ITRUST you have noted, by this time, that my yarn is not a mere chronicle of disconnected incidents. Linked circumstances seemed to be tying me up. One happening had pushed me on to another and I had allowed myself to be pushed. It might be urged, of course, that I had no business in inciting a mob to play hob with Mr. Bird—but I had my own interests to consider, and I had been listening to my uncle’s teachings on the subject of looking out for number one.
“You know what happened to your father when he went to running his legs off on somebody else’s business,” he told me. “If it hadn’t been for me helping him in his other scrapes, your mother would have been playing hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel oftener than she did. I hope you’ve got an ambition to be somebody and to have something.”
I did have, but you may be sure I did not tell my uncle that my principal hankering to get money was so that I might lay it at the feet of Zebulon Kingsley’s daughter.
Now, by the expressed wish of that daughter, I started out to control happenings and to set myself in new ways.
I passed the word to the Skokums, keeping my promise to Celene.
I was obliged to be indefinite, for I was guarding that little secret between her and myself as my most precious treasure.
As I remember it, I put it to the gang this way: “We ought to behave ourselves and protect the good name of the town.” They laughed at me and asked me if I had joined Judge Kingsley’s Sunday-school class.
I knew they didn’t suspect the truth, nevertheless that dig nearly put me out of countenance on account of the secret I was cherishing. I blushed and stammered and I lost my grip then and there as a leader—and it was the same old story—it was on account of a girl. A girl does rattle the gear of man-business!
One of the fellows remarked that I was getting almighty pious after I had used them to clean up my own dirty job. He said the most of them had matters of their own which needed attention, and wanted to know if I proposed to sneak out on them after all the help they had given me.
I told them that I had thought the thing over carefully and had decided that what we had done to Mr. Bird was not right or lawful and we’d better make no more mistakes.
“Then perhaps you want us to correct that mistake and make up a bee and carry the furniture back to the old cuss,” suggested one of the Sortwell boys.
When I failed to welcome that notion they turned on me in good earnest, and in my own heart I had to admit, looking on the surface of the thing, that they had good reason for thinking that I was both selfish and ungrateful.
In the Sixth Reader, at school, I had found the story of Frankenstein’s monster. I saw that in organizing the Skokums I had built a lively little monster of my own.
“I have a special and a private reason for asking you to quit and be good, boys,” I told them.
“A member who keeps his private and special reasons to himself and doesn’t trust the rest of us isn’t much of a help in time of trouble,” said Ben Pratt. “I have never taken a whole lot of stock in you, Ross Sidney, and now I take less than ever before.”
From remarks which were dropped I gathered that the rest of them held similar sentiments.
“They’re going to have a detective in here,” I told them.
“Who said so?”
But that was Celene Kingsley’s secret.
I had hoped that the threat might scare them. It had just the opposite effect; the boys of Levant had never seen a detective, but they had read every five-cent thriller on the subject. To be the object of a real detective’s attention seemed like glorious adventure—and they were sure that they were, when on their own prowling-grounds, match for any sleuth who ever dodged behind trees.
But I had stood up before her and had beaten fist upon my breast and had assured her that she could trust all to me. What sort of a knight was I to wear lady’s favor and then fail to do and dare in her behalf?
“I had hoped that you knew me better and that I stood higher with you fellows,” I said. “I’ll admit that you did a big job for me, and I am grateful. But you all had your fun out of it, for you have said so, over and over. You’ll have to admit something, yourselves; you’ll have to own up that we are ashamed of what we did to poor old Bangs. If you keep on you’ll do other things to be ashamed of. I’m advising you to stop.”
“We don’t want your advice,” said Ben.
“Then you’ll get something from me which you’ll like a blamed sight less than advice.”
Plainly they were hungry for information.
“What’ll that be?” asked one of the Sortwell boys.
“Try on any more of your doodle-busting in this town and you’ll find out,” I said. Then I left them and went home.
Some bright chap has made a simile about having as much privacy as a goldfish. At any rate, by leading an open life, one may be in a position to prove an alibi.
I took to spending my evenings in the bar-room of the Levant Tavern.
That was by no means such a roystering sort of a life as it sounds to be. They used to sell liquor in the tavern in the old stage-coaching days, when the place was a post station; the little catty-cornered bar is there in the big room, its worn wood shiny from the dragging of rough fists and from many scrubbings; behind is the cupboard, with wavy glass set in diamond-shaped panes. But the cupboard was bare in my boyhood days and the shelves were dusty. Dodovah Vose, the landlord, was a teetotaler and believed in impressing that principle on others.
