Kitabı oku: «The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales», sayfa 16
CHAPTER II
Let my young readers now sail with me to warmer and more hospitable climes. Off the coast of Patagonia a long, low, black schooner proudly rides the seas, that break softly upon the vine-clad shores of that luxuriant land. Who is this that, wrapped in Persian rugs, and dressed in the most expensive manner, calmly reclines on the quarter-deck of the schooner, toying lightly ever and anon with the luscious fruits of the vicinity, held in baskets of solid gold by Nubian slaves? or at intervals, with daring grace, guides an ebony velocipede over the polished black walnut decks, and in and out the intricacies of the rigging? Who is it? well may be asked. What name is it that blanches with terror the cheeks of the Patagonian navy? Who but the Pirate Prodigy—the relentless Boy Scourer of Patagonian seas? Voyagers slowly drifting by the Silurian beach, coasters along the Devonian shore, still shudder at the name of Bromley Chitterlings—the Boy Avenger, late of Hartford, Connecticut.
It has been often asked by the idly curious, Why Avenger, and of what? Let us not seek to disclose the awful secret hidden under that youthful jacket. Enough that there may have been that of bitterness in his past life that they “Whose soul would sicken o’er the heaving wave,” or “whose soul would heave above the sickening wave,” did not understand. Only one knew him, perhaps too well—a queen of the Amazons taken prisoner off Terra del Fuego a week previous. She loved the Boy Avenger. But in vain; his youthful heart seemed obdurate.
“Hear me,” at last he said, when she had for the seventh time wildly proffered her hand and her kingdom in marriage, “and know once and forever why I must decline your flattering proposal. I love another.”
With a wild, despairing cry she leaped into the sea, but was instantly rescued by the Pirate Prodigy. Yet, even in that supreme moment, such was his coolness, that on his way to the surface he captured a mermaid, and placing her in charge of his steward, with directions to give her a stateroom, with hot and cold water, calmly resumed his place by the Amazon’s side. When the cabin door closed on his faithful servant, bringing champagne and ices to the interesting stranger, Chitterlings resumed his narrative with a choking voice—
“When I first fled from the roof of a tyrannical parent I loved the beautiful and accomplished Eliza J. Sniffen. Her father was president of the Workingmen’s Savings Bank, and it was perfectly understood that in the course of time the entire deposits would be his. But, like a vain fool, I wished to anticipate the future, and in a wild moment persuaded Miss Sniffen to elope with me; and with the entire cash assets of the bank, we fled together.” He paused, overcome with emotion. “But fate decreed it otherwise. In my feverish haste, I had forgotten to place among the stores of my pirate craft that peculiar kind of chocolate caramel to which Eliza Jane was most partial. We were obliged to put into New Rochelle on the second day out, to enable Miss Sniffen to procure that delicacy at the nearest confectioner’s, and match some zephyr worsteds at the first fancy shop. Fatal mistake. She went—she never returned!” In a moment he resumed, in a choking voice, “After a week’s weary waiting, I was obliged to put to sea again, bearing a broken heart and the broken bank of her father. I have never seen her since.”
“And you still love her?” asked the Amazon queen excitedly.
“Ay, forever!”
“Noble youth. Here, take the reward of thy fidelity; for know, Bromley Chitterlings, that I am Eliza Jane. Wearied with waiting, I embarked on a Peruvian guano ship—it’s a long story, dear.”
“And altogether too thin,” said the Boy Avenger, fiercely releasing himself from her encircling arms. “Eliza Jane’s age, a year ago, was only thirteen, and you are forty, if a day.”
“True,” she returned sadly, “but I have suffered much, and time passes rapidly, and I’ve grown. You would scarcely believe that this is my own hair.”
“I know not,” he replied, in gloomy abstraction.
“Forgive my deceit,” she returned. “If you are affianced to another, let me at least be—a mother to you.”
The Pirate Prodigy started, and tears came to his eyes. The scene was affecting in the extreme. Several of the oldest seamen—men who had gone through scenes of suffering with tearless eyes and unblanched cheeks—now retired to the spirit room to conceal their emotion. A few went into caucus in the forecastle, and returned with the request that the Amazonian queen should hereafter be known as the “Queen of the Pirates’ Isle.”
