Exhaustedby the effort involved in keeping the thermometer of the closing day of August at an altitude intolerable to the human kind and irksome to the brute, a large, red-hot sun was languidly sinking beyond an extensive belt of dusky-brown elms fringing the western boundary of a seventy acre expanse of stubbles diagonally traversed by a parish right-of-way leading from the village of Bensley to the village of Dorton Ware. A knee-deep crop of grasses, flattened by the passage of the harvest wains, clothed this strip of everyman's land, and a narrow footpath divided the grass down the middle, as a parting divides hair.
A snorting sound, which, accompanied by a terrific clatter of old iron and the crunching of road-mendings, had been steadily growing from distant to near, and from loud to deafening, now reached a pitch of utter indescribability; and as a large splay-wheeled, tall-funneled, plowing engine rolled off the Bensley highroad and lumbered in upon the right-of-way, the powerful bouquet of hot lubricating oil nullified all other smells, and the atmosphere became opaque to the point of solidity. As the dust began to settle it was possible to observe that attached to the locomotive was a square, solid, wooden van, the movable residence of the stoker, the engineer, and an apprentice; that a Powler cultivator, a fearsome piece of mechanism, apparently composed of second-hand anchors, chain-cables, and motor driving-wheels, was coupled to the back of the van, and that a bright green water-cart brought up the rear. Upon the rotund barrel of this water-cart rode a boy.
The plowing-engine came to a standstill, the boy got down from the water-cart and uncoupled the locomotive from the living-van. During the operations, though the boy received many verbal buffets from both his superiors, it was curiously noticeable that the engineer and stoker, while plainly egging one another on to wreak physical retribution upon the body of the neophyte, studiously refrained from personally administering it.
"Hook off, can't ye, hook off!" commanded the engineer. "A 'ead like a dumpling, that boy 'as!" he commented to the stoker, as Billy wrought like a grimy goblin at the appointed task.
"A clout on the side of it 'ud do 'im good!" pronounced the stoker, who was as thin and saturnine as the engineer was stout and good-humored. "Boys need correction."
"I'll allow you're right," said the engineer. "But it ain't my business to 'it Billy for 's own good. Bein' own brother to 'is sister's 'usband—it's plainly your place to give 'im wot for if 'e 'appens to need it."
The stoker grunted and the clock belonging to the Anglo-Norman church tower of the village struck six. Both the engineer and his subordinate wiped their dewy foreheads with their blackened hands, and simultaneously thought of beer.
"Us bein' goin' up to Bensley for a bit, me an' George," said the engineer, "an' supposin' Farmer Shrubb should come worritin' along this way and ask where us are, what be you a-going to tell 'im, Billy boy?"
"The truth, I 'ope," said the stoker, with a vicious look in an eye which was naturally small and artificially bilious.
"Ah, but wot is the truth to be, this time?" queried the engineer. "Let's git it settled before we go. As far as I'm consarned, the answer Billy's to give in regards to my question o' my whereabouts is: 'Anywhere but in the tap o' the Red Cow.'"
"And everythink but decently drunk," retorted the stoker.
"That's about it," assented the unsuspecting engineer.
The stoker laughed truculently, and Billy ventured upon a faint echo of the jeering cachinnation. The grin died from the boy's face, however, as the engineer promptly relieved a dawning sense of injury by cuffing him upon one side of the head, while the stoker wrung the ear upon the other.
"Ow, hoo," wailed Billy, stanching his flowing tears in the ample sleeve of his coat, "Ow, hoo, hoo!"
"Stop that blubberin', you," commanded the stoker, who possessed a delicate ear, "and make th' fire an' git th' tea ready against Alfred and me gits back. You hear me?"
"Yes, plaize," whimpered Billy.
"An' mind you warms up the cold bacon pie," added the stoker.
"And don't you forget to knock in the top of that tin o' salmon," added the engineer, "an' set it on to stew a bit. An' don't you git pickin' the loaf wi' they mucky black fingers o' yours, Billy, my lad, or you'll suffer for it when I comes home."
"Yes, plaize," gasped Billy, bravely swallowing the recurrent hiccough of grief. "An' plaize where be I to build fire?"
"The fire," mused the engineer. He looked at the crimson ball of the sun, now drowning in a lake of ruddy vapors behind the belt of elms; he nodded appreciatively at the palely glimmering evening star and pointed to a spot some yards ahead. "Build it there, Billy," he commanded briefly.
The stoker hitched his thumbs in his blackened leather waist-strap and spat toward the rear of the van. "You build the fire nigh th' hedge there," he ordered, "so as us can sit wi' our faces to'rds yon bit o' quick an' hev th' van to back of us, an' git a bit o' comfort outside four walls fur once. D' ye hear, boy?"
"Yes, George," quavered Billy.
The sleepy eye of the engineer had a red spark in it that might have jumped out of his own engine-furnace as he turned upon the acquiescent Billy. "Didn't you catch wot I said to you just now, my lad?" he inquired with ill-boding politeness.
"Yes, Alfred," gasped the alarmed Billy.
"If the boy doesn't mind me," came from the stoker, who was thoroughly roused, "and if I don't find a blazin' good fire, an' victuals welding hot, ready just in the place I've pointed out to 'im, when I've 'ad my pipe and my glass at the 'Red Cow,' I'll——" A palpably artificial fit of coughing prevented further utterance.
"You'll strap 'im within an inch of 'is life, I dursay," hinted the engineer. "You pipe what George says, Billy?" he continued, as Billy applied his right and left coat cuffs to his eyes in rapid succession. "He's give you his promise, and now I give you mine. If I don't find a roarin' good fire and the rest to match, just where I've said they're to be when I come back from where I've said I'm a-goin'——"
"You'll wallop 'im a fair treat, I lays you will," said the stoker, revealing a discolored set of teeth in a gratified smile. "We'll bide by wot the boy does then," he added. "Knowin' that wot 'e gits from either of us, he'll earn. An' your road is my road, Alfred, leastways as far as the 'Red Cow.'"
The engineer and the stoker walked off amicably side by side. The sun sank to a mere blot of red fire behind the elms, and crowds of shrilly-cheering gnats rose out of the dry edges and swooped upon the passive victim, Billy, who sat on the steps of the living van with his knuckles in his eyes.
"Neither of 'em can't kill me, 'cos the one what did it 'ud 'ave to be 'ung," he reflected, and this thought gave consolation. He unhooked a rusty red brazier from the back of the living van, and dumping it well into the hedge at the spot indicated by the stoker, filled it with dry grass, rotten sticks, coals out of the engine bunker, and lumps of oily cotton waste. Then he struck and applied a match, saw the flame leap and roar amongst the combustibles, filled the stoker's squat tea-kettle with water from the green barrel, put in a generous handful of Tarawakee tea, and, innocent of refinements in tea-making, set it on to boil.
"George is more spitefuller nor wot Alfred is," Billy Beesley murmured, as the kettle sent forth its first faint shrill note. Then he added with a poignant afterthought, "But Alfred is a bigger man than wot George be."
The stimulus of this reflection aided cerebration. Possessed by an original idea, Billy rubbed the receptacle containing it, and his mouth widened in an astonished grin. A supplementary brazier, temporarily invalided by reason of a hole in the bottom, hung at the back of the living-van. The engineer possessed a kettle of his own. Active as a monkey, the small figure in the flapping coat and the baggy trousers sped hither and thither. Two hearths were established, two fires blazed, two tea-kettles chirped. Close beside the stoker's brazier a bacon pie in a brown earthen dish nestled to catch the warmth, a tin of Canadian salmon, which Billy had neglected to open, leaned affectionately against the other. Suddenly the engineer's kettle boiled over, and as Billy hurried to snatch it from the coals, the salmon-tin exploded with an awe-inspiring bang, and oily fragments of fish rained from the bounteous skies.
