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<dc:description id="description">DESCRIPTION</dc:description>
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<dc:source>https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1595</dc:source>
<meta property="se:production-notes">Any special notes about the production of this ebook for future editors/producers? Remove this element if not.</meta>
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<meta property="se:url.encyclopedia.wikipedia" refines="#author">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry</meta>
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<title>Chapter 14</title>
<title>A Blackjack Bargainer</title>
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<section id="chapter-14" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>A BLACKJACK BARGAINER</h2>
<section id="a-blackjack-bargainer" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">A Blackjack Bargainer</h2>
<p>The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street⁠—the main street of the town of Bethel.</p>
<p>Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.</p>
<p>The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. Trade was not. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the “court-house gang” was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had⁠—first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. The “gang” had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to be taken. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing “from the valley,” sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.</p>
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<p>Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into Blackjack’s bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner.</p>
<p>One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey’s cabin. Pike lifted his squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on the chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence of anything resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica underlying the said property.</p>
<p>When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small cannon⁠—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price⁠—might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever.</p>
<p>But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs. Garvey’s bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex⁠—to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike’s proposed system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.</p>
<p>And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey’s preference for one of the large valley towns and Pike’s hankering for primeval solitudes. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions comportable with Martella’s ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable.</p>
<p>But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Garvey’s bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex⁠—to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike’s proposed system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially.</p>
<p>And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of Laurel was their compromise between <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Garvey’s preference for one of the large valley towns and Pike’s hankering for primeval solitudes. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions comportable with Martella’s ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable.</p>
<p>Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree’s feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the spendthrift’s shaking hands.</p>
<p>Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers.</p>
<p>A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with something travelling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a slothful gray horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the middle of the street as it neared Goree’s office, and stopped in the gutter directly in front of his door.</p>
<p>On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in a skin-tight silk dress of the description known as “changeable,” being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However Martella Garvey’s heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had imbued her with the stolidity of his crags, and the reserve of his hushed interiors. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountain-side. She could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the stillest of nights.</p>
<p>Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the transformed, the recently civilized.</p>
<p>The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast doubts upon Garvey’s soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man’s countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile as a statue’s. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account for the visit.</p>
<p>“Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?” he inquired.</p>
<p>“Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo’ old place, and she likes the neighbourhood. Society is what she ‘lows she wants, and she is gettin’ of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The best folks hev axed her to differ’nt kinds of doin’s. I cyan’t say, Mr. Goree, that sech things suits me⁠—fur me, give me them thar.” Garvey’s huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains. “That’s whar I b’long, ‘mongst the wild honey bees and the b’ars. But that ain’t what I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar’s somethin’ you got what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy.”</p>
<p>“Everything all right at Laurel, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey?” he inquired.</p>
<p>“Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo’ old place, and she likes the neighbourhood. Society is what she ‘lows she wants, and she is gettin’ of it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The best folks hev axed her to differ’nt kinds of doin’s. I cyan’t say, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree, that sech things suits me⁠—fur me, give me them thar.” Garvey’s huge, yellow-gloved hand flourished in the direction of the mountains. “That’s whar I b’long, ‘mongst the wild honey bees and the b’ars. But that ain’t what I come fur to say, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree. Thar’s somethin’ you got what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy.”</p>
<p>“Buy!” echoed Goree. “From me?” Then he laughed harshly. “I reckon you are mistaken about that. I reckon you are mistaken about that. I sold out to you, as you yourself expressed it, ‘lock, stock and barrel.’ There isn’t even a ramrod left to sell.”</p>
<p>“You’ve got it; and we ‘uns want it. ‘Take the money,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’ ”</p>
<p>Goree shook his head. “The cupboard’s bare,” he said.</p>
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<p>Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing his unblinking eyes upon Goree’s.</p>
<p>“There’s a old feud,” he said distinctly and slowly, “ ’tween you ‘uns and the Coltranes.”</p>
<p>Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from “back yan’ ” knew it as well as the lawyer did.</p>
<p>“Na offense,” he went on “but purely in the way of business. Missis Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the mountains hev ’em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin’ on feuds f’om twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo’ uncle, Jedge Paisley Goree, ‘journed co’t and shot Len Coltrane f’om the bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f’om the po’ white trash. Nobody wouldn’t pick a feud with we ‘uns, no mo’n with a fam’ly of tree-toads. Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We ‘uns ain’t quality, but we’re buyin’ into it as fur as we can. ‘Take the money, then,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy Mr. Goree’s feud, fa’r and squar’.’ ”</p>
<p>“Na offense,” he went on “but purely in the way of business. Missis Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the mountains hev ’em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin’ on feuds f’om twenty to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo’ uncle, Jedge Paisley Goree, ‘journed co’t and shot Len Coltrane f’om the bench. Missis Garvey and me, we come f’om the po’ white trash. Nobody wouldn’t pick a feud with we ‘uns, no mo’n with a fam’ly of tree-toads. Quality people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We ‘uns ain’t quality, but we’re buyin’ into it as fur as we can. ‘Take the money, then,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree’s feud, fa’r and squar’.’ ”</p>
<p>The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.</p>
<p>“Thar’s two hundred dollars, Mr. Goree; what you would call a fa’r price for a feud that’s been ‘lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar’s only you left to cyar’ on yo’ side of it, and you’d make mighty po’ killin’. I’ll take it off yo’ hands, and it’ll set me and Missis Garvey up among the quality. Thar’s the money.”</p>
<p>“Thar’s two hundred dollars, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree; what you would call a fa’r price for a feud that’s been ‘lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar’s only you left to cyar’ on yo’ side of it, and you’d make mighty po’ killin’. I’ll take it off yo’ hands, and it’ll set me and Missis Garvey up among the quality. Thar’s the money.”</p>
<p>The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself, writhing and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed Garvey’s last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the court-house could be plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot, for the subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated across the square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood on Goree’s brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from under the table, and filled a tumbler from it.</p>
<p>“A little corn liquor, Mr. Garvey? Of course you are joking about⁠—what you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn’t it? Feuds. Prime, two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged⁠—two hundred, I believe you said, Mr. Garvey?”</p>
<p>“A little corn liquor, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey? Of course you are joking about⁠—what you spoke of? Opens quite a new market, doesn’t it? Feuds. Prime, two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged⁠—two hundred, I believe you said, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey?”</p>
<p>Goree laughed self-consciously.</p>
<p>The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and drank the whisky without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and taste.</p>
<p>“Two hundred,” repeated Garvey. “Thar’s the money.”</p>
<p>A sudden passion flared up in Goree’s brain. He struck the table with his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He flinched as if something had stung him.</p>
<p>“Do you come to me,” he shouted, “seriously with such a ridiculous, insulting, darned-fool proposition?”</p>
<p>“It’s fa’r and squar’,” said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out his hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger at himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that were being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged gentleman to an anxious chafferer recommending his goods.</p>
<p>“Don’t be in a hurry, Garvey,” he said, his face crimson and his speech thick. “I accept your p-p-proposition, though it’s dirt cheap at two hundred. A t-trade’s all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey?”</p>
<p>Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. “Missis Garvey will be pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a scrap ov writin’, Mr. Goree, you bein’ a lawyer, to show we traded.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be in a hurry, Garvey,” he said, his face crimson and his speech thick. “I accept your p-p-proposition, though it’s dirt cheap at two hundred. A t-trade’s all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are s-satisfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Garvey?”</p>
<p>Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. “Missis Garvey will be pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a scrap ov writin’, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree, you bein’ a lawyer, to show we traded.”</p>
<p>Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in his moist hand. Everything else suddenly seemed to grow trivial and light.</p>
<p>“Bill of sale, by all means. ‘Right, title, and interest in and to’ … ‘forever warrant and⁠—’ No, Garvey, we’ll have to leave out that ‘defend,’ ” said Goree with a loud laugh. “You’ll have to defend this title yourself.”</p>
<p>The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him, folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket.</p>
@ -55,10 +55,10 @@
<p>The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window in the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect, portly gentleman of about fifty, wearing the inevitable long, double-breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high silk hat, was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree glanced at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here was its counterpart. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the moving figure, disclosing long, amber-coloured fangs.</p>
<p>“Is that him? Why, that’s the man who sent me to the pen’tentiary once!”</p>
<p>“He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly. “And, by the way, he’s a first-class shot.”</p>
<p>“I kin hit a squirrel’s eye at a hundred yard,” said Garvey. “So that thar’s Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin’. I’ll take keer ov this feud, Mr. Goree, better’n you ever did!”</p>
<p>“I kin hit a squirrel’s eye at a hundred yard,” said Garvey. “So that thar’s Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin’. I’ll take keer ov this feud, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree, better’n you ever did!”</p>
<p>He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight perplexity.</p>
<p>“Anything else to-day?” inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. “Any family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as low as the lowest.”</p>
<p>“Thar was another thing,” replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, “that Missis Garvey was thinkin’ of. ‘Tain’t so much in my line as t’other, but she wanted partic’lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin’, ‘pay fur it,’ she says, ‘fa’r and squar’.’ Thar’s a buryin’ groun’, as you know, Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo’ old place, under the cedars. Them that lies thar is yo’ folks what was killed by the Coltranes. The monyments has the names on ’em. Missis Garvey says a fam’ly buryin’ groun’ is a sho’ sign of quality. She says ef we git the feud, thar’s somethin’ else ought to go with it. The names on them monyments is ‘Goree,’ but they can be changed to ourn by⁠—”</p>
<p>“Thar was another thing,” replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, “that Missis Garvey was thinkin’ of. ‘Tain’t so much in my line as t’other, but she wanted partic’lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin’, ‘pay fur it,’ she says, ‘fa’r and squar’.’ Thar’s a buryin’ groun’, as you know, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Goree, in the yard of yo’ old place, under the cedars. Them that lies thar is yo’ folks what was killed by the Coltranes. The monyments has the names on ’em. Missis Garvey says a fam’ly buryin’ groun’ is a sho’ sign of quality. She says ef we git the feud, thar’s somethin’ else ought to go with it. The names on them monyments is ‘Goree,’ but they can be changed to ourn by⁠—”</p>
<p>“Go! Go!” screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking. “Go, you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his ancestors⁠—go!”</p>
<p>The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with feverish celerity, the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the vehicle slowly turned about, the sheep, with a coat of newly grown wool, was hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the court-house.</p>
<p>At three o’clock in the morning they brought him back to his office, shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man “from the valley” acting as escort.</p>

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<title>Chapter 19</title>
<title>A Chaparral Christmas Gift</title>
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<h2>A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT</h2>
<section id="a-chaparral-christmas-gift" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">A Chaparral Christmas Gift</h2>
<p>The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.</p>
<p>At the end of that time it was worth it.</p>
<p>Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of extremely frank, deep-brown eyes and a laugh that rippled across the prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sundown Sheep Ranch.</p>
@ -18,18 +18,18 @@
<p>But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed.</p>
<p>“I’ll give you a Christmas present,” he yelled, shrilly, at the door, with his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an offhand shot.</p>
<p>His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane’s right ear. The barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the bride’s had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers somewhat well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had been hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at table, as a concession to good taste. But Carson, with great promptness, hurled his plate of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy, spoiling his aim. The second bullet, then, only shattered the white petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended two feet above Rosita’s head.</p>
<p>The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of Mr. McRoy.</p>
<p>The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing in the direction of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> McRoy.</p>
<p>“I’ll shoot better next time,” yelled Johnny; “and there’ll be a next time.” He backed rapidly out the door.</p>
<p>Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy’s bullet from the darkness laid him low.</p>
<p>The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement, it was a decided misdemeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard him quote the line “Christmas comes but once a year” to the guests.</p>
<p>But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the concealing chaparral.</p>
<p>That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the “bad man” of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss McMullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand. He would turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest opportunity, pick off his man and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly blood-thirsty that none but faint attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the draw. The other half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wantonness and cruelty.</p>
<p>Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to give each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of good he may have possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a throb of generosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and this is the way it happened.</p>
<br/>
<hr/>
<p>One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.</p>
<p>One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him somewhere beneath his ice and iron.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what I’ve been thinking about, Mex,” he remarked in his usual mild drawl, “to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to give. I’m going to ride over to-morrow night and shoot Madison Lane in his own house. He got my girl⁠—Rosita would have had me if he hadn’t cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?”</p>
<p>“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house to-morrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”</p>
<p>“Ah, shucks, Kid,” said Mexican, “don’t talk foolishness. You know you can’t get within a mile of Mad Lane’s house to-morrow night. I see old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don’t you suppose Mad Lane’ll kind of keep his eye open for a certain <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kid? You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks.”</p>
<p>“I’m going,” repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, “to go to Madison Lane’s Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and⁠—oh! h⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him⁠—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then’s when I’ll get him.”</p>
<p>“There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t you go and surrender to the sheriff?”</p>
<p>“I’ll get him,” said the Kid.</p>
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<p>The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all were they pleased when Santa Claus himself in magnificent white beard and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys.</p>
<p>“It’s my papa,” announced Billy Sampson, aged six. “I’ve seen him wear ’em before.”</p>
<p>Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking.</p>
<p>“Well, Mrs. Lane,” said he, “I suppose by this Christmas you’ve gotten over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven’t you? Madison and I have talked about it, you know.”</p>
<p>“Well, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Lane,” said he, “I suppose by this Christmas you’ve gotten over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven’t you? Madison and I have talked about it, you know.”</p>
<p>“Very nearly,” said Rosita, smiling, “but I am still nervous sometimes. I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing us.”</p>
<p>“He’s the most cold-hearted villain in the world,” said Berkly. “The citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like a wolf.”</p>
<p>“He has committed awful crimes,” said Rosita, “but⁠—I⁠—don’t⁠—know. I think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always bad⁠—that I know.”</p>
<p>Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through.</p>
<p>“I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane,” he said. “I was just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband. But I’ve left one for you, instead. It’s in the room to your right.”</p>
<p>“I heard what you said through the window, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Lane,” he said. “I was just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your husband. But I’ve left one for you, instead. It’s in the room to your right.”</p>
<p>“Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus,” said Rosita, brightly.</p>
<p>Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler air of the yard.</p>
<p>She found no one in the room but Madison.</p>
<p>“Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Haven’t seen anything in the way of a present,” said her husband, laughing, “unless he could have meant me.”</p>
<br/>
<p>The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span> O Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta.</p>
<p>“Well, the Frio Kid’s got his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the postmaster.</p>
<p>“That so? How’d it happen?”</p>
<p>“One of old Sanchez’s Mexican sheep herders did it!⁠—think of it! the Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along past his camp about twelve o’clock last night, and was so skeered that he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid playing Santy!”</p>

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<head>
<title>Chapter 20</title>
<title>A Little Local Colour</title>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
<section id="chapter-20" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>A LITTLE LOCAL COLOUR</h2>
<section id="a-little-local-colour" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">A Little Local Colour</h2>
<p>I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York scenes and incidents⁠—something typical, I told him, without necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an “i.”</p>
<p>“Oh, for your writing business,” said Rivington; “you couldn’t have applied to a better shop. What I don’t know about little old New York wouldn’t make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I’ll put you right in the middle of so much local colour that you won’t know whether you are a magazine cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?”</p>
<p>Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth, preference and incommutability.</p>

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<title>Chapter 5</title>
<title>A Matter of Mean Elevation</title>
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<section id="chapter-5" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION</h2>
<section id="a-matter-of-mean-elevation" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">A Matter of Mean Elevation</h2>
<p>One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, impressionable Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and “vivas.” The manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibitive climate he would have put forth the distinctive flower of his prosperity⁠—the overcoat of fur, braided, frogged and opulent. Almost was he persuaded to raise the salaries of his company. But with a mighty effort he conquered the impulse toward such an unprofitable effervescence of joy.</p>
<p>At Macuto, on the coast of Venezuela, the company scored its greatest success. Imagine Coney Island translated into Spanish and you will comprehend Macuto. The fashionable season is from November to March. Down from La Guayra and Caracas and Valencia and other interior towns flock the people for their holiday season. There are bathing and fiestas and bull fights and scandal. And then the people have a passion for music that the bands in the plaza and on the sea beach stir but do not satisfy. The coming of the Alcazar Opera Company aroused the utmost ardour and zeal among the pleasure seekers.</p>
<p>The illustrious Guzman Blanco, President and Dictator of Venezuela, sojourned in Macuto with his court for the season. That potent ruler⁠—who himself paid a subsidy of 40,000 pesos each year to grand opera in Caracas⁠—ordered one of the Government warehouses to be cleared for a temporary theatre. A stage was quickly constructed and rough wooden benches made for the audience. Private boxes were added for the use of the President and the notables of the army and Government.</p>
<p>The company remained in Macuto for two weeks. Each performance filled the house as closely as it could be packed. Then the music-mad people fought for room in the open doors and windows, and crowded about, hundreds deep, on the outside. Those audiences formed a brilliantly diversified patch of colour. The hue of their faces ranged from the clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and brown shades of the Mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets⁠—Indians down from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade their gold dust in the coast towns.</p>
<p>The spell cast upon these denizens of the interior fastnesses was remarkable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the excitable Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give evidence of their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these aboriginals find expression. During the rendition of “Faust,” Guzman Blanco, extravagantly pleased by the “Jewel Song,” cast upon the stage a purse of gold pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead to the extent of whatever loose coin they had convenient, while some of the fair and fashionable señoras were moved, in imitation, to fling a jewel or a ring or two at the feet of the Marguerite⁠—who was, according to the bills, Mlle. Nina Giraud. Then, from different parts of the house rose sundry of the stolid hillmen and cast upon the stage little brown and dun bags that fell with soft “thumps” and did not rebound. It was, no doubt, pleasure at the tribute to her art that caused Mlle. Giraud’s eyes to shine so brightly when she opened these little deerskin bags in her dressing room and found them to contain pure gold dust. If so, the pleasure was rightly hers, for her voice in song, pure, strong and thrilling with the feeling of the emotional artist, deserved the tribute that it earned.</p>
<p>The spell cast upon these denizens of the interior fastnesses was remarkable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the excitable Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give evidence of their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these aboriginals find expression. During the rendition of “Faust,” Guzman Blanco, extravagantly pleased by the “Jewel Song,” cast upon the stage a purse of gold pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead to the extent of whatever loose coin they had convenient, while some of the fair and fashionable señoras were moved, in imitation, to fling a jewel or a ring or two at the feet of the Marguerite⁠—who was, according to the bills, <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Nina Giraud. Then, from different parts of the house rose sundry of the stolid hillmen and cast upon the stage little brown and dun bags that fell with soft “thumps” and did not rebound. It was, no doubt, pleasure at the tribute to her art that caused <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud’s eyes to shine so brightly when she opened these little deerskin bags in her dressing room and found them to contain pure gold dust. If so, the pleasure was rightly hers, for her voice in song, pure, strong and thrilling with the feeling of the emotional artist, deserved the tribute that it earned.</p>
<p>But the triumph of the Alcazar Opera Company is not the theme⁠—it but leans upon and colours it. There happened in Macuto a tragic thing, an unsolvable mystery, that sobered for a time the gaiety of the happy season.</p>
<p>One evening between the short twilight and the time when she should have whirled upon the stage in the red and black of the ardent Carmen, Mlle. Nina Giraud disappeared from the sight and ken of 6,000 pairs of eyes and as many minds in Macuto. There was the usual turmoil and hurrying to seek her. Messengers flew to the little French-kept hotel where she stayed; others of the company hastened here or there where she might be lingering in some tienda or unduly prolonging her bath upon the beach. All search was fruitless. Mademoiselle had vanished.</p>
<p>One evening between the short twilight and the time when she should have whirled upon the stage in the red and black of the ardent Carmen, <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Nina Giraud disappeared from the sight and ken of 6,000 pairs of eyes and as many minds in Macuto. There was the usual turmoil and hurrying to seek her. Messengers flew to the little French-kept hotel where she stayed; others of the company hastened here or there where she might be lingering in some tienda or unduly prolonging her bath upon the beach. All search was fruitless. Mademoiselle had vanished.</p>
<p>Half an hour passed and she did not appear. The dictator, unused to the caprices of prime donne, became impatient. He sent an aide from his box to say to the manager that if the curtain did not at once rise he would immediately hale the entire company to the calabosa, though it would desolate his heart, indeed, to be compelled to such an act. Birds in Macuto could be made to sing.</p>
<p>The manager abandoned hope for the time of Mlle. Giraud. A member of the chorus, who had dreamed hopelessly for years of the blessed opportunity, quickly Carmenized herself and the opera went on.</p>
<p>Afterward, when the lost cantatrice appeared not, the aid of the authorities was invoked. The President at once set the army, the police and all citizens to the search. Not one clue to Mlle. Giraud’s disappearance was found. The Alcazar left to fill engagements farther down the coast.</p>
<p>The manager abandoned hope for the time of <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud. A member of the chorus, who had dreamed hopelessly for years of the blessed opportunity, quickly Carmenized herself and the opera went on.</p>
<p>Afterward, when the lost cantatrice appeared not, the aid of the authorities was invoked. The President at once set the army, the police and all citizens to the search. Not one clue to <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud’s disappearance was found. The Alcazar left to fill engagements farther down the coast.</p>
<p>On the way back the steamer stopped at Macuto and the manager made anxious inquiry. Not a trace of the lady had been discovered. The Alcazar could do no more. The personal belongings of the missing lady were stored in the hotel against her possible later reappearance and the opera company continued upon its homeward voyage to New Orleans.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>On the camino real along the beach the two saddle mules and the four pack mules of Don Señor Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting the crack of the whip of the <i>arriero</i>, Luis. That would be the signal for the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules were loaded with a varied assortment of hardware and cutlery. These articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust that they washed from the Andean streams and stored in quills and bags against his coming. It was a profitable business, and Señor Armstrong expected soon to be able to purchase the coffee plantation that he coveted.</p>
<hr/>
<p>On the camino real along the beach the two saddle mules and the four pack mules of Don Señor Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting the crack of the whip of the arriero, Luis. That would be the signal for the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules were loaded with a varied assortment of hardware and cutlery. These articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust that they washed from the Andean streams and stored in quills and bags against his coming. It was a profitable business, and Señor Armstrong expected soon to be able to purchase the coffee plantation that he coveted.</p>
<p>Armstrong stood on the narrow sidewalk, exchanging garbled Spanish with old Peralto, the rich native merchant who had just charged him four prices for half a gross of pot-metal hatchets, and abridged English with Rucker, the little German who was Consul for the United States.</p>
<p>“Take with you, señor,” said Peralto, “the blessings of the saints upon your journey.”</p>
<p>“Better try quinine,” growled Rucker through his pipe. “Take two grains every night. And don’t make your trip too long, Johnny, because we haf needs of you. It is ein villainous game dot Melville play of whist, and dere is no oder substitute. <i>Auf wiedersehen</i>, und keep your eyes dot mule’s ears between when you on der edge of der brecipices ride.”</p>
<p>“Better try quinine,” growled Rucker through his pipe. “Take two grains every night. And don’t make your trip too long, Johnny, because we haf needs of you. It is ein villainous game dot Melville play of whist, and dere is no oder substitute. Auf wiedersehen, und keep your eyes dot mule’s ears between when you on der edge of der brecipices ride.”</p>
<p>The bells of Luis’s mule jingled and the pack train filed after the warning note. Armstrong, waved a good-bye and took his place at the tail of the procession. Up the narrow street they turned, and passed the two-story wooden Hotel Ingles, where Ives and Dawson and Richards and the rest of the chaps were dawdling on the broad piazza, reading week-old newspapers. They crowded to the railing and shouted many friendly and wise and foolish farewells after him. Across the plaza they trotted slowly past the bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, within its fence of bayoneted rifles captured from revolutionists, and out of the town between the rows of thatched huts swarming with the unclothed youth of Macuto. They plunged into the damp coolness of banana groves at length to emerge upon a bright stream, where brown women in scant raiment laundered clothes destructively upon the rocks. Then the pack train, fording the stream, attacked the sudden ascent, and bade adieu to such civilization as the coast afforded.</p>
<p>For weeks Armstrong, guided by Luis, followed his regular route among the mountains. After he had collected an arroba of the precious metal, winning a profit of nearly $5,000, the heads of the lightened mules were turned down-trail again. Where the head of the Guarico River springs from a great gash in the mountain-side, Luis halted the train.</p>
<p>“Half a day’s journey from here, Señor,” said he, “is the village of Tacuzama, which we have never visited. I think many ounces of gold may be procured there. It is worth the trial.”</p>
@ -35,24 +35,35 @@
<p>The woman was worthy of his boldness. Only by a sudden flush of her pale cheek did she acknowledge understanding of his words. Then she spoke, scarcely moving her lips.</p>
<p>“I am held a prisoner by these Indians. God knows I need help. In two hours come to the little hut twenty yards toward the Mountainside. There will be a light and a red curtain in the window. There is always a guard at the door, whom you will have to overcome. For the love of heaven, do not fail to come.”</p>
<p>The story seems to shrink from adventure and rescue and mystery. The theme is one too gentle for those brave and quickening tones. And yet it reaches as far back as time itself. It has been named “environment,” which is as weak a word as any to express the unnameable kinship of man to nature, that queer fraternity that causes stones and trees and salt water and clouds to play upon our emotions. Why are we made serious and solemn and sublime by mountain heights, grave and contemplative by an abundance of overhanging trees, reduced to inconstancy and monkey capers by the ripples on a sandy beach? Did the protoplasm⁠—but enough. The chemists are looking into the matter, and before long they will have all life in the table of the symbols.</p>
<p>Briefly, then, in order to confine the story within scientific bounds, John Armstrong, went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried away Mlle. Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of gold dust she had collected during her six months’ forced engagement in Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic lovers of music between the equator and the French Opera House in New Orleans. They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson was good when he said: “The thing thou wantest, O discontented man⁠—take it, and pay the price.” A number of them had attended the performance of the Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found Mlle. Giraud’s style and technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they took her one evening suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her with much consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She was quite pleased at being rescued by Mr. Armstrong. So much for mystery and adventure. Now to resume the theory of the protoplasm.</p>
<p>John Armstrong and Mlle. Giraud rode among the Andean peaks, enveloped in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, furthest removed, in nature’s great family become conscious of the tie. Among those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic silences and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are precipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another. They moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in unison with the stately heights. They travelled in a zone of majesty and peace.</p>
<p>Briefly, then, in order to confine the story within scientific bounds, John Armstrong, went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried away <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of gold dust she had collected during her six months’ forced engagement in Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic lovers of music between the equator and the French Opera House in New Orleans. They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson was good when he said: “The thing thou wantest, O discontented man⁠—take it, and pay the price.” A number of them had attended the performance of the Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud’s style and technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they took her one evening suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her with much consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She was quite pleased at being rescued by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Armstrong. So much for mystery and adventure. Now to resume the theory of the protoplasm.</p>
<p>John Armstrong and <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud rode among the Andean peaks, enveloped in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, furthest removed, in nature’s great family become conscious of the tie. Among those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic silences and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are precipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another. They moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in unison with the stately heights. They travelled in a zone of majesty and peace.</p>
<p>To Armstrong the woman seemed almost a holy thing. Yet bathed in the white, still dignity of her martyrdom that purified her earthly beauty and gave out, it seemed, an aura of transcendent loveliness, in those first hours of companionship she drew from him an adoration that was half human love, half the worship of a descended goddess.</p>
<p>Never yet since her rescue had she smiled. Over her dress she still wore the robe of leopard skins, for the mountain air was cold. She looked to be some splendid princess belonging to those wild and awesome altitudes. The spirit of the region chimed with hers. Her eyes were always turned upon the sombre cliffs, the blue gorges and the snow-clad turrets, looking a sublime melancholy equal to their own. At times on the journey she sang thrilling te deums and misereres that struck the true note of the hills, and made their route seem like a solemn march down a cathedral aisle. The rescued one spoke but seldom, her mood partaking of the hush of nature that surrounded them. Armstrong looked upon her as an angel. He could not bring himself to the sacrilege of attempting to woo her as other women may be wooed.</p>
<p>On the third day they had descended as far as the <i>tierra templada</i>, the zona of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formidable heads. Here they met signs of man. They saw the white houses of coffee plantations gleam across the clearings. They struck into a road where they met travellers and pack-mules. Cattle were grazing on the slopes. They passed a little village where the round-eyed <i>niños</i> shrieked and called at sight of them.</p>
<p>Mlle. Giraud laid aside her leopard-skin robe. It seemed to be a trifle incongruous now. In the mountains it had appeared fitting and natural. And if Armstrong was not mistaken she laid aside with it something of the high dignity of her demeanour. As the country became more populous and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a woman⁠—an earth woman, but no less enticing. A little colour crept to the surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that the removal of the robe now disclosed with the solicitous touch of one who is conscious of the eyes of others. She smoothed the careless sweep of her hair. A mundane interest, long latent in the chilling atmosphere of the ascetic peaks, showed in her eyes.</p>
<p>On the third day they had descended as far as the tierra templada, the zona of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formidable heads. Here they met signs of man. They saw the white houses of coffee plantations gleam across the clearings. They struck into a road where they met travellers and pack-mules. Cattle were grazing on the slopes. They passed a little village where the round-eyed niños shrieked and called at sight of them.</p>
<p><abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud laid aside her leopard-skin robe. It seemed to be a trifle incongruous now. In the mountains it had appeared fitting and natural. And if Armstrong was not mistaken she laid aside with it something of the high dignity of her demeanour. As the country became more populous and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a woman⁠—an earth woman, but no less enticing. A little colour crept to the surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that the removal of the robe now disclosed with the solicitous touch of one who is conscious of the eyes of others. She smoothed the careless sweep of her hair. A mundane interest, long latent in the chilling atmosphere of the ascetic peaks, showed in her eyes.</p>
<p>This thaw in his divinity sent Armstrong’s heart going faster. So might an Arctic explorer thrill at his first ken of green fields and liquescent waters. They were on a lower plane of earth and life and were succumbing to its peculiar, subtle influence. The austerity of the hills no longer thinned the air they breathed. About them was the breath of fruit and corn and builded homes, the comfortable smell of smoke and warm earth and the consolations man has placed between himself and the dust of his brother earth from which he sprung. While traversing those awful mountains, Mile. Giraud had seemed to be wrapped in their spirit of reverent reserve. Was this that same woman⁠—now palpitating, warm, eager, throbbing with conscious life and charm, feminine to her finger-tips? Pondering over this, Armstrong felt certain misgivings intrude upon his thoughts. He wished he could stop there with this changing creature, descending no farther. Here was the elevation and environment to which her nature seemed to respond with its best. He feared to go down upon the man-dominated levels. Would her spirit not yield still further in that artificial zone to which they were descending?</p>
<p>Now from a little plateau they saw the sea flash at the edge of the green lowlands. Mile. Giraud gave a little, catching sigh.</p>
<p>“Oh! look, Mr. Armstrong, there is the sea! Isn’t it lovely? I’m so tired of mountains.” She heaved a pretty shoulder in a gesture of repugnance. “Those horrid Indians! Just think of what I suffered! Although I suppose I attained my ambition of becoming a stellar attraction, I wouldn’t care to repeat the engagement. It was very nice of you to bring me away. Tell me, Mr. Armstrong⁠—honestly, now⁠—do I look such an awful, awful fright? I haven’t looked into a mirror, you know, for months.”</p>
<p>“Oh! look, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Armstrong, there is the sea! Isn’t it lovely? I’m so tired of mountains.” She heaved a pretty shoulder in a gesture of repugnance. “Those horrid Indians! Just think of what I suffered! Although I suppose I attained my ambition of becoming a stellar attraction, I wouldn’t care to repeat the engagement. It was very nice of you to bring me away. Tell me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Armstrong⁠—honestly, now⁠—do I look such an awful, awful fright? I haven’t looked into a mirror, you know, for months.”</p>
<p>Armstrong made answer according to his changed moods. Also he laid his hand upon hers as it rested upon the horn of her saddle. Luis was at the head of the pack train and could not see. She allowed it to remain there, and her eyes smiled frankly into his.</p>
<p>Then at sundown they dropped upon the coast level under the palms and lemons among the vivid greens and scarlets and ochres of the <i>tierra caliente</i>. They rode into Macuto, and saw the line of volatile bathers frolicking in the surf. The mountains were very far away.</p>
<p>Mlle. Giraud’s eyes were shining with a joy that could not have existed under the chaperonage of the mountain-tops. There were other spirits calling to her⁠—nymphs of the orange groves, pixies from the chattering surf, imps, born of the music, the perfumes, colours and the insinuating presence of humanity. She laughed aloud, musically, at a sudden thought.</p>
<p>Then at sundown they dropped upon the coast level under the palms and lemons among the vivid greens and scarlets and ochres of the tierra caliente. They rode into Macuto, and saw the line of volatile bathers frolicking in the surf. The mountains were very far away.</p>
<p><abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud’s eyes were shining with a joy that could not have existed under the chaperonage of the mountain-tops. There were other spirits calling to her⁠—nymphs of the orange groves, pixies from the chattering surf, imps, born of the music, the perfumes, colours and the insinuating presence of humanity. She laughed aloud, musically, at a sudden thought.</p>
<p>“Won’t there be a sensation?” she called to Armstrong. “Don’t I wish I had an engagement just now, though! What a picnic the press agent would have! ‘Held a prisoner by a band of savage Indians subdued by the spell of her wonderful voice’⁠—wouldn’t that make great stuff? But I guess I quit the game winner, anyhow⁠—there ought to be a couple of thousand dollars in that sack of gold dust I collected as encores, don’t you think?”</p>
<p>He left her at the door of the little Hotel de Buen Descansar, where she had stopped before. Two hours later he returned to the hotel. He glanced in at the open door of the little combined reception room and cafe.</p>
<p>Half a dozen of Macuto’s representative social and official <i>caballeros</i> were distributed about the room. Señor Villablanca, the wealthy rubber concessionist, reposed his fat figure on two chairs, with an emollient smile beaming upon his chocolate-coloured face. Guilbert, the French mining engineer, leered through his polished nose-glasses. Colonel Mendez, of the regular army, in gold-laced uniform and fatuous grin, was busily extracting corks from champagne bottles. Other patterns of Macutian gallantry and fashion pranced and posed. The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Wine dripped upon the floor.</p>
<p>Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy preëminence was Mlle. Giraud. A chic costume of white lawn and cherry ribbons supplanted her travelling garb. There was a suggestion of lace, and a frill or two, with a discreet, small implication of hand-embroidered pink hosiery. Upon her lap rested a guitar. In her face was the light of resurrection, the peace of elysium attained through fire and suffering. She was singing to a lively accompaniment a little song:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote> “<i>When you see de big round moon</i><br/> <i> Comin’ up like a balloon,</i><br/> <i> Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lips</i><br/> <i> Ob his stylish, black-faced coon.</i>”<br/> </blockquote>
<hr/>
<p>Half a dozen of Macuto’s representative social and official caballeros were distributed about the room. Señor Villablanca, the wealthy rubber concessionist, reposed his fat figure on two chairs, with an emollient smile beaming upon his chocolate-coloured face. Guilbert, the French mining engineer, leered through his polished nose-glasses. Colonel Mendez, of the regular army, in gold-laced uniform and fatuous grin, was busily extracting corks from champagne bottles. Other patterns of Macutian gallantry and fashion pranced and posed. The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. Wine dripped upon the floor.</p>
<p>Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy preëminence was <abbr>Mlle.</abbr> Giraud. A chic costume of white lawn and cherry ribbons supplanted her travelling garb. There was a suggestion of lace, and a frill or two, with a discreet, small implication of hand-embroidered pink hosiery. Upon her lap rested a guitar. In her face was the light of resurrection, the peace of elysium attained through fire and suffering. She was singing to a lively accompaniment a little song:</p>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:song">
<p>
<i>
<span>“When you see de big round moon</span>
<br/>
<span>Comin’ up like a balloon,</span>
<br/>
<span>Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lips</span>
<br/>
<span>Ob his stylish, black-faced coon.”</span>
</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The singer caught sight of Armstrong.</p>
<p>“Hi! there, Johnny,” she called; “I’ve been expecting you for an hour. What kept you? Gee! but these smoked guys are the slowest you ever saw. They ain’t on, at all. Come along in, and I’ll make this coffee-coloured old sport with the gold epaulettes open one for you right off the ice.”</p>

