educated ear. And he never works with a mob
neither. Any time you make Shang he'll be
playin' the lone hand providin' his own nut
and goin' south with all the clean-up. No
splittin' with anybody for Shang it's against
his business principles. That's why he's labelled
the Solitary Kid."
Most of this was as pure Greek to Judge
Priest, who, I may say, knew no Greek, pure
or otherwise. Suddenly aware of the bewilder
ment revealed in the countenance of his inter
viewer, Montreal Red checked up and took a
new track.
[184]
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
"Say, bo, you ain't makin' me, are you?
Well, then, maybe I'd better spiel it out slow.
Know wot a petennan is?"
The judge shook his head.
"Well, you know wot a box is, don't you?"
"I'm skeered that I don't, though I believe
I'm beginnin' to git a faint idea," said Judge
Priest.-
As though deploring such ignorance Montreal
Red shook his flame-coloured head.
"I'll frame it for you different in sucker
language," he said.
And accordingly he did, most painstak
ingly.
"Now then," he said at the end of five minutes
of laborious translation, "do you get me?"
"I git you," said Judge Priest. "And I'm
mighty much obliged. Now, then, ef it ain't
too much trouble, I'd like to git in touch
with this here Mister Conklin, et cetery. Do
you, by any chance, know his present where
abouts?"
Before replying to this the Montreal Red
communed with himself for a brief space.
"Old-timer," he said finally, "if I thought
you was playin' in with the dicks I'd see you in
Belgium before I tipped you off to anything.
But this here mouthpiece of mine" he in
dicated the note from young Mr. Fairleigh
"says you're on the level. I judge he wouldn't
take my good fall-money and then cross me
this way. I take it you ain't tryin' to slip one
[185]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
over on Shang? All right, then; I'll tell you
where he is he's in Atlanta, Georgia."
"And whut is his address there?" pursued
Judge Priest.
"The Federal prison that's all," said Mon
treal Red. He smiled softly. "If I don't
beat this little case of mine I'm liable to meet
him down there along toward spring, or maybe
even sooner. The bulls nailed him at Chat
tanooga, Tennessee, about a month ago for a
little national-bank job, and right quick he
taken a plea and got off with a short bit in
Uncle Sammy's big house. I was readin' about
it in the papers. You wouldn't have no trouble
findin' him at Atlanta he'll be in to callers for
the next five years."
"Bein' an amateur Old Cap Collier certainly
calls fur a lot of travellin' round," murmured
Judge Priest, half to himself, and he sighed a
small sigh of resignation as he arose.
"Wot's that? I don't make you?" asked
Montreal Red.
" Nothin '," said Judge Priest; "nothin'
a-tall. I was jest thinkin' out loud; it's a sort
of failin' of mine ez I git older. You said,
didn't you, that these here sleepin' potions
which you was mentionin' a minute ago are
mostly administered in beer?"
"Mostly in beer," said Montreal Red. "The
little old knock-out seems to work best in the
lather stuff. I don't know why, but it does.
It's like this: You take the beer "
[186]
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
"Oh, I wasn't figgerin' on usin' it myself,"
explained Judge Priest hastily. "Much obliged
to you all the same, young man."
A night in a sleeping car brought Judge
Priest to Atlanta. A ride in a trolley car
brought him to the warden's office of a large
reformatory institution beyond the suburbs
of that progressive city. A ten-minute chat
with the warden and the display of divers
credentials brought him the privilege of an
interview, in private, with a person who, hav
ing so many names to pick from, was yet at
this time designated by a simple number.
Even in convict garb, which is cut on chastely
plain lines and which rarely fits perfectly the
form of its wearer, this gentleman continued
somehow to bespeak the accomplished metro
politan in his physical outlines and in his de
meanour as well, maintaining himself, as you
might say, jauntily.
In the first few moments of his meeting with
Judge Priest there was about him a bearing of
reserve almost of outright suspicion. But
half a dozen explanatory sentences from the
judge served speedily to establish an atmosphere
of mutual understanding. I believe I stated
earlier hi my tale that Judge Priest had a little
knack for winning people's confidences. Per
haps I should also explain that at a suitable
time in the introductory stages of the conversa
tion he produced a line in the characteristic
1 187 ]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
handwriting of Mr. Montreal Red. Being
thereby still further enlightened as to the dis
interestedness of the venerable stranger's mo
tives, the Solitary Kid proved frankness itself.