"He'll say I did it a purpose, Alfred will!" the aggrieved boy wailed, as he collected and restored to the battered tin as much of its late contents as might be recovered. While on all fours searching for bits which might have escaped him, and diluting the gravy which yet remained in the tin with salt drops of foreboding, a scorching sensation in the region of the back brought his head round. Then he yelled in earnest, for the roaring flame from the other brazier had set the quickset hedge, inflammable with drought, burning as fiercely as the naphtha torch of a fair-booth, while a black patch, widening every moment, was spreading through the dry, white grasses under the clumsy wheels of the living-van, whose brown painted sides were beginning to blister and char, as Billy, rendered intrepid by desperation, grabbed the broken furnace-rake handle, usually employed as a poker, and beat frantically at the encroaching fire. As he beat he yelled, and stamped fiercely upon those creeping yellow tongues. There was fire from side to side of the field pathway now, the straggling hedge on both sides was crackling gaily. And realizing the unconquerable nature of the disaster, Billy dropped the broken furnace-rake, uttered the short, sharp squeal of the ferret-pressed rabbit, and took to his heels, leaving a very creditable imitation of a prairie conflagration behind him.
It was quite dark by the time the engineer and his subordinate returned from the "Red Cow," and their wavering progress along the field pathway was rendered more difficult, after the first hundred yards or so, by the unaccountable absence of the hedge. It was a singularly oppressive night, a brooding pall of hot blackness hung above their heads, clouds of particularly acrid and smothering dust arose at every shuffle of their heavy boots, even the earth they trod seemed glowing with heat, and they remarked on the phenomenon to one another.
"It's thunder weather, that's wot it be," said the engineer, mopping his face. "I'm like my old mother, I feel it coming long before it's 'ere. Phew!"
"Uncommon strong smell o' roast apples there is about 'ere," commented the stoker, sniffing.
"That beer we 'ad must 'ave bin uncommon strong," said the engineer in a low, uneasy voice. "I seem to see three fires ahead of us, that's what I do."
"One whopping big one to the left, one little one farther on, right plumb ahead, and another small one lower down on my right 'and. I see 'em as well as you," confirmed the stoker in troubled accents. "And that's how that young nipper thinks to get off a licking from one of us——"
"By obeying both," said the engineer, quickening his pace indignantly. "This is Board School, this is. Well, you'll learn 'im to be clever, you will."
"You won't leave a whole bone in his dirty little carcase once you're started," said the stoker confidently.
By this time they were well upon the scene of the disaster. Before their dazed and horrified eyes rose the incandescent shell of what had been, for eight months past, their movable home, and a crawling crisping rustle came from the pile of ashes that represented the joint property of two men and one boy.
"Pinch me, Alfred," said the stoker, after an interval of appalled silence.
"Don't ask me," said the engineer, in a weak voice, "I 'aven't the power to kill a flea."
"There ain't one left living to kill," retorted the stoker, as he contemplated the smoking wreck. "There was 'undreds in that van, too," he added as an afterthought.
"Burned up the old cabin!" moaned the engineer, "an' my Sunday rig-out in my locker, an' my Post Office Savings Bank book sewed up in the pillar o' my bunk, along o' my last week's wages what I 'adn't paid in."
"I shouldn't wonder if Government 'ung on to they savings o' yourn," said the stoker, shaking his head. "It's a pity, but you'd invested yours as I 'ave mine," he added.
"In public 'ouses?" retorted the engineer.
"Some of it 'as went that way," the stoker admitted, "but for three weeks past I've denied myself to put a bit into a concern as I think is going to prove a paying thing."
"Owch!" exclaimed the engineer, who had been restlessly pacing in the velvety darkness round the still glowing wreck of the living-van.
"Don't you believe wot I've told you?" demanded the stoker haughtily.
"You don't always lie, George," said the engineer, gently. "Wot made me shout out like that just now," he explained, "was treading on something queer, down by the near side wheels. Somethink brittle that cracked like rotten sticks under my 'eel, an' then I slid on something round an' squashy. An' the smell like roast apples, what I noticed before, is stronger than ever."
"'Ave you a match about you?" asked the stoker eagerly.
"One," said the engineer, delicately withdrawing a solitary "kindler" from the bottom of his waistcoat pocket.
The stoker received the match, and struck it on his trousers. A blue glimmer resulted, a faint s-s-s! followed, and the match went out.
"On'y a glim," said the stoker in a satisfied tone, "but it showed me as I've made my money. An' made it easy, too."
"'Ow much 'ave you pulled orf, then?" asked the engineer.
"Double the value," replied the stoker, smiling broadly through the darkness, "of the property what I've lost in this here conflagration."
"That 'ud bring you in about eighteenpence," retorted the engineer bitterly.
The stoker laughed pleasantly.
"Wot do you say to three pun' seventeen?" he demanded.
"Better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick," said the engineer. "Wot did you say was the concern you invested in?"
The stoker felt in the darkness for his superior's arm, grasped it, and putting his mouth close to where he thought his ear ought to be, said loudly:
"A boy."
"Look 'ere, mate," began the engineer, hotly, "if you're trying a joke on me——"
"It ain't no joke," responded the stoker cheerfully. "Leastways not for the boy, it ain't. But Lord! when I think 'ow near I come to lettin' the policy fall through." He chuckled. "It's three weeks gone since I took it out," he said contentedly, "an' paid three weeks' money in advance, an' at threepence a week, that makes ninepence, an' the thought o' them nine half-pints I might 'ave 'ad out o' money 'as drove me 'arf wild with thirst, over an' over. I should 'ave 'ad to pay again come Monday, if only 'e 'ad 'ave lived."
"If only 'e 'ad lived—" repeated the engineer in a strange far-away tone, "Oo's 'e?" he asked eagerly.
"You know old Abey Turner as keeps the little sweet-an'-tobaccer shop over to Dorton Ware?" pursued the stoker. "Old Abey is a agint for the Popular Thrifty Life Insurance Company——"
"I know 'e is," confirmed the engineer.
"Abey 'as bin at me over an' over again to insure my life," explained the stoker, "but I told 'im as I didn't 'old with laying out good money wot wouldn't never come 'ome to roost-like, until I was dead. Then Abey leans over the counter an' ketches me by the neck 'andkerchief an' says, 'Think of the worst life you know, an' 'ave a bit on that.' Naturally, talkin' o' bad lives, you're the first chap whose name comes into my 'ead."
"Me!" ejaculated the engineer, starting.
"But it wasn't wickedness old Abey meaned," continued the stoker, "only un'ealthiness in general. Somebody wot wasn't likely to live long, that's the sort o' man or woman 'e wanted me to insure. 'A child'll do,' says 'e, smiling, an' tells me 'ow a large family may be made a source of blessing to parents 'oo are wise enough to insure in the Popular Thrifty. Then it comes into my mind all of a sudden as 'ow Billy 'ud do a treat, an' I names 'im to Old Abey. 'That young shaver!' calls out old Abey, disgusted like. 'Why, 'e's as 'ard as nails. Wot's likely to 'appen to 'im?' 'If you was to see the 'andling 'e gets when my mate is in 'is tantrums,' I says to old Abey, 'you'd put your bit o' money on 'im cheerful an' willin'.' 'Is Alfred Evans such a savage in 'is drink?' says old Abey, quite surprised——"
"I'll surprise 'im!" muttered the engineer, "when I meets 'im!"
