wistful desire for some lost and needful ingredient.
"I came near drowning in that awful river," said Cecilia, shuddering.
"It ought to have more water in it," said Hetty; "the stew, I mean.
I'll go get some at the sink."
"It smells good," said the artist.
"That nasty old North River?" objected Hetty. "It smells to me like
soap factories and wet setter-dogs - oh, you mean the stew. Well, I
wish we had an onion for it. Did he look like he had money?"
"First, he looked kind," said Cecilia. "I'm sure he was rich; but that
matters so little. When he drew out his bill-folder to pay the cab-man
you couldn't help seeing hundreds and thousands of dollars in it. And
I looked over the cab doors and saw him leave the ferry station in a
motor-car; and the chauffeur gave him his bearskin to put on, for he
was sopping wet. And it was only three days ago."
"What a fool!" said Hetty, shortly.
"Oh, the chauffeur wasn't wet," breathed Cecilia. "And he drove the
car away very nicely."
"I mean _you_," said Hetty. "For not giving him your address."
"I never give my address to chauffeurs," said Cecilia, haughtily.
"I wish we had one," said Hetty, disconsolately.
"What for?"
"For the stew, of course - oh, I mean an onion."
Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the end of the hall.
A young man came down the stairs from above just as she was opposite
the lower step. He was decently dressed, but pale and haggard. His
eyes were dull with the stress of some burden of physical or mental
woe. In his hand he bore an onion - a pink, smooth, solid, shining
onion as large around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock.
Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was something
Joan of Arc-ish, Herculean, and Una-ish in the look and pose
of the shop-lady - she had cast off the rôles of Job and
Little-Red-Riding-Hood. The young man stopped at the foot of the
stairs and coughed distractedly. He felt marooned, held up, attacked,
assailed, levied upon, sacked, assessed, panhandled, browbeaten,
though he knew not why. It was the look in Hetty's eyes that did it.
In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly to the masthead and an able seaman
with a dirk between his teeth scurry up the ratlines and nail it
there. But as yet he did not know that the cargo he carried was the
thing that had caused him to be so nearly blown out of the water
without even a parley.
"_Beg_ your pardon," said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid
tones permitted, "but did you find that onion on the stairs? There was
a hole in the paper bag; and I've just come out to look for it."
The young man coughed for half a minute. The interval may have given
him the courage to defend his own property. Also, he clutched his
pungent prize greedily, and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim
waylayer.
"No," he said huskily, "I didn't find it on the stairs. It was given
to me by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If you don't believe it, ask
him. I'll wait until you do."
"I know about Bevens," said Hetty, sourly. "He writes books and things
up there for the paper-and-rags man. We can hear the postman guy him
all over the house when he brings them thick envelopes back. Say - do
you live in the Vallambrosa?"
"I do not," said the young man. "I come to see Bevens sometimes. He's
my friend. I live two blocks west."
"What are you going to do with the onion? - _begging_ your pardon,"
said Hetty.
"I'm going to eat it."
"Raw?"
"Yes: as soon as I get home."
"Haven't you got anything else to eat with it?"
The young man considered briefly.
"No," he confessed; "there's not another scrap of anything in my
diggings to eat. I think old Jack is pretty hard up for grub in his
shack, too. He hated to give up the onion, but I worried him into
parting with it."
"Man," said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient eyes, and laying
a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, "you've known trouble, too,
haven't you?"
"Lots," said the onion owner, promptly. "But this onion is my own
property, honestly come by. If you will excuse me, I must be going."
"Listen," said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. "Raw onion is a
mighty poor diet. And so is a beef-stew without one. Now, if you're Jack
Bevens' friend, I guess you're nearly right. There's a little lady - a
friend of mine - in my room there at the end of the hall. Both of us
are out of luck; and we had just potatoes and meat between us. They're
stewing now. But it ain't got any soul. There's something lacking to it.
There's certain things in life that are naturally intended to fit and
belong together. One is pink cheese-cloth and green roses, and one is
ham and eggs, and one is Irish and trouble. And the other one is beef
and potatoes _with_ onions. And still another one is people who are up
against it and other people in the same fix."
The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of coughing. With one
hand he hugged his onion to his bosom.
"No doubt; no doubt," said he, at length. "But, as I said, I must be
going, because - "
Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly.
"Don't be a Dago, Little Brother. Don't eat raw onions. Chip it in
toward the dinner and line yourself inside with the best stew you ever
licked a spoon over. Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and
drag him inside for the honor of dining with 'em? No harm shall befall
you, Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into line."
The young man's pale face relaxed into a grin.
