue-prints, and with no
+destination except the Parliament buildings, where he had been led
+to believe the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission was eagerly and
+impatiently awaiting his coming. But when he called at the Parliament
+buildings he failed not only to find the Commission, but even to
+encounter anybody who knew anything about it. He did manage to locate
+the office, after some patient effort, but learned that it was nothing
+more than a forwarding address, and that no member of the Commission
+had been there for several weeks. He was informed that the Commission
+had convened once, and therefore was not entirely an imaginary body;
+beyond that he could discover nothing. On his second visit to the
+office he was told that Sir Thomas Drummond, the chairman, was inside,
+having run down from his shooting-lodge in Scotland for the day. But
+Sir Thomas's clerk, with whom Hanford had become acquainted at the
+time of his first call, informed him that Mr. Jackson Wylie, the
+Second, from America, was closeted with his lordship, and in
+consequence his lordship could not be disturbed. Later, when Hanford
+got more thoroughly in touch with the general situation, he began to
+realize that introductions, influence, social prestige would in all
+probability go farther toward landing the Barrata Bridge than mere
+engineering, ability or close figuring--facts with which the younger
+Wylie was already familiar, and against which he had provided. It also
+became plain to Hanford as time went on that the contract would of
+necessity go to America, for none of the European shops were in
+position to complete it on time.
+
+Owing to government needs, this huge, eleven-span structure had to be
+on the ground within ninety days from the date of the signing of the
+contract, and erected within eight months thereafter. The Commission's
+clerk, a big, red-faced, jovial fellow, informed Hanford that price
+was not nearly so essential as time of delivery; that although the
+contract glittered with alluring bonuses and was heavily weighted
+with forfeits, neither bonuses nor forfeitures could in the slightest
+manner compensate for a delay in time. It was due to this very fact,
+to the peculiar urgency of the occasion, that the Commissioners were
+inclined to look askance at prospective bidders who might in any way
+fail to complete the task as specified.
+
+"If all that is true, tell me why Wylie gets the call?" Hanford
+inquired.
+
+"I understand he has the very highest references," said the
+Englishman.
+
+"No doubt. But you can't build bridges with letters of introduction,
+even in Africa."
+
+"Probably not. But Sir Thomas is a big man; Mr. Wylie is one of his
+sort. They meet on common ground, don't you see?"
+
+"Well, if I can't arrange an interview with any member of the
+Commission, I can at least take you to lunch. Will you go?"
+
+The clerk declared that he would, indeed, and in the days that
+followed the two saw much of each other. This fellow, Lowe by name,
+interested Hanford. He was a cosmopolite; he was polished to the
+hardness of agate by a life spent in many lands. He possessed a cold
+eye and a firm chin; he was a complex mixture of daredeviltry and
+meekness. He had fought in a war or two, and he had led hopes quite
+as forlorn as the one Hanford was now engaged upon. It was this bond,
+perhaps, which drew the two together.
+
+In spite of Lowe's assistance Hanford found it extremely difficult,
+nay, almost impossible, to obtain any real inside information
+concerning the Barrata Bridge; wherever he turned he brought up
+against a blank wall of English impassiveness: he even experienced
+difficulty in securing the blue-prints he wanted.
+
+"It looks pretty tough for you," Lowe told him one day. "I'm afraid
+you're going to come a cropper, old man. This chap Wylie has the rail
+and he's running well. He has opened an office, I believe."
+
+"So I understand. Well, the race isn't over yet, and I'm a good
+stayer. This is the biggest thing I ever tackled and it means a lot to
+me--more than you imagine."
+
+"How so?"
+
+Hanford recited the story of his old wrong, to Lowe's frank amazement.
+
+"What a rotten trick!" the latter remarked.
+
+"Yes! And--I don't forget."
+
+"You'd better forget this job. It takes pull to get consideration from
+people like Sir Thomas, and Wylie has more than he needs. A fellow
+without it hasn't a chance. Look at me, for instance, working at a
+desk! Bah!"
+
+"Want to try something else?"
+
+"I do! And you'd better follow suit."
+
+Hanford shook his head. "I never quit--I can't. When my chance at this
+bridge comes along--"
+
+Lowe laughed.
+
+"Oh, the chance will come. Chances always come; sometimes we don't see
+them, that's all. When this one comes I want to be ready. Meanwhile, I
+think I'll reconnoiter Wylie's new office and find out what's doing."
+
+Day after day Henry Hanford pursued his work doggedly, seeing much of
+Lowe, something of Wylie's clerk, and nothing whatever of Sir Thomas
+Drummond or the other members of the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission.
+He heard occasional rumors of the social triumphs of his rival,
+and met him once, to be treated with half-veiled amusement by that
+patronizing young man. Meanwhile, the time was growing short and
+Hanford's firm was not well pleased with his progress.
+
+Then the chance came, unexpectedly, as Hanford had declared chances
+always come. The remarkable thing in this instance was not that the
+veiled goddess showed her face, but that Hanford was quick enough
+to recognize her and bold enough to act. He had taken Lowe to the
+Trocadero for dinner, and, finding no seats where they could watch the
+crowd, he had selected a stall in a quiet corner. They had been there
+but a short time when Hanford recognized a voice from the stall
+adjacent as belonging to the representative of the Atlantic Bridge
+Company. From the sounds he could tell that Wylie was giving a
+dinner-party, and with Lowe's aid he soon identified the guests as
+members of the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission. Hanford began to
+strain his ears.
+
+As the meal progressed this became less of an effort, for young
+Wylie's voice was strident. The Wylie conversation had ever been
+limited largely to the Wylies, their accomplishments, their purposes,
+and their prospects; and now having the floor as host, he talked
+mainly about himself, his father, and their forthcoming Barrata Bridge
+contract. It was his evident endeavor this evening to impress his
+distinguished guests with the tremendous importance of the Atlantic
+Bridge Company and its unsurpassed facilities for handling big jobs.
+A large part of young Wylie's experience had been acquired by
+manipulating municipal contracts and the aldermen connected therewith;
+he now worked along similar lines. Hanford soon learned that he was
+trying in every way possible to induce Drummond and his associates
+to accompany him back to America for the purpose of proving
+beyond peradventure that the Atlantic could take care of a
+five-million-dollar contract with ease.
+
+"As if they'd go!" Lowe said, softly. "And yet--by Jove! he talks as
+if he had the job buttoned up."
+
+The Englishman was alert, his dramatic instinct was at play;
+recognizing the significance of Wylie's offer and its possible bearing
+upon Hanford's fortunes, he waved the waiter away, knowing better than
+to permit the rattle of dishes to distract his host's attention.
+
+Meanwhile, with clenched teeth and smoldering eyes Henry Hanford heard
+his rival in the next compartment identify the State of New Jersey by
+the fact that the works of the Atlantic Bridge Company were located
+therein, and dignify it by the fact that the Jackson Wylies lived
+there.
+
+"You know, gentlemen," Wylie was saying, "I can arrange the trip
+without the least difficulty, and I assure you there will be no
+discomfort. I am in constant cipher communication with my father, and
+he will be delighted to afford you every courtesy. I can fix it up by
+cable in a day."
+
+Hanford arose with a silent gesture to his guest, then, although the
+meal was but half over, he paid the bill. He had closed his campaign.
+Right then and there he landed the great Barrata Bridge contract.
+
+Lowe, mystified beyond measure by his friend's action, made no comment
+until they were outside. Then he exclaimed:
+
+"I say, old top, what blew off?"
+
+Hanford smiled at him queerly. "The whole top of young Wylie's head
+blew off, if he only knew it. It's my day to settle that score, and
+the interest will be compounded."
+
+"I must be extremely stupid."
+
+"Not at all. You're damned intelligent, and that's why I'm going to
+need your help." Hanford turned upon the adventurer suddenly. "Have
+you ever been an actor?"
+
+Lowe made a comical grimace. "I say, old man, that's pretty rough. My
+people raised me for a gentleman."
+
+"Exactly. Come with me to my hotel. We're going to do each other a
+great favor. With your help and the help of Mr. Jackson Wylie the
+Second's London clerk, I'm going to land the Barrata Bridge."
+
+Hanford had not read his friend Lowe awrong, and when, behind locked
+doors, he outlined his plan, the big fellow gazed at him with
+amazement, his blue eyes sparkling with admiration.
+
+"Gad! That appeals to me. I--think I can do it." There was no timidity
+in Lowe's words, merely a careful consideration of the risks involved.
+
+Hanford gripped his hand. "I'll attend to Wylie's clerk," he declared.
+"Now we'd better begin to rehearse."
+
+"But what makes you so positive you can handle his clerk?" queried
+Lowe.
+
+"Oh, I've studied him the same way I've studied you! I've been doing
+nothing else for the last month."
+
+"Bli' me, you're a corker!" said Mr. Lowe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back in Newark, New Jersey, Jackson Wylie, Sr., was growing impatient.
+In spite of his son's weekly reports he had begun to fret at the
+indefinite nature of results up to date. This dissatisfaction it was
+that had induced him to cable his invitation to the Royal Commission
+to visit the Atlantic plant. Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., had a mysterious
+way of closing contracts once he came in personal contact with the
+proper people. In the words of his envious competitors, he had "good
+terminal facilities," and he felt sure in his own mind that he could
+get this job if only he could meet some member of that Commission who
+possessed the power to act. Business was bad, and in view of his son's
+preliminary reports he had relied upon the certainty of securing this
+tremendous contract; he had even turned work away so that his plant
+might be ready for the rush, with the result that many of his men now
+were idle and that he was running far below capacity. But he likewise
+had his eye upon those English bonuses, and when his associates rather
+timidly called his attention to the present state of affairs he
+assured them bitingly that he knew his business. Nevertheless, he
+could not help chafing at delay nor longing for the time to come to
+submit the bid that had lain for a month upon his desk. The magnitude
+of the figures contained therein was getting on Mr. Wylie's nerves.
+
+On the tenth of May he received a cablegram in his own official cipher
+which, translated, read:
+
+Meet Sir Thomas Drummond, Chairman Royal Barrata Bridge Commission,
+arriving Cunard Liner _Campania_, thirteenth, stopping Waldorf.
+Arrange personally Barrata contract. Caution.
+
+The cablegram was unsigned, but its address, "Atwylie," betrayed not
+only its destination, but also the identity of its sender. Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., became tremendously excited. The last word conjured up
+bewildering possibilities. He was about to consult his associates when
+it struck him that the greatest caution he could possibly observe
+would consist of holding his own tongue now and henceforth. They had
+seen fit to criticize his handling of the matter thus far; he decided
+he would play safe and say nothing until he had first seen Sir Thomas
+Drummond and learned the lay of the land. He imagined he might then
+have something electrifying to tell them. He had "dealt from the
+bottom" too often, he had closed too many bridge contracts in his
+time, to mistake the meaning of this visit, or of that last word
+"caution."
+
+During the next few days Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., had hard work to hold
+himself in, and he was at a high state of nervous tension when, on
+the morning of the fourteenth day of May, he strolled into the
+Waldorf-Astoria and inquired at the desk for Sir Thomas Drummond.
+
+There was no Sir Thomas stopping at the hotel, although a Mr. T.
+Drummond from London had arrived on the _Campania_ the day before. Mr.
+Jackson Wylie placed the heel of his right shoe upon the favorite corn
+of his left foot and bore down upon it heavily. He must be
+getting into his dotage, he reflected, or else the idea of a
+five-million-dollar job had him rattled. Of course Sir Thomas would
+not use his title.
+
+At the rear desk he had his card blown up through the tube to "Mr. T.
+Drummond," and a few moments later was invited to take the elevator.
+
+Arriving at the sixth floor, he needed no page to guide him; boots
+pointed his way to the apartment of the distinguished visitor as plainly
+as a lettered sign-board; boots of all descriptions--hunting-boots,
+riding-boots, street shoes, lowshoes, pumps, sandals--black ones and tan
+ones--all in a row outside the door. It was a typically English display.
+Evidently Sir Thomas Drummond was a personage of the most extreme
+importance and traveled in befitting style, Mr. Wylie told himself.
+Nothing was missing from the collection, unless perhaps a pair of rubber
+hip-boots.
+
+A stoop-shouldered old man with a marked accent and a port-wine nose
+showed Mr. Wylie into a parlor where the first object upon which
+his active eyes alighted was a mass of blue-prints. He knew these
+drawings; he had figured on them himself. He likewise noted a hat-box
+and a great, shapeless English bag, both plastered crazily with hotel
+and steamship labels hailing from every quarter of the world. It was
+plain to be seen that Sir Thomas was a globe-trotter.
+
+"Mr. Drummond begs you to be seated," the valet announced, with what
+seemed an unnecessary accent on the "mister," then moved silently out.
+
+Mr. Wylie remarked to himself upon the value of discreet servants.
+They were very valuable; very hard to get in America. This must be
+some lifelong servitor in his lordship's family.
+
+There was no occasion to inquire the identity of the tall, florid
+Englishman in tweeds who entered a moment later, a bundle of estimates
+in his hand. "Sir Thomas Drummond, Chairman of the Royal Barrata
+Bridge Commission," was written all over him in large type.
+
+His lordship did not go to the trouble of welcoming his visitor, but
+scanned him frigidly through his glasses.
+
+"You are Mr. Jackson Wylie, Senior?" he demanded, abruptly.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"President of the Atlantic Bridge Company, of Newark, New Jersey?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"You received a cablegram from your son in London?"
+
+"Yes, your lordship."
+
+Sir Thomas made a gesture as if to forego the title. "Let me see it,
+please."
+
+Mr. Wylie produced the cablegram, and Drummond scanned it sharply.
+Evidently the identification was complete.
+
+"Does any one besides your son and yourself know the contents of this
+message?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"You have not told any one of my coming?"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Very well." Sir Thomas appeared to breathe easier; he deliberately
+tore the cablegram into small bits, then tossed the fragments into
+a wastepaper basket before waving his caller to a chair. He still
+remained very cold, very forceful, although his stiff formality had
+vanished.
+
+"Do you understand all about this bridge?" he inquired.
+
+Wylie senior took the cue of brusqueness and nodded shortly.
+
+"Can you build it in the time specified?"
+
+"With ease."
+
+"Have you submitted your bid?"
+
+"Not yet. I--"
+
+"What is the amount of your proposal?"
+
+The president of the Atlantic Bridge Company gasped. This was the
+boldest, the coldest work he had ever experienced. Many times he had
+witnessed public officials like Sir Thomas Drummond approach this
+delicate point, but never with such composure, such matter-of-fact
+certainty and lack of moral scruple. Evidently, however, this
+Englishman had come to trade and wanted a direct answer. There was no
+false pose, no romance here. But Jackson Wylie, Sr., was too shrewd a
+business man to name a rock-bottom price to begin with. The training
+of a lifetime would not permit him to deny himself a liberal leeway
+for hedging, therefore he replied, cautiously:
+
+"My figures will be approximately �1,400,000 sterling." It was his
+longest speech thus far.
+
+For what seemed an hour to the bridge-builder Sir Thomas Drummond
+gazed at him with a cold, hard eye, then he folded his papers,
+rolled up his blue-prints, placed them in the big traveling-bag, and
+carefully locked it. When he had finished he flung out this question
+suddenly:
+
+"Does that include the Commissioners?"
+
+Up to this point Mr. Jackson Wylie had spoken mainly in monosyllables;
+now he quit talking altogether; it was no longer necessary. He merely
+shook his head in negation. He was smiling slightly.
+
+"Then I shall ask you to add �200,000 sterling to your price," his
+lordship calmly announced. "Make your bid �1,600,000 sterling, and
+mail it in time for Wednesday's boat. I sail on the same ship.
+Proposals will be opened on the twenty-fifth. Arrange for an English
+indemnity bond for ten per cent. of your proposition. Do not
+communicate in any manner whatsoever with your son, except to forward
+the sealed bid to him. He is not to know of our arrangement. You will
+meet me in London later; we will take care of that �200,000 out of the
+last forty per cent. of the contract price, which is payable thirty
+days after completion, inspection, and acceptance of the bridge. You
+will not consult your associates upon leaving here. Do I make myself
+clear? Very well, sir. The figures are easy to remember: �1,600,000;
+�1,400,000 to you. I am pleased with the facilities your plant offers
+for doing the work. I am confident you can complete the bridge on
+time, and I beg leave to wish you a very pleasant good day."
+
+Jackson Wylie, Sr., did not really come to until he had reached
+the street; even then he did not know whether he had come down the
+elevator or through the mail-chute. Of one thing only was he certain:
+he was due to retire in favor of his son. He told himself that
+he needed a trip through the Holy Land with a guardian and a
+nursing-bottle; then he paused on the curb and stamped on his corn for
+a second time.
+
+"Oh, what an idiot I am!" he cried, savagely. "I could have
+gotten �1,600,000 to start with, but--by gad, Sir Thomas is the
+coldest-blooded thing I ever went against! I--I can't help but admire
+him."
+
+Having shown a deplorable lack of foresight, Mr. Wylie determined to
+make up for it by an ample display of hindsight. If the profits on the
+job were not to be so large as they might have been, he would at
+least make certain of them by obeying instructions to the letter. In
+accordance with this determination, he made out the bid himself, and
+he mailed it with his own hand that very afternoon. He put three blue
+stamps on the envelope, although it required but two. Then he called
+up an automobile agency and ordered a foreign town-car his wife had
+admired. He decided that she and the girls might go to Paris for the
+fall shopping--he might even go with them, in view of that morning's
+episode.
+
+For ten days he stood the pressure, then on the morning of the
+twenty-fourth he called his _confr�res_ into the directors' room, that
+same room in which young Hanford had made his talk a number of years
+before. Inasmuch as it was too late now for a disclosure to affect the
+opening of the bids in London, he felt absolved from his promise to
+Sir Thomas.
+
+"Gentlemen, I have the honor to inform you," he began, pompously,
+"that the Barrata Bridge is ours! We have the greatest structural
+steel job of the decade." His chest swelled with justifiable pride.
+
+"How? When? What do you mean?" they cried.
+
+He told them of his mysterious but fruitful interview at the Waldorf
+ten days previously, enjoying their expressions of amazement to the
+full; then he explained in considerable detail the difficulties he had
+surmounted in securing such liberal figures from Sir Thomas.
+
+"We were ready to take the contract for �1,300,000, as you will
+remember, but by the exercise of some diplomacy"--he coughed
+modestly--"I may say, by the display of some firmness and
+independence, I succeeded in securing a clean profit of $500,000 over
+what we had expected." He accepted, with becoming diffidence, the
+congratulations which were showered upon him. Of course, the news
+created a sensation, but it was as nothing to the sensation that
+followed upon the receipt of a cablegram the next day which read:
+
+ATWYLIE,
+
+Newark, New Jersey.
+
+Terrible mistake somewhere. We lost. Am coming home to-day.
+
+Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., also went home that day--by carriage, for,
+after raving wildly of treachery, after cursing the name of some
+English nobleman, unknown to most of the office force, he collapsed,
+throwing his employees into much confusion. There were rumors of
+an apoplectic stroke; some one telephoned for a physician; but the
+president of the Atlantic Bridge Company only howled at the latter
+when he arrived.
+
+What hit the old man hardest was the fact that he could not explain to
+his associates--that he could not even explain to himself, for that
+matter. He could make neither head nor tail of the affair; his son was
+on the high seas and could not be reached; the mystery of the whole
+transaction threatened to unseat his reason. Even when his sorrowing
+heir arrived, a week after the shock, the father could gather nothing
+at first except the bare details.
+
+All he could learn was that the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission
+had met on the twenty-fifth day of May, for the second time in its
+history, with Sir Thomas Drummond in the chair. In the midst of an
+ultra-British solemnity the bids had been opened and read--nine of
+them--two Belgian, one German, two French, one English, one Scottish,
+and two American.
+
+The only proposals that conformed to the specifications in every
+respect were the last named. They were perfect. The Atlantic Bridge
+Company, of Newark, New Jersey, offered to do the work as specified
+for �1,600,000 sterling. The Patterson Bridge Company, through its
+authorized agent, Mr. Henry Hanford, named a price of �1,550,000. The
+rest was but a matter of detail.
+
+Having concluded this bald recital, Jackson Wylie, the Second, spread
+his hands in a gesture of despair. "I can't understand it," he said,
+dolefully. "I thought I had it cinched all the time."
+
+"_You_ had it cinched!" bellowed his father. "_You_! Why, you ruined
+it all! Why in hell did you send him over here?"
+
+"I? Send who? What are you talking about?"
+
+"That man with the boots! That lying, thieving scoundrel, Sir Thomas
+Drummond, of course."
+
+The younger Wylie's face showed blank, uncomprehending amazement. "Sir
+Thomas Drummond was in London all the time I was there. I saw him
+daily," said he.
+
+Not until this very moment did the president of the Atlantic Bridge
+Company comprehend the trap he had walked into, but now the whole
+hideous business became apparent. He had been fooled, swindled, and in
+a way to render recourse impossible; nay, in a manner to blacken his
+reputation if the story became public. He fell actually ill from the
+passion of his rage and not even a long rest from the worries of
+business completely cured him. The bitter taste of defeat would not
+down. He might never have understood the matter thoroughly had it not
+been for a missive he received one day through the mail. It was a bill
+from a London shoe-store for twelve pairs of boots, of varying styles,
+made out to Henry Hanford, and marked "paid."
+
+Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., noted with unspeakable chagrin that the last
+word was heavily under-scored in ink, as if by another hand. Hanford's
+bill was indeed paid, and with interest to date.
+
+
+
+
+THE CUB REPORTER
+
+
+Why he chose Buffalo Paul Anderson never knew, unless perhaps it
+had more newspapers than Bay City, Michigan, and because his ticket
+expired in the vicinity of Buffalo. For that matter, why he should
+have given up an easy job as the mate of a tugboat to enter the
+tortuous paths of journalism the young man did not know, and, lacking
+the introspective faculty, he did not stop to analyze his motives. So
+far as he could discover he had felt the call to higher endeavor, and
+just naturally had heeded it. Such things as practical experience and
+educational equipment were but empty words to him, for he was young
+and hopeful, and the world is kind at twenty-one.
+
+He had hoped to enter his chosen field with some financial backing,
+and to that end, when the desire to try his hand at literature had
+struck him, he had bought an interest in a smoke-consumer which a
+fireman on another tugboat had patented. In partnership with the
+inventor he had installed one of the devices beneath a sawmill boiler
+as an experiment. Although the thing consumed smoke surprisingly well,
+it likewise unharnessed such an amazing army of heat-units that it
+melted the crown-sheet of the boiler; whereupon the sawmill men, being
+singularly coarse and unimaginative fellows, set upon the patentee and
+his partner with ash-rakes, draw-bars, and other ordinary, unpatented
+implements; a lumberjack beat hollowly upon their ribs with a peavy,
+and that night young Anderson sickened of smoke-consumers, harked anew
+to the call of journalism, and hiked, arriving in Buffalo with seven
+dollars and fifty cents to the good.
+
+For seven dollars, counted out in advance, he chartered a furnished
+room for a week, the same carrying with it a meal at each end of the
+day, which left in Anderson's possession a superfluity of fifty cents
+to be spent in any extravagance he might choose.
+
+Next day he bought a copy of each newspaper and, carefully scanning
+them, selected the one upon which to bestow his reportorial gifts.
+This done, he weighed anchor and steamed through the town in search of
+the office. Walking in upon the city editor of _The Intelligencer_, he
+gazed with benevolent approval upon that busy gentleman's broad back.
+He liked the place, the office suited him, and he decided to have his
+desk placed over by the window.
+
+After a time the editor wheeled, displaying a young, smooth, fat face,
+out of which peered gray-blue eyes with pin-point pupils.
+
+"Well?" he queried.
+
+"Here I am," said Anderson.
+
+"So it appears. What do you want?"
+
+"Work."
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"Newspapering."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"Anything."
+
+"Well, well!" cried the editor. "You don't look much like a newspaper
+man."
+
+"I'm not one--yet. But I'm going to be."
+
+"Where have you worked?"
+
+"Nowhere! You see, I'm really a playwright."
+
+The editor's face showed a bit of interest. "Playwright, eh? Anderson!
+Anderson!" he mused. "Don't recall the name."
+
+"No," said Paul; "I've never written any plays yet, but I'm going
+to. That's why I want to sort of begin here and get the hang of this
+writing game."
+
+A boy entered with some proofs at that moment and tossed them upon
+the table, distracting the attention of the newspaper man. The latter
+wheeled back to his work and spoke curtly over his shoulder.
+
+"I'm not running a school of journalism. Good-by."
+
+"Maybe you'd like me to do a little space work--?"
+
+"I'd never like you. Get out. I'm busy."
+
+Anderson retired gracefully, jingling his scanty handful of nickels
+and dimes, and a half-hour later thrust himself boldly in upon another
+editor, but with no better result. He made the rounds of all the
+offices; although invariably rebuffed he became more firmly convinced
+than ever that journalism was his designated sphere.
+
+That night after dinner he retired to his room with the evening
+papers, wedged a chair against his bed, and, hoisting his feet upon
+the wash-stand, absorbed the news of the day. It was ineffably sweet
+and satisfying to be thus identified with the profession of letters,
+and it was immeasurably more dignified than "tugging" on the Saginaw
+River. Once he had schooled himself in the tricks of writing, he
+decided he would step to higher things than newspaper work, but for
+the present it was well to ground himself firmly in the rudiments of
+the craft.
+
+In going through the papers he noted one topic which interested him, a
+"similar mystery" story on the second page. From what he could gather,
+he judged that much space had already been given to it; for now,
+inasmuch as no solution offered, the item was dying slowly, the major
+portion of each article being devoted to a rehash of similar unsolved
+mysteries.
+
+Anderson read that the body of the golden-haired girl still lay at the
+Morgue, unidentified. Bit by bit he pieced together the lean story
+that she was a suicide and that both the police and the press had
+failed in their efforts to unearth the least particle of information
+regarding her. In spite of her remarkable beauty and certain unusual
+circumstances connected with her death investigation had led nowhere.
+
+On the following day Anderson again walked into the editorial-rooms
+of _The Intelligencer_ and greeted the smooth, fat-faced occupant
+thereof.
+
+"Anything doing yet?" he inquired.
+
+"Not yet," said the newspaper man, with a trace of annoyance in his
+voice. As the applicant moved out he halted him at the door with the
+words: "Oh! Wait!"
+
+Anderson's heart leaped. After all, he thought, perseverance would--
+
+"Not yet, nor soon." The editor smiled broadly, and Paul realized that
+the humor in those pin-point eyes was rather cruel.
+
+Five other calls he made that day, to be greeted gruffly in every
+instance except one. One man encouraged him slightly by saying:
+
+"Come back next week; I may have an opening then."
+
+In view of the "pay-as-you-enter" policy in vogue at Anderson's
+boarding-house he knew there could be no next week for him, therefore
+he inquired:
+
+"How about a little space work in the meantime? I'm pretty good at
+that stuff."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Surest thing you know."
+
+"Did you ever do any?"
+
+"No. But I'm good, just the same."
+
+"Huh!" the editor grunted. "There's no room now, and, come to think of
+it, you needn't bother to get around next week. I can't break in new
+men."
+
+That evening young Anderson again repaired to his room with his
+harvest of daily papers, and again he read them thoroughly. He was by
+no means discouraged as yet, for his week had just begun--there
+were still five days of grace, and prime ministers have been made
+overnight, nations have fallen in five days. Six calls a day for five
+days, that meant thirty chances for a job. It was a cinch!
+
+Hidden away among the back pages once more he encountered the
+golden-haired-girl story, and although one paper featured it a bit
+because of some imaginary clue, the others treated it casually, making
+public the information that the body still lay at the Morgue, a
+silent, irritating thing of mystery.
+
+On the third day Paul made his usual round of calls. He made them more
+quickly now because he was recognized, and was practically thrown out
+of each editorial sanctum. His serenity remained unruffled, and
+his confidence undisturbed. Of all the six editors, Burns, of _The
+Intelligencer_, treated him worst, adding ridicule to his gruffness, a
+refinement of cruelty which annoyed the young steamboat man. Anderson
+clenched his hard-knuckled hand and estimated the distance from
+editorial ear to point of literary chin, but realized in time that
+steamboat methods were out of place here in the politer realms of
+journalism.
+
+Four times more he followed his daily routine, and on Monday morning
+arose early to avoid his landlady. His week was up, his nickels and
+dimes were gone, nevertheless he spent the day on his customary
+rounds. He crept in late at night, blue with the cold and rather dazed
+at his bad luck; he had eaten nothing since the morning before, and
+he knew that he dared not show up at the breakfast-table the next
+morning. For the time being discouragement settled upon him; it
+settled suddenly like some heavy smothering thing; it robbed him of
+hope and redoubled his hunger. He awoke at daylight, roused by the
+sense of his defeat, then tiptoed out while yet the landlady was abed,
+and spent the day looking for work along the water-front. But winter
+had tied up the shipping, and he failed, as he likewise failed at
+sundry employment agencies where he offered himself in any capacity.
+
+At noon he wandered into the park, and, finding a sheltered spot,
+sunned himself as best he could. He picked up the sheets of a
+wind-scattered paper and read until the chill December afternoon
+got into his bones and forced him to his feet. The tale of the
+unidentified girl at the Morgue recurred to him when he read the
+announcement that she would be buried two days later in the Potter's
+Field. Perhaps the girl had starved for lack of work, he reflected.
+Perhaps hunger and cold had driven her to her death. Certainly those
+two were to blame for many a tragedy calculated to mystify warmly clad
+policemen and well-fed reporters.
+
+When he stole, shivering, into his bleak bedroom, late that night, he
+found a note pinned upon his pillow. Of course the landlady needed her
+rent--all landladies were in need of money--and of course he would get
+out in the morning. He was glad she had not turned him out during the
+day, for this afforded him sanctuary for another night at least. After
+to-morrow it would be a park bench for his.
+
+He left his valise behind in the morning, rather lamenting the fact
+that the old lady could not wear the shirts it contained, and hoping
+that she would realize a sufficient sum from their sale to pay his
+bill.
+
+It was late afternoon when he commenced his listless tramp toward the
+newspaper offices. Since Burns had become his pet aversion, he saved
+him for the last, framing a few farewell remarks befitting the death
+of hopes like his, and rehearsing an exit speech suitable to mark his
+departure from the field of letters.
+
+When he finally reached _The Intelligencer_ editorial-rooms, Burns
+rounded on him angrily.
+
+"For the love of Mike! Are you here again?" he demanded.
+
+"I thought you might like to have some space work--"
+
+"By heavens! You're persistent."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We editors are an unfeeling lot, aren't we?" the fat young man
+inquired. "No temperament, no appreciation." He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"Give me a job," Anderson cried, his voice breaking huskily. "I'll
+make good. I'll do anything."
+
+"How long do you intend to keep bothering me?" questioned Burns.
+
+Anderson's cheeks were blue and the backs of his legs were trembling
+from weakness, but he repeated, stolidly: "Give me a job. I--I won't
+bother you after that. I'll make good, see if I don't."
+
+"You think well of yourself, don't you?"
+
+"If you thought half as well of me as I do," Paul assured him, "I'd be
+your star reporter."
+
+"Star hell!" testily cried the editor. "We haven't got such a thing.
+They don't know they're alive, except on pay-day. Look at this blond
+girl at the Morgue--they've wasted two weeks on that case." He paused
+suddenly, then his soft lips spread, showing his sharp, white teeth.
+Modifying his tone, he continued: "Say, I rather like you, Anderson,
+you're such a blamed nuisance. You've half convinced me that you're a
+genius."
+
+The younger man's hunger, which had given up in despair, raised its
+head and bit into his vitals sharply.
+
+"Maybe I--"
+
+"I've a notion to give you a chance."
+
+"That's all I want," the caller quavered, in a panic. "Just give me a
+toe-hold, that's all," His voice broke in spite of his effort to
+hold it steady. Burns wasn't a bad sort, after all; just grouchy and
+irritable. Perhaps this was merely his way.
+
+Burns continued: "Well, I will give you an assignment, a good
+assignment, too, and if you cover it I'll put you on permanently. I'll
+do more than that, I'll pay you what we pay our best man, if you make
+good. That's fair, isn't it?"
+
+He smiled benignly, and the soon-to-be reporter's wits went capering
+off in a hysterical stampede. Anderson felt the desire to wring the
+fellow's hand.
+
+"All that counts in this office is efficiency," the latter went on.
+"We play no favorites. When a man delivers the goods we boost him;
+when he fails we fire him. There's no sentiment here, and I hold my
+job merely because I'm the best man in the shop. Can you go to work
+to-night?"
+
+"Why--why--yes, sir!"
+
+"Very well. That's the spirit I like. You can take your time on the
+story, and you needn't come back till you bring it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Now pay attention, here it is. About two weeks ago a blond girl
+committed suicide in a Main Street boarding-house. The body's down at
+the Morgue now. Find out who she is." He turned back to his desk and
+began to work.
+
+The hungry youth behind him experienced a sudden sinking at the
+stomach. All at once he became hopelessly empty and friendless, and he
+felt his knees urging him to sit down. He next became conscious
+that the shoulders of Mr. Burns were shaking a bit, as if he had
+encountered a piece of rare humor. After an instant, when Anderson
+made no move to go, the man at the desk wheeled about, exposing a
+bloated countenance purple with suppressed enjoyment.
+
+"What's the matter?" he giggled. "Don't you want the job? I can't tell
+you any more about the girl; that's all we know. The rest is up to
+you. You'll find out everything, won't you? Please do, for your own
+sake and the sake of _The Intelligencer_. Yes, yes, I'm sure you will,
+because you're a good newspaper man--you told me so yourself." His
+appreciation of the jest threatened to strangle him.
+
+"Mr. Burns," began the other, "I--I'm up against it. I guess you don't
+know it, but I'm hungry. I haven't eaten for three days."
+
+At this the editor became positively apoplectic.
+
+"Oh yes--yes, I do!" He nodded vigorously. "You show it in your face.
+That's why I went out of my way to help you. He! He! He! Now you run
+along and get me the girl's name and address while I finish this
+proof. Then come back and have supper with me at the Press Club."
+Again he chortled and snickered, whereupon something sullen and fierce
+awoke in young Anderson. He knew of a way to get food and a bed and a
+place to work even if it would only last thirty days, for he judged
+Burns was the kind of man who would yell for the police in case of an
+assault. Paul would have welcomed the prospect of prison fare, but he
+reasoned that it would be an incomplete satisfaction merely to mash
+the pudgy face of Mr. Burns and hear him clamor. What he wanted at
+this moment was a job; Burns's beating could hold over. This suicide
+case had baffled the pick of Buffalo's trained reporters; it had
+foiled the best efforts of her police; nevertheless, this fat-paunched
+fellow had baited a starving man by offering him the assignment. It
+was impossible; it was a cruel joke, and yet--there might be a chance
+of success. Even while he was debating the point he heard himself say:
+
+"Very well, Mr. Burns. If you want her name I'll get it for you."
+
+He crammed his hat down over his ears and walked out, leaving the
+astonished editor gazing after him with open mouth.
+
+Anderson's first impulse had been merely to get out of Burns's office,
+out of sight of that grinning satyr, and never to come back, but
+before he had reached the street he had decided that it was as well to
+starve striving as with folded hands. After all, the dead girl had a
+name.
+
+Instead of leaving the building, he went to the files of the paper
+and, turning back, uncovered the original story, which he cut out with
+his pen-knife, folded up, and placed in his pocket. This done, he
+sought the lobby of a near-by hotel, found a seat near a radiator, and
+proceeded to read the clipping carefully.
+
+It was a meager story, but it contained facts and was free from the
+confusion and distortions of the later accounts, which was precisely
+what he wished to guard against. Late one afternoon, so the story
+went, the girl had rented a room in a Main Street boarding-house, had
+eaten supper and retired. At eleven o'clock the next day, when she did
+not respond to a knock on her door, the room had been broken into and
+she had been found dead, with an empty morphine-bottle on the bureau.
+That was all. There were absolutely no clues to the girl's identity,
+for the closest scrutiny failed to discover a mark on her clothing
+or any personal articles which could be traced. She had possessed no
+luggage, save a little hand-satchel or shopping-bag containing a few
+coins. One fact alone stood out in the whole affair. She had paid for
+her room with a two-dollar Canadian bill, but this faint clue had been
+followed with no result. No one knew the girl; she had walked out of
+nowhere and had disappeared into impenetrable mystery. Those were the
+facts in the case, and they were sufficiently limited to baffle the
+best efforts of Buffalo's trained detective force.
+
+It would seem that there can be no human creature so obscure as to
+have neither relatives, friends, nor acquaintances, and yet this
+appeared to be the case, for a full description of this girl had
+been blazoned in the papers of every large city, had been exposed in
+countless country post-offices, and conveyed to the police of every
+city of the States and Canada. It was as if the mysterious occupant of
+the Morgue had been born of the winter wind on that fateful evening
+two weeks before. The country had been dragged by a net of publicity,
+that marvelous, fine-meshed fabric from which no living man is small
+or shrewd enough to escape, and still the sad, white face at the
+Morgue continued to smile out from its halo of gold as if in gentle
+mockery.
+
+For a long time Paul Anderson sat staring into the realms of
+speculation, his lips white with hunger, his cheeks hollow and
+feverish from the battle he had waged. His power of exclusion was
+strong, therefore he lost himself to his surroundings. Finally,
+however, he roused himself from his abstraction and realized the irony
+of this situation. He, the weakest, the most inexperienced of all the
+men who had tried, had been set to solve this mystery, and starvation
+was to be the fruit of his failure.
+
+He saw that it had begun to snow outside. In the lobby it was warm and
+bright and vivid with jostling life; the music of a stringed orchestra
+somewhere back of him was calling well-dressed men and women in to
+dinner. All of them seemed happy, hopeful, purposeful. He noted,
+furthermore, that three days without food makes a man cold, even in
+a warm place, and light-headed, too. The north wind had bitten him
+cruelly as he crossed the street, and now as he peered out of the
+plate-glass windows the night seemed to hold other lurking horrors
+besides. His want was like a burden, and he shuddered weakly,
+hesitating to venture out where the wind could harry him. It was a
+great temptation to remain here where there was warmth and laughter
+and life; nevertheless, he rose and slunk shivering out into the
+darkness, then laid a course toward the Morgue.
+
+While Anderson trod the snowy streets a slack-jowled editor sat at
+supper with some friends at the Press Club, eating and drinking
+heartily, as is the custom of newspaper men let down for a moment from
+the strain of their work. He had told a story, and his caustic way
+of telling it had amused his hearers, for each and every one of them
+remembered the shabby applicant for work, and all of them had wasted
+baffling hours on the mystery of this girl with the golden hair.
+
+"I guess I put a crimp in him," giggled Mr. Burns. "I gave him a
+chance to show those talents he recommends so highly."
+
+"The Morgue, on a night like this, is a pretty dismal place for a
+hungry man," said one of the others. "It's none too cheerful in the
+daytime."
+
+The others agreed, and Burns wabbled anew in his chair in appreciation
+of his humor.
+
+Young Anderson had never seen a morgue, and to-night, owing to his
+condition, his dread of it was child-like. It seemed as if this
+particular charnel-house harbored some grisly thing which stood
+between him and food and warmth and hope; the nearer he drew to it the
+greater grew his dread. A discourteous man, shrunken as if from the
+chill of the place, was hunched up in front of a glowing stove. He
+greeted Anderson sourly:
+
+"Out into that courtyard; turn to the left--second door," he directed.
+"She's in the third compartment."
+
+Anderson lacked courage to ask the fellow to come along, but stumbled
+out into a snow-filled areaway lighted by a swinging incandescent
+which danced to the swirling eddies.
+
+Compartment! He supposed bodies were kept upon slabs or tables, or
+something like that. He had steeled himself to see rows of unspeakable
+sights, played upon by dripping water, but he found nothing of the
+sort.
+
+The second door opened into a room which he discovered was colder than
+the night outside, evidently the result of artificial refrigeration.
+He was relieved to find the place utterly bare except for a sort of
+car or truck which ran around the room on a track beneath a row of
+square doors. These doors evidently opened into the compartments
+alluded to by the keeper.
+
+Which compartment had the fellow said? Paul abruptly discovered that
+he was rattled, terribly rattled, and he turned back out of the place.
+He paused shortly, however, and took hold of himself.
+
+"Now, now!" he said, aloud. "You're a bum reporter, my boy." An
+instant later he forced himself to jerk open the first door at his
+hand.
+
+For what seemed a full minute he stared into the cavern, as if
+petrified, then he closed the door softly. Sweat had started from his
+every pore. Alone once more in the great room, he stood shivering.
+"God!" he muttered. This was newspaper training indeed.
+
+He remembered now having read, several days before, about an Italian
+laborer who had been crushed by a falling column. To one unaccustomed
+to death in any form that object, head-on in the obscurity of the
+compartment, had been a trying sight. He began to wonder if it were
+really cold or stiflingly hot.
+
+The boy ground his teeth and flung open the next door, slamming it
+hurriedly again to blot out what it exposed. Why didn't they keep them
+covered? Why didn't they show a card outside? Must he examine every
+grisly corpse upon the premises?
+
+He stepped to the third door and wrenched it open. He knew the girl at
+once by her wealth of yellow hair and the beauty of her still, white
+face. There was no horror here, no ghastly sight to weaken a man's
+muscles and sicken his stomach; only a tired girl asleep. Anderson
+felt a great pity as he wheeled the truck opposite the door and
+reverently drew out the slab on which the body lay. He gazed upon her
+intently for some time. She was not at all as he had pictured her, and
+yet there could be no mistake. He took the printed description from
+his pocket and reread it carefully, comparing it point by point. When
+he had finished he found that it was a composite word photograph,
+vaguely like and yet totally unlike the person it was intended to
+portray, and so lacking in character that no one knowing the original
+intimately would have been likely to recognize her from it.
+
+So that was why no word had come in answer to all this newspaper
+publicity. After all, this case might not be so difficult as it had
+seemed; for the first time the dispirited youth felt a faint glow of
+encouragement. He began to formulate a plan.
+
+Hurriedly he fumbled for his note-book, and there, in that house
+of death, with his paper propped against the wall, he wrote a
+two-hundred-word description; a description so photographically exact
+that to this day it is preserved in the Buffalo police archives as a
+perfect model.
+
+He replaced the body in its resting-place and went out. There was no
+chill in him now, no stumbling nor weakness of any sort. He had found
+a starting-point, had uncovered what all those trained newspaper men
+had missed, and he felt that he had a chance to win.
+
+Twenty minutes later Burns, who had just come in from supper, turned
+back from his desk with annoyance and challenge in his little, narrow
+eyes.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I think I've got her, Mr. Burns."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Anyhow, I've got a description that her father or her mother or
+her friends can recognize. The one you and the other papers printed
+disguised her so that nobody could tell who she was--it might have
+covered a hundred girls."
+
+Rapidly, and without noting the editor's growing impatience, Paul read
+the two descriptions, then ran on, breathlessly:
+
+"All we have to do is print ten or twenty thousand of these and mail
+them out with the morning edition--separate sheets, posters, you
+understand?--so they can be nailed up in every post-office within two
+hundred miles. Send some to the police of all the cities, and we'll
+have a flash in twenty-four hours."
+
+Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man
+over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence,
+his stare, were eloquent.
+
+"Why? Why not?" Anderson demanded, querulously. "I tell you this
+description isn't right. It--it's nothing like her, nothing at all."
+
+"Say! I thought I'd seen the last of you," growled the corpulent man.
+"Aren't you on to yourself yet?"
+
+"Do you--mean that your talk this evening don't go?" Paul demanded,
+quietly. "Do you mean to say you won't even give me the chance you
+promised?"
+
+"No! I don't mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told _you_
+to identify this girl. I didn't agree to do it. What d'you think this
+paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don't care who or
+what this girl is unless there's a story in her. We're not running a
+job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females.
+Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say--don't you know that no two men
+can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What's the
+difference whether her hair is burnished gold or 'raw gold' or her
+eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!"
+
+"But I tell you--"
+
+"What's her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That's what I
+want to know. I'd look fine, wouldn't I, circularizing a dead story?
+Wouldn't that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and
+playwright, I'm getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you
+needn't come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself
+plain?"
+
+It was anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of
+petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve
+some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be,
+who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way
+village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in
+it this girl would go to the Potter's Field and her people would never
+know. And yet, by Heaven, they _would_ know! Something told him there
+_was_ a story back of this girl's death, and he swore to get it. With
+a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult
+to himself, replied:
+
+"Very well. I've got you this time."
+
+"Humph!" Burns grunted, viciously.
+
+"I don't know how I'll turn the trick, but I'll turn it." For the
+second time that evening he left the office with his jaws set
+stubbornly.
+
+Paul Anderson walked straight to his boarding-house and bearded his
+landlady. "I've got a job," said he.
+
+"I'm very glad," the lady told him, honestly enough. "I feared you
+were going to move out."
+
+"Yes!" he repeated. "I've got a job that carries the highest salary
+on the paper. You remember the yellow-haired girl who killed herself
+awhile ago?" he asked.
+
+"Indeed I do. Everybody knows about that case."
+
+"Well, it got too tough for the police and the other reporters, so
+they turned it over to me. It's a bully assignment, and my pay starts
+when I solve the mystery. Now I'm starved; I wish you'd rustle me some
+grub."
+
+"But, Mr. Anderson, you're bill for this week? You know I get paid
+in--"
+
+"Tut, tut! You know how newspapers are. They don't pay in advance, and
+I can't pay you until they pay me. You'll probably have to wait until
+Saturday, for I'm a little out of practice on detective stuff. But
+I'll have this thing cleared up by then. You don't appreciate--you
+_can't_ appreciate--what a corking assignment it is."
+
+Anderson had a peculiarly engaging smile, and five minutes later he
+was wrecking the pantry of all the edibles his fellow-boarders had
+overlooked, the while his landlady told him her life's history, wept
+over the memory of her departed husband, and confessed that she hoped
+to get out of the boarding-house business some time.
+
+A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast put the young man in fine
+fettle, and about ten o'clock he repaired to a certain rooming-house
+on Main Street, the number of which he obtained from the clipping in
+his pocket.
+
+A girl answered his ring, but at sight of him she shut the door
+hurriedly, explaining through the crack:
+
+"Mrs. MacDougal is out and you can't come in."
+
+"But I want to talk to you."
+
+"I'm not allowed to talk to reporters," she declared. "Mrs. MacDougal
+won't let me."
+
+A slight Scotch accent gave Anderson his cue. "MacDougal is a good
+Scotch name. I'm Scotch myself, and so are you." He smiled his
+boarding-house smile, and the girl's eyes twinkled back at him.
+"Didn't she tell you I was coming?"
+
+"Why, no, sir. Aren't you a reporter?"
+
+"I've been told that I'm not. I came to look at a room."
+
+"What room?" the girl asked, quickly. "We haven't any vacant rooms."
+
+"That's queer," Anderson frowned. "I can't be mistaken. I'm sure Mrs.
+MacDougal said there was one."
+
+The door opened slowly. "Maybe she meant the one on the second floor."
+
+"Precisely." An instant later he was following his guide up-stairs.
+
+Anderson recognized the room at a glance, from its description, but
+the girl did not mention the tragedy which had occurred therein, so
+he proceeded to talk terms with her, prolonging his stay as long as
+possible, meanwhile using his eyes to the best advantage. He invented
+an elaborate ancestry which he traced backward through the pages of
+_Scottish Chiefs_, the only book of the sort he had ever read, and by
+the time he was ready to leave the girl had thawed out considerably.
+
+"I'll take the room," he told her, "and I'm well pleased to get it. I
+don't see how such a good one stands vacant in this location."
+
+There was an instant's pause, then his companion confessed: "There's a
+reason. You'll find it out sooner or later, so I may as well tell you.
+That's where the yellow-haired girl you hear so much about killed
+herself. I hope it won't make any difference to you, Mr.--"
+
+"Gregor. Certainly not. I read about the case. Canadian, wasn't she?"
+
+"Oh yes! There's no doubt of it. She paid her rent with a Canadian
+bill, and, besides, I noticed her accent. I didn't tell the reporters,
+however, they're such a fresh lot."
+
+Paul's visit, it appeared, had served to establish one thing, at
+least, a thing which the trained investigators had not discovered.
+Canadian money in Buffalo was too common to excite comment, therefore
+none of them had seen fit to follow out that clue of the two-dollar
+bill.
+
+"The papers had it that she was some wealthy girl," the former speaker
+ran on, "but I know better."
+
+"Indeed? How do you know?"
+
+"Her hands! They were good hands, and she used them as if she knew
+what they were made for."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"No. She seemed very sad and didn't say much. Of course I only saw her
+once."
+
+Anderson questioned the girl at some further length, but discovered
+nothing of moment, so he left, declaring that he would probably move
+into the room on the following day.
+
+Prom the rooming-house he went directly to the Morgue, and for a
+second time examined the body, confining his attention particularly to
+the hands. The right one showed nothing upon which to found a theory,
+save that it was, indeed, a capable hand with smooth skin and
+well-tended nails; but on examining the left Paul noted a marked
+peculiarity. Near the ends of the thumb and the first finger the skin
+was roughened, abrased; there were numerous tiny black spots
+beneath the skin, which, upon careful scrutiny, he discovered to be
+microscopic blood-blisters.
+
+For a long time he puzzled over this phenomenon which had escaped all
+previous observers, but to save him he could invent no explanation for
+it. He repaired finally to the office of the attendant and asked for
+the girl's clothes, receiving permission to examine a small bundle.
+
+"Where's the rest?" he demanded.
+
+"That's all she had," said the man.
+
+"No baggage at all?"
+
+"Not a thing but what she stood up in. The coroner has her jewelry and
+things of that sort."
+
+Anderson searched the contents of the bundle with the utmost care, but
+found no mark of any sort. The garments, although inexpensive, were
+beautifully neat and clean, and they displayed the most marvelous
+examples of needlework he had ever seen. Among the effects was a plush
+muff, out of which, as he picked it up, fell a pair of little knitted
+mittens--or was there a pair? Finding but the one, he shook the muff
+again, then looked through the other things.
+
+"Where's the other mitten?" he inquired.
+
+"There 'ain't been but the one," the attendant told him.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"See here, do you think I'm trying to hold out a yarn mitten on you?
+I say there 'ain't been but the one. I was here when she came, and I
+know."
+
+Discouraged by the paucity of clues which this place offered, Anderson
+went next to the coroner's office.
+
+The City Hall newspaper squad had desks in this place, but Paul paid
+no attention to them or to their occupants. He went straight to the
+wicket and asked for the effects of the dead girl.
+
+It appeared that Burns had told his practical joke broadcast, for
+the young man heard his name mentioned, and then some one behind him
+snickered. He paid no attention, however, for the clerk had handed him
+a small leather bag or purse, together with a morphine-bottle, about
+the size and shape of an ordinary vaseline-bottle. The bag was cheap
+and bore no maker's name or mark. Inside of it was a brooch, a ring, a
+silver chain, and a slip of paper. Stuck to the bottom of the reticule
+was a small key. Paul came near overlooking the last-named article,
+for it was well hidden in a fold near the corner. Now a key to an
+unknown lock is not much to go on at best, therefore he gave his
+attention to the paper. It was evidently a scrap torn from a sheet of
+wrapping-paper, and bore these figures in pencil:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+While he was reading these figures Paul heard a reporter say, loudly,
+"Now that I have written the paper, who will take it?"
+
+Another answered, "I will."
+
+"Who are you?" inquired the first voice.
+
+"Hawkshaw, the detective."
+
+Anderson's cheeks flushed, but he returned the bag and its contents
+without comment and walked out, heedless of the laughter of the
+six reporters. The injustice of their ridicule burnt him like a
+branding-iron, for his only offense lay in trying the impossible.
+These fellows had done their best and had failed, yet they jeered at
+him because he had tackled a forlorn hope. They had taken the trail
+when it was hot and had lost it; now they railed at him when he took
+it cold.
+
+All that afternoon he tramped the streets, thinking, thinking, until
+his brain went stale. The only fresh clues he had discovered thus
+far were the marks on finger and thumb, the fact that the girl was a
+Canadian, and that she had possessed but one mitten instead of two.
+This last, for obvious reasons, was too trivial to mean anything, and
+yet in so obscure a case it could not be ignored. The fact that she
+was a Canadian helped but little, therefore the best point upon which
+to hang a line of reasoning seemed to be those black spots on the left
+hand. But they stumped Anderson absolutely.
+
+He altered his mental approach to the subject and reflected upon the
+girl's belongings. Taken in their entirety they showed nothing save
+that the girl was poor, therefore he began mentally to assort them,
+one by one. First, clothes. They were ordinary clothes; they betrayed
+nothing. Second, the purse. It was like a million other purses and
+showed no distinguishing mark, no peculiarity. Third, the jewelry. It
+was cheap and common, of a sort to be found in any store. Fourth, the
+morphine-bottle. Paul was forced likewise to dismiss consideration of
+that. There remained nothing but the scrap of paper, torn from the
+corner of a large sheet and containing these penciled figures:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+It was a simple sum in subtraction, a very simple sum indeed; too
+simple, Anderson reflected, for any one to reduce to figures unless
+those figures had been intended for a purpose. He recalled the face
+at the morgue and vowed that such a girl could have done the sum
+mentally. Then why the paper? Why had she taken pains to tear off a
+piece of wrapping-paper, jot down figures so easy to remember,
+and preserve them in her purse? Why, she did so because she was
+methodical, something answered. But, his alter ego reasoned, if she
+had been sufficiently methodical to note a trivial transaction so
+carefully, she would have been sufficiently methodical to use some
+better, some more methodical method. She would not have torn off a
+corner of thick wrapping-paper upon which to keep her books. There was
+but one answer, memorandum!
+
+All right, memorandum it was, for the time being. Now then, in what
+business could she have been engaged where she found it necessary to
+keep memoranda of such inconsiderable sums? Oh, Lord! There were a
+million! Paul had been walking on thin ice from the start; now it gave
+way beneath him, so he abandoned this train of thought and went back
+once more to the bundle of clothes. Surely there was a clue concealed
+somewhere among them, if only he could find it. They were poor
+clothes, and yet, judging by their cut, he fancied the girl had looked
+exceedingly well in them--nay, even modish. She had evidently spent
+much time on them, as the beautiful needlework attested. At this point
+Anderson's mind ran out on to thin ice again, so he reverted to the
+girl herself for the _n_th time. She was Canadian, her hands were
+useful, there were tiny blood-blisters on the left thumb and index
+finger, and the skin was roughened and torn minutely, evidently by
+some sharp instrument. What instrument? He answered the question
+almost before he had voiced it. A needle, of course!
+
+Paul stopped in his walk so abruptly that a man poked him in the back
+with a ladder; but he paid no heed, for his mind was leaping. That
+thickening of the skin, those tiny scratches, those blood-blisters,
+those garments without mark of maker, yet so stylish in cut and so
+carefully made, and furthermore that memorandum:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+"Why, she was a dressmaker!" said Anderson, out loud. He went back
+over his reasoning, but it held good--so good that he would have
+wagered his own clothes that he was right. Yes, and those figures
+represented some trifling purchases or commission--for a customer, no
+doubt.
+
+It followed naturally that she was not a Buffalo dressmaker, else she
+would have been identified long since; nor was it likely that she came
+from any city, for her clothes had not given him the impression of
+being city-made, and, moreover, the publicity given to the case
+through the press, even allowing for the fact that the printed
+description had been vague, would have been sure to uncover her
+identity. No, she was a Canadian country seamstress.
+
+The young man's mind went back a few years to his boyhood on a
+Michigan farm, where visiting dressmakers used to come and stay by the
+week to make his mother's clothes. They usually carried a little
+flat trunk filled with patterns, yard sticks, forms, and other
+paraphernalia of the trade. Paul remembered that the owners used to
+buy the cloths and materials at the country stores, and render a
+strict accounting thereof to his mother. Well, where was the trunk
+that went with this country dressmaker?
+
+The question of baggage had puzzled him from the start. Had the girl
+been possessed of a grip or bundle of any kind at the time of her
+death that question would have been answered. But there was absolutely
+nothing of the sort in her room. Her complete lack of luggage had
+made him doubt, at first, that she was an out-of-town visitor; but,
+following his recent conclusions, he decided now that directly the
+opposite was true. She had come to Buffalo with nothing but a trunk,
+otherwise she would have taken her hand-luggage with her to the Main
+Street rooming-house. It remained to find that trunk.
+
+This problem threatened even greater difficulties than any hitherto,
+and Paul shivered as the raw Lake wind searched through his clothes.
+He wondered if it had been as cold as this when the girl arrived in
+Buffalo. Yes, assuredly. Then why did she go out with only one mitten?
+His reason told him that the other one had been lost by the police.
+But the police are careful, as a rule. They had saved every other
+article found in the girl's possession, even to a brooch and pin and
+scrap of paper. Probably the girl herself had lost it. But country
+dressmakers are careful, too; they are not given to losing mittens,
+especially in cold weather. It was more reasonable to believe that she
+had mislaid it among her belongings; inasmuch as those belongings,
+according to Paul's logic, were doubtless contained in her trunk, that
+was probably where the missing mitten would be found. But, after all,
+had she really brought a trunk with her?
+
+Like a flash came the recollection of that key stuck to the bottom of
+the girl's leather purse at the coroner's office. Ten minutes later
+Paul was back at the City Hall.
+
+For a second time he was greeted with laughter by the reportorial
+squad; again he paid no heed.
+
+"Why, you saw those things not two hours ago," protested the coroner's
+clerk, in answer to his inquiry.
+
+"I want to see them again."
+
+"Well, I'm busy. You've had them once, that's enough."
+
+"Friend," said Anderson, quietly, "I want those things and I want them
+quick. You give them to me or I'll go to the man higher up and get
+them--and your job along with them."
+
+The fellow obeyed reluctantly. Paul picked the key loose and examined
+it closely. While he was thus engaged, one of the reporters behind him
+said:
+
+"Aha! At last he has the key to the mystery."
+
+The general laughter ceased abruptly when the object of this banter
+thrust the key into his pocket and advanced threateningly toward the
+speaker, his face white with rage. The latter rose to his feet; he
+undertook to execute a dignified retreat, but Anderson seized him
+viciously, flung him back, and pinned him against the wall, crying,
+furiously:
+
+"You dirty rat! If you open your face to me again, I'll brain you, and
+that goes for all of this death-watch." He took in the other five men
+with his reddened eyes. "When you fellows see me coming, hole up.
+Understand?"
+
+His grip was so fierce, his mouth had such a wicked twist to it, that
+his victim understood him perfectly and began to grin in a sickly,
+apologetic fashion. Paul reseated the reporter at his desk with
+such violence that a chair leg gave way; then he strode out of the
+building.
+
+For the next few hours Anderson tramped the streets in impotent anger,
+striving to master himself, for that trifling episode had so upset him
+that he could not concentrate his mind upon the subject in hand. When
+he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and
+farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow
+the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours
+were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract,
+subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light of inductive
+reasoning.
+
+"Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk?" he
+repeated, tirelessly. Could it be in some other rooming-house? No. If
+the girl had disappeared from such a place, leaving her trunk behind,
+the publicity would have uncovered the fact. It might be lying in the
+baggage-room of some hotel, to be sure; but Paul doubted that, for the
+same reason. The girl had been poor, too; it was unlikely that she
+would have gone to a high-priced hotel. Well, he couldn't examine all
+the baggage in all the cheap hotels of the city--that was evident.
+Somehow he could not picture that girl in a cheap hotel; she was too
+fine, too patrician. No, it was more likely that she had left her
+trunk in some railroad station. This was a long chance, but Paul took
+it.
+
+The girl had come from Canada, therefore Anderson went to the Grand
+Trunk Railway depot and asked for the baggage-master. There were other
+roads, but this seemed the most likely.
+
+A raw-boned Irish baggage-man emerged from the confusion, and of a
+sudden Paul realized the necessity of even greater tact here than he
+had used with the Scotch girl, for he had no authority of any sort
+behind him by virtue of which he could demand so much as a favor.
+
+"Are you a married man?" he inquired, abruptly.
+
+"G'wan! I thought ye wanted a baggage-man," the big fellow replied.
+
+"Don't kid me; this is important."
+
+"Shure, I am, but I don't want any accident insurance. I took a chance
+and I'm game."
+
+"Have you any daughters?"
+
+"Two of them. But what's it to ye?"
+
+"Suppose one of them disappeared?"
+
+The baggage-man seized Anderson by the shoulder; his eyes dilated;
+with a catch in his voice he cried:
+
+"Love o' God, speak out! What are ye drivin' at?"
+
+"Nothing has happened to your girls, but--"
+
+"Then what in hell--?"
+
+"Wait! I had to throw a little scare into you so you'd understand what
+I'm getting at. Suppose one of your girls lay dead and unidentified
+in the morgue of a strange city and was about to be buried in the
+Potter's Field. You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Are ye daft? Or has something really happened? If not, it's a damn
+fool question. What d'ye want?"
+
+"Listen! You'd want her to have a decent burial, and you'd want her
+mother to know how she came to such a pass, wouldn't you?"
+
+The Irishman mopped his brow uncertainly. "I would that."
+
+"Then listen some more." Paul told the man his story, freely,
+earnestly, but rapidly; he painted the picture of a shy, lonely girl,
+homeless, hopeless and despondent in a great city, then the picture of
+two old people waiting in some distant farmhouse, sick at heart and
+uncertain, seeing their daughter's face in the firelight, hearing
+her sigh in the night wind. He talked in homely words that left the
+baggage-man's face grave, then he told how Burns, in a cruel jest, had
+sent a starving boy out to solve the mystery that had baffled the best
+detectives. When he had finished his listener cried:
+
+"Shure it was a rotten trick, but why d'ye come here?"
+
+"I want you to go through your baggage-room with me till we find a
+trunk which this key will fit."
+
+"Come on with ye. I'm blamed if I don't admire yer nerve. Of course
+ye understand I've no right to let ye in--that's up to the
+station-master, but he's a grouchy divil." The speaker led Paul into
+a room piled high with trunks, then summoned two helpers. "We'll move
+every dam' wan of them till we fit your little key," he declared; then
+the four men fell to.
+
+A blind search promised to be a job of hours, so Paul walked down the
+runway between the piles of trunks, using his eyes as he went. At
+least he could eliminate certain classes of baggage, and thus he might
+shorten the search; but half-way down the row he called sharply to the
+smashers:
+
+"Come here, quick!" At his tone they came running. "Look! that one in
+the bottom row!" he cried. "That's it. Something tells me it is."
+
+On the floor underneath the pile was a little, flat, battered tin
+trunk, pathetically old-fashioned and out of place among its more
+stylish neighbors; it was the kind of trunk Paul had seen in his
+mother's front room on the farm. It was bound about with a bit of
+rope.
+
+His excitement infected the others, and the three smashers went at the
+pile, regardless of damage. Anderson's suspense bid fair to choke him;
+what if this were not the one? he asked himself. But what if it were
+the right one? What if this key he clutched in his cold palm should
+fit the lock? Paul pictured what he would see when he lifted the lid:
+a collection of forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, a tape measure,
+and somewhere in it a little black yarn mitten. He prayed blindly for
+courage to withstand disappointment.
+
+"There she is," panted his Irish friend, dragging the object out into
+the clear. The other men crowded closer. "Come on, lad. What are ye
+waitin' for?"
+
+Anderson knelt before the little battered trunk and inserted the key.
+It was the keenest moment he had ever lived. He turned the key; then
+he was on his feet, cold, calm, his blue eyes glittering.
+
+"Cut those ropes. Quick!" he ordered. "We're right."
+
+The man at his side whipped out a knife and slashed twice.
+
+"Come close, all of you," Paul directed, "and remember everything we
+find. You may have to testify."
+
+He lifted the lid. On the top of the shallow tray lay a little black
+yarn mitten, the mate to that one in the city Morgue.
+
+Anderson smiled into the faces of the men at his side. "That's it," he
+said, simply.
+
+The tall Irishman laid a hand on his shoulder, saying: "Yer all right,
+boy. Don't get rattled,"
+
+Paul opened the till and found precisely the paraphernalia he had
+expected: there were forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, and a tape
+measure. In the compartment beneath were some neatly folded clothes,
+the needlework of which was fine, and in one corner a bundle of
+letters which Anderson examined with trembling fingers. They were
+addressed to "Miss Mabel Wilkes, Highland, Ontario, Canada, Care of
+Captain Wilkes."
+
+The amateur detective replaced the letters carefully; he closed and
+locked the trunk; then he thanked his companions.
+
+"If I had a dollar in the world," said he, "I'd ask you boys to have a
+drink, but I'm broke." Then he began to laugh foolishly, hysterically,
+until the raw-boned man clapped him on the back again.
+
+"Straighten up, lad. Ye've been strained a bit too hard. I'll
+telephone for the cops."
+
+In an instant Paul was himself. "You'll do nothing of the sort," he
+cried. "Why, man, you'll spoil the whole thing. I've worked this out
+alone, and if the police hear of it they'll notify all the papers and
+I'll have no story. Burns won't give me that job, and I'll be hungry
+again."
+
+"True! I forgot that fat-headed divil of an editor. Well, you say the
+word and nobody won't know nothin' from us. Hey, boys?"
+
+"Sure not," the other men agreed. This lad was one of their kind; he
+was up against it and fighting for his own, therefore they knew how to
+sympathize. But Paul had been seized with terror lest his story might
+get away from him, therefore he bade them a hasty good-by and sped
+up-town. His feet could not carry him swiftly enough.
+
+Burns greeted him sourly when he burst into the editorial sanctum. It
+was not yet twenty-four hours since he had sent this fellow away with
+instructions not to return.
+
+"Are you back again?" he snarled. "I heard about your assaulting Wells
+down at the City Hall. Don't try it on me or I'll have you pinched."
+
+Paul laughed lightly. "I don't have to fight for my rights any more."
+
+"Indeed! What are you grinning about? Have you found who that girl
+is?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"_What?_" Burns's jaw dropped limply; he leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Yes, sir! I've identified her."
+
+The fat man was at first incredulous, then suspicious. "Don't try any
+tricks on me," he cried, warningly. "Don't try to put anything over--"
+
+"Her name is Mabel Wilkes. She is the daughter of Captain Wilkes, of
+Highland, Ontario. She was a country dressmaker and lived with her
+people at that place. Her trunk is down at the Grand Trunk depot with
+the rest of her clothes in it, together with the mate to the mitten
+she had when she killed herself. I went through the trunk with the
+baggage-master, name Corrigan. Here's the key which I got from her
+purse at the coroner's office."
+
+Burns fixed his round eyes upon the key, then he shifted them slowly
+to Anderson's face. "Why--why--this is amazing! I--I--" He cleared his
+throat nervously. "How did you discover all this? Who told you?"
+
+"Nobody told me. I reasoned it out."
+
+"But how--Good Lord! Am I dreaming?"
+
+"I'm a good newspaper man. I've been telling you that every day. Maybe
+you'll believe me now."
+
+Burns made no reply. Instead, he pushed a button and Wells, of the
+City Hall squad, entered, pausing abruptly at sight of Anderson.
+Giving the latter no time for words, Mr. Burns issued his
+instructions. On the instant he was the trained newspaper man again,
+cheating the clock dial and trimming minutes: his words were sharp and
+decisive.
+
+"That suicide story has broken big and we've got a scoop. Anderson has
+identified her. Take the first G.T. train for Highland, Ontario, and
+find her father, Captain Wilkes. Wire me a full story about the girl
+Mabel, private life, history, everything. Take plenty of space. Have
+it in by midnight."
+
+Wells's eyes were round, too; they were glued upon Paul with a
+hypnotic stare, but he managed to answer, "Yes, sir!" He was no longer
+grinning.
+
+"Now, Anderson," the editor snapped, "get down-stairs and see if you
+can write the story. Pile it on thick--it's a corker."
+
+"Very good, sir, but I'd like a little money," that elated youth
+demanded, boldly. "Just advance me fifty, will you? Remember I'm on
+top salary."
+
+Burns made a wry face. "I'll send a check down to you," he promised,
+"but get at that story and make it a good one or I'll fire you
+tonight."
+
+Anderson got. He found a desk and began to write feverishly. A
+half-hour later he read what he had written and tore it up. Another
+half-hour and he repeated the performance. Three times he wrote the
+tale and destroyed it, then paused, realizing blankly that as a
+newspaper story it was impossible. Every atom of interest surrounding
+the suicide of the girl grew out of his own efforts to solve the
+mystery. Nothing had happened, no new clues had been uncovered, no one
+had been implicated in the girl's death, there was no crime. It was
+a tale of Paul Anderson's deductions, nothing more, and it had no
+newspaper value. He found he had written about himself instead of
+about the girl.
+
+He began again, this time laboriously eliminating himself, and when he
+had finished his story it was perhaps the poorest journalistic effort
+ever written.
+
+Upon lagging feet he bore the copy to Burns's office. But the editor
+gave him no time for explanation, demanding, fiercely:
+
+"Where's that check I sent you?"
+
+"Here it is." The youth handed it to him. "Make a mistake?"
+
+"I certainly did." Burns tore up the check before saying, "Now you get
+out, you bum, and stay out, or take the consequences."
+
+"Get out? What for?"
+
+"You know what for." Burns was quivering with rage. "You ran a good
+bluff and you nearly put it over; but I don't want to advertise myself
+as a jackass, so I shan't have you pinched unless you come back."
+
+"Come back? I intend to stay. What's the matter?"
+
+"I had an idea you were fourflushing," stormed the editor, "so I went
+down to the G.T. depot myself. There's no trunk of the sort there;
+Corrigan never saw you or anybody like you. Say, why didn't you walk
+out when you got that check? What made you come back?"
+
+Anderson began to laugh softly. "Good old Corrigan! He's all right,
+isn't he? Well, he gets half of that check when you rewrite it, if I
+don't laugh myself to death before I get to the bank."
+
+"What d'you mean?" Burns was impressed by the other's confidence.
+
+"Nothing, except that I've found one square man in this village. One
+square guy is a pretty big percentage in a town the size of Buffalo.
+Corrigan wouldn't let you see the depot if I wasn't along. Put on your
+coat and come with me--yes, and bring a couple of hired men if it will
+make you feel any better."
+
+At the depot he called the baggage-master to him, and said:
+
+"Mr. Corrigan, this is Mr. Burns, the city editor of _The
+Intelligencer_."
+
+"That's what he told me," grinned the Irishman, utterly ignoring the
+young editor; "but you didn't give him no references, and I wouldn't
+take a chance."
+
+Burns maintained a dignified silence; he said little even when the
+contents of the trunk were displayed to him. Nor did he open his mouth
+on the way back to the office. But when he was seated at his desk and
+had read Anderson's copy he spoke.
+
+"This is the rottenest story ever turned in at this office," said he.
+
+"I know it is," Paul agreed, frankly, then explained his difficulty in
+writing it.
+
+"I'll do it myself," Burns told him. "Now, you go home and report
+to-morrow."
+
+A very tired but a very happy young man routed out the landlady of a
+cheap boarding-house that night and hugged her like a bear, explaining
+joyously that he had done a great big thing. He waltzed her down the
+hall and back, while she clutched wildly at her flapping flannel
+wrapper and besought him to think of her other boarders. He waltzed
+her out of her bedroom slippers, gave her a smacking big kiss on her
+wrinkled cheek, then left her, breathless and scandalized, but all
+aflutter.
+
+The city had read the story when Anderson awoke the next morning, for
+_The Intelligencer_ had made a clean "beat," and Burns had played up
+the story tremendously, hence it was with jumping pulses that Paul
+scanned the front page of that journal. The further he read, however,
+the greater grew his indignation.
+
+The history of Mabel Wilkes, under the magic touch of Burns, had,
+to be sure, become a wonderful, tragic story; but nowhere in it was
+mention made of Paul Anderson. In the patient and ingenious solution
+of the mystery of the girl's identity no credit was given to him. The
+cleverness and the perseverance of _The Buffalo Intelligencer_ was
+exploited, its able reportorial staff was praised, its editorial
+shrewdness extolled, but that was all. When he had concluded reading
+the article Anderson realized that it was no more than a boost for the
+city editor, who it was plain to be seen, had uncovered the story
+bit by bit, greatly to the confusion of the police and the detective
+bureau.
+
+It astounded as well as angered Paul to realize how cleverly Burns had
+covered him up, therefore the sense of injustice was strong in him
+when he entered the office. His enemy recognized his mood, and seemed
+to gloat over it.
+
+"That was good work you did," he purred, "and I'll keep you on as long
+as you show ability. Of course you can't write yet, so I'll let you
+cover real-estate transactions and the market. I'll send for you when
+you're needed."
+
+Anderson went back to his desk in silent rage. Real estate! Burns
+evidently intended to hold him down. His gloomy meditations were
+somewhat lightened by the congratulations of his fellow-reporters, who
+rather timidly ventured to introduce themselves. They understood the
+facts and they voiced a similar indignation to his. Burns had played
+him a rotten trick, they agreed. Not content with robbing his new
+reporter of the recognition which was justly his, the fellow was
+evidently determined to vent his spite in other ways. Well, that was
+like Burns. They voiced the opinion that Anderson would have a tough
+job getting through interference of the kind that their editor would
+throw in his way.
+
+Hour after hour Paul sat around the office nursing his disappointment,
+waiting for Burns to send him out. About two o'clock Wells hurried
+into the office, bringing with him the afternoon papers still wet from
+the press. In his eyes was an unwonted sparkle. He crossed directly to
+Anderson and thrust out his palm.
+
+"Old man, I want to shake with you," said he. "And I want to apologize
+for being a rotter."
+
+Paul met him half-way, and the fellow went on:
+
+"Burns gave us the wrong tip on you--said you were a joke--that's why
+we joshed you. But you showed us up, and I'm glad you did."
+
+"Why--thank you!" stammered the new reporter, upon whom this manly
+apology had a strong effect. "It--it was more luck than anything."
+
+"Luck nothing! You're a genius, and it's a dirty shame the way the
+boss tried to steal your credit. However, it seems he overreached
+himself." Wells began to laugh.
+
+"_Tried_ to steal it! Good Lord! he did steal it! How do you mean he
+overreached himself?"
+
+"Haven't you seen the afternoon papers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well! Read 'em!" Mr. Wells spread his papers out before Paul, whose
+astonished eyes took in for a second time the story of the Wilkes
+suicide. But what a story!
+
+He read his own name in big, black type; he read head-lines that told
+of a starving boy sent out on a hopeless assignment as a cruel joke;
+he read the story as it had really occurred, only told in the third
+person by an author who was neither ashamed nor afraid to give
+credit where it was due. The egotistical pretense of _The Buffalo
+Intelligencer_ was torn to shreds, and ridicule was heaped upon its
+editor. Paul read nervously, breathlessly, until Wells interrupted
+him.
+
+"I'm to blame for this," said he. "I couldn't stand for such a crooked
+deal. When I got in this morning and saw what that fat imbecile had
+done to you I tipped the true facts off to the others--all of the
+facts I knew. They got the rest from Corrigan, down at the Grand Trunk
+depot. Of course this means my job, if the old man finds it out; but I
+don't give a damn."
+
+As yet Anderson was too dazed to grasp what had happened to him, but
+the other continued:
+
+"The boys have had it in for Burns, on the quiet, for months, and now
+I guess they're even."
+
+"I--I don't know how to thank you," stammered Anderson.
+
+"Don't try. You're a born reporter, and the other papers will give you
+a job even if the baby hippo in yonder fires you."
+
+A boy touched Paul on the arm with the announcement, "Mr. Burns wants
+to see you."
+
+"Oho!" cried Wells. "He's got the bad news. Gee! I'd like to hear what
+he says. I'll bet he's biting splinters out of his desk. Let me know
+what comes off, will you?"
+
+When Anderson entered the office of his editor he was met by a
+white-faced man whose rage had him so by the throat that speech for a
+moment was impossible. Beneath Mr. Burns's feet, and strewn broadcast
+about the room, were the crumpled sheets of the afternoon papers.
+Burns glared at the newcomer for a moment, then he extended a shaking
+finger, crying, furiously:
+
+"You did this!"
+
+"Did what?"
+
+"You put up this job. You made a fool of me!"
+
+"No, sir! I did not. Your parents saw to that."
+
+"Don't tell me you didn't, you--you damned ungrateful--" Burns seemed
+about to assault his reporter, but restrained himself. "You're fired!
+Do you understand? Fired--discharged."
+
+"Say, Burns--"
+
+"Not a word. I'm done with you. I--"
+
+"Just a minute," young Anderson cried, in a tone that stilled the
+other. "I'm fired, am I, for something I didn't do? Very well!
+I'm glad of it, for now you can't stand in my way. You tried to
+double-cross me and failed. You robbed me of what was mine and got
+caught at it. You're a big man, in your way, Burns, but some day
+people will tell you that the biggest thing you ever did was to fire
+Paul Anderson. That's how small you'll be, and that's how big I'm
+going to grow. You've 'welched' on your own word; but there's one
+thing you gave me that you can't take away, and that's the knowledge
+that I'm a newspaper man and a good one. Now just one thing more: I'm
+broke today, but I'm going to lick you as soon as I save up enough for
+the fine."
+
+With studied insolence the speaker put on his hat, slammed the door
+behind him, and walked out of _The Intelligencer_ office, leaving the
+apoplectic editor thereof secure in the breathless knowledge that for
+once in his life he had heard the truth spoken. Mr. Burns wondered how
+long it would take that young bully to save up ten dollars and costs.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+"There is but one remedy for your complaint." Doctor Suydam settled
+deeper into his chair. "Marry the girl."
+
+"That is the only piece of your professional advice I ever cared to
+follow. But how?"
+
+"Any way you can--use force if necessary--only marry her. Otherwise I
+predict all sorts of complications for you--melancholia, brain-fag,
+bankruptcy--"
+
+Austin laughed. "Could you write me a prescription?"
+
+"Oh, she'll have you, Bob. You don't seem to realize that you are a
+good catch."
+
+Austin finished buckling his puttee before rising to his full height.
+"That doesn't mean anything to her. She doesn't need to make a catch."
+
+"Nonsense! She's just like all the others, only richer and nicer. Go
+at her as if she were the corn-market; she won't be half so hard to
+corner. You have made a name for yourself, and a blamed sight more
+money than you deserve; you are young--comparatively, I mean."
+
+The elder man stroked his shock of iron-gray hair for answer.
+
+"Well, at any rate you are a picturesque personage, even if you can't
+wear riding-clothes."
+
+"Doesn't a man look like the devil in these togs?" Austin posed
+awkwardly in front of a mirror.
+
+"There's only one person who can look worse in riding-clothes than a
+man--that's a woman."
+
+"What heresy, particularly in a society doctor! But I agree with you.
+I learned to ride on her account, you know. As a matter of fact, I
+hate it. The sight of a horse fills me with terror."
+
+Doctor Suydam laughed outright at this. "She tells me that you have a
+very good seat."
+
+"Really!" Austin's eyes gleamed suddenly. "You know I never had
+a chance to ride when I was a youngster--in fact, I never had an
+opportunity to do anything except work. That's what makes me so crude
+and awkward. What I know I have picked up during the last few years."
+
+"You make me tired!" declared the former. "You aren't--"
+
+"Oh, I don't skate on waxed floors nor spill tea, nor clutch at my
+chauffeur in a tight place, but you know what I mean. I feel lonesome
+in a dress-suit, a butler fills me with gloom, and--Well, I'm not one
+of you, that's all."
+
+"Perhaps that's what makes a hit with Marmion. She's used to the other
+kind."
+
+"It seems to me that I have always worked," ruminated the former
+speaker. "I don't remember that I ever had time to play, even after
+I came to the city. It's a mighty sad thing to rob a boy of his
+childhood; it makes him a dull, unattractive sort when he grows up.
+I used to read about people like Miss Moore, but I never expected to
+know them until I met you. Of course, that corn deal rather changed
+things."
+
+"Well, I should rather say it did!" Suydam agreed, with emphasis.
+
+"The result is that when I am with her I forget the few things I have
+done that are worth while, and I become the farm-hand again. I'm
+naturally rough and angular, and she sees it."
+
+"Oh, you're too sensitive! You have a heart like a girl underneath
+that saturnine front of yours, and while you look like the Sphinx,
+you are really as much of a kid at heart as I am. Where do you ride
+to-day?"
+
+"Riverside Drive."
+
+"What horse is she riding?"
+
+"Pointer."
+
+The doctor shook his head. "Too many automobiles on the Drive. He's a
+rotten nag for a woman, anyhow. His mouth is as tough as a stirrup,
+and he has the disposition of a tarantula. Why doesn't she stick to
+the Park?"
+
+"You know Marmion."
+
+"Say, wouldn't it be great if Pointer bolted and you saved her life?
+She couldn't refuse you then."
+
+Austin laughed. "That's not exactly the way I'd care to win her.
+However, if Pointer bolted I'd probably get rattled and fall off my
+own horse. I don't like the brutes. Come on, I'm late."
+
+"That's right," grumbled the other, "leave me here while you make
+love to the nicest girl in New York. I'm going down to the office and
+amputate somebody."
+
+They descended the single flight to the street, where Austin's groom
+was struggling with a huge black.
+
+"It's coming pretty soft for you brokers," the doctor growled, as his
+companion swung himself into the saddle. "The next time I get a friend
+I'll keep him to myself."
+
+Austin leaned forward with a look of grave anxiety upon his rugged
+features and said: "Wish me luck, Doc. I'm going to ask her to-day."
+
+"Good for you, old fellow." There was great fondness in the younger
+man's eyes as he wrung the rider's hand and waved him adieu, then
+watched him disappear around the corner.
+
+"She'll take him," he mused, half aloud. "She's a sensible girl even
+if all New York has done its best to spoil her." He hailed a taxicab
+and was hurried to his office.
+
+It was perhaps two hours later that he was called on the telephone.
+
+"Hello! Yes, yes! What is it?" he cried, irritably. "Mercy Hospital!
+_What_?" The young physician started. "Hurt, you say? Run-away? Go on,
+quick!" He listened with whitening face, then broke in abruptly: "Of
+course he sent for me. I'll be right up."
+
+He slammed the receiver upon its hook and, seizing his hat, bolted out
+through a waiting-room full of patients. His car was in readiness, and
+he called to his chauffeur in such tones that the fellow vaulted to
+his seat.
+
+"Go up Madison Avenue; there's less traffic there. And for God's sake
+_hurry_!"
+
+During two years' service with New York's most fashionable physician
+the driver had never received a command like this, and he opened up
+his machine. A policeman warned him at Thirty-third Street and the car
+slowed down, at which Suydam leaned forward, crying, roughly:
+
+"To hell with regulations! There's a man dying!"
+
+The last word was jerked from him as he was snapped back into his
+seat. Regardless of admonitory shouts from patrolmen, the French
+car sang its growing song, while truck-drivers bellowed curses
+and pedestrians fled from crossings at the scream of its siren. A
+cross-town car blocked them, and the brakes screeched in agony, while
+Doctor Suydam was well-nigh catapulted into the street; then they were
+under way again, with the car leaping from speed to speed. It was the
+first time the driver had ever dared to disregard those upraised,
+white-gloved hands, and it filled his joy-riding soul with exultation.
+A street repair loomed ahead, whereupon, with a sickening skid, they
+swung into a side street; the gears clashed again, and an instant
+later they shot out upon Fifth Avenue. At the next corner they lay
+motionless in a blockade, while the motor shuddered; then they dodged
+through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were
+whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer
+stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle,
+then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding
+machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be
+greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and
+told of a doctor's urgency.
+
+Inside, Doctor Suydam, pallid of face and shaking in a most
+unprofessional manner, was bending over a figure in riding-clothes,
+the figure of a tall, muscular man who lay silent, deaf to his words
+of greeting.
+
+They told him all there was to tell in the deadly, impersonal way
+of hospitals, while he nodded swift comprehension. There had been a
+runaway--a woman on a big, white-eyed bay, that had taken fright at an
+automobile; a swift rush up the Driveway, a lunge over the neck of
+the pursuing horse, then a man wrenched from his saddle and dragged
+beneath cruel, murderous hoofs. The bay had gone down, and the woman
+was senseless when the ambulance arrived, but she had revived and
+had been hurried to her home. In the man's hand they had found the
+fragment of a bridle rein gripped with such desperation that they
+could not remove it until he regained consciousness. He had asked
+regarding the girl's safety, then sighed himself into oblivion again.
+They told Suydam that he would die.
+
+With sick heart the listener cursed all high-spirited women and
+high-strung horses, declaring them to be works of the devil, like
+automobiles; then he went back to the side of his friend, where other
+hands less unsteady were at work.
+
+"Poor lonely old Bob!" he murmured. "Not a soul to care except Marmion
+and me, and God knows whether she cares or not."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Robert Austin did not die, although the attending surgeons said
+he would, said he should, in fact, unless all the teachings of their
+science were at fault. He even offended the traditions of the hospital
+by being removed to his own apartments in a week. There Suydam, who
+had watched him night and day, told him that Miss Moore had a broken
+shoulder and hence could not come to see him.
+
+"Poor girl!" said Austin, faintly. "If I'd known more about horses I
+might have saved her."
