Years ago, I came upon an old and hoary tavern when I as a fashion of refugee was flying from strong drink. Its name, as shown on the creaking sign-board, was The Black Lion Inn. My coming was the fruit of no plan; the hostelry was strange to me, and my arrival, casual and desultory, one of those accidents which belong with the experiences of folk who, whipped of a bad appetite and running from rum, are seeking only to be solitary and win a vacation for their selfrespect. This latter commodity in my own poor case had been sadly overworked, and called for rest and an opportunity of recuperation. Wherefore, going quietly and without word from the great city, I found this ancient inn with a purpose to turn presently sober. Also by remaining secluded for a space I would permit the memory of those recent dubious exploits of the cup to become a bit dimmed in the bosom of my discouraged relatives.
It turned a most fortunate blunder, this blundering discovery of the aged inn, for it was here I met the Jolly Doctor who, by saving me from my fate of a drunkard, a fate to which I was hopelessly surrendered, will dwell ever in my thoughts as a greatest benefactor.
There is that about an appetite for alcohol I can not understand. In my personal instance there is reason to believe it was inherited. And yet my own father never touched a drop and lived and died the uncompromising enemy of the bowl. It was from my grandsire, doubtless, I had any hankering after rum, for I have heard a sigh or two of how that dashing military gentleman so devoted himself to it that he fairly perished for very faithfulness as far away as eighty odd long years.
Once when my father and I were roaming the snow-filled woods with our guns—I was a lad of twelve—having heard little of that ancestor, I asked him what malady carried off my grandsire. My father did not reply at once, but stalked silently ahead, rifle caught under arm, the snow crunching beneath his heavy boots. Then he flung a sentence over his shoulder.
“Poor whiskey more than anything else,” said my father.
Even at the unripe age of twelve I could tell how the subject was unpleasant to my parent and did not press it. I saved my curiosity until evening when my mother and I were alone. My mother, to whom I re-put the query, informed me in whispers how she had been told—for she never met him, he being dead and gone before her day—my grandsire threw away his existence upon the bottle.
The taste for strong waters so developed in my grandsire would seem like a quartz-ledge to have “dipped” beneath my father to strike the family surface with all its old-time richness in myself. I state this the more secure of its truth because I was instantly and completely a drunkard, waiving every preliminary stage as a novice, from the moment of my first glass.
It was my first day of the tavern when I met the Jolly Doctor. The tavern was his home—for he lived a perilous bachelor—and had been many years; and when, being in a shaken state, I sent down from the apartments I had taken and requested the presence of a physician, he came up to me. He had me right and on my feet in the course of a few hours, and then I began to look him in the face and make his acquaintance.
As I abode in the tavern for a considerable space, we put in many friendly hours together. The Jolly Doctor was a round, strong, active body of a man, virile and with an atmosphere almost hypnotic. His forehead was good, his jaw hard, his nose arched, while his gray-blue eyes, half sour, half humorous and deeply wise of the world, gleamed in his head with the shine of beads.
One evening while we were together about the fireplace of my parlor, I was for having up a bottle of sherry.
“Before you give the order,” said the Jolly Doctor, restraining me with a friendly yet semiprofessional gesture, “let me say a word. Let me ask whether you have an intention or even a hope of one day—no matter how distant—quitting alcohol?” Without pausing for my answer, the Jolly Doctor went on. “You are yet a young man; I suppose you have seen thirty years. It has been my experience, albeit I’m but fifteen years your senior and not therefore as old as a hill, that no man uproots a habit after he has reached middle age. While climbing, mentally, physically, nervously, the slope of his years and adding to, not taking from, his strength, a man may so far re-draw himself as to make or break an appetite—the appetite of strong drink—if you will. But let him attain the summit of his strength, reach as it were the crest of his days and begin to travel down the easy long descent toward the grave, and every chance of change has perished beyond his reach. You are thirty; and to make it short, my friend, you must, considering what bottle tendencies lie latent within you, stop now and stop hard, or you are lost forever.”
To say I was impressed is not to exaggerate. I was frank enough to confess, however, that privately I held no hope of change. Several years before, I had become convinced, after a full survey of myself and the close study of my inclinations, that I was born to live and die, like my grandsire, the victim of drink. I was its thrall, bound to it as I lay in my cradle; there existed no gate of escape. This I told; not joyously, I promise you, or as one reciting good fortune; not argumentatively and as reason for the forthcoming of asked-for wine; but because it was true and made, as I held it, a reason for going in this matter of tipple with freest rein since dodge or balk my fate I might not.
At the close my Jolly Doctor shook his head in negative.
“No man knows his destiny,” said he, “until the game’s played out. Come, let me prescribe for you. The drug I have in mind has cured folk; I should add, too, that for some it carries neither power nor worth. Still, it will do no harm, and since we may have a test of its virtues within three days; at the worst you will be called upon to surrender no more than seventy-two hours to sobriety.” This last was delivered like a cynic.
On my side, I not only thanked the Jolly Doctor for his concern, but hastened to assure him I would willingly make pact to abstain from alcohol not three days, but three weeks or three months, were it necessary to pleasure his experiment. My bent for drink was in that degree peculiar that I was not so much its disciple who must worship constantly and every day, as one of those who are given to sprees. Often and of choice I was a stranger to so much as the odor of rum for weeks on end. Then would come other weeks of tumult and riot and drunkenness. The terms of trial for his medicine would be easily and comfortably undergone by me. He had my promise of three days free of rum.
The Jolly Doctor went to his room; returning, he placed on the table a little bottle of liquid, reddish in color and bitter of taste.
“Red cinchona, it is,” said the Jolly Doctor; “cinchona rubra, or rather the fluid extract of that bark. It is not a tincture; there is no alcohol about it. The remedy is well known and I oft marvel it has had no wider vogue. As I’ve told you, and on the principle, probably, that one man’s poison is another man’s food, it does not always cure. However, we will give you a teaspoonful once in three hours and observe the effect in your particular case.”
There shall be little more related on this point of dypsomania and its remedy. I took the prescription for a trio of days. At the expiration I sate me solemnly down and debated within myself whether or no I craved strong drink, with the full purpose of calling for it if I did. Absolutely, the anxiety was absent; and since I had resolved not to force the bottle upon myself, but to give the Jolly Doctor and his drug all proper show to gain a victory, I made no alcohol demands. All this was years ago, and from that hour until now, when I write these lines, I’ve neither taken nor wanted alcohol. I’ve gone freely where it was, and abode for hours at tables when others poured and tossed it off; for myself I’ve craved none and taken none.
Toward the last of my stay, there came to dwell at the hostelry a goodly circle; one for a most part chance-sown. For days it had been snowing with a free, persistent hand; softly, industriously, indomitably fell the flakes, straight down and unflurried of a wind, until the cold light element lay about the tavern for a level depth of full three feet. It was the sort of weather in which one should read Whittier’s Snow-Bound.
Our circle, as snow-pent and held within door we drew about the tavern fire, offered a chequered citizenry. On the earliest occasion of our comradeship, while the snow sifted about the old-fashioned panes and showed through them with the whiteness of milk, I cast my eye over the group to collect for myself a mental picture of my companions.
At the right hand of the Jolly Doctor, solid in his arm chair, sat a Red Nosed Gentleman. He showed prosperous of this world’s goods and owned to a warm weakness for burgundy. He was particular to keep ever a bottle at his elbow, and constantly supported his interest in what was current with a moderate glass.
In sharpest contrast to the Red Nosed Gentleman there should be mentioned a gray old gentleman of sour and forbidding eye. The Jolly Doctor, who had known him for long, gave me in a whisper his story. This Sour Gentleman, like the Red Nosed Gentleman, had half retired from the cares of business. The Red Nosed Gentleman in his later days had been a stock speculator, as in sooth had the Sour Gentleman, and each would still on occasion carry a few thousand shares for a week or two and then swoop on a profit with quite the eagerness of any hawk on any hen.
Not to be overlooked, in a corner nearest the chimney was a seamed white old figure, tall and spare, yet with vigorous thews still strung in the teeth of his all but four score years. He was referred to during our amiable captivity, and while we sate snow-locked about the mighty fire-place, as the Old Cattleman.
Half comrade and half ward, our Old Cattleman had with him a taciturn, grave individual, to whom he gave the title of “Sioux Sam,” and whose father, he informed us, had been a French trader from St. Louis, while his mother was a squaw of the tribe that furnished the first portion of his name.
As we brought arm chairs about the fire-place on our first snow-bound evening, moved possibly by the Red Nosed Gentleman’s burgundy, which that florid person had urged upon his attention, the Jolly Doctor set the little community a good story-telling example.
“This story, I should premise,” said the Jolly Doctor, mollifying certain rawnesses of his throat with a final glass of the Red Nosed Gentleman’s burgundy, “belongs to no experience of my own. I shall tell it as it was given me. It speaks broadly of the west and of the folk of cows and the Indians, and was set uppermost in my memory by the presence of our western friends.” Here the Jolly Doctor indicated the Old Cattleman and that product of the French fur trader and his Indian wife, Sioux Sam, by a polite wave of his glass. Then tossing off the last of his burgundy he, without tedious preliminary, struck into his little history.
Gray Wolf sits within the shadow of the agency cottonwood and puffs unhappy kinnikinic from his red stone pipe. Heavy, dull and hot lies the August afternoon; heavy, dull and hot lies the heart of Gray Wolf. There is a profound grief at his soul’s roots. The Indian’s is not a mobile face. In full expression it is capable only of apathy or rage. If your Indian would show you mirth or woe, he must eke out the dim and half-told story with streaks of paint. But so deep is the present sorrow of Gray Wolf that, even without the aid of graphic ochre, one reads some shadow of it in the wrinkled brows and brooding eyes.
What is this to so beat upon our dismal Osage? There is a dab of mud in his hair; his blanket is rags, and his moccasins are rusty and worn. These be weeds of mourning. Death has crept to the tepee of Gray Wolf and taken a prey. It was Catbird, the squaw of Gray Wolf.
However, his to-day’s sadness is not for the departed Catbird. He married her without laughter, and saw her pass without tears, as became a man and an Osage. When her breath was gone, the women combed her hair and dressed her in new, gay clothes, and burned the sacred cedar. Gray Wolf, after the usage of his fathers, seated her—knees to chin—on yonder hilltop, wrapped her in rawhides, and, as against the curiosity of coyotes and other prowling vermin of the night, budded her solidly about and over with heavy stones. You may see the rude mausole, like some tumbledown chimney, from the agency door. That was a moon ago. Another will go by; Gray Wolf will lay off his rags and tatters, comb the clay from his hair, and give a dance to show that he mourns no more. No, it is not the lost Catbird—good squaw though she was—that embitters the tobacco and haunts the moods of Gray Wolf. It is something more awful than death—that merest savage commonplace; something to touch the important fiber of pride.
Gray Wolf is proud, as indeed he has concern to be. Not alone is he eminent as an Osage; he is likewise an eminent Indian. Those two thin ragged lines of blue tattoo which, on each side from the point of the jaw, run downward on the neck until they disappear beneath his blanket, prove Gray Wolf’s elevation. They are the marks of an aboriginal nobility whereof the paleface in his ignorance knows nothing. Thirty Indians in all the tribes may wear these marks. And yet, despite such signs of respect, Gray Wolf has become the subject of acrid tribal criticism; and he feels it like the edge of a knife.
Keats was quill-pricked to death by critics. But Keats was an Englishman and a poet. Petronius Arbiter, Nero’s minion, was also criticised; despite the faultfinder, however, he lived in cloudless merry luxury, and died laughing. But Petronius was a Roman and an epicure. Gray Wolf is to gain nothing by these examples. He would not die like the verse maker, he could not laugh like the consul; there is a gulf between Gray Wolf and these as wide as the width of the possible. Gray Wolf is a stoic, and therefore neither so callous nor so wise as an epicure. Moreover, he is a savage and not a poet. Petronius came to be nothing better than an appetite; Gray Wolf rises to the heights of an emotion. Keats was a radical of sensibility, ransacking a firmament; Gray Wolf is an earthgoing conservative—a more stupendous Tory than any Bolingbroke. Of the two, while resembling neither, Gray Wolf comes nearer the poet than the Sybarite, since he can feel.
Let it be remarked that Osage criticism is no trivial thing. It is so far peculiar that never a word or look, or even a detractory shrug is made to be its evidence. Your Osage tells no evil tales of you to his neighbor. His conduct goes guiltless of slanderous syllable or gesture. But he criticises you in his heart; he is strenuous to think ill of you; and by some fashion of telepathy you know and feel and burn with this tacit condemnation as much as ever you might from hot irons laid on your forehead. It is this criticism, as silent as it is general, that gnaws at Gray Wolf’s heart and makes his somber visage more somber yet.
It was the week before when Gray Wolf, puffed of a vain conceit, matched Sundown, his pinto pony—swift as a winter wind, he deemed her—against a piebald, leggy roan, the property of Dull Ox, the cunning Ponca. The race had wide advertisement; it took shape between the Osages and the Poncas as an international event. Gray Wolf assured his tribe of victory; his Sundown was a shooting star, the roan a turtle; whereupon the Osages, ever ready as natural patriots to believe the worst Osage thing to be better than the best thing Ponca, fatuously wagered their substance on Sundown, even unto the beads on their moccasins.
The race was run; the ubiquitous roan, fleeter than a shadow, went by poor Sundown as though she ran with hobbles on. Dull Ox won; the Poncas won. The believing Osages were stripped of their last blanket; and even as Gray Wolf sits beneath the agency cottonwood and writhes while he considers what his pillaged countrymen must think of him, the exultant Poncas are in the midst of a protracted spree, something in the nature of a scalp dance, meant to celebrate their triumph and emphasize the thoroughness wherewith the Osages were routed. Is it marvel, then, that Osage thought is full of resentment, or that Gray Wolf feels its sting?
Over across from the moody Gray Wolf, Bill Henry lounges in the wide doorway of Florer’s agency store. Bill Henry is young, about twenty-three, in truth. He has a quick, handsome face, with gray eyes that dance and gleam, and promise explosiveness of temper. The tan that darkens Bill Henry’s skin wherever the sun may get to it, and which is comparable to the color of a saddle or a law book, testifies that the vivacious Bill is no recent importation. Five full years on the plains would be needed to ripen one to that durable hue.
Bill gazes out upon Gray Wolf as the latter sticks to the cottonwood’s shade; a plan is running in the thoughts of Bill. There is call for change in Bill’s destinies, and he must have the Gray Wolf’s consent to what he bears in mind.
Bill has followed cattle since he turned his back on Maryland, a quintet of years before, and pushed westward two thousand miles to commence a career. Bill’s family is of that aristocracy which adorns the “Eastern Shore” of Lord Baltimore’s old domain. His folk are of consequence, and intended that Bill should take a high position. Bill’s mother, an ardent church woman, had a pulpit in her thoughts for Bill; his father, more of the world, urged on his son the law. But Bill’s bent was towards the laws neither of heaven nor of men. The romantic overgrew the practical in his nature. He leaned not to labor, whether mental or physical, and he liked danger and change and careless savageries.
Civilization is artificial; it is a creature of convention, of clocks, of hours, of an unending procession of sleep, victuals and work. Bill distasted such orderly matters and felt instinctive abhorrence therefor. The day in and day out effort called for to remain civilized terrified Bill; his soul gave up the task before it was begun.
But savagery? Ah, that was different! Savagery was natural, easy and comfortable to the very heart’s blood of Bill, shiftless and wild as it ran. Bill was an instance of what wise folk term “reversion to type,” and thus it befell, while his father tugged one way and his mother another, Bill himself went suddenly from under their hands, fled from both altar and forum, and never paused until he found himself within the generous reaches of the Texas Panhandle. There, as related, and because savagery cannot mean entire idleness, Bill gave himself to a pursuit of cows, and soon had moderate fame as a rider, a roper, a gambler, and a quick, sure hand with a gun, and for whatever was deemed excellent in those regions wherein he abode.
Bill’s presence among the Osages is the upcome of a dispute which fell forth between Bill and a comrade in a barroom of Mobeetie. Bill and the comrade aforesaid played at a device called “draw poker;” and Bill, in attempting to supply the deficiencies of a four flush with his six shooter, managed the other’s serious wounding. This so shook Bill’s standing in the Panhandle, so marked him to the common eye as a boy of dangerous petulance, that Bill sagely withdrew between two days; and now, three hundred miles to the north and east, he seeks among the Indians for newer pastures more serene.
When we meet him Bill has been with the Osages the space of six weeks. And already he begins to doubt his welcome. Not that the Osages object. Your Indian objects to nothing that does not find shape as an immediate personal invasion of himself. But the government agent—a stern, decisive person—likes not the presence of straggling whites among his copper charges; already has he made intimation to Bill that his Osage sojourn should be short. Any moment this autocrat may despatch his marshal to march Bill off the reservation.
Bill does not enjoy the outlook. Within the brief frontiers of those six weeks of his visit, Bill has contracted an eager fondness for Osage life. Your Indian is so far scriptural that he taketh scant heed of the morrow, and believeth with all his soul that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Here was a program to dovetail with those natural moods of Bill. His very being, when once it understood, arose on tiptoe to embrace it. Bill has become an Osage in his breast; as he poses with listless grace in Florer’s portals, he is considering means whereby he may manage a jointure with the tribe, and become in actual truth a member.
There is but one door to his coming; Bill must wed his way into Osage citizenship. He must take a daughter of the tribe to wife; turn “squaw man,” as it is called. Then will Bill be a fullblown Osage; then may no agent molest him or make him afraid.
This amiable plot, as he lounges in Florer’s door, is already decided upon by Bill. His fancy has even pitched upon the damsel whom he will honor with the title of “Mrs. Bill.” It is this selection that produces Gray Wolf as a factor in Bill’s intended happiness, since Gray Wolf is the parent of the Saucy Paoli, to whom Bill’s hopes are turned. Bill must meet and treat with Gray Wolf for his daughter, discover her “price,” and pay it.
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As to the lady herself and her generous consent when once her father is won, Bill harbors no misgivings. He believes too well of his handsome person; moreover, has he not demonstrated in friendly bout, on foot and on horseback, his superiority to the young Osage bucks who would pit themselves against him? Has he not out-run, out-wrestled and out-ridden them? And at work with either rifle, six-shooter or knife, has he not opened their eyes? Also, he has conquered them at cards; and their money and their ponies and their gewgaws to a healthful value are his as spoils thereof.
Bill is all things that a lady of sensibility should love; and for that on those two or three occasions when he came unexpectedly upon her, the Saucy Paoli dodged within the ancestral lodge to daub her nose and cheeks with hurried yet graceful red, thereby to improve and give her beauties point, Bill knows he has touched her heart. Yes, forsooth! Bill feels sure of the Saucy Paoli; it is Gray Wolf, somber of his late defeat by the wily Dull Ox and the evanescent roan, toward whom his apprehensions turn their face. The more, perhaps, since Bill himself, not being a blinded Osage, and having besides some certain wit concerning horses, scrupled not to wager and win on the Ponca entry, and against the beloved Sundown of his father-in-law to come. It is the notion that Gray Wolf might resent this apostasy that breeds a half pause in Bill’s optimism as he loafs in Florer’s door.
