Kitabı oku: «Sundry Accounts», sayfa 7
This was Monday night, the opening night. The initial performance of the three on the nightly schedule of Powers Brothers' Trained Wild Animal Arena approached now its climax, the hour approximately being eight-forty-five. The ballyhoo upon the elevated platform without had been completed. Hard upon this an audience of townspeople and visitors which taxed the standing capacity of the tented enterprise had flowed in, after first complying with the necessary financial details at the ticket booth. The Educated Ostrich, the Bird That Thinks, had performed to the apparent satisfaction of all, though it might as well be confessed that if one might judge by the intelligent creature's expression, the things it thought while going through its paces scarcely would be printable. Violet, the lady leopard, had obliged by yowling in a spirited and spitty manner when stirred up with a broom handle. The two bears had given a complete if somewhat lackadaisical rendition of their act. And now the gentlemanly orator in charge, who, after his ballyhoos, doubled as master of ceremonies and announcer of events, directed the attention of the patrons to the largest cage of the four.
As was customary, the culminating feature of the program had been invested with several touches of skillful stage management, the purpose being to enhance the thrills provided and send the audience forth pleased and enthusiastic. In high boots and a tiger-skin tunic, Mr. Riley, armed with an iron bar held in one hand and a revolver loaded with blank cartridges in the other, stood poised and prepared to leap into the den at the ostensible peril of his life and put his ferocious charge through a repertoire of startling feats. His eye was set, his face determined; his lower jaw moved slowly. This steel-hearted man was chewing tobacco to hide any concern he might feel.
Red Hoss Shackleford, resplendent in his official trappings, made an elaborate ceremonial of undoing the pins and bolts which upheld the wooden panels across the front elevation of the cage. The announcer took advantage of the pause thus artfully contrived to urge upon the spectators the advisability of standing well back from the guard ropes. Every precaution had been taken, he informed them, every possible safeguard provided, but for their own sakes it were well to be on the prudent side in case the dauntless trainer should lose control over his dangerous pupil. This warning had its usual effect. With a forward rush everyone instantly pressed as closely as possible into the zone of supposed menace.
Here a curious psychological fact obtrudes. In each gathering of this character is at least one parent, generally a father, who habitually conveys his offsprings of tender years to places where they will be acutely uncomfortable, and by preference more especially to spots where there is a strong likelihood that they may meet with a sudden and violent end. Wyattsville numbered at least one such citizen within her enrolled midst. He was here now, jammed up against the creaking rope, holding fast with either clutch to a small and a sorely frightened child who wept.
Red Hoss finished with the iron catches. Behind the shielding falsework he heard and felt the rustle and the heave of a great sinewy body threshing about in a confined space. He turned his head toward the announcer, awaiting the ordained signal.
"Are you all ready?" clarioned that person. "Then go!"
With a clatter and crash down came the wooden frontage. It was a part of the mechanics intrusted to the docile and intelligent Chieftain that so soon as the woodwork had dropped he, counterfeiting an unappeasable bloodthirstiness, should fling himself headlong against the straining bars, uttering hair-raising roars. This also was the cue for Riley to wriggle nimbly through a door set in the end of the cage and slam the door behind him; then to outface the great beast and by threats, with bar and pistol both extended, to force him backward step by step, still snarling but seemingly daunted, round and round the cage. Finally, when through the demonstrated power of the human eye Chieftain had been sufficiently cowed, Riley would begin the stirring entertainment for which all this had been a spectacular overture. Such was the preliminary formula, but for once in his hitherto blameless life Chieftain failed to sustain his rôle.
He did not dash at his prison bars as though to rend them from their sockets; he did not growl in an amazingly deep bass, as per inculcated schooling; he did not bare the yellow fang nor yet unsheathe the cruel claw. With apparent difficulty, rising on his all fours from where he was crouched in the rear left-hand corner of his den, Chieftain advanced down stage with what might properly be called a rolling gait. Against the iron uprights he lurched, literally; then, as though grateful for their support, remained fixed there at a slanted angle for a brief space.
