A Technical Error explained simply

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. 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. 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. 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. Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam lived on a gallop between the two places. 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. 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. One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as ostentatiously as the black, waxy mud would permit. I knew that this information would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam’s soul, so I refrained from including it in the news of the city that I retailed on my return. But on the next afternoon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of Simmons, an old-time pal of Sam’s, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher, rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigarettes before he would talk. When he did make oration, his words were these: “Say, Sam, there’s been a description of a galoot miscallin’ himself Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the past two weeks. You know who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your Uncle Newt shot last February. You know what he done this morning? He killed your brother Lester—shot him in the co’t-house yard.” I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said: “He did, did he? He killed Lester?” “The same,” said Simmons. “And he did more. He run away with your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to know, so I rode out to impart the information.” “I am much obliged, Jim,” said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his mouth. “Yes, I’m glad you rode Out. Yes, I’m right glad.” “Well, I’ll be ridin’ back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store don’t know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the back.” “Shot him in the back?” “Yes, while he was hitchin’ his hoss.” “I’m much obliged, Jim.” “I kind of thought you’d like to know as soon as you could.” “Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?” “Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store.” “And you say—” “Yes, Sam. Everybody seen ’em drive away together in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was drivin’ the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They’ll be hard to overtake right away.” “And which—” “I was goin’ on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there’s no tellin’ which forks they’ll take—you know that.” “All right, Jim; much obliged.” “You’re welcome, Sam.” Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels. Twenty yards away he reined up and called back: “You don’t want no—assistance, as you might say?” “Not any, thanks.” “I didn’t think you would. Well, so long!” Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite “The Gipsy’s Curse.” The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco’s thrilling melodramas demanded instead. “I wonder,” said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, “if the cook has any cold beans left over!” He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into Sam’s private room, where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the saddles of his favourite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling “The Cowboy’s Lament” abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post. Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette belonging. You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West. It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef. “Nothing like a good meal before a long ride,” said Sam. “Eat hearty.” I had a sudden suspicion. “Why did you have two horses saddled?” I asked. “One, two—one, two,” said Sam. “You can count, can’t you?” His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice. It was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat more beans. In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben Tatum’s steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags. I knew that Ben Tatum’s card to play was flight—flight until he came within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it might lead. During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some subjects too big even for the words in the “Unabridged.” Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the right place—laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humour to have suppressed those anecdotes. Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table. In the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their meal, but looked around at times uneasily. The girl was dressed in brown—one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers adorning it. The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed very short. He was such a man as you might see anywhere. There they were—the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There we were—the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the supernumerary who writes these words. 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. “What are you waiting for, Sam?” I said in a whisper. “Let him have it now!” Sam gave a melancholy sigh. “You don’t understand; but he does,” he said. “He 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 can’t 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!” 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. 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. 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. Five miles farther, we came upon the future great Western city of Chandler. The horses of pursuers and pursued were starved and weary. There was one hotel that offered danger to man and entertainment to beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at the ringing of a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long ago. The dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie. Just as we were eating apple pie—how Ben Davises and tragedy impinge upon each other!—I noticed Sam looking with keen intentness at our quarry where they were seated at a table across the room. The girl still wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the veil drawn down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with his close cropped head held low. “There’s a code,” I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, “that won’t let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder, there ain’t one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a man!” And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped a Colt’s automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into the body that the brown dress covered—the brown dress with the lace collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt. The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose life a woman’s glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code. SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE 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. 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. 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.” 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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. “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?” 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. “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.” Turpin’s suspicions were allayed for the time. But one day soon there came an anonymous letter to him that read: 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. A MAN WHO KNOWS. Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that he lived in. “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.” 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. 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. 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. “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?” “She is not,” said Turpin. “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.” “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.” “Nothing but Browning,” said the captain. “Hear that?” “Thanatopsis by a nose,” drawled the man at the telephone. “That’s not Browning; that’s Longfellow,” said Turpin, who sometimes read books. “Back to the pasture!” exclaimed the captain. “Longfellow made the pacing-to-wagon record of 7.53 ’way back in 1868.” “I believe there’s something queer about this joint,” repeated Turpin. “I don’t see it,” said the captain. “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.” A number of racing sheets were tacked close together, covering a large space on one of the walls. Turpin, suspicious, tore several of them down. A door, previously hidden, was revealed. Turpin placed an ear to the crack and listened intently. He heard the soft hum of many voices, low and guarded laughter, and a sharp, metallic clicking and scraping as if from a multitude of tiny but busy objects. “My God! It is as I feared!” whispered Turpin to himself. “Summon your men at once!” he called to the captain. “She is in there, I know.” At the blowing of the captain’s whistle the uniformed plain-clothes men rushed up the stairs into the pool-room. When they saw the betting paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to know why they had been summoned. But the captain pointed to the locked door and bade them break it down. In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried. Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels. The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin’s mind. Nearly a score of women—women expensively and fashionably clothed, many beautiful and of refined appearance—had been seated at little marble-topped tables. When the police burst open the door they shrieked and ran here and there like gayly plumed birds that had been disturbed in a tropical grove. Some became hysterical; one or two fainted; several knelt at the feet of the officers and besought them for mercy on account of their families and social position. A man who had been seated behind a desk had seized a roll of currency as large as the ankle of a Paradise Roof Gardens chorus girl and jumped out of the window. Half a dozen attendants huddled at one end of the room, breathless from fear. Upon the tables remained the damning and incontrovertible evidences of the guilt of the habituées of that sinister room—dish after dish heaped high with ice cream, and surrounded by stacks of empty ones, scraped to the last spoonful. “Ladies,” said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoners, “I’ll not hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and good standing in the community, with hard-working husbands and childer at home. But I’ll read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the next room there’s a 20-to-1 shot just dropped in under the wire three lengths ahead of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands’ money instead of helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid’s on the ice-cream freezer in this precinct.” Claude Turpin’s wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He led her to their apartment in stern silence. There she wept so remorsefully and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot his just anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien in his arms and forgave her. “Darling,” she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, “I know I done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt some strange, sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only eleven saucers.” “Say no more,” said Claude, gently as he fondly caressed her waving curls. “And you are sure that you fully forgive me?” asked Vivien, gazing at him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue. “Almost sure, little one,” answered Claude, stooping and lightly touching her snowy forehead with his lips. “I’ll let you know later on. I’ve got a month’s salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old steeplechase to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you are It again—see?” THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE 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. 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. The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake of dignity, and moved to let them enter. “We-all,” said the woman, in a voice like the wind blowing through pine boughs, “wants a divo’ce.” She looked at Ransie to see if he noted any flaw or ambiguity or evasion or partiality or self-partisanship in her statement of their business. “A divo’ce,” repeated Ransie, with a solemn nod. “We-all can’t git along together nohow. It’s lonesome enough fur to live in the mount’ins when a man and a woman keers fur one another. But when she’s a-spittin’ like a wildcat or a-sullenin’ like a hoot-owl in the cabin, a man ain’t got no call to live with her.” “When he’s a no-’count varmint,” said the woman, “without any especial warmth, a-traipsin’ along of scalawags and moonshiners and a-layin’ on his back pizen ’ith co’n whiskey, and a-pesterin’ folks with a pack o’ hungry, triflin’ houn’s to feed!” “When she keeps a-throwin’ skillet lids,” came Ransie’s antiphony, “and slings b’ilin’ water on the best coon-dog in the Cumberlands, and sets herself agin’ cookin’ a man’s victuals, and keeps him awake o’ nights accusin’ him of a sight of doin’s!” “When he’s al’ays a-fightin’ the revenues, and gits a hard name in the mount’ins fur a mean man, who’s gwine to be able fur to sleep o’ nights?” The Justice of the Peace stirred deliberately to his duties. He placed his one chair and a wooden stool for his petitioners. He opened his book of statutes on the table and scanned the index. Presently he wiped his spectacles and shifted his inkstand. “The law and the statutes,” said he, “air silent on the subjeck of divo’ce as fur as the jurisdiction of this co’t air concerned. But, accordin’ to equity and the Constitution and the golden rule, it’s a bad barg’in that can’t run both ways. If a justice of the peace can marry a couple, it’s plain that he is bound to be able to divo’ce ’em. This here office will issue a decree of divo’ce and abide by the decision of the Supreme Co’t to hold it good.” Ransie Bilbro drew a small tobacco-bag from his trousers pocket. Out of this he shook upon the table a five-dollar note. “Sold a b’arskin and two foxes fur that,” he remarked. “It’s all the money we got.” “The regular price of a divo’ce in this co’t,” said the Justice, “air five dollars.” He stuffed the bill into the pocket of his homespun vest with a deceptive air of indifference. With much bodily toil and mental travail he wrote the decree upon half a sheet of foolscap, and then copied it upon the other. Ransie Bilbro and his wife listened to his reading of the document that was to give them freedom: “Know all men by these presents that Ransie Bilbro and his wife, Ariela Bilbro, this day personally appeared before me and promises that hereinafter they will neither love, honour, nor obey each other, neither for better nor worse, being of sound mind and body, and accept summons for divorce according to the peace and dignity of the State. Herein fail not, so help you God. Benaja Widdup, justice of the peace in and for the county of Piedmont, State of Tennessee.” The Justice was about to hand one of the documents to Ransie. The voice of Ariela delayed the transfer. Both men looked at her. Their dull masculinity was confronted by something sudden and unexpected in the woman. “Judge, don’t you give him that air paper yit. ’Tain’t all settled, nohow. I got to have my rights first. I got to have my ali-money. ’Tain’t no kind of a way to do fur a man to divo’ce his wife ’thout her havin’ a cent fur to do with. I’m a-layin’ off to be a-goin’ up to brother Ed’s up on Hogback Mount’in. I’m bound fur to hev a pa’r of shoes and some snuff and things besides. Ef Rance kin affo’d a divo’ce, let him pay me ali-money.” Ransie Bilbro was stricken to dumb perplexity. There had been no previous hint of alimony. Women were always bringing up startling and unlooked-for issues. Justice Benaja Widdup felt that the point demanded judicial decision. The authorities were also silent on the subject of alimony. But the woman’s feet were bare. The trail to Hogback Mountain was steep and flinty. “Ariela Bilbro,” he asked, in official tones, “how much did you ’low would be good and sufficient ali-money in the case befo’ the co’t.” “I ’lowed,” she answered, “fur the shoes and all, to say five dollars. That ain’t much fur ali-money, but I reckon that’ll git me to up brother Ed’s.” “The amount,” said the Justice, “air not onreasonable. Ransie Bilbro, you air ordered by the co’t to pay the plaintiff the sum of five dollars befo’ the decree of divo’ce air issued.” “I hain’t no mo’ money,” breathed Ransie, heavily. “I done paid you all I had.” “Otherwise,” said the Justice, looking severely over his spectacles, “you air in contempt of co’t.” “I reckon if you gimme till to-morrow,” pleaded the husband, “I mout be able to rake or scrape it up somewhars. I never looked for to be a-payin’ no ali-money.” “The case air adjourned,” said Benaja Widdup, “till to-morrow, when you-all will present yo’selves and obey the order of the co’t. Followin’ of which the decrees of divo’ce will be delivered.” He sat down in the door and began to loosen a shoestring. “We mout as well go down to Uncle Ziah’s,” decided Ransie, “and spend the night.” He climbed into the cart on one side, and Ariela climbed in on the other. Obeying the flap of his rope, the little red bull slowly came around on a tack, and the cart crawled away in the nimbus arising from its wheels. Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup smoked his elder-stem pipe. Late in the afternoon he got his weekly paper, and read it until the twilight dimmed its lines. Then he lit the tallow candle on his table, and read until the moon rose, marking the time for supper. He lived in the double log cabin on the slope near the girdled poplar. Going home to supper he crossed a little branch darkened by a laurel thicket. The dark figure of a man stepped from the laurels and pointed a rifle at his breast. His hat was pulled down low, and something covered most of his face. “I want yo’ money,” said the figure, “’thout any talk. I’m gettin’ nervous, and my finger’s a-wabblin’ on this here trigger.” “I’ve only got f-f-five dollars,” said the Justice, producing it from his vest pocket. “Roll it up,” came the order, “and stick it in the end of this here gun-bar’l.” The bill was crisp and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trembling found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle. “Now I reckon you kin be goin’ along,” said the robber. The Justice lingered not on his way. 