As Bill stands thus musing, the Saucy Paoli goes by. The Saucy Paoli is light, pretty, round and wholesome, and she glances with shy, engaging softness on Bill from eyes as dark and big and deep as a deer’s. Is it not worth while to wed her? The Osages are owners in fee of one million, five hundred thousand acres of best land; they have eight even millions of dollars stored in the Great Father’s strong chests in Washington; they are paid each one hundred and forty dollars by their fostering Great Father as an annual present; and the head of the house draws all for himself and his own. Marriage will mean an instant yearly income of two hundred and eighty dollars; moreover, there may come the profitable papoose, and with each such a money augmentation of one hundred and forty dollars. And again, there are but sixteen hundred Osages told and counted; and so would Bill gain a strong per cent, in the tribal domain and the tribal treasure. Altogether, a union with the fair, brown Saucy Paoli is a prospect fraught of sunshine; and so Bill wisely deems it.
For an hour it has leaped in Bill’s thoughts as an impulse to go across to the spreading cottonwood, propose himself to the Gray Wolf for the Saucy Paoli, and elicit reply. It would not be the Osage way, but Bill is not yet an Osage, and some reasonable allowance should be made by Gray Wolf for the rudeness of a paleface education. Such step would earn an answer, certain and complete. Your savage beateth not about the bush. His diplomacy is Bismarckian; it is direct and proceeds by straight lines.
Thus chase Bill’s cogitations when the sudden sight of the Saucy Paoli and her glances, full of wist and warmth, fasten his gallant fancy and crystalize a resolution to act at once.
“How!” observes Bill, by way of salutation, as he stands before Gray Wolf.
That warrior grunts swinish, though polite, response. Then Bill goes directly to the core of his employ; he explains his passion, sets forth his hopes, and by dashing swoops arrives at the point which, according to Bill’s blunt theories, should quicken the interest of Gray Wolf, and says:
“Now, what price? How many ponies?”
“How many you give?” retorts the cautious Gray Wolf.
“Fifteen.” Bill stands ready to go to thirty.
“Ugh!” observes Gray Wolf, and then he looks out across the prairie grasses where the thick smoke shows the summer fires to be burning them far away.
“Thirty ponies,” says Bill after a pause.
These or their money equivalent—six hundred dollars—Bill knows to be a fat figure. He believes Gray Wolf will yield.
But Bill is in partial error. Gray Wolf is not in any sordid, money frame. Your savage is a sentimentalist solely on two matters: those to touch his pride and those to wake his patriotism. And because of the recent triumph of the Poncas, and the consequent censures upon him now flaming, though hidden, in the common Osage heart, Gray Wolf’s pride is raw and throbbing. He looks up at Bill where he waits.
“One pony!” says Gray Wolf.
“One?”
“But it must beat the Ponca’s roan.”
Four hundred miles to the westward lie the broad ranges of the Triangle-Dot. Throughout all cow-land the ponies of the Triangle-Dot have name for speed. As far eastward as the Panhandle and westward to the Needles, as far southward as Seven Rivers and northward to the Spanish Peaks, has their fame been flung. About camp fires and among the boys of cows are tales told of Triangle-Dot ponies that overtake coyotes and jack-rabbits. More, they are exalted as having on a time raced even with an antelope. These ponies are children of a blue-grass sire, as thoroughbred as ever came out of Kentucky. Little in size, yet a ghost to go; his name was Redemption. These speedy mustang babies of Redemption have yet to meet their master in the whole southwest. And Bill knows of them; he has seen them run.
“In two moons, my father,” says Bill.
There is much creaking of saddle leathers; there is finally a deep dig in the flanks by the long spurs, and Bill, mounted on his best, rides out of Pauhauska. His blankets are strapped behind, his war bags bulge with provand, he is fully armed; of a verity, Bill meditates a journey. Four hundred miles—and return—no less, to the ranges of the Triangle-Dot.
Gray Wolf watches from beneath the cottonwood that already begins to throw its shadows long; his eyes follow Bill until the latter’s broad brimmed, gray sombrero disappears on the hill-crests over beyond Bird River.
It skills not to follow Bill in this pilgrimage. He fords rivers; he sups and sleeps at casual camps; now and again he pauses for the night at some chance plaza of the Mexicans; but first and last he pushes ever on and on at a round road gait, and with the end he has success.
Within his time by full three weeks Bill is again at the agency of the Osages; and with him comes a pony, lean of muzzle, mild of eye, wide of forehead, deep of lung, silken of mane, slim of limb, a daughter of the great Redemption; and so true and beautiful is she in each line she seems rather for air than earth. And she is named the Spirit.
Gray Wolf goes over the Spirit with eye and palm. He feels her velvet coat; picks up one by one her small hoofs, polished and hard as agate.
The Spirit has private trial with Sundown and leaves that hopeless cayuse as if the latter were pegged to the prairie.
“Ugh!” says Gray Wolf, at the finish. “Heap good pony!”
Your savage is not a personage of stopwatches, weights and records. At the best, he may only guess concerning a pony’s performance. Also his vanity has wings, though his pony has none, and once he gets it into his savage head that his pony can race, it is never long ere he regards him as invincible. Thus is it with Dull Ox and his precious roan. That besotted Ponca promptly accepts the Gray Wolf challenge for a second contest.
The day arrives. The race is to be run on the Osage course—a quarter of a mile, straight-away—at the Pauhauska agency. Two thousand Osages and Poncas are gathered together. There is no laughter, no uproar, no loud talk; all is gravity, dignity and decorum. The stakes are one thousand dollars a side, for Gray Wolf and Dull Ox are opulent pagans.
The ponies are brought up and looked over. The fires of a thousand racing ancestors burn in the eyes of the Spirit; the Poncas should take warning. But they do not; wagers run higher. The Osages have by resolution of their fifteen legislators brought the public money to the field. Thus they are rich for speculation, where, otherwise, by virtue of former losses, they would be helpless with empty hands.
Bet after bet is made. The pool box is a red blanket spread on the grass. It is presided over by a buck, impecunious but of fine integrity.
Being moneyless, he will make no bet himself; being honest, he will faithfully guard the treasure put within his care. A sporting buck approaches the blanket; he grumbles a word or two in the ear of the pool master who sits at the blanket’s head; then he searches forth a hundred-dollar bill from the darker recesses of his blanket and lays it on the red betting-cloth. Another comes up; the pool master murmurs the name of the pony on which the hundred is offered; it is covered by the second speculator; that wager is complete. Others arrive at the betting blanket; its entire surface becomes dotted with bank notes—two and two they lie together, each wagered against the other. The blanket is covered and concealed with the money piled upon it. One begins to wonder how a winner is to know his wealth. There will be no clash, no dispute. Savages never cheat; and each will know his own. Besides, there is the poverty-eaten, honest buck, watching all, to be appealed to should an accidental confusion of wagers occur.
On a bright blanket, a trifle to one side—not to be under the moccasins of commerce, as it were—sits the Saucy Paoli. She is without motion; and a blanket, covering her from little head to little foot, leaves not so much as a stray lock or the tip of an ear for one’s gaze to rest upon. The Saucy Paoli is present dutifully to answer the outcome of the Gray Wolf’s pact with Bill. One wonders how does her heart beat, and how roam her hopes? Is she for the roan, or is she for the Glory of the Triangle-Dot?
41
The solemn judges draw their blankets about them and settle to their places. Three Poncas and three Osages on a side they are; they seat themselves opposite each other with twenty feet between. A line is drawn from trio to trio; that will serve as wire. The pony to cross first will be victor.
Now all is ready! The rival ponies are at the head of the course; it will be a standing start. A grave buck sits in the saddle near the two racers and to their rear. He is the starter. Suddenly he cracks off a Winchester, skyward. It is the signal.
The ponies leap like panthers at the sound. There is a swooping rush; for one hundred yards they run together, then the Spirit takes the lead. Swifter than the thrown lance, swift as the sped arrow she comes! With each instant she leaves and still further leaves the roan! What has such as the mongrel pony of the Poncas to do with the Flower of the Triangle-Dot? The Spirit flashes between the double triumvirate of judges, winner by fifty yards!
And now one expects a shout. There is none. The losing Poncas and the triumphant Osages alike are stolid and dignified. Only Gray Wolf’s eyes gleam, and the cords in his neck swell. He has been redeemed with his people; his honor has been returned; his pride can again hold up its head. But while his heart may bound, his face must be like iron. Such is the etiquette of savagery.
Both Gray Wolf and the Osages will exult later, noisily, vociferously. There will be feasting and dancing. Now they must be grave and guarded, both for their own credit and to save their Ponca adversaries from a wound.
Bill turns and rides slowly back to the judges. The Spirit, daughter of Redemption, stands with fire eyes and tiger lily nostrils. Bill swings from the saddle. Gray Wolf throws off the blanket from the Saucy Paoli, where she waits, head bowed and silent. Her dress is the climax of Osage magnificence; the Saucy Paoli glows like a ruby against the dusk green of the prairie. Bill takes the Saucy Paoli’s hand and raises her to her feet.
She lifts her head. Her glance is shy, yet warm and glad. She hesitates. Then, as one who takes courage—just as might a white girl, though with less of art—she puts up her lips to be kissed.
“Now that is what I call a fair story,” commented the Red Nosed Gentleman approvingly when the Jolly Doctor came to a pause; “only I don’t like that notion of a white man marrying an Indian. It’s apt to keep alive in the children the worst characteristics of both races and none of the virtues of either.”
“Now I don’t know that,” observed the Sour Gentleman, contentiously. “In my own state of Virginia many of our best people are proud to trace their blood to Pocahontas, who was sold for a copper kettle. I, myself, am supposed to have a spoonful of the blood of that daughter of Powhatan in my veins; and while it is unpleasant to recall one’s ancestress as having gone from hand to hand as the subject of barter and sale—and for no mighty price at that—I cannot say I would wish it otherwise. My Indian blood fits me very well. Did you say”—turning to the Jolly Doctor—“did you say, sir, you knew this young man who won the Saucy Paoli?”
“No,” returned the Jolly Doctor, “I am guiltless of acquaintance with him. The story came to me from one of our Indian agents.”
While this talk went forward, Sioux Sam, who understood English perfectly and talked it very well, albeit with a guttural Indian effect, and who had listened to the Jolly Doctor’s story with every mark of interest, was saying something in a whisper to the Old Cattleman.
“He tells me,” remarked the Old Cattleman in reply to my look of curiosity, “that if you-alls don’t mind, he’ll onfold on you a Injun tale himse’f. It’s one of these yere folk-lore stories, I suppose, as Doc Peets used to call ’em.”
The whole company made haste to assure Sioux Sam that his proposal was deeply the popular one; thus cheered, our dark-skinned raconteur, first lighting his pipe with a coal from the great fireplace, issued forth upon his verbal journey.
“An’ this,” said Sioux Sam, lifting a dark finger to invoke attention and puffing a cloud the while, “an’ this tale, which shows how Forked Tongue, the bad medicine man, was burned, must teach how never to let the heart fill up with hate like a pond with the rains, nor permit the tongue to go a crooked trail.”
The time is long, long ago. Ugly Elk is the great chief of the Sioux, an’ he’s so ugly an’ his face so hideous, he makes a great laugh wherever he goes. But the people are careful to laugh when the Ugly Elk’s back is toward them. If they went in front of him an’ laugh, he’d go among them with his stone war-axe; for Ugly Elk is sensitive about his looks.
Ugly Elk is the warchief of the Sioux an’ keeps his camp on the high bluffs that mark the southern border of the Sioux country where he can look out far on the plains an’ see if the Pawnees go into the Sioux hills to hunt. Should the Pawnees try this, then Ugly Elk calls up his young men an’ pounces on the Pawnees like a coyote on a sage hen, an’ when Ugly Elk gets through, the Pawnees are hard to find.
It turns so, however, that the Pawnees grow tired. Ugly Elk’s war yell makes their knees weak, an’ when they see the smoke of his fire they turn an’ run. Then Ugly Elk has peace in his tepees on the bluffs, an’ eats an’ smokes an’ counts his scalps an’ no Pawnee comes to anger him. An’ the Sioux look up to him as a mighty fighter, an’ what Ugly Elk says goes as law from east to west an’ no’th to south throughout the country of the Sioux.
Ugly Elk has no sons or daughters an’ all his squaws are old an’ dead an’ asleep forever in their rawhides, high on pole scaffolds where the wolves can’t come. An’ because Ugly Elk is lonesome an’ would hear good words about his lodge an’ feel that truth is near, he asks his nephew, Running Water, to live with him when now the years grow deep an’ deeper on his head. The nephew is named Running Water because there is no muddiness of lies about him, an’ his life runs clear an’ swift an’ good. Some day Running Water will be chief, an’ then they will call him Kill-Bear, because he once sat down an’ waited until a grizzly came up; an’ when he had come up, Running Water offered him the muzzle of his gun to bite; an’ then as the grizzly took it between his jaws, Running Water blew off his head. An’ for that he was called Kill-Bear, an’ made chief. But that is not for a long time, an’ comes after Ugly Elk has died an’ been given a scaffold of poles with his squaws.
Ugly Elk has his heart full of love for Running Water an’ wants him ever in his sight an’ to hear his voice. Also, he declares to the Sioux that they must make Running Water their chief when he is gone. The Sioux say that if he will fight the Pawnees, like Ugly Elk, until the smoke of his camp is the smoke of fear to the Pawnees, he shall be their chief. An’ because Running Water is as bold as he is true, Ugly Elk accepts the promise of the Sioux an’ rests content that all will be as he asks when his eyes close for the long sleep.
But while Ugly Elk an’ Running Water are happy for each other, there is one whose heart turns black as he looks upon them. It is Forked Tongue, the medicine man; he is the cousin of Ugly Elk, an’ full of lies an’ treachery. Also, he wants to be chief when that day comes for Ugly Elk to die an’ go away. Forked Tongue feels hate for Running Water, an’ he plans to kill him.
Forked Tongue talks with Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, an’ who has once helped Forked Tongue with his medicine. Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is very wise; also he wants revenge on Forked Tongue, who promised him a bowl of molasses an’ then put a cheat on him.
When Forked Tongue powwows with Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear thinks now he will have vengeance on Forked Tongue, who was false about the molasses. Thereupon, he rests his head on his paw, an’ makes as if he thinks an’ thinks; an’ after a long while he tells Forked Tongue what to do.
“Follow my word,” says Moh-Kwa, “an’ it will bring success.”
But Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, doesn’t say to whom “success” will come; nor does Forked Tongue notice because liars are ever quickest to believe, an’ there is no one so easy to deceive as a treacherous man. Forked Tongue leaves Moh-Kwa an’ turns to carry out his su’gestions.
Forked Tongue talks to Ugly Elk when they’re alone an’ touches his feelings where they’re sore.
“The Running Water laughs at you,” says Forked Tongue to Ugly Elk. “He says you are more hideous than a gray gaunt old wolf, an’ that he must hold his head away when you an’ he are together. If he looked at you, he says, you are so ugly he would laugh till he died.”
Then the Ugly Elk turned to fire with rage.
“How will you prove that?” says Ugly Elk to Forked Tongue.
Forked Tongue is ready, for Moh-Kwa has foreseen the question of Ugly Elk.
“You may prove it for yourself,” says Forked Tongue. “When you an’ Running Water are together, see if he does not turn away his head.”
That night it is as Forked Tongue said. Running Water looks up at the top of the lodge, or down at the robes on the ground, or he turns his back on Ugly Elk; but he never once rests his eyes on Ugly Elk or looks him in the face. An’ the reason is this: Forked Tongue has told Running Water that Ugly Elk complained that Running Water’s eye was evil; that his medicine told him this; an’ that he asked Forked Tongue to command Running Water not to look on him, the Ugly Elk, for ten wakes an’ ten sleeps, when the evil would have gone out of his eye.
“An’ the Ugly Elk,” says Forked Tongue, “would tell you this himse’f, but he loves you so much it would make his soul sick, an’ so he asks me.”
Running Water, who is all truth, does not look for lies in any mouth, an’ believes Forked Tongue, an’ resolves for ten sleeps an’ ten wakes not to rest his eyes on Ugly Elk.
When Ugly Elk notices how Running Water will not look on him, he chokes with anger, for he remembers he is hideous an’ believes that Running Water laughs as Forked Tongue has told him. An’ he grows so angry his mind is darkened an’ his heart made as night. He seeks out the Forked Tongue an’ says:
“Because I am weak with love for him, I cannot kill him with my hands. What shall I do, for he must die?”
Then Forked Tongue makes a long think an’ as if he is hard at work inside his head. Then he gives this counsel to Ugly Elk:
“Send to your hunters where they are camped by the river. Say to them by your runner to seize on him who comes first to them in the morning, an’ tie him to the big peeled pine an’ burn him to death with wood. When the runner is gone, say to Running Water that he must go to the hunters when the sun wakes up in the east an’ ask them if they have killed an’ cooked the deer you sent them. Since he will be the first to come, the hunters will lay hands on Running Water an’ tie him an’ burn him; an’ that will put an end to his jests an’ laughter over your ugliness.”
Ugly Elk commands the Antelope, his runner, to hurry with word to the hunters to burn him to death who shall come first to them in the morning. Then he makes this word to Running Water that he must go to the hunters when the sun comes up an’ ask if they have killed an’ cooked the deer he sent them. Ugly Elk scowls like a cloud while he gives his directions to Running Water, but the boy does not see since his eyes are on the ground.
As the sun comes up, Running Water starts with the word of Ugly Elk to the hunters. But Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is before him for his safety. Moh-Kwa knows that the way to stop a man is with a woman, so he has brought a young squaw of the lower Yellowstone who is so beautiful that her people named her the Firelight. Moh-Kwa makes the Firelight pitch camp where the trail of Running Water will pass as he goes to the hunters. An’ the Wise Bear tells her what to say; an’ also to have a turkey roasted, an’ a pipe an’ a soft blanket ready for Running Water.
When Running Water sees the Firelight, she is so beautiful he thinks it is a dream. An’ when she asks him to eat, an’ fills the redstone pipe an’ spreads a blanket for him, the Running Water goes no further. He smokes an’ rests on the blanket; an’ because the tobacco is big medicine, Running Water falls asleep with his head in the lap of the Firelight.
When Forked Tongue knows that Running Water has started for the hunters, he waits. Then he thinks:
“Now the hunters, because I have waited long, have already burned Running Water. An’ I will go an’ see an’ bring back one of the shin-bones to show Ugly Elk that he will never return.”
Forked Tongue travels fast; an’ as he runs by the lodge of the Firelight, while it is a new lodge to him, he does not pause, for the lodge is closed so that the light will not trouble Running Water where he lies asleep with his head in the lap of the Firelight.
Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear, is behind a tree as Forked Tongue trots past, an’ he laughs deep in his hairy bosom; for Moh-Kwa likes revenge, an’ he remembers how he was cheated of his bowl of molasses.
Forked Tongue runs by Moh-Kwa like a shadow an’ never sees him, an’ cannot hear him laugh.