Preliminarily, though, he listened intently while
Judge Priest recited in full a story that had
mainly to do with the existing plight of Eman-
uel Moon.
"Now then, suh," said Judge Priest at the
conclusion of his narrative, "I've laid all the
cyards that I hold on the table right in front of
you. Ef I'm correct in my guess that you're
the party of the second part in this here trans
action I don't need to go on, because you know
a sight more about the rest of it than whut I
do. The way I figger it, a decent, honest little
man is in serious trouble, mainly on your ac
count. Ef you're so minded I calculate that
you kin help him without hurtin' yourself any.
Now then, presumin' sech to be the case, is
there anythin' you'd like to say to me ez his
friend?"
Conklin, alias Caruthers, alias Crowley, and
so on, put a question of his own now:
"You say the president of that bank is the
one that tried to fasten this job on Moon, eh?
Well, then, before we go any further, suppose
you tell me what that president looks like?"
Judge Priest sketched a quick word picture
of Mr. Hiram Blair accurate and fair, there
fore not particularly complimentary.
"That's enough," said the convict grimly;
[188]
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
" that'll do. Why, the long-whiskered old dog!
Now then, Judge you said you were a judge,
didn't you? I'm going to spill a funny yarn
for you. Never mind what my reasons for
coming through are. Maybe I want to get
even with somebody that handed me a large
disappointment. Maybe I don't want to see
that little Moon suffer for something he didn't
do. Figure it out for yourself afterward, but
first listen to me."
"I'm listenin', son," said Judge Priest.
"Good!" said Conklin, lowering his voice
cautiously, though he knew already they were
alone in the warden's room.
"Up to a certain point you've got the thing
figured out just, as it came off. That day on
the train going into Louisville I started to take
the little man at cards. I was going to deal
him the big mitt and then clean him for what
he had; but when he told me he worked in a
bank a nice, fat little country bank I switched
the play, of course. I saw thousands of dollars
where I'd seen lunch money before. Inside
of an hour I knew everything there was to know
about that bank what he knew and what I
could figure from what he told me. All I had
to do was to turn the spigot once in a while
and let him run on. And then, when he began
to spill his cravings for a new clarinet, I almost
laughed in his face. The whole thing looked
like a pipe.
"The dope was working lovely when I hit
[189]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
that town of yours two weeks later. At the
right minute I flashed the clarinet on him and
made him forget to throw the combination of
the vault. So far, so good. Then, when I got
him where I wanted him over in my room
I slipped the drops into his beer; not enough
to hurt him but enough to start him pounding
his ear right away. That was easy too so easy
I almost hated to do it.
"Then I waited until about two o'clock in
the morning, him lying there all the time on my
bed, dead to the world. So I took his keys off
him and dropped across the street without
being seen by anybody the main street of
your town is nice and quiet after midnight
I'll say that much for it anyway and walked
into the bank the same as if I owned it in fact,
I did own it and made myself at home. I
opened up the vault and went through it, with
a pocket flash to furnish light; and then after
a little I locked her up again, good and tight,
leaving everything just like I'd found it, and
went back to the hotel and put the keys in the
little man's pocket, and laid down alongside of
him and took a nap myself. D'ye see my
drift?"
"I reckin I don't altogether understand
yit," said Judge Priest.
"You naturally wouldn't," said Conklin
with the air of a teacher instructing an at
tentive but very ignorant pupil. "Here's
what happened: When I took a good look at
[190]
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
the inside door of that vault and tried the
tumblers of the outside door I knew I could
open her any time I wanted to in five minutes
or less. Besides, I wouldn't need the keys any
more, seeing as I could make impressions of
'em in wax, which I did as soon as I got back
inside of my room at the hotel. So I was
sure of having duplicates whenever I needed
'em."
"I'm feared that I'm still in the dark," said
Judge Priest. "You see it's only here right
recently that I took up your callin' in life ez
a study."
"Well, figure it out for yourself ," said Conk-
lin. "If I made my clean-up and my getaway
that night it was a cinch that they'd connect
up Moon with his strange friend from New
York; even a hick bull would be wise enough
to do that. And inside of twenty-four hours
they'd be combing the country for a gun answer
ing to my general plans and specifications. At
the beginning I was willing to take that chance;
but after I had a look at that combination I
switched my play. Besides, there wasn't enough
coin in the box that night to suit me. I always
play for the big dough when I can, and I re
membered what the little man told me about
that lumber company you know the one I
mean: that big crosstie concern depositing
its pay roll every other Friday night. So why
wouldn't I hold off?"