A faunal naturalist, versed in the ways of lions, would promptly have taken cognizance of the fact that Chieftain, upon his face, wore an expression unnatural for lions to wear. It was an expression which might be classified as dreamily good-natured. His eyes drooped heavily, his lips were wreathed in a jovial feline smile. Transfixed as he was by a shock of astonishment and chagrin, Riley under his breath snapped a word of command.
In subconscious obedience to his master's voice, Chieftain slowly straightened himself, came to an about face, and with his massive head canted far to one side and all adroop as though its weight had become to him suddenly burdensome, and his legs spraddled widely apart to hold him upright, he benignantly contemplated the sea of expectant and eager faces that stretched before him. Slowly he lifted a broad forefoot and with its padded undersurface made a fumbling gesture which might have been interpreted as an attempt on his part to wipe his nose.
The effort proved too much for him. Lacking one important prop, he lost his balance, toppled over and fell heavily upon his side. The fall jolted his mouth widely ajar, and from the depths of his great throat was emitted an immense but unmistakable hiccup – a hiccup deep, sincere and sustained, having a high muzzle velocity and humidly freighted with an aroma as of a hundred hot mince pies.
From the spellbound crowd rose a concerted gasp of surprise. Chieftain heeded it not. With the indubitable air of just recalling a pleasant but novel experience, and filled with a newborn desire to renew the sensation, he groggily regained his feet and reeled back to the corner from whence he had come. Here, with the other properties of his act, a slickly painted blue barrel stood upended. Applying his nose to a spot at the base of it, he lapped greedily at a darkish aromatic liquid which, as the entranced watchers now were aware, oozed forth in a stream upon the cage floor through a cranny treacherously opened between two sprung staves. And all the while he tongued up the escaping runlet of fluid he purred and rumbled joyously and his tawny sides heaved and little tremors of pure ecstasy ran lengthwise through him to expire diminishingly in lesser wriggles at the tufted tip of his gently flapping tail.
Then all at once understanding descended upon the audience, and from them together rose a tremendous whoop. A joyous whoop it was, yet tinged with a feather edging of jealous regret on the part of certain adult whoopers there. They had paid their quarters, these worthy folk, to see a lion perform certain tricks and antics; and lo, they had been vouchsafed the infinitely more unique spectacle of a lion with a jag on! It was a boon such as comes but once in many lifetimes, this opportunity to behold majestic Leo, converted into a confirmed inebriate by his first indulgence in strong and forbidden waters, returning to his tippling.
To some perhaps in this land of ours the scene would have served to point a moral and provide a text – a lamentable picture of the evils of intemperance as exemplified in its effects upon a mere unreasoning dumb brute. But in this assemblage were few or none holding the higher view. Unthoughtedly they yelled their appreciation, yelling all the louder when Chieftain, having copiously refreshed himself, upreared upon his hind legs, with both his forepaws winnowing the perfumed air, and after executing several steps of a patently impromptu dance movement, tumbled with a happy, intoxicated gurgle flat upon his back and lapsed into a coma of total insensibility.
But there was one among them who did not cheer. This one was a square-jawed person who, shoving and scrooging, cleft a passage through the applauding multitude, and slipped deftly under the ropes and laid a detaining grasp upon the peltry-clad shoulder of the astonished Riley. With his free hand he flipped back the lapel of his coat to display a badge of authority pinned on the breast of his waistcoat.
"What's the main idea?" His tone was rough. "Who's the chief booze smuggler of this outfit? How'd that barrel yonder come to be traveling across country with a soused lion?"
"You can search me!" lied Riley glibly. "So help me, Mike, all I know is that that barrel was slipped over on me by a big nigger that joined out with us up here in Kentucky a week ago! I told him to get me a barrel, meaning to teach the lion a new trick, and he stuck that one in there. But I hadn't never got round to using it yet, and I didn't know it was loaded – I'll swear to that!"
Cast in another environment, Mr. Riley might have made a good actor. Even here, in an embarrassing situation calling for lines spoken ad lib. and without prior rehearsals, he had what the critics term sincerity. His fine dissembling deceived the revenue man.
"Well, that being the case, where is this here nigger, then?" demanded the officer.
Riley looked about him.
"I don't see him," he said. "He was right alongside just a moment ago too. I guess he's gone."