When Forked Tongue comes to the hunters, they put their hands on him an’ tie him to the peeled pine tree. As they dance an’ shout an’ pile the brush an’ wood about him, Forked Tongue glares with eyes full of fear an’ asks: “What is this to mean?” The hunters stop dancing an’ say: “It means that it is time to sing the death song.” With that they bring fire from their camp an’ make a blaze in the twigs an’ brush about Forked Tongue; an’ the flames leap up as if eager to be at him—for fire hates a liar—an’ in a little time Forked Tongue is burned away an’ only the ashes are left an’ the big bones, which are yet white hot.
The sun is sinking when Running Water wakes an’ he is much dismayed; but the Firelight cheers him with her dark eyes, an’ Moh-Kwa comes from behind the tree an’ gives him good words of wisdom; an’ when he has once more eaten an’ drunk an’ smoked, he kisses the Firelight an’ goes forward to the hunters as the Ugly Elk said.
55
An’ when he comes to them, he asks:
“Have you killed an’ cooked the deer which was sent you by the Ugly Elk?” An’ the hunters laugh an’ say: “Yes; he is killed an’ cooked.” Then they take him to the peeled pine tree, an’ tell him of Forked Tongue an’ his fate; an’ after cooling a great shin-bone in the river, they wrap it in bark an’ grass an’ say:
“Carry that to the Ugly Elk that he may know his deer is killed an’ cooked.”
While he is returning to Ugly Elk much disturbed, Moh-Kwa tells Running Water how Forked Tongue made his evil plan; an both Running Water when he hears, an’ Ugly Elk when he hears, can hardly breathe for wonder. An’ the Ugly Elk cannot speak for his great happiness when now that Running Water is still alive an’ has not made a joke of his ugliness nor laughed. Also, Ugly Elk gives Moh-Kwa that bowl of molasses of which Forked Tongue would cheat him.
The same day, Moh-Kwa brings the Firelight to the lodge of Ugly Elk, an’ she an’ Running Water are wed; an’ from that time she dwells in the tepee of Running Water, even unto the day when he is named Kill-Bear an’ made chief after Ugly Elk is no more.
“It is ever,” said the Jolly Doctor, beaming from one to another to observe if we enjoyed Sioux Sam’s story with as deep a zest as he did, “it is ever a wondrous pleasure to meet with these tales of a primitive people. They are as simple as the romaunts invented and told by children for the amusement of each other, and yet they own something of a plot, though it be the shallowest.”
“Commonly, too, they teach a moral lesson,” spoke up the Sour Gentleman, “albeit from what I know of savage morals they would not seem to have had impressive effect upon the authors or their Indian listeners. You should know something of our Indians?”
Here the Sour Gentleman turned to the Old Cattleman, who was rolling a fresh cigar in his mouth as though the taste of tobacco were a delight.
“Me, savey Injuns?” said the Old Cattleman. “Which I knows that much about Injuns it gets in my way.”
“What of their morals, then?” asked the Sour Gentleman.
“Plumb base. That is, they’re plumb base when took from a paleface standp’int. Lookin’ at ’em with the callous eyes of a savage, I reckons now they would mighty likely seem bleached a whole lot.”
Discussion rambled to and fro for a time, and led to a learned disquisition on fables from the Jolly Doctor, they being, he said, the original literature of the world. With the end of it, however, there arose a request that the Sour Gentleman follow the excellent examples of the Jolly Doctor and Sioux Sam.
“But I’ve no invention,” complained the Sour Gentleman. “At the best I could but give you certain personal experiences of my own; and those, let me tell you, are not always to my credit.”
“Now I’ll wager,” spoke up the Red Nosed Gentleman, “now I’ll wager a bottle of burgundy—and that reminds me I must send for another, since this one by me is empty—that your experiences are quite as glorious as my own; and yet, sir,”—here the Red Nosed Gentleman looked hard at the Sour Gentleman as though defying him to the tiltyard—“should you favor us, I’ll even follow you, and forage in the pages of my own heretofore and give you a story myself.”
“That is a frank offer,” chimed in the Jolly Doctor.
“There is no fault to be found with the offer,” said the Sour Gentleman; “and yet, I naturally hesitate when those stories of myself, which my poverty of imagination would compel me to give you, are not likely to grace or lift me in your esteem.”
“And what now do you suppose should be the illustrative virtues of what stories I will offer when I tell you I am a reformed gambler?”
This query was put by the Red Nosed Gentleman. The information thrown out would seem to hearten the Sour Gentleman not a little.
“Then there will be two black sheep at all events,” said the Sour Gentleman.
“Gents,” observed the Old Cattleman, decisively, “if it’ll add to the gen’ral encouragement, I’ll say right yere that in Arizona I was allowed to be some heinous myse’f. If this is to be a competition in iniquity, I aims to cut in on the play.”
“Encouraged,” responded the Sour Gentleman, with just the specter of a vinegar smile, “by the assurance that I am like to prove no more ebon than my neighbors, I see nothing for it save to relate of the riches I made and lost in queer tobacco. I may add, too, that this particular incident carries no serious elements of wrong; it is one of my cleanest pages, and displays me as more sinned against than sinning.”
When the war was done and the battle flags of that confederacy which had been my sweetheart were rolled tight to their staves and laid away in mournful, dusty corners to moulder and be forgot, I cut those buttons and gold ends of braid from my uniform, which told of me as a once captain of rebels, and turned my face towards New York. I was twenty-one at the time; my majority arrived on the day when Lee piled his arms and surrendered to Grant at Appomatox. A captain at twenty-one? That was not strange, my friends, in a time when boys of twenty-two were wearing the wreath of a brigadier. The war was fought by boys, not men;—like every other war. Ah! I won my rank fairly, saber in fist; so they all said.
Those were great days. I was with O’Ferrell. There are one hundred miles in the Shenandoah, and backwards and forwards I’ve fought on its every foot. Towards the last, each day we fought, though both armies could see the end. We, for our side, fought with the wrath of despair; the Federals, with the glow of triumph in plain sight. Each day we fought; for if we did not go riding down the valley hunting Sheridan, the sun was never over-high when he rode up the valley hunting us. Those were brave days! We fought twice after the war was done. Yes, we knew of Richmond’s fall and that the end was come. But what then? There was the eager foe; there were we, sullen and ripe and hot with hate. Why should we not fight? So it befell that I heard those gay last bugles that called down the last grim charge; so it came that I, with my comrades, made the last gray line of battle for a cause already lost, and fought round the last standards of a confederacy already dead. Those were, indeed, good days—those last scenes were filled with the best and bravest of either side.
No; I neither regret nor repent the rebellion; nor do I grieve for rebellion’s failure. All’s well that well ends, and that carnage left us the better for it. For myself, I came honestly by my sentiments of the South. I was born in Virginia, of Virginians. One of my youthful recollections is how John Brown struck his blow at Harper’s Ferry; how Governor Wise called out that company of militia of which I was a member; and how, as we stood in the lamp-lighted Richmond streets that night, waiting to take the road for Harper’s Ferry, an old grotesque farmerish figure rushed excitedly into our midst. How we laughed at the belligerent agriculturist! No, he was no farmer; he was Wilkes Booth who, with the first whisper of the news, had come hot foot from the stage of Ford’s Theater in his costume of that night to have his part with us. But all these be other stories, and I started to tell, not of the war nor of days to precede it, but about that small crash in tobacco wherein I had disastrous part.
When I arrived in New York my hopes were high, as youth’s hopes commonly are. But, however high my hope, my pocket was light and my prospects nothing. Never will I forget how the mere sensation of the great city acted on me like a stimulant. The crowd and the breezy rush of things were as wine. Then again, to transplant a man means ever a multiplication of spirit. It was so with me; the world and the hour and I were all new together, and never have I felt more fervor of enterprise than came to me those earliest New York days. But still, I must plan and do some practical thing, for my dollars, like the hairs of my head, were numbered.
It was my seventh New York morning. As I sat in the café of the Astor House, my eye was caught by a news paragraph. The Internal Revenue law, with its tax of forty cents a pound on tobacco, had gained a construction, and the department’s reading of the law at once claimed my hungriest interest. No tobacco grown prior to the crop of ’66 was to be affected by the tax; that was the decision.
Aside from my saber-trade as a cavalryman, tobacco was that thing whereof I exhaustively knew. I was a tobacco adept from the hour when the seed went into the ground, down to the perfumed moment when the perfect leaf exhaled in smoke. Moreover, I was aware of a trade matter in the nature of a trade secret, which might be made of richest import.
During those five red years of war, throughout the tobacco regions of the south, planting and harvesting, though crippled, had still gone forward. The fires of battle and the moving lines of troops had only streaked those regions; they never wholly covered or consumed them. And wherever peace prevailed, the growing of tobacco went on. The harvests had been stored; there was no market—no method of getting the tobacco out. To be brief, as I read the internal revenue decision above quoted, on that Astor House morning, I knew that scattered up and down Virginia and throughout the rest of the kindom of tobacco, the crops of full five years were lying housed, mouldy and mildewed, for the most part, and therefore cheap to whoever came with money in his hands. For an hour I sat over my coffee and made a plan.
There was a gentleman, an old college friend of my father. He was rich, avoided business and cared only for books. I had made myself known to him on the day of my arrival; he had asked me, over a glass of wine, to let him hear from me as time and my destinies took unto themselves direction. For my tobacco plan I must have money; and I could think of no one save my father’s friend of the books.
When I was shown into the old gentleman’s library, I found him deeply held with Moore’s Life of Byron. As he greeted me, he kept the volume in his left hand with finger shut in the page. Evidently he trusted that I would not remain long and that he might soon return to his reading.
The situation chilled me; I began my story with slight belief that its end would be fortunate. I exposed my tobacco knowledge, laid bare my scheme of trade, and craved the loan of five thousand dollars on the personal security—not at all commercial—of an optimist of twenty-one, whose only employment had been certain boot-and-saddle efforts to overthrow the nation. I say, I had scant hope of obtaining the aid I quested. I suffered disappointment. I was dealing with a gentleman who, however much he might grudge me a few moments taken from Byron, was willing enough to help me with money. In truth, he seemed relieved when he had heard me through; and he at once signed a check with a fine flourish, and I came from his benevolent presence equipped for those tobacco experiments I contemplated.
It is not required that I go with filmy detail into a re-count of my enterprise. I began safely and quietly; with my profits I extended myself; and at the end of eighteen months, I had so pushed affairs that I was on the highway to wealth and the firm station of a millionaire.
I had personally and through my agents bought up those five entire war-crops of tobacco. Most of it was still in Virginia and the south, due to my order; much of it had been already brought to New York. By the simple process of steaming and vaporizing, I removed each trace of mould and mildew, and under my skillful methods that war tobacco emerged upon the market almost as sweet and hale as the best of our domestic stock; and what was vastly in its favor, its flavor was, if anything, a trifle mild.
In that day of leaf tobacco, the commodity was marketed in one-hundred-pound bales. My bales were made with ninety-two pounds of war tobacco, sweated free of any touch of mildew; and eight pounds of new tobacco, the latter on the outside for the sake of color and looks. Thus you may glimpse somewhat the advantage I had. Where, at forty cents a pound, the others paid on each bale of tobacco a revenue charge of forty dollars, I, with only eight pounds of new tobacco, paid but three dollars and twenty cents. And I had cornered the exempted tobacco. Is it wonder I began to wax rich?
Often I look over my account books of those brilliant eighteen months. When I read that news item on the Astor House morning I’ve indicated, I had carefully modeled existence to a supporting basis of ten dollars a week. When eighteen months later there came the crash, I was permitting unto my dainty self a rate of personal expenditure of over thirty thousand dollars a year. I had apartments up-town; I was a member of the best clubs; I was each afternoon in the park with my carriage; incidentally I was languidly looking about among the Vere de Veres of the old Knickerbockers for that lady who, because of her superlative beauty and wit and modesty coupled with youth and station, was worthy to be my wife. Also, I recall at this period how I was conceitedly content with myself; how I gave way to warmest self-regard; pitied others as dullards and thriftless blunderers; and privily commended myself as a very Caesar of Commerce and the one among millions. Alas! “Pride goeth”—you have read the rest!
It was a bright October afternoon. My cometlike career had subsisted for something like a year and a half; and I, the comet, was growing in size and brilliancy as time fled by. My tobacco works proper were over towards the East River in a brick warehouse I had leased; to these, which were under the superintendence of a trusty and expert adherent whom I had brought north from Richmond, I seldom repaired. My offices—five rooms, fitted and furnished to the last limit of rosewood and Russia leather magnificence—were down-town.
On this particular autumn afternoon, as I went forth to my brougham for a roll to my apartments, the accountant placed in my hands a statement which I’d asked for and which with particular exactitude set forth my business standing. I remember it exceeding well. As I trundled up-town that golden afternoon, I glanced at those additions and subtractions which told my opulent story. Briefly, my liabilities were ninety thousand dollars; and I was rich in assets to a money value of three hundred and twelve thousand dollars. The ninety thousand was or would be owing on my tobacco contracts south, and held those tons on tons of stored, mildewed war tobacco, solid to my command. As I read the totals and reviewed the items, I would not have paid a penny of premium to insure my future. There it was in black and white. I knew what I had done; I knew what I could do. I was master of the tobacco situation for the next three years to come. By that time, I would have worked up the entire fragrant stock of leaf exempt from the tax; also by that time, I would count my personal fortune at a shadow over three millions. There was nothing surer beneath the sun. At twenty-six I would retire from trade and its troubles; life would lie at my toe like a kick-ball, and I would own both the wealth and the supple youth to pursue it into every nook and corner of pleasurable experience. Thus ran my smug reflections as I rolled northward along Fifth avenue to dress for dinner on that bright October day.
It was the next afternoon, and I had concluded a pleasant lunch in my private office when Mike, my personal and favorite henchman, announced a visitor. The caller desired to see me on a subject both important and urgent.
“Show him in!” I said.
There slouched into the room an awkward-seeming man of middle age; not poor, but roughly dressed. No one would have called him a fop; his clothes, far astern of the style, fitted vilely; while his head, never beautiful, was made uglier with a shock of rudely exuberant hair and a stubby beard like pig’s bristles. It was an hour when there still remained among us, savages who oiled their hair; this creature was one; and I remember how the collar of his rusty surtout shone like glass with the dripped grease.
My ill-favored visitor accepted the chair Mike placed for him and perched uneasily on its edge. When we were alone, I brought him and his business to instant bay. I was anxious to free myself of his presence. His bear’s grease and jaded appearance bred a distaste of him.
“What is it you want?” My tones were brittle and sharp.
The uncouth caller leered at me with a fashion of rancid leer—I suppose even a leer may have a flavor. Then he opened with obscure craft—vaguely, foggily. He wanted to purchase half my business. He would take an account of stock; give me exact money for one-half its value; besides, he would pay me a bonus of fifty thousand dollars.
If this unkempt barbarian had come squarely forth and told me his whole story; if, in short, I had known who he was and whom he came from, there would have grown no trouble. I would have gulped and swallowed the pill; we would have dealt; I’d have had a partner and been worth one and one-half million instead of three millions when my fortune was made. But he didn’t. He shuffled and hinted and leered, and said over and over again as he repeated his offer:
“You need a partner.”
But beyond this he did not go; and of this I could make nothing, and I felt nothing save a cumulative resentment that kept growing the larger the longer he stayed. I told him I desired none of his partnership. I told him this several divers times; and each time with added vigor and a rising voice. To the last he persistently and leeringly retorted his offer; always concluding, like another Cato, with his eternal Delenda est Carthago.
“You need a partner!”
Even my flatterers have never painted me as patient, and at twenty-three my pulse beat swift and hot. And it came to pass that on the heels of an acrid ten minutes of my visitor, I brought him bluntly up.
“Go!” I said. “I’ve heard all I care to hear. Go; or I’ll have you shown the door!”
It was of no avail; the besotted creature held his ground.
I touched a bell; the faithful Mike appeared. It took no more than a wave of the hand; Mike had studied me and knew my moods. At once he fell upon the invader and threw him down stairs with all imaginable spirit.
Thereupon I breathed with vast relief, had the windows lifted because of bear’s grease that tainted the air, and conferred on the valorous Celt a reward of two dollars.
Who was this ill-combed, unctuous, oily, cloudy, would-be partner? He was but a messenger; two months before he had resigned a desk in the Washington Treasury—for appearances only—to come to me and make the proffer. After Mike cast him forth, he brushed the dust from his knees and returned to Washington and had his treasury desk again. He was a mere go-between. The one he stood for and whose plans he sought to transact was a high official of revenue. This latter personage, of whose plotting identity back in the shadows I became aware only when it was too late, noting my tobacco operations and their profits and hawk-hungry for a share, had sent me the offer of partnership. I regret, for my sake as well as his own, that he did not pitch upon a more sagacious commissioner.
Now fell the bolt of destruction. The morning following Mike’s turgid exploits with my visitor, I was met in the office door by the manager. His face was white and his eyes seemed goggled and fixed as if their possessor had been planet-struck. I stared at him.
“Have you read the news?” he gasped.
“What news?”
“Have you not read of the last order?”
Over night—for my visitor, doubtless, wired his discomfiture—the Revenue Department had reversed its decision of two years before. The forty cents per pound of internal revenue would from that moment be demanded and enforced against every leaf of tobacco then or thereafter to become extant; and that, too, whether its planting and its reaping occurred inter arma or took place beneath the pinions of wide-spreading peace. The revenue office declared that its first ruling, exempting tobacco grown during the war, had been taken criminal advantage of; and that thereby the nation in its revenue rights had been sorely defeated and pillaged by certain able rogues—meaning me. Therefore, this new rule of revenue right and justice.
Now the story ends. Under these changed, severe conditions, when I was made to meet a tax of forty dollars where I’d paid less than a tithe of it before, I was helpless. I couldn’t, with my inferior tobacco, engage on even terms against the new tobacco and succeed. My strength had dwelt in my power to undersell. This power was departed away; my locks as a Sampson were shorn.
But why spin out the hideous story? My market was choked up; a cataract of creditors came upon me; my liabilities seemed to swell while my assets grew sear and shrunken. Under the shaking jolt of that last new revenue decision, my fortunes came tumbling like a castle of cards.
After three months, I dragged myself from beneath the ruin of my affairs and stood—rather totteringly—on my feet again. I was out of business. I counted up my treasure and found myself, debtless and unthreatened, master of some twenty thousand dollars.
And what then? Twenty thousand dollars is not so bad. It is not three millions; nor even half of three millions; but when all is said, twenty thousand is not so bad! I gave up my rich apartments, sold my horses, looked no more for a female Vere de Vere with intent her to espouse, and turned to smuggling. I had now a personal as well as a regional grudge against government. The revenue had cheated me; I would in revenge cheat the revenue. I became a smuggler. That, however, is a tale to tell another day.
“And now,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, dipping deeply into his burgundy, as if for courage, “I’ll even keep my promise. I’ll tell a story of superstition and omen; also how I turned in my infancy to cards as a road to wealth. Cards as a method to arrive by riches is neither splendid nor respectable, but I shall make no apologies. I give you the story of The Sign of The Three.”
Such confession may come grotesquely enough from one of education and substance, yet all the day long I’ve been thinking on omens and on prophecies. It was my servant who brought it about. He, poor wretch! appeared in my chamber this morning with brows of terror and eyes of gloom. He had consulted a gypsy sorceress, whom the storm drove to cover in this tavern, and crossed the palm of her greed with a silver dollar to be told that he would die within the year. Information hardly worth the fee, truly! And the worst is, the shrinking fool believes the forebode and is already set about mending his lean estates for the change. What is still more strange, I, too, regard the word of this snow-blown witch—whoever the hag may be—and can no more eject her prophecies from my head than can the scared victim of them.