The stoker continued: "So the long an' the short is, I insured Billy, an' Billy's dead!"
"You don't really think so?" cried the engineer, in shocked accents.
"I don't think," said the stoker, in a hard, high tone, "I knows 'e is."
"Not—burned with the van!" gasped the engineer.
"Burned to cinders," said the stoker comfortably. "'Ow about that smell o' roasting you kep' a sniffing as we came along, an' wot were it if not cooked boy? Wot was it your foot crashed into when you called out awhile back? 'Is ribs, 'im being overdone to a crisp. Wot was it you slipped on——?"
"Stop!" shuddered the engineer. "'Old 'ard! I can't bear it."
"I can," said the stoker, following his comrade as he gingerly withdrew from the immediate scene of the tragedy. "I could if it was twice as much."
"It will be that to me!" sighed the engineer, seating himself upon the parish boundary stone, over which he had stumbled in his retreat, and sentimentally gazing at the star-jewelled skies. "Twice three pound is six, an' twice seventeen bob is one-fourteen. Seven pounds fourteen is wot that pore boy's crool end 'as dropped into my pocket, and I'd 'ad those best clothes ever since I got married; an' there was only eight an' fourpence in the piller o' the bunk, an——"
The engineer stopped short, not for lack of words, but because the stoker was clutching him tightly by the windpipe.
"You don't durst dare to tell me," the frenzied mechanic shouted, "as wot you went an' insured Billy too?"
"That's just wot I 'ave done," replied the half-strangled engineer. Then as the dismayed stoker's arms dropped helplessly by his side, he added, "you ought to be grateful, George, you 'ad no 'and in it. I couldn't 'ave enjoyed the money properly, not if you'd 'ad to be 'ung for the boy's murder. That's wot I said to old Abey two weeks back, when I told 'im as 'ow Billy's life went more in danger than anyone else's what I could think of, through your being such a brutal, violent-tempered, dangerous man."
"An' wot did that old snake in the grass say to that bloomin' lie?" demanded the stoker savagely.
"'E said life was a uncertain thing for all," sniggered the engineer, gently. "An' I'd better 'ave a bit on the event an' turn sorrow into joy, as the saying is. So I give Abey a shillin', bein' two weeks in advance, an' the Company sent me the policy, an' 'ere I am in for the money."
"Like wot I am, an' with clean 'ands for both of us," said the stoker in a tone of cheerful self-congratulation. "I 'aven't laid a finger on that boy, not since I insured 'im."
"Nor I ave'n't," said the engineer. "It's wonderful how I've bin able to keep my temper since I 'ad the policy to take care of at the same time."
"Same with me," said the stoker happily. "Why, wot's wrong?" he added, for a tragic cry had broken from the engineer.
"Mate," he stammered tremulously, "where did you keep your policy?"
"Meanin' the bit o' blue-printed paper I 'ad from the Popular Thrifty? Wot do you want to know for?" snapped the stoker suspiciously.
"It just come into my 'ead to arsk," said the engineer, in faltering accents.
"In my little locker in the van, since you're so curious," said the stoker grudgingly.
"I 'ad mine stitched up in the piller o' my bunk with my Post Office Savin's book," said the engineer in the deep, hollow voice of a funeral bell. "An' it's burned to hashes, an' so is yours!"
"Then it's nineteen to one the company won't pay up," said the stoker after an appalled silence.
"Ten 'underd to one," groaned the engineer.
Another blank silence was broken by the stoker's saying, with a savage oath:
"I wish that boy was alive, I do."
"I know your feeling," agreed the engineer sympathetically. "It 'ud be a comfort to you to kick 'im—or any-think else weak and small wot didn't durst to kick back."
"If I was to give you a bounce on the jor," inquired the stoker, breathing heavily, "should you 'ave the courage to land me another?"
The engineer promptly hit out in the darkness, and arrived safe home on the stoker's chin. With a tiger-like roar of fury, the stoker charged, and on the engineer's dodging conjecturally aside, fell heavily over the parish boundary-stone. He rose, foaming, and a pitched battle ensued, in which the combatants saw nothing but the brilliant showers of stars evoked by an occasional head-blow, and the general advisability of homicide. Toward dawn fatigue overcame them. The stoker lay down and declined to get up again and the engineer even while traveling on all fours in search of him, lost consciousness in slumber.
A yellow glare in the east heralded the rising of the orb of day, as the figures of an aged man and a ragged boy moved from the shelter of the belt of elms that screened the village of Dorton Ware, and proceeded along the right-of-way.
"It's burned, right enough, Billy, my boy," said the old man, shading his bleared eyes with his horny hand as he gazed at the blackened skeleton of the living-van. "An' all considered, you can't be called to blame."
Billy whistled.
"If you'd bin asleep inside the van when that theer blaze got started," said old Abey, rebukingly, as he hobbled along by the boy's side, "you wouldn't be whistlin' 'My Own Bluebell' now; your pore widowed mother, what lives in that theer little cottage o' mine at Porberry End—and 'om I persuaded to insure you in the Popular Thrifty—would 'ave 'ad a bit o' money comin' in 'andy for 'er Michaelmas rent, an' one or two other people would be a penny o' th' right side, likewise." He paused, and shading his bleared eyes under his gnarled hand, looked steadfastly at two huddled, motionless, grimy figures, lying in the charred grass beside the pathway. "Dang my old eyes!" he cried. "'Tis George an' Alfred—Alfred an' George—snatched away i' their drink an' neither of 'em insured. I'll lay a farden. Here's a judgment on their lives, what wouldn't listen to Old Abey an' put into the Popular Thrifty. Here's a waste of opportunity—here's——"
Old Abey's voice quavered and broke off suddenly as the corpse of the engineer, opening a pair of hideously blood-shot eyes, inquired ferociously what in thunder he meant by making such a blamed row, while the body of the stoker rolled over, yawned, revealing a split lip, and sat up staring.
"We—we thought you was dead, mates," faltered Old Abey. "Didn't us, Billy?"
"At first I did," Billy admitted, "an' then I——"
"Then you wot?" repeated the engineer, bending his brows sternly above a nose swollen to twice its usual size.
"Out with it!" snarled the stoker, whose lip was painful.
"I was afraid as it couldn't be true," stuttered Billy.
The stoker exchanged a look with the engineer.
"The van's burnt, an' we've both lost our property, to say nothin' of our prospects, mate," he said with a sardonic sneer, "but one comfort's left us, Billy's alive!"
A little later the plowing engine with its consort was at work under the hot September sky. As the Powler cultivator traveled to and fro, ripping up the stubbles, the boy who sat on the iron seat and manipulated the guiding-wheel, snivelled gently, realizing that the brief but welcome interval of icy aloofness on the part of his superiors had passed, never to return; and that the injunction of the Prophet would thenceforth be scrupulously obeyed.
HisHonor, Syed Mehta, the District Judge of Golampore, had dined with the Malcolms, and he was the first of the Collector's guests to leave the bungalow. He sauntered down the drive, lifting his contemplative gaze to the magnificence of the starry heavens. Behind him, the lamp-lit rooms sent long thrusts of light, sword-wise, into the hot darkness. Joan Malcolm had taken up her violin, and the sweet, wailing notes of it came sighing out on to the heavy air. Ruddy, broad-faced young Capper, of the Police, lounged by the open window, eating her up with adoring eyes.