“I have seen what liquor will do and undo,” he said when he used to get on to the subject. “In my young days, when the West Injy trade flourished and rum held its place without blushing, I have set in meeting and seen the parson soop a sip of rum-and-water between the firstly and secondly, and so on. It may have improved him and the sermon—I’m not arguing. But do you think that liquor would ever have improved my brother Jodrey and made him the best deep-sea diver on the Atlantic coast, as he is to-day? No, gents! Where a man needs the strength of his arms, the full power of his ten fingers, the quickness of his brain, and the help of his lungs and a good heart—then he’d better let liquor alone. That’s what my brother says and he has been deeper underwater than any other man—and you can look around you and see some of the queer and wonderful things he has brought up for the peerusal of mankind.”
The old foreroom was really a storehouse of curious pickings and gleanings which had been sent up-country, from time to time, by the diver brother. It had been one of my earliest haunts, for I had always hit it off nicely with Dodovah Vose. I did not lark about the room or molest the curios, as other boys in the village sometimes did.
On the contrary, I always surveyed them with respect and interest; the awe I felt when I first laid eyes on them never left me, entirely. I have not been able to determine, exactly, whether my boyhood study of those objects inspired the hankering I developed, the burning desire to go down into the depths of the sea some day, or whether the queer things merely catered to my natural instinct in the matter. At any rate, I touched them reverently and I asked many questions of Landlord Vose and he told me hair-raising stories which, he said, his brother had told him. I remember that when I was so young I was still wearing a plaid kilt, I got down on all-fours and stuck my leg in the air at his request; he called it “playing circus,” and gave me a penny. He said I was a smart boy and allowed that a smart boy might grow up and be made a diver by Jodrey Vose. So there was an idea put into my head at an early age. And Dodovah Vose used to call me “Lobster Sidney”—a truly deep-water nickname! He had a rather droll idea of a joke—it was to prompt youngsters to go and make fools of themselves. My folks gave me the middle name of Webster. In order to plague the new schoolma’am, Dodovah Vose told me to insist on the first day of school that my name was Ross Webster Lobster Sidney—and I did, even though the boys in the school laughed themselves sick. Mr. Vose praised me because I had obeyed orders, and gave me a conch-shell on which, by the aid of three finger-stops, one could play more or less of a tune. He had already given to me a shell which whispered in my ear the everlasting murmuring of the great ocean I had never seen.
It was a big fountain-shell from somewhere in the West Indies, and it fairly boomed, deep in its spirals, when I held it to my ear; I sensed all the vastness and the mystery and the solemnity of the ocean depths. The more I listened the better acquainted I seemed to be with a wonderful stranger far away at the other end of a wire.
It really seemed like a call to bigger things, and my job with my uncle was getting less and less to my taste. If there’s any such thing as the angels looking down on earth over the parapets of heaven in their hours off duty, some of the things my uncle would do in horse trades, in order to get back at other cheaters, must have grieved the judicious in the upper spheres.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can look back now and see how my lashings to the life in Levant were in the way of severance, one by one.
I found no comfort in the lull of Skokum activities; I reckoned that the boys were reorganizing and getting ready for a really big slam. I felt as a timid girl must, feel in a thunder-shower when the thing is right overhead and there’s an extra wait between claps.
I continued to visit the tavern evenings and I came, into closer intimacy with Dodovah Vose. He brought, out old letters written by his brother and read them to me. In one Jodrey Vose described his venture on the sunken British frigateTritonsomewhere off the coast, of Nova Scotia. She was bringing pay to the Hessian troops in the American colonies, so old reports had it. Jodrey Vose was more of a diver than a writer and his, letter had no frills. He informed his brother, who had invested modestly in the gamble at Jodrey’s suggestion, that the thing was a failure, though the frigate had been located by dragging and Jodrey himself had gone down and explored her where she had lain for more than a century.
Diver Vose stated bluntly that he believed, from what; he saw down there, that theTritonhad been scuttled or blown up by certain of her officers, who secured her treasure, escaped to the main in small boats and reported her loss in a storm; tradition has it that there was always considerable doubt about that storm. Also, tradition has it that those officers settled in America and lived happily ever after. Diver Vose tried to help pay expenses by raising the cannon. But though they seemed sound enough under the sea, they crumbled into lumpy masses after they were exposed to the air.
