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Books by Peter B. Kyne

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CONTENTS

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CHAPTER I
The Curious Tribe of McFee

“God is good,” murmured my old friend and one time comrade in arms, Sergeant John Ryan. His pronouncement, apropos of nothing, was voiced in that tone of flat finality which only a Celt—and a very positive Celt at that—can lend to a simple declarative sentence. “ ’Tis a fact. God is good.”

“Has He been good to you?” I queried.

“Always,” the old soldier replied and fell to puffing his cigar slowly and meditatively; seemingly his alert mind was back-tracking along the path of a career that wound through many a field of glory, seeking to find an occasion when the Almighty had not been good to him. Presently he sighed contentedly.

“Sure, I’m the lucky ould sojer,” he declared. “Here I am with all me heads and legs and arms, a bit wrinkled and scarred, to be sure, but sound in wind and limb for all that; and at the end of me service, in me forty-fifth year, divil a worry have I whether school keeps or not. Five hundred dollars a month for the remainder of me natural life—and me retired a first sergeant. Oho, ’tis the happy man I am!”

I scented a story. Knowing my friend of old, I forebore expressing the slightest interest in his astounding statement, however; in consequence of which, with the perversity of his race, he settled more comfortably in his chair, thrust his feet up on the hotel veranda and began his story:

Yes, ’tis the lucky man I am, and all account of me doing me djooty as I was raised to do it, and small praise to me for doing that same. As a result of me virtue here I sit on the porch of the best hotel in Florida, wondering whether I’ll fish for tarpon tomorrow or take a fling at the yellow-tail this afternoon. And all on account of Kevin McFee—more power to his Gaelic elbow.

Who was Kevin McFee, say you? With that name who would he be but a big Far Down of a Scotch-Irishman from Belfast! A great, red-headed, raw-boned stretch of divilmint he was when I first met him, and him and me both recruits in the camp at Tampa just before we shtarted for Santiago for the avowed purpose of remimbering the Maine. Kevin was then a lad of twinty-two or thereabouts, with a face on him like one of Oliver Cromwell’s Ironsides. He’d a round, deep-set number twelve blue eye, which is the eye of a fanatic and a fighter and a man with a will of his own.

Faith, I hadn’t shpoken two words to Kevin McFee before I knew him for what he was. He was a gintleman, a Trinity College man, but what with the hot feet of him and he a youngest son he’d been sint out to Wyoming by his ould father to learn the gintle art of raising sheep. By and large, Kevin raised more or less hell with his sheep, and what with him knowing less about sheep than I do about the income tax, ’tis small wonder he went broke. As he explained to me, ’twas a blizzard that caught him and his sheep in the open and blew for five mortal days and nights. And when ’twas over, Kevin cabled the head of the house of McFee for money to get back into business agin. For his pains he drew a fine line of billingsgate from the head of his clan, and then—“T’ell wit’ his money,” says Kevin and sought the nearest recruiting station and held up his hand for a go at the Spaniards, who’d never done him a hair’s worth of harm in his life.

No more had they done it to me, but for all that a bit of excitement is the leaven of life, and me and Kevin took part in the skirmish the Spaniards put up at Santiago to save their faces before surrendering. In the heel of the hunt Kevin McFee got a Mauser through his left lung and stretched himself among a patch of pineapple plants to die of thirst and black ants and his wound. What with his being a Far Down and an Orangeman, I had small use for Kevin McFee and was not minded to worry when, the ruction over, the top counted noses and Kevin was found missing. Still and all, he was Irish and he’d spoken to me in the Gaelic, so I went looking for him. Bad cess to him, I carried him a mile and a half on me back to a dressing station and that was the last I saw of Kevin McFee for upwards of twinty years.

Now, the dear Lord only knows what I found in that Fourth of July celebration before Santiago to keep me in the service, but shtay I did. From Cuba to Luzon I went, from the infanthry to the cavalry, for a horse was always dear to the heart of me. Up to the Boxer campaign and back to Luzon, thin south to Mindinao and the Moro campaigns, twice to Cuba with the army of pacification, and me so long a first sergeant by then that the colonel thought nothing of shaking hands with me. Then come the Great War and the colonel sint for me.

“Sergeant Ryan,” says he, “a terrible disgrace has fallen upon the regimint.”

“Glory be, sir,” says I. “Are we not to be sint?”

“We are, sergeant,” says he, “but as field artillery, not cavalry. They’re goin’ to galvanize us,” says he.

“God forgive thim, sir,” says I. “But—beggin’ the colonel’s pardon—what has all this got to do with me?”

“Oh!” says he, grinning like the divil, “we’re goin’ to make a batthery commandher out of you.”

“Meala-murdher, sir,” says I. “Would ye be afther ruinin’ a good top cutther to make a jackass of a captain?”

“Would I be afther doing it?” says he, laughin’. “Sure, I’ve already done it. Here’s your travel ordhers. Away wit’ you, sergeant, to the Reserve Officers’ Trainin’ Camp at the Presidio of San Francisco, and see to it that you get a captaincy, no less. Go now, and good luck to ye.”

So I went, and the divil’s own time I had of it. ’Tis little I knew of mathematics but much of horses and men. But what with pullin’ and haulin’ I come back to the ould regimint a captain.

To the ould regimint, did I say? ’Twas not a regimint when I got back. ’Twas an unlicked mob. Every ould non-com that was at all depindible had gotten at least a second lieutenancy, all the privates first-class was sergeants and serving in other regimints, and, save for the colonel and a dozen of the ould officers, sure I was a shtranger in a howlin’ mob of shtrangers. I was assigned to command A Batthery.

Well, sir, all that saved me reason for the next few months was the quality of recruits they sint to us. For the fir’rst six months of the war they were mostly volunteers; at least we filled up with volunteers and they the flower of the land. Whin I had them trained nicely, I had to give up the half of them to a casualty replacemint draft, which broke me heart, and to take the place of me lost loved ones they sint me a late draft of drafties, which broke me heart agin. I had good men in that lot, but by the same token I had the sweepings and the cleanings of the cities.

Faith, I clamped down on that lot. I was forever afther them. Sure, a man lear’rns a thing or two afther eighteen years a fir’rst sergeant in half a dozen campaigns, and I could tell what my laddybucks were thinkin’ of before they’d thought it. I put the fear o’ God an’ the pride of the ser’rvice in them, and for me pains they tacked a nickname to me. Aye, they did. They called me Ould Peep Sight, on account of me seeing everything. So I knew then that they would follow where I led and the divil take the hindmost.

Well, sir, come the time when we were ordhered overseas. For three weeks the throop trains had been rolling out of camp and at long last sixteen cars were spotted in on the siding and assigned to the first battalion. Our major—the Lord ha’ mer’rcy on him!—had gone on ahead with a school detachment, whilst B Batthery was commanded by a first lieutenant. Consequently I, being the senior officer of the battalion, went over in command of it for the time being.

The day before we were to entrain I was walking up the avenue through the ‘tillery quarthers when who should I meet but a long, raw-boned, red-headed captain of field artillery, and him with a round, deep-set number twelve blue eye and a face like a hangman. “By the Great Gun of Athlone thin,” says I to meself, “I’ve seen that lad before,” and I saluted him. He retur’rns it in the careless manner of one to whom the job is a natural nuisance, and says he to me, says he:

“Captain, be the device on your collar I am aware that you and I are brother officers of the same regimint. I’ve just been assigned to command of B Batthery. McFee is my name, sir. Kevin McFee.”

“Ye vagabone, Kevin,” says I. “So ye’re back to get kilt entirely this time, are ye?”

“Ryan! Ye Connocht gossoon! Sure, I’ve carried a vote of thanks to you since Santiago and never knew where to sind it.” And with that he put his two arms around me and give me a hug like a grizzly bear, whilst the eyes of him pop with delight.

Sure I was glad to see Kevin. His forty-eight years hung well on him and what with life in America he and I had both lost something, and that same was the habit of lookin’ down at each other because of the Ancient Grudge. So I give him a return hug and says I to him, says I:

“Kevin, when were ye commissioned?”

“Out of the second Reserve Officers’ Trainin’ Camp, John,” says he.

“Then, Kevin, me wild rapparee, I rank ye, for I’m a product of the first camp. Though ordinarily in command of A Batthery, I’m at present commandin’ the battalion, so ’tis unbecomin’ of me to permit ye to hug yer superior officer. Come to my tent, Kevin. I have a quart of good Scotch whisky I took from a soused sojer whilst I was officer of the day recently.”

“And what did ye do with the private?” says he.

“Oh, he belonged to me,” says I, “so I’ll give him batthery punishment. I run me outfit like I’ve run every outfit I’ve been in for the past eighteen years. If I can’t handle the bad ones without dhraggin’ the summary court officer into the mess, sure there’s somethin’ wrong with me and not the accused.”

“Sure, ye haven’t been commissioned eighteen years!” says Kevin.

“I have not, but I’ve been a first sergeant, and as well ye know, that and a captaincy are the two hardest and worth while jobs in the ser’rvice.”

“ ’Tis true. Have you a good top, John?”

“I have the makin’s of one, Kevin. He’s been a sergeant in the regular army ten years and eight of it first sergeant. In the fulness of time I’m hopin’ he’ll be worthy of his chevrons. Meanwhile we undhershtand each other and get along nicely.”

We’d reached me tent by this time and afther the bit of Scotch had been sampled, says Kevin to me, says he:

“John, I have a bit of a favor to ask of ye. Me own son is a private in B Batthery and——”

“Say no more, Kevin. I’ll agree to the thransfer to my command. Sure, no man can be captain to his own son.”

“Thank you, John,” says he. “He’ll do betther undher you nor me.”

“He’ll get no favors, Kevin,” says I. “In fact, I’ll be timpted to watch him closer than the others. What sort of young man is he, Kevin?”

“He’s a disgrace to all the McFees, livin’ and dead,” says Kevin, and wit’ that he commences to weep like a child. “Oh, John,” says he, “how can I tell ye? I didn’t want to, but I must. My son is by way of bein’ a conscientious objector.”

“Be this and be that, thin, Kevin,” says I, “but I’m not wishful to add to my collection. I have one conscientious objector at present and divil a thing can I do with him—and God knows I’ve not been idle. Sure, I’d be shot at sunrise if the Secrethary of War knew the half of what I’ve done to that lad. In fact, Kevin, I was takin’ a quiet shtroll when I met you, thinkin’ my man’s case over. This afthernoon he knelt in the batthery street and prayed God to forgive me for what I was tryin’ to do to him, becuz I knew not what I did. Begorry, I’ve come to the conclusion he’s really conscientious or crazy or something; at any rate the top advises me to sind him to the developmint battalion and rid meself and him of a nuisance. Sure, Kevin, there’ll be no peace in the family at all at all if I hand that decent old sojer another objector.”

“Ah, John,” says poor Kevin, “sure the hand of the Lord has touched me. Wirra, wirra, to think that a McFee could sire a son like that fellow; and then, when the draft got him, to think he’d be assigned to the same batthery his own father’s been ordhered to command. John, old friend, I have a feelin’ ’tis God Himself has sent you to me in this war as he did in the last. I have a heavy cross to bear and do you help me bear it.”

Have you ever seen a man with number twelve blue eyes, round and deep-set, with a face like one of Cromwell’s Ironsides, weepin’? Ye have not? God grant ye never may. I laid me hand on Kevin’s red head and says I to him, says I:

“Well, never mind about him, Kevin. I’ll take him and make a man of him or may the divil fly away with me, if he only flew a mile a day.”

He squeezed the hand of me. “Thank you,” says he, “till you’re betther paid. He’s Kevin McFee Fourteenth and the only disgrace to the name.”

“Is he conscientious?”

“I doubt it,” says he. “I’m afraid he’s cowardly. God knows he’s not entitled to the protection of a religious faith that’s been duly recognized by the President as one, the communicants of which are conscientiously entitled to object to war. He’s been raised a Presbyterian and if there’s Quaker blood in him I didn’t put it there, and no more did his poor mother.”

“Cheer up, Kevin lad,” says I. “I’ll do the best I can by the lad. How many childher have you, Kevin?”

“I used to have the one,” says he. “I give him up the day I wint before the draft board to kill his plea to be placed in non-combatant service because he was a conscientious objector.”

“Religious grounds, Kevin?” says I.

“Political,” says he.

“Then, Kevin,” says I, “may the Lord ha’ mercy on Kevin McFee Fourteenth, for I shall not, unless I find him insane. What sort of lad is he?”

“He’s twinty-two years old and the livin’ image of me at his age.”

I give a groan, for I knew then I had me work cut out for me. To mold an unwilling McFee into a sojer would be like tryin’ to flatten a bar of cold steel in a washringer.

At retreat that night I noticed a new face at the head of the first section, and faith I had small difficulty recognizing the shtranger. As I passed him to take me place front and center, he give me a look like a belligerent billy goat and me heart sank into me boots. Afther retreat my top, a man be the name of Moody, come up to me.

“Sir,” says he, “we have two of them now.”

“I’ll have the battalion surgeon ordher the ould one to hospital tonight for observation as to his mental condition, sergeant,” says I. “We’ll see no more of that lad. As for this new man, McFee, him will we keep, come hell or high wather. His father, Captain McFee, give him to us, and we cannot very well look a gift recruit in the mouth.”

The poor top sighed. “I noticed when he come to us he had no rifle, so I took him to the supply sergeant to get him one. Divil a rifle would he accept. He told me plain ’twas no part of his plan to kill people that had never done him a day’s harm. I advised him to try no shennanigans until afther his conference with you, sir. Here he is now, sir.”

He come briskly up to me and stood with his legs apart without saluting, and looked me over as cool as a cucumber. “I want to talk with you,” says he.

I looked through him and beyond him to the top and says I to Moody: “Sergeant Moody, who is this ill bred, ungainly, unmannerly and unsoldierly man?”

“This young person, sir, is Private Kevin McFee.”

“Evidently,” says I, “he has not been subjected to the elevatin’ influences of the recruit camp. He does not know that a bright, sprightly young man would, out of sheer self-respect, stand up like a man and not like a chimpanzee. He has, I perceive, a conscientious objection to saluting an officer, becuz he thinks he’s saluting the man and not the representative of the authority of the President and the dignity of his counthry, however misplaced that dignity and authority may be in the person of me poor self. Sure, sergeant, he must have come from the slums of a great city, that he says gruffly, ‘I want to speak with you,’ inshtead of addhressing me like a well bred man and saying, ‘Sir, will you accord me the privilege of an interview?’ How does he know I want to speak with him, even though he desires to speak with me? Begorry, I have some privileges, even if I am a captain. Has this person received permission from you to intherview his batthery commandher?”

“He has not, sir,” says Moody.

“Then until he learns how to secure an intherview, he shall have none. Meanwhile he should be taught the error of his ways. He has been rude and impolite to his batthery commandher and for that he should be taught otherwise. Sergeant Moody, I have a notion to rejuce that man, Kelleher, from chief mechanic, unless you know of some reason why he should be given one more chance to make good.”

“He’s no great shakes as a sojer, I’ll admit, sir,” says Moody, “but as a mechanic he knows his business. I’ll jack him up, sir, and see can I make him look neater.”

With that Moody give me his snappiest figure four, which I returned with equal snap, and the two of us went about our business, leaving young McFee starin’ afther us. But not for long. Before I was fairly out of the batthery shtreet—and God knows I all but ran, so anxious was I not to be a witness to what I knew was about to happen—Chief Mechanic Kelleher shtrolled up to Kevin McFee Fourteenth.

“Rook,” says he, “I observed your insultin’ and contimptuous attitude and the disrespectful note in your voice as ye addhressed the skipper. We regard Ould Peep Sight wit’ a deal of riverence here, me son,” says he, “so I’ll throuble you, me man, to change your chune or take the consequences.”

“Indeed!” says Kevin McFee Fourteenth—the top told me about it later. “And what may these pifflin’ consequences be if I refuse?”

“A polite invitation to fight me with skin gloves,” says Kelleher. “In civil life I’m known as Rawhide Kelleher. I’ve always fought out of me class.”

“I believe you,” says McFee. “I’m ten pounds lighter nor you, if I’m an ounce. And now, Chief Mechanic Rawhide Kelleher, if I make no mistake you’re the captain’s official executioner. Rawhide is it, eh? Well, my cocky cockatoo, I’m going to give you the rawhidin’ of your young life,” and with that he give Kelleher a shtraight left that tur’rned him round twice. As poor Kelleher faced him the second time, both arms hangin’ helpless at his side, our conscientious objector shtuck his hands in his pockets in a most unsoldierly manner and stared at him. “You can assimilate a wallop,” says he. “No man not tougher nor rawhide could have walked away with that one. I believe you’re good. I believe, further, that I’m goin’ to enjoy this. I’ll wait for you, darlint, till your poor head clears.”

He did. Kelleher had an iron jaw and he cleared at the count of nine and come in to clinch. Kevin McFee Fourteenth walked around him peckin’ him to pieces with his long left and keepin’ clear. Ochone, the terrible dhrubbin’ he give me official executioner! He made a shambles of him and then, tiring of this sport, he knocked him out. Turnin’ to the batthery which had gathered for the great sight, he bowed low all around the circle. “The king is dead,” says he. “Long live the king. Gangway,” says he, “for combat throops,” and with that he shoved his way through the crowd and went to wash his hands.

Moody come running to me with the terrible tidings. “We’re licked, sir,” says he. “In God’s name, sir, let us lose him somehow! We’ll never conquer that laddybuck.”

“Oh ye of little faith!” says I. “Why, ye omadhaun, Moody, don’t ye see we’re just beginning to win? The man’s got character. He’ll fight for a cause worth while. Slow and aisy does it, Moody. While there’s life there’s hope. I fear, Sergeant Moody, a diplomat is something ye’ll never be.”

Poor Moody! He sighed and wint away, whilst I lighted me pipe and sat down to contimplate the situation. I was interrupted in me meditations be a scratch at the canvas of me tint. “Come!” says I and in shtepped Private McFee. He clicked his heels together, give me the best salute he knew how and says, “I have permission from the first sergeant to speak to the batthery commandher.” The words come from him like they’d been wrung out of his mouth.

“Very well, Private McFee,” says I. “And in view of the fact that our intherview may be a bit dhrawn out, suppose you quit bein’ military, which is not to your taste, and sit down and talk to me.”

“Thank you, sir,” says he, evidently much surprised.

“That was a rare dhressin’ down ye gave Rawhide Kelleher, Private McFee,” says I. “I’m proud of ye. Where did ye learn to fight like that?”

“In an athletic club, sir,” says he. “It’s none of my business, sir, but may I ask what’s to become of Rawhide Kelleher?”

“I’m going to bust him to private and make him fight his way back. Do not preen yerself on your bright work, me son. Kelleher has been A. W. O. L. for a week and he’s been drunk. He expects to be kilt in France and he’s been celebrating his last week in the United States. Fear not, me brave lad. ’Tis well whipped ye’ll be before ould age descinds upon you.”

He looked a bit serious. Then: “I’ll take on all comers, sir.”

“Why do you address me as ‘sir,’ McFee?”

“Because I respect you, sir.”

“I taught you to respect me, did I not, McFee?”

“You did, sir.”

“Then, me son, I’ll teach you to respect yourself. Did you ever hear tell of me?”

“I did not, sir.”

“I was a buck private with your father before Santiago. I saved his life—not that I’m bragging about that, but he remimbers it. Lad, what have ye got agin sojerin’?”

“War is cruel, stupid, barbarous and unnecessary and I decline to be stupid, cruel and barbarous,” says he. “Moreover, the commandment says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’—and I’ll be damned if I’ll kill.”

“I agree with you, Kevin McFee. War is all of that, but until we learn how to settle our difficulties by peaceful means we’ll have to fight. And when the question is up for settlemint, is it not a case of eat or be eaten?”

“I prefer to be eaten,” says he. “I will not have my individualism destroyed.”

I smiled at the bhoy. “If I let you get away with this theory, Kevin, lad,” says I, “me authority over the other men of the batthery would be deshtroyed, the sedition might run to the other battheries of the regimint, through the brigade, through our division, through whole army corps. You have an ideal and you are prepared to fight for it——”

“I am prepared to die for it,” says he.

“And well I know it, and damnation to you. I know your kind. But I also have an ideal, and these three rows of ribbons are proof that I have tried frequently to die for it. I am prepared to fight for my ideal, and the fight between us will be to a finish.”

“I’ll rot in a military prison——”

“You’ll not. I’ll never report you for disobedience of orders. I’ll never complain that you’re a conscientious objector. Private McFee, I wash me own dirty linen and I do it in the batthery shtreet, not in the colonel’s office. Ours is a heavy artillery outfit and each batthery has a hundred and eighty-nine rifles. Why not save woe and pain to all of us, includin’ your father, by carrying one of those rifles and goin’ through the motions of sojerin’? Come now, lad, be a bit decent and help us out. I have no wish to indulge in a finish fight with you.”

“I have my code,” says he. “I cannot violate it, sir.”

“The interview is at an end,” says I. “I bear ye no ill will, but for the sake of the father that sired ye, your will I make or break or die tryin’.”

“I like plain talk, sir. At least we undhershtand each other.” He stood up, snapped into it and left me. I summoned Moody.

“Pass the word that life is to be hell with the lid off for Private McFee,” says I.

It was. He refused to roll out that last night at a fire call, so somebody shtole his marchin’ shoes and the supply sergeant wouldn’t issue him a new pair in the morning, claimin’ quite truthfully that all of his exthra equipment had been boxed and shipped. So Kevin McFee stepped forth into the morning in his bare feet, and when he refused to shtand in line for reveille roll call, somebody else shtole his mess kit and nobody would loan him another. In consequence he got no breakfast and I declined to permit him to ride to the train in an escort wagon. So he refused to march and I tied him behind the escort wagon. His father, at the head of B Batthery, saw him goin’ by, saw him standin’ hitched to the tail of the escort wagon whilst it was unloaded at the baggage car.

When I’d loaded me throops I come to him. “Will ye give me your word of honor ye will not desert if I do not put a leg iron on you, McFee?” says I.

“I’ll desert if I get the chance.”

“Ye’re truthful at any rate,” says I, and untied him, whilst Moody slipped the leg irons on him and hustled him aboard. For four days on that throop train he did not ask for food or a mess kit to get it with, so nobody gave him any. He helped himself to water from his own canteen until he foolishly detached it from his belt in order to lie down, when somebody shtole it, and poor Kevin was half dead with thirst when I marched him, barefooted, from the railroad yards at Weehawken, New Jersey, aboard a ferry-boat that took us down to Long Island City. The pavement in Long Island City was hotter nor the hobs of hell as he marched to the train. When he got out of the train at Camp Mills and stood, weavin’ in line, his poor father come up to him.

“Son,” says he, “for the sake of the honor of our house—for the sake of any love and respect you bear your mother—go through like a man.”

Young Kevin looked at him. “Father,” says he, “it takes a man to go through what I’m going through.” His tongue was thick with thirst and he trembled with weakness.

“It does indeed, Private McFee,” says I. “For your own queer cause you’re a gallant sojer bhoy. Here, take a pull at my canteen.”

His father shtruck it from me hand, and I stretched Kevin McFee Thirteenth in the grass with a right-hand blow to the chin. “This man belongs to me, Captain McFee,” says I, “and I will have no interference by an outsider in the internal administration of my command. Son, have a pull at the canteen.”

He dhrained it and handed it back to me with a twisted smile. “So ye reserve the right to abuse me yourself but deny it to others, sir,” says he.

I thrilled at the “sir.” “Private McFee, me lad,” says I, “any captain who doesn’t do that is unworthy to command men.”

“And in the pursuit of your code ye have not hesitated to be unmilitary, for ye have shtruck my father, who is a captain, and that in the presence of enlisted men. And my father is your friend.”

“The enlisted men would have lost respect for me had I done less. As for your father, he is a man and knows the code. He is shtill my friend. Supply Sergeant Cordano, hand me one of two things—your chevrons or a pair of brogues for this lad.”

Cordano come through with the marchin’ shoes and a pair of clean socks for good measure. God knows where he got them and I did not ask.

“Mess Sergeant Henderson,” says I, and the mess sergeant shtepped up and snapped into it. “Have ye by any chance some spare rations in your haversack, sergeant?” says I.

“I have, sir,” says Henderson and dug up two ham sandwiches. I took them and give them to Kevin McFee Fourteenth, and he ate them quietly with his divilish round blue number twelve fanatic’s eyes on me whilst he ate. “Sit down, Kevin lad,” says I, and at a sign from me Rawhide Kelleher set his pack down and Private McFee subsided on it with a sigh. Me own shtriker was beside me, so says I to him, “Put this lad’s socks and marchin’ shoes on him and show him how to roll a spiral puttee.”

’Twas done, with the batthery lookin’ on and Kevin McFee Fourteenth munchin’ his ham sandwich and never takin’ his queer eye off me the while, although once he looked at Rawhide Kelleher. And when they’d done with him he shtood up and smiled.

“I feel better now,” says he.

“There’s a motor lorry, son,” says I. “It carries our spare baggage up to camp. Ye have my permission to ride up on it.”

“I am no weakling, sir,” says he. “I’ll march and be damned to ye.”

“Ye are impudint, me friend,” says Rawhide Kelleher and slapped him a backhand slap across the mouth. “The captain is respected here.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” says McFee, shtaggerin’ where he shtood. “Don’t you love him a bit too?”