"Believe I'll go you," he said, brightening. "If my onion is good as
a credential, I'll accept the invitation gladly."
"It's good as that, but better as seasoning," said Hetty. "You come
and stand outside the door till I ask my lady friend if she has any
objections. And don't run away with that letter of recommendation
before I come out."
Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The young man waited
outside.
"Cecilia, kid," said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw of her voice
as well as she could, "there's an onion outside. With a young man
attached. I've asked him in to dinner. You ain't going to kick, are
you?"
"Oh, dear!" said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her artistic hair. She
cast a mournful glance at the ferry-boat poster on the wall.
"Nit," said Hetty. "It ain't him. You're up against real life now. I
believe you said your hero friend had money and automobiles. This is
a poor skeezicks that's got nothing to eat but an onion. But he's
easy-spoken and not a freshy. I imagine he's been a gentleman, he's
so low down now. And we need the onion. Shall I bring him in? I'll
guarantee his behavior."
"Hetty, dear," sighed Cecilia, "I'm so hungry. What difference does it
make whether he's a prince or a burglar? I don't care. Bring him in if
he's got anything to eat with him."
Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was gone. Her heart missed
a beat, and a gray look settled over her face except on her nose and
cheek-bones. And then the tides of life flowed in again, for she saw
him leaning out of the front window at the other end of the hall. She
hurried there. He was shouting to some one below. The noise of the
street overpowered the sound of her footsteps. She looked down over his
shoulder, saw whom he was speaking to, and heard his words. He pulled
himself in from the window-sill and saw her standing over him.
Hetty's eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets.
"Don't lie to me," she said, calmly. "What were you going to do with
that onion?"
The young man suppressed a cough and faced her resolutely. His manner
was that of one who had been bearded sufficiently.
"I was going to eat it," said he, with emphatic slowness; "just as I
told you before."
"And you have nothing else to eat at home?"
"Not a thing."
"What kind of work do you do?"
"I am not working at anything just now."
"Then why," said Hetty, with her voice set on its sharpest edge, "do you
lean out of windows and give orders to chauffeurs in green automobiles
in the street below?"
The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to sparkle.
"Because, madam," said he, in _accelerando_ tones, "I pay the
chauffeur's wages and I own the automobile - and also this onion - this
onion, madam."
He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty's nose. The shop-lady
did not retreat a hair's-breadth.
"Then why do you eat onions," she said, with biting contempt, "and
nothing else?"
"I never said I did," retorted the young man, heatedly. "I said I had
nothing else to eat where I live. I am not a delicatessen store-keeper."
"Then why," pursued Hetty, inflexibly, "were you going to eat a raw
onion?"
"My mother," said the young man, "always made me eat one for a cold.
Pardon my referring to a physical infirmity; but you may have noticed
that I have a very, very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion and
go to bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing to you for
it."
"How did you catch this cold?" went on Hetty, suspiciously.
The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme height of feeling.
There were two modes of descent open to him - a burst of rage or a
surrender to the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall echoed
his hoarse laughter.
"You're a dandy," said he. "And I don't blame you for being careful. I
don't mind telling you. I got wet. I was on a North River ferry a few
days ago when a girl jumped overboard. Of course, I - "
Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story.
"Give me the onion," she said.
The young man set his jaw a trifle harder.
"Give me the onion," she repeated.
He grinned, and laid it in her hand.
Then Hetty's infrequent, grim, melancholy smile showed itself. She took
the young man's arm and pointed with her other hand to the door of her
room.
"Little Brother," she said, "go in there. The little fool you fished out
of the river is there waiting for you. Go on in. I'll give you three
minutes before I come. Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on in, Onions."
After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty began to peel and
wash the onion at the sink. She gave a gray look at the gray roofs
outside, and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and
twitches.
"But it's us," she said, grimly, to herself, "it's _us_ that furnished
the beef."
THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL
A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery
eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los
Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat,
melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the
appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy
on both sides.
"Ain't seen you in about four years, Ham," said the seedy man. "Which
way you been travelling?"
"Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold in Alaska for me.
And I found it warm in Texas. I'll tell you about one hot spell I went
through there.
"One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it
go on without me. 'Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses than
New York City. Only out there they build 'em twenty miles away so you
can't smell what they've got for dinner, instead of running 'em up two
inches from their neighbors' windows.
"There wasn't any roads in sight, so I footed it 'cross country. The
grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a
peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman's private estate that
every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite
you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a
ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-railroad
station.
"There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink
handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front
of the door.
"'Greetings,' says I. 'Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even
work for a comparative stranger?'