“But I never begrudged the money I put in,” Dodovah Vose told me. “I got my curiosity scratched where it had been itching for a good many years, ever since Jodrey and I first began to talk about theTriton. And I helped my brother get something off his mind. He wouldn’t have died easy if he hadn’t made sure about that treasure. I stand ready to invest in another scheme of his if he ever gets ready to tackle it. That’s to go down and dig in the bottom of the river Tiber, providing he can fix it with the town officers of Rome. As near as we can find out from history, Jodrey and I, when the Romans wasn’t throwing their treasures into the river to keep ’em away from one another in their civil wars, the barbarians were up to the same game, because they didn’t enjoy art. And, of course, there’s always the treasure of theGolden Gate!That’s in modern times.”
But it was not in times sufficiently modern so that I knew anything about it, as my blank stare showed.
“She caught fire on her way from San Francisco to the Isthmus and was run ashore with three or four million dollars’ worth of gold ingots in her. That’s fact! But Jodrey says there’s been so much blasted lying done since by owners, underwriters, divers, claimers, and others, that nobody knows for sure just what has become of the treasure. That’s another of his hankerings—to find out!”
More and more did I feel the spirit of adventure stirring in me!
I could not understand why the whereabouts of that great treasure should remain in doubt, and so I expressed myself to Mr. Vose.
“There’s some sort of a mystery about it—and so far’s my brother is concerned he can’t drop regular contracts to go chasing dreams—only once in so often. ThatTritoncase made a hearty meal for his curiosity—he hasn’t been hungry for high-spiced stuff since.” He looked at me with shrewd kindness. “Maybe he’ll let you go on that job after he has made a diver out of you.”
I felt a flush in my cheeks.
“I suppose you have been poking a little fun at me all along when you have hinted at my being a diver, sir. Do you really believe your brother would give me a thought?”
“He might, if you went to him backed up with a letter from me.”
“I have a mind to ask you for that letter.”
“And you’ll not get it, my boy! I don’t propose to have your uncle Deck come yowling and clawing at me like an old tom-cat because I have coaxed his handy-Andy away from him.”
“I don’t like the kind of work he puts me to, Mr. Vose. I have grown up to be a man, almost, and I understand better than I did at first.”
“You understand, for instance, that when you took that cow away from Andrew P. Corson last week you left his baby without milk!” He stroked his nose and peered at me from under eyelids that were cocked like little tents.
“There was a bill of sale! He made me go and get the cow.”
“But do you know what your uncle did, after that?”
“No, sir!”
“He went to Andrew P. Corson and said you acted without orders. He lent Corson the money to buy another cow.”
I stammered out something about not understanding that.
“But I do,” said Landlord Vose. “Your uncle Deck wants to get into politics in this town—he wants to get into politics far enough so that he can do something to Judge Kingsley. He reckons you don’t need any popularity. He is starting you out with considerable of a handicap if you mean to live and prosper in your own town. However, I won’t do anything to encourage you to leave! I’ve got to keep on living in the town—alongside your uncle Deck!”
A flash of family loyalty prompted me to assert that my uncle was good to the poor.
“That he is,” said Dodovah Vose. “He is a queer man, your uncle is. But I don’t want to make a pauper of myself in order to curry favor with him.”
It came to me that I’d better have a talk with my uncle, and I started out, crossing the village square on my way home.
All at once something landed heavily and violently on my shoulders, and the attack was so sudden that I was borne to the ground with such a crack of my forehead on the hard earth that I became unconscious, but not until I had felt claws of some sort tearing at my cheeks.
When I came to my senses I was back in the tavern foreroom and Dodovah Vose was swabbing my face with a sponge wet in warm water. In a corner of the room Constable Nute and two helpers were hog-tying old Bennie Holt, the village fool.
“I ain’t a dove of peace no longer—I ain’t a rooster no longer,” he was squalling. “I’m a bald-headed eagle! They told me I’m an eagle. I allus knowed I was some kind of a fowl. They lied to me when they said I was a dove of peace. I’m an eagle. See what I’ve done! I’ve mallywhacked him. He made fun of me when I was a dove. Others made fun of me—but now they’d better look out. I’m an eagle.”
Whatever the old idiot had been or thought he had been, he was then plainly a raving maniac. In his struggles he was shedding turkey feathers with which he had thatched his coat. As far back as I could remember old Bennie Holt, he used to stand in the square with feathers of various sorts stuck around his hat, harmlessly indulging his vagary. But never before had he raised his hand against any human being.
“I reckon that this time you fired a boomerang, young Sidney,” stated the constable, reproachfully. “Old Bangs didn’t fly back and hit you, but this one has. The village will be glad to hear it.”