“We do,” says Kelleher. “You’re the only man in this outfit that does not.”

“Ye lie!” says Kevin McFee Fourteenth. “I love him and I respect him.”

“Kelleher,” says I, “hold over your head till he hits you.”

Kelleher dhropped his hands and held his homely mug up for the smash. It came and the blood flew in big drops. What with his weakened condition, McFee’s blows did not stagger Kelleher, but for all that they stung him cruel. But he did not flinch and Private McFee dropped his hands and looked at the man.

“He’ll take all you have to give for my sake, McFee,” says I. “Go to it. Kelleher represents the batthery spirit. All for the skipper, because they know he’s all for them. That’s sojerin’, me son; that’s what makes men out of bums and saves decent people from savages. Kelleher has conquered himself; he can glory in the sacrifice of himself for what he believes in—and that’s discipline and obedience to the expressed desires of the majority of his people. Kelleher hates war. He thinks it’s cruel and barbarous and stupid and he thinks it’s a great imposition on him to have to go sojerin’; if ever he goes into action he’ll go with his heart in his mouth and his two knees knockin’ together and a prayer on his lips. But—he’ll go! Come, Kevin, avic, you’re breakin’ the heart of me, that you are. Kelleher, lad, go in the lorry but give your pack and your rifle to McFee. Sergeant Cordano, show McFee how to fasten that pack to his back.”

We put the pack on the back of Kevin McFee Fourteenth and shoved a rifle into his hands.

“Batthery! Fall in!” says I, and in a minute they were lined up, right dressed, fours counted, given front and reported to me. Kevin McFee was not in ranks. He stood where we had left him, looking about him curiously. “Rest!” says I to the batthery—and waited, whilst Kevin thought it over.

And then he come! “The captain will have to make them count fours all over again,” he says as he passes me by on his way to the big fours at the head of the line.

“Gangway for combat troops!” roars Kelleher, “He’s a big man. Give him number one in the first squad, front rank. Gangway for a sojer!”

Kevin McFee Fourteenth shlipped into his place and ould Moody, the top, looked him over with a smilin’ eye. “Batthery! Attention!” barks the top. “This batthery had to be re-formed—and it was. It must be re-formed again, now that there are nine men in the first squad. Front rank! Give way to the left one file. Halt! Count fours! I said ‘Count fours!’ Speak up, McFee! Where do you think you are? In a young ladies’ seminary?”

“One!” roars McFee like a bull of Basham, and the chorus of “One, two, three, four—one, two, three, four,” ran down the batthery front. Old Moody about faced, saluted and reported:

“Sir, at last the batthery is present and accounted for.”

“Post!” says I, and old Moody made a right face, paused for a second and then shtepped out, with his ould back as shtiff as a ramrod. Arrah, but he was a sojer man, that lad!

“It is the custom in this batthery,” says I, addhressing me command, “to have men who have been disobedient or disrespectful or who have committed acts calculated to bring discredit on the fair name of the batthery, paraded before the batthery and given their preliminary examination by the batthery commandher. Private Kelleher, front and center!”

Kelleher hopped down from the lorry, marched down the front of the batthery and come up, front and center, whilst I give the batthery “At ease!”

“Private Kelleher,” says I, “before we left our thrainin’ camp you were A. W. O. L. for a week and returned to camp dhrunk and disorderly, all in defiance of ordhers and greatly to the prejudice of good conduct and milit’ry discipline. I caught you at it, Kelleher. Are you guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty, sir,” says Kelleher.

“Will you take such punishment as I care to give you, or would a summary court suit you betther?”

“I’ll take what the captain gives me and that same gladly,” says Kelleher.

“Bad luck to ye if ye didn’t, Kelleher,” says I. “Here’s what I’ll give ye,” and with that I handed him back his chevrons as chief mechanic, a job he was proud of. “Go back to the lorry,” says I.

“If the captain has no decided objection, I’ll borrow his handkerchief to wipe me bloody mug,” says Kelleher, “and afther that I’ll march in line of file closers. Me head has cleared wondherfully.”

So I give him a clean handkerchief—bad cess to him, he never gave it back—and dismissed him. Then says I, “Private McFee, front and center!”

Out shteps me poor misguided Kevin front and center. “Private McFee, ’tis common knowledge that ye have been mutinous, rebellious, disobedient and disrespectful to your batthery commander. Are ye guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty, sir,” says Private McFee, “and I’ll take what you give me and that same cheerfully, although in doing so I beg to call to the captain’s attintion, with all respect, the fact that I never whimpered or asked for quarter. I surrendhered of me own free will because it come to me, with a lump in me throat, that me policy was wrong and foolish and crazy. Neither you, sir, nor all the Ryans and Kellehers and McFees could have forced me to do it if I didn’t want to do it with a glad free heart, and to hell with you if you don’t like my plain speakin’, sir.”

“That’ll do you, McFee,” says I, in me best orderly room voice. “I’ll overlook your impudence and admonish ye this time, but have a care would I find you before me again. I’m a quiet man to get along with until I’m aroused—and then I’m hard-boiled and ’tis well for you you’ve found that out. Shtill, with all your faults—and they are many—you’re a mighty fine sojer and tonight at retreat you’ll be a private first-class. Here, you fool, I’ve been carryin’ these for you ever since your father give you to me to bust”—and with that I handed him the chevrons of a private first-class. “Post! And see can you keep your nose clean hereafter, kid.”

He blushed rosy red, give me a rifle salute—though God knows who’d taught him how to do that—about faced as he’d seen the top do, fell in a heap because he didn’t know how to do it and was weaker nor a cat into the bargain, picked himself up and shtaggered to his place in ranks.

“Now, thin,” says I, addhressin’ the batthery, “whilst I have a sneakin’ idjea that Private McFee is amply able to defind himself agin any blackguardly referinces to his notorious past, I’ll add a bit of advice for the forgetful to paste in their overseas caps. If I ever, by word, sign, deed or glance, get the idjea in my head that somebody has remembered this day and the days that have gone before, I’ll make hell look like a summer holiday to that man.” And I glared at thim. What did they do, say you? Well, I’d forgot to put them at attintion before I spoke, so they all grinned at me, God bless them.

“Attintion!” says I. “Squads right! Ho-o-o-o!” and away we went to the embarkation camp. And that was the last of Kevin McFee’s conscientious objections and the last of my conscientious objectors, for I was never blessed with another.

“But what became of him?” I ventured.

“Ah, the poor gossoon! The Boches put a box barrage around us one night and filled in the chinks with mustard and phosgene. I got the gun crews out in time with only moderate losses, but Chief Mechanic Kelleher, who had been up doin’ some work on number three gun, got hit in the leg with a fragment of H. E. and fell undher the gun. McFee saw him fall and knew he hadn’t his gas mask on, so when the gas shells commenced falling what does the lunatic do but take a mask off a dead man and go back through the barrage for Kelleher. He put a tourniquet on Kelleher’s ruined leg and got the gas mask on him, and when the barrage lifted he came out from undher the gun and carried Kelleher down to the dressing station. But ’twas too late. They’d both rolled in the mustard and next day they both went west with third degree burns.

“Kevin McFee Thirteenth got the medal of honor his son won in action, and last year, when the ould man died of the flu, sure he remimbered me in his will. The war was over and I, who had gone up to lieutenant-colonel, was back again to first sergeant, where I’d come from. Kevin McFee’s will established a trust fund for me ‘for favors done to the house of McFee,’ and sure ’tis the happy ould sojer I am, with a nice bit in bank for ready shpendin’ and five hundred a month from the McFee trust fund.

“Arrah, they were a queer lot, those McFees, and I never pretinded to undhershtand them!”

CHAPTER II
The Bluebird

Peep Sight was the battery commander and Cahalan was one of the very newest recruits in B Battery. He had just arrived with eight others from the recruit camp. Peep Sight, so called by his men because no ordnance hole was so small that he could not look through it and see dirt, had the recruits paraded before his tent immediately; for if there was one thing Peep Sight was more interested in than his own ultimate salvation, it was his battery. He wanted good men and had to have them; consequently when the personnel officer sent him recruits he could not rest until he had interviewed them one by one and satisfied himself of their quality.

If they were good men, he rejoiced. If they were indifferent men or poor men, Peep Sight would tell them that although he expected little of them for the present, in a month’s time he would expect much; if he did not get it somebody would have to tell him why. In a word, Peep Sight was a regular army man who knew all about soldiering and soldiers.

Peep Sight sat behind the home-made desk in the orderly tent, with his first sergeant, Grasby, at its entrance. The recruits stood at ease, in squad formation, just outside in the battery street. Their virginal service records lay before the battery commander.

“Well, sergeant,” said Peep Sight hopefully, “we’ll look them over and see what God has sent us. I suppose, for our sins, we’ll not find a farmer’s boy in the lot. Send Pelinsky in.”

Peep Sight, like all artillery officers, yearned for recruits who knew good hay when they saw it. Farmers’ boys are generally valuable to a battery. They are sound in wind and limb, sensible, amenable to discipline, cheerful under hardships, and (for this their welcome is three-fold)—they know horses!

“Pelinsky!” Sergeant Grasby barked.

Recruit Pelinsky lifted his head sullenly and scuffed up to the first sergeant. “Present yourself before the Captain’s desk and say: ‘Private Pelinsky reports to the Captain,’ ” Grasby instructed him. “Do not say it, however, until you have first come to attention and saluted. Understand? The rest of you men do the same when your names are called.”

“We learned all that in the recruit camp, sarge,” Private Pelinsky piped up.

“Shut up, you fool Bohunk,” one of the remaining eight growled softly, but not so softly that Sergeant Grasby did not hear him. He cast a cold but understanding and approving eye upon the speaker.

“Perhaps you did,” Grasby answered Pelinsky. “However, I don’t know how well you learned it, so you do it now where I can see you do it. I suppose they taught you also in the recruit camp to address a first sergeant as sarge! Well, right here and now, you unlearn it. I’m Sergeant Grasby, and don’t you ever call me Gras, or Grasby or sarge. You give me all of it—Sergeant Grasby. Understand?”

Pelinsky favored the top with a defiant and unfriendly glance and stepped into the tent. Before the Captain’s desk he came stiffly to attention, saluted raggedly and said: “Private Pelinsky, sir.”

Peep Sight looked at the man in friendly fashion and returned his salute. “We might as well start making a soldier out of you here and now, Private Pelinsky,” he declared, impersonally. “In the army there’s only one way to do a thing and in this battery it’s done better than that. We’ll rehearse this scene just once more and see if you can do it the way Sergeant Grasby told you to. Go back and make a new entrance.”

Sergeant Grasby repeated his instructions and this time Pelinsky performed correctly albeit reluctantly. Peep Sight had already digested the meager information anent Pelinsky which the latter’s service record furnished, but what he wanted was information that had to do with a recent civilian named Pelinsky.

“In civil life, Pelinsky, you were a musician. That’s fine. We haven’t enough musicians in the service as it is. What instrument did you play?”

“The violin.”

“The violin, sir.” This from First Sergeant Grasby. His business was molding civilians into soldiers and he never neglected it, wherefore Peep Sight and the Battery revered and respected him. Like Peep Sight he was a devil—a ten minute egg; but he was just and he knew his trade. Pridefully the men said of Grasby that he was the best top in the regiment.

The hard, recalcitrant shell of Pelinsky’s Polish temperament cracked minutely, “The violin, sir,” he repeated.

“Can you double in brass?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s fine, Pelinsky. Now we will not lose you to the band. We want you with us, Pelinsky—with B Battery. Did you bring your fiddle with you, by any chance?”

“No, sir. I didn’t think it would be allowed.”

“It wouldn’t—if you were a fiddler. However, something tells me you’re a violinist.”

“I was first violin with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, sir.”

“Good man! Sergeant Grasby, did you hear that? Private Pelinsky, I wish you’d do something for me. Send for your jolly old fiddle, and I’ll pay for the expressage and insurance out of the battery fund.”

Private Pelinsky expanded like a pouter pigeon. “Certainly, sir.”

“One more thing, Private Pelinsky. In the field artillery a man is called upon to do considerable manual labor. There are horses to groom, bedding and manure to fork out of the picket line, gun emplacements to be dug, and, when we get to France, thousands of shells to be loaded, unloaded and passed to the guns. Do you realize what that’s going to do to the late first violin of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra?”

Private Pelinsky blanched. “My hands—my fingers!” he quavered.

“Exactly. Now, then, Pelinsky, the supply sergeant is going to stake you to a bugle. You learn to blow that bugle and learn it in a hurry because one of the things this battery is weak on is its field music. Then I want you to organize a jazz orchestra for this battery. We have one slide trombone artist, a good banjo player, an Italian that can make an accordion weep, a very fair boy with the drums—and your artistic self. That’s the only way you can save your hands and keep in practise, and nobody will grouch because you never swing a pick and shovel or groom a horse. They’ll be grateful to you for your entertainment. How about it, Pelinsky?”

“Thank you very much, Captain!” said Private Pelinsky enthusiastically. “I had thought the army was going to be a mighty hard proposition, but I—I feel better about it now, sir.”

“If you ever feel badly about it, I’ll feel worse.” He dismissed Pelinsky with a tiny nod and a friendly little smile.

“Send in Private Cahalan,” came Peep Sight’s firm, precise order.

“Cahalan, front and center,” Grasby charged. Cahalan stepped out of the ranks and up into the orderly tent with the stride of one who had stepped into orderly tents before. He stood to attention before Peep Sight’s desk without appearing to make a ceremony of it; his hand came up in a perfect salute—and stayed there. Peep Sight looked him over with frank approval and then scanned the man’s record again.

“You’re a bluebird, Cahalan—a repeater,” he accused, but Cahalan answered him not. He was still standing at the salute; he could not drop his hand until the Captain had returned to him this salutation of warriors.

Peep Sight returned his salute, a little bit embarrassed at having been reminded of his neglect, and Cahalan’s arm fell swiftly but naturally to his side. He replied now, to the Captain’s accusation—replied following a momentary pause during which Peep Sight saw him swallow once.

“The Captain is mistaken. I am not a repeater, sir—I have never been in the service before.”

“Nevertheless you talk the language of the line. You know what a bluebird is!” Peep Sight’s voice was pitched very low, now, so the other recruits outside in the battery street could not hear his colloquy with Cahalan. “And you certainly have many of the mannerisms of an old soldier. They aren’t always learned in the National Guard, you know.”

“I was a civilian packer in the quartermaster’s corrals for about five years, sir, so I suppose, in that way, I picked up a lot of soldier mannerisms.”

“Ah! So that explains it.”

“It doesn’t explain it to me, sir.” The terrible Grasby had spoken at Cahalan’s shoulder. “A mule-skinner’s a mule-skinner, first, last and always. Cahalan, you’re a bluebird!”

“I very greatly fear you are, Private Cahalan,” Peep Sight complained. “You might fool me once in a blue moon, but Sergeant Grasby would not be top cutter of my battery if you could fool him. You salute the way some old Irish drill-sergeant taught you to salute—in the old army, when soldiering was a trade. Today’s it’s a game played by enthusiastic boys who thumb the book of rules and over-play the game. Do you know horses—oh, of course you do. I see the President didn’t send for you! The old soldier in you couldn’t stand for that, of course. You beat the draft by enlisting so you might have your choice of service—you had to come back to the horses. Good man! Well, you do not have to explain, Cahalan. If we are all to be judged by the worst we do, Heaven is certainly going to be an abandoned post! This is a new war, Cahalan, and you’re starting from scratch. It’s all up to you. But I’ll not stand for any nonsense.”

“And damned well I know it, sir,” murmured Private Cahalan. “The outfit looks good to me, sir. I was a twenty-seven day red leg once, but I’ll give the Captain thirty-one days in every month. I’ll soldier up to the handle.”

Peep Sight was re-reading the service record. “ ‘Age thirty-eight, weight one hundred and seventy-eight, height six feet, hair brown, eyes blue, No. 6, father and mother born in the United States, previous military service none, occupation cowboy’—and I hope to tell you, Sergeant Grasby, he has enough identifying scars to cover an entire squad. What ribbons would you be entitled to, Cahalan.”

“He’s entitled to the same ribbons you’re wearing, sir,” Sergeant Grasby answered for him. “I soldiered with this man in Cuba and later I met him in the Philippines. His right name is Gene Paddock and he won a certificate of merit at Peking, so he has the Spanish War and Filipino Insurrection medals, the Boxer Campaign medal, the medal for patriotism, fortitude and loyalty and the distinguished service cross.” He smiled at the bluebird. “Old timers can trade their certificates of merit for the distinguished service cross now-a-days, Gene.”

The bluebird’s No. 6 blue eyes blazed furiously. “Yes, I’m Gene Paddock,” he admitted, “and in about a minute I’ll tell you who you are. I haven’t seen you for sixteen years and you wore a mustache then, but—your name isn’t Grasby!” He turned to Peep Sight. “The Captain will have to have a cage to keep his bluebirds in if he sees when he’s supposed to be blind.”

Peep Sight chuckled. “Oh, I don’t mind a few bluebirds, Cahalan. Grasby isn’t his name, and I know it. He told me all about himself the day I made him top sergeant; he wouldn’t hold the job under false pretenses. Cahalan, what prison did they put you in first?”

“Bilibid, sir.”

“What a hole that was in the old days! What did the general court-martial give you?”

“Three years and a bob, sir, with forfeiture of all pay and allowances. I’d rather have faced a firing squad than Bilibid. There wasn’t much left of me when they turned me out. I had amebic dysentery and confluent smallpox there, and the day they turned me loose I contracted cholera. But I’m a good man yet! Of course, you can get me for fraudulent enlistment and give me another bobtail, but if you do, sir, I could take your fine first sergeant with me!”

“You win, Cahalan. That’s your new army name and you might as well get used to it. Of course, as Gene Paddock, a dishonorably discharged soldier, your country denies you the right to fight for it, but as Andrew Cahalan you may die for the flag and be damned to you—provided they didn’t bobtail you for wilful murder or theft?”

“I’d had a dozen summary courts before they sent me up to a general court,” Cahalan admitted bravely. “I was charged with being drunk and asleep on outpost. I was guilty as hell and I told them so, to save trouble. Then I asked them to give me one more chance, but they said I’d had too many already. I told them I couldn’t help it—that I was a beno fiend. Sabe beno usted, mi capitan?

“I asked to be sent to a post in the United States where I couldn’t buy beno. I asked them to give me the limit, but not to bobtail me, because I couldn’t go home if they snipped the character off my discharge papers. I had to have service honest and faithful, character good, because—well, because I had the kind of a mother I couldn’t face with a dishonorable discharge.

“I truly meant to soldier up to the handle then, because—well, sir, you see I’d slept on post and some of Montenegro’s men crossed the rice paddies and got by me. They lit into the sleeping main guard with bolos—and—it—it was pretty terrible, sir.” His voice grew husky. “I killed my bunkie, and, good God, sir, I’d have died for him! They chopped him, I tell you, but I killed him! They gave me the limit. I deserved it, but the company commander deserved something too, because he permitted the sergeant of the guard to put a beno fiend on outpost. I was nervous and jumpy, I was seeing things out there in the dark bosky, with the rain drops pattering on the banana leaves—I had some beno in my canteen and I took a few nips to steady me.

“Well, I deserved what I got, sir, but for God’s sake let me stay here now. I haven’t taken a drink since I looked on my bunkie—and they’d chopped him, sir . . . I couldn’t go home—and tell my mother that! . . . Do I look like a drinking man, sir? All I ask is one more chance. I’ll soldier up to the handle, sir, and I’m a good lead driver—I’ve got to go to this war——”

His voice died away to a husky whisper and ceased. The tears coursed down his face and he wiped them away with the heel of his fist. Peep Sight carefully unpinned from his breast the bar with the five ribbons and handed them to the top, who pinned them on the bluebird’s left breast.

“You’re out of your cage, Bluebird,” said Peep Sight then. “We old soldiers have got to stick together. You see, Cahalan, the trouble with you was that in your day the army didn’t use as much common sense as it does now. Nowadays we study our men; we even hand out different punishments for the same offense; we set men to the job they do best. We have morale officers.

“Take that man Pelinsky, for instance. He’s a Polish Jew, drafted into a war he isn’t remotely interested in. All he thinks of is his music. It would be a shame to have him killed, because he’ll never, never be a real soldier. So I’ve started Pelinsky right. Watch for the battery orchestra he’ll organize and lead!

“In your day, Cahalan, low-grade or waste personnel went to the pen. ‘Bobtail him and get rid of him’ was the motto then. Nowadays we send them to a disciplinary barracks, and give them a chance to come back and earn an honorable discharge. You are perfectly right about the culpability of your company commander, Cahalan. He should have protected you from yourself and he should have protected his command from you. . . . Well, this new army of ours is different from anything you or I ever knew before, and the old hands are pathetically scarce.

“I’m having a terrible time to get good non-commissioned officers. They’re not made in a day or a month or a year, you know. It requires a couple of campaigns and a full enlistment, at least, to make a good non-com—and they’re forcing commissions on the good ones now. You may come out of this war a colonel, if you have it in you! I was a top sergeant six months ago.”

“I couldn’t accept a commission, sir. As an officer and a gentleman, I couldn’t lie, and if I did lie for a commission I’d always be afraid somebody would recognize me—and then!” He looked wistfully at Grasby. “The best I can hope to be is top sergeant—if I outlive Sergeant Grasby. I’ll be happy wearing a red hat cord and riding with the limbers.” He paused and added in a lower voice: “When I first enlisted I was fresh off a farm, but I drove lead on No. 1 piece of Capron’s battery at Santiago.”

“Good work, Cahalan!” said the Captain. “Capron’s battery! Those were great days in the field artillery—when the battery went down into history as Reilly’s battery, Capron’s battery, Scott’s battery, Dyer’s battery, Kenley’s battery—I drove lead on No. 1 piece myself, with Kenley at Zapote river. I too was a rookie then, fresh off a farm. We had mules in those days. The center span of the bridge was wooden and they fired it when they saw us coming down the Calle Real. Old Johnny Clark was my section chief, riding boot to boot with me—because I was afraid—I wasn’t quite eighteen at the time—and how the pressure of old Johnny’s knee did help! And he talked to me! We didn’t have any overs and shorts—just rifle fire! We swung in on the front pier of the bridge, action left, and I swear the heat of that blazing bridge curled old Johnny’s whiskers. ‘I’ll make a red leg out of you yet, kid,’ says old Johnny, and fell off his horse as dead as a mackerel. The animal ran along beside me and I had to swing the limber wide to clear Johnny. Mighty near slid into the river doing it. If Johnny had been alive to see it he’d have rawhided me, good and plenty.”

The Bluebird’s eyes were very wistful as he listened to this talk of a life he had lived and loved and cast away. That’s why he was a bluebird—back to the army again, in search of happiness.

“I drove wheel, sir,” he said, “with a matched team of half-bred Percherons in Reilly’s battery—Bob and Babe. They weighed about fourteen hundred and were a dark brown——”

“I’ll bet they were good,” Peep Sight interrupted. “I never knew a dark brown that wasn’t good.”

“Babe and Bob should have been made privates, first class, sir. Sweet tempered, sensible, willing and, man, how they could pull! At Peking just as we were going into position a direct hit dropped on our section. It smashed up the lead swung gun teams and killed their drivers, but Babe and Bob and I didn’t get touched. The gun corporal got his, too, and likewise the section chief—I hope to tell you, sir, that was a mess. Old Babe and Bob stood quiet when I spoke to them and patted them on their necks, but they were afraid. Both of ’em started to sweat at once. Well, sir, we had a crew of rookie cannoneers on that piece and they beat it for a ditch across the road, which left the job up to Babe and Bob and me.

“Sir, those two animals stood without holding while I got down and unhooked the swing team. Then I killed all four, because I saw none of them would ever go into draft again and they were all screaming with their hurts. And while the platoon commander routed the rooks out of the ditch and brought them up afoot I mounted up on old Bob and we got going again. Sir, those two animals dragged that piece across a cornfield, doing the work of six, and I had to keep them rolling because if we’d ever stopped, the piece would have bogged in that soft ground and we’d never have got going again.”

“Is that where you won your certificate of merit?”

“Yes, sir, they gave me all the credit that belonged to Babe and Bob.”

Peep Sight looked upon the Bluebird with prideful eyes. “Cahalan, we’ve got to get the spirit of the field artillery into these recruits,” he declared.

“We’ve got to teach them to keep the Caissons Rolling Along,” the Bluebird agreed, and grinned.

“Hell’s bells,” cried Peep Sight, “there are only two men left in the battery who ever heard that song and can remember more than half a dozen of the eighty-five verses. I tell you, Cahalan, the old army’s gone.”

“Oh, there’s a piece of it left, sir. I know every verse of the eighty-five. The Captain and the top cutter are too busy to organize a glee club, but I’ll ‘tend to it. I’ll have these red legs singing Caissons Rolling Along before taps tonight.”

“Good man!” said Peep Sight, and dismissed the Bluebird by some hocus pocus all his own. He said nothing, he looked nothing; it seemed that he was prepared to talk for an hour. Nevertheless the Bluebird knew the interview was over.

“I thank the Captain,” he murmured. “The Captain has been very kind to me and I shall not forget it.”

He “snapped into it,” but not after the manner of a wooden soldier, made his about face without tripping over his own feet and retired from the orderly tent.

