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diff --git a/old/55360-0.txt b/old/55360-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 703ca53..0000000 --- a/old/55360-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,17303 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Your Treasure Is, by Holman Day - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Where Your Treasure Is - Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver - -Author: Holman Day - -Release Date: August 15, 2017 [EBook #55360] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS - -Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver - -By Holman Day - -New York And London: Harper Brothers - -1917 - - -[Illustration: 0001] - - -[Illustration: 0010] - - -[Illustration: 0011] - - - - -WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS - - - - -I--BEING THE STRUGGLE OP AN AMATEUR AUTHOR TO GET A FAIR START - -SPEAKING of money--and it’s a mighty popular topic--the investment of -the first twenty-five cents I ever earned, all at a crack, ought to -have directed my feet, my thoughts, and my future along the straight and -narrow way. Ten minutes after I had galloped gleefully home with that -quarter-dollar from Judge Kingsley’s hay-field, my good mother led me -down to Old Maid Branscombe’s little book-store and obliged me to buy a -catechism. - -I earned that money by hauling a drag-rake for a whole day around behind -a hay-cart, barefoot and kicking against the vicious stubbles of the -shaven field. I honestly felt that I did not deserve the extra penance -of the catechism. However, that first day’s work gave me my earliest -respect for money--earned money. And I also remember that Judge -Kingsley, when he paid me, sniffed and said I hadn’t done enough to earn -twenty-five cents. - -I hated to walk up to him and ask for my pay, because Celene Kingsley -was within hearing; she had come down to the field to fetch him home in -her pony-chaise. That’s right! You’ve guessed it! I’ll waste no words. -It was only another of the old familiar cases. Barefooted, folks poor, -keeping my face toward her, as a sunflower fronts the sun (though the -sunflower has other reasons than hiding patches), I was in the shamed, -secret, hopeless, heartaching agonies of a fifteen-year-old passion. Of -course, I don’t mean that I had loved her for all that time--I’m giving -my age and hers. - -Yes, I hated to walk up. And the judge gave me the quarter only because -he did not have any smaller change. - -And really, for the times, it was considerable of a coin for a single -juvenile job. - -The services of youngsters in those days in Levant were paid for on a -narrower scale--ten cents for lawns and a nickel for shoveling snow, and -so on. And tin-peddlers were mighty stingy in their dickerings for old -rubbers and junk. To get rags one had to steal ’em--our folks made -rugs and guarded old remnants carefully. - -So much for my first financial adventure of real moment--for the biggest -coin I had ever clutched; and right now I lay down my pen for a moment -and spread out two human paws which have juggled three million dollars’ -worth of gold ingots as carelessly as one scruffles jackstraws. That was -maverick treasure. But there’s a big difference between earned money and -maverick money. If you don’t know what maverick means I’ll save you the -trouble of looking the word up in the dictionary. Once on a time, in -Texas, old Sam Maverick wouldn’t brand his cattle. Therefore, a maverick -was a cow or steer unbranded. And to-day it means any kind of property -at large which a bold man or a dishonest man may grab if he can beat -other thieves to it. - -I had an early taste of maverick money, and the taste was so sweet that -I never have lost my hankering for more. - -In the fall of that “year of the catechism” the line gale blew down -the chimney which had stood after the old Pratt house was burned. I was -there before the dust settled, for all the boys knew that there were -wrought-iron clamps high up in the bricks. But I left the clamps to -the next comers and picked up a dented tin box, rusty and dusty and -soot-blackened; I shook it; it rattled and I ran away into the woods. -When I had knocked the box open and looked in and spied coins I had the -heart-thrilling conviction that money worries were over for me in this -life. My first thought was that I would marry Celene Kingsley and settle -down and live happy ever after. If there had been in the box what I -thought at first there was, I could wipe my pen and close my story. - -I dove both hands into the box and brought them up brimming--coins -scattering and clattering back over my trembling fingers. They were big -coins--and I had read much about the days of the bold pirates. - -“Pieces of eight!” I whispered. - -But they were not. When I had winked the mist out of my eyes I found -that they were old-fashioned coppers--bung-downs they used to be called. -Mixed in with them were a few copper tokens, a Pine Tree shilling, a -sprinkling of Speed The Plow cents, and the only coin of any account at -all was a Mexican dollar with a hole in it. - -It wasn’t in my nature to bury that treasure. I knew it was pretty -worthless junk, but I had a hankering to carry it about with me, to feel -its drag in my pockets, to reach in and chink it when no one could hear. -I walked around weighted with it as afterward I have been weighted with -the leaden chunks of my diver’s dress. As early as that in my life I -found that money was a burden as well as a vexation. I didn’t dare to -frisk and frolic with the boys at school; I was not exploiting my new -wealth; I had grounds for caution because there were plenty of Pratts -left in Levant. At home I moved about so quietly that my folks thought, -I reckon, that I was entering an early decline. My mother used to look -at my tongue quite often and made me drink hardhack tea. - -But there is one impulse in the male animal which is not easily -controlled by prudence; it’s that cursed itch to make a show in front -of the female of the species--in front of the special one, the selected -one, the beloved one. Some sort of a jimcrack-peddler came into the -school-yard one noon, and Celene Kingsley, daughter of a plutocrat, -tendered a big, shiny silver dollar and the man could not change it for -her. I walked up, trembling with both pride and panic, and said, trying -my best to act the part of a matter-of-fact bank on two legs, “Let me -handle it for you!” It was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and -my voice was only a weak squawk. - -When she turned to me and opened her big, blue eyes, I was nigh to -running away. - -The boys and girls came crowding around, and I couldn’t blame them for -showing interest; the sight of a Levant Sidney with money on him was a -new one in town. - -I had separated from the coppers the aristocrats of my hoard, the Pine -Tree shilling and the Mexican dollar, by wrapping them in a wisp of -paper. I brought them out first. - -“I don’t know exactly what they are worth in real money,” I told her. -“But you can have ’em at half price.” - -She had been considerably surprised before, but now she was plain -dumfounded. That system of changing a dollar was brand new. - -Then I dredged a trousers pocket and produced a handful of the bung-down -coppers. I began to count them down on a corner of the school-house -steps. - -“Somebody get a wheelbarrow,” advised one of the boys. “That’s the only -way she’ll ever tug-a-lug her change home.” - -“Really, you needn’t bother,” she said, stammering a little. “No, don’t -trouble yourself. I have changed my mind about buying anything.” - -They all laughed. - -“That isn’t money,” said the jimcrack man. “I’d never take that stuff -for my goods.” - -A girl ran up and grabbed into the coppers I had been, heaping on the -stone. She was a Pratt. - -“Ross Sidney, you stole that money,” she squealed. “It was in my -granny’s notion-box. We couldn’t find it after she died. You stole it!” - -“I didn’t steal it--I found it,” I told her. But all the courage had -gone out of me. - -“You ain’t the first thief to lie about your stealings.” - -“But I did find it--I found it after the chimney blew down.” - -“You knew it was ours. You didn’t bring it to us--that’s stealing.” - -“It might have been put there before--” - -“It was my granny’s money. Don’t you suppose I know? She saved old -coppers.” She spread down her handkerchief and began to pile the coins -upon it. - -There did not seem to be any room for argument. In my shame I fell -to wondering how I had ever convinced myself that this money was -treasure-trove. I dug down and gave her the rest of it. Instead of -proudly showing myself a person of means before Celene Kingsley I was. -barely escaping the suspicion of being a thief. - -“If it belongs to the Pratts you’re welcome to it,” I said. “I don’t -want anything which belongs to somebody else.” - -“You’d better remember as much the next time you find money,” snapped -the Pratt girl. “Your conscience will be easier when you die.” - -They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash--that’s so! -When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters -of the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what -that Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine, -my face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest -humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley. - -I think I know what my main mistake was in my first attempts at writing -this tale; I tried to tell the story as if it had happened to somebody -else and the thing was stiffer than a mud-caked tug-line and squealed -like a rusty windlass. Of course, I hate to be saying “I” here, there, -and everywhere--but there’ll come a place in my tale--you’ll think of -it if ever you get as far as that--where there’d be nothing to the story -unless you could see with my eyes and feel with my hands. So, bear with -me and I’ll reel off the yarn as best I know how, making no apologies -after this confession. - -Oh, about that first maverick money I ran afoul of! I never saw that -money again, of course. - -But I did happen to meet Ben Pratt right in front of Judge Kingsley’s -house. I’ll not say how big Ben Pratt was, because you’ll think this is -only a bragging story. He called me a thief and I decided it was about -time to show Levant that the name was not a popular one with me. - -I licked him: - -Judge Kingsley rushed out with a horsewhip and lashed us apart just as I -was finishing Ben up. - -“Young Sidney, you’re a cheeky, tough, brazen character,” said the -judge. I did not answer him. - -It is my nature to take a big lot from all women, considerable from some -men, and devilish little from most men. I had nothing at all to say -to Celene Kingsley’s father, even though I was rubbing half a dozen -swelling welts where his whip had connected with the back of my neck. - -“You come of a tough family,” stated the judge. - -Right then my uncle Deck arrived at the party; he had been watching the -thing from the tavern porch. - -“What’s that you say about our family?” he asked the judge. - -“I don’t care to stand here and quarrel with you, Decker Sidney.” - -“When you horsewhip my dead brother’s boy in the main street you’ll -come pretty nigh to having a quarrel with me, seeing that his own father -can’t protect him.” - -“I merely came out here and stopped a fight which was disgracing our -village.” - -“It’s a nice thing for one of the ‘forty thieves’ to talk about -disgracing a village,” said my uncle. - -As young as I was I knew what was meant when folks called Judge Kinglsey -one of the forty thieves. He belonged to the syndicate that had grabbed -the State’s principal railroad away from the original shareholders; -there was political shenanigan and a good deal of foreclosure trickery. -I never understood the details, but the fact remained that the syndicate -got the railroad. - -“A cheap slur from a cheap man,” said the judge, walking away. - -I can’t say that I resented that remark very deeply, though I suppose -family loyalty should have prompted me to do so. I never in my life came -close to my uncle Deck when he did not have the smell of liquor on his -breath: On each side of his nose there was a patch of perfectly lurid -crimson. He was a horse-trader and he made considerable money. - -“That slur of _yours_ is a high-priced one,” my uncle shouted. “I have -my eye on you, you old hypocrite. There’ll come a day when that slur -will cost you more than you can afford to pay. That’s how high-priced it -is, Judge Kingsley.” - -I didn’t know what my uncle meant then. - -It was a wicked time for me when I did find out, a long while afterward. - - - - -II--ENDING WITH A MEETING ON PURGATORY HILL - - -MY mother was a good woman--a thrifty, kindly, helpful woman, a good -neighbor, in spite of her poverty. - -My short temper, my cheeky disposition, my generally ready impulse to -grab in on short notice, all belong to the Sidney side, I guess. All we -know of the family has come down by word of mouth, and I suspect that -the first rovers who came over in the old days when New England was -really new were pretty tough characters who had plenty of original nerve -to start with and then developed more as occasion required. Well, some -of that sort had to come on ahead and smooth things with the ax and -crowbar--yes, and with the musket, so that the country could get a good -running start. - -My mother was a good neighbor, I repeat. Up in the attic, hanging in -dried bunches from the beams, were spearmint, thoroughwort, hardback, -mullein, pennyroyal, and other pasture herbs which she sent me forth -to gather. Her thoroughwort syrup was guaranteed to cure any case of -whooping-cough--and she gave freely to all who came to her. - -My father was a helpful sort of a man in his own way. He used to -volunteer as boss of all the barn-raising bees in our section--but his -enemies, made up of a considerable army of the men whom he had licked in -his life, said, behind his back, that the only reason he had for helping -at a barn-raising was to show off by running the ridgepole first of -all the crew, and then to start the regular free fight. He fell off a -ridge-pole one day and my mother was widowed. - -I take it that her chief ambition in life was to tame the Sidney -disposition in me--that earnest desire explaining my involuntary -investment in the catechism. My mother’s axioms and teachings would have -made excellent addenda and foot-notes for any catechism. Always did she -counsel me to count ten before speaking angry word or performing angry -act; I don’t remember that I ever did as she told me, though the Lord -Himself knows how much I have suffered in my life on account of that -lack of self-restraint. Two days after I bought the catechism my good -mother thought it was having its effect on my nature. She saw a boy -heave a rock at me in our door-yard and I stood perfectly motionless and -speechless. - -“That’s right, my own son! Count your ten!” she called to me. - -But just at that moment a bumblebee was crawling around over my bare -foot and I was in no mind to disturb him. Therefore, my enemy was -enabled to collect a full supply of rock ammunition and to defy and rout -me when at last I was free from the restraint of the bumblebee. It would -have been the same if I had waited to count ten. Somehow, as the world -is constituted, I have never taken much stock in this watchful-waiting -game while your enemy is hustling to pile up his ammunition and you know -he is doing so. I may be wrong. Maybe this story of mine will show that -I’m wrong. But I hear you say, let’s get on to the story! - -I mean to do so at once; but if I have paused to pull the curtain aside -from my family and my character a bit you may be able to understand some -parts of the story a mite better, because, in spite of that catechism, -in spite of mother-influence, and perhaps mother-goodness deep down in -me, I have butted into adventures which you will not find set down in -the volumes of any well-conducted Sunday-school library. - -I didn’t have my mother long, after my fifteenth birthday. - -I was her sole heir; five minutes before she closed her eyes she gave me -all her little fortune--to wit, the sweetest smile good mother ever left -to bless memory of her, a pat on my hand, a few whispered words in my -ear. - -And then Uncle Deck took me in hand to make a man of me, so he said. - -He wasn’t all bad--don’t understand me as saying that. He would pass -a sleepless night if he failed to cheat a man in a horse trade, but he -would sell his shirt before he would allow any old folks in our town -to go onto the poor-farm. He would sneak around with wood and groceries -after dark, that big, red face of his like a harvest moon, and when they -would start to thank him he would curse the miserable old creatures so -horribly that my blood used to run cold. He prided himself on language -which, so he said, “would break up a Sunday-school picnic if a little -bird sat overhead and twittered it out of a tree.” He saved his choicest -profanity for his comments on Judge Zebulon Kingsley. His hatred went -far back. I don’t know what started it. Perhaps it began in the natural -antipathy such a man as Uncle Deck would entertain for a cold, proud, -punctilious, professedly religious man like the judge. Uncle Deck would -have it that the judge was a hypocrite, a thief at heart, and my uncle’s -constant boast was that some day he would show the judge up; but all -that vaporing seemed to be silly spite, without foundation. Judge -Kingsley was our rich man; he had been judge of probate, and after -retiring from that office he was trusted with funds as a sort of private -banker; folks whose estates he had handled as judge just naturally -insisted on his keeping control; and he had been town treasurer of -Levant for years. - -I hated to hear my uncle rave on about such a man; it was as irritating -as the barking of a cur. - -I have said that my uncle was a horse-trader. Rather, he was a general -country dickerer, if you know the kind. He dealt in everything from a -sheet of fly-paper to a clap of thunder. He had car-loads of horses sent -to him from the West and peddled those to farmers, taking cash or bills -of sale or produce or second-hand furniture or anything else which he -could turn in a trade. He set me to peddling and collecting, and it -was a mean job. At first I used to believe everything which debtors or -sellers would tell me, and the result was that Uncle Deck bawled me out -most dreadfully; and thus being abused by both parties, I got so at last -that I believed nobody. - -Therefore I was in a fair way to be made just the sort of man Uncle Deck -desired me to be. - -And continually, after I was sufficiently hardened, he impressed on me -that I mustn’t be bothering him all the time, asking this and that about -running the business. I must act for myself and then report to him when -he called for an accounting. You shall see how his trying to make a man -of me in this fashion turned me into ways which neither he nor I could -have forecast. Don’t tell me that the activities of this life are very -much a matter of individual election, after all. To be sure, a man might -elect to live a hermit and might get away with the job in good shape; -but if a person throws himself into the ruck of the living, into the -running of humanity, he’ll be apt to find himself leaping from crag to -crag because he has been shooed or jarred. - -I ran up against one Juvenal Bird, newly come to town from the rural -fastnesses of Vienna plantation--plantation meaning an unorganized -township. I had never heard of Mr. Bird, and when he came within range -of my vision I rather wondered because I had not; he seemed to be a -person of some importance. To be sure, his frock suit was rusty and his -plug-hat was fuzzy, but the garb was distinctive. - -Mr. Bird was in search of furniture and I showed him our second-hand -stock; he ordered liberally and largely--especially largely. He took -the biggest stove, the largest bedsteads, the most expansive tables, and -bureaus of breadth. That plug-hat impressed me. When he told me to send -the goods out to his house on the Tumble-dick Road, and to call for -the pay at my convenience, I did not presume to ask for an advance -instalment, after our usual custom. - -I promptly found out that this was one affair of business with which -I should have bothered my busy uncle, who knew all the cheats of the -section. - -Mr. Bird was one of the most notable cheats. His raiment was garb -discarded by an up-country parson, who pitied Mr. Bird after the latter -had been evicted from timber-lands as a dangerous squatter, careless of -fire. Mr. Bird installed the furniture in a shack which he had hired, -then acted as his own carpenter and narrowed all the doors and the -windows. I went out after the money and learned that the law provides -for the replevin of furniture, but does not allow a house to be -mutilated in order to remove the furniture. Mr. Bird grinned at me -through a cracked window and thumbed his nose. - -When I reported to my uncle he told me to go and get it. I refrain from -quoting the words in which he voiced that command. - -“But the law says--” I ventured. - -Again I suppress details. My uncle Deck’s opinion of the law would lack -authority. - -However, being a Sidney, and resenting Mr. Bird’s betrayal of my -innocence, and needing a home and a job, I accepted my uncle’s opinion -of the law for the time being. I collected a gang of my boy intimates. -We went in the night and ripped the stuffing out of Mr. Bird’s nest. - -There’s a queer kind of senseless and secret gratification in doing a -mob job. The human animal has a lot of primeval instincts which need -tickling once in a while. I reckon we boys gratified the wolf streak on -that occasion, running in a pack in the night-time. - -We enjoyed it so much that we held a meeting a night or so later and -organized ourselves as the “Skokums.” I can’t remember how we happened -to light on that name. I was chosen as leader. - -That first sortie was a great success--Mr. Bird was not in a position -to prosecute. We had had a wonderful night, had defied the law, and had -escaped punishment. - -Judge Kingsley was the only man in town who proclaimed indignation -loudly and openly. He expressed himself before a crowd in the -post-office and declared that hoodlums had disgraced the town of Levant. -He looked straight at me and said he would give a reward of ten dollars -for evidence on which the ringleader could be convicted. - -“And I would give one thousand dollars to pay for law to set him free,” - said my uncle. - -“Some day the plug-uglies will be rooted out of this place--and good -riddance to ’em,” snarled the judge. - -“The snout that goes rooting into that business will get twisted off’n -the face of the rooter,” retorted my uncle. He was never very choice in -his language. How those crimson patches on his face did glow and how his -eyes sparkled! - -So, it will be seen, I was not getting on at all with my love-affair. - -It is pretty presumptuous in me to refer to it as a love-affair. That -would intimate--calling it that--a bit of reciprocation on the part of -Celene Kingsley. But she never showed any visible interest in me, even -to looking my way when she met me on the street. I would have liked to -attract her attention, for at last I wore shoes and had clothes without -patches on them. - -The Skokums flourished under cover of the night. - -There was Oramandel Bangs. He was rather simple, and always carried his -mouth open, and nobody in Levant ever forgot that once a hornet flew in -and stung his tongue and it swelled and stuck out of his mouth for days -like the end of a bologna sausage. - -Oramandel had a sneaking suspicion that witchcraft had never been wholly -stamped out by his forefathers in New England. - -We decided to convince him that he was right--there’s nothing like -clinching a man’s faith in the good judgment of his ancestors. - -We hoisted one of his calves into an apple-tree. He “unwitched” the -animal by cutting off its ears and tail before taking it down from the -tree. - -We tied cords to his ox-chains and hid ourselves and slashed the chains -about the dooryard; he ran to the neighbors and reported that the -witches had changed his chains into big snakes. We did a lot more -things, and then imagination began to do the rest for him. He said -the witches wouldn’t allow him to do his farm-work, even though he had -sumac-wood splinters in all his tools and stuck shears around his chum -to make the butter come. Before we realized what mischief a lively -imagination can do to a man, they were obliged to carry the old chap -away to the asylum for the insane. - -And again Judge Kingsley held forth in the post-office. I guess he did a -lot of talking at home, too. - -At any rate, Celene Kingsley was mighty well posted, so I discovered. - -I met her on Purgatory Hill one day--and never did that name seem to -apply so well! I had been out on my uncle’s business, and among -other plunder in the beach-wagon were two shotes in a crate, and they -certainly were taking on about leaving home and mother. - -She was alone in her pony-chaise and the shaggy little brute she drove -was frightened--and I didn’t blame him. I pulled as far into the gutter -as I could and waited; I poked the butt of my whip into the crate and -prodded those shotes, but that only made them screech the louder. - -So she came leading her pony past me. I didn’t expect that she would -stop and speak to me, but she did. I nearly fell off my seat. And she -called me “Mr. Sidney.” It was the first time anybody had ever given me -a handle to my name. I had pulled my hat off when I saw her coming; when -she spoke to me I put it back on again and then took it off so that I -could show her that I knew a little something about manners. However, I -wasn’t at all sure just what I was doing; my head was in a whirl, and I -was damning those pigs in my heart. - -“I thank you, Mr. Sidney,” she said. “Pedro acts like a fool sometimes.” - -Two hours afterward, I guess it was, I thought of just the right reply -to that remark; as it was, I didn’t say anything to her. I couldn’t. - -She started on and then stopped and looked at me. - -Perhaps she guessed something--I don’t know. Girls can act as if they -never notice anything and still they have an eye out all the time; and -what they don’t see they know by instinct. At any rate, there was a lot -of kindness in her face, and perhaps there was pity in her thoughts. - -“I’m afraid I am very bold, Mr. Sidney. I hope you’ll forgive me for -speaking to you.” - -She hesitated. Right there was another beautiful chance for me to say -the good thing which came to me that night after I was in bed. All I -could do at the time was duck my head. - -“I’d hate to have any of the boys who went to school with me get -into trouble on account of their thoughtlessness. I’m sure it’s only -thoughtlessness and skylarking. But older folks, you know, don’t -understand and cannot sympathize with young folks. Now you won’t tell -anybody that I told you something, will you?” - -Just think of it! A secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! - -I gulped and shook my head. - -“Won’t you tell the boys--you’ll know just how to pass the word--that -folks are talking of having a detective to watch the village nights?” - She probably saw that I was incapable of uttering a sound and she went -on, hurrying her words. “Mr. Sidney, of course you understand that I am -not picking you out as the ringleader. That’s not why I am asking you to -pass the word. But I know you are popular among the boys. They all speak -so well of you! And I was so sorry when I heard that your dear mother -had passed on. I wanted to write a bit of a note, but they are very -strict at the boarding-school--we are not allowed to write to young -gentlemen.” - -Think of two shotes, squalling their heads off, furnishing accompaniment -to that! But I’ll say this of the shotes, they had spirit enough to use -their voices--I was dumb. - -“It would be terrible to have anybody arrested here in Levant for boyish -pranks--it’s all thoughtlessness, I’m sure. You and I ought to be able -to straighten everything out.” - -I stood up. - -“Enough said!” I shouted. - -She flinched. Then I realized just how I must have sounded, for she -said, “I didn’t mean to make you angry!” - -I couldn’t blame her for mistaking my looks; I was so mad at myself that -I wanted to lash my back with my own whip. - -“No, no, no! It isn’t the way you seem to think it is! I want to say -that after this--after what you have said to me--if there’s any more -cutting-up in this village I’ll-strip the pelt off the chap who does -the job.” I beat my hand on my breast. “It’s the proudest day of my life -when I can take orders from you.” - -“But I haven’t given orders, Mr. Sidney.” - -“You have. They’re orders to me. The littlest thing you can wish for is -orders to me. If you said for me to cut my hand off I’d do it. Oh, you -don’t know! I have--I don’t know how to say it--but for years--oh, I’m -crazy--” And I was. It was lunacy provoked by the passion of love trying -to outvoice those devilish shotes. - -By the funny look she gave me she was taking me at my word. She hurried -to step into her little chaise. - -“All I mean is this,” I quavered. “I’ll make ’em quit. You look to me. -I’ll be responsible. Don’t you worry.” - -“I’m sure everything will be all right after this,” she told me. “I’ll -depend on you, and I thank you.” - -She went on her way, and the burden I had assumed seemed lighter than -feathers and more precious than golden ingots. - -She had given me her confidence--she had asked me for a service! - -She had thought of me and my trouble when she was away at school! - -A few minutes before I had not dreamed that she was conscious that such -a person as Ross Sidney walked the earth. - -Now, at all events, my poor self was in a little corner of her thoughts. -She was looking to me for help in something which she had made her own -concern. - -I rode down Purgatory Hill, hugging my joy and cursing those shotes. - - - - -III--ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL - -I TRUST you have noted, by this time, that my yarn is not a mere -chronicle of disconnected incidents. Linked circumstances seemed to be -tying me up. One happening had pushed me on to another and I had -allowed myself to be pushed. It might be urged, of course, that I had no -business in inciting a mob to play hob with Mr. Bird--but I had my own -interests to consider, and I had been listening to my uncle’s teachings -on the subject of looking out for number one. - -“You know what happened to your father when he went to running his legs -off on somebody else’s business,” he told me. “If it hadn’t been for me -helping him in his other scrapes, your mother would have been playing -hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel oftener than -she did. I hope you’ve got an ambition to be somebody and to have -something.” - -I did have, but you may be sure I did not tell my uncle that my -principal hankering to get money was so that I might lay it at the feet -of Zebulon Kingsley’s daughter. - -Now, by the expressed wish of that daughter, I started out to control -happenings and to set myself in new ways. - -I passed the word to the Skokums, keeping my promise to Celene. - -I was obliged to be indefinite, for I was guarding that little secret -between her and myself as my most precious treasure. - -As I remember it, I put it to the gang this way: “We ought to behave -ourselves and protect the good name of the town.” They laughed at me and -asked me if I had joined Judge Kingsley’s Sunday-school class. - -I knew they didn’t suspect the truth, nevertheless that dig nearly -put me out of countenance on account of the secret I was cherishing. I -blushed and stammered and I lost my grip then and there as a leader--and -it was the same old story--it was on account of a girl. A girl does -rattle the gear of man-business! - -One of the fellows remarked that I was getting almighty pious after I -had used them to clean up my own dirty job. He said the most of them -had matters of their own which needed attention, and wanted to know if I -proposed to sneak out on them after all the help they had given me. - -I told them that I had thought the thing over carefully and had decided -that what we had done to Mr. Bird was not right or lawful and we’d -better make no more mistakes. - -“Then perhaps you want us to correct that mistake and make up a bee and -carry the furniture back to the old cuss,” suggested one of the Sortwell -boys. - -When I failed to welcome that notion they turned on me in good earnest, -and in my own heart I had to admit, looking on the surface of the thing, -that they had good reason for thinking that I was both selfish and -ungrateful. - -In the Sixth Reader, at school, I had found the story of Frankenstein’s -monster. I saw that in organizing the Skokums I had built a lively -little monster of my own. - -“I have a special and a private reason for asking you to quit and be -good, boys,” I told them. - -“A member who keeps his private and special reasons to himself and -doesn’t trust the rest of us isn’t much of a help in time of trouble,” - said Ben Pratt. “I have never taken a whole lot of stock in you, Ross -Sidney, and now I take less than ever before.” - -From remarks which were dropped I gathered that the rest of them held -similar sentiments. - -“They’re going to have a detective in here,” I told them. - -“Who said so?” - -But that was Celene Kingsley’s secret. - -I had hoped that the threat might scare them. It had just the opposite -effect; the boys of Levant had never seen a detective, but they had -read every five-cent thriller on the subject. To be the object of a real -detective’s attention seemed like glorious adventure--and they were sure -that they were, when on their own prowling-grounds, match for any sleuth -who ever dodged behind trees. - -But I had stood up before her and had beaten fist upon my breast and had -assured her that she could trust all to me. What sort of a knight was I -to wear lady’s favor and then fail to do and dare in her behalf? - -“I had hoped that you knew me better and that I stood higher with you -fellows,” I said. “I’ll admit that you did a big job for me, and I am -grateful. But you all had your fun out of it, for you have said so, over -and over. You’ll have to admit something, yourselves; you’ll have to own -up that we are ashamed of what we did to poor old Bangs. If you keep on -you’ll do other things to be ashamed of. I’m advising you to stop.” - -“We don’t want your advice,” said Ben. - -“Then you’ll get something from me which you’ll like a blamed sight less -than advice.” - -Plainly they were hungry for information. - -“What’ll that be?” asked one of the Sortwell boys. - -“Try on any more of your doodle-busting in this town and you’ll find -out,” I said. Then I left them and went home. - -Some bright chap has made a simile about having as much privacy as a -goldfish. At any rate, by leading an open life, one may be in a position -to prove an alibi. - -I took to spending my evenings in the bar-room of the Levant Tavern. - -That was by no means such a roystering sort of a life as it sounds to -be. They used to sell liquor in the tavern in the old stage-coaching -days, when the place was a post station; the little catty-cornered bar -is there in the big room, its worn wood shiny from the dragging of rough -fists and from many scrubbings; behind is the cupboard, with wavy glass -set in diamond-shaped panes. But the cupboard was bare in my boyhood -days and the shelves were dusty. Dodovah Vose, the landlord, was a -teetotaler and believed in impressing that principle on others. - -“I have seen what liquor will do and undo,” he said when he used to -get on to the subject. “In my young days, when the West Injy trade -flourished and rum held its place without blushing, I have set in -meeting and seen the parson soop a sip of rum-and-water between the -firstly and secondly, and so on. It may have improved him and the -sermon--I’m not arguing. But do you think that liquor would ever have -improved my brother Jodrey and made him the best deep-sea diver on -the Atlantic coast, as he is to-day? No, gents! Where a man needs the -strength of his arms, the full power of his ten fingers, the quickness -of his brain, and the help of his lungs and a good heart--then he’d -better let liquor alone. That’s what my brother says and he has been -deeper underwater than any other man--and you can look around you and -see some of the queer and wonderful things he has brought up for the -peerusal of mankind.” - -The old foreroom was really a storehouse of curious pickings and -gleanings which had been sent up-country, from time to time, by the -diver brother. It had been one of my earliest haunts, for I had always -hit it off nicely with Dodovah Vose. I did not lark about the room or -molest the curios, as other boys in the village sometimes did. - -On the contrary, I always surveyed them with respect and interest; the -awe I felt when I first laid eyes on them never left me, entirely. I -have not been able to determine, exactly, whether my boyhood study of -those objects inspired the hankering I developed, the burning desire to -go down into the depths of the sea some day, or whether the queer things -merely catered to my natural instinct in the matter. At any rate, I -touched them reverently and I asked many questions of Landlord Vose and -he told me hair-raising stories which, he said, his brother had told -him. I remember that when I was so young I was still wearing a plaid -kilt, I got down on all-fours and stuck my leg in the air at his -request; he called it “playing circus,” and gave me a penny. He said I -was a smart boy and allowed that a smart boy might grow up and be made a -diver by Jodrey Vose. So there was an idea put into my head at an -early age. And Dodovah Vose used to call me “Lobster Sidney”--a truly -deep-water nickname! He had a rather droll idea of a joke--it was to -prompt youngsters to go and make fools of themselves. My folks gave -me the middle name of Webster. In order to plague the new schoolma’am, -Dodovah Vose told me to insist on the first day of school that my name -was Ross Webster Lobster Sidney--and I did, even though the boys in the -school laughed themselves sick. Mr. Vose praised me because I had -obeyed orders, and gave me a conch-shell on which, by the aid of three -finger-stops, one could play more or less of a tune. He had already -given to me a shell which whispered in my ear the everlasting murmuring -of the great ocean I had never seen. - -It was a big fountain-shell from somewhere in the West Indies, and it -fairly boomed, deep in its spirals, when I held it to my ear; I sensed -all the vastness and the mystery and the solemnity of the ocean -depths. The more I listened the better acquainted I seemed to be with a -wonderful stranger far away at the other end of a wire. - -It really seemed like a call to bigger things, and my job with my uncle -was getting less and less to my taste. If there’s any such thing as the -angels looking down on earth over the parapets of heaven in their hours -off duty, some of the things my uncle would do in horse trades, in order -to get back at other cheaters, must have grieved the judicious in the -upper spheres. - -I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can look back now and see how my -lashings to the life in Levant were in the way of severance, one by one. - -I found no comfort in the lull of Skokum activities; I reckoned that the -boys were reorganizing and getting ready for a really big slam. I felt -as a timid girl must, feel in a thunder-shower when the thing is right -overhead and there’s an extra wait between claps. - -I continued to visit the tavern evenings and I came, into closer -intimacy with Dodovah Vose. He brought, out old letters written by his -brother and read them to me. In one Jodrey Vose described his venture -on the sunken British frigate _Triton_ somewhere off the coast, of -Nova Scotia. She was bringing pay to the Hessian troops in the American -colonies, so old reports had it. Jodrey Vose was more of a diver than a -writer and his, letter had no frills. He informed his brother, who had -invested modestly in the gamble at Jodrey’s suggestion, that the thing -was a failure, though the frigate had been located by dragging and -Jodrey himself had gone down and explored her where she had lain for -more than a century. - -Diver Vose stated bluntly that he believed, from what; he saw down -there, that the _Triton_ had been scuttled or blown up by certain of her -officers, who secured her treasure, escaped to the main in small boats -and reported her loss in a storm; tradition has it that there was always -considerable doubt about that storm. Also, tradition has it that those -officers settled in America and lived happily ever after. Diver Vose -tried to help pay expenses by raising the cannon. But though they seemed -sound enough under the sea, they crumbled into lumpy masses after they -were exposed to the air. - -“But I never begrudged the money I put in,” Dodovah Vose told me. “I got -my curiosity scratched where it had been itching for a good many years, -ever since Jodrey and I first began to talk about the _Triton_. And I -helped my brother get something off his mind. He wouldn’t have died easy -if he hadn’t made sure about that treasure. I stand ready to invest in -another scheme of his if he ever gets ready to tackle it. That’s to go -down and dig in the bottom of the river Tiber, providing he can fix it -with the town officers of Rome. As near as we can find out from history, -Jodrey and I, when the Romans wasn’t throwing their treasures into -the river to keep ’em away from one another in their civil wars, the -barbarians were up to the same game, because they didn’t enjoy art. And, -of course, there’s always the treasure of the _Golden Gate!_ That’s in -modern times.” - -But it was not in times sufficiently modern so that I knew anything -about it, as my blank stare showed. - -“She caught fire on her way from San Francisco to the Isthmus and was -run ashore with three or four million dollars’ worth of gold ingots in -her. That’s fact! But Jodrey says there’s been so much blasted lying -done since by owners, underwriters, divers, claimers, and others, that -nobody knows for sure just what has become of the treasure. That’s -another of his hankerings--to find out!” - -More and more did I feel the spirit of adventure stirring in me! - -I could not understand why the whereabouts of that great treasure should -remain in doubt, and so I expressed myself to Mr. Vose. - -“There’s some sort of a mystery about it--and so far’s my brother is -concerned he can’t drop regular contracts to go chasing dreams--only -once in so often. That _Triton_ case made a hearty meal for his -curiosity--he hasn’t been hungry for high-spiced stuff since.” He looked -at me with shrewd kindness. “Maybe he’ll let you go on that job after he -has made a diver out of you.” - -I felt a flush in my cheeks. - -“I suppose you have been poking a little fun at me all along when you -have hinted at my being a diver, sir. Do you really believe your brother -would give me a thought?” - -“He might, if you went to him backed up with a letter from me.” - -“I have a mind to ask you for that letter.” - -“And you’ll not get it, my boy! I don’t propose to have your uncle Deck -come yowling and clawing at me like an old tom-cat because I have coaxed -his handy-Andy away from him.” - -“I don’t like the kind of work he puts me to, Mr. Vose. I have grown up -to be a man, almost, and I understand better than I did at first.” - -“You understand, for instance, that when you took that cow away from -Andrew P. Corson last week you left his baby without milk!” He stroked -his nose and peered at me from under eyelids that were cocked like -little tents. - -“There was a bill of sale! He made me go and get the cow.” - -“But do you know what your uncle did, after that?” - -“No, sir!” - -“He went to Andrew P. Corson and said you acted without orders. He lent -Corson the money to buy another cow.” - -I stammered out something about not understanding that. - -“But I do,” said Landlord Vose. “Your uncle Deck wants to get into -politics in this town--he wants to get into politics far enough so that -he can do something to Judge Kingsley. He reckons you don’t need any -popularity. He is starting you out with considerable of a handicap -if you mean to live and prosper in your own town. However, I won’t do -anything to encourage you to leave! I’ve got to keep on living in the -town--alongside your uncle Deck!” - -A flash of family loyalty prompted me to assert that my uncle was good -to the poor. - -“That he is,” said Dodovah Vose. “He is a queer man, your uncle is. But -I don’t want to make a pauper of myself in order to curry favor with -him.” - -It came to me that I’d better have a talk with my uncle, and I started -out, crossing the village square on my way home. - -All at once something landed heavily and violently on my shoulders, -and the attack was so sudden that I was borne to the ground with such -a crack of my forehead on the hard earth that I became unconscious, but -not until I had felt claws of some sort tearing at my cheeks. - -When I came to my senses I was back in the tavern foreroom and Dodovah -Vose was swabbing my face with a sponge wet in warm water. In a corner -of the room Constable Nute and two helpers were hog-tying old Bennie -Holt, the village fool. - -“I ain’t a dove of peace no longer--I ain’t a rooster no longer,” he was -squalling. “I’m a bald-headed eagle! They told me I’m an eagle. I allus -knowed I was some kind of a fowl. They lied to me when they said I was a -dove of peace. I’m an eagle. See what I’ve done! I’ve mallywhacked him. -He made fun of me when I was a dove. Others made fun of me--but now -they’d better look out. I’m an eagle.” - -Whatever the old idiot had been or thought he had been, he was then -plainly a raving maniac. In his struggles he was shedding turkey -feathers with which he had thatched his coat. As far back as I could -remember old Bennie Holt, he used to stand in the square with feathers -of various sorts stuck around his hat, harmlessly indulging his vagary. -But never before had he raised his hand against any human being. - -“I reckon that this time you fired a boomerang, young Sidney,” stated -the constable, reproachfully. “Old Bangs didn’t fly back and hit you, -but this one has. The village will be glad to hear it.” - -“You’d better be careful what you report about me,” - -I told him. “I had nothing whatever to do with old Bennie. Mr. Vose will -answer for me.” - -“We know where to plaster the blame when anything happens in this -place,” insisted Nute. “Now you’ve sent another one to the bug-house!” - -It did not seem to be of much use to talk to that raving old man, but I -tried it. I asked him who had been talking to him. - -“My guardeen angels,” he screamed. “They all come to me and told -me. They was in white and they told me.” I myself had furnished the -pillow-case cowls to the Skokums out of the second-hand stock in my -uncle’s storehouse! - -“There must be some mistake this time, Nute,” said Landlord Vose. “Young -Sidney has been spending his evenings here in the tavern for quite some -time.” - -“Trying to put up a bluff, that’s all. The one who-torches on a fool -can’t complain if the fool kicks back. Here’s more expense to the town, -boarding an insane man at the State hospital. It didn’t cost us anything -as long as he e’t broken crackers out of the grocery-stores, and slept -in the livery-stable. I reckon Town-Treasurer Kingsley will say that -this ends up his patience.” - -“Don’t you dare to tell Judge Kingsley that I had anything to do with -getting old Bennie in this state,” I cried. My face smarted dreadfully, -for Dodovah Vose-. was putting on some kind of stuff to kill the poison -of the-, tool’s finger-nails, so he explained. - -“I don’t need to tell him; he’ll know it for himself.” - -“I’ll find out who did do it! I know well enough!” - -“Of course you know.” - -It was maddening--this determination on the part of Levant to put me in -the wrong in all matters of local disturbance. Here was I, victim of -the resentment of the Skokums because I was trying to obey my promise -to Celene Kingsley, now in imminent danger of further repute as the -ringleader of the latest atrocity--even though I was the sole sufferer -after the devil had been stirred up in the old loafer. - -“You fired him, and the boomerang swung around back and hit you--that’s -all,” insisted the constable. “His mouth has been full of something you -have done to him. If it wasn’t you he wouldn’t be talking about you.” - -While Dodovah Vose was finishing with my lacerated face I pondered -on what he had said about my uncle’s indifference in regard to my -popularity in town. - -Then I stood up in the tavern foreroom and cursed family and foes and -town with such lurid invective--my vocabulary and force being so far -beyond the ordinary capabilities of youth--that even the crazy man was -shocked into silence. I was ashamed of myself even as I ranted. But -then, as in after-times, my temper swept me out of myself. I was blind -and dizzy and there was a roar in my ears like the rush of water. I -swung the fires of anger about myself as a juggler whirls his flaming -torches. I was sorry as soon as it was over--I have always been sorry -when my frenzy has passed. - -When I bowed my head and walked out of the tavern I heard the constable -clucking away like an offended old hen. - -“It’s all a matter for the judge to consider--language and all,” he -declared. - -“But I insist that he is a good boy in his heart,” said Dodovah Vose. - -“Can’t be--coming out of that family--and with the general reputation he -has got since he has worked for his uncle the last four years,” insisted -the constable. Fine dwelling-place for me--Levant, eh? - -My uncle was in bed and asleep when I got to the house--and perhaps -it was just as well, because I was quickly forgetting my shame and was -ready for a further squabble; a disposition on my part which has never -been especially helpful during my life. - -I made careful and disgusted study of my striped face in the -looking-glass before I went to bed. In spite of my innocence, there I -was, the labeled participator in an affray. In this world, as you have -probably noticed, the man who carries around a blacked eye or a bunged -lip never succeeds in dissipating the suspicion that he has been in some -sort of a disgraceful mix-up, in which he was more or less to blame. -You may remember how you yourself have felt in the case of your friends, -even when a sliding rug or a closet door has been saddled with -the blame. A man with a marked-up physog is never at his best as a -defendant. I dreaded the next day, for it seemed pretty certain that -I would have to face Judge Kingsley. But the feeling that his daughter -might be brought to doubt the sincerity of my promises, when she heard -the story and beheld my face, kept me awake more effectually than did -the pain of that ferocious clapperclawing. - - - - -IV--THE TRAINING OF THE QUEEN OF “SHEBY” - -I WAS awake so long in the night I overslept next morning, of course. -Breakfast had been cleared away by the time I got dressed and was -down-stairs. - -I had made up my mind to have a run-in with my uncle, but I was starting -with a disadvantage. Coming late to breakfast in that busy household -amounted almost to a crime, and the look of disgust my aunt Lucretia -set on my face made my courage drop tail. She was never amiable, and she -considered me an intruder in the family, as well I knew. - -“I have left your doughnuts and coffee in the but’ry--and your uncle -wants you in the stable.” She turned her back and went on with what she -was doing at the stove. - -I ate the doughnuts on my way to the stable, trying to whip up my -rancor. I expected to be received with a hoot and a howl, and depended -on those spurs to start my own temper on the gallop. - -Uncle Deck was just pushing a bottle back into the oats in the bin. He -slammed down the cover and wiped his mouth and grinned at me. He was in -the best of good humor. I was chewing on food his money had bought, and, -I repeat, he was as pleasant as a basket of chips. In the face of that I -couldn’t screw a mean word out of myself. - -“She sure was some operator with her claws,” he remarked. But he -wouldn’t listen to my indignant explanation; he plainly had his own -business on his mind that morning, and it was business which seemed -to be affording much satisfaction. He gave me a push toward the -harness-room, the sanctum where he performed most of his deviltry in -horse matters. - -In that harness-room was hitched the worst-looking old pelter of a plug -I had ever laid eyes on. - -Uncle Deck put his hands on his hips and swapped looks between myself -and the horse. He was master of a certain kind of cheap, horse-jockey -patter which he employed at fairs when he wanted to call a crowd around. -He struck a pose and “orated.” - -“Having a knowledge of hoss pedigree, relatives, previous condition of -servitude, religious preferences, and other matters pertaining to, and -so forth, even going back to the fact that the hoss Bucephalorus, that -was owned by the late Aleck the Great, cocked his left hind leg when he -stood in the stall, had a nicked right ear, and a wind-gall puff behind -each fore shoulder, I want to say that I reckon that never before was -there gathered, collected, and assembled on four legs every kind of a -pimple, bump, wheeze, scratch, spavin, horn ail, hock bunch, trick, -and bobblewhoop, that’s laid down by old Medicombobulus, in his book -entitled ‘Things a Hoss Can Get Along Without.’ I call this ancient -Gothic ruin ‘Carpenter Boy,’ sired by Pod Auger, dammed by Hemlock -Maid--and, in fact, damned by everybody who has ever owned him. Speed -is developed in him by feeding the celebrated spiral oats, produced by -crossing shoe-pegs with bed-springs, which in process of being digested -uncoil and carry the animile in leaps like the mountain-goat.” - -After that outburst I definitely, in my own mind, set forward to some -future date the matter of an understanding with my uncle. - -“How did it ever happen that anybody could unload this on you?” I asked -him. - -“Because I went out hunting for it, sonny. It was the worst I could do -on short notice. If it had looked worse and had had more ailments and -outs I would have paid more for it. Now ask no more questions, but lend -a hand to what I tell you to do.” - -I have no time to go into the details of what my uncle Deck did to -that equine framework, but if I could describe it all I’d be furnishing -considerable of a handbook for the uses of tricky horse-swappers. I had -helped in many similar jobs in that back room of his stable, but I had -never seen him put so much art and soul into the work before; he seemed -to have special reasons for his painstaking toil. He chuckled whenever -he secured a particularly good result; at times he gritted his teeth and -swore under his breath regarding some party whom he did not name. But -I gathered that this transformation of a horse was intended as -satisfaction of one of his bitterest grudges. - -He had everything to do with in that horse beauty-parlor of his. There -were ointments and colorings, false hair for mane and tail, skin-patches -and disguises for puffs and swellings. But still the horse remained -gaunt; the rafters of his ribs suggested that he needed to be shingled -in. To my general wonderment as to what my uncle was about, anyway, -was now added more lively curiosity; how was this living skeleton to be -disguised as to skinniness? I found out before long. My uncle put on the -poor brute a bridle with a wicked twist-bit and told me to hold him, no -matter how much he kicked about. - -Then Uncle Deck brought out a bit of board into which shoe-pegs had been -set thickly. He began to clap the pegged board against the horse’s skin. -I had my work cut out for me after that, I can tell you. The pain must -have been excruciating, for the bradding-pegs raised blisters. In a -little while the ribs were hidden by this new and deceptive plumpness. -The horse took on the appearance of an animal which had been well cared -for in the food line. And he certainly displayed the spirit of Phoebus’s -nigh wheel-horse. His nostrils snorted furiously and his eyes flamed. -It seemed incredible that this animal with flowing mane and tail, with -round barrel and smooth limbs, was the decrepit old creature I had seen -on my arrival in the room. - -Lastly, my uncle Deck oiled the horse from stem to stem, smoothing the -hair into place, and then stood and admired his handiwork. - -“Now let’s see what the needle will do for style and knee action,” he -said. He gave the horse a jab with the hypodermic--I had seen him do -that at horse-trots just before the race was started. He hitched a long -rope into the bridle and led the animal out into the yard. In a few -moments the horse was prancing and curveting and whickering like a -blueblood of youth and spirit. - -“But he won’t last this way!” I said. - -My uncle turned withering side-glance on me. “Do you think you’re -telling me something I didn’t know? Of course he won’t last. I don’t -want him to last. If he would pop like a blown-up paper bag when I got -ready to have it happen I’d like it all the better. But, as it is, it’ll -be bad enough. Don’t you know a good name for him out of some of those -books you have read, son?” - -But while I was hesitating my uncle dipped in with his usual impatience. - -“I have thought of it already! ‘Judge,’ that’s his name. When she hears -Trufant call him ‘Judge’ the coincidence will catch her interest, likely -enough. She will prick up her ears!” - -Right then I pricked up my own ears. I understood mighty sudden. I had -seen the writing tacked on the notice-board in the post-office the day -before. Judge Kingsley had let it be known that he was in the market for -a driving-horse, suitable for use by ladies. I had read it with mingled -emotions, realizing that Celene Kingsley had grown to girlhood out of -childhood; no longer a pony-cart for her! - -“But he’ll never buy a horse from you?” I blurted, staring at my uncle. - -“Who won’t?” - -“Judge Kingsley.” - -“Probably he wouldn’t if he thought it came from _me_. But I’m baiting a -hook that he’ll swallow or I’m no guesser.” - -My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me. - -“Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out -a few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of -Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night, -around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a -hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’ -has got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.” - -“I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected. - -My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers. - -“A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on -his weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh -will be bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss--there’s no -doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short -notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of -the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will -stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets -out of sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse -frolicked. “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, -and peepers! Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the -bridle, and led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll -slip you ten dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s -time for you to understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.” - -I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought. - -I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and -pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had -had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, -I’m sure of it. - -But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his -home, under his thumb. - -“You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like -the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, -and girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung -around the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous -horse. - -I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be -sure, the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But -the horse was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my -thoughts. Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag -that I had helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that -some of my promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the -matter of old Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There -was such a thing as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the -situation. But to allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little -sanctuary where I enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme -which must ruin forever all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, -these were sacrifices I did not feel called on to undergo. I had my -own pride to consider. I no longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene -Kingsley. What was in me was a romantic hope that she would think on -me once in a while when I was far, far away--remembering that I was her -slave in what she asked and that I had asked nothing of her. - -However, to have her memories of me mixed in with thoughts of the -horse-trading cheat which I had connived at was reflection unendurable. - -I went to the wood-shed and secured an ax. It occurred to me that when -a horse had so many bumps on him, one more and a deadly bump on his -forehead would not attract much attention; furthermore, my uncle seemed -to think that the animal’s course was nearly run. - -I faced the brute. His ears were hanging in despondency. His eyes were -dropping tears; those blisters must have been stinging like the -martyr’s skin under the shirt of fire. When I looked on that woe all my -resolution left me. I dropped the ax. There were tears in my own eyes. I -felt as if he were my brother in common sorrow. So I went to the -cellar and fetched apples and carrots and fed them into his gratefully -slobbering mouth until he sighed and spraddled his legs and went to -sleep. - -Constable Nute came for me during the day. - -“There ain’t any subpeny to this, young Sidney,” he informed me. “If -you feel too guilty to face Judge Kingsley, who is making an informal -investigation, you needn’t come.” - -“I am not guilty. I’m not afraid to face the judge.” And I went along. -There was no one else in his office. He had been calling in persons and -examining them one by one. I was alone with him after Nute left. - -I gave in my version of what had happened the night before and declared -that I had had nothing whatever to do with putting notions into the -noddle of the village fool. - -“But as to this society of young vandals which has been disgracing the -village? Certain members of the gang have confessed to me that you are -the organizer and the ringleader.” - -“And I confess that I _was_ leader at first,” I owned up to him, just -as manfully as I could. Then I told him about Mr. Bird. “When I realized -that I was making a mistake I stopped being leader. I have had nothing -to do with the society since.” - -He had a way of shooting speech out through his pinched nostrils with -a sort of a jew’s-harp twang. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a -good looking over. - -“Becoming an angel overnight by the natural piety of the Sidney -disposition, eh? Young man, you are lying to me! Now tell me the real -reason why you quit your devilishness.” - -I had no mind to tell him, and I was silent. - -“You had another reason, didn’t you? A better reason?” - -I confessed that I had. But I wouldn’t tell him what it was, even when -he raised his voice to me and pounded on the table with his fist. If he -had been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man -would have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I -knew that Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself -by talking to me. - -“You can’t tell the truth--you won’t tell the truth--for the truth isn’t -in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the boys who -have owned up.” - -“I knew there were sneaks in the crowd--that’s another reason I had for -getting out, Judge Kingsley.” - -“If anything else happens in this village we shall know where to place -the blame.” - -“It isn’t fair, Judge Kingsley!” I remonstrated. “I’m not getting a -square deal in this thing. I know that old Nute has been talking to you -the way he calked to me last night. They are all bound to put the blame -on to me.” - -“I know for myself.” - -“No, sir! You don’t know for yourself. You say I can’t tell the truth! -I’ll show you that I can, even when it’s to my own hurt--yes, sir, to my -awful hurt! You have advertised for a horse, haven’t you?” - -“Yes.” - -“My uncle is going to send around a man dressed in woman’s clothes--this -very evening--so as to fool you in the dusk with the worst fraud ever -propped on four legs.” - -That confession didn’t help me a bit and I ought to have had sense -enough to know it before I opened my mouth. I had made the judge -more thoroughly angry than ever; I had offended his pride as a shrewd -business man. - -“What cock-and-bull yam is this? Do you think I can be fooled by cheap -horse-jockey tricks? You young fool, what do you mean by insulting me?” - -“You just wait till you see the horse,” I retorted. “I helped fix him -and I didn’t know him, myself, after the job was done. But I don’t want -to see you gulled, Judge Kingsley. I am following new ways from now on. -You know my uncle and how I am beholden to him! When I open up to you -about him it ought to show you that I want to be honest, no matter how -much the truth is going to harm me.” - -“There’s no decency in this town--not even honor among thieves,” snarled -the judge. He pointed to the door. “That’s all for now, young Sidney! -Remember for yourself--and tell others--that the grand jury sits in this -county within a fortnight! Upon actions from now on depends what the -county prosecutor will be inclined to do.” - -Judge Kingsley’s office was a sort of ell affair built out from the side -of his mansion. When I left it I ducked around to the rear of the house -and made off down through the orchard, having no relish to show my -clawed face to the public. I had my day to myself and I did not hurry; I -had many things to ponder on. - -All at once I heard the sound of somebody running on the turf behind me. -I turned and faced Celene. I curved my forearm across my countenance, -ashamed of my appearance, her own flushed cheeks were so radiantly -beautiful! - -“I know how it happened. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said, -graciously. - -“They ste’boyed him on to me!” I told her. “I have tried to make ’em -stop their tricks, just as I promised you. So they did this to put me -in wrong. Your father is hard on me! I tried to make him understand that -I----well, I wanted--” - -“I overheard--I couldn’t help overhearing.” Then her cheeks grew rosier. -“I’ll own up. I listened at the door. I wanted to know. And that’s why I -came after you. You have kept our little secret and I know you have done -your best in other ways. So that’s why I’m here. I want to thank you. -And--I--Well, I think that’s all!” - -It seemed to finish it as far as I was concerned, too; I couldn’t pump a -word up out of myself. So we stood there and looked up into the trees. - -“Father has been talking to them to-day,” she said, after a time. -“Perhaps they are warned now and won’t be up to any more mischief. And -they ought to be sorry for what they have done to you. I think you can -have a lot of influence over them after this.” - -“I don’t know about that. I’m going away from here.” - -That statement astonished her just as much as it astonished me. I had -not thought of announcing my departure ten seconds before; it had not -been in my mind that I was going away. But all of a sudden the memory -of what I had told the judge about the horse popped into my thoughts. -Considering what would be my uncle’s state of mind after the exposure, I -reckon the going-away idea followed as naturally as the right answer in -a sum of addition. - -“I had supposed that your outlook--your position with your uncle--was -very promising,” she said. “The town needs smart men.” - -The fact that she had spent one thought upon my condition interested me -more than the implied compliment. - -“If I stay with him I’ll only be a country cheat and horse-dickerer. -I want to be something else,” I told her. “This very day my uncle is -trying to put up a job on your father. I have told the judge about it.” - -“I heard you. It was another reason why I wanted to speak to you--to -encourage you in being honest. There’s no need of father bringing you -into the matter at all. It would only make trouble between your uncle -and you. I’ll speak to father.” - -“You’d better not, for then you’d be making trouble for yourself. I’d -rather take all the blame of it.” - -We stood and looked at each other for a long time. - -“I’m not a coward,” she said. - -“But it will come out about me blabbing--some way it will come out. -There’s no need of you being in the scrape. I’m going away, and I may as -well go flying while I’m about it!” - -“I hope--” she said, and that was as far as she got. I know how I -was feeling inside and perhaps my feelings showed too plainly on that -striped face of mine. She looked scared and turned and hurried away. I -didn’t know whether she hoped I’d stay in Levant or hoped I’d do well -wherever I might roam. I watched her out of sight and she did not turn -to look at me. I couldn’t exactly figure that out--whether she didn’t -want to give me a last glance or didn’t dare to. - -I fingered in my vest pocket while she was running away; when she -disappeared I pulled out a packet and opened it. There were three rings -in it. One was a coral ring; I bought it when I was fifteen and paid -thirty cents for it. I never had the courage to give it to her when we -were at school. There was a silver ring which I bought a year later when -my circumstances were a little better--better than my courage. Lastly, -there was a gold ring which I had secured in a dicker soon after our -meeting on Purgatory Hill. I am not going to discourse on the fool -impulse which prompted me to buy those rings and stick them in my vest -pocket. Nor will I say anything concerning another impulse which made -me wrap the rings up and drop them into a cleft in the trunk of an -apple-tree. If I did not dare to give them to her, at least I could -leave them on her premises. Then I went by back ways to my uncle’s -house. - -Before I was out of sight of Judge Kingsley’s mansion I looked behind me -several times. I didn’t know but I might see a flutter of a handkerchief -from some window, for a vague and queer kind of hope was still in me. I -saw no flutter, but I did see a strange man who was strolling along my -trail. I was too busy with other thoughts to wonder who he might be. - -I found my uncle admiring the transmogrified horse. - -“I have been whetting the old hellion’s appetite,” he said, and I knew -by the expression on his face that he was referring to Judge Kingsley. -“I have had half a dozen fellows from the back districts drive one old -skate after another into his dooryard, and inside of an hour he’ll have -a chance to inspect a few more skeletons and bone-piles. By nightfall -he’ll be hungry for a peek at something which doesn’t look as if it -would have to be pushed on casters by iron reins. Oh, he’s hungry! He’ll -swallow this one.” - -More than ever was I coming to understand into what complicated and -precious gears I had flung my trig--and what the consequences to me were -likely to be. - -“Now come out into the harness-room,” commanded my uncle. “I want you to -have a look at the Queen of Sheby.” - -I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had -no doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled -up about him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil -partly draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe. - -“I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like -this the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a -scolding woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.” - -“You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I -don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like -you, right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and -reach into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let -me see you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.” - -Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased -quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to -see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to -me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not -going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. -He kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like -the judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man -dressed up like a woman. - -“I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said, -facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that -will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m -a good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and -hectored and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.” - -“I’ll kill you if you do--I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and -my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion -performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.” - -He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle. - -“You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you -old angleworm.” - -After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me. - -“I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face -is smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.” - -“I’ll not turn any such trick,” I said. I was angry in a moment. So was -he. - -“You will if I tell you to.” - -“I won’t; and I’ll say further that I don’t think much of this business, -anyway.” - -“Nor I--and that’s two against one,” declared Runnels, the tip of his -thin nose beginning to glow as if new courage had hung out a banner. - -Liquor had also given my uncle’s temper an edge of its own; he cuffed -Runnels until that lamenting “lady’s” hat fell off. I jumped up and ran -away into the fields, for I knew that Uncle Deck was merely warming -up on “Squealing John”; as chief mutineer, I was ticketed for the real -bout. I lurked about in the pine grove till after sunset. Then I stole -back into the village with all the stealth of a criminal. - - - - -V--SHOOING AWAY A SCAPEGOAT - -I RECKON it’s best for innocence to go boldly in this world. At any -rate, I would have come off better that night if I had not lurked and -prowled. However, I was only obeying very wise dictates of prudence; my -uncle had been sufficiently savage in the harness-room when rebellion -was merely in process of hatching. To meet him after Judge Kingsley -had exploded the bomb--and I was sure that I would be revealed in -the matter--would be like getting in the path of a Bengal tiger with -snap-crackers blistering his tail. - -I wasn’t at all certain what I would do after I found out that I -had been exposed to my uncle’s fury; first of all, so I felt, it was -essential to learn what had developed in the horse trade. - -So I stole in the gloom around behind the buildings of the village and -retraced my trail up through the judge’s orchard. While I was still some -distance from the mansion I heard considerable of a hullabaloo above -which rose the shrill voice of “Squealing John” Runnels, who was issuing -warnings about “laying a whip on that hoss.” Then there was a racketing -and a splintering and down past me came an outfit which I recognized. -The horse was certainly the brute my uncle had doctored into false -shapeliness; the mane was dangling in shreds where the apple-tree limbs -had raked. Runnels, his woman’s hat hanging on his back, was kneeling -on the bottom of the wagon, both hands full of false hair which he had -reaped from the horse’s tail in effort to check the animal; he had lost -the reins and they were dragging uselessly on the ground. - -Not far from me the wagon was flailed against a tree and Mr. Runnels was -violently dislodged; but I judged that he was not injured because, after -rolling over and over on the turf, he rose and ran away with his skirts -gathered around his waist. - -It was evident that my uncle’s plot had failed ingloriously. - -I could understand the flash of fresh spirit in that moribund horse; -Runnels had shrieked warnings regarding a whip; a lash laid across those -tingling water-blisters must have made that poor old pelter develop a -hankering to outfly Pegasus. He disappeared with fragments of the thills -clattering on his heels. - -Then there were immediate and further developments in that orchard. -I thought for a startled moment that it was enchanted ground. White -figures began to pop up here and there and came flocking to me. I found -myself surrounded by the Skokums, wearing the pillowcase masks I had -furnished. - -They seemed to think I had some information regarding the runaway or was -concerned in it, but I had no news to give out. One of them brought the -old felt hat with its broken feather. - -“I didn’t know there was any woman in these parts who could cuss like -that one did when she went down through the orchard,” said one of the -Sortwell boys. “I reckon that detective is finding mysteries piling in on -him pretty thick.” - -“What detective?” I asked. - -“The one that Judge Kingsley has been hiding in his house. That -detective was hid in a closet in the office to-day when the judge was -asking questions of us.” - -“How do you know he was there?” - -“Cigar smoke was coming out of the cracks in the closet door. So -somebody was hid. And since then he has been outdoors and we piped him -off. He followed you home. Didn’t you see him?” - -I did remember the strange man who had been loafing along behind me, but -I kept my own counsel. I had a more important matter on my mind. - -“I want to know which of you fellows told Judge Kingsley to-day that I -am ringleader of this gang?” - -No one answered me. They went on making fun of the detective, and I’ll -admit that it seemed to me that he was putting up a poor job in his -line. My reading had given me a rather exalted idea of detectives, but -a man who smoked behind a closet door while eavesdropping, and through -whose identity those country boys saw straightway, was certainly a -clumsy operator. Therefore, I lost interest in him and persisted in my -own business with them. - -“I’m going to overlook your dirty work in setting old Bennie on to me,” - I said. “You may have done it only for a joke, and there’s no telling -what a fool will do when you start him off. But there’s no joke in -blowing on me to Judge Kingsley--and you say there was a detective -listening behind a door. Now own up!” - -Nobody volunteered. - -“I told him myself that I was in it at first. But when I said I was out -of it he made it plain that some of you are still putting the blame on -me. Whoever has said anything of that kind to him is a sneak.” - -No word from any of them. - -“And the fellow who won’t speak up to me now, so that we can settle this -thing, is a coward.” - -There was no such thing as picking out a guilty face in that crowd; they -were hooded with those pillow-slips. I wasn’t sure which was which; I -couldn’t locate even Ben Pratt in the gang, and he was the special chap -I had in mind as informer. - -“I can say this,” stated one of the boys, “that I didn’t mention your -name to the judge, Ross. So there’s no chance for a fight between you -and me. But when you come to twitting about the throwing-down business, -let me remind you that you did the first job in that line; you threw us -all down. And that was after we had turned a trick that saved you and -your uncle good money.” - -“But what the rest of you wanted to do was go around in the night -and raise the devil in this town, simply for the sake of mischief. I -wouldn’t do that, and I told you so.” - -“But how about a case where we’d be protecting ourselves against -somebody who was doing us dirt?” - -“Nothing like that has been put up to me.” - -“It’s going to be in about three seconds. You organized this society; -now do something for it. We’re going to coat that detective with -molasses and feathers and ride him out of the village on a rail. We call -on you to boss the job.” - -“I won’t do it.” - -“Then join in with us and help.” - -“No!” - -“This isn’t mischief--it’s tackling an enemy. You haven’t got any good -excuse for throwing us down.” - -“I’ve got an excuse that suits _me_. I have made up my mind to travel -straight in this town, after this. I’m going to do it. I have my own -good reasons for doing it.” - -“Lost your courage, hey?” - -“It takes more courage to stand up here and say what I’m saying than to -lead this mob.” - -“So _you_ say, but that doesn’t convince _us_. Go home, then, and get -out from underfoot.” - -It came to me all of a sudden and with sickening force that it required -more courage to go home and face my uncle than to undertake any other -project which my mind could grasp just then. - -I stood stock-still and they began to suspect my motives in sticking -around. - -“You won’t head the party, you won’t go along as a member, you won’t get -out of the way,” growled a voice, and I recognized Ben Pratt. “What do -you intend to do--make a holler?” - -I could be just as stiff in temper as any of that Levant bunch. - -“A good deal depends on what you devils intend to do,” I said. - -“You may as well know at the start-off! We intend to have that detective -out of Judge Kingsley’s house! If he doesn’t come out when we call him -we shall go in and get him.” - -“That’s a prison crime--entering a house like that,” I warned them. -“Also, think what a report that is to go out from Levant! A guest of -our leading citizen dragged from a private residence by a mob! There’s a -sacredness about a home--” - -“What book did you get that out of?” asked some one, and they laughed. - -I suppose it did sound mighty top-lofty and unlike anything else that -ever came from me. But I was thinking with all my might of Celene -Kingsley and what an awful thing it would be to have those young hyenas -invade that house in the night-time. You can say what you want to about -hoodlumism in the city--it’s bad! But you’ve got to go back into the -country for unadulterated hellishness, when a mob really gets started. -Furthermore, nobody is especially afraid of a village constable. I could -foresee dirty doings that night in Levant. I had seen one mob in -Levant when I was a youngster; they tarred and feathered a fanatical -evangelist, and he died of fright. - -I tried to think up something in the way of argument and I stammered -about local pride and so forth, but my talk didn’t ring true, and I felt -it and they knew it. Personally, I didn’t care a hoot about that clumsy -fool of a detective, and I was not remarkably fond of sneering Judge -Kingsley. If I could have stepped up to those boys and explained my love -and my hopes and my fears for Celene Kingsley I might have made some -impression on them. But that was not to be thought of. - -While I talked I saw them crawling toward me, spreading out, two by two. -It was plain enough--they intended to start their foray by making me a -captive so that I could not interfere. - -Therefore, I made hasty resolution and turned and ran with all my speed -toward Judge Kingsley’s house. I wasn’t at all sure just what I intended -to do, but my impulse was to forewarn the household so that Celene might -not be frightened. The Skokums came on my heels on the dead jump. But I -had a good lead of them when I came around the corner of the house. - -Then a man tripped me, pounced on me, and sat on me; I was a submissive -captive, for the breath was knocked out of me when I fell. The instant -the Skokums appeared my captor began to shoot off two automatic -revolvers. I was lying on my back and saw by the flashes that he -was shooting into the air. The boys had been chasing me rather than -intending to rush the house at that time, and they broke and fled in -all directions, scampering in a way which suggested that they were not -prepared for artillery defense and that the hostilities were over for -that night. - -After a time there was silence, and the man who was sitting on me rose -and yanked me to my feet. - -He was a stocky man with a big, black mustache, and he looked savage. - -There was a sound of drawing bolts and Judge Kingsley appeared at his -office door. - -“You have the right one, have you, officer?” - -“Sure thing! He was leading the rush--ahead of ’em all. This is the -chap you told me to follow in the afternoon.” - -The judge came down the steps and stared into my face. - -“It’s the right one--the ringleader,” he said. - -I knew that she was listening above. She must be listening! And other -folks were flocking outside in the street; that fusillade had been a -signal as effective as a general fire alarm. - -“Look here,” I cried, full of panic, seeing the position I was in, -suddenly become the scapegoat of the whole affair. “I have done nothing -wrong. I rushed up here to warn you--” - -“You rushed up, all right,” declared the detective. “Do you think you -hicks could hold a mass-meeting down in that orchard and fool me as -to what you were planning to do? I was ready for you. What’s orders, -Judge?” - -“Take him to the lock-up!” - -God of the innocent! I’ll never forget how that sounded. It was as if -somebody had hit me on the heart with a hammer. There is some sort of -dignity about a real prison! But that little, red, wooden coop in -our village where an occasional drunk was cast in or some lousy hobo -harbored--it had always seemed to me and to others such a shameful -place--to leave such a badge of utter discredit on the person who had -been lodged there! - -“I’ll never go in there! I’ll die first,” I wailed. - -I was telling the bitter truth as I felt it. - -I was eager to die in my tracks rather than to have such a foul blot on -my name. - -The next instant I had sudden revulsion of feeling in regard to that -lock-up. In bitter fear, in almost frenzy of apprehension, in default of -better retreat, I was quite ready to flee to that loathsome coop. - -For I heard my uncle raving in the street! - -I never remembered his words; my feelings were too much stirred just -then. But the hideous screech of rage in his tones I’ll never forget. I -knew he had found out my betrayal of him. - -“He is going to kill me,” I told the detective. “It’s about the horse!” - -“Yes, I reckon he will peel you if he gets his hands on you,” stated the -man, who seemed to know what I was referring to. My uncle was threshing -his way through the crowd toward me, making slow progress in the jam. -The detective took advantage of that delay and rushed me off, with -Constable Nute swinging his key and leading the way. Before I was fairly -in my right senses I was in the lock-up alone and my two defenders were -on guard outside the door. - -My uncle frothed about the place for an hour, circling the little -building again and again, plucking at bars and clapboards as a monkey -might pick at a gigantic nut which resisted his attempts to get at the -juicy meat for which he was hungry. - -Never had I thought that I would be thankful to be in jail till then! - -Furthermore, my hopes were sustaining me. I was young and trustful, and -I was sure that innocence would be victorious. I could not understand -how anybody would believe that I was guilty when morning came and I -could explain it all. And I resolved to make some of the Skokums speak -up in my behalf on threat of exposing the whole gang. - -At last my uncle went away, staggering and hiccoughing curses--for he -had brought his bottle with him and had been consulting it quite often. - -I fell to wondering whether my innocence would stand me in good stead, -providing it vindicated me and secured my release from the lock-up? The -lock-up was surely proving a sanctuary--and my uncle’s threats had been -horrible ones. - -Then the crowd which had been hanging around the place with a sort of -hope, I suppose, that my uncle would be able to get at me, went away, -for the hour was late. Mr. Detective went, too. So did Constable -Nute, who was the village night-watch and had his rounds to make. They -considered the cage a secure one, I suppose, for there were big bolts on -the door and iron bars on the windows. - -I sat on a stool and mourned my lot as a prisoner, when I was not -dreading my release to be a victim of my incensed uncle. A good many -times I had watched Bart Flanders bring a trapped rat up from his cellar -and set it free in the village square for the entertainment of his -terrier. I was in a position to sympathize with trapped rats. - -In the silence of the night something clicked on the glass of a window -and a voice outside hailed me cautiously. My first thought was that the -Skokums had come to rescue me, and I was not especially pleased, for I -felt that they would be impelled more by the spirit of vandalism than by -any love for me. I did not answer. - -Then the window-frame grunted and squeaked and I saw that somebody was -prying with a chisel. I rose from the stool and saw the face of Dodovah -Vose. - -“I take it that it’s another job they have put up on you, young Sidney.” - -“Yes, it is, Mr. Vose,” I cried, and I began to whimper. I couldn’t help -it. He spoke as if he understood, as if he were a friend. “I was trying -to stop their devilishness, and they--” - -“You needn’t bother about going into details--not with me, young Sidney. -I have been watching you lately. You have been a good boy. I know you -haven’t been rampaging round town nights. No matter about telling me -anything. There’s no time to listen. Nute may be drifting back here any -minute.” - -He was working with his chisel while he was talking. - -He pried a couple of bars out of the rotten wood. He pushed the window -up. - -“Light out o’ there!” he commanded. - -“But I hate to run away, and--” - -“The way things stand now in the village you’ll be made the goat,” he -insisted. “And if you get clear of the gang part there’s your uncle to -reckon with. He has been stamping around the tavern and telling about -you. I don’t blame him much. What in sanup did you betray own folks -for?” - -I couldn’t tell him. - -“After what you did to him you can’t expect me and others to say nay -if he takes it out of your hide. Trigging own folks in a regular hoss -dicker comes nearer to being a crime than anything the judge can lay -against you. So you’ve got to simplify matters by getting out of town. -You mustn’t stay here and get hurt, son. Climb, I tell ye!” - -So I climbed. - -He led me down into a lane and pushed me into a top buggy whose -curtained sides hid me well. He crawled in after me and drove off at a -good dip. - -“I have written that letter to my brother,” he said, after a time. “Here -it is.” He put it into my hands. “How much money have you got about -you?” - -I was never at any loss in those days as to my exact financial standing. - -“Three dollars and sixty-four cents, sir.” - -“Here is ten more. You must remember to pay it back. It will take you -to the city and give you a little extra to come and go on. I have backed -that letter to my brother with full address and directions how to get -to the Trident Wrecking Company. Mind your eye, keep your money deep in -your pocket, and go straight.” - -I realized that we were on the way to the railroad station at Levant -Lower Comers. - -“I’ll do what I can to stand up for you in the current talk that will -be made, young Sidney,” said Landlord Vose. “I won’t say where you have -gone, and you can bet that I won’t give it out how I helped you to go -there. But I can tell folks how you have been sitting evenings with me -instead of cutting up snigdom. I’ll help your name what I can.” - -“I have been trying to get my tongue loose so as to thank--” - -“Don’t go to spoiling a good thing at the last minute,” he snapped. -“Come back and thank me when we both are sure that this jail-robbing was -the best thing that could be done under the circumstances. I had only -short notice and I took a chance that it was the right thing to do.” - -So, after a time, we came to the railroad station, and he left me. I -sneaked in the shadows till the night train came along. - -After this fashion I left Levant. Looking ahead or looking behind, I did -not feel especially joyous. - - - - -VI--HAVING TO DO WITH JODREY VOSE’s MAKING OP A DIVER - -I SAT up in the smoking-car all night, straight as a cob, making myself -as small as I could on one of the side seats nearest the door. I was not -used to riding on a railroad train. At every stop, when men came in -and looked at me in passing, my heart jumped. Things had been happening -pretty fast in my case. In the upheaval of my feelings, I was not -exactly sure just what special crime I had committed. I merely knew that -I felt like a combination of coward, renegade, and malefactor. - -The idea which stuck most painfully in my crop was the certain knowledge -of what everybody in Levant would be saying--“He had to skip the town!” - -That’s a mighty mean tag to be tied to a chap when it’s tied on by a -country community; it never comes off. Even if he makes good in fine -shape some old blatherskite is always ready to shift his chaw and drool, -“Maybe he’s all right _now_--but ye have to remember that he had to skip -the town!” - -I had run away! - -However, Ase Jepson let drop a remark once which sounded pretty good -to me: “I’d never run from a bear-fight, because if you lick the bear -there’s the pelt, the steak, the oil, and the reppytation. But who in -blazes ever got any sensible satisfaction out of sticking to the job and -licking a nestful of hornets?” - -I got a little satisfaction out of thinking that I had run away from -hornets, even if they would be sure to call me coward behind my back. - -But what I knew of the world outside my home town could have been put -in the eye of a mosquito without making the insect blink. I felt as -helpless as a wooden shingle latching a furnace door in tophet. I had -never seen Jodrey Vose. Either I had dreamed it or had heard that he was -considered a pretty hard ticket in his early days. As a diver, a man -who passed much of his time under water in the mysteries of the sea, he -seemed to me like something unreal. I studied the superscription on -the letter and felt as if I were carrying a line of introduction to a -bullfrog. - -And so I went bumping on toward somewhere, my thoughts heavy and my -possessions mighty light; I hadn’t even a clean handkerchief. - -If I had not so many bigger matters to hurry on to in this tale, I’d -like to describe how I was all of two days locating the Trident Wrecking -Company and Jodrey Vose, after I arrived in the city. The folks in -Levant always seemed to think I was a cheeky youngster, and I guess I -was, to a certain extent. I had plenty of temper and when I wanted a -thing I always had to go and get it--it wasn’t handed to me. But in that -big city I was more meeching than a scared pup in a boiler-factory. - -I had no idea how large a real city was, anyway. Furthermore, all of -a sudden, I found myself becoming very crafty, according to my own -reckoning. I had decided that I was a fugitive from justice and that -every policeman was on the watch for me. Therefore I avoided policemen, -turning comers whenever I saw brass buttons. As I looked on everybody -else in the hurrying multitude as a sharper, on the hunt for country -picking, that left me without anybody to question. I had my nose in the -air and must have sniffed the water-front after a time. At any rate, -I found myself down there, dodging drays, tramping dirty alleys and as -completely lost as a bug in a brush-pile. - -I lived on chestnuts because I found men selling them on the street. I -drank water from horse-fountains. After I walked all day and most of the -night, and napped for a while, standing up against a building in a dark -corner, I began to feel more or less like a horse; I had eaten so much -dry fodder and had gulped so much water! There were many adventures, of -course, but I have already stated why I may not deal with them. - -Staggering from weariness, I fairly bumped, at last, into a door which -was labeled: “Trident Wrecking Company, Anson C. Doughty, General -Manager.” This was no accident. I reckon I had tramped all the -waterfront and had read all the signs except that one. - -I went into the outer office, holding my letter by one corner. - -Nobody paid any attention to me for half an hour. There were men writing -in big books behind a counter, and finally I pushed the letter over to -one of them who had stopped to light a cigar. He pushed it back. - -“Not here,” he said. “Doesn’t come here.” - -“But where will I find him?” - -“Don’t know. He’s a diver. They don’t do their diving here in the -office.” - -There was not a place in that office where I could sit and I was so -tired I was sick. The man turned his back on me and I did not dare to -ask him any more questions. I backed away from the counter and stood -in the middle of the floor, swaying and blinking. I reckon I must have -looked like a down-and-out bum. At any rate, when a big man came showing -a caller out of a door labeled “General Manager, Private,” he bumped -against me when I did not get out of the road and almost knocked me -down. - -I suppose it was due to my state of mind and body--but till that moment -I had never felt what ugly, vicious hatred--desire to kill--meant. The -feeling came up in me so suddenly that I was frightened. - -The big man went right on with his friend and took no notice of me. He -had hairy hands which he flourished as he talked, and the coat of his -brown suit had long tails which ended in a sort of scallop at his knees, -behind; it came to me in the flush of my boiling hatred that he looked -like a fat cockroach. And that bump dealt to me when I was so miserable, -that suggestion of the cockroach which always popped up at me as long -as I knew him, later made for another decisive turning-point in my life. -Again I am calling attention to the fact that matters which I did -not reckon on as to amounting to much at the moment have been my -mile-stones. As I look back I recognize the mile-stones, though I could -not distinguish them at the time. For instance, if you keep on with me -far enough, I shall tell you how an affair which counted, perhaps, as -the biggest crisis in my life was dominated by a plain, ordinary monkey -with an artificial tail. - -I followed after that big man with a raging desire to kick him under the -sleek tads of that coat--to pound my fists into his fat back. I might -have given quite an account of myself, at that, for I was full grown at -twenty and as hard as hickory. - -“As I say,” I heard before he slammed the door behind him, “you better -come along with me down to Trull wharf and talk to Vose himself. He can -tell you--” - -I gathered my wits and chased along behind. The two of them paid as -little attention to me as they would to a prowling cat. But if they were -on the way to talk to “Vose himself,” that surely was my opportunity. - -It was some distance and by way of devious alleys, but we came at last -to where a lighter was tied beside a wharf. - -There was a derrick and the scow was loaded with blocks of granite. -A man was slowly and ceaselessly turning the wheel of a queer-looking -machine, another was carefully handling hose which passed over the side -of the lighter and down into the water, and still another was tending -ropes. It did not occur to me at first what this activity indicated. - -But when the big man called out, “Is Vose about due to come up?” I -understood at once and was mightily interested. - -I looked down into the dock and saw water like liquid muck, filled -with floating refuse, and a good deal of the glamour of a diver’s life -departed from my imagination. Somehow I had thought that Jodrey Vose -spent his days in blue depths of pure ocean water, looking around at -strange fishes and exploring mysterious caves. That he was obliged to -go down into any such mess as that and work on blocks of stones with his -two hands was a depressing discovery. - -After a time there was a bubbling of the turbid water close beside -the lighter, and for the first time in my life I saw a diver’s helmet -emerge; the goggling eye-plates, the grotesque excrescences, the -sprouting antennæ of the hose lines, the venomous hissing of the air -from the vents--it all seemed uncanny, and made me shiver. - -Men reached down to help him up the ladder, and when he was on deck in -full view, scuffing his huge, weighted shoes, a balloon-like creature, -as shapeless as the doughnut men my mother used to cut for me when she -was in good humor on frying-day, I was sure I had never seen so curious -a sight. - -After he sat down they twisted off the helmet, and the fat man, whom I -reckoned must be Manager Anson C. Doughty, escorted the other man aboard -the lighter and the three started a conversation which I could not hear. - -I knew the diver for Jodrey Vose because I had seen his picture at the -tavern. - -The business, whatever it was, did not take much time and the manager -and the other man went away. Helpers began to shuck the diver from his -suit; it was nearing sundown and work for the day was over, it seemed. -When he was free from the bulk of the stuff and was starting for the -cabin of the lighter I went to him and gave him the letter. - -“From Dod, hey?” Then he told me to follow him. - -I looked at him while he read the letter by the light of a bracket -lamp. He was a wiry man with a twist of grizzled chin-beard. I was much -comforted when he looked up from the letter and grinned. - -“Ben Sidney’s boy! Well, your father was the only critter on two legs in -Levant, in the old days, who could stand in a barrel, like I could, and -jump out without touching the sides. You look as if you have some of his -spryness and grit!” - -“I hope so, sir. I have always worked at what has come to my hands to -do.” - -“Dod says business is a mite slow in Levant and that you want a job.” - -“Yes, sir.” - -Now there was gratitude in me as well as comfort; it was evident that -Dodovah Vose had not written that I was a runaway. - -The diver laid down the letter and went fumbling for his street clothes -in a closet. - -“At any rate, you can come up to my boarding-place with me for the night -and we’ll talk it all over,” he said, in a very kind way. “If you had -only made yourself known a few minutes ago I could have introduced you -to Manager Anson C. Doughty. But to-morrow will do as well.” - -I did not dare to offer comment. I wondered what there was about Anson -C. Doughty to keep my hatred of him so stirred. - -“He takes my recommendations as to my helpers,” said Vose. “There is one -thing a diver has to be sure about--that’s picking his helpers. We’ll -talk it over, I say. If I find there’s considerable of Ben Sidney in -you, I reckon we can make a go of it. Have you a hankering to learn the -business, itself?” - -I blossomed under the warmth of this kindness, I was full of words by -that time. I hadn’t opened my mouth to talk for two days. I told -him about my evenings in that tavern, my poring over his curios, my -ambitions, my dreams and hopes after hearing the stories his brother had -to tell me. - -When he had finished dressing he clapped me on the shoulder. - -“Oh, I calculate you’re going to do,” he told me. “Don’t get your -expectations too high. I have given up all the deep work--too old. Five -or six years steady at deep work finishes a man. I have nursed myself -along. Wharf work--fifteen to thirty feet--that’s my limit these days. -But I like your spirit, son. Can’t find boys in the city like that! I -should say that you’ve got the real hankering. Cigarettes, ever?” - -“No, sir! No tobacco.” - -“No cider jamborees? No express packages from the city?” - -“No, Mr. Vose.” - -“Good! I reckon I’ll keep the old town of Levant on the map in the -diving line. I know the game, my boy. And I know how to teach it to the -right kind of a pupil.” - -“I’m sure you do, Mr. Vose.” - -“So we’ll talk it all over this evening--and while we’re about it, if -you don’t call me Captain Vose down this way they’ll think you don’t -know me very well.” - -I blushed, then I followed him out and away. - -Before I tumbled into bed that night we had settled upon the future -so far as our words to each other went; the bargain only needed the -ratification of Anson C. Doughty--and that was secured next morning. I -had expected that sleep would soothe my nerves and remove my ugly grouch -in the case of that gentleman. However, there must have been something -instinctive in my dislike for him; he looked me up and down and caught -my scowl. - -“You seem to have picked out a pretty surly up-country steer, Vose! -However, put him to work if you like that kind!” - -So to work I went. - -I cleaned diving-suits and thus became familiar with the parts and the -mechanism. I soaked out mud-caked ropes, I tended lines and learned -signals, and was always busy with a hundred other odd jobs as a -satellite of Diver Vose. He used me well enough, though he was never as -warm toward me as he was at our first meeting. - -After some weeks I lost my fear that I would be followed and taken back -to Levant. I was not sure whether I felt more relief than rancor. To -be considered as not worth chasing, to know they were saying “Good -riddance!” behind my back, gave me thoughts which hurt a certain kind of -pride. - -I was afraid of the city and I went nowhere except to my work and to -my boarding-place. So there was an epoch in my life which was bare of -adventure until Diver Vose sent me down for the first time. - -He had given me a fine course of sprouts previously, of course. - -But in spite of all that the first sensations nigh paralyzed me. -I reached bottom and wallowed around without the least thought or -remembrance regarding what I had been told to do. A freight-train seemed -to be roaring around inside my helmet and I was gasping like a dying -skate-fish. - -Then in scuffing around in a sort of panic, taking no care of what I -was about, I hooked my shoe onto something and began to yank and thresh -around in a perfect frenzy. The result was that I pulled the shoe off -and my lightened foot was snapped above my head in a finer spread-eagle -than any acrobatic dancer ever pulled off. To drag that foot down was -beyond my powers, and I tripped and went onto my back. Being up-ended is -a diver’s chief peril, because the air bellies up into the legs of the -dress and leaves scant supply in the helmet. - -In that crisis there was one idea which stuck to me: I must get that -lost shoe! - -And I did get it. I groped and rolled and struggled and pulled until I -did get it. A half-dozen times in my efforts I felt them trying to haul -me up. I suppose I must have given signals telling them to quit that. -I fought them as best I could, anyway, until I had recovered the shoe; -then I yanked for a lift and went up. - -Captain Vose was standing in front of me with the helmet in his hands -when I had recovered my wits enough to notice anybody. - -“Been dancing a jig?” he inquired, caustically. - -I shook my head, for I was not able to utter words. - -“Which did you lose first down there, your nerve or that shoe?” - -When I hesitated, he snapped, “Give me the truth, now, or we sha’n’t get -along after this!” - -“My nerve!” I told him. - -“So I knew--for I lashed on that shoe with my own hands. Very well! What -good are you as a diver without your wits or your nerve?” - -“No good, sir.” - -“You can buy an eighteen-pound shoe at any equipment loft. But how about -buying nerve?” - -“I reckon it can’t be bought, sir,” I confessed. - -“Still, you were almighty _particular_,” he sneered, “to bring back that -shoe with you even if you didn’t bring your nerve. Left your nerve on -the bottom, eh?” - -He was mighty nasty in his tone and his manner, and the men standing -around were grinning. Perhaps even all that would not have put grit back -into me, for I was dizzy and scared and was owning up to myself that I -was better fitted for dry ground than a wet sea-bottom. But just then -Anson C. Doughty bellowed from the wharf: - -“Say, look here, Vose, let that coward go back upcountry to his steers! -We have no time to fool away on greenhorns.” - -“If I did leave my nerve on the bottom I’m going back after it, and I’m -going right now!” I told the diver. I was holding the shoe and I dropped -it on deck and shoved my foot into it. Captain Vose kneeled and began to -lash it. - -“What are you doing, there?” demanded the manager. - -“Making a diver,” stated my teacher, calmly. - -“I’m paying you fifty dollars a day to do what I tell you to do, Vose.” - -“That’s right, sir!” The captain kept right on with the lashings. -“There’s a contract between you and this young man which tells me to -teach him how to be a diver, if he shows the capacity.” - -“He hasn’t shown it.” - -“He is going to in about five minutes, sir.” - -He picked up the helmet and bent over me. - -“I had a reason for twitting you about that shoe,” he said, in my ear. -“You showed what was in you by bringing it back If you hadn’t brought -it back I would have stripped this suit off you and sent you hipering! -You’ve got it in you! You’re all right! Now go down, son, and set that -chain where I told you to set it. The first scare is the vaccination for -this kind of work. You’re in a way to be immune from now on!” - -The last sound I heard was the snarl of Anson C. Doughty. That sound -helped me to go to my job that day. I went down and did what was -required of me, and, as I worked below there and became convinced that -there was nothing to harm me if I kept my head, I found my nerve, I -reckon, for good and all, in the diving business. - -And now that this story seems to be settled into a rut of adventure in -my chosen line of work, hold breath with me and prepare for a couple -of most “jeeroosly jounces,” as old Wagner Bangs used to term his -occasional falls from his state of natural grace. - -First, I leap as nimbly as I can over three years and a half of hard -work, the story of which would hold as little interest as the biography -of a mud-clam. I slipped and slid and dug in slime, I shagged granite -blocks and dragged chains, I pried into wrecks and had my whack at -fumbling in the watery shadows for the drowned--pitiful bundles floating -as if they were attempting posthumous gymnastics, head down and fingers -trying to touch toes. - -I did “deep work” on ticklish jobs. - -So I came into the fifty-dollar-a-day class of workers, to the grim -content of my mentor. - -I have just remarked that the snarl of Anson C. Doughty sent me in -earnest to my first job. Also, just as suddenly, that snarl pried me -loose from my job. - -I wish I did not have to confess what I have to say now. I come to -jounce number two! - -I have spoken a ways back of mile-stones in my life and suggested that -Anson C. Doughty was connected with one. - -I wish I could give a real, compelling, manly reason why I tossed my -hopes and my prospects so wildly into the air all of a sudden. I have -spoken of my ready temper--but that’s no reason. - -In fifteen seconds I shifted the life I was living as completely as a -derailing-switch shoots a runaway engine off the main line. - -The borers of that mysterious hatred for Anson C. Doughty must have been -burrowing in me all the time, even as those little teredinoid bivalves -we call ship-worms gnaw into submerged piles with the edges of their -shells. I was full of burrows and went to pieces all of a sudden. - -For I came up one day out of thirty fathoms--and that’s man’s work--and -Doughty was giving me green help out of his general meanness--and my -head was far from steady; in addition he gave me his snarl for the last -time, instead of snarling at his infernal dubs who were risking my life. - -I stepped on his foot with a shoe that was loaded with twenty pounds of -lead--and that’s some anchor!--I walloped him into insensibility with -the end of a rubber hose. Then I resigned informally, while he lay on -the deck of the lighter, grunting back to life again. - -Nobody stopped me when I said I was going and announced that it would be -dangerous to get in my way. - -They stood back while I shifted my clothes--and I got away with my -diving equipment, even! It was the newest thing out for those days and -the going styles of gear, and I had paid good money for it. - -I say again, I wish I had a more cogent reason to give for throwing up -my work. But I’m giving the truth of the matter. I left just that way. -I knew that Anson C. Doughty would have me put in jail if he could catch -me. I knew that I couldn’t do any more diving, for divers are marked men -and are easily located. It was up to me to go and hide; so I went and -hid. - - - - -VII--THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLUG-HAT - -I HAD been about a bit during three years and a half. -I own up frankly that I had found out that I had more or less of a cheap -streak in me. I’m not disguising it wholly by the name of curiosity; -though, of course, a country fellow has a keen hankering to look in on -some of the sights of the big city. - -When we boys up in Levant used to hand around among ourselves by stealth -some of the flashy papers, I didn’t believe there were such things as I -read in print and saw in pictures. After some of my sporty associates -of the Trident workers began to take me around with them evenings I kept -perfectly still about my earlier disbeliefs, and my cheap streak began -to talk up to me. Somebody came distributing free admission cards to -concerts, managed by religious and fraternal bodies--but I preferred to -pay money at the door of a burlesque theater. I liked to go scouting in -dance-halls, and I haunted low resorts to hear what I could hear and see -what I could see. - -We went boldly, for we were husky youths. As for myself, I had licked -the boys of Levant at every opportunity--and my Sidney temper afforded -me opportunities aplenty. I was never afraid when I went about alone, -either. I had a rather quiet way of minding my own business and -impressing it on the other fellow that he’d better mind his. - -So, it may be guessed, most of my wanderings had been done in the lower -quarters of the city. - -That’s where I went to hide. And I had knowledge enough of the locality -to hide myself effectually and keep hidden. - -I did get in touch with one of the fellows who had been around a great -deal with me and whom I trusted--for he had no special use for Anson C. -Doughty. - -Anson C. Doughty was out of doors once more, after spending a week of -retirement in the company of a few busy little leeches, and, as to -eyes and nose, he was not looking so very badly on the outside, but was -evidently having a great amount of trouble with a volcano raging within, -so my informant told me. Mr. Doughty was proclaiming that he proposed to -catch me so that he could make an example for the sake of discipline -in his crews in the future; but according to the program he had -promulgated, he proposed to cut me up with a meatchopper before turning -me over to the law. So I decided to keep under cover for an indefinite -period. - -Then I sent word to Captain Jodrey Vose and had him call on me in my -castle, because I did not want him to think that he had wasted all his -efforts when he had made me a diver. - -However, the captain did seem to think so. He frankly said so. - -“You’ll never get another job diving on the Atlantic coast,” he told me. -“In the first place, you won’t dare to show up as a diver where Anson C. -Doughty can grab you. In the next place, Anson C. Doughty has posted -you with all the wrecking companies as being as dangerous as an Asiatic -tiger with lighted kerosene on his tail. Now tell me what made you do -it.” - -I told him. - -He looked at me with his eyes squizzled up and a frown on his forehead. - -“I’m getting along in years and I’m probably losing my mind to some -extent,” he said, “but I’ll be cussed if I believe I’ve got -entire softening of the brain. It must be that I’m deaf and can’t -understand--because I don’t get the least idea of why you did it to him. -Tell it over.” - -I told him again. - -“Yes, I must have softening of the brain,” he grunted. “It’s all a -riddle-come-ree to me!” - -“It is the same to me--and that’s why I can’t explain,” I told him, -frankly. “I hung onto myself all that time, wanting to do it, and then I -let go and did it!” - -“About as you went to cutting up in Levant before you skipped out,” he -snapped. - -Up to that time, not by word or look had he let me know that he had any -knowledge of why I had left my home town. - -“Dod explained it to me in the letter he sent with you. But he had -excuses to give.” - -I had to admire Captain Vose’s ability to keep his thoughts to himself, -as I remembered the placid countenance he showed to me when he had read -that letter. - -“Now I reckon that Dod was prejudiced in your favor and that you had -been a young devil the folks wanted to boost out of town. Dod’s judgment -was never very good in the case of any critters who were willing to -cater to him. I don’t suppose you dare to go back up there?” - -“I don’t want to go.” But all of a sudden a queer wave of homesickness -seemed to come swelling up in me and to choke me like water chokes the -throat of a dredge-pump. “I’m done with that town for good and all,” I -told him. “I got along all right while I was doing dirt as fast as -the rest of ’em, but when I tried to be decent they didn’t give me -a show!” I snapped my finger. “I wouldn’t give _that_ for anybody in -Levant!” - -I knew I was lying and I think Jodrey Vose knew it, for he was a keen -old chap. He scowled at me and grunted. - -“Got any money left after all the rake-helling you’ve been doing for a -year past?” - -So he knew all about that, too! - -“I’m fixed all right!” But I looked up at the ceiling of my room when -I said it, and I knew I was not fooling him. I ought to have had a bank -account, considering what I had been pulling down. I had all my capital -in my pocket--a roll about as big as my thumb. I had considerable of a -string of memories, such as they were, regarding money I had spent; I -had a brand-new diving dress, and, above all, queer as this may sound, -I had a specially new outfit which was my chief pride: a frock-coat and -pearl-gray trousers, waistcoat modestly fancy--my real tastes in that -direction having been gently suppressed by an honest tailor--and a -plug-hat whose shininess fairly put my eyes out. And up to that time I -had had no opportunity to wear that suit except in front of the mirror -in my hiding-place! - -I had tested the tilt of that hat at a dozen different angles; I had -nearly broken my neck in efforts to see just how the coat-tails flared -in the back. With a chart as help, a card stuck in the side of the -mirror, I had practised tying a scarf in Ascot style until my staring -eyes watered and my fingers ached. Then I had walked back and forth, -trying to get the hang of a cane. - -Again I suggest that this may sound queer. But it was only another -manifestation of that cheap streak in me, so I reckon. I was not -modeling my appearance on the looks of any real gentleman I had ever -seen; I had not bought that garb in order to appear at church or to -climb into better society. But from the time I was ten years old I had -nursed one special, hungry, despairing ambition. At the county fair I -saw “Diamond Dick” Shrady marshaling his painted beauties in front of -his tent, and, according to my notion, his rig-out was apparel which -shaded even the robes of royalty. I could not conceive higher height of -happiness than to own and wear for “every day” a suit like that. - -Consider the lily--as I considered “Diamond Dick”! Then consider me as I -stood in front of that tent! - -I had on brogan shoes which I had fresh-tallowed for the day. My -stockings were home-knit and bulged out in folds over the tops of my -shoes. But I was not so keenly self-conscious of my footwear as of the -rest of my outfit, because Levant boys wore brogans quite commonly. My -trousers were my special sore point, for even in Levant they had been -ridiculed. In the first place, the cloth was a glazy, stiff stuff; in -the second place, my good mother did not understand how to cut out a -boy’s pants. There was just as much fullness in the front as in -the seat. I kept denting in that fullness with my fists when I was -unobserved. I found that by stooping quite a bit when I walked or stood -I was able to keep the fullness caved in and less noticeable. It was a -wonder I did not become permanently humpbacked while I was wearing out -those pants. The legs of them were like twin stovepipes, and almost as -unyielding. They crackled at the knees when I sat down. Add to those -items of attire a hickory shirt, for which I had made a false bosom out -of a shingle painted white, a paper collar, and a butterfly bow made of -a gingham rag, a hard hat which was a paternal hand-me-down; they called -them “dips.” It was a good name. The hat was exactly the shape of the -bowl of a table-spoon. - -As I leaned back and gaped up at that gorgeous stranger on the platform, -straightening myself and letting my forward fullness swell as it would, -there was born in me that unconquerable hankering--wild desire to be -dressed like that--sometime! To say to myself--sometime--“Now I am -dressed right! Everything about me is just as it should be!” - -To base my ideas on the outfit “Diamond Dick” wore was probably evidence -of the cheap streak in me, I say, but when you consider me as I stood -there, and then consider the lily, is there not some excuse? - -I confess with some shame that during my hiding in the city, while I was -tucked away in that boarding-house room, my chief regret was not that I -was out of a job, was not that I had battered the face of my employer, -but was because I could not go out and swell around the streets and the -amusement places wearing that suit and looking that picture of myself -which had been the ideal that lulled me to sleep every night during my -boyhood. - -I was having some of those dreams while I sat there and gazed up at the -ceiling. At last a big dream had come true. I owned that suit and I knew -I looked mighty well in it. I had put in a good many hours in front of -the looking-glass making sure of that fact. But now that I owned it I -was getting none of the thrills and but little of the satisfaction I had -looked forward to. Realized ambitions in my case--and probably it’s -true in most cases--have always seemed to have a lot of discomforting -tag-ends tied to them. I was practically a prisoner in a dingy room, I -could not go out and sport around in my new regalia, and Jodrey Vose, -who had undertaken to make a man of me, was sitting across the table, -scowling at me with a great deal of disfavor. - -“Have you taken up drinking along with the rest, young Sidney?” - -“No, sir; and I never shall. I’m sure of that, sir.” - -“What are you going to do next?” - -“I don’t know.” - -“You’d better go back to Levant.” - -“I’ll never do that.” - -“Dod writes that your uncle has been enlarging his business and is -making a lot of money and is going to run for town office. He must need -a chap like you and has probably forgotten any little trouble he might -have had with you.” - -But I shook my head. - -“You don’t expect me to do anything more for you, do you?” - -Again I shook my head. That homesick feeling was swelling up once more. - -“I hear that they are fitting out another Cocos Island expedition to -hunt for the Peru treasure-ship. You might be able to sign on there. But -it’s a fake job. There’s no sunken ship. However, you’ll get wages.” - -“I believe I’ll try the Pacific coast, sir.” - -He slid his forefinger back and forth slowly under his nose. - -“It might do, son. I have thought of the same jump, myself. I have -waited now till I’m too old. What started me thinking about it some -years ago was the _Golden Gate_ proposition. What troubled me about -making up my mind was that some said the treasure had been got out -of her and others said there was some guesswork. Nobody seemed to be -willing to produce any proof that the treasure was still there. Looking -back, I can see now why all interested parties would naturally rather -have it thought that the treasure wasn’t there. But when a fellow like -me has his living to make he doesn’t want to take too many chances. And -the one job I did go on sickened me of treasure-hunting on somebody’s -guesswork.” - -He was silent for a time. - -“I am sorry you are in your scrape, young Sidney. You’re done for as a -diver in these parts for a time. Try the Pacific. I don’t say it’s a bad -idea.” He grinned at me. “If you recover the _Golden Gate_ treasure drop -me a postal card.” - -Then he went away, making no more ado about the matter of our parting. I -was not surprised by that manner of leave-taking. I am a Yankee myself, -and I had found myself wishing that when he went he would walk off -without jawing me or coddling me. - -I counted my money and sent out for some railroad folders and trailed my -finger across the map--and stayed right on in the city, week after week. -I don’t know exactly what I had lost--ambition or pluck or what it was! -But that was a spell in my life when I was a plumb, square loafer, and -rather enjoyed myself--reading cheap novels and playing solitaire in -the daytime, then getting in with some of the rest of the boarders -and playing poker evenings. In Levant we used to play for beans in -barn-chambers. I had a country boy’s shrewdness in that game, and the -city fellows did not get much of my money away from me; nor did I get -any particular amount of theirs. - -However, the pastime did bring me into touch with some sporting -characters and with some queer characters, too. There were men who were -hiding the same as I was. The fact that I was under cover gave me open -sesame to their confidence. They talked a great deal, whiling away dull -hours in the day. Several were in the house where I was stopping, and -after a time I dared to go visiting around a bit evenings and went along -to other houses, in the locality. - -It was all new to me, this “flash” side of fife, and I listened to their -stories with eyes and mouth open. I conceived an idea of writing out -these stories into a book, and after I got back into my room nights I -would jot down all I had heard, names and all. I had all the nicknames -of operators down pat--those names rather fascinated me. There were -names which were based on personal peculiarities or blemishes or system -of operating. I found out that a great many of the parties were linked, -either by relationship or by gang ties, and that the wise boys among the -crooks or the police officers could tell in many cases just what crowd -had operated, providing the identity of one man could be revealed. I -reckon I calculated in those times that I was going to make an exposé, -for I made many notes about the different coteries and their associates. - -I will say at this point that I have no intention of writing such a -book, and I have gone into a bit of detail about the matter in order -that certain following activities of mine may be understood. Otherwise, -I might, later on, be thought to be advertising myself as one of those -know-it-all and do-it-all heroes of fiction instead of a plain and -ordinary chap who has been swayed by circumstance and governed by -accident in large measure. - -But I did get a lot of fresh and lively information out of those chaps -with whom I was thrown in. - -After a time they were not at all bashful about asking me if I wouldn’t -like a lay in some of their operations. - -They frankly said that they had the best luck in country communities. -Understand that they proposed nothing except brace games! No -safe-breakers in that lot! They said I had an honest way about me that -would take well in the country districts. - -My money was getting so low I listened with increasing interest. I -cannot say that I was tempted, exactly. But I was beginning to wonder -how I was ever going to make a go of it if I didn’t get some money. My -Pacific trip was all off by that time! My capital had shrunk below the -price of a ticket. - -They told me that a regular village skinflint with lots of money was, in -most cases, a prime victim if the right bait was offered; with the right -bait he bit more easily than the more liberal kind of an individual, -because the skinflint was more crazy to make money fast and was already -used to getting high rates of interest for all money he let out. They -were making constant search for old chaps in country communities, -well-to-do men who would be tempted to grab at a rich chance or could -be induced to serve as decoys to pull in the neighbors, provided a -sufficient rake-off were offered. - -There, too, was another thing which surprised me--that so often really -prominent men could be secured as decoys. The knaves I was training with -gave me a lot of stories of the kind; in most cases, so they said, the -men seemed to talk themselves into believing that they were offering the -neighbors an opportunity to make money. - -If I had not been idle and very curious, and all the time wondering how -I could make a little money for myself, a lot of this would have gone -into one ear and out of the other.. But I was in the mood to take it -all in, and so, in that foolish belief that I could write a story, I set -down many names and many instances until I had well filled a sheaf of -papers which I sewed together into a sort of note-book. - -There were various side-lines of the craft of cheaters where I was -allowed to be an observer. I watched one of the chaps make up his face -for a trip and learned about false beards attached by spirit gum. There -was a cute little mustache in his kit and I asked him to affix it to my -upper lip. He allowed me to keep it on when I asked permission. - -I felt so much confidence in that alteration of my features that I went -directly to my room, put on that raiment of my yearning ambition, took -in hand my cane, and went forth into the open. - -One who has remained long within-doors gets used to the confinement -after a time and the desire to go out is dulled; there are persons who -have voluntarily remained in bed in perfect health for years; but, once -the plunge outside is made, the desire for further liberty grows by what -it grasps in the blessedness of outdoors. I determined to be free from -then on and to test the quality of that freedom. It was astonishing what -confidence I felt in myself when I walked abroad in that rig, casting -side-glances at myself in store windows as I walked. It is amazing what -the right sort of clothes will do for a man’s grip and grit. - -I went down to the docks and walked about, deliberately seeking to put -myself in the path of Anson C. Doughty. He did come face to face with -me after a time, looked at me with considerable interest, for plug-hats -were none too common in that locality, and passed on with bland -indifference. My transition was too much for him; I was the butterfly -that had emerged from the pupa of a diving-dress. After that I bestowed -no further thought on dangers to be apprehended from Anson C. Doughty. - -I was more concerned with speculation on where my next meal was coming -from, for I was flat broke. I suppose that fact had something to do with -driving me out on the street; it was not wholly proud eagerness to show -myself in that suit of clothes. - -All of a sudden I received direct proof that a plug-hat is occasionally -something to conjure by. - -Perhaps it is on the principle that advertising pays; a man with slick, -silk headgear is supposed to be at least something which can be classed -under the title of “professor.” At any rate, I was hailed by that title -by a man who stood in a broad doorway. I stopped and he had something -interesting to say to me. - - - - -VIII--“TAKING IT OUT” ON A SUIT OF CLOTHES - -THAT doorway was solidly banked with banners frescoed in gaudy colors -and roughly painted; they advertised a show within. A few glances I had -time to give while I walked toward the man who had hailed me, revealed -that there were on tap such features as “Petrified Mormon Giant,” - “Siamese Susie,” “Mammoth Peruvian Cockatoo,” and others. Over the door -was heralded in big letters: “Dawlin’s Mammoth Wonder Show.” - -I guessed that the man in the doorway might be Dawlin. He wore a -corduroy suit, with gaiters, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was canted -on one side of his head. By the way in which he was looking me over I -could see that I was suiting him. - -“Hitched up with a show?” he asked. - -I told him that I was not, and I said it with considerable curtness. To -be sure, the personality and garb of Showman Shrady had formed my early -ideal, and I ought to have felt gratified, I suppose, when this man -took me for a showman. But I was pricked a little by the thought that my -appearance seemed to grade me on that plane. “Want to hitch on?” - -“What makes you think I’m in the show business?” - -“I had you sized that way on account of the scenery.” I gathered that he -meant my clothes. - -“I don’t see any circus signs on this suit of mine,” I told him. - -“Oh, say, I didn’t mean to offend--but it’s usually only sports and -professionals who tog that way down in this part of the town. If you’re -a gent you seem to be off your beat.” - -There was nothing offensive about the man--he seemed a good-humored chap -who was a little cheeky. - -“Well, what if I had been a showman--what about it?” - -“I was going to offer you a lay--here at the door.” - -“Selling tickets?” - -“Good gad, no, man! I want you for the spiel--for the -oratory--tongue-work--hooking the hicks! You’re rigged out just right. -You must know that the better the front we put on at the door, the -better the business inside! But excuse me if I got the tags shifted!” - -I swung my cane with one hand and with the other hand in my pocket -sifted coins through my fingers. There were not many coins. I needed -more in a hurry. It had been impressed on me that in spite of all my -pride in my attire I did not look like a “gent”; it was certain that -I did not feel like one. Disappointment was curdling pride in me; my -clothes had gone back on me. I entertained a sort of a grudge against -them. All of a sudden I made up my mind to get back at those garments -which had cost me so much money and now repaid me in contentment so -niggardly. - -“It would be all new business for me. Can I do it, do you suppose?” I -asked the man. - -“Looks are half the battle. You’ve got capital in your clothes to start -with. You don’t look like a souse! The last two I have had on the door -pawned their rigs for rum. I’ve got the patter stuff all written out. -All you’ve got to do is study it and reel it off like you used to recite -pieces in school.” - -“What’s the pay?” - -Seeing surrender in my face, he winked and crooked his finger in -invitation to me to follow him inside. He led me into a narrow little -office. He offered a drink and a cigar, and I refused both. - -“Gee! Some principles, hey? Now, if you’re a church member I reckon you -won’t stand for the lay!” - -“I’m devilish far from being a church member,” I told him. - -“I don’t like to open up too much till I know a little something about -you. Can you tell me?” - -I told him enough to make him pretty much at ease. - -“Do you know any of the right kind in this locality--the sporting -bunch?” - -I gave a roster of acquaintances that made his eyes glisten. - -“Oh, then, you’re all right!” he cried, slapping my knee. “In _my_ -business a fellow has to try the ice before he slides out too far. -I’m coming right across to you.” He waved his hand to indicate his -establishment. “This show is only a hinkumginny, you know!” - -“I thought so,” I said, calmly. I hadn’t the least idea what he meant, -but I knew that one needed to act wise with wise gentlemen. - -“We run the gazara game and phrenology.” - -I nodded and winked an eye as if I had been quite sure of that fact -right along. - -He scratched a few figures on a wisp of paper and pushed it to me across -the desk-slide on which he had set out the whisky-glasses. - -“That’s the split,” he said, grinning. Still it was all Greek to me. - -“I know places doing half our business and paying twice as much--and -every once in a while having to settle a squeal, at that! But I’ve got a -cousin at headquarters--see? Nothing to it! Now you can understand what -a sweet little pudding you’re pulling alongside of.” - -I was wishing I could understand better, though I was developing a dim -notion that he was talking about money paid for protection from the law. -He pulled back the paper and tore it up. - -“Only fifty a week,” he said; “it’s nothing. I’m thinking of throwing in -another twenty-five without their asking. It beats laying up treasures -in heaven!” - -I agreed. - -“Now as to a lay for you! Of course, first of all, I have to grab off -my fifty of the net--it’s my show and my pull! Then there’s the -‘Prof’--Professor Jewelle. He has his twenty-five per cent. I’ll tell -you straight, now, I have been getting by with those dickerdoodles -I’ve had out on the stand for fifteen per cent., and ‘prof’ and I have -divided the other ten. But they were crumby! Their suits were wrinkled -worse than an elephant’s dewlap, and the nap of their plug-hats was -fruzzled up like the fur in the mane of the Australian witherlick. No -pull to that class! The jaspers jogged right past without being a mite -impressed. If you grab in with us your looks and your style make you -worth a lay of twenty-five per cent. Now what say?” - -“I’ll grab,” I told him, and never did a man hire with less idea of just -what kind of a business he was entering or what pay he was going to get -for his labor. - -“You say your name is Ross Sidney,” said the boss, remembering what I -had told him. “Mine is Jeff Dawlin, Ross, and there’s no mistering among -partners.” He gave me a few dirty sheets of paper. “There’s your spiel -all written out. You can add your own talk as you work into the spirit -of the thing. The idea is get them to stop, look, listen--and then -coax till they come in. If they come out squealing, you go on and -bawl them--bawl them down! There’s some good work to be done in that -line--and you’re husky and can scare ’em, providing Big Mike hasn’t -already scared ’em enough. There isn’t a thing in the show but what’s -a fake--of course you understand that. Most of ’em are too ashamed to -squeal.” - -He was leading me into the inner mysteries of the place while he talked. -He made no reference to the objects which were ranged around the sides -of the big room, plainly despising them as curiosities which could not -possibly interest anybody. But they interested me mightily and I lagged -behind to give each one a glance in passing. - -“Siamese Susie” was made up of a couple of big wax dolls confined in a -single dress. “The Peruvian Cockatoo” manifestly had been, when he -was alive, the humble master of some up-country barn-yard; now he was -tricked out with all sorts of dyed false feathers, including an enormous -topknot. The “Mormon Giant” was a papier-mâché figure, and there was a -hideous thing labeled “Mermaid” constructed of the same material as the -giant. There were a few other nondescript exhibits in dingy glass -cases or mounted on stands draped in dirty hangings. I had never seen -a collection of more shameless frauds. I began to understand that I had -not been let in on the main proposition for money-making. - -On one side of the room there were curtains lettered: “Professor -Jewelle, the World’s Greatest Seer.” The professor came out when Dawlin -called for him. He wore a wig and false white whiskers, and had watery -eyes, and a breath like a whiff from a distillery chimney. A big brute -of a man was loafing in one corner of the room, and I reckoned that this -person must be Big Mike; I had seen many such of the bouncer sort when I -had made my rounds, hunting for experiences. - -Mr. Dawlin introduced me, and I seemed to make a good impression. - -When he slyly slid out the information that I, too, had been having -troubles which had kept me under cover for some weeks, I noted that I -stood even higher in their estimation. - -As we talked on I began to feel a bit ambitious. I thought I might be -able to improve business. - -“Look here,” I suggested, “why not put a tank in here and let me do some -of my diving stunts? It would be a novelty--there really doesn’t seem to -be much to the show as it stands.” - -“Say, I haven’t pulled a greenhorn into camp, have I?” inquired Mr. -Dawlin with a good deal of tartness. “Show? Good gad! who ever said we -wanted a show?” - -I did not know what to say to that and so I did not answer. - -“What do you think I would be doing, or the ‘prof’ would be doing, while -the jethros were crowded around you? We wouldn’t be doing a thing in the -line of the regular graft. The main idea of this concern is to get ’em -in here where there’s nothing to take up their minds after they’ve had -one look around the place. Then they begin to feel that they want to -get something for their money. So the ‘prof’ hands ’em the dome -dope--feels their bumps--and I feed ’em the gazara stuff. How many -times have I got to tell you what this place is?” - -“Oh, I’m wise,” I said, trying hard to look that way. “But of course I’m -anxious to do all I can to help.” - -“The zeal of youth! The zeal of youth!” prattled the professor. He -seemed to me to be pretty much of an old fool. He had that smug, cooing -way with him--all put on like the airs of a country undertaker. He came -across to me before I could understand what he was about and stuck his -thumb onto a spot on the top of my head and pressed with his forefinger -a little lower down. “Yes, approbativeness well developed and -conscientiousness--this where my finger--” - -“Oh, shut up!” snorted Mr. Dawlin. “Don’t cry to put that stuff over -among friends.” - -“However,” the professor went on, continuing to fondle my head, “the -development of the brain upward, forward, and backward, from the -medulla--” - -“Save it for the cud-wallopers, I tell you!” - -“If this young man is going to have his say about me in front, I want -him to know that the science of phrenology has a good exponent here,” - said the professor. - -I reckon he had seen me looking him over without a great amount of -liking and was anxious to put on a bit of a front. - -“He’ll say that you’ll read all heads free of charge, and that’s _all_ -he’ll say,” stated Mr. Dawlin. “It isn’t necessary for him to know -the difference between a medulla and a free-lunch pickle--and I don’t -believe _you_ know, yourself. Ross, we want to open the doors again -to-morrow. Do you think you can get the gist of that patter into your -head overnight?” - -I thumbed the dirty sheets and said I’d do my best. Therefore, I went -to my room and applied myself. There was a lot of extravagant guff about -the curiosities, flowery flapdoodle of the usual barker sort. - -The next morning I was able to make some sort of a try at it from the -stand, for I have said before that I always was more or less cheeky. -A sort of a fluffy-ruffle damsel with bleached hair was in the -ticket-office and there never was a young fellow yet who did not try -on a little extra swagger when a girl was hard by. She smiled at me -encouragingly when I had arrested the attention of a few passers, some -of whom bought tickets and went in. I guess I must have smiled back, for -Dawlin, who was standing in the doorway, appraising my first efforts, -came and climbed up beside me and growled in my ear. - -“You’re breaking in fine. Only put a little more punch and -sing-song into it! And, by the way, the dame who is shuffling the -pasteboards--she’s private goods--mine!” - -“I don’t want her,” I said, with considerable heat. - -“I don’t say you do--but a lot of trouble has sometimes been made in -partnerships by women. So that’s why I have flipped the buried card at -the start-off. Now tune up and let it went! If your voice gets husky -I’ll send out a handful of bird-seed and a hunk of cuttlefish.” I -reckoned he was trying his cheap humor on me to smooth the insult about -the girl. It seemed to me like an insult, and he understood pretty well -how I felt. - -So I went to my job and minded my own business most exclusively. - -Day after day, for several weeks, I stood up on my rostrum and cajoled -folks into that joint, and I say frankly and honestly that for a long -time I did not have full understanding of just what went on inside. -Possibly that statement makes me out a mighty stupid chap. - -But I was ashamed to ask any more questions after what Dawlin had yapped -out about his suspicions that I was a greenhorn. - -I did not have any special conversation with him, anyway. I was still -ugly when I thought upon his warning about that painted girl--as if I -wanted her! And I was careful that she should have no word to carry to -him about me; I never looked in her direction. - -Furthermore, I did not want to know very much about what they were up to -inside. I was ashamed of my job. It struck me that if I came to know -all the fraud of the thing I’d jack the proposition. An ostrich sort -of attitude, to be sure, a foolish evasion, but that’s just how it -was, like other things which came up in my life, things not lending -themselves readily to explanation as I look back on them now. - -I saw patrons come out, some angry and with red faces, some ashamed, -some laughing--but only a few of the last, and they were plainly chaps -who took it as a joke when anybody could put something across in their -case. - -Man after man came out with a broad piece of paper in his hand, crumpled -it up, swore, and dashed it down on the sidewalk. - -It was a chart purporting to be a reading of bumps, as Professor Jewelle -sized up the patron’s cranium. Nobody seemed to be very well pleased. -A lot of them pitched into me and said that I had promised that the -reading was free. - -Well, the reading was free. - -But once the victim had ventured inside the curtains and after the free -reading, the professor handed over the chart and demanded three dollars -for it. - -Disputes ended promptly, for Big Mike was always present. The vocabulary -of that bellowing bull was limited to two words in those séances--“Three -dollars!” - -Of course I had to find this out before long or stand convicted in these -records as liar and half-wit combined. - -I also found out about the gazara game, Mr. Dawlin’s special project. - -There was an oblong box in which were stacked leather envelopes, each -envelope bearing a numbered card. - -Mr. Dawlin seemed to be a very generous individual; he would allow -patrons to win considerable money by picking prize envelopes into which -he had slipped crisp bills; he also seemed to be a careless operator. -For instance, he would quite openly put a twenty or a fifty dollar bill -into the envelope holding the card numbered 0. Then he would shuffle the -envelopes and with carelessness utterly blind would leave the corner of -that card sticking up a bit, revealing the upper part of the numeral. -Feverishly excited patrons would bid high for the privilege of drawing -first--sometimes almost as high as the prize itself, for Mr. Dawlin -had plainly left a good thing exposed. But, strangely enough, what had -seemed like the figure 0 was revealed in the drawing as the figure 9 -with an exaggerated upper loop. If the patron made moan and let out -the secret of his grief, Mr. Dawlin reproached him for trying to take -advantage of an oversight in an honest game. Such was the activity known -as “gazara” in our establishment! I don’t know who gave the game that -designation. I believe that in Maccabees a town of that name is spoken -of--and being in Apocrypha seems well placed. It may be that the game -started there--at the same time the gold-brick game was hatched in -Gomorrah. Both schemes must be very ancient--for they are true, tried, -and certain. - -Mr. Dawlin had much information to give me regarding games in general. -He told me about his brother Ike, a proficient gold-brick artist. He -said that if I cared to go into that line he would put me next to his -brother. Mr. Dawlin, as had the others of his fraternity, complimented -me on my honest looks. When I dared to suggest that the gold-brick -scheme must be known to everybody, and all played out, he laughed at my -ignorance. He said that getting a whole lot for a little always had been -a bait for human greed and always would be; as to getting at the yaps in -these days, it was only a matter of fresh style of approach and men like -his brother were thinking up new methods of approach all the time. - -Men who needed money in a hurry to make up a balance were almost always -ready to gamble heavily and desperately. - -He said his brother had a deal on at that very time, but that it was too -late for me to get in on that, for the thing was all set and pretty near -ready to be pulled off. It was an up-country case, of course. - -“Plant by ‘Peacock’ Pratt,” said Davdin. That was a new name for my -roster of rascality, and I stuck it into a mental pigeonhole. “Pratt is -a white-vest operator. Paunch scenery!” He saw that I wasn’t catching -him very well and explained that Pratt affected the manner of a -prosperous Westerner who regularly stoned neighbors’ chickens out of his -garden with gold nuggets. - -Speaking of gold, I was not specially dissatisfied with the rake-off I -was getting from these precious rascals, though, of course, it was small -as compared with my diver’s wages. But standing in the sunshine under a -plug-hat with nothing to do but gabble nonsense was a softer snap than -grubbing under muddy water with a diver’s helmet stuck over my head. I -was truly in a way to succumb to the blandishments of my cheap screak -and settle down into the practice of roguery. - -But I had some sense of shame left in me. I kept on that disguising -mustache when I was before the public. It was not much of a mask, to -be sure, but it comforted me a bit to know that it made me look unlike -myself. - -And that’s why the Sortwell boys from Levant did not recognize me when -they halted on the sidewalk one day and listened to my barking. - -There they were, the two of them, grown up to manhood; but they were -mighty green specimens. They were looking at the banners rather than at -me. I wagered with myself that it was the first time they had ever been -in the big city; even one trip would have rounded off some of the rough -comers they were showing. For instance, they surely would have had -experience with such a peep-show as we were running and would not have -been tempted. - -They walked over to the painted maiden and asked her if she could -recommend the show; they grinned and gaped at her amorously. She fawned -on them and they bought tickets and went in. I wasn’t a bit sorry, nor -did I try to stop them. My last expenence with the gang in Levant had -not implanted in me any hankering to hug and kiss the Sortwell boys. - -I watched for them to come out, for I felt pretty sure that they would -be properly trimmed and I anticipated secret relish in looking on their -faces. I told myself I didn’t care. If a good jolt should be handed to -them it would help in satisfying my grudge against the town which had -sent me flying. Bitterness was in me at that moment. I was glad I was -out of the jay place. If I had stayed there I would be looking just -like those simpering rubes who had gone in like lambs to be sheared. I’d -never want to go back to that town, I decided all over again. - -When they came out each one carried one of Professor Jewelle’s charts, -and they were crying like great calves--actually guffling slobbering -sobs. They went away a little distance and stood on the sidewalk, -looking at each other and scruffing tears from their eyes with the palms -of their hands. Awhile back if somebody had told me I would see a couple -of big, larruping chaps from Levant doing that on the street in broad -daylight, I’d have predicted a good laugh for myself. - -Well, there was nothing like that in my case! - -A lump swelled in my throat. I don’t know what it was--whether ’twas -homesickness, longing for my own people of my own kind, spectacle of -boys who had gone barefoot with me, sight of their sorrow, mindfulness -of what the cruel city had done to me, reflection that I had helped in -a measure to get them into their scrape--I say I don’t know just what it -was. But my throat gripped and tears flowed up into my eyes. Those -poor devils, who were children in spite of their size, were helplessly -adrift--I could see that. Something special must have happened to them. - -I seem to be stopping to analyze my emotions. At the time I was doing -nothing of the sort. I felt a comforting sense that I was not a rascal -down in my heart, in spite of what I had done and of the job I was -holding down. - -I left my rostrum, ran into the little office, and tipped Dawlin’s -bottle of whisky against my upper lip; the alcohol dissolved the gum and -I ripped off the mustache. Then I chased along after the Sortwell boys. -They were far up the street, plugging slowly with bowed shoulders. - -When I came close upon them I took my time to get my breath and control -my emotions. Then I called to them, and they turned around and stared -at me with eyes which expressed all the range of feelings between -interrogation and stupefaction. - -“Well, haven’t you anything to say to an old friend?” I asked. - -“It ain’t you,” faltered the older. “It may look like you, but it -ain’t.” - -“There ain’t anything in this place that’s looking like it really is,” - whimpered the younger. “There was a card with a zero on it and it wasn’t -a zero--it was a nine--and he took our money.” - -“Have you lost your money, boys?” - -“All of it--every scrimptom of it,” bawled the older. “We ’ain’t got -anything to get home with. We saved up to come down and see the city for -a couple of days--and now it’s all gone.” - -“We worked all winter logging--sweating and freezing in Cale Warson’s -swamp--to earn that money, and that hell-hound down there took it and -jammed it into his pants pocket. And how’ll we get home?” - -Oh, I knew what logging in a swamp was! I knew what sort of wages were -paid and how hard it is to save! That one sentence fairly lanced my -conscience. “He jammed it into his pocket!” To Jeff Dawlin, who reached -out and took in his money so easily, those bills were hardly more than -so much paper, as he handled them. - -But he had not been a boy in a country town where money is not come at -so easily, where the little hoards grow so slowly, where there are -so many dreams about the big world up in the attics under the patched -coverlids--dreams which the little savings may bring to realization! - -These were boys from my home town. Thank God, a lot of the cheap in me, -the soul-dirt I had rubbed off in my associations, the cynical notions -about right and wrong, the inclinations of a swaggering sport--yes, a -whole lot of that slime was washed out of me right there and then by my -new emotions. I don’t say I was made anyways clean--not all of it went. -I have done many things since then to be ashamed of. But I was a blamed -sight more of a man when I went up and patted those poor boys on their -backs, standing between them. - -“Don’t take on about it any more, fellows,” I said. “I guess I’ll be -able to do something for you.” My tone was pretty important and they -began to look me over; they had been so fussed up that they had not -taken full stock of me till then. - -“Golly! You’re rich, ain’t you?” gasped the older. - -“Now about losing this money--where did you lose it?” I asked, swelling -a little more because I knew I was in the way to make a big impression. - -“Down the street there--where those fraud duflickers are all billed out! -It looked like a zero--” - -“And they charged three dollars apiece for feeling of our heads!” put in -the younger. “There was a big man who cracked his fists--” - -“Never mind! I know all about all such places, boys. I won’t allow any -such things to be put across in this city on any friends of mine!” - -I was talking as if I owned the town. They goggled at me as if they -believed that I did own it. When I started back toward Dawlin’s joint -they followed me like hounds at heel. - -I flipped a lordly gesture at the girl in the ticket-office and walked -in without paying--herding my clients ahead of me. That was visible -evidence of my mysterious importance, and they looked up at me as if -they were ready to fall down and offer worship. For in America any man -who can walk past ticket-sellers and pay by a flip of the hand, displays -a power which autocrats may envy. - -“You are sure this is the place?” I asked the Sortwell boys. - -They breathlessly assured me that it was. - -“And there’s the man who made us pay him six dollars,” declared the -older. - -Professor Jewelle had stepped out through the slit in his curtains. I -walked up to him. - -“Did you charge these gentlemen six dollars--take the money from them?” - I asked, sternly. - -He saw that there was something on and, like a rogue, believed, of -course, that I was plotting further graft on these innocents. He played -up to me with shrewd promptness. - -“If I have done anything wrong I ask pardon,” he whined. - -“These are particular friends of mine. Hand over their money at once!” - -He turned his back on them while he pulled out the money and gave me -a wink which indicated that he was on and approved whatever game I was -playing. I kept my face straight and stern, for the boys were surveying -me with adoration. - -I handed them the money and went across to Mr. Dawlin’s booth, the hicks -at my heels. - -Mr. Dawlin was by nature more suspicious of his fellow-man than was -Professor Jewelle, and he evidently resented the fact that I had not -tipped him off in advance. He regarded me with much sullenness when I -commanded him to return the money he had taken from the gentlemen. His -sour unwillingness, mingled with his uncertainty, really helped my game -along. It looked as if I had the power to force even such a balky mule -as Dawlin seemed to be. - -“I don’t know about this!” he growled. - -“I can’t help that! You’ll have to take my word--till you can get -something better,” I added, and I put a little significance into my last -words. - -And Mr. Dawlin, being a rascal who thought he could sniff a plant, -decided to grab in on a partner’s game. “Why, sure, boss,” he cried, -heartily, “if that’s the way you feel about it! Take any gents that’s -friends of yours and all you have to do is speak the word!” He pulled -out of his trousers pocket a big wad of crumpled bills. “Do you know how -much they spent backing their opinion against mine?” - -“It was twenty-two dollars--it was just twenty-two dollars,” piped one -of the boys, and the other one helped out on the chorus. - -“The rising young financiers seem to have no doubt,” sneered Dawlin. - -The older boy looked at the big swatch of bills and rasped his rough -hands together. - -“Perhaps money don’t mean much to you, mister, handling it the way you -do! But if you earnt twenty-two dollars by day’s work, getting into a -popple-swamp before sunup, I guess you’d know it when you counted those -dollars out to anybody.” - -“So that’s the way you earned this money? How much more did you earn?” - Dawlin screwed a look at me, showing fresh suspicion. - -“I’ll do the talking,” I said. “I’ll talk because I know what I’m doing! -I say only this: hand over the coin!” - -“And I say again, I don’t know about that!” - -I reckoned I was overplaying my air of importance, so I found a chance -to slip him a wink which promised a good deal. - -“But you know who I am!” I told him. - -“Yes,” he admitted. - -“Then pay!” - -He began to grin, finding this little comedy amusing as well as -mysterious. - -“Sure thing, boss! And seeing that it’s you and your orders,’ here’s -five dollars for your friends on top of the twenty-two. Go and buy five -dollars’ worth of corned beef and eat your heads off! Nothing like going -the limit when you come down to the big burg!” - -I gave Mr. Dawlin a knowing look when I turned to leave. - -“My friends are much obliged for the extra five--but they can use it for -something else besides eats. Come on, gentlemen! You will be my guests -at dinner.” - -I could see by Dawlin’s face that he took that last as a straight -tip from me that I had designs on the countrymen--and that he would -understand why I was quitting my job for a time. He gave me a most -benignant smile when I left. - -Professor Jewelle smirked and bowed when we passed him. - -Big Mike, the ogre of the place, stepped politely to one side and -twisted his ugly mug into a one-sided grin of apology. - -So we went out in state. - -There was a new feeling in me. It was a longing to be with those boys -from home. Up to then I had been ashamed to meet anybody from Levant. -And out of that shame had come a sort of dread to hear any news from my -old town. Now I was hungry for news. - -To be sure, just at that moment I was in a fool’s paradise of spurious -importance. It was comforting, however, to be set on a pedestal by those -Sortwell boys, and to know that at least two persons from Levant had -stopped thinking of me as a runaway scalawag. - -Along with my new feelings had come a sort of vague hope. - -I walked out of Dawlin’s place with a hazy notion that I would never go -back. Dawlin was evened up with me as to finances--I had my last week’s -rake-off in my pocket. - -And I may say right here that I never did go back--not to stand up and -coax suckers! When I did go back I played Mr. Jeff Dawlin for one! - - - - -IX--A GRISLY GAME OF BOWLS - -I DID not bother with any of the victualing houses in that low-down -locality. I led the Sortwell boys uptown and ushered them into a very -fancy restaurant. I could see that their opinion of my greatness was -growing all of the time. I could not induce them to touch the bill of -fare or even look at it. They gaped in such a frightened way when I -mentioned fancy dishes, that I helped to set them at ease by ordering -steak and potatoes. They ate to the last scrap, cleaning their plates -with morsels of bread, even as grateful pups lick their platters. They -confessed that they had not dared to go into an eating-house, and I -remembered that first day when I had roamed the streets of the city. - -I wanted to ask questions about Levant, but I delayed. Dave Sortwell, -the older, opened up the subject, but he did not do it very gracefully. - -“I reckon they can’t slur the Sidneys after this, like they have always -done past back,” he said. “Here you are, something big down here in the -city--and your uncle Deck is first selectman of Levant.” - -So my uncle had achieved his political ambition! When I heard that news -I had inside me a feeling of apprehension which I could scarcely account -for. - -“Elected last week at the March town-meeting,” affirmed Ardon, the -brother. “We younger fellows that have come of voting age went for -him--most all of us, because he say’s he is going to turn politics in -our town upside down and dance a jig on the bottom of ’em.” - -“He was into the tavern the other night, pretty well teaed up,” giggled -Dave, “and he said he was going to gallop Judge Kingsley to hell and -stand over him with a red-hot gad while he shoveled brimstone. He has -got it in for the judge--and a good many folks in Levant ain’t sorry. -Judge Kingsley has always gouged folks.” - -“Did they put the judge out of the treasurership--did my uncle bring -that about?” Hearing that the feud was on worse than ever made my heart -sick. I had been hoping! - -“O Lord, no! I guess the judge is forever fixed in that job. Folks can’t -seem to think of anybody else as treasurer. He’s a financier,” said -Dave, reverently. “He knows all about handling money. Folks trust to him -for that.” - -“But you say my uncle--” - -“Your uncle is doing most of the saying. Folks stand round and listen. -I don’t know what he is trying to do to the judge. Nobody seems to know. -Guess he can’t do much of anything except talk. You know, yourself, -Ross, how he keeps sparked up most of the time. Maybe he don’t know just -what he says, himself.” - -I began to skirt the edges of conditions in Levant, asking questions -about this one and that, showing as much indifference as I could. But -the Sortwell boys showed even more indifference about their home -town. It was all too familiar to them. They were displaying increasing -interest in me, and were emboldened to ask questions, now that their -early awe was wearing off. - -I found out--and I was rather surprised--that the folks in Levant had -not heard a word about me since I left the town. I had rather expected -that Dodovah Vose would drop some hint as to what had become of me--and -yet, on reflection, I could see that prudence required him to keep -still. He had helped a prisoner to escape, and could not well let -anybody suspect that he knew the whereabouts of that prisoner. - -“I’ll tell you, boys,” I said, when they had flanked me with questions -from every approach and had finally and fairly pounced on me to find out -what I was doing for a living and how I was so important, “I am hitched -up with big business interests who don’t allow their men to talk. -I’d tell you if I could tell anybody. It isn’t one special kind of -business--it’s all kinds--a sort of a syndicate--a combination. You -understand!” - -They hastened to say that they did--and I was glad of that because I -didn’t understand, myself. - -“But you’ll let us say that you’re in this big business, won’t you? When -we get back home we want to tell all of ’em that they’d better not -slur you any more.” - -“I suppose the backbiters have been busy, eh?” - -“Oh, not much nowadays except somebody remarks once in a while that -you had to skip the town. You know how such things pop up in talk. Your -uncle being prominent nowadays, you get mentioned once in a while. But -Dodovah Vose has always stood up for you!” - -“And a lot of folks didn’t believe what that detective said. He wasn’t a -real detective, anyway. He was only a deputy sheriff from Pownal,” added -Ardon, and the next minute I felt like hugging the boy. “I was always -ashamed of how us fellows put you in bad, Ross, and so I owned up when -Celene Kingsley asked me--” - -I couldn’t help it! I came right up in my chair. “Celene Kingsley asked -you?” - -He misunderstood my heat. - -“Don’t be mad, Ross! I stood up for you, I say! I was sorry for what I -did. I was ashamed.” - -“But you said Celene Kingsley asked you something!” - -“Well, I can’t remember whether she came right to me and asked me or -whether it just happened that the thing came up somewhere or--” - -“But you would surely remember if _she_ came to you!” I could not -conceive of Celene coming to anybody without it marking a mile-stone in -life. - -However, the Sortwell boy had plainly decided to be non-committal until -he had a better line on my feelings in the affair. - -“I don’t want you to be mad because I talked it over, Ross. I stood up -for you!” - -“But did she come _asking?_” - -“We-e-ll, I guess she must have asked--or--or something! Anyway, it came -up in talk--somehow--” - -Confound his haziness! - -“And of course I stood up for you. It was only right! I told her how -you tried to bust up the Skokums! I said you threatened to bat out the -brains of the whole of us if we didn’t stop cutting-up. I told her that -they hadn’t ought to have arrested you that night, for you was trying to -stop us from raiding her father’s house to grab that detective. You said -something about a home being a castle--or--or something. Anyway, Ross, -I did the best I knew how--I ain’t so much good in talk as you are. -Honestly, I did the best I could to put you straight when she asked. -Yes, I reckon she did ask.” - -I was looking at him with such rapturous expression that his face -cleared of uncertainty regarding my feelings. - -“Sure, she must have asked, for I wouldn’t go to blart-ing that around, -making the rest of us out as pirates, unless she had pinned me down. I -reckon she did just that! Pinned me down. But I was glad to help you out -that much!” - -It came to me with a rush of sentiment that all I had done that day for -the Sortwell boys had been fully paid for long in advance, and I was -sorry because a whole lot of my actions had really been dictated by my -selfishness and my desire to show off. - -I reached across the table and took his hand. - -“Ardon, I’m going to own up that I have had a lot of bitter thoughts -about the folks in Levant since I left home. But if I had known that -I had only one friend there like you have been in this matter, I would -have put all the bad things out of my mind.” - -“I only told the truth, Ross.” - -“But that’s the hardest job a man undertakes to do in a lot of cases.” - I was thinking just then how hard _I_ would find it to own up about -myself, and how I had secured that money from the clutches of the rogues -in Dawlin’s joint. And there I was, making a lot of capital out of that -deceit! - -But after what I had just heard I was resolved to go ahead and make more -capital out of my pretensions to greatness. - -“You’re going to let us say that you have made good, aren’t you?” asked -Dave. - -“I’d like to get back into the good opinion of the old town, boys. -If you feel like saying something nice about me when you get back to -Levant, I’ll be grateful.” - -“Say, if we don’t blow your horn!” they cried in concert. - -“But not too loud, boys! I don’t want to have too big a reputation to -live up to when I come back home.” - -They stood up and clapped me on the back. - -“By gorry! you will come, won’t you, and show ’em?” pleaded Dave. -“Come and show ’em!” - -“But there’s one thing to be thought of first,” I said, with a grin. -“Has my uncle Deck stopped threatening to kill me on sight?” - -That stirred their memories and fetched a laugh. - -“He wouldn’t dare to give you as much as one yip if you walked up to him -looking like you do now,” said Dave. - -The thought which he suggested was comforting; so much in this world -does depend on outside appearances. The hankering in me to go back was -whetted; just to make a show in the face and eyes of Levant, to stop -their tongues for good and all! But I was conscious that deep under -those cheaper motives was something more compelling. I had felt the -thrust of it after Ardon Sortwell had told me of his confession to -Celene. She, at least, knew that I had not been a renegade, and she had -taken enough interest in me to make sure on that point. - -“When are you coming back, Ross?” demanded Dave. - -“Don’t tell anybody I am coming back, boys. Promise me that.” - -They did. - -“But you may say that you saw me in the city, and that I am doing well, -and sent my best regards to all my friends.” - -“We’ll make their cussed old ears sing,” declared Ardon. “Don’t you -worry about us!” - -“If I can arrange my business so as to leave it, I may run up later.” - -I showed them some of the city sights that afternoon and they started -for home that night--and I saw to it that they were safely aboard their -train. - -That I should dream of Levant that night was entirely natural. They were -enticing dreams and they made me homesick and I found out that I was not -such a bold man, after all, in spite of the shell I had grown; I felt -very much like a boy when I woke next morning. I was hungry for my own -folks. - -In my haste to be gone I forgot all my caution. I went down to the -water-front just as if there were no such person as a vengeful Anson C. -Doughty. - -I had cached, temporarily, my diving equipment. I went to the -storage-man and arranged for its care, paying in advance. - -Then I was bold enough to go hunting up Jodrey Vose because I wanted to -carry some fresh and direct message to his brother in order to secure -continued favor in the case of the tavern-keeper; he certainly had been -my best friend in Levant. I intended to lodge with him and I dreaded his -keen questioning in case I went to him with lies about when I had seen -his brother last. - -I found the captain on his lighter and we had a good talk during his -rest-spell. - -“I’m sorry it has turned out for you as it has, young Sidney. But it’s a -good idea for you to run up to the old town and hang round with Dod for -a while and sort of get your feet placed all over again. Maybe something -will turn up down this way later!” - -“Anson C. Doughty’s toes, perhaps.” - -He wagged his head, soberly. - -“I’m glad you came down to take leave, son, but you’re running chances. -Anson C. Doughty is mighty ugly. He was beaten up in front of his -crew--and folks haven’t got done talking and he knows they are talking. -You’d better be hipering, I reckon.” - -He sent one of the helpers to his cabin for a parcel and he put it into -my hands. - -“It’ll be handier than sending it by express to Dod,” he said. “It’s a -skull I found in the dock. Tell him to make up a pirate yarn to go with -it.” - -Being thus equipped with full credentials as to my continued comfortable -standing with Jodrey Vose, for the purposes of my further intimacy with -Dodovah Vose, I started up the wharf in excellent spirits, my thoughts -on my home-going. - -And half-way to the street I fairly bumped into Anson C. Doughty. It was -no coincidence--I ought to have reckoned on that meeting--the manager -was regularly up and down the wharf at all hours of the day. But, as I -have said, I had lost my caution. I had met him once face to face, and -had not been recognized. But I was no longer wearing that mustache. - -He swore a blue streak and danced back and forth in front of me, waving -his hairy hands to shoo me back. He looked just as much like a cockroach -as ever. - -“You belong in State prison and you’re going there,” he snarled. - -There were two wharf loafers near by, the only men in sight. He called -to them, and they came to us, a couple of husky stevedores. - -“You know _me!_” shouted Doughty. “You two men hold this sucker till I -can fetch a cop. Hold him! Don’t let him get away!” - -He ran off toward the street. - -I had not a chance to get away from those big chaps on that narrow -wharf--and it was plain that they knew Anson C. Doughty and recognized -his authority in those quarters. - -So here were all my fresh plans, my hankering for home, my new-laid -reputation for Levant consumption about to be kicked into the black -depths of tophet by the grudge of Anson C. Doughty! - -I could see that the stevedores despised my size because I was wearing -a plug-hat; they glowered at me with the natural enmity the man in -overalls feels for the dandy. It was perfectly damnable--that situation! -To be arrested--to be shown up for what I was--the thought screwed my -desperation to the breaking-point. - -I pulled my wallet and began to flick out bills. - -“He’s only trying to get back at me on account of a grudge, fellows; -he’s using you for tongs,” I told them. “I was one of the divers and -I batted him when he insulted me! I want to get out of town! Here’s a -piece of money! He won’t give you anything.” - -I had the skull under my arm and my wallet in my hands, and I wasn’t -paying much attention to the men while I counted out money. - -“Who was the gink who told us to hold the guy?” muttered one of the men. -“Was it Doughty?” - -“Sure! You know him,” said his companion. - -“But he don’t know _us!_” - -“He won’t remember who you are!” I hastened to put in. “Take some money, -and--” - -“You bet we’ll take some money,” barked the two of them in chorus, and -the next instant one of them clutched me and the other grabbed -wallet, money and all, and they ran away, ducked into an alley between -storehouses, and disappeared. - -I was free at a high price. - -I ran after them, of course, but they were nowhere in sight when I -reached the parallel wharf, and so I started for the street; and Anson -C. Doughty saw me, for he was running up and down the sidewalk, wildly -hunting for a policeman. When he undertook to head me off I pitched the -wrapped skull at him with all my might; it plunked him squarely in the -face and dropped him, and then went bounding along the pavement at a -lively clip. I was conscious that a lot of people were looking on and -that a hullabaloo was started. But in spite of that I stopped to pick -up the skull before I fled from the place. I reckon I must have felt -considerable of a sense of responsibility where the interests of my -friends, the Voses, were concerned! - -I got through a short street on the jump, caught a passing car and when -I was once aboard I was lost to pursuers--I was merely one of the city’s -mass, and my garments testified for me. - -I dug down into my pockets and found a few crumpled bills and some -silver--the loose money I carried outside my wallet. The whole of it -amounted to mighty little--only about enough to take me to Levant, as I -remembered what the train fare had been. - -I did not stop to figure on any further resources; I did not dare to go -and seek aid from any of my acquaintances; I did not go back to my room -for any of my belongings. Panic was on me. To be caught at that time -meant the toppling of my cardboard house of hopes and reputation. I -did not know to what extent Anson C. Doughty would throw out his -drag-net--but I was pretty sure that he would drop all his other -business for a time and attend strictly to what concerned me. He surely -was the angriest man I had seen in many a day when he went down under -the impact of that package. - -To get out of that city just as quickly as I could, before he could set -persons on my trail, or put spies at the city’s outlets, was the only -sensible course open to me. - -So in less than half an hour I found myself on the train, homeward -bound, just as much of a fugitive _from_ the city as I had been in other -days when I headed _toward_ it. - -I had a little spare change in my pocket and a skull under my arm. - - - - -X--THE ART OF PUTTING ON A FRONT - -HAVING caught a train out of the city at a fairly early hour in the -forenoon, I made a daylight ride of it to Levant, and I stepped out upon -the platform at Lower Comers just before sundown. - -I remember that the red March sun was almost touching the rocky edge -of the beech ridge, and, with the bare trunks of the trees striping it, -looked like a coal fire with the stove cover off and a griddle on. In -fact, as I looked up at the sun and reflected on the general condition -of my affairs, I felt as if I were the particular live lobster destined -for the griddle in Levant. - -But I walked past the platform loafers, leaving my satin-lined overcoat -open so that they might get the full effect of my frock suit. No one -seemed to recognize me; Levant Comers is all of three miles from Levant -village, and there was never much mixing between the communities when I -was a boy. I set off at a good pace to walk the three miles to Dodovah -Vose’s tavern. - -Men in several teams which overtook me offered a lift, and one of -them addressed me as “Elder.” Evidently my clothes were producing an -impression! But I declined all offers. I had waved the stage-driver -aside, and now if I accepted a free ride I might have brought suspicion -on my financial ability. So I told them all politely that I needed -exercise and walked on in all my dignity--and, being encumbered by -nothing except a skull under my arm, I found my tramp pleasurable. - -I went along at such a clip that I topped the long rise from the river -where the railroad winds and was able to look down on distant Levant -village before the lingering dusk had settled into night. The stripped -trees had left all the houses bare and rather bleak; there was no -beauty anywhere. The afternoon chill had hardened the road mud into -iron ridges. Being back on my native heath was not so consoling and -heart-thrilling as I had pictured. That faded, sodden, frozen landscape -was depressing. I looked like a millionaire, but I belonged on the -town farm. There was one thing to remember, however. My uncle as first -selectman was also overseer of the poor, by virtue of his office. - -I wondered what he would say to me if I walked up to him and tried to -borrow money! On second thought, I knew so well what he would say that -I promptly decided that I would keep my mouth shut in regard to my -finances. - -I hurried on, for there was an inviting twinkle of light in the windows -of Vose’s tavern. I was carrying a rather gruesome ticket of admission, -but a message from Jodrey Vose went along with it and it would make me -especially welcome. - -For some distance the highway was bordered by woods, and at last I saw -a roadside sign which gave me a bit of a thrill, for it bore the magic -name of Kingsley. - -“For Sale. This Wood-lot. Apply to Z. Kingsley.” - -That’s what the sign said. - -Before I was fairly on my way, after stopping to read, I was able to put -eyes on Z. Kingsley, himself. He was in a carriage which was coming -in my direction and his daughter was driving a horse which was too -likely-looking to have been furnished by my uncle. - -I did not reflect or consider. I had no clear notion in my mind at that -instant. I suppose I was overcome by an irresistible hankering to hear -her voice--to speak to her. - -At any rate, backed by that longing or by courage or cheek or whatever -else it might be called, I stepped out into the middle of the road and -put up my hand. I reckon if Judge Kingsley had been driving he would -have run over me. His blessed daughter pulled up short. - -I took off my hat and he gave me a sharp glance and recognized me. And -so did Celene, for she smiled even while she looked a bit startled. - -“Drive on!” snapped her father. - -“Judge Kingsley, I want to--” - -He checked me with much impatience, and I was glad of it, for I was not -prepared to tell him just what I did want. I knew I wanted to rush up to -her and say a lot of things, but I was conscious that the action would -not have made much of a hit with her father. - -“I have no time to waste on you, sir. I have to catch a train.” - -“But the train has gone along,” I stalled. “I just came in on it.” - -“I am going the other way--to the city!” He showed considerable temper. - -“We have plenty of time before the down train is due, father,” Celene -told him. He reached after the reins, but she held them away from him, -showing that she had more or less of the Kingsley obstinacy, herself. - -“What do you want, sir? Quick!” - -It was a rather contemptuous command, but it was showing more -consideration for a member of the Sidney family than I had dared to hope -for. If he had taken up the whip and lashed at me at first meeting -I would not have been surprised. It was evident that my personal -appearance was having weight with him. I ventured to believe that the -Sortwell boys had been advertising me in town, though they were only a -few hours ahead of me. - -I rolled my eyes around, trying to think of something sensible. I saw -the sign again. - -“What is your price on this wood-lot, Judge Kingsley?” - -“I can’t stop to talk business, sir.” - -“But I’m simply asking the price. You’re advertising it. You must have -put a price on it.” - -“I’ll be back in a week or ten days. Come to me then. I’m in a hurry.” - -I put on a fine air of importance. - -“So am I, Judge Kingsley! So are the big interests which I represent. -But we are never in too much of a hurry to answer polite questions in -business. I say, what is your price?” - -“Two thousand dollars,” he cracked out. - -“How many acres?” - -“Forty.” - -I raised my hat and stepped to one side. - -“That’s all, sir. I’ll investigate and be ready to talk with you when -you return. Good evening!” - -I could see that he was taken aback a bit by my own shortness in the -matter. He sat there holding his mouth open as if he intended to say -something more, but I walked on; it came to me that perhaps he was -going to say that he wouldn’t do any business with a Sidney--and I was -avoiding all argument on that point. - -Celene gave me another flicker of a smile when she started the horse. -They went on at a good clip, and the moment they were out of sight -around a bend in the road I turned back, climbed the fence, and sat down -beside some bushes. My heart was so warm within me that I was not afraid -of a chill. - -I was guessing that she would not waste any time in making that trip to -the railroad station; you see, I was building high merely on the glances -she had been giving me--on the flush which was on her cheek when she -drove away. Would she hurry back to overtake me? She did. - -When I saw her coming, snapping her whip to make the horse trot at -a brisker pace, I climbed back over the pitch-pole fence and leaned -against it. It was pretty dark, but she spied me and stopped the horse. - -“I have done something rather foolish,” I told her, staying where I -stood. - -“Yes?” - -“And I have found out all over again that haste makes waste. I wanted -to get a peep at that stand of timber and I went racing around in the -dark--and so I have wrenched my ankle.” - -“Oh, I am so sorry!” - -“It’s my own fault! It’s what the city does to a man! Keeps him on the -gallop! Makes him too impatient to wait for morning.” - -“Can you get to the carriage?” - -“But I don’t like to trouble you, Miss Kingsley! If you will send a -team--” - -“No, you shall ride with me! The idea of my leaving you in the woods -alone! I’ll come and help you.” - -“No, I’ll manage!” - -So I limped to the carriage and climbed in. She watched me anxiously and -asked after my hurt with solicitude. I was doing a pretty mean thing, -I knew, but the opportunity to be alone with Celene Kingsley that first -hour of my arrival in town was a favor to be grabbed for and hugged -jealously. She walked the horse, and I sat beside her and was so happy -in that first intimacy that I was not a bit ashamed of my deceit. - -“So you are doing wonderful things in the city!” she said, after a time. -I had not spoken, for I was afraid of blurting out something foolish. - -“Nothing so very grand,” I faltered. - -“But Dave and Ardon Sortwell have had something to say about that since -they have been home. I am very glad for you, Mr. Sidney.” - -“I’d rather please you than anybody else.” That was a mighty awkward -answer and I was just as much embarrassed as she was. - -“Good news about Levant boys pleases us all up here.’ - -“Sometimes I have thought they liked the bad news best--the most of -’em. The way they drove me out and then talked behind my back was--” - -“I know all the truth of it--and most of the folks do now, I think,” she -broke in. “You must put it all out of your mind. You must not come back -with resentment toward anybody. There’s too much of that in the world. -There’s too much in Levant.” - -She hesitated a moment and then burst out with a tremble in her voice. - -“Oh, Mr. Sidney, I am so thankful because you have come home! I do hope -you can have some influence with your uncle. I ask your forgiveness for -bringing it up so soon. But my heart is so full of it all! I hurried -back, hoping I could overtake you.” - -So that was why she had hurried! - -“I don’t know about having influence with my uncle,” I said, and I could -not keep all of the rasp out of my voice. Her welcome of me simply as an -uncle-tamer had pricked me in a mighty tender place. “I don’t believe he -is going to give me either three cheers or a hug and kiss when he sees -me.” - -“But you are an important man, now, and he must be proud of you and your -success. He will look up to you now that you have money and position.” - -Like a bang on the head the conviction struck me that I had cut out a -fine bit of work for myself when I dropped back into my home town. - -I had been all too well advertised by my loving friends. - -Celene Kingsley had touched squarely on one truth: the only way to -handle my uncle was to appear important even if I were not important. -Mere bluff would go a little way--but not far. I must have money! - -And here I was picked by her as her champion in the family feud! - -If I had only stayed in the city! There was money to be come at there. -Dollars in Levant were nailed down with spikes. - -“We haven’t one happy hour in our home,” she wailed. “Your uncle is -breaking my father’s heart, Mr. Sidney. I don’t understand what your -uncle is doing; mother doesn’t understand it! Father has never told -his business to us. But he sits in his office and figures and figures. -Sometimes he stays there ’most all night. And it’s all on account of -your uncle! I know that! For my father says your uncle is hounding him -to death. You must find out what he is doing. I know you will find out -and tell him he must stop.” - -“I will look into the matter,” I said, as bravely as I could. “Of course -there’s been hard feeling between my uncle and your father for a good -many years.” - -“But my father is sorry now for anything in the past. He says so to us, -to mother and me. He sent mother to your uncle to ask him if he would -not stop persecuting. Yes, she went to your uncle because father asked -her to do so.” - -That statement nigh took my breath away! - -Mrs. Kingsley going as suppliant to my uncle Deck? Judge Zebulon -Kingsley requesting her to do it? I shut my eyes and could picture -her--frail, pale, aristocratic. The exigency must be desperate when -Judge Kingsley would submit his wife to such employment. - -“But please keep that a secret,” she pleaded. - -I saw that I was headed into something which was bigger and more baleful -than I had dreamed of. And more than before did I feel my deficiencies -as a fraud who could not even turn a trick for his own wants, let alone -those greater affairs in Levant. - -“This mystery in our home is killing us all,” she went on. “There have -been strangers in town and they have been much with my father. I do not -like their looks. He would not tell us, but I am afraid they have coaxed -him away to the city on this trip he is making. Perhaps your uncle has -set those men on to harm him.” - -I had never gauged my uncle Deck as a hirer of assassins, but I had not -seen him for some years, and I admitted to myself that there was never -any telling where a man’s grudge would lead him. - -“Mother and I tried to make him stay at home. But he would not stay and -he would not tell us why he was going to the city. Oh, how I hate those -strangers, for I believe they have coaxed him away.” - -I looked sideways at her, and a little shiver tingled in me. There was -real venom in her tone and I saw that I had not guessed the depths in -Miss Celene Kingsley. - -“I wish I had a brother,” she mourned. “I believe he would feel as -I feel now, and would follow up and kill the man who would harm my -father.” - -It was so strange an utterance from a girl and seemed so contrary to -what I had supposed her nature to be that I remembered that outburst for -a long time. - -I juggled the skull on my knee and pondered awhile before I said -anything, and she was silent, too, evidently trying to get control of -her emotions. - -“I want to say this to you, Miss Kingsley. The Sort-well boys gave me -some news of the home town and they told me that my uncle was after your -father in bitter fashion. That’s one reason why I have hurried up here. -I don’t know just what I can do with my uncle, but I’ll truly do my -best.” - -We had come into the edge of the village and had passed the first -houses. - -“I put my trust in you,” she said, gently. “I always knew you had good -impulses in you. I remember our talk that day on Purgatory Hill. And -I know you kept your promise you gave to me then. You did your best to -make the boys good.” - -“And I’ll do my best to make my uncle good.” - -“I do hope your business will not call you away until you have -straightened matters out. Oh, you asked about the price of the wood-lot! -Does it mean that you expect to have some business with father?” - -I had not given another thought to the wood-lot since I had used it for -an excuse in an emergency. I did not see at that moment how I could use -a wood-lot for anything else than that excuse. - -“If only you could have some business with my father--it would smooth -things so much for all of us, perhaps,” she pleaded. - -“We’ll see what can be done,” I assured her. “This syndicate--this -combination--a very large concern,” I floundered on, trying to think up -some sort of a plausible lie to account for my interest in a wood-lot, -“it’s--er--ah!--you see, I can’t give out much information locally -because we do so many kinds of business--it’s all linked up--it’s -necessary to move carefully, but I think I’ll tell you this much, -confidentially, just between ourselves!” Again my hankering to have some -sort of a secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! “One branch of our -business is building all the tall brick chimneys in the eastern part of -the country. We use millions of bricks and so we need a great deal -of wood for burning the bricks. So that’s why, maybe, I can pay your -father’s price for the wood-lot. Now you understand!” I ended up with a -lot of relief, for I had to dive pretty deep for that lie. - -“I do see, and I’m glad there’s a prospect you’ll stay in town. And -then, too, there’s your ankle to nurse!” - -I was glad she mentioned the ankle, for I had forgotten all about -it, and would certainly have betrayed myself when I jumped out of the -carriage at the tavern. Really, to be a good liar a fellow should -take one of those courses in memory-training! As it was, I descended -carefully and promised her to apply cloths and liniment that night. She -tendered her little hand, and I pressed it, and she left with me the -memory of a smile which was like a rose gemmed with dew---for there were -tears in her eyes. - -I waited in the tavern yard till she was well on her way, and then -I marched in without any limp, for I was not minded to keep up that -special lie for the benefit of all Levant. - -Dodovah Vose walked behind his catty-cornered counter, plucked a rusty -pen from its potato scabbard, whirled the register around under my nose, -and tendered the pen. - -“Rather nippy evenings, though pleasant enough daytimes for this time of -year, Squire,” he said, by way of welcome to the arriving guest. - -That tickled me. He didn’t recognize me. He was looking at my rig rather -than at my face. When I had splashed my name on the page he pulled his -spectacles to the end of his nose and inspected the signature. Then he -snapped upright and stared at me. - -“Godfrey domino Peter!” he bawled. “Then them Sortwell boys ain’t such -condemned liars as I suspected they were! When Jod wrote me that you had -quit diving I reckoned you had gone plunk square to tophet!” - -“Oh, there’s always a chance for a fellow in the city, if he keeps -hustling,” I told him. I chinked the little handful of small change in -my pocket. “I’m going to stay here with you for a spell, Mr. Vose. Have -you a rule that guests without baggage must pay in advance?” I grinned -and he took it as a great joke. - -“If you can tell me enough about Jod I may adopt you and give you free -board the rest of your life,” he chuckled. - -Then I handed over his present with a word of explanation, and he -unwrapped the grisly object and surveyed it with as much satisfaction as -if it had been a golden nugget. - -“Jod always knows what will hit me to a T. Of course, he says to you, -‘Tell Dod to make up a story to go with it’!” - -“Exactly what he said, sir.” - -“Sure! That’s what I have done with every curio he has given me.” - -For the first time I realized that in my boyhood I had accumulated a -fine line of fiction from Dodovah Vose. - -But I forgave him in my thoughts, for he took me into the big kitchen -and fried me the finest chicken I ever ate. And while he fixed up my -supper I told him how I had learned diving with his brother. I comforted -him, too, by telling him that I had given up the work only temporarily. - -But I switched him when he tried to find out what I was up to at that -time. The plug-hat part of my program seemed to puzzle him very much. -I was not ready with any good explanation. I figured that I might have -some kind of a story ready in the morning, after I had slept on the -thing. I began to rely considerably on my work as a fabricator; I -had shown quite a lot of aptitude and readiness on short notice, I -reflected. - -I found myself holding an impromptu reception in the tavern office that -evening--and they were all there with their little gimlets of questions, -boring for information, you can bet! Therefore I broke away early -and went to bed. I staved them all off in good shape, for I could be -dignified in those clothes I was wearing. What I was afraid of was that -Uncle Deck would pop in. He would not have used any gimlet; he would -have set upon me with a pod-auger of inquisition, and would have ridden -on it so as to bear down hard! And I had not my story ready! - - - - -XI--THE FAILURE OF AN UNCLE-TAMER - - -FURTHERMORE, in the morning I was just as much at sea. I had gone to -sleep as suddenly as if somebody had hit me a tunk on the head; too much -fried chicken and hashed brown potato! I did not wake up till Dodo-vah -Vose marched through the tavern halls, playing the long roll on his -gong. The March sun, level with the eastern windows, quivered with -glorious light when I opened my eyes on it. I had all sorts of reasons -to be downcast, but I was not when I waked and saw that sun. - -Scattered coins, my whole capital, lay on the carpet of braided rags, -where they had slipped from my trousers pocket the night before when I -hung the garment over a chair. I gazed over the billowing edge of the -feather tick in which I was nested, and counted, for the sun lighted the -floor and glinted on the coins. One dollar and thirty-seven cents! - -However, in spite of that spectacle, I hopped out of bed and dressed, -whistling snatches of tupes furnished by music-hall memories. I was home -again, Celene Kingsley had given me glances which my hopes translated -into all sorts of dear promises--she had asked me to help her; the sun -was shining, breakfast was ready! I went down-stairs whistling. - -“Head up and tail over the dasher, hey?” was the greeting from Landlord -Vose. - -“It’s a great world to live in,” I told him. After I had tucked away a -slice of home-smoked fried ham only a little smaller than a door-mat, -along with eggs and the fixings, I felt even more resolute about -fronting what was coming to me. - -My spirit of boldness was even a bit hysterical, I guess. I rubbed the -nap of my plug-hat smooth with my forearm, pulled on my overcoat, and -went out and stood on the tavern porch, inhaling the tingling air of the -morning, exhibiting myself to Levant like a gladiator stepping into the -arena, announcing by pose and expression: “Here I am. Now come on!” - -And the first to answer my challenge was my uncle Deck. I think he had -been waiting for me to appear. He walked across the village square, -coming from the town office, and I hailed him from afar with a flourish -of the hand and a “Good morning!” - -Ten feet away he stopped and looked me over. “Why didn’t you come home -last night, where you belong, instead of putting up at the tavern and -letting me hear about it by word of mouth?” - -“Well, Uncle Deck,” I drawled, “you remember--” - -“Look here,” he yapped, “as I stand here I don’t know whether to cuff -your young chops or shake your hand. A good deal depends on you. If you -go to digging up past foolishness I’ll cuff you. As it is”--he stepped -forward, hand outstretched--“as it is, son, I’m glad to see you back, -and I hear that you have made something of yourself. I’m glad of that, -too! Now get your volucus, or whatever your baggage is, and come to the -house.” - -“I’ll tell you, Uncle Deck,” I explained, dropping his hand after a -hearty shake; “I’m here on business this trip, not to go visiting.” - -“What difference does that make about coming to my house, where you -belong?” he demanded. - -He had me there--backed into a corner! He had his pod-auger out, ready -to use on me, just as I had apprehended--and so help me! I was not ready -with a story. - -“What is your business?” - -Dignified reserve and a plug-hat would not serve to trig my uncle Deck! - -It was necessary for me to dedare then and there what my business in -Levant was. I had been clutching wildly into a lot of nebulous thoughts -ever since waking, trying to get hold of something solid. - -And I found out then, as I had experienced before, and discovered on -many occasions later, that there was in me something which enabled me to -leap an emergency barrier when the goad was sharp enough and the danger -near. - -“I’ve got to have dealings with a lot of men and I’d be a nuisance -around your premises, Uncle Deck.” - -“What dealings? No secret, is it?” - -“Certainly not! I’m buying for a big syndicate. Buying standing timber.” - I said that because I had already committed myself with Celene Kingsley -and it came to me that I’d better have one story and stick to it. - -“All right! Buy some of mine.” - -“But as I remember it, it’s mostly black growth--pine and spruce.” - -“Yes, and cedar, fir, and hemlock! What in thunder does anybody want of -any other kind of timber?” - -“I can’t use it. I’m buying for a special purpose.” - -I felt like a man trying to get across a brook without wetting his -feet. Every time I leaped I was mighty glad and rather surprised to find -another stepping-stone to land on. - -“Then you must be looking for hardwood?” - -“That’s it.” - -“What are you going to do with it?” - -“Burn bricks for our factory chimneys.” - -He did not look more than half convinced. - -“I can’t go into details even with you, Uncle Deck,” I told him. “I’m -ordered to buy close, and when names of big concerns are given out the -sellers always raise prices.” - -“There’s only one big stand of hardwood in this town,” he said, “and -I’ll see you in damnation before I’ll let you buy that!” - -“Why?” - -The red patches beside his nose began to flame. “Don’t come back at _me_ -with your ‘whys’! I’ll tell you why you can’t buy! It’s because you’ll -be handing over money to that”--(I never heard coarser oaths; my uncle -fairly choked on them)--“to Zebulon Kingsley.” - -“I know the lot belongs to Judge Kingsley. I saw the sign on the fence -and I happened to meet the judge right there and had some talk with -him.” - -“Do you mean to tell me that you have been dickering with that--” - -I broke in on his list of names. “My concern has ordered me to buy -hardwood and I’m buying. I have no quarrel with Judge Kingsley.” - -“By the Great Jedux, you _have!_ Don’t you dare to tell me you have -forgotten! You _have_ got a quarrel with him. D----n you, look out that -you don’t start one with _me!_” - -“I have come in here to mind my own business--” - -“Condemn your ha’slet!” he cried. “No wonder you didn’t dare to come to -my house last night! No wonder you’re fighting shy of me to-day!” - -In spite of his anger, I felt a sudden sense of relief. I did not need -to waste effort and time on minor falsehoods, trying to explain why I -did not come to his house; I could devote all my attention to my main -lie. - -“I’m not fighting shy of you, Uncle Deck. I’m a business man, and--” - -He turned sideways to me and switched his arm furiously, as if he held a -goad and was trying to start a balky steer. - -“You come along over to my office,” he commanded with a grate in his -tones. “This isn’t a matter to blart about on a street corner.” - -I followed him. He locked the door behind us. - -“You know that I have been elected first selectman of this town?” - -“Yes, Uncle Deck. I’m glad the citizens--” - -“Yah, for the citizens! First and last, it has cost me five thousand -dollars to get this office. And it’s for their own good I worked to get -it--and they thought it was only to satisfy my grudge. That’s all -the credit a man gets from the fools who vote. But I’m in this office -now--I’m headed straight for my mark--and the man who gets in my way -will be bored like a cheese target! Do you hear that?” - -“Yes, sir.” - -“They know enough in this town to keep out of my way! I have trained -’em. You don’t dare to come back here, do you--my own nephew--and get -in my way?” - -“I’m only attending to my business.” - -“Meaning by that you’re thinking of buying a wood-lot from Zebulon -Kingsley?” - -Secretly I was sort of laughing at myself. Here I was, inviting a lot -of trouble by insisting on doing something which was a positive -impossibility, so it seemed then as I jingled my coins in my pocket. - -“I have my business the same as you have yours, sir. I didn’t know--” - -“You did know!” he shouted. “And if you are such a renegade as to forget -what has been done to your family by that skunk, you know _now_--for I’m -telling you! You can’t do business with Zebulon Kingsley. I say it!” He -pounded his fist on his breast. - -I kept still. I was trying to work out in my mind some sensible idea as -to what I really did intend to do in the matter of that wood-lot. - -My uncle leaned toward me over the table in the town office, propping -himself on one fist and pounding softly and slowly with the other. His -lips were rolled back and he growled his words deep down in his throat, -almost in a whisper. - -“I know what he is, now. I’ve got the stuff on him. I’ve had to work -slow. I’ve had to convince two devilish steers on the board of selectmen -without telling ’em what I’m after. But I’ve got ’em. And he is -headed for hell and I’m after him. And he knows it now and that’s the -best of it! Because I’m taking my time while he is thinking it over! -Oh, my gad! if only your father could have lived till now to see how the -devilish old gouger and robber is getting his! And he is paying for your -mother’s tears and sweat with drops of his blood. And he is paying me, -too. I stay up nights to see that lamp in his office window. And you -say, do you, that you have come here to hand over money to Zebulon -Kingsley? To the man who filed your father’s heart in two with a -mortgage?” - -“It’s only in the way of ordinary trade,” I ventured. I was wondering -why I was continuing to provoke my uncle. But I knew I needed to start -considerable of a smoke to screen my real condition from him. - -“There is to be no trade between you,” raged my uncle. “No money from -you shall touch that scoundrel’s hands!” Just at that moment I was more -sure of that than he was. - -My uncle gave me a little opportunity to do some thinking, for he went -to the office safe and pulled out a bottle and drank. - -I wondered what kind of a hold he had on Judge Kingsley. My curiosity -was aflame. It was not believable that he could ruin the judge -financially, for the Kingsleys had possessed wealth for many -generations. Celene Kingsley, as the petted daughter of our village -aristocrat, was too far above me for any hopes to bear fruit, even -though they budded. But what would the Kingsleys be after my uncle had -worked out his revenge, of whose success he seemed to be so sure? - -“I know there has been trouble between the families, Uncle Deck,” I -said. “I know we were not used right in money matters. But what is it -you’re going to do to Judge Kingsley? What is your grip on him?” - -He wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and set back the bottle. -“None of your d------d business!” - -“I don’t like to go into anything blindfolded. I have business to -consider, and I’ll have to make explanations. - -“You’ll get off better by making ’em to the men who have hired you -than by explaining to me, if you don’t do what I tell you to do.” - -“But I’m no kid any longer. I’m running my own affairs, sir. If you -can’t let me in on the plans of this thing--” - -He advanced on me, waggling his fist. “You’re a devil of a fellow to -come and pump me for secrets, you are! What do you want to do--run to -him again like you did in the case of that hoss trade? Do you think I -have forgotten that?” - -“No, and I know you never will, sir.” - -“And so I say now, ask no questions and do as I tell you.” - -I edged toward the door, for I was pretty well mixed up in my own -thoughts and did not care to get into any more of a row with my -uncle--and all needlessly. - -“Are you giving me your word?” he demanded. - -“I’m not promising anything until I can think it over and decide on -what’s best to be done, Uncle Deck.” - -“You’ll decide now before you leave this office.” - -He started toward me, but the key was in the door, and I turned it and -stood ready to leave. - -“You have come back here to fight me, have you? A Sidney fighting his -own and nearest blood kin, eh?” He came close and made threatening -gestures. I put my arm across his breast and slowly pushed him back; -I gave him good opportunity to note that the arm was a sizable one and -mighty hard. - -“You plug-hatted dude!” he frothed. “Forgetting the duty you owe to your -own because you have had a whirl in the city!” - -“I am no dude, Uncle Deck, and calling me names and treating me like a -brat, as you used to do, isn’t going to get you anything!” - -“You are not standing with your own family.” - -“I can be loyal to my family, but I’m not going to-shut my eyes and jump -into a row just because you tell me it’s your row.” - -I saw that I had produced an impression and he calmed down a bit. - -“There may be a good deal you can do to help me in the thing,” he said. -“But, blast it! after what you once did to me, I ain’t sure I can trust -you!” He squinted his eyes and sized me up shrewdly. “You’re a Sidney, -and the old rat did dirt to you before you left this town. If you ain’t -willing to rise up now and swoop on him, there’s a reason. You ain’t -stuck on that girl of his, are you?” - -The blood surged into my face. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking hard -about her all through that talk. That was the last thing I would have -looked for from my uncle. He had jumped me in fine shape, and he saw it. - -“Yah-h-h!” he snarled. “You fool! You devilish fool! It had to be a girl -to keep you from doing your plain duty--and I knew it. Nothing but a -girl would be putting a twist-bit into your mouth right now!” - -“You’re wrong! You’re all wrong!” I protested, but I didn’t sound real -convincing. - -Nor did he, either, when he started to give me hints about her. His -eyes shifted and he stammered. I took him by the arm with a good, hearty -clutch and he shut up. - -There did not seem to be anything more to say just then, on the part of -either of us; plainly, we had squared off at each other! - -So I walked out. - -I was glad because my first session with my uncle was over. But while -I felt relief I knew I had pretty well done for myself where he was -concerned. Of course, I had not intended to confess to him my financial -condition, but deep down I had felt until then that if worse came to the -worst he would see me out of a hole. He would have done something, -at least, for my father’s sake. But I had been the one to deal family -loyalty the first kick. Now my uncle would see me starve and enjoy my -sufferings; his grudges followed just such grooves. - -Whatever else was ahead, it was pretty much up to me! - -I went back to the tavern, for it was some comfort just to look on -Dodovah Vose’s kindly face. - -“Let’s see! You’ve been dropping a word or two about doing business -here,” he prodded in friendly fashion. “Hope so. It’s quiet in town. -We’re all climbing ‘March Hill,’ you know--dull time in the country.” - -“I’m here to start something, sir.” I was telling him the truth then. -I had just started something over in the town office. I sat down and -picked up a newspaper from the table and began to show great interest -in reading so that I would not be obliged to talk. I was afraid he would -get me cornered. I hung onto that paper as if it were a life-buoy--I -read it from title to last line, advertisements and all. It was the -_Mechanicsville Herald_, printed in a manufacturing city about thirty -miles from Levant, and because I did not miss anything which was -printed in it I noted that two concerns wanted cord-wood--and I had -just mentioned the matter of cord-wood to my uncle. At all events, I was -traveling on a singletrack lie in old Levant! - -I laid down that paper and did some mighty lively thinking. Then, to -reassure myself, I gave my silk hat the least bit of a cock and marched -to Judge Kingsley’s mansion. - -Celene herself opened the door so promptly after my ring that I had a -cozy little suspicion that she had seen me coming and had hurried to -meet me. She was very pretty in her morning gown. - -“Oh, your ankle is so much better, isn’t it?” she cried. “I watched you -coming across the square.” - -She stepped back, inviting me to enter by her manner, and I walked in. - -“I knew just what to do for it. It’s pretty nigh all right.” - -She led me to the sitting-room, and her mother rose and met me; Mrs. -Kingsley was distantly polite, that was all. I was glad even for that -much in the case of a Sidney, for I knew that Judge Kingsley’s obedient -wife was as careful in matching her opinions to his as she was in -matching colors at the store. - -“I ask to be excused for calling so early in the day,” I said, with my -hat in the hook of my arm, and putting on my best manners. “But this is -a business call and I’m in somewhat of a hurry. You heard me speak to -your father, Miss Kingsley, about the wood-lot. Now--” - -“I never presume to interfere in my husband’s business matters,” said -Mrs. Kingsley, looking half scared. “I know nothing whatever about his -business.” - -“Oh, I am not asking you to do so--certainly not,” I hurried to tell -her. “I shall do all my business directly with him. But to do so I need -his address in the city. I have come to ask you for it. I suppose he -left it.” - -“Oh yes--so that I may send his mail.” She looked relieved and gave me -the name of a hotel. - -I had not presumed to sit down, though I was sure that Celene’s eyes had -asked me. I bowed and backed toward the door. - -“I thank you. That’s all I wanted. I am sorry I was obliged to intrude.” - I felt that I was certainly doing that little thing well. “I may be -obliged to call again, if you will allow me.” - -Mrs. Kingsley hesitated. - -“Of course you may call,” blurted Celene. - -“I may have to consult with you in a matter similar to this errand -to-day,” I explained. “I’m sorry the judge is not here; in that case I -would not be bothering you.” - -“I tried to prevail on my husband to stay at home--he is not at -all well--there are so many matters which need his attention here,” - complained Mrs. Kingsley. “If we can help you with any information we’ll -be glad to doit.” - -I went away on that, and I guess I left a good impression that I was -strictly business! - -Feeling sure that the two of them were watching me, I put a lot of -business snap into my gait when I returned to the tavern. - -“Mr. Vose,” I asked, briskly, “how many hitches have you in your -livery-stable?” - -“Eight,” he said, “if I include two road-carts.” - -“The road-carts are all right, too. I want to use all of ’em, if you -can furnish drivers.” - -“It’s easy enough to find men in these slack times.” - -“And probably farmers and day’s-work men in the back districts of the -town would like a job.” - -“You can bet on it!” - -“Start eight men going, then, as soon as you can get the horses hitched -in. Have the messengers pass the word that I can use two hundred husky -men. Each man to report here in the tavern yard to-morrow morning at -six-thirty with a sharp ax on his shoulder.” - -“And what else--tell ’em what else?” - -“Nothing.” - -“But about wages--and what they’re to do?” - -“Tell ’em nothing. They’ll come running in here to find out what it’s -all about, Mr. Vose. Don’t even tell ’em who wants ’em. You and I -both know how curiosity itches in this town till it has been properly -scratched.” - -“Guess you’re right,” agreed the landlord. “If you set out to hire ’em -regular style they’d want to hem and haw and haggle about so long and so -much!” - -“If you want a deposit for--” I suggested, reaching toward a breast -pocket which was empty. - -“Godfrey domino, no!” he protested, flapping his hands. “If you have had -to handle business in those suspicious ways down in the city I’m sorry -for you. Now forget money talk between us till it’s time to talk.” - -I was glad to do that, and I hoped that his ideas of time were liberal. - -I borrowed some blank paper and went up to my room and figured for many -hours, stopping only to eat a good dinner--a boiled dinner in Vose’s -best style. My plate was piled high twice with corned beef fringed with -golden fat, succulent disks of yellow carrots, wine-red beets, snowy -white spuds, and odorous turnips. No man could possibly be a pessimist -with that dinner under his belt! I had every reason to be the most -apprehensive man in Avon County, but I had set my face to the front and -I had just naturally made up my mind that I was going to pay for that -dinner and for the other things which I had been recklessly ordering. I -proposed to put myself into a position where I would be compelled to use -every bit of my capital of cheek. The sweat stood, out on my forehead, -but it wasn’t the kind of moisture which could soften my grit. - -In the afternoon, every time a steaming horse came homing back to Vose’s -stable, I felt a funny quiver inside me. - -“I reckon you have got a good line on human nature, young Sidney,” - stated the landlord, when I went down to the foreroom before supper. -“From what the men say this rushing around back district’s with teams -has got the boys all heifered up. Even if they don’t come in to go to -work, they’ll be here to see what in tunket the hoorah’s about.” - -“I have heard my father say that this town was always ready to turn -out to a bee,” I told him. When I said it another thought came to cheer -me--I had noticed that when a lot of men were set at work together on -one job the natural spirit of rivalry put pep into the bunch. - -When Dodovah Vose went to his kitchen to give an eye to supper, I -plucked a telegraph blank from his office desk. I nerved myself to try -on my most audacious trick of all. I wrote this: - -_To Ross Sidney, Levant.--Offer accepted. Go ahead with work. Will -settle with you on my return._ - -_Z. Kingsley._ - -I set my jaws and told myself that the message wasn’t all falsehood; the -last sentence was strictly true, even if Zebulon Kingsley did not pen -it. - -I folded the paper, stuck it in my pocket, and went again to the -Kingsley house. It was brazen business--a dangerous hazard. But I was -depending on woman’s inadequacy. I felt that I had the two of them sized -pretty well. They had never presumed to meddle in the affairs of their -master. They would not dare to question his will. I figured that sending -him a wire asking corroboration of the message to me would seem to them -like bold interference which would bring reproof from him. - -I waited, respectfully standing, while they read the message, Celene -looking over her mother’s shoulder. - -“It’s more about the wood-lot matter,” I explained. “I think you heard -your father make me a price on it. Miss Kingsley.” - -“I remember distinctly, mother. Father said he would sell for two -thousand dollars.” - -“I know it must seem rather irregular,” I said, “but in my wire I -explained that my people are in a great hurry--and I’m glad that he has -been willing to meet me half-way. It means that I am to put on a crew at -once and cut the wood--and, of course, it’s a safe proposition for the -judge,” I went on, forcing the best smile I could. “Neither the land nor -the wood can be carried away in a shawl-strap before he returns--I think -he said in a week or ten days!” - -They returned my smile, and for the first time Mrs. Kingsley seemed -rather cordial. - -“I’m glad you are taking it off his hands,” she declared. “It will be -one less thing for him to worry about. He has been so troubled by his -business. I’m sure that he’ll be glad to get rid of a lot more property -in the same way.” - -My soul whispered its doubts! - -“I hope that the matter is all clear now and that you have a good -understanding, Mrs. Kingsley. You will explain, will you, if anybody -comes to you in regard to the matter or questions my authority?” - -“I will, Mr. Sidney.” - -She exchanged glances with her daughter and they seemed to understand -each other quickly. While we had been talking I heard the subdued -clatter of supper preparations in another room. - -“I feel sure that if my husband were here,” said Mrs. Kingsley, “he -would extend the hospitality of our house to a gentleman who was -obliging him in a business matter. Won’t you stay and take supper with -us, Mr. Sidney?” - -Without replying, I gave my hat into the ready hands of Celene and sat -down weakly. - -I was tickled nigh foolish--I’ll admit that. But I was not wholly taken -in by that hospitality play. Mrs. Zebulon Kingsley had known too much -about me and my breed-to feel any great hankering to have me as a guest. -But I was willing to bet a big plum that she was thinking a lot about my -uncle’s hostility and about the judge’s fear of that rambunctious town -official. And I was also sure that certain matters had been talked -over between her and Celene since my arrival in town with such outward -emblems of importance and prosperity. Furthermore, had I not -fairly promised the daughter that I would do my best in the line of -uncle-busting? - -So I held on to my emotions as best I could and waited for the subject -to come up. It did, of course. I had not been in the house ten minutes -before Mrs. Kingsley burst out. She was full of that topic. She saw in -my uncle’s attitude nothing but a wanton desire to make trouble for a -good and great man. - -I had been thinking over the matter of that hostility since my morning’s -talk with Uncle Deck. I had been developing a sharp-ended suspicion that -my uncle had something up his sleeve with which to arm that hostility. -Judge Kingsley would never have pulled his wife into a row he was having -with Decker Sidney unless desperation had moved him. I was bitterly -ashamed and grieved when I listened to her description of that -unutterable interview. - -As for her, she had no suspicions as to her husband’s integrity--I could -see that! The picture she made of the affair was of a mad dog chasing a -saint! - -“But what does the man think he can do to my husband? He can do nothing. -He must realize it. What has he said to you, Mr. Sidney? I ask you, for -I am sure you do not approve, his actions.” - -I looked at Celene, and answered that I certainly did not approve, nor -had I ever approved many things my uncle did. - -“I will say further that I did what I could to-day to turn him from his -grudge.” - -“But what does he think he can do to my husband?” she insisted. “I -suppose he told you.” - -“No, he did not, madam. He said he did not trust me. He twitted me with -having betrayed him once before to the judge--about the doctored horse,” - I added, with a sickly grin. - -“But, of course, you--his own nephew--you produced some effect on him?” - -“Yes, I made him so mad he would have struck me if he had dared. That’s -all the effect I seemed to produce.” - -Tears came into her eyes. “How will it end?” she quavered. - -I did not feel like bragging just then about any powers of mine in -the matter; I had plenty on my mind and conscience as it was. I was -distinctly aware of being glad I had had that boiled dinner, and plenty -of it, and I say that much with all due respect for the blessed presence -of Celene at the supper-board. For between my ever-swelling love for -her, my self-consciousness at table, my shame on account of my uncle, -and my general emotions, anyway, I could scarcely choke down a mouthful. -And at the end I was wholly and fairly rattled--that expression seems to -fit my state of mind better than anything I can think of right now. - -She accompanied me to the door that evening when I departed--Mrs. -Kingsley allowed her to go alone, evidently having elevated me to the -plane of, at least, a buttonhole friend of the family after hearing of -my quarrel with my uncle. - -And being rattled, and seeing the grieved anxiety in her eyes, and -knowing how much distress must be tearing at her poor heart, I gulped -out that I would put my uncle where he belonged. I was saying to myself -that I would see him in tophet before I’d allow his persecution to -harm those innocent women, and I came nigh saying that to her in my -excitement. - -She put out to me both of her hands, and I took them. I tossed all -prudence over the rail then. - -“If there’s got to be a fight in the Sidney family, then there’ll be -one! You tell your mother to sleep easy. I’ll take this thing in hand -from now on and I won’t have your father abused by anybody.” - -I was talking as big as old Lord Argyle, and I knew I was babbling -like a fool--bu t what can’t a girl’s wet eyes do to a fellow’s common, -sense? - -“We trust you,” she said. “You have made me so happy!” - -I bent down and kissed her dear hands, first one and then the other. -When I straightened up and saw the flush on her cheeks and the shy -pleasure in her eyes I went the limit without stopping to take thought. -I put my arms around her and kissed her on the lips--and no honest man -can look me squarely in the eye and tell me there’s any memory like the -remembrance of the first kiss from one’s own true love! For the first -true love is not merely maiden--she has elements of the goddess in her! - -Therefore, having presumed so much with a goddess, I was immediately -frightened and found myself ready to struggle with apology--and apology -did not fit that occasion. So I ran away before I made more of a fool of -myself. - -“Good night!” I whispered from the gate. “I love you!” - -She closed the big door very softly and I gathered good omen from that. - -How bright the stars were when I looked at them through my tears! A -half-century ago a Yankee poet wrote these verses when he was in love: - - When twilight’s sable curtain falls, - - Then stars stand thick at even To act as outside sentinels - Around the gates of heaven. - - That night along the shimmering slant, - - (I tell you true, my brother) - - The password was “Almira Grant” - - They whispered to each other. - -I knew mighty well what was their password that March night when I -walked away from Celene. - -I was not fit for any tavern society just then. Impulse seized upon me -and I went down into the orchard. True love does not forget his trails -and his caches! I found the tree with the hollow trunk and slipped my -hand into the hole; I pulled forth the little packet of three rings. I -reckoned that when I got my courage and my voice I would have a story to -tell her--some evidence of love longstanding to offer--and that I’d find -those rings pretty valuable as exhibits A, B, and C. - -There were quite a number of gossiping loafers in the tavern foreroom -when I marched in at last and took my room key from its hook. - -If there had been any doubt among them as to my importance in the world, -that doubt must have vanished when they looked on me that night; for if -I did not feel at that moment that the world was mine, nobody ever did! - - - - -XII--STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT - - -THE men were there in the morning--a mob of them. - -They came riding and they footed it into the village. The tavern office -was crowded and the yard was full. - -The growing buzz of them woke me before sunup, and I wasted no time in -dressing and getting down. - -It was just as I had expected--the spirit of a lark was in them. They -were not like men who had come dragging themselves to work. The men I -knew--and I knew a lot of them on account of my early goings and comings -about the countryside on my uncle’s affairs--were on my back in a -moment, their mouths full of questions. - -But I was not ready to talk turkey till I had settled on one point, and -I told them to be easy for a few minutes. - -I needed one man for a special purpose. I had left the selection of that -man for morning, feeling instinctively that I would do better to pick -from the crowd than to give away my plans overnight. - -I saw him inside of ten seconds. It was as clear a case of the right man -for the job as if I had specified and had received the goods. - -The man was Henshaw Hook, the best-known man in that section, the town -auctioneer. He had the gift of gab, the science of talking all men into -good humor, and was as alert in all his doings as a cricket on a hot -spider. - -I took him by the arm and rushed him up to my room. Mr. Hook had brought -no ax to the levee; he told me, by way of explanation, that he had come -around out of curiosity. So had a lot of others, I knew well enough. - -Dodovah Vose followed us, for I had summoned him by a jerk of my head. - -“Now, Mr. Hook, here’s the story short and snappy,” I told him. “I -represent a big syndicate which is buying all kinds of property. I have -bought Judge Kingsley’s wood-lot for the sake of what is on it--and it -must be cleaned off in a hurry. Of course, I can’t hang around town to -attend to that part of the business. I need an able man who can attend -to it.” I pulled out my papers and inspected my figures. “Mostly we are -after hardwood--cord-wood! Do you suppose you can pull a hundred or so -good workers out of that crowd downstairs?” - -“Yep!” snapped Hook. “Mebbe more.” - -He was just as brisk as I was. - -The newspaper had given me quotations in its market column, and I had -chopped cord-wood in my own young life. Furthermore, in my everlasting -scurryings after squirrels and birds I had made many explorations -on Judge Kingsley’s domains. I was fully prepared to talk business, -therefore. - -“Mr. Hook, green cord-wood is selling for five dollars a cord. It’s -a poor man with an ax who can’t chop, trim, and pile his cord a -day--four-foot length. If you can put two hundred men on that job and -will abide by the rules of my syndicate, you can turn a profit of around -fifty dollars a day for your own pocket--for I offer you five per cent, -on five dollars a cord.” - -Mr. Hook promptly showed much interest. “You said rules?” - -“I said rules!” - -“Spill,” invited Mr. Hook. - -“Get out your pencil and make notes--and I’ll ask you to do the same, -Mr. Vose, so that there’ll be no comeback!” - -They obeyed promptly. - -“I am to do all my business with you--you are to do all the business -with the choppers. You are the responsible party in all the details. You -are to keep the books, measuring each man’s daily cut and giving him due -credit. He is to be paid two dollars and fifty cents a cord--a weekly -bonus of twenty-five dollars to the man who comes across with the most -cords! No payment to be made for two weeks and then one week’s pay will -be held back so that the men will not quit on me.” - -“Don’t know about their agreeing!” - -“Then the syndicate doesn’t want them. There’s no chance for argument. -We’ll see how many volunteer when you put the matter up to ’em. I’m -going to leave the speechmaking to you!” - -“I’m fairly handy with my tongue,” he said, with a grin. “So I know. -And I must be sure that _you_ will not quit. That would disorganize the -whole thing. All money to the men must go through your hands. Therefore, -Mr. Hook, you must deposit with me, so as to cinch your responsibility, -the sum of five hundred dollars in cash before axes start this morning.” - -That idea did not please Mr. Henshaw Hook--not for a minute! He looked -pretty blank. - -“I haven’t any option in the matter,” I stated, coldly. “The syndicate -makes its rules--but you can see that’s a common-sense one. I couldn’t -be jumping around the country, leaving behind a lot of operations -running by guess and by gosh, nobody financially responsible for the -details.” - -“Corporations have to have their rules, Hen,” said helpful Landlord -Vose. “We all know how young Sidney, here, has come along in the world!” - -“The Sortwells have advertised that all right,” agreed Mr. Hook. - -“He isn’t working for dubs, Hen!” - -“Probably not! But with the judge out of town I can’t dig up more than -three hundred and fifty this morning, not even if I went and robbed my -old woman’s work-basket!” - -“Needn’t worry about that,” said Dodovah Vose. “I’ve got public spirit -and I want to see business get a hump on in this town. I’ll lend you -enough to make up the five hundred.” - -Mr. Hook devoted thirty seconds to meditation. “Let’s see--what did -I understand you to say your concern is?” he queried with assumed -innocence. - -“I did not say--we are not advertising; we are pussyfooting so that they -won’t be boosting land values on us,” I said, serenely. - -“But among friends--” - -“News travels faster among friends than anywhere else. Mr. Hook, I’m not -going to risk my job by shooting off my mouth. You don’t think I’ve come -back to my home town to work a flimflam trick, do you?” - -“I’ll grab in on this myself rather than see the plan dumped,” stated -the landlord. - -“I’ll go down and put the thing up to the boys,” offered Hook, hastily. -Fifty dollars and over a day had properly baited this Hook. - -Our auctioneer was a good talker! When--as he put it to them amidst -laughter--he asked the sheep to separate from the goats, more than a -hundred and fifty men stepped to one side and waved their axes as signal -that they were ready to go to work. - -Fifteen minutes later, closeted with Vose and Hook in my room, I was -counting the deposit money--a fat bundle of bills; I had made ready for -that part of the ceremony and I had an equally fat packet of blank paper -in the drawer of my little table. I had not sat at the feet of my crook -acquaintances without hearing much about the “substitution trick.” I -worked it then and there on those guileless old countrymen. - -I merely yanked out a table drawer with the casual remark about an -envelope, turned my back for an instant, and then slipped into an -envelope in full view of them a financial sandwich; I had made that -sandwich by flicking two bills off the money-packet and framing the -blank paper. I licked the mucilage, sparked down the flap, and handed -the packet to Landlord Vose. I left the rest of the money in the drawer -and slammed it shut. - -“I suppose you have wax and a seal down-stairs, Mr. Vose. Please daub on -a little and lock this up in your safe. Then Mr. Hook and you and I will -feel all right about our affairs.” - -I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have -flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry -of Navarre--providing I remember my _Fourth Reader_ selection. That wad -of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked against -my ribs in most comforting manner. - -I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did -after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic. -Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was -laughing. Axes sounded in a chick-chock chorus, and trees began to crash -down. - -I spent the most of the day on the job, for I saw opportunities for -extra profits; there was quite a stand of hackmatack, for instance, and -there was a lot of cedar which fringed a small swamp. I made special -bargains with men to fell this stuff for railroad ties. There was also -considerable pine suitable for, box stuff; before the day was over a -portable-sawmill man, hearing of the onslaught on the Kingsley lot, -came hurrying to the village, made a trade for the pine, and paid down a -sizable deposit; advertising was certainly paying! - -One of the most interested onlookers was my uncle Deck, who drove dose -to the wood-lot fence and scowled and sliced the air with his whip. He -made several trips during the day and was handy by when I started to -walk back to the village in the late afternoon. He offered a seat in his -wagon and I accepted, for I was all done being scared of him and I was -footsore. - -“Recorded your deed yet?” he asked. - -“No, not yet,” I said, airily. - -“Probably not, seeing that you haven’t got any.” - -I let it go at that, having no sensible explanation to give a business -man like my uncle. - -“So, as it stands,” he went on, “it’s a case of neck-and-neck whether -_he’ll_ jew you or _you’ll_ jew _him_. As bad as I hate _him_ I’m -getting to hate _you_ worse! I hope he’ll stick you. But I doubt it. A -young pirate who can step in here and steal a whole wood-lot right under -the noses of men who ought to know better is qualified to give old Judas -I-scarrot lessons in deviltry.” - -“I don’t blame you for feeling pleased and for praising me, Uncle Deck. -I certainly am doing credit to your training.” - -“But as first selectman of this town I’ve got a reputation to look -after, and where will I get off with one of my blood and name serving -time in State prison for grand larceny?” - -“Oh, I’m not going to State prison.” - -“You will, with that old devil after you, surer’n hell’s down-hill!” - -“We’re sort of partners, the judge and I.” I decided that I might as -well give him a jolt or two, even if his common sense did tell him that -I was lying. - -“Oh, bah-h-h!” he yelped. - -“And as his partner I want to warn you against trying to trig his -business affairs.” - -He almost yanked the jaw off his horse, pulling the animal to a -standstill. - -“Condemn your young tripe! You are about as much a partner of his as -a pullet is partner of a polecat! Don’t you talk up to me! If you are -trying to cheat him I’ll help you do it. But if you are trying to help -him, down goes your house!” - -“I propose to help him--help his family,” I said. - -To my surprise he held himself in. “Help him how?” he asked. - -“Why, by making you quit hounding him, for one thing. It’s time this -foolish old row was stopped. I am taking a special interest in Judge -Kingsley’s family in these days.” - -“Down to brass tacks, now! You mean just what you say, do you?” - -“I most certainly do, Uncle Deck!” - -“Don’t you dare to call me uncle, you wall-eyed pup! You have gone to -leaning up against that girl like a tomcat cuddling a warm brick, have -you? You’re letting her fool you along--” - -“Shut that dirty mouth of yours!” I shouted. - -“Get out of this wagon--out with you!” - -I obeyed promptly, for I had had plenty of his society. - -He waggled his whip-lash close to my nose when I stood in the road. -“When you get into State prison, where you belong,” he snarled, “you’ll -have a chum there. For that’s where I’m going to send old Kingsley, so -help me the living God!” - -And he curled the lash with all his might under the belly of his horse, -taking it out on the poor brute, and tore away, with the animal on the -dead run. - -I trudged along in the dust he left flying. A fine chance I stood of -handling my uncle Deck! - -A precious lot of fool babbling that talk had been at the front door of -the Kingsley house the night before! - -Nevertheless, I went to the house again that evening, for I had a -business excuse. I told mother and daughter that certain urgent matters -called me out of town and that I would be leaving early in the morning. -I had a word or two to say about my arrangements for clearing the lot so -that their minds might be at ease if any gossip came to them; in country -communities there are busybodies who are always guessing at mischief and -are trying to make trouble. - -I remained with them only a short time, for I was afraid they would try -to get consolation out of me regarding my uncle and I was not in the -mood to do any more lying. I was in a generally uncomfortable state of -mind, anyway, and I knew that Celene was troubled by my manner. There -seemed to be sense of impending evil hovering over the three of us. -Frankly, my uncle’s threat regarding the judge had thrown a good-sized -scare into me; Uncle Deck had truly acted as if he knew what he was -talking about. My own conscience was creaking considerably inside me. -When I rose to go Celene did not see me to the door. She gazed at me -tenderly when I stated that I would be back in a few days, but some sort -of reserve kept her at her mother’s side. - -The stars were certainly not so bright that night when I walked back to -the tavern. In my gloom a memory popped into my mind, queerly enough. -I remembered that Dodovah Vose had loaned me ten dollars the night he -helped me to escape. - -I plucked a bill out of my breast pocket and handed it to him when I -walked into the tavern. - -“I hope you’ll excuse the delay,” I pleaded. - -“I sure will,” he replied, heartily. “You’re an honest chap, young -Sidney!” - -But I was far from feeling honest that night. - - - - -XIII--THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK - -NEXT morning Dodovah Vose drove me to the railroad station at the Lower -Comers. He looked at the trip as a sort of a triumphal parade, and said -so to me. - -“Some different from that night ride we took, young Sidney,” he -chuckled. “I’m playing hackman this time so as to take the taste of that -other ride out of my mouth!” - -Yet, as I rode that morning by his side, I was wondering whether I would -have courage to come back to Levant. Panic was in me--it truly was! - -“Mighty scared little bug was you that night! But I always knew you had -sprawl and gumption in you. Now you’re showing the old town a thing or -two and I’m proud of you.” - -His praise made me cringe more than ever. - -When we passed the wood-lot a merry rick-tack of axes sounded in our -ears. - -“Yes, sir! You have shown them all that you can come back here and start -something,” stated Landlord Vose. He did not realize how infernally -right he was. What I had started was setting the willy-wallies to -dancing in my soul. - -“Things have come along with such a rush that I haven’t thought to -ask you how you happened to hit it off so smooth with the judge,” he -proceeded, and my alarm increased. - -“I met him on the road, and we turned a quick trade on the spot. He was -starting for the city and we had to trade sudden or not at all.” - -“That hasn’t been the judge’s usual way in business,” he commented, -sagely. “I have had some dealings with him myself, and so I know his -style pretty well.” He gave me a sly, sideways glance. “Yes, I know him -so well that I’ve noticed how he’s losing his grip on business.” - -“And do you think he has been losing money, too?” I plumped at him. - -“Well,” drawled Vose, “I don’t know how much money he’s got nor what -sort of investments he’s carrying or how much money he has been handling -for other folks, for he has always been cussed secret in his operations. -And the folks who have turned money over to him have been secret, -too, for I reckon he has helped them hide their money away from the -tax-assessors. But I’ll tell you, young Sidney, his money, however much -he’s got, must be pretty well tied up these days.” - -I questioned him with a side-glance which met his own. “Because when old -Rollins died a few months ago the heirs lit on the judge for the money -he had in his hands--for the heirs are spenders and wanted the money -to toss away. The judge’s home place is in his wife’s name and she -mortgaged it to raise the money--and when a man mortgages the roof over -his family’s head he does need money, there’s no doubt about that.” - -“But there are times when a man doesn’t like to sacrifice securities,” - I said. Somehow I felt as if I had been specially delegated to stand up -for the Kingsley family. “Maybe so! Maybe so!” agreed Vose. “Finance is -a strange critter--and the judge is a regular financier. But, I swan, if -I like the looks of the strangers he has been doing business with for a -long time back. I ain’t any kind of a hand to pry into the dealings of -men who put up at my tavern. Those fellows always paid their bills and -showed plenty of money, but it don’t seem to me as if straight business -needs to be so blamed secret.” - -“However, the big fellows in money affairs keep their cards pretty dose -to their vests,” I suggested. - -“Maybe so! But he’s selling property off slapdash--” - -“Mrs. Kingsley says he wants to get rid of some of his cares.” Perhaps -she had not said just that--but I had taken the rôle of the family -champion. - -“Maybe so--and if that’s the case, it’s too bad your uncle Deck is -rampaging so. Generally, we all trust the judge and look up to him, and -we don’t want to see him bothered at this time in his life. But here’s -your uncle trying to stir, up enough sentiment to call a special town -meeting.” - -“What for?” I was more alarmed than ever. - -“His excuse is that the town is now so prosperous that we can afford to -pay off the whole town debt by a little extra splurge in taxation. Says -that with the debt all paid off new industries can be induced to locate -here.” - -“But does that mean anything against Judge Kingsley? It looks to me like -enterprise on Uncle Deck’s part.” Again Mr. Vose chanted his everlasting -and singsong, “Maybe so!” Then he added: “But I reckon your uncle -Deck has more visible property spread around this town than any other -taxpayer in it. Maybe he has had a change of heart about money. Maybe -he intends to loosen up in his old age. Maybe he wants to hand something -back to a town he has gouged all his life. But from what I know of your -uncle Deck, I don’t think he has grown so cussed patriotic all of a -sudden. Young Sidney, I reckon there’s a hotter and livelier reason. -Your uncle has been nursing a grudge till it’s well-grown and all haired -out. That grudge is prancing, and he’s willing to pay high for a chance -to show its paces in public. And there’s more in the plan of that -special town meeting than shows on the surface at present writing!” - -Therefore, when I climbed on board the train I had plenty to think about -outside the immediate business I had in hand, though that was enough for -one poor mind, Lord knows! - -Take everything, by and large, I was in the prime mess of my young life -up to date. - -The principal reason why I stayed in it, I suppose, was because I didn’t -know any better! That reason has accounted for a lot of my experiences. - -Some of the best fights on the records have been won by men who were -worst scared. - -I alighted in Mechanicsville in a state of mind I’ll not attempt -to describe. But I looked at myself in a store window and made up a -business face to go with my appearance. I hired the best hack in sight, -I started on a round of factories, wood merchants, brick-yards, and -lumber-dealers. I rode up to the doors of offices in style; I walked in -on ’em in style. - -It was certainly a new wrinkle in wood-peddling--this plug-hat -performance! It opened all doors to me. I don’t know what they thought I -was, before I opened my mouth, but I was not kept twiddling my thumbs in -anterooms; the main squeeze in every office shunted all else in order -to greet me. I wonder what would have been my lot if I had come as a -stammering farmer, a crude countryman, or a chopper in wool boots! - -I sold wood! By gracious, I did! - -I found out something all of a sudden. I discovered that I had the art -of salesmanship. It’s an art, a qualification hard to describe. Every -man who has ever bought anything knows what it is and how it has -operated in his case. - -I sold wood and lumber and sleepers--and the more I sold, the higher -rose my confidence in my personality, and I had hard work to control and -conceal my hysterics of success. - -I worked off onto brick-yards even the crooked limbs, the second-grade -stuff which I had seen piling up on my operation. - -With every buyer I made written contracts, designating prompt delivery -on certain dates, first deliveries to be made within a week and calling -for cash payments of two-thirds of value of wood delivered, the whole -amount to be paid when final delivery was made. - -I went on down the line to another city and then to a third. I sold -wood! I sold for three days. Then I woke up and stopped selling. It -occurred to me that I might be overguessing on the resources of the -Kingsley wood-lot. - -I had not a mite of trouble in arranging with the division -superintendent of the railroad line for a supply of gondola cars; I was -offering something worth his attention. - -I left that gentleman in mighty abrupt fashion; he must have thought -that I was a very precipitate business man. But while I was winding -up my arrangements with him, I looked out of his office window in the -railroad station into the windows of a train which was pulling slowly -out, on its way up-country. I caught a glimpse of a stem profile with -a roll of chin-beard under it. If that face did not belong to Zebulon -Kingsley--But I did not stop to do any more thinking on the matter. I -galloped out of that office. I had to chase that train a hundred yards -down the platform--but I made the last car! - -Zebulon Kingsley home ahead of schedule! - -I stood on the car steps, getting my breath, giving dizzy thought to the -peril I had so narrowly missed. Zebulon Kingsley back in Levant ahead of -me, viewing his desolated wood-lot and voicing his fury! Where would my -character and importance land after that blow-up? - -Did I say that my dizzy thoughts dealt with a peril I had missed? In -about ten seconds I decided that I was traveling right along with the -peril. I was doomed to drop into Levant in its company. - -I might have been mistaken, I reflected. I hoped I had been deceived by -a too-hasty glance. I walked down through the train. I was pretty sure -of my man when I passed him, though I got a view of the back of his head -only. Therefore I went to the front of the car, making an excuse of -the water-cooler. I looked back at him while I drank. He seemed to be -asleep, for his head was bent down into the folds of the cape he had -pulled about his ears. I was so sure he was asleep that when I went -back up the car I gave him a bold look to convince myself I had not been -mistaken. - -I got one of the starts of my life! - -Zebulon Kingsley was distinctly not asleep. His eyes were like -fire-balls, and he stared straight at me without one flicker of the lids -or crinkle of the countenance to show that he recognized me. His face -was gray and haggard. He was like a stone man. If he had given one hint -by his expression that he knew me I would have pushed myself in beside -him, I reckon, and would have come across with my little story. But that -frozen face was too much for me. I was doing a lot of guessing about his -state of mind, and my guesses warned me to stay away from him just then. - -I hurried past and sat down in the first vacant seat. - -The feeling I had was that he had found out by letter from home or -somehow what kind of a trick I had cut up. Those glaring eyes hinted at -unutterable things. He must be in such a fury, I thought, that words had -failed him. He was waiting until he stepped foot in Levant to go at me -in proper style. Naturally, he would not start anything on a railroad -train. I sat there while those, thoughts flamed up in me like fire in a -brush-heap, and for a long time I found no handy extinguisher for those -thoughts. - -However, there was a rather comforting packet in the breast pocket of my -frock-coat; I got out those contracts and went over them carefully. - -I did have some visible emblems of success to stick up in front of his -sour face when it came to a showdown. But if Zebulon Kingsley was not -willing to start anything in public on a train, neither was I. I studied -my contracts, added figures, and tried to keep my mind off the big -trouble ahead. But who has ever sat near a bomb with a sputtering fuse -and felt in a mood for philosophy? I couldn’t even add figures! - -The train bumped on and on. It was a long ride. - -When we arrived at Levant Corners, I followed Kingsley so closely that -we almost walked in a lock-step. I had a sort of crazy notion that if he -started to bawl me out on the platform and expose me to the populace I’d -choke him and drag him off somewhere for an explanation, for I truly did -have a face to save in Levant. - -I trod behind him on the station platform. Far up the platform was -waiting a man who wore a constable’s badge. I itched all over as we -approached that man; I fully expected that the judge would whirl and -point me out and call for my arrest. But the constable touched his hat -respectfully and the judge marched on. I almost bumped into him when he -stopped at hail of a citizen. I was forced to go on, then. The citizen -had buttonholed the judge on some matter of business, but by the few -words I heard I knew it was no affair of mine. I ran my eye over the -array of hitches waiting in the station yard, expecting to see Celene -Kingsley. But she was not there. Her absence hinted to me that her -father was not expected. Then he would ride on the stage! I resolved -to walk on and to hail it when it overtook me. I proposed to be on the -scene when Judge Kingsley got first peep at what had been his wood-lot. -I kept looking behind and noted that he walked past the stage-coach and -had started to foot it on my trail. Therefore he was not expected at -home, and for reasons of his own had decided to walk. - -When I saw that the stage had come on without him and had observed that -he shook protesting hand at persons who stopped and offered a lift, I -walked on more briskly. He wanted to be left alone, then! His expression -had already hinted to me that he had no use for companionship at that -time. - -At last I could hear my ax-men. Their blades were biting wood in lively -chorus, though the dusk was gathering. I realized that the spirit of -rivalry was in them and that they were not watching the clock on that -job. When I came in sight of the wood-lot I saw that a big expanse had -been cleared, down to the bushes; the bared land was thickly dotted with -wood which was tiered in cord lots. I hardly recognized the place. - -The notion struck me that this was the proper strategic point to await -the battle. In the first place, I would not be obliged to waste any -breath in telling Zebulon Kingsley that his wood-lot was being cleared; -his eyes would inform him on that point. I could devote all my language -and energy to the job of enlightening him regarding my activities in -the matter, my hopes and his prospects of getting some money. Secondly, -considering strategy, my appearance before my men, accompanied by -Judge Kingsley, after I got him under control, would put the stamp -of authority on the whole affair; I believed I could control him. He -certainly would have to take the situation as he found it; he couldn’t -stick those trees back into the ground again. - -Therefore I settled my plug-hat well on my head, pulled out my bunch of -contracts, and waited for him to come around the bend in the road. - -I reflected that he had looked to me like a man who had a great deal of -trouble on his mind. In my young days, when old dog Bonny was dreadfully -afflicted with fleas I tied a tin can to his tail to take his mind off -his troubles. I believe fully that changing the current of his thoughts -for a time proved really restful to him. - -It was certain that Judge Kingsley would have the current of his -thoughts changed in a very few minutes. He would have something entirely -fresh to think about, and I hoped it would do him good, even though I -received no thanks. - -He seemed pretty much cast down when he shambled into sight, his -shoulders bowed, staring at the road ahead of him. But all at once he -straightened, threw back his head, and seemed to sniff the air. - -“Charge!” I said to myself. And he set his elbows akimbo under his cape -and came at a trot. - -He tried to rush past me on his way to the fence, but I stepped in front -of him and threw up my hands. - -“Just a moment, Judge Kingsley! This is my business--” - -“Your business be damned!” he stuttered. - -Strong talk for a Sunday-school teacher, but it made him seem more human -and my courage rose a bit. I had not known how to tackle that frozen -figure he looked to be in the railroad train. - -“But I’ll explain!” - -“I’m going to find out what this set of infernal thieves--” - -He wouldn’t wait any longer, though I was trying to head him off with my -arms outstretched. He drove past me and wrenched a post out of the fence -and started to climb into the wood-lot. There was only one thing to -do--I must get the upper hand of the infuriated old man before we -attracted the attention of my busy workers; the dusk was helping me in -that respect. - -I pulled the stake from him, held him by his arms, and set my face close -to his; he was a scrawny old chap and he hadn’t any muscle left. - -“Judge Kingsley, forgive me--but you must listen. It’s best for all -concerned. I have bought this lot from you and I am operating on it.” - -I thought he would choke to death before he got the words wrenched out -of him. - -“You haven’t bought it. You couldn’t buy it! There is no money passed. -There’s no deed. You’re a thief!” - -I had dropped the bunch of contracts when I grabbed him. I released my -clutch on one arm and picked up the packet. - -“Here’s something to show I am not a thief, sir. You’ve got to look at -’em. And the middle of the road is no place for our business.” - -Furthermore, I noticed all at once that the choppers were giving up work -and starting for the highway. - -Probably the most sensible way was for me to go along to his house, -exhorting him to keep his mouth shut till he understood the matter. But -a row with him in his own house would be exposing myself to Celene. -I held his arm and hurried him across the road and into the woods -opposite. He protested angrily, but I kept him on the move until we were -in a little clearing which the red western skies still lighted enough -for my purpose. - -I flapped the contracts under his nose. “You advertised the land--you -gave me a price, Judge Kingsley. I know I have been irregular. I cannot -stop now to explain why, but I have sold all the wood. Here are the -contracts. Hunt up the men and make sure, if you don’t believe writing -and signatures. I’ll let you go and collect your two thousand dollars -before a dollar comes to me.” I shoved the papers into his hands and he -pawed them over without seeming to understand very well. “Contracts?” - -“Yes, sir! Contracts with responsible concerns.” - -“I’ll have you arrested,” he insisted, but his anger was dying out -and he sort of whined, “It’s my land; you haven’t any right to make -contracts.” - -All at once his legs bent under him and he sat down on the ground. There -was plainly something special the matter with Zebulon Kingsley! - -“Oh, my God!” he mourned. “Are all the blatherskites, thieves, and -swindlers in this world on my track?” - -“Don’t tie any of those kind of tags on to me, Judge Kingsley. It isn’t -fair!” - -“You have robbed me!” - -“Confound it! Look at the contracts!” He did not seem to be taking any -interest in the papers; he merely waggled the packet about like a child -waving a rattle. - -“First one, and then the other! They have robbed me. I am ruined!” - -I squatted down in front of him and made him look at me. I was in the -mood for any kind of self-sacrifice. I wanted to beat it into his old -head that there was one man who was trying to help him. - -“Judge Kingsley, listen to me! You are sure of getting your two thousand -dollars for your wood-lot. I say again, go yourself and collect the -money. If my estimates are in any way near right--and I reckon I am -inside the truth--there’s around a thousand dollars profit in this deal, -profit I was intending to take for myself. But, seeing that you feel as -you do about my actions, I’ll hand the whole thing over to you. Take -it all! Come to me in the morning when you’re feeling better and I’ll -explain my trade with Henshaw Hook and the choppers.” - -He looked at me and never said a word. - -“I don’t even ask any pay for the time I have put in,” I said, trying -to make myself as much of an angel as I could, now that I was started -on the savior trail. “You understand, don’t you? All you’ve got to do -is keep my promises to the men and pull down around three thousand in -cash!” - -In a story-book that would have been his cue to get up and clasp me to -his breast. He simply blinked at me. I began to get a little warm in the -region of my neckband. - -“If that’s the way you feel about it, Judge Kingsley,” I said, -straightening up, “I’ll bid you good evening. After you have tucked -your three thousand in your jeans, send me a bill for damages and I’ll -settle.” - -He called me back before I had taken many steps. - -“My head isn’t right,” he mumbled. “I have been having much trouble. -What have you been telling me?” - -I went over the thing again, very patiently, for I saw I was dealing -with a case which was more serious than I thought. The night was on us -by that time. I tore strips of birch bark from a tree, lighted them one -by one, and made a torch so that he could examine one of the contracts. -Again I insisted that he must cake the whole thing over profits and all. - -“I had no right to start in on your property as I did, Judge Kingsley. -So I’ll fine myself a thousand!” - -“I think I ought to call you honest, young man,” he said, after a time. -“I have hard work to believe that any man is honest in this world just -now, but what you say sounds honest. I’ll meet you half-way in your -honesty.” - -He asked me to hold more torches. He found a sheet of letter-paper in -his wallet, bearing his name printed at the top. He wrote a receipt for -two thousand dollars, using the long wallet for his desk. - -“I have dated it four days back. Now that I have met you half-way in one -matter, young man, I ask you to meet me half-way in another. When you -get that, money in hand, pay it to my wife. Do not tell anybody that -you did not pay it to me.” He hesitated a moment. “As to the land--the -deed--” - -“I have no use for the land, Judge Kingsley. So there’s no call for a -deed.” - -“I think you are honest, young man. I believe I can trust you to give -the money to my wife--and say nothing about it outside!” - -“But I can give it to you, sir, in a few days!” - -“I expect to be away on business for some time,” he said, curtly. “Now -understand! Whatever questions are asked by anybody you must insist -that you paid that money to me. Your own interest requires it! Show the -receipt.” - -“Forgive me for keeping you here so long in the dark and the cold, sir,” - I pleaded, realizing the situation all at once. “If you’ll let me call -on you to-morrow I’ll have something further to say about the matter of -the profits--but I won’t bother you any more to-night.” - -“That’s right! Don’t bother me to-night.” - -I waited for him to come along with me. - -“Good night, young man,” he said. “Step along ahead if you will! I -prefer to walk home alone--I have some business matters to run over in -my head.” - -I realized fully that Judge Zebulon Kingsley did not care to have a -Sidney chumming with him before the eyes of Levant, and I did not take -this dismissal in bad part. I marched off. - -But the memory of that face of his went with me. Fifty feet up in the -road I stood stock-still. What did it mean--his command to hand over -the money to his wife, making a secret of it? What made his eyes burn so -redly? What was the matter with Judge Kingsley, anyway? I listened for -his footsteps on the road behind me. I heard no sound. - -It came to me that Celene Kingsley would have reason to blame me if I -left her old father floundering around the woods in the darkness. - -I went tiptoeing back, my ears perked. - -I heard him talking rapidly and clearly, not as one talks aloud in -soliloquy, but as if he were addressing somebody. I stepped carefully in -through the fringe of trees and I found out that Zebulon Kingsley _was_ -talking to somebody; he was talking to God! - -I listened five seconds and I realized what he was talking about. Then I -leaped on him and struck his wrist with the edge of my hand. - -He dropped a fat, ugly revolver which had glinted in the starlight. I -pounced on it and flung it into the woods as far as muscle, fright, -and anger could prevail. When I turned on the judge he had just tugged -another revolver out of his pocket, twin of the other weapon. I had a -tussle with him to get it, and he fairly squealed in his fury. But I -wrenched the thing out of his clutch and threw it; then I pulled him to -his feet and patted him all over, as a policeman frisks a prisoner, to -make sure that he was not serving as arsenal for more artillery. - -“Judge Kingsley,” I kept saying over and over, “your wife! Your -daughter! Think of them!” - -I was obliged to drag him out of the woods by main strength. I propelled -him along the highway and he walked as stiffly as some kind of a wooden -figure, moved by springs. His eyes stared straight ahead and his face -was white in the starlight. - -So we came into the village without a word between us, and I led him by -dark lanes to his house. - -Then he held back and replied to what I had said in the woods as if I -had just spoken. - -“I _am_ thinking of them! That’s why I can’t face them!” - -Oh, the tone in which he said that! Questions were crowding in my -throat, but I did not dare to pry into troubles as deep as Judge -Kingsley’s most certainly were. But I had to have some assurance from -him. - -“Judge Kingsley,” I said, with respect in my voice, “I am meddling, but -God knows there was a call for somebody to meddle just now.” - -“I want to be out of my troubles!” He was trembling like a leaf. - -“But you’re not so much of a coward, Judge, that you’ll shift off all of -your troubles on to your family, along with the awful one you were just -about to shove on them! I know you’re not. I have always looked up to -you, sir.”. - -“But nobody can look up to me from now on, young man!” - -“I always shall, sir. We all get rattled some time in our lives.” I knew -I was making pretty poor talk to a man like Judge Kingsley, but I was -trembling as badly as he was and I did not know what to say to him. - -“I’m only poor Ross Sidney, sir. You know I don’t amount to much, but -won’t you consider that I have done a little something for you this -night? I stopped you when you didn’t know what you were doing.” - -“I did know what I was doing,” he groaned. “I was doing it because I -couldn’t go home. I walked up the road to the woods--to my woods on -purpose to do it!” - -It came to me that fate, or whatever rules human actions, had set me to -play quite a part in Judge Kingsley’s life, for his private woods were -not there--and _I_ was. - -“Will you consider me enough of a man, sir, so that I can ask a -man-to-man promise that you’ll sleep on this thing and have a talk with -me to-morrow? I have helped you on one matter. I’ll do my best to help -you in other ways!” - -“There’s no help for me.” - -“But let me have a talk to-morrow with you! I beg you, Judge Kingsley. -Give me your promise till tomorrow!” - -He stiffened up and scowled at me. He resented what I said, I could see. -I guess he thought I was trying to be too familiar with him. The old -chap’s pride was still on tap. I suppose it seemed like lowering his -dignity to make any sort of a man’s compact with young Ross Sidney. -However, I was glad to see pride bristle up a bit in him. - -“I never heard of a Kingsley being a coward, Judge,” I told him. “Or -being a liar, either! You owe me something, sir, and I’ll insist on -being paid with your promise. So I reckon I have it.” I did not give him -opportunity to do any talking. I rang the bell at the door, though he -grabbed at my hand to stop me. - -“I can’t go in now! My face--my conscience!” So his conscience was still -working! - -“Leave it all to me, sir. I’ll fix it.” - -The maid opened the door, and I led him into the sitting-room. Celene -and her mother were there and they came to their feet, gasping with -fright, for I was half carrying the judge. - -“It’s nothing--it’s all right!” I told them. “We have been inspecting -the work in the wood-lot on the way from the train. It’s nothing, I -say--just a little touch of the heart. The judge insisted on walking -too much.” I helped him to a couch. “I’ll call in the morning on that -business, sir!” I told him. Then I turned to Celene, who was giving me -warm welcome with her eyes, now that her fears were subsiding. “Keep -your eye on your father during the night,” I advised her. “Of course, -it’s nothing serious in his case--only a little overtasking of the -heart--but a bit of home nursing will do him good.” - -I reckoned I had planted a loyal sentinel over the man who was indebted -to me for giving him more days of his life, even though they might be -bitter days. - -I went to Dodovah Vose’s tavern, feeling still more like an overloaded -mule--saddled with plenty of my own troubles, to say nothing of other -folks’. - - - - -XIV--THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN BUSINESS - -I WAS too much upset to go to sleep very early that night, even though -Dodovah Vose had given me another of those slumber-coaxing suppers of -fried chicken. - -So Zebulon Kingsley was ruined, according to his own tell! - -But what else besides ruin was fronting him? I knew him and the stuff -that was in him. When a man like the judge came humping back to his home -town, packing a gun on each hip and headed for his woods, there to -do himself destruction, it meant something more than that he was flat -broke. The fact that he had two guns suggested that he did not propose -to take any chances on failure. - -His troubles might have skeow-wowed his mind temporarily, I pondered. -The fact that he had given me, one of the despised Sidneys, a half-dozen -decent words hinted at aberration, as I thought upon the matter. I hoped -that he would stay crazy long enough so that he would allow me to poke -myself still further into his affairs and his family, and show me a -little appreciation. Up to that time I certainly had been using ax and -crowbar on the intimacy proposition! - -It was my conviction that he would be obliged to be pretty nice to me -from that time on. I knew something very private and personal in regard -to Judge Kingsley, Levant magnate! All at once I found myself feeling -rather like sticking my thumbs in my vest armholes and showing -condescension to that man who had loomed so largely before my -admiration. At any rate, no Sidney had ever committed suicide or had -tried to, unless it might be hinted that it mightily resembled suicide -when my father ran the ridge-pole of the Butler barn after wetting down -the occasion with a quart or so of hard cider. - -I felt decidedly cocky when I started over to his house the next -morning. I had his secret--I had manhandled him to save his life. A -man might make up his mind to commit suicide, thought I, and then be -particularly and almighty grateful, after a night’s sleep, because some -chap happened along at the right time and stopped him before he had made -a fool of himself. - -I headed for the front door like a friend of the family. - -Judge Kingsley opened his office door in the ell and called to me. - -“I do not transact business in my home,” he informed me, stiffly. He -tapped the sign beside his door. “Z. Kingsley” was its sole inscription, -curtly hinting that no further information was needed regarding that -gentleman. “I do all business in my office, sir.” - -I don’t know in just what condition I had been expecting to find the -judge, and I had not planned how I would act when I met him, but I know -mighty well I had not calculated on the sort of meeting we did have. - -I found him just as I had found him in times past when we had had a word -or so together--and that was my surprise that day! - -I would not have been much astonished if he had fallen on my neck and -sobbed out his gratitude; I rather looked for some demonstration. -To find him the same old, cold, stiff ramrod was outside all my -anticipations. I went in meekly and sat down. - -“In the matter of the wood-lot,” he said, perfectly at ease and putting -that jew’s-harp twang in his nose. “I have looked the contracts over. -Young man, I don’t know whether to compliment you as one of the smartest -business men I have ever met, or to have you arrested for an attempt at -grand larceny!” - -I did not know what to say to that, and sat and fiddled my finger across -the brim of my plug-hat. - -He put out his hand. “Please allow me to look at that receipt I gave -you.” - -I handed it over--obedient as a pup. He read it and tore it up. - -“It is as irregular a document as your operations have been irregular. I -will give you a deed, taking back your note and a mortgage--” - -“But I want no deed, sir. I said so to you last evening. I don’t want -the land. You keep it.” - -He gave me a chilly stare. “My price of two thousand dollars was on the -lot--not merely the wood on the lot. The land will be yours when we -have passed our papers. I don’t know why I should place myself under -obligations to you by any such foolish child’s play as you suggest.” - Say, I felt myself slipping out of the Kingsley family circle as if -I were going down a cellar slide in a puddle of soft soap. I made a -desperate clutch. - -“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I made you another offer last night. I -offered to turn the whole proposition over to you--profits and all! I -had no business starting in on the operation. If you are in some sort of -trouble--” - -“Who said I was in trouble?” - -“You said so last evening,” I faltered. - -“Have you told anybody I said so, sir?” he demanded, sharply. - -“No, sir! Certainly not.” - -“If you permit yourself to hint that to anybody I shall promptly brand -you as a falsifier and have you before the court on the charge of -slander. You must realize that I could secure large damages because a -financial man’s reputation forms his stock in trade. I could have you -sent to prison on a criminal charge.” - -“I don’t see any need of your sitting there and threatening me in that -fashion,” I protested, with some heat. “I have tried to help you--” - -“I have not asked for any of your help--I do not need it, sir.” - -“I don’t suppose you do,” I admitted, sourly. - -“Certainly not!” - -I couldn’t figure what his game was--it was his own business, -anyway--but I did not propose to have him sneering at me. His manner -when he said, “Certainly not!” was mighty nasty. I rose and kicked my -chair away from me. - -“You needn’t show any gratitude if you don’t feel like it, Judge -Kingsley. You’ll never hear a word from me about anything that has -happened, but I’m not keeping still because you have threatened me. I’m -keeping my mouth shut because I’m man enough to do so! And, by gad! I -hope you’re man enough, on your side, to show me a little decency and to -remember that you have a wife and daughter to protect from scandal and -shame. Good day!” I put on my hat and marched out. - -I’m making due allowance for the judge’s state of mind, but truly that -old hyampus did have the natural ability to stir a man’s temper. A -Kingsley and a Sidney got along together about as well as the two parts -of a Seidlitz powder do when they meet in a glass of water! - -I slammed the door after me, but I had gone only a few feet when I -remembered that I had left behind my contracts. Furthermore, I had -not finished my business in regard to the deed and the payments. So I -whirled and went back in without stopping to knock. - -It was as if he had been playing a part with me with a mask to hide his -face! He had laid down the mask. - -I looked on a fairly hideous scroll of awful, utter woe. That was his -face. He was crumpled down in his chair. He did not look at me. I picked -up the packet. - -“Are you ready to attend to the matter of the deed, sir?” - -He wagged his head weakly from side to side. “Later!” he muttered. “Come -later. Come this evening, perhaps.” - -I went down into the woods and hunted for hours until I found those two -revolvers. That face of his was before me all the time. I expected to -look up and find him hunting, too. There were other ways of committing -suicide than by shooting, but I did not propose to leave those revolvers -around loose, seeing that he had made up his mind to use that means of -shuffling off. That face which he had exposed to me showed that Judge -Kingsley’s soul was near the limit of endurance. - -I went about that day sick with fear. My helplessness in the matter was -maddening. He was holding me off with his disdain like a man holding an -enemy at bay with a pitchfork. And I knew that even if he gave me his -confidence there was little a poor devil of my caliber could do in -affairs such as his must be. - -I wondered if the knowledge that he was ruined was behind his desperate -resolve to die. Of course he had a lot of pride, but other proud men had -failed in business and lived through it. - -I was obliged to confess to myself that the judge must have a deeper -motive. I remembered my uncle’s threats and wondered what that disturber -had up his sleeve. - -I almost whipped my courage up to the point of tackling him on the -subject, but when I met him on the street in the afternoon and fronted -his savage scowl I walked right on past, minding my own little business. -His face had an extra touch of flame in it that day. That he had -something special on the docket was plain to be seen. I went down to the -wood-lot and checked up with Henshaw Hook so as to be out of my uncle’s -way. His looks rather scared me. Just as I was walking away from the -wood-lot at dusk he hopped out of his wagon ahead of me and tacked a -printed paper to a wayside tree, glowering at me while I waited at a -little distance. It was evident that he meant that paper especially for -my attention. - -So I walked up and had a look at it when he was out of the way. - -It called a special town meeting thirty days from that date. As was -necessary in a call of that sort, the purpose of the meeting was stated: -“To see what action the town will take to pay off its indebtedness in -full. Notice is hereby given that all creditors of the town must present -notes or other evidences of claims at that meeting on the 15th day of -April.” - -What did that call signify in the case of Zebulon Kingsley, town -treasurer? I had seen behind his mask and I guessed! If I guessed -rightly he would feel, when his eyes fell on that paper, like a man who -had been notified of the date of his execution. - -I started on toward the village, and when I passed Brickett’s duck-pond -I threw the revolvers into the water. - -I hurried to Judge Kingsley’s house, for I had the excuse of business, -and he himself had made the appointment. There was a light in his -office, but it went out suddenly when I was some distance away. I -started to run, and then I checked myself. I decided that caution rather -than haste was needed. I was right. Standing behind a tree, I saw him -come out of the office door in a sneaking fashion, the early evening -hiding him. He went around the house, and I followed. Young eyes can see -in the dark better than old ones, and he did not spy me where I stood -in the dusk, watching him hack off with a jack-knife a section of the -family clothes-line. - -Stooping and almost staggering he went down into the orchard, and I trod -close behind him undetected, for the trees plastered shadows into which -I dodged. I waited until he had settled a noose around his neck and had -thrown an end of the cord over a limb. I was taking no chances on having -any misunderstanding between Judge Kingsley and myself that trip. In my -own way I was just about as desperate as he was. I marched up to him, -took him by both arms and pushed him against the tree-trunk. - -He was in such a state, physically and mentally, that he did not protest -or resist; it did not seem to frighten him specially to be overhauled -in that fashion. Honestly, I felt like spanking his face as I would -have whipped a child. This game of “tag the suicide” was getting on my -nerves. - -“Judge Kingsley, you need a guardian and I have appointed myself one,” I -told him, and I was mighty resolute, for I had determined to brace up to -him with all the power in me. “You have no right to kill yourself, and -you’re not going to kill yourself, by gad! not if I have to camp with -you day and night till you get back your nerve. I’m going to take -you straight to your folks and tell ’em you’re out of your head -temporarily and will have to be taken to a hospital!” - -That brought him out of his numbness, and I knew it would. I believe he -would have struck me if his arms had been free. But I needed to have him -in another mood than the fighting one. I hit him hard. - -“You’re an embezzler!” I cracked out. “How much?” He crumpled, and I let -him slide down and sit on the ground, his back against the tree. It was -the first time he had ever had that word put to him from man’s mouth, -even though he may have confessed to himself in his heart. - -“Judge Kingsley,” I said, bravely, knowing that I had an advantage from -then on, “I’m only a young man and I know you don’t think much of me. -But I’m going to grab in on this thing, whether you want me to or not. -I have special reasons of my own. I’ll do everything I can to balk my -uncle.” - -“You’re a spy he has set on me!” - -“You’re a liar!” I wasn’t going to take any of his sneers or his abuse. -I hated to talk to him as I did, but only by being coarse and rough and -bossy could I hope to pound anything helpful into him. - -He stared up at me with his jaw hanging down and I did not let up on my -punches. - -“I have tried to head off my uncle Deck. I have told him straight out -that I am for you and against him. He and I don’t speak to each other. I -have promised your wife and your daughter that I’ll do everything I can -to beat my uncle out in this thing. They don’t understand it! I don’t -understand it all. But, before God, my promise to them is holy, even if -you do not believe in me! I’m in this affair and I’m in to stay.” - -He began to wag his head as he had done before that day. “Brace up, -Judge Kingsley! You’re not licked yet!” - -“Those three selectmen have signed my death-warrant. That notice which -has been posted!” - -I saw that I had him going and I kept him going. “But when an embezzler -stays alive and does his best to straighten matters--” - -“Don’t call me that name!” he groaned. - -“If you will take me into your confidence, Judge Kingsley, so that I can -turn to and help you, I swear before Almighty Jehovah that I will set to -work for you with body and soul. I _can_ help you--I know I can help. No -man can feel as I feel and be useless! But let me tell you this much on -the other side!” I bent down and snapped my finger under his nose. That -was no time for half-way and mealy-mouthed stuff. “If you throw me down -after this honest offer, it means that you think I’m too cheap to be -of use and too low to associate with. And that’s an insult I’ll never -swallow! So help me, I’ll drag you up into the village with that rope -around your neck and blow the whole business and hand you over to -those who will take care of you. I will! My mind is made up. Take your -choice!” - -I am sure that with no less bitter alternative could I have jounced any -of his secrets out of Zebulon Kingsley. - -“I’m just enough of a hellion to do that very thing if you don’t treat -me right,” I warned him, angrily. - -“You leave me no choice in the matter,” he mourned. “You are--” - -“Look out, sir! I’m doing what I’m doing out of pure and honest desire -to help you. I want fair treatment.” - -“Nothing can make my situation worse than it is, I suppose,” he stated, -after meditating for a time. “On the fifteenth day of April it will -become known in town meeting that more than ten thousand dollars of town -notes are out, drawing interest and bearing my name as town treasurer. I -have issued those notes without warrant.” - -“But the people who hold them know they are out!” He was coldly, numbly -patient with me, the untamed animal who had promised to pounce on him -and drag him to his shame in the village. - -“I have borrowed the money in various small lots and in each case the -note-holder is keeping absolutely still in order to escape taxation.” - -“But great Scott! Judge Kingsley, ten thousand dollars for a rich man -like you--” - -“I am no longer rich. I am ruined. I cannot take up those town notes -prior to the meeting. So I shall be arrested as a criminal! I have lost -money intrusted to me for investment, but though I have lost it I cannot -be prosecuted criminally--it was breach of trust. I hoped to get money -to stave off exposure in the criminal matter so that I could set myself -to earning more money and restoring what I owe to the investors. But -I have not been able to raise that money. That’s why I decided to kill -myself. I knew I couldn’t face it!” - -“Did you just find out that you couldn’t raise the money, sir?” - -He looked up at me, shame and agony in his face showing even in the -dark. It began to swell in him--I could see it in his eyes--that longing -which comes to every man in deep trouble--the wild hankering to confide -in somebody--to rush into confession, to unload the heart, to speak the -words which have been pressing to the lips. I was only Ross Sidney, to -be sure, but I was a man and Judge Kingsley had been bottling his grief -for a long time. - -“What I did last was worst of all! Nobody could have convinced me that -I would ever do such a piece of folly. Think of me doing such a thing--a -man used to the ways of money! A financier! Oh, I have been dreading the -scorn, the sneers, the ridicule more than I have dreaded the exposure of -my town notes! I want to die!” - -“What have you done, sir?” - -“My investments were good in years past! I knew how to handle money--but -what I did a few days ago!” - -“What was it, Judge?” He had been hesitating between his declarations, -and therefore I kept prodding him. But confession of his last affair -seemed to stick in his throat. - -“Oh, I am not guilty--I am not ashamed because I lost money in my -investments! The pirates who have manipulated this country’s industrials -and wrecked the railroads are the guilty ones--they should be ashamed of -what they did to the honest investors! But that I should run the scale -of speculation as I have--to the depths! Down, down, as I got more -desperate! And that I should do what I have just done when I was most -desperate--when your uncle was rushing me toward a cell door!” - -He twisted his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. - -I felt like a man waiting for a woodchuck to come out of his -hole--getting an occasional glimpse of a nose and seeing it -everlastingly dodging back. - -“But I had to have money quick. I had lost my grip. I could not raise -more money in a regular way.” - -“When I was in the city I heard swindlers talk about such men, sir. -There are blacklegs who go about the country hunting for such men. Have -you been swindled?” - -“Foully--vilely!” - -“How?” - -He hooked his fingers inside his collar as if speech had stuck in his -throat. - -“Laugh!” he advised me. He was as hoarse as a crow and looked as crazy -as a coot. “Go ahead and laugh! I may as well get used to the ridicule.” - -“I don’t feel much like laughing at anything these days, Judge Kingsley. -I wish that you could understand me better and know how sorry--” - -“Yes, and you and everybody else will pity me as a fool to be classed in -with the other fools who are gulled by the shell-and-pea game.” - -“For the sake of Mike, what have you done?” I demanded with a bit of -temper, for I was in no frame of mind to guess riddles. - -“I--Zebulon Kingsley--a financier, a man supposed to be in his right -mind,” he squealed, beating his breast as he struggled to his feet, “I -bought a gold brick!” - - - - -XV--A TIP FROM MR. DAWLIN - -WHILE I blinked at Zebulon Kingsley through the gloom I remembered what -“Cricket” Welch had once said to me, in one of those sessions where I -lapped up information as greedily as a kitten laps milk. He had a flow -of language, “Cricket” had, and I wish I could remember his words more -accurately. But it was something like this: - -“Why should any crook bring on brain-fag by thinking up new ones when -the old ones, with gears smoothed by twenty-five centuries of steady -operation, work so much better? As long ago as old Solomon was figuring -on Temple estimates with the architects, and had quite a reputation in -the country round about, a little chap dropped into a village outside of -Babylon and gave out that he was The Old Boy’s son by Wife 411, and was -interested in King Solomon’s mines along with his dad. Then he unloaded -a gold brick on to a village sucker, first making the sucker believe -that the latter was a buttonhole relation of the Solomon family.” - -I was running that speech over in my mind while I looked at the judge, a -little uncertain what to say to him under the circumstances. - -“And yet, the fraud did not seem to be barefaced while they were at work -on me,” lamented the old gentleman. “One of them, the one who came to -town first, was the son of one of my old schoolmates who went West when -he was young and has been settled there ever since. Young Blake was East -on business and dropped into Levant to look the old town over; his -father told him to make himself known to me, so that he could carry back -news of the folks his father used to know here.” - -And in my book of notes I had set down the detail of just such a scheme -as that! - -“They always have a skirmisher ahead of the main push,” I blurted. “He -finds out about somebody who settled West--and then along comes the -son.” - -“What’s that?” demanded Kingsley. “What do you know about it?” - -“Then, after the son is well settled, along comes one of father’s -partners, East, to sell stock, and he has a sample of the clean-up--a -big hunk of gold--and it’s always a real ingot, too.” - -“It _was_ real,” insisted the judge, passionately. “I went to the city -and had it tested by a jeweler who is a friend of mine. They offered me -a chance to make money on account of my old friendship. It did not seem -like a gold-brick game. I could not believe it was. I did not dare to -believe it was. I needed money so badly!” - -“But it was, sir.” - -“I mortgaged, I borrowed, I pawned! They offered me a chance to make -money because I was a prominent man and could help them sell their -stock. They wanted me to be sure that the proposition was a good -one--that the gold was honest. They took my last five thousand dollars! -My God! I bought a gold brick! I bought it like other fools have -bought.” - -“They always put new trimmings on the old game, Judge Kingsley, and make -it look attractive.” - -He looked at me strangely and did not answer. - -“I suppose they worked it as usual,” I went on, feeling just a bit proud -of my knowledge. I reflected that he might be more thankful for his -volunteer if I showed him that I was no greenhorn. His mouth had been -running away with him in his wild eagerness to unload the sorrows from -his soul. All at once he was showing symptoms of stiffening a bit, as if -he wondered why he had opened his heart to such a one as Ross Sidney. - -I needed all his confidence--the flow was lessening--and so I “shot the -well,” as the oil fellows say. - -“After they had given you all kinds of nice entertainment in the city, -you started for home and opened your package on the train and found a -lead junk and a letter advising you to go home and keep still and never -believe strangers again.” - -“That letter--that insult!” he gasped. - -“They told you they were starting straight for Europe, and they--” - -“So that is what you were in the city for, eh? A blackleg--one of them! -Your brazen cheek--your flashy clothes--” - -“No, Judge Kingsley, I never tried to sell gold bricks. But it came my -way to find out a lot about those fellows who do sell them.” - -“Yes, you flashy cheat!” he snarled. “You are like that other one! -Waistcoats like chromos! Tricked out with gewgaws--airs of a peacock!” - -That last word sent a thrill through me, put an idea into my head. - -“Was he a big man, Judge Kingsley? Was his name Pratt?” - -“No.” - -“But he brought the gold! He claimed to be the partner. He had a smear -like grease across his cheek--a scar. He--” - -“You seem to know your confederates very well, sir.” - -“Judge Kingsley, you listen to me! I have never seen those men face to -face, but I have heard of them. I have heard of their tricks. I know how -they operate. I know a good many of their lurking-places. I have made it -my business to know!” I noted that he was still suspicious, and I put my -face close to his and lied with all the fervor that was in me. I needed -his confidence, I say. “I did work as a detective until the dirty mess -of crooks made me sick of the job. I can help you in this thing! Depend -on me! I’m going to help!” - -“I have about given up belief in everything!” - -“Give me your hand, sir, and promise me you’ll offer a good front to the -world. Nobody must guess that you’re in difficulties. As for the noises -my uncle is making, he has never said anything definite; he is merely -making threats. Everybody knows about his grudge and folks don’t take -much stock in him. If you keep a stiff upper lip nobody will guess.” - -“But they all will _know_ on the fifteenth of April.” - -“If we can grab in ten thousand dollars before then--” - -“Do you stand there, young man, and tell me you have the crazy idea that -you can pull any of my money back from those scoundrels?” - -“Yes, and more with it,” I returned, much more bold in my tone than I -was in my heart. But when I knew that I had the “Peacock” Pratt gang -identified--and probably had located Jeff Dawlin’s brother as the man -who planted the fraud, posing as the son, his usual rôle, certain wild -hopes and dizzy schemes went to whirling in my head. - -“We ought to have three thousand in cash in a short time to--” - -“A client--a widow is pressing me for money. It amounts to about that -sum,” he said, dolefully. - -“Does she suspect--” - -“No, no!” he snapped, irritably. “She is going to be married again, the -fool, and wants to hand it to her new husband.” He showed a flicker of -pride in the midst of his troubles. “There is nobody calling Zebulon -Kingsley a thief as yet, except himself and your uncle. _I_ know that I -am and _he_ suspects,” he added, bitterly. - -“Then the woman must have her money, sir. We must keep everybody from -even suspecting for a time.” - -I took both his hands in mine. He did need comfort and sympathy, even -such as I could offer him. - -“I’m square with you, Judge Kingsley. I know how to find those men. I’ll -go after them. And I know you’ll do your part to help me. I only ask you -to buck up! Let nobody suspect!” - -“I ought to doubt every man in the world after what I have been through! -I ought to doubt _you!_ Why are you doing all this for me, sir?” he -demanded, and then I was glad it was dark there under the tree. I must -have revealed confusion aplenty. “I have never shown you any favors, -young man. It has been the other way. I never liked your breed.” - -“I know that, Judge Kingsley, but--” I could not go any further at the -moment. - -“Well?” - -“You see,” I gulped, “when I was a little shaver you gave me a quarter -and I bought a catechism and studied it and--I guess--I’m quite sure--it -made a better boy, and--” - -It wasn’t convincing, that talk wasn’t! He caught me up sharply: - -“The truth isn’t in you, young Sidney!” - -“You told me that once before. And it has been my ambition to show you -that you were wrong.” - -“Bah! I know human nature too well to believe any such rot.” - -“But you always stood up in Sunday-school, sir, and told us about -Christian charity and meekness and forgiveness. You believe in all that, -don’t you?” - -“I have no confidence in you--not now!” - -“Not when I’m trying to prove to you that I’m one of those practical -Christians?” - -“Do not insult me with any more of that balderdash, sir!” - -I had just as much of nasty temper as he had, and mine began to flare up -in me. I knew that my motives were all right, though I did not dare to -reveal them to him--and my innocence made me the more angry. - -“You would have made a big hit with the good Samaritan when he came -along and offered his help after you had fallen among thieves,” I -snapped. “I reckon you have never practised any of the charity you have -preached. I have never preached, but I am practising! You don’t seem to -recognize your own religion when you see it acted out instead of being -merely printed in a book!” - -“You’re a renegade, convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” - -Oh, what was the use! I walked off a little way. Then I turned on him. - -“I have my own reasons for wanting to help you, Judge Kingsley, no -matter what you believe about me. But if you feel as you talk, you can -go to blazes just as soon as you like. I’m not going to try to round up -all the revolvers, ropes, and razors in this town. That rope you have -there seems to be a good strong one. Go as far as you like! And I’ll -keep on in _my_ way and will turn the money over to your estate--to your -wife and your daughter. You are not the first coward who has knocked -out the last prop and sluiced all the mess on to his women folks! Go -on! I’ll be furnishing your wife bread and butter while you’re having -insomnia in hell!” - -Then I went back to the tavern. - -I knew well enough that Zebulon Kingsley would not kill himself that -night. In the first place, he was too mad. He came behind me, chattering -his teeth like an angry squirrel. Then, again, I had stirred his -curiosity, even if I had not given him any special hope. And my threat -about handling his money after he had gone was enough to keep Zebulon -Kingsley hanging around on top of the earth for a time. I knew his -nature mighty well. I would have taken those means with him at first, -but I had been hoping that he would accept me on a friendlier basis -where I might coddle my hopes; and here was I handling him by the scruff -of the neck! - -I caught a glimpse of Celene through the sitting-room window when I -passed the house. The light was behind her and her hair was like an -angel’s halo. Ah! there was the inspiration which was keeping me on -the lunatic’s job I had picked out for myself! As for that old hornbeam -father, I was in a state of fury which prompted me to go back, use his -ears for handles, and kick him around his premises until he promised -to behave himself--and give me his daughter when my task was finished. -Well, at least I had reached one interesting stage in my development--I -was acting as guardian of the high and mighty Zebulon Kingsley and was -rather despising my ward! - -That evening I sat till late and went through my notebook and studied -the affiliations, the methods, the lurking-places and all other -information I had recorded in regard to one “Peacock” Pratt and his -associates. - -It seemed to me that I had a pretty good start on the thing, even though -the future was, as Jodrey Vose used to say of dock water, in a “nebulous -and gummy condition.” - -But I went to bed, nevertheless, in a considerably exalted state of -mind. With every day that passed I was getting farther into the affairs -of the Kingsley family--and getting into those affairs-- - -I dreamed of Celene that night, but that was not a matter for special -record; I dreamed of her every night. - -In the morning I put on a business suit I had bought “off the pile” in -Mechanicsville. I had wanted to show Levant that I had more than one -suit of clothes. I reckoned that I would feel more sane and solid in -that suit. And I did feel that way when I went down to breakfast. If -ever a man had business ahead of him I was that one! - -But that sane and normal feeling did not sit well on my conscience. I -found myself brooding and getting depressed. I wondered why I had felt -so exalted and optimistic the night before. How could I have made such -confident promises to Kingsley? - -While I sawed at that prosaic hunk o’ ham the notion of chasing up -those knaves and getting my clutch on that stolen money--or any other -money--seemed just a hopeless dream. It was surely a crazy idea; I -sat there and looked down into my plate and so decided. For all of a -quarter-hour I mulled and gloomed there, wondering what had happened to -make me so dull and disheartened and doped. I woke up to what the -matter was--woke all of a sudden. It was that blamed ready-made suit of -clothes! - -I was simply plain Ross Sidney! I was right down on the plane of all -the men around me. I looked like a tank-town commercial drummer and felt -like one. I had no more imagination or horizon than a grocery clerk. All -the fantastic spirit of adventure had gone out of me. Perhaps it may -be thought that mere clothes cannot do all that to a man! Well, wear -overalls to the next grand ball! I’m no psychologist and I have never -read Carlyle’s essay on clothes, though I am told he describes about -what I have felt. I’m merely saying this: when I realized what was the -matter with me and felt certain that I needed to be comfortably crazy in -order to keep up my dip--why, do you suppose I would ever have tried to -bark in front of that show if I had been dressed in a sack-suit? - -Yes, comfortably crazy! - -I rushed, up-stairs and shifted to my knight-errant regalia. Then I went -to my job on the run. I reckoned that I was going to be in a devil of a -hurry for a while! - -I galloped down to the wood-lot, my plug-hat riding tilted back like -the funnel of a racing steamer. Those choppers were hearty and happy and -were hustling for that bonus; if a few laggards needed pep I injected -it. I made estimates, got every hitch in Levant which would cart wood -and drag timber and started the cut for the railroad. - -The freight-trains picked up the gondola cars as they were ready. - -I rushed to the cities and arranged for deliveries, pulled down first -payments in good season to settle wages for a week, as agreed with -Henshaw Hook, and shuttled back and forth until all the cut was cleaned -up on the lot. Gad! how I was counting days! I did not waste any time on -Judge Kingsley. I realized that the more I kept away from him, the more -I kept him guessing! - -I grabbed my first opportunity to take a day off the job and run down -to the big city; I made that jump from one of the towns where I was -handling the last deliveries--for I could not make final collections -until the railroad completed its haul, and so I had a little time to -spare. - -There was another barker at the door of Dawlin’s place, and I noted with -gratification that he was a rather seedy chap. The blonde looked acutely -surprised and showed apprehension when I walked right in past her. -Plainly, her man had been making some promises as to what he would do to -me if I ever showed up again. - -And the first glance Dawlin gave me when he looked up from his gazara -envelopes showed that he was quite ready to keep his promises. - -I beckoned him to his office and walked in there and waited for him. -He came on the jump. He was at me almost before I had time to place my -plug-hat out of the way of possible damage. - -When Mr. Dawlin would close a gazara game right at a moment when suckers -were shoving money at him, it was proof that he was specially interested -in something else which was almighty important. His language when he -burst in on me made it plain that his interest in me was not flattering, -though it was intense. - -“Oh, if it’s that little, foolish, petty matter of the few dollars you -handed back to those yaps,” I broke in, after I had pushed him back with -a swoop of my arm--and, as I have stated, it was a hard arm--“here’s -your small change.” - -In my wood business I had promptly changed checks into cash. I pulled -out before the lustful eyes of Mr. Dawlin a roll of bills big enough to -make a pillow for his Mormon Giant, and I carelessly flipped the edges -to show him they were yellowbacks. - -“What did the little matter amount to?” I asked, airily. - -“Six and twenty-two fifty--and I tossed ’em a five,” he said, trying -to make a quick shift from passion to pacification. - -“And I guess the drinks are on me this time, Jeff,” I said, adding a -ten-dollar bill to the amount. “Go buy the kind you like.” - -“But what in--” - -“This tells all the story,” I said, tapping the roll and stuffing it -back. - -“But your partners--leaving me in the lurch--not inviting me in for a -drag--” - -“It had to be a lone play, Jeff--just had to be! But don’t think I have -all the money in the world cornered in my pocket, even if it looks like -it. And I’m not back here simply to give you a treat by letting you look -at it. I have located a bigger bundle--but it can’t be coopered by a -lone play.” - -“Job for the gang, hey?” he asked, almost drooling. - -“Well, for the right operators if they’re the real goods. But no -amateurs, you know!” - -“Condemn it! I have told you about my brother. He’s one of the best in -the country! Has just pulled off a killing--not very big, but easy and -profitable.” - -“Where?” - -“Nothing doing on the where!” replied Mr. Dawlin, warily. “That’s all -done and the money counted. We always forget _where_ as soon as the -money is counted.” He fingered his nose. “Where is--” he started. - -“Same tag,” I said, smartly. “You forget and I don’t remember. All is, -it’s there waiting. Can we all get together?” - -“When?” - -“To-day.” - -“Blast it all! you ought to know that we can’t all get together -to-day--nor a week from to-day!” He showed some suspicion. - -“Why should I know that?” I looked him in the eye. “When a job is done -East, why, you know yourself they all shoot West--clear to the--” - -“You didn’t tell me the last job was done East,” I said, coolly. - -“Well, it was. I can say that much. And they’re on their way -West--they’re going over the Rockies.” - -“Then I guess I’ll declare them out on the job, Jeff. I’m in with some -of the other--” - -“But that’s no way to use a friend like I’ve been to you! This thing -ought to be put up to Ike and ‘Peacock.’ You must remember that I -offered you a lay with them! I tried to use you right. You ought to show -some gratitude.” - -He was fairly whining in his anxiety, but I was mighty careful about -showing any eagerness of my own. I scratched my ear and looked rather -doubtful and displayed indifference. - -“Of course I can’t write to ’em--we never write, especially soon after -a job. But I have their bearings, Ross. I can put you right on to their -trail. They have a job on below the Potlatch country in Idaho. First -East and then West--get the idea? It’s something about land--this -operation. You’re bound to bump into ’em; there are not so many men -out there as there are here.” - -“Still, it looks to me like a wild-goose chase,” I demurred, hoping to -be assured that it was no such thing. - -“‘Peacock’ isn’t going to change his style! He’s too far away to be -obliged to bother--and he sure does like his togs! You can’t hide -‘Peacock’ Pratt if you surround him with a whole county. You’ll find him -easy, and my brother will be right on the wheel. Wait! If you don’t know -that country I’ll jot down directions and names for you--names of men to -ask. I’ll give you a word or two for a passport!” He grabbed paper and -pen and began to scribble. “What extra the trip costs will be added to -your lay. You’ll find them square if you get in with them,” he assured -me while he wrote. “You don’t have to discuss any lay for me. My brother -always sees to it that I get my pickings from any job I help him to.” - -He fairly thrust the paper into my hands when he had finished. Really, I -was more grateful inside than I allowed to appear in my thanks. I could -hardly ask Mr. Dawlin to do more in setting me on the trail of the men -I was after. The humor of the thing certainly did appeal to me--and I -needed a little something for cheer just then. - -Whether I would try to pick their pockets when I arrived up with them, -or knock them down with a dub, or what I would do I left to the future. -I had enough to think of just then--that wood business to wind up and -the matter of the future handling of Zebulon Kingsley to attend to--and -a crazy chase across the continent ahead of me! - -I tucked the paper deep, slapped Mr. Dawlin on the back, and hustled for -up-country. - - - - -XVI--GRABBING A HUSBAND AND FATHER - -WHEN I laid rising three thousand dollars in front of Zebulon Kingsley -on his office table as my card of reintroduction to that glum gentleman, -I really jumped him. - -The money was in bills and there was a stack of it. A mere check -would not have been half as impressive. A lot of men in this world are -extravagant because they pay by check; handling real money makes one -more appreciative of values, I think. - -“I have wound up the wood-lot proposition to the last cent,” I informed -him. “All collections made, all the men paid, and I hope you are as well -satisfied as the rest. There’s the cash!” - -“How much is there?” His voice trembled when he asked me. - -“Count it.” - -“I’ll take your word, and later--” - -“You have told-me several times that the truth isn’t in me. Count that -money! I insist!” A bit nasty of me, I admit, but I had resolved to -make my bigness, where Judge Kingsley was concerned. I saw no chance of -winning unless I made him understand that I was not to be kicked around -any more. - -I stood over him while he counted. His bony fingers shook. Even though -he was handling money--rather a favorite indoor sport of his--I knew he -was finding the job a bitter one, with me at his elbow and acting just -as if I belonged there. He jotted down amounts as he counted, and then -he added the figures. - -“I make it three thousand three hundred and fifty four dollars and -twenty-nine cents,” he reported. - -“You are right, sir.” I held my little account-book in front of his nose -and tapped my totals. “I did a bit better than I figured.” - -“The two thousand which belongs to me--” - -“There are no divisions in that pile, sir. We are not going to have any -such argument as we had once before about price and land and deed. You -need that money for immediate use and you’re going to take it. And don’t -tell me again that you don’t need my help. You do!” Big talk, but he -needed it! “But don’t you be afraid that I shall ever twit you about -this help. Now is there any way of staving off this widow who wants her -three thousand?” - -“No! I have promised her. After what you told me--I reckoned on--” - -“Ah! Then you have been admitting to yourself the last few days that I’m -not so much of a renegade and crook, after all!” - -His eyes shifted. “You must make allowances in my case, Mr. Sidney!” - That looked promising. He was giving me a handle for my name. - -“Then we’ll pay the widow so that she will not be wagging her jaw while -we’re away.” - -“While we’re away?” he repeated. - -“Yes, sir! You and I are going to start on the trail of that last batch -of money you invested.” - -“But we’ll never get money that way.” - -“How else are you going to raise ten thousand dollars before the -fifteenth of April?” - -“I have no way of raising it!” he lamented. - -“That’s it! No sensible, business way! Therefore, we must do the next -best--grab from the men who have grabbed from you. It’s either that or -go steal money!” - -I pulled up to the table and before his eyes counted back to myself the -money over and above three thousand dollars. I put it in my pocket. - -“It’s our common purse--for traveling expenses,” I explained. - -“But it’s--” he gasped. - -“Yes, it’s a long journey, sir. However, I must go and you must go along -with me.” - -“I am not in condition to travel.” - -“I know that, sir, and I’m sorry. I wish I did not need you on the job, -but you must be with me in order to identify those men who robbed you. -Your complaint will put them in the jug if we can’t scare them and twist -the money out of them in another way. I can’t do a thing without your -presence, unless I catch up with them and knock them down. I may just as -well stay East here and commit highway robbery for you!” - -I had another reason for insisting on his making the trip with me, but -I kept it to myself. If I left him behind there in Levant with my -rambunctious uncle barking at his heels and creditors waking up to -suspicions, I could not have one moment’s peace of mind. I felt pretty -sure that he would betray himself by face, his actions, or by suicide -or confession. He was in no shape to endure inquisition if he were left -where folks could get at him. - -“You must go,” I insisted. - -“Where?” - -“It’s more or less of a blind run.” - -“But I must know.” - -“We’re only wasting time by talking it over ahead, Judge Kingsley, -because I don’t know much about the trip myself.” - -He began to show temper, and I could not blame him much. My comfortable -craziness which I had put on along with my “dream suit” was helping a -lot; the judge was frostily sane. - -“The project is crazy,” he stormed. - -“So is the fix you’re in!” - -“I can tell my wife and daughter nothing sensible!” - -“As near as I can find out, sir, you have never told them anything -special about your business. Why begin now?” - -“Because they are worried. My actions--those strangers--” - -“I know, sir. They told me. But when you go away this time you’ll be -going in my company and that may help with them.” - -He gave me a look which hinted that he was not at all sure about that. - -“We have been in one business deal; it’s easy to say we’re in another,” - I suggested, choosing to overlook his manner. - -But my feelings got away from me when he began to protest and argue and -ask questions about why and where and when. The balky old mule! And I -was giving him my soul and service free! - -I pounded my knuckles on the heaped money. “We are going to leave this -town on the night train, Judge Kingsley. That gives you time enough to -settle with the widow and tell your folks something and get them calmed -down.” - -“Don’t you dare to browbeat me, young man!” - -“Yes, and you’ll have time to think the thing over for yourself, sir, -before I call for you with a hitch just before train-time! There will be -no arguments then. I shall expect you to be all ready with your bag in -hand. Go light on luggage. We shall go a long way and we shall go in a -hurry.” - -I left him and went about a few final affairs of my own, and when I -finished I was squared with everybody in Levant. Before handing that -money to the judge I had paid my personal debts--I felt that I was -entitled to that much! - -That evening Dodovah Vose loaned me a hitch and a driver and clapped me -on the shoulder with great zest and pride. - -“When the judge picked you for a partner he picked the right one,” he -declared. “You make a team which will bring this old town up on its -feet. The judge needs you, son. He has been going behind.” - -And then once more he tried to pump me regarding this latest venture, -for I had purposely dropped a word to him that the judge and I were off -on a big deal. I knew that a seed planted in Dodovah Vose would bring -forth fruit of the sort the judge and I needed. - -“You can just hint to folks, if you feel like it, Mr. Vose, that Judge -Kingsley and I have seen a way to help this town very much.” That was -true. “Incidentally, the judge will make a great deal of money out of -certain things where his capital has been tied up.” - -“I’ve always said he knew his business as a financier. Some of the old -tom-cats in this town have been prowling and meraouwing because he has -been tied up lately by mortgages; but you’ve got to bait with money to -catch money! Don’t fret, son. I’ll hand ’em out something now to warm -their ear-wax.” - -“Oh, he knows how to make money for himself and for other folks!” - -“Am I too late to slip in a few hundred on this deal?” asked Mr. Vose, -anxiously. - -It was promptly on my tongue, of course, to put him aside as gently as -possible. But I knew that he had been wondering why I had not let him in -on the thing before, for truly he had been my best friend in that town. -I had no good excuse to give him. I needed his friendship and his loyal -good word even more then than in the past, for suspicion was darkly -brooding in Levant. I hated to leave behind with him the impression that -I would do everything for Zebulon Kingsley, who had been my foe, and -would not turn even a little leak of prosperity into an old friend’s -porringer. - -While I was struggling with my thoughts--feeling like a scoundrel -reaching for his brother’s wallet--a strange notion came to me. It -fitted in with that comfortable craziness of mine. If I accepted his -money, would I not be pledging my very soul to do and to dare? My -devotion to Celene Kingsley I had set at one side as my true and sacred -motive. I was mighty sure that I was not at all enthusiastic in regard -to her father. However, if I took Dodovah Vose’s hard-earned money from -his hands--and taking it meant a pledge that he was to benefit from a -sure thing--had I not another sacred and even more compelling motive? -Truly I had, for my man’s honor was concerned as well as my love for a -girl! - -“What have you handy?” I asked. - -“Five hundred,” he said. “I ask no questions. I want no promises. I know -you’ll do your best for me, son. I hate to bother you--but profits come -slow in a country tavern, and I’d like to do a little extra repairing -this spring.” - -He was on his way to his rusty old safe while he talked. - -So I took his money and went away from him with the warmth of his palm -on mine. - -The grinding of the wagon-wheels on the grit in front of Judge -Kingsley’s house brought Celene to the door, and when I did not climb -down from the wagon she called to me. - -“Will you not come into the house?” she pleaded. I had not intended to -do so. In spite of my longing to see her and to have her parting smile -go along with me on that amazing journey I was undertaking, I had made -up my mind to duck judiciously a meeting-up with the women folks of my -traveling partner. But I had no will to disobey when she called to me. I -found the judge with his overcoat on and his bag in his hand. Evidently -he had thought the matter over! But he did not look like a bridegroom -starting on a honeymoon trip, and he scowled at me with as much ferocity -as if we were two tom-cats tied by the tails over a clothes-line. - -His wife was hanging to his arm and she was white, even to her lips. - -“Mr. Sidney, I must know what this mysterious business is.” - -“I’m sure the judge will tell you what is necessary.” - -“He will tell me nothing. I have endured much in the past, Zebulon! I -have not asked to know much about your affairs,” she went on, trying to -get a square look into his eyes. “This time I _must_ know!” - -“I have told you!” From his tone it was hard to tell what his emotions -were. The words sounded as if somebody were talking into a tin spout a -long way off. - -“You have told me nothing except that you are going! You do not say -where. You have not told me when you are coming back.” - -“We don’t exactly know, Mrs. Kingsley. But I assure you that the trip is -very necessary,” I put in. - -“I must tell you that mother is not well,” said Celene, wistfully. “I’m -sure everything is all right, but we must know where you are going so -that we may be in touch with you.” - -“We can keep you posted--when we know where we are,” I said; but I did -not sound very convincing, I fear. God knows, I wanted to put my arms -around her and comfort her and tell her that I was madly trying to save -her, her home, her mother, and her father from disgrace and ruin. I -guess no man has ever figured out beyond doubt whether it’s better to -tell the woman everything or to hide trouble as long as possible. When -women are proud they never forget the disgrace, whether it is revealed -outside or if it’s merely kept secret in the household. And in Zebulon -Kingsley’s case I was proposing to keep the effect of the disgrace as -well as all knowledge of it away from those women. - -I knew how he felt in the matter! He had chosen revolvers and ropes -rather than face them. I was determined to be just as resolute as -he--until a show-down was inevitable. - -It would be a sorry triumph, a half job, if they were obliged to live -out their lives knowing that the master of the household had lived for -years in the shadow of prison; it meant the wrecking of all their pride -and ideals--no more joy in home or life itself in the case of such -women as they. I understood! - -The big dock was ticking off minutes rapidly. Our time was short. I -shuffled my feet, impatiently wishing that Judge Kingsley would hurry -up. His woe-begone, frozen face was making the thing worse every minute -he stayed there. - -“There is mystery here,” insisted his wife. “There should be no mystery -about business that’s honest!” - -“You surely can tell us something to comfort us before you go,” urged -Celene, coming dose to me, pleading with her eyes. - -But I knew I must stay away from the edges of explanation in her -presence; once I got started, I’d be sure to tumble into a mess. I -looked over her head. - -“We must hurry, Judge!” I warned. - -“I know that my husband would never go into any business that isn’t -honest,” declared Mrs. Kingsley, beginning to show temper. She faced me -and her eyes glittered. “But he is growing old, and his judgment may -not be what it was. There are always men trying to lead others into -trouble.” - -“That’s so,” I admitted. - -“Forgive mother if she says anything harsh! But we are in such a state -of mind!” - -Well, so was I! - -“I have mortgaged the home over my head,” cried Mrs. Kingsley. “I have -given the money to my husband willingly--but I will not allow thieves to -waste it!” - -It was about time for me to assert myself a little. The judge was merely -working his mouth like a dying fish, and it was plain that he could be -no help. - -“I don’t blame your mother,” I told the girl. I took her hands in mine, -glad I could carry away the memory of her touch. “Some of those men who -have been hanging around the judge are not good men, but I was born -in this town and you know me! I’m helping your father in an important -matter. I swear I’m telling the truth. And I’ll bring him back safe and -sound.” - -I left her before I should be tempted to kiss her right before their -eyes, and I took the judge’s bag in one hand and boosted him along with -a clutch on his arm. - -“We simply must catch that train!” I urged. - -It was a sad scene for a few moments. I was obliged fairly to tussle -with that woman for the possession of the old man. But I ran him out -and left the mother sobbing in the daughter’s arms, and they were in the -doorway when I helped the judge into the wagon. - -“Brace up!” I whispered. “Give ’em just a word or two.” - -“I’m all right,” he quavered. “It’s only business! It must be attended -to. There’s nothing to fret about!” - -Wasn’t, eh? - -“Lick up!” I told the driver. “Lay on the braid!” - -We went rattling out of Levant behind a galloping horse and I liked the -sensation of that haste. We were chasing ten thousand dollars and had -less than twenty days for the job. - - - - -XVII--MONEY HAS LEGS - - -WE swapped not a word on the way to the railroad. - -The judge seemed to be settled down into a sort of numb condition, and I -was glad of it, for I did not feel like talking. He stood indifferently -at one side when I bought tickets, and I was glad of that also. If I was -to be purser and general manager of that expedition I did not want to -have a joint debate every time I made a move. - -My first tickets took us to a junction point. Then I bought to Chicago. - -The judge went along silently, showing about as much interest as a mummy -in me, or in the scenery or people. I suppose the old fellow was having -a terrible struggle with his fears, his thoughts, and his recollection -of the manner in which he had parted from his family. I sympathized with -him and left him alone. Once in a while I got a side-glance from him -which suggested that he had not abandoned his distrust of me. Perhaps -he pondered that he was simply submitting to another form of -self-destruction and was willing to let it go at that! - -I’ll confess this: I was taking so much interest in the world about me -that I was finding it hard to concentrate my thoughts on the business -we had in hand. I had done no railroad-riding to speak of till then. It -seemed as unreal as if I were headed for the moon instead of into the -far vastness of my native land. When we went rolling through the -smoky fringes of Chicago and I saw that there really was a Chicago, my -emotion, as I remember it, was astonishment. But I had already found out -that a greenhorn could get along pretty well by watching other folks -and by asking questions. - -So we crowded into the transfer-wagon on Polk Street and were quickly -across the city to another railroad station, where I bought tickets -for St. Paul. Before the train pulled out I raided a folder-stand and -grabbed a sample of everything in the rack. - -I went into those folders like a girl diving into the love scenes in a -mush novel; I studied as diligently as if I were a prize pupil getting -ready for a contest. I had my nose in those papers for hours, till I -could close my eyes and see maps and repeat time-tables and names of -cities backward. - -So I wasn’t at a loss when we reached St. Paul. I trotted the judge -right along to a window and bought tickets for Spokane. He was mumbling -a monotone of growls in my ear while I counted out the money. - -“Look here, young man,” he said, when we had left the window, “I am not -going to be teamed any farther until you tell me exactly where you are -going and what you are intending to do.” - -It rather surprised me to hear him speak; I had sort of forgotten that -he could talk. - -“Do you pretend that you expect to get money, racing around like this?” - -“I’m on the trail of it, Judge Kingsley--your money, you remember. I’m -not doing this for my own amusement.” - -“You seem to be; I’ve been watching you, sir. You are plainly relishing -this junketing about. I go no farther.” - -“How much money have you in your pocket?” I asked, mildly. - -He looked alarmed. “I did not bring money! You took the money for -expenses, you said. I depended on that. I have only a few dollars.” - -“That’s good,” I told him. “So there’s no chance for argument here on -this platform.” I waved the tickets under his nose. “I reckon you’ll -have to stick right along with me, sir, wherever I go.” - -That settled that rebellion! - -When I started toward the train he followed. His face was white, his -jaws were ridged, and he was furious--but his anger locked his lips. He -did not bother me with questions. That night I hid my money inside my -berth-pillow; by the way the judge looked at me I knew he would pick my -pocket if he got a chance. - -On we went across the prairies of the Dakotas--and the journey was not -interesting. It was all dun and dull and brown and monotonous in -that late March. When the sun shone it only showed up more of the raw -country. Every little while we went plunging through a snow-squall which -plastered the car windows and speckled the brown of the prairie. - -Then the doldrums got me! All at once I found myself bluer than the old -judge had been, even in his deepest despondency. This was a reckless -escapade, not a sensible man’s project! I had bragged and blustered -and made promises there in that little tin dipper of a Levant where the -horizon was pinched in by Mitchell’s Mountain and Tumbledick Hill. I had -got by with my bluff in the wood-lot game and had felt as if I were a -big man! - -But out there! - -No longer was it a string of mere names and a smudge of color on paper -to make a map! I was looking out, hour by hour, on the reality of the -vastness of the great West. As to the men I was hunting for in that wide -expanse--those fly-by-nighters, those human skip-bugs--would they not be -dodging where impulse took them? Jeff Dawlin was a mere gambler--willing -to take a chance on anything. Had he not taken a mere gambler’s chance -on my finding those men? If I succeeded he would get his pay. If I did -not succeed it was only _my_ failure--he had invested nothing--he had no -interest in my affairs, except a gambler’s. - -And what could I do to those men if I did find them? They were at home -out there--as much at home as they were in the East. The farther out on -those prairies I rolled, the farther away from all confidence in myself -I seemed to be. Old Ariock Blake used to say that sometimes he felt as -if he were “forty miles from water and a hundred miles from land.” I -felt just as helplessly up in the air as that! I fairly wallowed in -sloppy gloom. - -To sit there in front of Zebulon Kingsley in my state of mind and -courage and look on his gad-awful sourness of visage was too much for my -nerves. - -I went to get a drink of water and heard men laughing in the -smoking-room. If there were men in the world who could laugh I wanted -to be with them. So I went in. They were playing poker, and after a time -one man had to leave the train and they asked me into the game. - -I was desperate enough to grab at anything that would take my mind off -my troubles, so I began to play poker. And when a man sits in to play -poker with strangers it’s a mighty small slice of mind he has left to -blotter worry with. - -I was away from the judge a long time, and he came hunting me up and -caught me at the pastime. Perhaps he feared that his two-legged bank had -fallen off the train and he had been worrying; but when he saw me with -cards in my hand and money spread out he had a lot more to worry about -and his face showed it. He let out of him a sort of moan and went away. - -“Your father?” asked one of the men, casually. “Sick?” - -“Yes,” I said. “I mean he’s sick, but he’s not my father. He is a big -Eastern capitalist I’m escorting West on business.” - -“Put me next--I can offer him some great chances,” said another man. - -“I’m afraid he is feeling too bad to talk business--and he is very -notional in the matter of strangers. Don’t say anything to him; leave it -to me.” I was obliged to say something about the judge and to block them -from bothering him, if I could, for I knew he would not be contented -with one inspection of me at my devilish and dangerous occupation. -“Don’t pay any attention to his actions,” I advised. “He’s feeling -mighty sick--a long ride makes him sort of seasick.” - -I was glad I had planted something with the men, for the judge kept -coming and sticking his head between the curtains and making strange -noises. He went at me in good earnest when he had me at table in the -dining-car. - -“How dare you throw away my money on gamblers?” - -“I haven’t done so, Judge Kingsley.” - -“I saw you doing it in that dirty den of smoke and vice.” - -“You saw me playing cards, I’ll admit. I had to do something to keep -from going crazy.” - -“Tossing away my money! Gambling my dollars--” - -“Just a moment, sir! That money is a part of my profits and I consider -it a common pot for both of us. I know how to play poker. I have added -forty-five dollars to it.” - -“Do you boast that you have been cheating at cards to help _me?