"I begin to see," said Judge Priest. "You're
[191]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
makin' me see a number of things that've been
pesterin' me fur three-four days now."
"Wait till you get the final kick," promised
the convict. "That'll open your eyes some, I
guess. Well, I skinned out next morning and
I went elsewhere never mind where, but it
wasn't far away. Then on the night of the
fifteenth the third Friday in the month I
came back again, travelling incog., as they
say on the other side of the duck pond; and
about two o'clock in the morning I paid another
call to your little old Commonwealth Bank and
opened up the vault outside door and inside
door in four minutes by my watch, without
putting a mark on her. That's my specialty-
nice, clean jobs, without damaging the box or
making any litter for the janitor to sweep up
in the morning. But I didn't clean her out
that time either."
"Ahem!" said Judge Priest doubtfully.
"You didn't?"
"Oh, I didn't expect you to believe that right
off," stated Mr. Conklin, prolonging his climax.
"The reason I didn't clean her out then was
because she was already cleaned out; some
body had beat me to it and got away with
everything worth having in that little old box.
It was considerable of a disappointment to me
and a shock too."
"It shorely must've been," agreed the judge,
almost sympathetically. " Mout I ask ef you've
got any gineral notion who it was that that
,[192]
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
deprived you of the fruits of your industry and
your patience?"
"I don't have to have any general notion,"
quoth Conklin et at., with bitterness creeping
into his voice. "I know who it was that is,
I'm practically certain I know who it was.
Because, while I was across the street in a
doorway about half past one, waiting to make
sure the neighbourhood was clear, I saw the
gink I suspect come out of the bank and lock
the door behind him, and go off up the street.
"I thought at the time it was funny any
body being in that bank at that hour of the
night; but mostly I was glad that I 'hadn't
walked in on him while he was there. So I
just laid low and let him get away with the
entire proceeds which was my mistake. I
guess under the circumstances he'd have been
glad enough to divide up with me. I might
even have induced him to hand over the whole
bunch to me though, as a rule, when it can
be avoided I don't believe in any strong-arm
stuff. But, you see, I didn't know;then what
I found out about half an hour later. So I
just stood still where I was, like a boob, and
let him fade away out of my life. Yep, Judge,
I'm reasonably sure I saw the party that copped
the big roll that night. And I presume I'm the
only person alive that did see him copping it."
"Would you mind describin' him ez nearly
ez you kin?" asked Judge Priest; he seemed
to have accepted the story as a truthful recital.
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
"I don't need to," answered the Solitary
Kid. "You did that yourself just a little bit
ago. If you're going back home any time soon
I suggest that you ask the old pappy-guy with
the long white whiskers what he was doing
coming out of his own bank at half past one
o'clock on the morning of October the sixteenth,
with a long overcoat on, and his hat pulled
down over his eyes, and a heavy sackful of
dough hid under his coat. I didn't exactly
see the sack, but he had it, all right I'll gamble
on that. You needn't tell him where you got
your information, but just ask him."
"Son," averred Judge Priest, "I shorely
will do that very thing; in fact, I came mighty
nigh practically doin' so several weeks ago
when I didn't know nigh ez much ez I do now
thanks to you and much obliged."
But Judge Priest was spared the trouble
for the time being, at least. What transpired
later in a legal way in his courtroom has noth
ing whatever to do with this narration. It is
true that he left Atlanta without loss of time,
heading homeward as straight and as speedily
as the steam cars could bear him.
Even so, he arrived too late to carry out his
promise to the Solitary Kid. For that very
day, while he was on his way back, in a city
several hundred miles distant in the city of
Chicago, to be precise the police saw fit to
raid an establishment called vulgarly a bucket
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
shop; and finding among the papers and books,
which they coincidentally seized, entries tend
ing to show that our Mr. Hiram Blair had, dur
ing the preceding months, gone short on wheat
to a disastrous extent, the police inconsiderately
betrayed those records of a prolonged and un
fortunate speculation to one of the Chicago
afternoon papers, which in turn wired its local
correspondent down our way to call upon the
gentleman and ask him pointblank how about
it.