This business of superstition—a weakness for the supernatural—belongs with our bone and blood. Reason is no shield from its assaults. Look at Sir Thomas More; chopped on Tower Hill because he would believe that the blessed wafers became of the Savior’s actual flesh and blood! And yet, Sir Thomas wrote that most thoughtful of works, “Utopia,” and was cunning enough of a hard-headed politics to succeed Wolsey as Chancellor.
Doubtless my bent to be superstitious came to me from my father. He was a miner; worked and lived on Tom’s Run; and being from Wales, and spending his days in gloomy caverns of coal, held to those fantastic beliefs of his craft in elves and gnomes and brownies and other malignant, small folk of Demonland. However, it becomes not me to find fault with my ancestor nor speak lightly of his foibles. He was a most excellent parent; and it is one of my comforts, and one which neither my money nor my ease could bring, that I was ever a good son.
As I say, my father was a miner of coal. Each morning while the mines were open, lamp in hat, he repaired deep within the tunneled belly of the hill across from our cottage and with pick and blast delved the day long. This mine was what is called a “rail mine,” and closed down its work each autumn to resume again in the spring. These beginnings and endings of mine activities depended on the opening and closing of navigation along the Great Lakes. When the lakes were open, the mines were open; when November’s ice locked up the lakes, it locked up the mines as well, and my father and his fellows of the lamp were perforce idle until the warmth of returning spring again freed the keels and south breezes refilled the sails of commerce. As this gave my father but five to six months work a year; and as—at sixty cents a ton and pay for powder, oil, fuse and blacksmithing—he could make no more than forty dollars a month, we were poor enough.
Even the scant money he earned we seldom really fingered. The little that was not cheated out of my father’s hands by the sins of diamond screens and untrue weights and other company tricks, was pounced on in advance by the harpies of “company store” and “company cottage,” and what coins came to our touch never soared above the mean dignity of copper. Poor we were! a family of groats and farthings! poor as Lamb’s “obolary Jew!”
It is not worth while for what I have in mind to dwell in sad extent on the struggles of my father or the aching shifts we made in my childhood to feed and clothe the life within our bodies. And yet, in body at least, I thrived thereby. I grew up strong and muscular; I boxed, wrestled and ran; was proficient as an athlete, and among other feats and for a slight wager—which was not made with my money, I warrant you!—swam eighteen miles in fresh water one Sunday afternoon.
While my muscles did well enough, our poverty would have starved my mind were it not for the parish priest. The question of books and schools for me was far beyond my father’s solution; he was eager that I be educated, but the emptiness of the family fisc forbade. It was then the good parish priest stepped forward and took me in earnest hand. Father Glennon deemed himself no little of an athlete, and I now believe that it was my supremacy in muscle among the boys of my age that first drew his eyes to me. Be that as it may, he took my schooling on himself; and night and day while I abode on Tom’s Run—say until my seventeenth year—I was as tightly bound to the priest’s books as ever Prometheus to his rock. And being a ready lad, I did my preceptor proud.
The good priest is dead now; I sought to put a tall stone above him but the bishop refused because it was too rich a mark for the dust of an humble priest. I had my way in part, however; I bought the plot just across the narrow gravel walk from the grave that held my earliest, best friend, and there, registering on its smooth white surface my debt to Father Glennon, stands the shaft. I carved on it no explanation of the fact that it is only near and not over my good priest’s bones. Those who turn curious touching that matter may wend to the bishop or to the sexton, and I now and then hear that they do.
No; I did not go into the coal holes. My father forbade it, and I lacked the inclination as well. By nature I was a speculator, a gambler if you will. I like uncertainties; I would not lend money at five hundred per cent., merely because one knows in advance the measure of one’s risks and profits. I want a chance to win and a chance to lose; for I hold with the eminent gamester Charles Fox that while to win offers the finest sensation of which the human soul is capable, the next finest comes when you lose. Congenitally I was a courtier of Fortune and a follower of the gospel of chance. And this inborn mood has carried me through a score of professions until, as I tell you this, I have grown rich and richer as a stock speculator, and hang over the markets a pure gambler of the tape. I make no apology; I simply point to the folk who surround me.
My vocation of a gambler—for what else shall one call a speculator of stocks?—has doubtless fattened my tendencies towards the superstitious. I’ve witnessed much surely, that should go to their strengthening. Let me tell you a story somewhat in line with the present current of my thoughts; it may reach some distance to teach you with Horatio that there be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. After all, it is the cold record of one of a hundred score of incidents that encourage my natural belief in the occult.
There is a gentleman of stocks—I’ve known him twenty years—and he has a weakness for the numeral three. Just how far his worship of that sacred number enters into his business life no one may certainly tell; he is secretive and cautious and furnishes no evidence on the point that may be covered up. Yet this weakness, if one will call it so, crops up in sundry fashions. His offices are suite three, in number thirty-three Blank street; his telephones are 333 and 3339 respectively; his great undertakings are invariably deferred in their commencements until the third of the month.
His peculiar and particular fetich, however, is a chain of three hundred and thirty-three gold beads. It is among the wonders of the street. This was made for him and under his direction by Tiffany, and cost one workman something over a year of his life in its construction. It is all hand and hammer work, this chain; and on each bead is drawn with delicate and finished art a gypsy girl’s head. Under a microscope this gypsy face is perfect and the entire jewel worthy the boast of the Tiffany house as a finest piece of goldbeater’s work turned out in modern times.
It is a listless, warm evening at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Our believer in “Three” is gathered casually with two of his friends. There is no business abroad; those missions which called our gentleman of the gypsy chain up-town are all discharged; he is off duty—unbuckled, as it were, in cheerful, light converse over a bottle of wine. Let us name our friend of the Three, “James of the Beads;” while his duo of comrades may be Reed and Rand respectively.
Such is man’s inconsistency that James of the Beads is railing at Reed who has told—with airs of veneration if not of faith—of a “system,” that day laid bare to him, warranted to discover in excellent rich advance, the names of the winning horses in next day’s races. James of the Beads laughs, while Reed feebly defends his credulity in lending the countenance of half belief to the “system” he describes.
Then a sudden impulse takes James of the Beads. His face grows grave while his eye shows deepest thought.
“To-morrow is the third of the month?” observes James of the Beads. Now with emphasis: “Gentlemen, I’ll show you how to select a horse.” Then to Reed, who holds in his hands the racing list: “Look for to-morrow’s third race!” Reed finds it.
“What is the third horse?”
“Roysterer.”
“Roysterer!” repeats James of the Beads. “Good! There are nine letters in the name; three syllables; three r’s!”
Then James of the Beads seizes with both hands, in a sort of ecstatic catch as catch can, on the gypsy chain of magic. He holds a bead between the thumb and fore-finger of each hand. Softly he counts the little yellow globes between.
“Thirty-three!” ejaculates James of the Beads. Deeper lights begin to shine in his eye. One test of the chain, however, is not enough. He must make three. A second time he takes a bead between each fore-finger and thumb; on this trial the two beads are farther apart. Again he counts, feeling each golden bullet with his finger’s tip as the tally proceeds.
“Sixty-six!”
There arrives a glow on the brow of James of the Beads to keep company with the gathering sparkle of his eye. The questioning of the witch-chain goes on. Again he seizes the beads; again he tells the number.
“Ninety-nine!”
The prophecy is made; the story of success is foretold. James of the Beads is on fire; he springs to his feet. Rand and Reed regard him in silence, curiously. He walks to a window and sharply gazes out on the lamp-sprinkled evening.
“Twenty-third street! Fifth avenue! Broadway!” he mutters. “Still three—always three!”
Unconsciously James of the Beads seeks the window-shade with his hand. He would raise it a trifle; it is low and interrupts the eye as he stands gazing into the trio of thoroughfares. The tassel he grasps is old and comes off in his fingers. James of the Beads turns his glance on the tassel.
“That, too, has its meaning,” says James of the Beads, “if only we might read it.”
The tassel is a common, poor creature of worsted yarns and strands wrapped about a clumsy mold of wood. James of the Beads scans it narrowly as it lies in his hand. At last he turns it, and the fringe falls away from the wooden mold. There is a little “3” burned upon the wood. James of the Beads exhibits this sacred sign to Reed and Rand; the while his excited interest deepens. Then he counts the strands of worsted which constitute the fringe. There are eighty-one!
“Three times three times three times three!” and James of the Beads draws a deep breath.
Who might resist these spectral manifestations of “Three!” James of the Beads turns from the window like one whose decision is made. Without a word he takes a slip of paper from his pocket book and going to the table writes his name on its back. It is a pleasant-seeming paper, this slip; and pleasantly engraved and written upon. No less is it than a New York draft drawn on the City National Bank by a leading Chicago concern for an even one hundred thousand dollars. James of the Beads places it in the hands of Rand.
“To-morrow should be the luckiest of days,” says James of the Beads. “I must not lose it. I must consider to-morrow and arrange to set afoot certain projects which I’ve had in train for some time. As to the races, Rand, take the draft and put it all on Roysterer.”
“Man alive!” remonstrates the amazed Rand; “it’s too much on one horse! Moreover, I won’t have time to get all that money down.”
“Get down what you can then,” commands James of the Beads. “Plunge! Have no fears! I tell you, so surely as the sun comes up, Roysterer will win.”
“The wise ones don’t think so,” urges Rand, who is not wedded to the mystic “Three,” and beholds nothing wondrous in that numeral. “This Roysterer is a seven for one shot.”
“And the better for us,” retorts James of the Beads. “Roysterer is to win.”
“But wouldn’t it be wiser to split this money and play part of it on Roysterer for a place?”
“Never!” declares James of the Beads. “Do you suppose I don’t know what I’m about? I’m worth a million for each year of my life, and I made every stiver of it by the very method I take to discover this horse. Can’t you see that I’m not guessing?—that I have reason for what I do? Roysterer for a place! Never! get down every splinter that Roysterer finishes first.”
“Let me ask one question,” observes the cautious Rand. “Do you know the horse?”
“Never heard of the animal in my life!” remarks James of the Beads, pouring himself a complacent glass. This he tastes approvingly. “You must pardon me, my friends, I’ve got to write a note or two. I’ve not too much time for a man with twenty things to do, and who must be in the street when business opens to-morrow. Take my word for it; get all you can on Roysterer. If we win, we’re partners; if we lose, I’m alone.”
Rand shakes sage, experienced head, while his face gathers a cynical look.
Reed and Rand take James of the Beads by the hand and then withdraw.
“What do you make of it?” asks Rand.
“The man’s infatuated!” replies Reed.
“And yet, you also believe in systems,” remarks Rand.
It is the next afternoon. The Brighton course is rampant with the usual jostling, pushing, striving, guessing, knowing, wagering, winning, losing, ignorant, exulting, deploring, profane crowd. The conservative Rand has so far obeyed the behest of James of the Beads that he has fifteen thousand dollars on Roysterer straight.
“To lose fifteen thousand won’t hurt him,” says Rand, and so consoles himself for a mad speculation whereof he has no joy.
Reed and Rand, as taking life easily, are in a box; the race over which their interest clings and clambers is called.
The horses are at the post. Roysterer does not act encouragingly; he is too sleepy—too lethargic! Starlight, the favorite, steps about, alert and springy as a cat; it should be an easy race for her if looks go for aught.
They get the word; they are “off!” The field sweeps ’round the curve. A tall man in a nearby box follows the race with a glass.
“At the quarter,” sings the tall man. “Starlight first, Blenheim second, Roysterer third!” There is a pause. Then the tall man: “At the half! Starlight first, Blenheim second, Roysterer third!” Rand turns to Reed. “He must better that,” says Rand, “or he’ll explode the superstition of our friend.” There is a wait of twenty-five seconds. Again the tall, binoculared man: “Three-quarter post! Starlight first, Blenheim second, Roysterer third—and whipping!”
“It’s as good as over,” observes Rand. “I wonder what James of the Beads will say to his witch-chain when he hears the finish.”
“It’s surprising,” remarks Reed peevishly, “that a man of his force and clear intelligence should own to such a weakness! All his life he’s followed this marvelous ‘Three’ about; and having had vast success he attributes it to the ‘Three,’ when he might as well and as wisely ascribe it to Captain Kidd or Trinity church. To-day’s results may cure him; and that’s one comfort.”
There is a sharp click as the tall man in the nearby box shuts up his glasses.
“Roysterer wins!” says the tall man.
“Got down fifteen thousand. Won one hundred and five thousand,” reads James of the Beads from Rand’s telegram sent from the track. James of the Beads is in his offices; he has just finished a victorious day, at once heavy and tumultuous with the buying and the selling of full three hundred thousand shares of stocks. “They should have wagered the full one hundred thousand and let the odds look after themselves,” he says. Then James of the Beads begins to caress the gypsy chain. “You knew,” he murmurs; “of course, you knew!” There is a note of devotion in the tones. The bead-worship goes on for a silent moment. “Only one hundred and five thousand!” ruminates James of the Beads. “I suppose Rand was afraid!”
“That is indeed a curious story,” observed the Jolly Doctor, when the Red Nosed Gentleman, being done with James of the Beads, was returning to his burgundy; “and did it really happen?”
“Of a verity, did it,” returned the Red Nosed Gentleman. “I was Rand.”
Conversation fluttered from one topic to another for a brief space, but dealt mainly with those divers superstitions that folk affect. When signs and omens were worn out, the Jolly Doctor turned upon the Old Cattleman as though to remind that ancient practitioner of cows how it would be now his right to uplift us with a reminiscence.
“No, I don’t need to be told it none,” said the Old Cattleman. “On the principle of freeze-out, it’s shore got down to me. Seein’ how this yere snow reminds me a heap of Christmas, I’ll onload on you-all how we’re aroused an’ brought to a realisin’ sense of that season of gifts once upon a time in Wolfville.”
This yere can’t be called a story; which it can’t even be described none as a sketch. Accordin’ to the critics, who, bein’ plumb onable to write one themse’fs, nacherally knows what a story ought to be, no story’s a story onless she’s built up like one of these one-sided hills. Reelation must climb painfully from base to peak, on the slope side, with interest on a up-grade, say, of one foot in ten; an’ then when you-all arrives safely at the summit, the same bein’ the climax, you’re to pitch headlong over the precipice on the sheer an’ other side, an’ in the space of not more’n a brace of sentences, land, bing! bang! smash!—all broke up at the bottom. That, by what you-all might call “Our best literary lights,” would be a story, an’ since what I’m about to onfold don’t own no sech brands nor y’ear-marks, it can’t come onder that head.
This partic’lar o’casion is when little Enright Peets Tutt—said blessed infant, as I sets forth former, bein’ the conj’int production of Dave Tutt an’ his esteemable wife, Tucson Jennie—is comin’ eight years old next spring round-up. Little Enright Peets is growin’ strong an’ husky now, an’ is the pride of the Wolfville heart. He’s shed his milk teeth an’ is sproutin’ a second mouthful, white an’ clean as a coyote’s. Also, his cur’osity is deeveloped powerful an’ he’s in the habit of pervadin’ about from the Red Light to the New York Store, askin’ questions; an’ he is as familiar in the local landscape as either the Tucson stage or Old Monte, the drunkard who drives it.
One afternoon, about first drink time, little Enright Peets comes waddlin’ up to Old Man Enright on them short reedic’lous black-b’ar laigs of his, an’ says:
“Say, gran’dad Enright, don’t you-all cim-marons never have no Christmas in this camp? Which if you does, all I got to say is I don’t notice no Christmas none since I’ve been yere, an’ that’s whatever!”
91
“Will you-all listen to this preecocious child!” observes Enright to Doc Peets, with whom he’s in talk. “Wherever now do you reckon, Doc, he hears tell of Christmas?”
“How about it, Uncle Doc?” asks little Enright Peets, turnin’ his eyes up to Peets when he notices Enright don’t reply.
At this Enright an’ Peets makes a disparin’ gesture an’ wheels into the Red Light for a drink, leavin’ pore little Enright Peets standin’ in the street.
“That baby puts us to shame, Doc,” says Enright, as he signs up to Black Jack, the barkeep, for the Valley Tan; “he shows us in one word how we neglects his eddication. The idee of that child never havin’ had no Christmas! It’s more of a stain on this commoonity than not hangin’ Navajo Joe that time.”
“That’s whatever!” assents Peets, reachin’ for the nose-paint in his turn. “‘Out of the mouths of babes an’ sucklin’s,’ as the good book says.” This infantile bluff of little Enright Peets goes a long way to stir up the sensibilities of the public. As for Enright, he don’t scroople to take Dave Tutt to task.
“The thought that you, Dave,” says Enright, “you, a gent I yeretofore regyards as distinguished for every paternal virchoo, would go romancin’ along, lettin’ that boy grow up in darkness of Christmas, an’ it one of the first festivals of the Christian world! As a play, I says freely, that sech neglect is plumb too many for me!”
“She’s shore a shame,” adds Dan Boggs, who’s also shocked a heap, and stands in with Enright to crawl Dave’s hump, “she’s shore a shame, never to provide no Christmas for that offspring of yours, an’ leave him to go knockin’ about in his ignorance like a blind dog in a meat shop. That’s what I states; she’s a shame!”
“Now gents,” reemonstrates Dave, “don’t press the limit in these yere reecrim’nations, don’t crowd me too hard. I asks you, whatever could I do? If you-all enthoosiasts will look this yere Christmas proposition ca’mly in the face, you’ll begin to notice that sech cel’brations ain’t feasible in Arizona. Christmas in its very beginnin’ is based on snow. Who’s the reg’lar round-up boss for Christmas? Ain’t he a disrepootable Dutchman named Santa Claus? Don’t he show up wrapped in furs, an’ with reindeer an’ sleigh an’ hock deep in a snowstorm? Answer me that? Also show me where’s your snow an’ where’s your sleigh an’ where’s your reindeer an’ where’s your Dutchman in Wolfville? You-all better go about Jixin’ up your camp an’ your climate so as to make one of these Christmases possible before ever you come buttin’ in, cavilin’ an’ criticisin’ ag’in me as a parent.”
“Which jest the same, Dave,” contends Dan, who takes the eepisode mighty sour, “it looks like you-all could have made some sort o’ play.”
About this time, as addin’ itse’f to the gen’ral jolt given the Wolfville nerve by them Christmas questions put aforesaid by little Enright Peets, news comes floatin’ over from Red Dog of a awful spree that low-flung outfit enjoys. It’s a Six Shooter Weddin’; so deenominated because Pete Bland, the outlaw for whom the party is made, an’ his wife, The Duchess, has been married six years an’ ain’t done nothin’ but fight. Wherefore, on the sixth anniversary of their nuptials, Red Dog resolves on a Six Shooter Weddin’; an’ tharupon descends on those two wedded warriors, Pete an’ The Duchess, in a body, packin’ fiddles, nose-paint, an’ the complete regalia of a frantic shindig. An’ you hear me, gents, them Red Dog tarrapins shore throws themse’fs loose! You-all could hear their happy howls in Wolfville.