+
+"If you'd known more about horses you'd have let Pointer run,"
+declared his friend. "Nobody but an idiot or a Bob Austin would have
+taken the chance you did. How is your head?"
+
+The sick man closed his eyes wearily. "It hurts all the time. What's
+the matter with it?"
+
+"We've none of us been able to discover what isn't the matter with it!
+Why in thunder did you hold on so long?"
+
+"Because I--I love her, I suppose."
+
+"Did you ask her to marry you?" Suydam had been itching to ask the
+question for days.
+
+"No, I was just getting to it when Pointer bolted. I--I'm slow at such
+things." There was a moment's pause. "Doc, what's the matter with my
+eyes? I can't see very well."
+
+"Don't talk so much," ordered the physician. "You're lucky to be here
+at all. Thanks to that copper-riveted constitution of yours, you'll
+get well."
+
+But it seemed that the patient was fated to disappoint the predictions
+of his friend as well as those of the surgeons at Mercy Hospital. He
+did not recover in a manner satisfactory to his medical adviser, and
+although he regained the most of his bodily vigor, the injury to his
+eyes baffled even the most skilled specialists.
+
+He was very brave about it, however, and wrung the heart of Doctor
+Suydam by the uncomplaining fortitude with which he bore examination
+after examination. Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic
+atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and
+meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in
+the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an
+unschooled farm-boy to a position of eminence in the business world,
+went slowly blind. The shadows crept in upon him with a deadly,
+merciless certainty that would have filled the stoutest heart with
+gloom, and yet he maintained a smiling stoicism that deceived all but
+his closest associates. To Doctor Suydam, however, the incontestable
+progress of the malady was frightfully tragic. He alone knew the man's
+abundant spirits, his lofty ambitions, and his active habits. He alone
+knew of the overmastering love that had come so late and was
+destined to go unvoiced, and he raved at the maddening limits of his
+profession. In Austin's presence he strove to be cheerful and to
+lighten the burden he knew was crushing the sick man; but at other
+times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check
+the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of. In time,
+however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned
+himself to the worst. He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion
+Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness
+he could muster, of her part in this calamity. But Austin would not
+hear of it.
+
+"She doesn't dream of the truth," the invalid told him. "And I don't
+want her to learn. She thinks I'm merely weak, and it grieves her
+terribly to know that I haven't recovered. If she really knew--it
+might ruin her life, for she is a girl who feels deeply. I want to
+spare her that; it's the least I can do."
+
+"But she'll find it out some time."
+
+"I think not. She comes to see me every day--"
+
+"Every day?"
+
+"Yes. I'm expecting her soon."
+
+"And she doesn't know?"
+
+Austin shook his head. "I never let her see there's anything the
+matter with my sight. She drives up with her mother, and I wait for
+her there in the bay-window. It's getting hard for me to distinguish
+her now, but I recognize the hoofbeats--I can tell them every time."
+
+"But--I don't understand."
+
+"I pretend to be very weak," explained the elder man, with a guilty
+flush. "I sit in the big chair yonder and my Jap boy waits on her. She
+is very kind." Austin's voice grew husky. "I'm sorry to lose sight of
+the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children--they're growing
+indistinct. I--I like children. I've always wanted some for myself.
+I've dreamed about--that." His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful
+smile. "I guess that is all over with now."
+
+"Why?" questioned Suydam, savagely. "Why don't you ask her to marry
+you, Bob? She couldn't refuse--and God knows you need her."
+
+"That's just it; she couldn't refuse. This is the sort of thing a
+fellow must bear alone. She's too young, and beautiful, and fine to be
+harnessed up to a worn-out old--cripple."
+
+"Cripple!" The other choked. "Don't talk like that. Don't be so blamed
+resigned. It tears my heart out. I--I--why, I believe I feel this more
+than you do."
+
+Austin turned his face to the speaker with a look of such tragic
+suffering that the younger man fell silent.
+
+"I'm glad I can hide my feelings," Austin told him, slowly, "for that
+is what I have to do every instant she is with me. I don't wish to
+inflict unnecessary pain upon my friends, but don't you suppose I know
+what this means? It means the destruction of all my fine hopes, the
+death of all I hold dear in the world. I love my work, for I am--or I
+was--a success; this means I must give it up. I'm strong in body and
+brain; this robs me of my usefulness. All my life I have prayed that
+I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means
+I must give her up and be lonely all my days. I must grope my way
+through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me. Do you know
+how awful the darkness is?" He clasped his hands tightly. "I must go
+hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me. Just
+at the crowning point of my life I've been snuffed out. I must fall
+behind and see my friends desert me."
+
+"Bob!" cried the other, in shocked denial.
+
+"Oh, you know it will come to that. People don't like to feel pity
+forever tugging at them. I've been a lonely fellow and my friends are
+numbered. For a time they will come to see me, and try to cheer me up;
+they will even try to include me in their pleasures; then when it is
+no longer a new story and their commiseration has worn itself out they
+will gradually fall away. It always happens so. I'll be 'poor Bob
+Austin,' and I'll go feeling my way through life an object of pity, a
+stumbling, incomplete thing that has no place to fill, no object to
+work for, no one to care. God! I'm not the sort to go blind! Where's
+the justice of it? I've lived clean. Why did this happen to me? Why?
+Why? I know what the world is; I've been a part of it. I've seen the
+spring and the autumn colors and I've watched the sunsets. I've looked
+into men's faces and read their souls, and when you've done that you
+can't live in darkness. I can't and--I won't!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'm going away."
+
+"When? Where?"
+
+"When I can no longer see Marmion Moore and before my affliction
+becomes known to her. Where--you can guess."
+
+"Oh, that's cowardly, Bob! You're not that sort. You mustn't! It's
+unbelievable," his friend cried, in a panic.
+
+Austin smiled bitterly. "We have discussed that too often, and--I'm
+not sure that what I intend doing is cowardly. I can't go now, for the
+thing is too fresh in her memory, she might learn the truth and hold
+herself to blame; but when she has lost the first shock of it I shall
+walk out quietly and she won't even suspect. Other interests will come
+into her life; I'll be only a memory. Then--" After a pause he went
+on, "I couldn't bear to see her drop away with the rest."
+
+"Don't give up yet," urged the physician. "She is leaving for the
+summer, and while she is gone we'll try that Berlin chap. He'll be
+here in August."
+
+"And he will fail, as the others did. He will lecture some clinic
+about me, that's all. Marmion will hear that my eyes have given out
+from overwork, or something like that. Then I'll go abroad, and--I
+won't come back." Austin, divining the rebellion in his friend's
+heart, said, quickly: "You're the only one who could enlighten her,
+Doc, but you won't do it. You owe me too much."
+
+"I--I suppose I do," acknowledged Suydam, slowly. "I owe you more than
+I can ever repay--"
+
+"Wait--" The sick man raised his hand, while a sudden light blazed up
+in his face. "She's coming!"
+
+To the doctor's trained ear the noises of the street rose in a
+confused murmur, but Austin spoke in an awed, breathless tone, almost
+as if he were clairvoyant.
+
+"I can hear the horses. She's coming to--see me."
+
+"I'll go," exclaimed the visitor, quickly, but the other shook his
+head.
+
+"I'd rather have you stay."
+
+Austin was poised in an attitude of the intensest alertness, his
+angular, awkward body was drawn to its full height, his lean face was
+lighted by some hidden fire that lent it almost beauty.
+
+"She's getting out of the carriage," he cried, in a nervous voice;
+then he felt his way to his accustomed arm-chair. Suydam was about to
+go to the bay-window when he paused, regarding his friend curiously.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+The blind man had begun to beat time with his hand, counting under his
+breath: "One! Two! Three!--"
+
+"She'll knock when I reach twenty-five. 'Sh! 'sh!" He continued his
+pantomime, and Suydam realized that from repeated practice Austin had
+gauged to a nicety the seconds Marmion Moore required to mount the
+stairs. This was his means of holding himself in check. True to
+prediction, at "Twenty-five" a gentle knock sounded, and Suydam opened
+the door.
+
+"Come in, Marmion."
+
+The girl paused for the briefest instant on the threshold, and the
+doctor noted her fleeting disappointment at seeing him; then she took
+his hand.
+
+"This _is_ a surprise," she exclaimed. "I haven't seen you for ever so
+long."
+
+Her anxious glance swept past him to the big, awkward figure against
+the window's light. Austin was rising with apparent difficulty, and
+she glided to him.
+
+"Please! Don't rise! How many times have I told you not to exert
+yourself?"
+
+Suydam noted the gentle, proprietary tone of her voice, and it amazed
+him.
+
+"I--am very glad that you came to see me." The afflicted man's voice
+was jerky and unmusical. "How are you to-day, Miss?"
+
+"He shouldn't rise, should he?" Miss Moore appealed to the physician.
+"He is very weak and shouldn't exert himself."
+
+The doctor wished that his friend might see the girl's face as he saw
+it; he suddenly began to doubt his own judgment of women.
+
+"Oh, I'm doing finely," Austin announced. "Won't you be seated?" He
+waved a comprehensive gesture, and Suydam, marveling at the manner
+in which the fellow concealed his infirmity, brought a chair for the
+caller.
+
+"I came alone to-day. Mother is shopping," Miss Moore was saying.
+"See! I brought these flowers to cheer up your room." She held up a
+great bunch of sweet peas. "I love the pink ones, don't you?"
+
+Austin addressed the doctor. "Miss Moore has been very kind to me; I'm
+afraid she feels it her duty--"
+
+"No! No!" cried the girl.
+
+"She rarely misses a day, and she always brings flowers. I'm very fond
+of bright colors."
+
+Suydam cursed at the stiff formality in the man's tone. How could any
+woman see past that glacial front and glimpse the big, aching
+heart beyond? Austin was harsh and repellent when the least bit
+self-conscious, and now he was striving deliberately to heighten the
+effect.
+
+The physician wondered why Marmion Moore had gone even thus far in
+showing her gratitude, for she was not the self-sacrificing kind. As
+for a love match between two such opposite types, Suydam could not
+conceive of it. Even if the girl understood the sweet, simple nature
+of this man, even if she felt her own affections answer to his, Suydam
+believed he knew the women of her set too well to imagine that she
+could bring herself to marry a blind man, particularly one of no
+address.
+
+"We leave for the mountains to-morrow," Marmion said, "so I came to
+say good-by, for a time."
+
+"I--shall miss your visits," Austin could not disguise his genuine
+regret, "but when you return I shall be thoroughly recovered. Perhaps
+we can ride again."
+
+"Never!" declared Miss Moore. "I shall never ride again. Think of the
+suffering I've caused you. I--I--am dreadfully sorry."
+
+To Suydam's amazement, he saw the speaker's eyes fill with tears. A
+doubt concerning the correctness of his surmises came over him and he
+rose quickly. After all, he reflected, she might see and love the real
+Bob as he did, and if so she might wish to be alone with him in this
+last hour. But Austin laughed at his friend's muttered excuse.
+
+"You know there's nobody waiting for you. That's only a pretense to
+find livelier company. You promised to dine with me." To Miss Moore he
+explained: "He isn't really busy; why, he has been complaining for an
+hour that the heat has driven all his patients to the country, and
+that he is dying of idleness."
+
+The girl's expression altered curiously. She shrank as if wounded; she
+scanned the speaker's face with startled eyes before turning with a
+strained smile to say:
+
+"So, Doctor, we caught you that time. That comes from being a
+high-priced society physician. Why don't you practise among the
+masses? I believe the poor are always in need of help."
+
+"I really have an engagement," Suydam muttered.
+
+"Then break it for Mr. Austin's sake. He is lonely and--I must be
+going in a moment."
+
+The three talked for a time in the manner all people adopt for a
+sick-room, then the girl rose and said, with her palm in Austin's
+hand:
+
+"I owe you so much that I can never hope to repay you, but you--you
+will come to see me frequently this season. Promise! You won't hide
+yourself, will you?"
+
+The blind man smiled his thanks and spoke his farewell with
+meaningless politeness; then, as the physician prepared to see her to
+her carriage, Miss Moore said:
+
+"No! Please stay and gossip with our invalid. It's only a step."
+
+She walked quickly to the door, flashed them a smile, and was gone.
+
+Suydam heard his patient counting as before.
+
+"One! Two! Three--!"
+
+At "Twenty-five" the elder man groped his way to the open bay-window
+and bowed at the carriage below. There came the sound of hoofs and
+rolling wheels, and the doctor, who had taken stand beside his friend,
+saw Marmion Moore turn in her seat and wave a last adieu. Austin
+continued to nod and smile in her direction, even after the carriage
+was lost to view; then he felt his way back to the arm-chair and sank
+limply into it.
+
+"Gone! I--I'll never be able to see her again."
+
+Suydam's throat tightened miserably. "Could you see her at all?"
+
+"Only her outlines; but when she comes back in the fall I'll be as
+blind as a bat." He raised an unsteady hand to his head and closed his
+eyes. "I can stand anything except that! To lose sight of her dear
+face--" The force of his emotion wrenched a groan from him.
+
+"I don't know what to make of her," said the other. "Why didn't you
+let me go, Bob? It was her last good-by; she wanted to be alone with
+you. She might have--"
+
+"That's it!" exclaimed Austin. "I was afraid of myself; afraid I'd
+speak if I had the chance." His voice was husky as he went on. "It's
+hard--hard, for sometimes I think she loves me, she's so sweet and so
+tender. At such times I'm a god. But I know it can't be; that it is
+only pity and gratitude that prompts her. Heaven knows I'm uncouth
+enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness. I play
+a part--the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is
+breaking." He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish
+eyes once more. "It's cruelly hard. I can't keep it up."
+
+The other man laid a hand on his shoulder, saying: "I don't know
+whether you're doing right or not. I half suspect you are doing
+Marmion a bitter wrong."
+
+"Oh, but she can't--she _can't_ love me!" Austin rose as if
+frightened. "She might yield to her impulse and--well, marry me, for
+she has a heart of gold, but it wouldn't last. She would learn some
+time that it wasn't real love that prompted the sacrifice. Then I
+should die."
+
+The specialist from Berlin came, but he refused to operate, declaring
+bluntly that there was no use, and all during the long, hot summer
+days Robert Austin sat beside his open window watching the light
+die out of the world, waiting, waiting, for the time to make his
+sacrifice.
+
+Suydam read Marmion's cheery letters aloud, wondering the while at the
+wistful note they sounded now and then. He answered them in his own
+handwriting, which she had never seen.
+
+One day came the announcement that she was returning the first week in
+October. Already September was partly gone, so Austin decided to sail
+in a week. At his dictation Suydam wrote to her, saying that the
+strain of overwork had rendered a long vacation necessary. The doctor
+writhed internally as he penned the careful sentences, wondering if
+the hurt of the deliberately chosen words would prevent her sensing
+the truth back of them. As days passed and no answer came he judged it
+had.
+
+The apartment was stripped and bare, the trunks were packed on the
+afternoon before Austin's departure. All through the dreary mockery of
+the process the blind man had withstood his friend's appeal, his stern
+face set, his heavy heart full of a despairing stubbornness. Now,
+being alone at last, he groped his way about the premises to fix them
+in his memory; then he sank into his chair beside the window.
+
+He heard a knock at the door and summoned the stranger to enter, then
+he rose with a gasp of dismay. Marmion Moore was greeting him with
+sweet, yet hesitating effusiveness.
+
+"I--I thought you were not coming back until next week," he stammered.
+
+"We changed our plans." She searched his face as best she could in the
+shaded light, a strange, anxious expression upon her own. "Your letter
+surprised me."
+
+"The doctor's orders," he said, carelessly. "They say I have broken
+down."
+
+"I know! I know what caused it!" she panted. "You never recovered from
+that accident. You did not tell me the truth. I've always felt that
+you were hiding something from me. Why? Oh, why?"
+
+"Nonsense!" He undertook to laugh, but failed in a ghastly manner.
+"I've been working too hard. Now I'm paying the penalty."
+
+"How long will you be gone?" she queried.
+
+"Oh, I haven't decided. A long time, however." His tone bewildered
+her. "It is the first vacation I ever had; I want to make the most of
+it."
+
+"You--you were going away without saying good-by to--your old
+friends?" Her lips were white, and her brave attempt to smile would
+have told him the truth had he seen it, but he only had her tone to go
+by, so he answered, indifferently:
+
+"All my arrangements were made; I couldn't wait."
+
+"You are offended with me," Miss Moore said, after a pause. "How have
+I hurt you? What is it; please? I--I have been too forward, perhaps?"
+
+Austin dared not trust himself to answer, and when he made no sign the
+girl went on, painfully:
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't want to seem bold. I owe you so much; we were
+such good friends--" In spite of her efforts her voice showed her
+suffering.
+
+The man felt his lonely heart swell with the wild impulse to tell her
+all, to voice his love in one breathless torrent of words that would
+undeceive her. The strain of repression lent him added brusqueness
+when he strove to explain, and his coldness left her sorely hurt.
+His indifference filled her with a sense of betrayal; it chilled the
+impulsive yearning in her breast. She had battled long with herself
+before coming and now she repented of her rashness, for it was plain
+he did not need her. This certainty left her sick and listless,
+therefore she bade him adieu a few moments later, and with aching
+throat went blindly out and down the stairs.
+
+The instant she was gone Austin leaped to his feet; the agony of death
+was upon his features. Breathlessly he began to count:
+
+"One! Two! Three--!"
+
+He felt himself smothering, and with one sweep of his hand ripped the
+collar from his throat.
+
+"Five! Six! Seven--!"
+
+He was battling like a drowning man, for, in truth, the very breath of
+his life was leaving him. A drumming came into his ears. He felt that
+he must call out to her before it was too late. He was counting aloud
+now, his voice like the moan of a man on the rack.
+
+"Nine! Ten--!"
+
+A frenzy to voice his sufferings swept over him, but he held himself.
+Only a moment more and she would be gone; her life would be spared
+this dark shadow, and she would never know, but he--he would indeed be
+face to face with darkness.
+
+Toward the last he was reeling, but he continued to tell off the
+seconds with the monotonous regularity of a timepiece, his every power
+centered on that process. The idea came to him that he was counting
+his own flickering pulse-throbs for the last time. With a tremendous
+effort of will he smoothed his face and felt his way to the open
+window, for by now she must be entering the landau. A moment later
+and she would turn to waft him her last adieu. Her last! God! How the
+seconds lagged! That infernal thumping in his ears had drowned the
+noises from the street below. He felt that for all time the torture of
+this moment would live with him.
+
+Then he smiled! He smiled blindly out into the glaring sunlight, and
+bowed. And bowed and smiled again, clinging to the window-casing to
+support himself. By now she must have reached the corner. He freed one
+hand and waved it gaily, then with outflung arms he stumbled back into
+the room, the hot tears coursing down his cheeks.
+
+Marmion Moore halted upon the stairs and felt mechanically for her
+gold chatelaine. She recalled dropping it upon the center-table as she
+went forward with hands outstretched to Austin; so she turned back,
+then hesitated. But he was leaving to-morrow; surely he would
+not misinterpret the meaning of her reappearance. Summoning her
+self-control, she remounted the stairs quickly.
+
+The door was half ajar as she had left it in her confusion. Mustering
+a careless smile, she was about to knock, then paused. Austin was
+facing her in the middle of the room, beating time. He was counting
+aloud--but was that his voice? In the brief instant she had been gone
+he had changed astoundingly. Moreover, notwithstanding the fact that
+she stood plainly revealed, he made no sign of recognition, but merely
+counted on and on, with the voice of a dying man. She divined that
+something was sadly amiss; she wondered for an instant if the man had
+lost his senses.
+
+She stood transfixed, half-minded to flee, yet held by some pitying
+desire to help; then she saw him reach forward and grope his way
+uncertainly to the window. In his progress he stumbled against a
+chair; he had to feel for the casing. Then she knew.
+
+Marmion Moore found herself inside the room, staring with wide,
+affrighted eyes at the man whose life she had spoiled. She pressed her
+hands to her bosom to still its heavings. She saw Austin nodding down
+at the street below; she saw his ghastly attempt to smile; she heard
+the breath sighing from his lungs and heard him muttering her name.
+Then he turned and lurched past her, groping, groping for his chair.
+She cried out, sharply, in a stricken voice:
+
+"Mr. Austin!"
+
+The man froze in his tracks; he swung his head slowly from side to
+side, as if listening.
+
+"What!" The word came like the crack of a gun. Then, after a moment,
+"Marmion!" He spoke her name as if to test his own hearing. It was the
+first time she had ever heard him use it.
+
+She slipped forward until within an arm's-length of him, then
+stretched forth a wildly shaking hand and passed it before his
+unwinking eyes, as if she still disbelieved. Then he heard her moan.
+
+"Marmion!" he cried again. "My God! little girl, I--thought I heard
+you go!"
+
+"Then this, _this_ is the reason," she said. "Oh-h-h!"
+
+"What are you doing here? Why did you come back?" he demanded,
+brutally.
+
+"I forgot my--No! God sent me back!"
+
+There was a pause, during which the man strove to master himself; then
+he asked, in the same harsh accents:
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"Long enough to see--and to understand."
+
+"Well, you know the truth at last. I--have gone--blind." The last word
+caused his lips to twitch. He knew from the sound that she was weeping
+bitterly. "Please don't. I've used my eyes too much, that is all. It
+is--nothing."
+
+"No! No! No!" she said, brokenly. "Don't you think I understand? Don't
+you think I see it all now? But why--why didn't you tell me? Why?"
+When he did not answer she repeated: "God sent me back. I--I was not
+meant to be so unhappy."
+
+Austin felt himself shaken as if by a panic. He cried, hurriedly:
+"You see, we've been such good friends. I knew it would distress you.
+I--wanted to spare you that! You were a good comrade to me; we were
+like chums. Yes, we were chums. No friend could have been dearer to me
+than you, Miss Moore. I never had a sister, you know. I--I thought of
+you that way, and I--" He was struggling desperately to save the girl,
+but his incoherent words died on his lips when he felt her come close
+and lay her cheek against his arm.
+
+"You mustn't try to deceive me any more," she said, gently. "I was
+here. I know the truth, and--I want to be happy."
+
+Even then he stood dazed and disbelieving until she continued:
+
+"I know that you love me, and that I love you."
+
+"It is pity!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. "You don't mean it."
+
+But she drew herself closer to him and turned her tear-stained face up
+to his, saying, wistfully, "If your dear eyes could have seen, they
+would have told you long ago."
+
+"Oh, my love!" He was too weak to resist longer. His arms were
+trembling as they enfolded her, but in his heart was a gladness that
+comes to but few men.
+
+"And you won't go away without me, will you?" she questioned,
+fearfully.
+
+"No, no!" he breathed. "Oh, Marmion, I have lost a little, but I have
+gained much! God has been good to me."
+
+
+
+
+THE REAL AND THE MAKE-BELIEVE
+
+
+On his way down-town Phillips stopped at a Subway news-stand and
+bought all the morning papers. He acknowledged that he was vastly
+excited. As he turned in at the stage door he thrilled at sight of
+the big electric sign over the theater, pallid now in the morning
+sunshine, but symbolizing in frosted letters the thing for which he
+had toiled and fought, had hoped and despaired these many years. There
+it hung, a dream come true, and it read, "A Woman's Thrall, By Henry
+Phillips."
+
+The stage-door man greeted him with a toothless smile and handed him a
+bundle of telegrams, mumbling: "I knew it would go over, Mr. Phillips.
+The notices are swell, ain't they?"
+
+"They seem to be."
+
+"I ain't seen their equal since 'The Music Master' opened. We'll run a
+year."
+
+This differed from the feverish, half-hysterical praise of the
+evening before. Phillips had made allowances then for the spell of a
+first-night enthusiasm and had prepared himself for a rude awakening
+this morning--he had seen too many plays fail, to put much faith
+in the fulsomeness of first-nighters--but the words of the doorman
+carried conviction. He had felt confident up to the last moment, to be
+sure, for he knew he had put his life's best work into this drama, and
+he believed he had written with a master's cunning; nevertheless, when
+his message had gone forth a sudden panic had seized him. He had begun
+to fear that his judgment was distorted by his nearness to the play,
+or that his absorption in it had blinded him to its defects. It was
+evident now, however, that these fears had been ill-founded, for no
+play could receive such laudatory reviews as these and fail to set
+New-Yorkers aflame.
+
+Certain printed sentences kept dancing through his memory: "Unknown
+dramatist of tremendous power," "A love story so pitiless, so true,
+that it electrifies," "The deep cry of a suffering heart," "Norma
+Berwynd enters the galaxy of stars."
+
+That last sentence was the most significant, the most wonderful of
+all. Norma Berwynd a star! Phillips could scarcely credit it; he
+wondered if she had the faintest notion of how or why her triumph had
+been effected.
+
+The property man met him, and he too was smiling.
+
+"I just came from the office," he began. "Say! they're raving. It's
+the biggest hit in ten years."
+
+"Oh, come now! It's too early for the afternoon papers--"
+
+"The papers be blowed! It's the public that makes a play; the whole
+town knows about this one already. It's in and over, I tell you;
+we'll sell out tonight. Believe me, this is a knock-out--a regular
+bull's-eye. It won't take no government bonds to bridge us over the
+next two weeks."
+
+"Did you get the new props?"
+
+"Sure! The electrician is working on the drop light for the first act;
+we'll have a better glass crash tonight, and I've got a brand-new
+dagger. That other knife was all right, but Mr. Francis forgot how to
+handle it."
+
+"Nevertheless, it's dangerous. We came near having a real tragedy last
+evening. Don't let's take any more chances."
+
+"It wasn't my fault, on the level," the property man insisted.
+"Francis always 'goes up' at an opening."
+
+"Thank Heaven the papers didn't notice it."
+
+"Huh! We could _afford_ to kill an actor for notices like them. It
+would make great advertising and please the critics. Say! I knew this
+show was a hit."
+
+Under the dim-lit vault of the stage Phillips found the third-act
+scenery set for the rehearsal he had called, then, having given his
+instructions to the wardrobe woman, he drew a chair up before a bunch
+light and prepared to read for a second time the morning reviews.
+
+He had attempted to read them at breakfast, but his wife--The
+playwright sighed heavily at the memory of that scene. L�ontine had
+been very unjust, as usual. Her temper had run away with her again and
+had forced him to leave the house with his splendid triumph spoiled,
+his first taste of victory like ashes in his mouth. He was, in a way,
+accustomed to these endless, senseless rows, but their increasing
+frequency was becoming more and more trying, and he was beginning to
+doubt his ability to stand them much longer. It seemed particularly
+nasty of L�ontine to seize upon this occasion to vent her open dislike
+of him--their relations were already sufficiently strained. Marriage,
+all at once, assumed a very lopsided aspect to the playwright; he had
+given so much and received so little.
+
+With an effort he dismissed the subject from his mind and set himself
+to the more pleasant task of looking at his play through the eyes of
+the reviewers.
+
+They had been very fair, he decided at last. Their only criticism
+was one which he had known to be inevitable, therefore he felt no
+resentment.
+
+"Norma Berwynd was superb," he read; "she combined with rare beauty
+a personality at once bewitching and natural. She gave life to her
+lines; she was deep, intense, true; she rose to her emotional heights
+in a burst of power which electrified the audience. We cannot but
+wonder why such an artist has remained so long undiscovered."
+
+The dramatist smiled; surely that was sufficient praise to compensate
+him for the miserable experience he had just undergone. He read
+further:
+
+"Alas, that the same kind things cannot be said of Irving Francis,
+whose name is blazoned forth in letters of fire above the theater. He
+has established himself as one of America's brightest stars; but the
+r�le of John Danton does not enhance his reputation. In his lighter
+scenes he was delightful, but his emotional moments did not ring true.
+In the white-hot climax of the third act, for instance, which is the
+big scene of the play, he was stiff, unnatural, unconvincing. Either
+he saw Miss Berwynd taking the honors of stardom away from him and
+generously submerged his own talent in order to enhance her triumph,
+or it is but another proof of the statement that husband and wife do
+not make convincing lovers in the realm of the make-believe. It was
+surely due to no lack of opportunity on his part--"
+
+So the writer thought Irving Francis had voluntarily allowed his wife
+to rival him. Phillips smiled at this. Some actors might be capable
+of such generosity, but hardly Irving Francis. He recalled the man's
+insistent demands during rehearsals that the 'script be changed to
+build up his own part and undermine that of his wife; the many heated
+arguments which had even threatened to prevent the final performance
+of the piece. Irving's egotism had blinded him to the true result
+of these quarrels, for although he had been given more lines, more
+scenes, Phillips had seen to it that Norma was the one to really
+profit by the changes. Author and star had been upon the verge
+of rupture more than once during that heartbreaking period of
+preparation, but Phillips was supremely glad now that he had held
+himself in control. L�ontine's constant nagging had borne fruit, after
+all, in that it had at least taught him to bite down on his words, and
+to smile at provocation.
+
+Yes! Norma Berwynd was a star in spite of herself, in spite of her
+husband. She was no longer merely the wife of Irving Francis, the
+popular idol. Phillips was glad that she did not know how long it had
+taken him to effect her independence, nor the price he had paid for
+it, since, under the circumstances, the truth could help neither of
+them.
+
+He was aroused from his abstraction by the rustle of a woman's
+garments, and leaped to his feet with a glad light in his eyes, only
+to find L�ontine, his wife, confronting him.
+
+"Oh!" he said; then with an effort, "What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I didn't know you were coming down-town."
+
+"Whom were you expecting?" L�ontine mocked, with that slight accent
+which betrayed her Gallic origin.
+
+"No one."
+
+She regarded him with fixed hostility. "I came down to see your
+rehearsal. You don't object, I hope?"
+
+"Why should I object?" Phillips turned away with a shrug. "I'm
+surprised, that's all--after what you said this morning. Isn't your
+interest in the play a trifle--tardy?"
+
+"No! I've been greatly interested in it all the time. I read it
+several times in manuscript."
+
+"Indeed! I didn't know that. It won't be much of a rehearsal this
+morning; I'm merely going to run over the third act with Mr. and Mrs.
+Francis."
+
+"You can rehearse her forty years and she'll never play the part."
+
+"The critics don't agree with you; they rave over her. If Francis
+himself--"
+
+Mrs. Phillips uttered an exclamation of anger. "Oh, of course, _she_
+is perfect! You wouldn't give me the part, would you? No. You gave it
+to her. But it's mine by rights; I have the personality."
+
+"I wrote it for her," said the husband, after a pause. "I can't see
+you in it."
+
+"Naturally," she sneered. "Well, _I_ can, and it's not too late to
+make the change. I'll replace her. My name will help the piece."
+
+"L�ontine!" he exclaimed, in amazement. "What are you talking about?
+The play is a tremendous success as it is, and Miss Berwynd is a big
+hit. I'd be crazy to make a change."
+
+"You won't give me the part?"
+
+"Certainly not. You shouldn't ask it."
+
+"Doesn't L�ontine Murat mean more to the public than Norma Berwynd?"
+she demanded.
+
+"Until last night, yes. To-day--well, no. She has created this r�le.
+Besides--you--couldn't play the part."
+
+"And why not, if you please?"
+
+"I don't want to hurt your feelings, L�ontine."
+
+"Go on!" she commanded, in a voice roughened by passion.
+
+"In the first place you're not--young enough." The woman quivered. "In
+the second place, you've grown heavy. Then, too, your accent--"
+
+She broke out at him furiously. "So! I'm old and fat and foreign. I've
+lost my beauty. You think so, eh? Well, other men don't. I'll show you
+what men think of me--"
+
+"This is no time for threats," he interrupted, coldly.
+
+"Bah! I don't threaten." Seizing him by the arm, she swung him about,
+for she was a large woman and still in the fullest vigor of her
+womanhood. "Listen! You can't fool me. I know why you wrote this play.
+I know why you took that girl and made a star of her. I've known the
+truth all along."
+
+"You have no cause to--"
+
+"Don't lie!" she stormed at him. "I can read you like a book. But I
+won't stand for it." She flung his arm violently from her and turned
+away.
+
+"I think you'd better go home," he told her. "You'll have the stage
+hands talking in a minute."
+
+She laughed disagreeably, ignoring his words. "I watched you write
+this play! I have eyes, even if Irving Francis is blind. It's time he
+knew what is going on."
+
+"There is nothing going on," Phillips cried, heatedly; but his wife
+merely shrugged her splendid shoulders and, opening her gold vanity
+case, gave her face a deft going over with a tiny powder puff. After
+a time the man continued: "I could understand your attitude if
+you--cared for me, but some years ago you took pains to undeceive me
+on that point."
+
+L�ontine's lip curled, and she made no answer.
+
+"This play is a fine piece of property; it will bring us a great deal
+of money; it is the thing for which I have worked years."
+
+"I am going to tell Francis the truth about you and his wife!" she
+said.
+
+"But there's nothing to tell," the man insisted, with an effort to
+restrain himself. "Besides, you must know the result if you start a
+thing like that. He'll walk out and take his wife with him. That would
+ruin--"
+
+"Give me her part."
+
+"I won't be coerced," he flared up, angrily. "You are willing to
+ruin me, out of pique, I suppose, but I won't permit it. This is the
+biggest thing I ever did, or ever will do, perhaps; it means honor and
+recognition, and--you're selfish enough to spoil it all. I've never
+spoken to Norma Berwynd in any way to which her husband or you could
+object. Therefore I resent your attitude."
+
+"My attitude! I'm your wife."
+
+He took a turn across the stage, followed by her eyes. Pausing before
+her at length, he said, quietly: "I've asked you to go home and now
+I insist upon it. If you are here when I return I shall dismiss the
+rehearsal. I refuse to allow our domestic relations to interfere with
+my business." He strode out to the front of the house and then paced
+the dark foyer, striving to master his emotions. A moment later he
+saw his wife leave the stage and assumed that she had obeyed his
+admonitions and gone home.
+
+The property-man appeared with an armful of draperies and mechanical
+appliances, interrupting his whistling long enough to call out.
+
+"Here's the new hangings, Mr. Phillips, and the Oriental rugs. I've
+got the dagger, too." He held a gleaming object on high. "Believe me,
+it's some Davy Crockett. There's a newspaper guy out back and he wants
+your ideas on the American drama. I told him they were great. Will you
+see him?"
+
+"Not now. Tell him to come back later."
+
+"Say! That John Danton is some character. Why don't you let him have
+the gal?"
+
+"Because--well, because it doesn't happen in real life, and I've tried
+to make this play real, more than anything else."
+
+When Norma Berwynd and her husband arrived Phillips had completely
+regained his composure, and he greeted them cordially. The woman
+seemed awed, half-frightened, by her sudden rise to fame. She seemed
+to be walking in a dream, and a great wonder dwelt in her eyes. As for
+Francis, he returned the author's greeting curtly, making it plain
+that he was in no agreeable temper.
+
+"I congratulate you, Phillips," he said. "You and Norma have become
+famous overnight."
+
+The open resentment in his tone angered the playwright and caused him
+to wonder if their long-deferred clash was destined to occur this
+morning. He knew himself to be overwrought, and he imagined Francis to
+be in no better frame of mind; nevertheless, he answered, pacifically:
+
+"If that is so we owe it to your art."
+
+"Not at all. I see now what I failed to detect in reading and
+rehearsing the piece, and what you neglected to tell me, namely, that
+this is a woman's play. There's nothing in it for me. There's nothing
+in my part."
+
+"Oh, come now! The part is tremendous; you merely haven't got the most
+out of it as yet."
+
+Francis drew himself up and eyed the speaker coldly. "You're quoting
+the newspapers. Pray be more original. You know, of course, how I
+stand with these penny-a-liners; they never have liked me, but as for
+the part--" He shrugged. "I can't get any more out of it than there is
+in it."
+
+"Doubtless that was my fault at rehearsals. I've called this one so we
+can fix up the weak spot in the third act."
+
+"Well! We're on time. Where are the others?" Francis cast an inquiring
+glance about.
+
+"I'll only rehearse you and Mrs. Francis."
+
+"Indeed!" The former speaker opened his mouth for a cutting rejoinder,
+but changed his mind and stalked away into the shadowy depths of the
+wings.
+
+"Please make allowances for him," Norma begged, approaching Phillips
+in order that her words might not be overheard. "I've never seen him
+so broken up over anything. He is always unstrung after an opening,
+but he is--terrible, this morning."
+
+There was trouble, timidity, and another indefinable expression in the
+woman's eyes as they followed the vanishing figure of her husband;
+faint lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, lines which had
+no place in the face of a happily married woman. She was trembling,
+moreover, as if she had but recently played some big, emotional r�le,
+and Phillips felt the old aching pity for her tugging at his heart. He
+wondered if those stories about Francis could be true.
+
+"It has been a great strain on all of us," he told her. "But you? How
+do you feel after all this?" He indicated the pile of morning papers,
+and at sight of them her eyes suddenly filled with that same wonder
+and gladness he had noticed when she first arrived.
+
+"Oh-h! I--I'm breathless. Something clutches me--here." She laid
+her hand upon her bosom. "It's so new I can't express it yet,
+except--well, all of my dreams came true in a night. Some fairy waved
+her wand and, lo! poor ugly little me--" She laughed, although it was
+more like a sob. "I had no idea my part was so immense. Had you?"
+
+"I had. I wrote it that way. My dreams, also, came true."
+
+"But why?" A faint flush stole into her cheeks. "There are so many
+women who could have played the part better than I. You had courage to
+risk your piece in my hands, Mr. Phillips."
+
+"Perhaps I knew you better than you knew yourself." She searched his
+face with startled curiosity. "Or better at least than the world knew
+you. Tell me, there is something wrong? I'm afraid he--resents your--"
+
+"Oh no, no!" she denied, hastily, letting her eyes fall, but not
+before he had seen them fill again with that same expression of pain
+and bewilderment. "He's--not himself, that's all. I--You--won't
+irritate him? Please! He has such a temper."
+
+Francis came out of the shadows scowling. "Well, let's get at it,"
+said he.
+
+Phillips agreed. "If you don't mind we'll start with your entrance. I
+wish you would try to express more depth of feeling, more tenderness,
+if you please, Mr. Francis. Remember, John Danton has fought this love
+of his for many years, undertaking to remain loyal to his wife. He
+doesn't dream that Diane returns his love, for he has never spoken,
+never even hinted of his feelings until this instant. Now, however,
+they are forced into expression. He begins reluctantly, frightened at
+the thing which makes him speak, then when she responds the dam breaks
+and his love over-rides his will power, his loyalty, his lifelong
+principles; it sweeps him onward and it takes her with him. The truth
+appals them both. They recognize its certain consequences and yet they
+respond freely, fiercely. You can't overplay the scene, Mr. Francis."
+
+"Certainly I can overplay it," the star declared. "That's the danger.
+My effects should come from repression."
+
+"I must differ with you. Repressive methods are out of place here. You
+see, John Danton loses control of himself--"
+
+"Nonsense!" Francis declared, angrily.
+
+"The effectiveness of the scene depends altogether upon its--well, its
+savagery. It must sweep the audience off its feet in order that the
+climax shall appear logical."
+
+"Nonsense again! I'm not an old-school actor, and I can't chew
+scenery. I've gained my reputation by repressive acting, by
+intensity."
+
+"This is not acting; this is real life."
+
+Francis's voice rose a tone in pitch, and his eyes flashed at this
+stubborn resistance to his own set ideas.
+
+"Great heavens, Phillips! Don't try to tell me my own business.
+People don't behave that way in real life; they don't explode under
+passion--not even jealousy or revenge; they are reserved. Reserve!
+That's the real thing; the other is all make-believe."
+
+Seeing that it was useless to argue with the man, Phillips said
+nothing more, so Francis and his wife assumed their positions and
+began their lines.
+
+It was a long scene and one demanding great force to sustain. It was
+this, in fact, which had led to the choice of Irving Francis for the
+principal r�le, for he was a man of tremendous physical power. He had
+great ability, moreover, and yet never, even at rehearsals, had he
+been able to invest this particular scene with conviction. Phillips
+had rehearsed him in it time and again, but he seemed strangely
+incapable of rising to the necessary heights. He was hollow,
+artificial; his tricks and mannerisms showed through like familiar
+trade marks. Strangely enough, the girl also had failed to get the
+most out of the scene, and this morning, both star and leading woman
+seemed particularly cold and unresponsive. They lacked the spark, the
+uplifting intensity, which was essential, therefore, in desperation,
+Phillips finally tried the expedient of altering their "business," of
+changing positions, postures, and crosses; but they went through the
+scene for a second time as mechanically as before.
+
+Knowing every line as he did, feeling every heart throb, living and
+suffering as John Danton was supposed to be living and suffering,
+Phillips was nearly distracted. To him this was a wanton butchery of
+his finest work. He interrupted, at last, in a heart-sick, hopeless
+tone which sorely offended the already irritated Francis.
+
+"I'm--afraid it's no use. You don't seem to get it."
+
+"What is it I don't get?" roughly demanded the actor.
+
+"You're not genuine--either of you. You don't seem to feel it."
+
+"Humph! We're married!" said the star, so brutally that his wife
+flushed painfully. "I tell you I get all it's possible to get out of
+the scene. You wrote it and you see a lot of imaginary values; but
+they're not there. I'm no superman--no god! I can't give you more than
+the part contains."
+
+"Look at it in this light," Phillips argued, after a pause. "Diane is
+a married woman; she, too, is fighting a battle; she is restrained by
+every convention, every sense of right, every instinct of wifehood and
+womanhood. Now, then, you must sweep all that aside; your own fire
+must set her ablaze despite--"
+
+"I? _I_ must do all this?" mocked the other, furiously. "Why must _I_
+do it all? Make Norma play up to me. She underplays me all the time;
+she's not in my key. That's what's the matter--and I'm damned tired of
+this everlasting criticism."
+
+There was a strained silence, during which the two men faced each
+other threateningly, and a panic seized the woman.
+
+She managed to say, uncertainly: "Perhaps I--should play up to you,
+Irving."
+
+"On the contrary, I don't think the fault is yours," Phillips said,
+stiffly.
+
+Again there was a dramatic silence, in which there was no element of
+the make-believe. It was the clash of two strong men who disliked each
+other intensely and whose masks were slipping. Neither they nor the
+leading woman detected a figure stealing out from the gloom, as if
+drawn by the magnetism of their anger.
+
+"My fault, as usual," Francis sneered. "Understand this, Phillips, my
+reputation means something to me, and I won't be forced out of a good
+engagement by a--well, by you or by any other stage manager."
+
+Phillips saw that same fearful look leap into the woman's eyes, and it
+checked his heated retort. "I don't mean to find fault with you," he
+declared, evenly. "I have the greatest respect for your ability as an
+actor, but--"
+
+The star tossed his massive head in a peculiarly aggravating manner.
+"Perhaps you think you can play the part better than I?"
+
+"Irving! _Please_!" breathed his wife.
+
+"Show me how it should be done, if you feel it so strongly."
+
+"Thank you, I will," Phillips answered, impulsively. "I'm not an
+actor, but I wrote this piece. What's more, I lived it before I wrote
+it. It's my own story, and I think I know how it should be played."
+
+Francis smiled mockingly. "Good!" said he; "I shall learn something."
+
+"Do you mind?" The author turned to the real Diane, and she shook her
+head, saying, uncertainly:
+
+"It's--very good of you."
+
+"Very well. If you will hold the manuscript, Mr. Francis, I'll try to
+show what I feel the scene lacks. However, I don't think I'll need any
+prompting. Now, then, we'll begin at John Danton's entrance."
+
+With the mocking smile still upon his lips, Francis took the
+manuscript and seated himself upon the prompter's table.
+
+It was by no means remarkable that Henry Phillips should know
+something about acting, for he had long been a stage manager, and in
+emergencies he has assumed a good many divergent r�les. He felt no
+self-consciousness, therefore, as he exchanged places with Francis;
+only an intense desire to prove his contentions. He nerved himself to
+an unusual effort, but before he had played more than a few moments he
+forgot the hostile husband and began to live the part of John Danton
+as he had lived it in the writing, as he invariably lived it every
+time he read the play or saw it acted.
+
+Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the
+written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain
+by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts
+expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden,
+hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same
+mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and
+left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had
+acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in
+solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He
+found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he
+was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a r�le of his
+creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he
+had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the
+real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in
+timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman
+and stirred her to a new response.
+
+As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with
+astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was
+indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had
+served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and
+to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the
+spectacle held him enthralled.
+
+Norma Berwynd was not slow to appreciate the truth. Accustomed
+thoroughly to every phase of the make-believe world in which she
+dwelt, she recognized unerringly in the new John Danton's words and
+actions something entirely unreal and apart from the theatrical. The
+conviction that Henry Phillips was not acting came to her with a
+blinding suddenness, and it threw her into momentary confusion, hence
+her responses were mechanical. But soon, without effort on her part,
+this embarrassment fell away and she in turn began to blaze. The flame
+grew as Phillips breathed upon it. She realized wildly that her heart
+had always hungered for words like these, and that, coming from his
+lips, they carried an altogether new and wondrous meaning; that they
+filled some long-felt, aching want of which she had been ignorant
+until this moment. The certainty that it was Phillips himself who
+spoke, and not a mere character of his creation, filled her with an
+exultant recklessness. She forgot her surroundings, her husband's
+presence, even the fact that the lines she spoke were not of her own
+making.
+
+Never had the scene been played like this. It grew vital, it took on
+a tremendous significance. No one could have observed it and remained
+unresponsive. Francis let fall the manuscript and stared at the actors
+wonderingly. Since he was an actor, nothing was so real to him,
+nothing so thrilling, as the make-believe. He realized that this was
+indeed a magnificent exhibition of the artificial. With parted lips
+and pulse athrob he followed the wooing of that imaginary John Danton,
+in whom he could see no one but himself.
+
+After a time he became conscious of a presence at his side, and heard
+some one breathing heavily. Turning with a start, he found L�ontine
+Phillips at his shoulder. She, too, was aroused, but in her sneering
+visage was that which brought the actor abruptly out of his spell. She
+had emerged from the shadows noiselessly, and was leaning forward, her
+strong hands gripping the edge of the table littered with its many
+properties.
+
+Mrs. Phillips had played emotional scenes herself, but never with such
+melodramatic intensity as she now unconsciously displayed. Her whole
+body shook as with an ague, her dark face was alive with a jealous fury
+which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The
+truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the
+author, which had been momentarily forgotten--momentarily lost in his
+admiration of the artist--rose up anew, and he recognized this occult
+spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality,
+not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the
+make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a
+smothered cry.
+
+L�ontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through
+livid lips.
+
+Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a
+cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could
+not keep his eyes from his wife's face. L�ontine plucked at his sleeve
+and whispered again:
+
+"You _fool_!"
+
+Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a
+man throttled. L�ontine could feel his muscles stiffen.
+
+But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of
+the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can
+tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart
+pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his
+arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned;
+her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce,
+impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.
+
+Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him
+paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his
+ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man
+who had played his part, he awoke.
+
+"She knows he loves her," L�ontine was saying. "You let him tell her
+in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"
+
+Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they
+rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She
+also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it
+forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she
+breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.
+
+It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which
+aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw
+him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save
+the latter.
+
+The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage
+fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly
+driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then staggered, and,
+half sliding through the woman's sheltering embrace, crumpled limply
+into a massive upholstered chair. He, too, was dazed by the sudden
+transition from his real world to his make-believe.
+
+When his eyes cleared he saw Norma Berwynd struggling with her
+husband, interposing her own slender body in his path. Francis was
+cursing her foully for her unfaithfulness; his voice was thick and
+brutal.
+
+"Yes! It's true!" she cried, with hysterical defiance. "I never knew
+till now; but it's true! It's _true_!"
+
+"You've killed him!" L�ontine chattered, shrilly, and emerged from the
+shadows, her dark features ashen, her eyes ringed with white. Mrs.
+Francis turned from her husband and flung her arms about the recumbent
+man, calling wildly to him.
+
+The d�nouement had come with such swiftness that it left all four of
+them appalled at their actions. Seeing what his brief insanity had led
+him into, Francis felt his strength evaporate; his face went white,
+his legs buckled beneath him. He scanned the place wildly in search of
+means of escape.
+
+"My God! My God!" L�ontine was repeating. "Why doesn't somebody come?"
+
+Now that his brain had cleared, and he knew what hand had smitten him,
+and why, Phillips was by far the calmest of the four. He saw the knife
+at his feet and smiled, for no steel could rob him of that gladness
+which was pulsing through his veins. He was still smiling when he
+stooped and picked up the weapon. He arose, lifting Norma to her feet;
+then his hand slid down and sought hers.
+
+"You needn't worry," he said to Francis. "You see--this is the new
+dagger I got for the end of the act."
+
+He held it out in his open palm for all of them to see, and they noted
+that it was strangely shortened--that the point of the sliding blade
+was barely exposed beneath the hilt.
+
+Francis wiped his wet face, then shuddered and cursed weakly with
+relief, meanwhile groping at the prompter's table for support. "Sold!
+A prop knife!" he cried.
+
+"You--you're not really--" Norma swayed forward with eyes closed.
+
+L�ontine laughed.
+
+"By God! I meant it," the star exclaimed, uncertainly. "You can't
+deny--" He gasped and tugged at his collar.
+
+"I believe there is nothing to deny," the author said, quietly. He
+looked first at his wife, then at his enemy, and then down at the
+quivering, white face upturned to his. "There is nothing to deny, is
+there?" he inquired of Norma.
+
+"Nothing!" she said. "I--I'm glad to know the truth, that's all."
+
+Francis glared first at one, then at the other, and as he did so he
+began to realize the full cost of his action. When it came home to
+him in terms of dollars and cents, he showed his true character by
+stammering:
+
+"I--I made a frightful mistake. I'm--not myself; really, I'm not. It
+was your wife's fault." In a panic he ran on, unmindful of L�ontine's
+scorn. "She did it, Mr. Phillips. She gave me the knife. She whispered
+things--she made me--I--I'm very sorry--Mr. Phillips, and I'll play
+the part the way you want it. I will, indeed."
+
+L�ontine met her husband's look defiantly; hence it was as much to her
+as to the cringing actor that the playwright said:
+
+"Your salary will go on as usual, under your contract, Mr.
+Francis--that is, until the management supplies you with a new play;
+but I'm the real John Danton, and I shall play him tonight and
+henceforth."
+
+"Then, I'm--discharged? Norma--d'you hear that? We're canceled.
+Fired!"
+
+"No, Miss Berwynd's name will go up in lights as the star, if she
+cares to stay," said Phillips. "Do you wish to remain?" He looked down
+at the woman, and she nodded.
+
+"Yes, oh yes!" she said. "I _must_ stay. I daren't go back." That
+hunted look leaped into her eyes again, and Phillips recognized it now
+as fear, the abject physical terror of the weaker animal. "I want to
+go--forward--not backward, if there is any way."
+
+"I'll show you the way," he told her, gently. "We'll find it
+together."
+
+He smiled reassuringly, and with a little gasping sigh she placed her
+hand in his.
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING ELK
+
+
+Up from the valley below came the throb of war drums, the faint rattle
+of shots, and the distant cries of painted horsemen charging. From
+my vantage-point on the ridge I had an unobstructed view of the
+encampment, a great circle of tepees and tents three miles in
+circumference, cradled in a sag of the timberless hills. The sounds
+came softly through the still Dakota air, and my eye took in every
+sharp-drawn detail of the scene--ponies grazing along the creek
+bottom, children playing beneath the blue smoke of camp-fires, the
+dense crowd ringed about a medicine pole in their center, intent on a
+war-dance.
+
+Five thousand Sioux were here in all their martial splendor. They were
+painted and decked and trapped for war, living again their days of
+plenty, telling anew their tales of might, and repeating on a mimic
+scale their greatest battles. Five days the feasting had continued;
+five mornings had I been awakened at dawn to see a thousand ochered,
+feathered horsemen come thundering down upon the camp, their horses
+running flat, their rifles popping, while the valley rocked to their
+battle-cries and to the answering clamor of the army which rode forth
+to meet them. Five sultry days had I spent wandering unnoticed,
+ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but
+unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and
+the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a
+million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul,
+through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told
+in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race,
+to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer
+dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the
+sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man,
+for a word in my own tongue.
+
+It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe
+assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount
+the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the
+reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of
+the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was
+a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell
+of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an
+ever-increasing pile of bones.
+
+I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a
+slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and
+standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets
+of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down
+again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired
+much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red
+man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.
+
+It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and
+descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance
+away from my tent, for next to it another had been erected during my
+absence. It was a tiny affair with a rug in front of it, and upon the
+rug stood a steamer-chair.
+
+"Hello, inside!" I shouted, then ran forward, straddling papooses and
+shouldering squaws out of my way.
+
+"Hello!" came an answer, and out through the flap was thrust the head
+of my friend, the Government doctor.
+
+"Gee! I'm glad to see you!" I said as I shook his hand. "I'm as
+lonesome as a deaf mute at a song recital."
+
+"I figured you would be," said the doctor, "so I came out to see the
+finish of the feast and to visit with you. I brought some bread from
+the Agency."
+
+"Hoorah! White bread and white conversation! I'm hungry for both."
+
+"What's the matter? Won't the Indians talk to you?"
+
+"I guess they would if they could, but they can't. I haven't found one
+among the whole five thousand who can understand a word I say. Your
+Government schools have gone back in the betting with me, Doc. You
+must keep your graduates under lock and key."
+
+"They can all speak English if they want to--that is, the younger
+ones. Some few of the old people are too proud to try, but the others
+can talk as well as we can, until they forget."
+
+"Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe
+it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet
+on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress
+which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal;
+he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've
+tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."
+
+My friend called to the warrior: "Hey, Tom! Come here a minute."
+The Indian came, and the doctor continued, "When do you hold the
+horse-races, Thomas?"
+
+"To-morrow, at four o'clock, unless it rains," said the fellow.
+He spoke in an odd, halting dialect, but his words were perfectly
+understandable.
+
+"Are you going to ride?"
+
+"No; my race-horse is sick."
+
+As the ocher-daubed figure vanished into the dusk the old man turned
+to me, saying, "College man."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yes. B.A. He's a graduate."
+
+"Impossible!" I declared. "Why, he talks like a foreigner, or as if he
+were just learning our language."
+
+"Exactly. In another three years he'll be an Indian again, through and
+through. Oh, the reservation is full of fellows like Tom." The
+doctor heaved a sigh of genuine discouragement. "It's a melancholy
+acknowledgment to make, but our work seems to count for almost
+nothing. It's their blood."
+
+"Perhaps they forget the higher education," said I; "but how about the
+Agency school, where you teach them to farm and to sew and to cook, as
+well as to read and to write? Surely they don't forget that?"
+
+"I've heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver
+sounding orations; then I've seen those same young fellows, three
+months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers. It's
+a common thing for our 'sweet girl graduates' to lay off their white
+commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats,
+for the shawl and the moccasin. We teach them to make sponge-cake and
+to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon. Of
+course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than
+they learn."
+
+"Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts,"
+I acknowledged. "He's sort of a hero with us. I remember several
+successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead."
+
+"I know!" My friend laughed shortly. "I saw some of them. If you like,
+however, I'll tell you how it really happens. I know a story."
+
+When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running
+Elk. The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird
+music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at
+intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter. On either hand the
+campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily
+until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness. It
+was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.
+
+"I've grown gray in this service," the old man began, "and the longer
+I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference
+between the Indian race and ours. I've about reached the conclusion
+that it's due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood. One
+race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic.
+The white man is ever developing, he's always advancing, always
+expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward. It is only
+a matter of time until he will vanish utterly. He's different from the
+negro. The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops. Some
+people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as
+to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set.
+The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious
+conflict between the blacks and the whites. But the red man differs
+from both. To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth.
+Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with
+an intellect quite as keen as the white man's, and with an open
+articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain.
+Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw
+which I have labored thirty years to find.
+
+"I have a theory--you know all old men have theories--that it is
+a physical thing, as tangible as that osseous constriction of the
+cranium which holds the negro in subjection, and that if I could lay
+my finger on it I could raise the Indian to his ancient mastery and
+to a dignified place among the nations; I could change them from a
+vanishing people into a race of rulers, of lawgivers, of creators. At
+least that used to be my dream.
+
+"Some years ago I felt that I was well on my way to success, for I
+found a youth who offered every promise of great manhood. I studied
+him until I knew his every trait and his every strength--he didn't
+seem to have any weaknesses. I raised him according to my own ideas;
+he became a tall, straight fellow, handsome as a bronze statue of a
+god. Physically he was perfect, and he had a mind as fine as his body.
+He had the best blood of his nation in him, being the son of a war
+chief, and he was called Thomas Running Elk. I educated him at the
+Agency school under my own personal supervision, and on every occasion
+I studied him. I spent hours in shaping his mind and in bending him
+away from the manners and the habits of his tribe. I taught him to
+think like a white man. He responded like a growing vine; he became
+the pride of the reservation--a reserved but an eager youth, with an
+understanding and a wit beyond that of most white boys of his age.
+Search him as rigorously as I might, I couldn't find a single flaw. I
+believed I was about to prove my theory.
+
+"Running Elk romped through our school, and he couldn't learn fast
+enough; when he had finished I sent him East to college, and, in order
+to wean him utterly away from the past, instead of sending him to
+an Indian school I arranged for him to enter one of the big Eastern
+universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant
+association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise
+him to a higher level. Well, it worked. He led his classes as a
+stag leads a herd. He was a silent, dignified, shadowy figure; his
+fellow-students considered him unapproachable, nevertheless they
+admired and they liked him. In all things he excelled; but he was
+best, perhaps, in athletics, and for this I took the credit--a Jovian
+satisfaction in my work.
+
+"News of his victories on track and field and gridiron came to me
+regularly, for his professors were interested in my experiment. As for
+the boy himself, he never wrote; it was not his nature. Nor did he
+communicate with his people. He had cut himself off from them, and I
+think he looked down upon them. At intervals his father came to the
+Agency to inquire about Running Elk, for I did not allow my prot�g�
+to return even during vacations. That was a part of my plan. At my
+stories of his son's victories the father made no comment; he merely
+listened quietly, then folded his blanket about him and slipped away.
+The old fellow was a good deal of a philosopher; he showed neither
+resentment nor pleasure, but once or twice I caught him smiling oddly
+at my enthusiasm. I know now what was in his mind.
+
+"It was in Running Elk's senior year that a great thing came to him,
+a thing I had counted upon from the start. He fell in love. A girl
+entered his life. But this girl didn't enter as I had expected, and
+when the news reached me I was completely taken aback. She was a girl
+I had dandled on my knees as a child, the only daughter of an old
+friend. Moreover, instead of Running Elk being drawn to her, as I had
+planned, she fell desperately in love with him.
+
+"I guess the gods were offended at my presumption and determined by
+one hair's-breadth shift to destroy the balance of my whole structure.
+They're a jealous lot, the gods. I didn't understand, at that time,
+how great must have been the amusement which I offered them.
+
+"You've heard of old Henry Harman? Yes, the railroad king. It was his
+daughter Alicia. No wonder you look incredulous.
+
+"In order to understand the story you'll have to know something about
+old Henry. You'll have to believe in heredity. Henry is a self-made
+man. He came into the Middle West as a poor boy, and by force of
+indomitable pluck, ability, and doggedness he became a captain of
+industry. We were born on neighboring farms, and while I, after a
+lifetime of work, have won nothing except an underpaid Government
+job, Henry has become rich and mighty. He had that indefinable,
+unacquirable faculty for making money, and he became a commanding
+figure in the financial world. He's dominant, he's self-centered, he's
+one-purposed; he's a rough-hewn block of a man, and his unbounded
+wealth, his power, and his contact with the world have never smoothed
+nor rounded him. He's just about the same now as when he was a section
+boss on his own railroad. His daughter Alicia is another Henry Harman,
+feminized. Her mother was a pampered child, born to ease and enslaved
+to her own whims. No desire of hers, however extravagant, ever went
+ungratified, and right up to the hour of her death old Henry never
+said no to her--partly out of a spirit of amusement, I dare say, and
+partly because she was the only unbridled extravagance he had ever
+yielded to in all his life. Well, having sowed the wind, he reaped the
+whirlwind in Alicia. She combined the distinguishing traits of both
+parents, and she grew up more effectively spoiled than her mother.
+
+"When I got a panicky letter from one of Running Elk's professors
+coupling her name vaguely with that of my Indian, I wavered in
+my determination to see this experiment out; but the analyst is
+unsentimental, and a fellow who sets out to untangle the skein of
+nature must pay the price, so I waited.
+
+"That fall I was called to Washington on department business--we
+were fighting for a new appropriation--and while there I went to the
+theater one night. I was extremely harassed, and my mind was filled
+with Indian matters, so I went out alone to seek an evening's relief,
+not caring whither my feet took me.
+
+"The play was one of those you spoke of; it told the story of a young
+Indian college man in love with a white girl. Whether or not it was
+well written I don't know; but it seemed as if the hand of destiny had
+led me to it, for the hero's plight was so similar to the situation of
+Running Elk that it seemed almost uncanny, and I wondered if this play
+might afford me some solution of his difficulty.
+
+"You will remember that the Indian in the play is a great football
+hero, and a sort of demi-god to his fellows. He begins to consider
+himself one of them--their equal--and he falls in love with the sister
+of his chum. But when this fact is made known his friends turn
+against him and try to show him the barrier of blood. At the finish a
+messenger comes bearing word that his father is dead and that he has
+been made chief in the old man's place. He is told that his people
+need him, and although the girl offers to go with him and make her
+life his, he renounces her for his duty to the tribe.
+
+"Well, it was all right up to that point, but the end didn't help me
+in shaping the future of Running Elk, for his father was hale, hearty,
+and contented, and promised to hang on in that condition as long as we
+gave him his allowance of beef on Issue Day.
+
+"That night when I got back to the hotel I found a long-distance
+call from old Henry Harman. He had wired me here at the Agency, and,
+finding I was in Washington, he had called me from New York. He didn't
+tell me much over the 'phone, except that he wanted to see me at once
+on a matter of importance. My work was about finished, so I took the
+train in the morning and went straight to his office. When I arrived I
+found the old fellow badly rattled. There is a certain kind of worry
+which comes from handling affairs of importance. Men like Henry Harman
+thrive upon it; but there's another kind which searches out the joints
+in their coats of mail and makes women of them. That's what Henry was
+suffering from.
+
+"'Oh, Doc, I'm in an awful hole!' he exclaimed. 'You're the only man
+who can pull me out. It's about Alicia and that damned savage of
+yours.'
+
+"'I knew that was it,' said I.
+
+"'If you've heard about it clear out there,' Harman declared, with a
+catch in his voice, 'it's even worse than I thought.' He strode up and
+down his office for a few moments; then he sank heavily into his chair
+and commenced to pound his mahogany desk, declaring, angrily:
+
+"'I won't be defied by my own flesh and blood! I won't! That's
+all there is to it. I'm master of my own family. Why, the thing's
+fantastic, absurd, and yet it's terrible! Heavens! I can't believe
+it!'
+
+"'Have you talked with Alicia?'
+
+"'Not with her, _to_ her. She's like a mule. I never saw such a will
+in a woman. I--I've fought her until I'm weak. Where she got her
+temper I don't know.' He collapsed feebly and I was forced to smile,
+for there's only one thing stubborn enough to overcome a Harman's
+resistance, and that is a Harman's desire.
+
+"'Then it isn't a girlish whim?' I ventured.
+
+"'_Whim!_ Look at me!' He held out his trembling hands. 'She's licked
+me, Doc. She's going to marry that--that--' He choked and muttered,
+unintelligibly: 'I've reasoned, I've pleaded, I've commanded. She
+merely smiles and shrugs and says I'm probably right, in the abstract.
+Then she informs me that abstract problems go to pieces once in a
+while. She says this--this--Galloping Moose, this yelping ghost-dancer
+of yours, is the only real man she ever met.'
+
+"'What does he have to say?'
+
+"'Humph!' grunted Harman. 'I offered to buy him off, but he threatened
+to serve me up with dumplings and wear my scalp in his belt. Such
+insolence! Alicia wouldn't speak to me for a week.'
+
+"'You made a mistake there,' said I. 'Running Elk is a Sioux. As for
+Alicia, she's thoroughly spoiled. She's never been denied any single
+thing in all her life, and she has your disposition. It's a difficult
+situation.'
+
+"'Difficult! It's scandalous--hideous!'
+
+"'How old is Alicia?'
+
+"'Nineteen. Oh, I've worn out that argument! She says she'll wait. You
+know she has her own money, from her mother.'
+
+"'Does Running Elk come to your house?'
+
+"At this my old friend roared so fiercely that I hastened to say:
+'I'll see the boy at once. I have more influence with him than anybody
+else.'
+
+"'I hope you can show him how impossible, how criminal, it is to ruin
+my girl's life.' Harman said this seriously. 'Yes, and mine, too,
+for that matter. Suppose the yellow newspapers got hold of this!' He
+shuddered. 'Doc, I love that girl so well that I'd kill her with my
+own hands rather than see her disgraced, ridiculed--'
+
+"'Tut, tut!' said I. 'That's pride--just plain, selfish pride.'
+
+"'I don't care a damn what it is, I'd do it. I earned my way in the
+world, but she's got blue blood in her and she was born to a position;
+she goes everywhere. When she comes out she'll be able to marry into
+the best circles in America. She could marry a duke, if she wanted to.
+I'd buy her one if she said the word. Naturally, I can't stand for
+this dirty, low-browed Injun.'
+
+"'He's not dirty,' I declared, 'and he's not as low-browed as some
+foreigner you'd be glad to pick out for her.'
+
+"'Well, he's an Injun,' retorted Harman, 'and that's enough. We've
+both seen 'em tried; they all drop back where they started from. You
+know that as well as I do.'
+
+"'I don't know it,' said I, thinking of my theories. 'I've been using
+him to make an experiment, but--the experiment has gotten away from
+me. I dare say you're right. I wanted him to meet and to know white
+girls, but I didn't want him to marry one--certainly not a girl like
+Alicia. No, we must put a stop to this affair. I'll see him right
+away.'
+
+"'To-morrow is Thanksgiving,' said Henry. 'Wait over and go up with us
+and see the football game.'
+
+"'Are you going?'
+
+"Harman grimaced. 'Alicia made me promise. I'd rather take her than
+let her go with friends--there's no telling what she might do.'
+
+"'Why let her go at all?' I objected.
+
+"The old fellow laughed mirthlessly. 'Why _let_ her? Running Elk plays
+full-back! How _stop_ her? We'll pick you up at your hotel in the
+morning and drive you up in the car. It's the big game of the year.
+You'll probably enjoy it. I won't!'
+
+"Miss Harman seemed glad to see me on the following day. She must have
+known that I was in her father's confidence, but she was too well
+schooled to show it. As we rode out in the big limousine I undertook
+to study her, but the reading of women isn't my game. All I could see
+was a beautiful, spirited, imperious girl with the Harman eyes and
+chin. She surprised me by mentioning Running Elk of her own free will;
+she wasn't the least bit embarrassed, and, although her father's face
+whitened, she preserved her quiet dignity, and I realized that she was
+in no wise ashamed of her infatuation. I didn't wonder that the old
+gentleman chose to accompany her to this game, although he must
+have known that the sight of Running Elk would pain him like a
+branding-iron.
+
+"It was the first great gridiron battle I had ever seen, and so I was
+unprepared for the spectacle. The enthusiasm of that immense crowd
+astonished me, and in spite of the fact that I had come as a tired old
+man, it got into my veins until my heart pounded and my pulses leaped.
+The songs, the shouts, the bellows of that multitude were intensely
+thrilling, for youth was in them. I grew young again, and I was half
+ashamed of myself until I saw other people of my own age who had also
+become boys and girls for the day. And the seriousness of it! Why, it
+was painful! Not one of those countless thousands was a disinterested
+spectator; they were all intensely partisan, and you'd have thought
+life or death hung on the victory.
+
+"Not one, did I say? There was one who held himself aloof from all the
+enthusiasm. Old Henry sat like a lump of granite, and out of regard
+for him I tried to restrain myself.
+
+"We had a box, close to the side lines, with the _�lite_ of the East
+on either hand--people whose names I had read. They bowed and smiled
+and waved to our little party, and I felt quite important.
+
+"You've probably seen similar games, so there's no need of my
+describing this one, even if I could. It was my first experience,
+however, and it impressed me greatly. When the teams appeared I
+recognized Running Elk at a distance. So did the hordes of madmen
+behind us, and I began to understand for the first time what it was
+that the old man in the seat next to mine was combating.
+
+"A dancing dervish in front of the grandstand said something through a
+megaphone, then he waved a cane, whereupon a tremendous barking, 'Rah!
+Rah! Rah!' broke out. It ended with my Sioux boy's name, and I wished
+the old chief back in Dakota were there to see his son and to witness
+the honor done him by the whites.
+
+"Quite as impressive to me as this demonstration was the death-like
+silence which settled over that tremendous throng when the teams
+scattered out in readiness. The other side kicked off, and the ball
+sailed high and far. As it settled in its downward flight, I saw a
+lithe, tall shadow of a man racing toward it, and I recognized my
+boy. I'd lost his position for the moment, but I knew that hungry,
+predatory stride which devoured the yards as if he were a thing of the
+wind. He was off with the ball in the hollow of his arm, right back
+into the heart of his enemies, dodging, darting, leaping, twisting,
+always advancing. They tore his interference away from him, but,
+nevertheless, he penetrated their ranks and none of them could lay
+hands upon him. He was running free when tackled; his assailant
+launched himself with such savage violence that the sound of their
+impact came to us distinctly. As he fell I heard Alicia Harman gasp.
+Then the crowd gave tongue.
+
+"From that time on to the finish of the game my eyes seldom left
+Running Elk, and then only long enough to shoot covert glances at my
+companions.
+
+"Although the skill of my young Sioux overtopped that of all the other
+contestants, the opposing team played as one man; they were like
+a wonderful, well-oiled piece of machinery, and--they scored. All
+through the first half our side struggled to retaliate, but at the
+intermission they had not succeeded.
+
+"So far Running Elk hadn't noticed our presence, but when the teams
+returned for the second half he saw us. He didn't even know that I was
+in the East; in fact, he hadn't laid eyes on me for more than three
+years. The sight of me there in the box with Alicia and her father
+must have been an unpleasant shock to him; my face must have seemed an
+evil omen; nevertheless, he waved his hand at me and smiled--one of
+his rare, reserved smiles. I couldn't help marveling at the fellow's
+physical beauty.
+
+"I had been secretly hoping that his side would be defeated, so that
+Miss Harman might see him for once as a loser; but the knowledge of
+our presence seemed to electrify him, and by the spark of his own
+magnetism he fired his fellows until they commenced to play like
+madmen; I have no doubt they were precisely that. His spirit was like
+some galvanic current, and he directed them with a master mind. He was
+a natural-born strategist, of course, for through him ran the blood of
+the craftiest race of all the earth, the blood of a people who have
+always fought against odds, to whom a forlorn hope is an assurance
+of victory. On this day the son of a Sioux chief led the men of
+that great university with the same skill that Hannibal led his
+Carthaginian cohorts up to the gates of Rome. He led them with the
+cunning of Chief Joseph, the greatest warrior of his people. He was
+indefatigable, irresistible, magnificent--and he himself tied the
+score.
+
+"In spite of myself I joined madly in the cheering; but the boy didn't
+let down. Now that his enemies recognized the source of their peril,
+they focused upon him all their fury. They tried to destroy him. They
+fell upon him like animals; they worried and they harried and they
+battered him until I felt sick for him and for the girl beside me,
+who had grown so faint and pale. But his body was of my making; I had
+spent careful years on it, and although they wore themselves out, they
+could not break Running Elk. He remained a fleeting, an elusive thing,
+with the vigor of a wild horse. He tackled their runners with the
+ferocity of a wolf.
+
+"It was a grand exhibition of coolness and courage, for he was
+everywhere, always alert and always ready--and it was he who won the
+game.
+
+"There came some sort of a fumble, too fast for the eye to follow, and
+then the ball rolled out of the scrimmage. Before we knew what had
+happened, Running Elk was away with it, a scattered field ahead of
+him.
+
+"I dare say you have heard about that run, for it occurred in the last
+three minutes of play, and is famous in football annals to this day,
+so I'm told. It was a spectacular performance, apparently devised by
+fate to make more difficult the labors of old Henry and me. Every
+living soul on those high-banked bleachers was on his feet at the
+finish, a senseless, screaming demon. I saw Alicia straining forward,
+her face like chalk, her very lips blanched, her whole high-strung
+body aquiver. Her eyes were distended, and in them I saw a look which
+told me that this was no mere girlish whim, that this was more than
+the animal call of youth and sex. Running Elk had become a fetish to
+her.
+
+"The father must likewise have recognized this, for as we passed out
+he stammered into my ear:
+
+"'You see, Doc, the girl's mad. It's awful--awful. I don't know what
+to do.'
+
+"We had become momentarily separated from her, and therefore I urged
+him: 'Get her away, quick, no matter how or where. Use force if you
+have to, but get her out of this crowd, this atmosphere, and keep her
+away. I'll see _him_ to-night.'
+
+"The old fellow nodded. 'I--I'll kidnap her and take her to Europe,'
+he mumbled. 'God! It's awful!'
+
+"I didn't go back to the city with the Harmans; but I told Alicia
+good-by at the running-board of the machine. I don't think she heard
+me.
+
+"Running Elk was glad to see me, and I spent that evening with him. He
+asked all about his people; he told me of his progress, and he spoke
+lightly of his victory that day. But sound him as I would, I could
+elicit no mention of Alicia Harman's name. He wasn't much of a talker,
+anyhow, so at last I was forced to bring up the subject myself. At my
+first word the silence of his forefathers fell upon him, and all he
+did was listen. I told him forcibly that any thoughts of her were
+ridiculous and impossible.
+
+"'Why?' said he, after I had finished.
+
+"I told him a thousand reasons why; I recounted them cruelly,
+unfeelingly, but he made no sign. As a matter of fact, I don't think
+he understood them any more than he understood the affair itself. He
+appeared to be blinded, confused by the splendor of what had come to
+him. Alicia was so glorious, so different, so mysterious to him, that
+he had lost all sense of perspective and of proportion. Recognizing
+this, I descended to material things which I knew he could grasp.
+
+"'I paid for your education,' said I, 'and it is almost over with. In
+a few months you'll be turned out to make your own living, and then
+you'll encounter this race prejudice I speak of in a way to effect
+your stomach and your body. You're a poor man, Running Elk, and you've
+got to earn your way. Your blood will bar you from a good many means
+of doing it, and when your color begins to affect your earning
+capacity you'll have all you can do to take care of yourself. Life
+isn't played on a gridiron, and the first thing you've got to do is
+to make a man of yourself. You've got no right to fill your head with
+dreams, with insane fancies of this sort.'
+
+"'Yes, sir!' said he, and that was about all I could get out of him.
+His reticence was very annoying.
+
+"I didn't see him again, for I came West the next day, and the weeks
+stretched into months without word of him or of the others.
+
+"Shortly before he was due to return I was taken sick--the one big
+illness of my life, which came near ending me, which made me into the
+creaking old ruin that I am. They sent me away to another climate,
+where I got worse, then they shifted me about like a bale of goods,
+airing me here and there. For a year and a half I hung over the edge,
+one ailment running into another, but finally I straightened out a bit
+and tottered back into Washington to resume operations.
+
+"For six months I hung around headquarters, busied on department
+matters. I had lost all track of things out here, meanwhile, for the
+agent had been changed shortly after I left, and no one had taken
+the trouble to keep me posted; but eventually I showed up on the
+reservation again, reaching here on the first of July, three days
+before the annual celebration of the people.
+
+"Many changes had occurred in my two years' absence, and there was no
+one to bring me gossip, hence I heard little during the first day or
+two while I was picking up the loose ends of my work. One thing I did
+find out, however--namely, that Running Elk had come straight home
+from college, and was still on the reserve. I determined to look him
+up during the festival.
+
+"But on the morning of the Fourth I got the surprise of my life. The
+stage from the railroad brought two women, two strange women, who came
+straight to my office--Alicia Harman and her French maid.
+
+"Well, I was fairly knocked endwise; but Alicia was as well-poised and
+as self-contained as on that Thanksgiving morning in New York when
+she and old Henry had picked me up in their automobile--a trifle more
+stunning and a bit more determined, perhaps. Oh, she was a splendid
+creature in the first glory of her womanhood, a perfectly groomed and
+an utterly spoiled young goddess. She greeted me graciously, with that
+queenly air of all great ladies.
+
+"'Where is your father?' I asked, as she laid off her dust-coat.
+
+"'He's in New York,' said she. 'I'm traveling alone.'
+
+"'And where have you been all this time?'
+
+"'In Europe, mainly; Rome, Naples, Cairo, India, St. Petersburg,
+London--all about, in fact. Father took me abroad the day after
+Thanksgiving--you remember? And he has kept me there. But I came of
+age two weeks ago.'
+
+"'Two weeks!' I ejaculated.
+
+"'Yes, I took the first ship after my birthday. I've been traveling
+pretty constantly ever since. This is a long way from the world out
+here, isn't it?' She looked around curiously.
+
+"'From your world, yes,' said I, and when she offered nothing further
+I grew embarrassed. I started to speak; then, noting the maid, I
+hesitated; but Alicia shook her head faintly.
+
+"'Lisette doesn't understand a word of English,' said she.
+
+"'Why have you come out here, Alicia?' I inquired. I was far more ill
+at ease than she.
+
+"'Do you need to ask?' She eyed me defiantly. 'I respected father's
+wishes when I was in my minority. I traveled and studied and did all
+the tiresome things he commanded me to do--as long as he had the right
+to command. But when I became my own mistress I--took my full freedom.
+He made his life to suit himself; I intend to make mine to suit
+myself. I'm sorry I can't please him, but we don't seem to see things
+the same way, and I dare say he has accepted the inevitable.'
+
+"'Then you consider this--this move you evidently contemplate as
+inevitable?'
+
+"She lifted her dainty brows. 'Inevitable isn't a good word. I wish a
+certain thing; I have wished it from the first; I have never ceased
+for an instant to wish it; I feel that I must have it; therefore, to
+all intents and purposes, it is inevtable. Anyhow, I'm going to have
+it.'
+
+"'You have--er--been in communication with--'
+
+"'Never! Father forbade it.'
+
+"'Then how did you know he is here?'
+
+"'He wrote me when he left college. He said he was coming home. I've
+heard nothing since. He is here, isn't he?'
+
+"'So I believe. I haven't seen him yet; you know I've been away
+myself.'
+
+"'Will you take me to him?'
+
+"'Have you really weighed this thing?' I remonstrated. 'Do you realize
+what it means?'
+
+"'Please don't.' She smiled wearily. 'So many people have tried to
+argue me out of my desires. I shall not spoil my life, believe me; it
+is too good a thing to ruin. That is precisely why I'm here.'
+
+"'If you insist.' I gave in reluctantly. 'Of course I'll put myself
+at your service. We'll look for him to-morrow.' All sorts of wild
+expedients to thwart a meeting were scurrying through my mind.
+
+"'We'll go to-day,' said she.
+
+"'But--'
+
+"'At once! If you're too busy I'll ask somebody else--'
+
+"'Very well!' said I. 'We'll drive out to the encampment.' And I sent
+for my buckboard.
+
+"I was delayed in spite of myself until nearly sundown, and meanwhile
+Alicia Harman waited in my office, pacing the floor with ill-concealed
+impatience. Before starting I ventured one more remonstrance, for I
+was filled with misgivings, and the more I saw of this girl the more
+fantastic and unnatural this affair seemed. But the unbridled impulses
+of her parents were bearing fruit, and no one could say her nay. She
+afforded the most illuminating study in heredity that I have ever
+witnessed.
+
+"We didn't say much during our fifteen-mile drive, for I was worried
+and Alicia was oddly torn between apprehension and exultation. We had
+left the French maid behind. I don't know that any woman ever went to
+her lover under stranger circumstances or in greater perturbation of
+spirit than did this girl, behind whom lay a generation of selfishness
+and unrestraint.
+
+"It was well along in the evening when we came over the ridge and saw
+the encampment below us. You can imagine the fairy picture it made
+with its myriad of winking fires, with the soft effulgence of a
+thousand glowing tents, and with the wonderful magic of the night over
+it all. As we drew nearer, the unusual sounds of a strange merrymaking
+came to us--the soft thudding of drums, the weird melody of the
+dances, the stir and the confusion of crowded animal life. In the
+daylight it would have been sufficiently picturesque, but under the
+wizard hand of the darkness it became ten times more so.
+
+"When I finally tied my horses and led the girl into the heart of it I
+think she became a bit frightened, for these Indians were the Sioux of
+a bygone day. They were barbaric in dress and in demeanor.
+
+"I guided her through the tangle of tepees, through glaring fire-lit
+circles and through black voids where we stumbled and had to feel our
+way. We were jostled and elbowed by fierce warriors and by sullen
+squaws. At every group I asked for Running Elk, but he was merely one
+of five thousand and nobody knew his whereabouts.
+
+"The people have ever been jealous of their customs, and as a result
+we were frequently greeted by cold looks and sudden silences.
+Recognizing this open resentment, my companion let down a thick
+automobile veil which effectually hid her face. Her dust-coat was long
+and loose and served further to conceal her identity.
+
+"At one time we came upon a sight I would gladly have spared her--the
+spectacle of some wrinkled hags strangling a dog by the light of a
+fire. The girl at my side stifled a cry at the apparition.
+
+"'What are they doing?' she gasped.
+
+"'Preparing the feast,' I told her.
+
+"'Do they--really--'
+
+"'They do,' said I. 'Come!' I tried to force her onward, but she would
+not stir until the sacrifice had been dragged to the flames, where
+other carcasses were singeing among the pots and kettles. From every
+side came the smell of cooking meat, mingled with the odor of burning
+hair and flesh. I could hear Miss Harman panting as we went on.
+
+"We circled half the great hoop before we came upon the trail of our
+man, and were directed to a near-by tepee, upon the glowing walls of
+which many heads were outlined in silhouette, and from which came the
+monotonous voice of a story-teller.
+
+"I don't know what hopes the girl had been nursing; she must have
+looked upon these people not as kindred of Running Elk, but rather as
+his servants, his slaves. Realizing that her quest was nearly ended,
+her strength forsook her and she dropped behind me. The entrance to
+the tepee was congested by those who could not find space inside, but
+they rose silently, upon recognizing me, and made room. I lifted the
+flap and peered within, clearing a view for Miss Harman.
+
+"We beheld a circle of half-naked braves in full war regalia,
+squatting haunch to haunch, listening to a story-teller. In front of
+them was a confusion of blackened pails and steaming vessels, into
+which they dipped with their naked fingers. Their faces were streaked
+with paint, their lips were greasy with traces of the dish, the air
+of the place was reeking from their breaths. My eyes were slower than
+Alicia's, and so I did not distinguish our quarry at first, although a
+slow sigh at my ear and a convulsive clutch at my arm told me that he
+was there.
+
+"And then I, too, saw Running Elk. It was he who was talking, to whom
+the others listened. What a change two years had wrought! His voice
+was harsh and guttural, his face, through the painted daubs and
+streaks, was coarser and duller than when I had seen him. His very
+body was more thin and shrunken.
+
+"He finished his tale while we stared at him; the circle broke into
+commendatory grunts, and he smiled in childlike satisfaction at the
+impression he had made. He leaned forward and, scrutinizing the litter
+of sooty pots, plunged his hand into the nearest one.
+
+"Miss Harman stumbled back into the crowd and her place was taken by a
+squaw.
+
+"'Running Elk,' I called, over the heads of those next the entrance,
+and, seeing my face against the night, he arose and came out, stepping
+over the others.
+
+"'How do you do?' I said. 'You haven't forgotten me, have you?'
+
+"He towered head and shoulders above me, his feather head-dress adding
+to his stature. The beaded patterns of his war-harness stood out dimly
+in the half-light.
+
+"'No, no! I will never forget you, doctor. You--you have been sick.'
+The change in his speech was even more noticeable when he turned
+his tongue to English. He halted over his words and he mouthed them
+hesitatingly.
+
+"'Yes, pretty sick. And you, what are you doing?'
+
+"'I do what the rest do,' said he. 'Nothing! I have some horses and a
+few head of cattle, that is all.'
+
+"'Are you satisfied?' I demanded, sharply. He eyed me darkly for an
+instant, then he answered, slowly:
+
+"'I am an Indian. I am satisfied.'
+
+"'Then education didn't do you any good, after all?' I was offended,
+disappointed; I must have spoken gruffly.
+
+"This time he paused a long while before he replied.
+
+"'I had dreams,' said he, 'many dreams, and they were splendid; but
+you told me that dreams were out of place in a Sioux, so I forgot
+them, along with all the things I had learned. It is better so.'
+
+"Alicia Harman called me in a voice which I did not recognize, so I
+shook hands with Running Elk and turned away. He bowed his head and
+slunk back through the tepee door, back into the heart of his people,
+back into the past, and with him went my experiment. Since then I have
+never meddled with the gods nor given them cause to laugh at me."
+
+The doctor arose and stretched himself, then he entered his tent for
+a match. The melancholy pulse of the drums and the minor-keyed chant
+which issued out of the night sounded like a dirge sung by a dying
+people.