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<title>Chapter 17</title>
<title>A Newspaper Story</title>
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<h2>A NEWSPAPER STORY</h2>
<p>At 8 A. M. it lay on Giuseppi’s news-stand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.</p>
<p>This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and <i>vade mecum</i>.</p>
<section id="a-newspaper-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">A Newspaper Story</h2>
<p>At 8 <abbr class="time">a.m.</abbr> it lay on Giuseppi’s news-stand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.</p>
<p>This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and vade mecum.</p>
<p>From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One was in simple and chaste but illuminating language directed to parents and teachers, deprecating corporal punishment for children.</p>
<p>Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a notorious labour leader who was on the point of instigating his clients to a troublesome strike.</p>
<p>The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained and aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public guardians and servants.</p>
<p>Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid out by the editor of the heart-to-heart column in the specific case of a young man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love, teaching him how he might win her.</p>
<p>Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young lady inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright eyes, rosy cheeks and a beautiful countenance.</p>
<p>One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief “personal,” running thus:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> DEAR JACK:⁠—Forgive me. You were right. Meet me corner Madison and⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠th at 8.30 this morning. We leave at noon. PENITENT.<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
<p><span epub:type="salutation">Dear Jack</span>:⁠—Forgive me. You were right. Meet me corner Madison and ⸺⁠th at 8:30 this morning. We leave at noon.</p>
<p epub:type="z3998:signature">Penitent.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At 8 o’clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam of unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he passed Giuseppi’s stand. A sleepless night had left him a late riser. There was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup of coffee to be crowded into the interval.</p>
<p>He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed his paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour. At the next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair of new gloves. Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned back fuming.</p>
<p>Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and the paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek. He was holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and looking into two penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart.</p>

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<title>A Sacrifice Hit</title>
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Sacrifice Hit</h2>
<p>The editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i> has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eye-glasses.</p>
<p>“The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i>,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers.”</p>
<p>That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:</p>
<p>When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty⁠ ⸻⁠th street, the cook and maid at his home⁠—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i>. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his assorted readers.</p>
<p>This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful record of speed.</p>
<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works⁠—all recommended, says the editor, by the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone’s</i> army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by other houses.</p>
<p>For instance (the gossips say), “The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham” was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected “The Boss”; “In the Bishop’s Carriage” was contemptuously looked upon by the street-car conductor; “The Deliverance” was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; “The Queen’s Quair” came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”</p>
<p>But nevertheless the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> adheres to its theory and system, and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.</p>
<p>This method of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled “Love Is All.” Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of every one in Gotham.</p>
<p>He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS. around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor’s stenographer. Another of the editor’s peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports.</p>
<p>Slayton made “Love Is All” the effort of his life. He gave it six months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate⁠—a prose poem that set the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i>.</p>
<p>Slayton finished “Love Is All,” and took it to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor.</p>
<p>As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton’s hat, and smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying hair followed the missile. The janitor’s foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.</p>
<p>Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor got to his feet, blown and humiliated.</p>
<p>“This is married life,” he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised humour. “That’s the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about. Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don’t snitch to the tenants about this, will yer? I don’t want to lose me job.”</p>
<p>Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i>. He left the MS. of “Love Is All” with the editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the end of a week.</p>
<p>Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about carrying it into execution.</p>
<p>Miss Puffkin, the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> stenographer, boarded in the same house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing, sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time before.</p>
<p>The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of “Love Is All” was love at first sight⁠—the enrapturing,</p>
<p>irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!⁠—would she not surely indorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> the novelette “Love Is All”?</p>
<p>Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boarding-house. He quoted freely from “Love Is All”; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head.</p>
<p>But Slayton did not stop at love-making. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.</p>
<p>Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!</p>
<p>On Friday morning <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Slayton said she would go over to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.</p>
<p>“Was there anything⁠—er⁠—that⁠—er⁠—you particularly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart.</p>
<p>“There was one⁠—a novelette, that I liked so much,” said his wife. “I haven’t read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to life.”</p>
<p>That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i> office. He felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i>, literary reputation would soon be his.</p>
<p>The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor except at rare intervals.</p>
<p>Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming success.</p>
<p>He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more than the bulk of a thousand checks.</p>
<p>“The boss told me to tell you he’s sorry,” said the boy, “but your manuscript ain’t available for the magazine.”</p>
<p>Slayton stood, dazed. “Can you tell me,” he stammered, “whether or no Miss Puff⁠—that is my⁠—I mean Miss Puffkin⁠—handed in a novelette this morning that she had been asked to read?”</p>
<p>“Sure she did,” answered the office boy wisely. “I heard the old man say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, ‘Married for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl’s Triumph.’ ”</p>
<p>“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton, ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right, though.”</p>
<p>And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title “Love Is All,” the janitor’s comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal:</p>
<p>“The ⸻⁠ you say!”</p>
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<title>Chapter 10</title>
<title>A Technical Error</title>
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<section id="chapter-10" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>A TECHNICAL ERROR</h2>
<section id="a-technical-error" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">A Technical Error</h2>
<p>I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact.</p>
<p>I was on a visit to Sam Durkee’s ranch, where I had a great time falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about twenty-five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance.</p>
<p>Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum. I was told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years. Several of each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family was growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them. But I gathered that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and aimed at the division of their enemies’ suspenders in the back⁠—partly, perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been harmed. In those days⁠—and you will find it so yet⁠—their women were safe.</p>
<p>Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I expect to sell this story to, I should say, “Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a fiancée.”) Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all couples do who are and have or aren’t and haven’t. She was tolerably pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates.</p>
<p>Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I expect to sell this story to, I should say, “<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Durkee rejoiced in a fiancée.”) Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all couples do who are and have or aren’t and haven’t. She was tolerably pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He introduced me to her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for him; so I reasoned that they were surely soul-mates.</p>
<p>Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived on a gallop between the two places.</p>
<p>One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather small, with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries about the business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cognominally. He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his yellow shoes and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I rode in for the mail. He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed rather improbable.</p>
<p>There were active times on the ranch, just then, and Sam was too busy to go to town often. As an incompetent and generally worthless guest, it devolved upon me to ride in for little things such as post cards, barrels of flour, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and⁠—letters from Ella.</p>
@ -57,7 +57,7 @@
<p>For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose the killing instinct. For one moment he joined the force of combatants⁠—orally.</p>
<p>“What are you waiting for, Sam?” I said in a whisper. “Let him have it now!”</p>
<p>Sam gave a melancholy sigh.</p>
<p>“You don’t understand; but <i>he</i> does,” he said. “<i>He</i> knows. Mr. Tenderfoot, there’s a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can’t shoot a man when he’s with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You <i>can’t</i> do it. You’ve got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That’s why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that’s Mr. Ben Tatum! One of the ‘pretty men’! I’ll cut him out of the herd before they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!”</p>
<p>“You don’t understand; but <em>he</em> does,” he said. “<em>He</em> knows. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Tenderfoot, there’s a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you can’t shoot a man when he’s with a woman. I never knew it to be broke yet. You <em>can’t</em> do it. You’ve got to get him in a gang of men or by himself. That’s why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that’s <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ben Tatum! One of the ‘pretty men’! I’ll cut him out of the herd before they leave the hotel, and regulate his account!”</p>
<p>After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam haunted lobby and stairway and halls half the night, in some mysterious way the fugitives eluded him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the brown dress with the accordion-plaited skirt and the dapper young man with the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with the prancing nags, were gone.</p>
<p>It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed. Once again we overtook them on a road. We were about fifty yards behind. They turned in the buckboard and looked at us; then drove on without whipping up their horses. Their safety no longer lay in speed. Ben Tatum knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was the code. There is no doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would have been settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had something at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It seemed likely that he was no coward.</p>
<p>So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead of precipitating conflict between man and man. But not willingly or consciously. She is oblivious of codes.</p>

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<title>Chapter 22</title>
<title>Blind Man’s Holiday</title>
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<h2>BLIND MAN’S HOLIDAY</h2>
<section id="blind-mans-holiday" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Blind Man’s Holiday</h2>
<p>Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.</p>
<p>Generations before, the name had been “Larsen.” His race had bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of thrift and industry.</p>
<p>From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society, forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a denizen <i>des trois-quartz de monde</i>, that pathetic spheroid lying between the <i>haut</i> and the <i>demi</i>, whose inhabitants envy each of their neighbours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, and his story begins.</p>
<br/>
<p>From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society, forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a denizen <i xml:lang="fr">des trois-quartz de monde</i>, that pathetic spheroid lying between the haut and the demi, whose inhabitants envy each of their neighbours, and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this opinion, as he was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, and his story begins.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of gold and grants and ladies’ gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every house has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of gallant promise and slow decay.</p>
<p>By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of Moorish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet, indomitable against the century, but their essence is gone. The street is one of ghosts to whosoever can see them.</p>
<p>A faint heartbeat of the street’s ancient glory still survives in a corner occupied by the Café Carabine d’Or. Once men gathered there to plot against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they are not the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those would have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the sign board, upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar species. In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun’s relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot.</p>
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
<p>They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.</p>
<p>The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright melancholy pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness doomed to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was the voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest. She sat at ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch, serene as if the begrimed pier were a summer garden. Lorison poked the rotting boards with his cane.</p>
<p>He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom he durst not speak of it. “And why not?” she asked, accepting swiftly his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. “My place in the world,” he answered, “is none to ask a woman to share. I am an outcast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am, I believe, guilty of another.”</p>
<p>Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler’s declension. During one night’s sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain amount of his employer’s money, which, by accident, he carried with him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain, leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night his employer’s safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister <i>devoirs</i> of a disagreeing jury.</p>
<p>Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. The story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the slightest touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler’s declension. During one night’s sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain amount of his employer’s money, which, by accident, he carried with him. He continued to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain, leaving the game winner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night his employer’s safe was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of Lorison were found in his room, their total forming an accusative nearness to the sum purloined. He was taken, tried and, through incomplete evidence, released, smutched with the sinister devoirs of a disagreeing jury.</p>
<p>“It is not in the unjust accusation,” he said to the girl, “that my burden lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the first dollar of the firm’s money I was a criminal⁠—no matter whether I lost or won. You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to her.”</p>
<p>“It is a sad thing,” said Norah, after a little pause, “to think what very good people there are in the world.”</p>
<p>“Good?” said Lorison.</p>
@ -64,11 +64,11 @@
<p>Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.</p>
<p>“A city directory first,” he cried, gayly, “to find where the man lives who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out. Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones and ministers shall aid us.”</p>
<p>“Father Rogan shall marry us,” said the girl, with ardour. “I will take you to him.”</p>
<br/>
<hr/>
<p>An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense, gloomy brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight in Norah’s hand.</p>
<p>“Wait here a moment,” she said, “till I find Father Rogan.”</p>
<p>She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing, as it were, on one leg, outside. His impatience was not greatly taxed. Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was presently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness, far down the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward, like the moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except books, which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots of territory had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a superlatively calm, remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his hand, his finger still marking a page. His dress was sombre and appertained to a religious order. His eye denoted an acquaintance with the perspective.</p>
<p>“Father Rogan,” said Norah, “this is <i>he</i>.”</p>
<p>“Father Rogan,” said Norah, “this is <em>he</em>.”</p>
<p>“The two of ye,” said Father Rogan, “want to get married?”</p>
<p>They did not deny it. He married them. The ceremony was quickly done. One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its endless chain of results.</p>
<p>Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other civil and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time, cap the ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and before the door closed after the departing couple Father Rogan’s book popped open again where his finger marked it.</p>