"'Oh, come in,' says he, in a refined tone. 'Sit down on that stool,
please. I didn't hear your horse coming.'
"'He isn't near enough yet,' says I. 'I walked. I don't want to be
a burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water
handy.'
"'You do look pretty dusty,' says he; 'but our bathing arrangements - '
"'It's a drink I want,' says I. 'Never mind the dust that's on the
outside.'
"He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then
goes on:
"'Do you want work?'
"'For a time,' says I. 'This is a rather quiet section of the country,
isn't it?'
"'It is,' says he. 'Sometimes - so I have been told - one sees no human
being pass for weeks at a time. I've been here only a month. I bought
the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'
"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man
sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float
stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.'
"'Can you herd sheep?' asks the little ranchman.
"'Do you mean _have_ I heard sheep?' says I.
"'Can you herd 'em - take charge of a flock of 'em?' says he.
"'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and bark at
'em like collie dogs. Well, I might,' says I. 'I've never exactly done
any sheep-herding, but I've often seen 'em from car windows masticating
daisies, and they don't look dangerous.'
"'I'm short a herder,' says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on
the Mexicans. I've only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of
muttons - there are only eight hundred of 'em - in the morning, if you
like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished. You
camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own cooking,
but wood and water are brought to your camp. It's an easy job.'
"'I'm on,' says I. 'I'll take the job even if I have to garland my brow
and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like
the shepherds do in pictures.'
"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of
muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a
little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about
not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving 'em
down to a water-hole to drink at noon.
"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the
buckboard before night,' says he.
"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit.
And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer, ain't it?"
"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'
"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.'
"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool
entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me.
I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. I've seen a lot of persons more
entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd drive 'em to the
corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton
and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen
to the coyotes and whip-poor-wills singing around the camp.
"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.
"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are
all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton
suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank
along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a
parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on a
mental basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if it's
only to knock somebody's brains out.'
"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-rings
and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and
his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an
outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him. But I
knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his brother.
I didn't care much for him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship
and communion with holy saints or lost sinners - anything sheepless would
do.
"'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I
guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny that
it's monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they
won't stray out?'
"'They're shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,' says
I. 'And I'll be back with them long before they'll need their trained
nurse.'
"So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five
days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When
I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in
Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about
the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.
"That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much
that he'd be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or
Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and
you'll see him splitting his ribs laughing at 'Curfew Shall Not Ring
To-night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.
"By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a
total eclipse of sheep.
"'Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,' says he,
'about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot
through the shoulder and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it's said
that only one man did the job.'
"'Seems to me I do,' says I. 'But such things happen so often they don't
linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize,
or lay hands upon the despoiler?'
"'He escaped,' says Ogden. 'And I was just reading in a paper to-day
that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country.
It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency
to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they've followed
the trail where they've been spent, and it leads this way.'
"Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.
"'I imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal
booze, 'that it wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train
robber to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell. A
sheep-ranch, now,' says I, 'would be the finest kind of a place. Who'd
ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song-birds
and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,' says I, kind of
looking H. Ogden over, 'was there any description mentioned of this
single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or height and thickness or
teeth fillings or style of habiliments set forth in print?'
"'Why, no,' says Ogden; 'they say nobody got a good sight of him because
he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber called Black Bill,
because he always works alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in
the express-car that had his name on it.'
"'All right,' says I. 'I approve of Black Bill's retreat to the
sheep-ranges. I guess they won't find him.'
"'There's one thousand dollars reward for his capture,' says Ogden.
"'I don't need that kind of money,' says I, looking Mr. Sheepman
straight in the eye. 'The twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough.
I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my fare to
Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,' I goes on,
looking significantly at Ogden, 'was to have come down this way - say,
a month ago - and bought a little sheep-ranch and - '
"'Stop,' says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty
vicious. 'Do you mean to insinuate - '
"'Nothing,' says I; 'no insinuations. I'm stating a hypodermical case.
I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep-ranch and
hired me to Little-Boy-Blue 'em and treated me square and friendly, as
you've done, he'd never have anything to fear from me. A man is a man,
regardless of any complications he may have with sheep or railroad
trains. Now you know where I stand.'
"Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he laughs,
amused.
"'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I _was_ Black Bill I wouldn't
be afraid to trust you. Let's have a game or two of seven-up to-night.
That is, if you don't mind playing with a train-robber.'
"'I've told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings
to 'em.'
"While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the
idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from.
"'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.'
"'That's a nice little place,' says I. 'I've often stopped over there.
But didn't you find the sheets a little damp and the food poor? Now, I
hail,' says I, 'from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up there?'