_” - -Confound him! he could sting a man with that tongue of his! - -“A man can play poker without cheating. Just as a man can do business -without cheating!” - -I looked him in the eye and he shut up. I had found out that I could get -along with him better when he didn’t talk. After the meal I went back to -the game. I felt that every little helped, provided I could hold my own. - -I couldn’t resist a quiet chuckle inside when I reflected that I was -industriously playing cards for the benefit of Judge Zebulon Kingsley, -Sunday-school superintendent of Levant. - -I had learned long before how to watch out in a card game, and when I -felt little scratches on the backs of the cards and observed that one -of the players was doing the gouge act with a specially manicured -finger-nail, I turned a few tricks of my own. I felt the full humor of -the thing when I calmed my conscience with the thought that it was all -for the sake of the judge. When he came to the curtains and glared at me -I grinned at him. - -I cleaned up one hundred and fifteen dollars, at any rate, before we -rolled into Spokane--and I had at least five hundred dollars’ worth of -respite from my bitter misgivings. When I showed that tainted money -to the judge with some little pride and impelled by a spirit of -devilishness I couldn’t control, I thought for a moment that he would -bite me. - -“I’m not going to associate any longer with a scalawag. I’m not going to -be bullyragged by a scoundrel!” - -“However, when we’re roaming we’ve got to do as the roamers do,” I told -him. Deep in me I was ashamed of the disrespect I was showing him -by plaguing him in that fashion, but I felt an almost irresistible -hankering to do it; he had so long lorded it in Levant. Furthermore, he -did not seem to recognize in any manner my spirit of self-sacrifice; he -had not shown to me one flash of wholehearted gratitude. I may have -had a cloudy notion that he needed to have his spirit of Kingsley pride -humbled before he would ever consider me as a likely son-in-law. My -ideas then and the memories of my ideas now are not very clear, for I -was not in any very calm and philosophic mood those days. - -After a carriage had snatched us across Spokane and we were landed -on the platform of a station from which trains for the Idaho country -departed, he did buck in good earnest. - -He was a man of plan and method; he had passed his life in routine. That -rattle-brained gallop must have offended every instinct in him. - -“I’ll not get on that train. I’ll go no farther. I’ll appeal to the -police,” he raved. “Give me my share of that money and I’ll go home.” - -“I have mixed it all together--gambling money and all! I would not have -you traveling on gambling money, Judge.” My pertness added to his anger. - -“I’ll have you arrested, so help me--” - -“Hold on before you put the binding word to that oath, Judge Kingsley. -If you dare to put me in the jug away out here away from home, I’ll yank -you in as an embezzler of town money--and I’ve got an uncle who is first -selectman of the town! A little telegraphing will do the trick. Now -let’s both of us throw away our bombs. The fuses are sizzling! Climb -aboard.” - -He ground his teeth and climbed! - -A fine sort of a brindled, cross-eyed hen was I setting to hatch my -son-in-law hopes! But a mood of recklessness was sweeping me then. - -I did not buy tickets; I paid cash fares to the conductor, naming a -station I culled from the folder. I was not sure what the limits of the -Potlatch country were; I proposed to drop in with somebody on the train, -if I could manage it discreetly, and post myself by asking questions. - -I saw no likely subjects in the car where we were riding--the passengers -were mostly women--so I slicked up my silk hat, fixed it at a confident -and compelling angle, and went out into the smoking-car. - -As I have just said, the spirit of recklessness was flaming in me. I did -not dare to let it die down. I lashed my courage and my craziness both -together. I was bitterly afraid I might drop back into that paralyzing -despondency I had felt back there on the Dakota prairies. That meant -that I would become a useless quitter. Only by dint of holding myself in -that desperate mood where I proposed to let chance have its way with me, -and to grab in on anything that offered, would I have gone through so -brazenly with the affair on which I soon found myself entering. It was -merely another gamble, it seemed to me after I was in it. It was -taking my mind off my more private affairs, even as the poker game had -distracted my attention. - -I marched through to the front of the smoking-car where the train-boy -was arranging his little stock, bought a paper, and walked slowly back -up the aisle with a glance to right and left at the faces of the men, -hoping to get a rise from that “likely subject” I was hunting for. - -One man returned my glance with interest. - -After I sat down, well up in the car, I looked over the top of the -newspaper and saw that the stranger’s interest in me continued. The chap -had a broad face, liquor-mottled. After a while he unscrewed the top of -a flask and sucked in a long drink. Then he worked his shoulders, jerked -at the bottom of his waistcoat, wriggled his arms, and displayed -other symptoms of a man who is trying to brace up and to pull himself -together. At last he derricked himself out of his seat and swayed up the -car aisle. He divided glances between my plug-hat and the frock-coat. - -“Excuse me, but it’s the clothes,” said the stranger. - -I nodded amiably. - -“I wouldn’t butt in and speak to you if it wasn’t for the clothes.” - -Once more I was having it impressed on me that a plug-hat and a -frock-coat seemed to be good reliable openers in the jack-pot of chance. -I reckoned I’d play the hand. - -“You’re not a parson.” - -“I’m far from it, sir.” - -“The farthest from it I know is to be a lawyer. I spotted you for a -lawyer. If you are one I want to talk with you.” - -“I’m a lawyer. Sit down,” was my cheerful lie. - -The stranger hauled out his flask. “Do you ever indulge?” - -“No.” - -“So much the better. Lawyers ought to keep their brains cool. Seeing -that you’ve got the brains and propose to keep ’em cool, I’ve got -to keep up my nerve--and so I’ll take a drink.” He sucked at the flask -again. “Where do you live?” - -“In the East.” - -“Then you don’t know this country and the laws out in this section,” - said the stranger, showing his disappointment. - -“Oh yes, I do; I used to live out here. That’s why I happen to be here -now. I’m investigating investments for Eastern capital.” - -My new acquaintance leaned dose, so close that his whisky-saturated -breath left vapor on my cheeks. - -“I have found out something that’s big. I thought I could handle it -myself. I have started out to handle it myself. But when I saw you I -said to myself, ‘There’s a squire, and he knows law and probably his -brains are cooler than mine.’ I’ve got the secret and I’ve got the grit, -but I need law, too--and I ain’t sure of all the fine points. I want you -to come along with me and stand at my back and hand me the fine points -as I need ’em. What do you charge per day for peddling law?” - -“I’ll have to know what the deal is first.” - -“Can’t tell you.” - -I was getting a little shaky on the proposition and raised the paper in -front of my face and appeared to lose interest in matters of law. After -a time the red-faced individual tapped on the paper with his knuckle, as -one would tap on a door. I pulled my shield to one side. - -“A chap hates to let go of a big thing to a stranger, even if that -stranger is a lawyer. I have walked past a dozen law-offices without -daring to go in. Perhaps you don’t realize what a big thing I’ve got. -Now listen here! Suppose you were a fellow like I am--a prospector--and -was digging around the record-books, looking up land titles, mineral -grants, and so forth, and got on to a trail that you followed up and -found that a new city had been laid out and lots sold off and buildings -going up, and all that--all on a location that wasn’t legal? Mind you, I -ain’t naming any place. But it’s on a section that land-grabbers got -hold of a long time ago. And they were such hungry land-grabbers that -they stretched lines to take in everything that was loose around those -parts. There was no one to make any holler about it. It was just so much -extra land and it didn’t look like real money.” - -“I have so much business of my own that I’m not interested in making -guesses at the business of somebody else,” I remarked. I was in that -thing about as deep as I wanted to be. - -“But how do I know anything about you?” - -“Honors are even!” - -The stranger knuckled his forehead, trying to think. - -“I don’t want to trig the best thing I ever got hold of in my life -because I didn’t buy a little law for to grease the runway,” he said at -last. “I may as well tell you--without giving out names and places--that -those land-grabbers hooked in a section that belonged to a soldiers’ -grant--and that’s why no one ever made a holler. There don’t seem to be -any particular heirs to side-tracked soldiers’ grants that have never -been thought worth much. No timber, you see; only plain land. But plain -land is mighty good property when a railroad takes a notion to build on -to it and comes to an end there and a city starts.” The client began to -show excitement. “They have laid out lots and built and they haven’t got -straight title. I have found it out.” - -“That doesn’t seem reasonable,” I said. “Railroads and men who are -building cities do not make such mistakes.” - -“But they have this time. The same money that grabbed the land has built -the railroad. They think they have got it all buttoned up. They didn’t -want to expose themselves by starting a movement to make their title -straight. They reckon they’ll be able to bluff it out with money and -pull and influence down to Boise. That will be easier than to chase -around and establish title to a soldiers’ grant. But, by thunder! they -can’t stretch or shrink the hide of old earth! There are set points that -have got to be measured from and the measurements will tell the story. -And re-locations will have to stand--for the law of the United States -can’t be built over when the holler is made.” - -I guess I didn’t show much interest--I was afraid to show any. I hoped -the man would shut up and go away. - -“Don’t you believe what I am telling you?” he demanded. - -“I am merely wondering how it comes about that you know so much, more -than everybody else about a section of land that has been surveyed for a -railroad and a new city.” - -“My father was a pioneer in this country. One day, after they began to -build the railroad, I was in the record-office and happened to remember -some of the things he told me about the days when they were grabbing -land in these parts. I looked up records, I did measuring, I did some -reckoning, and within the last two days I have made sure that I’ve got -the bind on the city of Breed.” - -In his excitement he spat out the name. Then he promptly began to damn -himself. “I never ought to take a drink of liquor,” he declared. “But -when it came to me that I could run in there and re-locate the best hunk -of that land, I reckoned I needed to have my nerve with me, and so I’ve -been bracing my nerve. But the trouble with me is, when my nerve is -braced my tongue is loose. Now I suppose I’ve got to take you in! But -I’m dangerous. However, I’ll take you in.” - -I didn’t say anything. - -“What do you get a day for your best law work?” - -“I don’t work by the day.” I wondered just how lawyers did work. - -“Well, then, name your price for standing by me against the sharks -they’ll bring to try to beat me out. I don’t know anything about hiring -lawyers.” - -“I’ll take half.” I thought that remark would send him hipering away. - -My client’s face promptly showed the color of a ripe damson. He tried to -say something and merely clucked. After a struggle he managed to control -his temper and his voice. He leaned forward and clutched my knees. He -spoke low, for there were other passengers near, but the rasp in his -tones made up for any lack of emphasis. - -“My name is Peter Dragg. If you have never heard of me, ask somebody -about me. Ask any one between Buffalo Hump and Cour d’Alene. I’ve had a -lot of practice in doing things to men who have got in my way. What I’ll -do to you if you don’t back up will put red rings around the moon.” - -“Well, then, consider I’m discharged!” - -“From what?” - -“From my position as your lawyer.” - -“I haven’t hired you.” - -“Then suppose you cast off those grappling-hooks,” I suggested, for his -clutch on my knees hurt my flesh and my feelings. When he did not let -go, I reached down slowly, grabbed his hands and began to pry. - -Not a man about us noticed what was going on--the newspaper that I had -dropped covered our hands. It was tense and silent testing out which was -the better man in that clinch. He had a handsome little grip of his own, -I’ll admit, but I had diver’s hooks at the ends of my arms and I bested -him. - -“I quit!” he growled, after a time. “Leave go!” - -“Listen,” said I. “I’m not a lawyer.” - -“You lie!” - -“I _did_ lie, but not now. You pass on about your business.” - -“It isn’t my own business any longer--I have put you wise to it.” - -“But I’m forgetting it. I have plenty else on my mind.” - -“You don’t get past with that kind of bluff,” he sneered. “You intend to -beat me to it, but you can’t.” - -“Look here, I’m coming across square with you,” I protested. “You came -and jammed a lot of information on to me. I didn’t ask for it.” - -“I say you coaxed it out of me. Now you’ve got to come in and give me -law on a decent lay. If you don’t I’ll do you!” - -“I’m not a _lawyer_.” - -“I know better! You’re tied up with me--you’ve got to stick to me.” - -“But I have important matters which will take all my time.” - -“I’ll take your time from now on.” - -“Look here! I propose to go on and mind my own business!” - -“Then you’re spoken for! I’ll tend to you before you get a chance to -butt in on _my_ business.” - -He leaned back in his seat and pushed his coat aside, inviting my -attention by a downward glance. - -He was packing a gun on each hip’. - -“I’ll give you about ten minutes’ recess to think the thing over,” he -stated. “If you try to leave this train I’ll be after you!” - -He went down the car, turned over a scat, and faced me. - -I was in a fine way to attend to the business of Judge Kingsley and -myself! Whether I went into that fellow’s scheme or did not go in, it -seemed all the same. In those days, according to what I had read, they -were very careless about handling firearms in some parts of the West, -and it looked to me as if I had dropped into one of those sections. -He took another pull from his flask. The uncertainty of what that -intoxicated gentleman might feel impelled to do to me next, in the -confusion of his fuddlement, made the shivers run up and down my back. -In the ten anxious minutes that passed he pulled that flask four times, -and every time he reached for it I made a motion to dodge under the -seat. The damnable part of it was that nobody in the car was paying the -least attention to us. - -Then he came tottering up the aisle and lurched into the seat in front -of me. Between two hiccups he sandwiched a threatening, “Well?” Plainly, -he was well “pickled” and accordingly dangerous. And, on the other hand, -there was a hope for me in his condition. I concluded I might as well be -shot as scared to death. I couldn’t draw a deep breath as long as those -guns were on him. - -“Well, what say?” he repeated. - -“It’s all right!” I mumbled. “But let’s make it private. Listen! I’ll -whisper!” I leaned forward, sliding both hands along his legs, getting -close to his ear. I laid hands on both weapons and jerked myself back, -holding them low at my hips. - -“Make one move and I’ll bore you,” I growled. “Go back to your seat. Go -quick!” - -He went. I tucked the guns into my own pockets. - -We passed the station to which I had paid fares, and I handed more money -to the conductor. I decided to stay on the train, hoping that my client -would arrive at his home town, whatever it was, and get off. But he kept -right on. - -After a time he held up a handkerchief by one corner and waggled -it, giving me a drunken and moist wink. Evidently he wanted further -conference under a flag of truce, and I nodded agreement after I had -made sure that the guns could be come at easily. I agreed because -I hoped I could make some sensible arrangement to get rid of this -particular bottle imp who had landed himself on to my affairs. - -“You think you’re a slick one, eh?” My hopes fell, for his tone did -not suggest compromise. “You’d better turn around and go back. You’re -heading into the wrong country. Will you go back?” - -“What is the country?” - -“Thought you said you used to live out this way!” - -“I say, what is the country you’re speaking of?” - -“The Potlatch section,” he growled. “You’d better not get as far as -that. You know Shan Benson, don’t you?” - -“Maybe!” - -“You know Ive Hacker, Binn Mingo, Cole Wass--all friends of mine!” - -“What about it?” - -“Pals, I say! All work together. Pull off our plays together.” - -“Go ahead!” - -“Go ahead!” he repeated, grinding his teeth. “We’ll go ahead and make -a pot roast of you in that plug-hat! Do you think I’m a lone-hander, -without friends? Haven’t you ever heard of Steer Bingham?” - -My heart jumped. That was the of the names Jeff Dawlin had written down -for me. - -“And I suppose you’re holding out Ike Dawlin for a--” I started, giving -him a sharp look. - -He smacked his hand on his knee. “Yes, Ike Dawlin. That’s the kind of -friends I’ve got who will--” - -“A fine bunch to be afraid of if they all are as handy by as Ike -Dawlin!” - -He stared at me. - -“Ike Dawlin is East on a gold-brick game, and you know it,” I said. - -“East--East--you plug-hat stiff! I’ll show you whether he’s East or -not!” - -“He is East along with ‘Peacock’ Pratt.” - -My cocksureness made him furious. - -“By the jumped-up jeesicks, don’t you suppose I know when Ike Dawlin -lands back in the Potlatch country?” - -“I’ll have to see him to believe it. Yes, or ‘Peacock’ Pratt!” - -“You follow along on my heels and you’ll see both of ’em all right! -Next you’ll claim to be a friend of theirs, eh?” - -“Oh no! If I really thought Ike Dawlin was in the Potlatch instead of -back East I wouldn’t be headed this way. _There’s_ one special man I -wouldn’t want to meet up with.” - -Mr. Dragg bounced up and down on the seat in his rage. I had prodded -him as hard as I could in order to make sure that he knew what he was -talking about. - -“Damn you!” he snorted. “Then you’ll get your dose of Ike Dawlin. I -won’t eat nor sleep till I find him. And he’ll burn up the road getting -to you. Ike Dawlin, eh? You don’t dare to come on!” - -“Keep your eye on me. But if you can dig up Ike Dawlin in these parts -come around and I’ll hand you a present--maybe I’ll hand back your -guns!” - -Mr. Dragg by that time was not a pleasant companion and I got up and -went back through the train. He started after me, and then thought -better of it. Probably he reflected that he had me either way. If I got -frightened and went back he would be well rid of me as a rival in his -scheme; if I came on he had Dawlin and the rest--and I surely believed -his word about Dawlin’s whereabouts. I did not know whether I was mighty -glad that my chase was being guided in such handsome manner or was so -dreadfully scared by the prospects just ahead of me that I was half -minded to jump off the train; my feelings were very much mixed up. - -However, when I met the gloomy stare of Zebulon Kingsley I grinned--I -couldn’t help it. There was a lot of grim humor in the situation. - -“Been raking in more dirty money, I suppose,” he snarled, mistaking the -nature of my smile. - -“No, I have turned a better trick, sir. I have just met up with the most -obliging chap I have found in a long time. He knows the man who fooled -you into buying that gold brick. He is going to find him for us!” - -“Bah!” sneered the judge. “This is only a wild, crazy, helter-skelter -chase for--” - -“I’m telling you the truth, sir! I never saw a man so enthusiastic about -a kindness for strangers! He just told me that he wouldn’t eat or sleep -till he had found that fellow. Why, he is so headlong about the thing -that I’m afraid he’ll find the chap before we’re ready to meet him in -proper style!” - -“Hump!” sneered the judge, not taking a mite of stock in me. - -I walked away and sat down by myself. There was sad truth in what I just -told Kingsley. I was not ready to meet Ike Dawlin and “Peacock” Pratt. - - - - -XVIII--THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ROYAL CITY - -I’LL confess that it took me a little while to screw up my resolution -to the point where I could tell myself that I was entirely ready and -willing to meet Ike Dawlin in the circle of his associates. - -We had left behind us brown fields where wheat grew, and had passed -through the Idaho prune-orchards--a brakeman told me they were -prune-orchards. We had come into the hill country and the railroad -wriggled its way along the foot of the canon. - -I took it for granted that Mr. Dragg proposed to stay with me. Every -little while he came and set his nose against the glass of the car’s -forward door and glared at me. When we stopped at a station I stuck my -head out of the window and made sure that he did not leave the train. -The two of us were playing a sort of “even Stephen” game--silent -peek-a-boo. I kept carefully away from Judge Kingsley, for I did not -care to have Dragg report that I was in the company of an elderly man -with a roll of chin-whiskers; Mr. Dawlin might recognize the description -and take alarm. - -The judge sat close to the window, wrapped in his cloak, and scowled up -at the canon’s walls closing in behind as the railroad wound along. He -looked as if he felt like a man headed for the innermost chambers of -tophet, with the doors slamming behind him. As the hills shut in to the -north, my feelings were of that sort, anyway! - -And so night came! - -I had been asking a lot of questions of that obliging brakeman. My -folder named a terminus of the road and I had paid to that point, but -I learned that the railroad had been stretched along six or eight miles -farther down the canon so as to serve a mushroom town which was the -depot for a freshly discovered mining section. - -When the train stopped at the old terminus, both Mr. Dragg and I found -ourselves very curious in regard to each other; had it not been for the -glass in the car door we would have bumped noses when we hurried to make -mutual inspection. But he stayed on the train--and so did I. - -It was a young, a very young railroad, that last bit. The train crawled -like a caterpillar--and that’s a good description, for the cars went -bumping up slowly over the bulges in the track. Every now and then we -got a side-slat which made me think we were going into the creek. - -I was too busy worrying about that train to give much thought to what -was going to happen to me when I landed in “Royal City” along with -Mr. Dragg. Such, I was informed, was the name of the new town. They -certainly do pick good names to build up to in the West, just as Seth -Dorsey, of Carmel, built a house on to the brass doorknob he found in -the road. - -Judge Kingsley was not affording me much encouragement; he sat and hung -on to the arm of his seat and glared unutterable reproach at me. - -I was considerably glad to get off that train. - -But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a -cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that -railroad. - -My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my -knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that -introduction to the town. - -I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among -the hills the darkness was something a man could eat! We stumbled over -upheavals of muddy earth, stepped into more holes, and made our way -across the especially treacherous places along single planks which were -half submerged in mire. A few lanterns, tied to short posts, were dim -beacons to direct new arrivals from the railroad to the heart of the -“city.” Quite a glare of lights marked the center of business activity. -The slope of the hillside was dotted with bits of radiance from -uncurtained windows. In that darkness only those points of light hinted -at the extent of this new town. The dots were widely scattered, showing -that Royal City was ambitiously endeavoring to cover as much ground as -possible. - -After threading the course marked by the lanterns we came to a stretch -of pulpy mud which was bordered by a sidewalk of four planks abreast, -evidently the main street of the place. There were buildings of -considerable size on both sides of the thoroughfare, but these buildings -certainly did put Royal City into the mushroom class. There was not -a bit of stone or brick nor a clapboard or shingle in evidence. The -buildings were constructed of beams, boards, laths, and tarred paper. -They gave me the feeling that I could pop them between my hands like I’d -pop a blown-up paper bag. - -A lantern, hung on the corner of a building containing a store, -lighted up a sign, “Empire Avenue.” The sign over the door of the store -advertised the place as the “Imperial Emporium.” A fairly huge structure -with tarred-paper outer walls was indicated by its sign as being the -“Imperial Hotel.” - -There was nothing bashful about the names picked in Royal City! - -The windows of the “Imperial Hotel” shed plenty of light upon the -sidewalk in front of it, and I caught sight of Dragg hurrying past as if -he wished to be swallowed up in the shadow’s on the other side. The man -had reached the street ahead of us, for he had been in the smoking-car -at the front of the train. - -I took a chance and led Kingsley into the “Imperial Hotel” and -registered in a book that a man in shirtsleeves tossed at me. I wrote -“Adam Mann” and “A. Fellow”--the “A” standing for “Another,” of course, -and that wasn’t bad for a quick grab at names. I did not care to -advertise the name of Zebulon Kingsley to certain gentlemen in those -parts. - -From the corner of my eye I saw Dragg peering in at the window when the -man in shirt-sleeves led us upstairs to a room which held two narrow -cots and an unpainted washstand with bowl and pitcher. The walls were of -tarred paper. - -“Is this all you can give us for a room?” asked the judge, as sour as -vinegar. - -“What do you expect in a new town--marble floors and gold door-knobs? -I have taken care of better men than you and they haven’t kicked.” - He turned on me; I had not said anything. “You seem to have a rush of -plug-hat to the brain!” - -His impudence gave me my chance. Dragg had located me at that hotel and -I wondered if I couldn’t turn a little trick. - -“We’ll move on and look for a landlord with better manners,” I said. - -“Go ahead,” advised the man. “A lot of tenderfeet do the same thing and -after they’ve taken a look at the other place they come back here and -beg for a room.” - -On the street I kept in the shadows. After a time we came to another -hulk of paper and boards. Its sign read, “Pallace Hotel.” - -That extravagance in L’s might hint at generosity, I pondered, but I had -my doubts. - -The “Palace” had a bar-room in the front of the house and there were -many customers crowded at it. - -“We’d better go back to the other hotel, bad as it is,” suggested the -judge. “There are drunken men in there and it is a wicked place.” - -I put up my hand and pushed Kingsley back from the window into the -gloom. - -“When one has business with wicked men those men must be followed to -a wicked place, sir. I found fault with the other hotel on purpose. I -didn’t intend to stay there after I knew that a certain man thought -he had located me for the night. It’s a wise plan to keep wicked men -guessing. Stay back here a moment!” - -I stepped along and stared in at the window, hiding my face with my -forearm. - -I saw Dragg at the bar, and Dragg had a man by the arm and was -whispering in his ear. Dragg’s face expressed huge pleasure. He slapped -the man on the back and bought drinks. After they had tossed off the -liquor, Dragg resumed his business at the man’s ear. - -This man stood out in that slouchy group at the bar as a peacock would -stand out among pullets in a hen-yard. He was distinctly a loud noise in -the matter of wardrobe. He would have made a lurid smear even among -the high dressers who top the crests of the Broadway crowds between -Forty-second Street and Greeley’s statue. He was of that sort of men who -are paunchy and seem to be glad of it, because the extra beam affords -them opportunity to display variegated waistcoats to better advantage. I -realized that I was looking on “Peacock” Pratt. - -After a few moments I tiptoed back to Kingsley, and, without speaking, -propelled him to a spot where he could get a view of the men at the bar. - -“Do you recognize anybody there, sir?” - -“There he is--the man who brought the brick--one of the infernal -robbers!” stuttered Kingsley. He was fairly beside himself with sudden -excitement. His eyes had fallen first on the most conspicuous figure in -the room. “He has my money. I want it. I’ll--” - -But I pushed him back when he started to rush into the hotel. “I guess -that man wouldn’t hand you his roll if you ran in there and snapped your -fingers under his nose, Judge Kingsley. You recognize him, eh? That’s -enough for now. I’ll tell you that your friend, there, is known in this -section as ‘Peacock’ Pratt, and he’s a good man for us to stay away from -for the present.” - -“How do you know so much about these men--how do you know where to come -to find them--dragging me across the continent?” demanded the old man. -His fury at sight of that smug blackleg had to blow off and I was the -nearest object. - -“I’ll have to confess that I didn’t know for sure I was to see this -man here to-night. I had my line out and a good bait on, but I didn’t -believe I’d get a bite so soon. You must keep cool, Judge Kingsley--keep -cool and out of sight. Simply seeing that man isn’t getting your money. -We’ve got considerable of a job ahead of us.” - -The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the -shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish -of his hand, Pratt gave orders to the bartender to fill all glasses. We -heard his hoarse voice above all others. He tossed a bill on the bar and -he and Dragg left in company and climbed the stairs leading up from the -hotel office. - -“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I left the other place and came over here -hoping I could sneak close enough to a certain chap to overhear what he -proposes to do about a little matter that I suggested to him a few hours -ago. I see that he has found somebody to talk to. We’ve got a handy sort -of house for eavesdropping, but I want you to remember that the other -fellow can hear us, too. Come along with me and keep your head. A lot -depends!” The “Pallace” was evidently more of a free and easy tavern -than the “Imperial.” There was no register on the planks which served -for an office desk. The proprietor looked up at us and leisurely lighted -his pipe before answering my questions regarding accommodations. - -“Four dollars apiece--two in a room. Pay now. Includes breakfast, and -there’s a cold, stand-up supper out in the dining-room.” - -“We bought box lunches from the brakeman on the train; we don’t want -supper,” I explained. - -“Price just the same. Supper is there, and I ain’t to blame if you don’t -want to eat it,” stated the proprietor. “You needn’t look for any -place to write your names,” he added, noting that my eyes seemed to -be searching for something that should be on the desk. “We don’t keep -books. And half the men who come along here can’t write, anyway.” - -I laid the money in his grimy hand and he fished two cards from his vest -pocket and scrawled “Brakfust” on each with a lead-pencil. - -“Give ’em up to the table-girl in the morning. Now, gents, all the -rooms up-stairs are just alike and there ain’t no locks on the doors. -Go up and help yourselves to any room that ain’t being used. I hope you -don’t snore, either of you. It’s apt to start gun-play from them that’s -trying to get to sleep in other rooms, and the walls we’ve got up-stairs -don’t stop bullets. Sleep hearty!” - -The judge followed me, muttering his opinions in regard to the hotel -methods in Royal City. - -“Hush!” I warned. “Tread lightly and keep still. It’s a stroke of luck -that he lets us pick our own rooms.” - -Smoky, stinking kerosene-lamps lighted dimly the corridor up-stairs. -Unplaned planks formed the floor, and here again were the walls of -tarred paper that had enabled Royal City to grow overnight. Some of the -doors that gave upon the corridor were open, and the rooms were dark -and apparently untenanted. Light shone from chinks in the walls here and -there, in other places, showing that guests were in their rooms. - -I tiptoed cautiously along the planks with ear out at each point where -light sifted from crannies. Then I grasped the judge by the arm and -thrust him into a room. I lighted the tiny lamp and motioned the old man -to take a seat in the single chair. I sat on the edge of the bed. - -When a drunken man is on a topic that sops up all his interest, he not -only iterates, he reiterates. It is hard to pry a wabbly tongue loose -from the favorite topic. Intoxication seems to make the subject fresher -and more entrancing with each repetition. The fuddled mind gets into -a run-around, as men lost in snow or fog keep on traveling and always -return to the same place. I had no means of determining how many -times Dragg had been over the subject with Mr. Pratt, but that latter -gentleman kept snarling out protests that the narrator did not heed. It -was a story about how a stranger in a plug-hat--a shark of a lawyer--had -hypnotized him, Dragg, on the train and had sucked out of him all his -plans, projects, and secrets in regard to the new city of Breed and now -proposed to rob said Dragg of all profits and rake-offs, and if a man -could do that and get away with it what would be the use in any honest -man starting out in the world and turning a trick for himself, as Dragg -had proposed to do? So on and on, he gabbled. - -“Say, look here, ‘Dangerflag’”--and this seemed a good nickname -for Dragg’s red face--“don’t con me any more as the human charlotte -russe--the top part of me is hard! There ain’t any such thing as -hypnotizing a man when he doesn’t want to be hypnotized. You were drunk -and you slit open your little bundle of playthings for him to look at.” - -“If I wasn’t hypnotized how did he get two guns off me--and I sitting -there not able to move hand or foot or wink my eyes?” - -“I’d be more inclined to think you begged him to take ’em as a -guarantee of friendship, and offered to kiss him in the bargain,” - sneered Mr. Pratt. “I’ve seen you drunk, Dragg.” - -“But I wasn’t to the give-my-shirt drunk stage that time,” insisted -the other. “I was hiring him for a lawyer--driving a sharp trade with -him--and then he hypnotized me and cleaned me out. And he’s over there -in the other hotel--and I’m going to get to him before he puts me out of -business. I’ll tell you again--” - -“For the love of Jehoshaphat _don’t_ tell me again!” protested Pratt. “I -have got it by heart.” - -“But you haven’t told me where Ike Dawlin is. He is the only man that -shark is afraid of. He told me so. He reckons that Ike is in the East. -That makes him bold to do me dirt. I made believe that I know where Ike -is. I tried to scare him, but the bluff didn’t go. He is sure that Ike -ain’t West. You’re Ike’s regular partner, and you know where he is. I -need him. Send for him, and we’ll hold that plug-hatted skyootus here -till Ike can whirl in and back him off. Blast him! I could have dropped -him if this was ten years ago, even if he was from the East, and wore -a plug-hat--and I could have got away with it--but the law sharks -have been and tied us all up.” - -“You want to think twice before you try gun-play on a man from the East -who comes wearing a plug-hat,” advised Pratt. “It’s a pretty good sign -that he is from the upper shelves back home, and somebody will be -slammed hard if he gets hurt. Keep your hands off a plug-hatter, -‘Dangerflag.’ I don’t believe Ike would dip in, even if he were here. -He’s too comfortable just now to play scarecrow for your private -interests. He might, if I asked him to, of course. But I don’t see any -reason for asking him.” - -“I’ll give you a half share in the Breed job,” promised Dragg. “I’ve -told you I would if you can gaff that law shark.” - -“The Breed job looks like digging into a national bank vault with -your thumb-nail,” remarked Mr. Pratt, listlessly. “A lot of law and -complications! This re-locating business runs against snags always. I -don’t mind telling you that Ike and I find the old game a lot easier -when we want to clean up an easy make. I’ll be blamed if we could sell -mining stock the last time we went East. What do you know about that? -And then we nudged each other and turned around and speared three easy -propositions on the good old gold-brick game. You wouldn’t believe -they’d still fall--but they do it. It’s simply a case of go hunt in the -odd corners for the right man. They’re there, waiting. We peeled five -thousand off the back of an old town treasurer--as soft money as we ever -pulled. A town treasurer, mind you! We didn’t have to go farther into -the bush than that! You can’t expect us to be very enthusiastic about a -claim-jumping proposition just now--with plenty in our Dockets. Gimme a -match! When you go to fighting a boom city and a railroad crowd, you’ve -got your work cut out for you--and just now I’m feeling a lot like -loafing.” - -Mr. Pratt was very wordy--but he was almighty interesting. Who was -hugging the most money--he or Dawlin? - -It was plain to me that the town treasurer of Levant was holding in with -difficulty. He twisted on his chair and his face was gray with anger and -his lips moved. I scowled a warning. - -“Well, you can loaf on _my_ job all right if you’ll grab in,” snapped -Dragg, temper in his voice. “I’m not asking you to break your neck. You -have got the thing sized up all wrong. I don’t expect to own Breed. I’m -going to operate on bluff. The Breed boomers and the railroad will come -across rather than have the city set back by a hold-up of everything -while land titles are being settled. If they’ll hand me cash, I’ll keep -still, surrender my claim, and the new lines can be ran and locations -filed before anybody wakes up. They’ll see the point all right.” - -“And I reckon that the lawyer you hired on the train sees it all right, -too,” commented Pratt. - -“I don’t know what made me blow myself to him after I had dodged lawyers -so long,” mourned Dragg. “But the way he was dressed made him look so -mighty solid and reliable and honest--and his eyes were nice and brown! -He got me! I tell you I was hypnotized. It wasn’t just because I had -budge in me. But he’ll never get to Breed ahead of _me_. That’ll be his -game, of course.” - -“Better make your getaway to-night and beat him to it,” suggested Pratt. - -Dragg was profane in his rejection of this counsel. He stated that Pratt -ought to have more sense than to think a project of that order could be -settled by a sprinting-match. - -“You know what Callas prairie is in March as well as I do,” he -sputtered. “It would be a gamble which one of us would get across first -if it comes to a race through that ‘’dobe’ mud. It’s all luck whether -a stage-coach or a wagon or a cayuse gets through. I’d have gone around -and come into Breed from the south, but I thought I’d rather tackle -sixteen miles of Callas mud in March than ride six hundred miles in -jerk-water trains. See here, Pratt, I’ve got to have time to operate -this thing without that shark hanging to me. He’s afraid of Ike. I don’t -know what made him tell me so--but he was so mighty sure that Ike was -East that he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little so as to aggravate -me, I reckon. He has got to be held here in Royal City till I can pull -off my job in Breed. I’m not going to have him racing me around over the -country, with a chance of his queering the whole proposition. Now come -into this thing and help me out, will you?” - -Mr. Pratt yawned audibly and allowed that he would not. - -“Then get word to Ike Dawlin for me,” pleaded Dragg. - -“I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” drawled Pratt, indifferently. -“I won’t send for him. That’s final!” - -I think it would have been hard telling at that moment who was more -disappointed, Mr. Dragg or myself! - -I had reckoned specially on Mr. Dawlin. He was boss of the gang, -according to his brother’s telling. In all Likelihood he was better -thatched with greenbacks than anybody else in the band. - -“Furthermore,” stated Mr. Pratt, “I can’t be bothered with your -business. I have some of my own to attend to. I’m going to jump the -train to-morrow and get back to some place where it’s safe to wear real -clothes instead of a diving-suit or overalls.” - -And so I was going to lose Mr. Pratt! - -To be sure, I had not exactly made up my mind what to do with him if he -remained in Royal City; but if he were to start on some kind of a hike -and we were obliged to chase him we would betray ourselves and our case, -sure as fate. Mr. Pratt was certainly no fool, and would know how to -cover a trail the moment he suspected that somebody was chasing him. But -I could see no reasonable way of keeping an independent gentleman of his -nature in that dump of a Royal City. - -“I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this -Breed--” - -“Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone. -“About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either -be bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game, -Dragg.” He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this -hog-wallow. Ike and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by -gad! There’s no clear title back of the land. We figured we would jump -in.” - -“You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the -citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re -skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as -to be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got -just as mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where -he belongs in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.” - -The other muttered. - -“I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put -my name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you--yes! -But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.” - -“But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.” - -“Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to -put anything over on this town, with the people here in their present -temper, will get slammed into the pen--and there’s no knowing when -they’ll let him out!” - -And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in -desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m -no guesser. - -“So it’s back up the line for me--where I can buy a cocktail and get the -smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!” - -But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge -Kingsley had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a -little bet that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could -see that the judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr. -Pratt. - -“Sit here and don’t make a sound!” I whispered, and I pussy-footed for -the door. - -He opened his mouth and I shook my fist at him. I hoped I had on a -demoniac expression--I tried to put one on. - -“Go to the devil, you and Dawlin, too!” barked Dragg. “If I’ve got to -handle this thing single-handed, the make will be all the bigger for -me. I’m all done worrying about an Eastern shyster beating me out of -the game on my own stamping-ground. If he tries to take the stage in the -morning to cross Callas prairie, I’ll smash that plug-hat down over his -eyes, yank them guns out from under his coat-tail and blow him into the -middle of next week. I’ll think up a story that will let me out.” - -Ah, so Mr. Dragg must be considered along with ‘Mr. Pratt and Mr. -Dawlin! - -I left the room and hurried down-stairs, hoping the stores had not -closed. My mind was mighty busy! I found a store that was still open. It -was the “Imperial Emporium” and seemed to be well named, for I was -able to purchase there a pair of shears, some spirit gum, a carpenter’s -lead-pencil, and a huge ball of twine. Then I hustled back to Zebulon -Kingsley, who sat livid and rigid, listening to the bragging of the man -who had robbed him. - -I suppose the stuff I tossed on the bed looked mighty queer to him, and -I wasn’t just sure about all of it myself. But I did not dare to ask -any leading questions in Royal City about claim-jumping and I decided to -tumble along alone, doing my little best as an amateur. - -Zebulon Kingsley was in a sufficiently volcanic state of mind without -any more stirring up. - -It’s a wonder that I ever got away with what I started on next in my -case. - -Perhaps his settled idea that I had lost my mind assisted in taming him -enough so that he submitted in his fear that I might become violent. -I look back now and wonder how I ever presumed so greatly even in the -emergency that had arisen. But if “Peacock” Pratt were to remain in -Royal City and if Ike Dawlin would join him, as I anticipated, the man -with me must not be known as Zebulon Kingsley, of Levant, their victim. -So I stood in front of Judge Kingsley and issued an ultimatum. - -I’ll never forget the look on his face! - - - - -XIX--THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST - -THE judge sat there with his hat and coat on; the looks of that room -did not invite anybody to take any comfort in it. - -I leaned close to his ear and told him to stand up. Then I began to -peel off his wrappings--overcoat, undercoat, and waistcoat. But when I -unbuttoned his collar he pushed me away. - -“I’ll explain it out to you just as soon as I get a chance, sir,” I -whispered. “But we mustn’t make any noise here.” I gathered my courage. -“I’m going to cut off your beard!” I had to clap my hand over his mouth -to keep him quiet. “I can’t argue now! If Pratt lays eyes on you he’ll -stampede. We mustn’t let any of that money get away.” I pushed him back -upon the chair. “Keep down your hands,” I urged. “It’s got to be done. -Your money is at stake--remember that! What’s a few whiskers compared -with ten thousand dollars!” I was talking just as if I expected to swap -hair for money. - -I confess I did not have much of a plan worked out just at that -moment--but certain notions were coming to me in sections, as one might -say. And the principal notion just then was that I must not let a set -of whiskers, even if they grew on Judge Kingsley, flag the whole -proposition. That was the first thing to look after, now that we were -close to the game--change his looks! - -He realized as well as I that we couldn’t start any riot there on our -side of that paper partition. I don’t believe any other consideration -would have made him give in to me. If I had been getting his neck ready -for the ax his looks would not have been more wild. I clipped his beard -as carefully as I could with the shears and laid the tufts, as I removed -them, in a little heap on the bed. - -Mr. Pratt was thoroughly tired of hearing Mr. Dragg repeat himself; we -knew that because Mr. Pratt said so with a lot of vigor and stated that -he was going to bed in his own room. - -Mr. Dragg advised him to be up early and see what happened to the -“plug-hatter,” providing said “plug-hatter” tried to get away for Breed -on the stage. - -“I’ll do it,” promised Mr. Pratt. “I haven’t been having much fun down -in this hog-wallow, and I need to have my feelings cheered up.” - -Then he marched away down the corridor, making the whole building creak -and shiver. - -Mr. Dragg had considerable to say to himself, in the way of rehearsing -his threats, while he was kicking off his shoes and getting ready for -bed. Then his mutterings ended in a rasping snore--and he was off! - -I was glad he was asleep because that gave me a chance to talk to the -judge, keeping my voice down cautiously. - -“I have some other plans, sir! I have had to think pretty quick! But the -talk between those scamps has given me a rather good idea, I think.” - -“You seem to be wasting your time on a lot of silly business,” muttered -the judge. “This is boy’s play out of a detective dime novel, sir. We -know where one of the robbers is. We can have him arrested. We can put -the screws to him and find out where the other renegade is.” - -“But that means going to law, Judge!” - -“We must let the law handle it from now on.” - -“We can’t afford to do that, sir.” - -“But the law will--” - -“The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up -along with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you -don’t want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold -brick!” He winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting -those crooks into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t -much time to turn around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. -I reckon it’s going to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” - He cringed. “The law is too slow and careful for us just now! They -pulled that money off by a trick. We must get it back by---- Well, I -don’t know just yet how we’ll get it back--but it won’t be by any law -business.” - -“Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?” - -“I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told him, -calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to keep -his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him. - -When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got -ready to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of -the room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his -chin scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle -with Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me. - -On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a -human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed -the judge his countenance with his whiskers off. - -“You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your -beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to -jump him too suddenly. - -“If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve -done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard -anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder--so bold -that I came right out with it! - -“I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how -to do it, for I did it once in my own case.” - -I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not -depend on his hands for defense--he put up his foot and pushed me away. -I protested. - -“There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a -mustache for you out of your own beard.” - -“I won’t be cockawhooped up in any such style!” - -“Are you going to let those men recognize you as the town treasurer of -Levant?” - -He glared at me and kept his foot up. - -“We’re after the money--we’re after the money!” I urged. “Just think -what a little thing this is you’re balking on, sir!” - -“But you give me no hint as to how you expect to get the money! I’m at -the end of my patience. I won’t submit to any more foolishness.” - -“This isn’t foolishness, Judge Kingsley! It’s a precaution we must -take. I’ve got a plan to keep those men from jumping out on us in the -morning--and they’ll be sure to see you.” I pushed down his foot and I -picked up the hair on the bed and looked resolute. “It’s got to be done, -sir. I’m going to do it!” - -He gave in to me as he had in other cases when I became savage, but I -realized that fury boiled in him. - -I made a mighty good job of it, if I do say so, but he angrily refused -to look at himself in the glass. I used all the hair in his beard and -gave him a mustache that fairly cut in half that hatchet face of his; -his best friend would not have known Judge Kingsley. - -I advised him to go to bed and to be sure to sleep on his back so that -the mustache would not be disturbed. - -I sharpened the carpenter’s pencil and hid the ball of twine under my -coat, the judge looking at me as savage as a bear. - -“Now what?” he growled. - -“Do you know anything about the right way of relocating a claim?” I -asked. “Anything in law about it?” - -“It’s more likely to be described in the thieves’ catechism,” he -snarled. “I have never owned a copy!”. - -That’s all the help I got from _him!_ - -Well, if I didn’t know much about the regular way, I reckoned I could -make considerable trouble in town by blundering along with a little way -of my own. So I tiptoed down-stairs. - -Apparently Royal City had quit the job and gone to sleep. The hotel -office was dark, and when I stepped forth into the night there was no -glimmer of light anywhere. Even the lanterns that served as the city’s -municipal lighting-plant in the streets had burned out or had been blown -out. It was a case of grope, but I had looked about carefully when I -went shopping and had a pretty good memory for locations. - -There was a little pile of laths at the corner of the hotel. I had -noticed them when I had lurked in the shadows with Judge Kingsley. -I picked up a lath and wrote on its side, well up toward one end, -“Relocated. Dragg.” Then I pushed the lath down into the mud at the -corner of the hotel and tied to it the end of the ball of twine. With -several laths under my arm I proceeded a few paces, unwinding the twine, -and pushed another lath down and knotted my string about its end. Thus -I circumnavigated the hotel, sticking down marked laths, knotting about -them the twine. In this fashion I calculated I had declared on one Dragg -a re-location of the hotel site--or rather made it seem that Dragg had -tried on a clumsy trick to jump a land claim. - -With footsteps muffled by the mud of Royal City, moving unseen in the -night, I was truly a generous cuss. I located nothing for myself. I -took the “Imperial Emporium” for Pratt, and re-located the site of the -“Imperial Hotel” for Dawlin. Then I stole back into the tavern, taking -off my muddy shoes at the door. - -That slatted bed and the snores pealing everywhere kept me awake nearly -all night, and next morning I was down before anybody else was stirring. -In the gray dawn out slouched from an inner room the landlord, yawning, -growling, blinking--beginning his day’s duties in a distinctly grouchy -frame of mind. - -“What time does the stage-coach leave for Breed City?” I asked. - -“Nobody but a fool would take a stage for Breed this time of year--but a -man who comes out here in March and mud-time, wearing a plug-hat, must -be a fool. So you’ll leave at ha’f pas’ six,” was the landlord’s genial -response. - -“And what time is breakfast?” - -“Time for you to get the stage. What do you want to ask such a cussed -fool question as that for? What do you think I’m getting up to do at -this hour in the morning?” Well, I wasn’t in any jolly mood myself. “I -didn’t know but you might be up to sing a hymn to the morning star.” - -“Say, you’re looking for trouble, ain’t you?” bawled the landlord. He -came from behind the counter. “I’ll cave that plug--” - -That made me good and mad! “No, I’m looking for cartridges to fit my -guns,” I stated, pulling both weapons. “I’ve got only twelve left--six -in each chamber.” - -My friend checked himself so suddenly that he nearly tumbled on his -nose. - -“Does the store open early?” - -“Yes, sir,” said the landlord, quite respectfully. - -“Then I’ll take a stroll up that way. Make my bacon thick and be -very careful not to fry the juice out of it.” There’s nothing like -establishing a bit of a reputation in a strange town, especially if a -fellow has planted seeds of trouble; I could see those laths through the -window! I had begun to feel rather devilish. . - -“Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “We aim to please.” - -I glanced at my work of the evening before as I sauntered along the -plank walk. The new laths and the white twine showed up well against the -black adobe mud. - -Sounds of housekeeping, clatter of dishes and of stove-covers indicated -that the proprietor of the “Emporium” dwelt over the store. I rattled -the door, and at last the man appeared and unlocked it from within. He -was surly and slatted the box of cartridges across the counter. - -“Is it because you don’t care for early customers that you have built a -fence of laths and string about your place?” I inquired. - -“There ain’t no such thing there.” But he hurried to the door. He gazed. -He ran to the nearest lath and stooped down and read what was written -thereon and cracked his fists together and kicked the lath and stamped -it into the mud and swore loudly. “Pratt, hey? ‘Peacock’ Pratt trying -one of his gambling bluffs because titles ain’t been settled here yet, -is he? If a kettle-bellied catfish like Pratt thinks he can jump a city -lot on me he’s got trouble coming his way on the down grade with the -axle greased.” - -There was much more that the infuriated merchant had to say regarding -the general standing of Pratt, but I did not linger. I strolled into the -“Imperial Hotel.” - -“I knew you’d come back--they all do; but you can’t do business with -me,” the landlord informed me before I had opened my mouth. “Once -you turn your nose up at my house, then up it stays, as far as I am -concerned! Mosey back to your pig-pen!” - -“Very well! But I’ll drop back here when the new proprietor takes hold.” - -“What new proprietor?” - -“I suppose it’s a man named Dawlin. I note that his name appears as the -man who has re-located this property.” The landlord took a jump and -a look and saw the laths and string. He ran out of doors. He was an -able-bodied man with a large voice, and he outdid his merchant neighbor -in volume of cursing. It was plain that he was well acquainted with the -mental and moral qualities of Ike Dawlin. - -So I went back to my own tavern. Judge Kingsley was waiting in the -office, and the landlord was talking to the old man with considerable -affability. - -“I was telling your friend here that we aim to please! I reckon the girl -can fit you out with breakfast now if you’re minded to step into the -dining-room.” - -“Thank you--we’ll step in, sir. By the way, there seems to be -considerable excitement on the street, Mr. Landlord. Men named Dawlin -and Pratt, whoever they may be, have re-located business sites occupied -by the big store and the other hotel. I just noticed that the same thing -has been done to you; you’d better take a look outside.” - -By the manner in which the owner of the “Pallace” pounded his way to the -street it might have been guessed that the consciences of the pioneers -of Royal City were not wholly clear as to their several rights of -property. But the manner in which they were taking the re-locations -showed that they were entirely ready to fight for what they had -squatted on. - -“By the bald-headed juductionary of Walla Walla County,” howled the -“Pallace” landlord, “that tinhorn Dragg has sneaked out of my house in -the night so as to do me up, has he?” - -“Do you say it’s Dragg?” bawled the landlord of the “Imperial” from -a distance. “It’s Dawlin, up here! He’s been boozing here in my house -under cover for a week, but he wasn’t so drunk, so it seems, but he -could dodge out last night and try to steal my property away from me.” - -Say, I swapped one very large look with Zebulon Kingsley, who stood in -the hotel door, staring from furious landlord to furious landlord. The -old man had heard enough the night before to appreciate the value of -that information in regard to Dawlin. - -“It’s that skunk of a dressed-up Pratt in my case,” shouted the owner of -the “Emporium” from farther up the street. - -“I reckon I can show any man who tries to steal my property that I’m -mighty wide awake mornings if I do sleep nights when honest men ought -to be in bed,” announced the proprietor of the “Pallace.” He rushed into -his hotel, and clattered up-stairs. - -“When the wheels of a scheme are running in good shape it’s best to -stay away and keep your fingers out of the gearing,” I said to Kingsley. -“We’ll go in and eat breakfast.” - -While we ate, loud voices sounded through the thin walls. Men were -crowding into the hotel office. Profanity, denunciation, denial, went -on and on. The judge fingered his makeshift mustache uneasily every time -the bawling of Pratt was heard. - -“Better keep your hands off that and drink your coffee from your spoon,” - I suggested. “They’ll never know you!” - -When we were ready to leave the dining-room I warned the judge not to -look at Pratt. We could hear him thundering away in the office. - -Dragg and Pratt were surrounded by men; the landlord of the “Pallace,” - the proprietor of the “Emporium,” and a grim man with a huge revolver -in his hand and a deputy sheriff’s badge on his breast were right in the -front row. - -“You can swear, threaten, and deny till your tongues drop off--it don’t -go for a minute with us,” declared the landlord, “for we all know your -style and your nerve. Because you have got away with a lot of hold-ups -in other places it doesn’t go that you can come here and do us in Royal -City.” - -“Do you think we’d be fools enough to go and put our names on--” began -Dragg, but he was promptly interrupted by the landlord. - -“Whose names would you put on if you were trying to steal land for -yourselves? You thought we’d rather settle than fight, that’s what! But -we’re going to fight.” - -It was my turn--and my chance. - -“Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m a stranger to you all--merely a passing -tourist. But I feel it’s my duty to state that I heard two men -discussing a matter of re-locating land last evening. They were in the -next room to mine in this hotel. I recognize their voices. Those are the -men.” I pointed to Dragg and Pratt. - -The deputy poked the muzzle of his gun into Dragg’s face to make him -stop swearing. “Shut up! Everybody can see that this is a real gent, and -if he’s got evidence we want to hear it.” - -“The evidence isn’t much,” I said, meekly, “but I distinctly heard -them say that they could clean up a nice pile of money by a re-location -scheme. It was to be bluff to a large extent. If that information is -worth anything you’re welcome to it. I would hate to see the prosperity -of a hustling city like this held up for one moment by men trying to -bunco honest citizens.” - -“You listen to me,” roared Dragg. “That hellhound there is lying like -a--” - -The sheriff slapped him across the mouth. “There’s no real gent gets -insulted by you in Royal City while I’m boss of law and order here.” - -Outdoors was a noise of clanking of whiffletrees and the “ruckling” of -wheels. A stage-coach, mud-daubed from tongue to roof-rail, was pulling -out of an opposite stable-yard. - -“I’ve got to take that stage,” raved Dragg. “The whole of Royal City -can’t stop me. I’ve been monkey-doodled by a shark. He’s trying to -get there ahead of me. It wouldn’t work here. I’m no fool. I knew it -wouldn’t work.” He yelled so loudly and talked so rapidly that they -listened to him. “My scheme was for Breed--and it was a cinch! He’s -stealing it from me--that doggone, lying plug-hatter found out that I -was going to re-locate claims in--” - -“Seem to be convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” broke in a -citizen. - -“I’m going to Breed by this stage. I’ve got to go!” gasped Dragg, -twisting his throat from the sheriff’s clutch. - -“You’re going into the calaboose right now--and Pratt is going there, -too, and Dawlin is going as soon as they get his clothes on him,” - declared the officer. “Grab a-holt, boys, and help me get on the -wristers.” - -“You men will stay here--and Dawlin, too, till we find out what you mean -by this trick,” said my landlord. “You don’t get out of here to run away -and file your location claims!” - -“Send a man to the county-seat,” raged Pratt. “Look at the records. That -will prove that we haven’t tried anything on here.” - -“We don’t need any advice from you chaps as to what we shall do--whether -it’s holding you for a show-down or shooting you out of this place when -we have your numbers.” - -I looked at Mr. Pratt. That remark started my think-works into action. I -had my men anchored, to be sure, but that wasn’t getting me anything -in the money line--and without doubt Royal City would cool down pretty -quickly and send the men kiting. When they scooted they would go by -rail, of course. That meant difficulties, the thought of which had -already discouraged me. I needed to keep those chaps in the open--and -the wilder the open the better! In the brush, where it was man to man, -instead of in the city where law was safe and sane--and almighty slow! I -needed to be quick and crazy! - -Mr. Pratt was beginning to get his wits back. He was bellowing so -wildly when I accused him and Dragg that he did not seem to sense the -situation. He turned to me. - -“Damn your lying tongue! What do you mean by putting up this job on me?” - -“I have simply stated what I overheard!” - -“Heard me say that I was going to jump claims? Why, I told Dragg I -wouldn’t--” - -“You told Dragg that you and your partner came down here on purpose to -jump claims!” - -He was so mad he was nigh black in the face. “Do I know you? Have I ever -done dirt to you?” - -I shook my head and looked him over with contempt. From the time I had -left Levant I had been at a loss to decide what front I would put on -when I met up with those men who had robbed the judge. I had thought all -along that my best plan would be to build on my acquaintance with Jeff -Dawlin and use his tips which were to put me next to the parties I was -after. Then I might be able to come up on their blind side--if they had -one--and-- - -Well, right there I had stopped. What could I do? Then I had been hooked -by that infernal Dragg! In that mess with him I had allowed chance to -swing me and our fortunes. After that squabble with Dragg I could not -hope to make much of a hit with his associates, eh? Therefore, I was -jumping for the other extreme and I proposed to make Mr. Pratt and his -friends just as ugly as insults and injury could serve. I felt like a -boy thumbing his nose at angry wildcats. And in my desperation I hoped -that the wildcats would come chasing me. Chasing me where? Why not to -Breed, wherever that might be? - -I certainly was sure of Mr. Dragg, according to his threats and his -promises. And if I could stick a few more darts into the broad flanks -of Mr. Pratt and leave them stinging it was full likely that Mr. Dragg’s -appeals to that gentleman would have much more effect than they did the -night before. - -A couple of citizens came dragging in another prisoner, a red-eyed and -ferociously angry person, and I knew by Judge Kingsley’s expression that -the round-up was complete. - -“Who says I did it? Who says I--” - -“I say so!” I told him. “You held me up and you asked me to buy twine -and pencil for you.” - -“That’s right,” stated the merchant. “The gent is right.” - -“Of course it looked all square to me,” I said. “I never heard how -claim-jumpers worked!” I told them. “I saw he had been drinking and I -thought the string-and-pencil notion was only his bee buzzing!” - -It was reckless lying, but that crowd was too much excited to bother -with mere details. - -“Why, you mutt-jawed smokestack, you, I never laid eyes on you in all my -life!” raged Dawlin. - -“I reckon my memory is a little better than yours, for I wasn’t drunk,” - I reminded him. - -The sheriff was obliged to assign two more men to the controlling of Mr. -Dawlin, who was a husky chap. He was far too much occupied to pay any -attention to the judge, who stood in a corner and goggled at me with -plain and sure conviction that I had gone stark, staring crazy. - -“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” roared Pratt, “that--” - -“You’re a cheap tinhorn. You never saw a thousand dollars.” - -Mr. Pratt jumped up and down and tried to throw off the clutch of the -men who were holding him. - -I felt perfectly safe in that crowd; I made up my mind to keep prodding -till I was sure that Mr. Pratt and his friends had developed enough -interest in me so that they would give up all other business till they -had settled their grudges. - -I patted my breast pocket. “I always carry ten thousand dollars around -with me just to keep the draughts off my chest. I find money better than -a folded newspaper,” I told him. - -I had been keeping my eye on the stage-coach for some few minutes. It -had hauled up at the post-office. The driver came out with mail-bags and -tossed them into the boot. - -“Landlord, will you fetch our valises?” I asked. - -“Certainly, sir!” - -“I’ve got a few thousand in my own pocket,” yelled Pratt. - -“So have I!” howled Dawlin. - -“And we’ll spend it getting to you,” they shouted in chorus. - -“It won’t cost you much to chase _me_,” I said, provokingly. “Cheap -skates of your sort wouldn’t spend much getting to a man you’re afraid -of.” - -That taunt, in the ears of those bystanders, made Pratt and his cronies -wild in earnest. - -“I’m only going as far as Breed,” I said. “I’ve got to stay there for -some time on business. When these good folks let you out of jail suppose -you run over and call on me!” - -“You don’t dare to wait there for us!” said Dawlin. - -“I’ll bet you five thousand I do dare!” - -They didn’t take me up on that bet. Perhaps I seemed too certain that I -meant what I said. I intended to seem certain. I wanted the company -of those gentlemen in Breed, no matter what the risks were. And I -was mighty glad when Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin had bragged about the -thousands they had in their pockets. I looked into the glittering eyes -of Pratt and I knew that even in his fury he was taking much comfort in -his belief that I was giving him a straight tip about Breed. - -“You don’t dare to hang up over there till I come,” he snarled, testing -me out. - -“If I am not there, I’ll hand over five hundred dollars to start a -city reading-room here,” I declared. “I call on these gentlemen to bear -witness.” - -“I hope we won’t get the reading-room,” stated the landlord, standing -with the luggage, “for I want to see a few fresh galoots get theirs.” - -“It’s time to test out whether respectable business men can go about -in this country without being insulted and bothered by rascals,” I -observed. “Come over to Breed after Royal City gets done with you.” And -just to clinch the thing I snapped my fingers under Pratt’s nose when I -passed him. - -I just naturally knew, that moment, that Mr. Pratt had made a binding -appointment with me. - -The landlord had hailed the stage, which was surging past through the -mud. I was obliged to push the judge to start him toward the door; he -seemed to be in a daze. - -“But we’ve got to stay here,” he croaked in my ear. “They’ve got the -money on ’em. They brag about it. You’ll never lay eyes on them -again!” - -I hurried him along the plank walk toward the coach. “Don’t fret one -mite about that part, sir. If we stay here all we can do is stand -outside the calaboose and ask ’em to push our money out through the -bars. And I’m afraid they are not feeling generous enough just now.” - -“But the law will keep them--” - -“No, it won’t, sir, if I’m any judge of the sporting blood out here. -Royal City will be mighty curious to find out what happens when Mr. -Pratt and his friends arrive in Breed. And they’ll come! Don’t worry!” - -But the judge was a stubborn old customer! He kept holding back. - -“Why not settle it with ’em here?” - -“Because I have always read that when a good general has a chance to do -it, he picks his own battle-ground and throws up his earthworks -before the enemy heaves in sight. I have picked Breed, sir! As to the -earthworks, I’ll do some meditating on the way.” - -Already my handy Mr. Dragg had given me the germ of a notion, though, of -course, he had not meant to make me any presents. - - - - -XX--ACROSS CALLAS - -THERE were four or five passengers inside the coach, and I boosted the -judge over the wheel and put him in there. There was no one on the box -with the driver, and that was not surprising, for I must say he did not -have any coaxing way with him: he had his fists full of muddy reins and -looked down on me with his mouth screwed around. I asked meekly if I -might ride up there with him. - -“If you think a plug-hat is going to help me any getting acrost sixteen -miles of ’dobe clay, climb up! But do one thing or t’other damn quick!” - -It did not look as if I would be making a specially promising friend, -but I climbed just the same. - -“Good luck!” said the landlord, “and I hope you’ll take it all right -from us if we let ’em loose after we have shaken ’em down.” - -“Send ’em along, sir. One at a time or the lot in a bunch!” - -That little speech suited the crowd; I got a lot of friendly hand-waves. - -A few rods from the last house in Royal City the muddy street swung to -the right and sort of sneaked into the river, as if it were ashamed -and wanted to wash the dirt off itself. There was no bridge. The -horses plunged into the water and dragged the coach across the stream, -floundering in depths that barely allowed them footing. - -On the other side of the river the road whiplashed in long curves up the -canon’s wall to reach the level of Callas prairie; I should say it was -all of a thousand feet above the stream. - -I offered to the driver comments on the weather, on the road: I offered -him a cigar. I had stocked up with smokes with which to curry favor. The -driver paid no attention to the comments and snarled his refusal of the -cigar. Even with six horses leaping to their work under the lash, our -crawl up the muddy slope was snail-like. The wheelers and swing team got -the whip, and the driver heaved curses and little rocks at the leaders. -He had nearly a peck of pebbles in a canvas bag at his side. When we -were over the rim-rock at last and upon the prairie, I looked for more -speed. But no such luck! The straining horses, half-way to their knees -in the black mud, could barely move the heavy coach. - -After a time the driver left what some flatterers might call a road -and took to the open prairie, zigzagging here and there to find solid -ground. Then intersecting gullies drove him back into the rutted road -again. It was adobe mud--black as zip and as sticky as cold molasses. -Every little while the driver was obliged to jump down from his seat and -poke the clotted mud out between the spokes of the wheels. Otherwise -the coach would have been anchored in spite of the best tussles of the -horses. - -“I should think they’d have to give up trying to run a stage across this -prairie in mud-time,” I ventured to suggest to the driver when he came -climbing back to his seat after a long assault on the mud-clogged wheels -with his piece of joist. - -“The mails _have_ to go, but the damn fools that I haul don’t have to,” - he retorted, sorting his reins between his muddy fingers. “If you ain’t -satisfied with the way I’m running this thing, mister, you can tuck -yourself into that plug-hat of yours and roll across to Breed City. -E-e-oyah! Go ‘long, you wall-eyed, splint-legged goats of the Bitter -Root, you!” - -However, I was thankful I was on the outside; the sun warmed me and the -warmth was grateful, for the breeze was chilly on that upland. I could -see snow on the far-distant peaks to the south. The passengers inside -the coach were plainly far from feeling any thankfulness whatsoever. -They groaned and growled and complained. I glanced down over the side -dining one stop for wheel-clearing, and found myself looking into the -face of Judge Kingsley, who had stuck his head out of the window. His -false mustache gave him the appearance of an angry cat. - -“How much more of this devilishness have we got to endure?” he demanded. - -“That’s easy figuring, sir! Sixteen miles, sixteen hours! It must be the -regular running time on this road.” - -“I don’t want no sarcasm from no one,” yelped the driver, straightening -up and shaking his joist. “And if any gent reckons he can keep passing -out his cheap slurs on this trip he’d better come down here now and get -his card entitling him to.” - -I kept my gaze on the distant mountains, but when the driver climbed -back to his seat and kept on cussing me out, I reckoned we’d better have -a little understanding for the rest of the trip. I closed my fingers -around his arm. It was only a pipe-stem arm--and his eyes were of the -sad, pale-blue kind. I said very near to his ear: “Your breakfast seems -to be hurting you, son! The stage company pays you to drive and to be -respectful to passengers. Mind your tongue after this.” - -I was trying on a little something. I have found that when you bluster -and shout, the blusterer usually recognizes his own kind and blusters -back. But the blowhard hasn’t any weapon when a man fights with a look -and a quiet word. - -“It’s the mud. It’s getting on to my nerves,” whined the man after he -had driven a short distance. - -“Have a smoke--it’s good for the nerves,” I invited. The driver’s hands -were full of reins and whip and pebbles, so I set the end of a cigar to -the drooping mouth and the driver bit off the end. Then I held a match -while he sucked. And when the cigar was going he turned an appreciative -grin on me. - -“A fellow can’t bluff you much, can he, mister?” he remarked. “I didn’t -have you sized up right at the start-off, I reckon. Why, _I_ couldn’t -lick a prairie-dog with a hammer. But I bluff out most of the dudes who -travel with me. I get a lot of innocent enjoyment that way. It helps -pass the time for me on this jodiggered trip.” - -Out of his cocoon of grouchiness he broke as a real butterfly of -chatter. I got a lot of good stuff from him, for I learned the name -of the mayor of Breed City and what sort of a man he was--a dry-goods -merchant who took his job seriously and hollered about the development -of the new place and loved those who said a good word for the -municipality. - -I also learned that many miners and prospectors from the Buffalo Hump -region were mudbound, on their annual spree, in Breed--the nearest town -where they could find all the rum and roulette they demanded. The driver -stated that one or two of his friends who had a little spare cash for -speculation made it a practice to loaf around the gambling-places -and buy in from busted players any mining shares that a man wanted to -realize on in a hurry. Most of these shares thus offered for sale were -shares in undeveloped prospects, the driver explained, but one could -never tell when a share bought for a cent would be worth a hundred. That -driver certainly liked the sound of his voice when he got started! He -offered the confidential tip that the Blacksnake Gully region would -develop into the howler of the season. It wasn’t being talked of much. -Nothing real definite was known outside. He guessed they hadn’t opened -up anything to prove the hunch some folks had--but mining is like -betting on the races. A tip floats in from somewhere--if a hunch goes -with it, play it, that was his motto. He had been able to pick up a few -loose shares. - -The mine in which he was most interested had been located for a long -time. Shares had been out for some years, scattered around. He couldn’t -tell for sure who had started the new stories, but he did know that a -friend of his--an humble friend called “Dirty-shirt” Maddox--was up -in this section, nosing around, and he reckoned he’d get some inside -information when “Dirty-shirt” returned to Breed. - -Of course I wasn’t surprised. My idea of the West was a place where -every man was trying to unload mining stock on an Eastern sucker. - -“The particular claim in the Blacksnake that I’m speaking of is ‘Her -Two Bright Eyes,’” stated the gossiper. “Mebbe that name is a hunch that -it’s worth looking into,” he added, with a cackle to point his little -joke. - -I thought of a couple of bright eyes, and felt homesick when the driver -drawled the name of the mine. - -“Two bright eyes are always worth looking into,” said I. - -That was some ride! - -The stage wallowed into Breed City about nightfall. It had tipped over -twice on the way, its wheels sinking into “honey-pots” of mud, rolling -over slowly like a tired cow lying down to rest. We swearing passengers -had been compelled to pry it up with poles borrowed from a rancher. -During these waits and during the meal at a sort of half-way house, -Judge Kingsley, mud-spattered, scared into conniptions when he thought -of what would be coming behind us from Royal City, miserable as a wet -cat, and seeing nothing ahead for consolation, muttered to me constantly -his familiar taunt that he was being teamed about the country by a -lunatic. - -I didn’t know exactly what to say, and made him still angrier by -confessing that he was undoubtedly correct. - -We left the coach in front of the hotel that the driver had recommended, -and we stepped from the board sidewalk like passengers disembarking from -a boat; the mud in the street was fairly a river of mire. - -“Even if you don’t like the ‘Prairie Pride’ very well,” my new friend -had said, “you’ll have a lot of fun watching the White Ghost operate. -There’s only one of his kind in these parts, or anywhere else in the -world, so fur’s I know. Folks come from a long ways off and stand around -the windows and doors of the ‘Prairie Pride’ hotel and see the White -Ghost perform. Oh no, I don’t mean that the house is haunted. The White -Ghost is the waiter. He’s the only waiter they have in the dining-room. -He won’t have anybody else there. He prides himself on doing it all -alone. Says he is the only waiter in the world who can handle fifty -guests and four Chinese cooks single-handed and keep everybody happy and -busy eating. He’s a little cracked in the head, but he’s sure a wonder -on his feet. A streak of white lightning would have to whistle for him -to turn around and come back and meet it.” - -Now this bit of information, when I listened to it, stirred in me merely -a half-determination to go to another hotel, where the waiter did not -give a show along with his services. - -How often does man slight some odd tools that Fate lays in his way, -especially when Fate doesn’t draw his attention to them! - -The “Prairie Pride” hotel deserved its name in some measure. It had -smooth floors, real doors, and walls of plaster. Its big office thronged -with guests, whose character was plain enough. There were slick drummers -and bearded and booted miners fresh from the hills, down for a bit of a -spring whirl, and there were mining engineers and such like. - -We were given a room and at the same time we were given a hint that we’d -better hurry to supper before the hungry mob cleaned up all the best -dishes. Again my clothes coaxed this courtesy! - -“Cross the big dining-room and go into the alcove,” directed the clerk, -after a glance at my hat. “The alcove is for gents. We herd the others -in the big room.” - -I crossed this main hall a few steps in advance of Judge Kingsley. Men -were crowded at the tables gobbling food. No fancy feeding! Men jabbed -knives into their mouths and grabbed stuff off plates and smacked their -lips and snuffled and grunted. I stopped in the alleyway between these -tables to look about. I heard a yell of warning and dodged just in time -to escape. - -Double swinging doors with spring hinges were burst open by the impact -of a foot that must have been swung waist high for the kick. Out into -the dining-room shot the individual who had kicked. - -It was an apparition! - -He was more than six feet tall and as slim as a beanpole. He wore a -white cap, a white jacket, a white apron shrouded him to his heels, -and he wore white shoes. He had a white, peaked face and his hair was -tow-colored. On a huge tray that he held well above his head dishes were -heaped high. He went past me and down the alleyway on the dead run, and -wisps of steam from his load followed after, trailing on the air. - -“You want to keep out of the road in this dining-room when the White -Ghost is on the rampage,” advised a guest at the table in the alcove -where we took seats. “He’s going to get somebody some day fine and -plenty. A few months ago he got old Babb Coan, who was down here on -crutches, nursing a broken leg, and couldn’t get out of the way in -season. But the White Ghost was loaded with empty dishes--just empties. -Some day he’s going to connect when he’s loaded with about seventeen hot -dinners.” - -The next moment a white streak came into the alcove, took half a dozen -orders and darted back into the kitchen with a tray-load of empty -dishes. - -“It advertises the hotel,” explained the talkative guest. “Men come here -from far and near to see the White Ghost razoo up and down the stretch, -but for me I’d rather have more waiters and less slamming. It keeps me -nervous, and when I’m nervous I can’t do justice to my vittles. I’m all -the time expecting to see that man that’s doomed to get _his_ get it. -It’ll be a mighty mushy affair.” - -By this time the White Ghost was back and was scaling loaded dishes -about the table with a deftness that a quick dealer shows in a poker -game. - -And I, still blind to what Fate was preparing for my side of the case, -was merely irritated by this tophet-te-larrup! - -When supper was over we seized an opportunity when the White Ghost was -on an outward trip and escaped. - -I advised the judge that he’d better take the key and go to our room -and get into bed, and the old man accepted that advice with a sigh -of thankfulness. He looked bent, weary, and broken as he climbed the -stairs; homesick hopelessness showed in every line of his face and in -every motion of his body. I did pity him then! - -“Poor old father of the girl with the two bright eyes,” I said, not -realizing that I had spoken aloud. - -A man sidled up and prodded me with his thumb. - -“I heard what you said to the old gent just now! Where did you get your -tip, pard?” he whispered. - -I had already forgotten just what the driver had said. - -“You needn’t let it out if you don’t want to. But there’s a little -inside guessing in these parts and when you hear a man let drop anything -about the ‘Two Bright Eyes,’ it’s reckoned he has had a hunch of some -kind.” - -“I wasn’t thinking about that mine!” - -The man grinned. - -“That’s right--keep it sly! But see here, pard, I’m going to test you -out a little on this thing. I’ve got a few thousand shares of the old -stock. Took it over in a poker game a long time ago--we gamble mining -stocks out this way when we’re busted. I’m busted now--and they won’t -take mining stock at the roulette wheel. I’ll sell you five hundred -shares of ‘Bright Eyes’ at fifty cents a share.” - -He peered anxiously into my face as he made the offer. He was plainly -trying to get a hint from my expression, but he didn’t, of course. I -knew nothing about mining stock. - -‘I don’t want it.”. - -“Twenty-five cents a share, then. I want to chase the wheel.” - -“You’re on a wrong lead, my friend.” - -Just then a man bumped against me as if by accident and promptly -apologized. It was the stage-driver. - -The owner of the stock scowled and backed into the crowd in the office. - -“I was trying to jolt a little hoss sense into you,” explained the -driver. “Why didn’t you buy that stock? I passed the hunch to you -to-day.” - -“I haven’t any money for wildcatting in gold-mines,” I said. - -The man came close to me and spoke low. - -“Don’t you remember what I said?” - -“Yes, but grabbing gold-mine stock from the first comer--say, my friend, -do I look as green as that?” - -“Hish! Don’t rear up, sir! Please don’t! But I know that fellow who -just tried to sell. He’s fresh in from the hills. He doesn’t know what’s -going on--and only a few do know. But I carry men on my stage who talk -and don’t know I’m overhearing. I say no more! But I hope you’ll take -the hint. If I could rake and scrape another dollar I’d buy that stock -myself. That fellow has some kind of a hunch--but he has been too far -away in the hills to know anything special. I guess he just smells it in -the air. There isn’t much stock in ‘Bright Eyes’ left loose these days. -I have smelt around; I know! That tells a long story, sir. If that -fellow hadn’t been off in the hills they’d have got his away from him!” - -He was urgent and appealing. I couldn’t understand this special interest -in me and I told him so plainly. - -“I don’t exactly know, either,” he said, unabashed. “I’m thinking it -over and I’ll tell you when I get it thought out. Maybe it’s your style. -I have always hoped to be able to wear a suit of clothes like that.” - -He surveyed me with candid admiration. - -My tartness didn’t bother him a bit. He beamed on me--and plainly had -taken a few drinks. I asked the driver to tell me how I could reach the -mayor’s store. My friend offered to conduct me. I had resolved to throw -up my Breed City earthworks! - -“When I take a liking to a gent I don’t do nothing by halves,” declared -my guide when we were on our way. “You come unwrapped enough to-day so -that I could see that you’ve got real whalebone in your stock and silk -in your snapper--and that’s the kind of a whip for my hand! You come -along with me and I’ll introduce you to the mayor. Him and me are chums. -He ain’t none of your stuck-up dudes. I’ll tell him you’re a special -friend of mine. There’s nothing like getting in right.” - -He left me in the back office of a dry-goods store, sitting knees to -knees in the tiny room with a fat and placid man who smiled amiably and -seemed to be impressed by my dress and demeanor. - -He launched out at me in a way that was surely astonishing. - -“You are the kind we like to see coming into our new and growing city. -We are anxious for a touch of the dignity and refinement of the East -here in our midst. We hope we can offer you inducements which will wean -you from that East which, though its traditions are glorious and its -civilization is sublime, is nevertheless a bit--I may say, without -offense, I trust--effete” By the way in which Mayor David Ware smacked -his lips over that sentence I was pretty sure that he was quoting from -his inaugural address. - -“I’m very glad to have you feel that way toward me, coming here a -stranger, Mr. Mayor.” - -“But strangers are certified to a man of insight by the masonry of -breeding.” - -I thanked him again and proceeded to a matter of business connected with -my earthworks. - -I told him of the plans of one Dragg, as I had gleaned them from -accidental association with that individual. I said that Dragg had now -attached to himself two blacklegs and undoubtedly would soon arrive in -Breed City for the purpose of taking advantage of technicalities in the -land law, jumping claims, holding up enterprises, giving Breed City a -black eye outside as a municipality where titles were not assured. - -“I am not a spy, a tattletale, or a meddler,” I said. “But this matter -was forced on my attention when I was on my way here, and I did not want -to see a hustling mayor and city set back by the schemes of blacklegs. -I had heard of your city and of you, and I said to myself, ‘If warning -will enable such a city to head off a plot and put the plotters where -they belong I’ll hurry to headquarters with my information.’ Those men -are now in Royal City and are on their way here.” - -The mayor’s mild eyes bulged and his face showed his dismay. - -“It’s plain you are a friend who wouldn’t take advantage of our -situation, sir. That’s shown because you are not trying to operate on -the tip this crook gave you. So I’m going to be frank with you, as a -friend. We were so anxious to get things moving here that we took a lot -for granted in the matter of land titles Those men can make trouble--or -at least they could have made trouble if we had not been warned in -season by you. You will find that this city can be grateful, Mr. Mann.” - -I was sticking to my assumed name. - -“Will you allow me to make a suggestion?” - -“I certainly will. I’ll be glad to have your advice.” - -“Don’t undertake to jump on them, officially, the moment they strike -town. In order to have your proof you must wait until they try to -operate. Have them watched sharply. If you’ll give me permission to -take a hand in the matter, on the side, I may be able to bluff them -out entirely. I reckon it’s for the interests of your city to close the -thing up without the public knowing there’s any doubt about land titles. -Of course I don’t need to suggest to you that you make a flying start -now and straighten out your law and titles so that no other shysters can -come along making trouble after we get rid of these gentlemen.” - -“Watch me in that line,” declared the mayor, thumping his breast. -“You’re right about handling them with gloves, Mr. Mann. I tell you if -you can do anything to help us you will stand mighty high with me and -with Breed City.” - -“In handling them I may be able to make it seem like a personal quarrel -between them and myself,” I suggested. My horizon was growing wider all -the time. “They are dangerous men, but I’m not afraid of them.” - -“But I don’t want you to be a martyr.” - -“I’m not afraid of them, I say. If trouble does happen here and it seems -like a personal quarrel, you will understand it all, Mr. Mayor!” - -“Certainly, sir!” - -“It may seem strange to have a stranger come along like this and offer -to meddle in matters where he has no personal interest. Those men are -nothing to me, one way or the other. But I’m for fair play always!” - -His Honor warmed to this modest candor. - -“The city is behind you in whatever you may do in this thing, sir. As -mayor I say it. You’ll be backed to the limit. And if you get hurt while -you are trying to do a bit of a trick for us I’ll be scissored if I -don’t toss law and order up for a little while and organize a lynching -party and head it in person.” - -“If I thought it would come to that I wouldn’t meddle in the affair! The -only reason I am offering my services is because I hope to be able to -keep Breed City from suffering a setback.” - -“Hand ’em any jolt that’s coming to ’em in the name of Breed City -and its mayor.” His Honor clapped his hand on my shoulder. - -I trudged back to the hotel in a fairly comfortable frame of mind. It’s -a lucky general who can choose his own battle-field, get to it well -ahead of the enemy, throw up earthworks and set a big gun or two in -position. So, I said to myself, “Let ’em come!” - - - - -XXI--THE SKIRMISH-LINE - -I WAS a bit embarrassed next morning and wondered if I hadn’t overdone -the thing. - -I was waited on by a delegation in the crowded office of the Pride of -the Prairie. Mayor David Ware headed the delegation and he introduced -the half-dozen amiable gentlemen as leading members of the Breed City -Chamber of Commerce. Then the mayor pulled me aside. - -“You understand that I haven’t whispered a word of what you and I talked -about last night. That’s to be buried between you and me, but there’s -nothing like getting in sneck with the big boys of this town. It’ll -be easier for me when I have to back you up--if it comes to that. -I’ve explained that you’re a friend of mine who is West looking for -prospects.” - -“I’m glad to be called a friend of yours--and you told the truth about -my business here, Mr Mayor. We start on a square basis.” - -With the mayor, followed by the delegation, I was escorted through -the main street of Breed City It seemed to afford the gentlemen honest -gratification to follow along behind that plug-hat which I had freshly -slicked that morning to the best of my ability. I was lunched at the -Chamber of Commerce--a half-finished board structure; I was dined by -the mayor at his own home; and I returned to the hotel in the evening to -find the judge marooned in the office. - -“Please don’t scowl at me that way,” I pleaded, humbly. “I was afraid -you might drop something that would queer the whole proposition. You are -looking over your shoulder as if you expected damnation to jump on to -your back!” - -“Damnation _is_ getting ready to jump on to our backs,” growled the old -man. “One of ’em has got here. He came in on the stage to-night.” - -“Which one?” - -“The scalawag with the flashy clothes.” - -I had looked for pretty quick action, but “Peacock” Pratt had got away -sooner than I expected he would. He had been free with his money, I -concluded. - -I got down-stairs early the next morning, the judge tagging at my heels. -But we were not ahead of Mr. Pratt. I didn’t have to hunt for him. He -stood out like Jeff Dawlin’s “Peruvian cockatoo” would have shown up in -a flock of crows. He followed us into the diningroom, and sat down at -the same table and scowled at me with ugly fire in his little eyes above -their pouches of flesh. Then he leaned across the table. We three were -alone when the White Ghost had frisked away after our breakfasts. - -“I’m here,” said he. - -“Glad to see you,” said I. - -“You’re a dog-eyed liar! You didn’t expect to see me. You thought you -had the three of us canned till you could put something across here. It -cost me a hundred dollars to grease the lock of that calaboose--and at -that I couldn’t bring out the other two. But they’re coming! You needn’t -worry any about that part, you punk-faced Piute!” - -He dove a pudgy hand down into the breast pocket of his vest. He got his -wallet out and banged it down on the table. It was a big wallet and it -was well stuffed. Judge Kingsley gulped when he saw it and his hands -worked like claws. - -“That’s how I’m heeled, and I’ll spend it getting you, if it comes to -that.” - -He packed the big wallet back into his waistcoat, galloped down his eggs -and bacon, and then banged away from the table. He called back over his -shoulder, “I wish I hadn’t promised that I’d anchor you and wait for -’em, else I’d take you now and settle my breakfast with you.” - -“Did you see that money?” gasped the old man. “It’s my money, There’s a -lot of it. My God! I could hardly keep my hands off it.” - -“It was a nice, fat wallet, Judge Kingsley. I was glad to see it. It all -looks very encouraging.” - -“Encouraging! Where do you see any encouragement? Two more men coming -full of blood and thunder to join him--and you waiting here for them to -get along! Anybody with sense would have that man grabbed by the police -on my charges. I thought you told me you were bringing me out here to -make the complaint? Now you’re only dillydallying. A man with, sense, I -say--” - -“Oh, I suppose a man with sense would never have come out here, at all.” - -When I went out and stood on the hotel porch, my friend, the -stage-driver, lounged up. - -“I’ve knocked off for a few days’ vacation,” he explained, sociably. -“Sent another man for my trip to Royal City yesterday. Mud was getting -on to my nerves. You noticed how it was the day you rode out with me. I -came nigh queering myself with you and spoiling one of the pleasantest -friendships I ever made. I was mighty glad to see the mayor and the boys -taking you around town yesterday.” - -I told him I appreciated his regard. - -“There’s another reason why I’m taking a few days off,” he confided. -“I’ve got a hunch that ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox is about due here. And in -the case of ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox it’s needful to be Johnny-on-the-spot -when he hits town if I’m going to cash in on that grubstake I advanced -to him.” - -I handed him a cigar and he explained further. - -“If I ain’t here to clap a hand over his mouth to keep the rum out and -the news in, he’ll get four slugs of language-loosener into him inside -of four minutes after striking the first board-walk here and then it’s -brakes off, all into a gallop and hell-bent up the rise for that ‘Bright -Eyes’ stock.” - -At a little distance the stylish Mr. Pratt paced his way to and fro on -the porch, scowling. - -“Please take a good look at that fellow,” said I. - -“I’ll do the best I can without smoked glasses,” promised the -stage-driver. “I’ve seen him before--and I never liked his style.” - -“His name is Pratt,” I said loud enough to be heard by that gentleman. -“He seems to hold some kind of a grudge against me and is following me.” - -Mr. Pratt let loose a torrent of cuss words that were fully as highly -colored as his rig-out. He wound up by saying, “And, by the gods! I’ll -get you, and get you fine and plenty!” - -“Will you remember that?” I asked the stage-driver. - -I realized that I had pretty good control of the movements of Mr. Pratt. -For where I did go there went Pratt also. Mr. Pratt was decidedly on his -job. Personal hatred moved him and he felt responsible, I suppose, -for the interests of the two who were frothing behind the bars of the -calaboose in Royal City. He seemed to be guarding me as a morsel for a -feast of revenge at which three proposed to sit down. He stuck to me so -closely that my big idea became firm enough to handle. The ability -to move Pratt, and to be near Pratt at all times by Pratt’s own wish, -suggested my scheme to me. - -When the noon hour was at hand I led the way back to the hotel, and, -while I tidied myself for dinner, taking my turn at the mirror in the -wash-room, I had an eye for the manoeuvers of Pratt, who was preening -and pluming himself, whisking all the stains of outdoors from his -clothing, settling his gorgeous tie, smoothing his waistcoat across his -expansive front. - -I couldn’t help it--I grinned in his face when I thought of my plan. - -I buttoned my frock-coat carefully and started for the dining-room--and -Pratt followed close. On the threshold I cast a look within. The White -Ghost was not there--he was in eclipse in the kitchen for the moment. I -started through the big hall, toward the alcove, crossing near the swing -doors. Pratt came on behind me and I halted and turned suddenly on him. - -“I’m going to shoot you now and here in your tracks, where every one can -look on,” I told him in a whisper--and I kept smiling. “Don’t you dare -to pull a gun. I’ve got you covered. I’ve got a revolver in that hand -that’s wrapped in the tail of this coat and it’s aimed at you. I’m going -to shoot you while I’m smiling. There are men looking at me. I’ll say -that the gun went off by accident. It’ll be believed, because we look -so sociable. Hold on! Don’t you open that mouth to yell. You’ve got -one chance for your life. I’ll tell you now--because I’ll never have a -better chance to get you proper if you don’t take that chance I offer.” - -I was stalling then, for I had not intended to talk so long. Mr. Pratt -stood there as stiff as a wooden man. - -He took a peep at my hand that was muffled in the skirt of my -frock-coat. The unseen terrifies most. His face grew pale. He -continued-to stare at the hidden thing that threatened his life. My -smile broadened--it was no assumed smile--for my wrapped hand was empty. - -“You may think that this is a queer place for me to hold you up” - -If Pratt could have known what was passing in my mind at that moment he -would have agreed. It would also have astonished Mr. Pratt to know that -I was just then raking my soul in order to think of something to say -next. - -There seemed to be an infernally long time between the shuttlings of the -White Ghost. I felt like an anarchist who has timed a bomb and finds his -fuse faulty. Where in the devil’s name was the fool? I knew I couldn’t -stand there and tell a serial story to Pratt. A dangerous light was -coming into the man’s eyes. Astonishment had held him for the first -few moments, then fear had chained him, but finally panic was plainly -breaking out in him, and in such cases a victim will run amuck -regardless of consequences. I felt that Pratt was getting ready to howl -and leap upon me. - -Where was the White Ghost? - -The thought came to me that this prolonged absence hinted at one -consolation--the White Ghost must be filling many orders--his tray would -be heaped to the ceiling. - -“Your one chance is--” said I--and then it happened! - -Without warning, the swing doors burst open under the kick of the -White Ghost’s foot and forth from the cavern of the kitchen came the -thunderbolt. I had been waiting and listening, and was ready to dodge. -The petrified Pratt never stirred a stump. There was a howl from warning -diners--a collision, a terrific crash, and Pratt went down under the -avalanche. The White Ghost was lugging one of the biggest loads of his -career. There were deep plates in which hot and greasy soup swam, there -were gravied meats, nappies of vegetables, tea, coffee, macaroni, pies, -and puddings. Mr. Pratt was buried under dishes, hot soup blinded his -eyes, macaroni was twined around his neck, pies plastered his shirt -bosom, and his clothes sopped up liquids. He might have been labeled, -“A dinner in eruption!” The White Ghost dove across him and skated along -the floor on his nose. - -I hurried to Pratt and began to paw the dishes from off him. And having -planned just what I was going to do and knowing just where to seek for -what I wanted, I dove a hand into Pratt’s inside vest pocket and yanked -out the big wallet. Other men ran to help me, there was excitement, -and in that mess of provisions which I was cuffing to right and left -my handling of the wallet was noticed by no one. I was kneeling close -beside Pratt and I shoved the wallet between my knees, and when I arose, -slid it up under my coat. - -There were plenty of volunteers whose hands were out to boost Mr. Pratt -to his feet. His eyes were tightly shut and he was bellowing about -the pain the soup was giving him. I took the rôle of close friend and -ordered the rescuers to carry Mr. Pratt to the wash-room and give him -first aid with towels and water. I followed close upon their heels -and elbowed Kingsley along with the push. The judge had stood at some -distance during our drama. I pulled his hand up under my coat and set it -on the wallet. - -“Grab it!” I whispered. “Slip it under your coat; get out of this hotel -and around the corner. Jam the money into your stocking and stamp the -wallet down into the mud. Be careful no one sees you.” - -It was on me that Pratt’s eyes first opened--for I was swabbing the soup -out of those eyes with the end of a wet towel. - -But when he opened his mouth I swabbed the towel across his lips. Other -volunteers were working away at the clothing of the victim with wet -towels. - -All at once Pratt began to slap himself on the breast and howl. His -laments in regard to the hot soup in his eyes had been loud, but in -contrast to his latest outburst they were as the voice of the chickadee -compared with the roar of the lion. After he had beat upon his breast, -he dove a greasy hand into his vest pocket. It was empty. His eyes -goggled, his face grew purple, he shouted, he swore, and he raved. - -He had been done, trimmed, robbed, frisked, touched--so were his -bellowings! He searched his soul for synonyms with which to announce -to the world that his wallet had been stolen. And then he accused -me--accused me with violence and profanity. - -“Just one moment, sir,” I suggested, taking advantage of a moment when -Mr. Pratt was choking. “You are sure those dishes didn’t crack your -skull a bit and injure your brain?” - -After spitting many oaths, Mr. Pratt declared that he was all right and -knew what he was talking about. - -“You’ll have to back that up,” I told him. “Fifty men were looking at -you when that thing happened. I have not been out of the sight of those -men since. You say it was a large wallet.” I unbuttoned my coat and -slung it open. “Will any gentleman present kindly search me?” - -“He is going too far when he shoots off his mouth about a gent like -you,” declared somebody in the crowd. “We all saw you. All you did was -try to help the son of a gun out of his mess--and that’s all the thanks -you get!” - -“Mistakes are bound to occur. I demand that some gentleman make sure -that I have no wallet on my person. My own money is in a roll in my -trousers pocket.” - -A solid-looking citizen searched me, uttering apologies. “There ain’t -any wallet on this gent, and you’d better ask his pardon for remarks -offered,” suggested the citizen. - -But Pratt only raved the louder. - -“I’d like to say a word just here,” called a voice. The stage-driver -pushed to the front. “You all know me and you know I ain’t any liar. -This gent, here, is a friend of mine and he wouldn’t do dirt to anybody. -He’s a friend of our mayor, too.” He put his hand affectionately on my -shoulder. “But as for that other cuss, there, in the piebald clothes, -I heard him make threats not longer ago than this morning that he would -get my friend, and get him good and plenty.” - -“Maybe you think I arranged to have those seventeen dinners dumped over -me so as to make the plot a good one, you pie-eyed horse-walloper, you,” - squealed Pratt, beginning to “weave” in his fury like a caged bear. - -“I wouldn’t wonder a mite,” replied the driver, coolly. “When I heard -you threatening to get my friend you was mad enough to try on most -anything.” - -“He got my money, I tell you. I felt him at my pocket while I was trying -to get my senses back. Blast you all for infernal fools, I’ve been -robbed right before your eyes and you’re backing up the thief.” - -There was a stir at the door and the crowd glanced that way and parted -respectfully. It was His Honor the Mayor of Breed City. He stood for a -few moments and listened to the language Pratt addressed to me. Then he -broke in with authority: - -“Just a moment, citizens! There’s a lot about this affair, here, that I -know and cannot tell. As for that knave who accuses Mr. Mann, I declare -on my honor that he is a dangerous foe to this city. He has come here to -try to ruin it if his scheme works.” - -Mr. Pratt at this point managed to control the amazement that was -provoked by the appearance of this new champion. - -“I tell you, Mayor,” he shouted, “you’ve got the wrong dope about me. -Dragg tried to get me into the scheme, but I----” - -“You are convicting yourself right now out of your own mouth,” broke -in the mayor. He marched up to Pratt, finger upraised: “You are as -dangerous here as a dynamite bomb. I’ll allow you thirty minutes to get -out of town. Get to those other two knaves and warn them that they’ll be -lynched if they show up here--and I’ll lead the lynching-bee.” - -There was immediate change in Mr. Pratt’s demeanor and the mayor and the -bystanders listened to him. The fat face was lined with grief, and tears -ran down his cheeks and mingled with the grub stains. - -“I’m not lying about that wallet, gents. I’ve lost my bundle. It has -been stolen. That’s a nice word to go out about Breed City--that a -visitor to town loses his wad and the mayor backs up the man who stole -it!” - -“Silence!” said the mayor. - -“Then I’ll simply say that I’ve lost my money--and how about law and -order in a city that will let a man be trimmed in that style? Hold on -one minute, Mr. Mayor! It isn’t merely a case of my own money! If it -was, I’d shut up now and pass on. But I had along with mine the money of -a good friend who trusted me with his roll. I left him in the calaboose -back on the trail and I brought out his money to take care of it for -him, for he was afraid they’d get to him for it. That’s God’s truth, -Mayor.” - -In a crowd there may be found champions for the under dog--even when a -mayor has turned down his thumb. I heard murmurs. One voice suggested -that the matter better be looked into--the good name of Breed City -demanded it. - -“I haven’t much to say in this business, even though this man has -accused me,” I said in the silence that followed. “Now that you are on -the subject of your money, Mr. Pratt, and are making such a squeal in -regard to the loss of it, will you allow me to ask you how much of it -was money you stole in the East--especially from Zebulon Kingsley of -Levant?” - -If I had struck “Peacock” Pratt between the eyes the effect could not -have been more noticeable. Most of those men who were present had -been trained to gauge the human expression in that region of plain and -mountain where life itself sometimes depends on the ability to judge -between bluff and resolve. His fat cheeks flushed and then they grew -pale. That a stranger in the Far West should be able to cast in his -teeth one of his latest exploits staggered him. He tried to speak and -couldn’t. - -“Pratt, you have twenty-two more minutes left of that half hour,” stated -the mayor, after silence had continued for some moments. - -“I suppose that has to go for to-day,” said Pratt. “But it doesn’t go -for to-morrow--nor for next day if my friends and I can get back here, -Mr. Mayor! Lynch or no lynch!” - -He buttoned his waistcoat, took a mournful look at himself in the -wash-room mirror, and headed for a livery-stable which a sarcastic -bystander recommended. I knew that threat to come back wasn’t mere talk. -Mr. Pratt had good reason to take the risks! - -I took my first chance and escaped from the populace of Breed City to -hunt up Kingsley in the little room in the hotel. - -“How much?” I was all a-tremble. - -“A little over six thousand dollars. Mostly five-hundred-dollar bills. -Part of it is tied up in a separate package and marked with Dawlin’s -name.” The judge was not very enthusiastic. - -I sat down on the edge of the bed. - -“In order to be on the right side and make allowance for delays here and -there, we ought to leave here tomorrow, Judge Kingsley. And even then -we’d be having hours for a margin--not days. I felt pretty good when I -heard Pratt say that he had Dawlin’s money along. I figured there would -be more between the two of ’em.” - -“Then it’s all over, is it? We’re beaten, eh?” - -“What do _you_ think?” - -“I think we are.” - -“Well, sir,” I said, “you and I have always seemed to make more progress -when I take the opposite side in an argument. I predict that we shall -win out. Please hand over that money.” - -“The money is mine--it was stolen from me. You’re too reckless to handle -money. We’re beaten, I tell you. I’ll send that money home to my wife -and daughter. It’s something for them to live on. I’ll kill myself out -here.” - -Judge Kingsley put both hands over his breast pocket. He was hysterical. -There was no reasoning with him and so I rose from the bed, walked -across the room, and snapped a finger under his nose. Zebulon Kingsley -must not have money in his pocket--in that case I could not handle him -or trust him to stay with me! - -“Give--me--that--money!” - -He stared and groaned and obeyed. - -I divided the bills into packets, tucked them into my various pockets, -and walked out of the room. - -“This money needs an airing,” I informed the judge. “I’ll take it -outdoors and give it one. It has been in some mighty bad company.” - - - - -XXII--MONEY ON THE GALLOP - -IN most circumstances, being padded with bills to the amount of six -thousand dollars would be comfortably warming. But in my case the -possession of that sum only provoked irritation. - -I had set out to save Zebulon Kingsley’s name and the peace of mind of -his family. The sum I had replevined by my scheme of justice fell far -short of what we needed--and there was the promise I had given Dodovah -Vose, as well. - -From the hotel porch I saw my friend, the stage-driver, humping it -toward me. - -“I have tripped, tied, and gagged him. That was the only thing to do! -He got here and he got two drinks into himself before I could slip the -bridle on him. In another two minutes he would have been jumping clear -off’n the ground, head and tail up, snorting out everything he knows. -But I got to him--and I’ve laid him away, tied and gagged. Go to it, Mr. -Mann, go to it, I tell you!” - -He certainly was some excited! - -“Are you talking about a man or a cayuse?” I asked. “I’m talking about -‘Dirty-shirt’--he’s just in from Blacksnake Gully ahead of the news. -Say, they’ve struck a brown crumble in ‘Bright Eyes’ with gold set into -the mush like raisins in a drunken cook’s pudding. You’re a sport and a -friend of mine. I’m letting you in. Come along!” - -He ran away a little distance and whirled and halted with the eager air -of a dog who is inviting his master to follow. I’ll bet if he had had -long ears he would have perked them; if he had had a tail he would have -wagged it. - -“You’re a sport--and I know it. Come along,” he called. - -Along the street came loafing the individual who had tried to sell me -“Bright Eyes” stock, and he heard that call. - -“You’re barking up the wrong tree, pard,” he advised the driver. “He’s -no sport. I have tried him out. He won’t take a chance. I gave him a -chance on some mining shares.” - -“What shares?” asked the stage-driver. - -“‘Bright Eyes’ in the Blacksnake.” - -My friend was truly a good actor. He showed no interest. - -“Shift the name to ‘blacked eyes.’ Yes, and both of ’em closed at -that. No good!” - -“I tell you there’s something in the air,” insisted the other. “It’s a -fair gamble at twenty-five cents a share.” He pulled out some papers and -walked up to me. - -“You look like ready money, my friend. I’d rather play the wheel just -now than be rich. I’m tied in here by the mud and it’s getting on to my -nerves. Take ten thousand at twenty-five cents. I’ll close out to you.” - -“Hold on!” sang out the driver, and he managed to smuggle a wink to me -while he was tugging papers out of his pocket on his way back to join -us. “If you’re in the market for ‘Bright Eyes,’ Eastern fellow, here’s -ten thousand shares for fifteen cents a share.”. - -“Don’t you come butting in on my market,” protested the prospector, -elbowing the driver away. “I got to this gent first.” - -“Those shares have been used all over this section for counters in poker -games when beans got too expensive,” sneered the driver. - -The prospector pulled out more papers. - -“If you’ll take twenty thousand at ten cents a share I’ll pass ’em -over. I was intending to hold on to ten thousand shares for a gamble. I -tell you there’s something, somehow, somewhere, that says the hunch is -out for ‘Bright Eyes.’ But I’ll let go for ten cents if you’ll take the -bunch.” - -“That’s no better offer than you made the other night,” I stated. - -“I was pretty drunk, then, and I didn’t mean to make it. I’m daffy now, -I reckon, or I wouldn’t be doing it over again.” - -I stood there and looked them over and for the first time I gave a -little real thought to that gold-mine proposition. Up to then the matter -had been mere sound, shooting into one ear and out the other. I had been -having plenty to think about in other lines. - -It struck me that I was being played for a sucker by a couple of mighty -awkward amateurs. Talk about Zebulon Kingsley buying a gold brick! That -affair had been well buttered by some slick operators. What those two -chaps were trying on me was truly raw work. That stage-driver--I didn’t -even know his name--must have a healthy hate for me hidden deep down -in him! I have cuffed a dog in my life and had him show more affection -afterward, but I couldn’t believe that such treatment helped to mellow -love in a human being. I knew it wouldn’t improve my own disposition -any. In my thoughts I had some excuse for the two. They had probably -been brought up to believe that the ordinary Easterner who had not -already bought some punk gold-mine stock was thriftily saving up to buy -some. - -“There’s one of ’em born every minute,” I remarked to the -stage-driver, “but I didn’t know I looked so much like one. Run away, -the two of you, and fan yourselves with that stock; that’s the only way -you’ll ever raise any wind with it.” - -“You ain’t talking to me, are you--to me--Wash Flye?” inquired the -driver. - -“I am, if that’s your name--and it seems to fit you! But you are not fly -enough!” - -He opened eyes and mouth on me, stepped back a few feet, and visibly -swelled. - -“Well, my-y-y Ga-a-awd!” he wailed. “If that ain’t using the butt end of -the whip on a willing friend, may I never sort webbin’s again!” - -There was truly something sincere in his distress. But that sudden -warming-up to me on the prairie after I had manhandled him, his -unaccountable friendliness, his jacking his job for a few days in order -to dog me about Breed City--the whole thing was too openly a plant. - -“You’re a good actor. No wonder you’re in the stage business, Flye,” was -my poor joke. - -He looked at me for a full minute. Then he turned on the other man. - -“It’s you, you horn-gilled wump, with your sashay prices and your -drunken man’s gab--it’s you that has put me in wrong with a friend,” he -squealed. “He thinks I’m like you are! He thinks I’m in mush with you on -a brace! I’ll show him and you!” He leaped forward and began to kick the -prospector with fury. The latter was a big and rather torpid person and -he seemed to be in a sort of daze at first, and stood still while Mr. -Flye kicked him. Then he turned and knocked Mr. Flye down; he picked him -up and knocked him down again. - -It struck me that if this were acting between friends it was getting too -realistic. The driver’s face was bloody and he lay where he fell, his -eyes closed. - -I jumped between and pushed the prospector away. He struck at me and I -was obliged to hit him a clip or two before he would hold off. We had -a fairly good audience, but fisticuffs in Breed, when the muddy season -made tempers short, seemed to stir only mild interest. - -I found Mr. Flye on his knees and “weaving” weakly when I turned to him. - -“I ain’t no fighter--I don’t pretend to be a fighter,” he mumbled. “I -knew he was going to lick me if I kicked him. But that’s all right! -There’s three teeth loose and my eyes are bunging! I can feel ’em! But -it’s all right. If anybody thinks it was a scuffle between friends, he’d -better take another think. I’ve took a licking to show some folks that -there’s such a thing as being mistook in a man.” - -I hadn’t straightened out my opinions, exactly, but I felt sudden pity -and new respect for Mr. Flye, and some emotion even deeper. I helped him -to his feet and took him into the wash-room of the hotel and fixed him -up as best I could. - -“I don’t blame you so very much,” he kept assuring me, whimpering -through his bruised and bleeding lips. “It probably hasn’t seemed -natural to you--it hasn’t seemed natural to me. This world is full of -crooks and I s’pose you’ve been up against a lot of ’em. I done one -crooked thing myself once when I kept water away from a drove of hogs -for two days and then let ’em drink all they could hold just before -I sold ’em live weight to a Snake River drover. But that drover had -stolen two cayuses off’n my uncle! I didn’t know what I could do to show -you, sir! Probably what I have done don’t show you. But I’ve done my -best. It was all I could think of on short notice. I’ll let a dozen men -beat me up if you will only understand that I ain’t going to do you or -try to do you!” - -That spirit of humble martyrdom was certainly getting to me! - -“Look here, Mr Flye,” I blurted, “I don’t understand at all. Why in -blazes are you taking all this interest in me?” - -He gazed at me out of those pathetic, pale-blue eyes around which -blue-black circles were settling. It was a lingering and wistful gaze. - -“I don’t know, sir. It came over me all of a sudden. It ain’t often I -take to anybody. It just came over me. You’re a real gent--you knowed -just how to handle me. You know how to handle me now! Ain’t you doing -the friendly act, hey?” - -We were alone in the wash-room; the guests of the hotel flocked there -only at meal-time. - -“You can see how it looked to me--a stranger here--you two fellows -chasing me up!” - -“I don’t blame you, sir,” he agreed, meekly. “This world is full of -crooks.” - -“I have some money with me. It isn’t mine. I need more in a hurry--it’s -to save a man’s name--save him from death, perhaps!” I couldn’t hold in. -“It’s to save his daughter, too. I’m in love with her. I have been for -years! It’s all I can think about. When you spoke of ‘Bright Eyes’ I -felt--I felt--” I stopped and gulped. - -“I reckon I know how you feel,” stated Mr. Flye, wagging that mussed-up -head of his. “I know a girl. There’s hardly a minute when I ain’t -thinking about her. She hasn’t paid no attention to me, but I’m going -to her after I make my clean-up on ‘Bright Eyes’! It makes ’em think -twice when there’s money. I ain’t much--” - -“I’m desperate--I’m half crazy, Flye! This mine! Are you fooling me?” - -He straightened and put his hand up like a man taking the oath. . - -“I wanted you to get in because I liked you, sir. That’s why I was after -you. But now that you say that you need money I’m begging and imploring -you! If money will do what you say it will in your case, I say ’fore -God you’ll commit a sin if you don’t grab in! I know it! It has come. -‘Dirty-shirt’ don’t know how to lie about it. The strike has been made. -Take my word,” he pleaded. - -“I’ll do it,” I told him. “I believe you’re trying to do an honest turn -for me.” I put out my hand and he took it. - -“Thank the Lord!” he said, and there was a lot of manliness about Mr. -Wash Flye at that moment. “That licking was a good investment.” He said -it devoutly. - -“But will that fellow sell now?” - -“Can you handle his twenty thousand shares at ten cents--two thousand -dollars?” - -“Yes.” - -“When I offered at fifteen I was trying to beat him down to ten. Don’t -give a cent more. Go show him the money and say you’re willing to be -buncoed once in your life. And hurry--for the love of Sancho, hurry!” - -I found the prospector watching a roulette game with the sour gaze of a -busted gambler. He went into the corner with me when I jerked invitation -with my chin. - -“I’ve changed my mind,” he growled, when I mentioned the stock. “And I -wouldn’t do business with you anyway, you--” - -I unfolded four five-hundred-dollar bills. He stopped his declaration as -suddenly as if I had pinched his throat. - -“Money is money, I suppose,” said he, “though your shin-plasters from -the East are poor things alongside the good hard coin.” - -“There’s the bank across the street, and they’ll give you the good hard -coin, mister.” - -He pulled out his packet and I verified the amount of the certificates. - -I went to the bank in his company, for he seemed to be bothered with the -notion that those five-hundred-dollar bills needed me as introducer -and sponsor. Then he hotfooted out, weighted with the coin. In spite -of myself and of my fresh faith in Mr. Flye, my heart sank considerably -when I saw that money take legs. The cashier was one of the amiable -citizens I had met in the delegation from the Chamber of Commerce. - -“Making a little investment?” he inquired, sociably. - -“A foolish one, I am afraid. But an Easterner who hasn’t had a flier in -a gold-mine at least once in his life gets to feeling lonesome after a -time. That chap has been chasing me around with stock and a story and I -have tossed a little spare change to him.” - -The cashier peered through the wicket and beamed with new respect on a -man who could speak of two thousand dollars as spare change. - -“There are mines--and then there are mines,” he suggested. - -I thought I might as well try my new tune over on this piano. - -“It’s a proposition called ‘Two Bright Eyes.” I tried to seem -indifferent, but my heart was only about an inch below my larynx and I -could hardly get the words out. - -I thought he would never speak. He scratched his nose and fiddled -with his ear. I wanted to reach in and shake him so that he would say -something, even if he would only say that I had been nicely fooled. - -“The property had rather a promising outlook at one time, sir. It was -located by good prospectors and afterward two or three other claims were -taken in. The section is first-rate!” - -Not wildly encouraging. - -“But the stock hasn’t been much thought of in these parts--it has been -footballed around a lot. Still”--he twisted his mustache and waited a -few moments--“well, I’ll tell you this confidentially, if I wasn’t a -bank man--and you know we have to move in grooves of caution--if I could -afford to do a little gambling I think I would have picked up a small -bunch of this loose stock. I got a flicker of a hint from a mining -engineer who banks here. Nothing definite--they can’t talk much. But I -know they have been running new leads. The first development wasn’t very -scientific, I understand.” - -“Does a--When they make a real strike--do prices run up pretty sudden?” - I managed to ask. - -He smiled. “I see you have never been in a mining town when a bonanza -toots. Everybody goes crazy. They’ll climb over one another to buy -stock. Those who can’t buy stock go racing off to see what they can grab -in the way of adjacent claims. Very exciting, sir! Wish we might show -you a circus of that kind while you’re in town.” - -When I went out on the street I found Mr. Flye waiting around the -corner. - -“You traded?” he gasped. “He’s over there tossing away twenty-dollar -gold pieces!” - -“I’ve got twenty thousand shares,” I said, dolefully. - -“Then I’m going to let ‘Dirty-shirt’ loose. He’ll swell up and bust if I -don’t get that gag out of his mouth.” - -“But will anybody believe what he says?” - -Honestly, a gold-mine was unreal to me! I had Eastern prejudices. - -“You go over there and stand on the hotel porch, sir! You’ll see -almighty sudden how news hits a mining town. ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox don’t -have to bring a gold-mine down into Breed City. He’s the bulletin, -that’s all. There’ll be proof enough pretty close on his heels.” - -So I went over on the tavern porch. Five minutes later I realized -that the bulletin was loose. “It” came whooping around a corner of the -street. - -Mr. Maddox’s nickname fitted him perfectly; in fact, he was well caked -with mud from head to feet. Plainly he had not stopped to pick dry spots -in his rush down to Breed City. He was shaking a canvas bag over his -head with one hand and in the other flourished a handful of stock -certificates. - -“Who’s got ‘Bright Eyes’? They’ve hit it! High grade from Buffalo Hump -clear through the earth to Chiny! Whoosh! Who wants ‘Bright Eyes’? -Here’s some that’s loose. And there ain’t much loose, gents! They have -been picking it up! High grade and pockets full of crumble!” - -He shook the canvas bag and opened it when men went crowding about him. - -“There he is,” announced Mr. Flye at my side. - -“Looks the part,” said I. - -“After I had rubbed his jaws where the gag had hurt,” confided my -friend, “he told me that he ain’t more’n four jumps ahead of the boss -engineer expert who is bringing out the samples for the report. All -you’ve got to do now, sir, is to sit tight and look wise!” - -My unlucky friend could not do much looking for his part; his eyes were -swelled so badly that he could hardly open them. - -“Look here, Mr. Flye,” I said, with a lot of repentance, “I must seem to -you like pretty much of a crab. I don’t know how--” - -“It was only a gold-mine guess, according to your notion, sir. And I -know how an Easterner must feel on that point. But when I have a friend -and make up my mind to let him in on a good thing I propose to do it, -even if I have to apologize to him afterward for being almighty fresh. -So I--” - -“Don’t make me feel worse than I am feeling!” - -There was a crowd in the street of Breed City by that time and Mr. -Maddox, in the center of it, had worked himself into a frenzy of -excitement and was offering “Bright Eyes” stock at a million dollars a -share. - -“Don’t mind that kind of talk,” advised Mr. Flye. “He’s half tight, and -his coco ain’t just right when he gets to talking in a crowd, but -you needn’t worry but what his news is all right. And you can see for -yourself!” - -Several men were larruping cayuses up the street, bags dangling from -saddle-bows. - -“It’s the first of the rush for the ‘Bright Eyes’ section. Some of the -critters out this way can beat firemen for quick action,” stated Mr. -Flye. Perhaps to emphasize the fact that now at last he felt himself -on a footing of intimate friendship with me, he plucked a cigar from my -vest pocket and lighted up. - -“I see you don’t smoke--you probably chaw,” he suggested, and he handed -his plug to me. - -When I state here that I promptly took the plug, whittled off a chunk, -palmed it, and put some gum into my mouth, the depth of my esteem for -Mr. Flye may be understood. I would rather have chewed that tobacco than -hurt his feelings by refusing a friendly offer. - -While we stood there a bearded man rode down the street, mud-covered. - -“And there’s the man who will back me up!” squealed Maddox. “There comes -the boss engineer! He knows what’s under cover in ‘Bright Eyes’!” - -But the bearded man rode right through the crowd without answering -questions. He alighted in front of the bank and went in, tugging -something in his hand. - -As a new, and somewhat heavy, stockholder in “Bright Eyes” gold-mine, I -reckoned I’d try to get a little information from that engineer--I was -quite sure that an Eastern capitalist who wore a silk hat and had a -friend in the bank cashier might expect a little more attention than a -street bystander. Therefore, with a word to my friend Flye I went over -to find out the best or the worst. - - - - -XXIII--THE CLEAN-UP - -AFTER I had been properly indorsed by the cashier, the mining engineer -gave me some mighty comforting information, though I did not understand -the technical lingo very well. He was conservative; he was not at all -excited. We could hear “Dirty-shirt” still orating. - -“Of course that old lunatic doesn’t know what he is talking about,” said -the engineer. “There are always some of that sort to run and rant and -stir up excitement and start poor fools off on a wild-goose chase.” - -He opened a sack and showed me ore and hunks of crumbly rock which -looked like nothing special. I had rather expected to see nuggets. He -explained that the crumbly stuff was high grade, very much so, but there -were only scattered pockets of it in the “Bright Eyes” claim. - -“The parties who first located the property,” said he, “simply skim in -for what pockets they were able to open. They had to pack all their ore -out on cayuses and ship it to Tacoma, and there was no profit to speak -of unless the ore yielded over a couple hundred dollars a ton. So when -they quit the job the mine seemed to be played out.” Then he went on -with his technical talk, and about all I could do was to blink and try -to look wise. - -“You can be sure that Newell knows what he is talking about,” put in the -cashier. - -I wished _I_ knew. I wanted to butt in with some excited questions. ‘But -I did understand that the men who had gathered up most of the stock of -the mine were going to build a smelter and tackle the thing right end -to. There was plenty of ore and the mine would pay after development was -the comforting information handed to me at last. - -“I beg your pardon, but how many shares went to you in that trade you -just made?” asked the cashier. “That is, if you’re willing to tell me.” - -“Twenty thousand--I bought for ten cents a share.” The engineer showed -some surprise. - -“I didn’t think so much of the loose stuff was corralled in one bunch; -we thought what we hadn’t picked up was scattered so wide that we -wouldn’t bother to chase it,” said he. “How did you happen to grab in on -it?” - -I didn’t propose to betray Mr. Flye. - -“Oh, it was just a gamble! A fellow kept following around after me and I -bought to get rid of him.” - -“Some of you Eastern Yankees certainly can use your noses for something -else than to talk through,” said the engineer. - -“If I smelled a bargain when I bought that stock I reckon it must have -been hunch instead of knowledge.” - -“Well, stick by and stand your assessment for the smelter and you won’t -be sorry.” - -Mayor Ware and several other citizens came hurrying to have the news -about “Bright Eyes” confirmed. I stood at one side for a time, listening -and meditating. When the cashier told them of my lucky strike they were -immensely tickled. - -“But you know we Easterners never can make a goldmine seem real,” I -said. - -“In most cases where they’re selling stock East the mines are not real. -But you’re West, now, and you happened in on the ground floor,” said the -mayor. “I am sorry I’m not there, too.” - -“You can be,” I promptly informed him. “I’m called back home. I’m in a -hurry. I don’t know anything about gold-mines. I can’t come back here to -watch my interests. You folks out here know all about mines and values. -My stock is for sale if anybody wants it.” - -“What price?” inquired the mayor. “We might make up a little syndicate. -How much do you want for the stock?” - -“I don’t know,” I confessed, frankly. “It’s all new to me. I paid ten -cents a share. When a gold-mine gets to paying I don’t know how much it -pays.” - -“It depends on the mine,” stated the engineer. “We can do a pretty good -job of guessing in our line, but we can’t see all that’s underground.” - -I pulled out my packet of stock. - -“I tell you honestly, gentlemen, this seems more or less like a joke to -me--and that being the case I’ll sell cheap.” - -“It’s really worth par--or it will be in time, I’m sure,” stated the -mayor, in honest fashion. “We are under great obligations to you, sir, -and we don’t want to take advantage of you in any way.” - -“And I feel just that same way toward you, gentlemen,” I assured them. -“There’s always the element of a gamble in mining, I’m sure, though I -don’t know much about it. Your mine may flush out. I’ll tell you -what I’ll do--I’ll meet you on a half-way basis. I’ll sell for half -price--fifty cents on a dollar. Give me ten thousand dollars and you own -the stock.” - -They stepped aside and conferred. - -“I suppose you’ll be in town a few days longer!” suggested the mayor. - -“If I can get out of here to-night I want to go. I must go.” - -“I say again, we don’t want to take any advantage of you because you -are obliged to leave in such a hurry. This may seem like queer talk for -business men to make--to offer more than the price asked. But we want -you to remember that Breed City is grateful.” - -“I really am not asking for any presents,” I said. - -That was jackass talk for me to make, and I knew it. Lord! we needed all -the money we could scrape. But a funny sort of pride swelled up in me. -I did not propose to be outdone in politeness. Never had I had municipal -attentions shown to my humble self before I came to Breed City. They did -not realize all the good it had done me. - -“This is no proposition of that sort,” declared the mayor. “But we are -so sure of Newell’s judgment that we know we shall make big profits on -this stock. There are six of us. We propose to give you twelve thousand -dollars, so that the amount you have paid for the stock will be handed -back to you also. We’d like you to remember that Breed City was good to -you to the extent of ten thousand dollars’ clear profit.” - -That asinine pride was prompting me to split the difference with them. -But across the street just then I saw the old judge peering about, -evidently in a panic of anxiety about me because I had been gone so -long with all that money. Another memory jogged me at that moment. I -was morally bound to hand Dodovah Vose some profit on his five hundred -dollars. Haggling with those enthusiastic citizens of Breed would be -feeding my fool pride at the expense of two old men. - -“It’s a trade, gentlemen, with all thanks to you!” - -The mayor was president of the bank and I guess the rest were directors; -at any rate, the cashier, in about two minutes, was asking me how I -would have it! - -I asked for currency--big bills. I had a boyish, eager hankering to lug -the money to the judge, to show it to him, to have him count it and -feel it and know that he could face the taxpayers of Levant, even if he -couldn’t satisfy all his creditors. But even bankruptcy, thought I, -was not State prison; my uncle would be cheated out of that part of his -revenge. My fingers itched and my eyes shone while the cashier nipped at -the comers of the bills with moistened fingers. He wrapped them in oiled -paper and I sunk them carefully in my clothes! - -I made as quick a getaway as politeness would allow. - -As I remember it, I left a promise to come back to Breed City and settle -down! - -I caught Judge Kingsley by the arm and hurried him down-street and into -the hotel. - -The moment we were in our room I began jamming packages of money into -his hands. - -“Look at it! Feel of it! Smell of it!” I urged. “Judge, I took that -money out for an airing and the junket did it lots of good.” - -He did not understand. I guess he thought I’d merely brought back the -Pratt money and had gone crazy while I was out with it. - -“There’s sixteen thousand dollars net and clear for us, Judge Kingsley! -And I reckon we won’t hunt up Pratt and hand back the thousand that’s -over and above his graft from you. He’s a liberal gentleman and he ought -to be willing to pay our expenses and for wear and tear. Now pack up, -sir!” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I can’t stop to tell you the story -just yet. We’ll have it on the way.” - -I began to pack the money into my pockets. - -He was deathly white when he stood up, and he staggered against the -wall. - -“On the way! Where?” he gasped. - -“Home!” I yelled, frolicking like a lad. “Home! And we’ve got to make a -race of it if we propose to head Uncle Deck Sidney under the wire!” - -Ten minutes later I was humping around Breed City, trying to find out -how I could escape. - -The stage would not leave till morning. And that stage would take us to -Royal City, and blamed if I wanted to go through Royal City. - -I knew well enough, of course, that Pratt had gone back there to join -his forces and I could hardly hope that the forces were still in jail. - -On the new railroad which they were building into Breed only a part of -the rails were down; they were not operating trains. There was no stage -line through the broken country in that direction. - -The Buffalo Hump Mountains were to the south, and to the east the Bitter -Root range raised obstructions. - -I had the judge on my back, as it were! I couldn’t wake him up to what -had happened. He appeared to be mentally and physically prostrated. -I myself could have straddled a cayuse and ducked out over the broken -country. But the judge must have wheels under him when he was moved. - -There seemed to be nothing to do but smash through Royal City, taking -our chances. I felt that the citizens there wouldn’t see us murdered on -the street, but they could not be expected to go along and guard us all -the way home. We would have three buzzards on our trail! - -I was mighty blue and some scared. I was wishing that I had not indulged -that boyish impulse to carry my fortune in cash. I would be fine picking -for those devils! Take that money and the judge, and I had two pretty -heavy parcels to tug back to the East. The dusk came down on Breed -before I had braced myself to make the jump. - -No, there was nothing else to it! - -In order to catch trains and get to Levant ahead of calamity we must go -back across Callas prairie and run the gantlet of those three renegades. - -I reckoned, according to my reading of time-tables, that the delay of -even one day would bump our plans fatally. - -I had tried several times to find my friend, Mr. Wash Flye. I could not -get on to his track to save me. I wanted to talk transportation with -him, for I was having a mighty discouraging time of it with other -parties. - -There were four public stables in the city, so I found by asking -questions. I tackled the biggest one first. The man in the office was -pulling off hip rubber boots with the air of one who has decided to call -it a day. He laughed at me when I asked for a horse. - -“My friend, every cayuse in my stable that can walk, trot, run, or limp, -or even can cover ground by rolling over is hired and has either started -for the Blacksnake country where that new strike has been reported or -else is going to start with a crazy prospector astraddle.” - -I offered to buy a horse. He said that he didn’t do business that -way--he had made promises and would keep them. I asked for names of men -who had hired. I found a few and was turned down; they all expected to -get rich if they could get to Blacksnake. - -I had no better luck at the other stables. - -“Bright Eyes” had made me--it looked as if it would also unmake me. - -“You can’t get it out of their heads in these parts that first-comers on -a strike ain’t due to be millionaires,” one man told me. “If you want a -hoss you’ll have to carpenter together a new one. The only plugs in the -city that haven’t been nailed by prospectors are the spare hosses of -the stage company--and old Uncle Sam’s mail keeps his thumb down hard on -those critters.” - -Then I set my teeth and began to hunt all the harder for my friend. I -got word of him here and there, but an eel in a dock quicksand could not -have been more of a dodger. It was evident that success had put springs -into the legs and restlessness into the heart of this new Rockebilt of -Breed City. The trail grew hot--the trail grew cold. It was late in the -evening when I finally caught up with him. He was clinking glasses with -“Dirty-shirt” Maddox, in a bar down an alley where Breed City’s virtuous -ten-o’clock-closing ordinance could be more safely violated. - -“I’ve done a lot for you, Mr. Mann, but I can’t monkey-doodle with the -company hosses at this time o’ year when the mud makes double work.” - -I drew him outdoors and down the alley. - -“I’m meddling with another man’s secret, my friend, but I’m going to -tell you enough so that you’ll understand what this means to a poor old -man and;--and--a girl back East.” - -At the end of my little speech the driver put out his, wiry hand. - -“If I didn’t do my part to help you in this job I’d have-; to own up to -having a spavined soul and a heart with, wind-puffs on it. Go out on the -road a half-mile and I’ll overtake you with two hosses and a mud-cart.” - -Before midnight our little expedition was well started across the -prairie. The cart was light, the crisp air of the March night had -stiffened the mud, and we naturally made-better time than with the heavy -outfit on which we had ridden to Breed. But it was coming, dawn when we -got to the rim-rock at the edge of Callas prairie.. Far below we could -see the chimneys of Royal City, smoking signals of early breakfasts. - -During the crawl across the adobe ruts, under the stars, I had canvassed -with the driver the dangers that the presence of Pratt and his associate -rogues in Royal City held for two gentlemen who desired to mind their -own business and travel East by that; first train. - -“Friends,” stated the driver, after he had meditated on the matter, “I’m -going to drop you right here at the rim-rock. Just over there is -the mouth of a path that leads down the side of the canon by a short -cut--it’s all of two miles further by the stage-road where you came-up. -The path doesn’t hit the stage-road anywhere. Now if those chaps are -out and free they’ll be likely to ram across to Breed by this morning’s -stage. They want to see you mighty quick and what the mayor said to -Pratt won’t keep ’em away, I reckon! They must be reckless by now! If -you walk down the path you’ll dodge ’em--for the stage is just about -leaving. There’s an old feller named Mike at the foot of the path who’ll -ferry you. You’ll have a full hour to make the train. Take your time -down the path so that you’ll be sure to miss the stage. If your men are -still in Royal City--well, if I was in your place I’d take that train, -anyway, even if I had to leave orders behind for the funerals and the -flowers.” - -We climbed down and I started to shove my hand into my pocket. Mr. Flye -threw his own hand to his hip. - -“Hands up!” he called, sharply. “Don’t you pull that wallet! When a -chap gets rich overnight like I’ve done he’s pretty touchy when a friend -tries to put favor on a cash basis. I didn’t think you’d do it, Mr. -Mann.” - -Tears came into my eyes. - -“Hands up? Yes, hands up to you, good friend, both hands up to you.” I -grabbed the driver’s fists in mine. “But I don’t understand just why you -have done for me all that you’ve done.” - -“I reckon I smelled out by sort of instinct that you was giving up your -time, doing good for somebody else,” he said, with a nod at the old -man. “At any rate, I took to you, and when I take to a man it’s all of -a sudden and, doggone it, I just can’t help giving him my shirt--if it’s -clean enough and he’ll take it.” - -He did not trust himself to stay any longer. He lashed his horses, they -spun around, dragging the cart on two wheels, and away the outfit went -across the prairie. And I never saw Wash Flye any more! - -I hurried along and the old man found the path too steep for -conversation. In places we were obliged to cling to sloping trees and -ease our way down. - -We were startled, after a time, by the sudden appearance of a man in the -path ahead. He was climbing with haste. - -“Well, gents,” he called, cheerily, “you’re lucky to be coming down -instead of going up! But I figured that I’d rather climb up to the -prairie and get a little sunshine than stay down there and wait for that -stage to get fixed up.” - -He stopped and wiped his forehead. - -“What about the stage?” I asked. I had a vision of Dragg, Dawlin, and -Pratt waiting at the river below or lounging in the streets of Royal -City, blocking our path of retreat. - -“Oh, a tire came off, this side of the river, and the rim caved in. -They’ve propped up the old caboose and sent the wheel back to the -blacksmith shop. You ought to have heard those other three passengers -swear! I’ve had a chance to hear it scientific and fancy in my time--but -those gents certainly could hang on the trimmings. Especially the fat -one!” - -“Fat one!” - -“Yep! Fat man with a suit of clothes that would put the eyesight of -a Potlatch coyote on the blink. They seem to be in a hurry. They’re -walking up this hill, too. Other two men are derricking fat man up the -trail. Are making some talk about getting a rancher to set ’em across -Callas.” - -He clapped on his hat and climbed along. - -When he had disappeared, I led the way into the pine growth at the side -of the trail, and we found a boulder which would shield the two of us. - -Dragg came first--carrying out the suggestion of his name by pulling at -Mr. Pratt with all his strength, and Dawlin pushed behind. They halted -often and one of their stops was just below our boulder. They were -telling each other what they proposed to do to a certain person who wore -a plug-hat. - -I drew the two guns from my hip pockets, and I could feel the arm of the -judge trembling against my ribs. - -But after the three went puffing on and were out of sight, I dropped the -weapons into a crevice between the ledges. - -“No, I did not intend to shoot them,” I said, when Judge Kingsley asked -questions. - -We hurried on down the trail. - -“But why did you throw away those two good revolvers?” asked the thrifty -old chap. - -“I only borrowed them. It might seem like stealing if I should carry -them back East. I don’t like to have stolen property on my person,” I -said. - -I did not feel like talking. That remark stopped further conversation. - -We caught the train! - - - - -XXIV--HOW SWEET IS THE HOME-COMING, EH? - -MY thoughts, fears, and hopes went galloping ahead of me during -that ride back to the East. It’s all a blur of memory--wheat-fields, -prune-orchards, tunnels, peaks, and prairies--and the old judge sitting -beside me, twisting his withered hands and cracking his bony knuckles. -It was lucky for both of us that the slow part of the journey was at the -start and that we had the clang of mile-a-minute rails under us for the -last two days of that race. - -Well, I thought the thing over. It was just as much of a nightmare then -as it seems now when I am setting it down. - -How I ever undertook such a crack-brained, daredevil trip and hoped for -anything tangible to fall to me by such a hundred-to-one shot I do not -understand even now in clear fashion, in spite of the explanation I have -given. We talk about hunches in this world! If I had not obeyed some -sort of suggestion I certainly would not have chased those renegades. -Only by meeting with them did I stand a chance of recovering any money. -That thought and my hankering to use my knowledge about the Pratt-Dawlin -gang influenced me a great deal, I suppose. And the conviction that I -couldn’t spin a thread by seeking money in any other way pried me out of -Levant, of course. - -I have had something to say about the force of circumstances! - -I was not in a comfortable frame of mind at all, though the money in my -pockets should have given me considerable cheer. I did not feel that it -was my money--any of it. I could not make it seem like anything which -belonged to me or convince myself that I had earned it. I had picked a -man’s pocket for part of it and the rest of that cash had been jammed -into my pockets, so to speak. I was not wasting a moment’s time on -questioning the morality of any of my acts. I reckoned if Pratt’s wallet -had been stuffed with twice as much I would have kept the plunder. - -I pondered on another point. - -Judge Kingsley, provided we got under the wire in season, could be -saved from the charge of criminality, but he still had his salvation, -financially, to work out. He needed all that money and more--and I had -volunteered--had forced myself on him as combination courier and savior. -It was all settled in my mind, according to my private code, that I must -hand over the cash. - -I will state right here that the decision I had come to about the -money did not rasp my feelings in the slightest. I had read quite a few -story-books in my time. If there was ever a case in the whole realm -of fact and fiction where the final scene would show loving daughter -clasped in adoring lover’s arms, and a benignant father raising his -hands over them with “Bless-you-my-children” sentiment, my affair -seemed to be triumphantly of that sort. Time, effort, and money--it all -belonged in the family! - -My heart glowed and my eyes grew moist and it was a wonder that I did -not blurt out the whole thing to the judge--I felt so sure of him! - -However, he had his own troubles to take up his mind pretty completely, -I realized. There was no telling what might be happening back home, with -my uncle Deck stirring things. If I had timed trains right, and nothing -tipped upside down, we didn’t have much more than twenty-four hours’ -leeway in Levant ahead of that town meeting. I asked the judge if the -town notes were very widely scattered, and he told me they were not. He -had picked special parties whom he could depend on to keep their mouths -shut about their investment, and he felt pretty sure that they would -hand back the notes in exchange for cash and would ask no questions and -would keep still in the future. - -“But I can’t eat and I can’t sleep,” he mourned, “not till I have those -papers in my two hands!” He put up his crooked claws and worked them. -“In my hands--all torn into ribbons--and then into the fire! Just think -of it!” He croaked the words and shivered. “Papers--only a few papers! -Scattered around town. Papers with ink-marks! Yet they can send me to -State prison!” - -No, that wasn’t the time to talk with the judge about being his partner -or his son-in-law. But I did talk more with him in regard to plans for -gathering in the notes quietly and quickly the moment we struck town. I -had him give me the names so that I could help plan the campaign. - -I knew them, of course. They were old tight-wads of farmers in the back -districts who would endure lighted candles at their feet for a long time -before they would leak any information about their money matters; there -were some widows and old maids who didn’t know anything about money -matters, anyway. The judge had picked well, I had to admit to myself. -But there was a lot to do, a mighty short time to do it in, and it -had got to be done with the delicate touch a bashful chap would use in -picking a rose-leaf off a sleeping schoolmarm’s cheek. - -Therefore, this was my suggestion to the judge: we’d slip off the train -a station below Levant Comers, hire a hitch, and make our rounds of the -town’s creditors in the back-lots before we showed up in Levant village. - -That’s what we did. - -The lengthened days of April gave us a full hour and a half of sunlight -for our ride on our quest. Out of cupboards and long wallets and -rosewood boxes the farmers and the old maids dutifully produced their -town notes--“for the judge had called on.” They seemed to believe that -his wish to call in the notes settled the matter beyond all question. - -He became once more his dignified, calm, self-contained self, though I -could see that it was only by exercise of all his will power. - -I had placed packets of money in his hands and he figured interest and -made payments. - -The first man with whom he did business gave the judge his cue and made -me thank the good Lord that I had planted that seed in Dodovah Vose! - -“You’re looking better than I have ever seen you, Judge! Younger, too! -What have you been doing to yourself? Oh, your whiskers are cut off! -Improves you!” - -The moment we had struck Spokane I bought alcohol and stripped that -grotesque mustache from the judge’s face. In spite of his haggard -countenance, he did look younger. - -“It’s said around town,” proceeded Farmer Bailey-- and I held my breath -and did not dare to look at Judge Kingsley--“that you’ve just cleaned up -a lot of money in a big deal. Dod Vose has given out first news! We’re -all glad of it because we have always looked up to you as a financier.” - -The judge nodded stiffly in acknowledgment of the compliment. - -“And I suppose he has made you rich, too, young Sidney, taking you under -his wing like he has,” suggested the farmer, with a wink. “Your uncle is -giving you a black eye for deserting the family--like he done the first -time you left town--but I guess you haven’t made any mistake by grabbing -in with Judge Kingsley.” - -“I’m quite sure of that,” I told Farmer Bailey. - -“I hate to take this money, Judge,” said the farmer. “It’s been safe -with you. I ain’t a financier like you be. It hasn’t been taxed. You bet -I have kept my mouth shut!” - -“It’s only to clear up town business on account of the special meeting -which has been called for to-morrow,” stated the judge. “I am glad to -hear you have kept the matter private. I merely tried to help a few of -my friends. And I suggest that you say nothing about having received -this money or that you have surrendered a town note. There are -disturbers in town who threaten a high tax-rate.” - -“It’s Deck Sidney, thrashing around to make a big show of his authority, -now that he is selectman,” the farmer grumbled. “He ain’t being -backed up by the people, I can tell you that! It’s all right to be -enterprising, but he is too cussed much so. He was around here the other -day, trying to nose out whether I held a town note or not!” I felt a -thrill of fear and the judge grew visibly paler. “Yes, he hung on and -coaxed and threatened and argued. But I knew what he was up to!” - -He winked at the shrinking judge. - -“He said if I didn’t bring my town note into the meeting I’d never be -able to collect.” - -“How did he know you held a town note?” croaked the judge. - -“He didn’t know! He was round town guessing. I never let on. I knew he -wasn’t any financier. I knew that you’d protect me, no matter what Deck -Sidney might say. I smelled him out, all right! He thinks he is running -this town and he tried to bamboozle me so that he could find some more -property to tax. I reckon we’ll show him where he belongs when it -comes to next annual meeting. He’s getting altogether too big for his -britches!” We learned much more about my uncle’s recent activities -before we finished our ride. Evidently, when he had held his nose in -the air he had sniffed town notes; but when he had set his nose to the -ground and had tried to run those notes to their lairs he had failed. At -any rate, the holders protested to the judge that they had not dropped -one word--all of them suspecting that my uncle was merely digging out -property to tax. The resentful farmers had replied to his anathema with -some of their own and the frightened old maids had been too scared to -say anything to him. We heard enough to know that he had traveled more -or less by guesswork, and had made his quest general, hoping to corner -somebody by chance. If we could believe the protestations of the parties -concerned, Judge Kingsley’s defenses still presented a fair front to the -world.. - -At last, before the evening was old, the judge had taken into his hands -the last note. - -Then we ordered our driver to hurry us to the village. - -“Mr. Sidney,” said the judge, when he had paid the driver and stood in -the shadows at the edge of the square, “this is not the time to talk -over our affairs, but I do want you to step into my office for a few -moments.” - -He led the way. - -The big house was dark and a queer kind of a shiver ran through me when -I looked at it. - -“The devil must have had me in his clutch all these days,” muttered the -judge. “I have been worse than a lunatic. Not a word from me to my poor -folks at home!” - -To tell the truth, I had not been giving much thought to our remissness -in that duty. I have never been much of a letter-writer in my life--I -had been so long without folks who cared to hear from me that the matter -of keeping anybody posted on my whereabouts never came into my mind. -To be sure, I had Celene Kingsley in my mind all the time, even in the -stress of our adventures, but I had not presumed to write to her. -During our travels it had not occurred to me that it was any part of my -business to prompt Judge Kingsley in any of his family affairs. But now -that we were back, in front of that gloomy house, I realized just how -brutal the whole thing was. - -The judge went to his office door and his hand trembled so violently -that the key clattered all around the hole; what with the darkness -and his agitation, he could not unlock the door, and I did it for him, -gently taking the key from his hand. - -I lighted his lamp when we were within. We stood there for a few moments -and looked at each other. - -“It’s so still!” he mumbled. “It seems early for them to be in bed.” - -“But your folks must be all right,” I ventured. “If there was anything -wrong we would have heard about it while we have been riding about -town.” - -“Probably! Probably!” His voice quavered and he was all a-tremble. “But -it seems so still!” - -He sat down at his table and pulled out the notes he had been gathering. - -“You are entitled to look on, Mr. Sidney! I wanted you to see me do it. -I don’t just understand all the reasons yet why you have helped me as -you have. We will talk about that some day when my head is clearer. It’s -all a dream--a dream--a dream--so it seems now.” He sort of maundered -along in his talk. He did not seem to be at all sure of himself. If the -thought did come to me with any force that then was a good time to tell -him why I had volunteered as I had done, I put the idea away when I -looked at him. - -He dumped papers out of a tin tray which stood on the table. He piled -the notes in the tray. - -“Touch a match to them, sir,” he told me. “You are entitled to do it. We -will watch them burn. I signed them as town treasurer. One of them would -put me into prison. Hurry! Set the match to them!” And I obeyed. - -Then, almost before the red embers were dark, he dove his hands into the -ashes of the papers and scrufled them about and out of him came the most -dreadful cackle of laughter I ever heard. - -I was anxious to end that scene as quickly as I could. I pulled a packet -from my coat and laid it on the table; I tapped my finger on it to get -his attention. - -“Here is something I have held out, Judge Kingsley,” - -I informed him. “There’s a thousand dollars tied up in this paper. Five -hundred of it I accepted from Dodo-vah Vose, agreeing to put him in -right in our speculation. I took it when I started West.” - -In spite of his emotion the old judge’s business sense flared just as -the fire had flared in the tray a moment before. - -“But there was no speculation--there was no business deal! Why did you -take money in that way?” - -“I had special reasons of my own, sir.” - -“But you had no right--it was a private affair--it--” - -“And I also had reasons of your own to consider, sir,” I broke in. “Mr. -Vose asked me to invest for him. I wanted your name to stand well after -we were gone. I was under obligations to Mr. Vose and when I told him we -had a big deal on I could give him no good reason why I would not turn -a little profit his way. That’s why the man Bailey is so sure that your -credit is now good. You’ll find that the news has gone all about the -section--” - -“They’ll be jumping on me for the money I owe!” snarled the judge. “Vose -has ruined me if he has bragged. You have--” - -“Just a moment, sir, before you say something you’ll be sorry for. It’s -just the other way, I’ll warrant! Men will bring more money to you. You -can be shrewd and work out of your troubles. Your credit is established. -I made a good play when I did it.” - -“You say there’s a thousand dollars in that envelope?” - -“Yes, sir! I have handed the other packets to you. I propose to give Mr. -Vose five hundred dollars profit--and after I have done that you’ll get -the best advertising you ever had. They’ll rate you mighty high in these -parts. Five hundred is a cheap price for what you’ll get.” - -“But I need every cent just now to tide me over,” he whined. “You are -throwing money away recklessly. Vose can be taken care of some time. -Give him his own five hundred--or--or--say it has been invested for him. -I will attend to his case later.” - -And do you know what that old rhinoceros did? He reached out his paw to -take that packet. I had to pound my fist on his fingers to make him let -go. - -He stood up and called me names--said that I was taking money he needed. -I suppose I ought to have made allowances for the state of mind he was -in--his fears--his weakness of old age--his dreadful anxiety which still -goaded him. - -But I was in a bad way, myself, and I could not pardon that selfishness. - -“Confound you,” I yelled, “I have a mind to back you against the wall -and strip every dollar out of your pockets!” - -And then we heard a noise and we turned around, and there stood Celene -Kingsley looking at us--looking at me especially with hatred and horror. - -“Father!” she cried. “Shall I run and call help? He is robbing you!” - -I certainly could not say a word just then, and the judge sat down and -gasped and gaped at her. - -She came into the room. She was white and pale and thin, but she was no -shrinking and anguished maiden. She was showing the female’s ferocity in -guarding her own. - -“I heard you! Confessing that you’re a robber out of your own mouth! -Where have you been with my poor father? What devilish spell have you -put on him--you and the rest of your gang?” - -She turned away from me. - -“Father, don’t you realize that you have come home when it is too late? -Oh, God in heaven, why did you not break away from those rogues and come -home--or write so that we could ransom you? I know. They have kept you a -prisoner!” - -“Too late?” he looked at his office safe. I knew what he was afraid of. -“Too late?” - -She began to sob. “It has killed mother!” - -He got up and staggered to her and took her in his arms. - -“Your mother dead?” - -“It’s worse than that! It’s her mind--it has gone, and her body is -following. She hasn’t known me for days. She lies there dying.” - -I was shocked, but I must confess I did not feel like a murderer. Mrs. -Kingsley had been ill when we went away--she had so declared in my -hearing. - -“Miss Kingsley,” I put in, “I’m sorry, but your father and I--” - -Her tears ceased and she turned on me in a fury. I knew something about -the Kingsley disposition, but I did not know before that she had so much -of it in her. - -“Sorry! You sorry? I know about you, you miserable low-lived wretch! I -have been hunting for my father. Do you think I would look down on my -dying mother and not spend every cent I had in trying to find where you -had taken him? My detectives have been on that trail you left in the -city!” - -Able detectives! On the cold and easy trail instead of nosing on the -warm one! - -“But please listen to me--” - -“To more of your lies? No! I know you for what you are--hiding from the -police in the city--coming back here to finish the ruin of my innocent -father after your friends had been, sent here by you to rob him. You -don’t dare to deny what you have been in the city! Your face convicts -you!” > - -I was perfectly conscious that I was not presenting any lamb-like -picture of innocence. She certainly had me on the run when she burst out -with that exposure of my city record. But I did not propose to lie down -and stick up my feet like a calf ticketed for the butcher. - -“Miss Kingsley,” I said, slapping the packet of money across my -palm--and that was a poor tool to use for emphasis after she had heard -my talk to her father, “you must listen--” - -“I have been listening just now! I heard you threaten to strip my poor -father of every cent he has in the world! Do you deny you said it?” - -“No, but--” - -“Do you deny that you have been the sort of a man I have said you were?” - -She rushed at me, her hands like claws. I was reminded of a sight I -had witnessed in boyhood--a shrieking meadow-thrush defending her nest -against a sneaking snake. - -I looked past her toward the judge. I did hope he would say something, -even though I did not expect that he would come out with the whole -truth. Honestly, I would have stopped him short if he had started to -confess to her anything about the real reason why I was mixed into his -affairs. Had not the whole expedition been planned so that the women -folks would not know? - -Nevertheless, a decent man in his right senses could have made some sort -of talk to help me out. But it was plain enough that Judge Kingsley was -not in his right senses--he did not seem to have much of any sense -left in him; he was doddering around the room, twisting his hands and -accusing himself of having killed his wife. - -“Please listen,” I implored. “You have heard only one side--” - -“I will not listen! You, your uncle, the renegades you associate with, -you have tried to ruin my father. You weren’t even decent enough to be -an open enemy--you came sneaking into our home to lie to us and deceive -us.” - -“By the gods,” I shouted, “you will listen to me! I don’t propose to be -kicked around from pillar to post all my life. I am the best friend the -Kingsley family ever had. If your father doesn’t tell you so, I will. -Judge Kingsley, why don’t you be a man?” - -But he gave me a fishy look and went on lamenting. - -She started for the door. “There are honest men in this village--I’m -going to call them!” - -But I got to the door ahead of her. - -“There’s another time coming--a better time for an explanation--and -you’ll be the sorriest girl in the world.” - -“I can never be as sorry as I am now--sorry and ashamed! To think that I -ever put confidence in a creature by the name of Sidney!” - -What a glorious home-coming for the paragon of selfsacrifice! - -I walked around the square half a dozen times before I dared to go into -the tavern. I don’t know how I ever got through that interview with -Dodovah Vose without betraying my state of mind, but I managed it and -excused my peculiarity by saying that I was all worn out by my trip. -And he had too much on his own mind in a few minutes to pay special -attention to me, for I handed him one thousand dollars and went up to -my room without bothering to contradict his excited guessings that the -judge and I had cleaned up a fortune. Kingsley, I reflected, might as -well have the benefit of the guessing. And, it must be known, hope was -not dead in me in spite of my agony. - -Something else was very much alive in me. Blackleg, eh? Flashy rogue! -Barker for gamblers! - -I took off that plug-hat, held it in both hands, and put my foot through -the crown; then I kicked it all around the room. I stripped off that -frock-coat, grabbed the tails and ripped it into two parts. - -Then I went to the closet and surveyed that ready-made suit and the -billycock hat with content. - -In the morning I would be Ross Sidney, professional diver, ready to go -back on the job if there was any such thing as a job for me in all the -world. I hoped I would be sane once more when I opened my eyes on a new -day. I yanked that fancy waistcoat into ribbons, threw the pearl-gray -trousers under the bed, and hurried to go to sleep so that I would not -become completely crazy before I could forget my troubles. - - - - -XXV--GRATITUDE! - -THERE surely is a lot in this conscious-virtue notion! I had plenty of -the quality next morning. - -Things seemed brighter. I felt like myself once more. It was -inconceivable that the horrible misunderstanding between Celene Kingsley -and myself could continue very long; I was ready to make confession as -to my temporary lunacy in the city, and my new optimism encouraged me -to believe that she would find excuse for me. At any rate, I was soon -assured that whatever she had learned from that detective, whoever he -was, she had kept it to herself. From that reticence I drew excellent -augury that she was not out to ruin me. If she had opened her mouth -about my past I would have known it the moment I stepped out on the -street in Levant. But every person I met ducked polite salute, and I -met many persons because the village was full on account; of the town -meeting. - -At ten o’clock the town hall was crowded and in a short time the -cut-and-dried preliminaries were over. - -My uncle was with his associates on the platform, and the stare he gave -me when he caught my eyes was so demoniac that I was careful not to look -his way again for some time. - -There was evidence of strained anticipation everywhere in the gathering. -I heard voters whispering that Deck Sidney proposed to spring something. -But nobody, according to what I could hear, presumed to put in words -what they guessed. - -My uncle was mashing his personal batteries, I saw. - -An unemotional lawyer explained the purpose of the meeting, and then -the moderator called on Judge Kingsley, as town treasurer, to give the -financial standing of the town. - -Uncle Deck fairly bored the judge with his gaze when the old man -walked to the platform and I was as intent with my scrutiny, for I -was wondering how Kingsley would get through with it. He was white and -somewhat shaky, but he was the same old cold proposition when he faced -the voters. - -“I hope you will pardon a word on a personal matter,” he said, as he -unfolded his papers; “but I have returned from a business trip and find -serious illness in my family. I have been keeping watch at the bedside -of my dear wife and my thoughts are not clear enough to enable me to -make the little address I had contemplated for to-day. I will only say -that the movement to clear the town of its debt is very praiseworthy -and my report will show that the thing may be done with a little extra -effort. Our only considerable indebtedness consists of town bonds -amounting to eight thousand dollars and current items as follows.” Then -he went on to give the list of unpaid town orders, of which only a few -were extant. “I see here representatives of the bondholders,” he -added, “who will check my figures if such assurance is required by any -voter--and probably most of the parties who hold town orders are in the -meeting. I hope the town orders will be presented for payment at once so -that there may be no floating indebtedness.” He folded up his papers. - -My uncle got up and stamped down his trousers legs. - -“Now, you voters,” he called, “ask your questions!” - -But not a voice was raised. - -“I’m no lawyer and I’m making no threats,” my uncle went on. “But after -the way this meeting has been advertised, and after the call that -has been made, I reckon that the men who have been holding out claims -against this town and who haven’t presented them will be left to whistle -for their money. I propose to have action taken that will outlaw those -claims.” - -Judge Kingsley turned slowly on my uncle and stood as stiff as a stake. - -“To what claims do you refer, Selectman Sidney? Do you question the -accuracy of my report?” - -“Come out of your holes, you old woodchucks!” shouted Uncle Deck, -looking past the judge at the voters. Men scowled at him and grumbled. - -The judge walked toward the First Selectman and shook his papers. - -“You must talk to me, sir! I am the treasurer of this town and have been -for a good many years. Here before the voters I demand that you specify -claims.” - -“I’ll specify, then! How about the town notes that are out with your -name on them?” - -A murmur ran through the assemblage. - -“Just one moment, sir! Weigh your words,” warned the judge. “You are -attacking my financial reputation; there is a law for slanderers and -I have many witnesses here. Do you say there is one single town note -extant with my name on it?” - -“I say there are a lot of ’em!” - -This time many voters raised voices of protest and there were hisses. - -“That’s the thanks a straight man gets for trying to protect his town -against a thief, eh?” raged my uncle, his ready temper bursting loose. - -“If the judge don’t collect fifty thousand dollars damages for this, -then I’m no guesser,” declared Dodovah Vose, who sat beside me. - -Uncle Deck tramped to the edge of the platform and with wagging finger -selected a man in the throng; the man was Farmer Bailey. - -“Bailey, you hold a town note with Kingsley’s name on it! You know you -do! Are you going to sit there and see it canceled as no good by the -vote of this town?” - -Bailey rose slowly and everybody listened in deep silence. - -“I hold no note of any kind with Judge Kingsley’s name on it.” - -“Yah-h-h! You have told me that before. But you don’t dare to stand here -in town meeting and say it under oath.” - -“Send down that Bible on the stand and I’ll take oath and kiss the -Book,” offered Bailey. There was applause and the judge quieted it by -raising his hand. - -“I will pay double for any note with my name on it as treasurer, and I -will turn the money over to the town as a gift,” he said. - -I despised him when he made that bluff, though of course he had to do -it. Really, in spite of his devilish temper and his spirit of revenge -my uncle was twice the man Judge Kingsley was in that moment. I wasn’t -trying to figure out the righteousness of the thing on either side; the -judge was fighting for his very life, as well as his standing, and my -uncle, though he was working for the good of the town according to his -lights, was satisfying his old grudge--the real passion of his life. - -A voter rose and bellowed until he secured silence; they were giving the -judge an ovation. - -“I want to put in a word here, fellow-townsmen! Money has been borrowed -on town notes. A certain eminent man you all know tried to borrow -from me and said I could escape taxation. And now he is backed by the -liars--” - -“And barked at by the liars, too,” yelled another man. - -“I stand up here for Selectman Sidney, who has given his time and effort -to help this town out of the clutches--” - -They howled him down. But by this time the defenders of my uncle were -howling, too. - -“This meeting is going to break up in a free fight if a stop isn’t put -to this jawing,” said Dodovah Vose. He jumped up on the settee and made -himself heard. “I move we adjourn!” - -The apprehensive moderator put the motion, the judge’s friends carried -it, and the meeting was dissolved. - -My uncle leaped off the platform and came raging at me through the -crowd. - -“It’s you--you damnation imp of Gehenna! Racing and chasing over this -town yesterday! I had a line on you. Saving that old whelp from what was -coming to him!” He put his hands over his head and wriggled his fingers. -“God! I don’t know what you have done--you got that money by robbing -a bank, probably. But you have done it--you have jumped up and down on -your family! You have got to answer to me!” - -Men pushed away in panic and left us in a ring. But I had no notion of -entertaining the old goggle-eyes of Levant by fisticuffs with my uncle. -I folded my arms. - -“According to your reckoning, Uncle Deck, I have owed you something for -a long time. I want to stand square with you! Go ahead and collect!” - -He did not seem to understand at once. - -“Go ahead and beat me up! I won’t raise a finger.” Yes, I would have -taken the beating--I knew inside of me that I did owe my uncle something -of the sort. - -“Not by a dam-site, he sha’n’t beat you up,” declared Dodovah Vose. “I -saved you from him once,” he said, careless of revelations, “and I’ll -save you again.” - -So, after waiting a minute and enduring my uncle’s tongue instead of his -fists, I went away with Landlord Vose. - -I was not in the mood for any further paltering or palavering in regard -to my personal and private standing with the Kingsley family. I had a -collection to make and I proposed to go and make it. I ought to -have known better than to force the issue at that time. But youth is -headstrong, the sense of my injuries was hot, and I felt that if ever -the judge might be willing to show his gratitude that would be the time. - -He was crossing the square on his way home and I left Mr. Vose and -hurried after. I caught up with him at the front door. - -“I want to come in and have a word with you and with your daughter,” I -told him. - -“Impossible,” he said, curtly. “I’m afraid my wife is at death’s door. -And my daughter--she is very bitter!” - -“I propose to have you explain enough so that she will not be bitter, -sir. It’s my due. You know what kind of a service I have rendered. I -have made an enemy of my uncle--ruined all my prospects to help you. -There are things you can tell your daughter to--” - -“How does my daughter enter into any affairs between you and myself? You -must let me alone in my sorrow. Later I will pay you for your services. -I am grateful. If I were not in such distress I would explain how -grateful I am. I will pray that I may be spared till I can pay back to -you what I owe.” - -“Good Cæsar! I don’t want your money, Judge Kingsley. I’ll work and earn -more to help you out of your difficulties. I only ask you to be a man -and make your daughter understand--” - -“My daughter again! You don’t presume--” - -“I do presume, sir. She was kind to me until this horrible -misunderstanding came up. I expect you to tell her that I am your best -friend. It’s my right!” - -I’ll never forget the look he gave me. I’ll wager a good bit that -the idea of such enormity on my part never came into his Kingsley -consciousness till that moment. Even then he did not seem to be just -sure that he understood. - -“I don’t expect anything definite from you or her, Judge Kingsley, until -I have made good in the world. But I do look to you to give me a square -deal. That’s only what you owe to me, man to man.” - -“I owe you money and I will pay it. There is no other sort of bargain -between us.” - -He stepped into his house and shut the door in my face. - -In that damnable situation I was minded to follow him and have it out, -even if I were obliged to expose him. However, if death were hovering -over that house it was a sanctuary I could not invade. But bitter -thoughts raged in me when I turned away; I only asked to be set right -with Celene. - -I understand that this part of my confession will elicit little sympathy -for me from the casual reader who takes the comfortable view that the -world is full of girls and if one does not swing low enough on the bough -there’s always another within reach. But mine was the exceptional -case where the first love had become an obsession and all my spirit of -persistency was flaming in me. I have not figured out as yet whether the -troubles into which my general persistency in all matters has slammed -me overbalance the fruits it has brought to me--but I reckon, after all, -I’ll have to take my hat off to my persistency. If I had been a quitter -I would not have played the biggest game in my life--and I’m coming to -that right soon. - -Once more circumstances were forcing me, though I needed mighty little -forcing, to leave Levant at that juncture in my affairs. - -“Damn ’em!” I blazed out to Dodovah Vose when I stamped into the -tavern, “I’ve got to show ’em! I’ll show ’em I can make good.” - -He blinked at me. - -“But you have shown ’em already,” he said. He thought, of course, that -I was speaking about the general public in Levant. “And if I was in your -place I wouldn’t give a dam what your uncle says to you.” - -Less than two hours later Landlord Vose revised that advice. He rushed -up to my room where I was sorting some papers, having resolved to travel -light when I did go. - -“Get under--get under, young Sidney,” he gasped. - -“Under what?” - -“I reckon I mean get out. It’s your uncle Deck! Bailey and some other -of them yawp-mouths in this place have been twitting and tormenting him -and dropping hints, and he’s worse than a sore-eared bulldog after a -scruffing. He’s coming with a double-barreled shot-gun. He is! He’s -drunk, son, and there’s no dealing with him. He lays it all to you!” - -“I won’t run.” - -“But he isn’t responsible, son. To say nothing of what will happen to -you, it means that he’ll go to State prison. You’re sane and sober and -you ought to be willing to save him from himself.” - -Right then Mr. Vose said something which appealed to me. I had stepped -outside my family--I had conspired against my uncle--I had blocked -his dearest ambition, iniquitous though it was. By hanging around and -allowing him to take pot-shots at me I would be aggravating his -troubles and bringing more serious afflictions upon him. A dead nephew, -shot-riddled, would be a damning exhibit A in his trial for murder! - -I picked up my few belongings and escaped from the back door of the -tavern, hid in a cross-road till Dodovah Vose’s stableman came with a -hitch, and I caught a train at a station down the line; hustling out of -my native town on the run, by dint of practice, was getting to be one of -the best performances in my list of tricks. - -I counted my money when I was on my way to the city. I had not been -keeping any strict account between the judge and myself; from the common -stock I had been paying expenses and spending as loose as peas in order -to hasten our journey back East. I found around two hundred and fifty -dollars in my pockets, and I reflected, with a sort of grim zest in the -humor of the thing, that I could fairly claim most of this money as my -own--the tainted cash from my poker profits. - -I went straight to Jodrey Vose when I arrived in the metropolis and he -looked neither surprised nor overjoyed. - -“Where have you been?” he inquired. - -“Oh, sort of loafing around up-country--killing time!” - -He squinted at me sourly. - -“I can’t say that you’re doing any great credit to my training, young -Sidney!” - -“You are right, Captain Vose, but I’m turning over a new leaf and I’m -out to make good. I am hoping that I can do something in the case of -Anson C. Doughty so that I can get back into the diving business and -keep on the job hereafter.” - -“Then you’ll go back to diving and keep out from under plug-hats, will -you?” - -“Yes, sir!” - -He looked at me for a long time and then he pulled out a letter. - -“This here,” he said, tapping it, “is something more about that _Golden -Gate_ treasure. There’s a new crowd on the rampage about it. From -somebody in the old crowd they have got hold of my name. I came nigh -trying it on once, as I have told you. But it’s a gamble; I am old and -I don’t want it. You are young and there’s nothing as yet for you on -the Atlantic coast, and you might grab in on this. They want an Eastern -diver because the divers out there are tied up with the big concerns and -can’t be depended on to keep their mouths shut--so this letter says.” - -“Probably it’s a pretty uncertain proposition, sir.” - -“Well, you don’t expect to fall into anything very certain, do you, a -diver blacklisted from Kittery to the Keys?” he demanded, tartly. - -“No, sir.” - -“I know nothing about these people, their plans, or anything. But I’ll -do this for you, if you want me to. I’ll wire this party and tell him I -am sending you on. After you are started you can post him from some -place as to when you’ll arrive. Better give him a wire from time to time -to keep his interest up. How’s your wallet?” - -“I think it’s all right, sir.” - -“If you’re lying to me that’s your own lookout. Haven’t sold your -diving-dress, have you?” - -“I have it safe in storage, sir.” - -“Well, I’m glad you kept remembering that you’re a diver--and the best -one I ever turned out!” That was the first word of high praise he had -given me. He got up and shook my hand. “Now go dive, son, and after you -raise that four million from the wreck of the Golden Gate come back and -tell me all about it.” - -I did not linger in the city; there were too many possibilities in the -way of Dawlins and Doughtys. - -Two hours later I was headed across the continent with my diving-dress -in its canvas bag and the address of one Captain Rask Holstrom written -in my note-book. I was pretty dizzy with the haste of it all and felt -like the human shuttle between oceans--but I possessed considerable more -serenity than I did when I began that lunatic lope with Judge Kingsley. - -I had framed a motto and hung it in my soul--“I’ll show ’em!” - - - - -XXVI--CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL. - -MY face was set to the West, to be sure, but my thoughts were traveling -back over my shoulder to the East. I wish I could say that a lively -sense of injury enabled me to put out of my mind Levant and everybody in -Levant--box and dice! But I’m not much of a liar. - -I do not propose to dwell on the bitterness which stuck in me day after -day, along with softer sentiments. This narrative goes into a gallop at -about this point and there is no time to be wasted on self-communings. -However, if I do not mention my old home and the folks back there it -must not be understood that the problem of my life ceased to go to bed -with me, rise with me, and keep pace with me as I hurried through the -day’s work. I obeyed Jodrey Vose’s counsel about giving bulletins of my -progress west. After I had bought my railroad ticket and had counted up, -I felt that I could not afford to take any chances on those strangers -losing their interest in me. I needed a job almighty sudden after I -landed in San Francisco. - -On the last leg of the journey I was able to forecast the hour of my -arrival and I suggested by wire that somebody meet me--knowing that -my diver’s kit in its duck bag would be identification enough. This -telegraph business was shooting arrows into the air and I would have -welcomed a return message; I thought they ought to be able to guess -closely enough to intercept me somewhere along the line. But, although -no answer came, I had the comfortable feeling that they’d be likely to -be on the lookout for me. And at last I got my first peek at Pacific -waters. - -Our train was hung up outside the yard over in Oakland while they opened -our track to the ferry, and a chap I had chatted with more or less in -the smoking-room on the trip, and who knew my business, rushed out, -climbed down beside the roadbed, and scooped a tumblerful of water. He -ran back into the car and dumped the water over me for a joke, and I’m -so accustomed to water that the joke did not jar me. I took it as it was -meant. - -“I baptize thee in the name of the Pacific,” he said. “Now I hope the -old dame will be good to you in your line.” - -Well, whether she was or not depends on how one looks at those things. - -I walked slowly through the ferry-house, hoping to be hailed, and -stepped out on to the foot of Market Street into the old San Francisco -of the days before the great calamity. In my right hand I tugged along -the duck bag that was bulging with my diving equipment. In my left hand -I had the rest of my earthly possessions in a grip which was about the -size of a ten-cent loaf of bread. It was early evening, and all the -lights were aglare. - -There was a turn-table for the cable cars at the foot of Market Street. -The cars were coming down in constant procession, and the turn-table was -busy. It was a regular merry-go-round kind of an affair. It interested -me, but it didn’t interest me so much that I had no eye for a girl -who stood beside me at the edge of the thing. It seemed to me right -then--fresh from a tedious train ride, where I’d been penned in with a -frumpy set of women passengers--that I had never seen a prettier girl. -She had her finger pointed at some one on the turn-table, and was saying -“Father!” over and over, with a new inflection on the word every time -she spoke it. Her finger traveled as the table revolved, and I was able -to pick out father fight away. I was right-down sorry for that girl when -I laid eyes on father. Father was grinning like a sculpin in deep water, -and he was good and drunk, and he was evidently taking a joy ride on -that turn-table. - -It struck me right then, as a stranger, that San Francisco had a good -trait pretty well developed; it was willing to let a man mind his own -business as long as he didn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself. -The street-car men did not push father off the turn-table, and two -policemen took a look at him and went off about their business. - -I took a good look at the man, too, when the turntable brought him near -me and stopped to let a car on. He had a face about as square as the -front of a safe, and his nose was the shape of a safety-lock knob, -and was red. His pot-bellied body was set on legs like crooked wharf -pilings. I had father sized up in a second. Double-breasted blue coat, -cap of blue, with the peak pulled rakishly down over one eye, gray beard -which radiated in spills from his chin like tiller spokes--he was a -steamboat man, sure! I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to butt -in and make certain--perhaps I wanted to start something so as to get a -rise out of the girl. I’m not naturally fresh and you may be sure I was -in no mood for a flirtation. I was crusted with Yankee reserve even -when I was young. But that impish air of San Francisco was in my -nostrils--did you ever sniff it? It makes your head buzz and your -thoughts froth, and it takes hold of an Easterner as quickly as a stiff -cocktail grabs a man who isn’t used to a mixed drink. You’ll do almost -anything in San Francisco when the sparkle from that trade-wind gets -into your lungs. - -So I tipped father the wink. - -“Give her the jingle when she starts again,” I said. - -I was right in my guess. He crooked his forefinger, reached down, and -yanked empty air. - -“Clang!” he barked. In a few seconds the turntable began to revolve -again. Father gave me as silly a grin as I ever saw on a grown-up man’s -face. “Yingleyingle--yingle!” he yelled in falsetto. And away he went! - -I never got a more awful look from a pretty girl than I got from that -one when I turned and caught her eyes. There was nothing shrinking or -bashful about her when she was mad, so I found out then and there. - -“You fool! You have started him all over again.” - -“He seemed to be well started before I came along, miss.” It was that -confounded air that was making me reckless and saucy. - -“Clang!” yelped father, coming around again. “Yingle--yingle--yingle! -Pull in them port fenders and mouse that anchor; we’re going outside -this trip.” - -“Just see the fool notion you have gone and put into him when he was -all ready to come along with me!” she blazed. She knocked her little -knuckles together in as fine a state of temper as I ever viewed spouting -in a female. She turned suddenly and drove one of her fists against a -man whom I had not noticed till then. He was tall--as long as the moral -law, as we say East--as thin as a pump-handle, and he had a tangle -of gray whisker and beard on top of him that made him look like a -window-mop. He fell down when she hit him. She kicked him with the -point of a little shoe, and he came up, unfolding in sections like a -carpenter’s two-foot rule. - -“Slap this man’s face, Ike, and send him along about his business,” she -commanded. - -But he only teetered and grinned and drooled, and winked at me over her -shoulder. - -“Oh, you are only another drunken fool!” she raged; and she stretched -on tiptoe, and beat his face with the flat of her hand. “You have stood -here without putting up a finger to help me get him off that turn-table, -where he’s disgracing himself. I wonder whether there are any real -men left in San Francisco!” She was in such a state of mind that I was -mighty ashamed by then, I tell you that! - -I dropped my baggage and took off my hat. - -“I don’t know much about San Francisco and the real men, miss,” I told -her, “for I’ve been in town only about five minutes. I reckon it makes -an Easterner dizzy to be rushed in and dropped here. I didn’t mean to -make trouble for you. Seeing that I’ve made it, I’ll unmake it if I -can. Do you want your father--saying it is your father--brought off that -turn-table?” - -“No!” she snapped, still spiteful and all worked up. “I want you to -think up something else for him to do on there as soon as he gets tired -of doing what you suggested.” - -Well, it was up to me to butt into that affair still farther--I could -see that. I couldn’t sneak off and leave that girl feeling that way -about me. I hopped on to the moving turn-table, took father by the arm, -and told him his daughter wanted him to come along. He braced himself -and shook loose. - -“Nossir,” said he. “I’ve paid my money, and I’ll stay aboard till I get -to where I’m bound.” - -“Look here, you are not getting anywhere, man. You are only riding -around and around, making a show of yourself, and there’s your nice -daughter waiting for you.” - -“It’s no place for a daughter--going where I’m going. Daughter ought to -be in bed.” And then he braced himself back still farther, and--well, I -suppose I’ll have to call it “singing” in order to describe the sound: - - “I’m bound for the foot of Telegraph Hill, - - To the Barbary Coast so gay. - - I’m starting there for a peach of a tear--fill - - ’Em up all round--hooray!” - -I took hold of his arm once more, and it was some arm. - -“Look here,” he snarled, squinting at me, “I don’t know who you are, but -I’ll let you know who I am blamed quick.” - -I don’t know just what he might have done to me if he had been -sober--but he wasn’t sober. I was, and my line of work had made me lithe -and quick. I snapped my man before he had time to open his mouth, and -ran him off that turn-table and presented him to his daughter with my -compliments. He kicked and thrashed around in a logy style, and I kept -him circling so that he could not get foothold, on the same principle -that you keep a boa-constrictor from hooking his tail around a tree. - -“Where will you have him delivered, miss?” I asked, as politely as I -could. - -“Father, you come along with me this instant!” she cried. “We don’t want -strangers interfering in our affairs any longer.” She said that to him -for my benefit. - -“I don’t mean to be interfering, miss,” I pleaded. “I only want to -square myself for being thoughtless and starting trouble for you--more -trouble, I mean.” - -She put her hand against me and pushed me away from her father--no, I -can hardly say that I was pushed away. That hand was too little to push -a man of my size. But the gesture of pushing was enough for me. I let -him loose. She reached for his ear, but he dodged away, cantering like -a cart-horse, and whooped that he was bound for the “Barbary Coast.” The -human belay-ing-pin with the oakum topknot followed, plainly relishing -the fact that the procession had started. The girl took a few steps in -pursuit, and then she stopped and began to cry. She had grit--I had -seen that--but after a girl gets about so mad she has to cry on general -principles. - -“Look here,” I told her, “I’m a stranger, all right, but you need a -man’s help right now. I’ll help for every ounce that’s in me if you’ll -say the word. But I’m a Yankee and I need to be asked.” - -“He has a lot of money in his pockets,” she sobbed. “He must pay out -that money to-morrow morning. He will be butchered and robbed where he’s -going. I never saw him so silly and obstinate before. His head has been -turned by some good luck which has come to him. He--” - -“I haven’t got time to listen to details, miss. He’s getting out of -sight. I’ve got to work quick. I’m square and decent and honest, and -I’m mighty sorry for the scrape you are in. Do you want me to chase that -father of yours for you?” - -“Yes,” she gasped; “yes, I do.” - -“About all I’m worth in the world is in that bag there. It’s my -diving-dress. I’ve got to leave it.” - -“Your name is Sidney!” she cried, her eyes opening wide on me. “You’re -the man we came to meet!” - -So, after all, I had butted in on my reception committee! “And that’s -Captain Holstrom?” I demanded, pointing up the street. - -“Yes! Yes! Hurry, sir. I will watch your bag! I will stay here. Hurry, -sir! He has gone up Market Street, but he’ll turn to the right pretty -soon. That’s the way to the horrible Barbary Coast.” - -I patted her shoulder--I couldn’t help it. She looked up at me through -her tears. And off I hiked, leaving my earthly possessions in charge of -a girl whom I had met for the first time less than ten minutes before. - -Of course, I knew what every one knows, whether he has been in San -Francisco or not, that Market Street cuts straight across the city -from bay to ocean. But at just what street on the course Captain Rask -Holstrom proceeded to port his helm and swing to starboard blessed if -I had the least idea. I didn’t know the name of another street in the -city. I knew what the Barbary Coast was in San Francisco. I had read -descriptions of its dance-halls, its dens, its haunts of iniquity, and -its dangers. And here I was, galloping straight toward it before the -creases of a railroad journey across the continent were out of my -clothes. That is to say, I hoped I was galloping toward it, for I wanted -to catch father for that nice girl. Captain Holstrom was out of sight -among the crowds on that long Market Street before I had started the -chase. I didn’t dare to run too fast. - -San Francisco, as I have said, seemed to be inclined to let a man tend -to his own business, but I didn’t want to provoke some ass to start a -“stop thief” yell behind me. I craned and peered ahead as I trotted -on. I stopped for a moment at the head of streets which led away to the -right--the girl had said he would turn to the right--but I caught no -glimpse of a bobbing blue cap nor of a lofty thatch of grizzled beard -and whisker. - -I took a chance after a while, for Market Street showed ahead an upward -slope and I couldn’t spot my man there. I turned off to the right, and -hurried. I didn’t know what street I was on. I came to a square at last -where there were a statue and a fountain, and there were large buildings -on the right. I ran across the square, and the next moment I realized -that I was in Chinatown--and I had read of that part of San Francisco, -too. I knew then that I was headed toward the Barbary Coast all right, -having a memory of what I had read. But in a few minutes I was lost in -a maze of narrow streets which traveled up and down the little hills. -I was peering and goggling here and there. I must have looked like a -tourist trying to do Chinatown in record time. I came into a street or -alley that was roofed--and I came out again, for it seemed to be closed -in at the upper end. By that time I realized that not only had I lost -Capt. Rask Holstrom, but that I had also succeeded in losing myself--a -rather silly predicament for a young man who so boldly offered himself -as knight errant to a damsel in distress. - -I stood still and wiped sweat out of my eyes, and addressed a few -pregnant remarks to myself on the subject of a man’s making a fool of -himself for a woman. However, I had a mighty good reason of my own for -wanting to meet up with Captain Holstrom--and to safeguard that money of -his, for I hoped to rake some of it down in wages. - - - - -XXVII--MR. BEASON HORNS IN - -A WHITE-LIVERED, sneaky-looking chap sidled up to me and stuck out a -dirty card. - -“That’s my name on there,” said he; “Jake Beason, and I’m the best -Chinatown guide that’s on the beat; I’ll show you everything from -joss-house to hop-holes.” - -“Do you know the Barbary Coast?” - -“Do I know--Oh, come now! Why, say, I live over that way,” he snarled -through the corner of his mouth; and he looked at me as though I had -insulted his intelligence. - -I decided that I would be plain and direct with that chap. - -“I’m on the trail of a steamboat captain by the name of Holstrom, and he -is two-thirds pickled, and has money on him. Do you think you know the -places where a man like that would be likely to drop in?” - -“What’s the lay--a touch and a divvy?” - -“Nothing of the kind. I’m his friend, and I want to catch him and take -him home out of trouble.” - -“The same old stall,” he sneered. “You’ve got to let me be a friend, -too.” - -I reached out and got my crowbar clutch on that fellow. “I don’t suppose -you ever had a man tell you the truth, son,” I said, “so I’m not going -to blame you much. I say that I’m after this man to take him home to his -daughter. That’s truth, and it’s on my say-so. If you propose to call me -a liar, out with it, and we’ll settle the thing.” - -“She stands as you say--and you needn’t pinch so,” he whined. - -There’s nothing like a good grip to press home conviction in a sneak. - -“I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll locate that man for me before the -evening is over,” I told him. “I’ll make it twenty dollars if you’ll -turn the trick inside of an hour.” - -“I know all the joints--I know the steamboat hangouts.” - -“It ought to be an easy trick. He is with an old belay-ing-pin who -has enough hair on his head and face to stuff a bolster--and I heard -somebody call him Ike.” - -“Aw, that’s ‘Ingot Ike.’ Everybody between Dupont Street and Telegraph -Hill knows that old hornbeam and his everlasting hum about three million -dollars’ worth of buried gold ingots. Come along! I ought to pull down -that twenty easy.” - -“Let me tell you one thing,” I said, chasing along with him. “I’m not -worth robbing. I’m going to keep close to you, and if you put me against -any frame-up I’ll get you first, and I’ll get you quick.” And I grabbed -him by the wrist and let him have that honest old grip once more. I kept -hold of him. And led thus like a blind man through this street and -that, by short cuts along dark alleys, across courts, and now and then -skirting vacant lots, we came at last into purlieus that my ears, -eyes, and nose told me must be that “Barbary Coast so gay,” as Captain -Holstrom had caroled. - -Out of open doors came liquor fumes and music blended, if there is any -such thing as blending noise and odors; the two seemed to be associated -there so regularly and invariably that my senses told me that they were -blended. - -The women sauntered on the sidewalks; the men loafed there. We two -seemed to be about the only ones who were headed for something definite. - -“We’ll tap the regular joints first,” said Beason. “If he’s pretty drunk -he won’t be using his mind much to think up new places to go. He’ll fall -into the rut like a ball in a crooked pin-game.” - -I was young enough to be interested in that panorama of iniquity. I -would have gaped longer than I did in those places, but Mr. Beason -proved to be a very active guide. That matter of twenty dollars proved -to be like a bur under a bronco’s saddle. He would gallop into a place, -leave me to goggle at the antics on the dance floor; he would weasel his -way through the crowd, chop out a few staccato questions, and then yank -me out with my eyes behind me and my chin hanging over my shoulder like -the tailboard of a cart. - -Beason rattled me down another length of street--and if the folks we -bumped hadn’t known him I reckon we would have had a few things on our -hands besides that man hunt. They all seemed to know Beason. He snapped -questions right and left. - -All at once my guide got a clue. He barked a few more questions at this -illuminative party, and turned and scooted back along our trail. - -“The old cuss has taken to a back room,” he gasped. “I ought to have -figured that he would be hiding.” - -He rushed me around comers, across streets, down alleys, and into more -streets. We came up against a saloon at last where the front window was -lettered in red paint, “Holding Ground Cove.” Knowing, as a deep-sea -diver, that a good holding ground means a mud bottom, I could have -thought up a highly moral and somewhat humorous apothegm on that name -for a saloon if I had had the time; but Mr. Beason was cutting comers on -Time that night. He rushed me into the saloon, into a back room at the -rear, and when he didn’t see what we were looking for up-stairs we went. -There were cribs of private rooms, furnished with bare tables and hard -chairs--drinking-rooms. From the half-open door of one came the cackle -of much laughter, and we peeped in. - -A girl, whose face was painted in almost as gaudy hues as her red -stockings, was standing on a table in the middle of the little room. - -Capt. Rask Holstrom was seated in a chair, straddling the back, and was -busily engaged in tickling the girl’s nose with the tip of a very long -peacock feather--and wherever he secured that feather I never found out. -But always leave it to a hilarious drunken man to find something odd -to carry around with him. In the room was the human belaying-pin, also -seated. But his chair had evidently slipped from under him when he tried -to lean against the wall, and he was jack-knifed down in a corner, -with his broomstick legs waving in the air, and was surveying the scene -between that frame. He was squealing laughter in a key that would have -put a guinea-hen out of business. - -“There’s Ingot Ike,” affirmed Beason, “and if t’other one is your -pertickler friend then I’ll cash in.” - -He held up his cheap watch, with his dirty forefinger indicating the -hour. - -“I get the twenty with nine minutes’ ‘velvet,’ if that’s your friend.” - -But Captain Holstrom did not display any very ardent friendship for any -one just then. He turned an especially malevolent stare in my direction -and poised his peacock feather like lance in rest. I could see that -something was going to break loose there mighty soon, and after what I -had told Beason I didn’t want that young sneak to overhear. It would be -like him to come back with a gang and “do” me on the excuse that I was a -stranger who was “frsking” Captain Holstrom for his pocketful. - -I hauled out two ten-dollar bills mighty quick, and passed them to -Beason. He held one in each hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, -and looked at them in turn, wrinkling his nose with as much disgust as -though he were holding lizards by the tails. - -“Soft money,” said he, “and the stink of the East still on it! I’ll -bet you both of these poultices that you haven’t been in San Francisco -twenty-four hours--and how do you happen to be such a pertickler friend -of a China Basin steamboat cap’n, hey?” - -A freshly arrived Easterner is always given away by his paper money. - -“Who’s a friend?” inquired Captain Holstrom, the one eye I could see as -staring and as baleful as the “eye” on the peacock feather. - -“Look-a-here,” said I, bracing up to him savagely, for I knew that soft -soap wouldn’t grease the ways, “I want to know what you mean by running -away from me after my telegrams to you.” - -I whirled on Beason, pushed him out of the room, and slammed the door in -his face. - -“You have been paid,” I yelled at him through the crack. “Now, keep your -nose out of the rest of the thing, or I’ll pinch it off.” - -“See here,” growled Captain Holstrom, vibrating the feather as -menacingly as though it were a sled stake, “don’t you know a private -party when you see one?” - -I walked right up to him. - -“My name is Sidney. I’m the diver you are expecting.” - -“You’re a liar,” he returned, promptly. - -“I tell you you were down to the ferry to meet me. I pulled you off that -turn-table!” - -“Who are you?” - -“I am Ross Sidney, I say! You’re expecting me. I’m a diver.” - -But he did not show the least evidence of understanding what I was -talking about. It’s a familiar phase of drunkenness in many men--that -dogged determination to hang on to one notion and admit no others. - -He shook his head and waggled the feather under the girl’s nose. - -“This is a private party,” he growled. - -“But your daughter is waiting for you--she is very much worried about -you and the money.” - -“Say, who does this money and this daughter and this room here belong -to, anyway? Who do I belong to? Who am I? Ain’t I Rask Holstrom, -fifty-six years old, and fully able to take care of myself anywhere -between Point Lobo and India Basin?” He squinted at me along the -peacock’s plume. “Who are _you?_ You say my girl is at the ferry, hey? -How do you know she is there?” He leaned back in his chair, dropped -the feather, and yanked a canvas bag from the right-hand pocket of his -trousers. It was a plump bag, and a heavy bag, and it plainly contained -hard money. He banged it down on the table with such a thump that the -girl hopped and squealed, and it barely missed her toes. He pulled -another canvas bag from the left-hand pocket, and crashed that down. -This time he connected with the girl’s toes. She screamed in pain, -leaped down from the table, and began to hop around the room, kicking -her foot out behind her. She stumbled into a corner, braced herself -there, and began to swear volubly, clutching the tip of her faded -red-velvet slipper in both hands. - -I had not broken in on his monologue. I could not match him in roaring. -Then for the first time he seemed to note that the girl was not in an -amiable state of mind. - -“You’ve insulted my lady friend. I’ll have your life for that!” He -plunged out of his chair and drove against the wall in his unsteadiness. - -The girl was profanely advising me--no, entreating me--to kill the -“drunken fool.” I didn’t blame her for her fire, and I could excuse her -language. To shift from a tickling under the chin to a mally-hackling of -toes was a little too strong for a woman’s nature even if the toes had -been cracked with money. - -That was no time for fine figuring as to ways, means, or chances. Before -Captain Holstrom recovered his balance I grabbed his sacks and stuffed -them into my pockets. I started for the door. I had a sort of muddled -memory of a maxim, or proverb, or something of the kind which says that -“where a man’s treasure is there will his heart be also.” It occurred -to me that Captain Holstrom’s body would go with his heart if I made off -with that money, and I preferred to have the body chase me on two legs -rather than be lugged on my shoulders. If he would chase me back to the -ferry the situation would be simplified. Of course, mine was a crazy -expedient, considering the place where I was, but it was a crazy -evening, anyway. - -“I’m not stealing it,” I yelled at him as I opened the door. “I’m going -to give it to your girl, and if you run hard enough you’ll see me give -it to her.” - -I had plenty of help in opening that door. There were men outside who -helped me so promptly and unanimously that it was evident they had been -lying in wait. - -Two of them grabbed me by the neck as they would have clutched a bat -stick in choosing sides in a game of three old cat. They rammed me back -into the room. There were three other men who came in, and one of them -was that rat of a Beason. - -They were all talking at one another, and Beason was spitting words the -fastest. But Captain Holstrom drowned out all other sounds by a bellow -of delight. He knew these men, all right. He seemed especially tickled -to behold the two men who held me. He slapped them on their backs, -cuffed their faces with drunken affection, and adjured them to hold me -tighter. - -“He took my money! He stole it! He insulted a lady friend of mine. He’s -been chasing me and picking a row with me for three days,” he lied, or -else the rum he had been drinking had elongated his notions of time. - -“You see, I get your twenty, Mr. Keedy,” insisted Beason. “I told you -straight. I called the turn on this fly guy. He’s what I told you he -was. You just heard what the captain said.” - -I was mighty busy just then with the two men who were holding me, and -Captain Holstrom was giving me some slaps which were drunkenly heavy, -but not affectionate. However, I heard what Beason said, and I saw the -man whom he called Keedy pass over a twenty-dollar gold piece. Beason -grinned at me and scuttled out of the room. The Keedy person pushed the -scolding girl out after him and slammed the door. - -I did not like the looks of the Keedy person--no, not at all. I may have -instinct in such matters; I don’t know. A diver is obliged to do most of -his work in pitch darkness and by the sense of touch, and such work may -develop instinct in general. I won’t stop to discuss the question. - -But that yellow face with a black mustache smacked across it like -a smear of paint, and arrows of eyebrows shooting up northeast and -northwest from a regular gouge of a wrinkle between the man’s eyes -wasn’t the kind of physog worn by the deacon who takes up the collection -in a Sunday-school. He stood with back against the door. - -“Go through him, gents,” he directed. “And hand me the gun when you come -to it.” - -There wasn’t any gun, but they got the two sacks of gold, and my little -stock of paper money as well. Then they gave me a shove into a corner, -and all of them stood off and looked at me. The excitement had brought -old Ingot Ike on to his feet and he joined the ring of spectators. - -“You are in bad,” stated Mr. Keedy. - -Silence gives consent; so I kept still. - -“Who is backing you in this job? Where’s the rest of your gang? You’re -in here without a gun. Now, where’s the main party?” - -“The main party,” said I, mad enough now to do a little talking, -“is down at the ferry, foot of Market Street. She is that old fool’s -daughter, and she was crying when I left her. I’m just in from the -East, and when I came out on to the street from the ferry this evening, -setting foot in San Francisco for the first time--” - -“You’re a liar!” yelped Captain Holstrom. “You’ve been on my trail for -seven days, and you have just knocked me down when I was entertaining -a lady friend and wasn’t looking. You robbed me. The money was found on -you. But Rask Holstrom has got friends who won’t see him done. Here they -are. And into the dock you go, blast ye!” - -“You’re in bad,” reiterated the Keedy person, narrowing the crease -between his eyes. - -“If you’re a friend of Captain Holstrom, see if you can’t pound it into -his head that I’m the diver he is expecting.” - -“You’re the what? Is your name Sidney?” - -“That is my name.” - -“Rask,” snapped Keedy at last, “were you down at the ferry turn-table as -this man says? You’ve been pretty drunk. This thing here is taking a new -tack. I’d like to believe this chap here if I can.” - -“Might have been there,” owned up the captain. - -“_Was_ there,” stated that old fool of an Ike, who had been standing by -without a word in my behalf. Now he was ready and willing to leap with -the popular side. “I was there with him.” - -“Was your daughter there with you? Did you leave her there?” - -Captain Holstrom looked a little ashamed, and hesitated. - -“She was there,” stated Ike. “She was following us and trying to get my -noble cap’n to go along with her, but it wasn’t right to bother my noble -cap’n when he was happy over a lucky trade.” - -“The two of you must have been good and fine,” growled Mr. Keedy. “Look -here, Cap, I believe this gent is telling a lot of the truth about you. -No matter now about his high jinks with the coin. I want to believe -what he says. As your partner, Captain Holstrom, my advice to you is to -hustle out, get a cab, and get to that ferry station in quick time. If -that diving-suit is there bring it back here.” - -The captain rolled out of the room, growling, but subdued. - -Mr. Keedy gave me what was for him an affable smile, a hitching up -nearer to his nose of that paint-streak mustache. - -“We may as well start in an acquaintance,” he said. He passed my -pocket-book back. “My name is Marcena Keedy, partner of Cap’n Holstrom. -Step up here, gents,” he commanded the two men who had squatted my -windpipe. “This is Number-one Jones; this is Number-two Jones.” They -ducked salute. They had paint-brush chin beards and cock eyes, and were -evidently twins. “First and second mates, new hired for the _Zizania_.” - He did not bother to introduce Ingot Ike. - -He pushed a button on the wall. - -“We’ll take something to gum the edges of sociability, gents. There’s -nothing like gents starting in sociable when they can, and staying -sociable as long as they can, providing any gent proves himself all -right, as he says he is.” - -He gave me a significant and mighty sharp look, sat down, and jigged one -leg over the other, trying hard to keep up his affable smile. - -We kept on being sociable for half an hour or more. - -At last back came Capt. Rask Holstrom. He was tugging my duffle-bag, -and on his heels was his daughter. She had my little valise. She did -not show any especial symptoms of embarrassment at being in such a joint -alone with men. She walked straight to me and gave me the valise. What -was better, she gave me a smile. - -“I misunderstood you, sir, on short acquaintance,” she said. “I hope you -will excuse me.” - -She looked me straight in the eyes without coquetry, a gaze as level and -candid as that of man to man. - -I gulped some reply--I don’t know what. I wasn’t half as cool as she -was. - -Keedy right now put that yellow face between us. The affable smile -wasn’t there. I got a quick and sharp impression that he didn’t relish -the way the girl and I were getting chummy. She was putting out her -hand to me, for I had made a motion as though to shake on our general -understanding. He took her hand and whirled her around and pointed to a -chair. - -“You’d better sit down, Kama dear. We’re going to talk a little -business, and you can listen, for you are too much father’s girl to be -kept out of any deal of ours.” - -She pulled her hand out of his, but she went and sat down without -shaking my hand. - -“Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” - she said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not -need your invitation to stay.” - -Captain Holstrom looked very sheepish. It was plain that he had been -listening to some plain and frank opinions on his way back from the -ferry station. - -He tried to act unconcerned, and spying the drink I had not touched, -started to lift it to his lips. His daughter snatched it away and -sprayed the liquor on the wall. He sat down, coughing behind his hand. -I had seen men like Capt. Rask Holstrom before--a bully and a braggart -among men, but half a fool where women were concerned--pliable in the -hands of the loose female, and mortally afraid of his own womenkind. - -The men in the room were silent for some time. Keedy was looking at -Holstrom; then his eyes fell on my canvas sack at Holstrom’s feet. He -spoke to me in almost the same fawning tone he had used with the girl. -It was that almost indescribable air--that cheap assumption of gentility -that a professional gambler uses when he is prosecuting his business, -and it rather jars on an honest man. - -“I’m sure it would be almighty interesting to me and to these other -gents and the lady to see an Eastern divingsuit. I reckon you’re pretty -much up to date back there.” Liar and knave himself, he wasn’t exactly -sure I had been telling the truth. He wanted to see the goods. But I did -not mind much. I knelt on the floor, and opened the sack and dug out -the equipment. This yam of mine goes back before the days of the -compressed-air chamber which the modern diver carries on his back just -as an automobile carries fuel. But I had a mighty good suit, almost a -new one. There wasn’t a dent in the helmet or a patch oh the rubber or -canvas. - -“We have had a long talk, this gent and I,” said Keedy, after he had -squatted like a frog and had peered at all I had to show him. “I’m -naturally a man to get to cases quick. I’m open and free with them I -take a liking to.” He went to the door and peeked into the corridor. -“Number-two Jones, you stand here and keep an eye and ear out,” he -directed. “Now, Brother Sidney, you Eastern chaps are apt to be pretty -cold-blooded, and you need first-hand evidence. I’m going to open up to -you one of the biggest prospects you ever heard of--reckoning that, as -a human being, you simply can’t resist coming into it. If you don’t see -fit to come in after it has been opened up to you--well--” He scowled at -me like a demon, snapped his fingers above his head, and turned on old -Ike. - -“Get up and take the floor,” he directed. - -“First-hand evidence is what counts,” went on Mr. Keedy. “Now, here’s -a man who has told his story over a lot of times on the water-front. He -has told it so many times it has grown to be a joke. They’ve given him -the nickname of ‘Ingot Ike.’ Lots of big things in this world have been -buried under a joke.” - -He leaned back in his chair and twisted up the ends of his mustache. - -“Court is open for first-hand evidence, gents. Ike is the first witness. -I’m going to ask him questions and make him answer snappy, for if he -ever gets to rambling on this story of his he’ll make it longer than a -dime novel. Look-a-here, Ike, what was the steamer _Golden Gate?_” - -“Passengers, bullion in ingots, and general cargo ’tween here and -Panama.” - -It was rather comical to see that old bean-pole straighten up and try to -imitate the snappy style of Mr. Keedy. - -“What was your job aboard of her?” - -“Quartermaster.” - -“What happened to her?” - -“Caught fire off coast of Mexico when she was bound for Panama, beached -well north of Acapulco, rolled over and over in surf, what was left -of her, and bones still there. Three ribs show at low tide if you know -where to look for ’em.” - -“What was she carrying for treasure?” - -“Over three million dollars’ worth of gold in ingots in her strong-room -abaft second bulkhead, between pantry and boiler-room.” - -“Was the treasure ever recovered?” - -“Wreck was abandoned to underwriters, and after underwriters had worked -for a long time, keeping very mysterious, they reported that they had -got the ingots all out of her. Then they came away. Everybody believed -that the underwriters had cleaned out the wreck, just as they reported -they had. But I was in that wrecking crew. I kept my eye out. It was -a bluff about getting that treasure.” The old man began to show -excitement. “Their divers couldn’t get at it. They didn’t have nerve, -and they didn’t have the right outfits in those days. The underwriters -didn’t want it shown that they hadn’t pulled up the stuff. They knew -that every Tom, Dick, and Harry would go down there, peeking and poking -around that wreck, and that some fellow might think up a way to call the -turn. - -“So they bribed the divers, and the divers brought up fake boxes of -gold, and the report was made that all the treasure had been taken from -the _Golden Gate_ wreck. But it’s all there, gents. The underwriters -haven’t been able yet to think of a sensible way of getting at it. They -don’t want to make another splurge and attract attention till they’re -sure of what they’re doing. Them’s facts what I’m telling. I know. I -haven’t done much of anything but keep tabs. I don’t care if they do -call me Ingot Ike. I know what I’m talking about. The trouble down there -has been that the old Pacific has rolled on and rolled in and piled -up sand over that treasure, and they didn’t know how to handle the -proposition in those days.” - -“The idea is, Brother Sidney,” broke in Keedy, “firsthand evidence -informs us that three or four millions are cached in a place we know of. -Now, because man has failed once, years ago, when man wasn’t as bright -as he is now, is that any sign that man shall give up? Captain Holstrom -and I say, ‘No.’ We’re partners. We have been talking over this -proposition for a long time. Now, up to date, are you in any way -interested?” - -I was, and I said so. - -“There they lie,” said Keedy, “bars of yellow gold. Boxes and boxes of -shiny gold. More than three million dollars’ worth of finest gold--and -only a little water and sand over ’em. No bars to break through, no -vaults to drill. Only sand and water--and we ought to be able to match -that sand with grit, and the water with good red blood.” - -There are some men who can talk about money, and it will not start a -thrill in you. - -Marcena Keedy could talk about gold in a way to make your soul hungry. -He rolled the sound in his mouth--a big, round, juicy sound--as a boy -sucks a candy marble. It made the moisture ooze in my own mouth to hear -him talk. - -Mr. Keedy gave over leaning back in his chair. He sat on the edge of it, -and leaned forward. - -“It’s right at this point that we go into this thing clear to the necks, -my friend. I have studied men a lot in my life. I can see about what -kind of a fellow you are. If another fellow opens up to you in honest -fashion you are _with_ him--and if you can’t stay with him you are not -going off and squeal and hurt him. There’s nothing half-way between -Holstrom, here, and myself. We’re partners. We’re in together, whole -hog. I’ll spread the cards for you just as they are spread for the -captain and myself. He and I have been having a run of good luck to date -in our partnership. We’ll have some more firsthand evidence. Rask, how -was it you got the inside clinch in the _Zizania_ matter?” - -“For the benefit of a man from the East, where they ain’t as shrewd as -the Yankees think they be,” stated Captain Holstrom in his husky -voice, “I will say that we’ve got a devilish good close combine on the -waterfront--we fellows have been on the job for a long time. When the -Government auctions off anything we get together and fix the top price -at which any bid shall go, and then we cut the cards to settle who shall -pick the plum at that price. It means that the lucky man will pick a -bargain, don’t forget that. Price can’t be budged above that bid--and -it’s a blamed measly price.” He smacked his lips. “So that is how I have -got hold of the old __Zizania__, Government lighthouse-tender and buoy -steamer, side-wheeler, one hundred and seventy feet long, new derricks, -boilers in fair shape, and engine fresh overhauled. I’ve cut the cards -for eleven years, and this has been my first look-in. But it’s worth -waiting for. I could junk her and make four times what I pay for her.” - -“What _we_ pay for her,” corrected Mr. Keedy. “Remember that I’m your -partner. Now I’ll take the stand myself. Holstrom here sold his tugboat -the minute he struck luck on the _Zizania_. He pulled what money he had -in the bank. He lacked half the price, at that. He was going to borrow -on a bill of sale. ‘No,’ says I to him. ‘Bring along your cash to the -place where I’m dealing faro. I’ll go in partner with you and double -your pot.’ Holstrom knew that when I talked that way with him I was -square. Some men would have double-crossed him and pulled the pickings -for the bank. I ain’t that kind,” declared Mr. Keedy, pulling himself up -virtuously and giving the girl a side-glance. “I know who my friends -are, and who I’d like to help. And I can deal faro! Don’t worry about -that! Captain Holstrom walked out with his pot doubled. The money goes -down on the _Zizania_ to-morrow morning, making up the balance after the -forfeit money was paid. That’s the way Holstrom and I do business after -we have come to an agreement.” He gave the girl a look which he intended -to be melting. “I said I’d do it, and I did it.” - -“I’m ashamed of my father,” she said, crisply. - -“I don’t much blame you, Kama,” stammered Captain Holstrom, missing the -point of her rebuke. “For me to go and do what I done after scooping -in that money was a fool performance, and I ask the pardon of all -concerned. But I reckon my head was turned by having all that good luck -come in a bunch. I just went into the air, that’s what I done. But I’m -back on earth to stay now.” - -“Let us hope so, partner,” chided Kir. Keedy. “That crazy Beason and our -new friend here made such a racket chasing you through the Coast that -I heard of it, and started out on the chase myself. It has turned out -lucky, but that’s no credit to you.” - -The girl stood up. “I have listened, and now I understand. If you want -to keep my respect, father, you’ll hand back the part of that money -which is stolen, and borrow enough to make your payment.” - -“Hold on, Miss Kama!” cried Keedy. “That money wasn’t stolen. A man who -tackles a faro-bank isn’t stealing if he wins.” - -“I heard what you said a few minutes ago, Mr. Keedy.” - -“And I said it to show I can be a friend to those I like. I’ve known you -a long time, and now when I’ve had a chance to show you that I’m a -friend you can’t afford to chuck me.” - -He jumped up and went near to her. - -“No more faro for me--no cards any more,” he said, dusting his hands -before her. “I know you haven’t liked to have me do it.” - -“I have never made any remarks to you about your affairs, Mr. Keedy. -It’s only when my father gets mixed into them that I protest.” - -“I reckon that after all the years I’ve dealt crooked for the sake of -the bank I’ve got the right to deal crooked for once in my life to help -my friends,” muttered Keedy. “But I’m all done with faro, I tell you, -Kama. We’re all going to be rich. I want you to remember that I’ve done -my full share in this thing.” - -Captain Holstrom banged the sacks of coin upon the table. - -“You bet you have, Marcena. And you’re my partner. I stand by you. I -never saw a girl yet who didn’t have foolish notions. But they grow out -of them.” He winked at Keedy. “This money goes down on the old _Zizania_ -to-morrow morning. She’s ours from snout to tail--from keelson to -pennant block. And she’s going to make our everlasting fortunes. You -shall see, Kama, my girl!” - -For a moment she stood there, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flaming up, -as fine a picture of protesting and indignant maidenhood as I ever laid -eyes on. Then she compressed her lips and choked back an outburst. - -“Yes, I _shall_ see,” she said at last. “For I shall go on board the -_Zizania_, and stay there and watch you, father, and try to keep you out -of State’s prison for the sake of my poor dead mother.” - -“It has been all right for you to live with me aboard the tug,” growled -Captain Holstrom, blinking sourly at her. “But this is a different -proposition. This is going to be a man’s game.” - -“With one woman along,” she insisted. - -“You have got to stay here in the city,” he declared. - -“If you leave me here alone, deserting me for men who are leading you -into dangers and trouble, you’ll find me dancing in one of the worst -holes on this street when you come back. I swear it!” she said. - -She did not raise her voice. There was no elocution, and hysterics were -absent. But there are women who can say a thing and make you believe -it. Captain Holstrom cracked his knuckles and gasped, and said nothing. -Keedy ran his thin tongue along the line of his sooty mustache. - -“As a partner, I’m in favor of keeping a good girl near her father,” - said he. - -“You are not a partner in my family affairs, Mr. Keedy!” cried the girl, -hotly. - -Keedy, much embarrassed, and willing to hide his feelings, turned to me. - -“We seem to be drifting off the main subject, Brother Sidney.” I wanted -to yank him up for calling me by that title--resentment surged in me as -hotly as it did in the girl. There are some men who seem to make your -soul feel sticky when they try to be intimate. - -I told him I’d like a night to think the matter over. - -“All right,” said Keedy, dryly; “I’ll take you with me to a place where -you can do some steady thinking and won’t be bothered. Stuff your things -back into your bag.” - -As I plodded along the narrow street with him, my sack propped on my -shoulder, Captain Holstrom and his daughter passed me in a cab. - -Mr. Keedy’s voice and manner were well padded with velvet that night, -but he couldn’t fool me. He caged me--that’s what he did. I remember -that I slept in a closet of a room, and, Mr. Keedy was on a cot in the -room which opened into the hall. I didn’t mind any of his precautions. I -had made up my mind to go along. I was dog-tired and slept all night. - - - - -XXVIII--SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW - -MR. KEEDY evidently desired to impress on me that his hankering to -make sure of my company during the night was inspired by pure and sudden -friendship. - -When he came to awaken me his mustache was lifted so high in an amiable -smile that the twin sooty wings seemed to stick out of his nostrils. -He hoped I was getting to like the West and the folks there. I returned -that up to date I had not been homesick--a conservative statement, and -true; I had had no time to be homesick. - -He paid for my breakfast; further evidence of friendship. Then he called -a cab and took me and my belongings down to the berth of the _Zizania_. -The old steamer was docked in a place which, so he told me, was the -China Basin, and we wormed our way through alleys and junk-piles and got -aboard. - -We hadn’t hurried that morning, and the time was well into the middle of -the forenoon. - -Captain Holstrom was stubbing to and fro on the main deck. He wore a -fine air of proprietorship, and welcomed us with a flourish of his hand. -He patted his breast, and the crackle of paper sounded. - -“Money paid,” he reported. “Them’s the dockyments. Come up into the -wheel-house. There’s the place to talk the rest of our business.” - -Marcena Keedy did most of the talking that forenoon. He loved to lollop -the words “three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots” in his mouth. He -had wormed out of me at breakfast-time admissions enough so that he knew -I was favorably disposed. He proposed to try to take advantage of me and -I saw his game and resolved to do some bluffing on my own part. He put -a lot of verbal plush around his propositions, but I could feel the hard -nub just the same. - -After all that conversational fluff he wanted me to sign a contract to -take day’s wages for the job--double pay for the days when I recovered -any gold. - -I turned that wages suggestion down, flat and final. You would have -thought I had money plastered all over me. - -“It has got to be on shares,” I said. - -“You doggone bean-eater, have you got the nerve to talk shares on an -investment of a diving-suit against our steamer and our information -about the _Golden Gate?_” stuttered Keedy. - -“That isn’t the way the thing shakes down, Mr. Keedy. You have made it -plain to me that you’re gambling in this--it isn’t a straight deal.” - -He swore at me, but I didn’t mean the thing the way he cook it. - -“If you were going down there,” I said, “with a big expedition, and -proposed to build coffer-dams, and all that, and go at it scientific -fashion, I would hire as a regular diver. I couldn’t demand anything -else. But I’m not merely investing a diving-suit, as it stands. I’m -playing a lone hand in the diving part of the scheme; I’m investing all -my experience, all my skill; I’m investing life itself, for, as near as -I can find out from what you say, it will be up to me to know how to get -that gold, and then go get it. I want one-third of the velvet after all -bills are paid, and I want a contract drawn before I start.” - -Perhaps I wouldn’t have jabbed the thing so hard at Holstrom, but I did -not propose to be the monkey for Keedy. I looked innocent and suggested -that they’d better talk with another diver. Keedy flapped like a speared -fish for half an hour--and then he came over. Captain Holstrom walked -up and down with his hands behind his back during all the talk. I judged -from his general air that he was viewing the whole thing as more or less -of a dream, and did not want to get too wide awake about it from fear of -losing courage and interest. - -“There’s one thing about it--you’ll work harder if you have a lay,” said -Keedy. - -That’s usually the way with the grafter or loafer--he’s afraid the other -fellow won’t work hard enough. - -Frankly, I did not have any very brilliant hopes in regard to that -expedition, for if old Ingot Ike had told the truth about the failure of -the underwriters, I figured that the diving proposition must be a tough -one. Keedy was hot about it, for he did not know enough about such work -to judge chances; as for Captain Holstrom, ever since he had won this -_Zizania_ elephant he was in a state of mind which made him ready for -any project, even to putting wings on her and starting for the moon. - -I didn’t pay much attention to the outfitting, except to make a list of -such equipment in the way of lines, hose, air-pumps, and such matters as -I needed for my part of the work. Keedy and Holstrom turned around -and borrowed money on the security of the steamer, this debt to stand -against our partnership. Keedy seemed so sure of that gold that he did -not stop to ask me how I was fixed to stand my share in case of utter -failure. Therefore, with plenty of funds to work with, we were ready for -sea in short order, and to sea we went, swashing out past Point Lobos, -the sea-lions hooting at us as we passed their rocks, and started down -the coast. - -I leaned over the rail and watched the shore melt in the hazy distance, -and did not blame the sea-lions for their derogatory remarks. I did not -know much about steamers, but I realized that the _Zizania_, condemned -Government tub, wasn’t anything to brag about. She was a real old -ocean-walloper, a broad-beamed duck of a thing, thrashing her -warped paddles, her rusty walking-beam groaning, her patched boilers -wheezing--a weather-worn, gray, and grunting ocean tramp. - -Like all craft of the buoy-boat model, she had much deck room forward of -the bridge, and here were nested, as dories are nested on a Gloucester -trawler, four forty-foot lighters. Plenty of anchors accompanied these -scows--huge, rusty second-hand anchors which Captain Holstrom had -bought from junkmen. The _Zizania_ was naturally slow, and this load -forward now made a snail of her. Hawsers and chains encumbered her deck -space everywhere--age-blackened ropes, and iron from which rust -scales were dropping. Captain Holstrom had ransacked the wharfs for -hand-me-downs. Even the men whom he had shipped looked as though he had -secured them at a rummage sale. - -“It’s a checker-board crew,” the captain had informed me as they -straggled on board. “Half black men, and half white. That’s the only way -to sort men when you’re bound on a long cruise. Keep the blacks mad with -the whites, and vitchy vici, and you’ve always got half the crew on your -side in case of trouble. There can’t any general mutinies start when -you’ve got a checker-board crew. Number-one Jones has the white men’s -watch; Number-two Jones has the black watch; and as soon as we get this -stuff stored and the rest moused on deck I’ll have Number-one sick his -bunch on to Number-two’s, and let ’em fight long enough to get good -and mad. Then they’ll sort of neutralize each other for the rest of the -cruise.” - -That system of gentle diplomacy was new to me, and I loafed around and -kept an eye out, for I have always had a hearty relish for an honest -scrap. Furthermore, in explaining to me later, the captain had stated -that I was expected to jump in with himself and the mates and break up -the fight with clubs when it had progressed far enough. - -“You see, we want to leave both sides mad and neither side licked,” - said Captain Holstrom. “It will be like cooking in a hot oven. The thing -mustn’t get scorched on. I know how to handle it. Jump in when I say the -word.” - -He had given me these instructions leaning over the sill of the -pilot-house window soon after we had got away from the dock. - -“Not that the doodah will start for some time yet,” he added. “But I’m -a great hand to have things all ready and understood. You can be looking -up your club between now and to-morrow.” - -I glanced into the wheel-house as I walked on. Marcena Keedy lounged in -solitary state on the transom seat at the rear, puffing away at a cigar. - -“You’re always welcome in here,” he called. But I had no appetite for -the companionship of Mr. Keedy. - -It occurred to me, with just a bit of relish in the thought, that Miss -Kama Holstrom probably was of similar mind in regard to Mr. Keedy. She -had taken a seat in the wheel-house when she had come on board that day. -Now she was in her state-room, which was the cabin on the upper deck -near the bridge, planned as the captain’s apartment. Either she had -pre-empted it or Captain Holstrom had assigned her to it. I had seen -that the Joneses--Number-one and Number-two--were in berths near my -quarters below, and it was plain that partners Holstrom and Keedy had -quartered themselves in the mates’ room on the upper deck. - -Miss Holstrom’s door was on the hook, and I caught a glimpse of her more -by accident than by design. She nodded without speaking, and I raised my -cap and went below to the main deck. - -I got there in season to see the lighting of a fuse which exploded -Captain Holstrom’s “checker-board” plans ahead of scheduled time. - -The first man I met on the deck was Ingot Ike. He was gnawing at a hunk -of gingerbread with his snags of teeth, and was grinning amiably. - -“This is going to be a comfortable trip for me,” he confided. “I find -I know the cook. It’s a lucky thing if you stand in well with the -cook. Him and me was shipmates together on a Vancouver packet. He’s the -Snohomish Glutton.” He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he -expected that I would show astonishment. “I said--he’s the Snohomish -Glutton,” he repeated, more loudly. - -But my face remained blank. - -“You don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of the Snohomish -Glutton!” - -I shook my head. - -“You nev--You don’t--You ain’t ever--” Ike took another drag at -the gingerbread, and swallowed hard. “Why, the Snohomish Glutton is -known--the Snohomish Glutton, he has eat at one setting--Oh, shucks, -if you ain’t ever heard, what’s the use!” He started on, but whirled and -came back and shook the hunk of gingerbread under my nose. “I suppose if -it had been writ and printed in a book you Eastern perfessers would know -all about it. Thank God, in the West we know a lot of things that ain’t -printed in a book!” Then he stumped away. - -Well, I concluded I would stroll along to the galley and take a look at -the cook, and be able thereafter to say that at least I had seen this -notable of the Pacific. - -There was a spacious galley on the old _Zizania_. I looked in through -an open window which commanded the port alley. A fat man was chopping -kindlings. He was a thing of rolls and folds of fat--a gob of a man. -There were narrow slits near his nose marking his eyes, but his eyes -seemed to be shut by fat. A little, round, pursed-up mouth was in the -middle of his face, and from this came wheezy grunts as he chopped. - -While I was watching him, an object bounded into the galley door and -leapfrogged him, darting past me through the window. Before I could turn -my head the thing, whatever it was, had disappeared around the corner of -the alley. - -The cook straightened up, and by an effort opened his eyes enough -to stare at me. I expected a deep, gruff voice, But he had a real -tin-whistle pipe. - -“What did you throw at me?” - -“I didn’t throw anything. Something rushed through the galley--I didn’t -see what.” - -“Things don’t hit a man unless they are thrown,” he insisted. “I may -look funny, but I ain’t funny. I don’t relish having things thrown at -me.” - -He gave up trying to hold his eyes open, and went on chopping. - -I was getting my breath ready to protest when the thing came through -once more. It was a monkey. But it missed the cook’s back, for the broad -shoulders heaved as the ax came up. The monkey slipped, slid across -the chopping-block, and down came the ax. The animal squealed horribly, -flung itself past me through the open window, and fled. It went like a -shot, but I got the fleeting impression that its tail was gone. - -“What did you do then?” asked the cook, squinting at me suspiciously. - -“I tell you I haven’t done anything at all. That was a monkey. He came -from somewhere. He ran through here. I think you have cut off his tail.” - He peered about. “There ain’t no tail here,” he whined. “There couldn’t -have been any monkey here. This ain’t any place for a monkey to be. -There may be monkey business here--and you’re getting it up. You go away -from here!” - -I’m afraid the Snohomish Glutton and I would have had trouble then and -there, but just then a man came rushing into the door of the galley. He -had the monkey under his arm, upside down, and he was pointing quivering -finger at a bleeding stump of a tail. I couldn’t understand what he -was bawling. I found out afterward that he was a Russian Finn and could -command only a few English words even when he was perfectly calm. He was -not calm now. I never heard a man rave so. The monkey joined him with -hideous screams. - -The cook listened for a time, puckering his fat forehead. When he found -that the man was talking a foreign language he upraised his ax and -swished it around in circles near the Finn’s head. A cook in his galley -is lord supreme in his domain, and the sailor probably knew as much. The -ax was menacing; it was coming very close, and the Finn already had one -exhibit of that cook’s ferocity under his arm. He allowed himself to be -backed out, and the cook slammed and barred the door. - -“What did he say?” he asked me, in his piping tones. - -“I don’t know what he said.” - -“I reckoned it was some kind of Dago swearing, and I don’t allow a man -to swear at me. Most likely it was swearing.” - -“You cut off that monkey’s tail,” I insisted. “I thought so when he -squealed. Now I’m sure of it.” - -He went to peering around again, whining to himself like a fat porcupine -who is being badgered. - -“There ain’t no tail here. I didn’t cut off his tail. I didn’t see him -so that I could cut off his tail.” He started toward the window with a -look as if he proposed to resent my suggestion that he had been cutting -off monkeys’ tails. I passed on. I figured that I might as well try to -argue with a Sussex shote as with that shapeless mass of fat. I would -have saved a nasty bit of trouble for myself, perhaps, if I had remained -and argued. And my trouble later that day--and that monkey with the -missing tail--was the seed from which--But that’s getting ahead of the -story. - - There were really three messes aboard the _Zizania_. There was the -captain’s mess aft, with special dishes, which was entirely distinct -from the crew’s food. On the port side was set out the food for the -black half of the checker-board crew, and on the starboard side the -white half received their provender. - -We were at dinner in the captain’s mess. It was our first meal at -sea--our first meeting at table. - -When Miss Kama came in we were just sitting down. The captain was -with us, having left one of the Joneses at the wheel. Keedy lifted his -paint-streak mustache against his nose in a smile, and pulled out a -chair beside his own. - -“Sit here, my dear,” he said to the girl. - -She walked past the chair, came around to my side of the table, and sat -down. She did not toss her chin or sniff, as some girls would have done, -to show dislike of Keedy. She was a cool proposition, that girl was. - -That left the chair beside Keedy the only vacant one at the table. A -plump little man had been standing off at one side, waiting for the -last choice of seats. He looked rather bashful, and his round face was -shining with soap, and his hair was plastered down at the sides and -combed up in front in a fancy cowlick. You could see that he realized -that he did not exactly belong at that table. Therefore he had scrubbed -himself up for the occasion. - -Captain Rask Holstrom did not trouble himself with any of the finer -graces of society. He gruffly introduced the little man as Romeo Shank, -chief engineer, and told Shank to slide into the chair beside Keedy. -“We ain’t drawing any fine lines between ship’s officers on this trip,” - stated the captain, bluntly, for the benefit of all concerned. “Get -to table while the grub is hot, and get it into you--that’s the motto. -Business before style is the idea aboard this boat.” - -He began to shovel food industriously with his knife. - -Keedy hitched away from his table-mate a few inches, and looked across -at me, and deepened the wrinkle between his eyes. But he could not spoil -my appetite. Something else which happened the next moment pretty nigh -did it, though. - -A black man leaped into the saloon through the forward door by which the -waiter came and went. Two other black men were at his back. They stopped -just inside the door and dragged off their knitted caps. They had the -appearance of being a delegation, and an excited delegation at that. It -was plain to be seen that they had come rushing aft without stopping to -figure on consequences. The leader carried something in front of him, -and it was looped over the blade of a wicked-looking-knife. He held the -object at arm’s length toward Captain Holstrom, pointed at it with the -vibrating finger of his left hand, and yelped shrilly like a dog. He was -too excited and too furious to put his complaint into words. - -“What have ye got there--a snake?” yelped the captain, gulping down a -mouthful, and wrinkling his nose like one who had suddenly come upon -something disgusting. - -“We find him in our kittle--we find him dere. Yassuh! We eat ’most to de -bottom, and den we find him,” raved the negro. - -Captain Holstrom snapped up from the table and strode over and squinted -at the object which dangled from the knife blade. - -“Dey cook for us in our kittle a monkey tail--dem white men cook dat for -us, and laugh,” squealed the negro. - -“And you think that some of those cheap white jokers put it in, eh?” - -“Dey laugh all de time since when we pull him out. Yassuh, it’s a lot of -fun for dem men.” - -Captain Holstrom rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and stared down on the -thing which had savored the black men’s dinner. - -A happy thought seemed to strike him. He turned his head and winked at -me. - -“Take that thing out and whack it across the face of the white man you -find laughing the hardest,” he commanded. “When he gets up to hit you -pitch in.” He came lurching back to the table. “I didn’t intend to have -the row till to-morrow,” he informed us, in an undertone. “But this is -too good a chance to miss. We’ll get that checker-board crew on a war -basis where they’ll stay put.” - -The black men were lingering at the door, trying to get the captain’s -meaning through their wool. - -“Excuse me, Captain Holstrom,” I said, “but I think I know how this -thing happened--and I feel it’s too bad to have innocent men beaten up.” - I started to tell what I had seen, but he swore and broke in on me. - -“Don’t butt into something that’s none of your business!” he snapped. He -roared at the men: “Go do what I told you to do. Go punch the jokes out -of that white gang or you’ll have no peace the rest of the voyage. Get -out of here before I kick you out!” - -It sounded like a very pretty row, judging it from where we were sitting -in the saloon. It began in a very few minutes. - -“Mr. Number-two Jones,” directed the captain, “go out there and oversee, -and let me know when it’s time to break the clinch.” He loaded up his -plate once more and kept on eating. - -In about five minutes the mate returned. “I reckon it’s about time to -knock ’em apart, Captain Holstrom,” he advised, shoving his head in at -the door. “No great harm done, but they’re chewing each other bad, and -that means expense for plaster and salve.” - -If I hadn’t already lost my appetite for dinner, that grisly statement -from Mr. Number-two Jones would have fixed me. I pushed back from the -table. - -“Come along, Sidney,” commanded the captain, kicking his chair out from -under him. “Come settle your dinner. I’ll find a club for you.” - -“I’ll obey the orders you gave me first, sir,” I called after him; “I -won’t butt into something that’s none of my business.” - -“Do you mean to say--” He had stopped and whirled on me. - -I was sore because he had snapped me up so short before them all. I -thought my explanation should have been considered. - -“I mean to say that this fight was needless. You started it; now you can -stop it.” - -Mr. Keedy had been lighting a cigar, and it was plain that he did not -intend to venture out into the mêlée. - -“Look here--I tell you to come along,” yelled the captain. “It’s your -duty.” - -“Not on your life. I’m no ship’s officer! I’m along as a diver, not as a -prize-fighter.” - -Captain Holstrom looked ugly enough just then to tackle me as a preface -to his job forward, but after cursing a moment he followed the mate. The -riot was increasing, and it was plain that he was needed in the field. - -Keedy leaned back and scowled at me through his cigar smoke. - -“I didn’t know I had picked a quitter,” he sneered. “We’re tackling a -job that needs sand. You ain’t a tin horn, are you?” - -I didn’t answer and the back of my neck began to itch; I suppose if -I had had hair there like a dog’s, the hair would have bristled. That -itching in the neck when you’re mad is a survival of the old days when -men had lots of hair on ’em. - -I started to walk out of the saloon. Miss Kama was sitting there, -looking at us, and her presence rather complicated matters for a man who -was getting madder all the time, as I was. The other officers had chased -along on the trail of Captain Holstrom. - -“A second-hand diving-suit doesn’t stack up very high against what we’re -putting into this thing--Captain Holstrom and myself,” he insisted. -“There was something going in from your side in addition to the -divingsuit, as I understand it. But a coward can’t invest grit.” - -I stopped at the door and walked back toward him. - -“A what?” I inquired. - -“I said ‘a coward.’” - -I slapped him--not hard. - -“Now come up on deck with me, Mr. Keedy. You’ve got to come after that. -There’s a lady here.” - -“I’m going, gentlemen,” said the girl. “Don’t mind me.” She looked at -Keedy and set her lips. - -But Keedy jumped up and pulled a gun instead of putting up his fists. - -“I don’t fight that way, Mr. Keedy,” I told him. “I have no gun. You’d -better put yours up. You can’t afford to kill me--not yet!” - -“No--and that’s the devil of it,” he blurted, after waiting a moment. -“You have taken advantage of--of--” - -“Of your hankering to get money into your paws,” I snapped back at him. -“If you won’t come up and fight man fashion, I can’t make you, but -if you ever call me a coward again on this trip I’ll put in a little -evidence to the contrary with these.” I showed him my fists. - -He rammed his revolver into his hip pocket and stamped out of the -saloon. - -I found the girl looking at me, wrinkling her forehead. - -“I beg your pardon, Miss Holstrom,” I apologized. “But an itching to -strike that man has been in my fingers for some time.” - -“You ought to have waited until you had an excuse to strike harder than -that, Mr. Sidney. I have known Marcena Keedy for a long time. A man like -you with a big job ahead ought to be able to keep his eyes to the front -all the time. Now you will have to keep looking behind you. I say--I -have known Mr. Keedy for a long time.” - -She went out. - -I followed a few minutes afterward, and I went with my head down, and -I was pretty thoughtful. Captain Holstrom and I bumped together in the -doorway. He shoved past me and threw a club into a corner. - -“I hope you can dive better’n you can fight,” he snorted. - -Then he bawled to the waiter and demanded his piece of pie. - - - - -XXIX--THE TELLTALE RIBS - -THERE was nothing especially interesting about that prolonged grunt of -the old _Zizania_ down the California coast. She rolled and thrashed, -and the brisk trades spattered spray over her bows, and she certainly -took her own time in moving along. - -We all settled down to endure the trip as best we could, but it was a -rather surly party. Forward, the blacks and whites nursed their scars -and their grudge; aft, Keedy and I scowled at each other so much that -nobody could be happy around where we were. Miss Kama walked the deck -alone, or read, or embroidered in her state-room; once in a while I got -a glimpse of her through the door while she was at work. She continued -to sit beside me at table, but she was very cool and distant. I don’t -know as I tried to have her anything else. I would have liked to lean -over the rail and talk with her, though I never presumed to speak to her -on deck. Take a fellow when he is young, penned aboard a slow packet, a -pretty girl near him all the time, and you bet he cannot confine all his -thought to the scenery and his job. - -She truly was a pretty girl! I can see her now as she strode to and fro -on the upper deck, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her white -sweater, and drawing it forward so that it set off her plumpness. There -was a sort of indescribable tousle to her hair, if I may put it that -way. I don’t know what the color was--there’s no name for those shades -of copper and brown and all that. - -I know I liked mighty well to see the sun shine through that hair. - -I loafed below and forward considerably. I found a lot to interest me, -particularly a job that the Russian Finn was on in his spare time. He -was making a new tail for his monkey. He explained to me half tearfully -that the monkey would never be safe or happy otherwise. I had pretty -hard work to understand the man’s broken lingo, but I gathered that this -especial kind of monkey needed to spend a portion of his time hanging -head downward from his tail in order to be well and contented. Once -or twice since the tail had been amputated the monkey had run up the -foremast or the derrick, and had confidently tried to throw an imaginary -tail over a rope, and had tumbled to the deck, where he had squatted -and moaned and examined the stump with confused and pitiful attempt to -understand the phenomenon. I could sympathize with the Finn’s fears when -he said that “some day he fall over the board or break him damn neck.” - The cook’s random blow had left some inches of the stump, and to this -with marline and glue the Finn deftly fastened by an “end-seizing” a -wire covered with furred skin. I wondered where he secured this skin. He -owned up to me. He had captured and killed one of the cook’s pet cats, -and the cook had never opened his eyes wide enough to detect the crime, -or to behold where the skin of the defunct was performing vicarious -atonement. - -This catskin-covered wire was hooked at the end. Edison, I reckon, never -watched the testing of an invention with greater raptness than the -Finn displayed as the monkey, after a thorough inspection of the new -appendage, clambered aloft to where a rope swayed invitingly. I confess -that I shared in that interest. It proved a surprising success. The -monkey swung from the hook, chattered, and grinned, and came down and -sat for long minutes scrutinizing the thing, running busy little fingers -along the furred wire. - -“I may need an inventor with brains when I get at my job down below -here,” I told the Finn. “I will remember what you have done to your -monkey.” - -But when the time did come, it was the monkey instead of the master who -served. - -As day followed day, and we finally raised the loom of the southern -California mountains in the blue distance on our port, Ingot Ike came -out of the lethargy in which limitless supplies of soft gingerbread -seemed to involve him. He talked to me with the brown crumbs sticking -in the comers of his mouth, and his spirits rose higher each day. He was -like a thermometer which was being brought nearer and nearer to heat. -His talk became more eager, his demeanor more alert, joy more intense. - -“After all I’ve talked about it, and told ’em about it, and argued, -it’s coming true at last,” he kept repeating to me. He had fastened -himself to me with especial insistence during the voyage. “You’re the -one who is going to get it, who is going off this boat right down to -where it is, where you can lay your hands right on it, sir. Won’t it be -a grand feeling when you lay your hands on the first box?” - -“Yes,” I admitted, “it will--when I lay my hands on it.” - -I did not say that with any great enthusiasm. If Ingot Ike had not been -so full of gingerbread and glee he would have seen that I was pretty -much down. That San Francisco cocktail had got well worked out of me. -I’d had plenty of time to think the whole thing over during that wallow -down the coast. A man could be hopeful, in on shore, with Mr. Keedy -rolling the word “gold” over his tongue like a luscious morsel. I had -been hopeful--and desperate. But after days at sea in that rickety old -tub, with her rotten equipment, her bargain-sale fittings, her makeshift -crew, with her whole grouchy, suspicious, and reckless atmosphere, I -decided that I was a fool and would have been better off if I had -gone out and hunted for a legitimate job. I had ahead of me the fact, -according to old Ike, that other good men had tried and failed. I had -behind me just then the sure feeling that Mr. Keedy proposed to do me up -as soon as I made good, provided I did so by some lucky chance. - -The last stage of the voyage south was made with old Ike posted in the -crow’s-nest, his beak thrust out, and his mat of hair fluttering in the -wind. He was so excited that he forgot to wallop gingerbread between his -toothless jaws. - -Number-two Jones, who wasn’t a bad sort, gave me some information about -the coast which was in sight of us since we had crossed the mouth of the -Gulf of California. He had sailed those waters before. He had a somewhat -misty remembrance of where the steamer _Golden Gate_ had gone ashore, -but he had never been in the vicinity of the spot, for the sand-bars -obliged craft to keep well offshore. - -According to his recollection, the wreck had occurred along the Guerrero -coast, somewhere between Orilla and Acapulco. The doomed steamer, after -she had caught fire, was headed for the harbor of Acapulco, almost the -only haven on the coast, but an outlying sand-bar tripped her many miles -north of her destination and she went to her grave. Mr. Jones confessed -that he did not know just where; he would be obliged to hunt fifty miles -of coast for her if it were up to him. - -But Ingot Ike had the memory of a monomaniac on the subject of the -_Golden Gate_. He peered under his palm at the hazy sky-line; he threw -back his head and snuffed into the east like a dog treeing game. - -Captain Holstrom started the lead going as soon as Ike had asked to -have the _Zizania_ hug the coast more closely. He knew the reputation -of those hummocks and submarine plateaus of sand, and the howl of the -leadsman rather astonished me when he reported, for on the Atlantic -coast, to which I had been accustomed, we would be in deep water with a -coast-line so far away in the hazy blue of the east. At a distance which -I judged to be at least two miles offshore we were getting a report of -only fifteen or twenty fathoms. - -At last Ike began to swish his thin arm. “Ye’d better down killick, -Captain!” he screamed from the crow’s-nest. “We’re laying off of her. -This is the place.” He scrambled down and ran to the wheel-house. “If -you put her in closer than this she’ll roll her blamed old smokestack -out.” - -Captain Holstrom accepted that advice promptly, though the shore-line -was at least a mile away. - -He yelled shrilly, and splash! went the port anchor. When she had swung -wide he sent down the starboard mud-hook, and she headed the rolling -Pacific, riding easily to the heave of the giant sweepers. - -A little thrill tingled in me as she came to a halt. We were on the -ground at last. - -It was now up to me! - -There were plenty of other men on that boat, but there was only one -man who could reach out and put his hand on that treasure, and that was -myself. The thought did not help to cheer my despondency. - -Captain Holstrom was immediately busy with a huge telescope which he -lifted from its rack and leveled across the sill of the wheel-house -window. Old Ike was excitedly counseling him, jabbing a digit toward the -shore. - -“Follow down from that second nick in that hossback mount’in,” the guide -suggested. “Them is my bearings. You ought to see them ribs fairly plain -against the white where that surf is breaking inshore.” - -There was silence after that while the captain squinted through the -glass, twisting a section now and then to sharpen the focus. His -daughter was in the wheel-house at his side, her face tense. She had -never intimated to me, of course, what her ideas were in regard to this -treasure quest. She may have held the whole project in the same contempt -in which she seemed to hold Keedy, its chief instigator, or old Ike, its -prophet. But I stole a look at her, and decided that she was interested -now. - -Well, anything with intellect above that of a steer would have had to be -interested at that moment. - -We were hoping that yonder under those rollers lay three or four million -dollars’ worth of gold--gold enough to buy everything that man or woman -could desire. - -Even the blockheads of the checker-board crew, who could hope for no -more than their wages from the quest, were staring over the rail from -the main deck forward, their mouths open. Marcena Keedy was eating a -cigar instead of smoking it. - -“Them ribs ought to be there, Captain,” insisted the old man, wistfully. -“The rest has been buried, but them ribs have stood all the swash for -years. They ought to be there.” - -There was another long silence. - -Then Captain Holstrom straightened up. “They’re there!” said he. He -beckoned to me. I was at the rail. “Come in here,” he directed. “It’s -your next peek--for yonder is laid out your job.” - -I had good eyes and I spotted the objects right off. There were three -curved ribs of a ship outlined against the white of the breaking rollers -beyond. The telescope gave the view relief and perspective, and I saw -that the ribs were well outshore. Many yards of tossing water, so I -judged, were between them and land. - -“Well, what do you think?” he inquired, when I passed the glass back. - -“I’ll tell you after I’ve been down, sir. A diver can’t afford to waste -guesswork on the top side of water.” - -The girl shook her head when her father offered her the telescope, and -Keedy came in and took his look. - -“Away in there, is it? Well, what are we waiting for out here?” - -Captain Holstrom looked his partner up and down. - -This sudden exhibition of a lack of a practical knowledge took his -breath away for a moment. - -“We’re waiting out here because we have got to stay here, Marcena. This -is as far as it’s safe to go.” - -“We might as well sit on the Cliff House piazza and boss the job as be -out here,” grumbled the gambler. - -“I don’t know what sort of an idea you had about getting this treasure,” - retorted the captain. “But if you had paid attention to Ike when, he -was telling about the lay of the land you ought to have realized that we -wasn’t going to tie up to that wreck and have Sidney hook bags of gold -on to a fish-line for you to pull up.” - -“I’m down here to have a general oversight in this business,” said -Keedy, “and I propose to be near enough to the job to oversee it.” - -Captain Holstrom looked a bit disgusted. “We might rig a bos’n’s chair -for you on one of them ribs, and cut a hole in the water for you to look -down through. But see here, Marcena, don’t get foolish about this thing. -All you’ve been thinking about, so I judge, is of them boxes of gold, -and you haven’t stopped to figure on the way of getting ’em. I have -figured. I’ve talked a lot with old Ike when you wasn’t listening, but -was dreaming about them ingots. Now you listen to me. Let’s start in -without a row and a general misunderstanding.” He began to dot off his -points with a stubby forefinger. - -“We can’t anchor the _Zizania_ any nearer. There isn’t holding-ground on -that sand, and we’ve got to have plenty of water under this steamer in -case of a blow. See those lighters forward? I bought ’em after I got a -general understanding of the lay of the land here from Ike.” - -“You bought a lot of things without consulting me,” said Keedy, showing -his grouch. “What _am_ I in this thing--a passenger or a partner? Seeing -that my money is in it, I propose to have my brains in, too.” - -The man acted and talked in a way to indicate that he was starting -out hunting for trouble. It began to look to me as if there were worse -shoals ahead for our partnership than the shoals of San Apusa Bar. Mr. -Jones had given me that as the name of the place where the wreck lay. - -Capt. Rask Holstrom did not have the steadiest temper in the world. His -eyes narrowed. - -“Every man for his own line, Keedy. I’m not presuming to tell you how to -deal from the box, nor how to size the buried card in stud poker. Nor I -don’t need any advice from you when it comes to handling a job of work -in tidewater. I’ve waited till I got here to tell you my plans. When -I can talk and you can see the layout at the same time, I’ll not be -wasting so much breath; even those faro-game brains of yours can take -in what I’m getting at. Now, hold right on! This is going to be a square -deal, and you can sit close to the jack-pot. Those four lighters are -going overboard, and we’ll moor them in a chain between here and the -shore. We can splice the cables so as to allow a hundred fathoms between -each one. That will make each lighter a sort of a bridle anchor for the -others, and we ought to get the inshore lighter mighty nigh the wreck. -You can stay on that lighter and have your meals brought if you hanker -to.” - -He snapped out that last remark while he was backing down the ladder -from the bridge to the main deck. The sneer that went with it did not -improve the state of Keedy’s feelings. - -“I’ll show this aggregation whether I can boss a job or not,” he -growled. - -I decided right then that if Keedy tried to boss me from that inshore -lighter the partnership of Holstrom, Keedy & Sidney would get a fracture -in the second joint much wider than the one which was already widening -there. I looked after him when he strolled away, and I reckon if he had -turned around and given me one of those nasty looks of his just then -I would have run after him and hoisted him a good one under the -coat-tail--gladly taking the consequences. I had never hated Anson C. -Doughty any worse. Keedy had grafted himself on to the project with -stolen money--and now he was insulting the rest of us by placing us in -the rogue class with himself and in need of watching. - -I suppose I looked very blue and ugly and disgusted as I stood there at -the rail, scowling first at Keedy and then at the streaming white of the -surf which played beyond the ribs of the wreck. - -The girl spoke to me. She leaned from the window of the wheel-house, -and there was a note in her voice I had never heard before. All her -brusqueness was gone. She was sort of confidential and wistful. - -“You don’t think much of this scheme, do you, Mr. Sidney?” - -I was in the mood to agree with her. “There must be an almighty good -reason why those other fellows did not recover the treasure, Miss -Holstrom, providing old Ike is right in what he says and that they -didn’t get it. I can tell better after I have been down.” - -“I have never seen a diver at work. It is very dangerous, isn’t it?” - -“That depends on the job. I have been as deep as one hundred and seventy -feet, Miss Holstrom, and I felt perfectly safe, though the pressure made -my nose bleed. Another time I was down in only four fathoms in the wash -of a lee shore, and they couldn’t keep my lines and my air-hose dear, -and they pulled me up near dead. That’s a lee shore yonder, and I’m -afraid I’m going to find some very good reasons why the other divers -didn’t succeed. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that they did get the -gold and that old Ike’s talk is simply a dream.” - -“I think the whole affair is a nightmare--I mean this trip,” she -declared. “I don’t believe the good Lord is going to allow a man like -Marcena Keedy to succeed in any decent enterprise.” - -I rubbed my ear and looked at her for a few minutes. I had been turning -over a thought about this expedition in my mind for some days. I did not -know whether to say anything to her about it or not. It would be giving -Captain Holstrom a pretty hard dig. But I blurted it, for she knew I had -something on my mind and bluntly demanded to know what I was thinking -about. - -“Perhaps this is the kind of a scheme where the devil will help his own, -Miss Holstrom--and therefore Keedy belongs in the thick of it as chief -manager. He’ll win on that basis. I don’t know much about admiralty -law or maritime justice. But it may be that this treasure has not been -officially abandoned. Perhaps taking it is stealing it. I know that the -_Zizania_ got away from port with papers as a trawl fisher. I know I -have no business talking like this about your father’s affair. But if -it’s to be real stealing, perhaps we’ll succeed with Keedy in the game,” - I said--and it was a pretty clumsy joke. It fell flat. - -“I hope my father will wake up,” she said, curtly, looking down on -him where he was giving off orders about clearing the big derrick. -“Sometimes I almost believe in evil spirits and in control of a man’s -mind by another man--in a wicked way, I mean. But I thank God there’s -one of the Holstrom family who can’t be hypnotized by Marcena Keedy. -That is why I have come on this voyage--my father needs a guardian.” - -She came down the steps from the wheel-house, and went into her -state-room. I walked aft, for the _Zizania_ had swung with the surges, -and was tailing toward shore, and I wanted to look at the place where my -work had been cut out for me. - -Keedy met me amidship. He came out from behind a lashed life-boat, and -it struck me at once that he had been in ambush, spying on me. That was -before he had opened his mouth. He did not leave me in any doubt when he -began to talk. - -“Let’s get to an understanding about Miss Holstrom, Sidney,” he rasped, -leveling his finger at me. “You let her alone. No more buzzing her -behind my back or her father’s.” - -“Keedy, you have started running after trouble to-day. In my case, -you’ll catch up with it mighty soon.” - -“Then let’s make believe I have caught up. I’m going to marry that -young lady. And no cheap Yankee masher is going to stand around and make -sheep’s eyes at her. That’s business and you keep your hands down. You -slap me again, Sidney, and I’ll drop you in your tracks--even if the -gold stays there till we can get another diver.” He had his hand on his -hip, and his eyes were fairly green. - -I started to tell him what I thought of him and his chances with that -girl, proposing to throw in a few remarks about what I should do if I -wanted to. But I shut my mouth suddenly. I had no right to stand out -there and insult a girl by quarreling about her with a fellow of that -stripe. - -Vastly different were the circumstances and the relations of the persons -concerned--but I felt the same rankling of resentment which hurt my -pride and my feelings when Jeff Dawlin growled his warning in my ear. -I hated to leave any false impressions with Keedy. I did not propose -to have him think I envied him anything he possessed or thought he -possessed. Pride and the spirit of brag--that was it--prompted my -answer. - -“Look here,” I shot out at him, “I have a girl East who is worth more -than all the gold you expect to find in that wreck over there. What do -you think I’m out in this God-forsaken country for? What do you think -I’m gambling along with you for? It’s so I can grab off enough money to -make a showing when I carry it back home and pour it into her lap! Don’t -you worry, Keedy. I don’t want any of your girls. There’s one who is -waiting for me back East!” How a man will lie when he gets to talking -about girls! I snapped my fingers under Keedy’s nose and walked on aft. -I felt considerably relieved because I figured I had taken some of the -conceit out of him. I had a lot taken out of myself when I returned. - -Miss Kama Holstrom met me. She gave me one of those up-and-down glances -which seem to sting like the flick of a long lash. - -“I have no objection to your discussing your love affairs with Mr. -Keedy, my dear sir--though I question your good taste. But I must ask -you not to discuss me with him.” - -“I assure you I did not!” - -“I stepped into my state-room only to get my cap. I was walking on the -other side of the life-boat when you were talking.” - -“But I--” - -“I’m sure you understand my request, sir.” She walked on. - -A fine partnership--that of Holstrom, Keedy, and Sidney, -treasure-seekers! And there was a silent partner whose silence just -then, along with her disgust, sent a crimson flame into my cheeks. - - - - -XXX--THE LOCKS OF THE SAND - -RIGHT away I found that Captain Holstrom knew how to “team” a crew. He -started that checkerboard outfit of his to humping in good earnest after -he and I had planned out the details of setting the stage for the work -ahead of us. - -We needed to reach as long an arm as possible toward the wreck. - -Inside of four days after we planted our mud-hooks on San Apusa Bar, we -had our string of lighters in place. - -First we anchored them and then we linked them with one another by -cables because the sandy bottom inshore from the steamer afforded poor -holding-ground for the anchors. Having a number of lighters hitched -together in this manner, the chain made a sort of spring cable for the -lighter nearest the wreck where the scuffling surges were piling high -over the shoals. The scow nearest the shore thrashed about in rather -lively style, but I figured that I could do my work from it in pretty -fair fashion. At any rate, by our system of cables, we planted the -lighter less than three hundred feet from the upstanding ribs of the -Golden Gate. It was about the best we could do, considering our limited -equipment. - -On the fifth day all was ready for me to go down for the first time. - -Of course I had been allowed to pick my own helpers, and I had been -giving them lessons for some time. I chose Mate Number-two Jones to tend -hose and lines, and Chief-Engineer Shank was to manage the air-pump. - -I had found them to be steady and reliable men. I owned a Heinke -diving-dress which had cost me six hundred dollars, and with the right -men “up-stairs” I was not worrying about my ability to get down and stay -down--even if I had been off my job for a while. As to what I would be -able to accomplish when I got down on ocean’s floor I was not quite so -sure. - -While I had been waiting for the lighters to be moored I had pumped -Ingot Ike daily. - -He did seem to know what he was talking about--and I had to admit that. -The matter of the treasure of the _Golden Gate_ had crowded everything -else out of his mind, and left his memory mighty dear. He drew a plan of -her with a stubby pencil, and went into minute details of description. -He said the ribs which showed were forward of the room where the -treasure had been stored. The fire had been aft and amidship, and when -she had struck the sand she had buried her nose, and these ribs were -planted so solidly that the surf had not been able to beat them down. As -a quartermaster who had known his ship, he was able to tell me how many -paces aft from the standing ribs should be the spot where the treasure -lay. - -They made ready the best life-boat on the _Zizania_ for me and my -equipment, a big yawl with sponsons. Captain Holstrom did not propose to -take any chances with that outfit during the ferrying process. He went -as coxswain, and I was not surprised, of course, to see Keedy scramble -in even before I had lowered my diving-dress over the side. What did -surprise me was to have Miss Kama show up as a passenger. When she -stepped past me and went down the ladder my eyes bugged out. I thought -’twas somebody I had never seen before. She wore knickerbockers, and -was gaitered to the knees, and she went into the life-boat as nimbly -as a midshipman, asking a hand from no one. I could have cracked Keedy -across the face with a relish for the way he rolled his eyes at her. - -She showed the good sense of an out-of-door girl who understood a thing -or two when she picked that costume. Embarking and disembarking with -that surf running under a keel was no job for a girl in skirts. - -When we came up beside the in-lying lighter we were climbing -white-flaked hills of water and coasting dizzily into green valleys. -Those waves of the old Pacific which had marched across seas from the -lee of the Society Islands were certainly making a great how-de-do in -halting on those sand-bars of the Mexican coast; and inshore there in -the shallows the surf had a nastier fling to it than off where we had -found holding-ground for the old _Zizania_. It was a case of every one -for himself in making the transfer from the life-boat to the lighter. -I was ready to assist the girl, but she set foot on the gunwale, sprang -with the heave of the boat, and landed on deck as lightly as a bird; she -could not have done the trick more neatly if she had worn wings on the -shoulders of that close-fitting sweater. - -There was one cheerful moment for me on that day of anxiety; Keedy was -the last passenger out of the lifeboat, and he teetered and made motions -to jump, and flinched and squirmed and backed water like a swimmer -afraid to plunge in. When he did jump at last he stubbed his toe on -the deck of the lighter, and raked that hooked beak of his across the -planks. I grinned at him when he staggered up, holding to his bleeding -nose, and I went to overhauling my diving-dress, whistling a tune. - -I found Number-two Jones and round little Romeo Shank to be helpful -handy-Andys after the instructions I had given them. The girl never -missed a motion they made in getting me ready. I felt a warm finger -trying to worm its way under my rubber wristbands, and I turned to find -her looking at me with a great deal of concern. She explained that she -wanted to be sure that no water could leak in, and then she seemed to -think that she had been just a bit forward, and she blushed. - -The next thing I knew she was sturdily fetching one of my twenty-pound -shoes, and stood there holding it ready for my helpers. I had gone -down a good many times in my life, but I went that day with the happy -consciousness of helpful interest in my poor self. - -Then they set the helmet on to the breastplate and gave it its -one-eighth turn into the screw bayonet joint, and set the thumb-screws. -My front eyepiece was hinged like the window of a ship’s port-hole, and -this was open. The girl bent down and peered at my face. - -“It seems a terrible thing for you to be closed in there--for you to go -down into that raging water,” she said, her face close to mine. - -“Wish me good luck, and I’ll go humming a tune,” said I, smiling at her. - -“With all my heart I do,” she answered, a catch in her voice. - -I shut the frame, and Mr. Shank set the turn-screw. With a man on each -side of me, I scuffed my way to the ladder, and went over the rail -of the lighter. I waited at the foot of the ladder--about ten feet -under--until I felt that little pop in my ears which signals to the -diver that his Eustachian tube is open, and that the pressure is -equalized. Then I yanked the rope to ask for a taut lifeline, and let go -my hold. - -The sun was bright and the bed of the sea was of sand, and I found good -light below. There was a heavy sway to the water even on bottom, but -I was strong, and knew how to handle myself. I found my footing, and -started along. - -My only tool that day was a peaked-nose shovel. I crawled along, using -it for a push-pole. - -I found the bottom to be a succession of bars, which were parallel with -the shore--waves of sand, so to speak, ranging from six to ten feet in -height. It was a slow job working one’s way across them. However, they -assisted me--there was no danger of getting off one’s course. I -needed only to proceed at right angles to the bars. Through my -bull’s-eye in that dim green light I could see ahead for some distance. -So at last I came to the timbers of the wreck. There was a long tangle -of these, a great mass of wreckage hidden by the sea and protruding but -a little way above the sand which the eternal surf had packed down. I -kept along toward shore until I came to the timbers which, so my eyes -told me, must be the ones that marked the location of the wreck. They -went looming up through the water. I clung to one of them and rested. I -was having no trouble with my air, and now that I had reached the scene -of the work that fact comforted me. The movement of the sea in that -shallower water was considerable, and now and then a heavier roller -jostled me about. But I began to plan out a system of lashings that -would anchor me. - -Then I got down on my belly, and started to measure paces along the edge -of the timbers, following Ike’s instructions as to distance. There -was mighty little that was encouraging about the spot which I finally -located as the probable site of the treasure-chamber. Sand was billowed -and packed there, and the place was quite free from wreckage. It -occurred to me that the other divers had dug the timbers away at this -point. As I was feeling fairly fresh, I decided to use my shovel a bit. - -After five minutes’ toil at that sand I began to perceive why the others -had failed, providing Ingot Ike was correct and they _had_ failed. -In the first place, there was not the footing on that bottom that a -submarine diver needs. I skated about almost helplessly when the heaving -sea clutched at me. When I tried to drive the shovel into the sand I was -pushed back, and the tool made only scratches on the bottom. Without -a prop or a brace, a diver cannot pull or push horizontally with much -force even under the best conditions, and when I did succeed in getting -the shovel into the sand and scooped a hole, the particles began to -settle back, driven by the swaying seas. The giant Pacific was jealous -of the treasure it had engulfed. - -There was nothing more for me to do down there that day. I began to feel -that pain above the eyes which warns the diver. I gave the signal for -return, and went back at a lively pace, for the taut line helped. - -I saw none of them on the lighter until my helmet had been removed, for -when a diver ascends to the air his bull’s-eye becomes covered with mist -in spite of the wash of vinegar which has kept the glass clear below. -Marcena Keedy was in front of me, looking at my hands, and acting as -though he were wondering where I had stowed the find I had made below. - -“Well, it’s there, isn’t it?” he demanded. - -“From what little I have been able to find out, I reckon it is there,” I -told him; “and it wouldn’t surprise me much if it stayed there for -some time.” I was in no mood to encourage that polecat, who was plainly -thinking more about that treasure than he was about any dangers I might -have been through. He drew that streak-o’-paint mustache up against his -nose and looked like a dog about to snap. I turned away from him so as -to have something better to look at. There was the girl beside me. She -sure was an antidote for the poison of Marcena Keedy’s evil eye. Her red -lips were apart, and her little hands were clasped, finger interlaced -with finger. - -“Thank God you are back safe, Mr. Sidney!” - -She wasn’t looking at me as though she were wondering in which pocket I -had hidden an ingot of gold. - -“It was not dangerous,” I told her. “It was disappointing, that’s all.” - -I ignored Keedy. I looked past him to Captain Hol-strom, and related -what had happened below. It was a mighty interested crowd that stood -around me and listened. - -“The idea is,” I wound up, “this is no ‘reach-down-and-pick-it-up’ -proposition.” - -“That’s what I call doing damn little in an hour’s work,” growled Keedy. -“You ain’t down here to tell us how hard that job is. We have heard all -about that from the other divers. You are down here to get that gold. -You bragged around what a devil of a diver you have been, and now when -we have to depend on you, all we get is some more conversation. Have you -got us away down here and let us in on a dead one?” - -“If that money was in a faro-bank instead of a sandbank,” I told -him, “you would be just the man to get it out--you have had plenty of -practice in that line. But this happens to be an honest job, and it -needs something besides false cards.” - -Then I kept on talking to the captain: - -“After giving the thing a good looking-over I have begun to figure on -a few plans. I’ll paw over and size up the stuff on the _Zizania_ this -afternoon and see what there is in stock to help me.” I told Mr. Jones -to unstrap my shoes. - -When Keedy saw them peeling off my dress he had a few more remarks to -offer about the kind of a “hot diver” a man was who called an hour a -day’s work. If I had brought up an ingot in each hand from that first -trip he wouldn’t have been grateful; he would have wanted to know why I -did not bring up the whole box. - -I had a dirty job of it that afternoon pawing over the old junk on board -that steamer, but I managed to sort out some material that fitted into -my scheme, and it was ferried to the lighter. - -I went down again the next morning at sunrise, for the southwest -trade-wind had quieted during the night, and the swell wasn’t quite as -energetic as it had been under the push of the breeze the previous day. - -I had the same spectators. Miss Kama, looking like a pretty boy in her -knickerbockers, had plainly determined to keep in the front row, and -I’ll own up that her presence put ginger into my efforts. I reckoned -I’d show her the difference between a man who could do and dare and a -sneering loafer of the caliber of Keedy. A handsome girl usually has an -effect of that sort on a young man. - -When I reached bottom under the lighter they lowered an old mushroom -anchor to me. I unhooked it, and started to roll it along the “windrows” - of sand toward the wreck. It took every ounce of strength in me to boost -it up those slopes. I had lashed a crowbar to the anchor stock, and when -I finally got the thing to the wreck and had rested I stuck to the job, -though I had really done as much as was advisable at one descent. - -I loosened up a sizable patch of sand with the crowbar, and settled the -anchor in the hole, stock upright. There was no need for me to pack the -sand back; the Pacific Ocean would attend to that part of the job. The -Pacific was altogether too busy in packing sand, though. It did not -discriminate between an anchor which I wanted made solid and treasure -which I wanted set free. - -I went down a second time that day. I carried small chains and a broad -shovel. I lashed myself to the anchor’s stock, and with that support as -a fulcrum for my body I dug into the sand with the crowbar, and fanned -out the loose particles with the broad shovel. - -But it was like the reverse of the story of the man who set out to carry -water in a sieve. The sand kept running in. If I had been able to stay -down there night and day, and have my meals brought to me, and could -have worked without rest or sleep, I might have been able to dig a hole -in that sand and to keep it dug out until I had come to that treasure. -As it was, I toiled until my head seemed splitting, until blood ran from -my nose, and I felt the first weakness of that peculiar paralysis of the -limbs which divers experience when they pass the limit set for endurance -under water. I lashed my tools to the anchor, and was pulled back to the -lighter. - -Human arms had given up--human strength and grit had failed. But I knew -that through the hours of that afternoon, through the watches of the -night, that old, miserly ocean would keep toiling on, rolling sand back -into that hole, patting it down with unseen fingers, locking a door over -the treasure that would serve the purpose better than doors of steel or -bars of bronze. I should find all my labor undone when I came back to -that anchor. - -Therefore I did not lark and play when I was dragged over the rail of -the old lighter. I stumbled to my seat, and sat and wiped blood from my -face when the helmet had been twisted off the breastplate. - -“Four hours since you went down--you’re sure a wonder!” muttered Shank, -patting my dripping shoulder. - -I was embarrassed--a bit shocked--when the girl hurried to me and began -to wipe away the blood with her little handkerchief. I tried to push -away her hands. It didn’t seem right to have her do such a task. But she -resisted me. She kept on. - -“You poor boy!” she said--or I thought she said it; I was not sure. -There was pity in her tones--a caressing kind of pity, such as comes -right from a woman’s heart. I was astonished. She had been stiff and -curt toward me--and was rather short with every one else, for that -matter. She had never seemed tender even toward her own father. - -But she murmured again in my ear, leaning close to me, “You poor boy!” - -I’ll admit I was glad to hear her say it--I needed sympathy; but -because I mention the girl and her little ways please do not jump at the -conclusion that I was falling in love. She had overheard a declaration -which established my standing with her and, I suppose, made her feel -freer in my company. Oh no! I was not falling in love! - -Sitting there as I did with forty pounds of lead on my feet and eighty -pounds of it across my shoulders, with air in my dress puffing me out -like a giant frog, dripping with brine, and hideous with blood-smeared -face, I wasn’t much to look at in the way of a lover. And outside of the -pity she had never by flicker of eyelid, or tone of voice, or touch of -hand intimated that she was interested in me except as a young man who -was tugging at a hard job and deserved a little encouragement. - -“It’s all--all useless--down there--isn’t it?” she asked. - -“No; it’s a glorious job, and I’ve just begun on it.” - -“But it’s wicked for you to suffer like this.” - -“I was never so comfortable and happy in all my life--never so full of -courage.” - -Keedy was listening and I felt like tormenting him. He stuck his -face down to mine. It was not a pretty face. His nose was swathed in -absorbent cotton, which was held on with straps of court-plaster. - -“Well, let me in on why you’re so happy,” he snapped. - -“It doesn’t happen to be any of your business,” I informed him. - -“Ain’t I a partner in this thing with you?” - -“When I get ready to tell you anything about my work, I’ll see that you -are informed. Or, if you want to make the trip, I’ll tuck you under my -arm and take you down to-morrow. I’d be delighted to do so.” He looked -at me a little while and his eyes narrowed. - -That evening I had a talk with Capt. Rask Holstrom. - -Marcena Keedy was not in that conference. I walked the upper deck until -Keedy had gone, grunting and growling, off into his state-room. Then -I hunted up the captain where he was lying on the transom in the -wheel-house, puffing at his pipe and looking rather sullen. - -I knew what was ailing him. I had refused earlier in the evening to come -into the wheel-house while Keedy was there. - -“Being a plain and blunt man, I may as well say what’s on my mind,” - stated Captain Holstrom, sourly. He did not arise. He squinted ar me -from under the vizor of his cap, which was pulled low over his eyes. -“You ain’t dealing with me and Keedy open and frank as your partners. -You ain’t giving us full particulars. You was down four hours to-day, -and came up looking blue and scared, and then just talked flush-dush -with my girl. We ain’t down here for anything except straight business -and results. Your two eyes are the eyes for all three of us. When you -have used ’em down below there we’re entitled to have full report. Me -and Keedy ain’t at all satisfied with the way this thing is running on.” - -I sat and looked at him, and waited to hear whether he had any more to -say. - -“No, sir, we ain’t satisfied,” he repeated. - -“I’m glad Mr. Keedy isn’t satisfied,” I told him. “I wish he would get -so dissatisfied that he would quit this expedition. And I don’t intend -to kowtow to him and make him satisfied.” - -“Well, I’ll be damnationed!” exploded the captain, pushing back his cap. - -“You needn’t be, Captain Holstrom. What I say doesn’t have any reference -to you at all. I hope my relations and yours will stay as they are--no, -I hope they will improve as you know me better. But that gambler has -grafted himself on to this scheme. He isn’t a practical man, as you are. -He sneers at me and my work--and God knows it’s hard and dangerous work. -He expects impossible things, and it doesn’t do any good to come up out -of that hell of water and explain to him. Every time he opens his mouth -I feel like jumping down his throat and galloping his gizzard out of -him. There! That’s rough talk, but I mean it. If Marcena Keedy doesn’t -handle himself different where I’m concerned there’s going to be serious -trouble aboard here. Hold on a moment! Hear me through. I respect your -good judgment and I know you are willing to work hard. I’m ready to talk -to you at any time when that sneak isn’t around. What you say to him -after that about plans and expectations I don’t care--that’s your own -business. But I’m sorry you don’t hate and distrust him as much as I -do. Now I’ll tell you what I found down there to-day, and how the thing -looks to me.” I told him. - -“Then, if all that is so, we may as well up killick and go home, eh?” - I never saw a more disgusted look on a man’s face, or heard a more -melancholy tone. - -“I haven’t told you that to discourage you, or to crybaby myself. I’m -giving you the facts, and I hope you’re practical man enough to keep -from sneering about my efforts the way Keedy does. I’m doing all that a -human being can do--but you’ve got to face facts, Captain Holstrom, and -I’ve been giving you facts, I say. That’s the situation--that’s all! -You know as much as I know. If you have ideas, think ’em over and give -’em to me. I’ll keep on trying to think up something myself.” I went -off to my state-room so as to give him time to do that thinking. - - - - -XXXI--A TASTE OF BLOOD - - -THE old Pacific was in her usual welter next morning. - -The big seas were rolling up from the equator, and we could hear them -booming in on the coast-line. - -As I look back on that nightmare off the bars of San Apusa I think the -day when I went down with the anchor was the calmest day of our stay. -With the everlasting thrust of the trades behind them the billows -rolled, rolled, rolled, rolled--seethed and surged--giant green soldiers -with the white plumes, charging that sandy shore. I got to feel after a -time that they were soldiers in real earnest, and that they were after -me--poor little midget, who was trying to accomplish the impossible. - -At breakfast Mr. Shank ventured to remark politely and somewhat -nervously that he was supposing I would not try to go down that day. - -And I told Mr. Shank rather brusquely that of course I should go down, -and added that if we were to wait for smooth water in soundings on the -lee shore of the Pacific Ocean in the season of the trades, we should -have brought plenty of knitting-work and novels. - -Captain Holstrom, from the head of the table, smiled and winked at me -with the most cordial expression I had ever seen on his face. I decided -that one of my partners was regarding me in a more amiable frame of -mind than he had before I had made that little speech to him. Mr. Keedy -scowled at me, and I was glad of that mark of his continued disesteem. -It occurred to me that perhaps I was weaning the captain from Keedy, for -Holstrom snapped his friend up rather short two or three times during -the meal. - -I went down that day with more weights. The tug of those rollers inshore -was tremendous for a buoyant man, even in the comparative calm of the -previous day. I realized what I would meet up with this day, and I was -not disappointed in my reckoning. - -I was tumbled from hummock to hummock of the submarine sand-bars. I was -knocked down and then was stood up once more. Sometimes I was lifted off -my feet, and then I was rolled and pressed down and pinned to the sand -till it seemed that I would never get on my feet again. Part of the -time I was thrust ahead as if the Pacific were trying to make me walk -Spanish--and then I was yanked backward on all-fours like a big crab. - -I knew a whole lot about undertows, and I realized that I was having an -experience with a particularly crazy one. - -Men who have observed and studied think they have a pretty good line on -the notions and the moods of the sea--but take it from me as a submarine -diver, they haven’t. If one is standing on a rock and looking out on -it, or sailing across it in a safe boat, the ocean becomes a matter of -“beautiful surf,” or an expanse more or less hubbly with waves. - -But get down into it--get down deep where it can play with you, -twirl you, toss you, suck your breath, provided it can throttle your -air-hose--where it can work all its schemes and its spite. You will find -out that the ocean has a new trick for every day. - -There are beaches where persons have bathed in safety for years. Then -all at once some day a shrieking man or woman is seized, as though -by some hidden monster, and is dragged off to death. That mighty and -erratic force is called an undertow. It is now here, now there. It is -born out of diverted currents, checked tide rips. It sneaks up bays, -seeking prey; it roams along open Peaches. I know a lot more about -undertows, but that’s all for now. - -I was in one that day off San Apusa. Wind, tide, a current wandering -off its course--one of the currents that is uncharted and which is known -only by some diver who meets it on its wanderings below the surface, had -combined, and had come to play in the vicinity of the wreck of the old -_Golden Gate_. - -I struggled on toward that wreck. Say, I met an old friend of mine. It -was the mushroom anchor, and it was doing a sort of jig on top of a sand -ridge when I first saw it. Evidently it had been lonesome during the -night, and it had come to meet me. It was at least one hundred feet on -the sea side of the wreck--and I had left it with fluke buried close -to the ribs. If that undertow had dug up that anchor it might be doing -other things. That thought came to me like a flash of hope. There’s no -telling what an undertow will do when it gets to prancing, you know! - -I unlashed the crowbar from the anchor stock and tumbled on over the -ridges. I found myself in an opaque yellow light instead of in the green -radiance I had found on my other two trips, and I knew that the sand was -in motion inshore. When I came to the wreckage of the steamer I did not -know my way about. The undertow had been dragging away the packing of -sand here and there. More bulk of the débris was displayed, so far as I -could judge by touch and by what I could see in the dim light. I groped -my way along to the great ribs which showed above water, in order to get -my bearing. It was a fight to get there. I was thrashed about and tossed -and slatted. I wasn’t exactly sure when I did get there, for other -parts of’ the wreck had been uncovered so much that one could easily be -deceived in water in which boiled so much sand that it was like working -in soup. - -However, I toiled back after I reckoned I had located the marker. - -Yes, the old Pacific had truly had a change of heart since the day -before. The unseen fingers of that freakish undertow had been at -work--they were still at work. They were scooping out sand instead of -piling it in. I can best describe the appearance of things by saying -that there was a smother of sand in the swirling water. Now and then the -water cleared when the undertow let go its tuggings for a moment, and I -could see parts of the steamer which formerly had been hidden from me. - -When I had counted the paces that should bring me in the neighborhood -of the treasure, I set my crowbar into the sand with all the strength -I could muster, and twisted it around and around in order to loosen the -stuff. It was wonderful how quickly the water dragged away what I set -free from that pack. - -A bottle came bouncing up out of the hole. I dislodged pieces of broken -crockery. Ingot Ike had said that the treasure had been stored in -a compartment of the ship near the pantry. The sight of that jetsam -encouraged me. I stabbed with all my might, drove the crowbar in again -and again, struggled to hold myself on bottom, and muttered appeals to -that undertow in my frenzy of toil. I do not know how long I worked. I -do know that all my sensations informed me that I was remaining beyond -my limit of endurance. But the conviction came to me that this was not a -chance to be neglected. I was in a fever of hope. I wanted to show that -coward of a Marcena Keedy that a strong man could call the bluff of a -loafer’s sneers. I wanted to convince Capt. Rask Holstrom that he had -not picked out a piker, and perhaps I wanted a girl to give me the smile -which success ought to win. - -Well--and here’s to the point!