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<title>Chapter 4</title>
<title>Calloway’s Code</title>
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<section id="chapter-4" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>CALLOWAY’S CODE</h2>
<p>The New York <i>Enterprise</i> sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war.</p>
<p>For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokio, shaking dice with the other correspondents for drinks of ‘rickshaws⁠—oh, no, that’s something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn’t earning the salary that his paper was paying him. But that was not Calloway’s fault. The little brown men who held the strings of Fate between their fingers were not ready for the readers of the <i>Enterprise</i> to season their breakfast bacon and eggs with the battles of the descendants of the gods.</p>
<section id="calloways-code" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Calloway’s Code</h2>
<p>The New York <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war.</p>
<p>For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokio, shaking dice with the other correspondents for drinks of ‘rickshaws⁠—oh, no, that’s something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn’t earning the salary that his paper was paying him. But that was not Calloway’s fault. The little brown men who held the strings of Fate between their fingers were not ready for the readers of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> to season their breakfast bacon and eggs with the battles of the descendants of the gods.</p>
<p>But soon the column of correspondents that were to go out with the First Army tightened their field-glass belts and went down to the Yalu with Kuroki. Calloway was one of these.</p>
<p>Now, this is no history of the battle of the Yalu River. That has been told in detail by the correspondents who gazed at the shrapnel smoke rings from a distance of three miles. But, for justice’s sake, let it be understood that the Japanese commander prohibited a nearer view.</p>
<p>Calloway’s feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was to furnish the <i>Enterprise</i> with the biggest beat of the war. That paper published exclusively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines of the Russian General on the same day that it was made. No other paper printed a word about it for two days afterward, except a London paper, whose account was absolutely incorrect and untrue.</p>
<p>Calloway’s feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was to furnish the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> with the biggest beat of the war. That paper published exclusively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines of the Russian General on the same day that it was made. No other paper printed a word about it for two days afterward, except a London paper, whose account was absolutely incorrect and untrue.</p>
<p>Calloway did this in face of the fact that General Kuroki was making his moves and laying his plans with the profoundest secrecy as far as the world outside his camps was concerned. The correspondents were forbidden to send out any news whatever of his plans; and every message that was allowed on the wires was censored with rigid severity.</p>
<p>The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram describing Kuroki’s plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end the censor grinned and let it go through.</p>
<p>So, there they were⁠—Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and twenty-four guns. On the other side, Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to guard. And Calloway had got hold of some important inside information that he knew would bring the <i>Enterprise</i> staff around a cablegram as thick as flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get that message past the censor⁠—the new censor who had arrived and taken his post that day!</p>
<p>Calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down on a gun carriage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter on the <i>Enterprise</i>.</p>
<p>So, there they were⁠—Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and twenty-four guns. On the other side, Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to guard. And Calloway had got hold of some important inside information that he knew would bring the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> staff around a cablegram as thick as flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get that message past the censor⁠—the new censor who had arrived and taken his post that day!</p>
<p>Calloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down on a gun carriage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter on the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i>.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Calloway’s cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four o’clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket mirror from a pigeon-hole in his desk, and looked at his reflection carefully. Then he went over to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he usually called Boyd when he wanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.</p>
<p>“It’s from Calloway,” he said. “See what you make of it.”</p>
<p>The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumour mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible. </blockquote>
<br/>
<br/>
<blockquote>
<p>
<b>Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumour mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible.</b>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Boyd read it twice.</p>
<p>“It’s either a cipher or a sunstroke,” said he.</p>
<p>“Ever hear of anything like a code in the office⁠—a secret code?” asked the m. e., who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors come and go.</p>
@ -36,8 +38,8 @@
<p>“Great!” cried Boyd. “It’s a charade. My first is a Russian general. Go on, Scott.”</p>
<p>“No, that won’t work,” said the city editor. “It’s undoubtedly a code. It’s impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a cipher code?”</p>
<p>“Just what I was asking,” said the m.e. “Hustle everybody up that ought to know. We must get at it some way. Calloway has evidently got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he wouldn’t have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this.”</p>
<p>Throughout the office of the <i>Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the m. e. in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow⁠—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code⁠—an abbreviation, rather⁠—but⁠—</p>
<p>The m. e. knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i>Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
<p>Throughout the office of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> a dragnet was sent, hauling in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence, or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room, with the m. e. in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, anyhow⁠—that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort of code⁠—an abbreviation, rather⁠—but⁠—</p>
<p>The m. e. knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> envelope for longer than six years. Calloway had been on the paper twelve years.</p>
<p>“Try old Heffelbauer,” said the m. e. “He was here when Park Row was a potato patch.”</p>
<p>Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handy-man about the office, and half watchman⁠—thus becoming the peer of thirteen and one-half tailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.</p>
<p>“Heffelbauer,” said the m. e., “did you ever hear of a code belonging to the office a long time ago⁠—a private code? You know what a code is, don’t you?”</p>
@ -47,7 +49,7 @@
<p>“Can you find it?” asked the m. e. eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”</p>
<p>“Mein Gott!” said Heffelbauer. “How long you dink a code live? Der reborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der editor, und⁠—”</p>
<p>“Oh, he’s talking about a goat,” said Boyd. “Get out, Heffelbauer.”</p>
<p>Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the <i>Enterprise</i> huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.</p>
<p>Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> huddled around Calloway’s puzzle, considering its mysterious words in vain.</p>
<p>Then Vesey came in.</p>
<p>Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hard-wood cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living human being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among all the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.</p>
<p>Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffelbauer’s “code” would have done, and asked what was up. Some one explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the m. e.’s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was always doing appalling things like that, and coming, off unscathed.</p>
@ -57,28 +59,74 @@
<p>Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whistle softly, frowning at the cablegram.</p>
<p>“Let’s have it, please,” said the m. e. “We’ve got to get to work on it.”</p>
<p>“I believe I’ve got a line on it,” said Vesey. “Give me ten minutes.”</p>
<p>He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a waste-basket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the <i>Enterprise</i> remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.</p>
<p>He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a waste-basket, spread out flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The wit and wisdom of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> remained in a loose group, and smiled at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to exchange their theories about the cipher.</p>
<p>It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the m. e. a pad with the code-key written on it.</p>
<p>“I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it,” said Vesey. “Hurrah for old Calloway! He’s done the Japs and every paper in town that prints literature instead of news. Take a look at that.”</p>
<p>Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> Foregone⁠—conclusion<br/> Preconcerted⁠—arrangement<br/> Rash⁠—act<br/> Witching⁠—hour of midnight<br/> Goes⁠—without saying<br/> Muffled⁠—report<br/> Rumour⁠—hath it<br/> Mine⁠—host<br/> Dark⁠—horse<br/> Silent⁠—majority<br/> Unfortunate⁠—pedestrians*<br/> Richmond⁠—in the field<br/> Existing⁠—conditions<br/> Great⁠—White Way<br/> Hotly⁠—contested<br/> Brute⁠—force<br/> Select⁠—few<br/> Mooted⁠—question<br/> Parlous⁠—times<br/> Beggars⁠—description<br/> Ye⁠—correspondent<br/> Angel⁠—unawares<br/> Incontrovertible⁠—fact<br/> <br/> *Mr. Vesey afterward explained that the logical journalistic complement of the word “unfortunate” was once the word “victim.” But, since the automobile became so popular, the correct following word is now “pedestrians”. Of course, in Calloway’s code it meant infantry. </blockquote>
<br/>
<p>“It’s simply newspaper English,” explained Vesey. “I’ve been reporting on the <i>Enterprise</i> long enough to know it by heart. Old Calloway gives us the cue word, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as we use ’em in the paper. Read it over, and you’ll see how pat they drop into their places. Now, here’s the message he intended us to get.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<span>Foregone⁠—conclusion</span>
<br/>
<span>Preconcerted⁠—arrangement</span>
<br/>
<span>Rash⁠—act</span>
<br/>
<span>Witching⁠—hour of midnight</span>
<br/>
<span>Goes⁠—without saying</span>
<br/>
<span>Muffled⁠—report</span>
<br/>
<span>Rumour⁠—hath it</span>
<br/>
<span>Mine⁠—host</span>
<br/>
<span>Dark⁠—horse</span>
<br/>
<span>Silent⁠—majority</span>
<br/>
<span>Unfortunate⁠—pedestrians<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-1" id="noteref-1" epub:type="noteref">1</a></span>
<br/>
<span>Richmond⁠—in the field</span>
<br/>
<span>Existing⁠—conditions</span>
<br/>
<span>Great⁠—White Way</span>
<br/>
<span>Hotly⁠—contested</span>
<br/>
<span>Brute⁠—force</span>
<br/>
<span>Select⁠—few</span>
<br/>
<span>Mooted⁠—question</span>
<br/>
<span>Parlous⁠—times</span>
<br/>
<span>Beggars⁠—description</span>
<br/>
<span>Ye⁠—correspondent</span>
<br/>
<span>Angel⁠—unawares</span>
<br/>
<span>Incontrovertible⁠—fact</span>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“It’s simply newspaper English,” explained Vesey. “I’ve been reporting on the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i> long enough to know it by heart. Old Calloway gives us the cue word, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as we use ’em in the paper. Read it over, and you’ll see how pat they drop into their places. Now, here’s the message he intended us to get.”</p>
<p>Vesey handed out another sheet of paper.</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying. Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way contested by only a small force. Question the <i>Times</i> description. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts. </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote>
<p>Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying. Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelming force of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way contested by only a small force. Question the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Times</i> description. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Great stuff!” cried Boyd excitedly. “Kuroki crosses the Yalu to-night and attacks. Oh, we won’t do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison’s essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!”</p>
<p>“Mr. Vesey,” said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey,” said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, “you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest ‘beat’ of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me.”</p>
<p>Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the down-trodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-year-old son.</p>
<p>Ames and the “war editor” shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway’s brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki’s flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle!⁠—well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of <i>the same date</i>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage,” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the <i>Enterprise</i>, anyway.</p>
<p>Ames and the “war editor” shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames translated Calloway’s brief message into a front page masterpiece that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave Kuroki’s flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado’s legions were hurled upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along the river. And the battle!⁠—well, you know what Ames can do with a battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of <em>the same date</em>.</p>
<p>Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju. Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word “great” in his code should have been “gage,” and its complemental words “of battle.” But it went to Ames “conditions white,” and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first day of May, “conditions white” excited some amusement. But it in made no difference to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Enterprise</i>, anyway.</p>
<p>It was wonderful. And Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.</p>
<hr/>
<p>On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey’s desk where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling into a coal-hole⁠—Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it.</p>
<p>“The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week,” said Scott.</p>
<p>“All right,” said Vesey. “Every little helps. Say⁠—Mr. Scott, which would you say⁠—‘We can state without fear of successful contradiction,’ or, ‘On the whole it can be safely asserted’?”</p>
<p>“All right,” said Vesey. “Every little helps. Say⁠—<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Scott, which would you say⁠—‘We can state without fear of successful contradiction,’ or, ‘On the whole it can be safely asserted’?”</p>
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<h2>A SACRIFICE HIT</h2>
<p>The editor of the <i>Hearthstone Magazine</i> has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eye-glasses.</p>
<p>“The <i>Hearthstone</i>,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers.”</p>
<p>That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out:</p>
<p>When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day. The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, messenger boys, the waiters at the café where the editor has luncheon, the man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and milkman, the guard on the 5.30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-chopper at Sixty⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠th street, the cook and maid at his home⁠—these are the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the <i>Hearthstone Magazine</i>. If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his assorted readers.</p>
<p>This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful record of speed.</p>
<p>The <i>Hearthstone</i> Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works⁠—all recommended, says the editor, by the <i>Hearthstone’s</i> army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the <i>Hearthstone</i> has allowed manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by other houses.</p>
<p>For instance (the gossips say), “The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham” was unfavourably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unanimously rejected “The Boss”; “In the Bishop’s Carriage” was contemptuously looked upon by the street-car conductor; “The Deliverance” was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife’s mother had just begun a two-months’ visit at his home; “The Queen’s Quair” came back from the janitor with the comment: “So is the book.”</p>
<p>But nevertheless the <i>Hearthstone</i> adheres to its theory and system, and it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the <i>Hearthstone</i> Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day.</p>
<p>This method of the <i>Hearthstone</i> was well known to Allen Slayton when he wrote his novelette entitled “Love Is All.” Slayton had hung about the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistently that he was acquainted with the inner workings of every one in Gotham.</p>
<p>He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS. around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor’s stenographer. Another of the editor’s peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name might not influence the sincerity of their reports.</p>
<p>Slayton made “Love Is All” the effort of his life. He gave it six months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story, fine, elevated, romantic, passionate⁠—a prose poem that set the divine blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all earthly gifts and honours, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven’s choicest rewards. Slayton’s literary ambition was intense. He would have sacrificed all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered himself to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have realized his dream of seeing one of his efforts published in the <i>Hearthstone</i>.</p>
<p>Slayton finished “Love Is All,” and took it to the <i>Hearthstone</i> in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor.</p>
<p>As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton’s hat, and smashing the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying hair followed the missile. The janitor’s foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.</p>
<p>Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked triumphant as Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor got to his feet, blown and humiliated.</p>
<p>“This is married life,” he said to Slayton, with a certain bruised humour. “That’s the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about. Sorry about your hat, mister. Say, don’t snitch to the tenants about this, will yer? I don’t want to lose me job.”</p>
<p>Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the <i>Hearthstone</i>. He left the MS. of “Love Is All” with the editor, who agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the end of a week.</p>
<p>Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admiring his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about carrying it into execution.</p>
<p>Miss Puffkin, the <i>Hearthstone</i> stenographer, boarded in the same house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing, sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time before.</p>
<p>The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the <i>Hearthstone</i> relied strongly upon Miss Puffkin’s judgment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of “Love Is All” was love at first sight⁠—the enrapturing,</p>
<p>irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon Miss Puffkin personally!⁠—would she not surely indorse her new and rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the <i>Hearthstone</i> the novelette “Love Is All”?</p>
<p>Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre. The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlour of the boarding-house. He quoted freely from “Love Is All”; and he wound up with Miss Puffkin’s head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame dancing in his head.</p>
<p>But Slayton did not stop at love-making. This, he said to himself, was the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he “went the limit.” On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.</p>
<p>Brave Slayton! Châteaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow, Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe, Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks, De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist, Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things for the sake of literature, but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself a niche in the temple of fame!</p>
<p>On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the <i>Hearthstone</i> office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer.</p>
<p>“Was there anything⁠—er⁠—that⁠—er⁠—you particularly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart.</p>
<p>“There was one⁠—a novelette, that I liked so much,” said his wife. “I haven’t read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to life.”</p>
<p>That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the <i>Hearthstone</i> office. He felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the <i>Hearthstone</i>, literary reputation would soon be his.</p>
<p>The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not for unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor except at rare intervals.</p>
<p>Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming success.</p>
<p>He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more than the bulk of a thousand checks.</p>
<p>“The boss told me to tell you he’s sorry,” said the boy, “but your manuscript ain’t available for the magazine.”</p>
<p>Slayton stood, dazed. “Can you tell me,” he stammered, “whether or no Miss Puff⁠—that is my⁠—I mean Miss Puffkin⁠—handed in a novelette this morning that she had been asked to read?”</p>
<p>“Sure she did,” answered the office boy wisely. “I heard the old man say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, ‘Married for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl’s Triumph.’ ”</p>
<p>“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton, ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right, though.”</p>
<p>And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title “Love Is All,” the janitor’s comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal:</p>
<p>“The⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠ you say!”</p>
<br/>
<br/>
<a name="14"/>
<br/>
<br/>
<center>
<b> XIV<br/> <br/> THE ROADS WE TAKE<br/> </b>
</center>
<br/>
<br/>
<p>Twenty miles west of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank to take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it.</p>
<p>While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, “Shark” Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of ordnance that they carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer with their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as accompanies the ejaculation “Do tell!”</p>
<p>At the crisp command of Shark Dodson, who was leader of the attacking force the engineer descended to the ground and uncoupled the engine and tender. Then John Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively held two guns upon the engine driver and the fireman, and suggested that they run the engine fifty yards away and there await further orders.</p>
<p>Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning to put such low-grade ore as the passengers through the mill, struck out for the rich pocket of the express car. They found the messenger serene in the belief that the “Sunset Express” was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous than aqua pura. While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with the butt-end of his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the express-car safe with dynamite.</p>
<p>The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for the thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine.</p>
<p>The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was accomplished the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball’s persuader to neutrality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle and took a trick in the game. Mr. John Big Dog, sitting on the coal tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a target, and the messenger trumped him. With a ball exactly between his shoulder blades the Creek chevalier of industry rolled off to the ground, thus increasing the share of his comrades in the loot by one-sixth each.</p>
<p>Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.</p>
<p>The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope into the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing through a thicket of chaparral brought them to open woods, where three horses were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discretion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg. They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a council of flight. Made secure for the present by the tortuous trail they had travelled, the question of time was no longer so big. Many miles and hours lay between them and the spryest posse that could follow. Shark Dodson’s horse, with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted and cropped thankfully of the grass along the stream in the gorge. Bob Tidball opened the sack, drew out double handfuls of the neat packages of currency and the one sack of gold and chuckled with the glee of a child.</p>
<p>“Say, you old double-decked pirate,” he called joyfully to Dodson, “you said we could do it⁠—you got a head for financing that knocks the horns off of anything in Arizona.”</p>
<p>“What are we going to do about a hoss for you, Bob? We ain’t got long to wait here. They’ll be on our trail before daylight in the mornin’.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn’ll carry double for a while,” answered the sanguine Bob. “We’ll annex the first animal we come across. By jingoes, we made a haul, didn’t we? Accordin’ to the marks on this money there’s $30,000⁠—$15,000 apiece!”</p>
<p>“It’s short of what I expected,” said Shark Dodson, kicking softly at the packages with the toe of his boot. And then he looked pensively at the wet sides of his tired horse.</p>
<p>“Old Bolivar’s mighty nigh played out,” he said, slowly. “I wish that sorrel of yours hadn’t got hurt.”</p>
<p>“So do I,” said Bob, heartily, “but it can’t be helped. Bolivar’s got plenty of bottom⁠—he’ll get us both far enough to get fresh mounts. Dang it, Shark, I can’t help thinkin’ how funny it is that an Easterner like you can come out here and give us Western fellows cards and spades in the desperado business. What part of the East was you from, anyway?”</p>
<p>“New York State,” said Shark Dodson, sitting down on a boulder and chewing a twig. “I was born on a farm in Ulster County. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my coming West. I was walkin’ along the road with my clothes in a bundle, makin’ for New York City. I had an idea of goin’ there and makin’ lots of money. I always felt like I could do it. I came to a place one evenin’ where the road forked and I didn’t know which fork to take. I studied about it for half an hour, and then I took the left-hand. That night I run into the camp of a Wild West show that was travellin’ among the little towns, and I went West with it. I’ve often wondered if I wouldn’t have turned out different if I’d took the other road.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I reckon you’d have ended up about the same,” said Bob Tidball, cheerfully philosophical. “It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.”</p>
<p>Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree.</p>
<p>“I’d a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn’t hurt himself, Bob,” he said again, almost pathetically.</p>
<p>“Same here,” agreed Bob; “he was sure a first-rate kind of a crowbait. But Bolivar, he’ll pull us through all right. Reckon we’d better be movin’ on, hadn’t we, Shark? I’ll bag this boodle ag’in and we’ll hit the trail for higher timber.”</p>
<p>Bob Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag and tied the mouth of it tightly with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that he saw was the muzzle of Shark Dodson’s .45 held upon him without a waver.</p>
<p>“Stop your funnin’,” said Bob, with a grin. “We got to be hittin’ the breeze.”</p>
<p>“Set still,” said Shark. “You ain’t goin’ to hit no breeze, Bob. I hate to tell you, but there ain’t any chance for but one of us. Bolivar, he’s plenty tired, and he can’t carry double.”</p>
<p>“We been pards, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three year,” Bob said quietly. “We’ve risked our lives together time and again. I’ve always give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I’ve heard some queer stories about you shootin’ one or two men in a peculiar way, but I never believed ’em. Now if you’re just havin’ a little fun with me, Shark, put your gun up, and we’ll get on Bolivar and vamose. If you mean to shoot⁠—shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!”</p>
<p>Shark Dodson’s face bore a deeply sorrowful look. “You don’t know how bad I feel,” he sighed, “about that sorrel of yourn breakin’ his leg, Bob.”</p>
<p>The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house.</p>
<p>Truly Bob Tidball was never to “hit the breeze” again. The deadly .45 of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the “Sunset Express,” not put to the stress of “carrying double.”</p>
<p>But as “Shark” Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge of a quartered-oak desk.</p>
<br/>
<p>I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson &amp; Decker, Wall Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.</p>
<p>“Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?”</p>
<p>“Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy &amp; Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in X. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I remember. What is X. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?”</p>
<p>“One eighty-five, sir.”</p>
<p>“Then that’s his price.”</p>
<p>“Excuse me,” said Peabody, rather nervously “for speaking of it, but I’ve been talking to Williams. He’s an old friend of yours, Mr. Dodson, and you practically have a corner in X. Y. Z. I thought you might⁠—that is, I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98. If he settles at the market price it will take every cent he has in the world and his home too to deliver the shares.”</p>
<p>The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house.</p>
<p>“He will settle at one eighty-five,” said Dodson. “Bolivar cannot carry double.”</p>
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<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey afterward explained that the logical journalistic complement of the word “unfortunate” was once the word “victim.” But, since the automobile became so popular, the correct following word is now “pedestrians.” Of course, in Calloway’s code it meant infantry. <a href="chapter-4.xhtml#noteref-1" epub:type="backlink">↩</a></p>
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<title>Chapter 21</title>
<title>Georgia’s Ruling</title>
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<h2>GEORGIA’S RULING</h2>
<section id="georgias-ruling" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Georgia’s Ruling</h2>
<p>If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the draughtsmen’s room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County. A leisurely German⁠—possibly old Kampfer himself⁠—will bring it to you. It will be four feet square, on heavy drawing-cloth. The lettering and the figures will be beautifully clear and distinct. The title will be in splendid, undecipherable German text, ornamented with classic Teutonic designs⁠—very likely Ceres or Pomona leaning against the initial letters with cornucopias venting grapes and wieners. You must tell him that this is not the map you wish to see; that he will kindly bring you its official predecessor. He will then say, “Ach, so!” and bring out a map half the size of the first, dim, old, tattered, and faded.</p>
<p>By looking carefully near its northwest corner you will presently come upon the worn contours of Chiquito River, and, maybe, if your eyes are good, discern the silent witness to this story.</p>
<br/>
<hr/>
<p>The Commissioner of the Land Office was of the old style; his antique courtesy was too formal for his day. He dressed in fine black, and there was a suggestion of Roman drapery in his long coat-skirts. His collars were “undetached” (blame haberdashery for the word); his tie was a narrow, funereal strip, tied in the same knot as were his shoe-strings. His gray hair was a trifle too long behind, but he kept it smooth and orderly. His face was clean-shaven, like the old statesmen’s. Most people thought it a stern face, but when its official expression was off, a few had seen altogether a different countenance. Especially tender and gentle it had appeared to those who were about him during the last illness of his only child.</p>
<p>The Commissioner had been a widower for years, and his life, outside his official duties, had been so devoted to little Georgia that people spoke of it as a touching and admirable thing. He was a reserved man, and dignified almost to austerity, but the child had come below it all and rested upon his very heart, so that she scarcely missed the mother’s love that had been taken away. There was a wonderful companionship between them, for she had many of his own ways, being thoughtful and serious beyond her years.</p>
<p>One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her checks, she said suddenly:</p>
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
<p>“What would you like to do, dear?” asked the Commissioner. “Give them a party?”</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t mean those kind. I mean poor children who haven’t homes, and aren’t loved and cared for as I am. I tell you what, papa!”</p>
<p>“What, my own child?”</p>
<p>“If I shouldn’t get well, I’ll leave them you⁠—not <i>give</i> you, but just lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you can find time, wouldn’t you do something to help them, if I ask you, papa?”</p>
<p>“If I shouldn’t get well, I’ll leave them you⁠—not <em>give</em> you, but just lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If you can find time, wouldn’t you do something to help them, if I ask you, papa?”</p>
<p>“Hush, hush dear, dear child,” said the Commissioner, holding her hot little hand against his cheek; “you’ll get well real soon, and you and I will see what we can do for them together.”</p>
<p>But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated, the Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to struggle further, and Georgia’s exit was made from the great stage when she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights. But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the cue to the one who was to speak after her.</p>
<p>A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the office, a little more courteous, a little paler and sterner, with the black frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.</p>
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<p>As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary, and reserved. A new phase of mind developed in him. He could not endure the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belonging to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room adjoining his little apartment, the Commissioner would steal softly and close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the school-children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon the sidewalk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.</p>
<p>It was nearly three months after the rains had washed the last dead flower-petals from the mound above little Georgia when the “land-shark” firm of Hamlin and Avery filed papers upon what they considered the “fattest” vacancy of the year.</p>
<p>It should not be supposed that all who were termed “land-sharks” deserved the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the State and say: “Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and matters go thus.” But, next to a three years’ drought and the boll-worm, the Actual Settler hated the Land-shark. The land-shark haunted the Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and hunted “vacancies”⁠—that is, tracts of unappropriated public domain, generally invisible upon the official maps, but actually existing “upon the ground.” The law entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to file by virtue of same upon any land not previously legally appropriated. Most of the scrip was now in the hands of the land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few hundred dollars, they often secured lands worth as many thousands. Naturally, the search for “vacancies” was lively.</p>
<p>But often⁠—very often⁠—the land they thus secured, though legally “unappropriated,” would be occupied by happy and contented settlers, who had laboured for years to build up their homes, only to discover that their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators who so often turned them forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labours. The history of the state teems with their antagonism. Mr. Land-shark seldom showed his face on “locations” from which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his emissaries do the work. There was lead in every cabin, moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all lay far back.</p>
<p>But often⁠—very often⁠—the land they thus secured, though legally “unappropriated,” would be occupied by happy and contented settlers, who had laboured for years to build up their homes, only to discover that their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators who so often turned them forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labours. The history of the state teems with their antagonism. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Land-shark seldom showed his face on “locations” from which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his emissaries do the work. There was lead in every cabin, moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all lay far back.</p>
<p>When the state was young, she felt the need of attracting newcomers, and of rewarding those pioneers already within her borders. Year after year she issued land scrip⁠—Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations, Confederates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies, and tillers of the soil galore. All required of the grantee was that he or it should have the scrip properly surveyed upon the public domain by the county or district surveyor, and the land thus appropriated became the property of him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.</p>
<p>In those days⁠—and here is where the trouble began⁠—the state’s domain was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with princely⁠—yea, even Western American⁠—liberality, gave good measure and over-flowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense altogether with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could cover something near a “vara” at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat of his pony’s hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his field notes with the complacency produced by an act of duty well performed. Sometimes⁠—and who could blame the surveyor?⁠—when the pony was “feeling his oats,” he might step a little higher and farther, and in that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for. But look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare! However, no one ever had to complain of the pony under-stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state contained an excess of land.</p>
<p>In later years, when the state became more populous, and land values increased, this careless work entailed incalculable trouble, endless litigation, a period of riotous land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed. The land-sharks voraciously attacked these excesses in the old surveys, and filed upon such portions with new scrip as unappropriated public domain. Wherever the identifications of the old tracts were vague, and the corners were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would recognize the newer locations as valid, and issue title to the locators. Here was the greatest hardship to be found. These old surveys, taken from the pick of the land, were already nearly all occupied by unsuspecting and peaceful settlers, and thus their titles were demolished, and the choice was placed before them either to buy their land over at a double price or to vacate it, with their families and personal belongings, immediately. Land locators sprang up by hundreds. The country was held up and searched for “vacancies” at the point of a compass. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of splendid acres were wrested from their innocent purchasers and holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers in tattered wagons; going nowhere, cursing injustice, stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless. Their children began to look up to them for bread, and cry.</p>
<br/>
<hr/>
<p>It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamilton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile wide and three miles long, comprising about two thousand acres, it being the excess over complement of the Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand-acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land, and improperly considered a part of the Denny survey. They based this assertion and their claim upon the land upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner of the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field notes called to run west 5,760 varas, and then called for Chiquito River; thence it ran south, with the meanders⁠—and so on⁠—and that the Chiquito River was, on the ground, fully a mile farther west from the point reached by course and distance. To sum up: there were two thousand acres of vacant land between the Denny survey proper and Chiquito River.</p>
<p>One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called for the papers in connection with this new location. They were brought, and heaped, a foot deep, upon his desk⁠—field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits, connecting lines⁠—documents of every description that shrewdness and money could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.</p>
<p>The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a patent upon their location. They possesed inside information concerning a new railroad that would probably pass somewhere near this land.</p>
<p>The General Land Office was very still while the Commissioner was delving into the heart of the mass of evidence. The pigeons could be heard on the roof of the old, castle-like building, cooing and fretting. The clerks were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to earn their salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud from the bare, stone-flagged floors, the plastered walls, and the iron-joisted ceiling. The impalpable, perpetual limestone dust that never settled, whitened a long streamer of sunlight that pierced the tattered window-awning.</p>
<p>It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well. The Denny survey was carelessly made, even for a careless period. Its beginning corner was identical with that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other calls were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no other object that survived⁠—no tree, no natural object save Chiquito River, and it was a mile wrong there. According to precedent, the Office would be justified in giving it its complement by course and distance, and considering the remainder vacant instead of a mere excess.</p>
<p>The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests <i>in re</i>. Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-shark, he had observed his myrmidons running the lines upon his ground. Making inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and he left the plough in the furrow and took his pen in hand.</p>
<p>The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests in re. Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-shark, he had observed his myrmidons running the lines upon his ground. Making inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and he left the plough in the furrow and took his pen in hand.</p>
<p>One of the protests the Commissioner read twice. It was from a woman, a widow, the granddaughter of Elias Denny himself. She told how her grandfather had sold most of the survey years before at a trivial price⁠—land that was now a principality in extent and value. Her mother had also sold a part, and she herself had succeeded to this western portion, along Chiquito River. Much of it she had been forced to part with in order to live, and now she owned only about three hundred acres, on which she had her home. Her letter wound up rather pathetically:</p>
<p>“I’ve got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and half the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes and books. I teach my children too. My neighbours is all poor and has big families. The drought kills the crops every two or three years and then we has hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on this land what the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them got titles from me. I sold to them cheap, and they aint paid out yet, but part of them is, and if their land should be took from them I would die. My grandfather was an honest man, and he helped to build up this state, and he taught his children to be honest, and how could I make it up to them who bought from me? Mr. Commissioner, if you let them land-sharks take the roof from over my children and the little from them as they has to live on, whoever again calls this state great or its government just will have a lie in their mouths”</p>
<p>“I’ve got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and half the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes and books. I teach my children too. My neighbours is all poor and has big families. The drought kills the crops every two or three years and then we has hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on this land what the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them got titles from me. I sold to them cheap, and they aint paid out yet, but part of them is, and if their land should be took from them I would die. My grandfather was an honest man, and he helped to build up this state, and he taught his children to be honest, and how could I make it up to them who bought from me? <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Commissioner, if you let them land-sharks take the roof from over my children and the little from them as they has to live on, whoever again calls this state great or its government just will have a lie in their mouths”</p>
<p>The Commissioner laid this letter aside with a sigh. Many, many such letters he had received. He had never been hurt by them, nor had he ever felt that they appealed to him personally. He was but the state’s servant, and must follow its laws. And yet, somehow, this reflection did not always eliminate a certain responsible feeling that hung upon him. Of all the state’s officers he was supremest in his department, not even excepting the Governor. Broad, general land laws he followed, it was true, but he had a wide latitude in particular ramifications. Rather than law, what he followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and precedents. In the complicated and new questions that were being engendered by the state’s development the</p>
<p>Commissioner’s ruling was rarely appealed from. Even the courts sustained it when its equity was apparent.</p>
<p>The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the other room⁠—spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince of the blood:</p>
<p>“Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as convenient?”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe, the state school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as convenient?”</p>
<p>Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his reports.</p>
<p>“Mr. Ashe,” said the Commissioner, “you worked along the Chiquito River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe,” said the Commissioner, “you worked along the Chiquito River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you remember anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?”</p>
<p>“Yes, sir, I do,” the blunt, breezy, surveyor answered. “I crossed it on my way to Block H, on the north side of it. The road runs with the Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles on the Chiquito.”</p>
<p>“It is claimed,” continued the commissioner, “that it fails to reach the river by as much as a mile.”</p>
<p>The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an Actual Settler, and the natural foe of the land-shark.</p>
@ -57,9 +57,9 @@
<p>“Ho, ho! I mean two-legged kids,” laughed the surveyor; “two-legged, and bare-legged, and tow-headed.”</p>
<p>“Children! oh, children!” mused the Commissioner, as though a new view had opened to him; “they raise children!</p>
<p>“It’s a lonesome country, Commissioner,” said the surveyor. “Can you blame ’em?”</p>
<p>“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”</p>
<p>“I suppose,” continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, “not all of them are tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe, I conjecture, to believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair.”</p>
<p>“Brown and black, sure,” said Ashe; “also red.”</p>
<p>“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your duties.”</p>
<p>“No doubt,” said the Commissioner. “Well, I thank you for your courtesy in informing me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Ashe. I will not detain you any longer from your duties.”</p>
<p>Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial, sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed among the clerks and left a wake of abbreviated given names and fat brown cigars.</p>
<p>These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big things. Full of serene confidence in themselves, there was no corporation, no syndicate, no railroad company or attorney general too big for them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown cigars was to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state, in every committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlour and every private caucus-room in the state Capital. Always pleasant, never in a hurry, in seeming to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered when they gave their attention to the many audacious enterprises in which they were known to be engaged.</p>
<p>By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Commissioner’s room and reclined lazily in the big, leather-upholstered arm-chairs. They drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the Commissioner an excellent story he had amassed that morning from the Secretary of State.</p>

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<h2>“GIRL”</h2>
<p>In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 962 were the words: “Robbins &amp; Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the half-open windows.</p>
<section id="girl" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">“Girl”</h2>
<p>In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room <abbr>No.</abbr> 962 were the words: “Robbins &amp; Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the half-open windows.</p>
<p>Robbins, fifty, something of an overweight beau, and addicted to first nights and hotel palm-rooms, pretended to be envious of his partner’s commuter’s joys.</p>
<p>“Going to be something doing in the humidity line to-night,” he said. “You out-of-town chaps will be the people, with your katydids and moonlight and long drinks and things out on the front porch.”</p>
<p>Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, nervous, sighed and frowned a little.</p>
@ -17,8 +17,8 @@
<p>“I’ve found where she lives,” he announced in the portentous half-whisper that makes the detective at work a marked being to his fellow men.</p>
<p>Hartley scowled him into a state of dramatic silence and quietude. But by that time Robbins had got his cane and set his tie pin to his liking, and with a debonair nod went out to his metropolitan amusements.</p>
<p>“Here is the address,” said the detective in a natural tone, being deprived of an audience to foil.</p>
<p>Hartley took the leaf torn out of the sleuth’s dingy memorandum book. On it were pencilled the words “Vivienne Arlington, No. 341 East⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠th Street, care of Mrs. McComus.”</p>
<p>“Moved there a week ago,” said the detective. “Now, if you want any shadowing done, Mr. Hartley, I can do you as fine a job in that line as anybody in the city. It will be only $7 a day and expenses. Can send in a daily typewritten report, covering⁠—”</p>
<p>Hartley took the leaf torn out of the sleuth’s dingy memorandum book. On it were pencilled the words “Vivienne Arlington, <abbr>No.</abbr> 341 East⁠ ⸺⁠th Street, care of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> McComus.”</p>
<p>“Moved there a week ago,” said the detective. “Now, if you want any shadowing done, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hartley, I can do you as fine a job in that line as anybody in the city. It will be only $7 a day and expenses. Can send in a daily typewritten report, covering⁠—”</p>
<p>“You needn’t go on,” interrupted the broker. “It isn’t a case of that kind. I merely wanted the address. How much shall I pay you?”</p>
<p>“One day’s work,” said the sleuth. “A tenner will cover it.”</p>
<p>Hartley paid the man and dismissed him. Then he left the office and boarded a Broadway car. At the first large crosstown artery of travel he took an eastbound car that deposited him in a decaying avenue, whose ancient structures once sheltered the pride and glory of the town.</p>
@ -30,15 +30,15 @@
<p>She was dressed in a white waist and dark skirt⁠—that discreet masquerade of goose-girl and duchess.</p>
<p>“Vivienne,” said Hartley, looking at her pleadingly, “you did not answer my last letter. It was only by nearly a week’s search that I found where you had moved to. Why have you kept me in suspense when you knew how anxiously I was waiting to see you and hear from you?”</p>
<p>The girl looked out the window dreamily.</p>
<p>“Mr. Hartley,” she said hesitatingly, “I hardly know what to say to you. I realize all the advantages of your offer, and sometimes I feel sure that I could be contented with you. But, again, I am doubtful. I was born a city girl, and I am afraid to bind myself to a quiet suburban life.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hartley,” she said hesitatingly, “I hardly know what to say to you. I realize all the advantages of your offer, and sometimes I feel sure that I could be contented with you. But, again, I am doubtful. I was born a city girl, and I am afraid to bind myself to a quiet suburban life.”</p>
<p>“My dear girl,” said Hartley, ardently, “have I not told you that you shall have everything that your heart can desire that is in my power to give you? You shall come to the city for the theatres, for shopping and to visit your friends as often as you care to. You can trust me, can you not?”</p>
<p>“To the fullest,” she said, turning her frank eyes upon him with a smile. “I know you are the kindest of men, and that the girl you get will be a lucky one. I learned all about you when I was at the Montgomerys’.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” exclaimed Hartley, with a tender, reminiscent light in his eye; “I remember well the evening I first saw you at the Montgomerys’. Mrs. Montgomery was sounding your praises to me all the evening. And she hardly did you justice. I shall never forget that supper. Come, Vivienne, promise me. I want you. You’ll never regret coming with me. No one else will ever give you as pleasant a home.”</p>
<p>“Ah!” exclaimed Hartley, with a tender, reminiscent light in his eye; “I remember well the evening I first saw you at the Montgomerys’. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Montgomery was sounding your praises to me all the evening. And she hardly did you justice. I shall never forget that supper. Come, Vivienne, promise me. I want you. You’ll never regret coming with me. No one else will ever give you as pleasant a home.”</p>
<p>The girl sighed and looked down at her folded hands.</p>
<p>A sudden jealous suspicion seized Hartley.</p>
<p>“Tell me, Vivienne,” he asked, regarding her keenly, “is there another⁠—is there some one else ?”</p>
<p>A rosy flush crept slowly over her fair cheeks and neck.</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t ask that, Mr. Hartley,” she said, in some confusion. “But I will tell you. There is one other⁠—but he has no right⁠—I have promised him nothing.”</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t ask that, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hartley,” she said, in some confusion. “But I will tell you. There is one other⁠—but he has no right⁠—I have promised him nothing.”</p>
<p>“His name?” demanded Hartley, sternly.</p>
<p>“Townsend.”</p>
<p>“Rafford Townsend!” exclaimed Hartley, with a grim tightening of his jaw. “How did that man come to know you? After all I’ve done for him⁠—”</p>