"'Too draughty,' says Ogden. 'But if you're ever in the Middle West just
mention my name, and you'll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.'
"'Well,' says I, 'I wasn't exactly fishing for your private telephone
number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the Cumberland
Presbyterian minister. It don't matter. I just want you to know you are
safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play hearts on spades,
and don't get nervous.'
"'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that
if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester
bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?'
"'Not any,' says I. 'A man who's got the nerve to hold up a train
single-handed wouldn't do a trick like that. I've knocked about enough
to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not
that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'being
only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we
might have been.'
"'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for deal.'
"About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the
water-hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up
rides softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being
he wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City
detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His
chin and eye wasn't molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a
scout.
"'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me.
"'Well,' says I, 'to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I
wouldn't have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old
bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets.'
"'You don't talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,' says he.
"'But you talk like what you look like to me,' says I.
"And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho
Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells
me he's a deputy sheriff.
"'There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in
these parts,' says the scout. 'He's been traced as far as San Antonio,
and maybe farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers around here
during the past month?'
"'I have not,' says I, 'except a report of one over at the Mexican
quarters of Loomis' ranch, on the Frio.'
"'What do you know about him?' asks the deputy.
"'He's three days old,' says I.
"'What kind of a looking man is the man you work for?' he asks. 'Does
old George Ramey own this place yet? He's run sheep here for the last
ten years, but never had no success.'
"'The old man has sold out and gone West,' I tells him. 'Another
sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago.'
"'What kind of a looking man is he?' asks the deputy again.
"'Oh,' says I, 'a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and
blue specs. I don't think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I
guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,' says I.
"After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information
and two-thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away.
"That night I mentions the matter to Ogden.
"'They're drawing the tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,' says
I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described
him to the deputy, and what the deputy said about the matter.
"'Oh, well,' says Ogden, 'let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's
troubles. We've a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the cupboard
and we'll drink to his health - unless,' says he, with his little
cackling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers.'
"'I'll drink,' says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I
believe that Black Bill,' I goes on, 'would be that. So here's to Black
Bill, and may he have good luck.'
"And both of us drank.
"About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be driven
up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip the
fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the
barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over the hill,
across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the ranch-house,
where I penned 'em in a corral and bade 'em my nightly adieus.
"I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire,
lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by
anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the
sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a
second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few
musings. 'Imperial Cæsar,' says I, 'asleep in such a way, might shut
his mouth and keep the wind away.'
"A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all
his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections?
He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he's
about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera
House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman
asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it's
better for all hands for her to be that way.
"Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to
be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his
table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical
culture - and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.
"After I'd smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H.
O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where
there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a
kind of a creek farther away.
"I saw five men riding up to the house. All of 'em carried guns across
their saddles, and among 'em was the deputy that had talked to me at my
camp.
"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I set
apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker of
this law-and-order cavalry.
"'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your horses?'
"The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in
it seems to cover my whole front elevation.
"'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge in
a adequate amount of necessary conversation.'
"'I will not,' says I. 'I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not have
to disobey your injunctions in replying.'
"'We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held up
the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and everybody
on 'em. What is your name, and what do you do on this ranch?'
"'Captain,' says I, 'Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my name
is sheep-herder. I've got my flock of veals - no, muttons - penned here
to-night. The shearers are coming to-morrow to give them a haircut - with
baa-a-rum, I suppose.'
"'Where's the boss of this ranch?' the captain of the gang asks me.
"'Wait just a minute, cap'n,' says I. 'Wasn't there a kind of a reward
offered for the capture of this desperate character you have referred
to in your preamble?'
"'There's a thousand dollars reward offered,' says the captain, 'but
it's for his capture and conviction. There don't seem to be no provision
made for an informer.'
"'It looks like it might rain in a day or so,' says I, in a tired way,
looking up at the cerulean blue sky.
"'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness
of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, 'you are amiable
to the law in not reporting it.'
"'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice,
'that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the
Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a
sheepman's cousin two weeks ago.'
"'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth,' says the captain, after looking
me over for bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill, I'll
pay you a hundred dollars out of my own - out of our own - pockets. That's
liberal,' says he. 'You ain't entitled to anything. Now, what do you
say?'
"'Cash down now?' I asks.
"The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all
produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the general
results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco.
"'Come nearer, capitan meeo,' says I, 'and listen.' He so did.
"'I am mighty poor and low down in the world,' says I. 'I am working for
twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose
only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,' says I, 'I regard
myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it's a come-down
to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops.