+
+"What became of Running Elk?" I inquired.
+
+The old man answered from within. "That was he I asked about the
+horse-races. He's the man you couldn't understand, who wouldn't talk
+to you. He's nearly an Indian again. Alicia Harman married a duke."
+
+
+
+
+THE MOON, THE MAID, AND THE WINGED SHOES
+
+
+The last place I locked wheels with Mike Butters was in Idaho. I'd
+just sold a silver-lead prospect and was proclaimin' my prosperity
+with soundin' brass and ticklin' symbols. I was tuned up to G and
+singin' quartettes with the bartender--opery buffet, so to speak--when
+in Mike walked. It was a bright morning out-side and I didn't
+reco'nize him at first against the sunlight.
+
+"Where's that cholera-morbus case?" said he.
+
+"Stranger, them ain't sounds of cramps," I told him. "It's me singin'
+'Hell Amongst the Yearlin's.'" Then I seen who he was and I fell among
+him.
+
+When we'd abated ourselves I looked him over.
+
+"What you doin' in all them good clothes?" I inquired.
+
+"I'm a D.D.S."
+
+"Do tell! All I ever took was the first three degrees. Gimme the grip
+and the password and I'll believe you."
+
+"That ain't a Masonic symbol," said he. "I'm a dentist--a bony fido
+dentist, with forceps and a little furnace and a gas-bag and a
+waitin'-rooms". He swelled up and bit a hang-nail off of his cigar.
+
+"Yep! A regular toothwright."
+
+Naturally I was surprised, not to say awed. "Have you got much of a
+practice?" I made bold to ask.
+
+"Um-m--It ain't what it ought to be, still I can't complain. It takes
+time to work into a fashionable clienteel. All I get a whack at now is
+Injuns, but I'm gradually beginnin' to close in on the white teeth."
+
+Now this was certainly news to me, for Mike was a foot-racer, and a
+good one, too, and the last time I'd seen him he didn't know nothing
+about teeth, except that if you ain't careful they'll bite your
+tongue. I figured he was lyin', so I said:
+
+"Where did you get your degree--off of a thermometer?"
+
+"Nothing of the tall. I run it down. I did, for a God's fact. It's
+like this: three months ago I crep' into this burg lookin' for a
+match, but the professions was overcrowded, there bein' fourteen
+lawyers, a half-dozen doctors, a chiropodist, and forty-three
+bartenders here ahead of me, not to speak of a tooth-tinker. That
+there dentist thought he could sprint. He come from some Eastern
+college and his pa had grub-staked him to a kit of tools and sent him
+out here to work his way into the confidences and cavities of the
+Idahobos.
+
+"Well, sir, the minute I seen him I realized he was my custard. He
+wore sofy cushions on his shoulders, and his coat was cut in at the
+back. He rolled up his pants, too, and sometimes he sweetened the view
+in a vi'lent, striped sweater. I watered at the mouth and picked my
+teeth over him--he was that succ'lent.
+
+"He'd been lookin' down on these natives and kiddin' 'em ever since he
+arrived, and once a week, reg'lar, he tried to frame a race so's he
+could wear his runnin'-pants and be a hero. I had no trouble fixin'
+things. He was a good little runner, and he done his best; but when I
+breasted the tape I won a quick-claim deed to his loose change, to a
+brand-new office over a drug-store, and to enough nickel-plated pliers
+for a wire-tapper. I staked him to a sleeper ticket, then I moved into
+his quarters. The tools didn't have no directions on 'em, but I've
+figgered out how to use most of 'em."
+
+"I gather that this here practice that you're buildin' up ain't
+exactly remunerative," I said to Mike.
+
+"Not yet it ain't, but I'm widenin' out. There ain't a day passes that
+I don't learn something. I was out drummin' up a little trade
+when your groans convinced me that somebody in here had a jumpin'
+toothache. If you ain't busy, mebbe you can help me get a patient."
+
+This particular saloon had about wore out its welcome with me, so I
+was game for any enterprise, and I allowed a little patient-huntin'
+would prob'ly do me good. I drawed my six gun and looked her over.
+
+"It's a new sport, but I bet I'll take to it," said I. "What d'you do,
+crease 'em or cripple 'em?"
+
+"Pshaw! Put up that hearse ticket," Mike told me. "Us doctors don't
+take human life, we save it."
+
+"I thought you said you was practisin' on Injuns."
+
+"Injuns is human. For a fact! I've learned a heap in this business.
+Not that I wouldn't bust one if I needed him, but it ain't necessary.
+Come, I'll show you."
+
+This here town had more heathens than whites in it, and before we'd
+gone a block I seen a buck Injun and his squaw idlin' along, lookin'
+into the store winders. The buck was a hungry, long-legged feller, and
+when we neared him Mike said to me:
+
+"Hist! There's one. I'll slip up and get him from behind. You grab him
+if he runs."
+
+This method of buildin' up a dental practice struck me as some
+strange, but Butters was a queer guy and this was sort of a rough
+town. When he got abreast of Mr. Lo, Mike reached out and garnered him
+by the neck. The Injun pitched some, but Mike eared him down finally,
+and when I come up I seen that one side of the lad's face was swelled
+up something fearful.
+
+"Well, well," said I. "You've sure got the dentist's eye. You must
+have spied that swellin' a block away."
+
+Mike nodded, then he said: "Poor feller! I'll bet it aches horrible.
+My office is right handy; let's get him in before the marshal sees
+us."
+
+We drug the savage up-stairs and into Mike's dental stable, then we
+bedded him down in a chair. He protested considerable, but we got him
+there in a tollable state of preservation, barring the fact that he
+was skinned up on the corners and we had pulled a hinge off from the
+office door.
+
+"It's a shame for a person to suffer thataway," Mike told me; "but
+these ignorant aborigines ain't educated up to the mercies of science.
+Just put your knee in his stummick, will you? What could be finer than
+to alleviate pain? The very thought in itself is elevatin'. I'm in
+this humanity business for life--Grab his feet quick or he'll kick out
+the winder."
+
+"Whoa!" I told the Injun. "Plenty fix-um!" I poked the swellin' on his
+face and he let out a yelp.
+
+"It's lucky we got him before multiplication set in," Mike assured me.
+"I lay for 'em that-away at the foot of the stairs every day; but this
+is the best patient I've had. I've a notion to charge this one."
+
+"Don't you charge all of 'em?" I wanted to know.
+
+"Nope. I got a tin watch off of one patient when he was under gas, but
+the most of 'em ain't worth goin' through. You got to do a certain
+amount of charity work."
+
+"Don't look like much of a business to me," I said.
+
+"There's something about it I like," Mike told me. "It sort of grows
+on a feller. Now that you're here to help catch 'em, I calc'late to
+acquire a lot of skill with these instruments. I've been playin' a
+lone hand and I've had to take little ones that I could handle."
+
+When Mike produced a pair of nickel-plated nail-pullers, Mr. Injun
+snorted like a sea-lion, and it took both of us to hold him down; but
+finally I tied his hair around the head-rest and we had him. His mane
+was long and I put a hard knot in it, then I set on his moccasins
+while Doctor Butters pried into his innermost secrets.
+
+"There she is--that big one." Mike pointed out a tooth that looked
+like the corner monument to a quartz claim.
+
+"You're on the wrong side," I told him.
+
+"Mebbe I am. Here's one that looks like it would come loose easier."
+Mike got a half-Nelson over in the east-half-east quarter-section of
+the buck's mouth and throwed his weight on the pliers.
+
+The Injun had pretty well wore himself out by this time, and when
+he felt those ice-tongs he just stiffened out--an Injun's dead game
+that-away; he won't make a holler when you hurt him. His squaw was
+hangin' around with her eyes poppin' out, but we didn't pay no
+attention to her.
+
+Somehow Mike's pinchers kept jumpin' the track and at every slip a new
+wrinkle showed in the patient's face--patient is the right word, all
+right--and we didn't make no more show at loosenin' that tusk than as
+if we'd tried to pull up Mount Bill Williams with a silk thread. At
+last two big tears come into the buck's eyes and rolled down his
+cheeks. First time I ever seen one cry.
+
+Now that weakness was plumb fatal to him, for right there and then he
+cracked his plate with his missus. Yes, sir, he tore his shirt-waist
+proper. The squaw straightened up and give him a look--oh, what a
+look!
+
+"Waugh!" she sniffed. "Injun heap big squaw!" And with that she
+swished out of the office and left him flat. Yes, sir, she just blew
+him on the spot.
+
+I s'pose Mike would have got that tooth somehow--he's a perseverin'
+party--only that I happened to notice something queer and called him
+off.
+
+"Here, wait a minute," said I, and I loosened him from the man's
+chest. Mike was so engorsed in the pursuit of his profession that he
+was astraddle of his patient's wishbone, gougin' away like a quartz
+miner. "Take your elbow out of his mouth and lemme talk to him a
+minute." When the savage had got his features together, I said to him,
+"How you catch um bump, hey?" And I pointed to his jaw.
+
+"Bzz-zz-zz!" said he.
+
+I turned to Doctor Butters. "Hornet!" I declared.
+
+When Mike had sized up the bee-sting he admitted that my diagnosis
+was prob'ly correct. "That's the trouble with these patients," he
+complained. "They don't take you into their confidence. Just the same,
+I'm goin' to attend to his teeth, for there's no tellin' when I'll
+catch another one."
+
+"What's wrong with his teeth?" I questioned. "They look good to me,
+except they're wore down from eatin' camus. If he was a horse I'd
+judge him to be about a ten-year-old."
+
+"You never can tell by lookin' at teeth what's inside of 'em. Anyhow,
+a nice fillin' would set 'em off. I ain't tried no fillin's yet. Gimme
+that Burley drill."
+
+I wheeled out a kind of sewing-machine; then I pedaled it while Mike
+dug into that Injun's hangin' wall like he had a round of holes to
+shoot before quittin'-time. This here was more in my line, bein' a
+hard-rock miner myself, and we certainly loaded a fine prospect of
+gold into that native's bi-cuspidor. We took his front teeth because
+they was the easiest to get at.
+
+It was just like I said, this Injun's white keys was wore off short
+and looked like they needed something, so we laid ourselves out to
+supply the want. We didn't exactly fill them teeth; we merely riveted
+on a sort of a plowshare--a gold sod-cutter about the size of your
+finger-nail. How Mike got it to stick I don't know, but he must have
+picked up quite a number of dentist's tricks before I came. Anyhow,
+there she hung like a brass name-plate, and she didn't wabble hardly
+at all. You'd of been surprised to see what a difference it made in
+that redskin's looks.
+
+We let our patient up finally and put a lookin'-glass in his hand. At
+first he didn't know just what to make of that fillin'; but when he
+seen it was real gold a grin broke over his face, his chest swelled
+up, and he walked out of the office and across the street to a novelty
+store. In a minute out he came with a little round lookin'-glass and a
+piece of buckskin, and the last we seen of him he was hikin' down the
+street, grinnin' into that mirror as happy as a child and polishin'
+that tusk like it had started to rust.
+
+"Which I sure entitle a gratifyin' operation," said Mike.
+
+"I'm in no ways proud of the job," I told him. "I feel like I'd salted
+a mine."
+
+Well, me and Mike lived in them dental parlors for a couple of weeks,
+decoyin' occasional natives into it, pullin', spilin', fillin', and
+filin' more teeth than a few, but bimeby the sport got tame.
+
+One day Mike was fakin' variations on his guitar, and I was washin'
+dishes, when I said: "This line is about as excitin' as a game of
+jack-straws. D'you know it's foot-racin' time with the Injuns?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sure. They're gettin' together at old Port Lewis to run races this
+week. One tribe or the other goes broke and walks home every year. If
+we could meet up with the winnin' crowd, down on the La Plata--"
+
+I didn't have to say no more, for I had a hackamore on Mike's
+attention right there, and he quit climbin' the "G" string and put up
+his box.
+
+The next day we traded out of the tooth business and rode south down
+the old Navajo trail. We picked a good campin' spot--a little "flat"
+in a bend of the river where the grazin' was good--and we turned the
+ponies out.
+
+We didn't have to wait long. A few evenings later, as we et supper we
+heard a big noise around the bend and knew our visitors was comin'.
+They must of had three hundred head of horses, besides a big outfit of
+blankets, buckskin, baskets, and all the plunder that an Injun outfit
+travels with. At sight of us in their campin'-place they halted, and
+the squaws and the children rode up to get a look at us.
+
+I stepped out in front of our tent and throwed my hand to my forehead,
+shading my eyes--that's the Injun sign of friendship. An old chief and
+a couple of warriors rode forrad, Winchester to pommel, but, seein' we
+was alone, they sheathed their guns, and we invited 'em to eat.
+
+It didn't take much urgin'. While we fed hot biscuits to the head men
+the squaws pitched camp.
+
+They was plumb elated at their winnin' up at Fort Lewis, and the
+gamblin' fever was on 'em strong, so right after supper they invited
+us to join 'em in a game of Mexican monte. I let Mike do the
+card-playin' for our side, because he's got a pass which is the
+despair of many a "tin-horn." He can take a clean Methodist-Episcopal
+deck, deal three hands, and have every face card so it'll answer to
+its Christian name. No, he didn't need no lookout, so I got myself
+into a game of "bounce the stick," which same, as you prob'ly know, is
+purely a redskin recreation. You take a handful of twigs in your hand,
+then throw 'em on to a flat rock endways, bettin' whether an odd or an
+even number will fall outside of a ring drawed in the dirt. After a
+couple of hours Mike strolled up and tipped me the wink that he'd
+dusted his victims.
+
+"Say," he began, "there's the niftiest chicken down here that I ever
+see."
+
+"Don't start any didos with the domestic relations of this tribe," I
+told him, "or they'll spread us out, and spread us thin. Remember,
+you're here on business bent, and if you bend back and forrads, from
+business to pleasure, and versy visa, you'll bust. These people has
+scrooplous ideas regardin' their wives and I respect 'em."
+
+"She ain't married," Mike told me. "She's the chief's daughter, and
+she looks better to me than a silver mine."
+
+Durin' that evening we give the impression that we was well heeled, so
+the tribe wasn't in no hurry to break camp on the following morning.
+
+Along about noon I missed Mike, and I took a stroll to look for him. I
+found him--and the chief's daughter--alongside of a shady trout pool.
+She was weavin' a horsehair bracelet onto his wrist, and I seen the
+flash of his ring on her finger. Mike could travel some.
+
+He was a bit flustered, it seemed to me, and he tried to laugh the
+matter off, but the girl didn't. There was something about the look
+of her that I didn't like. I've seen a whole lot of trouble come from
+less than a horsehair bracelet. This here quail was mebbe seventeen;
+she was slim and shy, and she had big black eyes and a skin like
+velvet. I spoke to Mike in words of one syllable, and I drug him away
+with me to our tent.
+
+That afternoon some half-grown boys got to runnin' foot-races and Mike
+entered. He let 'em beat him, then he offered to bet a pony that they
+couldn't do it again. The kids was game, and they took him quick. Mike
+faked the race, of course, and lost his horse, that bein' part of our
+progam.
+
+When it was all over I seen the chief's daughter had been watchin' us,
+but she didn't say nuthin'. The next mornin', however, when we got up
+we found a bully pinto pony tied to one of our tent stakes.
+
+"Look who's here," said I. "Young Minnie Ha-ha has made good your
+losin's."
+
+"That pony is worth forty dollars," said Mike.
+
+"Sure. And you're as good as a squaw-man this minute. You're
+betrothed."
+
+"Am I?" The idy didn't seem to faze Mike. "If that's the case," said
+he, "I reckon I'll play the string out. I sort of like it as far as
+I've gone."
+
+"I wish she'd gave us that cream-colored mare or hers," I said. "It's
+worth two of this one."
+
+"I'll get it to-day," Mike declared. And sure enough, he lost another
+foot-race, and the next morning the cream-colored mare was picketed in
+front of our tent.
+
+Well, this didn't look good to me, and I told Mike so. I never was
+much of a hand to take money from women, so I served a warnin' on
+him that if we didn't get down to business pretty quick and make our
+clean-up I proposed to leave him flat on his back.
+
+That day the young men of the tribe did a little foot-runnin', and
+Mike begged 'em to let him in. It was comical to see how pleased
+they was. They felt so sure of him that they began pro-ratin' our
+belongin's among one another. They laid out a half-mile course, and
+everybody in camp went out to the finish-line to see the contest and
+to bet on it. The old chief acted as judge, bookmaker, clerk of the
+course, referee, and stakeholder. I s'pose by the time the race was
+ready to start there must of been fifty ponies up, besides a lot of
+money, but the old bird kept every wager in his head. He rolled up a
+couple of blankets and placed 'em on opposite sides of the track, and
+showed us by motions that the first man between 'em would be declared
+the winner. All the money that had been bet he put in little piles on
+a blanket; then he give the word to get ready.
+
+I had no trouble layin' our money at one to five, and our ponies at
+the same odds; then, when everything was geared up, I called Mike from
+his tent. Say, when he opened the fly and stepped out there was a
+commotion, for all he had on was his runnin'-trunks and his spiked
+shoes. The Injuns was in breech-cloths and moccasins, and, of course,
+they created no comment; but the sight of a half-nekked white man was
+something new to these people, and the first flash they got at Mike's
+fancy togs told 'em they'd once more fell a victim to the white man's
+wiles.
+
+They was wise in a minute, and some of the young hot-bloods was for
+smokin' us up, but the chief was a sport--I got to give the old bird
+credit. He rared back on his hind legs and made a stormy palaver;
+as near as I could judge he told his ghost-dancers they'd been
+cold-decked, but he expected 'em to take their medicine and grin, and,
+anyhow, it was a lesson to 'em. Next time they'd know better'n to
+monkey with strangers. Whatever it was he said, he made his point, and
+after a right smart lot of powwowin' the entertainment proceeded. But
+Mike and me was as popular with them people as a couple of polecats at
+a picnic.
+
+Mike certainly made a picture when he lined up at the start; he stood
+out like a marble statue in a slate quarry. I caught a glimpse of the
+chief's daughter, and her eyes was bigger than ever, and she had her
+hands clinched at her side. He must have looked like a god to her;
+but, for that matter, he was a sight to turn any untamed female heart,
+whether the owner et Belgian hare off of silver service or boiled
+jack-rabbit out of a coal-oil can. Women are funny thataway.
+
+It's a pot-hunter's maxim never to win by a big margin, but to nose
+out his man at the finish. This Mike did, winnin' by a yard; then he
+acted as if he was all in--faked a faint, and I doused him with a
+sombrero of water from the creek. It was a spectacular race, at that,
+for at the finish the runners was bunched till a blanket would of
+covered 'em. When they tore into the finish I seen the chief's girl do
+a trick. Mike was runnin' on the outside, and when nobody was watchin'
+her the little squaw kicked one of them blanket bundles about two feet
+down the course, givin' Mike that much the "edge." She done it clever
+and it would have throwed a close race.
+
+Them savages swallered their physic and grinned, like the chief had
+told 'em, and they took it standin' up. They turned over the flower of
+their pony herd to us, not to mention about six quarts of silver money
+and enough blankets to fill our tent. The old chief patted Mike on the
+back, then put both hands to his temples with his fingers spread out,
+as much as to say, "He runs like a deer."
+
+Bimeby a buck stepped up and begun makin' signs. He pointed to the sun
+four times, and we gathered that he wanted us to wait four days until
+he could go and get another man.
+
+Mike tipped me the wink, sayin': "They're goin' after the champeen of
+the tribe. That phony faint of mine done it. Will we wait? Why,
+say, we'd wait four years, wouldn't we? Sweet pickin's, I call it.
+Champeen, huh?"
+
+"For me, I'd wait here till I was old folks," I said. "I don't aim to
+leave these simple savages nothin'. Nothin' at all, but a lot of idle
+regrets."
+
+Well, sir, there was a heap of excitement in that camp for the next
+three days. All them Injuns done, was to come and look at Mike and
+feel of his legs and argue with one another. The first night after the
+race Mike tuned up his guitar, and later on I heard snatches of the
+"Spanish Fandango" stealin' up from the river bank. I knew what was
+on; I knew without lookin' that the old chief's girl was right there
+beside him, huggin' her knees and listenin' with both ears. I didn't
+like to think about it, for she was a nice little yearlin', and it
+looked to me like Mike was up to his usual devilment. Seemed like a
+low-down trick to play on an injunoo like her, and the more I studied
+it the warmer I got. It was a wonderful night; the moonlight drenched
+the valley, and there was the smell of camp-fires and horses over
+everything--just the sort of a night for a guitar, just the sort of a
+night to make your blood run hot and to draw you out into the glitter
+and make you race with your shadow.
+
+When Mike moseyed in, along about ten o'clock, he was plumb loco;
+the moon-madness was on him strong. His eyes was as bright as silver
+coins, and his voice had a queer ring to it.
+
+"What a night!" said he. "And what a life this is Lord! I'm tired of
+pot-huntin'. I've trimmed suckers till I'm weary; I've toted a gold
+brick in my pocket till my clothes bag. I'm sick of it. I'm goin' to
+beat this Injun champeen, take my half of our winnin's, sell off the
+runty ones, and settle down."
+
+"Where do you aim to settle?" I inquired.
+
+"Oh, anywhere hereabouts. These are good people, and I like 'em."
+
+"You mean you're goin' to turn out with the Injuns?" I inquired, with
+my mouth open. Mike had led so sudden that he had me over the ropes.
+
+"I'm goin' to do that very little thing," he declared. "I dunno how to
+talk much Navajo, but I'm learnin' fast, and she got my meanin'. We
+understand each other, and we'll do better as time goes on. She calls
+me 'Emmike'! Sweet, ain't it?" He heaved a sigh, then he gargled a
+laugh that sounded like boilin' mush. "It ain't often a feller like me
+gets a swell little dame that worships him. Horses, guns, camp-fires!
+Can you beat it?"
+
+"If that squaw had a soft palate or a nose like a eeclair, you
+wouldn't be so keen for this simple life," I told him. "She has
+stirred up your wickedness, Mike, and you've gone nutty. You're
+moon-crazy, that's all. You cut it out."
+
+I argued half the night; but the more I talked the more I seen that
+Mike was stuck to be a renegade. It's a fact. If he hadn't of been
+a nice kid I'd of cut his hobbles and let him go; but--pshaw! Mike
+Butters could run too fast to be wasted among savages, and, besides,
+it's a terrible thing for a white man to marry an Injun. The red never
+dies out in the woman, but the white in the man always changes into a
+dirty, muddy red. I laid awake a long while tryin' to figger out a way
+to block his game, but the only thing I could think of was to tie him
+up and wear out a cinch on him. Just as I was dozin' off I had an idy.
+I didn't like it much at first; I had to swaller hard to down it, but
+the more I studied it the better it looked, so for fear I'd weaken I
+rolled over and went to sleep.
+
+Mike was in earnest, and so was the girl; that much I found out
+the next day. And she must of learned him enough Navajo to propose
+marriage with, and he must of learned her enough English to say "yes,"
+for she took possession of our camp and begun to order me around.
+First thing she lugged our Navajo blankets to the creek, washed 'em,
+then spread 'em over some bushes and beat 'em with a stick until they
+were as clean and soft as thistle-down. I'll admit she made a pleasant
+picture against the bright colors of them blankets, and I couldn't
+altogether blame Mike for losin' his head. He'd lost it, all right.
+Every time she looked at him out of them big black eyes he got as
+wabbly as clabber. It was plumb disgustin'.
+
+That evenin' he give her a guitar lesson. Now Mike himself was a sad
+musician, and the sound of him fandangoin' uncertainly up and down the
+fretful spine of that instrument was a tribulation I'd put up with on
+account of friendship, pure and simple, but when that discord-lovin'
+lady cliff-dweller set all evenin' in our tent and scraped
+snake-dances out of them catguts with a fish-bone, I pulled my freight
+and laid out in the moonlight with the dogs.
+
+Mike's infatuation served one purpose, though; he spent so much time
+with the squab that it give me an opportunity to work out my scheme.
+That guitar lesson showed me that vig'rous measures was necessary, so
+I dug up a file, a shoemaker's needle and some waxed thread, all of
+which we had in our kit.
+
+On the fourth morning there was a stir in the camp, and we knew that
+the courier had got back with his runner. Pretty soon the whole
+village stormed up to our tent in a body.
+
+"Let's go out and look him over," I said.
+
+"What's the use of lookin' at him?" Mike inquired. "All Injuns look
+alike--except one."
+
+I pulled back the tent fly and stepped out; then I called to Mike, for
+the first thing I seen was that gold fillin' of ours. Yes, sir, right
+there, starin' me in the eye, was the sole and shinin' monument to
+me and Mike's brief whirl at the science of dentistry. The face
+surroundin' it was stretched wide and welcome, and the minute this
+here new-comer reco'nized me, he drawed back his upper lip and pointed
+proudly to his ornament, then he dug up his lookin'-glass and his
+polishin'-rag and begun to dust it off. It was plain to be seen that
+he thought more of it than his right eye. And it impressed the other
+Injuns, too; they crowded up and studied it. They took turns feelin'
+of it, especially the squaws, and I bet if we'd had our dentist outfit
+with us we could of got rich right there. The chief's daughter, in
+particular, was took with the beauties of that gew-gaw, and she made
+signs to us that she wanted one just like it.
+
+"I never noticed he was so rangy," Mike told me, when he'd sized up
+the new arrival. "Say, this guy looks good. He's split plumb to the
+larynx and I bet he can run, for all of that wind-shield."
+
+I noticed that Mike was pretty grave when he come back in the tent,
+and more than once that day I caught him lookin' at the champeen, sort
+of studyin' him out. But for that matter this new party was gettin'
+his full share of attention; everywhere he went there was a trail of
+kids at his heels, and every time he opened his mouth he made a hit
+with the grown folks. The women just couldn't keep their eyes offen
+him, and I seen that Mike was gettin' pretty sore.
+
+In the evenin' he made a confession that tipped off the way his mind
+was workin'. "This is the first time I ever felt nervous before a
+race," said he. "Mebbe it's because it's goin' to be my last race;
+mebbe it's because that Injun knows me and ain't scared of me. Anyhow,
+I'm scared of _him_. That open-faced, Elgin-movement buck has got me
+tickin' fast."
+
+"That ain't what's got your goat," I told him.
+
+"Your cooin' dove is dazzled by that show of wealth, and you know it."
+
+"Hell! She's just curious, that's all. She's just a kid. I--I wish I'd
+of known who he was when I treated him. I'd of drove a horse-shoe nail
+in his knee."
+
+But all the same Mike looked worried.
+
+It rained hard that night, and the next morning the grass was pretty
+wet. Mike tried it, first thing, and come back grinnin' till the top
+of his head was an island.
+
+"That sod is so slippery old Flyin' Cloud can't get a good stride in
+his moccasins. Me, I can straddle out and take holt with my spikes.
+Them spikes is goin' to put us on easy street. You see! I don't care
+how good he is, they're goin' to give me four hundred head of broncs
+and a cute little pigeon to look out for 'em. Me, I'm goin' to lay
+back and learn to play the guitar. I'm goin' to learn it by note."
+
+"You sure got the makin's of a squaw-man," I told him. "Seems like
+I've over-read your hand. I used to think you had somethin' in you
+besides a appetite, but I was wrong. You're plumb cultus, Mike."
+
+"Don't get sore," he grinned. "I got my chance to beat the game and
+I'm goin' to take it. I can't run foot-races, and win 'em, all my
+life. Some day I'll step in my beard and sprain my ankle. Ambition's
+a funny thing. I got the ambition to quit work. Besides, she--you
+know--she's got a dimple you could lay your finger in. You'd ought to
+hear her say 'Emmike'; it's certainly cute."
+
+We bet everything we had--everything except that pinto pony and the
+cream-colored mare. I held them two out, for I figgered we was goin'
+to need 'em and need 'em bad, if my scheme worked out.
+
+The course--it was a quarter-mile, straight-away--was laid out along
+the bottom-land where the grass was thick and short. Me and the chief
+and his girl set on a blanket among the little piles of silver, and
+the rest of the merry villagers lined up close to the finish-line. We
+white men had been the prime attraction up till now, but it didn't
+take me long to see that we wasn't any more. Them people was all
+wrapped up in the lad with the gold name-plate, and they was rootin'
+for him frantic. Last thing he done was to give his eighteen-carat
+squaw-catcher the once-over with his buckskin buffer, then he shined
+it at the chief's girl and trotted down to the startin'-line. I
+noticed that she glued her big-and-liquids on him and kept 'em there.
+
+It was beautiful to watch those two men jockey for a start; the Injun
+was lean and hungry and mighty smart--but Mike was smarter still. Of
+course he got the jump.
+
+It was a pretty start, and Mike held his lead for fifty yards or more.
+I'll admit I was worked up. I've had my heart in my mouth so often
+over his races that it's wore smooth from swallerin', but this time it
+just wouldn't go down. Our dental patient was runnin' an awful race,
+but it looked like Mike had him; then, just as the boy settled down
+and reached out into that long, strong stride of his'n, something
+happened. He slipped. He would have fell, except that he caught
+himself. The next second he slipped again, and Mr. "Man in Love with a
+Gold Fillin'" passed him.
+
+With that them Injuns begun to speak. Some of their yells brought
+hunks of throat with 'em, and that whole region begun to echo as far
+south as the Rio Bravo.
+
+My scheme had worked, all right. You see, when Mike was doin' his
+heavy courtin' I'd planted my ace in the hole; I'd took off the outer
+soles of his runnin'-shoes and filed the spikes almost in two, close
+up to the plate. When I sewed the leather back on, it never showed,
+but the minute he struck his gait they broke with him and he begin to
+miss his pull. He might have won at that, for he's got the heart of a
+lion, but I s'pose the surprise did as much as anything else to
+beat him. It made my heart bleed to see the fight he put up, but he
+finished six feet to the bad and fell across the mark on his face,
+sobbin' like a child. It's the game ones that cry when they're licked;
+analyze a smilin' loser and you'll find the yellow streak. I lifted
+him to his feet, but he was shakin' like a bush in the wind.
+
+"Them shoes!" he wailed. "Them damned shoes!" Then he busted out again
+and blubbered like a kid.
+
+Right then I done some actin'; but, pshaw! anybody can act when he has
+to. If I'd of overplayed my hand a nickel's worth he'd of clumb up me
+like a rat up a rafter and there would of been human reminders all
+over that neighborhood. Not but what I would have got him eventually,
+bein' as I had my side-arms, but I liked Mike and I wouldn't kill
+nobody if I was sober.
+
+It happened that he fell right at the feet of the chief's girl, and
+when I lifted him up he seen her. But, say, it must have been a shock
+to him. Her eyes was half shut, her head was throwed back, and she was
+hissin' like a rattlesnake. Mike stiffened and sort of pawed at her,
+but she drawed away just like that other squaw in our dentist office
+had drawed away from her liege lord and master.
+
+"Waugh! White man heap squaw!" said she, and with that she flirted her
+braids and turned to the winner of the race. She went up to him and
+lifted his lip with her thumb like she just had to have another look
+at his gold tooth, then she smiled up into his face and they walked
+away together without a glance in our direction.
+
+Mike follered a step or two, then he stopped and stared around at the
+crowd. It was a big minute for him, and for me, too, and I'll prob'ly
+never forget the picture of that pantin' boy at bay among them
+grinnin' barbarians. The curs was yappin' at his heels, the squaws
+was gigglin' and makin' faces, the bucks was showin' their teeth and
+pointin' at his tears.
+
+Mike never said a word. He just stooped down and peeled off his
+runnin'-shoes, then he throwed 'em as far as he could, right out into
+the river. "Who the hell would marry a dame like that?" he sobbed.
+"She's stuck on his jewelry."
+
+"Come on, lad," said I; and I led him to our tent. Then, while he put
+on his clothes, I saddled the pinto pony and the cream-colored mare,
+for it was six days to the railroad.
+
+
+
+
+FLESH
+
+I
+
+
+Should you chance, in crossing a certain mountain pass in southern
+Catalonia, to find yourself poised above a little valley against the
+opposite side of which lies a monastery, look to the heights above
+it. Should you piece out from among the rocks the jagged ruins of a
+castle, ask its name. Your guide will perhaps inform you that those
+blackened stones are called "The Teeth of the Moor," and if he knows
+the story he will doubtless tell it to you, crossing himself many
+times during the recital. In all probability, however, he will merely
+shrug his shoulders and say it is a place of bad repute, nothing more.
+
+Even the monks of the monastery, who are considered well versed in
+local history, have forgotten the reason for the name, although they
+recall the legend that once upon a time the castle harbored a haughty
+Moslem lord. Few of them ever heard the story of Joseph the Anchorite,
+and how he sought flesh within its portals; those who have will not
+repeat it. Time was, however, when the tale was fresh, and it runs
+this wise:
+
+Away back in the reign of Abderamus the Just, First Caliph of the
+West, Hafiz, a certain warlike Moor, amazed at the fertility of
+this region, established on the edge of the plateau a stronghold of
+surprising security. His house he perched upon the crest of the cliff
+overlooking the valley below. It was backed by verdant, sun-kissed
+slopes which quickly yielded tribute in such quantity as to render
+him rich and powerful. Hafiz lived and fought and died beneath the
+Crescent banner, leaving in his place a son, who likewise waged war to
+the northward on behalf of the Prophet and all True Believers, at the
+same time farming his rich Catalonian acres.
+
+Generations came and went, and, although the descendants of Hafiz
+waxed strong, so also did the power of the hated Christians. Living
+as they did upon the very fringe of the Mussulman empire, the
+Moors beheld with consternation the slow encroachment of the
+Unbelievers--more noticeable here than farther to the southward.
+At intervals these enemies were driven back, but invariably they
+reappeared, until at length, upon the plain beneath the castle, monks
+came and built a monastery which they called San Sebastian. Beneath
+the very eyes of Abul Malek, fourth descendant of Hafiz, they raised
+their impious walls; although he chafed to wreak a bloody vengeance
+for this outrage, his hands were tied by force of circumstance.
+Wearied with interminable wars, the Moorish nation had sought respite;
+peace dozed upon the land. Men rested and took from the earth new
+strength with which to resume the never-ending struggle between the
+Crescent and the Cross, wherefore Abul Malek's rage availed him
+nothing. From his embrasured windows he beheld the cassocked enemies
+of his creed passing to and fro about their business; he heard his
+sacred hour of prayer desecrated by their Christian bells, and could
+do no more than revile them for dogs, the while he awaited the will of
+Allah. It was scant comfort for a man of his violent temper.
+
+But the truce threatened never to be broken. Years passed and still
+peace continued to reign. Meanwhile the Moor fed upon his wrongs and,
+from incessant brooding over them, became possessed of a fury more
+fanatical, more poisonous even than had been engendered by his many
+battles.
+
+Finally, when the wrong had bit too deep for him to endure, he
+summoned all his followers, and selecting from their number one
+hundred of the finest horsemen, he bade them make ready for a journey
+to Cordova; then in their presence he kissed the blue blade of his
+scimitar and vowed that the shackles which had hampered him and them
+would be struck off.
+
+For many days there ensued the bustle and the confusion of a great
+preparation in the house of the Moor; men came and went, women sewed
+and cleaned and burnished; horses were groomed, their manes were
+combed and their hoofs were polished; and then one morning, ere the
+golden sun was an hour high, down the winding trail past the monastery
+of San Sebastian, came a brilliant cavalcade. Abul Malek led, seated
+upon an Arabian steed whiter than the clouds which lay piled above the
+westward mountains. His two sons, Hassam and Elzemah, followed astride
+horses as black as night--horses the distinguished pedigrees of which
+were cited in the books of Ibn Zaid. Back of them came one hundred
+swarthy warriors on other coal-black mounts, whose flashing sides
+flung back the morning rays. Their flowing linen robes were like the
+snow, and from their turbans gleamed gems of value. Each horseman bore
+at his girdle a purse, a kerchief, and a poinard; and in their purses
+lay two thousand dinars of gold. Slaves brought up the rear of
+the procession, riding asses laden with bales, and they led fifty
+blood-red bays caparisoned as for a tournament.
+
+With scowling glances at the monastery the band rode on across the
+valley, climbed to the pass, and disappeared. After many days they
+arrived at Cordova, then when they had rested and cleansed themselves,
+Abul Malek craved audience of the Caliph, Aboul-Abbas El Hakkam. Being
+of distinguished reputation, his wish was quickly granted; and on the
+following day in the presence of the Hadjeb, the viziers, the white
+and black eunuchs, the archers, and the cuirassiers of the guard, he
+made a gift to his sovereign of those hundred northern horsemen and
+their mounts, those fifty blooded bays and their housings, those bales
+of aloe-wood and camphor, those silken pieces and those two thousand
+dinars of yellow Catalonian gold. This done, he humbly craved a
+favor in return, and when bade to speak, he began by telling of the
+indignities rendered him by the monks of San Sebastian.
+
+"Five generations my people have dwelt upon our lands, serving the
+true God and His Prophet," he declared, with quivering indignation;
+"but now those idolaters have come. They gibe and they mock at me
+beneath my very window. My prayers are broken by their yammerings;
+they defile my casement, and the stench of their presence assails my
+nostrils."
+
+"What do you ask of me?" inquired the Caliph.
+
+"I ask for leave to cleanse my doorstep."
+
+The illustrious Moslem shook his head, whereat Abul Malek cried:
+
+"Does not the Koran direct us to destroy the unbelieving and the
+impious? Must I then suffer these infidels to befoul my garden?"
+
+"God is merciful; it is His will that for a time the Unbelievers shall
+appear to flourish," said the Caliph. "We are bound by solemn compact
+with the kings of Leon and Castile to observe an armistice. That
+armistice we shall observe, for our land is weary of wars, our men are
+tired, and their scars must heal. It is not for you or for me to say:
+'This is good, or this is evil.' Allah's will be done!"
+
+Abul Malek and his sons returned alone to their mountains, but when
+they reined in at the door of their castle the father spat venomously
+at the belfried roof of the monastery beneath and vowed that he would
+yet work his will upon it.
+
+Now that the Law forbade him to make way with his enemies by force, he
+canvassed his brain for other means of effecting their downfall; but
+every day the monks went on with their peaceful tasks, unmindful of
+his hatred, and their impious religion spread about the countryside.
+Abul Malek's venom passed them by; they gazed upon him with gentle
+eyes in which there was no spleen, although in him they recognized a
+bitter foe.
+
+As time wore on his hatred of their religion became centered upon the
+monks themselves, and he undertook by crafty means to annoy them. Men
+said these Christian priests were good; that their lives were spent in
+prayer, in meditation, and in works of charity among the poor; tales
+came to the Moor of their spiritual existence, of their fleshly
+renunciation; but at these he scoffed. He refused to credit them.
+
+"Pah!" he would cry, tugging at his midnight beard; "how can these men
+be aught but liars, when they live and preach a falsehood? Their creed
+is impious, and they are hypocrites. They are not superior beings,
+they are flesh like you or me. They have our passions and our faults,
+but a thousand times multiplied, for they walk in darkness and dwell
+in hypocrisy. Beneath their cassocks is black infamy; their hearts are
+full of evil--aye, of lust and of every unclean thing. Being false to
+the true God, they are false to themselves and to the religion they
+profess; and I will prove it." Thus ran his reasoning.
+
+In order to make good his boast Abul Malek began to study the
+monks carefully, one after another. He tried temptation. A certain
+gross-bellied fellow he plied with wine. He flattered and fawned upon
+the simple friar; he led him into his cellars, striving to poison
+the good man's body as well as his mind; but the visitor partook in
+moderation, and preached the gospel of Christ so earnestly that the
+Saracen fled from his presence, bathing himself in clean water to be
+rid of the pollution.
+
+Next he laid a trap for the Abbot himself. He selected the fairest of
+his slaves, a well-rounded woman of great physical charm, and bribed
+her with a girdle of sequins. She sought out the Abbot and professed
+a hunger for his creed. Bound thus by secrecy to the pious man, she
+lured him by every means at her command. But the Abbot had room for no
+passion save the love of Christ, and her wiles were powerless against
+this armor.
+
+Abul Malek was patient; he renewed his vow to hold the false religion
+up to ridicule and laughter, thinking, by encompassing the downfall
+of a single advocate, thus to prove his contention and checkmate its
+ever-widening influence. He became obsessed by this idea; he schemed
+and he contrived; he used to the utmost the powers of his Oriental
+mind. From his vantage-point above the cloister he heard the monks
+droning at their Latin; his somber glances followed them at their
+daily tasks. Like a spider he spun his web, and when one victim broke
+through it he craftily repaired its fabric, luring another into its
+meshes.
+
+At times he shared his vigil with his daughter Zahra, a girl of
+twelve, fast growing into womanhood; and since she had inherited
+his wit and temperament, he taught her to share his hatred of the
+black-robed men.
+
+This Moorish maiden possessed the beauty of her mother, who had died
+in childbirth; and in honor of that celebrated favorite of Abderamus
+III. she had been christened "Flower of the World." Nor was the title
+too immoderate, as all men who saw her vowed. Already the hot sun of
+Catalonia had ripened her charms, and neighboring lords were beginning
+to make extravagant overtures of marriage. But seeing in her a
+possible weapon more powerful than any he had yet launched against the
+monks of San Sebastian, the father refused to consider even the best
+of them. He continued to keep her at his side, pouring his hatred into
+her ears until she, too, was ablaze with it.
+
+Zahra was in her fourteenth year when Abul Malek beheld, one day, a
+new figure among those in the courtyard of the monastery below. Even
+from his eminence the Saracen could see that this late-comer was
+a giant man, for the fellow towered head and shoulders above his
+brethren. Inquiry taught him that the monk's name was Joseph. Nor was
+their meeting long delayed, for a sickness fell among the people of
+the valley, and Abul Malek, being skilled in medicine, went out to
+minister among the poor, according to his religion. At the sick-bed of
+a shepherd the two men came face to face.
+
+Joseph was not young, nor was he old, but rather he had arrived at the
+perfect flower of his manhood, and his placid soul shone out through
+features of unusual strength and sweetness. In him the crafty Moor
+beheld a difference which for a time was puzzling. But eventually he
+analyzed it. The other monks had once been worldly men--they showed it
+in their faces; the countenance of Fray Joseph, on the contrary, was
+that of a boy, and it was without track of temptation or trace of
+evil. He had lived a sheltered life from his earliest youth, so it
+transpired, and Abul Malek rejoiced in the discovery, it being his
+belief that all men are flesh and that within them smolder flames
+which some day must have mastery. If this monk had never let his youth
+run free, if he had never met temptation and conquered it, those
+pent-up forces which inhabit all of us must be gathering power, year
+by year, and once the joint of this armor had been found, once it
+could be pierced, he would become earthly like other men, and his
+false religion would drop away, leaving him naked under the irksome
+garb of priesthood.
+
+Accordingly, the Moor tested Fray Joseph, as he had tested the Abbot
+and the others, but to no avail, and he was in despair, until one day
+the secret of his failure was unexpectedly revealed.
+
+Being busied with his accounts, he had repaired to the shade of a
+pomegranate grove near the cliff, the better to escape the heat; while
+so engaged up the path from the monastery came the good brother. Just
+abreast of Abul Malek's point of vantage Joseph paused to listen. A
+songbird was trilling wondrously and the monk's face, raised toward
+the pomegranate trees, became transfigured. He changed as if by
+magic; his lips parted in a tender smile, his figure grew tense with
+listening; not until the last note had died away did he move. Then
+a great breath stirred his lungs, and with shining eyes and rapt
+countenance he went on into the fields.
+
+Abul Malek rose, his white teeth gleaming through his beard.
+
+"Allah be praised!" he exclaimed. "It is music!" And rolling up his
+papers, he went into the house.
+
+Early on the following morning another cavalcade filed down past the
+monastery of San Sebastian; but this procession was in great contrast
+to the one that had gone by five years before. Instead of gaily
+caparisoned warriors, it was composed mainly of women and slaves, with
+a mere handful of guards to lead the way. There were bondmaidens and
+seamstresses, an ancient nurse and a tutor of languages; while astride
+of a palfrey at her father's side rode the youthful lady of the
+castle. Her veil was wet upon her cheeks, her eyes were filled with
+shadows; yet she rode proudly, like a princess.
+
+Once more the train moved past the sun-baked walls of the monastery,
+across the plain to the mountain road that led to the land of bounty
+and of culture. Late that afternoon Brother Joseph learned from the
+lips of a herdsman that the beauteous Zahra, flower of all the Moorish
+race, had gone to Cordova to study music.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Abul Malek once more rode home alone to his castle; but this time as
+he dismounted at his door he smiled at the monastery below.
+
+Four years crept by, during which the Saracen lord brooded over the
+valley and the monk Joseph went his simple way, rendering service
+where he could, preaching, by the example of his daily life and his
+unselfish devotion, a sermon more powerful than his lips could utter.
+Through it all the Moor watched him carefully, safeguarding him as a
+provident farmer fattens a sheep for the slaughter. Once a year the
+father rode southward to Cordova, bringing news with his return that
+delighted the countryside, news that penetrated even the walls of San
+Sebastian and filled the good men therein with gladness. It seemed
+that the maiden Zahra was becoming a great musician. She pursued her
+studies in the famous school of Ali-Zeriab, and not even Moussali
+himself, that most gifted of Arabian singers, could bring more tender
+notes from the lute than could this fair daughter of Catalonia. Her
+skill transcended that of Al Farabi, for the harp, the tabor, and the
+mandolin were wedded to her dancing fingers; and, most marvelous of
+all, her soul was so filled with poetry that her verses were sung from
+Valencia to Cadiz. It was said that she could move men to laughter, to
+tears, to deeds of heroism--that she could even lull them to sleep by
+the potency of her magic. She had once played before the Caliph under
+amazing circumstances.
+
+The Prince of True Believers, so ran the story, had quarreled with
+his favorite wife, and in consequence had fallen into a state of
+melancholy so deep as to threaten his health and to alarm his
+ministers. Do what they would, he still declined, until in despair the
+Hadjeb sent for Zahra, daughter of Abul Malek. She came, surrounded by
+her servants, and sang before El Hakkam. So cunningly did she contrive
+her verses, so tender were her airs, so potent were her fluttering
+fingers, that those within hearing were moved to tears, and the
+unhappy lover himself became so softened that he sped to the arms of
+his offended beauty and a reconciliation occurred. In token of his
+gratitude he had despatched a present of forty thousand drachmas of
+gold to the singer, and her renown went broadcast like a flame.
+
+When Abul Malek heard of this he praised his God, and, gathering his
+horsemen, he set out to bring his daughter home, for the time was
+ripe.
+
+One evening in early spring, that magic season when nature is most
+charming, Fray Joseph, returning to his cell, heard from behind a
+screen of verdure alongside his path a woman singing. But was this
+singing? he asked himself. Could mortal lips give birth to melody like
+this? It was the sighing of summer winds through rustling leaves, the
+music of crystal brooks on stony courses, the full-throated worship
+of birds. Joseph listened, enthralled, like a famished pilgrim in the
+desert. His simple soul, attuned to harmonies of the woodland, leaped
+in answer; his fancy, starved by years of churchly rigor, quickened
+like a prisoner at the light of day. Not until the singer had ceased
+did he resume his way, and through his dreams that night ran the song
+of birds, the play of zephyrs, the laughter of bubbling springs.
+
+A few evenings later he heard the voice again, and paused with lips
+apart, with heart consumed by eagerness. It was some slave girl busied
+among the vines of Abul Malek, he decided, for she translated all the
+fragmentary airs that float through summer evenings--the songs of
+sweethearts, the tender airs of motherhood, the croon of distant
+waterfalls, the voice of sleepy locusts--and yet she wove them into an
+air that carried words. It was most wonderful.
+
+Joseph felt a strong desire to mingle his voice with the singer's, but
+he knew his throat to be harsh and stiff from chanting Latin phrases.
+He knew not whither the tune would lead, and yet, when she sang, he
+followed, realizing gladly that she voiced the familiar music of his
+soul. He was moved to seek her out and to talk with her, until he
+remembered with a start that she was a woman and he a priest.
+
+Each night he shaped his course so as to bring him past the spot
+where the mysterious singer labored, and in time he began to feel the
+stirring of a very earthly curiosity, the which he manfully fought
+down. Through the long, heated hours of the day he hummed her airs and
+repeated her verses, longing for the twilight hour which would bring
+the angel voice from out the vineyard. Eventually the girl began to
+sing of love, and Joseph echoed the songs in solitude, his voice as
+rasping and untrue as that of a frog.
+
+Then, one evening, he heard that which froze him in his tracks. The
+singer accompanied herself upon some instrument the like of which he
+had never imagined. The music filled the air with heavenly harmony,
+and it set him to vibrating like a tautened string; it rippled
+forth, softer than the breeze, more haunting than the perfume of the
+frangipani. Joseph stood like a man in a trance, forgetful of all
+things save these honeyed sounds, half minded to believe himself
+favored by the music of the seraphim.
+
+Never had he dreamed of such an intoxication. And then, as if to
+intensify his wild exultation, the maiden sang a yearning strain of
+passion and desire.
+
+The priest began to tremble. His heart-beats quickened, his senses
+became unbridled; something new and mighty awoke within him, and he
+was filled with fever. His huge thews tightened, his muscles swelled
+as if for battle, yet miracle of miracles, he was melting like a child
+in tears! With his breath tugging at his throat, he turned off the
+path and parted the verdure, going as soundlessly as an animal; and
+all the while his head was whirling, his eyes took note of nothing. He
+was drawn as by a thousand invisible strings, which wound him toward
+the hidden singer.
+
+But suddenly the music ended in a peal of rippling laughter and there
+came the rustle of silken garments. Fray Joseph found himself in a
+little open glade, so recently vacated that a faint perfume still
+lingered to aggravate his nostrils. Beyond stretched the vineyard of
+the Moor, a tangle of purpling vines into the baffling mazes of which
+the singer had evidently fled.
+
+So she had known of his presence all along, the monk reflected,
+dizzily. It followed, therefore, that she must have waited every
+evening for his coming, and that her songs had been sung for him. An
+ecstasy swept over him. Regaining the path, he went downward to the
+monastery, his brain afire, his body tingling.
+
+Joseph was far too simple for self-analysis, and he was too enchanted
+by those liquid strains to know what all this soul confusion foretold;
+he merely realized that he had made the most amazing of discoveries,
+that the music of the spheres had been translated for his privileged
+ears, that a door had opened allowing him to glimpse a glory hidden
+from other mortals. It was not the existence of the singer, but of the
+music, that excited him to adoration. He longed to possess it, to take
+it with him, and to cherish it like a thing of substance, to worship
+it in his solitude.
+
+The song had been of love; but, after all, love was the burden of his
+religion. Love filled the universe, it kept the worlds a-swinging, it
+was the thing that dominated all nature and made sweet even the rigid
+life of an anchorite. It was doubtless love which awoke this fierce
+yet tender yearning in him now, this ecstasy that threatened to
+smother him. Love was a holy and an impersonal thing, nevertheless it
+blazed and melted in his every vein, and it made him very human.
+
+Through all that night Fray Joseph lay upon his couch, rapt, thankful,
+wondering. But in the morning he had changed. His thoughts became
+unruly, and he recalled again that tantalizing perfume, the shy tones
+of that mischief laughter. He began to long intensely to behold the
+author of this music-magic, to behold her just once, for imagination
+graced her with a thousand witching forms. He wished ardently, also,
+to speak with her about this miracle, this hidden thing called melody,
+for the which he had starved his life, unknowingly.
+
+As the afternoon aged he began to fear that he had frightened her,
+and therefore when he came to tread his homeward path it was with a
+strange commingling of eagerness and of dread. But while still at a
+distance, he heard her singing as usual, and, nearing the spot, he
+stopped to drink in her message. Again the maiden sang of love; again
+the monk felt his spirit leaping as she fed his starving soul even
+more adroitly than she fingered the vibrant strings. At last her wild,
+romantic verses became more unrestrained; the music quickened until,
+regardless of all things, Fray Joseph burst the thicket asunder and
+stood before her, huge, exalted, palpitant.
+
+"I, too, have sung those songs," he panted, hoarsely. "That melody has
+lived in me since time began; but I am mute. And you? Who are you?
+What miracle bestowed this gift--?"
+
+He paused, for with the ending of the song his frenzy was dying and
+his eyes were clearing. There, casting back his curious gaze, was a
+bewitching Moorish maid whose physical perfection seemed to cause the
+very place to glow. The slanting sunbeams shimmered upon her silken
+garments; from her careless hand drooped an instrument of gold and of
+tortoise-shell, an instrument strange to the eyes of the monk. Her
+feet were cased in tiny slippers of soft Moroccan leather; her limbs,
+rounded and supple and smooth as ivory, were outlined beneath wide
+flowing trousers which were gathered at the ankles. A tunic of finest
+fabric was flung back, displaying a figure of delicate proportions,
+half recumbent now upon the sward.
+
+The loveliness of Moorish women has been heralded to the world; it is
+not strange that this maid, renowned even among her own people, should
+have struck the rustic priest to dumbness. He stood transfixed; and
+yet he wondered not, for it was seemly that such heavenly music should
+have sprung from the rarest of mortals. He saw that her hair, blacker
+than the night, rippled in a glorious cascade below her waist, and
+that her teeth embellished with the whiteness of alabaster the
+vermilion lips which smiled at him.
+
+That same intoxicating scent, sweeter than the musk of Hadramaut,
+enveloped her; her fingers were jeweled with nails which flashed in
+rivalry with their burden of precious stones as she toyed with the
+whispering strings.
+
+For a time she regarded the monk silently.
+
+"I am Zahra," she said at length, and Joseph thrilled at the tones of
+her voice. "To me, all things are music."
+
+"Zahra! 'Flower of the World,'" he repeated, wonderingly. After an
+instant he continued, harshly, "Then you are the daughter of the
+Moor?"
+
+"Yes. Abul Malek. You have heard of me?"
+
+"Who has not? Aye, you were rightly called 'Flower of the World.'
+But--this music! It brought me here against my will; it pulls at me
+like straining horses. Why is that? What wizardry do you possess? What
+strange chemistry?"
+
+She laughed lightly. "I possess no magic art. We are akin, you and I.
+That is all. You, of all men, are attuned to me."
+
+"No," he said, heavily. "You are an Infidel, I am a Christian. There
+is no bond between us."
+
+"So?" she mocked. "And yet, when I sing, you can hear the nightingales
+of Aden; I can take you with me to the fields of battle, or to the
+innermost halls of the Alhambra. I have watched you many times,
+Brother Joseph, and I have never failed to play upon your soul as I
+play upon my own. Are we not, then, attuned?"
+
+"Your veil!" he cried, accusingly. "I have never beheld a Moorish
+woman's face until now."
+
+Her lids drooped, as if to hide the fire behind them, and she replied,
+without heeding his words: "Sit here, beside me. I will play for you."
+
+"Yes, yes!" he cried, eagerly. "Play! Play on for me! But--I will
+stand."
+
+Accordingly she resumed her instrument; and o'er its strings her
+rosy fingers twinkled, while with witchery of voice and beauty she
+enthralled him. Again she sang of love, reclinging there like an
+_houri_ fit to grace the paradise of her Prophet; and the giant monk
+became a puppet in her hands. Now, although she sang of love, it was a
+different love from that which Joseph knew and worshiped; and as she
+toyed with him his hot blood warred with his priestly devotion until
+he was racked with the tortures of the pit. But she would not let him
+go. She lured him with her eyes, her lips, her luscious beauty, until
+he heard no song whatever, until he no longer saw visions of spiritual
+beatitude, but flesh, ripe flesh, aquiver and awake to him.
+
+A cry burst from him. Turning, he tore himself away and went crashing
+blindly through the thicket like a bull pursued. On, on he fled, down
+to the monastery and into the coolness of his cell, where, upon the
+smooth, worn flags, he knelt and struggled with this evil thing which
+accursed his soul.
+
+For many days Joseph avoided the spot which had witnessed his
+temptation; but of nights, when he lay spent and weary with his
+battle, through the grating of his window came the song of the Saracen
+maid and the whisper of her golden lute. He knew she was calling to
+him, therefore he beat his breast and scourged himself to cure his
+longing. But night after night she sang from the heights above, and
+the burden of her song was ever the same, of one who waited and of one
+who came.
+
+Bit by bit she wore down the man's resistance, then drew him up
+through the groves of citron and pomegrante, into the grape fields;
+time and again he fled. Closer and closer she lured him, until one day
+he touched her flesh--woman's flesh--and forgot all else. But now it
+was her turn to flee.
+
+She poised like a sunbeam just beyond his reach, her bosom heaving,
+her lips as ripe and full as the grapes above, her eyes afire with
+invitation. In answer to his cry she made a glowing promise, subtle,
+yet warm and soft, as of the flesh.
+
+"To-night, when the moon hangs over yonder pass, I shall play on the
+balcony outside my window. Beneath is a door, unbarred. Come, for I
+shall be alone in all the castle, and there you will find music made
+flesh, and flesh made music." Then she was gone.
+
+The soul of the priest had been in torment heretofore, but chaos
+engulfed it during the hours that followed. He was like a man bereft
+of reason; he burned with fever, yet his whole frame shook as from a
+wintry wind. He prayed, or tried to, but his eyes beheld no vision
+save a waiting Moorish maid with hair like night, his stammering
+tongue gave forth no Latin, but repeated o'er and o'er her parting
+promise:
+
+"There you will find music made flesh and flesh made music."
+
+He realized that the foul fiend had him by the throat, and undertook
+to cast him off; but all the time he knew that when the moon came,
+bringing with it the cadence of a song, he would go, even though his
+going led to perdition. And go he did, groveling in his misery. His
+sandals spurned the rocky path when he heard the voice of Zahra
+sighing through the branches; then, when he had reached the castle
+wall, he saw her bending toward him from the balcony above.
+
+"I come to you," she whispered; and an instant later her form showed
+white against the blackness of the low stone door in front of him.
+There, in the gloom, for one brief instant, her yielding body met his,
+her hands reached upward and drew his face down to her own; then out
+from his hungry arms she glided, and with rippling laughter fled into
+the blackness.
+
+"Zahra!" he cried.
+
+"Come!" she whispered, and when he hesitated, "Do you fear to follow?"
+
+"Zahra!" he repeated; but his voice was strange, and he tore at the
+cloth that bound his throat, stumbling after her, guided only by her
+voice.
+
+Always she was just beyond his reach; always she eluded him; yet never
+did he lose the perfume of her presence nor the rustle of her silken
+garments. Over and over he cried her name, until at last he realized
+from the echo of his calling that he had come into a room of great
+dimensions and that the girl was gone.
+
+For an instant he was in despair, until her voice reached him from
+above:
+
+"I do but test you, Christian priest. I am waiting."
+
+"'Flower of the World,'" he stammered, hoarsely. "Whence lead the
+stairs?"
+
+"And do you love me, then?" she queried, in a tone that set him all
+ablaze.
+
+"Zahra," he repeated, "I shall perish for want of you."
+
+"How do you measure this devotion?" she insisted, softly. "Will it
+cool with the dawn, or are you mine in truth forever and all time?"
+
+"I have no thought save that of you. Come, Light of my Soul, or I
+shall die."
+
+"Do you then adore me above all things, earthly and heavenly, that you
+forsake your vows? Answer, that my arms may enfold you."
+
+He groaned like a man upon a rack, and the agony of that cry was proof
+conclusive of his abject surrender.
+
+Then, through the dead, black silence of the place there came a
+startling sound. It was a peal of laughter, loud, evil, triumphant;
+and, as if it had been a signal, other mocking voices took it up,
+until the great vault rang to a fiendish din.
+
+"Ho! Hassam! Elzemah! Close the doors!" cried the voice of Abul Malek.
+"Bring the lights."
+
+There followed a ponderous clanging and the rattle of chains, the
+while Fray Joseph stood reeling in his tracks. Then suddenly from
+every side burst forth the radiance of many lamps. Torches sprang into
+flame, braziers of resin wood began to smoke, flambeaux were lit, and,
+half blinded by the glare, the Christian monk stood revealed in the
+hall of Abul Malek.
+
+He cast his eyes about, but on every side he beheld grinning men of
+swarthy countenance, and at sight of his terror the hellish merriment
+broke forth anew, until the whole place thundered with it. Facing
+him, upon an ornamental balcony, stood the Moor, and beside him, with
+elbows on the balustrade and face alight with sinister enjoyment,
+stood his daughter.
+
+Stunned by his betrayal, Joseph imploringly pronounced her name, at
+which a fresh guffaw resounded. Then above the clamor she inquired,
+with biting malice:
+
+"Dost thou any longer doubt, oh, Christian, that I adore thee?"
+At this her father and her brothers rocked back and forth, as if
+suffocated by the humor of this jest.
+
+The lone man turned, in mind to flee, but every entrance to the hall
+was closed, and at each portal stood a grinning Saracen. He bowed his
+shaven head, and his shame fell slowly upon him.
+
+"You have me trapped," he said. "What shall my punishment be?"
+
+"This," answered the Moorish lord; "to acknowledge once again, before
+us all, the falseness of your faith."
+
+"That I have never done; that I can never do," said Joseph.
+
+"Nay! But a moment ago you confessed that you adored my daughter above
+all things, earthly or heavenly. You forswore your vows for her.
+Repeat it, then."
+
+"I have sinned before God; but I still acknowledge Him and crave His
+mercy," said the wretched priest.
+
+"Hark you, Joseph. You are the best of monks. Have you ever done evil
+before this night?"
+
+"My life has been clean, but the flesh is weak. It was the witchcraft
+of Satan in that woman's music. I prayed for strength, but I was
+powerless. My soul shall pay the penalty."
+
+"What sort of God is this who snares His holiest disciple, with the
+lusts of the flesh?" mocked Abul Malek. "Did not your prayers mount
+up so high? Or is His power insufficient to forestall the devil? Bah!
+There is but one true God, and Mohammed is His Prophet. These many
+years have I labored to rend your veil of holiness asunder and
+to expose your faith to ridicule and laughter. This have I done
+to-night."
+
+"Stop!" cried the tortured monk. "Bring forth a lance."
+
+"Nay! Nay! You shall hear me through," gloated Abul Malek; and again
+Joseph bowed his tonsured head, murmuring:
+
+"It is my punishment."
+
+Ringed about thus by his enemies, the priest stood meekly, while the
+sweat came out upon his face; as the Saracen mocked and jeered at him
+he made no answer, except to move his lips in whispered grayer. Had it
+not been for this sign they might have thought him changed to stone,
+so motionless and so patient did he stand. How long the baiting lasted
+no one knew; it may have been an hour, then Joseph's passive silence
+roused the anger of the overlord, who became demoniac in his rage.
+His followers joined in harrying the victim, until the place became a
+babel. Finally Elzemah stepped forward, torch in hand, and spat upon
+the giant black-robed figure.
+
+The monk's face whitened, it grew ghastly; but he made no movement.
+Then in a body the infidels rushed forth to follow the example of
+Abul Malek's son. They swarmed about the Christian, jeering, cursing,
+spitting, snatching at his garments, until their master cried:
+
+"Enough! The knave has water in his veins. His blood has soured.
+Deserted by his God, his frame has withered and his vigor fled."
+
+"Yes," echoed his daughter. "He is great only in bulk. Had he been a
+Man I might have loved him; but the evil has fled out of him, leaving
+nothing but his cassock. Off with his robe, Elzemah. Let us see if
+aught remains."
+
+With swift movement her brother tore at the monk's habit, baring his
+great bosom. At this insult to his cloth a frightful change swept over
+the victim. He upheaved his massive shoulders, his gleaming head rose
+high, and in the glaring light they saw that his face had lost all
+sweetness and humility; it was now the visage of a madman. All fleshly
+passion stored through thirty years of cloister life blazed forth,
+consuming reason and intelligence; with a sweep of his mighty arms he
+cleared a space about him, hurling his enemies aside as if they were
+made of straw. He raised his voice above the din, cursing God and men
+and Moors. As they closed in upon him he snatched from the hands of a
+lusty slave a massive wrought-iron brazier, and whirling it high above
+his head, he sent its glowing coals flying into the farthest corners
+of the room. Then with this weapon he laid about him right and left,
+while men fell like grain before the reaper.
+
+"At him!" shouted Abul Malek, from his balcony. "Pull down the weapons
+from the walls! The fool is mad!"
+
+Zahra clutched at her father's sleeve and pointed to a distant corner,
+where a tongue of flame was licking the dry woodwork and hangings.
+Her eyes were flashing and her lips were parted; she bent forward,
+following the priest with eagerness.
+
+"Allah be praised!" she breathed. "He is a Man!"
+
+Elzemah strove to sheathe his poinard in the monk's bare breast, but
+the brazier crushed him down. Across the wide floor raged the contest,
+but the mighty priest was irresistible. Hassam, seeing that the priest
+was fighting toward the balcony, flung himself upon the stairs, crying
+to his father and his sister to be gone. By now the castle echoed with
+a frightful din through which arose a sinister crackling. The light
+increased moment by moment, and there came the acrid smell of smoke.
+
+Men left the maniac to give battle to the other fury. Some fled to the
+doors and fought with their clumsy fastenings, but as they flung
+them back a draught sucked through, changing the place into a raging
+furnace.
+
+With his back against the stairs, Hassam hewed at the monk with his
+scimitar; he had done as well had he essayed to fell an oak with a
+single blow. Up over him rushed the giant, to the balcony above, where
+Abul Malek and his daughter stood at bay in the trap of their own
+manufacture. There, in the glare of the mounting flames, Fray Joseph
+sank his mighty fingers through the Moor's black beard.
+
+The place by now was suffocating, and the roar of the conflagration
+had drowned all other sounds. Men wrapped their robes about their
+heads and hurled themselves blindly at the doors, fighting with one
+another, with the licking flames, with the dead that clogged the
+slippery flags. But the maid remained. She tore at the tattered
+cassock of the priest, crying into his ear:
+
+"Come, Joseph! We may yet escape."
+
+He let the writhing Abul Malek slip from out his grasp and peered at
+her through the smother.
+
+"Thou knowest me not?" she queried. "I am Zahra." Her arms entwined
+his neck for a second time that night, but with a furious cry he
+raised his hands and smote her down at his feet, then he fled back to
+the stairs and plunged down into the billows that raged ahead of the
+fresh night wind.
+
+The bells of San Sebastian were clanging the alarm, the good monks
+were toiling up the path toward the inferno which lit the heavens,
+when, black against the glare, they saw a giant figure approaching. It
+came reeling toward them, vast, mighty, misshapen. Not until it was in
+their very midst did they recognize their brother, Joseph. He was
+bent and broken, he was singed of body and of raiment, he gibbered
+foolishly; he passed them by and went staggering to his cell. Long ere
+they reached the castle it was but a seething mountain of flame; and
+in the morning naught remained of Abul Malek's house but heated ruins.
+
+Strange tales were rife concerning the end of the Moor and of his
+immediate kin, but the monks could make little out of them, for they
+were garbled and too ridiculous for belief. No Mussulman who survived
+the fire could speak coherently of what had happened in the great
+hall, nor could Fray Joseph tell his story, for he lay stricken with a
+malady which did not leave him for many weeks. Even when he recovered
+he did not talk; for although his mind was clear on most matters, nay,
+although he was as simple and as devout as ever, a kind Providence had
+blotted out all memory of Zahra, of his sin, and of the temptation
+that had beset his flesh.
+
+So it is that even to this day "The Teeth of the Moor" remains a term
+of mystery to most of the monks of San Sebastian.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAUGHING BILL HYDE AND OTHER
+STORIES***
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories, by Rex
+Beach
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories
+
+Author: Rex Beach
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2004  [eBook #11501]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAUGHING BILL HYDE AND OTHER
+STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Kevin Handy, Dave Maddock, Josephine Paolucci, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LAUGHING BILL HYDE
+
+And Other Stories
+
+By REX BEACH
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"Rainbow's End," "Heart of the Sunset," "The Spoilers," Etc.
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "LIKE ME?" HE ASKED. PONATAH TURNED AWAY BLINDLY]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. William Hyde was discharged from Deer Lodge Penitentiary a changed
+man. That was quite in line with the accepted theory of criminal
+jurisprudence, the warden's discipline, and the chaplain's prayers.
+Yes, Mr. Hyde was changed, and the change had bitten deep; his
+humorous contempt for the law had turned to abiding hatred; his
+sunburned cheeks were pallid, his lungs were weak, and he coughed
+considerably. Balanced against these results, to be sure, were the
+benefits accruing from three years of corrective discipline at the
+State's expense; the knack of conversing through stone walls, which
+Mr. Hyde had mastered, and the plaiting of wonderful horsehair
+bridles, which he had learned. Otherwise he was the same "Laughing
+Bill" his friends had known, neither more nor less regenerate.
+
+Since the name of Montana promised to associate itself with unpleasant
+memories, Mr. Hyde determined at once to bury his past and begin life
+anew in a climate more suited to weak lungs. To that end he stuck up a
+peaceful citizen of Butte who was hurrying homeward with an armful of
+bundles, and in the warm dusk of a pleasant evening relieved him
+of eighty-three dollars, a Swiss watch with an elk's-tooth fob, a
+pearl-handled penknife, a key-ring, and a bottle of digestive tablets.
+
+Three wasted years of industry had not robbed Mr. Hyde of the
+technique of his trade, hence there was nothing amateurish or
+uproarious about the procedure. He merely back-heeled the pedestrian
+against a bill-board, held him erect and speechless by placing his
+left hand upon his victim's shoulder and pressing his left forearm
+firmly across the gentleman's apple, the while with his own dexterous
+right mit he placed the eighty-three dollars in circulation. During
+the transaction he laughed constantly. An hour later he was en route
+for the sunny South, there being good and sufficient reasons why he
+preferred that direction to any other.
+
+Arizona helped Mr. Hyde's lungs, for the random town which he selected
+was high and dry, but, unfortunately, so was Laughing Bill soon after
+his arrival, and in consequence he was forced to engage promptly in
+a new business enterprise. This time he raised a pay-roll. It was an
+easy task, for the custodian of the pay-roll was a small man with a
+kindly and unsuspicious nature. As a result of this operation Bill was
+enabled to maintain himself, for some six weeks, in a luxury to which
+of late he had been unaccustomed. At the end of this time the original
+bearer of the payroll tottered forth from the hospital and, chancing
+to overhear Mr. Hyde in altercation with a faro dealer, he was struck
+by some haunting note in the former's laughter, and lost no time in
+shuffling his painful way to the sheriff's office.
+
+Seeing the man go, Laughing Bill realized that his health again
+demanded a change of climate, and since it lacked nearly an hour of
+train time he was forced to leave on horseback. Luckily for him he
+found a horse convenient. It was a wild horse, with nothing whatever
+to indicate that it belonged to any one, except the fact that it
+carried a silver-mounted saddle and bridle, the reins of which were
+fastened to a post in front of a saloon.
+
+Mr. Hyde enjoyed the ride, for it kept him out in the open air. It
+grieved him to part with the horse, a few hours later, but being
+prodigal with personal property he presented the animal to a poor
+Mexican woman, leaving her to face any resulting embarrassments. Ten
+minutes later he swung himself under a west-bound freight, and in
+due time arrived in California, somewhat dirty and fatigued, but in
+excellent humor.
+
+Laughing Bill's adventures and his aliases during his slow progress up
+the coast form no part of this story. It might be said, with a great
+deal of truth, that he was missed, if not mourned, in many towns.
+Finally, having found the climates of California, Oregon and
+Washington uniformly unsuited to one of his habits, force of
+circumstance in the shape of numerous hand-bills adorned with an
+unflattering half-tone of himself, but containing certain undeniably
+accurate data such as diameter of skull, length of nose, angle of ear,
+and the like, drove him still north and west. Bill was a modest man;
+he considered these statistics purely personal in character; to see
+them blazoned publicly on the walls of post-offices, and in the
+corridors of county buildings, outraged his finer feelings, so he went
+away from there, in haste, as usual.
+
+Having never sailed the sea, he looked forward to such an experience
+with lively anticipation, only to be disappointed in the realization.
+It was rough off Flattery, and he suffered agonies strange and
+terrifying. In due time, however, he gained his sea legs and, being
+forever curious, even prying, he explored the ship. His explorations
+were interesting, for they took him into strange quarters--into
+the forecastle, the steerage, even into some of the first-class
+state-rooms, the doors of which had been left "on the hook" while
+their occupants were at meals. No small benefit accrued to Mr. Hyde
+from these investigations.
+
+One day during the dinner-hour, as he was occupied in admiring the
+contents of a strange suit-case, a voice accosted him over his
+shoulder, and he looked up to discover a face in the cabin window.
+Bill realized that an explanation was due, for it was evident that
+the speaker had been watching him for some little time; but under the
+circumstances, even though the face in the window was round, youthful,
+good-humored, explanations promised to be embarrassing.
+
+"How d'y?" said Mr. Hyde.
+
+"What luck?" inquired the stranger.
+
+Mr. Hyde sat back upon his heels and grinned engagingly. "Not much,"
+he confessed. "Can't find it nowhere. This guy must be a missionary."
+
+The new-comer opened the door and entered. He was a medium-sized,
+plump young man. "Oh, I say!" he protested. "Is it as bad as that?"
+Bill nodded vaguely, meanwhile carefully measuring the physical
+proportions of the interloper. The latter went on:
+
+"I saw that you knew your business, and--I was hoping you'd manage to
+find something I had missed."
+
+Mr. Hyde breathed deep with relief; his expression altered. "You been
+through ahead of me?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, several times; daily, in fact." The speaker tossed a bunch of
+keys upon the berth, saying: "Glance through the steamer-trunk while
+you're here and declare me in on anything-you find."
+
+Mr. Hyde rose to his feet and retreated a step; his look of relief was
+replaced by one of dark suspicion. As always, in moments of extremity,
+he began to laugh.
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded.
+
+"I? Why, I live here. That's my baggage. I've been through it, as
+I told you, but--" The young man frowned whimsically and lit a
+cigarette. "It doesn't diagnose. I can't find a solitary symptom of
+anything worth while. Sit down, won't you?"
+
+Mr. Hyde's manner changed for a second time. He was embarrassed,
+apologetic, crestfallen. "_Your_ cabin? Why, then--it's my mistake!"
+he declared. "I must 'a' got in the wrong flat. Mac sent me up for a
+deck of cards, but--Say, that's funny, ain't it?"
+
+He began to see the joke upon himself, and the youth echoed his
+laughter.
+
+"It _is_ funny," the latter agreed. "For Heaven's sake, don't spoil
+it. Sit down and have a smoke; I'm not going to eat you."
+
+"See here! You don't mean--? D'you think for a minute--?" Mr.
+Hyde began with rotund dignity, but the other waved his cigarette
+impatiently, saying:
+
+"Oh, drop that stuff or I'll page your friend 'Mac' and show you up."
+
+In assuming his air of outraged innocence Laughing Bill had arched
+his hollow chest and inhaled deeply. As a result he began to cough,
+whereupon his new acquaintance eyed him keenly, saying:
+
+"That's a bad bark. What ails you?"
+
+"Con," said Laughing Bill.
+
+"Pardon me. I wouldn't have smoked if I'd known." The speaker dropped
+his cigarette and placed a heel upon it. "What are you doing here?
+Alaska's no place for weak lungs."
+
+Gingerly seating himself upon the narrow settee Mr. Hyde murmured,
+wonderingly: "Say! You're a regular guy, ain't you?" He began to laugh
+again, but now there was less of a metallic quality to his merriment.
+"Yes sir, dam' if you ain't." He withdrew from his pocket a
+silver-mounted hair-brush and comb, and placed them carefully upon the
+washstand. "I don't aim to quit winner on a sport like you."
+
+"Thanks, awfully!" smiled the young man. "I'd have fought you for that
+comb and brush. Girl stuff, you understand? That's she." He pointed to
+a leather-framed photograph propped against the mirror.
+
+Laughing Bill leaned forward and studied the picture approvingly.
+"Some queen, all right. Blonde, I reckon."
+
+"Sure. You like blondes?"
+
+"Who, me? I ain't strong for no kind of women. You hate her, don't
+you?"
+
+The young man smiled more widely, his whole face lit up. "I hate her
+so much that I kissed her good-by and sailed away to make a quick
+fortune. I hope Alaska's unhealthy."
+
+"Yeah?"
+
+"You see, I'm a doctor. I'm a good doctor, too, but it takes a long
+time to prove it, out in the States, and I can't wait a long time."
+
+Mr. Hyde pondered briefly. "I don't see's you got much on me, Doc," he
+said. "I frisk 'em while they're good and healthy, and you 'take' 'em
+when they're feeble. I don't see no difference to speak of."
+
+"It's an interesting viewpoint," the physician agreed, seriously
+enough, "and I respect every man's opinion. Tell me, how did you
+acquire that cough?"
+
+"Livin' in a ground-floor apartment."
+
+"What's your business?"
+
+"Harness-maker."
+
+"Hm-m! You'll do well up here." The doctor was highly entertained. "I
+understand there's a horse at Nome."
+
+"_A_ horse!"
+
+"Alaska isn't a stock country."
+
+Laughing Bill was genuinely surprised. "No horses!" he murmured. "How
+the hell do you get away?"
+
+"You don't. You stay and face the music."
+
+"Now what do you know about that?" There was a brief silence. "Well, I
+bet I'll turn my hand to something."
+
+"No doubt. You impress me as a man of resource." The doctor's eyes
+twinkled and Bill smiled. A bond of friendly understanding had already
+sprung up between the two men. "Now then, I'm interested in your case.
+I've a notion to try to cure you."
+
+"Nothing doin' on the fees. I'm a dead card."
+
+"Oh, I won't charge you anything! I'm merely interested in obscure
+ailments, and, if I'm not mistaken, you suffer from more than
+one--well, disease. I think you need curing about as badly as any man
+I ever saw."
+
+Now Laughing Bill was not skilled in subtleties, and his relief at
+extricating himself from a trying predicament banished any resentment
+he might have felt at the doctor's double meaning. Since the latter
+was a good-natured, harmless individual he decided to humor him, and
+so, after they had visited for an hour or more, Mr. Hyde discreetly
+withdrew. But, oddly enough, during the days immediately following,
+Laughing Bill grew to like the young fellow immensely. This in itself
+was a novel experience, for the ex-convict had been a "loner" all
+his-life, and had never really liked any one. Dr. Evan Thomas,
+however, seemed to fill some long-felt want in Hyde's hungry make-up.
+He fitted in smoothly, too, and despite the latter's lifelong habit of
+suspicion, despite his many rough edges, he could not manage to hold
+the young man at a distance.
+
+Thomas was of a type strange to the wanderer, he was educated, he had
+unfamiliar airs and accomplishments, but he was human and natural
+withal. He was totally ignorant of much that Mr. Hyde deemed
+fundamental, and yet he was mysteriously superior, while his
+indifferent good nature, his mild amusement at the antics of the world
+about him covered a sincere and earnest nature. He knew his business,
+moreover, and he revolutionized Bill's habits of hygiene in spite of
+the latter's protests.
+
+But the disease which ravaged Mr. Hyde's constitution had its toes dug
+in, and when the steamer touched at St. Michaels he suffered a severe
+hemorrhage. For the first time in his life Laughing Bill stood face to
+face with darkness. He had fevered memories of going over side on a
+stretcher; he was dimly aware of an appalling weakness, which grew
+hourly, then an agreeable indifference enveloped him, and for a long
+time he lived in a land of unrealities, of dreams. The day came when
+he began to wonder dully how and why he found himself in a freezing
+cabin with Doctor Thomas, in fur cap and arctic overshoes, tending
+him. Bill pondered the phenomenon for a week before he put his query
+into words.
+
+"I've had a hard fight for you, old man," the doctor explained. "I
+couldn't leave you here to die."
+
+"I guess I must 'a' been pretty sick."
+
+"Right! There's no hospital here, so I took this cabin--borrowed it
+from the Company. We don't burn much fuel, and expenses aren't high."
+
+"You been standin' off the landlord?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a considerable silence, then Bill said, fervently: "You're a
+regular guy, like I told you! But you got your pill business to attend
+to. I'm all right now, so you better blow."
+
+Thomas smiled dubiously. "You're a long way from all right, and
+there's no place to 'blow' to. The last boat sailed two weeks ago."
+
+"Last boat for where?"
+
+"For anywhere. We're here for the winter, unless the mail-carrier will
+take us to Nome, or up the Yukon, after the trails open."
+
+"I bet you'll do a good business right here, when folks see what you
+done for me," Bill ventured.
+
+"Just wait till you look at the town--deserted warehouses, some young
+and healthy watchmen, and a Siwash village. You're the only possible
+patient in all of St. Michaels."
+
+Bill lay silent for an hour, staring through the open cabin window
+at a gray curtain of falling snowflakes; then he shook his head and
+muttered:
+
+"Well, I be danged!"
+
+"Anything you want?" Thomas inquired, quickly.
+
+"I was just thinking about that gal." Bill indicated the
+leather-framed photograph which was prominently featured above the
+other bunk. "You ain't gettin' ahead very fast, are you?"
+
+This time the young medical man smiled with his lips only--his eyes
+were grave and troubled. "I've written her all the circumstances, and
+she'll understand. She's that sort of a girl." He turned cheerfully
+back to his task. "I found that I had a few dollars left, so we won't
+starve."
+
+Mr. Hyde felt impelled to confess that in his war-bag there was a roll
+of some seven hundred dollars, title to which had vested in him on the
+northward trip, together with certain miscellaneous objects of virtu,
+but he resisted the impulse, fearing that an investigation by his
+nurse might lead the latter to believe that he, Bill, was not a
+harness-maker at all, but a jewelry salesman. He determined to spring
+that roll at a later date, and to present the doctor with a very thin,
+very choice gold watch out of State-room 27. Bill carried out this
+intention when he had sufficiently recovered to get about.
+
+Later, when his lungs had healed, Bill hired the mail-man to take him
+and his nurse to Nome. Since he was not yet altogether strong, he rode
+the sled most of the way, while the doctor walked. It was a slow and
+tiresome trip, along the dreary shores of Behring Sea, over timberless
+tundras, across inlets where the new ice bent beneath their weight and
+where the mail-carrier cautiously tested the footing with the head of
+his ax. Sometimes they slept in their tent, or again in road-houses
+and in Indian villages.
+
+Every hour Laughing Bill grew stronger, and with his strength of
+body grew his strength of affection for the youthful doctor. Bill
+experienced a dog-like satisfaction in merely being near him; he
+suffered pangs when Thomas made new friends; he monopolized him
+jealously. The knowledge that he had a pal was new and thrilling; it
+gave Bill constant food for thought and speculation. Thomas was always
+gentle and considerate, but his little services, his unobtrusive
+sacrifices never went unnoticed, and they awoke in the bandit an
+ever-increasing wonderment. Also, they awoke a fierce desire to square
+the obligation.
+
+The two men laid over at one of the old Russian towns, and Thomas, as
+was his restless custom, made investigation of the native village.
+Of course Bill went with him. They had learned by this time to enter
+Indian houses without knocking, so, therefore, when they finally came
+to a cabin larger and cleaner than the rest they opened the door and
+stepped inside, quite like experienced travelers.
+
+A squaw was bent over a tub of washing, another stood beside the tiny
+frosted window staring out. Neither woman answered the greeting of the
+white men.
+
+"Must be the chief's house," Thomas observed.
+
+"Must be! I s'pose the old bird is out adding up his reindeer.
+'Sapolio Sue' is prob'ly his head wife." Laughing Bill ran an
+interested eye over the orderly interior. "Some shack, but--I miss the
+usual smell."
+
+Neither woman paid them the least attention, so they continued to talk
+with each other.
+
+"I wonder what she is washing," Doctor Thomas said, finally.
+
+The figure at the window turned, exposing the face of a comely young
+Indian girl. Her features were good, her skin was light. She eyed the
+intruders coolly, then in a well-modulated voice, and in excellent
+English, she said:
+
+"She is washing a pair of sealskin pants."
+
+Both men removed their caps in sudden embarrassment. Thomas exclaimed:
+
+"I beg your pardon! We thought this was just an ordinary native house,
+or we wouldn't have intruded."
+
+"You haven't intruded. This is 'Reindeer Mary's' house." The girl had
+again turned her back.
+
+"Are you Reindeer Mary?"
+
+"No, I am Ponatah. Mary befriended me; she lets me live with her."
+
+"Allow me to introduce Mr. Hyde. I am Doctor Thomas. We were very
+rude--"
+
+"Oh, everybody comes here." The men recognized instantly in the
+speaker's face, as well as in her voice, that education had set its
+stamp. "Will you sit down and wait for her?"
+
+"You overwhelm us." After an awkward moment the physician queried,
+"How in the world did you learn to speak such good English?"
+
+"A missionary took an interest in me when I was a little girl. He sent
+me to Carlisle."
+
+Laughing Bill had been an attentive listener, now he ventured to say:
+"I know this Carlisle. He's a swell football player, or something."
+
+Ponatah smiled, showing a row of small, white teeth. "Carlisle is an
+Indian school."
+
+"What made you come back?" Thomas inquired, curiously.