As a reason for the outburst, an’ one consistent with its name, the guests endows Pete an’ The Duchess each with belts an’ a brace of guns.
“To the end,” says the Red Dog cha’rman when he makes the presentation speech, “that, as between Pete an’ The Duchess, we as a commoonity promotes a even break, and clothes both parties in interest with equal powers to preserve the peace.”
As I observes, it’s the story of these proud doin’s on the locoed part of our rival, that ondoubted goes some distance to decide us Wolves of Wolfville on pullin’ off a Christmas warjig for little Enright Peets. We ain’t goin’ to be outdone none in this business of being fervid.
It’s mebby a month prior to Christmas when we resolves on this yere racket, an’ so we has ample time to prepare. Almost every afternoon an’ evenin’ over our Valley Tan, we discusses an’ does our wisest to evolve a programme. It’s then we begins to grasp the wisdom of Dave’s observations touchin’ how onfeasible it is to go talkin’ of Christmas in southern Arizona.
“Nacherally,” remarks Enright, as we sits about the Red Light, turnin’ the game in our minds, “nacherally, we ups an’ gives little Enright Peets presents. Which brings us within ropin’ distance of the inquiry, ‘Whatever will we give him?’”
“We-all can’t give him fish-lines, an’ sech,” says Doc Peets, takin’ up Enright’s argument, “for thar ain’t no fish. Skates is likewise barred, thar bein’ no ice; an’ sleds an’ mittens an’ worsted comforters an’ fur caps fails us for causes sim’lar. Little Enright Peets is too young to smoke; Tucson Jennie won’t let him drink licker; thar, with one word, is them two important sources closed ag’in us. Gents, Pm inclined to string my bets with Dave; I offers two for one as we sets yere, that this framin’ up a Christmas play in Arizona as a problem ain’t no slouch.”
“Thar’s picture books,” says Faro Nell.
“Shore!” assents Cherokee Hall, where he’s planted back of his faro box.
“An’ painted blocks!”
“Good!” says Cherokee.
“An’ candy!”
“Nell’s right!” an’ Cherokee coincides plumb through, “Books, blocks, an’ candy, is what I calls startin’ on velvet.”
“Whatever’s the matter,” says Dan Boggs, who’s been rackin’ his intellects a heap, “of givin’ little Enright Peets a faro layout, or mebby now, a roolette wheel? Some of them wheels is mighty gaudy furniture!”
“Dan,” says Enright, an’ his tones is severe; “Dan, be you-all aimin’ to corrupt this child?” Dan subsides a whole lot after this yere reproof.
“I don’t reckon now,” observes Jack Moore, an’ his manner is as one ropin’ for information; “I don’t reckon now a nice, wholesome Colt’s-44, ivory butt, stamped leather belts, an’ all that, would be a proper thing to put in play. Of course, a 8-inch gun is some heavy as a plaything for a infant only seven; but he’d grow to it, gents, he’d grow to it.”
“Don’t alloode to sech a thing, Jack,” says Dan, with a shudder; “don’t alloode to it. Little Enright Peets would up an’ blow his yoothful light out; an’ then Tucson Jennie would camp on our trails forevermore as the deestroyers of her child. The mere idee gives me the fantods!” An’ Dan, who’s a nervous party, shudders ag’in.
“Gents,” says Texas Thompson, “I ain’t cut in on this talk for two reasons: one is I ain’t had nothin’ to say; an’ ag’in, it was Christmas Day when my Laredo wife—who I once or twice adverts to as gettin’ a divorce—ups an’ quits me for good. For which causes it has been my habit to pass up all mention an’ mem’ry of this sacred season in a sperit of silent pra’r. But time has so far modified my feelin’s that, considerin’ the present purposes of the camp, I’m willin’ to be heard. Thar’s nothin’ that should be looked to more jealously than this ye re givin’ of presents. It’s grown so that as a roole the business of makin’ presents degen’rates to this: Some sport who can’t afford to, gives some sport something he don’t need. Thar’s no fear of the first, since we gents can afford anything we likes. As to the second prop’sition, we should skin our kyards some sharp. We-all ought to lavish on little Enright Peets a present which, while safegyardin’ his life an’ his morals, is calc’lated to teach him some useful accomplishments. Books, blocks, an sweetmeats, as proposed by our fac’natin’ townswoman, Miss Faro Nell”—Nell tosses Texas a kiss—“is in admir’ble p’int as coverin’ a question of amooze-ments. For the rest, an’ as makin’ for the deevel-opment of what will be best in the character of little Enright Peets, I moves you we-all turns in an’ buys that baby the best bronco—saddle, bridle, rope an’ spurs, complete—that the southwest affords.”
Texas, who’s done stood up to make this yere oration, camps down ag’in in the midst of a storm of applause. The su’gestion has immediate adoption.
We-all gives a cold thousand for the little boss. We gets him of the sharp who—it bein’ in the old day before railroads—is slammin’ through the mails from Chihuahua to El Paso, three hundred miles in three nights. This bronco—he’s a deep bay, shadin’ off into black like one of them overripe violins, an’ with nostrils like red expandin’ hollyhocks—can go a hundred miles between dark an’ dark, an’ do it three days in a week. Which lie’s shore a wonder, is that little hoss; an’ the saddle an’ upholstery that goes with him, Spanish leather an’ gold, is fit for his company.
As Dan leads him up in front of the Red Light Christmas Eve for us to look at, he says:
“Gents, if he ain’t a swallow-bird on four legs, then I never sees no sech fowl; an’ the only drawback is that, considerin’ the season, we can’t hang him on no tree.”
An’ y ere, now, is where we-all gets scared up. It spoils the symmetry of this story to chunk it in this a-way; but I can’t he’p myse’f, for this story, like that tale of James of the Beads, is troo.
Jest as we-all is about to prounce down with our gifts on Dave’s wickeyup like a mink on a settin’ hen—Dan bein’ all framed an’ frazzled up in cow-tails an’ buffalo horns like a Injun medicine man, thinkin’ to make the deal as Santa Claus—Tucson Jennie comes surgin’ up, wild an’ frantic, an’ allows little Enright Peets is lost. Dave, she says, is chargin’ about, tryin’ to round him up.
“Which I knows he’s done been chewed up by wolves,” says Tucson Jennie, wringin’ her hands an’ throwin’ her apron over her head. “He’d shore showed up for supper if he’s alive.”
It’s obvious that before that Christmas can proceed, we-all has got to recover the beneficiary. Thar’s a gen’ral saddlin’ up, an’ in no time Wolf-ville’s population is spraddlin’ about the surroundin’ scenery.
It comes right though, an’ it’s Dan who makes the turn. Dan discovers little Enright Peets camped down in the lee of a mesquite bush, seven miles out on his way to the Floridas mountains. He puts it up he’s goin’ over to the hills to have a big talk an’ make medicine with Moh-Kwa, the wise medicine b’ar that Sioux Sam yere has been reelatin’ to him about.
No, that child ain’t scared none; he’s takin’ it cool an’ contented, with twenty coyotes settin’ about, blinkin’ an’ silent on their tails, an’ lookin’ like they’re sort o’ thinkin’ little Enright Peets over an’ tryin’ to figger out his system. Them little wolves don’t onderstand what brings that infant out alone on the plains, that a-way; an’ they’re cogitatin’ about it when Dan disperses ’em to the four winds.
That’s all thar is to the yarn. Little Enright Peets is packed into camp an’ planted in the midst of them books an’ blocks an’ candies which Faro Nell su’gests; also, he’s made happy with the little hoss. Dan, in his medicine mask an’ paint, does a skelp dance, an’ is the soul of the hour.
Little Enright Peets’ joy is as wide as the territory. Despite reemonstrance, he insists on get-tin’ into that gold-embossed saddle an’ givin’ his little hoss a whirl ‘round the camp. Dan rides along to head off stampedes.
On the return, little Enright Peets comes down the street like an arrow an’ pulls up short. As Dave searches him out of the saddle, he says:
“Paw, that cayouse could beat four kings an’ a ace.”
That’s reward enough; Wolfville is never more pleased than the night it opens up to little Enright Peets the beauties which lies hid in Christmas. An’ the feelin’ that we-all has done this, sort o’ glorifies an’ gilds the profound deebauch that en-soos. Tucson Jennie lays it down that it’s shore the star Christmas, since it’s the one when her lost is found an’ the Fates in the guise of Dan presents her with her boy ag’in. I knows of myse’f, gents, that Jennie is shore moved, for she omits utter to lay for Dave with reproaches when, givin’ way to a gen’rous impulse, he issues forth with the rest of the band, an’ relaxes into a picnic that savors of old days.
“My friends,” observed the Jolly Doctor, as we were taking our candles preparatory for bed, the hour having turned towards the late, “I shall think on this as an occasion of good company. And to-morrow evening—for this storm will continue to hold us prisoners—you will find unless better offer, I shall recognize my debt to you by attempting a Christmas story myself. I cannot stir your interest as has our friend of camps and trails with his Wolfville chapter, but I shall do what lies in me.”
“You will tell us of some Christmas,” hazarded the Sour Gentleman, “that came beneath your notice as a professional man.”
“Oh, no; not that,” returned the Jolly Doctor. “This is rather a story of health and robust strength than any sick-bed tale. It is of gloves and fighting men who never saw a doctor. I shall call it ‘The Pitt Street Stringency.’”
It was eight of the clock on the second evening when we gathered about the fire-place. The snow was still falling and roads were reported blocked beyond any thought of passage. We were snowbound; folk who should know declared that if a road were broken for our getting out within a week, it was the best we might look for.
No one seemed stricken of grief at this prison prospect. As we came about the cheery blaze, every face was easy and content. The Jolly Doctor joined the Red Nosed Gentleman in his burgundy, while the Sour Gentleman and the Old Cattleman qualified for the occasion with a copious account of whiskey, which the aged man of cows called “Nose-paint.” Sioux Sam and I were the only “abstainers”—I had ceased and he had never commenced—but as if to make up, we smoked a double number of cigars.
The Jolly Doctor began with the explanation that the incidents he would relate had fallen beneath his notice when as a student he walked the New York hospitals; then, glass in hand, he told us the tale of The Pitt Street Stringency.
Another would-be sooicide, eh! Here, Kid,” to a sharp gamin who does errands and odd commissions for the house; “take this mut in where dey kills ’em.”
The speaker is a loud young man, clad in garments of violence. The derby tilted over eye, the black cigar jutting ceilingward at an agle of sixty degrees, the figured shirt whereof a dominating dye is angry red, the high collar and flash tie, with its cheap stone, all declare the Bowery. As if to prove the proposition announced of his costume, the young man is perched on a stool, the official ticket-seller of a Bowery theatre.
Mike Menares, whom the Bowery person alludes to as the “mut,” is a square-shouldered boy of eighteen; handsome he is as Apollo, yet with a slow, good-humored guilelessness of face. He has come on business bent. That mighty pugilist, the Dublin Terror, is nightly on the stage, offering two hundred dollars to any amateur among boxers who shall remain before him four Queensberry rounds. Mike Menares, he of the candidly innocent countenance, desires to proffer himself as a sacrifice.
“Youse is just in time, sport,” remarks the brisk gamin to whom Mike has been committed, as he pilots the guileless one to the stage door. “It’s nine o’clock now, an’ d’ Terror goes on to do his bag-t’umpin’ turn at ten. After that comes d’ knockin’ out, see! But say! if youse was tired of livin’, why didn’t you jump in d’ East river? I’d try d’ river an’d’ morgue before I’d come here to be murdered be d’ Terror.”
Mike makes no retort to this, lacking lightness of temper. His gamin conductor throws open the stage door and signals Mike to enter.
“Tell d’ butcher here’s another calf for him,” vouchsafes the gamin to the stage-hands inside the door.
Let us go back four hours to a three-room tenement in Pitt Street. There are two rooms and a little kennel of a kitchen. The furnishings are rough and cheap and clean. The lady of the tenement, as the floors declare, is a miracle of soap and water. And the lady is little Mollie Lacy, aged eleven years.
The family of the Pitt Street tenement is made up of three. There is Mike Menares, our hero; little Mollie; and, lastly, her brother Davy, aged nine. Little Davy is lame. He fell on the tenement stairs four years before and injured his hip. The hospital doctors took up the work where the tenement stairs left off, and Davy came from his sick-bed doomed to a crutch for life.
Mike Menares is half-brother of the younger ones. Nineteen years before, Mike’s mother, Irish, with straw-colored hair and blue eyes, wedded one Menares, a Spanish Jew. This fortunate Menares was a well-looking, tall man; with hair black and stiffening in a natural pompadour. He kept a tobacco stall underneath a stair in Park Row, and was accounted rich by the awfully poor about him. He died, however, within the year following Mike’s birth; and thus there was an end to the rather thoroughbred dark Spanish Jew.
Mike’s mother essayed matrimony a second time. She selected as a partner in this experiment a shiftless, idle, easy creature named David Lacy, who would have been a plasterer had not his indolence defeated his craft. Little Mollie, and Davy of the clattering crutch, occurred as a kind of penalty of the nuptials.
Three years and a half before we encounter this mixed household, Lacy, the worthless, sailed away on a China ship without notice or farewell. Some say he was “shanghaied,” and some that he went of free will. Mrs. Lacy adopted the former of the two theories.
“David Lacy, too idle to work ashore, assuredly would not go to sea where work and fare are tenfold harder.”
Thus argued Mrs. Lacy. Still, a solution of Lacy’s reasons for becoming a mariner late in life is not here important. He sailed and he never returned; and as Mrs. Lacy perished of pneumonia the following winter, they both may be permitted to quit this chronicle to be meddled with by us no further.
Mike Menares had witnessed fifteen years when his mother died. As suggested, he is a singularly handsome boy, and of an appearance likely to impress. From his Conemara mother, he received a yellow head of hair. Underneath are a pair of jet black brows, a hawkish nose, double rows of strong white teeth, and deep soft black eyes, as honest as a hound’s, the plain bestowal of his Jewish father.
Mike was driving a delivery wagon for the great grocers, Mark & Milford, when his mother died. This brought six dollars a week. After the sad going of his mother, Mike found a second situation where he might work evenings, and thereby add six further dollars to that stipend from Mark & Milford. This until the other day continued. On twelve dollars a week, and with little Mollie—a notable housekeeper—to manage for the Pitt Street tenement, the composite house of Menares and Lacy fared well.
Mike’s evening labors require a description. One Sarsfield O’Punch, an expert of boxing and an athlete of some eminence, maintains a private gymnasium on Fifty-ninth street. This personage is known to his patrons as “Professor O’Punch.” Mike, well-builded and lithe, broad of shoulder, deep of lung, lean of flank, a sort of half-grown Hercules, finds congenial employ as aid to Professor O’Punch. Mike’s primal duty is to box with those amateurs of the game who seek fistic enlightenment of his patron, and who have been carried by that scientist into regions of half-wisdom concerning the bruising art for which they moil. From eight o’clock until eleven, Mike’s destiny sets him, one after the other, before a full score of these would-be boxers, some small and some big, some good and some bad, some weak and some strong, but all zealous to a perspiring degree. These novices smite and spare not, and move with all their skill and strength to pummel Mike. They have, be it said, but indifferent success; for Mike, waxing expert among experts, side-steps and blocks and stops and ducks and gets away; and his performances in these defensive directions are the whisper of the school.
Now and then he softly puts a glove on some eager face, or over some unguarded heart, or feather-like left-hooks some careless jaw, to the end that the other understand a peril and fend against it. But Mike, working lightly as a kitten, hurts no one; such being the private commands of Professor O’Punch who knows that to pound a pupil is to lose a pupil.
It is to be doubted if the easy-natured Mike is aware of his wonderful strength of arm and body, or the cat-like quickness and certainty of his blows. During these three years wherein he has been underling to Professor O’Punch, Mike strikes but two hard blows. One evening several of the followers of Professor O’Punch are determining their prowess on a machine intended to register the force of a blow. Following each other in a fashion of punching procession, these aspiring gymnasts, putting their utmost into the swings, strike with all steam. Four hundred to five hundred pounds says the register; this is vaunted as a vastly good account.
Mike, with folded arms and stripped to ring costume—his official robes—is looking on, a smile lighting his pleasant face. Mike is ever interested and ever silent.
As the others smite, Mike beams with approval, but makes no comment. At last one observes:
“Menares, how many pounds can you strike?”
“I don’t know,” replies Mike, in a surprised way, “I never tried.”
“Try now,” says the other; “I’ve a notion you could hit hard enough if you cared to.”
The others second the speaker. Much and instant curiosity grows up as to what Mike can do with his hands if he puts his soul into it. There is not an amateur about but knows more of Mike than does the latter of himself. They know him as one perfect of defensive boxing; also, they recall the precise feather-like taps which Mike confers on the best of their muster whenever he chooses; but none has a least of knowledge of how bitterly hard Mike’s glove might be sent home should ever his heart be given to the trial.
Being urged, Mike begins to rouse; he himself grows curious. It has never come to him as a thought to make the experiment. The “punching machine” has stood there as part of the paraphernalia of the gymnasium. But to the fog-witted Mike, who comes to work for so many dollars a week and who has not once considered himself in the light of a boxer, whether excellent or the reverse, it held no particular attraction. It could tell him no secrets he cares a stiver to hear.
Now, Mike for a first time feels moved to a bit of self-enlightenment. Poising himself for the effort, Mike, with the quickness of light, sends in a right-hand smash that all but topples the contrivance from its base. For the moment the muscles of his back and leg knot and leap in ropelike ridges; and then they as instantly sink away. The machine registers eight hundred and ninety-one pounds.
The on-gazers draw a long breath. Then they turn their eyes on Mike, whose regular outlines, with muscles retreated again into curves and slopes and shimmering ripples, have no taint of the bruiser, and whose handsome features, innocent of a faintest ferocity, recall some beautiful statue rather than anything more viciously hard.
Mike’s second earnest blow comes off in this sort. He is homeward bound from gymnasium work one frosty midnight. Not a block from his home, three evil folk of the night are standing beneath an electric light. Mike, unsuspicious, passes them. Instantly, one delivers a cut at Mike’s head with a sandbag. Mike, warned by the shadow of uplifted arm, springs forward out of reach, wheels, and then as the footpad blunders towards him, Mike’s left hand, clenched and hammerlike, goes straight to his face. Bone and teeth are broken with the shock of it; blood spurts, and the footpad comes senseless to the pave. His ally, one of the other two, grasps at Mike’s throat. His clutch slips on the stern muscles of the athlete’s neck as if the neck were a column of brass. Mike seizes his assailant’s arm with his right hand; there is a twist and a shriek; the second robber rolls about with a dislocated fore-arm. The third, unharmed, flies screeching with the fear of death upon him.
At full speed comes a policeman, warned of his duty by the howls of anguish. He surveys the two on the ground; one still and quiet, the other groaning and cursing with his twisted arm. The officer sends in an ambulance call. Then he surveys with pleased intentness the regular face of Mike, cool and unperturbed.
“An Irish Sheeny!” softly comments the officer to himself.
He is expert of faces, is the officer, and deduces Mike’s two-ply origin from his yellow hair, dark eye and curved nose.
“You’re part Irish and part Jew,” observes the policeman.