His Honor smoked his cigar tranquilly, but at heart, he smouldered. Harrow and Lincoln's Inn backed his past, the High Courts awaited him in the future. For the present he was a Civil Servant of excellent position and recognized ability, a Mohammedan gentleman who had distinguished himself in England as well as in the land of his birth. Also, he was of less account in the eyes of Joan Malcolm than Capper, a blundering English Acting-Superintendent of Police, with a pittance of six hundred rupees per mensem.
Possibly Capper had not intended to be offensive, but it is not given to the young and the British to entirely conceal all consciousness of superiority when speaking with a native. His courtesy was that of a man who considered it to be beneath his dignity to use less ceremony. His civility was due to his respect for himself, not for the person whom he honored with his unintellectual conversation.
The Judge flipped the ash off his cigar, and his slender hand was cool and leisurely. His dark, straight-featured face was impassive as carven stone. Mentally, he was cursing Capper with curses of inexhaustible fire and venom.
Malcolm, the Collector, had a right to speak loudly, and to say this or that without cause, for he was Collector; but Capper, a mere Superintendent of the Police, a cub of twenty-three, was on a very different footing. Yet, not even as an equal had he borne himself toward a District Judge.
His Honor's bungalow was on the outskirts of the town, and as he paced along the dusty road, he came to a footpath that ran down the hill, through dense jungle, to the native village in the valley. There was a swarm of dark-skinned fellow-men down there, to whom his name stood for all that is highest in authority. They would have loaded him with gifts had he permitted them to approach him. To them, it seemed that he was placed far above as a god, holding their lives and their fate 'twixt finger and thumb, in mid-air. In the unfathomed depths of the Judge's educated, well-ordered mind stirred a craving for solace. Galled by the brutish indifference of the Englishmen, there was yet left to him the reverence of his own people. He looked sharply up and down the road before he dived into the moist heat beneath the trees. He knew all that he was risking for a mere escapade. He had never trodden that path before, excepting when he had gone on a shooting expedition with the Collector. There were strange noises in the darkness, stealthy rustlings, small, unfamiliar cries. He heard nothing but Capper's comment on his carefully reasoned prediction that the day must come when India would govern herself.
"Oh! you think so?"
Stupid, unmeaning, absurd, but—successful.
Then, immediately Capper was talking to Miss Malcolm about tennis, and she was listening, smiling and intent. The Judge was a crack tennis player. He loathed the game, but he had made himself proficient in it, because it is one of the things that people expect of a man. He was impelled to challenge Capper, and the answer was a drawled excuse.
The Judge was well down the hill now, descending the last precipitous slope, and the countless odors of the Indian village rose to his nostrils. There was a dull murmurous commotion afar off, such as bees make when they are hiving. He listened, without curiosity, as he pressed forward. Suddenly he halted. The murmur boomed out into a long, thunderous roar. Then silence, and out of the silence a single voice, deep and ringing.
"An infernal protest meeting," the Judge's British training informed him.
He went forward again, moving noiselessly, and reached the outskirts of the crowd, sheltering himself between the bushes that fringed the jungle. Torches flared, and smoked, and shed a ruddy, uncertain light on hundreds of rapt, upturned faces. The orator stood tall and straight above them, fully revealed by purposely clustered lights. He volleyed reproach and insult upon his listeners, he gave them taunts instead of persuasion. They stood enthralled by the passionate voice, and bitter words found their mark, and rankled poisonously.
"Thesesoorsof Feringhi, whom you call your masters, beat you, and they use your brothers to be their sticks. But for your brothers, who wear the uniform of the Feringhi, and carry their guns, these worthless masters would be trodden into the dust beneath your feet. The men who hedge them in with steel must turn that steel against them."
The roar of voices thundered among the trees, and died away suddenly, so that no word from the speaker might be lost.
"They are cunning, these Feringhi, my brothers. They steal the wisest from among us while yet they are children, and bear them away to their own land, and give them over to their own teachers. Thus come back your own, with power and authority to scourge you. Your sons, your brothers come back to you, learned, praised greatly, having striven against the Feringhi in their own schools, and won what they desired. Collector-sahib, Judge-sahib, yea, even padre-sahib, come they back to you—not to lift you to honor and happiness beside them, but to side with those that oppress you, to grind taxes from you who starve, to imprison you who would be free. Sons of unspeakable shame! They drink your blood, they fatten on your misery, and they have their reward.Wecurse, them, brothers! The Feringhis smile upon them, they eat bread and salt in their company, but they spit when they have passed by!"
Something in the scornful voice rang familiarly on the Judge's ears, and incautiously he changed his position and tried to get a clearer view of the treasonmonger. Instantly the man's bare brown arm shot out, and pointed him to public notice.
"Here is one," pealed out the trumpet-voice, "has he come as our brother? Or comes he as the slave of our masters, to spy upon our meetings, and to deal out punishment to those who dare to be free? O brother, do you walk to Calcutta, where the High Courts be, over our bodies, and the bodies of our children? Will you go to the Collector-sahib with tales of a native rising, and call up our brothers of the police to kill and maim us? Or come you to offer us a great heart?"
The Judge stood there, a motionless figure, flaring against the dark jungle in his spotless, white linen evening dress. There was a broad silk cummerband about his lean waist, and a gold signet-ring gleamed on his left hand. Half a dozen Englishmen, thread for thread in similar garb, still lounged in the Collector's drawing-room. He appeared the very symbol of Anglicized India. The brown, half-naked mob surged and struggled to look at him. The brown, half-naked orator still pointed at him, and waited for reply. Meanwhile, he had been recognized.
"Iswar Chandra—by Jove," muttered the Judge.
The last time they had met was in a London drawing-room. Iswar Chandra, the brilliant young barrister-at-law had discoursed to a philanthropic peeress upon the social future of his native land, whilst an admiring circle of auditors hung upon his words. The fate of India's women, he had said, lay at the feet of such fair and noble ladies as her Grace. The Judge remembered that people were saying that evening of Iswar Chandra that he was a fascinating and earnest man, and that he would be the pioneer of great things in the country of his birth.
The eyes of the half-naked savage challenged the Judge over the sea of moving heads, and drove away the supercilious smile from his lips.
"Brother, we claim you! You are of our blood, and we need such as you to lead us. The Feringhi have sharpened a sword to cut us down, but it shall turn to destroy them. Brother, we suffer the torments of hell—will you deliver us? Brother, we starve—will you give us food? Will you deal out to us life or death, you whose fathers were as our fathers? Choose now between great honor and the infamy that dies not! You are the paid creature of the British Raj, or you are a leader of free men. Brother, speak!"
As in a dream the Judge approached the waiting crowd. His mouth was parched, his heart beat fitfully. He wanted that piercing voice to wake the echoes again, to take up the story of the old blood-feud, to goad him into doing that which he had not the courage to do. Vanished was his pride of intellect, and of fine achievement. He was a native, and he tugged and crawled at the stretch of the British chain.
"The Feringhi are few, and we are many. Shall the few rule the many? Shall we be servants and poor while yet in the arms of our own golden mother? In their own country do the Feringhi not say that the word of the majority shall be law? So be it! We accept their word. The majority shall rule! O brother, skilled in the Feringhi craft, high-placed to administer justice to all who are brought before thee, do I not speak the truth?"