“Mother!” gasped the Pirate Prodigy.
“My son!” screamed the Amazonian queen.
They embraced. At the same moment a loud flop was heard on the quarter-deck. It was the forgotten mermaid, who, emerging from her stateroom, and ascending the companion-way at that moment, had fainted at the spectacle. The Pirate Prodigy rushed to her side with a bottle of smelling-salts.
She recovered slowly. “Permit me,” she said, rising with dignity, “to leave the ship. I am unaccustomed, to such conduct.”
“Hear me—she is my mother!”
“She certainly is old enough to be,” replied the mermaid. “And to speak of that being her own hair!” she said, as she rearranged with characteristic grace, a comb, and a small hand-mirror, her own luxuriant tresses.
“If I couldn’t afford any other clothes, I might wear a switch, too!” hissed the Amazonian queen. “I suppose you don’t dye it on account of the salt water? But perhaps you prefer green, dear?”
“A little salt water might improve your own complexion, love.”
“Fishwoman!” screamed the Amazonian queen.
“Bloomerite!” shrieked the mermaid.
In another instant they had seized each other.
“Mutiny! Overboard with them!” cried the Pirate Prodigy, rising to the occasion, and casting aside all human affection in the peril of the moment.
A plank was brought and the two women placed upon it.
“After you, dear,” said the mermaid significantly to the Amazonian queen; “you’re the oldest.”
“Thank you!” said the Amazonian queen, stepping back. “Fish is always served first.”
Stung by the insult, with a wild scream of rage the mermaid grappled her in her arms and leaped into the sea.
As the waters closed over them forever, the Pirate Prodigy sprung to his feet. “Up with the black flag, and bear away for New London,” he shouted in trumpet-like tones.
“Ha! ha! Once more the Rover is free!”
Indeed it was too true. In that fatal moment he had again loosed himself from the trammels of human feeling and was once more the Boy Avenger.
CHAPTER III
Again I must ask my young readers to mount my hippogriff and hie with me to the almost inaccessible heights of the Rocky Mountains. There, for years, a band of wild and untamable savages, known as the Pigeon Feet, had resisted the blankets and Bibles of civilization. For years the trails leading to their camp were marked by the bones of teamsters and broken wagons, and the trees were decked with the dying scalp-locks of women and children. The boldest of military leaders hesitated to attack them in their fortresses, and prudently left the scalping-knives, rifles, powder, and shot provided by a paternal government for their welfare lying on the ground a few miles from their encampment, with the request that they were not to be used until the military had safely retired. Hitherto, save an occasional incursion into the territory of the Knock-knees, a rival tribe, they had limited their depredations to the vicinity.
But lately a baleful change had come over them. Acting under some evil influence, they now pushed their warfare into the white settlements, carrying fire and destruction with them. Again and again had the Government offered them a free pass to Washington and the privilege of being photographed, but under the same evil guidance they refused. There was a singular mystery in their mode of aggression. Schoolhouses were always burned, the schoolmasters taken into captivity, and never again heard from. A palace car on the Union Pacific Railway, containing an excursion party of teachers en route to San Francisco, was surrounded, its inmates captured, and—their vacancies in the school catalogue never again filled. Even a hoard of educational examiners, proceeding to Cheyenne, were taken prisoners, and obliged to answer questions they themselves had proposed, amidst horrible tortures. By degrees these atrocities were traced to the malign influence of a new chief of the tribe. As yet little was known of him but through his baleful appellations, “Young Man who Goes for His Teacher,” and “He Lifts the Hair of the School-Marm.” He was said to be small and exceedingly youthful in appearance. Indeed, his earlier appellative, “He Wipes His Nose on His Sleeve,” was said to have been given to him to indicate his still boy-like habits.
It was night in the encampment and among the lodges of the Pigeon Toes. Dusky maidens flitted in and out among the campfires like brown moths, cooking the toothsome buffalo-hump, frying the fragrant bear’s-meat, and stewing the esculent bean for the braves. For a few favored ones sput grasshoppers were reserved as a rare delicacy, although the proud Spartan soul of their chief scorned all such luxuries.