--all at once, when I was near fainting, -my crowbar struck something which was not bottles or crockery. I managed -at last to get the point of the bar under the object. I could not see -what it was. I only knew, as I worked the bar, edging it around the -thing to dislodge the sand, that the object was oblong and had corners. - -My buoyancy and the swing of the rolling sea would not allow me to pry -with any great force. I could only pick at the sand and coax the -box out. In the end I had it where I could get my fingers under the -edges--and there’s one thing a diver can do: he can lift with the -strength of a giant, the air in his dress assisting him. - -Yes, it _was_ a box, so I found when I had it out. It was a heavy box -even when lifted there under the sea. It was a small box, and there -could be only one reason for such a small box being so heavy--it was one -of the bullion boxes. Of that fact I was convinced. - -I carried several small chains at my belt--my lashings in case of need. -I circled the box with chains, and secured it to my body as best I -could, then clutched my arm about it for greater safety. As I worked -I grew more excited--I had drawn first blood in my duel with the old -Pacific. Excitedly I pulled the line to send my signal to the lighter, -asking for help on the return. They told me afterward that I gave the -emergency signal. Perhaps I did. They had been waiting for a signal for -so long that they were in a state of panic. They feared that I had been -drowned, for I had been down for horns. When they got my double tug, so -they told me later, Number-two Jones gave a yell, called every man -on the lighter to the rope, and proceeded to give me a run home in -emergency time. - -The first yank took me off my feet. Overballasted by the box of gold, -I tipped head down, and butted the summit of the first hummock of -sand with my helmet. My neck was snapped to one side and my head got a -tremendous rap against the side of the helmet. I did not strike ground -again until I reached the next ridge. I struck that and bounced, and I -think I took a recess on breathing right then and there. I have not much -recollection of the rest of that three hundred feet of rush back to the -lighter. I know I hit a good many hummocks, and I must have passed away -into dreamy unconsciousness when the drag upward through the water to -the rail of the lighter began. - -They told me that when I came over the rail I was bent double, and it -was some time before they saw that I had something tucked in my arms. - -I heard somebody shout, “Oh, God, this man is dead!” But I was just -getting my wits back then. I opened my eyes. Two of the crew were -holding me up, and Shank had my helmet off. He yelled like a maniac: - -“I’m wrong! He ain’t!” - -“I’m mighty glad you’re wrong, Shank,” I told him. My voice was pretty -feeble, but the memory of that box came back to me, and my thoughts were -dancing even if I couldn’t dance with my body just then. - -I tried to look around after that box, but I lost interest in it the -next instant. It’s pretty hard work for me to tell you what happened, -and tell it in a matter-of-fact way, as I’m trying to tell the rest of -this yam. When I looked around I saw Kama Holstrom on her knees a little -way from me, her face as pale as the white foam on the waves, her eyes -wide open. I think her ears had been closed by horror when Shank had let -out his first yell. - -“You’re alive!” she cried. And the next instant I was very much alive, -for she leaped up and ran to me, and threw her arms around my neck and -kissed me squarely on the mouth. Then her face was no longer white. It -flamed. - -“I didn’t mean to--I am sorry--it was a mistake!” she gasped, and she -broke out and cried like a baby. But I caught her hand before she could -get out of reach of me, and pulled it to me and kissed it. - -“Ah, if I _had_ been dead you would have waked me up,” I told her. - -“I’ve a blamed good mind to kiss you myself!” roared old Holstrom from -somewhere behind me. Then he let out a whoop and came and capered in -front of me. - -“You’ve brought up twenty thousand dollars’ worth of gold!” he informed -me. “Five ingots, with the assay mark on ’em, and each worth four -thousand dollars. That’s the kind of a diver you are, Sidney! All -together, men! Three cheers for the greatest sea diver that ever wore -lead shoes!” And the men gave the cheers while he pounded his fists on -my back. - -I got a view of Marcena Keedy when I turned my head around. Mr. Keedy -was not showing any interest in my condition--not he. He was sitting on -deck with the open box hugged between his knees, and he was feeling over -those bars of gold like a lover fondling his lady’s cheek. - -“I can’t say I’m stuck on the style of that critter,” mumbled Shank in -my ear. “He yanked that box away from you before we had fairly swung you -inboard and before anybody knew you was alive. He pried it open, and has -set there making love to it ever since.” - -Old Ike was squatting in front of Keedy on his haunches, and was -drooling like a hound watching a butcher. - -“It’s there! I’ve always said it was there. It’s there all bright and -shining. They all have hooted at me because I have said it was there. -Now what do you think?” - -“Nobody has been a game sport in this thing except you and me,” said -Keedy, sticking an ingot up under Ike’s nose. “Nobody would back your -hand till I came along. I’ve had to talk everybody over before anybody -would do anything. I know how to play a hand with a buried card in it. -I’ve played that hand to the limit, and now see what has happened. When -you fellows are passing cheers around you’d better hooray for the man -who has turned the trick--for the man who kept at it till he got you -down here.” - -He gave me a nasty side-glance and snuggled the box under his legs just -as though he had recovered property which belonged to him. - -“Where there’s one there’s the rest of ’em, eh, Sidney? You have found -the nest of the beauties, eh? Well, do we get another nice little box -to-day? We may as well open the game with forty thousand while we’re -about it.” - -Shank was leaning close to me, unscrewing the wing nuts between the -breastplate and my collar-band. He began to swear very soulfully in -an undertone, and he kept on swearing when he got a look from me that -indorsed all his sentiments in regard to Mr. Keedy. - -“There are three millions down there--and twenty thousand is only a -flea-bite,” declared the callous knave. I don’t believe he noticed that -I was half dead when I was pulled up--or cared a rap about my condition, -anyway. “I’m strong for bulling the game when it’s coming your way. What -do you say, Sidney, if we make the first day’s ante forty thousand?” - -“Captain Holstrom,” I said, “a man who has been banging the soul out of -himself for five hours in a divingsuit is in no condition to talk to a -skunk like that over there. Can’t you say something?” - -I must confess that the captain did rise nobly to the occasion. A -tugboat man who has spent most of his life fighting for berths in the -maze of shipping along the San Francisco water-front needs considerable -hot language in his business, and Captain Holstrom was in good practice. - -“So I’ve got the two partners against me now, have I?” snarled Keedy. -“I had to fight to get the two of you into the proposition, and now -that you’re making good I’ve got to fight both of you to keep the -thing going, have I? Thanks for the hint as to how you propose to hold -cards--but I serve notice right now that you can’t whipsaw me between -you.” - -He looked as evil as a door-tender in Tophet, but his threats did not -trouble me. - -That evening something happened that indicated further cleavage of -associations on board the _Zizania_, whose checker-board crew had set an -example early in the cruise. - -Ingot Ike came to the captain and myself in the wheel-house. - -“Now that we’re beginning to haul in the bright and shining stuff that -makes the world go round I’d like to know where I’m going to get off -when the divvy comes,” said he. And he was more than a little insolent -in the way he said it. It was a good guess that he had absorbed more or -less of the insolence of his new running-mate, Marcena Keedy. - -Captain Holstrom was pretty short with the man. He informed old Ike that -when the work was done and we knew what the profits would be he would -be handed a lay which would make him comfortable for life. “That was the -understanding between us when we started out on the gamble,” said the -captain. “You haven’t got a dollar ahead now--you never did have. A lot -of money wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. You don’t know how to keep it -or how to spend it.” - -“That ain’t any of your business!” declared Ike, with heat. “We have -begun to get up that gold. We’ll get all of it. It’s there, just as I -said it was. I want ten per cent, of all that comes over the rail, and I -want it without any strings on it.” - -“And if you got it laid into your hand you’d be around in six months -borrowing from me,” said the captain. “If this thing comes out as it -ought to, I’ll put enough in trust for you to pay you a hundred dollars -a month as long as you live. Now go off and dream of that, and be -happy.” - -“Happy your Aunt Lizy!” yelped the old man. “See here, me and Keedy is -the whole thing in this, and--” - -Captain Holstrom arose and grabbed Ike and tossed him out of the -wheel-house door. - -“Them two fellows,” he confided, wrathfully, to me, “will be charging me -board on this trip, besides taking all the profits for themselves, if I -don’t watch out.” - -I did not confide to the captain any of my doubts that evening in -our talk. I was hoping for the best. I had recovered one box with the -assistance of my enemy, the old Pacific. I understood the queer and -notional quirks of undertows. I realized that history might not repeat -itself in this case--but the Pacific coast was new to me, and I was not -ready to believe that I had happened on the only case of an undertow -scooping sand instead of piling it and packing it. I went to bed, tired -as a hound after a chase. - -And I went down into the sea again the next day, still hoping. Yes, I -was fairly confident--so confident that I carried a pair of ice-tongs. -My experience of the day before had shown me that this tool was just -the thing with which to grapple one of those boxes and lift it from the -sand. - -There was plenty of motion in the depths of the sea. But I realized that -it was not the motion of the day before. The swaying water thrust me -ahead over the hummocks with more force than it pulled me backward. The -water was clear and green once more. Where, oh, where had my undertow -gone? - -I had ground my crowbar into the sand where I worked the day before. I -could not find it, and after a survey I saw it had been covered by the -drifting sand. Portions of the wreck which had been in sight were -hidden again. The hole where I had wrought so valiantly was filled and -smoothed. It is wonderful how quickly currents of water can make changes -in sand. I had seen instances before in my submarine jobs; now I was -beholding a more striking case. After inspecting the scene I judged that -the treasure was buried more deeply than ever. The ocean had plenty of -loose sand with which to work, and had used it. I tell you honestly I -never suffered such an awful feeling of disappointment. The pang was -worse because I had been successful once. - -It was as though my enemy, the ocean, had decided to give me one bite of -the fruit of success in order to whet the appetite of my expectations. -It had not relented in order to do that--it had played a devilish trick -on me. - -It had shown me that the millions were there--money-enough for all that -life or love might require in this world. I had got a peep--had got one -taste--and the malicious ocean had tucked it all out of reach once more, -and was making faces at me with the wrinkles of that hard-packed sand. - -It was useless to remain down and exhaust myself. I signaled, and -returned to the lighter. - -As soon as my bull’s-eye cleared after I came up out of the bubbling -water I saw Keedy. He was perched on the rail near the life-line coils, -looking down at me like a fish-hawk eying its prey. For a moment I was -glad I did not have another box. I enjoyed his disappointment. - -Then, after my helmet was off, I told Captain Hol-strom that a change in -current had piled up the sand and that nothing could be done that day. - -“That’s it!” raged Keedy, smacking his fist into his palm. “You wouldn’t -take my advice yesterday. You wouldn’t follow your hand when the cards -were running right. I understand about those things. That was the time -to double the ante! I know how to play the game for what it’s worth. -There ain’t any brains in this whole outfit except what I’ve got under -my hat. I see it’s up to me to go down there and show you how to do this -thing.” - -“I’ll be out of this diving-dress in a few minutes,” I told him. “You’re -welcome to use it.” - -I had a wild hope that he was mad enough to go down--angry enough and -gold-hungry enough. It would have settled the case of Keedy if he had -gone down--soaked with rum and tobacco as he was. But he swore and -walked away and jumped into the life-boat--so much of a coward that he -wanted to put as great a distance between that dress and himself as he -could. - -I can describe the happenings of the next two sad weeks in two words, -“Nothing doing!” - -Not that I didn’t go down. I went every day. I tried all kinds of tools. -I sat up nights to think, and worked days under water until they had to -pull me back to the lighter, riding on my back over the sand hummocks, -so weak that I could not use my feet and drag my lead-weighted shoes. -But the old Pacific had given us our one mouthful of bait, and now was -mocking us. If I loosened sand the ocean took that sand and piled it -higher over the treasure. And all the time Keedy glowered and growled -and swore, and said I was not half trying. - -One morning Captain Holstrom came banging on my state-room door before I -was awake. He tried to tell me something, fairly frothing at the -mouth, but the words tumbled over each other so rapidly that I couldn’t -understand. He was jabbing a slip of paper at me, and I took it and -read: - -_To Holstrom and Sidney,--With two partners working against me, I claim -the partnership is broken. After this I’ll work on my own hook, and I’ll -have a man who is a real diver, not a dub; and I warn you not to bother -me in any way._ - -“Partnership broken!” yelled the captain. “And how do you suppose he has -broken it? He sneaked away in the night. He took Ike and four of my crew -and the best life-boat. But that ain’t the worst. He took the gold--all -of it! Took the twenty thousand. He had the key to the safe.” - -“Why did you let him have the key to the safe?” - -“Because he howled around that he ought to have some office as a -partner, and wanted to be treasurer. He has trimmed us for twenty -thousand, and he’ll use that money to fit out another expedition. He -has done us good and proper, and there ain’t anything sensible we can do -about it.” - -I reflected a few moments, and decided that, considering the kind of a -project we were working on, we could not afford to chase Keedy and howl. -In the opinion of certain persons interested in that wreck, we might -appear as thieves, ourselves, if the thing became known in Frisco. - -I tried to say something to Captain Holstrom about being well rid of -Keedy, but I do not think he heard me. He was too busy stamping about -and swearing. That was truly a dark-blue morning on the _Zizania_. - -They were certainly weary and hopeless days which tagged on after -that. I kept going down, for I hoped to meet up with another obliging -undertow. But San Apusa Bar did not seem to be a popular resort for -undertows. - -In about ten days we got another hard jolt. A little schooner came -swashing up in the lee of the _Zizania_, and a boat was rowed off to us. -The two men who leaped over the rail introduced themselves as Mexican -customs officers for the district off which we lay, and they wore the -uniform to prove their identity. It had been reported to them, they -said, that we were seeking treasure from the wreck of the _Golden Gate_, -and they told us we must stop such business at once and sail away or we -should lay ourselves liable to arrest and imprisonment. They had a lot -to tell us about what the law was, but I have forgotten. Maybe they were -giving us straight law, and maybe they were not. Neither Holstrom nor I -knew. - -The captain did know men if he did not know law--and he was a man -who had mighty keen sense for a crook’s trail, having had a lot of -experience with crooks on the water-front. He rubbed his red knob of a -nose for some time, and listened. Then he invited the customs men into -his sanctuary of the wheel-house, and called me along with them. - -“I know all about who has been talking this over with you, gents,” he -told them. “I reckoned he would make down the coast in that life-boat he -stole from me. He stole that boat, he stole my men, he stole what else -he could lay his hands on here. He is a yaller-faced faro-dealer. He -never told the truth, he never dealt square cards, he has always cut -a corner on every man he had business with. I don’t want to see you -fooled. I’m the captain of this steamer. You can see I’m something of a -man. This is my partner, and you can look at him and see that he is no -crook. I’m going to get right to the point, gents. Do you want to do -business with a square man or a crook? You might as well be open with -me. Men have to live down here in Mexico. I know all about this customs -business along the coast. You’ve got to do business to live.” - -They blinked hard, but they did not protest. - -“I don’t know how much of a ‘hot rock’ he dropped into your hat, but I’m -prepared to drop in a bigger and a hotter one.” - -I had never heard that expression about a “hot rock” before, and I was -obliged to listen a little while longer in order to understand that -Captain Holstrom was talking thus bluntly about a bribe. - -“In one case you’re doing business with a crook--a thief. He’ll turn -around and do you when he has used you. In this case you are dealing -with a man who has a name along the water-front, who owns this steamer, -and who is here to make a dollar for himself and for you. You are men -with brains and you can size up chaps pretty well. I’ll bet you didn’t -like the looks of that whelp with his cat’s eyes and his mustache cocked -up--come, now!” - -They blinked harder. - -The captain leaned to me and whispered in my ear: “Run and tell Kama to -give you every gold piece she has got in her pocket. Dig over your own -pockets. Tell the Joneses to dig. Bring it here. I’ve got to keep ’em -on the run with conversation.” - -I returned with my collection, and the captain added the contents of his -own pocket, banging the coins on the transom. Then he swept the money -into a little sack and drove the sack down into the trousers pocket of -one of the officers. - -“That’s only posting a little forfeit that we’ll do as we agree,” cried -Captain Holstrom, heartily. “We are here where you can watch us, gents. -But you can’t watch a fly-by-night like that coyote who has been lying -to you about us. Keep your eyes out--stand by us--and you’ll get a ‘hot -rock’ in your hat that you’ll need both hands to hold up. We’ll see the -other man’s stake and then raise him out of the game--and if we don’t, -then come and seize the steamer.” - -He followed the men to the rail, shook hands with them half a dozen -times, and they returned most urbane grins when they rowed away. - -As soon as they were out of ear-shot the captain cursed them in horrible -fashion and shook his clenched fist at them under pretense of waving -farewells. - -“So that’s what Keedy done as quick as he got down coast to a port, hey? -Cleaned us out of what he could lug, and then sent them critters here -to finish the job. He probably thinks he is going to make a clear field -here for himself by strapping us for every cent, and then setting the -customs on to us as soon as he can drop another ‘hot rock’ into their -hat so as to raise us out.” - -“Don’t those men feel bound in any way after taking money from us?” I -asked him. - -“They feel bound till the next fellow gets to ’em, my son. Do you see -what we have got cut out for us? By the jumped-up Judy, we’ve got to get -that gold--and we’ve got to keep ahead of everybody else in getting that -gold, because them custom-house blood-suckers are going to stick to the -juiciest crowd. I don’t know what kind of an outfit Keedy proposes to -bring back here, but he has got twenty thousand dollars in his fist, and -a man can do a lot of business on charters with twenty thousand dollars. -And we haven’t got a sou markee.” - -He stamped into the wheel-house, shaking his fist above his head, and I -walked up and down the upper deck, thinking some thoughts which I do not -care to call back to mind. - - - - -XXXII--PER MISTER MONKEY - -AS she had done many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl -came out of her state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was -a consolation. She looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and -swung along by my side with an easy air of comradeship. - -The word “comradeship” best expresses our attitude toward each other. -After that explosion of her feelings on board the lighter, when she had -kissed me in front of the whole bunch, she had coated herself with just -a little ice, and my Yankee reserve and sensitiveness detected it. It -was as though she had hinted to me that I would be a cad to presume -further because she had taken a woman’s interest in my misfortune. In -fact, she had dropped a few words in regard to women making fools of -themselves when they are too frightened to know what they are doing. - -Furthermore, she stuck to that knickeroocker costume of hers, and I -found myself forgetting half the time that she was a girl, for she -clambered about over the truck aboard the old _Zizania_ as no girl -in skirts could, and never needed a hand on her trips to and from the -lighter. She wore those clothes with such frank assurance that the -garb was the only suitable one for the circumstances, with such lack -of self-consciousness, that after a few days it really seemed as if the -other men had forgotten that we had a girl aboard. - -Perhaps that accounts for the fact that when one of the firemen rushed -past us a few minutes later he was using language such as he would not -have used had he been properly mindful that there was a lady in hearing. - -The fireman came from the depths below-decks, and was chasing the -Russian Finn’s monkey. He was so intent on the chase that when the -fleeing monkey invaded the sanctity of the upper deck the fireman came -along, too. There were several breathless instants in that part of the -pursuit which we saw. You will recollect that this monkey had a false -end to his mutilated tail--a curved wire, which was covered with cat’s -fur. As the monkey fled, screaming and swinging the heavy end of the -tail from side to side, the hook caught, first on a stanchion, then on -a lifeboat prop. The monkey had not entirely mastered the science of -handling that new tail, or else he was too excited just then to remember -its limitations. When he had his own pliant tail it didn’t matter if a -loop hooked around an obstruction. But now when the wire hooked itself -the monkey was obliged to back up and unhook that inflexible loop. Each -time he stopped he lost all the lead he had gained on the fireman. - -Four times in traversing the upper deck the coal-heaver was near enough -to make a crack at the monkey with a grate bar. Each time the monkey -unhooked himself just in time to be able to dodge and continue the -flight. Finally the fugitive made the ensign mast by a rousing leap, -shinned, up, and hung over the dingy gilded ball at the top. I don’t -understand monkey talk, but I’m sure that the yells he sent down were -just as pure profanity as that which the fireman was howling up at him. - -“Hey, there, my man,” I called, “that kind of talk doesn’t belong up -here.” - -He shut up, gave the monkey a long and blistering stare, and came back -toward the ladder. Sweat was running down through the soot on his face, -and that face showed that he was in no pleasant frame of mind. - -“I asks to be excused,” he said, “but that--” he gulped. “Seeing that -I can’t talk about it before a lady and be polite, I asks to be excused -again and I’ll be going.” - -I followed him to the head of the ladder and stopped him just as he was -on the first rounds. - -“What happened?” - -“We’re keeping up a little steam for the derrick windlass and the pumps, -and that gimlet-eyed, snub-nosed hellion got into the bunkers when I was -on deck, and turned on my wet-down hose, and shifted twenty tons of dust -coal out to where it’s all got to be shoveled back. I’m going down to -write out notices for a funeral and, by Jabez! I’ll guarantee to have -the corpse ready!” - -“Shifted twenty tons of coal!” said I, surprised. “It must have taken -him some time.” - -“I guess you don’t know what can be done in fine coal with a stream -of water when you bore it in,” snapped the fireman. “That wire-tailed -gabumpus wasn’t in there five minutes. He has laid in wait and watched -me sprinkle coal. He turned her on full bent and bored. I’ll get him, -and I’ll get him good!” His smudged face went out of sight down the -ladder. - -There are some ideas in this life which steal up on a man and whisper -to him, and keep whispering for a long time, until at last he -overhears--and then he plans and toils, and in the end an invention -results. - -Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the -head. - -Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The -idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all -at once; I was dizzy. The details were hazy--but there was the idea -hammering at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that -ensign mast, looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he -misunderstood my act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did -not care. I had got used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard -the _Zizania_. - -I turned around and found the girl looking at me with wide-open eyes. -“This isn’t insanity,” I told her. “It doesn’t run in the Sidney family. -But an idea has just come to me out of a monkey’s prank, and it’s such -a wonderful idea that I don’t dare to talk about it until I have thought -it over. I guess you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Kama; I’ve got to go -into my state-room and pound at that idea while it is hot.” - -I did not sleep much that night. I was wrestling with a notion as the -old chap in the Bible wrestled with the angel. And when morning came I -was positive that an angel of a notion had come to me. I told Captain -Holstrom at breakfast that I was not going down that day. But when he -turned a doleful look at me I grinned so amiably that he snapped his -eyes, thinking, perhaps, that he was not seeing just straight. - -“I’ll have something to tell you later, Captain. It’ll sound better to -you when I have made certain that we have got stuff aboard here to work -out an idea.” - -That became my business after breakfast--to hunt the _Zizania_ over for -certain material. I invited Captain Holstrom along with me, and took two -men for helpers. - -My first quest was for hose. The _Zizania_ carried canvas hose for -fire purposes, stacked here and there on racks. It was not in prime -condition, for the old _Zizania_ had been condemned along with her -equipment as far as Government purposes went. - -We got that hose down and measured it, and found rising two hundred -feet of stuff that was serviceable. I needed three hundred feet to cover -the distance between the lighter and the wreck. I made inquiries about -canvas. The steamer had a suit of sails for her two masts, and the sails -had been unbent some time before and were stored. Before the day was -over Mate Number-two Jones had men at work cutting that canvas and -sewing it into hose of a diameter to fit the fire-hose. Of course, -it was crude work, but I was obliged to do the best I could with the -materials at hand. - -That evening I called a conference. Captain Holstrom, his two mates, and -Engineer Shank assembled in the wheel-house, and I explained as best I -could what my preparations meant. - -Remember, please, that at the time of which I am writing hydraulic -mining had not been tried, and men in those days had no conception of -what a stream of water would accomplish in moving soil. - -I told those blinking confrères that I believed I could direct a -stream of water on that sand below the sea and bore a hole down to that -treasure. The only one in the party who showed one glimmer of enthusiasm -was Mr. Shank. And even he did not get up and hurrah. He nodded his head -sagely and admitted that “stranger things had happened.” - -“But you’ve got to use our steam-donkey for your stream,” growled -Captain Holstrom, “and you can’t get the _Zizania_ any nearer shore than -this without wrecking her. You’re only planning on three hundred feet of -hose.” - -“That’s all I need, Captain. Mr. Shank can build us a plunger-pump with -brakes, and we’ll put the whole crew on to the beams, and have ’em -give an imitation of a firemen’s muster.” - -Mr. Shank nodded again, and allowed that “stranger things had been -done.” - -“How did you happen to think of this cussed scheme, anyway?” inquired -Captain Holstrom, not trying to hide his disappointment. - -I promptly decided that I would not confess that the thing had been -suggested to me by a monkey with a wire tail. I looked at the scowling -captain, and I could imagine the wealth of his language if I should tell -him any such thing. So I took all the credit to myself--and it was not -much credit I received from those solemn listeners. The most I got out -of Holstrom was the sullen statement that no matter what I did next the -situation couldn’t be any worse than it was. - -The work went on the next day, and the day after, and the day after -that. It was slow business making that hose so that it would be anyway -water-tight. And the wooden force-pump took a lot of time in the -building, rude affair though it was. It had a plunger--two ends of wood -on an iron rod, and the brake-beams were long enough so that a dozen men -could get a clutch on them. - -I don’t remember how much time we used up in getting our makeshift -apparatus into such shape as would warrant it being used for the trial. - -I do remember this--and remember it all too well!--before we were in -readiness for the test of the hose and our pump a small schooner came -rolling up the coast and anchored well inside of us, even nearer the -wreck than our lighter from which we had been operating. - -This was no customs boat. Within a few hours we abroad the _Zizania_ -knew that Marcena Keedy was in command of the new arrival, and that he -had brought two divers and was full of hope and curses and brag. - -Where Keedy secured his men and his craft we did not know--for social -calls were not exchanged between the two vessels. But a lot can be -accomplished in a few weeks when a man has greed to prick him, a grudge -to settle, and twenty thousand dollars to back him. - -Capt. Rask Holstrom had been in the depths of despair before the arrival -of Keedy; now he found a hole leading into the subcellar of his despair, -and retreated still lower. He had no faith in my new contrivances. He -wanted me to abandon work on such folderols and go down and stand over -that treasure. He could not seem to see with my eyes. He knew that -millions in gold were at the bottom of the sea--I had recovered a sample -of it. He felt just as though it lay there unprotected, and that the -first-comer would get it. As a submarine diver who had struggled against -the difficulties of the situation, I was more serene. I didn’t know what -sort of prodigies in the diving line Keedy had secured as my rivals, but -I was not ready to admit to myself that they would succeed by ordinary -means where I had failed after exerting every ounce of effort. - -Using Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, I saw them going down. They -went together. Evidently Keedy had concluded that if one diver had -failed, two ought to be twice as good, and succeed. - -Captain Holstrom remained at the end of his telescope until he acquired -a permanent squint. We had hard work to get him to drop the glass long -enough to eat. Day after day, as soon as it was light in the morning, -he was in the wheel-house, balancing the glass across the window-sill, -watching Keedy’s schooner. He evidently feared and expected to see -uncounted wooden boxes of ingots come tumbling up over her rail. - -My equipment had been almost ready when Keedy arrived, but now another -consideration held me back. I did not propose to let the other crowd in -on my methods if I could help it. No matter what Captain Holstrom and -his associates thought of the feasibility of the scheme, I had a lot of -confidence in it, and was not willing that a rival should know enough -about it to copy any plans. - -Therefore I set my crew at work building a wall of boards about the -lighter, leaving only a door for my exit over the side. I wanted to -conceal the pumping operations. As to the divers whom I should meet -at the scene of the wreck, I trusted to other measures to conceal my -system. - -I was out on the lighter to superintend the building of the wall, -and more especially to oversee the setting of the force-pump and its -attachments. I did not like the looks of the sea on that last day of our -work. It looked murky and slaty as the big rollers surged under us, and -I remembered that it showed that same color on the day when my friendly -undertow had helped me. I was tempted to go down and investigate, but I -had seen the men from Keedy’s schooner go overboard, and I concluded -to keep away from contact with them until I was ready for serious -operations. - -Inclosed in my wall on the lighter, I was busy about my own affairs, and -did not peep to see what was happening in the neighborhood. - -Captain Holstrom remained on the _Zizania_, in close companionship of -his only intimate of those days--his long telescope. But Kama Holstrom -was at my side while I worked, cheering me by her wise little comments, -her bright eyes taking all in, her quick mind grasping all the -possibilities of my scheme. - -It was a rather cheerful little group there in our pen. Even Number-two -Jones was whistling in jig time, for all the apparatus was fitting -together as slick as a school-marm’s hand in a fur mitten. And then in -through the door burst a human thunderbolt in the form of Capt. Rask -Holstrom. - -He was bareheaded and his gray hair was scruffed up like the bristling -mane of a mad bulldog. He was not able to manage words for about a -minute, but he wasn’t voiceless by any manner of means. He roared and -leaped about and smote his fists together. He picked up our hose and -flung it about himself like an insane snake charmer. He kicked at the -wooden pump with his stubtoed shoes until I was obliged to push him -away. Then he grabbed the hose once more, and reeled it about himself in -senseless fury, for all the world like a caterpillar weaving its cocoon. -His square face was a war map of rage, and in the center of that face -his red nose gleamed like a danger signal. - -We stood and gaped at him. There wasn’t much else we could do as long as -he remained in that awful state. He paid no attention to his daughter’s -questions and appeals. - -I took a peep through the cracks of the boarding to see whether the old -_Zizania_ were still afloat; I had a horrified suspicion that she -had sunk or burned. She floated serenely, sweeping up and down on the -crested waves. - -After letting off his surplus of steam in howls, Captain Holstrom was -able to manage speech at last. - -“They’ve got it!” he yelled. “They’re getting it! I’ve seen ’em pull -two boxes of it over their rail, and they’re dancing jubilee around the -deck.” He flung down the coils of hose, and stamped on it, and spat the -most vicious oaths I ever listened to. - -“They’re getting it--they’ve got it--and all you’re doing here is -fooling with a damnation squirt-gun that ain’t no sense and no good--and -I told you so in the first place. Keedy was right. I ought to have stuck -to Keedy. I’ve known Keedy. He was a friend of mine till you came along -and broke us up. I had promised my girl to him. He ain’t setting around -darning second-hand canvas”--he kicked the hose--“when he ought to be up -and about, doing real business.” He rushed at me and clacked his fists -under my nose. “I’m all done with you! I’m going to Keedy and crawfish -and offer him the steamer and my equipment for a lay with him and his -men. I’ll offer him my girl. You’ll marry him if I have to hold you up -in front of the minister by the ears!” he informed her, whirling and -shaking his fists under her nose, too. “I’ve had all the silly notions -and lallygagging I propose to have, and what I say goes after this. It’s -business from now on.” - -He started to plunge back through the door like a down through a hoop. A -couple of his men were holding a yawl beside the lighter. - -I had used my submarine grip on Captain Holstrom once before when he was -drunk. I used it now when he was sober--and the grip held. I grabbed him -and yanked him back, slammed the door, and set myself against it. - -“You can’t dissolve partnership with me in any such way,” I informed -him. “Especially not right now, just as I’ve got the world by the tail.” - -“I’ll show you whether I can dissolve partnership or not,” he barked; -and he began running about the inclosure, roaring threats and peering -here and there. He was plainly hunting for a weapon of some sort in -order to beat me away from the door. - -“Kama!” I called to her--the first time I had ever addressed her so -familiarly, but that was no time for niceties. “Kama, it’s no use to -plead with your father. He’s no better than a lunatic. He’s going to -throw everything into the hands of that thief of a Keedy. It mustn’t be -done!” - -The captain had found a dub and was coming at me. - -She put herself between us. He knew better than to raise his club -against her, and he kept dodging back and forth to get past her. He paid -no attention to her protests and appeals. - -“Mr. Shank--Mr. Jones,” she cried, “take that club away from my father. -He is not in his right mind.” - -“It would be mutiny--mutiny and State prison,” stammered the mate. - -“I’m his daughter--I’ll go into court if it ever comes to that! I order -you to do it!” - -“Keep the others off, and I’ll do it,” I said in her ear, and I rushed -past her. - -Holstrom struck at me viciously, but my rush had taken him by surprise. -I caught his arm and the stick, and tore the weapon away from him. But -to down him and subdue him was a different proposition--and a very husky -job he made of it for me. - -He was broad and sturdy; he was sober, and he was beside himself with -rage. The spectacle of that gold going into the hands of Keedy and his -gang had made a lunatic of him for the time being. I got no help from -the others. Men of the sea and ships, they had a wholesome tear of what -would happen to mutineers when that matter came into court. I struggled -with that old rascal until every muscle in me throbbed with the pain of -tension, and I thought the blood would burst through my face. No matter -about the details of that long fight. But at last I got him down; I -rolled him on his face. I pulled his hands together, kneeling on him, -and the girl lashed his wrists together when I appealed to her. She -lashed his legs as well, for I decided to take no chances with him while -he was in that mood. - -When I got my breath I leaned over him and spoke my little piece: - -“This is tough business for all of us, Captain Holstrom. I don’t know -what may come out of it. I’m prepared to take my medicine if I’ve done -wrong. But you have started in to run amuck. You ought to know what -Keedy is by this time. He has done you once. He would do you worse the -next time. If you weren’t crazy at this minute you’d realize it. I don’t -propose to stand by and see you heave your best chance over the rail in -any such fashion. I demand twenty-four hours to make good on my scheme. -Twenty-four hours--that’s all. I know how those men got that gold. I -got mine in the same way. But they won’t get any more; I know conditions -down there; I’ve been all through it. You listen to me, I say! I’m going -to take twenty-four hours--and if I’ve got to keep you tied up while I -operate, then it’s tied up you stay. I’ll take all the responsibility -of this mutiny, men,” I told the crowd on the lighter. “I’m a partner in -this expedition with a signed contract. Twenty-four hours from now I’ll -hold out my hands and let you tie me up if I haven’t made good.” - -That was pretty bold talk, and I’ll confess that I did not know just -where I was going to get off. But to let Captain Holstrom run away to -that rogue of a Keedy just when I was on the eve of my experiment--to -allow Holstrom to hand over everything to that he-devil--was too -intolerable. - -“We’ll take the captain back to the steamer,” I told the men. “I’m -assuming all responsibility.” - -“I’ll share it with you,” said the girl, stoutly. - -Captain Holstrom seemed to have lost his voice. He stared at us and -gasped like a fish newly heaved on deck. He was silent while we carried -him to his state-room on the steamer. We left him tied up well and his -daughter was his caretaker and jailer by her own choice. She was showing -the grit of a young catamount in that emergency. - -All of it was about as bad as it could be. But it was going to be worse. - - - - -XXXIII--THE HEART OF THE MILLIONS - -I WAS about at daybreak next morning. The man who predicted the first -eclipse of the sun and was waiting for it had nothing on me in the way -of a case of nerves. I kept away from the captain’s state-room. I had -plenty on my mind without loading up with any more trouble. - -The first thing I saw when I came on deck was a little schooner which -was lying-to a few cable-lengths from us. She looked familiar. A boat -was slid over her rail. Through the telescope I saw two men in uniform -take seats in the stem-sheets. They were those customs chaps who had -visited us before and they rowed past us toward Keedy’s schooner. -I turned the telescope and saw that somebody in Keedy’s crowd was -wigwagging a flag furiously. - -I saw something else through the glass. Keedy’s divers were going down -and I could imagine with what kind of tongue-lashing he had been urging -them to “follow their hand.” - -For an instant I had a wild notion of calling for my boat crew and -beating them to it. Then I looked out over that quieter sea, and felt -sure that the freakish undertow had gone off to play elsewhere. - -“Let ’em go down and learn a thing or two,” I said to Romeo Shank, -“and then come up and tell Keedy that the Pacific Ocean is something, of -a gambler itself when it comes to ‘following your hand.’” - -I knew well enough that I’d better stick around pretty close aboard -the old _Zizania_, for I was sure we would be receiving a call from the -customs men. They would find our treasury bare, and they would find -the captain of the expedition trussed up in his state-room. They would -probably come with another “hot rock” which had been dropped in their -hat by the prospering Keedy. - -Yes, there was only one station for me that morning! - -The visitors arrived in less than an hour. They tried to smile when they -came over the rail, but it was a mighty sick smile. - -I led them into my state-room, and did not pay any attention to their -questions about the captain. They talked broken English, and little of -it, and so there were no words wasted. In a few minutes I knew what was -wanted. We must up killick and get out. We were there without authority; -we were breaking laws; we were stealing other men’s property. - -I tried to talk about Keedy and his gang. How about them? The -officers shrugged their shoulders and scowled at me. Ah, that was the -Government’s business, not mine, they told me. They were attending to -that case. Had I not seen them going over there also? Yes, all should -be used alike--but we must go or else they would report, and a gunboat -would be sent to drive us away--yes, to confiscate our ship. So! - -Captain Holstrom had been right in regard to them--I found that they -were blood-suckers, looking for the juiciest proposition, and Keedy had -got next by some plan--perhaps by being a better liar. - -I stared at those knaves for a few moments, and did some tall thinking -quickly. I was really getting used to quick thinking by that time. - -When I jumped up and asked to be excused for a moment they smiled and -settled back on the transom. Perhaps they thought that I proposed to -raise Keedy out of the game. - -I found Mate Number-two Jones on the main deck forward. - -“They have called the turn on us--say that we must get off the coast,” I -told him. “Keedy has bribed them over our heads. I tell you, Jones, I’m -going to get that treasure! I’ve got to get it. This isn’t mere brag -talk. You are posted on my plans, and you believe in them.” - -“The scheme does look good to me,” admitted the mate. - -“If those men leave here tied up to Keedy they’ll send a gunboat and -shoo us off--and they’ve told Keedy, of course, how to dodge her. Jones, -those men have got to stay aboard the _Zizania_ until I make my try -to-day. And, by the gods! I’ll bring up enough to show ’em that we are -the people. You come with me!” - -“What for?” - -“We’ve got to lasso those chaps and hitch ’em to the stanchion in my -state-room. They’ve got to stay here till I test out that hose.” - -“Look here,” objected Mr. Jones, fumbling at his nose, “seems to me -there’s altogether too much tripping and tying aboard here. It beats a -round-up of steers. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble--we’re in -it now. You wait till the captain gets loose, and see if we ain’t!” - -“Tying two more won’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t make you do -what you don’t want to do, Jones, but I believe you’re too much of a man -to let me play this thing single-handed. We’re fighting Keedy now. If -I fail in getting at that gold to-day, all we’ve got to do is to up -mud-hook and steam north--we’ll have to do the same thing if we let -those grafters go over the rail now.” Jones was a cautious man, but -he was a loyal one. I kept on urging, and at last the battle-light -flickered in his pale-blue eyes. - -“Blast their thievish souls!” he said. “They’ve taken all the money I -had in my pockets--and now they’re thumbing their noses at decent men. -I’m with you!” We grabbed ropes, rushed up to my state-room, and fell on -the men before they could scramble to their feet. - -They were wizened little chaps and we tied them without any trouble. - -Then I went below and leaned over the rail where their boat was tossing. - -“The gentlemen are staying here for some business,” I told the two -rowers. “They tell you to go back to the schooner and wait till they -signal for you with our ensign.” They didn’t look entirely satisfied, -but they rowed away after I had ordered them to fend off. - -I stationed two men at my state-room door and I hunted up weapons and -armed some of the crew. I ordered them to keep off everybody until I -returned from the lighter. - -I spoke to Captain Holstrom through his state-room window. I told him -that I would bring him a present before sundown. He did not reply--and -when Captain Holstrom was mad enough to keep his tongue between his -teeth I felt that only murder could express his feelings. - -The door was on the hook, and a little brown hand was thrust out to meet -mine. - -“Good luck, brave boy!” she whispered. “I know you’ll do it.” - -“I can’t fail after that word from you,” I told her. - -Then I ran down the ladder and jumped into the boat where my men were -waiting for me. - -I found a heavy surge running under our lighter, but the swirl of sand -was no longer darkening the water. I had reckoned right in regard to -that undertow. Keedy’s men were still down and I could imagine them -wasting their strength on the sand which had been packed back overnight. - -Our water-hose had already been coupled in makeshift fashion, and the -last work that morning was to wrap the joints as best we could. Then -I set the men at the brakes and told them to “give her tar,” as the -old-fashioned hand-tub foreman would say. The hose was strung about the -deck of the lighter. - -After they pumped for five minutes I found that the hose was not so -tight as I had hoped. Wheezing little streams punctured it here and -there, and the joints leaked. From the end of our home-made nozzle of -sheet iron the stream barely trickled. I was disgusted--but I was not -wholly discouraged. When I state this you may see how desperate I had -become. I was resolved to fight that thing through to the last ditch. -I was determined to take that hose down and try it out. I had the misty -and hopeful notion that the pressure of the sea on it might make some -difference, that the wet hose might retain the water better, that after -the plunger had swelled a bit we might get more force. - -All those straws and others did I grab at by way of bracing my courage. - -The captain of the expedition trussed up in his cabin like a steer -calf--only waiting his opportunity to deal with me! - -Two customs men also trussed up--also waiting to deal with me! - -It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot -goads at my back that day to drive me down under the sea. - -I had not been able to convince Captain Holstrom that all my work -and struggles and investigation and failures up to then were a good -investment. But as a submarine diver I knew that they had been. I -had been spending my nights on a sleepless pillow, docketing those -experiences and drawing lessons from them--plotting, pondering, and -planning. - -When I went down I was ready for my job in so far as a man, by pounding -his brain, can be ready for all emergencies. - -I had piled the lead on to myself. Around my body from hips to armpits -I had a canvas belt with five pockets, each pocket holding twenty-five -pounds of shot, part of the junk of the old _Zizania_. Around each leg -above the ankle I fastened another bag of shot holding fifteen pounds. - -My helmet had weights weighing thirty pounds. In addition I wore my -regular breast and back weights. That is to say, when I was rolled over -the side of that lighter I, a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, was -weighted with about two hundred and fifty pounds of metal. - -I went with bare feet and bare hands. I knew that if I ever did succeed -in boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have -to serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects. - -Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two -Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported -that they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that -Keedy was stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his -head. I could imagine from my own experience what kind of language the -cowardly slave-driver was spewing out. - -I found myself on the bottom under the lighter, and started to make my -way toward the wreck. I was loaded like a pack-donkey, outside of the -tremendous extra weight of lead I carried. But I was taking everything -which my judgment counseled as needful for success. - -I was obliged to drag with me my life-line, my air-hose, and the heavy -canvas hose for the water. In addition to those, I towed a double line -which was hitched to a pair of ice-tongs, and the points of those tongs -were filed to a sharp point. I carried the tongs at my belt. If I found -treasure I had this method of sending it to the lighter and of dragging -back the tongs to myself. I had had one experience in serving as a -carrier and I did not want to repeat the job. - -I tell you, I felt like a mighty poor and puny little ant when I started -away on the bottom of the sea, climbing those sand ridges. The sea -clutched and tore at those wriggling lines, at my air-hose, and was -especially ferocious in tackling that heavy water-hose. It seemed as if -the Pacific resented that scheme of fighting it. - -It was a mighty struggle I had. I was tossed and tumbled. I was banged -and buffeted. - -But in the end I arrived at the wreck. Under ordinary circumstances that -stunt alone would have finished a diver’s work for a day--but I had left -matters above the surface in such condition that I could not face them -just then. - -I dropped my water-hose, and went back fifty feet along the line. Past -experience with the weight of the surges had suggested another trick -with which to fight the giant Pacific. I had brought a small anchor, -and, with this set into the sand as best I cou’d do it, I anchored my -air-hose and water-hose about fifty feet from the wreck. I proposed to -let the ocean wreak the most of its spite on the two hundred and fifty -feet between that anchor and the lighter. I figured that I might be able -to handle the other fifty feet, no matter how ugly the surges were. - -I crawled back to the wreck and found my bearings. There were the “cat -scratchings” on the sand where the other divers had spent their energy -that morning. I grinned--I couldn’t help it. They had just had their own -experience with the tricks of a Pacific undertow. - -Well, the great and awful moment had come for me! - -In the years that have passed since then the vivid memory of that moment -has never left me. I wake up in the night even now, and the thrill of it -shakes me. - -If my scheme did not work, what would become of me when I went back to -the surface of the sea? - -If my scheme did work, what was I facing down there? I was proposing to -bore into that sand--to sink into it. No such plan had ever been -tried by a human being up to that time. Was I not digging my own -grave? - - * Although sticking a statement of fact into writing which - is professedly fiction may be considered supererogation by - the cynical critic, some honest reader may be grateful for a - certain bit of information. Here it is: My old and valued - friend, the diver who recovered the _Golden Gate_ treasure, - still lives at a ripe age and he has detailed to me how he - devised the hydraulic apparatus out of makeshift material, - how he bored into the sand, and how he, with his own hands, - recovered the bullion. Also, the incident of his narrow - escape when the water-hose shifted was a part of his bitter - experience on the bed of the Pacific. I hasten to state - that, so far as the rest of the yam goes, my good friend, - Diver Cook, is not culpable.--H. D. - -I sat down on the sand, Turk fashion, like a tailor on his table, -pointed the nozzle down, holding it against the sand, and gave the -agreed-upon signal for water. It took a long time in coming, and it was -an agony of waiting. Then at last I felt the hose swell under my arm. -I pressed the nozzle harder against the sand. I cannot describe my -delight. I felt that my dreams were coming true, for when I jammed the -nozzle down I found that the sand was moving. That stream had merely -trickled above the surface, but now a pressure was created when I held -the nozzle hard against the bottom of the sea. Yes, the sand moved -under me. It began to boil up around me. It swept and swirled in yellow -clouds. I realized that I was boring a hole about as big as a barrel, -and into that hole I was gradually sinking. I was on my way! I did not -know where I was going--but, bless the good Lord, I was on my way! The -sand in that boiling water made all dark. Down and down I went slowly, -my bare feet searching eagerly. - -But though I descended more rapidly as the swirling motion increased, I -felt no boxes. Had I, then, happened upon a straggler among the boxes -of gold on my earlier trip? Had my rivals also found two more stragglers -from the main treasure--loosened boxes which had been forced out of the -chamber by the impact of the wreck on the bar or had worked near the -surface of the sand by the action of a sucking undertow? If that were -true, it meant that Keedy’s men were dumped if they stuck to shovels. -Provided I could reach the treasure, and could keep my own system a -secret, I was headed toward a glorious victory, and could depend upon -the ocean to keep off others--but was I headed toward victory? My feet -touched nothing that had square corners. And yet, to the best of my -judgment, I had already gone down at least ten feet in that hole in the -sand. - -Down and down--five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a jump. -My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and -spread under me horizontally. But I soon discovered that it had too -large a surface to be a box of ingots. I could not bend over to feel it -with my hands, for the rush of the whirlpool of sand and water about -me, sweeping upward, would not allow me to force my helmet and the upper -part of my body down. I must depend on my bare feet to tell me what I -had struck. - -After a time I knew. It was boiler plate. I could feel the round heads -of bolts. Whether this plate formed a part of the treasure-chamber -or not I did not know. But it was an obstacle which must be passed. I -turned my nozzle in front of me to clear the way. I wanted to reach the -end of that iron plate. - -In two ticks of an eight-day clock I was in a mess that has been my -nightmare ever since. I began to get a thorough education in what sand -will do under water when it is submitted to the force of a stream from a -hose. The instant I turned that nozzle in front of me the sand rushed in -from behind. I was grabbed as tightly as though the eight feelers of a -devil-fish had encircled me. - -It must be remembered that this whole proposition was an experiment -so far as I was concerned. I did not know then how quickly a stream of -water can affect great quantities of sand under the sea, let that sand -get in motion. Tons can be moved almost while one takes a breath. - -This shift was so sudden that I was not prepared for it. My legs were -pinioned, and my arms seemed to be clutched at the elbows. The sand was -packing in around me from behind. I was so scared that my hands loosened -on the nozzle. A roller snatched the hose from my grasp. - -The nozzle was upended and began to sizzle away over my head. It kept -the sand moving there, and the murky water still swirled about my -helmet, and the pack was not allowed to settle on my head. But as to the -rest of my body, it was as if I had been immersed in molten metal and -it had cooled around me. In a few seconds I was immovable. I was buried -completely in sand, except for my wrists and hands. In clutching for the -hose, as it had been yanked away, I had raised my hands above my head, -and they were now waving in the swirl of the whirlpool. I groped and -stretched and strove, and at last I felt the tips of my fingers on the -nozzle. I managed, after a while, to tilt it down a bit so that the -stream played along my arms to the elbows. The temporary release of my -forearms did not help me. I couldn’t get hold of that hose so as to turn -the nozzle full upon myself. The sand kept packing more closely about my -legs and body. - -After a time my aching hands and arms were obliged to give up the fight. -I had become so weakened by my struggles and strainings that I was -faint--I was as feeble as a baby. - -I have read about men in awful peril who have resigned themselves to -die. Mentally I was not resigned when I first gave up struggling--not -for some time. I came out of that first faintness, wide awake to my -danger, filled with frightful fear, mad with the longing to live. But -my case seemed hopeless. The stream was keeping the sand in motion still -about my helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the -pack was gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck -slowly but surely. In the boil of that water the particles were drifting -over me. - -I might live minutes, I reflected--I might linger there for an hour or -more--feeling that sand pack around my head until it choked the valve of -the helmet or pinched off the current in the air-hose. - -Never was I so hungry for life as when I stood there pinioned hand and -foot in the Pacific’s bed, feeling the sand piling up against the glass -of my helmet, sifting around me to chink the little cranny where the -air bubbled from the valve. And all because a stream of water would not -swerve ten inches and pour itself in my direction. - -Then something surprising happened to my soul in its agony. I’m telling -the truth. - -When I had made up my mind that effort was useless, that I had done all -that I could do, and that death was certain, a strange feeling came -to me and took away my fear of death. I fell into a quiet and really -exalted frame of mind. I floated in dreams. Cares of earth and worries -of the world, lust for gold, and even the love of woman seemed very -small matters. What did it all matter? I was dying. Peace came to me. - -Is it not probable that kind nature or a kinder God thus smooths the way -into eternity when the great moment comes? Men who have been nigh the -last gasp have swapped stories with me and we all agree. - -I had no notion of the length of time I had been down. In my mistiness -of mind I did not bother about time. In the case of a submarine diver, -the hours are marked off by his sensations, and he knows when he has -stayed down long enough. If my men had told me that I had been on the -bed of the ocean for a day and a night I should not have disputed them. -I must have been near death, for it is said that when one is dying all -of life that has been lived comes before the mind and passes in review, -as though the mortal soul were preparing its brief for the use of the -recording angel. I remember that this last was a strange idea which came -to me there in the sand-pack which was slowly heaping itself over my -head. - -Then something happened. It was something which should have amazed me, -but I reckon that my brain was too numbed to feel amazement. - -The nozzle above my head gave a sudden yank and rapped my knuckles. -It righted itself. That is to say, it aimed downward and began to pour -water directly at and over me. I felt the stream rather than saw it. I -could not see in that smother of sand. But my arms came out of the mold -in which they had been pinned. I grabbed and groped for that hose with -all the desperation that was in me. I held to it with all my strength. -It was lucky that I seized it as I did, for I felt the rollers tugging -at it once more as though some devil of the sea had given me one more -chance in order to tantalize me, and was now resolved to finish me -finally. - -I did not know what had happened above to cause the sudden deflection of -the stream. It was enough for me to know that some freak of the waters -had turned the hose. I found out later what had occurred, and I may as -well explain at this point, lest you think I have told merely of a case -of story-book Providence. - -I have related how I anchored my lines fifty feet from the wreck. That -anchor, so I found later, had been pulled out of the sand, and the -surges had bellied the water-hose in toward shore, over my head, and the -aim of the nozzle had been changed in the snap of a finger. It surely -had been touch and go with me, for once the surge had taken up the slack -the next wave must have jerked the hose out of my hole. I had grabbed -just in time; I had melted my sand mold and was free. - -Common sense advised me to quit the job forever. The uncertainties of -trying to move sand with a stream of water had been impressed upon me in -horrible fashion. But common sense is not allowed to rule a man when -he is after gold in this world. I had found out what that stream would -accomplish if it was used properly. I had learned one lesson which I -could not forget, and I was sure I would not make the mistake of letting -the sand catch me from behind again. I knew, on the other hand, what -would happen to me when I appeared above the surface without my ransom -fee of yellow gold. I preferred to stay and fight sand instead of men. -There, in the boil of the roiled water, I resolved to stay down. - -I tried another experiment with the hose, and was-, vastly encouraged. -I had been worrying and wondering how I would get back out of the hole, -for I feared that the-life-line, playing over the edge of the sand, -would not allow the men on the lighter enough direct pull; to help me -much. Now I needed to rise from the hole for a littleway in order to -attack the sand at another angle so as to pass that plate of boiler -iron. - -I slackened the force of the stream from the nozzle with my palm, and -the sand began to pack in below me. The uprush of the swirling water -helped me and I was able to work myself slowly upward. Then I began to. -bore again. - -I realized now that something must have happened to, my anchor, because -the rollers were giving me battle for-the possession of that water-hose -in fierce style. But I hung on, and found myself sinking into the sand. -I went, down more rapidly, for I had already softened the surrounding -pack. After the awful experience I had just had, I was more of a lunatic -than sane while I made that, second attempt. My brain swirled as -dizzily as the water which swept up from the hole. As nearly as I could -estimate, I went down at least five yards before I struck anything that -was solid. And when my feet, already sore from the grinding of that -sand, felt what was below them, the whole of my being gave three -cheers--not cheers with, the mouth, but those silent cheers with which -a man’s soul yells its joy. I had touched a box. There were its -comers--there was its unmistakable shape. - -After wild struggles and contortions, I was able to set the points of -the ice-tongs into its sides. I gave the signal on the drag-rope, and I -could feel the surge of the men on the line. But the angle of the rope -over the edge of the hole would not allow them to lift very hard. The -box was too far away from the lighter for their efforts to amount to -much. But as they swayed away I kept the hose playing upon the box and -under it. It did seem damnably slow work. But it came up, inch by inch, -slowly and surely, until I was out of the hole, and standing about -knee-deep in the sand. I had a tug of war of it then! - -The box was not out of the hole. The rollers tugged at my lines and -wrenched at me. Once or twice I was fairly floored. I would fall with my -legs pinioned fast, and would lie exhausted until I could get strength -to stand up and wash myself free with the hose. In order to get back -out of that hole at all, I was obliged to slacken the stream and let the -sand pack in under myself and the box--and when the stream slackened I -was obliged to drag my legs out of the packing sand. - -But I was free at last, bless the good Lord! And I had a box of gold. It -was not a mere stray box, salvaged with the help of a freakish undertow. -It was a box which I had torn from the heart of the hoard below. Yes, I -was sure that I had been to the heart of the treasure. And where I had -been the Pacific was already stuffing back the sand, locking the door -once more on the gold it had taken for its own. Let Keedy’s men -come down! Let them waste their strength. I had the key to that -situation--and I alone. - -I tugged a signal to shut off the water. And as promptly I gave them -pull-up signals on my life-line and on the drag-cord of the tongs. I -wanted to get above the sea and breathe the fresh air of the good God, -and look into the eye of the blessed sun, and give praises. And, oh, the -awful weariness in every bone and muscle of me! I lay down and let ’em -pull me back. I had no strength with which to manage that weight of -metal which loaded me down. - -When they got me upon the deck of the lighter, and had twisted off my -helmet, I lay for a long time without words. I motioned to Number-two -Jones to remove the cover from the box I had brought. The sight of those -ingots gave me the goad once more--ah, it takes gold to make the human -soul gallop! - - “Gold, gold, yellow gold, - - Hard to get and harder to hold.” - -This quotation burst from Mr. Shank. His round face was radiant, and he -came and leaned over me and patted me on the head. He did not seem to -have any better way of showing his joy. It was a wildly excited crew -which crowded around me; they were still more excited when I sat up on -deck at last and told them I was going down again. The fever was in -me. I wanted to go back to the _Zizania_ with gold enough, to convince -Captain Holstrom and those knaves of customs men that there was no fluke -about our proposition. I wanted to raise that infernal Keedy out of this -game for good and all. - -It was mighty tempestuous water in the vicinity of the wreck, and -putting the lighter nearer was not to be thought of. But I discussed -with Mate Jones the possibility of dropping our yawl back toward -the wreck at the end of a cable, so that the men could lift the -treasure-boxes more directly. We had brought extra men that morning for -the pump, and a crew for the surf-boat volunteered. The gold lust was -seizing the whole of us. - -I went down again, feeling sure that the wicked labor of getting the box -up through the sand would be lightened for me. - -I took another anchor, and on my way to the wreck I refastened my hose -lines to the bottom, rigging the second anchor as a bridle, so that the -strain would be eased on the one which I had set into the sand. - -Down I bored again, my tongs at my belt, my hose in my clutch. And I -stayed down until I had sent three more boxes up to the surf-boat. While -I was toiling down there I knew that I was setting a dangerous record -for myself--I could not hope to equal it on the days which were to -follow. It was plain that I had penetrated to the heart of the treasure, -but I had penetrated to other things as well. I found all the sculch and -broken crockery of the wrecked pantry and the bar of the _Golden Gate_. -Yes, I sent three more boxes to the lighter; but when I crawled over the -rail later my hands and feet were bleeding, and the sand had ground into -the wounds. Already my skin showed where the grinding of the boiling -sand was wearing the epidermis. Even the rubber of my suit was showing -wear. - -I was a sorry-looking object when I staggered into Capt. Rask Holstrom’s -state-room. He fairly slavered in his rage and tried to leap at me. I -reckon I did look like a beaten man. But the next instant my men came -tramping in with the boxes of gold. There were four of these glorious -boxes, and each one was open and showed the ingots. - -“Your friend Keedy got his two boxes by the fluke of an undertow,” I -told him. “I have got mine by science and a system which will give us -the rest of it. Now, Captain Holstrom, I’ll accept your apologies.” And -I cut him loose. - -I did not mention any apologies due from me to him. I wanted to rub it -into the old squarehead so thoroughly that he would never get the smart -of it out of his skin. I wanted to let him know that I had set a ring -into his nose, and that if he ever tried to run amuck again I was the -man who could catch him and trip him. - -He gave me one look, gasped one gasp, and I knew that Capt. Rask -Holstrom had abdicated his throne. I was boss. But I had no time to -listen to his slobbering thanks just then. I took one of those bars of -gold in my bloody hand and started for my state-room. I shook the ingot -under the noses of those customs men. And they, too, knew that I was -boss when I got through with them. I had not come back that day from -hell and the bottom of the sea to mince words with any loafers--Captain -Holstrom included. - -“Here’s gold worth four thousand dollars in good Yankee money, you -low-down renegades. You take it and get off this steamer. If you are -good, and come around here like gentlemen about a month from now, -perhaps I’ll drop another rock into your hat. I don’t promise--it all -depends on how you act. But if you come back too quick--if you try to -squeeze us for more rake-off--I’ll go down to headquarters and buy your -blessed Government, and have you put into prison or shot--for before -this thing is ended here I’ll have more than three million dollars -behind me. Now you can either make a dollar quietly or you can make -trouble. Suit yourselves.” - -I cut their ropes and pushed them out of the room and ordered our ensign -set to signal their boat. - -I didn’t have to offer them any apologies, either, and I was not in -an apologizing mood that day. They did the apologizing while they were -waiting for their boat, and I scowled while they were begging me to -forgive the mistake they had made. - -Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama -Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me -into my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the -finger of his master is pointed. - - - - -XXXIV--AMONG THIEVES - -I DID not go down next day, and I watched the descent of Keedy’s divers -with indifference that was pretty nigh serene. Captain Holstrom stamped -around restlessly, for he couldn’t seem to get it into his mind that -the Pacific Ocean was on guard. But he did not venture to make any -suggestions to me, and I decided that I had trained him in pretty fair -shape. - -I had good reason for delaying my next descent. It would not do to take -chances with my diving-dress, which was showing signs of being frayed -by the swirling sand, and I put in a busy day with the two Joneses, -stitching an extra canvas suit to wear over the rubber dress. I improved -on the ice-tongs by having a set of steel spring hooks made so that by -means of long handles I could push them over a box without stooping and -fumbling. Also I had a long rod of steel turned out for me, and with -this I could probe the sand for boxes. - -I had no way of knowing whether Keedy or his divers suspected that I -had secured any treasure. I knew that after a night of action of the -sea there would be few traces left where I had disturbed the sand. But -I also knew that Keedy would certainly be wondering why we had built -the wall around the lighter, and therefore we doubled the guards who had -spent the night there since we had installed the pump, and gave the men -orders to shoot any man who tried to climb on board. - -We started work on a bigger and more elaborate pump, having tested out -the principle of the thing by means of the first one. I needed more -stream. While Shank was building this I went to work again, using the -old equipment. - -I waited each day until the other divers had been down and had climbed -back into the sunlight, empty-handed. Then I slid overboard from our -lighter as secretly as possible, and did my day’s work. I averaged three -boxes a. trip by working myself to the limit of my endurance. It was -reported to me that Keedy climbed into the rigging of the schooner -whenever the surf-boat was eased back toward the wreck, and that he -remained there on watch. How much he saw we did not know, but the men in -the boat crowded together whenever a box was raised. From what I learned -afterward, I found that Keedy thought we were operating some kind of a -dredge, and that his divers reported to him that we were not making any -impression on the sand. So he sat calmly in the rigging, spying on what -he could see, and reckoning that we were wasting our time the same as -his crew. - -Before the end of a week the new pump was finished and I had almost five -hundred gallons a minute at my command. - -I do not mean to be profane, but I must state that when I got that new -stream to operating it was hell for me down below--and no other phrase -seems to express the case. - -I have already mentioned the refuse of that wrecked pantry and bar; from -out of the holes I bored rushed up bits of broken bottles and crockery, -slashing at my bare feet and hands. I could not protect them. - -The stream from the nozzle--a three-inch stream--stirred such a mush of -sand that I worked in pitch darkness. I had to have bare feet and hands -in order to feel my way. - -After a time, my feet were swollen to twice their natural size. -Finger-nails and toe-nails had been worn off by the grinding of the -sand, and the skin had been eaten off. The sand even penetrated my -dress, and my knees and shoulders were chafed raw. My back, under the -dragging weights I was forced to wear, was about like a piece of pounded -steak. I was suffering the limit of human agony, but I was mad for -success--I was crazed by the gold lust. I was bringing out a small -fortune every day; one day I recovered six boxes--one hundred and twenty -thousand dollars! But I was still just as hungry for the gold that -remained at the bottom. I set my teeth, gasped back my groans, and kept -at work. - -All the tender ministrations of Kama Holstrom could not mend my hurts, -and I would not listen to her appeals to me. She begged me to give -up the fight. She urged that we had enough. But I was as crazy as the -wildest man who ever hunted gold, and the pain I was in made me more of -a lunatic. On several occasions I was pulled back to the lighter in a -dead faint, and fought with Number-two Jones because he would not send -me down again that day. - -I cannot go into the details of those days of nightmare. I can only say -that I kept on. - -We soon had plain hints that Keedy was getting suspicious and uneasy. -One night a crew from the schooner made a desperate attempt to board the -lighter. On other nights they made other tries, and shots were exchanged -before they were driven off. - -One day when I was at the bottom of the hole I had bored and had just -succeeded in fastening my hooks to a box, I got a shock that made me -believe the end of the world had come. Something hit me on the top of -the helmet with a thud that knocked me senseless for a moment. I reached -out quickly with one hand, reserving the other for my hose, and felt -the breastplate of a diver. I realized what had happened then. One of -Keedy’s men, sent to spy, had stumbled through the sand swirling from my -pit, and had fallen in on me, not dreaming that I had been able to dig a -fifteen-foot hole. - -In the tangle that followed, it was a wonder that either of us escaped. - -By the way the man struggled I knew that he was terrified out of his -senses. He clung to me desperately, as a drowning man might ding to a -rescuer. Then he gave his emergency pull, and yanked me with him when he -went up. - -I had a raw temper which went with my raw surface in those terrible -days. I left hose and box and went up with the caller, dragging my knife -from my belt. I kept clashing the knife against the front bull’s-eye -of his helmet, and after we had been dragged together for some distance -from the edge of the hole, and the sea became clearer, he perceived what -I was doing. He let go his clutch, and it was well he did, for I was in -a state of maniacal fury. I would have ripped his dress from crotch to -neck-band with my knife if he had not escaped from me just as he did. -I went back and recovered my hose, and after a time got the box. Then I -returned to the lighter, for I was too unnerved to work any longer that -day. - -As I lay on deck that afternoon, a shapeless, hideous thing of bruised -and macerated flesh, I wondered whether I would be able to work any -more. - -When I was under the sea I was fairly beside myself with the excitement -of the hunt. I could grind my teeth together and groan and fight my way -through the sand, for there was gold at the bottom of the hole I was -digging. And every time I went down through that fifteen feet of smother -I knew that death raced me to the box of treasure and back. Under those -circumstances, a man is desperate enough to forget his bloody cuts and -raw skin. But I felt like a pretty weak and useless tool as I lay there -on deck. - -Kama Holstrom was with me. She had insisted on becoming my nurse. I -craved her companionship, I’ll admit, but I wanted to hide myself from -her eyes. Her father was in his state-room, busy at his job of adding -more sheets of iron, more bands of steel, to the treasure-chest he had -taken it upon himself to build. We could hear the bang of his hammer. -Captain Holstrom worked days at that huge chest, slept on it nights -with the key lashed into the palm of his right hand, and between whiles -cuddled those ingots rapturously. In his way, he had become as insane -over the matter as I was myself. - -The girl and I were in the lee of the deck-house, to get out of the -trades, and we did not see the boat when it came off Keedy’s schooner. -Had I seen it coming, Keedy would never have been allowed to board us. -But all at once he appeared before the girl and myself. I felt a fierce -impulse to get up and beat his face off him, even though my hands were -as sore as the exposed nerve of an aching tooth. He got that flash from -my eyes, and looked meek for a moment, but then he saw the condition I -was in and became insolent. - -“Better listen to me,” he said. “I’m on. I know your system. But I -should say you’re all in, Sidney. You need help. There’s enough there -for all of us. I’ve got two good divers. I’m over here to propose -that we call the row off, and I’ll send my men down to work with your -contrivance and give you a rest.” - -That proposition from Marcena Keedy, after what he had done to us in the -matter of that twenty thousand dollars, and after what he had tried to -do to us in the affair of the customs men! I felt the language begin -to roil in me as the said roiled under the force of my stream from the -nozzle. - -“Miss Kama,” I pleaded, “won’t you please run away? I want to talk to -this dirty dog. And send your father here with a club.” - -She did not leave me. She came closer, and gave Keedy a look which would -have wilted any other sort of man. - -“You can’t afford to be foolish over what’s past and gone,” insisted my -ex-partner. “I left because you wasn’t making good--wasn’t holding up -our end of the partnership. You fell down. Now if you can deliver goods -we’ll call off all trouble and start it over again.” - -“Captain Holstrom,” I yelled, “come here quick! Bring your hammer! -Hurry! Knock that devil overboard!” I shouted when the captain tore -around the corner on the gallop. His eyes were bulged out, and he had -his hammer over his head, for I guess he thought from the tone of my -voice that pirates had boarded us. His expression did not soften any -when he laid eyes on Keedy. - -The gambler put up a lean forefinger. “You’d better hark to what I say, -friend Rask.” He went over the same talk he had had with me. - -“Not by a continental tin damsite!” howled the captain. “And how you -have got the gall even to look the way of the _Zizania_, much more come -aboard of her, is what gives me a callous over the collar-button. Get -off’m here!” - -“You don’t dare to drive me, Holstrom, after I’ve come to you with a -fair and open proposition--ready to take the first step and let bygones -rest. You can’t afford any big talk! Why, you’re only stealing this -gold, whatever of it you are getting! This is pirate business--the whole -of it. Now you be careful how you try to raise me out of the game.” - -That taunt about our rights there at San Apusa came from a rascal and -a gambler, but the taunt made me think--and it stung, too. To tell the -truth, I had done a little thinking about our rights in the matter of -that treasure. - -“You’re infernal thieves, and you can’t make yourselves out anything -else!” Keedy insisted. “And you can’t afford to throw down another thief -who is willing to come in and help.” - -Captain Holstrom shot out a swift kick and missed Keedy. He made a crack -at him with the hammer, and missed again. - -The Keedy person had had experience with the captain, probably, in past -times. He ran for the ladder and escaped into his boat. - -“You are fools, besides being thieves,” he informed us, standing up -when he was a safe distance away, and shaking his fists. “Don’t -you understand what I can do to you?” Captain Holstrom returned the -fist-shaking with too much alacrity to be misunderstood. - -“All right,” bellowed Keedy; “have it your own way, you fools! I’ll do -you so good that you’ll never know you were ever in the game.” He was -so mad that he let out a little more than he intended to, so I reckoned. -“There are men who will pay me more for what I can tell ’em than any -rake-off you can give me, anyway.” He was rowed away to his schooner. - -“That means?” I suggested, swapping looks with the captain. - -“I suppose it means that he is going to blow this thing to the -underwriters.” - -“Then we are stealing this gold, are we?” - -Captain Holstrom fingered his red knob of a nose, and looked away from -me. - -“I don’t know much about law,” I went on. “I supposed you knew something -about our rights in this thing--if we have any. I tell you, it’s going -to be pretty tough, Captain, if I’ve been through all this hell only to -have all our great hopes grabbed away from us.” - -“Men have to take a chance in this world, Sidney. Damn the law in a case -like this! The gold was there, and nobody was trying to get it. We had a -right to try for it.” - -“But wasn’t there any legal way?” - -“Oh, a drunken lawyer in San Francisco told me something about power -by attorney, but it meant chasing around and getting hold of claims by -shippers, or something of the kind--and that meant blowing our plans -and letting a lot of grafters in on us. I simply cleared from the -custom-house as a trawler and came away, minding my own business.” - -“And now somebody else will take the job of minding it,” I complained. I -did not have much philosophy or courage about me just then. My hands and -feet and shoulders were aching too miserably; and had all my suffering -and daring been thrown away? - -“Let’s go home, father,” pleaded the girl. - -“Go home!” he yelped. “Sail in past the Golden Gate with this gold? Lug -it back where coyote lawyers can get their whack at it until they’ve -trimmed us for every ounce? Well, I guess--not!” - -I wondered if he proposed to sail around in the middle of the Pacific -Ocean, cuddling those ingots for amusement, the rest of his life; but -I had neither strength nor taste for any more complaint or argument -at that time. It was a mighty dismal outlook, according to my way of -thinking. I saw that I was tied up with a man whose sole notion was to -get the gold without bothering his head about how he was going to keep -it. Later, Keedy’s schooner frothed out past us, standing to sea, and -headed north. - -I did not go down again for almost a week. Courage is always a man’s -best asset, but courage in the job I had undertaken was pretty near my -whole capital. And courage had left me--I had to admit it. I had been -doing honest work with all a man’s grit and strength and will. I had -wrecked my body and wrenched my soul in effort. Yes, the work part of it -was honest, but how about the honesty of our undertaking? I had got some -plain words from Keedy--and I got no consolation from Captain Holstrom. -I was daredevil enough and plenty in those days, but I was not the sort -of a daredevil who would make a successful pirate. - -I sat on deck day after day, and bore with my agonies of body and -wrestled with my soul. An idea had come to me as I had struggled with -that problem of our rights. It was a rather vague idea. Of only one -point of it was I sure--its success depended on getting as much of that -gold as I could tear out of the sand. - -Thinking upon it, hoping that good would come from it, brought my -courage back to me. I was again ready to undergo tortures and to face -death. - - - - -XXXV--SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS - -A NEW arrival off San Apusa Bar had interested us for a couple of days. -It was a husky sloop with a leg-of-mutton mainsail--a broad-bellied -craft on which a dozen men showed themselves when it sailed past us to -take up a position near the ribs of the wreck. This sloop seemed to be -of a build to ride the surges easily, and ventured much closer inshore -than we had dared to anchor our lighter. The men did not visit us, and -displayed no desire to meddle with the secrets of the equipment on the -walled-up scow. We wondered who they were, why they were there, and left -them alone. - -I went down and crawfished my way over the sand windrows, but I could -make only slow work of it, for I was stiffened by my days of inaction. -But that new idea of mine went along with me for my encouragement. - -I had hardly put myself in position, ready to call for my stream of -water, when I got a rousing surprise. Down through the sea came rushing -a naked man. The depths were fairly clear, for I had not begun to stir -the roil with my nozzle. His eyes were wide open and staring, and I -reckon that I peered at him through my bull’s-eye with eyes just as wide -open. When he arrived close to me he dropped a rock from each hand, his -diving weights, and grabbed me, hanging to my belt. I sat right there on -the sand and gaped at him. His mouth was shut tight--he was holding his -breath. - -In a short time another naked man came down like the stick of a -sky-rocket. He dropped his rocks and grabbed me, and the first man -let go and went swimming up to the surface. Then came a third man and -replaced the second. - -I began to feel like a candidate for office in the receiving line. I -wanted to ask some questions about what this function meant. But for -good and obvious reasons I could not carry on a conversation, and I did -not know the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. - -Along came the fourth man. I noticed that each man wore a narrow belt -with a huge knife fastened in it. And that’s all the man did wear. The -sight of the knife made me rather nervous. A man under water, -straining to hold his breath, his eyes bulging with his efforts, is a -savage-looking object at best. These men were plainly Mexicans, and they -looked particularly savage. I felt pretty sure that they were not diving -down there to cheer me in my loneliness or to ask me to run for mayor. - -Then it came to me all at once who these men were. As a submarine -worker, I was interested, of course, in all sorts of jobs under the sea, -and I had read various accounts of the Mexican pearl divers. I knew that -they could descend long distances and could remain under water, many of -them, for ninety seconds. One man succeeded another, diving in rotation. -I remained there without moving, staring at them until I began to -recognize faces. They were making me return visits. I realized that they -did not propose to carve me--the first man could have done that on his -first call. Therefore I got my nerve back and decided to go to work. I -signaled for water. - -It occurred to me that my new friends might find that the “fogo” I -stirred with that hose would be a little too much for them. I resisted -an impulse to bat them away from me with that nozzle, a considerable -effort in selfcontrol, for my temper was pretty short in those dreadful -days. - -They stuck to me bravely at first when the sand began to swirl. There -was an itching under my ribs when the sand made a pall and darkness -settled on me. I was afraid that one of my callers might become peevish -and ram his knife into me as a hint not to muddy that water. - -It was not easy to hold my position and work with a man anchored to me. -But I was not bothered for long. - -The tug at my belt ceased suddenly, and I knew that they had given up. -They could not find me in that smother. - -They resumed operations again when I got up my first box. In working -my way out of the hole I decreased the flow from the hose, and when I -reached the top of the sand the swirling particles were settling and -were being washed farther inshore by the surges. In a clearer sea -down came those devils once more, and fastened to me, one by one, like -leeches. They tried to clutch the box, but it was too heavy for them. -It was hoisted past them up to the surf-boat, and once more I drove the -nozzle into the sand and forced them off me with a whirlpool of mush. - -They were more bothersome the next time I allowed the sea to clear. Two -dove at a time, and grabbed me, and almost lifted me up with them. I -was furious, but I did not try to beat them off. I kept on about my own -affairs as best I could, and allowed them to hang on to me. There were -a dozen of them above, with knives, and I had no hankering to tackle -the pack. I was not sure as to their motives, anyway. One rip of a knife -would have put me out of business. But they did not offer to use knives. - -I did a short day’s work and went back to the lighter. Captain Holstrom -had watched their diving operations and was full of eager questions. - -That night we doubled the guards on the _Zizania_. But no boat came near -us. - -My friends were ready for me next day, and resumed the same tactics. I -carried a bigger knife, and kept my eye out as best I could. But before -I got the stream started they were coming at me three at a time. They -kept lifting me off bottom, and I wasted a lot of valuable time and much -of my little stock of strength before I got down on the sand and began -to bore. They were ready for me again as soon as I got up with a box and -the sea had cleared a bit. One of them brought a rope, and tried to get -it around a box I was handling, but I had my tongs well set, and my men -hoisted the treasure away from them. Then they began to interfere with -me so savagely that I quit in disgust and signaled to be pulled up. - -I was half crazy with rage, and frantic because this sort of business -was putting me where I could not realize on that idea which I was -nursing. - -After listening to me, Captain Holstrom set his cap well down over his -ears, jutting his chin, set his teeth, and called for his boat. He was -rowed over to the side of the little sloop. He came back very soon and -he was not looking pleased. - -“I couldn’t get anything out of that bunch except a few grunts and a lot -of jabber,” he reported. “They make believe they can’t understand the -English language. They want graft, I suppose. They’d understand, all -right, if I was to carry over a slug of gold and dump it over the rail. -But I’m about tired of feeding gold to everybody who comes along here.” - -“This isn’t our gold to give away to all comers,” I told him. He blinked -at me, and did not seem to understand. I did not go into that side of -the question any further, for I was not ready for much argument at that -time. “I’ll not stand for any more ‘hot rocks,’” I told him. - -“Nor I, either,” he agreed. “Begin to feed gold to those chaps, and -they’ll think we are scared of ’em and they’ll want the whole mess.” - -To show them that I was not scared, I went down the next day, and I had -a wire edge on my temper. I balked at starting a knife duel, however, -and after a struggle got my hole started. - -I struck something new that day in the ruck at the bottom of the hole. -I found ingots loose in the hodgepodge of pantry wreckage. A wooden box -had been smashed. I had a slit and a sort of deep pocket in the canvas -overalls affair which protected my India-rubber suit. As my toes located -loose ingots, I sifted the mush of sand with the fingers of one hand, -captured the gold, and stuffed it down into the deep pocket. I came up -with a box, and my breeches were bagging with gold. - -Then came the climax of my strained relations with those greaser divers. -I’ve heard of pickpockets operating everywhere, almost, but I reckon -that I’m the first and only man who ever had his pockets picked at the -bottom of the sea. The first devil who got to me as the sand settled, in -groping for a handhold on my dress, felt the loose ingots. He got one, -but he did not get away with it. Trouble or no trouble, knives or no -knives, I had got to the limit of my temper. I gave him a jab with the -end of my sheet-iron nozzle, and as near as I could judge I took a hunk -of meat out of him as neatly as a woman could operate on dough with a -doughnut cutter. The edges of that nozzle had been whetted on sand until -they were as sharp as a razor blade. The fellow drooped that ingot and -darted upward, blood streaming behind him. Another diver was coming down -to take his place, but when I jabbed at him with the nozzle he whirled -like a fish and went up, giving me an awful kick when he started. - -I reckoned I had thrown down the gage of battle, and I was not minded -to stay there and meet the pack, for I was weak after my extra struggle -down in the hole. It had been a tedious job gathering that loose gold. -I saw the box started on the way to the surf-boat, gave the emergency -signal, and was yanked back to the lighter at a lively clip. - -Later that day, being in a proper and ugly frame of mind, I tucked a -rifle under my arm and had myself rowed to the neighboring sloop. I -found the spokesman of the crew ready to talk English that day, all -right. But when our conversation was ended I had received a surprise. No -demand was made on me for a “hot rock.” I found that I was dealing with -men who had deeper motives. It took me some time to understand that they -were not holding out for a big offer. The man at the rail wrinkled his -nose and sneered when I angrily told him that was what they were after. - -“It’s what I’d expect a gringo to tell me,” he said. “But we are not -here to do business with thieves. You have no right to be here. You may -pick and steal, but it will not amount to _that!_” He snapped his finger -above his head. “We shall do our business with those who will have the -gold in the end, with those who can pay and will pay. And we have a man -who will see that we are paid.” - -My wits had been sharpened while I had toiled at San Apusa Bar. I was -able to see farther into the ways of guile than before I had met a man -like Marcena Keedy. I had a flash of suspicion that was almost instinct. - -“So you think you have made a better trade with that renegade, Keedy, do -you?” I flung at him. - -I was sure I had guessed right; the man’s face betrayed him. - -“Oh, we are honest men--not thieves,” he called back. “We do not deal -with thieves. We came here to stop you from stealing. But you do not -stop. Now we shall see. We have kept our knives in our belts. But you -have set us an example. You have tried to kill a man who did not offer -to hurt you.” He leaped up on the rail, and aimed a long finger at me. -“We can fight the way you do. If we catch you there on bottom again -you’ll be pulled up with six of these sticking in you.” He patted the -knife in his belt. - -There are men who can threaten and who cannot impress others. It is -easily docketed as bluster. There is another kind of a man who gives you -a look and a word, and you know that he means what he says. I went away -from that sloop feeling that if I were desperate enough just then to -commit suicide, an easy way had been opened for me. - -I went and tumbled into my berth, and viewed the ruins of that idea -which I had been building so prayerfully. It looked to me then, in -my despondency, as if Keedy was holding mighty good cards. If he had -decided to turn informer, he could demand and would undoubtedly receive -a noble rake-off. It was probable that he _would_ inform--for that would -be his natural, lazy method of making his money out of the thing. The -posting of the pearl divers in behalf of the underwriters would be an -additional feather in his cap; on the other hand, if he proposed to come -with a backer and new equipment--having discovered my system--he had -good reasons for leaving men behind him who would hold us in check. -If Keedy returned with steam-pumps he could rip the bottom out of the -Pacific. Our makeshift equipment would not be two-spot high. - -And how soon could he return, whether he came piloting the underwriters -or came on his own hook as a rival “thief”? I talked with Captain -Holstrom on that matter the next day. He rubbed his nose and scruffed -his hair, and could not guess. - -I asked the captain for his estimate of the amount of treasure in our -chest. He told me that we had rising three-quarters of a million. - -“Captain, it has become a matter of touch and go--live or die--with us. -With less than a third of that gold in our hands, we’re in no position -to do business when the pinch comes. I’m going after the rest of it!” - -“But you said you knew them greaser pickerel would poke their knives -into you. God knows I’m hungry for the rest of the treasure, Sidney, but -I’m no Marcena Keedy.” - -“I’m going down at night, Captain Holstrom.” - -“It can’t be done.” - -“It _can_ be done. After I get my stream started I’m in the dark even -when the sun is brightest. I know the way from the lighter to that -wreck, all right. I’ve dragged my way there times enough with a trail of -blood behind me,” I told him, sourly. “It can never be any worse than it -has been. We’ll take extra chances, moor the lighter nearer the wreck, -get rid of the surf-boat and crew, and leave those greasers guessing.” - -I want to say, to the credit of the captain, that he opposed this -undertaking of mine. His daughter--But I will not dwell on that point. -It harrows my soul now to remember the manner in which I opposed my -obstinate and reckless will to her honest grief and her almost frantic -protests. - -I went down that night. I gave ’em three boxes before midnight. I ate -a lunch, and gave ’em one box more before I quit. - -I have no ambition to make this story a rival of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. -I have already given some idea of the physical state I was in. I think -I became numb to pain, accustomed to agonies. I cannot explain otherwise -how I ever kept on, night after night. I haven’t the courage to write -down what I suffered. - -But out from under those grinning greasers--grinning their sneers at -us daytimes--I dragged one and one-half million dollars’ worth of gold -ingots inside of two weeks--and they never suspected that I was under -water. - -During the last of that nightmare, I felt as if I were working with -my chin over my shoulder. I was looking for trouble. I was expecting -disaster. I was scared to the marrow. I am not referring to any feelings -I had on account of the pearl divers. Their bug eyes had never detected -me in what I was about. I knew that darkness protected me more surely -from any attack by them than iron walls would have done. - -But I worked nights with the constant feeling that the red and green -eyes of a steamer were coming up over the horizon. When I was awake -daytimes I peered into the northern sky hour after hour, expecting and -dreading to see the trail of smoke which would announce the coming of -Marcena Keedy and those whom he had notified. - -My conferences with Captain Holstrom had been scant and rather brusque. -There were some points in that idea of mine that I had not thought out -to my own satisfaction, and I had not found the captain to be especially -helpful in attacking problems. He was wholly taken up in helping to pull -that gold in over the rail, in storing it, in guarding it. - -His daughter knew why I stared at the northern horizon, and why -desperate worry added to the other woes I was suffering in that tophet -of toil. She had resigned herself to the situation when I had persisted -in keeping on. She became, as before, my wistful nurse. She talked to me -as she would have soothed a madman whom she hoped to win back to sanity. -Well, I was a lunatic in those days--there’s not much doubt of it. It -was madness made up of fear, desperation, agony of physical pain, -lust for gold--all forcing me to do work which no sane man could have -accomplished in my condition of body. - -She dared to break her usual silence on the matter of the treasure when -we were on deck one afternoon after my sleep. She had been gazing at me -sorrowfully while I stared into the north. - -“Oh, what use is it--this dreadful work and worry? You have told me that -you feel like a thief in it all. You sit and stare into the north as -though you were a wicked man, instead of being so brave and successful -in the most wonderful work a man ever did. You are getting their gold -for them. But you feel that they are coming to take it all away--and -call you a thief. You cannot deceive me as to your thoughts.” - -I had to acknowledge to myself that her woman’s intuition was in fine -working order. I understood what men were, naturally, in affairs where -big sums of money were involved. These men, provided Keedy had done as I -supposed he had, would have Keedy’s lies about us to inflame them still -further in addition to their natural greed. - -But she was no quitter on one point. She clenched her little fists and -kept on: - -“I say fight back! It may be their money--somebody’s money--but what -good did it do them or anybody else until you came here with your -strength and your courage and your brains and got it up from the bottom -of the ocean? I don’t know what the law is about such things--I don’t -care. I’ve heard you and father talk, but I only know that often in this -life law is one thing and justice is another.” - -“There are the laws of salvage,” I told her. “We could turn this money -over and wait for the courts to decide. But I’m afraid of what may -happen if we do that. There’s that renegade Keedy with his lies; there -are the customs men of Mexico, and all that mess of international law to -complicate things. Keedy can claim partnership; the shippers can claim -shares, I suppose; this one and that one can dip in their fingers; and -lawyers can tie the matter up; and God only knows when it will all be -untied so that we can get what we have honestly earned. We may have to -fight for our liberty, for men are crazy enough to try to make us -out thieves, providing they can get hold of much money by lies and -injustice. I have been pounding it all out in my poor head, and I can’t -seem to believe that the law is going to give us what we ought to -have. For, you see, this thing isn’t like anything else that has ever -happened.” - -“I say fight!” she insisted, her eyes alight, her cheeks flaming under -the tan. “You have fought the ocean for their sakes as well as -your own--and you have won. Keep on fighting! Plan something, do -something--get into some position where they will have to come to you -and beg for what’s theirs. You have earned the right to make them beg. -And you know you have!” - -Yes, I did know it; and on that belief I had based my idea which had -served for my encouragement. Her advice and her woman’s spirit in the -matter heartened me. She had acted like the lady of the castle of whom I -had read. She brought to me my helmet and shield, and was sending me out -to battle as a brave woman should. I started to tell her more about my -idea--but we were interrupted. - -There was a queer noise in the direction of the ladder which led to the -lower deck. It was such a prodigious puffing and wheezing and grunting -that anybody might suppose that we were going to receive a visit from a -hippopotamus. The Snohomish Glutton, the cook of the _Zizania_, appeared -to us. I had not laid eyes on that individual for weeks. He stuck in his -pantry like a hermit in a cell, reveling in the steam of food, stuffing -himself even while he was cooking for others. He rolled rather than -walked across the deck, and stood before us, propping up the rolls of -fat which shuttered his little eyes. - -“I don’t know how much there is or where you’re keeping it,” he blurted, -without preface, in his tin-whistle voice. “I don’t ask questions--I -stay in my pantry and mind my business. But I serve the niggers in the -port alley and the whites in the starboard alley, and I hear both sides. -But there’s only one side now. They said that the monkey’s tail started -the row. But they’ve forgotten the row. Gold will make men forget -’most anything. They’ve got together at last. They are going to grab -for it. They thought I haven’t been hearing because my eyes were shut -and I seemed to be asleep.” - -“What do you mean, my man?” I demanded. - -“I mean that you can play checkers on that checkerboard crew now, sir. -It has settled into a solid board--white and black mixed. The Russian -Finn is captain. He killed my cat. I have said I would get even with -him. He is captain, and they are going to drop on to that gold and run -away.” - -“They have planned a mutiny?” - -“Mutiny and all the side dishes that go with it. I have heard. I wasn’t -asleep when they thought I was. I’ve got to go back. I have duff in the -pot.” - -He backed to the ladder and let himself down, rung by rung, grunting -more terrifically than before. - -The girl leaped to her feet. She held her clenched fists above her head. -Her white teeth showed beneath the crimson of her parted lips. She drove -her hands down at her sides. - -“Oh!” she had gasped, when her hands were above her head. When she drove -them down her woman’s soul spoke its anger and horror. “Damn the name -of gold!” she cried; and I would not have indorsed a milder phrase even -from her. - -For weeks my head had been full of seething particles of schemes -relating to my central idea. I reckon it needed a shock--needed the -desperate occasion of instant action--to make those particles cohere -into resolve. For a moment I was stunned by the prospect of this -new danger; and then a course of action came to me in a flash of -inspiration--it was the result of all the thinking I had been doing, -without making up my mind to act. - -I hobbled to find Captain Holstrom in his state-room. I had to push -him back when he had heard a dozen words of what I had reported. He -had grabbed his pistols and was rushing to kill off a few prospective -mutineers as an example to the others. - -“You have got to do what I advise in this matter, Captain. I’ve been -making plans. We’ve got not only this crew to consider, but Keedy and -those he is bringing down here. He is coming. We may as well make up our -minds to that. I want you to go down on the main deck as quickly as -you can and order the crew to get out planks and start in making strong -boxes. Privately, you and I will overhaul the junk for scrap iron, for -chains and cable. Get after the men. Hustle them. Make it a hurry-up -job. Busy men won’t have time to talk mutiny. And say to one of the -mates, when you are giving off orders, that you are going to pack the -treasure into boxes suitable for handling. Say that loud enough so that -all the men will hear.” - -“I’ll be joheifered if I don’t believe I’ve got to handle a lunatic as -well as a mutiny,” flamed Captain Holstrom. “Are you advising me to pack -up that gold so that it will be easy lugging for the crew?” - -“As soon as they believe that it is going to be packed so as to be easy -lugging there’ll be no mutiny until those boxes have been made. You’ve -got to do as I say. You ought to have had your lesson by this time that -I know what I’m talking about.” - -He shuttled his eyes when I looked at him. He was remembering those past -matters in which he had made a fool of himself in resisting me. I was -willing to explain my plan to him, for I was not trying to humiliate -Captain Holstrom. But just then I had a feeling that every moment -counted. One instant more and I knew what the pricking of my mental -thumbs had meant. Mate Number-two Jones came clattering along the deck -from below. He shoved a red and greatly troubled face in at the door. - -“Get your guns, Cap’n Holstrom,” he panted. “They’re grumbling and -mumbling. It means mutiny.” - -“Take your guns with you, if you like,” I told the captain. “But go down -there as cool as you can. Give off your orders as if you didn’t notice -anything. And be sure to throw out that hint about why you want the -boxes made. This is no time to bull this game of ours.” - -Captain Holstrom was no fool, and he knew when a man was in dead -earnest. I pushed him and he went. I’ll have to confess that he -qualified as a good actor when he arrived on the main deck. - -I was looking down from the bridge, and I saw the men of the crew -exchange winks and grins behind the captain’s back. - -The model crew of the crack ship in all the world could not have shown -such willing obedience. They went to their work on the rush. Saws rasped -and hammers banged. There was clattering of iron and hum of industry. - -Captain Holstrom left the work in charge of his mates, and came back to -his state-room to resume his watch over the treasure. I closeted myself -with him. - -“Now, we’ll get down to the bed-rock of the proposition, Captain -Holstrom. We have agreed--you and I--that Keedy is about due here. -We don’t know who will come with him. But we can be mighty sure that -they’ll be no friends of ours. We’d be playing the parts of idiots to -keep that gold on board the _Zizania_. But there isn’t a harbor nearer -than Acapulco where we can land it; we can’t lug it ashore on the open -coast through the breakers; we can’t dodge all around the Pacific Ocean -with it. Right now, there’s another complication besides Keedy and his -crowd. We have still more desperate thieves right here with us. The -mates and Shank are safe. To-night the five of us will get busy, pack -that gold in the strong boxes, and drop it overboard.” - -“Great guns!” groaned the captain. “I said you was crazy, and now I’m -sure of it. Dig it all up, and then throw it away again! No, let’s not -put it in the boxes. Let’s hoot and holler and cavort around the deck -and heave it overboard, one ingot at a time, so as to see who can make -the biggest splash. Come on--let’s have fun!” he raved. - -“I am far from being crazy, Captain Holstrom,” I informed him, giving -him the hard eye so steadily that he blinked. “To each box we’ll hitch -chain long enough to reach to the surface. That chain will have rope -cable--say ten feet of it--hitched to the end, and the rope will be -buoyed to a small spar. The box and all the chain will lie on bottom. -The small spar with its rope cable will swim well under the surface of -the water. In case we want to raise the box we can catch the rope and -spar with a rake, or else drag for it with a chain between two boats.” - -“I hate to see that gold go under water again,” mourned Captain -Holstrom. - -“It’s that or stand by and see mutineers lug it off or lawyers divide -it.” - -He writhed like a speared fish when he pondered on the alternatives. -I went out on deck and left him to think, confident that his slow mind -would finally swing to my way of making the best of a bad matter. - -The checker-board crew was at work in a real frenzy of effort. I have no -doubt that each man secretly told himself that he was building his own -box--and he was putting his best work into his treasure-carrier. - -The summer evening was long and the crew labored on after their supper. -According to my best judgment, when darkness shut down on their labors -there were boxes enough for our purpose. The men went to their rest -on the berth-deck in the forepeak of the steamer. Captain Holstrom had -remarked, casually, in their hearing, that he would wait till next day -before packing the ingots. From my post on the bridge, though the dusk -had deepened, I caught a cheerful wink or two between man and man, and -they went below looking like cats who had been promised a full meal of -canaries. - -In order to encourage general peace and confidence, the mates allowed -the usual deck watch to go below and sleep, and the lazy sailors were -only too glad to do so. - -When they were snoring in satisfactory chorus, Captain Holstrom slid -their hatch over and barred it so as to guard against a surprise by -peepers. Before two bells after midnight the last box of our gold had -gone gurgling down over the taffrail. The last spar winked out of sight -under the surge. - -“It’s gone!” groaned Captain Holstrom. - -“Thank God, it has!” said I, and felt the girl’s little hand snuggle -comfortingly into my unsightly fist. - - - - -XXXVI--THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH - -THE next morning Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew -assembled on the main deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and -leaned over the rail like a candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, -unlike a candidate, he had two revolvers strapped to his waist and in -plain sight. - -“I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I -know all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you -peeking and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t -find them. Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger -down at the Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn -turned pale and shook his head. - -“You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to -take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s -orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will -be mutiny--and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where you -stand.” - -After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led -him into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a -genera! tour of inspection of the upper deck. - -“Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here -to mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen--or, -rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder. - -“I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from -forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help -yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t -an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He -swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like -men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords. -If you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through -it will never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they -will fetch up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering -among themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report -of the leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last--the -blacks from the whites--and went about their tasks. - -“I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the -captain, as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving -three cheers--not while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific -Ocean.” - -Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the -bottom in that wreck of the _Golden Gate_, but I had no appetite for -more gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength -and courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that -miserly ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another -fight against the greed of men. - -I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for -the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north. -Half a dozen anxious days dragged past--and then it came! - -A trail of blacksmoke signaled it--they were using lots of coal and -were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain -Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed -to leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the -bows churned up white yeast. - -There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore -down on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our -own!” - -We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the -tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in -the hook of their arms. - -“It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come -down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now -with gold aboard here?” - -Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words -with which to express his feelings. - -“We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a -fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.” - -That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they -rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of -bell. A dozen men leaped on board the _Zizania_. Some were guards who -carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied -Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays. -He did not venture to come on board us with the others. - -“Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three -were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this -steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He -chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference. - -“I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see -that I ain’t looking for trouble--otherwise I might have a few words to -say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules -and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.” - -“It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who -wore a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an -office. “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in -the matter of the _Golden Gate_.” - -“Step into the wheel-house--it’s my office,” stated the captain. He -pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the -upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult -to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.” - -The man hesitated. - -“We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom. - -The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below. - -“If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the -wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug -out of the wreck over yonder.” - -The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger -on the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the -other law-shark trimmings. - -“You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s -powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t. -That gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.” - -Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some -emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that -in about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of -profanity. - -“Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this -enterprise.” - -“You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man. - -“You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and -purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.” - -“We shall take our gold, my friend!” - -“Rights or no rights?” - -“You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty -overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned, -and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world. - -“You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are -concerned, have you?” I asked. - -“Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular -by the court and the United States.” - -“But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?” - -“There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to -have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on -board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters -where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat -you in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and -you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.” - -I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this -affair, I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in -their insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their -plain intent was to intimidate us. - -“What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly. - -“Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going -to get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you -haven’t. I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary -if you act sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.” - -There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they -thought they had the upper hand on us! - -I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of -much gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs -in a man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the -men who would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success -to the best man! - -I looked at that fellow--at his white hands and his flabbiness--a man -who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had -given me his code. I told him as much. - -“And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on. - -I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. -I showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the -shirt from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh. - -“You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All -right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re -welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!” - -I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they -began to hunt the _Zizania_ over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom said -to them after they had finished. - -“Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my _Zizania_ -that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want -to remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat -and cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men -who can fight--and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a -ball through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.” - -They went silently and grudgingly--but they went. I enjoyed the -expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out -on the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a -little distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of -war that started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the -holding-ground. - -A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking -men were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The -spokesman shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in -threats. In order to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at -all interested in their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on -them, and after a time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned -to the tug. - -They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly -stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But -the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and -my conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had -established the code. - -Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely -stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged -to be allowed to come on board. - -Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had -resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment -and admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her -curls, her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty. - -She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonished _me_. -She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak. - -“Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes -how this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I -have watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I -know. There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to -get angry in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep -from being angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?” - -They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about -being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk. - -“May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother -you--I won’t move unless you start to quarrel--and then I’ll only remind -you that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them -started the grins on their faces. The ice was broken. - -Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to -the conference. - -We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and -realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down. -It had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I -felt that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the -thing. - -“Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you -would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody -seemed ready to say anything for a moment and I went on. “I reckon he -told, you that he was our partner and that we have cheated him.” - -“He had quite a story to tell when he reported the matter to the -underwriters,” admitted the lawyer. - -“After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat -Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame -you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what -else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are -here with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t -need to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy -on to the _Zizania_, even though he poisons the air. What I have to say -I’ll say in his hearing.” - -I’m pretty sure that Keedy did not relish making that call, but the men -who went after him brought him. He had a gambler’s face and nerve and -he put on his best front; he even disregarded Miss Kama’s presence and -lighted a cigar to appear more at ease, and I plucked it from between -his jaws and flung it out of the window. - -“I want the floor for only a few moments, gentlemen,” - -I told the group. “I’m going to tell you how this expedition was -organized, how this person Keedy fitted in; and what happened.” And I -did tell them. - -It was necessary for the lawyer to appoint Capt. Rask Holstrom as -special guard to keep Keedy’s mouth shut while I talked, but the rules -of a court-room prevailed after that. - -“I’ll admit, gentlemen,” I said when I had finished my little story, -“that we have acted like children so far as the legal side of this thing -goes. But it seemed only a crazy scheme at best when we started out--I -couldn’t feel that I was dealing with any reality. After we arrived here -we did the best we could, and we have been too busy to study up law. -But I want to say that Captain Holstrom and I are not thieves by nature. -I’ll show you a thief, however. There he stands!” I pointed to Keedy. -“He stole from us a box of bullion worth twenty thousand dollars. I know -that he recovered two more boxes. Now that you are proposing to handle -this matter man-fashion, Captain Holstrom and I stand ready to give -to owners what is fairly their own. I advise you to ask Keedy what he -proposes to do!” The lawyer asked him in mighty prompt fashion. - -“Up to date nobody seems to be making any showdown except in talk,” said -Mr. Keedy. “I’ll cash in conversation just as far as anybody.” - -“But how does it happen, Keedy, that when you gave us your other -information you did not say that you had any of the gold in your hands?” - asked the lawyer. - -He scowled and did not answer. - -“If these men turn their bullion over on a square lay, are you prepared -to do the same?” - -“I’ll talk business after I have seen them turn it over.” - -“That’s a rather queer attitude for you to take, Keedy, after your talk -to the underwriters and to me.” - -But the renegade did not show any inclination to come across with -anything definite. - -I knew well enough that he could not. His try with those divers had cost -high and it was safe to presume that he had realized on every ounce of -the bullion his men had recovered and had planted the money. My rancor -was deep and I walked up to him and declared my belief. - -“You understand, Keedy, that you must produce the bullion or its value -in money or our bargain doesn’t stand,” said the lawyer. - -I did not need that declaration to be assured that the villain had sold -us without regard to our rights or our safety. And sudden fervor and -determination thrilled through and through me. I proposed to show those -men from San Francisco the difference between Marcena Keedy and the -partners on whom he had pasted his dirty label. Mere talk was not as -convincing proof as I desired. I had already made an investment of my -best strength and all my courage and I had much to show. But I felt -that if those men could see with their own eyes what that investment -signified in the way of human endurance, they would meet me in more -generous spirit when we came to make our bargain. - -Up to then the legal papers had only been waved under my nose in -threatening manner. I asked permission to examine them, and the lawyer -was very obliging. They were all-embracing, even to granting powers of -attorney to the underwriters’ agents to handle the matter in all its -aspects. - -“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m going down after the rest of that gold, and -every box will be put into your hands as it comes up.” - -I got a glimpse at the girl’s face, but I did not dare to look into her -eyes. Her cheeks were white, and she was gasping protests which nobody -heeded, for those men were listening to something which filled their -ears just then: - -“And after you see how I am bucking hell for your sakes, well, then we -shall see what you have to say to me--man to man!” - - - - -XXXVII--THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE - -IF what I have just written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of -melodrama, I have produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game -and I was using all the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I -have said, I proposed to operate on human nature. After all, I was in -no position to demand anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we -were making in regard to the treasure we had recovered and concealed. -I had a healthy fear of what the courts might do to us in a case where -stolen property had been hidden. It was up to me to cultivate a spirit -of generosity in them--and that was why I went down again, though every -nerve and fiber in my racked body made protest. But I went down under -better conditions. - -The tug had powerful pumps and a considerable quantity of good hose. She -was manageable in shoal water, and by means of her hawsers and well-set -kedges we were able to swing her in, for the day’s work, fairly close to -the wreck. - -There is no need of further dwelling on details--and it would be -necessary to supply the details by somebody’s word of mouth--somebody -who watched me, for I don’t remember much of what happened. I was a -lunatic, I suppose; my human machinery was operated by a single mania. -As I look back I am unable to separate the nightmare from the reality -with any amount of clarity. Therefore, we’ll allow all that to hang in -limbo, seeing that this is a plain yam and not a study of psychology. - -However, I can remember flashes through the dark curtain, and of a few -of these I will make mention, for they have a bearing on the tale. - -There was a period when I was in the mood for babbling. I could feel my -dry tongue clacking away inside my jaws like a clapper in a wooden box -and wholly beyond my control. That tongue was telling all my story about -my love and longing and ambition in my boyhood days--telling the story -to somebody who patted my cheek and crooned sympathy--somebody who -did not annoy me by dispute when I said that I would never live to see -Levant again--somebody who promised to carry there the three rings and -tell my story and fulfil my requests. It was a dream full of agony for -me--rather it may be called a dreaming reality. I wanted to stop that -clacking tongue. I wasn’t operating it. It was telling a lot of truth -which I did not want published. It was putting me in wrong, I felt, -just as if some enemy were tattling about me. It was mine and I hated -it furiously for what seemed to be betrayal of me. I wasn’t standing for -what the tongue said. - -Then there was a period when I forgave the tongue many of its past -offenses, because, at last, it did good service for me in man-talk to -men. It was steady and convincing and I was conscious that it had helped -me to win in some big matter. Then, later, there was a time when there -were shots and shoutings and dismal trouble of some sort. And, last -of all, in the blurred imaginings, mixed with the real, came the -long-drawn-out, misty, groping, wondering consciousness that I was -out of strife and trouble and agony. But I could not come out of the -shadow--I knew that many days and nights came and went while I was -trying to grasp something which I could know was reality. - -I was dreaming that I was back in my old room in Dodovah Vose’s tavern, -and that dream seemed to last for days. Then all at once I woke up and I -was truly in that room. - -By the open window sat Capt. Rask Holstrom and he was junking up a Red -Astrachan apple with his jackknife. He poised a cube of the fruit on -the tip of the blade; looked me square in the eyes, and asked, in a -matter-of-fact way, if I was feeling more like myself that day. - -There was no doubt about my being in Dodovah Vose’s tavern! I made sure -before I opened my mouth. There was the old quaint smell of the place, -and I could always trust my nose. For my ears there was the whining -squeak of the windmill pump in the stable-yard. I touched the irregular -seams of the silk crazy-quilt, and, to delight my eyes, the brass -handles of the ancient high-boy in the corner blinked back the radiance -of the afternoon sunlight. All my senses were satisfied, for I could -almost taste, as the breeze flicked my lips, the savor of fried chicken -which came floating in through the window. And after my senses told -me what they did, I felt at ease and dismissed all the shadows and -imaginings. Never did a man come back to his right balance of mind in -more commonplace fashion. - -I decided to be just as matter-of-fact as Captain Rask. I told him I -felt pretty fair. Parts of my hands were bandaged and I was aware that -my feet were tied up. - -“Have another apple?” - -So I had been eating apples from Dodovah Vose’s orchard! I used to steal -from his trees--especially the early-autumn fruit. I must have been -giving the impression that I was pretty nigh all right, even though -the kink in my brain had kept me on the side-track so far as I was -concerned, personally. - -The captain junked an apple into quarters, pared them, and gave me the -fruit. I think Eve tempted Adam with a Red Astrachan! - -The captain sat and rocked and munched. Confound his old pelt, why -didn’t he start in and tell me what had happened? - -He clacked his knife shut after a time and yawned. - -“So, as I was telling you before you had your nap, Kama and I may as -well move on. There isn’t much more that’s sensible we can do for you.” - I wondered just what they _had_ done! - -“Where is Kama?” I called her “Kama” quite naturally; it seemed to me -that my clattering tongue had been that familiar for a long time. - -“Oh, I guess she’s just resting up a little in her room. She is bound -to be nursing you most of the time, though you don’t need so much -attention, so far as I can see. Do you know, Ross, in spite of what -you and I were saying to each other yesterday, that girl o’ mine still -insists that your mind isn’t right, and that you’re off the hooks. She -says there’s something that hasn’t come back to you!” - -God bless that girl’s intuition! I felt the tears coming into my eyes. - -“Women folks are always seeing something a man can’t see--because it -isn’t there for him to see!” declared the captain. “I have made her keep -her mouth shut best I could! Nice thing it would be to have it go out -in business circles that you’re a lunatic. That old hippohampus uncle of -yours would try to get himself appointed your guardian. He makes believe -to be a great friend of yours, I know, when he calls, but I reckon he’s -only hiding that old grudge that Vose has told me about. _There’s_ -your friend, Ross--Vose! He’s the old boy to tie to!” I was getting -considerable information from Capt. Rask Hol-strom without weakening his -confidence in my sanity. - -“And then, outside of Vose, it has really been a good thing for you to -get back here near your girl,” pursued the captain. “Now you take Kama -on that point! I say women folks have too much imagination. When you -told me you wanted the Kingsley girl to stay away from you till you was -fit to look at, why, then you was showing hard, ordinary common sense. -In spite of all that Kama or anybody else said about her coming in here, -I done just what you asked me to do--for I believe in men standing by -each other. But, as I have told you, Kama was bound to have it that a -screw was loose because you didn’t want your girl first thing! And Kama -has been bound and determined to hang on here till she is sure you’re -all right with your girl. But I can’t see that your girl is in any great -pucker about you! She hasn’t showed up!” The sweat started out on me. -Into what sort of a tangle had my affairs been drawn? - -“But I’ve got a good girl, even if she is flighty in her thoughts--as I -suppose girls’ nature is about this lovey-dove business. I used to sit -and hear you talk to her on the _Zizania_ about those three rings and -that girl back in Levant--all mush, mush right in the middle of that -wind-up job--and, I swear, if I didn’t think you were crazy then, though -she wouldn’t have it that way! Said you were all right. Kama and I never -did seem to agree very well on much of anything. After the settlement -with the underwriters, when you were right as a trivet and wanted to -stay on the Coast, then she insisted that you were out of your head--as -I don’t mind telling you noe when we’re going--and she fairly picked -you up and lugged you back here. You were too sick to help yourself, you -know! Made me help her do it! For you and your girl, said she! I ain’t -sure but what you _was_ a little delirious there at times. But being -here with Vose has done you good. However, I like West the best. So as -I say, I reckon Kama and I will pack up and start back. Furthermore, -you know, I’m summonsed for that trial.” I merely stared at the old -gossiper. - -“I don’t want to be too hard on those critters,” he said, musingly. -“There was a big temptation and Marcena Keedy knew how to stir ’em up. -When he lolloped that word ‘gold’ around in his mouth he always made me -drool.” - -Didn’t I remember, also? Only too well! - -“No, I’m going to use some discretion in my testimony,” - -Captain Rask chatted on. “I have been running over in my mind what -happened. Now, if you’re a mind to, let me kind of rehearse it over to -you so that you can check up my memory. I’ll hate to have any law-sharks -tangle me on the stand. If I make a slip catch me up on it.” - -I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in -my heart. - -He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened -to--wonderful because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my -fortune; wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the -first time was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising -narrative without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew -the happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order -to collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared -and munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did -not dare to prod him. - -I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In -this yarn I have been telling what I do know--not what I have heard from -another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of -the _Golden Gate_ treasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the -jettisoned gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had -been secretly organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody -battle which had been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful -guards. Keedy would not fight--he had prodded the other poor devils to -do that--and the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when -the _Zizania_ was on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom. -So, there’s enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself! - -And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another -apple I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I -had in the world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly -fearful as a straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank -credits and is afraid to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving -one’s self away becomes terror pretty vital! - -“However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about -their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife -blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the -stand that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the -faithful ones--especially _you_, for you could give out a better line of -talk--when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters and -added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even the -Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone to -board with him. Clear consciences--that’s what we’ve got, Ross!” - -But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred -thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally -must be plenty more where that came from! - -“Do all the folks here--do the people in Levant know how well we’re -fixed?” I faltered. - -“Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose -anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing -time.” - -So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was! - -And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out -of the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have -spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question. - -I don’t know just how wild I looked while I sat there, but I know I felt -wild. Then Kama Holstrom came into the room. - -I was conscious that my features were not obeying my volition. I had not -been able to make that clacking tongue of mine behave; now my face was -just as disobedient. I wanted with all my heart to beam gratitude and -joy on her, but I seemed to be trying to manage a stiff mask. If she had -turned and escaped in sheer fright I would not have blamed her. - -I entirely mistook the expression on her face when she stood there and -stared at me. Her eyes were wide with what appeared to be terror. Her -lips parted and her cheeks grew pale. Then she ran to the side of the -bed, plumped down on her knees, set both her little hands about one of -mine and cried, “Thank the good God! You have come back--you have come -back!” - -And that’s how a woman knows. - -The balm of her tears bathed my hand when she put her forehead down and -hid her face. It was not white any longer--the warm color flooded it and -I ought to have been content for a time with what I could bring in the -compass of my gaze. But I wanted to have a blessing from her eyes, and -when I struggled to lift her face she suddenly released my hand and -hurried to the window and sat down. - -“I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself that way,” she panted. “But when -I saw your eyes I knew you had come back--and it has been so long--and -the others haven’t understood!” - -“When I came to myself, just now, Kama, your father was here and I -didn’t confess to him. What I know now and what you have known all along -we must keep to ourselves.” - -“Yes! Nobody has believed what I was so sure of!” - -We sat there in silence for a long time. - -“Do you remember?” she asked, almost whispering the question. - -“Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and -now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.” - -I was the first to break another silence: - -“I know from what he said how faithful and self-sacrificing--” - -“You force me to remind you how much we owe to you, sir. It makes me -very uncomfortable. It’s twitting me of a debt which father and I can -never pay. Please don’t!” - -So there was conversation closed on that point; I did not feel like -making Kama Holstrom uncomfortable. - -“It’s all coming about just as it should. It will be all right from now -on,” she said, after a time. - -She had recovered all her usual serenity; she was the girl of the -_Zizania_, cool and distant. I was irritated by her manner. That -aloofness was not a square deal between folks who had been through what -we had suffered together. It seemed to me that I was not being treated -right--first that matter-of-fact manner of Captain Rask and now this -coolness on the daughter’s part. Her first greeting had given me an -appetite for more of the same sort. Of course, I didn’t expect to be -welcomed back from the shadows with a brass band and speeches--but some -kind of hankering or dissatisfaction was gnawing inside me and I felt -ugly and cross and childish. - -“I haven’t intended to go too far in anything, sir. But I have been so -anxious to help all I could--forgive me, but father and I do owe you -so much! Don’t scowl so! I’ll not mention debts again. I hope you won’t -think I was too eager--and that I meddled. But I went to her! I did not -want her to misunderstand! It was due you and due myself--and her. So I -have explained everything. I have told her the story. It will come -about all right--just as you hope--I am sure! I did not intend to -stay here--but I have been worrying about--But now you can speak for -yourself!” - -She rattled it off so fast I couldn’t get in a word. She looked relieved -when she had finished--as if she had been carrying around something very -disagreeable and had handed it over to somebody for keeps. And I was -obliged to wait quite a while before I dared to trust myself to reply -to her. What she had handed to me seemed to be about as gratifying as -if she had dropped a sea-crab down the back of my neck and then sat back -and expected me to give her three cheers. - -“Look-a-here!” I yapped. “Where did you get the notion that I wanted you -or anybody else to act as my attorney over there?” I jerked my thumb in -the direction of the Kingsley house. - -“But your head was not right--I knew it,” she stammered. “I was afraid -there would be a misunderstanding--and after what you made me promise -on the _Zizania_--” - -“Don’t you know that I was as crazy as a coot?” - -“But I knew that deep down in your heart you must love her.” - -“A crazy man doesn’t tell the truth.” - -“Oh, he does when he is revealing his real soul.” - -“I wasn’t revealing any soul. I was babbling away--and I knew I was -talking fool talk and I couldn’t stop my tongue. I didn’t mean that -guff. And now you have got this thing all tangled up by talking to -Celene Kingsley. I can do my own love-making!” That temper of mine -was working in fine shape. And Kama Holstrom was no wilting daisy in -temperament! - -“From what I know of you myself, and what _others_--I call no -names--have said, you are about as well qualified in that direction as a -catfish.” She jumped up and stamped her foot. - -“But I know now what love--” - -“Mr. Sidney, you have just insulted me because I tried to be your -friend. And your _sweetheart_,” she sneered, “has no better manners -than you! She has not even thanked me for bringing you to her! I do not -understand! I shall go to her at once and tell her that you are in your -right senses at last. After this you handle your own love affairs. Don’t -you mention the word ‘love’ to me again!” She marched out and banged -the door so violently behind her that all the brass handles on the old -high-boy were left jingling shrilly--as if the high-boy had gone into a -spasm of giggles over my comeuppance! - -In a few minutes the kindly face of Dodovah Vose appeared at the door, -his eyes full of solicitude. - -“Fall out of bed?” he inquired. - -“No, out of heaven,” I snapped. He came in and shut the door and showed -anxiety. - -“See here, son, you seem to have a turn for the worse all of a sudden. -You’ve been gaining fine. But your eyes look crazy to-day. And what you -just said--” - -Say, I came nigh bawling out Dodovah Vose, right then! Nobody seemed -to know anything about my case except Kama Holstrom--and she knew too -blamed much! I rolled myself out of bed and stood on my feet. - -“My Lawd!” gasped my old friend, “you mustn’t do that. It’s against her -orders. You’re sartain out of your head!” - -“Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred -knuckles against it--and the pain in the knuckles made me all the -uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed and fussed over any longer. I -have been nursed too much already. They’re even nursing my own private -business--and making it sicker all the time. From now on I’m going to -tend to my own affairs. Mr. Vose, help me get these bandages off my -feet!” - -He stood back and flapped his hands and protested. I knew he felt that -I had become a lunatic, and so I convinced him by walking up and giving -him a good, sane stare. - -“Do you think I’m going to stay in bed the rest of my life--a man who -has so much to live for as I have?” - -“That’s right--a man who is wuth--” - -At last somebody was going to post me on my financial status--satisfy my -wild eagerness to find out! And I stopped him. - -“Shut up,” I fairly barked. “I don’t want to be reminded of that every -five minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Vose. But get my clothes.” - -I had made up my mind that only one voice in all the world should tell -me what my sacrifice had wrung from the Pacific for my own self! Silly -notion, eh? No matter. I felt that a certain pair of lips would bless -the information when it passed them. - -A half-hour later I was dressed after a fashion. I walked down-stairs, -or it may be better to say that I scuffed and skated down, for I could -not squeeze my feet into shoes and was provided with a pair of Dodovah -Vose’s slippers--carpet affairs with a hectic rose on each instep. - -I found Captain Holstrom on the porch with my uncle Deck; their chairs -were tipped back and they were confabbing in most amiable fashion. My -uncle grinned at me, and I floundered for words because I wasn’t sure -what I had said to him prior to my awakening or just what our diplomatic -relations were. His grin encouraged me. - -“Damn it,” he ejaculated, “I’ve said right along it was best for you -to be up and around. But Cap’s girl would have it t’other way. Feel all -right, sonny?” - -“I’ll feel better, Uncle Deck, if I’m sure that you and I will never -have any more misunderstandings. As we have said--” - -I stopped there and waited, figuring that I had left about the right -kind of an opening to find out what we _had_ said. My uncle arose and -clapped my shoulder. - -“Sonny, I tell you again, now when you stand man-fashion in front of -me, that the night when I took my first trick at sitting up with you we -fixed it all! For I found out how you felt, underneath, about _him!_ And -about the whole proposition!” He nudged me. “I’m taking my comfort -these days watching him. No more liberty than old Potter Crabtree’s -clay-grinding hoss--around and around in an everlasting circle. I hope -he’ll live long enough to pay his debts--that means a considerable -stretch of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t trig his wheel for all the -world!” - -That was how it stood, eh? And I let it stand, for I wasn’t just sure -what my private sentiments were in regard to Judge Kingsley at that -time. Furthermore, I had some very special business of my own on my -mind. I turned to Captain Rask. - -“Where is Kama?” - -“Reckon she’s over saying good-by to your girl.” - -My uncle stared at me--I must have been telling him things when he sat -up with me. - -Saying good-by! Then she probably had told her father that she was ready -to go away. I started across the village square, sliding along in my -huge slippers like a man walking on snow-shoes. I banged the big knocker -on the front door of Judge Kingsley’s mansion and the maid admitted me. -I was not bashful that day--I walked right into the sitting-room. - -If I am any judge of expressions I did not interrupt any amiable and -confidential tête-à-tête. The two girls rose and, after a few moments -of constraint, Celene Kingsley asked me to be seated. I told her that I -preferred to stand; I reckon that I wasn’t sure that I _could_ sit down; -the stiffness of the whole situation made me feel as if I did not have -any joints. - -“I have finished my errand,” declared Kama. The red was in her cheeks -and there was no encouragement for me in her eyes. “I will say, Mr. -Sidney, that I have apologized to Miss Kingsley for meddling in matters -between you two. I thought I understood and I have tried to help. I -deserve exactly what I have received! I assure you both that I will keep -out of the way after this.” She started for the door, but I was standing -where I could block her. I supplemented my interference by an appeal to -the lady of the mansion. - -“Will you ask Miss Holstrom to remain for a moment?” I entreated. And -Miss Holstrom did remain, biting her lower lip with impatience. - -“I haven’t had much time for thinking on what to say,” I confessed. “I -don’t know how to talk to ladies very well, anyway.” - -My face was flaming--I could hardly control my voice--I felt sure that -I was committing a dreadful sin in point of etiquette and all that--but -once more I was playing a big game in my life--bigger, even, for the -sake of my happiness than when I offered to go down after the remainder -of the treasure of the _Golden Gate_. I was operating again on human -nature--and that nature was in the complex little personality of Kama -Holstrom who pressed impatiently at my elbow, frowning at me. I knew -with all my heart and soul that unless she stood in the presence of -Celene Kingsley and myself--as she then stood--and heard the truth about -my boyhood folly, my cause was lost; because the pride of a girl makes -the way of a man with a maid a mighty doubtful proposition. - -“May I hope that you have found out that I am not the scoundrel you -believed me to be?” - -“I know the truth now. My father is wiser! I am trying to find words--” - -She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me, -and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me -with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression--but, good heavens, there -wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was like -when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon! - -As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in -affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not -come into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more -illusions as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! -Never had she given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me -had been plainly inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that -piece of brazen idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had -been careful to keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been -doing some swift and coherent thinking on my way from the tavern. - -In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real -thing out of a dream--and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a -pitiful object as I stood there between them--I deserved punishment at -the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s -name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise. - -I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a -spark of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s -daughter; I knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion -one pours forth to the true mate. - -Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad -seeking release from the old love before taking on the new. - -Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I -understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster. - -So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of -humanity as there were in Levant that day. - -“I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I -blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks. - -It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she -was cooler than the other two in the party. - -She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp. - -“Don’t you understand, dear?” - -“No,” faltered the poor girl. - -“I hoped you could understand without obliging me to speak. I hoped you -would guess when I refused to discuss certain matters with you--I made -you angry, and I’m sorry.” - -“I know I meddled--” - -“My dear, I understood you all the time! I understood my old school -friend, too!” She reached out her hand and drew me close to Kama. “He -has been very noble in his help in a great trial in my family, dear! -I owe my happiness to him. And I’m speaking out, rather boldly--rather -bluntly, because I want to help him in obtaining his great happiness. I -know what must happen to make him happy.” She put Kama’s hand in mine. -“Now, my dear, do not force me to disparage one of the best young men -I have ever known by telling you that I never dreamed of him as a -husband--nor was I anything else to him except a school-day fancy, a--” - -“An inspiration to set me on the way to make something of myself,” I -insisted. - -“And now--say it, Ross Sidney, or you’re a coward--say it, and let me -hear it! She deserves it!” - -“I have found out that real love differs from boyhood fancies--and -I--I--want to--” - -She gently pushed us toward the door while I was stammering. - -“You want to tell a dear girl the sweetest story in the world, Ross -Sidney! My blessing on you both. Good night!” - -We did not speak to each other for some time after we were out of doors -together. I took her arm in gentle manner and led her steps away from -the tavern. We could see its lights in the early dusk, and I wanted to -keep away from lights for a time. - -I was glad the autumn dusk had settled--a sliver of new moon was a -comforting sight for a lover. - -“I guess neither of us knows very well how to talk about love, Kama,” I -told her, hobbling along beside her as best I could. The judge’s orchard -was shaded by the evening’s gloom, and when I turned down there she did -not resist. - -“I’m sure I’m mighty awkward about making love,” I went on, “but God -knows I want to learn how.” - -“Why do you think I can do any better as a tutor in love than as an -attorney?” she asked. - -“Because I’ll be such a willing pupil, dear.” - -“I heard you inform Miss Kingsley with a great deal of earnestness just -now that you have found out what real love is like.” She couldn’t keep -all the naughty teasing from her tone, though her voice trembled. “Who -is the fortunate one?” - -Then I caught her to me, and with her warm cheek close to mine and her -lips near and never denying caresses, I told her and I convinced her. - -“I think,” she admitted, after a long time and after many words there in -the blessed shadows, “that you are entitled to your diploma, Ross. You -are showing me that you know more than your tutor. But is there a woman -who is not jealous when she is in love? Here!” She pressed into my hand -a little packet; it contained the three rings. I drew her along to the -cleft tree. I dropped them into the hollow. - -“One for fancy, one for folly, one for the freakish dreams of boyhood!” - I told her. “All buried! Come back to the tavern, precious girl! I want -you to tell Dodovah Vose how to decorate the parlor for the wedding!” - -She reached on tiptoe and plucked two apples from the old tree. She gave -one to me. - -“An apple of gold from the only woman in the world,” I said. - -“Don’t say ‘gold’ to me, Ross! Don’t! A boy of your age with half a -million safe in the bank--” - -There was my news at last! I kissed the lips which told me! - -Then, eating the sweet fruit of our new knowledge of life and of each -other, we went on our way up through the whispering trees toward the -welcoming, glowing windows of the old tavern. - -THE END - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Your Treasure Is, by Holman Day - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS *** - -***** This file should be named 55360-0.txt or 55360-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/3/6/55360/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Where Your Treasure Is - Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver - -Author: Holman Day - -Release Date: August 15, 2017 [EBook #55360] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS - </h1> - <h3> - Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver - </h3> - <h2> - By Holman Day - </h2> - <h4> - New York And London: Harper Brothers - </h4> - <h3> - 1917 - </h3> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0010.jpg" alt="0010 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0010.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a> - </p> - <div class="fig" style="width:50%;"> - <img src="images/0011.jpg" alt="0011 " width="100%" /><br /> - </div> - <h5> - <a href="images/0011.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a> - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I—BEING THE STRUGGLE OF AN AMATEUR AUTHOR - TO GET A FAIR START </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II—ENDING WITH A MEETING ON PURGATORY HILL - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III—ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV—THE TRAINING OF THE QUEEN OF “SHEBY” - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V—SHOOING AWAY A SCAPEGOAT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI—HAVING TO DO WITH JODREY VOSE’s MAKING - OP A DIVER </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLUG-HAT| </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII—“TAKING IT OUT” ON A SUIT OF CLOTHES - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX—A GRISLY GAME OF BOWLS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X—THE ART OF PUTTING ON A FRONT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI—THE FAILURE OF AN UNCLE-TAMER </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII—STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII—THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV—THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN - BUSINESS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XV—A TIP FROM MR. DAWLIN </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVI—GRABBING A HUSBAND AND FATHER </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVII—MONEY HAS LEGS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVIII—THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ROYAL CITY - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XIX—THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XX—ACROSS CALLAS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXI—THE SKIRMISH-LINE </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXII—MONEY ON THE GALLOP </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIII—THE CLEAN-UP </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXIV—HOW SWEET IS THE HOME-COMING, EH? - </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXV—GRATITUDE! </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVI—CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL. </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVII—MR. BEASON HORNS IN </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXVIII—SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXIX—THE TELLTALE RIBS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXX—THE LOCKS OF THE SAND </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXI—A TASTE OF BLOOD </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXII—PER MISTER MONKEY </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIII—THE HEART OF THE MILLIONS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXIV—AMONG THIEVES </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXV—SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVI—THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> XXXVII—THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE - </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS - </h1> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I—BEING THE STRUGGLE OF AN AMATEUR AUTHOR TO GET A FAIR START - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>PEAKING of money—and - it’s a mighty popular topic—the investment of the first twenty-five - cents I ever earned, all at a crack, ought to have directed my feet, my - thoughts, and my future along the straight and narrow way. Ten minutes - after I had galloped gleefully home with that quarter-dollar from Judge - Kingsley’s hay-field, my good mother led me down to Old Maid Branscombe’s - little book-store and obliged me to buy a catechism. - </p> - <p> - I earned that money by hauling a drag-rake for a whole day around behind a - hay-cart, barefoot and kicking against the vicious stubbles of the shaven - field. I honestly felt that I did not deserve the extra penance of the - catechism. However, that first day’s work gave me my earliest respect for - money—earned money. And I also remember that Judge Kingsley, when he - paid me, sniffed and said I hadn’t done enough to earn twenty-five cents. - </p> - <p> - I hated to walk up to him and ask for my pay, because Celene Kingsley was - within hearing; she had come down to the field to fetch him home in her - pony-chaise. That’s right! You’ve guessed it! I’ll waste no words. It was - only another of the old familiar cases. Barefooted, folks poor, keeping my - face toward her, as a sunflower fronts the sun (though the sunflower has - other reasons than hiding patches), I was in the shamed, secret, hopeless, - heartaching agonies of a fifteen-year-old passion. Of course, I don’t mean - that I had loved her for all that time—I’m giving my age and hers. - </p> - <p> - Yes, I hated to walk up. And the judge gave me the quarter only because he - did not have any smaller change. - </p> - <p> - And really, for the times, it was considerable of a coin for a single - juvenile job. - </p> - <p> - The services of youngsters in those days in Levant were paid for on a - narrower scale—ten cents for lawns and a nickel for shoveling snow, - and so on. And tin-peddlers were mighty stingy in their dickerings for old - rubbers and junk. To get rags one had to steal ’em—our folks - made rugs and guarded old remnants carefully. - </p> - <p> - So much for my first financial adventure of real moment—for the - biggest coin I had ever clutched; and right now I lay down my pen for a - moment and spread out two human paws which have juggled three million - dollars’ worth of gold ingots as carelessly as one scruffles jackstraws. - That was maverick treasure. But there’s a big difference between earned - money and maverick money. If you don’t know what maverick means I’ll save - you the trouble of looking the word up in the dictionary. Once on a time, - in Texas, old Sam Maverick wouldn’t brand his cattle. Therefore, a - maverick was a cow or steer unbranded. And to-day it means any kind of - property at large which a bold man or a dishonest man may grab if he can - beat other thieves to it. - </p> - <p> - I had an early taste of maverick money, and the taste was so sweet that I - never have lost my hankering for more. - </p> - <p> - In the fall of that “year of the catechism” the line gale blew down the - chimney which had stood after the old Pratt house was burned. I was there - before the dust settled, for all the boys knew that there were - wrought-iron clamps high up in the bricks. But I left the clamps to the - next comers and picked up a dented tin box, rusty and dusty and - soot-blackened; I shook it; it rattled and I ran away into the woods. When - I had knocked the box open and looked in and spied coins I had the - heart-thrilling conviction that money worries were over for me in this - life. My first thought was that I would marry Celene Kingsley and settle - down and live happy ever after. If there had been in the box what I - thought at first there was, I could wipe my pen and close my story. - </p> - <p> - I dove both hands into the box and brought them up brimming—coins - scattering and clattering back over my trembling fingers. They were big - coins—and I had read much about the days of the bold pirates. - </p> - <p> - “Pieces of eight!” I whispered. - </p> - <p> - But they were not. When I had winked the mist out of my eyes I found that - they were old-fashioned coppers—bung-downs they used to be called. - Mixed in with them were a few copper tokens, a Pine Tree shilling, a - sprinkling of Speed The Plow cents, and the only coin of any account at - all was a Mexican dollar with a hole in it. - </p> - <p> - It wasn’t in my nature to bury that treasure. I knew it was pretty - worthless junk, but I had a hankering to carry it about with me, to feel - its drag in my pockets, to reach in and chink it when no one could hear. I - walked around weighted with it as afterward I have been weighted with the - leaden chunks of my diver’s dress. As early as that in my life I found - that money was a burden as well as a vexation. I didn’t dare to frisk and - frolic with the boys at school; I was not exploiting my new wealth; I had - grounds for caution because there were plenty of Pratts left in Levant. At - home I moved about so quietly that my folks thought, I reckon, that I was - entering an early decline. My mother used to look at my tongue quite often - and made me drink hardhack tea. - </p> - <p> - But there is one impulse in the male animal which is not easily controlled - by prudence; it’s that cursed itch to make a show in front of the female - of the species—in front of the special one, the selected one, the - beloved one. Some sort of a jimcrack-peddler came into the school-yard one - noon, and Celene Kingsley, daughter of a plutocrat, tendered a big, shiny - silver dollar and the man could not change it for her. I walked up, - trembling with both pride and panic, and said, trying my best to act the - part of a matter-of-fact bank on two legs, “Let me handle it for you!” It - was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and my voice was only a weak - squawk. - </p> - <p> - When she turned to me and opened her big, blue eyes, I was nigh to running - away. - </p> - <p> - The boys and girls came crowding around, and I couldn’t blame them for - showing interest; the sight of a Levant Sidney with money on him was a new - one in town. - </p> - <p> - I had separated from the coppers the aristocrats of my hoard, the Pine - Tree shilling and the Mexican dollar, by wrapping them in a wisp of paper. - I brought them out first. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know exactly what they are worth in real money,” I told her. “But - you can have ’em at half price.” - </p> - <p> - She had been considerably surprised before, but now she was plain - dumfounded. That system of changing a dollar was brand new. - </p> - <p> - Then I dredged a trousers pocket and produced a handful of the bung-down - coppers. I began to count them down on a corner of the school-house steps. - </p> - <p> - “Somebody get a wheelbarrow,” advised one of the boys. “That’s the only - way she’ll ever tug-a-lug her change home.” - </p> - <p> - “Really, you needn’t bother,” she said, stammering a little. “No, don’t - trouble yourself. I have changed my mind about buying anything.” - </p> - <p> - They all laughed. - </p> - <p> - “That isn’t money,” said the jimcrack man. “I’d never take that stuff for - my goods.” - </p> - <p> - A girl ran up and grabbed into the coppers I had been, heaping on the - stone. She was a Pratt. - </p> - <p> - “Ross Sidney, you stole that money,” she squealed. “It was in my granny’s - notion-box. We couldn’t find it after she died. You stole it!” - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t steal it—I found it,” I told her. But all the courage had - gone out of me. - </p> - <p> - “You ain’t the first thief to lie about your stealings.” - </p> - <p> - “But I did find it—I found it after the chimney blew down.” - </p> - <p> - “You knew it was ours. You didn’t bring it to us—that’s stealing.” - </p> - <p> - “It might have been put there before—” - </p> - <p> - “It was my granny’s money. Don’t you suppose I know? She saved old - coppers.” She spread down her handkerchief and began to pile the coins - upon it. - </p> - <p> - There did not seem to be any room for argument. In my shame I fell to - wondering how I had ever convinced myself that this money was - treasure-trove. I dug down and gave her the rest of it. Instead of proudly - showing myself a person of means before Celene Kingsley I was. barely - escaping the suspicion of being a thief. - </p> - <p> - “If it belongs to the Pratts you’re welcome to it,” I said. “I don’t want - anything which belongs to somebody else.” - </p> - <p> - “You’d better remember as much the next time you find money,” snapped the - Pratt girl. “Your conscience will be easier when you die.” - </p> - <p> - They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash—that’s so! - When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters of - the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what that - Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine, my - face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest - humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley. - </p> - <p> - I think I know what my main mistake was in my first attempts at writing - this tale; I tried to tell the story as if it had happened to somebody - else and the thing was stiffer than a mud-caked tug-line and squealed like - a rusty windlass. Of course, I hate to be saying “I” here, there, and - everywhere—but there’ll come a place in my tale—you’ll think - of it if ever you get as far as that—where there’d be nothing to the - story unless you could see with my eyes and feel with my hands. So, bear - with me and I’ll reel off the yarn as best I know how, making no apologies - after this confession. - </p> - <p> - Oh, about that first maverick money I ran afoul of! I never saw that money - again, of course. - </p> - <p> - But I did happen to meet Ben Pratt right in front of Judge Kingsley’s - house. I’ll not say how big Ben Pratt was, because you’ll think this is - only a bragging story. He called me a thief and I decided it was about - time to show Levant that the name was not a popular one with me. - </p> - <p> - I licked him: - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley rushed out with a horsewhip and lashed us apart just as I - was finishing Ben up. - </p> - <p> - “Young Sidney, you’re a cheeky, tough, brazen character,” said the judge. - I did not answer him. - </p> - <p> - It is my nature to take a big lot from all women, considerable from some - men, and devilish little from most men. I had nothing at all to say to - Celene Kingsley’s father, even though I was rubbing half a dozen swelling - welts where his whip had connected with the back of my neck. - </p> - <p> - “You come of a tough family,” stated the judge. - </p> - <p> - Right then my uncle Deck arrived at the party; he had been watching the - thing from the tavern porch. - </p> - <p> - “What’s that you say about our family?” he asked the judge. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t care to stand here and quarrel with you, Decker Sidney.” - </p> - <p> - “When you horsewhip my dead brother’s boy in the main street you’ll come - pretty nigh to having a quarrel with me, seeing that his own father can’t - protect him.” - </p> - <p> - “I merely came out here and stopped a fight which was disgracing our - village.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s a nice thing for one of the ‘forty thieves’ to talk about disgracing - a village,” said my uncle. - </p> - <p> - As young as I was I knew what was meant when folks called Judge Kinglsey - one of the forty thieves. He belonged to the syndicate that had grabbed - the State’s principal railroad away from the original shareholders; there - was political shenanigan and a good deal of foreclosure trickery. I never - understood the details, but the fact remained that the syndicate got the - railroad. - </p> - <p> - “A cheap slur from a cheap man,” said the judge, walking away. - </p> - <p> - I can’t say that I resented that remark very deeply, though I suppose - family loyalty should have prompted me to do so. I never in my life came - close to my uncle Deck when he did not have the smell of liquor on his - breath: On each side of his nose there was a patch of perfectly lurid - crimson. He was a horse-trader and he made considerable money. - </p> - <p> - “That slur of <i>yours</i> is a high-priced one,” my uncle shouted. “I - have my eye on you, you old hypocrite. There’ll come a day when that slur - will cost you more than you can afford to pay. That’s how high-priced it - is, Judge Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - I didn’t know what my uncle meant then. - </p> - <p> - It was a wicked time for me when I did find out, a long while afterward. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II—ENDING WITH A MEETING ON PURGATORY HILL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>Y mother was a - good woman—a thrifty, kindly, helpful woman, a good neighbor, in - spite of her poverty. - </p> - <p> - My short temper, my cheeky disposition, my generally ready impulse to grab - in on short notice, all belong to the Sidney side, I guess. All we know of - the family has come down by word of mouth, and I suspect that the first - rovers who came over in the old days when New England was really new were - pretty tough characters who had plenty of original nerve to start with and - then developed more as occasion required. Well, some of that sort had to - come on ahead and smooth things with the ax and crowbar—yes, and - with the musket, so that the country could get a good running start. - </p> - <p> - My mother was a good neighbor, I repeat. Up in the attic, hanging in dried - bunches from the beams, were spearmint, thoroughwort, hardback, mullein, - pennyroyal, and other pasture herbs which she sent me forth to gather. Her - thoroughwort syrup was guaranteed to cure any case of whooping-cough—and - she gave freely to all who came to her. - </p> - <p> - My father was a helpful sort of a man in his own way. He used to volunteer - as boss of all the barn-raising bees in our section—but his enemies, - made up of a considerable army of the men whom he had licked in his life, - said, behind his back, that the only reason he had for helping at a - barn-raising was to show off by running the ridgepole first of all the - crew, and then to start the regular free fight. He fell off a ridge-pole - one day and my mother was widowed. - </p> - <p> - I take it that her chief ambition in life was to tame the Sidney - disposition in me—that earnest desire explaining my involuntary - investment in the catechism. My mother’s axioms and teachings would have - made excellent addenda and foot-notes for any catechism. Always did she - counsel me to count ten before speaking angry word or performing angry - act; I don’t remember that I ever did as she told me, though the Lord - Himself knows how much I have suffered in my life on account of that lack - of self-restraint. Two days after I bought the catechism my good mother - thought it was having its effect on my nature. She saw a boy heave a rock - at me in our door-yard and I stood perfectly motionless and speechless. - </p> - <p> - “That’s right, my own son! Count your ten!” she called to me. - </p> - <p> - But just at that moment a bumblebee was crawling around over my bare foot - and I was in no mind to disturb him. Therefore, my enemy was enabled to - collect a full supply of rock ammunition and to defy and rout me when at - last I was free from the restraint of the bumblebee. It would have been - the same if I had waited to count ten. Somehow, as the world is - constituted, I have never taken much stock in this watchful-waiting game - while your enemy is hustling to pile up his ammunition and you know he is - doing so. I may be wrong. Maybe this story of mine will show that I’m - wrong. But I hear you say, let’s get on to the story! - </p> - <p> - I mean to do so at once; but if I have paused to pull the curtain aside - from my family and my character a bit you may be able to understand some - parts of the story a mite better, because, in spite of that catechism, in - spite of mother-influence, and perhaps mother-goodness deep down in me, I - have butted into adventures which you will not find set down in the - volumes of any well-conducted Sunday-school library. - </p> - <p> - I didn’t have my mother long, after my fifteenth birthday. - </p> - <p> - I was her sole heir; five minutes before she closed her eyes she gave me - all her little fortune—to wit, the sweetest smile good mother ever - left to bless memory of her, a pat on my hand, a few whispered words in my - ear. - </p> - <p> - And then Uncle Deck took me in hand to make a man of me, so he said. - </p> - <p> - He wasn’t all bad—don’t understand me as saying that. He would pass - a sleepless night if he failed to cheat a man in a horse trade, but he - would sell his shirt before he would allow any old folks in our town to go - onto the poor-farm. He would sneak around with wood and groceries after - dark, that big, red face of his like a harvest moon, and when they would - start to thank him he would curse the miserable old creatures so horribly - that my blood used to run cold. He prided himself on language which, so he - said, “would break up a Sunday-school picnic if a little bird sat overhead - and twittered it out of a tree.” He saved his choicest profanity for his - comments on Judge Zebulon Kingsley. His hatred went far back. I don’t know - what started it. Perhaps it began in the natural antipathy such a man as - Uncle Deck would entertain for a cold, proud, punctilious, professedly - religious man like the judge. Uncle Deck would have it that the judge was - a hypocrite, a thief at heart, and my uncle’s constant boast was that some - day he would show the judge up; but all that vaporing seemed to be silly - spite, without foundation. Judge Kingsley was our rich man; he had been - judge of probate, and after retiring from that office he was trusted with - funds as a sort of private banker; folks whose estates he had handled as - judge just naturally insisted on his keeping control; and he had been town - treasurer of Levant for years. - </p> - <p> - I hated to hear my uncle rave on about such a man; it was as irritating as - the barking of a cur. - </p> - <p> - I have said that my uncle was a horse-trader. Rather, he was a general - country dickerer, if you know the kind. He dealt in everything from a - sheet of fly-paper to a clap of thunder. He had car-loads of horses sent - to him from the West and peddled those to farmers, taking cash or bills of - sale or produce or second-hand furniture or anything else which he could - turn in a trade. He set me to peddling and collecting, and it was a mean - job. At first I used to believe everything which debtors or sellers would - tell me, and the result was that Uncle Deck bawled me out most dreadfully; - and thus being abused by both parties, I got so at last that I believed - nobody. - </p> - <p> - Therefore I was in a fair way to be made just the sort of man Uncle Deck - desired me to be. - </p> - <p> - And continually, after I was sufficiently hardened, he impressed on me - that I mustn’t be bothering him all the time, asking this and that about - running the business. I must act for myself and then report to him when he - called for an accounting. You shall see how his trying to make a man of me - in this fashion turned me into ways which neither he nor I could have - forecast. Don’t tell me that the activities of this life are very much a - matter of individual election, after all. To be sure, a man might elect to - live a hermit and might get away with the job in good shape; but if a - person throws himself into the ruck of the living, into the running of - humanity, he’ll be apt to find himself leaping from crag to crag because - he has been shooed or jarred. - </p> - <p> - I ran up against one Juvenal Bird, newly come to town from the rural - fastnesses of Vienna plantation—plantation meaning an unorganized - township. I had never heard of Mr. Bird, and when he came within range of - my vision I rather wondered because I had not; he seemed to be a person of - some importance. To be sure, his frock suit was rusty and his plug-hat was - fuzzy, but the garb was distinctive. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Bird was in search of furniture and I showed him our second-hand - stock; he ordered liberally and largely—especially largely. He took - the biggest stove, the largest bedsteads, the most expansive tables, and - bureaus of breadth. That plug-hat impressed me. When he told me to send - the goods out to his house on the Tumble-dick Road, and to call for the - pay at my convenience, I did not presume to ask for an advance instalment, - after our usual custom. - </p> - <p> - I promptly found out that this was one affair of business with which I - should have bothered my busy uncle, who knew all the cheats of the - section. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Bird was one of the most notable cheats. His raiment was garb - discarded by an up-country parson, who pitied Mr. Bird after the latter - had been evicted from timber-lands as a dangerous squatter, careless of - fire. Mr. Bird installed the furniture in a shack which he had hired, then - acted as his own carpenter and narrowed all the doors and the windows. I - went out after the money and learned that the law provides for the - replevin of furniture, but does not allow a house to be mutilated in order - to remove the furniture. Mr. Bird grinned at me through a cracked window - and thumbed his nose. - </p> - <p> - When I reported to my uncle he told me to go and get it. I refrain from - quoting the words in which he voiced that command. - </p> - <p> - “But the law says—” I ventured. - </p> - <p> - Again I suppress details. My uncle Deck’s opinion of the law would lack - authority. - </p> - <p> - However, being a Sidney, and resenting Mr. Bird’s betrayal of my - innocence, and needing a home and a job, I accepted my uncle’s opinion of - the law for the time being. I collected a gang of my boy intimates. We - went in the night and ripped the stuffing out of Mr. Bird’s nest. - </p> - <p> - There’s a queer kind of senseless and secret gratification in doing a mob - job. The human animal has a lot of primeval instincts which need tickling - once in a while. I reckon we boys gratified the wolf streak on that - occasion, running in a pack in the night-time. - </p> - <p> - We enjoyed it so much that we held a meeting a night or so later and - organized ourselves as the “Skokums.” I can’t remember how we happened to - light on that name. I was chosen as leader. - </p> - <p> - That first sortie was a great success—Mr. Bird was not in a position - to prosecute. We had had a wonderful night, had defied the law, and had - escaped punishment. - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley was the only man in town who proclaimed indignation loudly - and openly. He expressed himself before a crowd in the post-office and - declared that hoodlums had disgraced the town of Levant. He looked - straight at me and said he would give a reward of ten dollars for evidence - on which the ringleader could be convicted. - </p> - <p> - “And I would give one thousand dollars to pay for law to set him free,” - said my uncle. - </p> - <p> - “Some day the plug-uglies will be rooted out of this place—and good - riddance to ’em,” snarled the judge. - </p> - <p> - “The snout that goes rooting into that business will get twisted off’n the - face of the rooter,” retorted my uncle. He was never very choice in his - language. How those crimson patches on his face did glow and how his eyes - sparkled! - </p> - <p> - So, it will be seen, I was not getting on at all with my love-affair. - </p> - <p> - It is pretty presumptuous in me to refer to it as a love-affair. That - would intimate—calling it that—a bit of reciprocation on the - part of Celene Kingsley. But she never showed any visible interest in me, - even to looking my way when she met me on the street. I would have liked - to attract her attention, for at last I wore shoes and had clothes without - patches on them. - </p> - <p> - The Skokums flourished under cover of the night. - </p> - <p> - There was Oramandel Bangs. He was rather simple, and always carried his - mouth open, and nobody in Levant ever forgot that once a hornet flew in - and stung his tongue and it swelled and stuck out of his mouth for days - like the end of a bologna sausage. - </p> - <p> - Oramandel had a sneaking suspicion that witchcraft had never been wholly - stamped out by his forefathers in New England. - </p> - <p> - We decided to convince him that he was right—there’s nothing like - clinching a man’s faith in the good judgment of his ancestors. - </p> - <p> - We hoisted one of his calves into an apple-tree. He “unwitched” the animal - by cutting off its ears and tail before taking it down from the tree. - </p> - <p> - We tied cords to his ox-chains and hid ourselves and slashed the chains - about the dooryard; he ran to the neighbors and reported that the witches - had changed his chains into big snakes. We did a lot more things, and then - imagination began to do the rest for him. He said the witches wouldn’t - allow him to do his farm-work, even though he had sumac-wood splinters in - all his tools and stuck shears around his chum to make the butter come. - Before we realized what mischief a lively imagination can do to a man, - they were obliged to carry the old chap away to the asylum for the insane. - </p> - <p> - And again Judge Kingsley held forth in the post-office. I guess he did a - lot of talking at home, too. - </p> - <p> - At any rate, Celene Kingsley was mighty well posted, so I discovered. - </p> - <p> - I met her on Purgatory Hill one day—and never did that name seem to - apply so well! I had been out on my uncle’s business, and among other - plunder in the beach-wagon were two shotes in a crate, and they certainly - were taking on about leaving home and mother. - </p> - <p> - She was alone in her pony-chaise and the shaggy little brute she drove was - frightened—and I didn’t blame him. I pulled as far into the gutter - as I could and waited; I poked the butt of my whip into the crate and - prodded those shotes, but that only made them screech the louder. - </p> - <p> - So she came leading her pony past me. I didn’t expect that she would stop - and speak to me, but she did. I nearly fell off my seat. And she called me - “Mr. Sidney.” It was the first time anybody had ever given me a handle to - my name. I had pulled my hat off when I saw her coming; when she spoke to - me I put it back on again and then took it off so that I could show her - that I knew a little something about manners. However, I wasn’t at all - sure just what I was doing; my head was in a whirl, and I was damning - those pigs in my heart. - </p> - <p> - “I thank you, Mr. Sidney,” she said. “Pedro acts like a fool sometimes.” - </p> - <p> - Two hours afterward, I guess it was, I thought of just the right reply to - that remark; as it was, I didn’t say anything to her. I couldn’t. - </p> - <p> - She started on and then stopped and looked at me. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps she guessed something—I don’t know. Girls can act as if they - never notice anything and still they have an eye out all the time; and - what they don’t see they know by instinct. At any rate, there was a lot of - kindness in her face, and perhaps there was pity in her thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid I am very bold, Mr. Sidney. I hope you’ll forgive me for - speaking to you.” - </p> - <p> - She hesitated. Right there was another beautiful chance for me to say the - good thing which came to me that night after I was in bed. All I could do - at the time was duck my head. - </p> - <p> - “I’d hate to have any of the boys who went to school with me get into - trouble on account of their thoughtlessness. I’m sure it’s only - thoughtlessness and skylarking. But older folks, you know, don’t - understand and cannot sympathize with young folks. Now you won’t tell - anybody that I told you something, will you?” - </p> - <p> - Just think of it! A secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! - </p> - <p> - I gulped and shook my head. - </p> - <p> - “Won’t you tell the boys—you’ll know just how to pass the word—that - folks are talking of having a detective to watch the village nights?” She - probably saw that I was incapable of uttering a sound and she went on, - hurrying her words. “Mr. Sidney, of course you understand that I am not - picking you out as the ringleader. That’s not why I am asking you to pass - the word. But I know you are popular among the boys. They all speak so - well of you! And I was so sorry when I heard that your dear mother had - passed on. I wanted to write a bit of a note, but they are very strict at - the boarding-school—we are not allowed to write to young gentlemen.” - </p> - <p> - Think of two shotes, squalling their heads off, furnishing accompaniment - to that! But I’ll say this of the shotes, they had spirit enough to use - their voices—I was dumb. - </p> - <p> - “It would be terrible to have anybody arrested here in Levant for boyish - pranks—it’s all thoughtlessness, I’m sure. You and I ought to be - able to straighten everything out.” - </p> - <p> - I stood up. - </p> - <p> - “Enough said!” I shouted. - </p> - <p> - She flinched. Then I realized just how I must have sounded, for she said, - “I didn’t mean to make you angry!” - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t blame her for mistaking my looks; I was so mad at myself that I - wanted to lash my back with my own whip. - </p> - <p> - “No, no, no! It isn’t the way you seem to think it is! I want to say that - after this—after what you have said to me—if there’s any more - cutting-up in this village I’ll-strip the pelt off the chap who does the - job.” I beat my hand on my breast. “It’s the proudest day of my life when - I can take orders from you.” - </p> - <p> - “But I haven’t given orders, Mr. Sidney.” - </p> - <p> - “You have. They’re orders to me. The littlest thing you can wish for is - orders to me. If you said for me to cut my hand off I’d do it. Oh, you - don’t know! I have—I don’t know how to say it—but for years—oh, - I’m crazy—” And I was. It was lunacy provoked by the passion of love - trying to outvoice those devilish shotes. - </p> - <p> - By the funny look she gave me she was taking me at my word. She hurried to - step into her little chaise. - </p> - <p> - “All I mean is this,” I quavered. “I’ll make ’em quit. You look to - me. I’ll be responsible. Don’t you worry.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure everything will be all right after this,” she told me. “I’ll - depend on you, and I thank you.” - </p> - <p> - She went on her way, and the burden I had assumed seemed lighter than - feathers and more precious than golden ingots. - </p> - <p> - She had given me her confidence—she had asked me for a service! - </p> - <p> - She had thought of me and my trouble when she was away at school! - </p> - <p> - A few minutes before I had not dreamed that she was conscious that such a - person as Ross Sidney walked the earth. - </p> - <p> - Now, at all events, my poor self was in a little corner of her thoughts. - She was looking to me for help in something which she had made her own - concern. - </p> - <p> - I rode down Purgatory Hill, hugging my joy and cursing those shotes. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III—ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> TRUST you have - noted, by this time, that my yarn is not a mere chronicle of disconnected - incidents. Linked circumstances seemed to be tying me up. One happening - had pushed me on to another and I had allowed myself to be pushed. It - might be urged, of course, that I had no business in inciting a mob to - play hob with Mr. Bird—but I had my own interests to consider, and I - had been listening to my uncle’s teachings on the subject of looking out - for number one. - </p> - <p> - “You know what happened to your father when he went to running his legs - off on somebody else’s business,” he told me. “If it hadn’t been for me - helping him in his other scrapes, your mother would have been playing - hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel oftener than she - did. I hope you’ve got an ambition to be somebody and to have something.” - </p> - <p> - I did have, but you may be sure I did not tell my uncle that my principal - hankering to get money was so that I might lay it at the feet of Zebulon - Kingsley’s daughter. - </p> - <p> - Now, by the expressed wish of that daughter, I started out to control - happenings and to set myself in new ways. - </p> - <p> - I passed the word to the Skokums, keeping my promise to Celene. - </p> - <p> - I was obliged to be indefinite, for I was guarding that little secret - between her and myself as my most precious treasure. - </p> - <p> - As I remember it, I put it to the gang this way: “We ought to behave - ourselves and protect the good name of the town.” They laughed at me and - asked me if I had joined Judge Kingsley’s Sunday-school class. - </p> - <p> - I knew they didn’t suspect the truth, nevertheless that dig nearly put me - out of countenance on account of the secret I was cherishing. I blushed - and stammered and I lost my grip then and there as a leader—and it - was the same old story—it was on account of a girl. A girl does - rattle the gear of man-business! - </p> - <p> - One of the fellows remarked that I was getting almighty pious after I had - used them to clean up my own dirty job. He said the most of them had - matters of their own which needed attention, and wanted to know if I - proposed to sneak out on them after all the help they had given me. - </p> - <p> - I told them that I had thought the thing over carefully and had decided - that what we had done to Mr. Bird was not right or lawful and we’d better - make no more mistakes. - </p> - <p> - “Then perhaps you want us to correct that mistake and make up a bee and - carry the furniture back to the old cuss,” suggested one of the Sortwell - boys. - </p> - <p> - When I failed to welcome that notion they turned on me in good earnest, - and in my own heart I had to admit, looking on the surface of the thing, - that they had good reason for thinking that I was both selfish and - ungrateful. - </p> - <p> - In the Sixth Reader, at school, I had found the story of Frankenstein’s - monster. I saw that in organizing the Skokums I had built a lively little - monster of my own. - </p> - <p> - “I have a special and a private reason for asking you to quit and be good, - boys,” I told them. - </p> - <p> - “A member who keeps his private and special reasons to himself and doesn’t - trust the rest of us isn’t much of a help in time of trouble,” said Ben - Pratt. “I have never taken a whole lot of stock in you, Ross Sidney, and - now I take less than ever before.” - </p> - <p> - From remarks which were dropped I gathered that the rest of them held - similar sentiments. - </p> - <p> - “They’re going to have a detective in here,” I told them. - </p> - <p> - “Who said so?” - </p> - <p> - But that was Celene Kingsley’s secret. - </p> - <p> - I had hoped that the threat might scare them. It had just the opposite - effect; the boys of Levant had never seen a detective, but they had read - every five-cent thriller on the subject. To be the object of a real - detective’s attention seemed like glorious adventure—and they were - sure that they were, when on their own prowling-grounds, match for any - sleuth who ever dodged behind trees. - </p> - <p> - But I had stood up before her and had beaten fist upon my breast and had - assured her that she could trust all to me. What sort of a knight was I to - wear lady’s favor and then fail to do and dare in her behalf? - </p> - <p> - “I had hoped that you knew me better and that I stood higher with you - fellows,” I said. “I’ll admit that you did a big job for me, and I am - grateful. But you all had your fun out of it, for you have said so, over - and over. You’ll have to admit something, yourselves; you’ll have to own - up that we are ashamed of what we did to poor old Bangs. If you keep on - you’ll do other things to be ashamed of. I’m advising you to stop.” - </p> - <p> - “We don’t want your advice,” said Ben. - </p> - <p> - “Then you’ll get something from me which you’ll like a blamed sight less - than advice.” - </p> - <p> - Plainly they were hungry for information. - </p> - <p> - “What’ll that be?” asked one of the Sortwell boys. - </p> - <p> - “Try on any more of your doodle-busting in this town and you’ll find out,” - I said. Then I left them and went home. - </p> - <p> - Some bright chap has made a simile about having as much privacy as a - goldfish. At any rate, by leading an open life, one may be in a position - to prove an alibi. - </p> - <p> - I took to spending my evenings in the bar-room of the Levant Tavern. - </p> - <p> - That was by no means such a roystering sort of a life as it sounds to be. - They used to sell liquor in the tavern in the old stage-coaching days, - when the place was a post station; the little catty-cornered bar is there - in the big room, its worn wood shiny from the dragging of rough fists and - from many scrubbings; behind is the cupboard, with wavy glass set in - diamond-shaped panes. But the cupboard was bare in my boyhood days and the - shelves were dusty. Dodovah Vose, the landlord, was a teetotaler and - believed in impressing that principle on others. - </p> - <p> - “I have seen what liquor will do and undo,” he said when he used to get on - to the subject. “In my young days, when the West Injy trade flourished and - rum held its place without blushing, I have set in meeting and seen the - parson soop a sip of rum-and-water between the firstly and secondly, and - so on. It may have improved him and the sermon—I’m not arguing. But - do you think that liquor would ever have improved my brother Jodrey and - made him the best deep-sea diver on the Atlantic coast, as he is to-day? - No, gents! Where a man needs the strength of his arms, the full power of - his ten fingers, the quickness of his brain, and the help of his lungs and - a good heart—then he’d better let liquor alone. That’s what my - brother says and he has been deeper underwater than any other man—and - you can look around you and see some of the queer and wonderful things he - has brought up for the peerusal of mankind.” - </p> - <p> - The old foreroom was really a storehouse of curious pickings and gleanings - which had been sent up-country, from time to time, by the diver brother. - It had been one of my earliest haunts, for I had always hit it off nicely - with Dodovah Vose. I did not lark about the room or molest the curios, as - other boys in the village sometimes did. - </p> - <p> - On the contrary, I always surveyed them with respect and interest; the awe - I felt when I first laid eyes on them never left me, entirely. I have not - been able to determine, exactly, whether my boyhood study of those objects - inspired the hankering I developed, the burning desire to go down into the - depths of the sea some day, or whether the queer things merely catered to - my natural instinct in the matter. At any rate, I touched them reverently - and I asked many questions of Landlord Vose and he told me hair-raising - stories which, he said, his brother had told him. I remember that when I - was so young I was still wearing a plaid kilt, I got down on all-fours and - stuck my leg in the air at his request; he called it “playing circus,” and - gave me a penny. He said I was a smart boy and allowed that a smart boy - might grow up and be made a diver by Jodrey Vose. So there was an idea put - into my head at an early age. And Dodovah Vose used to call me “Lobster - Sidney”—a truly deep-water nickname! He had a rather droll idea of a - joke—it was to prompt youngsters to go and make fools of themselves. - My folks gave me the middle name of Webster. In order to plague the new - schoolma’am, Dodovah Vose told me to insist on the first day of school - that my name was Ross Webster Lobster Sidney—and I did, even though - the boys in the school laughed themselves sick. Mr. Vose praised me - because I had obeyed orders, and gave me a conch-shell on which, by the - aid of three finger-stops, one could play more or less of a tune. He had - already given to me a shell which whispered in my ear the everlasting - murmuring of the great ocean I had never seen. - </p> - <p> - It was a big fountain-shell from somewhere in the West Indies, and it - fairly boomed, deep in its spirals, when I held it to my ear; I sensed all - the vastness and the mystery and the solemnity of the ocean depths. The - more I listened the better acquainted I seemed to be with a wonderful - stranger far away at the other end of a wire. - </p> - <p> - It really seemed like a call to bigger things, and my job with my uncle - was getting less and less to my taste. If there’s any such thing as the - angels looking down on earth over the parapets of heaven in their hours - off duty, some of the things my uncle would do in horse trades, in order - to get back at other cheaters, must have grieved the judicious in the - upper spheres. - </p> - <p> - I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can look back now and see how my - lashings to the life in Levant were in the way of severance, one by one. - </p> - <p> - I found no comfort in the lull of Skokum activities; I reckoned that the - boys were reorganizing and getting ready for a really big slam. I felt as - a timid girl must, feel in a thunder-shower when the thing is right - overhead and there’s an extra wait between claps. - </p> - <p> - I continued to visit the tavern evenings and I came, into closer intimacy - with Dodovah Vose. He brought, out old letters written by his brother and - read them to me. In one Jodrey Vose described his venture on the sunken - British frigate <i>Triton</i> somewhere off the coast, of Nova Scotia. She - was bringing pay to the Hessian troops in the American colonies, so old - reports had it. Jodrey Vose was more of a diver than a writer and his, - letter had no frills. He informed his brother, who had invested modestly - in the gamble at Jodrey’s suggestion, that the thing was a failure, though - the frigate had been located by dragging and Jodrey himself had gone down - and explored her where she had lain for more than a century. - </p> - <p> - Diver Vose stated bluntly that he believed, from what; he saw down there, - that the <i>Triton</i> had been scuttled or blown up by certain of her - officers, who secured her treasure, escaped to the main in small boats and - reported her loss in a storm; tradition has it that there was always - considerable doubt about that storm. Also, tradition has it that those - officers settled in America and lived happily ever after. Diver Vose tried - to help pay expenses by raising the cannon. But though they seemed sound - enough under the sea, they crumbled into lumpy masses after they were - exposed to the air. - </p> - <p> - “But I never begrudged the money I put in,” Dodovah Vose told me. “I got - my curiosity scratched where it had been itching for a good many years, - ever since Jodrey and I first began to talk about the <i>Triton</i>. And I - helped my brother get something off his mind. He wouldn’t have died easy - if he hadn’t made sure about that treasure. I stand ready to invest in - another scheme of his if he ever gets ready to tackle it. That’s to go - down and dig in the bottom of the river Tiber, providing he can fix it - with the town officers of Rome. As near as we can find out from history, - Jodrey and I, when the Romans wasn’t throwing their treasures into the - river to keep ’em away from one another in their civil wars, the - barbarians were up to the same game, because they didn’t enjoy art. And, - of course, there’s always the treasure of the <i>Golden Gate!</i> That’s - in modern times.” - </p> - <p> - But it was not in times sufficiently modern so that I knew anything about - it, as my blank stare showed. - </p> - <p> - “She caught fire on her way from San Francisco to the Isthmus and was run - ashore with three or four million dollars’ worth of gold ingots in her. - That’s fact! But Jodrey says there’s been so much blasted lying done since - by owners, underwriters, divers, claimers, and others, that nobody knows - for sure just what has become of the treasure. That’s another of his - hankerings—to find out!” - </p> - <p> - More and more did I feel the spirit of adventure stirring in me! - </p> - <p> - I could not understand why the whereabouts of that great treasure should - remain in doubt, and so I expressed myself to Mr. Vose. - </p> - <p> - “There’s some sort of a mystery about it—and so far’s my brother is - concerned he can’t drop regular contracts to go chasing dreams—only - once in so often. That <i>Triton</i> case made a hearty meal for his - curiosity—he hasn’t been hungry for high-spiced stuff since.” He - looked at me with shrewd kindness. “Maybe he’ll let you go on that job - after he has made a diver out of you.” - </p> - <p> - I felt a flush in my cheeks. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you have been poking a little fun at me all along when you have - hinted at my being a diver, sir. Do you really believe your brother would - give me a thought?” - </p> - <p> - “He might, if you went to him backed up with a letter from me.” - </p> - <p> - “I have a mind to ask you for that letter.” - </p> - <p> - “And you’ll not get it, my boy! I don’t propose to have your uncle Deck - come yowling and clawing at me like an old tom-cat because I have coaxed - his handy-Andy away from him.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t like the kind of work he puts me to, Mr. Vose. I have grown up to - be a man, almost, and I understand better than I did at first.” - </p> - <p> - “You understand, for instance, that when you took that cow away from - Andrew P. Corson last week you left his baby without milk!” He stroked his - nose and peered at me from under eyelids that were cocked like little - tents. - </p> - <p> - “There was a bill of sale! He made me go and get the cow.” - </p> - <p> - “But do you know what your uncle did, after that?” - </p> - <p> - “No, sir!” - </p> - <p> - “He went to Andrew P. Corson and said you acted without orders. He lent - Corson the money to buy another cow.” - </p> - <p> - I stammered out something about not understanding that. - </p> - <p> - “But I do,” said Landlord Vose. “Your uncle Deck wants to get into - politics in this town—he wants to get into politics far enough so - that he can do something to Judge Kingsley. He reckons you don’t need any - popularity. He is starting you out with considerable of a handicap if you - mean to live and prosper in your own town. However, I won’t do anything to - encourage you to leave! I’ve got to keep on living in the town—alongside - your uncle Deck!” - </p> - <p> - A flash of family loyalty prompted me to assert that my uncle was good to - the poor. - </p> - <p> - “That he is,” said Dodovah Vose. “He is a queer man, your uncle is. But I - don’t want to make a pauper of myself in order to curry favor with him.” - </p> - <p> - It came to me that I’d better have a talk with my uncle, and I started - out, crossing the village square on my way home. - </p> - <p> - All at once something landed heavily and violently on my shoulders, and - the attack was so sudden that I was borne to the ground with such a crack - of my forehead on the hard earth that I became unconscious, but not until - I had felt claws of some sort tearing at my cheeks. - </p> - <p> - When I came to my senses I was back in the tavern foreroom and Dodovah - Vose was swabbing my face with a sponge wet in warm water. In a corner of - the room Constable Nute and two helpers were hog-tying old Bennie Holt, - the village fool. - </p> - <p> - “I ain’t a dove of peace no longer—I ain’t a rooster no longer,” he - was squalling. “I’m a bald-headed eagle! They told me I’m an eagle. I - allus knowed I was some kind of a fowl. They lied to me when they said I - was a dove of peace. I’m an eagle. See what I’ve done! I’ve mallywhacked - him. He made fun of me when I was a dove. Others made fun of me—but - now they’d better look out. I’m an eagle.” - </p> - <p> - Whatever the old idiot had been or thought he had been, he was then - plainly a raving maniac. In his struggles he was shedding turkey feathers - with which he had thatched his coat. As far back as I could remember old - Bennie Holt, he used to stand in the square with feathers of various sorts - stuck around his hat, harmlessly indulging his vagary. But never before - had he raised his hand against any human being. - </p> - <p> - “I reckon that this time you fired a boomerang, young Sidney,” stated the - constable, reproachfully. “Old Bangs didn’t fly back and hit you, but this - one has. The village will be glad to hear it.” - </p> - <p> - “You’d better be careful what you report about me,” - </p> - <p> - I told him. “I had nothing whatever to do with old Bennie. Mr. Vose will - answer for me.” - </p> - <p> - “We know where to plaster the blame when anything happens in this place,” - insisted Nute. “Now you’ve sent another one to the bug-house!” - </p> - <p> - It did not seem to be of much use to talk to that raving old man, but I - tried it. I asked him who had been talking to him. - </p> - <p> - “My guardeen angels,” he screamed. “They all come to me and told me. They - was in white and they told me.” I myself had furnished the pillow-case - cowls to the Skokums out of the second-hand stock in my uncle’s - storehouse! - </p> - <p> - “There must be some mistake this time, Nute,” said Landlord Vose. “Young - Sidney has been spending his evenings here in the tavern for quite some - time.” - </p> - <p> - “Trying to put up a bluff, that’s all. The one who-torches on a fool can’t - complain if the fool kicks back. Here’s more expense to the town, boarding - an insane man at the State hospital. It didn’t cost us anything as long as - he e’t broken crackers out of the grocery-stores, and slept in the - livery-stable. I reckon Town-Treasurer Kingsley will say that this ends up - his patience.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you dare to tell Judge Kingsley that I had anything to do with - getting old Bennie in this state,” I cried. My face smarted dreadfully, - for Dodovah Vose-. was putting on some kind of stuff to kill the poison of - the-, tool’s finger-nails, so he explained. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t need to tell him; he’ll know it for himself.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll find out who did do it! I know well enough!” - </p> - <p> - “Of course you know.” - </p> - <p> - It was maddening—this determination on the part of Levant to put me - in the wrong in all matters of local disturbance. Here was I, victim of - the resentment of the Skokums because I was trying to obey my promise to - Celene Kingsley, now in imminent danger of further repute as the - ringleader of the latest atrocity—even though I was the sole - sufferer after the devil had been stirred up in the old loafer. - </p> - <p> - “You fired him, and the boomerang swung around back and hit you—that’s - all,” insisted the constable. “His mouth has been full of something you - have done to him. If it wasn’t you he wouldn’t be talking about you.” - </p> - <p> - While Dodovah Vose was finishing with my lacerated face I pondered on what - he had said about my uncle’s indifference in regard to my popularity in - town. - </p> - <p> - Then I stood up in the tavern foreroom and cursed family and foes and town - with such lurid invective—my vocabulary and force being so far - beyond the ordinary capabilities of youth—that even the crazy man - was shocked into silence. I was ashamed of myself even as I ranted. But - then, as in after-times, my temper swept me out of myself. I was blind and - dizzy and there was a roar in my ears like the rush of water. I swung the - fires of anger about myself as a juggler whirls his flaming torches. I was - sorry as soon as it was over—I have always been sorry when my frenzy - has passed. - </p> - <p> - When I bowed my head and walked out of the tavern I heard the constable - clucking away like an offended old hen. - </p> - <p> - “It’s all a matter for the judge to consider—language and all,” he - declared. - </p> - <p> - “But I insist that he is a good boy in his heart,” said Dodovah Vose. - </p> - <p> - “Can’t be—coming out of that family—and with the general - reputation he has got since he has worked for his uncle the last four - years,” insisted the constable. Fine dwelling-place for me—Levant, - eh? - </p> - <p> - My uncle was in bed and asleep when I got to the house—and perhaps - it was just as well, because I was quickly forgetting my shame and was - ready for a further squabble; a disposition on my part which has never - been especially helpful during my life. - </p> - <p> - I made careful and disgusted study of my striped face in the looking-glass - before I went to bed. In spite of my innocence, there I was, the labeled - participator in an affray. In this world, as you have probably noticed, - the man who carries around a blacked eye or a bunged lip never succeeds in - dissipating the suspicion that he has been in some sort of a disgraceful - mix-up, in which he was more or less to blame. You may remember how you - yourself have felt in the case of your friends, even when a sliding rug or - a closet door has been saddled with the blame. A man with a marked-up - physog is never at his best as a defendant. I dreaded the next day, for it - seemed pretty certain that I would have to face Judge Kingsley. But the - feeling that his daughter might be brought to doubt the sincerity of my - promises, when she heard the story and beheld my face, kept me awake more - effectually than did the pain of that ferocious clapperclawing. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV—THE TRAINING OF THE QUEEN OF “SHEBY” - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS awake so long - in the night I overslept next morning, of course. Breakfast had been - cleared away by the time I got dressed and was down-stairs. - </p> - <p> - I had made up my mind to have a run-in with my uncle, but I was starting - with a disadvantage. Coming late to breakfast in that busy household - amounted almost to a crime, and the look of disgust my aunt Lucretia set - on my face made my courage drop tail. She was never amiable, and she - considered me an intruder in the family, as well I knew. - </p> - <p> - “I have left your doughnuts and coffee in the but’ry—and your uncle - wants you in the stable.” She turned her back and went on with what she - was doing at the stove. - </p> - <p> - I ate the doughnuts on my way to the stable, trying to whip up my rancor. - I expected to be received with a hoot and a howl, and depended on those - spurs to start my own temper on the gallop. - </p> - <p> - Uncle Deck was just pushing a bottle back into the oats in the bin. He - slammed down the cover and wiped his mouth and grinned at me. He was in - the best of good humor. I was chewing on food his money had bought, and, I - repeat, he was as pleasant as a basket of chips. In the face of that I - couldn’t screw a mean word out of myself. - </p> - <p> - “She sure was some operator with her claws,” he remarked. But he wouldn’t - listen to my indignant explanation; he plainly had his own business on his - mind that morning, and it was business which seemed to be affording much - satisfaction. He gave me a push toward the harness-room, the sanctum where - he performed most of his deviltry in horse matters. - </p> - <p> - In that harness-room was hitched the worst-looking old pelter of a plug I - had ever laid eyes on. - </p> - <p> - Uncle Deck put his hands on his hips and swapped looks between myself and - the horse. He was master of a certain kind of cheap, horse-jockey patter - which he employed at fairs when he wanted to call a crowd around. He - struck a pose and “orated.” - </p> - <p> - “Having a knowledge of hoss pedigree, relatives, previous condition of - servitude, religious preferences, and other matters pertaining to, and so - forth, even going back to the fact that the hoss Bucephalorus, that was - owned by the late Aleck the Great, cocked his left hind leg when he stood - in the stall, had a nicked right ear, and a wind-gall puff behind each - fore shoulder, I want to say that I reckon that never before was there - gathered, collected, and assembled on four legs every kind of a pimple, - bump, wheeze, scratch, spavin, horn ail, hock bunch, trick, and - bobblewhoop, that’s laid down by old Medicombobulus, in his book entitled - ‘Things a Hoss Can Get Along Without.’ I call this ancient Gothic ruin - ‘Carpenter Boy,’ sired by Pod Auger, dammed by Hemlock Maid—and, in - fact, damned by everybody who has ever owned him. Speed is developed in - him by feeding the celebrated spiral oats, produced by crossing shoe-pegs - with bed-springs, which in process of being digested uncoil and carry the - animile in leaps like the mountain-goat.” - </p> - <p> - After that outburst I definitely, in my own mind, set forward to some - future date the matter of an understanding with my uncle. - </p> - <p> - “How did it ever happen that anybody could unload this on you?” I asked - him. - </p> - <p> - “Because I went out hunting for it, sonny. It was the worst I could do on - short notice. If it had looked worse and had had more ailments and outs I - would have paid more for it. Now ask no more questions, but lend a hand to - what I tell you to do.” - </p> - <p> - I have no time to go into the details of what my uncle Deck did to that - equine framework, but if I could describe it all I’d be furnishing - considerable of a handbook for the uses of tricky horse-swappers. I had - helped in many similar jobs in that back room of his stable, but I had - never seen him put so much art and soul into the work before; he seemed to - have special reasons for his painstaking toil. He chuckled whenever he - secured a particularly good result; at times he gritted his teeth and - swore under his breath regarding some party whom he did not name. But I - gathered that this transformation of a horse was intended as satisfaction - of one of his bitterest grudges. - </p> - <p> - He had everything to do with in that horse beauty-parlor of his. There - were ointments and colorings, false hair for mane and tail, skin-patches - and disguises for puffs and swellings. But still the horse remained gaunt; - the rafters of his ribs suggested that he needed to be shingled in. To my - general wonderment as to what my uncle was about, anyway, was now added - more lively curiosity; how was this living skeleton to be disguised as to - skinniness? I found out before long. My uncle put on the poor brute a - bridle with a wicked twist-bit and told me to hold him, no matter how much - he kicked about. - </p> - <p> - Then Uncle Deck brought out a bit of board into which shoe-pegs had been - set thickly. He began to clap the pegged board against the horse’s skin. I - had my work cut out for me after that, I can tell you. The pain must have - been excruciating, for the bradding-pegs raised blisters. In a little - while the ribs were hidden by this new and deceptive plumpness. The horse - took on the appearance of an animal which had been well cared for in the - food line. And he certainly displayed the spirit of Phoebus’s nigh - wheel-horse. His nostrils snorted furiously and his eyes flamed. It seemed - incredible that this animal with flowing mane and tail, with round barrel - and smooth limbs, was the decrepit old creature I had seen on my arrival - in the room. - </p> - <p> - Lastly, my uncle Deck oiled the horse from stem to stem, smoothing the - hair into place, and then stood and admired his handiwork. - </p> - <p> - “Now let’s see what the needle will do for style and knee action,” he - said. He gave the horse a jab with the hypodermic—I had seen him do - that at horse-trots just before the race was started. He hitched a long - rope into the bridle and led the animal out into the yard. In a few - moments the horse was prancing and curveting and whickering like a - blueblood of youth and spirit. - </p> - <p> - “But he won’t last this way!” I said. - </p> - <p> - My uncle turned withering side-glance on me. “Do you think you’re telling - me something I didn’t know? Of course he won’t last. I don’t want him to - last. If he would pop like a blown-up paper bag when I got ready to have - it happen I’d like it all the better. But, as it is, it’ll be bad enough. - Don’t you know a good name for him out of some of those books you have - read, son?” - </p> - <p> - But while I was hesitating my uncle dipped in with his usual impatience. - </p> - <p> - “I have thought of it already! ‘Judge,’ that’s his name. When she hears - Trufant call him ‘Judge’ the coincidence will catch her interest, likely - enough. She will prick up her ears!” - </p> - <p> - Right then I pricked up my own ears. I understood mighty sudden. I had - seen the writing tacked on the notice-board in the post-office the day - before. Judge Kingsley had let it be known that he was in the market for a - driving-horse, suitable for use by ladies. I had read it with mingled - emotions, realizing that Celene Kingsley had grown to girlhood out of - childhood; no longer a pony-cart for her! - </p> - <p> - “But he’ll never buy a horse from you?” I blurted, staring at my uncle. - </p> - <p> - “Who won’t?” - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “Probably he wouldn’t if he thought it came from <i>me</i>. But I’m - baiting a hook that he’ll swallow or I’m no guesser.” - </p> - <p> - My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me. - </p> - <p> - “Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out a - few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of - Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night, - around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a - hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’ has - got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected. - </p> - <p> - My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers. - </p> - <p> - “A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on his - weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh will be - bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss—there’s no - doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short - notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of - the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will - stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets out of - sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse frolicked. - “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, and peepers! - Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the bridle, and - led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll slip you ten - dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to - understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.” - </p> - <p> - I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought. - </p> - <p> - I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and - pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had - had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, I’m - sure of it. - </p> - <p> - But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his home, - under his thumb. - </p> - <p> - “You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like - the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, and - girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung around - the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous horse. - </p> - <p> - I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be sure, - the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But the horse - was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my thoughts. - Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag that I had - helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that some of my - promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the matter of old - Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There was such a thing - as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the situation. But to - allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little sanctuary where I - enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme which must ruin forever - all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, these were sacrifices I - did not feel called on to undergo. I had my own pride to consider. I no - longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene Kingsley. What was in me was a - romantic hope that she would think on me once in a while when I was far, - far away—remembering that I was her slave in what she asked and that - I had asked nothing of her. - </p> - <p> - However, to have her memories of me mixed in with thoughts of the - horse-trading cheat which I had connived at was reflection unendurable. - </p> - <p> - I went to the wood-shed and secured an ax. It occurred to me that when a - horse had so many bumps on him, one more and a deadly bump on his forehead - would not attract much attention; furthermore, my uncle seemed to think - that the animal’s course was nearly run. - </p> - <p> - I faced the brute. His ears were hanging in despondency. His eyes were - dropping tears; those blisters must have been stinging like the martyr’s - skin under the shirt of fire. When I looked on that woe all my resolution - left me. I dropped the ax. There were tears in my own eyes. I felt as if - he were my brother in common sorrow. So I went to the cellar and fetched - apples and carrots and fed them into his gratefully slobbering mouth until - he sighed and spraddled his legs and went to sleep. - </p> - <p> - Constable Nute came for me during the day. - </p> - <p> - “There ain’t any subpeny to this, young Sidney,” he informed me. “If you - feel too guilty to face Judge Kingsley, who is making an informal - investigation, you needn’t come.” - </p> - <p> - “I am not guilty. I’m not afraid to face the judge.” And I went along. - There was no one else in his office. He had been calling in persons and - examining them one by one. I was alone with him after Nute left. - </p> - <p> - I gave in my version of what had happened the night before and declared - that I had had nothing whatever to do with putting notions into the noddle - of the village fool. - </p> - <p> - “But as to this society of young vandals which has been disgracing the - village? Certain members of the gang have confessed to me that you are the - organizer and the ringleader.” - </p> - <p> - “And I confess that I <i>was</i> leader at first,” I owned up to him, just - as manfully as I could. Then I told him about Mr. Bird. “When I realized - that I was making a mistake I stopped being leader. I have had nothing to - do with the society since.” - </p> - <p> - He had a way of shooting speech out through his pinched nostrils with a - sort of a jew’s-harp twang. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a good - looking over. - </p> - <p> - “Becoming an angel overnight by the natural piety of the Sidney - disposition, eh? Young man, you are lying to me! Now tell me the real - reason why you quit your devilishness.” - </p> - <p> - I had no mind to tell him, and I was silent. - </p> - <p> - “You had another reason, didn’t you? A better reason?” - </p> - <p> - I confessed that I had. But I wouldn’t tell him what it was, even when he - raised his voice to me and pounded on the table with his fist. If he had - been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man would - have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I knew that - Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself by talking to - me. - </p> - <p> - “You can’t tell the truth—you won’t tell the truth—for the - truth isn’t in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the - boys who have owned up.” - </p> - <p> - “I knew there were sneaks in the crowd—that’s another reason I had - for getting out, Judge Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “If anything else happens in this village we shall know where to place the - blame.” - </p> - <p> - “It isn’t fair, Judge Kingsley!” I remonstrated. “I’m not getting a square - deal in this thing. I know that old Nute has been talking to you the way - he calked to me last night. They are all bound to put the blame on to me.” - </p> - <p> - “I know for myself.” - </p> - <p> - “No, sir! You don’t know for yourself. You say I can’t tell the truth! - I’ll show you that I can, even when it’s to my own hurt—yes, sir, to - my awful hurt! You have advertised for a horse, haven’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “My uncle is going to send around a man dressed in woman’s clothes—this - very evening—so as to fool you in the dusk with the worst fraud ever - propped on four legs.” - </p> - <p> - That confession didn’t help me a bit and I ought to have had sense enough - to know it before I opened my mouth. I had made the judge more thoroughly - angry than ever; I had offended his pride as a shrewd business man. - </p> - <p> - “What cock-and-bull yam is this? Do you think I can be fooled by cheap - horse-jockey tricks? You young fool, what do you mean by insulting me?” - </p> - <p> - “You just wait till you see the horse,” I retorted. “I helped fix him and - I didn’t know him, myself, after the job was done. But I don’t want to see - you gulled, Judge Kingsley. I am following new ways from now on. You know - my uncle and how I am beholden to him! When I open up to you about him it - ought to show you that I want to be honest, no matter how much the truth - is going to harm me.” - </p> - <p> - “There’s no decency in this town—not even honor among thieves,” - snarled the judge. He pointed to the door. “That’s all for now, young - Sidney! Remember for yourself—and tell others—that the grand - jury sits in this county within a fortnight! Upon actions from now on - depends what the county prosecutor will be inclined to do.” - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley’s office was a sort of ell affair built out from the side - of his mansion. When I left it I ducked around to the rear of the house - and made off down through the orchard, having no relish to show my clawed - face to the public. I had my day to myself and I did not hurry; I had many - things to ponder on. - </p> - <p> - All at once I heard the sound of somebody running on the turf behind me. I - turned and faced Celene. I curved my forearm across my countenance, - ashamed of my appearance, her own flushed cheeks were so radiantly - beautiful! - </p> - <p> - “I know how it happened. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said, - graciously. - </p> - <p> - “They ste’boyed him on to me!” I told her. “I have tried to make ’em - stop their tricks, just as I promised you. So they did this to put me in - wrong. Your father is hard on me! I tried to make him understand that I——well, - I wanted—” - </p> - <p> - “I overheard—I couldn’t help overhearing.” Then her cheeks grew - rosier. “I’ll own up. I listened at the door. I wanted to know. And that’s - why I came after you. You have kept our little secret and I know you have - done your best in other ways. So that’s why I’m here. I want to thank you. - And—I—Well, I think that’s all!” - </p> - <p> - It seemed to finish it as far as I was concerned, too; I couldn’t pump a - word up out of myself. So we stood there and looked up into the trees. - </p> - <p> - “Father has been talking to them to-day,” she said, after a time. “Perhaps - they are warned now and won’t be up to any more mischief. And they ought - to be sorry for what they have done to you. I think you can have a lot of - influence over them after this.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know about that. I’m going away from here.” - </p> - <p> - That statement astonished her just as much as it astonished me. I had not - thought of announcing my departure ten seconds before; it had not been in - my mind that I was going away. But all of a sudden the memory of what I - had told the judge about the horse popped into my thoughts. Considering - what would be my uncle’s state of mind after the exposure, I reckon the - going-away idea followed as naturally as the right answer in a sum of - addition. - </p> - <p> - “I had supposed that your outlook—your position with your uncle—was - very promising,” she said. “The town needs smart men.” - </p> - <p> - The fact that she had spent one thought upon my condition interested me - more than the implied compliment. - </p> - <p> - “If I stay with him I’ll only be a country cheat and horse-dickerer. I - want to be something else,” I told her. “This very day my uncle is trying - to put up a job on your father. I have told the judge about it.” - </p> - <p> - “I heard you. It was another reason why I wanted to speak to you—to - encourage you in being honest. There’s no need of father bringing you into - the matter at all. It would only make trouble between your uncle and you. - I’ll speak to father.” - </p> - <p> - “You’d better not, for then you’d be making trouble for yourself. I’d - rather take all the blame of it.” - </p> - <p> - We stood and looked at each other for a long time. - </p> - <p> - “I’m not a coward,” she said. - </p> - <p> - “But it will come out about me blabbing—some way it will come out. - There’s no need of you being in the scrape. I’m going away, and I may as - well go flying while I’m about it!” - </p> - <p> - “I hope—” she said, and that was as far as she got. I know how I was - feeling inside and perhaps my feelings showed too plainly on that striped - face of mine. She looked scared and turned and hurried away. I didn’t know - whether she hoped I’d stay in Levant or hoped I’d do well wherever I might - roam. I watched her out of sight and she did not turn to look at me. I - couldn’t exactly figure that out—whether she didn’t want to give me - a last glance or didn’t dare to. - </p> - <p> - I fingered in my vest pocket while she was running away; when she - disappeared I pulled out a packet and opened it. There were three rings in - it. One was a coral ring; I bought it when I was fifteen and paid thirty - cents for it. I never had the courage to give it to her when we were at - school. There was a silver ring which I bought a year later when my - circumstances were a little better—better than my courage. Lastly, - there was a gold ring which I had secured in a dicker soon after our - meeting on Purgatory Hill. I am not going to discourse on the fool impulse - which prompted me to buy those rings and stick them in my vest pocket. Nor - will I say anything concerning another impulse which made me wrap the - rings up and drop them into a cleft in the trunk of an apple-tree. If I - did not dare to give them to her, at least I could leave them on her - premises. Then I went by back ways to my uncle’s house. - </p> - <p> - Before I was out of sight of Judge Kingsley’s mansion I looked behind me - several times. I didn’t know but I might see a flutter of a handkerchief - from some window, for a vague and queer kind of hope was still in me. I - saw no flutter, but I did see a strange man who was strolling along my - trail. I was too busy with other thoughts to wonder who he might be. - </p> - <p> - I found my uncle admiring the transmogrified horse. - </p> - <p> - “I have been whetting the old hellion’s appetite,” he said, and I knew by - the expression on his face that he was referring to Judge Kingsley. “I - have had half a dozen fellows from the back districts drive one old skate - after another into his dooryard, and inside of an hour he’ll have a chance - to inspect a few more skeletons and bone-piles. By nightfall he’ll be - hungry for a peek at something which doesn’t look as if it would have to - be pushed on casters by iron reins. Oh, he’s hungry! He’ll swallow this - one.” - </p> - <p> - More than ever was I coming to understand into what complicated and - precious gears I had flung my trig—and what the consequences to me - were likely to be. - </p> - <p> - “Now come out into the harness-room,” commanded my uncle. “I want you to - have a look at the Queen of Sheby.” - </p> - <p> - I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had no - doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled up about - him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil partly - draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like this - the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a scolding - woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.” - </p> - <p> - “You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I - don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you, - right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and reach - into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let me see - you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.” - </p> - <p> - Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased - quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to - see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to - me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not - going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. He - kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like the - judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man dressed - up like a woman. - </p> - <p> - “I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said, - facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that - will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m a - good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and hectored - and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll kill you if you do—I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and - my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion - performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.” - </p> - <p> - He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle. - </p> - <p> - “You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you - old angleworm.” - </p> - <p> - After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me. - </p> - <p> - “I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face is - smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll not turn any such trick,” I said. I was angry in a moment. So was - he. - </p> - <p> - “You will if I tell you to.” - </p> - <p> - “I won’t; and I’ll say further that I don’t think much of this business, - anyway.” - </p> - <p> - “Nor I—and that’s two against one,” declared Runnels, the tip of his - thin nose beginning to glow as if new courage had hung out a banner. - </p> - <p> - Liquor had also given my uncle’s temper an edge of its own; he cuffed - Runnels until that lamenting “lady’s” hat fell off. I jumped up and ran - away into the fields, for I knew that Uncle Deck was merely warming up on - “Squealing John”; as chief mutineer, I was ticketed for the real bout. I - lurked about in the pine grove till after sunset. Then I stole back into - the village with all the stealth of a criminal. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V—SHOOING AWAY A SCAPEGOAT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> RECKON it’s best - for innocence to go boldly in this world. At any rate, I would have come - off better that night if I had not lurked and prowled. However, I was only - obeying very wise dictates of prudence; my uncle had been sufficiently - savage in the harness-room when rebellion was merely in process of - hatching. To meet him after Judge Kingsley had exploded the bomb—and - I was sure that I would be revealed in the matter—would be like - getting in the path of a Bengal tiger with snap-crackers blistering his - tail. - </p> - <p> - I wasn’t at all certain what I would do after I found out that I had been - exposed to my uncle’s fury; first of all, so I felt, it was essential to - learn what had developed in the horse trade. - </p> - <p> - So I stole in the gloom around behind the buildings of the village and - retraced my trail up through the judge’s orchard. While I was still some - distance from the mansion I heard considerable of a hullabaloo above which - rose the shrill voice of “Squealing John” Runnels, who was issuing - warnings about “laying a whip on that hoss.” Then there was a racketing - and a splintering and down past me came an outfit which I recognized. The - horse was certainly the brute my uncle had doctored into false - shapeliness; the mane was dangling in shreds where the apple-tree limbs - had raked. Runnels, his woman’s hat hanging on his back, was kneeling on - the bottom of the wagon, both hands full of false hair which he had reaped - from the horse’s tail in effort to check the animal; he had lost the reins - and they were dragging uselessly on the ground. - </p> - <p> - Not far from me the wagon was flailed against a tree and Mr. Runnels was - violently dislodged; but I judged that he was not injured because, after - rolling over and over on the turf, he rose and ran away with his skirts - gathered around his waist. - </p> - <p> - It was evident that my uncle’s plot had failed ingloriously. - </p> - <p> - I could understand the flash of fresh spirit in that moribund horse; - Runnels had shrieked warnings regarding a whip; a lash laid across those - tingling water-blisters must have made that poor old pelter develop a - hankering to outfly Pegasus. He disappeared with fragments of the thills - clattering on his heels. - </p> - <p> - Then there were immediate and further developments in that orchard. I - thought for a startled moment that it was enchanted ground. White figures - began to pop up here and there and came flocking to me. I found myself - surrounded by the Skokums, wearing the pillowcase masks I had furnished. - </p> - <p> - They seemed to think I had some information regarding the runaway or was - concerned in it, but I had no news to give out. One of them brought the - old felt hat with its broken feather. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t know there was any woman in these parts who could cuss like that - one did when she went down through the orchard,” said one of the Sortwell - boys. “I reckon that detective is finding mysteries piling in on him - pretty thick.” - </p> - <p> - “What detective?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “The one that Judge Kingsley has been hiding in his house. That detective - was hid in a closet in the office to-day when the judge was asking - questions of us.” - </p> - <p> - “How do you know he was there?” - </p> - <p> - “Cigar smoke was coming out of the cracks in the closet door. So somebody - was hid. And since then he has been outdoors and we piped him off. He - followed you home. Didn’t you see him?” - </p> - <p> - I did remember the strange man who had been loafing along behind me, but I - kept my own counsel. I had a more important matter on my mind. - </p> - <p> - “I want to know which of you fellows told Judge Kingsley to-day that I am - ringleader of this gang?” - </p> - <p> - No one answered me. They went on making fun of the detective, and I’ll - admit that it seemed to me that he was putting up a poor job in his line. - My reading had given me a rather exalted idea of detectives, but a man who - smoked behind a closet door while eavesdropping, and through whose - identity those country boys saw straightway, was certainly a clumsy - operator. Therefore, I lost interest in him and persisted in my own - business with them. - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to overlook your dirty work in setting old Bennie on to me,” I - said. “You may have done it only for a joke, and there’s no telling what a - fool will do when you start him off. But there’s no joke in blowing on me - to Judge Kingsley—and you say there was a detective listening behind - a door. Now own up!” - </p> - <p> - Nobody volunteered. - </p> - <p> - “I told him myself that I was in it at first. But when I said I was out of - it he made it plain that some of you are still putting the blame on me. - Whoever has said anything of that kind to him is a sneak.” - </p> - <p> - No word from any of them. - </p> - <p> - “And the fellow who won’t speak up to me now, so that we can settle this - thing, is a coward.” - </p> - <p> - There was no such thing as picking out a guilty face in that crowd; they - were hooded with those pillow-slips. I wasn’t sure which was which; I - couldn’t locate even Ben Pratt in the gang, and he was the special chap I - had in mind as informer. - </p> - <p> - “I can say this,” stated one of the boys, “that I didn’t mention your name - to the judge, Ross. So there’s no chance for a fight between you and me. - But when you come to twitting about the throwing-down business, let me - remind you that you did the first job in that line; you threw us all down. - And that was after we had turned a trick that saved you and your uncle - good money.” - </p> - <p> - “But what the rest of you wanted to do was go around in the night and - raise the devil in this town, simply for the sake of mischief. I wouldn’t - do that, and I told you so.” - </p> - <p> - “But how about a case where we’d be protecting ourselves against somebody - who was doing us dirt?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing like that has been put up to me.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s going to be in about three seconds. You organized this society; now - do something for it. We’re going to coat that detective with molasses and - feathers and ride him out of the village on a rail. We call on you to boss - the job.” - </p> - <p> - “I won’t do it.” - </p> - <p> - “Then join in with us and help.” - </p> - <p> - “No!” - </p> - <p> - “This isn’t mischief—it’s tackling an enemy. You haven’t got any - good excuse for throwing us down.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve got an excuse that suits <i>me</i>. I have made up my mind to travel - straight in this town, after this. I’m going to do it. I have my own good - reasons for doing it.” - </p> - <p> - “Lost your courage, hey?” - </p> - <p> - “It takes more courage to stand up here and say what I’m saying than to - lead this mob.” - </p> - <p> - “So <i>you</i> say, but that doesn’t convince <i>us</i>. Go home, then, - and get out from underfoot.” - </p> - <p> - It came to me all of a sudden and with sickening force that it required - more courage to go home and face my uncle than to undertake any other - project which my mind could grasp just then. - </p> - <p> - I stood stock-still and they began to suspect my motives in sticking - around. - </p> - <p> - “You won’t head the party, you won’t go along as a member, you won’t get - out of the way,” growled a voice, and I recognized Ben Pratt. “What do you - intend to do—make a holler?” - </p> - <p> - I could be just as stiff in temper as any of that Levant bunch. - </p> - <p> - “A good deal depends on what you devils intend to do,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “You may as well know at the start-off! We intend to have that detective - out of Judge Kingsley’s house! If he doesn’t come out when we call him we - shall go in and get him.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s a prison crime—entering a house like that,” I warned them. - “Also, think what a report that is to go out from Levant! A guest of our - leading citizen dragged from a private residence by a mob! There’s a - sacredness about a home—” - </p> - <p> - “What book did you get that out of?” asked some one, and they laughed. - </p> - <p> - I suppose it did sound mighty top-lofty and unlike anything else that ever - came from me. But I was thinking with all my might of Celene Kingsley and - what an awful thing it would be to have those young hyenas invade that - house in the night-time. You can say what you want to about hoodlumism in - the city—it’s bad! But you’ve got to go back into the country for - unadulterated hellishness, when a mob really gets started. Furthermore, - nobody is especially afraid of a village constable. I could foresee dirty - doings that night in Levant. I had seen one mob in Levant when I was a - youngster; they tarred and feathered a fanatical evangelist, and he died - of fright. - </p> - <p> - I tried to think up something in the way of argument and I stammered about - local pride and so forth, but my talk didn’t ring true, and I felt it and - they knew it. Personally, I didn’t care a hoot about that clumsy fool of a - detective, and I was not remarkably fond of sneering Judge Kingsley. If I - could have stepped up to those boys and explained my love and my hopes and - my fears for Celene Kingsley I might have made some impression on them. - But that was not to be thought of. - </p> - <p> - While I talked I saw them crawling toward me, spreading out, two by two. - It was plain enough—they intended to start their foray by making me - a captive so that I could not interfere. - </p> - <p> - Therefore, I made hasty resolution and turned and ran with all my speed - toward Judge Kingsley’s house. I wasn’t at all sure just what I intended - to do, but my impulse was to forewarn the household so that Celene might - not be frightened. The Skokums came on my heels on the dead jump. But I - had a good lead of them when I came around the corner of the house. - </p> - <p> - Then a man tripped me, pounced on me, and sat on me; I was a submissive - captive, for the breath was knocked out of me when I fell. The instant the - Skokums appeared my captor began to shoot off two automatic revolvers. I - was lying on my back and saw by the flashes that he was shooting into the - air. The boys had been chasing me rather than intending to rush the house - at that time, and they broke and fled in all directions, scampering in a - way which suggested that they were not prepared for artillery defense and - that the hostilities were over for that night. - </p> - <p> - After a time there was silence, and the man who was sitting on me rose and - yanked me to my feet. - </p> - <p> - He was a stocky man with a big, black mustache, and he looked savage. - </p> - <p> - There was a sound of drawing bolts and Judge Kingsley appeared at his - office door. - </p> - <p> - “You have the right one, have you, officer?” - </p> - <p> - “Sure thing! He was leading the rush—ahead of ’em all. This - is the chap you told me to follow in the afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - The judge came down the steps and stared into my face. - </p> - <p> - “It’s the right one—the ringleader,” he said. - </p> - <p> - I knew that she was listening above. She must be listening! And other - folks were flocking outside in the street; that fusillade had been a - signal as effective as a general fire alarm. - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” I cried, full of panic, seeing the position I was in, - suddenly become the scapegoat of the whole affair. “I have done nothing - wrong. I rushed up here to warn you—” - </p> - <p> - “You rushed up, all right,” declared the detective. “Do you think you - hicks could hold a mass-meeting down in that orchard and fool me as to - what you were planning to do? I was ready for you. What’s orders, Judge?” - </p> - <p> - “Take him to the lock-up!” - </p> - <p> - God of the innocent! I’ll never forget how that sounded. It was as if - somebody had hit me on the heart with a hammer. There is some sort of - dignity about a real prison! But that little, red, wooden coop in our - village where an occasional drunk was cast in or some lousy hobo harbored—it - had always seemed to me and to others such a shameful place—to leave - such a badge of utter discredit on the person who had been lodged there! - </p> - <p> - “I’ll never go in there! I’ll die first,” I wailed. - </p> - <p> - I was telling the bitter truth as I felt it. - </p> - <p> - I was eager to die in my tracks rather than to have such a foul blot on my - name. - </p> - <p> - The next instant I had sudden revulsion of feeling in regard to that - lock-up. In bitter fear, in almost frenzy of apprehension, in default of - better retreat, I was quite ready to flee to that loathsome coop. - </p> - <p> - For I heard my uncle raving in the street! - </p> - <p> - I never remembered his words; my feelings were too much stirred just then. - But the hideous screech of rage in his tones I’ll never forget. I knew he - had found out my betrayal of him. - </p> - <p> - “He is going to kill me,” I told the detective. “It’s about the horse!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I reckon he will peel you if he gets his hands on you,” stated the - man, who seemed to know what I was referring to. My uncle was threshing - his way through the crowd toward me, making slow progress in the jam. The - detective took advantage of that delay and rushed me off, with Constable - Nute swinging his key and leading the way. Before I was fairly in my right - senses I was in the lock-up alone and my two defenders were on guard - outside the door. - </p> - <p> - My uncle frothed about the place for an hour, circling the little building - again and again, plucking at bars and clapboards as a monkey might pick at - a gigantic nut which resisted his attempts to get at the juicy meat for - which he was hungry. - </p> - <p> - Never had I thought that I would be thankful to be in jail till then! - </p> - <p> - Furthermore, my hopes were sustaining me. I was young and trustful, and I - was sure that innocence would be victorious. I could not understand how - anybody would believe that I was guilty when morning came and I could - explain it all. And I resolved to make some of the Skokums speak up in my - behalf on threat of exposing the whole gang. - </p> - <p> - At last my uncle went away, staggering and hiccoughing curses—for he - had brought his bottle with him and had been consulting it quite often. - </p> - <p> - I fell to wondering whether my innocence would stand me in good stead, - providing it vindicated me and secured my release from the lock-up? The - lock-up was surely proving a sanctuary—and my uncle’s threats had - been horrible ones. - </p> - <p> - Then the crowd which had been hanging around the place with a sort of - hope, I suppose, that my uncle would be able to get at me, went away, for - the hour was late. Mr. Detective went, too. So did Constable Nute, who was - the village night-watch and had his rounds to make. They considered the - cage a secure one, I suppose, for there were big bolts on the door and - iron bars on the windows. - </p> - <p> - I sat on a stool and mourned my lot as a prisoner, when I was not dreading - my release to be a victim of my incensed uncle. A good many times I had - watched Bart Flanders bring a trapped rat up from his cellar and set it - free in the village square for the entertainment of his terrier. I was in - a position to sympathize with trapped rats. - </p> - <p> - In the silence of the night something clicked on the glass of a window and - a voice outside hailed me cautiously. My first thought was that the - Skokums had come to rescue me, and I was not especially pleased, for I - felt that they would be impelled more by the spirit of vandalism than by - any love for me. I did not answer. - </p> - <p> - Then the window-frame grunted and squeaked and I saw that somebody was - prying with a chisel. I rose from the stool and saw the face of Dodovah - Vose. - </p> - <p> - “I take it that it’s another job they have put up on you, young Sidney.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, it is, Mr. Vose,” I cried, and I began to whimper. I couldn’t help - it. He spoke as if he understood, as if he were a friend. “I was trying to - stop their devilishness, and they—” - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t bother about going into details—not with me, young - Sidney. I have been watching you lately. You have been a good boy. I know - you haven’t been rampaging round town nights. No matter about telling me - anything. There’s no time to listen. Nute may be drifting back here any - minute.” - </p> - <p> - He was working with his chisel while he was talking. - </p> - <p> - He pried a couple of bars out of the rotten wood. He pushed the window up. - </p> - <p> - “Light out o’ there!” he commanded. - </p> - <p> - “But I hate to run away, and—” - </p> - <p> - “The way things stand now in the village you’ll be made the goat,” he - insisted. “And if you get clear of the gang part there’s your uncle to - reckon with. He has been stamping around the tavern and telling about you. - I don’t blame him much. What in sanup did you betray own folks for?” - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t tell him. - </p> - <p> - “After what you did to him you can’t expect me and others to say nay if he - takes it out of your hide. Trigging own folks in a regular hoss dicker - comes nearer to being a crime than anything the judge can lay against you. - So you’ve got to simplify matters by getting out of town. You mustn’t stay - here and get hurt, son. Climb, I tell ye!” - </p> - <p> - So I climbed. - </p> - <p> - He led me down into a lane and pushed me into a top buggy whose curtained - sides hid me well. He crawled in after me and drove off at a good dip. - </p> - <p> - “I have written that letter to my brother,” he said, after a time. “Here - it is.” He put it into my hands. “How much money have you got about you?” - </p> - <p> - I was never at any loss in those days as to my exact financial standing. - </p> - <p> - “Three dollars and sixty-four cents, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Here is ten more. You must remember to pay it back. It will take you to - the city and give you a little extra to come and go on. I have backed that - letter to my brother with full address and directions how to get to the - Trident Wrecking Company. Mind your eye, keep your money deep in your - pocket, and go straight.” - </p> - <p> - I realized that we were on the way to the railroad station at Levant Lower - Comers. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll do what I can to stand up for you in the current talk that will be - made, young Sidney,” said Landlord Vose. “I won’t say where you have gone, - and you can bet that I won’t give it out how I helped you to go there. But - I can tell folks how you have been sitting evenings with me instead of - cutting up snigdom. I’ll help your name what I can.” - </p> - <p> - “I have been trying to get my tongue loose so as to thank—” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t go to spoiling a good thing at the last minute,” he snapped. “Come - back and thank me when we both are sure that this jail-robbing was the - best thing that could be done under the circumstances. I had only short - notice and I took a chance that it was the right thing to do.” - </p> - <p> - So, after a time, we came to the railroad station, and he left me. I - sneaked in the shadows till the night train came along. - </p> - <p> - After this fashion I left Levant. Looking ahead or looking behind, I did - not feel especially joyous. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI—HAVING TO DO WITH JODREY VOSE’s MAKING OP A DIVER - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> SAT up in the - smoking-car all night, straight as a cob, making myself as small as I - could on one of the side seats nearest the door. I was not used to riding - on a railroad train. At every stop, when men came in and looked at me in - passing, my heart jumped. Things had been happening pretty fast in my - case. In the upheaval of my feelings, I was not exactly sure just what - special crime I had committed. I merely knew that I felt like a - combination of coward, renegade, and malefactor. - </p> - <p> - The idea which stuck most painfully in my crop was the certain knowledge - of what everybody in Levant would be saying—“He had to skip the - town!” - </p> - <p> - That’s a mighty mean tag to be tied to a chap when it’s tied on by a - country community; it never comes off. Even if he makes good in fine shape - some old blatherskite is always ready to shift his chaw and drool, “Maybe - he’s all right <i>now</i>—but ye have to remember that he had to - skip the town!” - </p> - <p> - I had run away! - </p> - <p> - However, Ase Jepson let drop a remark once which sounded pretty good to - me: “I’d never run from a bear-fight, because if you lick the bear there’s - the pelt, the steak, the oil, and the reppytation. But who in blazes ever - got any sensible satisfaction out of sticking to the job and licking a - nestful of hornets?” - </p> - <p> - I got a little satisfaction out of thinking that I had run away from - hornets, even if they would be sure to call me coward behind my back. - </p> - <p> - But what I knew of the world outside my home town could have been put in - the eye of a mosquito without making the insect blink. I felt as helpless - as a wooden shingle latching a furnace door in tophet. I had never seen - Jodrey Vose. Either I had dreamed it or had heard that he was considered a - pretty hard ticket in his early days. As a diver, a man who passed much of - his time under water in the mysteries of the sea, he seemed to me like - something unreal. I studied the superscription on the letter and felt as - if I were carrying a line of introduction to a bullfrog. - </p> - <p> - And so I went bumping on toward somewhere, my thoughts heavy and my - possessions mighty light; I hadn’t even a clean handkerchief. - </p> - <p> - If I had not so many bigger matters to hurry on to in this tale, I’d like - to describe how I was all of two days locating the Trident Wrecking - Company and Jodrey Vose, after I arrived in the city. The folks in Levant - always seemed to think I was a cheeky youngster, and I guess I was, to a - certain extent. I had plenty of temper and when I wanted a thing I always - had to go and get it—it wasn’t handed to me. But in that big city I - was more meeching than a scared pup in a boiler-factory. - </p> - <p> - I had no idea how large a real city was, anyway. Furthermore, all of a - sudden, I found myself becoming very crafty, according to my own - reckoning. I had decided that I was a fugitive from justice and that every - policeman was on the watch for me. Therefore I avoided policemen, turning - comers whenever I saw brass buttons. As I looked on everybody else in the - hurrying multitude as a sharper, on the hunt for country picking, that - left me without anybody to question. I had my nose in the air and must - have sniffed the water-front after a time. At any rate, I found myself - down there, dodging drays, tramping dirty alleys and as completely lost as - a bug in a brush-pile. - </p> - <p> - I lived on chestnuts because I found men selling them on the street. I - drank water from horse-fountains. After I walked all day and most of the - night, and napped for a while, standing up against a building in a dark - corner, I began to feel more or less like a horse; I had eaten so much dry - fodder and had gulped so much water! There were many adventures, of - course, but I have already stated why I may not deal with them. - </p> - <p> - Staggering from weariness, I fairly bumped, at last, into a door which was - labeled: “Trident Wrecking Company, Anson C. Doughty, General Manager.” - This was no accident. I reckon I had tramped all the waterfront and had - read all the signs except that one. - </p> - <p> - I went into the outer office, holding my letter by one corner. - </p> - <p> - Nobody paid any attention to me for half an hour. There were men writing - in big books behind a counter, and finally I pushed the letter over to one - of them who had stopped to light a cigar. He pushed it back. - </p> - <p> - “Not here,” he said. “Doesn’t come here.” - </p> - <p> - “But where will I find him?” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t know. He’s a diver. They don’t do their diving here in the office.” - </p> - <p> - There was not a place in that office where I could sit and I was so tired - I was sick. The man turned his back on me and I did not dare to ask him - any more questions. I backed away from the counter and stood in the middle - of the floor, swaying and blinking. I reckon I must have looked like a - down-and-out bum. At any rate, when a big man came showing a caller out of - a door labeled “General Manager, Private,” he bumped against me when I did - not get out of the road and almost knocked me down. - </p> - <p> - I suppose it was due to my state of mind and body—but till that - moment I had never felt what ugly, vicious hatred—desire to kill—meant. - The feeling came up in me so suddenly that I was frightened. - </p> - <p> - The big man went right on with his friend and took no notice of me. He had - hairy hands which he flourished as he talked, and the coat of his brown - suit had long tails which ended in a sort of scallop at his knees, behind; - it came to me in the flush of my boiling hatred that he looked like a fat - cockroach. And that bump dealt to me when I was so miserable, that - suggestion of the cockroach which always popped up at me as long as I knew - him, later made for another decisive turning-point in my life. Again I am - calling attention to the fact that matters which I did not reckon on as to - amounting to much at the moment have been my mile-stones. As I look back I - recognize the mile-stones, though I could not distinguish them at the - time. For instance, if you keep on with me far enough, I shall tell you - how an affair which counted, perhaps, as the biggest crisis in my life was - dominated by a plain, ordinary monkey with an artificial tail. - </p> - <p> - I followed after that big man with a raging desire to kick him under the - sleek tads of that coat—to pound my fists into his fat back. I might - have given quite an account of myself, at that, for I was full grown at - twenty and as hard as hickory. - </p> - <p> - “As I say,” I heard before he slammed the door behind him, “you better - come along with me down to Trull wharf and talk to Vose himself. He can - tell you—” - </p> - <p> - I gathered my wits and chased along behind. The two of them paid as little - attention to me as they would to a prowling cat. But if they were on the - way to talk to “Vose himself,” that surely was my opportunity. - </p> - <p> - It was some distance and by way of devious alleys, but we came at last to - where a lighter was tied beside a wharf. - </p> - <p> - There was a derrick and the scow was loaded with blocks of granite. A man - was slowly and ceaselessly turning the wheel of a queer-looking machine, - another was carefully handling hose which passed over the side of the - lighter and down into the water, and still another was tending ropes. It - did not occur to me at first what this activity indicated. - </p> - <p> - But when the big man called out, “Is Vose about due to come up?” I - understood at once and was mightily interested. - </p> - <p> - I looked down into the dock and saw water like liquid muck, filled with - floating refuse, and a good deal of the glamour of a diver’s life departed - from my imagination. Somehow I had thought that Jodrey Vose spent his days - in blue depths of pure ocean water, looking around at strange fishes and - exploring mysterious caves. That he was obliged to go down into any such - mess as that and work on blocks of stones with his two hands was a - depressing discovery. - </p> - <p> - After a time there was a bubbling of the turbid water close beside the - lighter, and for the first time in my life I saw a diver’s helmet emerge; - the goggling eye-plates, the grotesque excrescences, the sprouting antennæ - of the hose lines, the venomous hissing of the air from the vents—it - all seemed uncanny, and made me shiver. - </p> - <p> - Men reached down to help him up the ladder, and when he was on deck in - full view, scuffing his huge, weighted shoes, a balloon-like creature, as - shapeless as the doughnut men my mother used to cut for me when she was in - good humor on frying-day, I was sure I had never seen so curious a sight. - </p> - <p> - After he sat down they twisted off the helmet, and the fat man, whom I - reckoned must be Manager Anson C. Doughty, escorted the other man aboard - the lighter and the three started a conversation which I could not hear. - </p> - <p> - I knew the diver for Jodrey Vose because I had seen his picture at the - tavern. - </p> - <p> - The business, whatever it was, did not take much time and the manager and - the other man went away. Helpers began to shuck the diver from his suit; - it was nearing sundown and work for the day was over, it seemed. When he - was free from the bulk of the stuff and was starting for the cabin of the - lighter I went to him and gave him the letter. - </p> - <p> - “From Dod, hey?” Then he told me to follow him. - </p> - <p> - I looked at him while he read the letter by the light of a bracket lamp. - He was a wiry man with a twist of grizzled chin-beard. I was much - comforted when he looked up from the letter and grinned. - </p> - <p> - “Ben Sidney’s boy! Well, your father was the only critter on two legs in - Levant, in the old days, who could stand in a barrel, like I could, and - jump out without touching the sides. You look as if you have some of his - spryness and grit!” - </p> - <p> - “I hope so, sir. I have always worked at what has come to my hands to do.” - </p> - <p> - “Dod says business is a mite slow in Levant and that you want a job.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir.” - </p> - <p> - Now there was gratitude in me as well as comfort; it was evident that - Dodovah Vose had not written that I was a runaway. - </p> - <p> - The diver laid down the letter and went fumbling for his street clothes in - a closet. - </p> - <p> - “At any rate, you can come up to my boarding-place with me for the night - and we’ll talk it all over,” he said, in a very kind way. “If you had only - made yourself known a few minutes ago I could have introduced you to - Manager Anson C. Doughty. But to-morrow will do as well.” - </p> - <p> - I did not dare to offer comment. I wondered what there was about Anson C. - Doughty to keep my hatred of him so stirred. - </p> - <p> - “He takes my recommendations as to my helpers,” said Vose. “There is one - thing a diver has to be sure about—that’s picking his helpers. We’ll - talk it over, I say. If I find there’s considerable of Ben Sidney in you, - I reckon we can make a go of it. Have you a hankering to learn the - business, itself?” - </p> - <p> - I blossomed under the warmth of this kindness, I was full of words by that - time. I hadn’t opened my mouth to talk for two days. I told him about my - evenings in that tavern, my poring over his curios, my ambitions, my - dreams and hopes after hearing the stories his brother had to tell me. - </p> - <p> - When he had finished dressing he clapped me on the shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I calculate you’re going to do,” he told me. “Don’t get your - expectations too high. I have given up all the deep work—too old. - Five or six years steady at deep work finishes a man. I have nursed myself - along. Wharf work—fifteen to thirty feet—that’s my limit these - days. But I like your spirit, son. Can’t find boys in the city like that! - I should say that you’ve got the real hankering. Cigarettes, ever?” - </p> - <p> - “No, sir! No tobacco.” - </p> - <p> - “No cider jamborees? No express packages from the city?” - </p> - <p> - “No, Mr. Vose.” - </p> - <p> - “Good! I reckon I’ll keep the old town of Levant on the map in the diving - line. I know the game, my boy. And I know how to teach it to the right - kind of a pupil.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure you do, Mr. Vose.” - </p> - <p> - “So we’ll talk it all over this evening—and while we’re about it, if - you don’t call me Captain Vose down this way they’ll think you don’t know - me very well.” - </p> - <p> - I blushed, then I followed him out and away. - </p> - <p> - Before I tumbled into bed that night we had settled upon the future so far - as our words to each other went; the bargain only needed the ratification - of Anson C. Doughty—and that was secured next morning. I had - expected that sleep would soothe my nerves and remove my ugly grouch in - the case of that gentleman. However, there must have been something - instinctive in my dislike for him; he looked me up and down and caught my - scowl. - </p> - <p> - “You seem to have picked out a pretty surly up-country steer, Vose! - However, put him to work if you like that kind!” - </p> - <p> - So to work I went. - </p> - <p> - I cleaned diving-suits and thus became familiar with the parts and the - mechanism. I soaked out mud-caked ropes, I tended lines and learned - signals, and was always busy with a hundred other odd jobs as a satellite - of Diver Vose. He used me well enough, though he was never as warm toward - me as he was at our first meeting. - </p> - <p> - After some weeks I lost my fear that I would be followed and taken back to - Levant. I was not sure whether I felt more relief than rancor. To be - considered as not worth chasing, to know they were saying “Good riddance!” - behind my back, gave me thoughts which hurt a certain kind of pride. - </p> - <p> - I was afraid of the city and I went nowhere except to my work and to my - boarding-place. So there was an epoch in my life which was bare of - adventure until Diver Vose sent me down for the first time. - </p> - <p> - He had given me a fine course of sprouts previously, of course. - </p> - <p> - But in spite of all that the first sensations nigh paralyzed me. I reached - bottom and wallowed around without the least thought or remembrance - regarding what I had been told to do. A freight-train seemed to be roaring - around inside my helmet and I was gasping like a dying skate-fish. - </p> - <p> - Then in scuffing around in a sort of panic, taking no care of what I was - about, I hooked my shoe onto something and began to yank and thresh around - in a perfect frenzy. The result was that I pulled the shoe off and my - lightened foot was snapped above my head in a finer spread-eagle than any - acrobatic dancer ever pulled off. To drag that foot down was beyond my - powers, and I tripped and went onto my back. Being up-ended is a diver’s - chief peril, because the air bellies up into the legs of the dress and - leaves scant supply in the helmet. - </p> - <p> - In that crisis there was one idea which stuck to me: I must get that lost - shoe! - </p> - <p> - And I did get it. I groped and rolled and struggled and pulled until I did - get it. A half-dozen times in my efforts I felt them trying to haul me up. - I suppose I must have given signals telling them to quit that. I fought - them as best I could, anyway, until I had recovered the shoe; then I - yanked for a lift and went up. - </p> - <p> - Captain Vose was standing in front of me with the helmet in his hands when - I had recovered my wits enough to notice anybody. - </p> - <p> - “Been dancing a jig?” he inquired, caustically. - </p> - <p> - I shook my head, for I was not able to utter words. - </p> - <p> - “Which did you lose first down there, your nerve or that shoe?” - </p> - <p> - When I hesitated, he snapped, “Give me the truth, now, or we sha’n’t get - along after this!” - </p> - <p> - “My nerve!” I told him. - </p> - <p> - “So I knew—for I lashed on that shoe with my own hands. Very well! - What good are you as a diver without your wits or your nerve?” - </p> - <p> - “No good, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “You can buy an eighteen-pound shoe at any equipment loft. But how about - buying nerve?” - </p> - <p> - “I reckon it can’t be bought, sir,” I confessed. - </p> - <p> - “Still, you were almighty <i>particular</i>,” he sneered, “to bring back - that shoe with you even if you didn’t bring your nerve. Left your nerve on - the bottom, eh?” - </p> - <p> - He was mighty nasty in his tone and his manner, and the men standing - around were grinning. Perhaps even all that would not have put grit back - into me, for I was dizzy and scared and was owning up to myself that I was - better fitted for dry ground than a wet sea-bottom. But just then Anson C. - Doughty bellowed from the wharf: - </p> - <p> - “Say, look here, Vose, let that coward go back upcountry to his steers! We - have no time to fool away on greenhorns.” - </p> - <p> - “If I did leave my nerve on the bottom I’m going back after it, and I’m - going right now!” I told the diver. I was holding the shoe and I dropped - it on deck and shoved my foot into it. Captain Vose kneeled and began to - lash it. - </p> - <p> - “What are you doing, there?” demanded the manager. - </p> - <p> - “Making a diver,” stated my teacher, calmly. - </p> - <p> - “I’m paying you fifty dollars a day to do what I tell you to do, Vose.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s right, sir!” The captain kept right on with the lashings. “There’s - a contract between you and this young man which tells me to teach him how - to be a diver, if he shows the capacity.” - </p> - <p> - “He hasn’t shown it.” - </p> - <p> - “He is going to in about five minutes, sir.” - </p> - <p> - He picked up the helmet and bent over me. - </p> - <p> - “I had a reason for twitting you about that shoe,” he said, in my ear. - “You showed what was in you by bringing it back If you hadn’t brought it - back I would have stripped this suit off you and sent you hipering! You’ve - got it in you! You’re all right! Now go down, son, and set that chain - where I told you to set it. The first scare is the vaccination for this - kind of work. You’re in a way to be immune from now on!” - </p> - <p> - The last sound I heard was the snarl of Anson C. Doughty. That sound - helped me to go to my job that day. I went down and did what was required - of me, and, as I worked below there and became convinced that there was - nothing to harm me if I kept my head, I found my nerve, I reckon, for good - and all, in the diving business. - </p> - <p> - And now that this story seems to be settled into a rut of adventure in my - chosen line of work, hold breath with me and prepare for a couple of most - “jeeroosly jounces,” as old Wagner Bangs used to term his occasional falls - from his state of natural grace. - </p> - <p> - First, I leap as nimbly as I can over three years and a half of hard work, - the story of which would hold as little interest as the biography of a - mud-clam. I slipped and slid and dug in slime, I shagged granite blocks - and dragged chains, I pried into wrecks and had my whack at fumbling in - the watery shadows for the drowned—pitiful bundles floating as if - they were attempting posthumous gymnastics, head down and fingers trying - to touch toes. - </p> - <p> - I did “deep work” on ticklish jobs. - </p> - <p> - So I came into the fifty-dollar-a-day class of workers, to the grim - content of my mentor. - </p> - <p> - I have just remarked that the snarl of Anson C. Doughty sent me in earnest - to my first job. Also, just as suddenly, that snarl pried me loose from my - job. - </p> - <p> - I wish I did not have to confess what I have to say now. I come to jounce - number two! - </p> - <p> - I have spoken a ways back of mile-stones in my life and suggested that - Anson C. Doughty was connected with one. - </p> - <p> - I wish I could give a real, compelling, manly reason why I tossed my hopes - and my prospects so wildly into the air all of a sudden. I have spoken of - my ready temper—but that’s no reason. - </p> - <p> - In fifteen seconds I shifted the life I was living as completely as a - derailing-switch shoots a runaway engine off the main line. - </p> - <p> - The borers of that mysterious hatred for Anson C. Doughty must have been - burrowing in me all the time, even as those little teredinoid bivalves we - call ship-worms gnaw into submerged piles with the edges of their shells. - I was full of burrows and went to pieces all of a sudden. - </p> - <p> - For I came up one day out of thirty fathoms—and that’s man’s work—and - Doughty was giving me green help out of his general meanness—and my - head was far from steady; in addition he gave me his snarl for the last - time, instead of snarling at his infernal dubs who were risking my life. - </p> - <p> - I stepped on his foot with a shoe that was loaded with twenty pounds of - lead—and that’s some anchor!—I walloped him into insensibility - with the end of a rubber hose. Then I resigned informally, while he lay on - the deck of the lighter, grunting back to life again. - </p> - <p> - Nobody stopped me when I said I was going and announced that it would be - dangerous to get in my way. - </p> - <p> - They stood back while I shifted my clothes—and I got away with my - diving equipment, even! It was the newest thing out for those days and the - going styles of gear, and I had paid good money for it. - </p> - <p> - I say again, I wish I had a more cogent reason to give for throwing up my - work. But I’m giving the truth of the matter. I left just that way. I knew - that Anson C. Doughty would have me put in jail if he could catch me. I - knew that I couldn’t do any more diving, for divers are marked men and are - easily located. It was up to me to go and hide; so I went and hid. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLUG-HAT| - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> HAD been about a - bit during three years and a half. I own up frankly that I had found out - that I had more or less of a cheap streak in me. I’m not disguising it - wholly by the name of curiosity; though, of course, a country fellow has a - keen hankering to look in on some of the sights of the big city. - </p> - <p> - When we boys up in Levant used to hand around among ourselves by stealth - some of the flashy papers, I didn’t believe there were such things as I - read in print and saw in pictures. After some of my sporty associates of - the Trident workers began to take me around with them evenings I kept - perfectly still about my earlier disbeliefs, and my cheap streak began to - talk up to me. Somebody came distributing free admission cards to - concerts, managed by religious and fraternal bodies—but I preferred - to pay money at the door of a burlesque theater. I liked to go scouting in - dance-halls, and I haunted low resorts to hear what I could hear and see - what I could see. - </p> - <p> - We went boldly, for we were husky youths. As for myself, I had licked the - boys of Levant at every opportunity—and my Sidney temper afforded me - opportunities aplenty. I was never afraid when I went about alone, either. - I had a rather quiet way of minding my own business and impressing it on - the other fellow that he’d better mind his. - </p> - <p> - So, it may be guessed, most of my wanderings had been done in the lower - quarters of the city. - </p> - <p> - That’s where I went to hide. And I had knowledge enough of the locality to - hide myself effectually and keep hidden. - </p> - <p> - I did get in touch with one of the fellows who had been around a great - deal with me and whom I trusted—for he had no special use for Anson - C. Doughty. - </p> - <p> - Anson C. Doughty was out of doors once more, after spending a week of - retirement in the company of a few busy little leeches, and, as to eyes - and nose, he was not looking so very badly on the outside, but was - evidently having a great amount of trouble with a volcano raging within, - so my informant told me. Mr. Doughty was proclaiming that he proposed to - catch me so that he could make an example for the sake of discipline in - his crews in the future; but according to the program he had promulgated, - he proposed to cut me up with a meatchopper before turning me over to the - law. So I decided to keep under cover for an indefinite period. - </p> - <p> - Then I sent word to Captain Jodrey Vose and had him call on me in my - castle, because I did not want him to think that he had wasted all his - efforts when he had made me a diver. - </p> - <p> - However, the captain did seem to think so. He frankly said so. - </p> - <p> - “You’ll never get another job diving on the Atlantic coast,” he told me. - “In the first place, you won’t dare to show up as a diver where Anson C. - Doughty can grab you. In the next place, Anson C. Doughty has posted you - with all the wrecking companies as being as dangerous as an Asiatic tiger - with lighted kerosene on his tail. Now tell me what made you do it.” - </p> - <p> - I told him. - </p> - <p> - He looked at me with his eyes squizzled up and a frown on his forehead. - </p> - <p> - “I’m getting along in years and I’m probably losing my mind to some - extent,” he said, “but I’ll be cussed if I believe I’ve got entire - softening of the brain. It must be that I’m deaf and can’t understand—because - I don’t get the least idea of why you did it to him. Tell it over.” - </p> - <p> - I told him again. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I must have softening of the brain,” he grunted. “It’s all a - riddle-come-ree to me!” - </p> - <p> - “It is the same to me—and that’s why I can’t explain,” I told him, - frankly. “I hung onto myself all that time, wanting to do it, and then I - let go and did it!” - </p> - <p> - “About as you went to cutting up in Levant before you skipped out,” he - snapped. - </p> - <p> - Up to that time, not by word or look had he let me know that he had any - knowledge of why I had left my home town. - </p> - <p> - “Dod explained it to me in the letter he sent with you. But he had excuses - to give.” - </p> - <p> - I had to admire Captain Vose’s ability to keep his thoughts to himself, as - I remembered the placid countenance he showed to me when he had read that - letter. - </p> - <p> - “Now I reckon that Dod was prejudiced in your favor and that you had been - a young devil the folks wanted to boost out of town. Dod’s judgment was - never very good in the case of any critters who were willing to cater to - him. I don’t suppose you dare to go back up there?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want to go.” But all of a sudden a queer wave of homesickness - seemed to come swelling up in me and to choke me like water chokes the - throat of a dredge-pump. “I’m done with that town for good and all,” I - told him. “I got along all right while I was doing dirt as fast as the - rest of ’em, but when I tried to be decent they didn’t give me a - show!” I snapped my finger. “I wouldn’t give <i>that</i> for anybody in - Levant!” - </p> - <p> - I knew I was lying and I think Jodrey Vose knew it, for he was a keen old - chap. He scowled at me and grunted. - </p> - <p> - “Got any money left after all the rake-helling you’ve been doing for a - year past?” - </p> - <p> - So he knew all about that, too! - </p> - <p> - “I’m fixed all right!” But I looked up at the ceiling of my room when I - said it, and I knew I was not fooling him. I ought to have had a bank - account, considering what I had been pulling down. I had all my capital in - my pocket—a roll about as big as my thumb. I had considerable of a - string of memories, such as they were, regarding money I had spent; I had - a brand-new diving dress, and, above all, queer as this may sound, I had a - specially new outfit which was my chief pride: a frock-coat and pearl-gray - trousers, waistcoat modestly fancy—my real tastes in that direction - having been gently suppressed by an honest tailor—and a plug-hat - whose shininess fairly put my eyes out. And up to that time I had had no - opportunity to wear that suit except in front of the mirror in my - hiding-place! - </p> - <p> - I had tested the tilt of that hat at a dozen different angles; I had - nearly broken my neck in efforts to see just how the coat-tails flared in - the back. With a chart as help, a card stuck in the side of the mirror, I - had practised tying a scarf in Ascot style until my staring eyes watered - and my fingers ached. Then I had walked back and forth, trying to get the - hang of a cane. - </p> - <p> - Again I suggest that this may sound queer. But it was only another - manifestation of that cheap streak in me, so I reckon. I was not modeling - my appearance on the looks of any real gentleman I had ever seen; I had - not bought that garb in order to appear at church or to climb into better - society. But from the time I was ten years old I had nursed one special, - hungry, despairing ambition. At the county fair I saw “Diamond Dick” - Shrady marshaling his painted beauties in front of his tent, and, - according to my notion, his rig-out was apparel which shaded even the - robes of royalty. I could not conceive higher height of happiness than to - own and wear for “every day” a suit like that. - </p> - <p> - Consider the lily—as I considered “Diamond Dick”! Then consider me - as I stood in front of that tent! - </p> - <p> - I had on brogan shoes which I had fresh-tallowed for the day. My stockings - were home-knit and bulged out in folds over the tops of my shoes. But I - was not so keenly self-conscious of my footwear as of the rest of my - outfit, because Levant boys wore brogans quite commonly. My trousers were - my special sore point, for even in Levant they had been ridiculed. In the - first place, the cloth was a glazy, stiff stuff; in the second place, my - good mother did not understand how to cut out a boy’s pants. There was - just as much fullness in the front as in the seat. I kept denting in that - fullness with my fists when I was unobserved. I found that by stooping - quite a bit when I walked or stood I was able to keep the fullness caved - in and less noticeable. It was a wonder I did not become permanently - humpbacked while I was wearing out those pants. The legs of them were like - twin stovepipes, and almost as unyielding. They crackled at the knees when - I sat down. Add to those items of attire a hickory shirt, for which I had - made a false bosom out of a shingle painted white, a paper collar, and a - butterfly bow made of a gingham rag, a hard hat which was a paternal - hand-me-down; they called them “dips.” It was a good name. The hat was - exactly the shape of the bowl of a table-spoon. - </p> - <p> - As I leaned back and gaped up at that gorgeous stranger on the platform, - straightening myself and letting my forward fullness swell as it would, - there was born in me that unconquerable hankering—wild desire to be - dressed like that—sometime! To say to myself—sometime—“Now - I am dressed right! Everything about me is just as it should be!” - </p> - <p> - To base my ideas on the outfit “Diamond Dick” wore was probably evidence - of the cheap streak in me, I say, but when you consider me as I stood - there, and then consider the lily, is there not some excuse? - </p> - <p> - I confess with some shame that during my hiding in the city, while I was - tucked away in that boarding-house room, my chief regret was not that I - was out of a job, was not that I had battered the face of my employer, but - was because I could not go out and swell around the streets and the - amusement places wearing that suit and looking that picture of myself - which had been the ideal that lulled me to sleep every night during my - boyhood. - </p> - <p> - I was having some of those dreams while I sat there and gazed up at the - ceiling. At last a big dream had come true. I owned that suit and I knew I - looked mighty well in it. I had put in a good many hours in front of the - looking-glass making sure of that fact. But now that I owned it I was - getting none of the thrills and but little of the satisfaction I had - looked forward to. Realized ambitions in my case—and probably it’s - true in most cases—have always seemed to have a lot of discomforting - tag-ends tied to them. I was practically a prisoner in a dingy room, I - could not go out and sport around in my new regalia, and Jodrey Vose, who - had undertaken to make a man of me, was sitting across the table, scowling - at me with a great deal of disfavor. - </p> - <p> - “Have you taken up drinking along with the rest, young Sidney?” - </p> - <p> - “No, sir; and I never shall. I’m sure of that, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “What are you going to do next?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know.” - </p> - <p> - “You’d better go back to Levant.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll never do that.” - </p> - <p> - “Dod writes that your uncle has been enlarging his business and is making - a lot of money and is going to run for town office. He must need a chap - like you and has probably forgotten any little trouble he might have had - with you.” - </p> - <p> - But I shook my head. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t expect me to do anything more for you, do you?” - </p> - <p> - Again I shook my head. That homesick feeling was swelling up once more. - </p> - <p> - “I hear that they are fitting out another Cocos Island expedition to hunt - for the Peru treasure-ship. You might be able to sign on there. But it’s a - fake job. There’s no sunken ship. However, you’ll get wages.” - </p> - <p> - “I believe I’ll try the Pacific coast, sir.” - </p> - <p> - He slid his forefinger back and forth slowly under his nose. - </p> - <p> - “It might do, son. I have thought of the same jump, myself. I have waited - now till I’m too old. What started me thinking about it some years ago was - the <i>Golden Gate</i> proposition. What troubled me about making up my - mind was that some said the treasure had been got out of her and others - said there was some guesswork. Nobody seemed to be willing to produce any - proof that the treasure was still there. Looking back, I can see now why - all interested parties would naturally rather have it thought that the - treasure wasn’t there. But when a fellow like me has his living to make he - doesn’t want to take too many chances. And the one job I did go on - sickened me of treasure-hunting on somebody’s guesswork.” - </p> - <p> - He was silent for a time. - </p> - <p> - “I am sorry you are in your scrape, young Sidney. You’re done for as a - diver in these parts for a time. Try the Pacific. I don’t say it’s a bad - idea.” He grinned at me. “If you recover the <i>Golden Gate</i> treasure - drop me a postal card.” - </p> - <p> - Then he went away, making no more ado about the matter of our parting. I - was not surprised by that manner of leave-taking. I am a Yankee myself, - and I had found myself wishing that when he went he would walk off without - jawing me or coddling me. - </p> - <p> - I counted my money and sent out for some railroad folders and trailed my - finger across the map—and stayed right on in the city, week after - week. I don’t know exactly what I had lost—ambition or pluck or what - it was! But that was a spell in my life when I was a plumb, square loafer, - and rather enjoyed myself—reading cheap novels and playing solitaire - in the daytime, then getting in with some of the rest of the boarders and - playing poker evenings. In Levant we used to play for beans in - barn-chambers. I had a country boy’s shrewdness in that game, and the city - fellows did not get much of my money away from me; nor did I get any - particular amount of theirs. - </p> - <p> - However, the pastime did bring me into touch with some sporting characters - and with some queer characters, too. There were men who were hiding the - same as I was. The fact that I was under cover gave me open sesame to - their confidence. They talked a great deal, whiling away dull hours in the - day. Several were in the house where I was stopping, and after a time I - dared to go visiting around a bit evenings and went along to other houses, - in the locality. - </p> - <p> - It was all new to me, this “flash” side of fife, and I listened to their - stories with eyes and mouth open. I conceived an idea of writing out these - stories into a book, and after I got back into my room nights I would jot - down all I had heard, names and all. I had all the nicknames of operators - down pat—those names rather fascinated me. There were names which - were based on personal peculiarities or blemishes or system of operating. - I found out that a great many of the parties were linked, either by - relationship or by gang ties, and that the wise boys among the crooks or - the police officers could tell in many cases just what crowd had operated, - providing the identity of one man could be revealed. I reckon I calculated - in those times that I was going to make an exposé, for I made many notes - about the different coteries and their associates. - </p> - <p> - I will say at this point that I have no intention of writing such a book, - and I have gone into a bit of detail about the matter in order that - certain following activities of mine may be understood. Otherwise, I - might, later on, be thought to be advertising myself as one of those - know-it-all and do-it-all heroes of fiction instead of a plain and - ordinary chap who has been swayed by circumstance and governed by accident - in large measure. - </p> - <p> - But I did get a lot of fresh and lively information out of those chaps - with whom I was thrown in. - </p> - <p> - After a time they were not at all bashful about asking me if I wouldn’t - like a lay in some of their operations. - </p> - <p> - They frankly said that they had the best luck in country communities. - Understand that they proposed nothing except brace games! No safe-breakers - in that lot! They said I had an honest way about me that would take well - in the country districts. - </p> - <p> - My money was getting so low I listened with increasing interest. I cannot - say that I was tempted, exactly. But I was beginning to wonder how I was - ever going to make a go of it if I didn’t get some money. My Pacific trip - was all off by that time! My capital had shrunk below the price of a - ticket. - </p> - <p> - They told me that a regular village skinflint with lots of money was, in - most cases, a prime victim if the right bait was offered; with the right - bait he bit more easily than the more liberal kind of an individual, - because the skinflint was more crazy to make money fast and was already - used to getting high rates of interest for all money he let out. They were - making constant search for old chaps in country communities, well-to-do - men who would be tempted to grab at a rich chance or could be induced to - serve as decoys to pull in the neighbors, provided a sufficient rake-off - were offered. - </p> - <p> - There, too, was another thing which surprised me—that so often - really prominent men could be secured as decoys. The knaves I was training - with gave me a lot of stories of the kind; in most cases, so they said, - the men seemed to talk themselves into believing that they were offering - the neighbors an opportunity to make money. - </p> - <p> - If I had not been idle and very curious, and all the time wondering how I - could make a little money for myself, a lot of this would have gone into - one ear and out of the other.. But I was in the mood to take it all in, - and so, in that foolish belief that I could write a story, I set down many - names and many instances until I had well filled a sheaf of papers which I - sewed together into a sort of note-book. - </p> - <p> - There were various side-lines of the craft of cheaters where I was allowed - to be an observer. I watched one of the chaps make up his face for a trip - and learned about false beards attached by spirit gum. There was a cute - little mustache in his kit and I asked him to affix it to my upper lip. He - allowed me to keep it on when I asked permission. - </p> - <p> - I felt so much confidence in that alteration of my features that I went - directly to my room, put on that raiment of my yearning ambition, took in - hand my cane, and went forth into the open. - </p> - <p> - One who has remained long within-doors gets used to the confinement after - a time and the desire to go out is dulled; there are persons who have - voluntarily remained in bed in perfect health for years; but, once the - plunge outside is made, the desire for further liberty grows by what it - grasps in the blessedness of outdoors. I determined to be free from then - on and to test the quality of that freedom. It was astonishing what - confidence I felt in myself when I walked abroad in that rig, casting - side-glances at myself in store windows as I walked. It is amazing what - the right sort of clothes will do for a man’s grip and grit. - </p> - <p> - I went down to the docks and walked about, deliberately seeking to put - myself in the path of Anson C. Doughty. He did come face to face with me - after a time, looked at me with considerable interest, for plug-hats were - none too common in that locality, and passed on with bland indifference. - My transition was too much for him; I was the butterfly that had emerged - from the pupa of a diving-dress. After that I bestowed no further thought - on dangers to be apprehended from Anson C. Doughty. - </p> - <p> - I was more concerned with speculation on where my next meal was coming - from, for I was flat broke. I suppose that fact had something to do with - driving me out on the street; it was not wholly proud eagerness to show - myself in that suit of clothes. - </p> - <p> - All of a sudden I received direct proof that a plug-hat is occasionally - something to conjure by. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps it is on the principle that advertising pays; a man with slick, - silk headgear is supposed to be at least something which can be classed - under the title of “professor.” At any rate, I was hailed by that title by - a man who stood in a broad doorway. I stopped and he had something - interesting to say to me. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII—“TAKING IT OUT” ON A SUIT OF CLOTHES - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT doorway was - solidly banked with banners frescoed in gaudy colors and roughly painted; - they advertised a show within. A few glances I had time to give while I - walked toward the man who had hailed me, revealed that there were on tap - such features as “Petrified Mormon Giant,” “Siamese Susie,” “Mammoth - Peruvian Cockatoo,” and others. Over the door was heralded in big letters: - “Dawlin’s Mammoth Wonder Show.” - </p> - <p> - I guessed that the man in the doorway might be Dawlin. He wore a corduroy - suit, with gaiters, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was canted on one side - of his head. By the way in which he was looking me over I could see that I - was suiting him. - </p> - <p> - “Hitched up with a show?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - I told him that I was not, and I said it with considerable curtness. To be - sure, the personality and garb of Showman Shrady had formed my early - ideal, and I ought to have felt gratified, I suppose, when this man took - me for a showman. But I was pricked a little by the thought that my - appearance seemed to grade me on that plane. “Want to hitch on?” - </p> - <p> - “What makes you think I’m in the show business?” - </p> - <p> - “I had you sized that way on account of the scenery.” I gathered that he - meant my clothes. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t see any circus signs on this suit of mine,” I told him. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, say, I didn’t mean to offend—but it’s usually only sports and - professionals who tog that way down in this part of the town. If you’re a - gent you seem to be off your beat.” - </p> - <p> - There was nothing offensive about the man—he seemed a good-humored - chap who was a little cheeky. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what if I had been a showman—what about it?” - </p> - <p> - “I was going to offer you a lay—here at the door.” - </p> - <p> - “Selling tickets?” - </p> - <p> - “Good gad, no, man! I want you for the spiel—for the oratory—tongue-work—hooking - the hicks! You’re rigged out just right. You must know that the better the - front we put on at the door, the better the business inside! But excuse me - if I got the tags shifted!” - </p> - <p> - I swung my cane with one hand and with the other hand in my pocket sifted - coins through my fingers. There were not many coins. I needed more in a - hurry. It had been impressed on me that in spite of all my pride in my - attire I did not look like a “gent”; it was certain that I did not feel - like one. Disappointment was curdling pride in me; my clothes had gone - back on me. I entertained a sort of a grudge against them. All of a sudden - I made up my mind to get back at those garments which had cost me so much - money and now repaid me in contentment so niggardly. - </p> - <p> - “It would be all new business for me. Can I do it, do you suppose?” I - asked the man. - </p> - <p> - “Looks are half the battle. You’ve got capital in your clothes to start - with. You don’t look like a souse! The last two I have had on the door - pawned their rigs for rum. I’ve got the patter stuff all written out. All - you’ve got to do is study it and reel it off like you used to recite - pieces in school.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s the pay?” - </p> - <p> - Seeing surrender in my face, he winked and crooked his finger in - invitation to me to follow him inside. He led me into a narrow little - office. He offered a drink and a cigar, and I refused both. - </p> - <p> - “Gee! Some principles, hey? Now, if you’re a church member I reckon you - won’t stand for the lay!” - </p> - <p> - “I’m devilish far from being a church member,” I told him. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t like to open up too much till I know a little something about - you. Can you tell me?” - </p> - <p> - I told him enough to make him pretty much at ease. - </p> - <p> - “Do you know any of the right kind in this locality—the sporting - bunch?” - </p> - <p> - I gave a roster of acquaintances that made his eyes glisten. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, then, you’re all right!” he cried, slapping my knee. “In <i>my</i> - business a fellow has to try the ice before he slides out too far. I’m - coming right across to you.” He waved his hand to indicate his - establishment. “This show is only a hinkumginny, you know!” - </p> - <p> - “I thought so,” I said, calmly. I hadn’t the least idea what he meant, but - I knew that one needed to act wise with wise gentlemen. - </p> - <p> - “We run the gazara game and phrenology.” - </p> - <p> - I nodded and winked an eye as if I had been quite sure of that fact right - along. - </p> - <p> - He scratched a few figures on a wisp of paper and pushed it to me across - the desk-slide on which he had set out the whisky-glasses. - </p> - <p> - “That’s the split,” he said, grinning. Still it was all Greek to me. - </p> - <p> - “I know places doing half our business and paying twice as much—and - every once in a while having to settle a squeal, at that! But I’ve got a - cousin at headquarters—see? Nothing to it! Now you can understand - what a sweet little pudding you’re pulling alongside of.” - </p> - <p> - I was wishing I could understand better, though I was developing a dim - notion that he was talking about money paid for protection from the law. - He pulled back the paper and tore it up. - </p> - <p> - “Only fifty a week,” he said; “it’s nothing. I’m thinking of throwing in - another twenty-five without their asking. It beats laying up treasures in - heaven!” - </p> - <p> - I agreed. - </p> - <p> - “Now as to a lay for you! Of course, first of all, I have to grab off my - fifty of the net—it’s my show and my pull! Then there’s the ‘Prof’—Professor - Jewelle. He has his twenty-five per cent. I’ll tell you straight, now, I - have been getting by with those dickerdoodles I’ve had out on the stand - for fifteen per cent., and ‘prof’ and I have divided the other ten. But - they were crumby! Their suits were wrinkled worse than an elephant’s - dewlap, and the nap of their plug-hats was fruzzled up like the fur in the - mane of the Australian witherlick. No pull to that class! The jaspers - jogged right past without being a mite impressed. If you grab in with us - your looks and your style make you worth a lay of twenty-five per cent. - Now what say?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll grab,” I told him, and never did a man hire with less idea of just - what kind of a business he was entering or what pay he was going to get - for his labor. - </p> - <p> - “You say your name is Ross Sidney,” said the boss, remembering what I had - told him. “Mine is Jeff Dawlin, Ross, and there’s no mistering among - partners.” He gave me a few dirty sheets of paper. “There’s your spiel all - written out. You can add your own talk as you work into the spirit of the - thing. The idea is get them to stop, look, listen—and then coax till - they come in. If they come out squealing, you go on and bawl them—bawl - them down! There’s some good work to be done in that line—and you’re - husky and can scare ’em, providing Big Mike hasn’t already scared - ’em enough. There isn’t a thing in the show but what’s a fake—of - course you understand that. Most of ’em are too ashamed to squeal.” - </p> - <p> - He was leading me into the inner mysteries of the place while he talked. - He made no reference to the objects which were ranged around the sides of - the big room, plainly despising them as curiosities which could not - possibly interest anybody. But they interested me mightily and I lagged - behind to give each one a glance in passing. - </p> - <p> - “Siamese Susie” was made up of a couple of big wax dolls confined in a - single dress. “The Peruvian Cockatoo” manifestly had been, when he was - alive, the humble master of some up-country barn-yard; now he was tricked - out with all sorts of dyed false feathers, including an enormous topknot. - The “Mormon Giant” was a papier-mâché figure, and there was a hideous - thing labeled “Mermaid” constructed of the same material as the giant. - There were a few other nondescript exhibits in dingy glass cases or - mounted on stands draped in dirty hangings. I had never seen a collection - of more shameless frauds. I began to understand that I had not been let in - on the main proposition for money-making. - </p> - <p> - On one side of the room there were curtains lettered: “Professor Jewelle, - the World’s Greatest Seer.” The professor came out when Dawlin called for - him. He wore a wig and false white whiskers, and had watery eyes, and a - breath like a whiff from a distillery chimney. A big brute of a man was - loafing in one corner of the room, and I reckoned that this person must be - Big Mike; I had seen many such of the bouncer sort when I had made my - rounds, hunting for experiences. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dawlin introduced me, and I seemed to make a good impression. - </p> - <p> - When he slyly slid out the information that I, too, had been having - troubles which had kept me under cover for some weeks, I noted that I - stood even higher in their estimation. - </p> - <p> - As we talked on I began to feel a bit ambitious. I thought I might be able - to improve business. - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” I suggested, “why not put a tank in here and let me do some - of my diving stunts? It would be a novelty—there really doesn’t seem - to be much to the show as it stands.” - </p> - <p> - “Say, I haven’t pulled a greenhorn into camp, have I?” inquired Mr. Dawlin - with a good deal of tartness. “Show? Good gad! who ever said we wanted a - show?” - </p> - <p> - I did not know what to say to that and so I did not answer. - </p> - <p> - “What do you think I would be doing, or the ‘prof’ would be doing, while - the jethros were crowded around you? We wouldn’t be doing a thing in the - line of the regular graft. The main idea of this concern is to get ’em - in here where there’s nothing to take up their minds after they’ve had one - look around the place. Then they begin to feel that they want to get - something for their money. So the ‘prof’ hands ’em the dome dope—feels - their bumps—and I feed ’em the gazara stuff. How many times - have I got to tell you what this place is?