“My mother was from Ireland,” answers Mike; “my father was a Spanish Jew from Salamanca. I think that’s what they call it, although I was not old enough when he died to remember much about him.”
“Irish crossed on Jew!” comments the officer, still in a mood of thoughtful admiration. “It’s the best prize-ring strain in the world!” The officer is in his dim way a patron of sport.
Mike thanks the other; for, while by no means clearly understanding, he feels that a compliment is meant. Then Mike goes homeward to Mollie and little Davy.
It is the twenty-third of December—two days before Christmas—when we are first made friends of Mike Menares. About a month before, the little family of three fell upon bad days. Mike was dismissed by the great grocers, and the six dollars weekly from that quarter came to an end. Mike’s delivery wagon was run down and crushed by a car; and, while Mike was not to blame, the grocers have no time to discover a justice, and Mike was told to go.
For mere food and light and fire, Mike’s other six Saturday dollars from Professor O’Punch would with economy provide. But there is the rent on New Year’s day! Also, and more near, is Christmas, with not a penny to spare. It must perforce be a bare festival, this Christmas. It will be a blow to little Davy of the crutch, who has talked only of Christmas for two months past and gone.
Mike, as has been intimated, is dull and slow of brain. He has just enough of education to be able to read and write. He owns no bad habits—no habits at all, in fact; and the one great passion of his simple heart is love without a limit for Mollie and little Davy. He lives for them; the least of their desires is the great concern of Mike’s life. Therefore, when his income shrinks from twelve dollars to six, it creeps up on him and chills him as a loss to Mollie and Davy. And peculiarly does this sorrowful business of a ruined Christmas for Davy prey on poor Mike.
“You and I won’t mind,” says housewife Mollie, looking up in Mike’s face with the sage dignity of her eleven years, “because we’re old enough to understand; but I feel bad about little Davy. It’s the first real awful Christmas we’ve ever had.”
Mollie is as bright and wise as Mike is dull. Seven years her senior, still Mike has grown to believe in and rely altogether on Mollie as a guide. He takes her commands without question, and does her will like a slave. To Mollie goes every one of Mike’s dollars; it is Mollie who disposes of them, while Mike never gives them a thought. They have been devoted to the one purpose of Mike’s labors; they have gone to Mollie and little Davy of the crutch; why, then, should Mike pursue them further?
Following housewife Mollie’s regrets over a sad Christmas that was not because of their poverty to be a Christmas, Mike sits solemnly by the window looking out on the gathering gloom and hurrying holiday crowds of Pitt Street. The folk are all poor; yet each seems able to do a bit for Christmas. As they hurry by, with small bundles and parcels, and now and then a basket from which protrude mayhap a turkey’s legs or other symptom of the victory of Christmas, Mike, in the midst of his sluggish amiabilities, discovers a sense of pain—a darkish thought of trouble.
And as if grief were to sharpen his wits, Mike has for almost a first and last time an original idea. It is the thought natural enough, when one reflects on Mike’s engagements, evening in and evening out, with Professor O’Punch.
115
That day Mike, in passing through the Bowery, read the two hundred dollars offer of the selfconfident Terror. At that time Mike felt nothing save wonder that so great a fortune might be the reward of so small an effort. But it did not occur to him that he should try a tilt with the Terror. In his present stress, however, and with the woe upon him of a bad Christmas to dawn for little Davy, the notion marches slowly into Mike’s intelligence. And it seems simple enough, too, now Mike has thought of it; and with nothing further of pro or con, he prepares himself for the enterprise.
For causes not clear to himself he says nothing to housewife Mollie of his plans. But he alarms that little lady of the establishment’s few sparse pots and kettles by declining to eat his supper. Mollie fears Mike is ill. The latter, knowing by experience just as any animal might, that with twelve minutes of violent exercise before him, he is better without, while denying the imputation of illness, sticks to his supperless resolve.
Then Mike goes into the rear room and dons blue tights, blue sleeveless shirt, canvas trunks, and light shoes; his working costume. Over these he draws trousers and a blue sweater; on top of all a heavy double-breasted jacket. Thrusting his feet, light shoes and all, into heavy snow-proof overshoes, and pulling on a bicycle cap, Mike is arrayed for the street. Mollie knows of these several preparations, the ring costume under the street clothes, but thinks naught of it, such being Mike’s nightly custom as he departs for the academy of Professor O’Punch. At the last moment, Mike kisses both Mollie and little Davy; and then, with a sudden original enthusiasm, he says:
“I’ve been thinkin’, Mollie; mebby I can get some money. Mebby we’ll see a good Christmas, after all.”
Mollie is dazed by the notion of Mike thinking; but she looks in his face, with its honest eyes full of love for her and Davy, and as beautiful as a god’s and as unsophisticated, and in spite of herself a hope begins to live and lift up its head. Possibly Mike may get money; and Christmas, and the rent, and many another matter then pinching the baby housekeeper and of which she has made no mention to Mike, will be met and considered.
“It’ll be nice if you should get money, Mike,” is all Mollie trusts herself to say, as she returns Mike’s good-bye kiss.
When Mike gets into Pitt Street he moves slowly. There’s the crowd, for one thing. Then, too, it’s over early for his contest with the Terror. Mike prefers to arrive at the theatre just in time to strip and make the required application for those two hundred dollars. It may appear strange, but it never once occurs to Mike that he will not last the demanded four rounds. But it seems such a weighty sum! Mike doubts if the offer be earnest; hesitates with the fear that the management will refuse to give him the money at the end.
“But surely,” decides Mike, “they will feel as though they ought to give me something. I lose a dollar by not going to Professor O’Punch’s; they must take account of that.”
Mike loiters along with much inborn ease of heart. Occasionally he pauses to gaze into one of the cheap shop windows, ablaze and garish of the season’s wares. There is no wind; the air has no point; but it is snowing softly, persistently, flakes of a mighty size and softness.
Ten minutes before he arrives at that theatre which has been the scene of the Terror’s triumphs, Mike enters a bakery whereof the proprietor, a German, is known to him. Mike has no money but he feels no confusion for that.
“John,” says Mike to the German; “I’ve got to spar a little to-night and I want a big plate of soup.”
“Sure!” says John, leading the way to a rear room which thrives greasily as a kind of restaurant. “And here, Mike,” goes on John, as the soup arrives, “I’ll put a big drink of sherry in it. You will feel good because of it, and the sherry and the hot soup will make you quick and strong already.”
At the finish, Mike, with an eye of bland innocence—for he is certain the theatre will give him something, even if it withhold the full two hundred—tells John he will pay for the soup within the hour, when he returns.
“That’s all right, Mike,” cries the good-natured baker, “any time will do.”
“This w’y, me cove,” observes a person with a cockney accent, as the sharp gamin delivers Mike, together with the message to the Terror, at the stage door; “this w’y; ’ere’s a dressin’ room for you to shift your togs.”
Later, when Mike’s outer husks are off and he stands arrayed for the ring, this person, who is old and gray and wears a scarred and battered visage, looks Mike over in approval:
“You seems an amazin’ bit of stuff, lad,” says this worthy man; “the build of Tom Sayres at his best, but’eavier. I ’opes you’ll do this Mick, but I’m afeared on it. You looks too pretty; an’ you ain’t got a fightin’ face. How ’eavy be you, lad?”
“One hundred and eighty-one,” replies Mike, smiling on the Englishman with his boy’s eyes.
“Can you spar a bit?” asks the other.
“Why, of course I can!” and Mike’s tones exhibit surprise.
“Well, laddy,” says the other; “don’t let this Dublin bloke rattle you. ’E’s a great blow’ard, I takes it, an’ will quit if he runs ag’in two or three stiff ’uns. A score of years ago, I’d a-give ’im a stone an’ done for ’im myself. I’m to be in your corner, laddy, an’ I trusts you’ll not disgrace me.”
“Who are you?” asks Mike.
“Oh, me?” says the other; “I works for the theayter, laddy, an’, bein’ as ’ow I’m used to fightin’, I goes on to ’eel an’ ’andle the amatoors as goes arter the Terror. It’s all square, laddy; I’ll be be’ind you; an’ I’ll ’elp you to win those pennies if I sees a w’y.”
“I have also the honor,” shouts the loud master of ceremonies, “to introduce to you Mike Men-ares, who will contend with the Dublin Terror. Should he stay four rounds, Marquis of Queens-berry rules, the management forfeits two hundred dollars to the said Menares.”
“What a model for my Jason,” says a thin shaving of a man who stands as a spectator in the wings. He is an artist of note, and speaks to a friend at his elbow. “What a model for my Jason! I will give him five dollars an hour for three hours a day. What’s his name? Mike what?” The battle is about to commence; the friend, tongue-tied of interest, makes no reply.
The Dublin Terror is a rugged, powerful ruffian, with lumpy shoulders, thick short neck, and a shock gorilla head. His little gray eyes are lighted fiercely. His expression is as savagely bitter as Mike’s is gentle. The creature, a fighter by nature, was born meaning harm to other men.
There is a roped square, about eighteen feet each way, on the stage, in which the gladiators will box. The floor is canvas made safe with rosin. The master of cermonies, himself a pugilist of celebration, will act as referee. The old battered man of White Chapel is in Mike’s corner.
Another gentleman, with face similarly marred, but with Seven Dials as his nesting place, is posted opposite to befriend the Terror. There is much buzz in the audience—a rude gathering, it is—and a deal of sympathetic admiration and not a ray of hope for Mike in the eyes of those present.
The Terror is replete of a riotous confidence and savage to begin. For two nights, such is the awe of him engendered among local bruisers, no one has presented himself for a meeting. This has made the Terror hungry for a battle; he feels like a bear unfed. As he stands over from Mike awaiting the call of “Time,” he looks formidable and forbidding, with his knotted arms and mighty hands.
Mike lounges in his place, the perfection of the athlete and picture of grace with power. His face, full of vacant amiability, shows pleased and interested as he looks out on the crowded, rampant house. Mike has rather the air of a spectator than a principal. The crowd does not shake him; he is not disturbed by the situation. In a fashion, he has been through the same thing every night, save Sunday, for three years. It comes commonplace enough to Mike.
In a blurred way Mike resents the blood-eagerness which glows in the eyes of his enemy; but he knows no fear. It serves to remind him, however, that no restraints are laid upon him in favor of the brute across the ring, and that he is at liberty to hit with what lust he will.
“Time!” suddenly calls the referee.
Those who entertained a forbode of trouble ahead for Mike are agreeably surprised. With the word “Time!” Mike springs into tremendous life like a panther aroused. His dark eyes glow and gleam in a manner to daunt.
The Terror, a gallant headlong ruffian, throws himself upon Mike like a tornado. For full two minutes his blows fall like a storm. It does not seem of things possible that man could last through such a tempest. But Mike lasts; more than that, every blow of the Terror is stopped or avoided.
It runs off like a miracle to the onlookers, most of whom know somewhat of self-defensive arts. That Mike makes no reprisals, essays no counterhits, does not surprise. A cautious wisdom would teach him to feel out and learn his man. Moreover, Mike is not there to attack; his mere mission is to stay four rounds.
While spectators, with approving comment on Mike’s skill and quickness, are reminding one another that Mike’s business is “simply to stay,” Mike himself is coming to a different thought. He has grown disgusted rather than enraged by the attacks of the Terror. His thrice-trained eye notes each detail of what moves as a whirlwind to folk looking on; his arm and foot provide automatically for his defense and without direct effort of the brain. This leaves Mike’s mind, dull as it is, with nothing to engage itself about save a contemplation of the Terror. In sluggish sort Mike begins to hold a vast dislike for that furious person.
As this dislike commences to fire incipiently, he recalls the picture of Mollie and little Davy of the crutch. Mike remembers that it is after ten o’clock, and his two treasures must be deep in sleep. Then he considers of Christmas, now but a day away; and of the money so necessary to the full pleasure of his sleeping Mollie and little Davy.
As those home-visions come to Mike, and his antipathy to the Terror mounting to its height, the grim impulse claims him to attack. Tigerlike he steps back to get his distance; then he springs forward. It is too quickly done for eye to follow. The Terror’s guard is opened by a feint; and next like a flash Mike’s left shoots cleanly in. There is a sharp “spank!” as the six-ounce glove finds the Terror’s jaw; that person goes down like an oak that is felled. As he falls, Mike’s right starts with a crash for the heart. But there is no need: Mike stops the full blow midway—a feat without a mate in boxing. The Terror lies as one without life.
“W’y didn’t you let ’im ’ave your right like you started, laddy?” screams the old Cockney, as Mike walks towards his corner.
Mike laughs in his way of gentle, soft goodnature, and points where the Terror, white and senseless, bleeds thinly at nose and ear.
“The left did it,” Mike replies.
Out of his eyes the hot light is already dying. He takes a deep, deep breath, that arches his great breast and makes the muscles clutch and climb like serpents; he stretches himself by extending his arms and standing high on his toes. Meanwhile he beams pleasantly on his grizzled adherent.
“It wasn’t much,” says Mike.
“You be the coolest cove, laddy!” retorts the other in a rapt whisper. Then he towels deftly at the sweat on Mike’s forehead.
The decision has been given in Mike’s favor. And to his delight, without argument or hesitation, the loud young man of the vociferous garb comes behind the scenes and endows him with two hundred dollars.
“Say,” observes the loud young man, admiringly, “you ain’t no wonder, I don’t t’ink!”
“But how did you come to do it, Mike?” asks the good-natured baker, as Mike lingers over a midnight porterhouse at the latter’s restaurant.
“I had to, John,” says Mike, turning his innocent face on the other; “I had to win Christmas money for Mollie and little Davy.”
“And what,” said the Sour Gentleman, “became of this Mike Menares?”
“I should suppose,” broke in the Red Nosed Gentleman, who had followed the Jolly Doctor’s narrative with relish, “I should suppose now he posed for the little sculptor’s Jason.”
“It is my belief he did,” observed the Jolly Doctor, with a twinkle, “and in the end he became full partner of the bruiser, O’Punch, and shared the profits of the gymnasium instead of taking a dollar a night for his labors. His sister grew up and married, which, when one reflects on the experience of her mother, shows she owned no little of her brother’s courage.”
“Your story,” remarked the Red Nosed Gentleman to the Jolly Doctor, “and the terrific blow which this Menares dealt the Dublin Terror brings to mv mind a blow my father once struck.” This was a cue to the others and one quickly seized on; the Red Nosed Gentleman was urged to give the story of that paternal blow. First seeing to it that the stock of burgundy at his elbow was ample, and freighting his own and the Jolly Doctor’s glasses to the brim, the Red Nosed Gentleman coughed, cleared his throat, and then gave us the tale of That Stolen Ace of Hearts.
When I, at the unripe age of seventeen, left my father’s poor cottage-house on Tom’s Run and threw myself into life’s struggle, I sought Pittsburg as a nearest promising arena of effort. I had a small place at a smaller wage as a sort of office boy and porter for a down-town establishment devoted to a commerce of iron; but as I came early to cut my connection with that hard emporium we will not dwell thereon.
I have already told you how by nature I was a gambler. I had inborn hankerings after games of chance, and it was scant time, indeed, before I found myself on terms of more or less near acquaintance with every card sharper of the city. And I became under their improper tutelage an expert cheat myself. At short cards and such devices as faro and roulette, I soon knew each devious turn and was in excellent qualification to pillage my way to eminence if not to riches among the nimble-fingered nobility of the green tables into whose midst I had coaxed or crowded my way. Vast was my ambition to soar as a blackleg, and no student at his honest books burned with more fire to succeed. I became initiate into such mysteries as the “bug,” the “punch,” the “hold-out”; I could deal “double” or “from the bottom;” was a past master of those dubious faro inventions, the “snake,” the “end squeeze,” and the “balance top;” could “put back” with a clean deftness that might deceive even my masters in evil doing, and with an eye like a hawk read a deck of marked cards with the same easy certainty that I read the alphabet. It was a common compliment to my guilty merit that no better craftsman at crooked play ever walked in Diamond Alley.
No, as I’ve heretofore explained, there dawned a day when I gave up card gambling and played no more. It is now twenty years since I wagered so much as a two-bit piece in any game other than the Wall Street game of stocks. And yet it was no moral arousal that drew me from roulette, from farobank and from draw poker. I merely awoke to the truth that the greatest simpleton of cards is the professional gambler himself; and with that I turned my back on the whole scurvy business and quit the dens for the exchange. And with no purpose to preach, I say openly and with a fullest freedom that the game of stock speculation is as replete of traps and pitfalls, and of as false and blackleg character as any worst game of iniquitous faro that is dealt with trimmed and sanded deck from a dishonest box. As an arena of morals the stock exchange presents no conscious improvement beyond what is offered by the veriest dead-fall ever made elate with those two rings at the bell which tell the waiting inmates that some “steerer” is on the threshold with rustic victim to be fleeced. I once read that the homestead of Captain Kidd, the pirate, stood two centuries ago on that plot of ground now covered by the New York Stock Exchange; and I confess to a smile when I reflected how the spirit of immortal rapine would seem to hover over the place. The exchange is a fit successor to the habitat of that wild freebooter who died and dried in execution dock when long ago the Stuart Anne was queen.
During those earlier months in Pittsburg, I was not permitted by my father—who had much control of me, even unto the day of his death—to altogether abandon Tom’s Run, and the good, grimy miner folk, its inhabitants. My week’s holiday began with each Saturday’s noon; from that hour until Monday morning I was free; and thus, obeying my father’s behests, Saturday evening and Sunday, I was bound to pass beneath my parents’ roof.
It was during one of these visits home when I first cheated at cards—memorable event!—and it was on another that my roguery was discovered and my father struck that blow.
As already stated, my father was of Welsh extraction. It was no less the fact, however, that his original stock was Irish; his grandfather—I believe it to have been that venerable and I trust respected gentleman—coming to Wales from somewhere on the banks of the Blackwater. And my father, excellent man! had vast pride in his Irish lineage and grew never so angry, particularly if a bit heated of his Saturday evening cups, as when one spoke of him as offshoot of the rocky land of leeks and saintly David.
“What!” he would cry; “because I was born in Wales, do you take me for an onion-eating Welshman? Man, I’m Irish and don’t make that mistake again!”
The vigor wherewith his mine-hardened fist smote the table as conclusion to this, carried such weight of emphasis that no man was ever found to fall a second time into the error.
For myself, the question whether my ancestors were Welsh or Irish held little interest. I was looking forward not backward, and a hot avarice to hunt dollars drove from my bosom the last trace of concern touching a genealogy. I would sooner have one year’s run of uninterrupted luck at a gambling table than to know myself a direct descendant of the Plantagenets. Not so my dear old father; to the hour when death closed his eyes—already sightless for ten years—burned out with a blast, they were—he ceased not to regale me with tales of that noble line of dauntless Irish from whom we drew our blood. For the ten years following the destruction of his eyes by powder, I saw much of my father, for I established him at a little country tavern near enough to the ocean to hear the surf and smell the salt breath of it, and two or three times a week I made shift to get down where he was. And whether my stay was for an hour or for a night—as on Sunday this latter came often to be the chance—he made his pedigree, or what he dreamed was such, the proud burden of his conversation.