The Judge threw away the dead end of his cigar, and shouldered his way into the inmost circle.
"Peace, thou," he said, thickly; "this is folly. Ye must wait awhile for vengeance."
Chandra threw up his arms, writhing in a very ecstasy of fury.
"We have waited—have we not waited?—beside our open graves. Death to the Feringhi! Let them no longer desecrate our land. Let us forget that they ever were. They be few, and we be many. Brothers! To-night, to-night!"
The Judge was tearing off his clothes, he was trampling them beneath his feet, he was crying out in a strange, raucous voice; and all the swaying crowds were taking up his words, maddening themselves and their fellows with the intoxicating sounds.
"Death to the Feringhi! To-night, to-night! Our land for ourselves!"
All but a few torches were extinguished. Secret places were torn up, and out came old guns, old swords sharpened to razor-like edges, great pistols, clubs, skinning-knives, daggers. Then, up and up through the dark jungle they thronged, hordes of them in the grip of a red and silent frenzy. Chandra was in the forefront, but the leader was his Honor the District Judge, a glassy-eyed, tight-lipped Mussulman in a loincloth and a greasy turban.
The lights of the Collector's bungalow came in view, and the leader thought of young Capper, and rushed on, frothing like a madman, waving his sword above his head. Then he paused, and ran back to meet the laggards of a yard or two.
"Only the men!" he shouted.
Chandra mocked at him as the press bore him onward again, with scarcely an instant's halt.
"Only the men, my brother!" he echoed.
A few of the native police stood guard at the Collector's gates, but they turned and fled before the overwhelming numbers of the attacking force. Up the long drive the dark wave poured, and into the wide, bright rooms. The bungalow was deserted. Some fleet-footed servant had brought warning in time, and the British were well out of the town by the other road, with young Capper and a score of his men guarding their rear.
The mob howled with disappointment. The next instant it was screaming with triumph as it settled down to sack and burn and destroy.
The Judge went into the dining-room, and looked at the long table still decked with silver, and glass, and flowers. He looked at the chair on which he had sat, with Joan Malcolm at his side, and he picked it up and dashed it with all his might into a great ivory-framed mirror, and laughed aloud at the crash, and the ruin, and the rain of jagged splinters.
"India must pass into the hands of the Indians!"
"Oh!youthink so—you think so—you think so...."
He overthrew a couple of standard lamps, and watched the liquid fire run and eat up their silken shades, and run again and leap upon the snowy curtains, and so, like lightning, spring to the ceiling, and lick the dry rafters with a thousand darting tongues. Then, he was out in the night again, the night of his life, the wonderful night that was calling for blood, and would not be denied.
There was no lack of light now to make clear the path to vengeance. The Collector's bungalow roared red to the very heavens, and flames shot up in a dozen different parts of the town. The bazaar was looted, and English-made goods were piled upon bonfires in the street. A greater mob than had entered the town poured out of it, swift on the road to Chinsurah where thousands of their brothers lay, lacking only courage and leaders.
At the midway turn of the road where the giant trees rear themselves at the side of the well, came a sudden check, and the mob fell back upon itself, and grew dead silent. Those in the rear could only wait and guess what had happened. The forefront saw that the road was barred. The moon had risen, and well out in the white light, was Capper Sahib. Some of his men were behind him. There were soldiers there, too, how many could not be seen, for they were grouped in the velvety black shadows which the trees flung across the road. There might have been only fifty—or five hundred.
Young Capper came forward with his hands in his pockets, and stared at them. They saw that he was not afraid. He spoke to them in Maharattee, bluntly and earnestly, so that some of them wavered, and looked back. He said they were fools, led by a few rotten schemers who had only personal gain in view.
"Take good advice," he said, "go to your homes while ye may. Ignorant, and greatly daring that ye are, thebandar-log, or such thievish scum among ye, drive ye with idle words and chatterings even to the brink of death. So far have ye come, but no farther——"
The Judge had snatched a villager's gun, and fired. Capper Sahib fell, unspoken words upon his lips. His fair head draggled in the dust, and a red stain showed suddenly upon the white linen over his breast.
A triumphant roar swept the mob from end to end. British rifles cracked out the answer, and the bullets went home surely, into the rioting mass. Amid shrill screams of pain and fury the leaders rallied their men, and charged forward. A second volley stopped them, before young Capper's prostrate body could be reached. Few had joined the attack, but now they were fewer, and neither of the leaders stood among them.
That was the end. Bearing their dead and wounded, the rebels returned, wailing as they went. Before daylight the townsmen were in their houses, and the villagers had passed through the jungle, and regained their homes. Arms were concealed with all haste. The dead were buried, the wounded, for the most part, were hidden. Prisoners had been taken, but only an inconsiderable number. Before daylight also, the headman of the village, and a native surgeon came stealthily from the Judge's bungalow, and went their ways. They had their order, and they went to spread it abroad. The order was—Silence!The headman had bowed himself to the earth when it was given, for he understood all that it meant. Prisoners would be brought before a brother, not only to-day, but to-morrow, and for many morrows. So much had the night given them.
At noon His Honor came stiffly into the court-room, leaning upon the arm of his native servant. The Collector, who was awaiting him there, feared that he had been injured by the rioters on the previous night; but he was quickly reassured. The Judge, it seemed, had sprained his knee shortly after leaving the Malcolm's hospitable roof. It was nothing. A mere trifle, though indisputably painful.
The Collector seated himself near the bench, and talked in a low voice. The ladies were all safe. No Europeans had been killed, and few injured. Capper had been shot by some cowardly dog while parleying with the rioters, but there were good hopes of him.
The Judge was most truly concerned to hear of the calamity which had befallen Mr. Capper—immensely thankful to know that things were no worse with him.
His Honor had heard little or nothing of what had happened during the riot, being laid by the leg, as it were, in his own room.
The first batch of prisoners was brought in. At first the Judge did not look at them. Afterward his eyes sought their gaze, and held it, and they knew him for their brother. They heard his soft voice speaking of them compassionately, as wayward children whom mercy would win over, though harshness might confirm them in their foolish resistance to authority. The Collector seemed to protest, but with gentle courtesy his objections were put aside. He leaned back in his chair, flushed and angry, as one after another, the sullen-looking rebels were fined, and having paid what was demanded, were set at liberty.
When the Judge looked up again, a single prisoner stood before him, a wounded, hawk-faced native, whose eyes blazed hate and contempt. The Collector drew his chair closer to the bench, and began to speak in gruff undertones.
"A ring-leader. Man of some education, I understand—qualified as a barrister, and has taken to journalism. Must make an example of him—eh?"
The Judge, straining in agony of mind and body, was aware of sudden relief from the pain of his wound. The bandage had slipped, and blood was cooling the torturing fire. A deathly faintness was upon him, and through it he spoke distinctly—again of mercy.
"They were all blind. The leaders were blind. The blind leading the blind. Blind—blind——"
The Collector sprang up with a startled exclamation. A thin stream of blood trickled from behind His Honor's desk, and went a twisting way down to the well of the court. He caught the Judge in his arms as he fell forward, and lowered him gently to the ground. Then it was seen that the unconscious man's clothes were saturated with blood.
Instantly the court was cleared. A military surgeon cut away the blood-stained clothing from the Judge's thigh, and laid bare the clean wound made by a British bullet. A look passed between him and the Collector, but never a word. Syed Mehta's life had ebbed with his blood, and so he passed, unawakened, from swoon to death.