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’m wise,” I said, trying hard to look that way. “But of course I’m - anxious to do all I can to help.” - </p> - <p> - “The zeal of youth! The zeal of youth!” prattled the professor. He seemed - to me to be pretty much of an old fool. He had that smug, cooing way with - him—all put on like the airs of a country undertaker. He came across - to me before I could understand what he was about and stuck his thumb onto - a spot on the top of my head and pressed with his forefinger a little - lower down. “Yes, approbativeness well developed and conscientiousness—this - where my finger—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, shut up!” snorted Mr. Dawlin. “Don’t cry to put that stuff over among - friends.” - </p> - <p> - “However,” the professor went on, continuing to fondle my head, “the - development of the brain upward, forward, and backward, from the medulla—” - </p> - <p> - “Save it for the cud-wallopers, I tell you!” - </p> - <p> - “If this young man is going to have his say about me in front, I want him - to know that the science of phrenology has a good exponent here,” said the - professor. - </p> - <p> - I reckon he had seen me looking him over without a great amount of liking - and was anxious to put on a bit of a front. - </p> - <p> - “He’ll say that you’ll read all heads free of charge, and that’s <i>all</i> - he’ll say,” stated Mr. Dawlin. “It isn’t necessary for him to know the - difference between a medulla and a free-lunch pickle—and I don’t - believe <i>you</i> know, yourself. Ross, we want to open the doors again - to-morrow. Do you think you can get the gist of that patter into your head - overnight?” - </p> - <p> - I thumbed the dirty sheets and said I’d do my best. Therefore, I went to - my room and applied myself. There was a lot of extravagant guff about the - curiosities, flowery flapdoodle of the usual barker sort. - </p> - <p> - The next morning I was able to make some sort of a try at it from the - stand, for I have said before that I always was more or less cheeky. A - sort of a fluffy-ruffle damsel with bleached hair was in the ticket-office - and there never was a young fellow yet who did not try on a little extra - swagger when a girl was hard by. She smiled at me encouragingly when I had - arrested the attention of a few passers, some of whom bought tickets and - went in. I guess I must have smiled back, for Dawlin, who was standing in - the doorway, appraising my first efforts, came and climbed up beside me - and growled in my ear. - </p> - <p> - “You’re breaking in fine. Only put a little more punch and sing-song into - it! And, by the way, the dame who is shuffling the pasteboards—she’s - private goods—mine!” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want her,” I said, with considerable heat. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t say you do—but a lot of trouble has sometimes been made in - partnerships by women. So that’s why I have flipped the buried card at the - start-off. Now tune up and let it went! If your voice gets husky I’ll send - out a handful of bird-seed and a hunk of cuttlefish.” I reckoned he was - trying his cheap humor on me to smooth the insult about the girl. It - seemed to me like an insult, and he understood pretty well how I felt. - </p> - <p> - So I went to my job and minded my own business most exclusively. - </p> - <p> - Day after day, for several weeks, I stood up on my rostrum and cajoled - folks into that joint, and I say frankly and honestly that for a long time - I did not have full understanding of just what went on inside. Possibly - that statement makes me out a mighty stupid chap. - </p> - <p> - But I was ashamed to ask any more questions after what Dawlin had yapped - out about his suspicions that I was a greenhorn. - </p> - <p> - I did not have any special conversation with him, anyway. I was still ugly - when I thought upon his warning about that painted girl—as if I - wanted her! And I was careful that she should have no word to carry to him - about me; I never looked in her direction. - </p> - <p> - Furthermore, I did not want to know very much about what they were up to - inside. I was ashamed of my job. It struck me that if I came to know all - the fraud of the thing I’d jack the proposition. An ostrich sort of - attitude, to be sure, a foolish evasion, but that’s just how it was, like - other things which came up in my life, things not lending themselves - readily to explanation as I look back on them now. - </p> - <p> - I saw patrons come out, some angry and with red faces, some ashamed, some - laughing—but only a few of the last, and they were plainly chaps who - took it as a joke when anybody could put something across in their case. - </p> - <p> - Man after man came out with a broad piece of paper in his hand, crumpled - it up, swore, and dashed it down on the sidewalk. - </p> - <p> - It was a chart purporting to be a reading of bumps, as Professor Jewelle - sized up the patron’s cranium. Nobody seemed to be very well pleased. A - lot of them pitched into me and said that I had promised that the reading - was free. - </p> - <p> - Well, the reading was free. - </p> - <p> - But once the victim had ventured inside the curtains and after the free - reading, the professor handed over the chart and demanded three dollars - for it. - </p> - <p> - Disputes ended promptly, for Big Mike was always present. The vocabulary - of that bellowing bull was limited to two words in those séances—“Three - dollars!” - </p> - <p> - Of course I had to find this out before long or stand convicted in these - records as liar and half-wit combined. - </p> - <p> - I also found out about the gazara game, Mr. Dawlin’s special project. - </p> - <p> - There was an oblong box in which were stacked leather envelopes, each - envelope bearing a numbered card. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dawlin seemed to be a very generous individual; he would allow patrons - to win considerable money by picking prize envelopes into which he had - slipped crisp bills; he also seemed to be a careless operator. For - instance, he would quite openly put a twenty or a fifty dollar bill into - the envelope holding the card numbered 0. Then he would shuffle the - envelopes and with carelessness utterly blind would leave the corner of - that card sticking up a bit, revealing the upper part of the numeral. - Feverishly excited patrons would bid high for the privilege of drawing - first—sometimes almost as high as the prize itself, for Mr. Dawlin - had plainly left a good thing exposed. But, strangely enough, what had - seemed like the figure 0 was revealed in the drawing as the figure 9 with - an exaggerated upper loop. If the patron made moan and let out the secret - of his grief, Mr. Dawlin reproached him for trying to take advantage of an - oversight in an honest game. Such was the activity known as “gazara” in - our establishment! I don’t know who gave the game that designation. I - believe that in Maccabees a town of that name is spoken of—and being - in Apocrypha seems well placed. It may be that the game started there—at - the same time the gold-brick game was hatched in Gomorrah. Both schemes - must be very ancient—for they are true, tried, and certain. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dawlin had much information to give me regarding games in general. He - told me about his brother Ike, a proficient gold-brick artist. He said - that if I cared to go into that line he would put me next to his brother. - Mr. Dawlin, as had the others of his fraternity, complimented me on my - honest looks. When I dared to suggest that the gold-brick scheme must be - known to everybody, and all played out, he laughed at my ignorance. He - said that getting a whole lot for a little always had been a bait for - human greed and always would be; as to getting at the yaps in these days, - it was only a matter of fresh style of approach and men like his brother - were thinking up new methods of approach all the time. - </p> - <p> - Men who needed money in a hurry to make up a balance were almost always - ready to gamble heavily and desperately. - </p> - <p> - He said his brother had a deal on at that very time, but that it was too - late for me to get in on that, for the thing was all set and pretty near - ready to be pulled off. It was an up-country case, of course. - </p> - <p> - “Plant by ‘Peacock’ Pratt,” said Davdin. That was a new name for my roster - of rascality, and I stuck it into a mental pigeonhole. “Pratt is a - white-vest operator. Paunch scenery!” He saw that I wasn’t catching him - very well and explained that Pratt affected the manner of a prosperous - Westerner who regularly stoned neighbors’ chickens out of his garden with - gold nuggets. - </p> - <p> - Speaking of gold, I was not specially dissatisfied with the rake-off I was - getting from these precious rascals, though, of course, it was small as - compared with my diver’s wages. But standing in the sunshine under a - plug-hat with nothing to do but gabble nonsense was a softer snap than - grubbing under muddy water with a diver’s helmet stuck over my head. I was - truly in a way to succumb to the blandishments of my cheap screak and - settle down into the practice of roguery. - </p> - <p> - But I had some sense of shame left in me. I kept on that disguising - mustache when I was before the public. It was not much of a mask, to be - sure, but it comforted me a bit to know that it made me look unlike - myself. - </p> - <p> - And that’s why the Sortwell boys from Levant did not recognize me when - they halted on the sidewalk one day and listened to my barking. - </p> - <p> - There they were, the two of them, grown up to manhood; but they were - mighty green specimens. They were looking at the banners rather than at - me. I wagered with myself that it was the first time they had ever been in - the big city; even one trip would have rounded off some of the rough - comers they were showing. For instance, they surely would have had - experience with such a peep-show as we were running and would not have - been tempted. - </p> - <p> - They walked over to the painted maiden and asked her if she could - recommend the show; they grinned and gaped at her amorously. She fawned on - them and they bought tickets and went in. I wasn’t a bit sorry, nor did I - try to stop them. My last expenence with the gang in Levant had not - implanted in me any hankering to hug and kiss the Sortwell boys. - </p> - <p> - I watched for them to come out, for I felt pretty sure that they would be - properly trimmed and I anticipated secret relish in looking on their - faces. I told myself I didn’t care. If a good jolt should be handed to - them it would help in satisfying my grudge against the town which had sent - me flying. Bitterness was in me at that moment. I was glad I was out of - the jay place. If I had stayed there I would be looking just like those - simpering rubes who had gone in like lambs to be sheared. I’d never want - to go back to that town, I decided all over again. - </p> - <p> - When they came out each one carried one of Professor Jewelle’s charts, and - they were crying like great calves—actually guffling slobbering - sobs. They went away a little distance and stood on the sidewalk, looking - at each other and scruffing tears from their eyes with the palms of their - hands. Awhile back if somebody had told me I would see a couple of big, - larruping chaps from Levant doing that on the street in broad daylight, - I’d have predicted a good laugh for myself. - </p> - <p> - Well, there was nothing like that in my case! - </p> - <p> - A lump swelled in my throat. I don’t know what it was—whether ’twas - homesickness, longing for my own people of my own kind, spectacle of boys - who had gone barefoot with me, sight of their sorrow, mindfulness of what - the cruel city had done to me, reflection that I had helped in a measure - to get them into their scrape—I say I don’t know just what it was. - But my throat gripped and tears flowed up into my eyes. Those poor devils, - who were children in spite of their size, were helplessly adrift—I - could see that. Something special must have happened to them. - </p> - <p> - I seem to be stopping to analyze my emotions. At the time I was doing - nothing of the sort. I felt a comforting sense that I was not a rascal - down in my heart, in spite of what I had done and of the job I was holding - down. - </p> - <p> - I left my rostrum, ran into the little office, and tipped Dawlin’s bottle - of whisky against my upper lip; the alcohol dissolved the gum and I ripped - off the mustache. Then I chased along after the Sortwell boys. They were - far up the street, plugging slowly with bowed shoulders. - </p> - <p> - When I came close upon them I took my time to get my breath and control my - emotions. Then I called to them, and they turned around and stared at me - with eyes which expressed all the range of feelings between interrogation - and stupefaction. - </p> - <p> - “Well, haven’t you anything to say to an old friend?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “It ain’t you,” faltered the older. “It may look like you, but it ain’t.” - </p> - <p> - “There ain’t anything in this place that’s looking like it really is,” - whimpered the younger. “There was a card with a zero on it and it wasn’t a - zero—it was a nine—and he took our money.” - </p> - <p> - “Have you lost your money, boys?” - </p> - <p> - “All of it—every scrimptom of it,” bawled the older. “We ’ain’t - got anything to get home with. We saved up to come down and see the city - for a couple of days—and now it’s all gone.” - </p> - <p> - “We worked all winter logging—sweating and freezing in Cale Warson’s - swamp—to earn that money, and that hell-hound down there took it and - jammed it into his pants pocket. And how’ll we get home?” - </p> - <p> - Oh, I knew what logging in a swamp was! I knew what sort of wages were - paid and how hard it is to save! That one sentence fairly lanced my - conscience. “He jammed it into his pocket!” To Jeff Dawlin, who reached - out and took in his money so easily, those bills were hardly more than so - much paper, as he handled them. - </p> - <p> - But he had not been a boy in a country town where money is not come at so - easily, where the little hoards grow so slowly, where there are so many - dreams about the big world up in the attics under the patched coverlids—dreams - which the little savings may bring to realization! - </p> - <p> - These were boys from my home town. Thank God, a lot of the cheap in me, - the soul-dirt I had rubbed off in my associations, the cynical notions - about right and wrong, the inclinations of a swaggering sport—yes, a - whole lot of that slime was washed out of me right there and then by my - new emotions. I don’t say I was made anyways clean—not all of it - went. I have done many things since then to be ashamed of. But I was a - blamed sight more of a man when I went up and patted those poor boys on - their backs, standing between them. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t take on about it any more, fellows,” I said. “I guess I’ll be able - to do something for you.” My tone was pretty important and they began to - look me over; they had been so fussed up that they had not taken full - stock of me till then. - </p> - <p> - “Golly! You’re rich, ain’t you?” gasped the older. - </p> - <p> - “Now about losing this money—where did you lose it?” I asked, - swelling a little more because I knew I was in the way to make a big - impression. - </p> - <p> - “Down the street there—where those fraud duflickers are all billed - out! It looked like a zero—” - </p> - <p> - “And they charged three dollars apiece for feeling of our heads!” put in - the younger. “There was a big man who cracked his fists—” - </p> - <p> - “Never mind! I know all about all such places, boys. I won’t allow any - such things to be put across in this city on any friends of mine!” - </p> - <p> - I was talking as if I owned the town. They goggled at me as if they - believed that I did own it. When I started back toward Dawlin’s joint they - followed me like hounds at heel. - </p> - <p> - I flipped a lordly gesture at the girl in the ticket-office and walked in - without paying—herding my clients ahead of me. That was visible - evidence of my mysterious importance, and they looked up at me as if they - were ready to fall down and offer worship. For in America any man who can - walk past ticket-sellers and pay by a flip of the hand, displays a power - which autocrats may envy. - </p> - <p> - “You are sure this is the place?” I asked the Sortwell boys. - </p> - <p> - They breathlessly assured me that it was. - </p> - <p> - “And there’s the man who made us pay him six dollars,” declared the older. - </p> - <p> - Professor Jewelle had stepped out through the slit in his curtains. I - walked up to him. - </p> - <p> - “Did you charge these gentlemen six dollars—take the money from - them?” I asked, sternly. - </p> - <p> - He saw that there was something on and, like a rogue, believed, of course, - that I was plotting further graft on these innocents. He played up to me - with shrewd promptness. - </p> - <p> - “If I have done anything wrong I ask pardon,” he whined. - </p> - <p> - “These are particular friends of mine. Hand over their money at once!” - </p> - <p> - He turned his back on them while he pulled out the money and gave me a - wink which indicated that he was on and approved whatever game I was - playing. I kept my face straight and stern, for the boys were surveying me - with adoration. - </p> - <p> - I handed them the money and went across to Mr. Dawlin’s booth, the hicks - at my heels. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dawlin was by nature more suspicious of his fellow-man than was - Professor Jewelle, and he evidently resented the fact that I had not - tipped him off in advance. He regarded me with much sullenness when I - commanded him to return the money he had taken from the gentlemen. His - sour unwillingness, mingled with his uncertainty, really helped my game - along. It looked as if I had the power to force even such a balky mule as - Dawlin seemed to be. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know about this!” he growled. - </p> - <p> - “I can’t help that! You’ll have to take my word—till you can get - something better,” I added, and I put a little significance into my last - words. - </p> - <p> - And Mr. Dawlin, being a rascal who thought he could sniff a plant, decided - to grab in on a partner’s game. “Why, sure, boss,” he cried, heartily, “if - that’s the way you feel about it! Take any gents that’s friends of yours - and all you have to do is speak the word!” He pulled out of his trousers - pocket a big wad of crumpled bills. “Do you know how much they spent - backing their opinion against mine?” - </p> - <p> - “It was twenty-two dollars—it was just twenty-two dollars,” piped - one of the boys, and the other one helped out on the chorus. - </p> - <p> - “The rising young financiers seem to have no doubt,” sneered Dawlin. - </p> - <p> - The older boy looked at the big swatch of bills and rasped his rough hands - together. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps money don’t mean much to you, mister, handling it the way you do! - But if you earnt twenty-two dollars by day’s work, getting into a - popple-swamp before sunup, I guess you’d know it when you counted those - dollars out to anybody.” - </p> - <p> - “So that’s the way you earned this money? How much more did you earn?” - Dawlin screwed a look at me, showing fresh suspicion. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll do the talking,” I said. “I’ll talk because I know what I’m doing! I - say only this: hand over the coin!” - </p> - <p> - “And I say again, I don’t know about that!” - </p> - <p> - I reckoned I was overplaying my air of importance, so I found a chance to - slip him a wink which promised a good deal. - </p> - <p> - “But you know who I am!” I told him. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he admitted. - </p> - <p> - “Then pay!” - </p> - <p> - He began to grin, finding this little comedy amusing as well as - mysterious. - </p> - <p> - “Sure thing, boss! And seeing that it’s you and your orders,’ here’s five - dollars for your friends on top of the twenty-two. Go and buy five - dollars’ worth of corned beef and eat your heads off! Nothing like going - the limit when you come down to the big burg!” - </p> - <p> - I gave Mr. Dawlin a knowing look when I turned to leave. - </p> - <p> - “My friends are much obliged for the extra five—but they can use it - for something else besides eats. Come on, gentlemen! You will be my guests - at dinner.” - </p> - <p> - I could see by Dawlin’s face that he took that last as a straight tip from - me that I had designs on the countrymen—and that he would understand - why I was quitting my job for a time. He gave me a most benignant smile - when I left. - </p> - <p> - Professor Jewelle smirked and bowed when we passed him. - </p> - <p> - Big Mike, the ogre of the place, stepped politely to one side and twisted - his ugly mug into a one-sided grin of apology. - </p> - <p> - So we went out in state. - </p> - <p> - There was a new feeling in me. It was a longing to be with those boys from - home. Up to then I had been ashamed to meet anybody from Levant. And out - of that shame had come a sort of dread to hear any news from my old town. - Now I was hungry for news. - </p> - <p> - To be sure, just at that moment I was in a fool’s paradise of spurious - importance. It was comforting, however, to be set on a pedestal by those - Sortwell boys, and to know that at least two persons from Levant had - stopped thinking of me as a runaway scalawag. - </p> - <p> - Along with my new feelings had come a sort of vague hope. - </p> - <p> - I walked out of Dawlin’s place with a hazy notion that I would never go - back. Dawlin was evened up with me as to finances—I had my last - week’s rake-off in my pocket. - </p> - <p> - And I may say right here that I never did go back—not to stand up - and coax suckers! When I did go back I played Mr. Jeff Dawlin for one! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IX—A GRISLY GAME OF BOWLS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> DID not bother - with any of the victualing houses in that low-down locality. I led the - Sortwell boys uptown and ushered them into a very fancy restaurant. I - could see that their opinion of my greatness was growing all of the time. - I could not induce them to touch the bill of fare or even look at it. They - gaped in such a frightened way when I mentioned fancy dishes, that I - helped to set them at ease by ordering steak and potatoes. They ate to the - last scrap, cleaning their plates with morsels of bread, even as grateful - pups lick their platters. They confessed that they had not dared to go - into an eating-house, and I remembered that first day when I had roamed - the streets of the city. - </p> - <p> - I wanted to ask questions about Levant, but I delayed. Dave Sortwell, the - older, opened up the subject, but he did not do it very gracefully. - </p> - <p> - “I reckon they can’t slur the Sidneys after this, like they have always - done past back,” he said. “Here you are, something big down here in the - city—and your uncle Deck is first selectman of Levant.” - </p> - <p> - So my uncle had achieved his political ambition! When I heard that news I - had inside me a feeling of apprehension which I could scarcely account - for. - </p> - <p> - “Elected last week at the March town-meeting,” affirmed Ardon, the - brother. “We younger fellows that have come of voting age went for him—most - all of us, because he say’s he is going to turn politics in our town - upside down and dance a jig on the bottom of ’em.” - </p> - <p> - “He was into the tavern the other night, pretty well teaed up,” giggled - Dave, “and he said he was going to gallop Judge Kingsley to hell and stand - over him with a red-hot gad while he shoveled brimstone. He has got it in - for the judge—and a good many folks in Levant ain’t sorry. Judge - Kingsley has always gouged folks.” - </p> - <p> - “Did they put the judge out of the treasurership—did my uncle bring - that about?” Hearing that the feud was on worse than ever made my heart - sick. I had been hoping! - </p> - <p> - “O Lord, no! I guess the judge is forever fixed in that job. Folks can’t - seem to think of anybody else as treasurer. He’s a financier,” said Dave, - reverently. “He knows all about handling money. Folks trust to him for - that.” - </p> - <p> - “But you say my uncle—” - </p> - <p> - “Your uncle is doing most of the saying. Folks stand round and listen. I - don’t know what he is trying to do to the judge. Nobody seems to know. - Guess he can’t do much of anything except talk. You know, yourself, Ross, - how he keeps sparked up most of the time. Maybe he don’t know just what he - says, himself.” - </p> - <p> - I began to skirt the edges of conditions in Levant, asking questions about - this one and that, showing as much indifference as I could. But the - Sortwell boys showed even more indifference about their home town. It was - all too familiar to them. They were displaying increasing interest in me, - and were emboldened to ask questions, now that their early awe was wearing - off. - </p> - <p> - I found out—and I was rather surprised—that the folks in - Levant had not heard a word about me since I left the town. I had rather - expected that Dodovah Vose would drop some hint as to what had become of - me—and yet, on reflection, I could see that prudence required him to - keep still. He had helped a prisoner to escape, and could not well let - anybody suspect that he knew the whereabouts of that prisoner. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll tell you, boys,” I said, when they had flanked me with questions - from every approach and had finally and fairly pounced on me to find out - what I was doing for a living and how I was so important, “I am hitched up - with big business interests who don’t allow their men to talk. I’d tell - you if I could tell anybody. It isn’t one special kind of business—it’s - all kinds—a sort of a syndicate—a combination. You - understand!” - </p> - <p> - They hastened to say that they did—and I was glad of that because I - didn’t understand, myself. - </p> - <p> - “But you’ll let us say that you’re in this big business, won’t you? When - we get back home we want to tell all of ’em that they’d better not - slur you any more.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose the backbiters have been busy, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, not much nowadays except somebody remarks once in a while that you - had to skip the town. You know how such things pop up in talk. Your uncle - being prominent nowadays, you get mentioned once in a while. But Dodovah - Vose has always stood up for you!” - </p> - <p> - “And a lot of folks didn’t believe what that detective said. He wasn’t a - real detective, anyway. He was only a deputy sheriff from Pownal,” added - Ardon, and the next minute I felt like hugging the boy. “I was always - ashamed of how us fellows put you in bad, Ross, and so I owned up when - Celene Kingsley asked me—” - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t help it! I came right up in my chair. “Celene Kingsley asked - you?” - </p> - <p> - He misunderstood my heat. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t be mad, Ross! I stood up for you, I say! I was sorry for what I - did. I was ashamed.” - </p> - <p> - “But you said Celene Kingsley asked you something!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I can’t remember whether she came right to me and asked me or - whether it just happened that the thing came up somewhere or—” - </p> - <p> - “But you would surely remember if <i>she</i> came to you!” I could not - conceive of Celene coming to anybody without it marking a mile-stone in - life. - </p> - <p> - However, the Sortwell boy had plainly decided to be non-committal until he - had a better line on my feelings in the affair. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want you to be mad because I talked it over, Ross. I stood up for - you!” - </p> - <p> - “But did she come <i>asking?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “We-e-ll, I guess she must have asked—or—or something! Anyway, - it came up in talk—somehow—” - </p> - <p> - Confound his haziness! - </p> - <p> - “And of course I stood up for you. It was only right! I told her how you - tried to bust up the Skokums! I said you threatened to bat out the brains - of the whole of us if we didn’t stop cutting-up. I told her that they - hadn’t ought to have arrested you that night, for you was trying to stop - us from raiding her father’s house to grab that detective. You said - something about a home being a castle—or—or something. Anyway, - Ross, I did the best I knew how—I ain’t so much good in talk as you - are. Honestly, I did the best I could to put you straight when she asked. - Yes, I reckon she did ask.” - </p> - <p> - I was looking at him with such rapturous expression that his face cleared - of uncertainty regarding my feelings. - </p> - <p> - “Sure, she must have asked, for I wouldn’t go to blart-ing that around, - making the rest of us out as pirates, unless she had pinned me down. I - reckon she did just that! Pinned me down. But I was glad to help you out - that much!” - </p> - <p> - It came to me with a rush of sentiment that all I had done that day for - the Sortwell boys had been fully paid for long in advance, and I was sorry - because a whole lot of my actions had really been dictated by my - selfishness and my desire to show off. - </p> - <p> - I reached across the table and took his hand. - </p> - <p> - “Ardon, I’m going to own up that I have had a lot of bitter thoughts about - the folks in Levant since I left home. But if I had known that I had only - one friend there like you have been in this matter, I would have put all - the bad things out of my mind.” - </p> - <p> - “I only told the truth, Ross.” - </p> - <p> - “But that’s the hardest job a man undertakes to do in a lot of cases.” I - was thinking just then how hard <i>I</i> would find it to own up about - myself, and how I had secured that money from the clutches of the rogues - in Dawlin’s joint. And there I was, making a lot of capital out of that - deceit! - </p> - <p> - But after what I had just heard I was resolved to go ahead and make more - capital out of my pretensions to greatness. - </p> - <p> - “You’re going to let us say that you have made good, aren’t you?” asked - Dave. - </p> - <p> - “I’d like to get back into the good opinion of the old town, boys. If you - feel like saying something nice about me when you get back to Levant, I’ll - be grateful.” - </p> - <p> - “Say, if we don’t blow your horn!” they cried in concert. - </p> - <p> - “But not too loud, boys! I don’t want to have too big a reputation to live - up to when I come back home.” - </p> - <p> - They stood up and clapped me on the back. - </p> - <p> - “By gorry! you will come, won’t you, and show ’em?” pleaded Dave. - “Come and show ’em!” - </p> - <p> - “But there’s one thing to be thought of first,” I said, with a grin. “Has - my uncle Deck stopped threatening to kill me on sight?” - </p> - <p> - That stirred their memories and fetched a laugh. - </p> - <p> - “He wouldn’t dare to give you as much as one yip if you walked up to him - looking like you do now,” said Dave. - </p> - <p> - The thought which he suggested was comforting; so much in this world does - depend on outside appearances. The hankering in me to go back was whetted; - just to make a show in the face and eyes of Levant, to stop their tongues - for good and all! But I was conscious that deep under those cheaper - motives was something more compelling. I had felt the thrust of it after - Ardon Sortwell had told me of his confession to Celene. She, at least, - knew that I had not been a renegade, and she had taken enough interest in - me to make sure on that point. - </p> - <p> - “When are you coming back, Ross?” demanded Dave. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t tell anybody I am coming back, boys. Promise me that.” - </p> - <p> - They did. - </p> - <p> - “But you may say that you saw me in the city, and that I am doing well, - and sent my best regards to all my friends.” - </p> - <p> - “We’ll make their cussed old ears sing,” declared Ardon. “Don’t you worry - about us!” - </p> - <p> - “If I can arrange my business so as to leave it, I may run up later.” - </p> - <p> - I showed them some of the city sights that afternoon and they started for - home that night—and I saw to it that they were safely aboard their - train. - </p> - <p> - That I should dream of Levant that night was entirely natural. They were - enticing dreams and they made me homesick and I found out that I was not - such a bold man, after all, in spite of the shell I had grown; I felt very - much like a boy when I woke next morning. I was hungry for my own folks. - </p> - <p> - In my haste to be gone I forgot all my caution. I went down to the - water-front just as if there were no such person as a vengeful Anson C. - Doughty. - </p> - <p> - I had cached, temporarily, my diving equipment. I went to the storage-man - and arranged for its care, paying in advance. - </p> - <p> - Then I was bold enough to go hunting up Jodrey Vose because I wanted to - carry some fresh and direct message to his brother in order to secure - continued favor in the case of the tavern-keeper; he certainly had been my - best friend in Levant. I intended to lodge with him and I dreaded his keen - questioning in case I went to him with lies about when I had seen his - brother last. - </p> - <p> - I found the captain on his lighter and we had a good talk during his - rest-spell. - </p> - <p> - “I’m sorry it has turned out for you as it has, young Sidney. But it’s a - good idea for you to run up to the old town and hang round with Dod for a - while and sort of get your feet placed all over again. Maybe something - will turn up down this way later!” - </p> - <p> - “Anson C. Doughty’s toes, perhaps.” - </p> - <p> - He wagged his head, soberly. - </p> - <p> - “I’m glad you came down to take leave, son, but you’re running chances. - Anson C. Doughty is mighty ugly. He was beaten up in front of his crew—and - folks haven’t got done talking and he knows they are talking. You’d better - be hipering, I reckon.” - </p> - <p> - He sent one of the helpers to his cabin for a parcel and he put it into my - hands. - </p> - <p> - “It’ll be handier than sending it by express to Dod,” he said. “It’s a - skull I found in the dock. Tell him to make up a pirate yarn to go with - it.” - </p> - <p> - Being thus equipped with full credentials as to my continued comfortable - standing with Jodrey Vose, for the purposes of my further intimacy with - Dodovah Vose, I started up the wharf in excellent spirits, my thoughts on - my home-going. - </p> - <p> - And half-way to the street I fairly bumped into Anson C. Doughty. It was - no coincidence—I ought to have reckoned on that meeting—the - manager was regularly up and down the wharf at all hours of the day. But, - as I have said, I had lost my caution. I had met him once face to face, - and had not been recognized. But I was no longer wearing that mustache. - </p> - <p> - He swore a blue streak and danced back and forth in front of me, waving - his hairy hands to shoo me back. He looked just as much like a cockroach - as ever. - </p> - <p> - “You belong in State prison and you’re going there,” he snarled. - </p> - <p> - There were two wharf loafers near by, the only men in sight. He called to - them, and they came to us, a couple of husky stevedores. - </p> - <p> - “You know <i>me!</i>” shouted Doughty. “You two men hold this sucker till - I can fetch a cop. Hold him! Don’t let him get away!” - </p> - <p> - He ran off toward the street. - </p> - <p> - I had not a chance to get away from those big chaps on that narrow wharf—and - it was plain that they knew Anson C. Doughty and recognized his authority - in those quarters. - </p> - <p> - So here were all my fresh plans, my hankering for home, my new-laid - reputation for Levant consumption about to be kicked into the black depths - of tophet by the grudge of Anson C. Doughty! - </p> - <p> - I could see that the stevedores despised my size because I was wearing a - plug-hat; they glowered at me with the natural enmity the man in overalls - feels for the dandy. It was perfectly damnable—that situation! To be - arrested—to be shown up for what I was—the thought screwed my - desperation to the breaking-point. - </p> - <p> - I pulled my wallet and began to flick out bills. - </p> - <p> - “He’s only trying to get back at me on account of a grudge, fellows; he’s - using you for tongs,” I told them. “I was one of the divers and I batted - him when he insulted me! I want to get out of town! Here’s a piece of - money! He won’t give you anything.” - </p> - <p> - I had the skull under my arm and my wallet in my hands, and I wasn’t - paying much attention to the men while I counted out money. - </p> - <p> - “Who was the gink who told us to hold the guy?” muttered one of the men. - “Was it Doughty?” - </p> - <p> - “Sure! You know him,” said his companion. - </p> - <p> - “But he don’t know <i>us!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “He won’t remember who you are!” I hastened to put in. “Take some money, - and—” - </p> - <p> - “You bet we’ll take some money,” barked the two of them in chorus, and the - next instant one of them clutched me and the other grabbed wallet, money - and all, and they ran away, ducked into an alley between storehouses, and - disappeared. - </p> - <p> - I was free at a high price. - </p> - <p> - I ran after them, of course, but they were nowhere in sight when I reached - the parallel wharf, and so I started for the street; and Anson C. Doughty - saw me, for he was running up and down the sidewalk, wildly hunting for a - policeman. When he undertook to head me off I pitched the wrapped skull at - him with all my might; it plunked him squarely in the face and dropped - him, and then went bounding along the pavement at a lively clip. I was - conscious that a lot of people were looking on and that a hullabaloo was - started. But in spite of that I stopped to pick up the skull before I fled - from the place. I reckon I must have felt considerable of a sense of - responsibility where the interests of my friends, the Voses, were - concerned! - </p> - <p> - I got through a short street on the jump, caught a passing car and when I - was once aboard I was lost to pursuers—I was merely one of the - city’s mass, and my garments testified for me. - </p> - <p> - I dug down into my pockets and found a few crumpled bills and some silver—the - loose money I carried outside my wallet. The whole of it amounted to - mighty little—only about enough to take me to Levant, as I - remembered what the train fare had been. - </p> - <p> - I did not stop to figure on any further resources; I did not dare to go - and seek aid from any of my acquaintances; I did not go back to my room - for any of my belongings. Panic was on me. To be caught at that time meant - the toppling of my cardboard house of hopes and reputation. I did not know - to what extent Anson C. Doughty would throw out his drag-net—but I - was pretty sure that he would drop all his other business for a time and - attend strictly to what concerned me. He surely was the angriest man I had - seen in many a day when he went down under the impact of that package. - </p> - <p> - To get out of that city just as quickly as I could, before he could set - persons on my trail, or put spies at the city’s outlets, was the only - sensible course open to me. - </p> - <p> - So in less than half an hour I found myself on the train, homeward bound, - just as much of a fugitive <i>from</i> the city as I had been in other - days when I headed <i>toward</i> it. - </p> - <p> - I had a little spare change in my pocket and a skull under my arm. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - X—THE ART OF PUTTING ON A FRONT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>AVING caught a - train out of the city at a fairly early hour in the forenoon, I made a - daylight ride of it to Levant, and I stepped out upon the platform at - Lower Comers just before sundown. - </p> - <p> - I remember that the red March sun was almost touching the rocky edge of - the beech ridge, and, with the bare trunks of the trees striping it, - looked like a coal fire with the stove cover off and a griddle on. In - fact, as I looked up at the sun and reflected on the general condition of - my affairs, I felt as if I were the particular live lobster destined for - the griddle in Levant. - </p> - <p> - But I walked past the platform loafers, leaving my satin-lined overcoat - open so that they might get the full effect of my frock suit. No one - seemed to recognize me; Levant Comers is all of three miles from Levant - village, and there was never much mixing between the communities when I - was a boy. I set off at a good pace to walk the three miles to Dodovah - Vose’s tavern. - </p> - <p> - Men in several teams which overtook me offered a lift, and one of them - addressed me as “Elder.” Evidently my clothes were producing an - impression! But I declined all offers. I had waved the stage-driver aside, - and now if I accepted a free ride I might have brought suspicion on my - financial ability. So I told them all politely that I needed exercise and - walked on in all my dignity—and, being encumbered by nothing except - a skull under my arm, I found my tramp pleasurable. - </p> - <p> - I went along at such a clip that I topped the long rise from the river - where the railroad winds and was able to look down on distant Levant - village before the lingering dusk had settled into night. The stripped - trees had left all the houses bare and rather bleak; there was no beauty - anywhere. The afternoon chill had hardened the road mud into iron ridges. - Being back on my native heath was not so consoling and heart-thrilling as - I had pictured. That faded, sodden, frozen landscape was depressing. I - looked like a millionaire, but I belonged on the town farm. There was one - thing to remember, however. My uncle as first selectman was also overseer - of the poor, by virtue of his office. - </p> - <p> - I wondered what he would say to me if I walked up to him and tried to - borrow money! On second thought, I knew so well what he would say that I - promptly decided that I would keep my mouth shut in regard to my finances. - </p> - <p> - I hurried on, for there was an inviting twinkle of light in the windows of - Vose’s tavern. I was carrying a rather gruesome ticket of admission, but a - message from Jodrey Vose went along with it and it would make me - especially welcome. - </p> - <p> - For some distance the highway was bordered by woods, and at last I saw a - roadside sign which gave me a bit of a thrill, for it bore the magic name - of Kingsley. - </p> - <p> - “For Sale. This Wood-lot. Apply to Z. Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - That’s what the sign said. - </p> - <p> - Before I was fairly on my way, after stopping to read, I was able to put - eyes on Z. Kingsley, himself. He was in a carriage which was coming in my - direction and his daughter was driving a horse which was too - likely-looking to have been furnished by my uncle. - </p> - <p> - I did not reflect or consider. I had no clear notion in my mind at that - instant. I suppose I was overcome by an irresistible hankering to hear her - voice—to speak to her. - </p> - <p> - At any rate, backed by that longing or by courage or cheek or whatever - else it might be called, I stepped out into the middle of the road and put - up my hand. I reckon if Judge Kingsley had been driving he would have run - over me. His blessed daughter pulled up short. - </p> - <p> - I took off my hat and he gave me a sharp glance and recognized me. And so - did Celene, for she smiled even while she looked a bit startled. - </p> - <p> - “Drive on!” snapped her father. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley, I want to—” - </p> - <p> - He checked me with much impatience, and I was glad of it, for I was not - prepared to tell him just what I did want. I knew I wanted to rush up to - her and say a lot of things, but I was conscious that the action would not - have made much of a hit with her father. - </p> - <p> - “I have no time to waste on you, sir. I have to catch a train.” - </p> - <p> - “But the train has gone along,” I stalled. “I just came in on it.” - </p> - <p> - “I am going the other way—to the city!” He showed considerable - temper. - </p> - <p> - “We have plenty of time before the down train is due, father,” Celene told - him. He reached after the reins, but she held them away from him, showing - that she had more or less of the Kingsley obstinacy, herself. - </p> - <p> - “What do you want, sir? Quick!” - </p> - <p> - It was a rather contemptuous command, but it was showing more - consideration for a member of the Sidney family than I had dared to hope - for. If he had taken up the whip and lashed at me at first meeting I would - not have been surprised. It was evident that my personal appearance was - having weight with him. I ventured to believe that the Sortwell boys had - been advertising me in town, though they were only a few hours ahead of - me. - </p> - <p> - I rolled my eyes around, trying to think of something sensible. I saw the - sign again. - </p> - <p> - “What is your price on this wood-lot, Judge Kingsley?” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t stop to talk business, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “But I’m simply asking the price. You’re advertising it. You must have put - a price on it.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll be back in a week or ten days. Come to me then. I’m in a hurry.” - </p> - <p> - I put on a fine air of importance. - </p> - <p> - “So am I, Judge Kingsley! So are the big interests which I represent. But - we are never in too much of a hurry to answer polite questions in - business. I say, what is your price?” - </p> - <p> - “Two thousand dollars,” he cracked out. - </p> - <p> - “How many acres?” - </p> - <p> - “Forty.” - </p> - <p> - I raised my hat and stepped to one side. - </p> - <p> - “That’s all, sir. I’ll investigate and be ready to talk with you when you - return. Good evening!” - </p> - <p> - I could see that he was taken aback a bit by my own shortness in the - matter. He sat there holding his mouth open as if he intended to say - something more, but I walked on; it came to me that perhaps he was going - to say that he wouldn’t do any business with a Sidney—and I was - avoiding all argument on that point. - </p> - <p> - Celene gave me another flicker of a smile when she started the horse. They - went on at a good clip, and the moment they were out of sight around a - bend in the road I turned back, climbed the fence, and sat down beside - some bushes. My heart was so warm within me that I was not afraid of a - chill. - </p> - <p> - I was guessing that she would not waste any time in making that trip to - the railroad station; you see, I was building high merely on the glances - she had been giving me—on the flush which was on her cheek when she - drove away. Would she hurry back to overtake me? She did. - </p> - <p> - When I saw her coming, snapping her whip to make the horse trot at a - brisker pace, I climbed back over the pitch-pole fence and leaned against - it. It was pretty dark, but she spied me and stopped the horse. - </p> - <p> - “I have done something rather foolish,” I told her, staying where I stood. - </p> - <p> - “Yes?” - </p> - <p> - “And I have found out all over again that haste makes waste. I wanted to - get a peep at that stand of timber and I went racing around in the dark—and - so I have wrenched my ankle.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am so sorry!” - </p> - <p> - “It’s my own fault! It’s what the city does to a man! Keeps him on the - gallop! Makes him too impatient to wait for morning.” - </p> - <p> - “Can you get to the carriage?” - </p> - <p> - “But I don’t like to trouble you, Miss Kingsley! If you will send a team—” - </p> - <p> - “No, you shall ride with me! The idea of my leaving you in the woods - alone! I’ll come and help you.” - </p> - <p> - “No, I’ll manage!” - </p> - <p> - So I limped to the carriage and climbed in. She watched me anxiously and - asked after my hurt with solicitude. I was doing a pretty mean thing, I - knew, but the opportunity to be alone with Celene Kingsley that first hour - of my arrival in town was a favor to be grabbed for and hugged jealously. - She walked the horse, and I sat beside her and was so happy in that first - intimacy that I was not a bit ashamed of my deceit. - </p> - <p> - “So you are doing wonderful things in the city!” she said, after a time. I - had not spoken, for I was afraid of blurting out something foolish. - </p> - <p> - “Nothing so very grand,” I faltered. - </p> - <p> - “But Dave and Ardon Sortwell have had something to say about that since - they have been home. I am very glad for you, Mr. Sidney.” - </p> - <p> - “I’d rather please you than anybody else.” That was a mighty awkward - answer and I was just as much embarrassed as she was. - </p> - <p> - “Good news about Levant boys pleases us all up here.’ - </p> - <p> - “Sometimes I have thought they liked the bad news best—the most of - ’em. The way they drove me out and then talked behind my back was—” - </p> - <p> - “I know all the truth of it—and most of the folks do now, I think,” - she broke in. “You must put it all out of your mind. You must not come - back with resentment toward anybody. There’s too much of that in the - world. There’s too much in Levant.” - </p> - <p> - She hesitated a moment and then burst out with a tremble in her voice. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, Mr. Sidney, I am so thankful because you have come home! I do hope - you can have some influence with your uncle. I ask your forgiveness for - bringing it up so soon. But my heart is so full of it all! I hurried back, - hoping I could overtake you.” - </p> - <p> - So that was why she had hurried! - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know about having influence with my uncle,” I said, and I could - not keep all of the rasp out of my voice. Her welcome of me simply as an - uncle-tamer had pricked me in a mighty tender place. “I don’t believe he - is going to give me either three cheers or a hug and kiss when he sees - me.” - </p> - <p> - “But you are an important man, now, and he must be proud of you and your - success. He will look up to you now that you have money and position.” - </p> - <p> - Like a bang on the head the conviction struck me that I had cut out a fine - bit of work for myself when I dropped back into my home town. - </p> - <p> - I had been all too well advertised by my loving friends. - </p> - <p> - Celene Kingsley had touched squarely on one truth: the only way to handle - my uncle was to appear important even if I were not important. Mere bluff - would go a little way—but not far. I must have money! - </p> - <p> - And here I was picked by her as her champion in the family feud! - </p> - <p> - If I had only stayed in the city! There was money to be come at there. - Dollars in Levant were nailed down with spikes. - </p> - <p> - “We haven’t one happy hour in our home,” she wailed. “Your uncle is - breaking my father’s heart, Mr. Sidney. I don’t understand what your uncle - is doing; mother doesn’t understand it! Father has never told his business - to us. But he sits in his office and figures and figures. Sometimes he - stays there ’most all night. And it’s all on account of your uncle! - I know that! For my father says your uncle is hounding him to death. You - must find out what he is doing. I know you will find out and tell him he - must stop.” - </p> - <p> - “I will look into the matter,” I said, as bravely as I could. “Of course - there’s been hard feeling between my uncle and your father for a good many - years.” - </p> - <p> - “But my father is sorry now for anything in the past. He says so to us, to - mother and me. He sent mother to your uncle to ask him if he would not - stop persecuting. Yes, she went to your uncle because father asked her to - do so.” - </p> - <p> - That statement nigh took my breath away! - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Kingsley going as suppliant to my uncle Deck? Judge Zebulon Kingsley - requesting her to do it? I shut my eyes and could picture her—frail, - pale, aristocratic. The exigency must be desperate when Judge Kingsley - would submit his wife to such employment. - </p> - <p> - “But please keep that a secret,” she pleaded. - </p> - <p> - I saw that I was headed into something which was bigger and more baleful - than I had dreamed of. And more than before did I feel my deficiencies as - a fraud who could not even turn a trick for his own wants, let alone those - greater affairs in Levant. - </p> - <p> - “This mystery in our home is killing us all,” she went on. “There have - been strangers in town and they have been much with my father. I do not - like their looks. He would not tell us, but I am afraid they have coaxed - him away to the city on this trip he is making. Perhaps your uncle has set - those men on to harm him.” - </p> - <p> - I had never gauged my uncle Deck as a hirer of assassins, but I had not - seen him for some years, and I admitted to myself that there was never any - telling where a man’s grudge would lead him. - </p> - <p> - “Mother and I tried to make him stay at home. But he would not stay and he - would not tell us why he was going to the city. Oh, how I hate those - strangers, for I believe they have coaxed him away.” - </p> - <p> - I looked sideways at her, and a little shiver tingled in me. There was - real venom in her tone and I saw that I had not guessed the depths in Miss - Celene Kingsley. - </p> - <p> - “I wish I had a brother,” she mourned. “I believe he would feel as I feel - now, and would follow up and kill the man who would harm my father.” - </p> - <p> - It was so strange an utterance from a girl and seemed so contrary to what - I had supposed her nature to be that I remembered that outburst for a long - time. - </p> - <p> - I juggled the skull on my knee and pondered awhile before I said anything, - and she was silent, too, evidently trying to get control of her emotions. - </p> - <p> - “I want to say this to you, Miss Kingsley. The Sort-well boys gave me some - news of the home town and they told me that my uncle was after your father - in bitter fashion. That’s one reason why I have hurried up here. I don’t - know just what I can do with my uncle, but I’ll truly do my best.” - </p> - <p> - We had come into the edge of the village and had passed the first houses. - </p> - <p> - “I put my trust in you,” she said, gently. “I always knew you had good - impulses in you. I remember our talk that day on Purgatory Hill. And I - know you kept your promise you gave to me then. You did your best to make - the boys good.” - </p> - <p> - “And I’ll do my best to make my uncle good.” - </p> - <p> - “I do hope your business will not call you away until you have - straightened matters out. Oh, you asked about the price of the wood-lot! - Does it mean that you expect to have some business with father?” - </p> - <p> - I had not given another thought to the wood-lot since I had used it for an - excuse in an emergency. I did not see at that moment how I could use a - wood-lot for anything else than that excuse. - </p> - <p> - “If only you could have some business with my father—it would smooth - things so much for all of us, perhaps,” she pleaded. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll see what can be done,” I assured her. “This syndicate—this - combination—a very large concern,” I floundered on, trying to think - up some sort of a plausible lie to account for my interest in a wood-lot, - “it’s—er—ah!—you see, I can’t give out much information - locally because we do so many kinds of business—it’s all linked up—it’s - necessary to move carefully, but I think I’ll tell you this much, - confidentially, just between ourselves!” Again my hankering to have some - sort of a secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! “One branch of our - business is building all the tall brick chimneys in the eastern part of - the country. We use millions of bricks and so we need a great deal of wood - for burning the bricks. So that’s why, maybe, I can pay your father’s - price for the wood-lot. Now you understand!” I ended up with a lot of - relief, for I had to dive pretty deep for that lie. - </p> - <p> - “I do see, and I’m glad there’s a prospect you’ll stay in town. And then, - too, there’s your ankle to nurse!” - </p> - <p> - I was glad she mentioned the ankle, for I had forgotten all about it, and - would certainly have betrayed myself when I jumped out of the carriage at - the tavern. Really, to be a good liar a fellow should take one of those - courses in memory-training! As it was, I descended carefully and promised - her to apply cloths and liniment that night. She tendered her little hand, - and I pressed it, and she left with me the memory of a smile which was - like a rose gemmed with dew—-for there were tears in her eyes. - </p> - <p> - I waited in the tavern yard till she was well on her way, and then I - marched in without any limp, for I was not minded to keep up that special - lie for the benefit of all Levant. - </p> - <p> - Dodovah Vose walked behind his catty-cornered counter, plucked a rusty pen - from its potato scabbard, whirled the register around under my nose, and - tendered the pen. - </p> - <p> - “Rather nippy evenings, though pleasant enough daytimes for this time of - year, Squire,” he said, by way of welcome to the arriving guest. - </p> - <p> - That tickled me. He didn’t recognize me. He was looking at my rig rather - than at my face. When I had splashed my name on the page he pulled his - spectacles to the end of his nose and inspected the signature. Then he - snapped upright and stared at me. - </p> - <p> - “Godfrey domino Peter!” he bawled. “Then them Sortwell boys ain’t such - condemned liars as I suspected they were! When Jod wrote me that you had - quit diving I reckoned you had gone plunk square to tophet!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, there’s always a chance for a fellow in the city, if he keeps - hustling,” I told him. I chinked the little handful of small change in my - pocket. “I’m going to stay here with you for a spell, Mr. Vose. Have you a - rule that guests without baggage must pay in advance?” I grinned and he - took it as a great joke. - </p> - <p> - “If you can tell me enough about Jod I may adopt you and give you free - board the rest of your life,” he chuckled. - </p> - <p> - Then I handed over his present with a word of explanation, and he - unwrapped the grisly object and surveyed it with as much satisfaction as - if it had been a golden nugget. - </p> - <p> - “Jod always knows what will hit me to a T. Of course, he says to you, - ‘Tell Dod to make up a story to go with it’!” - </p> - <p> - “Exactly what he said, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Sure! That’s what I have done with every curio he has given me.” - </p> - <p> - For the first time I realized that in my boyhood I had accumulated a fine - line of fiction from Dodovah Vose. - </p> - <p> - But I forgave him in my thoughts, for he took me into the big kitchen and - fried me the finest chicken I ever ate. And while he fixed up my supper I - told him how I had learned diving with his brother. I comforted him, too, - by telling him that I had given up the work only temporarily. - </p> - <p> - But I switched him when he tried to find out what I was up to at that - time. The plug-hat part of my program seemed to puzzle him very much. I - was not ready with any good explanation. I figured that I might have some - kind of a story ready in the morning, after I had slept on the thing. I - began to rely considerably on my work as a fabricator; I had shown quite a - lot of aptitude and readiness on short notice, I reflected. - </p> - <p> - I found myself holding an impromptu reception in the tavern office that - evening—and they were all there with their little gimlets of - questions, boring for information, you can bet! Therefore I broke away - early and went to bed. I staved them all off in good shape, for I could be - dignified in those clothes I was wearing. What I was afraid of was that - Uncle Deck would pop in. He would not have used any gimlet; he would have - set upon me with a pod-auger of inquisition, and would have ridden on it - so as to bear down hard! And I had not my story ready! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XI—THE FAILURE OF AN UNCLE-TAMER - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>URTHERMORE, in the - morning I was just as much at sea. I had gone to sleep as suddenly as if - somebody had hit me a tunk on the head; too much fried chicken and hashed - brown potato! I did not wake up till Dodo-vah Vose marched through the - tavern halls, playing the long roll on his gong. The March sun, level with - the eastern windows, quivered with glorious light when I opened my eyes on - it. I had all sorts of reasons to be downcast, but I was not when I waked - and saw that sun. - </p> - <p> - Scattered coins, my whole capital, lay on the carpet of braided rags, - where they had slipped from my trousers pocket the night before when I - hung the garment over a chair. I gazed over the billowing edge of the - feather tick in which I was nested, and counted, for the sun lighted the - floor and glinted on the coins. One dollar and thirty-seven cents! - </p> - <p> - However, in spite of that spectacle, I hopped out of bed and dressed, - whistling snatches of tupes furnished by music-hall memories. I was home - again, Celene Kingsley had given me glances which my hopes translated into - all sorts of dear promises—she had asked me to help her; the sun was - shining, breakfast was ready! I went down-stairs whistling. - </p> - <p> - “Head up and tail over the dasher, hey?” was the greeting from Landlord - Vose. - </p> - <p> - “It’s a great world to live in,” I told him. After I had tucked away a - slice of home-smoked fried ham only a little smaller than a door-mat, - along with eggs and the fixings, I felt even more resolute about fronting - what was coming to me. - </p> - <p> - My spirit of boldness was even a bit hysterical, I guess. I rubbed the nap - of my plug-hat smooth with my forearm, pulled on my overcoat, and went out - and stood on the tavern porch, inhaling the tingling air of the morning, - exhibiting myself to Levant like a gladiator stepping into the arena, - announcing by pose and expression: “Here I am. Now come on!” - </p> - <p> - And the first to answer my challenge was my uncle Deck. I think he had - been waiting for me to appear. He walked across the village square, coming - from the town office, and I hailed him from afar with a flourish of the - hand and a “Good morning!” - </p> - <p> - Ten feet away he stopped and looked me over. “Why didn’t you come home - last night, where you belong, instead of putting up at the tavern and - letting me hear about it by word of mouth?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, Uncle Deck,” I drawled, “you remember—” - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” he yapped, “as I stand here I don’t know whether to cuff your - young chops or shake your hand. A good deal depends on you. If you go to - digging up past foolishness I’ll cuff you. As it is”—he stepped - forward, hand outstretched—“as it is, son, I’m glad to see you back, - and I hear that you have made something of yourself. I’m glad of that, - too! Now get your volucus, or whatever your baggage is, and come to the - house.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll tell you, Uncle Deck,” I explained, dropping his hand after a hearty - shake; “I’m here on business this trip, not to go visiting.” - </p> - <p> - “What difference does that make about coming to my house, where you - belong?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - He had me there—backed into a corner! He had his pod-auger out, - ready to use on me, just as I had apprehended—and so help me! I was - not ready with a story. - </p> - <p> - “What is your business?” - </p> - <p> - Dignified reserve and a plug-hat would not serve to trig my uncle Deck! - </p> - <p> - It was necessary for me to dedare then and there what my business in - Levant was. I had been clutching wildly into a lot of nebulous thoughts - ever since waking, trying to get hold of something solid. - </p> - <p> - And I found out then, as I had experienced before, and discovered on many - occasions later, that there was in me something which enabled me to leap - an emergency barrier when the goad was sharp enough and the danger near. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve got to have dealings with a lot of men and I’d be a nuisance around - your premises, Uncle Deck.” - </p> - <p> - “What dealings? No secret, is it?” - </p> - <p> - “Certainly not! I’m buying for a big syndicate. Buying standing timber.” I - said that because I had already committed myself with Celene Kingsley and - it came to me that I’d better have one story and stick to it. - </p> - <p> - “All right! Buy some of mine.” - </p> - <p> - “But as I remember it, it’s mostly black growth—pine and spruce.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and cedar, fir, and hemlock! What in thunder does anybody want of - any other kind of timber?” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t use it. I’m buying for a special purpose.” - </p> - <p> - I felt like a man trying to get across a brook without wetting his feet. - Every time I leaped I was mighty glad and rather surprised to find another - stepping-stone to land on. - </p> - <p> - “Then you must be looking for hardwood?” - </p> - <p> - “That’s it.” - </p> - <p> - “What are you going to do with it?” - </p> - <p> - “Burn bricks for our factory chimneys.” - </p> - <p> - He did not look more than half convinced. - </p> - <p> - “I can’t go into details even with you, Uncle Deck,” I told him. “I’m - ordered to buy close, and when names of big concerns are given out the - sellers always raise prices.” - </p> - <p> - “There’s only one big stand of hardwood in this town,” he said, “and I’ll - see you in damnation before I’ll let you buy that!” - </p> - <p> - “Why?” - </p> - <p> - The red patches beside his nose began to flame. “Don’t come back at <i>me</i> - with your ‘whys’! I’ll tell you why you can’t buy! It’s because you’ll be - handing over money to that”—(I never heard coarser oaths; my uncle - fairly choked on them)—“to Zebulon Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “I know the lot belongs to Judge Kingsley. I saw the sign on the fence and - I happened to meet the judge right there and had some talk with him.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean to tell me that you have been dickering with that—” - </p> - <p> - I broke in on his list of names. “My concern has ordered me to buy - hardwood and I’m buying. I have no quarrel with Judge Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “By the Great Jedux, you <i>have!</i> Don’t you dare to tell me you have - forgotten! You <i>have</i> got a quarrel with him. D——n you, - look out that you don’t start one with <i>me!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “I have come in here to mind my own business—” - </p> - <p> - “Condemn your ha’slet!” he cried. “No wonder you didn’t dare to come to my - house last night! No wonder you’re fighting shy of me to-day!” - </p> - <p> - In spite of his anger, I felt a sudden sense of relief. I did not need to - waste effort and time on minor falsehoods, trying to explain why I did not - come to his house; I could devote all my attention to my main lie. - </p> - <p> - “I’m not fighting shy of you, Uncle Deck. I’m a business man, and—” - </p> - <p> - He turned sideways to me and switched his arm furiously, as if he held a - goad and was trying to start a balky steer. - </p> - <p> - “You come along over to my office,” he commanded with a grate in his - tones. “This isn’t a matter to blart about on a street corner.” - </p> - <p> - I followed him. He locked the door behind us. - </p> - <p> - “You know that I have been elected first selectman of this town?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Uncle Deck. I’m glad the citizens—” - </p> - <p> - “Yah, for the citizens! First and last, it has cost me five thousand - dollars to get this office. And it’s for their own good I worked to get it—and - they thought it was only to satisfy my grudge. That’s all the credit a man - gets from the fools who vote. But I’m in this office now—I’m headed - straight for my mark—and the man who gets in my way will be bored - like a cheese target! Do you hear that?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “They know enough in this town to keep out of my way! I have trained ’em. - You don’t dare to come back here, do you—my own nephew—and get - in my way?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m only attending to my business.” - </p> - <p> - “Meaning by that you’re thinking of buying a wood-lot from Zebulon - Kingsley?” - </p> - <p> - Secretly I was sort of laughing at myself. Here I was, inviting a lot of - trouble by insisting on doing something which was a positive - impossibility, so it seemed then as I jingled my coins in my pocket. - </p> - <p> - “I have my business the same as you have yours, sir. I didn’t know—” - </p> - <p> - “You did know!” he shouted. “And if you are such a renegade as to forget - what has been done to your family by that skunk, you know <i>now</i>—for - I’m telling you! You can’t do business with Zebulon Kingsley. I say it!” - He pounded his fist on his breast. - </p> - <p> - I kept still. I was trying to work out in my mind some sensible idea as to - what I really did intend to do in the matter of that wood-lot. - </p> - <p> - My uncle leaned toward me over the table in the town office, propping - himself on one fist and pounding softly and slowly with the other. His - lips were rolled back and he growled his words deep down in his throat, - almost in a whisper. - </p> - <p> - “I know what he is, now. I’ve got the stuff on him. I’ve had to work slow. - I’ve had to convince two devilish steers on the board of selectmen without - telling ’em what I’m after. But I’ve got ’em. And he is - headed for hell and I’m after him. And he knows it now and that’s the best - of it! Because I’m taking my time while he is thinking it over! Oh, my - gad! if only your father could have lived till now to see how the devilish - old gouger and robber is getting his! And he is paying for your mother’s - tears and sweat with drops of his blood. And he is paying me, too. I stay - up nights to see that lamp in his office window. And you say, do you, that - you have come here to hand over money to Zebulon Kingsley? To the man who - filed your father’s heart in two with a mortgage?” - </p> - <p> - “It’s only in the way of ordinary trade,” I ventured. I was wondering why - I was continuing to provoke my uncle. But I knew I needed to start - considerable of a smoke to screen my real condition from him. - </p> - <p> - “There is to be no trade between you,” raged my uncle. “No money from you - shall touch that scoundrel’s hands!” Just at that moment I was more sure - of that than he was. - </p> - <p> - My uncle gave me a little opportunity to do some thinking, for he went to - the office safe and pulled out a bottle and drank. - </p> - <p> - I wondered what kind of a hold he had on Judge Kingsley. My curiosity was - aflame. It was not believable that he could ruin the judge financially, - for the Kingsleys had possessed wealth for many generations. Celene - Kingsley, as the petted daughter of our village aristocrat, was too far - above me for any hopes to bear fruit, even though they budded. But what - would the Kingsleys be after my uncle had worked out his revenge, of whose - success he seemed to be so sure? - </p> - <p> - “I know there has been trouble between the families, Uncle Deck,” I said. - “I know we were not used right in money matters. But what is it you’re - going to do to Judge Kingsley? What is your grip on him?” - </p> - <p> - He wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and set back the bottle. - “None of your d———d business!” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t like to go into anything blindfolded. I have business to - consider, and I’ll have to make explanations. - </p> - <p> - “You’ll get off better by making ’em to the men who have hired you - than by explaining to me, if you don’t do what I tell you to do.” - </p> - <p> - “But I’m no kid any longer. I’m running my own affairs, sir. If you can’t - let me in on the plans of this thing—” - </p> - <p> - He advanced on me, waggling his fist. “You’re a devil of a fellow to come - and pump me for secrets, you are! What do you want to do—run to him - again like you did in the case of that hoss trade? Do you think I have - forgotten that?” - </p> - <p> - “No, and I know you never will, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “And so I say now, ask no questions and do as I tell you.” - </p> - <p> - I edged toward the door, for I was pretty well mixed up in my own thoughts - and did not care to get into any more of a row with my uncle—and all - needlessly. - </p> - <p> - “Are you giving me your word?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - “I’m not promising anything until I can think it over and decide on what’s - best to be done, Uncle Deck.” - </p> - <p> - “You’ll decide now before you leave this office.” - </p> - <p> - He started toward me, but the key was in the door, and I turned it and - stood ready to leave. - </p> - <p> - “You have come back here to fight me, have you? A Sidney fighting his own - and nearest blood kin, eh?” He came close and made threatening gestures. I - put my arm across his breast and slowly pushed him back; I gave him good - opportunity to note that the arm was a sizable one and mighty hard. - </p> - <p> - “You plug-hatted dude!” he frothed. “Forgetting the duty you owe to your - own because you have had a whirl in the city!” - </p> - <p> - “I am no dude, Uncle Deck, and calling me names and treating me like a - brat, as you used to do, isn’t going to get you anything!” - </p> - <p> - “You are not standing with your own family.” - </p> - <p> - “I can be loyal to my family, but I’m not going to-shut my eyes and jump - into a row just because you tell me it’s your row.” - </p> - <p> - I saw that I had produced an impression and he calmed down a bit. - </p> - <p> - “There may be a good deal you can do to help me in the thing,” he said. - “But, blast it! after what you once did to me, I ain’t sure I can trust - you!” He squinted his eyes and sized me up shrewdly. “You’re a Sidney, and - the old rat did dirt to you before you left this town. If you ain’t - willing to rise up now and swoop on him, there’s a reason. You ain’t stuck - on that girl of his, are you?” - </p> - <p> - The blood surged into my face. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking hard - about her all through that talk. That was the last thing I would have - looked for from my uncle. He had jumped me in fine shape, and he saw it. - </p> - <p> - “Yah-h-h!” he snarled. “You fool! You devilish fool! It had to be a girl - to keep you from doing your plain duty—and I knew it. Nothing but a - girl would be putting a twist-bit into your mouth right now!” - </p> - <p> - “You’re wrong! You’re all wrong!” I protested, but I didn’t sound real - convincing. - </p> - <p> - Nor did he, either, when he started to give me hints about her. His eyes - shifted and he stammered. I took him by the arm with a good, hearty clutch - and he shut up. - </p> - <p> - There did not seem to be anything more to say just then, on the part of - either of us; plainly, we had squared off at each other! - </p> - <p> - So I walked out. - </p> - <p> - I was glad because my first session with my uncle was over. But while I - felt relief I knew I had pretty well done for myself where he was - concerned. Of course, I had not intended to confess to him my financial - condition, but deep down I had felt until then that if worse came to the - worst he would see me out of a hole. He would have done something, at - least, for my father’s sake. But I had been the one to deal family loyalty - the first kick. Now my uncle would see me starve and enjoy my sufferings; - his grudges followed just such grooves. - </p> - <p> - Whatever else was ahead, it was pretty much up to me! - </p> - <p> - I went back to the tavern, for it was some comfort just to look on Dodovah - Vose’s kindly face. - </p> - <p> - “Let’s see! You’ve been dropping a word or two about doing business here,” - he prodded in friendly fashion. “Hope so. It’s quiet in town. We’re all - climbing ‘March Hill,’ you know—dull time in the country.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m here to start something, sir.” I was telling him the truth then. I - had just started something over in the town office. I sat down and picked - up a newspaper from the table and began to show great interest in reading - so that I would not be obliged to talk. I was afraid he would get me - cornered. I hung onto that paper as if it were a life-buoy—I read it - from title to last line, advertisements and all. It was the <i>Mechanicsville - Herald</i>, printed in a manufacturing city about thirty miles from - Levant, and because I did not miss anything which was printed in it I - noted that two concerns wanted cord-wood—and I had just mentioned - the matter of cord-wood to my uncle. At all events, I was traveling on a - singletrack lie in old Levant! - </p> - <p> - I laid down that paper and did some mighty lively thinking. Then, to - reassure myself, I gave my silk hat the least bit of a cock and marched to - Judge Kingsley’s mansion. - </p> - <p> - Celene herself opened the door so promptly after my ring that I had a cozy - little suspicion that she had seen me coming and had hurried to meet me. - She was very pretty in her morning gown. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, your ankle is so much better, isn’t it?” she cried. “I watched you - coming across the square.” - </p> - <p> - She stepped back, inviting me to enter by her manner, and I walked in. - </p> - <p> - “I knew just what to do for it. It’s pretty nigh all right.” - </p> - <p> - She led me to the sitting-room, and her mother rose and met me; Mrs. - Kingsley was distantly polite, that was all. I was glad even for that much - in the case of a Sidney, for I knew that Judge Kingsley’s obedient wife - was as careful in matching her opinions to his as she was in matching - colors at the store. - </p> - <p> - “I ask to be excused for calling so early in the day,” I said, with my hat - in the hook of my arm, and putting on my best manners. “But this is a - business call and I’m in somewhat of a hurry. You heard me speak to your - father, Miss Kingsley, about the wood-lot. Now—” - </p> - <p> - “I never presume to interfere in my husband’s business matters,” said Mrs. - Kingsley, looking half scared. “I know nothing whatever about his - business.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am not asking you to do so—certainly not,” I hurried to tell - her. “I shall do all my business directly with him. But to do so I need - his address in the city. I have come to ask you for it. I suppose he left - it.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh yes—so that I may send his mail.” She looked relieved and gave - me the name of a hotel. - </p> - <p> - I had not presumed to sit down, though I was sure that Celene’s eyes had - asked me. I bowed and backed toward the door. - </p> - <p> - “I thank you. That’s all I wanted. I am sorry I was obliged to intrude.” I - felt that I was certainly doing that little thing well. “I may be obliged - to call again, if you will allow me.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Kingsley hesitated. - </p> - <p> - “Of course you may call,” blurted Celene. - </p> - <p> - “I may have to consult with you in a matter similar to this errand - to-day,” I explained. “I’m sorry the judge is not here; in that case I - would not be bothering you.” - </p> - <p> - “I tried to prevail on my husband to stay at home—he is not at all - well—there are so many matters which need his attention here,” - complained Mrs. Kingsley. “If we can help you with any information we’ll - be glad to doit.” - </p> - <p> - I went away on that, and I guess I left a good impression that I was - strictly business! - </p> - <p> - Feeling sure that the two of them were watching me, I put a lot of - business snap into my gait when I returned to the tavern. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Vose,” I asked, briskly, “how many hitches have you in your - livery-stable?” - </p> - <p> - “Eight,” he said, “if I include two road-carts.” - </p> - <p> - “The road-carts are all right, too. I want to use all of ’em, if - you can furnish drivers.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s easy enough to find men in these slack times.” - </p> - <p> - “And probably farmers and day’s-work men in the back districts of the town - would like a job.” - </p> - <p> - “You can bet on it!” - </p> - <p> - “Start eight men going, then, as soon as you can get the horses hitched - in. Have the messengers pass the word that I can use two hundred husky - men. Each man to report here in the tavern yard to-morrow morning at - six-thirty with a sharp ax on his shoulder.” - </p> - <p> - “And what else—tell ’em what else?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “But about wages—and what they’re to do?” - </p> - <p> - “Tell ’em nothing. They’ll come running in here to find out what - it’s all about, Mr. Vose. Don’t even tell ’em who wants ’em. - You and I both know how curiosity itches in this town till it has been - properly scratched.” - </p> - <p> - “Guess you’re right,” agreed the landlord. “If you set out to hire ’em - regular style they’d want to hem and haw and haggle about so long and so - much!” - </p> - <p> - “If you want a deposit for—” I suggested, reaching toward a breast - pocket which was empty. - </p> - <p> - “Godfrey domino, no!” he protested, flapping his hands. “If you have had - to handle business in those suspicious ways down in the city I’m sorry for - you. Now forget money talk between us till it’s time to talk.” - </p> - <p> - I was glad to do that, and I hoped that his ideas of time were liberal. - </p> - <p> - I borrowed some blank paper and went up to my room and figured for many - hours, stopping only to eat a good dinner—a boiled dinner in Vose’s - best style. My plate was piled high twice with corned beef fringed with - golden fat, succulent disks of yellow carrots, wine-red beets, snowy white - spuds, and odorous turnips. No man could possibly be a pessimist with that - dinner under his belt! I had every reason to be the most apprehensive man - in Avon County, but I had set my face to the front and I had just - naturally made up my mind that I was going to pay for that dinner and for - the other things which I had been recklessly ordering. I proposed to put - myself into a position where I would be compelled to use every bit of my - capital of cheek. The sweat stood, out on my forehead, but it wasn’t the - kind of moisture which could soften my grit. - </p> - <p> - In the afternoon, every time a steaming horse came homing back to Vose’s - stable, I felt a funny quiver inside me. - </p> - <p> - “I reckon you have got a good line on human nature, young Sidney,” stated - the landlord, when I went down to the foreroom before supper. “From what - the men say this rushing around back district’s with teams has got the - boys all heifered up. Even if they don’t come in to go to work, they’ll be - here to see what in tunket the hoorah’s about.” - </p> - <p> - “I have heard my father say that this town was always ready to turn out to - a bee,” I told him. When I said it another thought came to cheer me—I - had noticed that when a lot of men were set at work together on one job - the natural spirit of rivalry put pep into the bunch. - </p> - <p> - When Dodovah Vose went to his kitchen to give an eye to supper, I plucked - a telegraph blank from his office desk. I nerved myself to try on my most - audacious trick of all. I wrote this: - </p> - <p> - <i>To Ross Sidney, Levant.—Offer accepted. Go ahead with work. Will - settle with you on my return.</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>Z. Kingsley.</i> - </p> - <p> - I set my jaws and told myself that the message wasn’t all falsehood; the - last sentence was strictly true, even if Zebulon Kingsley did not pen it. - </p> - <p> - I folded the paper, stuck it in my pocket, and went again to the Kingsley - house. It was brazen business—a dangerous hazard. But I was - depending on woman’s inadequacy. I felt that I had the two of them sized - pretty well. They had never presumed to meddle in the affairs of their - master. They would not dare to question his will. I figured that sending - him a wire asking corroboration of the message to me would seem to them - like bold interference which would bring reproof from him. - </p> - <p> - I waited, respectfully standing, while they read the message, Celene - looking over her mother’s shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “It’s more about the wood-lot matter,” I explained. “I think you heard - your father make me a price on it. Miss Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “I remember distinctly, mother. Father said he would sell for two thousand - dollars.” - </p> - <p> - “I know it must seem rather irregular,” I said, “but in my wire I - explained that my people are in a great hurry—and I’m glad that he - has been willing to meet me half-way. It means that I am to put on a crew - at once and cut the wood—and, of course, it’s a safe proposition for - the judge,” I went on, forcing the best smile I could. “Neither the land - nor the wood can be carried away in a shawl-strap before he returns—I - think he said in a week or ten days!” - </p> - <p> - They returned my smile, and for the first time Mrs. Kingsley seemed rather - cordial. - </p> - <p> - “I’m glad you are taking it off his hands,” she declared. “It will be one - less thing for him to worry about. He has been so troubled by his - business. I’m sure that he’ll be glad to get rid of a lot more property in - the same way.” - </p> - <p> - My soul whispered its doubts! - </p> - <p> - “I hope that the matter is all clear now and that you have a good - understanding, Mrs. Kingsley. You will explain, will you, if anybody comes - to you in regard to the matter or questions my authority?” - </p> - <p> - “I will, Mr. Sidney.” - </p> - <p> - She exchanged glances with her daughter and they seemed to understand each - other quickly. While we had been talking I heard the subdued clatter of - supper preparations in another room. - </p> - <p> - “I feel sure that if my husband were here,” said Mrs. Kingsley, “he would - extend the hospitality of our house to a gentleman who was obliging him in - a business matter. Won’t you stay and take supper with us, Mr. Sidney?” - </p> - <p> - Without replying, I gave my hat into the ready hands of Celene and sat - down weakly. - </p> - <p> - I was tickled nigh foolish—I’ll admit that. But I was not wholly - taken in by that hospitality play. Mrs. Zebulon Kingsley had known too - much about me and my breed-to feel any great hankering to have me as a - guest. But I was willing to bet a big plum that she was thinking a lot - about my uncle’s hostility and about the judge’s fear of that rambunctious - town official. And I was also sure that certain matters had been talked - over between her and Celene since my arrival in town with such outward - emblems of importance and prosperity. Furthermore, had I not fairly - promised the daughter that I would do my best in the line of - uncle-busting? - </p> - <p> - So I held on to my emotions as best I could and waited for the subject to - come up. It did, of course. I had not been in the house ten minutes before - Mrs. Kingsley burst out. She was full of that topic. She saw in my uncle’s - attitude nothing but a wanton desire to make trouble for a good and great - man. - </p> - <p> - I had been thinking over the matter of that hostility since my morning’s - talk with Uncle Deck. I had been developing a sharp-ended suspicion that - my uncle had something up his sleeve with which to arm that hostility. - Judge Kingsley would never have pulled his wife into a row he was having - with Decker Sidney unless desperation had moved him. I was bitterly - ashamed and grieved when I listened to her description of that unutterable - interview. - </p> - <p> - As for her, she had no suspicions as to her husband’s integrity—I - could see that! The picture she made of the affair was of a mad dog - chasing a saint! - </p> - <p> - “But what does the man think he can do to my husband? He can do nothing. - He must realize it. What has he said to you, Mr. Sidney? I ask you, for I - am sure you do not approve, his actions.” - </p> - <p> - I looked at Celene, and answered that I certainly did not approve, nor had - I ever approved many things my uncle did. - </p> - <p> - “I will say further that I did what I could to-day to turn him from his - grudge.” - </p> - <p> - “But what does he think he can do to my husband?” she insisted. “I suppose - he told you.” - </p> - <p> - “No, he did not, madam. He said he did not trust me. He twitted me with - having betrayed him once before to the judge—about the doctored - horse,” I added, with a sickly grin. - </p> - <p> - “But, of course, you—his own nephew—you produced some effect - on him?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I made him so mad he would have struck me if he had dared. That’s - all the effect I seemed to produce.” - </p> - <p> - Tears came into her eyes. “How will it end?” she quavered. - </p> - <p> - I did not feel like bragging just then about any powers of mine in the - matter; I had plenty on my mind and conscience as it was. I was distinctly - aware of being glad I had had that boiled dinner, and plenty of it, and I - say that much with all due respect for the blessed presence of Celene at - the supper-board. For between my ever-swelling love for her, my - self-consciousness at table, my shame on account of my uncle, and my - general emotions, anyway, I could scarcely choke down a mouthful. And at - the end I was wholly and fairly rattled—that expression seems to fit - my state of mind better than anything I can think of right now. - </p> - <p> - She accompanied me to the door that evening when I departed—Mrs. - Kingsley allowed her to go alone, evidently having elevated me to the - plane of, at least, a buttonhole friend of the family after hearing of my - quarrel with my uncle. - </p> - <p> - And being rattled, and seeing the grieved anxiety in her eyes, and knowing - how much distress must be tearing at her poor heart, I gulped out that I - would put my uncle where he belonged. I was saying to myself that I would - see him in tophet before I’d allow his persecution to harm those innocent - women, and I came nigh saying that to her in my excitement. - </p> - <p> - She put out to me both of her hands, and I took them. I tossed all - prudence over the rail then. - </p> - <p> - “If there’s got to be a fight in the Sidney family, then there’ll be one! - You tell your mother to sleep easy. I’ll take this thing in hand from now - on and I won’t have your father abused by anybody.” - </p> - <p> - I was talking as big as old Lord Argyle, and I knew I was babbling like a - fool—bu t what can’t a girl’s wet eyes do to a fellow’s common, - sense? - </p> - <p> - “We trust you,” she said. “You have made me so happy!” - </p> - <p> - I bent down and kissed her dear hands, first one and then the other. When - I straightened up and saw the flush on her cheeks and the shy pleasure in - her eyes I went the limit without stopping to take thought. I put my arms - around her and kissed her on the lips—and no honest man can look me - squarely in the eye and tell me there’s any memory like the remembrance of - the first kiss from one’s own true love! For the first true love is not - merely maiden—she has elements of the goddess in her! - </p> - <p> - Therefore, having presumed so much with a goddess, I was immediately - frightened and found myself ready to struggle with apology—and - apology did not fit that occasion. So I ran away before I made more of a - fool of myself. - </p> - <p> - “Good night!” I whispered from the gate. “I love you!” - </p> - <p> - She closed the big door very softly and I gathered good omen from that. - </p> - <p> - How bright the stars were when I looked at them through my tears! A - half-century ago a Yankee poet wrote these verses when he was in love:= - </p> - <p> - ````When twilight’s sable curtain falls, - </p> - <p> - `````Then stars stand thick at even ````To act as outside sentinels - `````Around the gates of heaven. - </p> - <p> - ````That night along the shimmering slant, - </p> - <p> - `````(I tell you true, my brother) - </p> - <p> - ````The password was “Almira Grant” - </p> - <p> - `````They whispered to each other.= - </p> - <p> - I knew mighty well what was their password that March night when I walked - away from Celene. - </p> - <p> - I was not fit for any tavern society just then. Impulse seized upon me and - I went down into the orchard. True love does not forget his trails and his - caches! I found the tree with the hollow trunk and slipped my hand into - the hole; I pulled forth the little packet of three rings. I reckoned that - when I got my courage and my voice I would have a story to tell her—some - evidence of love longstanding to offer—and that I’d find those rings - pretty valuable as exhibits A, B, and C. - </p> - <p> - There were quite a number of gossiping loafers in the tavern foreroom when - I marched in at last and took my room key from its hook. - </p> - <p> - If there had been any doubt among them as to my importance in the world, - that doubt must have vanished when they looked on me that night; for if I - did not feel at that moment that the world was mine, nobody ever did! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XII—STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE men were there - in the morning—a mob of them. - </p> - <p> - They came riding and they footed it into the village. The tavern office - was crowded and the yard was full. - </p> - <p> - The growing buzz of them woke me before sunup, and I wasted no time in - dressing and getting down. - </p> - <p> - It was just as I had expected—the spirit of a lark was in them. They - were not like men who had come dragging themselves to work. The men I knew—and - I knew a lot of them on account of my early goings and comings about the - countryside on my uncle’s affairs—were on my back in a moment, their - mouths full of questions. - </p> - <p> - But I was not ready to talk turkey till I had settled on one point, and I - told them to be easy for a few minutes. - </p> - <p> - I needed one man for a special purpose. I had left the selection of that - man for morning, feeling instinctively that I would do better to pick from - the crowd than to give away my plans overnight. - </p> - <p> - I saw him inside of ten seconds. It was as clear a case of the right man - for the job as if I had specified and had received the goods. - </p> - <p> - The man was Henshaw Hook, the best-known man in that section, the town - auctioneer. He had the gift of gab, the science of talking all men into - good humor, and was as alert in all his doings as a cricket on a hot - spider. - </p> - <p> - I took him by the arm and rushed him up to my room. Mr. Hook had brought - no ax to the levee; he told me, by way of explanation, that he had come - around out of curiosity. So had a lot of others, I knew well enough. - </p> - <p> - Dodovah Vose followed us, for I had summoned him by a jerk of my head. - </p> - <p> - “Now, Mr. Hook, here’s the story short and snappy,” I told him. “I - represent a big syndicate which is buying all kinds of property. I have - bought Judge Kingsley’s wood-lot for the sake of what is on it—and - it must be cleaned off in a hurry. Of course, I can’t hang around town to - attend to that part of the business. I need an able man who can attend to - it.” I pulled out my papers and inspected my figures. “Mostly we are after - hardwood—cord-wood! Do you suppose you can pull a hundred or so good - workers out of that crowd downstairs?” - </p> - <p> - “Yep!” snapped Hook. “Mebbe more.” - </p> - <p> - He was just as brisk as I was. - </p> - <p> - The newspaper had given me quotations in its market column, and I had - chopped cord-wood in my own young life. Furthermore, in my everlasting - scurryings after squirrels and birds I had made many explorations on Judge - Kingsley’s domains. I was fully prepared to talk business, therefore. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Hook, green cord-wood is selling for five dollars a cord. It’s a poor - man with an ax who can’t chop, trim, and pile his cord a day—four-foot - length. If you can put two hundred men on that job and will abide by the - rules of my syndicate, you can turn a profit of around fifty dollars a day - for your own pocket—for I offer you five per cent, on five dollars a - cord.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hook promptly showed much interest. “You said rules?” - </p> - <p> - “I said rules!” - </p> - <p> - “Spill,” invited Mr. Hook. - </p> - <p> - “Get out your pencil and make notes—and I’ll ask you to do the same, - Mr. Vose, so that there’ll be no comeback!” - </p> - <p> - They obeyed promptly. - </p> - <p> - “I am to do all my business with you—you are to do all the business - with the choppers. You are the responsible party in all the details. You - are to keep the books, measuring each man’s daily cut and giving him due - credit. He is to be paid two dollars and fifty cents a cord—a weekly - bonus of twenty-five dollars to the man who comes across with the most - cords! No payment to be made for two weeks and then one week’s pay will be - held back so that the men will not quit on me.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t know about their agreeing!” - </p> - <p> - “Then the syndicate doesn’t want them. There’s no chance for argument. - We’ll see how many volunteer when you put the matter up to ’em. I’m - going to leave the speechmaking to you!” - </p> - <p> - “I’m fairly handy with my tongue,” he said, with a grin. “So I know. And I - must be sure that <i>you</i> will not quit. That would disorganize the - whole thing. All money to the men must go through your hands. Therefore, - Mr. Hook, you must deposit with me, so as to cinch your responsibility, - the sum of five hundred dollars in cash before axes start this morning.” - </p> - <p> - That idea did not please Mr. Henshaw Hook—not for a minute! He - looked pretty blank. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t any option in the matter,” I stated, coldly. “The syndicate - makes its rules—but you can see that’s a common-sense one. I - couldn’t be jumping around the country, leaving behind a lot of operations - running by guess and by gosh, nobody financially responsible for the - details.” - </p> - <p> - “Corporations have to have their rules, Hen,” said helpful Landlord Vose. - “We all know how young Sidney, here, has come along in the world!” - </p> - <p> - “The Sortwells have advertised that all right,” agreed Mr. Hook. - </p> - <p> - “He isn’t working for dubs, Hen!” - </p> - <p> - “Probably not! But with the judge out of town I can’t dig up more than - three hundred and fifty this morning, not even if I went and robbed my old - woman’s work-basket!” - </p> - <p> - “Needn’t worry about that,” said Dodovah Vose. “I’ve got public spirit and - I want to see business get a hump on in this town. I’ll lend you enough to - make up the five hundred.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Hook devoted thirty seconds to meditation. “Let’s see—what did I - understand you to say your concern is?” he queried with assumed innocence. - </p> - <p> - “I did not say—we are not advertising; we are pussyfooting so that - they won’t be boosting land values on us,” I said, serenely. - </p> - <p> - “But among friends—” - </p> - <p> - “News travels faster among friends than anywhere else. Mr. Hook, I’m not - going to risk my job by shooting off my mouth. You don’t think I’ve come - back to my home town to work a flimflam trick, do you?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll grab in on this myself rather than see the plan dumped,” stated the - landlord. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll go down and put the thing up to the boys,” offered Hook, hastily. - Fifty dollars and over a day had properly baited this Hook. - </p> - <p> - Our auctioneer was a good talker! When—as he put it to them amidst - laughter—he asked the sheep to separate from the goats, more than a - hundred and fifty men stepped to one side and waved their axes as signal - that they were ready to go to work. - </p> - <p> - Fifteen minutes later, closeted with Vose and Hook in my room, I was - counting the deposit money—a fat bundle of bills; I had made ready - for that part of the ceremony and I had an equally fat packet of blank - paper in the drawer of my little table. I had not sat at the feet of my - crook acquaintances without hearing much about the “substitution trick.” I - worked it then and there on those guileless old countrymen. - </p> - <p> - I merely yanked out a table drawer with the casual remark about an - envelope, turned my back for an instant, and then slipped into an envelope - in full view of them a financial sandwich; I had made that sandwich by - flicking two bills off the money-packet and framing the blank paper. I - licked the mucilage, sparked down the flap, and handed the packet to - Landlord Vose. I left the rest of the money in the drawer and slammed it - shut. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you have wax and a seal down-stairs, Mr. Vose. Please daub on a - little and lock this up in your safe. Then Mr. Hook and you and I will - feel all right about our affairs.” - </p> - <p> - I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have - flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry of - Navarre—providing I remember my <i>Fourth Reader</i> selection. That - wad of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked - against my ribs in most comforting manner. - </p> - <p> - I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did - after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic. - Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was - laughing. Axes sounded in a chick-chock chorus, and trees began to crash - down. - </p> - <p> - I spent the most of the day on the job, for I saw opportunities for extra - profits; there was quite a stand of hackmatack, for instance, and there - was a lot of cedar which fringed a small swamp. I made special bargains - with men to fell this stuff for railroad ties. There was also considerable - pine suitable for, box stuff; before the day was over a portable-sawmill - man, hearing of the onslaught on the Kingsley lot, came hurrying to the - village, made a trade for the pine, and paid down a sizable deposit; - advertising was certainly paying! - </p> - <p> - One of the most interested onlookers was my uncle Deck, who drove dose to - the wood-lot fence and scowled and sliced the air with his whip. He made - several trips during the day and was handy by when I started to walk back - to the village in the late afternoon. He offered a seat in his wagon and I - accepted, for I was all done being scared of him and I was footsore. - </p> - <p> - “Recorded your deed yet?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “No, not yet,” I said, airily. - </p> - <p> - “Probably not, seeing that you haven’t got any.” - </p> - <p> - I let it go at that, having no sensible explanation to give a business man - like my uncle. - </p> - <p> - “So, as it stands,” he went on, “it’s a case of neck-and-neck whether <i>he’ll</i> - jew you or <i>you’ll</i> jew <i>him</i>. As bad as I hate <i>him</i> I’m - getting to hate <i>you</i> worse! I hope he’ll stick you. But I doubt it. - A young pirate who can step in here and steal a whole wood-lot right under - the noses of men who ought to know better is qualified to give old Judas - I-scarrot lessons in deviltry.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t blame you for feeling pleased and for praising me, Uncle Deck. I - certainly am doing credit to your training.” - </p> - <p> - “But as first selectman of this town I’ve got a reputation to look after, - and where will I get off with one of my blood and name serving time in - State prison for grand larceny?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I’m not going to State prison.” - </p> - <p> - “You will, with that old devil after you, surer’n hell’s down-hill!” - </p> - <p> - “We’re sort of partners, the judge and I.” I decided that I might as well - give him a jolt or two, even if his common sense did tell him that I was - lying. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, bah-h-h!” he yelped. - </p> - <p> - “And as his partner I want to warn you against trying to trig his business - affairs.” - </p> - <p> - He almost yanked the jaw off his horse, pulling the animal to a - standstill. - </p> - <p> - “Condemn your young tripe! You are about as much a partner of his as a - pullet is partner of a polecat! Don’t you talk up to me! If you are trying - to cheat him I’ll help you do it. But if you are trying to help him, down - goes your house!” - </p> - <p> - “I propose to help him—help his family,” I said. - </p> - <p> - To my surprise he held himself in. “Help him how?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - “Why, by making you quit hounding him, for one thing. It’s time this - foolish old row was stopped. I am taking a special interest in Judge - Kingsley’s family in these days.” - </p> - <p> - “Down to brass tacks, now! You mean just what you say, do you?” - </p> - <p> - “I most certainly do, Uncle Deck!” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you dare to call me uncle, you wall-eyed pup! You have gone to - leaning up against that girl like a tomcat cuddling a warm brick, have - you? You’re letting her fool you along—” - </p> - <p> - “Shut that dirty mouth of yours!” I shouted. - </p> - <p> - “Get out of this wagon—out with you!” - </p> - <p> - I obeyed promptly, for I had had plenty of his society. - </p> - <p> - He waggled his whip-lash close to my nose when I stood in the road. “When - you get into State prison, where you belong,” he snarled, “you’ll have a - chum there. For that’s where I’m going to send old Kingsley, so help me - the living God!” - </p> - <p> - And he curled the lash with all his might under the belly of his horse, - taking it out on the poor brute, and tore away, with the animal on the - dead run. - </p> - <p> - I trudged along in the dust he left flying. A fine chance I stood of - handling my uncle Deck! - </p> - <p> - A precious lot of fool babbling that talk had been at the front door of - the Kingsley house the night before! - </p> - <p> - Nevertheless, I went to the house again that evening, for I had a business - excuse. I told mother and daughter that certain urgent matters called me - out of town and that I would be leaving early in the morning. I had a word - or two to say about my arrangements for clearing the lot so that their - minds might be at ease if any gossip came to them; in country communities - there are busybodies who are always guessing at mischief and are trying to - make trouble. - </p> - <p> - I remained with them only a short time, for I was afraid they would try to - get consolation out of me regarding my uncle and I was not in the mood to - do any more lying. I was in a generally uncomfortable state of mind, - anyway, and I knew that Celene was troubled by my manner. There seemed to - be sense of impending evil hovering over the three of us. Frankly, my - uncle’s threat regarding the judge had thrown a good-sized scare into me; - Uncle Deck had truly acted as if he knew what he was talking about. My own - conscience was creaking considerably inside me. When I rose to go Celene - did not see me to the door. She gazed at me tenderly when I stated that I - would be back in a few days, but some sort of reserve kept her at her - mother’s side. - </p> - <p> - The stars were certainly not so bright that night when I walked back to - the tavern. In my gloom a memory popped into my mind, queerly enough. I - remembered that Dodovah Vose had loaned me ten dollars the night he helped - me to escape. - </p> - <p> - I plucked a bill out of my breast pocket and handed it to him when I - walked into the tavern. - </p> - <p> - “I hope you’ll excuse the delay,” I pleaded. - </p> - <p> - “I sure will,” he replied, heartily. “You’re an honest chap, young - Sidney!” - </p> - <p> - But I was far from feeling honest that night. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIII—THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>EXT morning - Dodovah Vose drove me to the railroad station at the Lower Comers. He - looked at the trip as a sort of a triumphal parade, and said so to me. - </p> - <p> - “Some different from that night ride we took, young Sidney,” he chuckled. - “I’m playing hackman this time so as to take the taste of that other ride - out of my mouth!” - </p> - <p> - Yet, as I rode that morning by his side, I was wondering whether I would - have courage to come back to Levant. Panic was in me—it truly was! - </p> - <p> - “Mighty scared little bug was you that night! But I always knew you had - sprawl and gumption in you. Now you’re showing the old town a thing or two - and I’m proud of you.” - </p> - <p> - His praise made me cringe more than ever. - </p> - <p> - When we passed the wood-lot a merry rick-tack of axes sounded in our ears. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir! You have shown them all that you can come back here and start - something,” stated Landlord Vose. He did not realize how infernally right - he was. What I had started was setting the willy-wallies to dancing in my - soul. - </p> - <p> - “Things have come along with such a rush that I haven’t thought to ask you - how you happened to hit it off so smooth with the judge,” he proceeded, - and my alarm increased. - </p> - <p> - “I met him on the road, and we turned a quick trade on the spot. He was - starting for the city and we had to trade sudden or not at all.” - </p> - <p> - “That hasn’t been the judge’s usual way in business,” he commented, - sagely. “I have had some dealings with him myself, and so I know his style - pretty well.” He gave me a sly, sideways glance. “Yes, I know him so well - that I’ve noticed how he’s losing his grip on business.” - </p> - <p> - “And do you think he has been losing money, too?” I plumped at him. - </p> - <p> - “Well,” drawled Vose, “I don’t know how much money he’s got nor what sort - of investments he’s carrying or how much money he has been handling for - other folks, for he has always been cussed secret in his operations. And - the folks who have turned money over to him have been secret, too, for I - reckon he has helped them hide their money away from the tax-assessors. - But I’ll tell you, young Sidney, his money, however much he’s got, must be - pretty well tied up these days.” - </p> - <p> - I questioned him with a side-glance which met his own. “Because when old - Rollins died a few months ago the heirs lit on the judge for the money he - had in his hands—for the heirs are spenders and wanted the money to - toss away. The judge’s home place is in his wife’s name and she mortgaged - it to raise the money—and when a man mortgages the roof over his - family’s head he does need money, there’s no doubt about that.” - </p> - <p> - “But there are times when a man doesn’t like to sacrifice securities,” I - said. Somehow I felt as if I had been specially delegated to stand up for - the Kingsley family. “Maybe so! Maybe so!” agreed Vose. “Finance is a - strange critter—and the judge is a regular financier. But, I swan, - if I like the looks of the strangers he has been doing business with for a - long time back. I ain’t any kind of a hand to pry into the dealings of men - who put up at my tavern. Those fellows always paid their bills and showed - plenty of money, but it don’t seem to me as if straight business needs to - be so blamed secret.” - </p> - <p> - “However, the big fellows in money affairs keep their cards pretty dose to - their vests,” I suggested. - </p> - <p> - “Maybe so! But he’s selling property off slapdash—” - </p> - <p> - “Mrs. Kingsley says he wants to get rid of some of his cares.” Perhaps she - had not said just that—but I had taken the rôle of the family - champion. - </p> - <p> - “Maybe so—and if that’s the case, it’s too bad your uncle Deck is - rampaging so. Generally, we all trust the judge and look up to him, and we - don’t want to see him bothered at this time in his life. But here’s your - uncle trying to stir, up enough sentiment to call a special town meeting.” - </p> - <p> - “What for?” I was more alarmed than ever. - </p> - <p> - “His excuse is that the town is now so prosperous that we can afford to - pay off the whole town debt by a little extra splurge in taxation. Says - that with the debt all paid off new industries can be induced to locate - here.” - </p> - <p> - “But does that mean anything against Judge Kingsley? It looks to me like - enterprise on Uncle Deck’s part.” Again Mr. Vose chanted his everlasting - and singsong, “Maybe so!” Then he added: “But I reckon your uncle Deck has - more visible property spread around this town than any other taxpayer in - it. Maybe he has had a change of heart about money. Maybe he intends to - loosen up in his old age. Maybe he wants to hand something back to a town - he has gouged all his life. But from what I know of your uncle Deck, I - don’t think he has grown so cussed patriotic all of a sudden. Young - Sidney, I reckon there’s a hotter and livelier reason. Your uncle has been - nursing a grudge till it’s well-grown and all haired out. That grudge is - prancing, and he’s willing to pay high for a chance to show its paces in - public. And there’s more in the plan of that special town meeting than - shows on the surface at present writing!” - </p> - <p> - Therefore, when I climbed on board the train I had plenty to think about - outside the immediate business I had in hand, though that was enough for - one poor mind, Lord knows! - </p> - <p> - Take everything, by and large, I was in the prime mess of my young life up - to date. - </p> - <p> - The principal reason why I stayed in it, I suppose, was because I didn’t - know any better! That reason has accounted for a lot of my experiences. - </p> - <p> - Some of the best fights on the records have been won by men who were worst - scared. - </p> - <p> - I alighted in Mechanicsville in a state of mind I’ll not attempt to - describe. But I looked at myself in a store window and made up a business - face to go with my appearance. I hired the best hack in sight, I started - on a round of factories, wood merchants, brick-yards, and lumber-dealers. - I rode up to the doors of offices in style; I walked in on ’em in - style. - </p> - <p> - It was certainly a new wrinkle in wood-peddling—this plug-hat - performance! It opened all doors to me. I don’t know what they thought I - was, before I opened my mouth, but I was not kept twiddling my thumbs in - anterooms; the main squeeze in every office shunted all else in order to - greet me. I wonder what would have been my lot if I had come as a - stammering farmer, a crude countryman, or a chopper in wool boots! - </p> - <p> - I sold wood! By gracious, I did! - </p> - <p> - I found out something all of a sudden. I discovered that I had the art of - salesmanship. It’s an art, a qualification hard to describe. Every man who - has ever bought anything knows what it is and how it has operated in his - case. - </p> - <p> - I sold wood and lumber and sleepers—and the more I sold, the higher - rose my confidence in my personality, and I had hard work to control and - conceal my hysterics of success. - </p> - <p> - I worked off onto brick-yards even the crooked limbs, the second-grade - stuff which I had seen piling up on my operation. - </p> - <p> - With every buyer I made written contracts, designating prompt delivery on - certain dates, first deliveries to be made within a week and calling for - cash payments of two-thirds of value of wood delivered, the whole amount - to be paid when final delivery was made. - </p> - <p> - I went on down the line to another city and then to a third. I sold wood! - I sold for three days. Then I woke up and stopped selling. It occurred to - me that I might be overguessing on the resources of the Kingsley wood-lot. - </p> - <p> - I had not a mite of trouble in arranging with the division superintendent - of the railroad line for a supply of gondola cars; I was offering - something worth his attention. - </p> - <p> - I left that gentleman in mighty abrupt fashion; he must have thought that - I was a very precipitate business man. But while I was winding up my - arrangements with him, I looked out of his office window in the railroad - station into the windows of a train which was pulling slowly out, on its - way up-country. I caught a glimpse of a stem profile with a roll of - chin-beard under it. If that face did not belong to Zebulon Kingsley—But - I did not stop to do any more thinking on the matter. I galloped out of - that office. I had to chase that train a hundred yards down the platform—but - I made the last car! - </p> - <p> - Zebulon Kingsley home ahead of schedule! - </p> - <p> - I stood on the car steps, getting my breath, giving dizzy thought to the - peril I had so narrowly missed. Zebulon Kingsley back in Levant ahead of - me, viewing his desolated wood-lot and voicing his fury! Where would my - character and importance land after that blow-up? - </p> - <p> - Did I say that my dizzy thoughts dealt with a peril I had missed? In about - ten seconds I decided that I was traveling right along with the peril. I - was doomed to drop into Levant in its company. - </p> - <p> - I might have been mistaken, I reflected. I hoped I had been deceived by a - too-hasty glance. I walked down through the train. I was pretty sure of my - man when I passed him, though I got a view of the back of his head only. - Therefore I went to the front of the car, making an excuse of the - water-cooler. I looked back at him while I drank. He seemed to be asleep, - for his head was bent down into the folds of the cape he had pulled about - his ears. I was so sure he was asleep that when I went back up the car I - gave him a bold look to convince myself I had not been mistaken. - </p> - <p> - I got one of the starts of my life! - </p> - <p> - Zebulon Kingsley was distinctly not asleep. His eyes were like fire-balls, - and he stared straight at me without one flicker of the lids or crinkle of - the countenance to show that he recognized me. His face was gray and - haggard. He was like a stone man. If he had given one hint by his - expression that he knew me I would have pushed myself in beside him, I - reckon, and would have come across with my little story. But that frozen - face was too much for me. I was doing a lot of guessing about his state of - mind, and my guesses warned me to stay away from him just then. - </p> - <p> - I hurried past and sat down in the first vacant seat. - </p> - <p> - The feeling I had was that he had found out by letter from home or somehow - what kind of a trick I had cut up. Those glaring eyes hinted at - unutterable things. He must be in such a fury, I thought, that words had - failed him. He was waiting until he stepped foot in Levant to go at me in - proper style. Naturally, he would not start anything on a railroad train. - I sat there while those, thoughts flamed up in me like fire in a - brush-heap, and for a long time I found no handy extinguisher for those - thoughts. - </p> - <p> - However, there was a rather comforting packet in the breast pocket of my - frock-coat; I got out those contracts and went over them carefully. - </p> - <p> - I did have some visible emblems of success to stick up in front of his - sour face when it came to a showdown. But if Zebulon Kingsley was not - willing to start anything in public on a train, neither was I. I studied - my contracts, added figures, and tried to keep my mind off the big trouble - ahead. But who has ever sat near a bomb with a sputtering fuse and felt in - a mood for philosophy? I couldn’t even add figures! - </p> - <p> - The train bumped on and on. It was a long ride. - </p> - <p> - When we arrived at Levant Corners, I followed Kingsley so closely that we - almost walked in a lock-step. I had a sort of crazy notion that if he - started to bawl me out on the platform and expose me to the populace I’d - choke him and drag him off somewhere for an explanation, for I truly did - have a face to save in Levant. - </p> - <p> - I trod behind him on the station platform. Far up the platform was waiting - a man who wore a constable’s badge. I itched all over as we approached - that man; I fully expected that the judge would whirl and point me out and - call for my arrest. But the constable touched his hat respectfully and the - judge marched on. I almost bumped into him when he stopped at hail of a - citizen. I was forced to go on, then. The citizen had buttonholed the - judge on some matter of business, but by the few words I heard I knew it - was no affair of mine. I ran my eye over the array of hitches waiting in - the station yard, expecting to see Celene Kingsley. But she was not there. - Her absence hinted to me that her father was not expected. Then he would - ride on the stage! I resolved to walk on and to hail it when it overtook - me. I proposed to be on the scene when Judge Kingsley got first peep at - what had been his wood-lot. I kept looking behind and noted that he walked - past the stage-coach and had started to foot it on my trail. Therefore he - was not expected at home, and for reasons of his own had decided to walk. - </p> - <p> - When I saw that the stage had come on without him and had observed that he - shook protesting hand at persons who stopped and offered a lift, I walked - on more briskly. He wanted to be left alone, then! His expression had - already hinted to me that he had no use for companionship at that time. - </p> - <p> - At last I could hear my ax-men. Their blades were biting wood in lively - chorus, though the dusk was gathering. I realized that the spirit of - rivalry was in them and that they were not watching the clock on that job. - When I came in sight of the wood-lot I saw that a big expanse had been - cleared, down to the bushes; the bared land was thickly dotted with wood - which was tiered in cord lots. I hardly recognized the place. - </p> - <p> - The notion struck me that this was the proper strategic point to await the - battle. In the first place, I would not be obliged to waste any breath in - telling Zebulon Kingsley that his wood-lot was being cleared; his eyes - would inform him on that point. I could devote all my language and energy - to the job of enlightening him regarding my activities in the matter, my - hopes and his prospects of getting some money. Secondly, considering - strategy, my appearance before my men, accompanied by Judge Kingsley, - after I got him under control, would put the stamp of authority on the - whole affair; I believed I could control him. He certainly would have to - take the situation as he found it; he couldn’t stick those trees back into - the ground again. - </p> - <p> - Therefore I settled my plug-hat well on my head, pulled out my bunch of - contracts, and waited for him to come around the bend in the road. - </p> - <p> - I reflected that he had looked to me like a man who had a great deal of - trouble on his mind. In my young days, when old dog Bonny was dreadfully - afflicted with fleas I tied a tin can to his tail to take his mind off his - troubles. I believe fully that changing the current of his thoughts for a - time proved really restful to him. - </p> - <p> - It was certain that Judge Kingsley would have the current of his thoughts - changed in a very few minutes. He would have something entirely fresh to - think about, and I hoped it would do him good, even though I received no - thanks. - </p> - <p> - He seemed pretty much cast down when he shambled into sight, his shoulders - bowed, staring at the road ahead of him. But all at once he straightened, - threw back his head, and seemed to sniff the air. - </p> - <p> - “Charge!” I said to myself. And he set his elbows akimbo under his cape - and came at a trot. - </p> - <p> - He tried to rush past me on his way to the fence, but I stepped in front - of him and threw up my hands. - </p> - <p> - “Just a moment, Judge Kingsley! This is my business—” - </p> - <p> - “Your business be damned!” he stuttered. - </p> - <p> - Strong talk for a Sunday-school teacher, but it made him seem more human - and my courage rose a bit. I had not known how to tackle that frozen - figure he looked to be in the railroad train. - </p> - <p> - “But I’ll explain!” - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to find out what this set of infernal thieves—” - </p> - <p> - He wouldn’t wait any longer, though I was trying to head him off with my - arms outstretched. He drove past me and wrenched a post out of the fence - and started to climb into the wood-lot. There was only one thing to do—I - must get the upper hand of the infuriated old man before we attracted the - attention of my busy workers; the dusk was helping me in that respect. - </p> - <p> - I pulled the stake from him, held him by his arms, and set my face close - to his; he was a scrawny old chap and he hadn’t any muscle left. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley, forgive me—but you must listen. It’s best for all - concerned. I have bought this lot from you and I am operating on it.” - </p> - <p> - I thought he would choke to death before he got the words wrenched out of - him. - </p> - <p> - “You haven’t bought it. You couldn’t buy it! There is no money passed. - There’s no deed. You’re a thief!” - </p> - <p> - I had dropped the bunch of contracts when I grabbed him. I released my - clutch on one arm and picked up the packet. - </p> - <p> - “Here’s something to show I am not a thief, sir. You’ve got to look at ’em. - And the middle of the road is no place for our business.” - </p> - <p> - Furthermore, I noticed all at once that the choppers were giving up work - and starting for the highway. - </p> - <p> - Probably the most sensible way was for me to go along to his house, - exhorting him to keep his mouth shut till he understood the matter. But a - row with him in his own house would be exposing myself to Celene. I held - his arm and hurried him across the road and into the woods opposite. He - protested angrily, but I kept him on the move until we were in a little - clearing which the red western skies still lighted enough for my purpose. - </p> - <p> - I flapped the contracts under his nose. “You advertised the land—you - gave me a price, Judge Kingsley. I know I have been irregular. I cannot - stop now to explain why, but I have sold all the wood. Here are the - contracts. Hunt up the men and make sure, if you don’t believe writing and - signatures. I’ll let you go and collect your two thousand dollars before a - dollar comes to me.” I shoved the papers into his hands and he pawed them - over without seeming to understand very well. “Contracts?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir! Contracts with responsible concerns.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have you arrested,” he insisted, but his anger was dying out and he - sort of whined, “It’s my land; you haven’t any right to make contracts.” - </p> - <p> - All at once his legs bent under him and he sat down on the ground. There - was plainly something special the matter with Zebulon Kingsley! - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my God!” he mourned. “Are all the blatherskites, thieves, and - swindlers in this world on my track?” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t tie any of those kind of tags on to me, Judge Kingsley. It isn’t - fair!” - </p> - <p> - “You have robbed me!” - </p> - <p> - “Confound it! Look at the contracts!” He did not seem to be taking any - interest in the papers; he merely waggled the packet about like a child - waving a rattle. - </p> - <p> - “First one, and then the other! They have robbed me. I am ruined!” - </p> - <p> - I squatted down in front of him and made him look at me. I was in the mood - for any kind of self-sacrifice. I wanted to beat it into his old head that - there was one man who was trying to help him. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley, listen to me! You are sure of getting your two thousand - dollars for your wood-lot. I say again, go yourself and collect the money. - If my estimates are in any way near right—and I reckon I am inside - the truth—there’s around a thousand dollars profit in this deal, - profit I was intending to take for myself. But, seeing that you feel as - you do about my actions, I’ll hand the whole thing over to you. Take it - all! Come to me in the morning when you’re feeling better and I’ll explain - my trade with Henshaw Hook and the choppers.” - </p> - <p> - He looked at me and never said a word. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t even ask any pay for the time I have put in,” I said, trying to - make myself as much of an angel as I could, now that I was started on the - savior trail. “You understand, don’t you? All you’ve got to do is keep my - promises to the men and pull down around three thousand in cash!” - </p> - <p> - In a story-book that would have been his cue to get up and clasp me to his - breast. He simply blinked at me. I began to get a little warm in the - region of my neckband. - </p> - <p> - “If that’s the way you feel about it, Judge Kingsley,” I said, - straightening up, “I’ll bid you good evening. After you have tucked your - three thousand in your jeans, send me a bill for damages and I’ll settle.” - </p> - <p> - He called me back before I had taken many steps. - </p> - <p> - “My head isn’t right,” he mumbled. “I have been having much trouble. What - have you been telling me?” - </p> - <p> - I went over the thing again, very patiently, for I saw I was dealing with - a case which was more serious than I thought. The night was on us by that - time. I tore strips of birch bark from a tree, lighted them one by one, - and made a torch so that he could examine one of the contracts. Again I - insisted that he must cake the whole thing over profits and all. - </p> - <p> - “I had no right to start in on your property as I did, Judge Kingsley. So - I’ll fine myself a thousand!” - </p> - <p> - “I think I ought to call you honest, young man,” he said, after a time. “I - have hard work to believe that any man is honest in this world just now, - but what you say sounds honest. I’ll meet you half-way in your honesty.” - </p> - <p> - He asked me to hold more torches. He found a sheet of letter-paper in his - wallet, bearing his name printed at the top. He wrote a receipt for two - thousand dollars, using the long wallet for his desk. - </p> - <p> - “I have dated it four days back. Now that I have met you half-way in one - matter, young man, I ask you to meet me half-way in another. When you get - that, money in hand, pay it to my wife. Do not tell anybody that you did - not pay it to me.” He hesitated a moment. “As to the land—the deed—” - </p> - <p> - “I have no use for the land, Judge Kingsley. So there’s no call for a - deed.” - </p> - <p> - “I think you are honest, young man. I believe I can trust you to give the - money to my wife—and say nothing about it outside!” - </p> - <p> - “But I can give it to you, sir, in a few days!” - </p> - <p> - “I expect to be away on business for some time,” he said, curtly. “Now - understand! Whatever questions are asked by anybody you must insist that - you paid that money to me. Your own interest requires it! Show the - receipt.” - </p> - <p> - “Forgive me for keeping you here so long in the dark and the cold, sir,” I - pleaded, realizing the situation all at once. “If you’ll let me call on - you to-morrow I’ll have something further to say about the matter of the - profits—but I won’t bother you any more to-night.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s right! Don’t bother me to-night.” - </p> - <p> - I waited for him to come along with me. - </p> - <p> - “Good night, young man,” he said. “Step along ahead if you will! I prefer - to walk home alone—I have some business matters to run over in my - head.” - </p> - <p> - I realized fully that Judge Zebulon Kingsley did not care to have a Sidney - chumming with him before the eyes of Levant, and I did not take this - dismissal in bad part. I marched off. - </p> - <p> - But the memory of that face of his went with me. Fifty feet up in the road - I stood stock-still. What did it mean—his command to hand over the - money to his wife, making a secret of it? What made his eyes burn so - redly? What was the matter with Judge Kingsley, anyway? I listened for his - footsteps on the road behind me. I heard no sound. - </p> - <p> - It came to me that Celene Kingsley would have reason to blame me if I left - her old father floundering around the woods in the darkness. - </p> - <p> - I went tiptoeing back, my ears perked. - </p> - <p> - I heard him talking rapidly and clearly, not as one talks aloud in - soliloquy, but as if he were addressing somebody. I stepped carefully in - through the fringe of trees and I found out that Zebulon Kingsley <i>was</i> - talking to somebody; he was talking to God! - </p> - <p> - I listened five seconds and I realized what he was talking about. Then I - leaped on him and struck his wrist with the edge of my hand. - </p> - <p> - He dropped a fat, ugly revolver which had glinted in the starlight. I - pounced on it and flung it into the woods as far as muscle, fright, and - anger could prevail. When I turned on the judge he had just tugged another - revolver out of his pocket, twin of the other weapon. I had a tussle with - him to get it, and he fairly squealed in his fury. But I wrenched the - thing out of his clutch and threw it; then I pulled him to his feet and - patted him all over, as a policeman frisks a prisoner, to make sure that - he was not serving as arsenal for more artillery. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley,” I kept saying over and over, “your wife! Your daughter! - Think of them!” - </p> - <p> - I was obliged to drag him out of the woods by main strength. I propelled - him along the highway and he walked as stiffly as some kind of a wooden - figure, moved by springs. His eyes stared straight ahead and his face was - white in the starlight. - </p> - <p> - So we came into the village without a word between us, and I led him by - dark lanes to his house. - </p> - <p> - Then he held back and replied to what I had said in the woods as if I had - just spoken. - </p> - <p> - “I <i>am</i> thinking of them! That’s why I can’t face them!” - </p> - <p> - Oh, the tone in which he said that! Questions were crowding in my throat, - but I did not dare to pry into troubles as deep as Judge Kingsley’s most - certainly were. But I had to have some assurance from him. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley,” I said, with respect in my voice, “I am meddling, but - God knows there was a call for somebody to meddle just now.” - </p> - <p> - “I want to be out of my troubles!” He was trembling like a leaf. - </p> - <p> - “But you’re not so much of a coward, Judge, that you’ll shift off all of - your troubles on to your family, along with the awful one you were just - about to shove on them! I know you’re not. I have always looked up to you, - sir.”. - </p> - <p> - “But nobody can look up to me from now on, young man!” - </p> - <p> - “I always shall, sir. We all get rattled some time in our lives.” I knew I - was making pretty poor talk to a man like Judge Kingsley, but I was - trembling as badly as he was and I did not know what to say to him. - </p> - <p> - “I’m only poor Ross Sidney, sir. You know I don’t amount to much, but - won’t you consider that I have done a little something for you this night? - I stopped you when you didn’t know what you were doing.” - </p> - <p> - “I did know what I was doing,” he groaned. “I was doing it because I - couldn’t go home. I walked up the road to the woods—to my woods on - purpose to do it!” - </p> - <p> - It came to me that fate, or whatever rules human actions, had set me to - play quite a part in Judge Kingsley’s life, for his private woods were not - there—and <i>I</i> was. - </p> - <p> - “Will you consider me enough of a man, sir, so that I can ask a man-to-man - promise that you’ll sleep on this thing and have a talk with me to-morrow? - I have helped you on one matter. I’ll do my best to help you in other - ways!” - </p> - <p> - “There’s no help for me.” - </p> - <p> - “But let me have a talk to-morrow with you! I beg you, Judge Kingsley. - Give me your promise till tomorrow!” - </p> - <p> - He stiffened up and scowled at me. He resented what I said, I could see. I - guess he thought I was trying to be too familiar with him. The old chap’s - pride was still on tap. I suppose it seemed like lowering his dignity to - make any sort of a man’s compact with young Ross Sidney. However, I was - glad to see pride bristle up a bit in him. - </p> - <p> - “I never heard of a Kingsley being a coward, Judge,” I told him. “Or being - a liar, either! You owe me something, sir, and I’ll insist on being paid - with your promise. So I reckon I have it.” I did not give him opportunity - to do any talking. I rang the bell at the door, though he grabbed at my - hand to stop me. - </p> - <p> - “I can’t go in now! My face—my conscience!” So his conscience was - still working! - </p> - <p> - “Leave it all to me, sir. I’ll fix it.” - </p> - <p> - The maid opened the door, and I led him into the sitting-room. Celene and - her mother were there and they came to their feet, gasping with fright, - for I was half carrying the judge. - </p> - <p> - “It’s nothing—it’s all right!” I told them. “We have been inspecting - the work in the wood-lot on the way from the train. It’s nothing, I say—just - a little touch of the heart. The judge insisted on walking too much.” I - helped him to a couch. “I’ll call in the morning on that business, sir!” I - told him. Then I turned to Celene, who was giving me warm welcome with her - eyes, now that her fears were subsiding. “Keep your eye on your father - during the night,” I advised her. “Of course, it’s nothing serious in his - case—only a little overtasking of the heart—but a bit of home - nursing will do him good.” - </p> - <p> - I reckoned I had planted a loyal sentinel over the man who was indebted to - me for giving him more days of his life, even though they might be bitter - days. - </p> - <p> - I went to Dodovah Vose’s tavern, feeling still more like an overloaded - mule—saddled with plenty of my own troubles, to say nothing of other - folks’. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIV—THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN BUSINESS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS too much - upset to go to sleep very early that night, even though Dodovah Vose had - given me another of those slumber-coaxing suppers of fried chicken. - </p> - <p> - So Zebulon Kingsley was ruined, according to his own tell! - </p> - <p> - But what else besides ruin was fronting him? I knew him and the stuff that - was in him. When a man like the judge came humping back to his home town, - packing a gun on each hip and headed for his woods, there to do himself - destruction, it meant something more than that he was flat broke. The fact - that he had two guns suggested that he did not propose to take any chances - on failure. - </p> - <p> - His troubles might have skeow-wowed his mind temporarily, I pondered. The - fact that he had given me, one of the despised Sidneys, a half-dozen - decent words hinted at aberration, as I thought upon the matter. I hoped - that he would stay crazy long enough so that he would allow me to poke - myself still further into his affairs and his family, and show me a little - appreciation. Up to that time I certainly had been using ax and crowbar on - the intimacy proposition! - </p> - <p> - It was my conviction that he would be obliged to be pretty nice to me from - that time on. I knew something very private and personal in regard to - Judge Kingsley, Levant magnate! All at once I found myself feeling rather - like sticking my thumbs in my vest armholes and showing condescension to - that man who had loomed so largely before my admiration. At any rate, no - Sidney had ever committed suicide or had tried to, unless it might be - hinted that it mightily resembled suicide when my father ran the - ridge-pole of the Butler barn after wetting down the occasion with a quart - or so of hard cider. - </p> - <p> - I felt decidedly cocky when I started over to his house the next morning. - I had his secret—I had manhandled him to save his life. A man might - make up his mind to commit suicide, thought I, and then be particularly - and almighty grateful, after a night’s sleep, because some chap happened - along at the right time and stopped him before he had made a fool of - himself. - </p> - <p> - I headed for the front door like a friend of the family. - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley opened his office door in the ell and called to me. - </p> - <p> - “I do not transact business in my home,” he informed me, stiffly. He - tapped the sign beside his door. “Z. Kingsley” was its sole inscription, - curtly hinting that no further information was needed regarding that - gentleman. “I do all business in my office, sir.” - </p> - <p> - I don’t know in just what condition I had been expecting to find the - judge, and I had not planned how I would act when I met him, but I know - mighty well I had not calculated on the sort of meeting we did have. - </p> - <p> - I found him just as I had found him in times past when we had had a word - or so together—and that was my surprise that day! - </p> - <p> - I would not have been much astonished if he had fallen on my neck and - sobbed out his gratitude; I rather looked for some demonstration. To find - him the same old, cold, stiff ramrod was outside all my anticipations. I - went in meekly and sat down. - </p> - <p> - “In the matter of the wood-lot,” he said, perfectly at ease and putting - that jew’s-harp twang in his nose. “I have looked the contracts over. - Young man, I don’t know whether to compliment you as one of the smartest - business men I have ever met, or to have you arrested for an attempt at - grand larceny!” - </p> - <p> - I did not know what to say to that, and sat and fiddled my finger across - the brim of my plug-hat. - </p> - <p> - He put out his hand. “Please allow me to look at that receipt I gave you.” - </p> - <p> - I handed it over—obedient as a pup. He read it and tore it up. - </p> - <p> - “It is as irregular a document as your operations have been irregular. I - will give you a deed, taking back your note and a mortgage—” - </p> - <p> - “But I want no deed, sir. I said so to you last evening. I don’t want the - land. You keep it.” - </p> - <p> - He gave me a chilly stare. “My price of two thousand dollars was on the - lot—not merely the wood on the lot. The land will be yours when we - have passed our papers. I don’t know why I should place myself under - obligations to you by any such foolish child’s play as you suggest.” Say, - I felt myself slipping out of the Kingsley family circle as if I were - going down a cellar slide in a puddle of soft soap. I made a desperate - clutch. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I made you another offer last night. I offered - to turn the whole proposition over to you—profits and all! I had no - business starting in on the operation. If you are in some sort of trouble—” - </p> - <p> - “Who said I was in trouble?” - </p> - <p> - “You said so last evening,” I faltered. - </p> - <p> - “Have you told anybody I said so, sir?” he demanded, sharply. - </p> - <p> - “No, sir! Certainly not.” - </p> - <p> - “If you permit yourself to hint that to anybody I shall promptly brand you - as a falsifier and have you before the court on the charge of slander. You - must realize that I could secure large damages because a financial man’s - reputation forms his stock in trade. I could have you sent to prison on a - criminal charge.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t see any need of your sitting there and threatening me in that - fashion,” I protested, with some heat. “I have tried to help you—” - </p> - <p> - “I have not asked for any of your help—I do not need it, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t suppose you do,” I admitted, sourly. - </p> - <p> - “Certainly not!” - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t figure what his game was—it was his own business, anyway—but - I did not propose to have him sneering at me. His manner when he said, - “Certainly not!” was mighty nasty. I rose and kicked my chair away from - me. - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t show any gratitude if you don’t feel like it, Judge Kingsley. - You’ll never hear a word from me about anything that has happened, but I’m - not keeping still because you have threatened me. I’m keeping my mouth - shut because I’m man enough to do so! And, by gad! I hope you’re man - enough, on your side, to show me a little decency and to remember that you - have a wife and daughter to protect from scandal and shame. Good day!” I - put on my hat and marched out. - </p> - <p> - I’m making due allowance for the judge’s state of mind, but truly that old - hyampus did have the natural ability to stir a man’s temper. A Kingsley - and a Sidney got along together about as well as the two parts of a - Seidlitz powder do when they meet in a glass of water! - </p> - <p> - I slammed the door after me, but I had gone only a few feet when I - remembered that I had left behind my contracts. Furthermore, I had not - finished my business in regard to the deed and the payments. So I whirled - and went back in without stopping to knock. - </p> - <p> - It was as if he had been playing a part with me with a mask to hide his - face! He had laid down the mask. - </p> - <p> - I looked on a fairly hideous scroll of awful, utter woe. That was his - face. He was crumpled down in his chair. He did not look at me. I picked - up the packet. - </p> - <p> - “Are you ready to attend to the matter of the deed, sir?” - </p> - <p> - He wagged his head weakly from side to side. “Later!” he muttered. “Come - later. Come this evening, perhaps.” - </p> - <p> - I went down into the woods and hunted for hours until I found those two - revolvers. That face of his was before me all the time. I expected to look - up and find him hunting, too. There were other ways of committing suicide - than by shooting, but I did not propose to leave those revolvers around - loose, seeing that he had made up his mind to use that means of shuffling - off. That face which he had exposed to me showed that Judge Kingsley’s - soul was near the limit of endurance. - </p> - <p> - I went about that day sick with fear. My helplessness in the matter was - maddening. He was holding me off with his disdain like a man holding an - enemy at bay with a pitchfork. And I knew that even if he gave me his - confidence there was little a poor devil of my caliber could do in affairs - such as his must be. - </p> - <p> - I wondered if the knowledge that he was ruined was behind his desperate - resolve to die. Of course he had a lot of pride, but other proud men had - failed in business and lived through it. - </p> - <p> - I was obliged to confess to myself that the judge must have a deeper - motive. I remembered my uncle’s threats and wondered what that disturber - had up his sleeve. - </p> - <p> - I almost whipped my courage up to the point of tackling him on the - subject, but when I met him on the street in the afternoon and fronted his - savage scowl I walked right on past, minding my own little business. His - face had an extra touch of flame in it that day. That he had something - special on the docket was plain to be seen. I went down to the wood-lot - and checked up with Henshaw Hook so as to be out of my uncle’s way. His - looks rather scared me. Just as I was walking away from the wood-lot at - dusk he hopped out of his wagon ahead of me and tacked a printed paper to - a wayside tree, glowering at me while I waited at a little distance. It - was evident that he meant that paper especially for my attention. - </p> - <p> - So I walked up and had a look at it when he was out of the way. - </p> - <p> - It called a special town meeting thirty days from that date. As was - necessary in a call of that sort, the purpose of the meeting was stated: - “To see what action the town will take to pay off its indebtedness in - full. Notice is hereby given that all creditors of the town must present - notes or other evidences of claims at that meeting on the 15th day of - April.” - </p> - <p> - What did that call signify in the case of Zebulon Kingsley, town - treasurer? I had seen behind his mask and I guessed! If I guessed rightly - he would feel, when his eyes fell on that paper, like a man who had been - notified of the date of his execution. - </p> - <p> - I started on toward the village, and when I passed Brickett’s duck-pond I - threw the revolvers into the water. - </p> - <p> - I hurried to Judge Kingsley’s house, for I had the excuse of business, and - he himself had made the appointment. There was a light in his office, but - it went out suddenly when I was some distance away. I started to run, and - then I checked myself. I decided that caution rather than haste was - needed. I was right. Standing behind a tree, I saw him come out of the - office door in a sneaking fashion, the early evening hiding him. He went - around the house, and I followed. Young eyes can see in the dark better - than old ones, and he did not spy me where I stood in the dusk, watching - him hack off with a jack-knife a section of the family clothes-line. - </p> - <p> - Stooping and almost staggering he went down into the orchard, and I trod - close behind him undetected, for the trees plastered shadows into which I - dodged. I waited until he had settled a noose around his neck and had - thrown an end of the cord over a limb. I was taking no chances on having - any misunderstanding between Judge Kingsley and myself that trip. In my - own way I was just about as desperate as he was. I marched up to him, took - him by both arms and pushed him against the tree-trunk. - </p> - <p> - He was in such a state, physically and mentally, that he did not protest - or resist; it did not seem to frighten him specially to be overhauled in - that fashion. Honestly, I felt like spanking his face as I would have - whipped a child. This game of “tag the suicide” was getting on my nerves. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley, you need a guardian and I have appointed myself one,” I - told him, and I was mighty resolute, for I had determined to brace up to - him with all the power in me. “You have no right to kill yourself, and - you’re not going to kill yourself, by gad! not if I have to camp with you - day and night till you get back your nerve. I’m going to take you straight - to your folks and tell ’em you’re out of your head temporarily and - will have to be taken to a hospital!” - </p> - <p> - That brought him out of his numbness, and I knew it would. I believe he - would have struck me if his arms had been free. But I needed to have him - in another mood than the fighting one. I hit him hard. - </p> - <p> - “You’re an embezzler!” I cracked out. “How much?” He crumpled, and I let - him slide down and sit on the ground, his back against the tree. It was - the first time he had ever had that word put to him from man’s mouth, even - though he may have confessed to himself in his heart. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley,” I said, bravely, knowing that I had an advantage from - then on, “I’m only a young man and I know you don’t think much of me. But - I’m going to grab in on this thing, whether you want me to or not. I have - special reasons of my own. I’ll do everything I can to balk my uncle.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re a spy he has set on me!” - </p> - <p> - “You’re a liar!” I wasn’t going to take any of his sneers or his abuse. I - hated to talk to him as I did, but only by being coarse and rough and - bossy could I hope to pound anything helpful into him. - </p> - <p> - He stared up at me with his jaw hanging down and I did not let up on my - punches. - </p> - <p> - “I have tried to head off my uncle Deck. I have told him straight out that - I am for you and against him. He and I don’t speak to each other. I have - promised your wife and your daughter that I’ll do everything I can to beat - my uncle out in this thing. They don’t understand it! I don’t understand - it all. But, before God, my promise to them is holy, even if you do not - believe in me! I’m in this affair and I’m in to stay.” - </p> - <p> - He began to wag his head as he had done before that day. “Brace up, Judge - Kingsley! You’re not licked yet!” - </p> - <p> - “Those three selectmen have signed my death-warrant. That notice which has - been posted!” - </p> - <p> - I saw that I had him going and I kept him going. “But when an embezzler - stays alive and does his best to straighten matters—” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t call me that name!” he groaned. - </p> - <p> - “If you will take me into your confidence, Judge Kingsley, so that I can - turn to and help you, I swear before Almighty Jehovah that I will set to - work for you with body and soul. I <i>can</i> help you—I know I can - help. No man can feel as I feel and be useless! But let me tell you this - much on the other side!” I bent down and snapped my finger under his nose. - That was no time for half-way and mealy-mouthed stuff. “If you throw me - down after this honest offer, it means that you think I’m too cheap to be - of use and too low to associate with. And that’s an insult I’ll never - swallow! So help me, I’ll drag you up into the village with that rope - around your neck and blow the whole business and hand you over to those - who will take care of you. I will! My mind is made up. Take your choice!” - </p> - <p> - I am sure that with no less bitter alternative could I have jounced any of - his secrets out of Zebulon Kingsley. - </p> - <p> - “I’m just enough of a hellion to do that very thing if you don’t treat me - right,” I warned him, angrily. - </p> - <p> - “You leave me no choice in the matter,” he mourned. “You are—” - </p> - <p> - “Look out, sir! I’m doing what I’m doing out of pure and honest desire to - help you. I want fair treatment.” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing can make my situation worse than it is, I suppose,” he stated, - after meditating for a time. “On the fifteenth day of April it will become - known in town meeting that more than ten thousand dollars of town notes - are out, drawing interest and bearing my name as town treasurer. I have - issued those notes without warrant.” - </p> - <p> - “But the people who hold them know they are out!” He was coldly, numbly - patient with me, the untamed animal who had promised to pounce on him and - drag him to his shame in the village. - </p> - <p> - “I have borrowed the money in various small lots and in each case the - note-holder is keeping absolutely still in order to escape taxation.” - </p> - <p> - “But great Scott! Judge Kingsley, ten thousand dollars for a rich man like - you—” - </p> - <p> - “I am no longer rich. I am ruined. I cannot take up those town notes prior - to the meeting. So I shall be arrested as a criminal! I have lost money - intrusted to me for investment, but though I have lost it I cannot be - prosecuted criminally—it was breach of trust. I hoped to get money - to stave off exposure in the criminal matter so that I could set myself to - earning more money and restoring what I owe to the investors. But I have - not been able to raise that money. That’s why I decided to kill myself. I - knew I couldn’t face it!” - </p> - <p> - “Did you just find out that you couldn’t raise the money, sir?” - </p> - <p> - He looked up at me, shame and agony in his face showing even in the dark. - It began to swell in him—I could see it in his eyes—that - longing which comes to every man in deep trouble—the wild hankering - to confide in somebody—to rush into confession, to unload the heart, - to speak the words which have been pressing to the lips. I was only Ross - Sidney, to be sure, but I was a man and Judge Kingsley had been bottling - his grief for a long time. - </p> - <p> - “What I did last was worst of all! Nobody could have convinced me that I - would ever do such a piece of folly. Think of me doing such a thing—a - man used to the ways of money! A financier! Oh, I have been dreading the - scorn, the sneers, the ridicule more than I have dreaded the exposure of - my town notes! I want to die!” - </p> - <p> - “What have you done, sir?” - </p> - <p> - “My investments were good in years past! I knew how to handle money—but - what I did a few days ago!” - </p> - <p> - “What was it, Judge?” He had been hesitating between his declarations, and - therefore I kept prodding him. But confession of his last affair seemed to - stick in his throat. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I am not guilty—I am not ashamed because I lost money in my - investments! The pirates who have manipulated this country’s industrials - and wrecked the railroads are the guilty ones—they should be ashamed - of what they did to the honest investors! But that I should run the scale - of speculation as I have—to the depths! Down, down, as I got more - desperate! And that I should do what I have just done when I was most - desperate—when your uncle was rushing me toward a cell door!” - </p> - <p> - He twisted his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. - </p> - <p> - I felt like a man waiting for a woodchuck to come out of his hole—getting - an occasional glimpse of a nose and seeing it everlastingly dodging back. - </p> - <p> - “But I had to have money quick. I had lost my grip. I could not raise more - money in a regular way.” - </p> - <p> - “When I was in the city I heard swindlers talk about such men, sir. There - are blacklegs who go about the country hunting for such men. Have you been - swindled?” - </p> - <p> - “Foully—vilely!” - </p> - <p> - “How?” - </p> - <p> - He hooked his fingers inside his collar as if speech had stuck in his - throat. - </p> - <p> - “Laugh!” he advised me. He was as hoarse as a crow and looked as crazy as - a coot. “Go ahead and laugh! I may as well get used to the ridicule.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t feel much like laughing at anything these days, Judge Kingsley. I - wish that you could understand me better and know how sorry—” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and you and everybody else will pity me as a fool to be classed in - with the other fools who are gulled by the shell-and-pea game.” - </p> - <p> - “For the sake of Mike, what have you done?” I demanded with a bit of - temper, for I was in no frame of mind to guess riddles. - </p> - <p> - “I—Zebulon Kingsley—a financier, a man supposed to be in his - right mind,” he squealed, beating his breast as he struggled to his feet, - “I bought a gold brick!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XV—A TIP FROM MR. DAWLIN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HILE I blinked at - Zebulon Kingsley through the gloom I remembered what “Cricket” Welch had - once said to me, in one of those sessions where I lapped up information as - greedily as a kitten laps milk. He had a flow of language, “Cricket” had, - and I wish I could remember his words more accurately. But it was - something like this: - </p> - <p> - “Why should any crook bring on brain-fag by thinking up new ones when the - old ones, with gears smoothed by twenty-five centuries of steady - operation, work so much better? As long ago as old Solomon was figuring on - Temple estimates with the architects, and had quite a reputation in the - country round about, a little chap dropped into a village outside of - Babylon and gave out that he was The Old Boy’s son by Wife 411, and was - interested in King Solomon’s mines along with his dad. Then he unloaded a - gold brick on to a village sucker, first making the sucker believe that - the latter was a buttonhole relation of the Solomon family.” - </p> - <p> - I was running that speech over in my mind while I looked at the judge, a - little uncertain what to say to him under the circumstances. - </p> - <p> - “And yet, the fraud did not seem to be barefaced while they were at work - on me,” lamented the old gentleman. “One of them, the one who came to town - first, was the son of one of my old schoolmates who went West when he was - young and has been settled there ever since. Young Blake was East on - business and dropped into Levant to look the old town over; his father - told him to make himself known to me, so that he could carry back news of - the folks his father used to know here.” - </p> - <p> - And in my book of notes I had set down the detail of just such a scheme as - that! - </p> - <p> - “They always have a skirmisher ahead of the main push,” I blurted. “He - finds out about somebody who settled West—and then along comes the - son.” - </p> - <p> - “What’s that?” demanded Kingsley. “What do you know about it?” - </p> - <p> - “Then, after the son is well settled, along comes one of father’s - partners, East, to sell stock, and he has a sample of the clean-up—a - big hunk of gold—and it’s always a real ingot, too.” - </p> - <p> - “It <i>was</i> real,” insisted the judge, passionately. “I went to the - city and had it tested by a jeweler who is a friend of mine. They offered - me a chance to make money on account of my old friendship. It did not seem - like a gold-brick game. I could not believe it was. I did not dare to - believe it was. I needed money so badly!” - </p> - <p> - “But it was, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “I mortgaged, I borrowed, I pawned! They offered me a chance to make money - because I was a prominent man and could help them sell their stock. They - wanted me to be sure that the proposition was a good one—that the - gold was honest. They took my last five thousand dollars! My God! I bought - a gold brick! I bought it like other fools have bought.” - </p> - <p> - “They always put new trimmings on the old game, Judge Kingsley, and make - it look attractive.” - </p> - <p> - He looked at me strangely and did not answer. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose they worked it as usual,” I went on, feeling just a bit proud - of my knowledge. I reflected that he might be more thankful for his - volunteer if I showed him that I was no greenhorn. His mouth had been - running away with him in his wild eagerness to unload the sorrows from his - soul. All at once he was showing symptoms of stiffening a bit, as if he - wondered why he had opened his heart to such a one as Ross Sidney. - </p> - <p> - I needed all his confidence—the flow was lessening—and so I - “shot the well,” as the oil fellows say. - </p> - <p> - “After they had given you all kinds of nice entertainment in the city, you - started for home and opened your package on the train and found a lead - junk and a letter advising you to go home and keep still and never believe - strangers again.” - </p> - <p> - “That letter—that insult!” he gasped. - </p> - <p> - “They told you they were starting straight for Europe, and they—” - </p> - <p> - “So that is what you were in the city for, eh? A blackleg—one of - them! Your brazen cheek—your flashy clothes—” - </p> - <p> - “No, Judge Kingsley, I never tried to sell gold bricks. But it came my way - to find out a lot about those fellows who do sell them.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, you flashy cheat!” he snarled. “You are like that other one! - Waistcoats like chromos! Tricked out with gewgaws—airs of a - peacock!” - </p> - <p> - That last word sent a thrill through me, put an idea into my head. - </p> - <p> - “Was he a big man, Judge Kingsley? Was his name Pratt?” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “But he brought the gold! He claimed to be the partner. He had a smear - like grease across his cheek—a scar. He—” - </p> - <p> - “You seem to know your confederates very well, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley, you listen to me! I have never seen those men face to - face, but I have heard of them. I have heard of their tricks. I know how - they operate. I know a good many of their lurking-places. I have made it - my business to know!” I noted that he was still suspicious, and I put my - face close to his and lied with all the fervor that was in me. I needed - his confidence, I say. “I did work as a detective until the dirty mess of - crooks made me sick of the job. I can help you in this thing! Depend on - me! I’m going to help!” - </p> - <p> - “I have about given up belief in everything!” - </p> - <p> - “Give me your hand, sir, and promise me you’ll offer a good front to the - world. Nobody must guess that you’re in difficulties. As for the noises my - uncle is making, he has never said anything definite; he is merely making - threats. Everybody knows about his grudge and folks don’t take much stock - in him. If you keep a stiff upper lip nobody will guess.” - </p> - <p> - “But they all will <i>know</i> on the fifteenth of April.” - </p> - <p> - “If we can grab in ten thousand dollars before then—” - </p> - <p> - “Do you stand there, young man, and tell me you have the crazy idea that - you can pull any of my money back from those scoundrels?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and more with it,” I returned, much more bold in my tone than I was - in my heart. But when I knew that I had the “Peacock” Pratt gang - identified—and probably had located Jeff Dawlin’s brother as the man - who planted the fraud, posing as the son, his usual rôle, certain wild - hopes and dizzy schemes went to whirling in my head. - </p> - <p> - “We ought to have three thousand in cash in a short time to—” - </p> - <p> - “A client—a widow is pressing me for money. It amounts to about that - sum,” he said, dolefully. - </p> - <p> - “Does she suspect—” - </p> - <p> - “No, no!” he snapped, irritably. “She is going to be married again, the - fool, and wants to hand it to her new husband.” He showed a flicker of - pride in the midst of his troubles. “There is nobody calling Zebulon - Kingsley a thief as yet, except himself and your uncle. <i>I</i> know that - I am and <i>he</i> suspects,” he added, bitterly. - </p> - <p> - “Then the woman must have her money, sir. We must keep everybody from even - suspecting for a time.” - </p> - <p> - I took both his hands in mine. He did need comfort and sympathy, even such - as I could offer him. - </p> - <p> - “I’m square with you, Judge Kingsley. I know how to find those men. I’ll - go after them. And I know you’ll do your part to help me. I only ask you - to buck up! Let nobody suspect!” - </p> - <p> - “I ought to doubt every man in the world after what I have been through! I - ought to doubt <i>you!</i> Why are you doing all this for me, sir?” he - demanded, and then I was glad it was dark there under the tree. I must - have revealed confusion aplenty. “I have never shown you any favors, young - man. It has been the other way. I never liked your breed.” - </p> - <p> - “I know that, Judge Kingsley, but—” I could not go any further at - the moment. - </p> - <p> - “Well?” - </p> - <p> - “You see,” I gulped, “when I was a little shaver you gave me a quarter and - I bought a catechism and studied it and—I guess—I’m quite sure—it - made a better boy, and—” - </p> - <p> - It wasn’t convincing, that talk wasn’t! He caught me up sharply: - </p> - <p> - “The truth isn’t in you, young Sidney!” - </p> - <p> - “You told me that once before. And it has been my ambition to show you - that you were wrong.” - </p> - <p> - “Bah! I know human nature too well to believe any such rot.” - </p> - <p> - “But you always stood up in Sunday-school, sir, and told us about - Christian charity and meekness and forgiveness. You believe in all that, - don’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “I have no confidence in you—not now!” - </p> - <p> - “Not when I’m trying to prove to you that I’m one of those practical - Christians?” - </p> - <p> - “Do not insult me with any more of that balderdash, sir!” - </p> - <p> - I had just as much of nasty temper as he had, and mine began to flare up - in me. I knew that my motives were all right, though I did not dare to - reveal them to him—and my innocence made me the more angry. - </p> - <p> - “You would have made a big hit with the good Samaritan when he came along - and offered his help after you had fallen among thieves,” I snapped. “I - reckon you have never practised any of the charity you have preached. I - have never preached, but I am practising! You don’t seem to recognize your - own religion when you see it acted out instead of being merely printed in - a book!” - </p> - <p> - “You’re a renegade, convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” - </p> - <p> - Oh, what was the use! I walked off a little way. Then I turned on him. - </p> - <p> - “I have my own reasons for wanting to help you, Judge Kingsley, no matter - what you believe about me. But if you feel as you talk, you can go to - blazes just as soon as you like. I’m not going to try to round up all the - revolvers, ropes, and razors in this town. That rope you have there seems - to be a good strong one. Go as far as you like! And I’ll keep on in <i>my</i> - way and will turn the money over to your estate—to your wife and - your daughter. You are not the first coward who has knocked out the last - prop and sluiced all the mess on to his women folks! Go on! I’ll be - furnishing your wife bread and butter while you’re having insomnia in - hell!” - </p> - <p> - Then I went back to the tavern. - </p> - <p> - I knew well enough that Zebulon Kingsley would not kill himself that - night. In the first place, he was too mad. He came behind me, chattering - his teeth like an angry squirrel. Then, again, I had stirred his - curiosity, even if I had not given him any special hope. And my threat - about handling his money after he had gone was enough to keep Zebulon - Kingsley hanging around on top of the earth for a time. I knew his nature - mighty well. I would have taken those means with him at first, but I had - been hoping that he would accept me on a friendlier basis where I might - coddle my hopes; and here was I handling him by the scruff of the neck! - </p> - <p> - I caught a glimpse of Celene through the sitting-room window when I passed - the house. The light was behind her and her hair was like an angel’s halo. - Ah! there was the inspiration which was keeping me on the lunatic’s job I - had picked out for myself! As for that old hornbeam father, I was in a - state of fury which prompted me to go back, use his ears for handles, and - kick him around his premises until he promised to behave himself—and - give me his daughter when my task was finished. Well, at least I had - reached one interesting stage in my development—I was acting as - guardian of the high and mighty Zebulon Kingsley and was rather despising - my ward! - </p> - <p> - That evening I sat till late and went through my notebook and studied the - affiliations, the methods, the lurking-places and all other information I - had recorded in regard to one “Peacock” Pratt and his associates. - </p> - <p> - It seemed to me that I had a pretty good start on the thing, even though - the future was, as Jodrey Vose used to say of dock water, in a “nebulous - and gummy condition.” - </p> - <p> - But I went to bed, nevertheless, in a considerably exalted state of mind. - With every day that passed I was getting farther into the affairs of the - Kingsley family—and getting into those affairs— - </p> - <p> - I dreamed of Celene that night, but that was not a matter for special - record; I dreamed of her every night. - </p> - <p> - In the morning I put on a business suit I had bought “off the pile” in - Mechanicsville. I had wanted to show Levant that I had more than one suit - of clothes. I reckoned that I would feel more sane and solid in that suit. - And I did feel that way when I went down to breakfast. If ever a man had - business ahead of him I was that one! - </p> - <p> - But that sane and normal feeling did not sit well on my conscience. I - found myself brooding and getting depressed. I wondered why I had felt so - exalted and optimistic the night before. How could I have made such - confident promises to Kingsley? - </p> - <p> - While I sawed at that prosaic hunk o’ ham the notion of chasing up those - knaves and getting my clutch on that stolen money—or any other money—seemed - just a hopeless dream. It was surely a crazy idea; I sat there and looked - down into my plate and so decided. For all of a quarter-hour I mulled and - gloomed there, wondering what had happened to make me so dull and - disheartened and doped. I woke up to what the matter was—woke all of - a sudden. It was that blamed ready-made suit of clothes! - </p> - <p> - I was simply plain Ross Sidney! I was right down on the plane of all the - men around me. I looked like a tank-town commercial drummer and felt like - one. I had no more imagination or horizon than a grocery clerk. All the - fantastic spirit of adventure had gone out of me. Perhaps it may be - thought that mere clothes cannot do all that to a man! Well, wear overalls - to the next grand ball! I’m no psychologist and I have never read - Carlyle’s essay on clothes, though I am told he describes about what I - have felt. I’m merely saying this: when I realized what was the matter - with me and felt certain that I needed to be comfortably crazy in order to - keep up my dip—why, do you suppose I would ever have tried to bark - in front of that show if I had been dressed in a sack-suit? - </p> - <p> - Yes, comfortably crazy! - </p> - <p> - I rushed, up-stairs and shifted to my knight-errant regalia. Then I went - to my job on the run. I reckoned that I was going to be in a devil of a - hurry for a while! - </p> - <p> - I galloped down to the wood-lot, my plug-hat riding tilted back like the - funnel of a racing steamer. Those choppers were hearty and happy and were - hustling for that bonus; if a few laggards needed pep I injected it. I - made estimates, got every hitch in Levant which would cart wood and drag - timber and started the cut for the railroad. - </p> - <p> - The freight-trains picked up the gondola cars as they were ready. - </p> - <p> - I rushed to the cities and arranged for deliveries, pulled down first - payments in good season to settle wages for a week, as agreed with Henshaw - Hook, and shuttled back and forth until all the cut was cleaned up on the - lot. Gad! how I was counting days! I did not waste any time on Judge - Kingsley. I realized that the more I kept away from him, the more I kept - him guessing! - </p> - <p> - I grabbed my first opportunity to take a day off the job and run down to - the big city; I made that jump from one of the towns where I was handling - the last deliveries—for I could not make final collections until the - railroad completed its haul, and so I had a little time to spare. - </p> - <p> - There was another barker at the door of Dawlin’s place, and I noted with - gratification that he was a rather seedy chap. The blonde looked acutely - surprised and showed apprehension when I walked right in past her. - Plainly, her man had been making some promises as to what he would do to - me if I ever showed up again. - </p> - <p> - And the first glance Dawlin gave me when he looked up from his gazara - envelopes showed that he was quite ready to keep his promises. - </p> - <p> - I beckoned him to his office and walked in there and waited for him. He - came on the jump. He was at me almost before I had time to place my - plug-hat out of the way of possible damage. - </p> - <p> - When Mr. Dawlin would close a gazara game right at a moment when suckers - were shoving money at him, it was proof that he was specially interested - in something else which was almighty important. His language when he burst - in on me made it plain that his interest in me was not flattering, though - it was intense. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, if it’s that little, foolish, petty matter of the few dollars you - handed back to those yaps,” I broke in, after I had pushed him back with a - swoop of my arm—and, as I have stated, it was a hard arm—“here’s - your small change.” - </p> - <p> - In my wood business I had promptly changed checks into cash. I pulled out - before the lustful eyes of Mr. Dawlin a roll of bills big enough to make a - pillow for his Mormon Giant, and I carelessly flipped the edges to show - him they were yellowbacks. - </p> - <p> - “What did the little matter amount to?” I asked, airily. - </p> - <p> - “Six and twenty-two fifty—and I tossed ’em a five,” he said, - trying to make a quick shift from passion to pacification. - </p> - <p> - “And I guess the drinks are on me this time, Jeff,” I said, adding a - ten-dollar bill to the amount. “Go buy the kind you like.” - </p> - <p> - “But what in—” - </p> - <p> - “This tells all the story,” I said, tapping the roll and stuffing it back. - </p> - <p> - “But your partners—leaving me in the lurch—not inviting me in - for a drag—” - </p> - <p> - “It had to be a lone play, Jeff—just had to be! But don’t think I - have all the money in the world cornered in my pocket, even if it looks - like it. And I’m not back here simply to give you a treat by letting you - look at it. I have located a bigger bundle—but it can’t be coopered - by a lone play.” - </p> - <p> - “Job for the gang, hey?” he asked, almost drooling. - </p> - <p> - “Well, for the right operators if they’re the real goods. But no amateurs, - you know!” - </p> - <p> - “Condemn it! I have told you about my brother. He’s one of the best in the - country! Has just pulled off a killing—not very big, but easy and - profitable.” - </p> - <p> - “Where?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing doing on the where!” replied Mr. Dawlin, warily. “That’s all done - and the money counted. We always forget <i>where</i> as soon as the money - is counted.” He fingered his nose. “Where is—” he started. - </p> - <p> - “Same tag,” I said, smartly. “You forget and I don’t remember. All is, - it’s there waiting. Can we all get together?” - </p> - <p> - “When?” - </p> - <p> - “To-day.” - </p> - <p> - “Blast it all! you ought to know that we can’t all get together to-day—nor - a week from to-day!” He showed some suspicion. - </p> - <p> - “Why should I know that?” I looked him in the eye. “When a job is done - East, why, you know yourself they all shoot West—clear to the—” - </p> - <p> - “You didn’t tell me the last job was done East,” I said, coolly. - </p> - <p> - “Well, it was. I can say that much. And they’re on their way West—they’re - going over the Rockies.” - </p> - <p> - “Then I guess I’ll declare them out on the job, Jeff. I’m in with some of - the other—” - </p> - <p> - “But that’s no way to use a friend like I’ve been to you! This thing ought - to be put up to Ike and ‘Peacock.’ You must remember that I offered you a - lay with them! I tried to use you right. You ought to show some - gratitude.” - </p> - <p> - He was fairly whining in his anxiety, but I was mighty careful about - showing any eagerness of my own. I scratched my ear and looked rather - doubtful and displayed indifference. - </p> - <p> - “Of course I can’t write to ’em—we never write, especially - soon after a job. But I have their bearings, Ross. I can put you right on - to their trail. They have a job on below the Potlatch country in Idaho. - First East and then West—get the idea? It’s something about land—this - operation. You’re bound to bump into ’em; there are not so many men - out there as there are here.” - </p> - <p> - “Still, it looks to me like a wild-goose chase,” I demurred, hoping to be - assured that it was no such thing. - </p> - <p> - “‘Peacock’ isn’t going to change his style! He’s too far away to be - obliged to bother—and he sure does like his togs! You can’t hide - ‘Peacock’ Pratt if you surround him with a whole county. You’ll find him - easy, and my brother will be right on the wheel. Wait! If you don’t know - that country I’ll jot down directions and names for you—names of men - to ask. I’ll give you a word or two for a passport!” He grabbed paper and - pen and began to scribble. “What extra the trip costs will be added to - your lay. You’ll find them square if you get in with them,” he assured me - while he wrote. “You don’t have to discuss any lay for me. My brother - always sees to it that I get my pickings from any job I help him to.” - </p> - <p> - He fairly thrust the paper into my hands when he had finished. Really, I - was more grateful inside than I allowed to appear in my thanks. I could - hardly ask Mr. Dawlin to do more in setting me on the trail of the men I - was after. The humor of the thing certainly did appeal to me—and I - needed a little something for cheer just then. - </p> - <p> - Whether I would try to pick their pockets when I arrived up with them, or - knock them down with a dub, or what I would do I left to the future. I had - enough to think of just then—that wood business to wind up and the - matter of the future handling of Zebulon Kingsley to attend to—and a - crazy chase across the continent ahead of me! - </p> - <p> - I tucked the paper deep, slapped Mr. Dawlin on the back, and hustled for - up-country. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVI—GRABBING A HUSBAND AND FATHER - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HEN I laid rising - three thousand dollars in front of Zebulon Kingsley on his office table as - my card of reintroduction to that glum gentleman, I really jumped him. - </p> - <p> - The money was in bills and there was a stack of it. A mere check would not - have been half as impressive. A lot of men in this world are extravagant - because they pay by check; handling real money makes one more appreciative - of values, I think. - </p> - <p> - “I have wound up the wood-lot proposition to the last cent,” I informed - him. “All collections made, all the men paid, and I hope you are as well - satisfied as the rest. There’s the cash!” - </p> - <p> - “How much is there?” His voice trembled when he asked me. - </p> - <p> - “Count it.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll take your word, and later—” - </p> - <p> - “You have told-me several times that the truth isn’t in me. Count that - money! I insist!” A bit nasty of me, I admit, but I had resolved to make - my bigness, where Judge Kingsley was concerned. I saw no chance of winning - unless I made him understand that I was not to be kicked around any more. - </p> - <p> - I stood over him while he counted. His bony fingers shook. Even though he - was handling money—rather a favorite indoor sport of his—I - knew he was finding the job a bitter one, with me at his elbow and acting - just as if I belonged there. He jotted down amounts as he counted, and - then he added the figures. - </p> - <p> - “I make it three thousand three hundred and fifty four dollars and - twenty-nine cents,” he reported. - </p> - <p> - “You are right, sir.” I held my little account-book in front of his nose - and tapped my totals. “I did a bit better than I figured.” - </p> - <p> - “The two thousand which belongs to me—” - </p> - <p> - “There are no divisions in that pile, sir. We are not going to have any - such argument as we had once before about price and land and deed. You - need that money for immediate use and you’re going to take it. And don’t - tell me again that you don’t need my help. You do!” Big talk, but he - needed it! “But don’t you be afraid that I shall ever twit you about this - help. Now is there any way of staving off this widow who wants her three - thousand?” - </p> - <p> - “No! I have promised her. After what you told me—I reckoned on—” - </p> - <p> - “Ah! Then you have been admitting to yourself the last few days that I’m - not so much of a renegade and crook, after all!” - </p> - <p> - His eyes shifted. “You must make allowances in my case, Mr. Sidney!” That - looked promising. He was giving me a handle for my name. - </p> - <p> - “Then we’ll pay the widow so that she will not be wagging her jaw while - we’re away.” - </p> - <p> - “While we’re away?” he repeated. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir! You and I are going to start on the trail of that last batch of - money you invested.” - </p> - <p> - “But we’ll never get money that way.” - </p> - <p> - “How else are you going to raise ten thousand dollars before the fifteenth - of April?” - </p> - <p> - “I have no way of raising it!” he lamented. - </p> - <p> - “That’s it! No sensible, business way! Therefore, we must do the next best—grab - from the men who have grabbed from you. It’s either that or go steal - money!” - </p> - <p> - I pulled up to the table and before his eyes counted back to myself the - money over and above three thousand dollars. I put it in my pocket. - </p> - <p> - “It’s our common purse—for traveling expenses,” I explained. - </p> - <p> - “But it’s—” he gasped. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, it’s a long journey, sir. However, I must go and you must go along - with me.” - </p> - <p> - “I am not in condition to travel.” - </p> - <p> - “I know that, sir, and I’m sorry. I wish I did not need you on the job, - but you must be with me in order to identify those men who robbed you. - Your complaint will put them in the jug if we can’t scare them and twist - the money out of them in another way. I can’t do a thing without your - presence, unless I catch up with them and knock them down. I may just as - well stay East here and commit highway robbery for you!” - </p> - <p> - I had another reason for insisting on his making the trip with me, but I - kept it to myself. If I left him behind there in Levant with my - rambunctious uncle barking at his heels and creditors waking up to - suspicions, I could not have one moment’s peace of mind. I felt pretty - sure that he would betray himself by face, his actions, or by suicide or - confession. He was in no shape to endure inquisition if he were left where - folks could get at him. - </p> - <p> - “You must go,” I insisted. - </p> - <p> - “Where?” - </p> - <p> - “It’s more or less of a blind run.” - </p> - <p> - “But I must know.” - </p> - <p> - “We’re only wasting time by talking it over ahead, Judge Kingsley, because - I don’t know much about the trip myself.” - </p> - <p> - He began to show temper, and I could not blame him much. My comfortable - craziness which I had put on along with my “dream suit” was helping a lot; - the judge was frostily sane. - </p> - <p> - “The project is crazy,” he stormed. - </p> - <p> - “So is the fix you’re in!” - </p> - <p> - “I can tell my wife and daughter nothing sensible!” - </p> - <p> - “As near as I can find out, sir, you have never told them anything special - about your business. Why begin now?” - </p> - <p> - “Because they are worried. My actions—those strangers—” - </p> - <p> - “I know, sir. They told me. But when you go away this time you’ll be going - in my company and that may help with them.” - </p> - <p> - He gave me a look which hinted that he was not at all sure about that. - </p> - <p> - “We have been in one business deal; it’s easy to say we’re in another,” I - suggested, choosing to overlook his manner. - </p> - <p> - But my feelings got away from me when he began to protest and argue and - ask questions about why and where and when. The balky old mule! And I was - giving him my soul and service free! - </p> - <p> - I pounded my knuckles on the heaped money. “We are going to leave this - town on the night train, Judge Kingsley. That gives you time enough to - settle with the widow and tell your folks something and get them calmed - down.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you dare to browbeat me, young man!” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, and you’ll have time to think the thing over for yourself, sir, - before I call for you with a hitch just before train-time! There will be - no arguments then. I shall expect you to be all ready with your bag in - hand. Go light on luggage. We shall go a long way and we shall go in a - hurry.” - </p> - <p> - I left him and went about a few final affairs of my own, and when I - finished I was squared with everybody in Levant. Before handing that money - to the judge I had paid my personal debts—I felt that I was entitled - to that much! - </p> - <p> - That evening Dodovah Vose loaned me a hitch and a driver and clapped me on - the shoulder with great zest and pride. - </p> - <p> - “When the judge picked you for a partner he picked the right one,” he - declared. “You make a team which will bring this old town up on its feet. - The judge needs you, son. He has been going behind.” - </p> - <p> - And then once more he tried to pump me regarding this latest venture, for - I had purposely dropped a word to him that the judge and I were off on a - big deal. I knew that a seed planted in Dodovah Vose would bring forth - fruit of the sort the judge and I needed. - </p> - <p> - “You can just hint to folks, if you feel like it, Mr. Vose, that Judge - Kingsley and I have seen a way to help this town very much.” That was - true. “Incidentally, the judge will make a great deal of money out of - certain things where his capital has been tied up.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve always said he knew his business as a financier. Some of the old - tom-cats in this town have been prowling and meraouwing because he has - been tied up lately by mortgages; but you’ve got to bait with money to - catch money! Don’t fret, son. I’ll hand ’em out something now to - warm their ear-wax.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, he knows how to make money for himself and for other folks!” - </p> - <p> - “Am I too late to slip in a few hundred on this deal?” asked Mr. Vose, - anxiously. - </p> - <p> - It was promptly on my tongue, of course, to put him aside as gently as - possible. But I knew that he had been wondering why I had not let him in - on the thing before, for truly he had been my best friend in that town. I - had no good excuse to give him. I needed his friendship and his loyal good - word even more then than in the past, for suspicion was darkly brooding in - Levant. I hated to leave behind with him the impression that I would do - everything for Zebulon Kingsley, who had been my foe, and would not turn - even a little leak of prosperity into an old friend’s porringer. - </p> - <p> - While I was struggling with my thoughts—feeling like a scoundrel - reaching for his brother’s wallet—a strange notion came to me. It - fitted in with that comfortable craziness of mine. If I accepted his - money, would I not be pledging my very soul to do and to dare? My devotion - to Celene Kingsley I had set at one side as my true and sacred motive. I - was mighty sure that I was not at all enthusiastic in regard to her - father. However, if I took Dodovah Vose’s hard-earned money from his hands—and - taking it meant a pledge that he was to benefit from a sure thing—had - I not another sacred and even more compelling motive? Truly I had, for my - man’s honor was concerned as well as my love for a girl! - </p> - <p> - “What have you handy?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Five hundred,” he said. “I ask no questions. I want no promises. I know - you’ll do your best for me, son. I hate to bother you—but profits - come slow in a country tavern, and I’d like to do a little extra repairing - this spring.” - </p> - <p> - He was on his way to his rusty old safe while he talked. - </p> - <p> - So I took his money and went away from him with the warmth of his palm on - mine. - </p> - <p> - The grinding of the wagon-wheels on the grit in front of Judge Kingsley’s - house brought Celene to the door, and when I did not climb down from the - wagon she called to me. - </p> - <p> - “Will you not come into the house?” she pleaded. I had not intended to do - so. In spite of my longing to see her and to have her parting smile go - along with me on that amazing journey I was undertaking, I had made up my - mind to duck judiciously a meeting-up with the women folks of my traveling - partner. But I had no will to disobey when she called to me. I found the - judge with his overcoat on and his bag in his hand. Evidently he had - thought the matter over! But he did not look like a bridegroom starting on - a honeymoon trip, and he scowled at me with as much ferocity as if we were - two tom-cats tied by the tails over a clothes-line. - </p> - <p> - His wife was hanging to his arm and she was white, even to her lips. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Sidney, I must know what this mysterious business is.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure the judge will tell you what is necessary.” - </p> - <p> - “He will tell me nothing. I have endured much in the past, Zebulon! I have - not asked to know much about your affairs,” she went on, trying to get a - square look into his eyes. “This time I <i>must</i> know!” - </p> - <p> - “I have told you!” From his tone it was hard to tell what his emotions - were. The words sounded as if somebody were talking into a tin spout a - long way off. - </p> - <p> - “You have told me nothing except that you are going! You do not say where. - You have not told me when you are coming back.” - </p> - <p> - “We don’t exactly know, Mrs. Kingsley. But I assure you that the trip is - very necessary,” I put in. - </p> - <p> - “I must tell you that mother is not well,” said Celene, wistfully. “I’m - sure everything is all right, but we must know where you are going so that - we may be in touch with you.” - </p> - <p> - “We can keep you posted—when we know where we are,” I said; but I - did not sound very convincing, I fear. God knows, I wanted to put my arms - around her and comfort her and tell her that I was madly trying to save - her, her home, her mother, and her father from disgrace and ruin. I guess - no man has ever figured out beyond doubt whether it’s better to tell the - woman everything or to hide trouble as long as possible. When women are - proud they never forget the disgrace, whether it is revealed outside or if - it’s merely kept secret in the household. And in Zebulon Kingsley’s case I - was proposing to keep the effect of the disgrace as well as all knowledge - of it away from those women. - </p> - <p> - I knew how he felt in the matter! He had chosen revolvers and ropes rather - than face them. I was determined to be just as resolute as he—until - a show-down was inevitable. - </p> - <p> - It would be a sorry triumph, a half job, if they were obliged to live out - their lives knowing that the master of the household had lived for years - in the shadow of prison; it meant the wrecking of all their pride and - ideals—no more joy in home or life itself in the case of such women - as they. I understood! - </p> - <p> - The big dock was ticking off minutes rapidly. Our time was short. I - shuffled my feet, impatiently wishing that Judge Kingsley would hurry up. - His woe-begone, frozen face was making the thing worse every minute he - stayed there. - </p> - <p> - “There is mystery here,” insisted his wife. “There should be no mystery - about business that’s honest!” - </p> - <p> - “You surely can tell us something to comfort us before you go,” urged - Celene, coming dose to me, pleading with her eyes. - </p> - <p> - But I knew I must stay away from the edges of explanation in her presence; - once I got started, I’d be sure to tumble into a mess. I looked over her - head. - </p> - <p> - “We must hurry, Judge!” I warned. - </p> - <p> - “I know that my husband would never go into any business that isn’t - honest,” declared Mrs. Kingsley, beginning to show temper. She faced me - and her eyes glittered. “But he is growing old, and his judgment may not - be what it was. There are always men trying to lead others into trouble.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s so,” I admitted. - </p> - <p> - “Forgive mother if she says anything harsh! But we are in such a state of - mind!” - </p> - <p> - Well, so was I! - </p> - <p> - “I have mortgaged the home over my head,” cried Mrs. Kingsley. “I have - given the money to my husband willingly—but I will not allow thieves - to waste it!” - </p> - <p> - It was about time for me to assert myself a little. The judge was merely - working his mouth like a dying fish, and it was plain that he could be no - help. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t blame your mother,” I told the girl. I took her hands in mine, - glad I could carry away the memory of her touch. “Some of those men who - have been hanging around the judge are not good men, but I was born in - this town and you know me! I’m helping your father in an important matter. - I swear I’m telling the truth. And I’ll bring him back safe and sound.” - </p> - <p> - I left her before I should be tempted to kiss her right before their eyes, - and I took the judge’s bag in one hand and boosted him along with a clutch - on his arm. - </p> - <p> - “We simply must catch that train!” I urged. - </p> - <p> - It was a sad scene for a few moments. I was obliged fairly to tussle with - that woman for the possession of the old man. But I ran him out and left - the mother sobbing in the daughter’s arms, and they were in the doorway - when I helped the judge into the wagon. - </p> - <p> - “Brace up!” I whispered. “Give ’em just a word or two.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m all right,” he quavered. “It’s only business! It must be attended to. - There’s nothing to fret about!” - </p> - <p> - Wasn’t, eh? - </p> - <p> - “Lick up!” I told the driver. “Lay on the braid!” - </p> - <p> - We went rattling out of Levant behind a galloping horse and I liked the - sensation of that haste. We were chasing ten thousand dollars and had less - than twenty days for the job. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVII—MONEY HAS LEGS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E swapped not a - word on the way to the railroad. - </p> - <p> - The judge seemed to be settled down into a sort of numb condition, and I - was glad of it, for I did not feel like talking. He stood indifferently at - one side when I bought tickets, and I was glad of that also. If I was to - be purser and general manager of that expedition I did not want to have a - joint debate every time I made a move. - </p> - <p> - My first tickets took us to a junction point. Then I bought to Chicago. - </p> - <p> - The judge went along silently, showing about as much interest as a mummy - in me, or in the scenery or people. I suppose the old fellow was having a - terrible struggle with his fears, his thoughts, and his recollection of - the manner in which he had parted from his family. I sympathized with him - and left him alone. Once in a while I got a side-glance from him which - suggested that he had not abandoned his distrust of me. Perhaps he - pondered that he was simply submitting to another form of self-destruction - and was willing to let it go at that! - </p> - <p> - I’ll confess this: I was taking so much interest in the world about me - that I was finding it hard to concentrate my thoughts on the business we - had in hand. I had done no railroad-riding to speak of till then. It - seemed as unreal as if I were headed for the moon instead of into the far - vastness of my native land. When we went rolling through the smoky fringes - of Chicago and I saw that there really was a Chicago, my emotion, as I - remember it, was astonishment. But I had already found out that a - greenhorn could get along pretty well by watching other folks and by - asking questions. - </p> - <p> - So we crowded into the transfer-wagon on Polk Street and were quickly - across the city to another railroad station, where I bought tickets for - St. Paul. Before the train pulled out I raided a folder-stand and grabbed - a sample of everything in the rack. - </p> - <p> - I went into those folders like a girl diving into the love scenes in a - mush novel; I studied as diligently as if I were a prize pupil getting - ready for a contest. I had my nose in those papers for hours, till I could - close my eyes and see maps and repeat time-tables and names of cities - backward. - </p> - <p> - So I wasn’t at a loss when we reached St. Paul. I trotted the judge right - along to a window and bought tickets for Spokane. He was mumbling a - monotone of growls in my ear while I counted out the money. - </p> - <p> - “Look here, young man,” he said, when we had left the window, “I am not - going to be teamed any farther until you tell me exactly where you are - going and what you are intending to do.” - </p> - <p> - It rather surprised me to hear him speak; I had sort of forgotten that he - could talk. - </p> - <p> - “Do you pretend that you expect to get money, racing around like this?” - </p> - <p> - “I’m on the trail of it, Judge Kingsley—your money, you remember. - I’m not doing this for my own amusement.” - </p> - <p> - “You seem to be; I’ve been watching you, sir. You are plainly relishing - this junketing about. I go no farther.” - </p> - <p> - “How much money have you in your pocket?” I asked, mildly. - </p> - <p> - He looked alarmed. “I did not bring money! You took the money for - expenses, you said. I depended on that. I have only a few dollars.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s good,” I told him. “So there’s no chance for argument here on this - platform.” I waved the tickets under his nose. “I reckon you’ll have to - stick right along with me, sir, wherever I go.” - </p> - <p> - That settled that rebellion! - </p> - <p> - When I started toward the train he followed. His face was white, his jaws - were ridged, and he was furious—but his anger locked his lips. He - did not bother me with questions. That night I hid my money inside my - berth-pillow; by the way the judge looked at me I knew he would pick my - pocket if he got a chance. - </p> - <p> - On we went across the prairies of the Dakotas—and the journey was - not interesting. It was all dun and dull and brown and monotonous in that - late March. When the sun shone it only showed up more of the raw country. - Every little while we went plunging through a snow-squall which plastered - the car windows and speckled the brown of the prairie. - </p> - <p> - Then the doldrums got me! All at once I found myself bluer than the old - judge had been, even in his deepest despondency. This was a reckless - escapade, not a sensible man’s project! I had bragged and blustered and - made promises there in that little tin dipper of a Levant where the - horizon was pinched in by Mitchell’s Mountain and Tumbledick Hill. I had - got by with my bluff in the wood-lot game and had felt as if I were a big - man! - </p> - <p> - But out there! - </p> - <p> - No longer was it a string of mere names and a smudge of color on paper to - make a map! I was looking out, hour by hour, on the reality of the - vastness of the great West. As to the men I was hunting for in that wide - expanse—those fly-by-nighters, those human skip-bugs—would - they not be dodging where impulse took them? Jeff Dawlin was a mere - gambler—willing to take a chance on anything. Had he not taken a - mere gambler’s chance on my finding those men? If I succeeded he would get - his pay. If I did not succeed it was only <i>my</i> failure—he had - invested nothing—he had no interest in my affairs, except a - gambler’s. - </p> - <p> - And what could I do to those men if I did find them? They were at home out - there—as much at home as they were in the East. The farther out on - those prairies I rolled, the farther away from all confidence in myself I - seemed to be. Old Ariock Blake used to say that sometimes he felt as if he - were “forty miles from water and a hundred miles from land.” I felt just - as helplessly up in the air as that! I fairly wallowed in sloppy gloom. - </p> - <p> - To sit there in front of Zebulon Kingsley in my state of mind and courage - and look on his gad-awful sourness of visage was too much for my nerves. - </p> - <p> - I went to get a drink of water and heard men laughing in the smoking-room. - If there were men in the world who could laugh I wanted to be with them. - So I went in. They were playing poker, and after a time one man had to - leave the train and they asked me into the game. - </p> - <p> - I was desperate enough to grab at anything that would take my mind off my - troubles, so I began to play poker. And when a man sits in to play poker - with strangers it’s a mighty small slice of mind he has left to blotter - worry with. - </p> - <p> - I was away from the judge a long time, and he came hunting me up and - caught me at the pastime. Perhaps he feared that his two-legged bank had - fallen off the train and he had been worrying; but when he saw me with - cards in my hand and money spread out he had a lot more to worry about and - his face showed it. He let out of him a sort of moan and went away. - </p> - <p> - “Your father?” asked one of the men, casually. “Sick?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” I said. “I mean he’s sick, but he’s not my father. He is a big - Eastern capitalist I’m escorting West on business.” - </p> - <p> - “Put me next—I can offer him some great chances,” said another man. - </p> - <p> - “I’m afraid he is feeling too bad to talk business—and he is very - notional in the matter of strangers. Don’t say anything to him; leave it - to me.” I was obliged to say something about the judge and to block them - from bothering him, if I could, for I knew he would not be contented with - one inspection of me at my devilish and dangerous occupation. “Don’t pay - any attention to his actions,” I advised. “He’s feeling mighty sick—a - long ride makes him sort of seasick.” - </p> - <p> - I was glad I had planted something with the men, for the judge kept coming - and sticking his head between the curtains and making strange noises. He - went at me in good earnest when he had me at table in the dining-car. - </p> - <p> - “How dare you throw away my money on gamblers?” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t done so, Judge Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “I saw you doing it in that dirty den of smoke and vice.” - </p> - <p> - “You saw me playing cards, I’ll admit. I had to do something to keep from - going crazy.” - </p> - <p> - “Tossing away my money! Gambling my dollars—” - </p> - <p> - “Just a moment, sir! That money is a part of my profits and I consider it - a common pot for both of us. I know how to play poker. I have added - forty-five dollars to it.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you boast that you have been cheating at cards to help <i>me?</i>” - </p> - <p> - Confound him! he could sting a man with that tongue of his! - </p> - <p> - “A man can play poker without cheating. Just as a man can do business - without cheating!” - </p> - <p> - I looked him in the eye and he shut up. I had found out that I could get - along with him better when he didn’t talk. After the meal I went back to - the game. I felt that every little helped, provided I could hold my own. - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t resist a quiet chuckle inside when I reflected that I was - industriously playing cards for the benefit of Judge Zebulon Kingsley, - Sunday-school superintendent of Levant. - </p> - <p> - I had learned long before how to watch out in a card game, and when I felt - little scratches on the backs of the cards and observed that one of the - players was doing the gouge act with a specially manicured finger-nail, I - turned a few tricks of my own. I felt the full humor of the thing when I - calmed my conscience with the thought that it was all for the sake of the - judge. When he came to the curtains and glared at me I grinned at him. - </p> - <p> - I cleaned up one hundred and fifteen dollars, at any rate, before we - rolled into Spokane—and I had at least five hundred dollars’ worth - of respite from my bitter misgivings. When I showed that tainted money to - the judge with some little pride and impelled by a spirit of devilishness - I couldn’t control, I thought for a moment that he would bite me. - </p> - <p> - “I’m not going to associate any longer with a scalawag. I’m not going to - be bullyragged by a scoundrel!” - </p> - <p> - “However, when we’re roaming we’ve got to do as the roamers do,” I told - him. Deep in me I was ashamed of the disrespect I was showing him by - plaguing him in that fashion, but I felt an almost irresistible hankering - to do it; he had so long lorded it in Levant. Furthermore, he did not seem - to recognize in any manner my spirit of self-sacrifice; he had not shown - to me one flash of wholehearted gratitude. I may have had a cloudy notion - that he needed to have his spirit of Kingsley pride humbled before he - would ever consider me as a likely son-in-law. My ideas then and the - memories of my ideas now are not very clear, for I was not in any very - calm and philosophic mood those days. - </p> - <p> - After a carriage had snatched us across Spokane and we were landed on the - platform of a station from which trains for the Idaho country departed, he - did buck in good earnest. - </p> - <p> - He was a man of plan and method; he had passed his life in routine. That - rattle-brained gallop must have offended every instinct in him. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll not get on that train. I’ll go no farther. I’ll appeal to the - police,” he raved. “Give me my share of that money and I’ll go home.” - </p> - <p> - “I have mixed it all together—gambling money and all! I would not - have you traveling on gambling money, Judge.” My pertness added to his - anger. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have you arrested, so help me—” - </p> - <p> - “Hold on before you put the binding word to that oath, Judge Kingsley. If - you dare to put me in the jug away out here away from home, I’ll yank you - in as an embezzler of town money—and I’ve got an uncle who is first - selectman of the town! A little telegraphing will do the trick. Now let’s - both of us throw away our bombs. The fuses are sizzling! Climb aboard.” - </p> - <p> - He ground his teeth and climbed! - </p> - <p> - A fine sort of a brindled, cross-eyed hen was I setting to hatch my - son-in-law hopes! But a mood of recklessness was sweeping me then. - </p> - <p> - I did not buy tickets; I paid cash fares to the conductor, naming a - station I culled from the folder. I was not sure what the limits of the - Potlatch country were; I proposed to drop in with somebody on the train, - if I could manage it discreetly, and post myself by asking questions. - </p> - <p> - I saw no likely subjects in the car where we were riding—the - passengers were mostly women—so I slicked up my silk hat, fixed it - at a confident and compelling angle, and went out into the smoking-car. - </p> - <p> - As I have just said, the spirit of recklessness was flaming in me. I did - not dare to let it die down. I lashed my courage and my craziness both - together. I was bitterly afraid I might drop back into that paralyzing - despondency I had felt back there on the Dakota prairies. That meant that - I would become a useless quitter. Only by dint of holding myself in that - desperate mood where I proposed to let chance have its way with me, and to - grab in on anything that offered, would I have gone through so brazenly - with the affair on which I soon found myself entering. It was merely - another gamble, it seemed to me after I was in it. It was taking my mind - off my more private affairs, even as the poker game had distracted my - attention. - </p> - <p> - I marched through to the front of the smoking-car where the train-boy was - arranging his little stock, bought a paper, and walked slowly back up the - aisle with a glance to right and left at the faces of the men, hoping to - get a rise from that “likely subject” I was hunting for. - </p> - <p> - One man returned my glance with interest. - </p> - <p> - After I sat down, well up in the car, I looked over the top of the - newspaper and saw that the stranger’s interest in me continued. The chap - had a broad face, liquor-mottled. After a while he unscrewed the top of a - flask and sucked in a long drink. Then he worked his shoulders, jerked at - the bottom of his waistcoat, wriggled his arms, and displayed other - symptoms of a man who is trying to brace up and to pull himself together. - At last he derricked himself out of his seat and swayed up the car aisle. - He divided glances between my plug-hat and the frock-coat. - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me, but it’s the clothes,” said the stranger. - </p> - <p> - I nodded amiably. - </p> - <p> - “I wouldn’t butt in and speak to you if it wasn’t for the clothes.” - </p> - <p> - Once more I was having it impressed on me that a plug-hat and a frock-coat - seemed to be good reliable openers in the jack-pot of chance. I reckoned - I’d play the hand. - </p> - <p> - “You’re not a parson.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m far from it, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “The farthest from it I know is to be a lawyer. I spotted you for a - lawyer. If you are one I want to talk with you.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m a lawyer. Sit down,” was my cheerful lie. - </p> - <p> - The stranger hauled out his flask. “Do you ever indulge?” - </p> - <p> - “No.” - </p> - <p> - “So much the better. Lawyers ought to keep their brains cool. Seeing that - you’ve got the brains and propose to keep ’em cool, I’ve got to - keep up my nerve—and so I’ll take a drink.” He sucked at the flask - again. “Where do you live?” - </p> - <p> - “In the East.” - </p> - <p> - “Then you don’t know this country and the laws out in this section,” said - the stranger, showing his disappointment. - </p> - <p> - “Oh yes, I do; I used to live out here. That’s why I happen to be here - now. I’m investigating investments for Eastern capital.” - </p> - <p> - My new acquaintance leaned dose, so close that his whisky-saturated breath - left vapor on my cheeks. - </p> - <p> - “I have found out something that’s big. I thought I could handle it - myself. I have started out to handle it myself. But when I saw you I said - to myself, ‘There’s a squire, and he knows law and probably his brains are - cooler than mine.’ I’ve got the secret and I’ve got the grit, but I need - law, too—and I ain’t sure of all the fine points. I want you to come - along with me and stand at my back and hand me the fine points as I need - ’em. What do you charge per day for peddling law?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have to know what the deal is first.” - </p> - <p> - “Can’t tell you.” - </p> - <p> - I was getting a little shaky on the proposition and raised the paper in - front of my face and appeared to lose interest in matters of law. After a - time the red-faced individual tapped on the paper with his knuckle, as one - would tap on a door. I pulled my shield to one side. - </p> - <p> - “A chap hates to let go of a big thing to a stranger, even if that - stranger is a lawyer. I have walked past a dozen law-offices without - daring to go in. Perhaps you don’t realize what a big thing I’ve got. Now - listen here! Suppose you were a fellow like I am—a prospector—and - was digging around the record-books, looking up land titles, mineral - grants, and so forth, and got on to a trail that you followed up and found - that a new city had been laid out and lots sold off and buildings going - up, and all that—all on a location that wasn’t legal? Mind you, I - ain’t naming any place. But it’s on a section that land-grabbers got hold - of a long time ago. And they were such hungry land-grabbers that they - stretched lines to take in everything that was loose around those parts. - There was no one to make any holler about it. It was just so much extra - land and it didn’t look like real money.” - </p> - <p> - “I have so much business of my own that I’m not interested in making - guesses at the business of somebody else,” I remarked. I was in that thing - about as deep as I wanted to be. - </p> - <p> - “But how do I know anything about you?” - </p> - <p> - “Honors are even!” - </p> - <p> - The stranger knuckled his forehead, trying to think. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want to trig the best thing I ever got hold of in my life because - I didn’t buy a little law for to grease the runway,” he said at last. “I - may as well tell you—without giving out names and places—that - those land-grabbers hooked in a section that belonged to a soldiers’ grant—and - that’s why no one ever made a holler. There don’t seem to be any - particular heirs to side-tracked soldiers’ grants that have never been - thought worth much. No timber, you see; only plain land. But plain land is - mighty good property when a railroad takes a notion to build on to it and - comes to an end there and a city starts.” The client began to show - excitement. “They have laid out lots and built and they haven’t got - straight title. I have found it out.” - </p> - <p> - “That doesn’t seem reasonable,” I said. “Railroads and men who are - building cities do not make such mistakes.” - </p> - <p> - “But they have this time. The same money that grabbed the land has built - the railroad. They think they have got it all buttoned up. They didn’t - want to expose themselves by starting a movement to make their title - straight. They reckon they’ll be able to bluff it out with money and pull - and influence down to Boise. That will be easier than to chase around and - establish title to a soldiers’ grant. But, by thunder! they can’t stretch - or shrink the hide of old earth! There are set points that have got to be - measured from and the measurements will tell the story. And re-locations - will have to stand—for the law of the United States can’t be built - over when the holler is made.” - </p> - <p> - I guess I didn’t show much interest—I was afraid to show any. I - hoped the man would shut up and go away. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you believe what I am telling you?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - “I am merely wondering how it comes about that you know so much, more than - everybody else about a section of land that has been surveyed for a - railroad and a new city.” - </p> - <p> - “My father was a pioneer in this country. One day, after they began to - build the railroad, I was in the record-office and happened to remember - some of the things he told me about the days when they were grabbing land - in these parts. I looked up records, I did measuring, I did some - reckoning, and within the last two days I have made sure that I’ve got the - bind on the city of Breed.” - </p> - <p> - In his excitement he spat out the name. Then he promptly began to damn - himself. “I never ought to take a drink of liquor,” he declared. “But when - it came to me that I could run in there and re-locate the best hunk of - that land, I reckoned I needed to have my nerve with me, and so I’ve been - bracing my nerve. But the trouble with me is, when my nerve is braced my - tongue is loose. Now I suppose I’ve got to take you in! But I’m dangerous. - However, I’ll take you in.” - </p> - <p> - I didn’t say anything. - </p> - <p> - “What do you get a day for your best law work?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t work by the day.” I wondered just how lawyers did work. - </p> - <p> - “Well, then, name your price for standing by me against the sharks they’ll - bring to try to beat me out. I don’t know anything about hiring lawyers.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll take half.” I thought that remark would send him hipering away. - </p> - <p> - My client’s face promptly showed the color of a ripe damson. He tried to - say something and merely clucked. After a struggle he managed to control - his temper and his voice. He leaned forward and clutched my knees. He - spoke low, for there were other passengers near, but the rasp in his tones - made up for any lack of emphasis. - </p> - <p> - “My name is Peter Dragg. If you have never heard of me, ask somebody about - me. Ask any one between Buffalo Hump and Cour d’Alene. I’ve had a lot of - practice in doing things to men who have got in my way. What I’ll do to - you if you don’t back up will put red rings around the moon.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, then, consider I’m discharged!” - </p> - <p> - “From what?” - </p> - <p> - “From my position as your lawyer.” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t hired you.” - </p> - <p> - “Then suppose you cast off those grappling-hooks,” I suggested, for his - clutch on my knees hurt my flesh and my feelings. When he did not let go, - I reached down slowly, grabbed his hands and began to pry. - </p> - <p> - Not a man about us noticed what was going on—the newspaper that I - had dropped covered our hands. It was tense and silent testing out which - was the better man in that clinch. He had a handsome little grip of his - own, I’ll admit, but I had diver’s hooks at the ends of my arms and I - bested him. - </p> - <p> - “I quit!” he growled, after a time. “Leave go!” - </p> - <p> - “Listen,” said I. “I’m not a lawyer.” - </p> - <p> - “You lie!” - </p> - <p> - “I <i>did</i> lie, but not now. You pass on about your business.” - </p> - <p> - “It isn’t my own business any longer—I have put you wise to it.” - </p> - <p> - “But I’m forgetting it. I have plenty else on my mind.” - </p> - <p> - “You don’t get past with that kind of bluff,” he sneered. “You intend to - beat me to it, but you can’t.” - </p> - <p> - “Look here, I’m coming across square with you,” I protested. “You came and - jammed a lot of information on to me. I didn’t ask for it.” - </p> - <p> - “I say you coaxed it out of me. Now you’ve got to come in and give me law - on a decent lay. If you don’t I’ll do you!” - </p> - <p> - “I’m not a <i>lawyer</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “I know better! You’re tied up with me—you’ve got to stick to me.” - </p> - <p> - “But I have important matters which will take all my time.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll take your time from now on.” - </p> - <p> - “Look here! I propose to go on and mind my own business!” - </p> - <p> - “Then you’re spoken for! I’ll tend to you before you get a chance to butt - in on <i>my</i> business.” - </p> - <p> - He leaned back in his seat and pushed his coat aside, inviting my - attention by a downward glance. - </p> - <p> - He was packing a gun on each hip’. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll give you about ten minutes’ recess to think the thing over,” he - stated. “If you try to leave this train I’ll be after you!” - </p> - <p> - He went down the car, turned over a scat, and faced me. - </p> - <p> - I was in a fine way to attend to the business of Judge Kingsley and - myself! Whether I went into that fellow’s scheme or did not go in, it - seemed all the same. In those days, according to what I had read, they - were very careless about handling firearms in some parts of the West, and - it looked to me as if I had dropped into one of those sections. He took - another pull from his flask. The uncertainty of what that intoxicated - gentleman might feel impelled to do to me next, in the confusion of his - fuddlement, made the shivers run up and down my back. In the ten anxious - minutes that passed he pulled that flask four times, and every time he - reached for it I made a motion to dodge under the seat. The damnable part - of it was that nobody in the car was paying the least attention to us. - </p> - <p> - Then he came tottering up the aisle and lurched into the seat in front of - me. Between two hiccups he sandwiched a threatening, “Well?” Plainly, he - was well “pickled” and accordingly dangerous. And, on the other hand, - there was a hope for me in his condition. I concluded I might as well be - shot as scared to death. I couldn’t draw a deep breath as long as those - guns were on him. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what say?” he repeated. - </p> - <p> - “It’s all right!” I mumbled. “But let’s make it private. Listen! I’ll - whisper!” I leaned forward, sliding both hands along his legs, getting - close to his ear. I laid hands on both weapons and jerked myself back, - holding them low at my hips. - </p> - <p> - “Make one move and I’ll bore you,” I growled. “Go back to your seat. Go - quick!” - </p> - <p> - He went. I tucked the guns into my own pockets. - </p> - <p> - We passed the station to which I had paid fares, and I handed more money - to the conductor. I decided to stay on the train, hoping that my client - would arrive at his home town, whatever it was, and get off. But he kept - right on. - </p> - <p> - After a time he held up a handkerchief by one corner and waggled it, - giving me a drunken and moist wink. Evidently he wanted further conference - under a flag of truce, and I nodded agreement after I had made sure that - the guns could be come at easily. I agreed because I hoped I could make - some sensible arrangement to get rid of this particular bottle imp who had - landed himself on to my affairs. - </p> - <p> - “You think you’re a slick one, eh?” My hopes fell, for his tone did not - suggest compromise. “You’d better turn around and go back. You’re heading - into the wrong country. Will you go back?” - </p> - <p> - “What is the country?” - </p> - <p> - “Thought you said you used to live out this way!” - </p> - <p> - “I say, what is the country you’re speaking of?” - </p> - <p> - “The Potlatch section,” he growled. “You’d better not get as far as that. - You know Shan Benson, don’t you?” - </p> - <p> - “Maybe!” - </p> - <p> - “You know Ive Hacker, Binn Mingo, Cole Wass—all friends of mine!” - </p> - <p> - “What about it?” - </p> - <p> - “Pals, I say! All work together. Pull off our plays together.” - </p> - <p> - “Go ahead!” - </p> - <p> - “Go ahead!” he repeated, grinding his teeth. “We’ll go ahead and make a - pot roast of you in that plug-hat! Do you think I’m a lone-hander, without - friends? Haven’t you ever heard of Steer Bingham?” - </p> - <p> - My heart jumped. That was the of the names Jeff Dawlin had written down - for me. - </p> - <p> - “And I suppose you’re holding out Ike Dawlin for a—” I started, - giving him a sharp look. - </p> - <p> - He smacked his hand on his knee. “Yes, Ike Dawlin. That’s the kind of - friends I’ve got who will—” - </p> - <p> - “A fine bunch to be afraid of if they all are as handy by as Ike Dawlin!” - </p> - <p> - He stared at me. - </p> - <p> - “Ike Dawlin is East on a gold-brick game, and you know it,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “East—East—you plug-hat stiff! I’ll show you whether he’s East - or not!” - </p> - <p> - “He is East along with ‘Peacock’ Pratt.” - </p> - <p> - My cocksureness made him furious. - </p> - <p> - “By the jumped-up jeesicks, don’t you suppose I know when Ike Dawlin lands - back in the Potlatch country?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have to see him to believe it. Yes, or ‘Peacock’ Pratt!” - </p> - <p> - “You follow along on my heels and you’ll see both of ’em all right! - Next you’ll claim to be a friend of theirs, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh no! If I really thought Ike Dawlin was in the Potlatch instead of back - East I wouldn’t be headed this way. <i>There’s</i> one special man I - wouldn’t want to meet up with.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dragg bounced up and down on the seat in his rage. I had prodded him - as hard as I could in order to make sure that he knew what he was talking - about. - </p> - <p> - “Damn you!” he snorted. “Then you’ll get your dose of Ike Dawlin. I won’t - eat nor sleep till I find him. And he’ll burn up the road getting to you. - Ike Dawlin, eh? You don’t dare to come on!” - </p> - <p> - “Keep your eye on me. But if you can dig up Ike Dawlin in these parts come - around and I’ll hand you a present—maybe I’ll hand back your guns!” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dragg by that time was not a pleasant companion and I got up and went - back through the train. He started after me, and then thought better of - it. Probably he reflected that he had me either way. If I got frightened - and went back he would be well rid of me as a rival in his scheme; if I - came on he had Dawlin and the rest—and I surely believed his word - about Dawlin’s whereabouts. I did not know whether I was mighty glad that - my chase was being guided in such handsome manner or was so dreadfully - scared by the prospects just ahead of me that I was half minded to jump - off the train; my feelings were very much mixed up. - </p> - <p> - However, when I met the gloomy stare of Zebulon Kingsley I grinned—I - couldn’t help it. There was a lot of grim humor in the situation. - </p> - <p> - “Been raking in more dirty money, I suppose,” he snarled, mistaking the - nature of my smile. - </p> - <p> - “No, I have turned a better trick, sir. I have just met up with the most - obliging chap I have found in a long time. He knows the man who fooled you - into buying that gold brick. He is going to find him for us!” - </p> - <p> - “Bah!” sneered the judge. “This is only a wild, crazy, helter-skelter - chase for—” - </p> - <p> - “I’m telling you the truth, sir! I never saw a man so enthusiastic about a - kindness for strangers! He just told me that he wouldn’t eat or sleep till - he had found that fellow. Why, he is so headlong about the thing that I’m - afraid he’ll find the chap before we’re ready to meet him in proper - style!” - </p> - <p> - “Hump!” sneered the judge, not taking a mite of stock in me. - </p> - <p> - I walked away and sat down by myself. There was sad truth in what I just - told Kingsley. I was not ready to meet Ike Dawlin and “Peacock” Pratt. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XVIII—THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ROYAL CITY - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>’LL confess that - it took me a little while to screw up my resolution to the point where I - could tell myself that I was entirely ready and willing to meet Ike Dawlin - in the circle of his associates. - </p> - <p> - We had left behind us brown fields where wheat grew, and had passed - through the Idaho prune-orchards—a brakeman told me they were - prune-orchards. We had come into the hill country and the railroad - wriggled its way along the foot of the canon. - </p> - <p> - I took it for granted that Mr. Dragg proposed to stay with me. Every - little while he came and set his nose against the glass of the car’s - forward door and glared at me. When we stopped at a station I stuck my - head out of the window and made sure that he did not leave the train. The - two of us were playing a sort of “even Stephen” game—silent - peek-a-boo. I kept carefully away from Judge Kingsley, for I did not care - to have Dragg report that I was in the company of an elderly man with a - roll of chin-whiskers; Mr. Dawlin might recognize the description and take - alarm. - </p> - <p> - The judge sat close to the window, wrapped in his cloak, and scowled up at - the canon’s walls closing in behind as the railroad wound along. He looked - as if he felt like a man headed for the innermost chambers of tophet, with - the doors slamming behind him. As the hills shut in to the north, my - feelings were of that sort, anyway! - </p> - <p> - And so night came! - </p> - <p> - I had been asking a lot of questions of that obliging brakeman. My folder - named a terminus of the road and I had paid to that point, but I learned - that the railroad had been stretched along six or eight miles farther down - the canon so as to serve a mushroom town which was the depot for a freshly - discovered mining section. - </p> - <p> - When the train stopped at the old terminus, both Mr. Dragg and I found - ourselves very curious in regard to each other; had it not been for the - glass in the car door we would have bumped noses when we hurried to make - mutual inspection. But he stayed on the train—and so did I. - </p> - <p> - It was a young, a very young railroad, that last bit. The train crawled - like a caterpillar—and that’s a good description, for the cars went - bumping up slowly over the bulges in the track. Every now and then we got - a side-slat which made me think we were going into the creek. - </p> - <p> - I was too busy worrying about that train to give much thought to what was - going to happen to me when I landed in “Royal City” along with Mr. Dragg. - Such, I was informed, was the name of the new town. They certainly do pick - good names to build up to in the West, just as Seth Dorsey, of Carmel, - built a house on to the brass doorknob he found in the road. - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley was not affording me much encouragement; he sat and hung on - to the arm of his seat and glared unutterable reproach at me. - </p> - <p> - I was considerably glad to get off that train. - </p> - <p> - But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a - cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that - railroad. - </p> - <p> - My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my - knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that - introduction to the town. - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among the - hills the darkness was something a man could eat! We stumbled over - upheavals of muddy earth, stepped into more holes, and made our way across - the especially treacherous places along single planks which were half - submerged in mire. A few lanterns, tied to short posts, were dim beacons - to direct new arrivals from the railroad to the heart of the “city.” Quite - a glare of lights marked the center of business activity. The slope of the - hillside was dotted with bits of radiance from uncurtained windows. In - that darkness only those points of light hinted at the extent of this new - town. The dots were widely scattered, showing that Royal City was - ambitiously endeavoring to cover as much ground as possible. - </p> - <p> - After threading the course marked by the lanterns we came to a stretch of - pulpy mud which was bordered by a sidewalk of four planks abreast, - evidently the main street of the place. There were buildings of - considerable size on both sides of the thoroughfare, but these buildings - certainly did put Royal City into the mushroom class. There was not a bit - of stone or brick nor a clapboard or shingle in evidence. The buildings - were constructed of beams, boards, laths, and tarred paper. They gave me - the feeling that I could pop them between my hands like I’d pop a blown-up - paper bag. - </p> - <p> - A lantern, hung on the corner of a building containing a store, lighted up - a sign, “Empire Avenue.” The sign over the door of the store advertised - the place as the “Imperial Emporium.” A fairly huge structure with - tarred-paper outer walls was indicated by its sign as being the “Imperial - Hotel.” - </p> - <p> - There was nothing bashful about the names picked in Royal City! - </p> - <p> - The windows of the “Imperial Hotel” shed plenty of light upon the sidewalk - in front of it, and I caught sight of Dragg hurrying past as if he wished - to be swallowed up in the shadow’s on the other side. The man had reached - the street ahead of us, for he had been in the smoking-car at the front of - the train. - </p> - <p> - I took a chance and led Kingsley into the “Imperial Hotel” and registered - in a book that a man in shirtsleeves tossed at me. I wrote “Adam Mann” and - “A. Fellow”—the “A” standing for “Another,” of course, and that - wasn’t bad for a quick grab at names. I did not care to advertise the name - of Zebulon Kingsley to certain gentlemen in those parts. - </p> - <p> - From the corner of my eye I saw Dragg peering in at the window when the - man in shirt-sleeves led us upstairs to a room which held two narrow cots - and an unpainted washstand with bowl and pitcher. The walls were of tarred - paper. - </p> - <p> - “Is this all you can give us for a room?” asked the judge, as sour as - vinegar. - </p> - <p> - “What do you expect in a new town—marble floors and gold door-knobs? - I have taken care of better men than you and they haven’t kicked.” He - turned on me; I had not said anything. “You seem to have a rush of - plug-hat to the brain!” - </p> - <p> - His impudence gave me my chance. Dragg had located me at that hotel and I - wondered if I couldn’t turn a little trick. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll move on and look for a landlord with better manners,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “Go ahead,” advised the man. “A lot of tenderfeet do the same thing and - after they’ve taken a look at the other place they come back here and beg - for a room.” - </p> - <p> - On the street I kept in the shadows. After a time we came to another hulk - of paper and boards. Its sign read, “Pallace Hotel.” - </p> - <p> - That extravagance in L’s might hint at generosity, I pondered, but I had - my doubts. - </p> - <p> - The “Palace” had a bar-room in the front of the house and there were many - customers crowded at it. - </p> - <p> - “We’d better go back to the other hotel, bad as it is,” suggested the - judge. “There are drunken men in there and it is a wicked place.” - </p> - <p> - I put up my hand and pushed Kingsley back from the window into the gloom. - </p> - <p> - “When one has business with wicked men those men must be followed to a - wicked place, sir. I found fault with the other hotel on purpose. I didn’t - intend to stay there after I knew that a certain man thought he had - located me for the night. It’s a wise plan to keep wicked men guessing. - Stay back here a moment!” - </p> - <p> - I stepped along and stared in at the window, hiding my face with my - forearm. - </p> - <p> - I saw Dragg at the bar, and Dragg had a man by the arm and was whispering - in his ear. Dragg’s face expressed huge pleasure. He slapped the man on - the back and bought drinks. After they had tossed off the liquor, Dragg - resumed his business at the man’s ear. - </p> - <p> - This man stood out in that slouchy group at the bar as a peacock would - stand out among pullets in a hen-yard. He was distinctly a loud noise in - the matter of wardrobe. He would have made a lurid smear even among the - high dressers who top the crests of the Broadway crowds between - Forty-second Street and Greeley’s statue. He was of that sort of men who - are paunchy and seem to be glad of it, because the extra beam affords them - opportunity to display variegated waistcoats to better advantage. I - realized that I was looking on “Peacock” Pratt. - </p> - <p> - After a few moments I tiptoed back to Kingsley, and, without speaking, - propelled him to a spot where he could get a view of the men at the bar. - </p> - <p> - “Do you recognize anybody there, sir?” - </p> - <p> - “There he is—the man who brought the brick—one of the infernal - robbers!” stuttered Kingsley. He was fairly beside himself with sudden - excitement. His eyes had fallen first on the most conspicuous figure in - the room. “He has my money. I want it. I’ll—” - </p> - <p> - But I pushed him back when he started to rush into the hotel. “I guess - that man wouldn’t hand you his roll if you ran in there and snapped your - fingers under his nose, Judge Kingsley. You recognize him, eh? That’s - enough for now. I’ll tell you that your friend, there, is known in this - section as ‘Peacock’ Pratt, and he’s a good man for us to stay away from - for the present.” - </p> - <p> - “How do you know so much about these men—how do you know where to - come to find them—dragging me across the continent?” demanded the - old man. His fury at sight of that smug blackleg had to blow off and I was - the nearest object. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have to confess that I didn’t know for sure I was to see this man - here to-night. I had my line out and a good bait on, but I didn’t believe - I’d get a bite so soon. You must keep cool, Judge Kingsley—keep cool - and out of sight. Simply seeing that man isn’t getting your money. We’ve - got considerable of a job ahead of us.” - </p> - <p> - The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the - shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish of - his hand, Pratt gave orders to the bartender to fill all glasses. We heard - his hoarse voice above all others. He tossed a bill on the bar and he and - Dragg left in company and climbed the stairs leading up from the hotel - office. - </p> - <p> - “Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I left the other place and came over here - hoping I could sneak close enough to a certain chap to overhear what he - proposes to do about a little matter that I suggested to him a few hours - ago. I see that he has found somebody to talk to. We’ve got a handy sort - of house for eavesdropping, but I want you to remember that the other - fellow can hear us, too. Come along with me and keep your head. A lot - depends!” The “Pallace” was evidently more of a free and easy tavern than - the “Imperial.” There was no register on the planks which served for an - office desk. The proprietor looked up at us and leisurely lighted his pipe - before answering my questions regarding accommodations. - </p> - <p> - “Four dollars apiece—two in a room. Pay now. Includes breakfast, and - there’s a cold, stand-up supper out in the dining-room.” - </p> - <p> - “We bought box lunches from the brakeman on the train; we don’t want - supper,” I explained. - </p> - <p> - “Price just the same. Supper is there, and I ain’t to blame if you don’t - want to eat it,” stated the proprietor. “You needn’t look for any place to - write your names,” he added, noting that my eyes seemed to be searching - for something that should be on the desk. “We don’t keep books. And half - the men who come along here can’t write, anyway.” - </p> - <p> - I laid the money in his grimy hand and he fished two cards from his vest - pocket and scrawled “Brakfust” on each with a lead-pencil. - </p> - <p> - “Give ’em up to the table-girl in the morning. Now, gents, all the - rooms up-stairs are just alike and there ain’t no locks on the doors. Go - up and help yourselves to any room that ain’t being used. I hope you don’t - snore, either of you. It’s apt to start gun-play from them that’s trying - to get to sleep in other rooms, and the walls we’ve got up-stairs don’t - stop bullets. Sleep hearty!” - </p> - <p> - The judge followed me, muttering his opinions in regard to the hotel - methods in Royal City. - </p> - <p> - “Hush!” I warned. “Tread lightly and keep still. It’s a stroke of luck - that he lets us pick our own rooms.” - </p> - <p> - Smoky, stinking kerosene-lamps lighted dimly the corridor up-stairs. - Unplaned planks formed the floor, and here again were the walls of tarred - paper that had enabled Royal City to grow overnight. Some of the doors - that gave upon the corridor were open, and the rooms were dark and - apparently untenanted. Light shone from chinks in the walls here and - there, in other places, showing that guests were in their rooms. - </p> - <p> - I tiptoed cautiously along the planks with ear out at each point where - light sifted from crannies. Then I grasped the judge by the arm and thrust - him into a room. I lighted the tiny lamp and motioned the old man to take - a seat in the single chair. I sat on the edge of the bed. - </p> - <p> - When a drunken man is on a topic that sops up all his interest, he not - only iterates, he reiterates. It is hard to pry a wabbly tongue loose from - the favorite topic. Intoxication seems to make the subject fresher and - more entrancing with each repetition. The fuddled mind gets into a - run-around, as men lost in snow or fog keep on traveling and always return - to the same place. I had no means of determining how many times Dragg had - been over the subject with Mr. Pratt, but that latter gentleman kept - snarling out protests that the narrator did not heed. It was a story about - how a stranger in a plug-hat—a shark of a lawyer—had - hypnotized him, Dragg, on the train and had sucked out of him all his - plans, projects, and secrets in regard to the new city of Breed and now - proposed to rob said Dragg of all profits and rake-offs, and if a man - could do that and get away with it what would be the use in any honest man - starting out in the world and turning a trick for himself, as Dragg had - proposed to do? So on and on, he gabbled. - </p> - <p> - “Say, look here, ‘Dangerflag’”—and this seemed a good nickname for - Dragg’s red face—“don’t con me any more as the human charlotte russe—the - top part of me is hard! There ain’t any such thing as hypnotizing a man - when he doesn’t want to be hypnotized. You were drunk and you slit open - your little bundle of playthings for him to look at.” - </p> - <p> - “If I wasn’t hypnotized how did he get two guns off me—and I sitting - there not able to move hand or foot or wink my eyes?” - </p> - <p> - “I’d be more inclined to think you begged him to take ’em as a - guarantee of friendship, and offered to kiss him in the bargain,” sneered - Mr. Pratt. “I’ve seen you drunk, Dragg.” - </p> - <p> - “But I wasn’t to the give-my-shirt drunk stage that time,” insisted the - other. “I was hiring him for a lawyer—driving a sharp trade with him—and - then he hypnotized me and cleaned me out. And he’s over there in the other - hotel—and I’m going to get to him before he puts me out of business. - I’ll tell you again—” - </p> - <p> - “For the love of Jehoshaphat <i>don’t</i> tell me again!” protested Pratt. - “I have got it by heart.” - </p> - <p> - “But you haven’t told me where Ike Dawlin is. He is the only man that - shark is afraid of. He told me so. He reckons that Ike is in the East. - That makes him bold to do me dirt. I made believe that I know where Ike - is. I tried to scare him, but the bluff didn’t go. He is sure that Ike - ain’t West. You’re Ike’s regular partner, and you know where he is. I need - him. Send for him, and we’ll hold that plug-hatted skyootus here till Ike - can whirl in and back him off. Blast him! I could have dropped him if this - was ten years ago, even if he was from the East, and wore a plug-hat—and - I could have got away with it—but the law sharks have been and tied - us all up.” - </p> - <p> - “You want to think twice before you try gun-play on a man from the East - who comes wearing a plug-hat,” advised Pratt. “It’s a pretty good sign - that he is from the upper shelves back home, and somebody will be slammed - hard if he gets hurt. Keep your hands off a plug-hatter, ‘Dangerflag.’ I - don’t believe Ike would dip in, even if he were here. He’s too comfortable - just now to play scarecrow for your private interests. He might, if I - asked him to, of course. But I don’t see any reason for asking him.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll give you a half share in the Breed job,” promised Dragg. “I’ve told - you I would if you can gaff that law shark.” - </p> - <p> - “The Breed job looks like digging into a national bank vault with your - thumb-nail,” remarked Mr. Pratt, listlessly. “A lot of law and - complications! This re-locating business runs against snags always. I - don’t mind telling you that Ike and I find the old game a lot easier when - we want to clean up an easy make. I’ll be blamed if we could sell mining - stock the last time we went East. What do you know about that? And then we - nudged each other and turned around and speared three easy propositions on - the good old gold-brick game. You wouldn’t believe they’d still fall—but - they do it. It’s simply a case of go hunt in the odd corners for the right - man. They’re there, waiting. We peeled five thousand off the back of an - old town treasurer—as soft money as we ever pulled. A town - treasurer, mind you! We didn’t have to go farther into the bush than that! - You can’t expect us to be very enthusiastic about a claim-jumping - proposition just now—with plenty in our Dockets. Gimme a match! When - you go to fighting a boom city and a railroad crowd, you’ve got your work - cut out for you—and just now I’m feeling a lot like loafing.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt was very wordy—but he was almighty interesting. Who was - hugging the most money—he or Dawlin? - </p> - <p> - It was plain to me that the town treasurer of Levant was holding in with - difficulty. He twisted on his chair and his face was gray with anger and - his lips moved. I scowled a warning. - </p> - <p> - “Well, you can loaf on <i>my</i> job all right if you’ll grab in,” snapped - Dragg, temper in his voice. “I’m not asking you to break your neck. You - have got the thing sized up all wrong. I don’t expect to own Breed. I’m - going to operate on bluff. The Breed boomers and the railroad will come - across rather than have the city set back by a hold-up of everything while - land titles are being settled. If they’ll hand me cash, I’ll keep still, - surrender my claim, and the new lines can be ran and locations filed - before anybody wakes up. They’ll see the point all right.” - </p> - <p> - “And I reckon that the lawyer you hired on the train sees it all right, - too,” commented Pratt. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know what made me blow myself to him after I had dodged lawyers - so long,” mourned Dragg. “But the way he was dressed made him look so - mighty solid and reliable and honest—and his eyes were nice and - brown! He got me! I tell you I was hypnotized. It wasn’t just because I - had budge in me. But he’ll never get to Breed ahead of <i>me</i>. That’ll - be his game, of course.” - </p> - <p> - “Better make your getaway to-night and beat him to it,” suggested Pratt. - </p> - <p> - Dragg was profane in his rejection of this counsel. He stated that Pratt - ought to have more sense than to think a project of that order could be - settled by a sprinting-match. - </p> - <p> - “You know what Callas prairie is in March as well as I do,” he sputtered. - “It would be a gamble which one of us would get across first if it comes - to a race through that ‘’dobe’ mud. It’s all luck whether a - stage-coach or a wagon or a cayuse gets through. I’d have gone around and - come into Breed from the south, but I thought I’d rather tackle sixteen - miles of Callas mud in March than ride six hundred miles in jerk-water - trains. See here, Pratt, I’ve got to have time to operate this thing - without that shark hanging to me. He’s afraid of Ike. I don’t know what - made him tell me so—but he was so mighty sure that Ike was East that - he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little so as to aggravate me, I reckon. - He has got to be held here in Royal City till I can pull off my job in - Breed. I’m not going to have him racing me around over the country, with a - chance of his queering the whole proposition. Now come into this thing and - help me out, will you?” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt yawned audibly and allowed that he would not. - </p> - <p> - “Then get word to Ike Dawlin for me,” pleaded Dragg. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” drawled Pratt, indifferently. “I - won’t send for him. That’s final!” - </p> - <p> - I think it would have been hard telling at that moment who was more - disappointed, Mr. Dragg or myself! - </p> - <p> - I had reckoned specially on Mr. Dawlin. He was boss of the gang, according - to his brother’s telling. In all Likelihood he was better thatched with - greenbacks than anybody else in the band. - </p> - <p> - “Furthermore,” stated Mr. Pratt, “I can’t be bothered with your business. - I have some of my own to attend to. I’m going to jump the train to-morrow - and get back to some place where it’s safe to wear real clothes instead of - a diving-suit or overalls.” - </p> - <p> - And so I was going to lose Mr. Pratt! - </p> - <p> - To be sure, I had not exactly made up my mind what to do with him if he - remained in Royal City; but if he were to start on some kind of a hike and - we were obliged to chase him we would betray ourselves and our case, sure - as fate. Mr. Pratt was certainly no fool, and would know how to cover a - trail the moment he suspected that somebody was chasing him. But I could - see no reasonable way of keeping an independent gentleman of his nature in - that dump of a Royal City. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this - Breed—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone. - “About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either be - bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game, Dragg.” - He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this hog-wallow. Ike - and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by gad! There’s no clear - title back of the land. We figured we would jump in.” - </p> - <p> - “You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the - citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re - skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as to - be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got just as - mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where he belongs - in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.” - </p> - <p> - The other muttered. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put my - name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you—yes! - But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.” - </p> - <p> - “But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.” - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to put - anything over on this town, with the people here in their present temper, - will get slammed into the pen—and there’s no knowing when they’ll - let him out!” - </p> - <p> - And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in - desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m no - guesser. - </p> - <p> - “So it’s back up the line for me—where I can buy a cocktail and get - the smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!” - </p> - <p> - But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge Kingsley - had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a little bet - that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could see that the - judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr. Pratt. - </p> - <p> - “Sit here and don’t make a sound!” I whispered, and I pussy-footed for the - door. - </p> - <p> - He opened his mouth and I shook my fist at him. I hoped I had on a - demoniac expression—I tried to put one on. - </p> - <p> - “Go to the devil, you and Dawlin, too!” barked Dragg. “If I’ve got to - handle this thing single-handed, the make will be all the bigger for me. - I’m all done worrying about an Eastern shyster beating me out of the game - on my own stamping-ground. If he tries to take the stage in the morning to - cross Callas prairie, I’ll smash that plug-hat down over his eyes, yank - them guns out from under his coat-tail and blow him into the middle of - next week. I’ll think up a story that will let me out.” - </p> - <p> - Ah, so Mr. Dragg must be considered along with ‘Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin! - </p> - <p> - I left the room and hurried down-stairs, hoping the stores had not closed. - My mind was mighty busy! I found a store that was still open. It was the - “Imperial Emporium” and seemed to be well named, for I was able to - purchase there a pair of shears, some spirit gum, a carpenter’s - lead-pencil, and a huge ball of twine. Then I hustled back to Zebulon - Kingsley, who sat livid and rigid, listening to the bragging of the man - who had robbed him. - </p> - <p> - I suppose the stuff I tossed on the bed looked mighty queer to him, and I - wasn’t just sure about all of it myself. But I did not dare to ask any - leading questions in Royal City about claim-jumping and I decided to - tumble along alone, doing my little best as an amateur. - </p> - <p> - Zebulon Kingsley was in a sufficiently volcanic state of mind without any - more stirring up. - </p> - <p> - It’s a wonder that I ever got away with what I started on next in my case. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps his settled idea that I had lost my mind assisted in taming him - enough so that he submitted in his fear that I might become violent. I - look back now and wonder how I ever presumed so greatly even in the - emergency that had arisen. But if “Peacock” Pratt were to remain in Royal - City and if Ike Dawlin would join him, as I anticipated, the man with me - must not be known as Zebulon Kingsley, of Levant, their victim. So I stood - in front of Judge Kingsley and issued an ultimatum. - </p> - <p> - I’ll never forget the look on his face! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIX—THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE judge sat there - with his hat and coat on; the looks of that room did not invite anybody to - take any comfort in it. - </p> - <p> - I leaned close to his ear and told him to stand up. Then I began to peel - off his wrappings—overcoat, undercoat, and waistcoat. But when I - unbuttoned his collar he pushed me away. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll explain it out to you just as soon as I get a chance, sir,” I - whispered. “But we mustn’t make any noise here.” I gathered my courage. - “I’m going to cut off your beard!” I had to clap my hand over his mouth to - keep him quiet. “I can’t argue now! If Pratt lays eyes on you he’ll - stampede. We mustn’t let any of that money get away.” I pushed him back - upon the chair. “Keep down your hands,” I urged. “It’s got to be done. - Your money is at stake—remember that! What’s a few whiskers compared - with ten thousand dollars!” I was talking just as if I expected to swap - hair for money. - </p> - <p> - I confess I did not have much of a plan worked out just at that moment—but - certain notions were coming to me in sections, as one might say. And the - principal notion just then was that I must not let a set of whiskers, even - if they grew on Judge Kingsley, flag the whole proposition. That was the - first thing to look after, now that we were close to the game—change - his looks! - </p> - <p> - He realized as well as I that we couldn’t start any riot there on our side - of that paper partition. I don’t believe any other consideration would - have made him give in to me. If I had been getting his neck ready for the - ax his looks would not have been more wild. I clipped his beard as - carefully as I could with the shears and laid the tufts, as I removed - them, in a little heap on the bed. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt was thoroughly tired of hearing Mr. Dragg repeat himself; we - knew that because Mr. Pratt said so with a lot of vigor and stated that he - was going to bed in his own room. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dragg advised him to be up early and see what happened to the - “plug-hatter,” providing said “plug-hatter” tried to get away for Breed on - the stage. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll do it,” promised Mr. Pratt. “I haven’t been having much fun down in - this hog-wallow, and I need to have my feelings cheered up.” - </p> - <p> - Then he marched away down the corridor, making the whole building creak - and shiver. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Dragg had considerable to say to himself, in the way of rehearsing his - threats, while he was kicking off his shoes and getting ready for bed. - Then his mutterings ended in a rasping snore—and he was off! - </p> - <p> - I was glad he was asleep because that gave me a chance to talk to the - judge, keeping my voice down cautiously. - </p> - <p> - “I have some other plans, sir! I have had to think pretty quick! But the - talk between those scamps has given me a rather good idea, I think.” - </p> - <p> - “You seem to be wasting your time on a lot of silly business,” muttered - the judge. “This is boy’s play out of a detective dime novel, sir. We know - where one of the robbers is. We can have him arrested. We can put the - screws to him and find out where the other renegade is.” - </p> - <p> - “But that means going to law, Judge!” - </p> - <p> - “We must let the law handle it from now on.” - </p> - <p> - “We can’t afford to do that, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “But the law will—” - </p> - <p> - “The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up along - with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you don’t - want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold brick!” He - winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting those crooks - into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t much time to turn - around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. I reckon it’s going - to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” He cringed. “The law is - too slow and careful for us just now! They pulled that money off by a - trick. We must get it back by—— Well, I don’t know just yet - how we’ll get it back—but it won’t be by any law business.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?” - </p> - <p> - “I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told - him, calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to - keep his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him. - </p> - <p> - When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got ready - to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of the - room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his chin - scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle with - Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me. - </p> - <p> - On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a - human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed - the judge his countenance with his whiskers off. - </p> - <p> - “You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your - beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to - jump him too suddenly. - </p> - <p> - “If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve - done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard - anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder—so - bold that I came right out with it! - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how to - do it, for I did it once in my own case.” - </p> - <p> - I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not - depend on his hands for defense—he put up his foot and pushed me - away. I protested. - </p> - <p> - “There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a - mustache for you out of your own beard.” - </p> - <p> - “I won’t be cockawhooped up in any such style!” - </p> - <p> - “Are you going to let those men recognize you as the town treasurer of - Levant?” - </p> - <p> - He glared at me and kept his foot up. - </p> - <p> - “We’re after the money—we’re after the money!” I urged. “Just think - what a little thing this is you’re balking on, sir!” - </p> - <p> - “But you give me no hint as to how you expect to get the money! I’m at the - end of my patience. I won’t submit to any more foolishness.” - </p> - <p> - “This isn’t foolishness, Judge Kingsley! It’s a precaution we must take. - I’ve got a plan to keep those men from jumping out on us in the morning—and - they’ll be sure to see you.” I pushed down his foot and I picked up the - hair on the bed and looked resolute. “It’s got to be done, sir. I’m going - to do it!” - </p> - <p> - He gave in to me as he had in other cases when I became savage, but I - realized that fury boiled in him. - </p> - <p> - I made a mighty good job of it, if I do say so, but he angrily refused to - look at himself in the glass. I used all the hair in his beard and gave - him a mustache that fairly cut in half that hatchet face of his; his best - friend would not have known Judge Kingsley. - </p> - <p> - I advised him to go to bed and to be sure to sleep on his back so that the - mustache would not be disturbed. - </p> - <p> - I sharpened the carpenter’s pencil and hid the ball of twine under my - coat, the judge looking at me as savage as a bear. - </p> - <p> - “Now what?” he growled. - </p> - <p> - “Do you know anything about the right way of relocating a claim?” I asked. - “Anything in law about it?” - </p> - <p> - “It’s more likely to be described in the thieves’ catechism,” he snarled. - “I have never owned a copy!”. - </p> - <p> - That’s all the help I got from <i>him!</i> - </p> - <p> - Well, if I didn’t know much about the regular way, I reckoned I could make - considerable trouble in town by blundering along with a little way of my - own. So I tiptoed down-stairs. - </p> - <p> - Apparently Royal City had quit the job and gone to sleep. The hotel office - was dark, and when I stepped forth into the night there was no glimmer of - light anywhere. Even the lanterns that served as the city’s municipal - lighting-plant in the streets had burned out or had been blown out. It was - a case of grope, but I had looked about carefully when I went shopping and - had a pretty good memory for locations. - </p> - <p> - There was a little pile of laths at the corner of the hotel. I had noticed - them when I had lurked in the shadows with Judge Kingsley. I picked up a - lath and wrote on its side, well up toward one end, “Relocated. Dragg.” - Then I pushed the lath down into the mud at the corner of the hotel and - tied to it the end of the ball of twine. With several laths under my arm I - proceeded a few paces, unwinding the twine, and pushed another lath down - and knotted my string about its end. Thus I circumnavigated the hotel, - sticking down marked laths, knotting about them the twine. In this fashion - I calculated I had declared on one Dragg a re-location of the hotel site—or - rather made it seem that Dragg had tried on a clumsy trick to jump a land - claim. - </p> - <p> - With footsteps muffled by the mud of Royal City, moving unseen in the - night, I was truly a generous cuss. I located nothing for myself. I took - the “Imperial Emporium” for Pratt, and re-located the site of the - “Imperial Hotel” for Dawlin. Then I stole back into the tavern, taking off - my muddy shoes at the door. - </p> - <p> - That slatted bed and the snores pealing everywhere kept me awake nearly - all night, and next morning I was down before anybody else was stirring. - In the gray dawn out slouched from an inner room the landlord, yawning, - growling, blinking—beginning his day’s duties in a distinctly - grouchy frame of mind. - </p> - <p> - “What time does the stage-coach leave for Breed City?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Nobody but a fool would take a stage for Breed this time of year—but - a man who comes out here in March and mud-time, wearing a plug-hat, must - be a fool. So you’ll leave at ha’f pas’ six,” was the landlord’s genial - response. - </p> - <p> - “And what time is breakfast?” - </p> - <p> - “Time for you to get the stage. What do you want to ask such a cussed fool - question as that for? What do you think I’m getting up to do at this hour - in the morning?” Well, I wasn’t in any jolly mood myself. “I didn’t know - but you might be up to sing a hymn to the morning star.” - </p> - <p> - “Say, you’re looking for trouble, ain’t you?” bawled the landlord. He came - from behind the counter. “I’ll cave that plug—” - </p> - <p> - That made me good and mad! “No, I’m looking for cartridges to fit my - guns,” I stated, pulling both weapons. “I’ve got only twelve left—six - in each chamber.” - </p> - <p> - My friend checked himself so suddenly that he nearly tumbled on his nose. - </p> - <p> - “Does the store open early?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir,” said the landlord, quite respectfully. - </p> - <p> - “Then I’ll take a stroll up that way. Make my bacon thick and be very - careful not to fry the juice out of it.” There’s nothing like establishing - a bit of a reputation in a strange town, especially if a fellow has - planted seeds of trouble; I could see those laths through the window! I - had begun to feel rather devilish. . - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “We aim to please.” - </p> - <p> - I glanced at my work of the evening before as I sauntered along the plank - walk. The new laths and the white twine showed up well against the black - adobe mud. - </p> - <p> - Sounds of housekeeping, clatter of dishes and of stove-covers indicated - that the proprietor of the “Emporium” dwelt over the store. I rattled the - door, and at last the man appeared and unlocked it from within. He was - surly and slatted the box of cartridges across the counter. - </p> - <p> - “Is it because you don’t care for early customers that you have built a - fence of laths and string about your place?” I inquired. - </p> - <p> - “There ain’t no such thing there.” But he hurried to the door. He gazed. - He ran to the nearest lath and stooped down and read what was written - thereon and cracked his fists together and kicked the lath and stamped it - into the mud and swore loudly. “Pratt, hey? ‘Peacock’ Pratt trying one of - his gambling bluffs because titles ain’t been settled here yet, is he? If - a kettle-bellied catfish like Pratt thinks he can jump a city lot on me - he’s got trouble coming his way on the down grade with the axle greased.” - </p> - <p> - There was much more that the infuriated merchant had to say regarding the - general standing of Pratt, but I did not linger. I strolled into the - “Imperial Hotel.” - </p> - <p> - “I knew you’d come back—they all do; but you can’t do business with - me,” the landlord informed me before I had opened my mouth. “Once you turn - your nose up at my house, then up it stays, as far as I am concerned! - Mosey back to your pig-pen!” - </p> - <p> - “Very well! But I’ll drop back here when the new proprietor takes hold.” - </p> - <p> - “What new proprietor?” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose it’s a man named Dawlin. I note that his name appears as the - man who has re-located this property.” The landlord took a jump and a look - and saw the laths and string. He ran out of doors. He was an able-bodied - man with a large voice, and he outdid his merchant neighbor in volume of - cursing. It was plain that he was well acquainted with the mental and - moral qualities of Ike Dawlin. - </p> - <p> - So I went back to my own tavern. Judge Kingsley was waiting in the office, - and the landlord was talking to the old man with considerable affability. - </p> - <p> - “I was telling your friend here that we aim to please! I reckon the girl - can fit you out with breakfast now if you’re minded to step into the - dining-room.” - </p> - <p> - “Thank you—we’ll step in, sir. By the way, there seems to be - considerable excitement on the street, Mr. Landlord. Men named Dawlin and - Pratt, whoever they may be, have re-located business sites occupied by the - big store and the other hotel. I just noticed that the same thing has been - done to you; you’d better take a look outside.” - </p> - <p> - By the manner in which the owner of the “Pallace” pounded his way to the - street it might have been guessed that the consciences of the pioneers of - Royal City were not wholly clear as to their several rights of property. - But the manner in which they were taking the re-locations showed that they - were entirely ready to fight for what they had squatted on. - </p> - <p> - “By the bald-headed juductionary of Walla Walla County,” howled the - “Pallace” landlord, “that tinhorn Dragg has sneaked out of my house in the - night so as to do me up, has he?” - </p> - <p> - “Do you say it’s Dragg?” bawled the landlord of the “Imperial” from a - distance. “It’s Dawlin, up here! He’s been boozing here in my house under - cover for a week, but he wasn’t so drunk, so it seems, but he could dodge - out last night and try to steal my property away from me.” - </p> - <p> - Say, I swapped one very large look with Zebulon Kingsley, who stood in the - hotel door, staring from furious landlord to furious landlord. The old man - had heard enough the night before to appreciate the value of that - information in regard to Dawlin. - </p> - <p> - “It’s that skunk of a dressed-up Pratt in my case,” shouted the owner of - the “Emporium” from farther up the street. - </p> - <p> - “I reckon I can show any man who tries to steal my property that I’m - mighty wide awake mornings if I do sleep nights when honest men ought to - be in bed,” announced the proprietor of the “Pallace.” He rushed into his - hotel, and clattered up-stairs. - </p> - <p> - “When the wheels of a scheme are running in good shape it’s best to stay - away and keep your fingers out of the gearing,” I said to Kingsley. “We’ll - go in and eat breakfast.” - </p> - <p> - While we ate, loud voices sounded through the thin walls. Men were - crowding into the hotel office. Profanity, denunciation, denial, went on - and on. The judge fingered his makeshift mustache uneasily every time the - bawling of Pratt was heard. - </p> - <p> - “Better keep your hands off that and drink your coffee from your spoon,” I - suggested. “They’ll never know you!” - </p> - <p> - When we were ready to leave the dining-room I warned the judge not to look - at Pratt. We could hear him thundering away in the office. - </p> - <p> - Dragg and Pratt were surrounded by men; the landlord of the “Pallace,” the - proprietor of the “Emporium,” and a grim man with a huge revolver in his - hand and a deputy sheriff’s badge on his breast were right in the front - row. - </p> - <p> - “You can swear, threaten, and deny till your tongues drop off—it - don’t go for a minute with us,” declared the landlord, “for we all know - your style and your nerve. Because you have got away with a lot of - hold-ups in other places it doesn’t go that you can come here and do us in - Royal City.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you think we’d be fools enough to go and put our names on—” - began Dragg, but he was promptly interrupted by the landlord. - </p> - <p> - “Whose names would you put on if you were trying to steal land for - yourselves? You thought we’d rather settle than fight, that’s what! But - we’re going to fight.” - </p> - <p> - It was my turn—and my chance. - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m a stranger to you all—merely a passing - tourist. But I feel it’s my duty to state that I heard two men discussing - a matter of re-locating land last evening. They were in the next room to - mine in this hotel. I recognize their voices. Those are the men.” I - pointed to Dragg and Pratt. - </p> - <p> - The deputy poked the muzzle of his gun into Dragg’s face to make him stop - swearing. “Shut up! Everybody can see that this is a real gent, and if - he’s got evidence we want to hear it.” - </p> - <p> - “The evidence isn’t much,” I said, meekly, “but I distinctly heard them - say that they could clean up a nice pile of money by a re-location scheme. - It was to be bluff to a large extent. If that information is worth - anything you’re welcome to it. I would hate to see the prosperity of a - hustling city like this held up for one moment by men trying to bunco - honest citizens.” - </p> - <p> - “You listen to me,” roared Dragg. “That hellhound there is lying like a—” - </p> - <p> - The sheriff slapped him across the mouth. “There’s no real gent gets - insulted by you in Royal City while I’m boss of law and order here.” - </p> - <p> - Outdoors was a noise of clanking of whiffletrees and the “ruckling” of - wheels. A stage-coach, mud-daubed from tongue to roof-rail, was pulling - out of an opposite stable-yard. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve got to take that stage,” raved Dragg. “The whole of Royal City can’t - stop me. I’ve been monkey-doodled by a shark. He’s trying to get there - ahead of me. It wouldn’t work here. I’m no fool. I knew it wouldn’t work.” - He yelled so loudly and talked so rapidly that they listened to him. “My - scheme was for Breed—and it was a cinch! He’s stealing it from me—that - doggone, lying plug-hatter found out that I was going to re-locate claims - in—” - </p> - <p> - “Seem to be convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” broke in a - citizen. - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to Breed by this stage. I’ve got to go!” gasped Dragg, twisting - his throat from the sheriff’s clutch. - </p> - <p> - “You’re going into the calaboose right now—and Pratt is going there, - too, and Dawlin is going as soon as they get his clothes on him,” declared - the officer. “Grab a-holt, boys, and help me get on the wristers.” - </p> - <p> - “You men will stay here—and Dawlin, too, till we find out what you - mean by this trick,” said my landlord. “You don’t get out of here to run - away and file your location claims!” - </p> - <p> - “Send a man to the county-seat,” raged Pratt. “Look at the records. That - will prove that we haven’t tried anything on here.” - </p> - <p> - “We don’t need any advice from you chaps as to what we shall do—whether - it’s holding you for a show-down or shooting you out of this place when we - have your numbers.” - </p> - <p> - I looked at Mr. Pratt. That remark started my think-works into action. I - had my men anchored, to be sure, but that wasn’t getting me anything in - the money line—and without doubt Royal City would cool down pretty - quickly and send the men kiting. When they scooted they would go by rail, - of course. That meant difficulties, the thought of which had already - discouraged me. I needed to keep those chaps in the open—and the - wilder the open the better! In the brush, where it was man to man, instead - of in the city where law was safe and sane—and almighty slow! I - needed to be quick and crazy! - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt was beginning to get his wits back. He was bellowing so wildly - when I accused him and Dragg that he did not seem to sense the situation. - He turned to me. - </p> - <p> - “Damn your lying tongue! What do you mean by putting up this job on me?” - </p> - <p> - “I have simply stated what I overheard!” - </p> - <p> - “Heard me say that I was going to jump claims? Why, I told Dragg I - wouldn’t—” - </p> - <p> - “You told Dragg that you and your partner came down here on purpose to - jump claims!” - </p> - <p> - He was so mad he was nigh black in the face. “Do I know you? Have I ever - done dirt to you?” - </p> - <p> - I shook my head and looked him over with contempt. From the time I had - left Levant I had been at a loss to decide what front I would put on when - I met up with those men who had robbed the judge. I had thought all along - that my best plan would be to build on my acquaintance with Jeff Dawlin - and use his tips which were to put me next to the parties I was after. - Then I might be able to come up on their blind side—if they had one—and— - </p> - <p> - Well, right there I had stopped. What could I do? Then I had been hooked - by that infernal Dragg! In that mess with him I had allowed chance to - swing me and our fortunes. After that squabble with Dragg I could not hope - to make much of a hit with his associates, eh? Therefore, I was jumping - for the other extreme and I proposed to make Mr. Pratt and his friends - just as ugly as insults and injury could serve. I felt like a boy thumbing - his nose at angry wildcats. And in my desperation I hoped that the - wildcats would come chasing me. Chasing me where? Why not to Breed, - wherever that might be? - </p> - <p> - I certainly was sure of Mr. Dragg, according to his threats and his - promises. And if I could stick a few more darts into the broad flanks of - Mr. Pratt and leave them stinging it was full likely that Mr. Dragg’s - appeals to that gentleman would have much more effect than they did the - night before. - </p> - <p> - A couple of citizens came dragging in another prisoner, a red-eyed and - ferociously angry person, and I knew by Judge Kingsley’s expression that - the round-up was complete. - </p> - <p> - “Who says I did it? Who says I—” - </p> - <p> - “I say so!” I told him. “You held me up and you asked me to buy twine and - pencil for you.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s right,” stated the merchant. “The gent is right.” - </p> - <p> - “Of course it looked all square to me,” I said. “I never heard how - claim-jumpers worked!” I told them. “I saw he had been drinking and I - thought the string-and-pencil notion was only his bee buzzing!” - </p> - <p> - It was reckless lying, but that crowd was too much excited to bother with - mere details. - </p> - <p> - “Why, you mutt-jawed smokestack, you, I never laid eyes on you in all my - life!” raged Dawlin. - </p> - <p> - “I reckon my memory is a little better than yours, for I wasn’t drunk,” I - reminded him. - </p> - <p> - The sheriff was obliged to assign two more men to the controlling of Mr. - Dawlin, who was a husky chap. He was far too much occupied to pay any - attention to the judge, who stood in a corner and goggled at me with plain - and sure conviction that I had gone stark, staring crazy. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” roared Pratt, “that—” - </p> - <p> - “You’re a cheap tinhorn. You never saw a thousand dollars.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt jumped up and down and tried to throw off the clutch of the men - who were holding him. - </p> - <p> - I felt perfectly safe in that crowd; I made up my mind to keep prodding - till I was sure that Mr. Pratt and his friends had developed enough - interest in me so that they would give up all other business till they had - settled their grudges. - </p> - <p> - I patted my breast pocket. “I always carry ten thousand dollars around - with me just to keep the draughts off my chest. I find money better than a - folded newspaper,” I told him. - </p> - <p> - I had been keeping my eye on the stage-coach for some few minutes. It had - hauled up at the post-office. The driver came out with mail-bags and - tossed them into the boot. - </p> - <p> - “Landlord, will you fetch our valises?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Certainly, sir!” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve got a few thousand in my own pocket,” yelled Pratt. - </p> - <p> - “So have I!” howled Dawlin. - </p> - <p> - “And we’ll spend it getting to you,” they shouted in chorus. - </p> - <p> - “It won’t cost you much to chase <i>me</i>,” I said, provokingly. “Cheap - skates of your sort wouldn’t spend much getting to a man you’re afraid - of.” - </p> - <p> - That taunt, in the ears of those bystanders, made Pratt and his cronies - wild in earnest. - </p> - <p> - “I’m only going as far as Breed,” I said. “I’ve got to stay there for some - time on business. When these good folks let you out of jail suppose you - run over and call on me!” - </p> - <p> - “You don’t dare to wait there for us!” said Dawlin. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll bet you five thousand I do dare!” - </p> - <p> - They didn’t take me up on that bet. Perhaps I seemed too certain that I - meant what I said. I intended to seem certain. I wanted the company of - those gentlemen in Breed, no matter what the risks were. And I was mighty - glad when Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin had bragged about the thousands they - had in their pockets. I looked into the glittering eyes of Pratt and I - knew that even in his fury he was taking much comfort in his belief that I - was giving him a straight tip about Breed. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t dare to hang up over there till I come,” he snarled, testing me - out. - </p> - <p> - “If I am not there, I’ll hand over five hundred dollars to start a city - reading-room here,” I declared. “I call on these gentlemen to bear - witness.” - </p> - <p> - “I hope we won’t get the reading-room,” stated the landlord, standing with - the luggage, “for I want to see a few fresh galoots get theirs.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s time to test out whether respectable business men can go about in - this country without being insulted and bothered by rascals,” I observed. - “Come over to Breed after Royal City gets done with you.” And just to - clinch the thing I snapped my fingers under Pratt’s nose when I passed - him. - </p> - <p> - I just naturally knew, that moment, that Mr. Pratt had made a binding - appointment with me. - </p> - <p> - The landlord had hailed the stage, which was surging past through the mud. - I was obliged to push the judge to start him toward the door; he seemed to - be in a daze. - </p> - <p> - “But we’ve got to stay here,” he croaked in my ear. “They’ve got the money - on ’em. They brag about it. You’ll never lay eyes on them again!” - </p> - <p> - I hurried him along the plank walk toward the coach. “Don’t fret one mite - about that part, sir. If we stay here all we can do is stand outside the - calaboose and ask ’em to push our money out through the bars. And - I’m afraid they are not feeling generous enough just now.” - </p> - <p> - “But the law will keep them—” - </p> - <p> - “No, it won’t, sir, if I’m any judge of the sporting blood out here. Royal - City will be mighty curious to find out what happens when Mr. Pratt and - his friends arrive in Breed. And they’ll come! Don’t worry!” - </p> - <p> - But the judge was a stubborn old customer! He kept holding back. - </p> - <p> - “Why not settle it with ’em here?” - </p> - <p> - “Because I have always read that when a good general has a chance to do - it, he picks his own battle-ground and throws up his earthworks before the - enemy heaves in sight. I have picked Breed, sir! As to the earthworks, - I’ll do some meditating on the way.” - </p> - <p> - Already my handy Mr. Dragg had given me the germ of a notion, though, of - course, he had not meant to make me any presents. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XX—ACROSS CALLAS - </h2> - <p> - THERE were four or five passengers inside the coach, and I boosted the - judge over the wheel and put him in there. There was no one on the box - with the driver, and that was not surprising, for I must say he did not - have any coaxing way with him: he had his fists full of muddy reins and - looked down on me with his mouth screwed around. I asked meekly if I might - ride up there with him. - </p> - <p> - “If you think a plug-hat is going to help me any getting acrost sixteen - miles of ’dobe clay, climb up! But do one thing or t’other damn - quick!” - </p> - <p> - It did not look as if I would be making a specially promising friend, but - I climbed just the same. - </p> - <p> - “Good luck!” said the landlord, “and I hope you’ll take it all right from - us if we let ’em loose after we have shaken ’em down.” - </p> - <p> - “Send ’em along, sir. One at a time or the lot in a bunch!” - </p> - <p> - That little speech suited the crowd; I got a lot of friendly hand-waves. - </p> - <p> - A few rods from the last house in Royal City the muddy street swung to the - right and sort of sneaked into the river, as if it were ashamed and wanted - to wash the dirt off itself. There was no bridge. The horses plunged into - the water and dragged the coach across the stream, floundering in depths - that barely allowed them footing. - </p> - <p> - On the other side of the river the road whiplashed in long curves up the - canon’s wall to reach the level of Callas prairie; I should say it was all - of a thousand feet above the stream. - </p> - <p> - I offered to the driver comments on the weather, on the road: I offered - him a cigar. I had stocked up with smokes with which to curry favor. The - driver paid no attention to the comments and snarled his refusal of the - cigar. Even with six horses leaping to their work under the lash, our - crawl up the muddy slope was snail-like. The wheelers and swing team got - the whip, and the driver heaved curses and little rocks at the leaders. He - had nearly a peck of pebbles in a canvas bag at his side. When we were - over the rim-rock at last and upon the prairie, I looked for more speed. - But no such luck! The straining horses, half-way to their knees in the - black mud, could barely move the heavy coach. - </p> - <p> - After a time the driver left what some flatterers might call a road and - took to the open prairie, zigzagging here and there to find solid ground. - Then intersecting gullies drove him back into the rutted road again. It - was adobe mud—black as zip and as sticky as cold molasses. Every - little while the driver was obliged to jump down from his seat and poke - the clotted mud out between the spokes of the wheels. Otherwise the coach - would have been anchored in spite of the best tussles of the horses. - </p> - <p> - “I should think they’d have to give up trying to run a stage across this - prairie in mud-time,” I ventured to suggest to the driver when he came - climbing back to his seat after a long assault on the mud-clogged wheels - with his piece of joist. - </p> - <p> - “The mails <i>have</i> to go, but the damn fools that I haul don’t have - to,” he retorted, sorting his reins between his muddy fingers. “If you - ain’t satisfied with the way I’m running this thing, mister, you can tuck - yourself into that plug-hat of yours and roll across to Breed City. - E-e-oyah! Go ‘long, you wall-eyed, splint-legged goats of the Bitter Root, - you!” - </p> - <p> - However, I was thankful I was on the outside; the sun warmed me and the - warmth was grateful, for the breeze was chilly on that upland. I could see - snow on the far-distant peaks to the south. The passengers inside the - coach were plainly far from feeling any thankfulness whatsoever. They - groaned and growled and complained. I glanced down over the side dining - one stop for wheel-clearing, and found myself looking into the face of - Judge Kingsley, who had stuck his head out of the window. His false - mustache gave him the appearance of an angry cat. - </p> - <p> - “How much more of this devilishness have we got to endure?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - “That’s easy figuring, sir! Sixteen miles, sixteen hours! It must be the - regular running time on this road.” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want no sarcasm from no one,” yelped the driver, straightening up - and shaking his joist. “And if any gent reckons he can keep passing out - his cheap slurs on this trip he’d better come down here now and get his - card entitling him to.” - </p> - <p> - I kept my gaze on the distant mountains, but when the driver climbed back - to his seat and kept on cussing me out, I reckoned we’d better have a - little understanding for the rest of the trip. I closed my fingers around - his arm. It was only a pipe-stem arm—and his eyes were of the sad, - pale-blue kind. I said very near to his ear: “Your breakfast seems to be - hurting you, son! The stage company pays you to drive and to be respectful - to passengers. Mind your tongue after this.” - </p> - <p> - I was trying on a little something. I have found that when you bluster and - shout, the blusterer usually recognizes his own kind and blusters back. - But the blowhard hasn’t any weapon when a man fights with a look and a - quiet word. - </p> - <p> - “It’s the mud. It’s getting on to my nerves,” whined the man after he had - driven a short distance. - </p> - <p> - “Have a smoke—it’s good for the nerves,” I invited. The driver’s - hands were full of reins and whip and pebbles, so I set the end of a cigar - to the drooping mouth and the driver bit off the end. Then I held a match - while he sucked. And when the cigar was going he turned an appreciative - grin on me. - </p> - <p> - “A fellow can’t bluff you much, can he, mister?” he remarked. “I didn’t - have you sized up right at the start-off, I reckon. Why, <i>I</i> couldn’t - lick a prairie-dog with a hammer. But I bluff out most of the dudes who - travel with me. I get a lot of innocent enjoyment that way. It helps pass - the time for me on this jodiggered trip.” - </p> - <p> - Out of his cocoon of grouchiness he broke as a real butterfly of chatter. - I got a lot of good stuff from him, for I learned the name of the mayor of - Breed City and what sort of a man he was—a dry-goods merchant who - took his job seriously and hollered about the development of the new place - and loved those who said a good word for the municipality. - </p> - <p> - I also learned that many miners and prospectors from the Buffalo Hump - region were mudbound, on their annual spree, in Breed—the nearest - town where they could find all the rum and roulette they demanded. The - driver stated that one or two of his friends who had a little spare cash - for speculation made it a practice to loaf around the gambling-places and - buy in from busted players any mining shares that a man wanted to realize - on in a hurry. Most of these shares thus offered for sale were shares in - undeveloped prospects, the driver explained, but one could never tell when - a share bought for a cent would be worth a hundred. That driver certainly - liked the sound of his voice when he got started! He offered the - confidential tip that the Blacksnake Gully region would develop into the - howler of the season. It wasn’t being talked of much. Nothing real - definite was known outside. He guessed they hadn’t opened up anything to - prove the hunch some folks had—but mining is like betting on the - races. A tip floats in from somewhere—if a hunch goes with it, play - it, that was his motto. He had been able to pick up a few loose shares. - </p> - <p> - The mine in which he was most interested had been located for a long time. - Shares had been out for some years, scattered around. He couldn’t tell for - sure who had started the new stories, but he did know that a friend of his—an - humble friend called “Dirty-shirt” Maddox—was up in this section, - nosing around, and he reckoned he’d get some inside information when - “Dirty-shirt” returned to Breed. - </p> - <p> - Of course I wasn’t surprised. My idea of the West was a place where every - man was trying to unload mining stock on an Eastern sucker. - </p> - <p> - “The particular claim in the Blacksnake that I’m speaking of is ‘Her Two - Bright Eyes,’” stated the gossiper. “Mebbe that name is a hunch that it’s - worth looking into,” he added, with a cackle to point his little joke. - </p> - <p> - I thought of a couple of bright eyes, and felt homesick when the driver - drawled the name of the mine. - </p> - <p> - “Two bright eyes are always worth looking into,” said I. - </p> - <p> - That was some ride! - </p> - <p> - The stage wallowed into Breed City about nightfall. It had tipped over - twice on the way, its wheels sinking into “honey-pots” of mud, rolling - over slowly like a tired cow lying down to rest. We swearing passengers - had been compelled to pry it up with poles borrowed from a rancher. During - these waits and during the meal at a sort of half-way house, Judge - Kingsley, mud-spattered, scared into conniptions when he thought of what - would be coming behind us from Royal City, miserable as a wet cat, and - seeing nothing ahead for consolation, muttered to me constantly his - familiar taunt that he was being teamed about the country by a lunatic. - </p> - <p> - I didn’t know exactly what to say, and made him still angrier by - confessing that he was undoubtedly correct. - </p> - <p> - We left the coach in front of the hotel that the driver had recommended, - and we stepped from the board sidewalk like passengers disembarking from a - boat; the mud in the street was fairly a river of mire. - </p> - <p> - “Even if you don’t like the ‘Prairie Pride’ very well,” my new friend had - said, “you’ll have a lot of fun watching the White Ghost operate. There’s - only one of his kind in these parts, or anywhere else in the world, so - fur’s I know. Folks come from a long ways off and stand around the windows - and doors of the ‘Prairie Pride’ hotel and see the White Ghost perform. Oh - no, I don’t mean that the house is haunted. The White Ghost is the waiter. - He’s the only waiter they have in the dining-room. He won’t have anybody - else there. He prides himself on doing it all alone. Says he is the only - waiter in the world who can handle fifty guests and four Chinese cooks - single-handed and keep everybody happy and busy eating. He’s a little - cracked in the head, but he’s sure a wonder on his feet. A streak of white - lightning would have to whistle for him to turn around and come back and - meet it.” - </p> - <p> - Now this bit of information, when I listened to it, stirred in me merely a - half-determination to go to another hotel, where the waiter did not give a - show along with his services. - </p> - <p> - How often does man slight some odd tools that Fate lays in his way, - especially when Fate doesn’t draw his attention to them! - </p> - <p> - The “Prairie Pride” hotel deserved its name in some measure. It had smooth - floors, real doors, and walls of plaster. Its big office thronged with - guests, whose character was plain enough. There were slick drummers and - bearded and booted miners fresh from the hills, down for a bit of a spring - whirl, and there were mining engineers and such like. - </p> - <p> - We were given a room and at the same time we were given a hint that we’d - better hurry to supper before the hungry mob cleaned up all the best - dishes. Again my clothes coaxed this courtesy! - </p> - <p> - “Cross the big dining-room and go into the alcove,” directed the clerk, - after a glance at my hat. “The alcove is for gents. We herd the others in - the big room.” - </p> - <p> - I crossed this main hall a few steps in advance of Judge Kingsley. Men - were crowded at the tables gobbling food. No fancy feeding! Men jabbed - knives into their mouths and grabbed stuff off plates and smacked their - lips and snuffled and grunted. I stopped in the alleyway between these - tables to look about. I heard a yell of warning and dodged just in time to - escape. - </p> - <p> - Double swinging doors with spring hinges were burst open by the impact of - a foot that must have been swung waist high for the kick. Out into the - dining-room shot the individual who had kicked. - </p> - <p> - It was an apparition! - </p> - <p> - He was more than six feet tall and as slim as a beanpole. He wore a white - cap, a white jacket, a white apron shrouded him to his heels, and he wore - white shoes. He had a white, peaked face and his hair was tow-colored. On - a huge tray that he held well above his head dishes were heaped high. He - went past me and down the alleyway on the dead run, and wisps of steam - from his load followed after, trailing on the air. - </p> - <p> - “You want to keep out of the road in this dining-room when the White Ghost - is on the rampage,” advised a guest at the table in the alcove where we - took seats. “He’s going to get somebody some day fine and plenty. A few - months ago he got old Babb Coan, who was down here on crutches, nursing a - broken leg, and couldn’t get out of the way in season. But the White Ghost - was loaded with empty dishes—just empties. Some day he’s going to - connect when he’s loaded with about seventeen hot dinners.” - </p> - <p> - The next moment a white streak came into the alcove, took half a dozen - orders and darted back into the kitchen with a tray-load of empty dishes. - </p> - <p> - “It advertises the hotel,” explained the talkative guest. “Men come here - from far and near to see the White Ghost razoo up and down the stretch, - but for me I’d rather have more waiters and less slamming. It keeps me - nervous, and when I’m nervous I can’t do justice to my vittles. I’m all - the time expecting to see that man that’s doomed to get <i>his</i> get it. - It’ll be a mighty mushy affair.” - </p> - <p> - By this time the White Ghost was back and was scaling loaded dishes about - the table with a deftness that a quick dealer shows in a poker game. - </p> - <p> - And I, still blind to what Fate was preparing for my side of the case, was - merely irritated by this tophet-te-larrup! - </p> - <p> - When supper was over we seized an opportunity when the White Ghost was on - an outward trip and escaped. - </p> - <p> - I advised the judge that he’d better take the key and go to our room and - get into bed, and the old man accepted that advice with a sigh of - thankfulness. He looked bent, weary, and broken as he climbed the stairs; - homesick hopelessness showed in every line of his face and in every motion - of his body. I did pity him then! - </p> - <p> - “Poor old father of the girl with the two bright eyes,” I said, not - realizing that I had spoken aloud. - </p> - <p> - A man sidled up and prodded me with his thumb. - </p> - <p> - “I heard what you said to the old gent just now! Where did you get your - tip, pard?” he whispered. - </p> - <p> - I had already forgotten just what the driver had said. - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t let it out if you don’t want to. But there’s a little inside - guessing in these parts and when you hear a man let drop anything about - the ‘Two Bright Eyes,’ it’s reckoned he has had a hunch of some kind.” - </p> - <p> - “I wasn’t thinking about that mine!” - </p> - <p> - The man grinned. - </p> - <p> - “That’s right—keep it sly! But see here, pard, I’m going to test you - out a little on this thing. I’ve got a few thousand shares of the old - stock. Took it over in a poker game a long time ago—we gamble mining - stocks out this way when we’re busted. I’m busted now—and they won’t - take mining stock at the roulette wheel. I’ll sell you five hundred shares - of ‘Bright Eyes’ at fifty cents a share.” - </p> - <p> - He peered anxiously into my face as he made the offer. He was plainly - trying to get a hint from my expression, but he didn’t, of course. I knew - nothing about mining stock. - </p> - <p> - ‘I don’t want it.”. - </p> - <p> - “Twenty-five cents a share, then. I want to chase the wheel.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re on a wrong lead, my friend.” - </p> - <p> - Just then a man bumped against me as if by accident and promptly - apologized. It was the stage-driver. - </p> - <p> - The owner of the stock scowled and backed into the crowd in the office. - </p> - <p> - “I was trying to jolt a little hoss sense into you,” explained the driver. - “Why didn’t you buy that stock? I passed the hunch to you to-day.” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t any money for wildcatting in gold-mines,” I said. - </p> - <p> - The man came close to me and spoke low. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you remember what I said?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, but grabbing gold-mine stock from the first comer—say, my - friend, do I look as green as that?” - </p> - <p> - “Hish! Don’t rear up, sir! Please don’t! But I know that fellow who just - tried to sell. He’s fresh in from the hills. He doesn’t know what’s going - on—and only a few do know. But I carry men on my stage who talk and - don’t know I’m overhearing. I say no more! But I hope you’ll take the - hint. If I could rake and scrape another dollar I’d buy that stock myself. - That fellow has some kind of a hunch—but he has been too far away in - the hills to know anything special. I guess he just smells it in the air. - There isn’t much stock in ‘Bright Eyes’ left loose these days. I have - smelt around; I know! That tells a long story, sir. If that fellow hadn’t - been off in the hills they’d have got his away from him!” - </p> - <p> - He was urgent and appealing. I couldn’t understand this special interest - in me and I told him so plainly. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t exactly know, either,” he said, unabashed. “I’m thinking it over - and I’ll tell you when I get it thought out. Maybe it’s your style. I have - always hoped to be able to wear a suit of clothes like that.” - </p> - <p> - He surveyed me with candid admiration. - </p> - <p> - My tartness didn’t bother him a bit. He beamed on me—and plainly had - taken a few drinks. I asked the driver to tell me how I could reach the - mayor’s store. My friend offered to conduct me. I had resolved to throw up - my Breed City earthworks! - </p> - <p> - “When I take a liking to a gent I don’t do nothing by halves,” declared my - guide when we were on our way. “You come unwrapped enough to-day so that I - could see that you’ve got real whalebone in your stock and silk in your - snapper—and that’s the kind of a whip for my hand! You come along - with me and I’ll introduce you to the mayor. Him and me are chums. He - ain’t none of your stuck-up dudes. I’ll tell him you’re a special friend - of mine. There’s nothing like getting in right.” - </p> - <p> - He left me in the back office of a dry-goods store, sitting knees to knees - in the tiny room with a fat and placid man who smiled amiably and seemed - to be impressed by my dress and demeanor. - </p> - <p> - He launched out at me in a way that was surely astonishing. - </p> - <p> - “You are the kind we like to see coming into our new and growing city. We - are anxious for a touch of the dignity and refinement of the East here in - our midst. We hope we can offer you inducements which will wean you from - that East which, though its traditions are glorious and its civilization - is sublime, is nevertheless a bit—I may say, without offense, I - trust—effete” By the way in which Mayor David Ware smacked his lips - over that sentence I was pretty sure that he was quoting from his - inaugural address. - </p> - <p> - “I’m very glad to have you feel that way toward me, coming here a - stranger, Mr. Mayor.” - </p> - <p> - “But strangers are certified to a man of insight by the masonry of - breeding.” - </p> - <p> - I thanked him again and proceeded to a matter of business connected with - my earthworks. - </p> - <p> - I told him of the plans of one Dragg, as I had gleaned them from - accidental association with that individual. I said that Dragg had now - attached to himself two blacklegs and undoubtedly would soon arrive in - Breed City for the purpose of taking advantage of technicalities in the - land law, jumping claims, holding up enterprises, giving Breed City a - black eye outside as a municipality where titles were not assured. - </p> - <p> - “I am not a spy, a tattletale, or a meddler,” I said. “But this matter was - forced on my attention when I was on my way here, and I did not want to - see a hustling mayor and city set back by the schemes of blacklegs. I had - heard of your city and of you, and I said to myself, ‘If warning will - enable such a city to head off a plot and put the plotters where they - belong I’ll hurry to headquarters with my information.’ Those men are now - in Royal City and are on their way here.” - </p> - <p> - The mayor’s mild eyes bulged and his face showed his dismay. - </p> - <p> - “It’s plain you are a friend who wouldn’t take advantage of our situation, - sir. That’s shown because you are not trying to operate on the tip this - crook gave you. So I’m going to be frank with you, as a friend. We were so - anxious to get things moving here that we took a lot for granted in the - matter of land titles Those men can make trouble—or at least they - could have made trouble if we had not been warned in season by you. You - will find that this city can be grateful, Mr. Mann.” - </p> - <p> - I was sticking to my assumed name. - </p> - <p> - “Will you allow me to make a suggestion?” - </p> - <p> - “I certainly will. I’ll be glad to have your advice.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t undertake to jump on them, officially, the moment they strike town. - In order to have your proof you must wait until they try to operate. Have - them watched sharply. If you’ll give me permission to take a hand in the - matter, on the side, I may be able to bluff them out entirely. I reckon - it’s for the interests of your city to close the thing up without the - public knowing there’s any doubt about land titles. Of course I don’t need - to suggest to you that you make a flying start now and straighten out your - law and titles so that no other shysters can come along making trouble - after we get rid of these gentlemen.” - </p> - <p> - “Watch me in that line,” declared the mayor, thumping his breast. “You’re - right about handling them with gloves, Mr. Mann. I tell you if you can do - anything to help us you will stand mighty high with me and with Breed - City.” - </p> - <p> - “In handling them I may be able to make it seem like a personal quarrel - between them and myself,” I suggested. My horizon was growing wider all - the time. “They are dangerous men, but I’m not afraid of them.” - </p> - <p> - “But I don’t want you to be a martyr.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m not afraid of them, I say. If trouble does happen here and it seems - like a personal quarrel, you will understand it all, Mr. Mayor!” - </p> - <p> - “Certainly, sir!” - </p> - <p> - “It may seem strange to have a stranger come along like this and offer to - meddle in matters where he has no personal interest. Those men are nothing - to me, one way or the other. But I’m for fair play always!” - </p> - <p> - His Honor warmed to this modest candor. - </p> - <p> - “The city is behind you in whatever you may do in this thing, sir. As - mayor I say it. You’ll be backed to the limit. And if you get hurt while - you are trying to do a bit of a trick for us I’ll be scissored if I don’t - toss law and order up for a little while and organize a lynching party and - head it in person.” - </p> - <p> - “If I thought it would come to that I wouldn’t meddle in the affair! The - only reason I am offering my services is because I hope to be able to keep - Breed City from suffering a setback.” - </p> - <p> - “Hand ’em any jolt that’s coming to ’em in the name of Breed - City and its mayor.” His Honor clapped his hand on my shoulder. - </p> - <p> - I trudged back to the hotel in a fairly comfortable frame of mind. It’s a - lucky general who can choose his own battle-field, get to it well ahead of - the enemy, throw up earthworks and set a big gun or two in position. So, I - said to myself, “Let ’em come!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXI—THE SKIRMISH-LINE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS a bit - embarrassed next morning and wondered if I hadn’t overdone the thing. - </p> - <p> - I was waited on by a delegation in the crowded office of the Pride of the - Prairie. Mayor David Ware headed the delegation and he introduced the - half-dozen amiable gentlemen as leading members of the Breed City Chamber - of Commerce. Then the mayor pulled me aside. - </p> - <p> - “You understand that I haven’t whispered a word of what you and I talked - about last night. That’s to be buried between you and me, but there’s - nothing like getting in sneck with the big boys of this town. It’ll be - easier for me when I have to back you up—if it comes to that. I’ve - explained that you’re a friend of mine who is West looking for prospects.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m glad to be called a friend of yours—and you told the truth - about my business here, Mr Mayor. We start on a square basis.” - </p> - <p> - With the mayor, followed by the delegation, I was escorted through the - main street of Breed City It seemed to afford the gentlemen honest - gratification to follow along behind that plug-hat which I had freshly - slicked that morning to the best of my ability. I was lunched at the - Chamber of Commerce—a half-finished board structure; I was dined by - the mayor at his own home; and I returned to the hotel in the evening to - find the judge marooned in the office. - </p> - <p> - “Please don’t scowl at me that way,” I pleaded, humbly. “I was afraid you - might drop something that would queer the whole proposition. You are - looking over your shoulder as if you expected damnation to jump on to your - back!” - </p> - <p> - “Damnation <i>is</i> getting ready to jump on to our backs,” growled the - old man. “One of ’em has got here. He came in on the stage - to-night.” - </p> - <p> - “Which one?” - </p> - <p> - “The scalawag with the flashy clothes.” - </p> - <p> - I had looked for pretty quick action, but “Peacock” Pratt had got away - sooner than I expected he would. He had been free with his money, I - concluded. - </p> - <p> - I got down-stairs early the next morning, the judge tagging at my heels. - But we were not ahead of Mr. Pratt. I didn’t have to hunt for him. He - stood out like Jeff Dawlin’s “Peruvian cockatoo” would have shown up in a - flock of crows. He followed us into the diningroom, and sat down at the - same table and scowled at me with ugly fire in his little eyes above their - pouches of flesh. Then he leaned across the table. We three were alone - when the White Ghost had frisked away after our breakfasts. - </p> - <p> - “I’m here,” said he. - </p> - <p> - “Glad to see you,” said I. - </p> - <p> - “You’re a dog-eyed liar! You didn’t expect to see me. You thought you had - the three of us canned till you could put something across here. It cost - me a hundred dollars to grease the lock of that calaboose—and at - that I couldn’t bring out the other two. But they’re coming! You needn’t - worry any about that part, you punk-faced Piute!” - </p> - <p> - He dove a pudgy hand down into the breast pocket of his vest. He got his - wallet out and banged it down on the table. It was a big wallet and it was - well stuffed. Judge Kingsley gulped when he saw it and his hands worked - like claws. - </p> - <p> - “That’s how I’m heeled, and I’ll spend it getting you, if it comes to - that.” - </p> - <p> - He packed the big wallet back into his waistcoat, galloped down his eggs - and bacon, and then banged away from the table. He called back over his - shoulder, “I wish I hadn’t promised that I’d anchor you and wait for ’em, - else I’d take you now and settle my breakfast with you.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you see that money?” gasped the old man. “It’s my money, There’s a - lot of it. My God! I could hardly keep my hands off it.” - </p> - <p> - “It was a nice, fat wallet, Judge Kingsley. I was glad to see it. It all - looks very encouraging.” - </p> - <p> - “Encouraging! Where do you see any encouragement? Two more men coming full - of blood and thunder to join him—and you waiting here for them to - get along! Anybody with sense would have that man grabbed by the police on - my charges. I thought you told me you were bringing me out here to make - the complaint? Now you’re only dillydallying. A man with, sense, I say—” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I suppose a man with sense would never have come out here, at all.” - </p> - <p> - When I went out and stood on the hotel porch, my friend, the stage-driver, - lounged up. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve knocked off for a few days’ vacation,” he explained, sociably. “Sent - another man for my trip to Royal City yesterday. Mud was getting on to my - nerves. You noticed how it was the day you rode out with me. I came nigh - queering myself with you and spoiling one of the pleasantest friendships I - ever made. I was mighty glad to see the mayor and the boys taking you - around town yesterday.” - </p> - <p> - I told him I appreciated his regard. - </p> - <p> - “There’s another reason why I’m taking a few days off,” he confided. “I’ve - got a hunch that ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox is about due here. And in the case - of ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox it’s needful to be Johnny-on-the-spot when he hits - town if I’m going to cash in on that grubstake I advanced to him.” - </p> - <p> - I handed him a cigar and he explained further. - </p> - <p> - “If I ain’t here to clap a hand over his mouth to keep the rum out and the - news in, he’ll get four slugs of language-loosener into him inside of four - minutes after striking the first board-walk here and then it’s brakes off, - all into a gallop and hell-bent up the rise for that ‘Bright Eyes’ stock.” - </p> - <p> - At a little distance the stylish Mr. Pratt paced his way to and fro on the - porch, scowling. - </p> - <p> - “Please take a good look at that fellow,” said I. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll do the best I can without smoked glasses,” promised the - stage-driver. “I’ve seen him before—and I never liked his style.” - </p> - <p> - “His name is Pratt,” I said loud enough to be heard by that gentleman. “He - seems to hold some kind of a grudge against me and is following me.