Brian Boru, I remember, was an original wellhead of our family. My father was tireless in his settings forth of this hero king of Munster; nor did he fail at the close of his story to curse the assassin who struck down Boru at Clontarf. Sometimes to tease him, I’d argue what must have been the weak and primitive inconsequence of the royal Boru. I’d suggest that by the sheer narrowness and savagery of the hour wherein that monarch lived, he could have been nothing more royal than the mere king of a kale patch, and probably wore less of authority with still less of revenue and reverence than belong commonly with any district leader of Tammany Hall.
At these base doubtings my parent’s wrath would mount. He would wax vivid with a picture of the majesty and grandeur of the great Boru; and of the halls wherein he fed and housed a thousand knights compared with whom in riches, magnificence, and chivalrous feats those warriors who came about King Arthur’s round table showed paltry, mean and low. To crown narration he would ascribe to Boru credit as a world’s first law giver and hail him author of the “Code Brian.”
“Shure!” he would say; “he called his scholars and his penmen about him and he made them write down as the wor-rds fell from th’ mouth av him th’ whole of th’ Code Brian; an’ this in tur-rn was a model of th’ Code Napoleon that makes th’ law av Fr-rance to-day.”
It was in vain I pointed out that Napoleon’s Code found its roots and as well, its models, in the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian—I had learned so much Latin from Father Glennon—and that nowhere in the English law was the Code Brian, as he called it, so much as adverted to.
“An’ that’s th’ Sassenach jealousy av thim!” he would say. “An’ who was this Justinian? Who, indade, but a thievin’ Roman imp’ror who shtole his laws from King Boru just as th’ Dagoes now are shtealin’ th’ jobs at th’ mines from th’ Irish an’ Welsh lads to whom they belong av r-rights.”
After this I said no more; I did not explain that Justinian and his Pandects and the others of his grand body of civil law were in existence five centuries before the martyred Boru was born. That discovery would have served no purpose beyond my parent’s exasperation and earned for myself as well as the world’s historians naught save a cataract of hard words.
You marvel, perhaps, why I dwell with such length on the memory of my father—a poor, blind, ignorant miner of coal! I loved the old man; and to this day when my hair, too, is gray and when I may win my wealth and count my wealth and keep my wealth with any of the land, I recall him as the only man for whom I ever felt either love or confidence or real respect.
Yes; I heard much of the blood of the truculent yet wise Boru; also of younger ancestors who fought for the Stuarts against Cromwell, against Monmouth, against William; and later in both the “Fifteen” and in the “Forty-five.” Peculiarly was I made to know of my mother’s close connection by blood with the house of that brave Sarsfield “who,” as my father explained, “fairly withstud th’ Dootchman at th’ Boyne; an’ later made him quit befure th’ walls av Limerick.” There was one tradition of the renowned Sarsfield which the old gentleman was peculiarly prone to relate, and on the head of him who distrusted the legend there was sure to fall a storm. That particular tale concerned the Irish soldier and the sword of Wallace wight.
“Thish William Wallace,” my father was wont to say as he approached the myth, “was a joint (giant), no less. He was nine fut ’leven inches tall an’ his soord was eight fut foore inches long. It’s in Stirlin’ Cashtle now, an’ there niver was but one man besides Wallace who cud handle it. Th’ Black Douglas an’ all av thim Scotchmen thried it an’ failed. Whin, one day, along comes Gin’ral Patrick Sarsfield—a little bit av a felly, only five fut siven inches tall—an’ he tuk that soord av William Wallace in one hand an’, me son, he made it whishtle.”
But I must press to my first crime of cards or your patience will desert. During those summer months on Tom’s Run when the mines were open and my father and his mates of the pick and blast were earning their narrow pay, it was the habit of himself and four or five other gentlemen of coal to gather in the Toni’s Run Arms when Saturday evening came on, and relax into that amusement dear to Ireland as “forty-five.” Usually they played for a dime a corner; on occasional rich evenings the stakes mounted dizzily to two-bits, though this last was not often.
Now I was preyed on by a desire to make one at this Saturday contention, but my father would never consent.
“Jack,” he’d say; “you’d only lose your money. Shure! you’re nawthin’ but a boy an’ not fit to pla-ay cards with th’ loikes av grown-up men.”
But I persisted; I argued—to myself, you may be certain—while I might be no match for these old professors of forty-five who played the game with never a mistake, if I, like them, played honestly, that the cunning work I meditated could not fail to bring me in the wealth.
At last one of the others came to my rescue.
“Let him pla-ay, Mishter Roche,” he said. “Let’s win his money fr-rom him an’ it’ll be a lesson. He’ll not lose much befure he’ll be gla-ad to quit.”
“All right, thin,” replied my father; “you can pla-ay, Jack, till you lose fifty cints; an’ that’ll do ye. Moind now! whin you lose fifty cints you shtop.” And so I was made one of the circle.
As I foresaw, I did not lose the four-bits which my indulgent parent had marked as the limits of farthest sacrifice to my ambitious innocence. Already I had brought back to Tom’s Run a curious trick or two from Pittsburg. It soon came to be my “deal,” and the moment I got the cards in my hands I abstracted the ace of hearts—a most doughty creature in this game of forty-five!—and dropped it in my lap, covering the fact from vulgar eyes with a fold of my handkerchief. That was all the chicane I practiced; I kept myself in constant possession of the ace of hearts and played it at a crisis; and at once the wagered dimes of the others began to travel into my illicit pockets where they made a merry jingle, I warrant you!
The honest Irish from whom I was filching these small tributes never once bethought that I might play them sharp; they attributed my gains to luck and loud was exclamation over my good fortune. Time and again, for I was not their equal as a mere player, I’d board the wrong card. When I’d make such a mistake, one of them would cry: “D’ye moind that now! D’ye moind how ba-ad he plays!”
“An’ yet,” another would add, “an’ yet he rakes th’ money!”
Altogether I regarded my entrance into this ten-cent game of forty-five a most felicitous affair. I won at every sitting; getting up on some occasions with as much as eight dollars of profit for my evening’s work. In those days I went willingly to Tom’s Run, quitting Pittsburg without a sigh; and such was my ardor to fleece these coaldigging comrades of my father—and for that matter, my father, also; for like your true gambler, I played no favorites and was as warm to gather in the dimes of my parent as any—that I was usually found waiting about the forty-five table when, following supper, they appeared. And it all went favorably with me for perhaps a dozen sittings; my aggregate gains must have reached the mighty sum of sixty dollars. Of a merry verity! silver was at high tide in my hands!
One evening as the half dozen devoted to the science of forty-five drew up to the table—myself a stripling boy, the others bearded miner men—my father complained of an ache in his head or an ache in his stomach or some malady equally cogent, and said he would not play.
“I’ll have me poipe an’ me mug av beer,” he said, “an’ resht mesilf a bit. It’s loike I’ll feel betther afther a whoile an’ then I’ll take a haand.”
Play began, while my suffering father with his aches, his tobacco and his beer, sat nursing himself at a near-by table. I lost no time in acquiring my magic ace of hearts and at once the stream of usual fortune set in to flow my way.
Ten years, yes, one year later, my suspicions touching my father’s illness and his reasons for this unprecedented respite from the cares of forty-five would have stood more on tiptoe. As it was, however, it never assailed me as a thought that I had become the subject of ancestral doubts. I cheated on and on, and made hay while the sun shone with never a cloud in the sky.
It was not noticed by me, but following a halfhour’s play and while I was shuffling the cards for a deal, my parent stole noiselessly behind my chair. He reached under my arm and lifted the corner of the concealing handkerchief which filled my lap. Horrors! there lay the tell-tale ace of hearts!
Even then I realized nothing and knew not that my villainy was made bare. This news, however, was not long in its arrival.
“Niver did I r-raise a boy to be a r-robber!” roared my father.
Coincident with this remark, the paternal hand—not the lightest nor least formidable on Tom’s Run—dealt me a buffet on the head that lifted me from my sinful chair and hurled me across the room and against the wall full fifteen feet away. My teeth clattered, my wits reeled, while my ill-gotten silver danced blithely to metallic music of its own.
“Niver did I r-raise a boy to be a r-robber!” again shouted my father. Then seizing me by the collar, he lifted me to my feet. “Put all your money on the ta-able!” he cried; “put ivry groat av it!”
There was no escape; I was powerless in the talons of an inexorable fate. My pockets yielded a harvest of hardby seventy-five dollars—something more than the total of my winnings—and this was placed in the center of the table which had so lately witnessed my skill. An even distribution was then made by my father among the victims, each getting his share of the recovered treasure; my father keeping none for himself though urged by the others to that end.
“No,” said my father; “I’ll touch niver a penny av it. You take th’ money; I’ll make shift that the dishgrace of bein’ fa-ather to a rapparee shall do for me share!”
With that, he withdrew from the scene of my downfall, carrying me fast in his clutch; and later—bathed in tears of pain and shame—I was dragged into the presence of my mother and Father Glennon by the ignominious ear.
It did not cure me of cards, however; I ran the whole gamut of gambling and won dangerous prominence as a sharper of elevation and rank. To-morrow evening, should you care to listen, I may unfold concerning other of my adventures; I may even relate—as a tale most to my diplomatic glory, perhaps—how I brought Casino Joe to endow me with that great secret, richer, in truth! than the mines of Peru! of “How to Tell the Last Four.”
“Speakin’ of gamblin’,” observed the Old Cattleman when the Red Nosed Gentleman had come to a full stop, “I’ll bet a bloo stack that as we-alls sets yere talkin’, the games is goin’ brisk an’ hot in Wolfville. Thar won’t be no three foot of snow to put a damper on trade an’ hobble a gent’s energies in Arizona.” This last with a flush of pride.
“Does everybody gamble in the West?” asked the Sour Gentleman.
“Every sport who’s got the dinero does,” responded the Old Cattleman. “White folks, Injuns an’ Mexicans is right now at roulette an’ faro bank an’ monte as though they ain’t got a minute to live. I hates to concede ’em so much darin’, but the Mexicans, speshul, is zealous for specyoolations. Which they’d shore wager their immortal souls on the turn of a kyard, only a Greaser’s soul don’t own no market valyoo.”
“If you will,” said the Jolly Doctor, “you might tell us something of Mexicans and their ways, their labors and relaxations—their loves and their hates. I’d be pleased to hear of those interesting people from one who knows them so thoroughly.”
“Which I shore knows ’em,” returned the Old Cattleman, “an’ as I concedes how each gent present oughter b’ar his share of the entertainment, I’ll tell you of Chiquita of Chaparita.”
Which I doubts some if I’m a proper party to be a historian of Mexicans. Nacherally I abhors ’em; an’ when a gent abhors anything, that is a Caucasian gent, you-all can gamble the limit he won’t do it jestice. His prejudices is bound to hit the surface like one of these yere rock ledges in the mountains. Be white folks ag’in Mexicans? Gents, the paleface is ag’in everybody but himse’f; ag’in Mexicans, niggers, Injuns, Chinks—he’s ag’in ’em all; the paleface is overbearin’ an’ insolent, an’ because he’s the gamest fighter he allows he’s app’inted of Providence to prance ‘round, tyrannizin’ an’ makin’ trouble for everybody whose color don’t match his own. Shore, I’m as bad as others; only I ain’t so bigoted I don’t savey the fact.
Doc Peets is the one white gent I encounters who’s willin’ to mete out to Mexicans a squar’ deal from a squar’ deck. I allers reckons these yere equities on Peets’ part arises a heap from his bein’ a scientist. You take a scientist like Peets an’ the science in him sort o’ submerges an’ drowns out what you-all might term the racial notions native to the hooman soil. They comes to concloosions dispassionate, that a-way, scientists does; an’ Mexicans an’ Injuns reaps a milder racket at their hands. With sech folks as Old Man Enright an’ me, who’s more indoorated an’ acts on that arrogance which belongs with white folks at birth, inferior races don’t stand no dazzlin’ show.
Mexicans, as a herd, is stunted an’ ondeveloped both mental an’ physical. They bears the same compar’son to white folks that these yere little broncos does to the big hosses of the States. In intellects, Mexicans is about ’leven hands high. To go into one of their jimcrow plazas is like retreatin’ back’ard three hundred years. Their idees of agriculture is plenty primitive. An’ their minds is that bogged down in ignorance you-all can’t teach ’em nothin’. They clings to their worm-eaten customs like a miser to his money. Their plow is a wedge of wood; they hooks on about three yoke of bulls—measley, locoed critters—an’ with four or five Greasers to screech an’ herd an’ chunk up the anamiles they goes stampedin’ back’ard an’ for’ard on their sandy river-bottom fields—the same bein’ about as big as a saddle blanket—an’ they calls that plowin’. They sows the grain as they plows, sort o’ scratches it in; an’ when it comes up they don’t cut it none same as we-all harvests a crop. No; they ain’t capable of sech wisdom. They pulls it up by the roots an’ ties it in bundles. Then they sweeps off a clean spot of earth like the floor of one of these yere brickyards an’ covers it with the grain same as if it’s a big mat. Thar’s a corral constructed ‘round it of posts an’ lariats; an’ next, on top of the mat of grain, they drives in the loose burros, cattle, goats, an’ all things else that’s got a hoof; an’ tharupon they jams this menagerie about ontil the grain is trodden out. That’s what a Greaser regyards as threshin’ grain, so you can estimate how ediotic he is. When it’s trompled sufficient, he packs off the stalks an’ straw to make mats an’ thatches for the ’dobies; while he scrapes up the dust an’ wheat into a blanket an’ climbs onto the roof of his casa an’ pours it down slow onto the ground, an’ all so it gives the wind a openin’ to get action an’ blow away the chaff an’ dust.
But what’s the use of dilatin’ on savageries like that? I could push for’ard an’ relate how they makes flour with a stone rollin’-pin in a stone trough; how they grinds coffee by wroppin’ it in a gunny sack an’ beatin’ it with a rock; but where’s the good? It would only go lowerin’ your estimates of hooman nature to no end.
Whatever be their amoosements? Everything on earth amooses ’em. They has so many holidays, Mexicans does, they ain’t hardly left no time for work. They’re pirootin’ about constant, grinnin’ an’ chatterin’ like a outfit of bloo-jays.
No; they ain’t singers none. Takin’ feet an’ fingers, that a-way, a Mexican is moosical. They emerges a heap strong at dancin’, an’ when it conies to a fandango, hens on hot griddles is examples of listless abstraction to ’em. With sech weepons, too, as guitars an’ fiddles an’ a gourd half-full of gravel to shake an’ beat out the time, they can make the scenery ring. Thar they stops, however; a Greaser’s moosic never mounts higher than the hands. At singin’, crows an’ guinea chickens lays over ’em like a spade flush over nines-up.
Most likely if I reelates to you-all the story of a day among the Mexicans you comes to a cl’arer glimpse of their loves an’ hates an’ wars an’ merry-makin’s. Mexicans, like Injuns when a paleface is about, lapses into shyness an’ timidity same as one of these yere cottontail rabbits. But among themse’fs, when they feels onbuckled an’ at home, their play runs off plenty different. Tharfore a gent’s got to study Mexicans onder friendly auspices, an’ from the angle of their own home-life, if he’s out to rope onto concloosions concernin’ them that’ll stand the tests of trooth.
It’s one time when I’m camped in the Plaza Chaparita. It’s doorin’ the eepock when I freights from Vegas to the Canadian over the old Fort Bascom trail. One of the mules—the nigh swing mule, he is—quits on me, an’ I has to lay by ontil that mule recovers his sperits.
It’s a fieste or holiday at the Plaza Chaparita. The first local sport I connects with is the padre. He’s little, brown, an’ friendly; an’ has twinklin’ beady eyes like a rattlesnake; the big difference bein’ that the padre’s eyes is full of fun, whereas the optics of rattlesnakes is deevoid of humor utter. Shore; rattlesnakes wouldn’t know a joke from the ace of clubs.
The padre’s on his way to the ’dobe church; an’ what do you-all figger now that divine’s got onder his arm? Hymn books, says you? That’s where you’re barkin’ at a knot. The padre’s packin’ a game chicken—which the steel gaffs, drop-socket they be an’ of latest sort, is in his pocket—an’ as I goes squanderin’ along in his company, he informs me that followin’ the services thar’ll be a fight between his chicken an’ a rival brass-back belongin’ to a commoonicant named Romero. The padre desires my presence, an’ in a sperit of p’liteness I allows I’ll come idlein’ over onless otherwise engaged, the same bein’ onlikely.
Gents, you should have witnessed that battle! It’s shore lively carnage; yes, the padre’s bird wins an’ downs Romero’s entry the second buckle.
On the tail of the padre’s triumph, one of his parishioners gets locoed, shakes a chicken outen a bag an’ proclaims that he’ll fight him ag’in the world for two dollars a side. At that another enthoosiast gives notice that if the first parishioner will pinch down his bluff to one dollar—he says he don’t believe in losin’ an’ winnin’ fortunes on a chicken—he’ll prodooce a bird an’ go him once.
The match is made, an’ while the chickens is facin’ each other a heap feverish an’ fretful, peckin’ an’ see-sawin’ for a openin’, the various Greasers who’s bet money on ’em lugs out their beads an’ begins to pray to beat four of a kind. Shore, they’re prayin’ that their partic’lar chicken ’ll win. Still, when I considers that about as many Greasers is throwin’ themse’fs at the throne of grace for one as for the other, if Providence is payin’ any attention to ’em—an’ I deems it doubtful—I estimates that them orisons is a stand-off.
As the birds goes to the center, one party sprinkles something on his chicken. At that the opposition grabs up his bird an’ appeals to the padre. He challenges the other’s bird because he says he’s been sprinkled with holy-water.
The padre inquires, an’ the holy-water sharp confesses his guilt. Also, he admits that he hides the gaffs onder the altar cloth doorin’ the recent services so they’ll acquire extra grace an’ power.
The padre turns severe at this an’ declar’s the fight off; an’ he forfeits the doctored chicken an’ the gaffs to himse’f a whole lot—he representin’ the church—to teach the holy-water sharp that yereafter he’s not to go seizin’ onfair advantages, an’ to lead a happier an’ a better life. That culprit don’t say a word but passes over his chicken an’ the steel regalia for its heels. You can bet that padre’s word is law in the Plaza Chaparita!
Followin’ this fiasco of the holy-water chicken the Mexicans disperses themse’fs to pulque an’ monte an’ the dance. The padre an’ me sa’nters about; me bein’ a Americano, an’ him what you might call professionally sedate, we-all don’t go buttin’ into the baile nor the pulque nor the gamblin’. The padre su’gests that we go a-weavin’ over to his own camp, which he refers to as Casa Dolores—though thar’s nothin’ dolorous about it, the same bein’ the home of mirth an’ hilarity, that a-way—an’ he allows he’s got some Valley Tan hived up that’ll make me forget my nationality if stoodiously adhered to. It’s needless to observe that I accompanies the beady-eyed padre without a struggle. An’ I admits, free an’ without limitation, that said Valley Tan merits the padre’s encomiums an’ fixes me in my fav’rite theery that no matter what happens, the best happens to the church.
As we crosses the little Plaza on our way to Casa Dolores we passes in front of the church. Thar on the grass lays the wooden image of the patron saint of the Plaza Chaparita. This figger is about four foot long, an’ thar’s a hossha’r lariat looped onto it where them Mexicans who gets malcontent with the saint ropes him off his perch from up in front of the church. They’ve been haulin’ the image about an’ beatin’ it with cactus sticks an’ all expressive of disdain.