The English, as their way is, betrayed nothing. It was His Honor, the District Judge of Golampore, who had died, and they gave him burial the next day with due regard to the high position which he had held in the service of H.M. the King and Emperor.
TheSaucy Sallywas a vessel of renown. No blustering liner, no fussy tug, no squattering steamer, she; but a bluff-bowed, smartly painted, trim-built sailing barge, plying chiefly from the lower reaches of the Thames to ports west of Dover. She had no equal of her class, at any point of sailing, and certainly her Master, Mr. Joseph Pigg, was not the man to let her fair fame suffer for want of seamanship.
"Cap'n Pigg," as he insisted upon being called, was a great, hairy-faced man, with brawny muscles and a blood-shot eye. And in these respects, his mate, Bob Topper, greatly favored him—in fact, their physical resemblance was rather marked; but their tastes were in no way similar; 'the Cap'n' was fond of his glass, whilst the mate was a blue-ribbon man; Joseph Pigg couldn't bear music, in any form, whilst the total abstainer had a weakness for the flute and would not infrequently burst into song; the Skipper hated women, whereas the mate was, what he himself called "a bit of a gay Lathero." But notwithstanding these dissimilarities of tastes and disposition, they got along fairly well together, and both met on the common ground of getting as much work out of the two "hands" as was ordinarily possible. The Skipper didn't drink alcoholic liquors before the mate, and the mate returned the compliment by refraining from any musical outrage in the hearing of his superior officer.
One hot summer afternoon, when theSaucy Sallywas taking in cargo and the Skipper was ashore, Mr. Topper, seated on the coamings of the hatchway, abandoned himself to the melancholy pleasures of Haydn's "Surprise," the tune being wrung out of a tarnished German-silver flute. "Kittiwake Jack," one of the crew, was seated as far as possible for'ard, vainly trying to absorb his tea and stop his ears, at one and the same time, whilst his fellow-sufferer, Bill Brown, having hastily dived below, lay in his bunk, striving to deaden the weird, wailing sounds that filled the ship. And just as Haydn's "Surprise" was half way through, for the seventh time, the Skipper walked on board.
The flutist stopped short, and stared up at him.
"Didn't expect you back so soon, Cap'n," he said in confused tones.
"No. What's that 'owlin' row you're making?"
"I dunno about no 'owlin' row, but——"
"Well, I do. I s'pose, accordin' to you, I ain't got no musical h'ear," sneered Cap'n Pigg.
"This—this here tune——"
"Yes. This disgustin' noise—what is it?"
The mate looked sulky.
"This is Haydn's 'Surprise,'" he growled.
"So I should think. I dunno who the bloke was, but it must have given Haydn quite a turn! Don't let's 'ave no more of it."
"Well, I don't see as there's no 'arm in music. And I didn't loose it off when you was about. I know you don't like it, so I studied your pecooliarities. Fact is, I studies yer too much," and the mate looked mutinous.
Cap'n Pigg scowled.
"You shet yer 'ead," he grunted as he stamped off below. He went to a small cupboard in the corner of the cabin, and mixed himself a stiff "go" of gin and water, which he tossed off at one gulp, saying:
"Haydn's 'S'prise,' eh? Haydn's S'prise be d—dished! 'E don't come no s'prises 'ere while I'm master of theSaucy Sally!"
After this slight breeze, things quickly settled down again on the old lines between master and mate, and the voyage to Chichester Harbor was entirely uneventful, the barge bringing up at a snug anchorage near Emsworth.
The next day Mr. Topper had undressed and gone overboard for a swim. After this, climbing up the bobstay, he regained the deck, and proceeded to dry his hairy frame on an ancient flannel shirt. In the midst of this occupation, temporarily forgetful of his superior officer's prejudices, he broke into song.
Thirty seconds after he had let go the first howl, the Skipper's head was thrust up the companion-way.
"Wodjer want to make all that row about? Anything disagreed with yer? If so, why don't yer take something for it?"
"It's a funny thing yer carn't let a man alone, when all 'e's a doin' is making a bit of 'armony on board," replied the mate, pausing in the act of drying his shock head.
"'Armony be d—driven overboard!" cried Mr. Pigg, wrathfully. "Now, look 'ere, Bob Topper, I ain't a onreasonable man in my likes and dislikes, but it ain't fair to sing at a feller creature with the voice nature fitted you out with! I never done you no 'arm."
Next day theSaucy Sallyshipped some shingle ballast, got under weigh on the first of the ebb tide, and safely threading her way past the shallows and through the narrow channels of the harbor, emerged into the open sea, and turned her bluff-bowed stem eastwards.
The following afternoon, as Bob Topper took his trick at the wheel, he ruminated on the mutability of human affairs in general, and the "contraryness" of skippers in particular.
"Won't 'ave no music, won't he? Well, I reckon it's like religion when the missionaries is a shovin' of it into the African niggers—they just jolly well got to 'ave it! An' so it'll be with the ole man. I'll jest fix up a scheme as'll do 'im a treat."
He smiled broadly; and when Bob Topper smiled, the corners of his mouth seemed to almost meet at the back of his head.
And as soon as theSaucy Sallyhad pitched and tossed her way up channel—for she was light as a cork in ballast—and dropped anchor a little way off Gravesend, Bob Topper sculled himself ashore. Twenty minutes after stepping out of the boat, he was seated in the back-parlor of a friend, a musical-instrument maker.
When Mr. Topper went aboard again, he carried under his arm a large brown paper package, which he smuggled below, without encountering the Skipper, who was in his cabin at the time, communing with a bill of lading and a glass of Hollands neat. And, soon after the mate had come aboard, "the Cap'n" went ashore.
And then Mr. Topper laid himself out for some tranquil enjoyment, on quite an unusual scale. He unfastened the package, produced a gramophone, brought it on to the deck, and started "The Washington Post."
"Kittiwake Jack" and Bill Brown immediately fled below.
The mate sat on the edge of the hatch and gazed lovingly at the new instrument of torture, as he beat time to the inspiring strains, with a belaying pin. When the "Washington Post," was finished, he laid on "Jacksonville," with a chorus of human laughter, which sounded quite eerie. And so intent was he on this occupation, that he never even noticed the approach of Cap'n Pigg's boat until it was almost alongside.
The Skipper clambered aboard, looking black as thunder. This new outrage was not to be borne. Just as his foot touched the deck the instrument gave forth its unholy cachinnation of "Ha! Ha! Ha!" in the high nasal tones peculiar to its kind.
Cap'n Pigg was not easily disconcerted, but this ghostly "Ha! Ha! Ha!" was a distinct trial to his nerves; he thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, glared at the mate, and then growled:
"Wodjer got there? More 'armony?"
"Grammarphone," was the mate's brief reply. He was getting sulky.
"Grammar be blowed! Worst grammar I ever 'eard," returned Pigg. "Turn the bloomin' thing off—and turn it off at the main. Enough to give any respectable, law-abidin' sailor-man the 'ump!"
He proceeded two steps down the companion; then hurled this parting shot at the offending mate:
"You oughter be 'ead of a laundry where the 'andle of the mangle turns a pianer-horgan as well—work and play!" he concluded scornfully, as he disappeared from the musician's sight below.
The mate whistled softly; then he stopped the offending instrument and conveyed it below.
"P'raps the old man'll be glad of it, one o' these days," he muttered mysteriously.