This, in a sense, was the truth, and in still another sense an exaggeration. Red Hoss was not exactly gone, but he certainly was going. A man on horseback might have overtaken him, but with the handicap of Red Hoss' flying start against the pursuing forces no number of men afoot possibly could hope to do so.
At the end of the second mile, and still going strong, the fugitive bethought him to part with his red coat. He already had run out from under his uniform cap, but a red coat with a double row of brass buttons and brass-topped epaulettes on it flashing next morning across a bland autumnal landscape would be calculated to attract undesired attention. So without slackening speed he took it off and cast it behind him into the darkness. Figuratively speaking, he breathed easier when he crossed the state line at or about five A.M. As a matter of fact, though, he was breathing harder. Some hours elapsed before he caught up with his panting.
Traveling in his shirt sleeves, he reached home too late for the wedding. Still, considering everything, he hardly would have cared to attend anyhow. Either he would have felt embarrassed to be present or else the couple would, or perhaps all three. On such occasions nothing is more superfluous than an extra bridegroom. The wedding in question was the one uniting Melissa Grider and Homer Holmes. It was generally unexpected – in fact, sudden.
The marriage took place on a Wednesday at high noon in the office of Justice of the Peace Dycus. Red Hoss arrived the same afternoon, shortly after the departure of the happy pair for Cairo, Illinois, on a honeymoon tour. All along, Melissa had had her heart set on going to St. Louis; but after the license had been paid for and the magistrate had been remunerated there remained but thirty-four dollars of the fund she had been safeguarding, dollar by dollar, as her other, or regular, fiancé earned it. So she and Homer compromised on Cairo, and by their forethought in taking advantage of a popular excursion rate they had, on their return, enough cash left over to buy a hanging lamp with which to start up housekeeping.
Late that evening, while Red Hoss still wrestled mentally with the confusing problem of being engaged to a girl who just had been married to another, a disquieting thought came abruptly to him, jolting him like a blow. Looking back on events, he was reminded that the sequence of painful misadventures which had befallen him recently dated, all and sundry, from that time when he was coming back down the Blandsville Road after delivering Mr. Dick Bell's new cow and acquired a fresh hind foot of a graveyard rabbit. He had been religiously toting that presumably infallible charm against disaster ever since – and yet just see what had happened to him! Surely here was a situation calling for interpretive treatment by one having the higher authority. In the person of the venerable Daddy Hannah – root, herb and conjure doctor – he found such a one.
Before going into consultation the patriarch forethoughtedly collected a fee of seventy-five cents from Red Hoss. At the outset he demanded two dollars, but accepted the six bits, because that happened to be all the money the client had. This formality concluded, he required it of Red Hoss that he recount in their proper chronological order those various strokes of ill fortune which lately had plagued him; after which Daddy Hannah asked to see the talisman which coincidentally had been in the victim's ownership from beginning to culmination of the enumerated catastrophes. He took it in his wrinkled hand and studied it, sides, top and bottom, the while Red Hoss detailed the exact circumstances attending the death of the bunny. Then slowly the ancient delivered his findings.
"In de fust an' fo'mos' place," stated Daddy Hannah, "dis yere warn't no reg'lar graveyard rabbit to start off wid. See dis li'l' teeny black spot on de und'neath part? Well, dat's a sho' sign of a witch rabbit. A witch rabbit he hang round a buryin' ground, but he don't go inside of one – naw, suh, not never nur nary. He ain't dare to. He stay outside an' frolic wid de ha'nts w'en dey comes fo'th, but da's all. De onliest thing which dey is to do when you kills a witch rabbit is to cut off de haid f'um de body an' bury de haid on de north side of a log, an' den bury de body on de south side so's dey can't jine together ag'in an' resume witchin'. So you havin' failed to do so, 'tain't no wonder you been havin' sech a powerful sorry time." He started to return the foot to its owner, but snatched it back.
"Hole on yere a minute, boy! Lemme tek' nuther look at dat thing." He took it, then burst forth with a volley of derisive chuckling. "Huh, huh, well ef dat ain't de beatenes' part of it all!" wheezed Daddy Hannah. "Red Hoss, you sho' muster been in one big hurry to git away f'um dat spot whar you kilt your rabbit and ketched your charm. Looky yere at dis yere shank j'int! Don't you see nothin' curious about de side of de leg whar de hock sticks out? Well den, cullid boy, ef you don't, all I got to say is you mus' be total blind ez well ez monst'ous ignunt. Dis ain't no lef' hind foot of no rabbit."