“You’d better be careful what you report about me,”
I told him. “I had nothing whatever to do with old Bennie. Mr. Vose will answer for me.”
“We know where to plaster the blame when anything happens in this place,” insisted Nute. “Now you’ve sent another one to the bug-house!”
It did not seem to be of much use to talk to that raving old man, but I tried it. I asked him who had been talking to him.
“My guardeen angels,” he screamed. “They all come to me and told me. They was in white and they told me.” I myself had furnished the pillow-case cowls to the Skokums out of the second-hand stock in my uncle’s storehouse!
“There must be some mistake this time, Nute,” said Landlord Vose. “Young Sidney has been spending his evenings here in the tavern for quite some time.”
“Trying to put up a bluff, that’s all. The one who-torches on a fool can’t complain if the fool kicks back. Here’s more expense to the town, boarding an insane man at the State hospital. It didn’t cost us anything as long as he e’t broken crackers out of the grocery-stores, and slept in the livery-stable. I reckon Town-Treasurer Kingsley will say that this ends up his patience.”
“Don’t you dare to tell Judge Kingsley that I had anything to do with getting old Bennie in this state,” I cried. My face smarted dreadfully, for Dodovah Vose-. was putting on some kind of stuff to kill the poison of the-, tool’s finger-nails, so he explained.
“I don’t need to tell him; he’ll know it for himself.”
“I’ll find out who did do it! I know well enough!”
“Of course you know.”
It was maddening—this determination on the part of Levant to put me in the wrong in all matters of local disturbance. Here was I, victim of the resentment of the Skokums because I was trying to obey my promise to Celene Kingsley, now in imminent danger of further repute as the ringleader of the latest atrocity—even though I was the sole sufferer after the devil had been stirred up in the old loafer.
“You fired him, and the boomerang swung around back and hit you—that’s all,” insisted the constable. “His mouth has been full of something you have done to him. If it wasn’t you he wouldn’t be talking about you.”
While Dodovah Vose was finishing with my lacerated face I pondered on what he had said about my uncle’s indifference in regard to my popularity in town.
Then I stood up in the tavern foreroom and cursed family and foes and town with such lurid invective—my vocabulary and force being so far beyond the ordinary capabilities of youth—that even the crazy man was shocked into silence. I was ashamed of myself even as I ranted. But then, as in after-times, my temper swept me out of myself. I was blind and dizzy and there was a roar in my ears like the rush of water. I swung the fires of anger about myself as a juggler whirls his flaming torches. I was sorry as soon as it was over—I have always been sorry when my frenzy has passed.
When I bowed my head and walked out of the tavern I heard the constable clucking away like an offended old hen.
“It’s all a matter for the judge to consider—language and all,” he declared.
“But I insist that he is a good boy in his heart,” said Dodovah Vose.
“Can’t be—coming out of that family—and with the general reputation he has got since he has worked for his uncle the last four years,” insisted the constable. Fine dwelling-place for me—Levant, eh?
My uncle was in bed and asleep when I got to the house—and perhaps it was just as well, because I was quickly forgetting my shame and was ready for a further squabble; a disposition on my part which has never been especially helpful during my life.
I made careful and disgusted study of my striped face in the looking-glass before I went to bed. In spite of my innocence, there I was, the labeled participator in an affray. In this world, as you have probably noticed, the man who carries around a blacked eye or a bunged lip never succeeds in dissipating the suspicion that he has been in some sort of a disgraceful mix-up, in which he was more or less to blame. You may remember how you yourself have felt in the case of your friends, even when a sliding rug or a closet door has been saddled with the blame. A man with a marked-up physog is never at his best as a defendant. I dreaded the next day, for it seemed pretty certain that I would have to face Judge Kingsley. But the feeling that his daughter might be brought to doubt the sincerity of my promises, when she heard the story and beheld my face, kept me awake more effectually than did the pain of that ferocious clapperclawing.
IWAS awake so long in the night I overslept next morning, of course. Breakfast had been cleared away by the time I got dressed and was down-stairs.
I had made up my mind to have a run-in with my uncle, but I was starting with a disadvantage. Coming late to breakfast in that busy household amounted almost to a crime, and the look of disgust my aunt Lucretia set on my face made my courage drop tail. She was never amiable, and she considered me an intruder in the family, as well I knew.
“I have left your doughnuts and coffee in the but’ry—and your uncle wants you in the stable.” She turned her back and went on with what she was doing at the stove.
I ate the doughnuts on my way to the stable, trying to whip up my rancor. I expected to be received with a hoot and a howl, and depended on those spurs to start my own temper on the gallop.