I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and
rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way from
Scranton to Cincinnati - dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime,
and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're ever up that way, don't
fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I, 'I have never yet went
back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when they had plenty, and when
adversity's overtaken me I've never forsook 'em.
"'But,' I goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve
dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider
brown beans and corn-bread the food of friendship. I am a poor man,'
says I, 'and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will find Black
Bill,' says I, 'lying asleep in this house on a cot in the room to your
right. He's the man you want, as I know from his words and conversation.
He was in a way a friend,' I explains, 'and if I was the man I once was
the entire product of the mines of Gondola would not have tempted me to
betray him. But,' says I, 'every week half of the beans was wormy, and
not nigh enough wood in camp.
"'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at
times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would
look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.'
"So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers their
ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I follows,
like Delilah when she set the Philip Steins on to Samson.
"The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he
jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was mighty
tough with all his slimness, and he gives 'em as neat a single-footed
tussle against odds as I ever see.
"'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down.
"'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,' says the captain. 'That's all.'
"'It's an outrage,' says H. Ogden, madder yet.
"'It was,' says the peace-and-good-will man. 'The Katy wasn't bothering
you, and there's a law against monkeying with express packages.'
"And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets
symptomatically and careful.
"'I'll make you perspire for this,' says Ogden, perspiring some himself.
'I can prove who I am.'
"'So can I,' says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden's inside
coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank
of Espinosa City. 'Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays
visiting-card wouldn't have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity
than this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us
and expatriate your sins.'
"H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they
have taken the money off of him.
"'A well-greased idea,' says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip off
down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is seldom
heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,' says the captain.
"So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other
herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's horse,
and the sheriffs all ride up close around him with their guns in hand,
ready to take their prisoner to town.
"Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and gives
him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just as if
he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours afterward
one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito,
might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars - wages and
blood-money - in his pocket, riding south on another horse belonging to
said ranch."
The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming
freight-train sounded far away among the low hills.
The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head slowly
and disparagingly.
"What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again?"
"No, I ain't" said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like your
talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen year; and I
never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the law - not no one.
And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at whose table you had
played games of cards - if casino can be so called. And yet you inform
him to the law and take money for it. It never was like you, I say."
"This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer, proved
himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard
afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated to
hand him over."
"How about the bills they found in his pocket?" asked the seedy man.
"I put 'em there," said the red-faced man, "while he was asleep, when I
saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill. Look out, Snipy, here she
comes! We'll board her on the bumpers when she takes water at the tank."
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS
I
Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East
Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a downtown broker, so rich that he could
afford to walk - for his health - a few blocks in the direction of his
office every morning, and then call a cab.
He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert - Cyril
Scott could play him nicely - who was becoming a successful painter as
fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of
the household was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to trouble;
so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the burdens of
others.
Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical
understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell
some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome's money
in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be
introduced.
Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a
brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody else's
fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had a letter
from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that smelled
of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic and the
spelling St. Vitusy.
It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and
deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the
enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging
out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to
check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one
daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East,
charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and
cherish for the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them
part.
Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is supported
by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-fence; and
that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the turtle has
to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like old
Jerome.
I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so,
I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?
They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply
sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was frankly
unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude
upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you would expect
to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting glass balls
or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black skirt she
sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she swung
along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain to wrest
from her.
"I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Barbara, pecking at
the firm, sunburned cheek.
"I hope so," said Nevada.
"Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as welcome to my home as
if it were your father's own."
"Thanks," said Nevada.
"And I am going to call you 'cousin,'" said Gilbert, with his charming
smile.
"Take the valise, please," said Nevada. "It weighs a million pounds.
It's got samples from six of dad's old mines in it," she explained to
Barbara. "I calculate they'd assay about nine cents to the thousand
tons, but I promised him to bring them along."
II
It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one
man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and
a nobleman, or - well, any of those problems - as the triangle. But
they are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles - never
equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert and
Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that
triangle Barbara formed the hypotenuse.
One morning old Jerome was lingering long after breakfast over the
dullest morning paper in the city before setting forth to his down-town
fly-trap. He had become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her much of
his dead brother's quiet independence and unsuspicious frankness.
A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren.
"A messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please," she said. "He's
waiting for an answer."
Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between her teeth, and
watching the carriages and autos roll by in the street, took the
envelope. She knew it was from Gilbert, before she opened it, by the
little gold palette in the upper left-hand corner.
After tearing it open she pored over the contents for a while,
absorbedly. Then, with a serious face, she went and stood at her uncle's
elbow.
"Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn't he?"