He was seated alone in his wigwam, attended only by the gentle Mushymush, fairest of the Pigeon Feet maidens. Nowhere were the characteristics of her great tribe more plainly shown than in the little feet that lapped over each other in walking. A single glance at the chief was sufficient to show the truth of the wild rumors respecting his youth. He was scarcely twelve, of proud and lofty bearing, and clad completely in wrappings of various-colored scalloped cloths, which gave him the appearance of a somewhat extra-sized penwiper. An enormous eagle’s feather, torn from the wing of a bald eagle who once attempted to carry him away, completed his attire. It was also the memento of one of his most superhuman feats of courage. He would undoubtedly have scalped the eagle but that nature had anticipated him.
“Why is the Great Chief sad?” said Mushymush softly. “Does his soul still yearn for the blood of the palefaced teachers? Did not the scalping of two professors of geology in the Yale exploring party satisfy his warrior’s heart yesterday? Has he forgotten that Gardener and King are still to follow? Shall his own Mushymush bring him a botanist to-morrow? Speak, for the silence of my brother lies on my heart like the snow on the mountain, and checks the flow of my speech.”
Still the proud Boy Chief sat silent. Suddenly he said, “Hiss!” and rose to his feet. Taking a long rifle from the ground he adjusted its sight. Exactly seven miles away on the slope of the mountain the figure of a man was seen walking. The Boy Chief raised the rifle to his unerring eye and fired. The man fell.
A scout was dispatched to scalp and search the body. He presently returned.
“Who was the paleface?” eagerly asked the chief.
“A life insurance agent.”
A dark scowl settled on the face of the chief.
“I thought it was a book peddler.”
“Why is my brother’s heart sore against the book peddler?” asked Mushymush.
“Because,” said the Boy Chief fiercely, “I am again without my regular dime novel—and I thought he might have one in his pack. Hear me, Mushymush. The United States mails no longer bring me my ‘Young America’ or my ‘Boys’ and Girls’ Weekly.’ I find it impossible, even with my fastest scouts, to keep up with the rear of General Howard, and replenish my literature from the sutler’s wagon. Without a dime novel or a ‘Young America,’ how am I to keep up this Injin business?”
Mushymush remained in meditation a single moment. Then she looked up proudly.
“My brother has spoken. It is well. He shall have his dime novel. He shall know the kind of hairpin his sister Mushymush is.”
And she arose and gamboled lightly as the fawn out of his presence.
In two hours she returned. In one hand she held three small flaxen scalps, in the other “The Boy Marauder,” complete in one volume, price ten cents.
“Three palefaced children,” she gasped, “were reading it in the tail-end of an emigrant wagon. I crept up to them softly. Their parents are still unaware of the accident,” and she sank helpless at his feet.
“Noble girl!” said the Boy Chief, gazing proudly on her prostrate form; “and these are the people that a military despotism expects to subdue!”
CHAPTER IV
But the capture of several wagon-loads of commissary whiskey, and the destruction of two tons of stationery intended for the general commanding, which interfered with his regular correspondence with the War Department, at last awakened the United States military authorities to active exertion. A quantity of troops were massed before the Pigeon Feet encampment, and an attack was hourly imminent.
“Shine your boots, sir?”
It was the voice of a youth in humble attire, standing before the flap of the commanding general’s tent.
The general raised his head from his correspondence.
“Ah,” he said, looking down on the humble boy, “I see; I shall write that the appliances of civilization move steadily forward with the army. Yes,” he added, “you may shine my military boots. You understand, however, that to get your pay you must first”—
“Make a requisition on the commissary-general, have it certified to by the quartermaster, countersigned by the post-adjutant, and submitted by you to the War Department “—
“And charged as stationery” added the general gently. “You are, I see, an intelligent and thoughtful boy. I trust you neither use whiskey, tobacco, nor are ever profane?”
“I promised my sainted mother”—
“Enough! Go on with your blacking; I have to lead the attack on the Pigeon Feet at eight precisely. It is now half past seven” said the general, consulting a large kitchen clock that stood in the corner of his tent.
The little bootblack looked up—the general was absorbed in his correspondence. The bootblack drew a tin putty-blower from his pocket, took unerring aim, and nailed in a single shot the minute hand to the dial. Going on with his blacking, yet stopping ever and anon to glance over the general’s plan of campaign, spread on the table before him, he was at last interrupted by the entrance of an officer.