+
+Ponatah shrugged her shoulders. "There was an end to the money. What
+could I do? At first I thought I'd be able to help my people, but--I
+couldn't. They will learn from the white people, but not from one of
+their own kind."
+
+"Your parents--?"
+
+"They died when I was a baby. Mary took me in." The girl spoke in a
+flat, emotionless tone.
+
+"It must be tough to come back to this, now that you know what life
+really is," said Thomas, after a time.
+
+Ponatah's eyes were dark with tragedy when she turned them to the
+speaker. "_God!_" she cried, unexpectedly, then abruptly she faced
+the window once more. It was a moment before she went on in fierce
+resentment:
+
+"Why didn't they leave me as they found me? Why did they teach me
+their ways, and then send me back to this--this dirt and ignorance and
+squalor? Sometimes I think I can't stand it. But what can I do? Nobody
+understands. Mary can't see why I'm different from her and the others.
+She has grown rich, with her reindeer; she says if this is good enough
+for her it should be good enough for me. As for the white men who come
+through, they can't, or they won't, understand. They're hateful to me.
+Petersen, the mail-carrier, for instance! I don't know why I'm telling
+you this. You're strangers. You're probably just like Petersen."
+
+"I know why you're telling us," Thomas said, slowly. "It's because
+I--because we're _not_ like Petersen and the others; it's because
+I--we can help you."
+
+"Help me?" sneered the girl. "How?"
+
+"I don't know, yet. But you're out of place here. There's a place for
+you somewhere; I'll find it."
+
+Ponatah shook her head wearily. "Mary says I belong here, with my
+people."
+
+"No. You belong with white people--people who will treat you well."
+
+This time the girl smiled bitterly. "They have treated me worse than
+my own people have. I know them, and--I hate them."
+
+"Ain't you the sore-head, now?" Laughing Bill murmured. "You got a
+hundred-per-cent. grouch, but if the old medicine-man says he'll put
+you in right, you bet your string of beads he'll do it. He's got a
+gift for helpin' down-and-outers. You got class, Kid; you certainly
+rhinestone this whole bunch of red men. Why, you belong in French
+heels and a boodwar cap; that's how I dope you."
+
+"There must be a chance for a girl like you in Nome," Thomas
+continued, thoughtfully. "You'd make a good hand with children.
+Suppose I try to find you a place as governess?"
+
+"_Would_ you?" Ponatah's face was suddenly eager. "Children? Oh yes!
+I'd work my fingers to the bone. I--I'd do _anything_--"
+
+"Then I'll do what I can."
+
+For some time longer the three of them talked, and gradually into the
+native girl's eyes there came a light, for these men were not like the
+others she had met, and she saw the world begin to unfold before her.
+When at last they left she laid a hand upon the doctor's arm and said,
+imploringly:
+
+"You won't forget. You--promise?"
+
+"I promise," he told her.
+
+"He don't forget nothing," Bill assured her, "and if he does I'll see
+that he don't."
+
+After they had gone Ponatah stood motionless for a long time, then she
+whispered, breathlessly:
+
+"Children! Little white children! I'll be very good to them."
+
+"She's a classy quilt," Laughing Bill said, on the way back to the
+road-house.
+
+"She's as pretty as a picture, and little more than a child," the
+doctor admitted.
+
+"You made a hit. She'd do 'most anything for you." The doctor
+muttered, absent-mindedly. "She's stood off Petersen and these
+red-necks, but she'd fall for you." Mr. Hyde was insinuating.
+
+Thomas halted; he stared at his partner curiously, coldly. "Say! Do
+you think that's why I offered to help her?" he inquired.
+
+"Come clean!" The invalid winked meaningly. "You're a long ways from
+home, and I've knew fellers to do a lot worse. You can grab her, easy.
+And if you do--"
+
+Thomas grunted angrily. "I've put up with a lot from you," he said,
+then he strode on.
+
+"And if you do," the other resumed, falling into step with him, "I'll
+bust you right where you're thickest."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I'll bust you wide open. Oh, me 'n' that gal in the leather frame had
+a long talk while I was sick in St. Mikes, and she asked me to keep
+you in the middle of the trail. Well, I'm the little guy that can do
+it."
+
+"Bill!" Evan Thomas's eyes were twinkling. "I believe I'm going to
+cure you, after all," said he.
+
+Late that afternoon Mr. Hyde disappeared; he did not show up until
+after dark.
+
+"I been to see Lo, the poor squaw," he readily confessed. "She ain't
+the pure domestic leaf, she's a blend--part Rooshian, or something.
+Seems there was a gang of Rooshians or Swedes or Dagoes of some sort
+used to run this country. She says they horned into some of the best
+Injun families, and she's one of the 'overs.'"
+
+"They were Russians."
+
+"Rooshians is a kind of white people, ain't they? Well, that's how she
+come so light-complected. You remember she said our folks had treated
+her bad? It's a fact, Doc. She spilled the story, and it made a
+mouthful. It's like this: when Nome was struck a Swede feller she
+had knew staked her a claim, but she couldn't hold it, her bein' a
+squab--under age, savvy? There's something in the law that prevents
+Injuns gettin' in on anything good, too; I don't rightly recollect
+what it is, but if it's legal you can bet it's crooked. Anyhow, Uncle
+Sam lets up a squawk that she's only eighteen, goin' on nineteen, and
+a noble redskin to boot, and says his mining claims is reserved for
+Laps and Yaps and Japs and Wops, and such other furrin' slantheads of
+legal age as declare their intention to become American citizens if
+their claims turn out rich enough so's it pays 'em to do so.
+
+"Well, Ponatah's Swede friend gets himself froze, somehow, so she has
+to pass the buck. Naturally, she turns to her pals, the missionaries.
+There's a he-missionary here--head mug of the whole gang. He's a godly
+walloper, and he tears into Satan bare-handed every Sunday. He slams
+the devil around something shameful, and Ponatah thinks he's a square
+guy if ever they come square, so she asks him to re-locate her claim,
+on shares, and hold it for the joint account. Old Doctor M.E. Church
+agrees to split fifty-fifty, half to her and half to heaven, then he
+vamps to Nome and chalks his monaker over the Kid's. Now get me: the
+claim turns out good, and Ponatah's heavenly pilot makes a Mexican
+divvy--he takes the money and gives her his best wishes. He grabs
+everything, and says he never knew nobody by the name of Ponatah--he
+gets so he can't even pronounce it. He allows her face is familiar,
+but he can't place her, and the partnership idea allus was repugnant
+to him. He never was partners with nobody, understand? He blows the
+show; he bows out and leaves the Kid flat. He forsakes the Milky Way
+for the Great White one, and he's out there now, smokin' Coronas and
+wearin' a red vest under his black coat, with a diamond horseshoe
+in his tie. It looks to me like the James boys could 'a' learned
+something from this gospel hold-up."
+
+"Do you believe her story?" Thomas inquired.
+
+"She don't know enough to lie, and you can't trust a guy that wears
+his collar backwards."
+
+"She should go to court."
+
+Mr. Hyde shook his head. "I been there, often, but I never picked up a
+bet. Somehow or other courts is usually right next to jails, and you
+got to watch out you don't get in the wrong place. You can't win
+nothing in either one. I thought I'd tell you the story, so if you
+ever meet up with this shave-tail preacher and he wants a headache
+pill you can slip him some sugar-coated arsenic."
+
+In the days immediately following Doctor Thomas's arrival at Nome
+he was a busy man, but he did not forget Ponatah. He was allowed no
+opportunity of doing so, for Bill frequently reminded him of her, and
+as a result it was not long before he found a place for his charge, in
+the home of a leading merchant. Arrangements made, Bill went in search
+of the mail-carrier.
+
+Petersen was drinking with two friends at the bar of the Last Chance,
+and he pressed his late passenger to join them. But alcoholism was not
+one of Mr. Hyde's weaknesses. The best of Bill's bad habits was much
+worse than drink; he had learned from experience that liquor put a
+traitor's tongue in his head, and in consequence he was a teetotaler.
+
+"I got a job for you, Pete," he announced. "I got you another
+sled-load for your next trip. You know Ponatah?"
+
+"Ponatah? Sure Aye know 'im." Petersen. spoke with enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, bring her along when you come. Me 'n' the little Doc will
+settle."
+
+"Dat's good yob for me, all right. Vot mak' you tank she'll come? Aye
+ask her plenty tams, but she ant like me."
+
+"You slip her this billy-ducks and she'll come."
+
+Petersen pocketed the letter which Bill handed him; his eyes
+brightened; the flush in his face deepened. "You bet your gum boots
+Aye bring her. She's svell, ant she, Bill? She's yust some svell like
+white voman."
+
+"Who's this?" queried one of Petersen's companions.
+
+"Ponatah. She's jung sqvaw. Aye got eyes on dat chicken long tam
+now." The burly mail-man laughed loudly and slapped his friend on the
+shoulder.
+
+Mr. Hyde appeared to share in the general good nature. Carelessly,
+smilingly he picked up Petersen's dog-whip, which lay coiled on the
+bar; thoughtfully he weighed it. The lash was long, but the handle was
+short and thick, and its butt was loaded with shot; it had much the
+balance of a black-jack--a weapon not unknown to Mr. Hyde.
+
+"Pretty soft for you mail-men." The former speaker grinned.
+
+"Ja! Pretty soft. Aye bet Aye have good tam dis trip. Yust vait. You
+don't know how purty is Ponatah. She--"
+
+Petersen's listeners waited. They are waiting yet, for the mail-man
+never completed his admiring recital of the Indian girl's charms,
+owing to the fact that the genial Mr. Hyde without warning tapped his
+late friend's round head with the leather butt of the dog-whip. Had
+it not been for the Norseman's otter cap it is probable that a new
+mail-carrier would have taken the St. Michaels run.
+
+Petersen sat down upon his heels, and rested his forehead against the
+cool brass foot-rail; the subsequent proceedings interested him not
+at all. Those proceedings were varied and sudden, for the nearest and
+dearest of Petersen's friends rushed upon Mr. Hyde with a roar. Him,
+too, Bill eliminated from consideration with the loaded whip handle.
+But, this done, Bill found himself hugged in the arms of the other
+man, as in the embrace of a bereaved she-grizzly. Now even at his best
+the laughing Mr. Hyde was no hand at rough-and-tumble, it being his
+opinion that fisticuffs was a peculiarly indecisive and exhausting way
+of settling a dispute. He possessed a vile temper, moreover, and once
+aroused half measures failed to satisfy it.
+
+After Mr. Hyde's admirable beginning those neutrals who had seen the
+start of the affray were prepared to witness an ending equally quick
+and conclusive. They were surprised, therefore, to note that Bill put
+up a very weak struggle, once he had come to close quarters. He made
+only the feeblest resistance, before permitting himself to be borne
+backward to the floor, and then as he lay pinned beneath his opponent
+he did not even try to guard the blows that rained upon him; as a
+matter of fact, he continued to laugh as if the experience were highly
+diverting.
+
+Seeing that the fight was one-sided, the bartender hastened from his
+retreat, dragged Petersen's champion to his feet, and flung him back
+into the arms of the onlookers, after which he stooped to aid the
+loser. His hands were actually upon Bill before he understood the
+meaning of that peculiar laughter, and saw in Mr. Hyde's shaking
+fingers that which caused him to drop the prostrate victim as if he
+were a rattlesnake.
+
+"God'l'mighty!" exclaimed the rescuer. He retreated hurriedly whence
+he had come.
+
+Bill rose and dusted himself off, then he bent over Petersen, who was
+stirring.
+
+"Just give her that billy-ducks and tell her it's all right. Tell her
+I say you won't hurt her none." Then, still chuckling, he slipped into
+the crowd and out of the Last Chance. As he went he coughed and spat a
+mouthful of blood.
+
+Once the mail-carrier had been apprised of the amazing incidents which
+had occurred during his temporary inattention, he vowed vengeance in
+a mighty voice, and his threats found echo in the throats of his two
+companions. But the bartender took them aside and spoke guardedly:
+
+"You better lay off of that guy, or he'll fatten the graveyard with
+all three of you. I didn't 'make' him at first, but I got him now, all
+right."
+
+"What d'you mean? Who is he?"
+
+"His name's Hyde, 'Laughing Bill.'"
+
+"'Laughing Bill' Hyde!" One of Petersen's friends, he who had come
+last into the encounter, turned yellow and leaned hard against the
+bar. A sudden nausea assailed him and he laid tender hands upon his
+abdomen. "'Laughing Bill' Hyde! That's why he went down so easy! Why,
+he killed a feller I knew--ribboned him up from underneath, just
+that way--and the jury called it self-defense." A shudder racked the
+speaker's frame.
+
+"Sure! He's a cutter--a reg'lar gent's cutter and fitter. He'd 'a' had
+you all over the floor in another minute; if I hadn't pried you apart
+they'd 'a' sewed sawdust up inside of you like you was a doll. He had
+the old bone-handled skinner in his mit; that's why I let go of him.
+Laughing Bill! Take it from me, boys, you better walk around him like
+he was a hole in the ice."
+
+It may have been the memory of that heavy whip handle, it may have
+been the moral effect of stray biographical bits garnered here and
+there around the gambling-table, or it may have been merely a high
+and natural chivalry, totally unsuspected until now, which prompted
+Petersen to treat Ponatah with a chill and formal courtesy when he
+returned from St. Michaels. At any rate, the girl arrived in Nome with
+nothing but praise for the mail-man. Pete Petersen, so she said, might
+have his faults, but he knew how to behave like a perfect gentleman.
+
+Ponatah took up her new duties with enthusiasm, and before a month had
+passed she had endeared herself to her employers, who secretly assured
+Doctor Thomas that they had discovered a treasure and would never part
+with her. She was gentle, patient, sweet, industrious; the children
+idolized her. The Indian girl had never dreamed of a home like this;
+she was deliriously happy.
+
+She took pride in discharging her obligations; she did not forget the
+men who had made this wonder possible. They had rented a little cabin,
+and, after the fashion of men, they make slipshod efforts at keeping
+house. Since it was Ponatah's nature to serve, she found time somehow
+to keep the place tidy and to see to their comfort.
+
+Laughing Bill was a hopeless idler; he had been born to leisure and
+was wedded to indigence, therefore he saw a good deal of the girl on
+her visits. He listened to her stories of the children, he admired her
+new and stylish clothes, he watched her develop under the influence of
+her surroundings. Inasmuch as both of them were waifs, and beholden
+to the bounty of others, thy had ties in common--a certain
+mutuality--hence they came to know each other intimately.
+
+Despite the great change in her environment, Ponatah remained in many
+ways quite aboriginal. For instance, she was embarrassingly direct and
+straightforward; she entirely lacked hypocrisy, and that which puzzled
+or troubled her she boldly put into words. There came a time when Bill
+discovered that Ponatah's eyes, when they looked at him, were more
+than friendly, that most of the services she performed were aimed at
+him.
+
+Then one day she asked him to marry her.
+
+There was nothing brazen or forward about the proposal; Ponatah merely
+gave voice to her feelings in a simple, honest way that robbed her of
+no dignity.
+
+Bill laughed the proposal off. "I wouldn't marry the Queen of Sheby,"
+said he.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I ain't that kind of a bird, that's why."
+
+"What kind of a bird are you?" Ponatah eyed him with grave curiosity.
+"All men marry. I'm reading a great many books, and they're all about
+love and marriage. I love you, and I'm pretty. Is it because I'm an
+Indian--?"
+
+"Hell! That wouldn't faze me, Kiddo. You skin the white dames around
+this village. But you better cut out them books."
+
+"I'd make you a good wife."
+
+"Sure! You're aces. But I'd make a bum husband. I ain't got the breath
+to blow out a candle." Mr. Hyde chuckled; the idea of marriage plainly
+amused him. "How you know I ain't got a covey of wives?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, I know!" Ponatah was unsmiling. "I'm simple, but I can see
+through people. I can tell the good ones and the bad ones. You're a
+good man, Billy."
+
+Now this praise was anything but agreeable to Mr. Hyde, for above all
+things he abhorred so-called "good" people. Good people were suckers,
+and he prided himself upon being a wise guy, with all that was meant
+thereby.
+
+"You lay off of me, Kid," he warned, darkly, "and you muffle them
+wedding bells. You can't win nothing with that line of talk. If I
+was fifty inches around the chest, liked to work, and was fond of
+pas'ment'ries I'd prob'ly fall for you, but I ain't. I'm a good man,
+all right--to leave alone. I'll be a brother to you, but that's my
+limit." The subject was embarrassing, so he changed it. "Say! I been
+thinking about that claim of yours. Didn't you get no paper from that
+missionary?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then his word's as good as yours."
+
+"That's what the lawyer told me. I offered to give him half, but he
+wouldn't touch the case."
+
+"It was a dirty deal, but you better forget it."
+
+"I'll try," the girl promised. "But I don't forget easily."
+
+Laughing Bill's rejection of Ponatah's offer of marriage did not in
+the least affect their friendly relations. She continued to visit the
+cabin, and not infrequently she reverted to the forbidden topic, only
+to meet with discouragement.
+
+Doctor Thomas had opened an office, of course, but business was light
+and expenses heavy. Supplies were low in Nome and prices high; coal,
+for instance, was a hundred dollars a ton and, as a result, most
+of the idle citizens spent their evenings---but precious little
+else--around the saloon stoves. When April came Laughing Bill
+regretfully decided that it was necessary for him to go to work. The
+prospect was depressing, and he did not easily reconcile himself to
+it, for he would have infinitely preferred some less degraded and
+humiliating way out of the difficulty. He put up a desperate battle
+against the necessity, and he did not accept the inevitable until
+thoroughly convinced that the practice of medicine and burglary could
+not be carried on from the same residence without the risk of serious
+embarrassment to his benefactor.
+
+However, to find employment in a community where there were two men to
+one job was not easy, but happily--or unhappily--Bill had a smattering
+of many trades, and eventually there came an opening as handy-man at a
+mine. It was a lowly position, and Bill had little pride in it, for
+he was put to helping the cook, waiting on table, washing dishes,
+sweeping cabins, making beds, and the like. He had been assured that
+the work was light, and so it was, but it was also continuous. He
+could summon not the slightest interest in it until he discovered that
+this was the very claim which rightfully belonged to Ponatah. Then,
+indeed, he pricked up his ears.
+
+The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all
+winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the
+industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and
+that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to
+personally oversee the clean-ups. The ex-missionary, Bill discovered,
+had the reputation of being a tight man, and meanly suspicious in
+money matters. He reposed no confidence in his superintendent, a
+surly, saturnine fellow known as Black Jack Berg, nor in Denny Slevin,
+his foreman. So much Laughing Bill gathered from camp gossip.
+
+It soon became evident that Black Jack was a hard driver, for sluicing
+began with the first trickle of snow water--even while the ditches
+were still ice-bound--and it continued with double shifts thereafter.
+A representative of Doctor Slayforth came out from Nome to watch the
+first clean-up, and Bill, in his capacity as chambermaid, set up a cot
+for him in the cabin shared by Black Jack and Denny. While so engaged
+the latter discovered him, and gruffly ordered him to remove the cot
+to the bunk-house.
+
+"Put him in with the men," growled Slevin. "Serves the dam' spy
+right."
+
+"Spy? Is he a gum-shoe?" Mr. Hyde paused, a pillow slip between his
+teeth.
+
+"That's what! Me and Jack was honest enough to run things all
+winter, but we ain't honest enough to clean up. That's like old
+Slayforth--always lookin' to get the worst of it. I'm square, and so's
+Jack. Makes me sick, this spyin' on honest folks. Everybody knows we
+wouldn't turn a trick."
+
+Now it was Laughing Bill's experience that honesty needs no boosting,
+and that he who most loudly vaunts his rectitude is he who is least
+certain of it.
+
+"The boss must be a good man, him being a sort of psalm-singer," Bill
+ventured, guilelessly.
+
+Denny snorted: "Oh, sure! He's good, all right. He's 'most too
+good--to be true. Billy, my boy, when you've seen as many crooks as I
+have you'll know 'em, no matter how they come dressed."
+
+As he folded the cot Mr. Hyde opined that worldly experience must
+indeed be a fine thing to possess.
+
+"You go gamble on it!" Slevin agreed. "Now then, just tell that
+Hawkshaw we don't want no dam' spies in our house. We're square guys,
+and we can't stomach 'em."
+
+That evening Black Jack called upon the handy-man to help with the
+clean-up, and put him to tend the water while he and Denny, under the
+watchful eye of the owner's representative, lifted the riffles, worked
+down the concentrates, and removed them from the boxes.
+
+Bill was an experienced placer miner, so it was not many days before
+he was asked to help in the actual cleaning of the sluices. He was
+glad of the promotion, for, as he told himself, no man can squeeze a
+lemon without getting juice on his fingers. It will be seen, alas!
+that Mr. Hyde's moral sense remained blunted in spite of the refining
+influence of his association with Doctor Thomas. But Aurora dust
+was fine, and the handy-man's profits were scarcely worth the risks
+involved in taking them.
+
+One morning while Bill was cleaning up the superintendent's cabin
+he noticed a tiny yellow flake of gold upon the floor in front of
+Slevin's bed. Careful examination showed him several "colors" of the
+same sort, so he swept the boards carefully and took up the dust in
+a "blower." He breathed upon the pile, blowing the lighter particles
+away. A considerable residue of heavy yellow grains remained. With
+a grin Bill folded them in a cigarette paper and placed them in his
+pocket. But it puzzled him to explain how there came to be gold on the
+cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found
+another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded
+perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal--enough to set him to
+thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's
+bunk he could find no pay whatever.
+
+Slevin had left his hip boots in the cabin, and as Laughing Bill
+turned down their tops and set them out in the wind to dry his sharp
+eye detected several yellow pin-points of color which proved, upon
+closer investigation, to be specks of gold clinging to the wet lining.
+
+"Well, I be danged!" said Mr. Hyde. Carefully, thoughtfully, he
+replaced the boots where he had found them. The knowledge that he was
+on a hot trail electrified him.
+
+At the next clean-up Laughing Bill took less interest in his part of
+the work and more in Denny Slevin's. When the riffles were washed,
+and the loose gravel had been worked down into yellow piles of rich
+concentrates, Slevin, armed with whisk broom, paddle, and scoop,
+climbed into the sluices. Bill watched him out of a corner of his eye,
+and it was not long before his vigilance was rewarded. The hold-up
+man turned away with a feeling of genuine admiration, for he had
+seen Slevin, under the very nose of the lookout, "go south" with a
+substantial amount of gold.
+
+The foreman's daring and dexterity amazed Bill and deepened his
+respect. Slevin's work was cunning, and yet so simple as to be almost
+laughable. With his hip boots pulled high he had knelt upon one knee
+in the sluice scooping up the wet piles of gold and black iron sand,
+while Berg held a gold pan to receive it. During the process Black
+Jack had turned to address the vigilant owner's representative, and,
+profiting by the brief diversion, Bill had seen Denny dump a heaping
+scoop-load of "pay" into the gaping pocket-like top of his capacious
+rubber boot.
+
+"The sons-of-a-gun!" breathed Laughing Bill. "The double-crossing
+sons-of-a-gun! Why, it begins to look like a big summer for me."
+
+Bill slept well that night, for now that he knew the game which was
+going on he felt sure that sooner or later he would take a hand in it.
+Just how or when the hand would fall he could not tell, but that did
+not worry him in the least, inasmuch as he already held the trumps. It
+seemed that a kindly fortune had guided him to the Aurora; that fate
+had decreed he should avenge the wrongs of Ponatah. The handy-man fell
+asleep with a smile upon his lips.
+
+The first ship arrived that very evening, and the next day Doctor
+Slayforth in person appeared at the Aurora. He was a thin, restless
+man with weak and shifting eyes; he said grace at dinner, giving
+thanks for the scanty rations of hash and brown beans over which his
+hungry workmen were poised like cormorants. The Aurora had won the
+name of a bad feeder, but its owner seemed satisfied with his meal.
+Later Bill overheard him talking with his superintendent.
+
+"I'm disappointed with the clean-ups," Slayforth confessed. "The pay
+appears to be pinching out."
+
+"She don't wash like she sampled, that's a fact," said Black Jack.
+
+"I'm afraid we shall have to practise economies--"
+
+"Look here! If you aim to cut down the grub, don't try it," counseled
+Berg. "It's rotten now."
+
+"Indeed? There appeared to be plenty, and the quality was excellent. I
+fear you encourage gluttony, and nothing so interferes with work. We
+must effect a saving somehow; there is too great a variation between
+theoretical and actual values."
+
+"Huh! You better try feeding hay for a while," sourly grumbled the
+superintendent. "If you ain't getting what you aimed to get it's
+because it ain't in the cards."
+
+This conversation interested Bill, for it proved that the robbers had
+helped themselves with a liberal hand, but how they had managed to
+appropriate enough gold to noticeably affect the showing of the
+winter's work intensely mystified him; it led him to believe that
+Black Jack and Denny were out for a homestake.
+
+That such was indeed the case and that Slevin was not the only thief
+Bill soon discovered, for after the next clean-up he slipped away
+through the twilight and took stand among the alders outside the rear
+window of the shack on the hill. From his point of concealment he
+could observe all that went on inside.
+
+It was a familiar scene. By the light of an oil lamp Black Jack was
+putting the final touches to the clean-up. Two gold pans, heaped high
+with the mingled black sand and gold dust, as it came out of the
+sluices, were drying on the Yukon stove, and the superintendent was
+engaged in separating the precious yellow particles from the worthless
+material which gravity had deposited with it. This refining process
+was slow, painstaking work, and was effected with the help of a flat
+brass scoop--a "blower." By shaking this blower and breathing upon its
+contents the lighter grains of iron sand were propelled to the edge,
+as chaff is separated from wheat, and fell into a box held between the
+superintendent's knees. The residue, left in the heel of the blower
+after each blowing process, was commercial "dust," ready for the bank
+or the assay office. Doctor Slayforth, with his glasses on the end of
+his nose, presided at the gold scales, while Denny Slevin looked on.
+As the dust was weighed, a few ounces at a time, it was dumped into a
+moose-skin sack and entered upon the books.
+
+Black Jack had the light at his back, he was facing the window,
+therefore Laughing Bill commanded an unobstructed view of his
+adept manipulations. It was not long before the latter saw him
+surreptitiously drop a considerable quantity of gold out of the scoop
+and into the box between his knees, then cover it up with the black
+sand. This sleight-of-hand was repeated several times, and when
+the last heap of gold had been weighed Bill estimated that Doctor
+Slayforth was poorer by at least a hundred ounces--sixteen hundred
+dollars. There was no question about it now; these were not common
+thieves; this was becoming a regular man's game, and the stakes were
+assuming a size to give Laughing Bill a tingling sensation along his
+spine. Having discovered the _modus operandi_ of the pair, and having
+read their cards, so to speak, he next set himself to discover where
+they banked their swag. But this was by no means easy. His utmost
+vigilance went unrewarded by so much as a single clue.
+
+Berg and Slevin had a habit of riding into town on Saturday nights,
+and the next time they left the claim Bill pleaded a jumping toothache
+and set out afoot for medical attention.
+
+It was late when he arrived at Nome, nevertheless a diligent search
+of the Front Street saloons failed to locate either man. He was still
+looking for them when they came riding in.
+
+With their delayed arrival Bill's apprehensions vanished, as likewise
+did his imaginary toothache. He had feared that they were in the habit
+of bringing the gold to Nome, there perhaps to bank it with some
+friend; but now he knew that they were too cautious for that, and
+preferred instead to cache it somewhere in the hills. This simplified
+matters immensely, so Bill looked up his little doctor for a sociable
+visit.
+
+Thomas was in his office; he greeted Bill warmly.
+
+"Say! Pill-rolling must be brisk to keep you on the job till
+midnight," the latter began.
+
+"Business is rotten!" exclaimed the physician. "And it's a rotten
+business."
+
+"Nobody sick? That's tough. Open a can of typhoid germs, and I'll put
+'em in the well. Anything to stir up a little trade."
+
+"I've just balanced my books and--I've just heard from Alice."
+
+"Do the books balance?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly--nothing equals nothing--it's a perfect equilibrium.
+Alice wants me to come home and start all over, and I'm tempted to do
+so."
+
+"Ain't going to throw up your tail, are you?"
+
+"I can't get along without her." Thomas was plainly in the depths; he
+turned away and stared moodily out into the dim-lit street. It was
+midnight, but already the days were shortening, already there was an
+hour or two of dusk between the evening and the morning light.
+
+"Of course you can't get along without her," the ex-bandit agreed. "I
+seen that when I looked at her picture. Why don't you bring her in?"
+
+"Bring her in--_here_?" Thomas faced about quickly. "Humph! Not much."
+
+"Well, this ain't no doll's village, that's a fact. It's full of
+wicked men, and the women ain't wuth braggin' over. S'pose we go out
+and marry her?"
+
+"We?" Thomas smiled for the first time.
+
+"Sure. I'll stick to the bitter finish."
+
+"I'm broke, Bill."
+
+"Pshaw, now! Don't let that worry you. I got money."
+
+"You?" The doctor was surprised. "Where did you get it?"
+
+"Well, I _got_ it! That's the main thing. It was--left to me."
+
+"Honestly?"
+
+"What d'you mean, 'honestly'?"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"I dunno, exactly. You see, I ain't got it actually in my mit--"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"But I'll have it, all righto. It's just waiting for me to close down
+on it. I reckon there must be a thousand gold buzzards in the stack,
+mebby more. It's all yours."
+
+"Thanks!" said the physician, unimpressed.
+
+"Look me in the eye." Bill spoke earnestly. "Twenty thousand iron men
+ain't so bad. It'll buy a lot of doll's clothes. We can have a big
+party--I ain't kidding!" Then reading amused incredulity in his
+friend's face he demanded: "How you know I ain't got a rich uncle that
+raised me from a colt and that broke his heart at me runnin' away and
+turning out wild, and has had lawyers gunnin' for me ever since he
+knew he was gettin' old and going to croak? How you know that, eh?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't know anything about you, Bill. That's one of
+the most interesting features of our friendship."
+
+"Well, pay a little attention to me. Now then, I figger it like this:
+I got lungs like a grasshopper, and the money won't do me no good, so
+I'll stake you and Miss Alice to it."
+
+Doctor Thomas eyed the speaker curiously. "I believe you would," said
+he, after a moment.
+
+"Would I? Say! You ever seen a feather bed tied up with a rope? You
+sit tight and I'll slip you a roll just that size."
+
+"Of course you know I wouldn't take it?"
+
+"Why not? It's more'n likely it'll get me into evil company or gimme
+some bad habit, and I'll gargle off before I've had a chance to spend
+it. I ain't strong."
+
+"I'll earn what I get, Billy."
+
+"All right. If you feel like that I'll bet it for you on a crap game,
+and you can take the winnings--"
+
+"Nothing doing. I want honest money--money that I can look in the
+face."
+
+Mr. Hyde was out of patience. "All money's honest, after you get it!"
+he cried. "It's gettin' it that draws blood. I never knew the silver
+bird to fly off a dollar and scratch a guy, did you?"
+
+"I want to make money--that's why I came up to this God-forsaken
+place--but--when your uncle's draft arrives you cash it."
+
+"Ain't you the champeen bone-dome?" muttered Bill. Such an attitude
+seemed to him both senseless and quixotic, for he had never attached
+the least sentiment to money. Money was an elemental necessity,
+therefore he looked upon it with practical, unromantic eyes,
+and helped himself to it as he helped himself to such elemental
+necessities as air or water. Most of life's necessaries had fallen
+into monopolistic hands and were used to wring tribute from
+unfortunate mortals who had arrived too late to share in the graft, as
+witness, for instance, Standard Oil. So ran Bill's reasoning when he
+took the trouble to reason at all. Men had established arbitrary rules
+to govern their forays upon one another's property, to be sure, but
+under cover of these artificial laws they stole merrily, and got away
+with it. Eagles did not scruple to steal from one another, horses ate
+one another's fodder; why human beings should not do likewise had
+always puzzled Mr. Hyde. The basic principle held good in both cases,
+it seemed to him, and Doctor Thomas's refusal to share in the coming
+legacy struck him as silly; it was the result of a warped and unsound
+philosophy. But argue as he would he could not shake his friend's
+opinion of the matter.
+
+One evening, not long after his visit to town, Bill's toothache
+returned again to plague him. He raised groans and hoarse profanities,
+and then, while the crew was still at supper, he abandoned his work
+and set out in search of relief. But he did not go to Nome. Once
+out of sight of the mine he doubled back and came out behind the
+superintendent's cabin. A moment later he was stretched out in the
+narrow, dark space beneath Black Jack's bunk. Dust irritated Bill's
+lungs, therefore he had carefully swept out the place that morning;
+likewise he had thoughtfully provided himself with a cotton comforter
+as protection to his bones. He had no intention of permitting himself
+to be taken at a disadvantage, and knowing full well the painful
+consequences of discovery he opened his bone-handled pocket-knife and
+tested its keen edge with his thumb. In the interests of peace and
+good-fellowship, however, he hoped he could go through the night
+without coughing.
+
+Slevin was the first to return from supper. He went directly to his
+bunk, drew a bottle of whisky from beneath his pillow, poured himself
+a drink, and replaced the bottle. When Berg entered he went through a
+similar procedure, after which a fire was built, the men kicked off
+their boots, lit their pipes, and stretched out upon their beds.
+
+"I've been thinking it over," the superintendent began, "and you can't
+do it."
+
+"Why not?" queried Slevin. "I told his nibs I was sick of the grub."
+
+"Foremen don't quit good jobs on account of the grub. You've got to
+stick till fall; then we'll both go. We'll strike the old man for a
+raise--"
+
+"Humph! He'll let us go, quick enough, when we do that. Let's strike
+him now. I'm through."
+
+"Nothing stirring," Berg firmly declared. "We'll play out the string.
+I'm taking no chances."
+
+"Hell! Ain't we takin' a chance every day we stay here? I'm getting
+so I don't sleep. I got enough to do me; I ain't a hog. I got a bully
+corner all picked out, Jack--best corner in Seattle for a gin-mill."
+
+"It'll wait. Corners don't get up and move. No, I won't hold the
+bag for you or for anybody," declared the former speaker. "We'll go
+through, arm in arm. Once we're away clean you can do what you like.
+Me for the Argentine and ten thousand acres of long-horns. You better
+forget that corner. Some night you'll get stewed and spill the beans."
+
+"Who, me?" Slevin laughed in disdain. "Fat chance!" There was a long
+silence during which the only sound was the bubbling of a pipe. "I
+s'pose I'll have to stick, if you say so," Denny agreed finally, "but
+I'm fed up. I'm getting jumpy. I got a hunch the cache ain't safe; I
+feel like something was goin' to happen."
+
+Mr. Slevin's premonition, under the circumstances, was almost uncanny;
+it gave startling proof of his susceptibility to outside influences.
+
+"You _are_ rickety," Black Jack told him. "Why, there ain't any
+danger; nobody goes up there." Laughing Bill held his breath, missing
+not a word. "If they did we'd pick 'em up with the glasses. It's open
+country, and we'd get 'em before they got down."
+
+"I s'pose so. But the nights are getting dark."
+
+"Nobody's out at night, either, you boob. I ain't losing any slumber
+over that. And I ain't going to lose any about your quitting ahead of
+me. That don't trouble me none." Berg yawned and changed the subject.
+Half an hour later he rose, languidly undressed and rolled into his
+bed. Slevin followed suit shortly after, and the rapidity with which
+both men fell asleep spoke volumes for the elasticity of the human
+conscience.
+
+Now, Laughing Bill had come prepared to spend the night, but his
+throat tickled and he had a distressing habit of snoring, therefore he
+deemed it the part of caution to depart before he dropped off into the
+land of dreams. He effected the manoeuver noiselessly.
+
+Bill lingered at the spring hole on the following morning, and lost
+himself in an attentive study of the surrounding scenery. It was
+fairly impressive scenery, and he had a keen appreciation of nature's
+beauty, but Black Jack's words continued to puzzle him. "Nobody goes
+up there." Up where? The Aurora lay in a valley, therefore most of the
+country round about was "up"--it was open, too. The ridges were bold
+and barren, garbed only with shreds and patches of short grass and
+reindeer moss. "We'd pick 'em up with the glasses--we'd get 'em before
+they got down." Manifestly the cache was in plain sight, if one only
+knew where to look for it, but Mr. Hyde's sharp eyes took in ten
+thousand likely hiding-places, and he reasoned that it would be worse
+than folly to go exploring blindly without more definite data than he
+possessed.
+
+It was clever of the pair to hide the swag where they could oversee it
+every hour of the day, and they had chosen a safe location, too, for
+nobody wasted the effort to explore those domes and hogbacks now that
+they were known to contain no quartz. There was Anvil Mountain, for
+instance, a bold schist peak crowned with a huge rock in the likeness
+of a blacksmith's anvil. It guarded the entrance to the valley, rising
+from the very heart of the best mining section; it was the most
+prominent landmark hereabouts, but not a dozen men had ever climbed
+it, and nowadays nobody did.
+
+As Bill pondered the enigma, out from his bed in the willows came Don
+Antonio de Chiquito, a meek and lowly burro, the only member of the
+Aurora's working force which did not outrank in social importance the
+man-of-all-work. Don Antonio was the pet of the Aurora Borealis, and
+its scavenger. He ate everything from garbage to rubber boots--he was
+even suspected of possessing a low appetite for German socks. It was,
+in fact, this very democratic taste in things edible which caused
+him to remain the steadiest of Doctor Slayforth's boarders. Wisdom,
+patience, the sagacity of Solomon, lurked in Don Antonio's eyes, and
+Laughing Bill consulted him as a friend and an equal.
+
+"Tony," said he, "you've done a heap of prospecting and you know the
+business. There's a rich pocket on one of them hills. Which one is
+it?"
+
+Don Antonio de Chiquito had ears like sunbonnets; he folded them back,
+lifted his muzzle toward Anvil rock, and brayed loudly.
+
+"Mebbe you're right," said the man. He fitted the Chinese yoke to his
+skinny shoulders, and took up his burden. The load was heavy, the yoke
+bruised his bones, therefore he was moved to complain: "The idea of
+me totin' water for the very guys that stole my uncle's money! It's
+awful--the darned crooks!"
+
+It was a rainy evening when business next took Black Jack Berg and
+Denny Slevin to town. Having dined amply, if not well, they donned
+slickers, saddled a pair of horses, and set out down the creek. Few
+people were abroad, therefore they felt secure from observation when
+they swung off the trail where it bends around the foot of Anvil
+Mountain and bore directly up through the scattered alders. The grass
+was wet, the rain erased the marks of their horses' feet almost in the
+passing. Tethering their mounts in the last clump of underbrush the
+riders labored on afoot up a shallow draw which scarred the steep
+slope. The murk of twilight obscured them, but even in a good light
+they would have run small risk of discovery, for slow-moving human
+figures would have been lost against the dark background.
+
+The climb was long and arduous; both men were panting when they
+breasted the last rise and looked down into the valley where lay the
+Aurora Borealis. This was a desolate spot, great boulders, fallen from
+the huge rock overhead, lay all about, the earth was weathered by
+winter snows and summer rains. Ghostly fingers of mist writhed over
+the peak; darkness was not far distant.
+
+The robbers remained on the crest perhaps twenty minutes, then they
+came striding down. They passed within a hundred yards of Laughing
+Bill Hyde, who lay flat in the wet grass midway of their descent.
+He watched them mount and ride out of sight, then he continued his
+painful progress up the hillside.
+
+Weak lungs are not suited to heavy grades and slippery footing. Bill
+was sobbing with agony when he conquered the last rise and collapsed
+upon his face. He feared he was dying, every cough threatened a
+hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the
+familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about
+through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the
+night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps
+to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of
+the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain;
+brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of
+a pick and shovel.
+
+For once in his life Mr. Hyde looked upon these tools with favor, and
+energetically tackled the business end of a "Number 2." He considered
+pick-and-shovel work the lowest form of human endeavor; nevertheless
+he engaged in it willingly enough, and he had not dug deeply before
+he uncovered the side of a packing-case, labeled "Choice California
+Canned Fruits." Further rapid explorations showed that the box was
+fitted with a loose top, and that the interior was well-nigh filled
+with stout canvas and moose skin bags. Bill counted them; he weighed
+one, then he sat down weakly and his hard, smoke-blue eyes widened
+with amazement.
+
+"Suffering cats!" he whispered. He voiced other expletives, too, even
+more forcefully indicative of surprise. He was not an imaginative man;
+it did not occur to him to doubt his sanity or to wonder if he were
+awake, nevertheless he opened one of the pokes and incredulously
+examined its contents. "I'm dam' if it ain't!" he said, finally. "I
+should reckon they _was_ ready to quit. Argentine! Why, Jack'll bust
+the bottom out of a boat if he takes this with him. He'll drown a lot
+of innocent people." Mr. Hyde shook his head and smiled pityingly. "It
+ain't safe to trust him with it. It ain't safe--the thievin' devil!
+There's five hundred pounds if there's an ounce!" He began to figure
+with his finger on the muddy shovel blade. "A hundred thousand bucks!"
+he announced, finally. "Them boys is _all right_!"
+
+Slowly, reluctantly, he replaced the gold sacks, reburied the box, and
+placed the tools where he had found them; then he set out for home.
+
+Don Antonio de Chiquito was contentedly munching an empty oat sack,
+doubtless impelled thereto by the lingering flavor of its former
+contents, when on the following morning Bill accosted him.
+
+"Tony, I got to hand it to you," the man said, admiringly. "You're
+some pocket miner, and you speak up like a gent when you're spoken to.
+I got some nice egg-shells saved up for you." Then his voice dropped
+to a confidential tone. "We're in with a passel of crooks, Tony. Evil
+associates, I call 'em. They're bound to have a bad influence over
+us--I feel it a'ready, don't you? Well, s'pose you meet me to-night at
+the gap in the hedge and we'll take a walk?"
+
+Don Antonio appeared in every way agreeable to the proposal, but to
+make certain that he would keep his appointment Bill led him down
+into the creek bottom and tied him securely, after which he removed a
+pack-saddle and a bundle of hay from the stable. The saddle he hid in
+the brush, the hay he spread before his accomplice, with the generous
+invitation: "Drink hearty; it's on the house!" In explanation he went
+on: "It's this way, Tony; they left the elevator out of that Anvil
+skyscraper, and I can't climb stairs on one lung, so you got to be my
+six-cylinder oat-motor. We got a busy night ahead of us."
+
+That evening Laughing Bill ascended Anvil Mountain for a second time,
+but the exertion did not wind him unduly, for he made the ascent at
+the end of Don Antonio's tail. He was back in camp for breakfast, and
+despite his lack of sleep he performed his menial duties during the
+day with more than his usual cheerfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Speed up, can't you?" Slevin paused midway of the steepest slope and
+spoke impatiently to his partner below.
+
+"I'm coming," Black Jack panted. Being the heavier and clumsier of the
+two, the climb was harder for him. "You're so spry, s'pose you just
+pack this poke!" He unslung a heavy leather sack from his belt and
+gave it to Denny.
+
+"We'd ought to 'a' got an early start," the latter complained. "The
+days are gettin' short and I had a rotten fall going down, last time."
+
+Relieved of some fifteen pounds of dead, awkward weight--and nothing
+is more awkward to carry than a sizable gold sack--Berg made better
+speed, arriving at the cache in time to see Slevin spit on his hands
+and fall to digging.
+
+"Every time we open her up I get a shiver," Denny confessed, with a
+laugh. "I'm scared to look."
+
+"Humph! Think she's going to get up and walk out on us?" Berg seated
+himself, lit his pipe, and puffed in silence for a while. "We ain't
+never been seen," he declared, positively. "She's as safe as the Bank
+of England as long as you don't get drunk."
+
+"Me drunk! Ha! Me and the demon rum is divorced forever." Slevin's
+shovel struck wood and he swiftly uncovered the box, then removed its
+top. He, stood for a full minute staring into its interior, then he
+cried, hoarsely, "_Jack_!"
+
+Berg was on his feet in an instant; he strode to the excavation and
+bent over it. After a time he straightened himself and turned blazing
+eyes upon his confederate. Denny met his gaze with the glare of a man
+demented.
+
+"Wha'd I tell you?" the latter chattered. "I told you they'd get it.
+By God! They have!"
+
+He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. Far below the lights
+of the valley were beginning to twinkle, in the direction of Nome the
+cross on the Catholic church gleamed palely against the steel-gray
+expanse of Behring Sea.
+
+Berg was a man of violent temper; he choked and gasped; his face was
+bloated with an apoplectic rage. He began to growl curses deep in his
+throat. "_Who_ got it?" he demanded. "Who d'you mean by '_they_'?"
+
+"'Sh-h!" Slevin was panic-stricken; he flung out a nervous, jerky
+hand. "Mebbe they're here--now. Look out!"
+
+"Who d'you mean by '_they_'?" the larger man repeated.
+
+"I--God! I dunno! But there must 'a' been more'n one. Five hundred
+pounds! One man couldn't pack it!"
+
+"You said '_they_'!" Berg persisted in an odd tone.
+
+Slevin's madly roving gaze flew back and settled upon the discolored
+visage thrust toward him, then his own eyes widened. He recoiled,
+crying:
+
+"Look here! You don't think I--?" His words ended in a bark.
+
+"I ain't said what I think, but I'm thinkin' fast. Nobody knew it but
+us--"
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I know."
+
+Slowly Slevin settled himself. His muscles ceased jumping, his bullet
+head drew down between his shoulders. "Well, it wasn't me, so it must
+'a' been--_you_!"
+
+"Don't stall!" roared the larger man. "It won't win you anything. You
+can't leave here till you come through."
+
+"That goes double, Jack. I got my gat, too, and you ain't going to run
+out on me."
+
+"You wanted to quit. You weakened."
+
+"You're a liar!"
+
+The men stared fixedly at each other, heads forward, bodies tense; as
+they glared the fury of betrayal grew to madness.
+
+"Where'd you put it?" Berg ground the words between his teeth.
+
+"I'm askin' you that very thing," the foreman answered in a thin,
+menacing voice. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he widened the distance
+between himself and his accuser. It was not a retreat, he merely drew
+himself together defensively, holding himself under control with the
+last supreme effort of his will.
+
+The tension snapped suddenly.
+
+With a harsh, wordless cry of fury Black Jack tore his six-shooter
+from its resting-place. But Slevin's right hand stirred in unison and
+it moved like light. Owing to the fact that he carried his gun beneath
+his left armpit he was the first to fire, by the fraction of a second.
+It was impossible to miss at this distance. Berg went to his knees
+as if hit by a sledge. But he fired from that position, and his shot
+caught Slevin as the latter crow-hopped nimbly. Both men were down
+now. Slevin, however, seemed made of rubber; he was up again almost
+instantly, and zigzagging toward the shelter of the nearest rocks.
+Berg emptied his Colt at the running target, then a shout burst from
+his lips as he saw Denny pitch forward out of sight.
+
+With shaking, clumsy fingers Black Jack reloaded his hot weapon. With
+his left hand pressed deep into his side he rose slowly to his feet
+and lurched forward.
+
+"You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross _me_, will yeh?" He heard the
+sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his
+tracks and peering into the gloom.
+
+"Come out!" he ordered. "Come out and own up and I'll let yeh off."
+
+There was a silence. "I see yeh!" He took unsteady aim at a shadow and
+fired. "Never mind, I'll get yeh!" After a little while he stumbled
+onward between the boulders, shouting a challenge to his invisible
+opponent. He had gone perhaps fifty feet when the darkness was stabbed
+by the blaze of Slevin's gun. Three times the weapon spoke, at little
+more than arm's-length, and Black Jack spun on his heels, then rocked
+forward limply. It was a long time before the sound of his loud, slow
+breathing ceased. Not until then did Denny Slevin move. With a rattle
+in his throat the foreman crept out from hiding and went down the
+mountain-side upon his hands and knees.
+
+It occasioned considerable speculation at the Aurora Borealis when
+neither the superintendent nor the foreman appeared for breakfast.
+Later, a telephone message to Doctor Slayforth having elicited the
+startling intelligence that neither man had been seen in town during
+the night, there came a flicker of excitement. This excitement blazed
+to white heat when Slayforth rode up on a muddy horse, accompanied by
+the town marshal and the chief of police. Followed more telephoning
+and some cross-examination. But the men were gone. They had
+disappeared.
+
+It was a mystery baffling any attempt at explanation, for there were
+no ships in the roadstead, and hence it was impossible for the pair
+to have taken French leave. While a search party was being organized
+there came word that the missing saddle-horses had been found on the
+slope of Anvil Mountain, and by the time Slayforth's party had reached
+the ground more news awaited them. Up near the head of the draw some
+one had discovered the body of Denny Slevin. There was a rush thither,
+and thence on up the trail Slevin had left, to the scene of the
+twilight duel, to Black Jack Berg and the cache in the slide.
+
+The story told itself down to the last detail; it was the story of a
+thieves' quarrel and a double killing. Doctor Slayforth fell upon
+his bag of gold as a mother falls upon her babe; he voiced loud,
+hysterical condemnation of the deed; he wept tears of mingled
+indignation and thanksgiving; he gabbled scriptural quotations about
+the wages of sin. Then, remembering that the wages of his men were
+going on, he sent them back to their work, and determined to dock half
+their morning's pay.
+
+The story of the tragedy was still the sensation of Nome when, a
+fortnight later, Laughing Bill Hyde showed up in town with the
+cheerful announcement that he had been fired. Ponatah was at the cabin
+when he arrived, and she did not try to conceal her joy at seeing him
+again.
+
+"I've been so unhappy," she told him. "You've never been out of my
+thoughts, Billy."
+
+"Ain't you got nothing better to think about than me?" he asked, with
+a smile. "Well, the psalm-shouter let me out--jerked the piller-slip
+from under me, you might say--and turned me adrift. He's got a
+high-chested, low-browed Swede in my place. It takes a guy with hair
+down to his eyebrows to be a buck chamber-maid."
+
+"The old rascal!" Ponatah's face darkened with anger. "No wonder those
+men robbed him. I wish they had taken all his gold, and escaped."
+
+"You're pretty sore on his heavenly nibs, ain't you?" Ponatah clenched
+her hands and her eyes blazed. "Well, you got this consolation, the
+Aurora ain't as rich as it was."
+
+"It would have been rich enough for us."
+
+"Us?"
+
+"Yes. You'd marry me if I were rich, wouldn't you?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't," Bill declared, firmly. "What's the use to kid you?"
+
+"Why wouldn't you? Are you ashamed of me?"
+
+Bill protested, "Say, what is this you're giving me, the third
+degree?"
+
+"If I were as rich as--well, as Reindeer Mary, wouldn't you marry me?"
+Ponatah gazed at the unworthy object of her affections with a yearning
+that was embarrassing, and Laughing Bill was forced to spar for wind.
+
+"Ain't you the bold Mary Ann--makin' cracks like that?" he chided.
+"I'm ashamed of you, honest. I've passed up plenty of frills in my
+time, and we're all better off for it. My appetite for marriage ain't
+no keener than it used to be, so you forget it. Little Doc, he's the
+marrying kind."
+
+"Oh yes. He tells me a great deal about his Alice. He's very much
+discouraged. If--if I had the Aurora I wouldn't forget him; I'd give
+him half."
+
+"Would you, now? Well, he's the one stiffneck that wouldn't take it.
+He's funny that way--seems to think money 'll bite him, or something.
+I don't know how these pullanthrofists get along, with proud people
+always spurning their gifts. He's got my nan. You take my tip, Kid,
+and cling to your coin. Salt it down for winter. That's what I'm doing
+with mine."
+
+"Are you?" Ponatah was not amused, she was gravely interested. "I
+thought you were broke, Billy."
+
+"Where'd you get that at?" he demanded. "I've always got a pinch of
+change, I have. I'm lucky that way. Now then, you run along and don't
+never try to feint me into a clinch. It don't go."
+
+Laughing Bill enjoyed a good rest in the days that followed. He rested
+hard for several weeks, and when he rested he lifted his hand to
+absolutely nothing. He was an expert idler, and with him indolence was
+but a form of suspended animation. In spite of himself, however, he
+was troubled by a problem; he was completely baffled by it, in fact,
+until, without warning and without conscious effort, the solution
+presented itself. Bill startled his cabin mate one day by the
+announcement that he intended to go prospecting.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Thomas, when the first shock of surprise had passed.
+"This country has been run over, and every inch is staked."
+
+"I bet I'll horn in somewhere. All I want is one claim where I got
+room to sling myself."
+
+"If that's all you want I'll give you a claim. It has twenty acres. Is
+that room enough?"
+
+"Plenty. Where is it?"
+
+"It's on Eclipse Creek, I believe. A patient gave it to me for a
+bill."
+
+"He won't call for a new deal if I strike it rich?"
+
+"No. I paid his fare out of the country. But why waste your valuable
+time? Your time _is_ valuable, I presume?"
+
+"Sure! I ain't got much left. You don't believe in hunches, do
+you? Well, I do. I've seen 'em come out. Look at Denny Slevin, for
+instance! I heard him say he had a hunch something unpleasant was
+going to happen to him, and it did. We'll go fifty-fifty on this
+Eclipse Creek."
+
+The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Suit yourself. Fresh air won't
+hurt you."
+
+The first frosts of autumn had arrived before Laughing Bill returned
+to town with the announcement that he had struck a prospect. Doctor
+Thomas was at first incredulous, then amazed; finally, when the
+true significance of those tiny yellow grains came home to him, his
+enthusiasm burst all bounds. He was for at once closing his office and
+joining actively in his partner's work, but Bill would not hear to
+such a thing.
+
+"Stick to the pills and powders, Doc," he counseled. "You know that
+game and I know this. It's my strike and I don't want no amachoors
+butting in. I got options on the whole creek--she's eclipsed for
+fair--'cause I don't like neighbors. You shut your trap till spring
+and sit tight, then we'll roll our packs, stomp on the fire, and call
+the dog. Old Home Week for us."
+
+"But, Billy, we can't work out that claim in one winter," protested
+the physician.
+
+"How d'you know we can't? Mebbe it's just a pocket."
+
+"We'll find other pockets. We have the whole creek--"
+
+"Say, how much d'you need to satisfy you?" Bill inquired, curiously.
+
+"I--don't know. A hundred thousand dollars, perhaps."
+
+"A hundred thousand! Whew! You got rich tastes! This ain't no
+bonanza."
+
+"But if it's any good at all it will net us that much, probably more."
+
+Bill considered briefly, then he announced: "All right, bo, I got
+your idea. When I hand you a hundred thousand iron men we quit--no
+questions, no regrets; Is that it? But you've hiked the limit on me; I
+dunno's I'll make good."
+
+By the time snow flew the tent on Eclipse Creek had been replaced by a
+couple of warm shacks, provisions had been bought, and a crew hired.
+Work commenced immediately, and it continued throughout the winter
+with Bill in charge. The gravel was lean-looking stuff, but it seemed
+to satisfy the manager, and whenever Thomas came out from town he
+received encouraging reports from his partner. Hyde ceased playing
+solitaire long enough to pan samples in his tub of snow water. Now had
+the younger man been an experienced placer miner he might have noted
+with suspicion that whenever Bill panned he chewed tobacco--a new
+habit he had acquired--and not infrequently he spat into the tub of
+muddy water. But Thomas was not experienced in the wiles and artifices
+of mine-salters, and the residue of yellow particles left in the pan
+was proof positive that the claim was making good. It did strike him
+as strange, however, that when he selected a pan of dirt and washed
+it unassisted he found nothing. At such times Bill explained
+glibly enough that no pay dump carried steady values, and that an
+inexperienced sampler was apt to get "skunked" under the best of
+circumstances. Concentrates lay in streaks and pockets, he declared.
+Then to prove his assertions Bill would help his partner pan, and
+inasmuch as he wore long finger-nails, underneath which colors of gold
+could be easily concealed, it was not surprising that he succeeded in
+finding a prospect where the doctor had failed. For fear Thomas should
+still entertain some lingering doubts, Bill occasionally sent him down
+into the shaft alone, to sample the pay streak, but in each instance
+he took pains to go down beforehand with a shot-gun and some shells of
+his own loading and to shoot a few rounds into the face of the thawed
+ground.
+
+The winter passed quickly enough, Bill's only concern arising from the
+fact that his strike had become common knowledge, and that men were
+clamoring to buy or to lease a part of the creek. It was a tiny creek,
+and he had it safely tied up under his options, therefore he was in a
+position to refuse every offer. By so doing he gained the reputation
+of being a cautious, cagey man and difficult to deal with.
+
+Bill paid off his crew out of the first spring cleanup, from the dust
+he had managed to dump into the sluices at night. Thereafter he sent
+the gold to town by Doctor Thomas, who came after it regularly. When
+he closed down the works, in June, he and his partner held bank
+deposit slips for a trifle over one hundred thousand dollars. Rumor
+placed their profits at much more.
+
+Bill saw little of Ponatah after his return to Nome, for the girl
+avoided him, and when he did see her she assumed a peculiar reserve.
+Her year and a half of intimate association with cultured people had
+in reality worked an amazing improvement in her, and people no longer
+regarded her as an Indian, but referred to her now as "that Russian
+governess," nevertheless she could retreat behind a baffling air
+of stolidity--almost of sullenness--when she chose, and that was
+precisely the mask she wore for Bill. In reality she was far from
+stolid and anything but sullen.
+
+For his part he made no effort to break down the girl's guard; he
+continued to treat her with his customary free good nature.
+
+Notwithstanding the liberal margin of profit on his winter's
+operations, Bill realized that he was still shy approximately half
+of the sum which Doctor Thomas had set as satisfactory, and when the
+latter began planning to resume work on a larger scale in the fall Mr.
+Hyde was stricken with panic. Fearing lest his own lack of enthusiasm
+in these plans and his indifference to all affairs even remotely
+concerning Eclipse Creek should awaken suspicion, he determined to
+sell out his own and his partner's interests in accordance with their
+original understanding. Without consulting Thomas he called upon
+Doctor Slayforth.
+
+The pious mine-owner was glad to see him; his manner was not at all
+what it had been when Bill worked for him. His words of greeting
+fairly trickled prune juice and honey.
+
+"Say, Doc, I got a load on my chest! I'm a strayed lamb and you being
+a sort of shepherd I turns to you," Bill began.
+
+"I trust you have not come in vain." The ex-missionary beamed
+benignly. "It has been my duty and my privilege to comfort the
+afflicted. What troubles you, William?"
+
+"There's a school of sharks in this village, and I don't trust 'em.
+They're too slick for a feller like me,"
+
+"It _is_ an ungodly place," the doctor agreed. "I have felt the call
+to work here, but my duties prevent. Of course I labor in the Lord's
+vineyard as I pass through, but--I am weak."
+
+"Me, too, and getting weaker daily." Bill summoned a hollow cough.
+"Listen to that hospital bark,' I gotta blow this place, Doc, or
+they'll button me up in a rosewood overcoat. I gotta sell Eclipse
+Creek and beat it." Again he coughed.
+
+"I am distressed. But why do you come here?"
+
+"I aim to sell out to you."
+
+"What is your price, William?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty thousand, cash."
+
+Slayforth lifted protesting palms. "My dear man--"
+
+"That's cheaper'n good advice, and you know it. I took out 'most that
+much last winter with a scowegian gang of six. Here's the bank's O.K.
+But I ain't got use for a lot of money, Doc. I wouldn't know how to
+run a vineyard like you do. All I want is a nice little corner saloon
+or a cattle ranch."
+
+"It is a large sum of money you ask. There is always an element of
+uncertainty about placer mining." Doctor Slayforth failed to conceal
+the gleam of avarice in his eyes.
+
+"Doc, take it from me; there ain't a particle of uncertainty about
+Eclipse Creek," Bill earnestly assured his hearer. "If I told you
+what's there you wouldn't believe me. But Thomas, he's got a gal and I
+got a cough. They both need attention, and he's the only guy that can
+give it. We're willing to hand you Eclipse Creek if you'll take it."
+
+There was considerable conversation, and a visit to Eclipse Creek, but
+the doctor, it proved, was willing to take any good bargain, and a few
+days later the transfer was made. When the larger part of Slayforth's
+winter's clean-up had changed hands the two partners adjourned to
+Thomas's little office.
+
+"Well!" The physician heaved a deep sigh of relief. "It's all over,
+and--I feel as if I were dreaming."
+
+"The _Oregon_ sails to-morrow. It's time to stomp on the fire."
+
+"I--I wonder if we were wise to sell out at that price," the doctor
+mused, doubtfully.
+
+"You lay a bet on it, bo. Something tells me that soul-saver will go
+bust on Eclipse Creek. I got a hunch that way." Mr. Hyde's seamy face
+wrinkled into a broad grin.
+
+"Well, I've more faith in your hunches than I used to have. You've
+been a good friend, Bill, and a square one." The speaker choked, then
+wrung his partner's hand. "I've cabled Alice to meet us. I want you to
+know her and--I want her to see that I cured you, after all."
+
+"I'd admire to meet her, but my taste has allus run more to
+brunettes," said Mr. Hyde. Then, since he abhorred emotional display,
+he continued, briskly: "Now call the dog. I'm off to buy our duckets."
+
+Laughing Bill purchased three tickets instead of two, then he went in
+search of Ponatah. It so chanced that he found her alone. Now neither
+he nor any other man had ever called upon her, therefore she was
+dumfounded at his coming.
+
+"Well, Kid," he announced, "me 'n' the Doc have sold Eclipse Creek,
+and we bow out tomorrow on the big smoke."
+
+Ponatah opened her lips, but no sound issued. She possessed a strong
+young body, but the strength, the life, seemed suddenly to go out of
+it, leaving her old and spiritless.
+
+"Got a kind word for us?" the man inquired, with a twinkle.
+
+"I'm glad you struck it rich," she murmured, dully. "You--you'll take
+care of yourself, Billy?"
+
+"Who, me? I don't s'pose so. I don't know how to take care of
+nothing." There was a moment of silence. "Like me?" he asked.
+
+Ponatah turned away blindly, but as she did so Laughing Bill put his
+hand gently upon her shoulder, saying:
+
+"Cheer up, Kid. You're going to join the troupe. I've come to get
+you."
+
+There was amazement, incredulity, in the girl's face as she lifted it
+to his. "What do you--mean?" she quavered. "Are you going to--marry
+me?"
+
+"You guessed it!" he laughed. "I been aiming to put up that job on you
+for a long time, but I had a lot of deals on my hands. I was a sort
+of power-of-attorney for a coupla simps, and it kept me busy. If
+you think the two of us can do with three lungs, why, we'll grab a
+psalm-shouter and--"
+
+"Billy! Billy!" Ponatah clung to him fiercely, hungrily. "Oh,
+Billy--I'll make you well. We'll go to Arizona, Colorado,
+Montana--where it is high and dry--"
+
+"I been to them places," he told her, dubiously, "and I 'most stopped
+breathing altogether."
+
+"New Mexico, then. You won't be ashamed of me there."
+
+"Say, Kid! I wouldn't be ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico.
+But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it
+I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she
+stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to
+time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do
+with me as you will; grab your lid; we'll join hands and be soldered
+up."
+
+Laughing Bill stared after the girl as she hurried away; musingly he
+said: "The little Doc got in on no pair, for it was all her coin, of
+course. But she'd 'a' had to split, fifty-fifty, with a lawyer, so it
+ain't a bad deal all around."
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTH WIND'S MALICE
+
+
+It had snowed during the night, but toward morning it had grown cold;
+now the sled-runners complained and the load dragged heavily. Folsom,
+who had been heaving at the handle-bars all the way up the Dexter
+Creek hill, halted his dogs at the crest and dropped upon the sled,
+only too glad of a breathing spell. His forehead was wet with sweat;
+when it began to freeze in his eyebrows he removed his mittens and
+wiped away the drops, then watched them congeal upon his fingers.
+Yes, it was all of thirty below, and a bad morning to hit the trail,
+but--Folsom's face set itself--better thirty below in the open than
+the frigid atmosphere of an unhappy home.
+
+Harkness, who had led the way up the hill, plodded onward for a time
+before discovering that his companion had paused; then, through the
+ring of hoar frost around his parka hood, he called back:
+
+"I'll hike down to the road-house and warm up."
+
+Folsom made no answer, he did not even turn his head. Taciturnity was
+becoming a habit with him, and already he was beginning to dislike his
+new partner. For that matter he disliked everybody this morning.
+
+Below him lay the level tundra, merging indistinguishably with the
+white anchor-ice of Behring Sea; beyond that a long black streak of
+open water, underscoring the sky as if to emphasize the significance
+of that empty horizon, a horizon which for many months would remain
+unsmudged by smoke. To Folsom it seemed that the distant stretch of
+dark water was like a prison wall, barring the outside world from him
+and the other fools who had elected to stay "inside."
+
+Fools? Yes; they were all fools!
+
+Folsom was a "sour-dough." He had seen the pranks that Alaskan winters
+play with men and women, he had watched the alteration in minds and
+morals made by the Arctic isolation, and he had considered himself
+proof against the malice that rides the north wind--the mischief that
+comes with the winter nights. He had dared to put faith in his perfect
+happiness, thinking himself different from other men and Lois superior
+to other wives, wherefore he now called himself a fool!
+
+Sprawled beside the shore, five miles away, was Nome, its ugliness of
+corrugated iron, rough boards, and tar paper somewhat softened by the
+distance. From the jumble of roofs he picked out one and centered his
+attention upon it. It was his roof--or had been. He wondered, with a
+sudden flare of wrathful indignation, if Lois would remember that fact
+during his absence. But he banished this evil thought. Lois had pride,
+there was nothing common about her; he could not believe that she
+would affront the proprieties. It was to spare that very pride of
+hers, even more than his own, that he had undertaken this adventure to
+the Kobuk; and now, as he looked back upon Nome, he told himself that
+he was acting handsomely in totally eliminating himself, thus allowing
+her time and freedom in which to learn her heart. He hoped that before
+his return she would have chosen between him and the other man.
+
+It was too cold to remain idle long. Folsom's damp body began
+to chill, so he spoke to his team and once more heaved upon the
+handle-bars.
+
+Leaving the crest of the ridge behind, the dogs began to run; they
+soon brought up in a tangle at the road-house door. When Harkness
+did not appear in answer to his name Folsom entered, to find his
+trail-mate at the bar, glass in hand.
+
+"Put that down!" Folsom ordered, sharply.
+
+Harkness did precisely that, then he turned, wiping his lips with
+the back of his hand. He was a small, fox-faced man; with a grin he
+invited the new-comer to "have one."
+
+"Don't you know better than to drink on a day like this?" the latter
+demanded.
+
+"Don't worry about me. I was raised on 'hootch,'" said Harkness.
+
+"It's bad medicine."
+
+"Bah! I'll travel further drunk than--" Harkness measured his critic
+with an insolent eye--"than some folks sober." He commenced to warm
+himself at the stove, whereupon the other cried, impatiently:
+
+"Come along. We can't stop at every cabin."
+
+But Harkness was in no hurry, he consumed considerable time. When
+he finally followed Folsom out into the air the latter, being in a
+peculiarly irritable mood, warned him in a voice which shook with
+anger:
+
+"We're going to start with an understanding. If you take another drink
+during the daytime I'll leave you flat."
+
+"Rats! How you aim to get to the Kobuk without me?" asked Harkness.
+
+"I'll manage somehow."
+
+The smaller man shot a startled glance at the speaker, then his
+insolence vanished. "All right, old top," he said, easily. "But don't
+cut off your nose to spite your face. Remember, I promised if you'd
+stick to me you'd wear gold-beaded moccasins." He set off at a trot,
+with the dogs following.
+
+This fellow Harkness had come with the first snow into Nome, bearing
+news of a strike on the Kobuk, and despite his braggadocio he had made
+rather a good impression. That luck which favors fools and fakers had
+guided him straight to Folsom. He had appeared at a psychological
+moment in the latter's affairs, two disastrous seasons having almost
+broken Folsom and rendered him eager to grasp at anything which
+promised quick returns; moreover, the latter had just had a serious
+quarrel with his wife. Harkness had offered a half interest in his
+Kobuk claims for a grubstake and a working partner, and, smarting
+under the unaccustomed sting of domestic infelicity, the other had
+accepted, feeling sure in his own mind that Lois would not let him
+leave her when the time came to go. But the time had come, and Lois
+had offered no objection. She had acted strangely, to be sure, but she
+had made no effort to dissuade him. It seemed as if the proposal to
+separate for the winter had offended rather than frightened her. Well,
+that was the way with women; there was no pleasing them; when you
+tried to do the decent thing by them they pretended to misunderstand
+your motives. If you paid them the compliment of utter confidence they
+abused it on the pretext that you didn't love them; if you allowed
+your jealousy to show, they were offended at your lack of trust.
+
+So ran the husband's thoughts. He hoped that six months of widowhood
+would teach Lois her own mind, but it hurt to hit the trail with
+nothing more stimulating than a listless kiss and a chill request to
+write when convenient. Now that he was on his way he began to think of
+the pranks played by malicious nature during the long, dark nights,
+and to wonder if he had acted wisely in teaming up with this footless
+adventurer. He remembered the malice that rides the winter winds, the
+mischief that comes to Arctic widows, and he grew apprehensive.
+
+The travelers put up that night at the Tin Road-house, a comfortless
+shack sheathed with flattened kerosene cans, and Folsom's irritation
+at his new partner increased, for Harkness was loud, boastful, and
+blatantly egotistical, with the egotism that accompanies dense
+ignorance.
+
+The weather held cold, the snow remained as dry as sand, so they made
+slow progress, and the husband had ample time to meditate upon his
+wrongs, but the more he considered them the less acutely they smarted
+him and the gentler became his thoughts of Lois. The solitudes were
+healing his hurt, the open air was cooling his anger.
+
+At Kougarok City, a miserable huddle of cottonwood cabins, Harkness
+escaped his partner's watchful eye and got drunk. Folsom found the
+fellow clinging to the bar and entertaining a crowd of loafers with
+his absurd boastings. In a white fury he seized the wretch, dragged
+him from the room, and flung him into his bunk, then stood guard over
+him most of the night.
+
+It was during the quieter hours when the place rumbled to snores that
+Folsom yielded to his desire to write his wife, a desire which had
+been growing steadily. He was disgusted with Harkness, disappointed
+with the whole Kobuk enterprise, and in a peculiarly softened mood,
+therefore, he wrote with no attempt to conceal his yearning, homesick
+tenderness.
+
+But when he read the letter in the morning it struck him as weak and
+sentimental, just the sort of letter he would regret having written if
+it should transpire that Lois did not altogether share his feelings.
+So he tore it up.
+
+Those were the days of faint trails and poor accommodations; as yet
+the road to the Arctic was little traveled and imperfectly known, so
+Harkness acted as guide. He had bragged that he knew every inch of the
+country, but he soon proved that his ideas of distance were vague and
+faulty--a serious shortcoming in a land with no food, no shelter, and
+no firewood except green willows in the gulch-bottoms. Folsom began to
+fear that the fellow's sense of direction was equally bad, and taxed
+him with it, but Harkness scoffed at the idea.
+
+Leaving the last road-house behind them, they came into a hilly
+section of great white domes, high hog-backs, and ramifying creeks,
+each one exactly like its neighbor; two days' travel through this,
+according to Harkness, should have brought them to the Imnachuck,
+where there was food and shelter again. But when they pitched camp for
+the second night Folsom felt compelled to remind his partner that they
+were behind their schedule, and that this was the last of their grub.
+
+"Are you sure you're going right?" he inquired.
+
+"Sure? Of course I'm sure. D'you think I'm lost?"
+
+Folsom fed some twisted willow-tops into the sheet-iron stove. "I
+wouldn't recommend you as a pathfinder," said he. "You said we'd sleep
+out one night. This is two, and to-morrow we'll walk hungry."
+
+"Well, don't blame me!" challenged the other. "I'm going slow on your
+account."
+
+Now nothing could have galled Folsom more than a reflection upon
+his ability to travel. His lips whitened, he was upon the point of
+speaking his mind, but managed to check himself in time. Harkness's
+personality rasped him to the raw, and he had for days struggled
+against an utterly absurd but insistent desire to seize the little
+coxcomb by the throat and squeeze the arrogance out of him as juice is
+squeezed out of a lemon. There is flesh for which one's fingers itch.
+
+"I notice you're ready to camp when I am," the larger man muttered.
+"Understand, this is no nice place to be without grub, for it's liable
+to storm any hour, and storms last at this season."
+
+"Now don't get cold feet." Harkness could be maddeningly patronizing
+when he chose. "Leave it to me. I'll take you a short cut, and we'll
+eat lunch in a cabin to-morrow noon."
+
+But noon of the next day found Harkness still plodding up the river
+with the dogs close at his heels. The hills to the northward were
+growing higher, and Folsom's general knowledge of direction told him
+that they were in danger of going too far.
+
+"I think the Imnachuck is over there," said he.
+
+Harkness hesitated, then he nodded: "Right-o! It's just over that
+low saddle." He indicated a sweeping hillside ahead, and a half-mile
+further on he left the creek and began to climb. This was heavy work
+for the dogs, and mid-afternoon came before the partners had gained
+the summit only to discover that they were not upon a saddleback
+after all, but upon the edge of a vast rolling tableland from which a
+fanlike system of creeks radiated. In all directions was a desolate
+waste of barren peaks.
+
+Folsom saw that the sky ahead was thick and dark, as if a storm
+impended, and realizing only too well the results of the slightest
+error in judgment he called to Harkness. But the latter pretended
+not to hear, and took advantage of the dogs' fatigue to hurry out of
+earshot. It was some time before the team overhauled him.
+
+"Do you know where you are?" Folsom inquired.
+
+"Certainly." Harkness studied the panorama spread before him. "That
+blue gulch yonder is the Imnachuck." He pointed to a valley perhaps
+four miles away.
+
+A fine snow began to sift downward. The mountain peaks to the
+northward became obscured as by thin smoke, the afternoon shortened
+with alarming swiftness. Night, up here with a blizzard brewing, was
+unthinkable, so after a while the driver called another halt.
+
+"Something informs me that you're completely lost," he said, mildly.
+
+"Who, me? There she is." Harkness flung out a directing hand once
+more.
+
+Folsom hesitated, battling with his leaping desires, and upon that
+momentary hesitation hinged results out of all proportions to the
+gravity of the situation--issues destined to change the deepest
+channels of his life. Folsom hesitated, then he yielded to his
+impulse, and the luxury of yielding made him drunk. He walked around
+the sled, removing his mittens with his teeth as he went. Without a
+word he seized his companion by the throat and throttled him until his
+eyes protruded and his face grew black and bloated. He relaxed his
+stiff fingers finally, then he shook the fellow back to consciousness.
+
+"Just as I thought," he cried, harshly. "That's not the gulch you
+pointed out before. You're lost and you won't admit it."
+
+Harkness pawed the air and fought for his breath. There was abject
+terror in his eyes. He reeled away, but saw there was no safety in
+flight.
+
+"Own up!" Folsom commanded.
+
+"You--said this was the way," the pathfinder whimpered. "You made
+me--turn off--" Folsom uttered a growl and advanced a step, whereupon
+his victim gurgled: "D-don't touch me! That's the Imnachuck, so help
+me God! I'm--I'm almost sure it is."
+
+"_Almost_!" The speaker stooped for his mittens and shook the snow out
+of them; he was still struggling to control himself. "Look here, Mr.
+Know-It-All, I've never been here before, and you have; somewhere in
+your thick skull there must be some faint remembrance of the country.
+You got us into this fix, and I'm going to give you one more chance
+to get us out of it. Don't try to think with your head, let your feet
+think for you, and maybe they'll carry you to the right gulch. If they
+don't--" Folsom scanned the brooding heavens and his lips compressed.
+"We're in for a storm and--we'll never weather it. Take one look while
+there's light to see by, then turn your feet loose and pray that they
+lead you right, for if they don't, by God, I'll cut you loose!"
+
+It soon proved that memory lay neither in Harkness's head nor in his
+feet; when he had veered aimlessly about for half an hour, evidently
+fearing to commit himself to a definite course, and when the wind came
+whooping down, rolling a twilight smother ahead of it, Folsom turned
+his dogs into the nearest depression and urged them to a run. The
+grade increased, soon brittle willow-tops brushed against the speeding
+sled: this brush grew higher as the two men, blinded now by the gale,
+stumbled onward behind the team. They emerged from the gulch into a
+wider valley, after a while, and a mile further on the dogs burst
+through a grove of cottonwoods and fetched up before a lighted cabin
+window.
+
+Harkness pulled back his parka hood and cried, boastfully: "What did I
+tell you? I knew where I was all the time." Then he went in, leaving
+his partner to unhitch the team and care for it.
+
+Friendships ripen and enmities deepen quickly on the trail, seeds of
+discord sprout and flourish in the cold. Folsom's burst of temper had
+served to inflame a mutual dislike, and as he and Harkness journeyed
+northward that dislike deepened into something akin to hatred, for the
+men shared the same bed, drank from the same pot, endured the same
+exasperations. Nothing except their hope of mutual profit held
+them together. In our careless search for cause and effect we are
+accustomed to attribute important issues to important happenings,
+amazing consequences to amazing deeds; as a matter of fact it is the
+trivial action, the little thing, the thing unnoticed and forgotten
+which bends our pathways and makes or breaks us.
+
+Harkness was a hare-brained, irresponsible person, incapable of
+steadiness in thought or action, too weak to cherish actual hatred,
+too changeable to nurse a lasting grudge. It is with such frail
+instruments that prankish fate delights to work, and, although he
+never suspected it, the luxury of yielding to that sudden gust of
+passion cost Folsom dear.
+
+Arrived finally at the Kobuk the miner examined the properties covered
+by his option, and impressed by the optimism of the men who had made
+the gold discovery he paid Harkness the price agreed upon. The deal
+completed, he sent the fellow back to Candle Creek, the nearest
+post, for supplies. Folsom's mood had altogether changed by now, so,
+strangling his last doubt of Lois, he wrote her as he had written at
+Kougarok City, and intrusted the letter to his associate.
+
+Harkness, promptly upon his arrival at Candle, got drunk. He stayed
+drunk for three days, and it was not until he was well started on his
+way back to the Kobuk that he discovered Folsom's letter still in his
+pocket.
+
+Now, to repeat, the man was not malicious, neither was he bad, but as
+he debated whether he should back-track there came to him the memory
+of his humiliation on the Imnachuck divide.
+
+So! His brains were in his feet, eh? Folsom had strangled him until he
+kicked, when, all the time, they had been on the right trail. Harkness
+felt a flash of rage, like the flare of loose gunpowder, and in the
+heat of it he tore the letter to atoms. It was a womanish, spiteful
+thing to do, and he regretted it, but later when he greeted the
+husband he lied circumstantially and declared he had given the missive
+into the hands of the mail-carrier on the very hour of his departure.
+By this time, doubtless, it was nearly to Nome. Soon thereafter
+Harkness forgot all about the incident.
+
+Folsom was a fast worker. He hired men and cross-cut the most
+promising claim. Bed-rock was shallow, and he soon proved it to be
+barren, so he went on to the next property. When he had prospected
+this claim with no better results than before he wrote his wife
+confessing doubts of the district and voicing the fear that his
+winter's work would be wasted. Again he let his pen run as it would;
+the letter he gave to a neighbor who was leaving for Candle Creek in
+the morning.
+
+Folsom's neighbor was a famous "musher," a seasoned, self-reliant man,
+thoroughly accustomed to all the hazards of winter travel, but ten
+miles from his destination he crossed an inch-deep overflow which
+rendered the soles of his muk-luks slippery, and ten yards further on,
+where the wind had laid the glare-ice bare, he lost his footing. He
+fell and wrenched his ankle and came hobbling into Candle half an hour
+after the monthly mail for Nome had left.
+
+Three weeks later Folsom wrote his wife for the third time, and again
+a month after that. All three letters joined company in Candle Creek;
+for meanwhile the mail-man's lead dog had been killed in a fight with
+a big malamute at Lane's Landing, causing its owner to miss a trip.
+Now dog-fights are common; by no logic could one attribute weighty
+results to the loss of a sixty-pound leader, but in this instance it
+so happened that the mail-carrier's schedule suffered so that his
+contract was canceled.
+
+Meanwhile a lonely woman waited anxiously in Nome, and as the result
+of a stranger's spite, a wet muk-luk, and a vicious malamute her
+anxiety turned to bitterness and distrust.
+
+It is never difficult to forward mail in the north, for every "musher"
+is a postman. When news came to Candle Creek that the Government
+service had been discontinued the storekeeper, one end of whose bar
+served as post-office, sacked his accumulated letters and intrusted
+them to some friends who were traveling southward on the morrow. The
+trader was a canny man, but he loved to gamble, so when his friends
+offered to bet him that they could lower the record from Candle to
+Nome he went out into the night, sniffed the air and studied the
+stars, then laid them a hundred dollars that they could not.
+
+Excited to recklessness by this wager the volunteer mail-men cut
+down their load. They left their stove and tent and grub-box behind,
+planning to make a road-house every night except during the long jump
+from the Imnachuck to Crooked River. They argued that it was worth a
+hundred dollars to sleep once under the open sky.
+
+The fruits of that sporting enterprise were bitter; the trader won his
+bet, but he never cashed it in. Somewhere out on the high barrens a
+storm swooped down upon the travelers. To one who has never faced an
+Arctic hurricane it seems incredible that strong men have died within
+call of cozy cabins or have frozen with the lashings of their sleds
+but half untied. Yet it is true. The sudden awful cold, the shouting
+wind, the boiling, blinding, suffocating rush of snow; the sweaty
+clothes that harden into jointless armor; the stiff mittens and the
+clumsy hands inside--these tell a tale to those who know.
+
+The two mail-carriers managed to get into their sleeping-bags, but the
+gale, instead of drifting them over with a protective mantle of snow,
+scoured the mountain-side bare to the brittle reindeer moss, and they
+began to freeze where they lay. Some twenty hours they stood it, then
+they rose and plunged ahead of the hurricane like bewildered cattle.
+The strongest man gave up first and lay down, babbling of things
+to eat. His companion buried him, still alive, and broke down the
+surrounding willow-tops for a landmark, then he staggered on. By some
+miracle of good luck, or as a result of some unsuspected power of
+resistance, he finally came raving into the Crooked River Road-house.
+When the wind subsided they hurried him to Nome, but he was
+frightfully maimed and as a result of his amputations he lay gabbling
+until long after the spring break-up.
+
+Folsom did not write again. In fact, when no word came from Lois, he
+bitterly regretted the letters he had written. He heard indirectly
+from her; new-comers from Nome told him that she was well, but that
+was all. It was enough. He did not wish to learn more.
+
+Spring found him with barely enough money to pay his way back. He was
+blue, bitter, disheartened, but despite the certainty that his
+wife had forsaken him he still cherished a flickering hope of a
+reconciliation. Strangely enough he considered no scheme of vengeance
+upon the other man, for he was sane and healthy, and he loved Lois too
+well to spoil her attempt at happiness.
+
+It so happened that the Arctic ice opened up later this spring than
+for many seasons; therefore the short summer was well under way before
+the first steam-schooner anchored off the Kobuk. Folsom turned his
+back upon the wreck of his high hopes, his mind solely engaged with
+the problem of how to meet Lois and ascertain the truth without undue
+embarrassment to her and humiliation to himself. The prospect of
+seeing her, of touching her, of hearing her voice, affected him
+painfully. He could neither eat nor sleep on the way to Nome, but
+paced the deck in restless indecision. He had come to consider himself
+wholly to blame for their misunderstanding, and he wished only for a
+chance to win back her love, with no questions asked and no favors
+granted.
+
+When there were less than fifty miles to go the steamer broke her
+shaft. There was no particular reason why that shaft should break,
+but break it did, and for eighteen hours--eighteen eternities to
+Folsom--the ship lay crippled while its engine-room crew labored
+manfully.
+
+Folsom had been so long in the solitudes that Nome looked like a
+big city when he finally saw it. There were several ships in the
+roadstead, and one of them was just leaving as the Kobuk boat came to
+anchor. She made a splendid sight as she gathered way.
+
+The returning miner went ashore in the first dory and as he stepped
+out upon the sand a friend greeted him:
+
+"Hello there, old settler! Where you been all winter?"
+
+"I've been to the Kobuk," Folsom told him.
+
+"Kobuk? I hear she's a bum."
+
+"'Bum' is right. Maybe she'll do to dredge some day."
+
+"Too bad you missed the _Oregon_; there she goes now." The man pointed
+seaward.
+
+"Too bad?"
+
+"Sure! Don't you know? Why, Miz Folsom went out on her!"
+
+Folsom halted; after a momentary pause he repeated, vaguely, "Went
+out?"
+
+"Exactly. Didn't you know she was going?"
+
+"Oh yes--of course! The _Oregon_!" Folsom stared at the fading plume
+of black smoke; there was a curious brightness in his eyes, his face
+was white beneath its tan. "She sailed on the _Oregon_ and I missed
+her, by an hour! That broken shaft--" He began to laugh, and turning
+his back upon the sea he plodded heavily through the sand toward the
+main street.
+
+Folsom found no word from his wife, his house was empty; but he
+learned that "the man" had also gone to the States, and he drew his
+own conclusions. Since Lois had ordered her life as she saw fit there
+was nothing to do but wait and endure--doubtless the divorce would
+come in time. Nevertheless, he could not think of that broken shaft
+without raving.