Uncle Deck was just pushing a bottle back into the oats in the bin. He slammed down the cover and wiped his mouth and grinned at me. He was in the best of good humor. I was chewing on food his money had bought, and, I repeat, he was as pleasant as a basket of chips. In the face of that I couldn’t screw a mean word out of myself.
“She sure was some operator with her claws,” he remarked. But he wouldn’t listen to my indignant explanation; he plainly had his own business on his mind that morning, and it was business which seemed to be affording much satisfaction. He gave me a push toward the harness-room, the sanctum where he performed most of his deviltry in horse matters.
In that harness-room was hitched the worst-looking old pelter of a plug I had ever laid eyes on.
Uncle Deck put his hands on his hips and swapped looks between myself and the horse. He was master of a certain kind of cheap, horse-jockey patter which he employed at fairs when he wanted to call a crowd around. He struck a pose and “orated.”
“Having a knowledge of hoss pedigree, relatives, previous condition of servitude, religious preferences, and other matters pertaining to, and so forth, even going back to the fact that the hoss Bucephalorus, that was owned by the late Aleck the Great, cocked his left hind leg when he stood in the stall, had a nicked right ear, and a wind-gall puff behind each fore shoulder, I want to say that I reckon that never before was there gathered, collected, and assembled on four legs every kind of a pimple, bump, wheeze, scratch, spavin, horn ail, hock bunch, trick, and bobblewhoop, that’s laid down by old Medicombobulus, in his book entitled ‘Things a Hoss Can Get Along Without.’ I call this ancient Gothic ruin ‘Carpenter Boy,’ sired by Pod Auger, dammed by Hemlock Maid—and, in fact, damned by everybody who has ever owned him. Speed is developed in him by feeding the celebrated spiral oats, produced by crossing shoe-pegs with bed-springs, which in process of being digested uncoil and carry the animile in leaps like the mountain-goat.”
After that outburst I definitely, in my own mind, set forward to some future date the matter of an understanding with my uncle.
“How did it ever happen that anybody could unload this on you?” I asked him.
“Because I went out hunting for it, sonny. It was the worst I could do on short notice. If it had looked worse and had had more ailments and outs I would have paid more for it. Now ask no more questions, but lend a hand to what I tell you to do.”
I have no time to go into the details of what my uncle Deck did to that equine framework, but if I could describe it all I’d be furnishing considerable of a handbook for the uses of tricky horse-swappers. I had helped in many similar jobs in that back room of his stable, but I had never seen him put so much art and soul into the work before; he seemed to have special reasons for his painstaking toil. He chuckled whenever he secured a particularly good result; at times he gritted his teeth and swore under his breath regarding some party whom he did not name. But I gathered that this transformation of a horse was intended as satisfaction of one of his bitterest grudges.
He had everything to do with in that horse beauty-parlor of his. There were ointments and colorings, false hair for mane and tail, skin-patches and disguises for puffs and swellings. But still the horse remained gaunt; the rafters of his ribs suggested that he needed to be shingled in. To my general wonderment as to what my uncle was about, anyway, was now added more lively curiosity; how was this living skeleton to be disguised as to skinniness? I found out before long. My uncle put on the poor brute a bridle with a wicked twist-bit and told me to hold him, no matter how much he kicked about.
Then Uncle Deck brought out a bit of board into which shoe-pegs had been set thickly. He began to clap the pegged board against the horse’s skin. I had my work cut out for me after that, I can tell you. The pain must have been excruciating, for the bradding-pegs raised blisters. In a little while the ribs were hidden by this new and deceptive plumpness. The horse took on the appearance of an animal which had been well cared for in the food line. And he certainly displayed the spirit of Phoebus’s nigh wheel-horse. His nostrils snorted furiously and his eyes flamed. It seemed incredible that this animal with flowing mane and tail, with round barrel and smooth limbs, was the decrepit old creature I had seen on my arrival in the room.
Lastly, my uncle Deck oiled the horse from stem to stem, smoothing the hair into place, and then stood and admired his handiwork.
“Now let’s see what the needle will do for style and knee action,” he said. He gave the horse a jab with the hypodermic—I had seen him do that at horse-trots just before the race was started. He hitched a long rope into the bridle and led the animal out into the yard. In a few moments the horse was prancing and curveting and whickering like a blueblood of youth and spirit.
“But he won’t last this way!” I said.
My uncle turned withering side-glance on me. “Do you think you’re telling me something I didn’t know? Of course he won’t last. I don’t want him to last. If he would pop like a blown-up paper bag when I got ready to have it happen I’d like it all the better. But, as it is, it’ll be bad enough. Don’t you know a good name for him out of some of those books you have read, son?”