The next trip of theSaucy Sallywas a more eventful one. She left Tilbury in a light haze, which first thickened into a pale-colored fog, and then, aided by the smoke from the tall chimneys, to a regular "pea-souper." The mate, taking advantage of the Captain's spell below, brought up a long yard of tin, which looked remarkably like theSaucy Sally'sfog-horn, and quietly slipped it overboard.
As they got lower and lower down the river, the fog increased, and both Cap'n Pigg and Topper experienced a certain amount of anxiety as, first another barge, then a tramp steamer, and finally, a huge liner, all sounding their fog-horns loudly, passed them considerably too close for comfort. The Skipper himself was at the wheel and, coughing the raw, damp fog out of his throat, he shouted hoarsely to Topper:
"Better get our fog-horn goin', mate."
"Aye, aye, Skipper. It's in your cabin, ain't it?"
"Yes, in the first locker."
The mate descended the companion-steps, with a mysterious smile on his face, and his dexter optic closed. The casual observer might have thought that Mr. Topper was actually indulging in a wink.
After a time, he reappeared on deck, walked aft, and said:
"Fog-horn don't seem nowheres about, Skipper. Thought you always kept her in your charge."
Cap'n Pigg whisked the wheel round just in time to escape a tug, fussing up-stream, and feeling her way through the fog at half-speed, and then he grunted sourly:
"So I do. What the d—delay in findin' it is, I can't understand. 'Ere, ketch 'old o' the spokes, and I'll go; always got to do everything myself on this old tank, seems to me."
And thus grumbling, Cap'n Pigg went below—not altogether unwillingly, as, being a man who understood the importance of economizing time, he combined his search for the fog-horn with the quenching of a highly useful thirst. But when he came on deck again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he was unaccompanied by the fog-horn.
"Where the blamed thing's got to, I dunno, more'n the dead. I see it there, myself, not two days ago, but it ain't nowheres to be found now."
"Rather orkard, Skipper, ain't it, in all this maze o' shippin'?" returned Mr. Topper with a half turn at the wheel.
"Yes, I don't more'n 'arf like it," returned the Cap'n uneasily. "My nerves arn't quite what they was. An' a fog's a thing as I never could abide."
On glided theSaucy Sally, almost the only one on the great water way which spoke not, in the midst of a babel of confusing sounds. Syrens whooped, steam whistles shrieked hoarsely; the raucous voices of fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along, ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving no intimation of her proximity.
Then it was that Mr. Bob Topper's moment for action arrived. In casual tones, he observed to the Skipper:
"Pity, we ain't got something as'll make a sound o' some kind, so's to let people know as we 're a-comin'."
Cap'n Pigg said nothing: but the anxiety deepened perceptibly in his face.
"Where the blank blank are yer comin' to?" roared the voice of another bargeman, as, tooting loudly on a fog-horn, one of the "Medway flyers," shaved past them.
"Near thing, that," observed the mate, calmly.
Cap'n Pigg went a shade paler beneath the tan on his weather-beaten face.
"Cuss 'im! careless 'ound!" he muttered. "Might a' sunk us."
"'Ad no proper lookout, I expect," returned Mr. Topper, "even if 'e 'ad, 'e couldn't see anything, and we got no fog-'orn to show 'em where we was, yer see."
"No. An' p'raps we shall go to the bottom, all along o' our 'aving lost our ole bit o' tin. It's a orful thing to think of, ain't it?" said Cap'n Pigg solemnly.
The mate appeared to be in a brown study. Then, as though he had suddenly been inspired, he exclaimed:
"What about the grammarphone, Skipper?"
Even in the midst of his perturbation, Cap'n Pigg looked askance at mention of the hated instrument. But it was a case of 'any port in a storm,' and, with a grim nod, he relieved the mate at the wheel, and said:
"Fetch the bloomin' consarn up."
Mr. Topper obeyed, with alacrity in his step, and a wink in his eye. The 'consarn' was quickly brought on deck, and the 'Washington Post' let loose on the astonished ears of fog-smothered mariners, right and left of them.
One old shell-back, coming up river on a Gravesend shrimper, listened in blank astonishment for a minute, and then confided huskily to his mate that he thought their time had come.
"'Eavenly, strains! It's wot they calls 'the music o' the spears,'" he said mysteriously, "Hangels' music wot comes just before a bloke's time's up. We better prepare for the wust."
His mate, less superstitious and with more common sense, rejoined:
"Garn! 'Music o' the spears' be blowed! It's more like a pianer-horgan or a 'urdy-gurdy."
The shrimper glided on, and a tramp steamer, going dead slow, just shaved past the musical barge. Its master roared derisively from the bridge:
"'Ullo, barge, ahoy! Wot yer got there? Punch and Judy show aboard?"
Which cost Cap'n Pigg a nasty twinge. He had always prided himself on his seaman-like ways, and to proceed thus, down the great river, like a mountebank, or a Cockney out on a Bank Holiday, hurt his feelings more than he could say.
Yet another insult was to be hurled at theSaucy Sally, for "Jacksonville," with its weird human chorus, having been turned on—when the "Ha! Ha! Ha!" rang out on the ears of a passing tug's captain, that outraged gentleman, thinking he was being personally derided, shouted, as the tide swept them out of sight:
"Yah! 'Oo yer larfin' at? Set o' bloomin' monkeys!"
But the gramophone was certainly playing a useful part in warning others off theSaucy Sally, down that fog-laden river. And, when, at the end of their day's slow journey, they let go their anchor, the "Washington Post" was again nasally shrieking out its march-time glories.
The mate stopped the machine and carried it tenderly below, then, returning to the deck, he observed.
"Good job as we 'ad the grammarphone aboard, Cap'n."
Cap'n Pigg swallowed a lump in his throat, and looked like a child confronted with a dose of nauseous medicine, as he gruffly replied:
"It's better n' nothin' when yer wants a row made."
A pause ensued, and then the Skipper went on:
"In future, I don't object—not very much—to the dammarphone—grammarphone, I mean—If you can stand music, well, so can I. But you can't contrarst the beauty o' the two instruments, and I'm goin' ashore, straight away, to buy myself a good, old-fashioned fog-'orn. The tone of that is altogether more 'armonious and more soothin' to the hear, than that there beastly grammarphone ever could be!"
The mate heaved a deep sigh and sorrowfully went below. In the effort to ram music into his superior officer he had to admit himself defeated.
Texas Rankinstood in the street in front of the High Card Saloon, his lank body trembling with surprise, indecision, and indignation; his face alight with the fire of outraged dignity. Three long paces from him stood Sheriff Webster, indifferently fondling an ivory-handled .45.
The sheriff was nonchalantly deliberative in his actions, betraying only a negative interest in Rankin's movements—for Rankin's holster yawned with eloquent emptiness. With his empty holster dragging on his desires, it seemed to Rankin that to await the sheriff's pleasure was his most logical course.
And so he waited.
The sheriff had come upon him, when, in an incautious moment, he had emerged from the High Card Saloon, having forgotten the very important fact that the sheriff was looking for him. This forgetfulness had been the cause of his undoing, for at the instant he had turned to go down the street the sheriff had reached for his gun. The empty holster was evidence of his success.
After that there was no use in getting excited. True, Texas had flashed around in his tracks when he had felt the gun leaving its holster, and had made a lightning movement with his hand to prevent such a disgraceful occurrence. But he might just as well have reached for a rainbow. As he had faced about, rage-flushed and impotent, he saw his gun swinging loosely in Webster's left hand, while in Webster's right hand another big six-shooter had reached a foreboding level.