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt let loose a torrent of cuss words that were fully as highly - colored as his rig-out. He wound up by saying, “And, by the gods! I’ll get - you, and get you fine and plenty!” - </p> - <p> - “Will you remember that?” I asked the stage-driver. - </p> - <p> - I realized that I had pretty good control of the movements of Mr. Pratt. - For where I did go there went Pratt also. Mr. Pratt was decidedly on his - job. Personal hatred moved him and he felt responsible, I suppose, for the - interests of the two who were frothing behind the bars of the calaboose in - Royal City. He seemed to be guarding me as a morsel for a feast of revenge - at which three proposed to sit down. He stuck to me so closely that my big - idea became firm enough to handle. The ability to move Pratt, and to be - near Pratt at all times by Pratt’s own wish, suggested my scheme to me. - </p> - <p> - When the noon hour was at hand I led the way back to the hotel, and, while - I tidied myself for dinner, taking my turn at the mirror in the wash-room, - I had an eye for the manoeuvers of Pratt, who was preening and pluming - himself, whisking all the stains of outdoors from his clothing, settling - his gorgeous tie, smoothing his waistcoat across his expansive front. - </p> - <p> - I couldn’t help it—I grinned in his face when I thought of my plan. - </p> - <p> - I buttoned my frock-coat carefully and started for the dining-room—and - Pratt followed close. On the threshold I cast a look within. The White - Ghost was not there—he was in eclipse in the kitchen for the moment. - I started through the big hall, toward the alcove, crossing near the swing - doors. Pratt came on behind me and I halted and turned suddenly on him. - </p> - <p> - “I’m going to shoot you now and here in your tracks, where every one can - look on,” I told him in a whisper—and I kept smiling. “Don’t you - dare to pull a gun. I’ve got you covered. I’ve got a revolver in that hand - that’s wrapped in the tail of this coat and it’s aimed at you. I’m going - to shoot you while I’m smiling. There are men looking at me. I’ll say that - the gun went off by accident. It’ll be believed, because we look so - sociable. Hold on! Don’t you open that mouth to yell. You’ve got one - chance for your life. I’ll tell you now—because I’ll never have a - better chance to get you proper if you don’t take that chance I offer.” - </p> - <p> - I was stalling then, for I had not intended to talk so long. Mr. Pratt - stood there as stiff as a wooden man. - </p> - <p> - He took a peep at my hand that was muffled in the skirt of my frock-coat. - The unseen terrifies most. His face grew pale. He continued-to stare at - the hidden thing that threatened his life. My smile broadened—it was - no assumed smile—for my wrapped hand was empty. - </p> - <p> - “You may think that this is a queer place for me to hold you up” - </p> - <p> - If Pratt could have known what was passing in my mind at that moment he - would have agreed. It would also have astonished Mr. Pratt to know that I - was just then raking my soul in order to think of something to say next. - </p> - <p> - There seemed to be an infernally long time between the shuttlings of the - White Ghost. I felt like an anarchist who has timed a bomb and finds his - fuse faulty. Where in the devil’s name was the fool? I knew I couldn’t - stand there and tell a serial story to Pratt. A dangerous light was coming - into the man’s eyes. Astonishment had held him for the first few moments, - then fear had chained him, but finally panic was plainly breaking out in - him, and in such cases a victim will run amuck regardless of consequences. - I felt that Pratt was getting ready to howl and leap upon me. - </p> - <p> - Where was the White Ghost? - </p> - <p> - The thought came to me that this prolonged absence hinted at one - consolation—the White Ghost must be filling many orders—his - tray would be heaped to the ceiling. - </p> - <p> - “Your one chance is—” said I—and then it happened! - </p> - <p> - Without warning, the swing doors burst open under the kick of the White - Ghost’s foot and forth from the cavern of the kitchen came the - thunderbolt. I had been waiting and listening, and was ready to dodge. The - petrified Pratt never stirred a stump. There was a howl from warning - diners—a collision, a terrific crash, and Pratt went down under the - avalanche. The White Ghost was lugging one of the biggest loads of his - career. There were deep plates in which hot and greasy soup swam, there - were gravied meats, nappies of vegetables, tea, coffee, macaroni, pies, - and puddings. Mr. Pratt was buried under dishes, hot soup blinded his - eyes, macaroni was twined around his neck, pies plastered his shirt bosom, - and his clothes sopped up liquids. He might have been labeled, “A dinner - in eruption!” The White Ghost dove across him and skated along the floor - on his nose. - </p> - <p> - I hurried to Pratt and began to paw the dishes from off him. And having - planned just what I was going to do and knowing just where to seek for - what I wanted, I dove a hand into Pratt’s inside vest pocket and yanked - out the big wallet. Other men ran to help me, there was excitement, and in - that mess of provisions which I was cuffing to right and left my handling - of the wallet was noticed by no one. I was kneeling close beside Pratt and - I shoved the wallet between my knees, and when I arose, slid it up under - my coat. - </p> - <p> - There were plenty of volunteers whose hands were out to boost Mr. Pratt to - his feet. His eyes were tightly shut and he was bellowing about the pain - the soup was giving him. I took the rôle of close friend and ordered the - rescuers to carry Mr. Pratt to the wash-room and give him first aid with - towels and water. I followed close upon their heels and elbowed Kingsley - along with the push. The judge had stood at some distance during our - drama. I pulled his hand up under my coat and set it on the wallet. - </p> - <p> - “Grab it!” I whispered. “Slip it under your coat; get out of this hotel - and around the corner. Jam the money into your stocking and stamp the - wallet down into the mud. Be careful no one sees you.” - </p> - <p> - It was on me that Pratt’s eyes first opened—for I was swabbing the - soup out of those eyes with the end of a wet towel. - </p> - <p> - But when he opened his mouth I swabbed the towel across his lips. Other - volunteers were working away at the clothing of the victim with wet - towels. - </p> - <p> - All at once Pratt began to slap himself on the breast and howl. His - laments in regard to the hot soup in his eyes had been loud, but in - contrast to his latest outburst they were as the voice of the chickadee - compared with the roar of the lion. After he had beat upon his breast, he - dove a greasy hand into his vest pocket. It was empty. His eyes goggled, - his face grew purple, he shouted, he swore, and he raved. - </p> - <p> - He had been done, trimmed, robbed, frisked, touched—so were his - bellowings! He searched his soul for synonyms with which to announce to - the world that his wallet had been stolen. And then he accused me—accused - me with violence and profanity. - </p> - <p> - “Just one moment, sir,” I suggested, taking advantage of a moment when Mr. - Pratt was choking. “You are sure those dishes didn’t crack your skull a - bit and injure your brain?” - </p> - <p> - After spitting many oaths, Mr. Pratt declared that he was all right and - knew what he was talking about. - </p> - <p> - “You’ll have to back that up,” I told him. “Fifty men were looking at you - when that thing happened. I have not been out of the sight of those men - since. You say it was a large wallet.” I unbuttoned my coat and slung it - open. “Will any gentleman present kindly search me?” - </p> - <p> - “He is going too far when he shoots off his mouth about a gent like you,” - declared somebody in the crowd. “We all saw you. All you did was try to - help the son of a gun out of his mess—and that’s all the thanks you - get!” - </p> - <p> - “Mistakes are bound to occur. I demand that some gentleman make sure that - I have no wallet on my person. My own money is in a roll in my trousers - pocket.” - </p> - <p> - A solid-looking citizen searched me, uttering apologies. “There ain’t any - wallet on this gent, and you’d better ask his pardon for remarks offered,” - suggested the citizen. - </p> - <p> - But Pratt only raved the louder. - </p> - <p> - “I’d like to say a word just here,” called a voice. The stage-driver - pushed to the front. “You all know me and you know I ain’t any liar. This - gent, here, is a friend of mine and he wouldn’t do dirt to anybody. He’s a - friend of our mayor, too.” He put his hand affectionately on my shoulder. - “But as for that other cuss, there, in the piebald clothes, I heard him - make threats not longer ago than this morning that he would get my friend, - and get him good and plenty.” - </p> - <p> - “Maybe you think I arranged to have those seventeen dinners dumped over me - so as to make the plot a good one, you pie-eyed horse-walloper, you,” - squealed Pratt, beginning to “weave” in his fury like a caged bear. - </p> - <p> - “I wouldn’t wonder a mite,” replied the driver, coolly. “When I heard you - threatening to get my friend you was mad enough to try on most anything.” - </p> - <p> - “He got my money, I tell you. I felt him at my pocket while I was trying - to get my senses back. Blast you all for infernal fools, I’ve been robbed - right before your eyes and you’re backing up the thief.” - </p> - <p> - There was a stir at the door and the crowd glanced that way and parted - respectfully. It was His Honor the Mayor of Breed City. He stood for a few - moments and listened to the language Pratt addressed to me. Then he broke - in with authority: - </p> - <p> - “Just a moment, citizens! There’s a lot about this affair, here, that I - know and cannot tell. As for that knave who accuses Mr. Mann, I declare on - my honor that he is a dangerous foe to this city. He has come here to try - to ruin it if his scheme works.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Pratt at this point managed to control the amazement that was provoked - by the appearance of this new champion. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you, Mayor,” he shouted, “you’ve got the wrong dope about me. - Dragg tried to get me into the scheme, but I——” - </p> - <p> - “You are convicting yourself right now out of your own mouth,” broke in - the mayor. He marched up to Pratt, finger upraised: “You are as dangerous - here as a dynamite bomb. I’ll allow you thirty minutes to get out of town. - Get to those other two knaves and warn them that they’ll be lynched if - they show up here—and I’ll lead the lynching-bee.” - </p> - <p> - There was immediate change in Mr. Pratt’s demeanor and the mayor and the - bystanders listened to him. The fat face was lined with grief, and tears - ran down his cheeks and mingled with the grub stains. - </p> - <p> - “I’m not lying about that wallet, gents. I’ve lost my bundle. It has been - stolen. That’s a nice word to go out about Breed City—that a visitor - to town loses his wad and the mayor backs up the man who stole it!” - </p> - <p> - “Silence!” said the mayor. - </p> - <p> - “Then I’ll simply say that I’ve lost my money—and how about law and - order in a city that will let a man be trimmed in that style? Hold on one - minute, Mr. Mayor! It isn’t merely a case of my own money! If it was, I’d - shut up now and pass on. But I had along with mine the money of a good - friend who trusted me with his roll. I left him in the calaboose back on - the trail and I brought out his money to take care of it for him, for he - was afraid they’d get to him for it. That’s God’s truth, Mayor.” - </p> - <p> - In a crowd there may be found champions for the under dog—even when - a mayor has turned down his thumb. I heard murmurs. One voice suggested - that the matter better be looked into—the good name of Breed City - demanded it. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t much to say in this business, even though this man has accused - me,” I said in the silence that followed. “Now that you are on the subject - of your money, Mr. Pratt, and are making such a squeal in regard to the - loss of it, will you allow me to ask you how much of it was money you - stole in the East—especially from Zebulon Kingsley of Levant?” - </p> - <p> - If I had struck “Peacock” Pratt between the eyes the effect could not have - been more noticeable. Most of those men who were present had been trained - to gauge the human expression in that region of plain and mountain where - life itself sometimes depends on the ability to judge between bluff and - resolve. His fat cheeks flushed and then they grew pale. That a stranger - in the Far West should be able to cast in his teeth one of his latest - exploits staggered him. He tried to speak and couldn’t. - </p> - <p> - “Pratt, you have twenty-two more minutes left of that half hour,” stated - the mayor, after silence had continued for some moments. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose that has to go for to-day,” said Pratt. “But it doesn’t go for - to-morrow—nor for next day if my friends and I can get back here, - Mr. Mayor! Lynch or no lynch!” - </p> - <p> - He buttoned his waistcoat, took a mournful look at himself in the - wash-room mirror, and headed for a livery-stable which a sarcastic - bystander recommended. I knew that threat to come back wasn’t mere talk. - Mr. Pratt had good reason to take the risks! - </p> - <p> - I took my first chance and escaped from the populace of Breed City to hunt - up Kingsley in the little room in the hotel. - </p> - <p> - “How much?” I was all a-tremble. - </p> - <p> - “A little over six thousand dollars. Mostly five-hundred-dollar bills. - Part of it is tied up in a separate package and marked with Dawlin’s - name.” The judge was not very enthusiastic. - </p> - <p> - I sat down on the edge of the bed. - </p> - <p> - “In order to be on the right side and make allowance for delays here and - there, we ought to leave here tomorrow, Judge Kingsley. And even then we’d - be having hours for a margin—not days. I felt pretty good when I - heard Pratt say that he had Dawlin’s money along. I figured there would be - more between the two of ’em.” - </p> - <p> - “Then it’s all over, is it? We’re beaten, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “What do <i>you</i> think?” - </p> - <p> - “I think we are.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, sir,” I said, “you and I have always seemed to make more progress - when I take the opposite side in an argument. I predict that we shall win - out. Please hand over that money.” - </p> - <p> - “The money is mine—it was stolen from me. You’re too reckless to - handle money. We’re beaten, I tell you. I’ll send that money home to my - wife and daughter. It’s something for them to live on. I’ll kill myself - out here.” - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley put both hands over his breast pocket. He was hysterical. - There was no reasoning with him and so I rose from the bed, walked across - the room, and snapped a finger under his nose. Zebulon Kingsley must not - have money in his pocket—in that case I could not handle him or - trust him to stay with me! - </p> - <p> - “Give—me—that—money!” - </p> - <p> - He stared and groaned and obeyed. - </p> - <p> - I divided the bills into packets, tucked them into my various pockets, and - walked out of the room. - </p> - <p> - “This money needs an airing,” I informed the judge. “I’ll take it outdoors - and give it one. It has been in some mighty bad company.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXII—MONEY ON THE GALLOP - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N most - circumstances, being padded with bills to the amount of six thousand - dollars would be comfortably warming. But in my case the possession of - that sum only provoked irritation. - </p> - <p> - I had set out to save Zebulon Kingsley’s name and the peace of mind of his - family. The sum I had replevined by my scheme of justice fell far short of - what we needed—and there was the promise I had given Dodovah Vose, - as well. - </p> - <p> - From the hotel porch I saw my friend, the stage-driver, humping it toward - me. - </p> - <p> - “I have tripped, tied, and gagged him. That was the only thing to do! He - got here and he got two drinks into himself before I could slip the bridle - on him. In another two minutes he would have been jumping clear off’n the - ground, head and tail up, snorting out everything he knows. But I got to - him—and I’ve laid him away, tied and gagged. Go to it, Mr. Mann, go - to it, I tell you!” - </p> - <p> - He certainly was some excited! - </p> - <p> - “Are you talking about a man or a cayuse?” I asked. “I’m talking about - ‘Dirty-shirt’—he’s just in from Blacksnake Gully ahead of the news. - Say, they’ve struck a brown crumble in ‘Bright Eyes’ with gold set into - the mush like raisins in a drunken cook’s pudding. You’re a sport and a - friend of mine. I’m letting you in. Come along!” - </p> - <p> - He ran away a little distance and whirled and halted with the eager air of - a dog who is inviting his master to follow. I’ll bet if he had had long - ears he would have perked them; if he had had a tail he would have wagged - it. - </p> - <p> - “You’re a sport—and I know it. Come along,” he called. - </p> - <p> - Along the street came loafing the individual who had tried to sell me - “Bright Eyes” stock, and he heard that call. - </p> - <p> - “You’re barking up the wrong tree, pard,” he advised the driver. “He’s no - sport. I have tried him out. He won’t take a chance. I gave him a chance - on some mining shares.” - </p> - <p> - “What shares?” asked the stage-driver. - </p> - <p> - “‘Bright Eyes’ in the Blacksnake.” - </p> - <p> - My friend was truly a good actor. He showed no interest. - </p> - <p> - “Shift the name to ‘blacked eyes.’ Yes, and both of ’em closed at - that. No good!” - </p> - <p> - “I tell you there’s something in the air,” insisted the other. “It’s a - fair gamble at twenty-five cents a share.” He pulled out some papers and - walked up to me. - </p> - <p> - “You look like ready money, my friend. I’d rather play the wheel just now - than be rich. I’m tied in here by the mud and it’s getting on to my - nerves. Take ten thousand at twenty-five cents. I’ll close out to you.” - </p> - <p> - “Hold on!” sang out the driver, and he managed to smuggle a wink to me - while he was tugging papers out of his pocket on his way back to join us. - “If you’re in the market for ‘Bright Eyes,’ Eastern fellow, here’s ten - thousand shares for fifteen cents a share.”. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you come butting in on my market,” protested the prospector, - elbowing the driver away. “I got to this gent first.” - </p> - <p> - “Those shares have been used all over this section for counters in poker - games when beans got too expensive,” sneered the driver. - </p> - <p> - The prospector pulled out more papers. - </p> - <p> - “If you’ll take twenty thousand at ten cents a share I’ll pass ’em - over. I was intending to hold on to ten thousand shares for a gamble. I - tell you there’s something, somehow, somewhere, that says the hunch is out - for ‘Bright Eyes.’ But I’ll let go for ten cents if you’ll take the - bunch.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s no better offer than you made the other night,” I stated. - </p> - <p> - “I was pretty drunk, then, and I didn’t mean to make it. I’m daffy now, I - reckon, or I wouldn’t be doing it over again.” - </p> - <p> - I stood there and looked them over and for the first time I gave a little - real thought to that gold-mine proposition. Up to then the matter had been - mere sound, shooting into one ear and out the other. I had been having - plenty to think about in other lines. - </p> - <p> - It struck me that I was being played for a sucker by a couple of mighty - awkward amateurs. Talk about Zebulon Kingsley buying a gold brick! That - affair had been well buttered by some slick operators. What those two - chaps were trying on me was truly raw work. That stage-driver—I - didn’t even know his name—must have a healthy hate for me hidden - deep down in him! I have cuffed a dog in my life and had him show more - affection afterward, but I couldn’t believe that such treatment helped to - mellow love in a human being. I knew it wouldn’t improve my own - disposition any. In my thoughts I had some excuse for the two. They had - probably been brought up to believe that the ordinary Easterner who had - not already bought some punk gold-mine stock was thriftily saving up to - buy some. - </p> - <p> - “There’s one of ’em born every minute,” I remarked to the - stage-driver, “but I didn’t know I looked so much like one. Run away, the - two of you, and fan yourselves with that stock; that’s the only way you’ll - ever raise any wind with it.” - </p> - <p> - “You ain’t talking to me, are you—to me—Wash Flye?” inquired - the driver. - </p> - <p> - “I am, if that’s your name—and it seems to fit you! But you are not - fly enough!” - </p> - <p> - He opened eyes and mouth on me, stepped back a few feet, and visibly - swelled. - </p> - <p> - “Well, my-y-y Ga-a-awd!” he wailed. “If that ain’t using the butt end of - the whip on a willing friend, may I never sort webbin’s again!” - </p> - <p> - There was truly something sincere in his distress. But that sudden - warming-up to me on the prairie after I had manhandled him, his - unaccountable friendliness, his jacking his job for a few days in order to - dog me about Breed City—the whole thing was too openly a plant. - </p> - <p> - “You’re a good actor. No wonder you’re in the stage business, Flye,” was - my poor joke. - </p> - <p> - He looked at me for a full minute. Then he turned on the other man. - </p> - <p> - “It’s you, you horn-gilled wump, with your sashay prices and your drunken - man’s gab—it’s you that has put me in wrong with a friend,” he - squealed. “He thinks I’m like you are! He thinks I’m in mush with you on a - brace! I’ll show him and you!” He leaped forward and began to kick the - prospector with fury. The latter was a big and rather torpid person and he - seemed to be in a sort of daze at first, and stood still while Mr. Flye - kicked him. Then he turned and knocked Mr. Flye down; he picked him up and - knocked him down again. - </p> - <p> - It struck me that if this were acting between friends it was getting too - realistic. The driver’s face was bloody and he lay where he fell, his eyes - closed. - </p> - <p> - I jumped between and pushed the prospector away. He struck at me and I was - obliged to hit him a clip or two before he would hold off. We had a fairly - good audience, but fisticuffs in Breed, when the muddy season made tempers - short, seemed to stir only mild interest. - </p> - <p> - I found Mr. Flye on his knees and “weaving” weakly when I turned to him. - </p> - <p> - “I ain’t no fighter—I don’t pretend to be a fighter,” he mumbled. “I - knew he was going to lick me if I kicked him. But that’s all right! - There’s three teeth loose and my eyes are bunging! I can feel ’em! - But it’s all right. If anybody thinks it was a scuffle between friends, - he’d better take another think. I’ve took a licking to show some folks - that there’s such a thing as being mistook in a man.” - </p> - <p> - I hadn’t straightened out my opinions, exactly, but I felt sudden pity and - new respect for Mr. Flye, and some emotion even deeper. I helped him to - his feet and took him into the wash-room of the hotel and fixed him up as - best I could. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t blame you so very much,” he kept assuring me, whimpering through - his bruised and bleeding lips. “It probably hasn’t seemed natural to you—it - hasn’t seemed natural to me. This world is full of crooks and I s’pose - you’ve been up against a lot of ’em. I done one crooked thing - myself once when I kept water away from a drove of hogs for two days and - then let ’em drink all they could hold just before I sold ’em - live weight to a Snake River drover. But that drover had stolen two - cayuses off’n my uncle! I didn’t know what I could do to show you, sir! - Probably what I have done don’t show you. But I’ve done my best. It was - all I could think of on short notice. I’ll let a dozen men beat me up if - you will only understand that I ain’t going to do you or try to do you!” - </p> - <p> - That spirit of humble martyrdom was certainly getting to me! - </p> - <p> - “Look here, Mr Flye,” I blurted, “I don’t understand at all. Why in blazes - are you taking all this interest in me?” - </p> - <p> - He gazed at me out of those pathetic, pale-blue eyes around which - blue-black circles were settling. It was a lingering and wistful gaze. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know, sir. It came over me all of a sudden. It ain’t often I take - to anybody. It just came over me. You’re a real gent—you knowed just - how to handle me. You know how to handle me now! Ain’t you doing the - friendly act, hey?” - </p> - <p> - We were alone in the wash-room; the guests of the hotel flocked there only - at meal-time. - </p> - <p> - “You can see how it looked to me—a stranger here—you two - fellows chasing me up!” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t blame you, sir,” he agreed, meekly. “This world is full of - crooks.” - </p> - <p> - “I have some money with me. It isn’t mine. I need more in a hurry—it’s - to save a man’s name—save him from death, perhaps!” I couldn’t hold - in. “It’s to save his daughter, too. I’m in love with her. I have been for - years! It’s all I can think about. When you spoke of ‘Bright Eyes’ I felt—I - felt—” I stopped and gulped. - </p> - <p> - “I reckon I know how you feel,” stated Mr. Flye, wagging that mussed-up - head of his. “I know a girl. There’s hardly a minute when I ain’t thinking - about her. She hasn’t paid no attention to me, but I’m going to her after - I make my clean-up on ‘Bright Eyes’! It makes ’em think twice when - there’s money. I ain’t much—” - </p> - <p> - “I’m desperate—I’m half crazy, Flye! This mine! Are you fooling me?” - </p> - <p> - He straightened and put his hand up like a man taking the oath. . - </p> - <p> - “I wanted you to get in because I liked you, sir. That’s why I was after - you. But now that you say that you need money I’m begging and imploring - you! If money will do what you say it will in your case, I say ’fore - God you’ll commit a sin if you don’t grab in! I know it! It has come. - ‘Dirty-shirt’ don’t know how to lie about it. The strike has been made. - Take my word,” he pleaded. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll do it,” I told him. “I believe you’re trying to do an honest turn - for me.” I put out my hand and he took it. - </p> - <p> - “Thank the Lord!” he said, and there was a lot of manliness about Mr. Wash - Flye at that moment. “That licking was a good investment.” He said it - devoutly. - </p> - <p> - “But will that fellow sell now?” - </p> - <p> - “Can you handle his twenty thousand shares at ten cents—two thousand - dollars?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes.” - </p> - <p> - “When I offered at fifteen I was trying to beat him down to ten. Don’t - give a cent more. Go show him the money and say you’re willing to be - buncoed once in your life. And hurry—for the love of Sancho, hurry!” - </p> - <p> - I found the prospector watching a roulette game with the sour gaze of a - busted gambler. He went into the corner with me when I jerked invitation - with my chin. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve changed my mind,” he growled, when I mentioned the stock. “And I - wouldn’t do business with you anyway, you—” - </p> - <p> - I unfolded four five-hundred-dollar bills. He stopped his declaration as - suddenly as if I had pinched his throat. - </p> - <p> - “Money is money, I suppose,” said he, “though your shin-plasters from the - East are poor things alongside the good hard coin.” - </p> - <p> - “There’s the bank across the street, and they’ll give you the good hard - coin, mister.” - </p> - <p> - He pulled out his packet and I verified the amount of the certificates. - </p> - <p> - I went to the bank in his company, for he seemed to be bothered with the - notion that those five-hundred-dollar bills needed me as introducer and - sponsor. Then he hotfooted out, weighted with the coin. In spite of myself - and of my fresh faith in Mr. Flye, my heart sank considerably when I saw - that money take legs. The cashier was one of the amiable citizens I had - met in the delegation from the Chamber of Commerce. - </p> - <p> - “Making a little investment?” he inquired, sociably. - </p> - <p> - “A foolish one, I am afraid. But an Easterner who hasn’t had a flier in a - gold-mine at least once in his life gets to feeling lonesome after a time. - That chap has been chasing me around with stock and a story and I have - tossed a little spare change to him.” - </p> - <p> - The cashier peered through the wicket and beamed with new respect on a man - who could speak of two thousand dollars as spare change. - </p> - <p> - “There are mines—and then there are mines,” he suggested. - </p> - <p> - I thought I might as well try my new tune over on this piano. - </p> - <p> - “It’s a proposition called ‘Two Bright Eyes.” I tried to seem indifferent, - but my heart was only about an inch below my larynx and I could hardly get - the words out. - </p> - <p> - I thought he would never speak. He scratched his nose and fiddled with his - ear. I wanted to reach in and shake him so that he would say something, - even if he would only say that I had been nicely fooled. - </p> - <p> - “The property had rather a promising outlook at one time, sir. It was - located by good prospectors and afterward two or three other claims were - taken in. The section is first-rate!” - </p> - <p> - Not wildly encouraging. - </p> - <p> - “But the stock hasn’t been much thought of in these parts—it has - been footballed around a lot. Still”—he twisted his mustache and - waited a few moments—“well, I’ll tell you this confidentially, if I - wasn’t a bank man—and you know we have to move in grooves of caution—if - I could afford to do a little gambling I think I would have picked up a - small bunch of this loose stock. I got a flicker of a hint from a mining - engineer who banks here. Nothing definite—they can’t talk much. But - I know they have been running new leads. The first development wasn’t very - scientific, I understand.” - </p> - <p> - “Does a—When they make a real strike—do prices run up pretty - sudden?” I managed to ask. - </p> - <p> - He smiled. “I see you have never been in a mining town when a bonanza - toots. Everybody goes crazy. They’ll climb over one another to buy stock. - Those who can’t buy stock go racing off to see what they can grab in the - way of adjacent claims. Very exciting, sir! Wish we might show you a - circus of that kind while you’re in town.” - </p> - <p> - When I went out on the street I found Mr. Flye waiting around the corner. - </p> - <p> - “You traded?” he gasped. “He’s over there tossing away twenty-dollar gold - pieces!” - </p> - <p> - “I’ve got twenty thousand shares,” I said, dolefully. - </p> - <p> - “Then I’m going to let ‘Dirty-shirt’ loose. He’ll swell up and bust if I - don’t get that gag out of his mouth.” - </p> - <p> - “But will anybody believe what he says?” - </p> - <p> - Honestly, a gold-mine was unreal to me! I had Eastern prejudices. - </p> - <p> - “You go over there and stand on the hotel porch, sir! You’ll see almighty - sudden how news hits a mining town. ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox don’t have to - bring a gold-mine down into Breed City. He’s the bulletin, that’s all. - There’ll be proof enough pretty close on his heels.” - </p> - <p> - So I went over on the tavern porch. Five minutes later I realized that the - bulletin was loose. “It” came whooping around a corner of the street. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Maddox’s nickname fitted him perfectly; in fact, he was well caked - with mud from head to feet. Plainly he had not stopped to pick dry spots - in his rush down to Breed City. He was shaking a canvas bag over his head - with one hand and in the other flourished a handful of stock certificates. - </p> - <p> - “Who’s got ‘Bright Eyes’? They’ve hit it! High grade from Buffalo Hump - clear through the earth to Chiny! Whoosh! Who wants ‘Bright Eyes’? Here’s - some that’s loose. And there ain’t much loose, gents! They have been - picking it up! High grade and pockets full of crumble!” - </p> - <p> - He shook the canvas bag and opened it when men went crowding about him. - </p> - <p> - “There he is,” announced Mr. Flye at my side. - </p> - <p> - “Looks the part,” said I. - </p> - <p> - “After I had rubbed his jaws where the gag had hurt,” confided my friend, - “he told me that he ain’t more’n four jumps ahead of the boss engineer - expert who is bringing out the samples for the report. All you’ve got to - do now, sir, is to sit tight and look wise!” - </p> - <p> - My unlucky friend could not do much looking for his part; his eyes were - swelled so badly that he could hardly open them. - </p> - <p> - “Look here, Mr. Flye,” I said, with a lot of repentance, “I must seem to - you like pretty much of a crab. I don’t know how—” - </p> - <p> - “It was only a gold-mine guess, according to your notion, sir. And I know - how an Easterner must feel on that point. But when I have a friend and - make up my mind to let him in on a good thing I propose to do it, even if - I have to apologize to him afterward for being almighty fresh. So I—” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t make me feel worse than I am feeling!” - </p> - <p> - There was a crowd in the street of Breed City by that time and Mr. Maddox, - in the center of it, had worked himself into a frenzy of excitement and - was offering “Bright Eyes” stock at a million dollars a share. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t mind that kind of talk,” advised Mr. Flye. “He’s half tight, and - his coco ain’t just right when he gets to talking in a crowd, but you - needn’t worry but what his news is all right. And you can see for - yourself!” - </p> - <p> - Several men were larruping cayuses up the street, bags dangling from - saddle-bows. - </p> - <p> - “It’s the first of the rush for the ‘Bright Eyes’ section. Some of the - critters out this way can beat firemen for quick action,” stated Mr. Flye. - Perhaps to emphasize the fact that now at last he felt himself on a - footing of intimate friendship with me, he plucked a cigar from my vest - pocket and lighted up. - </p> - <p> - “I see you don’t smoke—you probably chaw,” he suggested, and he - handed his plug to me. - </p> - <p> - When I state here that I promptly took the plug, whittled off a chunk, - palmed it, and put some gum into my mouth, the depth of my esteem for Mr. - Flye may be understood. I would rather have chewed that tobacco than hurt - his feelings by refusing a friendly offer. - </p> - <p> - While we stood there a bearded man rode down the street, mud-covered. - </p> - <p> - “And there’s the man who will back me up!” squealed Maddox. “There comes - the boss engineer! He knows what’s under cover in ‘Bright Eyes’!” - </p> - <p> - But the bearded man rode right through the crowd without answering - questions. He alighted in front of the bank and went in, tugging something - in his hand. - </p> - <p> - As a new, and somewhat heavy, stockholder in “Bright Eyes” gold-mine, I - reckoned I’d try to get a little information from that engineer—I - was quite sure that an Eastern capitalist who wore a silk hat and had a - friend in the bank cashier might expect a little more attention than a - street bystander. Therefore, with a word to my friend Flye I went over to - find out the best or the worst. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIII—THE CLEAN-UP - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER I had been - properly indorsed by the cashier, the mining engineer gave me some mighty - comforting information, though I did not understand the technical lingo - very well. He was conservative; he was not at all excited. We could hear - “Dirty-shirt” still orating. - </p> - <p> - “Of course that old lunatic doesn’t know what he is talking about,” said - the engineer. “There are always some of that sort to run and rant and stir - up excitement and start poor fools off on a wild-goose chase.” - </p> - <p> - He opened a sack and showed me ore and hunks of crumbly rock which looked - like nothing special. I had rather expected to see nuggets. He explained - that the crumbly stuff was high grade, very much so, but there were only - scattered pockets of it in the “Bright Eyes” claim. - </p> - <p> - “The parties who first located the property,” said he, “simply skim in for - what pockets they were able to open. They had to pack all their ore out on - cayuses and ship it to Tacoma, and there was no profit to speak of unless - the ore yielded over a couple hundred dollars a ton. So when they quit the - job the mine seemed to be played out.” Then he went on with his technical - talk, and about all I could do was to blink and try to look wise. - </p> - <p> - “You can be sure that Newell knows what he is talking about,” put in the - cashier. - </p> - <p> - I wished <i>I</i> knew. I wanted to butt in with some excited questions. - ‘But I did understand that the men who had gathered up most of the stock - of the mine were going to build a smelter and tackle the thing right end - to. There was plenty of ore and the mine would pay after development was - the comforting information handed to me at last. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon, but how many shares went to you in that trade you just - made?” asked the cashier. “That is, if you’re willing to tell me.” - </p> - <p> - “Twenty thousand—I bought for ten cents a share.” The engineer - showed some surprise. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t think so much of the loose stuff was corralled in one bunch; we - thought what we hadn’t picked up was scattered so wide that we wouldn’t - bother to chase it,” said he. “How did you happen to grab in on it?” - </p> - <p> - I didn’t propose to betray Mr. Flye. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, it was just a gamble! A fellow kept following around after me and I - bought to get rid of him.” - </p> - <p> - “Some of you Eastern Yankees certainly can use your noses for something - else than to talk through,” said the engineer. - </p> - <p> - “If I smelled a bargain when I bought that stock I reckon it must have - been hunch instead of knowledge.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, stick by and stand your assessment for the smelter and you won’t be - sorry.” - </p> - <p> - Mayor Ware and several other citizens came hurrying to have the news about - “Bright Eyes” confirmed. I stood at one side for a time, listening and - meditating. When the cashier told them of my lucky strike they were - immensely tickled. - </p> - <p> - “But you know we Easterners never can make a goldmine seem real,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “In most cases where they’re selling stock East the mines are not real. - But you’re West, now, and you happened in on the ground floor,” said the - mayor. “I am sorry I’m not there, too.” - </p> - <p> - “You can be,” I promptly informed him. “I’m called back home. I’m in a - hurry. I don’t know anything about gold-mines. I can’t come back here to - watch my interests. You folks out here know all about mines and values. My - stock is for sale if anybody wants it.” - </p> - <p> - “What price?” inquired the mayor. “We might make up a little syndicate. - How much do you want for the stock?” - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know,” I confessed, frankly. “It’s all new to me. I paid ten - cents a share. When a gold-mine gets to paying I don’t know how much it - pays.” - </p> - <p> - “It depends on the mine,” stated the engineer. “We can do a pretty good - job of guessing in our line, but we can’t see all that’s underground.” - </p> - <p> - I pulled out my packet of stock. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you honestly, gentlemen, this seems more or less like a joke to me—and - that being the case I’ll sell cheap.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s really worth par—or it will be in time, I’m sure,” stated the - mayor, in honest fashion. “We are under great obligations to you, sir, and - we don’t want to take advantage of you in any way.” - </p> - <p> - “And I feel just that same way toward you, gentlemen,” I assured them. - “There’s always the element of a gamble in mining, I’m sure, though I - don’t know much about it. Your mine may flush out. I’ll tell you what I’ll - do—I’ll meet you on a half-way basis. I’ll sell for half price—fifty - cents on a dollar. Give me ten thousand dollars and you own the stock.” - </p> - <p> - They stepped aside and conferred. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you’ll be in town a few days longer!” suggested the mayor. - </p> - <p> - “If I can get out of here to-night I want to go. I must go.” - </p> - <p> - “I say again, we don’t want to take any advantage of you because you are - obliged to leave in such a hurry. This may seem like queer talk for - business men to make—to offer more than the price asked. But we want - you to remember that Breed City is grateful.” - </p> - <p> - “I really am not asking for any presents,” I said. - </p> - <p> - That was jackass talk for me to make, and I knew it. Lord! we needed all - the money we could scrape. But a funny sort of pride swelled up in me. I - did not propose to be outdone in politeness. Never had I had municipal - attentions shown to my humble self before I came to Breed City. They did - not realize all the good it had done me. - </p> - <p> - “This is no proposition of that sort,” declared the mayor. “But we are so - sure of Newell’s judgment that we know we shall make big profits on this - stock. There are six of us. We propose to give you twelve thousand - dollars, so that the amount you have paid for the stock will be handed - back to you also. We’d like you to remember that Breed City was good to - you to the extent of ten thousand dollars’ clear profit.” - </p> - <p> - That asinine pride was prompting me to split the difference with them. But - across the street just then I saw the old judge peering about, evidently - in a panic of anxiety about me because I had been gone so long with all - that money. Another memory jogged me at that moment. I was morally bound - to hand Dodovah Vose some profit on his five hundred dollars. Haggling - with those enthusiastic citizens of Breed would be feeding my fool pride - at the expense of two old men. - </p> - <p> - “It’s a trade, gentlemen, with all thanks to you!” - </p> - <p> - The mayor was president of the bank and I guess the rest were directors; - at any rate, the cashier, in about two minutes, was asking me how I would - have it! - </p> - <p> - I asked for currency—big bills. I had a boyish, eager hankering to - lug the money to the judge, to show it to him, to have him count it and - feel it and know that he could face the taxpayers of Levant, even if he - couldn’t satisfy all his creditors. But even bankruptcy, thought I, was - not State prison; my uncle would be cheated out of that part of his - revenge. My fingers itched and my eyes shone while the cashier nipped at - the comers of the bills with moistened fingers. He wrapped them in oiled - paper and I sunk them carefully in my clothes! - </p> - <p> - I made as quick a getaway as politeness would allow. - </p> - <p> - As I remember it, I left a promise to come back to Breed City and settle - down! - </p> - <p> - I caught Judge Kingsley by the arm and hurried him down-street and into - the hotel. - </p> - <p> - The moment we were in our room I began jamming packages of money into his - hands. - </p> - <p> - “Look at it! Feel of it! Smell of it!” I urged. “Judge, I took that money - out for an airing and the junket did it lots of good.” - </p> - <p> - He did not understand. I guess he thought I’d merely brought back the - Pratt money and had gone crazy while I was out with it. - </p> - <p> - “There’s sixteen thousand dollars net and clear for us, Judge Kingsley! - And I reckon we won’t hunt up Pratt and hand back the thousand that’s over - and above his graft from you. He’s a liberal gentleman and he ought to be - willing to pay our expenses and for wear and tear. Now pack up, sir!” I - clapped him on the shoulder. “I can’t stop to tell you the story just yet. - We’ll have it on the way.” - </p> - <p> - I began to pack the money into my pockets. - </p> - <p> - He was deathly white when he stood up, and he staggered against the wall. - </p> - <p> - “On the way! Where?” he gasped. - </p> - <p> - “Home!” I yelled, frolicking like a lad. “Home! And we’ve got to make a - race of it if we propose to head Uncle Deck Sidney under the wire!” - </p> - <p> - Ten minutes later I was humping around Breed City, trying to find out how - I could escape. - </p> - <p> - The stage would not leave till morning. And that stage would take us to - Royal City, and blamed if I wanted to go through Royal City. - </p> - <p> - I knew well enough, of course, that Pratt had gone back there to join his - forces and I could hardly hope that the forces were still in jail. - </p> - <p> - On the new railroad which they were building into Breed only a part of the - rails were down; they were not operating trains. There was no stage line - through the broken country in that direction. - </p> - <p> - The Buffalo Hump Mountains were to the south, and to the east the Bitter - Root range raised obstructions. - </p> - <p> - I had the judge on my back, as it were! I couldn’t wake him up to what had - happened. He appeared to be mentally and physically prostrated. I myself - could have straddled a cayuse and ducked out over the broken country. But - the judge must have wheels under him when he was moved. - </p> - <p> - There seemed to be nothing to do but smash through Royal City, taking our - chances. I felt that the citizens there wouldn’t see us murdered on the - street, but they could not be expected to go along and guard us all the - way home. We would have three buzzards on our trail! - </p> - <p> - I was mighty blue and some scared. I was wishing that I had not indulged - that boyish impulse to carry my fortune in cash. I would be fine picking - for those devils! Take that money and the judge, and I had two pretty - heavy parcels to tug back to the East. The dusk came down on Breed before - I had braced myself to make the jump. - </p> - <p> - No, there was nothing else to it! - </p> - <p> - In order to catch trains and get to Levant ahead of calamity we must go - back across Callas prairie and run the gantlet of those three renegades. - </p> - <p> - I reckoned, according to my reading of time-tables, that the delay of even - one day would bump our plans fatally. - </p> - <p> - I had tried several times to find my friend, Mr. Wash Flye. I could not - get on to his track to save me. I wanted to talk transportation with him, - for I was having a mighty discouraging time of it with other parties. - </p> - <p> - There were four public stables in the city, so I found by asking - questions. I tackled the biggest one first. The man in the office was - pulling off hip rubber boots with the air of one who has decided to call - it a day. He laughed at me when I asked for a horse. - </p> - <p> - “My friend, every cayuse in my stable that can walk, trot, run, or limp, - or even can cover ground by rolling over is hired and has either started - for the Blacksnake country where that new strike has been reported or else - is going to start with a crazy prospector astraddle.” - </p> - <p> - I offered to buy a horse. He said that he didn’t do business that way—he - had made promises and would keep them. I asked for names of men who had - hired. I found a few and was turned down; they all expected to get rich if - they could get to Blacksnake. - </p> - <p> - I had no better luck at the other stables. - </p> - <p> - “Bright Eyes” had made me—it looked as if it would also unmake me. - </p> - <p> - “You can’t get it out of their heads in these parts that first-comers on a - strike ain’t due to be millionaires,” one man told me. “If you want a hoss - you’ll have to carpenter together a new one. The only plugs in the city - that haven’t been nailed by prospectors are the spare hosses of the stage - company—and old Uncle Sam’s mail keeps his thumb down hard on those - critters.” - </p> - <p> - Then I set my teeth and began to hunt all the harder for my friend. I got - word of him here and there, but an eel in a dock quicksand could not have - been more of a dodger. It was evident that success had put springs into - the legs and restlessness into the heart of this new Rockebilt of Breed - City. The trail grew hot—the trail grew cold. It was late in the - evening when I finally caught up with him. He was clinking glasses with - “Dirty-shirt” Maddox, in a bar down an alley where Breed City’s virtuous - ten-o’clock-closing ordinance could be more safely violated. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve done a lot for you, Mr. Mann, but I can’t monkey-doodle with the - company hosses at this time o’ year when the mud makes double work.” - </p> - <p> - I drew him outdoors and down the alley. - </p> - <p> - “I’m meddling with another man’s secret, my friend, but I’m going to tell - you enough so that you’ll understand what this means to a poor old man - and;—and—a girl back East.” - </p> - <p> - At the end of my little speech the driver put out his, wiry hand. - </p> - <p> - “If I didn’t do my part to help you in this job I’d have-; to own up to - having a spavined soul and a heart with, wind-puffs on it. Go out on the - road a half-mile and I’ll overtake you with two hosses and a mud-cart.” - </p> - <p> - Before midnight our little expedition was well started across the prairie. - The cart was light, the crisp air of the March night had stiffened the - mud, and we naturally made-better time than with the heavy outfit on which - we had ridden to Breed. But it was coming, dawn when we got to the - rim-rock at the edge of Callas prairie.. Far below we could see the - chimneys of Royal City, smoking signals of early breakfasts. - </p> - <p> - During the crawl across the adobe ruts, under the stars, I had canvassed - with the driver the dangers that the presence of Pratt and his associate - rogues in Royal City held for two gentlemen who desired to mind their own - business and travel East by that; first train. - </p> - <p> - “Friends,” stated the driver, after he had meditated on the matter, “I’m - going to drop you right here at the rim-rock. Just over there is the mouth - of a path that leads down the side of the canon by a short cut—it’s - all of two miles further by the stage-road where you came-up. The path - doesn’t hit the stage-road anywhere. Now if those chaps are out and free - they’ll be likely to ram across to Breed by this morning’s stage. They - want to see you mighty quick and what the mayor said to Pratt won’t keep - ’em away, I reckon! They must be reckless by now! If you walk down - the path you’ll dodge ’em—for the stage is just about - leaving. There’s an old feller named Mike at the foot of the path who’ll - ferry you. You’ll have a full hour to make the train. Take your time down - the path so that you’ll be sure to miss the stage. If your men are still - in Royal City—well, if I was in your place I’d take that train, - anyway, even if I had to leave orders behind for the funerals and the - flowers.” - </p> - <p> - We climbed down and I started to shove my hand into my pocket. Mr. Flye - threw his own hand to his hip. - </p> - <p> - “Hands up!” he called, sharply. “Don’t you pull that wallet! When a chap - gets rich overnight like I’ve done he’s pretty touchy when a friend tries - to put favor on a cash basis. I didn’t think you’d do it, Mr. Mann.” - </p> - <p> - Tears came into my eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Hands up? Yes, hands up to you, good friend, both hands up to you.” I - grabbed the driver’s fists in mine. “But I don’t understand just why you - have done for me all that you’ve done.” - </p> - <p> - “I reckon I smelled out by sort of instinct that you was giving up your - time, doing good for somebody else,” he said, with a nod at the old man. - “At any rate, I took to you, and when I take to a man it’s all of a sudden - and, doggone it, I just can’t help giving him my shirt—if it’s clean - enough and he’ll take it.” - </p> - <p> - He did not trust himself to stay any longer. He lashed his horses, they - spun around, dragging the cart on two wheels, and away the outfit went - across the prairie. And I never saw Wash Flye any more! - </p> - <p> - I hurried along and the old man found the path too steep for conversation. - In places we were obliged to cling to sloping trees and ease our way down. - </p> - <p> - We were startled, after a time, by the sudden appearance of a man in the - path ahead. He was climbing with haste. - </p> - <p> - “Well, gents,” he called, cheerily, “you’re lucky to be coming down - instead of going up! But I figured that I’d rather climb up to the prairie - and get a little sunshine than stay down there and wait for that stage to - get fixed up.” - </p> - <p> - He stopped and wiped his forehead. - </p> - <p> - “What about the stage?” I asked. I had a vision of Dragg, Dawlin, and - Pratt waiting at the river below or lounging in the streets of Royal City, - blocking our path of retreat. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, a tire came off, this side of the river, and the rim caved in. - They’ve propped up the old caboose and sent the wheel back to the - blacksmith shop. You ought to have heard those other three passengers - swear! I’ve had a chance to hear it scientific and fancy in my time—but - those gents certainly could hang on the trimmings. Especially the fat - one!” - </p> - <p> - “Fat one!” - </p> - <p> - “Yep! Fat man with a suit of clothes that would put the eyesight of a - Potlatch coyote on the blink. They seem to be in a hurry. They’re walking - up this hill, too. Other two men are derricking fat man up the trail. Are - making some talk about getting a rancher to set ’em across Callas.” - </p> - <p> - He clapped on his hat and climbed along. - </p> - <p> - When he had disappeared, I led the way into the pine growth at the side of - the trail, and we found a boulder which would shield the two of us. - </p> - <p> - Dragg came first—carrying out the suggestion of his name by pulling - at Mr. Pratt with all his strength, and Dawlin pushed behind. They halted - often and one of their stops was just below our boulder. They were telling - each other what they proposed to do to a certain person who wore a - plug-hat. - </p> - <p> - I drew the two guns from my hip pockets, and I could feel the arm of the - judge trembling against my ribs. - </p> - <p> - But after the three went puffing on and were out of sight, I dropped the - weapons into a crevice between the ledges. - </p> - <p> - “No, I did not intend to shoot them,” I said, when Judge Kingsley asked - questions. - </p> - <p> - We hurried on down the trail. - </p> - <p> - “But why did you throw away those two good revolvers?” asked the thrifty - old chap. - </p> - <p> - “I only borrowed them. It might seem like stealing if I should carry them - back East. I don’t like to have stolen property on my person,” I said. - </p> - <p> - I did not feel like talking. That remark stopped further conversation. - </p> - <p> - We caught the train! - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIV—HOW SWEET IS THE HOME-COMING, EH? - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>Y thoughts, fears, - and hopes went galloping ahead of me during that ride back to the East. - It’s all a blur of memory—wheat-fields, prune-orchards, tunnels, - peaks, and prairies—and the old judge sitting beside me, twisting - his withered hands and cracking his bony knuckles. It was lucky for both - of us that the slow part of the journey was at the start and that we had - the clang of mile-a-minute rails under us for the last two days of that - race. - </p> - <p> - Well, I thought the thing over. It was just as much of a nightmare then as - it seems now when I am setting it down. - </p> - <p> - How I ever undertook such a crack-brained, daredevil trip and hoped for - anything tangible to fall to me by such a hundred-to-one shot I do not - understand even now in clear fashion, in spite of the explanation I have - given. We talk about hunches in this world! If I had not obeyed some sort - of suggestion I certainly would not have chased those renegades. Only by - meeting with them did I stand a chance of recovering any money. That - thought and my hankering to use my knowledge about the Pratt-Dawlin gang - influenced me a great deal, I suppose. And the conviction that I couldn’t - spin a thread by seeking money in any other way pried me out of Levant, of - course. - </p> - <p> - I have had something to say about the force of circumstances! - </p> - <p> - I was not in a comfortable frame of mind at all, though the money in my - pockets should have given me considerable cheer. I did not feel that it - was my money—any of it. I could not make it seem like anything which - belonged to me or convince myself that I had earned it. I had picked a - man’s pocket for part of it and the rest of that cash had been jammed into - my pockets, so to speak. I was not wasting a moment’s time on questioning - the morality of any of my acts. I reckoned if Pratt’s wallet had been - stuffed with twice as much I would have kept the plunder. - </p> - <p> - I pondered on another point. - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley, provided we got under the wire in season, could be saved - from the charge of criminality, but he still had his salvation, - financially, to work out. He needed all that money and more—and I - had volunteered—had forced myself on him as combination courier and - savior. It was all settled in my mind, according to my private code, that - I must hand over the cash. - </p> - <p> - I will state right here that the decision I had come to about the money - did not rasp my feelings in the slightest. I had read quite a few - story-books in my time. If there was ever a case in the whole realm of - fact and fiction where the final scene would show loving daughter clasped - in adoring lover’s arms, and a benignant father raising his hands over - them with “Bless-you-my-children” sentiment, my affair seemed to be - triumphantly of that sort. Time, effort, and money—it all belonged - in the family! - </p> - <p> - My heart glowed and my eyes grew moist and it was a wonder that I did not - blurt out the whole thing to the judge—I felt so sure of him! - </p> - <p> - However, he had his own troubles to take up his mind pretty completely, I - realized. There was no telling what might be happening back home, with my - uncle Deck stirring things. If I had timed trains right, and nothing - tipped upside down, we didn’t have much more than twenty-four hours’ - leeway in Levant ahead of that town meeting. I asked the judge if the town - notes were very widely scattered, and he told me they were not. He had - picked special parties whom he could depend on to keep their mouths shut - about their investment, and he felt pretty sure that they would hand back - the notes in exchange for cash and would ask no questions and would keep - still in the future. - </p> - <p> - “But I can’t eat and I can’t sleep,” he mourned, “not till I have those - papers in my two hands!” He put up his crooked claws and worked them. “In - my hands—all torn into ribbons—and then into the fire! Just - think of it!” He croaked the words and shivered. “Papers—only a few - papers! Scattered around town. Papers with ink-marks! Yet they can send me - to State prison!” - </p> - <p> - No, that wasn’t the time to talk with the judge about being his partner or - his son-in-law. But I did talk more with him in regard to plans for - gathering in the notes quietly and quickly the moment we struck town. I - had him give me the names so that I could help plan the campaign. - </p> - <p> - I knew them, of course. They were old tight-wads of farmers in the back - districts who would endure lighted candles at their feet for a long time - before they would leak any information about their money matters; there - were some widows and old maids who didn’t know anything about money - matters, anyway. The judge had picked well, I had to admit to myself. But - there was a lot to do, a mighty short time to do it in, and it had got to - be done with the delicate touch a bashful chap would use in picking a - rose-leaf off a sleeping schoolmarm’s cheek. - </p> - <p> - Therefore, this was my suggestion to the judge: we’d slip off the train a - station below Levant Comers, hire a hitch, and make our rounds of the - town’s creditors in the back-lots before we showed up in Levant village. - </p> - <p> - That’s what we did. - </p> - <p> - The lengthened days of April gave us a full hour and a half of sunlight - for our ride on our quest. Out of cupboards and long wallets and rosewood - boxes the farmers and the old maids dutifully produced their town notes—“for - the judge had called on.” They seemed to believe that his wish to call in - the notes settled the matter beyond all question. - </p> - <p> - He became once more his dignified, calm, self-contained self, though I - could see that it was only by exercise of all his will power. - </p> - <p> - I had placed packets of money in his hands and he figured interest and - made payments. - </p> - <p> - The first man with whom he did business gave the judge his cue and made me - thank the good Lord that I had planted that seed in Dodovah Vose! - </p> - <p> - “You’re looking better than I have ever seen you, Judge! Younger, too! - What have you been doing to yourself? Oh, your whiskers are cut off! - Improves you!” - </p> - <p> - The moment we had struck Spokane I bought alcohol and stripped that - grotesque mustache from the judge’s face. In spite of his haggard - countenance, he did look younger. - </p> - <p> - “It’s said around town,” proceeded Farmer Bailey—=and I held my - breath and did not dare to look at Judge Kingsley—“that you’ve just - cleaned up a lot of money in a big deal. Dod Vose has given out first - news! We’re all glad of it because we have always looked up to you as a - financier.” - </p> - <p> - The judge nodded stiffly in acknowledgment of the compliment. - </p> - <p> - “And I suppose he has made you rich, too, young Sidney, taking you under - his wing like he has,” suggested the farmer, with a wink. “Your uncle is - giving you a black eye for deserting the family—like he done the - first time you left town—but I guess you haven’t made any mistake by - grabbing in with Judge Kingsley.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m quite sure of that,” I told Farmer Bailey. - </p> - <p> - “I hate to take this money, Judge,” said the farmer. “It’s been safe with - you. I ain’t a financier like you be. It hasn’t been taxed. You bet I have - kept my mouth shut!” - </p> - <p> - “It’s only to clear up town business on account of the special meeting - which has been called for to-morrow,” stated the judge. “I am glad to hear - you have kept the matter private. I merely tried to help a few of my - friends. And I suggest that you say nothing about having received this - money or that you have surrendered a town note. There are disturbers in - town who threaten a high tax-rate.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s Deck Sidney, thrashing around to make a big show of his authority, - now that he is selectman,” the farmer grumbled. “He ain’t being backed up - by the people, I can tell you that! It’s all right to be enterprising, but - he is too cussed much so. He was around here the other day, trying to nose - out whether I held a town note or not!” I felt a thrill of fear and the - judge grew visibly paler. “Yes, he hung on and coaxed and threatened and - argued. But I knew what he was up to!” - </p> - <p> - He winked at the shrinking judge. - </p> - <p> - “He said if I didn’t bring my town note into the meeting I’d never be able - to collect.” - </p> - <p> - “How did he know you held a town note?” croaked the judge. - </p> - <p> - “He didn’t know! He was round town guessing. I never let on. I knew he - wasn’t any financier. I knew that you’d protect me, no matter what Deck - Sidney might say. I smelled him out, all right! He thinks he is running - this town and he tried to bamboozle me so that he could find some more - property to tax. I reckon we’ll show him where he belongs when it comes to - next annual meeting. He’s getting altogether too big for his britches!” We - learned much more about my uncle’s recent activities before we finished - our ride. Evidently, when he had held his nose in the air he had sniffed - town notes; but when he had set his nose to the ground and had tried to - run those notes to their lairs he had failed. At any rate, the holders - protested to the judge that they had not dropped one word—all of - them suspecting that my uncle was merely digging out property to tax. The - resentful farmers had replied to his anathema with some of their own and - the frightened old maids had been too scared to say anything to him. We - heard enough to know that he had traveled more or less by guesswork, and - had made his quest general, hoping to corner somebody by chance. If we - could believe the protestations of the parties concerned, Judge Kingsley’s - defenses still presented a fair front to the world.. - </p> - <p> - At last, before the evening was old, the judge had taken into his hands - the last note. - </p> - <p> - Then we ordered our driver to hurry us to the village. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Sidney,” said the judge, when he had paid the driver and stood in the - shadows at the edge of the square, “this is not the time to talk over our - affairs, but I do want you to step into my office for a few moments.” - </p> - <p> - He led the way. - </p> - <p> - The big house was dark and a queer kind of a shiver ran through me when I - looked at it. - </p> - <p> - “The devil must have had me in his clutch all these days,” muttered the - judge. “I have been worse than a lunatic. Not a word from me to my poor - folks at home!” - </p> - <p> - To tell the truth, I had not been giving much thought to our remissness in - that duty. I have never been much of a letter-writer in my life—I - had been so long without folks who cared to hear from me that the matter - of keeping anybody posted on my whereabouts never came into my mind. To be - sure, I had Celene Kingsley in my mind all the time, even in the stress of - our adventures, but I had not presumed to write to her. During our travels - it had not occurred to me that it was any part of my business to prompt - Judge Kingsley in any of his family affairs. But now that we were back, in - front of that gloomy house, I realized just how brutal the whole thing - was. - </p> - <p> - The judge went to his office door and his hand trembled so violently that - the key clattered all around the hole; what with the darkness and his - agitation, he could not unlock the door, and I did it for him, gently - taking the key from his hand. - </p> - <p> - I lighted his lamp when we were within. We stood there for a few moments - and looked at each other. - </p> - <p> - “It’s so still!” he mumbled. “It seems early for them to be in bed.” - </p> - <p> - “But your folks must be all right,” I ventured. “If there was anything - wrong we would have heard about it while we have been riding about town.” - </p> - <p> - “Probably! Probably!” His voice quavered and he was all a-tremble. “But it - seems so still!” - </p> - <p> - He sat down at his table and pulled out the notes he had been gathering. - </p> - <p> - “You are entitled to look on, Mr. Sidney! I wanted you to see me do it. I - don’t just understand all the reasons yet why you have helped me as you - have. We will talk about that some day when my head is clearer. It’s all a - dream—a dream—a dream—so it seems now.” He sort of - maundered along in his talk. He did not seem to be at all sure of himself. - If the thought did come to me with any force that then was a good time to - tell him why I had volunteered as I had done, I put the idea away when I - looked at him. - </p> - <p> - He dumped papers out of a tin tray which stood on the table. He piled the - notes in the tray. - </p> - <p> - “Touch a match to them, sir,” he told me. “You are entitled to do it. We - will watch them burn. I signed them as town treasurer. One of them would - put me into prison. Hurry! Set the match to them!” And I obeyed. - </p> - <p> - Then, almost before the red embers were dark, he dove his hands into the - ashes of the papers and scrufled them about and out of him came the most - dreadful cackle of laughter I ever heard. - </p> - <p> - I was anxious to end that scene as quickly as I could. I pulled a packet - from my coat and laid it on the table; I tapped my finger on it to get his - attention. - </p> - <p> - “Here is something I have held out, Judge Kingsley,” - </p> - <p> - I informed him. “There’s a thousand dollars tied up in this paper. Five - hundred of it I accepted from Dodo-vah Vose, agreeing to put him in right - in our speculation. I took it when I started West.” - </p> - <p> - In spite of his emotion the old judge’s business sense flared just as the - fire had flared in the tray a moment before. - </p> - <p> - “But there was no speculation—there was no business deal! Why did - you take money in that way?” - </p> - <p> - “I had special reasons of my own, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “But you had no right—it was a private affair—it—” - </p> - <p> - “And I also had reasons of your own to consider, sir,” I broke in. “Mr. - Vose asked me to invest for him. I wanted your name to stand well after we - were gone. I was under obligations to Mr. Vose and when I told him we had - a big deal on I could give him no good reason why I would not turn a - little profit his way. That’s why the man Bailey is so sure that your - credit is now good. You’ll find that the news has gone all about the - section—” - </p> - <p> - “They’ll be jumping on me for the money I owe!” snarled the judge. “Vose - has ruined me if he has bragged. You have—” - </p> - <p> - “Just a moment, sir, before you say something you’ll be sorry for. It’s - just the other way, I’ll warrant! Men will bring more money to you. You - can be shrewd and work out of your troubles. Your credit is established. I - made a good play when I did it.” - </p> - <p> - “You say there’s a thousand dollars in that envelope?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir! I have handed the other packets to you. I propose to give Mr. - Vose five hundred dollars profit—and after I have done that you’ll - get the best advertising you ever had. They’ll rate you mighty high in - these parts. Five hundred is a cheap price for what you’ll get.” - </p> - <p> - “But I need every cent just now to tide me over,” he whined. “You are - throwing money away recklessly. Vose can be taken care of some time. Give - him his own five hundred—or—or—say it has been invested - for him. I will attend to his case later.” - </p> - <p> - And do you know what that old rhinoceros did? He reached out his paw to - take that packet. I had to pound my fist on his fingers to make him let - go. - </p> - <p> - He stood up and called me names—said that I was taking money he - needed. I suppose I ought to have made allowances for the state of mind he - was in—his fears—his weakness of old age—his dreadful - anxiety which still goaded him. - </p> - <p> - But I was in a bad way, myself, and I could not pardon that selfishness. - </p> - <p> - “Confound you,” I yelled, “I have a mind to back you against the wall and - strip every dollar out of your pockets!” - </p> - <p> - And then we heard a noise and we turned around, and there stood Celene - Kingsley looking at us—looking at me especially with hatred and - horror. - </p> - <p> - “Father!” she cried. “Shall I run and call help? He is robbing you!” - </p> - <p> - I certainly could not say a word just then, and the judge sat down and - gasped and gaped at her. - </p> - <p> - She came into the room. She was white and pale and thin, but she was no - shrinking and anguished maiden. She was showing the female’s ferocity in - guarding her own. - </p> - <p> - “I heard you! Confessing that you’re a robber out of your own mouth! Where - have you been with my poor father? What devilish spell have you put on him—you - and the rest of your gang?” - </p> - <p> - She turned away from me. - </p> - <p> - “Father, don’t you realize that you have come home when it is too late? - Oh, God in heaven, why did you not break away from those rogues and come - home—or write so that we could ransom you? I know. They have kept - you a prisoner!” - </p> - <p> - “Too late?” he looked at his office safe. I knew what he was afraid of. - “Too late?” - </p> - <p> - She began to sob. “It has killed mother!” - </p> - <p> - He got up and staggered to her and took her in his arms. - </p> - <p> - “Your mother dead?” - </p> - <p> - “It’s worse than that! It’s her mind—it has gone, and her body is - following. She hasn’t known me for days. She lies there dying.” - </p> - <p> - I was shocked, but I must confess I did not feel like a murderer. Mrs. - Kingsley had been ill when we went away—she had so declared in my - hearing. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Kingsley,” I put in, “I’m sorry, but your father and I—” - </p> - <p> - Her tears ceased and she turned on me in a fury. I knew something about - the Kingsley disposition, but I did not know before that she had so much - of it in her. - </p> - <p> - “Sorry! You sorry? I know about you, you miserable low-lived wretch! I - have been hunting for my father. Do you think I would look down on my - dying mother and not spend every cent I had in trying to find where you - had taken him? My detectives have been on that trail you left in the - city!” - </p> - <p> - Able detectives! On the cold and easy trail instead of nosing on the warm - one! - </p> - <p> - “But please listen to me—” - </p> - <p> - “To more of your lies? No! I know you for what you are—hiding from - the police in the city—coming back here to finish the ruin of my - innocent father after your friends had been, sent here by you to rob him. - You don’t dare to deny what you have been in the city! Your face convicts - you!” > - </p> - <p> - I was perfectly conscious that I was not presenting any lamb-like picture - of innocence. She certainly had me on the run when she burst out with that - exposure of my city record. But I did not propose to lie down and stick up - my feet like a calf ticketed for the butcher. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Kingsley,” I said, slapping the packet of money across my palm—and - that was a poor tool to use for emphasis after she had heard my talk to - her father, “you must listen—” - </p> - <p> - “I have been listening just now! I heard you threaten to strip my poor - father of every cent he has in the world! Do you deny you said it?” - </p> - <p> - “No, but—” - </p> - <p> - “Do you deny that you have been the sort of a man I have said you were?” - </p> - <p> - She rushed at me, her hands like claws. I was reminded of a sight I had - witnessed in boyhood—a shrieking meadow-thrush defending her nest - against a sneaking snake. - </p> - <p> - I looked past her toward the judge. I did hope he would say something, - even though I did not expect that he would come out with the whole truth. - Honestly, I would have stopped him short if he had started to confess to - her anything about the real reason why I was mixed into his affairs. Had - not the whole expedition been planned so that the women folks would not - know? - </p> - <p> - Nevertheless, a decent man in his right senses could have made some sort - of talk to help me out. But it was plain enough that Judge Kingsley was - not in his right senses—he did not seem to have much of any sense - left in him; he was doddering around the room, twisting his hands and - accusing himself of having killed his wife. - </p> - <p> - “Please listen,” I implored. “You have heard only one side—” - </p> - <p> - “I will not listen! You, your uncle, the renegades you associate with, you - have tried to ruin my father. You weren’t even decent enough to be an open - enemy—you came sneaking into our home to lie to us and deceive us.” - </p> - <p> - “By the gods,” I shouted, “you will listen to me! I don’t propose to be - kicked around from pillar to post all my life. I am the best friend the - Kingsley family ever had. If your father doesn’t tell you so, I will. - Judge Kingsley, why don’t you be a man?” - </p> - <p> - But he gave me a fishy look and went on lamenting. - </p> - <p> - She started for the door. “There are honest men in this village—I’m - going to call them!” - </p> - <p> - But I got to the door ahead of her. - </p> - <p> - “There’s another time coming—a better time for an explanation—and - you’ll be the sorriest girl in the world.” - </p> - <p> - “I can never be as sorry as I am now—sorry and ashamed! To think - that I ever put confidence in a creature by the name of Sidney!” - </p> - <p> - What a glorious home-coming for the paragon of selfsacrifice! - </p> - <p> - I walked around the square half a dozen times before I dared to go into - the tavern. I don’t know how I ever got through that interview with - Dodovah Vose without betraying my state of mind, but I managed it and - excused my peculiarity by saying that I was all worn out by my trip. And - he had too much on his own mind in a few minutes to pay special attention - to me, for I handed him one thousand dollars and went up to my room - without bothering to contradict his excited guessings that the judge and I - had cleaned up a fortune. Kingsley, I reflected, might as well have the - benefit of the guessing. And, it must be known, hope was not dead in me in - spite of my agony. - </p> - <p> - Something else was very much alive in me. Blackleg, eh? Flashy rogue! - Barker for gamblers! - </p> - <p> - I took off that plug-hat, held it in both hands, and put my foot through - the crown; then I kicked it all around the room. I stripped off that - frock-coat, grabbed the tails and ripped it into two parts. - </p> - <p> - Then I went to the closet and surveyed that ready-made suit and the - billycock hat with content. - </p> - <p> - In the morning I would be Ross Sidney, professional diver, ready to go - back on the job if there was any such thing as a job for me in all the - world. I hoped I would be sane once more when I opened my eyes on a new - day. I yanked that fancy waistcoat into ribbons, threw the pearl-gray - trousers under the bed, and hurried to go to sleep so that I would not - become completely crazy before I could forget my troubles. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXV—GRATITUDE! - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE surely is a - lot in this conscious-virtue notion! I had plenty of the quality next - morning. - </p> - <p> - Things seemed brighter. I felt like myself once more. It was inconceivable - that the horrible misunderstanding between Celene Kingsley and myself - could continue very long; I was ready to make confession as to my - temporary lunacy in the city, and my new optimism encouraged me to believe - that she would find excuse for me. At any rate, I was soon assured that - whatever she had learned from that detective, whoever he was, she had kept - it to herself. From that reticence I drew excellent augury that she was - not out to ruin me. If she had opened her mouth about my past I would have - known it the moment I stepped out on the street in Levant. But every - person I met ducked polite salute, and I met many persons because the - village was full on account; of the town meeting. - </p> - <p> - At ten o’clock the town hall was crowded and in a short time the - cut-and-dried preliminaries were over. - </p> - <p> - My uncle was with his associates on the platform, and the stare he gave me - when he caught my eyes was so demoniac that I was careful not to look his - way again for some time. - </p> - <p> - There was evidence of strained anticipation everywhere in the gathering. I - heard voters whispering that Deck Sidney proposed to spring something. But - nobody, according to what I could hear, presumed to put in words what they - guessed. - </p> - <p> - My uncle was mashing his personal batteries, I saw. - </p> - <p> - An unemotional lawyer explained the purpose of the meeting, and then the - moderator called on Judge Kingsley, as town treasurer, to give the - financial standing of the town. - </p> - <p> - Uncle Deck fairly bored the judge with his gaze when the old man walked to - the platform and I was as intent with my scrutiny, for I was wondering how - Kingsley would get through with it. He was white and somewhat shaky, but - he was the same old cold proposition when he faced the voters. - </p> - <p> - “I hope you will pardon a word on a personal matter,” he said, as he - unfolded his papers; “but I have returned from a business trip and find - serious illness in my family. I have been keeping watch at the bedside of - my dear wife and my thoughts are not clear enough to enable me to make the - little address I had contemplated for to-day. I will only say that the - movement to clear the town of its debt is very praiseworthy and my report - will show that the thing may be done with a little extra effort. Our only - considerable indebtedness consists of town bonds amounting to eight - thousand dollars and current items as follows.” Then he went on to give - the list of unpaid town orders, of which only a few were extant. “I see - here representatives of the bondholders,” he added, “who will check my - figures if such assurance is required by any voter—and probably most - of the parties who hold town orders are in the meeting. I hope the town - orders will be presented for payment at once so that there may be no - floating indebtedness.” He folded up his papers. - </p> - <p> - My uncle got up and stamped down his trousers legs. - </p> - <p> - “Now, you voters,” he called, “ask your questions!” - </p> - <p> - But not a voice was raised. - </p> - <p> - “I’m no lawyer and I’m making no threats,” my uncle went on. “But after - the way this meeting has been advertised, and after the call that has been - made, I reckon that the men who have been holding out claims against this - town and who haven’t presented them will be left to whistle for their - money. I propose to have action taken that will outlaw those claims.” - </p> - <p> - Judge Kingsley turned slowly on my uncle and stood as stiff as a stake. - </p> - <p> - “To what claims do you refer, Selectman Sidney? Do you question the - accuracy of my report?” - </p> - <p> - “Come out of your holes, you old woodchucks!” shouted Uncle Deck, looking - past the judge at the voters. Men scowled at him and grumbled. - </p> - <p> - The judge walked toward the First Selectman and shook his papers. - </p> - <p> - “You must talk to me, sir! I am the treasurer of this town and have been - for a good many years. Here before the voters I demand that you specify - claims.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll specify, then! How about the town notes that are out with your name - on them?” - </p> - <p> - A murmur ran through the assemblage. - </p> - <p> - “Just one moment, sir! Weigh your words,” warned the judge. “You are - attacking my financial reputation; there is a law for slanderers and I - have many witnesses here. Do you say there is one single town note extant - with my name on it?” - </p> - <p> - “I say there are a lot of ’em!” - </p> - <p> - This time many voters raised voices of protest and there were hisses. - </p> - <p> - “That’s the thanks a straight man gets for trying to protect his town - against a thief, eh?” raged my uncle, his ready temper bursting loose. - </p> - <p> - “If the judge don’t collect fifty thousand dollars damages for this, then - I’m no guesser,” declared Dodovah Vose, who sat beside me. - </p> - <p> - Uncle Deck tramped to the edge of the platform and with wagging finger - selected a man in the throng; the man was Farmer Bailey. - </p> - <p> - “Bailey, you hold a town note with Kingsley’s name on it! You know you do! - Are you going to sit there and see it canceled as no good by the vote of - this town?” - </p> - <p> - Bailey rose slowly and everybody listened in deep silence. - </p> - <p> - “I hold no note of any kind with Judge Kingsley’s name on it.” - </p> - <p> - “Yah-h-h! You have told me that before. But you don’t dare to stand here - in town meeting and say it under oath.” - </p> - <p> - “Send down that Bible on the stand and I’ll take oath and kiss the Book,” - offered Bailey. There was applause and the judge quieted it by raising his - hand. - </p> - <p> - “I will pay double for any note with my name on it as treasurer, and I - will turn the money over to the town as a gift,” he said. - </p> - <p> - I despised him when he made that bluff, though of course he had to do it. - Really, in spite of his devilish temper and his spirit of revenge my uncle - was twice the man Judge Kingsley was in that moment. I wasn’t trying to - figure out the righteousness of the thing on either side; the judge was - fighting for his very life, as well as his standing, and my uncle, though - he was working for the good of the town according to his lights, was - satisfying his old grudge—the real passion of his life. - </p> - <p> - A voter rose and bellowed until he secured silence; they were giving the - judge an ovation. - </p> - <p> - “I want to put in a word here, fellow-townsmen! Money has been borrowed on - town notes. A certain eminent man you all know tried to borrow from me and - said I could escape taxation. And now he is backed by the liars—” - </p> - <p> - “And barked at by the liars, too,” yelled another man. - </p> - <p> - “I stand up here for Selectman Sidney, who has given his time and effort - to help this town out of the clutches—” - </p> - <p> - They howled him down. But by this time the defenders of my uncle were - howling, too. - </p> - <p> - “This meeting is going to break up in a free fight if a stop isn’t put to - this jawing,” said Dodovah Vose. He jumped up on the settee and made - himself heard. “I move we adjourn!” - </p> - <p> - The apprehensive moderator put the motion, the judge’s friends carried it, - and the meeting was dissolved. - </p> - <p> - My uncle leaped off the platform and came raging at me through the crowd. - </p> - <p> - “It’s you—you damnation imp of Gehenna! Racing and chasing over this - town yesterday! I had a line on you. Saving that old whelp from what was - coming to him!” He put his hands over his head and wriggled his fingers. - “God! I don’t know what you have done—you got that money by robbing - a bank, probably. But you have done it—you have jumped up and down - on your family! You have got to answer to me!” - </p> - <p> - Men pushed away in panic and left us in a ring. But I had no notion of - entertaining the old goggle-eyes of Levant by fisticuffs with my uncle. I - folded my arms. - </p> - <p> - “According to your reckoning, Uncle Deck, I have owed you something for a - long time. I want to stand square with you! Go ahead and collect!” - </p> - <p> - He did not seem to understand at once. - </p> - <p> - “Go ahead and beat me up! I won’t raise a finger.” Yes, I would have taken - the beating—I knew inside of me that I did owe my uncle something of - the sort. - </p> - <p> - “Not by a dam-site, he sha’n’t beat you up,” declared Dodovah Vose. “I - saved you from him once,” he said, careless of revelations, “and I’ll save - you again.” - </p> - <p> - So, after waiting a minute and enduring my uncle’s tongue instead of his - fists, I went away with Landlord Vose. - </p> - <p> - I was not in the mood for any further paltering or palavering in regard to - my personal and private standing with the Kingsley family. I had a - collection to make and I proposed to go and make it. I ought to have known - better than to force the issue at that time. But youth is headstrong, the - sense of my injuries was hot, and I felt that if ever the judge might be - willing to show his gratitude that would be the time. - </p> - <p> - He was crossing the square on his way home and I left Mr. Vose and hurried - after. I caught up with him at the front door. - </p> - <p> - “I want to come in and have a word with you and with your daughter,” I - told him. - </p> - <p> - “Impossible,” he said, curtly. “I’m afraid my wife is at death’s door. And - my daughter—she is very bitter!” - </p> - <p> - “I propose to have you explain enough so that she will not be bitter, sir. - It’s my due. You know what kind of a service I have rendered. I have made - an enemy of my uncle—ruined all my prospects to help you. There are - things you can tell your daughter to—” - </p> - <p> - “How does my daughter enter into any affairs between you and myself? You - must let me alone in my sorrow. Later I will pay you for your services. I - am grateful. If I were not in such distress I would explain how grateful I - am. I will pray that I may be spared till I can pay back to you what I - owe.” - </p> - <p> - “Good Cæsar! I don’t want your money, Judge Kingsley. I’ll work and earn - more to help you out of your difficulties. I only ask you to be a man and - make your daughter understand—” - </p> - <p> - “My daughter again! You don’t presume—” - </p> - <p> - “I do presume, sir. She was kind to me until this horrible - misunderstanding came up. I expect you to tell her that I am your best - friend. It’s my right!” - </p> - <p> - I’ll never forget the look he gave me. I’ll wager a good bit that the idea - of such enormity on my part never came into his Kingsley consciousness - till that moment. Even then he did not seem to be just sure that he - understood. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t expect anything definite from you or her, Judge Kingsley, until I - have made good in the world. But I do look to you to give me a square - deal. That’s only what you owe to me, man to man.” - </p> - <p> - “I owe you money and I will pay it. There is no other sort of bargain - between us.” - </p> - <p> - He stepped into his house and shut the door in my face. - </p> - <p> - In that damnable situation I was minded to follow him and have it out, - even if I were obliged to expose him. However, if death were hovering over - that house it was a sanctuary I could not invade. But bitter thoughts - raged in me when I turned away; I only asked to be set right with Celene. - </p> - <p> - I understand that this part of my confession will elicit little sympathy - for me from the casual reader who takes the comfortable view that the - world is full of girls and if one does not swing low enough on the bough - there’s always another within reach. But mine was the exceptional case - where the first love had become an obsession and all my spirit of - persistency was flaming in me. I have not figured out as yet whether the - troubles into which my general persistency in all matters has slammed me - overbalance the fruits it has brought to me—but I reckon, after all, - I’ll have to take my hat off to my persistency. If I had been a quitter I - would not have played the biggest game in my life—and I’m coming to - that right soon. - </p> - <p> - Once more circumstances were forcing me, though I needed mighty little - forcing, to leave Levant at that juncture in my affairs. - </p> - <p> - “Damn ’em!” I blazed out to Dodovah Vose when I stamped into the - tavern, “I’ve got to show ’em! I’ll show ’em I can make - good.” - </p> - <p> - He blinked at me. - </p> - <p> - “But you have shown ’em already,” he said. He thought, of course, - that I was speaking about the general public in Levant. “And if I was in - your place I wouldn’t give a dam what your uncle says to you.” - </p> - <p> - Less than two hours later Landlord Vose revised that advice. He rushed up - to my room where I was sorting some papers, having resolved to travel - light when I did go. - </p> - <p> - “Get under—get under, young Sidney,” he gasped. - </p> - <p> - “Under what?” - </p> - <p> - “I reckon I mean get out. It’s your uncle Deck! Bailey and some other of - them yawp-mouths in this place have been twitting and tormenting him and - dropping hints, and he’s worse than a sore-eared bulldog after a - scruffing. He’s coming with a double-barreled shot-gun. He is! He’s drunk, - son, and there’s no dealing with him. He lays it all to you!” - </p> - <p> - “I won’t run.” - </p> - <p> - “But he isn’t responsible, son. To say nothing of what will happen to you, - it means that he’ll go to State prison. You’re sane and sober and you - ought to be willing to save him from himself.” - </p> - <p> - Right then Mr. Vose said something which appealed to me. I had stepped - outside my family—I had conspired against my uncle—I had - blocked his dearest ambition, iniquitous though it was. By hanging around - and allowing him to take pot-shots at me I would be aggravating his - troubles and bringing more serious afflictions upon him. A dead nephew, - shot-riddled, would be a damning exhibit A in his trial for murder! - </p> - <p> - I picked up my few belongings and escaped from the back door of the - tavern, hid in a cross-road till Dodovah Vose’s stableman came with a - hitch, and I caught a train at a station down the line; hustling out of my - native town on the run, by dint of practice, was getting to be one of the - best performances in my list of tricks. - </p> - <p> - I counted my money when I was on my way to the city. I had not been - keeping any strict account between the judge and myself; from the common - stock I had been paying expenses and spending as loose as peas in order to - hasten our journey back East. I found around two hundred and fifty dollars - in my pockets, and I reflected, with a sort of grim zest in the humor of - the thing, that I could fairly claim most of this money as my own—the - tainted cash from my poker profits. - </p> - <p> - I went straight to Jodrey Vose when I arrived in the metropolis and he - looked neither surprised nor overjoyed. - </p> - <p> - “Where have you been?” he inquired. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, sort of loafing around up-country—killing time!” - </p> - <p> - He squinted at me sourly. - </p> - <p> - “I can’t say that you’re doing any great credit to my training, young - Sidney!” - </p> - <p> - “You are right, Captain Vose, but I’m turning over a new leaf and I’m out - to make good. I am hoping that I can do something in the case of Anson C. - Doughty so that I can get back into the diving business and keep on the - job hereafter.” - </p> - <p> - “Then you’ll go back to diving and keep out from under plug-hats, will - you?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, sir!” - </p> - <p> - He looked at me for a long time and then he pulled out a letter. - </p> - <p> - “This here,” he said, tapping it, “is something more about that <i>Golden - Gate</i> treasure. There’s a new crowd on the rampage about it. From - somebody in the old crowd they have got hold of my name. I came nigh - trying it on once, as I have told you. But it’s a gamble; I am old and I - don’t want it. You are young and there’s nothing as yet for you on the - Atlantic coast, and you might grab in on this. They want an Eastern diver - because the divers out there are tied up with the big concerns and can’t - be depended on to keep their mouths shut—so this letter says.” - </p> - <p> - “Probably it’s a pretty uncertain proposition, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, you don’t expect to fall into anything very certain, do you, a - diver blacklisted from Kittery to the Keys?” he demanded, tartly. - </p> - <p> - “No, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “I know nothing about these people, their plans, or anything. But I’ll do - this for you, if you want me to. I’ll wire this party and tell him I am - sending you on. After you are started you can post him from some place as - to when you’ll arrive. Better give him a wire from time to time to keep - his interest up. How’s your wallet?” - </p> - <p> - “I think it’s all right, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “If you’re lying to me that’s your own lookout. Haven’t sold your - diving-dress, have you?” - </p> - <p> - “I have it safe in storage, sir.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I’m glad you kept remembering that you’re a diver—and the - best one I ever turned out!” That was the first word of high praise he had - given me. He got up and shook my hand. “Now go dive, son, and after you - raise that four million from the wreck of the Golden Gate come back and - tell me all about it.” - </p> - <p> - I did not linger in the city; there were too many possibilities in the way - of Dawlins and Doughtys. - </p> - <p> - Two hours later I was headed across the continent with my diving-dress in - its canvas bag and the address of one Captain Rask Holstrom written in my - note-book. I was pretty dizzy with the haste of it all and felt like the - human shuttle between oceans—but I possessed considerable more - serenity than I did when I began that lunatic lope with Judge Kingsley. - </p> - <p> - I had framed a motto and hung it in my soul—“I’ll show ’em!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXVI—CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL. - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>Y face was set to - the West, to be sure, but my thoughts were traveling back over my shoulder - to the East. I wish I could say that a lively sense of injury enabled me - to put out of my mind Levant and everybody in Levant—box and dice! - But I’m not much of a liar. - </p> - <p> - I do not propose to dwell on the bitterness which stuck in me day after - day, along with softer sentiments. This narrative goes into a gallop at - about this point and there is no time to be wasted on self-communings. - However, if I do not mention my old home and the folks back there it must - not be understood that the problem of my life ceased to go to bed with me, - rise with me, and keep pace with me as I hurried through the day’s work. I - obeyed Jodrey Vose’s counsel about giving bulletins of my progress west. - After I had bought my railroad ticket and had counted up, I felt that I - could not afford to take any chances on those strangers losing their - interest in me. I needed a job almighty sudden after I landed in San - Francisco. - </p> - <p> - On the last leg of the journey I was able to forecast the hour of my - arrival and I suggested by wire that somebody meet me—knowing that - my diver’s kit in its duck bag would be identification enough. This - telegraph business was shooting arrows into the air and I would have - welcomed a return message; I thought they ought to be able to guess - closely enough to intercept me somewhere along the line. But, although no - answer came, I had the comfortable feeling that they’d be likely to be on - the lookout for me. And at last I got my first peek at Pacific waters. - </p> - <p> - Our train was hung up outside the yard over in Oakland while they opened - our track to the ferry, and a chap I had chatted with more or less in the - smoking-room on the trip, and who knew my business, rushed out, climbed - down beside the roadbed, and scooped a tumblerful of water. He ran back - into the car and dumped the water over me for a joke, and I’m so - accustomed to water that the joke did not jar me. I took it as it was - meant. - </p> - <p> - “I baptize thee in the name of the Pacific,” he said. “Now I hope the old - dame will be good to you in your line.” - </p> - <p> - Well, whether she was or not depends on how one looks at those things. - </p> - <p> - I walked slowly through the ferry-house, hoping to be hailed, and stepped - out on to the foot of Market Street into the old San Francisco of the days - before the great calamity. In my right hand I tugged along the duck bag - that was bulging with my diving equipment. In my left hand I had the rest - of my earthly possessions in a grip which was about the size of a ten-cent - loaf of bread. It was early evening, and all the lights were aglare. - </p> - <p> - There was a turn-table for the cable cars at the foot of Market Street. - The cars were coming down in constant procession, and the turn-table was - busy. It was a regular merry-go-round kind of an affair. It interested me, - but it didn’t interest me so much that I had no eye for a girl who stood - beside me at the edge of the thing. It seemed to me right then—fresh - from a tedious train ride, where I’d been penned in with a frumpy set of - women passengers—that I had never seen a prettier girl. She had her - finger pointed at some one on the turn-table, and was saying “Father!” - over and over, with a new inflection on the word every time she spoke it. - Her finger traveled as the table revolved, and I was able to pick out - father fight away. I was right-down sorry for that girl when I laid eyes - on father. Father was grinning like a sculpin in deep water, and he was - good and drunk, and he was evidently taking a joy ride on that turn-table. - </p> - <p> - It struck me right then, as a stranger, that San Francisco had a good - trait pretty well developed; it was willing to let a man mind his own - business as long as he didn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself. The - street-car men did not push father off the turn-table, and two policemen - took a look at him and went off about their business. - </p> - <p> - I took a good look at the man, too, when the turntable brought him near me - and stopped to let a car on. He had a face about as square as the front of - a safe, and his nose was the shape of a safety-lock knob, and was red. His - pot-bellied body was set on legs like crooked wharf pilings. I had father - sized up in a second. Double-breasted blue coat, cap of blue, with the - peak pulled rakishly down over one eye, gray beard which radiated in - spills from his chin like tiller spokes—he was a steamboat man, - sure! I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to butt in and make - certain—perhaps I wanted to start something so as to get a rise out - of the girl. I’m not naturally fresh and you may be sure I was in no mood - for a flirtation. I was crusted with Yankee reserve even when I was young. - But that impish air of San Francisco was in my nostrils—did you ever - sniff it? It makes your head buzz and your thoughts froth, and it takes - hold of an Easterner as quickly as a stiff cocktail grabs a man who isn’t - used to a mixed drink. You’ll do almost anything in San Francisco when the - sparkle from that trade-wind gets into your lungs. - </p> - <p> - So I tipped father the wink. - </p> - <p> - “Give her the jingle when she starts again,” I said. - </p> - <p> - I was right in my guess. He crooked his forefinger, reached down, and - yanked empty air. - </p> - <p> - “Clang!” he barked. In a few seconds the turntable began to revolve again. - Father gave me as silly a grin as I ever saw on a grown-up man’s face. - “Yingleyingle—yingle!” he yelled in falsetto. And away he went! - </p> - <p> - I never got a more awful look from a pretty girl than I got from that one - when I turned and caught her eyes. There was nothing shrinking or bashful - about her when she was mad, so I found out then and there. - </p> - <p> - “You fool! You have started him all over again.” - </p> - <p> - “He seemed to be well started before I came along, miss.” It was that - confounded air that was making me reckless and saucy. - </p> - <p> - “Clang!” yelped father, coming around again. “Yingle—yingle—yingle! - Pull in them port fenders and mouse that anchor; we’re going outside this - trip.” - </p> - <p> - “Just see the fool notion you have gone and put into him when he was all - ready to come along with me!” she blazed. She knocked her little knuckles - together in as fine a state of temper as I ever viewed spouting in a - female. She turned suddenly and drove one of her fists against a man whom - I had not noticed till then. He was tall—as long as the moral law, - as we say East—as thin as a pump-handle, and he had a tangle of gray - whisker and beard on top of him that made him look like a window-mop. He - fell down when she hit him. She kicked him with the point of a little - shoe, and he came up, unfolding in sections like a carpenter’s two-foot - rule. - </p> - <p> - “Slap this man’s face, Ike, and send him along about his business,” she - commanded. - </p> - <p> - But he only teetered and grinned and drooled, and winked at me over her - shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, you are only another drunken fool!” she raged; and she stretched on - tiptoe, and beat his face with the flat of her hand. “You have stood here - without putting up a finger to help me get him off that turn-table, where - he’s disgracing himself. I wonder whether there are any real men left in - San Francisco!” She was in such a state of mind that I was mighty ashamed - by then, I tell you that! - </p> - <p> - I dropped my baggage and took off my hat. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know much about San Francisco and the real men, miss,” I told - her, “for I’ve been in town only about five minutes. I reckon it makes an - Easterner dizzy to be rushed in and dropped here. I didn’t mean to make - trouble for you. Seeing that I’ve made it, I’ll unmake it if I can. Do you - want your father—saying it is your father—brought off that - turn-table?” - </p> - <p> - “No!” she snapped, still spiteful and all worked up. “I want you to think - up something else for him to do on there as soon as he gets tired of doing - what you suggested.” - </p> - <p> - Well, it was up to me to butt into that affair still farther—I could - see that. I couldn’t sneak off and leave that girl feeling that way about - me. I hopped on to the moving turn-table, took father by the arm, and told - him his daughter wanted him to come along. He braced himself and shook - loose. - </p> - <p> - “Nossir,” said he. “I’ve paid my money, and I’ll stay aboard till I get to - where I’m bound.” - </p> - <p> - “Look here, you are not getting anywhere, man. You are only riding around - and around, making a show of yourself, and there’s your nice daughter - waiting for you.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s no place for a daughter—going where I’m going. Daughter ought - to be in bed.” And then he braced himself back still farther, and—well, - I suppose I’ll have to call it “singing” in order to describe the sound:= - </p> - <p> - ````"I’m bound for the foot of Telegraph Hill, - </p> - <p> - `````To the Barbary Coast so gay. - </p> - <p> - ````I’m starting there for a peach of a tear—fill - </p> - <p> - `````’Em up all round—hooray!”= - </p> - <p> - I took hold of his arm once more, and it was some arm. - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” he snarled, squinting at me, “I don’t know who you are, but - I’ll let you know who I am blamed quick.” - </p> - <p> - I don’t know just what he might have done to me if he had been sober—but - he wasn’t sober. I was, and my line of work had made me lithe and quick. I - snapped my man before he had time to open his mouth, and ran him off that - turn-table and presented him to his daughter with my compliments. He - kicked and thrashed around in a logy style, and I kept him circling so - that he could not get foothold, on the same principle that you keep a - boa-constrictor from hooking his tail around a tree. - </p> - <p> - “Where will you have him delivered, miss?” I asked, as politely as I - could. - </p> - <p> - “Father, you come along with me this instant!” she cried. “We don’t want - strangers interfering in our affairs any longer.” She said that to him for - my benefit. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t mean to be interfering, miss,” I pleaded. “I only want to square - myself for being thoughtless and starting trouble for you—more - trouble, I mean.” - </p> - <p> - She put her hand against me and pushed me away from her father—no, I - can hardly say that I was pushed away. That hand was too little to push a - man of my size. But the gesture of pushing was enough for me. I let him - loose. She reached for his ear, but he dodged away, cantering like a - cart-horse, and whooped that he was bound for the “Barbary Coast.” The - human belay-ing-pin with the oakum topknot followed, plainly relishing the - fact that the procession had started. The girl took a few steps in - pursuit, and then she stopped and began to cry. She had grit—I had - seen that—but after a girl gets about so mad she has to cry on - general principles. - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” I told her, “I’m a stranger, all right, but you need a man’s - help right now. I’ll help for every ounce that’s in me if you’ll say the - word. But I’m a Yankee and I need to be asked.” - </p> - <p> - “He has a lot of money in his pockets,” she sobbed. “He must pay out that - money to-morrow morning. He will be butchered and robbed where he’s going. - I never saw him so silly and obstinate before. His head has been turned by - some good luck which has come to him. He—” - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t got time to listen to details, miss. He’s getting out of sight. - I’ve got to work quick. I’m square and decent and honest, and I’m mighty - sorry for the scrape you are in. Do you want me to chase that father of - yours for you?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” she gasped; “yes, I do.” - </p> - <p> - “About all I’m worth in the world is in that bag there. It’s my - diving-dress. I’ve got to leave it.” - </p> - <p> - “Your name is Sidney!” she cried, her eyes opening wide on me. “You’re the - man we came to meet!” - </p> - <p> - So, after all, I had butted in on my reception committee! “And that’s - Captain Holstrom?” I demanded, pointing up the street. - </p> - <p> - “Yes! Yes! Hurry, sir. I will watch your bag! I will stay here. Hurry, - sir! He has gone up Market Street, but he’ll turn to the right pretty - soon. That’s the way to the horrible Barbary Coast.” - </p> - <p> - I patted her shoulder—I couldn’t help it. She looked up at me - through her tears. And off I hiked, leaving my earthly possessions in - charge of a girl whom I had met for the first time less than ten minutes - before. - </p> - <p> - Of course, I knew what every one knows, whether he has been in San - Francisco or not, that Market Street cuts straight across the city from - bay to ocean. But at just what street on the course Captain Rask Holstrom - proceeded to port his helm and swing to starboard blessed if I had the - least idea. I didn’t know the name of another street in the city. I knew - what the Barbary Coast was in San Francisco. I had read descriptions of - its dance-halls, its dens, its haunts of iniquity, and its dangers. And - here I was, galloping straight toward it before the creases of a railroad - journey across the continent were out of my clothes. That is to say, I - hoped I was galloping toward it, for I wanted to catch father for that - nice girl. Captain Holstrom was out of sight among the crowds on that long - Market Street before I had started the chase. I didn’t dare to run too - fast. - </p> - <p> - San Francisco, as I have said, seemed to be inclined to let a man tend to - his own business, but I didn’t want to provoke some ass to start a “stop - thief” yell behind me. I craned and peered ahead as I trotted on. I - stopped for a moment at the head of streets which led away to the right—the - girl had said he would turn to the right—but I caught no glimpse of - a bobbing blue cap nor of a lofty thatch of grizzled beard and whisker. - </p> - <p> - I took a chance after a while, for Market Street showed ahead an upward - slope and I couldn’t spot my man there. I turned off to the right, and - hurried. I didn’t know what street I was on. I came to a square at last - where there were a statue and a fountain, and there were large buildings - on the right. I ran across the square, and the next moment I realized that - I was in Chinatown—and I had read of that part of San Francisco, - too. I knew then that I was headed toward the Barbary Coast all right, - having a memory of what I had read. But in a few minutes I was lost in a - maze of narrow streets which traveled up and down the little hills. I was - peering and goggling here and there. I must have looked like a tourist - trying to do Chinatown in record time. I came into a street or alley that - was roofed—and I came out again, for it seemed to be closed in at - the upper end. By that time I realized that not only had I lost Capt. Rask - Holstrom, but that I had also succeeded in losing myself—a rather - silly predicament for a young man who so boldly offered himself as knight - errant to a damsel in distress. - </p> - <p> - I stood still and wiped sweat out of my eyes, and addressed a few pregnant - remarks to myself on the subject of a man’s making a fool of himself for a - woman. However, I had a mighty good reason of my own for wanting to meet - up with Captain Holstrom—and to safeguard that money of his, for I - hoped to rake some of it down in wages. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXVII—MR. BEASON HORNS IN - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> WHITE-LIVERED, - sneaky-looking chap sidled up to me and stuck out a dirty card. - </p> - <p> - “That’s my name on there,” said he; “Jake Beason, and I’m the best - Chinatown guide that’s on the beat; I’ll show you everything from - joss-house to hop-holes.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you know the Barbary Coast?” - </p> - <p> - “Do I know—Oh, come now! Why, say, I live over that way,” he snarled - through the corner of his mouth; and he looked at me as though I had - insulted his intelligence. - </p> - <p> - I decided that I would be plain and direct with that chap. - </p> - <p> - “I’m on the trail of a steamboat captain by the name of Holstrom, and he - is two-thirds pickled, and has money on him. Do you think you know the - places where a man like that would be likely to drop in?” - </p> - <p> - “What’s the lay—a touch and a divvy?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing of the kind. I’m his friend, and I want to catch him and take him - home out of trouble.” - </p> - <p> - “The same old stall,” he sneered. “You’ve got to let me be a friend, too.” - </p> - <p> - I reached out and got my crowbar clutch on that fellow. “I don’t suppose - you ever had a man tell you the truth, son,” I said, “so I’m not going to - blame you much. I say that I’m after this man to take him home to his - daughter. That’s truth, and it’s on my say-so. If you propose to call me a - liar, out with it, and we’ll settle the thing.” - </p> - <p> - “She stands as you say—and you needn’t pinch so,” he whined. - </p> - <p> - There’s nothing like a good grip to press home conviction in a sneak. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll locate that man for me before the - evening is over,” I told him. “I’ll make it twenty dollars if you’ll turn - the trick inside of an hour.” - </p> - <p> - “I know all the joints—I know the steamboat hangouts.” - </p> - <p> - “It ought to be an easy trick. He is with an old belay-ing-pin who has - enough hair on his head and face to stuff a bolster—and I heard - somebody call him Ike.” - </p> - <p> - “Aw, that’s ‘Ingot Ike.’ Everybody between Dupont Street and Telegraph - Hill knows that old hornbeam and his everlasting hum about three million - dollars’ worth of buried gold ingots. Come along! I ought to pull down - that twenty easy.” - </p> - <p> - “Let me tell you one thing,” I said, chasing along with him. “I’m not - worth robbing. I’m going to keep close to you, and if you put me against - any frame-up I’ll get you first, and I’ll get you quick.” And I grabbed - him by the wrist and let him have that honest old grip once more. I kept - hold of him. And led thus like a blind man through this street and that, - by short cuts along dark alleys, across courts, and now and then skirting - vacant lots, we came at last into purlieus that my ears, eyes, and nose - told me must be that “Barbary Coast so gay,” as Captain Holstrom had - caroled. - </p> - <p> - Out of open doors came liquor fumes and music blended, if there is any - such thing as blending noise and odors; the two seemed to be associated - there so regularly and invariably that my senses told me that they were - blended. - </p> - <p> - The women sauntered on the sidewalks; the men loafed there. We two seemed - to be about the only ones who were headed for something definite. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll tap the regular joints first,” said Beason. “If he’s pretty drunk - he won’t be using his mind much to think up new places to go. He’ll fall - into the rut like a ball in a crooked pin-game.” - </p> - <p> - I was young enough to be interested in that panorama of iniquity. I would - have gaped longer than I did in those places, but Mr. Beason proved to be - a very active guide. That matter of twenty dollars proved to be like a bur - under a bronco’s saddle. He would gallop into a place, leave me to goggle - at the antics on the dance floor; he would weasel his way through the - crowd, chop out a few staccato questions, and then yank me out with my - eyes behind me and my chin hanging over my shoulder like the tailboard of - a cart. - </p> - <p> - Beason rattled me down another length of street—and if the folks we - bumped hadn’t known him I reckon we would have had a few things on our - hands besides that man hunt. They all seemed to know Beason. He snapped - questions right and left. - </p> - <p> - All at once my guide got a clue. He barked a few more questions at this - illuminative party, and turned and scooted back along our trail. - </p> - <p> - “The old cuss has taken to a back room,” he gasped. “I ought to have - figured that he would be hiding.” - </p> - <p> - He rushed me around comers, across streets, down alleys, and into more - streets. We came up against a saloon at last where the front window was - lettered in red paint, “Holding Ground Cove.” Knowing, as a deep-sea - diver, that a good holding ground means a mud bottom, I could have thought - up a highly moral and somewhat humorous apothegm on that name for a saloon - if I had had the time; but Mr. Beason was cutting comers on Time that - night. He rushed me into the saloon, into a back room at the rear, and - when he didn’t see what we were looking for up-stairs we went. There were - cribs of private rooms, furnished with bare tables and hard chairs—drinking-rooms. - From the half-open door of one came the cackle of much laughter, and we - peeped in. - </p> - <p> - A girl, whose face was painted in almost as gaudy hues as her red - stockings, was standing on a table in the middle of the little room. - </p> - <p> - Capt. Rask Holstrom was seated in a chair, straddling the back, and was - busily engaged in tickling the girl’s nose with the tip of a very long - peacock feather—and wherever he secured that feather I never found - out. But always leave it to a hilarious drunken man to find something odd - to carry around with him. In the room was the human belaying-pin, also - seated. But his chair had evidently slipped from under him when he tried - to lean against the wall, and he was jack-knifed down in a corner, with - his broomstick legs waving in the air, and was surveying the scene between - that frame. He was squealing laughter in a key that would have put a - guinea-hen out of business. - </p> - <p> - “There’s Ingot Ike,” affirmed Beason, “and if t’other one is your - pertickler friend then I’ll cash in.” - </p> - <p> - He held up his cheap watch, with his dirty forefinger indicating the hour. - </p> - <p> - “I get the twenty with nine minutes’ ‘velvet,’ if that’s your friend.” - </p> - <p> - But Captain Holstrom did not display any very ardent friendship for any - one just then. He turned an especially malevolent stare in my direction - and poised his peacock feather like lance in rest. I could see that - something was going to break loose there mighty soon, and after what I had - told Beason I didn’t want that young sneak to overhear. It would be like - him to come back with a gang and “do” me on the excuse that I was a - stranger who was “frsking” Captain Holstrom for his pocketful. - </p> - <p> - I hauled out two ten-dollar bills mighty quick, and passed them to Beason. - He held one in each hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, and looked - at them in turn, wrinkling his nose with as much disgust as though he were - holding lizards by the tails. - </p> - <p> - “Soft money,” said he, “and the stink of the East still on it! I’ll bet - you both of these poultices that you haven’t been in San Francisco - twenty-four hours—and how do you happen to be such a pertickler - friend of a China Basin steamboat cap’n, hey?” - </p> - <p> - A freshly arrived Easterner is always given away by his paper money. - </p> - <p> - “Who’s a friend?” inquired Captain Holstrom, the one eye I could see as - staring and as baleful as the “eye” on the peacock feather. - </p> - <p> - “Look-a-here,” said I, bracing up to him savagely, for I knew that soft - soap wouldn’t grease the ways, “I want to know what you mean by running - away from me after my telegrams to you.” - </p> - <p> - I whirled on Beason, pushed him out of the room, and slammed the door in - his face. - </p> - <p> - “You have been paid,” I yelled at him through the crack. “Now, keep your - nose out of the rest of the thing, or I’ll pinch it off.” - </p> - <p> - “See here,” growled Captain Holstrom, vibrating the feather as menacingly - as though it were a sled stake, “don’t you know a private party when you - see one?” - </p> - <p> - I walked right up to him. - </p> - <p> - “My name is Sidney. I’m the diver you are expecting.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re a liar,” he returned, promptly. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you you were down to the ferry to meet me. I pulled you off that - turn-table!” - </p> - <p> - “Who are you?” - </p> - <p> - “I am Ross Sidney, I say! You’re expecting me. I’m a diver.” - </p> - <p> - But he did not show the least evidence of understanding what I was talking - about. It’s a familiar phase of drunkenness in many men—that dogged - determination to hang on to one notion and admit no others. - </p> - <p> - He shook his head and waggled the feather under the girl’s nose. - </p> - <p> - “This is a private party,” he growled. - </p> - <p> - “But your daughter is waiting for you—she is very much worried about - you and the money.” - </p> - <p> - “Say, who does this money and this daughter and this room here belong to, - anyway? Who do I belong to? Who am I? Ain’t I Rask Holstrom, fifty-six - years old, and fully able to take care of myself anywhere between Point - Lobo and India Basin?” He squinted at me along the peacock’s plume. “Who - are <i>you?</i> You say my girl is at the ferry, hey? How do you know she - is there?” He leaned back in his chair, dropped the feather, and yanked a - canvas bag from the right-hand pocket of his trousers. It was a plump bag, - and a heavy bag, and it plainly contained hard money. He banged it down on - the table with such a thump that the girl hopped and squealed, and it - barely missed her toes. He pulled another canvas bag from the left-hand - pocket, and crashed that down. This time he connected with the girl’s - toes. She screamed in pain, leaped down from the table, and began to hop - around the room, kicking her foot out behind her. She stumbled into a - corner, braced herself there, and began to swear volubly, clutching the - tip of her faded red-velvet slipper in both hands. - </p> - <p> - I had not broken in on his monologue. I could not match him in roaring. - Then for the first time he seemed to note that the girl was not in an - amiable state of mind. - </p> - <p> - “You’ve insulted my lady friend. I’ll have your life for that!” He plunged - out of his chair and drove against the wall in his unsteadiness. - </p> - <p> - The girl was profanely advising me—no, entreating me—to kill - the “drunken fool.” I didn’t blame her for her fire, and I could excuse - her language. To shift from a tickling under the chin to a mally-hackling - of toes was a little too strong for a woman’s nature even if the toes had - been cracked with money. - </p> - <p> - That was no time for fine figuring as to ways, means, or chances. Before - Captain Holstrom recovered his balance I grabbed his sacks and stuffed - them into my pockets. I started for the door. I had a sort of muddled - memory of a maxim, or proverb, or something of the kind which says that - “where a man’s treasure is there will his heart be also.” It occurred to - me that Captain Holstrom’s body would go with his heart if I made off with - that money, and I preferred to have the body chase me on two legs rather - than be lugged on my shoulders. If he would chase me back to the ferry the - situation would be simplified. Of course, mine was a crazy expedient, - considering the place where I was, but it was a crazy evening, anyway. - </p> - <p> - “I’m not stealing it,” I yelled at him as I opened the door. “I’m going to - give it to your girl, and if you run hard enough you’ll see me give it to - her.” - </p> - <p> - I had plenty of help in opening that door. There were men outside who - helped me so promptly and unanimously that it was evident they had been - lying in wait. - </p> - <p> - Two of them grabbed me by the neck as they would have clutched a bat stick - in choosing sides in a game of three old cat. They rammed me back into the - room. There were three other men who came in, and one of them was that rat - of a Beason. - </p> - <p> - They were all talking at one another, and Beason was spitting words the - fastest. But Captain Holstrom drowned out all other sounds by a bellow of - delight. He knew these men, all right. He seemed especially tickled to - behold the two men who held me. He slapped them on their backs, cuffed - their faces with drunken affection, and adjured them to hold me tighter. - </p> - <p> - “He took my money! He stole it! He insulted a lady friend of mine. He’s - been chasing me and picking a row with me for three days,” he lied, or - else the rum he had been drinking had elongated his notions of time. - </p> - <p> - “You see, I get your twenty, Mr. Keedy,” insisted Beason. “I told you - straight. I called the turn on this fly guy. He’s what I told you he was. - You just heard what the captain said.” - </p> - <p> - I was mighty busy just then with the two men who were holding me, and - Captain Holstrom was giving me some slaps which were drunkenly heavy, but - not affectionate. However, I heard what Beason said, and I saw the man - whom he called Keedy pass over a twenty-dollar gold piece. Beason grinned - at me and scuttled out of the room. The Keedy person pushed the scolding - girl out after him and slammed the door. - </p> - <p> - I did not like the looks of the Keedy person—no, not at all. I may - have instinct in such matters; I don’t know. A diver is obliged to do most - of his work in pitch darkness and by the sense of touch, and such work may - develop instinct in general. I won’t stop to discuss the question. - </p> - <p> - But that yellow face with a black mustache smacked across it like a smear - of paint, and arrows of eyebrows shooting up northeast and northwest from - a regular gouge of a wrinkle between the man’s eyes wasn’t the kind of - physog worn by the deacon who takes up the collection in a Sunday-school. - He stood with back against the door. - </p> - <p> - “Go through him, gents,” he directed. “And hand me the gun when you come - to it.” - </p> - <p> - There wasn’t any gun, but they got the two sacks of gold, and my little - stock of paper money as well. Then they gave me a shove into a corner, and - all of them stood off and looked at me. The excitement had brought old - Ingot Ike on to his feet and he joined the ring of spectators. - </p> - <p> - “You are in bad,” stated Mr. Keedy. - </p> - <p> - Silence gives consent; so I kept still. - </p> - <p> - “Who is backing you in this job? Where’s the rest of your gang? You’re in - here without a gun. Now, where’s the main party?” - </p> - <p> - “The main party,” said I, mad enough now to do a little talking, “is down - at the ferry, foot of Market Street. She is that old fool’s daughter, and - she was crying when I left her. I’m just in from the East, and when I came - out on to the street from the ferry this evening, setting foot in San - Francisco for the first time—” - </p> - <p> - “You’re a liar!” yelped Captain Holstrom. “You’ve been on my trail for - seven days, and you have just knocked me down when I was entertaining a - lady friend and wasn’t looking. You robbed me. The money was found on you. - But Rask Holstrom has got friends who won’t see him done. Here they are. - And into the dock you go, blast ye!” - </p> - <p> - “You’re in bad,” reiterated the Keedy person, narrowing the crease between - his eyes. - </p> - <p> - “If you’re a friend of Captain Holstrom, see if you can’t pound it into - his head that I’m the diver he is expecting.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re the what? Is your name Sidney?” - </p> - <p> - “That is my name.” - </p> - <p> - “Rask,” snapped Keedy at last, “were you down at the ferry turn-table as - this man says? You’ve been pretty drunk. This thing here is taking a new - tack. I’d like to believe this chap here if I can.” - </p> - <p> - “Might have been there,” owned up the captain. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Was</i> there,” stated that old fool of an Ike, who had been standing - by without a word in my behalf. Now he was ready and willing to leap with - the popular side. “I was there with him.” - </p> - <p> - “Was your daughter there with you? Did you leave her there?” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom looked a little ashamed, and hesitated. - </p> - <p> - “She was there,” stated Ike. “She was following us and trying to get my - noble cap’n to go along with her, but it wasn’t right to bother my noble - cap’n when he was happy over a lucky trade.” - </p> - <p> - “The two of you must have been good and fine,” growled Mr. Keedy. “Look - here, Cap, I believe this gent is telling a lot of the truth about you. No - matter now about his high jinks with the coin. I want to believe what he - says. As your partner, Captain Holstrom, my advice to you is to hustle - out, get a cab, and get to that ferry station in quick time. If that - diving-suit is there bring it back here.” - </p> - <p> - The captain rolled out of the room, growling, but subdued. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Keedy gave me what was for him an affable smile, a hitching up nearer - to his nose of that paint-streak mustache. - </p> - <p> - “We may as well start in an acquaintance,” he said. He passed my - pocket-book back. “My name is Marcena Keedy, partner of Cap’n Holstrom. - Step up here, gents,” he commanded the two men who had squatted my - windpipe. “This is Number-one Jones; this is Number-two Jones.” They - ducked salute. They had paint-brush chin beards and cock eyes, and were - evidently twins. “First and second mates, new hired for the <i>Zizania</i>.” - He did not bother to introduce Ingot Ike. - </p> - <p> - He pushed a button on the wall. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll take something to gum the edges of sociability, gents. There’s - nothing like gents starting in sociable when they can, and staying - sociable as long as they can, providing any gent proves himself all right, - as he says he is.” - </p> - <p> - He gave me a significant and mighty sharp look, sat down, and jigged one - leg over the other, trying hard to keep up his affable smile. - </p> - <p> - We kept on being sociable for half an hour or more. - </p> - <p> - At last back came Capt. Rask Holstrom. He was tugging my duffle-bag, and - on his heels was his daughter. She had my little valise. She did not show - any especial symptoms of embarrassment at being in such a joint alone with - men. She walked straight to me and gave me the valise. What was better, - she gave me a smile. - </p> - <p> - “I misunderstood you, sir, on short acquaintance,” she said. “I hope you - will excuse me.” - </p> - <p> - She looked me straight in the eyes without coquetry, a gaze as level and - candid as that of man to man. - </p> - <p> - I gulped some reply—I don’t know what. I wasn’t half as cool as she - was. - </p> - <p> - Keedy right now put that yellow face between us. The affable smile wasn’t - there. I got a quick and sharp impression that he didn’t relish the way - the girl and I were getting chummy. She was putting out her hand to me, - for I had made a motion as though to shake on our general understanding. - He took her hand and whirled her around and pointed to a chair. - </p> - <p> - “You’d better sit down, Kama dear. We’re going to talk a little business, - and you can listen, for you are too much father’s girl to be kept out of - any deal of ours.” - </p> - <p> - She pulled her hand out of his, but she went and sat down without shaking - my hand. - </p> - <p> - “Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” she - said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not need - your invitation to stay.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom looked very sheepish. It was plain that he had been - listening to some plain and frank opinions on his way back from the ferry - station. - </p> - <p> - He tried to act unconcerned, and spying the drink I had not touched, - started to lift it to his lips. His daughter snatched it away and sprayed - the liquor on the wall. He sat down, coughing behind his hand. I had seen - men like Capt. Rask Holstrom before—a bully and a braggart among - men, but half a fool where women were concerned—pliable in the hands - of the loose female, and mortally afraid of his own womenkind. - </p> - <p> - The men in the room were silent for some time. Keedy was looking at - Holstrom; then his eyes fell on my canvas sack at Holstrom’s feet. He - spoke to me in almost the same fawning tone he had used with the girl. It - was that almost indescribable air—that cheap assumption of gentility - that a professional gambler uses when he is prosecuting his business, and - it rather jars on an honest man. - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure it would be almighty interesting to me and to these other gents - and the lady to see an Eastern divingsuit. I reckon you’re pretty much up - to date back there.” Liar and knave himself, he wasn’t exactly sure I had - been telling the truth. He wanted to see the goods. But I did not mind - much. I knelt on the floor, and opened the sack and dug out the equipment. - This yam of mine goes back before the days of the compressed-air chamber - which the modern diver carries on his back just as an automobile carries - fuel. But I had a mighty good suit, almost a new one. There wasn’t a dent - in the helmet or a patch oh the rubber or canvas. - </p> - <p> - “We have had a long talk, this gent and I,” said Keedy, after he had - squatted like a frog and had peered at all I had to show him. “I’m - naturally a man to get to cases quick. I’m open and free with them I take - a liking to.” He went to the door and peeked into the corridor. - “Number-two Jones, you stand here and keep an eye and ear out,” he - directed. “Now, Brother Sidney, you Eastern chaps are apt to be pretty - cold-blooded, and you need first-hand evidence. I’m going to open up to - you one of the biggest prospects you ever heard of—reckoning that, - as a human being, you simply can’t resist coming into it. If you don’t see - fit to come in after it has been opened up to you—well—” He - scowled at me like a demon, snapped his fingers above his head, and turned - on old Ike. - </p> - <p> - “Get up and take the floor,” he directed. - </p> - <p> - “First-hand evidence is what counts,” went on Mr. Keedy. “Now, here’s a - man who has told his story over a lot of times on the water-front. He has - told it so many times it has grown to be a joke. They’ve given him the - nickname of ‘Ingot Ike.’ Lots of big things in this world have been buried - under a joke.” - </p> - <p> - He leaned back in his chair and twisted up the ends of his mustache. - </p> - <p> - “Court is open for first-hand evidence, gents. Ike is the first witness. - I’m going to ask him questions and make him answer snappy, for if he ever - gets to rambling on this story of his he’ll make it longer than a dime - novel. Look-a-here, Ike, what was the steamer <i>Golden Gate?</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Passengers, bullion in ingots, and general cargo ’tween here and - Panama.” - </p> - <p> - It was rather comical to see that old bean-pole straighten up and try to - imitate the snappy style of Mr. Keedy. - </p> - <p> - “What was your job aboard of her?” - </p> - <p> - “Quartermaster.” - </p> - <p> - “What happened to her?” - </p> - <p> - “Caught fire off coast of Mexico when she was bound for Panama, beached - well north of Acapulco, rolled over and over in surf, what was left of - her, and bones still there. Three ribs show at low tide if you know where - to look for ’em.” - </p> - <p> - “What was she carrying for treasure?” - </p> - <p> - “Over three million dollars’ worth of gold in ingots in her strong-room - abaft second bulkhead, between pantry and boiler-room.” - </p> - <p> - “Was the treasure ever recovered?” - </p> - <p> - “Wreck was abandoned to underwriters, and after underwriters had worked - for a long time, keeping very mysterious, they reported that they had got - the ingots all out of her. Then they came away. Everybody believed that - the underwriters had cleaned out the wreck, just as they reported they - had. But I was in that wrecking crew. I kept my eye out. It was a bluff - about getting that treasure.” The old man began to show excitement. “Their - divers couldn’t get at it. They didn’t have nerve, and they didn’t have - the right outfits in those days. The underwriters didn’t want it shown - that they hadn’t pulled up the stuff. They knew that every Tom, Dick, and - Harry would go down there, peeking and poking around that wreck, and that - some fellow might think up a way to call the turn. - </p> - <p> - “So they bribed the divers, and the divers brought up fake boxes of gold, - and the report was made that all the treasure had been taken from the <i>Golden - Gate</i> wreck. But it’s all there, gents. The underwriters haven’t been - able yet to think of a sensible way of getting at it. They don’t want to - make another splurge and attract attention till they’re sure of what - they’re doing. Them’s facts what I’m telling. I know. I haven’t done much - of anything but keep tabs. I don’t care if they do call me Ingot Ike. I - know what I’m talking about. The trouble down there has been that the old - Pacific has rolled on and rolled in and piled up sand over that treasure, - and they didn’t know how to handle the proposition in those days.” - </p> - <p> - “The idea is, Brother Sidney,” broke in Keedy, “firsthand evidence informs - us that three or four millions are cached in a place we know of. Now, - because man has failed once, years ago, when man wasn’t as bright as he is - now, is that any sign that man shall give up? Captain Holstrom and I say, - ‘No.’ We’re partners. We have been talking over this proposition for a - long time. Now, up to date, are you in any way interested?” - </p> - <p> - I was, and I said so. - </p> - <p> - “There they lie,” said Keedy, “bars of yellow gold. Boxes and boxes of - shiny gold. More than three million dollars’ worth of finest gold—and - only a little water and sand over ’em. No bars to break through, no - vaults to drill. Only sand and water—and we ought to be able to - match that sand with grit, and the water with good red blood.” - </p> - <p> - There are some men who can talk about money, and it will not start a - thrill in you. - </p> - <p> - Marcena Keedy could talk about gold in a way to make your soul hungry. He - rolled the sound in his mouth—a big, round, juicy sound—as a - boy sucks a candy marble. It made the moisture ooze in my own mouth to - hear him talk. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Keedy gave over leaning back in his chair. He sat on the edge of it, - and leaned forward. - </p> - <p> - “It’s right at this point that we go into this thing clear to the necks, - my friend. I have studied men a lot in my life. I can see about what kind - of a fellow you are. If another fellow opens up to you in honest fashion - you are <i>with</i> him—and if you can’t stay with him you are not - going off and squeal and hurt him. There’s nothing half-way between - Holstrom, here, and myself. We’re partners. We’re in together, whole hog. - I’ll spread the cards for you just as they are spread for the captain and - myself. He and I have been having a run of good luck to date in our - partnership. We’ll have some more firsthand evidence. Rask, how was it you - got the inside clinch in the <i>Zizania</i> matter?” - </p> - <p> - “For the benefit of a man from the East, where they ain’t as shrewd as the - Yankees think they be,” stated Captain Holstrom in his husky voice, “I - will say that we’ve got a devilish good close combine on the waterfront—we - fellows have been on the job for a long time. When the Government auctions - off anything we get together and fix the top price at which any bid shall - go, and then we cut the cards to settle who shall pick the plum at that - price. It means that the lucky man will pick a bargain, don’t forget that. - Price can’t be budged above that bid—and it’s a blamed measly - price.” He smacked his lips. “So that is how I have got hold of the old - __Zizania__, Government lighthouse-tender and buoy steamer, side-wheeler, - one hundred and seventy feet long, new derricks, boilers in fair shape, - and engine fresh overhauled. I’ve cut the cards for eleven years, and this - has been my first look-in. But it’s worth waiting for. I could junk her - and make four times what I pay for her.” - </p> - <p> - “What <i>we</i> pay for her,” corrected Mr. Keedy. “Remember that I’m your - partner. Now I’ll take the stand myself. Holstrom here sold his tugboat - the minute he struck luck on the <i>Zizania</i>. He pulled what money he - had in the bank. He lacked half the price, at that. He was going to borrow - on a bill of sale. ‘No,’ says I to him. ‘Bring along your cash to the - place where I’m dealing faro. I’ll go in partner with you and double your - pot.’ Holstrom knew that when I talked that way with him I was square. - Some men would have double-crossed him and pulled the pickings for the - bank. I ain’t that kind,” declared Mr. Keedy, pulling himself up - virtuously and giving the girl a side-glance. “I know who my friends are, - and who I’d like to help. And I can deal faro! Don’t worry about that! - Captain Holstrom walked out with his pot doubled. The money goes down on - the <i>Zizania</i> to-morrow morning, making up the balance after the - forfeit money was paid. That’s the way Holstrom and I do business after we - have come to an agreement.” He gave the girl a look which he intended to - be melting. “I said I’d do it, and I did it.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m ashamed of my father,” she said, crisply. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t much blame you, Kama,” stammered Captain Holstrom, missing the - point of her rebuke. “For me to go and do what I done after scooping in - that money was a fool performance, and I ask the pardon of all concerned. - But I reckon my head was turned by having all that good luck come in a - bunch. I just went into the air, that’s what I done. But I’m back on earth - to stay now.” - </p> - <p> - “Let us hope so, partner,” chided Kir. Keedy. “That crazy Beason and our - new friend here made such a racket chasing you through the Coast that I - heard of it, and started out on the chase myself. It has turned out lucky, - but that’s no credit to you.” - </p> - <p> - The girl stood up. “I have listened, and now I understand. If you want to - keep my respect, father, you’ll hand back the part of that money which is - stolen, and borrow enough to make your payment.” - </p> - <p> - “Hold on, Miss Kama!” cried Keedy. “That money wasn’t stolen. A man who - tackles a faro-bank isn’t stealing if he wins.” - </p> - <p> - “I heard what you said a few minutes ago, Mr. Keedy.” - </p> - <p> - “And I said it to show I can be a friend to those I like. I’ve known you a - long time, and now when I’ve had a chance to show you that I’m a friend - you can’t afford to chuck me.” - </p> - <p> - He jumped up and went near to her. - </p> - <p> - “No more faro for me—no cards any more,” he said, dusting his hands - before her. “I know you haven’t liked to have me do it.” - </p> - <p> - “I have never made any remarks to you about your affairs, Mr. Keedy. It’s - only when my father gets mixed into them that I protest.” - </p> - <p> - “I reckon that after all the years I’ve dealt crooked for the sake of the - bank I’ve got the right to deal crooked for once in my life to help my - friends,” muttered Keedy. “But I’m all done with faro, I tell you, Kama. - We’re all going to be rich. I want you to remember that I’ve done my full - share in this thing.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom banged the sacks of coin upon the table. - </p> - <p> - “You bet you have, Marcena. And you’re my partner. I stand by you. I never - saw a girl yet who didn’t have foolish notions. But they grow out of - them.” He winked at Keedy. “This money goes down on the old <i>Zizania</i> - to-morrow morning. She’s ours from snout to tail—from keelson to - pennant block. And she’s going to make our everlasting fortunes. You shall - see, Kama, my girl!” - </p> - <p> - For a moment she stood there, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flaming up, as - fine a picture of protesting and indignant maidenhood as I ever laid eyes - on. Then she compressed her lips and choked back an outburst. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I <i>shall</i> see,” she said at last. “For I shall go on board the - <i>Zizania</i>, and stay there and watch you, father, and try to keep you - out of State’s prison for the sake of my poor dead mother.” - </p> - <p> - “It has been all right for you to live with me aboard the tug,” growled - Captain Holstrom, blinking sourly at her. “But this is a different - proposition. This is going to be a man’s game.” - </p> - <p> - “With one woman along,” she insisted. - </p> - <p> - “You have got to stay here in the city,” he declared. - </p> - <p> - “If you leave me here alone, deserting me for men who are leading you into - dangers and trouble, you’ll find me dancing in one of the worst holes on - this street when you come back. I swear it!” she said. - </p> - <p> - She did not raise her voice. There was no elocution, and hysterics were - absent. But there are women who can say a thing and make you believe it. - Captain Holstrom cracked his knuckles and gasped, and said nothing. Keedy - ran his thin tongue along the line of his sooty mustache. - </p> - <p> - “As a partner, I’m in favor of keeping a good girl near her father,” said - he. - </p> - <p> - “You are not a partner in my family affairs, Mr. Keedy!” cried the girl, - hotly. - </p> - <p> - Keedy, much embarrassed, and willing to hide his feelings, turned to me. - </p> - <p> - “We seem to be drifting off the main subject, Brother Sidney.” I wanted to - yank him up for calling me by that title—resentment surged in me as - hotly as it did in the girl. There are some men who seem to make your soul - feel sticky when they try to be intimate. - </p> - <p> - I told him I’d like a night to think the matter over. - </p> - <p> - “All right,” said Keedy, dryly; “I’ll take you with me to a place where - you can do some steady thinking and won’t be bothered. Stuff your things - back into your bag.” - </p> - <p> - As I plodded along the narrow street with him, my sack propped on my - shoulder, Captain Holstrom and his daughter passed me in a cab. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Keedy’s voice and manner were well padded with velvet that night, but - he couldn’t fool me. He caged me—that’s what he did. I remember that - I slept in a closet of a room, and, Mr. Keedy was on a cot in the room - which opened into the hall. I didn’t mind any of his precautions. I had - made up my mind to go along. I was dog-tired and slept all night. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXVIII—SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>R. KEEDY evidently - desired to impress on me that his hankering to make sure of my company - during the night was inspired by pure and sudden friendship. - </p> - <p> - When he came to awaken me his mustache was lifted so high in an amiable - smile that the twin sooty wings seemed to stick out of his nostrils. He - hoped I was getting to like the West and the folks there. I returned that - up to date I had not been homesick—a conservative statement, and - true; I had had no time to be homesick. - </p> - <p> - He paid for my breakfast; further evidence of friendship. Then he called a - cab and took me and my belongings down to the berth of the <i>Zizania</i>. - The old steamer was docked in a place which, so he told me, was the China - Basin, and we wormed our way through alleys and junk-piles and got aboard. - </p> - <p> - We hadn’t hurried that morning, and the time was well into the middle of - the forenoon. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom was stubbing to and fro on the main deck. He wore a fine - air of proprietorship, and welcomed us with a flourish of his hand. He - patted his breast, and the crackle of paper sounded. - </p> - <p> - “Money paid,” he reported. “Them’s the dockyments. Come up into the - wheel-house. There’s the place to talk the rest of our business.” - </p> - <p> - Marcena Keedy did most of the talking that forenoon. He loved to lollop - the words “three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots” in his mouth. He - had wormed out of me at breakfast-time admissions enough so that he knew I - was favorably disposed. He proposed to try to take advantage of me and I - saw his game and resolved to do some bluffing on my own part. He put a lot - of verbal plush around his propositions, but I could feel the hard nub - just the same. - </p> - <p> - After all that conversational fluff he wanted me to sign a contract to - take day’s wages for the job—double pay for the days when I - recovered any gold. - </p> - <p> - I turned that wages suggestion down, flat and final. You would have - thought I had money plastered all over me. - </p> - <p> - “It has got to be on shares,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “You doggone bean-eater, have you got the nerve to talk shares on an - investment of a diving-suit against our steamer and our information about - the <i>Golden Gate?</i>” stuttered Keedy. - </p> - <p> - “That isn’t the way the thing shakes down, Mr. Keedy. You have made it - plain to me that you’re gambling in this—it isn’t a straight deal.” - </p> - <p> - He swore at me, but I didn’t mean the thing the way he cook it. - </p> - <p> - “If you were going down there,” I said, “with a big expedition, and - proposed to build coffer-dams, and all that, and go at it scientific - fashion, I would hire as a regular diver. I couldn’t demand anything else. - But I’m not merely investing a diving-suit, as it stands. I’m playing a - lone hand in the diving part of the scheme; I’m investing all my - experience, all my skill; I’m investing life itself, for, as near as I can - find out from what you say, it will be up to me to know how to get that - gold, and then go get it. I want one-third of the velvet after all bills - are paid, and I want a contract drawn before I start.” - </p> - <p> - Perhaps I wouldn’t have jabbed the thing so hard at Holstrom, but I did - not propose to be the monkey for Keedy. I looked innocent and suggested - that they’d better talk with another diver. Keedy flapped like a speared - fish for half an hour—and then he came over. Captain Holstrom walked - up and down with his hands behind his back during all the talk. I judged - from his general air that he was viewing the whole thing as more or less - of a dream, and did not want to get too wide awake about it from fear of - losing courage and interest. - </p> - <p> - “There’s one thing about it—you’ll work harder if you have a lay,” - said Keedy. - </p> - <p> - That’s usually the way with the grafter or loafer—he’s afraid the - other fellow won’t work hard enough. - </p> - <p> - Frankly, I did not have any very brilliant hopes in regard to that - expedition, for if old Ingot Ike had told the truth about the failure of - the underwriters, I figured that the diving proposition must be a tough - one. Keedy was hot about it, for he did not know enough about such work to - judge chances; as for Captain Holstrom, ever since he had won this <i>Zizania</i> - elephant he was in a state of mind which made him ready for any project, - even to putting wings on her and starting for the moon. - </p> - <p> - I didn’t pay much attention to the outfitting, except to make a list of - such equipment in the way of lines, hose, air-pumps, and such matters as I - needed for my part of the work. Keedy and Holstrom turned around and - borrowed money on the security of the steamer, this debt to stand against - our partnership. Keedy seemed so sure of that gold that he did not stop to - ask me how I was fixed to stand my share in case of utter failure. - Therefore, with plenty of funds to work with, we were ready for sea in - short order, and to sea we went, swashing out past Point Lobos, the - sea-lions hooting at us as we passed their rocks, and started down the - coast. - </p> - <p> - I leaned over the rail and watched the shore melt in the hazy distance, - and did not blame the sea-lions for their derogatory remarks. I did not - know much about steamers, but I realized that the <i>Zizania</i>, - condemned Government tub, wasn’t anything to brag about. She was a real - old ocean-walloper, a broad-beamed duck of a thing, thrashing her warped - paddles, her rusty walking-beam groaning, her patched boilers wheezing—a - weather-worn, gray, and grunting ocean tramp. - </p> - <p> - Like all craft of the buoy-boat model, she had much deck room forward of - the bridge, and here were nested, as dories are nested on a Gloucester - trawler, four forty-foot lighters. Plenty of anchors accompanied these - scows—huge, rusty second-hand anchors which Captain Holstrom had - bought from junkmen. The <i>Zizania</i> was naturally slow, and this load - forward now made a snail of her. Hawsers and chains encumbered her deck - space everywhere—age-blackened ropes, and iron from which rust - scales were dropping. Captain Holstrom had ransacked the wharfs for - hand-me-downs. Even the men whom he had shipped looked as though he had - secured them at a rummage sale. - </p> - <p> - “It’s a checker-board crew,” the captain had informed me as they straggled - on board. “Half black men, and half white. That’s the only way to sort men - when you’re bound on a long cruise. Keep the blacks mad with the whites, - and vitchy vici, and you’ve always got half the crew on your side in case - of trouble. There can’t any general mutinies start when you’ve got a - checker-board crew. Number-one Jones has the white men’s watch; Number-two - Jones has the black watch; and as soon as we get this stuff stored and the - rest moused on deck I’ll have Number-one sick his bunch on to - Number-two’s, and let ’em fight long enough to get good and mad. - Then they’ll sort of neutralize each other for the rest of the cruise.” - </p> - <p> - That system of gentle diplomacy was new to me, and I loafed around and - kept an eye out, for I have always had a hearty relish for an honest - scrap. Furthermore, in explaining to me later, the captain had stated that - I was expected to jump in with himself and the mates and break up the - fight with clubs when it had progressed far enough. - </p> - <p> - “You see, we want to leave both sides mad and neither side licked,” said - Captain Holstrom. “It will be like cooking in a hot oven. The thing - mustn’t get scorched on. I know how to handle it. Jump in when I say the - word.” - </p> - <p> - He had given me these instructions leaning over the sill of the - pilot-house window soon after we had got away from the dock. - </p> - <p> - “Not that the doodah will start for some time yet,” he added. “But I’m a - great hand to have things all ready and understood. You can be looking up - your club between now and to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - I glanced into the wheel-house as I walked on. Marcena Keedy lounged in - solitary state on the transom seat at the rear, puffing away at a cigar. - </p> - <p> - “You’re always welcome in here,” he called. But I had no appetite for the - companionship of Mr. Keedy. - </p> - <p> - It occurred to me, with just a bit of relish in the thought, that Miss - Kama Holstrom probably was of similar mind in regard to Mr. Keedy. She had - taken a seat in the wheel-house when she had come on board that day. Now - she was in her state-room, which was the cabin on the upper deck near the - bridge, planned as the captain’s apartment. Either she had pre-empted it - or Captain Holstrom had assigned her to it. I had seen that the Joneses—Number-one - and Number-two—were in berths near my quarters below, and it was - plain that partners Holstrom and Keedy had quartered themselves in the - mates’ room on the upper deck. - </p> - <p> - Miss Holstrom’s door was on the hook, and I caught a glimpse of her more - by accident than by design. She nodded without speaking, and I raised my - cap and went below to the main deck. - </p> - <p> - I got there in season to see the lighting of a fuse which exploded Captain - Holstrom’s “checker-board” plans ahead of scheduled time. - </p> - <p> - The first man I met on the deck was Ingot Ike. He was gnawing at a hunk of - gingerbread with his snags of teeth, and was grinning amiably. - </p> - <p> - “This is going to be a comfortable trip for me,” he confided. “I find I - know the cook. It’s a lucky thing if you stand in well with the cook. Him - and me was shipmates together on a Vancouver packet. He’s the Snohomish - Glutton.” He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he expected that I - would show astonishment. “I said—he’s the Snohomish Glutton,” he - repeated, more loudly. - </p> - <p> - But my face remained blank. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of the Snohomish Glutton!” - </p> - <p> - I shook my head. - </p> - <p> - “You nev—You don’t—You ain’t ever—” Ike took another - drag at the gingerbread, and swallowed hard. “Why, the Snohomish Glutton - is known—the Snohomish Glutton, he has eat at one setting—Oh, - shucks, if you ain’t ever heard, what’s the use!” He started on, but - whirled and came back and shook the hunk of gingerbread under my nose. “I - suppose if it had been writ and printed in a book you Eastern perfessers - would know all about it. Thank God, in the West we know a lot of things - that ain’t printed in a book!” Then he stumped away. - </p> - <p> - Well, I concluded I would stroll along to the galley and take a look at - the cook, and be able thereafter to say that at least I had seen this - notable of the Pacific. - </p> - <p> - There was a spacious galley on the old <i>Zizania</i>. I looked in through - an open window which commanded the port alley. A fat man was chopping - kindlings. He was a thing of rolls and folds of fat—a gob of a man. - There were narrow slits near his nose marking his eyes, but his eyes - seemed to be shut by fat. A little, round, pursed-up mouth was in the - middle of his face, and from this came wheezy grunts as he chopped. - </p> - <p> - While I was watching him, an object bounded into the galley door and - leapfrogged him, darting past me through the window. Before I could turn - my head the thing, whatever it was, had disappeared around the corner of - the alley. - </p> - <p> - The cook straightened up, and by an effort opened his eyes enough to stare - at me. I expected a deep, gruff voice, But he had a real tin-whistle pipe. - </p> - <p> - “What did you throw at me?” - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t throw anything. Something rushed through the galley—I - didn’t see what.” - </p> - <p> - “Things don’t hit a man unless they are thrown,” he insisted. “I may look - funny, but I ain’t funny. I don’t relish having things thrown at me.” - </p> - <p> - He gave up trying to hold his eyes open, and went on chopping. - </p> - <p> - I was getting my breath ready to protest when the thing came through once - more. It was a monkey. But it missed the cook’s back, for the broad - shoulders heaved as the ax came up. The monkey slipped, slid across the - chopping-block, and down came the ax. The animal squealed horribly, flung - itself past me through the open window, and fled. It went like a shot, but - I got the fleeting impression that its tail was gone. - </p> - <p> - “What did you do then?” asked the cook, squinting at me suspiciously. - </p> - <p> - “I tell you I haven’t done anything at all. That was a monkey. He came - from somewhere. He ran through here. I think you have cut off his tail.” - He peered about. “There ain’t no tail here,” he whined. “There couldn’t - have been any monkey here. This ain’t any place for a monkey to be. There - may be monkey business here—and you’re getting it up. You go away - from here!” - </p> - <p> - I’m afraid the Snohomish Glutton and I would have had trouble then and - there, but just then a man came rushing into the door of the galley. He - had the monkey under his arm, upside down, and he was pointing quivering - finger at a bleeding stump of a tail. I couldn’t understand what he was - bawling. I found out afterward that he was a Russian Finn and could - command only a few English words even when he was perfectly calm. He was - not calm now. I never heard a man rave so. The monkey joined him with - hideous screams. - </p> - <p> - The cook listened for a time, puckering his fat forehead. When he found - that the man was talking a foreign language he upraised his ax and swished - it around in circles near the Finn’s head. A cook in his galley is lord - supreme in his domain, and the sailor probably knew as much. The ax was - menacing; it was coming very close, and the Finn already had one exhibit - of that cook’s ferocity under his arm. He allowed himself to be backed - out, and the cook slammed and barred the door. - </p> - <p> - “What did he say?” he asked me, in his piping tones. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know what he said.” - </p> - <p> - “I reckoned it was some kind of Dago swearing, and I don’t allow a man to - swear at me. Most likely it was swearing.” - </p> - <p> - “You cut off that monkey’s tail,” I insisted. “I thought so when he - squealed. Now I’m sure of it.” - </p> - <p> - He went to peering around again, whining to himself like a fat porcupine - who is being badgered. - </p> - <p> - “There ain’t no tail here. I didn’t cut off his tail. I didn’t see him so - that I could cut off his tail.” He started toward the window with a look - as if he proposed to resent my suggestion that he had been cutting off - monkeys’ tails. I passed on. I figured that I might as well try to argue - with a Sussex shote as with that shapeless mass of fat. I would have saved - a nasty bit of trouble for myself, perhaps, if I had remained and argued. - And my trouble later that day—and that monkey with the missing tail—was - the seed from which—But that’s getting ahead of the story. - </p> - <p> - ===There were really three messes aboard the <i>Zizania</i>. There was the - captain’s mess aft, with special dishes, which was entirely distinct from - the crew’s food. On the port side was set out the food for the black half - of the checker-board crew, and on the starboard side the white half - received their provender. - </p> - <p> - We were at dinner in the captain’s mess. It was our first meal at sea—our - first meeting at table. - </p> - <p> - When Miss Kama came in we were just sitting down. The captain was with us, - having left one of the Joneses at the wheel. Keedy lifted his paint-streak - mustache against his nose in a smile, and pulled out a chair beside his - own. - </p> - <p> - “Sit here, my dear,” he said to the girl. - </p> - <p> - She walked past the chair, came around to my side of the table, and sat - down. She did not toss her chin or sniff, as some girls would have done, - to show dislike of Keedy. She was a cool proposition, that girl was. - </p> - <p> - That left the chair beside Keedy the only vacant one at the table. A plump - little man had been standing off at one side, waiting for the last choice - of seats. He looked rather bashful, and his round face was shining with - soap, and his hair was plastered down at the sides and combed up in front - in a fancy cowlick. You could see that he realized that he did not exactly - belong at that table. Therefore he had scrubbed himself up for the - occasion. - </p> - <p> - Captain Rask Holstrom did not trouble himself with any of the finer graces - of society. He gruffly introduced the little man as Romeo Shank, chief - engineer, and told Shank to slide into the chair beside Keedy. “We ain’t - drawing any fine lines between ship’s officers on this trip,” stated the - captain, bluntly, for the benefit of all concerned. “Get to table while - the grub is hot, and get it into you—that’s the motto. Business - before style is the idea aboard this boat.” - </p> - <p> - He began to shovel food industriously with his knife. - </p> - <p> - Keedy hitched away from his table-mate a few inches, and looked across at - me, and deepened the wrinkle between his eyes. But he could not spoil my - appetite. Something else which happened the next moment pretty nigh did - it, though. - </p> - <p> - A black man leaped into the saloon through the forward door by which the - waiter came and went. Two other black men were at his back. They stopped - just inside the door and dragged off their knitted caps. They had the - appearance of being a delegation, and an excited delegation at that. It - was plain to be seen that they had come rushing aft without stopping to - figure on consequences. The leader carried something in front of him, and - it was looped over the blade of a wicked-looking-knife. He held the object - at arm’s length toward Captain Holstrom, pointed at it with the vibrating - finger of his left hand, and yelped shrilly like a dog. He was too excited - and too furious to put his complaint into words. - </p> - <p> - “What have ye got there—a snake?” yelped the captain, gulping down a - mouthful, and wrinkling his nose like one who had suddenly come upon - something disgusting. - </p> - <p> - “We find him in our kittle—we find him dere. Yassuh! We eat ’most - to de bottom, and den we find him,” raved the negro. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom snapped up from the table and strode over and squinted at - the object which dangled from the knife blade. - </p> - <p> - “Dey cook for us in our kittle a monkey tail—dem white men cook dat - for us, and laugh,” squealed the negro. - </p> - <p> - “And you think that some of those cheap white jokers put it in, eh?” - </p> - <p> - “Dey laugh all de time since when we pull him out. Yassuh, it’s a lot of - fun for dem men.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and stared down on the - thing which had savored the black men’s dinner. - </p> - <p> - A happy thought seemed to strike him. He turned his head and winked at me. - </p> - <p> - “Take that thing out and whack it across the face of the white man you - find laughing the hardest,” he commanded. “When he gets up to hit you - pitch in.” He came lurching back to the table. “I didn’t intend to have - the row till to-morrow,” he informed us, in an undertone. “But this is too - good a chance to miss. We’ll get that checker-board crew on a war basis - where they’ll stay put.” - </p> - <p> - The black men were lingering at the door, trying to get the captain’s - meaning through their wool. - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me, Captain Holstrom,” I said, “but I think I know how this thing - happened—and I feel it’s too bad to have innocent men beaten up.” I - started to tell what I had seen, but he swore and broke in on me. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t butt into something that’s none of your business!” he snapped. He - roared at the men: “Go do what I told you to do. Go punch the jokes out of - that white gang or you’ll have no peace the rest of the voyage. Get out of - here before I kick you out!” - </p> - <p> - It sounded like a very pretty row, judging it from where we were sitting - in the saloon. It began in a very few minutes. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Number-two Jones,” directed the captain, “go out there and oversee, - and let me know when it’s time to break the clinch.” He loaded up his - plate once more and kept on eating. - </p> - <p> - In about five minutes the mate returned. “I reckon it’s about time to - knock ’em apart, Captain Holstrom,” he advised, shoving his head in - at the door. “No great harm done, but they’re chewing each other bad, and - that means expense for plaster and salve.” - </p> - <p> - If I hadn’t already lost my appetite for dinner, that grisly statement - from Mr. Number-two Jones would have fixed me. I pushed back from the - table. - </p> - <p> - “Come along, Sidney,” commanded the captain, kicking his chair out from - under him. “Come settle your dinner. I’ll find a club for you.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll obey the orders you gave me first, sir,” I called after him; “I - won’t butt into something that’s none of my business.” - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean to say—” He had stopped and whirled on me. - </p> - <p> - I was sore because he had snapped me up so short before them all. I - thought my explanation should have been considered. - </p> - <p> - “I mean to say that this fight was needless. You started it; now you can - stop it.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Keedy had been lighting a cigar, and it was plain that he did not - intend to venture out into the mêlée. - </p> - <p> - “Look here—I tell you to come along,” yelled the captain. “It’s your - duty.” - </p> - <p> - “Not on your life. I’m no ship’s officer! I’m along as a diver, not as a - prize-fighter.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom looked ugly enough just then to tackle me as a preface to - his job forward, but after cursing a moment he followed the mate. The riot - was increasing, and it was plain that he was needed in the field. - </p> - <p> - Keedy leaned back and scowled at me through his cigar smoke. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t know I had picked a quitter,” he sneered. “We’re tackling a job - that needs sand. You ain’t a tin horn, are you?” - </p> - <p> - I didn’t answer and the back of my neck began to itch; I suppose if I had - had hair there like a dog’s, the hair would have bristled. That itching in - the neck when you’re mad is a survival of the old days when men had lots - of hair on ’em. - </p> - <p> - I started to walk out of the saloon. Miss Kama was sitting there, looking - at us, and her presence rather complicated matters for a man who was - getting madder all the time, as I was. The other officers had chased along - on the trail of Captain Holstrom. - </p> - <p> - “A second-hand diving-suit doesn’t stack up very high against what we’re - putting into this thing—Captain Holstrom and myself,” he insisted. - “There was something going in from your side in addition to the - divingsuit, as I understand it. But a coward can’t invest grit.” - </p> - <p> - I stopped at the door and walked back toward him. - </p> - <p> - “A what?” I inquired. - </p> - <p> - “I said ‘a coward.’” - </p> - <p> - I slapped him—not hard. - </p> - <p> - “Now come up on deck with me, Mr. Keedy. You’ve got to come after that. - There’s a lady here.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m going, gentlemen,” said the girl. “Don’t mind me.” She looked at - Keedy and set her lips. - </p> - <p> - But Keedy jumped up and pulled a gun instead of putting up his fists. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t fight that way, Mr. Keedy,” I told him. “I have no gun. You’d - better put yours up. You can’t afford to kill me—not yet!” - </p> - <p> - “No—and that’s the devil of it,” he blurted, after waiting a moment. - “You have taken advantage of—of—” - </p> - <p> - “Of your hankering to get money into your paws,” I snapped back at him. - “If you won’t come up and fight man fashion, I can’t make you, but if you - ever call me a coward again on this trip I’ll put in a little evidence to - the contrary with these.” I showed him my fists. - </p> - <p> - He rammed his revolver into his hip pocket and stamped out of the saloon. - </p> - <p> - I found the girl looking at me, wrinkling her forehead. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon, Miss Holstrom,” I apologized. “But an itching to - strike that man has been in my fingers for some time.” - </p> - <p> - “You ought to have waited until you had an excuse to strike harder than - that, Mr. Sidney. I have known Marcena Keedy for a long time. A man like - you with a big job ahead ought to be able to keep his eyes to the front - all the time. Now you will have to keep looking behind you. I say—I - have known Mr. Keedy for a long time.” - </p> - <p> - She went out. - </p> - <p> - I followed a few minutes afterward, and I went with my head down, and I - was pretty thoughtful. Captain Holstrom and I bumped together in the - doorway. He shoved past me and threw a club into a corner. - </p> - <p> - “I hope you can dive better’n you can fight,” he snorted. - </p> - <p> - Then he bawled to the waiter and demanded his piece of pie. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXIX—THE TELLTALE RIBS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE was nothing - especially interesting about that prolonged grunt of the old <i>Zizania</i> - down the California coast. She rolled and thrashed, and the brisk trades - spattered spray over her bows, and she certainly took her own time in - moving along. - </p> - <p> - We all settled down to endure the trip as best we could, but it was a - rather surly party. Forward, the blacks and whites nursed their scars and - their grudge; aft, Keedy and I scowled at each other so much that nobody - could be happy around where we were. Miss Kama walked the deck alone, or - read, or embroidered in her state-room; once in a while I got a glimpse of - her through the door while she was at work. She continued to sit beside me - at table, but she was very cool and distant. I don’t know as I tried to - have her anything else. I would have liked to lean over the rail and talk - with her, though I never presumed to speak to her on deck. Take a fellow - when he is young, penned aboard a slow packet, a pretty girl near him all - the time, and you bet he cannot confine all his thought to the scenery and - his job. - </p> - <p> - She truly was a pretty girl! I can see her now as she strode to and fro on - the upper deck, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her white sweater, - and drawing it forward so that it set off her plumpness. There was a sort - of indescribable tousle to her hair, if I may put it that way. I don’t - know what the color was—there’s no name for those shades of copper - and brown and all that. - </p> - <p> - I know I liked mighty well to see the sun shine through that hair. - </p> - <p> - I loafed below and forward considerably. I found a lot to interest me, - particularly a job that the Russian Finn was on in his spare time. He was - making a new tail for his monkey. He explained to me half tearfully that - the monkey would never be safe or happy otherwise. I had pretty hard work - to understand the man’s broken lingo, but I gathered that this especial - kind of monkey needed to spend a portion of his time hanging head downward - from his tail in order to be well and contented. Once or twice since the - tail had been amputated the monkey had run up the foremast or the derrick, - and had confidently tried to throw an imaginary tail over a rope, and had - tumbled to the deck, where he had squatted and moaned and examined the - stump with confused and pitiful attempt to understand the phenomenon. I - could sympathize with the Finn’s fears when he said that “some day he fall - over the board or break him damn neck.” The cook’s random blow had left - some inches of the stump, and to this with marline and glue the Finn - deftly fastened by an “end-seizing” a wire covered with furred skin. I - wondered where he secured this skin. He owned up to me. He had captured - and killed one of the cook’s pet cats, and the cook had never opened his - eyes wide enough to detect the crime, or to behold where the skin of the - defunct was performing vicarious atonement. - </p> - <p> - This catskin-covered wire was hooked at the end. Edison, I reckon, never - watched the testing of an invention with greater raptness than the Finn - displayed as the monkey, after a thorough inspection of the new appendage, - clambered aloft to where a rope swayed invitingly. I confess that I shared - in that interest. It proved a surprising success. The monkey swung from - the hook, chattered, and grinned, and came down and sat for long minutes - scrutinizing the thing, running busy little fingers along the furred wire. - </p> - <p> - “I may need an inventor with brains when I get at my job down below here,” - I told the Finn. “I will remember what you have done to your monkey.” - </p> - <p> - But when the time did come, it was the monkey instead of the master who - served. - </p> - <p> - As day followed day, and we finally raised the loom of the southern - California mountains in the blue distance on our port, Ingot Ike came out - of the lethargy in which limitless supplies of soft gingerbread seemed to - involve him. He talked to me with the brown crumbs sticking in the comers - of his mouth, and his spirits rose higher each day. He was like a - thermometer which was being brought nearer and nearer to heat. His talk - became more eager, his demeanor more alert, joy more intense. - </p> - <p> - “After all I’ve talked about it, and told ’em about it, and argued, - it’s coming true at last,” he kept repeating to me. He had fastened - himself to me with especial insistence during the voyage. “You’re the one - who is going to get it, who is going off this boat right down to where it - is, where you can lay your hands right on it, sir. Won’t it be a grand - feeling when you lay your hands on the first box?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” I admitted, “it will—when I lay my hands on it.” - </p> - <p> - I did not say that with any great enthusiasm. If Ingot Ike had not been so - full of gingerbread and glee he would have seen that I was pretty much - down. That San Francisco cocktail had got well worked out of me. I’d had - plenty of time to think the whole thing over during that wallow down the - coast. A man could be hopeful, in on shore, with Mr. Keedy rolling the - word “gold” over his tongue like a luscious morsel. I had been hopeful—and - desperate. But after days at sea in that rickety old tub, with her rotten - equipment, her bargain-sale fittings, her makeshift crew, with her whole - grouchy, suspicious, and reckless atmosphere, I decided that I was a fool - and would have been better off if I had gone out and hunted for a - legitimate job. I had ahead of me the fact, according to old Ike, that - other good men had tried and failed. I had behind me just then the sure - feeling that Mr. Keedy proposed to do me up as soon as I made good, - provided I did so by some lucky chance. - </p> - <p> - The last stage of the voyage south was made with old Ike posted in the - crow’s-nest, his beak thrust out, and his mat of hair fluttering in the - wind. He was so excited that he forgot to wallop gingerbread between his - toothless jaws. - </p> - <p> - Number-two Jones, who wasn’t a bad sort, gave me some information about - the coast which was in sight of us since we had crossed the mouth of the - Gulf of California. He had sailed those waters before. He had a somewhat - misty remembrance of where the steamer <i>Golden Gate</i> had gone ashore, - but he had never been in the vicinity of the spot, for the sand-bars - obliged craft to keep well offshore. - </p> - <p> - According to his recollection, the wreck had occurred along the Guerrero - coast, somewhere between Orilla and Acapulco. The doomed steamer, after - she had caught fire, was headed for the harbor of Acapulco, almost the - only haven on the coast, but an outlying sand-bar tripped her many miles - north of her destination and she went to her grave. Mr. Jones confessed - that he did not know just where; he would be obliged to hunt fifty miles - of coast for her if it were up to him. - </p> - <p> - But Ingot Ike had the memory of a monomaniac on the subject of the <i>Golden - Gate</i>. He peered under his palm at the hazy sky-line; he threw back his - head and snuffed into the east like a dog treeing game. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom started the lead going as soon as Ike had asked to have - the <i>Zizania</i> hug the coast more closely. He knew the reputation of - those hummocks and submarine plateaus of sand, and the howl of the - leadsman rather astonished me when he reported, for on the Atlantic coast, - to which I had been accustomed, we would be in deep water with a - coast-line so far away in the hazy blue of the east. At a distance which I - judged to be at least two miles offshore we were getting a report of only - fifteen or twenty fathoms. - </p> - <p> - At last Ike began to swish his thin arm. “Ye’d better down killick, - Captain!” he screamed from the crow’s-nest. “We’re laying off of her. This - is the place.” He scrambled down and ran to the wheel-house. “If you put - her in closer than this she’ll roll her blamed old smokestack out.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom accepted that advice promptly, though the shore-line was - at least a mile away. - </p> - <p> - He yelled shrilly, and splash! went the port anchor. When she had swung - wide he sent down the starboard mud-hook, and she headed the rolling - Pacific, riding easily to the heave of the giant sweepers. - </p> - <p> - A little thrill tingled in me as she came to a halt. We were on the ground - at last. - </p> - <p> - It was now up to me! - </p> - <p> - There were plenty of other men on that boat, but there was only one man - who could reach out and put his hand on that treasure, and that was - myself. The thought did not help to cheer my despondency. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom was immediately busy with a huge telescope which he - lifted from its rack and leveled across the sill of the wheel-house - window. Old Ike was excitedly counseling him, jabbing a digit toward the - shore. - </p> - <p> - “Follow down from that second nick in that hossback mount’in,” the guide - suggested. “Them is my bearings. You ought to see them ribs fairly plain - against the white where that surf is breaking inshore.” - </p> - <p> - There was silence after that while the captain squinted through the glass, - twisting a section now and then to sharpen the focus. His daughter was in - the wheel-house at his side, her face tense. She had never intimated to - me, of course, what her ideas were in regard to this treasure quest. She - may have held the whole project in the same contempt in which she seemed - to hold Keedy, its chief instigator, or old Ike, its prophet. But I stole - a look at her, and decided that she was interested now. - </p> - <p> - Well, anything with intellect above that of a steer would have had to be - interested at that moment. - </p> - <p> - We were hoping that yonder under those rollers lay three or four million - dollars’ worth of gold—gold enough to buy everything that man or - woman could desire. - </p> - <p> - Even the blockheads of the checker-board crew, who could hope for no more - than their wages from the quest, were staring over the rail from the main - deck forward, their mouths open. Marcena Keedy was eating a cigar instead - of smoking it. - </p> - <p> - “Them ribs ought to be there, Captain,” insisted the old man, wistfully. - “The rest has been buried, but them ribs have stood all the swash for - years. They ought to be there.” - </p> - <p> - There was another long silence. - </p> - <p> - Then Captain Holstrom straightened up. “They’re there!” said he. He - beckoned to me. I was at the rail. “Come in here,” he directed. “It’s your - next peek—for yonder is laid out your job.” - </p> - <p> - I had good eyes and I spotted the objects right off. There were three - curved ribs of a ship outlined against the white of the breaking rollers - beyond. The telescope gave the view relief and perspective, and I saw that - the ribs were well outshore. Many yards of tossing water, so I judged, - were between them and land. - </p> - <p> - “Well, what do you think?” he inquired, when I passed the glass back. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll tell you after I’ve been down, sir. A diver can’t afford to waste - guesswork on the top side of water.” - </p> - <p> - The girl shook her head when her father offered her the telescope, and - Keedy came in and took his look. - </p> - <p> - “Away in there, is it? Well, what are we waiting for out here?” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom looked his partner up and down. - </p> - <p> - This sudden exhibition of a lack of a practical knowledge took his breath - away for a moment. - </p> - <p> - “We’re waiting out here because we have got to stay here, Marcena. This is - as far as it’s safe to go.” - </p> - <p> - “We might as well sit on the Cliff House piazza and boss the job as be out - here,” grumbled the gambler. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know what sort of an idea you had about getting this treasure,” - retorted the captain. “But if you had paid attention to Ike when, he was - telling about the lay of the land you ought to have realized that we - wasn’t going to tie up to that wreck and have Sidney hook bags of gold on - to a fish-line for you to pull up.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m down here to have a general oversight in this business,” said Keedy, - “and I propose to be near enough to the job to oversee it.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom looked a bit disgusted. “We might rig a bos’n’s chair for - you on one of them ribs, and cut a hole in the water for you to look down - through. But see here, Marcena, don’t get foolish about this thing. All - you’ve been thinking about, so I judge, is of them boxes of gold, and you - haven’t stopped to figure on the way of getting ’em. I have - figured. I’ve talked a lot with old Ike when you wasn’t listening, but was - dreaming about them ingots. Now you listen to me. Let’s start in without a - row and a general misunderstanding.” He began to dot off his points with a - stubby forefinger. - </p> - <p> - “We can’t anchor the <i>Zizania</i> any nearer. There isn’t holding-ground - on that sand, and we’ve got to have plenty of water under this steamer in - case of a blow. See those lighters forward? I bought ’em after I - got a general understanding of the lay of the land here from Ike.” - </p> - <p> - “You bought a lot of things without consulting me,” said Keedy, showing - his grouch. “What <i>am</i> I in this thing—a passenger or a - partner? Seeing that my money is in it, I propose to have my brains in, - too.” - </p> - <p> - The man acted and talked in a way to indicate that he was starting out - hunting for trouble. It began to look to me as if there were worse shoals - ahead for our partnership than the shoals of San Apusa Bar. Mr. Jones had - given me that as the name of the place where the wreck lay. - </p> - <p> - Capt. Rask Holstrom did not have the steadiest temper in the world. His - eyes narrowed. - </p> - <p> - “Every man for his own line, Keedy. I’m not presuming to tell you how to - deal from the box, nor how to size the buried card in stud poker. Nor I - don’t need any advice from you when it comes to handling a job of work in - tidewater. I’ve waited till I got here to tell you my plans. When I can - talk and you can see the layout at the same time, I’ll not be wasting so - much breath; even those faro-game brains of yours can take in what I’m - getting at. Now, hold right on! This is going to be a square deal, and you - can sit close to the jack-pot. Those four lighters are going overboard, - and we’ll moor them in a chain between here and the shore. We can splice - the cables so as to allow a hundred fathoms between each one. That will - make each lighter a sort of a bridle anchor for the others, and we ought - to get the inshore lighter mighty nigh the wreck. You can stay on that - lighter and have your meals brought if you hanker to.” - </p> - <p> - He snapped out that last remark while he was backing down the ladder from - the bridge to the main deck. The sneer that went with it did not improve - the state of Keedy’s feelings. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll show this aggregation whether I can boss a job or not,” he growled. - </p> - <p> - I decided right then that if Keedy tried to boss me from that inshore - lighter the partnership of Holstrom, Keedy & Sidney would get a - fracture in the second joint much wider than the one which was already - widening there. I looked after him when he strolled away, and I reckon if - he had turned around and given me one of those nasty looks of his just - then I would have run after him and hoisted him a good one under the - coat-tail—gladly taking the consequences. I had never hated Anson C. - Doughty any worse. Keedy had grafted himself on to the project with stolen - money—and now he was insulting the rest of us by placing us in the - rogue class with himself and in need of watching. - </p> - <p> - I suppose I looked very blue and ugly and disgusted as I stood there at - the rail, scowling first at Keedy and then at the streaming white of the - surf which played beyond the ribs of the wreck. - </p> - <p> - The girl spoke to me. She leaned from the window of the wheel-house, and - there was a note in her voice I had never heard before. All her - brusqueness was gone. She was sort of confidential and wistful. - </p> - <p> - “You don’t think much of this scheme, do you, Mr. Sidney?” - </p> - <p> - I was in the mood to agree with her. “There must be an almighty good - reason why those other fellows did not recover the treasure, Miss - Holstrom, providing old Ike is right in what he says and that they didn’t - get it. I can tell better after I have been down.” - </p> - <p> - “I have never seen a diver at work. It is very dangerous, isn’t it?” - </p> - <p> - “That depends on the job. I have been as deep as one hundred and seventy - feet, Miss Holstrom, and I felt perfectly safe, though the pressure made - my nose bleed. Another time I was down in only four fathoms in the wash of - a lee shore, and they couldn’t keep my lines and my air-hose dear, and - they pulled me up near dead. That’s a lee shore yonder, and I’m afraid I’m - going to find some very good reasons why the other divers didn’t succeed. - Sometimes I am tempted to believe that they did get the gold and that old - Ike’s talk is simply a dream.” - </p> - <p> - “I think the whole affair is a nightmare—I mean this trip,” she - declared. “I don’t believe the good Lord is going to allow a man like - Marcena Keedy to succeed in any decent enterprise.” - </p> - <p> - I rubbed my ear and looked at her for a few minutes. I had been turning - over a thought about this expedition in my mind for some days. I did not - know whether to say anything to her about it or not. It would be giving - Captain Holstrom a pretty hard dig. But I blurted it, for she knew I had - something on my mind and bluntly demanded to know what I was thinking - about. - </p> - <p> - “Perhaps this is the kind of a scheme where the devil will help his own, - Miss Holstrom—and therefore Keedy belongs in the thick of it as - chief manager. He’ll win on that basis. I don’t know much about admiralty - law or maritime justice. But it may be that this treasure has not been - officially abandoned. Perhaps taking it is stealing it. I know that the <i>Zizania</i> - got away from port with papers as a trawl fisher. I know I have no - business talking like this about your father’s affair. But if it’s to be - real stealing, perhaps we’ll succeed with Keedy in the game,” I said—and - it was a pretty clumsy joke. It fell flat. - </p> - <p> - “I hope my father will wake up,” she said, curtly, looking down on him - where he was giving off orders about clearing the big derrick. “Sometimes - I almost believe in evil spirits and in control of a man’s mind by another - man—in a wicked way, I mean. But I thank God there’s one of the - Holstrom family who can’t be hypnotized by Marcena Keedy. That is why I - have come on this voyage—my father needs a guardian.” - </p> - <p> - She came down the steps from the wheel-house, and went into her - state-room. I walked aft, for the <i>Zizania</i> had swung with the - surges, and was tailing toward shore, and I wanted to look at the place - where my work had been cut out for me. - </p> - <p> - Keedy met me amidship. He came out from behind a lashed life-boat, and it - struck me at once that he had been in ambush, spying on me. That was - before he had opened his mouth. He did not leave me in any doubt when he - began to talk. - </p> - <p> - “Let’s get to an understanding about Miss Holstrom, Sidney,” he rasped, - leveling his finger at me. “You let her alone. No more buzzing her behind - my back or her father’s.” - </p> - <p> - “Keedy, you have started running after trouble to-day. In my case, you’ll - catch up with it mighty soon.” - </p> - <p> - “Then let’s make believe I have caught up. I’m going to marry that young - lady. And no cheap Yankee masher is going to stand around and make sheep’s - eyes at her. That’s business and you keep your hands down. You slap me - again, Sidney, and I’ll drop you in your tracks—even if the gold - stays there till we can get another diver.” He had his hand on his hip, - and his eyes were fairly green. - </p> - <p> - I started to tell him what I thought of him and his chances with that - girl, proposing to throw in a few remarks about what I should do if I - wanted to. But I shut my mouth suddenly. I had no right to stand out there - and insult a girl by quarreling about her with a fellow of that stripe. - </p> - <p> - Vastly different were the circumstances and the relations of the persons - concerned—but I felt the same rankling of resentment which hurt my - pride and my feelings when Jeff Dawlin growled his warning in my ear. I - hated to leave any false impressions with Keedy. I did not propose to have - him think I envied him anything he possessed or thought he possessed. - Pride and the spirit of brag—that was it—prompted my answer. - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” I shot out at him, “I have a girl East who is worth more than - all the gold you expect to find in that wreck over there. What do you - think I’m out in this God-forsaken country for? What do you think I’m - gambling along with you for? It’s so I can grab off enough money to make a - showing when I carry it back home and pour it into her lap! Don’t you - worry, Keedy. I don’t want any of your girls. There’s one who is waiting - for me back East!” How a man will lie when he gets to talking about girls! - I snapped my fingers under Keedy’s nose and walked on aft. I felt - considerably relieved because I figured I had taken some of the conceit - out of him. I had a lot taken out of myself when I returned. - </p> - <p> - Miss Kama Holstrom met me. She gave me one of those up-and-down glances - which seem to sting like the flick of a long lash. - </p> - <p> - “I have no objection to your discussing your love affairs with Mr. Keedy, - my dear sir—though I question your good taste. But I must ask you - not to discuss me with him.” - </p> - <p> - “I assure you I did not!” - </p> - <p> - “I stepped into my state-room only to get my cap. I was walking on the - other side of the life-boat when you were talking.” - </p> - <p> - “But I—” - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure you understand my request, sir.” She walked on. - </p> - <p> - A fine partnership—that of Holstrom, Keedy, and Sidney, - treasure-seekers! And there was a silent partner whose silence just then, - along with her disgust, sent a crimson flame into my cheeks. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXX—THE LOCKS OF THE SAND - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>IGHT away I found - that Captain Holstrom knew how to “team” a crew. He started that - checkerboard outfit of his to humping in good earnest after he and I had - planned out the details of setting the stage for the work ahead of us. - </p> - <p> - We needed to reach as long an arm as possible toward the wreck. - </p> - <p> - Inside of four days after we planted our mud-hooks on San Apusa Bar, we - had our string of lighters in place. - </p> - <p> - First we anchored them and then we linked them with one another by cables - because the sandy bottom inshore from the steamer afforded poor - holding-ground for the anchors. Having a number of lighters hitched - together in this manner, the chain made a sort of spring cable for the - lighter nearest the wreck where the scuffling surges were piling high over - the shoals. The scow nearest the shore thrashed about in rather lively - style, but I figured that I could do my work from it in pretty fair - fashion. At any rate, by our system of cables, we planted the lighter less - than three hundred feet from the upstanding ribs of the Golden Gate. It - was about the best we could do, considering our limited equipment. - </p> - <p> - On the fifth day all was ready for me to go down for the first time. - </p> - <p> - Of course I had been allowed to pick my own helpers, and I had been giving - them lessons for some time. I chose Mate Number-two Jones to tend hose and - lines, and Chief-Engineer Shank was to manage the air-pump. - </p> - <p> - I had found them to be steady and reliable men. I owned a Heinke - diving-dress which had cost me six hundred dollars, and with the right men - “up-stairs” I was not worrying about my ability to get down and stay down—even - if I had been off my job for a while. As to what I would be able to - accomplish when I got down on ocean’s floor I was not quite so sure. - </p> - <p> - While I had been waiting for the lighters to be moored I had pumped Ingot - Ike daily. - </p> - <p> - He did seem to know what he was talking about—and I had to admit - that. The matter of the treasure of the <i>Golden Gate</i> had crowded - everything else out of his mind, and left his memory mighty dear. He drew - a plan of her with a stubby pencil, and went into minute details of - description. He said the ribs which showed were forward of the room where - the treasure had been stored. The fire had been aft and amidship, and when - she had struck the sand she had buried her nose, and these ribs were - planted so solidly that the surf had not been able to beat them down. As a - quartermaster who had known his ship, he was able to tell me how many - paces aft from the standing ribs should be the spot where the treasure - lay. - </p> - <p> - They made ready the best life-boat on the <i>Zizania</i> for me and my - equipment, a big yawl with sponsons. Captain Holstrom did not propose to - take any chances with that outfit during the ferrying process. He went as - coxswain, and I was not surprised, of course, to see Keedy scramble in - even before I had lowered my diving-dress over the side. What did surprise - me was to have Miss Kama show up as a passenger. When she stepped past me - and went down the ladder my eyes bugged out. I thought ’twas - somebody I had never seen before. She wore knickerbockers, and was - gaitered to the knees, and she went into the life-boat as nimbly as a - midshipman, asking a hand from no one. I could have cracked Keedy across - the face with a relish for the way he rolled his eyes at her. - </p> - <p> - She showed the good sense of an out-of-door girl who understood a thing or - two when she picked that costume. Embarking and disembarking with that - surf running under a keel was no job for a girl in skirts. - </p> - <p> - When we came up beside the in-lying lighter we were climbing white-flaked - hills of water and coasting dizzily into green valleys. Those waves of the - old Pacific which had marched across seas from the lee of the Society - Islands were certainly making a great how-de-do in halting on those - sand-bars of the Mexican coast; and inshore there in the shallows the surf - had a nastier fling to it than off where we had found holding-ground for - the old <i>Zizania</i>. It was a case of every one for himself in making - the transfer from the life-boat to the lighter. I was ready to assist the - girl, but she set foot on the gunwale, sprang with the heave of the boat, - and landed on deck as lightly as a bird; she could not have done the trick - more neatly if she had worn wings on the shoulders of that close-fitting - sweater. - </p> - <p> - There was one cheerful moment for me on that day of anxiety; Keedy was the - last passenger out of the lifeboat, and he teetered and made motions to - jump, and flinched and squirmed and backed water like a swimmer afraid to - plunge in. When he did jump at last he stubbed his toe on the deck of the - lighter, and raked that hooked beak of his across the planks. I grinned at - him when he staggered up, holding to his bleeding nose, and I went to - overhauling my diving-dress, whistling a tune. - </p> - <p> - I found Number-two Jones and round little Romeo Shank to be helpful - handy-Andys after the instructions I had given them. The girl never missed - a motion they made in getting me ready. I felt a warm finger trying to - worm its way under my rubber wristbands, and I turned to find her looking - at me with a great deal of concern. She explained that she wanted to be - sure that no water could leak in, and then she seemed to think that she - had been just a bit forward, and she blushed. - </p> - <p> - The next thing I knew she was sturdily fetching one of my twenty-pound - shoes, and stood there holding it ready for my helpers. I had gone down a - good many times in my life, but I went that day with the happy - consciousness of helpful interest in my poor self. - </p> - <p> - Then they set the helmet on to the breastplate and gave it its one-eighth - turn into the screw bayonet joint, and set the thumb-screws. My front - eyepiece was hinged like the window of a ship’s port-hole, and this was - open. The girl bent down and peered at my face. - </p> - <p> - “It seems a terrible thing for you to be closed in there—for you to - go down into that raging water,” she said, her face close to mine. - </p> - <p> - “Wish me good luck, and I’ll go humming a tune,” said I, smiling at her. - </p> - <p> - “With all my heart I do,” she answered, a catch in her voice. - </p> - <p> - I shut the frame, and Mr. Shank set the turn-screw. With a man on each - side of me, I scuffed my way to the ladder, and went over the rail of the - lighter. I waited at the foot of the ladder—about ten feet under—until - I felt that little pop in my ears which signals to the diver that his - Eustachian tube is open, and that the pressure is equalized. Then I yanked - the rope to ask for a taut lifeline, and let go my hold. - </p> - <p> - The sun was bright and the bed of the sea was of sand, and I found good - light below. There was a heavy sway to the water even on bottom, but I was - strong, and knew how to handle myself. I found my footing, and started - along. - </p> - <p> - My only tool that day was a peaked-nose shovel. I crawled along, using it - for a push-pole. - </p> - <p> - I found the bottom to be a succession of bars, which were parallel with - the shore—waves of sand, so to speak, ranging from six to ten feet - in height. It was a slow job working one’s way across them. However, they - assisted me—there was no danger of getting off one’s course. I - needed only to proceed at right angles to the bars. Through my bull’s-eye - in that dim green light I could see ahead for some distance. So at last I - came to the timbers of the wreck. There was a long tangle of these, a - great mass of wreckage hidden by the sea and protruding but a little way - above the sand which the eternal surf had packed down. I kept along toward - shore until I came to the timbers which, so my eyes told me, must be the - ones that marked the location of the wreck. They went looming up through - the water. I clung to one of them and rested. I was having no trouble with - my air, and now that I had reached the scene of the work that fact - comforted me. The movement of the sea in that shallower water was - considerable, and now and then a heavier roller jostled me about. But I - began to plan out a system of lashings that would anchor me. - </p> - <p> - Then I got down on my belly, and started to measure paces along the edge - of the timbers, following Ike’s instructions as to distance. There was - mighty little that was encouraging about the spot which I finally located - as the probable site of the treasure-chamber. Sand was billowed and packed - there, and the place was quite free from wreckage. It occurred to me that - the other divers had dug the timbers away at this point. As I was feeling - fairly fresh, I decided to use my shovel a bit. - </p> - <p> - After five minutes’ toil at that sand I began to perceive why the others - had failed, providing Ingot Ike was correct and they <i>had</i> failed. In - the first place, there was not the footing on that bottom that a submarine - diver needs. I skated about almost helplessly when the heaving sea - clutched at me. When I tried to drive the shovel into the sand I was - pushed back, and the tool made only scratches on the bottom. Without a - prop or a brace, a diver cannot pull or push horizontally with much force - even under the best conditions, and when I did succeed in getting the - shovel into the sand and scooped a hole, the particles began to settle - back, driven by the swaying seas. The giant Pacific was jealous of the - treasure it had engulfed. - </p> - <p> - There was nothing more for me to do down there that day. I began to feel - that pain above the eyes which warns the diver. I gave the signal for - return, and went back at a lively pace, for the taut line helped. - </p> - <p> - I saw none of them on the lighter until my helmet had been removed, for - when a diver ascends to the air his bull’s-eye becomes covered with mist - in spite of the wash of vinegar which has kept the glass clear below. - Marcena Keedy was in front of me, looking at my hands, and acting as - though he were wondering where I had stowed the find I had made below. - </p> - <p> - “Well, it’s there, isn’t it?” he demanded. - </p> - <p> - “From what little I have been able to find out, I reckon it is there,” I - told him; “and it wouldn’t surprise me much if it stayed there for some - time.” I was in no mood to encourage that polecat, who was plainly - thinking more about that treasure than he was about any dangers I might - have been through. He drew that streak-o’-paint mustache up against his - nose and looked like a dog about to snap. I turned away from him so as to - have something better to look at. There was the girl beside me. She sure - was an antidote for the poison of Marcena Keedy’s evil eye. Her red lips - were apart, and her little hands were clasped, finger interlaced with - finger. - </p> - <p> - “Thank God you are back safe, Mr. Sidney!” - </p> - <p> - She wasn’t looking at me as though she were wondering in which pocket I - had hidden an ingot of gold. - </p> - <p> - “It was not dangerous,” I told her. “It was disappointing, that’s all.” - </p> - <p> - I ignored Keedy. I looked past him to Captain Hol-strom, and related what - had happened below. It was a mighty interested crowd that stood around me - and listened. - </p> - <p> - “The idea is,” I wound up, “this is no ‘reach-down-and-pick-it-up’ - proposition.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s what I call doing damn little in an hour’s work,” growled Keedy. - “You ain’t down here to tell us how hard that job is. We have heard all - about that from the other divers. You are down here to get that gold. You - bragged around what a devil of a diver you have been, and now when we have - to depend on you, all we get is some more conversation. Have you got us - away down here and let us in on a dead one?” - </p> - <p> - “If that money was in a faro-bank instead of a sandbank,” I told him, “you - would be just the man to get it out—you have had plenty of practice - in that line. But this happens to be an honest job, and it needs something - besides false cards.” - </p> - <p> - Then I kept on talking to the captain: - </p> - <p> - “After giving the thing a good looking-over I have begun to figure on a - few plans. I’ll paw over and size up the stuff on the <i>Zizania</i> this - afternoon and see what there is in stock to help me.” I told Mr. Jones to - unstrap my shoes. - </p> - <p> - When Keedy saw them peeling off my dress he had a few more remarks to - offer about the kind of a “hot diver” a man was who called an hour a day’s - work. If I had brought up an ingot in each hand from that first trip he - wouldn’t have been grateful; he would have wanted to know why I did not - bring up the whole box. - </p> - <p> - I had a dirty job of it that afternoon pawing over the old junk on board - that steamer, but I managed to sort out some material that fitted into my - scheme, and it was ferried to the lighter. - </p> - <p> - I went down again the next morning at sunrise, for the southwest - trade-wind had quieted during the night, and the swell wasn’t quite as - energetic as it had been under the push of the breeze the previous day. - </p> - <p> - I had the same spectators. Miss Kama, looking like a pretty boy in her - knickerbockers, had plainly determined to keep in the front row, and I’ll - own up that her presence put ginger into my efforts. I reckoned I’d show - her the difference between a man who could do and dare and a sneering - loafer of the caliber of Keedy. A handsome girl usually has an effect of - that sort on a young man. - </p> - <p> - When I reached bottom under the lighter they lowered an old mushroom - anchor to me. I unhooked it, and started to roll it along the “windrows” - of sand toward the wreck. It took every ounce of strength in me to boost - it up those slopes. I had lashed a crowbar to the anchor stock, and when I - finally got the thing to the wreck and had rested I stuck to the job, - though I had really done as much as was advisable at one descent. - </p> - <p> - I loosened up a sizable patch of sand with the crowbar, and settled the - anchor in the hole, stock upright. There was no need for me to pack the - sand back; the Pacific Ocean would attend to that part of the job. The - Pacific was altogether too busy in packing sand, though. It did not - discriminate between an anchor which I wanted made solid and treasure - which I wanted set free. - </p> - <p> - I went down a second time that day. I carried small chains and a broad - shovel. I lashed myself to the anchor’s stock, and with that support as a - fulcrum for my body I dug into the sand with the crowbar, and fanned out - the loose particles with the broad shovel. - </p> - <p> - But it was like the reverse of the story of the man who set out to carry - water in a sieve. The sand kept running in. If I had been able to stay - down there night and day, and have my meals brought to me, and could have - worked without rest or sleep, I might have been able to dig a hole in that - sand and to keep it dug out until I had come to that treasure. As it was, - I toiled until my head seemed splitting, until blood ran from my nose, and - I felt the first weakness of that peculiar paralysis of the limbs which - divers experience when they pass the limit set for endurance under water. - I lashed my tools to the anchor, and was pulled back to the lighter. - </p> - <p> - Human arms had given up—human strength and grit had failed. But I - knew that through the hours of that afternoon, through the watches of the - night, that old, miserly ocean would keep toiling on, rolling sand back - into that hole, patting it down with unseen fingers, locking a door over - the treasure that would serve the purpose better than doors of steel or - bars of bronze. I should find all my labor undone when I came back to that - anchor. - </p> - <p> - Therefore I did not lark and play when I was dragged over the rail of the - old lighter. I stumbled to my seat, and sat and wiped blood from my face - when the helmet had been twisted off the breastplate. - </p> - <p> - “Four hours since you went down—you’re sure a wonder!” muttered - Shank, patting my dripping shoulder. - </p> - <p> - I was embarrassed—a bit shocked—when the girl hurried to me - and began to wipe away the blood with her little handkerchief. I tried to - push away her hands. It didn’t seem right to have her do such a task. But - she resisted me. She kept on. - </p> - <p> - “You poor boy!” she said—or I thought she said it; I was not sure. - There was pity in her tones—a caressing kind of pity, such as comes - right from a woman’s heart. I was astonished. She had been stiff and curt - toward me—and was rather short with every one else, for that matter. - She had never seemed tender even toward her own father. - </p> - <p> - But she murmured again in my ear, leaning close to me, “You poor boy!” - </p> - <p> - I’ll admit I was glad to hear her say it—I needed sympathy; but - because I mention the girl and her little ways please do not jump at the - conclusion that I was falling in love. She had overheard a declaration - which established my standing with her and, I suppose, made her feel freer - in my company. Oh no! I was not falling in love! - </p> - <p> - Sitting there as I did with forty pounds of lead on my feet and eighty - pounds of it across my shoulders, with air in my dress puffing me out like - a giant frog, dripping with brine, and hideous with blood-smeared face, I - wasn’t much to look at in the way of a lover. And outside of the pity she - had never by flicker of eyelid, or tone of voice, or touch of hand - intimated that she was interested in me except as a young man who was - tugging at a hard job and deserved a little encouragement. - </p> - <p> - “It’s all—all useless—down there—isn’t it?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “No; it’s a glorious job, and I’ve just begun on it.” - </p> - <p> - “But it’s wicked for you to suffer like this.” - </p> - <p> - “I was never so comfortable and happy in all my life—never so full - of courage.” - </p> - <p> - Keedy was listening and I felt like tormenting him. He stuck his face down - to mine. It was not a pretty face. His nose was swathed in absorbent - cotton, which was held on with straps of court-plaster. - </p> - <p> - “Well, let me in on why you’re so happy,” he snapped. - </p> - <p> - “It doesn’t happen to be any of your business,” I informed him. - </p> - <p> - “Ain’t I a partner in this thing with you?” - </p> - <p> - “When I get ready to tell you anything about my work, I’ll see that you - are informed. Or, if you want to make the trip, I’ll tuck you under my arm - and take you down to-morrow. I’d be delighted to do so.” He looked at me a - little while and his eyes narrowed. - </p> - <p> - That evening I had a talk with Capt. Rask Holstrom. - </p> - <p> - Marcena Keedy was not in that conference. I walked the upper deck until - Keedy had gone, grunting and growling, off into his state-room. Then I - hunted up the captain where he was lying on the transom in the - wheel-house, puffing at his pipe and looking rather sullen. - </p> - <p> - I knew what was ailing him. I had refused earlier in the evening to come - into the wheel-house while Keedy was there. - </p> - <p> - “Being a plain and blunt man, I may as well say what’s on my mind,” stated - Captain Holstrom, sourly. He did not arise. He squinted ar me from under - the vizor of his cap, which was pulled low over his eyes. “You ain’t - dealing with me and Keedy open and frank as your partners. You ain’t - giving us full particulars. You was down four hours to-day, and came up - looking blue and scared, and then just talked flush-dush with my girl. We - ain’t down here for anything except straight business and results. Your - two eyes are the eyes for all three of us. When you have used ’em - down below there we’re entitled to have full report. Me and Keedy ain’t at - all satisfied with the way this thing is running on.” - </p> - <p> - I sat and looked at him, and waited to hear whether he had any more to - say. - </p> - <p> - “No, sir, we ain’t satisfied,” he repeated. - </p> - <p> - “I’m glad Mr. Keedy isn’t satisfied,” I told him. “I wish he would get so - dissatisfied that he would quit this expedition. And I don’t intend to - kowtow to him and make him satisfied.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, I’ll be damnationed!” exploded the captain, pushing back his cap. - </p> - <p> - “You needn’t be, Captain Holstrom. What I say doesn’t have any reference - to you at all. I hope my relations and yours will stay as they are—no, - I hope they will improve as you know me better. But that gambler has - grafted himself on to this scheme. He isn’t a practical man, as you are. - He sneers at me and my work—and God knows it’s hard and dangerous - work. He expects impossible things, and it doesn’t do any good to come up - out of that hell of water and explain to him. Every time he opens his - mouth I feel like jumping down his throat and galloping his gizzard out of - him. There! That’s rough talk, but I mean it. If Marcena Keedy doesn’t - handle himself different where I’m concerned there’s going to be serious - trouble aboard here. Hold on a moment! Hear me through. I respect your - good judgment and I know you are willing to work hard. I’m ready to talk - to you at any time when that sneak isn’t around. What you say to him after - that about plans and expectations I don’t care—that’s your own - business. But I’m sorry you don’t hate and distrust him as much as I do. - Now I’ll tell you what I found down there to-day, and how the thing looks - to me.” I told him. - </p> - <p> - “Then, if all that is so, we may as well up killick and go home, eh?” I - never saw a more disgusted look on a man’s face, or heard a more - melancholy tone. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t told you that to discourage you, or to crybaby myself. I’m - giving you the facts, and I hope you’re practical man enough to keep from - sneering about my efforts the way Keedy does. I’m doing all that a human - being can do—but you’ve got to face facts, Captain Holstrom, and - I’ve been giving you facts, I say. That’s the situation—that’s all! - You know as much as I know. If you have ideas, think ’em over and - give ’em to me. I’ll keep on trying to think up something myself.” - I went off to my state-room so as to give him time to do that thinking. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXI—A TASTE OF BLOOD - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE old Pacific was - in her usual welter next morning. - </p> - <p> - The big seas were rolling up from the equator, and we could hear them - booming in on the coast-line. - </p> - <p> - As I look back on that nightmare off the bars of San Apusa I think the day - when I went down with the anchor was the calmest day of our stay. With the - everlasting thrust of the trades behind them the billows rolled, rolled, - rolled, rolled—seethed and surged—giant green soldiers with - the white plumes, charging that sandy shore. I got to feel after a time - that they were soldiers in real earnest, and that they were after me—poor - little midget, who was trying to accomplish the impossible. - </p> - <p> - At breakfast Mr. Shank ventured to remark politely and somewhat nervously - that he was supposing I would not try to go down that day. - </p> - <p> - And I told Mr. Shank rather brusquely that of course I should go down, and - added that if we were to wait for smooth water in soundings on the lee - shore of the Pacific Ocean in the season of the trades, we should have - brought plenty of knitting-work and novels. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom, from the head of the table, smiled and winked at me with - the most cordial expression I had ever seen on his face. I decided that - one of my partners was regarding me in a more amiable frame of mind than - he had before I had made that little speech to him. Mr. Keedy scowled at - me, and I was glad of that mark of his continued disesteem. It occurred to - me that perhaps I was weaning the captain from Keedy, for Holstrom snapped - his friend up rather short two or three times during the meal. - </p> - <p> - I went down that day with more weights. The tug of those rollers inshore - was tremendous for a buoyant man, even in the comparative calm of the - previous day. I realized what I would meet up with this day, and I was not - disappointed in my reckoning. - </p> - <p> - I was tumbled from hummock to hummock of the submarine sand-bars. I was - knocked down and then was stood up once more. Sometimes I was lifted off - my feet, and then I was rolled and pressed down and pinned to the sand - till it seemed that I would never get on my feet again. Part of the time I - was thrust ahead as if the Pacific were trying to make me walk Spanish—and - then I was yanked backward on all-fours like a big crab. - </p> - <p> - I knew a whole lot about undertows, and I realized that I was having an - experience with a particularly crazy one. - </p> - <p> - Men who have observed and studied think they have a pretty good line on - the notions and the moods of the sea—but take it from me as a - submarine diver, they haven’t. If one is standing on a rock and looking - out on it, or sailing across it in a safe boat, the ocean becomes a matter - of “beautiful surf,” or an expanse more or less hubbly with waves. - </p> - <p> - But get down into it—get down deep where it can play with you, twirl - you, toss you, suck your breath, provided it can throttle your air-hose—where - it can work all its schemes and its spite. You will find out that the - ocean has a new trick for every day. - </p> - <p> - There are beaches where persons have bathed in safety for years. Then all - at once some day a shrieking man or woman is seized, as though by some - hidden monster, and is dragged off to death. That mighty and erratic force - is called an undertow. It is now here, now there. It is born out of - diverted currents, checked tide rips. It sneaks up bays, seeking prey; it - roams along open Peaches. I know a lot more about undertows, but that’s - all for now. - </p> - <p> - I was in one that day off San Apusa. Wind, tide, a current wandering off - its course—one of the currents that is uncharted and which is known - only by some diver who meets it on its wanderings below the surface, had - combined, and had come to play in the vicinity of the wreck of the old <i>Golden - Gate</i>. - </p> - <p> - I struggled on toward that wreck. Say, I met an old friend of mine. It was - the mushroom anchor, and it was doing a sort of jig on top of a sand ridge - when I first saw it. Evidently it had been lonesome during the night, and - it had come to meet me. It was at least one hundred feet on the sea side - of the wreck—and I had left it with fluke buried close to the ribs. - If that undertow had dug up that anchor it might be doing other things. - That thought came to me like a flash of hope. There’s no telling what an - undertow will do when it gets to prancing, you know! - </p> - <p> - I unlashed the crowbar from the anchor stock and tumbled on over the - ridges. I found myself in an opaque yellow light instead of in the green - radiance I had found on my other two trips, and I knew that the sand was - in motion inshore. When I came to the wreckage of the steamer I did not - know my way about. The undertow had been dragging away the packing of sand - here and there. More bulk of the débris was displayed, so far as I could - judge by touch and by what I could see in the dim light. I groped my way - along to the great ribs which showed above water, in order to get my - bearing. It was a fight to get there. I was thrashed about and tossed and - slatted. I wasn’t exactly sure when I did get there, for other parts of’ - the wreck had been uncovered so much that one could easily be deceived in - water in which boiled so much sand that it was like working in soup. - </p> - <p> - However, I toiled back after I reckoned I had located the marker. - </p> - <p> - Yes, the old Pacific had truly had a change of heart since the day before. - The unseen fingers of that freakish undertow had been at work—they - were still at work. They were scooping out sand instead of piling it in. I - can best describe the appearance of things by saying that there was a - smother of sand in the swirling water. Now and then the water cleared when - the undertow let go its tuggings for a moment, and I could see parts of - the steamer which formerly had been hidden from me. - </p> - <p> - When I had counted the paces that should bring me in the neighborhood of - the treasure, I set my crowbar into the sand with all the strength I could - muster, and twisted it around and around in order to loosen the stuff. It - was wonderful how quickly the water dragged away what I set free from that - pack. - </p> - <p> - A bottle came bouncing up out of the hole. I dislodged pieces of broken - crockery. Ingot Ike had said that the treasure had been stored in a - compartment of the ship near the pantry. The sight of that jetsam - encouraged me. I stabbed with all my might, drove the crowbar in again and - again, struggled to hold myself on bottom, and muttered appeals to that - undertow in my frenzy of toil. I do not know how long I worked. I do know - that all my sensations informed me that I was remaining beyond my limit of - endurance. But the conviction came to me that this was not a chance to be - neglected. I was in a fever of hope. I wanted to show that coward of a - Marcena Keedy that a strong man could call the bluff of a loafer’s sneers. - I wanted to convince Capt. Rask Holstrom that he had not picked out a - piker, and perhaps I wanted a girl to give me the smile which success - ought to win. - </p> - <p> - Well—and here’s to the point!—all at once, when I was near - fainting, my crowbar struck something which was not bottles or crockery. I - managed at last to get the point of the bar under the object. I could not - see what it was. I only knew, as I worked the bar, edging it around the - thing to dislodge the sand, that the object was oblong and had corners. - </p> - <p> - My buoyancy and the swing of the rolling sea would not allow me to pry - with any great force. I could only pick at the sand and coax the box out. - In the end I had it where I could get my fingers under the edges—and - there’s one thing a diver can do: he can lift with the strength of a - giant, the air in his dress assisting him. - </p> - <p> - Yes, it <i>was</i> a box, so I found when I had it out. It was a heavy box - even when lifted there under the sea. It was a small box, and there could - be only one reason for such a small box being so heavy—it was one of - the bullion boxes. Of that fact I was convinced. - </p> - <p> - I carried several small chains at my belt—my lashings in case of - need. I circled the box with chains, and secured it to my body as best I - could, then clutched my arm about it for greater safety. As I worked I - grew more excited—I had drawn first blood in my duel with the old - Pacific. Excitedly I pulled the line to send my signal to the lighter, - asking for help on the return. They told me afterward that I gave the - emergency signal. Perhaps I did. They had been waiting for a signal for so - long that they were in a state of panic. They feared that I had been - drowned, for I had been down for horns. When they got my double tug, so - they told me later, Number-two Jones gave a yell, called every man on the - lighter to the rope, and proceeded to give me a run home in emergency - time. - </p> - <p> - The first yank took me off my feet. Overballasted by the box of gold, I - tipped head down, and butted the summit of the first hummock of sand with - my helmet. My neck was snapped to one side and my head got a tremendous - rap against the side of the helmet. I did not strike ground again until I - reached the next ridge. I struck that and bounced, and I think I took a - recess on breathing right then and there. I have not much recollection of - the rest of that three hundred feet of rush back to the lighter. I know I - hit a good many hummocks, and I must have passed away into dreamy - unconsciousness when the drag upward through the water to the rail of the - lighter began. - </p> - <p> - They told me that when I came over the rail I was bent double, and it was - some time before they saw that I had something tucked in my arms. - </p> - <p> - I heard somebody shout, “Oh, God, this man is dead!” But I was just - getting my wits back then. I opened my eyes. Two of the crew were holding - me up, and Shank had my helmet off. He yelled like a maniac: - </p> - <p> - “I’m wrong! He ain’t!” - </p> - <p> - “I’m mighty glad you’re wrong, Shank,” I told him. My voice was pretty - feeble, but the memory of that box came back to me, and my thoughts were - dancing even if I couldn’t dance with my body just then. - </p> - <p> - I tried to look around after that box, but I lost interest in it the next - instant. It’s pretty hard work for me to tell you what happened, and tell - it in a matter-of-fact way, as I’m trying to tell the rest of this yam. - When I looked around I saw Kama Holstrom on her knees a little way from - me, her face as pale as the white foam on the waves, her eyes wide open. I - think her ears had been closed by horror when Shank had let out his first - yell. - </p> - <p> - “You’re alive!” she cried. And the next instant I was very much alive, for - she leaped up and ran to me, and threw her arms around my neck and kissed - me squarely on the mouth. Then her face was no longer white. It flamed. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t mean to—I am sorry—it was a mistake!” she gasped, - and she broke out and cried like a baby. But I caught her hand before she - could get out of reach of me, and pulled it to me and kissed it. - </p> - <p> - “Ah, if I <i>had</i> been dead you would have waked me up,” I told her. - </p> - <p> - “I’ve a blamed good mind to kiss you myself!” roared old Holstrom from - somewhere behind me. Then he let out a whoop and came and capered in front - of me. - </p> - <p> - “You’ve brought up twenty thousand dollars’ worth of gold!” he informed - me. “Five ingots, with the assay mark on ’em, and each worth four - thousand dollars. That’s the kind of a diver you are, Sidney! All - together, men! Three cheers for the greatest sea diver that ever wore lead - shoes!” And the men gave the cheers while he pounded his fists on my back. - </p> - <p> - I got a view of Marcena Keedy when I turned my head around. Mr. Keedy was - not showing any interest in my condition—not he. He was sitting on - deck with the open box hugged between his knees, and he was feeling over - those bars of gold like a lover fondling his lady’s cheek. - </p> - <p> - “I can’t say I’m stuck on the style of that critter,” mumbled Shank in my - ear. “He yanked that box away from you before we had fairly swung you - inboard and before anybody knew you was alive. He pried it open, and has - set there making love to it ever since.” - </p> - <p> - Old Ike was squatting in front of Keedy on his haunches, and was drooling - like a hound watching a butcher. - </p> - <p> - “It’s there! I’ve always said it was there. It’s there all bright and - shining. They all have hooted at me because I have said it was there. Now - what do you think?” - </p> - <p> - “Nobody has been a game sport in this thing except you and me,” said - Keedy, sticking an ingot up under Ike’s nose. “Nobody would back your hand - till I came along. I’ve had to talk everybody over before anybody would do - anything. I know how to play a hand with a buried card in it. I’ve played - that hand to the limit, and now see what has happened. When you fellows - are passing cheers around you’d better hooray for the man who has turned - the trick—for the man who kept at it till he got you down here.” - </p> - <p> - He gave me a nasty side-glance and snuggled the box under his legs just as - though he had recovered property which belonged to him. - </p> - <p> - “Where there’s one there’s the rest of ’em, eh, Sidney? You have - found the nest of the beauties, eh? Well, do we get another nice little - box to-day? We may as well open the game with forty thousand while we’re - about it.” - </p> - <p> - Shank was leaning close to me, unscrewing the wing nuts between the - breastplate and my collar-band. He began to swear very soulfully in an - undertone, and he kept on swearing when he got a look from me that - indorsed all his sentiments in regard to Mr. Keedy. - </p> - <p> - “There are three millions down there—and twenty thousand is only a - flea-bite,” declared the callous knave. I don’t believe he noticed that I - was half dead when I was pulled up—or cared a rap about my - condition, anyway. “I’m strong for bulling the game when it’s coming your - way. What do you say, Sidney, if we make the first day’s ante forty - thousand?” - </p> - <p> - “Captain Holstrom,” I said, “a man who has been banging the soul out of - himself for five hours in a divingsuit is in no condition to talk to a - skunk like that over there. Can’t you say something?” - </p> - <p> - I must confess that the captain did rise nobly to the occasion. A tugboat - man who has spent most of his life fighting for berths in the maze of - shipping along the San Francisco water-front needs considerable hot - language in his business, and Captain Holstrom was in good practice. - </p> - <p> - “So I’ve got the two partners against me now, have I?” snarled Keedy. “I - had to fight to get the two of you into the proposition, and now that - you’re making good I’ve got to fight both of you to keep the thing going, - have I? Thanks for the hint as to how you propose to hold cards—but - I serve notice right now that you can’t whipsaw me between you.” - </p> - <p> - He looked as evil as a door-tender in Tophet, but his threats did not - trouble me. - </p> - <p> - That evening something happened that indicated further cleavage of - associations on board the <i>Zizania</i>, whose checker-board crew had set - an example early in the cruise. - </p> - <p> - Ingot Ike came to the captain and myself in the wheel-house. - </p> - <p> - “Now that we’re beginning to haul in the bright and shining stuff that - makes the world go round I’d like to know where I’m going to get off when - the divvy comes,” said he. And he was more than a little insolent in the - way he said it. It was a good guess that he had absorbed more or less of - the insolence of his new running-mate, Marcena Keedy. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom was pretty short with the man. He informed old Ike that - when the work was done and we knew what the profits would be he would be - handed a lay which would make him comfortable for life. “That was the - understanding between us when we started out on the gamble,” said the - captain. “You haven’t got a dollar ahead now—you never did have. A - lot of money wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. You don’t know how to keep - it or how to spend it.” - </p> - <p> - “That ain’t any of your business!” declared Ike, with heat. “We have begun - to get up that gold. We’ll get all of it. It’s there, just as I said it - was. I want ten per cent, of all that comes over the rail, and I want it - without any strings on it.” - </p> - <p> - “And if you got it laid into your hand you’d be around in six months - borrowing from me,” said the captain. “If this thing comes out as it ought - to, I’ll put enough in trust for you to pay you a hundred dollars a month - as long as you live. Now go off and dream of that, and be happy.” - </p> - <p> - “Happy your Aunt Lizy!” yelped the old man. “See here, me and Keedy is the - whole thing in this, and—” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom arose and grabbed Ike and tossed him out of the - wheel-house door. - </p> - <p> - “Them two fellows,” he confided, wrathfully, to me, “will be charging me - board on this trip, besides taking all the profits for themselves, if I - don’t watch out.” - </p> - <p> - I did not confide to the captain any of my doubts that evening in our - talk. I was hoping for the best. I had recovered one box with the - assistance of my enemy, the old Pacific. I understood the queer and - notional quirks of undertows. I realized that history might not repeat - itself in this case—but the Pacific coast was new to me, and I was - not ready to believe that I had happened on the only case of an undertow - scooping sand instead of piling it and packing it. I went to bed, tired as - a hound after a chase. - </p> - <p> - And I went down into the sea again the next day, still hoping. Yes, I was - fairly confident—so confident that I carried a pair of ice-tongs. My - experience of the day before had shown me that this tool was just the - thing with which to grapple one of those boxes and lift it from the sand. - </p> - <p> - There was plenty of motion in the depths of the sea. But I realized that - it was not the motion of the day before. The swaying water thrust me ahead - over the hummocks with more force than it pulled me backward. The water - was clear and green once more. Where, oh, where had my undertow gone? - </p> - <p> - I had ground my crowbar into the sand where I worked the day before. I - could not find it, and after a survey I saw it had been covered by the - drifting sand. Portions of the wreck which had been in sight were hidden - again. The hole where I had wrought so valiantly was filled and smoothed. - It is wonderful how quickly currents of water can make changes in sand. I - had seen instances before in my submarine jobs; now I was beholding a more - striking case. After inspecting the scene I judged that the treasure was - buried more deeply than ever. The ocean had plenty of loose sand with - which to work, and had used it. I tell you honestly I never suffered such - an awful feeling of disappointment. The pang was worse because I had been - successful once. - </p> - <p> - It was as though my enemy, the ocean, had decided to give me one bite of - the fruit of success in order to whet the appetite of my expectations. It - had not relented in order to do that—it had played a devilish trick - on me. - </p> - <p> - It had shown me that the millions were there—money-enough for all - that life or love might require in this world. I had got a peep—had - got one taste—and the malicious ocean had tucked it all out of reach - once more, and was making faces at me with the wrinkles of that - hard-packed sand. - </p> - <p> - It was useless to remain down and exhaust myself. I signaled, and returned - to the lighter. - </p> - <p> - As soon as my bull’s-eye cleared after I came up out of the bubbling water - I saw Keedy. He was perched on the rail near the life-line coils, looking - down at me like a fish-hawk eying its prey. For a moment I was glad I did - not have another box. I enjoyed his disappointment. - </p> - <p> - Then, after my helmet was off, I told Captain Hol-strom that a change in - current had piled up the sand and that nothing could be done that day. - </p> - <p> - “That’s it!” raged Keedy, smacking his fist into his palm. “You wouldn’t - take my advice yesterday. You wouldn’t follow your hand when the cards - were running right. I understand about those things. That was the time to - double the ante! I know how to play the game for what it’s worth. There - ain’t any brains in this whole outfit except what I’ve got under my hat. I - see it’s up to me to go down there and show you how to do this thing.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll be out of this diving-dress in a few minutes,” I told him. “You’re - welcome to use it.” - </p> - <p> - I had a wild hope that he was mad enough to go down—angry enough and - gold-hungry enough. It would have settled the case of Keedy if he had gone - down—soaked with rum and tobacco as he was. But he swore and walked - away and jumped into the life-boat—so much of a coward that he - wanted to put as great a distance between that dress and himself as he - could. - </p> - <p> - I can describe the happenings of the next two sad weeks in two words, - “Nothing doing!” - </p> - <p> - Not that I didn’t go down. I went every day. I tried all kinds of tools. I - sat up nights to think, and worked days under water until they had to pull - me back to the lighter, riding on my back over the sand hummocks, so weak - that I could not use my feet and drag my lead-weighted shoes. But the old - Pacific had given us our one mouthful of bait, and now was mocking us. If - I loosened sand the ocean took that sand and piled it higher over the - treasure. And all the time Keedy glowered and growled and swore, and said - I was not half trying. - </p> - <p> - One morning Captain Holstrom came banging on my state-room door before I - was awake. He tried to tell me something, fairly frothing at the mouth, - but the words tumbled over each other so rapidly that I couldn’t - understand. He was jabbing a slip of paper at me, and I took it and read: - </p> - <p> - <i>To Holstrom and Sidney,—With two partners working against me, I - claim the partnership is broken. After this I’ll work on my own hook, and - I’ll have a man who is a real diver, not a dub; and I warn you not to - bother me in any way.</i> - </p> - <p> - “Partnership broken!” yelled the captain. “And how do you suppose he has - broken it? He sneaked away in the night. He took Ike and four of my crew - and the best life-boat. But that ain’t the worst. He took the gold—all - of it! Took the twenty thousand. He had the key to the safe.” - </p> - <p> - “Why did you let him have the key to the safe?” - </p> - <p> - “Because he howled around that he ought to have some office as a partner, - and wanted to be treasurer. He has trimmed us for twenty thousand, and - he’ll use that money to fit out another expedition. He has done us good - and proper, and there ain’t anything sensible we can do about it.” - </p> - <p> - I reflected a few moments, and decided that, considering the kind of a - project we were working on, we could not afford to chase Keedy and howl. - In the opinion of certain persons interested in that wreck, we might - appear as thieves, ourselves, if the thing became known in Frisco. - </p> - <p> - I tried to say something to Captain Holstrom about being well rid of - Keedy, but I do not think he heard me. He was too busy stamping about and - swearing. That was truly a dark-blue morning on the <i>Zizania</i>. - </p> - <p> - They were certainly weary and hopeless days which tagged on after that. I - kept going down, for I hoped to meet up with another obliging undertow. - But San Apusa Bar did not seem to be a popular resort for undertows. - </p> - <p> - In about ten days we got another hard jolt. A little schooner came - swashing up in the lee of the <i>Zizania</i>, and a boat was rowed off to - us. The two men who leaped over the rail introduced themselves as Mexican - customs officers for the district off which we lay, and they wore the - uniform to prove their identity. It had been reported to them, they said, - that we were seeking treasure from the wreck of the <i>Golden Gate</i>, - and they told us we must stop such business at once and sail away or we - should lay ourselves liable to arrest and imprisonment. They had a lot to - tell us about what the law was, but I have forgotten. Maybe they were - giving us straight law, and maybe they were not. Neither Holstrom nor I - knew. - </p> - <p> - The captain did know men if he did not know law—and he was a man who - had mighty keen sense for a crook’s trail, having had a lot of experience - with crooks on the water-front. He rubbed his red knob of a nose for some - time, and listened. Then he invited the customs men into his sanctuary of - the wheel-house, and called me along with them. - </p> - <p> - “I know all about who has been talking this over with you, gents,” he told - them. “I reckoned he would make down the coast in that life-boat he stole - from me. He stole that boat, he stole my men, he stole what else he could - lay his hands on here. He is a yaller-faced faro-dealer. He never told the - truth, he never dealt square cards, he has always cut a corner on every - man he had business with. I don’t want to see you fooled. I’m the captain - of this steamer. You can see I’m something of a man. This is my partner, - and you can look at him and see that he is no crook. I’m going to get - right to the point, gents. Do you want to do business with a square man or - a crook? You might as well be open with me. Men have to live down here in - Mexico. I know all about this customs business along the coast. You’ve got - to do business to live.” - </p> - <p> - They blinked hard, but they did not protest. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know how much of a ‘hot rock’ he dropped into your hat, but I’m - prepared to drop in a bigger and a hotter one.” - </p> - <p> - I had never heard that expression about a “hot rock” before, and I was - obliged to listen a little while longer in order to understand that - Captain Holstrom was talking thus bluntly about a bribe. - </p> - <p> - “In one case you’re doing business with a crook—a thief. He’ll turn - around and do you when he has used you. In this case you are dealing with - a man who has a name along the water-front, who owns this steamer, and who - is here to make a dollar for himself and for you. You are men with brains - and you can size up chaps pretty well. I’ll bet you didn’t like the looks - of that whelp with his cat’s eyes and his mustache cocked up—come, - now!” - </p> - <p> - They blinked harder. - </p> - <p> - The captain leaned to me and whispered in my ear: “Run and tell Kama to - give you every gold piece she has got in her pocket. Dig over your own - pockets. Tell the Joneses to dig. Bring it here. I’ve got to keep ’em - on the run with conversation.” - </p> - <p> - I returned with my collection, and the captain added the contents of his - own pocket, banging the coins on the transom. Then he swept the money into - a little sack and drove the sack down into the trousers pocket of one of - the officers. - </p> - <p> - “That’s only posting a little forfeit that we’ll do as we agree,” cried - Captain Holstrom, heartily. “We are here where you can watch us, gents. - But you can’t watch a fly-by-night like that coyote who has been lying to - you about us. Keep your eyes out—stand by us—and you’ll get a - ‘hot rock’ in your hat that you’ll need both hands to hold up. We’ll see - the other man’s stake and then raise him out of the game—and if we - don’t, then come and seize the steamer.” - </p> - <p> - He followed the men to the rail, shook hands with them half a dozen times, - and they returned most urbane grins when they rowed away. - </p> - <p> - As soon as they were out of ear-shot the captain cursed them in horrible - fashion and shook his clenched fist at them under pretense of waving - farewells. - </p> - <p> - “So that’s what Keedy done as quick as he got down coast to a port, hey? - Cleaned us out of what he could lug, and then sent them critters here to - finish the job. He probably thinks he is going to make a clear field here - for himself by strapping us for every cent, and then setting the customs - on to us as soon as he can drop another ‘hot rock’ into their hat so as to - raise us out.” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t those men feel bound in any way after taking money from us?” I - asked him. - </p> - <p> - “They feel bound till the next fellow gets to ’em, my son. Do you - see what we have got cut out for us? By the jumped-up Judy, we’ve got to - get that gold—and we’ve got to keep ahead of everybody else in - getting that gold, because them custom-house blood-suckers are going to - stick to the juiciest crowd. I don’t know what kind of an outfit Keedy - proposes to bring back here, but he has got twenty thousand dollars in his - fist, and a man can do a lot of business on charters with twenty thousand - dollars. And we haven’t got a sou markee.” - </p> - <p> - He stamped into the wheel-house, shaking his fist above his head, and I - walked up and down the upper deck, thinking some thoughts which I do not - care to call back to mind. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXII—PER MISTER MONKEY - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>S she had done - many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl came out of her - state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was a consolation. She - looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and swung along by my side - with an easy air of comradeship. - </p> - <p> - The word “comradeship” best expresses our attitude toward each other. - After that explosion of her feelings on board the lighter, when she had - kissed me in front of the whole bunch, she had coated herself with just a - little ice, and my Yankee reserve and sensitiveness detected it. It was as - though she had hinted to me that I would be a cad to presume further - because she had taken a woman’s interest in my misfortune. In fact, she - had dropped a few words in regard to women making fools of themselves when - they are too frightened to know what they are doing. - </p> - <p> - Furthermore, she stuck to that knickeroocker costume of hers, and I found - myself forgetting half the time that she was a girl, for she clambered - about over the truck aboard the old <i>Zizania</i> as no girl in skirts - could, and never needed a hand on her trips to and from the lighter. She - wore those clothes with such frank assurance that the garb was the only - suitable one for the circumstances, with such lack of self-consciousness, - that after a few days it really seemed as if the other men had forgotten - that we had a girl aboard. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps that accounts for the fact that when one of the firemen rushed - past us a few minutes later he was using language such as he would not - have used had he been properly mindful that there was a lady in hearing. - </p> - <p> - The fireman came from the depths below-decks, and was chasing the Russian - Finn’s monkey. He was so intent on the chase that when the fleeing monkey - invaded the sanctity of the upper deck the fireman came along, too. There - were several breathless instants in that part of the pursuit which we saw. - You will recollect that this monkey had a false end to his mutilated tail—a - curved wire, which was covered with cat’s fur. As the monkey fled, - screaming and swinging the heavy end of the tail from side to side, the - hook caught, first on a stanchion, then on a lifeboat prop. The monkey had - not entirely mastered the science of handling that new tail, or else he - was too excited just then to remember its limitations. When he had his own - pliant tail it didn’t matter if a loop hooked around an obstruction. But - now when the wire hooked itself the monkey was obliged to back up and - unhook that inflexible loop. Each time he stopped he lost all the lead he - had gained on the fireman. - </p> - <p> - Four times in traversing the upper deck the coal-heaver was near enough to - make a crack at the monkey with a grate bar. Each time the monkey unhooked - himself just in time to be able to dodge and continue the flight. Finally - the fugitive made the ensign mast by a rousing leap, shinned, up, and hung - over the dingy gilded ball at the top. I don’t understand monkey talk, but - I’m sure that the yells he sent down were just as pure profanity as that - which the fireman was howling up at him. - </p> - <p> - “Hey, there, my man,” I called, “that kind of talk doesn’t belong up - here.” - </p> - <p> - He shut up, gave the monkey a long and blistering stare, and came back - toward the ladder. Sweat was running down through the soot on his face, - and that face showed that he was in no pleasant frame of mind. - </p> - <p> - “I asks to be excused,” he said, “but that—” he gulped. “Seeing that - I can’t talk about it before a lady and be polite, I asks to be excused - again and I’ll be going.” - </p> - <p> - I followed him to the head of the ladder and stopped him just as he was on - the first rounds. - </p> - <p> - “What happened?” - </p> - <p> - “We’re keeping up a little steam for the derrick windlass and the pumps, - and that gimlet-eyed, snub-nosed hellion got into the bunkers when I was - on deck, and turned on my wet-down hose, and shifted twenty tons of dust - coal out to where it’s all got to be shoveled back. I’m going down to - write out notices for a funeral and, by Jabez! I’ll guarantee to have the - corpse ready!” - </p> - <p> - “Shifted twenty tons of coal!” said I, surprised. “It must have taken him - some time.” - </p> - <p> - “I guess you don’t know what can be done in fine coal with a stream of - water when you bore it in,” snapped the fireman. “That wire-tailed - gabumpus wasn’t in there five minutes. He has laid in wait and watched me - sprinkle coal. He turned her on full bent and bored. I’ll get him, and - I’ll get him good!” His smudged face went out of sight down the ladder. - </p> - <p> - There are some ideas in this life which steal up on a man and whisper to - him, and keep whispering for a long time, until at last he overhears—and - then he plans and toils, and in the end an invention results. - </p> - <p> - Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the - head. - </p> - <p> - Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The - idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all at once; - I was dizzy. The details were hazy—but there was the idea hammering - at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that ensign mast, - looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he misunderstood my - act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did not care. I had got - used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard the <i>Zizania</i>. - </p> - <p> - I turned around and found the girl looking at me with wide-open eyes. - “This isn’t insanity,” I told her. “It doesn’t run in the Sidney family. - But an idea has just come to me out of a monkey’s prank, and it’s such a - wonderful idea that I don’t dare to talk about it until I have thought it - over. I guess you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Kama; I’ve got to go into my - state-room and pound at that idea while it is hot.” - </p> - <p> - I did not sleep much that night. I was wrestling with a notion as the old - chap in the Bible wrestled with the angel. And when morning came I was - positive that an angel of a notion had come to me. I told Captain Holstrom - at breakfast that I was not going down that day. But when he turned a - doleful look at me I grinned so amiably that he snapped his eyes, - thinking, perhaps, that he was not seeing just straight. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll have something to tell you later, Captain. It’ll sound better to you - when I have made certain that we have got stuff aboard here to work out an - idea.” - </p> - <p> - That became my business after breakfast—to hunt the <i>Zizania</i> - over for certain material. I invited Captain Holstrom along with me, and - took two men for helpers. - </p> - <p> - My first quest was for hose. The <i>Zizania</i> carried canvas hose for - fire purposes, stacked here and there on racks. It was not in prime - condition, for the old <i>Zizania</i> had been condemned along with her - equipment as far as Government purposes went. - </p> - <p> - We got that hose down and measured it, and found rising two hundred feet - of stuff that was serviceable. I needed three hundred feet to cover the - distance between the lighter and the wreck. I made inquiries about canvas. - The steamer had a suit of sails for her two masts, and the sails had been - unbent some time before and were stored. Before the day was over Mate - Number-two Jones had men at work cutting that canvas and sewing it into - hose of a diameter to fit the fire-hose. Of course, it was crude work, but - I was obliged to do the best I could with the materials at hand. - </p> - <p> - That evening I called a conference. Captain Holstrom, his two mates, and - Engineer Shank assembled in the wheel-house, and I explained as best I - could what my preparations meant. - </p> - <p> - Remember, please, that at the time of which I am writing hydraulic mining - had not been tried, and men in those days had no conception of what a - stream of water would accomplish in moving soil. - </p> - <p> - I told those blinking confrères that I believed I could direct a stream of - water on that sand below the sea and bore a hole down to that treasure. - The only one in the party who showed one glimmer of enthusiasm was Mr. - Shank. And even he did not get up and hurrah. He nodded his head sagely - and admitted that “stranger things had happened.” - </p> - <p> - “But you’ve got to use our steam-donkey for your stream,” growled Captain - Holstrom, “and you can’t get the <i>Zizania</i> any nearer shore than this - without wrecking her. You’re only planning on three hundred feet of hose.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s all I need, Captain. Mr. Shank can build us a plunger-pump with - brakes, and we’ll put the whole crew on to the beams, and have ’em - give an imitation of a firemen’s muster.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Shank nodded again, and allowed that “stranger things had been done.” - </p> - <p> - “How did you happen to think of this cussed scheme, anyway?” inquired - Captain Holstrom, not trying to hide his disappointment. - </p> - <p> - I promptly decided that I would not confess that the thing had been - suggested to me by a monkey with a wire tail. I looked at the scowling - captain, and I could imagine the wealth of his language if I should tell - him any such thing. So I took all the credit to myself—and it was - not much credit I received from those solemn listeners. The most I got out - of Holstrom was the sullen statement that no matter what I did next the - situation couldn’t be any worse than it was. - </p> - <p> - The work went on the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. - It was slow business making that hose so that it would be anyway - water-tight. And the wooden force-pump took a lot of time in the building, - rude affair though it was. It had a plunger—two ends of wood on an - iron rod, and the brake-beams were long enough so that a dozen men could - get a clutch on them. - </p> - <p> - I don’t remember how much time we used up in getting our makeshift - apparatus into such shape as would warrant it being used for the trial. - </p> - <p> - I do remember this—and remember it all too well!—before we - were in readiness for the test of the hose and our pump a small schooner - came rolling up the coast and anchored well inside of us, even nearer the - wreck than our lighter from which we had been operating. - </p> - <p> - This was no customs boat. Within a few hours we abroad the <i>Zizania</i> - knew that Marcena Keedy was in command of the new arrival, and that he had - brought two divers and was full of hope and curses and brag. - </p> - <p> - Where Keedy secured his men and his craft we did not know—for social - calls were not exchanged between the two vessels. But a lot can be - accomplished in a few weeks when a man has greed to prick him, a grudge to - settle, and twenty thousand dollars to back him. - </p> - <p> - Capt. Rask Holstrom had been in the depths of despair before the arrival - of Keedy; now he found a hole leading into the subcellar of his despair, - and retreated still lower. He had no faith in my new contrivances. He - wanted me to abandon work on such folderols and go down and stand over - that treasure. He could not seem to see with my eyes. He knew that - millions in gold were at the bottom of the sea—I had recovered a - sample of it. He felt just as though it lay there unprotected, and that - the first-comer would get it. As a submarine diver who had struggled - against the difficulties of the situation, I was more serene. I didn’t - know what sort of prodigies in the diving line Keedy had secured as my - rivals, but I was not ready to admit to myself that they would succeed by - ordinary means where I had failed after exerting every ounce of effort. - </p> - <p> - Using Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, I saw them going down. They went - together. Evidently Keedy had concluded that if one diver had failed, two - ought to be twice as good, and succeed. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom remained at the end of his telescope until he acquired a - permanent squint. We had hard work to get him to drop the glass long - enough to eat. Day after day, as soon as it was light in the morning, he - was in the wheel-house, balancing the glass across the window-sill, - watching Keedy’s schooner. He evidently feared and expected to see - uncounted wooden boxes of ingots come tumbling up over her rail. - </p> - <p> - My equipment had been almost ready when Keedy arrived, but now another - consideration held me back. I did not propose to let the other crowd in on - my methods if I could help it. No matter what Captain Holstrom and his - associates thought of the feasibility of the scheme, I had a lot of - confidence in it, and was not willing that a rival should know enough - about it to copy any plans. - </p> - <p> - Therefore I set my crew at work building a wall of boards about the - lighter, leaving only a door for my exit over the side. I wanted to - conceal the pumping operations. As to the divers whom I should meet at the - scene of the wreck, I trusted to other measures to conceal my system. - </p> - <p> - I was out on the lighter to superintend the building of the wall, and more - especially to oversee the setting of the force-pump and its attachments. I - did not like the looks of the sea on that last day of our work. It looked - murky and slaty as the big rollers surged under us, and I remembered that - it showed that same color on the day when my friendly undertow had helped - me. I was tempted to go down and investigate, but I had seen the men from - Keedy’s schooner go overboard, and I concluded to keep away from contact - with them until I was ready for serious operations. - </p> - <p> - Inclosed in my wall on the lighter, I was busy about my own affairs, and - did not peep to see what was happening in the neighborhood. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom remained on the <i>Zizania</i>, in close companionship of - his only intimate of those days—his long telescope. But Kama - Holstrom was at my side while I worked, cheering me by her wise little - comments, her bright eyes taking all in, her quick mind grasping all the - possibilities of my scheme. - </p> - <p> - It was a rather cheerful little group there in our pen. Even Number-two - Jones was whistling in jig time, for all the apparatus was fitting - together as slick as a school-marm’s hand in a fur mitten. And then in - through the door burst a human thunderbolt in the form of Capt. Rask - Holstrom. - </p> - <p> - He was bareheaded and his gray hair was scruffed up like the bristling - mane of a mad bulldog. He was not able to manage words for about a minute, - but he wasn’t voiceless by any manner of means. He roared and leaped about - and smote his fists together. He picked up our hose and flung it about - himself like an insane snake charmer. He kicked at the wooden pump with - his stubtoed shoes until I was obliged to push him away. Then he grabbed - the hose once more, and reeled it about himself in senseless fury, for all - the world like a caterpillar weaving its cocoon. His square face was a war - map of rage, and in the center of that face his red nose gleamed like a - danger signal. - </p> - <p> - We stood and gaped at him. There wasn’t much else we could do as long as - he remained in that awful state. He paid no attention to his daughter’s - questions and appeals. - </p> - <p> - I took a peep through the cracks of the boarding to see whether the old <i>Zizania</i> - were still afloat; I had a horrified suspicion that she had sunk or - burned. She floated serenely, sweeping up and down on the crested waves. - </p> - <p> - After letting off his surplus of steam in howls, Captain Holstrom was able - to manage speech at last. - </p> - <p> - “They’ve got it!” he yelled. “They’re getting it! I’ve seen ’em - pull two boxes of it over their rail, and they’re dancing jubilee around - the deck.” He flung down the coils of hose, and stamped on it, and spat - the most vicious oaths I ever listened to. - </p> - <p> - “They’re getting it—they’ve got it—and all you’re doing here - is fooling with a damnation squirt-gun that ain’t no sense and no good—and - I told you so in the first place. Keedy was right. I ought to have stuck - to Keedy. I’ve known Keedy. He was a friend of mine till you came along - and broke us up. I had promised my girl to him. He ain’t setting around - darning second-hand canvas”—he kicked the hose—“when he ought - to be up and about, doing real business.” He rushed at me and clacked his - fists under my nose. “I’m all done with you! I’m going to Keedy and - crawfish and offer him the steamer and my equipment for a lay with him and - his men. I’ll offer him my girl. You’ll marry him if I have to hold you up - in front of the minister by the ears!” he informed her, whirling and - shaking his fists under her nose, too. “I’ve had all the silly notions and - lallygagging I propose to have, and what I say goes after this. It’s - business from now on.” - </p> - <p> - He started to plunge back through the door like a down through a hoop. A - couple of his men were holding a yawl beside the lighter. - </p> - <p> - I had used my submarine grip on Captain Holstrom once before when he was - drunk. I used it now when he was sober—and the grip held. I grabbed - him and yanked him back, slammed the door, and set myself against it. - </p> - <p> - “You can’t dissolve partnership with me in any such way,” I informed him. - “Especially not right now, just as I’ve got the world by the tail.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll show you whether I can dissolve partnership or not,” he barked; and - he began running about the inclosure, roaring threats and peering here and - there. He was plainly hunting for a weapon of some sort in order to beat - me away from the door. - </p> - <p> - “Kama!” I called to her—the first time I had ever addressed her so - familiarly, but that was no time for niceties. “Kama, it’s no use to plead - with your father. He’s no better than a lunatic. He’s going to throw - everything into the hands of that thief of a Keedy. It mustn’t be done!” - </p> - <p> - The captain had found a dub and was coming at me. - </p> - <p> - She put herself between us. He knew better than to raise his club against - her, and he kept dodging back and forth to get past her. He paid no - attention to her protests and appeals. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Shank—Mr. Jones,” she cried, “take that club away from my - father. He is not in his right mind.” - </p> - <p> - “It would be mutiny—mutiny and State prison,” stammered the mate. - </p> - <p> - “I’m his daughter—I’ll go into court if it ever comes to that! I - order you to do it!” - </p> - <p> - “Keep the others off, and I’ll do it,” I said in her ear, and I rushed - past her. - </p> - <p> - Holstrom struck at me viciously, but my rush had taken him by surprise. I - caught his arm and the stick, and tore the weapon away from him. But to - down him and subdue him was a different proposition—and a very husky - job he made of it for me. - </p> - <p> - He was broad and sturdy; he was sober, and he was beside himself with - rage. The spectacle of that gold going into the hands of Keedy and his - gang had made a lunatic of him for the time being. I got no help from the - others. Men of the sea and ships, they had a wholesome tear of what would - happen to mutineers when that matter came into court. I struggled with - that old rascal until every muscle in me throbbed with the pain of - tension, and I thought the blood would burst through my face. No matter - about the details of that long fight. But at last I got him down; I rolled - him on his face. I pulled his hands together, kneeling on him, and the - girl lashed his wrists together when I appealed to her. She lashed his - legs as well, for I decided to take no chances with him while he was in - that mood. - </p> - <p> - When I got my breath I leaned over him and spoke my little piece: - </p> - <p> - “This is tough business for all of us, Captain Holstrom. I don’t know what - may come out of it. I’m prepared to take my medicine if I’ve done wrong. - But you have started in to run amuck. You ought to know what Keedy is by - this time. He has done you once. He would do you worse the next time. If - you weren’t crazy at this minute you’d realize it. I don’t propose to - stand by and see you heave your best chance over the rail in any such - fashion. I demand twenty-four hours to make good on my scheme. Twenty-four - hours—that’s all. I know how those men got that gold. I got mine in - the same way. But they won’t get any more; I know conditions down there; - I’ve been all through it. You listen to me, I say! I’m going to take - twenty-four hours—and if I’ve got to keep you tied up while I - operate, then it’s tied up you stay. I’ll take all the responsibility of - this mutiny, men,” I told the crowd on the lighter. “I’m a partner in this - expedition with a signed contract. Twenty-four hours from now I’ll hold - out my hands and let you tie me up if I haven’t made good.” - </p> - <p> - That was pretty bold talk, and I’ll confess that I did not know just where - I was going to get off. But to let Captain Holstrom run away to that rogue - of a Keedy just when I was on the eve of my experiment—to allow - Holstrom to hand over everything to that he-devil—was too - intolerable. - </p> - <p> - “We’ll take the captain back to the steamer,” I told the men. “I’m - assuming all responsibility.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll share it with you,” said the girl, stoutly. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom seemed to have lost his voice. He stared at us and gasped - like a fish newly heaved on deck. He was silent while we carried him to - his state-room on the steamer. We left him tied up well and his daughter - was his caretaker and jailer by her own choice. She was showing the grit - of a young catamount in that emergency. - </p> - <p> - All of it was about as bad as it could be. But it was going to be worse. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXIII—THE HEART OF THE MILLIONS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS about at - daybreak next morning. The man who predicted the first eclipse of the sun - and was waiting for it had nothing on me in the way of a case of nerves. I - kept away from the captain’s state-room. I had plenty on my mind without - loading up with any more trouble. - </p> - <p> - The first thing I saw when I came on deck was a little schooner which was - lying-to a few cable-lengths from us. She looked familiar. A boat was slid - over her rail. Through the telescope I saw two men in uniform take seats - in the stem-sheets. They were those customs chaps who had visited us - before and they rowed past us toward Keedy’s schooner. I turned the - telescope and saw that somebody in Keedy’s crowd was wigwagging a flag - furiously. - </p> - <p> - I saw something else through the glass. Keedy’s divers were going down and - I could imagine with what kind of tongue-lashing he had been urging them - to “follow their hand.” - </p> - <p> - For an instant I had a wild notion of calling for my boat crew and beating - them to it. Then I looked out over that quieter sea, and felt sure that - the freakish undertow had gone off to play elsewhere. - </p> - <p> - “Let ’em go down and learn a thing or two,” I said to Romeo Shank, - “and then come up and tell Keedy that the Pacific Ocean is something, of a - gambler itself when it comes to ‘following your hand.’” - </p> - <p> - I knew well enough that I’d better stick around pretty close aboard the - old <i>Zizania</i>, for I was sure we would be receiving a call from the - customs men. They would find our treasury bare, and they would find the - captain of the expedition trussed up in his state-room. They would - probably come with another “hot rock” which had been dropped in their hat - by the prospering Keedy. - </p> - <p> - Yes, there was only one station for me that morning! - </p> - <p> - The visitors arrived in less than an hour. They tried to smile when they - came over the rail, but it was a mighty sick smile. - </p> - <p> - I led them into my state-room, and did not pay any attention to their - questions about the captain. They talked broken English, and little of it, - and so there were no words wasted. In a few minutes I knew what was - wanted. We must up killick and get out. We were there without authority; - we were breaking laws; we were stealing other men’s property. - </p> - <p> - I tried to talk about Keedy and his gang. How about them? The officers - shrugged their shoulders and scowled at me. Ah, that was the Government’s - business, not mine, they told me. They were attending to that case. Had I - not seen them going over there also? Yes, all should be used alike—but - we must go or else they would report, and a gunboat would be sent to drive - us away—yes, to confiscate our ship. So! - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom had been right in regard to them—I found that they - were blood-suckers, looking for the juiciest proposition, and Keedy had - got next by some plan—perhaps by being a better liar. - </p> - <p> - I stared at those knaves for a few moments, and did some tall thinking - quickly. I was really getting used to quick thinking by that time. - </p> - <p> - When I jumped up and asked to be excused for a moment they smiled and - settled back on the transom. Perhaps they thought that I proposed to raise - Keedy out of the game. - </p> - <p> - I found Mate Number-two Jones on the main deck forward. - </p> - <p> - “They have called the turn on us—say that we must get off the - coast,” I told him. “Keedy has bribed them over our heads. I tell you, - Jones, I’m going to get that treasure! I’ve got to get it. This isn’t mere - brag talk. You are posted on my plans, and you believe in them.” - </p> - <p> - “The scheme does look good to me,” admitted the mate. - </p> - <p> - “If those men leave here tied up to Keedy they’ll send a gunboat and shoo - us off—and they’ve told Keedy, of course, how to dodge her. Jones, - those men have got to stay aboard the <i>Zizania</i> until I make my try - to-day. And, by the gods! I’ll bring up enough to show ’em that we - are the people. You come with me!” - </p> - <p> - “What for?” - </p> - <p> - “We’ve got to lasso those chaps and hitch ’em to the stanchion in - my state-room. They’ve got to stay here till I test out that hose.” - </p> - <p> - “Look here,” objected Mr. Jones, fumbling at his nose, “seems to me - there’s altogether too much tripping and tying aboard here. It beats a - round-up of steers. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble—we’re - in it now. You wait till the captain gets loose, and see if we ain’t!” - </p> - <p> - “Tying two more won’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t make you do - what you don’t want to do, Jones, but I believe you’re too much of a man - to let me play this thing single-handed. We’re fighting Keedy now. If I - fail in getting at that gold to-day, all we’ve got to do is to up mud-hook - and steam north—we’ll have to do the same thing if we let those - grafters go over the rail now.” Jones was a cautious man, but he was a - loyal one. I kept on urging, and at last the battle-light flickered in his - pale-blue eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Blast their thievish souls!” he said. “They’ve taken all the money I had - in my pockets—and now they’re thumbing their noses at decent men. - I’m with you!” We grabbed ropes, rushed up to my state-room, and fell on - the men before they could scramble to their feet. - </p> - <p> - They were wizened little chaps and we tied them without any trouble. - </p> - <p> - Then I went below and leaned over the rail where their boat was tossing. - </p> - <p> - “The gentlemen are staying here for some business,” I told the two rowers. - “They tell you to go back to the schooner and wait till they signal for - you with our ensign.” They didn’t look entirely satisfied, but they rowed - away after I had ordered them to fend off. - </p> - <p> - I stationed two men at my state-room door and I hunted up weapons and - armed some of the crew. I ordered them to keep off everybody until I - returned from the lighter. - </p> - <p> - I spoke to Captain Holstrom through his state-room window. I told him that - I would bring him a present before sundown. He did not reply—and - when Captain Holstrom was mad enough to keep his tongue between his teeth - I felt that only murder could express his feelings. - </p> - <p> - The door was on the hook, and a little brown hand was thrust out to meet - mine. - </p> - <p> - “Good luck, brave boy!” she whispered. “I know you’ll do it.” - </p> - <p> - “I can’t fail after that word from you,” I told her. - </p> - <p> - Then I ran down the ladder and jumped into the boat where my men were - waiting for me. - </p> - <p> - I found a heavy surge running under our lighter, but the swirl of sand was - no longer darkening the water. I had reckoned right in regard to that - undertow. Keedy’s men were still down and I could imagine them wasting - their strength on the sand which had been packed back overnight. - </p> - <p> - Our water-hose had already been coupled in makeshift fashion, and the last - work that morning was to wrap the joints as best we could. Then I set the - men at the brakes and told them to “give her tar,” as the old-fashioned - hand-tub foreman would say. The hose was strung about the deck of the - lighter. - </p> - <p> - After they pumped for five minutes I found that the hose was not so tight - as I had hoped. Wheezing little streams punctured it here and there, and - the joints leaked. From the end of our home-made nozzle of sheet iron the - stream barely trickled. I was disgusted—but I was not wholly - discouraged. When I state this you may see how desperate I had become. I - was resolved to fight that thing through to the last ditch. I was - determined to take that hose down and try it out. I had the misty and - hopeful notion that the pressure of the sea on it might make some - difference, that the wet hose might retain the water better, that after - the plunger had swelled a bit we might get more force. - </p> - <p> - All those straws and others did I grab at by way of bracing my courage. - </p> - <p> - The captain of the expedition trussed up in his cabin like a steer calf—only - waiting his opportunity to deal with me! - </p> - <p> - Two customs men also trussed up—also waiting to deal with me! - </p> - <p> - It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot goads - at my back that day to drive me down under the sea. - </p> - <p> - I had not been able to convince Captain Holstrom that all my work and - struggles and investigation and failures up to then were a good - investment. But as a submarine diver I knew that they had been. I had been - spending my nights on a sleepless pillow, docketing those experiences and - drawing lessons from them—plotting, pondering, and planning. - </p> - <p> - When I went down I was ready for my job in so far as a man, by pounding - his brain, can be ready for all emergencies. - </p> - <p> - I had piled the lead on to myself. Around my body from hips to armpits I - had a canvas belt with five pockets, each pocket holding twenty-five - pounds of shot, part of the junk of the old <i>Zizania</i>. Around each - leg above the ankle I fastened another bag of shot holding fifteen pounds. - </p> - <p> - My helmet had weights weighing thirty pounds. In addition I wore my - regular breast and back weights. That is to say, when I was rolled over - the side of that lighter I, a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, was - weighted with about two hundred and fifty pounds of metal. - </p> - <p> - I went with bare feet and bare hands. I knew that if I ever did succeed in - boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have to - serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects. - </p> - <p> - Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two - Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported that - they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that Keedy was - stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his head. I could - imagine from my own experience what kind of language the cowardly - slave-driver was spewing out. - </p> - <p> - I found myself on the bottom under the lighter, and started to make my way - toward the wreck. I was loaded like a pack-donkey, outside of the - tremendous extra weight of lead I carried. But I was taking everything - which my judgment counseled as needful for success. - </p> - <p> - I was obliged to drag with me my life-line, my air-hose, and the heavy - canvas hose for the water. In addition to those, I towed a double line - which was hitched to a pair of ice-tongs, and the points of those tongs - were filed to a sharp point. I carried the tongs at my belt. If I found - treasure I had this method of sending it to the lighter and of dragging - back the tongs to myself. I had had one experience in serving as a carrier - and I did not want to repeat the job. - </p> - <p> - I tell you, I felt like a mighty poor and puny little ant when I started - away on the bottom of the sea, climbing those sand ridges. The sea - clutched and tore at those wriggling lines, at my air-hose, and was - especially ferocious in tackling that heavy water-hose. It seemed as if - the Pacific resented that scheme of fighting it. - </p> - <p> - It was a mighty struggle I had. I was tossed and tumbled. I was banged and - buffeted. - </p> - <p> - But in the end I arrived at the wreck. Under ordinary circumstances that - stunt alone would have finished a diver’s work for a day—but I had - left matters above the surface in such condition that I could not face - them just then. - </p> - <p> - I dropped my water-hose, and went back fifty feet along the line. Past - experience with the weight of the surges had suggested another trick with - which to fight the giant Pacific. I had brought a small anchor, and, with - this set into the sand as best I cou’d do it, I anchored my air-hose and - water-hose about fifty feet from the wreck. I proposed to let the ocean - wreak the most of its spite on the two hundred and fifty feet between that - anchor and the lighter. I figured that I might be able to handle the other - fifty feet, no matter how ugly the surges were. - </p> - <p> - I crawled back to the wreck and found my bearings. There were the “cat - scratchings” on the sand where the other divers had spent their energy - that morning. I grinned—I couldn’t help it. They had just had their - own experience with the tricks of a Pacific undertow. - </p> - <p> - Well, the great and awful moment had come for me! - </p> - <p> - In the years that have passed since then the vivid memory of that moment - has never left me. I wake up in the night even now, and the thrill of it - shakes me. - </p> - <p> - If my scheme did not work, what would become of me when I went back to the - surface of the sea? - </p> - <p> - If my scheme did work, what was I facing down there? I was proposing to - bore into that sand—to sink into it. No such plan had ever been - tried by a human being up to that time. Was I not digging my own grave? - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Although sticking a statement of fact into writing which - is professedly fiction may be considered supererogation by - the cynical critic, some honest reader may be grateful for a - certain bit of information. Here it is: My old and valued - friend, the diver who recovered the <i>Golden Gate</i> treasure, - still lives at a ripe age and he has detailed to me how he - devised the hydraulic apparatus out of makeshift material, - how he bored into the sand, and how he, with his own hands, - recovered the bullion. Also, the incident of his narrow - escape when the water-hose shifted was a part of his bitter - experience on the bed of the Pacific. I hasten to state - that, so far as the rest of the yam goes, my good friend, - Diver Cook, is not culpable.—H. D. -</pre> - <p> - I sat down on the sand, Turk fashion, like a tailor on his table, pointed - the nozzle down, holding it against the sand, and gave the agreed-upon - signal for water. It took a long time in coming, and it was an agony of - waiting. Then at last I felt the hose swell under my arm. I pressed the - nozzle harder against the sand. I cannot describe my delight. I felt that - my dreams were coming true, for when I jammed the nozzle down I found that - the sand was moving. That stream had merely trickled above the surface, - but now a pressure was created when I held the nozzle hard against the - bottom of the sea. Yes, the sand moved under me. It began to boil up - around me. It swept and swirled in yellow clouds. I realized that I was - boring a hole about as big as a barrel, and into that hole I was gradually - sinking. I was on my way! I did not know where I was going—but, - bless the good Lord, I was on my way! The sand in that boiling water made - all dark. Down and down I went slowly, my bare feet searching eagerly. - </p> - <p> - But though I descended more rapidly as the swirling motion increased, I - felt no boxes. Had I, then, happened upon a straggler among the boxes of - gold on my earlier trip? Had my rivals also found two more stragglers from - the main treasure—loosened boxes which had been forced out of the - chamber by the impact of the wreck on the bar or had worked near the - surface of the sand by the action of a sucking undertow? If that were - true, it meant that Keedy’s men were dumped if they stuck to shovels. - Provided I could reach the treasure, and could keep my own system a - secret, I was headed toward a glorious victory, and could depend upon the - ocean to keep off others—but was I headed toward victory? My feet - touched nothing that had square corners. And yet, to the best of my - judgment, I had already gone down at least ten feet in that hole in the - sand. - </p> - <p> - Down and down—five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a - jump. My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and - spread under me horizontally. But I soon discovered that it had too large - a surface to be a box of ingots. I could not bend over to feel it with my - hands, for the rush of the whirlpool of sand and water about me, sweeping - upward, would not allow me to force my helmet and the upper part of my - body down. I must depend on my bare feet to tell me what I had struck. - </p> - <p> - After a time I knew. It was boiler plate. I could feel the round heads of - bolts. Whether this plate formed a part of the treasure-chamber or not I - did not know. But it was an obstacle which must be passed. I turned my - nozzle in front of me to clear the way. I wanted to reach the end of that - iron plate. - </p> - <p> - In two ticks of an eight-day clock I was in a mess that has been my - nightmare ever since. I began to get a thorough education in what sand - will do under water when it is submitted to the force of a stream from a - hose. The instant I turned that nozzle in front of me the sand rushed in - from behind. I was grabbed as tightly as though the eight feelers of a - devil-fish had encircled me. - </p> - <p> - It must be remembered that this whole proposition was an experiment so far - as I was concerned. I did not know then how quickly a stream of water can - affect great quantities of sand under the sea, let that sand get in - motion. Tons can be moved almost while one takes a breath. - </p> - <p> - This shift was so sudden that I was not prepared for it. My legs were - pinioned, and my arms seemed to be clutched at the elbows. The sand was - packing in around me from behind. I was so scared that my hands loosened - on the nozzle. A roller snatched the hose from my grasp. - </p> - <p> - The nozzle was upended and began to sizzle away over my head. It kept the - sand moving there, and the murky water still swirled about my helmet, and - the pack was not allowed to settle on my head. But as to the rest of my - body, it was as if I had been immersed in molten metal and it had cooled - around me. In a few seconds I was immovable. I was buried completely in - sand, except for my wrists and hands. In clutching for the hose, as it had - been yanked away, I had raised my hands above my head, and they were now - waving in the swirl of the whirlpool. I groped and stretched and strove, - and at last I felt the tips of my fingers on the nozzle. I managed, after - a while, to tilt it down a bit so that the stream played along my arms to - the elbows. The temporary release of my forearms did not help me. I - couldn’t get hold of that hose so as to turn the nozzle full upon myself. - The sand kept packing more closely about my legs and body. - </p> - <p> - After a time my aching hands and arms were obliged to give up the fight. I - had become so weakened by my struggles and strainings that I was faint—I - was as feeble as a baby. - </p> - <p> - I have read about men in awful peril who have resigned themselves to die. - Mentally I was not resigned when I first gave up struggling—not for - some time. I came out of that first faintness, wide awake to my danger, - filled with frightful fear, mad with the longing to live. But my case - seemed hopeless. The stream was keeping the sand in motion still about my - helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the pack was - gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck slowly but - surely. In the boil of that water the particles were drifting over me. - </p> - <p> - I might live minutes, I reflected—I might linger there for an hour - or more—feeling that sand pack around my head until it choked the - valve of the helmet or pinched off the current in the air-hose. - </p> - <p> - Never was I so hungry for life as when I stood there pinioned hand and - foot in the Pacific’s bed, feeling the sand piling up against the glass of - my helmet, sifting around me to chink the little cranny where the air - bubbled from the valve. And all because a stream of water would not swerve - ten inches and pour itself in my direction. - </p> - <p> - Then something surprising happened to my soul in its agony. I’m telling - the truth. - </p> - <p> - When I had made up my mind that effort was useless, that I had done all - that I could do, and that death was certain, a strange feeling came to me - and took away my fear of death. I fell into a quiet and really exalted - frame of mind. I floated in dreams. Cares of earth and worries of the - world, lust for gold, and even the love of woman seemed very small - matters. What did it all matter? I was dying. Peace came to me. - </p> - <p> - Is it not probable that kind nature or a kinder God thus smooths the way - into eternity when the great moment comes? Men who have been nigh the last - gasp have swapped stories with me and we all agree. - </p> - <p> - I had no notion of the length of time I had been down. In my mistiness of - mind I did not bother about time. In the case of a submarine diver, the - hours are marked off by his sensations, and he knows when he has stayed - down long enough. If my men had told me that I had been on the bed of the - ocean for a day and a night I should not have disputed them. I must have - been near death, for it is said that when one is dying all of life that - has been lived comes before the mind and passes in review, as though the - mortal soul were preparing its brief for the use of the recording angel. I - remember that this last was a strange idea which came to me there in the - sand-pack which was slowly heaping itself over my head. - </p> - <p> - Then something happened. It was something which should have amazed me, but - I reckon that my brain was too numbed to feel amazement. - </p> - <p> - The nozzle above my head gave a sudden yank and rapped my knuckles. It - righted itself. That is to say, it aimed downward and began to pour water - directly at and over me. I felt the stream rather than saw it. I could not - see in that smother of sand. But my arms came out of the mold in which - they had been pinned. I grabbed and groped for that hose with all the - desperation that was in me. I held to it with all my strength. It was - lucky that I seized it as I did, for I felt the rollers tugging at it once - more as though some devil of the sea had given me one more chance in order - to tantalize me, and was now resolved to finish me finally. - </p> - <p> - I did not know what had happened above to cause the sudden deflection of - the stream. It was enough for me to know that some freak of the waters had - turned the hose. I found out later what had occurred, and I may as well - explain at this point, lest you think I have told merely of a case of - story-book Providence. - </p> - <p> - I have related how I anchored my lines fifty feet from the wreck. That - anchor, so I found later, had been pulled out of the sand, and the surges - had bellied the water-hose in toward shore, over my head, and the aim of - the nozzle had been changed in the snap of a finger. It surely had been - touch and go with me, for once the surge had taken up the slack the next - wave must have jerked the hose out of my hole. I had grabbed just in time; - I had melted my sand mold and was free. - </p> - <p> - Common sense advised me to quit the job forever. The uncertainties of - trying to move sand with a stream of water had been impressed upon me in - horrible fashion. But common sense is not allowed to rule a man when he is - after gold in this world. I had found out what that stream would - accomplish if it was used properly. I had learned one lesson which I could - not forget, and I was sure I would not make the mistake of letting the - sand catch me from behind again. I knew, on the other hand, what would - happen to me when I appeared above the surface without my ransom fee of - yellow gold. I preferred to stay and fight sand instead of men. There, in - the boil of the roiled water, I resolved to stay down. - </p> - <p> - I tried another experiment with the hose, and was-, vastly encouraged. I - had been worrying and wondering how I would get back out of the hole, for - I feared that the-life-line, playing over the edge of the sand, would not - allow the men on the lighter enough direct pull; to help me much. Now I - needed to rise from the hole for a littleway in order to attack the sand - at another angle so as to pass that plate of boiler iron. - </p> - <p> - I slackened the force of the stream from the nozzle with my palm, and the - sand began to pack in below me. The uprush of the swirling water helped me - and I was able to work myself slowly upward. Then I began to. bore again. - </p> - <p> - I realized now that something must have happened to, my anchor, because - the rollers were giving me battle for-the possession of that water-hose in - fierce style. But I hung on, and found myself sinking into the sand. I - went, down more rapidly, for I had already softened the surrounding pack. - After the awful experience I had just had, I was more of a lunatic than - sane while I made that, second attempt. My brain swirled as dizzily as the - water which swept up from the hole. As nearly as I could estimate, I went - down at least five yards before I struck anything that was solid. And when - my feet, already sore from the grinding of that sand, felt what was below - them, the whole of my being gave three cheers—not cheers with, the - mouth, but those silent cheers with which a man’s soul yells its joy. I - had touched a box. There were its comers—there was its unmistakable - shape. - </p> - <p> - After wild struggles and contortions, I was able to set the points of the - ice-tongs into its sides. I gave the signal on the drag-rope, and I could - feel the surge of the men on the line. But the angle of the rope over the - edge of the hole would not allow them to lift very hard. The box was too - far away from the lighter for their efforts to amount to much. But as they - swayed away I kept the hose playing upon the box and under it. It did seem - damnably slow work. But it came up, inch by inch, slowly and surely, until - I was out of the hole, and standing about knee-deep in the sand. I had a - tug of war of it then! - </p> - <p> - The box was not out of the hole. The rollers tugged at my lines and - wrenched at me. Once or twice I was fairly floored. I would fall with my - legs pinioned fast, and would lie exhausted until I could get strength to - stand up and wash myself free with the hose. In order to get back out of - that hole at all, I was obliged to slacken the stream and let the sand - pack in under myself and the box—and when the stream slackened I was - obliged to drag my legs out of the packing sand. - </p> - <p> - But I was free at last, bless the good Lord! And I had a box of gold. It - was not a mere stray box, salvaged with the help of a freakish undertow. - It was a box which I had torn from the heart of the hoard below. Yes, I - was sure that I had been to the heart of the treasure. And where I had - been the Pacific was already stuffing back the sand, locking the door once - more on the gold it had taken for its own. Let Keedy’s men come down! Let - them waste their strength. I had the key to that situation—and I - alone. - </p> - <p> - I tugged a signal to shut off the water. And as promptly I gave them - pull-up signals on my life-line and on the drag-cord of the tongs. I - wanted to get above the sea and breathe the fresh air of the good God, and - look into the eye of the blessed sun, and give praises. And, oh, the awful - weariness in every bone and muscle of me! I lay down and let ’em - pull me back. I had no strength with which to manage that weight of metal - which loaded me down. - </p> - <p> - When they got me upon the deck of the lighter, and had twisted off my - helmet, I lay for a long time without words. I motioned to Number-two - Jones to remove the cover from the box I had brought. The sight of those - ingots gave me the goad once more—ah, it takes gold to make the - human soul gallop!= - </p> - <p> - `````"Gold, gold, yellow gold, - </p> - <p> - `````Hard to get and harder to hold.” - </p> - <p> - This quotation burst from Mr. Shank. His round face was radiant, and he - came and leaned over me and patted me on the head. He did not seem to have - any better way of showing his joy. It was a wildly excited crew which - crowded around me; they were still more excited when I sat up on deck at - last and told them I was going down again. The fever was in me. I wanted - to go back to the <i>Zizania</i> with gold enough, to convince Captain - Holstrom and those knaves of customs men that there was no fluke about our - proposition. I wanted to raise that infernal Keedy out of this game for - good and all. - </p> - <p> - It was mighty tempestuous water in the vicinity of the wreck, and putting - the lighter nearer was not to be thought of. But I discussed with Mate - Jones the possibility of dropping our yawl back toward the wreck at the - end of a cable, so that the men could lift the treasure-boxes more - directly. We had brought extra men that morning for the pump, and a crew - for the surf-boat volunteered. The gold lust was seizing the whole of us. - </p> - <p> - I went down again, feeling sure that the wicked labor of getting the box - up through the sand would be lightened for me. - </p> - <p> - I took another anchor, and on my way to the wreck I refastened my hose - lines to the bottom, rigging the second anchor as a bridle, so that the - strain would be eased on the one which I had set into the sand. - </p> - <p> - Down I bored again, my tongs at my belt, my hose in my clutch. And I - stayed down until I had sent three more boxes up to the surf-boat. While I - was toiling down there I knew that I was setting a dangerous record for - myself—I could not hope to equal it on the days which were to - follow. It was plain that I had penetrated to the heart of the treasure, - but I had penetrated to other things as well. I found all the sculch and - broken crockery of the wrecked pantry and the bar of the <i>Golden Gate</i>. - Yes, I sent three more boxes to the lighter; but when I crawled over the - rail later my hands and feet were bleeding, and the sand had ground into - the wounds. Already my skin showed where the grinding of the boiling sand - was wearing the epidermis. Even the rubber of my suit was showing wear. - </p> - <p> - I was a sorry-looking object when I staggered into Capt. Rask Holstrom’s - state-room. He fairly slavered in his rage and tried to leap at me. I - reckon I did look like a beaten man. But the next instant my men came - tramping in with the boxes of gold. There were four of these glorious - boxes, and each one was open and showed the ingots. - </p> - <p> - “Your friend Keedy got his two boxes by the fluke of an undertow,” I told - him. “I have got mine by science and a system which will give us the rest - of it. Now, Captain Holstrom, I’ll accept your apologies.” And I cut him - loose. - </p> - <p> - I did not mention any apologies due from me to him. I wanted to rub it - into the old squarehead so thoroughly that he would never get the smart of - it out of his skin. I wanted to let him know that I had set a ring into - his nose, and that if he ever tried to run amuck again I was the man who - could catch him and trip him. - </p> - <p> - He gave me one look, gasped one gasp, and I knew that Capt. Rask Holstrom - had abdicated his throne. I was boss. But I had no time to listen to his - slobbering thanks just then. I took one of those bars of gold in my bloody - hand and started for my state-room. I shook the ingot under the noses of - those customs men. And they, too, knew that I was boss when I got through - with them. I had not come back that day from hell and the bottom of the - sea to mince words with any loafers—Captain Holstrom included. - </p> - <p> - “Here’s gold worth four thousand dollars in good Yankee money, you - low-down renegades. You take it and get off this steamer. If you are good, - and come around here like gentlemen about a month from now, perhaps I’ll - drop another rock into your hat. I don’t promise—it all depends on - how you act. But if you come back too quick—if you try to squeeze us - for more rake-off—I’ll go down to headquarters and buy your blessed - Government, and have you put into prison or shot—for before this - thing is ended here I’ll have more than three million dollars behind me. - Now you can either make a dollar quietly or you can make trouble. Suit - yourselves.” - </p> - <p> - I cut their ropes and pushed them out of the room and ordered our ensign - set to signal their boat. - </p> - <p> - I didn’t have to offer them any apologies, either, and I was not in an - apologizing mood that day. They did the apologizing while they were - waiting for their boat, and I scowled while they were begging me to - forgive the mistake they had made. - </p> - <p> - Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama - Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me into - my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the finger of - his master is pointed. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXIV—AMONG THIEVES - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> DID not go down - next day, and I watched the descent of Keedy’s divers with indifference - that was pretty nigh serene. Captain Holstrom stamped around restlessly, - for he couldn’t seem to get it into his mind that the Pacific Ocean was on - guard. But he did not venture to make any suggestions to me, and I decided - that I had trained him in pretty fair shape. - </p> - <p> - I had good reason for delaying my next descent. It would not do to take - chances with my diving-dress, which was showing signs of being frayed by - the swirling sand, and I put in a busy day with the two Joneses, stitching - an extra canvas suit to wear over the rubber dress. I improved on the - ice-tongs by having a set of steel spring hooks made so that by means of - long handles I could push them over a box without stooping and fumbling. - Also I had a long rod of steel turned out for me, and with this I could - probe the sand for boxes. - </p> - <p> - I had no way of knowing whether Keedy or his divers suspected that I had - secured any treasure. I knew that after a night of action of the sea there - would be few traces left where I had disturbed the sand. But I also knew - that Keedy would certainly be wondering why we had built the wall around - the lighter, and therefore we doubled the guards who had spent the night - there since we had installed the pump, and gave the men orders to shoot - any man who tried to climb on board. - </p> - <p> - We started work on a bigger and more elaborate pump, having tested out the - principle of the thing by means of the first one. I needed more stream. - While Shank was building this I went to work again, using the old - equipment. - </p> - <p> - I waited each day until the other divers had been down and had climbed - back into the sunlight, empty-handed. Then I slid overboard from our - lighter as secretly as possible, and did my day’s work. I averaged three - boxes a. trip by working myself to the limit of my endurance. It was - reported to me that Keedy climbed into the rigging of the schooner - whenever the surf-boat was eased back toward the wreck, and that he - remained there on watch. How much he saw we did not know, but the men in - the boat crowded together whenever a box was raised. From what I learned - afterward, I found that Keedy thought we were operating some kind of a - dredge, and that his divers reported to him that we were not making any - impression on the sand. So he sat calmly in the rigging, spying on what he - could see, and reckoning that we were wasting our time the same as his - crew. - </p> - <p> - Before the end of a week the new pump was finished and I had almost five - hundred gallons a minute at my command. - </p> - <p> - I do not mean to be profane, but I must state that when I got that new - stream to operating it was hell for me down below—and no other - phrase seems to express the case. - </p> - <p> - I have already mentioned the refuse of that wrecked pantry and bar; from - out of the holes I bored rushed up bits of broken bottles and crockery, - slashing at my bare feet and hands. I could not protect them. - </p> - <p> - The stream from the nozzle—a three-inch stream—stirred such a - mush of sand that I worked in pitch darkness. I had to have bare feet and - hands in order to feel my way. - </p> - <p> - After a time, my feet were swollen to twice their natural size. - Finger-nails and toe-nails had been worn off by the grinding of the sand, - and the skin had been eaten off. The sand even penetrated my dress, and my - knees and shoulders were chafed raw. My back, under the dragging weights I - was forced to wear, was about like a piece of pounded steak. I was - suffering the limit of human agony, but I was mad for success—I was - crazed by the gold lust. I was bringing out a small fortune every day; one - day I recovered six boxes—one hundred and twenty thousand dollars! - But I was still just as hungry for the gold that remained at the bottom. I - set my teeth, gasped back my groans, and kept at work. - </p> - <p> - All the tender ministrations of Kama Holstrom could not mend my hurts, and - I would not listen to her appeals to me. She begged me to give up the - fight. She urged that we had enough. But I was as crazy as the wildest man - who ever hunted gold, and the pain I was in made me more of a lunatic. On - several occasions I was pulled back to the lighter in a dead faint, and - fought with Number-two Jones because he would not send me down again that - day. - </p> - <p> - I cannot go into the details of those days of nightmare. I can only say - that I kept on. - </p> - <p> - We soon had plain hints that Keedy was getting suspicious and uneasy. One - night a crew from the schooner made a desperate attempt to board the - lighter. On other nights they made other tries, and shots were exchanged - before they were driven off. - </p> - <p> - One day when I was at the bottom of the hole I had bored and had just - succeeded in fastening my hooks to a box, I got a shock that made me - believe the end of the world had come. Something hit me on the top of the - helmet with a thud that knocked me senseless for a moment. I reached out - quickly with one hand, reserving the other for my hose, and felt the - breastplate of a diver. I realized what had happened then. One of Keedy’s - men, sent to spy, had stumbled through the sand swirling from my pit, and - had fallen in on me, not dreaming that I had been able to dig a - fifteen-foot hole. - </p> - <p> - In the tangle that followed, it was a wonder that either of us escaped. - </p> - <p> - By the way the man struggled I knew that he was terrified out of his - senses. He clung to me desperately, as a drowning man might ding to a - rescuer. Then he gave his emergency pull, and yanked me with him when he - went up. - </p> - <p> - I had a raw temper which went with my raw surface in those terrible days. - I left hose and box and went up with the caller, dragging my knife from my - belt. I kept clashing the knife against the front bull’s-eye of his - helmet, and after we had been dragged together for some distance from the - edge of the hole, and the sea became clearer, he perceived what I was - doing. He let go his clutch, and it was well he did, for I was in a state - of maniacal fury. I would have ripped his dress from crotch to neck-band - with my knife if he had not escaped from me just as he did. I went back - and recovered my hose, and after a time got the box. Then I returned to - the lighter, for I was too unnerved to work any longer that day. - </p> - <p> - As I lay on deck that afternoon, a shapeless, hideous thing of bruised and - macerated flesh, I wondered whether I would be able to work any more. - </p> - <p> - When I was under the sea I was fairly beside myself with the excitement of - the hunt. I could grind my teeth together and groan and fight my way - through the sand, for there was gold at the bottom of the hole I was - digging. And every time I went down through that fifteen feet of smother I - knew that death raced me to the box of treasure and back. Under those - circumstances, a man is desperate enough to forget his bloody cuts and raw - skin. But I felt like a pretty weak and useless tool as I lay there on - deck. - </p> - <p> - Kama Holstrom was with me. She had insisted on becoming my nurse. I craved - her companionship, I’ll admit, but I wanted to hide myself from her eyes. - Her father was in his state-room, busy at his job of adding more sheets of - iron, more bands of steel, to the treasure-chest he had taken it upon - himself to build. We could hear the bang of his hammer. Captain Holstrom - worked days at that huge chest, slept on it nights with the key lashed - into the palm of his right hand, and between whiles cuddled those ingots - rapturously. In his way, he had become as insane over the matter as I was - myself. - </p> - <p> - The girl and I were in the lee of the deck-house, to get out of the - trades, and we did not see the boat when it came off Keedy’s schooner. Had - I seen it coming, Keedy would never have been allowed to board us. But all - at once he appeared before the girl and myself. I felt a fierce impulse to - get up and beat his face off him, even though my hands were as sore as the - exposed nerve of an aching tooth. He got that flash from my eyes, and - looked meek for a moment, but then he saw the condition I was in and - became insolent. - </p> - <p> - “Better listen to me,” he said. “I’m on. I know your system. But I should - say you’re all in, Sidney. You need help. There’s enough there for all of - us. I’ve got two good divers. I’m over here to propose that we call the - row off, and I’ll send my men down to work with your contrivance and give - you a rest.” - </p> - <p> - That proposition from Marcena Keedy, after what he had done to us in the - matter of that twenty thousand dollars, and after what he had tried to do - to us in the affair of the customs men! I felt the language begin to roil - in me as the said roiled under the force of my stream from the nozzle. - </p> - <p> - “Miss Kama,” I pleaded, “won’t you please run away? I want to talk to this - dirty dog. And send your father here with a club.” - </p> - <p> - She did not leave me. She came closer, and gave Keedy a look which would - have wilted any other sort of man. - </p> - <p> - “You can’t afford to be foolish over what’s past and gone,” insisted my - ex-partner. “I left because you wasn’t making good—wasn’t holding up - our end of the partnership. You fell down. Now if you can deliver goods - we’ll call off all trouble and start it over again.” - </p> - <p> - “Captain Holstrom,” I yelled, “come here quick! Bring your hammer! Hurry! - Knock that devil overboard!” I shouted when the captain tore around the - corner on the gallop. His eyes were bulged out, and he had his hammer over - his head, for I guess he thought from the tone of my voice that pirates - had boarded us. His expression did not soften any when he laid eyes on - Keedy. - </p> - <p> - The gambler put up a lean forefinger. “You’d better hark to what I say, - friend Rask.” He went over the same talk he had had with me. - </p> - <p> - “Not by a continental tin damsite!” howled the captain. “And how you have - got the gall even to look the way of the <i>Zizania</i>, much more come - aboard of her, is what gives me a callous over the collar-button. Get - off’m here!” - </p> - <p> - “You don’t dare to drive me, Holstrom, after I’ve come to you with a fair - and open proposition—ready to take the first step and let bygones - rest. You can’t afford any big talk! Why, you’re only stealing this gold, - whatever of it you are getting! This is pirate business—the whole of - it. Now you be careful how you try to raise me out of the game.” - </p> - <p> - That taunt about our rights there at San Apusa came from a rascal and a - gambler, but the taunt made me think—and it stung, too. To tell the - truth, I had done a little thinking about our rights in the matter of that - treasure. - </p> - <p> - “You’re infernal thieves, and you can’t make yourselves out anything - else!” Keedy insisted. “And you can’t afford to throw down another thief - who is willing to come in and help.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom shot out a swift kick and missed Keedy. He made a crack - at him with the hammer, and missed again. - </p> - <p> - The Keedy person had had experience with the captain, probably, in past - times. He ran for the ladder and escaped into his boat. - </p> - <p> - “You are fools, besides being thieves,” he informed us, standing up when - he was a safe distance away, and shaking his fists. “Don’t you understand - what I can do to you?” Captain Holstrom returned the fist-shaking with too - much alacrity to be misunderstood. - </p> - <p> - “All right,” bellowed Keedy; “have it your own way, you fools! I’ll do you - so good that you’ll never know you were ever in the game.” He was so mad - that he let out a little more than he intended to, so I reckoned. “There - are men who will pay me more for what I can tell ’em than any - rake-off you can give me, anyway.” He was rowed away to his schooner. - </p> - <p> - “That means?” I suggested, swapping looks with the captain. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose it means that he is going to blow this thing to the - underwriters.” - </p> - <p> - “Then we are stealing this gold, are we?” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom fingered his red knob of a nose, and looked away from me. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know much about law,” I went on. “I supposed you knew something - about our rights in this thing—if we have any. I tell you, it’s - going to be pretty tough, Captain, if I’ve been through all this hell only - to have all our great hopes grabbed away from us.” - </p> - <p> - “Men have to take a chance in this world, Sidney. Damn the law in a case - like this! The gold was there, and nobody was trying to get it. We had a - right to try for it.” - </p> - <p> - “But wasn’t there any legal way?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, a drunken lawyer in San Francisco told me something about power by - attorney, but it meant chasing around and getting hold of claims by - shippers, or something of the kind—and that meant blowing our plans - and letting a lot of grafters in on us. I simply cleared from the - custom-house as a trawler and came away, minding my own business.” - </p> - <p> - “And now somebody else will take the job of minding it,” I complained. I - did not have much philosophy or courage about me just then. My hands and - feet and shoulders were aching too miserably; and had all my suffering and - daring been thrown away? - </p> - <p> - “Let’s go home, father,” pleaded the girl. - </p> - <p> - “Go home!” he yelped. “Sail in past the Golden Gate with this gold? Lug it - back where coyote lawyers can get their whack at it until they’ve trimmed - us for every ounce? Well, I guess—not!” - </p> - <p> - I wondered if he proposed to sail around in the middle of the Pacific - Ocean, cuddling those ingots for amusement, the rest of his life; but I - had neither strength nor taste for any more complaint or argument at that - time. It was a mighty dismal outlook, according to my way of thinking. I - saw that I was tied up with a man whose sole notion was to get the gold - without bothering his head about how he was going to keep it. Later, - Keedy’s schooner frothed out past us, standing to sea, and headed north. - </p> - <p> - I did not go down again for almost a week. Courage is always a man’s best - asset, but courage in the job I had undertaken was pretty near my whole - capital. And courage had left me—I had to admit it. I had been doing - honest work with all a man’s grit and strength and will. I had wrecked my - body and wrenched my soul in effort. Yes, the work part of it was honest, - but how about the honesty of our undertaking? I had got some plain words - from Keedy—and I got no consolation from Captain Holstrom. I was - daredevil enough and plenty in those days, but I was not the sort of a - daredevil who would make a successful pirate. - </p> - <p> - I sat on deck day after day, and bore with my agonies of body and wrestled - with my soul. An idea had come to me as I had struggled with that problem - of our rights. It was a rather vague idea. Of only one point of it was I - sure—its success depended on getting as much of that gold as I could - tear out of the sand. - </p> - <p> - Thinking upon it, hoping that good would come from it, brought my courage - back to me. I was again ready to undergo tortures and to face death. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXV—SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> NEW arrival off - San Apusa Bar had interested us for a couple of days. It was a husky sloop - with a leg-of-mutton mainsail—a broad-bellied craft on which a dozen - men showed themselves when it sailed past us to take up a position near - the ribs of the wreck. This sloop seemed to be of a build to ride the - surges easily, and ventured much closer inshore than we had dared to - anchor our lighter. The men did not visit us, and displayed no desire to - meddle with the secrets of the equipment on the walled-up scow. We - wondered who they were, why they were there, and left them alone. - </p> - <p> - I went down and crawfished my way over the sand windrows, but I could make - only slow work of it, for I was stiffened by my days of inaction. But that - new idea of mine went along with me for my encouragement. - </p> - <p> - I had hardly put myself in position, ready to call for my stream of water, - when I got a rousing surprise. Down through the sea came rushing a naked - man. The depths were fairly clear, for I had not begun to stir the roil - with my nozzle. His eyes were wide open and staring, and I reckon that I - peered at him through my bull’s-eye with eyes just as wide open. When he - arrived close to me he dropped a rock from each hand, his diving weights, - and grabbed me, hanging to my belt. I sat right there on the sand and - gaped at him. His mouth was shut tight—he was holding his breath. - </p> - <p> - In a short time another naked man came down like the stick of a - sky-rocket. He dropped his rocks and grabbed me, and the first man let go - and went swimming up to the surface. Then came a third man and replaced - the second. - </p> - <p> - I began to feel like a candidate for office in the receiving line. I - wanted to ask some questions about what this function meant. But for good - and obvious reasons I could not carry on a conversation, and I did not - know the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. - </p> - <p> - Along came the fourth man. I noticed that each man wore a narrow belt with - a huge knife fastened in it. And that’s all the man did wear. The sight of - the knife made me rather nervous. A man under water, straining to hold his - breath, his eyes bulging with his efforts, is a savage-looking object at - best. These men were plainly Mexicans, and they looked particularly - savage. I felt pretty sure that they were not diving down there to cheer - me in my loneliness or to ask me to run for mayor. - </p> - <p> - Then it came to me all at once who these men were. As a submarine worker, - I was interested, of course, in all sorts of jobs under the sea, and I had - read various accounts of the Mexican pearl divers. I knew that they could - descend long distances and could remain under water, many of them, for - ninety seconds. One man succeeded another, diving in rotation. I remained - there without moving, staring at them until I began to recognize faces. - They were making me return visits. I realized that they did not propose to - carve me—the first man could have done that on his first call. - Therefore I got my nerve back and decided to go to work. I signaled for - water. - </p> - <p> - It occurred to me that my new friends might find that the “fogo” I stirred - with that hose would be a little too much for them. I resisted an impulse - to bat them away from me with that nozzle, a considerable effort in - selfcontrol, for my temper was pretty short in those dreadful days. - </p> - <p> - They stuck to me bravely at first when the sand began to swirl. There was - an itching under my ribs when the sand made a pall and darkness settled on - me. I was afraid that one of my callers might become peevish and ram his - knife into me as a hint not to muddy that water. - </p> - <p> - It was not easy to hold my position and work with a man anchored to me. - But I was not bothered for long. - </p> - <p> - The tug at my belt ceased suddenly, and I knew that they had given up. - They could not find me in that smother. - </p> - <p> - They resumed operations again when I got up my first box. In working my - way out of the hole I decreased the flow from the hose, and when I reached - the top of the sand the swirling particles were settling and were being - washed farther inshore by the surges. In a clearer sea down came those - devils once more, and fastened to me, one by one, like leeches. They tried - to clutch the box, but it was too heavy for them. It was hoisted past them - up to the surf-boat, and once more I drove the nozzle into the sand and - forced them off me with a whirlpool of mush. - </p> - <p> - They were more bothersome the next time I allowed the sea to clear. Two - dove at a time, and grabbed me, and almost lifted me up with them. I was - furious, but I did not try to beat them off. I kept on about my own - affairs as best I could, and allowed them to hang on to me. There were a - dozen of them above, with knives, and I had no hankering to tackle the - pack. I was not sure as to their motives, anyway. One rip of a knife would - have put me out of business. But they did not offer to use knives. - </p> - <p> - I did a short day’s work and went back to the lighter. Captain Holstrom - had watched their diving operations and was full of eager questions. - </p> - <p> - That night we doubled the guards on the <i>Zizania</i>. But no boat came - near us. - </p> - <p> - My friends were ready for me next day, and resumed the same tactics. I - carried a bigger knife, and kept my eye out as best I could. But before I - got the stream started they were coming at me three at a time. They kept - lifting me off bottom, and I wasted a lot of valuable time and much of my - little stock of strength before I got down on the sand and began to bore. - They were ready for me again as soon as I got up with a box and the sea - had cleared a bit. One of them brought a rope, and tried to get it around - a box I was handling, but I had my tongs well set, and my men hoisted the - treasure away from them. Then they began to interfere with me so savagely - that I quit in disgust and signaled to be pulled up. - </p> - <p> - I was half crazy with rage, and frantic because this sort of business was - putting me where I could not realize on that idea which I was nursing. - </p> - <p> - After listening to me, Captain Holstrom set his cap well down over his - ears, jutting his chin, set his teeth, and called for his boat. He was - rowed over to the side of the little sloop. He came back very soon and he - was not looking pleased. - </p> - <p> - “I couldn’t get anything out of that bunch except a few grunts and a lot - of jabber,” he reported. “They make believe they can’t understand the - English language. They want graft, I suppose. They’d understand, all - right, if I was to carry over a slug of gold and dump it over the rail. - But I’m about tired of feeding gold to everybody who comes along here.” - </p> - <p> - “This isn’t our gold to give away to all comers,” I told him. He blinked - at me, and did not seem to understand. I did not go into that side of the - question any further, for I was not ready for much argument at that time. - “I’ll not stand for any more ‘hot rocks,’” I told him. - </p> - <p> - “Nor I, either,” he agreed. “Begin to feed gold to those chaps, and - they’ll think we are scared of ’em and they’ll want the whole - mess.” - </p> - <p> - To show them that I was not scared, I went down the next day, and I had a - wire edge on my temper. I balked at starting a knife duel, however, and - after a struggle got my hole started. - </p> - <p> - I struck something new that day in the ruck at the bottom of the hole. I - found ingots loose in the hodgepodge of pantry wreckage. A wooden box had - been smashed. I had a slit and a sort of deep pocket in the canvas - overalls affair which protected my India-rubber suit. As my toes located - loose ingots, I sifted the mush of sand with the fingers of one hand, - captured the gold, and stuffed it down into the deep pocket. I came up - with a box, and my breeches were bagging with gold. - </p> - <p> - Then came the climax of my strained relations with those greaser divers. - I’ve heard of pickpockets operating everywhere, almost, but I reckon that - I’m the first and only man who ever had his pockets picked at the bottom - of the sea. The first devil who got to me as the sand settled, in groping - for a handhold on my dress, felt the loose ingots. He got one, but he did - not get away with it. Trouble or no trouble, knives or no knives, I had - got to the limit of my temper. I gave him a jab with the end of my - sheet-iron nozzle, and as near as I could judge I took a hunk of meat out - of him as neatly as a woman could operate on dough with a doughnut cutter. - The edges of that nozzle had been whetted on sand until they were as sharp - as a razor blade. The fellow drooped that ingot and darted upward, blood - streaming behind him. Another diver was coming down to take his place, but - when I jabbed at him with the nozzle he whirled like a fish and went up, - giving me an awful kick when he started. - </p> - <p> - I reckoned I had thrown down the gage of battle, and I was not minded to - stay there and meet the pack, for I was weak after my extra struggle down - in the hole. It had been a tedious job gathering that loose gold. I saw - the box started on the way to the surf-boat, gave the emergency signal, - and was yanked back to the lighter at a lively clip. - </p> - <p> - Later that day, being in a proper and ugly frame of mind, I tucked a rifle - under my arm and had myself rowed to the neighboring sloop. I found the - spokesman of the crew ready to talk English that day, all right. But when - our conversation was ended I had received a surprise. No demand was made - on me for a “hot rock.” I found that I was dealing with men who had deeper - motives. It took me some time to understand that they were not holding out - for a big offer. The man at the rail wrinkled his nose and sneered when I - angrily told him that was what they were after. - </p> - <p> - “It’s what I’d expect a gringo to tell me,” he said. “But we are not here - to do business with thieves. You have no right to be here. You may pick - and steal, but it will not amount to <i>that!