But while I was hesitating my uncle dipped in with his usual impatience.
“I have thought of it already! ‘Judge,’ that’s his name. When she hears Trufant call him ‘Judge’ the coincidence will catch her interest, likely enough. She will prick up her ears!”
Right then I pricked up my own ears. I understood mighty sudden. I had seen the writing tacked on the notice-board in the post-office the day before. Judge Kingsley had let it be known that he was in the market for a driving-horse, suitable for use by ladies. I had read it with mingled emotions, realizing that Celene Kingsley had grown to girlhood out of childhood; no longer a pony-cart for her!
“But he’ll never buy a horse from you?” I blurted, staring at my uncle.
“Who won’t?”
“Judge Kingsley.”
“Probably he wouldn’t if he thought it came fromme. But I’m baiting a hook that he’ll swallow or I’m no guesser.”
My eyes were full of questions and he saw fit to humor me.
“Seeing it’s all in the family, son, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to let out a few holes in my surcingle or I’ll bust. ‘Squealing John’ Runnels, of Carmel, will drive this hoss into Judge Kingsley’s dooryard to-night, around dusk, representing that he is a poor woman who needs money in a hurry so that she can get her husband out of trouble. ‘Squealing John’ has got a woman’s voice, and he will wear some of his wife’s clothes.”
“I don’t see how you can get a man to do that,” I objected.
My uncle raised his hand above his head and slowly clinched his fingers.
“A man will do ‘most anything when you’ve got a foreclosure clutch on his weazen. I’m making the whole thing plenty crazy so that the laugh will be bigger when the truth comes out. He’ll buy this hoss—there’s no doubt of it. Old John will give him only twenty minutes to decide. Short notice on account of the hypo juice I’ll shoot in up around the turn of the street! Must have a quick decision because I reckon the hoss will stagger up against a fence and die mighty soon after old John gets out of sight. Clek-clek! Gid-dap!” He yanked on the rope and the horse frolicked. “Whoa, Judge! Plenty of knee action! Sound in wind, limb, and peepers! Safe for the ladies!” He pulled in on the rope, grabbed the bridle, and led the horse to a stall. “If we get over two hundred I’ll slip you ten dollars for your part of the job,” he called to me. “It’s time for you to understand that there’s good money in a sharp dicker.”
I did not have the courage to tell him what I thought.
I tried to frame some sort of a reproach when he went to the oat-bin and pulled out his bottle. But he grinned over his shoulder at me! If he had had any short and sharp words for me that day I would have burst out, I’m sure of it.
But he was wonderfully kind to me that last day I ever spent in his home, under his thumb.
“You’d better stay close around the house till your face looks less like the battle-flag of freedom, son,” he advised me. “Cats will be cats, and girls will show claws!” He went away about his business and I hung around the stable, taking a look every now and then at the preposterous horse.
I was made party to a most horrible deceit on Celene Kingsley. To be sure, the fraud most nearly concerned her father and his money. But the horse was destined for her. I could not get that idea out of my thoughts. Probably, after the trade had been made, my uncle would brag that I had helped him. How would she view me? It must seem to her that some of my promises had already been broken, for I was certain that the matter of old Bennie was being canvassed that day in the village. There was such a thing as family loyalty, I admitted, as I pondered on the situation. But to allow my tough uncle to tramp through the little sanctuary where I enshrined my love, to pull me into a vulgar scheme which must ruin forever all my hopes, poor and futile though they were, these were sacrifices I did not feel called on to undergo. I had my own pride to consider. I no longer dreamed of ever possessing Celene Kingsley. What was in me was a romantic hope that she would think on me once in a while when I was far, far away—remembering that I was her slave in what she asked and that I had asked nothing of her.
However, to have her memories of me mixed in with thoughts of the horse-trading cheat which I had connived at was reflection unendurable.
I went to the wood-shed and secured an ax. It occurred to me that when a horse had so many bumps on him, one more and a deadly bump on his forehead would not attract much attention; furthermore, my uncle seemed to think that the animal’s course was nearly run.
I faced the brute. His ears were hanging in despondency. His eyes were dropping tears; those blisters must have been stinging like the martyr’s skin under the shirt of fire. When I looked on that woe all my resolution left me. I dropped the ax. There were tears in my own eyes. I felt as if he were my brother in common sorrow. So I went to the cellar and fetched apples and carrots and fed them into his gratefully slobbering mouth until he sighed and spraddled his legs and went to sleep.