“Next man!” Peep Sight was addressing the first sergeant.

“Hanrahan!” barked the top. Then to Peep Sight: “City Irish, rough and tough, sir.”

“Ah, but he knows horses,” Peep Sight murmured. “The Irish always do, and if they do not they’re eager to learn. . . . How do you do, Private Hanrahan? Welcome to B Battery. I see, by your service record, that in civil life you were a laborer?”

“Yes, sir, I was, sir.”

“He lies like hell, sir.” The Bluebird, having passed Hanrahan as the latter entered, had paused just outside the tent and was looking back at Peep Sight. “Hanrahan told me in the recruit camp, sir, that he was a horseshoer, but had given his trade to the draft board as laborer. He said he’d been shoeing horses ten years in civil life and he’d be damned if he’d shoe them in the army.”

“Hanrahan, you’ll shoe horses in B Battery,” Peep Sight cried joyously. Then: “Dismiss the recruits. There goes first call for retreat.”

Sergeant Grasby stepped into the battery street and sounded his whistle, while Peep Sight sat in at the battery typewriter and wrote two brief letters, in duplicate, one of which he signed; with both letters in his hand he fled for the adjutant’s office. He reappeared in the battery street presently and handed a sheet of paper to Grasby, just as the bugles sounded “Assembly.”

“Recruits, with the exception of Cahalan, fall in for retreat in line of file-closers. Cahalan, fall in with the first section.” Grasby “dressed” the battery, and in a precise, yet deliberate, old soldier manner, took his position, facing the command. “ ‘Tenshun to orders!” he barked, and read:

Sergeant Grasby always grew very weary when reading the names and titles of the two individuals responsible for regimental orders and mouthed and mumbled them in his hurry to finish reading and call the rolls.

After the rolls had been called and all the section chiefs had reported, there ensued a brief wait, while the men stood at ease, before Peep Sight sang out: “ ‘Tenshun-n-n-n! Parade-e-e! Rest!”

The Bluebird came to a parade as naturally, as automatically, as if days instead of years had passed since he did it before. Then the field music sounded Retreat, and the Bluebird made a mental note of the fact that the entire regiment was weak on buglers. . . . Peep Sight’s voice reached him again.

“ ‘Tenshun-n-n!”

The band played the national anthem, and from where he stood the Bluebird saw the flag on the pole at division headquarters come fluttering down to the soldier hands that caught it reverently lest it touch the dust of the parade ground.

As a boy, when he drove the lead team on No. 1 gun of Capron’s battery into action at San Juan Hill, the Bluebird had been a sentimentalist. He could bear to miss any other call in the service, except Retreat, because Retreat never failed to thrill him, to make his heart beat a little faster and prouder in the knowledge that he was a participant in this lovely ceremony, this evening renewal of faith, this revival of a religion of loyalty. A homecoming, too, after a long sad absence, is bound to stir the emotions, and the Bluebird was home again—and still a sentimentalist. He wanted very much to weep, but he dared not, for he was a sergeant now, a chief of section.

When field artillery is firing on the target range the range is always policed by a mounted guard whose duty it is to see that no living thing wanders into the sector upon which the shells or shrapnel are falling. The range guard also repairs targets smashed by shell fire and extinguishes brush or grass fires caused by low bursts. Just off the limits of the sector, where it can be seen from the guns, a flagpole is always set up; when the range is clear a white flag floating from this pole indicates to the officer conducting fire that he may proceed to shoot the problem assigned to him; when, for any reason, the range may not be fired upon, a red flag indicates “Cease Firing.”

Sergeant Andy Cahalan, with eighteen mounted men, constituted the range guard assigned to continuous duty during the target practise of his regiment. Peep Sight had suggested him to the colonel as one who knew his business and would require no supervision.

The Bluebird was sensible today of a feeling of elation, for he was about to see, for the first time, something new in field artillery practise, to wit, a creeping barrage. In his day the word barrage had been unknown; fire had been direct with three point two’s at comparatively close ranges and practically all shrapnel had been used. Today the first battalion, using three inch guns and high explosive shell, was to search out every nook and cranny of the sector, advancing in fifty-yard leaps before an imaginary line of infantrymen following so close behind the barrage that casualties of approximately ten percent inevitably must result from the “shorts.”

A corporal rode to the sergeant’s side and reported the range clear in his half of the sector. Five minutes before another corporal had signaled “all clear” from the opposite half. After sweeping the entire sector with a field glass to verify the accuracy of these reports Cahalan half turned in his saddle and signaled to the two men at the flagpole to haul down the red flag and run up the white.

Three miles away twelve flashes announced the impending arrival of twelve shells. They came with a “whoosh,” bursting prettily upon impact in an irregular line of dirty white smoke balls.

Cahalan sat his horse far enough off the south line of the sector to be safe from shell fragments and watched the sheaf of fire jump across the plain, up and over a low hill, down into a little swale where mesquite trees grew thickly along a dry water course.

“Good work!” the Bluebird murmured. “Infantry or machine guns in that sector would certainly be out of luck. If we could have done it that way in ninety-eight and ninety-nine—Judas Priest! A woman! . . . Two more jumps of that barrage and they’ll get her! Oh, my God, where were my eyes?”

He turned toward the flagpole to signal the two privates in attendance there to haul down the white flag, for he knew that the instant the white flag commenced its descent the guns would cease firing, without waiting for the red flag to be run up. To his dismay he observed that the wind blowing across the range perpendicular to the line of fire had swept a film of smoke between the flagpole and the guns! What if the observers could not see the red flag through that pall of dirty white smoke?

“I can’t chance it. I haven’t time—I got to get to her!” the Bluebird muttered and spurred madly along the side of the hill, racing with the barrage.

As he rode he counted the first “arrivals” at a new range. Six salvos at that range and then the curtain of fire would lift and jump fifty yards . . . he spurred his mount with dull spurs, encouraging the animal with his voice, striking him smartly on the withers with his campaign hat. As he galloped by on the fringe of the barrage and bore gradually toward it, the shell fragments whistled closer and closer—the thought came to him that one slight error in the deflection of the gun on the right of the battalion line might cause a shell to burst in his path and then——

His horse grunted and quivered, but did not slacken his speed. The Bluebird had heard such grunts before, had felt that same piteous quiver under him; he knew his horse had been hit. When he was about seventy yards ahead of the center of impact of the barrage, he swung straight into the path of it—and then the range lifted and shells crashed in front of him, in back of him and over him. For a few seconds he was the center of impact, galloping between the overs and the shorts . . . Well, he had galloped between them before. . . . to hell with that. . . . If his name was on one of those shells he’d get it . . . if his name wasn’t on it he would win through.

Shells were crashing behind him and though the air was filled with shrieking, whistling metal, his horse thundered on. They were outrunning the barrage . . . they had to do a hundred yards before the next lift of that curtain of fire——

Up the dry water course his horse plunged wearily . . . before him, running, staggering, falling, getting up again, an old woman fled before the barrage . . . the Bluebird leaned from his saddle and scooped the frail old form off the ground and up before him on the horse’s neck. His mount grunted again at the double burden, but like a good soldier, continued to carry on, while the Bluebird held the strange burden in his arms and spurred madly. He was seventy-five yards ahead of the barrage when the next leap came and the “overs” broke upon the spot where he had picked up the old lady. Looking back he saw them and swore with relief; then he headed the horse to the south and was well off the fringe of the barrage when the range lifted again.

He walked his horse up the slope to the flagpole and passed the old lady to the two privates on duty there. Then he looked up. From the top of the pole the red flag floated, but the guns were ignoring it!

“I figured it wouldn’t do a bit of good to run up the ‘cease firing’ flag,” he informed his men. “I couldn’t take a chance that they’d see it—and it would have been my fault if the old lady had gone west. . . . Here, Dolan, spread my blanket first. . . . Now, then, set her down gently. Put my blouse under her head, Casinelli . . . I don’t think she’s hurt—just fainted with fright when I swept by and grabbed her without waiting to be introduced. . . .”

He dismounted to examine his horse and found a fragment of shell as big as a walnut imbedded in the muscle of the animal’s off quarter. “Pretty well spent when it reached you, old timer,” he remarked to the trembling beast. He pried the fragment out with his pocket knife and covered the wound with the gauze dressing from his own first-aid packet. “The vet’ll mark you quarters for a month or two, Tony, and then you’ll be all right again. Good old Tony horse! Sort o’ hard on the nerves, wasn’t it,” he soothed the trembling animal.

He rubbed his tanned face against Tony’s drooping head for a minute and then turned to the calico clad, gray-haired old woman, lying there so white and still.

As he supposed, she had not been hit. Dolan had poured some water from his canteen onto a clean handkerchief and was wetting the old brow tenderly.

“Sergeant, what do you suppose this old lady was doing down there,” he asked.

“I don’t know, son. All I know is that I’m the sergeant in command of this range guard and responsible for anything that goes wrong. So I rode down and got her out.”

“Do you have to tell Peep Sight how come you overlooked this old lady on the range?”

The Bluebird sighed. “I’ll have to tell him. Tony draws a wound stripe and it’s got to be explained.”

“You can tell him your horse ran away to the edge of the barrage, got hit and then came runnin’ back,” Casinelli suggested.

“A good red leg never lets his horse get away, my son, and lying to Peep Sight isn’t a job for me . . . the old lady is coming to . . .”

“Hello, mother,” he cried cheerily as her eyes opened slowly and gazed wonderingly about her. “You’re all right. You’re with the soldiers. You got in the way of our practise barrage and most scared me to death until I got you out. Buck up, mother, there’s nothing to be frightened about any more——”

His hard fingers patted the withered cheek and stroked the thin hair.

“And you rode down into—that, to save me?” she queried.

“Oh, that was no trick at all. You see, we fellows know how to get in and get out. That’s what an artilleryman is taught to do—to get in and get out and get over. Now, mother, tell me what under the canopy you were doing down in that bunch of mesquite?”

“I have a house there. It’s not big enough to be seen through the mesquite trees and they’re dusty and the same color as the roof, I suppose—I keep bees.”

“Oh, so you’re the bee lady, eh? You range honey bees on this sage?”

“Yes, my dear boy, I do. I live all alone down yonder and I was out looking after my bees when I heard that terrible series of explosions behind me and I ran—and then you came—oh dear, oh dear.” She commenced to weep, as the aged weep—silently. That is an unpleasant sight.

He wiped her tears away with the moist handkerchief. “Now, now, mother,” he soothed her, “you can’t hang out with the soldiers and be a cry-baby, you know.”

“My bees,” she sobbed. “I had eighty stands of bees down in that draw and they’re destroyed. I know they are.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. If they are, mother, I’ll buy you a new stand for every stand you can’t salvage. That’s fair, isn’t it? Come, now, come, come, mother— Say, just listen to this——”

He knelt over the old lady and commenced to sing: “The Caissons Are Rolling Along.”

She smiled up at him through her tears. “You’re such a dear boy—trying to take my mind off it,” she murmured. “How proud your mother must be of you! I’ll pray every night and morning that you’ll come back to her. I—I had a soldier boy once—my only boy—and he went away—but he didn’t come back. If he had, I wouldn’t be so poor in my old age—I wouldn’t be an old hermit of a woman keeping bees in this lonely canyon.”

“The luck breaks tough like that once in a while, mother. Want to sit up? There, that’s better. Just lean your back against the flagpole and watch the shells burst. Listen to the song of the guns, mother.”

“Why do you call me mother, Mr.—ah——”

“Call me Sergeant Cahalan. I call you mother because you’re a nice old lady and, somehow, you remind me of what my mother would have been like if— Well, my mother was mighty sweet.”

“She must have been to bear a son like you—so fine, and kind and brave—such a jolly lad. My boy was like you—but he didn’t have any mustache and the years hadn’t made his face so lined and stern.”

“I’ve had smallpox,” the Bluebird explained.

“Have you lived here all during the time we have been firing on this range, ma’am?” Dolan asked. The old lady nodded and the sergeant and the private exchanged glances.

“Today is the first time we’ve fired over such a wide sector,” Cahalan explained. “Before this no shells have fallen in this area.” He chuckled. “Poor old innocent! Didn’t you know there’s a first-class war on in Europe and we’re going over there to stop it?”

“Yes, I heard about it five months ago.”

“Why, since then, mother, a great training camp has been built three miles from here. There are twenty-five thousand soldiers in it, perhaps six thousand horses and mules, and brass bands and everything. Why, you have been completely out of the world, mother.”

The faded old eyes looked in wonder at the sergeant. The irrepressible Dolan piped up. “Yes, and we’re going to have a divisional review as soon as the artillery finishes target practise. Sergeant, suppose we tell Peep Sight about mother? He’ll loan us his car to come over here and get her and bring her down to camp to see the review. Peep Sight’s a human being.”

“Would you care to do that?” Cahalan asked.

The old lady’s eyes shone with a bright wistfulness. “Soldiers marching and flags fluttering and a band playing?” she queried.

“A band! Why, a dozen bands! A band for every regiment. Wait till you see the guns go by with the red guidons flying—the clop, clop of hoofs and the bump and thump of the guns, the rattle of toggles—the brigadier and his staff out front, and then our band playing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,’ in march time. Mother, I hope to tell you that’s a fair sight. The division will be about three hours passing in review. And when it’s all over Dolan (he drives the captain’s car when he isn’t on range guard) will come for you and bring you over to our mess hall for lunch. Come on, mother. Come and eat with the soldiers. Our jazz orchestra will play for you and our glee club will sing for you. How about it, mother? Is it a bet?”

The old eyes danced with delight. “Do you mean it, Sergeant?”

“You wait and see.”

His keen glance swept the distant plain where the dust blown skyward before the blast from the gun muzzles glowed darkly against the westering sun. Through that dust he saw a white flag waving.

“Shooting is over for the day, mother,” he announced. “Dolan, let me have your horse. I want to bring mother back home. You aren’t afraid to go back, are you, mother . . . yes, yes, I know you’re still too shaky to walk it, so I’ll carry you before me on Dolan’s horse. . . . We’ll give the bees the once over before I leave you and see what damage has been done to them and your house.”

Fortunately, the eighty stands of bees had been set out in the mesquite grove (evidently with the idea of concealing their presence from any chance passer-by) and the trees had protected all but half a dozen of the stands. Three of these were not damaged beyond repair; the bees would continue to use them, although for the present excitement ran high in the bee colony, and the Bluebird was stung early and often before his inspection had been completed. There were several gaping holes in the roof of the old lady’s shanty.

“You’re luckier’n a cross-eyed nigger, mother,” he declared cheerfully. “I’m stung for three stands of bees at the outside—I didn’t mean that for a joke, because I have been stung and that’s no joke. You tell me where to buy new bees and you shall have them next pay-day. As for your house, I’ll send a couple of the battery mechanics out next Saturday afternoon and they’ll repair that roof. If you should want some extra carpenter work done about the place, tell me. My captain maintains an A-1 salvage squad; any time we need lumber they steal it from the construction quartermaster . . . hello, your stove pipe’s been wrecked! Got to get you some new pieces when I go to town Saturday.”

He paused and looked at her with the light of a brilliant idea dawning in his stern eyes. “You can’t use the stove that way, mother. Suppose you mess with the range guard tonight! I’ll bring you over and I’ll bring you back, and the boys will all be glad to meet you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t go that far, Sergeant Cahalan. It’s so nice of you to ask me, but——”

“We don’t go back to the cantonment for supper. We’re a permanent guard and camped right over that low hill yonder, in the next canyon. We have eighteen men and a cook and three Sibley tents. Better come over and mess with us until I get your stove fixed.”

She hesitated, but the more she hesitated the more he realized that nothing could please her more than this wild adventure, so in the end he swung her up into the saddle, and, walking beside her and holding her on, he led his horse over the hill to the range guard camp. And there they found First Sergeant Grasby.

“Peep Sight sent me over to find out why the red flag was flying when we finished the barrage,” he began crisply. “He wants to know how long it flew and why. The smoke was blown across the terrain and we couldn’t see it, or the observer wasn’t looking. Anyhow, we couldn’t raise you on the telephone and Peep Sight’s badly worried and sent me to get a report. He’s acting battalion commander, you know. Cripes, he’s out of humor about that flag.”

The Bluebird reported the incident to the first sergeant. “And here,” he added, “is Exhibit A to prove it. Ma’am, may I present First Sergeant Grasby? Sergeant Grasby, this is—ah—” he looked questioningly at the bee lady.

“Mrs. Paddock,” she replied.

First Sergeant Grasby bent low in his saddle. “And will you tell that Peep Sight man that Sergeant Cahalan is the finest, bravest soldier in all the army. He rode right in among those bursting shells and carried me out of harm’s way. Look at his horse yonder. The poor dumb beast is wounded.”

Cahalan flushed with embarrassment.

“I’ll tell the Major that, Mrs. Paddock. However, your report will not surprise him. He knows Sergeant Cahalan is a brave man, because the sergeant has proved it. He won a certificate of merit for gallantry in action at the siege of Peking.”

“Your tongue’s hung in the middle and wags from both ends,” the Bluebird growled. The bee lady turned with beaming eyes.

“Oh!” she said, and in her voice was a note of maternal tenderness and pride. “Why, my boy won a certificate of merit for gallantry in action at Peking; and he was an artilleryman, too. He was in Reilly’s battery, and when all the other horses had been killed except his team he drove them right on with the gun. And, oh, he was so proud of his horses! His captain sent me a copy of the citation and his medals and the certificate of merit after my poor boy had been killed in action in Luzon, later. I wonder if, by any chance, you knew my son, Sergeant Cahalan? His name was Gene Paddock!”

The Bluebird had turned away and was gazing steadily down toward the distant cantonment; apparently he had not heard her. But the top spoke up. “I knew him, Mrs. Paddock, and a mighty fine lad he was.”

She came toward Grasby, her trembling old hands outstretched a little.

“You—you—knew my boy?”

He nodded.

“He was killed at a place called Malinta. I—I wonder if you—saw him—there?”

“I did, Mrs. Paddock. He was in my section and I saw him killed. He never knew what happened, Mrs. Paddock—no pain, no suffering. He was a good boy, Mrs. Paddock, and we all thought a great deal of him.”

“Yes, he was a good boy,” she agreed. “He only disobeyed me once and I forgave him for that. That was when he ran away from our farm and enlisted to go to Cuba. Poor boy, I suppose he just couldn’t help it. Soldiering was a tradition with the Paddocks—they were Virginians—and Gene’s father had served as a lieutenant with the Rockbridge artillery in the Confederate army.”

“I’ve heard of that outfit. My old gent was a Union soldier. That Rockbridge artillery was bad medicine for the boys in blue.” He turned to the Bluebird. “Sergeant Cahalan, upon further consideration, I think you had better report in to Peep Sight personally. Take your wounded horse with you. I’m going to stay here a little while and visit with Mrs. Paddock.”

The Bluebird nodded and with a careless wave of his hand over his shoulder at the bee lady, he strode over to his horse, standing disconsolate on the picket line. Grasby, glancing curiously after him, saw him take the animal’s head in his arms and lay his cheek against it . . . He held Tony thus a long time . . . Poor Tony! Poor Bluebird!

Sergeant Cahalan did not return to the range guard. He couldn’t. He told Peep Sight so, between great gasping sobs, as he sat, in Peep Sight’s presence, in the seclusion of Peep Sight’s tent. And, of course, Peep Sight told him he didn’t have to, for Peep Sight was an understanding man.

“I died when they bobtailed me and put me in Bilibid, sir,” the Bluebird explained in a strangled voice. “I killed my bunkie, you know—and he came from the farm next to ours. I couldn’t go back and face his mother and mine after that. So I died—and my captain buried me. He was sorry for me, but he remembered I had been a good soldier once—he wrote to mother—a kind lie—and now I’m dead—forever.”

“I don’t know whether you were a coward or a brave man, Cahalan.” Peep Sight’s hard face was a-twitch. “I suppose you were too young to know that a mother forgives and forgets anything—and never ceases to love. Why, son, her love would follow you down to hell. Didn’t you ever try to find her and help her out?”

“Yes, sir, I did. I had an idea I could help her some way—secretly—but—three years in Bilibid—and another year before I could get back to the old farm—and dad was dead—and nobody knew where mother—had gone—I tried for years to find out—I—I—and all these years while I’ve skulked, she’s been a widow—poor—lonely—helpless—ranging bees—thinking—wondering—praying—don’t you see, sir, I’ve got to remain dead? I want to ride over to that—little shack—and take mother in my arms—and kiss her and tell her—she’d understand, of course, and she’d be so happy, but—she had the sorrow once and she’s lived it—down—and it would be cruel to make her live it all over—again. I’m off to a new war—and this time I’ll not come—back——”

“But, Cahalan, are you certain she didn’t recognize you?”

“Certain, sir. Why I didn’t even recognize her. She was young and pretty and her hair was raven black when I saw her last in ‘98 and now she’s old and white and wrinkled. Twenty years do things to a woman—and they’ve done things to me. I am thirty-eight but I might be fifty. I’ve had smallpox and my face is a smear of scars. I was a stripling boy when she saw me last—and my hair is gray now. This old bolo cut on my cheek—it draws up one corner of my mouth—and then you know, sir, mother believes firmly that I died seventeen years ago. She might see a resemblance—but——”

“I wouldn’t see her again if I were you,” Peep Sight suggested.

The Bluebird nodded. “No, sir, I couldn’t afford that.”

By his silence Peep Sight indicated his complete understanding, and the Bluebird’s hand came over and clutched the Captain’s for a moment; then Peep Sight went quietly out of the tent and over to the picket line, where the horses and mules of B Battery munched their hay. . . . Fortunately the mules couldn’t tell the battery how truly soft he was.

Mother came down to the divisional review and Private Dolan drove her in Peep Sight’s car. And she sat up in the grandstand, just outside the commanding general’s box, and watched the guns go bumping by, saw the red guidons flying bravely in the breeze, saw Peep Sight on a prancing charger raise his hand in salute to the chief, saw the cannoneers sitting up so stiffly with their arms folded as they rode the limbers and caissons, saw Sergeant Cahalan riding with the first section, and marked what a brave figure was his; heard the band playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” in march time, and felt her old heart thrill again as it had thrilled in an elder day when a beardless boy, with the innocent eyes of a babe, had ridden away with Capron’s battery.

She came down again to the cantonment the day the first battalion entrained for a port of embarkation on the Atlantic coast. Dressed in her best, which wasn’t much, she had come to say good-by to the range guard. Sergeant Cahalan was in charge of the baggage detail and when he had come back to report to Peep Sight that the last of it was loaded aboard the train, from the little knot of civilians waiting to wave good-by to the departing troops, Mother stepped timidly up and touched the sergeant’s arm.

“I came to say good-by to you,” she quavered. “I haven’t any boy in this war, although if he had lived, I know I would be bidding him good-by. You see, there’s something about you, Sergeant Cahalan, that reminds me of my boy. Oh, so much——”

She smiled up at him through tears and from under her faded cloak brought forth a little service flag with a lone star in the center of it.

“All the mothers have service flags,” she told him confidentially, “and I did so want one, too. They weren’t the fashion when my boy—well, Sergeant, that star means you, and I’m going to hang it up in my window while you’re away. I don’t want to forget how brave you are.”

“Dear old mother,” he gasped, and drew her to his breast and held her there, while she listened to the wild thumping of his heart. “I—I haven’t any mother—not a soul to think of me,” he stuttered, “so I’ve left my insurance to you—in case I’m not present but—accounted for—some day. I—I had to leave it to a—relative—so I—I left it to you and said you were my—mother. Don’t tell anybody—it might make it—hard for you to collect the insurance in case—and I’ve made an allotment out of my wages to you—you’ll get it every month—and—here’s my will. I have a couple of thousand in the bank—and I’ve left it all to—you—you know, just in case—Now, good-by—good-by, dear old mother, and—see that you don’t misplace any—of those bees!”

He kissed her again, and swung aboard the troop train. Peep Sight raised his hand to the engineer and they rolled away down the path of glory—to the grave.

When First Sergeant Grasby’s term of service had expired the quartermaster gave him railroad transportation back to the place where he had enlisted—and that was Camp Kearny, California. Camp Kearny is sixteen miles from San Diego and in San Diego is the western advanced base of the Marine Corps. Grasby, having tried infantry, cavalry and field artillery, was now minded to join up with the Devil Dogs for the change his restless soul demanded, for only with the Marines could he hope to find active service again.

To San Diego, therefore, Grasby traveled on his hard-earned ticket, and “held up his hand” to a marine corps surgeon, in order that he might, without delay, enter once more under the mantle of his Uncle Sam’s philanthropy and add another “fogie” for continuous service to the stripes on his sleeve.

One Sunday he hired a motorcycle, rode out to the brush-swept, deserted artillery range at Kearny, and sought the lonely little shanty tucked away in the mesquite thicket. The door hung open—plainly the house had not been lived in for many months—and the bees were gone. But in the grimy window, where no eye save Mother’s and Grasby’s had ever seen it, a faded, dusty little service flag still hung—and in the center of it Grasby saw the Bluebird’s star.

It was golden now.

Grasby sighed. He had seen Sergeant Cahalan carried away on a stretcher, but not until now had he known that the Bluebird at last got his honorable discharge from the service.

CHAPTER III
Discipline

My friend, First Sergeant John Ryan, United States Army, retired, is, as the reader has doubtless already suspected, of direct Celtic ancestry, but without even the ghost of a hyphen.