"Whut is it den?"
"It's de right hind foot, dat's whut 'tis!" He tossed it away contemptuously.
After a long minute Red Hoss, standing at Daddy Hannah's doorstep with his hands rammed deep in pockets, which were both empty, spoke in tones of profound bitterness. He addressed his remarks to space, but Daddy Hannah couldn't help overhearing.
"Fust off, I gits fooled by de right laig of de wrong rabbit. Den a man-eatin' mule come a-browsin' on me an' gnaw a suit of close right offen my back. Den I runs into a elephint in a fog an' busts one of Mist' Lee Farrell's taxiscabs fur him an' he busts my jaw fur me. Den I gits tuk advantage of by a fool lion dat can't chamber his licker lak a gen'l'man, in consequence of which I loses me a fancy job an' a chunk of money. Den Melissa, she up an' – well, suh, I merely wishes to say dat f'um now on, so fur ez I is concerned, natchel history is a utter failure."
CHAPTER IV
IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN TO-MORROW
"Sorry, ma'am," said the Pullman conductor, "but there's not a bit of space left in the chair car, nor the sleeper neither."
"I'm sorry too," said the young woman in the tan-colored tailor-mades. She was smartly hatted and smartly spatted; smart all over from toque-tip to toe-tip. "I didn't know until almost the last minute that I'd have to catch this train, and trusted to chance for a seat."
"Yes'm, I see," commiserated the man in blue. "But you know what the rush is this time of year, and right now on top of all that so many of the soldiers getting home from the other side and their folks coming East to meet 'em and everything. I guess though, miss, you won't have much trouble getting accommodated in one of the day coaches."
"I'll try it," she said, "and thank you all the same."
She picked up her hand bag.
"Wait a minute," he suggested. "I'll have my porter carry your valise on up to the other cars."
Men of all stations in life were rather given to offering help to Miss Mildred Smith, the distinguished interior decorator and – on the side – amateur investigator for Uncle Sam with a wartime record for services rendered which many a professional might have envied. Perhaps they were the more ready to offer it since the young woman seemed so rarely to need it.
This man's reward was a brisk little nod.
"Please don't bother," she said. "This bag isn't at all heavy, and I'm used to traveling alone and looking out for myself." She footed it briskly along the platform of the Dobb's Ferry station. At the door of the third coach back from the baggage car a flagman stopped her.
"All full up in here, lady," he told her, "but I think maybe you might find some place to sit in the next car beyond. If you'll just leave your grip here I'll bring it along to you after we pull out."
As she reached the door of the coach ahead the train began to move. This coach was comfortably filled – and more than comfortably filled. Into the aisles projected elbows and feet and at either side doubled rows of backs of heads showed above the red plush seats. She shrugged her shoulders; it meant standing for a while at least; probably someone would be getting off soon – this train was a local, making frequent stops. It was not the train she would have chosen had the choosing been left altogether to her, but Mullinix of the Secret Service, her unofficial chief, had called her away from a furnishing and finishing contract at a millionaire's mansion in the country back of Dobb's Ferry to run up state to Troy, where there had arisen a situation which in the opinion of the espionage squad a woman was best fitted to handle, provided only that woman be Miss Mildred Smith. And so on an hour's notice she had dropped her own work and started.
Now, though, near the more distant end of the car she saw a break in one line of heads. Perhaps the gap might mean there would be room for her. She made her way toward the spot, her trim small figure swaying to the motion as the locomotive picked up speed. Drawing nearer, she saw the back of one seat had been turned so that its occupants faced rearward toward her. In this seat, the one farther from her as she went up the aisle, were a man and a woman; in the nearer seat, facing this pair and sitting next the window, was a second woman – a girl rather – all three of them, she deduced from the seating arrangement, being members of the same party. A suitcase rested upon the cushions alongside the younger woman.
"I beg your pardon," said the lone passenger, halting here, "but is this place taken?"