“Everything is ready for the attack, general. It is now eight o’clock”
“Impossible! It is only half past seven.”
“But my watch, and the watches of the staff”—
“Are regulated by my kitchen clock, that has been in my family for years. Enough! it is only half past seven.”
The officer retired; the bootblack had finished one boot. Another officer appeared.
“Instead of attacking the enemy, general, we are attacked ourselves. Our pickets are already driven in.”
“Military pickets should not differ from other pickets” said the bootblack modestly. “To stand firmly they should be well driven in.” “Ha! there is something in that,” said the general thoughtfully. “But who are you, who speak thus?”
Rising to his full height, the bootblack threw off his outer rags, and revealed the figure of the Boy Chief of the Pigeon Feet.
“Treason!” shrieked the general. “Order an advance along the whole line.”
But in vain. The next moment he fell beneath the tomahawk of the Boy Chief, and within the next quarter of an hour the United States army was dispersed. Thus ended the battle of Bootblack Creek.
CHAPTER V
And yet the Boy Chief was not entirely happy. Indeed, at times he seriously thought of accepting the invitation extended by the Great Chief at Washington immediately after the massacre of his soldiers, and once more revisiting the haunts of civilization, His soul sickened in feverish inactivity; schoolmasters palled on his taste; he had introduced baseball, blind hooky, marbles, and peg-top among his Indian subjects, but only with indifferent success. The squaws persisted in boring holes through the china alleys and wearing them as necklaces; his warriors stuck pipes in their baseball bats, and made war-clubs of them. He could not but feel, too, that the gentle Mushymush, although devoted to her paleface brother, was deficient in culinary education. Her mince-pies were abominable; her jam far inferior to that made by his Aunt Sally of Doemville. Only an unexpected incident kept him equally from the extreme of listless sybaritic indulgence or of morbid cynicism. Indeed, at the age of twelve, he already had become disgusted with existence.
He had returned to his wigwam after an exhausting buffalo hunt, in which he had slain two hundred and seventy-five buffaloes with his own hand, not counting the individual buffalo on which he had leaped, so as to join the herd, and which he afterward led into the camp a captive and a present to the lovely Mushymush. He had scalped two express riders, and a correspondent of the “New York Herald;” had despoiled the Overland Mail stage of a quantity of vouchers which enabled him to draw double rations from the Government, and was reclining on a bearskin, smoking and thinking of the vanity of human endeavor, when a scout entered, saying that a paleface youth had demanded access to his person.
“Is he a commissioner? If so, say that the red man is rapidly passing to the happy hunting-grounds of his fathers, and now desires only peace, blankets, and ammunition; obtain the latter, and then scalp the commissioner.”
“But it is only a youth who asks an interview.”
“Does he look like an insurance agent? If so, say that I have already policies in three Hartford companies. Meanwhile prepare the stake, and see that the squaws are ready with their implements of torture.”
The youth was admitted; he was evidently only half the age of the Boy Chief. As he entered the wigwam, and stood revealed to his host, they both started. In another moment they were locked in each other’s arms. “Jenky, old boy!”
“Bromley, old fel!”
B. F. Jenkins, for such was the name of the Boy Chief, was the first to recover his calmness. Turning to his warriors he said proudly,—
“Let my children retire while I speak to the agent of our Great Father in Washington. Hereafter no latch-keys will be provided for the wigwams of the warriors. The practice of late hours must be discouraged.”
“How!” said the warriors, and instantly retired.
“Whisper!” said Jenkins, drawing his friend aside. “I am known here only as the Boy Chief of the Pigeon Toes.”
“And I,” said Bromley Chitterlings proudly, “am known everywhere as the Pirate Prodigy—the Boy Avenger of the Patagonian coast.”
“But how came you here?”
“Listen! My pirate brig, the Lively Mermaid, now lies at Meiggs’s wharf in San Francisco, disguised as a Mendocino lumber vessel. My pirate crew accompanied me here in a palace car from San Francisco.”
“It must have been expensive,” said the prudent Jenkins. “It was, hut they defrayed it by a collection from the other passengers, you understand. The papers will be full of it to-morrow. Do you take in the ‘New York Sun’?”