Thirty years of soldiering, from private to first sergeant, in the infantry and cavalry before the war with Germany, two years as a captain of field artillery during the war, and then “blooeyed” back to first sergeant after the armistice, is this veteran’s record; a third of a century of service under the Stars and Stripes has obliterated all other interests save that of his adopted country, and of the multitudinous problems which confront the United States the sergeant is interested in but one.

That is his first, last and only love—the army. Upon the occasion when he told me this story he prefaced it with the remark, apropos of something he had read in a newspaper, that the service was going to the dogs entirely.

“Thank God,” he added piously, “ ’twas given to me to have my service in a day when the army, though small, was commanded be officers and gentlemin, and composed of enlisted men to whom the service was as dear as a monastery to a monk.

“Now the poor pay is drivin’ the good men out of the service, the pluckin’ board an’ the Class B rating is completin’ the ruin of the army morale, whilst the tinderness toward enlisted men that has resulted from the adoption of newfangled methods of discipline advocated by civilian doctrinaires an’ mollycoddles is drivin’ the ould non-coms out of their happy homes that was into the could, could wor’rld known as civil life. Sure, the army’s gone to Hell completely. There’s no discipline at all, at all.”

“Opinions differ as to what constitutes discipline,” I ventured.

“That’s because few men know what discipline is,” he retorted, “and fewer still are to be entrusted wit’ the job of instillin’ it into enlisted men.

“No man can succeed as a disciplinarian who has not learned to conthrol himself; if he tries to swank before enlisted men an’ prate of pride of service and djooty to the counthry an’ loyalty to the command, his men will know him for a hypocrite before the week is out an’ despise him accordingly. They will take small pleasure in makin’ his job an aisy one.”

“But there are various grades of discipline and various methods of administering it,” I suggested. “For instance, the methods of discipline practised so successfully in the German army would result in mutiny if foisted upon our troops.”

The old soldier smiled reminiscently.

“Yes,” he agreed, “the Teuton’s military training robs him of initiative and makes him docile, submissive and automatically obedient.

“There can be no drivin’ of our throops into action, however. They must be led, and when properly led they’ll go far an’ fast an’ the Divil fly away wit’ discipline, so called. They obey, not through fear an’ not that they give two hoots in Hell for the Regulations but because of a little thing called esprit de corps.

“The seed of it is love an’ respect for the leader, his qualities as a man and his ability as a sojer. It sprouts quickly and shows itself in the firm belief in the heart of each an’ every enlisted man in that command that he is the best private in the best squad in the best section of the best platoon of the best company of the best battalion of the best regimint of the best brigade of the best division of the best corps in the only army on earth that can’t be defeated.

“Esprit de corps, thin, is pride of service, which is founded in decency an’ patriotism an’ confidence in the leader, an’ out of esprit de corps is born that something that has won all the battles that have ever been won—an’ that same is the winnin’ spirit.”

The old soldier settled himself more comfortably in his chair, loaded his pipe and prepared to resume his thesis.

“Men in the mass,” he announced presently, “are so aisy to mold, so aisy to handle, so childishly eager to be good bhoys and earn the approbation of their leader that sure ’tis not a knowledge of discipline, rules and regulations an’ the wieldin’ of power that one requires to get the best results out of them, but a bit of common sinse, shtrict justice, manly dignity, a sinse of humor an’ a bit of sympathy an’ undhershtandin’ for them beneath you.

“I suppose ye’ve hear’rd the ould regular sojer’s recipe for a happy enlistment, have ye not? ‘Give me a martinet of a captain, a plain red Divil for a first sergeant, an’ lieutenants I can borrow money from,’ says he, ‘an’, faith, I’ll be a happy member of a happy family!’

“Whin I was the summary court officer of my late regimint, an’ the gods o’ war sint wan o’ these laddybucks before me, sure I knew how to handle him. Wit’ a wave of me hand I’d cut short his palaverin’.

“ ‘That’ll do ye, me bhoy,’ says I, ‘I know all about it. Sure I was too long an enlisted man meself not to. Now, thin, ye plead not guilty. Hum-m-m-m! Well, I’m not callin’ ye a liar, although privately I have me own fir’rm convictions regardin’ the triflin’ manner in which ye dally wit’ facts, so on gineral principles I find ye guilty.

“ ‘I know what I know—an’ why shouldn’t I? Me that has been lookin’ the rascals of the service in the eye since before you were born? I know what I know an’ that’s that there’s no virtue in ye; ye’d do this thing if ye got the chance, I know ye got it an’ if ye didn’t we’ll save time an’ argumint by assumin’ ye did.

“ ‘Ordinarily I’d give ye a fine of two-thir’rds of two months’ pay, confinement to the limits of the camp for thirty days, an’ at the ind of that time I’d suggest to yer commandin’ officer the propriety, for the sake of the service, of givin’ a three day furlough wit’ the hint that ye might utilize that three days gettin’ a good shtart goin’ over the hill.

“ ‘As matthers shtand, ye’re a disgrace to a decent line outfit, so I shall make it me business to dispose of yer case in a manner all me own. The divisional personnel officer sojered three enlistmints wit’ me an’ he’ll do what I ask him. I’ll see to it, young man, that ye’re transferred to a bakin’ company or the sanitary corps. In two days yer comrades will know ye no more. Also, for the sake of appearances, I’ll fine ye five dollars. Sinthry, take the prisoner to his company commandher an’ report him for djooty!’ ”

“And what,” I ventured, “would be the result of that unusual sentence?”

“Nine times out of ten the lad would report blubberin’ like a child to his captain. Here he would confess error an’ contrition an’ promise reform. He was a sojer—not a very good sojer, to be sure, but shtill a sojer, an’ God knows his heart would break to be a baker or grave digger. An’ wouldn’t the captain forgive an’ forget an’ inthercede for him wit’ the summary court officer to save him this disgrace?

“Afther long pleadin’, reluctantly the captain would consint, only to be refused. Returnin’ to the culprit wit’ this disheartenin’ intelligence, he’d confide to the accused that no less a person than the colonel himself could save him an’ wit’ that he’d give the poor divil permission to intherview the colonel.

“Sure, ’tis well known that the older a man grows the kindlier an’ more forbearin’ he grows, an’ ’tis so wit’ colonels. Likewise they’re all puffed up wit’ pride in their regimints, an’ since regimints consists practically of enlisted min, sure he’s a poor colonel entirely who hasn’t a warm spot in his heart for a private an’ in particular for a private who’s repentant an’ shows he loves the colonel’s regimint so fervintly his poor heart is breakin’ at the prospect of lavin’ it!

“At wanst the colonel’d sind his ordherly to me wit’ his complimints an’ desire that I should report to him immedjiately. I do an’ am confronted be the accused an’ thin an’ there the colonel asks me, as a personal complimint to him, to give over my plan of seein’ to it that this man is plucked out of the regimint. This I decline to do, on the grounds that what I plan to do is for the good of the regimint, but I wink at the colonel as I say it, an’ wit’ that he exthracts from the culprit a solemn promise to refrain from disgracin’ the regimint if Captain Ryan agrees to lay off on the proposed plan. I agree to it wit’ grace.

“Now, what’s the result of all this? To begin wit’, I have acquired a reputation as a bad lad to go up ag’in on charges. The man’s company commandher is voted a dacint man wit’ a heart in his chist. As for the colonel, sure isn’t he the ould darlint entirely? An’ who could be blackguard enough to go back on him an’ the captain?

“Within a month ninety-five percent of the enlisted men of the command are guardin’ their comrade’s morals an’ guidin’ them in the back way and puttin’ them to bed whin they come in a bit tight. An’ that’s the beginnings of discipline or esprit de corps.

“Which brings to me mind the case of ould Johnny Packard—the Lord ‘a’ mercy on his soul—he was kilt at Soissons.”

It happened twinty-odd years ago, whin the army was what it is not now and will never be ag’in—God help us in our hour o’ need! I was a roysterin’ young corp’ral in B Throop of the —th Cavalry thin, an’ the regimint was on active service in Mindanao, roundin’ up Moros. ’Twas in Datto Ali’s time, an’ we were fairly busy an’ enjoyin’ the campaign, for the fightin’ was plentiful, the casualties slight an’ the counthry interestin’ an’ diversified. In fact, there was but one bug in our amber, an’ that was our throop commandher, a Captain Massie.

I was a young man in his time, an’ like all young men given to snap judgmints. I’d had three years of active service all over the Islands, in both infantry and cavalry, and I’d sojered under enough officers to know an officer, a gintlemin an’ a sojer whin I saw one. I didn’t think then, nor do I think now, that Captain Massie was either. He was a square peg in a round hole. God a’mighty intended him for the presidency of a mortgage loan company.

To begin, he had not a military bearin’. He was short an’ squat, wit’ unlovely legs an’ his head sunk bechune his two shouldhers an’ his chin outthrust in a manner that would anger a sheep. His eyes were mean an’ deep-set an’ he had a habit of lookin’ at an enlisted man as if that man was dir’rt. Also, he could give wan an unwinkin’, unblinkin’ stare. His voice was high an’ thin, an’ he had a poor command, in consequence of which, in case of mounted throops, he got a poor dhrill. For this he laid upon us a bitther tongue, an’ seein’ be the dark looks an’ the sullen faces he was unloved, he retaliated by dhrivin’ us from mornin’ till night.

B Throop was operatin’ more or less indepindintly at the time an’ Captain Massie actually had the poor taste to dhrill us in the field. Afther a hard day in the saddle, he’d have us out for a most critical inspection, pickin’ here an’ complainin’ there. He had the bad taste to rawhide his non-coms in the presence of privates an’ in order to enforce the regulations ag’in gamblin’ he snooped an’ spied upon us both day an’ night. He was savin’ wit’ the throop rations, an’ though we fed afield on government shtraight, the captain never encouraged our cooks to disguise the ration and make it more palatable or plentiful.

Of course, such a man quickly had a throop to match him. The men retaliated by neglectin’ to jump to attintion whin the captain appeared in the throop shtreet; not a man Jack of thim, seein’ him first, would call “Attenshun!” for the benefit of those who still had him to see.

Whin he shpoke to thim they pretinded not to hear him an’ thin apologized for their carelessness; they lost his personal baggage or dhropped it in mud holes an’ rivers; there wasn’t a man in the throop low enough to be his shtriker, an’ the stable sergeant was forever swearin’ he’d do this an’ that to the captain’s horse, but never quite havin’ the heart to make good, owin’ to the respect he had for the horse.

Whin at attintion the men coughed an’ sneezed unnecessarily an’ whin rawhided pleaded they couldn’t help it; they were forever slyly gaffin’ their mounts in the shouldher wit’ the spur an’ causin’ thim to go crazy an’ disrupt the formation, just to harass the throop commandher. If he ordhered the bugler to sound “Boots and Saddles” the stupid lad would blow “Commince Firin’ ” pretindin’ he was mixed in his music. Thin he’d have the captain whistle the call for him to set him right.

Now, I’ll say this for Captain Massie. He was not a coward, yet he was a poor sojer in this, that he had not a bould, offensive spirit. He was contint to put the enimy on the run but not wishful to follow hard an’ change a rethreat into a rout. By an’ large, I think he was a bit touched in the head, for I remember that once when battle, starvation, hard work, an’ disease had kilt off all our mounts, Captain Massie wan day undhertook to dhrill us in the proper way to groom a horse. Down to the vacant picket line he led us.

“Now, thin,” says he, “imagine you see tied to this picket line a lot of horses badly in need of groomin’, an’ proceed to groom thim. Ye will shtart in at the head, with a light brush an’ gintly, bein’ careful not to frighten the horse by brisk work bechune his ears, for that will inculcate in the animal the habit of rearin’ or tossin’ his head or holdin’ back on the halter-shank. Wit’ the currycomb in the right hand an’ the brush in the left go gintly but forcibly over him from the neck backward an’ down, an’ never attimpt to use the currycomb below the knees. Now, thin, fall in an’ let me see ye do some dacint groomin’.”

Well, sir, there was nothin’ to do but go through the motions of groomin’ horses that were not there, and faith ’twas a solemn business until a private named Flannigan of a sudden let out a whoop of agony, clapped his two hands to his belly an’ rolled in the dir’rt at Captain Massie’s feet.

“What’s the matther wit’ you, Flannigan?” says the captain.

“Ochone, captain dear,” says the blackguard Flannigan, “that big mad brute of a horse I was groomin’ has kicked me!”

That was the cue for the rest of thim an’ in a minute the air was filled wit’ cries of “Whoa, there!” “Shtand shtill, I tell ye, or I’ll put a twitch on yer nose!” “Captain Massie, sir, I have to report me horse down wit’ the glanders.” “Sir, that big bay do have the heaves!” “Beggin’ the throop commandher’s pardon, but wan of those imaginary horses has bit me!” And so on, till the picket line was a riot an’ the throop completely out of hand, an’ the only thing the captain could do to save the shreds of his dignity was to dismiss the throop. Be the same token, that was the last we had of him, for that same day he was made a major an’ thransferred to the Q. M. where he belonged.

Three weeks later our new throop commandher come down from Manila an’ took us over about half-past ten of a mornin’ when we was restin’ quietly in a barrio we’d took be force of arms, to wait for remounts to be sint up from Zamboanga. At tin forty-five he issued his fir’rst order, to the effect that be virtue of paragraph this of departmental order that, he thereby took command of B Throop. Signed, John H. Packard, Captain, —th U. S. Cavalry.

At a quarter of twelve he drifted down to the kitchen and hailed the cook with a pleasant smile and this announcement:

“Cook, I am Captain Packard, the new throop commandher. I’ll have a look at the rations ye are about to feed to me brave lads.”

The cook lifted the lid off a pan and disclosed a mess of corned beef hash.

“It has an agreeable odor,” says the captain. “I believe I’ll taste it.” He did. “Very good hash,” he complimented the cook, whose hard face lighted up like the jungle surrounding a burning barrio, for ’twas a year since any human bein’ had done aught but curse him for his best efforts. “However,” the captain added, “if I may offer a suggestion, I’d say that there’s just a trifle too much salt in it, although I dare say that’s due to the salty corned beef we’re furnished. I think, too, that the average man might relish just a few more onions in his hash. Onions are a good, sound, reliable vegetable, splendid for the digestion. Hello, these soda biscuits aren’t half bad. Light enough and very white, but don’t you think you skimped a little bit on the soda, cook?”

The cook didn’t think so, for he was a hard-headed man with a good opinion of himself, but something in the new skipper’s aisy manner, an’ the pleasant, friendly, human smile of him, moved the blackguard of a cook to lie an’ say the biscuits were shy on soda. Meanwhile Captain Packard had helped himself to a dipper an’ was samplin’ the coffee. ’Twas bitther, black coffee, an’ faith, as he sipped it the cook noticed a bitther, black look come over the new captain’s face. He tur’rned on the cook like a savage ould dog.

“Are ye in the habit, me man,” says he, “of savin’ the coffee left over from breakfast, addin’ fresh coffee to it at noon, b’ilin’ hell out of it all ag’in an’ servin’ it to the men?”

“Yes, sir,” says the cook.

“Be whose orders?”

“The quartermaster sergeant’s, sir.”

“Tell that quartermaster sergeant to report to me immediately.”

The quartermaster sergeant reported, and due to somethin’ the cook tould him, he reported double time, snapped to attintion at six feet, gave the new captain a salute that should have earned him a cheer an’ says:

“Sir, Quartermaster Sergeant Miller reports to the captain.”

“Miller,” says the captain, “what do you mean by feedin’ my boys this damnable concentrated extract of caffein? Why, this infernal coffee is pure poison. It’s so strong a pewter soup ladle will stand to attintion in it.”

“Why, the men seem to like it strong, sir, and I was saving on the coffee in order to buy somethin’ more tasty to serve as a dessert, sir.”

To any other man Miller would have told the truth, which was that Captain Massie’s ordhers were to serve the sort of coffee that was bein’ served. He was an ould sojer, was Miller, and he could recognize an officer an’ a gintleman an’ a sojer the minute he clapped eye on one. Well, he knew this new man would not like him if he tossed the blame where it belonged—on the shoulders of Captain Massie—for no man loves a snitch.

“That’s dacint of you, Sergeant Miller,” says Captain Packard, “in view of the fact that Captain Massie is not presint to contradict you if you had seen fit to tell the truth. Did Captain Massie feed with the line?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did he dhrink the throop coffee?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a charming and lovable liar, Miller. The second cook informs me that he did not. How long have you been in the service?”

“Two years and a butt on my third enlistment, sir,” says Miller, reaching for the tongs. He damped them in the handle of the hot coffee boiler and with a flip of his arm he spilled the mess on the ground. One glare of his hard eye at the cook’s police and they were grindin’ fresh coffee.

“I’m not a difficult man for a quartermaster sergeant to get along with, Sergeant Miller,” says the new captain. “While I’m a bit of a crank in the matther of food and dhrink for me command, I try not to be unreasonable. By the way, I’ll feed with the line. I undershtand my lieutenants feed with it also.”

This was his polite way of informing Miller that a violent change was necessary in that kitchen at once and that he would be on hand three times a day to check up on him.

Well, sir, that episode in the kitchen marked the dawn of a betther day in B Throop. There was mucho hablar—lots of talk—that afthernoon, an’ whin fir’rst call for retreat wint, ’twas obser’rved that Captain Packard was shtandin’ in front of the nipa shack he occupied, an’ him wit’ a watch in his hand.

“Fall in!” roars ould man Melody, the top sergeant, in a voice like a Nubian lion roarin’ for fresh meat, an’ the way that the throop formed, right dressed wit’out command an’ snapped into it was proof that the esprit de corps had already shtarted to ferment in B Throop. Faith, we made it snappy! An’ for why? Because we wanted to do for the new captain the only little favor we could do for him, as acknowledgmint of what he’d done for us, for what every man Jack of us knew he’d do for us in the days to come. We wanted to give him the only kind of obedience that’s ever worth a damn, an’ that is affectionate obedience.

As the top barked “Front! Attintion to roll call!” Captain Packard snapped his watch closed and nodded a bit to himself as if to say: “Well, they’re fast, but shtill ’tis no more than I expected of thim. Thank God I’m not disappointed!” As the names were called each carbine came down to an order with the three hearty, distinct snaps a captain likes to hear, and not a butt plate hit the ground with the thump that denotes the rookie. Whin roll call was completed ould Melody did an about face an’ a rifle salute that seemed to say to the new captain: “Here I am, an’ be the great gun of Athlone, I’m hard-boiled an’ I know my business. If you an’ me, sir, can’t run this throop bechune us, begorra I’d like to see the photographs of the two that can!” What Melody did say was: “Sir, B Throop is presint an’ accounted for.”

“Where is Sergeant McMurdo?” says the new captain. “You called his name, Sergeant Melody, but if his carbine came down I didn’t see it.”

“Sergeant McMurdo is sick in quarthers, sir.”

“Ah! Thin you forgot to take his name off the djooty list. Very well, sergeant. I wasn’t criticisin’ you or hintin’ that you were hidin’ somewan on me, undhershtan.”

“Sergeant McMurdo is marked djooty, sir, an’ for that I called his name,” says ould Melody. He was an obstinate little Irishman—a Far Down, wit’ more Gaelic nor Celt in him, or Scotch, if ye’ll have it that way.

“Thin why isn’t he doin’ djooty?”

“Because he cannot, sir. He’s down wit’ dysentery in that shack yonder, sir.”

“The hell he is,” says Captain Packard, an’ the voice of him had a cuttin’ edge on it. “Thin why is he not in hospital where he belongs?”

“Whin Sergeant McMurdo fir’rst wint on sick report, sir, ’twas just before a bit of a row. ’Twas a spalpeen of a conthract surgeon that looked him over an’ diagnosed McMurdo’s case as could feet. ‘All you need, me man,’ says this conthract surgeon, ‘is a pair of Arctic socks. Steward, give this man a dose of ipecac to relieve him.’ ”

“And what did Sergeant McMurdo say to that?” says Captain Packard quietly.

“Not a word, sir. Sergeant McMurdo is a sojer, sir. He houlds a certificate of merit for gallanthry in action an’ he was the runner-up for the championship of the army in the last rifle shoot at Fort Riley.”

The captain nodded an’ we held rethreat. As the captain about faced ag’in an’ the top saluted Captain Packard says to him:

“Sergeant, have the bugler sound ‘Boots and Saddles.’ We’ll have to escort the bearer carryin’ McMurdo down to the coast to hospital. Have ye any idea at all where one might find that conthract surgeon?”

“I have, sir. Whin we get to hospital I’ll p’int him out to the captain.”

We were at that hospital be noon next day an’ ould Melody made good on his promise. An’ oh, the glorious sight the meetin’ of Captain Packard an’ that brute of a conthract surgeon was! In a quiet manner the skipper tould that poultice walloper what he’d been guilty of, an’ the M. D. did not deny it. “Whin ye’re longer in the service,” says the captain, “ye’ll lear’rn that no officer or gintleman ever insults an enlisted man. ’Tis crool an’ brutal, because he cannot resent the insult. However, Sergeant McMurdo belongs to me, body, bones an’ belt buckle. His joys are mine an’ likewise his sorrows. Take off your blouse, sir. I’m goin’ to clout you until your carcass rings like a Chinese gong!”

’Twas a beautiful battle. Faith, the docthor could fight, an’ be the same token he did! Our C. O. was thirteen minutes, be the watch, layin’ him out, an’ whin the job was done our poor Johnny—the men were callin’ him be his fir’rst name behind his back be now—looked like he’d been fed through a concrete mixer. ’Twas the terrible sight it was entirely as he shtaggered over to his horse. Both eyes were closed an’ he fiddled a bit wit’ his foot tryin’ to find the stirrup.

“Fall in the throop,” says he to Melody, “an’ we’ll go back to our legitimate job o’ chasin’ Moros. Give me complimints to the fir’rst lieutenant an’ tell him to take command; then do you ride boot to boot wit’ me for a bit an’ see that I shtay in me saddle. Faith, if that sawbones had held out another minute yer captain would have disgraced ye, Sergeant Melody.”

We rode back into the bush in silence an’ each enlisted man was thinkin’: “The captain is for us! You bet he is! He is for us! He won’t let anybody on earth hand us anything that isn’t comin’ to us, an’ if we’ve got it comin’ he’ll give it to us himself and right between the eyes. McMurdo represents the throop an’ Johnny took a hell of a beatin’ for the throop, for its glory an’ honor and because he loves us. We must buck up. We must be good sojers, shtayin’ moderately sober around pay-day an’ behavin’ ourselves to the ind that we’ll not annoy him or make him ashamed of us. Begorra, Johnny’s all right.”

Before we’d gone a mile the captain knew. Little Rat Hosmer, who’d been a ‘prentice bhoy on a windjammer in his Godless youth, waited until we were at route step an’ then set up a song. ’Twas an ould sailor chantey called “Whisky for My Johnny,” an’ faith, for all that it hurt his split lip, Johnny grinned like the head of an ould fiddle. Sure he knew we were for him. Of course he did. Sure how could he help it, with the whole throop roarin’ the chorus, like bulls of Bashan?

An’ whin the original chantey had been sung, one private, Felix McSheehy, who was be way o’ bein’ a spring poet in civil life, changed the refrain from “Whisky for My Johnny,” to “Whisky for Our Johnny,” and with a quiet aise that branded him a betther poet than soldier Felix invinted new wor’rds for the ould music. Sure, ’tis an ancient habit of the Irish to perpetuate the glorious deeds of their heroes in song, an’ Felix was a bor’rn minstrel an’ the wag o’ the throop. What wit’ the men rollin’ in their saddles, laughin’ at the villain as he described the battle in verse, wit’ a dash of profanity here an’ there to season it, five horses of B Throop had galled backs before we reached camp. Johnny give the throopers three-ly hell for it, an’ put their names in his doomsday book, but sure nobody give a damn. We were a happy family at long last an’ such we stayed for seven hard, wet dir’rty, dangerous months before an unexpected bit of bad luck ripped the silver linin’ out of our cloud of contintmint.

Like everything that happens in the Moro country, the fir’rst hint we had of it was a killin’. We were at peace at the time. All the local dattos had followed the Sultan for that district into Zamboanga for an undhershtandin’ wit’ the commandin’ officer, an’ ’twas agreed that all war was a mistake an’ in the future we’d cut it out. So B Throop wint into permanent quarthers in a nice barrio on the shore of Lake Lanao an’ we took up the humdrum life of garrison throops until one bright day a fanatical Moro declared for a new deal. He descinded upon our barrio almost as naked as the babe unborn, smeared from head to foot with coconut oil so that no man might hold him, an’ carryin’ a whoppin’ big two-handled campilán.

He arrived in the horse lines wit’ a whoop and hurray, hamstrung two horses, cut a sojer in two halves from shoulder to belt, and shtarted chasin’ the stable police, who were unarmed, in an’ out among the horses an’ the stables.

I was in command of a squad groomin’ at the far end of the picket line, when I heard the cry of “Juaramentado,” which is a word, once hear’rd in Moro land, that is never forgotten. It is a sure sign of death, for once a Moro runs juaramentado nothin’ but death will shtop him. The Mohammedan devil is out to kill all the unbelievers he can before rifle fire wafts him to his Moslem paradise.