The man's face twisted as though in annoyance. He made an undecided gesture which might be interpreted either as an affirmative or the other thing. "I'm sorry if I am disturbing you," added Miss Smith, "but the car is crowded – every inch of it except this seems to be occupied."
"Oh, I guess it's all right," he said, though in his begrudged consent was a sort of indirect intimation that it was not altogether all right. He half rose and swung the suitcase up into the luggage rack overhead, then tucked in his knees so she might slip into the place opposite him next the aisle.
"Excuse me," he said a moment later, "but I could change seats with you if you don't mind."
Her eyebrows went up a trifle.
In her experiences it had not often happened that seemingly without reason a male fellow traveler had suggested that she give him a place commonly regarded as preferable to his own.
"I do mind, rather," she answered. "Riding backward makes me carsick sometimes. Still I will change with you if you insist on it. I'm the intruder, you know."
"No, no, never mind!" he hastened to say. "I guess it don't make any difference. And there's no intrusion, miss – honest now, there ain't."
Miss Smith opened the book she had brought along and began to read. She felt that obliquely her enforced companions were studying her – at least two of them were. The one with whom she shared a seat had not looked her way; except to draw in her body a trifle as Miss Smith sat down she had made no movement of any sort. Certainly she had manifested no interest in the new arrival. In moments when her glance did not cross theirs, Miss Smith, turning the pages of her book, considered the two who faced her, subconsciously trying – as was her way – to appraise them for what outwardly they presumably were. Offhand she decided the man might be the superintendent of an estate; or then again he might be somebody's head gardener. He was heavily built and heavily mustached with a reddish cast to his skin and fat broad hands. The woman alongside him had the look about her of being a high-class domestic employee, possibly a housekeeper or perhaps a seamstress. Miss Smith decided that if not exactly a servant she was accustomed to dealing with servants and in her own sphere undoubtedly would figure as a competent and authoritative person.
Of her own seat mate she could make out little except that she was young – young enough to be the daughter of the woman across from her, and yet plainly enough not the woman's daughter. Indeed if first impressions counted for anything she was of a different type and a different fiber from the pair who rode in her company. One somehow felt that she was with them but not of them; that she formed the alien apex of a triangle otherwise harmonious in its social composition. She was muffled cheek to knees in a loose cape of blue military cloth which quite hid the outlines of her figure, yet nevertheless revealed that she was slimly formed and of fair height. The flaring collar of the garment was upturned, shielding her face almost to the line of her brows. But out of the tail of her eye Miss Smith caught a suggestion of a youthful regular profile and admiringly observed the texture of a mass of thick, fine, auburn hair. Miss Smith was partial to auburn hair; she wondered if this girl had a coloring to match the rich reddish tones that glinted in the smooth coils about her head.
Presently the man fumbled in a breast pocket of his waistcoat and found a long malignant-looking cigar. He bit the end of it and inserted the bitten end in his mouth, rolling it back and forth between his lips. Before long this poor substitute of the confirmed nicotinist for a smoke failed to satisfy his cravings. He whispered a word to his middle-aged companion, who nodded, and then with a mutter of apology to Miss Smith for troubling her he scrouged out into the aisle and disappeared in the direction of the smoker.
Left alone, the woman very soon began to yawn. It was to be judged that the stuffy air of the car made her dozy. She kept her eyes open with an effort, her head lolling in spite of her drowsy efforts to hold it straight, yet all the while bearing herself after the fashion of one determined not to fall asleep.
A voice spoke in Miss Smith's ear – a low and well-bred and musical voice.
"I beg your pardon," it said hesitatingly, then stopped.
Miss Smith turned her head toward the speaker and now for the first time had a fair chance to look into the face of the voice's owner. She looked and saw the oval of a most comely face, white and drawn as though by exhaustion or by deep sorrow, or perhaps by both. For all their pallor the cheeks were full and smooth; the brow was broad and low; the mouth firm and sweet. From between the tall collars of the cape the throat, partly revealed, rose as a smooth fair column. What made the girl almost beautiful were her eyes – eyes big and brown with a fire in them to suggest the fine high mettle of a resolute character, but out of them there looked – or else the other was woefully wrong – a great grief, a great distress bravely borne. To herself – all in that instant of looking – she said mentally that these were the saddest, most courageous eyes she ever had seen set in a face so young and seemingly bespeaking so healthful a body. For a moment Miss Smith was so held by what she saw that she forgot to speak.