I asks the padre why his congregation engages itse’f in studied contoomely towards the Plaza’s saint. He shrugs his shoulders, spreads his hands palm out, an’ says it’s because the Plaza’s sheep gets sick. I su’gests that him an’ me cut in an’ rescoo the saint; more partic’lar since the image is all alone, an’ the outfit that’s been beatin’ him up has abandoned said corrections to drink pulque an’ exercise their moccasins in the baile. But the padre shakes his head. He allows it’s a heap better to let the public fully vent its feelin’s. He explains that when the sheep gets well the congregation ’ll round-up the image, give him a reproachful talk an’ a fresh coat of paint, an’ put him back on his perch. The saint ’ll come winner on the deal all right, the padre says.
“Besides,” argues the padre, “it is onneces-sary for pore blinded mortals to come pawin’ about to protect a saint. These yere images,” he insists, “can look after themse’fs. They’ll find the way outen their troubles whenever they gets ready.”
At that we proceeds for’ard to Casa Dolores an’ the promised Valley Tan, an’ leaves the wooden saint to his meditations on the grass. After all, I agrees with the padre. It’s the saint’s business to ride herd on the interests of the Plaza Chaparita; an’ if he goes to sleep on the lookout’s stool an’ takes to neglectin’ sech plays as them sheep gettin’ sick, whatever is the Greasers goin’ to do? They’re shore bound to express their disapproval; an’ I reckons as good a scheme as any is to caper up, yank the careless image outen his niche with a lariat, an’ lam loose an’ cavil at him with a club.
This yere fieste at the Plaza Chaparita is a day an’ night of laughter, dance an’ mirth. But it ends bad. The padre an’ me is over to the dance-hall followin’ our investigations touchin’ the Valley Tan an’ the padre explains to me how he permits to his people a different behavior from what’s possible among Americanos.
“I studies for the church in Baltimore,” the padre says, “an’ thar the priest must keep a curb on his Americano parishioners. They are not like Mexicanos. They’re fierce an’ headlong an’ go too far. If you let them gamble, they gamble too much; if you let them drink, they drink too much. The evil of the Americano is that he overplays. It is not so with the Mexicano. If the Mexicano gambles, it is only a trifle an’ for pleasure; if he drinks, it is but enough to free a bird’s song in his heart. All my people drink an’ dance an’ gamble; but it’s only play, it is never earnest. See! in the whole Plaza Chaparita you find no drunkard, no pauper; no one is too bad or too good or too rich or too poor or too unhappy.”
Then the priest beams on me like he disposes of the question; an’ since I’ve jest been drinkin’ his Valley Tan I don’t enter no protests to what he states. From what ensoos, however, I should jedge the padre overlooks his game in one partic’lar.
As me an’ the padre sits gazin’ on at the dance, a senorita with a dark shawl over her head, drifts into the door like a shadow. She’s little; an’ by what I sees of her face, she’s pretty. As she crosses in front of the padre she stops an’ sort o’ drops down on one knee with her head bowed. The padre blesses her an’ calls her “Chiquita;” then she goes on. I don’t pay no onusual attention; though as me an’ the padre talks, I notes her where she stands with her shawl still over her head in a corner of the dance hall.
Across from the little Chiquita is a young Greaser an’ his sweetheart. This girl is pretty, too; but her shawl ain’t over her head an’ she an’ her muchacho, from their smiles an’ love glances, is havin’ the happiest of nights.
“It looks like you’ll have a weddin’ on your hands,” I says to the padre, indicatin’ where the two is courtin’.
“Chiquita should not stay here,” says the padre talkin’ to himse’f. With that he organizes like he’s goin’ over to the little shawled senorita in the corner.
It strikes me that the padre’s remark is a heap irrelevant. But I soon sees that he onderstands the topics he tackles a mighty sight better than me. The padre’s hardly moved when it looks like the senorita Chiquita saveys he’s out to head her off. With that she crosses the dance-hall swift as a cat an’ flashes a knife into the heart of the laughing girl. The next moment the knife is planted in her own.
It’s the old story, so old an’ common thar’s not a new word to be said. Two dead girls; love the reason an’ the jealous knife the trail. Thar’s not a scream, not a word; that entire baile stands transfixed. As the padre raises the little Chi-quita’s head, I sees the tears swimmin’ in his eyes. It’s the one time I comes nearest thinkin’ well of a Mexican; that padre, at least, is toler’ble.
“That is a very sad finale—the death of the girls,” observed the Sour Gentleman, reaching for the Scotch whiskey as though for comfort’s sake. “And still, the glimpse you gave would move me to a pleasant estimate of Mexicans.”
“Why then,” returned the Old Cattleman, becoming also an applicant for Scotch, “considered as abstract prop’sitions, Mexicans aint so bad. Which they’re like Injuns; they improves a lot by distance. An’ they has their strong p’ints, too; gratitoode is one. You-all confer a favor on a Mexican, an’ he’ll hang on your trail a hundred years but what he’ll do you a favor in return. An’ he’ll jest about pay ten for one at that.
“Speakin’ of gratitoode, Sioux Sam yere tells a story to ’llustrate how good deeds is bound to meet their reward. It’s what the squaws tells the papooses to make ’em kind.” Then to Sioux Sam: “Give us the tale of Strongarm an’ the Big Medicine Elk. The talk is up to you.”
Sioux Sam was in no sort diffident, and readily told us the following:
Moh-Kwa was the wisest of all the beasts along the Upper Yellowstone; an’ yet Moh-Kwa could not catch a fish. This made Moh-Kwa have a bad heart, for next to honey he liked fish. What made it worse was that in Moh-Kwa’s cavern where he lived, there lay a deep pool which was the camp of many fish; an’ Moh-Kwa would sit an’ look at them an’ long for them, while the fish came close to the edge an’ laughed at Moh-Kwa, for they knew beneath their scales that he could not catch them; an’ the laughter of the fish made a noise like swift water running among rocks. Sometimes Moh-Kwa struck at a fish with his big paw, but the fish never failed to dive out of reach; an’ this made the other fish laugh at Moh-Kwa more than before. Once Moh-Kwa got so angry he plunged into the pool to hunt the fish; but it only made him seem foolish, for the fish swam about him in flashing circles, an’ dived under him an’ jumped over him, laughing all the time, making a play an’ a sport of Moh-Kwa. At last he gave up an’ swam ashore; an’ then he had to sit by his fire an’ comb his fur all day to dry himself so that he might feel like the same bear again.
One morning down by the Yellowstone, Moh-Kwa met Strongarm, the young Sioux, an’ Strongarm had a buffalo fish which he had speared in the river. An’ because Moh-Kwa looked at the fish hungrily an’ with water in his mouth, Strongarm gave him the buffalo fish. Also he asked Moh-Kwa why he did not catch fish since he liked them so well an’ the pool in his cavern was the camp of many fish. An’ Moh-Kwa said it was because the fish were cowards an’ would not stay an’ fight with him, but ran away.
“They are not so brave as the bees,” said Moh-Kwa, “for when I find a bee-tree, they make me fight for the honey. The bees have big hearts though little knives, but the fish have no hearts an’ run like water down hill if they but see Moh-Kwa’s shadow from his fire fall across the pool.”
Strongarm said he would catch the fish for Moh-Kwa; an’ with that he went to the Wise Bear’s house an’ with his spear took many fish, being plenty to feed Moh-Kwa two days. Moh-Kwa was very thankful, an’ because Strong-arm liked the Wise Bear, he came four times each moon an’ speared fish for Moh-Kwa who was never so well fed with fish before.
Strongarm was a mighty hunter among the Sioux an’ killed more elk than did the ten best hunters of his village. So many elk did Strong-arm slay that his squaw, the Blossom, made for their little son, Feather-foot, a buckskin coat on which was sewed the eye-teeth of elk, two for each elk, until there were so many eye-teeth on Feather-foot’s buckskin coat it was like counting the leaves on a cottonwood to find how many there were. An’ the Blossom was proud of Feather-foot’s coat, for none among the Sioux had so beautiful a garment an’ the eye-teeth of the elk told how big a hunter was Strongarm.
While the Sioux wondered an’ admired at the elk-tooth coat, it made the Big Medicine Elk, who was chief of the Elk people, hot an’ angry, an’ turned his heart black against Strongarm. The Big Medicine Elk said he would have revenge.
Thus it happened one day that when Strong-arm stepped from his lodge, he saw standing in front a great Elk who had antlers like the branches of a tree. An’ the great Elk stamped his foot an’ snorted at Strongarm. Then Strongarm took his bow an’ his lance an’ his knife an’ hunted the great Elk to kill him; but the great Elk ran always a little ahead just out of reach.
At last the great Elk ran into the Pouch canyon an’ then Strongarm took hope into his heart like a man takes air into his mouth, for the sides of the Pouch canyon were high an’ steep an’ it ended with a high wall, an’ nothing save a bird might get out again once it went in; for the Pouch canyon was a trap which the Great Spirit had set when the world was new.
Strongarm was happy in his breast as he followed the great Elk into the Pouch canyon for now he was sure. An’ he thought how the big eye-teeth of so great an Elk would look on the collar of Feather-foot’s buckskin coat.
When Strongarm came to the upper end of the Pouch canyon, there the great Elk stood waiting.
“Hold!” said the great Elk, when Strongarm put an arrow on his bowstring.
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But Strongarm shot the arrow which bounded off the great Elk’s hide an’ made no wound. Then Strongarm ran against the great Elk with his lance, but the lance was broken as though the great Elk was a rock. Then Strongarm drew his knife, but when he went close to the great Elk, the beast threw him down with his antlers an’ put his forefoot on Strongarm an’ held him on the ground.
“Listen,” said the great Elk, an’ Strongarm listened because he couldn’t help it. “You have hunted my people far an’ near; an’ you can never get enough of their blood or their eye-teeth. I am the Big Medicine Elk an’ chief of the Elk people; an’ now for a vengeance against you, I shall change you from the hunter to the hunted, an’ you shall know how good it is to have fear an’ be an elk.”
As the great Elk said this, Strongarm felt his head turn heavy with antlers, while his nose grew long an’ his mouth wide, an’ hair grew out of his skin like grass in the moon of new grass, an’ his hands an’ feet split into hoofs; an’ then Strong-arm stood on his four new hoofs an’ saw by his picture in the stream that he was an elk. Also the elk-fear curled up in his heart to keep him ever in alarm; an’ he snuffed the air an’ walked about timidly where before he was Strongarm and feared nothing.
Strongarm crept home to his lodge, but the Blossom did not know her husband; an’ Feather-foot, his little son, shot arrows at him; an’ as he ran from them, the hunters of his village came forth an’ chased him until Strongarm ran into the darkness of the next night as it came trailing up from the East, an’ the darkness was kind an’ covered him like a blanket an’ Strongarm was hid by it an’ saved.
When Strongarm did not come with the next sun to spear fish for Moh-Kwa, the Wise Bear went to Strongarm’s lodge to seek him for he thought that he was sick. An’ Moh-Kwa asked the Blossom where was Strongarm? An’ the Blossom said she did not know; that Strongarm chased the great Elk into the Pouch canyon an’ never came out again; an’ now a big Doubt had spread its blankets in her heart an’ would not leave, but was making a long camp, saying she was a widow. Then the Blossom wept; but Moh-Kwa told her to wait an’ he would see, because he, Moh-Kwa, owed Strongarm for many fish an’ would now pay him.
Moh-Kwa went to the Big Medicine Elk.
“Where is the Strongarm?” said Moh-Kwa.
“He runs in the hills an’ is an elk,” said the Big Medicine Elk. “He killed my people for their teeth, an’ a great fright was on all my people because of the Strongarm. The mothers dare not go down to the river’s edge to drink, an’ their children had no time to grow fat for they were ever looking to meet the Strongarm. Now he is an elk an’ my people will have peace; the mothers will drink an’ their babies be fat an’ big, being no more chased by the Strongarm.”
Then Moh-Kwa thought an’ thought, an’ at last he said to the Big Medicine Elk:
“That is all proud talk. But I must have the Strongarm back, for he catches my fish.”
But the Big Medicine Elk said he would not give Moh-Kwa back the Strongarm.
“Why should I?” asked the Big Medicine Elk. “Did not I save you in the Yellowstone,” said Moh-Kwa, “when as you swam the river a drifting tree caught in your antlers an’ held down your head to drown you? An’ did you not bawl to me who searched for berries on the bank; an’ did I not swim to you an’ save you from the tree?” Still the Big Medicine Elk shook his antlers.
“What you say is of another day. You saved me an’ that is ended. I will not give you back the Strongarm for that. One does not drink the water that is gone by.”
Moh-Kwa then grew so angry his eyes burned red like fire, an’ he threatened to kill the Big-Medicine Elk. But the Big Medicine Elk laughed like the fish laughed, for he said he could not be killed by any who lived on the land.
“Then we will go to the water,” said Moh-Kwa; an’ with that he took the Big Medicine Elk in his great hairy arms an’ carried him kicking an’ struggling to the Yellowstone; for Moh-Kwa could hold the Big Medicine Elk though he could not hurt him.
When Moh-Kwa had carried the Big Medicine Elk to the river, he sat down on the bank an’ waited with the Big Medicine Elk in his arms until a tree came floating down. Then Moh-Kwa swam with the Big Medicine Elk to the tree an’ tangled the branches in the antlers of the Big Medicine Elk so that he was fast with his nose under the water an’ was sure to drown.
“Now you are as you were when I helped you,” said Moh-Kwa.
An’ the Catfish people in the river came with joy an’ bit the legs of the Big Medicine Elk, an’ said, “Thank you, Moh-Kwa; you do well to bring us food now an’ then since you eat so many fish.”
As Moh-Kwa turned to swim again to the bank, he said over his shoulder to the Big Medicine Elk:
“Now you may sing your death song, for Pauguk, the Death, is in the river with you an’ those are Pauguk’s catfish which gnaw your legs.”
At this the Big Medicine Elk said between his cries of grief an’ fear that if Moh-Kwa would save him out of the river, he would tell him how to have the Strongarm back. So Moh-Kwa went again an’ freed the Big Medicine Elk from the tree an’ carried him to the bank, while the Catfish people followed, angrily crying:
“Is this fair, Moh-Kwa? Do you give an’ then do you take away? Moh-Kwa! you are a Pawnee!”
When the Big Medicine Elk had got his breath an’ wiped the tears from his eyes, he told Moh-Kwa that the only way to bring the Strongarm back to be a hunter from being one of the hunted was for Feather-foot, his son, to cut his throat; an’ for the Blossom, his squaw, to burn his elk-body with cedar boughs.
“An’ why his son, the Feather-foot?” asked Moh-Kwa.
“Because the Feather-foot owes the Strongarm a life,” replied the Big Medicine Elk. “Is not Strongarm the Feather-foot’s father an’ does not the son owe the father his life?”
Moh-Kwa saw this was true talk, so he let the Big Medicine Elk go free.
“I will even promise that the Strongarm,” said Moh-Kwa, as the two parted, “when again he is a Sioux on two legs, shall never hunt the Elk people.”
But the Big Medicine Elk, who was licking his fetlocks where the Catfish people had hurt the skin, shook his antlers an’ replied:
“It is not needed. The Strongarm has been one of the Elk people an’ will feel he is their brother an’ will not hurt them.”
Moh-Kwa found it a hard task to capture Strongarm when now he was an elk with the elk-fear in his heart. For Strongarm had already learned the elk’s warning which is taught by all the Elk people, an’ which says:
Look up for danger and look down for gain;
Believe no wolf’s word, and avoid the plain.
Strongarm would look down for the grass with one eye, while he kept an eye up among the branches or along the sides of the canyon for fear of mountain lions. An’ he stuck close in among the hills, an’ would not go out on the plains where the wolves lived; an’ he wouldn’t talk with a wolf or listen to his words.
But Strongarm, while he ran an’ hid from Moh-Kwa and the others, was not afraid of the Blossom, who was his squaw, but would come to her gladly if he might find her alone among the trees.
“It is not the first time,” said the Wise Bear, “that the hunter has made his trap of love.”
With that he told the Blossom to go into the hills an’ call Strongarm to her with her love. Then she was to bind his feet so that he might not get away an’ run.
The Blossom called Strongarm an’ he came; but he was fearful an’ suspicious an’ his nose an’ his ears an’ his eyes kept guard until the Blossom put her hand on his neck; an’ then Strongarm’s great love for the Blossom smothered out his caution as one might smother a fire with a robe; an’ the Blossom tied all his feet with thongs an’ bound his eyes with her blanket so that Strongarm might not see an’ be afraid.
Then came Feather-foot, gladly, an’ cut Strong-arm’s throat with his knife; for Feather-foot did not know he killed his father—for that was a secret thing with Moh-Kwa an’ the Blossom—an’ thought only how he killed a great Elk.
When Strongarm was dead, Moh-Kwa toiled throughout the day carrying up the big cedar; an’ when a pile like a hill was made, Moh-Kwa put Strongarm’s elk-body on its top, an’ brought fire from his house in the rocks, an’ made a great burning.
In the morning, the Blossom who had stayed with Moh-Kwa through the night while the fire burned, said, “Now, although the big elk is gone into ashes, I do not yet see the Strongarm.” But Moh-Kwa said, “You will find him asleep in the lodge.” An’ that was a true word, for when Moh-Kwa an’ the Blossom went to the lodge, there they found Strongarm whole an’ good an’ as sound asleep as a tree at midnight.
Outside the lodge they met the little Feather-foot who cried, “Where is the big elk, Moh-Kwa, that I killed?” An’ the Blossom showed him his father, Strongarm, where he slept, an’ said, “There is your big elk, Feather-foot; an’ this will ever be your best hunting for it found you your father again.”
When Moh-Kwa saw that everything was settled an’ well, an’ that he would now have always his regular fish, he wiped the sweat out of his eyes with his paws which were all singed fur an’ ashes, an’ said, “I am the weariest bear along the whole length of the Yellowstone, for I carried some heavy trees an’ have worked hard. Now I will sleep an’ rest.”
An’ with that Moh-Kwa lay down an’ snored an’ slept four days; then he arose an’ eat up the countless fish which Strongarm had speared to be ready for him. This done, Moh-Kwa lighted his pipe of kinnikinick, an’ softly rubbing his stomach where the fish were, said: “Fish give Moh-Kwa a good heart.”
“Now that is what I call a pretty story,” said the Jolly Doctor.
“It is that,” observed the Red Nosed Gentleman, with emphasis. “And I’ve no doubt the Strongarm made it a point thereafter to be careful as to what game he hunted. But, leaving fable for fact, my friend,”—the Red Nosed Gentleman addressed now the Sour Gentleman—“would you not call it your turn to uplift the spirits of this company? We have just enough time and I just enough burgundy for one more story before we go to bed.”
“While our friend, the Sioux Gentleman,” responded the Sour Gentleman, “was unfolding his interesting fable, my thoughts—albeit I listened to him and lost never a word—were to the rear with the old days which came on the back of that catastrophe of tobacco. They come to me most clearly as I sit here smoking and listening, and with your permission I’ll relate the story of The Smuggled Silk.”