+
+Being penniless he looked for work, and his first job came from a
+small Jewish merchant, named Guth, who offered him a hundred dollars
+to do the assessment work on a tundra claim. For twenty days Folsom
+picked holes through frozen muck, wondering why a thrifty person like
+Guth would pay good money to hold such unpromising property as this.
+
+The claim was in sight of Nome, and as Folsom finished his last day's
+labor he heard bells ringing and whistles blowing and discovered that
+the town was ablaze. He hurried in to find that an entire block in
+the business center of the city had been destroyed and with it Guth's
+little store, including all its contents. He found the Jew in tears.
+
+"What a misfortune!" wailed the merchant. "Ruined, absolutely--and by
+a match! It started in my store--my little girl, you understand?
+And now, all gone!" He tore his beard and the tears rolled down his
+cheeks.
+
+The little man's grief was affecting, and so Folsom inquired more
+gently than he intended, "I'm sorry, of course, but how about my money
+for the Lulu assessment?"
+
+"Money? There's your money!" Guth pointed sadly into the smoldering
+ruins. "Go find it--you're welcome to anything I have left. Gott! What
+a country! How can a man get ahead, with no insurance?"
+
+Folsom laughed mirthlessly. His hard luck was becoming amusing and
+he wondered how long it would last. He had counted on that hundred
+dollars to get away from Nome, hoping to shake misfortune from his
+heels, but a match in the hands of a child, like that broken propeller
+shaft, had worked havoc with his plans. Well, it was useless to cry.
+
+To the despairing Hebrew he said: "Don't lose your grip, old man. Buck
+up and take another start. You have your wife and your little girl, at
+least, and you're the sort who makes good."
+
+"You think so?" Guth looked up, grateful for the first word of
+encouragement he had heard.
+
+"It's a cinch! Only don't lose your courage."
+
+"I--I'll do what's right by you, Mr. Folsom," declared the other.
+"I'll deed you a half interest in the Lulu."
+
+But Folsom shook his head. "I don't want it. There's nothing there
+except moss and muck and salmon berries, and it's a mile to bed-rock.
+No, you're welcome to my share; maybe you can sell the claim for
+enough to make a new start or to buy grub for the wife and the kid.
+I'll look for another job."
+
+For a month or more the lonesome husband "stevedored," wrestling
+freight on the lighters, then he disappeared. He left secretly, in the
+night, for by now he had grown fanciful and he dared to hope that he
+could dodge his Nemesis. He turned up in Fairbanks, a thousand miles
+away, and straightway lost himself in the hills.
+
+He had not covered his tracks, however, for bad luck followed him.
+
+Now no man starves in Alaska, for there is always work for the
+able-bodied; but whatever Folsom turned his hand to failed, and by and
+by his courage went. He had been a man of consequence in Nome; he
+had made money and he had handled other men, therefore his sense of
+failure was the bitterer.
+
+Meanwhile, somewhere in him there remained the ghost of his faith
+in Lois, the faintly flickering hope that some day they would come
+together again. It lay dormant in him, like an irreligious man's
+unacknowledged faith in God and a hereafter, but it, too, vanished
+when he read in a Seattle newspaper, already three months old, the
+announcement of his wife's divorce. He flinched when he read that it
+had been won on the grounds of desertion, and thereafter he shunned
+newspapers.
+
+Spring found him broke, as usual. He had become bad company and men
+avoided him. It amused him grimly to learn that a new strike had been
+made in Nome, the biggest discovery in the camp's history, and to
+realize that he had fled just in time to miss the opportunity of
+profiting by it. He heard talk of a prehistoric sea-beach line, a
+streak of golden sands which paralleled the shore and lay hidden below
+the tundra mud. News came of overnight fortunes, of friends grown
+prosperous and mighty. Embittered anew, Folsom turned again to the
+wilderness, and he did not reappear until the summer was over. He came
+to town resolved to stay only long enough to buy bacon and beans, but
+he had lost his pocket calendar and arrived on a Sunday, when the
+stores were closed.
+
+Even so little a thing as the loss of that calendar loomed big in the
+light of later events, for in walking the streets he encountered a
+friend but just arrived from the Behring coast.
+
+The man recognized him, despite his beard and his threadbare mackinaws
+and they had a drink together.
+
+"I s'pose you heard about that Third Beach Line?" the new-comer
+inquired. Folsom nodded. "Well, they've opened it up for miles, and
+it's just a boulevard of solid gold. 'Cap' Carter's into it big, and
+so are the O'Brien boys and Old Man Hendricks. They're lousy with
+pay."
+
+"I did the work on a tundra claim," said Folsom; "the Lulu--"
+
+"The _Lulu_!" Folsom's friend stared at him. "Haven't you heard about
+the Lulu? My God! Where you been, anyhow? Why, the Lulu's a mint! Guth
+is a millionaire and he made it all without turning a finger."
+
+Folsom's grip on the bar-rail tightened until his knuckles were white.
+
+"I'm telling you right, old man; he's the luckiest Jew in the country.
+He let a lay to McCarthy and Olson, and they took out six hundred
+thousand dollars, after Christmas."
+
+"Guth offered me a--half interest in the Lulu when his store burned
+and--I turned it down. He's never paid me for that assessment work."
+
+The Nomeite was speechless with amazement. "The son-of-a-gun!" he
+said, finally. "Well, you can collect now. Say! That's what he meant
+when he told me he wanted to see you. Guth was down to the boat when I
+left, and he says: 'If you see Folsom up river tell him to come back.
+I got something for him.' Those were his very words. That little Jew
+aims to pay you a rotten hundred so you won't sue him for an interest.
+By Gorry, I wouldn't take it! I'd go back and make him do the right
+thing. I'd sue him. I'd bust him in the nose! A half interest--in the
+Lulu! My God!" The speaker gulped his drink hastily.
+
+After consideration, Folsom said: "He'll do the right thing. Guth
+isn't a bad sort."
+
+"No. But he's a Jew; trust him to get his."
+
+"I wouldn't ask him to do more than pay his debt. You see I refused
+his offer."
+
+"What of that? I'd give it a try, anyhow, and see if he wouldn't
+settle. There's lots of lawyers would take your case. But say, that's
+the toughest tough-luck story I ever heard. You've sure got a jinx on
+you."
+
+"I'm going back, but I won't sue Guth. I'm sick of Alaska; it has
+licked me. I'm going out to God's country."
+
+Folsom indeed acknowledged himself beaten. The narrow margin by which
+he had missed reward for his work and his hardships bred in him such
+hatred for Alaska that he abruptly changed his plans. He had no heart,
+perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all
+measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what
+straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken
+piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him
+payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by
+his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog,
+and the storekeeper's wager.
+
+Folsom carried cord-wood to pay for a deck passage down river. He
+discovered en route that Guth had really tried to get in touch with
+him, and in fact appeared greatly concerned over his failure to do so,
+for at Tanana he received another message, and again at St. Michaels.
+He was grimly amused at the little Jew's craftiness, yet it sorely
+offended him to think that any one should consider him such a welcher.
+He had no intention of causing trouble, for he knew he had no legal
+claim against the fellow, and he doubted if he possessed even a moral
+right to share in the Lulu's riches. To play upon the Hebrew's fears,
+therefore, savored of extortion. Nevertheless, he was in no agreeable
+frame of mind when he arrived at his destination and inquired for
+Guth.
+
+The new-made millionaire was in his office; Folsom walked in
+unannounced. He had expected his arrival to create a scene, and he was
+not disappointed. But Guth's actions were strange, they left the new
+arrival dazed, for the little man fell upon him with what appeared to
+be exuberant manifestations of joy.
+
+"Mr. Folsom!" he cried. "You have come! You got my letters, eh? Well,
+I wrote you everywhere, but I was in despair, for I thought you must
+be dead. Nobody knew what had become of you."
+
+"I got your message in Fairbanks."
+
+"You heard about the Lulu, eh? Gott! She's a dandy."
+
+"Yes. I can hardly believe it. So, you're rich. Well, I congratulate
+you, and now I can use that hundred."
+
+Guth chuckled. "Ha! You will have your joke, eh? But the Lulu is no
+joke. Come, we will go to the bank; I want them to tell you how much
+she has yielded. You'll blame me for leasing her, but how was I to
+know what she was?"
+
+"I--Why should I blame--" Folsom stared at the speaker. "It's none of
+my business what the Lulu has yielded. In fact, I'll sleep better if I
+don't know."
+
+Little Guth paused and his mouth opened. After a moment he inquired,
+curiously: "Don't you understand?" There was another pause, then he
+said, quietly, "I'm a man of my word."
+
+Folsom suddenly saw black, the room began to spin, he passed his hand
+across his eyes. "Wait! Let's get this straight," he whispered.
+
+"It is all very simple," Guth told him. "We are equal partners in
+the Lulu--we have been, ever since the day my store burned. It was a
+little thing you said to me then, but the way you said it, the fact
+that you didn't blame me, gave me new heart. Did you think I'd renig?"
+When Folsom found no answer the other nodded slowly. "I see. You
+probably said, 'That Guth is a Jew and he'll do me up if he can.'
+Well, I am a Jew, yes, and I am proud of it; but I am an honest man,
+too, like you."
+
+Folsom turned to the wall and hid his face in the crook of his arm,
+but with his other hand he groped for that of the Hebrew.
+
+The story of the Lulu is history now; in all the north that mine is
+famous, for it made half a dozen fortunes. In a daze, half doubting
+the reality of things, Folsom watched a golden stream pour into his
+lap. All that winter and the next summer the Lulu yielded wondrously,
+but one of the partners was not happy, his thoughts being ever of the
+woman who had left him. Prosperity gave him courage, however, and when
+he discovered that Lois had not remarried he determined to press his
+luck as a gambler should.
+
+When the second season's sluicing was over and the ground had frozen
+he went outside.
+
+The day after he sailed Lois arrived in Nome, on the last boat. She
+was older, graver; she had heard of the Lulu, but it was not that
+which had brought her back. She had returned in spite of the Lulu to
+solve an aching mystery and to learn the why of things. Her husband's
+riches--she still considered him her husband--merely made the task
+more trying.
+
+Advised that Folsom had passed almost within hailing distance of her,
+she pressed her lips together and took up her problem of living. The
+prospect of another lonely Alaskan winter frightened her, and yet
+because of the Lulu she could not return by the ship she had come on.
+Now that Folsom was a Croesus she could not follow him too closely--he
+might misunderstand. After all, she reflected, it mattered little to
+her where she lived.
+
+Guth called at her cabin, but she managed to avoid seeing him, and
+somehow continued to avoid a meeting.
+
+Late in December some travelers from Candle Creek, while breaking a
+short cut to the head of Crooked River, came upon an abandoned sled
+and its impedimenta. Snow and rain and summer sun had bleached its
+wood, its runners were red streaks of rust, its rawhide lashings had
+been eaten off, but snugly rolled inside the tarpaulin was a sack
+of mail. This mail the travelers brought in with them, and the Nome
+newspapers, in commenting upon the find, reprinted the story of that
+tragic fight for life in the Arctic hurricane, now almost forgotten.
+
+Folsom's three letters reached their destination on Christmas Day.
+They were stained and yellow and blurred in places, for they were
+three years old, but the woman read them with eyes wide and wondering,
+and with heart-beats pounding, for it seemed that dead lips spoke to
+her. Ten minutes later she was standing at Guth's door, and when he
+let her in she behaved like one demented. She had the letters hidden
+in her bosom, and she would not let him see them, but she managed to
+make known the meaning of her coming.
+
+"You know him," she cried, hysterically. "You made him rich. You've
+lived alongside of him. Tell me then, has he--has he--changed? These
+letters are old. Does he still care, or--does he hate me, as he
+should?"
+
+Guth smiled; he took her shaking hands in his, his voice was gentle.
+"No, no! He doesn't hate you. He has never mentioned your name to me,
+or to any one else, so far as I know, but his money hasn't satisfied
+him. He is sad, and he wants you. That is what took him to the States,
+I'm sure."
+
+Lois sank into a chair, her face was white, her twisting fingers
+strained at each other. "I can't understand. I can't make head or tail
+of it," she moaned. "It seems that I wronged him, but see what ruin he
+has made for me! Why? Why--?"
+
+"Who can understand the 'why' of anything?" inquired the little
+Hebrew. "I've heard him curse the perversity of little things, and
+rave at what he called the 'malice of the north wind.' I didn't dare
+to ask him what he meant, but I knew he was thinking of the evil which
+had come between you two. Who was to blame, or what separated you, he
+never told me. Well, his bad luck has changed, and yours, too; and I'm
+happy. Now then, the wireless. You can talk to him. Let us go."
+
+An hour later a crackling message was hurled into the empty Christmas
+sky, a message that pulsed through the voids, was relayed over ice and
+brine and drifted forests to a lonely, brooding man three thousand
+miles away.
+
+The answer came rushing back:
+
+"Thank God! Am starting north tomorrow. Love and a million kisses.
+Wait for me."
+
+Folsom came. Neither ice nor snow, neither winter seas nor trackless
+wastes, could daunt him, for youth was in his heart and fire ran
+through his veins. North and west he came by a rimy little steamer, as
+fast as coal could drive her, then overland more than fifteen hundred
+miles. His record stands unbroken, and in villages from Katmai to the
+Kuskokwim the Indians tell of the tall white man with the team of
+fifteen huskies who raced through as if a demon were at his heels; how
+he bored headlong into the blizzards and braved January's fiercest
+rage; how his guides dropped and his dogs died in their collars. That
+was how Folsom came.
+
+He was thin and brown, the marks of the frost were bitten deep into
+his flesh when, one evening in early March, he drove into Nome. He
+had covered sixty miles on the last day's run, and his team was
+staggering. He left the dogs in their harnesses, where they fell, and
+bounded through the high-banked streets to Lois's cabin.
+
+It was growing dark, a light gleamed from her window; Folsom glimpsed
+her moving about inside. He paused to rip the ice from his bearded
+lips, then he knocked softly, three times.
+
+As he stood there a gentle north wind fanned him. It was deadly cold,
+but it was fresh and clean and vastly invigorating. There was no
+malice in it.
+
+At his familiar signal he heard the clatter of a dish, dropped from
+nerveless fingers, he heard a startled voice cry out his name, then he
+pressed the latch and entered, smiling.
+
+
+
+
+HIS STOCK IN TRADE
+
+
+"The science of salesmanship is quite as exact as the science of
+astronomy," said Mr. Gross, casting his eyes down the table to see
+that he had the attention of the other boarders, "and much more
+intricate. The successful salesman is as much an artist in his line as
+the man who paints pictures or writes books."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing so artistic as writing books," protested Miss
+Harris, the manicurist. "Nothing except acting, perhaps. Actors are
+artistic, too. But salesmen! I meet lots in my business, and I'm not
+strong for them."
+
+Mr. Gross smiled at her indulgently; it was an expression that became
+him well, and he had rehearsed it often.
+
+"The power to sell goods is a talent, my dear Miss Harris, just like
+the power to invent machinery or to rule a city, or--or--to keep a set
+of books. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Green?"
+
+Mrs. Green, the landlady, a brown, gray woman in black, smiled
+frigidly. "You're _so_ original, Mr. Gross," said she, "it's a
+pleasure to hear you, I'm sure."
+
+Gross was an impressive talker, due to the fact that he plagiarized
+office platitudes; he ran on pompously, dropping trade mottoes and
+shop-worn bits of philosophy until young Mitchell, unable longer to
+endure the light of admiration he saw in Miss Harris's eyes, rolled
+up his napkin to the size of a croquette and interrupted by noisily
+shoving back his chair and muttering under his breath:
+
+"That stuff comes on printed cards. They give it away."
+
+Mrs. Green called to him, "It's bread pudding, Mr. Mitchell, and very
+nice."
+
+"Thanks! My gout is bad again," he said, at which some of the more
+frivolous-minded boarders snickered.
+
+"Mitchell is a bright boy--in many ways," Gross remarked, a moment
+later, "but he's too fresh. I don't think he'll last long at the
+office."
+
+Instead of climbing to his hall kennel on the fourth floor rear, Louis
+Mitchell went out upon the rusty little porch of the boarding-house
+and sat down on the topmost step, reflecting gloomily that a clerk has
+small chance against a head bookkeeper.
+
+Life at Mrs. Green's pension--she called it that, rates six dollars
+up, terms six dollars down--had not been the same for the youthful
+hermit of the hall bedroom since Gross had met him and Miss Harris in
+the park a few Sundays before and, falling under the witchery of the
+manicurist's violet eyes, had changed his residence to coincide with
+theirs. Gross now occupied one of the front rooms, and a corresponding
+place in the esteem of those less fortunate boarders to whom the mere
+contemplation of ten dollars a week was an extravagance. Mitchell had
+long adored the blonde manicurist, but once the same roof sheltered
+her and the magnificent head bookkeeper, he saw his dream of love and
+two furnished rooms with kitchenette go glimmering.
+
+Time was when Miss Harris had been content with Sundays in the park,
+vaudeville--first balcony--on Wednesdays, and a moving picture now and
+then. These lavish attentions, coupled with an occasional assault upon
+some delicatessen establishment, had satisfied her cravings for the
+higher life. Now that Gross had appeared and sown discord with his
+prodigality she no longer cared for animals and band concerts, she had
+acquired the orchestra-seat habit, had learned to dance, and, above
+all, she now possessed a subtle refinement in regard to victuals. She
+criticized Marlowe's acting, and complained that cold food gave her
+indigestion. No longer did she sit the summer evenings out with
+Mitchell, holding his hand in her lap and absent-mindedly buffing his
+nails, warning him in sweet familiarity that his cuticle was "growing
+down." In consequence of her defection, fierce resentment smoldered in
+the young man's breast. He was jealous; he longed to out-squander
+the extravagant Mr. Gross; he lusted to spend money in unstinted
+quantities, five dollars an evening if or when necessary.
+
+But there seemed little hope of his ever attaining such a purse-proud
+position, for while he loomed fairly large in the boarding-house
+atmosphere of Ohio Street--or had so loomed until the advent of the
+reckless bookkeeper--he was so small a part of the office force of
+Comer & Mathison, jobbers of railway supplies, as to resemble nothing
+multiplied by itself. He received twelve dollars a week, to be sure,
+for making telephone quotations and extending invoices between times;
+but when, as the evening shadows of pay-day descended and he drew his
+envelope, the procedure reminded him vaguely of blackmail, for any
+office-boy who did not stutter could have held his job.
+
+When at seven forty-five Miss Harris appeared upon the porch with her
+hat and gloves and two-dollar-ticket air, and tripped gaily away in
+company with Mr. Gross, young Mitchell realized bitterly that the cost
+of living had increased and that it was up to him to raise his salary
+or lose his lady.
+
+He recalled Gross's words at supper-time, and wondered if there really
+could be a science to business; if there could be anything to success
+except hard work. Mr. Comer, in his weekly talks to the office
+force, had repeatedly said so--whence the origin of the bookkeeper's
+warmed-over wisdom--but Mitchell's duties were so simple and so
+constricted as to allow no opening for science, or so, at least, it
+seemed to him. How could he be scientific, how could he find play for
+genius when he sat at the end of a telephone wire and answered routine
+questions from a card? Every day the General Railway Sales Manager
+gave him a price-list of the commodities which C. & M. handled, and
+when an inquiry came over the 'phone all he was required, all he
+was permitted, to do was to read the figures and to quote time of
+delivery. If this resulted in an order the Sales Manager took the
+credit. An open quotation, on the other hand, made Mitchell the
+subject of brusque criticism for offering a target to competitors, and
+when he lost an order he was the goat, not the General Railway Sales
+Manager.
+
+No one around the office was too lowly to exact homage from the
+quotation clerk, and no one was tongue-tied in the matter of
+criticism, hence his position was neither one of dignity nor one
+that afforded scope for talent in the money-making line. And yet if
+salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must
+be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by
+acquiring it. What if he were buckled to the end of a wire? Human
+nature is the same, face to face or voice to voice; surely then, if
+he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere
+string of words over a telephone. Heretofore he had been working
+wholly with his fingers, his ear-drums, and his vocal cords; he
+determined henceforth to exercise his intelligence, if he had any. It
+was indeed high time, for Miss Harris was undoubtedly slipping away,
+lured by luxuries no clerk could afford, and, moreover, he, Mitchell,
+was growing old; in a scant two years he would be able to vote. He
+began forthwith to analyze the situation.
+
+There wasn't much to it. His telephone calls came almost wholly
+from the purchasing departments of the various railroads. Daily
+requisitions were filled by the stenographers in those railway
+offices, young ladies who through their long experience were allowed
+to attend to the more unimportant purchases. It was in quoting prices
+on these "pick-ups" that Mitchell helloed for eight hours a day.
+Of course no large orders ever came over his wire, but this small
+business carried an unusual profit for supply houses like Comer &
+Mathison, and in consequence it was highly prized.
+
+After a period of intense and painful thought the young man realized,
+for the first time, that it was not the telephone itself which asked
+for price and time of delivery, but a weak, imaginative human being,
+like himself, at the other end of the wire. He reasoned further that
+if he could convince that person that the voice from Conner & Mathison
+likewise issued from a human throat, then it might be possible to get
+away, in a measure at least, from the mechanical part of the business
+and establish altogether new relations. If there were really a
+science to salesmanship, it would work at long distance as well as at
+collar-and-elbow holds, and Mitchell's first task, therefore, should
+be to project his own personality into the railroad offices. He went
+to bed still trying to figure the matter out.
+
+His opportunity to test his new-born theory came on the following
+morning when an irritable female voice over at the Santa Fe asked the
+price on twenty kegs of rivets.
+
+"Good morning, Santa Fe-male," he answered, cheerily.
+
+There was a moment of amazed silence, then the young lady snapped:
+"'Good morning'? What is this, the Weather Bureau? I want Comer &
+Mathison."
+
+"Gee! Can't a fellow display a little courtesy in business?" Mitchell
+inquired. "I'd rather be nice to you than not."
+
+"All right, Mr. Comer," the voice replied, sarcastically. "Make a nice
+price on those rivets--and cut out the kidding."
+
+"Listen; my name's not Comer; it's Mitchell. I'm not kidding, either.
+I want you to ask for me whenever you call up. Every little bit helps,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, I see. You want the carriage man to call your number. All right,
+Mitch. If you're out at lunch with Mr. Carnegie the next time I want a
+dozen number ten sheets I'll have you paged at the Union League Club."
+
+If the speaker liked this kind of blank verse, she had called up the
+right supply house, for Mitchell came back with:
+
+"Say, if I ever get _your_ number, I'll do the calling, Miss Santa
+Fe."
+
+"_W-what_?" came the startled reply.
+
+"I mean what I say. I'd love to call--"
+
+"Is that so? Well, I do all the calling for our, family, and I'm going
+to call you right now. What's the price of those rivets?"
+
+"Two sixty-five."
+
+"Too high! Good-by."
+
+"Wait a minute." Mitchell checked the lady before she could "plug out"
+on him. "Now that you've got those rivets out of your system, may I
+get personal for an instant?"
+
+"Just about an instant."
+
+"I could listen to _you_ all day."
+
+"Oops, Horace; he loves me!" mocked the lady's voice.
+
+"See here, I'm a regular person--with references. I've been talking to
+you every day for six months, so I feel that we're acquainted. Some
+pleasant evening, when your crew of hammock gladiators palls on you,
+let me come around and show you the difference."
+
+"What difference?"
+
+"I'll show you what a real porch-climber is like."
+
+"Indeed! I'll think it over."
+
+Ten minutes later Miss Santa Fe called up again.
+
+"Hello! I want Mitchell, the junior partner."
+
+"This is Mitchell."
+
+"Did you say those rivets were two-fifty?"
+
+"Should they be?"
+
+"They should."
+
+"They are."
+
+"Ship them to Trinidad."
+
+"That's bully of you, Miss Santa Claus. I want to--" But the wire was
+dead.
+
+Mitchell grinned. Personality did count after all, and he had proved
+that it could be projected over a copper wire.
+
+An hour later when Miss Northwestern called him for a price on
+stay-bolt iron she did not ring off for fifteen minutes, and at the
+end of that time she promised to take the first opportunity of having
+another chat. In a similar manner, once the ice had been broken at
+the C. & E.I., Mitchell learned that the purchasing agent was at West
+Baden on his vacation; that he had stomach trouble and was cranky;
+that the speaker loved music, particularly Chaminade and George Cohan,
+although Beethoven had written some good stuff; that she'd been to
+Grand Haven on Sunday with her cousin, who sold hats out of Cleveland
+and was a prince with his money, but drank; and that the price on
+corrugated iron might be raised ten cents without doing any damage.
+
+On the following afternoon Murphy, the Railroad Sales Manager, stopped
+on his way past Mitchell's desk to inquire:
+
+"Say, have you been sending orchids to Miss Dunlap over at the Santa
+Fe? I was in there this morning, and she wanted to know all about
+you."
+
+"Did you boost me?" Louis inquired. "It won't hurt your sales to plug
+my game."
+
+"She said you and she are 'buddies' over the wire. What did she mean?"
+
+"Oh, wire pals, that's all. What kind of a looker is she, Mr. Murphy?"
+
+The Sales Manager shrugged his shoulders. "She looks as if she was
+good to her mother." Then he sauntered away.
+
+Mitchell, in the days that followed, proceeded to become acquainted
+with the Big Four, and in a short time was so close to the Lackawanna
+that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times
+in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he
+was busy, threatened to hang crepe on the round-house if he were not
+summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab.
+
+Within a week he became the most thoroughly telephoned person in the
+office, and had learned the tastes, the hopes, the aims, and the
+ambitions of his respective customers. Miss C. & E.I., for instance,
+whose real name was Gratz, was a bug on music; Miss Northwestern was
+literary. She had read everything Marion Crawford ever wrote, and
+considered her the greatest writer Indiana had produced, but was sorry
+to learn from Mitchell that her marriage to Capt. Jack Crawford had
+turned out so unhappily--some men were brutes, weren't they? There was
+a hidden romance gnawing at the Big Four's heart, and Phoebe Snow
+had a picture of James K. Hackett on her desk and wanted to start a
+poultry farm. The Santa Fe had been married once, but had taken her
+maiden name, it was so much pleasanter in business.
+
+As Mitchell's telephone orders piled up, day after day, Murphy began
+to treat him more like an employee than a "hand," and finally offered
+him a moderate expense account if he cared to entertain his railroad
+trade. When the young man's amazement at this offer had abated
+sufficiently for him to accept he sent the office-boy around to the
+Santa Fe on the run, instructing him to size up Miss Dunlap and
+report. It was the first order he had ever issued in the office, and
+the news spread quickly that he had been "raised."
+
+Mr. Gross took occasion to congratulate the despised underling with
+pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat
+it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a letter-press on his
+dome.
+
+When the office-boy reappeared he turned in a laconic report, "She's a
+peach!"
+
+Mitchell sweated the lad for further details, then nearly strained a
+tendon in getting to the telephone booth.
+
+"Hello, Miss Dunlap," he called. "Are you tied up for to-night?"
+
+"I'm knot. The k is silent."
+
+"Will you go to the theater with me?"
+
+"Nickelodeon?"
+
+"No, Montgomery and Stone."
+
+The lady muttered something unintelligible, then she tittered
+nervously. "Those top balconies make me dizzy."
+
+"How about the orchestra--sixth row? Could you keep your head there?"
+
+"You must own a bill-board."
+
+"No, it's a bank-book; same initials, you see. I'm an heiress."
+
+"See here, Mitch"--Miss Dunlap became serious--"you're a good little
+copper-wire comedian, but I don't know you nor your people."
+
+"Well, I come from one of the oldest families in Atwood, Michigan, and
+that town was settled over thirty years ago."
+
+"But you don't know me," the lady demurred.
+
+"I do, too. You're a tall blonde, gray eyes, blue dress; you have a
+dimple--"
+
+"Well, I declare! All right, then; seven-thirty to-night, six hundred
+and twelve Filbert Street, fourth apartment, and many thanks."
+
+Fifteen minutes before the appointed time Louis Mitchell was fidgeting
+nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water "walk-up" known as
+Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes.
+Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the
+back-drop for a "Pity the Blind" card; but promptly on the minute
+he punched the button at the fourth apartment. An instant later he
+realized that no matter how he looked he had it on Miss Dunlap by
+eighty per cent.
+
+She was a blonde, to be sure, for the time being, and by the grace of
+H_{2}O_{2}. One glance convinced her caller of two things--_viz_.,
+that his office-boy did not care much for peaches, and that the Santa
+Fe purchasing agent had a jealous wife. The most that possibly could
+be said in praise of Miss Dunlap's appearance was that she was the
+largest stenographer in Chicago. Then and there, however, her caller
+qualified as a salesman; he smiled and he chatted in a free and easy
+way that had the lady roped, thrown, and lashed to his chariot in
+three minutes by her alarm-clock.
+
+They went to the theater, and when Montgomery sprang a joke or Stone
+did a fall Miss Dunlap showed her appreciation after the fashion of a
+laughing hyena. Between times she barked enthusiastically, giving vent
+to sounds like those caused when a boy runs past a picket fence with a
+stick in his hand. She gushed, but so does Old Faithful. Anyhow, the
+audience enjoyed her greatly.
+
+At supper Mitchell secured parking space for his companion at the
+Union Cafe, and there he learned how a welsh rabbit may be humiliated
+by a woman. During the _debacle_ he fingered the money in his pocket,
+then shut his eyes and ordered a bottle of champagne, just to see if
+it could be done. Contrary to his expectation, the waiter did not
+swoon; nor was he arrested. Root-beer had been Mitchell's main
+intoxicant heretofore, but as he and the noisy Miss Dunlap sipped the
+effervescing wine over their ice-cream, they pledged themselves to
+enjoy Monday evenings together, and she told him, frankly:
+
+"Mitch, you're the nickel-plated entertainer, and I'll never miss
+another Monday eve unless I'm in the shops or the round-house. You
+certainly have got class."
+
+At breakfast Miss Harris regarded Lotus darkly, for Mr. Gross had told
+her just enough to excite her curiosity.
+
+"Where were you last night?" she inquired.
+
+"I went to a show."
+
+"Were the pictures good?"
+
+"They don't have pictures at the Grand."
+
+"Oh--h!" The manicurist's violet eyes opened wide. "Louis--you _drank_
+something. You're awful pale. What was it?"
+
+"Clicquot! That's my favorite brand."
+
+Miss Harris clutched the table-cloth and pulled a dish into her lap.
+After a moment she said: "Maybe you'll take me somewhere to-night. We
+haven't been out together for the longest time."
+
+"Oh, I see! This is Gross's night at the Maccabbees', isn't it?" Louis
+gloated brutally over her confusion. "Sorry, but I'll probably have to
+entertain some more customers. The firm is keeping me busy."
+
+At the office things went most pleasantly for the next few weeks;
+sixty per cent. of the city's railroad business came to Comer &
+Mathison; the clerks began to treat Mitchell as if he were an equal;
+even Gross lost his patronizing air and became openly hateful, while
+Murphy--Louis no longer called him Mister--increased his assistant's
+expense account and confided some of his family affairs to the latter.
+Mr. Comer, the senior partner, began to nod familiarly as he passed
+the quotation clerk's desk.
+
+Nor were Louis's customers all so eccentric as Miss Dunlap. Phoebe
+Snow, for instance, was very easy to entertain, and the Northwestern
+took to his custody like a hungry urchin to a barbecue. He gave them
+each one night a week, and in a short time all his evenings were
+taken, as a consequence of which he saw less and less of Miss Harris.
+But, although he and his manicurist were becoming strangers, he soon
+began to call the waiters at Rector's by their given names, and a
+number of the more prominent cab-drivers waved at him.
+
+One morning when, for the tenth successive time, he slid into his
+desk-chair an hour late, Mr. Comer bowed to him, not only familiarly,
+but sarcastically, then invited him to step into his private office
+and see if he could locate the center of the carpet. It was a
+geometrical task that Louis had been wishing to try for some time.
+
+The senior partner began with elaborate sarcasm. "I notice you're
+not getting down until nine o'clock lately, Mr. Mitchell. Is your
+automobile out of order?"
+
+"I have no automobile, Mr. Comer," the youth replied, respectfully.
+
+"No? I'm surprised. Well, if eight sharp is too early, you may set
+your time."
+
+Mitchell tried his best to appear disconcerted. "You know I'm busy
+every evening with my trade," said he.
+
+"Nonsense. I've seen you out with a different dressmaker every night
+that I've been down-town."
+
+"Those are not dressmakers, they are stenographers from the railroad
+offices. I'm sorry you're not satisfied with me, but I'm glad you
+called me in, for I've been meaning to speak to you about this very
+thing. You see, I have practically all the railroad business in the
+city, and it takes too much of my time keeping it lined up. I have no
+leisure of my own. I'll quit Saturday night, if convenient."
+
+Mr. Comer grunted like a man who has stepped off a flight of stairs
+one step too soon. "I didn't know it was really business. Of course,
+if it is, why, you needn't quit--exactly--"
+
+"I'm afraid I'll have to." Mitchell dropped his eyes demurely. "I've
+had a number of offers, and in justice to myself--"
+
+"Offers? _You_? How much?"
+
+"One hundred a month and expenses."
+
+Mr. Comer removed his glasses, he polished them carefully, then he
+readjusted them and leaned forward, looking the young man over from
+head to foot, as if he had never until this moment seen more than his
+vague outlines.
+
+"Um-m! You're nineteen years old, I believe!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, then, an hour's delay won't be serious. Now you go back to
+your desk and send Mr. Murphy here. I'll let you know shortly whether
+Saturday night or this noon will be convenient."
+
+It was perhaps a half-hour before lunch-time when Mr. Comer again
+called for Mitchell, greeting him with the gruff inquiry:
+
+"See here, do you think I'm going to advance you from twelve to
+twenty-five a week at one clip?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Humph! I'm not. I had a talk with Murphy. I think he's a liar, but
+I'm going to make it fifteen hundred a year and expenses. Now get busy
+and work your 'trade' for all it's worth."
+
+Young Mitchell's knees wabbled, but, having learned the value of a
+black mask and a gun, he went through his victim thoroughly while he
+had him down.
+
+"I'd like a traveling position the first of the year, sir, if you
+don't mind."
+
+"All right! If you hold your present gait I'll give you the Western
+roads. Anything else you'd like? Well, then, git!"
+
+That day Louis switched from the narrow-countered bakery-lunch route
+to regular standard-gauge restaurants; he ordered clothes like a
+bookmaker's bride and he sent a cubic foot of violets to Miss Harris.
+At dinner-time he patronized Mr. Gross so tantalizingly that the
+latter threatened to pull his nose out until it resembled a yard of
+garden hose.
+
+The whole boarding-house was agog at Mitchell's good fortune and
+Miss Harris smiled on him in a manner reminiscent of the good old
+ante-bookkeeper--one might say "ante-vellum"--days. She hinted that
+Mr. Gross's company did not wholly satisfy her soul-hunger, and even
+confessed that she was lonely; but this was Mitchell's Rock Island
+evening, and although the frank surrender in Miss Harris's eyes caused
+him to gasp as if he were slowly settling into a barrel of ice-water,
+he tore himself from her side.
+
+Louis's batting average would have reached one thousand had it not
+been for the Monon. Miss Day, the young lady there, had a vocabulary
+limited to "Hello," "Too high," and "Good-by," and it became
+particularly galling to learn that the fellow at James & Naughten's
+was pulling down the business, so Mitchell went to Murphy with a
+proposition which showed that his mental growth had kept pace with his
+financial advancement.
+
+"You need a new stenographer," he declared.
+
+"Oh, do I? Why do I need a new stenographer, Mr. Bones?"
+
+"Well, it would be a good investment, and I know a corker."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Miss Day, of the Monon."
+
+"I didn't know you cared for Miss Day."
+
+"I don't. That's the reason I want her to work for you."
+
+Murphy coughed slightly, then he agreed. "You're learning the game.
+We'll give her a three-dollar raise, and take her on."
+
+Shortly thereafter Mitchell began to get acquainted with the new Miss
+Monon along the right lines, and gave her Thursday nights. She was a
+great improvement over Miss Day; she was, in fact, quite different
+from any of the others. She was small and winsome, and she didn't care
+to run around. She liked her home, and so did Mitchell after he had
+called a few times. Before long he began to look forward eagerly
+to Thursday nights and Miss Monon's cozy corner with its red-plush
+cushions--reminiscent of chair-cars, to be sure--and its darkness
+illumined dimly by red and green signal lamps. Many a pleasant evening
+the two spent there, talking of locomotive planished iron, wire
+nails, and turnbuckles, and the late lunch Miss Monon served beat the
+system's regular buffet service a city block. Of course they lit the
+red fire in front of James & Naughten's and turned the green light
+Mitchell's way. He had the right of way on the Monon after that, and
+other salesmen were side-tracked.
+
+But this was too easy to last. Human affairs never run smoothly; it is
+a man's ability to surmount the hummocks and the pressure ridges that
+enables him to penetrate to the polar regions of success. The first
+inkling of disaster came to Mitchell when Miss Dunlap began to tire
+of the gay life and chose to spend her Monday evenings at home, where
+they might be alone together. She spoke of the domestic habits she had
+acquired during her brief matrimonial experience; she boldly declared
+that marriage was the ideal state for any man, and that two could live
+as cheaply as one, although personally she saw no reason why a girl
+should quit work the instant she became a wife, did he? She confessed
+that Monday evenings had become so pleasant that if Louis could
+arrange to drop in on Fridays also, the week would be considerably
+brightened thereby and her whole disposition improved. Now Fridays
+were cinched tightly to the Big Four, but the young man dared not
+acknowledge it, so he confessed that all his evenings except Monday
+were taken up with night school, whereupon Miss Dunlap, in order
+to keep abreast of his mental development, decided to take a
+correspondence course in Esperanto.
+
+It transpired also that his attentions toward the Lackawanna had
+been misconstrued, for one night when Phoebe bade him adieu in the
+vestibule she broke down and wept upon his shoulder, saying that his
+coldness hurt her. She confessed that a rate clerk in the freight
+department wanted to marry her, and she supposed she'd have to accept
+his dastardly proposal because a girl couldn't go on working all
+her life, could she? Then Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., following a
+red-letter night at Grand Opera, succeeded by a German pancake and a
+stein at the Edelweiss and a cab-ride home, took Louis gravely to task
+for his extravagance and hinted that he ought to have a permanent
+manager who took an interest in him, one who loved music as he did and
+whose tastes were simple and Teutonic.
+
+When the literary lady of the Northwestern declined a trip to the
+White City and began to read Marion Crawford aloud to him Louis awoke
+to the gravity of the situation.
+
+But before he had worked the matter out in his own mind that rate
+clerk of whom Miss Lackawanna had spoken dropped in at Comer &
+Mathison's, introduced himself to Mitchell and told him, with a degree
+of firmness which could not be ignored, that his attentions to Miss
+Phoebe Snow were distasteful. He did not state to whom. Louis's caller
+had the physical proportions of a "white hope," and he wasted few
+words. He had come to nail up a vacate notice, and he announced simply
+but firmly that Miss Snow's Wednesday evenings were to be considered
+open time thereafter, and if Mitchell elected to horn his way in it
+was a hundred-to-one shot that he'd have to give up solid foods for a
+month or more and take his nourishment through a glass tube.
+
+Nor were the young man's troubles confined to the office. Miss Harris,
+it seemed, had seen him with a different lady each night she and Mr.
+Gross had been out, and had drawn her own conclusions, so, therefore,
+when he tried to talk to her she flared up and called him a dissipated
+roue, and threatened to have the head bookkeeper give him a thrashing
+if he dared to accost her again.
+
+Now the various apartments where Mitchell had been calling, these past
+months, were opulently furnished with gifts from the representatives
+of the various railway supply houses of the city, each article being
+cunningly designed to cement in the mind of the owner a source of
+supply which, coupled with price and delivery, would make for good
+sales service. He was greatly surprised one day to receive a brass
+library lamp from the Santa Fe the initial destination of which had
+evidently been changed. Then came a mission hall-clock in the original
+package, redirected in the hand of Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., and
+one day the office-boy from the Lackawanna brought him a smoking-set
+for which Miss Phoebe Snow had no use. Gifts like these piled
+up rapidly, many of them bearing witness to the fact that their
+consignment originated from Mitchell's very rivals in the railroad
+trade. Judging from the quantity of stuff that ricocheted from the
+Santa Fe it was Miss Dunlap's evident desire to present him with a
+whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible. Louis's desk
+became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green's became filled
+with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-a-brac. He
+acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of
+his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers
+was the best in Chicago.
+
+Miss Harris continued to ignore him, however, and he learned with a
+jealous pang that she was giving Mr. Gross a gratuitous course of
+facial massage and scalp treatments. No longer did Mitchell entertain
+his trade; they entertained him. They tried to help him save his
+money, and every evening he was forced to battle for his freedom.
+
+In desperation he finally went to Murphy begging quick promotion to a
+traveling position, but the Sales Manager told him there was no chance
+before the first of the year, then asked him why he had lost his grip
+on the Lackawanna business.
+
+As a matter of fact, since Miss Phoebe's rate clerk had declared
+himself Mitchell had slipped a few Wednesday nights, trusting to
+hold the Lackawanna trade by virtue of his past performances, but he
+realized in the light of Murphy's catechism that eternal visiting is
+the price of safety. He sighed, therefore, and called up the lady,
+then apprehensively made a date.
+
+That visit issued in disaster, as he had feared. The rate clerk,
+gifted with some subtle second sight, had divined his treachery and
+was waiting. He came to meet the caller gladly, like a paladin. Louis
+strove to disarm the big brute by the power of the human eye, then
+when that did not work he explained, politely, earnestly, that his
+weekly calls were but part and parcel of his business, and that there
+was nothing in his mind so remote as thoughts of matrimony. But the
+rate clerk was a stolid, a suspicious person, and he was gnawed by
+a low and common jealousy. Reason failing, they came together,
+amalgamating like two drops of quicksilver.
+
+On the following morning Mitchell explained to Mr. Comer that
+in stepping out of the bathtub he had slipped and wrenched both
+shoulders, then while passing through the dark hall had put his face
+into mourning by colliding with an open door. His ankles he had
+sprained on the way down-town.
+
+About nine-thirty Miss Dunlap called up, but not to leave an order.
+When she had finally rung off Louis looked dazedly at the wire to see
+if the insulation had melted. It seemed impossible that rubber and
+gutta-percha could withstand such heat as had come sizzling from the
+Santa Fe. From what the lady had said it required no great inductive
+powers to reason that the rate clerk had told all. Coming victorious
+to Miss Lackawanna's door to have his knuckles collodionized he had
+made known in coarse, triumphant language the base commercialism of
+his rival.
+
+The result had been that Phoebe arose in her wrath. Just to verify the
+story she had called up the other railroad offices this morning,
+and the hideous truth had come out. It had come out like a herd of
+jack-rabbits ahead of a hound. Miss Dunlap was shouting mad, but
+Phoebe herself, when she called up, was indignant in a mean, sarcastic
+manner that hurt. The Northwestern rang Mitchell to say good-by
+forever and to hope his nose was broken; the Big Four promised that
+her brother, who was a puddler in the South Chicago steel mills, would
+run in and finish the rate clerk's job; Miss Gratz, of the C.&E.I.,
+was tearfully plaintive and, being German, spoke of suicide. Of course
+all business relations with these offices were at an end.
+
+During that whole day but one 'phone order came, and that was from
+Miss Monon. Mitchell had been steeling himself to hear from her, but
+it seemed that she took the whole thing as rather a good joke. She
+told him she had known all the time why he came to see her, and when
+he reminded her that it was Thursday she invited him to call if he
+thought it worth while.
+
+When he saw Miss Harris at supper-time and undertook to explain his
+black eyes she assured him coldly that he and his ebony gig-lamps
+mattered nothing in her young life, as evidence of which she flashed a
+magnificent three-quarter carat diamond solitaire on her third finger.
+She and Mr. Gross expected to be married inside of two or three years
+if all went well, she told him.
+
+At eight o'clock, disguised behind a pair of blue goggles, Louis
+headed for Miss Monon's door, glad that the cozy corner was so dimly
+lighted. When he arrived she bathed his battle-scarred features with
+hamamelis, which is just the same as Pond's Extract, but doesn't cost
+so much, and told him the other girls had acted foolishly. She was
+very sweet and gentle with him and young Mitchell, imperfect as was
+his vision, saw something in her he had never seen before.
+
+A week went by, during which it seemed that all the railroads except
+the Monon had suddenly gone out of business. It was as if a strike had
+been declared. Another week passed and Mitchell's sales were scarcely
+noticeable, so Mr. Comer called him in to ask:
+
+"Is your 'phone disconnected?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you know the price of our goods?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Don't you sleep well at home?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then what has become of those pick-ups?"
+
+"I seem to have lost--my trade."
+
+"Your 'trade'! Bah! Young man, you've been dissipating. That expense
+account turned your head. You've been blowing in our money on your
+friends and you've let your customers go. If you can't hold the
+railroad business we'll get some fellow who can. Cut out your
+sewing-circle wine suppers and your box parties to the North Shore
+debutantes and get busy. You've got a week to make good. One week."
+
+There wasn't the slightest chance, and Mitchell told Miss Monon
+so when Thursday came around. He told her all about that promised
+position on the road and what it meant to him, and then he told her
+that beginning Monday he'd have to hunt a new berth at twelve dollars
+per. She was very quiet, very sympathetic--so sympathetic, in fact,
+that he told her some other things which no young man on a diminishing
+salary should tell. She said little at the moment, but she did
+considerable thinking, and she got busy on her 'phone early the next
+morning. The first number she called was the Santa Fe's. When she had
+finished talking with Miss Dunlap that hempen-haired sentimentalist
+was dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief and blowing her nose,
+assuring Miss Monon, at the same time, that she was a dear and that
+it was all right now that she knew the truth. Miss Monon blushed
+prettily, thanked her, and confessed that she had felt it coming on
+for some time. Thereupon they took turns calling the others, from the
+Big Four to the C.&E.I., with the result that Mitchell's wire began to
+heat up.
+
+Phoebe Snow called him to say that she hadn't meant what she said,
+that he was a good old scout, and that the rate clerk was sorry also,
+and wanted to stand treat for a Dutch lunch. Then she left an order
+for a ton and a half of engine bolts.
+
+Miss Gratz cried a little when she heard Mitchell's voice and told him
+to make his own price on forty kegs of washers and suit himself about
+delivery.
+
+Miss Dunlap confessed that it was her pride which had spoken, and,
+anyhow, she knew altogether too much about marriage to take another
+chance. She'd rather have one man friend than three husbands.
+
+One by one the flock returned, and Saturday night Mitchell sent five
+pounds of chocolates and a sheaf of red roses to the one who had made
+it all come out right. He got his share of business after that, and
+when the holidays came they brought him his promotion.
+
+Murphy, who knew most of the facts, was the first to congratulate him.
+"Jove!" he said, "that little Monon lady saved your bacon, didn't she?
+By. the way, you never told me what her name was."
+
+Young Mitchell's cheeks assumed a shell-pink shade as he replied: "It
+doesn't matter what her name was, it's Mitchell now. We were married
+yesterday and--all the roads were represented at the wedding."
+
+
+
+
+WITH BRIDGES BURNED
+
+
+Louis Mitchell knew what the telegram meant, even though it was brief
+and cryptic. He had been expecting something of the sort ever since
+the bottom dropped out of the steel business and prices tobogganed
+forty dollars a ton. Nevertheless, it came as an undeniable shock, for
+he had hoped the firm would keep him on in spite of hard times. He
+wondered, as he sadly pocketed the yellow sheet, whether he had in him
+the makings of a good life-insurance agent, or if he had not better
+"join out" with a medicine show. This message led him to think his
+talents must lie along the latter line. Certainly they did not lie in
+the direction of metal supplies.
+
+He had plenty of time to think the situation over, however, for it is
+a long jump from Butte to Chicago; when he arrived at the latter place
+he was certain of only one thing, he would not stand a cut in salary.
+Either Comer & Mathison would have to fire him outright or keep him on
+at his present wage; he would not compromise as the other salesmen had
+done and were doing.
+
+Twenty-five hundred a year is a liberal piece of money where people
+raise their own vegetables, but to a man traveling in the West it is
+about equal to "no pair." Given two hundred dollars a month and a fair
+expense account a salesman can plow quite a respectable furrow around
+Plymouth Rock, but out where they roll their r's and monogram their
+live stock he can't make a track. Besides the loss of prestige and all
+that went with it, there was another reason why young Mitchell could
+not face a cut. He had a wife, and she was too new, too wonderful;
+she admired him too greatly to permit of such a thing. She might, she
+doubtless would, lose confidence in him if he took a step backward,
+and that confidence of hers was the most splendid thing in Mitchell's
+life. No, if Comer & Mathison wanted to make any change, they would
+have to promote him. Ten minutes with the "old man," however, served
+to jar this satisfactory determination to its foundation. Mr. Comer
+put the situation clearly, concisely.
+
+"Business is rotten. We've got to lay all the younger men off or we'll
+go broke," he announced.
+
+"But--I'm married," protested the young salesman.
+
+"So am I; so is Mathison; so are the rest of the fellows. But, my boy,
+this is a panic. We wouldn't let you go if we could keep you."
+
+"I can sell goods--"
+
+"That's just it; we don't want you to. Conditions are such that we
+can't afford to sell anything. The less business we do the fewer
+losses we stand to make. Good Lord, Louis, this is the worst year the
+trade has ever known!"
+
+"B-but--I'm married," blankly repeated Mitchell.
+
+Comer shook his head. "We'd keep you in a minute if there was any way
+to do it. You go home and see the wife. Of course if you can show
+us where you're worth it, we'll let you stay; but--well, you can't.
+There's no chance. I'll see you to-morrow."
+
+Ordinarily Mitchell would not have allowed himself the extravagance
+of a cab, but to-day the cars were too slow. He wondered how the girl
+would take this calamity, their very first. As a matter of fact, she
+divined the news even before he had voiced his exuberant greetings,
+and, leading him into the neat little front room, she curled up at his
+side, demanding all the reasons for his unexpected recall. He saw that
+she was wide-eyed and rather white. When he had broken the bad news
+she inquired, bravely:
+
+"What is your plan, boy?"
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I mean it. What can I do? I don't know anything except the steel
+business. I can lick my weight in wildcats on my own ground--but--"
+The wife nodded her blonde head in complete agreement. "But that lets
+me out," he concluded, despondently. "I can sell steel because I know
+it from the ground up; it's my specialty."
+
+"Oh, we mustn't think about making a change."
+
+"I've handled more big jobs than any man of my age and experience on
+the road, and yet--I'm fired." The husband sighed wearily. "I built
+that big pipe line in Portland; I sold those smelters in Anaconda, and
+the cyanide tanks for the Highland Girl. Yes, and a lot of other jobs,
+too. I know all about the smelter business, but that's no sign I can
+sell electric belts or corn salve. We're up against it, girlie."
+
+"Have people quit building smelters?"
+
+"They sure have--during this panic. There's nothing doing anywhere."
+
+The wife thought for a moment before saying, "The last time you were
+home you told me about some Western mining men who had gone to South
+Africa--"
+
+"Sure! To the Rand! They've made good, too; they're whopping big
+operators, now."
+
+"You said there was a large contract of some sort coming up in
+London."
+
+"Large! Well, rather! The Robinson-Ray job. It's the biggest ever, in
+my line. They're going to rebuild those plants the Boers destroyed. I
+heard all about it in Montana."
+
+"Well!" Mrs. Mitchell spoke with finality. "That's the place for you.
+Get the firm to send you over there."
+
+"Um-m! I thought about that, but it scared me out. It's too big. Why,
+it's a three-million-dollar job. You see, we've never landed a large
+foreign contract in this country as yet." Mitchell sat up suddenly.
+"But say! This panic might--" Then he relaxed. "Oh, what's the use?
+If there were a chance the firm wouldn't send me. Comer would go
+himself--he'd take the whole outfit over for a job like that. Besides,
+it's too big a thing for our people; they couldn't handle it."
+
+Mrs. Mitchell's eyes were as round as buttons. "Three million dollars'
+worth of steel in one contract! Do you think you could land it if you
+went?"
+
+"It's my line of work," the young man replied, doubtfully. "I'll bet
+I know more about cyanide tanks than any salesman in Europe, and if I
+had a decent price to work on--"
+
+"Then it's the chance we've been waiting for."
+
+The girl scrambled to her feet and, fetching a chair, began to talk
+earnestly, rapidly. She talked for a long time, until gradually the
+man's gray despondency gave way to her own bright optimism. Nor was
+it idle theory alone that she advanced; Mitchell found that she knew
+almost as much about the steel business as he did, and when she had
+finished he arose and kissed her.
+
+"You've put new heart into me, anyhow. If you're game to do your
+share, why--I'll try it out. But remember it may mean all we've got in
+the bank, and--" He looked at her darkly.
+
+"It's the biggest chance we'll ever have," she insisted. "It's worth
+trying. Don't let's wait to get rich until we are old."
+
+When Mr. Comer returned from lunch he found his youngest salesman
+waiting for him, and inside of ten minutes he had learned what
+Mitchell had on his mind. With two words Comer blew out the gas.
+
+"You're crazy," said he.
+
+"Am I? It's worth going after."
+
+"In the first place no big foreign job ever came to America--"
+
+"I know all that. It's time we got one."
+
+"In the second place Comer & Mathison are jobbers."
+
+"I'll get a special price from Carnegie."
+
+"In the third place it would cost a barrel of money to send a man to
+England."
+
+Mitchell swallowed hard. "I'll pay my own way."
+
+Mr. Comer regarded the speaker with genuine astonishment. "_You'll_
+pay your way? Why, you haven't got any money."
+
+"I've got a thousand dollars--or the wife has. It's our nest-egg."
+
+"It would take five thousand to make the trip."
+
+"I'll make it on one. Yes, and I'll come back with that job. Don't you
+see this panic makes the thing possible? Yes, and I'm the one man
+to turn the trick; for it's right in my line. I'll see the Carnegie
+people at Pittsburgh. If they quote the right price I'll ask you for a
+letter, and that's all you'll have to do. Will you let me go?"
+
+"What sort of a letter?"
+
+"A letter stating that I am your general sales manager."
+
+The steel merchant's mouth fell open.
+
+"Oh, I only want it for this London trip," Mitchell explained. "I
+won't use it except as a credential. But I've got to go armed, you
+understand. Mr. Comer, if I don't land that Robinson-Ray contract, I
+won't come back. I--I couldn't, after this. Maybe I'll drive a 'bus--I
+hear they have a lot of them in London."
+
+"Suppose, for instance, you should get the job on a profitable basis;
+the biggest job this concern ever had and one of the biggest ever let
+anywhere--" Mr. Comer's brow was wrinkled humorously. "What would you
+expect out of it?"
+
+Mitchell grinned. "Well, if I signed all those contracts as your
+general sales manager, I'd probably form the habit."
+
+"There's nothing modest about you, is there?" queried the elder man.
+
+"Not a thing. My theory of business is that a man should either be
+fired or promoted. If I get that job I'll leave it to you to do what's
+right. I won't ask any questions."
+
+"The whole thing is utterly absurd," Mitchell's employer protested.
+"You haven't a chance! But--Wait!" He pressed a button on his desk.
+"We'll talk with Mathison."
+
+Louis Mitchell took the night train for Pittsburgh. He was back in
+three days, and that afternoon Mr. Comer, in the privacy of his own
+office, dictated a letter of which no carbon copy was preserved. He
+gave it to the young man with his own hand, and with these words:
+"You'd better think it over carefully, my boy. It's the most idiotic
+thing I ever heard of, and there isn't one chance in a million. It
+won't do you any good to fail, even on a forlorn hope like this."
+
+But Mitchell smiled. "I can't fail--I'm married." Then when the other
+seemed unimpressed by this method of reasoning, he explained: "I guess
+you never saw my wife. She says I can do it."
+
+It was only to this lady herself that Mitchell recited the details of
+his reception at Pittsburgh, and of the battle he had fought in the
+Carnegie office. The Carnegie men had refused to take him seriously,
+had laughed at him as at a mild-mannered lunatic.
+
+"But I got my price," he concluded, triumphantly, "and it sure looks
+good to me. Now for the painful details and the sad good-bys."
+
+"How long will you be gone?" his wife inquired.
+
+"I can't stay more than a month, the bank-roll is too small."
+
+"Oo-oo-h! A month! London is a long way off." Mrs. Mitchell's voice
+broke plaintively and her husband's misgivings at once took fire.
+
+"If I fail, as they all feel sure I will, what then?" he inquired.
+"I'll be out of a job! I'll be a joke in the steel business; I'll be
+broke. What will you do?"
+
+She gave him a ravishing, dimpled smile, and her eyes were brave once
+more. "Why, I haven't forgotten my shorthand, and there are always the
+department stores." In a high, querulous tone she cried "Ca--a--sh!"
+then laughed aloud at his expression. "Oh, it wouldn't hurt me any.
+But--you won't fail--you can't! We're going to be rich. Now, we'll
+divide our grand fortune." She produced a roll of currency from her
+purse and took four twenty-dollar bills from it.
+
+"Only eighty dollars?" he queried.
+
+"It's more than enough for me. You'll be back in a month." She thrust
+the remaining notes into his hand. "It's our one great, glorious
+chance, dear. Don't you understand?"
+
+Faith, hope and enthusiasm, the three graces of salesmanship, thrive
+best in bright places. Had it not been for his wife's cheer during
+those final hours young Mitchell surely would have weakened before it
+came time to leave on the following day. It was a far cry to London,
+and he realized 'way back in his head that there wasn't one chance in
+a million of success. He began to doubt, to waver, but the girl seemed
+to feel that her lord was bound upon some flaring triumph, and even
+at the station her face was wreathed in smiles. Her blue eyes were
+brimming with excitement; she bubbled with hopeful, helpful advice;
+she patted her husband's arm and hugged it to her. "You're going to
+win, boy. You're going to win," she kept repeating. For one moment
+only--at the actual parting--she clung to him wildly, with all her
+woman's strength, then, as the warning cry sounded, she kissed him
+long and hungrily, and fairly thrust him aboard the Pullman. He did
+not dream how she wilted and drooped the instant he had gone.
+
+As the train pulled out he ran back to the observation car to wave
+a last farewell, and saw her clinging to the iron fence, sobbing
+wretchedly; a desolate, weak little girl-wife mastered by a thousand
+fears. She was too blind with tears to see him. The sight raised a
+lump in the young husband's throat which lasted to Fort Wayne.
+
+"Poor little thoroughbred," he mused. "I just can't lose, that's all."
+
+The lump was not entirely gone when the luncheon call came, so
+Mitchell dined upon it, reasoning that this kind of a beginning
+augured well for an economical trip.
+
+Now that he was away from the warmth of his wife's enthusiasm
+contemplation of his undertaking made the salesman rather sick. If
+only he were traveling at the firm's expense, if only he had something
+to fall back upon in case of failure, if only Comer & Mathison were
+behind him in any way, the complexion of things would have been
+altogether different. But to set out for a foreign land with no
+backing whatever in the hope of accomplishing that which no American
+salesman had ever been able to accomplish, and to finance the
+undertaking out of his own pocket on a sum less than he would have
+expected for cigarette money--well, it was an enterprise to test
+a fellow's courage and to dampen the most youthful optimism. His
+proposal to the firm to win all or lose all, he realized now, had
+been in the nature of a bluff, and the firm had called it. There was
+nothing to do, therefore, but go through and win; there could be no
+turning back, for he had burned his bridges.
+
+When one enters a race-horse in a contest he puts the animal in good
+condition, he grooms it, he feeds it the best the stable affords,
+he trains and exercises it carefully. Mitchell had never owned a
+race-horse, but he reasoned that similar principles should apply to a
+human being under similar conditions. He had entered a competition,
+therefore he decided to condition himself physically and mentally for
+the race. A doped pony cannot run, neither can a worried salesman sell
+goods.
+
+In line with this decision, he took one of the best state-rooms on the
+_Lucania_, and denied himself nothing that the ship afforded. Every
+morning he took his exercise, every evening a rub-down. He trained
+like a fighter, and when he landed he was fit; his muscles were
+hard, his stomach strong, his brain clear. He went first-class from
+Liverpool to London; he put up at the Metropole in luxurious quarters.
+When he stopped to think about that nine hundred and twenty, already
+amazingly shrunken, he argued bravely that what he had spent had gone
+to buy condition powders.
+
+On the way across he had posted himself so far as possible about the
+proposed Robinson-Ray plant. He learned that there were to be fifteen
+batteries of cyanide tanks, two high--eighty-four in all--supported
+by steel sub- and super-structures; the work to be completed at
+Krugersdorpf, twenty miles out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
+The address of the company was No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street.
+Threadneedle Street was somewhere in London, and London was the
+capital of a place called England.
+
+He knew other African contracts were under consideration, but he
+dismissed them from his thoughts and centered his forces upon
+this particular job. Once he had taken a definite scent his early
+trepidations vanished. He became obsessed by a joyous, purposeful,
+unceasing energy that would not let him rest.
+
+The first evening in London he fattened himself for the fray with a
+hearty dinner, then he strove to get acquainted with his neighbors and
+his environment. The nervous force within him needed outlet, but he
+was frowned upon at every quarter. Even the waiter at his table made
+it patent that his social standing would not permit him to indulge
+in the slightest intimacy with chance guests of the hotel, while the
+young Earl who had permitted Mitchell to register at the desk declined
+utterly to go further with their acquaintance. Louis spent the evening
+at the Empire, and the next morning, which was Sunday, he put in on
+the top of a 'bus, laying himself open to the advances of anybody who
+cared to pay him the slightest attention. But he was ignored; even
+the driver, who spoke a foreign language, evidently considered him a
+suspicious character. Like a wise general, Louis reconnoitered No.
+42-1/2 Threadneedle Street during the afternoon, noting the lay of the
+land and deciding upon modes of transportation to and from. Under
+the pressure of circumstance he chose a Cannon Street 'bus, fare
+"tuppence."
+
+Now garrulity is a disease that must either break out or strike inward
+with fatal results. When Sunday night came, Mitchell was about ready
+to fare forth with gun and mask and take conversation away from
+anybody who had it to spare. He had begun to fear that his vocal cords
+would atrophy.
+
+He was up early, had breakfasted, and was at 42-1/2 Threadneedle
+Street promptly at nine, beating the janitor by some twenty minutes.
+During the next hour and a half he gleaned considerable information
+regarding British business methods, the while he monotonously pounded
+the sidewalk.
+
+At nine-thirty a scouting party of dignified office-boys made a
+cautious approach. At nine-thirty-five there came the main army of
+clerks, only they were not clerks, but "clarks"--very impressive
+gentlemen with gloves, spats, sticks, silk hats and sack coats. At
+this same time, evidently by appointment, came the charwomen--"char"
+being spelled s-c-r-u-b, and affording an example of how pure English
+has been corrupted out in the Americas.
+
+After the arrival of the head "clarks" and stenographers at
+nine-forty-five, there ensued fifteen minutes of guarded conversation
+in front of the offices. During this time the public issues of the day
+were settled and the nation's policies outlined. At ten o'clock the
+offices were formally opened, and at ten-thirty a reception was
+tendered to the managers who arrived dressed as for any well-conducted
+afternoon function.
+
+To Mitchell, who was accustomed to the feverish, football methods of
+American business life, all this was vastly edifying and instructive;
+it was even soothing, although he was vaguely offended to note that
+passers-by avoided him as if fearful of contamination.
+
+Upon entering 42-1/2 Threadneedle Street, he was halted by an
+imperious office-boy. To him Louis gave his card with a request that
+it be handed to Mr. Peebleby, then he seated himself and for an hour
+witnessed a parade of unsmiling, silk-hatted gentlemen pass in and out
+of Mr. Peebleby's office. Growing impatient, at length, he inquired of
+the boy;
+
+"Is somebody dead around here or is this where the City Council
+meets?"
+
+"I beg pardon?" The lad was polite in a cool, superior way.
+
+"I say, what's the idea of the pall-bearers?"
+
+The youth's expression froze to one of disapproval and suspicion.
+
+"I mean the parade. Are these fellows Congress- or minstrel-men?"
+
+His hearer shrugged and smiled vacuously, then turned away, whereupon
+Mitchell took him firmly by the arm.
+
+"Look here, my boy," he began. "There seems to be a lot of information
+coming to both of us. Who are these over-dressed gentlemen I see
+promenading back and forth?"
+
+"Why--they're callers, customers, representatives of the firms we do
+business with, sir."
+
+"Is this Guy Fawkes Day?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Are these men here on business? Are any of them salesmen, for
+instance?"
+
+"Yes, sir; some of them. Certainly, sir."
+
+"To see Mr. Peebleby about the new construction work?"
+
+"No doubt."
+
+"So, you're letting them get the edge on me."
+
+"I beg pardon?"
+
+"Never mind, I merely wanted to assure you that I have some olive
+spats, a high hat, and a walking-stick, but I left them at my hotel.
+I'm a salesman, too. Now then let's get down to business. I've come
+all the way from America to hire an office-boy. I've heard so much
+about English office-boys that I thought I'd run over and get one.
+Would you entertain a proposition to go back to America and become my
+partner?"
+
+The boy rolled his eyes; it was plain that he was seriously alarmed.
+"You are ragging me, sir," he stammered, uncertainly.
+
+"Perish the thought!"
+
+"I--I--Really, sir--"
+
+"I pay twenty-five dollars a week to office-boys. That's five 'pun' in
+your money, I believe. But, meanwhile, now that I'm in London, I have
+some business with Mr. Peebleby." Mitchell produced an American silver
+dollar and forced it into the boy's hand, whereupon the latter blinked
+in a dazed manner, then hazarded the opinion that Mr. Peebleby might
+be at leisure if Mr. Mitchell had another card.
+
+"Never mind the card; I can't trust you with another one. Just show me
+the trail and I'll take it myself. That's a way we have in America."
+
+A moment later he was knocking at a door emblazoned, "Director
+General." Without awaiting an invitation, he turned the knob and
+walked in. Before the astonished Mr. Peebleby could expostulate he had
+introduced himself and was making known his mission.
+
+Fortunately for Mitchell, Englishmen are not without a sense of
+humor. The announcement that this young man had come all the way from
+Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., to bid on the Krugersdorpf work struck Mr.
+Peebleby as amusing. Not only was the idea in itself laughable, but
+also the fact that a mere beardless youth should venture to figure on
+a contract of such gigantic proportions quite convulsed the Director
+General, and in consequence he smiled. Then fearing that his dignity
+had been jeopardized, he announced politely but firmly that the
+proposition was absurd, and that he had no time to discuss it.
+
+"I've come for that job, and I'm going to take it back with me,"
+Mitchell averred, with equal firmness. "I know more about this class
+of work than any salesman you have over here, and I'm going to build
+you the finest cluster of cyanide tanks you ever saw."
+
+"May I ask where you obtained this comprehensive knowledge of tank
+construction?" Mr. Peebleby inquired, with some curiosity.
+
+"Sure!" Mitchell ran through a list of jobs with which the Director
+General could not have been unfamiliar. He mentioned work that caused
+that gentleman to regard him more respectfully. For a time questions
+and answers shot back and forth between them.
+
+"I tell you, that is my line," Mitchell declared, at length. "I'll
+read any blueprints you can offer. I'll answer any queries you can
+formulate. I'm the accredited representative of a big concern, and I'm
+entitled to a chance to figure, at least. That courtesy is due me."
+
+"I dare say it is," the other reluctantly agreed. "I'm very busy, but
+if that is the quickest way to end the discussion I'll give you the
+prints. I assure you, nevertheless, it is an utter waste of your time
+and mine." He pushed a button and five minutes later a clerk staggered
+back into the room with an armful of blueprints that caused Mitchell
+to gasp.
+
+"The bid must be in Thursday at ten-thirty," Peebleby announced.
+
+"Thursday? Why, good Lord! That's only three days, and there's a
+dray-load of drawings!"
+
+"I told you it was a waste of time. You should have come sooner."
+
+Mitchell ran through the pile and his heart grew sick with dismay.
+There were drawings of tanks, drawings of substructures and
+superstructures in every phase of construction--enough of them
+to daunt a skilled engineer. He realized that he had by no means
+appreciated the full magnitude of this work, in fact had never figured
+on a job anything like this one. He could see at least a week's hard,
+constant labor ahead of him--a week's work to be done in three days.
+There was no use trying; the time was too short; it was a physical
+impossibility to formulate an intelligent proposition in such a
+short length of time. Then to Mitchell's mind came the picture of
+a wretched, golden-haired girl clinging to the iron fence of the
+Pennsylvania depot. He gathered the rolls into his arms.
+
+"At ten-thirty, Thursday," said he.
+
+"Ten-thirty, sharp."
+
+"Thank you. I'll have my bid in."
+
+His muscles ached and his knees were trembling even before he had
+reached the street. When he tried to board a 'bus he was waved away,
+so he called a cab, piled his blueprints inside of it, and then
+clambered in on top of them. He realized that he was badly frightened.
+
+To this day the sight of a blueprint gives Louis Mitchell a peculiar
+nausea and a fluttering sensation about the heart. At three o'clock
+the next morning he felt his way blindly to his bed and toppled upon
+it, falling straightway into a slumber during which he passed through
+monotonous, maddening wastes of blue and white, over which ran
+serpentine rows of figures.
+
+He was up with the dawn and at his desk again, but by four that
+afternoon he was too dazed, too exhausted to continue. His eyes were
+playing him tricks, the room was whirling, his hand was shaking until
+his fingers staggered drunkenly across the sheets of paper. Ground
+plans, substructures, superstructures, were jumbled into a frightful
+tangle. He wanted to yell. Instead he flung the drawings about the
+room, stamped savagely upon them, then rushed down-stairs and devoured
+a table d'hote dinner. He washed the meal down with a bottle of red
+wine, smoked a long cigar, then undressed and went to bed amid the
+scattered blueprints. He slept like a dead man.
+
+He arose at sun-up, clear-headed, calm. All day he worked like a
+machine, increasing his speed as the hours flew. He took good care to
+eat and drink, and, above all, to smoke at regular intervals, but he
+did not leave his room. By dark he had much of the task behind him; by
+midnight he began to have hope; toward dawn he saw the end; and when
+daylight came he collapsed.
+
+He had deciphered the tank and superstructure plans on forty-five sets
+of blueprints, had formulated a proposition, exclusive of substructure
+work, basing a price per pound on the American market then ruling,
+f.o.b. tidewater, New York. He had the proposition in his pocket
+when he tapped on the ground-glass door of Mr. Peebleby's office at
+ten-twenty-nine Thursday morning.
+
+The Director General of the great Robinson-Ray Syndicate was genuinely
+surprised to learn that the young American had completed a bid in so
+short a time, then requested him, somewhat absent-mindedly, to leave
+it on his desk where he could look it over at his leisure.
+
+"Just a moment," said his caller. "I'm going to sit down and talk to
+you again. How long have you been using cyanide tanks, Mr. Peebleby?"
+
+"Ever since they were adopted." Mr. Peebleby was visibly annoyed at
+this interruption to his morning's work.
+
+"Well, I can give you a lot of information about them."
+
+The Director General raised his brows haughtily. "Ah! Suggestions,
+amendments, improvements, no doubt."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"In all my experience I never sent out a blueprint which some youthful
+salesman could not improve upon. Generally the younger the salesman
+the greater the improvement."
+
+In Mitchell's own parlance he "beat Mr. Peebleby to the punch." "If
+that's the case, you've got a rotten line of engineers," he frankly
+announced.
+
+"Indeed! I went over those drawings myself. I flattered myself that
+they were comprehensive and up-to-date." Mr. Peebleby was annoyed,
+nevertheless he was visibly interested and curious.
+
+"Well, they're not," the younger man declared, eying him boldly.
+"For instance, you call for cast-iron columns in your sub-and
+super-structures, whereas they're obsolete. We've discarded them. What
+you save in first cost you eat up, twice over, in freight. Not only
+that, but their strength is a matter of theory, not of fact. Then,
+too, in your structural-steel sections your factor of safety is
+wrongly figured. To get the best results your lower tanks are twenty
+inches too short and your upper ones nine inches too short. For
+another thing, you're using a section of beam which is five per cent.
+heavier than your other dimensions call for."
+
+The Director General sat back in his chair, a look of extreme
+alertness replacing his former expression.
+
+"My word! Is there anything else?" He undertook to speak mockingly,
+but without complete success.
+
+"There is. The layout of your platework is all wrong--out of line with
+modern practice. You should have interchangeable parts in every tank.
+The floor of your lower section should be convex, instead of flat, to
+get the run-off. You see, sir, this is my line of business."
+
+"Who is your engineer?" inquired the elder man. "I should like to talk
+to him."
+
+"You're talking to him now. I'm him--it--them. I'm the party! I told
+you I knew the game."
+
+There was a brief silence, then Mr. Peebleby inquired, "By the way,
+who helped you figure those prints?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"You did that _alone_, since Monday morning?" The speaker was
+incredulous.
+
+"I did. I haven't slept much. I'm pretty tired."
+
+There was a new note in Mr. Peebleby's voice when he said: "Jove! I've
+treated you badly, Mr. Mitchell, but--I wonder if you're too tired to
+tell my engineers what you told me just now? I should like them to
+hear you."
+
+"Trot them in." For the first time since leaving this office three
+days before, Mitchell smiled. He was getting into his stride at last.
+After all, there seemed to be a chance.
+
+There followed a convention of the draftsmen and engineers of the
+Robinson-Ray Syndicate before which an unknown American youth
+delivered an address on "Cyanide Tanks. How to Build Them; Where to
+Buy Them."
+
+It was the old story of a man who had learned his work thoroughly and
+who loved it. Mitchell typified the theory of specialization; what he
+knew, he knew completely, and before he had more than begun his talk
+these men recognized that fact. When he had finished, Mr. Peebleby
+announced that the bids would not be opened that day.
+
+The American had made his first point. He had gained time in which
+to handle himself, and the Robinson-Ray people had recognized a new
+factor in the field. When he was again in the Director General's room,
+the latter said:
+
+"I think I will have you formulate a new bid along the lines you have
+laid down."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You understand, our time is up. Can you have it ready by Saturday,
+three days from now?"
+
+Mitchell laughed. "It's a ten days' job for two men."
+
+"I know, but we can't wait."
+
+"Then give me until Tuesday; I'm used to a twenty-four-hour shift
+now. Meanwhile I'd like to leave these figures here for your chief
+draftsman to examine. Of course they are not to be considered
+binding."
+
+"Isn't that a bit--er--foolish?" inquired Peebleby? "Aren't you
+leaving a weapon behind you?"
+
+"Yes, but not the sort of a weapon you suspect," thought Mitchell.
+"This is a boomerang." Aloud, he answered, lightly: "Oh, that's all
+right. I know I'm among friends."
+
+When his request was granted he made a mental note, "Step number two!"
+
+Again he filled a cab with drawings, again he went back to the
+Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures--back to the
+monotony of tasteless meals served at his elbow.
+
+But there were other things besides his own bid to think of now.
+Mitchell knew he must find what other firms were bidding on the job,
+and what prices they had bid. The first promised to require some
+ingenuity, the second was a Titan's task.
+
+Salesmanship, in its highest development, is an exact science. Given
+the data he desired, Louis Mitchell felt sure he could read the
+figures sealed up in those other bids to a nicety, but to get that
+data required much concentrated effort and much time. Time was what he
+needed above all things; time to refigure these myriad drawings, time
+to determine when the other bids had gone in, time to learn trade
+conditions at the competitive plants, time to sleep. There were not
+sufficient hours in the day for all these things, so he rigidly
+economized on the least important, sleep. He laid out a program
+for himself; by night he worked in his room, by day he cruised for
+information, at odd moments around the dawn he slept. He began to feel
+the strain before long. Never physically robust, he began to grow blue
+and drawn about the nostrils. Frequently his food would not stay down.
+He was forced to drive his lagging spirits with a lash. To accomplish
+this he had to think often of his girl-wife. Her letters, written
+daily, were a great help; they were like some God-given cordial that
+infused fresh blood into his brain, new strength into his flagging
+limbs. Without them he could not have held up.
+
+With certain definite objects in view he made daily trips to
+Threadneedle Street. Invariably he walked into the general offices
+unannounced; invariably he made a new friend before he came out.
+Peebleby seemed to like him; in fact asked his opinion on certain
+forms of structure and voluntarily granted the young man two days of
+grace. Two days! They were like oxygen to a dying man.
+
+Mitchell asked permission to talk to the head draftsman and received
+it, and following their interview he requested the privilege of
+dictating some notes regarding the interview. In this way he met the
+stenographer. When he had finished with her he flipped the girl a gold
+sovereign, stolen from the sadly melted nine hundred and twenty.
+
+As Mitchell was leaving the office the Director General yielded to a
+kindly impulse and advised his new acquaintance to run over to Paris
+and view the Exposition.
+
+"You can do your figuring there just as well as here," said he.
+"I don't want your trip from Chicago to be altogether wasted, Mr.
+Mitchell."
+
+Louis smiled and shook his head. "I can't take that Exposition back
+with me, and I can take this contract. I think I'll camp with my bid."
+
+In the small hours of that night he made a discovery that
+electrified him. He found that the most commonly used section in his
+specifications, a twelve-inch I-beam, was listed under the English
+custom as weighing fifty-four pounds per foot, whereas the
+standardized American section, which possessed the same carrying
+strength, weighed four pounds less. Here was an advantage of eight
+per cent. in cost and freight! This put another round of the ladder
+beneath him; he was progressing well, but as yet he had learned
+nothing about his competitors.
+
+The next morning he had some more dictation for Peebleby's
+stenographer, and niched another sovereign from his sad little
+bank-roll. When the girl gave him his copy he fell into conversation
+with her and painted a picture of Yankeeland well calculated to keep
+her awake nights. They gossiped idly, she of her social obligations,
+he of the cyanide-tank business--he could think of nothing else to
+talk about. Adroitly he led her out. They grew confidential. She
+admitted her admiration for Mr. Jenkins from Edinburgh. Yes, Mr.
+Jenkins's company was bidding on the Krugersdorpf job. He was much
+nicer than Mr. Kruse from the Brussels concern, and, anyhow, those
+Belgian firms had no chance at this contract, for Belgium was
+pro-Boer, and--well, she had heard a few things around the office.
+
+Mitchell was getting "feed-box" information. When he left he knew
+the names of his dangerous competitors as well as those whom, in all
+likelihood, he had no cause to fear. Another step! He was gaining
+ground.
+
+In order to make himself absolutely certain that his figures would be
+low, there still remained three things to learn, and they were matters
+upon which he could afford to take no slightest chance of mistake.
+He must know, first, the dates of those other bids; second, the
+market-price of English steel at such times; and, third, the cost of
+fabrication at the various mills. The first two he believed could
+be easily learned, but the third promised to afford appalling
+difficulties to a man unfamiliar with foreign methods and utterly
+lacking in trade acquaintances. He went at them systematically,
+however, only to run against a snag within the hour. Not only did he
+fail to find the answer to question number one, but he could find no
+market quotations whatever on structural steel shapes such as entered
+into the Krugersdorpf job.
+
+He searched through every possible trade journal, through reading
+rooms and libraries, for the price of I-beams, channels, Z-bars, and
+the like; but nowhere could he even find mention of them. His failure
+left him puzzled and panic-stricken; he could not understand it. If
+only he had more time, he reflected, time in which to learn the usages
+and the customs of this country. But time was what he had not. He was
+tired, very tired from his sleepless nights and hours of daylight
+strain--and meanwhile the days were rushing past.
+
+While engaged in these side labors, he had, of course, been working
+on his draftsmen friends, and more assiduously even than upon his
+blue-prints. On Tuesday night, with but one more day of grace ahead of
+him, he gave a dinner to all of them, disregarding the fact that his
+bank-roll had become frightfully emaciated.
+
+For several days after that little party blue-printing in the
+Robinson-Ray office was a lost art. When his guests had dined and had
+settled back into their chairs, Mitchell decided to risk all upon one
+throw. He rose, at the head of the table, and told them who he was. He
+utterly destroyed their illusions regarding him and his position with
+Comer & Mathison, he bared his heart to those stoop-shouldered, shabby
+young men from Threadneedle Street and came right down to the nine
+hundred and twenty dollars and the girl. He told them what
+this Krugersdorpf job meant to him and to her, and to the four
+twenty-dollar bills in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
+
+Those Englishmen listened silently. Nobody laughed. Perhaps it was the
+sort of thing they had dreamed of doing some day, perhaps there were
+other girls in other tiny furnished flats, other hearts wrapped up in
+similar struggles for advancement. They were good mathematicians, it
+seemed, for they did not have to ask Mitchell how the nine hundred
+and twenty was doing, or to inquire regarding the health of the other
+eighty. One of them, a near-sighted fellow with thick lenses, arose
+with the grave assertion that he had taken the floor for the purpose
+of correcting a popular fallacy; Englishmen and Yankees, he declared,
+were not cousins, they were brothers, and their interests ever had
+been and ever would be identical. He said, too, that England wanted
+to do business with America, and as for this particular contract, not
+only did the British nation as a whole desire America to secure it,
+but the chaps who bent over the boards at No. 42-1/2 Threadneedle
+Street were plugging for her tooth and nail. His hollow-chested
+companions yelled their approval of this statement, whereupon Mitchell
+again arose, alternately flushing and paling, and apologized for what
+had happened in 1776. He acknowledged himself ashamed of the 1812
+affair, moreover, and sympathized with his guests over their present
+trouble with the Boers. When he had finished they voted him the best
+host and the best little cyanide tank-builder known to them--and then
+everybody tried to tell him something at once.
+
+They told him among other things that every bid except his had been in
+for two weeks, and that they were in the vault under the care of Mr.
+Pitts, the head draftsman. They promised to advise him if any new bids
+came in or if any changes occurred, and, most important of all, they
+told him that in England all structural steel shapes, instead of being
+classified as in America, are known as "angles," and they told him
+just how and where to find the official reports giving the price of
+the same for every day in the year.
+
+The word "angles" was the missing key, and those official market
+reports formed the lock in which to fit it. Mitchell had taken several
+mighty strides, and there remained but one more step to take.
+
+When his guests had finally gone home, swearing fealty, and declaring
+this to be the best dinner they had ever drunk, he hastened back to
+his room, back to the desert of blueprints and to the interminable
+columns of figures, and over them he worked like a madman.
+
+He slept two hours before daylight, then he was up and toiling again,
+for this was his last day. Using the data he had gathered the night
+before, he soon had the price of English and Scottish steel at the
+time the last bids were closed. Given one thing more--namely, the cost
+of fabrication in these foreign shops, and he would have reduced this
+hazard to a certainty, he would be able to read the prices contained
+in those sealed bids as plainly as if they lay open before him. But
+his time had narrowed now to hours.
+
+He lunched with John Pitts, the head draughtsman, going back to pick
+up the boomerang he had left the week before.
+
+"Have you gone over my first bid?" he asked, carelessly.
+
+"I have--lucky for you," said Pitts. "You made a mistake."
+
+"Indeed! How so?"
+
+"Why, it's thirty per cent. too low. It would be a crime to give you
+the business at those figures."
+
+"But, you see, I didn't include the sub-structure. I didn't have time
+to figure that." Mitchell prayed that his face might not show his
+eagerness. Evidently it did not, for Pitts walked into the trap.
+
+"Even so," said he; "it's thirty per cent. out of the way. I made
+allowance for that."
+
+The boomerang had finished its flight!
+
+Once they had separated, Mitchell broke for his hotel like a
+hunted man. He had made no mistake in his first figures. The great
+Krugersdorpf job was his; but, nevertheless, he wished to make himself
+absolutely sure and to secure as much profit as possible for Comer
+& Mathison. Without a handsome profit this three-million-dollar job
+might ruin a firm of their standing.
+
+In order to verify Pitts's statement, in order to swell his proposed
+profits to the utmost, Mitchell knew he ought to learn the "overhead"
+in English mills; that is, the fixed charges which, added to shop
+costs and prices of material, are set aside to cover office expenses,
+cost of operation, and contingencies. Without this information
+he would have to go it blind, after a fashion, and thereby risk
+penalizing himself; with it he could estimate very closely the amounts
+of the other bids and insure a safe margin for Comer & Mathison. In
+addition to this precaution he wished to have his own figures checked
+up, for even under normal conditions, if one makes a numerical error
+in work of this sort, he is more than apt to repeat it time and again,
+and Mitchell knew himself to be deadly tired--almost on the verge
+of collapse. He was inclined to doze off whenever he sat down; the
+raucous noises of the city no longer jarred or startled him, and his
+surroundings were becoming unreal, grotesque, as if seen through the
+spell of absinthe. Yes, it was necessary to check off his figures.
+
+But who could he get to do the work? He could not go to Threadneedle
+Street. He thought of the Carnegie representative and telephoned him,
+explaining the situation and his crying need, only to be told that
+no one in that office was capable of assisting him. He was referred,
+however, to an English engineer who, it was barely possible, could
+handle the job. In closing, the Carnegie man voiced a vague warning:
+
+"His name is Dell, and he used to be with one of the Edinburgh
+concerns, so don't let him know your inside figures. He might spring a
+leak."