Constable Nute came for me during the day.
“There ain’t any subpeny to this, young Sidney,” he informed me. “If you feel too guilty to face Judge Kingsley, who is making an informal investigation, you needn’t come.”
“I am not guilty. I’m not afraid to face the judge.” And I went along. There was no one else in his office. He had been calling in persons and examining them one by one. I was alone with him after Nute left.
I gave in my version of what had happened the night before and declared that I had had nothing whatever to do with putting notions into the noddle of the village fool.
“But as to this society of young vandals which has been disgracing the village? Certain members of the gang have confessed to me that you are the organizer and the ringleader.”
“And I confess that Iwasleader at first,” I owned up to him, just as manfully as I could. Then I told him about Mr. Bird. “When I realized that I was making a mistake I stopped being leader. I have had nothing to do with the society since.”
He had a way of shooting speech out through his pinched nostrils with a sort of a jew’s-harp twang. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a good looking over.
“Becoming an angel overnight by the natural piety of the Sidney disposition, eh? Young man, you are lying to me! Now tell me the real reason why you quit your devilishness.”
I had no mind to tell him, and I was silent.
“You had another reason, didn’t you? A better reason?”
I confessed that I had. But I wouldn’t tell him what it was, even when he raised his voice to me and pounded on the table with his fist. If he had been the right kind of a man I would have told him, for a proper man would have been proud of his daughter under those circumstances. But I knew that Judge Kingsley would consider that she had disgraced herself by talking to me.
“You can’t tell the truth—you won’t tell the truth—for the truth isn’t in you,” he stormed. “You are convicted by the tongues of the boys who have owned up.”
“I knew there were sneaks in the crowd—that’s another reason I had for getting out, Judge Kingsley.”
“If anything else happens in this village we shall know where to place the blame.”
“It isn’t fair, Judge Kingsley!” I remonstrated. “I’m not getting a square deal in this thing. I know that old Nute has been talking to you the way he calked to me last night. They are all bound to put the blame on to me.”
“I know for myself.”
“No, sir! You don’t know for yourself. You say I can’t tell the truth! I’ll show you that I can, even when it’s to my own hurt—yes, sir, to my awful hurt! You have advertised for a horse, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“My uncle is going to send around a man dressed in woman’s clothes—this very evening—so as to fool you in the dusk with the worst fraud ever propped on four legs.”
That confession didn’t help me a bit and I ought to have had sense enough to know it before I opened my mouth. I had made the judge more thoroughly angry than ever; I had offended his pride as a shrewd business man.
“What cock-and-bull yam is this? Do you think I can be fooled by cheap horse-jockey tricks? You young fool, what do you mean by insulting me?”
“You just wait till you see the horse,” I retorted. “I helped fix him and I didn’t know him, myself, after the job was done. But I don’t want to see you gulled, Judge Kingsley. I am following new ways from now on. You know my uncle and how I am beholden to him! When I open up to you about him it ought to show you that I want to be honest, no matter how much the truth is going to harm me.”
“There’s no decency in this town—not even honor among thieves,” snarled the judge. He pointed to the door. “That’s all for now, young Sidney! Remember for yourself—and tell others—that the grand jury sits in this county within a fortnight! Upon actions from now on depends what the county prosecutor will be inclined to do.”
Judge Kingsley’s office was a sort of ell affair built out from the side of his mansion. When I left it I ducked around to the rear of the house and made off down through the orchard, having no relish to show my clawed face to the public. I had my day to myself and I did not hurry; I had many things to ponder on.
All at once I heard the sound of somebody running on the turf behind me. I turned and faced Celene. I curved my forearm across my countenance, ashamed of my appearance, her own flushed cheeks were so radiantly beautiful!
“I know how it happened. I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” she said, graciously.
“They ste’boyed him on to me!” I told her. “I have tried to make ’em stop their tricks, just as I promised you. So they did this to put me in wrong. Your father is hard on me! I tried to make him understand that I——well, I wanted—”
“I overheard—I couldn’t help overhearing.” Then her cheeks grew rosier. “I’ll own up. I listened at the door. I wanted to know. And that’s why I came after you. You have kept our little secret and I know you have done your best in other ways. So that’s why I’m here. I want to thank you. And—I—Well, I think that’s all!”
It seemed to finish it as far as I was concerned, too; I couldn’t pump a word up out of myself. So we stood there and looked up into the trees.