I was washin’ me bridle with one eye on the squad at the time, an’ I had the bridle apart and was scrubbin’ it in a bucket of warm Castile soap suds, preparatory to saddle-soapin’ it, which to my mind is the only way to treat a good bridle, when the scrimmage shtarted; an’ before I could make a move that black-toothed fiend was coming shtraight at me in big India rubber jumps.

“Gwan, ye divil,” says I, an’ seizin’ the fir’rst weapon ready to me hand, I hur’rled it at him. Be the same token ’twas the contints of the bucket I was squatted beside an’ I gave him three gallons of shtrong soap suds full in the face an’ lepped aside.

Then I threw the bucket at him as he missed his fir’rst cut at me; as I shtarted to run, I saw that the lye in the suds had gotten into his eyes an’ for the moment he couldn’t see.

So with that I changed my tactics. Shtraight at him I run an’ swung a beautiful right to his colorado maduro jaw. That took the conceit out of him, an’ whilst he was gropin’ around, blinded be suds an’ tears, I kicked him in the belly. That stretched him, an’ he dhropped his campilán, which I picked up immediately and used for the purpose for which cantpiláns were fir’rst invinted. I split his pompadour as nately as a barber might an’ as a sign to others of his ilk to observe the treaty of peace, Johnny had him buried with a pig and promoted me to sergeant.

A week later a detail of seven throopers and a corporal, camped down at the landin’ where the cascos from across the lake docked with supplies for our garrison, was set upon in the dead o’ night. ’Twas a surprise attack and unprovoked. The man on guard was sneaked upon an’ butchered quietly; then the rest of the detail with one exception were kilt in their beds, the outpost pillaged an’ the carbines an’ pistols of the murdered men taken, together with their belts and ammunition.

Little Rat Hosmer was the one man who escaped. He’d gotten out of bed and gone down to the kitchen for a dhrink of water, an’ if he’d lear’rned nothin’ else in Mindanao he’d lear’rned that a wise man is he who never neglects to carry his pistol and dumdum his ammunition.

The Rat shot his way through the mess and escaped in the dark, and at daylight he was back ag’in with Johnny and the throop.

Johnny looked at his dead sojer bhoys and comminced to cry.

“Look at this, sir, an’ laugh,” says the Rat, and led him down to the kitchen where four dead Moros lay. “ ’Twas quite dark, sir, an’ I had but six shots an’ only four men to shoot at, else I’d have evened the score,” says the Rat apologetically. “At that I didn’t do a half bad job, for this snaggled-toothed son of Allah was not unknown to me in life,” says he, toeing one of the departed. “He’s a sub-datto of Sultan Saman, and Sultan Saman dwells in that big coto yonder across the lake, where the smoke is now. He is be way of livin’ in a big mud fort.”

“We will call on the Sultan Saman to return his henchmen and ask for an explanation,” says Johnny.

So we gathered up our dead and buried them, tossed the Moros in a bull cart and started around the lake shore to call on Saman.

We arrived in the cool of the morning an’ Sultan Saman looked over the top of his mud fort and he was very polite to Johnny, but neglected entirely to invite him in.

So Johnny climbed up on the mud wall, took the Sultan Saman be the arm in a most fraternal manner, an’ waltzed him down among B Throop, for a look at what we’d brought him.

“Sultan,” says Johnny through his interpreter, “do you happen to know these dead men?”

“I do not,” says Saman.

“That is most unfortunate, Your Highness,” says Johnny, “because it disappoints me greatly, and whin I’m disappointed nothin’ will cure me but a dead Sultan. Saman, you’re a liar. Your men did this, and I want the murdherers. I want them now.

“Send word to your second in command to send out the men and the carbines and pistols they stole from me sojers after murdhering them. For this is murdher, Saman. Were my losses the fortune of war I should not complain, but there is peace between your people and mine; hence this thing is murdher.”

Saman swore by the beard of the Prophet no men of his had done this thing. It had been the work of outlaws—of Pulajanes over whom he had no control.

Johnny took out his watch and held it carelessly in his hand.

“Those men and the stolen arms will be turned over to me within one hour, Saman,” he said. “At the end of that time I shall attack and nothing that lives in here shall continue to live, once me men get inside this fort.”

In fifteen minutes we had our men. Not a rifle or pistol was missing, and the prisoners numbered twenty-eight. I have always felt that Saman played fair with us, for Johnny would have been satisfied with half that number.

We rode away until we came to a dry rice field and there we halted. Ould man Melody rode up to the captain.

“What shall I do with the prisoners, sir?” says he.

“I’m afraid they’re goin’ to prove an embarrassment to us, sergeant,” says Johnny plaintively, “unless we find some work for them to do. Prisoners should be made to work, sergeant. Here’s a nice, open field, with not a bush in a hundred acres under which a jack rabbit might hide. Is Sergeant McMurdo there?”

“He is, sir.”

“Am I mistaken, or is McMurdo the man who was runner-up for the rifle championship of the army last year?”

“The captain is not mistaken.”

“Well, detail Sergeant McMurdo and ten men to take charge of these prisoners and put them to work cutting wood. We might be passing this way ag’in some day and need firewood. Out of compliment to McMurdo he has my permission to select the detail himself.”

“Yes, sir,” says ould Melody an’ attinded to the matther. The throop rode on, leavin’ McMurdo and his ten men—of which, thanks to a rating as sharpshooters, I was one—to superintend the cutting of the wood.

Fifteen minutes later we rejoined the throop, and I think Johnny must have been expecting us, for he’d halted the throop and was restin’ with the men in the shade.

McMurdo rode up to him, dismounted, snapped into it and said:

“Sir, those prisoners attempted to escape. They refused to halt when ordhered to do so, and I ordhered me detail to open fire on them, but only afther they had run at least two hundred yards, headed for the timber. I gave them every chance, sir, but they wouldn’t stop, so twenty-eight new faces are now whining around the divil.”

“Such unfortunate incidents are to be regretted, Sergeant McMurdo,” says Johnny. “I sincerely hope, however, that what has happened this day will prove a lesson to every one of the twenty-eight. That will be all, sergeant.”

Like Johnny, we all thought it would be. But it wasn’t.

Eight months later, down in Zamboanga, we hear’rd the echo. It arrived in the shape of a cablegram from the commanding general of the Department of the Philippines to the commanding officer at Zamboanga, instructing him to relieve Captain John H. Packard, B. Throop, —th Cavalry, of his command and to place him under arrest in his quarthers forthwith, a-waitin’ the action of a general court-martial which would shortly be convened to try the said Captain John H. Packard for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gintleman in that the said Packard had been charged with having, on a certain date, and at a time when a state of war did not exist, wantonly put to death by rifle fire twenty-eight Moros in the vicinity of Lake Lanao, etc., etc.

I happened to be in the ordherly room when the news broke on Johnny. He read the ordher aloud and his face went white enough as he read it.

“I—I—never thought it would leak out,” he protested. “I didn’t care if it reached headquarters in Manila because the commanding general can be trusted to undershtand. The rules of war as promulgated at The Hague Conference were not meant to include Moro murderers, because the Sultan Saman wasn’t represented at the historical conference. No, men, this thing comes shtraight from Washington, where they can never possibly undershtand the only method of handling a Malay.

“Why how could I try those men? In the fir’rst place, I didn’t have any authority to try them, and in the second place, I didn’t have time. In the third place, they were guilty as hell, because their chief admitted it and sent them out to me with the shtolen arms, evidence of their guilt.

“A trial by anybody would have been a mockery. They were charged when I got to the gate of that mud fort and served my verbal John Doe warrant on the Sultan, and they were tried and convicted the instant the Sultan gave them up.

“What if the Sultan did explain that he was sorry, that these men were kinsmen of the juaramentado chap Ryan had killed a week before; that they merely sought reprisal? My job was to play the game as the Malay plays it—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. To a Moro mercy means weakness and death is nothing at all.

“They expected to be executed because they deserved it. They knew the code. The Sultan expected it and has even now doubtless forgotten the episode. But news of it has leaked to Washington to some civilian in Congress, and the Secretary of War, who also is a civilian, has cabled the ould man to make an example of me.

“No, that means a bobtail out of the service and perhaps ten years in Leavenworth.

“The politicians tried to get old Hell-Roaring Jake when he employed the water cure to get the guns. And he got the guns too! Got them in the only way anybody ever gets anything out of a Malay—by force. It didn’t occur to the politicians, of course, that old Jake was saving a lot of American lives and that war is never a strawberry festival.

“But now, at last, the politicians have got a human sacrifice for the altar of publicity! They’ll get me as sure as death and taxes. I’m only a captain of cavalry!”

And when he had said that, Johnny had to sit down.

Ould Melody tossed his frigid blue eye at me and I fled, and in about an hour the top came into the squad room and called McMurdo outside. They had a talk, and then McMurdo came inside and called nine men and meself outside. Be the same token the eleven of us constituted the detail that had given those twenty-eight Moros a two hundred yard running shtart for the timber.

The news was all over the throop be now, of course, and McMurdo came to the point.

“Which one of you blackguards blabbed?” says he. “Somebody wrote home, describin’ the affair in detail and using the names of all of us. The account appeared in a New York newspaper, a Senator read it and commenced throwing fits. He threw one in the office of the Secretary of War and half a dozen more on the floor of the Senate, and the Senate has demanded a showdown from the Secretary of War, who has demanded a showdown from the commanding general of the Department of the Philippines, who has demanded a showdown from Johnny. Now, then, who has ruined our Johnny? The story leaked from some wan of the eleven who did the job. Who was it?”

There was silence for a bit, and then Felix McSheehy commenced to weep.

“So ’twas you, Felix, you good for nothin’ poet!” says McMurdo. “I might have known it. Ye’re the writin’ man of this outfit. Hum-m-m-m! I recall now that you were a newspaper writer in civil life. You wrote a poem a day, so you told us—bad luck to you! Why in blue blazes didn’t you stick to poetry? Your letter writin’ it is that has bobtailed the finest officer and gintleman the army ever knew.”

“It was a poem,” says poor Felix. “Sure, ’twas a most shtirrin’ an’ dramatic episode an’ me hear’rt thrilled to relate the tale of it in shtirrin’ verse an’ immortalize B Throop.”

“You ass! You blitherin’ ass,” says McMurdo. “Who did you send your brain child to call upon?”

“To me ould city editor,” says Felix. “I didn’t think—I didn’t mean a bit of har’rm, sergeant, honest I didn’t.”

“Shut up!” says McMurdo. “Not another peep out of you or I’ll break the back of ye in two halves. Now, thin, you of the pale pink thoughts, where did you lear’rn to shoot? If you hadn’t been an expert rifleman I’d never have picked you for that day’s sport.”

“I used to sojer in the New York National Guard,” says poor Felix.

McMurdo groaned. “Potting and poetry is his specialty, so it is,” says he. “Now, thin, Felix, me brave lad, what would you give to save the throop commandher?”

“I’d give me life,” says Felix. “I’d throw it away like an ould sock to save Johnny. Poor divil! Did he ever do me a day o’ harm? He did not. God forgive me, I must have been crazy!”

“You were, Felix, and what’s more, ye’re crazy shtill. That much I’ll admit on the witness shtand.”

“So will I, sarge,” says poor Felix.

“So say we all of us,” says I, chippin’ in for the fir’rst time, for I saw the drift of McMurdo’s mind. “Felix, this poem of yours is not founded on fact but on a disordhered imagination due to a diet of canned salmon, prunes an’ black coffee. Is it not a fact, Felix, that in all your bor’rn days ye never saw a dead Moro?”

“I’ll swear to that on a stack of Bibles seventeen hands high,” says Felix, like the good cavalryman he was.

“Then go yer way and have done with these poetic ravin’s of yours,” says McMurdo, an’ give the rest of us a wink. “Ould Melody an’ Gus Schultz, who used to be a lawyer’s clerk, are batin’ the brains out of the throop typewriter now, makin’ out an affidavit. Lave us go down into the town and have a couple of quarts of ice cold beer. Felix, the dhrinks are on you.”

Whin we came back from our dhrinks there was a notice on the throop bulletin board ordherin’ every man in the throop to report at the ordherly room.

We reported an’ whin we got there who should be there but the summary court officer of the regimint and him empowered to administer oaths and witness affidavits. And one afther the other, crowdin’ on each other’s heels, we signed that blessed affidavit an’ swore to it, black lie that it was, an’ whin we’d signed we were all feelin’ that virtuous we were fit to desert B Throop an’ take holy ordhers.

Whin the precious document was all signed an’ sealed, McMurdo took it over to Johnny’s quarthers an’ handed it to him.

Poor Johnny’s hear’rt was broke an’ faith, at sight of him, McMurdo comminced to swear like a pirate an’ in a most outrageous manner. He forgot he was a throoper an’ that Johnny was an officer an’ a gintleman. Sure the poor man must have been quite beside himself, for what does he do but grab Johnny be the shoulder an’ shake him like a terrier would a rat.

“Come out o’ that, Johnny-boy,” says he. “Arrah, don’t be puttin’ dogs in windows. Come Sunday, God’ll sind Monday and ye’ll always have somebody to take care of ye. The original of this document has gone to the commanding officer here, and Sergeant Melody has sint a friendly Moro interpreter out to the Sultan Saman with the information that if one wor’rd of this leaks out of his district B Throop’ll come out an’ lay the counthry waste. Sure, how can they convict ye without evidence? Here, here, lad, here’s the evidence an’ to blazes with all legislators.”

Three days later Johnny was facin’ us at rethreat ag’in an’ afther the flag had come flutterin’ down an’ the band had marched back to barracks, the lad shtood lookin’ at us, an’ the chin of him workin’ up an’ down an’ sideways. Six feet in front of him ould man Melody shtood at attintion, with his hand at the rifle salute, waitin’ for Johnny to return the salute before he’d let his hand dhrop. But Johnny’s eyes was rovin’ up an’ down the throop front and he couldn’t see that he was embarrassin’ the top. Afther a long time, however, a little smile come over the face of him an’ his glance met the top’s. Up come his hand to the brim of his campaign hat.

“Sergeant Melody,” says he, “dismiss this throop of damned vagabones and liars.”

First Sergeant John Ryan glanced again at the newspaper he had been holding all through his recital.

“And I see here,” he concluded, “that a judge refused to sind a pickpocket to the county jail, provided the pickpocket would agree to enlist in the United States Army. Mother of Moses! The army’s not a reformatory! How are you going to inculcate esprit de corps in a pickpocket?”

CHAPTER IV
The Thunder God

This story begins back in the days when shipping men commenced converting their coal burning vessels into crude-oil burners. Although the movement really had its beginning in San Francisco and was the natural concomitant of the tremendous production of low grade oil in California, Old Man Hickman, of Hickman & Son, was the last owner to convert his fleet of steam schooners, for he was a thrifty old man who prided himself on his conservatism. Having burned soft coal for thirty years and waxed wealthy despite it, he was naturally averse to spending money on newfangled notions until his competitors had demonstrated beyond a doubt that not only would the use of oil cut the fuel bills in half, but that there was no likelihood that the supply of fuel oil underlying the sovereign State of California would “peter out” during the lifetime of even the newest of the Hickman fleet. Wherefore, with many a groan and sigh at the initial cost, Old Man Hickman made the change. Before he arrived at this decision, however, he made the acquaintance of Valdemar Sigurdson.

This statement is important only for the reason that if he had made his decision subsequent to making the acquaintance of Valdemar Sigurdson, this story would, in all probability, never have been written, for briefly, the tale hinges on coal dust.

The steam schooner Eliza Hickman had finished coaling and a quartet of her deckhands, having finished trimming the coal in the bunkers (a task which they felt belonged rightfully to the engineer’s department), had come on deck hot, dripping with perspiration and black as a Georgia camp meeting. Old Man Hickman, who was up on the boat deck examining the fire hose and wondering agonizedly if it would pass the impending annual inspection of the Supervising Inspector of Hulls and Boilers, distinctly heard one of these men say:

“I’ve finished my last shift in a coal burning vessel. A sailor who will——”

“You’re not a sailor. You’re a North Pacific laborer,” some one interrupted the complaining one.

“I’m a sailor and I’m going back to blue water,” the first speaker retorted. “There’s something wrong with a man who will continue to handle soft coal for an owner who doesn’t supply a shower bath. I made up my mind to handle it until I had saved two hundred and fifty dollars. I’ve saved them, and tonight I’m taking my time. If I stay here I may get to be a creature of habit, like Old Man Hickman. Oh, but I’m sick of this filthy old box!”

Old Hickman could not see the speaker. The man’s voice was very deep, resonant and musical. He continued:

“I saw an American square-rigger towing up to Port Costa this morning. She’ll probably load barley for the United Kingdom. I’m going up tomorrow and sign on with the old man direct, if he’ll have me. No crimp ever got a two months’ advance out of me.”

Old Man Hickman heard the booming mellow voice break into song:

“Cheerful creature, at any rate,” Old Man Hickman soliloquized. “Well, quit and be damned to you. You’re like all Americans. You want to be coddled and pampered and stuffed with apple pie or you won’t go to sea. I have this comforting knowledge, however. There’s always some fine big squarehead waiting to take your job when you leave it.”

He continued his inspection of the fire hose, and when that was completed he looked at the sky and decided that a sou’easter was brewing. He would see what the barometer had to say about it. He stepped into the pilot house and consulted that instrument, which confirmed his suspicions. While he was browsing around in the pilot house, looking for more expense and worrying about it, his glance happened to wander through the pilot house window down to the main deck, just as a giant, naked as Venus and black as Erebus from his waist up, came out of the forecastle. He had a sponge and a piece of soap in one hand, a bucket with a length of rope brailed to it in the other.

“Cripes!” muttered Old Man Hickman. “Here comes the late Goliath.”

The man walked with a light and springy step to the rail, hauled a bucket of water up out of the bay and tossed his sponge into the bucket. Then he hung a Jacob’s ladder overside and with a piece of soap in his right hand, climbed up on the Eliza Hickman’s rail, whooped joyously and dove off into the bay.

Old Man Hickman shuddered. It was the fifteenth day of January and colder than the fingers of death. Indeed, an hour before, the deck of the Eliza Hickman had been covered an inch deep with hail, and hail in San Francisco means colder weather than snow in New York.

“Oh-h-h, Lord! To be young again and do that,” Old Man Hickman cried, and ran out of the pilot house, up the stairs to the flying bridge. He trotted out to the port end and looked down into the bay just as the man came up with a snort like a little killer whale when one tickles him with a rifle bullet. He commenced treading water while his right hand came up clutching the piece of salt-water soap. Old Man Hickman watched him soap his grimy head vigorously, duck under and rinse it, soap it again, duck—and came up golden-headed! Then he swam to the side of the Eliza Hickman, climbed up the Jacob’s ladder, stood on the rail, soaped himself and rubbed until he was covered with a dirty lather, threw his piece of soap into the bucket and dove off into the bay again. When he came back once more to the vessel’s rail he was reasonably white, so he soaped and rubbed again and repeated the operation, while Old Man Hickman watched him, fascinated. Then he stepped down on deck and completed the job with the sponge, hauled up a couple of buckets of salt water, poured them over his head and was about to retire to the forecastle when Old Man Hickman slid down the narrow, greasy iron ladder to the main deck and yelled:

“Hey! You! Big fellow!”

The man shook himself as an animal does after swimming a stream, and spattered Old Man Hickman. He touched his wavy, golden forelock respectfully. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Yes, you’re the man. You’ve got a voice like a bull fiddle. Who are you? I’m Old Man Hickman, and I don’t provide shower baths on any packet of mine. But I will hereafter. To tell you the truth, son, I haven’t thought about it heretofore. Man, I feel frozen, just from looking at you.”

The man smiled—a slow, lazy smile of complete understanding.

“Now that you’ve got religion, sir,” he replied, “why not install a mess room for your men. You could tuck one in that vacant space just aft the house and for’d of the after winch. You never use it for cargo anyhow. As we operate at present, the ship’s cook brings our grub out on deck in pans and pots, and we sit around on our hunkers on deck and eat like a crew of aborigines in dry weather. In wet weather we take our food into the forecastle, where we sleep, and that’s not Christian.”

Old Man Hickman shook a skinny fist under the giant’s nose. “Don’t you lecture me,” he warned.

“I’m not lecturing you. I’m suggesting things, and I don’t give a tinker’s hoot whether you follow my suggestions or not, because I’m quitting tonight. I’m going to hunt up a ship that’s owned and operated by a human being.”

“That’s right,” shrilled Old Man Hickman, angrily. “Get along without shower baths and mess room until I make up my mind to install both, and then leave me. Fine sense of loyalty you’ve got!”

The man picked up his sponge, wrung the water out of it thoughtfully and pondered this. “Why, I didn’t think you’d care whether I stay or go, Mr. Hickman,” he replied seriously.

“Of course I care. D’ye think I want you to go somewhere else and blackguard my vessels and me? Not by a damn sight. What’s your name?”

“Valdemar Sigurdson, sir. I’m an A. B.”

“Shame on you. Why aren’t you master of a steam schooner like this, instead of a plain A. B.?”

Valdemar Sigurdson cast a sea-blue glance aloft, forward and abaft. “I wouldn’t care to be master of a hooker like this one, sir, and I wouldn’t care for a back-number owner like you. You’re living in the carboniferous age, while I’m in the oleaginous.”

Old Man Hickman thrust his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest and gazed upon Valdemar Sigurdson as a horse buyer gazes upon a striking-looking animal in a dealer’s paddock. “God bless my mildewed soul,” he complained. “I say, God bless it.”

“Yes, sir,” rumbled Valdemar Sigurdson.

“My boy Johnny says the same thing. Had a quarrel with him yesterday on this very subject of converting the fleet into oil burners, and what d’ye suppose that boy did, Sigurdson? He took his pocket knife and scraped the ‘& Son’ off forty-five dollars’ worth of gold lettering on our office windows—and I haven’t seen him since.”

Valdemar Sigurdson shifted his weight to his left foot and very thoughtfully rubbed his left shin with the great toe of his right foot. He appeared oblivious of the cruelly cold wind that fanned his hairless milk-white naked body.

“Well, sir,” he said finally, “in view of the fact that you’ve decided to give in to Johnny, I’ll be a good sport and stick by you myself.”

“Say, young feller, you’re pretty fresh, ain’t you?” Old Man Hickman demanded, shriller than ever.

“Very well, sir. Since you object to my staying, I’ll go away peaceably.”

“Shut up,” yelled Old Man Hickman. “You make me sick.” He uncoiled a bony index finger and pointed it menacingly at Valdemar Sigurdson. “Age?” he barked—and coiled his finger again.

“Twenty-four, sir.”

The bony finger uncoiled again. “Height?”

“Six feet five and a half in my bare feet, weight two hundred and forty pounds. All of my teeth are sound and I’ve never been sick a day in my life. Neither have I been in jail.”

“Suffering sailor! And you haven’t enough fat on your big carcass to grease a bucksaw. Boy, you’re the damnedest, finest, white man I’ve ever seen. Swede, Dane, Norwegian or Icelander?”

“You pays your money and you takes your choice, sir. My original bill of lading was lost in the tenth century. In those days all the Scandinavian tribes were known as Norsemen, and when a Norseman got hot feet and went raiding down across the North Sea to see what the rest of Europe looked like, they were called Vikings. I believe my ancestors came down to the sack of Paris under the pirate Hrolf, or were attracted south by the necessity for putting the skids under the Saxon Kings, or perhaps they came over from Normandy with William the Conqueror. At any rate, the first arrivals settled in the Channel Islands. I was born there. We have never been disturbed and we have had but slight opportunity to mix with other races. So I imagine I’m what horse breeders might call a grade Norman. It’s too much to suppose I’m pure bred.”

“Ever hear of Mendel’s Law, Sigurdson?”

The giant looked puzzled. “I’ve never studied navigation, sir,” he admitted.

“It’s about heredity and the fertility of hybrids and the evolution of species. You’re a Viking. You’re a dominant, not a recessive type. You’re a throwback, perhaps a thousand generations. Think of it! Old Man Hickman is going to be the only shipping man on this coast with an honest-to-god Viking in his employ.”

“Well, the Vikings were full of paprika,” Valdemar Sigurdson admitted. “They had two mottoes: ‘Let’s go and see’ and ‘If you want to know who’s boss around here, ask me.’ Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Hickman. I hadn’t considered the advantages of being a Viking, but now that you mention it——”

“Thor and his hammer! Get out of this dirty little hulk, Sigurdson, and report to me at my office tomorrow morning. I’m going to send you to navigation school and when you’ve been given your ticket as second mate of steam vessels up to five hundred tons net register, you shall have a job as Number Two kicker in the Cleone.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hickman. I shall be happy to serve in her. She’s old and rotten and works in a seaway and spits oakum and leaks. She is filled with cockroaches and bedbugs. She has little freeboard and no sheer to speak of, and she’d wet you in dry dock, but whatever you say goes with me. I’m no teacher’s pet.”

“How’d you get that hole in the side of your head?”

“Shipped on a big South Sea trader once. The crew deserted her and we shipped a native crew. New Hebrides boys. Chief mate used to kick them around too much, so one day ten of them jumped him and the second mate and fed them to the sharks. The old man was below with dengue fever, and I being the only white man left, just naturally had to show those black boys the error of their ways.”

“Hum-m-m! Raised in this country, Sigurdson?”

The youthful giant nodded.

“High school?”