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. “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.” “You air a-goin’ to your brother Ed’s?” asked Ransie, with fine unconcern. “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.” “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.” 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. 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. “Be kind o’ lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ranse,” he said. Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the sunlight. He did not look at Ariela. “I ’low it might be lonesome,” he said; “but when folks gits mad and wants a divo’ce, you can’t make folks stay.” “There’s others wanted a divo’ce,” said Ariela, speaking to the wooden stool. “Besides, nobody don’t want nobody to stay.” “Nobody never said they didn’t.” “Nobody never said they did. I reckon I better start on now to brother Ed’s.” “Nobody can’t wind that old clock.” “Want me to go back along ’ith you in the cart and wind it fur you, Ranse?” The mountaineer’s countenance was proof against emotion. But he reached out a big hand and enclosed Ariela’s thin brown one. Her soul peeped out once through her impassive face, hallowing it. “Them hounds shan’t pester you no more,” said Ransie. “I reckon I been mean and low down. You wind that clock, Ariela.” “My heart hit’s in that cabin, Ranse,” she whispered, “along ’ith you. I ai’nt a-goin’ to git mad no more. Le’s be startin’, Ranse, so’s we kin git home by sundown.” Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup interposed as they started for the door, forgetting his presence. “In the name of the State of Tennessee,” he said, “I forbid you-all to be a-defyin’ of its laws and statutes. This co’t is mo’ than willin’ and full of joy to see the clouds of discord and misunderstandin’ rollin’ away from two lovin’ hearts, but it air the duty of the co’t to p’eserve the morals and integrity of the State. The co’t reminds you that you air no longer man and wife, but air divo’ced by regular decree, and as such air not entitled to the benefits and ’purtenances of the mattermonal estate.” Ariela caught Ransie’s arm. Did those words mean that she must lose him now when they had just learned the lesson of life? “But the co’t air prepared,” went on the Justice, “fur to remove the disabilities set up by the decree of divo’ce. The co’t air on hand to perform the solemn ceremony of marri’ge, thus fixin’ things up and enablin’ the parties in the case to resume the honour’ble and elevatin’ state of mattermony which they desires. The fee fur performin’ said ceremony will be, in this case, to wit, five dollars.” Ariela caught the gleam of promise in his words. Swiftly her hand went to her bosom. Freely as an alighting dove the bill fluttered to the Justice’s table. Her sallow cheek coloured as she stood hand in hand with Ransie and listened to the reuniting words. Ransie helped her into the cart, and climbed in beside her. The little red bull turned once more, and they set out, hand-clasped, for the mountains. Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup sat in his door and took off his shoes. Once again he fingered the bill tucked down in his vest pocket. Once again he smoked his elder-stem pipe. Once again the speckled hen swaggered down the main street of the “settlement,” cackling foolishly. A SACRIFICE HIT The editor of the Hearthstone Magazine 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. “The Hearthstone,” 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.” That is the editor’s theory; and this is the way he carries it out: 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 Hearthstone Magazine. 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. 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. The Hearthstone Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to be found on several successful works—all recommended, says the editor, by the Hearthstone’s army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according to talkative members of the editorial staff) the Hearthstone 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. 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.” But nevertheless the Hearthstone 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 Hearthstone Company the manuscript of “The Under World”), has expectations of becoming editor of the magazine some day. This method of the Hearthstone 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. 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. 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 Hearthstone. Slayton finished “Love Is All,” and took it to the Hearthstone in person. The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided under by a janitor. 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. 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. “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.” Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices of the Hearthstone. 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. 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. Miss Puffkin, the Hearthstone 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. The writer’s daring and self-sacrificing project was this: He knew that the editor of the Hearthstone 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, 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 Hearthstone the novelette “Love Is All”? 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. 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. 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! On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the Hearthstone office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given to her to read, and resign her position as stenographer. “Was there anything—er—that—er—you particularly fancied in the stories you are going to turn in?” asked Slayton with a thumping heart. “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.” That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the Hearthstone office. He felt that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the Hearthstone, literary reputation would soon be his. 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. Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the exquisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming success. 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. “The boss told me to tell you he’s sorry,” said the boy, “but your manuscript ain’t available for the magazine.” 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?” “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.’” “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.” 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: “The –––– you say!” THE ROADS WE TAKE 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. 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!” 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. 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. 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. 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. Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop. 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. “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.” “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’.” “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!” “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. “Old Bolivar’s mighty nigh played out,” he said, slowly. “I wish that sorrel of yours hadn’t got hurt.” “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?” “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.” “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.” Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree. “I’d a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn’t hurt himself, Bob,” he said again, almost pathetically. “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.” 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. “Stop your funnin’,” said Bob, with a grin. “We got to be hittin’ the breeze.” “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.” “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!” 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.” 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. 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.” 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. I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & 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. “Ahem! Peabody,” said Dodson, blinking. “I must have fallen asleep. I had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?” “Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to settle his deal in X. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you remember.” “Yes, I remember. What is X. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?” “One eighty-five, sir.” “Then that’s his price.” “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.” 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. “He will settle at one eighty-five,” said Dodson. “Bolivar cannot carry double.” A BLACKJACK BARGAINER 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. 