The distance between the two men approximated ten feet; for Webster had wisely stepped back, knowing Rankin's reluctance toward submission.
And now, over the ten feet of space, captive and captor surveyed one another with that narrowing of the eyes which denotes tension and warns of danger.
"I reckon I was too quick for you, Texas," said Webster, with a gentleness that fell too softly to be genuine.
Rankin gazed dolefully at his empty holster. The skin tensed over his teeth in a grinning sneer.
"I ain't sayin' that you took a mean advantage," he said, raising his eyes and allowing them an expression of mild innocence that contrasted strangely with his drawn lips, "but you might have given me a chance to fight it out square. I wouldn't have took your gun, Jim."
Knowing Texas less intimately, the sheriff might have been misled by this crude sentiment; but the sheriff's fingers only drew more closely around the ivory handle of his .45. And there came a glint of humor into his eyes.
"I ain't sayin' you would, Texas. But as sheriff of Socorro County I ain't takin' any chances. I wanted to talk to you, an' I knew if I had your gun I'd feel easier."
"Which means that you didn't want me to have a chance," complained Texas glumly. "Socorro's always been meaner'n ——"
"'T ain't Socorro's fault," interrupted the sheriff with a sudden coldness; "you've been cuttin' didoes in Socorro for so long a time that you've disgraced yourself. You've gambled an' shot yourself into disfavor with theélite. You've been as ornery an' as compromisin' as it's possible for any human maverick to get without havin' to requisition the unwillin' mourners."
"Not that I'm sayin' you're naturally bad, Texas. It's that you've got an overdose of what them modern brain specialists call exaggerated ego; which us common critters would call plain swell head. That there disease is listed an' catalogued in the text books of the New York Medical Institoot as bearin' a close relationship to the geni Loco; which is a scientific way of sayin' that you've got buzzers in your attic."
Texas smiled, showing his teeth in wan sarcasm.
"You wouldn't say that if I had my gun, Jim. It ain't like you to pour out your blackguardisms on a man what ain't armed."
"I ain't blackguardin' you none," said Webster easily. "It's the naked truth, an' you know it. Takin' your gun was part of my official duty. Personally I could have talked to you without trampling down any of the niceties of etiquette, but officially I had to have your gun."
Rankin's face lengthened with a deep melancholy. With this expression he intended to convey the impression that he was suffering a martyrdom. But the sheriff's acquaintance with Texas was not recent.
"An' now that you've got the gun," said Texas, after an embarrassed silence, "what's the next thing on the programme?"
"Takin' your gun," said the sheriff heavily, "was a preliminary; like they say in the sporting papers. The big event is that you're goin' to say your adoos to Socorro without bein' allowed to make any farewell announcement. The reason is that you an' Socorro is incongruous—like a side-saddle on a razor-back hog. Socorro won't stand for you a minute longer. You're a Public Favorite which has lost its popularity an' which has become heterogeneous to the established order of things. In other words, you're an outlaw; a soft-spoken, lazy, good-for-nothin' road-agent. An' though Socorro ain't never had anything on you before, it knows you had a hand in robbin' the express office last night. An' it's——"
"You're a damn ——"
"——like playin' a king-full against three deuces that you done the trick. You was seen goin' toward the station about an hour before Budd Tucker found Ridgely, the agent, stretched out on the floor of the office, a bullet from a .45 clean through him. An' there's five thousand dollars in gold gone, an' no trace of it. An' there's been no strangers in town. An' here's your gun, showin' plain that it's been shot off lately, for there's the powder smudge on the cylinder an' the barrel. That's a pay streak of circumstantial evidence or I ain't sheriff of Socorro!"
Rankin's eyes had flashed with an unusual brilliancy as the sheriff had spoken of him being seen going toward the station previous to the finding of the agent's body, but they glazed over with unconcern during the rest of the recital. And as the sheriff concluded, Rankin gazed scornfully at him, sneering mildly:
"I couldn't add nothin' to what you've just said." He idly kicked the gray dust that was mounded at his feet, standing loose and inert, as though he cared little what might be the outcome of this impromptu interview. And then, suddenly, his blue eyes twinkled humorously as he raised them to meet the sheriff's.
"Give you time you might tell me where I spent the money," he said drily. "There's no tellin' where your theorizin' might end."
The sheriff ignored this, but he eyed his prisoner meditatively.
"There's been a rumor," he said coldly, "that you've got cracked on my daughter, Mary Jane. But I ain't never been able to properly confirm it. I meant to tell you some time ago that while I ain't had no objection to livin' in the same town with you, I'm some opposed to havin' you for a son-in-law. But now, since the express robbery, it won't be necessary for me to tell you not to nose around my house, for you're goin' to ride straight out of Socorro County, an' you ain't comin' back any more. If you do, I reckon you'll discover that Socorro's present leniency ain't elastic enough to be stretched to cover your home-comin'."
"I ain't sayin' nothin'," said Texas, glancing with pensive eyes to a point far up the sun-baked street where his gaze rested upon a pretentious house in a neatly-fenced yard where there were green things that gave a restful impression. "Circumstantial evidence is sure convincin'." he sighed deeply. "I reckon you knowed all along that I thought a heap of Mary Jane. That's the reason you picked me out for the express job."
He scowled as his eyes took in the meagre details of Socorro's one street. Because of long association these details had become mental fixtures. Socorro had been his home for ten years, and in ten years things grow into a man's heart. And civic pride had been his one great virtue. If in the summer the alkali dust of the street formed into miniature hills of grayish white which sifted into surrounding hollows under the whipping tread of the cow-pony's hoofs, Texas likened it unto ruffled waters that seek a level. The same condition in another town would have drawn a curse from him. If in the winter the huge windrows of caked mud stretched across the street in unlovely phalanx, Texas was reminded of itinerant mountain ranges. The stranger who would be so unwary as to take issue with him on this point would regret—if he lived. The unpainted shanties, the huddled, tottering dives, the tumble-down express station—all, even the maudlin masquerade of the High Card Saloon—were institutions inseparable from his thoughts, inviolable and sacred in the measure of his love for them.
And now! Something caught in his throat and gave forth a choking sound.
"But I reckon it's just as well," he said resignedly. "I sure ain't of much account." He hesitated and smiled weakly at the sheriff. "I ain't croakin'," he said apologetically; "there's the circumstantial evidence." He hesitated again, evidently battling a ponderous question. "You didn't happen to hear Mary Jane say anything about the express job?" he questioned with an expression of dog-like hopefulness. "Anything that would lead you to believe she knowed about it?"
"I don't see what——"
"No, of course!" He shuffled his feet awkwardly. "An' so she don't know anything. Didn't mention me at all?" The hopefulness was gone from his eyes, and in its place was the dull glaze of puzzled wonder. "Not that it makes any difference," he added quickly, as he caught a sudden sharp glance from the sheriff's eyes.
"An' so I'm to leave Socorro." He looked dully at the sheriff. "Why, of course, there's the circumstantial evidence." His eyes swept the shanties, the street, the timber-dotted sides of the mountains that rose above the town—familiar landmarks of his long sojourn; landmarks that brought pleasant memories.
"I've lived here a long time," he said, with abrupt melancholy, his voice grating with suppressed regret. "I won't forget soon."
There ensued a silence which lasted long. It brought a suspicious lump into the sheriff's throat.
"I wouldn't take it so hard, Texas," he said gently. "Mebbe it'll be the best for you in the long run. If you get away from here mebbe you make a man——"