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<title>Chapter 23</title>
<title>Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches</title>
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<h2>MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES</h2>
<section id="madame-bo-peep-of-the-ranches" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches</h2>
<p>“Aunt Ellen,” said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, “I’m a pauper.”</p>
<p>“You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, dear,” said Aunt Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper. “If you find yourself temporarily in need of some small change for bonbons, you will find my purse in the drawer of the writing desk.”</p>
<p>Octavia Beaupree removed her hat and seated herself on a footstool near her aunt’s chair, clasping her hands about her knees. Her slim and flexible figure, clad in a modish mourning costume, accommodated itself easily and gracefully to the trying position. Her bright and youthful face, with its pair of sparkling, life-enamoured eyes, tried to compose itself to the seriousness that the occasion seemed to demand.</p>
@ -16,10 +16,10 @@
<p>“Colonel Beaupree’s estate,” interrupted Octavia, emphasizing her words with appropriate dramatic gestures, “is of Spanish castellar architecture. Colonel Beaupree’s resources are⁠—wind. Colonel Beaupree’s stocks are⁠—water. Colonel Beaupree’s income is⁠—all in. The statement lacks the legal technicalities to which I have been listening for an hour, but that is what it means when translated.”</p>
<p>“Octavia!” Aunt Ellen was now visibly possessed by consternation. “I can hardly believe it. And it was the impression that he was worth a million. And the De Peysters themselves introduced him!”</p>
<p>Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave.</p>
<p>“<i>De mortuis nil</i>, auntie⁠—not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel⁠—what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly⁠—I’m all here, am I not?⁠—items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unquestionable position in society as called for in the contract⁠—no wild-cat stock here.” Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. “But I’m not going to ‘squeal’⁠—isn’t that what they call it when you rail at Fortune because you’ve, lost the game?” She turned the pages of the paper calmly. “ ‘Stock market’⁠—no use for that. ‘Society’s doings’⁠—that’s done. Here is my page⁠—the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to ‘want’ for anything, of course. ‘Chamber-maids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers⁠—’ ”</p>
<p>“De mortuis nil, auntie⁠—not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel⁠—what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly⁠—I’m all here, am I not?⁠—items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unquestionable position in society as called for in the contract⁠—no wild-cat stock here.” Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. “But I’m not going to ‘squeal’⁠—isn’t that what they call it when you rail at Fortune because you’ve, lost the game?” She turned the pages of the paper calmly. “ ‘Stock market’⁠—no use for that. ‘Society’s doings’⁠—that’s done. Here is my page⁠—the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to ‘want’ for anything, of course. ‘Chamber-maids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers⁠—’ ”</p>
<p>“Dear,” said Aunt Ellen, with a little tremor in her voice, “please do not talk in that way. Even if your affairs are in so unfortunate a condition, there is my three thousand⁠—”</p>
<p>Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate cheek of the prim little elderly maid.</p>
<p>“Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized cream. I know I’d be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like Beelzebub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music from the side entrance. I’m going to earn my own living. There’s nothing else to do. I’m a⁠—Oh, oh, oh!⁠—I had forgotten. There’s one thing saved from the wreck. It’s a corral⁠—no, a ranch in⁠—let me see⁠—Texas: an asset, dear old Mr. Bannister called it. How pleased he was to show me something he could describe as unencumbered! I’ve a description of it among those stupid papers he made me bring away with me from his office. I’ll try to find it.”</p>
<p>“Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized cream. I know I’d be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like Beelzebub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music from the side entrance. I’m going to earn my own living. There’s nothing else to do. I’m a⁠—Oh, oh, oh!⁠—I had forgotten. There’s one thing saved from the wreck. It’s a corral⁠—no, a ranch in⁠—let me see⁠—Texas: an asset, dear old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister called it. How pleased he was to show me something he could describe as unencumbered! I’ve a description of it among those stupid papers he made me bring away with me from his office. I’ll try to find it.”</p>
<p>Octavia found her shopping-bag, and drew from it a long envelope filled with typewritten documents.</p>
<p>“A ranch in Texas,” sighed Aunt Ellen. “It sounds to me more like a liability than an asset. Those are the places where the centipedes are found, and cowboys, and fandangos.”</p>
<p>“ ‘The Rancho de las Sombras,’ ” read Octavia from a sheet of violently purple typewriting, “ ‘is situated one hundred and ten miles southeast of San Antonio, and thirty-eight miles from its nearest railroad station, Nopal, on the I. and G. N. Ranch, consists of 7,680 acres of well-watered land, with title conferred by State patents, and twenty-two sections, or 14,080 acres, partly under yearly running lease and partly bought under State’s twenty-year-purchase act. Eight thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses, vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick, with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence.</p>
@ -34,9 +34,9 @@
<p>Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her aunt’s lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.</p>
<p>Aunt Ellen bent over her, and smoothed the coppery-brown hair.</p>
<p>“I didn’t know,” she said, gently; “I didn’t know⁠—that. Who was it, dear?”</p>
<br/>
<p>When Mrs. Octavia Beaupree, née Van Dresser, stepped from the train at Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent establishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms.</p>
<p>Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and attempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been instructed by Mr. Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious, looking, elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she thought must be he. But, no; he passed by, removing his gaze from the lady as hers rested on him, according to the Southern custom. The manager, she thought, with some impatience at being kept waiting, should have no difficulty in selecting her. Young women wearing the most recent thing in ash-coloured travelling suits were not so plentiful in Nopal!</p>
<hr/>
<p>When <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Octavia Beaupree, née Van Dresser, stepped from the train at Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent establishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms.</p>
<p>Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and attempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been instructed by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious, looking, elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she thought must be he. But, no; he passed by, removing his gaze from the lady as hers rested on him, according to the Southern custom. The manager, she thought, with some impatience at being kept waiting, should have no difficulty in selecting her. Young women wearing the most recent thing in ash-coloured travelling suits were not so plentiful in Nopal!</p>
<p>Thus keeping a speculative watch on all persons of possible managerial aspect, Octavia, with a catching breath and a start of surprise, suddenly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in the direction of the train⁠—of Teddy Westlake or his sun-browned ghost in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat⁠—Theodore Westlake, Jr., amateur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cumberer of the soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than the one she had known a year ago when last she saw him.</p>
<p>He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course, and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe came upon her as the strangeness of his metamorphosis was brought into closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so vividly his straw-coloured mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old, boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood.</p>
<p>“Why, ‘Tave!” he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to coherence. “How⁠—what⁠—when⁠—where?”</p>
@ -50,12 +50,12 @@
<p>Octavia leaned against the wall of the telegraph office. Was this possible? And didn’t he know?</p>
<p>“Are you the manager of that ranch?” she asked weakly.</p>
<p>“I am,” said Teddy, with pride.</p>
<p>“I am Mrs. Beaupree,” said Octavia faintly; “but my hair never would curl, and I was polite to the conductor.”</p>
<p>“I am <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Beaupree,” said Octavia faintly; “but my hair never would curl, and I was polite to the conductor.”</p>
<p>For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed Teddy miles away from her.</p>
<p>“I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said, rather awkwardly. “You see, I’ve been down here in the chaparral a year. I hadn’t heard. Give me your checks, please, and I’ll have your traps loaded into the wagon. José will follow with them. We travel ahead in the buckboard.”</p>
<p>Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild, cream-coloured Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and disappeared, and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless reach of curly mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant by thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared gloriously in their ears. The motion was aërial, ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of perpetuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent, possessed by a feeling of elemental, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be wrestling with some internal problem.</p>
<p>“I’m going to call you madama,” he announced as the result of his labours. “That is what the Mexicans will call you⁠—they’re nearly all Mexicans on the ranch, you know. That seems to me about the proper thing.”</p>
<p>“Very well, Mr. Westlake,” said Octavia, primly.</p>
<p>“Very well, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Westlake,” said Octavia, primly.</p>
<p>“Oh, now,” said Teddy, in some consternation, “that’s carrying the thing too far, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry me with your beastly etiquette. I’m just beginning to live. Don’t remind me of anything artificial. If only this air could be bottled! This much alone is worth coming for. Oh, look I there goes a deer!”</p>
<p>“Jack-rabbit,” said Teddy, without turning his head.</p>
@ -81,25 +81,25 @@
<p>“It’s a home, Teddy,” said Octavia, breathlessly; that’s what it is⁠—it’s a home.”</p>
<p>“Not so bad for a sheep ranch,” admitted Teddy, with excusable pride. “I’ve been tinkering on it at odd times.”</p>
<p>A Mexican youth sprang from somewhere in the grass, and took charge of the creams. The mistress and the manager entered the house.</p>
<p>“Here’s Mrs. MacIntyre,” said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady came out upon the gallery to meet them. “Mrs. Mac, here’s the boss. Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of beans after her drive.”</p>
<p>Mrs. MacIntyre, the housekeeper, as much a fixture on the place as the lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch’s resources of refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it utterance when Octavia spoke.</p>
<p>“Oh, Mrs. MacIntyre, don’t apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him Teddy. So does every one whom he hasn’t duped into taking him seriously. You see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages ago. No one minds what he says.”</p>
<p>“Here’s <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre,” said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady came out upon the gallery to meet them. “<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Mac, here’s the boss. Very likely she will be wanting a hunk of ham and a dish of beans after her drive.”</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, the housekeeper, as much a fixture on the place as the lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch’s resources of refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it utterance when Octavia spoke.</p>
<p>“Oh, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, don’t apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him Teddy. So does every one whom he hasn’t duped into taking him seriously. You see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages ago. No one minds what he says.”</p>
<p>“No,” said Teddy, “no one minds what he says, just so he doesn’t do it again.”</p>
<p>Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from beneath her lowered eyelids⁠—a glance that Teddy used to describe as an upper-cut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion⁠—nothing. Beyond a doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten.</p>
<p>“Mr. Westlake likes his fun,” said Mrs. Maclntyre, as she conducted Octavia to her rooms. “But,” she added, loyally, “people around here usually pay attention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don’t know what would have become of this place without him.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Westlake likes his fun,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, as she conducted Octavia to her rooms. “But,” she added, loyally, “people around here usually pay attention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don’t know what would have become of this place without him.”</p>
<p>Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the occupancy of the ranch’s mistress. When she entered them a slight dismay seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to conform to it. The sashes had already been removed from the big windows, and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting room was covered with books on smooth, unpainted pine shelves. She flew to these at once. Before her was a well-selected library. She caught glimpses of titles of volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of the press.</p>
<p>Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to mutton, centipedes and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to the fly-leaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed in fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.</p>
<p>Octavia, fatigued by her long journey, retired early that night. Lying upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliciously, but sleep coquetted long with her. She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her faculties on the alert⁠—the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the ceaseless, low symphony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs about the lake, the lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans’ quarters. There were many conflicting feelings in her heart⁠—thankfulness and rebellion, peace and disquietude, loneliness and a sense of protecting care, happiness and an old, haunting pain.</p>
<p>She did what any other woman would have done⁠—sought relief in a wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to herself before slumber, capitulating, came softly to woo her, were “He has forgotten.”</p>
<p>The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante. He was a “hustler.” He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks and camps. This was the duty of the major-domo, a stately old Mexican with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal of confidence in his own eyesight. Except in the busy seasons, he nearly always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o’clock, with Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, at the little table set in the central hallway, bringing with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the health and flavour of the prairies.</p>
<p>The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante. He was a “hustler.” He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks and camps. This was the duty of the major-domo, a stately old Mexican with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal of confidence in his own eyesight. Except in the busy seasons, he nearly always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o’clock, with Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, at the little table set in the central hallway, bringing with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the health and flavour of the prairies.</p>
<p>A few days after Octavia’s arrival he made her get out one of her riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by the chaparral brakes.</p>
<p>With some misgivings she donned this and the pair of buckskin leggings he prescribed in addition, and, mounted upon a dancing pony, rode with him to view her possessions. He showed her everything⁠—the flocks of ewes, muttons and grazing lambs, the dipping vats, the shearing pens, the uncouth merino rams in their little pasture, the water-tanks prepared against the summer drought⁠—giving account of his stewardship with a boyish enthusiasm that never flagged.</p>
<p>Where was the old Teddy that she knew so well? This side of him was the same, and it was a side that pleased her; but this was all she ever saw of him now. Where was his sentimentality⁠—those old, varying moods of impetuous love-making, of fanciful, quixotic devotion, of heart-breaking gloom, of alternating, absurd tenderness and haughty dignity? His nature had been a sensitive one, his temperament bordering closely on the artistic. She knew that, besides being a follower of fashion and its fads and sports, he had cultivated tastes of a finer nature. He had written things, he had tampered with colours, he was something of a student in certain branches of art, and once she had been admitted to all his aspirations and thoughts. But now⁠—and she could not avoid the conclusion⁠—Teddy had</p>
<p>barricaded against her every side of himself except one⁠—the side that showed the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras and a jolly chum who had forgiven and forgotten. Queerly enough the words of Mr. Bannister’s description of her property came into her mind⁠—“all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.”</p>
<p>barricaded against her every side of himself except one⁠—the side that showed the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras and a jolly chum who had forgiven and forgotten. Queerly enough the words of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister’s description of her property came into her mind⁠—“all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.”</p>
<p>“Teddy’s fenced, too,” said Octavia to herself.</p>
<p>It was not difficult for her to reason out the cause of his fortifications. It had originated one night at the Hammersmiths’ ball. It occurred at a time soon after she had decided to accept Colonel Beaupree and his million, which was no more than her looks and the entrée she held to the inner circles were worth. Teddy had proposed with all his impetuosity and fire, and she looked him straight in the eyes, an said, coldly and finally: “Never let me hear any such silly nonsense from you again.” “You won’t,” said Teddy, with an expression around his mouth, and⁠—now Teddy was inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.</p>
<p>It was on this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the inspiration that suggested the name of Mother Goose’s heroine, and he at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a similarity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him as a peculiarly happy one, and he never tired of using it. The Mexicans on the ranch also took up the name, adding another syllable to accommodate their lingual incapacity for the final “p,” gravely referring to her as “La Madama Bo-Peepy.” Eventually it spread, and “Madame Bo-Peep’s ranch” was as often mentioned as the “Rancho de las Sombras.”</p>
<p>Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old water-colour box and easel⁠—these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and Mrs. MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the lighter humour in which she was lacking.</p>
<p>Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed interest in her old water-colour box and easel⁠—these disposed of the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy, when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery, and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the lighter humour in which she was lacking.</p>
<p>And the nights came, one after another, and were filed away by weeks and months⁠—nights soft and languorous and fragrant, that should have driven Strephon to Chloe over wires however barbed, that might have drawn Cupid himself to hunt, lasso in hand, among those amorous pastures⁠—but Teddy kept his fences up.</p>
<p>One July night Madame Bo-Peep and her ranch manager were sitting on the east gallery. Teddy had been exhausting the science of prognostication as to the probabilities of a price of twenty-four cents for the autumn clip, and had then subsided into an anesthetic cloud of Havana smoke. Only as incompetent a judge as a woman would have failed to note long ago that at least a third of his salary must have gone up in the fumes of those imported Regalias.</p>
<p>“Teddy,” said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, “what are you working down here on a ranch for?”</p>
@ -128,42 +128,50 @@
<p>“A pearl-gray glove, nearly new,” sighed Octavia, mournfully.</p>
<p>“A bang-up chap, that McArdle,” maintained Teddy approvingly. “A man who hated olives and elevators; a man who handled mountains as croquettes, and built tunnels in the air; a man who never uttered a word of silly nonsense in his life. Did you sign those lease-renewal applications yet, madama? They’ve got to be on file in the land office by the thirty-first.”</p>
<p>Teddy turned his head lazily. Octavia’s chair was vacant.</p>
<br/>
<p>A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate, expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery. Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the night by a thunder-storm.</p>
<p>The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor of the gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue, he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the furthermost west room, which was Teddy’s. Arming themselves with domestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and Mrs. Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.</p>
<hr/>
<p>A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate, expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery. Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground during the night by a thunder-storm.</p>
<p>The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor of the gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue, he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the furthermost west room, which was Teddy’s. Arming themselves with domestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the position of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.</p>
<p>Once outside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their victim.</p>
<p>Even in the midst of such a dangerous and absorbing adventure Octavia was conscious of an awed curiosity on finding herself in Teddy’s sanctum. In that room he sat alone, silently communing with those secret thoughts that he now shared with no one, dreamed there whatever dreams he now called on no one to interpret.</p>
<p>It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier. In one corner stood a wide, canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim stand of Winchesters and shotguns. An immense table, strewn with letters, papers and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeon-holes, occupied one side.</p>
<p>The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare quarters. Mrs. Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase. Octavia approached Teddy’s cot. The room was just as the manager had left it in his hurry. The Mexican maid had not yet given it her attention. There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still in the centre. She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot and hidden itself to bite Teddy. Centipedes were thus cruel and vindictive toward managers.</p>
<p>The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare quarters. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase. Octavia approached Teddy’s cot. The room was just as the manager had left it in his hurry. The Mexican maid had not yet given it her attention. There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still in the centre. She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot and hidden itself to bite Teddy. Centipedes were thus cruel and vindictive toward managers.</p>
<p>She cautiously overturned the pillow, and then parted her lips to give the signal for reinforcements at sight of a long, slender, dark object lying there. But, repressing it in time, she caught up a glove, a pearl-gray glove, flattened⁠—it might be conceived⁠—by many, many months of nightly pressure beneath the pillow of the man who had forgotten the Hammersmiths’ ball. Teddy must have left so hurriedly that morning that he had, for once, forgotten to transfer it to its resting-place by day. Even managers, who are notoriously wily and cunning, are sometimes caught up with.</p>
<p>Octavia slid the gray glove into the bosom of her summery morning gown. It was hers. Men who put themselves within a strong barbed-wire fence, and remember Hammersmith balls only by the talk of miners about sluice-boxes, should not be allowed to possess such articles.</p>
<p>After all, what a paradise this prairie country was! How it blossomed like the rose when you found things that were thought to be lost! How delicious was that morning breeze coming in the windows, fresh and sweet with the breath of the yellow ratama blooms! Might one not stand, for a minute, with shining, far-gazing eyes, and dream that mistakes might be corrected?</p>
<p>Why was Mrs. Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom?</p>
<p>“I’ve found it,” said Mrs. MacIntyre, banging the door. “Here it is.”</p>
<p>Why was <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom?</p>
<p>“I’ve found it,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre, banging the door. “Here it is.”</p>
<p>“Did you lose something? asked Octavia, with sweetly polite non-interest.</p>
<p>“The little devil!” said Mrs. Maclntyre, driven to violence. “Ye’ve no forgotten him alretty?”</p>
<p>“The little devil!” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Maclntyre, driven to violence. “Ye’ve no forgotten him alretty?”</p>
<p>Between them they slew the centipede. Thus was he rewarded for his agency toward the recovery of things lost at the Hammersmiths’ ball.</p>
<p>It seems that Teddy, in due course, remembered the glove, and when he returned to the house at sunset made a secret but exhaustive search for it. Not until evening, upon the moonlit eastern gallery, did he find it. It was upon the hand that he had thought lost to him forever, and so he was moved to repeat certain nonsense that he had been commanded never, never to utter again. Teddy’s fences were down.</p>
<p>This time there was no ambition to stand in the way, and the wooing was as natural and successful as should be between ardent shepherd and gentle shepherdess.</p>
<p>The prairies changed to a garden. The Rancho de las Sombras became the Ranch of Light.</p>
<p>A few days later Octavia received a letter from Mr. Bannister, in reply to one she had written to him asking some questions about her business. A portion of the letter ran as follows:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> “I am at a loss to account for your references to the sheep ranch. Two months after your departure to take up your residence upon it, it was discovered that Colonel Beaupree’s title was worthless. A deed came to light showing that he disposed of the property before his death. The matter was reported to your manager, Mr. Westlake, who at once repurchased the property. It is entirely beyond my powers of conjecture to imagine how you have remained in ignorance of this fact. I beg that you that will at once confer with that gentleman, who will, at least, corroborate my statement.”<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<p>A few days later Octavia received a letter from <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister, in reply to one she had written to him asking some questions about her business. A portion of the letter ran as follows:</p>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
<p>I am at a loss to account for your references to the sheep ranch. Two months after your departure to take up your residence upon it, it was discovered that Colonel Beaupree’s title was worthless. A deed came to light showing that he disposed of the property before his death. The matter was reported to your manager, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Westlake, who at once repurchased the property. It is entirely beyond my powers of conjecture to imagine how you have remained in ignorance of this fact. I beg that you that will at once confer with that gentleman, who will, at least, corroborate my statement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Octavia sought Teddy, with battle in her eye.</p>
<p>“What are you working on this ranch for?” she asked once more.</p>
<p>“One hundred⁠—” he began to repeat, but saw in her face that she knew. She held Mr. Bannister’s letter in her hand. He knew that the game was up.</p>
<p>“One hundred⁠—” he began to repeat, but saw in her face that she knew. She held <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister’s letter in her hand. He knew that the game was up.</p>
<p>“It’s my ranch,” said Teddy, like a schoolboy detected in evil. “It’s a mighty poor manager that isn’t able to absorb the boss’s business if you give him time.”</p>
<p>“Why were you working down here?” pursued Octavia still struggling after the key to the riddle of Teddy.</p>
<p>“To tell the truth, ‘Tave,” said Teddy, with quiet candour, “it wasn’t for the salary. That about kept me in cigars and sunburn lotions. I was sent south by my doctor. ’Twas that right lung that was going to the bad on account of over-exercise and strain at polo and gymnastics. I needed climate and ozone and rest and things of that sort.”</p>
<p>In an instant Octavia was close against the vicinity of the affected organ. Mr. Bannister’s letter fluttered to the floor.</p>
<p>In an instant Octavia was close against the vicinity of the affected organ. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bannister’s letter fluttered to the floor.</p>
<p>“It’s⁠—it’s well now, isn’t it, Teddy?”</p>
<p>“Sound as a mesquite chunk. I deceived you in one thing. I paid fifty thousand for your ranch as soon as I found you had no title. I had just about that much income accumulated at my banker’s while I’ve been herding sheep down here, so it was almost like picking the thing up on a bargain-counter for a penny. There’s another little surplus of unearned increment piling up there, ‘Tave. I’ve been thinking of a wedding trip in a yacht with white ribbons tied to the mast, through the Mediterranean, and then up among the Hebrides and down Norway to the Zuyder Zee.”</p>
<p>“And I was thinking,” said Octavia, softly, “of a wedding gallop with my manager among the flocks of sheep and back to a wedding breakfast with Mrs. MacIntyre on the gallery, with, maybe, a sprig of orange blossom fastened to the red jar above the table.”</p>
<p>“And I was thinking,” said Octavia, softly, “of a wedding gallop with my manager among the flocks of sheep and back to a wedding breakfast with <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> MacIntyre on the gallery, with, maybe, a sprig of orange blossom fastened to the red jar above the table.”</p>
<p>Teddy laughed, and began to chant:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> “Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,<br/> And doesn’t know where to find ’em.<br/> Let ’em alone, and they’ll come home,<br/> And⁠—”<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:verse">
<p>
<span>“Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,</span>
<br/>
<span>And doesn’t know where to find ’em.</span>
<br/>
<span>Let ’em alone, and they’ll come home,</span>
<br/>
<span>And⁠—”</span>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Octavia drew his head down, and whispered in his ear, But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.</p>
</section>
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<title>Chapter 16</title>
<title>One Dollar’s Worth</title>
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<h2>ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH</h2>
<section id="one-dollars-worth" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">One Dollar’s Worth</h2>
<p>The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> JUDGE:<br/> <br/> When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other hard things, you called me a rattlesnake. Maybe I am one⁠—anyhow, you hear me rattling now. One year after I got to the pen, my daughter died of⁠—well, they said it was poverty and the disgrace together. You’ve got a daughter, Judge, and I’m going to make you know how it feels to lose one. And I’m going to bite that district attorney that spoke against me. I’m free now, and I guess I’ve turned to rattlesnake all right. I feel like one. I don’t say much, but this is my rattle. Look out when I strike.<br/> <br/> Yours respectfully,<br/> <br/> RATTLESNAKE.<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter"><p epub:type="salutation">Judge</p>:
<p>When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other hard things, you called me a rattlesnake. Maybe I am one⁠—anyhow, you hear me rattling now. One year after I got to the pen, my daughter died of⁠—well, they said it was poverty and the disgrace together. You’ve got a daughter, Judge, and I’m going to make you know how it feels to lose one. And I’m going to bite that district attorney that spoke against me. I’m free now, and I guess I’ve turned to rattlesnake all right. I feel like one. I don’t say much, but this is my rattle. Look out when I strike.</p><footer><p epub:type="valediction">Yours respectfully,</p><p epub:type="z3998:signature">Rattlesnake.</p></footer></blockquote>
<p>Judge Derwent threw the letter carelessly aside. It was nothing new to receive such epistles from desperate men whom he had been called upon to judge. He felt no alarm. Later on he showed the letter to Littlefield, the young district attorney, for Littlefield’s name was included in the threat, and the judge was punctilious in matters between himself and his fellow men.</p>
<p>Littlefield honoured the rattle of the writer, as far as it concerned himself, with a smile of contempt; but he frowned a little over the reference to the Judge’s daughter, for he and Nancy Derwent were to be married in the fall.</p>
<p>Littlefield went to the clerk of the court and looked over the records with him. They decided that the letter might have been sent by Mexico Sam, a half-breed border desperado who had been imprisoned for manslaughter four years before. Then official duties crowded the matter from his mind, and the rattle of the revengeful serpent was forgotten.</p>
@ -25,19 +24,19 @@
<p>They were to be married in the fall. The glamour was at its height. The plovers won the day⁠—or, rather, the afternoon⁠—over the calf-bound authorities. Littlefield began to put his papers away.</p>
<p>There was a knock at the door. Kilpatrick answered it. A beautiful, dark-eyed girl with a skin tinged with the faintest lemon colour walked into the room. A black shawl was thrown over her head and wound once around her neck.</p>
<p>She began to talk in Spanish, a voluble, mournful stream of melancholy music. Littlefield did not understand Spanish. The deputy did, and he translated her talk by portions, at intervals holding up his hand to check the flow of her words.</p>
<p>“She came to see you, Mr. Littlefield. Her name’s Joya Treviñas. She wants to see you about⁠—well, she’s mixed up with that Rafael Ortiz. She’s his⁠—she’s his girl. She says he’s innocent. She says she made the money and got him to pass it. Don’t you believe her, Mr. Littlefield. That’s the way with these Mexican girls; they’ll lie, steal, or kill for a fellow when they get stuck on him. Never trust a woman that’s in love!”</p>
<p>“Mr. Kilpatrick!”</p>
<p>“She came to see you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Littlefield. Her name’s Joya Treviñas. She wants to see you about⁠—well, she’s mixed up with that Rafael Ortiz. She’s his⁠—she’s his girl. She says he’s innocent. She says she made the money and got him to pass it. Don’t you believe her, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Littlefield. That’s the way with these Mexican girls; they’ll lie, steal, or kill for a fellow when they get stuck on him. Never trust a woman that’s in love!”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Kilpatrick!”</p>
<p>Nancy Derwent’s indignant exclamation caused the deputy to flounder for a moment in attempting to explain that he had misquoted his own sentiments, and then he went on with the translation:</p>
<p>“She says she’s willing to take his place in the jail if you’ll let him out. She says she was down sick with the fever, and the doctor said she’d die if she didn’t have medicine. That’s why he passed the lead dollar on the drug store. She says it saved her life. This Rafael seems to be her honey, all right; there’s a lot of stuff in her talk about love and such things that you don’t want to hear.”</p>
<p>It was an old story to the district attorney.</p>
<p>“Tell her,” said he, “that I can do nothing. The case comes up in the morning, and he will have to make his fight before the court.”</p>
<p>Nancy Derwent was not so hardened. She was looking with sympathetic interest at Joya Treviñas and at Littlefield alternately. The deputy repeated the district attorney’s words to the girl. She spoke a sentence or two in a low voice, pulled her shawl closely about her face, and left the room.</p>
<p>“What did she say then?” asked the district attorney.</p>
<p>“Nothing special,” said the deputy. “She said: ‘If the life of the one’⁠—let’s see how it went⁠—’<i>Si la vida de ella a quien tu amas</i>⁠—if the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.’ ”</p>
<p>“Nothing special,” said the deputy. “She said: ‘If the life of the one’⁠—let’s see how it went⁠—’<i xml:lang="es">Si la vida de ella a quien tu amas</i>⁠—if the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.’ ”</p>
<p>Kilpatrick strolled out through the corridor in the direction of the marshal’s office.</p>
<p>“Can’t you do anything for them, Bob?” asked Nancy. “It’s such a little thing⁠—just one counterfeit dollar⁠—to ruin the happiness of two lives! She was in danger of death, and he did it to save her. Doesn’t the law know the feeling of pity?”</p>
<p>“It hasn’t a place in jurisprudence, Nan,” said Littlefield, “especially <i>in re</i> the district attorney’s duty. I’ll promise you that the prosecution will not be vindictive; but the man is as good as convicted when the case is called. Witnesses will swear to his passing the bad dollar which I have in my pocket at this moment as ‘Exhibit A.’ There are no Mexicans on the jury, and it will vote Mr. Greaser guilty without leaving the box.”</p>
<br/>
<p>“It hasn’t a place in jurisprudence, Nan,” said Littlefield, “especially in re the district attorney’s duty. I’ll promise you that the prosecution will not be vindictive; but the man is as good as convicted when the case is called. Witnesses will swear to his passing the bad dollar which I have in my pocket at this moment as ‘Exhibit A.’ There are no Mexicans on the jury, and it will vote <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Greaser guilty without leaving the box.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>The plover-shooting was fine that afternoon, and in the excitement of the sport the case of Rafael and the grief of Joya Treviñas was forgotten. The district attorney and Nancy Derwent drove out from the town three miles along a smooth, grassy road, and then struck across a rolling prairie toward a heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond this creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent, as if he had come up behind them.</p>
<p>“I’ve seen that fellow somewhere,” said Littlefield, who had a memory for faces, “but I can’t exactly place him. Some ranchman, I suppose, taking a short cut home.”</p>
<p>They spent an hour on Long Prairie, shooting from the buckboard. Nancy Derwent, an active, outdoor Western girl, was pleased with her twelve-bore. She had bagged within two brace of her companion’s score.</p>
@ -45,7 +44,7 @@
<p>“It looks like the man we saw coming over,” remarked Miss Derwent.</p>
<p>As the distance between them lessened, the district attorney suddenly pulled up his team sharply, with his eyes fixed upon the advancing horseman. That individual had drawn a Winchester from its scabbard on his saddle and thrown it over his arm.</p>
<p>“Now I know you, Mexico Sam!” muttered Littlefield to himself. “It was you who shook your rattles in that gentle epistle.”</p>
<p>Mexico Sam did not leave things long in doubt. He had a nice eye in all matters relating to firearms, so when he was within good rifle range, but outside of danger from No. 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.</p>
<p>Mexico Sam did not leave things long in doubt. He had a nice eye in all matters relating to firearms, so when he was within good rifle range, but outside of danger from <abbr>No.</abbr> 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.</p>
<p>The first shot cracked the back of the seat within the two-inch space between the shoulders of Littlefield and Miss Derwent. The next went through the dashboard and Littlefield’s trouser leg.</p>
<p>The district attorney hustled Nancy out of the buck-board to the ground. She was a little pale, but asked no questions. She had the frontier instinct that accepts conditions in an emergency without superfluous argument. They kept their guns in hand, and Littlefield hastily gathered some handfuls of cartridges from the pasteboard box on the seat and crowded them into his pockets.</p>
<p>“Keep behind the horses, Nan,” he commanded. “That fellow is a ruffian I sent to prison once. He’s trying to get even. He knows our shot won’t hurt him at that distance.”</p>
@ -64,9 +63,9 @@
<p>Mexico Sam waited patiently until this innocuous fusillade ceased. He had plenty of time, and he did not care to risk the chance of a bird-shot in his eye when it could be avoided by a little caution. He pulled his heavy Stetson low down over his face until the shots ceased. Then he drew a little nearer, and fired with careful aim at what he could see of his victims above the fallen horse.</p>
<p>Neither of them moved. He urged his horse a few steps nearer. He saw the district attorney rise to one knee and deliberately level his shotgun. He pulled his hat down and awaited the harmless rattle of the tiny pellets.</p>
<p>The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned limp all over, and slowly fell from his horse⁠—a dead rattlesnake.</p>
<br/>
<hr/>
<p>At ten o’clock the next morning court opened, and the case of the United States versus Rafael Ortiz was called. The district attorney, with his arm in a sling, rose and addressed the court.</p>
<p>“May it please your honour,” he said, “I desire to enter a <i>nolle pros.</i> in this case. Even though the defendant should be guilty, there is not sufficient evidence in the hands of the government to secure a conviction. The piece of counterfeit coin upon the identity of which the case was built is not now available as evidence. I ask, therefore, that the case be stricken off.”</p>
<p>“May it please your honour,” he said, “I desire to enter a nolle pros in this case. Even though the defendant should be guilty, there is not sufficient evidence in the hands of the government to secure a conviction. The piece of counterfeit coin upon the identity of which the case was built is not now available as evidence. I ask, therefore, that the case be stricken off.”</p>
<p>At the noon recess Kilpatrick strolled into the district attorney’s office.</p>
<p>“I’ve just been down to take a squint at old Mexico Sam,” said the deputy. “They’ve got him laid out. Old Mexico was a tough outfit, I reckon. The boys was wonderin’ down there what you shot him with. Some said it must have been nails. I never see a gun carry anything to make holes like he had.”</p>
<p>“I shot him,” said the district attorney, “with Exhibit A of your counterfeiting case. Lucky thing for me⁠—and somebody else⁠—that it was as bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil, can’t you go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives? Miss Derwent wants to know.”</p>