“Yes, sir, and one year of college. Didn’t seem to see much sense in college—and anyhow, I like to go to sea. I never knew what it was to be happy until I’d shipped out on that trader.”

“I know, I know. You can’t help it, son. You’re a throwback. Now, look here, you big son of a pirate, you stick to Old Man Hickman and you’ll be fixed for life. Promise me that when my son, Johnny, sees you and starts selling you the idea you’re a natural born heavy-weight pugilist and can lick Jim Jeffries with one hand tied behind you, you’ll not listen to him. If you listen to him you’ll be a bum at thirty, but if you follow the sea and Old Man Hickman you’ll always be happy. And happiness, Sigurdson, is to be preferred to great riches.”

“I promise, sir,” said Valdemar Sigurdson.

“Good.” Old Man Hickman turned and disappeared over the rail.

Valdemar Sigurdson watched him scurrying up the dock, gesticulating and talking to himself. “Queer old man, that,” murmured the Viking. “Nobody’s fool. He has imagination and I like him. I’ll stick to Old Man Hickman. He weighs about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, so he’s strong for a big fellow like me. He says I’m a Viking. All right. Maybe I am. I’ll stick to Old Man Hickman and play his game through thick and thin.”

And he went into the forecastle, dressed in his Sunday clothes, and left the Eliza Hickman forever.

Thus did Valdemar Sigurdson emerge from the coal dust. He went from second mate to master of the Cleone, grim Old Man Hickman watching him with a prideful light in his fierce gray eyes, and always repulsing his son Johnny, who fought to promote the Viking to command of the finest ship in the fleet.

“You leave that Viking of mine alone, Johnny,” Old Man Hickman shrilled. “He’s my experiment, I tell you. I can’t live forever, and when I’m gone you can do what you please with him, but for the love of the game, do let me have my fun while I can see it. I’m waiting to hear a yelp from that man Sigurdson. If he doesn’t protest his job in that floating coffin of a Cleone, he isn’t the man I’m thinking he is.”

Presently Hickman & Son built the queen of Pacific Coast steam schooners—a steel vessel that could do twelve knots and carry two million feet of green lumber. On the day of her trial trip the Cleone was in San Pedro harbor discharging cargo; but to the amazement of Hickman & Son, the master of the Cleone appeared aboard the newest vessel of the Hickman fleet as she lay at her dock in San Francisco. Under his arm he carried his master’s license in a neat oak frame, and without consulting Hickman & Son he went into the dining saloon and screwed this frame into the wall. When he came out on deck again he found Old Man Hickman and his son Johnny. They looked him over curiously.

“Well, well, well,” Old Man Hickman demanded crisply. “What in blue blazes are you doing here?”

“I’m here to take out my ship on her trial trip, sir,” Valdemar Sigurdson replied. “I left the Cleone in San Pedro in command of my mate. He has a master’s license and is capable and efficient. Do I get this new boat?”

“You do—by God!” Old Man Hickman yelled blasphemously, “but if you hadn’t come for her you would have forfeited your chance. I’ve come down to take you up to the Customs House and record you as her master. You’ve earned this berth, if ever a man earned anything.”

Valdemar Sigurdson smiled upon Hickman & Son. “You told me once I was a throwback—a Viking—a dominant type and not a recessive. I’ve been weary of the Cleone for three years——”

“He never complained, though,” Old Man Hickman interrupted. “Just made up his mind to stick with Old Man Hickman and get along with what Old Man Hickman had to offer until something better showed up. Bully boy, Sigurdson. Hop into my car and we’ll go up to the Customs House.”

When the Russian-Japanese war occurred, Old Man Hickman bought a ten thousand ton tramp, loaded her with foodstuffs, put Valdemar Sigurdson on her bridge and said briefly. “Take her to Vladivostok and see to it that the Japs don’t get you.”

Three times Valdemar Sigurdson ran the blockade before the war ended. Then Hickman & Son ran him regularly to the Far East with general cargo, and little by little they added to the trans-Pacific fleet and gradually dropped out of the coastwise lumber trade. Finally Old Man Hickman called his Viking into his private office and once again transfixed the huge skipper with his bony index finger.

“Captain Sigurdson,” he charged, “you’re thirty-five years old and unmarried. Something has got to be done about this situation.”

“That is a thought worth entertaining, sir. What puzzles me, however, is: How am I ever going to find time to locate a wife and court her? I’m at sea forty weeks out of the fifty-two in every year.”

“Precisely, my boy. What sort of a wife do you think you ought to have? A woman as big as the Cardiff giant, to match you?”

“I have no ambition to rear a Brobdingnagian brood, sir.”

“Well, well,” Old Man Hickman demanded impatiently. “Got any ideas of your own on this important subject?”

“Miss Nellie O’Hara, your son Johnny’s secretary, would suit me fine,” the Viking confessed. “That girl, sir, is a pure white diamond set in jet.”

“She’s a pinch of Celtic dynamite. Man, you don’t stand any more chance with that young woman than a Zulu delegate to a world conference. All the eligible young fellows on California street are running themselves ragged after her. She has ’em all groveling at her feet. One young fellow whose father is a banker and an old friend of mine has induced his father to induce me to give him a job here to learn the shipping business. But that’s all nonsense. He just wants to be near Miss O’Hara.”

“Well, I haven’t done any groveling yet——”

“No, not yet, but soon. You’d be a gay sight, wouldn’t you, trying to do a fox trot with that miniature.”

“I know it,” the Viking replied sadly. “She was kind enough to go to dinner and the theater with me a couple of times, but everybody stared so at us both I’m sure it must have been very embarrassing to her.”

“You mustn’t blame folks for staring, captain. She’s the most dashing young woman in a town where dashing young women are the rule, not the exception; also, you’re not exactly a masculine frost yourself.”

“I’m an awkward big dub,” said Valdemar Sigurdson sadly. “Look at that hand,” and he held that member out for Old Man Hickman’s inspection. “Why, it’s as big as a ham!”

“Granted. But I notice you’ve had a manicure working on it and your choice of tailors is always commendable. You’re neat but not gaudy. Don’t be discouraged. Believe me, boy, the sight of you is most embarrassing to the boys with the belted overcoats, padded shoulders and pussy-cat hats. What causes you such discouragement, son?”

“In a kindly way she gave me to understand recently that she pitied women whose husbands went to sea. Indeed, she wondered why seafaring men persisted in getting married—that is, unless they ran coastwise and could get home to their families a couple of times a month.”

Old Man Hickman sat straight up. “Have you, by any chance, discussed with Miss O’Hara recently the impending retirement of our port captain?”

“She mentioned the fact to me. That was the first I had heard about it.”

“My boy, she has no business telling office secrets. Bet you whatever you want that she’ll marry you if I make you port captain.”

With his big sea-blue eyes that had in them something of the docility and affection of a St. Bernard dog, Valdemar Sigurdson asked Old Man Hickman to make him port captain. But the old man shook his head.

“That was just her subtle woman’s way of prodding you into asking me to make you port captain,” he informed his amazed auditor. “You blithering young idiot! Don’t you realize that if she hadn’t been interested in you she wouldn’t have felt so sorry for the wives of seafaring men; and she wouldn’t have imparted to you an office secret calculated to rob me of a seafaring man! The trouble with you, my boy, is that you cannot conceive of that jewel falling in love with you, and you haven’t sufficient courage to put your fortune to the test.”

But the Viking only shook his head. “If she refused me, sir, I’d have to quit the employ of Hickman & Son. I couldn’t stand the embarrassment of meeting her in the office hereafter.”

“That is not at all necessary. You ask her and if she refuses you I’ll discharge her to save you embarrassment in the future.”

“Why, I couldn’t be the cause of having her ejected from a fine job, Mr. Hickman!”

“Tish! Tush! There are as good fish in the sea—bah! You irritate me profoundly. Get out of here and I’ll ascertain in about two shakes of a lamb’s tail where you stand in Miss O’Hara’s affections. You just step outside in the hall and wait until I tell you to come back.”

The Viking obeyed, and immediately Old Man Hickman sent a summons for Miss Nellie O’Hara to report to him with her notebook. When she seated herself opposite him at his large flat-topped desk he favored her with a shrewd appraising glance. She was about twenty-four years old, a glorious, dainty little Celtic beauty, a creature vibrant with health, radiating that amazing charm which is the heritage of all women of physical and mental energy.

“Take a letter,” said Old Man Hickman. “Captain Valdemar Sigurdson, Master S. S. City of Seattle, Pier 42, San Francisco, California. Sir:” He paused and noted that Miss O’Hara glanced up, apprehensively, at his employment of that curt form of salutation. He continued: “In view of your failure to acquit yourself satisfactorily of the charges filed against you, we find it necessary to dispense with your services immediately. You will proceed to draw up a statement of the ship’s accounts and settle with our cashier not later than ten o’clock tomorrow morning. It is to be regretted that your many years of successful and highly satisfactory service with this company should terminate so disastrously, but under the circumstances we can no longer see our way clear to retain you, despite your claim, which we acknowledge is true, that the evidence against you is entirely circumstantial. Yours and so forth.”

Old Man Hickman had noted with inward satisfaction that as he dictated the radiant glow had quite fled Miss O’Hara’s cheeks; in her brilliant brown eyes he read pain and amazement and incredulity. “Oh, Mr. Hickman, I’m so sorry!” she quavered as he ceased dictating.

“Don’t waste your sweet sympathy on that ungrateful big duffer,” he begged her.

“Oh, but I happen to know he isn’t ungrateful, Mr. Hickman! I fear you haven’t the slightest idea of his loyalty to Hickman & Son and his keen appreciation of the many splendid opportunities you have accorded him.”

“All camouflage to hide his real nature, Miss O’Hara. The fellow is utterly depraved.”

She stiffened perceptibly. “I have not found him so, Mr. Hickman, and I have come to know Captain Sigurdson rather well. To me he is the finest, kindest, squarest, most considerate gentleman that ever went down to the sea in a ship. If circumstantial evidence is all you have upon which to convict him, do you think it is quite fair of you to dismiss him without more investigation? After all his years of faithful service it will hurt him terribly to be cast aside like an out-worn garment.”

“Serves him right. I can’t prove my charge against him but I know it’s true. Hurts me quite as much as it hurts you, Miss O’Hara, but there is no sentiment in business. Take another letter to the Steamship Owners’ Association, Merchants Exchange Building, City. Gentlemen: We have this day dismissed from our employ Captain Valdemar Sigurdson, who has, for the past four years, commanded our steamer City of Seattle. The charges upon which the dismissal rests are extreme brutality and drunkenness at sea, smuggling opium and Chinese into the country and gross discourtesy to passengers of both sexes. Very truly yours.”

Miss O’Hara looked up with blazing eyes. “Am I to understand that this means that Captain Sigurdson is to be black-listed?” she demanded.

“You are not to understand anything in this office except stenography and typewriting, Miss O’Hara,” Old Man Hickman reminded her severely, “but since you ask the question I shall answer it. Captain Sigurdson is to be black-listed. He’ll never command another ship sailing out of Pacific ports, and since he has never been employed as master by any firm except Hickman & Son, and Hickman & Son decline to recommend him to anybody, in all probability he will never again sail as master out of any other port. He’ll be lucky to be permitted to earn a living as a longshoreman. After all, he was built for that sort of labor. Get those two letters off immediately, Miss O’Hara, and after I sign the one to Sigurdson, send it down to him by one of the office boys.”

“Send it yourself. Write it yourself. I resign. I feel called upon to resent such outrageous treatment of Captain Sigurdson, who has been your devoted slave and a good friend of mine, and the only manner in which I can show my resentment is by leaving your employ at once. I can no longer serve Hickman & Son with the loyalty and enthusiasm which Hickman & Son demand from their employees. Your charges against Captain Sigurdson are a tissue of lies. I know they are.”

“Suit yourself, young woman,” Old Man Hickman retorted crisply.

She was blinking away the tears as she swept out of his office.

“I knew it,” Old Man Hickman declared to the office clock. “It’s an immutable law of nature and I’ve never known it to fail. All the great Junoesque women in the world feel so much pity for little half-portion runts of men that they marry them; while all the little pepper-pots like that O’Hara girl marry big fellows like the Viking—because the big fellows are so infernally helpless! God bless my downy old soul.”

He stepped to the door and looked out into the hall. “Come in, son,” he ordered the Viking. And when the latter had obeyed: “That girl will marry you whenever you ask her. Ask her now. She thinks I’ve fired you for scandalous conduct and that you haven’t got a friend in the world; consequently she’s out to protect and comfort you. Ask her to marry you, you big four-flusher. If you do not, I swear I’ll fire you. She has already quit.” He took down the telephone. “Send Miss O’Hara into my office again,” he ordered. “She’ll come,” he added, turning to the Viking. “The Celts never dodge a battle. After she has accepted you, hand her this envelope. It’s a little something I had privately typed as long as two days ago. I thought it might come in useful. I’m going out to luncheon.”

He picked up his hat and darted out—and when Nellie O’Hara returned to his office in answer to his summons, she found the Viking standing in the middle of the floor, looking at her foolishly.

“The old man has gone out to luncheon,” he informed her. “Before he went he told me to ask you to marry me. Said he’d fire me if I didn’t. You wouldn’t see a fellow lose his job, would you, Nellie? I love you, Nellie—and Old Man Hickman found it out somehow and he’s been having fun with us both—confound him, he’s made you cry.”

Just how it happened Valdemar Sigurdson never could quite remember, but suddenly he found a shining black head resting in the neighborhood of his lower vest pocket, so he bent down and kissed it and a peace that passeth understanding settled down over Old Man Hickman’s office.

Finally the Viking remembered, so he brought forth the envelope Old Man Hickman had entrusted to him for Nellie O’Hara. “The wicked old scoundrel told me to give you this after you’d promised to marry me,” he explained.

She opened the envelope and read.

When the Sigurdsons returned from their wedding trip, it was with considerable joy that the Viking reported for duty at the shipyard as Old Man Hickman’s personal representative.

In the morning he was first at the slip where the giant frame gradually took on grace and symmetry; he was the last to leave at night. A careless workman, finishing off a rivet in a manner displeasing to Valdemar Sigurdson, was reminded that Hickman & Son were paying for a first-class job, and that night, upon complaint of the Viking, that riveter would find himself out of a job. The ship-workers called him The Terrible Swede, and exerted themselves to give of their best, for if they gave less he was bound to find them out.

As each of the four great vessels slid into the water, the Viking accompanied them down the smoking ways. He watched the last nail driven in the woodwork of each vessel’s house. With a querulous slap he broke the collar bone of the boss painter who substituted an inferior brand of varnish. He took each ship over the trial course, swung her and adjusted her compasses, turned her over to her master and went back to the shipyard to start his inspection of the next leviathan.

He could scarcely await the completion of the last of the splendid quartet, for this one was to be his, and Old Man Hickman, out of compliment to her future master, had insisted that Valdemar Sigurdson’s wife should break the traditional bottle of champagne across her bows and christen her—Viking! Three years ashore! He would be nearly forty when he took her through the Golden Gate. The thought of leaving his wife and three babies in the bungalow in the Piedmont hills was not a pleasant one, but the lure of far blue horizons, the ancient call of the sea, was in his blood and gave him compensation.

The Viking had completed her trial trip, the last of Hickman & Son’s guests had gone ashore, and the mess boys were gathering up the remains of the luncheon which Old Man Hickman had tendered his Viking aboard his own ship, and Valdemar Sigurdson, resplendent in the new uniform which Hickman & Son had had designed for the masters of their Big Four, as Old Man Hickman loved to call them, had mounted his bridge and was preparing to leave the dock and haul over to Oakland Long Wharf to load cargo for Honolulu. On the cap of the wharf Old Man Hickman, now very little and white and palsied, stood clinging to Johnny’s arm, and the Viking, walking to the extreme end of the bridge, beamed down at him.

“Mr. Hickman,” he roared, “this is the happiest day of my life.” He faced the chief mate, standing with his gang on the forecastle head.

“All ready for’d!”

“Aye, sir.”

“Slack off your bowline.”

His great hand sought the engine room telegraph; he gave the chief the jingle bell to stand by, then, almost immediately, as the bowline commenced to pay out, he signaled for half speed astern, and thrilled as the slight trembling underfoot told him the screw was turning. Slowly the Viking gathered sternway, then although he had not signaled for it, she paused abruptly.

The master stepped to the engine room howler and whistled up the chief.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Some spawn of hell has done things to the low-pressure turbine. I can hear the blades going out like the rattle of musketry. Tie her up again, captain.”

“Sabotage!” the Viking breathed. “That disgruntled bunch of maniacs that tried to foment a shipyard strike. I should have watched!”

He tied her up again and went down into the engine room. His face was stern and white with fury, for this was his ship—his pet—his darling, and scoundrels had violated her. Only those who have seen a seadog weeping over the loss of his ship can understand the tremendous pride, affection even, which animates a master in a command worth while. Valdemar Sigurdson faced the chief engineer now, in his sea-blue eyes a silent interrogation.

“I don’t think much damage has been done, Captain,” the chief reported. “I heard the clatter the instant I gave her a fair head of steam, and stopped her at once. Some rotten anarchist must have opened that little hand inspection hole on the low-pressure cylinder and dropped an iron nut or two inside; then when the steam came through that nut was blown down through the cylinder and ripped through every blade in its path.”

“She was all right on her trial trip. This dirty work has been done within the hour. Pipe up your entire engine room crew. I’ll look them over and if I discover the scoundrel who has done this, I’ll kill him!”

He stood at the foot of the ladder leading up to the fiddles, and as the chief paraded his men past him, the Viking looked each man over.

“I’ll vouch for every man jack of them, Captain,” the chief protested. “They’ve worked with me and for me, off and on, for years and there isn’t a Red in the lot.”

Abruptly the Viking turned and climbed up out of the bowels of the steamer. Straight aft he went, to the sterncastle where the engine room crew was housed. As his giant bulk filled the doorway he spoke to the watch off duty.

“There’s been a job of sabotage committed on this ship. Somebody has jimmed up the low-pressure turbine and I’m going to discover who that man is and fix his clock for him. Come out, you men, one at a time. I’m going to interrogate each of you separately.”

A fireman slid out of an upper berth and came toward the Viking, smiling. Valdemar Sigurdson looked him over, stepped aside and motioned the man out on deck. “I don’t want you,” he said tersely. The fireman grinned his appreciation of the implied compliment, walked across the deck and sat down on the hatch coaming.

One after the other the engine room crew off duty passed in review before Valdemar Sigurdson and took their seats on the hatch coaming.

“Any more of you left in there?” the master bellowed.

“Only Frenchy,” one of the men volunteered. “He quit at noon. He’s packing his things now.”

“Frenchy,” the Viking called, “come out to me.”

A grunt answered him. “I’ll come when I get good and ready,” a voice replied irritably.

“So?” purred the Viking, and went in after him. “I am the master here,” he informed the man Frenchy, as his terrible hand closed over the fellow’s nape. “Come out on deck till I have a look at you.”

He dragged the man forth, as a terrier might drag a day old kitten. “You look queer and twisted, Frenchy. When did you come off duty in the engine room?”

“At twelve o’clock. Leggo my neck.”

“In a minute. I’m going to search you first.”

“You can’t search me without a search warrant. I’ll have the police on you,” the man screamed angrily.

“You damned sea lawyer. Shut up.” Viking cuffed the man with his open hand—gently, as a mother bear cuffs her cubs. Then, holding Frenchy fast with his left arm and leg, he went through the man’s pockets until he found a battered pocketbook.

“It ought to be in here,” he mused, and with a shove, sent his prisoner reeling back into the sterncastle. “Ah! It is. Here is his membership card in the I. W. W., showing his dues paid to date. Damned rotten Frenchy anarchist. Well, he’ll never cripple another ship—the rat!”

Frenchy emerged from the sterncastle, dragging a sea bag behind him with his left hand. In his right he carried a heavy blue automatic pistol, and it was cocked and pointed at the Viking’s breast; from the baleful eyes behind the gun, murder lights flickered. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” he informed the Viking. “Stand aside.”

But Valdemar Sigurdson did not stand aside. “No,” he said patiently, “you can’t get away with this. Shoot and be damned to you! Even if you get me through the heart, I’ll live long enough to get my hands on you; then I’ll break your back and you’ll die lingeringly. You’re an enemy of the world, you crazy swine, and I’m going to destroy you.”

He leaped toward the direct actionist, and a bullet whizzed past his head. When the hammer fell again it fell on a defective cartridge.

“That’s a hell of an automatic,” the Viking roared triumphantly. “You can’t get a fresh cartridge into the chamber until you’ve exploded its predecessor. The real gunmen stick to the old-fashioned double-action revolver.” He knocked the gun out of Frenchy’s hand, and the man fell to the deck screaming.

“Get up,” said Valdemar Sigurdson, “and die like a man.”

“Not at all,” said a crisp voice behind him. “We can’t afford to have you tried for murder, Captain Sigurdson. I forbid you to touch this man again.”

The speaker was Johnny Hickman who, seeing Sigurdson leave his bridge at the very moment when his ship was backing out from the dock, had leaped aboard the vessel to ascertain the reason for such extraordinary behavior.

“He stabbed my ship! He jimmed up the low-pressure turbine! He’s a crazy anarchist!” The Viking was roaring now like an angry bear. With a gentle sweep of his great arm he fended Johnny Hickman aside and stooped for his prey.

“At him, men! On top of him! Stop him!” Johnny Hickman commanded, and struck the Viking in the face with all his might. Young Hickman was not a small nor a weak man by any means; nevertheless, his crashing left and right did not serve to divert the Viking from his purpose. He merely shook his leonine head and his clutching fingers closed over the midriff of the man Frenchy. Clothing and flesh intertwined in that grip of death, and a scream of agony burst from the victim; then the crew off watch rallied to the command of the owner and closed in on the Viking like jackals around a tiger.

It was a Homeric battle. There were six of them, and they clung to his legs and his arms, striving to upset him, to bear him down. And all the time young Hickman rained blow upon blow on the Viking’s iron jaw. But Valdemar Sigurdson only shook his head and roared. In desperation young Hickman sought to break the clutch upon the screaming Frenchy. Vain effort. Holding fast to the squirming wretch, the Viking started across the deck to the rail, lifting his feet slowly but surely, though two men clung to each leg; each step he made he punctuated the salty air with a gorilla-like “Haw-w-w-r-r!”

A heave, a swing of a mighty arm, and two firemen were flung off and sent hurtling across the deck. Johnny Hickman leaped and caught the free arm, but was flung many feet for his pains. And now, one by one, the Viking plucked the men who clung to him and threw them away.

He was free at last—free to administer the terrible primitive justice of his kind—when Old Man Hickman tottered into the mêlée. A moment the Viking paused to survey his victim, then with a quick twist he flopped him over on his back across the rail. But in that instant Old Man Hickman’s clawlike hands were clutching at the Viking’s throat and Old Man Hickman’s piping treble was saying:

“Quit, curse you! Quit, or I’ll fire you!”

It was the voice of the master, but in his berserker rage the Viking failed to recognize it. He half raised his great arm to annihilate the wisp that clung to him, thought better of it and stood staring at Old Man Hickman somewhat stupidly.

“Don’t you roar at me, you big squarehead. Stop this riot, you roaring thunder god, or I’ll bust your bobstay.”

“Go away, sir,” said the Viking patiently, and fended his owner gently backward. “This is my business.” And he turned to break the man on the rail, just as a new ally joined the Hickman forces.

“Val,” said the Viking’s wife firmly, “stop your nonsense!” She was making the first voyage with her husband and, attracted by the turmoil, she had descended to the main deck in the nick of time. At sound of her voice Valdemar Sigurdson turned, hesitated, looked foolish.

“You are making a spectacle of yourself, dearie,” the erstwhile Nellie O’Hara continued, and laid her little hand on the wrist of the terrible hand that clutched the victim on the rail. “Silly boy! You should practise controlling your temper. Come, darling, and I’ll wash your gory old face and patch you up with court plaster.”

The Viking’s hand fell to his side and he heaved a great sigh. He looked half pitifully at his wife. Tears suddenly flooded his eyes, and then the big right hand came up and rested pathetically on Old Man Hickman’s thin, bony shoulder.

“Very well, sir,” he said, in a husky subdued voice, “have it your own way. You’re the boss!”

Little Old Man Hickman, who weighed about two ounces less than a straw hat and was five feet five inches tall in his prime, pursed his lips and favored Valdemar Sigurdson with a very severe glance, before which the giant’s gaze dropped in confusion and embarrassment.

“Say, look here, you big squarehead,” he piped, “I’ll have you understand that you’re not the only Viking aboard this ship.”

Valdemar Sigurdson lifted his victim tenderly from the rail and let him sag, sobbing, to the deck. Then he faced Old Man Hickman.

“Yes, sir,” he said respectfully, and touched his golden forelock.

“Send that thing up to the Harbor Hospital,” the little man commanded, “and the next time you start pulling off one of your little old tenth century scraps, pause long enough to count ten. Now you hustle ashore to a telephone and get a couple of Red Stack tugs to snake you back to the shipyard for repairs.”

“Aye, sir,” rumbled the Viking, and started for the ship’s rail. As he leaped to the dock Old Man Hickman walked up to the moaning Frenchy and spurned the latter contemptuously in the ribs. “Score one for Capitalism,” he piped. “Come on, Johnny. Got to get some arnica on those ruined knuckles of yours. And, by the way, Thor’s new uniform has been torn to shreds by you bunglers. Get him a new one, Johnny, and charge it to expense. Come, come. I want to go ashore and imbibe a little—yes, I’ll chance it—a few drops of whisky! Excited, Johnny. Thought I’d lost my Thunder God.”