</i>” He snapped his finger - above his head. “We shall do our business with those who will have the - gold in the end, with those who can pay and will pay. And we have a man - who will see that we are paid.” - </p> - <p> - My wits had been sharpened while I had toiled at San Apusa Bar. I was able - to see farther into the ways of guile than before I had met a man like - Marcena Keedy. I had a flash of suspicion that was almost instinct. - </p> - <p> - “So you think you have made a better trade with that renegade, Keedy, do - you?” I flung at him. - </p> - <p> - I was sure I had guessed right; the man’s face betrayed him. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, we are honest men—not thieves,” he called back. “We do not deal - with thieves. We came here to stop you from stealing. But you do not stop. - Now we shall see. We have kept our knives in our belts. But you have set - us an example. You have tried to kill a man who did not offer to hurt - you.” He leaped up on the rail, and aimed a long finger at me. “We can - fight the way you do. If we catch you there on bottom again you’ll be - pulled up with six of these sticking in you.” He patted the knife in his - belt. - </p> - <p> - There are men who can threaten and who cannot impress others. It is easily - docketed as bluster. There is another kind of a man who gives you a look - and a word, and you know that he means what he says. I went away from that - sloop feeling that if I were desperate enough just then to commit suicide, - an easy way had been opened for me. - </p> - <p> - I went and tumbled into my berth, and viewed the ruins of that idea which - I had been building so prayerfully. It looked to me then, in my - despondency, as if Keedy was holding mighty good cards. If he had decided - to turn informer, he could demand and would undoubtedly receive a noble - rake-off. It was probable that he <i>would</i> inform—for that would - be his natural, lazy method of making his money out of the thing. The - posting of the pearl divers in behalf of the underwriters would be an - additional feather in his cap; on the other hand, if he proposed to come - with a backer and new equipment—having discovered my system—he - had good reasons for leaving men behind him who would hold us in check. If - Keedy returned with steam-pumps he could rip the bottom out of the - Pacific. Our makeshift equipment would not be two-spot high. - </p> - <p> - And how soon could he return, whether he came piloting the underwriters or - came on his own hook as a rival “thief”? I talked with Captain Holstrom on - that matter the next day. He rubbed his nose and scruffed his hair, and - could not guess. - </p> - <p> - I asked the captain for his estimate of the amount of treasure in our - chest. He told me that we had rising three-quarters of a million. - </p> - <p> - “Captain, it has become a matter of touch and go—live or die—with - us. With less than a third of that gold in our hands, we’re in no position - to do business when the pinch comes. I’m going after the rest of it!” - </p> - <p> - “But you said you knew them greaser pickerel would poke their knives into - you. God knows I’m hungry for the rest of the treasure, Sidney, but I’m no - Marcena Keedy.” - </p> - <p> - “I’m going down at night, Captain Holstrom.” - </p> - <p> - “It can’t be done.” - </p> - <p> - “It <i>can</i> be done. After I get my stream started I’m in the dark even - when the sun is brightest. I know the way from the lighter to that wreck, - all right. I’ve dragged my way there times enough with a trail of blood - behind me,” I told him, sourly. “It can never be any worse than it has - been. We’ll take extra chances, moor the lighter nearer the wreck, get rid - of the surf-boat and crew, and leave those greasers guessing.” - </p> - <p> - I want to say, to the credit of the captain, that he opposed this - undertaking of mine. His daughter—But I will not dwell on that - point. It harrows my soul now to remember the manner in which I opposed my - obstinate and reckless will to her honest grief and her almost frantic - protests. - </p> - <p> - I went down that night. I gave ’em three boxes before midnight. I - ate a lunch, and gave ’em one box more before I quit. - </p> - <p> - I have no ambition to make this story a rival of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. I - have already given some idea of the physical state I was in. I think I - became numb to pain, accustomed to agonies. I cannot explain otherwise how - I ever kept on, night after night. I haven’t the courage to write down - what I suffered. - </p> - <p> - But out from under those grinning greasers—grinning their sneers at - us daytimes—I dragged one and one-half million dollars’ worth of - gold ingots inside of two weeks—and they never suspected that I was - under water. - </p> - <p> - During the last of that nightmare, I felt as if I were working with my - chin over my shoulder. I was looking for trouble. I was expecting - disaster. I was scared to the marrow. I am not referring to any feelings I - had on account of the pearl divers. Their bug eyes had never detected me - in what I was about. I knew that darkness protected me more surely from - any attack by them than iron walls would have done. - </p> - <p> - But I worked nights with the constant feeling that the red and green eyes - of a steamer were coming up over the horizon. When I was awake daytimes I - peered into the northern sky hour after hour, expecting and dreading to - see the trail of smoke which would announce the coming of Marcena Keedy - and those whom he had notified. - </p> - <p> - My conferences with Captain Holstrom had been scant and rather brusque. - There were some points in that idea of mine that I had not thought out to - my own satisfaction, and I had not found the captain to be especially - helpful in attacking problems. He was wholly taken up in helping to pull - that gold in over the rail, in storing it, in guarding it. - </p> - <p> - His daughter knew why I stared at the northern horizon, and why desperate - worry added to the other woes I was suffering in that tophet of toil. She - had resigned herself to the situation when I had persisted in keeping on. - She became, as before, my wistful nurse. She talked to me as she would - have soothed a madman whom she hoped to win back to sanity. Well, I was a - lunatic in those days—there’s not much doubt of it. It was madness - made up of fear, desperation, agony of physical pain, lust for gold—all - forcing me to do work which no sane man could have accomplished in my - condition of body. - </p> - <p> - She dared to break her usual silence on the matter of the treasure when we - were on deck one afternoon after my sleep. She had been gazing at me - sorrowfully while I stared into the north. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, what use is it—this dreadful work and worry? You have told me - that you feel like a thief in it all. You sit and stare into the north as - though you were a wicked man, instead of being so brave and successful in - the most wonderful work a man ever did. You are getting their gold for - them. But you feel that they are coming to take it all away—and call - you a thief. You cannot deceive me as to your thoughts.” - </p> - <p> - I had to acknowledge to myself that her woman’s intuition was in fine - working order. I understood what men were, naturally, in affairs where big - sums of money were involved. These men, provided Keedy had done as I - supposed he had, would have Keedy’s lies about us to inflame them still - further in addition to their natural greed. - </p> - <p> - But she was no quitter on one point. She clenched her little fists and - kept on: - </p> - <p> - “I say fight back! It may be their money—somebody’s money—but - what good did it do them or anybody else until you came here with your - strength and your courage and your brains and got it up from the bottom of - the ocean? I don’t know what the law is about such things—I don’t - care. I’ve heard you and father talk, but I only know that often in this - life law is one thing and justice is another.” - </p> - <p> - “There are the laws of salvage,” I told her. “We could turn this money - over and wait for the courts to decide. But I’m afraid of what may happen - if we do that. There’s that renegade Keedy with his lies; there are the - customs men of Mexico, and all that mess of international law to - complicate things. Keedy can claim partnership; the shippers can claim - shares, I suppose; this one and that one can dip in their fingers; and - lawyers can tie the matter up; and God only knows when it will all be - untied so that we can get what we have honestly earned. We may have to - fight for our liberty, for men are crazy enough to try to make us out - thieves, providing they can get hold of much money by lies and injustice. - I have been pounding it all out in my poor head, and I can’t seem to - believe that the law is going to give us what we ought to have. For, you - see, this thing isn’t like anything else that has ever happened.” - </p> - <p> - “I say fight!” she insisted, her eyes alight, her cheeks flaming under the - tan. “You have fought the ocean for their sakes as well as your own—and - you have won. Keep on fighting! Plan something, do something—get - into some position where they will have to come to you and beg for what’s - theirs. You have earned the right to make them beg. And you know you - have!” - </p> - <p> - Yes, I did know it; and on that belief I had based my idea which had - served for my encouragement. Her advice and her woman’s spirit in the - matter heartened me. She had acted like the lady of the castle of whom I - had read. She brought to me my helmet and shield, and was sending me out - to battle as a brave woman should. I started to tell her more about my - idea—but we were interrupted. - </p> - <p> - There was a queer noise in the direction of the ladder which led to the - lower deck. It was such a prodigious puffing and wheezing and grunting - that anybody might suppose that we were going to receive a visit from a - hippopotamus. The Snohomish Glutton, the cook of the <i>Zizania</i>, - appeared to us. I had not laid eyes on that individual for weeks. He stuck - in his pantry like a hermit in a cell, reveling in the steam of food, - stuffing himself even while he was cooking for others. He rolled rather - than walked across the deck, and stood before us, propping up the rolls of - fat which shuttered his little eyes. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t know how much there is or where you’re keeping it,” he blurted, - without preface, in his tin-whistle voice. “I don’t ask questions—I - stay in my pantry and mind my business. But I serve the niggers in the - port alley and the whites in the starboard alley, and I hear both sides. - But there’s only one side now. They said that the monkey’s tail started - the row. But they’ve forgotten the row. Gold will make men forget ’most - anything. They’ve got together at last. They are going to grab for it. - They thought I haven’t been hearing because my eyes were shut and I seemed - to be asleep.” - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean, my man?” I demanded. - </p> - <p> - “I mean that you can play checkers on that checkerboard crew now, sir. It - has settled into a solid board—white and black mixed. The Russian - Finn is captain. He killed my cat. I have said I would get even with him. - He is captain, and they are going to drop on to that gold and run away.” - </p> - <p> - “They have planned a mutiny?” - </p> - <p> - “Mutiny and all the side dishes that go with it. I have heard. I wasn’t - asleep when they thought I was. I’ve got to go back. I have duff in the - pot.” - </p> - <p> - He backed to the ladder and let himself down, rung by rung, grunting more - terrifically than before. - </p> - <p> - The girl leaped to her feet. She held her clenched fists above her head. - Her white teeth showed beneath the crimson of her parted lips. She drove - her hands down at her sides. - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” she had gasped, when her hands were above her head. When she drove - them down her woman’s soul spoke its anger and horror. “Damn the name of - gold!” she cried; and I would not have indorsed a milder phrase even from - her. - </p> - <p> - For weeks my head had been full of seething particles of schemes relating - to my central idea. I reckon it needed a shock—needed the desperate - occasion of instant action—to make those particles cohere into - resolve. For a moment I was stunned by the prospect of this new danger; - and then a course of action came to me in a flash of inspiration—it - was the result of all the thinking I had been doing, without making up my - mind to act. - </p> - <p> - I hobbled to find Captain Holstrom in his state-room. I had to push him - back when he had heard a dozen words of what I had reported. He had - grabbed his pistols and was rushing to kill off a few prospective - mutineers as an example to the others. - </p> - <p> - “You have got to do what I advise in this matter, Captain. I’ve been - making plans. We’ve got not only this crew to consider, but Keedy and - those he is bringing down here. He is coming. We may as well make up our - minds to that. I want you to go down on the main deck as quickly as you - can and order the crew to get out planks and start in making strong boxes. - Privately, you and I will overhaul the junk for scrap iron, for chains and - cable. Get after the men. Hustle them. Make it a hurry-up job. Busy men - won’t have time to talk mutiny. And say to one of the mates, when you are - giving off orders, that you are going to pack the treasure into boxes - suitable for handling. Say that loud enough so that all the men will - hear.” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll be joheifered if I don’t believe I’ve got to handle a lunatic as - well as a mutiny,” flamed Captain Holstrom. “Are you advising me to pack - up that gold so that it will be easy lugging for the crew?” - </p> - <p> - “As soon as they believe that it is going to be packed so as to be easy - lugging there’ll be no mutiny until those boxes have been made. You’ve got - to do as I say. You ought to have had your lesson by this time that I know - what I’m talking about.” - </p> - <p> - He shuttled his eyes when I looked at him. He was remembering those past - matters in which he had made a fool of himself in resisting me. I was - willing to explain my plan to him, for I was not trying to humiliate - Captain Holstrom. But just then I had a feeling that every moment counted. - One instant more and I knew what the pricking of my mental thumbs had - meant. Mate Number-two Jones came clattering along the deck from below. He - shoved a red and greatly troubled face in at the door. - </p> - <p> - “Get your guns, Cap’n Holstrom,” he panted. “They’re grumbling and - mumbling. It means mutiny.” - </p> - <p> - “Take your guns with you, if you like,” I told the captain. “But go down - there as cool as you can. Give off your orders as if you didn’t notice - anything. And be sure to throw out that hint about why you want the boxes - made. This is no time to bull this game of ours.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom was no fool, and he knew when a man was in dead earnest. - I pushed him and he went. I’ll have to confess that he qualified as a good - actor when he arrived on the main deck. - </p> - <p> - I was looking down from the bridge, and I saw the men of the crew exchange - winks and grins behind the captain’s back. - </p> - <p> - The model crew of the crack ship in all the world could not have shown - such willing obedience. They went to their work on the rush. Saws rasped - and hammers banged. There was clattering of iron and hum of industry. - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom left the work in charge of his mates, and came back to - his state-room to resume his watch over the treasure. I closeted myself - with him. - </p> - <p> - “Now, we’ll get down to the bed-rock of the proposition, Captain Holstrom. - We have agreed—you and I—that Keedy is about due here. We - don’t know who will come with him. But we can be mighty sure that they’ll - be no friends of ours. We’d be playing the parts of idiots to keep that - gold on board the <i>Zizania</i>. But there isn’t a harbor nearer than - Acapulco where we can land it; we can’t lug it ashore on the open coast - through the breakers; we can’t dodge all around the Pacific Ocean with it. - Right now, there’s another complication besides Keedy and his crowd. We - have still more desperate thieves right here with us. The mates and Shank - are safe. To-night the five of us will get busy, pack that gold in the - strong boxes, and drop it overboard.” - </p> - <p> - “Great guns!” groaned the captain. “I said you was crazy, and now I’m sure - of it. Dig it all up, and then throw it away again! No, let’s not put it - in the boxes. Let’s hoot and holler and cavort around the deck and heave - it overboard, one ingot at a time, so as to see who can make the biggest - splash. Come on—let’s have fun!” he raved. - </p> - <p> - “I am far from being crazy, Captain Holstrom,” I informed him, giving him - the hard eye so steadily that he blinked. “To each box we’ll hitch chain - long enough to reach to the surface. That chain will have rope cable—say - ten feet of it—hitched to the end, and the rope will be buoyed to a - small spar. The box and all the chain will lie on bottom. The small spar - with its rope cable will swim well under the surface of the water. In case - we want to raise the box we can catch the rope and spar with a rake, or - else drag for it with a chain between two boats.” - </p> - <p> - “I hate to see that gold go under water again,” mourned Captain Holstrom. - </p> - <p> - “It’s that or stand by and see mutineers lug it off or lawyers divide it.” - </p> - <p> - He writhed like a speared fish when he pondered on the alternatives. I - went out on deck and left him to think, confident that his slow mind would - finally swing to my way of making the best of a bad matter. - </p> - <p> - The checker-board crew was at work in a real frenzy of effort. I have no - doubt that each man secretly told himself that he was building his own box—and - he was putting his best work into his treasure-carrier. - </p> - <p> - The summer evening was long and the crew labored on after their supper. - According to my best judgment, when darkness shut down on their labors - there were boxes enough for our purpose. The men went to their rest on the - berth-deck in the forepeak of the steamer. Captain Holstrom had remarked, - casually, in their hearing, that he would wait till next day before - packing the ingots. From my post on the bridge, though the dusk had - deepened, I caught a cheerful wink or two between man and man, and they - went below looking like cats who had been promised a full meal of - canaries. - </p> - <p> - In order to encourage general peace and confidence, the mates allowed the - usual deck watch to go below and sleep, and the lazy sailors were only too - glad to do so. - </p> - <p> - When they were snoring in satisfactory chorus, Captain Holstrom slid their - hatch over and barred it so as to guard against a surprise by peepers. - Before two bells after midnight the last box of our gold had gone gurgling - down over the taffrail. The last spar winked out of sight under the surge. - </p> - <p> - “It’s gone!” groaned Captain Holstrom. - </p> - <p> - “Thank God, it has!” said I, and felt the girl’s little hand snuggle - comfortingly into my unsightly fist. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXVI—THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE next morning - Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew assembled on the main - deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and leaned over the rail like a - candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, unlike a candidate, he had - two revolvers strapped to his waist and in plain sight. - </p> - <p> - “I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I know - all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you peeking - and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t find them. - Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger down at the - Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn turned pale and - shook his head. - </p> - <p> - “You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to - take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s - orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will - be mutiny—and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where - you stand.” - </p> - <p> - After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led him - into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a genera! - tour of inspection of the upper deck. - </p> - <p> - “Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here to - mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen—or, - rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder. - </p> - <p> - “I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from - forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help - yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t - an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He - swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like - men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords. If - you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through it will - never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they will fetch - up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering among - themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report of the - leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last—the - blacks from the whites—and went about their tasks. - </p> - <p> - “I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the captain, - as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving three cheers—not - while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.” - </p> - <p> - Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the bottom - in that wreck of the <i>Golden Gate</i>, but I had no appetite for more - gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength and - courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that miserly - ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another fight against - the greed of men. - </p> - <p> - I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for - the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north. - Half a dozen anxious days dragged past—and then it came! - </p> - <p> - A trail of blacksmoke signaled it—they were using lots of coal and - were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain - Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed to - leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the bows - churned up white yeast. - </p> - <p> - There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore down - on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our own!” - </p> - <p> - We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the - tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in the - hook of their arms. - </p> - <p> - “It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come - down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now - with gold aboard here?” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words with - which to express his feelings. - </p> - <p> - “We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a - fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.” - </p> - <p> - That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they - rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of bell. - A dozen men leaped on board the <i>Zizania</i>. Some were guards who - carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied - Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays. - He did not venture to come on board us with the others. - </p> - <p> - “Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three - were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this - steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He - chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference. - </p> - <p> - “I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see - that I ain’t looking for trouble—otherwise I might have a few words - to say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules - and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.” - </p> - <p> - “It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who wore - a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an office. - “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in the matter - of the <i>Golden Gate</i>.” - </p> - <p> - “Step into the wheel-house—it’s my office,” stated the captain. He - pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the - upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult - to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.” - </p> - <p> - The man hesitated. - </p> - <p> - “We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom. - </p> - <p> - The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below. - </p> - <p> - “If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the - wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug - out of the wreck over yonder.” - </p> - <p> - The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger on - the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the other - law-shark trimmings. - </p> - <p> - “You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s - powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t. That - gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.” - </p> - <p> - Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some - emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that in - about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of - profanity. - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this - enterprise.” - </p> - <p> - “You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man. - </p> - <p> - “You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and - purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.” - </p> - <p> - “We shall take our gold, my friend!” - </p> - <p> - “Rights or no rights?” - </p> - <p> - “You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty - overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned, - and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world. - </p> - <p> - “You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are - concerned, have you?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - “Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular by - the court and the United States.” - </p> - <p> - “But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?” - </p> - <p> - “There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to - have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on - board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters - where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat you - in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and - you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.” - </p> - <p> - I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this affair, - I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in their - insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their plain - intent was to intimidate us. - </p> - <p> - “What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly. - </p> - <p> - “Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going to - get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you haven’t. - I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary if you act - sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.” - </p> - <p> - There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they - thought they had the upper hand on us! - </p> - <p> - I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of much - gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs in a - man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the men who - would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success to the best - man! - </p> - <p> - I looked at that fellow—at his white hands and his flabbiness—a - man who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had - given me his code. I told him as much. - </p> - <p> - “And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on. - </p> - <p> - I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. I - showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the shirt - from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh. - </p> - <p> - “You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All - right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re - welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!” - </p> - <p> - I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they - began to hunt the <i>Zizania</i> over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom - said to them after they had finished. - </p> - <p> - “Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my <i>Zizania</i> - that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want to - remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat and - cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men who can - fight—and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a ball - through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.” - </p> - <p> - They went silently and grudgingly—but they went. I enjoyed the - expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out on - the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a little - distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of war that - started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the holding-ground. - </p> - <p> - A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking men - were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The spokesman - shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in threats. In order - to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at all interested in - their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on them, and after a - time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned to the tug. - </p> - <p> - They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly - stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But - the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and my - conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had - established the code. - </p> - <p> - Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely - stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged to - be allowed to come on board. - </p> - <p> - Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had - resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment and - admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her curls, - her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty. - </p> - <p> - She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonished <i>me</i>. - She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak. - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes how - this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I have - watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I know. - There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to get angry - in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep from being - angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?” - </p> - <p> - They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about - being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk. - </p> - <p> - “May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother you—I - won’t move unless you start to quarrel—and then I’ll only remind you - that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them started - the grins on their faces. The ice was broken. - </p> - <p> - Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to the - conference. - </p> - <p> - We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and - realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down. It - had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I felt - that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the thing. - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you - would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody seemed - ready to say anything for a moment and I went on. “I reckon he told, you - that he was our partner and that we have cheated him.” - </p> - <p> - “He had quite a story to tell when he reported the matter to the - underwriters,” admitted the lawyer. - </p> - <p> - “After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat - Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame - you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what - else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are here - with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t need - to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy on to - the <i>Zizania</i>, even though he poisons the air. What I have to say - I’ll say in his hearing.” - </p> - <p> - I’m pretty sure that Keedy did not relish making that call, but the men - who went after him brought him. He had a gambler’s face and nerve and he - put on his best front; he even disregarded Miss Kama’s presence and - lighted a cigar to appear more at ease, and I plucked it from between his - jaws and flung it out of the window. - </p> - <p> - “I want the floor for only a few moments, gentlemen,” - </p> - <p> - I told the group. “I’m going to tell you how this expedition was - organized, how this person Keedy fitted in; and what happened.” And I did - tell them. - </p> - <p> - It was necessary for the lawyer to appoint Capt. Rask Holstrom as special - guard to keep Keedy’s mouth shut while I talked, but the rules of a - court-room prevailed after that. - </p> - <p> - “I’ll admit, gentlemen,” I said when I had finished my little story, “that - we have acted like children so far as the legal side of this thing goes. - But it seemed only a crazy scheme at best when we started out—I - couldn’t feel that I was dealing with any reality. After we arrived here - we did the best we could, and we have been too busy to study up law. But I - want to say that Captain Holstrom and I are not thieves by nature. I’ll - show you a thief, however. There he stands!” I pointed to Keedy. “He stole - from us a box of bullion worth twenty thousand dollars. I know that he - recovered two more boxes. Now that you are proposing to handle this matter - man-fashion, Captain Holstrom and I stand ready to give to owners what is - fairly their own. I advise you to ask Keedy what he proposes to do!” The - lawyer asked him in mighty prompt fashion. - </p> - <p> - “Up to date nobody seems to be making any showdown except in talk,” said - Mr. Keedy. “I’ll cash in conversation just as far as anybody.” - </p> - <p> - “But how does it happen, Keedy, that when you gave us your other - information you did not say that you had any of the gold in your hands?” - asked the lawyer. - </p> - <p> - He scowled and did not answer. - </p> - <p> - “If these men turn their bullion over on a square lay, are you prepared to - do the same?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll talk business after I have seen them turn it over.” - </p> - <p> - “That’s a rather queer attitude for you to take, Keedy, after your talk to - the underwriters and to me.” - </p> - <p> - But the renegade did not show any inclination to come across with anything - definite. - </p> - <p> - I knew well enough that he could not. His try with those divers had cost - high and it was safe to presume that he had realized on every ounce of the - bullion his men had recovered and had planted the money. My rancor was - deep and I walked up to him and declared my belief. - </p> - <p> - “You understand, Keedy, that you must produce the bullion or its value in - money or our bargain doesn’t stand,” said the lawyer. - </p> - <p> - I did not need that declaration to be assured that the villain had sold us - without regard to our rights or our safety. And sudden fervor and - determination thrilled through and through me. I proposed to show those - men from San Francisco the difference between Marcena Keedy and the - partners on whom he had pasted his dirty label. Mere talk was not as - convincing proof as I desired. I had already made an investment of my best - strength and all my courage and I had much to show. But I felt that if - those men could see with their own eyes what that investment signified in - the way of human endurance, they would meet me in more generous spirit - when we came to make our bargain. - </p> - <p> - Up to then the legal papers had only been waved under my nose in - threatening manner. I asked permission to examine them, and the lawyer was - very obliging. They were all-embracing, even to granting powers of - attorney to the underwriters’ agents to handle the matter in all its - aspects. - </p> - <p> - “Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m going down after the rest of that gold, and - every box will be put into your hands as it comes up.” - </p> - <p> - I got a glimpse at the girl’s face, but I did not dare to look into her - eyes. Her cheeks were white, and she was gasping protests which nobody - heeded, for those men were listening to something which filled their ears - just then: - </p> - <p> - “And after you see how I am bucking hell for your sakes, well, then we - shall see what you have to say to me—man to man!” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XXXVII—THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>F what I have just - written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of melodrama, I have - produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game and I was using all - the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I have said, I proposed - to operate on human nature. After all, I was in no position to demand - anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we were making in regard to - the treasure we had recovered and concealed. I had a healthy fear of what - the courts might do to us in a case where stolen property had been hidden. - It was up to me to cultivate a spirit of generosity in them—and that - was why I went down again, though every nerve and fiber in my racked body - made protest. But I went down under better conditions. - </p> - <p> - The tug had powerful pumps and a considerable quantity of good hose. She - was manageable in shoal water, and by means of her hawsers and well-set - kedges we were able to swing her in, for the day’s work, fairly close to - the wreck. - </p> - <p> - There is no need of further dwelling on details—and it would be - necessary to supply the details by somebody’s word of mouth—somebody - who watched me, for I don’t remember much of what happened. I was a - lunatic, I suppose; my human machinery was operated by a single mania. As - I look back I am unable to separate the nightmare from the reality with - any amount of clarity. Therefore, we’ll allow all that to hang in limbo, - seeing that this is a plain yam and not a study of psychology. - </p> - <p> - However, I can remember flashes through the dark curtain, and of a few of - these I will make mention, for they have a bearing on the tale. - </p> - <p> - There was a period when I was in the mood for babbling. I could feel my - dry tongue clacking away inside my jaws like a clapper in a wooden box and - wholly beyond my control. That tongue was telling all my story about my - love and longing and ambition in my boyhood days—telling the story - to somebody who patted my cheek and crooned sympathy—somebody who - did not annoy me by dispute when I said that I would never live to see - Levant again—somebody who promised to carry there the three rings - and tell my story and fulfil my requests. It was a dream full of agony for - me—rather it may be called a dreaming reality. I wanted to stop that - clacking tongue. I wasn’t operating it. It was telling a lot of truth - which I did not want published. It was putting me in wrong, I felt, just - as if some enemy were tattling about me. It was mine and I hated it - furiously for what seemed to be betrayal of me. I wasn’t standing for what - the tongue said. - </p> - <p> - Then there was a period when I forgave the tongue many of its past - offenses, because, at last, it did good service for me in man-talk to men. - It was steady and convincing and I was conscious that it had helped me to - win in some big matter. Then, later, there was a time when there were - shots and shoutings and dismal trouble of some sort. And, last of all, in - the blurred imaginings, mixed with the real, came the long-drawn-out, - misty, groping, wondering consciousness that I was out of strife and - trouble and agony. But I could not come out of the shadow—I knew - that many days and nights came and went while I was trying to grasp - something which I could know was reality. - </p> - <p> - I was dreaming that I was back in my old room in Dodovah Vose’s tavern, - and that dream seemed to last for days. Then all at once I woke up and I - was truly in that room. - </p> - <p> - By the open window sat Capt. Rask Holstrom and he was junking up a Red - Astrachan apple with his jackknife. He poised a cube of the fruit on the - tip of the blade; looked me square in the eyes, and asked, in a - matter-of-fact way, if I was feeling more like myself that day. - </p> - <p> - There was no doubt about my being in Dodovah Vose’s tavern! I made sure - before I opened my mouth. There was the old quaint smell of the place, and - I could always trust my nose. For my ears there was the whining squeak of - the windmill pump in the stable-yard. I touched the irregular seams of the - silk crazy-quilt, and, to delight my eyes, the brass handles of the - ancient high-boy in the corner blinked back the radiance of the afternoon - sunlight. All my senses were satisfied, for I could almost taste, as the - breeze flicked my lips, the savor of fried chicken which came floating in - through the window. And after my senses told me what they did, I felt at - ease and dismissed all the shadows and imaginings. Never did a man come - back to his right balance of mind in more commonplace fashion. - </p> - <p> - I decided to be just as matter-of-fact as Captain Rask. I told him I felt - pretty fair. Parts of my hands were bandaged and I was aware that my feet - were tied up. - </p> - <p> - “Have another apple?” - </p> - <p> - So I had been eating apples from Dodovah Vose’s orchard! I used to steal - from his trees—especially the early-autumn fruit. I must have been - giving the impression that I was pretty nigh all right, even though the - kink in my brain had kept me on the side-track so far as I was concerned, - personally. - </p> - <p> - The captain junked an apple into quarters, pared them, and gave me the - fruit. I think Eve tempted Adam with a Red Astrachan! - </p> - <p> - The captain sat and rocked and munched. Confound his old pelt, why didn’t - he start in and tell me what had happened? - </p> - <p> - He clacked his knife shut after a time and yawned. - </p> - <p> - “So, as I was telling you before you had your nap, Kama and I may as well - move on. There isn’t much more that’s sensible we can do for you.” I - wondered just what they <i>had</i> done! - </p> - <p> - “Where is Kama?” I called her “Kama” quite naturally; it seemed to me that - my clattering tongue had been that familiar for a long time. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I guess she’s just resting up a little in her room. She is bound to - be nursing you most of the time, though you don’t need so much attention, - so far as I can see. Do you know, Ross, in spite of what you and I were - saying to each other yesterday, that girl o’ mine still insists that your - mind isn’t right, and that you’re off the hooks. She says there’s - something that hasn’t come back to you!” - </p> - <p> - God bless that girl’s intuition! I felt the tears coming into my eyes. - </p> - <p> - “Women folks are always seeing something a man can’t see—because it - isn’t there for him to see!” declared the captain. “I have made her keep - her mouth shut best I could! Nice thing it would be to have it go out in - business circles that you’re a lunatic. That old hippohampus uncle of - yours would try to get himself appointed your guardian. He makes believe - to be a great friend of yours, I know, when he calls, but I reckon he’s - only hiding that old grudge that Vose has told me about. <i>There’s</i> - your friend, Ross—Vose! He’s the old boy to tie to!” I was getting - considerable information from Capt. Rask Hol-strom without weakening his - confidence in my sanity. - </p> - <p> - “And then, outside of Vose, it has really been a good thing for you to get - back here near your girl,” pursued the captain. “Now you take Kama on that - point! I say women folks have too much imagination. When you told me you - wanted the Kingsley girl to stay away from you till you was fit to look - at, why, then you was showing hard, ordinary common sense. In spite of all - that Kama or anybody else said about her coming in here, I done just what - you asked me to do—for I believe in men standing by each other. But, - as I have told you, Kama was bound to have it that a screw was loose - because you didn’t want your girl first thing! And Kama has been bound and - determined to hang on here till she is sure you’re all right with your - girl. But I can’t see that your girl is in any great pucker about you! She - hasn’t showed up!” The sweat started out on me. Into what sort of a tangle - had my affairs been drawn? - </p> - <p> - “But I’ve got a good girl, even if she is flighty in her thoughts—as - I suppose girls’ nature is about this lovey-dove business. I used to sit - and hear you talk to her on the <i>Zizania</i> about those three rings and - that girl back in Levant—all mush, mush right in the middle of that - wind-up job—and, I swear, if I didn’t think you were crazy then, - though she wouldn’t have it that way! Said you were all right. Kama and I - never did seem to agree very well on much of anything. After the - settlement with the underwriters, when you were right as a trivet and - wanted to stay on the Coast, then she insisted that you were out of your - head—as I don’t mind telling you noe when we’re going—and she - fairly picked you up and lugged you back here. You were too sick to help - yourself, you know! Made me help her do it! For you and your girl, said - she! I ain’t sure but what you <i>was</i> a little delirious there at - times. But being here with Vose has done you good. However, I like West - the best. So as I say, I reckon Kama and I will pack up and start back. - Furthermore, you know, I’m summonsed for that trial.” I merely stared at - the old gossiper. - </p> - <p> - “I don’t want to be too hard on those critters,” he said, musingly. “There - was a big temptation and Marcena Keedy knew how to stir ’em up. - When he lolloped that word ‘gold’ around in his mouth he always made me - drool.” - </p> - <p> - Didn’t I remember, also? Only too well! - </p> - <p> - “No, I’m going to use some discretion in my testimony,” - </p> - <p> - Captain Rask chatted on. “I have been running over in my mind what - happened. Now, if you’re a mind to, let me kind of rehearse it over to you - so that you can check up my memory. I’ll hate to have any law-sharks - tangle me on the stand. If I make a slip catch me up on it.” - </p> - <p> - I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in my - heart. - </p> - <p> - He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened to—wonderful - because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my fortune; - wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the first time - was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising narrative - without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew the - happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order to - collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared and - munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did not - dare to prod him. - </p> - <p> - I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In this - yarn I have been telling what I do know—not what I have heard from - another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of the <i>Golden - Gate</i> treasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the jettisoned - gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had been secretly - organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody battle which had - been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful guards. Keedy would - not fight—he had prodded the other poor devils to do that—and - the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when the <i>Zizania</i> - was on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom. So, there’s - enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself! - </p> - <p> - And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another apple - I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I had in the - world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly fearful as a - straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank credits and is afraid - to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving one’s self away becomes - terror pretty vital! - </p> - <p> - “However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about - their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife - blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the stand - that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the faithful - ones—especially <i>you</i>, for you could give out a better line of - talk—when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters - and added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even - the Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone - to board with him. Clear consciences—that’s what we’ve got, Ross!” - </p> - <p> - But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred - thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally must - be plenty more where that came from! - </p> - <p> - “Do all the folks here—do the people in Levant know how well we’re - fixed?” I faltered. - </p> - <p> - “Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose - anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing - time.” - </p> - <p> - So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was! - </p> - <p> - And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out of - the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have - spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question. - </p> - <p> - I don’t know just how wild I looked while I sat there, but I know I felt - wild. Then Kama Holstrom came into the room. - </p> - <p> - I was conscious that my features were not obeying my volition. I had not - been able to make that clacking tongue of mine behave; now my face was - just as disobedient. I wanted with all my heart to beam gratitude and joy - on her, but I seemed to be trying to manage a stiff mask. If she had - turned and escaped in sheer fright I would not have blamed her. - </p> - <p> - I entirely mistook the expression on her face when she stood there and - stared at me. Her eyes were wide with what appeared to be terror. Her lips - parted and her cheeks grew pale. Then she ran to the side of the bed, - plumped down on her knees, set both her little hands about one of mine and - cried, “Thank the good God! You have come back—you have come back!” - </p> - <p> - And that’s how a woman knows. - </p> - <p> - The balm of her tears bathed my hand when she put her forehead down and - hid her face. It was not white any longer—the warm color flooded it - and I ought to have been content for a time with what I could bring in the - compass of my gaze. But I wanted to have a blessing from her eyes, and - when I struggled to lift her face she suddenly released my hand and - hurried to the window and sat down. - </p> - <p> - “I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself that way,” she panted. “But when I - saw your eyes I knew you had come back—and it has been so long—and - the others haven’t understood!” - </p> - <p> - “When I came to myself, just now, Kama, your father was here and I didn’t - confess to him. What I know now and what you have known all along we must - keep to ourselves.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes! Nobody has believed what I was so sure of!” - </p> - <p> - We sat there in silence for a long time. - </p> - <p> - “Do you remember?” she asked, almost whispering the question. - </p> - <p> - “Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and - now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.” - </p> - <p> - I was the first to break another silence: - </p> - <p> - “I know from what he said how faithful and self-sacrificing—” - </p> - <p> - “You force me to remind you how much we owe to you, sir. It makes me very - uncomfortable. It’s twitting me of a debt which father and I can never - pay. Please don’t!” - </p> - <p> - So there was conversation closed on that point; I did not feel like making - Kama Holstrom uncomfortable. - </p> - <p> - “It’s all coming about just as it should. It will be all right from now - on,” she said, after a time. - </p> - <p> - She had recovered all her usual serenity; she was the girl of the <i>Zizania</i>, - cool and distant. I was irritated by her manner. That aloofness was not a - square deal between folks who had been through what we had suffered - together. It seemed to me that I was not being treated right—first - that matter-of-fact manner of Captain Rask and now this coolness on the - daughter’s part. Her first greeting had given me an appetite for more of - the same sort. Of course, I didn’t expect to be welcomed back from the - shadows with a brass band and speeches—but some kind of hankering or - dissatisfaction was gnawing inside me and I felt ugly and cross and - childish. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t intended to go too far in anything, sir. But I have been so - anxious to help all I could—forgive me, but father and I do owe you - so much! Don’t scowl so! I’ll not mention debts again. I hope you won’t - think I was too eager—and that I meddled. But I went to her! I did - not want her to misunderstand! It was due you and due myself—and - her. So I have explained everything. I have told her the story. It will - come about all right—just as you hope—I am sure! I did not - intend to stay here—but I have been worrying about—But now you - can speak for yourself!” - </p> - <p> - She rattled it off so fast I couldn’t get in a word. She looked relieved - when she had finished—as if she had been carrying around something - very disagreeable and had handed it over to somebody for keeps. And I was - obliged to wait quite a while before I dared to trust myself to reply to - her. What she had handed to me seemed to be about as gratifying as if she - had dropped a sea-crab down the back of my neck and then sat back and - expected me to give her three cheers. - </p> - <p> - “Look-a-here!” I yapped. “Where did you get the notion that I wanted you - or anybody else to act as my attorney over there?” I jerked my thumb in - the direction of the Kingsley house. - </p> - <p> - “But your head was not right—I knew it,” she stammered. “I was - afraid there would be a misunderstanding—and after what you made me - promise on the <i>Zizania</i>—” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you know that I was as crazy as a coot?” - </p> - <p> - “But I knew that deep down in your heart you must love her.” - </p> - <p> - “A crazy man doesn’t tell the truth.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, he does when he is revealing his real soul.” - </p> - <p> - “I wasn’t revealing any soul. I was babbling away—and I knew I was - talking fool talk and I couldn’t stop my tongue. I didn’t mean that guff. - And now you have got this thing all tangled up by talking to Celene - Kingsley. I can do my own love-making!” That temper of mine was working in - fine shape. And Kama Holstrom was no wilting daisy in temperament! - </p> - <p> - “From what I know of you myself, and what <i>others</i>—I call no - names—have said, you are about as well qualified in that direction - as a catfish.” She jumped up and stamped her foot. - </p> - <p> - “But I know now what love—” - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Sidney, you have just insulted me because I tried to be your friend. - And your <i>sweetheart</i>,” she sneered, “has no better manners than you! - She has not even thanked me for bringing you to her! I do not understand! - I shall go to her at once and tell her that you are in your right senses - at last. After this you handle your own love affairs. Don’t you mention - the word ‘love’ to me again!” She marched out and banged the door so - violently behind her that all the brass handles on the old high-boy were - left jingling shrilly—as if the high-boy had gone into a spasm of - giggles over my comeuppance! - </p> - <p> - In a few minutes the kindly face of Dodovah Vose appeared at the door, his - eyes full of solicitude. - </p> - <p> - “Fall out of bed?” he inquired. - </p> - <p> - “No, out of heaven,” I snapped. He came in and shut the door and showed - anxiety. - </p> - <p> - “See here, son, you seem to have a turn for the worse all of a sudden. - You’ve been gaining fine. But your eyes look crazy to-day. And what you - just said—” - </p> - <p> - Say, I came nigh bawling out Dodovah Vose, right then! Nobody seemed to - know anything about my case except Kama Holstrom—and she knew too - blamed much! I rolled myself out of bed and stood on my feet. - </p> - <p> - “My Lawd!” gasped my old friend, “you mustn’t do that. It’s against her - orders. You’re sartain out of your head!” - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred - knuckles against it—and the pain in the knuckles made me all the - uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed and fussed over any longer. I have - been nursed too much already. They’re even nursing my own private business—and - making it sicker all the time. From now on I’m going to tend to my own - affairs. Mr. Vose, help me get these bandages off my feet!” - </p> - <p> - He stood back and flapped his hands and protested. I knew he felt that I - had become a lunatic, and so I convinced him by walking up and giving him - a good, sane stare. - </p> - <p> - “Do you think I’m going to stay in bed the rest of my life—a man who - has so much to live for as I have?” - </p> - <p> - “That’s right—a man who is wuth—” - </p> - <p> - At last somebody was going to post me on my financial status—satisfy - my wild eagerness to find out! And I stopped him. - </p> - <p> - “Shut up,” I fairly barked. “I don’t want to be reminded of that every - five minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Vose. But get my clothes.” - </p> - <p> - I had made up my mind that only one voice in all the world should tell me - what my sacrifice had wrung from the Pacific for my own self! Silly - notion, eh? No matter. I felt that a certain pair of lips would bless the - information when it passed them. - </p> - <p> - A half-hour later I was dressed after a fashion. I walked down-stairs, or - it may be better to say that I scuffed and skated down, for I could not - squeeze my feet into shoes and was provided with a pair of Dodovah Vose’s - slippers—carpet affairs with a hectic rose on each instep. - </p> - <p> - I found Captain Holstrom on the porch with my uncle Deck; their chairs - were tipped back and they were confabbing in most amiable fashion. My - uncle grinned at me, and I floundered for words because I wasn’t sure what - I had said to him prior to my awakening or just what our diplomatic - relations were. His grin encouraged me. - </p> - <p> - “Damn it,” he ejaculated, “I’ve said right along it was best for you to be - up and around. But Cap’s girl would have it t’other way. Feel all right, - sonny?” - </p> - <p> - “I’ll feel better, Uncle Deck, if I’m sure that you and I will never have - any more misunderstandings. As we have said—” - </p> - <p> - I stopped there and waited, figuring that I had left about the right kind - of an opening to find out what we <i>had</i> said. My uncle arose and - clapped my shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Sonny, I tell you again, now when you stand man-fashion in front of me, - that the night when I took my first trick at sitting up with you we fixed - it all! For I found out how you felt, underneath, about <i>him!</i> And - about the whole proposition!” He nudged me. “I’m taking my comfort these - days watching him. No more liberty than old Potter Crabtree’s - clay-grinding hoss—around and around in an everlasting circle. I - hope he’ll live long enough to pay his debts—that means a - considerable stretch of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t trig his wheel for - all the world!” - </p> - <p> - That was how it stood, eh? And I let it stand, for I wasn’t just sure what - my private sentiments were in regard to Judge Kingsley at that time. - Furthermore, I had some very special business of my own on my mind. I - turned to Captain Rask. - </p> - <p> - “Where is Kama?” - </p> - <p> - “Reckon she’s over saying good-by to your girl.” - </p> - <p> - My uncle stared at me—I must have been telling him things when he - sat up with me. - </p> - <p> - Saying good-by! Then she probably had told her father that she was ready - to go away. I started across the village square, sliding along in my huge - slippers like a man walking on snow-shoes. I banged the big knocker on the - front door of Judge Kingsley’s mansion and the maid admitted me. I was not - bashful that day—I walked right into the sitting-room. - </p> - <p> - If I am any judge of expressions I did not interrupt any amiable and - confidential tête-à-tête. The two girls rose and, after a few moments of - constraint, Celene Kingsley asked me to be seated. I told her that I - preferred to stand; I reckon that I wasn’t sure that I <i>could</i> sit - down; the stiffness of the whole situation made me feel as if I did not - have any joints. - </p> - <p> - “I have finished my errand,” declared Kama. The red was in her cheeks and - there was no encouragement for me in her eyes. “I will say, Mr. Sidney, - that I have apologized to Miss Kingsley for meddling in matters between - you two. I thought I understood and I have tried to help. I deserve - exactly what I have received! I assure you both that I will keep out of - the way after this.” She started for the door, but I was standing where I - could block her. I supplemented my interference by an appeal to the lady - of the mansion. - </p> - <p> - “Will you ask Miss Holstrom to remain for a moment?” I entreated. And Miss - Holstrom did remain, biting her lower lip with impatience. - </p> - <p> - “I haven’t had much time for thinking on what to say,” I confessed. “I - don’t know how to talk to ladies very well, anyway.” - </p> - <p> - My face was flaming—I could hardly control my voice—I felt - sure that I was committing a dreadful sin in point of etiquette and all - that—but once more I was playing a big game in my life—bigger, - even, for the sake of my happiness than when I offered to go down after - the remainder of the treasure of the <i>Golden Gate</i>. I was operating - again on human nature—and that nature was in the complex little - personality of Kama Holstrom who pressed impatiently at my elbow, frowning - at me. I knew with all my heart and soul that unless she stood in the - presence of Celene Kingsley and myself—as she then stood—and - heard the truth about my boyhood folly, my cause was lost; because the - pride of a girl makes the way of a man with a maid a mighty doubtful - proposition. - </p> - <p> - “May I hope that you have found out that I am not the scoundrel you - believed me to be?” - </p> - <p> - “I know the truth now. My father is wiser! I am trying to find words—” - </p> - <p> - She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me, - and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me - with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression—but, good heavens, - there wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was - like when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon! - </p> - <p> - As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in - affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not come - into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more illusions - as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! Never had she - given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me had been plainly - inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that piece of brazen - idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had been careful to - keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been doing some swift and - coherent thinking on my way from the tavern. - </p> - <p> - In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real - thing out of a dream—and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a - pitiful object as I stood there between them—I deserved punishment - at the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s - name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise. - </p> - <p> - I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a spark - of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s daughter; I - knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion one pours - forth to the true mate. - </p> - <p> - Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad - seeking release from the old love before taking on the new. - </p> - <p> - Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I - understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster. - </p> - <p> - So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of - humanity as there were in Levant that day. - </p> - <p> - “I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I - blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks. - </p> - <p> - It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she was - cooler than the other two in the party. - </p> - <p> - She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t you understand, dear?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” faltered the poor girl. - </p> - <p> - “I hoped you could understand without obliging me to speak. I hoped you - would guess when I refused to discuss certain matters with you—I - made you angry, and I’m sorry.” - </p> - <p> - “I know I meddled—” - </p> - <p> - “My dear, I understood you all the time! I understood my old school - friend, too!” She reached out her hand and drew me close to Kama. “He has - been very noble in his help in a great trial in my family, dear! I owe my - happiness to him. And I’m speaking out, rather boldly—rather - bluntly, because I want to help him in obtaining his great happiness. I - know what must happen to make him happy.” She put Kama’s hand in mine. - “Now, my dear, do not force me to disparage one of the best young men I - have ever known by telling you that I never dreamed of him as a husband—nor - was I anything else to him except a school-day fancy, a—” - </p> - <p> - “An inspiration to set me on the way to make something of myself,” I - insisted. - </p> - <p> - “And now—say it, Ross Sidney, or you’re a coward—say it, and - let me hear it! She deserves it!” - </p> - <p> - “I have found out that real love differs from boyhood fancies—and I—I—want - to—” - </p> - <p> - She gently pushed us toward the door while I was stammering. - </p> - <p> - “You want to tell a dear girl the sweetest story in the world, Ross - Sidney! My blessing on you both. Good night!” - </p> - <p> - We did not speak to each other for some time after we were out of doors - together. I took her arm in gentle manner and led her steps away from the - tavern. We could see its lights in the early dusk, and I wanted to keep - away from lights for a time. - </p> - <p> - I was glad the autumn dusk had settled—a sliver of new moon was a - comforting sight for a lover. - </p> - <p> - “I guess neither of us knows very well how to talk about love, Kama,” I - told her, hobbling along beside her as best I could. The judge’s orchard - was shaded by the evening’s gloom, and when I turned down there she did - not resist. - </p> - <p> - “I’m sure I’m mighty awkward about making love,” I went on, “but God knows - I want to learn how.” - </p> - <p> - “Why do you think I can do any better as a tutor in love than as an - attorney?” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “Because I’ll be such a willing pupil, dear.” - </p> - <p> - “I heard you inform Miss Kingsley with a great deal of earnestness just - now that you have found out what real love is like.” She couldn’t keep all - the naughty teasing from her tone, though her voice trembled. “Who is the - fortunate one?” - </p> - <p> - Then I caught her to me, and with her warm cheek close to mine and her - lips near and never denying caresses, I told her and I convinced her. - </p> - <p> - “I think,” she admitted, after a long time and after many words there in - the blessed shadows, “that you are entitled to your diploma, Ross. You are - showing me that you know more than your tutor. But is there a woman who is - not jealous when she is in love? Here!” She pressed into my hand a little - packet; it contained the three rings. I drew her along to the cleft tree. - I dropped them into the hollow. - </p> - <p> - “One for fancy, one for folly, one for the freakish dreams of boyhood!” I - told her. “All buried! Come back to the tavern, precious girl! I want you - to tell Dodovah Vose how to decorate the parlor for the wedding!” - </p> - <p> - She reached on tiptoe and plucked two apples from the old tree. She gave - one to me. - </p> - <p> - “An apple of gold from the only woman in the world,” I said. - </p> - <p> - “Don’t say ‘gold’ to me, Ross! Don’t! A boy of your age with half a - million safe in the bank—” - </p> - <p> - There was my news at last! I kissed the lips which told me! - </p> - <p> - Then, eating the sweet fruit of our new knowledge of life and of each - other, we went on our way up through the whispering trees toward the - welcoming, glowing windows of the old tavern. - </p> - <h3> - THE END - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Your Treasure Is, by Holman Day - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS *** - -***** This file should be named 55360-h.htm or 55360-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/3/6/55360/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where Your Treasure Is, by Holman Day
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Where Your Treasure Is
- Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver
-
-Author: Holman Day
-
-Release Date: August 15, 2017 [EBook #55360]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS ***
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-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
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-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS
- </h1>
- <h3>
- Being the Personal Narrative of Ross Sidney, Diver
- </h3>
- <h2>
- By Holman Day
- </h2>
- <h4>
- New York And London: Harper Brothers
- </h4>
- <h3>
- 1917
- </h3>
- <p>
- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
- </p>
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- <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
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- </h5>
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- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
- </p>
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- <img src="images/0010.jpg" alt="0010 " width="100%" /><br />
- </div>
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- <a href="images/0010.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
- </h5>
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- <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
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- </h5>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I—BEING THE STRUGGLE OF AN AMATEUR AUTHOR
- TO GET A FAIR START </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II—ENDING WITH A MEETING ON PURGATORY HILL
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III—ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV—THE TRAINING OF THE QUEEN OF “SHEBY”
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V—SHOOING AWAY A SCAPEGOAT </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI—HAVING TO DO WITH JODREY VOSE’s MAKING
- OP A DIVER </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLUG-HAT| </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII—“TAKING IT OUT” ON A SUIT OF CLOTHES
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX—A GRISLY GAME OF BOWLS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X—THE ART OF PUTTING ON A FRONT </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI—THE FAILURE OF AN UNCLE-TAMER </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII—STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII—THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIV—THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN
- BUSINESS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XV—A TIP FROM MR. DAWLIN </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVI—GRABBING A HUSBAND AND FATHER </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVII—MONEY HAS LEGS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVIII—THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ROYAL CITY
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XIX—THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XX—ACROSS CALLAS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXI—THE SKIRMISH-LINE </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXII—MONEY ON THE GALLOP </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIII—THE CLEAN-UP </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXIV—HOW SWEET IS THE HOME-COMING, EH?
- </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXV—GRATITUDE! </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVI—CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL. </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVII—MR. BEASON HORNS IN </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXVIII—SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXIX—THE TELLTALE RIBS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXX—THE LOCKS OF THE SAND </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXI—A TASTE OF BLOOD </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXII—PER MISTER MONKEY </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIII—THE HEART OF THE MILLIONS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXIV—AMONG THIEVES </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXV—SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVI—THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> XXXVII—THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
- </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS
- </h1>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I—BEING THE STRUGGLE OF AN AMATEUR AUTHOR TO GET A FAIR START
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>PEAKING of money—and
- it’s a mighty popular topic—the investment of the first twenty-five
- cents I ever earned, all at a crack, ought to have directed my feet, my
- thoughts, and my future along the straight and narrow way. Ten minutes
- after I had galloped gleefully home with that quarter-dollar from Judge
- Kingsley’s hay-field, my good mother led me down to Old Maid Branscombe’s
- little book-store and obliged me to buy a catechism.
- </p>
- <p>
- I earned that money by hauling a drag-rake for a whole day around behind a
- hay-cart, barefoot and kicking against the vicious stubbles of the shaven
- field. I honestly felt that I did not deserve the extra penance of the
- catechism. However, that first day’s work gave me my earliest respect for
- money—earned money. And I also remember that Judge Kingsley, when he
- paid me, sniffed and said I hadn’t done enough to earn twenty-five cents.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hated to walk up to him and ask for my pay, because Celene Kingsley was
- within hearing; she had come down to the field to fetch him home in her
- pony-chaise. That’s right! You’ve guessed it! I’ll waste no words. It was
- only another of the old familiar cases. Barefooted, folks poor, keeping my
- face toward her, as a sunflower fronts the sun (though the sunflower has
- other reasons than hiding patches), I was in the shamed, secret, hopeless,
- heartaching agonies of a fifteen-year-old passion. Of course, I don’t mean
- that I had loved her for all that time—I’m giving my age and hers.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, I hated to walk up. And the judge gave me the quarter only because he
- did not have any smaller change.
- </p>
- <p>
- And really, for the times, it was considerable of a coin for a single
- juvenile job.
- </p>
- <p>
- The services of youngsters in those days in Levant were paid for on a
- narrower scale—ten cents for lawns and a nickel for shoveling snow,
- and so on. And tin-peddlers were mighty stingy in their dickerings for old
- rubbers and junk. To get rags one had to steal ’em—our folks
- made rugs and guarded old remnants carefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- So much for my first financial adventure of real moment—for the
- biggest coin I had ever clutched; and right now I lay down my pen for a
- moment and spread out two human paws which have juggled three million
- dollars’ worth of gold ingots as carelessly as one scruffles jackstraws.
- That was maverick treasure. But there’s a big difference between earned
- money and maverick money. If you don’t know what maverick means I’ll save
- you the trouble of looking the word up in the dictionary. Once on a time,
- in Texas, old Sam Maverick wouldn’t brand his cattle. Therefore, a
- maverick was a cow or steer unbranded. And to-day it means any kind of
- property at large which a bold man or a dishonest man may grab if he can
- beat other thieves to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had an early taste of maverick money, and the taste was so sweet that I
- never have lost my hankering for more.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the fall of that “year of the catechism” the line gale blew down the
- chimney which had stood after the old Pratt house was burned. I was there
- before the dust settled, for all the boys knew that there were
- wrought-iron clamps high up in the bricks. But I left the clamps to the
- next comers and picked up a dented tin box, rusty and dusty and
- soot-blackened; I shook it; it rattled and I ran away into the woods. When
- I had knocked the box open and looked in and spied coins I had the
- heart-thrilling conviction that money worries were over for me in this
- life. My first thought was that I would marry Celene Kingsley and settle
- down and live happy ever after. If there had been in the box what I
- thought at first there was, I could wipe my pen and close my story.
- </p>
- <p>
- I dove both hands into the box and brought them up brimming—coins
- scattering and clattering back over my trembling fingers. They were big
- coins—and I had read much about the days of the bold pirates.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pieces of eight!” I whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- But they were not. When I had winked the mist out of my eyes I found that
- they were old-fashioned coppers—bung-downs they used to be called.
- Mixed in with them were a few copper tokens, a Pine Tree shilling, a
- sprinkling of Speed The Plow cents, and the only coin of any account at
- all was a Mexican dollar with a hole in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- It wasn’t in my nature to bury that treasure. I knew it was pretty
- worthless junk, but I had a hankering to carry it about with me, to feel
- its drag in my pockets, to reach in and chink it when no one could hear. I
- walked around weighted with it as afterward I have been weighted with the
- leaden chunks of my diver’s dress. As early as that in my life I found
- that money was a burden as well as a vexation. I didn’t dare to frisk and
- frolic with the boys at school; I was not exploiting my new wealth; I had
- grounds for caution because there were plenty of Pratts left in Levant. At
- home I moved about so quietly that my folks thought, I reckon, that I was
- entering an early decline. My mother used to look at my tongue quite often
- and made me drink hardhack tea.
- </p>
- <p>
- But there is one impulse in the male animal which is not easily controlled
- by prudence; it’s that cursed itch to make a show in front of the female
- of the species—in front of the special one, the selected one, the
- beloved one. Some sort of a jimcrack-peddler came into the school-yard one
- noon, and Celene Kingsley, daughter of a plutocrat, tendered a big, shiny
- silver dollar and the man could not change it for her. I walked up,
- trembling with both pride and panic, and said, trying my best to act the
- part of a matter-of-fact bank on two legs, “Let me handle it for you!” It
- was the first time I had ever spoken to her, and my voice was only a weak
- squawk.
- </p>
- <p>
- When she turned to me and opened her big, blue eyes, I was nigh to running
- away.
- </p>
- <p>
- The boys and girls came crowding around, and I couldn’t blame them for
- showing interest; the sight of a Levant Sidney with money on him was a new
- one in town.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had separated from the coppers the aristocrats of my hoard, the Pine
- Tree shilling and the Mexican dollar, by wrapping them in a wisp of paper.
- I brought them out first.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know exactly what they are worth in real money,” I told her. “But
- you can have ’em at half price.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had been considerably surprised before, but now she was plain
- dumfounded. That system of changing a dollar was brand new.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I dredged a trousers pocket and produced a handful of the bung-down
- coppers. I began to count them down on a corner of the school-house steps.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Somebody get a wheelbarrow,” advised one of the boys. “That’s the only
- way she’ll ever tug-a-lug her change home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Really, you needn’t bother,” she said, stammering a little. “No, don’t
- trouble yourself. I have changed my mind about buying anything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They all laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That isn’t money,” said the jimcrack man. “I’d never take that stuff for
- my goods.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A girl ran up and grabbed into the coppers I had been, heaping on the
- stone. She was a Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ross Sidney, you stole that money,” she squealed. “It was in my granny’s
- notion-box. We couldn’t find it after she died. You stole it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t steal it—I found it,” I told her. But all the courage had
- gone out of me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ain’t the first thief to lie about your stealings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I did find it—I found it after the chimney blew down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You knew it was ours. You didn’t bring it to us—that’s stealing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It might have been put there before—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was my granny’s money. Don’t you suppose I know? She saved old
- coppers.” She spread down her handkerchief and began to pile the coins
- upon it.
- </p>
- <p>
- There did not seem to be any room for argument. In my shame I fell to
- wondering how I had ever convinced myself that this money was
- treasure-trove. I dug down and gave her the rest of it. Instead of proudly
- showing myself a person of means before Celene Kingsley I was. barely
- escaping the suspicion of being a thief.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If it belongs to the Pratts you’re welcome to it,” I said. “I don’t want
- anything which belongs to somebody else.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better remember as much the next time you find money,” snapped the
- Pratt girl. “Your conscience will be easier when you die.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They say that dying men live over their lives in a. flash—that’s so!
- When I was dying in black darkness, five fathoms deep under the waters of
- the Pacific, with a bar of gold in either hand, I remembered what that
- Pratt girl said to me that day in the glory of the autumn sunshine, my
- face as red as a frost-touched leaf; it was the day of my bitterest
- humiliation; I slunk off without daring to look at Celene Kingsley.
- </p>
- <p>
- I think I know what my main mistake was in my first attempts at writing
- this tale; I tried to tell the story as if it had happened to somebody
- else and the thing was stiffer than a mud-caked tug-line and squealed like
- a rusty windlass. Of course, I hate to be saying “I” here, there, and
- everywhere—but there’ll come a place in my tale—you’ll think
- of it if ever you get as far as that—where there’d be nothing to the
- story unless you could see with my eyes and feel with my hands. So, bear
- with me and I’ll reel off the yarn as best I know how, making no apologies
- after this confession.
- </p>
- <p>
- Oh, about that first maverick money I ran afoul of! I never saw that money
- again, of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I did happen to meet Ben Pratt right in front of Judge Kingsley’s
- house. I’ll not say how big Ben Pratt was, because you’ll think this is
- only a bragging story. He called me a thief and I decided it was about
- time to show Levant that the name was not a popular one with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I licked him:
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley rushed out with a horsewhip and lashed us apart just as I
- was finishing Ben up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Young Sidney, you’re a cheeky, tough, brazen character,” said the judge.
- I did not answer him.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is my nature to take a big lot from all women, considerable from some
- men, and devilish little from most men. I had nothing at all to say to
- Celene Kingsley’s father, even though I was rubbing half a dozen swelling
- welts where his whip had connected with the back of my neck.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You come of a tough family,” stated the judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- Right then my uncle Deck arrived at the party; he had been watching the
- thing from the tavern porch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s that you say about our family?” he asked the judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t care to stand here and quarrel with you, Decker Sidney.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When you horsewhip my dead brother’s boy in the main street you’ll come
- pretty nigh to having a quarrel with me, seeing that his own father can’t
- protect him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I merely came out here and stopped a fight which was disgracing our
- village.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s a nice thing for one of the ‘forty thieves’ to talk about disgracing
- a village,” said my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- As young as I was I knew what was meant when folks called Judge Kinglsey
- one of the forty thieves. He belonged to the syndicate that had grabbed
- the State’s principal railroad away from the original shareholders; there
- was political shenanigan and a good deal of foreclosure trickery. I never
- understood the details, but the fact remained that the syndicate got the
- railroad.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A cheap slur from a cheap man,” said the judge, walking away.
- </p>
- <p>
- I can’t say that I resented that remark very deeply, though I suppose
- family loyalty should have prompted me to do so. I never in my life came
- close to my uncle Deck when he did not have the smell of liquor on his
- breath: On each side of his nose there was a patch of perfectly lurid
- crimson. He was a horse-trader and he made considerable money.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That slur of <i>yours</i> is a high-priced one,” my uncle shouted. “I
- have my eye on you, you old hypocrite. There’ll come a day when that slur
- will cost you more than you can afford to pay. That’s how high-priced it
- is, Judge Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t know what my uncle meant then.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a wicked time for me when I did find out, a long while afterward.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II—ENDING WITH A MEETING ON PURGATORY HILL
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>Y mother was a
- good woman—a thrifty, kindly, helpful woman, a good neighbor, in
- spite of her poverty.
- </p>
- <p>
- My short temper, my cheeky disposition, my generally ready impulse to grab
- in on short notice, all belong to the Sidney side, I guess. All we know of
- the family has come down by word of mouth, and I suspect that the first
- rovers who came over in the old days when New England was really new were
- pretty tough characters who had plenty of original nerve to start with and
- then developed more as occasion required. Well, some of that sort had to
- come on ahead and smooth things with the ax and crowbar—yes, and
- with the musket, so that the country could get a good running start.
- </p>
- <p>
- My mother was a good neighbor, I repeat. Up in the attic, hanging in dried
- bunches from the beams, were spearmint, thoroughwort, hardback, mullein,
- pennyroyal, and other pasture herbs which she sent me forth to gather. Her
- thoroughwort syrup was guaranteed to cure any case of whooping-cough—and
- she gave freely to all who came to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- My father was a helpful sort of a man in his own way. He used to volunteer
- as boss of all the barn-raising bees in our section—but his enemies,
- made up of a considerable army of the men whom he had licked in his life,
- said, behind his back, that the only reason he had for helping at a
- barn-raising was to show off by running the ridgepole first of all the
- crew, and then to start the regular free fight. He fell off a ridge-pole
- one day and my mother was widowed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I take it that her chief ambition in life was to tame the Sidney
- disposition in me—that earnest desire explaining my involuntary
- investment in the catechism. My mother’s axioms and teachings would have
- made excellent addenda and foot-notes for any catechism. Always did she
- counsel me to count ten before speaking angry word or performing angry
- act; I don’t remember that I ever did as she told me, though the Lord
- Himself knows how much I have suffered in my life on account of that lack
- of self-restraint. Two days after I bought the catechism my good mother
- thought it was having its effect on my nature. She saw a boy heave a rock
- at me in our door-yard and I stood perfectly motionless and speechless.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right, my own son! Count your ten!” she called to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- But just at that moment a bumblebee was crawling around over my bare foot
- and I was in no mind to disturb him. Therefore, my enemy was enabled to
- collect a full supply of rock ammunition and to defy and rout me when at
- last I was free from the restraint of the bumblebee. It would have been
- the same if I had waited to count ten. Somehow, as the world is
- constituted, I have never taken much stock in this watchful-waiting game
- while your enemy is hustling to pile up his ammunition and you know he is
- doing so. I may be wrong. Maybe this story of mine will show that I’m
- wrong. But I hear you say, let’s get on to the story!
- </p>
- <p>
- I mean to do so at once; but if I have paused to pull the curtain aside
- from my family and my character a bit you may be able to understand some
- parts of the story a mite better, because, in spite of that catechism, in
- spite of mother-influence, and perhaps mother-goodness deep down in me, I
- have butted into adventures which you will not find set down in the
- volumes of any well-conducted Sunday-school library.
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t have my mother long, after my fifteenth birthday.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was her sole heir; five minutes before she closed her eyes she gave me
- all her little fortune—to wit, the sweetest smile good mother ever
- left to bless memory of her, a pat on my hand, a few whispered words in my
- ear.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then Uncle Deck took me in hand to make a man of me, so he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- He wasn’t all bad—don’t understand me as saying that. He would pass
- a sleepless night if he failed to cheat a man in a horse trade, but he
- would sell his shirt before he would allow any old folks in our town to go
- onto the poor-farm. He would sneak around with wood and groceries after
- dark, that big, red face of his like a harvest moon, and when they would
- start to thank him he would curse the miserable old creatures so horribly
- that my blood used to run cold. He prided himself on language which, so he
- said, “would break up a Sunday-school picnic if a little bird sat overhead
- and twittered it out of a tree.” He saved his choicest profanity for his
- comments on Judge Zebulon Kingsley. His hatred went far back. I don’t know
- what started it. Perhaps it began in the natural antipathy such a man as
- Uncle Deck would entertain for a cold, proud, punctilious, professedly
- religious man like the judge. Uncle Deck would have it that the judge was
- a hypocrite, a thief at heart, and my uncle’s constant boast was that some
- day he would show the judge up; but all that vaporing seemed to be silly
- spite, without foundation. Judge Kingsley was our rich man; he had been
- judge of probate, and after retiring from that office he was trusted with
- funds as a sort of private banker; folks whose estates he had handled as
- judge just naturally insisted on his keeping control; and he had been town
- treasurer of Levant for years.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hated to hear my uncle rave on about such a man; it was as irritating as
- the barking of a cur.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have said that my uncle was a horse-trader. Rather, he was a general
- country dickerer, if you know the kind. He dealt in everything from a
- sheet of fly-paper to a clap of thunder. He had car-loads of horses sent
- to him from the West and peddled those to farmers, taking cash or bills of
- sale or produce or second-hand furniture or anything else which he could
- turn in a trade. He set me to peddling and collecting, and it was a mean
- job. At first I used to believe everything which debtors or sellers would
- tell me, and the result was that Uncle Deck bawled me out most dreadfully;
- and thus being abused by both parties, I got so at last that I believed
- nobody.
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore I was in a fair way to be made just the sort of man Uncle Deck
- desired me to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- And continually, after I was sufficiently hardened, he impressed on me
- that I mustn’t be bothering him all the time, asking this and that about
- running the business. I must act for myself and then report to him when he
- called for an accounting. You shall see how his trying to make a man of me
- in this fashion turned me into ways which neither he nor I could have
- forecast. Don’t tell me that the activities of this life are very much a
- matter of individual election, after all. To be sure, a man might elect to
- live a hermit and might get away with the job in good shape; but if a
- person throws himself into the ruck of the living, into the running of
- humanity, he’ll be apt to find himself leaping from crag to crag because
- he has been shooed or jarred.
- </p>
- <p>
- I ran up against one Juvenal Bird, newly come to town from the rural
- fastnesses of Vienna plantation—plantation meaning an unorganized
- township. I had never heard of Mr. Bird, and when he came within range of
- my vision I rather wondered because I had not; he seemed to be a person of
- some importance. To be sure, his frock suit was rusty and his plug-hat was
- fuzzy, but the garb was distinctive.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Bird was in search of furniture and I showed him our second-hand
- stock; he ordered liberally and largely—especially largely. He took
- the biggest stove, the largest bedsteads, the most expansive tables, and
- bureaus of breadth. That plug-hat impressed me. When he told me to send
- the goods out to his house on the Tumble-dick Road, and to call for the
- pay at my convenience, I did not presume to ask for an advance instalment,
- after our usual custom.
- </p>
- <p>
- I promptly found out that this was one affair of business with which I
- should have bothered my busy uncle, who knew all the cheats of the
- section.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Bird was one of the most notable cheats. His raiment was garb
- discarded by an up-country parson, who pitied Mr. Bird after the latter
- had been evicted from timber-lands as a dangerous squatter, careless of
- fire. Mr. Bird installed the furniture in a shack which he had hired, then
- acted as his own carpenter and narrowed all the doors and the windows. I
- went out after the money and learned that the law provides for the
- replevin of furniture, but does not allow a house to be mutilated in order
- to remove the furniture. Mr. Bird grinned at me through a cracked window
- and thumbed his nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I reported to my uncle he told me to go and get it. I refrain from
- quoting the words in which he voiced that command.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the law says—” I ventured.
- </p>
- <p>
- Again I suppress details. My uncle Deck’s opinion of the law would lack
- authority.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, being a Sidney, and resenting Mr. Bird’s betrayal of my
- innocence, and needing a home and a job, I accepted my uncle’s opinion of
- the law for the time being. I collected a gang of my boy intimates. We
- went in the night and ripped the stuffing out of Mr. Bird’s nest.
- </p>
- <p>
- There’s a queer kind of senseless and secret gratification in doing a mob
- job. The human animal has a lot of primeval instincts which need tickling
- once in a while. I reckon we boys gratified the wolf streak on that
- occasion, running in a pack in the night-time.
- </p>
- <p>
- We enjoyed it so much that we held a meeting a night or so later and
- organized ourselves as the “Skokums.” I can’t remember how we happened to
- light on that name. I was chosen as leader.
- </p>
- <p>
- That first sortie was a great success—Mr. Bird was not in a position
- to prosecute. We had had a wonderful night, had defied the law, and had
- escaped punishment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley was the only man in town who proclaimed indignation loudly
- and openly. He expressed himself before a crowd in the post-office and
- declared that hoodlums had disgraced the town of Levant. He looked
- straight at me and said he would give a reward of ten dollars for evidence
- on which the ringleader could be convicted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I would give one thousand dollars to pay for law to set him free,”
- said my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some day the plug-uglies will be rooted out of this place—and good
- riddance to ’em,” snarled the judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The snout that goes rooting into that business will get twisted off’n the
- face of the rooter,” retorted my uncle. He was never very choice in his
- language. How those crimson patches on his face did glow and how his eyes
- sparkled!
- </p>
- <p>
- So, it will be seen, I was not getting on at all with my love-affair.
- </p>
- <p>
- It is pretty presumptuous in me to refer to it as a love-affair. That
- would intimate—calling it that—a bit of reciprocation on the
- part of Celene Kingsley. But she never showed any visible interest in me,
- even to looking my way when she met me on the street. I would have liked
- to attract her attention, for at last I wore shoes and had clothes without
- patches on them.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Skokums flourished under cover of the night.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was Oramandel Bangs. He was rather simple, and always carried his
- mouth open, and nobody in Levant ever forgot that once a hornet flew in
- and stung his tongue and it swelled and stuck out of his mouth for days
- like the end of a bologna sausage.
- </p>
- <p>
- Oramandel had a sneaking suspicion that witchcraft had never been wholly
- stamped out by his forefathers in New England.
- </p>
- <p>
- We decided to convince him that he was right—there’s nothing like
- clinching a man’s faith in the good judgment of his ancestors.
- </p>
- <p>
- We hoisted one of his calves into an apple-tree. He “unwitched” the animal
- by cutting off its ears and tail before taking it down from the tree.
- </p>
- <p>
- We tied cords to his ox-chains and hid ourselves and slashed the chains
- about the dooryard; he ran to the neighbors and reported that the witches
- had changed his chains into big snakes. We did a lot more things, and then
- imagination began to do the rest for him. He said the witches wouldn’t
- allow him to do his farm-work, even though he had sumac-wood splinters in
- all his tools and stuck shears around his chum to make the butter come.
- Before we realized what mischief a lively imagination can do to a man,
- they were obliged to carry the old chap away to the asylum for the insane.
- </p>
- <p>
- And again Judge Kingsley held forth in the post-office. I guess he did a
- lot of talking at home, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- At any rate, Celene Kingsley was mighty well posted, so I discovered.
- </p>
- <p>
- I met her on Purgatory Hill one day—and never did that name seem to
- apply so well! I had been out on my uncle’s business, and among other
- plunder in the beach-wagon were two shotes in a crate, and they certainly
- were taking on about leaving home and mother.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was alone in her pony-chaise and the shaggy little brute she drove was
- frightened—and I didn’t blame him. I pulled as far into the gutter
- as I could and waited; I poked the butt of my whip into the crate and
- prodded those shotes, but that only made them screech the louder.
- </p>
- <p>
- So she came leading her pony past me. I didn’t expect that she would stop
- and speak to me, but she did. I nearly fell off my seat. And she called me
- “Mr. Sidney.” It was the first time anybody had ever given me a handle to
- my name. I had pulled my hat off when I saw her coming; when she spoke to
- me I put it back on again and then took it off so that I could show her
- that I knew a little something about manners. However, I wasn’t at all
- sure just what I was doing; my head was in a whirl, and I was damning
- those pigs in my heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thank you, Mr. Sidney,” she said. “Pedro acts like a fool sometimes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Two hours afterward, I guess it was, I thought of just the right reply to
- that remark; as it was, I didn’t say anything to her. I couldn’t.
- </p>
- <p>
- She started on and then stopped and looked at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps she guessed something—I don’t know. Girls can act as if they
- never notice anything and still they have an eye out all the time; and
- what they don’t see they know by instinct. At any rate, there was a lot of
- kindness in her face, and perhaps there was pity in her thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m afraid I am very bold, Mr. Sidney. I hope you’ll forgive me for
- speaking to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She hesitated. Right there was another beautiful chance for me to say the
- good thing which came to me that night after I was in bed. All I could do
- at the time was duck my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d hate to have any of the boys who went to school with me get into
- trouble on account of their thoughtlessness. I’m sure it’s only
- thoughtlessness and skylarking. But older folks, you know, don’t
- understand and cannot sympathize with young folks. Now you won’t tell
- anybody that I told you something, will you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Just think of it! A secret between Celene Kingsley and myself!
- </p>
- <p>
- I gulped and shook my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Won’t you tell the boys—you’ll know just how to pass the word—that
- folks are talking of having a detective to watch the village nights?” She
- probably saw that I was incapable of uttering a sound and she went on,
- hurrying her words. “Mr. Sidney, of course you understand that I am not
- picking you out as the ringleader. That’s not why I am asking you to pass
- the word. But I know you are popular among the boys. They all speak so
- well of you! And I was so sorry when I heard that your dear mother had
- passed on. I wanted to write a bit of a note, but they are very strict at
- the boarding-school—we are not allowed to write to young gentlemen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Think of two shotes, squalling their heads off, furnishing accompaniment
- to that! But I’ll say this of the shotes, they had spirit enough to use
- their voices—I was dumb.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be terrible to have anybody arrested here in Levant for boyish
- pranks—it’s all thoughtlessness, I’m sure. You and I ought to be
- able to straighten everything out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Enough said!” I shouted.
- </p>
- <p>
- She flinched. Then I realized just how I must have sounded, for she said,
- “I didn’t mean to make you angry!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t blame her for mistaking my looks; I was so mad at myself that I
- wanted to lash my back with my own whip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no, no! It isn’t the way you seem to think it is! I want to say that
- after this—after what you have said to me—if there’s any more
- cutting-up in this village I’ll-strip the pelt off the chap who does the
- job.” I beat my hand on my breast. “It’s the proudest day of my life when
- I can take orders from you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I haven’t given orders, Mr. Sidney.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have. They’re orders to me. The littlest thing you can wish for is
- orders to me. If you said for me to cut my hand off I’d do it. Oh, you
- don’t know! I have—I don’t know how to say it—but for years—oh,
- I’m crazy—” And I was. It was lunacy provoked by the passion of love
- trying to outvoice those devilish shotes.
- </p>
- <p>
- By the funny look she gave me she was taking me at my word. She hurried to
- step into her little chaise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All I mean is this,” I quavered. “I’ll make ’em quit. You look to
- me. I’ll be responsible. Don’t you worry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure everything will be all right after this,” she told me. “I’ll
- depend on you, and I thank you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went on her way, and the burden I had assumed seemed lighter than
- feathers and more precious than golden ingots.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had given me her confidence—she had asked me for a service!
- </p>
- <p>
- She had thought of me and my trouble when she was away at school!
- </p>
- <p>
- A few minutes before I had not dreamed that she was conscious that such a
- person as Ross Sidney walked the earth.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now, at all events, my poor self was in a little corner of her thoughts.
- She was looking to me for help in something which she had made her own
- concern.
- </p>
- <p>
- I rode down Purgatory Hill, hugging my joy and cursing those shotes.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III—ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> TRUST you have
- noted, by this time, that my yarn is not a mere chronicle of disconnected
- incidents. Linked circumstances seemed to be tying me up. One happening
- had pushed me on to another and I had allowed myself to be pushed. It
- might be urged, of course, that I had no business in inciting a mob to
- play hob with Mr. Bird—but I had my own interests to consider, and I
- had been listening to my uncle’s teachings on the subject of looking out
- for number one.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know what happened to your father when he went to running his legs
- off on somebody else’s business,” he told me. “If it hadn’t been for me
- helping him in his other scrapes, your mother would have been playing
- hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel oftener than she
- did. I hope you’ve got an ambition to be somebody and to have something.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did have, but you may be sure I did not tell my uncle that my principal
- hankering to get money was so that I might lay it at the feet of Zebulon
- Kingsley’s daughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now, by the expressed wish of that daughter, I started out to control
- happenings and to set myself in new ways.
- </p>
- <p>
- I passed the word to the Skokums, keeping my promise to Celene.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was obliged to be indefinite, for I was guarding that little secret
- between her and myself as my most precious treasure.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I remember it, I put it to the gang this way: “We ought to behave
- ourselves and protect the good name of the town.” They laughed at me and
- asked me if I had joined Judge Kingsley’s Sunday-school class.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew they didn’t suspect the truth, nevertheless that dig nearly put me
- out of countenance on account of the secret I was cherishing. I blushed
- and stammered and I lost my grip then and there as a leader—and it
- was the same old story—it was on account of a girl. A girl does
- rattle the gear of man-business!
- </p>
- <p>
- One of the fellows remarked that I was getting almighty pious after I had
- used them to clean up my own dirty job. He said the most of them had
- matters of their own which needed attention, and wanted to know if I
- proposed to sneak out on them after all the help they had given me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told them that I had thought the thing over carefully and had decided
- that what we had done to Mr. Bird was not right or lawful and we’d better
- make no more mistakes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then perhaps you want us to correct that mistake and make up a bee and
- carry the furniture back to the old cuss,” suggested one of the Sortwell
- boys.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I failed to welcome that notion they turned on me in good earnest,
- and in my own heart I had to admit, looking on the surface of the thing,
- that they had good reason for thinking that I was both selfish and
- ungrateful.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the Sixth Reader, at school, I had found the story of Frankenstein’s
- monster. I saw that in organizing the Skokums I had built a lively little
- monster of my own.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have a special and a private reason for asking you to quit and be good,
- boys,” I told them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A member who keeps his private and special reasons to himself and doesn’t
- trust the rest of us isn’t much of a help in time of trouble,” said Ben
- Pratt. “I have never taken a whole lot of stock in you, Ross Sidney, and
- now I take less than ever before.”
- </p>
- <p>
- From remarks which were dropped I gathered that the rest of them held
- similar sentiments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’re going to have a detective in here,” I told them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who said so?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But that was Celene Kingsley’s secret.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had hoped that the threat might scare them. It had just the opposite
- effect; the boys of Levant had never seen a detective, but they had read
- every five-cent thriller on the subject. To be the object of a real
- detective’s attention seemed like glorious adventure—and they were
- sure that they were, when on their own prowling-grounds, match for any
- sleuth who ever dodged behind trees.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I had stood up before her and had beaten fist upon my breast and had
- assured her that she could trust all to me. What sort of a knight was I to
- wear lady’s favor and then fail to do and dare in her behalf?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had hoped that you knew me better and that I stood higher with you
- fellows,” I said. “I’ll admit that you did a big job for me, and I am
- grateful. But you all had your fun out of it, for you have said so, over
- and over. You’ll have to admit something, yourselves; you’ll have to own
- up that we are ashamed of what we did to poor old Bangs. If you keep on
- you’ll do other things to be ashamed of. I’m advising you to stop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We don’t want your advice,” said Ben.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you’ll get something from me which you’ll like a blamed sight less
- than advice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Plainly they were hungry for information.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’ll that be?” asked one of the Sortwell boys.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Try on any more of your doodle-busting in this town and you’ll find out,”
- I said. Then I left them and went home.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some bright chap has made a simile about having as much privacy as a
- goldfish. At any rate, by leading an open life, one may be in a position
- to prove an alibi.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took to spending my evenings in the bar-room of the Levant Tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was by no means such a roystering sort of a life as it sounds to be.
- They used to sell liquor in the tavern in the old stage-coaching days,
- when the place was a post station; the little catty-cornered bar is there
- in the big room, its worn wood shiny from the dragging of rough fists and
- from many scrubbings; behind is the cupboard, with wavy glass set in
- diamond-shaped panes. But the cupboard was bare in my boyhood days and the
- shelves were dusty. Dodovah Vose, the landlord, was a teetotaler and
- believed in impressing that principle on others.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have seen what liquor will do and undo,” he said when he used to get on
- to the subject. “In my young days, when the West Injy trade flourished and
- rum held its place without blushing, I have set in meeting and seen the
- parson soop a sip of rum-and-water between the firstly and secondly, and
- so on. It may have improved him and the sermon—I’m not arguing. But
- do you think that liquor would ever have improved my brother Jodrey and
- made him the best deep-sea diver on the Atlantic coast, as he is to-day?
- No, gents! Where a man needs the strength of his arms, the full power of
- his ten fingers, the quickness of his brain, and the help of his lungs and
- a good heart—then he’d better let liquor alone. That’s what my
- brother says and he has been deeper underwater than any other man—and
- you can look around you and see some of the queer and wonderful things he
- has brought up for the peerusal of mankind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old foreroom was really a storehouse of curious pickings and gleanings
- which had been sent up-country, from time to time, by the diver brother.
- It had been one of my earliest haunts, for I had always hit it off nicely
- with Dodovah Vose. I did not lark about the room or molest the curios, as
- other boys in the village sometimes did.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the contrary, I always surveyed them with respect and interest; the awe
- I felt when I first laid eyes on them never left me, entirely. I have not
- been able to determine, exactly, whether my boyhood study of those objects
- inspired the hankering I developed, the burning desire to go down into the
- depths of the sea some day, or whether the queer things merely catered to
- my natural instinct in the matter. At any rate, I touched them reverently
- and I asked many questions of Landlord Vose and he told me hair-raising
- stories which, he said, his brother had told him. I remember that when I
- was so young I was still wearing a plaid kilt, I got down on all-fours and
- stuck my leg in the air at his request; he called it “playing circus,” and
- gave me a penny. He said I was a smart boy and allowed that a smart boy
- might grow up and be made a diver by Jodrey Vose. So there was an idea put
- into my head at an early age. And Dodovah Vose used to call me “Lobster
- Sidney”—a truly deep-water nickname! He had a rather droll idea of a
- joke—it was to prompt youngsters to go and make fools of themselves.
- My folks gave me the middle name of Webster. In order to plague the new
- schoolma’am, Dodovah Vose told me to insist on the first day of school
- that my name was Ross Webster Lobster Sidney—and I did, even though
- the boys in the school laughed themselves sick. Mr. Vose praised me
- because I had obeyed orders, and gave me a conch-shell on which, by the
- aid of three finger-stops, one could play more or less of a tune. He had
- already given to me a shell which whispered in my ear the everlasting
- murmuring of the great ocean I had never seen.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a big fountain-shell from somewhere in the West Indies, and it
- fairly boomed, deep in its spirals, when I held it to my ear; I sensed all
- the vastness and the mystery and the solemnity of the ocean depths. The
- more I listened the better acquainted I seemed to be with a wonderful
- stranger far away at the other end of a wire.
- </p>
- <p>
- It really seemed like a call to bigger things, and my job with my uncle
- was getting less and less to my taste. If there’s any such thing as the
- angels looking down on earth over the parapets of heaven in their hours
- off duty, some of the things my uncle would do in horse trades, in order
- to get back at other cheaters, must have grieved the judicious in the
- upper spheres.
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can look back now and see how my
- lashings to the life in Levant were in the way of severance, one by one.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found no comfort in the lull of Skokum activities; I reckoned that the
- boys were reorganizing and getting ready for a really big slam. I felt as
- a timid girl must, feel in a thunder-shower when the thing is right
- overhead and there’s an extra wait between claps.
- </p>
- <p>
- I continued to visit the tavern evenings and I came, into closer intimacy
- with Dodovah Vose. He brought, out old letters written by his brother and
- read them to me. In one Jodrey Vose described his venture on the sunken
- British frigate <i>Triton</i> somewhere off the coast, of Nova Scotia. She
- was bringing pay to the Hessian troops in the American colonies, so old
- reports had it. Jodrey Vose was more of a diver than a writer and his,
- letter had no frills. He informed his brother, who had invested modestly
- in the gamble at Jodrey’s suggestion, that the thing was a failure, though
- the frigate had been located by dragging and Jodrey himself had gone down
- and explored her where she had lain for more than a century.
- </p>
- <p>
- Diver Vose stated bluntly that he believed, from what; he saw down there,
- that the <i>Triton</i> had been scuttled or blown up by certain of her
- officers, who secured her treasure, escaped to the main in small boats and
- reported her loss in a storm; tradition has it that there was always
- considerable doubt about that storm. Also, tradition has it that those
- officers settled in America and lived happily ever after. Diver Vose tried
- to help pay expenses by raising the cannon. But though they seemed sound
- enough under the sea, they crumbled into lumpy masses after they were
- exposed to the air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I never begrudged the money I put in,” Dodovah Vose told me. “I got
- my curiosity scratched where it had been itching for a good many years,
- ever since Jodrey and I first began to talk about the <i>Triton</i>. And I
- helped my brother get something off his mind. He wouldn’t have died easy
- if he hadn’t made sure about that treasure. I stand ready to invest in
- another scheme of his if he ever gets ready to tackle it. That’s to go
- down and dig in the bottom of the river Tiber, providing he can fix it
- with the town officers of Rome. As near as we can find out from history,
- Jodrey and I, when the Romans wasn’t throwing their treasures into the
- river to keep ’em away from one another in their civil wars, the
- barbarians were up to the same game, because they didn’t enjoy art. And,
- of course, there’s always the treasure of the <i>Golden Gate!</i> That’s
- in modern times.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But it was not in times sufficiently modern so that I knew anything about
- it, as my blank stare showed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She caught fire on her way from San Francisco to the Isthmus and was run
- ashore with three or four million dollars’ worth of gold ingots in her.
- That’s fact! But Jodrey says there’s been so much blasted lying done since
- by owners, underwriters, divers, claimers, and others, that nobody knows
- for sure just what has become of the treasure. That’s another of his
- hankerings—to find out!”
- </p>
- <p>
- More and more did I feel the spirit of adventure stirring in me!
- </p>
- <p>
- I could not understand why the whereabouts of that great treasure should
- remain in doubt, and so I expressed myself to Mr. Vose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s some sort of a mystery about it—and so far’s my brother is
- concerned he can’t drop regular contracts to go chasing dreams—only
- once in so often. That <i>Triton</i> case made a hearty meal for his
- curiosity—he hasn’t been hungry for high-spiced stuff since.” He
- looked at me with shrewd kindness. “Maybe he’ll let you go on that job
- after he has made a diver out of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt a flush in my cheeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you have been poking a little fun at me all along when you have
- hinted at my being a diver, sir. Do you really believe your brother would
- give me a thought?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He might, if you went to him backed up with a letter from me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have a mind to ask you for that letter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you’ll not get it, my boy! I don’t propose to have your uncle Deck
- come yowling and clawing at me like an old tom-cat because I have coaxed
- his handy-Andy away from him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t like the kind of work he puts me to, Mr. Vose. I have grown up to
- be a man, almost, and I understand better than I did at first.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You understand, for instance, that when you took that cow away from
- Andrew P. Corson last week you left his baby without milk!” He stroked his
- nose and peered at me from under eyelids that were cocked like little
- tents.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There was a bill of sale! He made me go and get the cow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But do you know what your uncle did, after that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He went to Andrew P. Corson and said you acted without orders. He lent
- Corson the money to buy another cow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stammered out something about not understanding that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I do,” said Landlord Vose. “Your uncle Deck wants to get into
- politics in this town—he wants to get into politics far enough so
- that he can do something to Judge Kingsley. He reckons you don’t need any
- popularity. He is starting you out with considerable of a handicap if you
- mean to live and prosper in your own town. However, I won’t do anything to
- encourage you to leave! I’ve got to keep on living in the town—alongside
- your uncle Deck!”
- </p>
- <p>
- A flash of family loyalty prompted me to assert that my uncle was good to
- the poor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That he is,” said Dodovah Vose. “He is a queer man, your uncle is. But I
- don’t want to make a pauper of myself in order to curry favor with him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It came to me that I’d better have a talk with my uncle, and I started
- out, crossing the village square on my way home.
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once something landed heavily and violently on my shoulders, and
- the attack was so sudden that I was borne to the ground with such a crack
- of my forehead on the hard earth that I became unconscious, but not until
- I had felt claws of some sort tearing at my cheeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I came to my senses I was back in the tavern foreroom and Dodovah
- Vose was swabbing my face with a sponge wet in warm water. In a corner of
- the room Constable Nute and two helpers were hog-tying old Bennie Holt,
- the village fool.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ain’t a dove of peace no longer—I ain’t a rooster no longer,” he
- was squalling. “I’m a bald-headed eagle! They told me I’m an eagle. I
- allus knowed I was some kind of a fowl. They lied to me when they said I
- was a dove of peace. I’m an eagle. See what I’ve done! I’ve mallywhacked
- him. He made fun of me when I was a dove. Others made fun of me—but
- now they’d better look out. I’m an eagle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Whatever the old idiot had been or thought he had been, he was then
- plainly a raving maniac. In his struggles he was shedding turkey feathers
- with which he had thatched his coat. As far back as I could remember old
- Bennie Holt, he used to stand in the square with feathers of various sorts
- stuck around his hat, harmlessly indulging his vagary. But never before
- had he raised his hand against any human being.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon that this time you fired a boomerang, young Sidney,” stated the
- constable, reproachfully. “Old Bangs didn’t fly back and hit you, but this
- one has. The village will be glad to hear it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better be careful what you report about me,”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him. “I had nothing whatever to do with old Bennie. Mr. Vose will
- answer for me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We know where to plaster the blame when anything happens in this place,”
- insisted Nute. “Now you’ve sent another one to the bug-house!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It did not seem to be of much use to talk to that raving old man, but I
- tried it. I asked him who had been talking to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My guardeen angels,” he screamed. “They all come to me and told me. They
- was in white and they told me.” I myself had furnished the pillow-case
- cowls to the Skokums out of the second-hand stock in my uncle’s
- storehouse!
- </p>
- <p>
- “There must be some mistake this time, Nute,” said Landlord Vose. “Young
- Sidney has been spending his evenings here in the tavern for quite some
- time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Trying to put up a bluff, that’s all. The one who-torches on a fool can’t
- complain if the fool kicks back. Here’s more expense to the town, boarding
- an insane man at the State hospital. It didn’t cost us anything as long as
- he e’t broken crackers out of the grocery-stores, and slept in the
- livery-stable. I reckon Town-Treasurer Kingsley will say that this ends up
- his patience.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you dare to tell Judge Kingsley that I had anything to do with
- getting old Bennie in this state,” I cried. My face smarted dreadfully,
- for Dodovah Vose-. was putting on some kind of stuff to kill the poison of
- the-, tool’s finger-nails, so he explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t need to tell him; he’ll know it for himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll find out who did do it! I know well enough!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was maddening—this determination on the part of Levant to put me
- in the wrong in all matters of local disturbance. Here was I, victim of
- the resentment of the Skokums because I was trying to obey my promise to
- Celene Kingsley, now in imminent danger of further repute as the
- ringleader of the latest atrocity—even though I was the sole
- sufferer after the devil had been stirred up in the old loafer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You fired him, and the boomerang swung around back and hit you—that’s
- all,” insisted the constable. “His mouth has been full of something you
- have done to him. If it wasn’t you he wouldn’t be talking about you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While Dodovah Vose was finishing with my lacerated face I pondered on what
- he had said about my uncle’s indifference in regard to my popularity in
- town.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I stood up in the tavern foreroom and cursed family and foes and town
- with such lurid invective—my vocabulary and force being so far
- beyond the ordinary capabilities of youth—that even the crazy man
- was shocked into silence. I was ashamed of myself even as I ranted. But
- then, as in after-times, my temper swept me out of myself. I was blind and
- dizzy and there was a roar in my ears like the rush of water. I swung the
- fires of anger about myself as a juggler whirls his flaming torches. I was
- sorry as soon as it was over—I have always been sorry when my frenzy
- has passed.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I bowed my head and walked out of the tavern I heard the constable
- clucking away like an offended old hen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all a matter for the judge to consider—language and all,” he
- declared.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I insist that he is a good boy in his heart,” said Dodovah Vose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can’t be—coming out of that family—and with the general
- reputation he has got since he has worked for his uncle the last four
- years,” insisted the constable. Fine dwelling-place for me—Levant,
- eh?
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle was in bed and asleep when I got to the house—and perhaps
- it was just as well, because I was quickly forgetting my shame and was
- ready for a further squabble; a disposition on my part which has never
- been especially helpful during my life.
- </p>
- <p>
- I made careful and disgusted study of my striped face in the looking-glass
- before I went to bed. In spite of my innocence, there I was, the labeled
- participator in an affray. In this world, as you have probably noticed,
- the man who carries around a blacked eye or a bunged lip never succeeds in
- dissipating the suspicion that he has been in some sort of a disgraceful
- mix-up, in which he was more or less to blame. You may remember how you
- yourself have felt in the case of your friends, even when a sliding rug or
- a closet door has been saddled with the blame. A man with a marked-up
- physog is never at his best as a defendant. I dreaded the next day, for it
- seemed pretty certain that I would have to face Judge Kingsley. But the
- feeling that his daughter might be brought to doubt the sincerity of my
- promises, when she heard the story and beheld my face, kept me awake more
- effectually than did the pain of that ferocious clapperclawing.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV—THE TRAINING OF THE QUEEN OF “SHEBY”
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS awake so long
- in the night I overslept next morning, of course. Breakfast had been
- cleared away by the time I got dressed and was down-stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had made up my mind to have a run-in with my uncle, but I was starting
- with a disadvantage. Coming late to breakfast in that busy household
- amounted almost to a crime, and the look of disgust my aunt Lucretia set
- on my face made my courage drop tail. She was never amiable, and she
- considered me an intruder in the family, as well I knew.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have left your doughnuts and coffee in the but’ry—and your uncle
- wants you in the stable.” She turned her back and went on with what she
- was doing at the stove.
- </p>
- <p>
- I ate the doughnuts on my way to the stable, trying to whip up my rancor.
- I expected to be received with a hoot and a howl, and depended on those
- spurs to start my own temper on the gallop.
- </p>
- <p>
- Uncle Deck was just pushing a bottle back into the oats in the bin. He
- slammed down the cover and wiped his mouth and grinned at me. He was in
- the best of good humor. I was chewing on food his money had bought, and, I
- repeat, he was as pleasant as a basket of chips. In the face of that I
- couldn’t screw a mean word out of myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She sure was some operator with her claws,” he remarked. But he wouldn’t
- listen to my indignant explanation; he plainly had his own business on his
- mind that morning, and it was business which seemed to be affording much
- satisfaction. He gave me a push toward the harness-room, the sanctum where
- he performed most of his deviltry in horse matters.
- </p>
- <p>
- In that harness-room was hitched the worst-looking old pelter of a plug I
- had ever laid eyes on.
- </p>
- <p>
- Uncle Deck put his hands on his hips and swapped looks between myself and
- the horse. He was master of a certain kind of cheap, horse-jockey patter
- which he employed at fairs when he wanted to call a crowd around. He
- struck a pose and “orated.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Having a knowledge of hoss pedigree, relatives, previous condition of
- servitude, religious preferences, and other matters pertaining to, and so
- forth, even going back to the fact that the hoss Bucephalorus, that was
- owned by the late Aleck the Great, cocked his left hind leg when he stood
- in the stall, had a nicked right ear, and a wind-gall puff behind each
- fore shoulder, I want to say that I reckon that never before was there
- gathered, collected, and assembled on four legs every kind of a pimple,
- bump, wheeze, scratch, spavin, horn ail, hock bunch, trick, and
- bobblewhoop, that’s laid down by old Medicombobulus, in his book entitled
- ‘Things a Hoss Can Get Along Without.’ I call this ancient Gothic ruin
- ‘Carpenter Boy,’ sired by Pod Auger, dammed by Hemlock Maid—and, in
- fact, damned by everybody who has ever owned him. Speed is developed in
- him by feeding the celebrated spiral oats, produced by crossing shoe-pegs
- with bed-springs, which in process of being digested uncoil and carry the
- animile in leaps like the mountain-goat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After that outburst I definitely, in my own mind, set forward to some
- future date the matter of an understanding with my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did it ever happen that anybody could unload this on you?” I asked
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because I went out hunting for it, sonny. It was the worst I could do on
- short notice. If it had looked worse and had had more ailments and outs I
- would have paid more for it. Now ask no more questions, but lend a hand to
- what I tell you to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I have no time to go into the details of what my uncle Deck did to that
- equine framework, but if I could describe it all I’d be furnishing
- considerable of a handbook for the uses of tricky horse-swappers. I had
- helped in many similar jobs in that back room of his stable, but I had
- never seen him put so much art and soul into the work before; he seemed to
- have special reasons for his painstaking toil. He chuckled whenever he
- secured a particularly good result; at times he gritted his teeth and
- swore under his breath regarding some party whom he did not name. But I
- gathered that this transformation of a horse was intended as satisfaction
- of one of his bitterest grudges.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had everything to do with in that horse beauty-parlor of his. There
- were ointments and colorings, false hair for mane and tail, skin-patches
- and disguises for puffs and swellings. But still the horse remained gaunt;
- the rafters of his ribs suggested that he needed to be shingled in. To my
- general wonderment as to what my uncle was about, anyway, was now added
- more lively curiosity; how was this living skeleton to be disguised as to
- skinniness? I found out before long. My uncle put on the poor brute a
- bridle with a wicked twist-bit and told me to hold him, no matter how much
- he kicked about.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then Uncle Deck brought out a bit of board into which shoe-pegs had been
- set thickly. He began to clap the pegged board against the horse’s skin. I
- had my work cut out for me after that, I can tell you. The pain must have
- been excruciating, for the bradding-pegs raised blisters. In a little
- while the ribs were hidden by this new and deceptive plumpness. The horse
- took on the appearance of an animal which had been well cared for in the
- food line. And he certainly displayed the spirit of Phoebus’s nigh
- wheel-horse. His nostrils snorted furiously and his eyes flamed. It seemed
- incredible that this animal with flowing mane and tail, with round barrel
- and smooth limbs, was the decrepit old creature I had seen on my arrival
- in the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Lastly, my uncle Deck oiled the horse from stem to stem, smoothing the
- hair into place, and then stood and admired his handiwork.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now let’s see what the needle will do for style and knee action,” he
- said. He gave the horse a jab with the hypodermic—I had seen him do
- that at horse-trots just before the race was started. He hitched a long
- rope into the bridle and led the animal out into the yard. In a few
- moments the horse was prancing and curveting and whickering like a
- blueblood of youth and spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he won’t last this way!” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle turned withering side-glance on me. “Do you think you’re telling
- me something I didn’t know? Of course he won’t last. I don’t want him to
- last. If he would pop like a blown-up paper bag when I got ready to have
- it happen I’d like it all the better. But, as it is, it’ll be bad enough.
- Don’t you know a good name for him out of some of those books you have
- read, son?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But while I was hesitating my uncle dipped in with his usual impatience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have thought of it already! ‘Judge,’ that’s his name. When she hears
- Trufant call him ‘Judge’ the coincidence will catch her interest, likely
- enough. She will prick up her ears!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Right then I pricked up my own ears. I understood mighty sudden. I had
- seen the writing tacked on the notice-board in the post-office the day
- before. Judge Kingsley had let it be known that he was in the market for a
- driving-horse, suitable for use by ladies. I had read it with mingled
- emotions, realizing that Celene Kingsley had grown to girlhood out of
- childhood; no longer a pony-cart for her!
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he’ll never buy a horse from you?” I blurted, staring at my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who won’t?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably he wouldn’t if he thought it came from <i>me</i>. But I’m
- baiting a hook that he’ll swallow or I’m no guesser.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out a
- few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of
- Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night,
- around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a
- hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’ has
- got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on his
- weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh will be
- bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss—there’s no
- doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short
- notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of
- the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will
- stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets out of
- sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse frolicked.
- “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, and peepers!
- Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the bridle, and
- led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll slip you ten
- dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to
- understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and
- pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had
- had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, I’m
- sure of it.
- </p>
- <p>
- But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his home,
- under his thumb.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like
- the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, and
- girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung around
- the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be sure,
- the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But the horse
- was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my thoughts.
- Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag that I had
- helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that some of my
- promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the matter of old
- Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There was such a thing
- as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the situation. But to
- allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little sanctuary where I
- enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme which must ruin forever
- all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, these were sacrifices I
- did not feel called on to undergo. I had my own pride to consider. I no
- longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene Kingsley. What was in me was a
- romantic hope that she would think on me once in a while when I was far,
- far away—remembering that I was her slave in what she asked and that
- I had asked nothing of her.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, to have her memories of me mixed in with thoughts of the
- horse-trading cheat which I had connived at was reflection unendurable.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went to the wood-shed and secured an ax. It occurred to me that when a
- horse had so many bumps on him, one more and a deadly bump on his forehead
- would not attract much attention; furthermore, my uncle seemed to think
- that the animal’s course was nearly run.
- </p>
- <p>
- I faced the brute. His ears were hanging in despondency. His eyes were
- dropping tears; those blisters must have been stinging like the martyr’s
- skin under the shirt of fire. When I looked on that woe all my resolution
- left me. I dropped the ax. There were tears in my own eyes. I felt as if
- he were my brother in common sorrow. So I went to the cellar and fetched
- apples and carrots and fed them into his gratefully slobbering mouth until
- he sighed and spraddled his legs and went to sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- Constable Nute came for me during the day.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There ain’t any subpeny to this, young Sidney,” he informed me. “If you
- feel too guilty to face Judge Kingsley, who is making an informal
- investigation, you needn’t come.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not guilty. I’m not afraid to face the judge.” And I went along.
- There was no one else in his office. He had been calling in persons and
- examining them one by one. I was alone with him after Nute left.
- </p>
- <p>
- I gave in my version of what had happened the night before and declared
- that I had had nothing whatever to do with putting notions into the noddle
- of the village fool.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But as to this society of young vandals which has been disgracing the
- village? Certain members of the gang have confessed to me that you are the
- organizer and the ringleader.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I confess that I <i>was</i> leader at first,” I owned up to him, just
- as manfully as I could. Then I told him about Mr. Bird. “When I realized
- that I was making a mistake I stopped being leader. I have had nothing to
- do with the society since.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had a way of shooting speech out through his pinched nostrils with a
- sort of a jew’s-harp twang. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a good
- looking over.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Becoming an angel overnight by the natural piety of the Sidney
- disposition, eh? Young man, you are lying to me! Now tell me the real
- reason why you quit your devilishness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had no mind to tell him, and I was silent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had another reason, didn’t you? A better reason?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I confessed that I had. But I wouldn’t tell him what it was, even when he
- raised his voice to me and pounded on the table with his fist. If he had
- been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man would
- have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I knew that
- Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself by talking to
- me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can’t tell the truth—you won’t tell the truth—for the
- truth isn’t in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the
- boys who have owned up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew there were sneaks in the crowd—that’s another reason I had
- for getting out, Judge Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If anything else happens in this village we shall know where to place the
- blame.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn’t fair, Judge Kingsley!” I remonstrated. “I’m not getting a square
- deal in this thing. I know that old Nute has been talking to you the way
- he calked to me last night. They are all bound to put the blame on to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know for myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir! You don’t know for yourself. You say I can’t tell the truth!
- I’ll show you that I can, even when it’s to my own hurt—yes, sir, to
- my awful hurt! You have advertised for a horse, haven’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My uncle is going to send around a man dressed in woman’s clothes—this
- very evening—so as to fool you in the dusk with the worst fraud ever
- propped on four legs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That confession didn’t help me a bit and I ought to have had sense enough
- to know it before I opened my mouth. I had made the judge more thoroughly
- angry than ever; I had offended his pride as a shrewd business man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What cock-and-bull yam is this? Do you think I can be fooled by cheap
- horse-jockey tricks? You young fool, what do you mean by insulting me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You just wait till you see the horse,” I retorted. “I helped fix him and
- I didn’t know him, myself, after the job was done. But I don’t want to see
- you gulled, Judge Kingsley. I am following new ways from now on. You know
- my uncle and how I am beholden to him! When I open up to you about him it
- ought to show you that I want to be honest, no matter how much the truth
- is going to harm me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s no decency in this town—not even honor among thieves,”
- snarled the judge. He pointed to the door. “That’s all for now, young
- Sidney! Remember for yourself—and tell others—that the grand
- jury sits in this county within a fortnight! Upon actions from now on
- depends what the county prosecutor will be inclined to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley’s office was a sort of ell affair built out from the side
- of his mansion. When I left it I ducked around to the rear of the house
- and made off down through the orchard, having no relish to show my clawed
- face to the public. I had my day to myself and I did not hurry; I had many
- things to ponder on.
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once I heard the sound of somebody running on the turf behind me. I
- turned and faced Celene. I curved my forearm across my countenance,
- ashamed of my appearance, her own flushed cheeks were so radiantly
- beautiful!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know how it happened. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said,
- graciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They ste’boyed him on to me!” I told her. “I have tried to make ’em
- stop their tricks, just as I promised you. So they did this to put me in
- wrong. Your father is hard on me! I tried to make him understand that I——well,
- I wanted—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I overheard—I couldn’t help overhearing.” Then her cheeks grew
- rosier. “I’ll own up. I listened at the door. I wanted to know. And that’s
- why I came after you. You have kept our little secret and I know you have
- done your best in other ways. So that’s why I’m here. I want to thank you.
- And—I—Well, I think that’s all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It seemed to finish it as far as I was concerned, too; I couldn’t pump a
- word up out of myself. So we stood there and looked up into the trees.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father has been talking to them to-day,” she said, after a time. “Perhaps
- they are warned now and won’t be up to any more mischief. And they ought
- to be sorry for what they have done to you. I think you can have a lot of
- influence over them after this.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know about that. I’m going away from here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That statement astonished her just as much as it astonished me. I had not
- thought of announcing my departure ten seconds before; it had not been in
- my mind that I was going away. But all of a sudden the memory of what I
- had told the judge about the horse popped into my thoughts. Considering
- what would be my uncle’s state of mind after the exposure, I reckon the
- going-away idea followed as naturally as the right answer in a sum of
- addition.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had supposed that your outlook—your position with your uncle—was
- very promising,” she said. “The town needs smart men.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The fact that she had spent one thought upon my condition interested me
- more than the implied compliment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I stay with him I’ll only be a country cheat and horse-dickerer. I
- want to be something else,” I told her. “This very day my uncle is trying
- to put up a job on your father. I have told the judge about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard you. It was another reason why I wanted to speak to you—to
- encourage you in being honest. There’s no need of father bringing you into
- the matter at all. It would only make trouble between your uncle and you.
- I’ll speak to father.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better not, for then you’d be making trouble for yourself. I’d
- rather take all the blame of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We stood and looked at each other for a long time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not a coward,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it will come out about me blabbing—some way it will come out.
- There’s no need of you being in the scrape. I’m going away, and I may as
- well go flying while I’m about it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope—” she said, and that was as far as she got. I know how I was
- feeling inside and perhaps my feelings showed too plainly on that striped
- face of mine. She looked scared and turned and hurried away. I didn’t know
- whether she hoped I’d stay in Levant or hoped I’d do well wherever I might
- roam. I watched her out of sight and she did not turn to look at me. I
- couldn’t exactly figure that out—whether she didn’t want to give me
- a last glance or didn’t dare to.
- </p>
- <p>
- I fingered in my vest pocket while she was running away; when she
- disappeared I pulled out a packet and opened it. There were three rings in
- it. One was a coral ring; I bought it when I was fifteen and paid thirty
- cents for it. I never had the courage to give it to her when we were at
- school. There was a silver ring which I bought a year later when my
- circumstances were a little better—better than my courage. Lastly,
- there was a gold ring which I had secured in a dicker soon after our
- meeting on Purgatory Hill. I am not going to discourse on the fool impulse
- which prompted me to buy those rings and stick them in my vest pocket. Nor
- will I say anything concerning another impulse which made me wrap the
- rings up and drop them into a cleft in the trunk of an apple-tree. If I
- did not dare to give them to her, at least I could leave them on her
- premises. Then I went by back ways to my uncle’s house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before I was out of sight of Judge Kingsley’s mansion I looked behind me
- several times. I didn’t know but I might see a flutter of a handkerchief
- from some window, for a vague and queer kind of hope was still in me. I
- saw no flutter, but I did see a strange man who was strolling along my
- trail. I was too busy with other thoughts to wonder who he might be.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found my uncle admiring the transmogrified horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been whetting the old hellion’s appetite,” he said, and I knew by
- the expression on his face that he was referring to Judge Kingsley. “I
- have had half a dozen fellows from the back districts drive one old skate
- after another into his dooryard, and inside of an hour he’ll have a chance
- to inspect a few more skeletons and bone-piles. By nightfall he’ll be
- hungry for a peek at something which doesn’t look as if it would have to
- be pushed on casters by iron reins. Oh, he’s hungry! He’ll swallow this
- one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- More than ever was I coming to understand into what complicated and
- precious gears I had flung my trig—and what the consequences to me
- were likely to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now come out into the harness-room,” commanded my uncle. “I want you to
- have a look at the Queen of Sheby.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had no
- doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled up about
- him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil partly
- draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like this
- the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a scolding
- woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I
- don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you,
- right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and reach
- into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let me see
- you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased
- quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to
- see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to
- me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not
- going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. He
- kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like the
- judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man dressed
- up like a woman.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said,
- facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that
- will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m a
- good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and hectored
- and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll kill you if you do—I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and
- my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion
- performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you
- old angleworm.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face is
- smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll not turn any such trick,” I said. I was angry in a moment. So was
- he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will if I tell you to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t; and I’ll say further that I don’t think much of this business,
- anyway.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nor I—and that’s two against one,” declared Runnels, the tip of his
- thin nose beginning to glow as if new courage had hung out a banner.
- </p>
- <p>
- Liquor had also given my uncle’s temper an edge of its own; he cuffed
- Runnels until that lamenting “lady’s” hat fell off. I jumped up and ran
- away into the fields, for I knew that Uncle Deck was merely warming up on
- “Squealing John”; as chief mutineer, I was ticketed for the real bout. I
- lurked about in the pine grove till after sunset. Then I stole back into
- the village with all the stealth of a criminal.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V—SHOOING AWAY A SCAPEGOAT
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> RECKON it’s best
- for innocence to go boldly in this world. At any rate, I would have come
- off better that night if I had not lurked and prowled. However, I was only
- obeying very wise dictates of prudence; my uncle had been sufficiently
- savage in the harness-room when rebellion was merely in process of
- hatching. To meet him after Judge Kingsley had exploded the bomb—and
- I was sure that I would be revealed in the matter—would be like
- getting in the path of a Bengal tiger with snap-crackers blistering his
- tail.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wasn’t at all certain what I would do after I found out that I had been
- exposed to my uncle’s fury; first of all, so I felt, it was essential to
- learn what had developed in the horse trade.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I stole in the gloom around behind the buildings of the village and
- retraced my trail up through the judge’s orchard. While I was still some
- distance from the mansion I heard considerable of a hullabaloo above which
- rose the shrill voice of “Squealing John” Runnels, who was issuing
- warnings about “laying a whip on that hoss.” Then there was a racketing
- and a splintering and down past me came an outfit which I recognized. The
- horse was certainly the brute my uncle had doctored into false
- shapeliness; the mane was dangling in shreds where the apple-tree limbs
- had raked. Runnels, his woman’s hat hanging on his back, was kneeling on
- the bottom of the wagon, both hands full of false hair which he had reaped
- from the horse’s tail in effort to check the animal; he had lost the reins
- and they were dragging uselessly on the ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not far from me the wagon was flailed against a tree and Mr. Runnels was
- violently dislodged; but I judged that he was not injured because, after
- rolling over and over on the turf, he rose and ran away with his skirts
- gathered around his waist.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was evident that my uncle’s plot had failed ingloriously.
- </p>
- <p>
- I could understand the flash of fresh spirit in that moribund horse;
- Runnels had shrieked warnings regarding a whip; a lash laid across those
- tingling water-blisters must have made that poor old pelter develop a
- hankering to outfly Pegasus. He disappeared with fragments of the thills
- clattering on his heels.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there were immediate and further developments in that orchard. I
- thought for a startled moment that it was enchanted ground. White figures
- began to pop up here and there and came flocking to me. I found myself
- surrounded by the Skokums, wearing the pillowcase masks I had furnished.
- </p>
- <p>
- They seemed to think I had some information regarding the runaway or was
- concerned in it, but I had no news to give out. One of them brought the
- old felt hat with its broken feather.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t know there was any woman in these parts who could cuss like that
- one did when she went down through the orchard,” said one of the Sortwell
- boys. “I reckon that detective is finding mysteries piling in on him
- pretty thick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What detective?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The one that Judge Kingsley has been hiding in his house. That detective
- was hid in a closet in the office to-day when the judge was asking
- questions of us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you know he was there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cigar smoke was coming out of the cracks in the closet door. So somebody
- was hid. And since then he has been outdoors and we piped him off. He
- followed you home. Didn’t you see him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did remember the strange man who had been loafing along behind me, but I
- kept my own counsel. I had a more important matter on my mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to know which of you fellows told Judge Kingsley to-day that I am
- ringleader of this gang?”
- </p>
- <p>
- No one answered me. They went on making fun of the detective, and I’ll
- admit that it seemed to me that he was putting up a poor job in his line.
- My reading had given me a rather exalted idea of detectives, but a man who
- smoked behind a closet door while eavesdropping, and through whose
- identity those country boys saw straightway, was certainly a clumsy
- operator. Therefore, I lost interest in him and persisted in my own
- business with them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m going to overlook your dirty work in setting old Bennie on to me,” I
- said. “You may have done it only for a joke, and there’s no telling what a
- fool will do when you start him off. But there’s no joke in blowing on me
- to Judge Kingsley—and you say there was a detective listening behind
- a door. Now own up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Nobody volunteered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I told him myself that I was in it at first. But when I said I was out of
- it he made it plain that some of you are still putting the blame on me.
- Whoever has said anything of that kind to him is a sneak.”
- </p>
- <p>
- No word from any of them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And the fellow who won’t speak up to me now, so that we can settle this
- thing, is a coward.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no such thing as picking out a guilty face in that crowd; they
- were hooded with those pillow-slips. I wasn’t sure which was which; I
- couldn’t locate even Ben Pratt in the gang, and he was the special chap I
- had in mind as informer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can say this,” stated one of the boys, “that I didn’t mention your name
- to the judge, Ross. So there’s no chance for a fight between you and me.
- But when you come to twitting about the throwing-down business, let me
- remind you that you did the first job in that line; you threw us all down.
- And that was after we had turned a trick that saved you and your uncle
- good money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what the rest of you wanted to do was go around in the night and
- raise the devil in this town, simply for the sake of mischief. I wouldn’t
- do that, and I told you so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But how about a case where we’d be protecting ourselves against somebody
- who was doing us dirt?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing like that has been put up to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s going to be in about three seconds. You organized this society; now
- do something for it. We’re going to coat that detective with molasses and
- feathers and ride him out of the village on a rail. We call on you to boss
- the job.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t do it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then join in with us and help.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This isn’t mischief—it’s tackling an enemy. You haven’t got any
- good excuse for throwing us down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve got an excuse that suits <i>me</i>. I have made up my mind to travel
- straight in this town, after this. I’m going to do it. I have my own good
- reasons for doing it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lost your courage, hey?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It takes more courage to stand up here and say what I’m saying than to
- lead this mob.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So <i>you</i> say, but that doesn’t convince <i>us</i>. Go home, then,
- and get out from underfoot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It came to me all of a sudden and with sickening force that it required
- more courage to go home and face my uncle than to undertake any other
- project which my mind could grasp just then.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood stock-still and they began to suspect my motives in sticking
- around.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You won’t head the party, you won’t go along as a member, you won’t get
- out of the way,” growled a voice, and I recognized Ben Pratt. “What do you
- intend to do—make a holler?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I could be just as stiff in temper as any of that Levant bunch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A good deal depends on what you devils intend to do,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You may as well know at the start-off! We intend to have that detective
- out of Judge Kingsley’s house! If he doesn’t come out when we call him we
- shall go in and get him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s a prison crime—entering a house like that,” I warned them.
- “Also, think what a report that is to go out from Levant! A guest of our
- leading citizen dragged from a private residence by a mob! There’s a
- sacredness about a home—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What book did you get that out of?” asked some one, and they laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I suppose it did sound mighty top-lofty and unlike anything else that ever
- came from me. But I was thinking with all my might of Celene Kingsley and
- what an awful thing it would be to have those young hyenas invade that
- house in the night-time. You can say what you want to about hoodlumism in
- the city—it’s bad! But you’ve got to go back into the country for
- unadulterated hellishness, when a mob really gets started. Furthermore,
- nobody is especially afraid of a village constable. I could foresee dirty
- doings that night in Levant. I had seen one mob in Levant when I was a
- youngster; they tarred and feathered a fanatical evangelist, and he died
- of fright.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried to think up something in the way of argument and I stammered about
- local pride and so forth, but my talk didn’t ring true, and I felt it and
- they knew it. Personally, I didn’t care a hoot about that clumsy fool of a
- detective, and I was not remarkably fond of sneering Judge Kingsley. If I
- could have stepped up to those boys and explained my love and my hopes and
- my fears for Celene Kingsley I might have made some impression on them.
- But that was not to be thought of.
- </p>
- <p>
- While I talked I saw them crawling toward me, spreading out, two by two.
- It was plain enough—they intended to start their foray by making me
- a captive so that I could not interfere.
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore, I made hasty resolution and turned and ran with all my speed
- toward Judge Kingsley’s house. I wasn’t at all sure just what I intended
- to do, but my impulse was to forewarn the household so that Celene might
- not be frightened. The Skokums came on my heels on the dead jump. But I
- had a good lead of them when I came around the corner of the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then a man tripped me, pounced on me, and sat on me; I was a submissive
- captive, for the breath was knocked out of me when I fell. The instant the
- Skokums appeared my captor began to shoot off two automatic revolvers. I
- was lying on my back and saw by the flashes that he was shooting into the
- air. The boys had been chasing me rather than intending to rush the house
- at that time, and they broke and fled in all directions, scampering in a
- way which suggested that they were not prepared for artillery defense and
- that the hostilities were over for that night.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time there was silence, and the man who was sitting on me rose and
- yanked me to my feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was a stocky man with a big, black mustache, and he looked savage.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a sound of drawing bolts and Judge Kingsley appeared at his
- office door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have the right one, have you, officer?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure thing! He was leading the rush—ahead of ’em all. This
- is the chap you told me to follow in the afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge came down the steps and stared into my face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s the right one—the ringleader,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew that she was listening above. She must be listening! And other
- folks were flocking outside in the street; that fusillade had been a
- signal as effective as a general fire alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” I cried, full of panic, seeing the position I was in,
- suddenly become the scapegoat of the whole affair. “I have done nothing
- wrong. I rushed up here to warn you—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You rushed up, all right,” declared the detective. “Do you think you
- hicks could hold a mass-meeting down in that orchard and fool me as to
- what you were planning to do? I was ready for you. What’s orders, Judge?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take him to the lock-up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- God of the innocent! I’ll never forget how that sounded. It was as if
- somebody had hit me on the heart with a hammer. There is some sort of
- dignity about a real prison! But that little, red, wooden coop in our
- village where an occasional drunk was cast in or some lousy hobo harbored—it
- had always seemed to me and to others such a shameful place—to leave
- such a badge of utter discredit on the person who had been lodged there!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll never go in there! I’ll die first,” I wailed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was telling the bitter truth as I felt it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was eager to die in my tracks rather than to have such a foul blot on my
- name.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next instant I had sudden revulsion of feeling in regard to that
- lock-up. In bitter fear, in almost frenzy of apprehension, in default of
- better retreat, I was quite ready to flee to that loathsome coop.
- </p>
- <p>
- For I heard my uncle raving in the street!
- </p>
- <p>
- I never remembered his words; my feelings were too much stirred just then.
- But the hideous screech of rage in his tones I’ll never forget. I knew he
- had found out my betrayal of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is going to kill me,” I told the detective. “It’s about the horse!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I reckon he will peel you if he gets his hands on you,” stated the
- man, who seemed to know what I was referring to. My uncle was threshing
- his way through the crowd toward me, making slow progress in the jam. The
- detective took advantage of that delay and rushed me off, with Constable
- Nute swinging his key and leading the way. Before I was fairly in my right
- senses I was in the lock-up alone and my two defenders were on guard
- outside the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle frothed about the place for an hour, circling the little building
- again and again, plucking at bars and clapboards as a monkey might pick at
- a gigantic nut which resisted his attempts to get at the juicy meat for
- which he was hungry.
- </p>
- <p>
- Never had I thought that I would be thankful to be in jail till then!
- </p>
- <p>
- Furthermore, my hopes were sustaining me. I was young and trustful, and I
- was sure that innocence would be victorious. I could not understand how
- anybody would believe that I was guilty when morning came and I could
- explain it all. And I resolved to make some of the Skokums speak up in my
- behalf on threat of exposing the whole gang.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last my uncle went away, staggering and hiccoughing curses—for he
- had brought his bottle with him and had been consulting it quite often.
- </p>
- <p>
- I fell to wondering whether my innocence would stand me in good stead,
- providing it vindicated me and secured my release from the lock-up? The
- lock-up was surely proving a sanctuary—and my uncle’s threats had
- been horrible ones.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the crowd which had been hanging around the place with a sort of
- hope, I suppose, that my uncle would be able to get at me, went away, for
- the hour was late. Mr. Detective went, too. So did Constable Nute, who was
- the village night-watch and had his rounds to make. They considered the
- cage a secure one, I suppose, for there were big bolts on the door and
- iron bars on the windows.
- </p>
- <p>
- I sat on a stool and mourned my lot as a prisoner, when I was not dreading
- my release to be a victim of my incensed uncle. A good many times I had
- watched Bart Flanders bring a trapped rat up from his cellar and set it
- free in the village square for the entertainment of his terrier. I was in
- a position to sympathize with trapped rats.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the silence of the night something clicked on the glass of a window and
- a voice outside hailed me cautiously. My first thought was that the
- Skokums had come to rescue me, and I was not especially pleased, for I
- felt that they would be impelled more by the spirit of vandalism than by
- any love for me. I did not answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the window-frame grunted and squeaked and I saw that somebody was
- prying with a chisel. I rose from the stool and saw the face of Dodovah
- Vose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I take it that it’s another job they have put up on you, young Sidney.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, it is, Mr. Vose,” I cried, and I began to whimper. I couldn’t help
- it. He spoke as if he understood, as if he were a friend. “I was trying to
- stop their devilishness, and they—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You needn’t bother about going into details—not with me, young
- Sidney. I have been watching you lately. You have been a good boy. I know
- you haven’t been rampaging round town nights. No matter about telling me
- anything. There’s no time to listen. Nute may be drifting back here any
- minute.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was working with his chisel while he was talking.
- </p>
- <p>
- He pried a couple of bars out of the rotten wood. He pushed the window up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Light out o’ there!” he commanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I hate to run away, and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The way things stand now in the village you’ll be made the goat,” he
- insisted. “And if you get clear of the gang part there’s your uncle to
- reckon with. He has been stamping around the tavern and telling about you.
- I don’t blame him much. What in sanup did you betray own folks for?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t tell him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After what you did to him you can’t expect me and others to say nay if he
- takes it out of your hide. Trigging own folks in a regular hoss dicker
- comes nearer to being a crime than anything the judge can lay against you.
- So you’ve got to simplify matters by getting out of town. You mustn’t stay
- here and get hurt, son. Climb, I tell ye!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So I climbed.
- </p>
- <p>
- He led me down into a lane and pushed me into a top buggy whose curtained
- sides hid me well. He crawled in after me and drove off at a good dip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have written that letter to my brother,” he said, after a time. “Here
- it is.” He put it into my hands. “How much money have you got about you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was never at any loss in those days as to my exact financial standing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Three dollars and sixty-four cents, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here is ten more. You must remember to pay it back. It will take you to
- the city and give you a little extra to come and go on. I have backed that
- letter to my brother with full address and directions how to get to the
- Trident Wrecking Company. Mind your eye, keep your money deep in your
- pocket, and go straight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I realized that we were on the way to the railroad station at Levant Lower
- Comers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll do what I can to stand up for you in the current talk that will be
- made, young Sidney,” said Landlord Vose. “I won’t say where you have gone,
- and you can bet that I won’t give it out how I helped you to go there. But
- I can tell folks how you have been sitting evenings with me instead of
- cutting up snigdom. I’ll help your name what I can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been trying to get my tongue loose so as to thank—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t go to spoiling a good thing at the last minute,” he snapped. “Come
- back and thank me when we both are sure that this jail-robbing was the
- best thing that could be done under the circumstances. I had only short
- notice and I took a chance that it was the right thing to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So, after a time, we came to the railroad station, and he left me. I
- sneaked in the shadows till the night train came along.
- </p>
- <p>
- After this fashion I left Levant. Looking ahead or looking behind, I did
- not feel especially joyous.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI—HAVING TO DO WITH JODREY VOSE’s MAKING OP A DIVER
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> SAT up in the
- smoking-car all night, straight as a cob, making myself as small as I
- could on one of the side seats nearest the door. I was not used to riding
- on a railroad train. At every stop, when men came in and looked at me in
- passing, my heart jumped. Things had been happening pretty fast in my
- case. In the upheaval of my feelings, I was not exactly sure just what
- special crime I had committed. I merely knew that I felt like a
- combination of coward, renegade, and malefactor.
- </p>
- <p>
- The idea which stuck most painfully in my crop was the certain knowledge
- of what everybody in Levant would be saying—“He had to skip the
- town!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That’s a mighty mean tag to be tied to a chap when it’s tied on by a
- country community; it never comes off. Even if he makes good in fine shape
- some old blatherskite is always ready to shift his chaw and drool, “Maybe
- he’s all right <i>now</i>—but ye have to remember that he had to
- skip the town!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had run away!
- </p>
- <p>
- However, Ase Jepson let drop a remark once which sounded pretty good to
- me: “I’d never run from a bear-fight, because if you lick the bear there’s
- the pelt, the steak, the oil, and the reppytation. But who in blazes ever
- got any sensible satisfaction out of sticking to the job and licking a
- nestful of hornets?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I got a little satisfaction out of thinking that I had run away from
- hornets, even if they would be sure to call me coward behind my back.
- </p>
- <p>
- But what I knew of the world outside my home town could have been put in
- the eye of a mosquito without making the insect blink. I felt as helpless
- as a wooden shingle latching a furnace door in tophet. I had never seen
- Jodrey Vose. Either I had dreamed it or had heard that he was considered a
- pretty hard ticket in his early days. As a diver, a man who passed much of
- his time under water in the mysteries of the sea, he seemed to me like
- something unreal. I studied the superscription on the letter and felt as
- if I were carrying a line of introduction to a bullfrog.
- </p>
- <p>
- And so I went bumping on toward somewhere, my thoughts heavy and my
- possessions mighty light; I hadn’t even a clean handkerchief.
- </p>
- <p>
- If I had not so many bigger matters to hurry on to in this tale, I’d like
- to describe how I was all of two days locating the Trident Wrecking
- Company and Jodrey Vose, after I arrived in the city. The folks in Levant
- always seemed to think I was a cheeky youngster, and I guess I was, to a
- certain extent. I had plenty of temper and when I wanted a thing I always
- had to go and get it—it wasn’t handed to me. But in that big city I
- was more meeching than a scared pup in a boiler-factory.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had no idea how large a real city was, anyway. Furthermore, all of a
- sudden, I found myself becoming very crafty, according to my own
- reckoning. I had decided that I was a fugitive from justice and that every
- policeman was on the watch for me. Therefore I avoided policemen, turning
- comers whenever I saw brass buttons. As I looked on everybody else in the
- hurrying multitude as a sharper, on the hunt for country picking, that
- left me without anybody to question. I had my nose in the air and must
- have sniffed the water-front after a time. At any rate, I found myself
- down there, dodging drays, tramping dirty alleys and as completely lost as
- a bug in a brush-pile.
- </p>
- <p>
- I lived on chestnuts because I found men selling them on the street. I
- drank water from horse-fountains. After I walked all day and most of the
- night, and napped for a while, standing up against a building in a dark
- corner, I began to feel more or less like a horse; I had eaten so much dry
- fodder and had gulped so much water! There were many adventures, of
- course, but I have already stated why I may not deal with them.
- </p>
- <p>
- Staggering from weariness, I fairly bumped, at last, into a door which was
- labeled: “Trident Wrecking Company, Anson C. Doughty, General Manager.”
- This was no accident. I reckon I had tramped all the waterfront and had
- read all the signs except that one.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went into the outer office, holding my letter by one corner.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nobody paid any attention to me for half an hour. There were men writing
- in big books behind a counter, and finally I pushed the letter over to one
- of them who had stopped to light a cigar. He pushed it back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not here,” he said. “Doesn’t come here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But where will I find him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t know. He’s a diver. They don’t do their diving here in the office.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was not a place in that office where I could sit and I was so tired
- I was sick. The man turned his back on me and I did not dare to ask him
- any more questions. I backed away from the counter and stood in the middle
- of the floor, swaying and blinking. I reckon I must have looked like a
- down-and-out bum. At any rate, when a big man came showing a caller out of
- a door labeled “General Manager, Private,” he bumped against me when I did
- not get out of the road and almost knocked me down.
- </p>
- <p>
- I suppose it was due to my state of mind and body—but till that
- moment I had never felt what ugly, vicious hatred—desire to kill—meant.
- The feeling came up in me so suddenly that I was frightened.
- </p>
- <p>
- The big man went right on with his friend and took no notice of me. He had
- hairy hands which he flourished as he talked, and the coat of his brown
- suit had long tails which ended in a sort of scallop at his knees, behind;
- it came to me in the flush of my boiling hatred that he looked like a fat
- cockroach. And that bump dealt to me when I was so miserable, that
- suggestion of the cockroach which always popped up at me as long as I knew
- him, later made for another decisive turning-point in my life. Again I am
- calling attention to the fact that matters which I did not reckon on as to
- amounting to much at the moment have been my mile-stones. As I look back I
- recognize the mile-stones, though I could not distinguish them at the
- time. For instance, if you keep on with me far enough, I shall tell you
- how an affair which counted, perhaps, as the biggest crisis in my life was
- dominated by a plain, ordinary monkey with an artificial tail.
- </p>
- <p>
- I followed after that big man with a raging desire to kick him under the
- sleek tads of that coat—to pound my fists into his fat back. I might
- have given quite an account of myself, at that, for I was full grown at
- twenty and as hard as hickory.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As I say,” I heard before he slammed the door behind him, “you better
- come along with me down to Trull wharf and talk to Vose himself. He can
- tell you—”
- </p>
- <p>
- I gathered my wits and chased along behind. The two of them paid as little
- attention to me as they would to a prowling cat. But if they were on the
- way to talk to “Vose himself,” that surely was my opportunity.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was some distance and by way of devious alleys, but we came at last to
- where a lighter was tied beside a wharf.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a derrick and the scow was loaded with blocks of granite. A man
- was slowly and ceaselessly turning the wheel of a queer-looking machine,
- another was carefully handling hose which passed over the side of the
- lighter and down into the water, and still another was tending ropes. It
- did not occur to me at first what this activity indicated.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when the big man called out, “Is Vose about due to come up?” I
- understood at once and was mightily interested.
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked down into the dock and saw water like liquid muck, filled with
- floating refuse, and a good deal of the glamour of a diver’s life departed
- from my imagination. Somehow I had thought that Jodrey Vose spent his days
- in blue depths of pure ocean water, looking around at strange fishes and
- exploring mysterious caves. That he was obliged to go down into any such
- mess as that and work on blocks of stones with his two hands was a
- depressing discovery.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time there was a bubbling of the turbid water close beside the
- lighter, and for the first time in my life I saw a diver’s helmet emerge;
- the goggling eye-plates, the grotesque excrescences, the sprouting antennæ
- of the hose lines, the venomous hissing of the air from the vents—it
- all seemed uncanny, and made me shiver.
- </p>
- <p>
- Men reached down to help him up the ladder, and when he was on deck in
- full view, scuffing his huge, weighted shoes, a balloon-like creature, as
- shapeless as the doughnut men my mother used to cut for me when she was in
- good humor on frying-day, I was sure I had never seen so curious a sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- After he sat down they twisted off the helmet, and the fat man, whom I
- reckoned must be Manager Anson C. Doughty, escorted the other man aboard
- the lighter and the three started a conversation which I could not hear.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew the diver for Jodrey Vose because I had seen his picture at the
- tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- The business, whatever it was, did not take much time and the manager and
- the other man went away. Helpers began to shuck the diver from his suit;
- it was nearing sundown and work for the day was over, it seemed. When he
- was free from the bulk of the stuff and was starting for the cabin of the
- lighter I went to him and gave him the letter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “From Dod, hey?” Then he told me to follow him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked at him while he read the letter by the light of a bracket lamp.
- He was a wiry man with a twist of grizzled chin-beard. I was much
- comforted when he looked up from the letter and grinned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ben Sidney’s boy! Well, your father was the only critter on two legs in
- Levant, in the old days, who could stand in a barrel, like I could, and
- jump out without touching the sides. You look as if you have some of his
- spryness and grit!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope so, sir. I have always worked at what has come to my hands to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dod says business is a mite slow in Levant and that you want a job.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Now there was gratitude in me as well as comfort; it was evident that
- Dodovah Vose had not written that I was a runaway.
- </p>
- <p>
- The diver laid down the letter and went fumbling for his street clothes in
- a closet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At any rate, you can come up to my boarding-place with me for the night
- and we’ll talk it all over,” he said, in a very kind way. “If you had only
- made yourself known a few minutes ago I could have introduced you to
- Manager Anson C. Doughty. But to-morrow will do as well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not dare to offer comment. I wondered what there was about Anson C.
- Doughty to keep my hatred of him so stirred.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He takes my recommendations as to my helpers,” said Vose. “There is one
- thing a diver has to be sure about—that’s picking his helpers. We’ll
- talk it over, I say. If I find there’s considerable of Ben Sidney in you,
- I reckon we can make a go of it. Have you a hankering to learn the
- business, itself?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I blossomed under the warmth of this kindness, I was full of words by that
- time. I hadn’t opened my mouth to talk for two days. I told him about my
- evenings in that tavern, my poring over his curios, my ambitions, my
- dreams and hopes after hearing the stories his brother had to tell me.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he had finished dressing he clapped me on the shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I calculate you’re going to do,” he told me. “Don’t get your
- expectations too high. I have given up all the deep work—too old.
- Five or six years steady at deep work finishes a man. I have nursed myself
- along. Wharf work—fifteen to thirty feet—that’s my limit these
- days. But I like your spirit, son. Can’t find boys in the city like that!
- I should say that you’ve got the real hankering. Cigarettes, ever?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir! No tobacco.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No cider jamborees? No express packages from the city?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Mr. Vose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good! I reckon I’ll keep the old town of Levant on the map in the diving
- line. I know the game, my boy. And I know how to teach it to the right
- kind of a pupil.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure you do, Mr. Vose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So we’ll talk it all over this evening—and while we’re about it, if
- you don’t call me Captain Vose down this way they’ll think you don’t know
- me very well.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I blushed, then I followed him out and away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before I tumbled into bed that night we had settled upon the future so far
- as our words to each other went; the bargain only needed the ratification
- of Anson C. Doughty—and that was secured next morning. I had
- expected that sleep would soothe my nerves and remove my ugly grouch in
- the case of that gentleman. However, there must have been something
- instinctive in my dislike for him; he looked me up and down and caught my
- scowl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You seem to have picked out a pretty surly up-country steer, Vose!
- However, put him to work if you like that kind!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So to work I went.
- </p>
- <p>
- I cleaned diving-suits and thus became familiar with the parts and the
- mechanism. I soaked out mud-caked ropes, I tended lines and learned
- signals, and was always busy with a hundred other odd jobs as a satellite
- of Diver Vose. He used me well enough, though he was never as warm toward
- me as he was at our first meeting.
- </p>
- <p>
- After some weeks I lost my fear that I would be followed and taken back to
- Levant. I was not sure whether I felt more relief than rancor. To be
- considered as not worth chasing, to know they were saying “Good riddance!”
- behind my back, gave me thoughts which hurt a certain kind of pride.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was afraid of the city and I went nowhere except to my work and to my
- boarding-place. So there was an epoch in my life which was bare of
- adventure until Diver Vose sent me down for the first time.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had given me a fine course of sprouts previously, of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- But in spite of all that the first sensations nigh paralyzed me. I reached
- bottom and wallowed around without the least thought or remembrance
- regarding what I had been told to do. A freight-train seemed to be roaring
- around inside my helmet and I was gasping like a dying skate-fish.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then in scuffing around in a sort of panic, taking no care of what I was
- about, I hooked my shoe onto something and began to yank and thresh around
- in a perfect frenzy. The result was that I pulled the shoe off and my
- lightened foot was snapped above my head in a finer spread-eagle than any
- acrobatic dancer ever pulled off. To drag that foot down was beyond my
- powers, and I tripped and went onto my back. Being up-ended is a diver’s
- chief peril, because the air bellies up into the legs of the dress and
- leaves scant supply in the helmet.
- </p>
- <p>
- In that crisis there was one idea which stuck to me: I must get that lost
- shoe!
- </p>
- <p>
- And I did get it. I groped and rolled and struggled and pulled until I did
- get it. A half-dozen times in my efforts I felt them trying to haul me up.
- I suppose I must have given signals telling them to quit that. I fought
- them as best I could, anyway, until I had recovered the shoe; then I
- yanked for a lift and went up.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Vose was standing in front of me with the helmet in his hands when
- I had recovered my wits enough to notice anybody.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Been dancing a jig?” he inquired, caustically.
- </p>
- <p>
- I shook my head, for I was not able to utter words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which did you lose first down there, your nerve or that shoe?”
- </p>
- <p>
- When I hesitated, he snapped, “Give me the truth, now, or we sha’n’t get
- along after this!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My nerve!” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So I knew—for I lashed on that shoe with my own hands. Very well!
- What good are you as a diver without your wits or your nerve?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No good, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can buy an eighteen-pound shoe at any equipment loft. But how about
- buying nerve?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon it can’t be bought, sir,” I confessed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Still, you were almighty <i>particular</i>,” he sneered, “to bring back
- that shoe with you even if you didn’t bring your nerve. Left your nerve on
- the bottom, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was mighty nasty in his tone and his manner, and the men standing
- around were grinning. Perhaps even all that would not have put grit back
- into me, for I was dizzy and scared and was owning up to myself that I was
- better fitted for dry ground than a wet sea-bottom. But just then Anson C.
- Doughty bellowed from the wharf:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, look here, Vose, let that coward go back upcountry to his steers! We
- have no time to fool away on greenhorns.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I did leave my nerve on the bottom I’m going back after it, and I’m
- going right now!” I told the diver. I was holding the shoe and I dropped
- it on deck and shoved my foot into it. Captain Vose kneeled and began to
- lash it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you doing, there?” demanded the manager.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Making a diver,” stated my teacher, calmly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m paying you fifty dollars a day to do what I tell you to do, Vose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right, sir!” The captain kept right on with the lashings. “There’s
- a contract between you and this young man which tells me to teach him how
- to be a diver, if he shows the capacity.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He hasn’t shown it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is going to in about five minutes, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He picked up the helmet and bent over me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had a reason for twitting you about that shoe,” he said, in my ear.
- “You showed what was in you by bringing it back If you hadn’t brought it
- back I would have stripped this suit off you and sent you hipering! You’ve
- got it in you! You’re all right! Now go down, son, and set that chain
- where I told you to set it. The first scare is the vaccination for this
- kind of work. You’re in a way to be immune from now on!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The last sound I heard was the snarl of Anson C. Doughty. That sound
- helped me to go to my job that day. I went down and did what was required
- of me, and, as I worked below there and became convinced that there was
- nothing to harm me if I kept my head, I found my nerve, I reckon, for good
- and all, in the diving business.
- </p>
- <p>
- And now that this story seems to be settled into a rut of adventure in my
- chosen line of work, hold breath with me and prepare for a couple of most
- “jeeroosly jounces,” as old Wagner Bangs used to term his occasional falls
- from his state of natural grace.
- </p>
- <p>
- First, I leap as nimbly as I can over three years and a half of hard work,
- the story of which would hold as little interest as the biography of a
- mud-clam. I slipped and slid and dug in slime, I shagged granite blocks
- and dragged chains, I pried into wrecks and had my whack at fumbling in
- the watery shadows for the drowned—pitiful bundles floating as if
- they were attempting posthumous gymnastics, head down and fingers trying
- to touch toes.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did “deep work” on ticklish jobs.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I came into the fifty-dollar-a-day class of workers, to the grim
- content of my mentor.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have just remarked that the snarl of Anson C. Doughty sent me in earnest
- to my first job. Also, just as suddenly, that snarl pried me loose from my
- job.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wish I did not have to confess what I have to say now. I come to jounce
- number two!
- </p>
- <p>
- I have spoken a ways back of mile-stones in my life and suggested that
- Anson C. Doughty was connected with one.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wish I could give a real, compelling, manly reason why I tossed my hopes
- and my prospects so wildly into the air all of a sudden. I have spoken of
- my ready temper—but that’s no reason.
- </p>
- <p>
- In fifteen seconds I shifted the life I was living as completely as a
- derailing-switch shoots a runaway engine off the main line.
- </p>
- <p>
- The borers of that mysterious hatred for Anson C. Doughty must have been
- burrowing in me all the time, even as those little teredinoid bivalves we
- call ship-worms gnaw into submerged piles with the edges of their shells.
- I was full of burrows and went to pieces all of a sudden.
- </p>
- <p>
- For I came up one day out of thirty fathoms—and that’s man’s work—and
- Doughty was giving me green help out of his general meanness—and my
- head was far from steady; in addition he gave me his snarl for the last
- time, instead of snarling at his infernal dubs who were risking my life.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stepped on his foot with a shoe that was loaded with twenty pounds of
- lead—and that’s some anchor!—I walloped him into insensibility
- with the end of a rubber hose. Then I resigned informally, while he lay on
- the deck of the lighter, grunting back to life again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nobody stopped me when I said I was going and announced that it would be
- dangerous to get in my way.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stood back while I shifted my clothes—and I got away with my
- diving equipment, even! It was the newest thing out for those days and the
- going styles of gear, and I had paid good money for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I say again, I wish I had a more cogent reason to give for throwing up my
- work. But I’m giving the truth of the matter. I left just that way. I knew
- that Anson C. Doughty would have me put in jail if he could catch me. I
- knew that I couldn’t do any more diving, for divers are marked men and are
- easily located. It was up to me to go and hide; so I went and hid.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII—THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLUG-HAT|
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> HAD been about a
- bit during three years and a half. I own up frankly that I had found out
- that I had more or less of a cheap streak in me. I’m not disguising it
- wholly by the name of curiosity; though, of course, a country fellow has a
- keen hankering to look in on some of the sights of the big city.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we boys up in Levant used to hand around among ourselves by stealth
- some of the flashy papers, I didn’t believe there were such things as I
- read in print and saw in pictures. After some of my sporty associates of
- the Trident workers began to take me around with them evenings I kept
- perfectly still about my earlier disbeliefs, and my cheap streak began to
- talk up to me. Somebody came distributing free admission cards to
- concerts, managed by religious and fraternal bodies—but I preferred
- to pay money at the door of a burlesque theater. I liked to go scouting in
- dance-halls, and I haunted low resorts to hear what I could hear and see
- what I could see.
- </p>
- <p>
- We went boldly, for we were husky youths. As for myself, I had licked the
- boys of Levant at every opportunity—and my Sidney temper afforded me
- opportunities aplenty. I was never afraid when I went about alone, either.
- I had a rather quiet way of minding my own business and impressing it on
- the other fellow that he’d better mind his.
- </p>
- <p>
- So, it may be guessed, most of my wanderings had been done in the lower
- quarters of the city.
- </p>
- <p>
- That’s where I went to hide. And I had knowledge enough of the locality to
- hide myself effectually and keep hidden.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did get in touch with one of the fellows who had been around a great
- deal with me and whom I trusted—for he had no special use for Anson
- C. Doughty.
- </p>
- <p>
- Anson C. Doughty was out of doors once more, after spending a week of
- retirement in the company of a few busy little leeches, and, as to eyes
- and nose, he was not looking so very badly on the outside, but was
- evidently having a great amount of trouble with a volcano raging within,
- so my informant told me. Mr. Doughty was proclaiming that he proposed to
- catch me so that he could make an example for the sake of discipline in
- his crews in the future; but according to the program he had promulgated,
- he proposed to cut me up with a meatchopper before turning me over to the
- law. So I decided to keep under cover for an indefinite period.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I sent word to Captain Jodrey Vose and had him call on me in my
- castle, because I did not want him to think that he had wasted all his
- efforts when he had made me a diver.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, the captain did seem to think so. He frankly said so.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ll never get another job diving on the Atlantic coast,” he told me.
- “In the first place, you won’t dare to show up as a diver where Anson C.
- Doughty can grab you. In the next place, Anson C. Doughty has posted you
- with all the wrecking companies as being as dangerous as an Asiatic tiger
- with lighted kerosene on his tail. Now tell me what made you do it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at me with his eyes squizzled up and a frown on his forehead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m getting along in years and I’m probably losing my mind to some
- extent,” he said, “but I’ll be cussed if I believe I’ve got entire
- softening of the brain. It must be that I’m deaf and can’t understand—because
- I don’t get the least idea of why you did it to him. Tell it over.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I must have softening of the brain,” he grunted. “It’s all a
- riddle-come-ree to me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is the same to me—and that’s why I can’t explain,” I told him,
- frankly. “I hung onto myself all that time, wanting to do it, and then I
- let go and did it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “About as you went to cutting up in Levant before you skipped out,” he
- snapped.
- </p>
- <p>
- Up to that time, not by word or look had he let me know that he had any
- knowledge of why I had left my home town.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dod explained it to me in the letter he sent with you. But he had excuses
- to give.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had to admire Captain Vose’s ability to keep his thoughts to himself, as
- I remembered the placid countenance he showed to me when he had read that
- letter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now I reckon that Dod was prejudiced in your favor and that you had been
- a young devil the folks wanted to boost out of town. Dod’s judgment was
- never very good in the case of any critters who were willing to cater to
- him. I don’t suppose you dare to go back up there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want to go.” But all of a sudden a queer wave of homesickness
- seemed to come swelling up in me and to choke me like water chokes the
- throat of a dredge-pump. “I’m done with that town for good and all,” I
- told him. “I got along all right while I was doing dirt as fast as the
- rest of ’em, but when I tried to be decent they didn’t give me a
- show!” I snapped my finger. “I wouldn’t give <i>that</i> for anybody in
- Levant!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew I was lying and I think Jodrey Vose knew it, for he was a keen old
- chap. He scowled at me and grunted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Got any money left after all the rake-helling you’ve been doing for a
- year past?”
- </p>
- <p>
- So he knew all about that, too!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m fixed all right!” But I looked up at the ceiling of my room when I
- said it, and I knew I was not fooling him. I ought to have had a bank
- account, considering what I had been pulling down. I had all my capital in
- my pocket—a roll about as big as my thumb. I had considerable of a
- string of memories, such as they were, regarding money I had spent; I had
- a brand-new diving dress, and, above all, queer as this may sound, I had a
- specially new outfit which was my chief pride: a frock-coat and pearl-gray
- trousers, waistcoat modestly fancy—my real tastes in that direction
- having been gently suppressed by an honest tailor—and a plug-hat
- whose shininess fairly put my eyes out. And up to that time I had had no
- opportunity to wear that suit except in front of the mirror in my
- hiding-place!
- </p>
- <p>
- I had tested the tilt of that hat at a dozen different angles; I had
- nearly broken my neck in efforts to see just how the coat-tails flared in
- the back. With a chart as help, a card stuck in the side of the mirror, I
- had practised tying a scarf in Ascot style until my staring eyes watered
- and my fingers ached. Then I had walked back and forth, trying to get the
- hang of a cane.
- </p>
- <p>
- Again I suggest that this may sound queer. But it was only another
- manifestation of that cheap streak in me, so I reckon. I was not modeling
- my appearance on the looks of any real gentleman I had ever seen; I had
- not bought that garb in order to appear at church or to climb into better
- society. But from the time I was ten years old I had nursed one special,
- hungry, despairing ambition. At the county fair I saw “Diamond Dick”
- Shrady marshaling his painted beauties in front of his tent, and,
- according to my notion, his rig-out was apparel which shaded even the
- robes of royalty. I could not conceive higher height of happiness than to
- own and wear for “every day” a suit like that.
- </p>
- <p>
- Consider the lily—as I considered “Diamond Dick”! Then consider me
- as I stood in front of that tent!
- </p>
- <p>
- I had on brogan shoes which I had fresh-tallowed for the day. My stockings
- were home-knit and bulged out in folds over the tops of my shoes. But I
- was not so keenly self-conscious of my footwear as of the rest of my
- outfit, because Levant boys wore brogans quite commonly. My trousers were
- my special sore point, for even in Levant they had been ridiculed. In the
- first place, the cloth was a glazy, stiff stuff; in the second place, my
- good mother did not understand how to cut out a boy’s pants. There was
- just as much fullness in the front as in the seat. I kept denting in that
- fullness with my fists when I was unobserved. I found that by stooping
- quite a bit when I walked or stood I was able to keep the fullness caved
- in and less noticeable. It was a wonder I did not become permanently
- humpbacked while I was wearing out those pants. The legs of them were like
- twin stovepipes, and almost as unyielding. They crackled at the knees when
- I sat down. Add to those items of attire a hickory shirt, for which I had
- made a false bosom out of a shingle painted white, a paper collar, and a
- butterfly bow made of a gingham rag, a hard hat which was a paternal
- hand-me-down; they called them “dips.” It was a good name. The hat was
- exactly the shape of the bowl of a table-spoon.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I leaned back and gaped up at that gorgeous stranger on the platform,
- straightening myself and letting my forward fullness swell as it would,
- there was born in me that unconquerable hankering—wild desire to be
- dressed like that—sometime! To say to myself—sometime—“Now
- I am dressed right! Everything about me is just as it should be!”
- </p>
- <p>
- To base my ideas on the outfit “Diamond Dick” wore was probably evidence
- of the cheap streak in me, I say, but when you consider me as I stood
- there, and then consider the lily, is there not some excuse?
- </p>
- <p>
- I confess with some shame that during my hiding in the city, while I was
- tucked away in that boarding-house room, my chief regret was not that I
- was out of a job, was not that I had battered the face of my employer, but
- was because I could not go out and swell around the streets and the
- amusement places wearing that suit and looking that picture of myself
- which had been the ideal that lulled me to sleep every night during my
- boyhood.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was having some of those dreams while I sat there and gazed up at the
- ceiling. At last a big dream had come true. I owned that suit and I knew I
- looked mighty well in it. I had put in a good many hours in front of the
- looking-glass making sure of that fact. But now that I owned it I was
- getting none of the thrills and but little of the satisfaction I had
- looked forward to. Realized ambitions in my case—and probably it’s
- true in most cases—have always seemed to have a lot of discomforting
- tag-ends tied to them. I was practically a prisoner in a dingy room, I
- could not go out and sport around in my new regalia, and Jodrey Vose, who
- had undertaken to make a man of me, was sitting across the table, scowling
- at me with a great deal of disfavor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you taken up drinking along with the rest, young Sidney?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir; and I never shall. I’m sure of that, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you going to do next?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better go back to Levant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll never do that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dod writes that your uncle has been enlarging his business and is making
- a lot of money and is going to run for town office. He must need a chap
- like you and has probably forgotten any little trouble he might have had
- with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I shook my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t expect me to do anything more for you, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Again I shook my head. That homesick feeling was swelling up once more.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hear that they are fitting out another Cocos Island expedition to hunt
- for the Peru treasure-ship. You might be able to sign on there. But it’s a
- fake job. There’s no sunken ship. However, you’ll get wages.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe I’ll try the Pacific coast, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He slid his forefinger back and forth slowly under his nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It might do, son. I have thought of the same jump, myself. I have waited
- now till I’m too old. What started me thinking about it some years ago was
- the <i>Golden Gate</i> proposition. What troubled me about making up my
- mind was that some said the treasure had been got out of her and others
- said there was some guesswork. Nobody seemed to be willing to produce any
- proof that the treasure was still there. Looking back, I can see now why
- all interested parties would naturally rather have it thought that the
- treasure wasn’t there. But when a fellow like me has his living to make he
- doesn’t want to take too many chances. And the one job I did go on
- sickened me of treasure-hunting on somebody’s guesswork.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was silent for a time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am sorry you are in your scrape, young Sidney. You’re done for as a
- diver in these parts for a time. Try the Pacific. I don’t say it’s a bad
- idea.” He grinned at me. “If you recover the <i>Golden Gate</i> treasure
- drop me a postal card.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he went away, making no more ado about the matter of our parting. I
- was not surprised by that manner of leave-taking. I am a Yankee myself,
- and I had found myself wishing that when he went he would walk off without
- jawing me or coddling me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I counted my money and sent out for some railroad folders and trailed my
- finger across the map—and stayed right on in the city, week after
- week. I don’t know exactly what I had lost—ambition or pluck or what
- it was! But that was a spell in my life when I was a plumb, square loafer,
- and rather enjoyed myself—reading cheap novels and playing solitaire
- in the daytime, then getting in with some of the rest of the boarders and
- playing poker evenings. In Levant we used to play for beans in
- barn-chambers. I had a country boy’s shrewdness in that game, and the city
- fellows did not get much of my money away from me; nor did I get any
- particular amount of theirs.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, the pastime did bring me into touch with some sporting characters
- and with some queer characters, too. There were men who were hiding the
- same as I was. The fact that I was under cover gave me open sesame to
- their confidence. They talked a great deal, whiling away dull hours in the
- day. Several were in the house where I was stopping, and after a time I
- dared to go visiting around a bit evenings and went along to other houses,
- in the locality.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was all new to me, this “flash” side of fife, and I listened to their
- stories with eyes and mouth open. I conceived an idea of writing out these
- stories into a book, and after I got back into my room nights I would jot
- down all I had heard, names and all. I had all the nicknames of operators
- down pat—those names rather fascinated me. There were names which
- were based on personal peculiarities or blemishes or system of operating.
- I found out that a great many of the parties were linked, either by
- relationship or by gang ties, and that the wise boys among the crooks or
- the police officers could tell in many cases just what crowd had operated,
- providing the identity of one man could be revealed. I reckon I calculated
- in those times that I was going to make an exposé, for I made many notes
- about the different coteries and their associates.
- </p>
- <p>
- I will say at this point that I have no intention of writing such a book,
- and I have gone into a bit of detail about the matter in order that
- certain following activities of mine may be understood. Otherwise, I
- might, later on, be thought to be advertising myself as one of those
- know-it-all and do-it-all heroes of fiction instead of a plain and
- ordinary chap who has been swayed by circumstance and governed by accident
- in large measure.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I did get a lot of fresh and lively information out of those chaps
- with whom I was thrown in.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time they were not at all bashful about asking me if I wouldn’t
- like a lay in some of their operations.
- </p>
- <p>
- They frankly said that they had the best luck in country communities.
- Understand that they proposed nothing except brace games! No safe-breakers
- in that lot! They said I had an honest way about me that would take well
- in the country districts.
- </p>
- <p>
- My money was getting so low I listened with increasing interest. I cannot
- say that I was tempted, exactly. But I was beginning to wonder how I was
- ever going to make a go of it if I didn’t get some money. My Pacific trip
- was all off by that time! My capital had shrunk below the price of a
- ticket.
- </p>
- <p>
- They told me that a regular village skinflint with lots of money was, in
- most cases, a prime victim if the right bait was offered; with the right
- bait he bit more easily than the more liberal kind of an individual,
- because the skinflint was more crazy to make money fast and was already
- used to getting high rates of interest for all money he let out. They were
- making constant search for old chaps in country communities, well-to-do
- men who would be tempted to grab at a rich chance or could be induced to
- serve as decoys to pull in the neighbors, provided a sufficient rake-off
- were offered.
- </p>
- <p>
- There, too, was another thing which surprised me—that so often
- really prominent men could be secured as decoys. The knaves I was training
- with gave me a lot of stories of the kind; in most cases, so they said,
- the men seemed to talk themselves into believing that they were offering
- the neighbors an opportunity to make money.
- </p>
- <p>
- If I had not been idle and very curious, and all the time wondering how I
- could make a little money for myself, a lot of this would have gone into
- one ear and out of the other.. But I was in the mood to take it all in,
- and so, in that foolish belief that I could write a story, I set down many
- names and many instances until I had well filled a sheaf of papers which I
- sewed together into a sort of note-book.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were various side-lines of the craft of cheaters where I was allowed
- to be an observer. I watched one of the chaps make up his face for a trip
- and learned about false beards attached by spirit gum. There was a cute
- little mustache in his kit and I asked him to affix it to my upper lip. He
- allowed me to keep it on when I asked permission.
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt so much confidence in that alteration of my features that I went
- directly to my room, put on that raiment of my yearning ambition, took in
- hand my cane, and went forth into the open.
- </p>
- <p>
- One who has remained long within-doors gets used to the confinement after
- a time and the desire to go out is dulled; there are persons who have
- voluntarily remained in bed in perfect health for years; but, once the
- plunge outside is made, the desire for further liberty grows by what it
- grasps in the blessedness of outdoors. I determined to be free from then
- on and to test the quality of that freedom. It was astonishing what
- confidence I felt in myself when I walked abroad in that rig, casting
- side-glances at myself in store windows as I walked. It is amazing what
- the right sort of clothes will do for a man’s grip and grit.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down to the docks and walked about, deliberately seeking to put
- myself in the path of Anson C. Doughty. He did come face to face with me
- after a time, looked at me with considerable interest, for plug-hats were
- none too common in that locality, and passed on with bland indifference.
- My transition was too much for him; I was the butterfly that had emerged
- from the pupa of a diving-dress. After that I bestowed no further thought
- on dangers to be apprehended from Anson C. Doughty.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was more concerned with speculation on where my next meal was coming
- from, for I was flat broke. I suppose that fact had something to do with
- driving me out on the street; it was not wholly proud eagerness to show
- myself in that suit of clothes.
- </p>
- <p>
- All of a sudden I received direct proof that a plug-hat is occasionally
- something to conjure by.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps it is on the principle that advertising pays; a man with slick,
- silk headgear is supposed to be at least something which can be classed
- under the title of “professor.” At any rate, I was hailed by that title by
- a man who stood in a broad doorway. I stopped and he had something
- interesting to say to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII—“TAKING IT OUT” ON A SUIT OF CLOTHES
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT doorway was
- solidly banked with banners frescoed in gaudy colors and roughly painted;
- they advertised a show within. A few glances I had time to give while I
- walked toward the man who had hailed me, revealed that there were on tap
- such features as “Petrified Mormon Giant,” “Siamese Susie,” “Mammoth
- Peruvian Cockatoo,” and others. Over the door was heralded in big letters:
- “Dawlin’s Mammoth Wonder Show.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I guessed that the man in the doorway might be Dawlin. He wore a corduroy
- suit, with gaiters, and a broad-brimmed cowboy hat was canted on one side
- of his head. By the way in which he was looking me over I could see that I
- was suiting him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hitched up with a show?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him that I was not, and I said it with considerable curtness. To be
- sure, the personality and garb of Showman Shrady had formed my early
- ideal, and I ought to have felt gratified, I suppose, when this man took
- me for a showman. But I was pricked a little by the thought that my
- appearance seemed to grade me on that plane. “Want to hitch on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What makes you think I’m in the show business?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had you sized that way on account of the scenery.” I gathered that he
- meant my clothes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t see any circus signs on this suit of mine,” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, say, I didn’t mean to offend—but it’s usually only sports and
- professionals who tog that way down in this part of the town. If you’re a
- gent you seem to be off your beat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was nothing offensive about the man—he seemed a good-humored
- chap who was a little cheeky.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what if I had been a showman—what about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was going to offer you a lay—here at the door.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Selling tickets?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good gad, no, man! I want you for the spiel—for the oratory—tongue-work—hooking
- the hicks! You’re rigged out just right. You must know that the better the
- front we put on at the door, the better the business inside! But excuse me
- if I got the tags shifted!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I swung my cane with one hand and with the other hand in my pocket sifted
- coins through my fingers. There were not many coins. I needed more in a
- hurry. It had been impressed on me that in spite of all my pride in my
- attire I did not look like a “gent”; it was certain that I did not feel
- like one. Disappointment was curdling pride in me; my clothes had gone
- back on me. I entertained a sort of a grudge against them. All of a sudden
- I made up my mind to get back at those garments which had cost me so much
- money and now repaid me in contentment so niggardly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be all new business for me. Can I do it, do you suppose?” I
- asked the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Looks are half the battle. You’ve got capital in your clothes to start
- with. You don’t look like a souse! The last two I have had on the door
- pawned their rigs for rum. I’ve got the patter stuff all written out. All
- you’ve got to do is study it and reel it off like you used to recite
- pieces in school.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s the pay?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Seeing surrender in my face, he winked and crooked his finger in
- invitation to me to follow him inside. He led me into a narrow little
- office. He offered a drink and a cigar, and I refused both.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gee! Some principles, hey? Now, if you’re a church member I reckon you
- won’t stand for the lay!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m devilish far from being a church member,” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t like to open up too much till I know a little something about
- you. Can you tell me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him enough to make him pretty much at ease.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know any of the right kind in this locality—the sporting
- bunch?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I gave a roster of acquaintances that made his eyes glisten.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, then, you’re all right!” he cried, slapping my knee. “In <i>my</i>
- business a fellow has to try the ice before he slides out too far. I’m
- coming right across to you.” He waved his hand to indicate his
- establishment. “This show is only a hinkumginny, you know!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought so,” I said, calmly. I hadn’t the least idea what he meant, but
- I knew that one needed to act wise with wise gentlemen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We run the gazara game and phrenology.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I nodded and winked an eye as if I had been quite sure of that fact right
- along.
- </p>
- <p>
- He scratched a few figures on a wisp of paper and pushed it to me across
- the desk-slide on which he had set out the whisky-glasses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s the split,” he said, grinning. Still it was all Greek to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know places doing half our business and paying twice as much—and
- every once in a while having to settle a squeal, at that! But I’ve got a
- cousin at headquarters—see? Nothing to it! Now you can understand
- what a sweet little pudding you’re pulling alongside of.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was wishing I could understand better, though I was developing a dim
- notion that he was talking about money paid for protection from the law.
- He pulled back the paper and tore it up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only fifty a week,” he said; “it’s nothing. I’m thinking of throwing in
- another twenty-five without their asking. It beats laying up treasures in
- heaven!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I agreed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now as to a lay for you! Of course, first of all, I have to grab off my
- fifty of the net—it’s my show and my pull! Then there’s the ‘Prof’—Professor
- Jewelle. He has his twenty-five per cent. I’ll tell you straight, now, I
- have been getting by with those dickerdoodles I’ve had out on the stand
- for fifteen per cent., and ‘prof’ and I have divided the other ten. But
- they were crumby! Their suits were wrinkled worse than an elephant’s
- dewlap, and the nap of their plug-hats was fruzzled up like the fur in the
- mane of the Australian witherlick. No pull to that class! The jaspers
- jogged right past without being a mite impressed. If you grab in with us
- your looks and your style make you worth a lay of twenty-five per cent.
- Now what say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll grab,” I told him, and never did a man hire with less idea of just
- what kind of a business he was entering or what pay he was going to get
- for his labor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You say your name is Ross Sidney,” said the boss, remembering what I had
- told him. “Mine is Jeff Dawlin, Ross, and there’s no mistering among
- partners.” He gave me a few dirty sheets of paper. “There’s your spiel all
- written out. You can add your own talk as you work into the spirit of the
- thing. The idea is get them to stop, look, listen—and then coax till
- they come in. If they come out squealing, you go on and bawl them—bawl
- them down! There’s some good work to be done in that line—and you’re
- husky and can scare ’em, providing Big Mike hasn’t already scared
- ’em enough. There isn’t a thing in the show but what’s a fake—of
- course you understand that. Most of ’em are too ashamed to squeal.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was leading me into the inner mysteries of the place while he talked.
- He made no reference to the objects which were ranged around the sides of
- the big room, plainly despising them as curiosities which could not
- possibly interest anybody. But they interested me mightily and I lagged
- behind to give each one a glance in passing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Siamese Susie” was made up of a couple of big wax dolls confined in a
- single dress. “The Peruvian Cockatoo” manifestly had been, when he was
- alive, the humble master of some up-country barn-yard; now he was tricked
- out with all sorts of dyed false feathers, including an enormous topknot.
- The “Mormon Giant” was a papier-mâché figure, and there was a hideous
- thing labeled “Mermaid” constructed of the same material as the giant.
- There were a few other nondescript exhibits in dingy glass cases or
- mounted on stands draped in dirty hangings. I had never seen a collection
- of more shameless frauds. I began to understand that I had not been let in
- on the main proposition for money-making.
- </p>
- <p>
- On one side of the room there were curtains lettered: “Professor Jewelle,
- the World’s Greatest Seer.” The professor came out when Dawlin called for
- him. He wore a wig and false white whiskers, and had watery eyes, and a
- breath like a whiff from a distillery chimney. A big brute of a man was
- loafing in one corner of the room, and I reckoned that this person must be
- Big Mike; I had seen many such of the bouncer sort when I had made my
- rounds, hunting for experiences.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dawlin introduced me, and I seemed to make a good impression.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he slyly slid out the information that I, too, had been having
- troubles which had kept me under cover for some weeks, I noted that I
- stood even higher in their estimation.
- </p>
- <p>
- As we talked on I began to feel a bit ambitious. I thought I might be able
- to improve business.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” I suggested, “why not put a tank in here and let me do some
- of my diving stunts? It would be a novelty—there really doesn’t seem
- to be much to the show as it stands.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, I haven’t pulled a greenhorn into camp, have I?” inquired Mr. Dawlin
- with a good deal of tartness. “Show? Good gad! who ever said we wanted a
- show?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not know what to say to that and so I did not answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you think I would be doing, or the ‘prof’ would be doing, while
- the jethros were crowded around you? We wouldn’t be doing a thing in the
- line of the regular graft. The main idea of this concern is to get ’em
- in here where there’s nothing to take up their minds after they’ve had one
- look around the place. Then they begin to feel that they want to get
- something for their money. So the ‘prof’ hands ’em the dome dope—feels
- their bumps—and I feed ’em the gazara stuff. How many times
- have I got to tell you what this place is?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I’m wise,” I said, trying hard to look that way. “But of course I’m
- anxious to do all I can to help.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The zeal of youth! The zeal of youth!” prattled the professor. He seemed
- to me to be pretty much of an old fool. He had that smug, cooing way with
- him—all put on like the airs of a country undertaker. He came across
- to me before I could understand what he was about and stuck his thumb onto
- a spot on the top of my head and pressed with his forefinger a little
- lower down. “Yes, approbativeness well developed and conscientiousness—this
- where my finger—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, shut up!” snorted Mr. Dawlin. “Don’t cry to put that stuff over among
- friends.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “However,” the professor went on, continuing to fondle my head, “the
- development of the brain upward, forward, and backward, from the medulla—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Save it for the cud-wallopers, I tell you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If this young man is going to have his say about me in front, I want him
- to know that the science of phrenology has a good exponent here,” said the
- professor.
- </p>
- <p>
- I reckon he had seen me looking him over without a great amount of liking
- and was anxious to put on a bit of a front.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He’ll say that you’ll read all heads free of charge, and that’s <i>all</i>
- he’ll say,” stated Mr. Dawlin. “It isn’t necessary for him to know the
- difference between a medulla and a free-lunch pickle—and I don’t
- believe <i>you</i> know, yourself. Ross, we want to open the doors again
- to-morrow. Do you think you can get the gist of that patter into your head
- overnight?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I thumbed the dirty sheets and said I’d do my best. Therefore, I went to
- my room and applied myself. There was a lot of extravagant guff about the
- curiosities, flowery flapdoodle of the usual barker sort.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next morning I was able to make some sort of a try at it from the
- stand, for I have said before that I always was more or less cheeky. A
- sort of a fluffy-ruffle damsel with bleached hair was in the ticket-office
- and there never was a young fellow yet who did not try on a little extra
- swagger when a girl was hard by. She smiled at me encouragingly when I had
- arrested the attention of a few passers, some of whom bought tickets and
- went in. I guess I must have smiled back, for Dawlin, who was standing in
- the doorway, appraising my first efforts, came and climbed up beside me
- and growled in my ear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re breaking in fine. Only put a little more punch and sing-song into
- it! And, by the way, the dame who is shuffling the pasteboards—she’s
- private goods—mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want her,” I said, with considerable heat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t say you do—but a lot of trouble has sometimes been made in
- partnerships by women. So that’s why I have flipped the buried card at the
- start-off. Now tune up and let it went! If your voice gets husky I’ll send
- out a handful of bird-seed and a hunk of cuttlefish.” I reckoned he was
- trying his cheap humor on me to smooth the insult about the girl. It
- seemed to me like an insult, and he understood pretty well how I felt.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I went to my job and minded my own business most exclusively.
- </p>
- <p>
- Day after day, for several weeks, I stood up on my rostrum and cajoled
- folks into that joint, and I say frankly and honestly that for a long time
- I did not have full understanding of just what went on inside. Possibly
- that statement makes me out a mighty stupid chap.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I was ashamed to ask any more questions after what Dawlin had yapped
- out about his suspicions that I was a greenhorn.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not have any special conversation with him, anyway. I was still ugly
- when I thought upon his warning about that painted girl—as if I
- wanted her! And I was careful that she should have no word to carry to him
- about me; I never looked in her direction.
- </p>
- <p>
- Furthermore, I did not want to know very much about what they were up to
- inside. I was ashamed of my job. It struck me that if I came to know all
- the fraud of the thing I’d jack the proposition. An ostrich sort of
- attitude, to be sure, a foolish evasion, but that’s just how it was, like
- other things which came up in my life, things not lending themselves
- readily to explanation as I look back on them now.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw patrons come out, some angry and with red faces, some ashamed, some
- laughing—but only a few of the last, and they were plainly chaps who
- took it as a joke when anybody could put something across in their case.
- </p>
- <p>
- Man after man came out with a broad piece of paper in his hand, crumpled
- it up, swore, and dashed it down on the sidewalk.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a chart purporting to be a reading of bumps, as Professor Jewelle
- sized up the patron’s cranium. Nobody seemed to be very well pleased. A
- lot of them pitched into me and said that I had promised that the reading
- was free.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, the reading was free.
- </p>
- <p>
- But once the victim had ventured inside the curtains and after the free
- reading, the professor handed over the chart and demanded three dollars
- for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Disputes ended promptly, for Big Mike was always present. The vocabulary
- of that bellowing bull was limited to two words in those séances—“Three
- dollars!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Of course I had to find this out before long or stand convicted in these
- records as liar and half-wit combined.
- </p>
- <p>
- I also found out about the gazara game, Mr. Dawlin’s special project.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was an oblong box in which were stacked leather envelopes, each
- envelope bearing a numbered card.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dawlin seemed to be a very generous individual; he would allow patrons
- to win considerable money by picking prize envelopes into which he had
- slipped crisp bills; he also seemed to be a careless operator. For
- instance, he would quite openly put a twenty or a fifty dollar bill into
- the envelope holding the card numbered 0. Then he would shuffle the
- envelopes and with carelessness utterly blind would leave the corner of
- that card sticking up a bit, revealing the upper part of the numeral.
- Feverishly excited patrons would bid high for the privilege of drawing
- first—sometimes almost as high as the prize itself, for Mr. Dawlin
- had plainly left a good thing exposed. But, strangely enough, what had
- seemed like the figure 0 was revealed in the drawing as the figure 9 with
- an exaggerated upper loop. If the patron made moan and let out the secret
- of his grief, Mr. Dawlin reproached him for trying to take advantage of an
- oversight in an honest game. Such was the activity known as “gazara” in
- our establishment! I don’t know who gave the game that designation. I
- believe that in Maccabees a town of that name is spoken of—and being
- in Apocrypha seems well placed. It may be that the game started there—at
- the same time the gold-brick game was hatched in Gomorrah. Both schemes
- must be very ancient—for they are true, tried, and certain.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dawlin had much information to give me regarding games in general. He
- told me about his brother Ike, a proficient gold-brick artist. He said
- that if I cared to go into that line he would put me next to his brother.
- Mr. Dawlin, as had the others of his fraternity, complimented me on my
- honest looks. When I dared to suggest that the gold-brick scheme must be
- known to everybody, and all played out, he laughed at my ignorance. He
- said that getting a whole lot for a little always had been a bait for
- human greed and always would be; as to getting at the yaps in these days,
- it was only a matter of fresh style of approach and men like his brother
- were thinking up new methods of approach all the time.
- </p>
- <p>
- Men who needed money in a hurry to make up a balance were almost always
- ready to gamble heavily and desperately.
- </p>
- <p>
- He said his brother had a deal on at that very time, but that it was too
- late for me to get in on that, for the thing was all set and pretty near
- ready to be pulled off. It was an up-country case, of course.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Plant by ‘Peacock’ Pratt,” said Davdin. That was a new name for my roster
- of rascality, and I stuck it into a mental pigeonhole. “Pratt is a
- white-vest operator. Paunch scenery!” He saw that I wasn’t catching him
- very well and explained that Pratt affected the manner of a prosperous
- Westerner who regularly stoned neighbors’ chickens out of his garden with
- gold nuggets.
- </p>
- <p>
- Speaking of gold, I was not specially dissatisfied with the rake-off I was
- getting from these precious rascals, though, of course, it was small as
- compared with my diver’s wages. But standing in the sunshine under a
- plug-hat with nothing to do but gabble nonsense was a softer snap than
- grubbing under muddy water with a diver’s helmet stuck over my head. I was
- truly in a way to succumb to the blandishments of my cheap screak and
- settle down into the practice of roguery.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I had some sense of shame left in me. I kept on that disguising
- mustache when I was before the public. It was not much of a mask, to be
- sure, but it comforted me a bit to know that it made me look unlike
- myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- And that’s why the Sortwell boys from Levant did not recognize me when
- they halted on the sidewalk one day and listened to my barking.
- </p>
- <p>
- There they were, the two of them, grown up to manhood; but they were
- mighty green specimens. They were looking at the banners rather than at
- me. I wagered with myself that it was the first time they had ever been in
- the big city; even one trip would have rounded off some of the rough
- comers they were showing. For instance, they surely would have had
- experience with such a peep-show as we were running and would not have
- been tempted.
- </p>
- <p>
- They walked over to the painted maiden and asked her if she could
- recommend the show; they grinned and gaped at her amorously. She fawned on
- them and they bought tickets and went in. I wasn’t a bit sorry, nor did I
- try to stop them. My last expenence with the gang in Levant had not
- implanted in me any hankering to hug and kiss the Sortwell boys.
- </p>
- <p>
- I watched for them to come out, for I felt pretty sure that they would be
- properly trimmed and I anticipated secret relish in looking on their
- faces. I told myself I didn’t care. If a good jolt should be handed to
- them it would help in satisfying my grudge against the town which had sent
- me flying. Bitterness was in me at that moment. I was glad I was out of
- the jay place. If I had stayed there I would be looking just like those
- simpering rubes who had gone in like lambs to be sheared. I’d never want
- to go back to that town, I decided all over again.
- </p>
- <p>
- When they came out each one carried one of Professor Jewelle’s charts, and
- they were crying like great calves—actually guffling slobbering
- sobs. They went away a little distance and stood on the sidewalk, looking
- at each other and scruffing tears from their eyes with the palms of their
- hands. Awhile back if somebody had told me I would see a couple of big,
- larruping chaps from Levant doing that on the street in broad daylight,
- I’d have predicted a good laugh for myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, there was nothing like that in my case!
- </p>
- <p>
- A lump swelled in my throat. I don’t know what it was—whether ’twas
- homesickness, longing for my own people of my own kind, spectacle of boys
- who had gone barefoot with me, sight of their sorrow, mindfulness of what
- the cruel city had done to me, reflection that I had helped in a measure
- to get them into their scrape—I say I don’t know just what it was.
- But my throat gripped and tears flowed up into my eyes. Those poor devils,
- who were children in spite of their size, were helplessly adrift—I
- could see that. Something special must have happened to them.
- </p>
- <p>
- I seem to be stopping to analyze my emotions. At the time I was doing
- nothing of the sort. I felt a comforting sense that I was not a rascal
- down in my heart, in spite of what I had done and of the job I was holding
- down.
- </p>
- <p>
- I left my rostrum, ran into the little office, and tipped Dawlin’s bottle
- of whisky against my upper lip; the alcohol dissolved the gum and I ripped
- off the mustache. Then I chased along after the Sortwell boys. They were
- far up the street, plugging slowly with bowed shoulders.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I came close upon them I took my time to get my breath and control my
- emotions. Then I called to them, and they turned around and stared at me
- with eyes which expressed all the range of feelings between interrogation
- and stupefaction.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, haven’t you anything to say to an old friend?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ain’t you,” faltered the older. “It may look like you, but it ain’t.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There ain’t anything in this place that’s looking like it really is,”
- whimpered the younger. “There was a card with a zero on it and it wasn’t a
- zero—it was a nine—and he took our money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you lost your money, boys?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “All of it—every scrimptom of it,” bawled the older. “We ’ain’t
- got anything to get home with. We saved up to come down and see the city
- for a couple of days—and now it’s all gone.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We worked all winter logging—sweating and freezing in Cale Warson’s
- swamp—to earn that money, and that hell-hound down there took it and
- jammed it into his pants pocket. And how’ll we get home?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Oh, I knew what logging in a swamp was! I knew what sort of wages were
- paid and how hard it is to save! That one sentence fairly lanced my
- conscience. “He jammed it into his pocket!” To Jeff Dawlin, who reached
- out and took in his money so easily, those bills were hardly more than so
- much paper, as he handled them.
- </p>
- <p>
- But he had not been a boy in a country town where money is not come at so
- easily, where the little hoards grow so slowly, where there are so many
- dreams about the big world up in the attics under the patched coverlids—dreams
- which the little savings may bring to realization!
- </p>
- <p>
- These were boys from my home town. Thank God, a lot of the cheap in me,
- the soul-dirt I had rubbed off in my associations, the cynical notions
- about right and wrong, the inclinations of a swaggering sport—yes, a
- whole lot of that slime was washed out of me right there and then by my
- new emotions. I don’t say I was made anyways clean—not all of it
- went. I have done many things since then to be ashamed of. But I was a
- blamed sight more of a man when I went up and patted those poor boys on
- their backs, standing between them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t take on about it any more, fellows,” I said. “I guess I’ll be able
- to do something for you.” My tone was pretty important and they began to
- look me over; they had been so fussed up that they had not taken full
- stock of me till then.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Golly! You’re rich, ain’t you?” gasped the older.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now about losing this money—where did you lose it?” I asked,
- swelling a little more because I knew I was in the way to make a big
- impression.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Down the street there—where those fraud duflickers are all billed
- out! It looked like a zero—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And they charged three dollars apiece for feeling of our heads!” put in
- the younger. “There was a big man who cracked his fists—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Never mind! I know all about all such places, boys. I won’t allow any
- such things to be put across in this city on any friends of mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was talking as if I owned the town. They goggled at me as if they
- believed that I did own it. When I started back toward Dawlin’s joint they
- followed me like hounds at heel.
- </p>
- <p>
- I flipped a lordly gesture at the girl in the ticket-office and walked in
- without paying—herding my clients ahead of me. That was visible
- evidence of my mysterious importance, and they looked up at me as if they
- were ready to fall down and offer worship. For in America any man who can
- walk past ticket-sellers and pay by a flip of the hand, displays a power
- which autocrats may envy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are sure this is the place?” I asked the Sortwell boys.
- </p>
- <p>
- They breathlessly assured me that it was.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And there’s the man who made us pay him six dollars,” declared the older.
- </p>
- <p>
- Professor Jewelle had stepped out through the slit in his curtains. I
- walked up to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you charge these gentlemen six dollars—take the money from
- them?” I asked, sternly.
- </p>
- <p>
- He saw that there was something on and, like a rogue, believed, of course,
- that I was plotting further graft on these innocents. He played up to me
- with shrewd promptness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I have done anything wrong I ask pardon,” he whined.
- </p>
- <p>
- “These are particular friends of mine. Hand over their money at once!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned his back on them while he pulled out the money and gave me a
- wink which indicated that he was on and approved whatever game I was
- playing. I kept my face straight and stern, for the boys were surveying me
- with adoration.
- </p>
- <p>
- I handed them the money and went across to Mr. Dawlin’s booth, the hicks
- at my heels.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dawlin was by nature more suspicious of his fellow-man than was
- Professor Jewelle, and he evidently resented the fact that I had not
- tipped him off in advance. He regarded me with much sullenness when I
- commanded him to return the money he had taken from the gentlemen. His
- sour unwillingness, mingled with his uncertainty, really helped my game
- along. It looked as if I had the power to force even such a balky mule as
- Dawlin seemed to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know about this!” he growled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t help that! You’ll have to take my word—till you can get
- something better,” I added, and I put a little significance into my last
- words.
- </p>
- <p>
- And Mr. Dawlin, being a rascal who thought he could sniff a plant, decided
- to grab in on a partner’s game. “Why, sure, boss,” he cried, heartily, “if
- that’s the way you feel about it! Take any gents that’s friends of yours
- and all you have to do is speak the word!” He pulled out of his trousers
- pocket a big wad of crumpled bills. “Do you know how much they spent
- backing their opinion against mine?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was twenty-two dollars—it was just twenty-two dollars,” piped
- one of the boys, and the other one helped out on the chorus.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The rising young financiers seem to have no doubt,” sneered Dawlin.
- </p>
- <p>
- The older boy looked at the big swatch of bills and rasped his rough hands
- together.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps money don’t mean much to you, mister, handling it the way you do!
- But if you earnt twenty-two dollars by day’s work, getting into a
- popple-swamp before sunup, I guess you’d know it when you counted those
- dollars out to anybody.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So that’s the way you earned this money? How much more did you earn?”
- Dawlin screwed a look at me, showing fresh suspicion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll do the talking,” I said. “I’ll talk because I know what I’m doing! I
- say only this: hand over the coin!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I say again, I don’t know about that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I reckoned I was overplaying my air of importance, so I found a chance to
- slip him a wink which promised a good deal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you know who I am!” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he admitted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then pay!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He began to grin, finding this little comedy amusing as well as
- mysterious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure thing, boss! And seeing that it’s you and your orders,’ here’s five
- dollars for your friends on top of the twenty-two. Go and buy five
- dollars’ worth of corned beef and eat your heads off! Nothing like going
- the limit when you come down to the big burg!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I gave Mr. Dawlin a knowing look when I turned to leave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My friends are much obliged for the extra five—but they can use it
- for something else besides eats. Come on, gentlemen! You will be my guests
- at dinner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I could see by Dawlin’s face that he took that last as a straight tip from
- me that I had designs on the countrymen—and that he would understand
- why I was quitting my job for a time. He gave me a most benignant smile
- when I left.
- </p>
- <p>
- Professor Jewelle smirked and bowed when we passed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Big Mike, the ogre of the place, stepped politely to one side and twisted
- his ugly mug into a one-sided grin of apology.
- </p>
- <p>
- So we went out in state.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a new feeling in me. It was a longing to be with those boys from
- home. Up to then I had been ashamed to meet anybody from Levant. And out
- of that shame had come a sort of dread to hear any news from my old town.
- Now I was hungry for news.
- </p>
- <p>
- To be sure, just at that moment I was in a fool’s paradise of spurious
- importance. It was comforting, however, to be set on a pedestal by those
- Sortwell boys, and to know that at least two persons from Levant had
- stopped thinking of me as a runaway scalawag.
- </p>
- <p>
- Along with my new feelings had come a sort of vague hope.
- </p>
- <p>
- I walked out of Dawlin’s place with a hazy notion that I would never go
- back. Dawlin was evened up with me as to finances—I had my last
- week’s rake-off in my pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I may say right here that I never did go back—not to stand up
- and coax suckers! When I did go back I played Mr. Jeff Dawlin for one!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IX—A GRISLY GAME OF BOWLS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> DID not bother
- with any of the victualing houses in that low-down locality. I led the
- Sortwell boys uptown and ushered them into a very fancy restaurant. I
- could see that their opinion of my greatness was growing all of the time.
- I could not induce them to touch the bill of fare or even look at it. They
- gaped in such a frightened way when I mentioned fancy dishes, that I
- helped to set them at ease by ordering steak and potatoes. They ate to the
- last scrap, cleaning their plates with morsels of bread, even as grateful
- pups lick their platters. They confessed that they had not dared to go
- into an eating-house, and I remembered that first day when I had roamed
- the streets of the city.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wanted to ask questions about Levant, but I delayed. Dave Sortwell, the
- older, opened up the subject, but he did not do it very gracefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon they can’t slur the Sidneys after this, like they have always
- done past back,” he said. “Here you are, something big down here in the
- city—and your uncle Deck is first selectman of Levant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So my uncle had achieved his political ambition! When I heard that news I
- had inside me a feeling of apprehension which I could scarcely account
- for.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Elected last week at the March town-meeting,” affirmed Ardon, the
- brother. “We younger fellows that have come of voting age went for him—most
- all of us, because he say’s he is going to turn politics in our town
- upside down and dance a jig on the bottom of ’em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He was into the tavern the other night, pretty well teaed up,” giggled
- Dave, “and he said he was going to gallop Judge Kingsley to hell and stand
- over him with a red-hot gad while he shoveled brimstone. He has got it in
- for the judge—and a good many folks in Levant ain’t sorry. Judge
- Kingsley has always gouged folks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did they put the judge out of the treasurership—did my uncle bring
- that about?” Hearing that the feud was on worse than ever made my heart
- sick. I had been hoping!
- </p>
- <p>
- “O Lord, no! I guess the judge is forever fixed in that job. Folks can’t
- seem to think of anybody else as treasurer. He’s a financier,” said Dave,
- reverently. “He knows all about handling money. Folks trust to him for
- that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you say my uncle—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your uncle is doing most of the saying. Folks stand round and listen. I
- don’t know what he is trying to do to the judge. Nobody seems to know.
- Guess he can’t do much of anything except talk. You know, yourself, Ross,
- how he keeps sparked up most of the time. Maybe he don’t know just what he
- says, himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I began to skirt the edges of conditions in Levant, asking questions about
- this one and that, showing as much indifference as I could. But the
- Sortwell boys showed even more indifference about their home town. It was
- all too familiar to them. They were displaying increasing interest in me,
- and were emboldened to ask questions, now that their early awe was wearing
- off.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found out—and I was rather surprised—that the folks in
- Levant had not heard a word about me since I left the town. I had rather
- expected that Dodovah Vose would drop some hint as to what had become of
- me—and yet, on reflection, I could see that prudence required him to
- keep still. He had helped a prisoner to escape, and could not well let
- anybody suspect that he knew the whereabouts of that prisoner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll tell you, boys,” I said, when they had flanked me with questions
- from every approach and had finally and fairly pounced on me to find out
- what I was doing for a living and how I was so important, “I am hitched up
- with big business interests who don’t allow their men to talk. I’d tell
- you if I could tell anybody. It isn’t one special kind of business—it’s
- all kinds—a sort of a syndicate—a combination. You
- understand!”
- </p>
- <p>
- They hastened to say that they did—and I was glad of that because I
- didn’t understand, myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you’ll let us say that you’re in this big business, won’t you? When
- we get back home we want to tell all of ’em that they’d better not
- slur you any more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose the backbiters have been busy, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, not much nowadays except somebody remarks once in a while that you
- had to skip the town. You know how such things pop up in talk. Your uncle
- being prominent nowadays, you get mentioned once in a while. But Dodovah
- Vose has always stood up for you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And a lot of folks didn’t believe what that detective said. He wasn’t a
- real detective, anyway. He was only a deputy sheriff from Pownal,” added
- Ardon, and the next minute I felt like hugging the boy. “I was always
- ashamed of how us fellows put you in bad, Ross, and so I owned up when
- Celene Kingsley asked me—”
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t help it! I came right up in my chair. “Celene Kingsley asked
- you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He misunderstood my heat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t be mad, Ross! I stood up for you, I say! I was sorry for what I
- did. I was ashamed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you said Celene Kingsley asked you something!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I can’t remember whether she came right to me and asked me or
- whether it just happened that the thing came up somewhere or—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you would surely remember if <i>she</i> came to you!” I could not
- conceive of Celene coming to anybody without it marking a mile-stone in
- life.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, the Sortwell boy had plainly decided to be non-committal until he
- had a better line on my feelings in the affair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want you to be mad because I talked it over, Ross. I stood up for
- you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But did she come <i>asking?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We-e-ll, I guess she must have asked—or—or something! Anyway,
- it came up in talk—somehow—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Confound his haziness!
- </p>
- <p>
- “And of course I stood up for you. It was only right! I told her how you
- tried to bust up the Skokums! I said you threatened to bat out the brains
- of the whole of us if we didn’t stop cutting-up. I told her that they
- hadn’t ought to have arrested you that night, for you was trying to stop
- us from raiding her father’s house to grab that detective. You said
- something about a home being a castle—or—or something. Anyway,
- Ross, I did the best I knew how—I ain’t so much good in talk as you
- are. Honestly, I did the best I could to put you straight when she asked.
- Yes, I reckon she did ask.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was looking at him with such rapturous expression that his face cleared
- of uncertainty regarding my feelings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure, she must have asked, for I wouldn’t go to blart-ing that around,
- making the rest of us out as pirates, unless she had pinned me down. I
- reckon she did just that! Pinned me down. But I was glad to help you out
- that much!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It came to me with a rush of sentiment that all I had done that day for
- the Sortwell boys had been fully paid for long in advance, and I was sorry
- because a whole lot of my actions had really been dictated by my
- selfishness and my desire to show off.
- </p>
- <p>
- I reached across the table and took his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ardon, I’m going to own up that I have had a lot of bitter thoughts about
- the folks in Levant since I left home. But if I had known that I had only
- one friend there like you have been in this matter, I would have put all
- the bad things out of my mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I only told the truth, Ross.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that’s the hardest job a man undertakes to do in a lot of cases.” I
- was thinking just then how hard <i>I</i> would find it to own up about
- myself, and how I had secured that money from the clutches of the rogues
- in Dawlin’s joint. And there I was, making a lot of capital out of that
- deceit!
- </p>
- <p>
- But after what I had just heard I was resolved to go ahead and make more
- capital out of my pretensions to greatness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re going to let us say that you have made good, aren’t you?” asked
- Dave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d like to get back into the good opinion of the old town, boys. If you
- feel like saying something nice about me when you get back to Levant, I’ll
- be grateful.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, if we don’t blow your horn!” they cried in concert.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But not too loud, boys! I don’t want to have too big a reputation to live
- up to when I come back home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They stood up and clapped me on the back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By gorry! you will come, won’t you, and show ’em?” pleaded Dave.
- “Come and show ’em!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there’s one thing to be thought of first,” I said, with a grin. “Has
- my uncle Deck stopped threatening to kill me on sight?”
- </p>
- <p>
- That stirred their memories and fetched a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He wouldn’t dare to give you as much as one yip if you walked up to him
- looking like you do now,” said Dave.
- </p>
- <p>
- The thought which he suggested was comforting; so much in this world does
- depend on outside appearances. The hankering in me to go back was whetted;
- just to make a show in the face and eyes of Levant, to stop their tongues
- for good and all! But I was conscious that deep under those cheaper
- motives was something more compelling. I had felt the thrust of it after
- Ardon Sortwell had told me of his confession to Celene. She, at least,
- knew that I had not been a renegade, and she had taken enough interest in
- me to make sure on that point.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When are you coming back, Ross?” demanded Dave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t tell anybody I am coming back, boys. Promise me that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They did.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you may say that you saw me in the city, and that I am doing well,
- and sent my best regards to all my friends.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll make their cussed old ears sing,” declared Ardon. “Don’t you worry
- about us!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I can arrange my business so as to leave it, I may run up later.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I showed them some of the city sights that afternoon and they started for
- home that night—and I saw to it that they were safely aboard their
- train.
- </p>
- <p>
- That I should dream of Levant that night was entirely natural. They were
- enticing dreams and they made me homesick and I found out that I was not
- such a bold man, after all, in spite of the shell I had grown; I felt very
- much like a boy when I woke next morning. I was hungry for my own folks.
- </p>
- <p>
- In my haste to be gone I forgot all my caution. I went down to the
- water-front just as if there were no such person as a vengeful Anson C.
- Doughty.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had cached, temporarily, my diving equipment. I went to the storage-man
- and arranged for its care, paying in advance.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I was bold enough to go hunting up Jodrey Vose because I wanted to
- carry some fresh and direct message to his brother in order to secure
- continued favor in the case of the tavern-keeper; he certainly had been my
- best friend in Levant. I intended to lodge with him and I dreaded his keen
- questioning in case I went to him with lies about when I had seen his
- brother last.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found the captain on his lighter and we had a good talk during his
- rest-spell.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sorry it has turned out for you as it has, young Sidney. But it’s a
- good idea for you to run up to the old town and hang round with Dod for a
- while and sort of get your feet placed all over again. Maybe something
- will turn up down this way later!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anson C. Doughty’s toes, perhaps.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He wagged his head, soberly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m glad you came down to take leave, son, but you’re running chances.
- Anson C. Doughty is mighty ugly. He was beaten up in front of his crew—and
- folks haven’t got done talking and he knows they are talking. You’d better
- be hipering, I reckon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sent one of the helpers to his cabin for a parcel and he put it into my
- hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’ll be handier than sending it by express to Dod,” he said. “It’s a
- skull I found in the dock. Tell him to make up a pirate yarn to go with
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Being thus equipped with full credentials as to my continued comfortable
- standing with Jodrey Vose, for the purposes of my further intimacy with
- Dodovah Vose, I started up the wharf in excellent spirits, my thoughts on
- my home-going.
- </p>
- <p>
- And half-way to the street I fairly bumped into Anson C. Doughty. It was
- no coincidence—I ought to have reckoned on that meeting—the
- manager was regularly up and down the wharf at all hours of the day. But,
- as I have said, I had lost my caution. I had met him once face to face,
- and had not been recognized. But I was no longer wearing that mustache.
- </p>
- <p>
- He swore a blue streak and danced back and forth in front of me, waving
- his hairy hands to shoo me back. He looked just as much like a cockroach
- as ever.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You belong in State prison and you’re going there,” he snarled.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were two wharf loafers near by, the only men in sight. He called to
- them, and they came to us, a couple of husky stevedores.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know <i>me!</i>” shouted Doughty. “You two men hold this sucker till
- I can fetch a cop. Hold him! Don’t let him get away!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He ran off toward the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had not a chance to get away from those big chaps on that narrow wharf—and
- it was plain that they knew Anson C. Doughty and recognized his authority
- in those quarters.
- </p>
- <p>
- So here were all my fresh plans, my hankering for home, my new-laid
- reputation for Levant consumption about to be kicked into the black depths
- of tophet by the grudge of Anson C. Doughty!
- </p>
- <p>
- I could see that the stevedores despised my size because I was wearing a
- plug-hat; they glowered at me with the natural enmity the man in overalls
- feels for the dandy. It was perfectly damnable—that situation! To be
- arrested—to be shown up for what I was—the thought screwed my
- desperation to the breaking-point.
- </p>
- <p>
- I pulled my wallet and began to flick out bills.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He’s only trying to get back at me on account of a grudge, fellows; he’s
- using you for tongs,” I told them. “I was one of the divers and I batted
- him when he insulted me! I want to get out of town! Here’s a piece of
- money! He won’t give you anything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had the skull under my arm and my wallet in my hands, and I wasn’t
- paying much attention to the men while I counted out money.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who was the gink who told us to hold the guy?” muttered one of the men.
- “Was it Doughty?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure! You know him,” said his companion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he don’t know <i>us!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He won’t remember who you are!” I hastened to put in. “Take some money,
- and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You bet we’ll take some money,” barked the two of them in chorus, and the
- next instant one of them clutched me and the other grabbed wallet, money
- and all, and they ran away, ducked into an alley between storehouses, and
- disappeared.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was free at a high price.
- </p>
- <p>
- I ran after them, of course, but they were nowhere in sight when I reached
- the parallel wharf, and so I started for the street; and Anson C. Doughty
- saw me, for he was running up and down the sidewalk, wildly hunting for a
- policeman. When he undertook to head me off I pitched the wrapped skull at
- him with all my might; it plunked him squarely in the face and dropped
- him, and then went bounding along the pavement at a lively clip. I was
- conscious that a lot of people were looking on and that a hullabaloo was
- started. But in spite of that I stopped to pick up the skull before I fled
- from the place. I reckon I must have felt considerable of a sense of
- responsibility where the interests of my friends, the Voses, were
- concerned!
- </p>
- <p>
- I got through a short street on the jump, caught a passing car and when I
- was once aboard I was lost to pursuers—I was merely one of the
- city’s mass, and my garments testified for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I dug down into my pockets and found a few crumpled bills and some silver—the
- loose money I carried outside my wallet. The whole of it amounted to
- mighty little—only about enough to take me to Levant, as I
- remembered what the train fare had been.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not stop to figure on any further resources; I did not dare to go
- and seek aid from any of my acquaintances; I did not go back to my room
- for any of my belongings. Panic was on me. To be caught at that time meant
- the toppling of my cardboard house of hopes and reputation. I did not know
- to what extent Anson C. Doughty would throw out his drag-net—but I
- was pretty sure that he would drop all his other business for a time and
- attend strictly to what concerned me. He surely was the angriest man I had
- seen in many a day when he went down under the impact of that package.
- </p>
- <p>
- To get out of that city just as quickly as I could, before he could set
- persons on my trail, or put spies at the city’s outlets, was the only
- sensible course open to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- So in less than half an hour I found myself on the train, homeward bound,
- just as much of a fugitive <i>from</i> the city as I had been in other
- days when I headed <i>toward</i> it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had a little spare change in my pocket and a skull under my arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- X—THE ART OF PUTTING ON A FRONT
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>AVING caught a
- train out of the city at a fairly early hour in the forenoon, I made a
- daylight ride of it to Levant, and I stepped out upon the platform at
- Lower Comers just before sundown.
- </p>
- <p>
- I remember that the red March sun was almost touching the rocky edge of
- the beech ridge, and, with the bare trunks of the trees striping it,
- looked like a coal fire with the stove cover off and a griddle on. In
- fact, as I looked up at the sun and reflected on the general condition of
- my affairs, I felt as if I were the particular live lobster destined for
- the griddle in Levant.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I walked past the platform loafers, leaving my satin-lined overcoat
- open so that they might get the full effect of my frock suit. No one
- seemed to recognize me; Levant Comers is all of three miles from Levant
- village, and there was never much mixing between the communities when I
- was a boy. I set off at a good pace to walk the three miles to Dodovah
- Vose’s tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- Men in several teams which overtook me offered a lift, and one of them
- addressed me as “Elder.” Evidently my clothes were producing an
- impression! But I declined all offers. I had waved the stage-driver aside,
- and now if I accepted a free ride I might have brought suspicion on my
- financial ability. So I told them all politely that I needed exercise and
- walked on in all my dignity—and, being encumbered by nothing except
- a skull under my arm, I found my tramp pleasurable.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went along at such a clip that I topped the long rise from the river
- where the railroad winds and was able to look down on distant Levant
- village before the lingering dusk had settled into night. The stripped
- trees had left all the houses bare and rather bleak; there was no beauty
- anywhere. The afternoon chill had hardened the road mud into iron ridges.
- Being back on my native heath was not so consoling and heart-thrilling as
- I had pictured. That faded, sodden, frozen landscape was depressing. I
- looked like a millionaire, but I belonged on the town farm. There was one
- thing to remember, however. My uncle as first selectman was also overseer
- of the poor, by virtue of his office.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wondered what he would say to me if I walked up to him and tried to
- borrow money! On second thought, I knew so well what he would say that I
- promptly decided that I would keep my mouth shut in regard to my finances.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hurried on, for there was an inviting twinkle of light in the windows of
- Vose’s tavern. I was carrying a rather gruesome ticket of admission, but a
- message from Jodrey Vose went along with it and it would make me
- especially welcome.
- </p>
- <p>
- For some distance the highway was bordered by woods, and at last I saw a
- roadside sign which gave me a bit of a thrill, for it bore the magic name
- of Kingsley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For Sale. This Wood-lot. Apply to Z. Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That’s what the sign said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before I was fairly on my way, after stopping to read, I was able to put
- eyes on Z. Kingsley, himself. He was in a carriage which was coming in my
- direction and his daughter was driving a horse which was too
- likely-looking to have been furnished by my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not reflect or consider. I had no clear notion in my mind at that
- instant. I suppose I was overcome by an irresistible hankering to hear her
- voice—to speak to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- At any rate, backed by that longing or by courage or cheek or whatever
- else it might be called, I stepped out into the middle of the road and put
- up my hand. I reckon if Judge Kingsley had been driving he would have run
- over me. His blessed daughter pulled up short.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took off my hat and he gave me a sharp glance and recognized me. And so
- did Celene, for she smiled even while she looked a bit startled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Drive on!” snapped her father.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley, I want to—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He checked me with much impatience, and I was glad of it, for I was not
- prepared to tell him just what I did want. I knew I wanted to rush up to
- her and say a lot of things, but I was conscious that the action would not
- have made much of a hit with her father.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no time to waste on you, sir. I have to catch a train.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the train has gone along,” I stalled. “I just came in on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am going the other way—to the city!” He showed considerable
- temper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have plenty of time before the down train is due, father,” Celene told
- him. He reached after the reins, but she held them away from him, showing
- that she had more or less of the Kingsley obstinacy, herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you want, sir? Quick!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a rather contemptuous command, but it was showing more
- consideration for a member of the Sidney family than I had dared to hope
- for. If he had taken up the whip and lashed at me at first meeting I would
- not have been surprised. It was evident that my personal appearance was
- having weight with him. I ventured to believe that the Sortwell boys had
- been advertising me in town, though they were only a few hours ahead of
- me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I rolled my eyes around, trying to think of something sensible. I saw the
- sign again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is your price on this wood-lot, Judge Kingsley?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t stop to talk business, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I’m simply asking the price. You’re advertising it. You must have put
- a price on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll be back in a week or ten days. Come to me then. I’m in a hurry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I put on a fine air of importance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So am I, Judge Kingsley! So are the big interests which I represent. But
- we are never in too much of a hurry to answer polite questions in
- business. I say, what is your price?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two thousand dollars,” he cracked out.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How many acres?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I raised my hat and stepped to one side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s all, sir. I’ll investigate and be ready to talk with you when you
- return. Good evening!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I could see that he was taken aback a bit by my own shortness in the
- matter. He sat there holding his mouth open as if he intended to say
- something more, but I walked on; it came to me that perhaps he was going
- to say that he wouldn’t do any business with a Sidney—and I was
- avoiding all argument on that point.
- </p>
- <p>
- Celene gave me another flicker of a smile when she started the horse. They
- went on at a good clip, and the moment they were out of sight around a
- bend in the road I turned back, climbed the fence, and sat down beside
- some bushes. My heart was so warm within me that I was not afraid of a
- chill.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was guessing that she would not waste any time in making that trip to
- the railroad station; you see, I was building high merely on the glances
- she had been giving me—on the flush which was on her cheek when she
- drove away. Would she hurry back to overtake me? She did.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I saw her coming, snapping her whip to make the horse trot at a
- brisker pace, I climbed back over the pitch-pole fence and leaned against
- it. It was pretty dark, but she spied me and stopped the horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have done something rather foolish,” I told her, staying where I stood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I have found out all over again that haste makes waste. I wanted to
- get a peep at that stand of timber and I went racing around in the dark—and
- so I have wrenched my ankle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am so sorry!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s my own fault! It’s what the city does to a man! Keeps him on the
- gallop! Makes him too impatient to wait for morning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can you get to the carriage?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I don’t like to trouble you, Miss Kingsley! If you will send a team—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, you shall ride with me! The idea of my leaving you in the woods
- alone! I’ll come and help you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I’ll manage!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So I limped to the carriage and climbed in. She watched me anxiously and
- asked after my hurt with solicitude. I was doing a pretty mean thing, I
- knew, but the opportunity to be alone with Celene Kingsley that first hour
- of my arrival in town was a favor to be grabbed for and hugged jealously.
- She walked the horse, and I sat beside her and was so happy in that first
- intimacy that I was not a bit ashamed of my deceit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you are doing wonderful things in the city!” she said, after a time. I
- had not spoken, for I was afraid of blurting out something foolish.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing so very grand,” I faltered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But Dave and Ardon Sortwell have had something to say about that since
- they have been home. I am very glad for you, Mr. Sidney.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d rather please you than anybody else.” That was a mighty awkward
- answer and I was just as much embarrassed as she was.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good news about Levant boys pleases us all up here.’
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sometimes I have thought they liked the bad news best—the most of
- ’em. The way they drove me out and then talked behind my back was—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know all the truth of it—and most of the folks do now, I think,”
- she broke in. “You must put it all out of your mind. You must not come
- back with resentment toward anybody. There’s too much of that in the
- world. There’s too much in Levant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She hesitated a moment and then burst out with a tremble in her voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, Mr. Sidney, I am so thankful because you have come home! I do hope
- you can have some influence with your uncle. I ask your forgiveness for
- bringing it up so soon. But my heart is so full of it all! I hurried back,
- hoping I could overtake you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So that was why she had hurried!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know about having influence with my uncle,” I said, and I could
- not keep all of the rasp out of my voice. Her welcome of me simply as an
- uncle-tamer had pricked me in a mighty tender place. “I don’t believe he
- is going to give me either three cheers or a hug and kiss when he sees
- me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you are an important man, now, and he must be proud of you and your
- success. He will look up to you now that you have money and position.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Like a bang on the head the conviction struck me that I had cut out a fine
- bit of work for myself when I dropped back into my home town.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had been all too well advertised by my loving friends.
- </p>
- <p>
- Celene Kingsley had touched squarely on one truth: the only way to handle
- my uncle was to appear important even if I were not important. Mere bluff
- would go a little way—but not far. I must have money!
- </p>
- <p>
- And here I was picked by her as her champion in the family feud!
- </p>
- <p>
- If I had only stayed in the city! There was money to be come at there.
- Dollars in Levant were nailed down with spikes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We haven’t one happy hour in our home,” she wailed. “Your uncle is
- breaking my father’s heart, Mr. Sidney. I don’t understand what your uncle
- is doing; mother doesn’t understand it! Father has never told his business
- to us. But he sits in his office and figures and figures. Sometimes he
- stays there ’most all night. And it’s all on account of your uncle!
- I know that! For my father says your uncle is hounding him to death. You
- must find out what he is doing. I know you will find out and tell him he
- must stop.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will look into the matter,” I said, as bravely as I could. “Of course
- there’s been hard feeling between my uncle and your father for a good many
- years.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But my father is sorry now for anything in the past. He says so to us, to
- mother and me. He sent mother to your uncle to ask him if he would not
- stop persecuting. Yes, she went to your uncle because father asked her to
- do so.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That statement nigh took my breath away!
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Kingsley going as suppliant to my uncle Deck? Judge Zebulon Kingsley
- requesting her to do it? I shut my eyes and could picture her—frail,
- pale, aristocratic. The exigency must be desperate when Judge Kingsley
- would submit his wife to such employment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But please keep that a secret,” she pleaded.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw that I was headed into something which was bigger and more baleful
- than I had dreamed of. And more than before did I feel my deficiencies as
- a fraud who could not even turn a trick for his own wants, let alone those
- greater affairs in Levant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This mystery in our home is killing us all,” she went on. “There have
- been strangers in town and they have been much with my father. I do not
- like their looks. He would not tell us, but I am afraid they have coaxed
- him away to the city on this trip he is making. Perhaps your uncle has set
- those men on to harm him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had never gauged my uncle Deck as a hirer of assassins, but I had not
- seen him for some years, and I admitted to myself that there was never any
- telling where a man’s grudge would lead him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mother and I tried to make him stay at home. But he would not stay and he
- would not tell us why he was going to the city. Oh, how I hate those
- strangers, for I believe they have coaxed him away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked sideways at her, and a little shiver tingled in me. There was
- real venom in her tone and I saw that I had not guessed the depths in Miss
- Celene Kingsley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wish I had a brother,” she mourned. “I believe he would feel as I feel
- now, and would follow up and kill the man who would harm my father.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was so strange an utterance from a girl and seemed so contrary to what
- I had supposed her nature to be that I remembered that outburst for a long
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- I juggled the skull on my knee and pondered awhile before I said anything,
- and she was silent, too, evidently trying to get control of her emotions.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to say this to you, Miss Kingsley. The Sort-well boys gave me some
- news of the home town and they told me that my uncle was after your father
- in bitter fashion. That’s one reason why I have hurried up here. I don’t
- know just what I can do with my uncle, but I’ll truly do my best.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We had come into the edge of the village and had passed the first houses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I put my trust in you,” she said, gently. “I always knew you had good
- impulses in you. I remember our talk that day on Purgatory Hill. And I
- know you kept your promise you gave to me then. You did your best to make
- the boys good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I’ll do my best to make my uncle good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do hope your business will not call you away until you have
- straightened matters out. Oh, you asked about the price of the wood-lot!
- Does it mean that you expect to have some business with father?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had not given another thought to the wood-lot since I had used it for an
- excuse in an emergency. I did not see at that moment how I could use a
- wood-lot for anything else than that excuse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If only you could have some business with my father—it would smooth
- things so much for all of us, perhaps,” she pleaded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll see what can be done,” I assured her. “This syndicate—this
- combination—a very large concern,” I floundered on, trying to think
- up some sort of a plausible lie to account for my interest in a wood-lot,
- “it’s—er—ah!—you see, I can’t give out much information
- locally because we do so many kinds of business—it’s all linked up—it’s
- necessary to move carefully, but I think I’ll tell you this much,
- confidentially, just between ourselves!” Again my hankering to have some
- sort of a secret between Celene Kingsley and myself! “One branch of our
- business is building all the tall brick chimneys in the eastern part of
- the country. We use millions of bricks and so we need a great deal of wood
- for burning the bricks. So that’s why, maybe, I can pay your father’s
- price for the wood-lot. Now you understand!” I ended up with a lot of
- relief, for I had to dive pretty deep for that lie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do see, and I’m glad there’s a prospect you’ll stay in town. And then,
- too, there’s your ankle to nurse!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was glad she mentioned the ankle, for I had forgotten all about it, and
- would certainly have betrayed myself when I jumped out of the carriage at
- the tavern. Really, to be a good liar a fellow should take one of those
- courses in memory-training! As it was, I descended carefully and promised
- her to apply cloths and liniment that night. She tendered her little hand,
- and I pressed it, and she left with me the memory of a smile which was
- like a rose gemmed with dew—-for there were tears in her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- I waited in the tavern yard till she was well on her way, and then I
- marched in without any limp, for I was not minded to keep up that special
- lie for the benefit of all Levant.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dodovah Vose walked behind his catty-cornered counter, plucked a rusty pen
- from its potato scabbard, whirled the register around under my nose, and
- tendered the pen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rather nippy evenings, though pleasant enough daytimes for this time of
- year, Squire,” he said, by way of welcome to the arriving guest.
- </p>
- <p>
- That tickled me. He didn’t recognize me. He was looking at my rig rather
- than at my face. When I had splashed my name on the page he pulled his
- spectacles to the end of his nose and inspected the signature. Then he
- snapped upright and stared at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Godfrey domino Peter!” he bawled. “Then them Sortwell boys ain’t such
- condemned liars as I suspected they were! When Jod wrote me that you had
- quit diving I reckoned you had gone plunk square to tophet!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, there’s always a chance for a fellow in the city, if he keeps
- hustling,” I told him. I chinked the little handful of small change in my
- pocket. “I’m going to stay here with you for a spell, Mr. Vose. Have you a
- rule that guests without baggage must pay in advance?” I grinned and he
- took it as a great joke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you can tell me enough about Jod I may adopt you and give you free
- board the rest of your life,” he chuckled.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I handed over his present with a word of explanation, and he
- unwrapped the grisly object and surveyed it with as much satisfaction as
- if it had been a golden nugget.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jod always knows what will hit me to a T. Of course, he says to you,
- ‘Tell Dod to make up a story to go with it’!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Exactly what he said, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure! That’s what I have done with every curio he has given me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For the first time I realized that in my boyhood I had accumulated a fine
- line of fiction from Dodovah Vose.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I forgave him in my thoughts, for he took me into the big kitchen and
- fried me the finest chicken I ever ate. And while he fixed up my supper I
- told him how I had learned diving with his brother. I comforted him, too,
- by telling him that I had given up the work only temporarily.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I switched him when he tried to find out what I was up to at that
- time. The plug-hat part of my program seemed to puzzle him very much. I
- was not ready with any good explanation. I figured that I might have some
- kind of a story ready in the morning, after I had slept on the thing. I
- began to rely considerably on my work as a fabricator; I had shown quite a
- lot of aptitude and readiness on short notice, I reflected.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found myself holding an impromptu reception in the tavern office that
- evening—and they were all there with their little gimlets of
- questions, boring for information, you can bet! Therefore I broke away
- early and went to bed. I staved them all off in good shape, for I could be
- dignified in those clothes I was wearing. What I was afraid of was that
- Uncle Deck would pop in. He would not have used any gimlet; he would have
- set upon me with a pod-auger of inquisition, and would have ridden on it
- so as to bear down hard! And I had not my story ready!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XI—THE FAILURE OF AN UNCLE-TAMER
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>URTHERMORE, in the
- morning I was just as much at sea. I had gone to sleep as suddenly as if
- somebody had hit me a tunk on the head; too much fried chicken and hashed
- brown potato! I did not wake up till Dodo-vah Vose marched through the
- tavern halls, playing the long roll on his gong. The March sun, level with
- the eastern windows, quivered with glorious light when I opened my eyes on
- it. I had all sorts of reasons to be downcast, but I was not when I waked
- and saw that sun.
- </p>
- <p>
- Scattered coins, my whole capital, lay on the carpet of braided rags,
- where they had slipped from my trousers pocket the night before when I
- hung the garment over a chair. I gazed over the billowing edge of the
- feather tick in which I was nested, and counted, for the sun lighted the
- floor and glinted on the coins. One dollar and thirty-seven cents!
- </p>
- <p>
- However, in spite of that spectacle, I hopped out of bed and dressed,
- whistling snatches of tupes furnished by music-hall memories. I was home
- again, Celene Kingsley had given me glances which my hopes translated into
- all sorts of dear promises—she had asked me to help her; the sun was
- shining, breakfast was ready! I went down-stairs whistling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Head up and tail over the dasher, hey?” was the greeting from Landlord
- Vose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s a great world to live in,” I told him. After I had tucked away a
- slice of home-smoked fried ham only a little smaller than a door-mat,
- along with eggs and the fixings, I felt even more resolute about fronting
- what was coming to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- My spirit of boldness was even a bit hysterical, I guess. I rubbed the nap
- of my plug-hat smooth with my forearm, pulled on my overcoat, and went out
- and stood on the tavern porch, inhaling the tingling air of the morning,
- exhibiting myself to Levant like a gladiator stepping into the arena,
- announcing by pose and expression: “Here I am. Now come on!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the first to answer my challenge was my uncle Deck. I think he had
- been waiting for me to appear. He walked across the village square, coming
- from the town office, and I hailed him from afar with a flourish of the
- hand and a “Good morning!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ten feet away he stopped and looked me over. “Why didn’t you come home
- last night, where you belong, instead of putting up at the tavern and
- letting me hear about it by word of mouth?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, Uncle Deck,” I drawled, “you remember—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” he yapped, “as I stand here I don’t know whether to cuff your
- young chops or shake your hand. A good deal depends on you. If you go to
- digging up past foolishness I’ll cuff you. As it is”—he stepped
- forward, hand outstretched—“as it is, son, I’m glad to see you back,
- and I hear that you have made something of yourself. I’m glad of that,
- too! Now get your volucus, or whatever your baggage is, and come to the
- house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll tell you, Uncle Deck,” I explained, dropping his hand after a hearty
- shake; “I’m here on business this trip, not to go visiting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What difference does that make about coming to my house, where you
- belong?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had me there—backed into a corner! He had his pod-auger out,
- ready to use on me, just as I had apprehended—and so help me! I was
- not ready with a story.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is your business?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dignified reserve and a plug-hat would not serve to trig my uncle Deck!
- </p>
- <p>
- It was necessary for me to dedare then and there what my business in
- Levant was. I had been clutching wildly into a lot of nebulous thoughts
- ever since waking, trying to get hold of something solid.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I found out then, as I had experienced before, and discovered on many
- occasions later, that there was in me something which enabled me to leap
- an emergency barrier when the goad was sharp enough and the danger near.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve got to have dealings with a lot of men and I’d be a nuisance around
- your premises, Uncle Deck.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What dealings? No secret, is it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly not! I’m buying for a big syndicate. Buying standing timber.” I
- said that because I had already committed myself with Celene Kingsley and
- it came to me that I’d better have one story and stick to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right! Buy some of mine.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But as I remember it, it’s mostly black growth—pine and spruce.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and cedar, fir, and hemlock! What in thunder does anybody want of
- any other kind of timber?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t use it. I’m buying for a special purpose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt like a man trying to get across a brook without wetting his feet.
- Every time I leaped I was mighty glad and rather surprised to find another
- stepping-stone to land on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you must be looking for hardwood?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you going to do with it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Burn bricks for our factory chimneys.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not look more than half convinced.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t go into details even with you, Uncle Deck,” I told him. “I’m
- ordered to buy close, and when names of big concerns are given out the
- sellers always raise prices.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s only one big stand of hardwood in this town,” he said, “and I’ll
- see you in damnation before I’ll let you buy that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The red patches beside his nose began to flame. “Don’t come back at <i>me</i>
- with your ‘whys’! I’ll tell you why you can’t buy! It’s because you’ll be
- handing over money to that”—(I never heard coarser oaths; my uncle
- fairly choked on them)—“to Zebulon Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know the lot belongs to Judge Kingsley. I saw the sign on the fence and
- I happened to meet the judge right there and had some talk with him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean to tell me that you have been dickering with that—”
- </p>
- <p>
- I broke in on his list of names. “My concern has ordered me to buy
- hardwood and I’m buying. I have no quarrel with Judge Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the Great Jedux, you <i>have!</i> Don’t you dare to tell me you have
- forgotten! You <i>have</i> got a quarrel with him. D——n you,
- look out that you don’t start one with <i>me!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have come in here to mind my own business—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Condemn your ha’slet!” he cried. “No wonder you didn’t dare to come to my
- house last night! No wonder you’re fighting shy of me to-day!”
- </p>
- <p>
- In spite of his anger, I felt a sudden sense of relief. I did not need to
- waste effort and time on minor falsehoods, trying to explain why I did not
- come to his house; I could devote all my attention to my main lie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not fighting shy of you, Uncle Deck. I’m a business man, and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned sideways to me and switched his arm furiously, as if he held a
- goad and was trying to start a balky steer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You come along over to my office,” he commanded with a grate in his
- tones. “This isn’t a matter to blart about on a street corner.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I followed him. He locked the door behind us.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know that I have been elected first selectman of this town?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Uncle Deck. I’m glad the citizens—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yah, for the citizens! First and last, it has cost me five thousand
- dollars to get this office. And it’s for their own good I worked to get it—and
- they thought it was only to satisfy my grudge. That’s all the credit a man
- gets from the fools who vote. But I’m in this office now—I’m headed
- straight for my mark—and the man who gets in my way will be bored
- like a cheese target! Do you hear that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They know enough in this town to keep out of my way! I have trained ’em.