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<section id="chapter-7" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW</h2>
<section id="sociology-in-serge-and-straw" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Sociology in Serge and Straw</h2>
<p>The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields.</p>
<p>Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going to sea, and bade us observe that, at length, the convexity of the earth hid from our view all but the vessel’s topmast. But we picked up a telescope and looked, and saw the decks and hull again. Then the wise men said: “Oh, pshaw! anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the equator and the ecliptic proves it.” We could not see this through our telescope, so we remained silent. But it stands to reason that, if the world were round, the queues of Chinamen would stand straight up from their heads instead of hanging down their backs, as travellers assure us they do.</p>
<p>Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory is the fact that all of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate⁠—and sit upon a bench.</p>
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<p>But this is humour, and must be stopped. Let us get back to the serious questions that arise whenever Sociology turns summer boarder. You are invited to consider the scene of the story⁠—wild, Atlantic waves, thundering against a wooded and rock-bound shore⁠—in the Greater City of New York.</p>
<p>The town of Fishampton, on the south shore of Long Island, is noted for its clam fritters and the summer residence of the Van Plushvelts.</p>
<p>The Van Plushvelts have a hundred million dollars, and their name is a household word with tradesmen and photographers.</p>
<p>On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone in the shade⁠—Amaryllis not being in their class. If you are a subscriber to the <i>Toadies’ Magazine</i>, you have often⁠—You say you are not? Well, you buy it at a news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to you. But he knows about it all. HE knows⁠—HE knows! I say that you have often seen in the <i>Toadies’ Magazine</i> pictures of the Van Plushvelts’ summer home; so it will not be described here. Our business is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.</p>
<p>On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone in the shade⁠—Amaryllis not being in their class. If you are a subscriber to the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i>, you have often⁠—You say you are not? Well, you buy it at a news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to you. But he knows about it all. HE knows⁠—HE knows! I say that you have often seen in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> pictures of the Van Plushvelts’ summer home; so it will not be described here. Our business is with young Haywood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions, darling of the financial gods and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt, former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.</p>
<p>One afternoon young Haywood Van Plushvelt strolled out between the granite gate posts of “Dolce far Niente”⁠—that’s what they called the place; and it was an improvement on dolce Far Rockaway, I can tell you.</p>
<p>Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and his prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon him its direfullest. He was the product of private tutors. Even under his first hobby-horse had tan bark been strewn. He had been born with a gold spoon, lobster fork and fish-set in his mouth. For which I hope, later, to submit justification, I must ask your consideration of his haberdashery and tailoring.</p>
<p>Young Fortunatus was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat, white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, of the well-known “immaculate” trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat, bamboo cane.</p>
@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
<p>“Ho! ladies!” mocked the rude one. “I say ladies! I know what them rich women in the city does. They, drink cocktails and swear and give parties to gorillas. The papers say so.”</p>
<p>Then Haywood knew that it must be. He took off his coat, folded it neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and began to unknot his blue silk tie.</p>
<p>“Hadn’t yer better ring fer yer maid, Arabella?” taunted “Smoky.” “Wot yer going to do⁠—go to bed?”</p>
<p>“I’m going to give you a good trouncing,” said the hero. He did not hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two columns, first page. And the <i>Toadies’ Magazine</i> had a special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.</p>
<p>“I’m going to give you a good trouncing,” said the hero. He did not hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He remembered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it two columns, first page. And the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> had a special article on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.</p>
<p>“Wot’s trouncing?” asked “Smoky,” suspiciously. “I don’t want your old clothes. I’m no⁠—oh, you mean to scrap! My, my! I won’t do a thing to mamma’s pet. Criminy! I’d hate to be a hand-laundered thing like you.</p>
<p>“Smoky” waited with some awkwardness for his adversary to prepare for battle. His own decks were always clear for action. When he should spit upon the palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to “You may fire now, Gridley.”</p>
<p>The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up. “Smoky” waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be conducted according to Fishampton’s rules of war. These allowed combat to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse and insult gradually increasing in emphasis and degree. After a round of these “you’re anothers” would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the advance across the “dare” line drawn with a toe on the ground. Next light taps given and taken, these also increasing in force until finally the blood was up and fists going at their best.</p>
@ -64,7 +64,7 @@
<p>“Never in my life,” said Haywood. “I’ve never known any fellows except one or two of my cousins.”</p>
<p>“Jer like to learn? We’re goin’ to have a practice-game before the match. Wanter come along? I’ll put yer in left-field, and yer won’t be long ketchin’ on.”</p>
<p>“I’d like it bully,” said Haywood. “I’ve always wanted to play baseball.”</p>
<p>The ladies’ maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The <i>Toadies’ Magazine</i> got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs’ ball⁠—illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man.</p>
<p>The ladies’ maids of New York and the families of Western mine owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pictures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Toadies’ Magazine</i> got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs’ ball⁠—illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man.</p>
<p>One afternoon I was reclining under the trees near the shore at Fishampton in the esteemed company of an eminent, bald-headed young sociologist. By way of note it may be inserted that all sociologists are more or less bald, and exactly thirty-two. Look ’em over.</p>
<p>The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as the most important “uplift” symptom of a generation, and as an excuse for his own existence.</p>
<p>Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now came the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shouting, about the diamond.</p>

27
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<title>Chapter 11</title>
<title>Suite Homes and Their Romance</title>
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<h2>SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE</h2>
<p>Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs. Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and accommodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living as expensively as the couple on the next floor above who had twice their income; and their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferry-boat and first acquaintance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice with their names attached to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M. Santos-Dumont.</p>
<section id="suite-homes-and-their-romance" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Suite Homes and Their Romance</h2>
<p>Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did <abbr>Mr.</abbr> and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfortably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and accommodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living as expensively as the couple on the next floor above who had twice their income; and their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferry-boat and first acquaintance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice with their names attached to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M. Santos-Dumont.</p>
<p>Turpin’s income was $200 per month. On pay day, after calculating the amounts due for rent, instalments on furniture and piano, gas, and bills owed to the florist, confectioner, milliner, tailor, wine merchant and cab company, the Turpins would find that they still had $200 left to spend. How to do this is one of the secrets of metropolitan life.</p>
<p>The domestic life of the Turpins was a beautiful picture to see. But you couldn’t gaze upon it as you could at an oleograph of “Don’t Wake Grandma,” or “Brooklyn by Moonlight.”</p>
<p>You had to blink when looked at it; and you heard a fizzing sound just like the machine with a “scope” at the end of it. Yes; there wasn’t much repose about the picture of the Turpins’ domestic life. It was something like “Spearing Salmon in the Columbia River,” or “Japanese Artillery in Action.”</p>
<p>Every day was just like another; as the days are in New York. In the morning Turpin would take bromo-seltzer, his pocket change from under the clock, his hat, no breakfast and his departure for the office. At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono, airs, and the water to boil for coffee.</p>
<p>Every day was just like another; as the days are in New York. In the morning Turpin would take bromo-seltzer, his pocket change from under the clock, his hat, no breakfast and his departure for the office. At noon <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono, airs, and the water to boil for coffee.</p>
<p>Turpin lunched downtown. He came home at 6 to dress for dinner. They always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-sueydom, from terrace to table d’hôte, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from café to casino, from Maria’s to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates. Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wedding march you now hear only “Come with the Gypsy Bride.” You rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and, besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir silver sugar bowl to blow over.</p>
<p>The Turpins were therefore happy. They made many warm and delightful friends, some of whom they remembered the next day. Their home life was an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of the Book of Bluff.</p>
<p>There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was getting away with too much money. If you belong to the near-swell class in the Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the end of the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that you, yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become of the other $50. So you suspect your wife. And perhaps you give her a hint that something needs explanation.</p>
<p>“I say, Vivien,” said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, “you’ve been creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month’s honorarium. You haven’t been paying your dressmaker anything on account, have you?”</p>
<p>There was a moment’s silence. No sounds could be heard except the breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of Vivien’s fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons. Claude Turpin, sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the convolutions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely face of his wife.</p>
<p>“Claudie, dear,” said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and testing the unresponsive curling irons, “you do me an injustice. Mme. Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor ten dollars on account.”</p>
<p>“Claudie, dear,” said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and testing the unresponsive curling irons, “you do me an injustice. <abbr>Mme.</abbr> Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor ten dollars on account.”</p>
<p>Turpin’s suspicions were allayed for the time. But one day soon there came an anonymous letter to him that read:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote> Watch your wife. She is blowing in your money secretly. I was a sufferer just as you are. The place is No. 345 Blank Street. A word to the wise, etc.<br/> <br/> A MAN WHO KNOWS.<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
<p>Watch your wife. She is blowing in your money secretly. I was a sufferer just as you are. The place is <abbr>No.</abbr> 345 Blank Street. A word to the wise, <abbr>etc.</abbr></p>
<p epub:type="z3998:signature">A Man Who Knows.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that he lived in.</p>
<p>“My precinct is as clean as a hound’s tooth,” said the captain. “The lid’s shut down as close there as it is over the eye of a Williamsburg girl when she’s kissed at a party. But if you think there’s anything queer at the address, I’ll go there with ye.”</p>
<p>On the next afternoon at 3, Turpin and the captain crept softly up the stairs of No. 345 Blank Street. A dozen plain-clothes men, dressed in full police uniforms, so as to allay suspicion, waited in the hall below.</p>
<p>On the next afternoon at 3, Turpin and the captain crept softly up the stairs of <abbr>No.</abbr> 345 Blank Street. A dozen plain-clothes men, dressed in full police uniforms, so as to allay suspicion, waited in the hall below.</p>
<p>At the top of the stairs was a door, which was found to be locked. The captain took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. The two men entered.</p>
<p>They found themselves in a large room, occupied by twenty or twenty-five elegantly clothed ladies. Racing charts hung against the walls, a ticker clicked in one corner; with a telephone receiver to his ear a man was calling out the various positions of the horses in a very exciting race. The occupants of the room looked up at the intruders; but, as if reassured by the sight of the captain’s uniform, they reverted their attention to the man at the telephone.</p>
<p>“You see,” said the captain to Turpin, “the value of an anonymous letter! No high-minded and self-respecting gentleman should consider one worthy of notice. Is your wife among this assembly, Mr. Turpin?”</p>
<p>“You see,” said the captain to Turpin, “the value of an anonymous letter! No high-minded and self-respecting gentleman should consider one worthy of notice. Is your wife among this assembly, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Turpin?”</p>
<p>“She is not,” said Turpin.</p>
<p>“And if she was,” continued the captain, “would she be within the reach of the tongue of slander? These ladies constitute a Browning Society. They meet to discuss the meaning of the great poet. The telephone is connected with Boston, whence the parent society transmits frequently its interpretations of the poems. Be ashamed of yer suspicions, Mr. Turpin.”</p>
<p>“And if she was,” continued the captain, “would she be within the reach of the tongue of slander? These ladies constitute a Browning Society. They meet to discuss the meaning of the great poet. The telephone is connected with Boston, whence the parent society transmits frequently its interpretations of the poems. Be ashamed of yer suspicions, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Turpin.”</p>
<p>“Go soak your shield,” said Turpin. “Vivien knows how to take care of herself in a pool-room. She’s not dropping anything on the ponies. There must be something queer going on here.”</p>
<p>“Nothing but Browning,” said the captain. “Hear that?”</p>
<p>“Thanatopsis by a nose,” drawled the man at the telephone.</p>
<p>“That’s not Browning; that’s Longfellow,” said Turpin, who sometimes read books.</p>
<p>“Back to the pasture!” exclaimed the captain. “Longfellow made the pacing-to-wagon record of 7.53 ‘way back in 1868.”</p>
<p>“Back to the pasture!” exclaimed the captain. “Longfellow made the pacing-to-wagon record of 7:53 ’way back in 1868.”</p>
<p>“I believe there’s something queer about this joint,” repeated Turpin.</p>
<p>“I don’t see it,” said the captain.</p>
<p>“I know it looks like a pool-room, all right,” persisted Turpin, “but that’s all a blind. Vivien has been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I believe there’s some under-handed work going on here.”</p>