"I beg your pardon," repeated the girl. "I wonder if you would be good enough to bring me a drink of water – if it isn't too much trouble. I'm so thirsty. I can't very well go myself – there are reasons why I can't. And I don't think she" – with a sidelong glance toward the nodding figure opposite – "I don't think she would feel that she could go and leave me.'
"Certainly I will," said Miss Smith. "It's not a bit of bother."
"What is it?" The woman had been roused to full wakefulness by the movement of the stranger in rising.
"Please don't move," said Miss Smith. "Your young lady is thirsty and I'm going to bring her a drink of water – that's all."
"It's very good of you, miss," said the elder woman. She reached for her hand bag. "I think I've got a penny here for the cup."
"I've plenty of pennies," said Miss Smith.
At the cooler behind the forward door she filled a paper cup and brought it back to where the two were. To her surprise the elder woman reached for the cup and took it from her and held it to the girl's lips while she drank. With a profound shock of sympathy the realization went through Miss Smith that the girl had not the use of her hands.
Having drunk, the girl settled back in her former posture, her face half turned toward the window and her head drooping as if from weariness. The woman laid the emptied cup aside and at once was dozing off again. The third member of the group sat in pitying wonder. She wondered what affliction had made a cripple of this wholesome-looking bonny creature. She thought of ghastly things she had read concerning the dreadful after effects of infantile paralysis, but rejected the suggestion, because no matter what else of dread and woe the girl's eyes had betrayed the face was too plump and the body, which she could feel touching hers, too firm and well nourished to betoken a present and wasting infirmity. So then it must have been some accident – some maiming mishap which probably had not been of recent occurrence, since nothing else about the girl suggested physical impairment. If this deduction were correct, the wearing of the shrouding blue cape in an atmosphere almost stiflingly close stood explained. It was so worn to hide the injured limbs from view. That, of course, would be the plausible explanation. Yet at the same time an inner consciousness gave Miss Smith a certain and absolute conviction that the specter of tearfulness lurking at the back of those big brown eyes meant more than the ever-present realization of some bodily disfigurement.
Fascinated, she found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries – our Miss Smith was too well-bred for that – only was there a sudden quickened pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any small comfort of act or word which might fitly come her way. As her glance – behind the cover of her reopened book – traveled over the cloaked shape searching for a clew to the secret she saw how that chance promised to serve her ends. The girl was half turned from her, a shoulder pressing against the window ledge; the twist of her body had drawn one front breadth of the cape awry so that no longer did it completely overlap its fellow. In the slight opening thus unwittingly contrived Miss Smith could make out at the wearer's belt line a partly obscured inch or two of what seemed to be a heavy leathern gear, or truss, which so far as the small limits of the exposed area gave hint as to its purpose appeared to engage the forearms like a surgical device, supporting their weight below the bend of the elbows. With quickening and enhanced sympathy the little woman winced.
Then she started, her gaze lifting quickly. Of a sudden she became aware that the girl was regarding her straightforwardly with those haggard eyes.
"Can you tell what the – the trouble is with me?" she asked.
She spoke under her breath, the wraith of a weary little smile about her mouth.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," answered Miss Smith contritely. "But please believe me – it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that made me look."
"I think I know," said the girl softly. "You were sorry. And it doesn't matter much – your seeing. Somehow I don't mind your seeing."
"But I haven't really seen – I only caught a glimpse. And I'm afraid now that I've been pressing too closely against your side; perhaps giving you pain by touching your arms."
"My arms are not hurting me," said the girl, still with that queer ghost of a smile at her lips. "I've not been hurt or injured in any way."
"Not hurt? Then why – "
She choked the involuntary question even as she was framing it.
"This – this has been done, I suppose, to keep me from hurting anyone else."
"But – but I don't understand."
"Don't you – yet? Then lift a fold of my wrap – carefully, so no one else can see while you are looking. I'd rather you did," she continued, seeing how Miss Smith hesitated.