But the correspondent, who happened also
to be the city staff of the Daily Evening News,
a young man by the name of Rawlings, was
unsuccessful in his attempts to see Mr. Blair,
either at his place of business in the bank or^at
his residence. From what he was able to
glean, the reporter divined that Mr. Blair had
gone out of town suddenly. Putting two and
two together the young man promptly reached
the conclusion that Mr. Blair might possibly
have had also some word from Chicago. Devel
opments, rapidly ensuing, proved the youth
correct in his hypothesis.
Two days later Mr. Blair was halted by a
person in civilian garb, but wearing a badge
of authority under his coat, as Mr. Blair was
about to cross the boundary line near Buffalo
into the adjacent Dominion of Canada. Mr.
Blair insisted at first that it was not him. In
truth it did not look like him. Somewhere en
route he had lost his distinguished chin whiskers
[195]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
and his commanding manner, acquiring in lieu
of these a name which did not in the least re
semble Hiram Blair.
Nevertheless, being peremptorily, forcibly
and over his protests detained in fact, locked
up he was presently constrained to make a
complete statement, amounting to a confession.
Indeed, Mr. Blair went so far in his disclosures
that the Daily Evening News, in an extra issued
at high noon, carried across its front page, in
box-car letters, a headline reading: Fugitive,
in Durance Vile, Tells All!
Old Judge Priest was passing Mrs. Teenie
Merrill's boarding house one night on his way
home from Soule's drug store, where he had
spent the evening in the congenial company
of Mr. Soule, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby and
Squire Roundtree. This was perhaps a week
after his return from a flying trip to Atlanta,
Georgia, the results of which, as the saying
goes, still were locked within his breast.
As he came opposite Mrs. Merrill's front gate
a blast of harmonious sound, floating out into
the night, saluted his ears. He looked upward.
Behind a front window on the top floor, with
his upper lip overlapping the mouthpiece of a
handsome clarinet and his fingers flitting upon
the polished shaft of the instrument, sat little
Emanuel Moon, now, by virtue of appoint
ment, Deputy Circuit Clerk Emanuel Moon,
playing The Last Rose of Summer with the
fervour inspired of a happy heart, a rehabil-
[196]
THE LIFE OF AN ANT
itated reputation, a lucrative and honourable
employment in the public service, and a newly
acquired mastery of the melodic intricacies of
the air in question four things calculated, you
will allow, to make anyone blithe of the spirit.
The old judge halted and smiled up at the
window. Then, as he moved onward, he ut
tered the very word a small coincidence, this
which I chose for the opening text of this
chapter out of the life and the times of our
town.
"Poor little ant!" said Judge Priest to him
self; and then, as an afterthought: "But a
dag-gone clever little feller!"
[197]
V
SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBY'S
FEET
SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBY sat on the
front porch of the First Presbyterian par
sonage with an arched framing of green
vines above his head. His broad form
reposed in a yet broader porch chair his bare
feet in a foot-tub of cold water.
The sergeant wore his reunion regalia, con
sisting, in the main, of an ancient fatigue jacket
with an absurdly high collar and an even more
absurdly short and peaked tail. About his gen
erous middle was girthed a venerable leather
belt that snaffled at the front with a broad
buckle of age-darkened brass and supported an
old cartridge box, which perched jauntily upon a
fold of the wearer's plump hip like a birdbox on
a crotch. Badges of resplendent new satin,
striped in alternate bars of red and white, flowed
down over his foreshortened bosom, partly
obscuring the scraps of rotted and faded braid
and the big round ball buttons of dulled brass,
which adhered intermittently to the decayed
[198]
SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBY's FEET
front of his uniform coat. Against a veranda
post leaned the sergeant's rusted rifle, the same
he had carried to the war and through the war
and home again after the war, and now reserved
for occasions of high state, such as the present one.
The sergeant's trousers were turned high up
on his shanks; his shoes reposed side by side
alongside him on the floor, each with a white
yarn sock crammed into and overflowing it.
They were new shoes, but excessively dusty and
seamed with young wrinkles; and they bore that
look of total disrepute which anything new in
leather always bears after its first wearing. With
his elbows on his thighs and his hands clasped
loosely between his knees, Sergeant Bagby
bent forward, looking first up the wide street
and then down it. Looking this way he saw
four old men, three of them dressed in grey
and one in black, straggle limpingly across
the road; and one of them carried at a droopy
angle a flag upon which were white-scrolled
letters to tell the world that here was Lyon's
Battery, or what might be left of it. Look
ing that way he saw a group of ten or fifteen
grey heads riding through a cross street upon
bay horses; and at a glance he knew them for a
detachment of Forrest's men, who always came
mounted to reunions. Once they rode like
centaurs; now, with one or two exceptions, they
rode like sacks or racks. It depended on
whether, with age, the rider had grown stout or
stayed thin.