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<title>Chapter 3</title>
<title>The Hypotheses of Failure</title>
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<section id="chapter-3" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE</h2>
<section id="the-hypotheses-of-failure" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">The Hypotheses of Failure</h2>
<p>Lawyer Gooch bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing arts of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the bottom of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door opening from one to another. These doors could also be closed.</p>
<p>“Ships,” Lawyer Gooch would say, “are constructed for safety, with separate, water-tight compartments in their bottoms. If one compartment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes on unhurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would sink the vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occupied with clients, other clients with conflicting interests call. With the assistance of Archibald⁠—an office boy with a future⁠—I cause the dangerous influx to be diverted into separate compartments, while I sound with my legal plummet the depth of each. If necessary, they may be baled into the hallway and permitted to escape by way of the stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers. Thus the good ship of business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that supports her were allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped⁠—ha, ha, ha!”</p>
<p>The law is dry. Good jokes are few. Surely it might be permitted Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore of briefs, the tedium of torts and the prosiness of processes with even so light a levy upon the good property of humour.</p>
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<p>“My name is Gooch,” at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he would also have confessed to the Phineas C. But he did not consider it good practice to volunteer information. “I did not receive your card,” he continued, by way of rebuke, “so I⁠—”</p>
<p>“I know you didn’t,” remarked the visitor, coolly; “And you won’t just yet. Light up?” He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.</p>
<p>“You are a divorce lawyer,” said the cardless visitor. This time there was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple assertion. They formed a charge⁠—a denunciation⁠—as one would say to a dog: “You are a dog.” Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation.</p>
<p>“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid’s darts when he shoots ’em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can’t light a cigar at it. Am I right, Mr. Gooch?”</p>
<p>“I have undertaken cases,” said the lawyer, guardedly, “in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me professionally, Mr. ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠” The lawyer paused, with significance.</p>
<p>“Not yet,” said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, “not just yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used in the original act that makes this pow-wow necessary. There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names I want your honest⁠—well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe⁠—abstractly⁠—you understand? I’m Mr. Nobody; and I’ve got a story to tell you. Then you say what’s what. Do you get my wireless?”</p>
<p>“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts Cupid’s darts when he shoots ’em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can’t light a cigar at it. Am I right, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch?”</p>
<p>“I have undertaken cases,” said the lawyer, guardedly, “in the line to which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me professionally, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠” The lawyer paused, with significance.</p>
<p>“Not yet,” said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, “not just yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used in the original act that makes this pow-wow necessary. There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names I want your honest⁠—well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe⁠—abstractly⁠—you understand? I’m <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Nobody; and I’ve got a story to tell you. Then you say what’s what. Do you get my wireless?”</p>
<p>“You want to state a hypothetical case?” suggested Lawyer Gooch.</p>
<p>“That’s the word I was after. ‘Apothecary’ was the best shot I could make at it in my mind. The hypothetical goes. I’ll state the case. Suppose there’s a woman⁠—a deuced fine-looking woman⁠—who has run away from her husband and home? She’s badly mashed on another man who went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may as well call this woman’s husband Thomas R. Billings, for that’s his name. I’m giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario chap is Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called Susanville⁠—a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two weeks ago. The next day Mrs. Billings follows him. She’s dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your law library on that.”</p>
<p>“That’s the word I was after. ‘Apothecary’ was the best shot I could make at it in my mind. The hypothetical goes. I’ll state the case. Suppose there’s a woman⁠—a deuced fine-looking woman⁠—who has run away from her husband and home? She’s badly mashed on another man who went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may as well call this woman’s husband Thomas R. Billings, for that’s his name. I’m giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario chap is Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called Susanville⁠—a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two weeks ago. The next day <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings follows him. She’s dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your law library on that.”</p>
<p>Lawyer Gooch’s client said this with such unctuous satisfaction that even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He now saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic complacency of the successful trifler.</p>
<p>“Now,” continued the visitor, “suppose this Mrs. Billings wasn’t happy at home? We’ll say she and her husband didn’t gee worth a cent. They’ve got incompatibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn’t have as a gift with trading-stamps. It’s Tabby and Rover with them all the time. She’s an educated woman in science and culture, and she reads things out loud at meetings. Billings is not on. He don’t appreciate progress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady is out and out above his class. Now, lawyer, don’t it look like a fair equalization of rights and wrongs that a woman like that should be allowed to throw down Billings and take the man that can appreciate her?</p>
<p>“Now,” continued the visitor, “suppose this <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings wasn’t happy at home? We’ll say she and her husband didn’t gee worth a cent. They’ve got incompatibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn’t have as a gift with trading-stamps. It’s Tabby and Rover with them all the time. She’s an educated woman in science and culture, and she reads things out loud at meetings. Billings is not on. He don’t appreciate progress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings is simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady is out and out above his class. Now, lawyer, don’t it look like a fair equalization of rights and wrongs that a woman like that should be allowed to throw down Billings and take the man that can appreciate her?</p>
<p>“Incompatibility,” said Lawyer Gooch, “is undoubtedly the source of much marital discord and unhappiness. Where it is positively proved, divorce would seem to be the equitable remedy. Are you⁠—excuse me⁠—is this man Jessup one to whom the lady may safely trust her future?”</p>
<p>“Oh, you can bet on Jessup,” said the client, with a confident wag of his head. “Jessup’s all right. He’ll do the square thing. Why, he left Susanville just to keep people from talking about Mrs. Billings. But she followed him up, and now, of course, he’ll stick to her. When she gets a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup will do the proper thing.”</p>
<p>“Oh, you can bet on Jessup,” said the client, with a confident wag of his head. “Jessup’s all right. He’ll do the square thing. Why, he left Susanville just to keep people from talking about <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings. But she followed him up, and now, of course, he’ll stick to her. When she gets a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup will do the proper thing.”</p>
<p>“And now,” said Lawyer Gooch, “continuing the hypothesis, if you prefer, and supposing that my services should be desired in the case, what⁠—”</p>
<p>The client rose impulsively to his feet.</p>
<p>“Oh, dang the hypothetical business,” he exclaimed, impatiently. “Let’s let her drop, and get down to straight talk. You ought to know who I am by this time. I want that woman to have her divorce. I’ll pay for it. The day you set Mrs. Billings free I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”</p>
<p>“Oh, dang the hypothetical business,” he exclaimed, impatiently. “Let’s let her drop, and get down to straight talk. You ought to know who I am by this time. I want that woman to have her divorce. I’ll pay for it. The day you set <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings free I’ll pay you five hundred dollars.”</p>
<p>Lawyer Gooch’s client banged his fist upon the table to punctuate his generosity.</p>
<p>“If that is the case⁠—” began the lawyer.</p>
<p>“Lady to see you, sir,” bawled Archibald, bouncing in from his anteroom. He had orders to always announce immediately any client that might come. There was no sense in turning business away.</p>
@ -43,19 +43,19 @@
<p>The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging acquiescence, and took up a magazine. The lawyer returned to the middle office, carefully closing behind him the connecting door.</p>
<p>“Show the lady in, Archibald,” he said to the office boy, who was awaiting the order.</p>
<p>A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered the room. She wore robes⁠—robes; not clothes⁠—ample and fluent. In her eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She accepted a chair.</p>
<p>“Are you Mr. Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?” she asked, in formal and unconciliatory tones.</p>
<p>“Are you <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?” she asked, in formal and unconciliatory tones.</p>
<p>“I am,” answered Lawyer Gooch, without circumlocution. He never circumlocuted when dealing with a woman. Women circumlocute. Time is wasted when both sides in debate employ the same tactics.</p>
<p>“As a lawyer, sir,” began the lady, “you may have acquired some knowledge of the human heart. Do you believe that the pusillanimous and petty conventions of our artificial social life should stand as an obstacle in the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds its true mate among the miserable and worthless wretches in the world that are called men?”</p>
<p>“Madam,” said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he used in curbing his female clients, “this is an office for conducting the practice of law. I am a lawyer, not a philosopher, nor the editor of an ‘Answers to the Lovelorn’ column of a newspaper. I have other clients waiting. I will ask you kindly to come to the point.”</p>
<p>“Well, you needn’t get so stiff around the gills about it,” said the lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her umbrella. “Business is what I’ve come for. I want your opinion in the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the short-sighted laws of man have interposed between a loving⁠—”</p>
<p>“I beg your pardon, madam,” interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some impatience, “for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps Mrs. Wilcox⁠—”</p>
<p>“Mrs. Wilcox is all right,” cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. “And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and Mr. Edward Bok. I’ve read ’em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a supposable instance, without⁠—”</p>
<p>“I beg your pardon, madam,” interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some impatience, “for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Wilcox⁠—”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Wilcox is all right,” cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. “And so are Tolstoi, and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Edward Bok. I’ve read ’em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a supposable instance, without⁠—”</p>
<p>“You wish to state a hypothetical case?” said Lawyer Gooch.</p>
<p>“I was going to say that,” said the lady, sharply. “Now, suppose there is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in taste⁠—in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature. He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world’s great thinkers. He thinks only of real estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a woman with soul. We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets with her ideal⁠—a man with brain and heart and force. She loves him. Although this man feels the thrill of a new-found affinity he is too noble, too honourable to declare himself. He flies from the presence of his beloved. She flies after him, trampling, with superb indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened social system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce cost? Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for three hundred and forty dollars. Can I⁠—I mean can this lady I speak of get one that cheap?”</p>
<p>“Madam,” said Lawyer Gooch, “your last two or three sentences delight me with their intelligence and clearness. Can we not now abandon the hypothetical and come down to names and business?”</p>
<p>“I should say so,” exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with admirable readiness. “Thomas R. Billings is the name of the low brute who stands between the happiness of his legal⁠—his legal, but not his spiritual⁠—wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom nature intended for her mate. I,” concluded the client, with an air of dramatic revelation, “am Mrs. Billings!”</p>
<p>“I should say so,” exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with admirable readiness. “Thomas R. Billings is the name of the low brute who stands between the happiness of his legal⁠—his legal, but not his spiritual⁠—wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom nature intended for her mate. I,” concluded the client, with an air of dramatic revelation, “am <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings!”</p>
<p>“Gentlemen to see you, sir,” shouted Archibald, invading the room almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair.</p>
<p>“Mrs. Billings,” he said courteously, “allow me to conduct you into the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a very wealthy old gentleman on business connected with a will. In a very short while I will join you, and continue our consultation.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings,” he said courteously, “allow me to conduct you into the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a very wealthy old gentleman on business connected with a will. In a very short while I will join you, and continue our consultation.”</p>
<p>With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his soulful client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out, closing the door with circumspection.</p>
<p>The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin, nervous, irritable-looking man of middle age, with a worried and apprehensive expression of countenance. He carried in one hand a small satchel, which he set down upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer placed for him. His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn without regard to neatness or style, and appeared to be covered with the dust of travel.</p>
<p>“You make a specialty of divorce cases,” he said, in, an agitated but business-like tone.</p>
@ -66,10 +66,10 @@
<p>Lawyer Gooch delivered the cautious opinion that there was not.</p>
<p>“This man she has gone to join,” resumed the visitor, “is not the man to make her happy. It is a wild and foolish self-deception that makes her think he will. Her husband, in spite of their many disagreements, is the only one capable of dealing with her sensitive and peculiar nature. But this she does not realize now.”</p>
<p>“Would you consider a divorce the logical cure in the case you present?” asked Lawyer Gooch, who felt that the conversation was wandering too far from the field of business.</p>
<p>“A divorce!” exclaimed the client, feelingly⁠—almost tearfully. “No, no⁠—not that. I have read, Mr. Gooch, of many instances where your sympathy and kindly interest led you to act as a mediator between estranged husband and wife, and brought them together again. Let us drop the hypothetical case⁠—I need conceal no longer that it is I who am the sufferer in this sad affair⁠—the names you shall have⁠—Thomas R. Billings and wife⁠—and Henry K. Jessup, the man with whom she is infatuated.”</p>
<p>Client number three laid his hand upon Mr. Gooch’s arm. Deep emotion was written upon his careworn face. “For Heaven’s sake”, he said fervently, “help me in this hour of trouble. Seek out Mrs. Billings, and persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable folly. Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive her back to his heart and home⁠—promise her anything that will induce her to return. I have heard of your success in these matters. Mrs. Billings cannot be very far away. I am worn out with travel and weariness. Twice during the pursuit I saw her, but various circumstances prevented our having an interview. Will you undertake this mission for me, Mr. Gooch, and earn my everlasting gratitude?”</p>
<p>“A divorce!” exclaimed the client, feelingly⁠—almost tearfully. “No, no⁠—not that. I have read, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch, of many instances where your sympathy and kindly interest led you to act as a mediator between estranged husband and wife, and brought them together again. Let us drop the hypothetical case⁠—I need conceal no longer that it is I who am the sufferer in this sad affair⁠—the names you shall have⁠—Thomas R. Billings and wife⁠—and Henry K. Jessup, the man with whom she is infatuated.”</p>
<p>Client number three laid his hand upon <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch’s arm. Deep emotion was written upon his careworn face. “For Heaven’s sake,” he said fervently, “help me in this hour of trouble. Seek out <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings, and persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable folly. Tell her, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive her back to his heart and home⁠—promise her anything that will induce her to return. I have heard of your success in these matters. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings cannot be very far away. I am worn out with travel and weariness. Twice during the pursuit I saw her, but various circumstances prevented our having an interview. Will you undertake this mission for me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Gooch, and earn my everlasting gratitude?”</p>
<p>“It is true,” said Lawyer Gooch, frowning slightly at the other’s last words, but immediately calling up an expression of virtuous benevolence, “that on a number of occasions I have been successful in persuading couples who sought the severing of their matrimonial bonds to think better of their rash intentions and return to their homes reconciled. But I assure you that the work is often exceedingly difficult. The amount of argument, perseverance, and, if I may be allowed to say it, eloquence that it requires would astonish you. But this is a case in which my sympathies would be wholly enlisted. I feel deeply for you sir, and I would be most happy to see husband and wife reunited. But my time,” concluded the lawyer, looking at his watch as if suddenly reminded of the fact, “is valuable.”</p>
<p>“I am aware of that,” said the client, “and if you will take the case and persuade Mrs. Billings to return home and leave the man alone that she is following⁠—on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand dollars. I have made a little money in real estate during the recent boom in Susanville, and I will not begrudge that amount.”</p>
<p>“I am aware of that,” said the client, “and if you will take the case and persuade <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings to return home and leave the man alone that she is following⁠—on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand dollars. I have made a little money in real estate during the recent boom in Susanville, and I will not begrudge that amount.”</p>
<p>“Retain your seat for a few moments, please,” said Lawyer Gooch, arising, and again consulting his watch. “I have another client waiting in an adjoining room whom I had very nearly forgotten. I will return in the briefest possible space.”</p>
<p>The situation was now one that fully satisfied Lawyer Gooch’s love of intricacy and complication. He revelled in cases that presented such subtle problems and possibilities. It pleased him to think that he was master of the happiness and fate of the three individuals who sat, unconscious of one another’s presence, within his reach. His old figure of the ship glided into his mind. But now the figure failed, for to have filled every compartment of an actual vessel would have been to endanger her safety; with his compartments full, his ship of affairs could but sail on to the advantageous port of a fine, fat fee. The thing for him to do, of course, was to wring the best bargain he could from some one of his anxious cargo.</p>
<p>First he called to the office boy: “Lock the outer door, Archibald, and admit no one.” Then he moved, with long, silent strides into the room in which client number one waited. That gentleman sat, patiently scanning the pictures in the magazine, with a cigar in his mouth and his feet upon a table.</p>
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<p>“Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?” asked the lawyer, insinuatingly.</p>
<p>“Five hundred is my limit, I tell you. Guess I’ll have to hunt up a cheaper lawyer.” The client put on his hat.</p>
<p>“Out this way, please,” said Lawyer Gooch, opening the door that led into the hallway.</p>
<p>As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs, Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. “Exit Mr. Jessup,” he murmured, as he fingered the Henry Clay tuft of hair at his ear. “And now for the forsaken husband.” He returned to the middle office, and assumed a businesslike manner.</p>
<p>“I understand,” he said to client number three, “that you agree to pay one thousand dollars if I bring about, or am instrumental in bringing about, the return of Mrs. Billings to her home, and her abandonment of her infatuated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such a violent fancy. Also that the case is now unreservedly in my hands on that basis. Is that correct?”</p>
<p>“Entirely”, said the other, eagerly. “And I can produce the cash any time at two hours’ notice.”</p>
<p>As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs, Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. “Exit <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jessup,” he murmured, as he fingered the Henry Clay tuft of hair at his ear. “And now for the forsaken husband.” He returned to the middle office, and assumed a businesslike manner.</p>
<p>“I understand,” he said to client number three, “that you agree to pay one thousand dollars if I bring about, or am instrumental in bringing about, the return of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings to her home, and her abandonment of her infatuated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such a violent fancy. Also that the case is now unreservedly in my hands on that basis. Is that correct?”</p>
<p>“Entirely,” said the other, eagerly. “And I can produce the cash any time at two hours’ notice.”</p>
<p>Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height. His thin figure seemed to expand. His thumbs sought the arm-holes of his vest. Upon his face was a look of sympathetic benignity that he always wore during such undertakings.</p>
<p>“Then, sir,” he said, in kindly tones, “I think I can promise you an early relief from your troubles. I have that much confidence in my powers of argument and persuasion, in the natural impulses of the human heart toward good, and in the strong influence of a husband’s unfaltering love. Mrs. Billings, sir, is here⁠—in that room⁠—” the lawyer’s long arm pointed to the door. “I will call her in at once; and our united pleadings⁠—”</p>
<p>“Then, sir,” he said, in kindly tones, “I think I can promise you an early relief from your troubles. I have that much confidence in my powers of argument and persuasion, in the natural impulses of the human heart toward good, and in the strong influence of a husband’s unfaltering love. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Billings, sir, is here⁠—in that room⁠—” the lawyer’s long arm pointed to the door. “I will call her in at once; and our united pleadings⁠—”</p>
<p>Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had leaped from his chair as if propelled by steel springs, and clutched his satchel.</p>
<p>“What the devil,” he exclaimed, harshly, “do you mean? That woman in there! I thought I shook her off forty miles back.”</p>
<p>He ran to the open window, looked out below, and threw one leg over the sill.</p>
<p>“Stop!” cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement. “What would you do? Come, Mr. Billings, and face your erring but innocent wife. Our combined entreaties cannot fail to⁠—”</p>
<p>“Stop!” cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement. “What would you do? Come, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Billings, and face your erring but innocent wife. Our combined entreaties cannot fail to⁠—”</p>
<p>“Billings!” shouted the now thoroughly moved client. “I’ll Billings you, you old idiot!”</p>
<p>Turning, he hurled his satchel with fury at the lawyer’s head. It struck that astounded peacemaker between the eyes, causing him to stagger backward a pace or two. When Lawyer Gooch recovered his wits he saw that his client had disappeared. Rushing to the window, he leaned out, and saw the recreant gathering himself up from the top of a shed upon which he had dropped from the second-story window. Without stopping to collect his hat he then plunged downward the remaining ten feet to the alley, up which he flew with prodigious celerity until the surrounding building swallowed him up from view.</p>
<p>Lawyer Gooch passed his hand tremblingly across his brow. It was a habitual act with him, serving to clear his thoughts. Perhaps also it now seemed to soothe the spot where a very hard alligator-hide satchel had struck.</p>
<p>The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its contents spilled about. Mechanically, Lawyer Gooch stooped to gather up the articles. The first was a collar; and the omniscient eye of the man of law perceived, wonderingly, the initials H. K. J. marked upon it. Then came a comb, a brush, a folded map, and a piece of soap. Lastly, a handful of old business letters, addressed⁠—every one of them⁠—to “Henry K. Jessup, Esq.”</p>
<p>The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its contents spilled about. Mechanically, Lawyer Gooch stooped to gather up the articles. The first was a collar; and the omniscient eye of the man of law perceived, wonderingly, the initials H. K. J. marked upon it. Then came a comb, a brush, a folded map, and a piece of soap. Lastly, a handful of old business letters, addressed⁠—every one of them⁠—to “Henry K. Jessup, <abbr>Esq.</abbr>”</p>
<p>Lawyer Gooch closed the satchel, and set it upon the table. He hesitated for a moment, and then put on his hat and walked into the office boy’s anteroom.</p>
<p>“Archibald,” he said mildly, as he opened the hall door, “I am going around to the Supreme Court rooms. In five minutes you may step into the inner office, and inform the lady who is waiting there that”⁠—here Lawyer Gooch made use of the vernacular⁠—“that there’s nothing doing.”</p>
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<title>The Marry Month of May</title>
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<h2>THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY</h2>
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<h2 epub:type="title">The Marry Month of May</h2>
<p>Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are busy in town and country.</p>
<p>In May nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember that we are not gods, but overconceited members of her own great family. She reminds us that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the donkey; lineal scions of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but cousins-german to the cooing doves, the quacking ducks and the housemaids and policemen in the parks.</p>
<p>In May Cupid shoots blindfolded⁠—millionaires marry stenographers; wise professors woo white-aproned gum-chewers behind quick-lunch counters; schoolma’ams make big bad boys remain after school; lads with ladders steal lightly over lawns where Juliet waits in her trellissed window with her telescope packed; young couples out for a walk come home married; old chaps put on white spats and promenade near the Normal School; even married men, grown unwontedly tender and sentimental, whack their spouses on the back and growl: “How goes it, old girl:”</p>
<p>This May, who is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance given in honour of the fair débutante, Summer, puts the kibosh on us all.</p>
<p>Old Mr. Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up straight in his invalid’s chair. He had the gout very bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park, half a million dollars and a daughter. And he had a housekeeper, Mrs. Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence each. They have it.</p>
<p>When May poked Mr. Coulson he became elder brother to the turtle-dove. In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths, geraniums and pansies. The breeze brought their odour into the room. Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath of the flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old Mr. Coulson’s nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false enchantress May was done.</p>
<p>Across the park to the olfactories of Mr. Coulson came other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere outdoors. Never trust May.</p>
<p>Mr. Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot, and pounded a bell on the table by his side.</p>
<p>In came Mrs. Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty and foxy.</p>
<p>Old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up straight in his invalid’s chair. He had the gout very bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park, half a million dollars and a daughter. And he had a housekeeper, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence each. They have it.</p>
<p>When May poked <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson he became elder brother to the turtle-dove. In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hyacinths, geraniums and pansies. The breeze brought their odour into the room. Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath of the flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson’s nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false enchantress May was done.</p>
<p>Across the park to the olfactories of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson came other unmistakable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyptian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere outdoors. Never trust May.</p>
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot, and pounded a bell on the table by his side.</p>
<p>In came <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty and foxy.</p>
<p>“Higgins is out, sir,” she said, with a smile suggestive of vibratory massage. “He went to post a letter. Can I do anything for you, sir?”</p>
<p>“It’s time for my aconite,” said old Mr. Coulson. “Drop it for me. The bottle’s there. Three drops. In water. D⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠ that is, confound Higgins! There’s nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for want of attention.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Widdup sighed deeply.</p>
<p>“It’s time for my aconite,” said old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson. “Drop it for me. The bottle’s there. Three drops. In water. D⁠⸺ that is, confound Higgins! There’s nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for want of attention.”</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup sighed deeply.</p>
<p>“Don’t be saying that, sir,” she said. “There’s them that would care more than any one knows. Thirteen drops, you said, sir?”</p>
<p>“Three,” said old man Coulson.</p>
<p>He took his dose and then Mrs. Widdup’s hand. She blushed. Oh, yes, it can be done. Just hold your breath and compress the diaphragm.</p>
<p>“Mrs. Widdup,” said Mr. Coulson, “the springtime’s full upon us.”</p>
<p>“Ain’t that right?” said Mrs. Widdup. “The air’s real warm. And there’s bock-beer signs on every corner. And the park’s all yaller and pink and blue with flowers; and I have such shooting pains up my legs and body.”</p>
<p>“ ‘In the spring,’ ” quoted Mr. Coulson, curling his mustache, “ ‘a y⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠ that is, a man’s⁠—fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’ ”</p>
<p>“Lawsy, now!” exclaimed Mrs. Widdup; “ain’t that right? Seems like it’s in the air.”</p>
<p>“ ‘In the spring,’ ” continued old Mr. Coulson, “ ‘a livelier iris shines upon the burnished dove.’ ”</p>
<p>“They do be lively, the Irish,” sighed Mrs. Widdup pensively.</p>
<p>“Mrs. Widdup,” said Mr. Coulson, making a face at a twinge of his gouty foot, “this would be a lonesome house without you. I’m an⁠—that is, I’m an elderly man⁠—but I’m worth a comfortable lot of money. If half a million dollars’ worth of Government bonds and the true affection of a heart that, though no longer beating with the first ardour of youth, can still throb with genuine⁠—”</p>
<p>He took his dose and then <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup’s hand. She blushed. Oh, yes, it can be done. Just hold your breath and compress the diaphragm.</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson, “the springtime’s full upon us.”</p>
<p>“Ain’t that right?” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup. “The air’s real warm. And there’s bock-beer signs on every corner. And the park’s all yaller and pink and blue with flowers; and I have such shooting pains up my legs and body.”</p>
<p>“ ‘In the spring,’ ” quoted <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson, curling his mustache, “ ‘a y⁠⸺⁠ that is, a man’s⁠—fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’ ”</p>
<p>“Lawsy, now!” exclaimed <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup; “ain’t that right? Seems like it’s in the air.”</p>
<p>“ ‘In the spring,’ ” continued old <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson, “ ‘a livelier iris shines upon the burnished dove.’ ”</p>
<p>“They do be lively, the Irish,” sighed <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup pensively.</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson, making a face at a twinge of his gouty foot, “this would be a lonesome house without you. I’m an⁠—that is, I’m an elderly man⁠—but I’m worth a comfortable lot of money. If half a million dollars’ worth of Government bonds and the true affection of a heart that, though no longer beating with the first ardour of youth, can still throb with genuine⁠—”</p>
<p>The loud noise of an overturned chair near the portières of the adjoining room interrupted the venerable and scarcely suspecting victim of May.</p>
<p>In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony, durable, tall, high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five, in-the-neighbourhood-of-Gramercy-Parkish. She put up a lorgnette. Mrs. Widdup hastily stooped and arranged the bandages on Mr. Coulson’s gouty foot.</p>
<p>In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony, durable, tall, high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five, in-the-neighbourhood-of-Gramercy-Parkish. She put up a lorgnette. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup hastily stooped and arranged the bandages on <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson’s gouty foot.</p>
<p>“I thought Higgins was with you,” said Miss Van Meeker Constantia.</p>
<p>“Higgins went out,” explained her father, “and Mrs. Widdup answered the bell. That is better now, Mrs. Widdup, thank you. No; there is nothing else I require.”</p>
<p>“Higgins went out,” explained her father, “and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup answered the bell. That is better now, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup, thank you. No; there is nothing else I require.”</p>
<p>The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss Coulson.</p>
<p>“This spring weather is lovely, isn’t it, daughter?” said the old man, consciously conscious.</p>
<p>“That’s just it,” replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat obscurely. “When does Mrs. Widdup start on her vacation, papa?”</p>
<p>“I believe she said a week from to-day,” said Mr. Coulson.</p>
<p>“That’s just it,” replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat obscurely. “When does <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup start on her vacation, papa?”</p>
<p>“I believe she said a week from to-day,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson.</p>
<p>Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at the window gazing, toward the little park, flooded with the mellow afternoon sunlight. With the eye of a botanist she viewed the flowers⁠—most potent weapons of insidious May. With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne she withstood the attack of the ethereal mildness. The arrows of the pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom. The odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the unexplored recesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows gave her a pain. She mocked at May.</p>
<p>But although Miss Coulson was proof against the season, she was keen enough to estimate its power. She knew that elderly men and thick-waisted women jumped as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of May, the merry mocker of the months. She had heard of foolish old gentlemen marrying their housekeepers before. What a humiliating thing, after all, was this feeling called love!</p>
<p>The next morning at 8 o’clock, when the iceman called, the cook told him that Miss Coulson wanted to see him in the basement.</p>
@ -47,31 +47,31 @@
<p>Miss Coulson tendered a ten-dollar bill. The iceman bowed, and held his hat in his two hands behind him.</p>
<p>“Not if you’ll excuse me, lady. It’ll be a pleasure to fix things up for you any way you please.”</p>
<p>Alas for May!</p>
<p>About noon Mr. Coulson knocked two glasses off his table, broke the spring of his bell and yelled for Higgins at the same time.</p>
<p>“Bring an axe,” commanded Mr. Coulson, sardonically, “or send out for a quart of prussic acid, or have a policeman come in and shoot me. I’d rather that than be frozen to death.”</p>
<p>About noon <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson knocked two glasses off his table, broke the spring of his bell and yelled for Higgins at the same time.</p>
<p>“Bring an axe,” commanded <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson, sardonically, “or send out for a quart of prussic acid, or have a policeman come in and shoot me. I’d rather that than be frozen to death.”</p>
<p>“It does seem to be getting cool, Sir,” said Higgins. “I hadn’t noticed it before. I’ll close the window, Sir.”</p>
<p>“Do,” said Mr. Coulson. “They call this spring, do they? If it keeps up long I’ll go back to Palm Beach. House feels like a morgue.”</p>
<p>“Do,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson. “They call this spring, do they? If it keeps up long I’ll go back to Palm Beach. House feels like a morgue.”</p>
<p>Later Miss Coulson dutifully came in to inquire how the gout was progressing.</p>
<p>“ ‘Stantia,” said the old man, “how is the weather outdoors?”</p>
<p>“Bright,” answered Miss Coulson, “but chilly.”</p>
<p>“Feels like the dead of winter to me,” said Mr. Coulson.</p>
<p>“Feels like the dead of winter to me,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson.</p>
<p>“An instance,” said Constantia, gazing abstractedly out the window, “of ‘winter lingering in the lap of spring,’ though the metaphor is not in the most refined taste.”</p>
<p>A little later she walked down by the side of the little park and on westward to Broadway to accomplish a little shopping.</p>
<p>A little later than that Mrs. Widdup entered the invalid’s room.</p>
<p>A little later than that <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup entered the invalid’s room.</p>
<p>“Did you ring, Sir?” she asked, dimpling in many places. “I asked Higgins to go to the drug store, and I thought I heard your bell.”</p>
<p>“I did not,” said Mr. Coulson.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Widdup, “I interrupted you sir, yesterday when you were about to say something.”</p>
<p>“How comes it, Mrs. Widdup,” said old man Coulson sternly, “that I find it so cold in this house?”</p>
<p>“I did not,” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup, “I interrupted you sir, yesterday when you were about to say something.”</p>
<p>“How comes it, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup,” said old man Coulson sternly, “that I find it so cold in this house?”</p>
<p>“Cold, Sir?” said the housekeeper, “why, now, since you speak of it it do seem cold in this room. But, outdoors it’s as warm and fine as June, sir. And how this weather do seem to make one’s heart jump out of one’s shirt waist, sir. And the ivy all leaved out on the side of the house, and the hand-organs playing, and the children dancing on the sidewalk⁠—’tis a great time for speaking out what’s in the heart. You were saying yesterday, sir⁠—”</p>
<p>“Woman!” roared Mr. Coulson; “you are a fool. I pay you to take care of this house. I am freezing to death in my own room, and you come in and drivel to me about ivy and hand-organs. Get me an overcoat at once. See that all doors and windows are closed below. An old, fat, irresponsible, one-sided object like you prating about springtime and flowers in the middle of winter! When Higgins comes back, tell him to bring me a hot rum punch. And now get out!”</p>
<p>“Woman!” roared <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson; “you are a fool. I pay you to take care of this house. I am freezing to death in my own room, and you come in and drivel to me about ivy and hand-organs. Get me an overcoat at once. See that all doors and windows are closed below. An old, fat, irresponsible, one-sided object like you prating about springtime and flowers in the middle of winter! When Higgins comes back, tell him to bring me a hot rum punch. And now get out!”</p>
<p>But who shall shame the bright face of May? Rogue though she be and disturber of sane men’s peace, no wise virgins cunning nor cold storage shall make her bow her head in the bright galaxy of months.</p>
<p>Oh, yes, the story was not quite finished.</p>
<p>A night passed, and Higgins helped old man Coulson in the morning to his chair by the window. The cold of the room was gone. Heavenly odours and fragrant mildness entered.</p>
<p>In hurried Mrs. Widdup, and stood by his chair. Mr. Coulson reached his bony hand and grasped her plump one.</p>
<p>“Mrs. Widdup,” he said, “this house would be no home without you. I have half a million dollars. If that and the true affection of a heart no lonoer in its youthful prime, but still not cold, could⁠—”</p>
<p>“I found out what made it cold,” said Mrs. Widdup, leanin’ against his chair. “ ’Twas ice⁠—tons of it⁠—in the basement and in the furnace room, everywhere. I shut off the registers that it was coming through into your room, Mr. Coulson, poor soul! And now it’s Maytime again.”</p>
<p>“A true heart,” went on old man Coulson, a little wanderingly, “that the springtime has brought to life again, and⁠—but what will my daughter say, Mrs. Widdup?”</p>
<p>“Never fear, sir,” said Mrs. Widdup, cheerfully. “Miss Coulson, she ran away with the iceman last night, sir!”</p>
<p>In hurried <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup, and stood by his chair. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson reached his bony hand and grasped her plump one.</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup,” he said, “this house would be no home without you. I have half a million dollars. If that and the true affection of a heart no lonoer in its youthful prime, but still not cold, could⁠—”</p>
<p>“I found out what made it cold,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup, leanin’ against his chair. “ ’Twas ice⁠—tons of it⁠—in the basement and in the furnace room, everywhere. I shut off the registers that it was coming through into your room, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Coulson, poor soul! And now it’s Maytime again.”</p>
<p>“A true heart,” went on old man Coulson, a little wanderingly, “that the springtime has brought to life again, and⁠—but what will my daughter say, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup?”</p>
<p>“Never fear, sir,” said <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Widdup, cheerfully. “Miss Coulson, she ran away with the iceman last night, sir!”</p>
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<title>Chapter 8</title>
<title>The Ransom of Red Chief</title>
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<h2>THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF</h2>
<section id="the-ransom-of-red-chief" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">The Ransom of Red Chief</h2>
<p>It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama⁠—Bill Driscoll and myself⁠—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later.</p>
<p>There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.</p>
<p>Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the <i>Weekly Farmers’ Budget</i>. So, it looked good.</p>
<p>Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; therefore and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Weekly Farmers’ Budget</i>. So, it looked good.</p>
<p>We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.</p>
<p>About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.</p>
<p>“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?”</p>
@ -51,20 +51,25 @@
<p>I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.</p>
<p>“If you don’t behave,” says I, “I’ll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?”</p>
<p>“I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.”</p>
<p>I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.</p>
<p>“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I’ve stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood⁠—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”</p>
<p>“I’ll be back some time this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old Dorset.”</p>
<p>Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. “I ain’t attempting,” says he, “to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.”</p>
<p>So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote><i>Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:</i><br/><br/> We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply⁠—as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.<br/> <br/> The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit. <br/> <br/> If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.<br/> <br/> If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.<br/> <br/> TWO DESPERATE MEN.<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
<p epub:type="salutation">Ebenezer Dorset, <abbr>Esq.</abbr>:</p>
<p>We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply⁠—as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.</p>
<p>The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.</p>
<p>If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.</p>
<p>If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.</p>
<p epub:type="z3998:signature">Two Desparate Men.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:</p>
<p>“Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone.”</p>
<p>“Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?”</p>
<p>“Play it, of course,” says I. “<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?”</p>
<p>“I’m the Black Scout,” says Red Chief, “and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I’m tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.”</p>
<p>“All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages.”</p>
<p>“All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bill will help you foil the pesky savages.”</p>
<p>“What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.</p>
<p>“You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?”</p>
<p>“You’d better keep him interested,” said I, “till we get the scheme going. Loosen up.”</p>
@ -89,12 +94,14 @@
<p>I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left⁠—and the money later on⁠—was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.</p>
<p>Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.</p>
<p>I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:</p>
<br/>
<blockquote><i>Two Desperate Men.<br/> <br/> Gentlemen:</i> I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very respectfully,<br/> <br/> EBENEZER DORSET.<br/> </blockquote>
<br/>
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
<p epub:type="z3998:recipient">Two Desperate Men.</p>
<p><span epub:type="salutation">Gentlemen</span>: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. <span epub:type="valediction">Very respectfully</span>,</p>
<p epub:type="z3998:signature">Ebenezer Dorset.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I; “of all the impudent⁠—”</p>
<p>But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.</p>
<p>“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?”</p>
<p>“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?”</p>
<p>“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away.”</p>
<p>We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.</p>
<p>It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.</p>