- You don’t dare to come back here, do you—my own nephew—and get
- in my way?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m only attending to my business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Meaning by that you’re thinking of buying a wood-lot from Zebulon
- Kingsley?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Secretly I was sort of laughing at myself. Here I was, inviting a lot of
- trouble by insisting on doing something which was a positive
- impossibility, so it seemed then as I jingled my coins in my pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have my business the same as you have yours, sir. I didn’t know—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You did know!” he shouted. “And if you are such a renegade as to forget
- what has been done to your family by that skunk, you know <i>now</i>—for
- I’m telling you! You can’t do business with Zebulon Kingsley. I say it!”
- He pounded his fist on his breast.
- </p>
- <p>
- I kept still. I was trying to work out in my mind some sensible idea as to
- what I really did intend to do in the matter of that wood-lot.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle leaned toward me over the table in the town office, propping
- himself on one fist and pounding softly and slowly with the other. His
- lips were rolled back and he growled his words deep down in his throat,
- almost in a whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know what he is, now. I’ve got the stuff on him. I’ve had to work slow.
- I’ve had to convince two devilish steers on the board of selectmen without
- telling ’em what I’m after. But I’ve got ’em. And he is
- headed for hell and I’m after him. And he knows it now and that’s the best
- of it! Because I’m taking my time while he is thinking it over! Oh, my
- gad! if only your father could have lived till now to see how the devilish
- old gouger and robber is getting his! And he is paying for your mother’s
- tears and sweat with drops of his blood. And he is paying me, too. I stay
- up nights to see that lamp in his office window. And you say, do you, that
- you have come here to hand over money to Zebulon Kingsley? To the man who
- filed your father’s heart in two with a mortgage?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s only in the way of ordinary trade,” I ventured. I was wondering why
- I was continuing to provoke my uncle. But I knew I needed to start
- considerable of a smoke to screen my real condition from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is to be no trade between you,” raged my uncle. “No money from you
- shall touch that scoundrel’s hands!” Just at that moment I was more sure
- of that than he was.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle gave me a little opportunity to do some thinking, for he went to
- the office safe and pulled out a bottle and drank.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wondered what kind of a hold he had on Judge Kingsley. My curiosity was
- aflame. It was not believable that he could ruin the judge financially,
- for the Kingsleys had possessed wealth for many generations. Celene
- Kingsley, as the petted daughter of our village aristocrat, was too far
- above me for any hopes to bear fruit, even though they budded. But what
- would the Kingsleys be after my uncle had worked out his revenge, of whose
- success he seemed to be so sure?
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know there has been trouble between the families, Uncle Deck,” I said.
- “I know we were not used right in money matters. But what is it you’re
- going to do to Judge Kingsley? What is your grip on him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and set back the bottle.
- “None of your d———d business!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t like to go into anything blindfolded. I have business to
- consider, and I’ll have to make explanations.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ll get off better by making ’em to the men who have hired you
- than by explaining to me, if you don’t do what I tell you to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I’m no kid any longer. I’m running my own affairs, sir. If you can’t
- let me in on the plans of this thing—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He advanced on me, waggling his fist. “You’re a devil of a fellow to come
- and pump me for secrets, you are! What do you want to do—run to him
- again like you did in the case of that hoss trade? Do you think I have
- forgotten that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, and I know you never will, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And so I say now, ask no questions and do as I tell you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I edged toward the door, for I was pretty well mixed up in my own thoughts
- and did not care to get into any more of a row with my uncle—and all
- needlessly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you giving me your word?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not promising anything until I can think it over and decide on what’s
- best to be done, Uncle Deck.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ll decide now before you leave this office.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He started toward me, but the key was in the door, and I turned it and
- stood ready to leave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have come back here to fight me, have you? A Sidney fighting his own
- and nearest blood kin, eh?” He came close and made threatening gestures. I
- put my arm across his breast and slowly pushed him back; I gave him good
- opportunity to note that the arm was a sizable one and mighty hard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You plug-hatted dude!” he frothed. “Forgetting the duty you owe to your
- own because you have had a whirl in the city!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am no dude, Uncle Deck, and calling me names and treating me like a
- brat, as you used to do, isn’t going to get you anything!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are not standing with your own family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can be loyal to my family, but I’m not going to-shut my eyes and jump
- into a row just because you tell me it’s your row.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw that I had produced an impression and he calmed down a bit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There may be a good deal you can do to help me in the thing,” he said.
- “But, blast it! after what you once did to me, I ain’t sure I can trust
- you!” He squinted his eyes and sized me up shrewdly. “You’re a Sidney, and
- the old rat did dirt to you before you left this town. If you ain’t
- willing to rise up now and swoop on him, there’s a reason. You ain’t stuck
- on that girl of his, are you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The blood surged into my face. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking hard
- about her all through that talk. That was the last thing I would have
- looked for from my uncle. He had jumped me in fine shape, and he saw it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yah-h-h!” he snarled. “You fool! You devilish fool! It had to be a girl
- to keep you from doing your plain duty—and I knew it. Nothing but a
- girl would be putting a twist-bit into your mouth right now!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re wrong! You’re all wrong!” I protested, but I didn’t sound real
- convincing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nor did he, either, when he started to give me hints about her. His eyes
- shifted and he stammered. I took him by the arm with a good, hearty clutch
- and he shut up.
- </p>
- <p>
- There did not seem to be anything more to say just then, on the part of
- either of us; plainly, we had squared off at each other!
- </p>
- <p>
- So I walked out.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was glad because my first session with my uncle was over. But while I
- felt relief I knew I had pretty well done for myself where he was
- concerned. Of course, I had not intended to confess to him my financial
- condition, but deep down I had felt until then that if worse came to the
- worst he would see me out of a hole. He would have done something, at
- least, for my father’s sake. But I had been the one to deal family loyalty
- the first kick. Now my uncle would see me starve and enjoy my sufferings;
- his grudges followed just such grooves.
- </p>
- <p>
- Whatever else was ahead, it was pretty much up to me!
- </p>
- <p>
- I went back to the tavern, for it was some comfort just to look on Dodovah
- Vose’s kindly face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s see! You’ve been dropping a word or two about doing business here,”
- he prodded in friendly fashion. “Hope so. It’s quiet in town. We’re all
- climbing ‘March Hill,’ you know—dull time in the country.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m here to start something, sir.” I was telling him the truth then. I
- had just started something over in the town office. I sat down and picked
- up a newspaper from the table and began to show great interest in reading
- so that I would not be obliged to talk. I was afraid he would get me
- cornered. I hung onto that paper as if it were a life-buoy—I read it
- from title to last line, advertisements and all. It was the <i>Mechanicsville
- Herald</i>, printed in a manufacturing city about thirty miles from
- Levant, and because I did not miss anything which was printed in it I
- noted that two concerns wanted cord-wood—and I had just mentioned
- the matter of cord-wood to my uncle. At all events, I was traveling on a
- singletrack lie in old Levant!
- </p>
- <p>
- I laid down that paper and did some mighty lively thinking. Then, to
- reassure myself, I gave my silk hat the least bit of a cock and marched to
- Judge Kingsley’s mansion.
- </p>
- <p>
- Celene herself opened the door so promptly after my ring that I had a cozy
- little suspicion that she had seen me coming and had hurried to meet me.
- She was very pretty in her morning gown.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, your ankle is so much better, isn’t it?” she cried. “I watched you
- coming across the square.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She stepped back, inviting me to enter by her manner, and I walked in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew just what to do for it. It’s pretty nigh all right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She led me to the sitting-room, and her mother rose and met me; Mrs.
- Kingsley was distantly polite, that was all. I was glad even for that much
- in the case of a Sidney, for I knew that Judge Kingsley’s obedient wife
- was as careful in matching her opinions to his as she was in matching
- colors at the store.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ask to be excused for calling so early in the day,” I said, with my hat
- in the hook of my arm, and putting on my best manners. “But this is a
- business call and I’m in somewhat of a hurry. You heard me speak to your
- father, Miss Kingsley, about the wood-lot. Now—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never presume to interfere in my husband’s business matters,” said Mrs.
- Kingsley, looking half scared. “I know nothing whatever about his
- business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am not asking you to do so—certainly not,” I hurried to tell
- her. “I shall do all my business directly with him. But to do so I need
- his address in the city. I have come to ask you for it. I suppose he left
- it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh yes—so that I may send his mail.” She looked relieved and gave
- me the name of a hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had not presumed to sit down, though I was sure that Celene’s eyes had
- asked me. I bowed and backed toward the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thank you. That’s all I wanted. I am sorry I was obliged to intrude.” I
- felt that I was certainly doing that little thing well. “I may be obliged
- to call again, if you will allow me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Kingsley hesitated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course you may call,” blurted Celene.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I may have to consult with you in a matter similar to this errand
- to-day,” I explained. “I’m sorry the judge is not here; in that case I
- would not be bothering you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tried to prevail on my husband to stay at home—he is not at all
- well—there are so many matters which need his attention here,”
- complained Mrs. Kingsley. “If we can help you with any information we’ll
- be glad to doit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I went away on that, and I guess I left a good impression that I was
- strictly business!
- </p>
- <p>
- Feeling sure that the two of them were watching me, I put a lot of
- business snap into my gait when I returned to the tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Vose,” I asked, briskly, “how many hitches have you in your
- livery-stable?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eight,” he said, “if I include two road-carts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The road-carts are all right, too. I want to use all of ’em, if
- you can furnish drivers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s easy enough to find men in these slack times.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And probably farmers and day’s-work men in the back districts of the town
- would like a job.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can bet on it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Start eight men going, then, as soon as you can get the horses hitched
- in. Have the messengers pass the word that I can use two hundred husky
- men. Each man to report here in the tavern yard to-morrow morning at
- six-thirty with a sharp ax on his shoulder.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what else—tell ’em what else?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But about wages—and what they’re to do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell ’em nothing. They’ll come running in here to find out what
- it’s all about, Mr. Vose. Don’t even tell ’em who wants ’em.
- You and I both know how curiosity itches in this town till it has been
- properly scratched.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Guess you’re right,” agreed the landlord. “If you set out to hire ’em
- regular style they’d want to hem and haw and haggle about so long and so
- much!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you want a deposit for—” I suggested, reaching toward a breast
- pocket which was empty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Godfrey domino, no!” he protested, flapping his hands. “If you have had
- to handle business in those suspicious ways down in the city I’m sorry for
- you. Now forget money talk between us till it’s time to talk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was glad to do that, and I hoped that his ideas of time were liberal.
- </p>
- <p>
- I borrowed some blank paper and went up to my room and figured for many
- hours, stopping only to eat a good dinner—a boiled dinner in Vose’s
- best style. My plate was piled high twice with corned beef fringed with
- golden fat, succulent disks of yellow carrots, wine-red beets, snowy white
- spuds, and odorous turnips. No man could possibly be a pessimist with that
- dinner under his belt! I had every reason to be the most apprehensive man
- in Avon County, but I had set my face to the front and I had just
- naturally made up my mind that I was going to pay for that dinner and for
- the other things which I had been recklessly ordering. I proposed to put
- myself into a position where I would be compelled to use every bit of my
- capital of cheek. The sweat stood, out on my forehead, but it wasn’t the
- kind of moisture which could soften my grit.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the afternoon, every time a steaming horse came homing back to Vose’s
- stable, I felt a funny quiver inside me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon you have got a good line on human nature, young Sidney,” stated
- the landlord, when I went down to the foreroom before supper. “From what
- the men say this rushing around back district’s with teams has got the
- boys all heifered up. Even if they don’t come in to go to work, they’ll be
- here to see what in tunket the hoorah’s about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have heard my father say that this town was always ready to turn out to
- a bee,” I told him. When I said it another thought came to cheer me—I
- had noticed that when a lot of men were set at work together on one job
- the natural spirit of rivalry put pep into the bunch.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Dodovah Vose went to his kitchen to give an eye to supper, I plucked
- a telegraph blank from his office desk. I nerved myself to try on my most
- audacious trick of all. I wrote this:
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>To Ross Sidney, Levant.—Offer accepted. Go ahead with work. Will
- settle with you on my return.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Z. Kingsley.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- I set my jaws and told myself that the message wasn’t all falsehood; the
- last sentence was strictly true, even if Zebulon Kingsley did not pen it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I folded the paper, stuck it in my pocket, and went again to the Kingsley
- house. It was brazen business—a dangerous hazard. But I was
- depending on woman’s inadequacy. I felt that I had the two of them sized
- pretty well. They had never presumed to meddle in the affairs of their
- master. They would not dare to question his will. I figured that sending
- him a wire asking corroboration of the message to me would seem to them
- like bold interference which would bring reproof from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I waited, respectfully standing, while they read the message, Celene
- looking over her mother’s shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s more about the wood-lot matter,” I explained. “I think you heard
- your father make me a price on it. Miss Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I remember distinctly, mother. Father said he would sell for two thousand
- dollars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know it must seem rather irregular,” I said, “but in my wire I
- explained that my people are in a great hurry—and I’m glad that he
- has been willing to meet me half-way. It means that I am to put on a crew
- at once and cut the wood—and, of course, it’s a safe proposition for
- the judge,” I went on, forcing the best smile I could. “Neither the land
- nor the wood can be carried away in a shawl-strap before he returns—I
- think he said in a week or ten days!”
- </p>
- <p>
- They returned my smile, and for the first time Mrs. Kingsley seemed rather
- cordial.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m glad you are taking it off his hands,” she declared. “It will be one
- less thing for him to worry about. He has been so troubled by his
- business. I’m sure that he’ll be glad to get rid of a lot more property in
- the same way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My soul whispered its doubts!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope that the matter is all clear now and that you have a good
- understanding, Mrs. Kingsley. You will explain, will you, if anybody comes
- to you in regard to the matter or questions my authority?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will, Mr. Sidney.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She exchanged glances with her daughter and they seemed to understand each
- other quickly. While we had been talking I heard the subdued clatter of
- supper preparations in another room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I feel sure that if my husband were here,” said Mrs. Kingsley, “he would
- extend the hospitality of our house to a gentleman who was obliging him in
- a business matter. Won’t you stay and take supper with us, Mr. Sidney?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Without replying, I gave my hat into the ready hands of Celene and sat
- down weakly.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was tickled nigh foolish—I’ll admit that. But I was not wholly
- taken in by that hospitality play. Mrs. Zebulon Kingsley had known too
- much about me and my breed-to feel any great hankering to have me as a
- guest. But I was willing to bet a big plum that she was thinking a lot
- about my uncle’s hostility and about the judge’s fear of that rambunctious
- town official. And I was also sure that certain matters had been talked
- over between her and Celene since my arrival in town with such outward
- emblems of importance and prosperity. Furthermore, had I not fairly
- promised the daughter that I would do my best in the line of
- uncle-busting?
- </p>
- <p>
- So I held on to my emotions as best I could and waited for the subject to
- come up. It did, of course. I had not been in the house ten minutes before
- Mrs. Kingsley burst out. She was full of that topic. She saw in my uncle’s
- attitude nothing but a wanton desire to make trouble for a good and great
- man.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had been thinking over the matter of that hostility since my morning’s
- talk with Uncle Deck. I had been developing a sharp-ended suspicion that
- my uncle had something up his sleeve with which to arm that hostility.
- Judge Kingsley would never have pulled his wife into a row he was having
- with Decker Sidney unless desperation had moved him. I was bitterly
- ashamed and grieved when I listened to her description of that unutterable
- interview.
- </p>
- <p>
- As for her, she had no suspicions as to her husband’s integrity—I
- could see that! The picture she made of the affair was of a mad dog
- chasing a saint!
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what does the man think he can do to my husband? He can do nothing.
- He must realize it. What has he said to you, Mr. Sidney? I ask you, for I
- am sure you do not approve, his actions.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked at Celene, and answered that I certainly did not approve, nor had
- I ever approved many things my uncle did.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will say further that I did what I could to-day to turn him from his
- grudge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what does he think he can do to my husband?” she insisted. “I suppose
- he told you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, he did not, madam. He said he did not trust me. He twitted me with
- having betrayed him once before to the judge—about the doctored
- horse,” I added, with a sickly grin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, of course, you—his own nephew—you produced some effect
- on him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I made him so mad he would have struck me if he had dared. That’s
- all the effect I seemed to produce.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tears came into her eyes. “How will it end?” she quavered.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not feel like bragging just then about any powers of mine in the
- matter; I had plenty on my mind and conscience as it was. I was distinctly
- aware of being glad I had had that boiled dinner, and plenty of it, and I
- say that much with all due respect for the blessed presence of Celene at
- the supper-board. For between my ever-swelling love for her, my
- self-consciousness at table, my shame on account of my uncle, and my
- general emotions, anyway, I could scarcely choke down a mouthful. And at
- the end I was wholly and fairly rattled—that expression seems to fit
- my state of mind better than anything I can think of right now.
- </p>
- <p>
- She accompanied me to the door that evening when I departed—Mrs.
- Kingsley allowed her to go alone, evidently having elevated me to the
- plane of, at least, a buttonhole friend of the family after hearing of my
- quarrel with my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- And being rattled, and seeing the grieved anxiety in her eyes, and knowing
- how much distress must be tearing at her poor heart, I gulped out that I
- would put my uncle where he belonged. I was saying to myself that I would
- see him in tophet before I’d allow his persecution to harm those innocent
- women, and I came nigh saying that to her in my excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- She put out to me both of her hands, and I took them. I tossed all
- prudence over the rail then.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If there’s got to be a fight in the Sidney family, then there’ll be one!
- You tell your mother to sleep easy. I’ll take this thing in hand from now
- on and I won’t have your father abused by anybody.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was talking as big as old Lord Argyle, and I knew I was babbling like a
- fool—bu t what can’t a girl’s wet eyes do to a fellow’s common,
- sense?
- </p>
- <p>
- “We trust you,” she said. “You have made me so happy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I bent down and kissed her dear hands, first one and then the other. When
- I straightened up and saw the flush on her cheeks and the shy pleasure in
- her eyes I went the limit without stopping to take thought. I put my arms
- around her and kissed her on the lips—and no honest man can look me
- squarely in the eye and tell me there’s any memory like the remembrance of
- the first kiss from one’s own true love! For the first true love is not
- merely maiden—she has elements of the goddess in her!
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore, having presumed so much with a goddess, I was immediately
- frightened and found myself ready to struggle with apology—and
- apology did not fit that occasion. So I ran away before I made more of a
- fool of myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good night!” I whispered from the gate. “I love you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She closed the big door very softly and I gathered good omen from that.
- </p>
- <p>
- How bright the stars were when I looked at them through my tears! A
- half-century ago a Yankee poet wrote these verses when he was in love:=
- </p>
- <p>
- ````When twilight’s sable curtain falls,
- </p>
- <p>
- `````Then stars stand thick at even ````To act as outside sentinels
- `````Around the gates of heaven.
- </p>
- <p>
- ````That night along the shimmering slant,
- </p>
- <p>
- `````(I tell you true, my brother)
- </p>
- <p>
- ````The password was “Almira Grant”
- </p>
- <p>
- `````They whispered to each other.=
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew mighty well what was their password that March night when I walked
- away from Celene.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was not fit for any tavern society just then. Impulse seized upon me and
- I went down into the orchard. True love does not forget his trails and his
- caches! I found the tree with the hollow trunk and slipped my hand into
- the hole; I pulled forth the little packet of three rings. I reckoned that
- when I got my courage and my voice I would have a story to tell her—some
- evidence of love longstanding to offer—and that I’d find those rings
- pretty valuable as exhibits A, B, and C.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were quite a number of gossiping loafers in the tavern foreroom when
- I marched in at last and took my room key from its hook.
- </p>
- <p>
- If there had been any doubt among them as to my importance in the world,
- that doubt must have vanished when they looked on me that night; for if I
- did not feel at that moment that the world was mine, nobody ever did!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XII—STARTING SOMETHING IN LEVANT
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE men were there
- in the morning—a mob of them.
- </p>
- <p>
- They came riding and they footed it into the village. The tavern office
- was crowded and the yard was full.
- </p>
- <p>
- The growing buzz of them woke me before sunup, and I wasted no time in
- dressing and getting down.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was just as I had expected—the spirit of a lark was in them. They
- were not like men who had come dragging themselves to work. The men I knew—and
- I knew a lot of them on account of my early goings and comings about the
- countryside on my uncle’s affairs—were on my back in a moment, their
- mouths full of questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I was not ready to talk turkey till I had settled on one point, and I
- told them to be easy for a few minutes.
- </p>
- <p>
- I needed one man for a special purpose. I had left the selection of that
- man for morning, feeling instinctively that I would do better to pick from
- the crowd than to give away my plans overnight.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw him inside of ten seconds. It was as clear a case of the right man
- for the job as if I had specified and had received the goods.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man was Henshaw Hook, the best-known man in that section, the town
- auctioneer. He had the gift of gab, the science of talking all men into
- good humor, and was as alert in all his doings as a cricket on a hot
- spider.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took him by the arm and rushed him up to my room. Mr. Hook had brought
- no ax to the levee; he told me, by way of explanation, that he had come
- around out of curiosity. So had a lot of others, I knew well enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dodovah Vose followed us, for I had summoned him by a jerk of my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, Mr. Hook, here’s the story short and snappy,” I told him. “I
- represent a big syndicate which is buying all kinds of property. I have
- bought Judge Kingsley’s wood-lot for the sake of what is on it—and
- it must be cleaned off in a hurry. Of course, I can’t hang around town to
- attend to that part of the business. I need an able man who can attend to
- it.” I pulled out my papers and inspected my figures. “Mostly we are after
- hardwood—cord-wood! Do you suppose you can pull a hundred or so good
- workers out of that crowd downstairs?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yep!” snapped Hook. “Mebbe more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was just as brisk as I was.
- </p>
- <p>
- The newspaper had given me quotations in its market column, and I had
- chopped cord-wood in my own young life. Furthermore, in my everlasting
- scurryings after squirrels and birds I had made many explorations on Judge
- Kingsley’s domains. I was fully prepared to talk business, therefore.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Hook, green cord-wood is selling for five dollars a cord. It’s a poor
- man with an ax who can’t chop, trim, and pile his cord a day—four-foot
- length. If you can put two hundred men on that job and will abide by the
- rules of my syndicate, you can turn a profit of around fifty dollars a day
- for your own pocket—for I offer you five per cent, on five dollars a
- cord.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hook promptly showed much interest. “You said rules?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I said rules!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Spill,” invited Mr. Hook.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get out your pencil and make notes—and I’ll ask you to do the same,
- Mr. Vose, so that there’ll be no comeback!”
- </p>
- <p>
- They obeyed promptly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am to do all my business with you—you are to do all the business
- with the choppers. You are the responsible party in all the details. You
- are to keep the books, measuring each man’s daily cut and giving him due
- credit. He is to be paid two dollars and fifty cents a cord—a weekly
- bonus of twenty-five dollars to the man who comes across with the most
- cords! No payment to be made for two weeks and then one week’s pay will be
- held back so that the men will not quit on me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t know about their agreeing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then the syndicate doesn’t want them. There’s no chance for argument.
- We’ll see how many volunteer when you put the matter up to ’em. I’m
- going to leave the speechmaking to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m fairly handy with my tongue,” he said, with a grin. “So I know. And I
- must be sure that <i>you</i> will not quit. That would disorganize the
- whole thing. All money to the men must go through your hands. Therefore,
- Mr. Hook, you must deposit with me, so as to cinch your responsibility,
- the sum of five hundred dollars in cash before axes start this morning.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That idea did not please Mr. Henshaw Hook—not for a minute! He
- looked pretty blank.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t any option in the matter,” I stated, coldly. “The syndicate
- makes its rules—but you can see that’s a common-sense one. I
- couldn’t be jumping around the country, leaving behind a lot of operations
- running by guess and by gosh, nobody financially responsible for the
- details.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Corporations have to have their rules, Hen,” said helpful Landlord Vose.
- “We all know how young Sidney, here, has come along in the world!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Sortwells have advertised that all right,” agreed Mr. Hook.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He isn’t working for dubs, Hen!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably not! But with the judge out of town I can’t dig up more than
- three hundred and fifty this morning, not even if I went and robbed my old
- woman’s work-basket!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Needn’t worry about that,” said Dodovah Vose. “I’ve got public spirit and
- I want to see business get a hump on in this town. I’ll lend you enough to
- make up the five hundred.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Hook devoted thirty seconds to meditation. “Let’s see—what did I
- understand you to say your concern is?” he queried with assumed innocence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did not say—we are not advertising; we are pussyfooting so that
- they won’t be boosting land values on us,” I said, serenely.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But among friends—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “News travels faster among friends than anywhere else. Mr. Hook, I’m not
- going to risk my job by shooting off my mouth. You don’t think I’ve come
- back to my home town to work a flimflam trick, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll grab in on this myself rather than see the plan dumped,” stated the
- landlord.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll go down and put the thing up to the boys,” offered Hook, hastily.
- Fifty dollars and over a day had properly baited this Hook.
- </p>
- <p>
- Our auctioneer was a good talker! When—as he put it to them amidst
- laughter—he asked the sheep to separate from the goats, more than a
- hundred and fifty men stepped to one side and waved their axes as signal
- that they were ready to go to work.
- </p>
- <p>
- Fifteen minutes later, closeted with Vose and Hook in my room, I was
- counting the deposit money—a fat bundle of bills; I had made ready
- for that part of the ceremony and I had an equally fat packet of blank
- paper in the drawer of my little table. I had not sat at the feet of my
- crook acquaintances without hearing much about the “substitution trick.” I
- worked it then and there on those guileless old countrymen.
- </p>
- <p>
- I merely yanked out a table drawer with the casual remark about an
- envelope, turned my back for an instant, and then slipped into an envelope
- in full view of them a financial sandwich; I had made that sandwich by
- flicking two bills off the money-packet and framing the blank paper. I
- licked the mucilage, sparked down the flap, and handed the packet to
- Landlord Vose. I left the rest of the money in the drawer and slammed it
- shut.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you have wax and a seal down-stairs, Mr. Vose. Please daub on a
- little and lock this up in your safe. Then Mr. Hook and you and I will
- feel all right about our affairs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I led the gang to the wood-lot, and that plug-hat of mine must have
- flashed in the March sunlight about as brightly as the helmet of Henry of
- Navarre—providing I remember my <i>Fourth Reader</i> selection. That
- wad of bills which I had frisked out of the table drawer was bulked
- against my ribs in most comforting manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- I never saw men pitch into a job more cheerfully than those chaps did
- after I led them over the fence and gave the word. It was a real frolic.
- Men bantered one another and made side bets on ability and everybody was
- laughing. Axes sounded in a chick-chock chorus, and trees began to crash
- down.
- </p>
- <p>
- I spent the most of the day on the job, for I saw opportunities for extra
- profits; there was quite a stand of hackmatack, for instance, and there
- was a lot of cedar which fringed a small swamp. I made special bargains
- with men to fell this stuff for railroad ties. There was also considerable
- pine suitable for, box stuff; before the day was over a portable-sawmill
- man, hearing of the onslaught on the Kingsley lot, came hurrying to the
- village, made a trade for the pine, and paid down a sizable deposit;
- advertising was certainly paying!
- </p>
- <p>
- One of the most interested onlookers was my uncle Deck, who drove dose to
- the wood-lot fence and scowled and sliced the air with his whip. He made
- several trips during the day and was handy by when I started to walk back
- to the village in the late afternoon. He offered a seat in his wagon and I
- accepted, for I was all done being scared of him and I was footsore.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Recorded your deed yet?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, not yet,” I said, airily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably not, seeing that you haven’t got any.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I let it go at that, having no sensible explanation to give a business man
- like my uncle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So, as it stands,” he went on, “it’s a case of neck-and-neck whether <i>he’ll</i>
- jew you or <i>you’ll</i> jew <i>him</i>. As bad as I hate <i>him</i> I’m
- getting to hate <i>you</i> worse! I hope he’ll stick you. But I doubt it.
- A young pirate who can step in here and steal a whole wood-lot right under
- the noses of men who ought to know better is qualified to give old Judas
- I-scarrot lessons in deviltry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t blame you for feeling pleased and for praising me, Uncle Deck. I
- certainly am doing credit to your training.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But as first selectman of this town I’ve got a reputation to look after,
- and where will I get off with one of my blood and name serving time in
- State prison for grand larceny?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I’m not going to State prison.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will, with that old devil after you, surer’n hell’s down-hill!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re sort of partners, the judge and I.” I decided that I might as well
- give him a jolt or two, even if his common sense did tell him that I was
- lying.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, bah-h-h!” he yelped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And as his partner I want to warn you against trying to trig his business
- affairs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He almost yanked the jaw off his horse, pulling the animal to a
- standstill.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Condemn your young tripe! You are about as much a partner of his as a
- pullet is partner of a polecat! Don’t you talk up to me! If you are trying
- to cheat him I’ll help you do it. But if you are trying to help him, down
- goes your house!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I propose to help him—help his family,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- To my surprise he held himself in. “Help him how?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, by making you quit hounding him, for one thing. It’s time this
- foolish old row was stopped. I am taking a special interest in Judge
- Kingsley’s family in these days.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Down to brass tacks, now! You mean just what you say, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I most certainly do, Uncle Deck!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you dare to call me uncle, you wall-eyed pup! You have gone to
- leaning up against that girl like a tomcat cuddling a warm brick, have
- you? You’re letting her fool you along—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shut that dirty mouth of yours!” I shouted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get out of this wagon—out with you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I obeyed promptly, for I had had plenty of his society.
- </p>
- <p>
- He waggled his whip-lash close to my nose when I stood in the road. “When
- you get into State prison, where you belong,” he snarled, “you’ll have a
- chum there. For that’s where I’m going to send old Kingsley, so help me
- the living God!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And he curled the lash with all his might under the belly of his horse,
- taking it out on the poor brute, and tore away, with the animal on the
- dead run.
- </p>
- <p>
- I trudged along in the dust he left flying. A fine chance I stood of
- handling my uncle Deck!
- </p>
- <p>
- A precious lot of fool babbling that talk had been at the front door of
- the Kingsley house the night before!
- </p>
- <p>
- Nevertheless, I went to the house again that evening, for I had a business
- excuse. I told mother and daughter that certain urgent matters called me
- out of town and that I would be leaving early in the morning. I had a word
- or two to say about my arrangements for clearing the lot so that their
- minds might be at ease if any gossip came to them; in country communities
- there are busybodies who are always guessing at mischief and are trying to
- make trouble.
- </p>
- <p>
- I remained with them only a short time, for I was afraid they would try to
- get consolation out of me regarding my uncle and I was not in the mood to
- do any more lying. I was in a generally uncomfortable state of mind,
- anyway, and I knew that Celene was troubled by my manner. There seemed to
- be sense of impending evil hovering over the three of us. Frankly, my
- uncle’s threat regarding the judge had thrown a good-sized scare into me;
- Uncle Deck had truly acted as if he knew what he was talking about. My own
- conscience was creaking considerably inside me. When I rose to go Celene
- did not see me to the door. She gazed at me tenderly when I stated that I
- would be back in a few days, but some sort of reserve kept her at her
- mother’s side.
- </p>
- <p>
- The stars were certainly not so bright that night when I walked back to
- the tavern. In my gloom a memory popped into my mind, queerly enough. I
- remembered that Dodovah Vose had loaned me ten dollars the night he helped
- me to escape.
- </p>
- <p>
- I plucked a bill out of my breast pocket and handed it to him when I
- walked into the tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you’ll excuse the delay,” I pleaded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I sure will,” he replied, heartily. “You’re an honest chap, young
- Sidney!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I was far from feeling honest that night.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIII—THE MAN WHO TALKED IN THE DARK
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>EXT morning
- Dodovah Vose drove me to the railroad station at the Lower Comers. He
- looked at the trip as a sort of a triumphal parade, and said so to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some different from that night ride we took, young Sidney,” he chuckled.
- “I’m playing hackman this time so as to take the taste of that other ride
- out of my mouth!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet, as I rode that morning by his side, I was wondering whether I would
- have courage to come back to Levant. Panic was in me—it truly was!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mighty scared little bug was you that night! But I always knew you had
- sprawl and gumption in you. Now you’re showing the old town a thing or two
- and I’m proud of you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- His praise made me cringe more than ever.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we passed the wood-lot a merry rick-tack of axes sounded in our ears.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir! You have shown them all that you can come back here and start
- something,” stated Landlord Vose. He did not realize how infernally right
- he was. What I had started was setting the willy-wallies to dancing in my
- soul.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Things have come along with such a rush that I haven’t thought to ask you
- how you happened to hit it off so smooth with the judge,” he proceeded,
- and my alarm increased.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I met him on the road, and we turned a quick trade on the spot. He was
- starting for the city and we had to trade sudden or not at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That hasn’t been the judge’s usual way in business,” he commented,
- sagely. “I have had some dealings with him myself, and so I know his style
- pretty well.” He gave me a sly, sideways glance. “Yes, I know him so well
- that I’ve noticed how he’s losing his grip on business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And do you think he has been losing money, too?” I plumped at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” drawled Vose, “I don’t know how much money he’s got nor what sort
- of investments he’s carrying or how much money he has been handling for
- other folks, for he has always been cussed secret in his operations. And
- the folks who have turned money over to him have been secret, too, for I
- reckon he has helped them hide their money away from the tax-assessors.
- But I’ll tell you, young Sidney, his money, however much he’s got, must be
- pretty well tied up these days.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I questioned him with a side-glance which met his own. “Because when old
- Rollins died a few months ago the heirs lit on the judge for the money he
- had in his hands—for the heirs are spenders and wanted the money to
- toss away. The judge’s home place is in his wife’s name and she mortgaged
- it to raise the money—and when a man mortgages the roof over his
- family’s head he does need money, there’s no doubt about that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there are times when a man doesn’t like to sacrifice securities,” I
- said. Somehow I felt as if I had been specially delegated to stand up for
- the Kingsley family. “Maybe so! Maybe so!” agreed Vose. “Finance is a
- strange critter—and the judge is a regular financier. But, I swan,
- if I like the looks of the strangers he has been doing business with for a
- long time back. I ain’t any kind of a hand to pry into the dealings of men
- who put up at my tavern. Those fellows always paid their bills and showed
- plenty of money, but it don’t seem to me as if straight business needs to
- be so blamed secret.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “However, the big fellows in money affairs keep their cards pretty dose to
- their vests,” I suggested.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe so! But he’s selling property off slapdash—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mrs. Kingsley says he wants to get rid of some of his cares.” Perhaps she
- had not said just that—but I had taken the rôle of the family
- champion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe so—and if that’s the case, it’s too bad your uncle Deck is
- rampaging so. Generally, we all trust the judge and look up to him, and we
- don’t want to see him bothered at this time in his life. But here’s your
- uncle trying to stir, up enough sentiment to call a special town meeting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What for?” I was more alarmed than ever.
- </p>
- <p>
- “His excuse is that the town is now so prosperous that we can afford to
- pay off the whole town debt by a little extra splurge in taxation. Says
- that with the debt all paid off new industries can be induced to locate
- here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But does that mean anything against Judge Kingsley? It looks to me like
- enterprise on Uncle Deck’s part.” Again Mr. Vose chanted his everlasting
- and singsong, “Maybe so!” Then he added: “But I reckon your uncle Deck has
- more visible property spread around this town than any other taxpayer in
- it. Maybe he has had a change of heart about money. Maybe he intends to
- loosen up in his old age. Maybe he wants to hand something back to a town
- he has gouged all his life. But from what I know of your uncle Deck, I
- don’t think he has grown so cussed patriotic all of a sudden. Young
- Sidney, I reckon there’s a hotter and livelier reason. Your uncle has been
- nursing a grudge till it’s well-grown and all haired out. That grudge is
- prancing, and he’s willing to pay high for a chance to show its paces in
- public. And there’s more in the plan of that special town meeting than
- shows on the surface at present writing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore, when I climbed on board the train I had plenty to think about
- outside the immediate business I had in hand, though that was enough for
- one poor mind, Lord knows!
- </p>
- <p>
- Take everything, by and large, I was in the prime mess of my young life up
- to date.
- </p>
- <p>
- The principal reason why I stayed in it, I suppose, was because I didn’t
- know any better! That reason has accounted for a lot of my experiences.
- </p>
- <p>
- Some of the best fights on the records have been won by men who were worst
- scared.
- </p>
- <p>
- I alighted in Mechanicsville in a state of mind I’ll not attempt to
- describe. But I looked at myself in a store window and made up a business
- face to go with my appearance. I hired the best hack in sight, I started
- on a round of factories, wood merchants, brick-yards, and lumber-dealers.
- I rode up to the doors of offices in style; I walked in on ’em in
- style.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was certainly a new wrinkle in wood-peddling—this plug-hat
- performance! It opened all doors to me. I don’t know what they thought I
- was, before I opened my mouth, but I was not kept twiddling my thumbs in
- anterooms; the main squeeze in every office shunted all else in order to
- greet me. I wonder what would have been my lot if I had come as a
- stammering farmer, a crude countryman, or a chopper in wool boots!
- </p>
- <p>
- I sold wood! By gracious, I did!
- </p>
- <p>
- I found out something all of a sudden. I discovered that I had the art of
- salesmanship. It’s an art, a qualification hard to describe. Every man who
- has ever bought anything knows what it is and how it has operated in his
- case.
- </p>
- <p>
- I sold wood and lumber and sleepers—and the more I sold, the higher
- rose my confidence in my personality, and I had hard work to control and
- conceal my hysterics of success.
- </p>
- <p>
- I worked off onto brick-yards even the crooked limbs, the second-grade
- stuff which I had seen piling up on my operation.
- </p>
- <p>
- With every buyer I made written contracts, designating prompt delivery on
- certain dates, first deliveries to be made within a week and calling for
- cash payments of two-thirds of value of wood delivered, the whole amount
- to be paid when final delivery was made.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went on down the line to another city and then to a third. I sold wood!
- I sold for three days. Then I woke up and stopped selling. It occurred to
- me that I might be overguessing on the resources of the Kingsley wood-lot.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had not a mite of trouble in arranging with the division superintendent
- of the railroad line for a supply of gondola cars; I was offering
- something worth his attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- I left that gentleman in mighty abrupt fashion; he must have thought that
- I was a very precipitate business man. But while I was winding up my
- arrangements with him, I looked out of his office window in the railroad
- station into the windows of a train which was pulling slowly out, on its
- way up-country. I caught a glimpse of a stem profile with a roll of
- chin-beard under it. If that face did not belong to Zebulon Kingsley—But
- I did not stop to do any more thinking on the matter. I galloped out of
- that office. I had to chase that train a hundred yards down the platform—but
- I made the last car!
- </p>
- <p>
- Zebulon Kingsley home ahead of schedule!
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood on the car steps, getting my breath, giving dizzy thought to the
- peril I had so narrowly missed. Zebulon Kingsley back in Levant ahead of
- me, viewing his desolated wood-lot and voicing his fury! Where would my
- character and importance land after that blow-up?
- </p>
- <p>
- Did I say that my dizzy thoughts dealt with a peril I had missed? In about
- ten seconds I decided that I was traveling right along with the peril. I
- was doomed to drop into Levant in its company.
- </p>
- <p>
- I might have been mistaken, I reflected. I hoped I had been deceived by a
- too-hasty glance. I walked down through the train. I was pretty sure of my
- man when I passed him, though I got a view of the back of his head only.
- Therefore I went to the front of the car, making an excuse of the
- water-cooler. I looked back at him while I drank. He seemed to be asleep,
- for his head was bent down into the folds of the cape he had pulled about
- his ears. I was so sure he was asleep that when I went back up the car I
- gave him a bold look to convince myself I had not been mistaken.
- </p>
- <p>
- I got one of the starts of my life!
- </p>
- <p>
- Zebulon Kingsley was distinctly not asleep. His eyes were like fire-balls,
- and he stared straight at me without one flicker of the lids or crinkle of
- the countenance to show that he recognized me. His face was gray and
- haggard. He was like a stone man. If he had given one hint by his
- expression that he knew me I would have pushed myself in beside him, I
- reckon, and would have come across with my little story. But that frozen
- face was too much for me. I was doing a lot of guessing about his state of
- mind, and my guesses warned me to stay away from him just then.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hurried past and sat down in the first vacant seat.
- </p>
- <p>
- The feeling I had was that he had found out by letter from home or somehow
- what kind of a trick I had cut up. Those glaring eyes hinted at
- unutterable things. He must be in such a fury, I thought, that words had
- failed him. He was waiting until he stepped foot in Levant to go at me in
- proper style. Naturally, he would not start anything on a railroad train.
- I sat there while those, thoughts flamed up in me like fire in a
- brush-heap, and for a long time I found no handy extinguisher for those
- thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, there was a rather comforting packet in the breast pocket of my
- frock-coat; I got out those contracts and went over them carefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did have some visible emblems of success to stick up in front of his
- sour face when it came to a showdown. But if Zebulon Kingsley was not
- willing to start anything in public on a train, neither was I. I studied
- my contracts, added figures, and tried to keep my mind off the big trouble
- ahead. But who has ever sat near a bomb with a sputtering fuse and felt in
- a mood for philosophy? I couldn’t even add figures!
- </p>
- <p>
- The train bumped on and on. It was a long ride.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we arrived at Levant Corners, I followed Kingsley so closely that we
- almost walked in a lock-step. I had a sort of crazy notion that if he
- started to bawl me out on the platform and expose me to the populace I’d
- choke him and drag him off somewhere for an explanation, for I truly did
- have a face to save in Levant.
- </p>
- <p>
- I trod behind him on the station platform. Far up the platform was waiting
- a man who wore a constable’s badge. I itched all over as we approached
- that man; I fully expected that the judge would whirl and point me out and
- call for my arrest. But the constable touched his hat respectfully and the
- judge marched on. I almost bumped into him when he stopped at hail of a
- citizen. I was forced to go on, then. The citizen had buttonholed the
- judge on some matter of business, but by the few words I heard I knew it
- was no affair of mine. I ran my eye over the array of hitches waiting in
- the station yard, expecting to see Celene Kingsley. But she was not there.
- Her absence hinted to me that her father was not expected. Then he would
- ride on the stage! I resolved to walk on and to hail it when it overtook
- me. I proposed to be on the scene when Judge Kingsley got first peep at
- what had been his wood-lot. I kept looking behind and noted that he walked
- past the stage-coach and had started to foot it on my trail. Therefore he
- was not expected at home, and for reasons of his own had decided to walk.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I saw that the stage had come on without him and had observed that he
- shook protesting hand at persons who stopped and offered a lift, I walked
- on more briskly. He wanted to be left alone, then! His expression had
- already hinted to me that he had no use for companionship at that time.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last I could hear my ax-men. Their blades were biting wood in lively
- chorus, though the dusk was gathering. I realized that the spirit of
- rivalry was in them and that they were not watching the clock on that job.
- When I came in sight of the wood-lot I saw that a big expanse had been
- cleared, down to the bushes; the bared land was thickly dotted with wood
- which was tiered in cord lots. I hardly recognized the place.
- </p>
- <p>
- The notion struck me that this was the proper strategic point to await the
- battle. In the first place, I would not be obliged to waste any breath in
- telling Zebulon Kingsley that his wood-lot was being cleared; his eyes
- would inform him on that point. I could devote all my language and energy
- to the job of enlightening him regarding my activities in the matter, my
- hopes and his prospects of getting some money. Secondly, considering
- strategy, my appearance before my men, accompanied by Judge Kingsley,
- after I got him under control, would put the stamp of authority on the
- whole affair; I believed I could control him. He certainly would have to
- take the situation as he found it; he couldn’t stick those trees back into
- the ground again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore I settled my plug-hat well on my head, pulled out my bunch of
- contracts, and waited for him to come around the bend in the road.
- </p>
- <p>
- I reflected that he had looked to me like a man who had a great deal of
- trouble on his mind. In my young days, when old dog Bonny was dreadfully
- afflicted with fleas I tied a tin can to his tail to take his mind off his
- troubles. I believe fully that changing the current of his thoughts for a
- time proved really restful to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was certain that Judge Kingsley would have the current of his thoughts
- changed in a very few minutes. He would have something entirely fresh to
- think about, and I hoped it would do him good, even though I received no
- thanks.
- </p>
- <p>
- He seemed pretty much cast down when he shambled into sight, his shoulders
- bowed, staring at the road ahead of him. But all at once he straightened,
- threw back his head, and seemed to sniff the air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Charge!” I said to myself. And he set his elbows akimbo under his cape
- and came at a trot.
- </p>
- <p>
- He tried to rush past me on his way to the fence, but I stepped in front
- of him and threw up my hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just a moment, Judge Kingsley! This is my business—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your business be damned!” he stuttered.
- </p>
- <p>
- Strong talk for a Sunday-school teacher, but it made him seem more human
- and my courage rose a bit. I had not known how to tackle that frozen
- figure he looked to be in the railroad train.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I’ll explain!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m going to find out what this set of infernal thieves—”
- </p>
- <p>
- He wouldn’t wait any longer, though I was trying to head him off with my
- arms outstretched. He drove past me and wrenched a post out of the fence
- and started to climb into the wood-lot. There was only one thing to do—I
- must get the upper hand of the infuriated old man before we attracted the
- attention of my busy workers; the dusk was helping me in that respect.
- </p>
- <p>
- I pulled the stake from him, held him by his arms, and set my face close
- to his; he was a scrawny old chap and he hadn’t any muscle left.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley, forgive me—but you must listen. It’s best for all
- concerned. I have bought this lot from you and I am operating on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I thought he would choke to death before he got the words wrenched out of
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You haven’t bought it. You couldn’t buy it! There is no money passed.
- There’s no deed. You’re a thief!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had dropped the bunch of contracts when I grabbed him. I released my
- clutch on one arm and picked up the packet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here’s something to show I am not a thief, sir. You’ve got to look at ’em.
- And the middle of the road is no place for our business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Furthermore, I noticed all at once that the choppers were giving up work
- and starting for the highway.
- </p>
- <p>
- Probably the most sensible way was for me to go along to his house,
- exhorting him to keep his mouth shut till he understood the matter. But a
- row with him in his own house would be exposing myself to Celene. I held
- his arm and hurried him across the road and into the woods opposite. He
- protested angrily, but I kept him on the move until we were in a little
- clearing which the red western skies still lighted enough for my purpose.
- </p>
- <p>
- I flapped the contracts under his nose. “You advertised the land—you
- gave me a price, Judge Kingsley. I know I have been irregular. I cannot
- stop now to explain why, but I have sold all the wood. Here are the
- contracts. Hunt up the men and make sure, if you don’t believe writing and
- signatures. I’ll let you go and collect your two thousand dollars before a
- dollar comes to me.” I shoved the papers into his hands and he pawed them
- over without seeming to understand very well. “Contracts?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir! Contracts with responsible concerns.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have you arrested,” he insisted, but his anger was dying out and he
- sort of whined, “It’s my land; you haven’t any right to make contracts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once his legs bent under him and he sat down on the ground. There
- was plainly something special the matter with Zebulon Kingsley!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my God!” he mourned. “Are all the blatherskites, thieves, and
- swindlers in this world on my track?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t tie any of those kind of tags on to me, Judge Kingsley. It isn’t
- fair!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have robbed me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Confound it! Look at the contracts!” He did not seem to be taking any
- interest in the papers; he merely waggled the packet about like a child
- waving a rattle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “First one, and then the other! They have robbed me. I am ruined!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I squatted down in front of him and made him look at me. I was in the mood
- for any kind of self-sacrifice. I wanted to beat it into his old head that
- there was one man who was trying to help him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley, listen to me! You are sure of getting your two thousand
- dollars for your wood-lot. I say again, go yourself and collect the money.
- If my estimates are in any way near right—and I reckon I am inside
- the truth—there’s around a thousand dollars profit in this deal,
- profit I was intending to take for myself. But, seeing that you feel as
- you do about my actions, I’ll hand the whole thing over to you. Take it
- all! Come to me in the morning when you’re feeling better and I’ll explain
- my trade with Henshaw Hook and the choppers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at me and never said a word.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t even ask any pay for the time I have put in,” I said, trying to
- make myself as much of an angel as I could, now that I was started on the
- savior trail. “You understand, don’t you? All you’ve got to do is keep my
- promises to the men and pull down around three thousand in cash!”
- </p>
- <p>
- In a story-book that would have been his cue to get up and clasp me to his
- breast. He simply blinked at me. I began to get a little warm in the
- region of my neckband.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If that’s the way you feel about it, Judge Kingsley,” I said,
- straightening up, “I’ll bid you good evening. After you have tucked your
- three thousand in your jeans, send me a bill for damages and I’ll settle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He called me back before I had taken many steps.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My head isn’t right,” he mumbled. “I have been having much trouble. What
- have you been telling me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I went over the thing again, very patiently, for I saw I was dealing with
- a case which was more serious than I thought. The night was on us by that
- time. I tore strips of birch bark from a tree, lighted them one by one,
- and made a torch so that he could examine one of the contracts. Again I
- insisted that he must cake the whole thing over profits and all.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had no right to start in on your property as I did, Judge Kingsley. So
- I’ll fine myself a thousand!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think I ought to call you honest, young man,” he said, after a time. “I
- have hard work to believe that any man is honest in this world just now,
- but what you say sounds honest. I’ll meet you half-way in your honesty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He asked me to hold more torches. He found a sheet of letter-paper in his
- wallet, bearing his name printed at the top. He wrote a receipt for two
- thousand dollars, using the long wallet for his desk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have dated it four days back. Now that I have met you half-way in one
- matter, young man, I ask you to meet me half-way in another. When you get
- that, money in hand, pay it to my wife. Do not tell anybody that you did
- not pay it to me.” He hesitated a moment. “As to the land—the deed—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no use for the land, Judge Kingsley. So there’s no call for a
- deed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think you are honest, young man. I believe I can trust you to give the
- money to my wife—and say nothing about it outside!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I can give it to you, sir, in a few days!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I expect to be away on business for some time,” he said, curtly. “Now
- understand! Whatever questions are asked by anybody you must insist that
- you paid that money to me. Your own interest requires it! Show the
- receipt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forgive me for keeping you here so long in the dark and the cold, sir,” I
- pleaded, realizing the situation all at once. “If you’ll let me call on
- you to-morrow I’ll have something further to say about the matter of the
- profits—but I won’t bother you any more to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right! Don’t bother me to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I waited for him to come along with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good night, young man,” he said. “Step along ahead if you will! I prefer
- to walk home alone—I have some business matters to run over in my
- head.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I realized fully that Judge Zebulon Kingsley did not care to have a Sidney
- chumming with him before the eyes of Levant, and I did not take this
- dismissal in bad part. I marched off.
- </p>
- <p>
- But the memory of that face of his went with me. Fifty feet up in the road
- I stood stock-still. What did it mean—his command to hand over the
- money to his wife, making a secret of it? What made his eyes burn so
- redly? What was the matter with Judge Kingsley, anyway? I listened for his
- footsteps on the road behind me. I heard no sound.
- </p>
- <p>
- It came to me that Celene Kingsley would have reason to blame me if I left
- her old father floundering around the woods in the darkness.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went tiptoeing back, my ears perked.
- </p>
- <p>
- I heard him talking rapidly and clearly, not as one talks aloud in
- soliloquy, but as if he were addressing somebody. I stepped carefully in
- through the fringe of trees and I found out that Zebulon Kingsley <i>was</i>
- talking to somebody; he was talking to God!
- </p>
- <p>
- I listened five seconds and I realized what he was talking about. Then I
- leaped on him and struck his wrist with the edge of my hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- He dropped a fat, ugly revolver which had glinted in the starlight. I
- pounced on it and flung it into the woods as far as muscle, fright, and
- anger could prevail. When I turned on the judge he had just tugged another
- revolver out of his pocket, twin of the other weapon. I had a tussle with
- him to get it, and he fairly squealed in his fury. But I wrenched the
- thing out of his clutch and threw it; then I pulled him to his feet and
- patted him all over, as a policeman frisks a prisoner, to make sure that
- he was not serving as arsenal for more artillery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley,” I kept saying over and over, “your wife! Your daughter!
- Think of them!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was obliged to drag him out of the woods by main strength. I propelled
- him along the highway and he walked as stiffly as some kind of a wooden
- figure, moved by springs. His eyes stared straight ahead and his face was
- white in the starlight.
- </p>
- <p>
- So we came into the village without a word between us, and I led him by
- dark lanes to his house.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he held back and replied to what I had said in the woods as if I had
- just spoken.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I <i>am</i> thinking of them! That’s why I can’t face them!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Oh, the tone in which he said that! Questions were crowding in my throat,
- but I did not dare to pry into troubles as deep as Judge Kingsley’s most
- certainly were. But I had to have some assurance from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley,” I said, with respect in my voice, “I am meddling, but
- God knows there was a call for somebody to meddle just now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to be out of my troubles!” He was trembling like a leaf.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you’re not so much of a coward, Judge, that you’ll shift off all of
- your troubles on to your family, along with the awful one you were just
- about to shove on them! I know you’re not. I have always looked up to you,
- sir.”.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But nobody can look up to me from now on, young man!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I always shall, sir. We all get rattled some time in our lives.” I knew I
- was making pretty poor talk to a man like Judge Kingsley, but I was
- trembling as badly as he was and I did not know what to say to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m only poor Ross Sidney, sir. You know I don’t amount to much, but
- won’t you consider that I have done a little something for you this night?
- I stopped you when you didn’t know what you were doing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did know what I was doing,” he groaned. “I was doing it because I
- couldn’t go home. I walked up the road to the woods—to my woods on
- purpose to do it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It came to me that fate, or whatever rules human actions, had set me to
- play quite a part in Judge Kingsley’s life, for his private woods were not
- there—and <i>I</i> was.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you consider me enough of a man, sir, so that I can ask a man-to-man
- promise that you’ll sleep on this thing and have a talk with me to-morrow?
- I have helped you on one matter. I’ll do my best to help you in other
- ways!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s no help for me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But let me have a talk to-morrow with you! I beg you, Judge Kingsley.
- Give me your promise till tomorrow!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stiffened up and scowled at me. He resented what I said, I could see. I
- guess he thought I was trying to be too familiar with him. The old chap’s
- pride was still on tap. I suppose it seemed like lowering his dignity to
- make any sort of a man’s compact with young Ross Sidney. However, I was
- glad to see pride bristle up a bit in him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never heard of a Kingsley being a coward, Judge,” I told him. “Or being
- a liar, either! You owe me something, sir, and I’ll insist on being paid
- with your promise. So I reckon I have it.” I did not give him opportunity
- to do any talking. I rang the bell at the door, though he grabbed at my
- hand to stop me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t go in now! My face—my conscience!” So his conscience was
- still working!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Leave it all to me, sir. I’ll fix it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The maid opened the door, and I led him into the sitting-room. Celene and
- her mother were there and they came to their feet, gasping with fright,
- for I was half carrying the judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s nothing—it’s all right!” I told them. “We have been inspecting
- the work in the wood-lot on the way from the train. It’s nothing, I say—just
- a little touch of the heart. The judge insisted on walking too much.” I
- helped him to a couch. “I’ll call in the morning on that business, sir!” I
- told him. Then I turned to Celene, who was giving me warm welcome with her
- eyes, now that her fears were subsiding. “Keep your eye on your father
- during the night,” I advised her. “Of course, it’s nothing serious in his
- case—only a little overtasking of the heart—but a bit of home
- nursing will do him good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I reckoned I had planted a loyal sentinel over the man who was indebted to
- me for giving him more days of his life, even though they might be bitter
- days.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went to Dodovah Vose’s tavern, feeling still more like an overloaded
- mule—saddled with plenty of my own troubles, to say nothing of other
- folks’.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIV—THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN BUSINESS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS too much
- upset to go to sleep very early that night, even though Dodovah Vose had
- given me another of those slumber-coaxing suppers of fried chicken.
- </p>
- <p>
- So Zebulon Kingsley was ruined, according to his own tell!
- </p>
- <p>
- But what else besides ruin was fronting him? I knew him and the stuff that
- was in him. When a man like the judge came humping back to his home town,
- packing a gun on each hip and headed for his woods, there to do himself
- destruction, it meant something more than that he was flat broke. The fact
- that he had two guns suggested that he did not propose to take any chances
- on failure.
- </p>
- <p>
- His troubles might have skeow-wowed his mind temporarily, I pondered. The
- fact that he had given me, one of the despised Sidneys, a half-dozen
- decent words hinted at aberration, as I thought upon the matter. I hoped
- that he would stay crazy long enough so that he would allow me to poke
- myself still further into his affairs and his family, and show me a little
- appreciation. Up to that time I certainly had been using ax and crowbar on
- the intimacy proposition!
- </p>
- <p>
- It was my conviction that he would be obliged to be pretty nice to me from
- that time on. I knew something very private and personal in regard to
- Judge Kingsley, Levant magnate! All at once I found myself feeling rather
- like sticking my thumbs in my vest armholes and showing condescension to
- that man who had loomed so largely before my admiration. At any rate, no
- Sidney had ever committed suicide or had tried to, unless it might be
- hinted that it mightily resembled suicide when my father ran the
- ridge-pole of the Butler barn after wetting down the occasion with a quart
- or so of hard cider.
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt decidedly cocky when I started over to his house the next morning.
- I had his secret—I had manhandled him to save his life. A man might
- make up his mind to commit suicide, thought I, and then be particularly
- and almighty grateful, after a night’s sleep, because some chap happened
- along at the right time and stopped him before he had made a fool of
- himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- I headed for the front door like a friend of the family.
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley opened his office door in the ell and called to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do not transact business in my home,” he informed me, stiffly. He
- tapped the sign beside his door. “Z. Kingsley” was its sole inscription,
- curtly hinting that no further information was needed regarding that
- gentleman. “I do all business in my office, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I don’t know in just what condition I had been expecting to find the
- judge, and I had not planned how I would act when I met him, but I know
- mighty well I had not calculated on the sort of meeting we did have.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found him just as I had found him in times past when we had had a word
- or so together—and that was my surprise that day!
- </p>
- <p>
- I would not have been much astonished if he had fallen on my neck and
- sobbed out his gratitude; I rather looked for some demonstration. To find
- him the same old, cold, stiff ramrod was outside all my anticipations. I
- went in meekly and sat down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In the matter of the wood-lot,” he said, perfectly at ease and putting
- that jew’s-harp twang in his nose. “I have looked the contracts over.
- Young man, I don’t know whether to compliment you as one of the smartest
- business men I have ever met, or to have you arrested for an attempt at
- grand larceny!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not know what to say to that, and sat and fiddled my finger across
- the brim of my plug-hat.
- </p>
- <p>
- He put out his hand. “Please allow me to look at that receipt I gave you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I handed it over—obedient as a pup. He read it and tore it up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is as irregular a document as your operations have been irregular. I
- will give you a deed, taking back your note and a mortgage—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I want no deed, sir. I said so to you last evening. I don’t want the
- land. You keep it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave me a chilly stare. “My price of two thousand dollars was on the
- lot—not merely the wood on the lot. The land will be yours when we
- have passed our papers. I don’t know why I should place myself under
- obligations to you by any such foolish child’s play as you suggest.” Say,
- I felt myself slipping out of the Kingsley family circle as if I were
- going down a cellar slide in a puddle of soft soap. I made a desperate
- clutch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I made you another offer last night. I offered
- to turn the whole proposition over to you—profits and all! I had no
- business starting in on the operation. If you are in some sort of trouble—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who said I was in trouble?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You said so last evening,” I faltered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have you told anybody I said so, sir?” he demanded, sharply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir! Certainly not.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you permit yourself to hint that to anybody I shall promptly brand you
- as a falsifier and have you before the court on the charge of slander. You
- must realize that I could secure large damages because a financial man’s
- reputation forms his stock in trade. I could have you sent to prison on a
- criminal charge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t see any need of your sitting there and threatening me in that
- fashion,” I protested, with some heat. “I have tried to help you—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have not asked for any of your help—I do not need it, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t suppose you do,” I admitted, sourly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly not!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t figure what his game was—it was his own business, anyway—but
- I did not propose to have him sneering at me. His manner when he said,
- “Certainly not!” was mighty nasty. I rose and kicked my chair away from
- me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You needn’t show any gratitude if you don’t feel like it, Judge Kingsley.
- You’ll never hear a word from me about anything that has happened, but I’m
- not keeping still because you have threatened me. I’m keeping my mouth
- shut because I’m man enough to do so! And, by gad! I hope you’re man
- enough, on your side, to show me a little decency and to remember that you
- have a wife and daughter to protect from scandal and shame. Good day!” I
- put on my hat and marched out.
- </p>
- <p>
- I’m making due allowance for the judge’s state of mind, but truly that old
- hyampus did have the natural ability to stir a man’s temper. A Kingsley
- and a Sidney got along together about as well as the two parts of a
- Seidlitz powder do when they meet in a glass of water!
- </p>
- <p>
- I slammed the door after me, but I had gone only a few feet when I
- remembered that I had left behind my contracts. Furthermore, I had not
- finished my business in regard to the deed and the payments. So I whirled
- and went back in without stopping to knock.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was as if he had been playing a part with me with a mask to hide his
- face! He had laid down the mask.
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked on a fairly hideous scroll of awful, utter woe. That was his
- face. He was crumpled down in his chair. He did not look at me. I picked
- up the packet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you ready to attend to the matter of the deed, sir?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He wagged his head weakly from side to side. “Later!” he muttered. “Come
- later. Come this evening, perhaps.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down into the woods and hunted for hours until I found those two
- revolvers. That face of his was before me all the time. I expected to look
- up and find him hunting, too. There were other ways of committing suicide
- than by shooting, but I did not propose to leave those revolvers around
- loose, seeing that he had made up his mind to use that means of shuffling
- off. That face which he had exposed to me showed that Judge Kingsley’s
- soul was near the limit of endurance.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went about that day sick with fear. My helplessness in the matter was
- maddening. He was holding me off with his disdain like a man holding an
- enemy at bay with a pitchfork. And I knew that even if he gave me his
- confidence there was little a poor devil of my caliber could do in affairs
- such as his must be.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wondered if the knowledge that he was ruined was behind his desperate
- resolve to die. Of course he had a lot of pride, but other proud men had
- failed in business and lived through it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was obliged to confess to myself that the judge must have a deeper
- motive. I remembered my uncle’s threats and wondered what that disturber
- had up his sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- I almost whipped my courage up to the point of tackling him on the
- subject, but when I met him on the street in the afternoon and fronted his
- savage scowl I walked right on past, minding my own little business. His
- face had an extra touch of flame in it that day. That he had something
- special on the docket was plain to be seen. I went down to the wood-lot
- and checked up with Henshaw Hook so as to be out of my uncle’s way. His
- looks rather scared me. Just as I was walking away from the wood-lot at
- dusk he hopped out of his wagon ahead of me and tacked a printed paper to
- a wayside tree, glowering at me while I waited at a little distance. It
- was evident that he meant that paper especially for my attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I walked up and had a look at it when he was out of the way.
- </p>
- <p>
- It called a special town meeting thirty days from that date. As was
- necessary in a call of that sort, the purpose of the meeting was stated:
- “To see what action the town will take to pay off its indebtedness in
- full. Notice is hereby given that all creditors of the town must present
- notes or other evidences of claims at that meeting on the 15th day of
- April.”
- </p>
- <p>
- What did that call signify in the case of Zebulon Kingsley, town
- treasurer? I had seen behind his mask and I guessed! If I guessed rightly
- he would feel, when his eyes fell on that paper, like a man who had been
- notified of the date of his execution.
- </p>
- <p>
- I started on toward the village, and when I passed Brickett’s duck-pond I
- threw the revolvers into the water.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hurried to Judge Kingsley’s house, for I had the excuse of business, and
- he himself had made the appointment. There was a light in his office, but
- it went out suddenly when I was some distance away. I started to run, and
- then I checked myself. I decided that caution rather than haste was
- needed. I was right. Standing behind a tree, I saw him come out of the
- office door in a sneaking fashion, the early evening hiding him. He went
- around the house, and I followed. Young eyes can see in the dark better
- than old ones, and he did not spy me where I stood in the dusk, watching
- him hack off with a jack-knife a section of the family clothes-line.
- </p>
- <p>
- Stooping and almost staggering he went down into the orchard, and I trod
- close behind him undetected, for the trees plastered shadows into which I
- dodged. I waited until he had settled a noose around his neck and had
- thrown an end of the cord over a limb. I was taking no chances on having
- any misunderstanding between Judge Kingsley and myself that trip. In my
- own way I was just about as desperate as he was. I marched up to him, took
- him by both arms and pushed him against the tree-trunk.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was in such a state, physically and mentally, that he did not protest
- or resist; it did not seem to frighten him specially to be overhauled in
- that fashion. Honestly, I felt like spanking his face as I would have
- whipped a child. This game of “tag the suicide” was getting on my nerves.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley, you need a guardian and I have appointed myself one,” I
- told him, and I was mighty resolute, for I had determined to brace up to
- him with all the power in me. “You have no right to kill yourself, and
- you’re not going to kill yourself, by gad! not if I have to camp with you
- day and night till you get back your nerve. I’m going to take you straight
- to your folks and tell ’em you’re out of your head temporarily and
- will have to be taken to a hospital!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That brought him out of his numbness, and I knew it would. I believe he
- would have struck me if his arms had been free. But I needed to have him
- in another mood than the fighting one. I hit him hard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re an embezzler!” I cracked out. “How much?” He crumpled, and I let
- him slide down and sit on the ground, his back against the tree. It was
- the first time he had ever had that word put to him from man’s mouth, even
- though he may have confessed to himself in his heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley,” I said, bravely, knowing that I had an advantage from
- then on, “I’m only a young man and I know you don’t think much of me. But
- I’m going to grab in on this thing, whether you want me to or not. I have
- special reasons of my own. I’ll do everything I can to balk my uncle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a spy he has set on me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a liar!” I wasn’t going to take any of his sneers or his abuse. I
- hated to talk to him as I did, but only by being coarse and rough and
- bossy could I hope to pound anything helpful into him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stared up at me with his jaw hanging down and I did not let up on my
- punches.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have tried to head off my uncle Deck. I have told him straight out that
- I am for you and against him. He and I don’t speak to each other. I have
- promised your wife and your daughter that I’ll do everything I can to beat
- my uncle out in this thing. They don’t understand it! I don’t understand
- it all. But, before God, my promise to them is holy, even if you do not
- believe in me! I’m in this affair and I’m in to stay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He began to wag his head as he had done before that day. “Brace up, Judge
- Kingsley! You’re not licked yet!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Those three selectmen have signed my death-warrant. That notice which has
- been posted!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw that I had him going and I kept him going. “But when an embezzler
- stays alive and does his best to straighten matters—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t call me that name!” he groaned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you will take me into your confidence, Judge Kingsley, so that I can
- turn to and help you, I swear before Almighty Jehovah that I will set to
- work for you with body and soul. I <i>can</i> help you—I know I can
- help. No man can feel as I feel and be useless! But let me tell you this
- much on the other side!” I bent down and snapped my finger under his nose.
- That was no time for half-way and mealy-mouthed stuff. “If you throw me
- down after this honest offer, it means that you think I’m too cheap to be
- of use and too low to associate with. And that’s an insult I’ll never
- swallow! So help me, I’ll drag you up into the village with that rope
- around your neck and blow the whole business and hand you over to those
- who will take care of you. I will! My mind is made up. Take your choice!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I am sure that with no less bitter alternative could I have jounced any of
- his secrets out of Zebulon Kingsley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m just enough of a hellion to do that very thing if you don’t treat me
- right,” I warned him, angrily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You leave me no choice in the matter,” he mourned. “You are—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look out, sir! I’m doing what I’m doing out of pure and honest desire to
- help you. I want fair treatment.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing can make my situation worse than it is, I suppose,” he stated,
- after meditating for a time. “On the fifteenth day of April it will become
- known in town meeting that more than ten thousand dollars of town notes
- are out, drawing interest and bearing my name as town treasurer. I have
- issued those notes without warrant.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the people who hold them know they are out!” He was coldly, numbly
- patient with me, the untamed animal who had promised to pounce on him and
- drag him to his shame in the village.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have borrowed the money in various small lots and in each case the
- note-holder is keeping absolutely still in order to escape taxation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But great Scott! Judge Kingsley, ten thousand dollars for a rich man like
- you—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am no longer rich. I am ruined. I cannot take up those town notes prior
- to the meeting. So I shall be arrested as a criminal! I have lost money
- intrusted to me for investment, but though I have lost it I cannot be
- prosecuted criminally—it was breach of trust. I hoped to get money
- to stave off exposure in the criminal matter so that I could set myself to
- earning more money and restoring what I owe to the investors. But I have
- not been able to raise that money. That’s why I decided to kill myself. I
- knew I couldn’t face it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you just find out that you couldn’t raise the money, sir?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked up at me, shame and agony in his face showing even in the dark.
- It began to swell in him—I could see it in his eyes—that
- longing which comes to every man in deep trouble—the wild hankering
- to confide in somebody—to rush into confession, to unload the heart,
- to speak the words which have been pressing to the lips. I was only Ross
- Sidney, to be sure, but I was a man and Judge Kingsley had been bottling
- his grief for a long time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What I did last was worst of all! Nobody could have convinced me that I
- would ever do such a piece of folly. Think of me doing such a thing—a
- man used to the ways of money! A financier! Oh, I have been dreading the
- scorn, the sneers, the ridicule more than I have dreaded the exposure of
- my town notes! I want to die!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have you done, sir?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My investments were good in years past! I knew how to handle money—but
- what I did a few days ago!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was it, Judge?” He had been hesitating between his declarations, and
- therefore I kept prodding him. But confession of his last affair seemed to
- stick in his throat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I am not guilty—I am not ashamed because I lost money in my
- investments! The pirates who have manipulated this country’s industrials
- and wrecked the railroads are the guilty ones—they should be ashamed
- of what they did to the honest investors! But that I should run the scale
- of speculation as I have—to the depths! Down, down, as I got more
- desperate! And that I should do what I have just done when I was most
- desperate—when your uncle was rushing me toward a cell door!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He twisted his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt like a man waiting for a woodchuck to come out of his hole—getting
- an occasional glimpse of a nose and seeing it everlastingly dodging back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I had to have money quick. I had lost my grip. I could not raise more
- money in a regular way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I was in the city I heard swindlers talk about such men, sir. There
- are blacklegs who go about the country hunting for such men. Have you been
- swindled?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Foully—vilely!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He hooked his fingers inside his collar as if speech had stuck in his
- throat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Laugh!” he advised me. He was as hoarse as a crow and looked as crazy as
- a coot. “Go ahead and laugh! I may as well get used to the ridicule.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t feel much like laughing at anything these days, Judge Kingsley. I
- wish that you could understand me better and know how sorry—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and you and everybody else will pity me as a fool to be classed in
- with the other fools who are gulled by the shell-and-pea game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the sake of Mike, what have you done?” I demanded with a bit of
- temper, for I was in no frame of mind to guess riddles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I—Zebulon Kingsley—a financier, a man supposed to be in his
- right mind,” he squealed, beating his breast as he struggled to his feet,
- “I bought a gold brick!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XV—A TIP FROM MR. DAWLIN
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HILE I blinked at
- Zebulon Kingsley through the gloom I remembered what “Cricket” Welch had
- once said to me, in one of those sessions where I lapped up information as
- greedily as a kitten laps milk. He had a flow of language, “Cricket” had,
- and I wish I could remember his words more accurately. But it was
- something like this:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should any crook bring on brain-fag by thinking up new ones when the
- old ones, with gears smoothed by twenty-five centuries of steady
- operation, work so much better? As long ago as old Solomon was figuring on
- Temple estimates with the architects, and had quite a reputation in the
- country round about, a little chap dropped into a village outside of
- Babylon and gave out that he was The Old Boy’s son by Wife 411, and was
- interested in King Solomon’s mines along with his dad. Then he unloaded a
- gold brick on to a village sucker, first making the sucker believe that
- the latter was a buttonhole relation of the Solomon family.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was running that speech over in my mind while I looked at the judge, a
- little uncertain what to say to him under the circumstances.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And yet, the fraud did not seem to be barefaced while they were at work
- on me,” lamented the old gentleman. “One of them, the one who came to town
- first, was the son of one of my old schoolmates who went West when he was
- young and has been settled there ever since. Young Blake was East on
- business and dropped into Levant to look the old town over; his father
- told him to make himself known to me, so that he could carry back news of
- the folks his father used to know here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And in my book of notes I had set down the detail of just such a scheme as
- that!
- </p>
- <p>
- “They always have a skirmisher ahead of the main push,” I blurted. “He
- finds out about somebody who settled West—and then along comes the
- son.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s that?” demanded Kingsley. “What do you know about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then, after the son is well settled, along comes one of father’s
- partners, East, to sell stock, and he has a sample of the clean-up—a
- big hunk of gold—and it’s always a real ingot, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It <i>was</i> real,” insisted the judge, passionately. “I went to the
- city and had it tested by a jeweler who is a friend of mine. They offered
- me a chance to make money on account of my old friendship. It did not seem
- like a gold-brick game. I could not believe it was. I did not dare to
- believe it was. I needed money so badly!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it was, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mortgaged, I borrowed, I pawned! They offered me a chance to make money
- because I was a prominent man and could help them sell their stock. They
- wanted me to be sure that the proposition was a good one—that the
- gold was honest. They took my last five thousand dollars! My God! I bought
- a gold brick! I bought it like other fools have bought.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They always put new trimmings on the old game, Judge Kingsley, and make
- it look attractive.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at me strangely and did not answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose they worked it as usual,” I went on, feeling just a bit proud
- of my knowledge. I reflected that he might be more thankful for his
- volunteer if I showed him that I was no greenhorn. His mouth had been
- running away with him in his wild eagerness to unload the sorrows from his
- soul. All at once he was showing symptoms of stiffening a bit, as if he
- wondered why he had opened his heart to such a one as Ross Sidney.
- </p>
- <p>
- I needed all his confidence—the flow was lessening—and so I
- “shot the well,” as the oil fellows say.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After they had given you all kinds of nice entertainment in the city, you
- started for home and opened your package on the train and found a lead
- junk and a letter advising you to go home and keep still and never believe
- strangers again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That letter—that insult!” he gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They told you they were starting straight for Europe, and they—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So that is what you were in the city for, eh? A blackleg—one of
- them! Your brazen cheek—your flashy clothes—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, Judge Kingsley, I never tried to sell gold bricks. But it came my way
- to find out a lot about those fellows who do sell them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, you flashy cheat!” he snarled. “You are like that other one!
- Waistcoats like chromos! Tricked out with gewgaws—airs of a
- peacock!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That last word sent a thrill through me, put an idea into my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was he a big man, Judge Kingsley? Was his name Pratt?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he brought the gold! He claimed to be the partner. He had a smear
- like grease across his cheek—a scar. He—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You seem to know your confederates very well, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley, you listen to me! I have never seen those men face to
- face, but I have heard of them. I have heard of their tricks. I know how
- they operate. I know a good many of their lurking-places. I have made it
- my business to know!” I noted that he was still suspicious, and I put my
- face close to his and lied with all the fervor that was in me. I needed
- his confidence, I say. “I did work as a detective until the dirty mess of
- crooks made me sick of the job. I can help you in this thing! Depend on
- me! I’m going to help!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have about given up belief in everything!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give me your hand, sir, and promise me you’ll offer a good front to the
- world. Nobody must guess that you’re in difficulties. As for the noises my
- uncle is making, he has never said anything definite; he is merely making
- threats. Everybody knows about his grudge and folks don’t take much stock
- in him. If you keep a stiff upper lip nobody will guess.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But they all will <i>know</i> on the fifteenth of April.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If we can grab in ten thousand dollars before then—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you stand there, young man, and tell me you have the crazy idea that
- you can pull any of my money back from those scoundrels?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and more with it,” I returned, much more bold in my tone than I was
- in my heart. But when I knew that I had the “Peacock” Pratt gang
- identified—and probably had located Jeff Dawlin’s brother as the man
- who planted the fraud, posing as the son, his usual rôle, certain wild
- hopes and dizzy schemes went to whirling in my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We ought to have three thousand in cash in a short time to—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A client—a widow is pressing me for money. It amounts to about that
- sum,” he said, dolefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Does she suspect—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, no!” he snapped, irritably. “She is going to be married again, the
- fool, and wants to hand it to her new husband.” He showed a flicker of
- pride in the midst of his troubles. “There is nobody calling Zebulon
- Kingsley a thief as yet, except himself and your uncle. <i>I</i> know that
- I am and <i>he</i> suspects,” he added, bitterly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then the woman must have her money, sir. We must keep everybody from even
- suspecting for a time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I took both his hands in mine. He did need comfort and sympathy, even such
- as I could offer him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m square with you, Judge Kingsley. I know how to find those men. I’ll
- go after them. And I know you’ll do your part to help me. I only ask you
- to buck up! Let nobody suspect!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ought to doubt every man in the world after what I have been through! I
- ought to doubt <i>you!</i> Why are you doing all this for me, sir?” he
- demanded, and then I was glad it was dark there under the tree. I must
- have revealed confusion aplenty. “I have never shown you any favors, young
- man. It has been the other way. I never liked your breed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know that, Judge Kingsley, but—” I could not go any further at
- the moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see,” I gulped, “when I was a little shaver you gave me a quarter and
- I bought a catechism and studied it and—I guess—I’m quite sure—it
- made a better boy, and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- It wasn’t convincing, that talk wasn’t! He caught me up sharply:
- </p>
- <p>
- “The truth isn’t in you, young Sidney!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You told me that once before. And it has been my ambition to show you
- that you were wrong.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bah! I know human nature too well to believe any such rot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you always stood up in Sunday-school, sir, and told us about
- Christian charity and meekness and forgiveness. You believe in all that,
- don’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no confidence in you—not now!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not when I’m trying to prove to you that I’m one of those practical
- Christians?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do not insult me with any more of that balderdash, sir!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had just as much of nasty temper as he had, and mine began to flare up
- in me. I knew that my motives were all right, though I did not dare to
- reveal them to him—and my innocence made me the more angry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You would have made a big hit with the good Samaritan when he came along
- and offered his help after you had fallen among thieves,” I snapped. “I
- reckon you have never practised any of the charity you have preached. I
- have never preached, but I am practising! You don’t seem to recognize your
- own religion when you see it acted out instead of being merely printed in
- a book!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a renegade, convicting yourself out of your own mouth!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Oh, what was the use! I walked off a little way. Then I turned on him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have my own reasons for wanting to help you, Judge Kingsley, no matter
- what you believe about me. But if you feel as you talk, you can go to
- blazes just as soon as you like. I’m not going to try to round up all the
- revolvers, ropes, and razors in this town. That rope you have there seems
- to be a good strong one. Go as far as you like! And I’ll keep on in <i>my</i>
- way and will turn the money over to your estate—to your wife and
- your daughter. You are not the first coward who has knocked out the last
- prop and sluiced all the mess on to his women folks! Go on! I’ll be
- furnishing your wife bread and butter while you’re having insomnia in
- hell!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I went back to the tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew well enough that Zebulon Kingsley would not kill himself that
- night. In the first place, he was too mad. He came behind me, chattering
- his teeth like an angry squirrel. Then, again, I had stirred his
- curiosity, even if I had not given him any special hope. And my threat
- about handling his money after he had gone was enough to keep Zebulon
- Kingsley hanging around on top of the earth for a time. I knew his nature
- mighty well. I would have taken those means with him at first, but I had
- been hoping that he would accept me on a friendlier basis where I might
- coddle my hopes; and here was I handling him by the scruff of the neck!
- </p>
- <p>
- I caught a glimpse of Celene through the sitting-room window when I passed
- the house. The light was behind her and her hair was like an angel’s halo.
- Ah! there was the inspiration which was keeping me on the lunatic’s job I
- had picked out for myself! As for that old hornbeam father, I was in a
- state of fury which prompted me to go back, use his ears for handles, and
- kick him around his premises until he promised to behave himself—and
- give me his daughter when my task was finished. Well, at least I had
- reached one interesting stage in my development—I was acting as
- guardian of the high and mighty Zebulon Kingsley and was rather despising
- my ward!
- </p>
- <p>
- That evening I sat till late and went through my notebook and studied the
- affiliations, the methods, the lurking-places and all other information I
- had recorded in regard to one “Peacock” Pratt and his associates.
- </p>
- <p>
- It seemed to me that I had a pretty good start on the thing, even though
- the future was, as Jodrey Vose used to say of dock water, in a “nebulous
- and gummy condition.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I went to bed, nevertheless, in a considerably exalted state of mind.
- With every day that passed I was getting farther into the affairs of the
- Kingsley family—and getting into those affairs—
- </p>
- <p>
- I dreamed of Celene that night, but that was not a matter for special
- record; I dreamed of her every night.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the morning I put on a business suit I had bought “off the pile” in
- Mechanicsville. I had wanted to show Levant that I had more than one suit
- of clothes. I reckoned that I would feel more sane and solid in that suit.
- And I did feel that way when I went down to breakfast. If ever a man had
- business ahead of him I was that one!
- </p>
- <p>
- But that sane and normal feeling did not sit well on my conscience. I
- found myself brooding and getting depressed. I wondered why I had felt so
- exalted and optimistic the night before. How could I have made such
- confident promises to Kingsley?
- </p>
- <p>
- While I sawed at that prosaic hunk o’ ham the notion of chasing up those
- knaves and getting my clutch on that stolen money—or any other money—seemed
- just a hopeless dream. It was surely a crazy idea; I sat there and looked
- down into my plate and so decided. For all of a quarter-hour I mulled and
- gloomed there, wondering what had happened to make me so dull and
- disheartened and doped. I woke up to what the matter was—woke all of
- a sudden. It was that blamed ready-made suit of clothes!
- </p>
- <p>
- I was simply plain Ross Sidney! I was right down on the plane of all the
- men around me. I looked like a tank-town commercial drummer and felt like
- one. I had no more imagination or horizon than a grocery clerk. All the
- fantastic spirit of adventure had gone out of me. Perhaps it may be
- thought that mere clothes cannot do all that to a man! Well, wear overalls
- to the next grand ball! I’m no psychologist and I have never read
- Carlyle’s essay on clothes, though I am told he describes about what I
- have felt. I’m merely saying this: when I realized what was the matter
- with me and felt certain that I needed to be comfortably crazy in order to
- keep up my dip—why, do you suppose I would ever have tried to bark
- in front of that show if I had been dressed in a sack-suit?
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, comfortably crazy!
- </p>
- <p>
- I rushed, up-stairs and shifted to my knight-errant regalia. Then I went
- to my job on the run. I reckoned that I was going to be in a devil of a
- hurry for a while!
- </p>
- <p>
- I galloped down to the wood-lot, my plug-hat riding tilted back like the
- funnel of a racing steamer. Those choppers were hearty and happy and were
- hustling for that bonus; if a few laggards needed pep I injected it. I
- made estimates, got every hitch in Levant which would cart wood and drag
- timber and started the cut for the railroad.
- </p>
- <p>
- The freight-trains picked up the gondola cars as they were ready.
- </p>
- <p>
- I rushed to the cities and arranged for deliveries, pulled down first
- payments in good season to settle wages for a week, as agreed with Henshaw
- Hook, and shuttled back and forth until all the cut was cleaned up on the
- lot. Gad! how I was counting days! I did not waste any time on Judge
- Kingsley. I realized that the more I kept away from him, the more I kept
- him guessing!
- </p>
- <p>
- I grabbed my first opportunity to take a day off the job and run down to
- the big city; I made that jump from one of the towns where I was handling
- the last deliveries—for I could not make final collections until the
- railroad completed its haul, and so I had a little time to spare.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was another barker at the door of Dawlin’s place, and I noted with
- gratification that he was a rather seedy chap. The blonde looked acutely
- surprised and showed apprehension when I walked right in past her.
- Plainly, her man had been making some promises as to what he would do to
- me if I ever showed up again.
- </p>
- <p>
- And the first glance Dawlin gave me when he looked up from his gazara
- envelopes showed that he was quite ready to keep his promises.
- </p>
- <p>
- I beckoned him to his office and walked in there and waited for him. He
- came on the jump. He was at me almost before I had time to place my
- plug-hat out of the way of possible damage.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Mr. Dawlin would close a gazara game right at a moment when suckers
- were shoving money at him, it was proof that he was specially interested
- in something else which was almighty important. His language when he burst
- in on me made it plain that his interest in me was not flattering, though
- it was intense.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, if it’s that little, foolish, petty matter of the few dollars you
- handed back to those yaps,” I broke in, after I had pushed him back with a
- swoop of my arm—and, as I have stated, it was a hard arm—“here’s
- your small change.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In my wood business I had promptly changed checks into cash. I pulled out
- before the lustful eyes of Mr. Dawlin a roll of bills big enough to make a
- pillow for his Mormon Giant, and I carelessly flipped the edges to show
- him they were yellowbacks.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did the little matter amount to?” I asked, airily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Six and twenty-two fifty—and I tossed ’em a five,” he said,
- trying to make a quick shift from passion to pacification.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I guess the drinks are on me this time, Jeff,” I said, adding a
- ten-dollar bill to the amount. “Go buy the kind you like.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But what in—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This tells all the story,” I said, tapping the roll and stuffing it back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But your partners—leaving me in the lurch—not inviting me in
- for a drag—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It had to be a lone play, Jeff—just had to be! But don’t think I
- have all the money in the world cornered in my pocket, even if it looks
- like it. And I’m not back here simply to give you a treat by letting you
- look at it. I have located a bigger bundle—but it can’t be coopered
- by a lone play.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Job for the gang, hey?” he asked, almost drooling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, for the right operators if they’re the real goods. But no amateurs,
- you know!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Condemn it! I have told you about my brother. He’s one of the best in the
- country! Has just pulled off a killing—not very big, but easy and
- profitable.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing doing on the where!” replied Mr. Dawlin, warily. “That’s all done
- and the money counted. We always forget <i>where</i> as soon as the money
- is counted.” He fingered his nose. “Where is—” he started.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Same tag,” I said, smartly. “You forget and I don’t remember. All is,
- it’s there waiting. Can we all get together?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To-day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Blast it all! you ought to know that we can’t all get together to-day—nor
- a week from to-day!” He showed some suspicion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why should I know that?” I looked him in the eye. “When a job is done
- East, why, you know yourself they all shoot West—clear to the—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You didn’t tell me the last job was done East,” I said, coolly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it was. I can say that much. And they’re on their way West—they’re
- going over the Rockies.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I guess I’ll declare them out on the job, Jeff. I’m in with some of
- the other—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that’s no way to use a friend like I’ve been to you! This thing ought
- to be put up to Ike and ‘Peacock.’ You must remember that I offered you a
- lay with them! I tried to use you right. You ought to show some
- gratitude.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was fairly whining in his anxiety, but I was mighty careful about
- showing any eagerness of my own. I scratched my ear and looked rather
- doubtful and displayed indifference.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course I can’t write to ’em—we never write, especially
- soon after a job. But I have their bearings, Ross. I can put you right on
- to their trail. They have a job on below the Potlatch country in Idaho.
- First East and then West—get the idea? It’s something about land—this
- operation. You’re bound to bump into ’em; there are not so many men
- out there as there are here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Still, it looks to me like a wild-goose chase,” I demurred, hoping to be
- assured that it was no such thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Peacock’ isn’t going to change his style! He’s too far away to be
- obliged to bother—and he sure does like his togs! You can’t hide
- ‘Peacock’ Pratt if you surround him with a whole county. You’ll find him
- easy, and my brother will be right on the wheel. Wait! If you don’t know
- that country I’ll jot down directions and names for you—names of men
- to ask. I’ll give you a word or two for a passport!” He grabbed paper and
- pen and began to scribble. “What extra the trip costs will be added to
- your lay. You’ll find them square if you get in with them,” he assured me
- while he wrote. “You don’t have to discuss any lay for me. My brother
- always sees to it that I get my pickings from any job I help him to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He fairly thrust the paper into my hands when he had finished. Really, I
- was more grateful inside than I allowed to appear in my thanks. I could
- hardly ask Mr. Dawlin to do more in setting me on the trail of the men I
- was after. The humor of the thing certainly did appeal to me—and I
- needed a little something for cheer just then.
- </p>
- <p>
- Whether I would try to pick their pockets when I arrived up with them, or
- knock them down with a dub, or what I would do I left to the future. I had
- enough to think of just then—that wood business to wind up and the
- matter of the future handling of Zebulon Kingsley to attend to—and a
- crazy chase across the continent ahead of me!
- </p>
- <p>
- I tucked the paper deep, slapped Mr. Dawlin on the back, and hustled for
- up-country.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVI—GRABBING A HUSBAND AND FATHER
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HEN I laid rising
- three thousand dollars in front of Zebulon Kingsley on his office table as
- my card of reintroduction to that glum gentleman, I really jumped him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The money was in bills and there was a stack of it. A mere check would not
- have been half as impressive. A lot of men in this world are extravagant
- because they pay by check; handling real money makes one more appreciative
- of values, I think.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have wound up the wood-lot proposition to the last cent,” I informed
- him. “All collections made, all the men paid, and I hope you are as well
- satisfied as the rest. There’s the cash!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much is there?” His voice trembled when he asked me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Count it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll take your word, and later—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have told-me several times that the truth isn’t in me. Count that
- money! I insist!” A bit nasty of me, I admit, but I had resolved to make
- my bigness, where Judge Kingsley was concerned. I saw no chance of winning
- unless I made him understand that I was not to be kicked around any more.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood over him while he counted. His bony fingers shook. Even though he
- was handling money—rather a favorite indoor sport of his—I
- knew he was finding the job a bitter one, with me at his elbow and acting
- just as if I belonged there. He jotted down amounts as he counted, and
- then he added the figures.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I make it three thousand three hundred and fifty four dollars and
- twenty-nine cents,” he reported.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are right, sir.” I held my little account-book in front of his nose
- and tapped my totals. “I did a bit better than I figured.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The two thousand which belongs to me—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are no divisions in that pile, sir. We are not going to have any
- such argument as we had once before about price and land and deed. You
- need that money for immediate use and you’re going to take it. And don’t
- tell me again that you don’t need my help. You do!” Big talk, but he
- needed it! “But don’t you be afraid that I shall ever twit you about this
- help. Now is there any way of staving off this widow who wants her three
- thousand?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No! I have promised her. After what you told me—I reckoned on—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah! Then you have been admitting to yourself the last few days that I’m
- not so much of a renegade and crook, after all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His eyes shifted. “You must make allowances in my case, Mr. Sidney!” That
- looked promising. He was giving me a handle for my name.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then we’ll pay the widow so that she will not be wagging her jaw while
- we’re away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “While we’re away?” he repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir! You and I are going to start on the trail of that last batch of
- money you invested.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But we’ll never get money that way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How else are you going to raise ten thousand dollars before the fifteenth
- of April?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no way of raising it!” he lamented.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s it! No sensible, business way! Therefore, we must do the next best—grab
- from the men who have grabbed from you. It’s either that or go steal
- money!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I pulled up to the table and before his eyes counted back to myself the
- money over and above three thousand dollars. I put it in my pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s our common purse—for traveling expenses,” I explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it’s—” he gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, it’s a long journey, sir. However, I must go and you must go along
- with me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not in condition to travel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know that, sir, and I’m sorry. I wish I did not need you on the job,
- but you must be with me in order to identify those men who robbed you.
- Your complaint will put them in the jug if we can’t scare them and twist
- the money out of them in another way. I can’t do a thing without your
- presence, unless I catch up with them and knock them down. I may just as
- well stay East here and commit highway robbery for you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had another reason for insisting on his making the trip with me, but I
- kept it to myself. If I left him behind there in Levant with my
- rambunctious uncle barking at his heels and creditors waking up to
- suspicions, I could not have one moment’s peace of mind. I felt pretty
- sure that he would betray himself by face, his actions, or by suicide or
- confession. He was in no shape to endure inquisition if he were left where
- folks could get at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must go,” I insisted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s more or less of a blind run.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I must know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re only wasting time by talking it over ahead, Judge Kingsley, because
- I don’t know much about the trip myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He began to show temper, and I could not blame him much. My comfortable
- craziness which I had put on along with my “dream suit” was helping a lot;
- the judge was frostily sane.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The project is crazy,” he stormed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So is the fix you’re in!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can tell my wife and daughter nothing sensible!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As near as I can find out, sir, you have never told them anything special
- about your business. Why begin now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because they are worried. My actions—those strangers—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know, sir. They told me. But when you go away this time you’ll be going
- in my company and that may help with them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave me a look which hinted that he was not at all sure about that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have been in one business deal; it’s easy to say we’re in another,” I
- suggested, choosing to overlook his manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- But my feelings got away from me when he began to protest and argue and
- ask questions about why and where and when. The balky old mule! And I was
- giving him my soul and service free!
- </p>
- <p>
- I pounded my knuckles on the heaped money. “We are going to leave this
- town on the night train, Judge Kingsley. That gives you time enough to
- settle with the widow and tell your folks something and get them calmed
- down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you dare to browbeat me, young man!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, and you’ll have time to think the thing over for yourself, sir,
- before I call for you with a hitch just before train-time! There will be
- no arguments then. I shall expect you to be all ready with your bag in
- hand. Go light on luggage. We shall go a long way and we shall go in a
- hurry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I left him and went about a few final affairs of my own, and when I
- finished I was squared with everybody in Levant. Before handing that money
- to the judge I had paid my personal debts—I felt that I was entitled
- to that much!
- </p>
- <p>
- That evening Dodovah Vose loaned me a hitch and a driver and clapped me on
- the shoulder with great zest and pride.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When the judge picked you for a partner he picked the right one,” he
- declared. “You make a team which will bring this old town up on its feet.
- The judge needs you, son. He has been going behind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then once more he tried to pump me regarding this latest venture, for
- I had purposely dropped a word to him that the judge and I were off on a
- big deal. I knew that a seed planted in Dodovah Vose would bring forth
- fruit of the sort the judge and I needed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can just hint to folks, if you feel like it, Mr. Vose, that Judge
- Kingsley and I have seen a way to help this town very much.” That was
- true. “Incidentally, the judge will make a great deal of money out of
- certain things where his capital has been tied up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve always said he knew his business as a financier. Some of the old
- tom-cats in this town have been prowling and meraouwing because he has
- been tied up lately by mortgages; but you’ve got to bait with money to
- catch money! Don’t fret, son. I’ll hand ’em out something now to
- warm their ear-wax.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, he knows how to make money for himself and for other folks!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Am I too late to slip in a few hundred on this deal?” asked Mr. Vose,
- anxiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was promptly on my tongue, of course, to put him aside as gently as
- possible. But I knew that he had been wondering why I had not let him in
- on the thing before, for truly he had been my best friend in that town. I
- had no good excuse to give him. I needed his friendship and his loyal good
- word even more then than in the past, for suspicion was darkly brooding in
- Levant. I hated to leave behind with him the impression that I would do
- everything for Zebulon Kingsley, who had been my foe, and would not turn
- even a little leak of prosperity into an old friend’s porringer.
- </p>
- <p>
- While I was struggling with my thoughts—feeling like a scoundrel
- reaching for his brother’s wallet—a strange notion came to me. It
- fitted in with that comfortable craziness of mine. If I accepted his
- money, would I not be pledging my very soul to do and to dare? My devotion
- to Celene Kingsley I had set at one side as my true and sacred motive. I
- was mighty sure that I was not at all enthusiastic in regard to her
- father. However, if I took Dodovah Vose’s hard-earned money from his hands—and
- taking it meant a pledge that he was to benefit from a sure thing—had
- I not another sacred and even more compelling motive? Truly I had, for my
- man’s honor was concerned as well as my love for a girl!
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have you handy?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Five hundred,” he said. “I ask no questions. I want no promises. I know
- you’ll do your best for me, son. I hate to bother you—but profits
- come slow in a country tavern, and I’d like to do a little extra repairing
- this spring.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was on his way to his rusty old safe while he talked.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I took his money and went away from him with the warmth of his palm on
- mine.
- </p>
- <p>
- The grinding of the wagon-wheels on the grit in front of Judge Kingsley’s
- house brought Celene to the door, and when I did not climb down from the
- wagon she called to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you not come into the house?” she pleaded. I had not intended to do
- so. In spite of my longing to see her and to have her parting smile go
- along with me on that amazing journey I was undertaking, I had made up my
- mind to duck judiciously a meeting-up with the women folks of my traveling
- partner. But I had no will to disobey when she called to me. I found the
- judge with his overcoat on and his bag in his hand. Evidently he had
- thought the matter over! But he did not look like a bridegroom starting on
- a honeymoon trip, and he scowled at me with as much ferocity as if we were
- two tom-cats tied by the tails over a clothes-line.
- </p>
- <p>
- His wife was hanging to his arm and she was white, even to her lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Sidney, I must know what this mysterious business is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure the judge will tell you what is necessary.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He will tell me nothing. I have endured much in the past, Zebulon! I have
- not asked to know much about your affairs,” she went on, trying to get a
- square look into his eyes. “This time I <i>must</i> know!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have told you!” From his tone it was hard to tell what his emotions
- were. The words sounded as if somebody were talking into a tin spout a
- long way off.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have told me nothing except that you are going! You do not say where.
- You have not told me when you are coming back.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We don’t exactly know, Mrs. Kingsley. But I assure you that the trip is
- very necessary,” I put in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I must tell you that mother is not well,” said Celene, wistfully. “I’m
- sure everything is all right, but we must know where you are going so that
- we may be in touch with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can keep you posted—when we know where we are,” I said; but I
- did not sound very convincing, I fear. God knows, I wanted to put my arms
- around her and comfort her and tell her that I was madly trying to save
- her, her home, her mother, and her father from disgrace and ruin. I guess
- no man has ever figured out beyond doubt whether it’s better to tell the
- woman everything or to hide trouble as long as possible. When women are
- proud they never forget the disgrace, whether it is revealed outside or if
- it’s merely kept secret in the household. And in Zebulon Kingsley’s case I
- was proposing to keep the effect of the disgrace as well as all knowledge
- of it away from those women.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew how he felt in the matter! He had chosen revolvers and ropes rather
- than face them. I was determined to be just as resolute as he—until
- a show-down was inevitable.
- </p>
- <p>
- It would be a sorry triumph, a half job, if they were obliged to live out
- their lives knowing that the master of the household had lived for years
- in the shadow of prison; it meant the wrecking of all their pride and
- ideals—no more joy in home or life itself in the case of such women
- as they. I understood!
- </p>
- <p>
- The big dock was ticking off minutes rapidly. Our time was short. I
- shuffled my feet, impatiently wishing that Judge Kingsley would hurry up.
- His woe-begone, frozen face was making the thing worse every minute he
- stayed there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There is mystery here,” insisted his wife. “There should be no mystery
- about business that’s honest!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You surely can tell us something to comfort us before you go,” urged
- Celene, coming dose to me, pleading with her eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I knew I must stay away from the edges of explanation in her presence;
- once I got started, I’d be sure to tumble into a mess. I looked over her
- head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must hurry, Judge!” I warned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know that my husband would never go into any business that isn’t
- honest,” declared Mrs. Kingsley, beginning to show temper. She faced me
- and her eyes glittered. “But he is growing old, and his judgment may not
- be what it was. There are always men trying to lead others into trouble.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s so,” I admitted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Forgive mother if she says anything harsh! But we are in such a state of
- mind!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, so was I!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have mortgaged the home over my head,” cried Mrs. Kingsley. “I have
- given the money to my husband willingly—but I will not allow thieves
- to waste it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was about time for me to assert myself a little. The judge was merely
- working his mouth like a dying fish, and it was plain that he could be no
- help.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t blame your mother,” I told the girl. I took her hands in mine,
- glad I could carry away the memory of her touch. “Some of those men who
- have been hanging around the judge are not good men, but I was born in
- this town and you know me! I’m helping your father in an important matter.
- I swear I’m telling the truth. And I’ll bring him back safe and sound.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I left her before I should be tempted to kiss her right before their eyes,
- and I took the judge’s bag in one hand and boosted him along with a clutch
- on his arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We simply must catch that train!” I urged.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a sad scene for a few moments. I was obliged fairly to tussle with
- that woman for the possession of the old man. But I ran him out and left
- the mother sobbing in the daughter’s arms, and they were in the doorway
- when I helped the judge into the wagon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Brace up!” I whispered. “Give ’em just a word or two.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m all right,” he quavered. “It’s only business! It must be attended to.
- There’s nothing to fret about!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Wasn’t, eh?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Lick up!” I told the driver. “Lay on the braid!”
- </p>
- <p>
- We went rattling out of Levant behind a galloping horse and I liked the
- sensation of that haste. We were chasing ten thousand dollars and had less
- than twenty days for the job.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVII—MONEY HAS LEGS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E swapped not a
- word on the way to the railroad.
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge seemed to be settled down into a sort of numb condition, and I
- was glad of it, for I did not feel like talking. He stood indifferently at
- one side when I bought tickets, and I was glad of that also. If I was to
- be purser and general manager of that expedition I did not want to have a
- joint debate every time I made a move.
- </p>
- <p>
- My first tickets took us to a junction point. Then I bought to Chicago.
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge went along silently, showing about as much interest as a mummy
- in me, or in the scenery or people. I suppose the old fellow was having a
- terrible struggle with his fears, his thoughts, and his recollection of
- the manner in which he had parted from his family. I sympathized with him
- and left him alone. Once in a while I got a side-glance from him which
- suggested that he had not abandoned his distrust of me. Perhaps he
- pondered that he was simply submitting to another form of self-destruction
- and was willing to let it go at that!
- </p>
- <p>
- I’ll confess this: I was taking so much interest in the world about me
- that I was finding it hard to concentrate my thoughts on the business we
- had in hand. I had done no railroad-riding to speak of till then. It
- seemed as unreal as if I were headed for the moon instead of into the far
- vastness of my native land. When we went rolling through the smoky fringes
- of Chicago and I saw that there really was a Chicago, my emotion, as I
- remember it, was astonishment. But I had already found out that a
- greenhorn could get along pretty well by watching other folks and by
- asking questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- So we crowded into the transfer-wagon on Polk Street and were quickly
- across the city to another railroad station, where I bought tickets for
- St. Paul. Before the train pulled out I raided a folder-stand and grabbed
- a sample of everything in the rack.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went into those folders like a girl diving into the love scenes in a
- mush novel; I studied as diligently as if I were a prize pupil getting
- ready for a contest. I had my nose in those papers for hours, till I could
- close my eyes and see maps and repeat time-tables and names of cities
- backward.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I wasn’t at a loss when we reached St. Paul. I trotted the judge right
- along to a window and bought tickets for Spokane. He was mumbling a
- monotone of growls in my ear while I counted out the money.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here, young man,” he said, when we had left the window, “I am not
- going to be teamed any farther until you tell me exactly where you are
- going and what you are intending to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It rather surprised me to hear him speak; I had sort of forgotten that he
- could talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you pretend that you expect to get money, racing around like this?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m on the trail of it, Judge Kingsley—your money, you remember.
- I’m not doing this for my own amusement.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You seem to be; I’ve been watching you, sir. You are plainly relishing
- this junketing about. I go no farther.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much money have you in your pocket?” I asked, mildly.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked alarmed. “I did not bring money! You took the money for
- expenses, you said. I depended on that. I have only a few dollars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s good,” I told him. “So there’s no chance for argument here on this
- platform.” I waved the tickets under his nose. “I reckon you’ll have to
- stick right along with me, sir, wherever I go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That settled that rebellion!
- </p>
- <p>
- When I started toward the train he followed. His face was white, his jaws
- were ridged, and he was furious—but his anger locked his lips. He
- did not bother me with questions. That night I hid my money inside my
- berth-pillow; by the way the judge looked at me I knew he would pick my
- pocket if he got a chance.
- </p>
- <p>
- On we went across the prairies of the Dakotas—and the journey was
- not interesting. It was all dun and dull and brown and monotonous in that
- late March. When the sun shone it only showed up more of the raw country.
- Every little while we went plunging through a snow-squall which plastered
- the car windows and speckled the brown of the prairie.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then the doldrums got me! All at once I found myself bluer than the old
- judge had been, even in his deepest despondency. This was a reckless
- escapade, not a sensible man’s project! I had bragged and blustered and
- made promises there in that little tin dipper of a Levant where the
- horizon was pinched in by Mitchell’s Mountain and Tumbledick Hill. I had
- got by with my bluff in the wood-lot game and had felt as if I were a big
- man!
- </p>
- <p>
- But out there!
- </p>
- <p>
- No longer was it a string of mere names and a smudge of color on paper to
- make a map! I was looking out, hour by hour, on the reality of the
- vastness of the great West. As to the men I was hunting for in that wide
- expanse—those fly-by-nighters, those human skip-bugs—would
- they not be dodging where impulse took them? Jeff Dawlin was a mere
- gambler—willing to take a chance on anything. Had he not taken a
- mere gambler’s chance on my finding those men? If I succeeded he would get
- his pay. If I did not succeed it was only <i>my</i> failure—he had
- invested nothing—he had no interest in my affairs, except a
- gambler’s.
- </p>
- <p>
- And what could I do to those men if I did find them? They were at home out
- there—as much at home as they were in the East. The farther out on
- those prairies I rolled, the farther away from all confidence in myself I
- seemed to be. Old Ariock Blake used to say that sometimes he felt as if he
- were “forty miles from water and a hundred miles from land.” I felt just
- as helplessly up in the air as that! I fairly wallowed in sloppy gloom.
- </p>
- <p>
- To sit there in front of Zebulon Kingsley in my state of mind and courage
- and look on his gad-awful sourness of visage was too much for my nerves.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went to get a drink of water and heard men laughing in the smoking-room.
- If there were men in the world who could laugh I wanted to be with them.
- So I went in. They were playing poker, and after a time one man had to
- leave the train and they asked me into the game.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was desperate enough to grab at anything that would take my mind off my
- troubles, so I began to play poker. And when a man sits in to play poker
- with strangers it’s a mighty small slice of mind he has left to blotter
- worry with.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was away from the judge a long time, and he came hunting me up and
- caught me at the pastime. Perhaps he feared that his two-legged bank had
- fallen off the train and he had been worrying; but when he saw me with
- cards in my hand and money spread out he had a lot more to worry about and
- his face showed it. He let out of him a sort of moan and went away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your father?” asked one of the men, casually. “Sick?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” I said. “I mean he’s sick, but he’s not my father. He is a big
- Eastern capitalist I’m escorting West on business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Put me next—I can offer him some great chances,” said another man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m afraid he is feeling too bad to talk business—and he is very
- notional in the matter of strangers. Don’t say anything to him; leave it
- to me.” I was obliged to say something about the judge and to block them
- from bothering him, if I could, for I knew he would not be contented with
- one inspection of me at my devilish and dangerous occupation. “Don’t pay
- any attention to his actions,” I advised. “He’s feeling mighty sick—a
- long ride makes him sort of seasick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was glad I had planted something with the men, for the judge kept coming
- and sticking his head between the curtains and making strange noises. He
- went at me in good earnest when he had me at table in the dining-car.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How dare you throw away my money on gamblers?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t done so, Judge Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I saw you doing it in that dirty den of smoke and vice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You saw me playing cards, I’ll admit. I had to do something to keep from
- going crazy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tossing away my money! Gambling my dollars—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just a moment, sir! That money is a part of my profits and I consider it
- a common pot for both of us. I know how to play poker. I have added
- forty-five dollars to it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you boast that you have been cheating at cards to help <i>me?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- Confound him! he could sting a man with that tongue of his!
- </p>
- <p>
- “A man can play poker without cheating. Just as a man can do business
- without cheating!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked him in the eye and he shut up. I had found out that I could get
- along with him better when he didn’t talk. After the meal I went back to
- the game. I felt that every little helped, provided I could hold my own.
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t resist a quiet chuckle inside when I reflected that I was
- industriously playing cards for the benefit of Judge Zebulon Kingsley,
- Sunday-school superintendent of Levant.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had learned long before how to watch out in a card game, and when I felt
- little scratches on the backs of the cards and observed that one of the
- players was doing the gouge act with a specially manicured finger-nail, I
- turned a few tricks of my own. I felt the full humor of the thing when I
- calmed my conscience with the thought that it was all for the sake of the
- judge. When he came to the curtains and glared at me I grinned at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I cleaned up one hundred and fifteen dollars, at any rate, before we
- rolled into Spokane—and I had at least five hundred dollars’ worth
- of respite from my bitter misgivings. When I showed that tainted money to
- the judge with some little pride and impelled by a spirit of devilishness
- I couldn’t control, I thought for a moment that he would bite me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not going to associate any longer with a scalawag. I’m not going to
- be bullyragged by a scoundrel!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “However, when we’re roaming we’ve got to do as the roamers do,” I told
- him. Deep in me I was ashamed of the disrespect I was showing him by
- plaguing him in that fashion, but I felt an almost irresistible hankering
- to do it; he had so long lorded it in Levant. Furthermore, he did not seem
- to recognize in any manner my spirit of self-sacrifice; he had not shown
- to me one flash of wholehearted gratitude. I may have had a cloudy notion
- that he needed to have his spirit of Kingsley pride humbled before he
- would ever consider me as a likely son-in-law. My ideas then and the
- memories of my ideas now are not very clear, for I was not in any very
- calm and philosophic mood those days.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a carriage had snatched us across Spokane and we were landed on the
- platform of a station from which trains for the Idaho country departed, he
- did buck in good earnest.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was a man of plan and method; he had passed his life in routine. That
- rattle-brained gallop must have offended every instinct in him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll not get on that train. I’ll go no farther. I’ll appeal to the
- police,” he raved. “Give me my share of that money and I’ll go home.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have mixed it all together—gambling money and all! I would not
- have you traveling on gambling money, Judge.” My pertness added to his
- anger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have you arrested, so help me—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hold on before you put the binding word to that oath, Judge Kingsley. If
- you dare to put me in the jug away out here away from home, I’ll yank you
- in as an embezzler of town money—and I’ve got an uncle who is first
- selectman of the town! A little telegraphing will do the trick. Now let’s
- both of us throw away our bombs. The fuses are sizzling! Climb aboard.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He ground his teeth and climbed!
- </p>
- <p>
- A fine sort of a brindled, cross-eyed hen was I setting to hatch my
- son-in-law hopes! But a mood of recklessness was sweeping me then.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not buy tickets; I paid cash fares to the conductor, naming a
- station I culled from the folder. I was not sure what the limits of the
- Potlatch country were; I proposed to drop in with somebody on the train,
- if I could manage it discreetly, and post myself by asking questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw no likely subjects in the car where we were riding—the
- passengers were mostly women—so I slicked up my silk hat, fixed it
- at a confident and compelling angle, and went out into the smoking-car.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I have just said, the spirit of recklessness was flaming in me. I did
- not dare to let it die down. I lashed my courage and my craziness both
- together. I was bitterly afraid I might drop back into that paralyzing
- despondency I had felt back there on the Dakota prairies. That meant that
- I would become a useless quitter. Only by dint of holding myself in that
- desperate mood where I proposed to let chance have its way with me, and to
- grab in on anything that offered, would I have gone through so brazenly
- with the affair on which I soon found myself entering. It was merely
- another gamble, it seemed to me after I was in it. It was taking my mind
- off my more private affairs, even as the poker game had distracted my
- attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- I marched through to the front of the smoking-car where the train-boy was
- arranging his little stock, bought a paper, and walked slowly back up the
- aisle with a glance to right and left at the faces of the men, hoping to
- get a rise from that “likely subject” I was hunting for.
- </p>
- <p>
- One man returned my glance with interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- After I sat down, well up in the car, I looked over the top of the
- newspaper and saw that the stranger’s interest in me continued. The chap
- had a broad face, liquor-mottled. After a while he unscrewed the top of a
- flask and sucked in a long drink. Then he worked his shoulders, jerked at
- the bottom of his waistcoat, wriggled his arms, and displayed other
- symptoms of a man who is trying to brace up and to pull himself together.
- At last he derricked himself out of his seat and swayed up the car aisle.
- He divided glances between my plug-hat and the frock-coat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excuse me, but it’s the clothes,” said the stranger.
- </p>
- <p>
- I nodded amiably.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wouldn’t butt in and speak to you if it wasn’t for the clothes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Once more I was having it impressed on me that a plug-hat and a frock-coat
- seemed to be good reliable openers in the jack-pot of chance. I reckoned
- I’d play the hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re not a parson.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m far from it, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The farthest from it I know is to be a lawyer. I spotted you for a
- lawyer. If you are one I want to talk with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m a lawyer. Sit down,” was my cheerful lie.
- </p>
- <p>
- The stranger hauled out his flask. “Do you ever indulge?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So much the better. Lawyers ought to keep their brains cool. Seeing that
- you’ve got the brains and propose to keep ’em cool, I’ve got to
- keep up my nerve—and so I’ll take a drink.” He sucked at the flask
- again. “Where do you live?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In the East.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you don’t know this country and the laws out in this section,” said
- the stranger, showing his disappointment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh yes, I do; I used to live out here. That’s why I happen to be here
- now. I’m investigating investments for Eastern capital.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My new acquaintance leaned dose, so close that his whisky-saturated breath
- left vapor on my cheeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have found out something that’s big. I thought I could handle it
- myself. I have started out to handle it myself. But when I saw you I said
- to myself, ‘There’s a squire, and he knows law and probably his brains are
- cooler than mine.’ I’ve got the secret and I’ve got the grit, but I need
- law, too—and I ain’t sure of all the fine points. I want you to come
- along with me and stand at my back and hand me the fine points as I need
- ’em. What do you charge per day for peddling law?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have to know what the deal is first.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can’t tell you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was getting a little shaky on the proposition and raised the paper in
- front of my face and appeared to lose interest in matters of law. After a
- time the red-faced individual tapped on the paper with his knuckle, as one
- would tap on a door. I pulled my shield to one side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A chap hates to let go of a big thing to a stranger, even if that
- stranger is a lawyer. I have walked past a dozen law-offices without
- daring to go in. Perhaps you don’t realize what a big thing I’ve got. Now
- listen here! Suppose you were a fellow like I am—a prospector—and
- was digging around the record-books, looking up land titles, mineral
- grants, and so forth, and got on to a trail that you followed up and found
- that a new city had been laid out and lots sold off and buildings going
- up, and all that—all on a location that wasn’t legal? Mind you, I
- ain’t naming any place. But it’s on a section that land-grabbers got hold
- of a long time ago. And they were such hungry land-grabbers that they
- stretched lines to take in everything that was loose around those parts.
- There was no one to make any holler about it. It was just so much extra
- land and it didn’t look like real money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have so much business of my own that I’m not interested in making
- guesses at the business of somebody else,” I remarked. I was in that thing
- about as deep as I wanted to be.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But how do I know anything about you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Honors are even!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The stranger knuckled his forehead, trying to think.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want to trig the best thing I ever got hold of in my life because
- I didn’t buy a little law for to grease the runway,” he said at last. “I
- may as well tell you—without giving out names and places—that
- those land-grabbers hooked in a section that belonged to a soldiers’ grant—and
- that’s why no one ever made a holler. There don’t seem to be any
- particular heirs to side-tracked soldiers’ grants that have never been
- thought worth much. No timber, you see; only plain land. But plain land is
- mighty good property when a railroad takes a notion to build on to it and
- comes to an end there and a city starts.” The client began to show
- excitement. “They have laid out lots and built and they haven’t got
- straight title. I have found it out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That doesn’t seem reasonable,” I said. “Railroads and men who are
- building cities do not make such mistakes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But they have this time. The same money that grabbed the land has built
- the railroad. They think they have got it all buttoned up. They didn’t
- want to expose themselves by starting a movement to make their title
- straight. They reckon they’ll be able to bluff it out with money and pull
- and influence down to Boise. That will be easier than to chase around and
- establish title to a soldiers’ grant. But, by thunder! they can’t stretch
- or shrink the hide of old earth! There are set points that have got to be
- measured from and the measurements will tell the story. And re-locations
- will have to stand—for the law of the United States can’t be built
- over when the holler is made.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I guess I didn’t show much interest—I was afraid to show any. I
- hoped the man would shut up and go away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you believe what I am telling you?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am merely wondering how it comes about that you know so much, more than
- everybody else about a section of land that has been surveyed for a
- railroad and a new city.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My father was a pioneer in this country. One day, after they began to
- build the railroad, I was in the record-office and happened to remember
- some of the things he told me about the days when they were grabbing land
- in these parts. I looked up records, I did measuring, I did some
- reckoning, and within the last two days I have made sure that I’ve got the
- bind on the city of Breed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In his excitement he spat out the name. Then he promptly began to damn
- himself. “I never ought to take a drink of liquor,” he declared. “But when
- it came to me that I could run in there and re-locate the best hunk of
- that land, I reckoned I needed to have my nerve with me, and so I’ve been
- bracing my nerve. But the trouble with me is, when my nerve is braced my
- tongue is loose. Now I suppose I’ve got to take you in! But I’m dangerous.
- However, I’ll take you in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t say anything.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you get a day for your best law work?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t work by the day.” I wondered just how lawyers did work.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, then, name your price for standing by me against the sharks they’ll
- bring to try to beat me out. I don’t know anything about hiring lawyers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll take half.” I thought that remark would send him hipering away.
- </p>
- <p>
- My client’s face promptly showed the color of a ripe damson. He tried to
- say something and merely clucked. After a struggle he managed to control
- his temper and his voice. He leaned forward and clutched my knees. He
- spoke low, for there were other passengers near, but the rasp in his tones
- made up for any lack of emphasis.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My name is Peter Dragg. If you have never heard of me, ask somebody about
- me. Ask any one between Buffalo Hump and Cour d’Alene. I’ve had a lot of
- practice in doing things to men who have got in my way. What I’ll do to
- you if you don’t back up will put red rings around the moon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, then, consider I’m discharged!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “From what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “From my position as your lawyer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t hired you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then suppose you cast off those grappling-hooks,” I suggested, for his
- clutch on my knees hurt my flesh and my feelings. When he did not let go,
- I reached down slowly, grabbed his hands and began to pry.
- </p>
- <p>
- Not a man about us noticed what was going on—the newspaper that I
- had dropped covered our hands. It was tense and silent testing out which
- was the better man in that clinch. He had a handsome little grip of his
- own, I’ll admit, but I had diver’s hooks at the ends of my arms and I
- bested him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I quit!” he growled, after a time. “Leave go!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen,” said I. “I’m not a lawyer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You lie!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I <i>did</i> lie, but not now. You pass on about your business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn’t my own business any longer—I have put you wise to it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I’m forgetting it. I have plenty else on my mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t get past with that kind of bluff,” he sneered. “You intend to
- beat me to it, but you can’t.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here, I’m coming across square with you,” I protested. “You came and
- jammed a lot of information on to me. I didn’t ask for it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say you coaxed it out of me. Now you’ve got to come in and give me law
- on a decent lay. If you don’t I’ll do you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not a <i>lawyer</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know better! You’re tied up with me—you’ve got to stick to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I have important matters which will take all my time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll take your time from now on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here! I propose to go on and mind my own business!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you’re spoken for! I’ll tend to you before you get a chance to butt
- in on <i>my</i> business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He leaned back in his seat and pushed his coat aside, inviting my
- attention by a downward glance.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was packing a gun on each hip’.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll give you about ten minutes’ recess to think the thing over,” he
- stated. “If you try to leave this train I’ll be after you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He went down the car, turned over a scat, and faced me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was in a fine way to attend to the business of Judge Kingsley and
- myself! Whether I went into that fellow’s scheme or did not go in, it
- seemed all the same. In those days, according to what I had read, they
- were very careless about handling firearms in some parts of the West, and
- it looked to me as if I had dropped into one of those sections. He took
- another pull from his flask. The uncertainty of what that intoxicated
- gentleman might feel impelled to do to me next, in the confusion of his
- fuddlement, made the shivers run up and down my back. In the ten anxious
- minutes that passed he pulled that flask four times, and every time he
- reached for it I made a motion to dodge under the seat. The damnable part
- of it was that nobody in the car was paying the least attention to us.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he came tottering up the aisle and lurched into the seat in front of
- me. Between two hiccups he sandwiched a threatening, “Well?” Plainly, he
- was well “pickled” and accordingly dangerous. And, on the other hand,
- there was a hope for me in his condition. I concluded I might as well be
- shot as scared to death. I couldn’t draw a deep breath as long as those
- guns were on him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what say?” he repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all right!” I mumbled. “But let’s make it private. Listen! I’ll
- whisper!” I leaned forward, sliding both hands along his legs, getting
- close to his ear. I laid hands on both weapons and jerked myself back,
- holding them low at my hips.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Make one move and I’ll bore you,” I growled. “Go back to your seat. Go
- quick!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He went. I tucked the guns into my own pockets.
- </p>
- <p>
- We passed the station to which I had paid fares, and I handed more money
- to the conductor. I decided to stay on the train, hoping that my client
- would arrive at his home town, whatever it was, and get off. But he kept
- right on.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time he held up a handkerchief by one corner and waggled it,
- giving me a drunken and moist wink. Evidently he wanted further conference
- under a flag of truce, and I nodded agreement after I had made sure that
- the guns could be come at easily. I agreed because I hoped I could make
- some sensible arrangement to get rid of this particular bottle imp who had
- landed himself on to my affairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You think you’re a slick one, eh?” My hopes fell, for his tone did not
- suggest compromise. “You’d better turn around and go back. You’re heading
- into the wrong country. Will you go back?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is the country?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thought you said you used to live out this way!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say, what is the country you’re speaking of?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Potlatch section,” he growled. “You’d better not get as far as that.
- You know Shan Benson, don’t you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know Ive Hacker, Binn Mingo, Cole Wass—all friends of mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pals, I say! All work together. Pull off our plays together.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go ahead!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go ahead!” he repeated, grinding his teeth. “We’ll go ahead and make a
- pot roast of you in that plug-hat! Do you think I’m a lone-hander, without
- friends? Haven’t you ever heard of Steer Bingham?”
- </p>
- <p>
- My heart jumped. That was the of the names Jeff Dawlin had written down
- for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I suppose you’re holding out Ike Dawlin for a—” I started,
- giving him a sharp look.
- </p>
- <p>
- He smacked his hand on his knee. “Yes, Ike Dawlin. That’s the kind of
- friends I’ve got who will—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fine bunch to be afraid of if they all are as handy by as Ike Dawlin!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stared at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ike Dawlin is East on a gold-brick game, and you know it,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “East—East—you plug-hat stiff! I’ll show you whether he’s East
- or not!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is East along with ‘Peacock’ Pratt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My cocksureness made him furious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the jumped-up jeesicks, don’t you suppose I know when Ike Dawlin lands
- back in the Potlatch country?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have to see him to believe it. Yes, or ‘Peacock’ Pratt!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You follow along on my heels and you’ll see both of ’em all right!
- Next you’ll claim to be a friend of theirs, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh no! If I really thought Ike Dawlin was in the Potlatch instead of back
- East I wouldn’t be headed this way. <i>There’s</i> one special man I
- wouldn’t want to meet up with.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dragg bounced up and down on the seat in his rage. I had prodded him
- as hard as I could in order to make sure that he knew what he was talking
- about.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn you!” he snorted. “Then you’ll get your dose of Ike Dawlin. I won’t
- eat nor sleep till I find him. And he’ll burn up the road getting to you.
- Ike Dawlin, eh? You don’t dare to come on!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Keep your eye on me. But if you can dig up Ike Dawlin in these parts come
- around and I’ll hand you a present—maybe I’ll hand back your guns!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dragg by that time was not a pleasant companion and I got up and went
- back through the train. He started after me, and then thought better of
- it. Probably he reflected that he had me either way. If I got frightened
- and went back he would be well rid of me as a rival in his scheme; if I
- came on he had Dawlin and the rest—and I surely believed his word
- about Dawlin’s whereabouts. I did not know whether I was mighty glad that
- my chase was being guided in such handsome manner or was so dreadfully
- scared by the prospects just ahead of me that I was half minded to jump
- off the train; my feelings were very much mixed up.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, when I met the gloomy stare of Zebulon Kingsley I grinned—I
- couldn’t help it. There was a lot of grim humor in the situation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Been raking in more dirty money, I suppose,” he snarled, mistaking the
- nature of my smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I have turned a better trick, sir. I have just met up with the most
- obliging chap I have found in a long time. He knows the man who fooled you
- into buying that gold brick. He is going to find him for us!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bah!” sneered the judge. “This is only a wild, crazy, helter-skelter
- chase for—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m telling you the truth, sir! I never saw a man so enthusiastic about a
- kindness for strangers! He just told me that he wouldn’t eat or sleep till
- he had found that fellow. Why, he is so headlong about the thing that I’m
- afraid he’ll find the chap before we’re ready to meet him in proper
- style!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hump!” sneered the judge, not taking a mite of stock in me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I walked away and sat down by myself. There was sad truth in what I just
- told Kingsley. I was not ready to meet Ike Dawlin and “Peacock” Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XVIII—THE ECCENTRICITIES OF ROYAL CITY
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>’LL confess that
- it took me a little while to screw up my resolution to the point where I
- could tell myself that I was entirely ready and willing to meet Ike Dawlin
- in the circle of his associates.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had left behind us brown fields where wheat grew, and had passed
- through the Idaho prune-orchards—a brakeman told me they were
- prune-orchards. We had come into the hill country and the railroad
- wriggled its way along the foot of the canon.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took it for granted that Mr. Dragg proposed to stay with me. Every
- little while he came and set his nose against the glass of the car’s
- forward door and glared at me. When we stopped at a station I stuck my
- head out of the window and made sure that he did not leave the train. The
- two of us were playing a sort of “even Stephen” game—silent
- peek-a-boo. I kept carefully away from Judge Kingsley, for I did not care
- to have Dragg report that I was in the company of an elderly man with a
- roll of chin-whiskers; Mr. Dawlin might recognize the description and take
- alarm.
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge sat close to the window, wrapped in his cloak, and scowled up at
- the canon’s walls closing in behind as the railroad wound along. He looked
- as if he felt like a man headed for the innermost chambers of tophet, with
- the doors slamming behind him. As the hills shut in to the north, my
- feelings were of that sort, anyway!
- </p>
- <p>
- And so night came!
- </p>
- <p>
- I had been asking a lot of questions of that obliging brakeman. My folder
- named a terminus of the road and I had paid to that point, but I learned
- that the railroad had been stretched along six or eight miles farther down
- the canon so as to serve a mushroom town which was the depot for a freshly
- discovered mining section.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the train stopped at the old terminus, both Mr. Dragg and I found
- ourselves very curious in regard to each other; had it not been for the
- glass in the car door we would have bumped noses when we hurried to make
- mutual inspection. But he stayed on the train—and so did I.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a young, a very young railroad, that last bit. The train crawled
- like a caterpillar—and that’s a good description, for the cars went
- bumping up slowly over the bulges in the track. Every now and then we got
- a side-slat which made me think we were going into the creek.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was too busy worrying about that train to give much thought to what was
- going to happen to me when I landed in “Royal City” along with Mr. Dragg.
- Such, I was informed, was the name of the new town. They certainly do pick
- good names to build up to in the West, just as Seth Dorsey, of Carmel,
- built a house on to the brass doorknob he found in the road.
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley was not affording me much encouragement; he sat and hung on
- to the arm of his seat and glared unutterable reproach at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was considerably glad to get off that train.
- </p>
- <p>
- But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a
- cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that
- railroad.
- </p>
- <p>
- My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my
- knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that
- introduction to the town.
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among the
- hills the darkness was something a man could eat! We stumbled over
- upheavals of muddy earth, stepped into more holes, and made our way across
- the especially treacherous places along single planks which were half
- submerged in mire. A few lanterns, tied to short posts, were dim beacons
- to direct new arrivals from the railroad to the heart of the “city.” Quite
- a glare of lights marked the center of business activity. The slope of the
- hillside was dotted with bits of radiance from uncurtained windows. In
- that darkness only those points of light hinted at the extent of this new
- town. The dots were widely scattered, showing that Royal City was
- ambitiously endeavoring to cover as much ground as possible.
- </p>
- <p>
- After threading the course marked by the lanterns we came to a stretch of
- pulpy mud which was bordered by a sidewalk of four planks abreast,
- evidently the main street of the place. There were buildings of
- considerable size on both sides of the thoroughfare, but these buildings
- certainly did put Royal City into the mushroom class. There was not a bit
- of stone or brick nor a clapboard or shingle in evidence. The buildings
- were constructed of beams, boards, laths, and tarred paper. They gave me
- the feeling that I could pop them between my hands like I’d pop a blown-up
- paper bag.
- </p>
- <p>
- A lantern, hung on the corner of a building containing a store, lighted up
- a sign, “Empire Avenue.” The sign over the door of the store advertised
- the place as the “Imperial Emporium.” A fairly huge structure with
- tarred-paper outer walls was indicated by its sign as being the “Imperial
- Hotel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was nothing bashful about the names picked in Royal City!
- </p>
- <p>
- The windows of the “Imperial Hotel” shed plenty of light upon the sidewalk
- in front of it, and I caught sight of Dragg hurrying past as if he wished
- to be swallowed up in the shadow’s on the other side. The man had reached
- the street ahead of us, for he had been in the smoking-car at the front of
- the train.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took a chance and led Kingsley into the “Imperial Hotel” and registered
- in a book that a man in shirtsleeves tossed at me. I wrote “Adam Mann” and
- “A. Fellow”—the “A” standing for “Another,” of course, and that
- wasn’t bad for a quick grab at names. I did not care to advertise the name
- of Zebulon Kingsley to certain gentlemen in those parts.
- </p>
- <p>
- From the corner of my eye I saw Dragg peering in at the window when the
- man in shirt-sleeves led us upstairs to a room which held two narrow cots
- and an unpainted washstand with bowl and pitcher. The walls were of tarred
- paper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is this all you can give us for a room?” asked the judge, as sour as
- vinegar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you expect in a new town—marble floors and gold door-knobs?
- I have taken care of better men than you and they haven’t kicked.” He
- turned on me; I had not said anything. “You seem to have a rush of
- plug-hat to the brain!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His impudence gave me my chance. Dragg had located me at that hotel and I
- wondered if I couldn’t turn a little trick.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll move on and look for a landlord with better manners,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go ahead,” advised the man. “A lot of tenderfeet do the same thing and
- after they’ve taken a look at the other place they come back here and beg
- for a room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the street I kept in the shadows. After a time we came to another hulk
- of paper and boards. Its sign read, “Pallace Hotel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That extravagance in L’s might hint at generosity, I pondered, but I had
- my doubts.
- </p>
- <p>
- The “Palace” had a bar-room in the front of the house and there were many
- customers crowded at it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’d better go back to the other hotel, bad as it is,” suggested the
- judge. “There are drunken men in there and it is a wicked place.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I put up my hand and pushed Kingsley back from the window into the gloom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When one has business with wicked men those men must be followed to a
- wicked place, sir. I found fault with the other hotel on purpose. I didn’t
- intend to stay there after I knew that a certain man thought he had
- located me for the night. It’s a wise plan to keep wicked men guessing.
- Stay back here a moment!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stepped along and stared in at the window, hiding my face with my
- forearm.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw Dragg at the bar, and Dragg had a man by the arm and was whispering
- in his ear. Dragg’s face expressed huge pleasure. He slapped the man on
- the back and bought drinks. After they had tossed off the liquor, Dragg
- resumed his business at the man’s ear.
- </p>
- <p>
- This man stood out in that slouchy group at the bar as a peacock would
- stand out among pullets in a hen-yard. He was distinctly a loud noise in
- the matter of wardrobe. He would have made a lurid smear even among the
- high dressers who top the crests of the Broadway crowds between
- Forty-second Street and Greeley’s statue. He was of that sort of men who
- are paunchy and seem to be glad of it, because the extra beam affords them
- opportunity to display variegated waistcoats to better advantage. I
- realized that I was looking on “Peacock” Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a few moments I tiptoed back to Kingsley, and, without speaking,
- propelled him to a spot where he could get a view of the men at the bar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you recognize anybody there, sir?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There he is—the man who brought the brick—one of the infernal
- robbers!” stuttered Kingsley. He was fairly beside himself with sudden
- excitement. His eyes had fallen first on the most conspicuous figure in
- the room. “He has my money. I want it. I’ll—”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I pushed him back when he started to rush into the hotel. “I guess
- that man wouldn’t hand you his roll if you ran in there and snapped your
- fingers under his nose, Judge Kingsley. You recognize him, eh? That’s
- enough for now. I’ll tell you that your friend, there, is known in this
- section as ‘Peacock’ Pratt, and he’s a good man for us to stay away from
- for the present.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you know so much about these men—how do you know where to
- come to find them—dragging me across the continent?” demanded the
- old man. His fury at sight of that smug blackleg had to blow off and I was
- the nearest object.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have to confess that I didn’t know for sure I was to see this man
- here to-night. I had my line out and a good bait on, but I didn’t believe
- I’d get a bite so soon. You must keep cool, Judge Kingsley—keep cool
- and out of sight. Simply seeing that man isn’t getting your money. We’ve
- got considerable of a job ahead of us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge was all of a tremble while we stood there at the edge of the
- shadow and watched the room and the drinkers. At last, with a flourish of
- his hand, Pratt gave orders to the bartender to fill all glasses. We heard
- his hoarse voice above all others. He tossed a bill on the bar and he and
- Dragg left in company and climbed the stairs leading up from the hotel
- office.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I left the other place and came over here
- hoping I could sneak close enough to a certain chap to overhear what he
- proposes to do about a little matter that I suggested to him a few hours
- ago. I see that he has found somebody to talk to. We’ve got a handy sort
- of house for eavesdropping, but I want you to remember that the other
- fellow can hear us, too. Come along with me and keep your head. A lot
- depends!” The “Pallace” was evidently more of a free and easy tavern than
- the “Imperial.” There was no register on the planks which served for an
- office desk. The proprietor looked up at us and leisurely lighted his pipe
- before answering my questions regarding accommodations.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Four dollars apiece—two in a room. Pay now. Includes breakfast, and
- there’s a cold, stand-up supper out in the dining-room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We bought box lunches from the brakeman on the train; we don’t want
- supper,” I explained.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Price just the same. Supper is there, and I ain’t to blame if you don’t
- want to eat it,” stated the proprietor. “You needn’t look for any place to
- write your names,” he added, noting that my eyes seemed to be searching
- for something that should be on the desk. “We don’t keep books. And half
- the men who come along here can’t write, anyway.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I laid the money in his grimy hand and he fished two cards from his vest
- pocket and scrawled “Brakfust” on each with a lead-pencil.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give ’em up to the table-girl in the morning. Now, gents, all the
- rooms up-stairs are just alike and there ain’t no locks on the doors. Go
- up and help yourselves to any room that ain’t being used. I hope you don’t
- snore, either of you. It’s apt to start gun-play from them that’s trying
- to get to sleep in other rooms, and the walls we’ve got up-stairs don’t
- stop bullets. Sleep hearty!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge followed me, muttering his opinions in regard to the hotel
- methods in Royal City.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hush!” I warned. “Tread lightly and keep still. It’s a stroke of luck
- that he lets us pick our own rooms.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Smoky, stinking kerosene-lamps lighted dimly the corridor up-stairs.
- Unplaned planks formed the floor, and here again were the walls of tarred
- paper that had enabled Royal City to grow overnight. Some of the doors
- that gave upon the corridor were open, and the rooms were dark and
- apparently untenanted. Light shone from chinks in the walls here and
- there, in other places, showing that guests were in their rooms.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tiptoed cautiously along the planks with ear out at each point where
- light sifted from crannies. Then I grasped the judge by the arm and thrust
- him into a room. I lighted the tiny lamp and motioned the old man to take
- a seat in the single chair. I sat on the edge of the bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- When a drunken man is on a topic that sops up all his interest, he not
- only iterates, he reiterates. It is hard to pry a wabbly tongue loose from
- the favorite topic. Intoxication seems to make the subject fresher and
- more entrancing with each repetition. The fuddled mind gets into a
- run-around, as men lost in snow or fog keep on traveling and always return
- to the same place. I had no means of determining how many times Dragg had
- been over the subject with Mr. Pratt, but that latter gentleman kept
- snarling out protests that the narrator did not heed. It was a story about
- how a stranger in a plug-hat—a shark of a lawyer—had
- hypnotized him, Dragg, on the train and had sucked out of him all his
- plans, projects, and secrets in regard to the new city of Breed and now
- proposed to rob said Dragg of all profits and rake-offs, and if a man
- could do that and get away with it what would be the use in any honest man
- starting out in the world and turning a trick for himself, as Dragg had
- proposed to do? So on and on, he gabbled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, look here, ‘Dangerflag’”—and this seemed a good nickname for
- Dragg’s red face—“don’t con me any more as the human charlotte russe—the
- top part of me is hard! There ain’t any such thing as hypnotizing a man
- when he doesn’t want to be hypnotized. You were drunk and you slit open
- your little bundle of playthings for him to look at.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I wasn’t hypnotized how did he get two guns off me—and I sitting
- there not able to move hand or foot or wink my eyes?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d be more inclined to think you begged him to take ’em as a
- guarantee of friendship, and offered to kiss him in the bargain,” sneered
- Mr. Pratt. “I’ve seen you drunk, Dragg.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I wasn’t to the give-my-shirt drunk stage that time,” insisted the
- other. “I was hiring him for a lawyer—driving a sharp trade with him—and
- then he hypnotized me and cleaned me out. And he’s over there in the other
- hotel—and I’m going to get to him before he puts me out of business.
- I’ll tell you again—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the love of Jehoshaphat <i>don’t</i> tell me again!” protested Pratt.
- “I have got it by heart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you haven’t told me where Ike Dawlin is. He is the only man that
- shark is afraid of. He told me so. He reckons that Ike is in the East.
- That makes him bold to do me dirt. I made believe that I know where Ike
- is. I tried to scare him, but the bluff didn’t go. He is sure that Ike
- ain’t West. You’re Ike’s regular partner, and you know where he is. I need
- him. Send for him, and we’ll hold that plug-hatted skyootus here till Ike
- can whirl in and back him off. Blast him! I could have dropped him if this
- was ten years ago, even if he was from the East, and wore a plug-hat—and
- I could have got away with it—but the law sharks have been and tied
- us all up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You want to think twice before you try gun-play on a man from the East
- who comes wearing a plug-hat,” advised Pratt. “It’s a pretty good sign
- that he is from the upper shelves back home, and somebody will be slammed
- hard if he gets hurt. Keep your hands off a plug-hatter, ‘Dangerflag.’ I
- don’t believe Ike would dip in, even if he were here. He’s too comfortable
- just now to play scarecrow for your private interests. He might, if I
- asked him to, of course. But I don’t see any reason for asking him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll give you a half share in the Breed job,” promised Dragg. “I’ve told
- you I would if you can gaff that law shark.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Breed job looks like digging into a national bank vault with your
- thumb-nail,” remarked Mr. Pratt, listlessly. “A lot of law and
- complications! This re-locating business runs against snags always. I
- don’t mind telling you that Ike and I find the old game a lot easier when
- we want to clean up an easy make. I’ll be blamed if we could sell mining
- stock the last time we went East. What do you know about that? And then we
- nudged each other and turned around and speared three easy propositions on
- the good old gold-brick game. You wouldn’t believe they’d still fall—but
- they do it. It’s simply a case of go hunt in the odd corners for the right
- man. They’re there, waiting. We peeled five thousand off the back of an
- old town treasurer—as soft money as we ever pulled. A town
- treasurer, mind you! We didn’t have to go farther into the bush than that!
- You can’t expect us to be very enthusiastic about a claim-jumping
- proposition just now—with plenty in our Dockets. Gimme a match! When
- you go to fighting a boom city and a railroad crowd, you’ve got your work
- cut out for you—and just now I’m feeling a lot like loafing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt was very wordy—but he was almighty interesting. Who was
- hugging the most money—he or Dawlin?
- </p>
- <p>
- It was plain to me that the town treasurer of Levant was holding in with
- difficulty. He twisted on his chair and his face was gray with anger and
- his lips moved. I scowled a warning.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you can loaf on <i>my</i> job all right if you’ll grab in,” snapped
- Dragg, temper in his voice. “I’m not asking you to break your neck. You
- have got the thing sized up all wrong. I don’t expect to own Breed. I’m
- going to operate on bluff. The Breed boomers and the railroad will come
- across rather than have the city set back by a hold-up of everything while
- land titles are being settled. If they’ll hand me cash, I’ll keep still,
- surrender my claim, and the new lines can be ran and locations filed
- before anybody wakes up. They’ll see the point all right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I reckon that the lawyer you hired on the train sees it all right,
- too,” commented Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know what made me blow myself to him after I had dodged lawyers
- so long,” mourned Dragg. “But the way he was dressed made him look so
- mighty solid and reliable and honest—and his eyes were nice and
- brown! He got me! I tell you I was hypnotized. It wasn’t just because I
- had budge in me. But he’ll never get to Breed ahead of <i>me</i>. That’ll
- be his game, of course.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better make your getaway to-night and beat him to it,” suggested Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dragg was profane in his rejection of this counsel. He stated that Pratt
- ought to have more sense than to think a project of that order could be
- settled by a sprinting-match.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You know what Callas prairie is in March as well as I do,” he sputtered.
- “It would be a gamble which one of us would get across first if it comes
- to a race through that ‘’dobe’ mud. It’s all luck whether a
- stage-coach or a wagon or a cayuse gets through. I’d have gone around and
- come into Breed from the south, but I thought I’d rather tackle sixteen
- miles of Callas mud in March than ride six hundred miles in jerk-water
- trains. See here, Pratt, I’ve got to have time to operate this thing
- without that shark hanging to me. He’s afraid of Ike. I don’t know what
- made him tell me so—but he was so mighty sure that Ike was East that
- he wanted to shoot his mouth off a little so as to aggravate me, I reckon.
- He has got to be held here in Royal City till I can pull off my job in
- Breed. I’m not going to have him racing me around over the country, with a
- chance of his queering the whole proposition. Now come into this thing and
- help me out, will you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt yawned audibly and allowed that he would not.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then get word to Ike Dawlin for me,” pleaded Dragg.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” drawled Pratt, indifferently. “I
- won’t send for him. That’s final!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I think it would have been hard telling at that moment who was more
- disappointed, Mr. Dragg or myself!
- </p>
- <p>
- I had reckoned specially on Mr. Dawlin. He was boss of the gang, according
- to his brother’s telling. In all Likelihood he was better thatched with
- greenbacks than anybody else in the band.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Furthermore,” stated Mr. Pratt, “I can’t be bothered with your business.
- I have some of my own to attend to. I’m going to jump the train to-morrow
- and get back to some place where it’s safe to wear real clothes instead of
- a diving-suit or overalls.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And so I was going to lose Mr. Pratt!
- </p>
- <p>
- To be sure, I had not exactly made up my mind what to do with him if he
- remained in Royal City; but if he were to start on some kind of a hike and
- we were obliged to chase him we would betray ourselves and our case, sure
- as fate. Mr. Pratt was certainly no fool, and would know how to cover a
- trail the moment he suspected that somebody was chasing him. But I could
- see no reasonable way of keeping an independent gentleman of his nature in
- that dump of a Royal City.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you, you are turning down a good lay when you duck out on this
- Breed—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, hell!” snapped Pratt with all kinds of coarse scorn in his tone.
- “About all this re-locating business amounts to is that you’ll either be
- bored in the back or boarded in jail! I’ve been studying the game, Dragg.”
- He grew confidential. “That’s why I ran down here to this hog-wallow. Ike
- and I came. These lines here are run by guess and by gad! There’s no clear
- title back of the land. We figured we would jump in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d have the law behind you,” insisted Dragg. “Sure! And all the
- citizens who own guns, too! The trouble is, Dragg, they all know they’re
- skating on thin ice. They are looking for something to drop. And so as to
- be ready for trouble when it comes they have gone to work and got just as
- mad as they can stick so that they can put a claim-jumper where he belongs
- in a hurry. None of it for me, Dragg.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The other muttered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you, Dragg,” insisted Mr. Pratt, “I’d hate to be the man to put my
- name on to a re-location stake in this place! Law to back you—yes!
- But I have been testing out their temper! It’s dangerous.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But mobs don’t do up men any longer in this part of the country.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps I stated it a little strong, Dragg. But a fellow who tries to put
- anything over on this town, with the people here in their present temper,
- will get slammed into the pen—and there’s no knowing when they’ll
- let him out!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And if that wasn’t a straight tip from Mr. Pratt to a poor young chap in
- desperate need of good counsel and help in a ticklish matter, then I’m no
- guesser.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So it’s back up the line for me—where I can buy a cocktail and get
- the smell of this tarred paper out of my clothes!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Mr. Pratt’s tip was such a helpful one that, providing Judge Kingsley
- had had a drop of sporting blood in him, I would have posted a little bet
- that Mr. Pratt would stay on with us for a while. I could see that the
- judge had made up his mind already that we had lost our Mr. Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sit here and don’t make a sound!” I whispered, and I pussy-footed for the
- door.
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened his mouth and I shook my fist at him. I hoped I had on a
- demoniac expression—I tried to put one on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go to the devil, you and Dawlin, too!” barked Dragg. “If I’ve got to
- handle this thing single-handed, the make will be all the bigger for me.
- I’m all done worrying about an Eastern shyster beating me out of the game
- on my own stamping-ground. If he tries to take the stage in the morning to
- cross Callas prairie, I’ll smash that plug-hat down over his eyes, yank
- them guns out from under his coat-tail and blow him into the middle of
- next week. I’ll think up a story that will let me out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ah, so Mr. Dragg must be considered along with ‘Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin!
- </p>
- <p>
- I left the room and hurried down-stairs, hoping the stores had not closed.
- My mind was mighty busy! I found a store that was still open. It was the
- “Imperial Emporium” and seemed to be well named, for I was able to
- purchase there a pair of shears, some spirit gum, a carpenter’s
- lead-pencil, and a huge ball of twine. Then I hustled back to Zebulon
- Kingsley, who sat livid and rigid, listening to the bragging of the man
- who had robbed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I suppose the stuff I tossed on the bed looked mighty queer to him, and I
- wasn’t just sure about all of it myself. But I did not dare to ask any
- leading questions in Royal City about claim-jumping and I decided to
- tumble along alone, doing my little best as an amateur.
- </p>
- <p>
- Zebulon Kingsley was in a sufficiently volcanic state of mind without any
- more stirring up.
- </p>
- <p>
- It’s a wonder that I ever got away with what I started on next in my case.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps his settled idea that I had lost my mind assisted in taming him
- enough so that he submitted in his fear that I might become violent. I
- look back now and wonder how I ever presumed so greatly even in the
- emergency that had arisen. But if “Peacock” Pratt were to remain in Royal
- City and if Ike Dawlin would join him, as I anticipated, the man with me
- must not be known as Zebulon Kingsley, of Levant, their victim. So I stood
- in front of Judge Kingsley and issued an ultimatum.
- </p>
- <p>
- I’ll never forget the look on his face!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIX—THE JOB Of AN ALTRUIST
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE judge sat there
- with his hat and coat on; the looks of that room did not invite anybody to
- take any comfort in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- I leaned close to his ear and told him to stand up. Then I began to peel
- off his wrappings—overcoat, undercoat, and waistcoat. But when I
- unbuttoned his collar he pushed me away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll explain it out to you just as soon as I get a chance, sir,” I
- whispered. “But we mustn’t make any noise here.” I gathered my courage.
- “I’m going to cut off your beard!” I had to clap my hand over his mouth to
- keep him quiet. “I can’t argue now! If Pratt lays eyes on you he’ll
- stampede. We mustn’t let any of that money get away.” I pushed him back
- upon the chair. “Keep down your hands,” I urged. “It’s got to be done.
- Your money is at stake—remember that! What’s a few whiskers compared
- with ten thousand dollars!” I was talking just as if I expected to swap
- hair for money.
- </p>
- <p>
- I confess I did not have much of a plan worked out just at that moment—but
- certain notions were coming to me in sections, as one might say. And the
- principal notion just then was that I must not let a set of whiskers, even
- if they grew on Judge Kingsley, flag the whole proposition. That was the
- first thing to look after, now that we were close to the game—change
- his looks!
- </p>
- <p>
- He realized as well as I that we couldn’t start any riot there on our side
- of that paper partition. I don’t believe any other consideration would
- have made him give in to me. If I had been getting his neck ready for the
- ax his looks would not have been more wild. I clipped his beard as
- carefully as I could with the shears and laid the tufts, as I removed
- them, in a little heap on the bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt was thoroughly tired of hearing Mr. Dragg repeat himself; we
- knew that because Mr. Pratt said so with a lot of vigor and stated that he
- was going to bed in his own room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dragg advised him to be up early and see what happened to the
- “plug-hatter,” providing said “plug-hatter” tried to get away for Breed on
- the stage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll do it,” promised Mr. Pratt. “I haven’t been having much fun down in
- this hog-wallow, and I need to have my feelings cheered up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he marched away down the corridor, making the whole building creak
- and shiver.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Dragg had considerable to say to himself, in the way of rehearsing his
- threats, while he was kicking off his shoes and getting ready for bed.
- Then his mutterings ended in a rasping snore—and he was off!
- </p>
- <p>
- I was glad he was asleep because that gave me a chance to talk to the
- judge, keeping my voice down cautiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have some other plans, sir! I have had to think pretty quick! But the
- talk between those scamps has given me a rather good idea, I think.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You seem to be wasting your time on a lot of silly business,” muttered
- the judge. “This is boy’s play out of a detective dime novel, sir. We know
- where one of the robbers is. We can have him arrested. We can put the
- screws to him and find out where the other renegade is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But that means going to law, Judge!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We must let the law handle it from now on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can’t afford to do that, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the law will—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The law will grab the crooks, maybe. But your money will be tied up along
- with ’em. We are strangers out here, Judge Kingsley. And you don’t
- want the notoriety of the thing. Remember, you bought a gold brick!” He
- winced, but it wasn’t on account of the shears! “Just getting those crooks
- into jail won’t help your case,” I insisted. “We haven’t much time to turn
- around in. The fifteenth of April isn’t very far away. I reckon it’s going
- to mean getting ten thousand dollars in ten days!” He cringed. “The law is
- too slow and careful for us just now! They pulled that money off by a
- trick. We must get it back by—— Well, I don’t know just yet
- how we’ll get it back—but it won’t be by any law business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you intend to rob them and mix me into more trouble?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d rob ’em in a minute if I could do it and get away,” I told
- him, calmly. And then, because he was getting excited, I advised him to
- keep his jaw still so that the shears might not slip and cut him.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the clipping was done I got my little kit out of my bag and got ready
- to shave him; there was a tin dish full of water in the corner of the
- room. Of course he was glad to have the stubble I had left under his chin
- scraped off, and submitted quietly. However, I knew my real tussle with
- Judge Zebulon Kingsley was just ahead of me.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the wall there was a little mirror with glass so wavy that it made a
- human face seem like the physog of a baboon. I pulled it down and showed
- the judge his countenance with his whiskers off.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see it doesn’t change your looks very much, after all, Judge. Your
- beard was all under your chin instead of on your face.” I didn’t want to
- jump him too suddenly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you have changed my looks as much as that glass represents, you’ve
- done a good job,” he said, dryly. It was the first time I had ever heard
- anything like humor from him, and I was cheered and made bolder—so
- bold that I came right out with it!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have to change your appearance just a bit more, Judge. I know how to
- do it, for I did it once in my own case.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I uncorked the bottle of gum. But when I started toward him he did not
- depend on his hands for defense—he put up his foot and pushed me
- away. I protested.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s no use going half-way in this thing, sir. It only means a
- mustache for you out of your own beard.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t be cockawhooped up in any such style!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you going to let those men recognize you as the town treasurer of
- Levant?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He glared at me and kept his foot up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re after the money—we’re after the money!” I urged. “Just think
- what a little thing this is you’re balking on, sir!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you give me no hint as to how you expect to get the money! I’m at the
- end of my patience. I won’t submit to any more foolishness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This isn’t foolishness, Judge Kingsley! It’s a precaution we must take.
- I’ve got a plan to keep those men from jumping out on us in the morning—and
- they’ll be sure to see you.” I pushed down his foot and I picked up the
- hair on the bed and looked resolute. “It’s got to be done, sir. I’m going
- to do it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave in to me as he had in other cases when I became savage, but I
- realized that fury boiled in him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I made a mighty good job of it, if I do say so, but he angrily refused to
- look at himself in the glass. I used all the hair in his beard and gave
- him a mustache that fairly cut in half that hatchet face of his; his best
- friend would not have known Judge Kingsley.
- </p>
- <p>
- I advised him to go to bed and to be sure to sleep on his back so that the
- mustache would not be disturbed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I sharpened the carpenter’s pencil and hid the ball of twine under my
- coat, the judge looking at me as savage as a bear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now what?” he growled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know anything about the right way of relocating a claim?” I asked.
- “Anything in law about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s more likely to be described in the thieves’ catechism,” he snarled.
- “I have never owned a copy!”.
- </p>
- <p>
- That’s all the help I got from <i>him!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, if I didn’t know much about the regular way, I reckoned I could make
- considerable trouble in town by blundering along with a little way of my
- own. So I tiptoed down-stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- Apparently Royal City had quit the job and gone to sleep. The hotel office
- was dark, and when I stepped forth into the night there was no glimmer of
- light anywhere. Even the lanterns that served as the city’s municipal
- lighting-plant in the streets had burned out or had been blown out. It was
- a case of grope, but I had looked about carefully when I went shopping and
- had a pretty good memory for locations.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a little pile of laths at the corner of the hotel. I had noticed
- them when I had lurked in the shadows with Judge Kingsley. I picked up a
- lath and wrote on its side, well up toward one end, “Relocated. Dragg.”
- Then I pushed the lath down into the mud at the corner of the hotel and
- tied to it the end of the ball of twine. With several laths under my arm I
- proceeded a few paces, unwinding the twine, and pushed another lath down
- and knotted my string about its end. Thus I circumnavigated the hotel,
- sticking down marked laths, knotting about them the twine. In this fashion
- I calculated I had declared on one Dragg a re-location of the hotel site—or
- rather made it seem that Dragg had tried on a clumsy trick to jump a land
- claim.
- </p>
- <p>
- With footsteps muffled by the mud of Royal City, moving unseen in the
- night, I was truly a generous cuss. I located nothing for myself. I took
- the “Imperial Emporium” for Pratt, and re-located the site of the
- “Imperial Hotel” for Dawlin. Then I stole back into the tavern, taking off
- my muddy shoes at the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- That slatted bed and the snores pealing everywhere kept me awake nearly
- all night, and next morning I was down before anybody else was stirring.
- In the gray dawn out slouched from an inner room the landlord, yawning,
- growling, blinking—beginning his day’s duties in a distinctly
- grouchy frame of mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What time does the stage-coach leave for Breed City?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nobody but a fool would take a stage for Breed this time of year—but
- a man who comes out here in March and mud-time, wearing a plug-hat, must
- be a fool. So you’ll leave at ha’f pas’ six,” was the landlord’s genial
- response.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what time is breakfast?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Time for you to get the stage. What do you want to ask such a cussed fool
- question as that for? What do you think I’m getting up to do at this hour
- in the morning?” Well, I wasn’t in any jolly mood myself. “I didn’t know
- but you might be up to sing a hymn to the morning star.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, you’re looking for trouble, ain’t you?” bawled the landlord. He came
- from behind the counter. “I’ll cave that plug—”
- </p>
- <p>
- That made me good and mad! “No, I’m looking for cartridges to fit my
- guns,” I stated, pulling both weapons. “I’ve got only twelve left—six
- in each chamber.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My friend checked himself so suddenly that he nearly tumbled on his nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Does the store open early?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir,” said the landlord, quite respectfully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I’ll take a stroll up that way. Make my bacon thick and be very
- careful not to fry the juice out of it.” There’s nothing like establishing
- a bit of a reputation in a strange town, especially if a fellow has
- planted seeds of trouble; I could see those laths through the window! I
- had begun to feel rather devilish. .
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir,” said the landlord. “We aim to please.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I glanced at my work of the evening before as I sauntered along the plank
- walk. The new laths and the white twine showed up well against the black
- adobe mud.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sounds of housekeeping, clatter of dishes and of stove-covers indicated
- that the proprietor of the “Emporium” dwelt over the store. I rattled the
- door, and at last the man appeared and unlocked it from within. He was
- surly and slatted the box of cartridges across the counter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it because you don’t care for early customers that you have built a
- fence of laths and string about your place?” I inquired.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There ain’t no such thing there.” But he hurried to the door. He gazed.
- He ran to the nearest lath and stooped down and read what was written
- thereon and cracked his fists together and kicked the lath and stamped it
- into the mud and swore loudly. “Pratt, hey? ‘Peacock’ Pratt trying one of
- his gambling bluffs because titles ain’t been settled here yet, is he? If
- a kettle-bellied catfish like Pratt thinks he can jump a city lot on me
- he’s got trouble coming his way on the down grade with the axle greased.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was much more that the infuriated merchant had to say regarding the
- general standing of Pratt, but I did not linger. I strolled into the
- “Imperial Hotel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I knew you’d come back—they all do; but you can’t do business with
- me,” the landlord informed me before I had opened my mouth. “Once you turn
- your nose up at my house, then up it stays, as far as I am concerned!
- Mosey back to your pig-pen!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Very well! But I’ll drop back here when the new proprietor takes hold.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What new proprietor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose it’s a man named Dawlin. I note that his name appears as the
- man who has re-located this property.” The landlord took a jump and a look
- and saw the laths and string. He ran out of doors. He was an able-bodied
- man with a large voice, and he outdid his merchant neighbor in volume of
- cursing. It was plain that he was well acquainted with the mental and
- moral qualities of Ike Dawlin.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I went back to my own tavern. Judge Kingsley was waiting in the office,
- and the landlord was talking to the old man with considerable affability.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was telling your friend here that we aim to please! I reckon the girl
- can fit you out with breakfast now if you’re minded to step into the
- dining-room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank you—we’ll step in, sir. By the way, there seems to be
- considerable excitement on the street, Mr. Landlord. Men named Dawlin and
- Pratt, whoever they may be, have re-located business sites occupied by the
- big store and the other hotel. I just noticed that the same thing has been
- done to you; you’d better take a look outside.”
- </p>
- <p>
- By the manner in which the owner of the “Pallace” pounded his way to the
- street it might have been guessed that the consciences of the pioneers of
- Royal City were not wholly clear as to their several rights of property.
- But the manner in which they were taking the re-locations showed that they
- were entirely ready to fight for what they had squatted on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the bald-headed juductionary of Walla Walla County,” howled the
- “Pallace” landlord, “that tinhorn Dragg has sneaked out of my house in the
- night so as to do me up, has he?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you say it’s Dragg?” bawled the landlord of the “Imperial” from a
- distance. “It’s Dawlin, up here! He’s been boozing here in my house under
- cover for a week, but he wasn’t so drunk, so it seems, but he could dodge
- out last night and try to steal my property away from me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Say, I swapped one very large look with Zebulon Kingsley, who stood in the
- hotel door, staring from furious landlord to furious landlord. The old man
- had heard enough the night before to appreciate the value of that
- information in regard to Dawlin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s that skunk of a dressed-up Pratt in my case,” shouted the owner of
- the “Emporium” from farther up the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon I can show any man who tries to steal my property that I’m
- mighty wide awake mornings if I do sleep nights when honest men ought to
- be in bed,” announced the proprietor of the “Pallace.” He rushed into his
- hotel, and clattered up-stairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When the wheels of a scheme are running in good shape it’s best to stay
- away and keep your fingers out of the gearing,” I said to Kingsley. “We’ll
- go in and eat breakfast.”
- </p>
- <p>
- While we ate, loud voices sounded through the thin walls. Men were
- crowding into the hotel office. Profanity, denunciation, denial, went on
- and on. The judge fingered his makeshift mustache uneasily every time the
- bawling of Pratt was heard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better keep your hands off that and drink your coffee from your spoon,” I
- suggested. “They’ll never know you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- When we were ready to leave the dining-room I warned the judge not to look
- at Pratt. We could hear him thundering away in the office.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dragg and Pratt were surrounded by men; the landlord of the “Pallace,” the
- proprietor of the “Emporium,” and a grim man with a huge revolver in his
- hand and a deputy sheriff’s badge on his breast were right in the front
- row.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can swear, threaten, and deny till your tongues drop off—it
- don’t go for a minute with us,” declared the landlord, “for we all know
- your style and your nerve. Because you have got away with a lot of
- hold-ups in other places it doesn’t go that you can come here and do us in
- Royal City.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think we’d be fools enough to go and put our names on—”
- began Dragg, but he was promptly interrupted by the landlord.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whose names would you put on if you were trying to steal land for
- yourselves? You thought we’d rather settle than fight, that’s what! But
- we’re going to fight.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was my turn—and my chance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m a stranger to you all—merely a passing
- tourist. But I feel it’s my duty to state that I heard two men discussing
- a matter of re-locating land last evening. They were in the next room to
- mine in this hotel. I recognize their voices. Those are the men.” I
- pointed to Dragg and Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- The deputy poked the muzzle of his gun into Dragg’s face to make him stop
- swearing. “Shut up! Everybody can see that this is a real gent, and if
- he’s got evidence we want to hear it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The evidence isn’t much,” I said, meekly, “but I distinctly heard them
- say that they could clean up a nice pile of money by a re-location scheme.
- It was to be bluff to a large extent. If that information is worth
- anything you’re welcome to it. I would hate to see the prosperity of a
- hustling city like this held up for one moment by men trying to bunco
- honest citizens.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You listen to me,” roared Dragg. “That hellhound there is lying like a—”
- </p>
- <p>
- The sheriff slapped him across the mouth. “There’s no real gent gets
- insulted by you in Royal City while I’m boss of law and order here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Outdoors was a noise of clanking of whiffletrees and the “ruckling” of
- wheels. A stage-coach, mud-daubed from tongue to roof-rail, was pulling
- out of an opposite stable-yard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve got to take that stage,” raved Dragg. “The whole of Royal City can’t
- stop me. I’ve been monkey-doodled by a shark. He’s trying to get there
- ahead of me. It wouldn’t work here. I’m no fool. I knew it wouldn’t work.”
- He yelled so loudly and talked so rapidly that they listened to him. “My
- scheme was for Breed—and it was a cinch! He’s stealing it from me—that
- doggone, lying plug-hatter found out that I was going to re-locate claims
- in—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Seem to be convicting yourself out of your own mouth!” broke in a
- citizen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m going to Breed by this stage. I’ve got to go!” gasped Dragg, twisting
- his throat from the sheriff’s clutch.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re going into the calaboose right now—and Pratt is going there,
- too, and Dawlin is going as soon as they get his clothes on him,” declared
- the officer. “Grab a-holt, boys, and help me get on the wristers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You men will stay here—and Dawlin, too, till we find out what you
- mean by this trick,” said my landlord. “You don’t get out of here to run
- away and file your location claims!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Send a man to the county-seat,” raged Pratt. “Look at the records. That
- will prove that we haven’t tried anything on here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We don’t need any advice from you chaps as to what we shall do—whether
- it’s holding you for a show-down or shooting you out of this place when we
- have your numbers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked at Mr. Pratt. That remark started my think-works into action. I
- had my men anchored, to be sure, but that wasn’t getting me anything in
- the money line—and without doubt Royal City would cool down pretty
- quickly and send the men kiting. When they scooted they would go by rail,
- of course. That meant difficulties, the thought of which had already
- discouraged me. I needed to keep those chaps in the open—and the
- wilder the open the better! In the brush, where it was man to man, instead
- of in the city where law was safe and sane—and almighty slow! I
- needed to be quick and crazy!
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt was beginning to get his wits back. He was bellowing so wildly
- when I accused him and Dragg that he did not seem to sense the situation.
- He turned to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn your lying tongue! What do you mean by putting up this job on me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have simply stated what I overheard!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heard me say that I was going to jump claims? Why, I told Dragg I
- wouldn’t—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You told Dragg that you and your partner came down here on purpose to
- jump claims!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was so mad he was nigh black in the face. “Do I know you? Have I ever
- done dirt to you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I shook my head and looked him over with contempt. From the time I had
- left Levant I had been at a loss to decide what front I would put on when
- I met up with those men who had robbed the judge. I had thought all along
- that my best plan would be to build on my acquaintance with Jeff Dawlin
- and use his tips which were to put me next to the parties I was after.
- Then I might be able to come up on their blind side—if they had one—and—
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, right there I had stopped. What could I do? Then I had been hooked
- by that infernal Dragg! In that mess with him I had allowed chance to
- swing me and our fortunes. After that squabble with Dragg I could not hope
- to make much of a hit with his associates, eh? Therefore, I was jumping
- for the other extreme and I proposed to make Mr. Pratt and his friends
- just as ugly as insults and injury could serve. I felt like a boy thumbing
- his nose at angry wildcats. And in my desperation I hoped that the
- wildcats would come chasing me. Chasing me where? Why not to Breed,
- wherever that might be?
- </p>
- <p>
- I certainly was sure of Mr. Dragg, according to his threats and his
- promises. And if I could stick a few more darts into the broad flanks of
- Mr. Pratt and leave them stinging it was full likely that Mr. Dragg’s
- appeals to that gentleman would have much more effect than they did the
- night before.
- </p>
- <p>
- A couple of citizens came dragging in another prisoner, a red-eyed and
- ferociously angry person, and I knew by Judge Kingsley’s expression that
- the round-up was complete.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who says I did it? Who says I—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say so!” I told him. “You held me up and you asked me to buy twine and
- pencil for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right,” stated the merchant. “The gent is right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course it looked all square to me,” I said. “I never heard how
- claim-jumpers worked!” I told them. “I saw he had been drinking and I
- thought the string-and-pencil notion was only his bee buzzing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was reckless lying, but that crowd was too much excited to bother with
- mere details.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, you mutt-jawed smokestack, you, I never laid eyes on you in all my
- life!” raged Dawlin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon my memory is a little better than yours, for I wasn’t drunk,” I
- reminded him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sheriff was obliged to assign two more men to the controlling of Mr.
- Dawlin, who was a husky chap. He was far too much occupied to pay any
- attention to the judge, who stood in a corner and goggled at me with plain
- and sure conviction that I had gone stark, staring crazy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars,” roared Pratt, “that—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a cheap tinhorn. You never saw a thousand dollars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt jumped up and down and tried to throw off the clutch of the men
- who were holding him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I felt perfectly safe in that crowd; I made up my mind to keep prodding
- till I was sure that Mr. Pratt and his friends had developed enough
- interest in me so that they would give up all other business till they had
- settled their grudges.
- </p>
- <p>
- I patted my breast pocket. “I always carry ten thousand dollars around
- with me just to keep the draughts off my chest. I find money better than a
- folded newspaper,” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had been keeping my eye on the stage-coach for some few minutes. It had
- hauled up at the post-office. The driver came out with mail-bags and
- tossed them into the boot.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Landlord, will you fetch our valises?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly, sir!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve got a few thousand in my own pocket,” yelled Pratt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So have I!” howled Dawlin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And we’ll spend it getting to you,” they shouted in chorus.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It won’t cost you much to chase <i>me</i>,” I said, provokingly. “Cheap
- skates of your sort wouldn’t spend much getting to a man you’re afraid
- of.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That taunt, in the ears of those bystanders, made Pratt and his cronies
- wild in earnest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m only going as far as Breed,” I said. “I’ve got to stay there for some
- time on business. When these good folks let you out of jail suppose you
- run over and call on me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t dare to wait there for us!” said Dawlin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll bet you five thousand I do dare!”
- </p>
- <p>
- They didn’t take me up on that bet. Perhaps I seemed too certain that I
- meant what I said. I intended to seem certain. I wanted the company of
- those gentlemen in Breed, no matter what the risks were. And I was mighty
- glad when Mr. Pratt and Mr. Dawlin had bragged about the thousands they
- had in their pockets. I looked into the glittering eyes of Pratt and I
- knew that even in his fury he was taking much comfort in his belief that I
- was giving him a straight tip about Breed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t dare to hang up over there till I come,” he snarled, testing me
- out.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I am not there, I’ll hand over five hundred dollars to start a city
- reading-room here,” I declared. “I call on these gentlemen to bear
- witness.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope we won’t get the reading-room,” stated the landlord, standing with
- the luggage, “for I want to see a few fresh galoots get theirs.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s time to test out whether respectable business men can go about in
- this country without being insulted and bothered by rascals,” I observed.
- “Come over to Breed after Royal City gets done with you.” And just to
- clinch the thing I snapped my fingers under Pratt’s nose when I passed
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I just naturally knew, that moment, that Mr. Pratt had made a binding
- appointment with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- The landlord had hailed the stage, which was surging past through the mud.
- I was obliged to push the judge to start him toward the door; he seemed to
- be in a daze.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But we’ve got to stay here,” he croaked in my ear. “They’ve got the money
- on ’em. They brag about it. You’ll never lay eyes on them again!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I hurried him along the plank walk toward the coach. “Don’t fret one mite
- about that part, sir. If we stay here all we can do is stand outside the
- calaboose and ask ’em to push our money out through the bars. And
- I’m afraid they are not feeling generous enough just now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the law will keep them—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, it won’t, sir, if I’m any judge of the sporting blood out here. Royal
- City will be mighty curious to find out what happens when Mr. Pratt and
- his friends arrive in Breed. And they’ll come! Don’t worry!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But the judge was a stubborn old customer! He kept holding back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not settle it with ’em here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because I have always read that when a good general has a chance to do
- it, he picks his own battle-ground and throws up his earthworks before the
- enemy heaves in sight. I have picked Breed, sir! As to the earthworks,
- I’ll do some meditating on the way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Already my handy Mr. Dragg had given me the germ of a notion, though, of
- course, he had not meant to make me any presents.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XX—ACROSS CALLAS
- </h2>
- <p>
- THERE were four or five passengers inside the coach, and I boosted the
- judge over the wheel and put him in there. There was no one on the box
- with the driver, and that was not surprising, for I must say he did not
- have any coaxing way with him: he had his fists full of muddy reins and
- looked down on me with his mouth screwed around. I asked meekly if I might
- ride up there with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you think a plug-hat is going to help me any getting acrost sixteen
- miles of ’dobe clay, climb up! But do one thing or t’other damn
- quick!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It did not look as if I would be making a specially promising friend, but
- I climbed just the same.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good luck!” said the landlord, “and I hope you’ll take it all right from
- us if we let ’em loose after we have shaken ’em down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Send ’em along, sir. One at a time or the lot in a bunch!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That little speech suited the crowd; I got a lot of friendly hand-waves.
- </p>
- <p>
- A few rods from the last house in Royal City the muddy street swung to the
- right and sort of sneaked into the river, as if it were ashamed and wanted
- to wash the dirt off itself. There was no bridge. The horses plunged into
- the water and dragged the coach across the stream, floundering in depths
- that barely allowed them footing.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the other side of the river the road whiplashed in long curves up the
- canon’s wall to reach the level of Callas prairie; I should say it was all
- of a thousand feet above the stream.
- </p>
- <p>
- I offered to the driver comments on the weather, on the road: I offered
- him a cigar. I had stocked up with smokes with which to curry favor. The
- driver paid no attention to the comments and snarled his refusal of the
- cigar. Even with six horses leaping to their work under the lash, our
- crawl up the muddy slope was snail-like. The wheelers and swing team got
- the whip, and the driver heaved curses and little rocks at the leaders. He
- had nearly a peck of pebbles in a canvas bag at his side. When we were
- over the rim-rock at last and upon the prairie, I looked for more speed.
- But no such luck! The straining horses, half-way to their knees in the
- black mud, could barely move the heavy coach.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time the driver left what some flatterers might call a road and
- took to the open prairie, zigzagging here and there to find solid ground.
- Then intersecting gullies drove him back into the rutted road again. It
- was adobe mud—black as zip and as sticky as cold molasses. Every
- little while the driver was obliged to jump down from his seat and poke
- the clotted mud out between the spokes of the wheels. Otherwise the coach
- would have been anchored in spite of the best tussles of the horses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should think they’d have to give up trying to run a stage across this
- prairie in mud-time,” I ventured to suggest to the driver when he came
- climbing back to his seat after a long assault on the mud-clogged wheels
- with his piece of joist.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The mails <i>have</i> to go, but the damn fools that I haul don’t have
- to,” he retorted, sorting his reins between his muddy fingers. “If you
- ain’t satisfied with the way I’m running this thing, mister, you can tuck
- yourself into that plug-hat of yours and roll across to Breed City.
- E-e-oyah! Go ‘long, you wall-eyed, splint-legged goats of the Bitter Root,
- you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- However, I was thankful I was on the outside; the sun warmed me and the
- warmth was grateful, for the breeze was chilly on that upland. I could see
- snow on the far-distant peaks to the south. The passengers inside the
- coach were plainly far from feeling any thankfulness whatsoever. They
- groaned and growled and complained. I glanced down over the side dining
- one stop for wheel-clearing, and found myself looking into the face of
- Judge Kingsley, who had stuck his head out of the window. His false
- mustache gave him the appearance of an angry cat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much more of this devilishness have we got to endure?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s easy figuring, sir! Sixteen miles, sixteen hours! It must be the
- regular running time on this road.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want no sarcasm from no one,” yelped the driver, straightening up
- and shaking his joist. “And if any gent reckons he can keep passing out
- his cheap slurs on this trip he’d better come down here now and get his
- card entitling him to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I kept my gaze on the distant mountains, but when the driver climbed back
- to his seat and kept on cussing me out, I reckoned we’d better have a
- little understanding for the rest of the trip. I closed my fingers around
- his arm. It was only a pipe-stem arm—and his eyes were of the sad,
- pale-blue kind. I said very near to his ear: “Your breakfast seems to be
- hurting you, son! The stage company pays you to drive and to be respectful
- to passengers. Mind your tongue after this.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was trying on a little something. I have found that when you bluster and
- shout, the blusterer usually recognizes his own kind and blusters back.
- But the blowhard hasn’t any weapon when a man fights with a look and a
- quiet word.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s the mud. It’s getting on to my nerves,” whined the man after he had
- driven a short distance.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have a smoke—it’s good for the nerves,” I invited. The driver’s
- hands were full of reins and whip and pebbles, so I set the end of a cigar
- to the drooping mouth and the driver bit off the end. Then I held a match
- while he sucked. And when the cigar was going he turned an appreciative
- grin on me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fellow can’t bluff you much, can he, mister?” he remarked. “I didn’t
- have you sized up right at the start-off, I reckon. Why, <i>I</i> couldn’t
- lick a prairie-dog with a hammer. But I bluff out most of the dudes who
- travel with me. I get a lot of innocent enjoyment that way. It helps pass
- the time for me on this jodiggered trip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Out of his cocoon of grouchiness he broke as a real butterfly of chatter.
- I got a lot of good stuff from him, for I learned the name of the mayor of
- Breed City and what sort of a man he was—a dry-goods merchant who
- took his job seriously and hollered about the development of the new place
- and loved those who said a good word for the municipality.
- </p>
- <p>
- I also learned that many miners and prospectors from the Buffalo Hump
- region were mudbound, on their annual spree, in Breed—the nearest
- town where they could find all the rum and roulette they demanded. The
- driver stated that one or two of his friends who had a little spare cash
- for speculation made it a practice to loaf around the gambling-places and
- buy in from busted players any mining shares that a man wanted to realize
- on in a hurry. Most of these shares thus offered for sale were shares in
- undeveloped prospects, the driver explained, but one could never tell when
- a share bought for a cent would be worth a hundred. That driver certainly
- liked the sound of his voice when he got started! He offered the
- confidential tip that the Blacksnake Gully region would develop into the
- howler of the season. It wasn’t being talked of much. Nothing real
- definite was known outside. He guessed they hadn’t opened up anything to
- prove the hunch some folks had—but mining is like betting on the
- races. A tip floats in from somewhere—if a hunch goes with it, play
- it, that was his motto. He had been able to pick up a few loose shares.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mine in which he was most interested had been located for a long time.
- Shares had been out for some years, scattered around. He couldn’t tell for
- sure who had started the new stories, but he did know that a friend of his—an
- humble friend called “Dirty-shirt” Maddox—was up in this section,
- nosing around, and he reckoned he’d get some inside information when
- “Dirty-shirt” returned to Breed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of course I wasn’t surprised. My idea of the West was a place where every
- man was trying to unload mining stock on an Eastern sucker.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The particular claim in the Blacksnake that I’m speaking of is ‘Her Two
- Bright Eyes,’” stated the gossiper. “Mebbe that name is a hunch that it’s
- worth looking into,” he added, with a cackle to point his little joke.
- </p>
- <p>
- I thought of a couple of bright eyes, and felt homesick when the driver
- drawled the name of the mine.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Two bright eyes are always worth looking into,” said I.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was some ride!
- </p>
- <p>
- The stage wallowed into Breed City about nightfall. It had tipped over
- twice on the way, its wheels sinking into “honey-pots” of mud, rolling
- over slowly like a tired cow lying down to rest. We swearing passengers
- had been compelled to pry it up with poles borrowed from a rancher. During
- these waits and during the meal at a sort of half-way house, Judge
- Kingsley, mud-spattered, scared into conniptions when he thought of what
- would be coming behind us from Royal City, miserable as a wet cat, and
- seeing nothing ahead for consolation, muttered to me constantly his
- familiar taunt that he was being teamed about the country by a lunatic.
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t know exactly what to say, and made him still angrier by
- confessing that he was undoubtedly correct.
- </p>
- <p>
- We left the coach in front of the hotel that the driver had recommended,
- and we stepped from the board sidewalk like passengers disembarking from a
- boat; the mud in the street was fairly a river of mire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Even if you don’t like the ‘Prairie Pride’ very well,” my new friend had
- said, “you’ll have a lot of fun watching the White Ghost operate. There’s
- only one of his kind in these parts, or anywhere else in the world, so
- fur’s I know. Folks come from a long ways off and stand around the windows
- and doors of the ‘Prairie Pride’ hotel and see the White Ghost perform. Oh
- no, I don’t mean that the house is haunted. The White Ghost is the waiter.
- He’s the only waiter they have in the dining-room. He won’t have anybody
- else there. He prides himself on doing it all alone. Says he is the only
- waiter in the world who can handle fifty guests and four Chinese cooks
- single-handed and keep everybody happy and busy eating. He’s a little
- cracked in the head, but he’s sure a wonder on his feet. A streak of white
- lightning would have to whistle for him to turn around and come back and
- meet it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Now this bit of information, when I listened to it, stirred in me merely a
- half-determination to go to another hotel, where the waiter did not give a
- show along with his services.
- </p>
- <p>
- How often does man slight some odd tools that Fate lays in his way,
- especially when Fate doesn’t draw his attention to them!
- </p>
- <p>
- The “Prairie Pride” hotel deserved its name in some measure. It had smooth
- floors, real doors, and walls of plaster. Its big office thronged with
- guests, whose character was plain enough. There were slick drummers and
- bearded and booted miners fresh from the hills, down for a bit of a spring
- whirl, and there were mining engineers and such like.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were given a room and at the same time we were given a hint that we’d
- better hurry to supper before the hungry mob cleaned up all the best
- dishes. Again my clothes coaxed this courtesy!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cross the big dining-room and go into the alcove,” directed the clerk,
- after a glance at my hat. “The alcove is for gents. We herd the others in
- the big room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I crossed this main hall a few steps in advance of Judge Kingsley. Men
- were crowded at the tables gobbling food. No fancy feeding! Men jabbed
- knives into their mouths and grabbed stuff off plates and smacked their
- lips and snuffled and grunted. I stopped in the alleyway between these
- tables to look about. I heard a yell of warning and dodged just in time to
- escape.
- </p>
- <p>
- Double swinging doors with spring hinges were burst open by the impact of
- a foot that must have been swung waist high for the kick. Out into the
- dining-room shot the individual who had kicked.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was an apparition!
- </p>
- <p>
- He was more than six feet tall and as slim as a beanpole. He wore a white
- cap, a white jacket, a white apron shrouded him to his heels, and he wore
- white shoes. He had a white, peaked face and his hair was tow-colored. On
- a huge tray that he held well above his head dishes were heaped high. He
- went past me and down the alleyway on the dead run, and wisps of steam
- from his load followed after, trailing on the air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You want to keep out of the road in this dining-room when the White Ghost
- is on the rampage,” advised a guest at the table in the alcove where we
- took seats. “He’s going to get somebody some day fine and plenty. A few
- months ago he got old Babb Coan, who was down here on crutches, nursing a
- broken leg, and couldn’t get out of the way in season. But the White Ghost
- was loaded with empty dishes—just empties. Some day he’s going to
- connect when he’s loaded with about seventeen hot dinners.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The next moment a white streak came into the alcove, took half a dozen
- orders and darted back into the kitchen with a tray-load of empty dishes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It advertises the hotel,” explained the talkative guest. “Men come here
- from far and near to see the White Ghost razoo up and down the stretch,
- but for me I’d rather have more waiters and less slamming. It keeps me
- nervous, and when I’m nervous I can’t do justice to my vittles. I’m all
- the time expecting to see that man that’s doomed to get <i>his</i> get it.
- It’ll be a mighty mushy affair.”
- </p>
- <p>
- By this time the White Ghost was back and was scaling loaded dishes about
- the table with a deftness that a quick dealer shows in a poker game.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I, still blind to what Fate was preparing for my side of the case, was
- merely irritated by this tophet-te-larrup!
- </p>
- <p>
- When supper was over we seized an opportunity when the White Ghost was on
- an outward trip and escaped.
- </p>
- <p>
- I advised the judge that he’d better take the key and go to our room and
- get into bed, and the old man accepted that advice with a sigh of
- thankfulness. He looked bent, weary, and broken as he climbed the stairs;
- homesick hopelessness showed in every line of his face and in every motion
- of his body. I did pity him then!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Poor old father of the girl with the two bright eyes,” I said, not
- realizing that I had spoken aloud.
- </p>
- <p>
- A man sidled up and prodded me with his thumb.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard what you said to the old gent just now! Where did you get your
- tip, pard?” he whispered.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had already forgotten just what the driver had said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You needn’t let it out if you don’t want to. But there’s a little inside
- guessing in these parts and when you hear a man let drop anything about
- the ‘Two Bright Eyes,’ it’s reckoned he has had a hunch of some kind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wasn’t thinking about that mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man grinned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right—keep it sly! But see here, pard, I’m going to test you
- out a little on this thing. I’ve got a few thousand shares of the old
- stock. Took it over in a poker game a long time ago—we gamble mining
- stocks out this way when we’re busted. I’m busted now—and they won’t
- take mining stock at the roulette wheel. I’ll sell you five hundred shares
- of ‘Bright Eyes’ at fifty cents a share.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He peered anxiously into my face as he made the offer. He was plainly
- trying to get a hint from my expression, but he didn’t, of course. I knew
- nothing about mining stock.
- </p>
- <p>
- ‘I don’t want it.”.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Twenty-five cents a share, then. I want to chase the wheel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re on a wrong lead, my friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Just then a man bumped against me as if by accident and promptly
- apologized. It was the stage-driver.
- </p>
- <p>
- The owner of the stock scowled and backed into the crowd in the office.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was trying to jolt a little hoss sense into you,” explained the driver.
- “Why didn’t you buy that stock? I passed the hunch to you to-day.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t any money for wildcatting in gold-mines,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man came close to me and spoke low.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you remember what I said?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, but grabbing gold-mine stock from the first comer—say, my
- friend, do I look as green as that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hish! Don’t rear up, sir! Please don’t! But I know that fellow who just
- tried to sell. He’s fresh in from the hills. He doesn’t know what’s going
- on—and only a few do know. But I carry men on my stage who talk and
- don’t know I’m overhearing. I say no more! But I hope you’ll take the
- hint. If I could rake and scrape another dollar I’d buy that stock myself.
- That fellow has some kind of a hunch—but he has been too far away in
- the hills to know anything special. I guess he just smells it in the air.
- There isn’t much stock in ‘Bright Eyes’ left loose these days. I have
- smelt around; I know! That tells a long story, sir. If that fellow hadn’t
- been off in the hills they’d have got his away from him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was urgent and appealing. I couldn’t understand this special interest
- in me and I told him so plainly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t exactly know, either,” he said, unabashed. “I’m thinking it over
- and I’ll tell you when I get it thought out. Maybe it’s your style. I have
- always hoped to be able to wear a suit of clothes like that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He surveyed me with candid admiration.
- </p>
- <p>
- My tartness didn’t bother him a bit. He beamed on me—and plainly had
- taken a few drinks. I asked the driver to tell me how I could reach the
- mayor’s store. My friend offered to conduct me. I had resolved to throw up
- my Breed City earthworks!
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I take a liking to a gent I don’t do nothing by halves,” declared my
- guide when we were on our way. “You come unwrapped enough to-day so that I
- could see that you’ve got real whalebone in your stock and silk in your
- snapper—and that’s the kind of a whip for my hand! You come along
- with me and I’ll introduce you to the mayor. Him and me are chums. He
- ain’t none of your stuck-up dudes. I’ll tell him you’re a special friend
- of mine. There’s nothing like getting in right.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He left me in the back office of a dry-goods store, sitting knees to knees
- in the tiny room with a fat and placid man who smiled amiably and seemed
- to be impressed by my dress and demeanor.
- </p>
- <p>
- He launched out at me in a way that was surely astonishing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are the kind we like to see coming into our new and growing city. We
- are anxious for a touch of the dignity and refinement of the East here in
- our midst. We hope we can offer you inducements which will wean you from
- that East which, though its traditions are glorious and its civilization
- is sublime, is nevertheless a bit—I may say, without offense, I
- trust—effete” By the way in which Mayor David Ware smacked his lips
- over that sentence I was pretty sure that he was quoting from his
- inaugural address.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m very glad to have you feel that way toward me, coming here a
- stranger, Mr. Mayor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But strangers are certified to a man of insight by the masonry of
- breeding.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I thanked him again and proceeded to a matter of business connected with
- my earthworks.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him of the plans of one Dragg, as I had gleaned them from
- accidental association with that individual. I said that Dragg had now
- attached to himself two blacklegs and undoubtedly would soon arrive in
- Breed City for the purpose of taking advantage of technicalities in the
- land law, jumping claims, holding up enterprises, giving Breed City a
- black eye outside as a municipality where titles were not assured.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am not a spy, a tattletale, or a meddler,” I said. “But this matter was
- forced on my attention when I was on my way here, and I did not want to
- see a hustling mayor and city set back by the schemes of blacklegs. I had
- heard of your city and of you, and I said to myself, ‘If warning will
- enable such a city to head off a plot and put the plotters where they
- belong I’ll hurry to headquarters with my information.’ Those men are now
- in Royal City and are on their way here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The mayor’s mild eyes bulged and his face showed his dismay.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s plain you are a friend who wouldn’t take advantage of our situation,
- sir. That’s shown because you are not trying to operate on the tip this
- crook gave you. So I’m going to be frank with you, as a friend. We were so
- anxious to get things moving here that we took a lot for granted in the
- matter of land titles Those men can make trouble—or at least they
- could have made trouble if we had not been warned in season by you. You
- will find that this city can be grateful, Mr. Mann.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was sticking to my assumed name.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you allow me to make a suggestion?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I certainly will. I’ll be glad to have your advice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t undertake to jump on them, officially, the moment they strike town.
- In order to have your proof you must wait until they try to operate. Have
- them watched sharply. If you’ll give me permission to take a hand in the
- matter, on the side, I may be able to bluff them out entirely. I reckon
- it’s for the interests of your city to close the thing up without the
- public knowing there’s any doubt about land titles. Of course I don’t need
- to suggest to you that you make a flying start now and straighten out your
- law and titles so that no other shysters can come along making trouble
- after we get rid of these gentlemen.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Watch me in that line,” declared the mayor, thumping his breast. “You’re
- right about handling them with gloves, Mr. Mann. I tell you if you can do
- anything to help us you will stand mighty high with me and with Breed
- City.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “In handling them I may be able to make it seem like a personal quarrel
- between them and myself,” I suggested. My horizon was growing wider all
- the time. “They are dangerous men, but I’m not afraid of them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I don’t want you to be a martyr.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not afraid of them, I say. If trouble does happen here and it seems
- like a personal quarrel, you will understand it all, Mr. Mayor!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Certainly, sir!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It may seem strange to have a stranger come along like this and offer to
- meddle in matters where he has no personal interest. Those men are nothing
- to me, one way or the other. But I’m for fair play always!”
- </p>
- <p>
- His Honor warmed to this modest candor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The city is behind you in whatever you may do in this thing, sir. As
- mayor I say it. You’ll be backed to the limit. And if you get hurt while
- you are trying to do a bit of a trick for us I’ll be scissored if I don’t
- toss law and order up for a little while and organize a lynching party and
- head it in person.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I thought it would come to that I wouldn’t meddle in the affair! The
- only reason I am offering my services is because I hope to be able to keep
- Breed City from suffering a setback.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hand ’em any jolt that’s coming to ’em in the name of Breed
- City and its mayor.” His Honor clapped his hand on my shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- I trudged back to the hotel in a fairly comfortable frame of mind. It’s a
- lucky general who can choose his own battle-field, get to it well ahead of
- the enemy, throw up earthworks and set a big gun or two in position. So, I
- said to myself, “Let ’em come!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXI—THE SKIRMISH-LINE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS a bit
- embarrassed next morning and wondered if I hadn’t overdone the thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was waited on by a delegation in the crowded office of the Pride of the
- Prairie. Mayor David Ware headed the delegation and he introduced the
- half-dozen amiable gentlemen as leading members of the Breed City Chamber
- of Commerce. Then the mayor pulled me aside.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You understand that I haven’t whispered a word of what you and I talked
- about last night. That’s to be buried between you and me, but there’s
- nothing like getting in sneck with the big boys of this town. It’ll be
- easier for me when I have to back you up—if it comes to that. I’ve
- explained that you’re a friend of mine who is West looking for prospects.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m glad to be called a friend of yours—and you told the truth
- about my business here, Mr Mayor. We start on a square basis.”
- </p>
- <p>
- With the mayor, followed by the delegation, I was escorted through the
- main street of Breed City It seemed to afford the gentlemen honest
- gratification to follow along behind that plug-hat which I had freshly
- slicked that morning to the best of my ability. I was lunched at the
- Chamber of Commerce—a half-finished board structure; I was dined by
- the mayor at his own home; and I returned to the hotel in the evening to
- find the judge marooned in the office.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Please don’t scowl at me that way,” I pleaded, humbly. “I was afraid you
- might drop something that would queer the whole proposition. You are
- looking over your shoulder as if you expected damnation to jump on to your
- back!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damnation <i>is</i> getting ready to jump on to our backs,” growled the
- old man. “One of ’em has got here. He came in on the stage
- to-night.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which one?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The scalawag with the flashy clothes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had looked for pretty quick action, but “Peacock” Pratt had got away
- sooner than I expected he would. He had been free with his money, I
- concluded.
- </p>
- <p>
- I got down-stairs early the next morning, the judge tagging at my heels.
- But we were not ahead of Mr. Pratt. I didn’t have to hunt for him. He
- stood out like Jeff Dawlin’s “Peruvian cockatoo” would have shown up in a
- flock of crows. He followed us into the diningroom, and sat down at the
- same table and scowled at me with ugly fire in his little eyes above their
- pouches of flesh. Then he leaned across the table. We three were alone
- when the White Ghost had frisked away after our breakfasts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m here,” said he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Glad to see you,” said I.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a dog-eyed liar! You didn’t expect to see me. You thought you had
- the three of us canned till you could put something across here. It cost
- me a hundred dollars to grease the lock of that calaboose—and at
- that I couldn’t bring out the other two. But they’re coming! You needn’t
- worry any about that part, you punk-faced Piute!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He dove a pudgy hand down into the breast pocket of his vest. He got his
- wallet out and banged it down on the table. It was a big wallet and it was
- well stuffed. Judge Kingsley gulped when he saw it and his hands worked
- like claws.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s how I’m heeled, and I’ll spend it getting you, if it comes to
- that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He packed the big wallet back into his waistcoat, galloped down his eggs
- and bacon, and then banged away from the table. He called back over his
- shoulder, “I wish I hadn’t promised that I’d anchor you and wait for ’em,
- else I’d take you now and settle my breakfast with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you see that money?” gasped the old man. “It’s my money, There’s a
- lot of it. My God! I could hardly keep my hands off it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was a nice, fat wallet, Judge Kingsley. I was glad to see it. It all
- looks very encouraging.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Encouraging! Where do you see any encouragement? Two more men coming full
- of blood and thunder to join him—and you waiting here for them to
- get along! Anybody with sense would have that man grabbed by the police on
- my charges. I thought you told me you were bringing me out here to make
- the complaint? Now you’re only dillydallying. A man with, sense, I say—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I suppose a man with sense would never have come out here, at all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When I went out and stood on the hotel porch, my friend, the stage-driver,
- lounged up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve knocked off for a few days’ vacation,” he explained, sociably. “Sent
- another man for my trip to Royal City yesterday. Mud was getting on to my
- nerves. You noticed how it was the day you rode out with me. I came nigh
- queering myself with you and spoiling one of the pleasantest friendships I
- ever made. I was mighty glad to see the mayor and the boys taking you
- around town yesterday.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him I appreciated his regard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s another reason why I’m taking a few days off,” he confided. “I’ve
- got a hunch that ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox is about due here. And in the case
- of ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox it’s needful to be Johnny-on-the-spot when he hits
- town if I’m going to cash in on that grubstake I advanced to him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I handed him a cigar and he explained further.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I ain’t here to clap a hand over his mouth to keep the rum out and the
- news in, he’ll get four slugs of language-loosener into him inside of four
- minutes after striking the first board-walk here and then it’s brakes off,
- all into a gallop and hell-bent up the rise for that ‘Bright Eyes’ stock.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At a little distance the stylish Mr. Pratt paced his way to and fro on the
- porch, scowling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Please take a good look at that fellow,” said I.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll do the best I can without smoked glasses,” promised the
- stage-driver. “I’ve seen him before—and I never liked his style.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “His name is Pratt,” I said loud enough to be heard by that gentleman. “He
- seems to hold some kind of a grudge against me and is following me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt let loose a torrent of cuss words that were fully as highly
- colored as his rig-out. He wound up by saying, “And, by the gods! I’ll get
- you, and get you fine and plenty!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you remember that?” I asked the stage-driver.
- </p>
- <p>
- I realized that I had pretty good control of the movements of Mr. Pratt.
- For where I did go there went Pratt also. Mr. Pratt was decidedly on his
- job. Personal hatred moved him and he felt responsible, I suppose, for the
- interests of the two who were frothing behind the bars of the calaboose in
- Royal City. He seemed to be guarding me as a morsel for a feast of revenge
- at which three proposed to sit down. He stuck to me so closely that my big
- idea became firm enough to handle. The ability to move Pratt, and to be
- near Pratt at all times by Pratt’s own wish, suggested my scheme to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- When the noon hour was at hand I led the way back to the hotel, and, while
- I tidied myself for dinner, taking my turn at the mirror in the wash-room,
- I had an eye for the manoeuvers of Pratt, who was preening and pluming
- himself, whisking all the stains of outdoors from his clothing, settling
- his gorgeous tie, smoothing his waistcoat across his expansive front.
- </p>
- <p>
- I couldn’t help it—I grinned in his face when I thought of my plan.
- </p>
- <p>
- I buttoned my frock-coat carefully and started for the dining-room—and
- Pratt followed close. On the threshold I cast a look within. The White
- Ghost was not there—he was in eclipse in the kitchen for the moment.
- I started through the big hall, toward the alcove, crossing near the swing
- doors. Pratt came on behind me and I halted and turned suddenly on him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m going to shoot you now and here in your tracks, where every one can
- look on,” I told him in a whisper—and I kept smiling. “Don’t you
- dare to pull a gun. I’ve got you covered. I’ve got a revolver in that hand
- that’s wrapped in the tail of this coat and it’s aimed at you. I’m going
- to shoot you while I’m smiling. There are men looking at me. I’ll say that
- the gun went off by accident. It’ll be believed, because we look so
- sociable. Hold on! Don’t you open that mouth to yell. You’ve got one
- chance for your life. I’ll tell you now—because I’ll never have a
- better chance to get you proper if you don’t take that chance I offer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was stalling then, for I had not intended to talk so long. Mr. Pratt
- stood there as stiff as a wooden man.
- </p>
- <p>
- He took a peep at my hand that was muffled in the skirt of my frock-coat.
- The unseen terrifies most. His face grew pale. He continued-to stare at
- the hidden thing that threatened his life. My smile broadened—it was
- no assumed smile—for my wrapped hand was empty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You may think that this is a queer place for me to hold you up”
- </p>
- <p>
- If Pratt could have known what was passing in my mind at that moment he
- would have agreed. It would also have astonished Mr. Pratt to know that I
- was just then raking my soul in order to think of something to say next.
- </p>
- <p>
- There seemed to be an infernally long time between the shuttlings of the
- White Ghost. I felt like an anarchist who has timed a bomb and finds his
- fuse faulty. Where in the devil’s name was the fool? I knew I couldn’t
- stand there and tell a serial story to Pratt. A dangerous light was coming
- into the man’s eyes. Astonishment had held him for the first few moments,
- then fear had chained him, but finally panic was plainly breaking out in
- him, and in such cases a victim will run amuck regardless of consequences.
- I felt that Pratt was getting ready to howl and leap upon me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Where was the White Ghost?
- </p>
- <p>
- The thought came to me that this prolonged absence hinted at one
- consolation—the White Ghost must be filling many orders—his
- tray would be heaped to the ceiling.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your one chance is—” said I—and then it happened!
- </p>
- <p>
- Without warning, the swing doors burst open under the kick of the White
- Ghost’s foot and forth from the cavern of the kitchen came the
- thunderbolt. I had been waiting and listening, and was ready to dodge. The
- petrified Pratt never stirred a stump. There was a howl from warning
- diners—a collision, a terrific crash, and Pratt went down under the
- avalanche. The White Ghost was lugging one of the biggest loads of his
- career. There were deep plates in which hot and greasy soup swam, there
- were gravied meats, nappies of vegetables, tea, coffee, macaroni, pies,
- and puddings. Mr. Pratt was buried under dishes, hot soup blinded his
- eyes, macaroni was twined around his neck, pies plastered his shirt bosom,
- and his clothes sopped up liquids. He might have been labeled, “A dinner
- in eruption!” The White Ghost dove across him and skated along the floor
- on his nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hurried to Pratt and began to paw the dishes from off him. And having
- planned just what I was going to do and knowing just where to seek for
- what I wanted, I dove a hand into Pratt’s inside vest pocket and yanked
- out the big wallet. Other men ran to help me, there was excitement, and in
- that mess of provisions which I was cuffing to right and left my handling
- of the wallet was noticed by no one. I was kneeling close beside Pratt and
- I shoved the wallet between my knees, and when I arose, slid it up under
- my coat.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were plenty of volunteers whose hands were out to boost Mr. Pratt to
- his feet. His eyes were tightly shut and he was bellowing about the pain
- the soup was giving him. I took the rôle of close friend and ordered the
- rescuers to carry Mr. Pratt to the wash-room and give him first aid with
- towels and water. I followed close upon their heels and elbowed Kingsley
- along with the push. The judge had stood at some distance during our
- drama. I pulled his hand up under my coat and set it on the wallet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Grab it!” I whispered. “Slip it under your coat; get out of this hotel
- and around the corner. Jam the money into your stocking and stamp the
- wallet down into the mud. Be careful no one sees you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was on me that Pratt’s eyes first opened—for I was swabbing the
- soup out of those eyes with the end of a wet towel.
- </p>
- <p>
- But when he opened his mouth I swabbed the towel across his lips. Other
- volunteers were working away at the clothing of the victim with wet
- towels.
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once Pratt began to slap himself on the breast and howl. His
- laments in regard to the hot soup in his eyes had been loud, but in
- contrast to his latest outburst they were as the voice of the chickadee
- compared with the roar of the lion. After he had beat upon his breast, he
- dove a greasy hand into his vest pocket. It was empty. His eyes goggled,
- his face grew purple, he shouted, he swore, and he raved.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had been done, trimmed, robbed, frisked, touched—so were his
- bellowings! He searched his soul for synonyms with which to announce to
- the world that his wallet had been stolen. And then he accused me—accused
- me with violence and profanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just one moment, sir,” I suggested, taking advantage of a moment when Mr.
- Pratt was choking. “You are sure those dishes didn’t crack your skull a
- bit and injure your brain?”
- </p>
- <p>
- After spitting many oaths, Mr. Pratt declared that he was all right and
- knew what he was talking about.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ll have to back that up,” I told him. “Fifty men were looking at you
- when that thing happened. I have not been out of the sight of those men
- since. You say it was a large wallet.” I unbuttoned my coat and slung it
- open. “Will any gentleman present kindly search me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is going too far when he shoots off his mouth about a gent like you,”
- declared somebody in the crowd. “We all saw you. All you did was try to
- help the son of a gun out of his mess—and that’s all the thanks you
- get!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mistakes are bound to occur. I demand that some gentleman make sure that
- I have no wallet on my person. My own money is in a roll in my trousers
- pocket.”
- </p>
- <p>
- A solid-looking citizen searched me, uttering apologies. “There ain’t any
- wallet on this gent, and you’d better ask his pardon for remarks offered,”
- suggested the citizen.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Pratt only raved the louder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’d like to say a word just here,” called a voice. The stage-driver
- pushed to the front. “You all know me and you know I ain’t any liar. This
- gent, here, is a friend of mine and he wouldn’t do dirt to anybody. He’s a
- friend of our mayor, too.” He put his hand affectionately on my shoulder.
- “But as for that other cuss, there, in the piebald clothes, I heard him
- make threats not longer ago than this morning that he would get my friend,
- and get him good and plenty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe you think I arranged to have those seventeen dinners dumped over me
- so as to make the plot a good one, you pie-eyed horse-walloper, you,”
- squealed Pratt, beginning to “weave” in his fury like a caged bear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wouldn’t wonder a mite,” replied the driver, coolly. “When I heard you
- threatening to get my friend you was mad enough to try on most anything.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He got my money, I tell you. I felt him at my pocket while I was trying
- to get my senses back. Blast you all for infernal fools, I’ve been robbed
- right before your eyes and you’re backing up the thief.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a stir at the door and the crowd glanced that way and parted
- respectfully. It was His Honor the Mayor of Breed City. He stood for a few
- moments and listened to the language Pratt addressed to me. Then he broke
- in with authority:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just a moment, citizens! There’s a lot about this affair, here, that I
- know and cannot tell. As for that knave who accuses Mr. Mann, I declare on
- my honor that he is a dangerous foe to this city. He has come here to try
- to ruin it if his scheme works.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Pratt at this point managed to control the amazement that was provoked
- by the appearance of this new champion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you, Mayor,” he shouted, “you’ve got the wrong dope about me.
- Dragg tried to get me into the scheme, but I——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are convicting yourself right now out of your own mouth,” broke in
- the mayor. He marched up to Pratt, finger upraised: “You are as dangerous
- here as a dynamite bomb. I’ll allow you thirty minutes to get out of town.
- Get to those other two knaves and warn them that they’ll be lynched if
- they show up here—and I’ll lead the lynching-bee.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was immediate change in Mr. Pratt’s demeanor and the mayor and the
- bystanders listened to him. The fat face was lined with grief, and tears
- ran down his cheeks and mingled with the grub stains.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not lying about that wallet, gents. I’ve lost my bundle. It has been
- stolen. That’s a nice word to go out about Breed City—that a visitor
- to town loses his wad and the mayor backs up the man who stole it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Silence!” said the mayor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I’ll simply say that I’ve lost my money—and how about law and
- order in a city that will let a man be trimmed in that style? Hold on one
- minute, Mr. Mayor! It isn’t merely a case of my own money! If it was, I’d
- shut up now and pass on. But I had along with mine the money of a good
- friend who trusted me with his roll. I left him in the calaboose back on
- the trail and I brought out his money to take care of it for him, for he
- was afraid they’d get to him for it. That’s God’s truth, Mayor.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In a crowd there may be found champions for the under dog—even when
- a mayor has turned down his thumb. I heard murmurs. One voice suggested
- that the matter better be looked into—the good name of Breed City
- demanded it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t much to say in this business, even though this man has accused
- me,” I said in the silence that followed. “Now that you are on the subject
- of your money, Mr. Pratt, and are making such a squeal in regard to the
- loss of it, will you allow me to ask you how much of it was money you
- stole in the East—especially from Zebulon Kingsley of Levant?”
- </p>
- <p>
- If I had struck “Peacock” Pratt between the eyes the effect could not have
- been more noticeable. Most of those men who were present had been trained
- to gauge the human expression in that region of plain and mountain where
- life itself sometimes depends on the ability to judge between bluff and
- resolve. His fat cheeks flushed and then they grew pale. That a stranger
- in the Far West should be able to cast in his teeth one of his latest
- exploits staggered him. He tried to speak and couldn’t.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pratt, you have twenty-two more minutes left of that half hour,” stated
- the mayor, after silence had continued for some moments.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose that has to go for to-day,” said Pratt. “But it doesn’t go for
- to-morrow—nor for next day if my friends and I can get back here,
- Mr. Mayor! Lynch or no lynch!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He buttoned his waistcoat, took a mournful look at himself in the
- wash-room mirror, and headed for a livery-stable which a sarcastic
- bystander recommended. I knew that threat to come back wasn’t mere talk.
- Mr. Pratt had good reason to take the risks!
- </p>
- <p>
- I took my first chance and escaped from the populace of Breed City to hunt
- up Kingsley in the little room in the hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How much?” I was all a-tremble.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A little over six thousand dollars. Mostly five-hundred-dollar bills.
- Part of it is tied up in a separate package and marked with Dawlin’s
- name.” The judge was not very enthusiastic.
- </p>
- <p>
- I sat down on the edge of the bed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In order to be on the right side and make allowance for delays here and
- there, we ought to leave here tomorrow, Judge Kingsley. And even then we’d
- be having hours for a margin—not days. I felt pretty good when I
- heard Pratt say that he had Dawlin’s money along. I figured there would be
- more between the two of ’em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then it’s all over, is it? We’re beaten, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do <i>you</i> think?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think we are.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, sir,” I said, “you and I have always seemed to make more progress
- when I take the opposite side in an argument. I predict that we shall win
- out. Please hand over that money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The money is mine—it was stolen from me. You’re too reckless to
- handle money. We’re beaten, I tell you. I’ll send that money home to my
- wife and daughter. It’s something for them to live on. I’ll kill myself
- out here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley put both hands over his breast pocket. He was hysterical.
- There was no reasoning with him and so I rose from the bed, walked across
- the room, and snapped a finger under his nose. Zebulon Kingsley must not
- have money in his pocket—in that case I could not handle him or
- trust him to stay with me!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give—me—that—money!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stared and groaned and obeyed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I divided the bills into packets, tucked them into my various pockets, and
- walked out of the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This money needs an airing,” I informed the judge. “I’ll take it outdoors
- and give it one. It has been in some mighty bad company.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXII—MONEY ON THE GALLOP
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>N most
- circumstances, being padded with bills to the amount of six thousand
- dollars would be comfortably warming. But in my case the possession of
- that sum only provoked irritation.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had set out to save Zebulon Kingsley’s name and the peace of mind of his
- family. The sum I had replevined by my scheme of justice fell far short of
- what we needed—and there was the promise I had given Dodovah Vose,
- as well.
- </p>
- <p>
- From the hotel porch I saw my friend, the stage-driver, humping it toward
- me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have tripped, tied, and gagged him. That was the only thing to do! He
- got here and he got two drinks into himself before I could slip the bridle
- on him. In another two minutes he would have been jumping clear off’n the
- ground, head and tail up, snorting out everything he knows. But I got to
- him—and I’ve laid him away, tied and gagged. Go to it, Mr. Mann, go
- to it, I tell you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He certainly was some excited!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you talking about a man or a cayuse?” I asked. “I’m talking about
- ‘Dirty-shirt’—he’s just in from Blacksnake Gully ahead of the news.
- Say, they’ve struck a brown crumble in ‘Bright Eyes’ with gold set into
- the mush like raisins in a drunken cook’s pudding. You’re a sport and a
- friend of mine. I’m letting you in. Come along!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He ran away a little distance and whirled and halted with the eager air of
- a dog who is inviting his master to follow. I’ll bet if he had had long
- ears he would have perked them; if he had had a tail he would have wagged
- it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a sport—and I know it. Come along,” he called.
- </p>
- <p>
- Along the street came loafing the individual who had tried to sell me
- “Bright Eyes” stock, and he heard that call.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re barking up the wrong tree, pard,” he advised the driver. “He’s no
- sport. I have tried him out. He won’t take a chance. I gave him a chance
- on some mining shares.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What shares?” asked the stage-driver.
- </p>
- <p>
- “‘Bright Eyes’ in the Blacksnake.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My friend was truly a good actor. He showed no interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shift the name to ‘blacked eyes.’ Yes, and both of ’em closed at
- that. No good!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you there’s something in the air,” insisted the other. “It’s a
- fair gamble at twenty-five cents a share.” He pulled out some papers and
- walked up to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You look like ready money, my friend. I’d rather play the wheel just now
- than be rich. I’m tied in here by the mud and it’s getting on to my
- nerves. Take ten thousand at twenty-five cents. I’ll close out to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hold on!” sang out the driver, and he managed to smuggle a wink to me
- while he was tugging papers out of his pocket on his way back to join us.
- “If you’re in the market for ‘Bright Eyes,’ Eastern fellow, here’s ten
- thousand shares for fifteen cents a share.”.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you come butting in on my market,” protested the prospector,
- elbowing the driver away. “I got to this gent first.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Those shares have been used all over this section for counters in poker
- games when beans got too expensive,” sneered the driver.
- </p>
- <p>
- The prospector pulled out more papers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you’ll take twenty thousand at ten cents a share I’ll pass ’em
- over. I was intending to hold on to ten thousand shares for a gamble. I
- tell you there’s something, somehow, somewhere, that says the hunch is out
- for ‘Bright Eyes.’ But I’ll let go for ten cents if you’ll take the
- bunch.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s no better offer than you made the other night,” I stated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was pretty drunk, then, and I didn’t mean to make it. I’m daffy now, I
- reckon, or I wouldn’t be doing it over again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood there and looked them over and for the first time I gave a little
- real thought to that gold-mine proposition. Up to then the matter had been
- mere sound, shooting into one ear and out the other. I had been having
- plenty to think about in other lines.
- </p>
- <p>
- It struck me that I was being played for a sucker by a couple of mighty
- awkward amateurs. Talk about Zebulon Kingsley buying a gold brick! That
- affair had been well buttered by some slick operators. What those two
- chaps were trying on me was truly raw work. That stage-driver—I
- didn’t even know his name—must have a healthy hate for me hidden
- deep down in him! I have cuffed a dog in my life and had him show more
- affection afterward, but I couldn’t believe that such treatment helped to
- mellow love in a human being. I knew it wouldn’t improve my own
- disposition any. In my thoughts I had some excuse for the two. They had
- probably been brought up to believe that the ordinary Easterner who had
- not already bought some punk gold-mine stock was thriftily saving up to
- buy some.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s one of ’em born every minute,” I remarked to the
- stage-driver, “but I didn’t know I looked so much like one. Run away, the
- two of you, and fan yourselves with that stock; that’s the only way you’ll
- ever raise any wind with it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ain’t talking to me, are you—to me—Wash Flye?” inquired
- the driver.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am, if that’s your name—and it seems to fit you! But you are not
- fly enough!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened eyes and mouth on me, stepped back a few feet, and visibly
- swelled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, my-y-y Ga-a-awd!” he wailed. “If that ain’t using the butt end of
- the whip on a willing friend, may I never sort webbin’s again!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was truly something sincere in his distress. But that sudden
- warming-up to me on the prairie after I had manhandled him, his
- unaccountable friendliness, his jacking his job for a few days in order to
- dog me about Breed City—the whole thing was too openly a plant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a good actor. No wonder you’re in the stage business, Flye,” was
- my poor joke.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at me for a full minute. Then he turned on the other man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s you, you horn-gilled wump, with your sashay prices and your drunken
- man’s gab—it’s you that has put me in wrong with a friend,” he
- squealed. “He thinks I’m like you are! He thinks I’m in mush with you on a
- brace! I’ll show him and you!” He leaped forward and began to kick the
- prospector with fury. The latter was a big and rather torpid person and he
- seemed to be in a sort of daze at first, and stood still while Mr. Flye
- kicked him. Then he turned and knocked Mr. Flye down; he picked him up and
- knocked him down again.
- </p>
- <p>
- It struck me that if this were acting between friends it was getting too
- realistic. The driver’s face was bloody and he lay where he fell, his eyes
- closed.
- </p>
- <p>
- I jumped between and pushed the prospector away. He struck at me and I was
- obliged to hit him a clip or two before he would hold off. We had a fairly
- good audience, but fisticuffs in Breed, when the muddy season made tempers
- short, seemed to stir only mild interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found Mr. Flye on his knees and “weaving” weakly when I turned to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ain’t no fighter—I don’t pretend to be a fighter,” he mumbled. “I
- knew he was going to lick me if I kicked him. But that’s all right!
- There’s three teeth loose and my eyes are bunging! I can feel ’em!
- But it’s all right. If anybody thinks it was a scuffle between friends,
- he’d better take another think. I’ve took a licking to show some folks
- that there’s such a thing as being mistook in a man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I hadn’t straightened out my opinions, exactly, but I felt sudden pity and
- new respect for Mr. Flye, and some emotion even deeper. I helped him to
- his feet and took him into the wash-room of the hotel and fixed him up as
- best I could.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t blame you so very much,” he kept assuring me, whimpering through
- his bruised and bleeding lips. “It probably hasn’t seemed natural to you—it
- hasn’t seemed natural to me. This world is full of crooks and I s’pose
- you’ve been up against a lot of ’em. I done one crooked thing
- myself once when I kept water away from a drove of hogs for two days and
- then let ’em drink all they could hold just before I sold ’em
- live weight to a Snake River drover. But that drover had stolen two
- cayuses off’n my uncle! I didn’t know what I could do to show you, sir!
- Probably what I have done don’t show you. But I’ve done my best. It was
- all I could think of on short notice. I’ll let a dozen men beat me up if
- you will only understand that I ain’t going to do you or try to do you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That spirit of humble martyrdom was certainly getting to me!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here, Mr Flye,” I blurted, “I don’t understand at all. Why in blazes
- are you taking all this interest in me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gazed at me out of those pathetic, pale-blue eyes around which
- blue-black circles were settling. It was a lingering and wistful gaze.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know, sir. It came over me all of a sudden. It ain’t often I take
- to anybody. It just came over me. You’re a real gent—you knowed just
- how to handle me. You know how to handle me now! Ain’t you doing the
- friendly act, hey?”
- </p>
- <p>
- We were alone in the wash-room; the guests of the hotel flocked there only
- at meal-time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can see how it looked to me—a stranger here—you two
- fellows chasing me up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t blame you, sir,” he agreed, meekly. “This world is full of
- crooks.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have some money with me. It isn’t mine. I need more in a hurry—it’s
- to save a man’s name—save him from death, perhaps!” I couldn’t hold
- in. “It’s to save his daughter, too. I’m in love with her. I have been for
- years! It’s all I can think about. When you spoke of ‘Bright Eyes’ I felt—I
- felt—” I stopped and gulped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon I know how you feel,” stated Mr. Flye, wagging that mussed-up
- head of his. “I know a girl. There’s hardly a minute when I ain’t thinking
- about her. She hasn’t paid no attention to me, but I’m going to her after
- I make my clean-up on ‘Bright Eyes’! It makes ’em think twice when
- there’s money. I ain’t much—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m desperate—I’m half crazy, Flye! This mine! Are you fooling me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He straightened and put his hand up like a man taking the oath. .
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wanted you to get in because I liked you, sir. That’s why I was after
- you. But now that you say that you need money I’m begging and imploring
- you! If money will do what you say it will in your case, I say ’fore
- God you’ll commit a sin if you don’t grab in! I know it! It has come.
- ‘Dirty-shirt’ don’t know how to lie about it. The strike has been made.
- Take my word,” he pleaded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll do it,” I told him. “I believe you’re trying to do an honest turn
- for me.” I put out my hand and he took it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank the Lord!” he said, and there was a lot of manliness about Mr. Wash
- Flye at that moment. “That licking was a good investment.” He said it
- devoutly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But will that fellow sell now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Can you handle his twenty thousand shares at ten cents—two thousand
- dollars?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I offered at fifteen I was trying to beat him down to ten. Don’t
- give a cent more. Go show him the money and say you’re willing to be
- buncoed once in your life. And hurry—for the love of Sancho, hurry!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I found the prospector watching a roulette game with the sour gaze of a
- busted gambler. He went into the corner with me when I jerked invitation
- with my chin.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve changed my mind,” he growled, when I mentioned the stock. “And I
- wouldn’t do business with you anyway, you—”
- </p>
- <p>
- I unfolded four five-hundred-dollar bills. He stopped his declaration as
- suddenly as if I had pinched his throat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Money is money, I suppose,” said he, “though your shin-plasters from the
- East are poor things alongside the good hard coin.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s the bank across the street, and they’ll give you the good hard
- coin, mister.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He pulled out his packet and I verified the amount of the certificates.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went to the bank in his company, for he seemed to be bothered with the
- notion that those five-hundred-dollar bills needed me as introducer and
- sponsor. Then he hotfooted out, weighted with the coin. In spite of myself
- and of my fresh faith in Mr. Flye, my heart sank considerably when I saw
- that money take legs. The cashier was one of the amiable citizens I had
- met in the delegation from the Chamber of Commerce.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Making a little investment?” he inquired, sociably.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A foolish one, I am afraid. But an Easterner who hasn’t had a flier in a
- gold-mine at least once in his life gets to feeling lonesome after a time.
- That chap has been chasing me around with stock and a story and I have
- tossed a little spare change to him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The cashier peered through the wicket and beamed with new respect on a man
- who could speak of two thousand dollars as spare change.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are mines—and then there are mines,” he suggested.
- </p>
- <p>
- I thought I might as well try my new tune over on this piano.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s a proposition called ‘Two Bright Eyes.” I tried to seem indifferent,
- but my heart was only about an inch below my larynx and I could hardly get
- the words out.
- </p>
- <p>
- I thought he would never speak. He scratched his nose and fiddled with his
- ear. I wanted to reach in and shake him so that he would say something,
- even if he would only say that I had been nicely fooled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The property had rather a promising outlook at one time, sir. It was
- located by good prospectors and afterward two or three other claims were
- taken in. The section is first-rate!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Not wildly encouraging.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the stock hasn’t been much thought of in these parts—it has
- been footballed around a lot. Still”—he twisted his mustache and
- waited a few moments—“well, I’ll tell you this confidentially, if I
- wasn’t a bank man—and you know we have to move in grooves of caution—if
- I could afford to do a little gambling I think I would have picked up a
- small bunch of this loose stock. I got a flicker of a hint from a mining
- engineer who banks here. Nothing definite—they can’t talk much. But
- I know they have been running new leads. The first development wasn’t very
- scientific, I understand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Does a—When they make a real strike—do prices run up pretty
- sudden?” I managed to ask.
- </p>
- <p>
- He smiled. “I see you have never been in a mining town when a bonanza
- toots. Everybody goes crazy. They’ll climb over one another to buy stock.
- Those who can’t buy stock go racing off to see what they can grab in the
- way of adjacent claims. Very exciting, sir! Wish we might show you a
- circus of that kind while you’re in town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When I went out on the street I found Mr. Flye waiting around the corner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You traded?” he gasped. “He’s over there tossing away twenty-dollar gold
- pieces!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve got twenty thousand shares,” I said, dolefully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I’m going to let ‘Dirty-shirt’ loose. He’ll swell up and bust if I
- don’t get that gag out of his mouth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But will anybody believe what he says?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Honestly, a gold-mine was unreal to me! I had Eastern prejudices.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You go over there and stand on the hotel porch, sir! You’ll see almighty
- sudden how news hits a mining town. ‘Dirty-shirt’ Maddox don’t have to
- bring a gold-mine down into Breed City. He’s the bulletin, that’s all.
- There’ll be proof enough pretty close on his heels.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So I went over on the tavern porch. Five minutes later I realized that the
- bulletin was loose. “It” came whooping around a corner of the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Maddox’s nickname fitted him perfectly; in fact, he was well caked
- with mud from head to feet. Plainly he had not stopped to pick dry spots
- in his rush down to Breed City. He was shaking a canvas bag over his head
- with one hand and in the other flourished a handful of stock certificates.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who’s got ‘Bright Eyes’? They’ve hit it! High grade from Buffalo Hump
- clear through the earth to Chiny! Whoosh! Who wants ‘Bright Eyes’? Here’s
- some that’s loose. And there ain’t much loose, gents! They have been
- picking it up! High grade and pockets full of crumble!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook the canvas bag and opened it when men went crowding about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There he is,” announced Mr. Flye at my side.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Looks the part,” said I.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After I had rubbed his jaws where the gag had hurt,” confided my friend,
- “he told me that he ain’t more’n four jumps ahead of the boss engineer
- expert who is bringing out the samples for the report. All you’ve got to
- do now, sir, is to sit tight and look wise!”
- </p>
- <p>
- My unlucky friend could not do much looking for his part; his eyes were
- swelled so badly that he could hardly open them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here, Mr. Flye,” I said, with a lot of repentance, “I must seem to
- you like pretty much of a crab. I don’t know how—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was only a gold-mine guess, according to your notion, sir. And I know
- how an Easterner must feel on that point. But when I have a friend and
- make up my mind to let him in on a good thing I propose to do it, even if
- I have to apologize to him afterward for being almighty fresh. So I—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t make me feel worse than I am feeling!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a crowd in the street of Breed City by that time and Mr. Maddox,
- in the center of it, had worked himself into a frenzy of excitement and
- was offering “Bright Eyes” stock at a million dollars a share.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t mind that kind of talk,” advised Mr. Flye. “He’s half tight, and
- his coco ain’t just right when he gets to talking in a crowd, but you
- needn’t worry but what his news is all right. And you can see for
- yourself!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Several men were larruping cayuses up the street, bags dangling from
- saddle-bows.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s the first of the rush for the ‘Bright Eyes’ section. Some of the
- critters out this way can beat firemen for quick action,” stated Mr. Flye.
- Perhaps to emphasize the fact that now at last he felt himself on a
- footing of intimate friendship with me, he plucked a cigar from my vest
- pocket and lighted up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see you don’t smoke—you probably chaw,” he suggested, and he
- handed his plug to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I state here that I promptly took the plug, whittled off a chunk,
- palmed it, and put some gum into my mouth, the depth of my esteem for Mr.
- Flye may be understood. I would rather have chewed that tobacco than hurt
- his feelings by refusing a friendly offer.
- </p>
- <p>
- While we stood there a bearded man rode down the street, mud-covered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And there’s the man who will back me up!” squealed Maddox. “There comes
- the boss engineer! He knows what’s under cover in ‘Bright Eyes’!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But the bearded man rode right through the crowd without answering
- questions. He alighted in front of the bank and went in, tugging something
- in his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- As a new, and somewhat heavy, stockholder in “Bright Eyes” gold-mine, I
- reckoned I’d try to get a little information from that engineer—I
- was quite sure that an Eastern capitalist who wore a silk hat and had a
- friend in the bank cashier might expect a little more attention than a
- street bystander. Therefore, with a word to my friend Flye I went over to
- find out the best or the worst.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXIII—THE CLEAN-UP
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER I had been
- properly indorsed by the cashier, the mining engineer gave me some mighty
- comforting information, though I did not understand the technical lingo
- very well. He was conservative; he was not at all excited. We could hear
- “Dirty-shirt” still orating.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course that old lunatic doesn’t know what he is talking about,” said
- the engineer. “There are always some of that sort to run and rant and stir
- up excitement and start poor fools off on a wild-goose chase.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened a sack and showed me ore and hunks of crumbly rock which looked
- like nothing special. I had rather expected to see nuggets. He explained
- that the crumbly stuff was high grade, very much so, but there were only
- scattered pockets of it in the “Bright Eyes” claim.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The parties who first located the property,” said he, “simply skim in for
- what pockets they were able to open. They had to pack all their ore out on
- cayuses and ship it to Tacoma, and there was no profit to speak of unless
- the ore yielded over a couple hundred dollars a ton. So when they quit the
- job the mine seemed to be played out.” Then he went on with his technical
- talk, and about all I could do was to blink and try to look wise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can be sure that Newell knows what he is talking about,” put in the
- cashier.
- </p>
- <p>
- I wished <i>I</i> knew. I wanted to butt in with some excited questions.
- ‘But I did understand that the men who had gathered up most of the stock
- of the mine were going to build a smelter and tackle the thing right end
- to. There was plenty of ore and the mine would pay after development was
- the comforting information handed to me at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon, but how many shares went to you in that trade you just
- made?” asked the cashier. “That is, if you’re willing to tell me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Twenty thousand—I bought for ten cents a share.” The engineer
- showed some surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t think so much of the loose stuff was corralled in one bunch; we
- thought what we hadn’t picked up was scattered so wide that we wouldn’t
- bother to chase it,” said he. “How did you happen to grab in on it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t propose to betray Mr. Flye.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, it was just a gamble! A fellow kept following around after me and I
- bought to get rid of him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Some of you Eastern Yankees certainly can use your noses for something
- else than to talk through,” said the engineer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I smelled a bargain when I bought that stock I reckon it must have
- been hunch instead of knowledge.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, stick by and stand your assessment for the smelter and you won’t be
- sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mayor Ware and several other citizens came hurrying to have the news about
- “Bright Eyes” confirmed. I stood at one side for a time, listening and
- meditating. When the cashier told them of my lucky strike they were
- immensely tickled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you know we Easterners never can make a goldmine seem real,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In most cases where they’re selling stock East the mines are not real.
- But you’re West, now, and you happened in on the ground floor,” said the
- mayor. “I am sorry I’m not there, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can be,” I promptly informed him. “I’m called back home. I’m in a
- hurry. I don’t know anything about gold-mines. I can’t come back here to
- watch my interests. You folks out here know all about mines and values. My
- stock is for sale if anybody wants it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What price?” inquired the mayor. “We might make up a little syndicate.
- How much do you want for the stock?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know,” I confessed, frankly. “It’s all new to me. I paid ten
- cents a share. When a gold-mine gets to paying I don’t know how much it
- pays.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It depends on the mine,” stated the engineer. “We can do a pretty good
- job of guessing in our line, but we can’t see all that’s underground.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I pulled out my packet of stock.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you honestly, gentlemen, this seems more or less like a joke to me—and
- that being the case I’ll sell cheap.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s really worth par—or it will be in time, I’m sure,” stated the
- mayor, in honest fashion. “We are under great obligations to you, sir, and
- we don’t want to take advantage of you in any way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I feel just that same way toward you, gentlemen,” I assured them.
- “There’s always the element of a gamble in mining, I’m sure, though I
- don’t know much about it. Your mine may flush out. I’ll tell you what I’ll
- do—I’ll meet you on a half-way basis. I’ll sell for half price—fifty
- cents on a dollar. Give me ten thousand dollars and you own the stock.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They stepped aside and conferred.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you’ll be in town a few days longer!” suggested the mayor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I can get out of here to-night I want to go. I must go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say again, we don’t want to take any advantage of you because you are
- obliged to leave in such a hurry. This may seem like queer talk for
- business men to make—to offer more than the price asked. But we want
- you to remember that Breed City is grateful.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I really am not asking for any presents,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was jackass talk for me to make, and I knew it. Lord! we needed all
- the money we could scrape. But a funny sort of pride swelled up in me. I
- did not propose to be outdone in politeness. Never had I had municipal
- attentions shown to my humble self before I came to Breed City. They did
- not realize all the good it had done me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is no proposition of that sort,” declared the mayor. “But we are so
- sure of Newell’s judgment that we know we shall make big profits on this
- stock. There are six of us. We propose to give you twelve thousand
- dollars, so that the amount you have paid for the stock will be handed
- back to you also. We’d like you to remember that Breed City was good to
- you to the extent of ten thousand dollars’ clear profit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That asinine pride was prompting me to split the difference with them. But
- across the street just then I saw the old judge peering about, evidently
- in a panic of anxiety about me because I had been gone so long with all
- that money. Another memory jogged me at that moment. I was morally bound
- to hand Dodovah Vose some profit on his five hundred dollars. Haggling
- with those enthusiastic citizens of Breed would be feeding my fool pride
- at the expense of two old men.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s a trade, gentlemen, with all thanks to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The mayor was president of the bank and I guess the rest were directors;
- at any rate, the cashier, in about two minutes, was asking me how I would
- have it!
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked for currency—big bills. I had a boyish, eager hankering to
- lug the money to the judge, to show it to him, to have him count it and
- feel it and know that he could face the taxpayers of Levant, even if he
- couldn’t satisfy all his creditors. But even bankruptcy, thought I, was
- not State prison; my uncle would be cheated out of that part of his
- revenge. My fingers itched and my eyes shone while the cashier nipped at
- the comers of the bills with moistened fingers. He wrapped them in oiled
- paper and I sunk them carefully in my clothes!
- </p>
- <p>
- I made as quick a getaway as politeness would allow.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I remember it, I left a promise to come back to Breed City and settle
- down!
- </p>
- <p>
- I caught Judge Kingsley by the arm and hurried him down-street and into
- the hotel.
- </p>
- <p>
- The moment we were in our room I began jamming packages of money into his
- hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look at it! Feel of it! Smell of it!” I urged. “Judge, I took that money
- out for an airing and the junket did it lots of good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not understand. I guess he thought I’d merely brought back the
- Pratt money and had gone crazy while I was out with it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s sixteen thousand dollars net and clear for us, Judge Kingsley!
- And I reckon we won’t hunt up Pratt and hand back the thousand that’s over
- and above his graft from you. He’s a liberal gentleman and he ought to be
- willing to pay our expenses and for wear and tear. Now pack up, sir!” I
- clapped him on the shoulder. “I can’t stop to tell you the story just yet.
- We’ll have it on the way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I began to pack the money into my pockets.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was deathly white when he stood up, and he staggered against the wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “On the way! Where?” he gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Home!” I yelled, frolicking like a lad. “Home! And we’ve got to make a
- race of it if we propose to head Uncle Deck Sidney under the wire!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ten minutes later I was humping around Breed City, trying to find out how
- I could escape.
- </p>
- <p>
- The stage would not leave till morning. And that stage would take us to
- Royal City, and blamed if I wanted to go through Royal City.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew well enough, of course, that Pratt had gone back there to join his
- forces and I could hardly hope that the forces were still in jail.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the new railroad which they were building into Breed only a part of the
- rails were down; they were not operating trains. There was no stage line
- through the broken country in that direction.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Buffalo Hump Mountains were to the south, and to the east the Bitter
- Root range raised obstructions.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had the judge on my back, as it were! I couldn’t wake him up to what had
- happened. He appeared to be mentally and physically prostrated. I myself
- could have straddled a cayuse and ducked out over the broken country. But
- the judge must have wheels under him when he was moved.
- </p>
- <p>
- There seemed to be nothing to do but smash through Royal City, taking our
- chances. I felt that the citizens there wouldn’t see us murdered on the
- street, but they could not be expected to go along and guard us all the
- way home. We would have three buzzards on our trail!
- </p>
- <p>
- I was mighty blue and some scared. I was wishing that I had not indulged
- that boyish impulse to carry my fortune in cash. I would be fine picking
- for those devils! Take that money and the judge, and I had two pretty
- heavy parcels to tug back to the East. The dusk came down on Breed before
- I had braced myself to make the jump.
- </p>
- <p>
- No, there was nothing else to it!
- </p>
- <p>
- In order to catch trains and get to Levant ahead of calamity we must go
- back across Callas prairie and run the gantlet of those three renegades.
- </p>
- <p>
- I reckoned, according to my reading of time-tables, that the delay of even
- one day would bump our plans fatally.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had tried several times to find my friend, Mr. Wash Flye. I could not
- get on to his track to save me. I wanted to talk transportation with him,
- for I was having a mighty discouraging time of it with other parties.
- </p>
- <p>
- There were four public stables in the city, so I found by asking
- questions. I tackled the biggest one first. The man in the office was
- pulling off hip rubber boots with the air of one who has decided to call
- it a day. He laughed at me when I asked for a horse.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My friend, every cayuse in my stable that can walk, trot, run, or limp,
- or even can cover ground by rolling over is hired and has either started
- for the Blacksnake country where that new strike has been reported or else
- is going to start with a crazy prospector astraddle.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I offered to buy a horse. He said that he didn’t do business that way—he
- had made promises and would keep them. I asked for names of men who had
- hired. I found a few and was turned down; they all expected to get rich if
- they could get to Blacksnake.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had no better luck at the other stables.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bright Eyes” had made me—it looked as if it would also unmake me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can’t get it out of their heads in these parts that first-comers on a
- strike ain’t due to be millionaires,” one man told me. “If you want a hoss
- you’ll have to carpenter together a new one. The only plugs in the city
- that haven’t been nailed by prospectors are the spare hosses of the stage
- company—and old Uncle Sam’s mail keeps his thumb down hard on those
- critters.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I set my teeth and began to hunt all the harder for my friend. I got
- word of him here and there, but an eel in a dock quicksand could not have
- been more of a dodger. It was evident that success had put springs into
- the legs and restlessness into the heart of this new Rockebilt of Breed
- City. The trail grew hot—the trail grew cold. It was late in the
- evening when I finally caught up with him. He was clinking glasses with
- “Dirty-shirt” Maddox, in a bar down an alley where Breed City’s virtuous
- ten-o’clock-closing ordinance could be more safely violated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve done a lot for you, Mr. Mann, but I can’t monkey-doodle with the
- company hosses at this time o’ year when the mud makes double work.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I drew him outdoors and down the alley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m meddling with another man’s secret, my friend, but I’m going to tell
- you enough so that you’ll understand what this means to a poor old man
- and;—and—a girl back East.”
- </p>
- <p>
- At the end of my little speech the driver put out his, wiry hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I didn’t do my part to help you in this job I’d have-; to own up to
- having a spavined soul and a heart with, wind-puffs on it. Go out on the
- road a half-mile and I’ll overtake you with two hosses and a mud-cart.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Before midnight our little expedition was well started across the prairie.
- The cart was light, the crisp air of the March night had stiffened the
- mud, and we naturally made-better time than with the heavy outfit on which
- we had ridden to Breed. But it was coming, dawn when we got to the
- rim-rock at the edge of Callas prairie.. Far below we could see the
- chimneys of Royal City, smoking signals of early breakfasts.
- </p>
- <p>
- During the crawl across the adobe ruts, under the stars, I had canvassed
- with the driver the dangers that the presence of Pratt and his associate
- rogues in Royal City held for two gentlemen who desired to mind their own
- business and travel East by that; first train.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Friends,” stated the driver, after he had meditated on the matter, “I’m
- going to drop you right here at the rim-rock. Just over there is the mouth
- of a path that leads down the side of the canon by a short cut—it’s
- all of two miles further by the stage-road where you came-up. The path
- doesn’t hit the stage-road anywhere. Now if those chaps are out and free
- they’ll be likely to ram across to Breed by this morning’s stage. They
- want to see you mighty quick and what the mayor said to Pratt won’t keep
- ’em away, I reckon! They must be reckless by now! If you walk down
- the path you’ll dodge ’em—for the stage is just about
- leaving. There’s an old feller named Mike at the foot of the path who’ll
- ferry you. You’ll have a full hour to make the train. Take your time down
- the path so that you’ll be sure to miss the stage. If your men are still
- in Royal City—well, if I was in your place I’d take that train,
- anyway, even if I had to leave orders behind for the funerals and the
- flowers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We climbed down and I started to shove my hand into my pocket. Mr. Flye
- threw his own hand to his hip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hands up!” he called, sharply. “Don’t you pull that wallet! When a chap
- gets rich overnight like I’ve done he’s pretty touchy when a friend tries
- to put favor on a cash basis. I didn’t think you’d do it, Mr. Mann.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Tears came into my eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hands up? Yes, hands up to you, good friend, both hands up to you.” I
- grabbed the driver’s fists in mine. “But I don’t understand just why you
- have done for me all that you’ve done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon I smelled out by sort of instinct that you was giving up your
- time, doing good for somebody else,” he said, with a nod at the old man.
- “At any rate, I took to you, and when I take to a man it’s all of a sudden
- and, doggone it, I just can’t help giving him my shirt—if it’s clean
- enough and he’ll take it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not trust himself to stay any longer. He lashed his horses, they
- spun around, dragging the cart on two wheels, and away the outfit went
- across the prairie. And I never saw Wash Flye any more!
- </p>
- <p>
- I hurried along and the old man found the path too steep for conversation.
- In places we were obliged to cling to sloping trees and ease our way down.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were startled, after a time, by the sudden appearance of a man in the
- path ahead. He was climbing with haste.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, gents,” he called, cheerily, “you’re lucky to be coming down
- instead of going up! But I figured that I’d rather climb up to the prairie
- and get a little sunshine than stay down there and wait for that stage to
- get fixed up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stopped and wiped his forehead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What about the stage?” I asked. I had a vision of Dragg, Dawlin, and
- Pratt waiting at the river below or lounging in the streets of Royal City,
- blocking our path of retreat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, a tire came off, this side of the river, and the rim caved in.
- They’ve propped up the old caboose and sent the wheel back to the
- blacksmith shop. You ought to have heard those other three passengers
- swear! I’ve had a chance to hear it scientific and fancy in my time—but
- those gents certainly could hang on the trimmings. Especially the fat
- one!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fat one!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yep! Fat man with a suit of clothes that would put the eyesight of a
- Potlatch coyote on the blink. They seem to be in a hurry. They’re walking
- up this hill, too. Other two men are derricking fat man up the trail. Are
- making some talk about getting a rancher to set ’em across Callas.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He clapped on his hat and climbed along.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he had disappeared, I led the way into the pine growth at the side of
- the trail, and we found a boulder which would shield the two of us.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dragg came first—carrying out the suggestion of his name by pulling
- at Mr. Pratt with all his strength, and Dawlin pushed behind. They halted
- often and one of their stops was just below our boulder. They were telling
- each other what they proposed to do to a certain person who wore a
- plug-hat.
- </p>
- <p>
- I drew the two guns from my hip pockets, and I could feel the arm of the
- judge trembling against my ribs.
- </p>
- <p>
- But after the three went puffing on and were out of sight, I dropped the
- weapons into a crevice between the ledges.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I did not intend to shoot them,” I said, when Judge Kingsley asked
- questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- We hurried on down the trail.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But why did you throw away those two good revolvers?” asked the thrifty
- old chap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I only borrowed them. It might seem like stealing if I should carry them
- back East. I don’t like to have stolen property on my person,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not feel like talking. That remark stopped further conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- We caught the train!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXIV—HOW SWEET IS THE HOME-COMING, EH?
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>Y thoughts, fears,
- and hopes went galloping ahead of me during that ride back to the East.
- It’s all a blur of memory—wheat-fields, prune-orchards, tunnels,
- peaks, and prairies—and the old judge sitting beside me, twisting
- his withered hands and cracking his bony knuckles. It was lucky for both
- of us that the slow part of the journey was at the start and that we had
- the clang of mile-a-minute rails under us for the last two days of that
- race.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, I thought the thing over. It was just as much of a nightmare then as
- it seems now when I am setting it down.
- </p>
- <p>
- How I ever undertook such a crack-brained, daredevil trip and hoped for
- anything tangible to fall to me by such a hundred-to-one shot I do not
- understand even now in clear fashion, in spite of the explanation I have
- given. We talk about hunches in this world! If I had not obeyed some sort
- of suggestion I certainly would not have chased those renegades. Only by
- meeting with them did I stand a chance of recovering any money. That
- thought and my hankering to use my knowledge about the Pratt-Dawlin gang
- influenced me a great deal, I suppose. And the conviction that I couldn’t
- spin a thread by seeking money in any other way pried me out of Levant, of
- course.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have had something to say about the force of circumstances!
- </p>
- <p>
- I was not in a comfortable frame of mind at all, though the money in my
- pockets should have given me considerable cheer. I did not feel that it
- was my money—any of it. I could not make it seem like anything which
- belonged to me or convince myself that I had earned it. I had picked a
- man’s pocket for part of it and the rest of that cash had been jammed into
- my pockets, so to speak. I was not wasting a moment’s time on questioning
- the morality of any of my acts. I reckoned if Pratt’s wallet had been
- stuffed with twice as much I would have kept the plunder.
- </p>
- <p>
- I pondered on another point.
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley, provided we got under the wire in season, could be saved
- from the charge of criminality, but he still had his salvation,
- financially, to work out. He needed all that money and more—and I
- had volunteered—had forced myself on him as combination courier and
- savior. It was all settled in my mind, according to my private code, that
- I must hand over the cash.
- </p>
- <p>
- I will state right here that the decision I had come to about the money
- did not rasp my feelings in the slightest. I had read quite a few
- story-books in my time. If there was ever a case in the whole realm of
- fact and fiction where the final scene would show loving daughter clasped
- in adoring lover’s arms, and a benignant father raising his hands over
- them with “Bless-you-my-children” sentiment, my affair seemed to be
- triumphantly of that sort. Time, effort, and money—it all belonged
- in the family!
- </p>
- <p>
- My heart glowed and my eyes grew moist and it was a wonder that I did not
- blurt out the whole thing to the judge—I felt so sure of him!
- </p>
- <p>
- However, he had his own troubles to take up his mind pretty completely, I
- realized. There was no telling what might be happening back home, with my
- uncle Deck stirring things. If I had timed trains right, and nothing
- tipped upside down, we didn’t have much more than twenty-four hours’
- leeway in Levant ahead of that town meeting. I asked the judge if the town
- notes were very widely scattered, and he told me they were not. He had
- picked special parties whom he could depend on to keep their mouths shut
- about their investment, and he felt pretty sure that they would hand back
- the notes in exchange for cash and would ask no questions and would keep
- still in the future.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I can’t eat and I can’t sleep,” he mourned, “not till I have those
- papers in my two hands!” He put up his crooked claws and worked them. “In
- my hands—all torn into ribbons—and then into the fire! Just
- think of it!” He croaked the words and shivered. “Papers—only a few
- papers! Scattered around town. Papers with ink-marks! Yet they can send me
- to State prison!”
- </p>
- <p>
- No, that wasn’t the time to talk with the judge about being his partner or
- his son-in-law. But I did talk more with him in regard to plans for
- gathering in the notes quietly and quickly the moment we struck town. I
- had him give me the names so that I could help plan the campaign.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew them, of course. They were old tight-wads of farmers in the back
- districts who would endure lighted candles at their feet for a long time
- before they would leak any information about their money matters; there
- were some widows and old maids who didn’t know anything about money
- matters, anyway. The judge had picked well, I had to admit to myself. But
- there was a lot to do, a mighty short time to do it in, and it had got to
- be done with the delicate touch a bashful chap would use in picking a
- rose-leaf off a sleeping schoolmarm’s cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore, this was my suggestion to the judge: we’d slip off the train a
- station below Levant Comers, hire a hitch, and make our rounds of the
- town’s creditors in the back-lots before we showed up in Levant village.
- </p>
- <p>
- That’s what we did.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lengthened days of April gave us a full hour and a half of sunlight
- for our ride on our quest. Out of cupboards and long wallets and rosewood
- boxes the farmers and the old maids dutifully produced their town notes—“for
- the judge had called on.” They seemed to believe that his wish to call in
- the notes settled the matter beyond all question.
- </p>
- <p>
- He became once more his dignified, calm, self-contained self, though I
- could see that it was only by exercise of all his will power.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had placed packets of money in his hands and he figured interest and
- made payments.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first man with whom he did business gave the judge his cue and made me
- thank the good Lord that I had planted that seed in Dodovah Vose!
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re looking better than I have ever seen you, Judge! Younger, too!
- What have you been doing to yourself? Oh, your whiskers are cut off!
- Improves you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The moment we had struck Spokane I bought alcohol and stripped that
- grotesque mustache from the judge’s face. In spite of his haggard
- countenance, he did look younger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s said around town,” proceeded Farmer Bailey—=and I held my
- breath and did not dare to look at Judge Kingsley—“that you’ve just
- cleaned up a lot of money in a big deal. Dod Vose has given out first
- news! We’re all glad of it because we have always looked up to you as a
- financier.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge nodded stiffly in acknowledgment of the compliment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I suppose he has made you rich, too, young Sidney, taking you under
- his wing like he has,” suggested the farmer, with a wink. “Your uncle is
- giving you a black eye for deserting the family—like he done the
- first time you left town—but I guess you haven’t made any mistake by
- grabbing in with Judge Kingsley.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m quite sure of that,” I told Farmer Bailey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hate to take this money, Judge,” said the farmer. “It’s been safe with
- you. I ain’t a financier like you be. It hasn’t been taxed. You bet I have
- kept my mouth shut!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s only to clear up town business on account of the special meeting
- which has been called for to-morrow,” stated the judge. “I am glad to hear
- you have kept the matter private. I merely tried to help a few of my
- friends. And I suggest that you say nothing about having received this
- money or that you have surrendered a town note. There are disturbers in
- town who threaten a high tax-rate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s Deck Sidney, thrashing around to make a big show of his authority,
- now that he is selectman,” the farmer grumbled. “He ain’t being backed up
- by the people, I can tell you that! It’s all right to be enterprising, but
- he is too cussed much so. He was around here the other day, trying to nose
- out whether I held a town note or not!” I felt a thrill of fear and the
- judge grew visibly paler. “Yes, he hung on and coaxed and threatened and
- argued. But I knew what he was up to!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He winked at the shrinking judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He said if I didn’t bring my town note into the meeting I’d never be able
- to collect.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did he know you held a town note?” croaked the judge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He didn’t know! He was round town guessing. I never let on. I knew he
- wasn’t any financier. I knew that you’d protect me, no matter what Deck
- Sidney might say. I smelled him out, all right! He thinks he is running
- this town and he tried to bamboozle me so that he could find some more
- property to tax. I reckon we’ll show him where he belongs when it comes to
- next annual meeting. He’s getting altogether too big for his britches!” We
- learned much more about my uncle’s recent activities before we finished
- our ride. Evidently, when he had held his nose in the air he had sniffed
- town notes; but when he had set his nose to the ground and had tried to
- run those notes to their lairs he had failed. At any rate, the holders
- protested to the judge that they had not dropped one word—all of
- them suspecting that my uncle was merely digging out property to tax. The
- resentful farmers had replied to his anathema with some of their own and
- the frightened old maids had been too scared to say anything to him. We
- heard enough to know that he had traveled more or less by guesswork, and
- had made his quest general, hoping to corner somebody by chance. If we
- could believe the protestations of the parties concerned, Judge Kingsley’s
- defenses still presented a fair front to the world..
- </p>
- <p>
- At last, before the evening was old, the judge had taken into his hands
- the last note.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then we ordered our driver to hurry us to the village.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Sidney,” said the judge, when he had paid the driver and stood in the
- shadows at the edge of the square, “this is not the time to talk over our
- affairs, but I do want you to step into my office for a few moments.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He led the way.
- </p>
- <p>
- The big house was dark and a queer kind of a shiver ran through me when I
- looked at it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The devil must have had me in his clutch all these days,” muttered the
- judge. “I have been worse than a lunatic. Not a word from me to my poor
- folks at home!”
- </p>
- <p>
- To tell the truth, I had not been giving much thought to our remissness in
- that duty. I have never been much of a letter-writer in my life—I
- had been so long without folks who cared to hear from me that the matter
- of keeping anybody posted on my whereabouts never came into my mind. To be
- sure, I had Celene Kingsley in my mind all the time, even in the stress of
- our adventures, but I had not presumed to write to her. During our travels
- it had not occurred to me that it was any part of my business to prompt
- Judge Kingsley in any of his family affairs. But now that we were back, in
- front of that gloomy house, I realized just how brutal the whole thing
- was.
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge went to his office door and his hand trembled so violently that
- the key clattered all around the hole; what with the darkness and his
- agitation, he could not unlock the door, and I did it for him, gently
- taking the key from his hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- I lighted his lamp when we were within. We stood there for a few moments
- and looked at each other.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s so still!” he mumbled. “It seems early for them to be in bed.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But your folks must be all right,” I ventured. “If there was anything
- wrong we would have heard about it while we have been riding about town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably! Probably!” His voice quavered and he was all a-tremble. “But it
- seems so still!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat down at his table and pulled out the notes he had been gathering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are entitled to look on, Mr. Sidney! I wanted you to see me do it. I
- don’t just understand all the reasons yet why you have helped me as you
- have. We will talk about that some day when my head is clearer. It’s all a
- dream—a dream—a dream—so it seems now.” He sort of
- maundered along in his talk. He did not seem to be at all sure of himself.
- If the thought did come to me with any force that then was a good time to
- tell him why I had volunteered as I had done, I put the idea away when I
- looked at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He dumped papers out of a tin tray which stood on the table. He piled the
- notes in the tray.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Touch a match to them, sir,” he told me. “You are entitled to do it. We
- will watch them burn. I signed them as town treasurer. One of them would
- put me into prison. Hurry! Set the match to them!” And I obeyed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, almost before the red embers were dark, he dove his hands into the
- ashes of the papers and scrufled them about and out of him came the most
- dreadful cackle of laughter I ever heard.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was anxious to end that scene as quickly as I could. I pulled a packet
- from my coat and laid it on the table; I tapped my finger on it to get his
- attention.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here is something I have held out, Judge Kingsley,”
- </p>
- <p>
- I informed him. “There’s a thousand dollars tied up in this paper. Five
- hundred of it I accepted from Dodo-vah Vose, agreeing to put him in right
- in our speculation. I took it when I started West.”
- </p>
- <p>
- In spite of his emotion the old judge’s business sense flared just as the
- fire had flared in the tray a moment before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there was no speculation—there was no business deal! Why did
- you take money in that way?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had special reasons of my own, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you had no right—it was a private affair—it—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I also had reasons of your own to consider, sir,” I broke in. “Mr.
- Vose asked me to invest for him. I wanted your name to stand well after we
- were gone. I was under obligations to Mr. Vose and when I told him we had
- a big deal on I could give him no good reason why I would not turn a
- little profit his way. That’s why the man Bailey is so sure that your
- credit is now good. You’ll find that the news has gone all about the
- section—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’ll be jumping on me for the money I owe!” snarled the judge. “Vose
- has ruined me if he has bragged. You have—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just a moment, sir, before you say something you’ll be sorry for. It’s
- just the other way, I’ll warrant! Men will bring more money to you. You
- can be shrewd and work out of your troubles. Your credit is established. I
- made a good play when I did it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You say there’s a thousand dollars in that envelope?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir! I have handed the other packets to you. I propose to give Mr.
- Vose five hundred dollars profit—and after I have done that you’ll
- get the best advertising you ever had. They’ll rate you mighty high in
- these parts. Five hundred is a cheap price for what you’ll get.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I need every cent just now to tide me over,” he whined. “You are
- throwing money away recklessly. Vose can be taken care of some time. Give
- him his own five hundred—or—or—say it has been invested
- for him. I will attend to his case later.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And do you know what that old rhinoceros did? He reached out his paw to
- take that packet. I had to pound my fist on his fingers to make him let
- go.
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood up and called me names—said that I was taking money he
- needed. I suppose I ought to have made allowances for the state of mind he
- was in—his fears—his weakness of old age—his dreadful
- anxiety which still goaded him.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I was in a bad way, myself, and I could not pardon that selfishness.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Confound you,” I yelled, “I have a mind to back you against the wall and
- strip every dollar out of your pockets!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then we heard a noise and we turned around, and there stood Celene
- Kingsley looking at us—looking at me especially with hatred and
- horror.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father!” she cried. “Shall I run and call help? He is robbing you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I certainly could not say a word just then, and the judge sat down and
- gasped and gaped at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- She came into the room. She was white and pale and thin, but she was no
- shrinking and anguished maiden. She was showing the female’s ferocity in
- guarding her own.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard you! Confessing that you’re a robber out of your own mouth! Where
- have you been with my poor father? What devilish spell have you put on him—you
- and the rest of your gang?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She turned away from me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father, don’t you realize that you have come home when it is too late?
- Oh, God in heaven, why did you not break away from those rogues and come
- home—or write so that we could ransom you? I know. They have kept
- you a prisoner!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Too late?” he looked at his office safe. I knew what he was afraid of.
- “Too late?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She began to sob. “It has killed mother!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He got up and staggered to her and took her in his arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your mother dead?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s worse than that! It’s her mind—it has gone, and her body is
- following. She hasn’t known me for days. She lies there dying.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was shocked, but I must confess I did not feel like a murderer. Mrs.
- Kingsley had been ill when we went away—she had so declared in my
- hearing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Kingsley,” I put in, “I’m sorry, but your father and I—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Her tears ceased and she turned on me in a fury. I knew something about
- the Kingsley disposition, but I did not know before that she had so much
- of it in her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sorry! You sorry? I know about you, you miserable low-lived wretch! I
- have been hunting for my father. Do you think I would look down on my
- dying mother and not spend every cent I had in trying to find where you
- had taken him? My detectives have been on that trail you left in the
- city!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Able detectives! On the cold and easy trail instead of nosing on the warm
- one!
- </p>
- <p>
- “But please listen to me—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “To more of your lies? No! I know you for what you are—hiding from
- the police in the city—coming back here to finish the ruin of my
- innocent father after your friends had been, sent here by you to rob him.
- You don’t dare to deny what you have been in the city! Your face convicts
- you!” >
- </p>
- <p>
- I was perfectly conscious that I was not presenting any lamb-like picture
- of innocence. She certainly had me on the run when she burst out with that
- exposure of my city record. But I did not propose to lie down and stick up
- my feet like a calf ticketed for the butcher.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Kingsley,” I said, slapping the packet of money across my palm—and
- that was a poor tool to use for emphasis after she had heard my talk to
- her father, “you must listen—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have been listening just now! I heard you threaten to strip my poor
- father of every cent he has in the world! Do you deny you said it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, but—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you deny that you have been the sort of a man I have said you were?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rushed at me, her hands like claws. I was reminded of a sight I had
- witnessed in boyhood—a shrieking meadow-thrush defending her nest
- against a sneaking snake.
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked past her toward the judge. I did hope he would say something,
- even though I did not expect that he would come out with the whole truth.
- Honestly, I would have stopped him short if he had started to confess to
- her anything about the real reason why I was mixed into his affairs. Had
- not the whole expedition been planned so that the women folks would not
- know?
- </p>
- <p>
- Nevertheless, a decent man in his right senses could have made some sort
- of talk to help me out. But it was plain enough that Judge Kingsley was
- not in his right senses—he did not seem to have much of any sense
- left in him; he was doddering around the room, twisting his hands and
- accusing himself of having killed his wife.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Please listen,” I implored. “You have heard only one side—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will not listen! You, your uncle, the renegades you associate with, you
- have tried to ruin my father. You weren’t even decent enough to be an open
- enemy—you came sneaking into our home to lie to us and deceive us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “By the gods,” I shouted, “you will listen to me! I don’t propose to be
- kicked around from pillar to post all my life. I am the best friend the
- Kingsley family ever had. If your father doesn’t tell you so, I will.
- Judge Kingsley, why don’t you be a man?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But he gave me a fishy look and went on lamenting.
- </p>
- <p>
- She started for the door. “There are honest men in this village—I’m
- going to call them!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I got to the door ahead of her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s another time coming—a better time for an explanation—and
- you’ll be the sorriest girl in the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can never be as sorry as I am now—sorry and ashamed! To think
- that I ever put confidence in a creature by the name of Sidney!”
- </p>
- <p>
- What a glorious home-coming for the paragon of selfsacrifice!
- </p>
- <p>
- I walked around the square half a dozen times before I dared to go into
- the tavern. I don’t know how I ever got through that interview with
- Dodovah Vose without betraying my state of mind, but I managed it and
- excused my peculiarity by saying that I was all worn out by my trip. And
- he had too much on his own mind in a few minutes to pay special attention
- to me, for I handed him one thousand dollars and went up to my room
- without bothering to contradict his excited guessings that the judge and I
- had cleaned up a fortune. Kingsley, I reflected, might as well have the
- benefit of the guessing. And, it must be known, hope was not dead in me in
- spite of my agony.
- </p>
- <p>
- Something else was very much alive in me. Blackleg, eh? Flashy rogue!
- Barker for gamblers!
- </p>
- <p>
- I took off that plug-hat, held it in both hands, and put my foot through
- the crown; then I kicked it all around the room. I stripped off that
- frock-coat, grabbed the tails and ripped it into two parts.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I went to the closet and surveyed that ready-made suit and the
- billycock hat with content.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the morning I would be Ross Sidney, professional diver, ready to go
- back on the job if there was any such thing as a job for me in all the
- world. I hoped I would be sane once more when I opened my eyes on a new
- day. I yanked that fancy waistcoat into ribbons, threw the pearl-gray
- trousers under the bed, and hurried to go to sleep so that I would not
- become completely crazy before I could forget my troubles.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXV—GRATITUDE!