+
+A half-hour later Mitchell, his arms full of blue-prints, was in Mr.
+Dell's office. But the English engineer hesitated; he was very busy;
+he had numerous obligations. Mitchell gazed over the threadbare rooms
+and hastily estimated how much of the nine hundred and twenty dollars
+would be left after he had paid his hotel bill. What there was to do
+must be done before the next morning's sun arose.
+
+"This job is worth ten sovereigns to me if it is finished tonight," he
+declared, briskly.
+
+Mr. Dell hesitated, stumbled, and fell. "Very well. We'll begin at
+once," said he.
+
+He unrolled the blue-prints, from a drawer he produced a sliding-rule.
+He slid this rule up; he slid it down; he gazed through his glasses
+at space; he made microscopic Spencerian figures in neat rows and
+columns. He seemed to pluck his results from the air with necromantic
+cunning, and what had taken the young man at his elbow days and nights
+of cruel effort to accomplish--what had put haggard lines about his
+mouth and eyes--the engineer accomplished in a few hours by means
+of that sliding-rule. Meanwhile, with one weary effort of will, his
+visitor summoned his powers and cross-examined him adroitly. Here was
+the very man to supply the one missing link in the perfect chain;
+but Mr. Dell would not talk. He did not like Americans nor American
+methods, and he made his dislike apparent by sealing his lips.
+Mitchell played upon his vanity at first, only to find the man wholly
+lacking in conceit. Changing his method of attack, Mitchell built a
+fire under Mr. Dell. He grilled everything British, the people, their
+social customs, their business methods, even English engineers, and
+he did it in a most annoying manner. Mr. Dell began to perspire.
+He worked doggedly on for a while, then he arose in defense of his
+country, whereupon Mitchell artfully shifted his attack to English
+steel-mills. The other refuted his statements flatly. At length the
+engineer was goaded to anger, he became disputative, indignant,
+loquacious.
+
+When Louis Mitchell flung himself into the dark body of his cab,
+late that evening, and sank his legs knee-deep into those hateful
+blue-prints, he blessed that engineer, for Dell had told him all he
+wished to know, all he had tried so vainly to discover through other
+sources. The average "overhead" in British mills was one hundred and
+thirty per cent., and Dell _knew_.
+
+The young man laughed hysterically, triumphantly, but the sound was
+more like a tearful hiccough. To-morrow at ten-thirty! It was nearly
+over. He would be ready. As he lolled back inertly upon the cushions
+he mused dreamily that he had done well. In less than two weeks, in a
+foreign country, and under strange conditions, without acquaintance or
+pull or help of any sort, he had learned the names of his competitive
+firms, the dates of their bids, and the market prices ruling on every
+piece of steel in the Krugersdorpf job when those bids were figured.
+He had learned the rules governing English labor unions; he knew all
+about piece-work and time-work, fixed charges and shop costs, together
+with the ability of every plant figuring on the Robinson-Ray contract
+to turn out the work in the necessary time. All this, and more, he
+had learned legitimately and without cost to his commercial honor.
+Henceforth that South-African contract depended merely upon his own
+ability to add, subtract, and multiply correctly. It was his just as
+surely as two and two make four--for salesmanship is an exact science.
+
+The girl would be very happy, he told himself. He was glad that she
+could never know the strain it had been.
+
+Again, through the slow, silent hours of that Wednesday night,
+Mitchell fought the fatigue of death, going over his figures
+carefully. There were no errors in them.
+
+Dawn was creeping in on him when he added a clean thirty-per-cent.
+profit for his firm, signed his bid, and prepared for bed. But he
+found that he could not leave the thing. After he had turned in he
+became assailed by sudden doubts and fears. What if he had made a
+mistake after all? What if some link in his chain were faulty? What if
+some other bidder had made a mistake and underfigured? Such thoughts
+made him tremble. Now that it was all done, he feared that he had been
+overconfident, for could it really be possible that the greatest steel
+contract in years would come to him? He grew dizzy at the picture of
+what it meant to him and to the girl.
+
+He calmed himself finally and looked straight at the matter, sitting
+up in bed, his knees drawn up under his chin. While so engaged he
+caught sight of his drawn face in the mirror opposite and started
+when he realized how old and heavy with fatigue it was. He determined
+suddenly to shave that profit to twenty-nine per cent. and make
+assurance doubly sure, but managed to conquer his momentary panic.
+Cold reasoning told him that his figures were safe.
+
+Louis Mitchell was the only salesman in Mr. Peebleby's office that
+morning who did not wear a silk hat, pearl gloves, and spats. In
+consequence the others ignored him for a time--but only for a time.
+Once the proposals had been read, an air of impenetrable gloom spread
+over the room. The seven Scotch, English, and Belgian mourners stared
+cheerlessly at one another and then with growing curiosity at the
+young man from overseas who had underbid the lowest of them by six
+thousand pounds sterling, less than one per cent. After a while they
+bowed among themselves, mumbled something to Mr. Peebleby, and
+went softly out in their high hats, their pearl gloves, and their
+spats--more like pall-bearers now than ever.
+
+"Six hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterling!"
+said the Director General. "By Jove, Mitchell, I'm glad!" They shook
+hands. "I'm really glad."
+
+"That's over three million dollars in real money," said the youth.
+"It's quite a tidy little job."
+
+Peebleby laughed. "You've been very decent about it, too. I hope to
+see something of you in the future. What?"
+
+"You'll see my smoke, that's all."
+
+"You're not going back right away?"
+
+"To-morrow; I've booked my passage and cabled the girl to meet me in
+New York."
+
+"My word! A girl! She'll be glad to hear of your success."
+
+"Oh, I've told her already. You see, I knew I'd won."
+
+The Director General of the Robinson-Ray Syndicate stared in open
+amazement, but Mitchell hitched his chair closer, saying:
+
+"Now let's get at those signatures. I've got to pack."
+
+That night Louis Mitchell slept with fifteen separate contracts under
+his pillow. He double-locked the door, pulled the dresser in front of
+it, and left the light burning. At times he awoke with a start and
+felt for the documents. Toward morning he was seized with a sudden
+fright, so he got up and read them all over for fear somebody had
+tampered with them. They were correct, however, whereupon he read them
+a second time just for pleasure. They were strangely interesting.
+
+On the _Deutschland_ he slept much of the way across, and by the
+time Liberty Statue loomed up he could dream of other things than
+blue-prints--of the girl, for instance.
+
+She had enough left from the eighty dollars to bring her to New York
+and to pay for a week's lodging in West Thirty-fourth Street, though
+how she managed it Mitchell never knew. She was at the dock, of
+course. He knew she would be. He expected to see her with her arms
+outstretched and with the old joyous smile upon her dimpled face, and,
+therefore, he was sorely disappointed when he came down the gang-plank
+and she did not appear. He searched high and low until finally he
+discovered her seated over by the letter "M," where his trunk was
+waiting inspection. There she was, huddled up on a coil of rope,
+crying as if her heart would break; her nerve was gone, along with the
+four twenty-dollar bills; she was afraid to face him, afraid there had
+been an error in his cablegram.
+
+Not until she lay in his arms at last, sobbing and laughing, her
+slender body all aquiver, did she believe. Then he allowed her to feel
+the fifteen contracts inside his coat. Later, when they were in a cab
+bound for her smelly little boarding-house, he showed them to her. In
+return she gave him a telegram from his firm--a telegram addressed as
+follows:
+
+Mr. LOUIS MITCHELL,
+
+General Sales Manager, Comer & Mathison, New York City.
+
+The message read:
+
+That goes. COMER.
+
+Mitchell opened the trap above his head and called up to the driver:
+"Hey, Cabbie! We've changed our minds. Drive us to the Waldorf--at a
+gallop."
+
+
+
+
+WITH INTEREST TO DATE
+
+
+This is the tale of a wrong that rankled and a great revenge. It is
+not a moral story, nor yet, measured by the modern money code, is it
+what could be called immoral. It is merely a tale of sharp wits
+which clashed in pursuit of business, therefore let it be considered
+unmoral, a word with a wholly different commercial significance.
+
+Time was when wrongs were righted by mace and battle-ax, amid fanfares
+and shoutings, but we live in a quieter age, an age of repression,
+wherein the keenest thrust is not delivered with a yell of triumph nor
+the oldest score settled to the blare of trumpets. No longer do the
+men of great muscle lord it over the weak and the puny; as a rule
+they toil and they lift, doing unpleasant, menial duties for
+hollow-chested, big-domed men with eye-glasses. But among those very
+spindle-shanked, terra-cotta dwellers who cower at draughts and eat
+soda mints, the ancient struggle for supremacy wages fiercer than
+ever. Single combats are fought now as then, and the flavor of victory
+is quite as sweet to the pallid man back of a roll-top desk as to the
+swart, bristling baron behind his vizored helmet.
+
+The beginning of this story runs back to the time Henry Hanford went
+with the General Equipment Company as a young salesman full of hope
+and enthusiasm and a somewhat exaggerated idea of his own importance.
+He was selling shears, punches, and other machinery used in the
+fabrication of structural steel. In the territory assigned to him, the
+works of the Atlantic Bridge Company stuck up like a sore thumb, for
+although it employed many men, although its contracts were large and
+its requirements numerous, the General Equipment Company had never
+sold it a dollar's worth of anything.
+
+In the course of time Hanford convinced himself that the Atlantic
+Bridge Company needed more modern machinery, so he laid siege to
+Jackson Wylie, Sr., its president and practical owner. He spent all of
+six months in gaining the old man's ear, but when he succeeded he
+laid himself out to sell his goods. He analyzed the Atlantic Bridge
+Company's needs in the light of modern milling practice, and
+demonstrated the saving his equipment would effect. A big order and
+much prestige were at stake, both of which young Hanford needed
+badly at the time. He was vastly encouraged, therefore, when the
+bridge-builder listened attentively to him.
+
+"I dare say we shall have to make a change," Mr. Wylie reluctantly
+agreed. "I've been bothered to death by machinery salesmen, but you're
+the first one to really interest me."
+
+Hanford acknowledged the compliment and proceeded further to elaborate
+upon the superiority of the General Equipment Company's goods over
+those sold by rival concerns. When he left he felt that he had Mr.
+Wylie, Sr., "going."
+
+At the office they warned him that he had a hard nut to crack; that
+Wylie was given to "stringing" salesmen and was a hard man to close
+with, but Hanford smiled confidently. Granting those facts, they
+rendered him all the more eager to make this sale; and the bridge
+company really did need up-to-date machinery.
+
+He instituted an even more vigorous selling campaign, he sent much
+printed matter to Mr. Wylie, Sr., he wrote him many letters. Being a
+thoroughgoing young saleman, he studied the plant from the ground up,
+learning the bridge business in such detail as enabled him to talk
+with authority on efficiency methods. In the course of his studies he
+discovered many things that were wrong with the Atlantic, and spent
+days in outlining improvements on paper. He made the acquaintance of
+the foremen; he cultivated the General Superintendent; he even met Mr.
+Jackson Wylie, Jr., the Sales Manager, a very polished, metallic young
+man, who seemed quite as deeply impressed with Hanford's statements as
+did his father.
+
+Under our highly developed competitive system, modern business is done
+very largely upon personality. From the attitude of both father and
+son, Hanford began to count his chickens. Instead of letting up,
+however, he redoubled his efforts, which was his way. He spent so much
+time on the matter that his other work suffered, and in consequence
+his firm called him down. He outlined his progress with the Atlantic
+Bridge Company, declared he was going to succeed, and continued to
+camp with the job, notwithstanding the firm's open doubts.
+
+Sixty days after his first interview he had another visit with Wylie,
+senior, during which the latter drained him of information and made an
+appointment for a month later. Said Mr. Wylie:
+
+"You impress me strongly, Hanford, and I want my associates to hear
+you. Get your proposition into shape and make the same talk to them
+that you have made to me."
+
+Hanford went away elated; he even bragged a bit at the office, and the
+report got around among the other salesmen that he really had done the
+impossible and had pulled off something big with the Atlantic. It was
+a busy month for that young gentleman, and when the red-letter day at
+last arrived he went on to Newark to find both Wylies awaiting him.
+
+"Well, sir, are you prepared to make a good argument?" the father
+inquired.
+
+"I am." Hanford decided that three months was not too long a time to
+devote to work of this magnitude, after all.
+
+"I want you to do your best," the bridge-builder continued,
+encouragingly, then he led Hanford into the directors' room, where, to
+his visitor's astonishment, some fifty men were seated.
+
+"These are our salesmen," announced Mr. Wylie. He introduced Hanford
+to them with the request that they listen attentively to what the
+young man had to say.
+
+It was rather nervous work for Hanford, but he soon warmed up and
+forgot his embarrassment. He stood on his feet for two long hours
+pleading as if for his life. He went over the Atlantic plant from end
+to end; he showed the economic necessity for new machinery; then he
+explained the efficiency of his own appliances. He took rival types
+and picked them to pieces, pointing out their inferiority. He showed
+his familiarity with bridge work by going into figures which bore out
+his contention that the Atlantic's output could be increased and at
+an actual monthly saving. He wound up by proving that the General
+Equipment Company was the one concern best fitted to effect the
+improvement.
+
+It had taken months of unremitting toil to prepare himself for this
+exposition, but the young fellow felt he had made his case. When he
+took up the cost of the proposed instalment, however, Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., interrupted him.
+
+"That is all I care to have you cover," the latter explained. "Thank
+you very kindly, Mr. Hanford."
+
+Hanford sat down and wiped his forehead, whereupon the other stepped
+forward and addressed his employees.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "you have just listened to the best argument I
+ever heard. I purposely called you in from the road so that you might
+have a practical lesson in salesmanship and learn something from an
+outsider about your own business. I want you to profit by this talk.
+Take it to heart and apply it to your own customers. Our selling
+efficiency has deteriorated lately; you are getting lazy. I want you
+to wake up and show better results. That is all. You might thank this
+young gentleman for his kindness."
+
+When the audience had dispersed, Hanford inquired, blankly, "Don't you
+intend to act on my suggestions?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Mr. Wylie, in apparent surprise. "We are doing nicely,
+as it is. I merely wanted you to address the boys."
+
+"But--I've spent three months of hard labor on this! You led me to
+believe that you would put in new equipment."
+
+The younger Wylie laughed, languidly exhaling a lungful of cigarette
+smoke. "When Dad gets ready to purchase, he'll let you know," said he.
+
+Six months later the Atlantic Bridge Company placed a mammoth order
+with Hanford's rival concern, and he was not even asked to figure on
+it.
+
+That is how the seeds of this story were sown. Of course the facts got
+out, for those Atlantic salesmen were not wanting in a sense of humor,
+and Hanford was joshed in every quarter. To make matters worse,
+his firm called him to account for his wasted time, implying that
+something was evidently wrong with his selling methods. Thus began a
+lack of confidence which quickly developed into strained relations.
+The result was inevitable; Hanford saw what was coming and was wise
+enough to resign his position.
+
+But it was the ridicule that hurt him most. He was unable to get
+away from that. Had he been at all emotional, he would have sworn a
+vendetta, so deep and lasting was the hurt, but he did not; he merely
+failed to forget, which, after all, is not so different.
+
+It seemed queer that Henry Hanford should wind up in the bridge
+business himself, after attempting to fill several unsatisfactory
+positions, and yet there was nothing remarkable about it, for that
+three months of intense application at the Atlantic plant had given
+him a groundwork which came in handy when the Patterson Bridge Company
+offered him a desk. He was a good salesman; he worked hard and in
+time he was promoted. By and by the story was forgotten--by every
+one except Henry Hanford. But he had lost a considerable number of
+precious years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When it became known that the English and Continental structural
+shops were so full of work that they could not figure on the mammoth
+five-million-dollar steel structure designed to span the Barrata River
+in Africa, and when the Royal Commission in London finally advertised
+broadcast that time was the essence of this contract, Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., realized that his plant was equipped to handle the job in
+magnificent shape, with large profit to himself and with great renown
+to the Wylie name. He therefore sent his son, Jackson Wylie, the
+Second, now a full-fledged partner, to London armed with letters to
+almost everybody in England from almost everybody in America.
+
+Two weeks later--the Patterson Bridge Company was not so aggressive
+as its more pretentious rival--Henry Hanford went abroad on the same
+mission, but he carried no letters of introduction for the very good
+reason that he possessed neither commercial influence nor social
+prestige. Bradstreets had never rated him, and _Who's Who_ contained
+no names with which he was familiar.
+
+Jackson Wylie, the Second had been to London frequently, and he was
+accustomed to English life. He had friends with headquarters at
+Prince's and at Romano's, friends who were delighted to entertain so
+prominent an American; his letters gave him the entree to many of the
+best clubs and paved his way socially wherever he chose to go.
+
+It was Hanford's first trip across, and he arrived on British soil
+without so much as a knowledge of English coins, with nothing in
+the way of baggage except a grip full of blue-prints, and with no
+destination except the Parliament buildings, where he had been led
+to believe the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission was eagerly and
+impatiently awaiting his coming. But when he called at the Parliament
+buildings he failed not only to find the Commission, but even to
+encounter anybody who knew anything about it. He did manage to locate
+the office, after some patient effort, but learned that it was nothing
+more than a forwarding address, and that no member of the Commission
+had been there for several weeks. He was informed that the Commission
+had convened once, and therefore was not entirely an imaginary body;
+beyond that he could discover nothing. On his second visit to the
+office he was told that Sir Thomas Drummond, the chairman, was inside,
+having run down from his shooting-lodge in Scotland for the day. But
+Sir Thomas's clerk, with whom Hanford had become acquainted at the
+time of his first call, informed him that Mr. Jackson Wylie, the
+Second, from America, was closeted with his lordship, and in
+consequence his lordship could not be disturbed. Later, when Hanford
+got more thoroughly in touch with the general situation, he began to
+realize that introductions, influence, social prestige would in all
+probability go farther toward landing the Barrata Bridge than mere
+engineering, ability or close figuring--facts with which the younger
+Wylie was already familiar, and against which he had provided. It also
+became plain to Hanford as time went on that the contract would of
+necessity go to America, for none of the European shops were in
+position to complete it on time.
+
+Owing to government needs, this huge, eleven-span structure had to be
+on the ground within ninety days from the date of the signing of the
+contract, and erected within eight months thereafter. The Commission's
+clerk, a big, red-faced, jovial fellow, informed Hanford that price
+was not nearly so essential as time of delivery; that although the
+contract glittered with alluring bonuses and was heavily weighted
+with forfeits, neither bonuses nor forfeitures could in the slightest
+manner compensate for a delay in time. It was due to this very fact,
+to the peculiar urgency of the occasion, that the Commissioners were
+inclined to look askance at prospective bidders who might in any way
+fail to complete the task as specified.
+
+"If all that is true, tell me why Wylie gets the call?" Hanford
+inquired.
+
+"I understand he has the very highest references," said the
+Englishman.
+
+"No doubt. But you can't build bridges with letters of introduction,
+even in Africa."
+
+"Probably not. But Sir Thomas is a big man; Mr. Wylie is one of his
+sort. They meet on common ground, don't you see?"
+
+"Well, if I can't arrange an interview with any member of the
+Commission, I can at least take you to lunch. Will you go?"
+
+The clerk declared that he would, indeed, and in the days that
+followed the two saw much of each other. This fellow, Lowe by name,
+interested Hanford. He was a cosmopolite; he was polished to the
+hardness of agate by a life spent in many lands. He possessed a cold
+eye and a firm chin; he was a complex mixture of daredeviltry and
+meekness. He had fought in a war or two, and he had led hopes quite
+as forlorn as the one Hanford was now engaged upon. It was this bond,
+perhaps, which drew the two together.
+
+In spite of Lowe's assistance Hanford found it extremely difficult,
+nay, almost impossible, to obtain any real inside information
+concerning the Barrata Bridge; wherever he turned he brought up
+against a blank wall of English impassiveness: he even experienced
+difficulty in securing the blue-prints he wanted.
+
+"It looks pretty tough for you," Lowe told him one day. "I'm afraid
+you're going to come a cropper, old man. This chap Wylie has the rail
+and he's running well. He has opened an office, I believe."
+
+"So I understand. Well, the race isn't over yet, and I'm a good
+stayer. This is the biggest thing I ever tackled and it means a lot to
+me--more than you imagine."
+
+"How so?"
+
+Hanford recited the story of his old wrong, to Lowe's frank amazement.
+
+"What a rotten trick!" the latter remarked.
+
+"Yes! And--I don't forget."
+
+"You'd better forget this job. It takes pull to get consideration from
+people like Sir Thomas, and Wylie has more than he needs. A fellow
+without it hasn't a chance. Look at me, for instance, working at a
+desk! Bah!"
+
+"Want to try something else?"
+
+"I do! And you'd better follow suit."
+
+Hanford shook his head. "I never quit--I can't. When my chance at this
+bridge comes along--"
+
+Lowe laughed.
+
+"Oh, the chance will come. Chances always come; sometimes we don't see
+them, that's all. When this one comes I want to be ready. Meanwhile, I
+think I'll reconnoiter Wylie's new office and find out what's doing."
+
+Day after day Henry Hanford pursued his work doggedly, seeing much of
+Lowe, something of Wylie's clerk, and nothing whatever of Sir Thomas
+Drummond or the other members of the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission.
+He heard occasional rumors of the social triumphs of his rival,
+and met him once, to be treated with half-veiled amusement by that
+patronizing young man. Meanwhile, the time was growing short and
+Hanford's firm was not well pleased with his progress.
+
+Then the chance came, unexpectedly, as Hanford had declared chances
+always come. The remarkable thing in this instance was not that the
+veiled goddess showed her face, but that Hanford was quick enough
+to recognize her and bold enough to act. He had taken Lowe to the
+Trocadero for dinner, and, finding no seats where they could watch the
+crowd, he had selected a stall in a quiet corner. They had been there
+but a short time when Hanford recognized a voice from the stall
+adjacent as belonging to the representative of the Atlantic Bridge
+Company. From the sounds he could tell that Wylie was giving a
+dinner-party, and with Lowe's aid he soon identified the guests as
+members of the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission. Hanford began to
+strain his ears.
+
+As the meal progressed this became less of an effort, for young
+Wylie's voice was strident. The Wylie conversation had ever been
+limited largely to the Wylies, their accomplishments, their purposes,
+and their prospects; and now having the floor as host, he talked
+mainly about himself, his father, and their forthcoming Barrata Bridge
+contract. It was his evident endeavor this evening to impress his
+distinguished guests with the tremendous importance of the Atlantic
+Bridge Company and its unsurpassed facilities for handling big jobs.
+A large part of young Wylie's experience had been acquired by
+manipulating municipal contracts and the aldermen connected therewith;
+he now worked along similar lines. Hanford soon learned that he was
+trying in every way possible to induce Drummond and his associates
+to accompany him back to America for the purpose of proving
+beyond peradventure that the Atlantic could take care of a
+five-million-dollar contract with ease.
+
+"As if they'd go!" Lowe said, softly. "And yet--by Jove! he talks as
+if he had the job buttoned up."
+
+The Englishman was alert, his dramatic instinct was at play;
+recognizing the significance of Wylie's offer and its possible bearing
+upon Hanford's fortunes, he waved the waiter away, knowing better than
+to permit the rattle of dishes to distract his host's attention.
+
+Meanwhile, with clenched teeth and smoldering eyes Henry Hanford heard
+his rival in the next compartment identify the State of New Jersey by
+the fact that the works of the Atlantic Bridge Company were located
+therein, and dignify it by the fact that the Jackson Wylies lived
+there.
+
+"You know, gentlemen," Wylie was saying, "I can arrange the trip
+without the least difficulty, and I assure you there will be no
+discomfort. I am in constant cipher communication with my father, and
+he will be delighted to afford you every courtesy. I can fix it up by
+cable in a day."
+
+Hanford arose with a silent gesture to his guest, then, although the
+meal was but half over, he paid the bill. He had closed his campaign.
+Right then and there he landed the great Barrata Bridge contract.
+
+Lowe, mystified beyond measure by his friend's action, made no comment
+until they were outside. Then he exclaimed:
+
+"I say, old top, what blew off?"
+
+Hanford smiled at him queerly. "The whole top of young Wylie's head
+blew off, if he only knew it. It's my day to settle that score, and
+the interest will be compounded."
+
+"I must be extremely stupid."
+
+"Not at all. You're damned intelligent, and that's why I'm going to
+need your help." Hanford turned upon the adventurer suddenly. "Have
+you ever been an actor?"
+
+Lowe made a comical grimace. "I say, old man, that's pretty rough. My
+people raised me for a gentleman."
+
+"Exactly. Come with me to my hotel. We're going to do each other a
+great favor. With your help and the help of Mr. Jackson Wylie the
+Second's London clerk, I'm going to land the Barrata Bridge."
+
+Hanford had not read his friend Lowe awrong, and when, behind locked
+doors, he outlined his plan, the big fellow gazed at him with
+amazement, his blue eyes sparkling with admiration.
+
+"Gad! That appeals to me. I--think I can do it." There was no timidity
+in Lowe's words, merely a careful consideration of the risks involved.
+
+Hanford gripped his hand. "I'll attend to Wylie's clerk," he declared.
+"Now we'd better begin to rehearse."
+
+"But what makes you so positive you can handle his clerk?" queried
+Lowe.
+
+"Oh, I've studied him the same way I've studied you! I've been doing
+nothing else for the last month."
+
+"Bli' me, you're a corker!" said Mr. Lowe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back in Newark, New Jersey, Jackson Wylie, Sr., was growing impatient.
+In spite of his son's weekly reports he had begun to fret at the
+indefinite nature of results up to date. This dissatisfaction it was
+that had induced him to cable his invitation to the Royal Commission
+to visit the Atlantic plant. Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., had a mysterious
+way of closing contracts once he came in personal contact with the
+proper people. In the words of his envious competitors, he had "good
+terminal facilities," and he felt sure in his own mind that he could
+get this job if only he could meet some member of that Commission who
+possessed the power to act. Business was bad, and in view of his son's
+preliminary reports he had relied upon the certainty of securing this
+tremendous contract; he had even turned work away so that his plant
+might be ready for the rush, with the result that many of his men now
+were idle and that he was running far below capacity. But he likewise
+had his eye upon those English bonuses, and when his associates rather
+timidly called his attention to the present state of affairs he
+assured them bitingly that he knew his business. Nevertheless, he
+could not help chafing at delay nor longing for the time to come to
+submit the bid that had lain for a month upon his desk. The magnitude
+of the figures contained therein was getting on Mr. Wylie's nerves.
+
+On the tenth of May he received a cablegram in his own official cipher
+which, translated, read:
+
+Meet Sir Thomas Drummond, Chairman Royal Barrata Bridge Commission,
+arriving Cunard Liner _Campania_, thirteenth, stopping Waldorf.
+Arrange personally Barrata contract. Caution.
+
+The cablegram was unsigned, but its address, "Atwylie," betrayed not
+only its destination, but also the identity of its sender. Mr. Jackson
+Wylie, Sr., became tremendously excited. The last word conjured up
+bewildering possibilities. He was about to consult his associates when
+it struck him that the greatest caution he could possibly observe
+would consist of holding his own tongue now and henceforth. They had
+seen fit to criticize his handling of the matter thus far; he decided
+he would play safe and say nothing until he had first seen Sir Thomas
+Drummond and learned the lay of the land. He imagined he might then
+have something electrifying to tell them. He had "dealt from the
+bottom" too often, he had closed too many bridge contracts in his
+time, to mistake the meaning of this visit, or of that last word
+"caution."
+
+During the next few days Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., had hard work to hold
+himself in, and he was at a high state of nervous tension when, on
+the morning of the fourteenth day of May, he strolled into the
+Waldorf-Astoria and inquired at the desk for Sir Thomas Drummond.
+
+There was no Sir Thomas stopping at the hotel, although a Mr. T.
+Drummond from London had arrived on the _Campania_ the day before. Mr.
+Jackson Wylie placed the heel of his right shoe upon the favorite corn
+of his left foot and bore down upon it heavily. He must be
+getting into his dotage, he reflected, or else the idea of a
+five-million-dollar job had him rattled. Of course Sir Thomas would
+not use his title.
+
+At the rear desk he had his card blown up through the tube to "Mr. T.
+Drummond," and a few moments later was invited to take the elevator.
+
+Arriving at the sixth floor, he needed no page to guide him; boots
+pointed his way to the apartment of the distinguished visitor as plainly
+as a lettered sign-board; boots of all descriptions--hunting-boots,
+riding-boots, street shoes, lowshoes, pumps, sandals--black ones and tan
+ones--all in a row outside the door. It was a typically English display.
+Evidently Sir Thomas Drummond was a personage of the most extreme
+importance and traveled in befitting style, Mr. Wylie told himself.
+Nothing was missing from the collection, unless perhaps a pair of rubber
+hip-boots.
+
+A stoop-shouldered old man with a marked accent and a port-wine nose
+showed Mr. Wylie into a parlor where the first object upon which
+his active eyes alighted was a mass of blue-prints. He knew these
+drawings; he had figured on them himself. He likewise noted a hat-box
+and a great, shapeless English bag, both plastered crazily with hotel
+and steamship labels hailing from every quarter of the world. It was
+plain to be seen that Sir Thomas was a globe-trotter.
+
+"Mr. Drummond begs you to be seated," the valet announced, with what
+seemed an unnecessary accent on the "mister," then moved silently out.
+
+Mr. Wylie remarked to himself upon the value of discreet servants.
+They were very valuable; very hard to get in America. This must be
+some lifelong servitor in his lordship's family.
+
+There was no occasion to inquire the identity of the tall, florid
+Englishman in tweeds who entered a moment later, a bundle of estimates
+in his hand. "Sir Thomas Drummond, Chairman of the Royal Barrata
+Bridge Commission," was written all over him in large type.
+
+His lordship did not go to the trouble of welcoming his visitor, but
+scanned him frigidly through his glasses.
+
+"You are Mr. Jackson Wylie, Senior?" he demanded, abruptly.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"President of the Atlantic Bridge Company, of Newark, New Jersey?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"You received a cablegram from your son in London?"
+
+"Yes, your lordship."
+
+Sir Thomas made a gesture as if to forego the title. "Let me see it,
+please."
+
+Mr. Wylie produced the cablegram, and Drummond scanned it sharply.
+Evidently the identification was complete.
+
+"Does any one besides your son and yourself know the contents of this
+message?"
+
+"Not a soul."
+
+"You have not told any one of my coming?"
+
+"No, sir!"
+
+"Very well." Sir Thomas appeared to breathe easier; he deliberately
+tore the cablegram into small bits, then tossed the fragments into
+a wastepaper basket before waving his caller to a chair. He still
+remained very cold, very forceful, although his stiff formality had
+vanished.
+
+"Do you understand all about this bridge?" he inquired.
+
+Wylie senior took the cue of brusqueness and nodded shortly.
+
+"Can you build it in the time specified?"
+
+"With ease."
+
+"Have you submitted your bid?"
+
+"Not yet. I--"
+
+"What is the amount of your proposal?"
+
+The president of the Atlantic Bridge Company gasped. This was the
+boldest, the coldest work he had ever experienced. Many times he had
+witnessed public officials like Sir Thomas Drummond approach this
+delicate point, but never with such composure, such matter-of-fact
+certainty and lack of moral scruple. Evidently, however, this
+Englishman had come to trade and wanted a direct answer. There was no
+false pose, no romance here. But Jackson Wylie, Sr., was too shrewd a
+business man to name a rock-bottom price to begin with. The training
+of a lifetime would not permit him to deny himself a liberal leeway
+for hedging, therefore he replied, cautiously:
+
+"My figures will be approximately L1,400,000 sterling." It was his
+longest speech thus far.
+
+For what seemed an hour to the bridge-builder Sir Thomas Drummond
+gazed at him with a cold, hard eye, then he folded his papers,
+rolled up his blue-prints, placed them in the big traveling-bag, and
+carefully locked it. When he had finished he flung out this question
+suddenly:
+
+"Does that include the Commissioners?"
+
+Up to this point Mr. Jackson Wylie had spoken mainly in monosyllables;
+now he quit talking altogether; it was no longer necessary. He merely
+shook his head in negation. He was smiling slightly.
+
+"Then I shall ask you to add L200,000 sterling to your price," his
+lordship calmly announced. "Make your bid L1,600,000 sterling, and
+mail it in time for Wednesday's boat. I sail on the same ship.
+Proposals will be opened on the twenty-fifth. Arrange for an English
+indemnity bond for ten per cent. of your proposition. Do not
+communicate in any manner whatsoever with your son, except to forward
+the sealed bid to him. He is not to know of our arrangement. You will
+meet me in London later; we will take care of that L200,000 out of the
+last forty per cent. of the contract price, which is payable thirty
+days after completion, inspection, and acceptance of the bridge. You
+will not consult your associates upon leaving here. Do I make myself
+clear? Very well, sir. The figures are easy to remember: L1,600,000;
+L1,400,000 to you. I am pleased with the facilities your plant offers
+for doing the work. I am confident you can complete the bridge on
+time, and I beg leave to wish you a very pleasant good day."
+
+Jackson Wylie, Sr., did not really come to until he had reached
+the street; even then he did not know whether he had come down the
+elevator or through the mail-chute. Of one thing only was he certain:
+he was due to retire in favor of his son. He told himself that
+he needed a trip through the Holy Land with a guardian and a
+nursing-bottle; then he paused on the curb and stamped on his corn for
+a second time.
+
+"Oh, what an idiot I am!" he cried, savagely. "I could have
+gotten L1,600,000 to start with, but--by gad, Sir Thomas is the
+coldest-blooded thing I ever went against! I--I can't help but admire
+him."
+
+Having shown a deplorable lack of foresight, Mr. Wylie determined to
+make up for it by an ample display of hindsight. If the profits on the
+job were not to be so large as they might have been, he would at
+least make certain of them by obeying instructions to the letter. In
+accordance with this determination, he made out the bid himself, and
+he mailed it with his own hand that very afternoon. He put three blue
+stamps on the envelope, although it required but two. Then he called
+up an automobile agency and ordered a foreign town-car his wife had
+admired. He decided that she and the girls might go to Paris for the
+fall shopping--he might even go with them, in view of that morning's
+episode.
+
+For ten days he stood the pressure, then on the morning of the
+twenty-fourth he called his _confreres_ into the directors' room, that
+same room in which young Hanford had made his talk a number of years
+before. Inasmuch as it was too late now for a disclosure to affect the
+opening of the bids in London, he felt absolved from his promise to
+Sir Thomas.
+
+"Gentlemen, I have the honor to inform you," he began, pompously,
+"that the Barrata Bridge is ours! We have the greatest structural
+steel job of the decade." His chest swelled with justifiable pride.
+
+"How? When? What do you mean?" they cried.
+
+He told them of his mysterious but fruitful interview at the Waldorf
+ten days previously, enjoying their expressions of amazement to the
+full; then he explained in considerable detail the difficulties he had
+surmounted in securing such liberal figures from Sir Thomas.
+
+"We were ready to take the contract for L1,300,000, as you will
+remember, but by the exercise of some diplomacy"--he coughed
+modestly--"I may say, by the display of some firmness and
+independence, I succeeded in securing a clean profit of $500,000 over
+what we had expected." He accepted, with becoming diffidence, the
+congratulations which were showered upon him. Of course, the news
+created a sensation, but it was as nothing to the sensation that
+followed upon the receipt of a cablegram the next day which read:
+
+ATWYLIE,
+
+Newark, New Jersey.
+
+Terrible mistake somewhere. We lost. Am coming home to-day.
+
+Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., also went home that day--by carriage, for,
+after raving wildly of treachery, after cursing the name of some
+English nobleman, unknown to most of the office force, he collapsed,
+throwing his employees into much confusion. There were rumors of
+an apoplectic stroke; some one telephoned for a physician; but the
+president of the Atlantic Bridge Company only howled at the latter
+when he arrived.
+
+What hit the old man hardest was the fact that he could not explain to
+his associates--that he could not even explain to himself, for that
+matter. He could make neither head nor tail of the affair; his son was
+on the high seas and could not be reached; the mystery of the whole
+transaction threatened to unseat his reason. Even when his sorrowing
+heir arrived, a week after the shock, the father could gather nothing
+at first except the bare details.
+
+All he could learn was that the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission
+had met on the twenty-fifth day of May, for the second time in its
+history, with Sir Thomas Drummond in the chair. In the midst of an
+ultra-British solemnity the bids had been opened and read--nine of
+them--two Belgian, one German, two French, one English, one Scottish,
+and two American.
+
+The only proposals that conformed to the specifications in every
+respect were the last named. They were perfect. The Atlantic Bridge
+Company, of Newark, New Jersey, offered to do the work as specified
+for L1,600,000 sterling. The Patterson Bridge Company, through its
+authorized agent, Mr. Henry Hanford, named a price of L1,550,000. The
+rest was but a matter of detail.
+
+Having concluded this bald recital, Jackson Wylie, the Second, spread
+his hands in a gesture of despair. "I can't understand it," he said,
+dolefully. "I thought I had it cinched all the time."
+
+"_You_ had it cinched!" bellowed his father. "_You_! Why, you ruined
+it all! Why in hell did you send him over here?"
+
+"I? Send who? What are you talking about?"
+
+"That man with the boots! That lying, thieving scoundrel, Sir Thomas
+Drummond, of course."
+
+The younger Wylie's face showed blank, uncomprehending amazement. "Sir
+Thomas Drummond was in London all the time I was there. I saw him
+daily," said he.
+
+Not until this very moment did the president of the Atlantic Bridge
+Company comprehend the trap he had walked into, but now the whole
+hideous business became apparent. He had been fooled, swindled, and in
+a way to render recourse impossible; nay, in a manner to blacken his
+reputation if the story became public. He fell actually ill from the
+passion of his rage and not even a long rest from the worries of
+business completely cured him. The bitter taste of defeat would not
+down. He might never have understood the matter thoroughly had it not
+been for a missive he received one day through the mail. It was a bill
+from a London shoe-store for twelve pairs of boots, of varying styles,
+made out to Henry Hanford, and marked "paid."
+
+Mr. Jackson Wylie, Sr., noted with unspeakable chagrin that the last
+word was heavily under-scored in ink, as if by another hand. Hanford's
+bill was indeed paid, and with interest to date.
+
+
+
+
+THE CUB REPORTER
+
+
+Why he chose Buffalo Paul Anderson never knew, unless perhaps it
+had more newspapers than Bay City, Michigan, and because his ticket
+expired in the vicinity of Buffalo. For that matter, why he should
+have given up an easy job as the mate of a tugboat to enter the
+tortuous paths of journalism the young man did not know, and, lacking
+the introspective faculty, he did not stop to analyze his motives. So
+far as he could discover he had felt the call to higher endeavor, and
+just naturally had heeded it. Such things as practical experience and
+educational equipment were but empty words to him, for he was young
+and hopeful, and the world is kind at twenty-one.
+
+He had hoped to enter his chosen field with some financial backing,
+and to that end, when the desire to try his hand at literature had
+struck him, he had bought an interest in a smoke-consumer which a
+fireman on another tugboat had patented. In partnership with the
+inventor he had installed one of the devices beneath a sawmill boiler
+as an experiment. Although the thing consumed smoke surprisingly well,
+it likewise unharnessed such an amazing army of heat-units that it
+melted the crown-sheet of the boiler; whereupon the sawmill men, being
+singularly coarse and unimaginative fellows, set upon the patentee and
+his partner with ash-rakes, draw-bars, and other ordinary, unpatented
+implements; a lumberjack beat hollowly upon their ribs with a peavy,
+and that night young Anderson sickened of smoke-consumers, harked anew
+to the call of journalism, and hiked, arriving in Buffalo with seven
+dollars and fifty cents to the good.
+
+For seven dollars, counted out in advance, he chartered a furnished
+room for a week, the same carrying with it a meal at each end of the
+day, which left in Anderson's possession a superfluity of fifty cents
+to be spent in any extravagance he might choose.
+
+Next day he bought a copy of each newspaper and, carefully scanning
+them, selected the one upon which to bestow his reportorial gifts.
+This done, he weighed anchor and steamed through the town in search of
+the office. Walking in upon the city editor of _The Intelligencer_, he
+gazed with benevolent approval upon that busy gentleman's broad back.
+He liked the place, the office suited him, and he decided to have his
+desk placed over by the window.
+
+After a time the editor wheeled, displaying a young, smooth, fat face,
+out of which peered gray-blue eyes with pin-point pupils.
+
+"Well?" he queried.
+
+"Here I am," said Anderson.
+
+"So it appears. What do you want?"
+
+"Work."
+
+"What kind?"
+
+"Newspapering."
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+"Anything."
+
+"Well, well!" cried the editor. "You don't look much like a newspaper
+man."
+
+"I'm not one--yet. But I'm going to be."
+
+"Where have you worked?"
+
+"Nowhere! You see, I'm really a playwright."
+
+The editor's face showed a bit of interest. "Playwright, eh? Anderson!
+Anderson!" he mused. "Don't recall the name."
+
+"No," said Paul; "I've never written any plays yet, but I'm going
+to. That's why I want to sort of begin here and get the hang of this
+writing game."
+
+A boy entered with some proofs at that moment and tossed them upon
+the table, distracting the attention of the newspaper man. The latter
+wheeled back to his work and spoke curtly over his shoulder.
+
+"I'm not running a school of journalism. Good-by."
+
+"Maybe you'd like me to do a little space work--?"
+
+"I'd never like you. Get out. I'm busy."
+
+Anderson retired gracefully, jingling his scanty handful of nickels
+and dimes, and a half-hour later thrust himself boldly in upon another
+editor, but with no better result. He made the rounds of all the
+offices; although invariably rebuffed he became more firmly convinced
+than ever that journalism was his designated sphere.
+
+That night after dinner he retired to his room with the evening
+papers, wedged a chair against his bed, and, hoisting his feet upon
+the wash-stand, absorbed the news of the day. It was ineffably sweet
+and satisfying to be thus identified with the profession of letters,
+and it was immeasurably more dignified than "tugging" on the Saginaw
+River. Once he had schooled himself in the tricks of writing, he
+decided he would step to higher things than newspaper work, but for
+the present it was well to ground himself firmly in the rudiments of
+the craft.
+
+In going through the papers he noted one topic which interested him, a
+"similar mystery" story on the second page. From what he could gather,
+he judged that much space had already been given to it; for now,
+inasmuch as no solution offered, the item was dying slowly, the major
+portion of each article being devoted to a rehash of similar unsolved
+mysteries.
+
+Anderson read that the body of the golden-haired girl still lay at the
+Morgue, unidentified. Bit by bit he pieced together the lean story
+that she was a suicide and that both the police and the press had
+failed in their efforts to unearth the least particle of information
+regarding her. In spite of her remarkable beauty and certain unusual
+circumstances connected with her death investigation had led nowhere.
+
+On the following day Anderson again walked into the editorial-rooms
+of _The Intelligencer_ and greeted the smooth, fat-faced occupant
+thereof.
+
+"Anything doing yet?" he inquired.
+
+"Not yet," said the newspaper man, with a trace of annoyance in his
+voice. As the applicant moved out he halted him at the door with the
+words: "Oh! Wait!"
+
+Anderson's heart leaped. After all, he thought, perseverance would--
+
+"Not yet, nor soon." The editor smiled broadly, and Paul realized that
+the humor in those pin-point eyes was rather cruel.
+
+Five other calls he made that day, to be greeted gruffly in every
+instance except one. One man encouraged him slightly by saying:
+
+"Come back next week; I may have an opening then."
+
+In view of the "pay-as-you-enter" policy in vogue at Anderson's
+boarding-house he knew there could be no next week for him, therefore
+he inquired:
+
+"How about a little space work in the meantime? I'm pretty good at
+that stuff."
+
+"You are?"
+
+"Surest thing you know."
+
+"Did you ever do any?"
+
+"No. But I'm good, just the same."
+
+"Huh!" the editor grunted. "There's no room now, and, come to think of
+it, you needn't bother to get around next week. I can't break in new
+men."
+
+That evening young Anderson again repaired to his room with his
+harvest of daily papers, and again he read them thoroughly. He was by
+no means discouraged as yet, for his week had just begun--there
+were still five days of grace, and prime ministers have been made
+overnight, nations have fallen in five days. Six calls a day for five
+days, that meant thirty chances for a job. It was a cinch!
+
+Hidden away among the back pages once more he encountered the
+golden-haired-girl story, and although one paper featured it a bit
+because of some imaginary clue, the others treated it casually, making
+public the information that the body still lay at the Morgue, a
+silent, irritating thing of mystery.
+
+On the third day Paul made his usual round of calls. He made them more
+quickly now because he was recognized, and was practically thrown out
+of each editorial sanctum. His serenity remained unruffled, and
+his confidence undisturbed. Of all the six editors, Burns, of _The
+Intelligencer_, treated him worst, adding ridicule to his gruffness, a
+refinement of cruelty which annoyed the young steamboat man. Anderson
+clenched his hard-knuckled hand and estimated the distance from
+editorial ear to point of literary chin, but realized in time that
+steamboat methods were out of place here in the politer realms of
+journalism.
+
+Four times more he followed his daily routine, and on Monday morning
+arose early to avoid his landlady. His week was up, his nickels and
+dimes were gone, nevertheless he spent the day on his customary
+rounds. He crept in late at night, blue with the cold and rather dazed
+at his bad luck; he had eaten nothing since the morning before, and
+he knew that he dared not show up at the breakfast-table the next
+morning. For the time being discouragement settled upon him; it
+settled suddenly like some heavy smothering thing; it robbed him of
+hope and redoubled his hunger. He awoke at daylight, roused by the
+sense of his defeat, then tiptoed out while yet the landlady was abed,
+and spent the day looking for work along the water-front. But winter
+had tied up the shipping, and he failed, as he likewise failed at
+sundry employment agencies where he offered himself in any capacity.
+
+At noon he wandered into the park, and, finding a sheltered spot,
+sunned himself as best he could. He picked up the sheets of a
+wind-scattered paper and read until the chill December afternoon
+got into his bones and forced him to his feet. The tale of the
+unidentified girl at the Morgue recurred to him when he read the
+announcement that she would be buried two days later in the Potter's
+Field. Perhaps the girl had starved for lack of work, he reflected.
+Perhaps hunger and cold had driven her to her death. Certainly those
+two were to blame for many a tragedy calculated to mystify warmly clad
+policemen and well-fed reporters.
+
+When he stole, shivering, into his bleak bedroom, late that night, he
+found a note pinned upon his pillow. Of course the landlady needed her
+rent--all landladies were in need of money--and of course he would get
+out in the morning. He was glad she had not turned him out during the
+day, for this afforded him sanctuary for another night at least. After
+to-morrow it would be a park bench for his.
+
+He left his valise behind in the morning, rather lamenting the fact
+that the old lady could not wear the shirts it contained, and hoping
+that she would realize a sufficient sum from their sale to pay his
+bill.
+
+It was late afternoon when he commenced his listless tramp toward the
+newspaper offices. Since Burns had become his pet aversion, he saved
+him for the last, framing a few farewell remarks befitting the death
+of hopes like his, and rehearsing an exit speech suitable to mark his
+departure from the field of letters.
+
+When he finally reached _The Intelligencer_ editorial-rooms, Burns
+rounded on him angrily.
+
+"For the love of Mike! Are you here again?" he demanded.
+
+"I thought you might like to have some space work--"
+
+"By heavens! You're persistent."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We editors are an unfeeling lot, aren't we?" the fat young man
+inquired. "No temperament, no appreciation." He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"Give me a job," Anderson cried, his voice breaking huskily. "I'll
+make good. I'll do anything."
+
+"How long do you intend to keep bothering me?" questioned Burns.
+
+Anderson's cheeks were blue and the backs of his legs were trembling
+from weakness, but he repeated, stolidly: "Give me a job. I--I won't
+bother you after that. I'll make good, see if I don't."
+
+"You think well of yourself, don't you?"
+
+"If you thought half as well of me as I do," Paul assured him, "I'd be
+your star reporter."
+
+"Star hell!" testily cried the editor. "We haven't got such a thing.
+They don't know they're alive, except on pay-day. Look at this blond
+girl at the Morgue--they've wasted two weeks on that case." He paused
+suddenly, then his soft lips spread, showing his sharp, white teeth.
+Modifying his tone, he continued: "Say, I rather like you, Anderson,
+you're such a blamed nuisance. You've half convinced me that you're a
+genius."
+
+The younger man's hunger, which had given up in despair, raised its
+head and bit into his vitals sharply.
+
+"Maybe I--"
+
+"I've a notion to give you a chance."
+
+"That's all I want," the caller quavered, in a panic. "Just give me a
+toe-hold, that's all," His voice broke in spite of his effort to
+hold it steady. Burns wasn't a bad sort, after all; just grouchy and
+irritable. Perhaps this was merely his way.
+
+Burns continued: "Well, I will give you an assignment, a good
+assignment, too, and if you cover it I'll put you on permanently. I'll
+do more than that, I'll pay you what we pay our best man, if you make
+good. That's fair, isn't it?"
+
+He smiled benignly, and the soon-to-be reporter's wits went capering
+off in a hysterical stampede. Anderson felt the desire to wring the
+fellow's hand.
+
+"All that counts in this office is efficiency," the latter went on.
+"We play no favorites. When a man delivers the goods we boost him;
+when he fails we fire him. There's no sentiment here, and I hold my
+job merely because I'm the best man in the shop. Can you go to work
+to-night?"
+
+"Why--why--yes, sir!"
+
+"Very well. That's the spirit I like. You can take your time on the
+story, and you needn't come back till you bring it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Now pay attention, here it is. About two weeks ago a blond girl
+committed suicide in a Main Street boarding-house. The body's down at
+the Morgue now. Find out who she is." He turned back to his desk and
+began to work.
+
+The hungry youth behind him experienced a sudden sinking at the
+stomach. All at once he became hopelessly empty and friendless, and he
+felt his knees urging him to sit down. He next became conscious
+that the shoulders of Mr. Burns were shaking a bit, as if he had
+encountered a piece of rare humor. After an instant, when Anderson
+made no move to go, the man at the desk wheeled about, exposing a
+bloated countenance purple with suppressed enjoyment.
+
+"What's the matter?" he giggled. "Don't you want the job? I can't tell
+you any more about the girl; that's all we know. The rest is up to
+you. You'll find out everything, won't you? Please do, for your own
+sake and the sake of _The Intelligencer_. Yes, yes, I'm sure you will,
+because you're a good newspaper man--you told me so yourself." His
+appreciation of the jest threatened to strangle him.
+
+"Mr. Burns," began the other, "I--I'm up against it. I guess you don't
+know it, but I'm hungry. I haven't eaten for three days."
+
+At this the editor became positively apoplectic.
+
+"Oh yes--yes, I do!" He nodded vigorously. "You show it in your face.
+That's why I went out of my way to help you. He! He! He! Now you run
+along and get me the girl's name and address while I finish this
+proof. Then come back and have supper with me at the Press Club."
+Again he chortled and snickered, whereupon something sullen and fierce
+awoke in young Anderson. He knew of a way to get food and a bed and a
+place to work even if it would only last thirty days, for he judged
+Burns was the kind of man who would yell for the police in case of an
+assault. Paul would have welcomed the prospect of prison fare, but he
+reasoned that it would be an incomplete satisfaction merely to mash
+the pudgy face of Mr. Burns and hear him clamor. What he wanted at
+this moment was a job; Burns's beating could hold over. This suicide
+case had baffled the pick of Buffalo's trained reporters; it had
+foiled the best efforts of her police; nevertheless, this fat-paunched
+fellow had baited a starving man by offering him the assignment. It
+was impossible; it was a cruel joke, and yet--there might be a chance
+of success. Even while he was debating the point he heard himself say:
+
+"Very well, Mr. Burns. If you want her name I'll get it for you."
+
+He crammed his hat down over his ears and walked out, leaving the
+astonished editor gazing after him with open mouth.
+
+Anderson's first impulse had been merely to get out of Burns's office,
+out of sight of that grinning satyr, and never to come back, but
+before he had reached the street he had decided that it was as well to
+starve striving as with folded hands. After all, the dead girl had a
+name.
+
+Instead of leaving the building, he went to the files of the paper
+and, turning back, uncovered the original story, which he cut out with
+his pen-knife, folded up, and placed in his pocket. This done, he
+sought the lobby of a near-by hotel, found a seat near a radiator, and
+proceeded to read the clipping carefully.
+
+It was a meager story, but it contained facts and was free from the
+confusion and distortions of the later accounts, which was precisely
+what he wished to guard against. Late one afternoon, so the story
+went, the girl had rented a room in a Main Street boarding-house, had
+eaten supper and retired. At eleven o'clock the next day, when she did
+not respond to a knock on her door, the room had been broken into and
+she had been found dead, with an empty morphine-bottle on the bureau.
+That was all. There were absolutely no clues to the girl's identity,
+for the closest scrutiny failed to discover a mark on her clothing
+or any personal articles which could be traced. She had possessed no
+luggage, save a little hand-satchel or shopping-bag containing a few
+coins. One fact alone stood out in the whole affair. She had paid for
+her room with a two-dollar Canadian bill, but this faint clue had been
+followed with no result. No one knew the girl; she had walked out of
+nowhere and had disappeared into impenetrable mystery. Those were the
+facts in the case, and they were sufficiently limited to baffle the
+best efforts of Buffalo's trained detective force.
+
+It would seem that there can be no human creature so obscure as to
+have neither relatives, friends, nor acquaintances, and yet this
+appeared to be the case, for a full description of this girl had
+been blazoned in the papers of every large city, had been exposed in
+countless country post-offices, and conveyed to the police of every
+city of the States and Canada. It was as if the mysterious occupant of
+the Morgue had been born of the winter wind on that fateful evening
+two weeks before. The country had been dragged by a net of publicity,
+that marvelous, fine-meshed fabric from which no living man is small
+or shrewd enough to escape, and still the sad, white face at the
+Morgue continued to smile out from its halo of gold as if in gentle
+mockery.
+
+For a long time Paul Anderson sat staring into the realms of
+speculation, his lips white with hunger, his cheeks hollow and
+feverish from the battle he had waged. His power of exclusion was
+strong, therefore he lost himself to his surroundings. Finally,
+however, he roused himself from his abstraction and realized the irony
+of this situation. He, the weakest, the most inexperienced of all the
+men who had tried, had been set to solve this mystery, and starvation
+was to be the fruit of his failure.
+
+He saw that it had begun to snow outside. In the lobby it was warm and
+bright and vivid with jostling life; the music of a stringed orchestra
+somewhere back of him was calling well-dressed men and women in to
+dinner. All of them seemed happy, hopeful, purposeful. He noted,
+furthermore, that three days without food makes a man cold, even in
+a warm place, and light-headed, too. The north wind had bitten him
+cruelly as he crossed the street, and now as he peered out of the
+plate-glass windows the night seemed to hold other lurking horrors
+besides. His want was like a burden, and he shuddered weakly,
+hesitating to venture out where the wind could harry him. It was a
+great temptation to remain here where there was warmth and laughter
+and life; nevertheless, he rose and slunk shivering out into the
+darkness, then laid a course toward the Morgue.
+
+While Anderson trod the snowy streets a slack-jowled editor sat at
+supper with some friends at the Press Club, eating and drinking
+heartily, as is the custom of newspaper men let down for a moment from
+the strain of their work. He had told a story, and his caustic way
+of telling it had amused his hearers, for each and every one of them
+remembered the shabby applicant for work, and all of them had wasted
+baffling hours on the mystery of this girl with the golden hair.
+
+"I guess I put a crimp in him," giggled Mr. Burns. "I gave him a
+chance to show those talents he recommends so highly."
+
+"The Morgue, on a night like this, is a pretty dismal place for a
+hungry man," said one of the others. "It's none too cheerful in the
+daytime."
+
+The others agreed, and Burns wabbled anew in his chair in appreciation
+of his humor.
+
+Young Anderson had never seen a morgue, and to-night, owing to his
+condition, his dread of it was child-like. It seemed as if this
+particular charnel-house harbored some grisly thing which stood
+between him and food and warmth and hope; the nearer he drew to it the
+greater grew his dread. A discourteous man, shrunken as if from the
+chill of the place, was hunched up in front of a glowing stove. He
+greeted Anderson sourly:
+
+"Out into that courtyard; turn to the left--second door," he directed.
+"She's in the third compartment."
+
+Anderson lacked courage to ask the fellow to come along, but stumbled
+out into a snow-filled areaway lighted by a swinging incandescent
+which danced to the swirling eddies.
+
+Compartment! He supposed bodies were kept upon slabs or tables, or
+something like that. He had steeled himself to see rows of unspeakable
+sights, played upon by dripping water, but he found nothing of the
+sort.
+
+The second door opened into a room which he discovered was colder than
+the night outside, evidently the result of artificial refrigeration.
+He was relieved to find the place utterly bare except for a sort of
+car or truck which ran around the room on a track beneath a row of
+square doors. These doors evidently opened into the compartments
+alluded to by the keeper.
+
+Which compartment had the fellow said? Paul abruptly discovered that
+he was rattled, terribly rattled, and he turned back out of the place.
+He paused shortly, however, and took hold of himself.
+
+"Now, now!" he said, aloud. "You're a bum reporter, my boy." An
+instant later he forced himself to jerk open the first door at his
+hand.
+
+For what seemed a full minute he stared into the cavern, as if
+petrified, then he closed the door softly. Sweat had started from his
+every pore. Alone once more in the great room, he stood shivering.
+"God!" he muttered. This was newspaper training indeed.
+
+He remembered now having read, several days before, about an Italian
+laborer who had been crushed by a falling column. To one unaccustomed
+to death in any form that object, head-on in the obscurity of the
+compartment, had been a trying sight. He began to wonder if it were
+really cold or stiflingly hot.
+
+The boy ground his teeth and flung open the next door, slamming it
+hurriedly again to blot out what it exposed. Why didn't they keep them
+covered? Why didn't they show a card outside? Must he examine every
+grisly corpse upon the premises?
+
+He stepped to the third door and wrenched it open. He knew the girl at
+once by her wealth of yellow hair and the beauty of her still, white
+face. There was no horror here, no ghastly sight to weaken a man's
+muscles and sicken his stomach; only a tired girl asleep. Anderson
+felt a great pity as he wheeled the truck opposite the door and
+reverently drew out the slab on which the body lay. He gazed upon her
+intently for some time. She was not at all as he had pictured her, and
+yet there could be no mistake. He took the printed description from
+his pocket and reread it carefully, comparing it point by point. When
+he had finished he found that it was a composite word photograph,
+vaguely like and yet totally unlike the person it was intended to
+portray, and so lacking in character that no one knowing the original
+intimately would have been likely to recognize her from it.
+
+So that was why no word had come in answer to all this newspaper
+publicity. After all, this case might not be so difficult as it had
+seemed; for the first time the dispirited youth felt a faint glow of
+encouragement. He began to formulate a plan.
+
+Hurriedly he fumbled for his note-book, and there, in that house
+of death, with his paper propped against the wall, he wrote a
+two-hundred-word description; a description so photographically exact
+that to this day it is preserved in the Buffalo police archives as a
+perfect model.
+
+He replaced the body in its resting-place and went out. There was no
+chill in him now, no stumbling nor weakness of any sort. He had found
+a starting-point, had uncovered what all those trained newspaper men
+had missed, and he felt that he had a chance to win.
+
+Twenty minutes later Burns, who had just come in from supper, turned
+back from his desk with annoyance and challenge in his little, narrow
+eyes.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I think I've got her, Mr. Burns."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Anyhow, I've got a description that her father or her mother or
+her friends can recognize. The one you and the other papers printed
+disguised her so that nobody could tell who she was--it might have
+covered a hundred girls."
+
+Rapidly, and without noting the editor's growing impatience, Paul read
+the two descriptions, then ran on, breathlessly:
+
+"All we have to do is print ten or twenty thousand of these and mail
+them out with the morning edition--separate sheets, posters, you
+understand?--so they can be nailed up in every post-office within two
+hundred miles. Send some to the police of all the cities, and we'll
+have a flash in twenty-four hours."
+
+Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man
+over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence,
+his stare, were eloquent.
+
+"Why? Why not?" Anderson demanded, querulously. "I tell you this
+description isn't right. It--it's nothing like her, nothing at all."
+
+"Say! I thought I'd seen the last of you," growled the corpulent man.
+"Aren't you on to yourself yet?"
+
+"Do you--mean that your talk this evening don't go?" Paul demanded,
+quietly. "Do you mean to say you won't even give me the chance you
+promised?"
+
+"No! I don't mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told _you_
+to identify this girl. I didn't agree to do it. What d'you think this
+paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don't care who or
+what this girl is unless there's a story in her. We're not running a
+job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females.
+Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say--don't you know that no two men
+can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What's the
+difference whether her hair is burnished gold or 'raw gold' or her
+eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!"
+
+"But I tell you--"
+
+"What's her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That's what I
+want to know. I'd look fine, wouldn't I, circularizing a dead story?
+Wouldn't that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and
+playwright, I'm getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you
+needn't come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself
+plain?"
+
+It was anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of
+petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve
+some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be,
+who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way
+village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in
+it this girl would go to the Potter's Field and her people would never
+know. And yet, by Heaven, they _would_ know! Something told him there
+_was_ a story back of this girl's death, and he swore to get it. With
+a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult
+to himself, replied:
+
+"Very well. I've got you this time."
+
+"Humph!" Burns grunted, viciously.
+
+"I don't know how I'll turn the trick, but I'll turn it." For the
+second time that evening he left the office with his jaws set
+stubbornly.
+
+Paul Anderson walked straight to his boarding-house and bearded his
+landlady. "I've got a job," said he.
+
+"I'm very glad," the lady told him, honestly enough. "I feared you
+were going to move out."
+
+"Yes!" he repeated. "I've got a job that carries the highest salary
+on the paper. You remember the yellow-haired girl who killed herself
+awhile ago?" he asked.
+
+"Indeed I do. Everybody knows about that case."
+
+"Well, it got too tough for the police and the other reporters, so
+they turned it over to me. It's a bully assignment, and my pay starts
+when I solve the mystery. Now I'm starved; I wish you'd rustle me some
+grub."
+
+"But, Mr. Anderson, you're bill for this week? You know I get paid
+in--"
+
+"Tut, tut! You know how newspapers are. They don't pay in advance, and
+I can't pay you until they pay me. You'll probably have to wait until
+Saturday, for I'm a little out of practice on detective stuff. But
+I'll have this thing cleared up by then. You don't appreciate--you
+_can't_ appreciate--what a corking assignment it is."
+
+Anderson had a peculiarly engaging smile, and five minutes later he
+was wrecking the pantry of all the edibles his fellow-boarders had
+overlooked, the while his landlady told him her life's history, wept
+over the memory of her departed husband, and confessed that she hoped
+to get out of the boarding-house business some time.
+
+A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast put the young man in fine
+fettle, and about ten o'clock he repaired to a certain rooming-house
+on Main Street, the number of which he obtained from the clipping in
+his pocket.
+
+A girl answered his ring, but at sight of him she shut the door
+hurriedly, explaining through the crack:
+
+"Mrs. MacDougal is out and you can't come in."
+
+"But I want to talk to you."
+
+"I'm not allowed to talk to reporters," she declared. "Mrs. MacDougal
+won't let me."
+
+A slight Scotch accent gave Anderson his cue. "MacDougal is a good
+Scotch name. I'm Scotch myself, and so are you." He smiled his
+boarding-house smile, and the girl's eyes twinkled back at him.
+"Didn't she tell you I was coming?"
+
+"Why, no, sir. Aren't you a reporter?"
+
+"I've been told that I'm not. I came to look at a room."
+
+"What room?" the girl asked, quickly. "We haven't any vacant rooms."
+
+"That's queer," Anderson frowned. "I can't be mistaken. I'm sure Mrs.
+MacDougal said there was one."
+
+The door opened slowly. "Maybe she meant the one on the second floor."
+
+"Precisely." An instant later he was following his guide up-stairs.
+
+Anderson recognized the room at a glance, from its description, but
+the girl did not mention the tragedy which had occurred therein, so
+he proceeded to talk terms with her, prolonging his stay as long as
+possible, meanwhile using his eyes to the best advantage. He invented
+an elaborate ancestry which he traced backward through the pages of
+_Scottish Chiefs_, the only book of the sort he had ever read, and by
+the time he was ready to leave the girl had thawed out considerably.
+
+"I'll take the room," he told her, "and I'm well pleased to get it. I
+don't see how such a good one stands vacant in this location."
+
+There was an instant's pause, then his companion confessed: "There's a
+reason. You'll find it out sooner or later, so I may as well tell you.
+That's where the yellow-haired girl you hear so much about killed
+herself. I hope it won't make any difference to you, Mr.--"
+
+"Gregor. Certainly not. I read about the case. Canadian, wasn't she?"
+
+"Oh yes! There's no doubt of it. She paid her rent with a Canadian
+bill, and, besides, I noticed her accent. I didn't tell the reporters,
+however, they're such a fresh lot."
+
+Paul's visit, it appeared, had served to establish one thing, at
+least, a thing which the trained investigators had not discovered.
+Canadian money in Buffalo was too common to excite comment, therefore
+none of them had seen fit to follow out that clue of the two-dollar
+bill.
+
+"The papers had it that she was some wealthy girl," the former speaker
+ran on, "but I know better."
+
+"Indeed? How do you know?"
+
+"Her hands! They were good hands, and she used them as if she knew
+what they were made for."
+
+"Anything else?"
+
+"No. She seemed very sad and didn't say much. Of course I only saw her
+once."
+
+Anderson questioned the girl at some further length, but discovered
+nothing of moment, so he left, declaring that he would probably move
+into the room on the following day.
+
+Prom the rooming-house he went directly to the Morgue, and for a
+second time examined the body, confining his attention particularly to
+the hands. The right one showed nothing upon which to found a theory,
+save that it was, indeed, a capable hand with smooth skin and
+well-tended nails; but on examining the left Paul noted a marked
+peculiarity. Near the ends of the thumb and the first finger the skin
+was roughened, abrased; there were numerous tiny black spots
+beneath the skin, which, upon careful scrutiny, he discovered to be
+microscopic blood-blisters.
+
+For a long time he puzzled over this phenomenon which had escaped all
+previous observers, but to save him he could invent no explanation for
+it. He repaired finally to the office of the attendant and asked for
+the girl's clothes, receiving permission to examine a small bundle.
+
+"Where's the rest?" he demanded.
+
+"That's all she had," said the man.
+
+"No baggage at all?"
+
+"Not a thing but what she stood up in. The coroner has her jewelry and
+things of that sort."
+
+Anderson searched the contents of the bundle with the utmost care, but
+found no mark of any sort. The garments, although inexpensive, were
+beautifully neat and clean, and they displayed the most marvelous
+examples of needlework he had ever seen. Among the effects was a plush
+muff, out of which, as he picked it up, fell a pair of little knitted
+mittens--or was there a pair? Finding but the one, he shook the muff
+again, then looked through the other things.
+
+"Where's the other mitten?" he inquired.
+
+"There 'ain't been but the one," the attendant told him.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"See here, do you think I'm trying to hold out a yarn mitten on you?
+I say there 'ain't been but the one. I was here when she came, and I
+know."
+
+Discouraged by the paucity of clues which this place offered, Anderson
+went next to the coroner's office.
+
+The City Hall newspaper squad had desks in this place, but Paul paid
+no attention to them or to their occupants. He went straight to the
+wicket and asked for the effects of the dead girl.
+
+It appeared that Burns had told his practical joke broadcast, for
+the young man heard his name mentioned, and then some one behind him
+snickered. He paid no attention, however, for the clerk had handed him
+a small leather bag or purse, together with a morphine-bottle, about
+the size and shape of an ordinary vaseline-bottle. The bag was cheap
+and bore no maker's name or mark. Inside of it was a brooch, a ring, a
+silver chain, and a slip of paper. Stuck to the bottom of the reticule
+was a small key. Paul came near overlooking the last-named article,
+for it was well hidden in a fold near the corner. Now a key to an
+unknown lock is not much to go on at best, therefore he gave his
+attention to the paper. It was evidently a scrap torn from a sheet of
+wrapping-paper, and bore these figures in pencil:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+While he was reading these figures Paul heard a reporter say, loudly,
+"Now that I have written the paper, who will take it?"
+
+Another answered, "I will."
+
+"Who are you?" inquired the first voice.
+
+"Hawkshaw, the detective."
+
+Anderson's cheeks flushed, but he returned the bag and its contents
+without comment and walked out, heedless of the laughter of the
+six reporters. The injustice of their ridicule burnt him like a
+branding-iron, for his only offense lay in trying the impossible.
+These fellows had done their best and had failed, yet they jeered at
+him because he had tackled a forlorn hope. They had taken the trail
+when it was hot and had lost it; now they railed at him when he took
+it cold.
+
+All that afternoon he tramped the streets, thinking, thinking, until
+his brain went stale. The only fresh clues he had discovered thus
+far were the marks on finger and thumb, the fact that the girl was a
+Canadian, and that she had possessed but one mitten instead of two.
+This last, for obvious reasons, was too trivial to mean anything, and
+yet in so obscure a case it could not be ignored. The fact that she
+was a Canadian helped but little, therefore the best point upon which
+to hang a line of reasoning seemed to be those black spots on the left
+hand. But they stumped Anderson absolutely.
+
+He altered his mental approach to the subject and reflected upon the
+girl's belongings. Taken in their entirety they showed nothing save
+that the girl was poor, therefore he began mentally to assort them,
+one by one. First, clothes. They were ordinary clothes; they betrayed
+nothing. Second, the purse. It was like a million other purses and
+showed no distinguishing mark, no peculiarity. Third, the jewelry. It
+was cheap and common, of a sort to be found in any store. Fourth, the
+morphine-bottle. Paul was forced likewise to dismiss consideration of
+that. There remained nothing but the scrap of paper, torn from the
+corner of a large sheet and containing these penciled figures:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+It was a simple sum in subtraction, a very simple sum indeed; too
+simple, Anderson reflected, for any one to reduce to figures unless
+those figures had been intended for a purpose. He recalled the face
+at the morgue and vowed that such a girl could have done the sum
+mentally. Then why the paper? Why had she taken pains to tear off a
+piece of wrapping-paper, jot down figures so easy to remember,
+and preserve them in her purse? Why, she did so because she was
+methodical, something answered. But, his alter ego reasoned, if she
+had been sufficiently methodical to note a trivial transaction so
+carefully, she would have been sufficiently methodical to use some
+better, some more methodical method. She would not have torn off a
+corner of thick wrapping-paper upon which to keep her books. There was
+but one answer, memorandum!
+
+All right, memorandum it was, for the time being. Now then, in what
+business could she have been engaged where she found it necessary to
+keep memoranda of such inconsiderable sums? Oh, Lord! There were a
+million! Paul had been walking on thin ice from the start; now it gave
+way beneath him, so he abandoned this train of thought and went back
+once more to the bundle of clothes. Surely there was a clue concealed
+somewhere among them, if only he could find it. They were poor
+clothes, and yet, judging by their cut, he fancied the girl had looked
+exceedingly well in them--nay, even modish. She had evidently spent
+much time on them, as the beautiful needlework attested. At this point
+Anderson's mind ran out on to thin ice again, so he reverted to the
+girl herself for the _n_th time. She was Canadian, her hands were
+useful, there were tiny blood-blisters on the left thumb and index
+finger, and the skin was roughened and torn minutely, evidently by
+some sharp instrument. What instrument? He answered the question
+almost before he had voiced it. A needle, of course!
+
+Paul stopped in his walk so abruptly that a man poked him in the back
+with a ladder; but he paid no heed, for his mind was leaping. That
+thickening of the skin, those tiny scratches, those blood-blisters,
+those garments without mark of maker, yet so stylish in cut and so
+carefully made, and furthermore that memorandum:
+
+  9.25
+  6.25
+  ----
+  3.00
+
+"Why, she was a dressmaker!" said Anderson, out loud. He went back
+over his reasoning, but it held good--so good that he would have
+wagered his own clothes that he was right. Yes, and those figures
+represented some trifling purchases or commission--for a customer, no
+doubt.
+
+It followed naturally that she was not a Buffalo dressmaker, else she
+would have been identified long since; nor was it likely that she came
+from any city, for her clothes had not given him the impression of
+being city-made, and, moreover, the publicity given to the case
+through the press, even allowing for the fact that the printed
+description had been vague, would have been sure to uncover her
+identity. No, she was a Canadian country seamstress.
+
+The young man's mind went back a few years to his boyhood on a
+Michigan farm, where visiting dressmakers used to come and stay by the
+week to make his mother's clothes. They usually carried a little
+flat trunk filled with patterns, yard sticks, forms, and other
+paraphernalia of the trade. Paul remembered that the owners used to
+buy the cloths and materials at the country stores, and render a
+strict accounting thereof to his mother. Well, where was the trunk
+that went with this country dressmaker?
+
+The question of baggage had puzzled him from the start. Had the girl
+been possessed of a grip or bundle of any kind at the time of her
+death that question would have been answered. But there was absolutely
+nothing of the sort in her room. Her complete lack of luggage had
+made him doubt, at first, that she was an out-of-town visitor; but,
+following his recent conclusions, he decided now that directly the
+opposite was true. She had come to Buffalo with nothing but a trunk,
+otherwise she would have taken her hand-luggage with her to the Main
+Street rooming-house. It remained to find that trunk.
+
+This problem threatened even greater difficulties than any hitherto,
+and Paul shivered as the raw Lake wind searched through his clothes.
+He wondered if it had been as cold as this when the girl arrived in
+Buffalo. Yes, assuredly. Then why did she go out with only one mitten?
+His reason told him that the other one had been lost by the police.
+But the police are careful, as a rule. They had saved every other
+article found in the girl's possession, even to a brooch and pin and
+scrap of paper. Probably the girl herself had lost it. But country
+dressmakers are careful, too; they are not given to losing mittens,
+especially in cold weather. It was more reasonable to believe that she
+had mislaid it among her belongings; inasmuch as those belongings,
+according to Paul's logic, were doubtless contained in her trunk, that
+was probably where the missing mitten would be found. But, after all,
+had she really brought a trunk with her?
+
+Like a flash came the recollection of that key stuck to the bottom of
+the girl's leather purse at the coroner's office. Ten minutes later
+Paul was back at the City Hall.
+
+For a second time he was greeted with laughter by the reportorial
+squad; again he paid no heed.
+
+"Why, you saw those things not two hours ago," protested the coroner's
+clerk, in answer to his inquiry.
+
+"I want to see them again."
+
+"Well, I'm busy. You've had them once, that's enough."
+
+"Friend," said Anderson, quietly, "I want those things and I want them
+quick. You give them to me or I'll go to the man higher up and get
+them--and your job along with them."
+
+The fellow obeyed reluctantly. Paul picked the key loose and examined
+it closely. While he was thus engaged, one of the reporters behind him
+said:
+
+"Aha! At last he has the key to the mystery."
+
+The general laughter ceased abruptly when the object of this banter
+thrust the key into his pocket and advanced threateningly toward the
+speaker, his face white with rage. The latter rose to his feet; he
+undertook to execute a dignified retreat, but Anderson seized him
+viciously, flung him back, and pinned him against the wall, crying,
+furiously:
+
+"You dirty rat! If you open your face to me again, I'll brain you, and
+that goes for all of this death-watch." He took in the other five men
+with his reddened eyes. "When you fellows see me coming, hole up.
+Understand?"
+
+His grip was so fierce, his mouth had such a wicked twist to it, that
+his victim understood him perfectly and began to grin in a sickly,
+apologetic fashion. Paul reseated the reporter at his desk with
+such violence that a chair leg gave way; then he strode out of the
+building.
+
+For the next few hours Anderson tramped the streets in impotent anger,
+striving to master himself, for that trifling episode had so upset him
+that he could not concentrate his mind upon the subject in hand. When
+he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and
+farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow
+the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours
+were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract,
+subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light of inductive
+reasoning.
+
+"Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk? Where is that trunk?" he
+repeated, tirelessly. Could it be in some other rooming-house? No. If
+the girl had disappeared from such a place, leaving her trunk behind,
+the publicity would have uncovered the fact. It might be lying in the
+baggage-room of some hotel, to be sure; but Paul doubted that, for the
+same reason. The girl had been poor, too; it was unlikely that she
+would have gone to a high-priced hotel. Well, he couldn't examine all
+the baggage in all the cheap hotels of the city--that was evident.
+Somehow he could not picture that girl in a cheap hotel; she was too
+fine, too patrician. No, it was more likely that she had left her
+trunk in some railroad station. This was a long chance, but Paul took
+it.
+
+The girl had come from Canada, therefore Anderson went to the Grand
+Trunk Railway depot and asked for the baggage-master. There were other
+roads, but this seemed the most likely.
+
+A raw-boned Irish baggage-man emerged from the confusion, and of a
+sudden Paul realized the necessity of even greater tact here than he
+had used with the Scotch girl, for he had no authority of any sort
+behind him by virtue of which he could demand so much as a favor.
+
+"Are you a married man?" he inquired, abruptly.
+
+"G'wan! I thought ye wanted a baggage-man," the big fellow replied.
+
+"Don't kid me; this is important."
+
+"Shure, I am, but I don't want any accident insurance. I took a chance
+and I'm game."
+
+"Have you any daughters?"
+
+"Two of them. But what's it to ye?"
+
+"Suppose one of them disappeared?"
+
+The baggage-man seized Anderson by the shoulder; his eyes dilated;
+with a catch in his voice he cried:
+
+"Love o' God, speak out! What are ye drivin' at?"
+
+"Nothing has happened to your girls, but--"
+
+"Then what in hell--?"
+
+"Wait! I had to throw a little scare into you so you'd understand what
+I'm getting at. Suppose one of your girls lay dead and unidentified
+in the morgue of a strange city and was about to be buried in the
+Potter's Field. You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Are ye daft? Or has something really happened? If not, it's a damn
+fool question. What d'ye want?"
+
+"Listen! You'd want her to have a decent burial, and you'd want her
+mother to know how she came to such a pass, wouldn't you?"
+
+The Irishman mopped his brow uncertainly. "I would that."
+
+"Then listen some more." Paul told the man his story, freely,
+earnestly, but rapidly; he painted the picture of a shy, lonely girl,
+homeless, hopeless and despondent in a great city, then the picture of
+two old people waiting in some distant farmhouse, sick at heart and
+uncertain, seeing their daughter's face in the firelight, hearing
+her sigh in the night wind. He talked in homely words that left the
+baggage-man's face grave, then he told how Burns, in a cruel jest, had
+sent a starving boy out to solve the mystery that had baffled the best
+detectives. When he had finished his listener cried:
+
+"Shure it was a rotten trick, but why d'ye come here?"
+
+"I want you to go through your baggage-room with me till we find a
+trunk which this key will fit."
+
+"Come on with ye. I'm blamed if I don't admire yer nerve. Of course
+ye understand I've no right to let ye in--that's up to the
+station-master, but he's a grouchy divil." The speaker led Paul into
+a room piled high with trunks, then summoned two helpers. "We'll move
+every dam' wan of them till we fit your little key," he declared; then
+the four men fell to.
+
+A blind search promised to be a job of hours, so Paul walked down the
+runway between the piles of trunks, using his eyes as he went. At
+least he could eliminate certain classes of baggage, and thus he might
+shorten the search; but half-way down the row he called sharply to the
+smashers:
+
+"Come here, quick!" At his tone they came running. "Look! that one in
+the bottom row!" he cried. "That's it. Something tells me it is."
+
+On the floor underneath the pile was a little, flat, battered tin
+trunk, pathetically old-fashioned and out of place among its more
+stylish neighbors; it was the kind of trunk Paul had seen in his
+mother's front room on the farm. It was bound about with a bit of
+rope.
+
+His excitement infected the others, and the three smashers went at the
+pile, regardless of damage. Anderson's suspense bid fair to choke him;
+what if this were not the one? he asked himself. But what if it were
+the right one? What if this key he clutched in his cold palm should
+fit the lock? Paul pictured what he would see when he lifted the lid:
+a collection of forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, a tape measure,
+and somewhere in it a little black yarn mitten. He prayed blindly for
+courage to withstand disappointment.
+
+"There she is," panted his Irish friend, dragging the object out into
+the clear. The other men crowded closer. "Come on, lad. What are ye
+waitin' for?"
+
+Anderson knelt before the little battered trunk and inserted the key.
+It was the keenest moment he had ever lived. He turned the key; then
+he was on his feet, cold, calm, his blue eyes glittering.
+
+"Cut those ropes. Quick!" he ordered. "We're right."
+
+The man at his side whipped out a knife and slashed twice.
+
+"Come close, all of you," Paul directed, "and remember everything we
+find. You may have to testify."
+
+He lifted the lid. On the top of the shallow tray lay a little black
+yarn mitten, the mate to that one in the city Morgue.
+
+Anderson smiled into the faces of the men at his side. "That's it," he
+said, simply.
+
+The tall Irishman laid a hand on his shoulder, saying: "Yer all right,
+boy. Don't get rattled,"
+
+Paul opened the till and found precisely the paraphernalia he had
+expected: there were forms, hangers, patterns, yard-sticks, and a tape
+measure. In the compartment beneath were some neatly folded clothes,
+the needlework of which was fine, and in one corner a bundle of
+letters which Anderson examined with trembling fingers. They were
+addressed to "Miss Mabel Wilkes, Highland, Ontario, Canada, Care of
+Captain Wilkes."
+
+The amateur detective replaced the letters carefully; he closed and
+locked the trunk; then he thanked his companions.
+
+"If I had a dollar in the world," said he, "I'd ask you boys to have a
+drink, but I'm broke." Then he began to laugh foolishly, hysterically,
+until the raw-boned man clapped him on the back again.
+
+"Straighten up, lad. Ye've been strained a bit too hard. I'll
+telephone for the cops."
+
+In an instant Paul was himself. "You'll do nothing of the sort," he
+cried. "Why, man, you'll spoil the whole thing. I've worked this out
+alone, and if the police hear of it they'll notify all the papers and
+I'll have no story. Burns won't give me that job, and I'll be hungry
+again."
+
+"True! I forgot that fat-headed divil of an editor. Well, you say the
+word and nobody won't know nothin' from us. Hey, boys?"
+
+"Sure not," the other men agreed. This lad was one of their kind; he
+was up against it and fighting for his own, therefore they knew how to
+sympathize. But Paul had been seized with terror lest his story might
+get away from him, therefore he bade them a hasty good-by and sped
+up-town. His feet could not carry him swiftly enough.
+
+Burns greeted him sourly when he burst into the editorial sanctum. It
+was not yet twenty-four hours since he had sent this fellow away with
+instructions not to return.
+
+"Are you back again?" he snarled. "I heard about your assaulting Wells
+down at the City Hall. Don't try it on me or I'll have you pinched."
+
+Paul laughed lightly. "I don't have to fight for my rights any more."
+
+"Indeed! What are you grinning about? Have you found who that girl
+is?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"_What?_" Burns's jaw dropped limply; he leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Yes, sir! I've identified her."
+
+The fat man was at first incredulous, then suspicious. "Don't try any
+tricks on me," he cried, warningly. "Don't try to put anything over--"
+
+"Her name is Mabel Wilkes. She is the daughter of Captain Wilkes, of
+Highland, Ontario. She was a country dressmaker and lived with her
+people at that place. Her trunk is down at the Grand Trunk depot with
+the rest of her clothes in it, together with the mate to the mitten
+she had when she killed herself. I went through the trunk with the
+baggage-master, name Corrigan. Here's the key which I got from her
+purse at the coroner's office."
+
+Burns fixed his round eyes upon the key, then he shifted them slowly
+to Anderson's face. "Why--why--this is amazing! I--I--" He cleared his
+throat nervously. "How did you discover all this? Who told you?"
+
+"Nobody told me. I reasoned it out."
+
+"But how--Good Lord! Am I dreaming?"
+
+"I'm a good newspaper man. I've been telling you that every day. Maybe
+you'll believe me now."
+
+Burns made no reply. Instead, he pushed a button and Wells, of the
+City Hall squad, entered, pausing abruptly at sight of Anderson.
+Giving the latter no time for words, Mr. Burns issued his
+instructions. On the instant he was the trained newspaper man again,
+cheating the clock dial and trimming minutes: his words were sharp and
+decisive.
+
+"That suicide story has broken big and we've got a scoop. Anderson has
+identified her. Take the first G.T. train for Highland, Ontario, and
+find her father, Captain Wilkes. Wire me a full story about the girl
+Mabel, private life, history, everything. Take plenty of space. Have
+it in by midnight."
+
+Wells's eyes were round, too; they were glued upon Paul with a
+hypnotic stare, but he managed to answer, "Yes, sir!" He was no longer
+grinning.
+
+"Now, Anderson," the editor snapped, "get down-stairs and see if you
+can write the story. Pile it on thick--it's a corker."
+
+"Very good, sir, but I'd like a little money," that elated youth
+demanded, boldly. "Just advance me fifty, will you? Remember I'm on
+top salary."
+
+Burns made a wry face. "I'll send a check down to you," he promised,
+"but get at that story and make it a good one or I'll fire you
+tonight."