CHAPTER V
The Sea Anchor

“Johnny,” declared Old Man Hickman, of Hickman & Son, to the junior member of the firm, “there’s only one man for the job and that’s my big Thunder God, Valdemar Sigurdson.”

“I agree with you, dad. On the other hand, however, Sigurdson’s a married man with three youngsters. It seems to me that for this reason a single man should skipper the Matador on this run.”

“There is no sentiment in the shipping business, Johnny,” the old man reminded him. “ ‘For men must work and women must weep, though the harbor bar be moaning.’ ”

“Well, of course, if Sigurdson didn’t come back his family would be well provided for. He’s done pretty well with his shipping investments since the war started. His interests with us are worth a quarter of a million dollars, and skippers worth that much generally yield to the temptation to retire and raise chickens.”

“Suppose we put it up to Nellie O’Hara,” Old Man Hickman suggested. The fact that his former secretary had married Valdemar Sigurdson had not conduced to alter her status with Old Man Hickman. To him she was still Nellie O’Hara and not infrequently Old Man Hickman would condescend to give her advice on how to manage her husband. He reached for the telephone now and ordered the private exchange operator to get Nellie O’Hara on the wire.

Presently she was speaking. “Hello, Nellie,” Old Man Hickman piped. “Old Man Hickman speaking. Say, Nellie! Listen! Are you feeling sporty today . . . Yes? . . . Bully for you. Nellie, we’re going to send one of our big four—the Matador—into the war zone with a cargo of food stuff, and somehow, Nellie, I’ll feel better if that big, good for nothing husband of yours takes her out. However, before broaching the subject to our Viking we concluded that your wishes ought to be considered——”

“Evidently you have forgotten the motto of the O’Hara tribe,” Mrs. Sigurdson interrupted. “You knew my father——”

“I did, Nellie, and he was the meanest little Irishman that ever bossed a gang of stevedores. His motto was ‘T’ell wid ’em.’ ”

“Well?” cooed the former Nellie O’Hara.

“Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead—or words to that effect, eh?” Old Man Hickman gasped.

“Rather a free translation, but it will do, Mr. Hickman. My husband knows his own business best and a sailor man who marries a cry-baby is out of luck.”

“God bless my downy old soul,” murmured Old Man Hickman and hung up without the formality of saying good-by to Nellie O’Hara.

So the Thunder God took a general cargo to West Coast ports and a jag of nitrate up to New York, where she loaded with beans and bully beef for the British army in France and went snorting boldly out across the Atlantic. She never came back and the British government paid Hickman & Son three times what she had cost to build. In the fulness of time came a cablegram from Valdemar Sigurdson saying:

A month later the Thunder God reported in person to Hickman & Son. He was pale and gaunt and his clothing hung loosely on him; there was a look in his sea-blue eyes that had not been there before and the intonation of his deep voice, as he made his verbal report to his owners, hinted of great mental depression.

“They treated you rough, eh?” Old Man Hickman remarked casually.

“Yes, sir, they did. Got me about nine hundred miles off the Atlantic coast. I wasn’t expecting them that far west.”

“Yes, they paid us a visit and sunk a number of vessels right in our own back yard, so to speak. Tried to bluff us into keeping our fleet at home to patrol our own coastline and protect our own shipping. Go on, Sigurdson.”

“They didn’t warn us. The first torpedo drove into the engine room and killed the crew on duty. They gave us another forward for luck and we sank in ten minutes. I got the remainder of my crew off in the boats and they shelled the boats. I was in command of the last boat to leave the ship and as we pulled out from the lee of the ship a fog closed in on us and they couldn’t see to shell us. We were afloat two weeks and had a tough time of it, sir. Couldn’t beat back to the United States so I ran for it across the Western ocean and a P-boat picked us up in the Irish Sea. I’ve made a formal written report in greater detail. Here it is, sir. I want to go home.”

He heaved himself wearily to his feet and left the office. When Nellie O’Hara heard some one fumbling with a latchkey at the door of her home, she knew who it was and flew to meet him.

“Nellie, wife,” he murmured huskily and appeared to grope for her. She noted the absence of the old, glad, Viking roar of welcome which had always greeted her at the door whenever the Thunder God came home from sea, so she knew now that he had suffered—that he was still suffering. So when he picked her up in his great arms and held her, she merely laid her soft cheek close to his, so rough and red and wind bitten—and said nothing. Silence and understanding are the two safest cures for the bruised heart of a man—and Nellie O’Hara was not surprised when presently the Thunder God shivered slightly and she felt a tear splash from his eye to her cheek. Because she was a wise woman she pretended not to notice this weakness, for she knew that within the minute he would feel ashamed of it. She held him closer.

“The children,” he said presently. “In school, eh?”

“Yes, Val.”

“I lost my ship, Nellie.”

“Never mind, dear. She didn’t go down in red ink, you know. Old Man Hickman says it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody good—and your stock in Hickman & Son is worth a great deal more than it was before the Germans sunk the Matador.”

“She was a splendid vessel—and money can’t heal the hurt when a man’s ship is stabbed.” He quivered again. “To me a ship is—more than a ship. She’s something elemental, banding the nations together—something beautiful, throbbing with energy—and purpose—and—oh, Nellie, wife, the sea is a hard taskmaster! It demands too much—it puts horrible decisions up to a man—it upsets the code and sets up new codes that nobody can see justice and sanity in except the men who have to obey them——”

He carried her into the living room and sat down in the huge chair she had had made to order for him. And there, holding her close to him, where the slow, measured thump, thump, thump of his great heart pounded in her ears, he held her in that silence and complete understanding she knew he had craved for long.

After a while she ruffled his tawny hair and kissed his troubled eyes. “Suppose you tell me what hurts you so, dear love,” she whispered.

Whereupon Old Man Hickman’s Thunder God unfolded a tale.

When the Matador put to sea she carried, in addition to her regular crew, a supercargo representing His Majesty King George IV and a trio of gunners furnished by His Majesty’s navy to serve the six inch gun mounted astern. Of six inch guns Valdemar Sigurdson knew nothing and cared less. The sole danger to his ship lay in an attack from ambush on the part of a German submarine; hence he maintained by day a keen lookout for periscopes and by night he ran with every light doused. From time to time, as he approached the submarine zone, his wireless operator brought code messages to the supercargo, who decoded them and furnished the Thunder God with information as to what course to steer in order to avoid submarines operating in certain longitude and latitude. In the event a submarine should come to the surface and attempt to shell him, the Thunder God depended upon the British gun crew and the six inch gun to outrange and outshoot the enemy; in the event of pursuit he could escape, for the Matador could do fifteen knots when crowded and few of the submarines, he was informed, could do better than fourteen knots on the surface. So the Viking prowled backward and forward on the bridge of the Matador, with something of the restlessness and alertness of a bear in his movements; when he wasn’t sweeping the surrounding sea with his glasses he was keeping a sharp lookout on his lookouts; when their attention wandered from their dreary task the Thunder God’s stentorian voice reminded them profanely of their lapse.

The fog it was that was at once the undoing of the Matador and the salvation of Valdemar Sigurdson and three of his crew. For an hour the horizon astern had been dull and lead-colored, and with the gradual lessening of visibility Sigurdson knew that a fog was catching up with him. He welcomed it, praying only that it would be as thick as mush and last for three days and nights, by which time he would be well down out of the North Sea and close to the rendezvous where he was to pick up his escort.

He decided to “shoot the sun” and work out his exact position before the fog should overtake him; and while he was in his room doing this, his lookouts glanced astern toward the welcome fog longer and more frequently than would have been the case had the Thunder God been on the bridge. At any rate they missed the periscope as it rose out of a choppy sea a quarter of a mile off the starboard bow; there was no opportunity given to swing the ship and present a lessened target to the enemy before the first torpedo crashed into the vitals of the Matador.

The shock of the explosion, the violent trembling of the ship, upset Valdemar Sigurdson where he sat at his desk working out his position. For a few seconds he sprawled on his cabin floor; then, with the rapid and continuous clanging of the ship’s bell and the cessation of the steady, rhythmic throb of her engines, he realized that his ship had received her death blow, that the mate on watch realized it and was calling the crew to quarters.

The Thunder God had good mates. He knew they were good because he had selected them and trained them himself. So he rose from his sprawling position now, reached for the speaking tube and called the bridge.

“Proceed to clear away the boats, Mr. Howell,” he ordered calmly. “As fast as you get each boat ready, lower away without awaiting orders from me. I’m working out the ship’s position. I’ll be on deck in time to take command of the last boat.”

He returned deliberately to his calculations, for it was no part of his plan to be cast adrift in a small boat without knowing his position, provided there still remained time in which to complete his calculations. A second torpedo well up toward the ship’s bows interrupted him for a few seconds and caused a change in his plans.

“I’ve got all my data. I’ll complete my figuring in the small boat,” he soliloquized. He donned a heavy watchcoat, took his chronometer, sextant, an oilskin slicker and a roll of charts under one arm, slipped a pistol in his hip pocket and stepped out on the deck, which was now inclined at an angle of some forty-five degrees as the Matador heeled in her death agony.

He cast a quick glance astern. The fog was less than half a mile distant and coming on briskly before a gentle little ten mile breeze.

“What rotten luck,” he murmured and made his way along the canting deck to Number One lifeboat, which the men were just breaking out of the chocks. “Take your time, lads. Don’t jim the boat falls up,” he warned as he tucked his charts and instruments in the little space under the stern sheets.

His calm glance checked the contents of the boat—the tin crate of sea biscuit, the water breaker, the oars, the mast and spritsail, the lights, the can of oil and the hempen equipment for spreading oil on the water in case the sea should lump up too dangerously. He had inspected all of the boats that very morning and had noted in Number One boat the absence of a sea anchor, whereupon he had given orders to have one made forthwith and placed in the boat; he noted with irritation now that his order had not been complied with. Well, there was no time to find one now or to seek explanations——

The second mate, who had been following the master’s critical glance, suddenly spoke up. “If the fog doesn’t reach us quickly, sir, we will never miss the sea anchor. The scoundrels have come up; they’re going to shell us—they’re sliding off a hatch to let their gun come up——”

“Swing clear and hold the boat until I come back,” the Thunder God ordered calmly, and scrambled up the steep slope of the deck just in time to see the chief engineer’s boat dip over the high side of the rapidly listing vessel, scrape along the bulwark and hang there, thirty feet above the water. Owing to the listing of the Matador the boat could not swing clear and be lowered away.

“Hang on,” roared Sigurdson to the two men in the boat. He slashed the falls at the stern of the boat, which dropped away and hung by the falls at the bow. “Drop her, stern first. Maybe she’ll stand the drop and fail to fill,” he ordered.

She did. “Overboard with you, swim to the boat and climb in quickly. The ship’s going to turn turtle. Get away before she drags you under,” he ordered.

Without hesitation the boat crew leaped overboard—all but one man. “Jump, you!” roared Valdemar Sigurdson, but the man shrank back.

“I can’t swim a lick,” he whimpered.

“That’s your boat. You belong in it. We haven’t time to lower all the boats. Jump! Take a chance with those other men who can’t swim. Jump or I’ll throw you overboard.”

As the man still hesitated, the master’s great right arm shot out for him. With surprising swiftness the man dodged under the outstretched arm, ran along the deck until he had cleared the end of the house and then slid down the inclined deck to Number One boat. He darted into it as a rabbit darts into its hole.

Sigurdson leaned over the bulwarks and watched all of the struggling men in the water, with the exception of three, reach the side of the boat, clamber in and get her under control. Then he hurried to the port side of his ship and watched the first mate lower safely away.

“I think everybody living is on deck, sir,” the first mate called to him. “Remember, we took one through the engine room and another through the bows. That one jimmed up the forecastle and the watch below.”

“Keep close to me and I’ll give you the course in a couple of minutes,” the Thunder God called after him, and hurried away to Number One boat. “Lower away,” he ordered calmly, and the boat slid gently down to the water a few feet below. Like monkeys the men slid down the falls into the boat, shipped the oars and fended the lifeboat away from the black sides of the Matador. As they cast off, Sigurdson slid down the dangling falls and landed neatly in the stern sheets before the boat could slip out from under the lee of the vessel. As he did so there was a “whoosh,” a crashing report and hundreds of tiny waterspouts sprang up around the first mate’s boat. A shrapnel had burst fairly over it.

“Pull for that fog,” the master ordered, “and pull for your lives!”

He looked back. Two men in the mate’s boat were still tugging at the oars and Mr. Howell was standing up aft with arms outspread toward the submarine, pleading dumbly for quarter. At the next burst he toppled overboard and the starboard oar went out of action, leaving the port oar to continue work and turn the boat blindly in a circle.

The Thunder God sighed. He was very fond of Mr. Howell and there was something pitifully grotesque about the rattled oarsman who kept turning the boat in such slow circles. Presently a sea struck it amidships and it filled; the succeeding wave rolled over it and it careened and floated mournfully keel up.

The second mate spoke to Sigurdson. “Well,” he said dully, “I told you we wouldn’t need that sea anchor, sir. Here’s where we all go to hell together.”

The Thunder God reflected, in a queer detached way, that this was precisely the remark that might be expected from a sailor under such circumstances. They never dream of going to heaven individually.

A tongue of flame darted from the U-boat, but the shrapnel burst beyond them and did no damage; steering with an oar, Valdemar Sigurdson shot the ship’s boat in under the towering fantail of the Matador to temporary safety. There they hovered, while the U-boat shelled the chief engineer who had incautiously pulled clear of the protection of the torpedoed ship. Sigurdson could see them floundering helplessly in the leaden hail; when a fair hit drove her out of control, Sigurdson watched her blanketed by the choppy seas, and presently the chief engineer and Mr. Howell and their bully boys all went to hell together.

“Thank God for a nice, thick, wet fog,” said Valdemar Sigurdson as the cold gray vapor closed in around them. “Give way, lads.”

They hauled off a couple of hundred yards into the fog and rested, flipping their oars gently to keep the ship’s boat head on to the short, choppy sea. While the master got out a notebook and pencil and set to work to figure his position, the second mate shipped the rudder and the mast and rigged the spritsail.

“Nothing but westerly winds, Mr. Gibson,” said Valdemar Sigurdson when he looked up from his computations. “We can’t beat to windward very well with a boat like this, so we’ll have to run before it. We are out of the steamer lanes, even of those steamers that are on the dodge and have turned pretty well north. We’re unusually far to the northward, and all things considered our best bet is to run for the coast of Ireland. Got about twelve hundred miles to go and we’ll have a lot of dirty weather.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Old Man Hickman calls me his Viking and his Thunder God—and here I am where my ancestors started—in a small boat, beating down to Britain through the North Sea. Well, they did it without sextant, compass or charts; they didn’t know a logarithm from a ham or an azimuth from a Pekinese pup, but they got there somehow, and they got there in quantity; so if this fog holds until we clear that murdering German pirate, I’ll set up the drinks in Belfast or I’m not Old Man Hickman’s Thunder God. Know anything about small boat sailing, Mr. Gibson?”

“Nothing, sir,” Gibson admitted. “I’ve been raised entirely in steam.”

“Praise be, I have not. I owned a sailing dory when I was ten years old; in the days before gasoline motors had been heard from, my old man used to sail a Whitehall boat from Frisco town to the Farallons, to meet incoming ships and beat his competitors to their orders for stores when they got to port. My old man knew all there was to be known about small boat sailing. He wrote the book—and made me read it! However, I’d feel a lot happier starting on this trip if I had a sea anchor.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Gibson, “I would, too. We may not need a sea anchor but if we should need it we’ll need it badly. If the wind should haul to the eastward now we’re liable to slam around out here for a couple of weeks; and on short rations, not to mention the exposure, we’ll find it a dirty job to keep her head up to the sea with the oars.”

The Thunder God nodded. Once, in his windjammer days, he had spent a week in an open boat. He knew! With his charts spread out on the thwart before him he laid off his course with his parallel ruler, took the tiller and ordered his men to give way with a will. With the little vessel on her course, he ran up the spritsail, the oars were shipped and the survivors of the S. S. Matador breezed blithely away at a four knot clip. The fog was thick and getting thicker, a typical North Atlantic fog, driving down before a breeze that carried with it a hint of approaching winter.

Suddenly a man in the bow of the boat shouted: “Starboard your helm! Hard-a-starboard!” Sigurdson jammed his tiller hard over as a gray shape loomed out of the mist. It was the U-boat, under a dead slow bell, cruising around in the vicinity of her kill.

The Thunder God’s boat slid by like a wraith, not twenty feet from her. On the U-boat’s deck stood an officer superintending the replacing of the hatch over the gun; in the window of the conning tower appeared the head and shoulders of another officer, peering out into the mist.

The Thunder God pulled his pistol on the instant and fired at this man. He saw a red splotch break out on the man’s face and then the face disappeared as the body sagged back from the window. Gibson, who in the emergency had possessed himself of a similar means to force obedience if need be, opened fire on the group on deck. From eleven bullets three visible casualties resulted—and then the fog had swallowed the Thunder God and his Number One boat.

“I feel better,” said Mr. Gibson.

The Thunder God smiled. “Yes,” he agreed, “little incidents like that do help to uplift a man. Damnation. We haven’t much freeboard, have we. Eighteen men in this boat and she’s only certified for sixteen.”

“Nineteen’s the crew, sir,” Mr. Gibson corrected him. “One of the engine room force volunteered his company just before we lowered away.”

“Oh, yes! The cowardly little rat who wouldn’t jump it for the chief’s boat. I was going to throw him overboard and make him take his chance with the others in the boat where he belonged, but he dodged out from under me. Which one is he, Mr. Gibson?”

“This article here,” the second mate replied and indicated a man who huddled dejectedly in the bottom of the boat with his back against the thwart immediately in front of the Thunder God. “The mess that Hun made out of the other two boats has taken the tuck out of him, I think.” He took a small memorandum from one pocket, fished up a stub of a pencil from another and bawled, “Any of you men familiar with small boat sailing?”

“Here!” came the reply and around the edge of the mast peered a broad, unterrified Scandinavian face. “When the captain needs a rest I’ll spell him.”

“Thank you, Larsen.” He turned to the master. “When the wind fails we’ll have to row, or if it shifts we’ll have to have at least four oars to hold up her head. I’ll form four watches of four men each, eh, sir?”

“Good,” the Thunder God assented. “Lucky devil, that fellow, to have dodged the passage with the chief engineer. Nevertheless, I do not wish him luck. He’s without guts. Hey, you—the man from the engine room force! What’s your name?”

The man murmured inaudibly and without turning his head, so Mr. Gibson, a sturdy soul and loyal, reached for his ear and savagely turned it for him. “When the captain speaks to you, my man,” he said, “answer in a voice he can hear and understand, say ‘sir’ and do him the courtesy to look at him. He’s master here.”

Under Mr. Gibson’s gentle rebuke the man from the engine room force turned a white and sickly face toward the Thunder God. The latter whistled shrilly in amazement.

“So it’s you, eh?” he roared. “I haven’t seen you for a few years, but your rat face hasn’t changed, Frenchy.” He turned to the second mate. “Mr. Gibson, do you recall the day the Viking had completed her trial trip and I was about to take her over to Oakland Long Wharf to load cargo? We were just pulling out from the pier when her low-pressure turbine went out. This is the dirty red who slipped a nut through the hand inspection hole and when the steam came through that nut was blown down through the blades and ripped them out like grain before a scythe.”

“I recall the incident very clearly, sir. I was quartermaster on the Matador at the time and we were lying at the same pier. It required half the crew of the Viking to keep you from killing this bird.”

“My wife stopped me,” the Thunder God explained. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill’ stuff, you know. He needed killing, Mr. Gibson, but nevertheless my wife was right—as usual. I’d have been held for murder; everything would have been spoiled forever—Frenchy, what the devil possessed you to sign on in the same ship with me?”

“The bonus, of course,” Frenchy snarled. “But while I knew the Matador was a Hickman ship, I thought you were skippering their Viking. The chance came in New York and I took things for granted; I should have asked who the skipper was before signing on.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Sigurdson growled. “You’re safe unless you forget your place. What in the fiend’s name possessed you to come into my boat? You knew you didn’t belong here, didn’t you?”

“I thought you were going in the chief’s boat. I can swim, but I didn’t want to go in the chief’s boat because I thought you were going with him also. So I beat it for this boat—and here we are together, after all.”

Mr. Gibson forgot the dreadful events of the past half hour and laughed long and heartily. “If that isn’t a fine maritime joke,” he declared, “I hope I may never see the back of my neck.” Even the grim Sigurdson smiled at the hapless Frenchy until, not knowing what else to do, Frenchy grinned sheepishly and said, “You’re not holding a grudge against me still, are you, captain?”

“I am,” the master answered. “You’re not welcome here. You’re an uninvited guest in a boat that’s certified for sixteen men and you make the nineteenth. You help to crowd us to the point where we haven’t room to do any bailing if bailing becomes necessary. We haven’t more than six inches freeboard and my natural impulse is to chuck you overboard to make the going easier for better men than yourself. Go forward where I can’t look at you and make room for Larsen to come aft.”

The direct actionist grinned another grin, as twisted as his mentality, and crawled gingerly forward over the thwarts and the backs of the men crouched in the bottom of the boat. He was as happy to leave the immediate vicinity of his Nemesis as Valdemar Sigurdson was to see him go.

“It sort of looks as if fate intended I should get that man,” the skipper murmured to Mr. Gibson. “Damn him! I don’t want him, either. He’s a temptation to me. There are too many men in this boat, I tell you, and if the sea lumps up much more—ah, well, what of it? We’ll cross our bridges when we come to them. Gibson, you take charge of the water and the biscuit and do not issue either without an order from me. Larsen, you sail the boat for awhile. I haven’t had any sleep in ages.”

They fled into the east all day and all night. Next morning the fog lifted and the sun came out for a couple of hours to warm the cold occupants of the boat. The Thunder God doled out to his crew a meager ration of water and sea biscuit and alternated his watches at the oars in order that the exercise might help to keep them warm. He worked out his position again at noon, laid out his course and sighed as the wind hauled around until he was forced to take in his tiny sail and depend entirely upon the oars to make meager headway. The men were drenched with spray; they looked blue and miserable. About dusk a cold rain commenced falling and kept up all night; when the gray dawnlight crept over the sea the Thunder God stood up in his boat and counted his men. They numbered eighteen.

“Did somebody get sick of this mess and take a short cut out last night?” he shouted.

A chill, famished figure up in the bow nodded. “Old man McLaurie, the steward, sir. He had terrible pains in his chest last night and went a bit out of his head. Told me he couldn’t live anyhow with pneumonia and besides there were three too many in the boat; so he just stood up, sir, and listed overboard, quiet-like.”

“Peace to old man McLaurie,” Mr. Gibson murmured through chattering teeth. “Unless the sun comes out to warm us, that mess boy will not last the day. Glad I had the sense to take my oilskin slicker. I’m cold but I’m not wet.”

The sun did not shine that dreary day and, true to Mr. Gibson’s prediction, the mess boy died of exposure in the middle of the afternoon. The Thunder God ordered his body tossed overboard and noted with satisfaction that the life boat rode higher now. “Now if that animal, Frenchy, will only die,” he confided to Mr. Gibson, “I’ll begin to think Providence has not forgotten us.”

“No fear, sir. He and one of the quartermasters have been rowing all night—like sensible men. Look at the rotter. Lots of fight left in him. He’s managed to keep half warm, at any rate.”

Thanks to his foresight in bringing his heavy watchcoat and oilskin slicker, the Thunder God, while cold and miserable, was not particularly affected by the exposure. His heart ached, however, for the wretched men under him who had had no opportunity to prepare, however meagerly, for this dreadful voyage. At dusk the rain ceased and the weather turned colder; the wind hauled from east to southwest, and to run before it with the spritsail merely meant that they would make more northing. They were already too far north for safety, so the Thunder God kept his weary men at the oars, not with any hope of making headway but with the hope that they would not make leeway and would at least keep the boat’s head up to the seas and carry on. During the night he and Mr. Gibson did some rowing in order to keep warm.

At daylight two sailors lay dead in the bottom of the boat. “More freeboard,” murmured Sigurdson as the bodies were cast overboard. “Poor devils!” His glance roved forward to Frenchy, huddled in the bow. The man’s face was blue but his eyes were bright with life and the skipper saw that Frenchy had been rummaging in the tiny locker in the eyes of the boat and had discovered an old peajacket there.

During the week that followed five men went insane and leaped overboard while three died where they crouched in the bottom of the boat. That week was one long nightmare of squalls, unfavorable winds, cold sleet and colder spray; the last three days of it were memorable because of a northwest gale that kicked up a furious sea. The lifeboat, riding far higher now than at the beginning of this voyage through indescribable misery, fled like a hunted thing before it, under the mere wisp of canvas Valdemar Sigurdson would risk her with. She shipped a great deal of water and in order to keep in his men sufficient strength to continue bailing, he was forced to issue them a heavy ration of sea biscuit and water. With Larsen at the tiller, he and Mr. Gibson bailed steadily hour after hour; when the second mate dropped exhausted, the tremendous reserve strength and stamina of Old Man Hickman’s Viking came into play and he bailed alone.