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE surely is a
- lot in this conscious-virtue notion! I had plenty of the quality next
- morning.
- </p>
- <p>
- Things seemed brighter. I felt like myself once more. It was inconceivable
- that the horrible misunderstanding between Celene Kingsley and myself
- could continue very long; I was ready to make confession as to my
- temporary lunacy in the city, and my new optimism encouraged me to believe
- that she would find excuse for me. At any rate, I was soon assured that
- whatever she had learned from that detective, whoever he was, she had kept
- it to herself. From that reticence I drew excellent augury that she was
- not out to ruin me. If she had opened her mouth about my past I would have
- known it the moment I stepped out on the street in Levant. But every
- person I met ducked polite salute, and I met many persons because the
- village was full on account; of the town meeting.
- </p>
- <p>
- At ten o’clock the town hall was crowded and in a short time the
- cut-and-dried preliminaries were over.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle was with his associates on the platform, and the stare he gave me
- when he caught my eyes was so demoniac that I was careful not to look his
- way again for some time.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was evidence of strained anticipation everywhere in the gathering. I
- heard voters whispering that Deck Sidney proposed to spring something. But
- nobody, according to what I could hear, presumed to put in words what they
- guessed.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle was mashing his personal batteries, I saw.
- </p>
- <p>
- An unemotional lawyer explained the purpose of the meeting, and then the
- moderator called on Judge Kingsley, as town treasurer, to give the
- financial standing of the town.
- </p>
- <p>
- Uncle Deck fairly bored the judge with his gaze when the old man walked to
- the platform and I was as intent with my scrutiny, for I was wondering how
- Kingsley would get through with it. He was white and somewhat shaky, but
- he was the same old cold proposition when he faced the voters.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you will pardon a word on a personal matter,” he said, as he
- unfolded his papers; “but I have returned from a business trip and find
- serious illness in my family. I have been keeping watch at the bedside of
- my dear wife and my thoughts are not clear enough to enable me to make the
- little address I had contemplated for to-day. I will only say that the
- movement to clear the town of its debt is very praiseworthy and my report
- will show that the thing may be done with a little extra effort. Our only
- considerable indebtedness consists of town bonds amounting to eight
- thousand dollars and current items as follows.” Then he went on to give
- the list of unpaid town orders, of which only a few were extant. “I see
- here representatives of the bondholders,” he added, “who will check my
- figures if such assurance is required by any voter—and probably most
- of the parties who hold town orders are in the meeting. I hope the town
- orders will be presented for payment at once so that there may be no
- floating indebtedness.” He folded up his papers.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle got up and stamped down his trousers legs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, you voters,” he called, “ask your questions!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But not a voice was raised.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m no lawyer and I’m making no threats,” my uncle went on. “But after
- the way this meeting has been advertised, and after the call that has been
- made, I reckon that the men who have been holding out claims against this
- town and who haven’t presented them will be left to whistle for their
- money. I propose to have action taken that will outlaw those claims.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Judge Kingsley turned slowly on my uncle and stood as stiff as a stake.
- </p>
- <p>
- “To what claims do you refer, Selectman Sidney? Do you question the
- accuracy of my report?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come out of your holes, you old woodchucks!” shouted Uncle Deck, looking
- past the judge at the voters. Men scowled at him and grumbled.
- </p>
- <p>
- The judge walked toward the First Selectman and shook his papers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You must talk to me, sir! I am the treasurer of this town and have been
- for a good many years. Here before the voters I demand that you specify
- claims.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll specify, then! How about the town notes that are out with your name
- on them?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A murmur ran through the assemblage.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just one moment, sir! Weigh your words,” warned the judge. “You are
- attacking my financial reputation; there is a law for slanderers and I
- have many witnesses here. Do you say there is one single town note extant
- with my name on it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say there are a lot of ’em!”
- </p>
- <p>
- This time many voters raised voices of protest and there were hisses.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s the thanks a straight man gets for trying to protect his town
- against a thief, eh?” raged my uncle, his ready temper bursting loose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If the judge don’t collect fifty thousand dollars damages for this, then
- I’m no guesser,” declared Dodovah Vose, who sat beside me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Uncle Deck tramped to the edge of the platform and with wagging finger
- selected a man in the throng; the man was Farmer Bailey.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bailey, you hold a town note with Kingsley’s name on it! You know you do!
- Are you going to sit there and see it canceled as no good by the vote of
- this town?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Bailey rose slowly and everybody listened in deep silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hold no note of any kind with Judge Kingsley’s name on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yah-h-h! You have told me that before. But you don’t dare to stand here
- in town meeting and say it under oath.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Send down that Bible on the stand and I’ll take oath and kiss the Book,”
- offered Bailey. There was applause and the judge quieted it by raising his
- hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will pay double for any note with my name on it as treasurer, and I
- will turn the money over to the town as a gift,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- I despised him when he made that bluff, though of course he had to do it.
- Really, in spite of his devilish temper and his spirit of revenge my uncle
- was twice the man Judge Kingsley was in that moment. I wasn’t trying to
- figure out the righteousness of the thing on either side; the judge was
- fighting for his very life, as well as his standing, and my uncle, though
- he was working for the good of the town according to his lights, was
- satisfying his old grudge—the real passion of his life.
- </p>
- <p>
- A voter rose and bellowed until he secured silence; they were giving the
- judge an ovation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to put in a word here, fellow-townsmen! Money has been borrowed on
- town notes. A certain eminent man you all know tried to borrow from me and
- said I could escape taxation. And now he is backed by the liars—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And barked at by the liars, too,” yelled another man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I stand up here for Selectman Sidney, who has given his time and effort
- to help this town out of the clutches—”
- </p>
- <p>
- They howled him down. But by this time the defenders of my uncle were
- howling, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This meeting is going to break up in a free fight if a stop isn’t put to
- this jawing,” said Dodovah Vose. He jumped up on the settee and made
- himself heard. “I move we adjourn!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The apprehensive moderator put the motion, the judge’s friends carried it,
- and the meeting was dissolved.
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle leaped off the platform and came raging at me through the crowd.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s you—you damnation imp of Gehenna! Racing and chasing over this
- town yesterday! I had a line on you. Saving that old whelp from what was
- coming to him!” He put his hands over his head and wriggled his fingers.
- “God! I don’t know what you have done—you got that money by robbing
- a bank, probably. But you have done it—you have jumped up and down
- on your family! You have got to answer to me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Men pushed away in panic and left us in a ring. But I had no notion of
- entertaining the old goggle-eyes of Levant by fisticuffs with my uncle. I
- folded my arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “According to your reckoning, Uncle Deck, I have owed you something for a
- long time. I want to stand square with you! Go ahead and collect!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not seem to understand at once.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go ahead and beat me up! I won’t raise a finger.” Yes, I would have taken
- the beating—I knew inside of me that I did owe my uncle something of
- the sort.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not by a dam-site, he sha’n’t beat you up,” declared Dodovah Vose. “I
- saved you from him once,” he said, careless of revelations, “and I’ll save
- you again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So, after waiting a minute and enduring my uncle’s tongue instead of his
- fists, I went away with Landlord Vose.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was not in the mood for any further paltering or palavering in regard to
- my personal and private standing with the Kingsley family. I had a
- collection to make and I proposed to go and make it. I ought to have known
- better than to force the issue at that time. But youth is headstrong, the
- sense of my injuries was hot, and I felt that if ever the judge might be
- willing to show his gratitude that would be the time.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was crossing the square on his way home and I left Mr. Vose and hurried
- after. I caught up with him at the front door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to come in and have a word with you and with your daughter,” I
- told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Impossible,” he said, curtly. “I’m afraid my wife is at death’s door. And
- my daughter—she is very bitter!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I propose to have you explain enough so that she will not be bitter, sir.
- It’s my due. You know what kind of a service I have rendered. I have made
- an enemy of my uncle—ruined all my prospects to help you. There are
- things you can tell your daughter to—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How does my daughter enter into any affairs between you and myself? You
- must let me alone in my sorrow. Later I will pay you for your services. I
- am grateful. If I were not in such distress I would explain how grateful I
- am. I will pray that I may be spared till I can pay back to you what I
- owe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good Cæsar! I don’t want your money, Judge Kingsley. I’ll work and earn
- more to help you out of your difficulties. I only ask you to be a man and
- make your daughter understand—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My daughter again! You don’t presume—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I do presume, sir. She was kind to me until this horrible
- misunderstanding came up. I expect you to tell her that I am your best
- friend. It’s my right!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I’ll never forget the look he gave me. I’ll wager a good bit that the idea
- of such enormity on my part never came into his Kingsley consciousness
- till that moment. Even then he did not seem to be just sure that he
- understood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t expect anything definite from you or her, Judge Kingsley, until I
- have made good in the world. But I do look to you to give me a square
- deal. That’s only what you owe to me, man to man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I owe you money and I will pay it. There is no other sort of bargain
- between us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stepped into his house and shut the door in my face.
- </p>
- <p>
- In that damnable situation I was minded to follow him and have it out,
- even if I were obliged to expose him. However, if death were hovering over
- that house it was a sanctuary I could not invade. But bitter thoughts
- raged in me when I turned away; I only asked to be set right with Celene.
- </p>
- <p>
- I understand that this part of my confession will elicit little sympathy
- for me from the casual reader who takes the comfortable view that the
- world is full of girls and if one does not swing low enough on the bough
- there’s always another within reach. But mine was the exceptional case
- where the first love had become an obsession and all my spirit of
- persistency was flaming in me. I have not figured out as yet whether the
- troubles into which my general persistency in all matters has slammed me
- overbalance the fruits it has brought to me—but I reckon, after all,
- I’ll have to take my hat off to my persistency. If I had been a quitter I
- would not have played the biggest game in my life—and I’m coming to
- that right soon.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once more circumstances were forcing me, though I needed mighty little
- forcing, to leave Levant at that juncture in my affairs.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn ’em!” I blazed out to Dodovah Vose when I stamped into the
- tavern, “I’ve got to show ’em! I’ll show ’em I can make
- good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He blinked at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you have shown ’em already,” he said. He thought, of course,
- that I was speaking about the general public in Levant. “And if I was in
- your place I wouldn’t give a dam what your uncle says to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Less than two hours later Landlord Vose revised that advice. He rushed up
- to my room where I was sorting some papers, having resolved to travel
- light when I did go.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get under—get under, young Sidney,” he gasped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Under what?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon I mean get out. It’s your uncle Deck! Bailey and some other of
- them yawp-mouths in this place have been twitting and tormenting him and
- dropping hints, and he’s worse than a sore-eared bulldog after a
- scruffing. He’s coming with a double-barreled shot-gun. He is! He’s drunk,
- son, and there’s no dealing with him. He lays it all to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won’t run.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he isn’t responsible, son. To say nothing of what will happen to you,
- it means that he’ll go to State prison. You’re sane and sober and you
- ought to be willing to save him from himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Right then Mr. Vose said something which appealed to me. I had stepped
- outside my family—I had conspired against my uncle—I had
- blocked his dearest ambition, iniquitous though it was. By hanging around
- and allowing him to take pot-shots at me I would be aggravating his
- troubles and bringing more serious afflictions upon him. A dead nephew,
- shot-riddled, would be a damning exhibit A in his trial for murder!
- </p>
- <p>
- I picked up my few belongings and escaped from the back door of the
- tavern, hid in a cross-road till Dodovah Vose’s stableman came with a
- hitch, and I caught a train at a station down the line; hustling out of my
- native town on the run, by dint of practice, was getting to be one of the
- best performances in my list of tricks.
- </p>
- <p>
- I counted my money when I was on my way to the city. I had not been
- keeping any strict account between the judge and myself; from the common
- stock I had been paying expenses and spending as loose as peas in order to
- hasten our journey back East. I found around two hundred and fifty dollars
- in my pockets, and I reflected, with a sort of grim zest in the humor of
- the thing, that I could fairly claim most of this money as my own—the
- tainted cash from my poker profits.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went straight to Jodrey Vose when I arrived in the metropolis and he
- looked neither surprised nor overjoyed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where have you been?” he inquired.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, sort of loafing around up-country—killing time!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He squinted at me sourly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t say that you’re doing any great credit to my training, young
- Sidney!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are right, Captain Vose, but I’m turning over a new leaf and I’m out
- to make good. I am hoping that I can do something in the case of Anson C.
- Doughty so that I can get back into the diving business and keep on the
- job hereafter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you’ll go back to diving and keep out from under plug-hats, will
- you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, sir!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at me for a long time and then he pulled out a letter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This here,” he said, tapping it, “is something more about that <i>Golden
- Gate</i> treasure. There’s a new crowd on the rampage about it. From
- somebody in the old crowd they have got hold of my name. I came nigh
- trying it on once, as I have told you. But it’s a gamble; I am old and I
- don’t want it. You are young and there’s nothing as yet for you on the
- Atlantic coast, and you might grab in on this. They want an Eastern diver
- because the divers out there are tied up with the big concerns and can’t
- be depended on to keep their mouths shut—so this letter says.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Probably it’s a pretty uncertain proposition, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, you don’t expect to fall into anything very certain, do you, a
- diver blacklisted from Kittery to the Keys?” he demanded, tartly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know nothing about these people, their plans, or anything. But I’ll do
- this for you, if you want me to. I’ll wire this party and tell him I am
- sending you on. After you are started you can post him from some place as
- to when you’ll arrive. Better give him a wire from time to time to keep
- his interest up. How’s your wallet?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think it’s all right, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you’re lying to me that’s your own lookout. Haven’t sold your
- diving-dress, have you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have it safe in storage, sir.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I’m glad you kept remembering that you’re a diver—and the
- best one I ever turned out!” That was the first word of high praise he had
- given me. He got up and shook my hand. “Now go dive, son, and after you
- raise that four million from the wreck of the Golden Gate come back and
- tell me all about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not linger in the city; there were too many possibilities in the way
- of Dawlins and Doughtys.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two hours later I was headed across the continent with my diving-dress in
- its canvas bag and the address of one Captain Rask Holstrom written in my
- note-book. I was pretty dizzy with the haste of it all and felt like the
- human shuttle between oceans—but I possessed considerable more
- serenity than I did when I began that lunatic lope with Judge Kingsley.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had framed a motto and hung it in my soul—“I’ll show ’em!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXVI—CAPTAIN HOLSTROM ET AL.
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>Y face was set to
- the West, to be sure, but my thoughts were traveling back over my shoulder
- to the East. I wish I could say that a lively sense of injury enabled me
- to put out of my mind Levant and everybody in Levant—box and dice!
- But I’m not much of a liar.
- </p>
- <p>
- I do not propose to dwell on the bitterness which stuck in me day after
- day, along with softer sentiments. This narrative goes into a gallop at
- about this point and there is no time to be wasted on self-communings.
- However, if I do not mention my old home and the folks back there it must
- not be understood that the problem of my life ceased to go to bed with me,
- rise with me, and keep pace with me as I hurried through the day’s work. I
- obeyed Jodrey Vose’s counsel about giving bulletins of my progress west.
- After I had bought my railroad ticket and had counted up, I felt that I
- could not afford to take any chances on those strangers losing their
- interest in me. I needed a job almighty sudden after I landed in San
- Francisco.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the last leg of the journey I was able to forecast the hour of my
- arrival and I suggested by wire that somebody meet me—knowing that
- my diver’s kit in its duck bag would be identification enough. This
- telegraph business was shooting arrows into the air and I would have
- welcomed a return message; I thought they ought to be able to guess
- closely enough to intercept me somewhere along the line. But, although no
- answer came, I had the comfortable feeling that they’d be likely to be on
- the lookout for me. And at last I got my first peek at Pacific waters.
- </p>
- <p>
- Our train was hung up outside the yard over in Oakland while they opened
- our track to the ferry, and a chap I had chatted with more or less in the
- smoking-room on the trip, and who knew my business, rushed out, climbed
- down beside the roadbed, and scooped a tumblerful of water. He ran back
- into the car and dumped the water over me for a joke, and I’m so
- accustomed to water that the joke did not jar me. I took it as it was
- meant.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I baptize thee in the name of the Pacific,” he said. “Now I hope the old
- dame will be good to you in your line.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, whether she was or not depends on how one looks at those things.
- </p>
- <p>
- I walked slowly through the ferry-house, hoping to be hailed, and stepped
- out on to the foot of Market Street into the old San Francisco of the days
- before the great calamity. In my right hand I tugged along the duck bag
- that was bulging with my diving equipment. In my left hand I had the rest
- of my earthly possessions in a grip which was about the size of a ten-cent
- loaf of bread. It was early evening, and all the lights were aglare.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a turn-table for the cable cars at the foot of Market Street.
- The cars were coming down in constant procession, and the turn-table was
- busy. It was a regular merry-go-round kind of an affair. It interested me,
- but it didn’t interest me so much that I had no eye for a girl who stood
- beside me at the edge of the thing. It seemed to me right then—fresh
- from a tedious train ride, where I’d been penned in with a frumpy set of
- women passengers—that I had never seen a prettier girl. She had her
- finger pointed at some one on the turn-table, and was saying “Father!”
- over and over, with a new inflection on the word every time she spoke it.
- Her finger traveled as the table revolved, and I was able to pick out
- father fight away. I was right-down sorry for that girl when I laid eyes
- on father. Father was grinning like a sculpin in deep water, and he was
- good and drunk, and he was evidently taking a joy ride on that turn-table.
- </p>
- <p>
- It struck me right then, as a stranger, that San Francisco had a good
- trait pretty well developed; it was willing to let a man mind his own
- business as long as he didn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself. The
- street-car men did not push father off the turn-table, and two policemen
- took a look at him and went off about their business.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took a good look at the man, too, when the turntable brought him near me
- and stopped to let a car on. He had a face about as square as the front of
- a safe, and his nose was the shape of a safety-lock knob, and was red. His
- pot-bellied body was set on legs like crooked wharf pilings. I had father
- sized up in a second. Double-breasted blue coat, cap of blue, with the
- peak pulled rakishly down over one eye, gray beard which radiated in
- spills from his chin like tiller spokes—he was a steamboat man,
- sure! I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to butt in and make
- certain—perhaps I wanted to start something so as to get a rise out
- of the girl. I’m not naturally fresh and you may be sure I was in no mood
- for a flirtation. I was crusted with Yankee reserve even when I was young.
- But that impish air of San Francisco was in my nostrils—did you ever
- sniff it? It makes your head buzz and your thoughts froth, and it takes
- hold of an Easterner as quickly as a stiff cocktail grabs a man who isn’t
- used to a mixed drink. You’ll do almost anything in San Francisco when the
- sparkle from that trade-wind gets into your lungs.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I tipped father the wink.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Give her the jingle when she starts again,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was right in my guess. He crooked his forefinger, reached down, and
- yanked empty air.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Clang!” he barked. In a few seconds the turntable began to revolve again.
- Father gave me as silly a grin as I ever saw on a grown-up man’s face.
- “Yingleyingle—yingle!” he yelled in falsetto. And away he went!
- </p>
- <p>
- I never got a more awful look from a pretty girl than I got from that one
- when I turned and caught her eyes. There was nothing shrinking or bashful
- about her when she was mad, so I found out then and there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You fool! You have started him all over again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He seemed to be well started before I came along, miss.” It was that
- confounded air that was making me reckless and saucy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Clang!” yelped father, coming around again. “Yingle—yingle—yingle!
- Pull in them port fenders and mouse that anchor; we’re going outside this
- trip.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Just see the fool notion you have gone and put into him when he was all
- ready to come along with me!” she blazed. She knocked her little knuckles
- together in as fine a state of temper as I ever viewed spouting in a
- female. She turned suddenly and drove one of her fists against a man whom
- I had not noticed till then. He was tall—as long as the moral law,
- as we say East—as thin as a pump-handle, and he had a tangle of gray
- whisker and beard on top of him that made him look like a window-mop. He
- fell down when she hit him. She kicked him with the point of a little
- shoe, and he came up, unfolding in sections like a carpenter’s two-foot
- rule.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slap this man’s face, Ike, and send him along about his business,” she
- commanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- But he only teetered and grinned and drooled, and winked at me over her
- shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, you are only another drunken fool!” she raged; and she stretched on
- tiptoe, and beat his face with the flat of her hand. “You have stood here
- without putting up a finger to help me get him off that turn-table, where
- he’s disgracing himself. I wonder whether there are any real men left in
- San Francisco!” She was in such a state of mind that I was mighty ashamed
- by then, I tell you that!
- </p>
- <p>
- I dropped my baggage and took off my hat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know much about San Francisco and the real men, miss,” I told
- her, “for I’ve been in town only about five minutes. I reckon it makes an
- Easterner dizzy to be rushed in and dropped here. I didn’t mean to make
- trouble for you. Seeing that I’ve made it, I’ll unmake it if I can. Do you
- want your father—saying it is your father—brought off that
- turn-table?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No!” she snapped, still spiteful and all worked up. “I want you to think
- up something else for him to do on there as soon as he gets tired of doing
- what you suggested.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, it was up to me to butt into that affair still farther—I could
- see that. I couldn’t sneak off and leave that girl feeling that way about
- me. I hopped on to the moving turn-table, took father by the arm, and told
- him his daughter wanted him to come along. He braced himself and shook
- loose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nossir,” said he. “I’ve paid my money, and I’ll stay aboard till I get to
- where I’m bound.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here, you are not getting anywhere, man. You are only riding around
- and around, making a show of yourself, and there’s your nice daughter
- waiting for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s no place for a daughter—going where I’m going. Daughter ought
- to be in bed.” And then he braced himself back still farther, and—well,
- I suppose I’ll have to call it “singing” in order to describe the sound:=
- </p>
- <p>
- ````"I’m bound for the foot of Telegraph Hill,
- </p>
- <p>
- `````To the Barbary Coast so gay.
- </p>
- <p>
- ````I’m starting there for a peach of a tear—fill
- </p>
- <p>
- `````’Em up all round—hooray!”=
- </p>
- <p>
- I took hold of his arm once more, and it was some arm.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” he snarled, squinting at me, “I don’t know who you are, but
- I’ll let you know who I am blamed quick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I don’t know just what he might have done to me if he had been sober—but
- he wasn’t sober. I was, and my line of work had made me lithe and quick. I
- snapped my man before he had time to open his mouth, and ran him off that
- turn-table and presented him to his daughter with my compliments. He
- kicked and thrashed around in a logy style, and I kept him circling so
- that he could not get foothold, on the same principle that you keep a
- boa-constrictor from hooking his tail around a tree.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where will you have him delivered, miss?” I asked, as politely as I
- could.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father, you come along with me this instant!” she cried. “We don’t want
- strangers interfering in our affairs any longer.” She said that to him for
- my benefit.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t mean to be interfering, miss,” I pleaded. “I only want to square
- myself for being thoughtless and starting trouble for you—more
- trouble, I mean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She put her hand against me and pushed me away from her father—no, I
- can hardly say that I was pushed away. That hand was too little to push a
- man of my size. But the gesture of pushing was enough for me. I let him
- loose. She reached for his ear, but he dodged away, cantering like a
- cart-horse, and whooped that he was bound for the “Barbary Coast.” The
- human belay-ing-pin with the oakum topknot followed, plainly relishing the
- fact that the procession had started. The girl took a few steps in
- pursuit, and then she stopped and began to cry. She had grit—I had
- seen that—but after a girl gets about so mad she has to cry on
- general principles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” I told her, “I’m a stranger, all right, but you need a man’s
- help right now. I’ll help for every ounce that’s in me if you’ll say the
- word. But I’m a Yankee and I need to be asked.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has a lot of money in his pockets,” she sobbed. “He must pay out that
- money to-morrow morning. He will be butchered and robbed where he’s going.
- I never saw him so silly and obstinate before. His head has been turned by
- some good luck which has come to him. He—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t got time to listen to details, miss. He’s getting out of sight.
- I’ve got to work quick. I’m square and decent and honest, and I’m mighty
- sorry for the scrape you are in. Do you want me to chase that father of
- yours for you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” she gasped; “yes, I do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “About all I’m worth in the world is in that bag there. It’s my
- diving-dress. I’ve got to leave it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your name is Sidney!” she cried, her eyes opening wide on me. “You’re the
- man we came to meet!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So, after all, I had butted in on my reception committee! “And that’s
- Captain Holstrom?” I demanded, pointing up the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes! Yes! Hurry, sir. I will watch your bag! I will stay here. Hurry,
- sir! He has gone up Market Street, but he’ll turn to the right pretty
- soon. That’s the way to the horrible Barbary Coast.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I patted her shoulder—I couldn’t help it. She looked up at me
- through her tears. And off I hiked, leaving my earthly possessions in
- charge of a girl whom I had met for the first time less than ten minutes
- before.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of course, I knew what every one knows, whether he has been in San
- Francisco or not, that Market Street cuts straight across the city from
- bay to ocean. But at just what street on the course Captain Rask Holstrom
- proceeded to port his helm and swing to starboard blessed if I had the
- least idea. I didn’t know the name of another street in the city. I knew
- what the Barbary Coast was in San Francisco. I had read descriptions of
- its dance-halls, its dens, its haunts of iniquity, and its dangers. And
- here I was, galloping straight toward it before the creases of a railroad
- journey across the continent were out of my clothes. That is to say, I
- hoped I was galloping toward it, for I wanted to catch father for that
- nice girl. Captain Holstrom was out of sight among the crowds on that long
- Market Street before I had started the chase. I didn’t dare to run too
- fast.
- </p>
- <p>
- San Francisco, as I have said, seemed to be inclined to let a man tend to
- his own business, but I didn’t want to provoke some ass to start a “stop
- thief” yell behind me. I craned and peered ahead as I trotted on. I
- stopped for a moment at the head of streets which led away to the right—the
- girl had said he would turn to the right—but I caught no glimpse of
- a bobbing blue cap nor of a lofty thatch of grizzled beard and whisker.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took a chance after a while, for Market Street showed ahead an upward
- slope and I couldn’t spot my man there. I turned off to the right, and
- hurried. I didn’t know what street I was on. I came to a square at last
- where there were a statue and a fountain, and there were large buildings
- on the right. I ran across the square, and the next moment I realized that
- I was in Chinatown—and I had read of that part of San Francisco,
- too. I knew then that I was headed toward the Barbary Coast all right,
- having a memory of what I had read. But in a few minutes I was lost in a
- maze of narrow streets which traveled up and down the little hills. I was
- peering and goggling here and there. I must have looked like a tourist
- trying to do Chinatown in record time. I came into a street or alley that
- was roofed—and I came out again, for it seemed to be closed in at
- the upper end. By that time I realized that not only had I lost Capt. Rask
- Holstrom, but that I had also succeeded in losing myself—a rather
- silly predicament for a young man who so boldly offered himself as knight
- errant to a damsel in distress.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stood still and wiped sweat out of my eyes, and addressed a few pregnant
- remarks to myself on the subject of a man’s making a fool of himself for a
- woman. However, I had a mighty good reason of my own for wanting to meet
- up with Captain Holstrom—and to safeguard that money of his, for I
- hoped to rake some of it down in wages.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXVII—MR. BEASON HORNS IN
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> WHITE-LIVERED,
- sneaky-looking chap sidled up to me and stuck out a dirty card.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s my name on there,” said he; “Jake Beason, and I’m the best
- Chinatown guide that’s on the beat; I’ll show you everything from
- joss-house to hop-holes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know the Barbary Coast?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do I know—Oh, come now! Why, say, I live over that way,” he snarled
- through the corner of his mouth; and he looked at me as though I had
- insulted his intelligence.
- </p>
- <p>
- I decided that I would be plain and direct with that chap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m on the trail of a steamboat captain by the name of Holstrom, and he
- is two-thirds pickled, and has money on him. Do you think you know the
- places where a man like that would be likely to drop in?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What’s the lay—a touch and a divvy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing of the kind. I’m his friend, and I want to catch him and take him
- home out of trouble.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The same old stall,” he sneered. “You’ve got to let me be a friend, too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I reached out and got my crowbar clutch on that fellow. “I don’t suppose
- you ever had a man tell you the truth, son,” I said, “so I’m not going to
- blame you much. I say that I’m after this man to take him home to his
- daughter. That’s truth, and it’s on my say-so. If you propose to call me a
- liar, out with it, and we’ll settle the thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “She stands as you say—and you needn’t pinch so,” he whined.
- </p>
- <p>
- There’s nothing like a good grip to press home conviction in a sneak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll locate that man for me before the
- evening is over,” I told him. “I’ll make it twenty dollars if you’ll turn
- the trick inside of an hour.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know all the joints—I know the steamboat hangouts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ought to be an easy trick. He is with an old belay-ing-pin who has
- enough hair on his head and face to stuff a bolster—and I heard
- somebody call him Ike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Aw, that’s ‘Ingot Ike.’ Everybody between Dupont Street and Telegraph
- Hill knows that old hornbeam and his everlasting hum about three million
- dollars’ worth of buried gold ingots. Come along! I ought to pull down
- that twenty easy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me tell you one thing,” I said, chasing along with him. “I’m not
- worth robbing. I’m going to keep close to you, and if you put me against
- any frame-up I’ll get you first, and I’ll get you quick.” And I grabbed
- him by the wrist and let him have that honest old grip once more. I kept
- hold of him. And led thus like a blind man through this street and that,
- by short cuts along dark alleys, across courts, and now and then skirting
- vacant lots, we came at last into purlieus that my ears, eyes, and nose
- told me must be that “Barbary Coast so gay,” as Captain Holstrom had
- caroled.
- </p>
- <p>
- Out of open doors came liquor fumes and music blended, if there is any
- such thing as blending noise and odors; the two seemed to be associated
- there so regularly and invariably that my senses told me that they were
- blended.
- </p>
- <p>
- The women sauntered on the sidewalks; the men loafed there. We two seemed
- to be about the only ones who were headed for something definite.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll tap the regular joints first,” said Beason. “If he’s pretty drunk
- he won’t be using his mind much to think up new places to go. He’ll fall
- into the rut like a ball in a crooked pin-game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was young enough to be interested in that panorama of iniquity. I would
- have gaped longer than I did in those places, but Mr. Beason proved to be
- a very active guide. That matter of twenty dollars proved to be like a bur
- under a bronco’s saddle. He would gallop into a place, leave me to goggle
- at the antics on the dance floor; he would weasel his way through the
- crowd, chop out a few staccato questions, and then yank me out with my
- eyes behind me and my chin hanging over my shoulder like the tailboard of
- a cart.
- </p>
- <p>
- Beason rattled me down another length of street—and if the folks we
- bumped hadn’t known him I reckon we would have had a few things on our
- hands besides that man hunt. They all seemed to know Beason. He snapped
- questions right and left.
- </p>
- <p>
- All at once my guide got a clue. He barked a few more questions at this
- illuminative party, and turned and scooted back along our trail.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The old cuss has taken to a back room,” he gasped. “I ought to have
- figured that he would be hiding.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He rushed me around comers, across streets, down alleys, and into more
- streets. We came up against a saloon at last where the front window was
- lettered in red paint, “Holding Ground Cove.” Knowing, as a deep-sea
- diver, that a good holding ground means a mud bottom, I could have thought
- up a highly moral and somewhat humorous apothegm on that name for a saloon
- if I had had the time; but Mr. Beason was cutting comers on Time that
- night. He rushed me into the saloon, into a back room at the rear, and
- when he didn’t see what we were looking for up-stairs we went. There were
- cribs of private rooms, furnished with bare tables and hard chairs—drinking-rooms.
- From the half-open door of one came the cackle of much laughter, and we
- peeped in.
- </p>
- <p>
- A girl, whose face was painted in almost as gaudy hues as her red
- stockings, was standing on a table in the middle of the little room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Capt. Rask Holstrom was seated in a chair, straddling the back, and was
- busily engaged in tickling the girl’s nose with the tip of a very long
- peacock feather—and wherever he secured that feather I never found
- out. But always leave it to a hilarious drunken man to find something odd
- to carry around with him. In the room was the human belaying-pin, also
- seated. But his chair had evidently slipped from under him when he tried
- to lean against the wall, and he was jack-knifed down in a corner, with
- his broomstick legs waving in the air, and was surveying the scene between
- that frame. He was squealing laughter in a key that would have put a
- guinea-hen out of business.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s Ingot Ike,” affirmed Beason, “and if t’other one is your
- pertickler friend then I’ll cash in.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He held up his cheap watch, with his dirty forefinger indicating the hour.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I get the twenty with nine minutes’ ‘velvet,’ if that’s your friend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Captain Holstrom did not display any very ardent friendship for any
- one just then. He turned an especially malevolent stare in my direction
- and poised his peacock feather like lance in rest. I could see that
- something was going to break loose there mighty soon, and after what I had
- told Beason I didn’t want that young sneak to overhear. It would be like
- him to come back with a gang and “do” me on the excuse that I was a
- stranger who was “frsking” Captain Holstrom for his pocketful.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hauled out two ten-dollar bills mighty quick, and passed them to Beason.
- He held one in each hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, and looked
- at them in turn, wrinkling his nose with as much disgust as though he were
- holding lizards by the tails.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Soft money,” said he, “and the stink of the East still on it! I’ll bet
- you both of these poultices that you haven’t been in San Francisco
- twenty-four hours—and how do you happen to be such a pertickler
- friend of a China Basin steamboat cap’n, hey?”
- </p>
- <p>
- A freshly arrived Easterner is always given away by his paper money.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who’s a friend?” inquired Captain Holstrom, the one eye I could see as
- staring and as baleful as the “eye” on the peacock feather.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look-a-here,” said I, bracing up to him savagely, for I knew that soft
- soap wouldn’t grease the ways, “I want to know what you mean by running
- away from me after my telegrams to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I whirled on Beason, pushed him out of the room, and slammed the door in
- his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have been paid,” I yelled at him through the crack. “Now, keep your
- nose out of the rest of the thing, or I’ll pinch it off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here,” growled Captain Holstrom, vibrating the feather as menacingly
- as though it were a sled stake, “don’t you know a private party when you
- see one?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I walked right up to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My name is Sidney. I’m the diver you are expecting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a liar,” he returned, promptly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you you were down to the ferry to meet me. I pulled you off that
- turn-table!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who are you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am Ross Sidney, I say! You’re expecting me. I’m a diver.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But he did not show the least evidence of understanding what I was talking
- about. It’s a familiar phase of drunkenness in many men—that dogged
- determination to hang on to one notion and admit no others.
- </p>
- <p>
- He shook his head and waggled the feather under the girl’s nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is a private party,” he growled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But your daughter is waiting for you—she is very much worried about
- you and the money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say, who does this money and this daughter and this room here belong to,
- anyway? Who do I belong to? Who am I? Ain’t I Rask Holstrom, fifty-six
- years old, and fully able to take care of myself anywhere between Point
- Lobo and India Basin?” He squinted at me along the peacock’s plume. “Who
- are <i>you?</i> You say my girl is at the ferry, hey? How do you know she
- is there?” He leaned back in his chair, dropped the feather, and yanked a
- canvas bag from the right-hand pocket of his trousers. It was a plump bag,
- and a heavy bag, and it plainly contained hard money. He banged it down on
- the table with such a thump that the girl hopped and squealed, and it
- barely missed her toes. He pulled another canvas bag from the left-hand
- pocket, and crashed that down. This time he connected with the girl’s
- toes. She screamed in pain, leaped down from the table, and began to hop
- around the room, kicking her foot out behind her. She stumbled into a
- corner, braced herself there, and began to swear volubly, clutching the
- tip of her faded red-velvet slipper in both hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had not broken in on his monologue. I could not match him in roaring.
- Then for the first time he seemed to note that the girl was not in an
- amiable state of mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ve insulted my lady friend. I’ll have your life for that!” He plunged
- out of his chair and drove against the wall in his unsteadiness.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl was profanely advising me—no, entreating me—to kill
- the “drunken fool.” I didn’t blame her for her fire, and I could excuse
- her language. To shift from a tickling under the chin to a mally-hackling
- of toes was a little too strong for a woman’s nature even if the toes had
- been cracked with money.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was no time for fine figuring as to ways, means, or chances. Before
- Captain Holstrom recovered his balance I grabbed his sacks and stuffed
- them into my pockets. I started for the door. I had a sort of muddled
- memory of a maxim, or proverb, or something of the kind which says that
- “where a man’s treasure is there will his heart be also.” It occurred to
- me that Captain Holstrom’s body would go with his heart if I made off with
- that money, and I preferred to have the body chase me on two legs rather
- than be lugged on my shoulders. If he would chase me back to the ferry the
- situation would be simplified. Of course, mine was a crazy expedient,
- considering the place where I was, but it was a crazy evening, anyway.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m not stealing it,” I yelled at him as I opened the door. “I’m going to
- give it to your girl, and if you run hard enough you’ll see me give it to
- her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had plenty of help in opening that door. There were men outside who
- helped me so promptly and unanimously that it was evident they had been
- lying in wait.
- </p>
- <p>
- Two of them grabbed me by the neck as they would have clutched a bat stick
- in choosing sides in a game of three old cat. They rammed me back into the
- room. There were three other men who came in, and one of them was that rat
- of a Beason.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were all talking at one another, and Beason was spitting words the
- fastest. But Captain Holstrom drowned out all other sounds by a bellow of
- delight. He knew these men, all right. He seemed especially tickled to
- behold the two men who held me. He slapped them on their backs, cuffed
- their faces with drunken affection, and adjured them to hold me tighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He took my money! He stole it! He insulted a lady friend of mine. He’s
- been chasing me and picking a row with me for three days,” he lied, or
- else the rum he had been drinking had elongated his notions of time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see, I get your twenty, Mr. Keedy,” insisted Beason. “I told you
- straight. I called the turn on this fly guy. He’s what I told you he was.
- You just heard what the captain said.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was mighty busy just then with the two men who were holding me, and
- Captain Holstrom was giving me some slaps which were drunkenly heavy, but
- not affectionate. However, I heard what Beason said, and I saw the man
- whom he called Keedy pass over a twenty-dollar gold piece. Beason grinned
- at me and scuttled out of the room. The Keedy person pushed the scolding
- girl out after him and slammed the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not like the looks of the Keedy person—no, not at all. I may
- have instinct in such matters; I don’t know. A diver is obliged to do most
- of his work in pitch darkness and by the sense of touch, and such work may
- develop instinct in general. I won’t stop to discuss the question.
- </p>
- <p>
- But that yellow face with a black mustache smacked across it like a smear
- of paint, and arrows of eyebrows shooting up northeast and northwest from
- a regular gouge of a wrinkle between the man’s eyes wasn’t the kind of
- physog worn by the deacon who takes up the collection in a Sunday-school.
- He stood with back against the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go through him, gents,” he directed. “And hand me the gun when you come
- to it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There wasn’t any gun, but they got the two sacks of gold, and my little
- stock of paper money as well. Then they gave me a shove into a corner, and
- all of them stood off and looked at me. The excitement had brought old
- Ingot Ike on to his feet and he joined the ring of spectators.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are in bad,” stated Mr. Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Silence gives consent; so I kept still.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who is backing you in this job? Where’s the rest of your gang? You’re in
- here without a gun. Now, where’s the main party?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The main party,” said I, mad enough now to do a little talking, “is down
- at the ferry, foot of Market Street. She is that old fool’s daughter, and
- she was crying when I left her. I’m just in from the East, and when I came
- out on to the street from the ferry this evening, setting foot in San
- Francisco for the first time—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re a liar!” yelped Captain Holstrom. “You’ve been on my trail for
- seven days, and you have just knocked me down when I was entertaining a
- lady friend and wasn’t looking. You robbed me. The money was found on you.
- But Rask Holstrom has got friends who won’t see him done. Here they are.
- And into the dock you go, blast ye!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re in bad,” reiterated the Keedy person, narrowing the crease between
- his eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you’re a friend of Captain Holstrom, see if you can’t pound it into
- his head that I’m the diver he is expecting.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re the what? Is your name Sidney?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is my name.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rask,” snapped Keedy at last, “were you down at the ferry turn-table as
- this man says? You’ve been pretty drunk. This thing here is taking a new
- tack. I’d like to believe this chap here if I can.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Might have been there,” owned up the captain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Was</i> there,” stated that old fool of an Ike, who had been standing
- by without a word in my behalf. Now he was ready and willing to leap with
- the popular side. “I was there with him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was your daughter there with you? Did you leave her there?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom looked a little ashamed, and hesitated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She was there,” stated Ike. “She was following us and trying to get my
- noble cap’n to go along with her, but it wasn’t right to bother my noble
- cap’n when he was happy over a lucky trade.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The two of you must have been good and fine,” growled Mr. Keedy. “Look
- here, Cap, I believe this gent is telling a lot of the truth about you. No
- matter now about his high jinks with the coin. I want to believe what he
- says. As your partner, Captain Holstrom, my advice to you is to hustle
- out, get a cab, and get to that ferry station in quick time. If that
- diving-suit is there bring it back here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain rolled out of the room, growling, but subdued.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Keedy gave me what was for him an affable smile, a hitching up nearer
- to his nose of that paint-streak mustache.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We may as well start in an acquaintance,” he said. He passed my
- pocket-book back. “My name is Marcena Keedy, partner of Cap’n Holstrom.
- Step up here, gents,” he commanded the two men who had squatted my
- windpipe. “This is Number-one Jones; this is Number-two Jones.” They
- ducked salute. They had paint-brush chin beards and cock eyes, and were
- evidently twins. “First and second mates, new hired for the <i>Zizania</i>.”
- He did not bother to introduce Ingot Ike.
- </p>
- <p>
- He pushed a button on the wall.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll take something to gum the edges of sociability, gents. There’s
- nothing like gents starting in sociable when they can, and staying
- sociable as long as they can, providing any gent proves himself all right,
- as he says he is.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave me a significant and mighty sharp look, sat down, and jigged one
- leg over the other, trying hard to keep up his affable smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- We kept on being sociable for half an hour or more.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last back came Capt. Rask Holstrom. He was tugging my duffle-bag, and
- on his heels was his daughter. She had my little valise. She did not show
- any especial symptoms of embarrassment at being in such a joint alone with
- men. She walked straight to me and gave me the valise. What was better,
- she gave me a smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I misunderstood you, sir, on short acquaintance,” she said. “I hope you
- will excuse me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looked me straight in the eyes without coquetry, a gaze as level and
- candid as that of man to man.
- </p>
- <p>
- I gulped some reply—I don’t know what. I wasn’t half as cool as she
- was.
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy right now put that yellow face between us. The affable smile wasn’t
- there. I got a quick and sharp impression that he didn’t relish the way
- the girl and I were getting chummy. She was putting out her hand to me,
- for I had made a motion as though to shake on our general understanding.
- He took her hand and whirled her around and pointed to a chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’d better sit down, Kama dear. We’re going to talk a little business,
- and you can listen, for you are too much father’s girl to be kept out of
- any deal of ours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She pulled her hand out of his, but she went and sat down without shaking
- my hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” she
- said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not need
- your invitation to stay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom looked very sheepish. It was plain that he had been
- listening to some plain and frank opinions on his way back from the ferry
- station.
- </p>
- <p>
- He tried to act unconcerned, and spying the drink I had not touched,
- started to lift it to his lips. His daughter snatched it away and sprayed
- the liquor on the wall. He sat down, coughing behind his hand. I had seen
- men like Capt. Rask Holstrom before—a bully and a braggart among
- men, but half a fool where women were concerned—pliable in the hands
- of the loose female, and mortally afraid of his own womenkind.
- </p>
- <p>
- The men in the room were silent for some time. Keedy was looking at
- Holstrom; then his eyes fell on my canvas sack at Holstrom’s feet. He
- spoke to me in almost the same fawning tone he had used with the girl. It
- was that almost indescribable air—that cheap assumption of gentility
- that a professional gambler uses when he is prosecuting his business, and
- it rather jars on an honest man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure it would be almighty interesting to me and to these other gents
- and the lady to see an Eastern divingsuit. I reckon you’re pretty much up
- to date back there.” Liar and knave himself, he wasn’t exactly sure I had
- been telling the truth. He wanted to see the goods. But I did not mind
- much. I knelt on the floor, and opened the sack and dug out the equipment.
- This yam of mine goes back before the days of the compressed-air chamber
- which the modern diver carries on his back just as an automobile carries
- fuel. But I had a mighty good suit, almost a new one. There wasn’t a dent
- in the helmet or a patch oh the rubber or canvas.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have had a long talk, this gent and I,” said Keedy, after he had
- squatted like a frog and had peered at all I had to show him. “I’m
- naturally a man to get to cases quick. I’m open and free with them I take
- a liking to.” He went to the door and peeked into the corridor.
- “Number-two Jones, you stand here and keep an eye and ear out,” he
- directed. “Now, Brother Sidney, you Eastern chaps are apt to be pretty
- cold-blooded, and you need first-hand evidence. I’m going to open up to
- you one of the biggest prospects you ever heard of—reckoning that,
- as a human being, you simply can’t resist coming into it. If you don’t see
- fit to come in after it has been opened up to you—well—” He
- scowled at me like a demon, snapped his fingers above his head, and turned
- on old Ike.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get up and take the floor,” he directed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “First-hand evidence is what counts,” went on Mr. Keedy. “Now, here’s a
- man who has told his story over a lot of times on the water-front. He has
- told it so many times it has grown to be a joke. They’ve given him the
- nickname of ‘Ingot Ike.’ Lots of big things in this world have been buried
- under a joke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He leaned back in his chair and twisted up the ends of his mustache.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Court is open for first-hand evidence, gents. Ike is the first witness.
- I’m going to ask him questions and make him answer snappy, for if he ever
- gets to rambling on this story of his he’ll make it longer than a dime
- novel. Look-a-here, Ike, what was the steamer <i>Golden Gate?</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Passengers, bullion in ingots, and general cargo ’tween here and
- Panama.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was rather comical to see that old bean-pole straighten up and try to
- imitate the snappy style of Mr. Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was your job aboard of her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Quartermaster.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What happened to her?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Caught fire off coast of Mexico when she was bound for Panama, beached
- well north of Acapulco, rolled over and over in surf, what was left of
- her, and bones still there. Three ribs show at low tide if you know where
- to look for ’em.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What was she carrying for treasure?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Over three million dollars’ worth of gold in ingots in her strong-room
- abaft second bulkhead, between pantry and boiler-room.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Was the treasure ever recovered?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wreck was abandoned to underwriters, and after underwriters had worked
- for a long time, keeping very mysterious, they reported that they had got
- the ingots all out of her. Then they came away. Everybody believed that
- the underwriters had cleaned out the wreck, just as they reported they
- had. But I was in that wrecking crew. I kept my eye out. It was a bluff
- about getting that treasure.” The old man began to show excitement. “Their
- divers couldn’t get at it. They didn’t have nerve, and they didn’t have
- the right outfits in those days. The underwriters didn’t want it shown
- that they hadn’t pulled up the stuff. They knew that every Tom, Dick, and
- Harry would go down there, peeking and poking around that wreck, and that
- some fellow might think up a way to call the turn.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So they bribed the divers, and the divers brought up fake boxes of gold,
- and the report was made that all the treasure had been taken from the <i>Golden
- Gate</i> wreck. But it’s all there, gents. The underwriters haven’t been
- able yet to think of a sensible way of getting at it. They don’t want to
- make another splurge and attract attention till they’re sure of what
- they’re doing. Them’s facts what I’m telling. I know. I haven’t done much
- of anything but keep tabs. I don’t care if they do call me Ingot Ike. I
- know what I’m talking about. The trouble down there has been that the old
- Pacific has rolled on and rolled in and piled up sand over that treasure,
- and they didn’t know how to handle the proposition in those days.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The idea is, Brother Sidney,” broke in Keedy, “firsthand evidence informs
- us that three or four millions are cached in a place we know of. Now,
- because man has failed once, years ago, when man wasn’t as bright as he is
- now, is that any sign that man shall give up? Captain Holstrom and I say,
- ‘No.’ We’re partners. We have been talking over this proposition for a
- long time. Now, up to date, are you in any way interested?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was, and I said so.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There they lie,” said Keedy, “bars of yellow gold. Boxes and boxes of
- shiny gold. More than three million dollars’ worth of finest gold—and
- only a little water and sand over ’em. No bars to break through, no
- vaults to drill. Only sand and water—and we ought to be able to
- match that sand with grit, and the water with good red blood.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There are some men who can talk about money, and it will not start a
- thrill in you.
- </p>
- <p>
- Marcena Keedy could talk about gold in a way to make your soul hungry. He
- rolled the sound in his mouth—a big, round, juicy sound—as a
- boy sucks a candy marble. It made the moisture ooze in my own mouth to
- hear him talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Keedy gave over leaning back in his chair. He sat on the edge of it,
- and leaned forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s right at this point that we go into this thing clear to the necks,
- my friend. I have studied men a lot in my life. I can see about what kind
- of a fellow you are. If another fellow opens up to you in honest fashion
- you are <i>with</i> him—and if you can’t stay with him you are not
- going off and squeal and hurt him. There’s nothing half-way between
- Holstrom, here, and myself. We’re partners. We’re in together, whole hog.
- I’ll spread the cards for you just as they are spread for the captain and
- myself. He and I have been having a run of good luck to date in our
- partnership. We’ll have some more firsthand evidence. Rask, how was it you
- got the inside clinch in the <i>Zizania</i> matter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “For the benefit of a man from the East, where they ain’t as shrewd as the
- Yankees think they be,” stated Captain Holstrom in his husky voice, “I
- will say that we’ve got a devilish good close combine on the waterfront—we
- fellows have been on the job for a long time. When the Government auctions
- off anything we get together and fix the top price at which any bid shall
- go, and then we cut the cards to settle who shall pick the plum at that
- price. It means that the lucky man will pick a bargain, don’t forget that.
- Price can’t be budged above that bid—and it’s a blamed measly
- price.” He smacked his lips. “So that is how I have got hold of the old
- __Zizania__, Government lighthouse-tender and buoy steamer, side-wheeler,
- one hundred and seventy feet long, new derricks, boilers in fair shape,
- and engine fresh overhauled. I’ve cut the cards for eleven years, and this
- has been my first look-in. But it’s worth waiting for. I could junk her
- and make four times what I pay for her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What <i>we</i> pay for her,” corrected Mr. Keedy. “Remember that I’m your
- partner. Now I’ll take the stand myself. Holstrom here sold his tugboat
- the minute he struck luck on the <i>Zizania</i>. He pulled what money he
- had in the bank. He lacked half the price, at that. He was going to borrow
- on a bill of sale. ‘No,’ says I to him. ‘Bring along your cash to the
- place where I’m dealing faro. I’ll go in partner with you and double your
- pot.’ Holstrom knew that when I talked that way with him I was square.
- Some men would have double-crossed him and pulled the pickings for the
- bank. I ain’t that kind,” declared Mr. Keedy, pulling himself up
- virtuously and giving the girl a side-glance. “I know who my friends are,
- and who I’d like to help. And I can deal faro! Don’t worry about that!
- Captain Holstrom walked out with his pot doubled. The money goes down on
- the <i>Zizania</i> to-morrow morning, making up the balance after the
- forfeit money was paid. That’s the way Holstrom and I do business after we
- have come to an agreement.” He gave the girl a look which he intended to
- be melting. “I said I’d do it, and I did it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m ashamed of my father,” she said, crisply.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t much blame you, Kama,” stammered Captain Holstrom, missing the
- point of her rebuke. “For me to go and do what I done after scooping in
- that money was a fool performance, and I ask the pardon of all concerned.
- But I reckon my head was turned by having all that good luck come in a
- bunch. I just went into the air, that’s what I done. But I’m back on earth
- to stay now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let us hope so, partner,” chided Kir. Keedy. “That crazy Beason and our
- new friend here made such a racket chasing you through the Coast that I
- heard of it, and started out on the chase myself. It has turned out lucky,
- but that’s no credit to you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl stood up. “I have listened, and now I understand. If you want to
- keep my respect, father, you’ll hand back the part of that money which is
- stolen, and borrow enough to make your payment.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hold on, Miss Kama!” cried Keedy. “That money wasn’t stolen. A man who
- tackles a faro-bank isn’t stealing if he wins.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard what you said a few minutes ago, Mr. Keedy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I said it to show I can be a friend to those I like. I’ve known you a
- long time, and now when I’ve had a chance to show you that I’m a friend
- you can’t afford to chuck me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He jumped up and went near to her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No more faro for me—no cards any more,” he said, dusting his hands
- before her. “I know you haven’t liked to have me do it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never made any remarks to you about your affairs, Mr. Keedy. It’s
- only when my father gets mixed into them that I protest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckon that after all the years I’ve dealt crooked for the sake of the
- bank I’ve got the right to deal crooked for once in my life to help my
- friends,” muttered Keedy. “But I’m all done with faro, I tell you, Kama.
- We’re all going to be rich. I want you to remember that I’ve done my full
- share in this thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom banged the sacks of coin upon the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You bet you have, Marcena. And you’re my partner. I stand by you. I never
- saw a girl yet who didn’t have foolish notions. But they grow out of
- them.” He winked at Keedy. “This money goes down on the old <i>Zizania</i>
- to-morrow morning. She’s ours from snout to tail—from keelson to
- pennant block. And she’s going to make our everlasting fortunes. You shall
- see, Kama, my girl!”
- </p>
- <p>
- For a moment she stood there, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flaming up, as
- fine a picture of protesting and indignant maidenhood as I ever laid eyes
- on. Then she compressed her lips and choked back an outburst.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I <i>shall</i> see,” she said at last. “For I shall go on board the
- <i>Zizania</i>, and stay there and watch you, father, and try to keep you
- out of State’s prison for the sake of my poor dead mother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It has been all right for you to live with me aboard the tug,” growled
- Captain Holstrom, blinking sourly at her. “But this is a different
- proposition. This is going to be a man’s game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “With one woman along,” she insisted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have got to stay here in the city,” he declared.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you leave me here alone, deserting me for men who are leading you into
- dangers and trouble, you’ll find me dancing in one of the worst holes on
- this street when you come back. I swear it!” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not raise her voice. There was no elocution, and hysterics were
- absent. But there are women who can say a thing and make you believe it.
- Captain Holstrom cracked his knuckles and gasped, and said nothing. Keedy
- ran his thin tongue along the line of his sooty mustache.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As a partner, I’m in favor of keeping a good girl near her father,” said
- he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are not a partner in my family affairs, Mr. Keedy!” cried the girl,
- hotly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy, much embarrassed, and willing to hide his feelings, turned to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We seem to be drifting off the main subject, Brother Sidney.” I wanted to
- yank him up for calling me by that title—resentment surged in me as
- hotly as it did in the girl. There are some men who seem to make your soul
- feel sticky when they try to be intimate.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told him I’d like a night to think the matter over.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right,” said Keedy, dryly; “I’ll take you with me to a place where
- you can do some steady thinking and won’t be bothered. Stuff your things
- back into your bag.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As I plodded along the narrow street with him, my sack propped on my
- shoulder, Captain Holstrom and his daughter passed me in a cab.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Keedy’s voice and manner were well padded with velvet that night, but
- he couldn’t fool me. He caged me—that’s what he did. I remember that
- I slept in a closet of a room, and, Mr. Keedy was on a cot in the room
- which opened into the hall. I didn’t mind any of his precautions. I had
- made up my mind to go along. I was dog-tired and slept all night.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXVIII—SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>R. KEEDY evidently
- desired to impress on me that his hankering to make sure of my company
- during the night was inspired by pure and sudden friendship.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he came to awaken me his mustache was lifted so high in an amiable
- smile that the twin sooty wings seemed to stick out of his nostrils. He
- hoped I was getting to like the West and the folks there. I returned that
- up to date I had not been homesick—a conservative statement, and
- true; I had had no time to be homesick.
- </p>
- <p>
- He paid for my breakfast; further evidence of friendship. Then he called a
- cab and took me and my belongings down to the berth of the <i>Zizania</i>.
- The old steamer was docked in a place which, so he told me, was the China
- Basin, and we wormed our way through alleys and junk-piles and got aboard.
- </p>
- <p>
- We hadn’t hurried that morning, and the time was well into the middle of
- the forenoon.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom was stubbing to and fro on the main deck. He wore a fine
- air of proprietorship, and welcomed us with a flourish of his hand. He
- patted his breast, and the crackle of paper sounded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Money paid,” he reported. “Them’s the dockyments. Come up into the
- wheel-house. There’s the place to talk the rest of our business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Marcena Keedy did most of the talking that forenoon. He loved to lollop
- the words “three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots” in his mouth. He
- had wormed out of me at breakfast-time admissions enough so that he knew I
- was favorably disposed. He proposed to try to take advantage of me and I
- saw his game and resolved to do some bluffing on my own part. He put a lot
- of verbal plush around his propositions, but I could feel the hard nub
- just the same.
- </p>
- <p>
- After all that conversational fluff he wanted me to sign a contract to
- take day’s wages for the job—double pay for the days when I
- recovered any gold.
- </p>
- <p>
- I turned that wages suggestion down, flat and final. You would have
- thought I had money plastered all over me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It has got to be on shares,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You doggone bean-eater, have you got the nerve to talk shares on an
- investment of a diving-suit against our steamer and our information about
- the <i>Golden Gate?</i>” stuttered Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That isn’t the way the thing shakes down, Mr. Keedy. You have made it
- plain to me that you’re gambling in this—it isn’t a straight deal.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He swore at me, but I didn’t mean the thing the way he cook it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you were going down there,” I said, “with a big expedition, and
- proposed to build coffer-dams, and all that, and go at it scientific
- fashion, I would hire as a regular diver. I couldn’t demand anything else.
- But I’m not merely investing a diving-suit, as it stands. I’m playing a
- lone hand in the diving part of the scheme; I’m investing all my
- experience, all my skill; I’m investing life itself, for, as near as I can
- find out from what you say, it will be up to me to know how to get that
- gold, and then go get it. I want one-third of the velvet after all bills
- are paid, and I want a contract drawn before I start.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps I wouldn’t have jabbed the thing so hard at Holstrom, but I did
- not propose to be the monkey for Keedy. I looked innocent and suggested
- that they’d better talk with another diver. Keedy flapped like a speared
- fish for half an hour—and then he came over. Captain Holstrom walked
- up and down with his hands behind his back during all the talk. I judged
- from his general air that he was viewing the whole thing as more or less
- of a dream, and did not want to get too wide awake about it from fear of
- losing courage and interest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s one thing about it—you’ll work harder if you have a lay,”
- said Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- That’s usually the way with the grafter or loafer—he’s afraid the
- other fellow won’t work hard enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- Frankly, I did not have any very brilliant hopes in regard to that
- expedition, for if old Ingot Ike had told the truth about the failure of
- the underwriters, I figured that the diving proposition must be a tough
- one. Keedy was hot about it, for he did not know enough about such work to
- judge chances; as for Captain Holstrom, ever since he had won this <i>Zizania</i>
- elephant he was in a state of mind which made him ready for any project,
- even to putting wings on her and starting for the moon.
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t pay much attention to the outfitting, except to make a list of
- such equipment in the way of lines, hose, air-pumps, and such matters as I
- needed for my part of the work. Keedy and Holstrom turned around and
- borrowed money on the security of the steamer, this debt to stand against
- our partnership. Keedy seemed so sure of that gold that he did not stop to
- ask me how I was fixed to stand my share in case of utter failure.
- Therefore, with plenty of funds to work with, we were ready for sea in
- short order, and to sea we went, swashing out past Point Lobos, the
- sea-lions hooting at us as we passed their rocks, and started down the
- coast.
- </p>
- <p>
- I leaned over the rail and watched the shore melt in the hazy distance,
- and did not blame the sea-lions for their derogatory remarks. I did not
- know much about steamers, but I realized that the <i>Zizania</i>,
- condemned Government tub, wasn’t anything to brag about. She was a real
- old ocean-walloper, a broad-beamed duck of a thing, thrashing her warped
- paddles, her rusty walking-beam groaning, her patched boilers wheezing—a
- weather-worn, gray, and grunting ocean tramp.
- </p>
- <p>
- Like all craft of the buoy-boat model, she had much deck room forward of
- the bridge, and here were nested, as dories are nested on a Gloucester
- trawler, four forty-foot lighters. Plenty of anchors accompanied these
- scows—huge, rusty second-hand anchors which Captain Holstrom had
- bought from junkmen. The <i>Zizania</i> was naturally slow, and this load
- forward now made a snail of her. Hawsers and chains encumbered her deck
- space everywhere—age-blackened ropes, and iron from which rust
- scales were dropping. Captain Holstrom had ransacked the wharfs for
- hand-me-downs. Even the men whom he had shipped looked as though he had
- secured them at a rummage sale.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s a checker-board crew,” the captain had informed me as they straggled
- on board. “Half black men, and half white. That’s the only way to sort men
- when you’re bound on a long cruise. Keep the blacks mad with the whites,
- and vitchy vici, and you’ve always got half the crew on your side in case
- of trouble. There can’t any general mutinies start when you’ve got a
- checker-board crew. Number-one Jones has the white men’s watch; Number-two
- Jones has the black watch; and as soon as we get this stuff stored and the
- rest moused on deck I’ll have Number-one sick his bunch on to
- Number-two’s, and let ’em fight long enough to get good and mad.
- Then they’ll sort of neutralize each other for the rest of the cruise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That system of gentle diplomacy was new to me, and I loafed around and
- kept an eye out, for I have always had a hearty relish for an honest
- scrap. Furthermore, in explaining to me later, the captain had stated that
- I was expected to jump in with himself and the mates and break up the
- fight with clubs when it had progressed far enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see, we want to leave both sides mad and neither side licked,” said
- Captain Holstrom. “It will be like cooking in a hot oven. The thing
- mustn’t get scorched on. I know how to handle it. Jump in when I say the
- word.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had given me these instructions leaning over the sill of the
- pilot-house window soon after we had got away from the dock.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not that the doodah will start for some time yet,” he added. “But I’m a
- great hand to have things all ready and understood. You can be looking up
- your club between now and to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I glanced into the wheel-house as I walked on. Marcena Keedy lounged in
- solitary state on the transom seat at the rear, puffing away at a cigar.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re always welcome in here,” he called. But I had no appetite for the
- companionship of Mr. Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- It occurred to me, with just a bit of relish in the thought, that Miss
- Kama Holstrom probably was of similar mind in regard to Mr. Keedy. She had
- taken a seat in the wheel-house when she had come on board that day. Now
- she was in her state-room, which was the cabin on the upper deck near the
- bridge, planned as the captain’s apartment. Either she had pre-empted it
- or Captain Holstrom had assigned her to it. I had seen that the Joneses—Number-one
- and Number-two—were in berths near my quarters below, and it was
- plain that partners Holstrom and Keedy had quartered themselves in the
- mates’ room on the upper deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Holstrom’s door was on the hook, and I caught a glimpse of her more
- by accident than by design. She nodded without speaking, and I raised my
- cap and went below to the main deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- I got there in season to see the lighting of a fuse which exploded Captain
- Holstrom’s “checker-board” plans ahead of scheduled time.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first man I met on the deck was Ingot Ike. He was gnawing at a hunk of
- gingerbread with his snags of teeth, and was grinning amiably.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is going to be a comfortable trip for me,” he confided. “I find I
- know the cook. It’s a lucky thing if you stand in well with the cook. Him
- and me was shipmates together on a Vancouver packet. He’s the Snohomish
- Glutton.” He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he expected that I
- would show astonishment. “I said—he’s the Snohomish Glutton,” he
- repeated, more loudly.
- </p>
- <p>
- But my face remained blank.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of the Snohomish Glutton!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I shook my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You nev—You don’t—You ain’t ever—” Ike took another
- drag at the gingerbread, and swallowed hard. “Why, the Snohomish Glutton
- is known—the Snohomish Glutton, he has eat at one setting—Oh,
- shucks, if you ain’t ever heard, what’s the use!” He started on, but
- whirled and came back and shook the hunk of gingerbread under my nose. “I
- suppose if it had been writ and printed in a book you Eastern perfessers
- would know all about it. Thank God, in the West we know a lot of things
- that ain’t printed in a book!” Then he stumped away.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, I concluded I would stroll along to the galley and take a look at
- the cook, and be able thereafter to say that at least I had seen this
- notable of the Pacific.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a spacious galley on the old <i>Zizania</i>. I looked in through
- an open window which commanded the port alley. A fat man was chopping
- kindlings. He was a thing of rolls and folds of fat—a gob of a man.
- There were narrow slits near his nose marking his eyes, but his eyes
- seemed to be shut by fat. A little, round, pursed-up mouth was in the
- middle of his face, and from this came wheezy grunts as he chopped.
- </p>
- <p>
- While I was watching him, an object bounded into the galley door and
- leapfrogged him, darting past me through the window. Before I could turn
- my head the thing, whatever it was, had disappeared around the corner of
- the alley.
- </p>
- <p>
- The cook straightened up, and by an effort opened his eyes enough to stare
- at me. I expected a deep, gruff voice, But he had a real tin-whistle pipe.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did you throw at me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t throw anything. Something rushed through the galley—I
- didn’t see what.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Things don’t hit a man unless they are thrown,” he insisted. “I may look
- funny, but I ain’t funny. I don’t relish having things thrown at me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave up trying to hold his eyes open, and went on chopping.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was getting my breath ready to protest when the thing came through once
- more. It was a monkey. But it missed the cook’s back, for the broad
- shoulders heaved as the ax came up. The monkey slipped, slid across the
- chopping-block, and down came the ax. The animal squealed horribly, flung
- itself past me through the open window, and fled. It went like a shot, but
- I got the fleeting impression that its tail was gone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did you do then?” asked the cook, squinting at me suspiciously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I tell you I haven’t done anything at all. That was a monkey. He came
- from somewhere. He ran through here. I think you have cut off his tail.”
- He peered about. “There ain’t no tail here,” he whined. “There couldn’t
- have been any monkey here. This ain’t any place for a monkey to be. There
- may be monkey business here—and you’re getting it up. You go away
- from here!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I’m afraid the Snohomish Glutton and I would have had trouble then and
- there, but just then a man came rushing into the door of the galley. He
- had the monkey under his arm, upside down, and he was pointing quivering
- finger at a bleeding stump of a tail. I couldn’t understand what he was
- bawling. I found out afterward that he was a Russian Finn and could
- command only a few English words even when he was perfectly calm. He was
- not calm now. I never heard a man rave so. The monkey joined him with
- hideous screams.
- </p>
- <p>
- The cook listened for a time, puckering his fat forehead. When he found
- that the man was talking a foreign language he upraised his ax and swished
- it around in circles near the Finn’s head. A cook in his galley is lord
- supreme in his domain, and the sailor probably knew as much. The ax was
- menacing; it was coming very close, and the Finn already had one exhibit
- of that cook’s ferocity under his arm. He allowed himself to be backed
- out, and the cook slammed and barred the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did he say?” he asked me, in his piping tones.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know what he said.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I reckoned it was some kind of Dago swearing, and I don’t allow a man to
- swear at me. Most likely it was swearing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You cut off that monkey’s tail,” I insisted. “I thought so when he
- squealed. Now I’m sure of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He went to peering around again, whining to himself like a fat porcupine
- who is being badgered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There ain’t no tail here. I didn’t cut off his tail. I didn’t see him so
- that I could cut off his tail.” He started toward the window with a look
- as if he proposed to resent my suggestion that he had been cutting off
- monkeys’ tails. I passed on. I figured that I might as well try to argue
- with a Sussex shote as with that shapeless mass of fat. I would have saved
- a nasty bit of trouble for myself, perhaps, if I had remained and argued.
- And my trouble later that day—and that monkey with the missing tail—was
- the seed from which—But that’s getting ahead of the story.
- </p>
- <p>
- ===There were really three messes aboard the <i>Zizania</i>. There was the
- captain’s mess aft, with special dishes, which was entirely distinct from
- the crew’s food. On the port side was set out the food for the black half
- of the checker-board crew, and on the starboard side the white half
- received their provender.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were at dinner in the captain’s mess. It was our first meal at sea—our
- first meeting at table.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Miss Kama came in we were just sitting down. The captain was with us,
- having left one of the Joneses at the wheel. Keedy lifted his paint-streak
- mustache against his nose in a smile, and pulled out a chair beside his
- own.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sit here, my dear,” he said to the girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- She walked past the chair, came around to my side of the table, and sat
- down. She did not toss her chin or sniff, as some girls would have done,
- to show dislike of Keedy. She was a cool proposition, that girl was.
- </p>
- <p>
- That left the chair beside Keedy the only vacant one at the table. A plump
- little man had been standing off at one side, waiting for the last choice
- of seats. He looked rather bashful, and his round face was shining with
- soap, and his hair was plastered down at the sides and combed up in front
- in a fancy cowlick. You could see that he realized that he did not exactly
- belong at that table. Therefore he had scrubbed himself up for the
- occasion.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Rask Holstrom did not trouble himself with any of the finer graces
- of society. He gruffly introduced the little man as Romeo Shank, chief
- engineer, and told Shank to slide into the chair beside Keedy. “We ain’t
- drawing any fine lines between ship’s officers on this trip,” stated the
- captain, bluntly, for the benefit of all concerned. “Get to table while
- the grub is hot, and get it into you—that’s the motto. Business
- before style is the idea aboard this boat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He began to shovel food industriously with his knife.
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy hitched away from his table-mate a few inches, and looked across at
- me, and deepened the wrinkle between his eyes. But he could not spoil my
- appetite. Something else which happened the next moment pretty nigh did
- it, though.
- </p>
- <p>
- A black man leaped into the saloon through the forward door by which the
- waiter came and went. Two other black men were at his back. They stopped
- just inside the door and dragged off their knitted caps. They had the
- appearance of being a delegation, and an excited delegation at that. It
- was plain to be seen that they had come rushing aft without stopping to
- figure on consequences. The leader carried something in front of him, and
- it was looped over the blade of a wicked-looking-knife. He held the object
- at arm’s length toward Captain Holstrom, pointed at it with the vibrating
- finger of his left hand, and yelped shrilly like a dog. He was too excited
- and too furious to put his complaint into words.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have ye got there—a snake?” yelped the captain, gulping down a
- mouthful, and wrinkling his nose like one who had suddenly come upon
- something disgusting.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We find him in our kittle—we find him dere. Yassuh! We eat ’most
- to de bottom, and den we find him,” raved the negro.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom snapped up from the table and strode over and squinted at
- the object which dangled from the knife blade.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dey cook for us in our kittle a monkey tail—dem white men cook dat
- for us, and laugh,” squealed the negro.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And you think that some of those cheap white jokers put it in, eh?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dey laugh all de time since when we pull him out. Yassuh, it’s a lot of
- fun for dem men.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and stared down on the
- thing which had savored the black men’s dinner.
- </p>
- <p>
- A happy thought seemed to strike him. He turned his head and winked at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take that thing out and whack it across the face of the white man you
- find laughing the hardest,” he commanded. “When he gets up to hit you
- pitch in.” He came lurching back to the table. “I didn’t intend to have
- the row till to-morrow,” he informed us, in an undertone. “But this is too
- good a chance to miss. We’ll get that checker-board crew on a war basis
- where they’ll stay put.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The black men were lingering at the door, trying to get the captain’s
- meaning through their wool.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excuse me, Captain Holstrom,” I said, “but I think I know how this thing
- happened—and I feel it’s too bad to have innocent men beaten up.” I
- started to tell what I had seen, but he swore and broke in on me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t butt into something that’s none of your business!” he snapped. He
- roared at the men: “Go do what I told you to do. Go punch the jokes out of
- that white gang or you’ll have no peace the rest of the voyage. Get out of
- here before I kick you out!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It sounded like a very pretty row, judging it from where we were sitting
- in the saloon. It began in a very few minutes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Number-two Jones,” directed the captain, “go out there and oversee,
- and let me know when it’s time to break the clinch.” He loaded up his
- plate once more and kept on eating.
- </p>
- <p>
- In about five minutes the mate returned. “I reckon it’s about time to
- knock ’em apart, Captain Holstrom,” he advised, shoving his head in
- at the door. “No great harm done, but they’re chewing each other bad, and
- that means expense for plaster and salve.”
- </p>
- <p>
- If I hadn’t already lost my appetite for dinner, that grisly statement
- from Mr. Number-two Jones would have fixed me. I pushed back from the
- table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Come along, Sidney,” commanded the captain, kicking his chair out from
- under him. “Come settle your dinner. I’ll find a club for you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll obey the orders you gave me first, sir,” I called after him; “I
- won’t butt into something that’s none of my business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean to say—” He had stopped and whirled on me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was sore because he had snapped me up so short before them all. I
- thought my explanation should have been considered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mean to say that this fight was needless. You started it; now you can
- stop it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Keedy had been lighting a cigar, and it was plain that he did not
- intend to venture out into the mêlée.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here—I tell you to come along,” yelled the captain. “It’s your
- duty.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not on your life. I’m no ship’s officer! I’m along as a diver, not as a
- prize-fighter.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom looked ugly enough just then to tackle me as a preface to
- his job forward, but after cursing a moment he followed the mate. The riot
- was increasing, and it was plain that he was needed in the field.
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy leaned back and scowled at me through his cigar smoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t know I had picked a quitter,” he sneered. “We’re tackling a job
- that needs sand. You ain’t a tin horn, are you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t answer and the back of my neck began to itch; I suppose if I had
- had hair there like a dog’s, the hair would have bristled. That itching in
- the neck when you’re mad is a survival of the old days when men had lots
- of hair on ’em.
- </p>
- <p>
- I started to walk out of the saloon. Miss Kama was sitting there, looking
- at us, and her presence rather complicated matters for a man who was
- getting madder all the time, as I was. The other officers had chased along
- on the trail of Captain Holstrom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A second-hand diving-suit doesn’t stack up very high against what we’re
- putting into this thing—Captain Holstrom and myself,” he insisted.
- “There was something going in from your side in addition to the
- divingsuit, as I understand it. But a coward can’t invest grit.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stopped at the door and walked back toward him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A what?” I inquired.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I said ‘a coward.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- I slapped him—not hard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now come up on deck with me, Mr. Keedy. You’ve got to come after that.
- There’s a lady here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m going, gentlemen,” said the girl. “Don’t mind me.” She looked at
- Keedy and set her lips.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Keedy jumped up and pulled a gun instead of putting up his fists.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t fight that way, Mr. Keedy,” I told him. “I have no gun. You’d
- better put yours up. You can’t afford to kill me—not yet!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No—and that’s the devil of it,” he blurted, after waiting a moment.
- “You have taken advantage of—of—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of your hankering to get money into your paws,” I snapped back at him.
- “If you won’t come up and fight man fashion, I can’t make you, but if you
- ever call me a coward again on this trip I’ll put in a little evidence to
- the contrary with these.” I showed him my fists.
- </p>
- <p>
- He rammed his revolver into his hip pocket and stamped out of the saloon.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found the girl looking at me, wrinkling her forehead.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon, Miss Holstrom,” I apologized. “But an itching to
- strike that man has been in my fingers for some time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ought to have waited until you had an excuse to strike harder than
- that, Mr. Sidney. I have known Marcena Keedy for a long time. A man like
- you with a big job ahead ought to be able to keep his eyes to the front
- all the time. Now you will have to keep looking behind you. I say—I
- have known Mr. Keedy for a long time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went out.
- </p>
- <p>
- I followed a few minutes afterward, and I went with my head down, and I
- was pretty thoughtful. Captain Holstrom and I bumped together in the
- doorway. He shoved past me and threw a club into a corner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope you can dive better’n you can fight,” he snorted.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he bawled to the waiter and demanded his piece of pie.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXIX—THE TELLTALE RIBS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HERE was nothing
- especially interesting about that prolonged grunt of the old <i>Zizania</i>
- down the California coast. She rolled and thrashed, and the brisk trades
- spattered spray over her bows, and she certainly took her own time in
- moving along.
- </p>
- <p>
- We all settled down to endure the trip as best we could, but it was a
- rather surly party. Forward, the blacks and whites nursed their scars and
- their grudge; aft, Keedy and I scowled at each other so much that nobody
- could be happy around where we were. Miss Kama walked the deck alone, or
- read, or embroidered in her state-room; once in a while I got a glimpse of
- her through the door while she was at work. She continued to sit beside me
- at table, but she was very cool and distant. I don’t know as I tried to
- have her anything else. I would have liked to lean over the rail and talk
- with her, though I never presumed to speak to her on deck. Take a fellow
- when he is young, penned aboard a slow packet, a pretty girl near him all
- the time, and you bet he cannot confine all his thought to the scenery and
- his job.
- </p>
- <p>
- She truly was a pretty girl! I can see her now as she strode to and fro on
- the upper deck, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her white sweater,
- and drawing it forward so that it set off her plumpness. There was a sort
- of indescribable tousle to her hair, if I may put it that way. I don’t
- know what the color was—there’s no name for those shades of copper
- and brown and all that.
- </p>
- <p>
- I know I liked mighty well to see the sun shine through that hair.
- </p>
- <p>
- I loafed below and forward considerably. I found a lot to interest me,
- particularly a job that the Russian Finn was on in his spare time. He was
- making a new tail for his monkey. He explained to me half tearfully that
- the monkey would never be safe or happy otherwise. I had pretty hard work
- to understand the man’s broken lingo, but I gathered that this especial
- kind of monkey needed to spend a portion of his time hanging head downward
- from his tail in order to be well and contented. Once or twice since the
- tail had been amputated the monkey had run up the foremast or the derrick,
- and had confidently tried to throw an imaginary tail over a rope, and had
- tumbled to the deck, where he had squatted and moaned and examined the
- stump with confused and pitiful attempt to understand the phenomenon. I
- could sympathize with the Finn’s fears when he said that “some day he fall
- over the board or break him damn neck.” The cook’s random blow had left
- some inches of the stump, and to this with marline and glue the Finn
- deftly fastened by an “end-seizing” a wire covered with furred skin. I
- wondered where he secured this skin. He owned up to me. He had captured
- and killed one of the cook’s pet cats, and the cook had never opened his
- eyes wide enough to detect the crime, or to behold where the skin of the
- defunct was performing vicarious atonement.
- </p>
- <p>
- This catskin-covered wire was hooked at the end. Edison, I reckon, never
- watched the testing of an invention with greater raptness than the Finn
- displayed as the monkey, after a thorough inspection of the new appendage,
- clambered aloft to where a rope swayed invitingly. I confess that I shared
- in that interest. It proved a surprising success. The monkey swung from
- the hook, chattered, and grinned, and came down and sat for long minutes
- scrutinizing the thing, running busy little fingers along the furred wire.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I may need an inventor with brains when I get at my job down below here,”
- I told the Finn. “I will remember what you have done to your monkey.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But when the time did come, it was the monkey instead of the master who
- served.
- </p>
- <p>
- As day followed day, and we finally raised the loom of the southern
- California mountains in the blue distance on our port, Ingot Ike came out
- of the lethargy in which limitless supplies of soft gingerbread seemed to
- involve him. He talked to me with the brown crumbs sticking in the comers
- of his mouth, and his spirits rose higher each day. He was like a
- thermometer which was being brought nearer and nearer to heat. His talk
- became more eager, his demeanor more alert, joy more intense.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After all I’ve talked about it, and told ’em about it, and argued,
- it’s coming true at last,” he kept repeating to me. He had fastened
- himself to me with especial insistence during the voyage. “You’re the one
- who is going to get it, who is going off this boat right down to where it
- is, where you can lay your hands right on it, sir. Won’t it be a grand
- feeling when you lay your hands on the first box?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” I admitted, “it will—when I lay my hands on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not say that with any great enthusiasm. If Ingot Ike had not been so
- full of gingerbread and glee he would have seen that I was pretty much
- down. That San Francisco cocktail had got well worked out of me. I’d had
- plenty of time to think the whole thing over during that wallow down the
- coast. A man could be hopeful, in on shore, with Mr. Keedy rolling the
- word “gold” over his tongue like a luscious morsel. I had been hopeful—and
- desperate. But after days at sea in that rickety old tub, with her rotten
- equipment, her bargain-sale fittings, her makeshift crew, with her whole
- grouchy, suspicious, and reckless atmosphere, I decided that I was a fool
- and would have been better off if I had gone out and hunted for a
- legitimate job. I had ahead of me the fact, according to old Ike, that
- other good men had tried and failed. I had behind me just then the sure
- feeling that Mr. Keedy proposed to do me up as soon as I made good,
- provided I did so by some lucky chance.
- </p>
- <p>
- The last stage of the voyage south was made with old Ike posted in the
- crow’s-nest, his beak thrust out, and his mat of hair fluttering in the
- wind. He was so excited that he forgot to wallop gingerbread between his
- toothless jaws.
- </p>
- <p>
- Number-two Jones, who wasn’t a bad sort, gave me some information about
- the coast which was in sight of us since we had crossed the mouth of the
- Gulf of California. He had sailed those waters before. He had a somewhat
- misty remembrance of where the steamer <i>Golden Gate</i> had gone ashore,
- but he had never been in the vicinity of the spot, for the sand-bars
- obliged craft to keep well offshore.
- </p>
- <p>
- According to his recollection, the wreck had occurred along the Guerrero
- coast, somewhere between Orilla and Acapulco. The doomed steamer, after
- she had caught fire, was headed for the harbor of Acapulco, almost the
- only haven on the coast, but an outlying sand-bar tripped her many miles
- north of her destination and she went to her grave. Mr. Jones confessed
- that he did not know just where; he would be obliged to hunt fifty miles
- of coast for her if it were up to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Ingot Ike had the memory of a monomaniac on the subject of the <i>Golden
- Gate</i>. He peered under his palm at the hazy sky-line; he threw back his
- head and snuffed into the east like a dog treeing game.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom started the lead going as soon as Ike had asked to have
- the <i>Zizania</i> hug the coast more closely. He knew the reputation of
- those hummocks and submarine plateaus of sand, and the howl of the
- leadsman rather astonished me when he reported, for on the Atlantic coast,
- to which I had been accustomed, we would be in deep water with a
- coast-line so far away in the hazy blue of the east. At a distance which I
- judged to be at least two miles offshore we were getting a report of only
- fifteen or twenty fathoms.
- </p>
- <p>
- At last Ike began to swish his thin arm. “Ye’d better down killick,
- Captain!” he screamed from the crow’s-nest. “We’re laying off of her. This
- is the place.” He scrambled down and ran to the wheel-house. “If you put
- her in closer than this she’ll roll her blamed old smokestack out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom accepted that advice promptly, though the shore-line was
- at least a mile away.
- </p>
- <p>
- He yelled shrilly, and splash! went the port anchor. When she had swung
- wide he sent down the starboard mud-hook, and she headed the rolling
- Pacific, riding easily to the heave of the giant sweepers.
- </p>
- <p>
- A little thrill tingled in me as she came to a halt. We were on the ground
- at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was now up to me!
- </p>
- <p>
- There were plenty of other men on that boat, but there was only one man
- who could reach out and put his hand on that treasure, and that was
- myself. The thought did not help to cheer my despondency.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom was immediately busy with a huge telescope which he
- lifted from its rack and leveled across the sill of the wheel-house
- window. Old Ike was excitedly counseling him, jabbing a digit toward the
- shore.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Follow down from that second nick in that hossback mount’in,” the guide
- suggested. “Them is my bearings. You ought to see them ribs fairly plain
- against the white where that surf is breaking inshore.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was silence after that while the captain squinted through the glass,
- twisting a section now and then to sharpen the focus. His daughter was in
- the wheel-house at his side, her face tense. She had never intimated to
- me, of course, what her ideas were in regard to this treasure quest. She
- may have held the whole project in the same contempt in which she seemed
- to hold Keedy, its chief instigator, or old Ike, its prophet. But I stole
- a look at her, and decided that she was interested now.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, anything with intellect above that of a steer would have had to be
- interested at that moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- We were hoping that yonder under those rollers lay three or four million
- dollars’ worth of gold—gold enough to buy everything that man or
- woman could desire.
- </p>
- <p>
- Even the blockheads of the checker-board crew, who could hope for no more
- than their wages from the quest, were staring over the rail from the main
- deck forward, their mouths open. Marcena Keedy was eating a cigar instead
- of smoking it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Them ribs ought to be there, Captain,” insisted the old man, wistfully.
- “The rest has been buried, but them ribs have stood all the swash for
- years. They ought to be there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was another long silence.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then Captain Holstrom straightened up. “They’re there!” said he. He
- beckoned to me. I was at the rail. “Come in here,” he directed. “It’s your
- next peek—for yonder is laid out your job.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had good eyes and I spotted the objects right off. There were three
- curved ribs of a ship outlined against the white of the breaking rollers
- beyond. The telescope gave the view relief and perspective, and I saw that
- the ribs were well outshore. Many yards of tossing water, so I judged,
- were between them and land.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, what do you think?” he inquired, when I passed the glass back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll tell you after I’ve been down, sir. A diver can’t afford to waste
- guesswork on the top side of water.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl shook her head when her father offered her the telescope, and
- Keedy came in and took his look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Away in there, is it? Well, what are we waiting for out here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom looked his partner up and down.
- </p>
- <p>
- This sudden exhibition of a lack of a practical knowledge took his breath
- away for a moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re waiting out here because we have got to stay here, Marcena. This is
- as far as it’s safe to go.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We might as well sit on the Cliff House piazza and boss the job as be out
- here,” grumbled the gambler.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know what sort of an idea you had about getting this treasure,”
- retorted the captain. “But if you had paid attention to Ike when, he was
- telling about the lay of the land you ought to have realized that we
- wasn’t going to tie up to that wreck and have Sidney hook bags of gold on
- to a fish-line for you to pull up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m down here to have a general oversight in this business,” said Keedy,
- “and I propose to be near enough to the job to oversee it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom looked a bit disgusted. “We might rig a bos’n’s chair for
- you on one of them ribs, and cut a hole in the water for you to look down
- through. But see here, Marcena, don’t get foolish about this thing. All
- you’ve been thinking about, so I judge, is of them boxes of gold, and you
- haven’t stopped to figure on the way of getting ’em. I have
- figured. I’ve talked a lot with old Ike when you wasn’t listening, but was
- dreaming about them ingots. Now you listen to me. Let’s start in without a
- row and a general misunderstanding.” He began to dot off his points with a
- stubby forefinger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We can’t anchor the <i>Zizania</i> any nearer. There isn’t holding-ground
- on that sand, and we’ve got to have plenty of water under this steamer in
- case of a blow. See those lighters forward? I bought ’em after I
- got a general understanding of the lay of the land here from Ike.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You bought a lot of things without consulting me,” said Keedy, showing
- his grouch. “What <i>am</i> I in this thing—a passenger or a
- partner? Seeing that my money is in it, I propose to have my brains in,
- too.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man acted and talked in a way to indicate that he was starting out
- hunting for trouble. It began to look to me as if there were worse shoals
- ahead for our partnership than the shoals of San Apusa Bar. Mr. Jones had
- given me that as the name of the place where the wreck lay.
- </p>
- <p>
- Capt. Rask Holstrom did not have the steadiest temper in the world. His
- eyes narrowed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Every man for his own line, Keedy. I’m not presuming to tell you how to
- deal from the box, nor how to size the buried card in stud poker. Nor I
- don’t need any advice from you when it comes to handling a job of work in
- tidewater. I’ve waited till I got here to tell you my plans. When I can
- talk and you can see the layout at the same time, I’ll not be wasting so
- much breath; even those faro-game brains of yours can take in what I’m
- getting at. Now, hold right on! This is going to be a square deal, and you
- can sit close to the jack-pot. Those four lighters are going overboard,
- and we’ll moor them in a chain between here and the shore. We can splice
- the cables so as to allow a hundred fathoms between each one. That will
- make each lighter a sort of a bridle anchor for the others, and we ought
- to get the inshore lighter mighty nigh the wreck. You can stay on that
- lighter and have your meals brought if you hanker to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He snapped out that last remark while he was backing down the ladder from
- the bridge to the main deck. The sneer that went with it did not improve
- the state of Keedy’s feelings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll show this aggregation whether I can boss a job or not,” he growled.
- </p>
- <p>
- I decided right then that if Keedy tried to boss me from that inshore
- lighter the partnership of Holstrom, Keedy & Sidney would get a
- fracture in the second joint much wider than the one which was already
- widening there. I looked after him when he strolled away, and I reckon if
- he had turned around and given me one of those nasty looks of his just
- then I would have run after him and hoisted him a good one under the
- coat-tail—gladly taking the consequences. I had never hated Anson C.
- Doughty any worse. Keedy had grafted himself on to the project with stolen
- money—and now he was insulting the rest of us by placing us in the
- rogue class with himself and in need of watching.
- </p>
- <p>
- I suppose I looked very blue and ugly and disgusted as I stood there at
- the rail, scowling first at Keedy and then at the streaming white of the
- surf which played beyond the ribs of the wreck.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl spoke to me. She leaned from the window of the wheel-house, and
- there was a note in her voice I had never heard before. All her
- brusqueness was gone. She was sort of confidential and wistful.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t think much of this scheme, do you, Mr. Sidney?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was in the mood to agree with her. “There must be an almighty good
- reason why those other fellows did not recover the treasure, Miss
- Holstrom, providing old Ike is right in what he says and that they didn’t
- get it. I can tell better after I have been down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have never seen a diver at work. It is very dangerous, isn’t it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That depends on the job. I have been as deep as one hundred and seventy
- feet, Miss Holstrom, and I felt perfectly safe, though the pressure made
- my nose bleed. Another time I was down in only four fathoms in the wash of
- a lee shore, and they couldn’t keep my lines and my air-hose dear, and
- they pulled me up near dead. That’s a lee shore yonder, and I’m afraid I’m
- going to find some very good reasons why the other divers didn’t succeed.
- Sometimes I am tempted to believe that they did get the gold and that old
- Ike’s talk is simply a dream.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think the whole affair is a nightmare—I mean this trip,” she
- declared. “I don’t believe the good Lord is going to allow a man like
- Marcena Keedy to succeed in any decent enterprise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I rubbed my ear and looked at her for a few minutes. I had been turning
- over a thought about this expedition in my mind for some days. I did not
- know whether to say anything to her about it or not. It would be giving
- Captain Holstrom a pretty hard dig. But I blurted it, for she knew I had
- something on my mind and bluntly demanded to know what I was thinking
- about.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Perhaps this is the kind of a scheme where the devil will help his own,
- Miss Holstrom—and therefore Keedy belongs in the thick of it as
- chief manager. He’ll win on that basis. I don’t know much about admiralty
- law or maritime justice. But it may be that this treasure has not been
- officially abandoned. Perhaps taking it is stealing it. I know that the <i>Zizania</i>
- got away from port with papers as a trawl fisher. I know I have no
- business talking like this about your father’s affair. But if it’s to be
- real stealing, perhaps we’ll succeed with Keedy in the game,” I said—and
- it was a pretty clumsy joke. It fell flat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope my father will wake up,” she said, curtly, looking down on him
- where he was giving off orders about clearing the big derrick. “Sometimes
- I almost believe in evil spirits and in control of a man’s mind by another
- man—in a wicked way, I mean. But I thank God there’s one of the
- Holstrom family who can’t be hypnotized by Marcena Keedy. That is why I
- have come on this voyage—my father needs a guardian.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She came down the steps from the wheel-house, and went into her
- state-room. I walked aft, for the <i>Zizania</i> had swung with the
- surges, and was tailing toward shore, and I wanted to look at the place
- where my work had been cut out for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy met me amidship. He came out from behind a lashed life-boat, and it
- struck me at once that he had been in ambush, spying on me. That was
- before he had opened his mouth. He did not leave me in any doubt when he
- began to talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s get to an understanding about Miss Holstrom, Sidney,” he rasped,
- leveling his finger at me. “You let her alone. No more buzzing her behind
- my back or her father’s.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Keedy, you have started running after trouble to-day. In my case, you’ll
- catch up with it mighty soon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then let’s make believe I have caught up. I’m going to marry that young
- lady. And no cheap Yankee masher is going to stand around and make sheep’s
- eyes at her. That’s business and you keep your hands down. You slap me
- again, Sidney, and I’ll drop you in your tracks—even if the gold
- stays there till we can get another diver.” He had his hand on his hip,
- and his eyes were fairly green.
- </p>
- <p>
- I started to tell him what I thought of him and his chances with that
- girl, proposing to throw in a few remarks about what I should do if I
- wanted to. But I shut my mouth suddenly. I had no right to stand out there
- and insult a girl by quarreling about her with a fellow of that stripe.
- </p>
- <p>
- Vastly different were the circumstances and the relations of the persons
- concerned—but I felt the same rankling of resentment which hurt my
- pride and my feelings when Jeff Dawlin growled his warning in my ear. I
- hated to leave any false impressions with Keedy. I did not propose to have
- him think I envied him anything he possessed or thought he possessed.
- Pride and the spirit of brag—that was it—prompted my answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” I shot out at him, “I have a girl East who is worth more than
- all the gold you expect to find in that wreck over there. What do you
- think I’m out in this God-forsaken country for? What do you think I’m
- gambling along with you for? It’s so I can grab off enough money to make a
- showing when I carry it back home and pour it into her lap! Don’t you
- worry, Keedy. I don’t want any of your girls. There’s one who is waiting
- for me back East!” How a man will lie when he gets to talking about girls!
- I snapped my fingers under Keedy’s nose and walked on aft. I felt
- considerably relieved because I figured I had taken some of the conceit
- out of him. I had a lot taken out of myself when I returned.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Kama Holstrom met me. She gave me one of those up-and-down glances
- which seem to sting like the flick of a long lash.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have no objection to your discussing your love affairs with Mr. Keedy,
- my dear sir—though I question your good taste. But I must ask you
- not to discuss me with him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I assure you I did not!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I stepped into my state-room only to get my cap. I was walking on the
- other side of the life-boat when you were talking.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure you understand my request, sir.” She walked on.
- </p>
- <p>
- A fine partnership—that of Holstrom, Keedy, and Sidney,
- treasure-seekers! And there was a silent partner whose silence just then,
- along with her disgust, sent a crimson flame into my cheeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXX—THE LOCKS OF THE SAND
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">R</span>IGHT away I found
- that Captain Holstrom knew how to “team” a crew. He started that
- checkerboard outfit of his to humping in good earnest after he and I had
- planned out the details of setting the stage for the work ahead of us.
- </p>
- <p>
- We needed to reach as long an arm as possible toward the wreck.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inside of four days after we planted our mud-hooks on San Apusa Bar, we
- had our string of lighters in place.
- </p>
- <p>
- First we anchored them and then we linked them with one another by cables
- because the sandy bottom inshore from the steamer afforded poor
- holding-ground for the anchors. Having a number of lighters hitched
- together in this manner, the chain made a sort of spring cable for the
- lighter nearest the wreck where the scuffling surges were piling high over
- the shoals. The scow nearest the shore thrashed about in rather lively
- style, but I figured that I could do my work from it in pretty fair
- fashion. At any rate, by our system of cables, we planted the lighter less
- than three hundred feet from the upstanding ribs of the Golden Gate. It
- was about the best we could do, considering our limited equipment.
- </p>
- <p>
- On the fifth day all was ready for me to go down for the first time.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of course I had been allowed to pick my own helpers, and I had been giving
- them lessons for some time. I chose Mate Number-two Jones to tend hose and
- lines, and Chief-Engineer Shank was to manage the air-pump.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had found them to be steady and reliable men. I owned a Heinke
- diving-dress which had cost me six hundred dollars, and with the right men
- “up-stairs” I was not worrying about my ability to get down and stay down—even
- if I had been off my job for a while. As to what I would be able to
- accomplish when I got down on ocean’s floor I was not quite so sure.
- </p>
- <p>
- While I had been waiting for the lighters to be moored I had pumped Ingot
- Ike daily.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did seem to know what he was talking about—and I had to admit
- that. The matter of the treasure of the <i>Golden Gate</i> had crowded
- everything else out of his mind, and left his memory mighty dear. He drew
- a plan of her with a stubby pencil, and went into minute details of
- description. He said the ribs which showed were forward of the room where
- the treasure had been stored. The fire had been aft and amidship, and when
- she had struck the sand she had buried her nose, and these ribs were
- planted so solidly that the surf had not been able to beat them down. As a
- quartermaster who had known his ship, he was able to tell me how many
- paces aft from the standing ribs should be the spot where the treasure
- lay.
- </p>
- <p>
- They made ready the best life-boat on the <i>Zizania</i> for me and my
- equipment, a big yawl with sponsons. Captain Holstrom did not propose to
- take any chances with that outfit during the ferrying process. He went as
- coxswain, and I was not surprised, of course, to see Keedy scramble in
- even before I had lowered my diving-dress over the side. What did surprise
- me was to have Miss Kama show up as a passenger. When she stepped past me
- and went down the ladder my eyes bugged out. I thought ’twas
- somebody I had never seen before. She wore knickerbockers, and was
- gaitered to the knees, and she went into the life-boat as nimbly as a
- midshipman, asking a hand from no one. I could have cracked Keedy across
- the face with a relish for the way he rolled his eyes at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- She showed the good sense of an out-of-door girl who understood a thing or
- two when she picked that costume. Embarking and disembarking with that
- surf running under a keel was no job for a girl in skirts.
- </p>
- <p>
- When we came up beside the in-lying lighter we were climbing white-flaked
- hills of water and coasting dizzily into green valleys. Those waves of the
- old Pacific which had marched across seas from the lee of the Society
- Islands were certainly making a great how-de-do in halting on those
- sand-bars of the Mexican coast; and inshore there in the shallows the surf
- had a nastier fling to it than off where we had found holding-ground for
- the old <i>Zizania</i>. It was a case of every one for himself in making
- the transfer from the life-boat to the lighter. I was ready to assist the
- girl, but she set foot on the gunwale, sprang with the heave of the boat,
- and landed on deck as lightly as a bird; she could not have done the trick
- more neatly if she had worn wings on the shoulders of that close-fitting
- sweater.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was one cheerful moment for me on that day of anxiety; Keedy was the
- last passenger out of the lifeboat, and he teetered and made motions to
- jump, and flinched and squirmed and backed water like a swimmer afraid to
- plunge in. When he did jump at last he stubbed his toe on the deck of the
- lighter, and raked that hooked beak of his across the planks. I grinned at
- him when he staggered up, holding to his bleeding nose, and I went to
- overhauling my diving-dress, whistling a tune.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found Number-two Jones and round little Romeo Shank to be helpful
- handy-Andys after the instructions I had given them. The girl never missed
- a motion they made in getting me ready. I felt a warm finger trying to
- worm its way under my rubber wristbands, and I turned to find her looking
- at me with a great deal of concern. She explained that she wanted to be
- sure that no water could leak in, and then she seemed to think that she
- had been just a bit forward, and she blushed.
- </p>
- <p>
- The next thing I knew she was sturdily fetching one of my twenty-pound
- shoes, and stood there holding it ready for my helpers. I had gone down a
- good many times in my life, but I went that day with the happy
- consciousness of helpful interest in my poor self.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then they set the helmet on to the breastplate and gave it its one-eighth
- turn into the screw bayonet joint, and set the thumb-screws. My front
- eyepiece was hinged like the window of a ship’s port-hole, and this was
- open. The girl bent down and peered at my face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It seems a terrible thing for you to be closed in there—for you to
- go down into that raging water,” she said, her face close to mine.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wish me good luck, and I’ll go humming a tune,” said I, smiling at her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “With all my heart I do,” she answered, a catch in her voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- I shut the frame, and Mr. Shank set the turn-screw. With a man on each
- side of me, I scuffed my way to the ladder, and went over the rail of the
- lighter. I waited at the foot of the ladder—about ten feet under—until
- I felt that little pop in my ears which signals to the diver that his
- Eustachian tube is open, and that the pressure is equalized. Then I yanked
- the rope to ask for a taut lifeline, and let go my hold.
- </p>
- <p>
- The sun was bright and the bed of the sea was of sand, and I found good
- light below. There was a heavy sway to the water even on bottom, but I was
- strong, and knew how to handle myself. I found my footing, and started
- along.
- </p>
- <p>
- My only tool that day was a peaked-nose shovel. I crawled along, using it
- for a push-pole.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found the bottom to be a succession of bars, which were parallel with
- the shore—waves of sand, so to speak, ranging from six to ten feet
- in height. It was a slow job working one’s way across them. However, they
- assisted me—there was no danger of getting off one’s course. I
- needed only to proceed at right angles to the bars. Through my bull’s-eye
- in that dim green light I could see ahead for some distance. So at last I
- came to the timbers of the wreck. There was a long tangle of these, a
- great mass of wreckage hidden by the sea and protruding but a little way
- above the sand which the eternal surf had packed down. I kept along toward
- shore until I came to the timbers which, so my eyes told me, must be the
- ones that marked the location of the wreck. They went looming up through
- the water. I clung to one of them and rested. I was having no trouble with
- my air, and now that I had reached the scene of the work that fact
- comforted me. The movement of the sea in that shallower water was
- considerable, and now and then a heavier roller jostled me about. But I
- began to plan out a system of lashings that would anchor me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I got down on my belly, and started to measure paces along the edge
- of the timbers, following Ike’s instructions as to distance. There was
- mighty little that was encouraging about the spot which I finally located
- as the probable site of the treasure-chamber. Sand was billowed and packed
- there, and the place was quite free from wreckage. It occurred to me that
- the other divers had dug the timbers away at this point. As I was feeling
- fairly fresh, I decided to use my shovel a bit.
- </p>
- <p>
- After five minutes’ toil at that sand I began to perceive why the others
- had failed, providing Ingot Ike was correct and they <i>had</i> failed. In
- the first place, there was not the footing on that bottom that a submarine
- diver needs. I skated about almost helplessly when the heaving sea
- clutched at me. When I tried to drive the shovel into the sand I was
- pushed back, and the tool made only scratches on the bottom. Without a
- prop or a brace, a diver cannot pull or push horizontally with much force
- even under the best conditions, and when I did succeed in getting the
- shovel into the sand and scooped a hole, the particles began to settle
- back, driven by the swaying seas. The giant Pacific was jealous of the
- treasure it had engulfed.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was nothing more for me to do down there that day. I began to feel
- that pain above the eyes which warns the diver. I gave the signal for
- return, and went back at a lively pace, for the taut line helped.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw none of them on the lighter until my helmet had been removed, for
- when a diver ascends to the air his bull’s-eye becomes covered with mist
- in spite of the wash of vinegar which has kept the glass clear below.
- Marcena Keedy was in front of me, looking at my hands, and acting as
- though he were wondering where I had stowed the find I had made below.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, it’s there, isn’t it?” he demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “From what little I have been able to find out, I reckon it is there,” I
- told him; “and it wouldn’t surprise me much if it stayed there for some
- time.” I was in no mood to encourage that polecat, who was plainly
- thinking more about that treasure than he was about any dangers I might
- have been through. He drew that streak-o’-paint mustache up against his
- nose and looked like a dog about to snap. I turned away from him so as to
- have something better to look at. There was the girl beside me. She sure
- was an antidote for the poison of Marcena Keedy’s evil eye. Her red lips
- were apart, and her little hands were clasped, finger interlaced with
- finger.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank God you are back safe, Mr. Sidney!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She wasn’t looking at me as though she were wondering in which pocket I
- had hidden an ingot of gold.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was not dangerous,” I told her. “It was disappointing, that’s all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I ignored Keedy. I looked past him to Captain Hol-strom, and related what
- had happened below. It was a mighty interested crowd that stood around me
- and listened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The idea is,” I wound up, “this is no ‘reach-down-and-pick-it-up’
- proposition.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s what I call doing damn little in an hour’s work,” growled Keedy.
- “You ain’t down here to tell us how hard that job is. We have heard all
- about that from the other divers. You are down here to get that gold. You
- bragged around what a devil of a diver you have been, and now when we have
- to depend on you, all we get is some more conversation. Have you got us
- away down here and let us in on a dead one?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If that money was in a faro-bank instead of a sandbank,” I told him, “you
- would be just the man to get it out—you have had plenty of practice
- in that line. But this happens to be an honest job, and it needs something
- besides false cards.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I kept on talking to the captain:
- </p>
- <p>
- “After giving the thing a good looking-over I have begun to figure on a
- few plans. I’ll paw over and size up the stuff on the <i>Zizania</i> this
- afternoon and see what there is in stock to help me.” I told Mr. Jones to
- unstrap my shoes.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Keedy saw them peeling off my dress he had a few more remarks to
- offer about the kind of a “hot diver” a man was who called an hour a day’s
- work. If I had brought up an ingot in each hand from that first trip he
- wouldn’t have been grateful; he would have wanted to know why I did not
- bring up the whole box.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had a dirty job of it that afternoon pawing over the old junk on board
- that steamer, but I managed to sort out some material that fitted into my
- scheme, and it was ferried to the lighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down again the next morning at sunrise, for the southwest
- trade-wind had quieted during the night, and the swell wasn’t quite as
- energetic as it had been under the push of the breeze the previous day.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had the same spectators. Miss Kama, looking like a pretty boy in her
- knickerbockers, had plainly determined to keep in the front row, and I’ll
- own up that her presence put ginger into my efforts. I reckoned I’d show
- her the difference between a man who could do and dare and a sneering
- loafer of the caliber of Keedy. A handsome girl usually has an effect of
- that sort on a young man.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I reached bottom under the lighter they lowered an old mushroom
- anchor to me. I unhooked it, and started to roll it along the “windrows”
- of sand toward the wreck. It took every ounce of strength in me to boost
- it up those slopes. I had lashed a crowbar to the anchor stock, and when I
- finally got the thing to the wreck and had rested I stuck to the job,
- though I had really done as much as was advisable at one descent.
- </p>
- <p>
- I loosened up a sizable patch of sand with the crowbar, and settled the
- anchor in the hole, stock upright. There was no need for me to pack the
- sand back; the Pacific Ocean would attend to that part of the job. The
- Pacific was altogether too busy in packing sand, though. It did not
- discriminate between an anchor which I wanted made solid and treasure
- which I wanted set free.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down a second time that day. I carried small chains and a broad
- shovel. I lashed myself to the anchor’s stock, and with that support as a
- fulcrum for my body I dug into the sand with the crowbar, and fanned out
- the loose particles with the broad shovel.
- </p>
- <p>
- But it was like the reverse of the story of the man who set out to carry
- water in a sieve. The sand kept running in. If I had been able to stay
- down there night and day, and have my meals brought to me, and could have
- worked without rest or sleep, I might have been able to dig a hole in that
- sand and to keep it dug out until I had come to that treasure. As it was,
- I toiled until my head seemed splitting, until blood ran from my nose, and
- I felt the first weakness of that peculiar paralysis of the limbs which
- divers experience when they pass the limit set for endurance under water.
- I lashed my tools to the anchor, and was pulled back to the lighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- Human arms had given up—human strength and grit had failed. But I
- knew that through the hours of that afternoon, through the watches of the
- night, that old, miserly ocean would keep toiling on, rolling sand back
- into that hole, patting it down with unseen fingers, locking a door over
- the treasure that would serve the purpose better than doors of steel or
- bars of bronze. I should find all my labor undone when I came back to that
- anchor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore I did not lark and play when I was dragged over the rail of the
- old lighter. I stumbled to my seat, and sat and wiped blood from my face
- when the helmet had been twisted off the breastplate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Four hours since you went down—you’re sure a wonder!” muttered
- Shank, patting my dripping shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was embarrassed—a bit shocked—when the girl hurried to me
- and began to wipe away the blood with her little handkerchief. I tried to
- push away her hands. It didn’t seem right to have her do such a task. But
- she resisted me. She kept on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You poor boy!” she said—or I thought she said it; I was not sure.
- There was pity in her tones—a caressing kind of pity, such as comes
- right from a woman’s heart. I was astonished. She had been stiff and curt
- toward me—and was rather short with every one else, for that matter.
- She had never seemed tender even toward her own father.
- </p>
- <p>
- But she murmured again in my ear, leaning close to me, “You poor boy!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I’ll admit I was glad to hear her say it—I needed sympathy; but
- because I mention the girl and her little ways please do not jump at the
- conclusion that I was falling in love. She had overheard a declaration
- which established my standing with her and, I suppose, made her feel freer
- in my company. Oh no! I was not falling in love!
- </p>
- <p>
- Sitting there as I did with forty pounds of lead on my feet and eighty
- pounds of it across my shoulders, with air in my dress puffing me out like
- a giant frog, dripping with brine, and hideous with blood-smeared face, I
- wasn’t much to look at in the way of a lover. And outside of the pity she
- had never by flicker of eyelid, or tone of voice, or touch of hand
- intimated that she was interested in me except as a young man who was
- tugging at a hard job and deserved a little encouragement.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all—all useless—down there—isn’t it?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No; it’s a glorious job, and I’ve just begun on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But it’s wicked for you to suffer like this.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was never so comfortable and happy in all my life—never so full
- of courage.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy was listening and I felt like tormenting him. He stuck his face down
- to mine. It was not a pretty face. His nose was swathed in absorbent
- cotton, which was held on with straps of court-plaster.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, let me in on why you’re so happy,” he snapped.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It doesn’t happen to be any of your business,” I informed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ain’t I a partner in this thing with you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I get ready to tell you anything about my work, I’ll see that you
- are informed. Or, if you want to make the trip, I’ll tuck you under my arm
- and take you down to-morrow. I’d be delighted to do so.” He looked at me a
- little while and his eyes narrowed.
- </p>
- <p>
- That evening I had a talk with Capt. Rask Holstrom.
- </p>
- <p>
- Marcena Keedy was not in that conference. I walked the upper deck until
- Keedy had gone, grunting and growling, off into his state-room. Then I
- hunted up the captain where he was lying on the transom in the
- wheel-house, puffing at his pipe and looking rather sullen.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew what was ailing him. I had refused earlier in the evening to come
- into the wheel-house while Keedy was there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Being a plain and blunt man, I may as well say what’s on my mind,” stated
- Captain Holstrom, sourly. He did not arise. He squinted ar me from under
- the vizor of his cap, which was pulled low over his eyes. “You ain’t
- dealing with me and Keedy open and frank as your partners. You ain’t
- giving us full particulars. You was down four hours to-day, and came up
- looking blue and scared, and then just talked flush-dush with my girl. We
- ain’t down here for anything except straight business and results. Your
- two eyes are the eyes for all three of us. When you have used ’em
- down below there we’re entitled to have full report. Me and Keedy ain’t at
- all satisfied with the way this thing is running on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I sat and looked at him, and waited to hear whether he had any more to
- say.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, sir, we ain’t satisfied,” he repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m glad Mr. Keedy isn’t satisfied,” I told him. “I wish he would get so
- dissatisfied that he would quit this expedition. And I don’t intend to
- kowtow to him and make him satisfied.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I’ll be damnationed!” exploded the captain, pushing back his cap.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You needn’t be, Captain Holstrom. What I say doesn’t have any reference
- to you at all. I hope my relations and yours will stay as they are—no,
- I hope they will improve as you know me better. But that gambler has
- grafted himself on to this scheme. He isn’t a practical man, as you are.
- He sneers at me and my work—and God knows it’s hard and dangerous
- work. He expects impossible things, and it doesn’t do any good to come up
- out of that hell of water and explain to him. Every time he opens his
- mouth I feel like jumping down his throat and galloping his gizzard out of
- him. There! That’s rough talk, but I mean it. If Marcena Keedy doesn’t
- handle himself different where I’m concerned there’s going to be serious
- trouble aboard here. Hold on a moment! Hear me through. I respect your
- good judgment and I know you are willing to work hard. I’m ready to talk
- to you at any time when that sneak isn’t around. What you say to him after
- that about plans and expectations I don’t care—that’s your own
- business. But I’m sorry you don’t hate and distrust him as much as I do.
- Now I’ll tell you what I found down there to-day, and how the thing looks
- to me.” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then, if all that is so, we may as well up killick and go home, eh?” I
- never saw a more disgusted look on a man’s face, or heard a more
- melancholy tone.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t told you that to discourage you, or to crybaby myself. I’m
- giving you the facts, and I hope you’re practical man enough to keep from
- sneering about my efforts the way Keedy does. I’m doing all that a human
- being can do—but you’ve got to face facts, Captain Holstrom, and
- I’ve been giving you facts, I say. That’s the situation—that’s all!
- You know as much as I know. If you have ideas, think ’em over and
- give ’em to me. I’ll keep on trying to think up something myself.”
- I went off to my state-room so as to give him time to do that thinking.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXI—A TASTE OF BLOOD
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE old Pacific was
- in her usual welter next morning.
- </p>
- <p>
- The big seas were rolling up from the equator, and we could hear them
- booming in on the coast-line.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I look back on that nightmare off the bars of San Apusa I think the day
- when I went down with the anchor was the calmest day of our stay. With the
- everlasting thrust of the trades behind them the billows rolled, rolled,
- rolled, rolled—seethed and surged—giant green soldiers with
- the white plumes, charging that sandy shore. I got to feel after a time
- that they were soldiers in real earnest, and that they were after me—poor
- little midget, who was trying to accomplish the impossible.
- </p>
- <p>
- At breakfast Mr. Shank ventured to remark politely and somewhat nervously
- that he was supposing I would not try to go down that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I told Mr. Shank rather brusquely that of course I should go down, and
- added that if we were to wait for smooth water in soundings on the lee
- shore of the Pacific Ocean in the season of the trades, we should have
- brought plenty of knitting-work and novels.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom, from the head of the table, smiled and winked at me with
- the most cordial expression I had ever seen on his face. I decided that
- one of my partners was regarding me in a more amiable frame of mind than
- he had before I had made that little speech to him. Mr. Keedy scowled at
- me, and I was glad of that mark of his continued disesteem. It occurred to
- me that perhaps I was weaning the captain from Keedy, for Holstrom snapped
- his friend up rather short two or three times during the meal.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down that day with more weights. The tug of those rollers inshore
- was tremendous for a buoyant man, even in the comparative calm of the
- previous day. I realized what I would meet up with this day, and I was not
- disappointed in my reckoning.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was tumbled from hummock to hummock of the submarine sand-bars. I was
- knocked down and then was stood up once more. Sometimes I was lifted off
- my feet, and then I was rolled and pressed down and pinned to the sand
- till it seemed that I would never get on my feet again. Part of the time I
- was thrust ahead as if the Pacific were trying to make me walk Spanish—and
- then I was yanked backward on all-fours like a big crab.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew a whole lot about undertows, and I realized that I was having an
- experience with a particularly crazy one.
- </p>
- <p>
- Men who have observed and studied think they have a pretty good line on
- the notions and the moods of the sea—but take it from me as a
- submarine diver, they haven’t. If one is standing on a rock and looking
- out on it, or sailing across it in a safe boat, the ocean becomes a matter
- of “beautiful surf,” or an expanse more or less hubbly with waves.
- </p>
- <p>
- But get down into it—get down deep where it can play with you, twirl
- you, toss you, suck your breath, provided it can throttle your air-hose—where
- it can work all its schemes and its spite. You will find out that the
- ocean has a new trick for every day.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are beaches where persons have bathed in safety for years. Then all
- at once some day a shrieking man or woman is seized, as though by some
- hidden monster, and is dragged off to death. That mighty and erratic force
- is called an undertow. It is now here, now there. It is born out of
- diverted currents, checked tide rips. It sneaks up bays, seeking prey; it
- roams along open Peaches. I know a lot more about undertows, but that’s
- all for now.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was in one that day off San Apusa. Wind, tide, a current wandering off
- its course—one of the currents that is uncharted and which is known
- only by some diver who meets it on its wanderings below the surface, had
- combined, and had come to play in the vicinity of the wreck of the old <i>Golden
- Gate</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- I struggled on toward that wreck. Say, I met an old friend of mine. It was
- the mushroom anchor, and it was doing a sort of jig on top of a sand ridge
- when I first saw it. Evidently it had been lonesome during the night, and
- it had come to meet me. It was at least one hundred feet on the sea side
- of the wreck—and I had left it with fluke buried close to the ribs.
- If that undertow had dug up that anchor it might be doing other things.
- That thought came to me like a flash of hope. There’s no telling what an
- undertow will do when it gets to prancing, you know!
- </p>
- <p>
- I unlashed the crowbar from the anchor stock and tumbled on over the
- ridges. I found myself in an opaque yellow light instead of in the green
- radiance I had found on my other two trips, and I knew that the sand was
- in motion inshore. When I came to the wreckage of the steamer I did not
- know my way about. The undertow had been dragging away the packing of sand
- here and there. More bulk of the débris was displayed, so far as I could
- judge by touch and by what I could see in the dim light. I groped my way
- along to the great ribs which showed above water, in order to get my
- bearing. It was a fight to get there. I was thrashed about and tossed and
- slatted. I wasn’t exactly sure when I did get there, for other parts of’
- the wreck had been uncovered so much that one could easily be deceived in
- water in which boiled so much sand that it was like working in soup.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, I toiled back after I reckoned I had located the marker.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, the old Pacific had truly had a change of heart since the day before.
- The unseen fingers of that freakish undertow had been at work—they
- were still at work. They were scooping out sand instead of piling it in. I
- can best describe the appearance of things by saying that there was a
- smother of sand in the swirling water. Now and then the water cleared when
- the undertow let go its tuggings for a moment, and I could see parts of
- the steamer which formerly had been hidden from me.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I had counted the paces that should bring me in the neighborhood of
- the treasure, I set my crowbar into the sand with all the strength I could
- muster, and twisted it around and around in order to loosen the stuff. It
- was wonderful how quickly the water dragged away what I set free from that
- pack.
- </p>
- <p>
- A bottle came bouncing up out of the hole. I dislodged pieces of broken
- crockery. Ingot Ike had said that the treasure had been stored in a
- compartment of the ship near the pantry. The sight of that jetsam
- encouraged me. I stabbed with all my might, drove the crowbar in again and
- again, struggled to hold myself on bottom, and muttered appeals to that
- undertow in my frenzy of toil. I do not know how long I worked. I do know
- that all my sensations informed me that I was remaining beyond my limit of
- endurance. But the conviction came to me that this was not a chance to be
- neglected. I was in a fever of hope. I wanted to show that coward of a
- Marcena Keedy that a strong man could call the bluff of a loafer’s sneers.
- I wanted to convince Capt. Rask Holstrom that he had not picked out a
- piker, and perhaps I wanted a girl to give me the smile which success
- ought to win.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well—and here’s to the point!—all at once, when I was near
- fainting, my crowbar struck something which was not bottles or crockery. I
- managed at last to get the point of the bar under the object. I could not
- see what it was. I only knew, as I worked the bar, edging it around the
- thing to dislodge the sand, that the object was oblong and had corners.
- </p>
- <p>
- My buoyancy and the swing of the rolling sea would not allow me to pry
- with any great force. I could only pick at the sand and coax the box out.
- In the end I had it where I could get my fingers under the edges—and
- there’s one thing a diver can do: he can lift with the strength of a
- giant, the air in his dress assisting him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, it <i>was</i> a box, so I found when I had it out. It was a heavy box
- even when lifted there under the sea. It was a small box, and there could
- be only one reason for such a small box being so heavy—it was one of
- the bullion boxes. Of that fact I was convinced.
- </p>
- <p>
- I carried several small chains at my belt—my lashings in case of
- need. I circled the box with chains, and secured it to my body as best I
- could, then clutched my arm about it for greater safety. As I worked I
- grew more excited—I had drawn first blood in my duel with the old
- Pacific. Excitedly I pulled the line to send my signal to the lighter,
- asking for help on the return. They told me afterward that I gave the
- emergency signal. Perhaps I did. They had been waiting for a signal for so
- long that they were in a state of panic. They feared that I had been
- drowned, for I had been down for horns. When they got my double tug, so
- they told me later, Number-two Jones gave a yell, called every man on the
- lighter to the rope, and proceeded to give me a run home in emergency
- time.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first yank took me off my feet. Overballasted by the box of gold, I
- tipped head down, and butted the summit of the first hummock of sand with
- my helmet. My neck was snapped to one side and my head got a tremendous
- rap against the side of the helmet. I did not strike ground again until I
- reached the next ridge. I struck that and bounced, and I think I took a
- recess on breathing right then and there. I have not much recollection of
- the rest of that three hundred feet of rush back to the lighter. I know I
- hit a good many hummocks, and I must have passed away into dreamy
- unconsciousness when the drag upward through the water to the rail of the
- lighter began.
- </p>
- <p>
- They told me that when I came over the rail I was bent double, and it was
- some time before they saw that I had something tucked in my arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- I heard somebody shout, “Oh, God, this man is dead!” But I was just
- getting my wits back then. I opened my eyes. Two of the crew were holding
- me up, and Shank had my helmet off. He yelled like a maniac:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m wrong! He ain’t!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m mighty glad you’re wrong, Shank,” I told him. My voice was pretty
- feeble, but the memory of that box came back to me, and my thoughts were
- dancing even if I couldn’t dance with my body just then.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried to look around after that box, but I lost interest in it the next
- instant. It’s pretty hard work for me to tell you what happened, and tell
- it in a matter-of-fact way, as I’m trying to tell the rest of this yam.
- When I looked around I saw Kama Holstrom on her knees a little way from
- me, her face as pale as the white foam on the waves, her eyes wide open. I
- think her ears had been closed by horror when Shank had let out his first
- yell.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re alive!” she cried. And the next instant I was very much alive, for
- she leaped up and ran to me, and threw her arms around my neck and kissed
- me squarely on the mouth. Then her face was no longer white. It flamed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t mean to—I am sorry—it was a mistake!” she gasped,
- and she broke out and cried like a baby. But I caught her hand before she
- could get out of reach of me, and pulled it to me and kissed it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ah, if I <i>had</i> been dead you would have waked me up,” I told her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ve a blamed good mind to kiss you myself!” roared old Holstrom from
- somewhere behind me. Then he let out a whoop and came and capered in front
- of me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’ve brought up twenty thousand dollars’ worth of gold!” he informed
- me. “Five ingots, with the assay mark on ’em, and each worth four
- thousand dollars. That’s the kind of a diver you are, Sidney! All
- together, men! Three cheers for the greatest sea diver that ever wore lead
- shoes!” And the men gave the cheers while he pounded his fists on my back.
- </p>
- <p>
- I got a view of Marcena Keedy when I turned my head around. Mr. Keedy was
- not showing any interest in my condition—not he. He was sitting on
- deck with the open box hugged between his knees, and he was feeling over
- those bars of gold like a lover fondling his lady’s cheek.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t say I’m stuck on the style of that critter,” mumbled Shank in my
- ear. “He yanked that box away from you before we had fairly swung you
- inboard and before anybody knew you was alive. He pried it open, and has
- set there making love to it ever since.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Ike was squatting in front of Keedy on his haunches, and was drooling
- like a hound watching a butcher.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s there! I’ve always said it was there. It’s there all bright and
- shining. They all have hooted at me because I have said it was there. Now
- what do you think?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nobody has been a game sport in this thing except you and me,” said
- Keedy, sticking an ingot up under Ike’s nose. “Nobody would back your hand
- till I came along. I’ve had to talk everybody over before anybody would do
- anything. I know how to play a hand with a buried card in it. I’ve played
- that hand to the limit, and now see what has happened. When you fellows
- are passing cheers around you’d better hooray for the man who has turned
- the trick—for the man who kept at it till he got you down here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave me a nasty side-glance and snuggled the box under his legs just as
- though he had recovered property which belonged to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where there’s one there’s the rest of ’em, eh, Sidney? You have
- found the nest of the beauties, eh? Well, do we get another nice little
- box to-day? We may as well open the game with forty thousand while we’re
- about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Shank was leaning close to me, unscrewing the wing nuts between the
- breastplate and my collar-band. He began to swear very soulfully in an
- undertone, and he kept on swearing when he got a look from me that
- indorsed all his sentiments in regard to Mr. Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are three millions down there—and twenty thousand is only a
- flea-bite,” declared the callous knave. I don’t believe he noticed that I
- was half dead when I was pulled up—or cared a rap about my
- condition, anyway. “I’m strong for bulling the game when it’s coming your
- way. What do you say, Sidney, if we make the first day’s ante forty
- thousand?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Captain Holstrom,” I said, “a man who has been banging the soul out of
- himself for five hours in a divingsuit is in no condition to talk to a
- skunk like that over there. Can’t you say something?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I must confess that the captain did rise nobly to the occasion. A tugboat
- man who has spent most of his life fighting for berths in the maze of
- shipping along the San Francisco water-front needs considerable hot
- language in his business, and Captain Holstrom was in good practice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So I’ve got the two partners against me now, have I?” snarled Keedy. “I
- had to fight to get the two of you into the proposition, and now that
- you’re making good I’ve got to fight both of you to keep the thing going,
- have I? Thanks for the hint as to how you propose to hold cards—but
- I serve notice right now that you can’t whipsaw me between you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked as evil as a door-tender in Tophet, but his threats did not
- trouble me.
- </p>
- <p>
- That evening something happened that indicated further cleavage of
- associations on board the <i>Zizania</i>, whose checker-board crew had set
- an example early in the cruise.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ingot Ike came to the captain and myself in the wheel-house.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now that we’re beginning to haul in the bright and shining stuff that
- makes the world go round I’d like to know where I’m going to get off when
- the divvy comes,” said he. And he was more than a little insolent in the
- way he said it. It was a good guess that he had absorbed more or less of
- the insolence of his new running-mate, Marcena Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom was pretty short with the man. He informed old Ike that
- when the work was done and we knew what the profits would be he would be
- handed a lay which would make him comfortable for life. “That was the
- understanding between us when we started out on the gamble,” said the
- captain. “You haven’t got a dollar ahead now—you never did have. A
- lot of money wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. You don’t know how to keep
- it or how to spend it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That ain’t any of your business!” declared Ike, with heat. “We have begun
- to get up that gold. We’ll get all of it. It’s there, just as I said it
- was. I want ten per cent, of all that comes over the rail, and I want it
- without any strings on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And if you got it laid into your hand you’d be around in six months
- borrowing from me,” said the captain. “If this thing comes out as it ought
- to, I’ll put enough in trust for you to pay you a hundred dollars a month
- as long as you live. Now go off and dream of that, and be happy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Happy your Aunt Lizy!” yelped the old man. “See here, me and Keedy is the
- whole thing in this, and—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom arose and grabbed Ike and tossed him out of the
- wheel-house door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Them two fellows,” he confided, wrathfully, to me, “will be charging me
- board on this trip, besides taking all the profits for themselves, if I
- don’t watch out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not confide to the captain any of my doubts that evening in our
- talk. I was hoping for the best. I had recovered one box with the
- assistance of my enemy, the old Pacific. I understood the queer and
- notional quirks of undertows. I realized that history might not repeat
- itself in this case—but the Pacific coast was new to me, and I was
- not ready to believe that I had happened on the only case of an undertow
- scooping sand instead of piling it and packing it. I went to bed, tired as
- a hound after a chase.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I went down into the sea again the next day, still hoping. Yes, I was
- fairly confident—so confident that I carried a pair of ice-tongs. My
- experience of the day before had shown me that this tool was just the
- thing with which to grapple one of those boxes and lift it from the sand.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was plenty of motion in the depths of the sea. But I realized that
- it was not the motion of the day before. The swaying water thrust me ahead
- over the hummocks with more force than it pulled me backward. The water
- was clear and green once more. Where, oh, where had my undertow gone?
- </p>
- <p>
- I had ground my crowbar into the sand where I worked the day before. I
- could not find it, and after a survey I saw it had been covered by the
- drifting sand. Portions of the wreck which had been in sight were hidden
- again. The hole where I had wrought so valiantly was filled and smoothed.
- It is wonderful how quickly currents of water can make changes in sand. I
- had seen instances before in my submarine jobs; now I was beholding a more
- striking case. After inspecting the scene I judged that the treasure was
- buried more deeply than ever. The ocean had plenty of loose sand with
- which to work, and had used it. I tell you honestly I never suffered such
- an awful feeling of disappointment. The pang was worse because I had been
- successful once.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was as though my enemy, the ocean, had decided to give me one bite of
- the fruit of success in order to whet the appetite of my expectations. It
- had not relented in order to do that—it had played a devilish trick
- on me.
- </p>
- <p>
- It had shown me that the millions were there—money-enough for all
- that life or love might require in this world. I had got a peep—had
- got one taste—and the malicious ocean had tucked it all out of reach
- once more, and was making faces at me with the wrinkles of that
- hard-packed sand.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was useless to remain down and exhaust myself. I signaled, and returned
- to the lighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- As soon as my bull’s-eye cleared after I came up out of the bubbling water
- I saw Keedy. He was perched on the rail near the life-line coils, looking
- down at me like a fish-hawk eying its prey. For a moment I was glad I did
- not have another box. I enjoyed his disappointment.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, after my helmet was off, I told Captain Hol-strom that a change in
- current had piled up the sand and that nothing could be done that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s it!” raged Keedy, smacking his fist into his palm. “You wouldn’t
- take my advice yesterday. You wouldn’t follow your hand when the cards
- were running right. I understand about those things. That was the time to
- double the ante! I know how to play the game for what it’s worth. There
- ain’t any brains in this whole outfit except what I’ve got under my hat. I
- see it’s up to me to go down there and show you how to do this thing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll be out of this diving-dress in a few minutes,” I told him. “You’re
- welcome to use it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had a wild hope that he was mad enough to go down—angry enough and
- gold-hungry enough. It would have settled the case of Keedy if he had gone
- down—soaked with rum and tobacco as he was. But he swore and walked
- away and jumped into the life-boat—so much of a coward that he
- wanted to put as great a distance between that dress and himself as he
- could.
- </p>
- <p>
- I can describe the happenings of the next two sad weeks in two words,
- “Nothing doing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Not that I didn’t go down. I went every day. I tried all kinds of tools. I
- sat up nights to think, and worked days under water until they had to pull
- me back to the lighter, riding on my back over the sand hummocks, so weak
- that I could not use my feet and drag my lead-weighted shoes. But the old
- Pacific had given us our one mouthful of bait, and now was mocking us. If
- I loosened sand the ocean took that sand and piled it higher over the
- treasure. And all the time Keedy glowered and growled and swore, and said
- I was not half trying.
- </p>
- <p>
- One morning Captain Holstrom came banging on my state-room door before I
- was awake. He tried to tell me something, fairly frothing at the mouth,
- but the words tumbled over each other so rapidly that I couldn’t
- understand. He was jabbing a slip of paper at me, and I took it and read:
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>To Holstrom and Sidney,—With two partners working against me, I
- claim the partnership is broken. After this I’ll work on my own hook, and
- I’ll have a man who is a real diver, not a dub; and I warn you not to
- bother me in any way.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “Partnership broken!” yelled the captain. “And how do you suppose he has
- broken it? He sneaked away in the night. He took Ike and four of my crew
- and the best life-boat. But that ain’t the worst. He took the gold—all
- of it! Took the twenty thousand. He had the key to the safe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why did you let him have the key to the safe?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because he howled around that he ought to have some office as a partner,
- and wanted to be treasurer. He has trimmed us for twenty thousand, and
- he’ll use that money to fit out another expedition. He has done us good
- and proper, and there ain’t anything sensible we can do about it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I reflected a few moments, and decided that, considering the kind of a
- project we were working on, we could not afford to chase Keedy and howl.
- In the opinion of certain persons interested in that wreck, we might
- appear as thieves, ourselves, if the thing became known in Frisco.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried to say something to Captain Holstrom about being well rid of
- Keedy, but I do not think he heard me. He was too busy stamping about and
- swearing. That was truly a dark-blue morning on the <i>Zizania</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were certainly weary and hopeless days which tagged on after that. I
- kept going down, for I hoped to meet up with another obliging undertow.
- But San Apusa Bar did not seem to be a popular resort for undertows.
- </p>
- <p>
- In about ten days we got another hard jolt. A little schooner came
- swashing up in the lee of the <i>Zizania</i>, and a boat was rowed off to
- us. The two men who leaped over the rail introduced themselves as Mexican
- customs officers for the district off which we lay, and they wore the
- uniform to prove their identity. It had been reported to them, they said,
- that we were seeking treasure from the wreck of the <i>Golden Gate</i>,
- and they told us we must stop such business at once and sail away or we
- should lay ourselves liable to arrest and imprisonment. They had a lot to
- tell us about what the law was, but I have forgotten. Maybe they were
- giving us straight law, and maybe they were not. Neither Holstrom nor I
- knew.
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain did know men if he did not know law—and he was a man who
- had mighty keen sense for a crook’s trail, having had a lot of experience
- with crooks on the water-front. He rubbed his red knob of a nose for some
- time, and listened. Then he invited the customs men into his sanctuary of
- the wheel-house, and called me along with them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know all about who has been talking this over with you, gents,” he told
- them. “I reckoned he would make down the coast in that life-boat he stole
- from me. He stole that boat, he stole my men, he stole what else he could
- lay his hands on here. He is a yaller-faced faro-dealer. He never told the
- truth, he never dealt square cards, he has always cut a corner on every
- man he had business with. I don’t want to see you fooled. I’m the captain
- of this steamer. You can see I’m something of a man. This is my partner,
- and you can look at him and see that he is no crook. I’m going to get
- right to the point, gents. Do you want to do business with a square man or
- a crook? You might as well be open with me. Men have to live down here in
- Mexico. I know all about this customs business along the coast. You’ve got
- to do business to live.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They blinked hard, but they did not protest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know how much of a ‘hot rock’ he dropped into your hat, but I’m
- prepared to drop in a bigger and a hotter one.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had never heard that expression about a “hot rock” before, and I was
- obliged to listen a little while longer in order to understand that
- Captain Holstrom was talking thus bluntly about a bribe.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In one case you’re doing business with a crook—a thief. He’ll turn
- around and do you when he has used you. In this case you are dealing with
- a man who has a name along the water-front, who owns this steamer, and who
- is here to make a dollar for himself and for you. You are men with brains
- and you can size up chaps pretty well. I’ll bet you didn’t like the looks
- of that whelp with his cat’s eyes and his mustache cocked up—come,
- now!”
- </p>
- <p>
- They blinked harder.
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain leaned to me and whispered in my ear: “Run and tell Kama to
- give you every gold piece she has got in her pocket. Dig over your own
- pockets. Tell the Joneses to dig. Bring it here. I’ve got to keep ’em
- on the run with conversation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I returned with my collection, and the captain added the contents of his
- own pocket, banging the coins on the transom. Then he swept the money into
- a little sack and drove the sack down into the trousers pocket of one of
- the officers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s only posting a little forfeit that we’ll do as we agree,” cried
- Captain Holstrom, heartily. “We are here where you can watch us, gents.
- But you can’t watch a fly-by-night like that coyote who has been lying to
- you about us. Keep your eyes out—stand by us—and you’ll get a
- ‘hot rock’ in your hat that you’ll need both hands to hold up. We’ll see
- the other man’s stake and then raise him out of the game—and if we
- don’t, then come and seize the steamer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He followed the men to the rail, shook hands with them half a dozen times,
- and they returned most urbane grins when they rowed away.
- </p>
- <p>
- As soon as they were out of ear-shot the captain cursed them in horrible
- fashion and shook his clenched fist at them under pretense of waving
- farewells.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So that’s what Keedy done as quick as he got down coast to a port, hey?
- Cleaned us out of what he could lug, and then sent them critters here to
- finish the job. He probably thinks he is going to make a clear field here
- for himself by strapping us for every cent, and then setting the customs
- on to us as soon as he can drop another ‘hot rock’ into their hat so as to
- raise us out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t those men feel bound in any way after taking money from us?” I
- asked him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They feel bound till the next fellow gets to ’em, my son. Do you
- see what we have got cut out for us? By the jumped-up Judy, we’ve got to
- get that gold—and we’ve got to keep ahead of everybody else in
- getting that gold, because them custom-house blood-suckers are going to
- stick to the juiciest crowd. I don’t know what kind of an outfit Keedy
- proposes to bring back here, but he has got twenty thousand dollars in his
- fist, and a man can do a lot of business on charters with twenty thousand
- dollars. And we haven’t got a sou markee.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stamped into the wheel-house, shaking his fist above his head, and I
- walked up and down the upper deck, thinking some thoughts which I do not
- care to call back to mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXII—PER MISTER MONKEY
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>S she had done
- many times in those days of gloom and doubt, the girl came out of her
- state-room and walked with me. Her companionship was a consolation. She
- looked up at me from under her tousle of curls and swung along by my side
- with an easy air of comradeship.
- </p>
- <p>
- The word “comradeship” best expresses our attitude toward each other.
- After that explosion of her feelings on board the lighter, when she had
- kissed me in front of the whole bunch, she had coated herself with just a
- little ice, and my Yankee reserve and sensitiveness detected it. It was as
- though she had hinted to me that I would be a cad to presume further
- because she had taken a woman’s interest in my misfortune. In fact, she
- had dropped a few words in regard to women making fools of themselves when
- they are too frightened to know what they are doing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Furthermore, she stuck to that knickeroocker costume of hers, and I found
- myself forgetting half the time that she was a girl, for she clambered
- about over the truck aboard the old <i>Zizania</i> as no girl in skirts
- could, and never needed a hand on her trips to and from the lighter. She
- wore those clothes with such frank assurance that the garb was the only
- suitable one for the circumstances, with such lack of self-consciousness,
- that after a few days it really seemed as if the other men had forgotten
- that we had a girl aboard.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps that accounts for the fact that when one of the firemen rushed
- past us a few minutes later he was using language such as he would not
- have used had he been properly mindful that there was a lady in hearing.
- </p>
- <p>
- The fireman came from the depths below-decks, and was chasing the Russian
- Finn’s monkey. He was so intent on the chase that when the fleeing monkey
- invaded the sanctity of the upper deck the fireman came along, too. There
- were several breathless instants in that part of the pursuit which we saw.
- You will recollect that this monkey had a false end to his mutilated tail—a
- curved wire, which was covered with cat’s fur. As the monkey fled,
- screaming and swinging the heavy end of the tail from side to side, the
- hook caught, first on a stanchion, then on a lifeboat prop. The monkey had
- not entirely mastered the science of handling that new tail, or else he
- was too excited just then to remember its limitations. When he had his own
- pliant tail it didn’t matter if a loop hooked around an obstruction. But
- now when the wire hooked itself the monkey was obliged to back up and
- unhook that inflexible loop. Each time he stopped he lost all the lead he
- had gained on the fireman.
- </p>
- <p>
- Four times in traversing the upper deck the coal-heaver was near enough to
- make a crack at the monkey with a grate bar. Each time the monkey unhooked
- himself just in time to be able to dodge and continue the flight. Finally
- the fugitive made the ensign mast by a rousing leap, shinned, up, and hung
- over the dingy gilded ball at the top. I don’t understand monkey talk, but
- I’m sure that the yells he sent down were just as pure profanity as that
- which the fireman was howling up at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hey, there, my man,” I called, “that kind of talk doesn’t belong up
- here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He shut up, gave the monkey a long and blistering stare, and came back
- toward the ladder. Sweat was running down through the soot on his face,
- and that face showed that he was in no pleasant frame of mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I asks to be excused,” he said, “but that—” he gulped. “Seeing that
- I can’t talk about it before a lady and be polite, I asks to be excused
- again and I’ll be going.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I followed him to the head of the ladder and stopped him just as he was on
- the first rounds.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What happened?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re keeping up a little steam for the derrick windlass and the pumps,
- and that gimlet-eyed, snub-nosed hellion got into the bunkers when I was
- on deck, and turned on my wet-down hose, and shifted twenty tons of dust
- coal out to where it’s all got to be shoveled back. I’m going down to
- write out notices for a funeral and, by Jabez! I’ll guarantee to have the
- corpse ready!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shifted twenty tons of coal!” said I, surprised. “It must have taken him
- some time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I guess you don’t know what can be done in fine coal with a stream of
- water when you bore it in,” snapped the fireman. “That wire-tailed
- gabumpus wasn’t in there five minutes. He has laid in wait and watched me
- sprinkle coal. He turned her on full bent and bored. I’ll get him, and
- I’ll get him good!” His smudged face went out of sight down the ladder.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are some ideas in this life which steal up on a man and whisper to
- him, and keep whispering for a long time, until at last he overhears—and
- then he plans and toils, and in the end an invention results.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there are other ideas which march up to a man and hit him on the
- head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Twenty tons of coal shifted in five minutes by a monkey and a hose! The
- idea that hit me was like a hammer blow. My head wasn’t clear all at once;
- I was dizzy. The details were hazy—but there was the idea hammering
- at me. It was such a glorious idea that I walked aft to that ensign mast,
- looked up, and took off my hat to that monkey. I know he misunderstood my
- act. I know he cursed me as another enemy. But I did not care. I had got
- used to being misunderstood and underrated aboard the <i>Zizania</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- I turned around and found the girl looking at me with wide-open eyes.
- “This isn’t insanity,” I told her. “It doesn’t run in the Sidney family.
- But an idea has just come to me out of a monkey’s prank, and it’s such a
- wonderful idea that I don’t dare to talk about it until I have thought it
- over. I guess you’ll have to excuse me, Miss Kama; I’ve got to go into my
- state-room and pound at that idea while it is hot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not sleep much that night. I was wrestling with a notion as the old
- chap in the Bible wrestled with the angel. And when morning came I was
- positive that an angel of a notion had come to me. I told Captain Holstrom
- at breakfast that I was not going down that day. But when he turned a
- doleful look at me I grinned so amiably that he snapped his eyes,
- thinking, perhaps, that he was not seeing just straight.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll have something to tell you later, Captain. It’ll sound better to you
- when I have made certain that we have got stuff aboard here to work out an
- idea.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That became my business after breakfast—to hunt the <i>Zizania</i>
- over for certain material. I invited Captain Holstrom along with me, and
- took two men for helpers.
- </p>
- <p>
- My first quest was for hose. The <i>Zizania</i> carried canvas hose for
- fire purposes, stacked here and there on racks. It was not in prime
- condition, for the old <i>Zizania</i> had been condemned along with her
- equipment as far as Government purposes went.
- </p>
- <p>
- We got that hose down and measured it, and found rising two hundred feet
- of stuff that was serviceable. I needed three hundred feet to cover the
- distance between the lighter and the wreck. I made inquiries about canvas.
- The steamer had a suit of sails for her two masts, and the sails had been
- unbent some time before and were stored. Before the day was over Mate
- Number-two Jones had men at work cutting that canvas and sewing it into
- hose of a diameter to fit the fire-hose. Of course, it was crude work, but
- I was obliged to do the best I could with the materials at hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- That evening I called a conference. Captain Holstrom, his two mates, and
- Engineer Shank assembled in the wheel-house, and I explained as best I
- could what my preparations meant.
- </p>
- <p>
- Remember, please, that at the time of which I am writing hydraulic mining
- had not been tried, and men in those days had no conception of what a
- stream of water would accomplish in moving soil.
- </p>
- <p>
- I told those blinking confrères that I believed I could direct a stream of
- water on that sand below the sea and bore a hole down to that treasure.
- The only one in the party who showed one glimmer of enthusiasm was Mr.
- Shank. And even he did not get up and hurrah. He nodded his head sagely
- and admitted that “stranger things had happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you’ve got to use our steam-donkey for your stream,” growled Captain
- Holstrom, “and you can’t get the <i>Zizania</i> any nearer shore than this
- without wrecking her. You’re only planning on three hundred feet of hose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s all I need, Captain. Mr. Shank can build us a plunger-pump with
- brakes, and we’ll put the whole crew on to the beams, and have ’em
- give an imitation of a firemen’s muster.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Shank nodded again, and allowed that “stranger things had been done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How did you happen to think of this cussed scheme, anyway?” inquired
- Captain Holstrom, not trying to hide his disappointment.
- </p>
- <p>
- I promptly decided that I would not confess that the thing had been
- suggested to me by a monkey with a wire tail. I looked at the scowling
- captain, and I could imagine the wealth of his language if I should tell
- him any such thing. So I took all the credit to myself—and it was
- not much credit I received from those solemn listeners. The most I got out
- of Holstrom was the sullen statement that no matter what I did next the
- situation couldn’t be any worse than it was.
- </p>
- <p>
- The work went on the next day, and the day after, and the day after that.
- It was slow business making that hose so that it would be anyway
- water-tight. And the wooden force-pump took a lot of time in the building,
- rude affair though it was. It had a plunger—two ends of wood on an
- iron rod, and the brake-beams were long enough so that a dozen men could
- get a clutch on them.
- </p>
- <p>
- I don’t remember how much time we used up in getting our makeshift
- apparatus into such shape as would warrant it being used for the trial.
- </p>
- <p>
- I do remember this—and remember it all too well!—before we
- were in readiness for the test of the hose and our pump a small schooner
- came rolling up the coast and anchored well inside of us, even nearer the
- wreck than our lighter from which we had been operating.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was no customs boat. Within a few hours we abroad the <i>Zizania</i>
- knew that Marcena Keedy was in command of the new arrival, and that he had
- brought two divers and was full of hope and curses and brag.
- </p>
- <p>
- Where Keedy secured his men and his craft we did not know—for social
- calls were not exchanged between the two vessels. But a lot can be
- accomplished in a few weeks when a man has greed to prick him, a grudge to
- settle, and twenty thousand dollars to back him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Capt. Rask Holstrom had been in the depths of despair before the arrival
- of Keedy; now he found a hole leading into the subcellar of his despair,
- and retreated still lower. He had no faith in my new contrivances. He
- wanted me to abandon work on such folderols and go down and stand over
- that treasure. He could not seem to see with my eyes. He knew that
- millions in gold were at the bottom of the sea—I had recovered a
- sample of it. He felt just as though it lay there unprotected, and that
- the first-comer would get it. As a submarine diver who had struggled
- against the difficulties of the situation, I was more serene. I didn’t
- know what sort of prodigies in the diving line Keedy had secured as my
- rivals, but I was not ready to admit to myself that they would succeed by
- ordinary means where I had failed after exerting every ounce of effort.
- </p>
- <p>
- Using Captain Holstrom’s long telescope, I saw them going down. They went
- together. Evidently Keedy had concluded that if one diver had failed, two
- ought to be twice as good, and succeed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom remained at the end of his telescope until he acquired a
- permanent squint. We had hard work to get him to drop the glass long
- enough to eat. Day after day, as soon as it was light in the morning, he
- was in the wheel-house, balancing the glass across the window-sill,
- watching Keedy’s schooner. He evidently feared and expected to see
- uncounted wooden boxes of ingots come tumbling up over her rail.
- </p>
- <p>
- My equipment had been almost ready when Keedy arrived, but now another
- consideration held me back. I did not propose to let the other crowd in on
- my methods if I could help it. No matter what Captain Holstrom and his
- associates thought of the feasibility of the scheme, I had a lot of
- confidence in it, and was not willing that a rival should know enough
- about it to copy any plans.
- </p>
- <p>
- Therefore I set my crew at work building a wall of boards about the
- lighter, leaving only a door for my exit over the side. I wanted to
- conceal the pumping operations. As to the divers whom I should meet at the
- scene of the wreck, I trusted to other measures to conceal my system.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was out on the lighter to superintend the building of the wall, and more
- especially to oversee the setting of the force-pump and its attachments. I
- did not like the looks of the sea on that last day of our work. It looked
- murky and slaty as the big rollers surged under us, and I remembered that
- it showed that same color on the day when my friendly undertow had helped
- me. I was tempted to go down and investigate, but I had seen the men from
- Keedy’s schooner go overboard, and I concluded to keep away from contact
- with them until I was ready for serious operations.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inclosed in my wall on the lighter, I was busy about my own affairs, and
- did not peep to see what was happening in the neighborhood.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom remained on the <i>Zizania</i>, in close companionship of
- his only intimate of those days—his long telescope. But Kama
- Holstrom was at my side while I worked, cheering me by her wise little
- comments, her bright eyes taking all in, her quick mind grasping all the
- possibilities of my scheme.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a rather cheerful little group there in our pen. Even Number-two
- Jones was whistling in jig time, for all the apparatus was fitting
- together as slick as a school-marm’s hand in a fur mitten. And then in
- through the door burst a human thunderbolt in the form of Capt. Rask
- Holstrom.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was bareheaded and his gray hair was scruffed up like the bristling
- mane of a mad bulldog. He was not able to manage words for about a minute,
- but he wasn’t voiceless by any manner of means. He roared and leaped about
- and smote his fists together. He picked up our hose and flung it about
- himself like an insane snake charmer. He kicked at the wooden pump with
- his stubtoed shoes until I was obliged to push him away. Then he grabbed
- the hose once more, and reeled it about himself in senseless fury, for all
- the world like a caterpillar weaving its cocoon. His square face was a war
- map of rage, and in the center of that face his red nose gleamed like a
- danger signal.
- </p>
- <p>
- We stood and gaped at him. There wasn’t much else we could do as long as
- he remained in that awful state. He paid no attention to his daughter’s
- questions and appeals.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took a peep through the cracks of the boarding to see whether the old <i>Zizania</i>
- were still afloat; I had a horrified suspicion that she had sunk or
- burned. She floated serenely, sweeping up and down on the crested waves.
- </p>
- <p>
- After letting off his surplus of steam in howls, Captain Holstrom was able
- to manage speech at last.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’ve got it!” he yelled. “They’re getting it! I’ve seen ’em
- pull two boxes of it over their rail, and they’re dancing jubilee around
- the deck.” He flung down the coils of hose, and stamped on it, and spat
- the most vicious oaths I ever listened to.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They’re getting it—they’ve got it—and all you’re doing here
- is fooling with a damnation squirt-gun that ain’t no sense and no good—and
- I told you so in the first place. Keedy was right. I ought to have stuck
- to Keedy. I’ve known Keedy. He was a friend of mine till you came along
- and broke us up. I had promised my girl to him. He ain’t setting around
- darning second-hand canvas”—he kicked the hose—“when he ought
- to be up and about, doing real business.” He rushed at me and clacked his
- fists under my nose. “I’m all done with you! I’m going to Keedy and
- crawfish and offer him the steamer and my equipment for a lay with him and
- his men. I’ll offer him my girl. You’ll marry him if I have to hold you up
- in front of the minister by the ears!” he informed her, whirling and
- shaking his fists under her nose, too. “I’ve had all the silly notions and
- lallygagging I propose to have, and what I say goes after this. It’s
- business from now on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He started to plunge back through the door like a down through a hoop. A
- couple of his men were holding a yawl beside the lighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had used my submarine grip on Captain Holstrom once before when he was
- drunk. I used it now when he was sober—and the grip held. I grabbed
- him and yanked him back, slammed the door, and set myself against it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can’t dissolve partnership with me in any such way,” I informed him.
- “Especially not right now, just as I’ve got the world by the tail.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll show you whether I can dissolve partnership or not,” he barked; and
- he began running about the inclosure, roaring threats and peering here and
- there. He was plainly hunting for a weapon of some sort in order to beat
- me away from the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Kama!” I called to her—the first time I had ever addressed her so
- familiarly, but that was no time for niceties. “Kama, it’s no use to plead
- with your father. He’s no better than a lunatic. He’s going to throw
- everything into the hands of that thief of a Keedy. It mustn’t be done!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain had found a dub and was coming at me.
- </p>
- <p>
- She put herself between us. He knew better than to raise his club against
- her, and he kept dodging back and forth to get past her. He paid no
- attention to her protests and appeals.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Shank—Mr. Jones,” she cried, “take that club away from my
- father. He is not in his right mind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It would be mutiny—mutiny and State prison,” stammered the mate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m his daughter—I’ll go into court if it ever comes to that! I
- order you to do it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Keep the others off, and I’ll do it,” I said in her ear, and I rushed
- past her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Holstrom struck at me viciously, but my rush had taken him by surprise. I
- caught his arm and the stick, and tore the weapon away from him. But to
- down him and subdue him was a different proposition—and a very husky
- job he made of it for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was broad and sturdy; he was sober, and he was beside himself with
- rage. The spectacle of that gold going into the hands of Keedy and his
- gang had made a lunatic of him for the time being. I got no help from the
- others. Men of the sea and ships, they had a wholesome tear of what would
- happen to mutineers when that matter came into court. I struggled with
- that old rascal until every muscle in me throbbed with the pain of
- tension, and I thought the blood would burst through my face. No matter
- about the details of that long fight. But at last I got him down; I rolled
- him on his face. I pulled his hands together, kneeling on him, and the
- girl lashed his wrists together when I appealed to her. She lashed his
- legs as well, for I decided to take no chances with him while he was in
- that mood.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I got my breath I leaned over him and spoke my little piece:
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is tough business for all of us, Captain Holstrom. I don’t know what
- may come out of it. I’m prepared to take my medicine if I’ve done wrong.
- But you have started in to run amuck. You ought to know what Keedy is by
- this time. He has done you once. He would do you worse the next time. If
- you weren’t crazy at this minute you’d realize it. I don’t propose to
- stand by and see you heave your best chance over the rail in any such
- fashion. I demand twenty-four hours to make good on my scheme. Twenty-four
- hours—that’s all. I know how those men got that gold. I got mine in
- the same way. But they won’t get any more; I know conditions down there;
- I’ve been all through it. You listen to me, I say! I’m going to take
- twenty-four hours—and if I’ve got to keep you tied up while I
- operate, then it’s tied up you stay. I’ll take all the responsibility of
- this mutiny, men,” I told the crowd on the lighter. “I’m a partner in this
- expedition with a signed contract. Twenty-four hours from now I’ll hold
- out my hands and let you tie me up if I haven’t made good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That was pretty bold talk, and I’ll confess that I did not know just where
- I was going to get off. But to let Captain Holstrom run away to that rogue
- of a Keedy just when I was on the eve of my experiment—to allow
- Holstrom to hand over everything to that he-devil—was too
- intolerable.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ll take the captain back to the steamer,” I told the men. “I’m
- assuming all responsibility.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll share it with you,” said the girl, stoutly.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom seemed to have lost his voice. He stared at us and gasped
- like a fish newly heaved on deck. He was silent while we carried him to
- his state-room on the steamer. We left him tied up well and his daughter
- was his caretaker and jailer by her own choice. She was showing the grit
- of a young catamount in that emergency.
- </p>
- <p>
- All of it was about as bad as it could be. But it was going to be worse.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXIII—THE HEART OF THE MILLIONS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> WAS about at
- daybreak next morning. The man who predicted the first eclipse of the sun
- and was waiting for it had nothing on me in the way of a case of nerves. I
- kept away from the captain’s state-room. I had plenty on my mind without
- loading up with any more trouble.
- </p>
- <p>
- The first thing I saw when I came on deck was a little schooner which was
- lying-to a few cable-lengths from us. She looked familiar. A boat was slid
- over her rail. Through the telescope I saw two men in uniform take seats
- in the stem-sheets. They were those customs chaps who had visited us
- before and they rowed past us toward Keedy’s schooner. I turned the
- telescope and saw that somebody in Keedy’s crowd was wigwagging a flag
- furiously.
- </p>
- <p>
- I saw something else through the glass. Keedy’s divers were going down and
- I could imagine with what kind of tongue-lashing he had been urging them
- to “follow their hand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- For an instant I had a wild notion of calling for my boat crew and beating
- them to it. Then I looked out over that quieter sea, and felt sure that
- the freakish undertow had gone off to play elsewhere.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let ’em go down and learn a thing or two,” I said to Romeo Shank,
- “and then come up and tell Keedy that the Pacific Ocean is something, of a
- gambler itself when it comes to ‘following your hand.’”
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew well enough that I’d better stick around pretty close aboard the
- old <i>Zizania</i>, for I was sure we would be receiving a call from the
- customs men. They would find our treasury bare, and they would find the
- captain of the expedition trussed up in his state-room. They would
- probably come with another “hot rock” which had been dropped in their hat
- by the prospering Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, there was only one station for me that morning!
- </p>
- <p>
- The visitors arrived in less than an hour. They tried to smile when they
- came over the rail, but it was a mighty sick smile.
- </p>
- <p>
- I led them into my state-room, and did not pay any attention to their
- questions about the captain. They talked broken English, and little of it,
- and so there were no words wasted. In a few minutes I knew what was
- wanted. We must up killick and get out. We were there without authority;
- we were breaking laws; we were stealing other men’s property.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried to talk about Keedy and his gang. How about them? The officers
- shrugged their shoulders and scowled at me. Ah, that was the Government’s
- business, not mine, they told me. They were attending to that case. Had I
- not seen them going over there also? Yes, all should be used alike—but
- we must go or else they would report, and a gunboat would be sent to drive
- us away—yes, to confiscate our ship. So!
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom had been right in regard to them—I found that they
- were blood-suckers, looking for the juiciest proposition, and Keedy had
- got next by some plan—perhaps by being a better liar.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stared at those knaves for a few moments, and did some tall thinking
- quickly. I was really getting used to quick thinking by that time.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I jumped up and asked to be excused for a moment they smiled and
- settled back on the transom. Perhaps they thought that I proposed to raise
- Keedy out of the game.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found Mate Number-two Jones on the main deck forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They have called the turn on us—say that we must get off the
- coast,” I told him. “Keedy has bribed them over our heads. I tell you,
- Jones, I’m going to get that treasure! I’ve got to get it. This isn’t mere
- brag talk. You are posted on my plans, and you believe in them.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The scheme does look good to me,” admitted the mate.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If those men leave here tied up to Keedy they’ll send a gunboat and shoo
- us off—and they’ve told Keedy, of course, how to dodge her. Jones,
- those men have got to stay aboard the <i>Zizania</i> until I make my try
- to-day. And, by the gods! I’ll bring up enough to show ’em that we
- are the people. You come with me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What for?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’ve got to lasso those chaps and hitch ’em to the stanchion in
- my state-room. They’ve got to stay here till I test out that hose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look here,” objected Mr. Jones, fumbling at his nose, “seems to me
- there’s altogether too much tripping and tying aboard here. It beats a
- round-up of steers. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble—we’re
- in it now. You wait till the captain gets loose, and see if we ain’t!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tying two more won’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t make you do
- what you don’t want to do, Jones, but I believe you’re too much of a man
- to let me play this thing single-handed. We’re fighting Keedy now. If I
- fail in getting at that gold to-day, all we’ve got to do is to up mud-hook
- and steam north—we’ll have to do the same thing if we let those
- grafters go over the rail now.” Jones was a cautious man, but he was a
- loyal one. I kept on urging, and at last the battle-light flickered in his
- pale-blue eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Blast their thievish souls!” he said. “They’ve taken all the money I had
- in my pockets—and now they’re thumbing their noses at decent men.
- I’m with you!” We grabbed ropes, rushed up to my state-room, and fell on
- the men before they could scramble to their feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were wizened little chaps and we tied them without any trouble.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I went below and leaned over the rail where their boat was tossing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The gentlemen are staying here for some business,” I told the two rowers.
- “They tell you to go back to the schooner and wait till they signal for
- you with our ensign.” They didn’t look entirely satisfied, but they rowed
- away after I had ordered them to fend off.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stationed two men at my state-room door and I hunted up weapons and
- armed some of the crew. I ordered them to keep off everybody until I
- returned from the lighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- I spoke to Captain Holstrom through his state-room window. I told him that
- I would bring him a present before sundown. He did not reply—and
- when Captain Holstrom was mad enough to keep his tongue between his teeth
- I felt that only murder could express his feelings.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door was on the hook, and a little brown hand was thrust out to meet
- mine.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Good luck, brave boy!” she whispered. “I know you’ll do it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can’t fail after that word from you,” I told her.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I ran down the ladder and jumped into the boat where my men were
- waiting for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found a heavy surge running under our lighter, but the swirl of sand was
- no longer darkening the water. I had reckoned right in regard to that
- undertow. Keedy’s men were still down and I could imagine them wasting
- their strength on the sand which had been packed back overnight.
- </p>
- <p>
- Our water-hose had already been coupled in makeshift fashion, and the last
- work that morning was to wrap the joints as best we could. Then I set the
- men at the brakes and told them to “give her tar,” as the old-fashioned
- hand-tub foreman would say. The hose was strung about the deck of the
- lighter.
- </p>
- <p>
- After they pumped for five minutes I found that the hose was not so tight
- as I had hoped. Wheezing little streams punctured it here and there, and
- the joints leaked. From the end of our home-made nozzle of sheet iron the
- stream barely trickled. I was disgusted—but I was not wholly
- discouraged. When I state this you may see how desperate I had become. I
- was resolved to fight that thing through to the last ditch. I was
- determined to take that hose down and try it out. I had the misty and
- hopeful notion that the pressure of the sea on it might make some
- difference, that the wet hose might retain the water better, that after
- the plunger had swelled a bit we might get more force.
- </p>
- <p>
- All those straws and others did I grab at by way of bracing my courage.
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain of the expedition trussed up in his cabin like a steer calf—only
- waiting his opportunity to deal with me!
- </p>
- <p>
- Two customs men also trussed up—also waiting to deal with me!
- </p>
- <p>
- It can be readily understood that there were some decidedly red-hot goads
- at my back that day to drive me down under the sea.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had not been able to convince Captain Holstrom that all my work and
- struggles and investigation and failures up to then were a good
- investment. But as a submarine diver I knew that they had been. I had been
- spending my nights on a sleepless pillow, docketing those experiences and
- drawing lessons from them—plotting, pondering, and planning.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I went down I was ready for my job in so far as a man, by pounding
- his brain, can be ready for all emergencies.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had piled the lead on to myself. Around my body from hips to armpits I
- had a canvas belt with five pockets, each pocket holding twenty-five
- pounds of shot, part of the junk of the old <i>Zizania</i>. Around each
- leg above the ankle I fastened another bag of shot holding fifteen pounds.
- </p>
- <p>
- My helmet had weights weighing thirty pounds. In addition I wore my
- regular breast and back weights. That is to say, when I was rolled over
- the side of that lighter I, a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound man, was
- weighted with about two hundred and fifty pounds of metal.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went with bare feet and bare hands. I knew that if I ever did succeed in
- boring that sand, holding that hose in my hands, my feet would have to
- serve as hands for the purpose of feeling out objects.
- </p>
- <p>
- Keedy’s men had come up before I gave the word to lower me. Number-two
- Jones had peered through the cracks of the boarding, and had reported that
- they had come over the rail without bringing treasure, and that Keedy was
- stamping up and down the deck, wagging his fists over his head. I could
- imagine from my own experience what kind of language the cowardly
- slave-driver was spewing out.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found myself on the bottom under the lighter, and started to make my way
- toward the wreck. I was loaded like a pack-donkey, outside of the
- tremendous extra weight of lead I carried. But I was taking everything
- which my judgment counseled as needful for success.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was obliged to drag with me my life-line, my air-hose, and the heavy
- canvas hose for the water. In addition to those, I towed a double line
- which was hitched to a pair of ice-tongs, and the points of those tongs
- were filed to a sharp point. I carried the tongs at my belt. If I found
- treasure I had this method of sending it to the lighter and of dragging
- back the tongs to myself. I had had one experience in serving as a carrier
- and I did not want to repeat the job.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tell you, I felt like a mighty poor and puny little ant when I started
- away on the bottom of the sea, climbing those sand ridges. The sea
- clutched and tore at those wriggling lines, at my air-hose, and was
- especially ferocious in tackling that heavy water-hose. It seemed as if
- the Pacific resented that scheme of fighting it.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a mighty struggle I had. I was tossed and tumbled. I was banged and
- buffeted.
- </p>
- <p>
- But in the end I arrived at the wreck. Under ordinary circumstances that
- stunt alone would have finished a diver’s work for a day—but I had
- left matters above the surface in such condition that I could not face
- them just then.
- </p>
- <p>
- I dropped my water-hose, and went back fifty feet along the line. Past
- experience with the weight of the surges had suggested another trick with
- which to fight the giant Pacific. I had brought a small anchor, and, with
- this set into the sand as best I cou’d do it, I anchored my air-hose and
- water-hose about fifty feet from the wreck. I proposed to let the ocean
- wreak the most of its spite on the two hundred and fifty feet between that
- anchor and the lighter. I figured that I might be able to handle the other
- fifty feet, no matter how ugly the surges were.
- </p>
- <p>
- I crawled back to the wreck and found my bearings. There were the “cat
- scratchings” on the sand where the other divers had spent their energy
- that morning. I grinned—I couldn’t help it. They had just had their
- own experience with the tricks of a Pacific undertow.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, the great and awful moment had come for me!
- </p>
- <p>
- In the years that have passed since then the vivid memory of that moment
- has never left me. I wake up in the night even now, and the thrill of it
- shakes me.
- </p>
- <p>
- If my scheme did not work, what would become of me when I went back to the
- surface of the sea?
- </p>
- <p>
- If my scheme did work, what was I facing down there? I was proposing to
- bore into that sand—to sink into it. No such plan had ever been
- tried by a human being up to that time. Was I not digging my own grave?
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Although sticking a statement of fact into writing which
- is professedly fiction may be considered supererogation by
- the cynical critic, some honest reader may be grateful for a
- certain bit of information. Here it is: My old and valued
- friend, the diver who recovered the <i>Golden Gate</i> treasure,
- still lives at a ripe age and he has detailed to me how he
- devised the hydraulic apparatus out of makeshift material,
- how he bored into the sand, and how he, with his own hands,
- recovered the bullion. Also, the incident of his narrow
- escape when the water-hose shifted was a part of his bitter
- experience on the bed of the Pacific. I hasten to state
- that, so far as the rest of the yam goes, my good friend,
- Diver Cook, is not culpable.—H. D.
-</pre>
- <p>
- I sat down on the sand, Turk fashion, like a tailor on his table, pointed
- the nozzle down, holding it against the sand, and gave the agreed-upon
- signal for water. It took a long time in coming, and it was an agony of
- waiting. Then at last I felt the hose swell under my arm. I pressed the
- nozzle harder against the sand. I cannot describe my delight. I felt that
- my dreams were coming true, for when I jammed the nozzle down I found that
- the sand was moving. That stream had merely trickled above the surface,
- but now a pressure was created when I held the nozzle hard against the
- bottom of the sea. Yes, the sand moved under me. It began to boil up
- around me. It swept and swirled in yellow clouds. I realized that I was
- boring a hole about as big as a barrel, and into that hole I was gradually
- sinking. I was on my way! I did not know where I was going—but,
- bless the good Lord, I was on my way! The sand in that boiling water made
- all dark. Down and down I went slowly, my bare feet searching eagerly.
- </p>
- <p>
- But though I descended more rapidly as the swirling motion increased, I
- felt no boxes. Had I, then, happened upon a straggler among the boxes of
- gold on my earlier trip? Had my rivals also found two more stragglers from
- the main treasure—loosened boxes which had been forced out of the
- chamber by the impact of the wreck on the bar or had worked near the
- surface of the sand by the action of a sucking undertow? If that were
- true, it meant that Keedy’s men were dumped if they stuck to shovels.
- Provided I could reach the treasure, and could keep my own system a
- secret, I was headed toward a glorious victory, and could depend upon the
- ocean to keep off others—but was I headed toward victory? My feet
- touched nothing that had square corners. And yet, to the best of my
- judgment, I had already gone down at least ten feet in that hole in the
- sand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Down and down—five feet more, so I reckoned. Then my heart gave a
- jump. My feet had touched something. It was smooth and hard and flat, and
- spread under me horizontally. But I soon discovered that it had too large
- a surface to be a box of ingots. I could not bend over to feel it with my
- hands, for the rush of the whirlpool of sand and water about me, sweeping
- upward, would not allow me to force my helmet and the upper part of my
- body down. I must depend on my bare feet to tell me what I had struck.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time I knew. It was boiler plate. I could feel the round heads of
- bolts. Whether this plate formed a part of the treasure-chamber or not I
- did not know. But it was an obstacle which must be passed. I turned my
- nozzle in front of me to clear the way. I wanted to reach the end of that
- iron plate.
- </p>
- <p>
- In two ticks of an eight-day clock I was in a mess that has been my
- nightmare ever since. I began to get a thorough education in what sand
- will do under water when it is submitted to the force of a stream from a
- hose. The instant I turned that nozzle in front of me the sand rushed in
- from behind. I was grabbed as tightly as though the eight feelers of a
- devil-fish had encircled me.
- </p>
- <p>
- It must be remembered that this whole proposition was an experiment so far
- as I was concerned. I did not know then how quickly a stream of water can
- affect great quantities of sand under the sea, let that sand get in
- motion. Tons can be moved almost while one takes a breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- This shift was so sudden that I was not prepared for it. My legs were
- pinioned, and my arms seemed to be clutched at the elbows. The sand was
- packing in around me from behind. I was so scared that my hands loosened
- on the nozzle. A roller snatched the hose from my grasp.
- </p>
- <p>
- The nozzle was upended and began to sizzle away over my head. It kept the
- sand moving there, and the murky water still swirled about my helmet, and
- the pack was not allowed to settle on my head. But as to the rest of my
- body, it was as if I had been immersed in molten metal and it had cooled
- around me. In a few seconds I was immovable. I was buried completely in
- sand, except for my wrists and hands. In clutching for the hose, as it had
- been yanked away, I had raised my hands above my head, and they were now
- waving in the swirl of the whirlpool. I groped and stretched and strove,
- and at last I felt the tips of my fingers on the nozzle. I managed, after
- a while, to tilt it down a bit so that the stream played along my arms to
- the elbows. The temporary release of my forearms did not help me. I
- couldn’t get hold of that hose so as to turn the nozzle full upon myself.
- The sand kept packing more closely about my legs and body.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time my aching hands and arms were obliged to give up the fight. I
- had become so weakened by my struggles and strainings that I was faint—I
- was as feeble as a baby.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have read about men in awful peril who have resigned themselves to die.
- Mentally I was not resigned when I first gave up struggling—not for
- some time. I came out of that first faintness, wide awake to my danger,
- filled with frightful fear, mad with the longing to live. But my case
- seemed hopeless. The stream was keeping the sand in motion still about my
- helmet and over my head, but my hands informed me that the pack was
- gradually settling, that the sand was piling up around my neck slowly but
- surely. In the boil of that water the particles were drifting over me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I might live minutes, I reflected—I might linger there for an hour
- or more—feeling that sand pack around my head until it choked the
- valve of the helmet or pinched off the current in the air-hose.
- </p>
- <p>
- Never was I so hungry for life as when I stood there pinioned hand and
- foot in the Pacific’s bed, feeling the sand piling up against the glass of
- my helmet, sifting around me to chink the little cranny where the air
- bubbled from the valve. And all because a stream of water would not swerve
- ten inches and pour itself in my direction.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then something surprising happened to my soul in its agony. I’m telling
- the truth.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I had made up my mind that effort was useless, that I had done all
- that I could do, and that death was certain, a strange feeling came to me
- and took away my fear of death. I fell into a quiet and really exalted
- frame of mind. I floated in dreams. Cares of earth and worries of the
- world, lust for gold, and even the love of woman seemed very small
- matters. What did it all matter? I was dying. Peace came to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Is it not probable that kind nature or a kinder God thus smooths the way
- into eternity when the great moment comes? Men who have been nigh the last
- gasp have swapped stories with me and we all agree.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had no notion of the length of time I had been down. In my mistiness of
- mind I did not bother about time. In the case of a submarine diver, the
- hours are marked off by his sensations, and he knows when he has stayed
- down long enough. If my men had told me that I had been on the bed of the
- ocean for a day and a night I should not have disputed them. I must have
- been near death, for it is said that when one is dying all of life that
- has been lived comes before the mind and passes in review, as though the
- mortal soul were preparing its brief for the use of the recording angel. I
- remember that this last was a strange idea which came to me there in the
- sand-pack which was slowly heaping itself over my head.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then something happened. It was something which should have amazed me, but
- I reckon that my brain was too numbed to feel amazement.
- </p>
- <p>
- The nozzle above my head gave a sudden yank and rapped my knuckles. It
- righted itself. That is to say, it aimed downward and began to pour water
- directly at and over me. I felt the stream rather than saw it. I could not
- see in that smother of sand. But my arms came out of the mold in which
- they had been pinned. I grabbed and groped for that hose with all the
- desperation that was in me. I held to it with all my strength. It was
- lucky that I seized it as I did, for I felt the rollers tugging at it once
- more as though some devil of the sea had given me one more chance in order
- to tantalize me, and was now resolved to finish me finally.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not know what had happened above to cause the sudden deflection of
- the stream. It was enough for me to know that some freak of the waters had
- turned the hose. I found out later what had occurred, and I may as well
- explain at this point, lest you think I have told merely of a case of
- story-book Providence.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have related how I anchored my lines fifty feet from the wreck. That
- anchor, so I found later, had been pulled out of the sand, and the surges
- had bellied the water-hose in toward shore, over my head, and the aim of
- the nozzle had been changed in the snap of a finger. It surely had been
- touch and go with me, for once the surge had taken up the slack the next
- wave must have jerked the hose out of my hole. I had grabbed just in time;
- I had melted my sand mold and was free.
- </p>
- <p>
- Common sense advised me to quit the job forever. The uncertainties of
- trying to move sand with a stream of water had been impressed upon me in
- horrible fashion. But common sense is not allowed to rule a man when he is
- after gold in this world. I had found out what that stream would
- accomplish if it was used properly. I had learned one lesson which I could
- not forget, and I was sure I would not make the mistake of letting the
- sand catch me from behind again. I knew, on the other hand, what would
- happen to me when I appeared above the surface without my ransom fee of
- yellow gold. I preferred to stay and fight sand instead of men. There, in
- the boil of the roiled water, I resolved to stay down.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried another experiment with the hose, and was-, vastly encouraged. I
- had been worrying and wondering how I would get back out of the hole, for
- I feared that the-life-line, playing over the edge of the sand, would not
- allow the men on the lighter enough direct pull; to help me much. Now I
- needed to rise from the hole for a littleway in order to attack the sand
- at another angle so as to pass that plate of boiler iron.
- </p>
- <p>
- I slackened the force of the stream from the nozzle with my palm, and the
- sand began to pack in below me. The uprush of the swirling water helped me
- and I was able to work myself slowly upward. Then I began to. bore again.
- </p>
- <p>
- I realized now that something must have happened to, my anchor, because
- the rollers were giving me battle for-the possession of that water-hose in
- fierce style. But I hung on, and found myself sinking into the sand. I
- went, down more rapidly, for I had already softened the surrounding pack.
- After the awful experience I had just had, I was more of a lunatic than
- sane while I made that, second attempt. My brain swirled as dizzily as the
- water which swept up from the hole. As nearly as I could estimate, I went
- down at least five yards before I struck anything that was solid. And when
- my feet, already sore from the grinding of that sand, felt what was below
- them, the whole of my being gave three cheers—not cheers with, the
- mouth, but those silent cheers with which a man’s soul yells its joy. I
- had touched a box. There were its comers—there was its unmistakable
- shape.
- </p>
- <p>
- After wild struggles and contortions, I was able to set the points of the
- ice-tongs into its sides. I gave the signal on the drag-rope, and I could
- feel the surge of the men on the line. But the angle of the rope over the
- edge of the hole would not allow them to lift very hard. The box was too
- far away from the lighter for their efforts to amount to much. But as they
- swayed away I kept the hose playing upon the box and under it. It did seem
- damnably slow work. But it came up, inch by inch, slowly and surely, until
- I was out of the hole, and standing about knee-deep in the sand. I had a
- tug of war of it then!
- </p>
- <p>
- The box was not out of the hole. The rollers tugged at my lines and
- wrenched at me. Once or twice I was fairly floored. I would fall with my
- legs pinioned fast, and would lie exhausted until I could get strength to
- stand up and wash myself free with the hose. In order to get back out of
- that hole at all, I was obliged to slacken the stream and let the sand
- pack in under myself and the box—and when the stream slackened I was
- obliged to drag my legs out of the packing sand.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I was free at last, bless the good Lord! And I had a box of gold. It
- was not a mere stray box, salvaged with the help of a freakish undertow.
- It was a box which I had torn from the heart of the hoard below. Yes, I
- was sure that I had been to the heart of the treasure. And where I had
- been the Pacific was already stuffing back the sand, locking the door once
- more on the gold it had taken for its own. Let Keedy’s men come down! Let
- them waste their strength. I had the key to that situation—and I
- alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tugged a signal to shut off the water. And as promptly I gave them
- pull-up signals on my life-line and on the drag-cord of the tongs. I
- wanted to get above the sea and breathe the fresh air of the good God, and
- look into the eye of the blessed sun, and give praises. And, oh, the awful
- weariness in every bone and muscle of me! I lay down and let ’em
- pull me back. I had no strength with which to manage that weight of metal
- which loaded me down.
- </p>
- <p>
- When they got me upon the deck of the lighter, and had twisted off my
- helmet, I lay for a long time without words. I motioned to Number-two
- Jones to remove the cover from the box I had brought. The sight of those
- ingots gave me the goad once more—ah, it takes gold to make the
- human soul gallop!=
- </p>
- <p>
- `````"Gold, gold, yellow gold,
- </p>
- <p>
- `````Hard to get and harder to hold.”
- </p>
- <p>
- This quotation burst from Mr. Shank. His round face was radiant, and he
- came and leaned over me and patted me on the head. He did not seem to have
- any better way of showing his joy. It was a wildly excited crew which
- crowded around me; they were still more excited when I sat up on deck at
- last and told them I was going down again. The fever was in me. I wanted
- to go back to the <i>Zizania</i> with gold enough, to convince Captain
- Holstrom and those knaves of customs men that there was no fluke about our
- proposition. I wanted to raise that infernal Keedy out of this game for
- good and all.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was mighty tempestuous water in the vicinity of the wreck, and putting
- the lighter nearer was not to be thought of. But I discussed with Mate
- Jones the possibility of dropping our yawl back toward the wreck at the
- end of a cable, so that the men could lift the treasure-boxes more
- directly. We had brought extra men that morning for the pump, and a crew
- for the surf-boat volunteered. The gold lust was seizing the whole of us.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down again, feeling sure that the wicked labor of getting the box
- up through the sand would be lightened for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I took another anchor, and on my way to the wreck I refastened my hose
- lines to the bottom, rigging the second anchor as a bridle, so that the
- strain would be eased on the one which I had set into the sand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Down I bored again, my tongs at my belt, my hose in my clutch. And I
- stayed down until I had sent three more boxes up to the surf-boat. While I
- was toiling down there I knew that I was setting a dangerous record for
- myself—I could not hope to equal it on the days which were to
- follow. It was plain that I had penetrated to the heart of the treasure,
- but I had penetrated to other things as well. I found all the sculch and
- broken crockery of the wrecked pantry and the bar of the <i>Golden Gate</i>.
- Yes, I sent three more boxes to the lighter; but when I crawled over the
- rail later my hands and feet were bleeding, and the sand had ground into
- the wounds. Already my skin showed where the grinding of the boiling sand
- was wearing the epidermis. Even the rubber of my suit was showing wear.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was a sorry-looking object when I staggered into Capt. Rask Holstrom’s
- state-room. He fairly slavered in his rage and tried to leap at me. I
- reckon I did look like a beaten man. But the next instant my men came
- tramping in with the boxes of gold. There were four of these glorious
- boxes, and each one was open and showed the ingots.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Your friend Keedy got his two boxes by the fluke of an undertow,” I told
- him. “I have got mine by science and a system which will give us the rest
- of it. Now, Captain Holstrom, I’ll accept your apologies.” And I cut him
- loose.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not mention any apologies due from me to him. I wanted to rub it
- into the old squarehead so thoroughly that he would never get the smart of
- it out of his skin. I wanted to let him know that I had set a ring into
- his nose, and that if he ever tried to run amuck again I was the man who
- could catch him and trip him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave me one look, gasped one gasp, and I knew that Capt. Rask Holstrom
- had abdicated his throne. I was boss. But I had no time to listen to his
- slobbering thanks just then. I took one of those bars of gold in my bloody
- hand and started for my state-room. I shook the ingot under the noses of
- those customs men. And they, too, knew that I was boss when I got through
- with them. I had not come back that day from hell and the bottom of the
- sea to mince words with any loafers—Captain Holstrom included.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here’s gold worth four thousand dollars in good Yankee money, you
- low-down renegades. You take it and get off this steamer. If you are good,
- and come around here like gentlemen about a month from now, perhaps I’ll
- drop another rock into your hat. I don’t promise—it all depends on
- how you act. But if you come back too quick—if you try to squeeze us
- for more rake-off—I’ll go down to headquarters and buy your blessed
- Government, and have you put into prison or shot—for before this
- thing is ended here I’ll have more than three million dollars behind me.
- Now you can either make a dollar quietly or you can make trouble. Suit
- yourselves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I cut their ropes and pushed them out of the room and ordered our ensign
- set to signal their boat.
- </p>
- <p>
- I didn’t have to offer them any apologies, either, and I was not in an
- apologizing mood that day. They did the apologizing while they were
- waiting for their boat, and I scowled while they were begging me to
- forgive the mistake they had made.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, I felt pretty much like the boss of the outfit. But when Kama
- Holstrom came with hot water and a basin and bandages and ordered me into
- my state-room, I went as meekly as a slave who trembles when the finger of
- his master is pointed.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXIV—AMONG THIEVES
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> DID not go down
- next day, and I watched the descent of Keedy’s divers with indifference
- that was pretty nigh serene. Captain Holstrom stamped around restlessly,
- for he couldn’t seem to get it into his mind that the Pacific Ocean was on
- guard. But he did not venture to make any suggestions to me, and I decided
- that I had trained him in pretty fair shape.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had good reason for delaying my next descent. It would not do to take
- chances with my diving-dress, which was showing signs of being frayed by
- the swirling sand, and I put in a busy day with the two Joneses, stitching
- an extra canvas suit to wear over the rubber dress. I improved on the
- ice-tongs by having a set of steel spring hooks made so that by means of
- long handles I could push them over a box without stooping and fumbling.
- Also I had a long rod of steel turned out for me, and with this I could
- probe the sand for boxes.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had no way of knowing whether Keedy or his divers suspected that I had
- secured any treasure. I knew that after a night of action of the sea there
- would be few traces left where I had disturbed the sand. But I also knew
- that Keedy would certainly be wondering why we had built the wall around
- the lighter, and therefore we doubled the guards who had spent the night
- there since we had installed the pump, and gave the men orders to shoot
- any man who tried to climb on board.
- </p>
- <p>
- We started work on a bigger and more elaborate pump, having tested out the
- principle of the thing by means of the first one. I needed more stream.
- While Shank was building this I went to work again, using the old
- equipment.
- </p>
- <p>
- I waited each day until the other divers had been down and had climbed
- back into the sunlight, empty-handed. Then I slid overboard from our
- lighter as secretly as possible, and did my day’s work. I averaged three
- boxes a. trip by working myself to the limit of my endurance. It was
- reported to me that Keedy climbed into the rigging of the schooner
- whenever the surf-boat was eased back toward the wreck, and that he
- remained there on watch. How much he saw we did not know, but the men in
- the boat crowded together whenever a box was raised. From what I learned
- afterward, I found that Keedy thought we were operating some kind of a
- dredge, and that his divers reported to him that we were not making any
- impression on the sand. So he sat calmly in the rigging, spying on what he
- could see, and reckoning that we were wasting our time the same as his
- crew.
- </p>
- <p>
- Before the end of a week the new pump was finished and I had almost five
- hundred gallons a minute at my command.
- </p>
- <p>
- I do not mean to be profane, but I must state that when I got that new
- stream to operating it was hell for me down below—and no other
- phrase seems to express the case.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have already mentioned the refuse of that wrecked pantry and bar; from
- out of the holes I bored rushed up bits of broken bottles and crockery,
- slashing at my bare feet and hands. I could not protect them.
- </p>
- <p>
- The stream from the nozzle—a three-inch stream—stirred such a
- mush of sand that I worked in pitch darkness. I had to have bare feet and
- hands in order to feel my way.
- </p>
- <p>
- After a time, my feet were swollen to twice their natural size.
- Finger-nails and toe-nails had been worn off by the grinding of the sand,
- and the skin had been eaten off. The sand even penetrated my dress, and my
- knees and shoulders were chafed raw. My back, under the dragging weights I
- was forced to wear, was about like a piece of pounded steak. I was
- suffering the limit of human agony, but I was mad for success—I was
- crazed by the gold lust. I was bringing out a small fortune every day; one
- day I recovered six boxes—one hundred and twenty thousand dollars!
- But I was still just as hungry for the gold that remained at the bottom. I
- set my teeth, gasped back my groans, and kept at work.
- </p>
- <p>
- All the tender ministrations of Kama Holstrom could not mend my hurts, and
- I would not listen to her appeals to me. She begged me to give up the
- fight. She urged that we had enough. But I was as crazy as the wildest man
- who ever hunted gold, and the pain I was in made me more of a lunatic. On
- several occasions I was pulled back to the lighter in a dead faint, and
- fought with Number-two Jones because he would not send me down again that
- day.
- </p>
- <p>
- I cannot go into the details of those days of nightmare. I can only say
- that I kept on.
- </p>
- <p>
- We soon had plain hints that Keedy was getting suspicious and uneasy. One
- night a crew from the schooner made a desperate attempt to board the
- lighter. On other nights they made other tries, and shots were exchanged
- before they were driven off.
- </p>
- <p>
- One day when I was at the bottom of the hole I had bored and had just
- succeeded in fastening my hooks to a box, I got a shock that made me
- believe the end of the world had come. Something hit me on the top of the
- helmet with a thud that knocked me senseless for a moment. I reached out
- quickly with one hand, reserving the other for my hose, and felt the
- breastplate of a diver. I realized what had happened then. One of Keedy’s
- men, sent to spy, had stumbled through the sand swirling from my pit, and
- had fallen in on me, not dreaming that I had been able to dig a
- fifteen-foot hole.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the tangle that followed, it was a wonder that either of us escaped.
- </p>
- <p>
- By the way the man struggled I knew that he was terrified out of his
- senses. He clung to me desperately, as a drowning man might ding to a
- rescuer. Then he gave his emergency pull, and yanked me with him when he
- went up.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had a raw temper which went with my raw surface in those terrible days.
- I left hose and box and went up with the caller, dragging my knife from my
- belt. I kept clashing the knife against the front bull’s-eye of his
- helmet, and after we had been dragged together for some distance from the
- edge of the hole, and the sea became clearer, he perceived what I was
- doing. He let go his clutch, and it was well he did, for I was in a state
- of maniacal fury. I would have ripped his dress from crotch to neck-band
- with my knife if he had not escaped from me just as he did. I went back
- and recovered my hose, and after a time got the box. Then I returned to
- the lighter, for I was too unnerved to work any longer that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- As I lay on deck that afternoon, a shapeless, hideous thing of bruised and
- macerated flesh, I wondered whether I would be able to work any more.
- </p>
- <p>
- When I was under the sea I was fairly beside myself with the excitement of
- the hunt. I could grind my teeth together and groan and fight my way
- through the sand, for there was gold at the bottom of the hole I was
- digging. And every time I went down through that fifteen feet of smother I
- knew that death raced me to the box of treasure and back. Under those
- circumstances, a man is desperate enough to forget his bloody cuts and raw
- skin. But I felt like a pretty weak and useless tool as I lay there on
- deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- Kama Holstrom was with me. She had insisted on becoming my nurse. I craved
- her companionship, I’ll admit, but I wanted to hide myself from her eyes.
- Her father was in his state-room, busy at his job of adding more sheets of
- iron, more bands of steel, to the treasure-chest he had taken it upon
- himself to build. We could hear the bang of his hammer. Captain Holstrom
- worked days at that huge chest, slept on it nights with the key lashed
- into the palm of his right hand, and between whiles cuddled those ingots
- rapturously. In his way, he had become as insane over the matter as I was
- myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl and I were in the lee of the deck-house, to get out of the
- trades, and we did not see the boat when it came off Keedy’s schooner. Had
- I seen it coming, Keedy would never have been allowed to board us. But all
- at once he appeared before the girl and myself. I felt a fierce impulse to
- get up and beat his face off him, even though my hands were as sore as the
- exposed nerve of an aching tooth. He got that flash from my eyes, and
- looked meek for a moment, but then he saw the condition I was in and
- became insolent.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Better listen to me,” he said. “I’m on. I know your system. But I should
- say you’re all in, Sidney. You need help. There’s enough there for all of
- us. I’ve got two good divers. I’m over here to propose that we call the
- row off, and I’ll send my men down to work with your contrivance and give
- you a rest.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That proposition from Marcena Keedy, after what he had done to us in the
- matter of that twenty thousand dollars, and after what he had tried to do
- to us in the affair of the customs men! I felt the language begin to roil
- in me as the said roiled under the force of my stream from the nozzle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Kama,” I pleaded, “won’t you please run away? I want to talk to this
- dirty dog. And send your father here with a club.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She did not leave me. She came closer, and gave Keedy a look which would
- have wilted any other sort of man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You can’t afford to be foolish over what’s past and gone,” insisted my
- ex-partner. “I left because you wasn’t making good—wasn’t holding up
- our end of the partnership. You fell down. Now if you can deliver goods
- we’ll call off all trouble and start it over again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Captain Holstrom,” I yelled, “come here quick! Bring your hammer! Hurry!
- Knock that devil overboard!” I shouted when the captain tore around the
- corner on the gallop. His eyes were bulged out, and he had his hammer over
- his head, for I guess he thought from the tone of my voice that pirates
- had boarded us. His expression did not soften any when he laid eyes on
- Keedy.
- </p>
- <p>
- The gambler put up a lean forefinger. “You’d better hark to what I say,
- friend Rask.” He went over the same talk he had had with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not by a continental tin damsite!” howled the captain. “And how you have
- got the gall even to look the way of the <i>Zizania</i>, much more come
- aboard of her, is what gives me a callous over the collar-button. Get
- off’m here!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don’t dare to drive me, Holstrom, after I’ve come to you with a fair
- and open proposition—ready to take the first step and let bygones
- rest. You can’t afford any big talk! Why, you’re only stealing this gold,
- whatever of it you are getting! This is pirate business—the whole of
- it. Now you be careful how you try to raise me out of the game.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That taunt about our rights there at San Apusa came from a rascal and a
- gambler, but the taunt made me think—and it stung, too. To tell the
- truth, I had done a little thinking about our rights in the matter of that
- treasure.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re infernal thieves, and you can’t make yourselves out anything
- else!” Keedy insisted. “And you can’t afford to throw down another thief
- who is willing to come in and help.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom shot out a swift kick and missed Keedy. He made a crack
- at him with the hammer, and missed again.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Keedy person had had experience with the captain, probably, in past
- times. He ran for the ladder and escaped into his boat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are fools, besides being thieves,” he informed us, standing up when
- he was a safe distance away, and shaking his fists. “Don’t you understand
- what I can do to you?” Captain Holstrom returned the fist-shaking with too
- much alacrity to be misunderstood.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All right,” bellowed Keedy; “have it your own way, you fools! I’ll do you
- so good that you’ll never know you were ever in the game.” He was so mad
- that he let out a little more than he intended to, so I reckoned. “There
- are men who will pay me more for what I can tell ’em than any
- rake-off you can give me, anyway.” He was rowed away to his schooner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That means?” I suggested, swapping looks with the captain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose it means that he is going to blow this thing to the
- underwriters.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then we are stealing this gold, are we?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom fingered his red knob of a nose, and looked away from me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know much about law,” I went on. “I supposed you knew something
- about our rights in this thing—if we have any. I tell you, it’s
- going to be pretty tough, Captain, if I’ve been through all this hell only
- to have all our great hopes grabbed away from us.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Men have to take a chance in this world, Sidney. Damn the law in a case
- like this! The gold was there, and nobody was trying to get it. We had a
- right to try for it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But wasn’t there any legal way?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, a drunken lawyer in San Francisco told me something about power by
- attorney, but it meant chasing around and getting hold of claims by
- shippers, or something of the kind—and that meant blowing our plans
- and letting a lot of grafters in on us. I simply cleared from the
- custom-house as a trawler and came away, minding my own business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And now somebody else will take the job of minding it,” I complained. I
- did not have much philosophy or courage about me just then. My hands and
- feet and shoulders were aching too miserably; and had all my suffering and
- daring been thrown away?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let’s go home, father,” pleaded the girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go home!” he yelped. “Sail in past the Golden Gate with this gold? Lug it
- back where coyote lawyers can get their whack at it until they’ve trimmed
- us for every ounce? Well, I guess—not!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I wondered if he proposed to sail around in the middle of the Pacific
- Ocean, cuddling those ingots for amusement, the rest of his life; but I
- had neither strength nor taste for any more complaint or argument at that
- time. It was a mighty dismal outlook, according to my way of thinking. I
- saw that I was tied up with a man whose sole notion was to get the gold
- without bothering his head about how he was going to keep it. Later,
- Keedy’s schooner frothed out past us, standing to sea, and headed north.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not go down again for almost a week. Courage is always a man’s best
- asset, but courage in the job I had undertaken was pretty near my whole
- capital. And courage had left me—I had to admit it. I had been doing
- honest work with all a man’s grit and strength and will. I had wrecked my
- body and wrenched my soul in effort. Yes, the work part of it was honest,
- but how about the honesty of our undertaking? I had got some plain words
- from Keedy—and I got no consolation from Captain Holstrom. I was
- daredevil enough and plenty in those days, but I was not the sort of a
- daredevil who would make a successful pirate.
- </p>
- <p>
- I sat on deck day after day, and bore with my agonies of body and wrestled
- with my soul. An idea had come to me as I had struggled with that problem
- of our rights. It was a rather vague idea. Of only one point of it was I
- sure—its success depended on getting as much of that gold as I could
- tear out of the sand.
- </p>
- <p>
- Thinking upon it, hoping that good would come from it, brought my courage
- back to me. I was again ready to undergo tortures and to face death.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXV—SUBMARINE PICKPOCKETS
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> NEW arrival off
- San Apusa Bar had interested us for a couple of days. It was a husky sloop
- with a leg-of-mutton mainsail—a broad-bellied craft on which a dozen
- men showed themselves when it sailed past us to take up a position near
- the ribs of the wreck. This sloop seemed to be of a build to ride the
- surges easily, and ventured much closer inshore than we had dared to
- anchor our lighter. The men did not visit us, and displayed no desire to
- meddle with the secrets of the equipment on the walled-up scow. We
- wondered who they were, why they were there, and left them alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down and crawfished my way over the sand windrows, but I could make
- only slow work of it, for I was stiffened by my days of inaction. But that
- new idea of mine went along with me for my encouragement.
- </p>
- <p>
- I had hardly put myself in position, ready to call for my stream of water,
- when I got a rousing surprise. Down through the sea came rushing a naked
- man. The depths were fairly clear, for I had not begun to stir the roil
- with my nozzle. His eyes were wide open and staring, and I reckon that I
- peered at him through my bull’s-eye with eyes just as wide open. When he
- arrived close to me he dropped a rock from each hand, his diving weights,
- and grabbed me, hanging to my belt. I sat right there on the sand and
- gaped at him. His mouth was shut tight—he was holding his breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- In a short time another naked man came down like the stick of a
- sky-rocket. He dropped his rocks and grabbed me, and the first man let go
- and went swimming up to the surface. Then came a third man and replaced
- the second.
- </p>
- <p>
- I began to feel like a candidate for office in the receiving line. I
- wanted to ask some questions about what this function meant. But for good
- and obvious reasons I could not carry on a conversation, and I did not
- know the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.
- </p>
- <p>
- Along came the fourth man. I noticed that each man wore a narrow belt with
- a huge knife fastened in it. And that’s all the man did wear. The sight of
- the knife made me rather nervous. A man under water, straining to hold his
- breath, his eyes bulging with his efforts, is a savage-looking object at
- best. These men were plainly Mexicans, and they looked particularly
- savage. I felt pretty sure that they were not diving down there to cheer
- me in my loneliness or to ask me to run for mayor.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then it came to me all at once who these men were. As a submarine worker,
- I was interested, of course, in all sorts of jobs under the sea, and I had
- read various accounts of the Mexican pearl divers. I knew that they could
- descend long distances and could remain under water, many of them, for
- ninety seconds. One man succeeded another, diving in rotation. I remained
- there without moving, staring at them until I began to recognize faces.
- They were making me return visits. I realized that they did not propose to
- carve me—the first man could have done that on his first call.
- Therefore I got my nerve back and decided to go to work. I signaled for
- water.
- </p>
- <p>
- It occurred to me that my new friends might find that the “fogo” I stirred
- with that hose would be a little too much for them. I resisted an impulse
- to bat them away from me with that nozzle, a considerable effort in
- selfcontrol, for my temper was pretty short in those dreadful days.
- </p>
- <p>
- They stuck to me bravely at first when the sand began to swirl. There was
- an itching under my ribs when the sand made a pall and darkness settled on
- me. I was afraid that one of my callers might become peevish and ram his
- knife into me as a hint not to muddy that water.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was not easy to hold my position and work with a man anchored to me.
- But I was not bothered for long.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tug at my belt ceased suddenly, and I knew that they had given up.
- They could not find me in that smother.
- </p>
- <p>
- They resumed operations again when I got up my first box. In working my
- way out of the hole I decreased the flow from the hose, and when I reached
- the top of the sand the swirling particles were settling and were being
- washed farther inshore by the surges. In a clearer sea down came those
- devils once more, and fastened to me, one by one, like leeches. They tried
- to clutch the box, but it was too heavy for them. It was hoisted past them
- up to the surf-boat, and once more I drove the nozzle into the sand and
- forced them off me with a whirlpool of mush.
- </p>
- <p>
- They were more bothersome the next time I allowed the sea to clear. Two
- dove at a time, and grabbed me, and almost lifted me up with them. I was
- furious, but I did not try to beat them off. I kept on about my own
- affairs as best I could, and allowed them to hang on to me. There were a
- dozen of them above, with knives, and I had no hankering to tackle the
- pack. I was not sure as to their motives, anyway. One rip of a knife would
- have put me out of business. But they did not offer to use knives.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did a short day’s work and went back to the lighter. Captain Holstrom
- had watched their diving operations and was full of eager questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- That night we doubled the guards on the <i>Zizania</i>. But no boat came
- near us.
- </p>
- <p>
- My friends were ready for me next day, and resumed the same tactics. I
- carried a bigger knife, and kept my eye out as best I could. But before I
- got the stream started they were coming at me three at a time. They kept
- lifting me off bottom, and I wasted a lot of valuable time and much of my
- little stock of strength before I got down on the sand and began to bore.
- They were ready for me again as soon as I got up with a box and the sea
- had cleared a bit. One of them brought a rope, and tried to get it around
- a box I was handling, but I had my tongs well set, and my men hoisted the
- treasure away from them. Then they began to interfere with me so savagely
- that I quit in disgust and signaled to be pulled up.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was half crazy with rage, and frantic because this sort of business was
- putting me where I could not realize on that idea which I was nursing.
- </p>
- <p>
- After listening to me, Captain Holstrom set his cap well down over his
- ears, jutting his chin, set his teeth, and called for his boat. He was
- rowed over to the side of the little sloop. He came back very soon and he
- was not looking pleased.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I couldn’t get anything out of that bunch except a few grunts and a lot
- of jabber,” he reported. “They make believe they can’t understand the
- English language. They want graft, I suppose. They’d understand, all
- right, if I was to carry over a slug of gold and dump it over the rail.
- But I’m about tired of feeding gold to everybody who comes along here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “This isn’t our gold to give away to all comers,” I told him. He blinked
- at me, and did not seem to understand. I did not go into that side of the
- question any further, for I was not ready for much argument at that time.
- “I’ll not stand for any more ‘hot rocks,’” I told him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nor I, either,” he agreed. “Begin to feed gold to those chaps, and
- they’ll think we are scared of ’em and they’ll want the whole
- mess.”
- </p>
- <p>
- To show them that I was not scared, I went down the next day, and I had a
- wire edge on my temper. I balked at starting a knife duel, however, and
- after a struggle got my hole started.
- </p>
- <p>
- I struck something new that day in the ruck at the bottom of the hole. I
- found ingots loose in the hodgepodge of pantry wreckage. A wooden box had
- been smashed. I had a slit and a sort of deep pocket in the canvas
- overalls affair which protected my India-rubber suit. As my toes located
- loose ingots, I sifted the mush of sand with the fingers of one hand,
- captured the gold, and stuffed it down into the deep pocket. I came up
- with a box, and my breeches were bagging with gold.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then came the climax of my strained relations with those greaser divers.
- I’ve heard of pickpockets operating everywhere, almost, but I reckon that
- I’m the first and only man who ever had his pockets picked at the bottom
- of the sea. The first devil who got to me as the sand settled, in groping
- for a handhold on my dress, felt the loose ingots. He got one, but he did
- not get away with it. Trouble or no trouble, knives or no knives, I had
- got to the limit of my temper. I gave him a jab with the end of my
- sheet-iron nozzle, and as near as I could judge I took a hunk of meat out
- of him as neatly as a woman could operate on dough with a doughnut cutter.
- The edges of that nozzle had been whetted on sand until they were as sharp
- as a razor blade. The fellow drooped that ingot and darted upward, blood
- streaming behind him. Another diver was coming down to take his place, but
- when I jabbed at him with the nozzle he whirled like a fish and went up,
- giving me an awful kick when he started.
- </p>
- <p>
- I reckoned I had thrown down the gage of battle, and I was not minded to
- stay there and meet the pack, for I was weak after my extra struggle down
- in the hole. It had been a tedious job gathering that loose gold. I saw
- the box started on the way to the surf-boat, gave the emergency signal,
- and was yanked back to the lighter at a lively clip.
- </p>
- <p>
- Later that day, being in a proper and ugly frame of mind, I tucked a rifle
- under my arm and had myself rowed to the neighboring sloop. I found the
- spokesman of the crew ready to talk English that day, all right. But when
- our conversation was ended I had received a surprise. No demand was made
- on me for a “hot rock.” I found that I was dealing with men who had deeper
- motives. It took me some time to understand that they were not holding out
- for a big offer. The man at the rail wrinkled his nose and sneered when I
- angrily told him that was what they were after.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s what I’d expect a gringo to tell me,” he said. “But we are not here
- to do business with thieves. You have no right to be here. You may pick
- and steal, but it will not amount to <i>that!</i>” He snapped his finger
- above his head. “We shall do our business with those who will have the
- gold in the end, with those who can pay and will pay. And we have a man
- who will see that we are paid.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My wits had been sharpened while I had toiled at San Apusa Bar. I was able
- to see farther into the ways of guile than before I had met a man like
- Marcena Keedy. I had a flash of suspicion that was almost instinct.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So you think you have made a better trade with that renegade, Keedy, do
- you?” I flung at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was sure I had guessed right; the man’s face betrayed him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, we are honest men—not thieves,” he called back. “We do not deal
- with thieves. We came here to stop you from stealing. But you do not stop.
- Now we shall see. We have kept our knives in our belts. But you have set
- us an example. You have tried to kill a man who did not offer to hurt
- you.” He leaped up on the rail, and aimed a long finger at me. “We can
- fight the way you do. If we catch you there on bottom again you’ll be
- pulled up with six of these sticking in you.” He patted the knife in his
- belt.
- </p>
- <p>
- There are men who can threaten and who cannot impress others. It is easily
- docketed as bluster. There is another kind of a man who gives you a look
- and a word, and you know that he means what he says. I went away from that
- sloop feeling that if I were desperate enough just then to commit suicide,
- an easy way had been opened for me.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went and tumbled into my berth, and viewed the ruins of that idea which
- I had been building so prayerfully. It looked to me then, in my
- despondency, as if Keedy was holding mighty good cards. If he had decided
- to turn informer, he could demand and would undoubtedly receive a noble
- rake-off. It was probable that he <i>would</i> inform—for that would
- be his natural, lazy method of making his money out of the thing. The
- posting of the pearl divers in behalf of the underwriters would be an
- additional feather in his cap; on the other hand, if he proposed to come
- with a backer and new equipment—having discovered my system—he
- had good reasons for leaving men behind him who would hold us in check. If
- Keedy returned with steam-pumps he could rip the bottom out of the
- Pacific. Our makeshift equipment would not be two-spot high.
- </p>
- <p>
- And how soon could he return, whether he came piloting the underwriters or
- came on his own hook as a rival “thief”? I talked with Captain Holstrom on
- that matter the next day. He rubbed his nose and scruffed his hair, and
- could not guess.
- </p>
- <p>
- I asked the captain for his estimate of the amount of treasure in our
- chest. He told me that we had rising three-quarters of a million.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Captain, it has become a matter of touch and go—live or die—with
- us. With less than a third of that gold in our hands, we’re in no position
- to do business when the pinch comes. I’m going after the rest of it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you said you knew them greaser pickerel would poke their knives into
- you. God knows I’m hungry for the rest of the treasure, Sidney, but I’m no
- Marcena Keedy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m going down at night, Captain Holstrom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It can’t be done.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It <i>can</i> be done. After I get my stream started I’m in the dark even
- when the sun is brightest. I know the way from the lighter to that wreck,
- all right. I’ve dragged my way there times enough with a trail of blood
- behind me,” I told him, sourly. “It can never be any worse than it has
- been. We’ll take extra chances, moor the lighter nearer the wreck, get rid
- of the surf-boat and crew, and leave those greasers guessing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I want to say, to the credit of the captain, that he opposed this
- undertaking of mine. His daughter—But I will not dwell on that
- point. It harrows my soul now to remember the manner in which I opposed my
- obstinate and reckless will to her honest grief and her almost frantic
- protests.
- </p>
- <p>
- I went down that night. I gave ’em three boxes before midnight. I
- ate a lunch, and gave ’em one box more before I quit.
- </p>
- <p>
- I have no ambition to make this story a rival of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. I
- have already given some idea of the physical state I was in. I think I
- became numb to pain, accustomed to agonies. I cannot explain otherwise how
- I ever kept on, night after night. I haven’t the courage to write down
- what I suffered.
- </p>
- <p>
- But out from under those grinning greasers—grinning their sneers at
- us daytimes—I dragged one and one-half million dollars’ worth of
- gold ingots inside of two weeks—and they never suspected that I was
- under water.
- </p>
- <p>
- During the last of that nightmare, I felt as if I were working with my
- chin over my shoulder. I was looking for trouble. I was expecting
- disaster. I was scared to the marrow. I am not referring to any feelings I
- had on account of the pearl divers. Their bug eyes had never detected me
- in what I was about. I knew that darkness protected me more surely from
- any attack by them than iron walls would have done.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I worked nights with the constant feeling that the red and green eyes
- of a steamer were coming up over the horizon. When I was awake daytimes I
- peered into the northern sky hour after hour, expecting and dreading to
- see the trail of smoke which would announce the coming of Marcena Keedy
- and those whom he had notified.
- </p>
- <p>
- My conferences with Captain Holstrom had been scant and rather brusque.
- There were some points in that idea of mine that I had not thought out to
- my own satisfaction, and I had not found the captain to be especially
- helpful in attacking problems. He was wholly taken up in helping to pull
- that gold in over the rail, in storing it, in guarding it.
- </p>
- <p>
- His daughter knew why I stared at the northern horizon, and why desperate
- worry added to the other woes I was suffering in that tophet of toil. She
- had resigned herself to the situation when I had persisted in keeping on.
- She became, as before, my wistful nurse. She talked to me as she would
- have soothed a madman whom she hoped to win back to sanity. Well, I was a
- lunatic in those days—there’s not much doubt of it. It was madness
- made up of fear, desperation, agony of physical pain, lust for gold—all
- forcing me to do work which no sane man could have accomplished in my
- condition of body.
- </p>
- <p>
- She dared to break her usual silence on the matter of the treasure when we
- were on deck one afternoon after my sleep. She had been gazing at me
- sorrowfully while I stared into the north.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, what use is it—this dreadful work and worry? You have told me
- that you feel like a thief in it all. You sit and stare into the north as
- though you were a wicked man, instead of being so brave and successful in
- the most wonderful work a man ever did. You are getting their gold for
- them. But you feel that they are coming to take it all away—and call
- you a thief. You cannot deceive me as to your thoughts.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had to acknowledge to myself that her woman’s intuition was in fine
- working order. I understood what men were, naturally, in affairs where big
- sums of money were involved. These men, provided Keedy had done as I
- supposed he had, would have Keedy’s lies about us to inflame them still
- further in addition to their natural greed.
- </p>
- <p>
- But she was no quitter on one point. She clenched her little fists and
- kept on:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say fight back! It may be their money—somebody’s money—but
- what good did it do them or anybody else until you came here with your
- strength and your courage and your brains and got it up from the bottom of
- the ocean? I don’t know what the law is about such things—I don’t
- care. I’ve heard you and father talk, but I only know that often in this
- life law is one thing and justice is another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There are the laws of salvage,” I told her. “We could turn this money
- over and wait for the courts to decide. But I’m afraid of what may happen
- if we do that. There’s that renegade Keedy with his lies; there are the
- customs men of Mexico, and all that mess of international law to
- complicate things. Keedy can claim partnership; the shippers can claim
- shares, I suppose; this one and that one can dip in their fingers; and
- lawyers can tie the matter up; and God only knows when it will all be
- untied so that we can get what we have honestly earned. We may have to
- fight for our liberty, for men are crazy enough to try to make us out
- thieves, providing they can get hold of much money by lies and injustice.
- I have been pounding it all out in my poor head, and I can’t seem to
- believe that the law is going to give us what we ought to have. For, you
- see, this thing isn’t like anything else that has ever happened.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I say fight!” she insisted, her eyes alight, her cheeks flaming under the
- tan. “You have fought the ocean for their sakes as well as your own—and
- you have won. Keep on fighting! Plan something, do something—get
- into some position where they will have to come to you and beg for what’s
- theirs. You have earned the right to make them beg. And you know you
- have!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, I did know it; and on that belief I had based my idea which had
- served for my encouragement. Her advice and her woman’s spirit in the
- matter heartened me. She had acted like the lady of the castle of whom I
- had read. She brought to me my helmet and shield, and was sending me out
- to battle as a brave woman should. I started to tell her more about my
- idea—but we were interrupted.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a queer noise in the direction of the ladder which led to the
- lower deck. It was such a prodigious puffing and wheezing and grunting
- that anybody might suppose that we were going to receive a visit from a
- hippopotamus. The Snohomish Glutton, the cook of the <i>Zizania</i>,
- appeared to us. I had not laid eyes on that individual for weeks. He stuck
- in his pantry like a hermit in a cell, reveling in the steam of food,
- stuffing himself even while he was cooking for others. He rolled rather
- than walked across the deck, and stood before us, propping up the rolls of
- fat which shuttered his little eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t know how much there is or where you’re keeping it,” he blurted,
- without preface, in his tin-whistle voice. “I don’t ask questions—I
- stay in my pantry and mind my business. But I serve the niggers in the
- port alley and the whites in the starboard alley, and I hear both sides.
- But there’s only one side now. They said that the monkey’s tail started
- the row. But they’ve forgotten the row. Gold will make men forget ’most
- anything. They’ve got together at last. They are going to grab for it.
- They thought I haven’t been hearing because my eyes were shut and I seemed
- to be asleep.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean, my man?” I demanded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mean that you can play checkers on that checkerboard crew now, sir. It
- has settled into a solid board—white and black mixed. The Russian
- Finn is captain. He killed my cat. I have said I would get even with him.
- He is captain, and they are going to drop on to that gold and run away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “They have planned a mutiny?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mutiny and all the side dishes that go with it. I have heard. I wasn’t
- asleep when they thought I was. I’ve got to go back. I have duff in the
- pot.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He backed to the ladder and let himself down, rung by rung, grunting more
- terrifically than before.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl leaped to her feet. She held her clenched fists above her head.
- Her white teeth showed beneath the crimson of her parted lips. She drove
- her hands down at her sides.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh!” she had gasped, when her hands were above her head. When she drove
- them down her woman’s soul spoke its anger and horror. “Damn the name of
- gold!” she cried; and I would not have indorsed a milder phrase even from
- her.
- </p>
- <p>
- For weeks my head had been full of seething particles of schemes relating
- to my central idea. I reckon it needed a shock—needed the desperate
- occasion of instant action—to make those particles cohere into
- resolve. For a moment I was stunned by the prospect of this new danger;
- and then a course of action came to me in a flash of inspiration—it
- was the result of all the thinking I had been doing, without making up my
- mind to act.
- </p>
- <p>
- I hobbled to find Captain Holstrom in his state-room. I had to push him
- back when he had heard a dozen words of what I had reported. He had
- grabbed his pistols and was rushing to kill off a few prospective
- mutineers as an example to the others.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have got to do what I advise in this matter, Captain. I’ve been
- making plans. We’ve got not only this crew to consider, but Keedy and
- those he is bringing down here. He is coming. We may as well make up our
- minds to that. I want you to go down on the main deck as quickly as you
- can and order the crew to get out planks and start in making strong boxes.
- Privately, you and I will overhaul the junk for scrap iron, for chains and
- cable. Get after the men. Hustle them. Make it a hurry-up job. Busy men
- won’t have time to talk mutiny. And say to one of the mates, when you are
- giving off orders, that you are going to pack the treasure into boxes
- suitable for handling. Say that loud enough so that all the men will
- hear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll be joheifered if I don’t believe I’ve got to handle a lunatic as
- well as a mutiny,” flamed Captain Holstrom. “Are you advising me to pack
- up that gold so that it will be easy lugging for the crew?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “As soon as they believe that it is going to be packed so as to be easy
- lugging there’ll be no mutiny until those boxes have been made. You’ve got
- to do as I say. You ought to have had your lesson by this time that I know
- what I’m talking about.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He shuttled his eyes when I looked at him. He was remembering those past
- matters in which he had made a fool of himself in resisting me. I was
- willing to explain my plan to him, for I was not trying to humiliate
- Captain Holstrom. But just then I had a feeling that every moment counted.
- One instant more and I knew what the pricking of my mental thumbs had
- meant. Mate Number-two Jones came clattering along the deck from below. He
- shoved a red and greatly troubled face in at the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Get your guns, Cap’n Holstrom,” he panted. “They’re grumbling and
- mumbling. It means mutiny.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Take your guns with you, if you like,” I told the captain. “But go down
- there as cool as you can. Give off your orders as if you didn’t notice
- anything. And be sure to throw out that hint about why you want the boxes
- made. This is no time to bull this game of ours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom was no fool, and he knew when a man was in dead earnest.
- I pushed him and he went. I’ll have to confess that he qualified as a good
- actor when he arrived on the main deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was looking down from the bridge, and I saw the men of the crew exchange
- winks and grins behind the captain’s back.
- </p>
- <p>
- The model crew of the crack ship in all the world could not have shown
- such willing obedience. They went to their work on the rush. Saws rasped
- and hammers banged. There was clattering of iron and hum of industry.
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom left the work in charge of his mates, and came back to
- his state-room to resume his watch over the treasure. I closeted myself
- with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, we’ll get down to the bed-rock of the proposition, Captain Holstrom.
- We have agreed—you and I—that Keedy is about due here. We
- don’t know who will come with him. But we can be mighty sure that they’ll
- be no friends of ours. We’d be playing the parts of idiots to keep that
- gold on board the <i>Zizania</i>. But there isn’t a harbor nearer than
- Acapulco where we can land it; we can’t lug it ashore on the open coast
- through the breakers; we can’t dodge all around the Pacific Ocean with it.
- Right now, there’s another complication besides Keedy and his crowd. We
- have still more desperate thieves right here with us. The mates and Shank
- are safe. To-night the five of us will get busy, pack that gold in the
- strong boxes, and drop it overboard.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Great guns!” groaned the captain. “I said you was crazy, and now I’m sure
- of it. Dig it all up, and then throw it away again! No, let’s not put it
- in the boxes. Let’s hoot and holler and cavort around the deck and heave
- it overboard, one ingot at a time, so as to see who can make the biggest
- splash. Come on—let’s have fun!” he raved.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am far from being crazy, Captain Holstrom,” I informed him, giving him
- the hard eye so steadily that he blinked. “To each box we’ll hitch chain
- long enough to reach to the surface. That chain will have rope cable—say
- ten feet of it—hitched to the end, and the rope will be buoyed to a
- small spar. The box and all the chain will lie on bottom. The small spar
- with its rope cable will swim well under the surface of the water. In case
- we want to raise the box we can catch the rope and spar with a rake, or
- else drag for it with a chain between two boats.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hate to see that gold go under water again,” mourned Captain Holstrom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s that or stand by and see mutineers lug it off or lawyers divide it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He writhed like a speared fish when he pondered on the alternatives. I
- went out on deck and left him to think, confident that his slow mind would
- finally swing to my way of making the best of a bad matter.
- </p>
- <p>
- The checker-board crew was at work in a real frenzy of effort. I have no
- doubt that each man secretly told himself that he was building his own box—and
- he was putting his best work into his treasure-carrier.
- </p>
- <p>
- The summer evening was long and the crew labored on after their supper.
- According to my best judgment, when darkness shut down on their labors
- there were boxes enough for our purpose. The men went to their rest on the
- berth-deck in the forepeak of the steamer. Captain Holstrom had remarked,
- casually, in their hearing, that he would wait till next day before
- packing the ingots. From my post on the bridge, though the dusk had
- deepened, I caught a cheerful wink or two between man and man, and they
- went below looking like cats who had been promised a full meal of
- canaries.
- </p>
- <p>
- In order to encourage general peace and confidence, the mates allowed the
- usual deck watch to go below and sleep, and the lazy sailors were only too
- glad to do so.
- </p>
- <p>
- When they were snoring in satisfactory chorus, Captain Holstrom slid their
- hatch over and barred it so as to guard against a surprise by peepers.
- Before two bells after midnight the last box of our gold had gone gurgling
- down over the taffrail. The last spar winked out of sight under the surge.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s gone!” groaned Captain Holstrom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Thank God, it has!” said I, and felt the girl’s little hand snuggle
- comfortingly into my unsightly fist.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXVI—THE TERROR FROM THE NORTH
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE next morning
- Captain Holstrom ordered the checker-board crew assembled on the main
- deck, forward. He appeared on the bridge and leaned over the rail like a
- candidate ready to make a stump speech. But, unlike a candidate, he had
- two revolvers strapped to his waist and in plain sight.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have a few words to say to you critters down there,” he began. “I know
- all about what you have been planning to do. I have watched you peeking
- and spying around this morning for them boxes. Well, you won’t find them.
- Them boxes are a good way off.” He pointed a stubby finger down at the
- Russian Finn. “You come up here!” he commanded. The Finn turned pale and
- shook his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You come up here and I’ll promise that you won’t be hurt. I want you to
- take back a report to that gang of yours. If you don’t obey a master’s
- orders and come up here,” continued the captain, pulling a gun, “it will
- be mutiny—and I know how to deal with mutiny. I’ll shoot you where
- you stand.”
- </p>
- <p>
- After a little hesitation the Finn climbed the ladder. The captain led him
- into the wheel-house, into all the state-rooms, and took him on a genera!
- tour of inspection of the upper deck.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now you can see with your own eyes that there isn’t any gold up here to
- mutiny about. You go back and tell that gang what you have seen—or,
- rather, what you didn’t see.” He pushed the Finn to the ladder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I give you all liberty to hunt over the lower part of the steamer from
- forepeak to rudder,” declared the captain over the rail. “You can help
- yourselves to all the gold you find. But I can tell you that there ain’t
- an ounce aboard here. That gold is stored where you can’t get it.” He
- swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the horizon. “If you act like
- men from now on until this cruise is over, you’ll be paid like lords. If
- you hanker for mutiny, start in and mutiny. Them who live through it will
- never get a cent; them who are killed can’t use gold where they will fetch
- up; it will be too hot to handle!” The men fell to muttering among
- themselves, but I could see that they had been cowed. The report of the
- leader made them still more melancholy. They divided at last—the
- blacks from the whites—and went about their tasks.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to say, Sidney, that you showed good judgment,” said the captain,
- as he went to his state-room. “But I don’t feel like giving three cheers—not
- while that gold is back on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, there was gold to the value of about a million yonder on the bottom
- in that wreck of the <i>Golden Gate</i>, but I had no appetite for more
- gold just then. I knew that I had reached the limit of my strength and
- courage. I had won more than two millions from the greed of that miserly
- ocean, and had given it back again in order to make another fight against
- the greed of men.
- </p>
- <p>
- I sat on deck and endured the pains of my tortured body, and waited for
- the inevitable when it should come down over the horizon from the north.
- Half a dozen anxious days dragged past—and then it came!
- </p>
- <p>
- A trail of blacksmoke signaled it—they were using lots of coal and
- were in a hurry, as that banner of black indicated. Framed in Captain
- Holstrom’s long telescope, it took form as a big ocean tug. She seemed to
- leap angrily across the sea as the surges rolled under her, and the bows
- churned up white yeast.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no hesitation in the manner in which she came on. She bore down
- on us with a speed which seemed to say, “Here we come to take our own!”
- </p>
- <p>
- We counted at least a score of men aboard, using our glass. And when the
- tug slowed off our quarter we saw that most of the men held rifles in the
- hook of their arms.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s what I have been expecting,” I told the captain. “They have come
- down here proposing to treat us as pirates. How would you feel right now
- with gold aboard here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom wagged his head mournfully, and seemed to lack words with
- which to express his feelings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We are going to make fast to you,” bawled a man, with a voice like a
- fog-horn. “Mind how you perform.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That was a reckless performance even for a tug in that sea, but they
- rigged a row of fenders and put her alongside with much clanging of bell.
- A dozen men leaped on board the <i>Zizania</i>. Some were guards who
- carried rifles. There were three men who seemed of importance. I spied
- Marcena Keedy on the upper deck of the tug, holding to the funnel stays.
- He did not venture to come on board us with the others.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let them do the talking,” I whispered to Captain Holstrom as the three
- were climbing the ladder. “Just stand on your dignity as master of this
- steamer.” And the captain did so in a way that highly satisfied me. He
- chewed a toothpick and displayed much indifference.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I bid you welcome, gents!” he informed them, stiffly. “And you can see
- that I ain’t looking for trouble—otherwise I might have a few words
- to say about your way of boarding this steamer. If it’s ignorance of rules
- and etiquette, I’ll overlook it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s business, Captain Holstrom,” snapped the spokesman, a chap who wore
- a hard hat and looked as though he had just closed a desk in an office.
- “We are from San Francisco, and represent the underwriters in the matter
- of the <i>Golden Gate</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Step into the wheel-house—it’s my office,” stated the captain. He
- pointed to the muzzle of the first rifle, rising over the edge of the
- upper deck. “If those fellows come up here I shall consider it an insult
- to me as a peaceful man and master of this vessel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man hesitated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We’re no pirates,” remarked Captain Holstrom.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man gave orders to the gunmen to remain below.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you are not pirates,” he said, when we were assembled in the
- wheel-house, “you can show it by turning over to us the gold you’ve dug
- out of the wreck over yonder.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The spokesman was a rather excitable fellow. He began to tap his finger on
- the captain’s breast. He showed documents with seals and all the other
- law-shark trimmings.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have no right to come here and operate. Have you got attorney’s
- powers? Have you got anything in the way of permits? No, you haven’t. That
- gold belongs to other people. Give it up and save trouble.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Holstrom threw a sort of helpless look at me, stifling some
- emotion. I realized that he was at the end of his dignity and that in
- about ten seconds he would begin to use his talents in the line of
- profanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excuse me if I say a word here,” I broke in. “I am a partner in this
- enterprise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You’re using a polite word for this kind of a job,” sneered the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You may represent the underwriters,” I said, “but to all intents and
- purposes the underwriters had abandoned the treasure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “We shall take our gold, my friend!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rights or no rights?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have made it a grab game, and we’re in on the grab!” He was mighty
- overbearing and offensive. Law was behind him, a fortune was concerned,
- and he was showing the usual spirit of the greedy world.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have full powers in this matter so far as the underwriters are
- concerned, have you?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Absolute.” He waved his papers under my nose. “Issued due and regular by
- the court and the United States.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But don’t you realize that you are not in the United States, sir?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There’s got to be more or less dog eat dog in this game. We happen to
- have the cards. If you don’t hand over that gold, we shall put a crew on
- board this steamer, guard it with rifles, and set this boat into waters
- where we have jurisdiction. I’ll be frank to say that then we can beat you
- in court in the lying game, because we start with law behind us, and
- you’re handicapped. I say this to show you that you’d better fork over.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was holding my temper. For the sake of my own conscience in this affair,
- I wanted the other side to lay all their cards on the table; in their
- insolence and confidence, they seemed inclined to do so, for their plain
- intent was to intimidate us.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do we get out of it for ourselves?” I inquired, meekly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Remember that you came down here on the sly, thinking you were going to
- get away with the whole thing. It hasn’t been your fault that you haven’t.
- I think that we can promise to keep you out of the penitentiary if you act
- sensible. I’m not making any rash promises.”
- </p>
- <p>
- There we had it! Contemptuous disregard of all our rights because they
- thought they had the upper hand on us!
- </p>
- <p>
- I have hinted before this that men become monsters in the presence of much
- gold. From my own experience I knew the insanity which gold stirs in a
- man. I had foreseen some such attitude as this on the part of the men who
- would come to claim the treasure. A grab game, eh? And success to the best
- man!
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked at that fellow—at his white hands and his flabbiness—a
- man who had never done an honest day’s labor with grit and muscles. He had
- given me his code. I told him as much.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I thank you for giving me that code,” I went on.
- </p>
- <p>
- I stripped the bandages off my hands. I tore the wrappings off my feet. I
- showed them sights which made their faces turn white. I ripped the shirt
- from my back and exhibited that spectacle of ragged flesh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have given me your code, I say! It’s going to be a grab game. All
- right! Have it your way. Go hunt this steamer from top to bottom. You’re
- welcome! Prove that we have any of your damned gold! Go ahead!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I hobbled out of the wheel-house and went into my state-room, and they
- began to hunt the <i>Zizania</i> over. And I heard what Captain Holstrom
- said to them after they had finished.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, gents, you have made sure that there’s nothing on my <i>Zizania</i>
- that belongs to you. You’re aboard here without any rights. I just want to
- remark that I’ll give you five minutes to get aboard your own boat and
- cast off, and stay cast off’m here, yourselves. I’ve got some men who can
- fight—and I’ve got a two-pounder in my junk-heap. I’ll put a ball
- through that tug that will disturb her innards seriously.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They went silently and grudgingly—but they went. I enjoyed the
- expression on Marcena Keedy’s face as the tug backed off. I came out on
- the upper deck and gloated down on him. They anchored their craft a little
- distance from us, and I could readily imagine the council of war that
- started among them as soon as their mud-hook bit the holding-ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- A boat put off from the tug next day, and the three important-looking men
- were in it. But Captain Holstrom warned them away from us. The spokesman
- shouted his message. He was angry, and he still dealt in threats. In order
- to impress upon those gentlemen that we were not at all interested in
- their threats, the captain and I turned our backs on them, and after a
- time they bawled themselves out of breath and returned to the tug.
- </p>
- <p>
- They kept up those tactics for most of a week. They were certainly
- stubborn and insolent persons, and they were fighting for big money. But
- the more they raved and threatened, the more at peace with myself and my
- conscience I felt. We were fighting for our own now, and they had
- established the code.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then at last the boat came with a white flag. The spokesman politely
- stated that they had come to talk some business in private, and begged to
- be allowed to come on board.
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Kama was with me on deck when they climbed up the ladder. She had
- resumed her woman’s garb, and they stared at her in frank astonishment and
- admiration. She did look particularly sweet, her little cap on her curls,
- her sweater displaying her winsome curves of beauty.
- </p>
- <p>
- She seemed to astonish them, I say. The next moment she astonished <i>me</i>.
- She walked into the wheel-house by my side, and was the first to speak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen,” she said to the three, “you have seen with your own eyes how
- this poor boy has suffered. You can’t see how I have suffered as I have
- watched him do what he has done, but the marks are on my soul, I know.
- There is law in the world, and all that, and men are too apt to get angry
- in law when there is much money concerned. Can’t you all keep from being
- angry to-day, and be wise, and decide on what is right?”
- </p>
- <p>
- They looked at one another and the spokesman stammered something about
- being over there to have a heart-to-heart talk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “May I not stay?” she asked, wistfully. “I won’t say a word to bother you—I
- won’t move unless you start to quarrel—and then I’ll only remind you
- that there’s a lady present.” The queer little smile she gave them started
- the grins on their faces. The ice was broken.
- </p>
- <p>
- Those men were human once more. The girl had given the magic touch to the
- conference.
- </p>
- <p>
- We had not been getting anywhere at all, in the past, and we woke up and
- realized it as we stood there with the girl’s presence toning us down. It
- had been man’s bluff and bluster; they had arrived ready mad and I felt
- that I knew what ailed them outside of the mere money part of the thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen,” I said, “if it hadn’t been for Marcena Keedy’s tongue you
- would have shown a better side to us when you arrived here.” Nobody seemed
- ready to say anything for a moment and I went on. “I reckon he told, you
- that he was our partner and that we have cheated him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He had quite a story to tell when he reported the matter to the
- underwriters,” admitted the lawyer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “After you sized him up, you naturally decided that men who could cheat
- Keedy must be the champion renegades of the Pacific coast! I can’t blame
- you much for the way you came banging up against us. I don’t know what
- else he has said to our prejudice, and I don’t care. Now that you are here
- with us, face to face, and we’re down on a real man-basis, we don’t need
- to paw over what a liar has said. I want you to call that man Keedy on to
- the <i>Zizania</i>, even though he poisons the air. What I have to say
- I’ll say in his hearing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I’m pretty sure that Keedy did not relish making that call, but the men
- who went after him brought him. He had a gambler’s face and nerve and he
- put on his best front; he even disregarded Miss Kama’s presence and
- lighted a cigar to appear more at ease, and I plucked it from between his
- jaws and flung it out of the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want the floor for only a few moments, gentlemen,”
- </p>
- <p>
- I told the group. “I’m going to tell you how this expedition was
- organized, how this person Keedy fitted in; and what happened.” And I did
- tell them.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was necessary for the lawyer to appoint Capt. Rask Holstrom as special
- guard to keep Keedy’s mouth shut while I talked, but the rules of a
- court-room prevailed after that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll admit, gentlemen,” I said when I had finished my little story, “that
- we have acted like children so far as the legal side of this thing goes.
- But it seemed only a crazy scheme at best when we started out—I
- couldn’t feel that I was dealing with any reality. After we arrived here
- we did the best we could, and we have been too busy to study up law. But I
- want to say that Captain Holstrom and I are not thieves by nature. I’ll
- show you a thief, however. There he stands!” I pointed to Keedy. “He stole
- from us a box of bullion worth twenty thousand dollars. I know that he
- recovered two more boxes. Now that you are proposing to handle this matter
- man-fashion, Captain Holstrom and I stand ready to give to owners what is
- fairly their own. I advise you to ask Keedy what he proposes to do!” The
- lawyer asked him in mighty prompt fashion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Up to date nobody seems to be making any showdown except in talk,” said
- Mr. Keedy. “I’ll cash in conversation just as far as anybody.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But how does it happen, Keedy, that when you gave us your other
- information you did not say that you had any of the gold in your hands?”
- asked the lawyer.
- </p>
- <p>
- He scowled and did not answer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If these men turn their bullion over on a square lay, are you prepared to
- do the same?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll talk business after I have seen them turn it over.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s a rather queer attitude for you to take, Keedy, after your talk to
- the underwriters and to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But the renegade did not show any inclination to come across with anything
- definite.
- </p>
- <p>
- I knew well enough that he could not. His try with those divers had cost
- high and it was safe to presume that he had realized on every ounce of the
- bullion his men had recovered and had planted the money. My rancor was
- deep and I walked up to him and declared my belief.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You understand, Keedy, that you must produce the bullion or its value in
- money or our bargain doesn’t stand,” said the lawyer.
- </p>
- <p>
- I did not need that declaration to be assured that the villain had sold us
- without regard to our rights or our safety. And sudden fervor and
- determination thrilled through and through me. I proposed to show those
- men from San Francisco the difference between Marcena Keedy and the
- partners on whom he had pasted his dirty label. Mere talk was not as
- convincing proof as I desired. I had already made an investment of my best
- strength and all my courage and I had much to show. But I felt that if
- those men could see with their own eyes what that investment signified in
- the way of human endurance, they would meet me in more generous spirit
- when we came to make our bargain.
- </p>
- <p>
- Up to then the legal papers had only been waved under my nose in
- threatening manner. I asked permission to examine them, and the lawyer was
- very obliging. They were all-embracing, even to granting powers of
- attorney to the underwriters’ agents to handle the matter in all its
- aspects.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m going down after the rest of that gold, and
- every box will be put into your hands as it comes up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I got a glimpse at the girl’s face, but I did not dare to look into her
- eyes. Her cheeks were white, and she was gasping protests which nobody
- heeded, for those men were listening to something which filled their ears
- just then:
- </p>
- <p>
- “And after you see how I am bucking hell for your sakes, well, then we
- shall see what you have to say to me—man to man!”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XXXVII—THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>F what I have just
- written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of melodrama, I have
- produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game and I was using all
- the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I have said, I proposed
- to operate on human nature. After all, I was in no position to demand
- anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we were making in regard to
- the treasure we had recovered and concealed. I had a healthy fear of what
- the courts might do to us in a case where stolen property had been hidden.
- It was up to me to cultivate a spirit of generosity in them—and that
- was why I went down again, though every nerve and fiber in my racked body
- made protest. But I went down under better conditions.
- </p>
- <p>
- The tug had powerful pumps and a considerable quantity of good hose. She
- was manageable in shoal water, and by means of her hawsers and well-set
- kedges we were able to swing her in, for the day’s work, fairly close to
- the wreck.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is no need of further dwelling on details—and it would be
- necessary to supply the details by somebody’s word of mouth—somebody
- who watched me, for I don’t remember much of what happened. I was a
- lunatic, I suppose; my human machinery was operated by a single mania. As
- I look back I am unable to separate the nightmare from the reality with
- any amount of clarity. Therefore, we’ll allow all that to hang in limbo,
- seeing that this is a plain yam and not a study of psychology.
- </p>
- <p>
- However, I can remember flashes through the dark curtain, and of a few of
- these I will make mention, for they have a bearing on the tale.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a period when I was in the mood for babbling. I could feel my
- dry tongue clacking away inside my jaws like a clapper in a wooden box and
- wholly beyond my control. That tongue was telling all my story about my
- love and longing and ambition in my boyhood days—telling the story
- to somebody who patted my cheek and crooned sympathy—somebody who
- did not annoy me by dispute when I said that I would never live to see
- Levant again—somebody who promised to carry there the three rings
- and tell my story and fulfil my requests. It was a dream full of agony for
- me—rather it may be called a dreaming reality. I wanted to stop that
- clacking tongue. I wasn’t operating it. It was telling a lot of truth
- which I did not want published. It was putting me in wrong, I felt, just
- as if some enemy were tattling about me. It was mine and I hated it
- furiously for what seemed to be betrayal of me. I wasn’t standing for what
- the tongue said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then there was a period when I forgave the tongue many of its past
- offenses, because, at last, it did good service for me in man-talk to men.
- It was steady and convincing and I was conscious that it had helped me to
- win in some big matter. Then, later, there was a time when there were
- shots and shoutings and dismal trouble of some sort. And, last of all, in
- the blurred imaginings, mixed with the real, came the long-drawn-out,
- misty, groping, wondering consciousness that I was out of strife and
- trouble and agony. But I could not come out of the shadow—I knew
- that many days and nights came and went while I was trying to grasp
- something which I could know was reality.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was dreaming that I was back in my old room in Dodovah Vose’s tavern,
- and that dream seemed to last for days. Then all at once I woke up and I
- was truly in that room.
- </p>
- <p>
- By the open window sat Capt. Rask Holstrom and he was junking up a Red
- Astrachan apple with his jackknife. He poised a cube of the fruit on the
- tip of the blade; looked me square in the eyes, and asked, in a
- matter-of-fact way, if I was feeling more like myself that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no doubt about my being in Dodovah Vose’s tavern! I made sure
- before I opened my mouth. There was the old quaint smell of the place, and
- I could always trust my nose. For my ears there was the whining squeak of
- the windmill pump in the stable-yard. I touched the irregular seams of the
- silk crazy-quilt, and, to delight my eyes, the brass handles of the
- ancient high-boy in the corner blinked back the radiance of the afternoon
- sunlight. All my senses were satisfied, for I could almost taste, as the
- breeze flicked my lips, the savor of fried chicken which came floating in
- through the window. And after my senses told me what they did, I felt at
- ease and dismissed all the shadows and imaginings. Never did a man come
- back to his right balance of mind in more commonplace fashion.
- </p>
- <p>
- I decided to be just as matter-of-fact as Captain Rask. I told him I felt
- pretty fair. Parts of my hands were bandaged and I was aware that my feet
- were tied up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have another apple?”
- </p>
- <p>
- So I had been eating apples from Dodovah Vose’s orchard! I used to steal
- from his trees—especially the early-autumn fruit. I must have been
- giving the impression that I was pretty nigh all right, even though the
- kink in my brain had kept me on the side-track so far as I was concerned,
- personally.
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain junked an apple into quarters, pared them, and gave me the
- fruit. I think Eve tempted Adam with a Red Astrachan!
- </p>
- <p>
- The captain sat and rocked and munched. Confound his old pelt, why didn’t
- he start in and tell me what had happened?
- </p>
- <p>
- He clacked his knife shut after a time and yawned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So, as I was telling you before you had your nap, Kama and I may as well
- move on. There isn’t much more that’s sensible we can do for you.” I
- wondered just what they <i>had</i> done!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where is Kama?” I called her “Kama” quite naturally; it seemed to me that
- my clattering tongue had been that familiar for a long time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I guess she’s just resting up a little in her room. She is bound to
- be nursing you most of the time, though you don’t need so much attention,
- so far as I can see. Do you know, Ross, in spite of what you and I were
- saying to each other yesterday, that girl o’ mine still insists that your
- mind isn’t right, and that you’re off the hooks. She says there’s
- something that hasn’t come back to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- God bless that girl’s intuition! I felt the tears coming into my eyes.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Women folks are always seeing something a man can’t see—because it
- isn’t there for him to see!” declared the captain. “I have made her keep
- her mouth shut best I could! Nice thing it would be to have it go out in
- business circles that you’re a lunatic. That old hippohampus uncle of
- yours would try to get himself appointed your guardian. He makes believe
- to be a great friend of yours, I know, when he calls, but I reckon he’s
- only hiding that old grudge that Vose has told me about. <i>There’s</i>
- your friend, Ross—Vose! He’s the old boy to tie to!” I was getting
- considerable information from Capt. Rask Hol-strom without weakening his
- confidence in my sanity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And then, outside of Vose, it has really been a good thing for you to get
- back here near your girl,” pursued the captain. “Now you take Kama on that
- point! I say women folks have too much imagination. When you told me you
- wanted the Kingsley girl to stay away from you till you was fit to look
- at, why, then you was showing hard, ordinary common sense. In spite of all
- that Kama or anybody else said about her coming in here, I done just what
- you asked me to do—for I believe in men standing by each other. But,
- as I have told you, Kama was bound to have it that a screw was loose
- because you didn’t want your girl first thing! And Kama has been bound and
- determined to hang on here till she is sure you’re all right with your
- girl. But I can’t see that your girl is in any great pucker about you! She
- hasn’t showed up!” The sweat started out on me. Into what sort of a tangle
- had my affairs been drawn?
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I’ve got a good girl, even if she is flighty in her thoughts—as
- I suppose girls’ nature is about this lovey-dove business. I used to sit
- and hear you talk to her on the <i>Zizania</i> about those three rings and
- that girl back in Levant—all mush, mush right in the middle of that
- wind-up job—and, I swear, if I didn’t think you were crazy then,
- though she wouldn’t have it that way! Said you were all right. Kama and I
- never did seem to agree very well on much of anything. After the
- settlement with the underwriters, when you were right as a trivet and
- wanted to stay on the Coast, then she insisted that you were out of your
- head—as I don’t mind telling you noe when we’re going—and she
- fairly picked you up and lugged you back here. You were too sick to help
- yourself, you know! Made me help her do it! For you and your girl, said
- she! I ain’t sure but what you <i>was</i> a little delirious there at
- times. But being here with Vose has done you good. However, I like West
- the best. So as I say, I reckon Kama and I will pack up and start back.
- Furthermore, you know, I’m summonsed for that trial.” I merely stared at
- the old gossiper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don’t want to be too hard on those critters,” he said, musingly. “There
- was a big temptation and Marcena Keedy knew how to stir ’em up.
- When he lolloped that word ‘gold’ around in his mouth he always made me
- drool.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Didn’t I remember, also? Only too well!
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, I’m going to use some discretion in my testimony,”
- </p>
- <p>
- Captain Rask chatted on. “I have been running over in my mind what
- happened. Now, if you’re a mind to, let me kind of rehearse it over to you
- so that you can check up my memory. I’ll hate to have any law-sharks
- tangle me on the stand. If I make a slip catch me up on it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in my
- heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened to—wonderful
- because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my fortune;
- wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the first time
- was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising narrative
- without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew the
- happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order to
- collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared and
- munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did not
- dare to prod him.
- </p>
- <p>
- I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In this
- yarn I have been telling what I do know—not what I have heard from
- another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of the <i>Golden
- Gate</i> treasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the jettisoned
- gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had been secretly
- organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody battle which had
- been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful guards. Keedy would
- not fight—he had prodded the other poor devils to do that—and
- the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when the <i>Zizania</i>
- was on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom. So, there’s
- enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself!
- </p>
- <p>
- And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another apple
- I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I had in the
- world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly fearful as a
- straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank credits and is afraid
- to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving one’s self away becomes
- terror pretty vital!
- </p>
- <p>
- “However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about
- their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife
- blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the stand
- that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the faithful
- ones—especially <i>you</i>, for you could give out a better line of
- talk—when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters
- and added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even
- the Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone
- to board with him. Clear consciences—that’s what we’ve got, Ross!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred
- thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally must
- be plenty more where that came from!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do all the folks here—do the people in Levant know how well we’re
- fixed?” I faltered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose
- anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing
- time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was!
- </p>
- <p>
- And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out of
- the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have
- spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question.
- </p>
- <p>
- I don’t know just how wild I looked while I sat there, but I know I felt
- wild. Then Kama Holstrom came into the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was conscious that my features were not obeying my volition. I had not
- been able to make that clacking tongue of mine behave; now my face was
- just as disobedient. I wanted with all my heart to beam gratitude and joy
- on her, but I seemed to be trying to manage a stiff mask. If she had
- turned and escaped in sheer fright I would not have blamed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- I entirely mistook the expression on her face when she stood there and
- stared at me. Her eyes were wide with what appeared to be terror. Her lips
- parted and her cheeks grew pale. Then she ran to the side of the bed,
- plumped down on her knees, set both her little hands about one of mine and
- cried, “Thank the good God! You have come back—you have come back!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And that’s how a woman knows.
- </p>
- <p>
- The balm of her tears bathed my hand when she put her forehead down and
- hid her face. It was not white any longer—the warm color flooded it
- and I ought to have been content for a time with what I could bring in the
- compass of my gaze. But I wanted to have a blessing from her eyes, and
- when I struggled to lift her face she suddenly released my hand and
- hurried to the window and sat down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself that way,” she panted. “But when I
- saw your eyes I knew you had come back—and it has been so long—and
- the others haven’t understood!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I came to myself, just now, Kama, your father was here and I didn’t
- confess to him. What I know now and what you have known all along we must
- keep to ourselves.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes! Nobody has believed what I was so sure of!”
- </p>
- <p>
- We sat there in silence for a long time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you remember?” she asked, almost whispering the question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and
- now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I was the first to break another silence:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know from what he said how faithful and self-sacrificing—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You force me to remind you how much we owe to you, sir. It makes me very
- uncomfortable. It’s twitting me of a debt which father and I can never
- pay. Please don’t!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So there was conversation closed on that point; I did not feel like making
- Kama Holstrom uncomfortable.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It’s all coming about just as it should. It will be all right from now
- on,” she said, after a time.
- </p>
- <p>
- She had recovered all her usual serenity; she was the girl of the <i>Zizania</i>,
- cool and distant. I was irritated by her manner. That aloofness was not a
- square deal between folks who had been through what we had suffered
- together. It seemed to me that I was not being treated right—first
- that matter-of-fact manner of Captain Rask and now this coolness on the
- daughter’s part. Her first greeting had given me an appetite for more of
- the same sort. Of course, I didn’t expect to be welcomed back from the
- shadows with a brass band and speeches—but some kind of hankering or
- dissatisfaction was gnawing inside me and I felt ugly and cross and
- childish.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t intended to go too far in anything, sir. But I have been so
- anxious to help all I could—forgive me, but father and I do owe you
- so much! Don’t scowl so! I’ll not mention debts again. I hope you won’t
- think I was too eager—and that I meddled. But I went to her! I did
- not want her to misunderstand! It was due you and due myself—and
- her. So I have explained everything. I have told her the story. It will
- come about all right—just as you hope—I am sure! I did not
- intend to stay here—but I have been worrying about—But now you
- can speak for yourself!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She rattled it off so fast I couldn’t get in a word. She looked relieved
- when she had finished—as if she had been carrying around something
- very disagreeable and had handed it over to somebody for keeps. And I was
- obliged to wait quite a while before I dared to trust myself to reply to
- her. What she had handed to me seemed to be about as gratifying as if she
- had dropped a sea-crab down the back of my neck and then sat back and
- expected me to give her three cheers.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look-a-here!” I yapped. “Where did you get the notion that I wanted you
- or anybody else to act as my attorney over there?” I jerked my thumb in
- the direction of the Kingsley house.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But your head was not right—I knew it,” she stammered. “I was
- afraid there would be a misunderstanding—and after what you made me
- promise on the <i>Zizania</i>—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you know that I was as crazy as a coot?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I knew that deep down in your heart you must love her.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A crazy man doesn’t tell the truth.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, he does when he is revealing his real soul.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wasn’t revealing any soul. I was babbling away—and I knew I was
- talking fool talk and I couldn’t stop my tongue. I didn’t mean that guff.
- And now you have got this thing all tangled up by talking to Celene
- Kingsley. I can do my own love-making!” That temper of mine was working in
- fine shape. And Kama Holstrom was no wilting daisy in temperament!
- </p>
- <p>
- “From what I know of you myself, and what <i>others</i>—I call no
- names—have said, you are about as well qualified in that direction
- as a catfish.” She jumped up and stamped her foot.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I know now what love—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Sidney, you have just insulted me because I tried to be your friend.
- And your <i>sweetheart</i>,” she sneered, “has no better manners than you!
- She has not even thanked me for bringing you to her! I do not understand!
- I shall go to her at once and tell her that you are in your right senses
- at last. After this you handle your own love affairs. Don’t you mention
- the word ‘love’ to me again!” She marched out and banged the door so
- violently behind her that all the brass handles on the old high-boy were
- left jingling shrilly—as if the high-boy had gone into a spasm of
- giggles over my comeuppance!
- </p>
- <p>
- In a few minutes the kindly face of Dodovah Vose appeared at the door, his
- eyes full of solicitude.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Fall out of bed?” he inquired.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, out of heaven,” I snapped. He came in and shut the door and showed
- anxiety.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here, son, you seem to have a turn for the worse all of a sudden.
- You’ve been gaining fine. But your eyes look crazy to-day. And what you
- just said—”
- </p>
- <p>
- Say, I came nigh bawling out Dodovah Vose, right then! Nobody seemed to
- know anything about my case except Kama Holstrom—and she knew too
- blamed much! I rolled myself out of bed and stood on my feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My Lawd!” gasped my old friend, “you mustn’t do that. It’s against her
- orders. You’re sartain out of your head!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you worry one mite about my knob,” I shouted, cracking my scarred
- knuckles against it—and the pain in the knuckles made me all the
- uglier. “I’m not going to be nursed and fussed over any longer. I have
- been nursed too much already. They’re even nursing my own private business—and
- making it sicker all the time. From now on I’m going to tend to my own
- affairs. Mr. Vose, help me get these bandages off my feet!”
- </p>
- <p>
- He stood back and flapped his hands and protested. I knew he felt that I
- had become a lunatic, and so I convinced him by walking up and giving him
- a good, sane stare.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you think I’m going to stay in bed the rest of my life—a man who
- has so much to live for as I have?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That’s right—a man who is wuth—”
- </p>
- <p>
- At last somebody was going to post me on my financial status—satisfy
- my wild eagerness to find out! And I stopped him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shut up,” I fairly barked. “I don’t want to be reminded of that every
- five minutes. Excuse me, Mr. Vose. But get my clothes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I had made up my mind that only one voice in all the world should tell me
- what my sacrifice had wrung from the Pacific for my own self! Silly
- notion, eh? No matter. I felt that a certain pair of lips would bless the
- information when it passed them.
- </p>
- <p>
- A half-hour later I was dressed after a fashion. I walked down-stairs, or
- it may be better to say that I scuffed and skated down, for I could not
- squeeze my feet into shoes and was provided with a pair of Dodovah Vose’s
- slippers—carpet affairs with a hectic rose on each instep.
- </p>
- <p>
- I found Captain Holstrom on the porch with my uncle Deck; their chairs
- were tipped back and they were confabbing in most amiable fashion. My
- uncle grinned at me, and I floundered for words because I wasn’t sure what
- I had said to him prior to my awakening or just what our diplomatic
- relations were. His grin encouraged me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn it,” he ejaculated, “I’ve said right along it was best for you to be
- up and around. But Cap’s girl would have it t’other way. Feel all right,
- sonny?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’ll feel better, Uncle Deck, if I’m sure that you and I will never have
- any more misunderstandings. As we have said—”
- </p>
- <p>
- I stopped there and waited, figuring that I had left about the right kind
- of an opening to find out what we <i>had</i> said. My uncle arose and
- clapped my shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sonny, I tell you again, now when you stand man-fashion in front of me,
- that the night when I took my first trick at sitting up with you we fixed
- it all! For I found out how you felt, underneath, about <i>him!</i> And
- about the whole proposition!” He nudged me. “I’m taking my comfort these
- days watching him. No more liberty than old Potter Crabtree’s
- clay-grinding hoss—around and around in an everlasting circle. I
- hope he’ll live long enough to pay his debts—that means a
- considerable stretch of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t trig his wheel for
- all the world!”
- </p>
- <p>
- That was how it stood, eh? And I let it stand, for I wasn’t just sure what
- my private sentiments were in regard to Judge Kingsley at that time.
- Furthermore, I had some very special business of my own on my mind. I
- turned to Captain Rask.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Where is Kama?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Reckon she’s over saying good-by to your girl.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My uncle stared at me—I must have been telling him things when he
- sat up with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- Saying good-by! Then she probably had told her father that she was ready
- to go away. I started across the village square, sliding along in my huge
- slippers like a man walking on snow-shoes. I banged the big knocker on the
- front door of Judge Kingsley’s mansion and the maid admitted me. I was not
- bashful that day—I walked right into the sitting-room.
- </p>
- <p>
- If I am any judge of expressions I did not interrupt any amiable and
- confidential tête-à-tête. The two girls rose and, after a few moments of
- constraint, Celene Kingsley asked me to be seated. I told her that I
- preferred to stand; I reckon that I wasn’t sure that I <i>could</i> sit
- down; the stiffness of the whole situation made me feel as if I did not
- have any joints.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have finished my errand,” declared Kama. The red was in her cheeks and
- there was no encouragement for me in her eyes. “I will say, Mr. Sidney,
- that I have apologized to Miss Kingsley for meddling in matters between
- you two. I thought I understood and I have tried to help. I deserve
- exactly what I have received! I assure you both that I will keep out of
- the way after this.” She started for the door, but I was standing where I
- could block her. I supplemented my interference by an appeal to the lady
- of the mansion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you ask Miss Holstrom to remain for a moment?” I entreated. And Miss
- Holstrom did remain, biting her lower lip with impatience.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I haven’t had much time for thinking on what to say,” I confessed. “I
- don’t know how to talk to ladies very well, anyway.”
- </p>
- <p>
- My face was flaming—I could hardly control my voice—I felt
- sure that I was committing a dreadful sin in point of etiquette and all
- that—but once more I was playing a big game in my life—bigger,
- even, for the sake of my happiness than when I offered to go down after
- the remainder of the treasure of the <i>Golden Gate</i>. I was operating
- again on human nature—and that nature was in the complex little
- personality of Kama Holstrom who pressed impatiently at my elbow, frowning
- at me. I knew with all my heart and soul that unless she stood in the
- presence of Celene Kingsley and myself—as she then stood—and
- heard the truth about my boyhood folly, my cause was lost; because the
- pride of a girl makes the way of a man with a maid a mighty doubtful
- proposition.
- </p>
- <p>
- “May I hope that you have found out that I am not the scoundrel you
- believed me to be?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know the truth now. My father is wiser! I am trying to find words—”
- </p>
- <p>
- She hesitated, just as if she did not know what she ought to say to me,
- and I could not blame her for feeling pretty uncertain. She looked at me
- with a sort of kindly and tolerant expression—but, good heavens,
- there wasn’t any love in her eyes! I had found out what love-light was
- like when Kama Holstrom kneeled beside my bed that afternoon!
- </p>
- <p>
- As I have confessed and have shown, I was pretty much of a blunderer in
- affairs with women. But do me this credit in your estimate: I had not come
- into the presence of Celene Kingsley that day harboring any more illusions
- as to how I stood with her. I was awake! Think back with me! Never had she
- given me a word of affection. Rather, her tolerance of me had been plainly
- inspired by her zeal in her father’s behalf. After that piece of brazen
- idiocy of mine, when I had taken her in my arms, she had been careful to
- keep out of my reach. Allow me to say that I had been doing some swift and
- coherent thinking on my way from the tavern.
- </p>
- <p>
- In my soul was the shamed consciousness that I had been making a real
- thing out of a dream—and had been babbling unwarrantably. I was a
- pitiful object as I stood there between them—I deserved punishment
- at the hands of both of them. For I had made free with Celene Kingsley’s
- name and had misdirected Kama Holstrom’s devoted obedience to a promise.
- </p>
- <p>
- I say, I knew with all my heart and being that I had never struck a spark
- of real love from the condescending nature of Judge Kingsley’s daughter; I
- knew that I loved Kama Holstrom with all the tender devotion one pours
- forth to the true mate.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet I dared not say a word lest I should appear as an atrocious cad
- seeking release from the old love before taking on the new.
- </p>
- <p>
- Equally did Celene Kingsley’s high-bred delicacy restrain her tongue; I
- understood that she did not want to betray me as a mere cheeky boaster.
- </p>
- <p>
- So we stood there looking at one another, three as unhappy specimens of
- humanity as there were in Levant that day.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am too much of a fool to know what to say and how to say it,” I
- blurted, and the tears ran down my cheeks.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Celene who stepped into the breach; she wasn’t in love, and she was
- cooler than the other two in the party.
- </p>
- <p>
- She walked up to Kama and took her hands in caressing grasp.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t you understand, dear?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” faltered the poor girl.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hoped you could understand without obliging me to speak. I hoped you
- would guess when I refused to discuss certain matters with you—I
- made you angry, and I’m sorry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I know I meddled—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear, I understood you all the time! I understood my old school
- friend, too!” She reached out her hand and drew me close to Kama. “He has
- been very noble in his help in a great trial in my family, dear! I owe my
- happiness to him. And I’m speaking out, rather boldly—rather
- bluntly, because I want to help him in obtaining his great happiness. I
- know what must happen to make him happy.” She put Kama’s hand in mine.
- “Now, my dear, do not force me to disparage one of the best young men I
- have ever known by telling you that I never dreamed of him as a husband—nor
- was I anything else to him except a school-day fancy, a—”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An inspiration to set me on the way to make something of myself,” I
- insisted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And now—say it, Ross Sidney, or you’re a coward—say it, and
- let me hear it! She deserves it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have found out that real love differs from boyhood fancies—and I—I—want
- to—”
- </p>
- <p>
- She gently pushed us toward the door while I was stammering.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You want to tell a dear girl the sweetest story in the world, Ross
- Sidney! My blessing on you both. Good night!”
- </p>
- <p>
- We did not speak to each other for some time after we were out of doors
- together. I took her arm in gentle manner and led her steps away from the
- tavern. We could see its lights in the early dusk, and I wanted to keep
- away from lights for a time.
- </p>
- <p>
- I was glad the autumn dusk had settled—a sliver of new moon was a
- comforting sight for a lover.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I guess neither of us knows very well how to talk about love, Kama,” I
- told her, hobbling along beside her as best I could. The judge’s orchard
- was shaded by the evening’s gloom, and when I turned down there she did
- not resist.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I’m sure I’m mighty awkward about making love,” I went on, “but God knows
- I want to learn how.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why do you think I can do any better as a tutor in love than as an
- attorney?” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because I’ll be such a willing pupil, dear.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard you inform Miss Kingsley with a great deal of earnestness just
- now that you have found out what real love is like.” She couldn’t keep all
- the naughty teasing from her tone, though her voice trembled. “Who is the
- fortunate one?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I caught her to me, and with her warm cheek close to mine and her
- lips near and never denying caresses, I told her and I convinced her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I think,” she admitted, after a long time and after many words there in
- the blessed shadows, “that you are entitled to your diploma, Ross. You are
- showing me that you know more than your tutor. But is there a woman who is
- not jealous when she is in love? Here!” She pressed into my hand a little
- packet; it contained the three rings. I drew her along to the cleft tree.
- I dropped them into the hollow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One for fancy, one for folly, one for the freakish dreams of boyhood!” I
- told her. “All buried! Come back to the tavern, precious girl! I want you
- to tell Dodovah Vose how to decorate the parlor for the wedding!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She reached on tiptoe and plucked two apples from the old tree. She gave
- one to me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An apple of gold from the only woman in the world,” I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don’t say ‘gold’ to me, Ross! Don’t! A boy of your age with half a
- million safe in the bank—”
- </p>
- <p>
- There was my news at last! I kissed the lips which told me!
- </p>
- <p>
- Then, eating the sweet fruit of our new knowledge of life and of each
- other, we went on our way up through the whispering trees toward the
- welcoming, glowing windows of the old tavern.
- </p>
- <h3>
- THE END
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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