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<title>The Roads We Take</title>
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<h2 epub:type="title">The Roads We Take</h2>
<p>Twenty miles west of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank to take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it.</p>
<p>While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, “Shark” Dodson and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of ordnance that they carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer with their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as accompanies the ejaculation “Do tell!”</p>
<p>At the crisp command of Shark Dodson, who was leader of the attacking force the engineer descended to the ground and uncoupled the engine and tender. Then John Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively held two guns upon the engine driver and the fireman, and suggested that they run the engine fifty yards away and there await further orders.</p>
<p>Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning to put such low-grade ore as the passengers through the mill, struck out for the rich pocket of the express car. They found the messenger serene in the belief that the “Sunset Express” was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous than aqua pura. While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with the butt-end of his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the express-car safe with dynamite.</p>
<p>The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for the thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell-rope, which sagged down loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, with their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car and ran awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine.</p>
<p>The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was accomplished the express messenger, recovered from Bob Tidball’s persuader to neutrality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle and took a trick in the game. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> John Big Dog, sitting on the coal tender, unwittingly made a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a target, and the messenger trumped him. With a ball exactly between his shoulder blades the Creek chevalier of industry rolled off to the ground, thus increasing the share of his comrades in the loot by one-sixth each.</p>
<p>Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.</p>
<p>The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope into the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing through a thicket of chaparral brought them to open woods, where three horses were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discretion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg. They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a council of flight. Made secure for the present by the tortuous trail they had travelled, the question of time was no longer so big. Many miles and hours lay between them and the spryest posse that could follow. Shark Dodson’s horse, with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted and cropped thankfully of the grass along the stream in the gorge. Bob Tidball opened the sack, drew out double handfuls of the neat packages of currency and the one sack of gold and chuckled with the glee of a child.</p>
<p>“Say, you old double-decked pirate,” he called joyfully to Dodson, “you said we could do it⁠—you got a head for financing that knocks the horns off of anything in Arizona.”</p>
<p>“What are we going to do about a hoss for you, Bob? We ain’t got long to wait here. They’ll be on our trail before daylight in the mornin’.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn’ll carry double for a while,” answered the sanguine Bob. “We’ll annex the first animal we come across. By jingoes, we made a haul, didn’t we? Accordin’ to the marks on this money there’s $30,000⁠—$15,000 apiece!”</p>
<p>“It’s short of what I expected,” said Shark Dodson, kicking softly at the packages with the toe of his boot. And then he looked pensively at the wet sides of his tired horse.</p>
<p>“Old Bolivar’s mighty nigh played out,” he said, slowly. “I wish that sorrel of yours hadn’t got hurt.”</p>
<p>“So do I,” said Bob, heartily, “but it can’t be helped. Bolivar’s got plenty of bottom⁠—he’ll get us both far enough to get fresh mounts. Dang it, Shark, I can’t help thinkin’ how funny it is that an Easterner like you can come out here and give us Western fellows cards and spades in the desperado business. What part of the East was you from, anyway?”</p>
<p>“New York State,” said Shark Dodson, sitting down on a boulder and chewing a twig. “I was born on a farm in Ulster County. I ran away from home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my coming West. I was walkin’ along the road with my clothes in a bundle, makin’ for New York City. I had an idea of goin’ there and makin’ lots of money. I always felt like I could do it. I came to a place one evenin’ where the road forked and I didn’t know which fork to take. I studied about it for half an hour, and then I took the left-hand. That night I run into the camp of a Wild West show that was travellin’ among the little towns, and I went West with it. I’ve often wondered if I wouldn’t have turned out different if I’d took the other road.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I reckon you’d have ended up about the same,” said Bob Tidball, cheerfully philosophical. “It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.”</p>
<p>Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree.</p>
<p>“I’d a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn’t hurt himself, Bob,” he said again, almost pathetically.</p>
<p>“Same here,” agreed Bob; “he was sure a first-rate kind of a crowbait. But Bolivar, he’ll pull us through all right. Reckon we’d better be movin’ on, hadn’t we, Shark? I’ll bag this boodle ag’in and we’ll hit the trail for higher timber.”</p>
<p>Bob Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag and tied the mouth of it tightly with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that he saw was the muzzle of Shark Dodson’s .45 held upon him without a waver.</p>
<p>“Stop your funnin’,” said Bob, with a grin. “We got to be hittin’ the breeze.”</p>
<p>“Set still,” said Shark. “You ain’t goin’ to hit no breeze, Bob. I hate to tell you, but there ain’t any chance for but one of us. Bolivar, he’s plenty tired, and he can’t carry double.”</p>
<p>“We been pards, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three year,” Bob said quietly. “We’ve risked our lives together time and again. I’ve always give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I’ve heard some queer stories about you shootin’ one or two men in a peculiar way, but I never believed ’em. Now if you’re just havin’ a little fun with me, Shark, put your gun up, and we’ll get on Bolivar and vamose. If you mean to shoot⁠—shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!”</p>
<p>Shark Dodson’s face bore a deeply sorrowful look. “You don’t know how bad I feel,” he sighed, “about that sorrel of yourn breakin’ his leg, Bob.”</p>
<p>The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house.</p>
<p>Truly Bob Tidball was never to “hit the breeze” again. The deadly .45 of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious accomplice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the “Sunset Express,” not put to the stress of “carrying double.”</p>
<p>But as “Shark” Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from his view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge of a quartered-oak desk.</p>
<hr/>
<p>I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson &amp; Decker, Wall Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.</p>
<p>“Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams, sir, of Tracy &amp; Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I remember. What is <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?”</p>
<p>“One eighty-five, sir.”</p>
<p>“Then that’s his price.”</p>
<p>“Excuse me,” said Peabody, rather nervously “for speaking of it, but I’ve been talking to Williams. He’s an old friend of yours, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Dodson, and you practically have a corner in <span epub:type="z3998:roman">X</span>. Y. Z. I thought you might⁠—that is, I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98. If he settles at the market price it will take every cent he has in the world and his home too to deliver the shares.”</p>
<p>The expression on Dodson’s face changed in an instant to one of cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house.</p>
<p>“He will settle at one eighty-five,” said Dodson. “Bolivar cannot carry double.”</p>
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<title>Chapter 15</title>
<title>The Song and the Sergeant</title>
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<section id="chapter-15" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT</h2>
<section id="the-song-and-the-sergeant" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">The Song and the Sergeant</h2>
<p>Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their argument had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager’s gaze. It was midnight, and the restaurant was filled with patrons from the theatres of that district. Some among the dispersed audiences must have recognized among the quarrelsome sextet the faces of the players belonging to the Carroll Comedy Company.</p>
<p>Four of the six made up the company. Another was the author of the comedietta, “A Gay Coquette,” which the quartette of players had been presenting with fair success at several vaudeville houses in the city. The sixth at the table was a person inconsequent in the realm of art, but one at whose bidding many lobsters had perished.</p>
<p>Loudly the six maintained their clamorous debate. No one of the Party was silent except when answers were stormed from him by the excited ones. That was the comedian of “A Gay Coquette.” He was a young man with a face even too melancholy for his profession.</p>
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<p>Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign with his hand and a waiter slipped out of the door. In twenty minutes the party of six was in a police station facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant.</p>
<p>“Disorderly conduct in a restaurant,” said the policeman who had brought the party in.</p>
<p>The author of “A Gay Coquette” stepped to the front. He wore nose-glasses and evening clothes, even if his shoes had been tans before they met the patent-leather-polish bottle.</p>
<p>“Mr. Sergeant,” said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, “I would like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are performing in a little play that I have written, in company with a friend and myself were having a little supper. We became deeply interested in the discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible for a scene in the sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece is about to become a failure. We may have been rather noisy and intolerant of interruption by the restaurant people; but the matter was of considerable importance to all of us. You see that we are sober and are not the kind of people who desire to raise disturbances. I hope that the case will not be pressed and that we may be allowed to go.”</p>
<p>“<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Sergeant,” said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, “I would like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are performing in a little play that I have written, in company with a friend and myself were having a little supper. We became deeply interested in the discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible for a scene in the sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece is about to become a failure. We may have been rather noisy and intolerant of interruption by the restaurant people; but the matter was of considerable importance to all of us. You see that we are sober and are not the kind of people who desire to raise disturbances. I hope that the case will not be pressed and that we may be allowed to go.”</p>
<p>“Who makes the charge?” asked the sergeant.</p>
<p>“Me,” said a white-aproned voice in the rear. “De restaurant sent me to. De gang was raisin’ a rough-house and breakin’ dishes.”</p>
<p>“The dishes were paid for,” said the playwright. “They were not broken purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for spoiling the scene, Miss⁠—”</p>
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<p>“I regret to say,” he answered, “that Miss Carroll seems to have lost her grip on that scene. She’s all right in the rest of the play, but⁠—but I tell you, sergeant, she can do it⁠—she has done it equal to any of ’em⁠—and she can do it again.”</p>
<p>Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Jimmy, for the first good word I’ve had in many a day,” she cried. And then she turned her eager face toward the desk.</p>
<p>“I’ll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. I’ll show them whether I can do that scene. Come, Mr. Delmars; let us begin. You will let us, won’t you, sergeant?”</p>
<p>“I’ll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. I’ll show them whether I can do that scene. Come, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Delmars; let us begin. You will let us, won’t you, sergeant?”</p>
<p>“How long will it take?” asked the sergeant, dubiously.</p>
<p>“Eight minutes,” said the playwright. “The entire play consumes but thirty.”</p>
<p>“You may go ahead,” said the sergeant. “Most of you seem to side against the little lady. Maybe she had a right to crack up a saucer or two in that restaurant. We’ll see how she does the turn before we take that up.”</p>
<p>The matron of the police station had been standing near, listening to the singular argument. She came nigher and stood near the sergeant’s chair. Two or three of the reserves strolled in, big and yawning.</p>
<p>“Before beginning the scene,” said the playwright, “and assuming that you have not seen a production of ‘A Gay Coquette,’ I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy⁠—burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll’s rôle is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same coquettish idea.</p>
<p>“Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll’s acting is called the ‘gorilla dance.’ She is costumed to represent a wood nymph, and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla⁠—played by Mr. Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set.</p>
<p>“Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll’s acting is called the ‘gorilla dance.’ She is costumed to represent a wood nymph, and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla⁠—played by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is set.</p>
<p>“That used to get four and five recalls. The main thing was the acting and the dance⁠—it was the funniest thing in New York for five months. Delmars’s song, ‘I’ll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home,’ while he and Miss Carroll were cutting hide-and-seek capers among the tropical plants, was a winner.”</p>
<p>“What’s the trouble with the scene now?” asked the sergeant.</p>
<p>“Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it,” said the playwright wrathfully.</p>
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<p>“Must an old woman teach you all?” she said. She went up to Miss Carroll and took her hand.</p>
<p>“The man’s wearing his heart out for you, my dear. Couldn’t you tell it the first note you heard him sing? All of his monkey flip-flops wouldn’t have kept it from me. Must you be deaf as well as blind? That’s why you couldn’t act your part, child. Do you love him or must he be a gorilla for the rest of his days?”</p>
<p>Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning glance of her eye. He came toward her, melancholy.</p>
<p>“Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?” she asked, with a catching breath.</p>
<p>“Did you hear, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Delmars?” she asked, with a catching breath.</p>
<p>“I did,” said the comedian. “It is true. I didn’t think there was any use. I tried to let you know with the song.”</p>
<p>“Silly!” said the matron; “why didn’t you speak?”</p>
<p>“No, no,” cried the wood nymph, “his way was the best. I didn’t know, but⁠—it was just what I wanted, Bobby.”</p>

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<title>Chapter 2</title>
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<h2>THE THEORY AND THE HOUND</h2>
<section id="the-theory-and-the-hound" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">The Theory and the Hound</h2>
<p>Not many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb tide, we were walking up a street that parallels and parodies Broadway.</p>
<p>A woman with a comely and mundane countenance passed us, holding in leash a wheezing, vicious, waddling, brute of a yellow pug. The dog entangled himself with Bridger’s legs and mumbled his ankles in a snarling, peevish, sulky bite. Bridger, with a happy smile, kicked the breath out of the brute; the woman showered us with a quick rain of well-conceived adjectives that left us in no doubt as to our place in her opinion, and we passed on. Ten yards farther an old woman with disordered white hair and her bankbook tucked well hidden beneath her tattered shawl begged. Bridger stopped and disinterred for her a quarter from his holiday waistcoat.</p>
<p>On the next corner a quarter of a ton of well-clothed man with a rice-powdered, fat, white jowl, stood holding the chain of a devil-born bulldog whose forelegs were strangers by the length of a dachshund. A little woman in a last-season’s hat confronted him and wept, which was plainly all she could do, while he cursed her in low sweet, practised tones.</p>
<p>Bridger smiled again⁠—strictly to himself⁠—and this time he took out a little memorandum book and made a note of it. This he had no right to do without due explanation, and I said so.</p>
<p>“It’s a new theory,” said Bridger, “that I picked up down in Ratona. I’ve been gathering support for it as I knock about. The world isn’t ripe for it yet, but⁠—well I’ll tell you; and then you run your mind back along the people you’ve known and see what you make of it.”</p>
<p>And so I cornered Bridger in a place where they have artificial palms and wine; and he told me the story which is here in my words and on his responsibility.</p>
<p>One afternoon at three o’clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced along the beach screaming, “<i>Pajaro</i>, ahoy!”</p>
<p>One afternoon at three o’clock, on the island of Ratona, a boy raced along the beach screaming, “<i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, ahoy!”</p>
<p>Thus he made known the keenness of his hearing and the justice of his discrimination in pitch.</p>
<p>He who first heard and made oral proclamation concerning the toot of an approaching steamer’s whistle, and correctly named the steamer, was a small hero in Ratona⁠—until the next steamer came. Wherefore, there was rivalry among the barefoot youth of Ratona, and many fell victims to the softly blown conch shells of sloops which, as they enter harbour, sound surprisingly like a distant steamer’s signal. And some could name you the vessel when its call, in your duller ears, sounded no louder than the sigh of the wind through the branches of the cocoanut palms.</p>
<p>But to-day he who proclaimed the <i>Pajaro</i> gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low “point” the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour.</p>
<p>But to-day he who proclaimed the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> gained his honours. Ratona bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low “point” the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the mouth of the harbour.</p>
<p>You must know that Ratona is an island twenty miles off the south of a South American republic. It is a port of that republic; and it sleeps sweetly in a smiling sea, toiling not nor spinning; fed by the abundant tropics where all things “ripen, cease and fall toward the grave.”</p>
<p>Eight hundred people dream life away in a green-embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian <i>mestizos</i>, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine matter at the island and that is about all the touch Ratona gets with the world.</p>
<p>The <i>Pajaro</i> paused at the mouth of the harbour, rolling heavily in the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside. Already two dories from the village⁠—one conveying fruit inspectors, the other going for what it could get⁠—were halfway out to the steamer.</p>
<p>The inspectors’ dory was taken on board with them, and the <i>Pajaro</i> steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.</p>
<p>The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the <i>Pajaro’s</i> store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one passenger⁠—Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.</p>
<p>Eight hundred people dream life away in a green-embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine matter at the island and that is about all the touch Ratona gets with the world.</p>
<p>The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> paused at the mouth of the harbour, rolling heavily in the swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside. Already two dories from the village⁠—one conveying fruit inspectors, the other going for what it could get⁠—were halfway out to the steamer.</p>
<p>The inspectors’ dory was taken on board with them, and the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.</p>
<p>The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro’s</i> store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers and one passenger⁠—Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.</p>
<p>Bridger, the United States consul at Ratona, was cleaning his rifle in the official shanty under a bread-fruit tree twenty yards from the water of the harbour. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his political party’s procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others. Bridger’s share of the spoils⁠—the consulship at Ratona⁠—was little more than a prune⁠—a dried prune from the boarding-house department of the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his consulate, and was not unhappy.</p>
<p>He looked up from a careful inspection of his rifle lock and saw a broad man filling his doorway. A broad, noiseless, slow-moving man, sunburned almost to the brown of Vandyke. A man of forty-five, neatly clothed in homespun, with scanty light hair, a close-clipped brown-and-gray beard and pale-blue eyes expressing mildness and simplicity.</p>
<p>“You are Mr. Bridger, the consul,” said the broad man. “They directed me here. Can you tell me what those big bunches of things like gourds are in those trees that look like feather dusters along the edge of the water?”</p>
<p>“You are <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bridger, the consul,” said the broad man. “They directed me here. Can you tell me what those big bunches of things like gourds are in those trees that look like feather dusters along the edge of the water?”</p>
<p>“Take that chair,” said the consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. “No, the other one⁠—that bamboo thing won’t hold you. Why, they’re cocoanuts⁠—green cocoanuts. The shell of ’em is always a light green before they’re ripe.”</p>
<p>“Much obliged,” said the other man, sitting down carefully. “I didn’t quite like to tell the folks at home they were olives unless I was sure about it. My name is Plunkett. I’m sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky. I’ve got extradition papers in my pocket authorizing the arrest of a man on this island. They’ve been signed by the President of this country, and they’re in correct shape. The man’s name is Wade Williams. He’s in the cocoanut raising business. What he’s wanted for is the murder of his wife two years ago. Where can I find him?”</p>
<p>The consul squinted an eye and looked through his rifle barrel.</p>
@ -38,41 +38,41 @@
<p>“You’ve got his picture, of course,” said Bridger. “It might be Reeves or Morgan, but I’d hate to think it. They’re both as fine fellows as you’d meet in an all-day auto ride.”</p>
<p>“No,” doubtfully answered Plunkett; “there wasn’t any picture of Williams to be had. And I never saw him myself. I’ve been sheriff only a year. But I’ve got a pretty accurate description of him. About 5 feet 11; dark-hair and eyes; nose inclined to be Roman; heavy about the shoulders; strong, white teeth, with none missing; laughs a good deal, talkative; drinks considerably but never to intoxication; looks you square in the eye when talking; age thirty-five. Which one of your men does that description fit?”</p>
<p>The consul grinned broadly.</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what you do,” he said, laying down his rifle and slipping on his dingy black alpaca coat. “You come along, Mr. Plunkett, and I’ll take you up to see the boys. If you can tell which one of ’em your description fits better than it does the other you have the advantage of me.”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what you do,” he said, laying down his rifle and slipping on his dingy black alpaca coat. “You come along, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett, and I’ll take you up to see the boys. If you can tell which one of ’em your description fits better than it does the other you have the advantage of me.”</p>
<p>Bridger conducted the sheriff out and along the hard beach close to which the tiny houses of the village were distributed. Immediately back of the town rose sudden, small, thickly wooded hills. Up one of these, by means of steps cut in the hard clay, the consul led Plunkett. On the very verge of an eminence was perched a two-room wooden cottage with a thatched roof. A Carib woman was washing clothes outside. The consul ushered the sheriff to the door of the room that overlooked the harbour.</p>
<p>Two men were in the room, about to sit down, in their shirt sleeves, to a table spread for dinner. They bore little resemblance one to the other in detail; but the general description given by Plunkett could have been justly applied to either. In height, colour of hair, shape of nose, build and manners each of them tallied with it. They were fair types of jovial, ready-witted, broad-gauged Americans who had gravitated together for companionship in an alien land.</p>
<p>“Hello, Bridger” they called in unison at sight Of the consul. “Come and have dinner with us!” And then they noticed Plunkett at his heels, and came forward with hospitable curiosity.</p>
<p>“Gentlemen,” said the consul, his voice taking on unaccustomed formality, “this is Mr. Plunkett. Mr. Plunkett⁠—Mr. Reeves and Mr. Morgan.”</p>
<p>“Gentlemen,” said the consul, his voice taking on unaccustomed formality, “this is <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett⁠—<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Reeves and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan.”</p>
<p>The cocoanut barons greeted the newcomer joyously. Reeves seemed about an inch taller than Morgan, but his laugh was not quite as loud. Morgan’s eyes were deep brown; Reeves’s were black. Reeves was the host and busied himself with fetching other chairs and calling to the Carib woman for supplemental table ware. It was explained that Morgan lived in a bamboo shack to “loo’ard,” but that every day the two friends dined together. Plunkett stood still during the preparations, looking about mildly with his pale-blue eyes. Bridger looked apologetic and uneasy.</p>
<p>At length two other covers were laid and the company was assigned to places. Reeves and Morgan stood side by side across the table from the visitors. Reeves nodded genially as a signal for all to seat themselves. And then suddenly Plunkett raised his hand with a gesture of authority. He was looking straight between Reeves and Morgan.</p>
<p>“Wade Williams,” he said quietly, “you are under arrest for murder.”</p>
<p>Reeves and Morgan instantly exchanged a quick, bright glance, the quality of which was interrogation, with a seasoning of surprise. Then, simultaneously they turned to the speaker with a puzzled and frank deprecation in their gaze.</p>
<p>“Can’t say that we understand you, Mr. Plunkett,” said Morgan, cheerfully. “Did you say ‘Williams’?”</p>
<p>“Can’t say that we understand you, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett,” said Morgan, cheerfully. “Did you say ‘Williams’?”</p>
<p>“What’s the joke, Bridgy?” asked Reeves, turning, to the consul with a smile.</p>
<p>Before Bridger could answer Plunkett spoke again.</p>
<p>“I’ll explain,” he said, quietly. “One of you don’t need any explanation, but this is for the other one. One of you is Wade Williams of Chatham County, Kentucky. You murdered your wife on May 5, two years ago, after ill-treating and abusing her continually for five years. I have the proper papers in my pocket for taking you back with me, and you are going. We will return on the fruit steamer that comes back by this island to-morrow to leave its inspectors. I acknowledge, gentlemen, that I’m not quite sure which one of you is Williams. But Wade Williams goes back to Chatham County to-morrow. I want you to understand that.”</p>
<p>A great sound of merry laughter from Morgan and Reeves went out over the still harbour. Two or three fishermen in the fleet of sloops anchored there looked up at the house of the diablos Americanos on the hill and wondered.</p>
<p>“My dear Mr. Plunkett,” cried Morgan, conquering his mirth, “the dinner is getting, cold. Let us sit down and eat. I am anxious to get my spoon into that shark-fin soup. Business afterward.”</p>
<p>“Sit down, gentlemen, if you please,” added Reeves, pleasantly. “I am sure Mr. Plunkett will not object. Perhaps a little time may be of advantage to him in identifying⁠—the gentleman he wishes to arrest.”</p>
<p>“My dear <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett,” cried Morgan, conquering his mirth, “the dinner is getting, cold. Let us sit down and eat. I am anxious to get my spoon into that shark-fin soup. Business afterward.”</p>
<p>“Sit down, gentlemen, if you please,” added Reeves, pleasantly. “I am sure <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett will not object. Perhaps a little time may be of advantage to him in identifying⁠—the gentleman he wishes to arrest.”</p>
<p>“No objections, I’m sure,” said Plunkett, dropping into his chair heavily. “I’m hungry myself. I didn’t want to accept the hospitality of you folks without giving you notice; that’s all.”</p>
<p>Reeves set bottles and glasses on the table.</p>
<p>“There’s cognac,” he said, “and anisada, and Scotch ‘smoke,’ and rye. Take your choice.”</p>
<p>Bridger chose rye, Reeves poured three fingers of Scotch for himself, Morgan took the same. The sheriff, against much protestation, filled his glass from the water bottle.</p>
<p>“Here’s to the appetite,” said Reeves, raising his glass, “of Mr. Williams!” Morgan’s laugh and his drink encountering sent him into a choking splutter. All began to pay attention to the dinner, which was well cooked and palatable.</p>
<p>“Here’s to the appetite,” said Reeves, raising his glass, “of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams!” Morgan’s laugh and his drink encountering sent him into a choking splutter. All began to pay attention to the dinner, which was well cooked and palatable.</p>
<p>“Williams!” called Plunkett, suddenly and sharply.</p>
<p>All looked up wonderingly. Reeves found the sheriff’s mild eye resting upon him. He flushed a little.</p>
<p>“See here,” he said, with some asperity, “my name’s Reeves, and I don’t want you to⁠—” But the comedy of the thing came to his rescue, and he ended with a laugh.</p>
<p>“I suppose, Mr. Plunkett,” said Morgan, carefully seasoning an alligator pear, “that you are aware of the fact that you will import a good deal of trouble for yourself into Kentucky if you take back the wrong man⁠—that is, of course, if you take anybody back?”</p>
<p>“I suppose, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett,” said Morgan, carefully seasoning an alligator pear, “that you are aware of the fact that you will import a good deal of trouble for yourself into Kentucky if you take back the wrong man⁠—that is, of course, if you take anybody back?”</p>
<p>“Thank you for the salt,” said the sheriff. “Oh, I’ll take somebody back. It’ll be one of you two gentlemen. Yes, I know I’d get stuck for damages if I make a mistake. But I’m going to try to get the right man.”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what you do,” said Morgan, leaning forward with a jolly twinkle in his eyes. “You take me. I’ll go without any trouble. The cocoanut business hasn’t panned out well this year, and I’d like to make some extra money out of your bondsmen.”</p>
<p>“That’s not fair,” chimed in Reeves. “I got only $16 a thousand for my last shipment. Take me, Mr. Plunkett.”</p>
<p>“That’s not fair,” chimed in Reeves. “I got only $16 a thousand for my last shipment. Take me, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett.”</p>
<p>“I’ll take Wade Williams,” said the sheriff, patiently, “or I’ll come pretty close to it.”</p>
<p>“It’s like dining with a ghost,” remarked Morgan, with a pretended shiver. “The ghost of a murderer, too! Will somebody pass the toothpicks to the shade of the naughty Mr. Williams?”</p>
<p>“It’s like dining with a ghost,” remarked Morgan, with a pretended shiver. “The ghost of a murderer, too! Will somebody pass the toothpicks to the shade of the naughty <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Williams?”</p>
<p>Plunkett seemed as unconcerned as if he were dining at his own table in Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken with surprising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge of wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if wrongly solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, yet there he sat puzzling his soul (to all appearances) over the novel flavour of a broiled iguana cutlet.</p>
<p>The consul felt a decided discomfort. Reeves and Morgan were his friends and pals; yet the sheriff from Kentucky had a certain right to his official aid and moral support. So Bridger sat the silentest around the board and tried to estimate the peculiar situation. His conclusion was that both Reeves and Morgan, quickwitted, as he knew them to be, had conceived at the moment of Plunkett’s disclosure of his mission⁠—and in the brief space of a lightning flash⁠—the idea that the other might be the guilty Williams; and that each of them had decided in that moment loyally to protect his comrade against the doom that threatened him. This was the consul’s theory and if he had been a bookmaker at a race of wits for life and liberty he would have offered heavy odds against the plodding sheriff from Chatham County, Kentucky.</p>
<p>When the meal was concluded the Carib woman came and removed the dishes and cloth. Reeves strewed the table with excellent cigars, and Plunkett, with the others, lighted one of these with evident gratification.</p>
<p>“I may be dull,” said Morgan, with a grin and a wink at Bridger; “but I want to know if I am. Now, I say this is all a joke of Mr. Plunkett’s, concocted to frighten two babes-in-the-woods. Is this Williamson to be taken seriously or not?”</p>
<p>“ ‘Williams,’ ” corrected Plunkett gravely. “I never got off any jokes in my life. I know I wouldn’t travel 2,000 miles to get off a poor one as this would be if I didn’t take Wade Williams back with me. Gentlemen!” continued the sheriff, now letting his mild eyes travel impartially from one of the company to another, “see if you can find any joke in this case. Wade Williams is listening to the words I utter now; but out of politeness, I will speak of him as a third person. For five years he made his wife lead the life of a dog⁠—No; I’ll take that back. No dog in Kentucky was ever treated as she was. He spent the money that she brought him⁠—spent it at races, at the card table and on horses and hunting. He was a good fellow to his friends, but a cold, sullen demon at home. He wound up the five years of neglect by striking her with his closed hand⁠—a hand as hard as a stone⁠—when she was ill and weak from suffering. She died the next day; and he skipped. That’s all there is to it. It’s enough. I never saw Williams; but I knew his wife. I’m not a man to tell half. She and I were keeping company when she met him. She went to Louisville on a visit and saw him there. I’ll admit that he spoilt my chances in no time. I lived then on the edge of the Cumberland mountains. I was elected sheriff of Chatham County a year after Wade Williams killed his wife. My official duty sends me out here after him; but I’ll admit that there’s personal feeling, too. And he’s going back with me. Mr.⁠—er⁠—Reeves, will you pass me a match?</p>
<p>“I may be dull,” said Morgan, with a grin and a wink at Bridger; “but I want to know if I am. Now, I say this is all a joke of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Plunkett’s, concocted to frighten two babes-in-the-woods. Is this Williamson to be taken seriously or not?”</p>
<p>“ ‘Williams,’ ” corrected Plunkett gravely. “I never got off any jokes in my life. I know I wouldn’t travel 2,000 miles to get off a poor one as this would be if I didn’t take Wade Williams back with me. Gentlemen!” continued the sheriff, now letting his mild eyes travel impartially from one of the company to another, “see if you can find any joke in this case. Wade Williams is listening to the words I utter now; but out of politeness, I will speak of him as a third person. For five years he made his wife lead the life of a dog⁠—No; I’ll take that back. No dog in Kentucky was ever treated as she was. He spent the money that she brought him⁠—spent it at races, at the card table and on horses and hunting. He was a good fellow to his friends, but a cold, sullen demon at home. He wound up the five years of neglect by striking her with his closed hand⁠—a hand as hard as a stone⁠—when she was ill and weak from suffering. She died the next day; and he skipped. That’s all there is to it. It’s enough. I never saw Williams; but I knew his wife. I’m not a man to tell half. She and I were keeping company when she met him. She went to Louisville on a visit and saw him there. I’ll admit that he spoilt my chances in no time. I lived then on the edge of the Cumberland mountains. I was elected sheriff of Chatham County a year after Wade Williams killed his wife. My official duty sends me out here after him; but I’ll admit that there’s personal feeling, too. And he’s going back with me. <abbr>Mr.</abbr>⁠—er⁠—Reeves, will you pass me a match?</p>
<p>“Awfully imprudent of Williams,” said Morgan, putting his feet up against the wall, “to strike a Kentucky lady. Seems to me I’ve heard they were scrappers.”</p>
<p>“Bad, bad Williams,” said Reeves, pouring out more Scotch.</p>
<p>The two men spoke lightly, but the consul saw and felt the tension and the carefulness in their actions and words. “Good old fellows,” he said to himself; “they’re both all right. Each of ’em is standing by the other like a little brick church.”</p>
@ -90,8 +90,8 @@
<p>“Did he get the right man?”</p>
<p>“He did,” said the Consul.</p>
<p>“And how did he know?” I inquired, being in a kind of bewilderment.</p>
<p>“When he put Morgan in the dory,” answered Bridger, “the next day to take him aboard the <i>Pajaro</i>, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands with me and I asked him the same question.”</p>
<p>“ ‘Mr. Bridger,’ said he, ‘I’m a Kentuckian, and I’ve seen a great deal of both men and animals. And I never yet saw a man that was overfond of horses and dogs but what was cruel to women.’ ”</p>
<p>“When he put Morgan in the dory,” answered Bridger, “the next day to take him aboard the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands with me and I asked him the same question.”</p>
<p>“ ‘<abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bridger,’ said he, ‘I’m a Kentuckian, and I’ve seen a great deal of both men and animals. And I never yet saw a man that was overfond of horses and dogs but what was cruel to women.’ ”</p>
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<title>Chapter 12</title>
<title>The Whirligig of Life</title>
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<h2>THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE</h2>
<section id="the-whirligig-of-life" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">The Whirligig of Life</h2>
<p>Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Half-way to the zenith the Cumberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly.</p>
<p>Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The cart stopped at the Justice’s door, and the two climbed down. Ransie was a narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The imperturbability of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armour. The woman was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown desires. Through it all gleamed a faint protest of cheated youth unconscious of its loss.</p>
<p>The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake of dignity, and moved to let them enter.</p>
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<p>The next day came the little red bull, drawing the cart to the office door. Justice Benaja Widdup had his shoes on, for he was expecting the visit. In his presence Ransie Bilbro handed to his wife a five-dollar bill. The official’s eye sharply viewed it. It seemed to curl up as though it had been rolled and inserted into the end of a gun-barrel. But the Justice refrained from comment. It is true that other bills might be inclined to curl. He handed each one a decree of divorce. Each stood awkwardly silent, slowly folding the guarantee of freedom. The woman cast a shy glance full of constraint at Ransie.</p>
<p>“I reckon you’ll be goin’ back up to the cabin,” she said, along ‘ith the bull-cart. There’s bread in the tin box settin’ on the shelf. I put the bacon in the b’ilin’-pot to keep the hounds from gittin’ it. Don’t forget to wind the clock to-night.”</p>
<p>“You air a-goin’ to your brother Ed’s?” asked Ransie, with fine unconcern.</p>
<p>“I was ‘lowin’ to get along up thar afore night. I ain’t sayin’ as they’ll pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain’t nowhar else fur to go. It’s a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be goin’. I’ll be a-sayin’ good-bye, Ranse⁠—that is, if you keer fur to say so.”</p>
<p>“I was ’lowin’ to get along up thar afore night. I ain’t sayin’ as they’ll pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain’t nowhar else fur to go. It’s a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be goin’. I’ll be a-sayin’ good-bye, Ranse⁠—that is, if you keer fur to say so.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know as anybody’s a hound dog,” said Ransie, in a martyr’s voice, “fur to not want to say good-bye⁠—‘less you air so anxious to git away that you don’t want me to say it.”</p>
<p>Ariela was silent. She folded the five-dollar bill and her decree carefully, and placed them in the bosom of her dress. Benaja Widdup watched the money disappear with mournful eyes behind his spectacles.</p>
<p>And then with his next words he achieved rank (as his thoughts ran) with either the great crowd of the world’s sympathizers or the little crowd of its great financiers.</p>
<p>“Be kind o’ lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ranse,” he said.</p>
<p>Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the sunlight. He did not look at Ariela.</p>
<p>“I ‘low it might be lonesome,” he said; “but when folks gits mad and wants a divo’ce, you can’t make folks stay.”</p>
<p>“I ’low it might be lonesome,” he said; “but when folks gits mad and wants a divo’ce, you can’t make folks stay.”</p>
<p>“There’s others wanted a divo’ce,” said Ariela, speaking to the wooden stool. “Besides, nobody don’t want nobody to stay.”</p>
<p>“Nobody never said they didn’t.”</p>
<p>“Nobody never said they did. I reckon I better start on now to brother Ed’s.”</p>