“Father has been talking to them to-day,” she said, after a time. “Perhaps they are warned now and won’t be up to any more mischief. And they ought to be sorry for what they have done to you. I think you can have a lot of influence over them after this.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m going away from here.”
That statement astonished her just as much as it astonished me. I had not thought of announcing my departure ten seconds before; it had not been in my mind that I was going away. But all of a sudden the memory of what I had told the judge about the horse popped into my thoughts. Considering what would be my uncle’s state of mind after the exposure, I reckon the going-away idea followed as naturally as the right answer in a sum of addition.
“I had supposed that your outlook—your position with your uncle—was very promising,” she said. “The town needs smart men.”
The fact that she had spent one thought upon my condition interested me more than the implied compliment.
“If I stay with him I’ll only be a country cheat and horse-dickerer. I want to be something else,” I told her. “This very day my uncle is trying to put up a job on your father. I have told the judge about it.”
“I heard you. It was another reason why I wanted to speak to you—to encourage you in being honest. There’s no need of father bringing you into the matter at all. It would only make trouble between your uncle and you. I’ll speak to father.”
“You’d better not, for then you’d be making trouble for yourself. I’d rather take all the blame of it.”
We stood and looked at each other for a long time.
“I’m not a coward,” she said.
“But it will come out about me blabbing—some way it will come out. There’s no need of you being in the scrape. I’m going away, and I may as well go flying while I’m about it!”
“I hope—” she said, and that was as far as she got. I know how I was feeling inside and perhaps my feelings showed too plainly on that striped face of mine. She looked scared and turned and hurried away. I didn’t know whether she hoped I’d stay in Levant or hoped I’d do well wherever I might roam. I watched her out of sight and she did not turn to look at me. I couldn’t exactly figure that out—whether she didn’t want to give me a last glance or didn’t dare to.
I fingered in my vest pocket while she was running away; when she disappeared I pulled out a packet and opened it. There were three rings in it. One was a coral ring; I bought it when I was fifteen and paid thirty cents for it. I never had the courage to give it to her when we were at school. There was a silver ring which I bought a year later when my circumstances were a little better—better than my courage. Lastly, there was a gold ring which I had secured in a dicker soon after our meeting on Purgatory Hill. I am not going to discourse on the fool impulse which prompted me to buy those rings and stick them in my vest pocket. Nor will I say anything concerning another impulse which made me wrap the rings up and drop them into a cleft in the trunk of an apple-tree. If I did not dare to give them to her, at least I could leave them on her premises. Then I went by back ways to my uncle’s house.
Before I was out of sight of Judge Kingsley’s mansion I looked behind me several times. I didn’t know but I might see a flutter of a handkerchief from some window, for a vague and queer kind of hope was still in me. I saw no flutter, but I did see a strange man who was strolling along my trail. I was too busy with other thoughts to wonder who he might be.
I found my uncle admiring the transmogrified horse.
“I have been whetting the old hellion’s appetite,” he said, and I knew by the expression on his face that he was referring to Judge Kingsley. “I have had half a dozen fellows from the back districts drive one old skate after another into his dooryard, and inside of an hour he’ll have a chance to inspect a few more skeletons and bone-piles. By nightfall he’ll be hungry for a peek at something which doesn’t look as if it would have to be pushed on casters by iron reins. Oh, he’s hungry! He’ll swallow this one.”
More than ever was I coming to understand into what complicated and precious gears I had flung my trig—and what the consequences to me were likely to be.
“Now come out into the harness-room,” commanded my uncle. “I want you to have a look at the Queen of Sheby.”
I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had no doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled up about him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil partly draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe.
“I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like this the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a scolding woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.”
“You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you, right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and reach into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let me see you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.”
Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. He kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like the judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man dressed up like a woman.
“I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said, facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m a good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and hectored and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.”
“I’ll kill you if you do—I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.”
He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle.
“You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you old angleworm.”
After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me.
“I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face is smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.”
“I’ll not turn any such trick,” I said. I was angry in a moment. So was he.
“You will if I tell you to.”
“I won’t; and I’ll say further that I don’t think much of this business, anyway.”
“Nor I—and that’s two against one,” declared Runnels, the tip of his thin nose beginning to glow as if new courage had hung out a banner.
Liquor had also given my uncle’s temper an edge of its own; he cuffed Runnels until that lamenting “lady’s” hat fell off. I jumped up and ran away into the fields, for I knew that Uncle Deck was merely warming up on “Squealing John”; as chief mutineer, I was ticketed for the real bout. I lurked about in the pine grove till after sunset. Then I stole back into the village with all the stealth of a criminal.