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. 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. Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left—Colonel Abner Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree’s father. The feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong and slaughter. But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep—but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years. He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity. One more chance—he was saying to himself—if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted. He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. There had come from “back yan’” in the mountains two of the strangest creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. “Back yan’,” with a wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the mountaineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed gorges, the haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf’s den, and the boudoir of the bear. In the cabin far up on Blackjack’s shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years. They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him “crazy as a loon.” He acknowledged no occupation save that of a squirrel hunter, but he “moonshined” occasionally by way of diversion. Once the “revenues” had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he had been sent to state’s prison for two years. Released, he popped back into his hole like an angry weasel. Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into Blackjack’s bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. “Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?” he inquired. “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.” “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.” “You’ve got it; and we ’uns want it. ‘Take the money,’ says Missis Garvey, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’” Goree shook his head. “The cupboard’s bare,” he said. “We’ve riz,” pursued the mountaineer, undeflected from his object, “a heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner every day. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society. But there’s somethin’ we need we ain’t got. She says it ought to been put in the ’ventory ov the sale, but it tain’t thar. ‘Take the money, then,’ says she, ‘and buy it fa’r and squar’.’” “Out with it,” said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient. Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing his unblinking eyes upon Goree’s. “There’s a old feud,” he said distinctly and slowly, “’tween you ’uns and the Coltranes.” 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. “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’.’” The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a roll of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table. “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.” 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. “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?” Goree laughed self-consciously. 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. “Two hundred,” repeated Garvey. “Thar’s the money.” 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. “Do you come to me,” he shouted, “seriously with such a ridiculous, insulting, darned-fool proposition?” “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. “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?” 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.” 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. “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.” The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed him, folded it with immense labour, and laced it carefully in his pocket. Goree was standing near the window. “Step here,” he said, raising his finger, “and I’ll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he goes, down the other side of the street.” 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. “Is that him? Why, that’s the man who sent me to the pen’tentiary once!” “He used to be district attorney,” said Goree carelessly. “And, by the way, he’s a first-class shot.” “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!” He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight perplexity. “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.” “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—” “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!” 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. 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. “On the table,” said one of them, and they deposited him there among the litter of his unprofitable books and papers. “Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he’s liquored up,” sighed the sheriff reflectively. “Too much,” said the gay attorney. “A man has no business to play poker who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped to-night.” “Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain’t had a cent fur over a month, I know.” “Struck a client, maybe. Well, let’s get home before daylight. He’ll be all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the cranium.” The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching, white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table’s débris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking higher, he discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly, smooth face of Colonel Abner Coltrane. A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members of these two families faced each other in peace. Goree’s eyelids puckered as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he smiled serenely. “Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play?” he said calmly. “Do you know me, Yancey?” asked Coltrane. “Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end.” So he had—twenty-four years ago; when Yancey’s father was his best friend. Goree’s eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. “Lie still, and I’ll bring you some,” said he. There was a pump in the yard at the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the click of its handle, and the bubbling of the falling stream. Coltrane brought a pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink. Presently Goree sat up—a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax soiled and crumpled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He tried to wave one of his hands toward the colonel. “Ex-excuse—everything, will you?” he said. “I must have drunk too much whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table.” His brows knitted into a puzzled frown. “Out with the boys awhile?” asked Coltrane kindly. “No, I went nowhere. I haven’t had a dollar to spend in the last two months. Struck the demijohn too often, I reckon, as usual.” Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder. “A little while ago, Yancey,” he began, “you asked me if I had brought Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren’t quite awake then, and must have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I want you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old playmate, and to my old friend’s son. They know that I am going to bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay until you are yourself again, and as much longer as you will. We heard of your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with me?” “Trouble!” said Goree, opening his eyes wide. “There was never any trouble between us that I know of. I’m sure we’ve always been the best friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home as I am—a drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and gambler—” He lurched from the table into his armchair, and began to weep maudlin tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple mountain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting upon the genuineness of the invitation. Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help in the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber from a high mountain-side to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once invented a device for this purpose—a series of slides and chutes upon which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow, delighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread upon the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in demonstration of what he could and would do. The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning again toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and his thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the progress he had made. Bethel received the surprise of its existence that afternoon when a Coltrane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by side they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down across the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had brushed and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he was unsteady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the contemplation of some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood, relying upon the influence of changed surroundings to restore his equilibrium. Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a collapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The colonel, foreseeing such a condition, had provided a small flask of whisky for the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it almost with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and by he was recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he pulled up his horse suddenly, and said: “I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did I get that money?” “Take it easy, Yancey. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We’ll go fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping there like bullfrogs. We’ll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a picnic on Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham sandwich tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?” Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so Goree retired again into brooding silence. By late Afternoon they had travelled ten of the twelve miles between Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree place; a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road was now steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The tilted aisles of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air put to shame the pharmacopæia. The glades were dark with mossy shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels. On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze. Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of Painter’s Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the rocky way, was familiar to him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the music of “Home, Sweet Home.” They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream. Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, zig-zagging among the trees. “That’s Garvey,” said Coltrane; “the man you sold out to. There’s no doubt but he’s considerably cracked. I had to send him up for moonshining once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I believed him irresponsible. Why, what’s the matter, Yancey?” Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its colour. “Do I look queer, too?” he asked, trying to smile. “I’m just remembering a few more things.” Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. “I recollect now where I got that two hundred dollars.” “Don’t think of it,” said Coltrane cheerfully. “Later on we’ll figure it all out together.” They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the hill Goree stopped again. “Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel?” he asked. “Sort of foolish proud about appearances?” The colonel’s eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of flax and the faded slouch hat. “It seems to me,” he replied, mystified, but humouring him, “I remember a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair, and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge.” “Right you are,” said Goree eagerly. “And it’s in me yet, though it don’t show. Oh, I’m as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as Lucifer. I’m going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a little matter.” “Speak out, Yancey. We’ll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of Blue Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella’s peacock’s tail to wear in your hat.” “I’m in earnest. In a few minutes we’ll pass the house up there on the hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a century. Strangers live there now—and look at me! I am about to show myself to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar. Colonel Coltrane, I’m ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your coat and hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a foolish pride, but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I pass the old place.” “Now, what does this mean?” said Coltrane to himself, as he compared his companion’s sane looks and quiet demeanour with his strange request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange. The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly the same size—rather tall, portly, and erect. Twenty-five years were between them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree looked older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel had the smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on Goree’s disreputable old flax coat and faded slouch hat. “Now,” said Goree, taking up the reins, “I’m all right. I want you to ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can get a good look at me. They’ll see I’m no back number yet, by any means. I guess I’ll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow. Let’s ride on.” He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he had been requested. Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes were turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and hiding-place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself, “Will the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?” It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he saw what he had been looking for—a puff of white smoke, coming from the thick cedars in one corner. He toppled so slowly to the left that Coltrane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with one arm. The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his aim. He had sent the bullet where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would pass—through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane’s black frock coat. Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel’s arm kept him steady. The little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon Coltrane’s fingers, which held his bridle. “Good friend,” he said, and that was all. Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, considering all things, the best showing that was in his power. THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT 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. 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. 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. The oral warfare of four immoderate tongues was directed at Miss Clarice Carroll, the twinkling star of the small aggregation. Excepting the downcast comedian, all members of the party united in casting upon her with vehemence the blame of some momentous misfortune. Fifty times they told her: “It is your fault, Clarice—it is you alone who spoilt the scene. It is only of late that you have acted this way. At this rate the sketch will have to be taken off.” Miss Carroll was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a vivacity that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a scorching denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly menaced the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would have been a scream had it not possessed so pure a musical quality. She hurled back at the attacking four their denunciations in tones sweet, but of too great carrying power for a Broadway restaurant. Finally they exhausted her patience both as a woman and an artist. She sprang up like a panther, managed to smash half a dozen plates and glasses with one royal sweep of her arm, and defied her critics. They rose and wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked a trifle sadder and disinterested. The manager came tripping and suggested peace. He was told to go to the popular synonym for war so promptly that the affair might have happened at The Hague. 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. “Disorderly conduct in a restaurant,” said the policeman who had brought the party in. 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. “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.” “Who makes the charge?” asked the sergeant. “Me,” said a white-aproned voice in the rear. “De restaurant sent me to. De gang was raisin’ a rough-house and breakin’ dishes.” “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—” “It’s not true, sergeant,” cried the clear voice of Miss Clarice Carroll. In a long coat of tan silk and a red-plumed hat, she bounded before the desk. “It’s not my fault,” she cried indignantly. “How dare they say such a thing! I’ve played the title rôle ever since it was staged, and if you want to know who made it a success, ask the public—that’s all.” “What Miss Carroll says is true in part,” said the author. “For five months the comedietta was a drawing-card in the best houses. But during the last two weeks it has lost favour. There is one scene in it in which Miss Carroll made a big hit. Now she hardly gets a hand out of it. She spoils it by acting it entirely different from her old way.” “It is not my fault,” reiterated the actress. “There are only two of you on in the scene,” argued the playwright hotly, “you and Delmars, here—” “Then it’s his fault,” declared Miss Carroll, with a lightning glance of scorn from her dark eyes. The comedian caught it, and gazed with increased melancholy at the panels of the sergeant’s desk. The night was a dull one in that particular police station. The sergeant’s long-blunted curiosity awoke a little. “I’ve heard you,” he said to the author. And then he addressed the thin-faced and ascetic-looking lady of the company who played “Aunt Turnip-top” in the little comedy. “Who do you think spoils the scene you are fussing about?” he asked. “I’m no knocker,” said that lady, “and everybody knows it. So, when I say that Clarice falls down every time in that scene I’m judging her art and not herself. She was great in it once. She does it something fierce now. It’ll dope the show if she keeps it up.” The sergeant looked at the comedian. “You and the lady have this scene together, I understand. I suppose there’s no use asking you which one of you queers it?” The comedian avoided the direct rays from the two fixed stars of Miss Carroll’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, looking down at his patent-leather toes. “Are you one of the actors?” asked the sergeant of a dwarfish youth with a middle-aged face. “Why, say!” replied the last Thespian witness, “you don’t notice any tin spear in my hands, do you? You haven’t heard me shout: ‘See, the Emperor comes!’ since I’ve been in here, have you? I guess I’m on the stage long enough for ’em not to start a panic by mistaking me for a thin curl of smoke rising above the footlights.” “In your opinion, if you’ve got one,” said the sergeant, “is the frost that gathers on the scene in question the work of the lady or the gentleman who takes part in it?” The middle-aged youth looked pained. “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.” Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating. “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. “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?” “How long will it take?” asked the sergeant, dubiously. “Eight minutes,” said the playwright. “The entire play consumes but thirty.” “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.” 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. “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. “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. “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.” “What’s the trouble with the scene now?” asked the sergeant. “Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle of it,” said the playwright wrathfully. With a wide gesture of her ever-moving arms the actress waved back the little group of spectators, leaving a space in front of the desk for the scene of her vindication or fall. Then she whipped off her long tan cloak and tossed it across the arm of the policeman who still stood officially among them. Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was like a humming-bird—green and golden and purple. And then she danced a fluttering, fantastic dance, so agile and light and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll Comedy Company broke into applause at the art of it. And at the proper time Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking the uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled sergeant himself gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand from all. Then began the most fantastic part of the scene—the wooing of the nymph by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself—eccentric and prankish, with the nymph in coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the gorilla as he sang “I’ll Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home.” The song was a lyric of merit. The words were nonsense, as befitted the play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words. During one verse of the song the wood nymph performed the grotesque evolutions designed for the scene. At the middle of the second verse she stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla’s last leap had brought him to her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand, until he had finished the haunting-lyric that was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a piece of putty. When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden flow of tears with both hands. “There!” cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; “there you have it, sergeant. For two weeks she has spoiled that scene in just that manner at every performance. I have begged her to consider that it is not Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing. Do you wonder now at our impatience? Tears for the gorilla song! The play is lost!” Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared suddenly, and pointed a desperate finger at Delmars. “It is you—you who have done this,” she cried wildly. “You never sang that song that way until lately. It is your doing.” “I give it up,” said the sergeant. And then the gray-haired matron of the police station came forward from behind the sergeant’s chair. “Must an old woman teach you all?” she said. She went up to Miss Carroll and took her hand. “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?” Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning glance of her eye. He came toward her, melancholy. “Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?” she asked, with a catching breath. “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.” “Silly!” said the matron; “why didn’t you speak?” “No, no,” cried the wood nymph, “his way was the best. I didn’t know, but—it was just what I wanted, Bobby.” She sprang like a green grasshopper; and the comedian opened his arms, and—smiled. “Get out of this,” roared the desk sergeant to the waiting waiter from the restaurant. “There’s nothing doing here for you.” ONE DOLLAR’S WORTH 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: JUDGE: 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. Yours respectfully, RATTLESNAKE. 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. 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. 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. Court was in session at Brownsville. Most of the cases to be tried were charges of smuggling, counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and violations of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican, Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office in the court-house. The deputy and a reputable druggist were prepared to swear that Ortiz paid for a bottle of medicine with it. The coin was a poor counterfeit, soft, dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the day before the morning on which the docket would reach the case of Ortiz, and the district attorney was preparing himself for trial. “Not much need of having in high-priced experts to prove the coin’s queer, is there, Kil?” smiled Littlefield, as he thumped the dollar down upon the table, where it fell with no more ring than would have come from a lump of putty. “I guess the Greaser’s as good as behind the bars,” said the deputy, easing up his holsters. “You’ve got him dead. If it had been just one time, these Mexicans can’t tell good money from bad; but this little yaller rascal belongs to a gang of counterfeiters, I know. This is the first time I’ve been able to catch him doing the trick. He’s got a girl down there in them Mexican jacals on the river bank. I seen her one day when I was watching him. She’s as pretty as a red heifer in a flower bed.” Littlefield shoved the counterfeit dollar into his pocket, and slipped his memoranda of the case into an envelope. Just then a bright, winsome face, as frank and jolly as a boy’s, appeared in the doorway, and in walked Nancy Derwent. “Oh, Bob, didn’t court adjourn at twelve to-day until to-morrow?” she asked of Littlefield. “It did,” said the district attorney, “and I’m very glad of it. I’ve got a lot of rulings to look up, and—” “Now, that’s just like you. I wonder you and father don’t turn to law books or rulings or something! I want you to take me out plover-shooting this afternoon. Long Prairie is just alive with them. Don’t say no, please! I want to try my new twelve-bore hammerless. I’ve sent to the livery stable to engage Fly and Bess for the buckboard; they stand fire so nicely. I was sure you would go.” 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. 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. 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. “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!” “Mr. Kilpatrick!” 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: “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.” It was an old story to the district attorney. “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.” 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. “What did she say then?” asked the district attorney. “Nothing special,” said the deputy. “She said: ‘If the life of the one’—let’s see how it went—‘Si la vida de ella á quien tu amas—if the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.’” Kilpatrick strolled out through the corridor in the direction of the marshal’s office. “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?” “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 Mr. Greaser guilty without leaving the box.” 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. “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.” 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. They started homeward at a gentle trot. When within a hundred yards of Piedra Creek a man rode out of the timber directly toward them. “It looks like the man we saw coming over,” remarked Miss Derwent. 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. “Now I know you, Mexico Sam!” muttered Littlefield to himself. “It was you who shook your rattles in that gentle epistle.” 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. 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. 