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<title>Chapter 1</title>
<title>The World and the Door</title>
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<h2>THE WORLD AND THE DOOR</h2>
<p>A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer <i>El Carrero</i> swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S. vice-consul at La Paz⁠—a person who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them.</p>
<section id="the-world-and-the-door" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">The World and the Door</h2>
<p>A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">El Carrero</i> swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S. vice-consul at La Paz⁠—a person who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them.</p>
<p>As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in puncturing it by affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the line: “ ‘Be it so,’ said the policeman.” Nothing so strange has yet cropped out in Truth.</p>
<br/>
<hr/>
<p>When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor and man-about- New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word of it went “down the line,” bouncers took a precautionary turn at the Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables, cab drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafés, and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to his account by way of preface and introduction.</p>
<p>As a money power a one-millionaire is of small account in a city where the man who cuts your slice of beef behind the free-lunch counter rides to work in his own automobile. But Hedges spent his money as lavishly, loudly and showily as though he were only a clerk squandering a week’s wages. And, after all, the bartender takes no interest in your reserve fund. He would rather look you up on his cash register than in Bradstreet.</p>
<p>On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges was bidding dull care begone in the company of five or six good fellows⁠—acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake.</p>
@ -27,19 +27,19 @@
<p>From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the discursive skipper from his course.</p>
<p>It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land⁠—La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain’s dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained.</p>
<p>Kalb, the vice-consul, a Græco-Armenian citizen of the United States, born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries, considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached himself to Merriam’s elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.</p>
<p>There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the <i>triste</i> Peruvian town. At Kalb’s introductory: “Shake hands with⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men⁠—anything but men of living tissue.</p>
<p>After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front <i>galeria</i> with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.” The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.</p>
<p>“One year more,” said Bibb, “and I’ll go back to God’s country. Oh, I know it’s pretty here, and you get <i>dolce far niente</i> handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn’t made for a white man to live in. You’ve got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs. Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It’s nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”</p>
<p>There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the triste Peruvian town. At Kalb’s introductory: “Shake hands with⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠⁠–⁠,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men⁠—anything but men of living tissue.</p>
<p>After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front <i xml:lang="es">galeria</i> with Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank Scotch “smoke.” The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him, seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and theories.</p>
<p>“One year more,” said Bibb, “and I’ll go back to God’s country. Oh, I know it’s pretty here, and you get dolce far niente handed to you in chunks, but this country wasn’t made for a white man to live in. You’ve got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It’s nicer to be rejected by <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation.”</p>
<p>“Many like her here?” asked Merriam.</p>
<p>“Not anywhere,” said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. She’s the only white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the colour of a b-flat piano key. She’s been here a year. Comes from⁠—well, you know how a woman can talk⁠—ask ’em to say ‘string’ and they’ll say ‘crow’s foot’ or ‘cat’s cradle.’ Sometimes you’d think she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod.”</p>
<p>“Mystery?” ventured Merriam.</p>
<p>“M⁠—well, she looks it; but her talk’s translucent enough. But that’s a woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she’d merely say: ‘Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but the sand which is here.’ But you won’t think about that when you meet her, Merriam. You’ll propose to her too.”</p>
<p>To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her. He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze turkey’s wings, and mysterious, <i>remembering</i> eyes that⁠—well, that looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent life suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz, all in all, charmed her.</p>
<p>To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her. He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze turkey’s wings, and mysterious, <em>remembering</em> eyes that⁠—well, that looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent life suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz, all in all, charmed her.</p>
<p>Merriam’s courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although be did not know that he was courting her. He was using her as an antidote for remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit. During that time he had received no news from home. Wade did not know where he was; and he was not sure of Wade’s exact address, and was afraid to write. He thought he had better let matters rest as they were for a while.</p>
<p>One afternoon he and Mrs. Conant hired two ponies and rode out along the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke his piece⁠—he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied.</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out of his intoxication and back to his senses.</p>
<p>One afternoon he and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant hired two ponies and rode out along the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke his piece⁠—he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied.</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out of his intoxication and back to his senses.</p>
<p>“I beg your pardon, Florence,” he said, releasing her hand; “but I’ll have to hedge on part of what I said. I can’t ask you to marry me, of course. I killed a man in New York⁠—a man who was my friend⁠—shot him down⁠—in quite a cowardly manner, I understand. Of course, the drinking didn’t excuse it. Well, I couldn’t resist having my say; and I’ll always mean it. I’m here as a fugitive from justice, and⁠—I suppose that ends our acquaintance.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging branch of a lime tree.</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging branch of a lime tree.</p>
<p>“I suppose so,” she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; “but that depends upon you. I’ll be as honest as you were. I poisoned my husband. I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So I suppose that ends our acquaintance.”</p>
<p>She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what it was all about.</p>
<p>She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes blazing.</p>
@ -49,14 +49,14 @@
<p>“Ralph,” she interrupted, almost with a scream, “be my world!”</p>
<p>Her eyes melted; she relaxed magnificently and swayed toward Merriam so suddenly that he had to jump to catch her.</p>
<p>Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But it can’t be helped. It’s the subconscious smell of the footlights’ smoke that’s in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook’s soul sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese.</p>
<p>Merriam and Mrs. Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy.</p>
<p>They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other’s world. Mrs. Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. “Good night, my world,” would say Mrs. Conant every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that nothing could sever.</p>
<p>Merriam and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant were very happy. He announced their engagement at the Hotel Orilla del <abbr>Mar.</abbr> Eight foreigners and four native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale lilac with envy.</p>
<p>They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other’s world. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. “Good night, my world,” would say <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that nothing could sever.</p>
<p>One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o’clock tea.</p>
<p>When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the <i>Pajaro</i>, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.</p>
<p>The <i>Pajaro</i> put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away.</p>
<p>When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: “Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn’t expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New York⁠—Merriam, Mr. Quinby.”</p>
<p>When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i>, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.</p>
<p>The <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet away.</p>
<p>When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: “Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn’t expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New York⁠—Merriam, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Quinby.”</p>
<p>Merriam gave Hedges and then Quinby an ice-cold hand. “Br-r-r-r!” said Hedges. “But you’ve got a frappéd flipper! Man, you’re not well. You’re as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a bar if there is such a thing, and let’s take a prophylactic.”</p>
<p>Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del Mar.</p>
<p>Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del <abbr class="eoc">Mar.</abbr></p>
<p>“Quinby and I,” explained Hedges, puffing through the slippery sand, “are looking out along the coast for some investments. We’ve just come up from Concepción and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this subsidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around here in silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that café, Merriam? Oh, in this portable soda water pavilion?”</p>
<p>Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam aside.</p>
<p>“Now, what does this mean?” he said, with gruff kindness. “Are you sulking about that fool row we had?”</p>
@ -67,41 +67,41 @@
<p>Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the eleven-o’clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him. His eye was strangely bright.</p>
<p>“Bibb, my boy,” said he, slowly waving his hand, “do you see those mountains and that sea and sky and sunshine?⁠—they’re mine, Bibbsy⁠—all mine.”</p>
<p>“You go in,” said Bibb, “and take eight grains of quinine, right away. It won’t do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he’s Rockefeller, or James O’Neill either.”</p>
<p>Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the <i>Pajaro</i> to be distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains.</p>
<p>Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed <i>anteojos</i> upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls. A barefooted <i>muchacho</i> dashed in, desiring the post of messenger.</p>
<p>“<i>Bien venido</i>,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel⁠—<i>Dios</i>! what a name to say!⁠—that to Señor Davis⁠—one for Don Alberto. These two for the <i>Casa de Huespedes</i>, <i>Numero 6</i>, <i>en la calle de las Buenas Gracias</i>. And say to them all, <i>muchacho</i>, that the <i>Pajaro</i> sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the <i>correo</i>.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o’clock. The boy was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.</p>
<p>Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> to be distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains.</p>
<p>Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed <i xml:lang="es">anteojos</i> upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls. A barefooted muchacho dashed in, desiring the post of messenger.</p>
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Bien venido</i>,” said Tio Pancho. “This to Señora Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel⁠—<i xml:lang="es">Dios</i>! what a name to say!⁠—that to Señor Davis⁠—one for Don Alberto. These two for the <i xml:lang="es">Casa de Huespedes</i>, <i xml:lang="es">Numero 6</i>, <i xml:lang="es">en la calle de las Buenas Gracias</i>. And say to them all, muchacho, that the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the <i xml:lang="es">correo</i>.”</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o’clock. The boy was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.</p>
<p>She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she occupied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she and Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was content now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon of her life. They had shut out the world and closed the door.</p>
<p>Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the hotel. She would put on a white dress and an apricot-coloured lace mantilla, and they would walk an hour under the cocoanut palms by the lagoon. She smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the roll the boy had brought.</p>
<p>At first the words of a certain headline of a Sunday newspaper meant nothing to her; they conveyed only a visualized sense of familiarity. The largest type ran thus: “Lloyd B. Conant secures divorce.” And then the subheadings: “Well-known Saint Louis paint manufacturer wins suit, pleading one year’s absence of wife.” “Her mysterious disappearance recalled.” “Nothing has been heard of her since.”</p>
<p>Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, Mrs. Conant’s eye soon traversed the half-column of the “Recall.” It ended thus: “It will be remembered that Mrs. Conant disappeared one evening in March of last year. It was freely rumoured that her marriage with Lloyd B. Conant resulted in much unhappiness. Stories were not wanting to the effect that his cruelty toward his wife had more than once taken the form of physical abuse. After her departure a full bottle of tincture of aconite, a deadly poison, was found in a small medicine cabinet in her bedroom. This might have been an indication that she meditated suicide. It is supposed that she abandoned such an intention if she possessed it, and left her home instead.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her hands tightly.</p>
<p>Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant’s eye soon traversed the half-column of the “Recall.” It ended thus: “It will be remembered that <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant disappeared one evening in March of last year. It was freely rumoured that her marriage with Lloyd B. Conant resulted in much unhappiness. Stories were not wanting to the effect that his cruelty toward his wife had more than once taken the form of physical abuse. After her departure a full bottle of tincture of aconite, a deadly poison, was found in a small medicine cabinet in her bedroom. This might have been an indication that she meditated suicide. It is supposed that she abandoned such an intention if she possessed it, and left her home instead.”</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her hands tightly.</p>
<p>“Let me think⁠—O God!⁠—let me think,” she whispered. “I took the bottle with me … I threw it out of the window of the train … I⁠— … there was another bottle in the cabinet … there were two, side by side⁠—the aconite⁠—and the valerian that I took when I could not sleep … If they found the aconite bottle full, why⁠—but, he is alive, of course⁠—I gave him only a harmless dose of valerian … I am not a murderess in fact … Ralph, I⁠—O God, don’t let this be a dream!”</p>
<p>She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down her room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam’s photograph stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a smile of exquisite tenderness, and⁠—dropped four tears on it. And Merriam only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes, looking into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening door. On her side of the door was the building material for a castle of Romance⁠—love, an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on the shore of a haven of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy ease and security⁠—a life of poetry and heart’s ease and refuge. Romanticist, will you tell me what Mrs. Conant saw on the other side of the door? You cannot?⁠—that is, you will not? Very well; then listen.</p>
<p>
<i>She saw herself go into a department store and buy five spools of silk thread and three yards of gingham to make an apron for the cook. “Shall I charge it, ma’am?” asked the clerk. As she walked out a lady whom she met greeted her cordially. “Oh, where did you get the pattern for those sleeves, dear Mrs. Conant?” she said. At the corner a policeman helped her across the street and touched his helmet. “Any callers?” she asked the maid when she reached home. “Mrs. Waldron,” answered the maid, “and the two Misses Jenkinson.” “Very well,” she said. “You may bring me a cup of tea, Maggie.”</i>
</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant went to the door and called Angela, the old Peruvian woman. “If Mateo is there send him to me.” Mateo, a half-breed, shuffling and old but efficient, came.</p>
<p>She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down her room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam’s photograph stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a smile of exquisite tenderness, and⁠—dropped four tears on it. And Merriam only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes, looking into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening door. On her side of the door was the building material for a castle of Romance⁠—love, an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on the shore of a haven of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy ease and security⁠—a life of poetry and heart’s ease and refuge. Romanticist, will you tell me what <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant saw on the other side of the door? You cannot?⁠—that is, you will not? Very well; then listen.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She saw herself go into a department store and buy five spools of silk thread and three yards of gingham to make an apron for the cook. “Shall I charge it, ma’am?” asked the clerk. As she walked out a lady whom she met greeted her cordially. “Oh, where did you get the pattern for those sleeves, dear <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant?” she said. At the corner a policeman helped her across the street and touched his helmet. “Any callers?” she asked the maid when she reached home. “<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Waldron,” answered the maid, “and the two Misses Jenkinson.” “Very well,” she said. “You may bring me a cup of tea, Maggie.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant went to the door and called Angela, the old Peruvian woman. “If Mateo is there send him to me.” Mateo, a half-breed, shuffling and old but efficient, came.</p>
<p>“Is there a steamer or a vessel of any kind leaving this coast to-night or to-morrow that I can get passage on?” she asked.</p>
<p>Mateo considered.</p>
<p>“At Punta Reina, thirty miles down the coast, señora,” he answered, “there is a small steamer loading with cinchona and dyewoods. She sails for San Francisco to-morrow at sunrise. So says my brother, who arrived in his sloop to-day, passing by Punta Reina.”</p>
<p>“You must take me in that sloop to that steamer to-night. Will you do that?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps⁠—” Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoulder. Mrs. Conant took a handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him.</p>
<p>“Perhaps⁠—” Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoulder. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant took a handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him.</p>
<p>“Get the sloop ready behind the little point of land below the town,” she ordered. “Get sailors, and be ready to sail at six o’clock. In half an hour bring a cart partly filled with straw into the patio here, and take my trunk to the sloop. There is more money yet. Now, hurry.”</p>
<p>For one time Mateo walked away without shuffling his feet.</p>
<p>“Angela,” cried Mrs. Conant, almost fiercely, “come and help me pack. I am going away. Out with this trunk. My clothes first. Stir yourself. Those dark dresses first. Hurry.”</p>
<p>“Angela,” cried <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant, almost fiercely, “come and help me pack. I am going away. Out with this trunk. My clothes first. Stir yourself. Those dark dresses first. Hurry.”</p>
<p>From the first she did not waver from her decision. Her view was clear and final. Her door had opened and let the world in. Her love for Merriam was not lessened; but it now appeared a hopeless and unrealizable thing. The visions of their future that had seemed so blissful and complete had vanished. She tried to assure herself that her renunciation was rather for his sake than for her own. Now that she was cleared of her burden⁠—at least, technically⁠—would not his own weigh too heavily upon him? If she should cling to him, would not the difference forever silently mar and corrode their happiness? Thus she reasoned; but there were a thousand little voices calling to her that she could feel rather than hear, like the hum of distant, powerful machinery⁠—the little voices of the world, that, when raised in unison, can send their insistent call through the thickest door.</p>
<p>Once while packing, a brief shadow of the lotus dream came back to her. She held Merriam’s picture to her heart with one hand, while she threw a pair of shoes into the trunk with her other.</p>
<p>At six o’clock Mateo returned and reported the sloop ready. He and his brother lifted the trunk into the cart, covered it with straw and conveyed it to the point of embarkation. From there they transferred it on board in the sloop’s dory. Then Mateo returned for additional orders.</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant was ready. She had settled all business matters with Angela, and was impatiently waiting. She wore a long, loose black-silk duster that she often walked about in when the evenings were chilly. On her head was a small round hat, and over it the apricot-coloured lace mantilla.</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant was ready. She had settled all business matters with Angela, and was impatiently waiting. She wore a long, loose black-silk duster that she often walked about in when the evenings were chilly. On her head was a small round hat, and over it the apricot-coloured lace mantilla.</p>
<p>Dusk had quickly followed the short twilight. Mateo led her by dark and grass-grown streets toward the point behind which the sloop was anchored. On turning a corner they beheld the Hotel Orilla del Mar three streets away, nebulously aglow with its array of kerosene lamps.</p>
<p>Mrs. Conant paused, with streaming eyes. “I must, I <i>must</i> see him once before I go,” she murmured in anguish. But even then she did not falter in her decision. Quickly she invented a plan by which she might speak to him, and yet make her departure without his knowing. She would walk past the hotel, ask some one to call him out and talk a few moments on some trivial excuse, leaving him expecting to see her at her home at seven.</p>
<p>She unpinned her hat and gave it to Mateo. “Keep this, and wait here till I come,” she ordered. Then she draped the mantilla over her head as she usually did when walking after sunset, and went straight to the Orilla del Mar.</p>
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conant paused, with streaming eyes. “I must, I <em>must</em> see him once before I go,” she murmured in anguish. But even then she did not falter in her decision. Quickly she invented a plan by which she might speak to him, and yet make her departure without his knowing. She would walk past the hotel, ask some one to call him out and talk a few moments on some trivial excuse, leaving him expecting to see her at her home at seven.</p>
<p>She unpinned her hat and gave it to Mateo. “Keep this, and wait here till I come,” she ordered. Then she draped the mantilla over her head as she usually did when walking after sunset, and went straight to the Orilla del <abbr class="eoc">Mar.</abbr></p>
<p>She was glad to see the bulky, white-clad figure of Tio Pancho standing alone on the gallery.</p>
<p>“Tio Pancho,” she said, with a charming smile, “may I trouble you to ask Mr. Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak with him?”</p>
<p>“Tio Pancho,” she said, with a charming smile, “may I trouble you to ask <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak with him?”</p>
<p>Tio Pancho bowed as an elephant bows.</p>
<p>“Buenas tardes, Señora Conant,” he said, as a cavalier talks. And then he went on, less at his ease:</p>
<p>“But does not the señora know that Señor Merriam sailed on the <i>Pajaro</i> for Panama at three o’clock of this afternoon?”</p>
<p>“But does not the señora know that Señor Merriam sailed on the <i epub:type="se:vessel.ship">Pajaro</i> for Panama at three o’clock of this afternoon?”</p>
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<head>
<title>Chapter 18</title>
<title>Tommy’s Burglar</title>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
<section id="chapter-18" epub:type="chapter">
<h2>TOMMY’S BURGLAR</h2>
<p>At ten o’clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over one of St. George Rathbone’s novels on the third floor, but she was overruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.</p>
<section id="tommys-burglar" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
<h2 epub:type="title">Tommy’s Burglar</h2>
<p>At ten o’clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over one of <abbr>St.</abbr> George Rathbone’s novels on the third floor, but she was overruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.</p>
<p>The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must have action and not too much description in a 2,000-word story.</p>
<p>In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the silver-closet.</p>
<p>Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light. The dark velvet portières parted to admit a fair-haired boy of eight in pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.</p>
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<p>“You know I’m not,” answered Tommy. “Don’t you suppose I know fact from fiction. If this wasn’t a story I’d yell like an Indian when I saw you; and you’d probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk.”</p>
<p>“I see,” said the burglar, “that you’re on to your job. Go on with the performance.”</p>
<p>Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him.</p>
<p>“Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no friends?”</p>
<p>“Why do you go around robbing strangers, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Burglar? Have you no friends?”</p>
<p>“I see what you’re driving at,” said the burglar, with a dark frown. “It’s the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is going to lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib where there’s a kid around, it happens.”</p>
<p>“Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef that the butler has left on the dining table?” said Tommy. “I’m afraid it’s growing late.”</p>
<p>The burglar accommodated.</p>

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<a href="text/imprint.xhtml">Imprint</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/chapter-1.xhtml"><span epub:type="z3998:roman">I</span>: CHAPTER_TITLE</a>
<a href="text/a-blackjack-bargainer.xhtml">A Blackjack Bargainer</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/a-chaparral-christmas-gift.xhtml">A Chaparral Christmas Gift</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/a-little-local-colour.xhtml">A Little Local Colour</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/a-matter-of-mean-elevation.xhtml">A Matter of Mean Elevation</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/a-newspaper-story.xhtml">A Newspaper Story</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/a-sacrifice-hit.xhtml">A Sacrifice Hit</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/a-technical-error.xhtml">A Technical Error</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/blind-mans-holiday.xhtml">Blind Man’s Holiday</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/calloways-code.xhtml">Calloway’s Code</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/georgias-ruling.xhtml">Georgia’s Ruling</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/girl.xhtml">“Girl”</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/madame-bo-peep-of-the-ranches.xhtml">Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/one-dollars-worth.xhtml">One Dollar’s Worth</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/sociology-in-serge-and-straw.xhtml">Sociology in Serge and Straw</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/suite-homes-and-their-romance.xhtml">Suite Homes and Their Romance</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-hypotheses-of-failure.xhtml">The Hypotheses of Failure</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-marry-month-of-may.xhtml">The Marry Month of May</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-ransom-of-red-chief.xhtml">The Ransom of Red Chief</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-roads-we-take.xhtml">The Roads We Take</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-song-and-the-sergeant.xhtml">The Song and the Sergeant</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-theory-and-the-hound.xhtml">The Theory and the Hound</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-whirligig-of-life.xhtml">The Whirligig of Life</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/the-world-and-the-door.xhtml">The World and the Door</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/tommys-burglar.xhtml">Tommy’s Burglar</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/endnotes.xhtml">Endnotes</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/colophon.xhtml">Colophon</a>
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<a href="text/imprint.xhtml" epub:type="frontmatter imprint">Imprint</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/chapter-1.xhtml" epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">WORK_TITLE</a>
<a href="text/a-blackjack-bargainer.xhtml" epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">Whirligigs</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="text/endnotes.xhtml" epub:type="backmatter endnotes">Endnotes</a>
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<li>
<a href="text/colophon.xhtml" epub:type="backmatter colophon">Colophon</a>