[199]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
Having looked both ways, the sergeant ad
dressed himself to a sight nearer home. He
considered his feet. Viewed through sundry
magnifying and misleading inches of water they
seemed pinky white; but when, groaning gently,
he lifted one foot clear it showed an angry
chafed red upon toe and heel, with large blis-
tery patches running across the instep. With
a plop he lowered it back into the laving depths.
Then, bending over sideways, he picked up one
of his shoes, shaking the crumpled sock out of
it and peering down its white-lined gullet to
read the maker's tag:
"Fall River, Mass.," the sergeant spelled out
the stamped letters "Reliance Shoe Company,
Fall River, Mass."
He dropped the shoe and in tones of reluctant
admiration addressed empty space:
"Well, now, ain't them Yankees the per
sistent devils! Waitin' forty-odd years fur a
chance to cripple me up! But they done it!"
Judge Priest turned in at the front gate and
came up the yard walk. He was in white linens,
severely and comfortably civilian in cut, but
with a commandant's badge upon his lapel and
a short, bobby, black ostrich feather in the brim
of his hat. He advanced slowly, with a slight
outward skew to his short, round legs.
* ' Aha ! " he said understandingly . * ' Whut did
I tell you, Jimmy Bagby, about tryin' to parade
in new shoes? But no, you wouldn't listen
you would be one of these here young dudes!"
[200]
SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBY's FEET
"Judge," pleaded the sergeant, "don't rub it
in! I'm about ruint I'm ruint for life with
these here feet of mine."
Still at a somewhat stiff and straddle-legged
gait, the judge mounted the porch, and after a
quick appraisal of all the chairs in sight eased
his frame into one that had a cushioned seat.
A small involuntary moan escaped him. It was
the sergeant's time to gloat.
"I'm wearin' my blisters on my feet," he
exulted, "and you're wearin' yourn elsewhere.
That's whut you git at your age fur tryin' to
ride a strange horse in a strange town."
"Jimmy," protested the judge, "age ain't got
nothin' a' tall to do with it; but that certainly
was a mighty hard-rackin' animal they conferred
on me. I feel like I've been straddlin' a hip
roof durin' an earthquake. How did you make
out to git back here?"
"That last half mile or so I shore did think
I was trampin' along on red-hot ploughshears.
If there'd been one more mile to walk I reckin
I'd 'a' been listed amongst the wounded and
missin'. I jest did about manage to hobble in.
And Mizz Grundy fetched me this here piggin
of cold water out on the porch, so's I could favour
my feet and watch the boys passin' at the same
time."
Judge Priest undertook to cross one leg over
the other, but uncrossed it again with a wince of
sudden concern on his pink face.
"How dp you aim, then, to git to the big
[201]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
doin's this evenin'?" he asked, and shifted his
position slightly where he sat.
"I ain't aimin' to git there," said Sergeant
Bagby. "I aim to stay right here and take
my ease. Besides, ef I don't git these feet of
mine shrunk down some by milkin' time, I'm
shore goin' to have to pull my pants off over
my head this night."
"Well, now, ain't that too bad!" commis
erated his friend and commander. "I wouldn't
miss hearin' Gen'l Gracey's speech fur a purty."
"Don't you worry about me," the sergeant
was prompt to tell him. "You and Lew Lake
and Hector Woodward and the other boys kin
represent Gideon K. Irons Camp without me fur
oncet anyway. And say, listen, Judge," he
added with malice aforethought, "you'd better
borrow a goosehair cushion, or a feather tick,
or somethin' soft, to set on out yonder. Them
plain pine benches are liable to make a purty
hard roostin' place, even fur an old seasoned
cavalryman."
Judge Priest's retort, if he had one in stock,
remained unbroached, because just then their
hostess bustled out to announce dinner was on
the table. It was to be an early dinner and a
hurried one, because, of course, everybody
wanted to start early, to be sure of getting good
seats for the speaking. The sergeant ate his
right where he was, his feet in his tub, like a
Foot- washing Baptist.
There were servants aplenty within, but the
[202]
SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBY's FEET
younger Miss Grundy elected to serve him; a