+
+Anderson got. He found a desk and began to write feverishly. A
+half-hour later he read what he had written and tore it up. Another
+half-hour and he repeated the performance. Three times he wrote the
+tale and destroyed it, then paused, realizing blankly that as a
+newspaper story it was impossible. Every atom of interest surrounding
+the suicide of the girl grew out of his own efforts to solve the
+mystery. Nothing had happened, no new clues had been uncovered, no one
+had been implicated in the girl's death, there was no crime. It was
+a tale of Paul Anderson's deductions, nothing more, and it had no
+newspaper value. He found he had written about himself instead of
+about the girl.
+
+He began again, this time laboriously eliminating himself, and when he
+had finished his story it was perhaps the poorest journalistic effort
+ever written.
+
+Upon lagging feet he bore the copy to Burns's office. But the editor
+gave him no time for explanation, demanding, fiercely:
+
+"Where's that check I sent you?"
+
+"Here it is." The youth handed it to him. "Make a mistake?"
+
+"I certainly did." Burns tore up the check before saying, "Now you get
+out, you bum, and stay out, or take the consequences."
+
+"Get out? What for?"
+
+"You know what for." Burns was quivering with rage. "You ran a good
+bluff and you nearly put it over; but I don't want to advertise myself
+as a jackass, so I shan't have you pinched unless you come back."
+
+"Come back? I intend to stay. What's the matter?"
+
+"I had an idea you were fourflushing," stormed the editor, "so I went
+down to the G.T. depot myself. There's no trunk of the sort there;
+Corrigan never saw you or anybody like you. Say, why didn't you walk
+out when you got that check? What made you come back?"
+
+Anderson began to laugh softly. "Good old Corrigan! He's all right,
+isn't he? Well, he gets half of that check when you rewrite it, if I
+don't laugh myself to death before I get to the bank."
+
+"What d'you mean?" Burns was impressed by the other's confidence.
+
+"Nothing, except that I've found one square man in this village. One
+square guy is a pretty big percentage in a town the size of Buffalo.
+Corrigan wouldn't let you see the depot if I wasn't along. Put on your
+coat and come with me--yes, and bring a couple of hired men if it will
+make you feel any better."
+
+At the depot he called the baggage-master to him, and said:
+
+"Mr. Corrigan, this is Mr. Burns, the city editor of _The
+Intelligencer_."
+
+"That's what he told me," grinned the Irishman, utterly ignoring the
+young editor; "but you didn't give him no references, and I wouldn't
+take a chance."
+
+Burns maintained a dignified silence; he said little even when the
+contents of the trunk were displayed to him. Nor did he open his mouth
+on the way back to the office. But when he was seated at his desk and
+had read Anderson's copy he spoke.
+
+"This is the rottenest story ever turned in at this office," said he.
+
+"I know it is," Paul agreed, frankly, then explained his difficulty in
+writing it.
+
+"I'll do it myself," Burns told him. "Now, you go home and report
+to-morrow."
+
+A very tired but a very happy young man routed out the landlady of a
+cheap boarding-house that night and hugged her like a bear, explaining
+joyously that he had done a great big thing. He waltzed her down the
+hall and back, while she clutched wildly at her flapping flannel
+wrapper and besought him to think of her other boarders. He waltzed
+her out of her bedroom slippers, gave her a smacking big kiss on her
+wrinkled cheek, then left her, breathless and scandalized, but all
+aflutter.
+
+The city had read the story when Anderson awoke the next morning, for
+_The Intelligencer_ had made a clean "beat," and Burns had played up
+the story tremendously, hence it was with jumping pulses that Paul
+scanned the front page of that journal. The further he read, however,
+the greater grew his indignation.
+
+The history of Mabel Wilkes, under the magic touch of Burns, had,
+to be sure, become a wonderful, tragic story; but nowhere in it was
+mention made of Paul Anderson. In the patient and ingenious solution
+of the mystery of the girl's identity no credit was given to him. The
+cleverness and the perseverance of _The Buffalo Intelligencer_ was
+exploited, its able reportorial staff was praised, its editorial
+shrewdness extolled, but that was all. When he had concluded reading
+the article Anderson realized that it was no more than a boost for the
+city editor, who it was plain to be seen, had uncovered the story
+bit by bit, greatly to the confusion of the police and the detective
+bureau.
+
+It astounded as well as angered Paul to realize how cleverly Burns had
+covered him up, therefore the sense of injustice was strong in him
+when he entered the office. His enemy recognized his mood, and seemed
+to gloat over it.
+
+"That was good work you did," he purred, "and I'll keep you on as long
+as you show ability. Of course you can't write yet, so I'll let you
+cover real-estate transactions and the market. I'll send for you when
+you're needed."
+
+Anderson went back to his desk in silent rage. Real estate! Burns
+evidently intended to hold him down. His gloomy meditations were
+somewhat lightened by the congratulations of his fellow-reporters, who
+rather timidly ventured to introduce themselves. They understood the
+facts and they voiced a similar indignation to his. Burns had played
+him a rotten trick, they agreed. Not content with robbing his new
+reporter of the recognition which was justly his, the fellow was
+evidently determined to vent his spite in other ways. Well, that was
+like Burns. They voiced the opinion that Anderson would have a tough
+job getting through interference of the kind that their editor would
+throw in his way.
+
+Hour after hour Paul sat around the office nursing his disappointment,
+waiting for Burns to send him out. About two o'clock Wells hurried
+into the office, bringing with him the afternoon papers still wet from
+the press. In his eyes was an unwonted sparkle. He crossed directly to
+Anderson and thrust out his palm.
+
+"Old man, I want to shake with you," said he. "And I want to apologize
+for being a rotter."
+
+Paul met him half-way, and the fellow went on:
+
+"Burns gave us the wrong tip on you--said you were a joke--that's why
+we joshed you. But you showed us up, and I'm glad you did."
+
+"Why--thank you!" stammered the new reporter, upon whom this manly
+apology had a strong effect. "It--it was more luck than anything."
+
+"Luck nothing! You're a genius, and it's a dirty shame the way the
+boss tried to steal your credit. However, it seems he overreached
+himself." Wells began to laugh.
+
+"_Tried_ to steal it! Good Lord! he did steal it! How do you mean he
+overreached himself?"
+
+"Haven't you seen the afternoon papers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well! Read 'em!" Mr. Wells spread his papers out before Paul, whose
+astonished eyes took in for a second time the story of the Wilkes
+suicide. But what a story!
+
+He read his own name in big, black type; he read head-lines that told
+of a starving boy sent out on a hopeless assignment as a cruel joke;
+he read the story as it had really occurred, only told in the third
+person by an author who was neither ashamed nor afraid to give
+credit where it was due. The egotistical pretense of _The Buffalo
+Intelligencer_ was torn to shreds, and ridicule was heaped upon its
+editor. Paul read nervously, breathlessly, until Wells interrupted
+him.
+
+"I'm to blame for this," said he. "I couldn't stand for such a crooked
+deal. When I got in this morning and saw what that fat imbecile had
+done to you I tipped the true facts off to the others--all of the
+facts I knew. They got the rest from Corrigan, down at the Grand Trunk
+depot. Of course this means my job, if the old man finds it out; but I
+don't give a damn."
+
+As yet Anderson was too dazed to grasp what had happened to him, but
+the other continued:
+
+"The boys have had it in for Burns, on the quiet, for months, and now
+I guess they're even."
+
+"I--I don't know how to thank you," stammered Anderson.
+
+"Don't try. You're a born reporter, and the other papers will give you
+a job even if the baby hippo in yonder fires you."
+
+A boy touched Paul on the arm with the announcement, "Mr. Burns wants
+to see you."
+
+"Oho!" cried Wells. "He's got the bad news. Gee! I'd like to hear what
+he says. I'll bet he's biting splinters out of his desk. Let me know
+what comes off, will you?"
+
+When Anderson entered the office of his editor he was met by a
+white-faced man whose rage had him so by the throat that speech for a
+moment was impossible. Beneath Mr. Burns's feet, and strewn broadcast
+about the room, were the crumpled sheets of the afternoon papers.
+Burns glared at the newcomer for a moment, then he extended a shaking
+finger, crying, furiously:
+
+"You did this!"
+
+"Did what?"
+
+"You put up this job. You made a fool of me!"
+
+"No, sir! I did not. Your parents saw to that."
+
+"Don't tell me you didn't, you--you damned ungrateful--" Burns seemed
+about to assault his reporter, but restrained himself. "You're fired!
+Do you understand? Fired--discharged."
+
+"Say, Burns--"
+
+"Not a word. I'm done with you. I--"
+
+"Just a minute," young Anderson cried, in a tone that stilled the
+other. "I'm fired, am I, for something I didn't do? Very well!
+I'm glad of it, for now you can't stand in my way. You tried to
+double-cross me and failed. You robbed me of what was mine and got
+caught at it. You're a big man, in your way, Burns, but some day
+people will tell you that the biggest thing you ever did was to fire
+Paul Anderson. That's how small you'll be, and that's how big I'm
+going to grow. You've 'welched' on your own word; but there's one
+thing you gave me that you can't take away, and that's the knowledge
+that I'm a newspaper man and a good one. Now just one thing more: I'm
+broke today, but I'm going to lick you as soon as I save up enough for
+the fine."
+
+With studied insolence the speaker put on his hat, slammed the door
+behind him, and walked out of _The Intelligencer_ office, leaving the
+apoplectic editor thereof secure in the breathless knowledge that for
+once in his life he had heard the truth spoken. Mr. Burns wondered how
+long it would take that young bully to save up ten dollars and costs.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+"There is but one remedy for your complaint." Doctor Suydam settled
+deeper into his chair. "Marry the girl."
+
+"That is the only piece of your professional advice I ever cared to
+follow. But how?"
+
+"Any way you can--use force if necessary--only marry her. Otherwise I
+predict all sorts of complications for you--melancholia, brain-fag,
+bankruptcy--"
+
+Austin laughed. "Could you write me a prescription?"
+
+"Oh, she'll have you, Bob. You don't seem to realize that you are a
+good catch."
+
+Austin finished buckling his puttee before rising to his full height.
+"That doesn't mean anything to her. She doesn't need to make a catch."
+
+"Nonsense! She's just like all the others, only richer and nicer. Go
+at her as if she were the corn-market; she won't be half so hard to
+corner. You have made a name for yourself, and a blamed sight more
+money than you deserve; you are young--comparatively, I mean."
+
+The elder man stroked his shock of iron-gray hair for answer.
+
+"Well, at any rate you are a picturesque personage, even if you can't
+wear riding-clothes."
+
+"Doesn't a man look like the devil in these togs?" Austin posed
+awkwardly in front of a mirror.
+
+"There's only one person who can look worse in riding-clothes than a
+man--that's a woman."
+
+"What heresy, particularly in a society doctor! But I agree with you.
+I learned to ride on her account, you know. As a matter of fact, I
+hate it. The sight of a horse fills me with terror."
+
+Doctor Suydam laughed outright at this. "She tells me that you have a
+very good seat."
+
+"Really!" Austin's eyes gleamed suddenly. "You know I never had
+a chance to ride when I was a youngster--in fact, I never had an
+opportunity to do anything except work. That's what makes me so crude
+and awkward. What I know I have picked up during the last few years."
+
+"You make me tired!" declared the former. "You aren't--"
+
+"Oh, I don't skate on waxed floors nor spill tea, nor clutch at my
+chauffeur in a tight place, but you know what I mean. I feel lonesome
+in a dress-suit, a butler fills me with gloom, and--Well, I'm not one
+of you, that's all."
+
+"Perhaps that's what makes a hit with Marmion. She's used to the other
+kind."
+
+"It seems to me that I have always worked," ruminated the former
+speaker. "I don't remember that I ever had time to play, even after
+I came to the city. It's a mighty sad thing to rob a boy of his
+childhood; it makes him a dull, unattractive sort when he grows up.
+I used to read about people like Miss Moore, but I never expected to
+know them until I met you. Of course, that corn deal rather changed
+things."
+
+"Well, I should rather say it did!" Suydam agreed, with emphasis.
+
+"The result is that when I am with her I forget the few things I have
+done that are worth while, and I become the farm-hand again. I'm
+naturally rough and angular, and she sees it."
+
+"Oh, you're too sensitive! You have a heart like a girl underneath
+that saturnine front of yours, and while you look like the Sphinx,
+you are really as much of a kid at heart as I am. Where do you ride
+to-day?"
+
+"Riverside Drive."
+
+"What horse is she riding?"
+
+"Pointer."
+
+The doctor shook his head. "Too many automobiles on the Drive. He's a
+rotten nag for a woman, anyhow. His mouth is as tough as a stirrup,
+and he has the disposition of a tarantula. Why doesn't she stick to
+the Park?"
+
+"You know Marmion."
+
+"Say, wouldn't it be great if Pointer bolted and you saved her life?
+She couldn't refuse you then."
+
+Austin laughed. "That's not exactly the way I'd care to win her.
+However, if Pointer bolted I'd probably get rattled and fall off my
+own horse. I don't like the brutes. Come on, I'm late."
+
+"That's right," grumbled the other, "leave me here while you make
+love to the nicest girl in New York. I'm going down to the office and
+amputate somebody."
+
+They descended the single flight to the street, where Austin's groom
+was struggling with a huge black.
+
+"It's coming pretty soft for you brokers," the doctor growled, as his
+companion swung himself into the saddle. "The next time I get a friend
+I'll keep him to myself."
+
+Austin leaned forward with a look of grave anxiety upon his rugged
+features and said: "Wish me luck, Doc. I'm going to ask her to-day."
+
+"Good for you, old fellow." There was great fondness in the younger
+man's eyes as he wrung the rider's hand and waved him adieu, then
+watched him disappear around the corner.
+
+"She'll take him," he mused, half aloud. "She's a sensible girl even
+if all New York has done its best to spoil her." He hailed a taxicab
+and was hurried to his office.
+
+It was perhaps two hours later that he was called on the telephone.
+
+"Hello! Yes, yes! What is it?" he cried, irritably. "Mercy Hospital!
+_What_?" The young physician started. "Hurt, you say? Run-away? Go on,
+quick!" He listened with whitening face, then broke in abruptly: "Of
+course he sent for me. I'll be right up."
+
+He slammed the receiver upon its hook and, seizing his hat, bolted out
+through a waiting-room full of patients. His car was in readiness, and
+he called to his chauffeur in such tones that the fellow vaulted to
+his seat.
+
+"Go up Madison Avenue; there's less traffic there. And for God's sake
+_hurry_!"
+
+During two years' service with New York's most fashionable physician
+the driver had never received a command like this, and he opened up
+his machine. A policeman warned him at Thirty-third Street and the car
+slowed down, at which Suydam leaned forward, crying, roughly:
+
+"To hell with regulations! There's a man dying!"
+
+The last word was jerked from him as he was snapped back into his
+seat. Regardless of admonitory shouts from patrolmen, the French
+car sang its growing song, while truck-drivers bellowed curses
+and pedestrians fled from crossings at the scream of its siren. A
+cross-town car blocked them, and the brakes screeched in agony, while
+Doctor Suydam was well-nigh catapulted into the street; then they were
+under way again, with the car leaping from speed to speed. It was the
+first time the driver had ever dared to disregard those upraised,
+white-gloved hands, and it filled his joy-riding soul with exultation.
+A street repair loomed ahead, whereupon, with a sickening skid, they
+swung into a side street; the gears clashed again, and an instant
+later they shot out upon Fifth Avenue. At the next corner they lay
+motionless in a blockade, while the motor shuddered; then they dodged
+through an opening where the mud-guards missed by an inch and were
+whirling west toward Broadway. At 109th Street a bicycle officer
+stared in amazement at the dwindling number beneath the rear axle,
+then ducked his head and began to pedal. He overhauled the speeding
+machine as it throbbed before the doors of Mercy Hospital, to be
+greeted by a grinning chauffeur who waved him toward the building and
+told of a doctor's urgency.
+
+Inside, Doctor Suydam, pallid of face and shaking in a most
+unprofessional manner, was bending over a figure in riding-clothes,
+the figure of a tall, muscular man who lay silent, deaf to his words
+of greeting.
+
+They told him all there was to tell in the deadly, impersonal way
+of hospitals, while he nodded swift comprehension. There had been a
+runaway--a woman on a big, white-eyed bay, that had taken fright at an
+automobile; a swift rush up the Driveway, a lunge over the neck of
+the pursuing horse, then a man wrenched from his saddle and dragged
+beneath cruel, murderous hoofs. The bay had gone down, and the woman
+was senseless when the ambulance arrived, but she had revived and
+had been hurried to her home. In the man's hand they had found the
+fragment of a bridle rein gripped with such desperation that they
+could not remove it until he regained consciousness. He had asked
+regarding the girl's safety, then sighed himself into oblivion again.
+They told Suydam that he would die.
+
+With sick heart the listener cursed all high-spirited women and
+high-strung horses, declaring them to be works of the devil, like
+automobiles; then he went back to the side of his friend, where other
+hands less unsteady were at work.
+
+"Poor lonely old Bob!" he murmured. "Not a soul to care except Marmion
+and me, and God knows whether she cares or not."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Robert Austin did not die, although the attending surgeons said
+he would, said he should, in fact, unless all the teachings of their
+science were at fault. He even offended the traditions of the hospital
+by being removed to his own apartments in a week. There Suydam, who
+had watched him night and day, told him that Miss Moore had a broken
+shoulder and hence could not come to see him.
+
+"Poor girl!" said Austin, faintly. "If I'd known more about horses I
+might have saved her."
+
+"If you'd known more about horses you'd have let Pointer run,"
+declared his friend. "Nobody but an idiot or a Bob Austin would have
+taken the chance you did. How is your head?"
+
+The sick man closed his eyes wearily. "It hurts all the time. What's
+the matter with it?"
+
+"We've none of us been able to discover what isn't the matter with it!
+Why in thunder did you hold on so long?"
+
+"Because I--I love her, I suppose."
+
+"Did you ask her to marry you?" Suydam had been itching to ask the
+question for days.
+
+"No, I was just getting to it when Pointer bolted. I--I'm slow at such
+things." There was a moment's pause. "Doc, what's the matter with my
+eyes? I can't see very well."
+
+"Don't talk so much," ordered the physician. "You're lucky to be here
+at all. Thanks to that copper-riveted constitution of yours, you'll
+get well."
+
+But it seemed that the patient was fated to disappoint the predictions
+of his friend as well as those of the surgeons at Mercy Hospital. He
+did not recover in a manner satisfactory to his medical adviser, and
+although he regained the most of his bodily vigor, the injury to his
+eyes baffled even the most skilled specialists.
+
+He was very brave about it, however, and wrung the heart of Doctor
+Suydam by the uncomplaining fortitude with which he bore examination
+after examination. Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic
+atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and
+meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in
+the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an
+unschooled farm-boy to a position of eminence in the business world,
+went slowly blind. The shadows crept in upon him with a deadly,
+merciless certainty that would have filled the stoutest heart with
+gloom, and yet he maintained a smiling stoicism that deceived all but
+his closest associates. To Doctor Suydam, however, the incontestable
+progress of the malady was frightfully tragic. He alone knew the man's
+abundant spirits, his lofty ambitions, and his active habits. He alone
+knew of the overmastering love that had come so late and was
+destined to go unvoiced, and he raved at the maddening limits of his
+profession. In Austin's presence he strove to be cheerful and to
+lighten the burden he knew was crushing the sick man; but at other
+times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check
+the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of. In time,
+however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned
+himself to the worst. He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion
+Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness
+he could muster, of her part in this calamity. But Austin would not
+hear of it.
+
+"She doesn't dream of the truth," the invalid told him. "And I don't
+want her to learn. She thinks I'm merely weak, and it grieves her
+terribly to know that I haven't recovered. If she really knew--it
+might ruin her life, for she is a girl who feels deeply. I want to
+spare her that; it's the least I can do."
+
+"But she'll find it out some time."
+
+"I think not. She comes to see me every day--"
+
+"Every day?"
+
+"Yes. I'm expecting her soon."
+
+"And she doesn't know?"
+
+Austin shook his head. "I never let her see there's anything the
+matter with my sight. She drives up with her mother, and I wait for
+her there in the bay-window. It's getting hard for me to distinguish
+her now, but I recognize the hoofbeats--I can tell them every time."
+
+"But--I don't understand."
+
+"I pretend to be very weak," explained the elder man, with a guilty
+flush. "I sit in the big chair yonder and my Jap boy waits on her. She
+is very kind." Austin's voice grew husky. "I'm sorry to lose sight of
+the Park out yonder, and the trees and the children--they're growing
+indistinct. I--I like children. I've always wanted some for myself.
+I've dreamed about--that." His thin, haggard face broke into a wistful
+smile. "I guess that is all over with now."
+
+"Why?" questioned Suydam, savagely. "Why don't you ask her to marry
+you, Bob? She couldn't refuse--and God knows you need her."
+
+"That's just it; she couldn't refuse. This is the sort of thing a
+fellow must bear alone. She's too young, and beautiful, and fine to be
+harnessed up to a worn-out old--cripple."
+
+"Cripple!" The other choked. "Don't talk like that. Don't be so blamed
+resigned. It tears my heart out. I--I--why, I believe I feel this more
+than you do."
+
+Austin turned his face to the speaker with a look of such tragic
+suffering that the younger man fell silent.
+
+"I'm glad I can hide my feelings," Austin told him, slowly, "for that
+is what I have to do every instant she is with me. I don't wish to
+inflict unnecessary pain upon my friends, but don't you suppose I know
+what this means? It means the destruction of all my fine hopes, the
+death of all I hold dear in the world. I love my work, for I am--or I
+was--a success; this means I must give it up. I'm strong in body and
+brain; this robs me of my usefulness. All my life I have prayed that
+I might some time love a woman; that time has come, but this means
+I must give her up and be lonely all my days. I must grope my way
+through the dark with never a ray of light to guide me. Do you know
+how awful the darkness is?" He clasped his hands tightly. "I must go
+hungering through the night, with a voiceless love to torture me. Just
+at the crowning point of my life I've been snuffed out. I must fall
+behind and see my friends desert me."
+
+"Bob!" cried the other, in shocked denial.
+
+"Oh, you know it will come to that. People don't like to feel pity
+forever tugging at them. I've been a lonely fellow and my friends are
+numbered. For a time they will come to see me, and try to cheer me up;
+they will even try to include me in their pleasures; then when it is
+no longer a new story and their commiseration has worn itself out they
+will gradually fall away. It always happens so. I'll be 'poor Bob
+Austin,' and I'll go feeling my way through life an object of pity, a
+stumbling, incomplete thing that has no place to fill, no object to
+work for, no one to care. God! I'm not the sort to go blind! Where's
+the justice of it? I've lived clean. Why did this happen to me? Why?
+Why? I know what the world is; I've been a part of it. I've seen the
+spring and the autumn colors and I've watched the sunsets. I've looked
+into men's faces and read their souls, and when you've done that you
+can't live in darkness. I can't and--I won't!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I'm going away."
+
+"When? Where?"
+
+"When I can no longer see Marmion Moore and before my affliction
+becomes known to her. Where--you can guess."
+
+"Oh, that's cowardly, Bob! You're not that sort. You mustn't! It's
+unbelievable," his friend cried, in a panic.
+
+Austin smiled bitterly. "We have discussed that too often, and--I'm
+not sure that what I intend doing is cowardly. I can't go now, for the
+thing is too fresh in her memory, she might learn the truth and hold
+herself to blame; but when she has lost the first shock of it I shall
+walk out quietly and she won't even suspect. Other interests will come
+into her life; I'll be only a memory. Then--" After a pause he went
+on, "I couldn't bear to see her drop away with the rest."
+
+"Don't give up yet," urged the physician. "She is leaving for the
+summer, and while she is gone we'll try that Berlin chap. He'll be
+here in August."
+
+"And he will fail, as the others did. He will lecture some clinic
+about me, that's all. Marmion will hear that my eyes have given out
+from overwork, or something like that. Then I'll go abroad, and--I
+won't come back." Austin, divining the rebellion in his friend's
+heart, said, quickly: "You're the only one who could enlighten her,
+Doc, but you won't do it. You owe me too much."
+
+"I--I suppose I do," acknowledged Suydam, slowly. "I owe you more than
+I can ever repay--"
+
+"Wait--" The sick man raised his hand, while a sudden light blazed up
+in his face. "She's coming!"
+
+To the doctor's trained ear the noises of the street rose in a
+confused murmur, but Austin spoke in an awed, breathless tone, almost
+as if he were clairvoyant.
+
+"I can hear the horses. She's coming to--see me."
+
+"I'll go," exclaimed the visitor, quickly, but the other shook his
+head.
+
+"I'd rather have you stay."
+
+Austin was poised in an attitude of the intensest alertness, his
+angular, awkward body was drawn to its full height, his lean face was
+lighted by some hidden fire that lent it almost beauty.
+
+"She's getting out of the carriage," he cried, in a nervous voice;
+then he felt his way to his accustomed arm-chair. Suydam was about to
+go to the bay-window when he paused, regarding his friend curiously.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+The blind man had begun to beat time with his hand, counting under his
+breath: "One! Two! Three!--"
+
+"She'll knock when I reach twenty-five. 'Sh! 'sh!" He continued his
+pantomime, and Suydam realized that from repeated practice Austin had
+gauged to a nicety the seconds Marmion Moore required to mount the
+stairs. This was his means of holding himself in check. True to
+prediction, at "Twenty-five" a gentle knock sounded, and Suydam opened
+the door.
+
+"Come in, Marmion."
+
+The girl paused for the briefest instant on the threshold, and the
+doctor noted her fleeting disappointment at seeing him; then she took
+his hand.
+
+"This _is_ a surprise," she exclaimed. "I haven't seen you for ever so
+long."
+
+Her anxious glance swept past him to the big, awkward figure against
+the window's light. Austin was rising with apparent difficulty, and
+she glided to him.
+
+"Please! Don't rise! How many times have I told you not to exert
+yourself?"
+
+Suydam noted the gentle, proprietary tone of her voice, and it amazed
+him.
+
+"I--am very glad that you came to see me." The afflicted man's voice
+was jerky and unmusical. "How are you to-day, Miss?"
+
+"He shouldn't rise, should he?" Miss Moore appealed to the physician.
+"He is very weak and shouldn't exert himself."
+
+The doctor wished that his friend might see the girl's face as he saw
+it; he suddenly began to doubt his own judgment of women.
+
+"Oh, I'm doing finely," Austin announced. "Won't you be seated?" He
+waved a comprehensive gesture, and Suydam, marveling at the manner
+in which the fellow concealed his infirmity, brought a chair for the
+caller.
+
+"I came alone to-day. Mother is shopping," Miss Moore was saying.
+"See! I brought these flowers to cheer up your room." She held up a
+great bunch of sweet peas. "I love the pink ones, don't you?"
+
+Austin addressed the doctor. "Miss Moore has been very kind to me; I'm
+afraid she feels it her duty--"
+
+"No! No!" cried the girl.
+
+"She rarely misses a day, and she always brings flowers. I'm very fond
+of bright colors."
+
+Suydam cursed at the stiff formality in the man's tone. How could any
+woman see past that glacial front and glimpse the big, aching
+heart beyond? Austin was harsh and repellent when the least bit
+self-conscious, and now he was striving deliberately to heighten the
+effect.
+
+The physician wondered why Marmion Moore had gone even thus far in
+showing her gratitude, for she was not the self-sacrificing kind. As
+for a love match between two such opposite types, Suydam could not
+conceive of it. Even if the girl understood the sweet, simple nature
+of this man, even if she felt her own affections answer to his, Suydam
+believed he knew the women of her set too well to imagine that she
+could bring herself to marry a blind man, particularly one of no
+address.
+
+"We leave for the mountains to-morrow," Marmion said, "so I came to
+say good-by, for a time."
+
+"I--shall miss your visits," Austin could not disguise his genuine
+regret, "but when you return I shall be thoroughly recovered. Perhaps
+we can ride again."
+
+"Never!" declared Miss Moore. "I shall never ride again. Think of the
+suffering I've caused you. I--I--am dreadfully sorry."
+
+To Suydam's amazement, he saw the speaker's eyes fill with tears. A
+doubt concerning the correctness of his surmises came over him and he
+rose quickly. After all, he reflected, she might see and love the real
+Bob as he did, and if so she might wish to be alone with him in this
+last hour. But Austin laughed at his friend's muttered excuse.
+
+"You know there's nobody waiting for you. That's only a pretense to
+find livelier company. You promised to dine with me." To Miss Moore he
+explained: "He isn't really busy; why, he has been complaining for an
+hour that the heat has driven all his patients to the country, and
+that he is dying of idleness."
+
+The girl's expression altered curiously. She shrank as if wounded; she
+scanned the speaker's face with startled eyes before turning with a
+strained smile to say:
+
+"So, Doctor, we caught you that time. That comes from being a
+high-priced society physician. Why don't you practise among the
+masses? I believe the poor are always in need of help."
+
+"I really have an engagement," Suydam muttered.
+
+"Then break it for Mr. Austin's sake. He is lonely and--I must be
+going in a moment."
+
+The three talked for a time in the manner all people adopt for a
+sick-room, then the girl rose and said, with her palm in Austin's
+hand:
+
+"I owe you so much that I can never hope to repay you, but you--you
+will come to see me frequently this season. Promise! You won't hide
+yourself, will you?"
+
+The blind man smiled his thanks and spoke his farewell with
+meaningless politeness; then, as the physician prepared to see her to
+her carriage, Miss Moore said:
+
+"No! Please stay and gossip with our invalid. It's only a step."
+
+She walked quickly to the door, flashed them a smile, and was gone.
+
+Suydam heard his patient counting as before.
+
+"One! Two! Three--!"
+
+At "Twenty-five" the elder man groped his way to the open bay-window
+and bowed at the carriage below. There came the sound of hoofs and
+rolling wheels, and the doctor, who had taken stand beside his friend,
+saw Marmion Moore turn in her seat and wave a last adieu. Austin
+continued to nod and smile in her direction, even after the carriage
+was lost to view; then he felt his way back to the arm-chair and sank
+limply into it.
+
+"Gone! I--I'll never be able to see her again."
+
+Suydam's throat tightened miserably. "Could you see her at all?"
+
+"Only her outlines; but when she comes back in the fall I'll be as
+blind as a bat." He raised an unsteady hand to his head and closed his
+eyes. "I can stand anything except that! To lose sight of her dear
+face--" The force of his emotion wrenched a groan from him.
+
+"I don't know what to make of her," said the other. "Why didn't you
+let me go, Bob? It was her last good-by; she wanted to be alone with
+you. She might have--"
+
+"That's it!" exclaimed Austin. "I was afraid of myself; afraid I'd
+speak if I had the chance." His voice was husky as he went on. "It's
+hard--hard, for sometimes I think she loves me, she's so sweet and so
+tender. At such times I'm a god. But I know it can't be; that it is
+only pity and gratitude that prompts her. Heaven knows I'm uncouth
+enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness. I play
+a part--the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is
+breaking." He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish
+eyes once more. "It's cruelly hard. I can't keep it up."
+
+The other man laid a hand on his shoulder, saying: "I don't know
+whether you're doing right or not. I half suspect you are doing
+Marmion a bitter wrong."
+
+"Oh, but she can't--she _can't_ love me!" Austin rose as if
+frightened. "She might yield to her impulse and--well, marry me, for
+she has a heart of gold, but it wouldn't last. She would learn some
+time that it wasn't real love that prompted the sacrifice. Then I
+should die."
+
+The specialist from Berlin came, but he refused to operate, declaring
+bluntly that there was no use, and all during the long, hot summer
+days Robert Austin sat beside his open window watching the light
+die out of the world, waiting, waiting, for the time to make his
+sacrifice.
+
+Suydam read Marmion's cheery letters aloud, wondering the while at the
+wistful note they sounded now and then. He answered them in his own
+handwriting, which she had never seen.
+
+One day came the announcement that she was returning the first week in
+October. Already September was partly gone, so Austin decided to sail
+in a week. At his dictation Suydam wrote to her, saying that the
+strain of overwork had rendered a long vacation necessary. The doctor
+writhed internally as he penned the careful sentences, wondering if
+the hurt of the deliberately chosen words would prevent her sensing
+the truth back of them. As days passed and no answer came he judged it
+had.
+
+The apartment was stripped and bare, the trunks were packed on the
+afternoon before Austin's departure. All through the dreary mockery of
+the process the blind man had withstood his friend's appeal, his stern
+face set, his heavy heart full of a despairing stubbornness. Now,
+being alone at last, he groped his way about the premises to fix them
+in his memory; then he sank into his chair beside the window.
+
+He heard a knock at the door and summoned the stranger to enter, then
+he rose with a gasp of dismay. Marmion Moore was greeting him with
+sweet, yet hesitating effusiveness.
+
+"I--I thought you were not coming back until next week," he stammered.
+
+"We changed our plans." She searched his face as best she could in the
+shaded light, a strange, anxious expression upon her own. "Your letter
+surprised me."
+
+"The doctor's orders," he said, carelessly. "They say I have broken
+down."
+
+"I know! I know what caused it!" she panted. "You never recovered from
+that accident. You did not tell me the truth. I've always felt that
+you were hiding something from me. Why? Oh, why?"
+
+"Nonsense!" He undertook to laugh, but failed in a ghastly manner.
+"I've been working too hard. Now I'm paying the penalty."
+
+"How long will you be gone?" she queried.
+
+"Oh, I haven't decided. A long time, however." His tone bewildered
+her. "It is the first vacation I ever had; I want to make the most of
+it."
+
+"You--you were going away without saying good-by to--your old
+friends?" Her lips were white, and her brave attempt to smile would
+have told him the truth had he seen it, but he only had her tone to go
+by, so he answered, indifferently:
+
+"All my arrangements were made; I couldn't wait."
+
+"You are offended with me," Miss Moore said, after a pause. "How have
+I hurt you? What is it; please? I--I have been too forward, perhaps?"
+
+Austin dared not trust himself to answer, and when he made no sign the
+girl went on, painfully:
+
+"I'm sorry. I didn't want to seem bold. I owe you so much; we were
+such good friends--" In spite of her efforts her voice showed her
+suffering.
+
+The man felt his lonely heart swell with the wild impulse to tell her
+all, to voice his love in one breathless torrent of words that would
+undeceive her. The strain of repression lent him added brusqueness
+when he strove to explain, and his coldness left her sorely hurt.
+His indifference filled her with a sense of betrayal; it chilled the
+impulsive yearning in her breast. She had battled long with herself
+before coming and now she repented of her rashness, for it was plain
+he did not need her. This certainty left her sick and listless,
+therefore she bade him adieu a few moments later, and with aching
+throat went blindly out and down the stairs.
+
+The instant she was gone Austin leaped to his feet; the agony of death
+was upon his features. Breathlessly he began to count:
+
+"One! Two! Three--!"
+
+He felt himself smothering, and with one sweep of his hand ripped the
+collar from his throat.
+
+"Five! Six! Seven--!"
+
+He was battling like a drowning man, for, in truth, the very breath of
+his life was leaving him. A drumming came into his ears. He felt that
+he must call out to her before it was too late. He was counting aloud
+now, his voice like the moan of a man on the rack.
+
+"Nine! Ten--!"
+
+A frenzy to voice his sufferings swept over him, but he held himself.
+Only a moment more and she would be gone; her life would be spared
+this dark shadow, and she would never know, but he--he would indeed be
+face to face with darkness.
+
+Toward the last he was reeling, but he continued to tell off the
+seconds with the monotonous regularity of a timepiece, his every power
+centered on that process. The idea came to him that he was counting
+his own flickering pulse-throbs for the last time. With a tremendous
+effort of will he smoothed his face and felt his way to the open
+window, for by now she must be entering the landau. A moment later
+and she would turn to waft him her last adieu. Her last! God! How the
+seconds lagged! That infernal thumping in his ears had drowned the
+noises from the street below. He felt that for all time the torture of
+this moment would live with him.
+
+Then he smiled! He smiled blindly out into the glaring sunlight, and
+bowed. And bowed and smiled again, clinging to the window-casing to
+support himself. By now she must have reached the corner. He freed one
+hand and waved it gaily, then with outflung arms he stumbled back into
+the room, the hot tears coursing down his cheeks.
+
+Marmion Moore halted upon the stairs and felt mechanically for her
+gold chatelaine. She recalled dropping it upon the center-table as she
+went forward with hands outstretched to Austin; so she turned back,
+then hesitated. But he was leaving to-morrow; surely he would
+not misinterpret the meaning of her reappearance. Summoning her
+self-control, she remounted the stairs quickly.
+
+The door was half ajar as she had left it in her confusion. Mustering
+a careless smile, she was about to knock, then paused. Austin was
+facing her in the middle of the room, beating time. He was counting
+aloud--but was that his voice? In the brief instant she had been gone
+he had changed astoundingly. Moreover, notwithstanding the fact that
+she stood plainly revealed, he made no sign of recognition, but merely
+counted on and on, with the voice of a dying man. She divined that
+something was sadly amiss; she wondered for an instant if the man had
+lost his senses.
+
+She stood transfixed, half-minded to flee, yet held by some pitying
+desire to help; then she saw him reach forward and grope his way
+uncertainly to the window. In his progress he stumbled against a
+chair; he had to feel for the casing. Then she knew.
+
+Marmion Moore found herself inside the room, staring with wide,
+affrighted eyes at the man whose life she had spoiled. She pressed her
+hands to her bosom to still its heavings. She saw Austin nodding down
+at the street below; she saw his ghastly attempt to smile; she heard
+the breath sighing from his lungs and heard him muttering her name.
+Then he turned and lurched past her, groping, groping for his chair.
+She cried out, sharply, in a stricken voice:
+
+"Mr. Austin!"
+
+The man froze in his tracks; he swung his head slowly from side to
+side, as if listening.
+
+"What!" The word came like the crack of a gun. Then, after a moment,
+"Marmion!" He spoke her name as if to test his own hearing. It was the
+first time she had ever heard him use it.
+
+She slipped forward until within an arm's-length of him, then
+stretched forth a wildly shaking hand and passed it before his
+unwinking eyes, as if she still disbelieved. Then he heard her moan.
+
+"Marmion!" he cried again. "My God! little girl, I--thought I heard
+you go!"
+
+"Then this, _this_ is the reason," she said. "Oh-h-h!"
+
+"What are you doing here? Why did you come back?" he demanded,
+brutally.
+
+"I forgot my--No! God sent me back!"
+
+There was a pause, during which the man strove to master himself; then
+he asked, in the same harsh accents:
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"Long enough to see--and to understand."
+
+"Well, you know the truth at last. I--have gone--blind." The last word
+caused his lips to twitch. He knew from the sound that she was weeping
+bitterly. "Please don't. I've used my eyes too much, that is all. It
+is--nothing."
+
+"No! No! No!" she said, brokenly. "Don't you think I understand? Don't
+you think I see it all now? But why--why didn't you tell me? Why?"
+When he did not answer she repeated: "God sent me back. I--I was not
+meant to be so unhappy."
+
+Austin felt himself shaken as if by a panic. He cried, hurriedly:
+"You see, we've been such good friends. I knew it would distress you.
+I--wanted to spare you that! You were a good comrade to me; we were
+like chums. Yes, we were chums. No friend could have been dearer to me
+than you, Miss Moore. I never had a sister, you know. I--I thought of
+you that way, and I--" He was struggling desperately to save the girl,
+but his incoherent words died on his lips when he felt her come close
+and lay her cheek against his arm.
+
+"You mustn't try to deceive me any more," she said, gently. "I was
+here. I know the truth, and--I want to be happy."
+
+Even then he stood dazed and disbelieving until she continued:
+
+"I know that you love me, and that I love you."
+
+"It is pity!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. "You don't mean it."
+
+But she drew herself closer to him and turned her tear-stained face up
+to his, saying, wistfully, "If your dear eyes could have seen, they
+would have told you long ago."
+
+"Oh, my love!" He was too weak to resist longer. His arms were
+trembling as they enfolded her, but in his heart was a gladness that
+comes to but few men.
+
+"And you won't go away without me, will you?" she questioned,
+fearfully.
+
+"No, no!" he breathed. "Oh, Marmion, I have lost a little, but I have
+gained much! God has been good to me."
+
+
+
+
+THE REAL AND THE MAKE-BELIEVE
+
+
+On his way down-town Phillips stopped at a Subway news-stand and
+bought all the morning papers. He acknowledged that he was vastly
+excited. As he turned in at the stage door he thrilled at sight of
+the big electric sign over the theater, pallid now in the morning
+sunshine, but symbolizing in frosted letters the thing for which he
+had toiled and fought, had hoped and despaired these many years. There
+it hung, a dream come true, and it read, "A Woman's Thrall, By Henry
+Phillips."
+
+The stage-door man greeted him with a toothless smile and handed him a
+bundle of telegrams, mumbling: "I knew it would go over, Mr. Phillips.
+The notices are swell, ain't they?"
+
+"They seem to be."
+
+"I ain't seen their equal since 'The Music Master' opened. We'll run a
+year."
+
+This differed from the feverish, half-hysterical praise of the
+evening before. Phillips had made allowances then for the spell of a
+first-night enthusiasm and had prepared himself for a rude awakening
+this morning--he had seen too many plays fail, to put much faith
+in the fulsomeness of first-nighters--but the words of the doorman
+carried conviction. He had felt confident up to the last moment, to be
+sure, for he knew he had put his life's best work into this drama, and
+he believed he had written with a master's cunning; nevertheless, when
+his message had gone forth a sudden panic had seized him. He had begun
+to fear that his judgment was distorted by his nearness to the play,
+or that his absorption in it had blinded him to its defects. It was
+evident now, however, that these fears had been ill-founded, for no
+play could receive such laudatory reviews as these and fail to set
+New-Yorkers aflame.
+
+Certain printed sentences kept dancing through his memory: "Unknown
+dramatist of tremendous power," "A love story so pitiless, so true,
+that it electrifies," "The deep cry of a suffering heart," "Norma
+Berwynd enters the galaxy of stars."
+
+That last sentence was the most significant, the most wonderful of
+all. Norma Berwynd a star! Phillips could scarcely credit it; he
+wondered if she had the faintest notion of how or why her triumph had
+been effected.
+
+The property man met him, and he too was smiling.
+
+"I just came from the office," he began. "Say! they're raving. It's
+the biggest hit in ten years."
+
+"Oh, come now! It's too early for the afternoon papers--"
+
+"The papers be blowed! It's the public that makes a play; the whole
+town knows about this one already. It's in and over, I tell you;
+we'll sell out tonight. Believe me, this is a knock-out--a regular
+bull's-eye. It won't take no government bonds to bridge us over the
+next two weeks."
+
+"Did you get the new props?"
+
+"Sure! The electrician is working on the drop light for the first act;
+we'll have a better glass crash tonight, and I've got a brand-new
+dagger. That other knife was all right, but Mr. Francis forgot how to
+handle it."
+
+"Nevertheless, it's dangerous. We came near having a real tragedy last
+evening. Don't let's take any more chances."
+
+"It wasn't my fault, on the level," the property man insisted.
+"Francis always 'goes up' at an opening."
+
+"Thank Heaven the papers didn't notice it."
+
+"Huh! We could _afford_ to kill an actor for notices like them. It
+would make great advertising and please the critics. Say! I knew this
+show was a hit."
+
+Under the dim-lit vault of the stage Phillips found the third-act
+scenery set for the rehearsal he had called, then, having given his
+instructions to the wardrobe woman, he drew a chair up before a bunch
+light and prepared to read for a second time the morning reviews.
+
+He had attempted to read them at breakfast, but his wife--The
+playwright sighed heavily at the memory of that scene. Leontine had
+been very unjust, as usual. Her temper had run away with her again and
+had forced him to leave the house with his splendid triumph spoiled,
+his first taste of victory like ashes in his mouth. He was, in a way,
+accustomed to these endless, senseless rows, but their increasing
+frequency was becoming more and more trying, and he was beginning to
+doubt his ability to stand them much longer. It seemed particularly
+nasty of Leontine to seize upon this occasion to vent her open dislike
+of him--their relations were already sufficiently strained. Marriage,
+all at once, assumed a very lopsided aspect to the playwright; he had
+given so much and received so little.
+
+With an effort he dismissed the subject from his mind and set himself
+to the more pleasant task of looking at his play through the eyes of
+the reviewers.
+
+They had been very fair, he decided at last. Their only criticism
+was one which he had known to be inevitable, therefore he felt no
+resentment.
+
+"Norma Berwynd was superb," he read; "she combined with rare beauty
+a personality at once bewitching and natural. She gave life to her
+lines; she was deep, intense, true; she rose to her emotional heights
+in a burst of power which electrified the audience. We cannot but
+wonder why such an artist has remained so long undiscovered."
+
+The dramatist smiled; surely that was sufficient praise to compensate
+him for the miserable experience he had just undergone. He read
+further:
+
+"Alas, that the same kind things cannot be said of Irving Francis,
+whose name is blazoned forth in letters of fire above the theater. He
+has established himself as one of America's brightest stars; but the
+role of John Danton does not enhance his reputation. In his lighter
+scenes he was delightful, but his emotional moments did not ring true.
+In the white-hot climax of the third act, for instance, which is the
+big scene of the play, he was stiff, unnatural, unconvincing. Either
+he saw Miss Berwynd taking the honors of stardom away from him and
+generously submerged his own talent in order to enhance her triumph,
+or it is but another proof of the statement that husband and wife do
+not make convincing lovers in the realm of the make-believe. It was
+surely due to no lack of opportunity on his part--"
+
+So the writer thought Irving Francis had voluntarily allowed his wife
+to rival him. Phillips smiled at this. Some actors might be capable
+of such generosity, but hardly Irving Francis. He recalled the man's
+insistent demands during rehearsals that the 'script be changed to
+build up his own part and undermine that of his wife; the many heated
+arguments which had even threatened to prevent the final performance
+of the piece. Irving's egotism had blinded him to the true result
+of these quarrels, for although he had been given more lines, more
+scenes, Phillips had seen to it that Norma was the one to really
+profit by the changes. Author and star had been upon the verge
+of rupture more than once during that heartbreaking period of
+preparation, but Phillips was supremely glad now that he had held
+himself in control. Leontine's constant nagging had borne fruit, after
+all, in that it had at least taught him to bite down on his words, and
+to smile at provocation.
+
+Yes! Norma Berwynd was a star in spite of herself, in spite of her
+husband. She was no longer merely the wife of Irving Francis, the
+popular idol. Phillips was glad that she did not know how long it had
+taken him to effect her independence, nor the price he had paid for
+it, since, under the circumstances, the truth could help neither of
+them.
+
+He was aroused from his abstraction by the rustle of a woman's
+garments, and leaped to his feet with a glad light in his eyes, only
+to find Leontine, his wife, confronting him.
+
+"Oh!" he said; then with an effort, "What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I didn't know you were coming down-town."
+
+"Whom were you expecting?" Leontine mocked, with that slight accent
+which betrayed her Gallic origin.
+
+"No one."
+
+She regarded him with fixed hostility. "I came down to see your
+rehearsal. You don't object, I hope?"
+
+"Why should I object?" Phillips turned away with a shrug. "I'm
+surprised, that's all--after what you said this morning. Isn't your
+interest in the play a trifle--tardy?"
+
+"No! I've been greatly interested in it all the time. I read it
+several times in manuscript."
+
+"Indeed! I didn't know that. It won't be much of a rehearsal this
+morning; I'm merely going to run over the third act with Mr. and Mrs.
+Francis."
+
+"You can rehearse her forty years and she'll never play the part."
+
+"The critics don't agree with you; they rave over her. If Francis
+himself--"
+
+Mrs. Phillips uttered an exclamation of anger. "Oh, of course, _she_
+is perfect! You wouldn't give me the part, would you? No. You gave it
+to her. But it's mine by rights; I have the personality."
+
+"I wrote it for her," said the husband, after a pause. "I can't see
+you in it."
+
+"Naturally," she sneered. "Well, _I_ can, and it's not too late to
+make the change. I'll replace her. My name will help the piece."
+
+"Leontine!" he exclaimed, in amazement. "What are you talking about?
+The play is a tremendous success as it is, and Miss Berwynd is a big
+hit. I'd be crazy to make a change."
+
+"You won't give me the part?"
+
+"Certainly not. You shouldn't ask it."
+
+"Doesn't Leontine Murat mean more to the public than Norma Berwynd?"
+she demanded.
+
+"Until last night, yes. To-day--well, no. She has created this role.
+Besides--you--couldn't play the part."
+
+"And why not, if you please?"
+
+"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Leontine."
+
+"Go on!" she commanded, in a voice roughened by passion.
+
+"In the first place you're not--young enough." The woman quivered. "In
+the second place, you've grown heavy. Then, too, your accent--"
+
+She broke out at him furiously. "So! I'm old and fat and foreign. I've
+lost my beauty. You think so, eh? Well, other men don't. I'll show you
+what men think of me--"
+
+"This is no time for threats," he interrupted, coldly.
+
+"Bah! I don't threaten." Seizing him by the arm, she swung him about,
+for she was a large woman and still in the fullest vigor of her
+womanhood. "Listen! You can't fool me. I know why you wrote this play.
+I know why you took that girl and made a star of her. I've known the
+truth all along."
+
+"You have no cause to--"
+
+"Don't lie!" she stormed at him. "I can read you like a book. But I
+won't stand for it." She flung his arm violently from her and turned
+away.
+
+"I think you'd better go home," he told her. "You'll have the stage
+hands talking in a minute."
+
+She laughed disagreeably, ignoring his words. "I watched you write
+this play! I have eyes, even if Irving Francis is blind. It's time he
+knew what is going on."
+
+"There is nothing going on," Phillips cried, heatedly; but his wife
+merely shrugged her splendid shoulders and, opening her gold vanity
+case, gave her face a deft going over with a tiny powder puff. After
+a time the man continued: "I could understand your attitude if
+you--cared for me, but some years ago you took pains to undeceive me
+on that point."
+
+Leontine's lip curled, and she made no answer.
+
+"This play is a fine piece of property; it will bring us a great deal
+of money; it is the thing for which I have worked years."
+
+"I am going to tell Francis the truth about you and his wife!" she
+said.
+
+"But there's nothing to tell," the man insisted, with an effort to
+restrain himself. "Besides, you must know the result if you start a
+thing like that. He'll walk out and take his wife with him. That would
+ruin--"
+
+"Give me her part."
+
+"I won't be coerced," he flared up, angrily. "You are willing to
+ruin me, out of pique, I suppose, but I won't permit it. This is the
+biggest thing I ever did, or ever will do, perhaps; it means honor and
+recognition, and--you're selfish enough to spoil it all. I've never
+spoken to Norma Berwynd in any way to which her husband or you could
+object. Therefore I resent your attitude."
+
+"My attitude! I'm your wife."
+
+He took a turn across the stage, followed by her eyes. Pausing before
+her at length, he said, quietly: "I've asked you to go home and now
+I insist upon it. If you are here when I return I shall dismiss the
+rehearsal. I refuse to allow our domestic relations to interfere with
+my business." He strode out to the front of the house and then paced
+the dark foyer, striving to master his emotions. A moment later he
+saw his wife leave the stage and assumed that she had obeyed his
+admonitions and gone home.
+
+The property-man appeared with an armful of draperies and mechanical
+appliances, interrupting his whistling long enough to call out.
+
+"Here's the new hangings, Mr. Phillips, and the Oriental rugs. I've
+got the dagger, too." He held a gleaming object on high. "Believe me,
+it's some Davy Crockett. There's a newspaper guy out back and he wants
+your ideas on the American drama. I told him they were great. Will you
+see him?"
+
+"Not now. Tell him to come back later."
+
+"Say! That John Danton is some character. Why don't you let him have
+the gal?"
+
+"Because--well, because it doesn't happen in real life, and I've tried
+to make this play real, more than anything else."
+
+When Norma Berwynd and her husband arrived Phillips had completely
+regained his composure, and he greeted them cordially. The woman
+seemed awed, half-frightened, by her sudden rise to fame. She seemed
+to be walking in a dream, and a great wonder dwelt in her eyes. As for
+Francis, he returned the author's greeting curtly, making it plain
+that he was in no agreeable temper.
+
+"I congratulate you, Phillips," he said. "You and Norma have become
+famous overnight."
+
+The open resentment in his tone angered the playwright and caused him
+to wonder if their long-deferred clash was destined to occur this
+morning. He knew himself to be overwrought, and he imagined Francis to
+be in no better frame of mind; nevertheless, he answered, pacifically:
+
+"If that is so we owe it to your art."
+
+"Not at all. I see now what I failed to detect in reading and
+rehearsing the piece, and what you neglected to tell me, namely, that
+this is a woman's play. There's nothing in it for me. There's nothing
+in my part."
+
+"Oh, come now! The part is tremendous; you merely haven't got the most
+out of it as yet."
+
+Francis drew himself up and eyed the speaker coldly. "You're quoting
+the newspapers. Pray be more original. You know, of course, how I
+stand with these penny-a-liners; they never have liked me, but as for
+the part--" He shrugged. "I can't get any more out of it than there is
+in it."
+
+"Doubtless that was my fault at rehearsals. I've called this one so we
+can fix up the weak spot in the third act."
+
+"Well! We're on time. Where are the others?" Francis cast an inquiring
+glance about.
+
+"I'll only rehearse you and Mrs. Francis."
+
+"Indeed!" The former speaker opened his mouth for a cutting rejoinder,
+but changed his mind and stalked away into the shadowy depths of the
+wings.
+
+"Please make allowances for him," Norma begged, approaching Phillips
+in order that her words might not be overheard. "I've never seen him
+so broken up over anything. He is always unstrung after an opening,
+but he is--terrible, this morning."
+
+There was trouble, timidity, and another indefinable expression in the
+woman's eyes as they followed the vanishing figure of her husband;
+faint lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, lines which had
+no place in the face of a happily married woman. She was trembling,
+moreover, as if she had but recently played some big, emotional role,
+and Phillips felt the old aching pity for her tugging at his heart. He
+wondered if those stories about Francis could be true.
+
+"It has been a great strain on all of us," he told her. "But you? How
+do you feel after all this?" He indicated the pile of morning papers,
+and at sight of them her eyes suddenly filled with that same wonder
+and gladness he had noticed when she first arrived.
+
+"Oh-h! I--I'm breathless. Something clutches me--here." She laid
+her hand upon her bosom. "It's so new I can't express it yet,
+except--well, all of my dreams came true in a night. Some fairy waved
+her wand and, lo! poor ugly little me--" She laughed, although it was
+more like a sob. "I had no idea my part was so immense. Had you?"
+
+"I had. I wrote it that way. My dreams, also, came true."
+
+"But why?" A faint flush stole into her cheeks. "There are so many
+women who could have played the part better than I. You had courage to
+risk your piece in my hands, Mr. Phillips."
+
+"Perhaps I knew you better than you knew yourself." She searched his
+face with startled curiosity. "Or better at least than the world knew
+you. Tell me, there is something wrong? I'm afraid he--resents your--"
+
+"Oh no, no!" she denied, hastily, letting her eyes fall, but not
+before he had seen them fill again with that same expression of pain
+and bewilderment. "He's--not himself, that's all. I--You--won't
+irritate him? Please! He has such a temper."
+
+Francis came out of the shadows scowling. "Well, let's get at it,"
+said he.
+
+Phillips agreed. "If you don't mind we'll start with your entrance. I
+wish you would try to express more depth of feeling, more tenderness,
+if you please, Mr. Francis. Remember, John Danton has fought this love
+of his for many years, undertaking to remain loyal to his wife. He
+doesn't dream that Diane returns his love, for he has never spoken,
+never even hinted of his feelings until this instant. Now, however,
+they are forced into expression. He begins reluctantly, frightened at
+the thing which makes him speak, then when she responds the dam breaks
+and his love over-rides his will power, his loyalty, his lifelong
+principles; it sweeps him onward and it takes her with him. The truth
+appals them both. They recognize its certain consequences and yet they
+respond freely, fiercely. You can't overplay the scene, Mr. Francis."
+
+"Certainly I can overplay it," the star declared. "That's the danger.
+My effects should come from repression."
+
+"I must differ with you. Repressive methods are out of place here. You
+see, John Danton loses control of himself--"
+
+"Nonsense!" Francis declared, angrily.
+
+"The effectiveness of the scene depends altogether upon its--well, its
+savagery. It must sweep the audience off its feet in order that the
+climax shall appear logical."
+
+"Nonsense again! I'm not an old-school actor, and I can't chew
+scenery. I've gained my reputation by repressive acting, by
+intensity."
+
+"This is not acting; this is real life."
+
+Francis's voice rose a tone in pitch, and his eyes flashed at this
+stubborn resistance to his own set ideas.
+
+"Great heavens, Phillips! Don't try to tell me my own business.
+People don't behave that way in real life; they don't explode under
+passion--not even jealousy or revenge; they are reserved. Reserve!
+That's the real thing; the other is all make-believe."
+
+Seeing that it was useless to argue with the man, Phillips said
+nothing more, so Francis and his wife assumed their positions and
+began their lines.
+
+It was a long scene and one demanding great force to sustain. It was
+this, in fact, which had led to the choice of Irving Francis for the
+principal role, for he was a man of tremendous physical power. He had
+great ability, moreover, and yet never, even at rehearsals, had he
+been able to invest this particular scene with conviction. Phillips
+had rehearsed him in it time and again, but he seemed strangely
+incapable of rising to the necessary heights. He was hollow,
+artificial; his tricks and mannerisms showed through like familiar
+trade marks. Strangely enough, the girl also had failed to get the
+most out of the scene, and this morning, both star and leading woman
+seemed particularly cold and unresponsive. They lacked the spark, the
+uplifting intensity, which was essential, therefore, in desperation,
+Phillips finally tried the expedient of altering their "business," of
+changing positions, postures, and crosses; but they went through the
+scene for a second time as mechanically as before.
+
+Knowing every line as he did, feeling every heart throb, living and
+suffering as John Danton was supposed to be living and suffering,
+Phillips was nearly distracted. To him this was a wanton butchery of
+his finest work. He interrupted, at last, in a heart-sick, hopeless
+tone which sorely offended the already irritated Francis.
+
+"I'm--afraid it's no use. You don't seem to get it."
+
+"What is it I don't get?" roughly demanded the actor.
+
+"You're not genuine--either of you. You don't seem to feel it."
+
+"Humph! We're married!" said the star, so brutally that his wife
+flushed painfully. "I tell you I get all it's possible to get out of
+the scene. You wrote it and you see a lot of imaginary values; but
+they're not there. I'm no superman--no god! I can't give you more than
+the part contains."
+
+"Look at it in this light," Phillips argued, after a pause. "Diane is
+a married woman; she, too, is fighting a battle; she is restrained by
+every convention, every sense of right, every instinct of wifehood and
+womanhood. Now, then, you must sweep all that aside; your own fire
+must set her ablaze despite--"
+
+"I? _I_ must do all this?" mocked the other, furiously. "Why must _I_
+do it all? Make Norma play up to me. She underplays me all the time;
+she's not in my key. That's what's the matter--and I'm damned tired of
+this everlasting criticism."
+
+There was a strained silence, during which the two men faced each
+other threateningly, and a panic seized the woman.
+
+She managed to say, uncertainly: "Perhaps I--should play up to you,
+Irving."
+
+"On the contrary, I don't think the fault is yours," Phillips said,
+stiffly.
+
+Again there was a dramatic silence, in which there was no element of
+the make-believe. It was the clash of two strong men who disliked each
+other intensely and whose masks were slipping. Neither they nor the
+leading woman detected a figure stealing out from the gloom, as if
+drawn by the magnetism of their anger.
+
+"My fault, as usual," Francis sneered. "Understand this, Phillips, my
+reputation means something to me, and I won't be forced out of a good
+engagement by a--well, by you or by any other stage manager."
+
+Phillips saw that same fearful look leap into the woman's eyes, and it
+checked his heated retort. "I don't mean to find fault with you," he
+declared, evenly. "I have the greatest respect for your ability as an
+actor, but--"
+
+The star tossed his massive head in a peculiarly aggravating manner.
+"Perhaps you think you can play the part better than I?"
+
+"Irving! _Please_!" breathed his wife.
+
+"Show me how it should be done, if you feel it so strongly."
+
+"Thank you, I will," Phillips answered, impulsively. "I'm not an
+actor, but I wrote this piece. What's more, I lived it before I wrote
+it. It's my own story, and I think I know how it should be played."
+
+Francis smiled mockingly. "Good!" said he; "I shall learn something."
+
+"Do you mind?" The author turned to the real Diane, and she shook her
+head, saying, uncertainly:
+
+"It's--very good of you."
+
+"Very well. If you will hold the manuscript, Mr. Francis, I'll try to
+show what I feel the scene lacks. However, I don't think I'll need any
+prompting. Now, then, we'll begin at John Danton's entrance."
+
+With the mocking smile still upon his lips, Francis took the
+manuscript and seated himself upon the prompter's table.
+
+It was by no means remarkable that Henry Phillips should know
+something about acting, for he had long been a stage manager, and in
+emergencies he has assumed a good many divergent roles. He felt no
+self-consciousness, therefore, as he exchanged places with Francis;
+only an intense desire to prove his contentions. He nerved himself to
+an unusual effort, but before he had played more than a few moments he
+forgot the hostile husband and began to live the part of John Danton
+as he had lived it in the writing, as he invariably lived it every
+time he read the play or saw it acted.
+
+Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the
+written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain
+by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts
+expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden,
+hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same
+mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and
+left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had
+acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in
+solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He
+found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he
+was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a role of his
+creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he
+had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the
+real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in
+timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman
+and stirred her to a new response.
+
+As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with
+astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was
+indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had
+served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and
+to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the
+spectacle held him enthralled.
+
+Norma Berwynd was not slow to appreciate the truth. Accustomed
+thoroughly to every phase of the make-believe world in which she
+dwelt, she recognized unerringly in the new John Danton's words and
+actions something entirely unreal and apart from the theatrical. The
+conviction that Henry Phillips was not acting came to her with a
+blinding suddenness, and it threw her into momentary confusion, hence
+her responses were mechanical. But soon, without effort on her part,
+this embarrassment fell away and she in turn began to blaze. The flame
+grew as Phillips breathed upon it. She realized wildly that her heart
+had always hungered for words like these, and that, coming from his
+lips, they carried an altogether new and wondrous meaning; that they
+filled some long-felt, aching want of which she had been ignorant
+until this moment. The certainty that it was Phillips himself who
+spoke, and not a mere character of his creation, filled her with an
+exultant recklessness. She forgot her surroundings, her husband's
+presence, even the fact that the lines she spoke were not of her own
+making.
+
+Never had the scene been played like this. It grew vital, it took on
+a tremendous significance. No one could have observed it and remained
+unresponsive. Francis let fall the manuscript and stared at the actors
+wonderingly. Since he was an actor, nothing was so real to him,
+nothing so thrilling, as the make-believe. He realized that this was
+indeed a magnificent exhibition of the artificial. With parted lips
+and pulse athrob he followed the wooing of that imaginary John Danton,
+in whom he could see no one but himself.
+
+After a time he became conscious of a presence at his side, and heard
+some one breathing heavily. Turning with a start, he found Leontine
+Phillips at his shoulder. She, too, was aroused, but in her sneering
+visage was that which brought the actor abruptly out of his spell. She
+had emerged from the shadows noiselessly, and was leaning forward, her
+strong hands gripping the edge of the table littered with its many
+properties.
+
+Mrs. Phillips had played emotional scenes herself, but never with such
+melodramatic intensity as she now unconsciously displayed. Her whole
+body shook as with an ague, her dark face was alive with a jealous fury
+which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The
+truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the
+author, which had been momentarily forgotten--momentarily lost in his
+admiration of the artist--rose up anew, and he recognized this occult
+spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality,
+not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the
+make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a
+smothered cry.
+
+Leontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through
+livid lips.
+
+Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a
+cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could
+not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Leontine plucked at his sleeve
+and whispered again:
+
+"You _fool_!"
+
+Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a
+man throttled. Leontine could feel his muscles stiffen.
+
+But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of
+the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can
+tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart
+pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his
+arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned;
+her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce,
+impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.
+
+Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him
+paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his
+ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man
+who had played his part, he awoke.
+
+"She knows he loves her," Leontine was saying. "You let him tell her
+in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"
+
+Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they
+rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She
+also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it
+forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she
+breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.
+
+It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which
+aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw
+him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save
+the latter.
+
+The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage
+fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly
+driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then staggered, and,
+half sliding through the woman's sheltering embrace, crumpled limply
+into a massive upholstered chair. He, too, was dazed by the sudden
+transition from his real world to his make-believe.
+
+When his eyes cleared he saw Norma Berwynd struggling with her
+husband, interposing her own slender body in his path. Francis was
+cursing her foully for her unfaithfulness; his voice was thick and
+brutal.
+
+"Yes! It's true!" she cried, with hysterical defiance. "I never knew
+till now; but it's true! It's _true_!"
+
+"You've killed him!" Leontine chattered, shrilly, and emerged from the
+shadows, her dark features ashen, her eyes ringed with white. Mrs.
+Francis turned from her husband and flung her arms about the recumbent
+man, calling wildly to him.
+
+The denouement had come with such swiftness that it left all four of
+them appalled at their actions. Seeing what his brief insanity had led
+him into, Francis felt his strength evaporate; his face went white,
+his legs buckled beneath him. He scanned the place wildly in search of
+means of escape.
+
+"My God! My God!" Leontine was repeating. "Why doesn't somebody come?"
+
+Now that his brain had cleared, and he knew what hand had smitten him,
+and why, Phillips was by far the calmest of the four. He saw the knife
+at his feet and smiled, for no steel could rob him of that gladness
+which was pulsing through his veins. He was still smiling when he
+stooped and picked up the weapon. He arose, lifting Norma to her feet;
+then his hand slid down and sought hers.
+
+"You needn't worry," he said to Francis. "You see--this is the new
+dagger I got for the end of the act."
+
+He held it out in his open palm for all of them to see, and they noted
+that it was strangely shortened--that the point of the sliding blade
+was barely exposed beneath the hilt.
+
+Francis wiped his wet face, then shuddered and cursed weakly with
+relief, meanwhile groping at the prompter's table for support. "Sold!
+A prop knife!" he cried.
+
+"You--you're not really--" Norma swayed forward with eyes closed.
+
+Leontine laughed.
+
+"By God! I meant it," the star exclaimed, uncertainly. "You can't
+deny--" He gasped and tugged at his collar.
+
+"I believe there is nothing to deny," the author said, quietly. He
+looked first at his wife, then at his enemy, and then down at the
+quivering, white face upturned to his. "There is nothing to deny, is
+there?" he inquired of Norma.
+
+"Nothing!" she said. "I--I'm glad to know the truth, that's all."
+
+Francis glared first at one, then at the other, and as he did so he
+began to realize the full cost of his action. When it came home to
+him in terms of dollars and cents, he showed his true character by
+stammering:
+
+"I--I made a frightful mistake. I'm--not myself; really, I'm not. It
+was your wife's fault." In a panic he ran on, unmindful of Leontine's
+scorn. "She did it, Mr. Phillips. She gave me the knife. She whispered
+things--she made me--I--I'm very sorry--Mr. Phillips, and I'll play
+the part the way you want it. I will, indeed."
+
+Leontine met her husband's look defiantly; hence it was as much to her
+as to the cringing actor that the playwright said:
+
+"Your salary will go on as usual, under your contract, Mr.
+Francis--that is, until the management supplies you with a new play;
+but I'm the real John Danton, and I shall play him tonight and
+henceforth."
+
+"Then, I'm--discharged? Norma--d'you hear that? We're canceled.
+Fired!"
+
+"No, Miss Berwynd's name will go up in lights as the star, if she
+cares to stay," said Phillips. "Do you wish to remain?" He looked down
+at the woman, and she nodded.
+
+"Yes, oh yes!" she said. "I _must_ stay. I daren't go back." That
+hunted look leaped into her eyes again, and Phillips recognized it now
+as fear, the abject physical terror of the weaker animal. "I want to
+go--forward--not backward, if there is any way."
+
+"I'll show you the way," he told her, gently. "We'll find it
+together."
+
+He smiled reassuringly, and with a little gasping sigh she placed her
+hand in his.
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING ELK
+
+
+Up from the valley below came the throb of war drums, the faint rattle
+of shots, and the distant cries of painted horsemen charging. From
+my vantage-point on the ridge I had an unobstructed view of the
+encampment, a great circle of tepees and tents three miles in
+circumference, cradled in a sag of the timberless hills. The sounds
+came softly through the still Dakota air, and my eye took in every
+sharp-drawn detail of the scene--ponies grazing along the creek
+bottom, children playing beneath the blue smoke of camp-fires, the
+dense crowd ringed about a medicine pole in their center, intent on a
+war-dance.
+
+Five thousand Sioux were here in all their martial splendor. They were
+painted and decked and trapped for war, living again their days of
+plenty, telling anew their tales of might, and repeating on a mimic
+scale their greatest battles. Five days the feasting had continued;
+five mornings had I been awakened at dawn to see a thousand ochered,
+feathered horsemen come thundering down upon the camp, their horses
+running flat, their rifles popping, while the valley rocked to their
+battle-cries and to the answering clamor of the army which rode forth
+to meet them. Five sultry days had I spent wandering unnoticed,
+ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but
+unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and
+the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a
+million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul,
+through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told
+in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race,
+to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer
+dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the
+sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man,
+for a word in my own tongue.
+
+It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe
+assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount
+the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the
+reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of
+the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was
+a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell
+of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an
+ever-increasing pile of bones.
+
+I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a
+slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and
+standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets
+of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down
+again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired
+much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red
+man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.
+
+It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and
+descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance
+away from my tent, for next to it another had been erected during my
+absence. It was a tiny affair with a rug in front of it, and upon the
+rug stood a steamer-chair.
+
+"Hello, inside!" I shouted, then ran forward, straddling papooses and
+shouldering squaws out of my way.
+
+"Hello!" came an answer, and out through the flap was thrust the head
+of my friend, the Government doctor.
+
+"Gee! I'm glad to see you!" I said as I shook his hand. "I'm as
+lonesome as a deaf mute at a song recital."
+
+"I figured you would be," said the doctor, "so I came out to see the
+finish of the feast and to visit with you. I brought some bread from
+the Agency."
+
+"Hoorah! White bread and white conversation! I'm hungry for both."
+
+"What's the matter? Won't the Indians talk to you?"
+
+"I guess they would if they could, but they can't. I haven't found one
+among the whole five thousand who can understand a word I say. Your
+Government schools have gone back in the betting with me, Doc. You
+must keep your graduates under lock and key."
+
+"They can all speak English if they want to--that is, the younger
+ones. Some few of the old people are too proud to try, but the others
+can talk as well as we can, until they forget."
+
+"Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe
+it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet
+on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress
+which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal;
+he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've
+tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."
+
+My friend called to the warrior: "Hey, Tom! Come here a minute."
+The Indian came, and the doctor continued, "When do you hold the
+horse-races, Thomas?"
+
+"To-morrow, at four o'clock, unless it rains," said the fellow.
+He spoke in an odd, halting dialect, but his words were perfectly
+understandable.
+
+"Are you going to ride?"
+
+"No; my race-horse is sick."
+
+As the ocher-daubed figure vanished into the dusk the old man turned
+to me, saying, "College man."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yes. B.A. He's a graduate."
+
+"Impossible!" I declared. "Why, he talks like a foreigner, or as if he
+were just learning our language."
+
+"Exactly. In another three years he'll be an Indian again, through and
+through. Oh, the reservation is full of fellows like Tom." The
+doctor heaved a sigh of genuine discouragement. "It's a melancholy
+acknowledgment to make, but our work seems to count for almost
+nothing. It's their blood."
+
+"Perhaps they forget the higher education," said I; "but how about the
+Agency school, where you teach them to farm and to sew and to cook, as
+well as to read and to write? Surely they don't forget that?"
+
+"I've heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver
+sounding orations; then I've seen those same young fellows, three
+months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers. It's
+a common thing for our 'sweet girl graduates' to lay off their white
+commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats,
+for the shawl and the moccasin. We teach them to make sponge-cake and
+to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon. Of
+course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than
+they learn."
+
+"Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts,"
+I acknowledged. "He's sort of a hero with us. I remember several
+successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead."
+
+"I know!" My friend laughed shortly. "I saw some of them. If you like,
+however, I'll tell you how it really happens. I know a story."
+
+When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running
+Elk. The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird
+music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at
+intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter. On either hand the
+campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily
+until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness. It
+was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.
+
+"I've grown gray in this service," the old man began, "and the longer
+I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference
+between the Indian race and ours. I've about reached the conclusion
+that it's due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood. One
+race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic.
+The white man is ever developing, he's always advancing, always
+expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward. It is only
+a matter of time until he will vanish utterly. He's different from the
+negro. The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops. Some
+people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as
+to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set.
+The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious
+conflict between the blacks and the whites. But the red man differs
+from both. To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth.
+Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with
+an intellect quite as keen as the white man's, and with an open
+articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain.
+Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw
+which I have labored thirty years to find.
+
+"I have a theory--you know all old men have theories--that it is
+a physical thing, as tangible as that osseous constriction of the
+cranium which holds the negro in subjection, and that if I could lay
+my finger on it I could raise the Indian to his ancient mastery and
+to a dignified place among the nations; I could change them from a
+vanishing people into a race of rulers, of lawgivers, of creators. At
+least that used to be my dream.
+
+"Some years ago I felt that I was well on my way to success, for I
+found a youth who offered every promise of great manhood. I studied
+him until I knew his every trait and his every strength--he didn't
+seem to have any weaknesses. I raised him according to my own ideas;
+he became a tall, straight fellow, handsome as a bronze statue of a
+god. Physically he was perfect, and he had a mind as fine as his body.
+He had the best blood of his nation in him, being the son of a war
+chief, and he was called Thomas Running Elk. I educated him at the
+Agency school under my own personal supervision, and on every occasion
+I studied him. I spent hours in shaping his mind and in bending him
+away from the manners and the habits of his tribe. I taught him to
+think like a white man. He responded like a growing vine; he became
+the pride of the reservation--a reserved but an eager youth, with an
+understanding and a wit beyond that of most white boys of his age.
+Search him as rigorously as I might, I couldn't find a single flaw. I
+believed I was about to prove my theory.
+
+"Running Elk romped through our school, and he couldn't learn fast
+enough; when he had finished I sent him East to college, and, in order
+to wean him utterly away from the past, instead of sending him to
+an Indian school I arranged for him to enter one of the big Eastern
+universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant
+association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise
+him to a higher level. Well, it worked. He led his classes as a
+stag leads a herd. He was a silent, dignified, shadowy figure; his
+fellow-students considered him unapproachable, nevertheless they
+admired and they liked him. In all things he excelled; but he was
+best, perhaps, in athletics, and for this I took the credit--a Jovian
+satisfaction in my work.
+
+"News of his victories on track and field and gridiron came to me
+regularly, for his professors were interested in my experiment. As for
+the boy himself, he never wrote; it was not his nature. Nor did he
+communicate with his people. He had cut himself off from them, and I
+think he looked down upon them. At intervals his father came to the
+Agency to inquire about Running Elk, for I did not allow my protege
+to return even during vacations. That was a part of my plan. At my
+stories of his son's victories the father made no comment; he merely
+listened quietly, then folded his blanket about him and slipped away.
+The old fellow was a good deal of a philosopher; he showed neither
+resentment nor pleasure, but once or twice I caught him smiling oddly
+at my enthusiasm. I know now what was in his mind.
+
+"It was in Running Elk's senior year that a great thing came to him,
+a thing I had counted upon from the start. He fell in love. A girl
+entered his life. But this girl didn't enter as I had expected, and
+when the news reached me I was completely taken aback. She was a girl
+I had dandled on my knees as a child, the only daughter of an old
+friend. Moreover, instead of Running Elk being drawn to her, as I had
+planned, she fell desperately in love with him.
+
+"I guess the gods were offended at my presumption and determined by
+one hair's-breadth shift to destroy the balance of my whole structure.
+They're a jealous lot, the gods. I didn't understand, at that time,
+how great must have been the amusement which I offered them.
+
+"You've heard of old Henry Harman? Yes, the railroad king. It was his
+daughter Alicia. No wonder you look incredulous.
+
+"In order to understand the story you'll have to know something about
+old Henry. You'll have to believe in heredity. Henry is a self-made
+man. He came into the Middle West as a poor boy, and by force of
+indomitable pluck, ability, and doggedness he became a captain of
+industry. We were born on neighboring farms, and while I, after a
+lifetime of work, have won nothing except an underpaid Government
+job, Henry has become rich and mighty. He had that indefinable,
+unacquirable faculty for making money, and he became a commanding
+figure in the financial world. He's dominant, he's self-centered, he's
+one-purposed; he's a rough-hewn block of a man, and his unbounded
+wealth, his power, and his contact with the world have never smoothed
+nor rounded him. He's just about the same now as when he was a section
+boss on his own railroad. His daughter Alicia is another Henry Harman,
+feminized. Her mother was a pampered child, born to ease and enslaved
+to her own whims. No desire of hers, however extravagant, ever went
+ungratified, and right up to the hour of her death old Henry never
+said no to her--partly out of a spirit of amusement, I dare say, and
+partly because she was the only unbridled extravagance he had ever
+yielded to in all his life. Well, having sowed the wind, he reaped the
+whirlwind in Alicia. She combined the distinguishing traits of both
+parents, and she grew up more effectively spoiled than her mother.
+
+"When I got a panicky letter from one of Running Elk's professors
+coupling her name vaguely with that of my Indian, I wavered in
+my determination to see this experiment out; but the analyst is
+unsentimental, and a fellow who sets out to untangle the skein of
+nature must pay the price, so I waited.
+
+"That fall I was called to Washington on department business--we
+were fighting for a new appropriation--and while there I went to the
+theater one night. I was extremely harassed, and my mind was filled
+with Indian matters, so I went out alone to seek an evening's relief,
+not caring whither my feet took me.
+
+"The play was one of those you spoke of; it told the story of a young
+Indian college man in love with a white girl. Whether or not it was
+well written I don't know; but it seemed as if the hand of destiny had
+led me to it, for the hero's plight was so similar to the situation of
+Running Elk that it seemed almost uncanny, and I wondered if this play
+might afford me some solution of his difficulty.
+
+"You will remember that the Indian in the play is a great football
+hero, and a sort of demi-god to his fellows. He begins to consider
+himself one of them--their equal--and he falls in love with the sister
+of his chum. But when this fact is made known his friends turn
+against him and try to show him the barrier of blood. At the finish a
+messenger comes bearing word that his father is dead and that he has
+been made chief in the old man's place. He is told that his people
+need him, and although the girl offers to go with him and make her
+life his, he renounces her for his duty to the tribe.
+
+"Well, it was all right up to that point, but the end didn't help me
+in shaping the future of Running Elk, for his father was hale, hearty,
+and contented, and promised to hang on in that condition as long as we
+gave him his allowance of beef on Issue Day.
+
+"That night when I got back to the hotel I found a long-distance
+call from old Henry Harman. He had wired me here at the Agency, and,
+finding I was in Washington, he had called me from New York. He didn't
+tell me much over the 'phone, except that he wanted to see me at once
+on a matter of importance. My work was about finished, so I took the
+train in the morning and went straight to his office. When I arrived I
+found the old fellow badly rattled. There is a certain kind of worry
+which comes from handling affairs of importance. Men like Henry Harman
+thrive upon it; but there's another kind which searches out the joints
+in their coats of mail and makes women of them. That's what Henry was
+suffering from.
+
+"'Oh, Doc, I'm in an awful hole!' he exclaimed. 'You're the only man
+who can pull me out. It's about Alicia and that damned savage of
+yours.'
+
+"'I knew that was it,' said I.
+
+"'If you've heard about it clear out there,' Harman declared, with a
+catch in his voice, 'it's even worse than I thought.' He strode up and
+down his office for a few moments; then he sank heavily into his chair
+and commenced to pound his mahogany desk, declaring, angrily:
+
+"'I won't be defied by my own flesh and blood! I won't! That's
+all there is to it. I'm master of my own family. Why, the thing's
+fantastic, absurd, and yet it's terrible! Heavens! I can't believe
+it!'
+
+"'Have you talked with Alicia?'
+
+"'Not with her, _to_ her. She's like a mule. I never saw such a will
+in a woman. I--I've fought her until I'm weak. Where she got her
+temper I don't know.' He collapsed feebly and I was forced to smile,
+for there's only one thing stubborn enough to overcome a Harman's
+resistance, and that is a Harman's desire.
+
+"'Then it isn't a girlish whim?' I ventured.
+
+"'_Whim!_ Look at me!' He held out his trembling hands. 'She's licked
+me, Doc. She's going to marry that--that--' He choked and muttered,
+unintelligibly: 'I've reasoned, I've pleaded, I've commanded. She
+merely smiles and shrugs and says I'm probably right, in the abstract.
+Then she informs me that abstract problems go to pieces once in a
+while. She says this--this--Galloping Moose, this yelping ghost-dancer
+of yours, is the only real man she ever met.'
+
+"'What does he have to say?'
+
+"'Humph!' grunted Harman. 'I offered to buy him off, but he threatened
+to serve me up with dumplings and wear my scalp in his belt. Such
+insolence! Alicia wouldn't speak to me for a week.'
+
+"'You made a mistake there,' said I. 'Running Elk is a Sioux. As for
+Alicia, she's thoroughly spoiled. She's never been denied any single
+thing in all her life, and she has your disposition. It's a difficult
+situation.'
+
+"'Difficult! It's scandalous--hideous!'
+
+"'How old is Alicia?'
+
+"'Nineteen. Oh, I've worn out that argument! She says she'll wait. You
+know she has her own money, from her mother.'
+
+"'Does Running Elk come to your house?'
+
+"At this my old friend roared so fiercely that I hastened to say:
+'I'll see the boy at once. I have more influence with him than anybody
+else.'
+
+"'I hope you can show him how impossible, how criminal, it is to ruin
+my girl's life.' Harman said this seriously. 'Yes, and mine, too,
+for that matter. Suppose the yellow newspapers got hold of this!' He
+shuddered. 'Doc, I love that girl so well that I'd kill her with my
+own hands rather than see her disgraced, ridiculed--'
+
+"'Tut, tut!' said I. 'That's pride--just plain, selfish pride.'
+
+"'I don't care a damn what it is, I'd do it. I earned my way in the
+world, but she's got blue blood in her and she was born to a position;
+she goes everywhere. When she comes out she'll be able to marry into
+the best circles in America. She could marry a duke, if she wanted to.
+I'd buy her one if she said the word. Naturally, I can't stand for
+this dirty, low-browed Injun.'
+
+"'He's not dirty,' I declared, 'and he's not as low-browed as some
+foreigner you'd be glad to pick out for her.'
+
+"'Well, he's an Injun,' retorted Harman, 'and that's enough. We've
+both seen 'em tried; they all drop back where they started from. You
+know that as well as I do.'
+
+"'I don't know it,' said I, thinking of my theories. 'I've been using
+him to make an experiment, but--the experiment has gotten away from
+me. I dare say you're right. I wanted him to meet and to know white
+girls, but I didn't want him to marry one--certainly not a girl like
+Alicia. No, we must put a stop to this affair. I'll see him right
+away.'
+
+"'To-morrow is Thanksgiving,' said Henry. 'Wait over and go up with us
+and see the football game.'
+
+"'Are you going?'
+
+"Harman grimaced. 'Alicia made me promise. I'd rather take her than
+let her go with friends--there's no telling what she might do.'
+
+"'Why let her go at all?' I objected.
+
+"The old fellow laughed mirthlessly. 'Why _let_ her? Running Elk plays
+full-back! How _stop_ her? We'll pick you up at your hotel in the
+morning and drive you up in the car. It's the big game of the year.
+You'll probably enjoy it. I won't!'
+
+"Miss Harman seemed glad to see me on the following day. She must have
+known that I was in her father's confidence, but she was too well
+schooled to show it. As we rode out in the big limousine I undertook
+to study her, but the reading of women isn't my game. All I could see
+was a beautiful, spirited, imperious girl with the Harman eyes and
+chin. She surprised me by mentioning Running Elk of her own free will;
+she wasn't the least bit embarrassed, and, although her father's face
+whitened, she preserved her quiet dignity, and I realized that she was
+in no wise ashamed of her infatuation. I didn't wonder that the old
+gentleman chose to accompany her to this game, although he must
+have known that the sight of Running Elk would pain him like a
+branding-iron.
+
+"It was the first great gridiron battle I had ever seen, and so I was
+unprepared for the spectacle. The enthusiasm of that immense crowd
+astonished me, and in spite of the fact that I had come as a tired old
+man, it got into my veins until my heart pounded and my pulses leaped.
+The songs, the shouts, the bellows of that multitude were intensely
+thrilling, for youth was in them. I grew young again, and I was half
+ashamed of myself until I saw other people of my own age who had also
+become boys and girls for the day. And the seriousness of it! Why, it
+was painful! Not one of those countless thousands was a disinterested
+spectator; they were all intensely partisan, and you'd have thought
+life or death hung on the victory.