“No; I dislike their Indian policy. But why are you here?”
“Hear me, Jenk! ‘T is a long and a sad story. The lovely Eliza J. Sniffen, who fled with me from Doemville, was seized by her parents and torn from my arms at New Rochelle. Reduced to poverty by the breaking of the savings bank of which he was president—a failure to which I largely contributed, and the profits of which I enjoyed—I have since ascertained that Eliza Jane Sniffen was forced to become a schoolmistress, departed to take charge of a seminary in Colorado, and since then has never been heard from.”
Why did the Boy Chief turn pale, and clutch at the tent-pole for support? Why, indeed?
“Eliza Jane Sniffen,” gasped Jenkins,—“aged fourteen, red-haired, with a slight tendency to strabismus?”
“The same.”
“Heaven help me! She died by my mandate!”
“Traitor!” shrieked Chitterlings, rushing at Jenkins with a drawn poniard.
But a figure interposed. The slight girlish form of Mushymush with outstretched hands stood between the exasperated Pirate Prodigy and the Boy Chief.
“Forbear,” she said sternly to Chitterlings; “you know not what you do.”
The two youths paused.
“Hear me,” she said rapidly. “When captured in a confectioner’s shop at New Rochelle, E. J. Sniffen was taken back to poverty. She resolved to become a schoolmistress. Hearing of an opening in the West, she proceeded to Colorado to take exclusive charge of the pensionnat of Mdme. Choflie, late of Paris. On the way thither she was captured by the emissaries of the Boy Chief”—
“In consummation of a fatal vow I made, never to spare educational instructors,” interrupted Jenkins.
“But in her captivity,” continued Mushymush, “she managed to stain her face with poke-berry juice, and mingling with the Indian maidens was enabled to pass for one of the tribe. Once undetected, she boldly ingratiated herself with the Boy Chief,—how honestly and devotedly he best can tell,—for I, Mushymush, the little sister of the Boy Chief, am Eliza Jane Sniffen.”
The Pirate Prodigy clasped her in his arms. The Boy Chief, raising his hand, ejaculated,—
“Bless you, my children!”
“There is but one thing wanting to complete this reunion,” said Chitterlings, after a pause, but the hurried entrance of a scout stopped his utterance.
“A commissioner from the Great Father in Washington.”
“Scalp him!” shrieked the Boy Chief; “this is no time for diplomatic trifling.”
“We have; but he still insists upon seeing you, and has sent in his card.”
The Boy Chief took it, and read aloud, in agonized accents,—
“Charles Francis Adams Golightly, late page in United States Senate, and acting commissioner of United States.”
In another moment, Golightly, pale, bleeding, and, as it were, prematurely bald, but still cold and intellectual, entered the wigwam. They fell upon his neck and begged his forgiveness.
“Don’t mention it,” he said quietly; “these things must and will happen under our present system of government. My story is brief. Obtaining political influence through caucuses, I became at last page in the Senate. Through the exertions of political friends, I was appointed clerk to the commissioner whose functions I now represent. Knowing through political spies in your own camp who you were, I acted upon the physical fears of the commissioner, who was an ex-clergyman, and easily induced him to deputize me to consult with you. In doing so, I have lost my scalp, but as the hirsute signs of juvenility have worked against my political progress, I do not regret it. As a partially bald young man I shall have more power. The terms that I have to offer are simply this: you can do everything you want, go anywhere you choose, if you will only leave this place. I have a hundred-thousand-dollar draft on the United States Treasury in my pocket at your immediate disposal.”
“But what’s to become of me?” asked Chitterlings.
“Your case has already been under advisement. The Secretary of State, who is an intelligent man, has determined to recognize you as de jure and de facto the only loyal representative of the Patagonian Government. You may safely proceed to Washington as its envoy extraordinary. I dine with the secretary next week.”
“And yourself, old fellow?”
“I only wish that twenty years from now you will recognize by your influence and votes the rights of C. F. A. Golightly to the presidency.”
And here ends our story. Trusting that my dear young friends may take whatever example or moral their respective parents and guardians may deem fittest from these pages, I hope in future years to portray further the career of those three young heroes I have already introduced in the springtime of life to their charitable consideration.