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. “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.” “All right, Bob,” said Nancy steadily. “I’m not afraid. But you come close, too. Whoa, Bess; stand still, now!” She stroked Bess’s mane. Littlefield stood with his gun ready, praying that the desperado would come within range. But Mexico Sam was playing his vendetta along safe lines. He was a bird of different feather from the plover. His accurate eye drew an imaginary line of circumference around the area of danger from bird-shot, and upon this line he rode. His horse wheeled to the right, and as his victims rounded to the safe side of their equine breast-work he sent a ball through the district attorney’s hat. Once he miscalculated in making a détour, and over-stepped his margin. Littlefield’s gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked his head to the harmless patter of the shot. A few of them stung his horse, which pranced promptly back to the safety line. The desperado fired again. A little cry came from Nancy Derwent. Littlefield whirled, with blazing eyes, and saw the blood trickling down her cheek. “I’m not hurt, Bob—only a splinter struck me. I think he hit one of the wheel-spokes.” “Lord!” groaned Littlefield. “If I only had a charge of buckshot!” The ruffian got his horse still, and took careful aim. Fly gave a snort and fell in the harness, struck in the neck. Bess, now disabused of the idea that plover were being fired at, broke her traces and galloped wildly away. Mexican Sam sent a ball neatly through the fulness of Nancy Derwent’s shooting jacket. “Lie down—lie down!” snapped Littlefield. “Close to the horse—flat on the ground—so.” He almost threw her upon the grass against the back of the recumbent Fly. Oddly enough, at that moment the words of the Mexican girl returned to his mind: “If the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz.” Littlefield uttered an exclamation. “Open fire on him, Nan, across the horse’s back. Fire as fast as you can! You can’t hurt him, but keep him dodging shot for one minute while I try to work a little scheme.” Nancy gave a quick glance at Littlefield, and saw him take out his pocket-knife and open it. Then she turned her face to obey orders, keeping up a rapid fire at the enemy. 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. 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. The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned limp all over, and slowly fell from his horse—a dead rattlesnake. 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. “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.” At the noon recess Kilpatrick strolled into the district attorney’s office. “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.” “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.” A NEWSPAPER STORY 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief “personal,” running thus: DEAR JACK:—Forgive me. You were right. Meet me corner Madison and —th at 8.30 this morning. We leave at noon. PENITENT. 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. 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. 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. “Dear Jack,” she said, “I knew you would be here on time.” “I wonder what she means by that,” he was saying to himself; “but it’s all right, it’s all right.” A big wind puffed out of the west, picked up the paper from the sidewalk, opened it out and sent it flying and whirling down a side street. Up that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel buggy, the young man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for a recipe that he might win her for whom he sighed. The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay mingled with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for four blocks. Then a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony, the buggy became matchwood as foreordained, and the driver rested very quietly where he had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain brownstone mansion. They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one who made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes, bending over and saying, “Oh, it was you; it was you all the time, Bobby! Couldn’t you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and—” But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper. Policeman O’Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic. Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he stood a few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Café. One headline he spelled out ponderously: “The Papers to the Front in a Move to Help the Police.” But, whisht! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the crack of the door: “Here’s a nip for ye, Mike, ould man.” Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman O’Brine receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart, refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view with pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had blessed his labours. Policeman O’Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the arm of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he took the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she had written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get some braid. Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of the paper Johnny had brought. When she walked the rustling sound was an exact imitation of the real thing. On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped to talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at $5 a yard could make the sound that she heard when Gladys moved. The Brown girl, consumed by jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with pinched lips. Gladys proceeded toward the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle, vivifying, smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the beauty editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer in the paper, I believe, about cultivating kind feelings toward others in order to make plain features attractive. The labour leader against whom the paper’s solemn and weighty editorial injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked up the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic of silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage. The labour leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with table, pencil and paper and glued himself to his puzzle. Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed place, other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favour of arbitration, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted. Subsequent editions of the paper referred, in coloured inks, to the clarion tone of its successful denunciation of the labour leader’s intended designs. The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the proving of its potency. When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in that morning’s issue, and no doubt it had its effect. After this can any one doubt the power of the press? TOMMY’S BURGLAR 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. 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. 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. 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. “Are you a burglar?” he asked, in a sweet, childish voice. “Listen to that,” exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. “Am I a burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three-days’ growth of bristly beard on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and let me grease the bit, so I won’t wake up your mamma, who is lying down with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia who has been faithless to her trust.” “Oh, dear,” said Tommy, with a sigh. “I thought you would be more up-to-date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the pantry for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to hear De Reszke. But that isn’t my fault. It only shows how long the story has been knocking around among the editors. If the author had been wise he’d have changed it to Caruso in the proofs.” “Be quiet,” hissed the burglar, under his breath. “If you raise an alarm I’ll wring your neck like a rabbit’s.” “Like a chicken’s,” corrected Tommy. “You had that wrong. You don’t wring rabbits’ necks.” “Aren’t you afraid of me?” asked the burglar. “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.” “I see,” said the burglar, “that you’re on to your job. Go on with the performance.” Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him. “Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no friends?” “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.” “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.” The burglar accommodated. “Poor man,” said Tommy. “You must be hungry. If you will please stand in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat.” The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly. “It’s only been an hour,” he grumbled, “since I had a lobster and a pint of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let a fellow have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds.” “My papa writes books,” remarked Tommy. The burglar jumped to his feet quickly. “You said he had gone to the opera,” he hissed, hoarsely and with immediate suspicion. “I ought to have explained,” said Tommy. “He didn’t buy the tickets.” The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone. “Why do you burgle houses?” asked the boy, wonderingly. “Because,” replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. “God bless my little brown-haired boy Bessie at home.” “Ah,” said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, “you got that answer in the wrong place. You want to tell your hard-luck story before you pull out the child stop.” “Oh, yes,” said the burglar, “I forgot. Well, once I lived in Milwaukee, and—” “Take the silver,” said Tommy, rising from his chair. “Hold on,” said the burglar. “But I moved away.” I could find no other employment. For a while I managed to support my wife and child by passing confederate money; but, alas! I was forced to give that up because it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a burglar.” “Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?” asked Tommy. “I said ‘burglar,’ not ‘beggar,’” answered the cracksman. “After you finish your lunch,” said Tommy, “and experience the usual change of heart, how shall we wind up the story?” “Suppose,” said the burglar, thoughtfully, “that Tony Pastor turns out earlier than usual to-night, and your father gets in from ‘Parsifal’ at 10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own little boy Bessie, and—” “Say,” said Tommy, “haven’t you got that wrong?” “Not on your coloured crayon drawings by B. Cory Kilvert,” said the burglar. “It’s always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling to the pale-cheeked burglar’s bride. As I was saying, your father opens the front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches that you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard classmate he starts back in—” “Not in surprise?” interrupted Tommy, with wide, open eyes. “He starts back in the doorway,” continued the burglar. And then he rose to his feet and began to shout “Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah!” “Well,” said Tommy, wonderingly, “that’s, the first time I ever knew a burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even in a story.” “That’s one on you,” said the burglar, with a laugh. “I was practising the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is about the only thing that will make it go.” Tommy looked his admiration. “You’re on, all right,” he said. “And there’s another mistake you’ve made,” said the burglar. “You should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie.” “But she didn’t give it to me to take to Bessie,” said Tommy, pouting. “Come, come!” said the burglar, sternly. “It’s not nice of you to take advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know what I mean. It’s mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I’m allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too. I’ve a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into the silver-closet.” “Oh, no, you haven’t,” said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you’ve got to preserve the unities.” “So’ve you,” said the burglar, rather glumly. “Instead of sitting here talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth, what you’d like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top of your voice.” “You’re right, old man,” said Tommy, heartily. “I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You’d think editors would know—but what’s the use?” The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn. “Well, let’s get through with it,” he said. “God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house—at least not until the June magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.” “You haven’t got all the kicks coming to you,” sighed Tommy, crawling out of his chair. “Think of the sleep I’m losing. But it’s tough on both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob somebody. Maybe you’ll have the chance if they dramatize us.” “Never!” said the burglar, gloomily. “Between the box office and my better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken and the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I’ll always be broke.” “I’m sorry,” said Tommy, sympathetically. “But I can’t help myself any more than you can. It’s one of the canons of household fiction that no burglar shall be successful. The burglar must be foiled by a kid like me, or by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal, Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story.” “Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now,” said the burglar, taking up his lantern and bracebit. “You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle of wine with you for Bessie and her mother,” said Tommy, calmly. “But confound it,” exclaimed the burglar, in an annoyed tone, “they don’t want it. I’ve got five cases of Château de Beychsvelle at home that was bottled in 1853. That claret of yours is corked. And you couldn’t get either of them to look at a chicken unless it was stewed in champagne. You know, after I get out of the story I don’t have so many limitations. I make a turn now and then.” “Yes, but you must take them,” said Tommy, loading his arms with the bundles. “Bless you, young master!” recited the burglar, obedient. “Second-Story Saul will never forget you. And now hurry and let me out, kid. Our 2,000 words must be nearly up.” Tommy led the way through the hall toward the front door. Suddenly the burglar stopped and called to him softly: “Ain’t there a cop out there in front somewhere sparking the girl?” “Yes,” said Tommy, “but what—” “I’m afraid he’ll catch me,” said the burglar. “You mustn’t forget that this is fiction.” “Great head!” said Tommy, turning. “Come out by the back door.” A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing. At the end of that time it was worth it. 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. There came riding on red roan steeds—or, to be more explicit, on a paint and a flea-bitten sorrel—two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio Kid, for he had not earned the honours of special nomenclature. His name was simply Johnny McRoy. It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita’s admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps’-eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled. Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the race. He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious, vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion. Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and sixshooters, the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratulations of the herders of kine. But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealousy, like one possessed. “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. 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. 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. “I’ll shoot better next time,” yelled Johnny; “and there’ll be a next time.” He backed rapidly out the door. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. “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?” “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.” “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.” “There’s other ways of committing suicide,” advised Mexican. “Why don’t you go and surrender to the sheriff?” “I’ll get him,” said the Kid. Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April. Perhaps there was a hint of far-away frostiness in the air, but it tingles like seltzer, perfumed faintly with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass. When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch-house were brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer ranches. At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other cowboys employed on his ranch. “Now, boys,” said Lane, “keep your eyes open. Walk around the house and watch the road well. All of you know the ‘Frio Kid,’ as they call him now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions. I’m not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She’s been afraid he’d come in on us every Christmas since we were married.” The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were making themselves comfortable inside. The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised Rosita’s excellent supper, and afterward the men scattered in groups about the rooms or on the broad “gallery,” smoking and chatting. 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. “It’s my papa,” announced Billy Sampson, aged six. “I’ve seen him wear ’em before.” Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking. “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through. “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.” “Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus,” said Rosita, brightly. Rosita went into the room, while Santa Claus stepped into the cooler air of the yard. She found no one in the room but Madison. “Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?” she asked. “Haven’t seen anything in the way of a present,” said her husband, laughing, “unless he could have meant me.” The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the X O Ranch, dropped into the post-office at Loma Alta. “Well, the Frio Kid’s got his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the postmaster. “That so? How’d it happen?” “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!”