+
+"Not one, did I say? There was one who held himself aloof from all the
+enthusiasm. Old Henry sat like a lump of granite, and out of regard
+for him I tried to restrain myself.
+
+"We had a box, close to the side lines, with the _elite_ of the East
+on either hand--people whose names I had read. They bowed and smiled
+and waved to our little party, and I felt quite important.
+
+"You've probably seen similar games, so there's no need of my
+describing this one, even if I could. It was my first experience,
+however, and it impressed me greatly. When the teams appeared I
+recognized Running Elk at a distance. So did the hordes of madmen
+behind us, and I began to understand for the first time what it was
+that the old man in the seat next to mine was combating.
+
+"A dancing dervish in front of the grandstand said something through a
+megaphone, then he waved a cane, whereupon a tremendous barking, 'Rah!
+Rah! Rah!' broke out. It ended with my Sioux boy's name, and I wished
+the old chief back in Dakota were there to see his son and to witness
+the honor done him by the whites.
+
+"Quite as impressive to me as this demonstration was the death-like
+silence which settled over that tremendous throng when the teams
+scattered out in readiness. The other side kicked off, and the ball
+sailed high and far. As it settled in its downward flight, I saw a
+lithe, tall shadow of a man racing toward it, and I recognized my
+boy. I'd lost his position for the moment, but I knew that hungry,
+predatory stride which devoured the yards as if he were a thing of the
+wind. He was off with the ball in the hollow of his arm, right back
+into the heart of his enemies, dodging, darting, leaping, twisting,
+always advancing. They tore his interference away from him, but,
+nevertheless, he penetrated their ranks and none of them could lay
+hands upon him. He was running free when tackled; his assailant
+launched himself with such savage violence that the sound of their
+impact came to us distinctly. As he fell I heard Alicia Harman gasp.
+Then the crowd gave tongue.
+
+"From that time on to the finish of the game my eyes seldom left
+Running Elk, and then only long enough to shoot covert glances at my
+companions.
+
+"Although the skill of my young Sioux overtopped that of all the other
+contestants, the opposing team played as one man; they were like
+a wonderful, well-oiled piece of machinery, and--they scored. All
+through the first half our side struggled to retaliate, but at the
+intermission they had not succeeded.
+
+"So far Running Elk hadn't noticed our presence, but when the teams
+returned for the second half he saw us. He didn't even know that I was
+in the East; in fact, he hadn't laid eyes on me for more than three
+years. The sight of me there in the box with Alicia and her father
+must have been an unpleasant shock to him; my face must have seemed an
+evil omen; nevertheless, he waved his hand at me and smiled--one of
+his rare, reserved smiles. I couldn't help marveling at the fellow's
+physical beauty.
+
+"I had been secretly hoping that his side would be defeated, so that
+Miss Harman might see him for once as a loser; but the knowledge of
+our presence seemed to electrify him, and by the spark of his own
+magnetism he fired his fellows until they commenced to play like
+madmen; I have no doubt they were precisely that. His spirit was like
+some galvanic current, and he directed them with a master mind. He was
+a natural-born strategist, of course, for through him ran the blood of
+the craftiest race of all the earth, the blood of a people who have
+always fought against odds, to whom a forlorn hope is an assurance
+of victory. On this day the son of a Sioux chief led the men of
+that great university with the same skill that Hannibal led his
+Carthaginian cohorts up to the gates of Rome. He led them with the
+cunning of Chief Joseph, the greatest warrior of his people. He was
+indefatigable, irresistible, magnificent--and he himself tied the
+score.
+
+"In spite of myself I joined madly in the cheering; but the boy didn't
+let down. Now that his enemies recognized the source of their peril,
+they focused upon him all their fury. They tried to destroy him. They
+fell upon him like animals; they worried and they harried and they
+battered him until I felt sick for him and for the girl beside me,
+who had grown so faint and pale. But his body was of my making; I had
+spent careful years on it, and although they wore themselves out, they
+could not break Running Elk. He remained a fleeting, an elusive thing,
+with the vigor of a wild horse. He tackled their runners with the
+ferocity of a wolf.
+
+"It was a grand exhibition of coolness and courage, for he was
+everywhere, always alert and always ready--and it was he who won the
+game.
+
+"There came some sort of a fumble, too fast for the eye to follow, and
+then the ball rolled out of the scrimmage. Before we knew what had
+happened, Running Elk was away with it, a scattered field ahead of
+him.
+
+"I dare say you have heard about that run, for it occurred in the last
+three minutes of play, and is famous in football annals to this day,
+so I'm told. It was a spectacular performance, apparently devised by
+fate to make more difficult the labors of old Henry and me. Every
+living soul on those high-banked bleachers was on his feet at the
+finish, a senseless, screaming demon. I saw Alicia straining forward,
+her face like chalk, her very lips blanched, her whole high-strung
+body aquiver. Her eyes were distended, and in them I saw a look which
+told me that this was no mere girlish whim, that this was more than
+the animal call of youth and sex. Running Elk had become a fetish to
+her.
+
+"The father must likewise have recognized this, for as we passed out
+he stammered into my ear:
+
+"'You see, Doc, the girl's mad. It's awful--awful. I don't know what
+to do.'
+
+"We had become momentarily separated from her, and therefore I urged
+him: 'Get her away, quick, no matter how or where. Use force if you
+have to, but get her out of this crowd, this atmosphere, and keep her
+away. I'll see _him_ to-night.'
+
+"The old fellow nodded. 'I--I'll kidnap her and take her to Europe,'
+he mumbled. 'God! It's awful!'
+
+"I didn't go back to the city with the Harmans; but I told Alicia
+good-by at the running-board of the machine. I don't think she heard
+me.
+
+"Running Elk was glad to see me, and I spent that evening with him. He
+asked all about his people; he told me of his progress, and he spoke
+lightly of his victory that day. But sound him as I would, I could
+elicit no mention of Alicia Harman's name. He wasn't much of a talker,
+anyhow, so at last I was forced to bring up the subject myself. At my
+first word the silence of his forefathers fell upon him, and all he
+did was listen. I told him forcibly that any thoughts of her were
+ridiculous and impossible.
+
+"'Why?' said he, after I had finished.
+
+"I told him a thousand reasons why; I recounted them cruelly,
+unfeelingly, but he made no sign. As a matter of fact, I don't think
+he understood them any more than he understood the affair itself. He
+appeared to be blinded, confused by the splendor of what had come to
+him. Alicia was so glorious, so different, so mysterious to him, that
+he had lost all sense of perspective and of proportion. Recognizing
+this, I descended to material things which I knew he could grasp.
+
+"'I paid for your education,' said I, 'and it is almost over with. In
+a few months you'll be turned out to make your own living, and then
+you'll encounter this race prejudice I speak of in a way to effect
+your stomach and your body. You're a poor man, Running Elk, and you've
+got to earn your way. Your blood will bar you from a good many means
+of doing it, and when your color begins to affect your earning
+capacity you'll have all you can do to take care of yourself. Life
+isn't played on a gridiron, and the first thing you've got to do is
+to make a man of yourself. You've got no right to fill your head with
+dreams, with insane fancies of this sort.'
+
+"'Yes, sir!' said he, and that was about all I could get out of him.
+His reticence was very annoying.
+
+"I didn't see him again, for I came West the next day, and the weeks
+stretched into months without word of him or of the others.
+
+"Shortly before he was due to return I was taken sick--the one big
+illness of my life, which came near ending me, which made me into the
+creaking old ruin that I am. They sent me away to another climate,
+where I got worse, then they shifted me about like a bale of goods,
+airing me here and there. For a year and a half I hung over the edge,
+one ailment running into another, but finally I straightened out a bit
+and tottered back into Washington to resume operations.
+
+"For six months I hung around headquarters, busied on department
+matters. I had lost all track of things out here, meanwhile, for the
+agent had been changed shortly after I left, and no one had taken
+the trouble to keep me posted; but eventually I showed up on the
+reservation again, reaching here on the first of July, three days
+before the annual celebration of the people.
+
+"Many changes had occurred in my two years' absence, and there was no
+one to bring me gossip, hence I heard little during the first day or
+two while I was picking up the loose ends of my work. One thing I did
+find out, however--namely, that Running Elk had come straight home
+from college, and was still on the reserve. I determined to look him
+up during the festival.
+
+"But on the morning of the Fourth I got the surprise of my life. The
+stage from the railroad brought two women, two strange women, who came
+straight to my office--Alicia Harman and her French maid.
+
+"Well, I was fairly knocked endwise; but Alicia was as well-poised and
+as self-contained as on that Thanksgiving morning in New York when
+she and old Henry had picked me up in their automobile--a trifle more
+stunning and a bit more determined, perhaps. Oh, she was a splendid
+creature in the first glory of her womanhood, a perfectly groomed and
+an utterly spoiled young goddess. She greeted me graciously, with that
+queenly air of all great ladies.
+
+"'Where is your father?' I asked, as she laid off her dust-coat.
+
+"'He's in New York,' said she. 'I'm traveling alone.'
+
+"'And where have you been all this time?'
+
+"'In Europe, mainly; Rome, Naples, Cairo, India, St. Petersburg,
+London--all about, in fact. Father took me abroad the day after
+Thanksgiving--you remember? And he has kept me there. But I came of
+age two weeks ago.'
+
+"'Two weeks!' I ejaculated.
+
+"'Yes, I took the first ship after my birthday. I've been traveling
+pretty constantly ever since. This is a long way from the world out
+here, isn't it?' She looked around curiously.
+
+"'From your world, yes,' said I, and when she offered nothing further
+I grew embarrassed. I started to speak; then, noting the maid, I
+hesitated; but Alicia shook her head faintly.
+
+"'Lisette doesn't understand a word of English,' said she.
+
+"'Why have you come out here, Alicia?' I inquired. I was far more ill
+at ease than she.
+
+"'Do you need to ask?' She eyed me defiantly. 'I respected father's
+wishes when I was in my minority. I traveled and studied and did all
+the tiresome things he commanded me to do--as long as he had the right
+to command. But when I became my own mistress I--took my full freedom.
+He made his life to suit himself; I intend to make mine to suit
+myself. I'm sorry I can't please him, but we don't seem to see things
+the same way, and I dare say he has accepted the inevitable.'
+
+"'Then you consider this--this move you evidently contemplate as
+inevitable?'
+
+"She lifted her dainty brows. 'Inevitable isn't a good word. I wish a
+certain thing; I have wished it from the first; I have never ceased
+for an instant to wish it; I feel that I must have it; therefore, to
+all intents and purposes, it is inevtable. Anyhow, I'm going to have
+it.'
+
+"'You have--er--been in communication with--'
+
+"'Never! Father forbade it.'
+
+"'Then how did you know he is here?'
+
+"'He wrote me when he left college. He said he was coming home. I've
+heard nothing since. He is here, isn't he?'
+
+"'So I believe. I haven't seen him yet; you know I've been away
+myself.'
+
+"'Will you take me to him?'
+
+"'Have you really weighed this thing?' I remonstrated. 'Do you realize
+what it means?'
+
+"'Please don't.' She smiled wearily. 'So many people have tried to
+argue me out of my desires. I shall not spoil my life, believe me; it
+is too good a thing to ruin. That is precisely why I'm here.'
+
+"'If you insist.' I gave in reluctantly. 'Of course I'll put myself
+at your service. We'll look for him to-morrow.' All sorts of wild
+expedients to thwart a meeting were scurrying through my mind.
+
+"'We'll go to-day,' said she.
+
+"'But--'
+
+"'At once! If you're too busy I'll ask somebody else--'
+
+"'Very well!' said I. 'We'll drive out to the encampment.' And I sent
+for my buckboard.
+
+"I was delayed in spite of myself until nearly sundown, and meanwhile
+Alicia Harman waited in my office, pacing the floor with ill-concealed
+impatience. Before starting I ventured one more remonstrance, for I
+was filled with misgivings, and the more I saw of this girl the more
+fantastic and unnatural this affair seemed. But the unbridled impulses
+of her parents were bearing fruit, and no one could say her nay. She
+afforded the most illuminating study in heredity that I have ever
+witnessed.
+
+"We didn't say much during our fifteen-mile drive, for I was worried
+and Alicia was oddly torn between apprehension and exultation. We had
+left the French maid behind. I don't know that any woman ever went to
+her lover under stranger circumstances or in greater perturbation of
+spirit than did this girl, behind whom lay a generation of selfishness
+and unrestraint.
+
+"It was well along in the evening when we came over the ridge and saw
+the encampment below us. You can imagine the fairy picture it made
+with its myriad of winking fires, with the soft effulgence of a
+thousand glowing tents, and with the wonderful magic of the night over
+it all. As we drew nearer, the unusual sounds of a strange merrymaking
+came to us--the soft thudding of drums, the weird melody of the
+dances, the stir and the confusion of crowded animal life. In the
+daylight it would have been sufficiently picturesque, but under the
+wizard hand of the darkness it became ten times more so.
+
+"When I finally tied my horses and led the girl into the heart of it I
+think she became a bit frightened, for these Indians were the Sioux of
+a bygone day. They were barbaric in dress and in demeanor.
+
+"I guided her through the tangle of tepees, through glaring fire-lit
+circles and through black voids where we stumbled and had to feel our
+way. We were jostled and elbowed by fierce warriors and by sullen
+squaws. At every group I asked for Running Elk, but he was merely one
+of five thousand and nobody knew his whereabouts.
+
+"The people have ever been jealous of their customs, and as a result
+we were frequently greeted by cold looks and sudden silences.
+Recognizing this open resentment, my companion let down a thick
+automobile veil which effectually hid her face. Her dust-coat was long
+and loose and served further to conceal her identity.
+
+"At one time we came upon a sight I would gladly have spared her--the
+spectacle of some wrinkled hags strangling a dog by the light of a
+fire. The girl at my side stifled a cry at the apparition.
+
+"'What are they doing?' she gasped.
+
+"'Preparing the feast,' I told her.
+
+"'Do they--really--'
+
+"'They do,' said I. 'Come!' I tried to force her onward, but she would
+not stir until the sacrifice had been dragged to the flames, where
+other carcasses were singeing among the pots and kettles. From every
+side came the smell of cooking meat, mingled with the odor of burning
+hair and flesh. I could hear Miss Harman panting as we went on.
+
+"We circled half the great hoop before we came upon the trail of our
+man, and were directed to a near-by tepee, upon the glowing walls of
+which many heads were outlined in silhouette, and from which came the
+monotonous voice of a story-teller.
+
+"I don't know what hopes the girl had been nursing; she must have
+looked upon these people not as kindred of Running Elk, but rather as
+his servants, his slaves. Realizing that her quest was nearly ended,
+her strength forsook her and she dropped behind me. The entrance to
+the tepee was congested by those who could not find space inside, but
+they rose silently, upon recognizing me, and made room. I lifted the
+flap and peered within, clearing a view for Miss Harman.
+
+"We beheld a circle of half-naked braves in full war regalia,
+squatting haunch to haunch, listening to a story-teller. In front of
+them was a confusion of blackened pails and steaming vessels, into
+which they dipped with their naked fingers. Their faces were streaked
+with paint, their lips were greasy with traces of the dish, the air
+of the place was reeking from their breaths. My eyes were slower than
+Alicia's, and so I did not distinguish our quarry at first, although a
+slow sigh at my ear and a convulsive clutch at my arm told me that he
+was there.
+
+"And then I, too, saw Running Elk. It was he who was talking, to whom
+the others listened. What a change two years had wrought! His voice
+was harsh and guttural, his face, through the painted daubs and
+streaks, was coarser and duller than when I had seen him. His very
+body was more thin and shrunken.
+
+"He finished his tale while we stared at him; the circle broke into
+commendatory grunts, and he smiled in childlike satisfaction at the
+impression he had made. He leaned forward and, scrutinizing the litter
+of sooty pots, plunged his hand into the nearest one.
+
+"Miss Harman stumbled back into the crowd and her place was taken by a
+squaw.
+
+"'Running Elk,' I called, over the heads of those next the entrance,
+and, seeing my face against the night, he arose and came out, stepping
+over the others.
+
+"'How do you do?' I said. 'You haven't forgotten me, have you?'
+
+"He towered head and shoulders above me, his feather head-dress adding
+to his stature. The beaded patterns of his war-harness stood out dimly
+in the half-light.
+
+"'No, no! I will never forget you, doctor. You--you have been sick.'
+The change in his speech was even more noticeable when he turned
+his tongue to English. He halted over his words and he mouthed them
+hesitatingly.
+
+"'Yes, pretty sick. And you, what are you doing?'
+
+"'I do what the rest do,' said he. 'Nothing! I have some horses and a
+few head of cattle, that is all.'
+
+"'Are you satisfied?' I demanded, sharply. He eyed me darkly for an
+instant, then he answered, slowly:
+
+"'I am an Indian. I am satisfied.'
+
+"'Then education didn't do you any good, after all?' I was offended,
+disappointed; I must have spoken gruffly.
+
+"This time he paused a long while before he replied.
+
+"'I had dreams,' said he, 'many dreams, and they were splendid; but
+you told me that dreams were out of place in a Sioux, so I forgot
+them, along with all the things I had learned. It is better so.'
+
+"Alicia Harman called me in a voice which I did not recognize, so I
+shook hands with Running Elk and turned away. He bowed his head and
+slunk back through the tepee door, back into the heart of his people,
+back into the past, and with him went my experiment. Since then I have
+never meddled with the gods nor given them cause to laugh at me."
+
+The doctor arose and stretched himself, then he entered his tent for
+a match. The melancholy pulse of the drums and the minor-keyed chant
+which issued out of the night sounded like a dirge sung by a dying
+people.
+
+"What became of Running Elk?" I inquired.
+
+The old man answered from within. "That was he I asked about the
+horse-races. He's the man you couldn't understand, who wouldn't talk
+to you. He's nearly an Indian again. Alicia Harman married a duke."
+
+
+
+
+THE MOON, THE MAID, AND THE WINGED SHOES
+
+
+The last place I locked wheels with Mike Butters was in Idaho. I'd
+just sold a silver-lead prospect and was proclaimin' my prosperity
+with soundin' brass and ticklin' symbols. I was tuned up to G and
+singin' quartettes with the bartender--opery buffet, so to speak--when
+in Mike walked. It was a bright morning out-side and I didn't
+reco'nize him at first against the sunlight.
+
+"Where's that cholera-morbus case?" said he.
+
+"Stranger, them ain't sounds of cramps," I told him. "It's me singin'
+'Hell Amongst the Yearlin's.'" Then I seen who he was and I fell among
+him.
+
+When we'd abated ourselves I looked him over.
+
+"What you doin' in all them good clothes?" I inquired.
+
+"I'm a D.D.S."
+
+"Do tell! All I ever took was the first three degrees. Gimme the grip
+and the password and I'll believe you."
+
+"That ain't a Masonic symbol," said he. "I'm a dentist--a bony fido
+dentist, with forceps and a little furnace and a gas-bag and a
+waitin'-rooms". He swelled up and bit a hang-nail off of his cigar.
+
+"Yep! A regular toothwright."
+
+Naturally I was surprised, not to say awed. "Have you got much of a
+practice?" I made bold to ask.
+
+"Um-m--It ain't what it ought to be, still I can't complain. It takes
+time to work into a fashionable clienteel. All I get a whack at now is
+Injuns, but I'm gradually beginnin' to close in on the white teeth."
+
+Now this was certainly news to me, for Mike was a foot-racer, and a
+good one, too, and the last time I'd seen him he didn't know nothing
+about teeth, except that if you ain't careful they'll bite your
+tongue. I figured he was lyin', so I said:
+
+"Where did you get your degree--off of a thermometer?"
+
+"Nothing of the tall. I run it down. I did, for a God's fact. It's
+like this: three months ago I crep' into this burg lookin' for a
+match, but the professions was overcrowded, there bein' fourteen
+lawyers, a half-dozen doctors, a chiropodist, and forty-three
+bartenders here ahead of me, not to speak of a tooth-tinker. That
+there dentist thought he could sprint. He come from some Eastern
+college and his pa had grub-staked him to a kit of tools and sent him
+out here to work his way into the confidences and cavities of the
+Idahobos.
+
+"Well, sir, the minute I seen him I realized he was my custard. He
+wore sofy cushions on his shoulders, and his coat was cut in at the
+back. He rolled up his pants, too, and sometimes he sweetened the view
+in a vi'lent, striped sweater. I watered at the mouth and picked my
+teeth over him--he was that succ'lent.
+
+"He'd been lookin' down on these natives and kiddin' 'em ever since he
+arrived, and once a week, reg'lar, he tried to frame a race so's he
+could wear his runnin'-pants and be a hero. I had no trouble fixin'
+things. He was a good little runner, and he done his best; but when I
+breasted the tape I won a quick-claim deed to his loose change, to a
+brand-new office over a drug-store, and to enough nickel-plated pliers
+for a wire-tapper. I staked him to a sleeper ticket, then I moved into
+his quarters. The tools didn't have no directions on 'em, but I've
+figgered out how to use most of 'em."
+
+"I gather that this here practice that you're buildin' up ain't
+exactly remunerative," I said to Mike.
+
+"Not yet it ain't, but I'm widenin' out. There ain't a day passes that
+I don't learn something. I was out drummin' up a little trade
+when your groans convinced me that somebody in here had a jumpin'
+toothache. If you ain't busy, mebbe you can help me get a patient."
+
+This particular saloon had about wore out its welcome with me, so I
+was game for any enterprise, and I allowed a little patient-huntin'
+would prob'ly do me good. I drawed my six gun and looked her over.
+
+"It's a new sport, but I bet I'll take to it," said I. "What d'you do,
+crease 'em or cripple 'em?"
+
+"Pshaw! Put up that hearse ticket," Mike told me. "Us doctors don't
+take human life, we save it."
+
+"I thought you said you was practisin' on Injuns."
+
+"Injuns is human. For a fact! I've learned a heap in this business.
+Not that I wouldn't bust one if I needed him, but it ain't necessary.
+Come, I'll show you."
+
+This here town had more heathens than whites in it, and before we'd
+gone a block I seen a buck Injun and his squaw idlin' along, lookin'
+into the store winders. The buck was a hungry, long-legged feller, and
+when we neared him Mike said to me:
+
+"Hist! There's one. I'll slip up and get him from behind. You grab him
+if he runs."
+
+This method of buildin' up a dental practice struck me as some
+strange, but Butters was a queer guy and this was sort of a rough
+town. When he got abreast of Mr. Lo, Mike reached out and garnered him
+by the neck. The Injun pitched some, but Mike eared him down finally,
+and when I come up I seen that one side of the lad's face was swelled
+up something fearful.
+
+"Well, well," said I. "You've sure got the dentist's eye. You must
+have spied that swellin' a block away."
+
+Mike nodded, then he said: "Poor feller! I'll bet it aches horrible.
+My office is right handy; let's get him in before the marshal sees
+us."
+
+We drug the savage up-stairs and into Mike's dental stable, then we
+bedded him down in a chair. He protested considerable, but we got him
+there in a tollable state of preservation, barring the fact that he
+was skinned up on the corners and we had pulled a hinge off from the
+office door.
+
+"It's a shame for a person to suffer thataway," Mike told me; "but
+these ignorant aborigines ain't educated up to the mercies of science.
+Just put your knee in his stummick, will you? What could be finer than
+to alleviate pain? The very thought in itself is elevatin'. I'm in
+this humanity business for life--Grab his feet quick or he'll kick out
+the winder."
+
+"Whoa!" I told the Injun. "Plenty fix-um!" I poked the swellin' on his
+face and he let out a yelp.
+
+"It's lucky we got him before multiplication set in," Mike assured me.
+"I lay for 'em that-away at the foot of the stairs every day; but this
+is the best patient I've had. I've a notion to charge this one."
+
+"Don't you charge all of 'em?" I wanted to know.
+
+"Nope. I got a tin watch off of one patient when he was under gas, but
+the most of 'em ain't worth goin' through. You got to do a certain
+amount of charity work."
+
+"Don't look like much of a business to me," I said.
+
+"There's something about it I like," Mike told me. "It sort of grows
+on a feller. Now that you're here to help catch 'em, I calc'late to
+acquire a lot of skill with these instruments. I've been playin' a
+lone hand and I've had to take little ones that I could handle."
+
+When Mike produced a pair of nickel-plated nail-pullers, Mr. Injun
+snorted like a sea-lion, and it took both of us to hold him down; but
+finally I tied his hair around the head-rest and we had him. His mane
+was long and I put a hard knot in it, then I set on his moccasins
+while Doctor Butters pried into his innermost secrets.
+
+"There she is--that big one." Mike pointed out a tooth that looked
+like the corner monument to a quartz claim.
+
+"You're on the wrong side," I told him.
+
+"Mebbe I am. Here's one that looks like it would come loose easier."
+Mike got a half-Nelson over in the east-half-east quarter-section of
+the buck's mouth and throwed his weight on the pliers.
+
+The Injun had pretty well wore himself out by this time, and when
+he felt those ice-tongs he just stiffened out--an Injun's dead game
+that-away; he won't make a holler when you hurt him. His squaw was
+hangin' around with her eyes poppin' out, but we didn't pay no
+attention to her.
+
+Somehow Mike's pinchers kept jumpin' the track and at every slip a new
+wrinkle showed in the patient's face--patient is the right word, all
+right--and we didn't make no more show at loosenin' that tusk than as
+if we'd tried to pull up Mount Bill Williams with a silk thread. At
+last two big tears come into the buck's eyes and rolled down his
+cheeks. First time I ever seen one cry.
+
+Now that weakness was plumb fatal to him, for right there and then he
+cracked his plate with his missus. Yes, sir, he tore his shirt-waist
+proper. The squaw straightened up and give him a look--oh, what a
+look!
+
+"Waugh!" she sniffed. "Injun heap big squaw!" And with that she
+swished out of the office and left him flat. Yes, sir, she just blew
+him on the spot.
+
+I s'pose Mike would have got that tooth somehow--he's a perseverin'
+party--only that I happened to notice something queer and called him
+off.
+
+"Here, wait a minute," said I, and I loosened him from the man's
+chest. Mike was so engorsed in the pursuit of his profession that he
+was astraddle of his patient's wishbone, gougin' away like a quartz
+miner. "Take your elbow out of his mouth and lemme talk to him a
+minute." When the savage had got his features together, I said to him,
+"How you catch um bump, hey?" And I pointed to his jaw.
+
+"Bzz-zz-zz!" said he.
+
+I turned to Doctor Butters. "Hornet!" I declared.
+
+When Mike had sized up the bee-sting he admitted that my diagnosis
+was prob'ly correct. "That's the trouble with these patients," he
+complained. "They don't take you into their confidence. Just the same,
+I'm goin' to attend to his teeth, for there's no tellin' when I'll
+catch another one."
+
+"What's wrong with his teeth?" I questioned. "They look good to me,
+except they're wore down from eatin' camus. If he was a horse I'd
+judge him to be about a ten-year-old."
+
+"You never can tell by lookin' at teeth what's inside of 'em. Anyhow,
+a nice fillin' would set 'em off. I ain't tried no fillin's yet. Gimme
+that Burley drill."
+
+I wheeled out a kind of sewing-machine; then I pedaled it while Mike
+dug into that Injun's hangin' wall like he had a round of holes to
+shoot before quittin'-time. This here was more in my line, bein' a
+hard-rock miner myself, and we certainly loaded a fine prospect of
+gold into that native's bi-cuspidor. We took his front teeth because
+they was the easiest to get at.
+
+It was just like I said, this Injun's white keys was wore off short
+and looked like they needed something, so we laid ourselves out to
+supply the want. We didn't exactly fill them teeth; we merely riveted
+on a sort of a plowshare--a gold sod-cutter about the size of your
+finger-nail. How Mike got it to stick I don't know, but he must have
+picked up quite a number of dentist's tricks before I came. Anyhow,
+there she hung like a brass name-plate, and she didn't wabble hardly
+at all. You'd of been surprised to see what a difference it made in
+that redskin's looks.
+
+We let our patient up finally and put a lookin'-glass in his hand. At
+first he didn't know just what to make of that fillin'; but when he
+seen it was real gold a grin broke over his face, his chest swelled
+up, and he walked out of the office and across the street to a novelty
+store. In a minute out he came with a little round lookin'-glass and a
+piece of buckskin, and the last we seen of him he was hikin' down the
+street, grinnin' into that mirror as happy as a child and polishin'
+that tusk like it had started to rust.
+
+"Which I sure entitle a gratifyin' operation," said Mike.
+
+"I'm in no ways proud of the job," I told him. "I feel like I'd salted
+a mine."
+
+Well, me and Mike lived in them dental parlors for a couple of weeks,
+decoyin' occasional natives into it, pullin', spilin', fillin', and
+filin' more teeth than a few, but bimeby the sport got tame.
+
+One day Mike was fakin' variations on his guitar, and I was washin'
+dishes, when I said: "This line is about as excitin' as a game of
+jack-straws. D'you know it's foot-racin' time with the Injuns?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sure. They're gettin' together at old Port Lewis to run races this
+week. One tribe or the other goes broke and walks home every year. If
+we could meet up with the winnin' crowd, down on the La Plata--"
+
+I didn't have to say no more, for I had a hackamore on Mike's
+attention right there, and he quit climbin' the "G" string and put up
+his box.
+
+The next day we traded out of the tooth business and rode south down
+the old Navajo trail. We picked a good campin' spot--a little "flat"
+in a bend of the river where the grazin' was good--and we turned the
+ponies out.
+
+We didn't have to wait long. A few evenings later, as we et supper we
+heard a big noise around the bend and knew our visitors was comin'.
+They must of had three hundred head of horses, besides a big outfit of
+blankets, buckskin, baskets, and all the plunder that an Injun outfit
+travels with. At sight of us in their campin'-place they halted, and
+the squaws and the children rode up to get a look at us.
+
+I stepped out in front of our tent and throwed my hand to my forehead,
+shading my eyes--that's the Injun sign of friendship. An old chief and
+a couple of warriors rode forrad, Winchester to pommel, but, seein' we
+was alone, they sheathed their guns, and we invited 'em to eat.
+
+It didn't take much urgin'. While we fed hot biscuits to the head men
+the squaws pitched camp.
+
+They was plumb elated at their winnin' up at Fort Lewis, and the
+gamblin' fever was on 'em strong, so right after supper they invited
+us to join 'em in a game of Mexican monte. I let Mike do the
+card-playin' for our side, because he's got a pass which is the
+despair of many a "tin-horn." He can take a clean Methodist-Episcopal
+deck, deal three hands, and have every face card so it'll answer to
+its Christian name. No, he didn't need no lookout, so I got myself
+into a game of "bounce the stick," which same, as you prob'ly know, is
+purely a redskin recreation. You take a handful of twigs in your hand,
+then throw 'em on to a flat rock endways, bettin' whether an odd or an
+even number will fall outside of a ring drawed in the dirt. After a
+couple of hours Mike strolled up and tipped me the wink that he'd
+dusted his victims.
+
+"Say," he began, "there's the niftiest chicken down here that I ever
+see."
+
+"Don't start any didos with the domestic relations of this tribe," I
+told him, "or they'll spread us out, and spread us thin. Remember,
+you're here on business bent, and if you bend back and forrads, from
+business to pleasure, and versy visa, you'll bust. These people has
+scrooplous ideas regardin' their wives and I respect 'em."
+
+"She ain't married," Mike told me. "She's the chief's daughter, and
+she looks better to me than a silver mine."
+
+Durin' that evening we give the impression that we was well heeled, so
+the tribe wasn't in no hurry to break camp on the following morning.
+
+Along about noon I missed Mike, and I took a stroll to look for him. I
+found him--and the chief's daughter--alongside of a shady trout pool.
+She was weavin' a horsehair bracelet onto his wrist, and I seen the
+flash of his ring on her finger. Mike could travel some.
+
+He was a bit flustered, it seemed to me, and he tried to laugh the
+matter off, but the girl didn't. There was something about the look
+of her that I didn't like. I've seen a whole lot of trouble come from
+less than a horsehair bracelet. This here quail was mebbe seventeen;
+she was slim and shy, and she had big black eyes and a skin like
+velvet. I spoke to Mike in words of one syllable, and I drug him away
+with me to our tent.
+
+That afternoon some half-grown boys got to runnin' foot-races and Mike
+entered. He let 'em beat him, then he offered to bet a pony that they
+couldn't do it again. The kids was game, and they took him quick. Mike
+faked the race, of course, and lost his horse, that bein' part of our
+progam.
+
+When it was all over I seen the chief's daughter had been watchin' us,
+but she didn't say nuthin'. The next mornin', however, when we got up
+we found a bully pinto pony tied to one of our tent stakes.
+
+"Look who's here," said I. "Young Minnie Ha-ha has made good your
+losin's."
+
+"That pony is worth forty dollars," said Mike.
+
+"Sure. And you're as good as a squaw-man this minute. You're
+betrothed."
+
+"Am I?" The idy didn't seem to faze Mike. "If that's the case," said
+he, "I reckon I'll play the string out. I sort of like it as far as
+I've gone."
+
+"I wish she'd gave us that cream-colored mare or hers," I said. "It's
+worth two of this one."
+
+"I'll get it to-day," Mike declared. And sure enough, he lost another
+foot-race, and the next morning the cream-colored mare was picketed in
+front of our tent.
+
+Well, this didn't look good to me, and I told Mike so. I never was
+much of a hand to take money from women, so I served a warnin' on
+him that if we didn't get down to business pretty quick and make our
+clean-up I proposed to leave him flat on his back.
+
+That day the young men of the tribe did a little foot-runnin', and
+Mike begged 'em to let him in. It was comical to see how pleased
+they was. They felt so sure of him that they began pro-ratin' our
+belongin's among one another. They laid out a half-mile course, and
+everybody in camp went out to the finish-line to see the contest and
+to bet on it. The old chief acted as judge, bookmaker, clerk of the
+course, referee, and stakeholder. I s'pose by the time the race was
+ready to start there must of been fifty ponies up, besides a lot of
+money, but the old bird kept every wager in his head. He rolled up a
+couple of blankets and placed 'em on opposite sides of the track, and
+showed us by motions that the first man between 'em would be declared
+the winner. All the money that had been bet he put in little piles on
+a blanket; then he give the word to get ready.
+
+I had no trouble layin' our money at one to five, and our ponies at
+the same odds; then, when everything was geared up, I called Mike from
+his tent. Say, when he opened the fly and stepped out there was a
+commotion, for all he had on was his runnin'-trunks and his spiked
+shoes. The Injuns was in breech-cloths and moccasins, and, of course,
+they created no comment; but the sight of a half-nekked white man was
+something new to these people, and the first flash they got at Mike's
+fancy togs told 'em they'd once more fell a victim to the white man's
+wiles.
+
+They was wise in a minute, and some of the young hot-bloods was for
+smokin' us up, but the chief was a sport--I got to give the old bird
+credit. He rared back on his hind legs and made a stormy palaver;
+as near as I could judge he told his ghost-dancers they'd been
+cold-decked, but he expected 'em to take their medicine and grin, and,
+anyhow, it was a lesson to 'em. Next time they'd know better'n to
+monkey with strangers. Whatever it was he said, he made his point, and
+after a right smart lot of powwowin' the entertainment proceeded. But
+Mike and me was as popular with them people as a couple of polecats at
+a picnic.
+
+Mike certainly made a picture when he lined up at the start; he stood
+out like a marble statue in a slate quarry. I caught a glimpse of the
+chief's daughter, and her eyes was bigger than ever, and she had her
+hands clinched at her side. He must have looked like a god to her;
+but, for that matter, he was a sight to turn any untamed female heart,
+whether the owner et Belgian hare off of silver service or boiled
+jack-rabbit out of a coal-oil can. Women are funny thataway.
+
+It's a pot-hunter's maxim never to win by a big margin, but to nose
+out his man at the finish. This Mike did, winnin' by a yard; then he
+acted as if he was all in--faked a faint, and I doused him with a
+sombrero of water from the creek. It was a spectacular race, at that,
+for at the finish the runners was bunched till a blanket would of
+covered 'em. When they tore into the finish I seen the chief's girl do
+a trick. Mike was runnin' on the outside, and when nobody was watchin'
+her the little squaw kicked one of them blanket bundles about two feet
+down the course, givin' Mike that much the "edge." She done it clever
+and it would have throwed a close race.
+
+Them savages swallered their physic and grinned, like the chief had
+told 'em, and they took it standin' up. They turned over the flower of
+their pony herd to us, not to mention about six quarts of silver money
+and enough blankets to fill our tent. The old chief patted Mike on the
+back, then put both hands to his temples with his fingers spread out,
+as much as to say, "He runs like a deer."
+
+Bimeby a buck stepped up and begun makin' signs. He pointed to the sun
+four times, and we gathered that he wanted us to wait four days until
+he could go and get another man.
+
+Mike tipped me the wink, sayin': "They're goin' after the champeen of
+the tribe. That phony faint of mine done it. Will we wait? Why,
+say, we'd wait four years, wouldn't we? Sweet pickin's, I call it.
+Champeen, huh?"
+
+"For me, I'd wait here till I was old folks," I said. "I don't aim to
+leave these simple savages nothin'. Nothin' at all, but a lot of idle
+regrets."
+
+Well, sir, there was a heap of excitement in that camp for the next
+three days. All them Injuns done, was to come and look at Mike and
+feel of his legs and argue with one another. The first night after the
+race Mike tuned up his guitar, and later on I heard snatches of the
+"Spanish Fandango" stealin' up from the river bank. I knew what was
+on; I knew without lookin' that the old chief's girl was right there
+beside him, huggin' her knees and listenin' with both ears. I didn't
+like to think about it, for she was a nice little yearlin', and it
+looked to me like Mike was up to his usual devilment. Seemed like a
+low-down trick to play on an injunoo like her, and the more I studied
+it the warmer I got. It was a wonderful night; the moonlight drenched
+the valley, and there was the smell of camp-fires and horses over
+everything--just the sort of a night for a guitar, just the sort of a
+night to make your blood run hot and to draw you out into the glitter
+and make you race with your shadow.
+
+When Mike moseyed in, along about ten o'clock, he was plumb loco;
+the moon-madness was on him strong. His eyes was as bright as silver
+coins, and his voice had a queer ring to it.
+
+"What a night!" said he. "And what a life this is Lord! I'm tired of
+pot-huntin'. I've trimmed suckers till I'm weary; I've toted a gold
+brick in my pocket till my clothes bag. I'm sick of it. I'm goin' to
+beat this Injun champeen, take my half of our winnin's, sell off the
+runty ones, and settle down."
+
+"Where do you aim to settle?" I inquired.
+
+"Oh, anywhere hereabouts. These are good people, and I like 'em."
+
+"You mean you're goin' to turn out with the Injuns?" I inquired, with
+my mouth open. Mike had led so sudden that he had me over the ropes.
+
+"I'm goin' to do that very little thing," he declared. "I dunno how to
+talk much Navajo, but I'm learnin' fast, and she got my meanin'. We
+understand each other, and we'll do better as time goes on. She calls
+me 'Emmike'! Sweet, ain't it?" He heaved a sigh, then he gargled a
+laugh that sounded like boilin' mush. "It ain't often a feller like me
+gets a swell little dame that worships him. Horses, guns, camp-fires!
+Can you beat it?"
+
+"If that squaw had a soft palate or a nose like a eeclair, you
+wouldn't be so keen for this simple life," I told him. "She has
+stirred up your wickedness, Mike, and you've gone nutty. You're
+moon-crazy, that's all. You cut it out."
+
+I argued half the night; but the more I talked the more I seen that
+Mike was stuck to be a renegade. It's a fact. If he hadn't of been
+a nice kid I'd of cut his hobbles and let him go; but--pshaw! Mike
+Butters could run too fast to be wasted among savages, and, besides,
+it's a terrible thing for a white man to marry an Injun. The red never
+dies out in the woman, but the white in the man always changes into a
+dirty, muddy red. I laid awake a long while tryin' to figger out a way
+to block his game, but the only thing I could think of was to tie him
+up and wear out a cinch on him. Just as I was dozin' off I had an idy.
+I didn't like it much at first; I had to swaller hard to down it, but
+the more I studied it the better it looked, so for fear I'd weaken I
+rolled over and went to sleep.
+
+Mike was in earnest, and so was the girl; that much I found out
+the next day. And she must of learned him enough Navajo to propose
+marriage with, and he must of learned her enough English to say "yes,"
+for she took possession of our camp and begun to order me around.
+First thing she lugged our Navajo blankets to the creek, washed 'em,
+then spread 'em over some bushes and beat 'em with a stick until they
+were as clean and soft as thistle-down. I'll admit she made a pleasant
+picture against the bright colors of them blankets, and I couldn't
+altogether blame Mike for losin' his head. He'd lost it, all right.
+Every time she looked at him out of them big black eyes he got as
+wabbly as clabber. It was plumb disgustin'.
+
+That evenin' he give her a guitar lesson. Now Mike himself was a sad
+musician, and the sound of him fandangoin' uncertainly up and down the
+fretful spine of that instrument was a tribulation I'd put up with on
+account of friendship, pure and simple, but when that discord-lovin'
+lady cliff-dweller set all evenin' in our tent and scraped
+snake-dances out of them catguts with a fish-bone, I pulled my freight
+and laid out in the moonlight with the dogs.
+
+Mike's infatuation served one purpose, though; he spent so much time
+with the squab that it give me an opportunity to work out my scheme.
+That guitar lesson showed me that vig'rous measures was necessary, so
+I dug up a file, a shoemaker's needle and some waxed thread, all of
+which we had in our kit.
+
+On the fourth morning there was a stir in the camp, and we knew that
+the courier had got back with his runner. Pretty soon the whole
+village stormed up to our tent in a body.
+
+"Let's go out and look him over," I said.
+
+"What's the use of lookin' at him?" Mike inquired. "All Injuns look
+alike--except one."
+
+I pulled back the tent fly and stepped out; then I called to Mike, for
+the first thing I seen was that gold fillin' of ours. Yes, sir, right
+there, starin' me in the eye, was the sole and shinin' monument to
+me and Mike's brief whirl at the science of dentistry. The face
+surroundin' it was stretched wide and welcome, and the minute this
+here new-comer reco'nized me, he drawed back his upper lip and pointed
+proudly to his ornament, then he dug up his lookin'-glass and his
+polishin'-rag and begun to dust it off. It was plain to be seen that
+he thought more of it than his right eye. And it impressed the other
+Injuns, too; they crowded up and studied it. They took turns feelin'
+of it, especially the squaws, and I bet if we'd had our dentist outfit
+with us we could of got rich right there. The chief's daughter, in
+particular, was took with the beauties of that gew-gaw, and she made
+signs to us that she wanted one just like it.
+
+"I never noticed he was so rangy," Mike told me, when he'd sized up
+the new arrival. "Say, this guy looks good. He's split plumb to the
+larynx and I bet he can run, for all of that wind-shield."
+
+I noticed that Mike was pretty grave when he come back in the tent,
+and more than once that day I caught him lookin' at the champeen, sort
+of studyin' him out. But for that matter this new party was gettin'
+his full share of attention; everywhere he went there was a trail of
+kids at his heels, and every time he opened his mouth he made a hit
+with the grown folks. The women just couldn't keep their eyes offen
+him, and I seen that Mike was gettin' pretty sore.
+
+In the evenin' he made a confession that tipped off the way his mind
+was workin'. "This is the first time I ever felt nervous before a
+race," said he. "Mebbe it's because it's goin' to be my last race;
+mebbe it's because that Injun knows me and ain't scared of me. Anyhow,
+I'm scared of _him_. That open-faced, Elgin-movement buck has got me
+tickin' fast."
+
+"That ain't what's got your goat," I told him.
+
+"Your cooin' dove is dazzled by that show of wealth, and you know it."
+
+"Hell! She's just curious, that's all. She's just a kid. I--I wish I'd
+of known who he was when I treated him. I'd of drove a horse-shoe nail
+in his knee."
+
+But all the same Mike looked worried.
+
+It rained hard that night, and the next morning the grass was pretty
+wet. Mike tried it, first thing, and come back grinnin' till the top
+of his head was an island.
+
+"That sod is so slippery old Flyin' Cloud can't get a good stride in
+his moccasins. Me, I can straddle out and take holt with my spikes.
+Them spikes is goin' to put us on easy street. You see! I don't care
+how good he is, they're goin' to give me four hundred head of broncs
+and a cute little pigeon to look out for 'em. Me, I'm goin' to lay
+back and learn to play the guitar. I'm goin' to learn it by note."
+
+"You sure got the makin's of a squaw-man," I told him. "Seems like
+I've over-read your hand. I used to think you had somethin' in you
+besides a appetite, but I was wrong. You're plumb cultus, Mike."
+
+"Don't get sore," he grinned. "I got my chance to beat the game and
+I'm goin' to take it. I can't run foot-races, and win 'em, all my
+life. Some day I'll step in my beard and sprain my ankle. Ambition's
+a funny thing. I got the ambition to quit work. Besides, she--you
+know--she's got a dimple you could lay your finger in. You'd ought to
+hear her say 'Emmike'; it's certainly cute."
+
+We bet everything we had--everything except that pinto pony and the
+cream-colored mare. I held them two out, for I figgered we was goin'
+to need 'em and need 'em bad, if my scheme worked out.
+
+The course--it was a quarter-mile, straight-away--was laid out along
+the bottom-land where the grass was thick and short. Me and the chief
+and his girl set on a blanket among the little piles of silver, and
+the rest of the merry villagers lined up close to the finish-line. We
+white men had been the prime attraction up till now, but it didn't
+take me long to see that we wasn't any more. Them people was all
+wrapped up in the lad with the gold name-plate, and they was rootin'
+for him frantic. Last thing he done was to give his eighteen-carat
+squaw-catcher the once-over with his buckskin buffer, then he shined
+it at the chief's girl and trotted down to the startin'-line. I
+noticed that she glued her big-and-liquids on him and kept 'em there.
+
+It was beautiful to watch those two men jockey for a start; the Injun
+was lean and hungry and mighty smart--but Mike was smarter still. Of
+course he got the jump.
+
+It was a pretty start, and Mike held his lead for fifty yards or more.
+I'll admit I was worked up. I've had my heart in my mouth so often
+over his races that it's wore smooth from swallerin', but this time it
+just wouldn't go down. Our dental patient was runnin' an awful race,
+but it looked like Mike had him; then, just as the boy settled down
+and reached out into that long, strong stride of his'n, something
+happened. He slipped. He would have fell, except that he caught
+himself. The next second he slipped again, and Mr. "Man in Love with a
+Gold Fillin'" passed him.
+
+With that them Injuns begun to speak. Some of their yells brought
+hunks of throat with 'em, and that whole region begun to echo as far
+south as the Rio Bravo.
+
+My scheme had worked, all right. You see, when Mike was doin' his
+heavy courtin' I'd planted my ace in the hole; I'd took off the outer
+soles of his runnin'-shoes and filed the spikes almost in two, close
+up to the plate. When I sewed the leather back on, it never showed,
+but the minute he struck his gait they broke with him and he begin to
+miss his pull. He might have won at that, for he's got the heart of a
+lion, but I s'pose the surprise did as much as anything else to
+beat him. It made my heart bleed to see the fight he put up, but he
+finished six feet to the bad and fell across the mark on his face,
+sobbin' like a child. It's the game ones that cry when they're licked;
+analyze a smilin' loser and you'll find the yellow streak. I lifted
+him to his feet, but he was shakin' like a bush in the wind.
+
+"Them shoes!" he wailed. "Them damned shoes!" Then he busted out again
+and blubbered like a kid.
+
+Right then I done some actin'; but, pshaw! anybody can act when he has
+to. If I'd of overplayed my hand a nickel's worth he'd of clumb up me
+like a rat up a rafter and there would of been human reminders all
+over that neighborhood. Not but what I would have got him eventually,
+bein' as I had my side-arms, but I liked Mike and I wouldn't kill
+nobody if I was sober.
+
+It happened that he fell right at the feet of the chief's girl, and
+when I lifted him up he seen her. But, say, it must have been a shock
+to him. Her eyes was half shut, her head was throwed back, and she was
+hissin' like a rattlesnake. Mike stiffened and sort of pawed at her,
+but she drawed away just like that other squaw in our dentist office
+had drawed away from her liege lord and master.
+
+"Waugh! White man heap squaw!" said she, and with that she flirted her
+braids and turned to the winner of the race. She went up to him and
+lifted his lip with her thumb like she just had to have another look
+at his gold tooth, then she smiled up into his face and they walked
+away together without a glance in our direction.
+
+Mike follered a step or two, then he stopped and stared around at the
+crowd. It was a big minute for him, and for me, too, and I'll prob'ly
+never forget the picture of that pantin' boy at bay among them
+grinnin' barbarians. The curs was yappin' at his heels, the squaws
+was gigglin' and makin' faces, the bucks was showin' their teeth and
+pointin' at his tears.
+
+Mike never said a word. He just stooped down and peeled off his
+runnin'-shoes, then he throwed 'em as far as he could, right out into
+the river. "Who the hell would marry a dame like that?" he sobbed.
+"She's stuck on his jewelry."
+
+"Come on, lad," said I; and I led him to our tent. Then, while he put
+on his clothes, I saddled the pinto pony and the cream-colored mare,
+for it was six days to the railroad.
+
+
+
+
+FLESH
+
+I
+
+
+Should you chance, in crossing a certain mountain pass in southern
+Catalonia, to find yourself poised above a little valley against the
+opposite side of which lies a monastery, look to the heights above
+it. Should you piece out from among the rocks the jagged ruins of a
+castle, ask its name. Your guide will perhaps inform you that those
+blackened stones are called "The Teeth of the Moor," and if he knows
+the story he will doubtless tell it to you, crossing himself many
+times during the recital. In all probability, however, he will merely
+shrug his shoulders and say it is a place of bad repute, nothing more.
+
+Even the monks of the monastery, who are considered well versed in
+local history, have forgotten the reason for the name, although they
+recall the legend that once upon a time the castle harbored a haughty
+Moslem lord. Few of them ever heard the story of Joseph the Anchorite,
+and how he sought flesh within its portals; those who have will not
+repeat it. Time was, however, when the tale was fresh, and it runs
+this wise:
+
+Away back in the reign of Abderamus the Just, First Caliph of the
+West, Hafiz, a certain warlike Moor, amazed at the fertility of
+this region, established on the edge of the plateau a stronghold of
+surprising security. His house he perched upon the crest of the cliff
+overlooking the valley below. It was backed by verdant, sun-kissed
+slopes which quickly yielded tribute in such quantity as to render
+him rich and powerful. Hafiz lived and fought and died beneath the
+Crescent banner, leaving in his place a son, who likewise waged war to
+the northward on behalf of the Prophet and all True Believers, at the
+same time farming his rich Catalonian acres.
+
+Generations came and went, and, although the descendants of Hafiz
+waxed strong, so also did the power of the hated Christians. Living
+as they did upon the very fringe of the Mussulman empire, the
+Moors beheld with consternation the slow encroachment of the
+Unbelievers--more noticeable here than farther to the southward.
+At intervals these enemies were driven back, but invariably they
+reappeared, until at length, upon the plain beneath the castle, monks
+came and built a monastery which they called San Sebastian. Beneath
+the very eyes of Abul Malek, fourth descendant of Hafiz, they raised
+their impious walls; although he chafed to wreak a bloody vengeance
+for this outrage, his hands were tied by force of circumstance.
+Wearied with interminable wars, the Moorish nation had sought respite;
+peace dozed upon the land. Men rested and took from the earth new
+strength with which to resume the never-ending struggle between the
+Crescent and the Cross, wherefore Abul Malek's rage availed him
+nothing. From his embrasured windows he beheld the cassocked enemies
+of his creed passing to and fro about their business; he heard his
+sacred hour of prayer desecrated by their Christian bells, and could
+do no more than revile them for dogs, the while he awaited the will of
+Allah. It was scant comfort for a man of his violent temper.
+
+But the truce threatened never to be broken. Years passed and still
+peace continued to reign. Meanwhile the Moor fed upon his wrongs and,
+from incessant brooding over them, became possessed of a fury more
+fanatical, more poisonous even than had been engendered by his many
+battles.
+
+Finally, when the wrong had bit too deep for him to endure, he
+summoned all his followers, and selecting from their number one
+hundred of the finest horsemen, he bade them make ready for a journey
+to Cordova; then in their presence he kissed the blue blade of his
+scimitar and vowed that the shackles which had hampered him and them
+would be struck off.
+
+For many days there ensued the bustle and the confusion of a great
+preparation in the house of the Moor; men came and went, women sewed
+and cleaned and burnished; horses were groomed, their manes were
+combed and their hoofs were polished; and then one morning, ere the
+golden sun was an hour high, down the winding trail past the monastery
+of San Sebastian, came a brilliant cavalcade. Abul Malek led, seated
+upon an Arabian steed whiter than the clouds which lay piled above the
+westward mountains. His two sons, Hassam and Elzemah, followed astride
+horses as black as night--horses the distinguished pedigrees of which
+were cited in the books of Ibn Zaid. Back of them came one hundred
+swarthy warriors on other coal-black mounts, whose flashing sides
+flung back the morning rays. Their flowing linen robes were like the
+snow, and from their turbans gleamed gems of value. Each horseman bore
+at his girdle a purse, a kerchief, and a poinard; and in their purses
+lay two thousand dinars of gold. Slaves brought up the rear of
+the procession, riding asses laden with bales, and they led fifty
+blood-red bays caparisoned as for a tournament.
+
+With scowling glances at the monastery the band rode on across the
+valley, climbed to the pass, and disappeared. After many days they
+arrived at Cordova, then when they had rested and cleansed themselves,
+Abul Malek craved audience of the Caliph, Aboul-Abbas El Hakkam. Being
+of distinguished reputation, his wish was quickly granted; and on the
+following day in the presence of the Hadjeb, the viziers, the white
+and black eunuchs, the archers, and the cuirassiers of the guard, he
+made a gift to his sovereign of those hundred northern horsemen and
+their mounts, those fifty blooded bays and their housings, those bales
+of aloe-wood and camphor, those silken pieces and those two thousand
+dinars of yellow Catalonian gold. This done, he humbly craved a
+favor in return, and when bade to speak, he began by telling of the
+indignities rendered him by the monks of San Sebastian.
+
+"Five generations my people have dwelt upon our lands, serving the
+true God and His Prophet," he declared, with quivering indignation;
+"but now those idolaters have come. They gibe and they mock at me
+beneath my very window. My prayers are broken by their yammerings;
+they defile my casement, and the stench of their presence assails my
+nostrils."
+
+"What do you ask of me?" inquired the Caliph.
+
+"I ask for leave to cleanse my doorstep."
+
+The illustrious Moslem shook his head, whereat Abul Malek cried:
+
+"Does not the Koran direct us to destroy the unbelieving and the
+impious? Must I then suffer these infidels to befoul my garden?"
+
+"God is merciful; it is His will that for a time the Unbelievers shall
+appear to flourish," said the Caliph. "We are bound by solemn compact
+with the kings of Leon and Castile to observe an armistice. That
+armistice we shall observe, for our land is weary of wars, our men are
+tired, and their scars must heal. It is not for you or for me to say:
+'This is good, or this is evil.' Allah's will be done!"
+
+Abul Malek and his sons returned alone to their mountains, but when
+they reined in at the door of their castle the father spat venomously
+at the belfried roof of the monastery beneath and vowed that he would
+yet work his will upon it.
+
+Now that the Law forbade him to make way with his enemies by force, he
+canvassed his brain for other means of effecting their downfall; but
+every day the monks went on with their peaceful tasks, unmindful of
+his hatred, and their impious religion spread about the countryside.
+Abul Malek's venom passed them by; they gazed upon him with gentle
+eyes in which there was no spleen, although in him they recognized a
+bitter foe.
+
+As time wore on his hatred of their religion became centered upon the
+monks themselves, and he undertook by crafty means to annoy them. Men
+said these Christian priests were good; that their lives were spent in
+prayer, in meditation, and in works of charity among the poor; tales
+came to the Moor of their spiritual existence, of their fleshly
+renunciation; but at these he scoffed. He refused to credit them.
+
+"Pah!" he would cry, tugging at his midnight beard; "how can these men
+be aught but liars, when they live and preach a falsehood? Their creed
+is impious, and they are hypocrites. They are not superior beings,
+they are flesh like you or me. They have our passions and our faults,
+but a thousand times multiplied, for they walk in darkness and dwell
+in hypocrisy. Beneath their cassocks is black infamy; their hearts are
+full of evil--aye, of lust and of every unclean thing. Being false to
+the true God, they are false to themselves and to the religion they
+profess; and I will prove it." Thus ran his reasoning.
+
+In order to make good his boast Abul Malek began to study the
+monks carefully, one after another. He tried temptation. A certain
+gross-bellied fellow he plied with wine. He flattered and fawned upon
+the simple friar; he led him into his cellars, striving to poison
+the good man's body as well as his mind; but the visitor partook in
+moderation, and preached the gospel of Christ so earnestly that the
+Saracen fled from his presence, bathing himself in clean water to be
+rid of the pollution.
+
+Next he laid a trap for the Abbot himself. He selected the fairest of
+his slaves, a well-rounded woman of great physical charm, and bribed
+her with a girdle of sequins. She sought out the Abbot and professed
+a hunger for his creed. Bound thus by secrecy to the pious man, she
+lured him by every means at her command. But the Abbot had room for no
+passion save the love of Christ, and her wiles were powerless against
+this armor.
+
+Abul Malek was patient; he renewed his vow to hold the false religion
+up to ridicule and laughter, thinking, by encompassing the downfall
+of a single advocate, thus to prove his contention and checkmate its
+ever-widening influence. He became obsessed by this idea; he schemed
+and he contrived; he used to the utmost the powers of his Oriental
+mind. From his vantage-point above the cloister he heard the monks
+droning at their Latin; his somber glances followed them at their
+daily tasks. Like a spider he spun his web, and when one victim broke
+through it he craftily repaired its fabric, luring another into its
+meshes.
+
+At times he shared his vigil with his daughter Zahra, a girl of
+twelve, fast growing into womanhood; and since she had inherited
+his wit and temperament, he taught her to share his hatred of the
+black-robed men.
+
+This Moorish maiden possessed the beauty of her mother, who had died
+in childbirth; and in honor of that celebrated favorite of Abderamus
+III. she had been christened "Flower of the World." Nor was the title
+too immoderate, as all men who saw her vowed. Already the hot sun of
+Catalonia had ripened her charms, and neighboring lords were beginning
+to make extravagant overtures of marriage. But seeing in her a
+possible weapon more powerful than any he had yet launched against the
+monks of San Sebastian, the father refused to consider even the best
+of them. He continued to keep her at his side, pouring his hatred into
+her ears until she, too, was ablaze with it.
+
+Zahra was in her fourteenth year when Abul Malek beheld, one day, a
+new figure among those in the courtyard of the monastery below. Even
+from his eminence the Saracen could see that this late-comer was
+a giant man, for the fellow towered head and shoulders above his
+brethren. Inquiry taught him that the monk's name was Joseph. Nor was
+their meeting long delayed, for a sickness fell among the people of
+the valley, and Abul Malek, being skilled in medicine, went out to
+minister among the poor, according to his religion. At the sick-bed of
+a shepherd the two men came face to face.
+
+Joseph was not young, nor was he old, but rather he had arrived at the
+perfect flower of his manhood, and his placid soul shone out through
+features of unusual strength and sweetness. In him the crafty Moor
+beheld a difference which for a time was puzzling. But eventually he
+analyzed it. The other monks had once been worldly men--they showed it
+in their faces; the countenance of Fray Joseph, on the contrary, was
+that of a boy, and it was without track of temptation or trace of
+evil. He had lived a sheltered life from his earliest youth, so it
+transpired, and Abul Malek rejoiced in the discovery, it being his
+belief that all men are flesh and that within them smolder flames
+which some day must have mastery. If this monk had never let his youth
+run free, if he had never met temptation and conquered it, those
+pent-up forces which inhabit all of us must be gathering power, year
+by year, and once the joint of this armor had been found, once it
+could be pierced, he would become earthly like other men, and his
+false religion would drop away, leaving him naked under the irksome
+garb of priesthood.
+
+Accordingly, the Moor tested Fray Joseph, as he had tested the Abbot
+and the others, but to no avail, and he was in despair, until one day
+the secret of his failure was unexpectedly revealed.
+
+Being busied with his accounts, he had repaired to the shade of a
+pomegranate grove near the cliff, the better to escape the heat; while
+so engaged up the path from the monastery came the good brother. Just
+abreast of Abul Malek's point of vantage Joseph paused to listen. A
+songbird was trilling wondrously and the monk's face, raised toward
+the pomegranate trees, became transfigured. He changed as if by
+magic; his lips parted in a tender smile, his figure grew tense with
+listening; not until the last note had died away did he move. Then
+a great breath stirred his lungs, and with shining eyes and rapt
+countenance he went on into the fields.
+
+Abul Malek rose, his white teeth gleaming through his beard.
+
+"Allah be praised!" he exclaimed. "It is music!" And rolling up his
+papers, he went into the house.
+
+Early on the following morning another cavalcade filed down past the
+monastery of San Sebastian; but this procession was in great contrast
+to the one that had gone by five years before. Instead of gaily
+caparisoned warriors, it was composed mainly of women and slaves, with
+a mere handful of guards to lead the way. There were bondmaidens and
+seamstresses, an ancient nurse and a tutor of languages; while astride
+of a palfrey at her father's side rode the youthful lady of the
+castle. Her veil was wet upon her cheeks, her eyes were filled with
+shadows; yet she rode proudly, like a princess.
+
+Once more the train moved past the sun-baked walls of the monastery,
+across the plain to the mountain road that led to the land of bounty
+and of culture. Late that afternoon Brother Joseph learned from the
+lips of a herdsman that the beauteous Zahra, flower of all the Moorish
+race, had gone to Cordova to study music.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Abul Malek once more rode home alone to his castle; but this time as
+he dismounted at his door he smiled at the monastery below.
+
+Four years crept by, during which the Saracen lord brooded over the
+valley and the monk Joseph went his simple way, rendering service
+where he could, preaching, by the example of his daily life and his
+unselfish devotion, a sermon more powerful than his lips could utter.
+Through it all the Moor watched him carefully, safeguarding him as a
+provident farmer fattens a sheep for the slaughter. Once a year the
+father rode southward to Cordova, bringing news with his return that
+delighted the countryside, news that penetrated even the walls of San
+Sebastian and filled the good men therein with gladness. It seemed
+that the maiden Zahra was becoming a great musician. She pursued her
+studies in the famous school of Ali-Zeriab, and not even Moussali
+himself, that most gifted of Arabian singers, could bring more tender
+notes from the lute than could this fair daughter of Catalonia. Her
+skill transcended that of Al Farabi, for the harp, the tabor, and the
+mandolin were wedded to her dancing fingers; and, most marvelous of
+all, her soul was so filled with poetry that her verses were sung from
+Valencia to Cadiz. It was said that she could move men to laughter, to
+tears, to deeds of heroism--that she could even lull them to sleep by
+the potency of her magic. She had once played before the Caliph under
+amazing circumstances.
+
+The Prince of True Believers, so ran the story, had quarreled with
+his favorite wife, and in consequence had fallen into a state of
+melancholy so deep as to threaten his health and to alarm his
+ministers. Do what they would, he still declined, until in despair the
+Hadjeb sent for Zahra, daughter of Abul Malek. She came, surrounded by
+her servants, and sang before El Hakkam. So cunningly did she contrive
+her verses, so tender were her airs, so potent were her fluttering
+fingers, that those within hearing were moved to tears, and the
+unhappy lover himself became so softened that he sped to the arms of
+his offended beauty and a reconciliation occurred. In token of his
+gratitude he had despatched a present of forty thousand drachmas of
+gold to the singer, and her renown went broadcast like a flame.
+
+When Abul Malek heard of this he praised his God, and, gathering his
+horsemen, he set out to bring his daughter home, for the time was
+ripe.
+
+One evening in early spring, that magic season when nature is most
+charming, Fray Joseph, returning to his cell, heard from behind a
+screen of verdure alongside his path a woman singing. But was this
+singing? he asked himself. Could mortal lips give birth to melody like
+this? It was the sighing of summer winds through rustling leaves, the
+music of crystal brooks on stony courses, the full-throated worship
+of birds. Joseph listened, enthralled, like a famished pilgrim in the
+desert. His simple soul, attuned to harmonies of the woodland, leaped
+in answer; his fancy, starved by years of churchly rigor, quickened
+like a prisoner at the light of day. Not until the singer had ceased
+did he resume his way, and through his dreams that night ran the song
+of birds, the play of zephyrs, the laughter of bubbling springs.
+
+A few evenings later he heard the voice again, and paused with lips
+apart, with heart consumed by eagerness. It was some slave girl busied
+among the vines of Abul Malek, he decided, for she translated all the
+fragmentary airs that float through summer evenings--the songs of
+sweethearts, the tender airs of motherhood, the croon of distant
+waterfalls, the voice of sleepy locusts--and yet she wove them into an
+air that carried words. It was most wonderful.
+
+Joseph felt a strong desire to mingle his voice with the singer's, but
+he knew his throat to be harsh and stiff from chanting Latin phrases.
+He knew not whither the tune would lead, and yet, when she sang, he
+followed, realizing gladly that she voiced the familiar music of his
+soul. He was moved to seek her out and to talk with her, until he
+remembered with a start that she was a woman and he a priest.
+
+Each night he shaped his course so as to bring him past the spot
+where the mysterious singer labored, and in time he began to feel the
+stirring of a very earthly curiosity, the which he manfully fought
+down. Through the long, heated hours of the day he hummed her airs and
+repeated her verses, longing for the twilight hour which would bring
+the angel voice from out the vineyard. Eventually the girl began to
+sing of love, and Joseph echoed the songs in solitude, his voice as
+rasping and untrue as that of a frog.
+
+Then, one evening, he heard that which froze him in his tracks. The
+singer accompanied herself upon some instrument the like of which he
+had never imagined. The music filled the air with heavenly harmony,
+and it set him to vibrating like a tautened string; it rippled
+forth, softer than the breeze, more haunting than the perfume of the
+frangipani. Joseph stood like a man in a trance, forgetful of all
+things save these honeyed sounds, half minded to believe himself
+favored by the music of the seraphim.
+
+Never had he dreamed of such an intoxication. And then, as if to
+intensify his wild exultation, the maiden sang a yearning strain of
+passion and desire.
+
+The priest began to tremble. His heart-beats quickened, his senses
+became unbridled; something new and mighty awoke within him, and he
+was filled with fever. His huge thews tightened, his muscles swelled
+as if for battle, yet miracle of miracles, he was melting like a child
+in tears! With his breath tugging at his throat, he turned off the
+path and parted the verdure, going as soundlessly as an animal; and
+all the while his head was whirling, his eyes took note of nothing. He
+was drawn as by a thousand invisible strings, which wound him toward
+the hidden singer.
+
+But suddenly the music ended in a peal of rippling laughter and there
+came the rustle of silken garments. Fray Joseph found himself in a
+little open glade, so recently vacated that a faint perfume still
+lingered to aggravate his nostrils. Beyond stretched the vineyard of
+the Moor, a tangle of purpling vines into the baffling mazes of which
+the singer had evidently fled.
+
+So she had known of his presence all along, the monk reflected,
+dizzily. It followed, therefore, that she must have waited every
+evening for his coming, and that her songs had been sung for him. An
+ecstasy swept over him. Regaining the path, he went downward to the
+monastery, his brain afire, his body tingling.
+
+Joseph was far too simple for self-analysis, and he was too enchanted
+by those liquid strains to know what all this soul confusion foretold;
+he merely realized that he had made the most amazing of discoveries,
+that the music of the spheres had been translated for his privileged
+ears, that a door had opened allowing him to glimpse a glory hidden
+from other mortals. It was not the existence of the singer, but of the
+music, that excited him to adoration. He longed to possess it, to take
+it with him, and to cherish it like a thing of substance, to worship
+it in his solitude.
+
+The song had been of love; but, after all, love was the burden of his
+religion. Love filled the universe, it kept the worlds a-swinging, it
+was the thing that dominated all nature and made sweet even the rigid
+life of an anchorite. It was doubtless love which awoke this fierce
+yet tender yearning in him now, this ecstasy that threatened to
+smother him. Love was a holy and an impersonal thing, nevertheless it
+blazed and melted in his every vein, and it made him very human.
+
+Through all that night Fray Joseph lay upon his couch, rapt, thankful,
+wondering. But in the morning he had changed. His thoughts became
+unruly, and he recalled again that tantalizing perfume, the shy tones
+of that mischief laughter. He began to long intensely to behold the
+author of this music-magic, to behold her just once, for imagination
+graced her with a thousand witching forms. He wished ardently, also,
+to speak with her about this miracle, this hidden thing called melody,
+for the which he had starved his life, unknowingly.
+
+As the afternoon aged he began to fear that he had frightened her,
+and therefore when he came to tread his homeward path it was with a
+strange commingling of eagerness and of dread. But while still at a
+distance, he heard her singing as usual, and, nearing the spot, he
+stopped to drink in her message. Again the maiden sang of love; again
+the monk felt his spirit leaping as she fed his starving soul even
+more adroitly than she fingered the vibrant strings. At last her wild,
+romantic verses became more unrestrained; the music quickened until,
+regardless of all things, Fray Joseph burst the thicket asunder and
+stood before her, huge, exalted, palpitant.
+
+"I, too, have sung those songs," he panted, hoarsely. "That melody has
+lived in me since time began; but I am mute. And you? Who are you?
+What miracle bestowed this gift--?"
+
+He paused, for with the ending of the song his frenzy was dying and
+his eyes were clearing. There, casting back his curious gaze, was a
+bewitching Moorish maid whose physical perfection seemed to cause the
+very place to glow. The slanting sunbeams shimmered upon her silken
+garments; from her careless hand drooped an instrument of gold and of
+tortoise-shell, an instrument strange to the eyes of the monk. Her
+feet were cased in tiny slippers of soft Moroccan leather; her limbs,
+rounded and supple and smooth as ivory, were outlined beneath wide
+flowing trousers which were gathered at the ankles. A tunic of finest
+fabric was flung back, displaying a figure of delicate proportions,
+half recumbent now upon the sward.
+
+The loveliness of Moorish women has been heralded to the world; it is
+not strange that this maid, renowned even among her own people, should
+have struck the rustic priest to dumbness. He stood transfixed; and
+yet he wondered not, for it was seemly that such heavenly music should
+have sprung from the rarest of mortals. He saw that her hair, blacker
+than the night, rippled in a glorious cascade below her waist, and
+that her teeth embellished with the whiteness of alabaster the
+vermilion lips which smiled at him.
+
+That same intoxicating scent, sweeter than the musk of Hadramaut,
+enveloped her; her fingers were jeweled with nails which flashed in
+rivalry with their burden of precious stones as she toyed with the
+whispering strings.
+
+For a time she regarded the monk silently.
+
+"I am Zahra," she said at length, and Joseph thrilled at the tones of
+her voice. "To me, all things are music."
+
+"Zahra! 'Flower of the World,'" he repeated, wonderingly. After an
+instant he continued, harshly, "Then you are the daughter of the
+Moor?"
+
+"Yes. Abul Malek. You have heard of me?"
+
+"Who has not? Aye, you were rightly called 'Flower of the World.'
+But--this music! It brought me here against my will; it pulls at me
+like straining horses. Why is that? What wizardry do you possess? What
+strange chemistry?"
+
+She laughed lightly. "I possess no magic art. We are akin, you and I.
+That is all. You, of all men, are attuned to me."
+
+"No," he said, heavily. "You are an Infidel, I am a Christian. There
+is no bond between us."
+
+"So?" she mocked. "And yet, when I sing, you can hear the nightingales
+of Aden; I can take you with me to the fields of battle, or to the
+innermost halls of the Alhambra. I have watched you many times,
+Brother Joseph, and I have never failed to play upon your soul as I
+play upon my own. Are we not, then, attuned?"
+
+"Your veil!" he cried, accusingly. "I have never beheld a Moorish
+woman's face until now."
+
+Her lids drooped, as if to hide the fire behind them, and she replied,
+without heeding his words: "Sit here, beside me. I will play for you."
+
+"Yes, yes!" he cried, eagerly. "Play! Play on for me! But--I will
+stand."
+
+Accordingly she resumed her instrument; and o'er its strings her
+rosy fingers twinkled, while with witchery of voice and beauty she
+enthralled him. Again she sang of love, reclinging there like an
+_houri_ fit to grace the paradise of her Prophet; and the giant monk
+became a puppet in her hands. Now, although she sang of love, it was a
+different love from that which Joseph knew and worshiped; and as she
+toyed with him his hot blood warred with his priestly devotion until
+he was racked with the tortures of the pit. But she would not let him
+go. She lured him with her eyes, her lips, her luscious beauty, until
+he heard no song whatever, until he no longer saw visions of spiritual
+beatitude, but flesh, ripe flesh, aquiver and awake to him.
+
+A cry burst from him. Turning, he tore himself away and went crashing
+blindly through the thicket like a bull pursued. On, on he fled, down
+to the monastery and into the coolness of his cell, where, upon the
+smooth, worn flags, he knelt and struggled with this evil thing which
+accursed his soul.
+
+For many days Joseph avoided the spot which had witnessed his
+temptation; but of nights, when he lay spent and weary with his
+battle, through the grating of his window came the song of the Saracen
+maid and the whisper of her golden lute. He knew she was calling to
+him, therefore he beat his breast and scourged himself to cure his
+longing. But night after night she sang from the heights above, and
+the burden of her song was ever the same, of one who waited and of one
+who came.
+
+Bit by bit she wore down the man's resistance, then drew him up
+through the groves of citron and pomegrante, into the grape fields;
+time and again he fled. Closer and closer she lured him, until one day
+he touched her flesh--woman's flesh--and forgot all else. But now it
+was her turn to flee.
+
+She poised like a sunbeam just beyond his reach, her bosom heaving,
+her lips as ripe and full as the grapes above, her eyes afire with
+invitation. In answer to his cry she made a glowing promise, subtle,
+yet warm and soft, as of the flesh.
+
+"To-night, when the moon hangs over yonder pass, I shall play on the
+balcony outside my window. Beneath is a door, unbarred. Come, for I
+shall be alone in all the castle, and there you will find music made
+flesh, and flesh made music." Then she was gone.
+
+The soul of the priest had been in torment heretofore, but chaos
+engulfed it during the hours that followed. He was like a man bereft
+of reason; he burned with fever, yet his whole frame shook as from a
+wintry wind. He prayed, or tried to, but his eyes beheld no vision
+save a waiting Moorish maid with hair like night, his stammering
+tongue gave forth no Latin, but repeated o'er and o'er her parting
+promise:
+
+"There you will find music made flesh and flesh made music."
+
+He realized that the foul fiend had him by the throat, and undertook
+to cast him off; but all the time he knew that when the moon came,
+bringing with it the cadence of a song, he would go, even though his
+going led to perdition. And go he did, groveling in his misery. His
+sandals spurned the rocky path when he heard the voice of Zahra
+sighing through the branches; then, when he had reached the castle
+wall, he saw her bending toward him from the balcony above.
+
+"I come to you," she whispered; and an instant later her form showed
+white against the blackness of the low stone door in front of him.
+There, in the gloom, for one brief instant, her yielding body met his,
+her hands reached upward and drew his face down to her own; then out
+from his hungry arms she glided, and with rippling laughter fled into
+the blackness.
+
+"Zahra!" he cried.
+
+"Come!" she whispered, and when he hesitated, "Do you fear to follow?"
+
+"Zahra!" he repeated; but his voice was strange, and he tore at the
+cloth that bound his throat, stumbling after her, guided only by her
+voice.
+
+Always she was just beyond his reach; always she eluded him; yet never
+did he lose the perfume of her presence nor the rustle of her silken
+garments. Over and over he cried her name, until at last he realized
+from the echo of his calling that he had come into a room of great
+dimensions and that the girl was gone.
+
+For an instant he was in despair, until her voice reached him from
+above:
+
+"I do but test you, Christian priest. I am waiting."
+
+"'Flower of the World,'" he stammered, hoarsely. "Whence lead the
+stairs?"
+
+"And do you love me, then?" she queried, in a tone that set him all
+ablaze.
+
+"Zahra," he repeated, "I shall perish for want of you."
+
+"How do you measure this devotion?" she insisted, softly. "Will it
+cool with the dawn, or are you mine in truth forever and all time?"
+
+"I have no thought save that of you. Come, Light of my Soul, or I
+shall die."
+
+"Do you then adore me above all things, earthly and heavenly, that you
+forsake your vows? Answer, that my arms may enfold you."
+
+He groaned like a man upon a rack, and the agony of that cry was proof
+conclusive of his abject surrender.
+
+Then, through the dead, black silence of the place there came a
+startling sound. It was a peal of laughter, loud, evil, triumphant;
+and, as if it had been a signal, other mocking voices took it up,
+until the great vault rang to a fiendish din.
+
+"Ho! Hassam! Elzemah! Close the doors!" cried the voice of Abul Malek.
+"Bring the lights."
+
+There followed a ponderous clanging and the rattle of chains, the
+while Fray Joseph stood reeling in his tracks. Then suddenly from
+every side burst forth the radiance of many lamps. Torches sprang into
+flame, braziers of resin wood began to smoke, flambeaux were lit, and,
+half blinded by the glare, the Christian monk stood revealed in the
+hall of Abul Malek.
+
+He cast his eyes about, but on every side he beheld grinning men of
+swarthy countenance, and at sight of his terror the hellish merriment
+broke forth anew, until the whole place thundered with it. Facing
+him, upon an ornamental balcony, stood the Moor, and beside him, with
+elbows on the balustrade and face alight with sinister enjoyment,
+stood his daughter.
+
+Stunned by his betrayal, Joseph imploringly pronounced her name, at
+which a fresh guffaw resounded. Then above the clamor she inquired,
+with biting malice:
+
+"Dost thou any longer doubt, oh, Christian, that I adore thee?"
+At this her father and her brothers rocked back and forth, as if
+suffocated by the humor of this jest.
+
+The lone man turned, in mind to flee, but every entrance to the hall
+was closed, and at each portal stood a grinning Saracen. He bowed his
+shaven head, and his shame fell slowly upon him.
+
+"You have me trapped," he said. "What shall my punishment be?"
+
+"This," answered the Moorish lord; "to acknowledge once again, before
+us all, the falseness of your faith."
+
+"That I have never done; that I can never do," said Joseph.
+
+"Nay! But a moment ago you confessed that you adored my daughter above
+all things, earthly or heavenly. You forswore your vows for her.
+Repeat it, then."
+
+"I have sinned before God; but I still acknowledge Him and crave His
+mercy," said the wretched priest.
+
+"Hark you, Joseph. You are the best of monks. Have you ever done evil
+before this night?"
+
+"My life has been clean, but the flesh is weak. It was the witchcraft
+of Satan in that woman's music. I prayed for strength, but I was
+powerless. My soul shall pay the penalty."
+
+"What sort of God is this who snares His holiest disciple, with the
+lusts of the flesh?" mocked Abul Malek. "Did not your prayers mount
+up so high? Or is His power insufficient to forestall the devil? Bah!
+There is but one true God, and Mohammed is His Prophet. These many
+years have I labored to rend your veil of holiness asunder and
+to expose your faith to ridicule and laughter. This have I done
+to-night."
+
+"Stop!" cried the tortured monk. "Bring forth a lance."
+
+"Nay! Nay! You shall hear me through," gloated Abul Malek; and again
+Joseph bowed his tonsured head, murmuring:
+
+"It is my punishment."
+
+Ringed about thus by his enemies, the priest stood meekly, while the
+sweat came out upon his face; as the Saracen mocked and jeered at him
+he made no answer, except to move his lips in whispered grayer. Had it
+not been for this sign they might have thought him changed to stone,
+so motionless and so patient did he stand. How long the baiting lasted
+no one knew; it may have been an hour, then Joseph's passive silence
+roused the anger of the overlord, who became demoniac in his rage.
+His followers joined in harrying the victim, until the place became a
+babel. Finally Elzemah stepped forward, torch in hand, and spat upon
+the giant black-robed figure.
+
+The monk's face whitened, it grew ghastly; but he made no movement.
+Then in a body the infidels rushed forth to follow the example of
+Abul Malek's son. They swarmed about the Christian, jeering, cursing,
+spitting, snatching at his garments, until their master cried:
+
+"Enough! The knave has water in his veins. His blood has soured.
+Deserted by his God, his frame has withered and his vigor fled."
+
+"Yes," echoed his daughter. "He is great only in bulk. Had he been a
+Man I might have loved him; but the evil has fled out of him, leaving
+nothing but his cassock. Off with his robe, Elzemah. Let us see if
+aught remains."
+
+With swift movement her brother tore at the monk's habit, baring his
+great bosom. At this insult to his cloth a frightful change swept over
+the victim. He upheaved his massive shoulders, his gleaming head rose
+high, and in the glaring light they saw that his face had lost all
+sweetness and humility; it was now the visage of a madman. All fleshly
+passion stored through thirty years of cloister life blazed forth,
+consuming reason and intelligence; with a sweep of his mighty arms he
+cleared a space about him, hurling his enemies aside as if they were
+made of straw. He raised his voice above the din, cursing God and men
+and Moors. As they closed in upon him he snatched from the hands of a
+lusty slave a massive wrought-iron brazier, and whirling it high above
+his head, he sent its glowing coals flying into the farthest corners
+of the room. Then with this weapon he laid about him right and left,
+while men fell like grain before the reaper.
+
+"At him!" shouted Abul Malek, from his balcony. "Pull down the weapons
+from the walls! The fool is mad!"
+
+Zahra clutched at her father's sleeve and pointed to a distant corner,
+where a tongue of flame was licking the dry woodwork and hangings.
+Her eyes were flashing and her lips were parted; she bent forward,
+following the priest with eagerness.
+
+"Allah be praised!" she breathed. "He is a Man!"
+
+Elzemah strove to sheathe his poinard in the monk's bare breast, but
+the brazier crushed him down. Across the wide floor raged the contest,
+but the mighty priest was irresistible. Hassam, seeing that the priest
+was fighting toward the balcony, flung himself upon the stairs, crying
+to his father and his sister to be gone. By now the castle echoed with
+a frightful din through which arose a sinister crackling. The light
+increased moment by moment, and there came the acrid smell of smoke.
+
+Men left the maniac to give battle to the other fury. Some fled to the
+doors and fought with their clumsy fastenings, but as they flung
+them back a draught sucked through, changing the place into a raging
+furnace.
+
+With his back against the stairs, Hassam hewed at the monk with his
+scimitar; he had done as well had he essayed to fell an oak with a
+single blow. Up over him rushed the giant, to the balcony above, where
+Abul Malek and his daughter stood at bay in the trap of their own
+manufacture. There, in the glare of the mounting flames, Fray Joseph
+sank his mighty fingers through the Moor's black beard.
+
+The place by now was suffocating, and the roar of the conflagration
+had drowned all other sounds. Men wrapped their robes about their
+heads and hurled themselves blindly at the doors, fighting with one
+another, with the licking flames, with the dead that clogged the
+slippery flags. But the maid remained. She tore at the tattered
+cassock of the priest, crying into his ear:
+
+"Come, Joseph! We may yet escape."
+
+He let the writhing Abul Malek slip from out his grasp and peered at
+her through the smother.
+
+"Thou knowest me not?" she queried. "I am Zahra." Her arms entwined
+his neck for a second time that night, but with a furious cry he
+raised his hands and smote her down at his feet, then he fled back to
+the stairs and plunged down into the billows that raged ahead of the
+fresh night wind.
+
+The bells of San Sebastian were clanging the alarm, the good monks
+were toiling up the path toward the inferno which lit the heavens,
+when, black against the glare, they saw a giant figure approaching. It
+came reeling toward them, vast, mighty, misshapen. Not until it was in
+their very midst did they recognize their brother, Joseph. He was
+bent and broken, he was singed of body and of raiment, he gibbered
+foolishly; he passed them by and went staggering to his cell. Long ere
+they reached the castle it was but a seething mountain of flame; and
+in the morning naught remained of Abul Malek's house but heated ruins.
+
+Strange tales were rife concerning the end of the Moor and of his
+immediate kin, but the monks could make little out of them, for they
+were garbled and too ridiculous for belief. No Mussulman who survived
+the fire could speak coherently of what had happened in the great
+hall, nor could Fray Joseph tell his story, for he lay stricken with a
+malady which did not leave him for many weeks. Even when he recovered
+he did not talk; for although his mind was clear on most matters, nay,
+although he was as simple and as devout as ever, a kind Providence had
+blotted out all memory of Zahra, of his sin, and of the temptation
+that had beset his flesh.
+
+So it is that even to this day "The Teeth of the Moor" remains a term
+of mystery to most of the monks of San Sebastian.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAUGHING BILL HYDE AND OTHER
+STORIES***
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:37:05 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:37:05 -0700
commit	14badfb2487e1ab2ad556ba920ae6b95023bd304 (patch)
tree	4d5a4d3dfd6b921a8e4a76f38643cb85d9931026