Came a time, however, when he realized that this sort of thing could not endure indefinitely. His feet were so badly swollen that he could not stand upon them; he had sat on the thwarts swaying with the heave and pitch of the boat until the steady grinding of muscle on bone had become unendurable; his body was one vast sore. Mr. Gibson, sturdy, uncomplaining fellow that he was, had gone the limit of his endurance and lay helpless in the bottom of the boat, oblivious to the wash of the seawater they shipped every few minutes. Larsen, at the tiller, kept looking at the Thunder God with a puzzled, patient query in his eyes, and finally Sigurdson could no longer ignore the man. He crawled into the stern sheets beside Larsen.

“Yes,” he said, “I know we can’t go on this way. If we cease bailing for fifteen minutes we’ll fill and finish. I know that the thing to do would be to heave the oil bags over and ride to it with a sea anchor. This following sea will get us, but we can’t head into it; we’re all too weak to row any longer.”

“Too bad we haven’t half a dozen blankets,” Larsen replied sadly. “I’ve ridden out a gale with a sea anchor made from half a dozen blankets rolled lengthwise. We just brailed about fifteen fathom of inch Manila line to the center of the roll; when the blankets were soaked they sank a little and we lay to nicely under the oil bags and never shipped a drop.”

“Well, we haven’t any sea anchor and we haven’t anything to fashion a sea anchor from, so we’ll have to get along without it and test our luck.”

At that moment Frenchy came crawling painfully aft. “Say,” he demanded, addressing the skipper, “I can’t do no more bailin’ or rowin’ unless I get more to eat and drink.”

“I’m sorry, Frenchy, but I’ve got to ration all you poor devils. At that all the water and biscuit will be gone within twenty-four hours.”

“You lie,” the man rasped petulantly, “you and the second mate are holdin’ out on the rest of us. I know your kind.”

“We’ll dispense with the argument, Frenchy,” Valdemar Sigurdson pleaded patiently. “I know it’s mighty hard on you. Buck up, boy, and do the best you can.”

“Easy enough for you to talk,” the malcontent half screamed. “You sitting there with a full belly and a watchcoat and slicker on while the rest of us freeze to death! You gimme that watchcoat and we’ll ration that out among these here wage slaves your damned rotten system has brought to this.”

“Have you gone crazy?” Valdemar Sigurdson demanded.

“Not a bit of it. I’m just standing on my rights. I’ve got just as much right to live as you have. Come across with that watchcoat!”

“It’s my coat and I shall wear it,” the Thunder God explained patiently. “I’m a better man than you are, Frenchy; I’m worth more to the world; more responsibility rests on me than on you. I’m the master here and I must be the last man to blink out, for if I am the first all the others will surely follow. Go back to your place and stay there.”

A pistol suddenly appeared in Frenchy’s right hand, the muzzle of it pointed at the Thunder God’s breast. The latter stared at him.

“You filthy dog,” he growled. “You had a gun and you failed to use it when we slid by that U-boat.”

“I want the watchcoat,” Frenchy reiterated. “I’m going to make you ration something you don’t want to ration. You don’t play fair and, by God, I’m going to make you!”

“You win!” Slowly Valdemar Sigurdson commenced unbuttoning his oilskin slicker; slowly, very slowly and painfully he removed it and commenced to unbutton the great watchcoat. But all the time his glance never left that of Frenchy the Red. He was thinking.

He removed the watchcoat. “Very well, Frenchy, here’s the watchcoat,” he said and tossed the heavy garment to the man in such a way that it almost enveloped him. At the same instant Mr. Gibson, who had been lying in the bottom of the boat just behind Frenchy, reached up, grasped the fellow by the nape of the neck and jerked him over backward, wrapped his arms around him and held him, while the Thunder God crawled forward and possessed himself of Frenchy’s pistol. Then he hauled the latter clear of Mr. Gibson and in order to warm his chilled hands he boxed Frenchy’s ears furiously and threw him forward in a heap.

Valdemar Sigurdson crawled aft again and sat painfully down beside Larsen. “That sort of cattle are always up in arms against authority,” he complained bitterly. “They spend their lives protesting. They want everybody to be boss. Funny notion they have of personal liberty and orderly civilization. That fellow doesn’t know that it is much more necessary that I survive than that he shall live to continue to rant and jim up the works. Larsen, the vast majority of men are such fools that they must have leaders to take care of them. There must be somebody to plan things and give orders and see to it that those orders are carried out. That’s government and when somebody opposes government he’s called a rebel and shot or imprisoned. Now, Larsen, don’t I represent government aboard this boat? Am I not the responsible party? Don’t I have to give orders and don’t I give orders because I’ve got the knowledge and the power—not only because I know, but because I know I know? I’m capable. I’ve got a wife and kids to live for—I’m responsible for you and Mr. Gibson there and all the rest of you—Larsen, I’m the Law.”

“Yes, sir,” Larsen replied in his slow patient voice, “you are the Law here if the majority of the men in this boat say you are.”

The Thunder God stood up, “Look here, men,” he bawled, “Frenchy has just tried to mutiny on me and I want to know where I stand with the rest of you. Am I the master here?”

“Aye, sir,” croaked Mr. Gibson, and “Aye, sir,” followed in chorus from all of the men except Frenchy.

“Then I am the Law,” roared the Viking.

“Whether we’re north of fifty-three or south of it, you are the Law, sir,” Mr. Gibson declared and again, from all save Frenchy, came a weak chorus of “Aye, sir.”

The Thunder God sat down. “Civilization is only possible where law and order and leadership for the common good exists. The Law can kill a man and men call that justice, whereas if an individual should kill a man that is murder. A killing is legal, isn’t it, if the man killed is guilty of rebellion or treason? Rebellion is treason until the rebellion is successful, when the traitor becomes a patriot.”

“The Law,” Larsen answered, “takes no heed of individuals. It is the protection of the people, and an individual may not defy the masses or endanger their property or their lives by forcing upon them his ideas or whims. That would throttle the Law and set up a despotism.”

“No man is fit to rule if he is not willing to sacrifice his life and his liberty for his people, provided he believes himself to be in the right and a majority of his people agree with him.” Mr. Gibson was speaking.

The Thunder God gazed long and earnestly at these two salt-water philosophers; he knew both had read in his eyes, as he gazed upon Frenchy, the thought which, if put into execution, might save the lives of men more useful to the world than the snaky man who crouched in the bottom of the boat and glared at them so balefully.

“Frenchy,” he called, “I adjudge you guilty of mutiny on the high seas, in defiance of the laws of the United States of America; I adjudge you guilty of treason to the little republic that was automatically set up when this boat dropped over the side of the Matador. Incapable of leadership yourself, you have struck at the authority of one who is capable of it and who still possesses the physical strength to enforce it. If you had triumphed in your rebellion, you and all of us would, doubtless, have perished; but since you have not triumphed, you must not feel badly if I sentence you to die as a martyr to your cause. You had some sort of queer cause—you’ve had it all your life—and you’ve fought for it in your queer, sly way. I say that a cause that’s worth fighting for is worth dying for—particularly when better men than you are adrift in a following sea without a sea anchor. Frenchy, it is my duty to kill you and may God have mercy on your soul.”

At that moment, seemingly to emphasize the truth of his statement, the lip of the following sea slid over the stern of the boat and struck the Thunder God and Larsen a vicious slap.

“We could use a sea anchor,” Larsen murmured patiently.

“I am the Law,” Valdemar Sigurdson declared. “I must be obeyed. What I do is for the greatest good of the greatest number.”

He reached in under the stern sheets and brought forth a five gallon can of light lubricating oil and two hempen objects that looked like small fenders, only their centers were filed with okum. Into these he poured the lubricating oil until the oakum centers would hold no more, brailed a light line to each, crawled forward with them, tied the other end of each rope to the bow ring. Then he crawled back aft until he came to Frenchy crouched with his back to the stinging spray.

“You love your fellow man so much,” he roared, “I’ve decided that you shall die for him!” His terrible hand closed around the mutineer’s neck. He squeezed—and weak as he was there was in that squeeze the strength of three ordinary men. Not a cry, not a struggle came from the doomed man. Only his eyes looked for a few seconds on the Thunder God—and then his neck cracked.

When Valdemar Sigurdson released his grip on his victim’s neck, Larsen reached under the stern sheets and drew forth a coil of inch and a half Manila line and a life preserver. These articles he tossed to the master, who lashed the life preserver around the dead man securely, then fastened one end of the line around Frenchy’s midriff; the other end he fastened at the bow of the boat. These details attended to, he shipped a pair of oars and turned a white, haggard face to Larsen.

“Give her a wipe into the wind, Larsen, and then smother that spritsail,” he commanded. “If we can wear ship without filling I’ll hold her head up to the sea until you and Gibson do the rest.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” cried Larsen cheerfully and glanced behind him. “Ready, about!” He jammed his tiller hard over and as the wind spilled out of his tiny sail he leaped for the canvas and dragged it down into the boat, while Valdemar Sigurdson’s tremendous arms drove deep with the oars and whirled the little craft just in time to present her brave little nose to the sea and make her rise with it.

“Hold her, hold her!” croaked Mr. Gibson and cast off the oil containers, one off each bow. The body of Frenchy followed immediately, and as the boat made rapid leeway before the gale, the line on the oil containers and the corpse stretched taut.

“He wasn’t much of a man,” the Thunder God cried triumphantly, “but he makes a bully sea anchor, and by God, we can ride safely to it. Let it blow. That spreading smear of oil around us will keep the seas from breaking over us. Cheer up, my bullies! We have a lot of fight left in us yet.”

He shipped his oars, helped Larsen snug up the spritsail and bail out the boat, thanked God for His great mercy and fell asleep. Three days later, when the gale had blown itself out, a P-boat found them riding calmly to a sea anchor that proved to be a dead man with a life preserver around him to keep him from sinking. There were other dead men in the boat, but Old Man Hickman’s Thunder God, Mr. Gibson and the man Larsen still survived, for they were of the breed that dies hard. They had willed to live, as men destined for chief ship have a habit of willing.

“And ever since I’ve been wondering if I did right, Nellie—wondering if I was a leader of men or a murderer. I was quite sane when I did it—I thought it all out, and it seemed right and just that he should die to preserve to the world men who do the world’s work and do it cheerfully. I was the State; I was the Law, and I administered that Law according to my code. But, Nellie, doubts assail me now, for the law of God is that a man may not kill. I wasn’t selfish, I didn’t confuse my own desire for life with the desire to save my men so worth while saving. I—I—ah, Nellie, wife, I had to tell you, and God help me if I’ve made a mistake.”

“Hush,” whispered the wife of Old Man Hickman’s Thunder God. “We should always choose the lesser of two evils. You had to choose between killing one man or several, for it was in your power to choose for them life or death. You had to be a man or a mouse—and, dear love, there has never been any doubt in my mind about you. I know I didn’t marry a mouse!”

Fell a silence, while the Thunder God held her tighter. The clock in the hall ticked audibly; Valdemar Sigurdson had never heard it tick so loudly before. But Nellie O’Hara merely held her soft cheek to his, so rough and red and wind bitten, and said nothing; for silence and understanding are the two safest cures for the bruised heart of a man.

CHAPTER VI
Back to Yellow Jacket

For a long time, Chuckwalla Bill had been gazing ruminatively into the camp-fire. Presently he spoke.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I get to wonderin’ what I’m going to do when I get old.” In view of the fact that Chuckwalla Bill is seventy years old if he is a minute, I smiled at the old desert-rat. “Oh, you needn’t smile,” he retorted. “Barrin’ accidents, I ought to be good for another quarter of a century. My mother passed away at ninety-eight, and at that she didn’t die. She just quit livin’ because life wasn’t worth while after my father was killed ridin’ a buckin’ horse at the tender age of a hundred and four—not the horse, but my old man. My paternal grandfather was killed in a duel at eighty-seven, and my maternal grandfather finally got so old he couldn’t keep track of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so they had to shoot him to get rid of him. He got to be a nuisance.”

He parted his mustache and almost put the fire out with a deluge of tobacco juice.

“I’m plumb fearful of the future,” he continued. “Why, I ain’t never seen the inside of a dentist’s office yet, and a toothache is an experience I’ve still got comin’. As for doctors, the only occasions them highwaymen ever gets a fee out of me is the time I’m carved while reprovin’ a Mexican with a wagon-spoke, and another time when I’m shot twice provin’ title to a minin’ claim I don’t want but which I object to havin’ took away from me. And I’ve only been sick once. That was when, under the guise of sweet hospitality, I accept of four fingers of denatured alcohol and formaldehyde that’s labeled bonded whisky.”

“But why should you be fearful of the future, Chuckwalla?” I queried. “Good health is practically assured you, and if the hundred thousand dollars you received for that tungsten property doesn’t last you for the remainder of your days— Why, look here, Chuckwalla: You can invest that hundred thousand in good first farm-mortgages. That means an income of five hundred dollars a month; you’re a single man without dependents, and on that income you can live like a king.”

“Yes; I suppose I can eat well and sleep dry,” he replied, and fell to cogitating again. Suddenly, he spoke. He quoted:

Chuckwalla Bill is one who has educated himself fairly well, for all his free-and-easy handling of his mother tongue. He is an imaginative old rascal who has read much and traveled far.

“Have you, like Marius, stood amid the ruins of Carthage?” I asked.

“No, son,” he replied gently; “I was just thinkin’ of Yellow Jacket and Uncle Jimmy Ballantyne.”

“I have never previously heard of either, Chuckwalla.”

“Well, you needn’t apologize. Yellow Jacket hasn’t been heard of in nigh onto forty year, and Uncle Jimmy Ballantyne ain’t goin’ to be heard of hereafter, not even in the funeral notices, because I aim to plant Uncle Jimmy without bell or book or advertisin’, grief or ostentation. You see, I figger on outlastin’ Uncle Jimmy.”

“Naturally—if your uncle is very much older than you.”

“He ain’t my uncle, son. He’s everybody’s uncle.” He rose, piled some mesquite on the camp-fire, and resumed his seat. “I must tell you about Uncle Jimmy,” he began, “because, thirty-odd year ago, he settled his future to his own satisfaction, and when he come to retire, he did exactly what he’d planned to do, and I guess he’s almighty happy doin’ it, whatever it is. It didn’t make no difference to Uncle Jimmy Ballantyne when he found the world had gone crazy, because Jimmy was a philosopher, and little things like that couldn’t bother him nohow. He just left the world behind. Yes, sir; that old rooster went back to Yellow Jacket—and Yellow Jacket is a ghost minin’-camp that Uncle Jimmy and me put on the map along in the summer of ‘82. She died a natural death in ‘85, but she was a hummer while she lasted; she don’t give back no change.”

“What were the symptoms?” I queried respectfully.

“She had lead complicated with copper in gold ore that assayed so high it broke our hearts to go away and leave it. We tried millin’ it, when what we needed was a cyanide plant. Cyanide plants in them days was not. Still, in our crude way, we managed to make a few dividends until we’d cut away all the piñon pine for five miles around and the fuel problem completed our ruin. And the road into Yellow Jacket was scarcely passable. More jackassable, I should say.

“However, to get back to Uncle Jimmy. Him an’ me made four sizable fortunes durin’ the thirty-six years we was partners, but they was paper fortunes more or less, so I guess we didn’t take ’em seriously. Consequently, we neglected to unload in time—just got greedy and held on for a larger profit. But why repine? We had a good time doin’ it.

“Still, Jimmy’s manner of dissipatin’ his cash reserve used to rile me. I reckon he loans or gives away durin’ his active career at least a million dollars; yet he never sued a man or woman to collect a promissory note, foreclosed a mortgage, or took by main force and violence that which some short sport wrongfully and wilfully withheld. He’s beloved of women and children, and admired and respected and exploited by men, with no credit to speak of with bankers.

“I reckon it ain’t Uncle Jimmy’s fault that he’s dedicated his life to the goddess of Chance, for, as the feller says, he’s prenatally ordained. His parents havin’ wedded in Louisville on a certain day, they start for California with an ox team the day after, and Jimmy’s born on the summit of the Sierra Nevadas. He grew to manhood in the Sierra, and, of course, his old man bein’ a placer-miner, Jimmy was one, too, until they quit findin’ fortunes practically on top of the ground and took to driftin’ for prehistoric river channels. Drift-minin’ didn’t appeal to Jimmy. He was born in the sunlight and he couldn’t stand underground work in a wet channel; so presently he takes a job with a hydraulic outfit. However, he quit that long before the Débris Commission made hydraulic minin’ unpopular. Seems as if it hurt Uncle Jimmy to see them giants squirtin’ big streams of water against the sides of his mountains and tearin’ ’em away forty times faster than it took God A’mighty to make ’em.”

“Uncle Jimmy Ballantyne was a poet,” I opined.

“Uncle Jimmy Ballantyne was the sweetest-hearted fool that ever threw a hitch on a jack, and the only prospector I ever knew that the desert didn’t get sooner or later—considerin’ the fact that Jimmy operated in the desert quite considerable. Me, I like the desert; but the mountains had got Uncle Jimmy at birth, and, unlike me, he never was afraid of ’em. And he was afraid of the desert. Always claimed we’d burn up there some bright day; many’s the time I’ve heard him say he never commenced feelin’ close to God until he was up six thousand feet. The minute we began to climb, Uncle Jimmy began to sing.

“Well, after foolin’ away a good many years of his life in the desert, he finished his business there last fall—business he’d waited nigh on to forty year to finish—and now he’s gone back to the mountains and won’t ever come down among men any more. If I want to visit with him, I’ve got to climb up to Yellow Jacket, which I make the grade this spring to see if the old reprobate is dead or alive, and find him cussin’ me up hill and down dale because I scorn the flyin’ machine he offers to send after me.”

“An airplane?” I queried, amazed.

“Sure. Uncle Jimmy can afford it. Dang a man that holes up for the remainder of his days on the six-thousand-foot-level of the Cosos and has his mail and his grub and his friends delivered by flyin’ machine! ‘Which you’re plain, old-fashioned, and back-numbered takin’ a week to get to see me, Chuckwalla,’ says Uncle Jimmy, ‘when you might have floated up here, free gratis, in less’n thirty minutes from the railroad.’ He hoots when I claim that flyin’ for a man of my age and worldly experience ain’t my notion of dignity. But for all Jimmy’s abuse, I ain’t got the heart to come whoopin’ down out of the sky and light in Uncle Jimmy’s landin’-field. Why? Because that there landin’-field was once the site of the city of Yellow Jacket that Uncle Jimmy and me put on the map in the days of our youth and ignorance. Son, that would be like yellin’ out loud in church. Of course, some wanderin’ prospector used the last buildin’ in Yellow Jacket as fuel to cook his beans along about the Spanish War, but there’s a few old pillars of adobe and wash-boulders that was chimneys in the most pretentious homes, and I sort of hesitate to take liberties with these monuments of memory. Which is more than Uncle Jimmy did. He’s left ’em standin’, of course, but he’s got alfalfa planted where Yellow Jacket once reared her proud head, and he maintains a couple of jacks for old sake’s sake, and a passel o’ Toggenburg goats to furnish him with milk and cheese. He has a barn for the jacks and the goats to live in while they’re snowed in, and another barn for feed, and a mighty nice little adobe shack for himself, frontin’ a combination flower and vegetable garden. The old concrete reservoir that was the municipal water-supply of Yellow Jacket in the Eighties is still standin’. Jimmy just cleaned it out and put in some new pipin’; he’s planted some weepin’ willows round the house, which he’s furnished plain but mighty comfortable; he has all the best magazines and books, and the newspapers are just as fresh to Uncle Jimmy when delivered in a heap two weeks late as they are to us delivered every mornin’.

“Is Uncle Jimmy lonesome? I should say not! He’s got a cur dog, and, in the winter, when he’s snowed in, he makes friends with starvin’ bobcats, coyotes, an’ wolverines. The last time I was up, he’d added a mountain-sheep to his menagerie—an old ewe he’d found bogged in a snow-drift. He was plannin’ to cross with a Merino ram an’ see what the lambs would be like.

“However, to get back to the days when Uncle Jimmy Ballantyne and yours truly were both steppin’ high, wide and handsome, and as full of ginger and ambition as a pair of woodpeckers at work on a concrete schoolhouse. When Jimmy’s about twenty-five, he wanders back over the Sierra and gets him a job in Virginia City, which, in her day, is the greatest silver-camp, bar none, that the world has ever seen. Jimmy works underground just long enough to learn to recognize silver ore when he sees it and get a road stake before the yearnin’ for a change takes him in hand an’ leads him down to Calico City.

“Along about that time, I’ve made my big strike at Panamint, and have had my first experience of bein’ a minin’-camp millionaire. I own the controllin’ interest in the Panamint Lily, and I’m carryin’ more silver stocks than a jack can tote round. Yes, sir; I had my day, an’ a bright an’ glorious day it was. Then I had my night! The demonetization of silver put the skids under me an’ greased ’em, and I left Panamint as I had arrived—walkin’ behind a pair of jacks. However, I had lots of company, and, as the feller says, ‘Man born of woman is of few days and filled with sorrer.’ So I’ll skip a lot of adventures and pause again at the bar of the principal deadfall in Ballarat, to which camp I’m attracted by rumors of gold. An’, in order to announce my presence in society and get acquainted, I surge up to the bar and invite all present to join me in their favorite libation—which bein’ done, I’m aware of one man in the house that’s failed to accept my invitation. He’s settin’ off in a corner, lookin’ so plumb dejected that I bring his liquor over to him and set down alongside of him.

“ ‘Excuse me, partner,’ I says, ‘but there’s a cloud on your brow. Is this sorrer that gnaws at your vitals so personal you can’t share it with a total stranger?’

“He looks up with a sad, but sweet and friendly smile, like a lost dog. ‘This cloud you observe, my friend,’ says he, ‘once had a silver linin’. I’m one of these late parvenu persons from a white-metal camp, and I ain’t quite adjusted myself to poverty. Finding myself flat busted is such a recent experience that I ignored your invitation, not seein’ my way clear to reciprocate.’

“ ‘Well, amigo,’ says I, ‘it wasn’t my intention to start an endurance contest. That’s a habit I’m cured of, because I’m another one of them defunct silver kings. Why, boy, I hardly got the taste of ham and eggs and champagne out of my mouth yet!’

“ ‘Us silver kings had ought to stand together,’ he says, with another one of them winnin’, twisted smiles of his, and he crooked his finger at the barkeeper. ‘Bring a drink for my friend here,’ he says. ‘He’ll pay for it.’

“ ‘I’m Chuckwalla Bill Redfield, late of the Panamint Lily and still mayor of Panamint—her first, last, only, and continuous mayor, because my successor ain’t never goin’ to be elected.’

“ ‘You’re baskin’ in the presence of Jimmy Ballantyne, late of the Dyin’ Jenny Silver Minin’ Company an’ the town boob of Calico City. So you’re out of politics, are you?’

“ ‘I am, Jimmy,’ I says, ‘and my morals has improved otherwise, in addition.’

“ ‘Chuckwalla,’ says he, ‘I’m lonesome for an understanding and understandable partner with a sense of humor and some cash capital. I think you’ll do.’

“ ‘The ayes have it, and it is so ordered, Jimmy. However, let us start even. I’m goin’ to give you half of my everlastin’ fortune,’ and I lay a five-dollar piece on the table. ‘And inasmuch as I own two picks, two shovels, two back saddles, two blankets, two jacks, and two days’ rations, we’re not confronted by any problem in long division. Put her there, Jimmy!’

“We shook on it.

“ ‘Happy days, Chuckwalla!’

“ ‘All the hair off your head, Jimmy!’

“We drank.

“ ‘The Lord is my Shepherd,’ says Jimmy Ballantyne. ‘I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in catclaw and prickly pear. He leadeth me beside the empty water-holes. I must be plumb crazy to associate myself with a desert-rat—me a born hill-billy.’ He fingers the five-dollar piece, smiling—and then I see that back of that childish smile was a childish heart and a childish soul, and somebody had tromped hell out of both.

“ ‘Which, as the poet says, “man alone is vile,” ’ I come back at him. ‘Be thankful you got a partner that don’t aim to let you get morbid, and that ain’t so burdened with years he’s gotten hidebound. I’m not so wedded to a desert life, Jimmy, that I’m against tacklin’ a high-grade proposition if we have to climb clear to the tip of Mount Whitney to stake it. Suppose we cease this vain repining and slip on the nose-bags.’

“ ‘Well, a good snappy salesman could sign me up for an order of ham and eggs for immediate delivery,’ says Jimmy, and leads the way to a Chinese restaurant, where we scoff. Then I help Jimmy rustle up his few worldly possessions, and we make a dry camp in the sand at the edge of the town. I had a quart in my kyacks, in case of sudden vertigo or melancholia, so presently we enter into a discussion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and Jimmy unloads his cargo of grief into my sympathetic red ears.

“It appears Jimmy has drifted into Calico City lookin’ for a job where dexterity with a pick, a shovel, or a drill is the main requisite, and upon confiding to a total stranger the tale of his ability along these lines, he is given temporary employment, with the promise that, in a day or two, when a new consignment of powder arrives, he’ll be put on regular. ‘Down that draw mebbe half a mile,’ says this person to Uncle Jimmy, ‘my favorite gen-burro, Kathleen Mavourneen, is facing certain death from lockjaw. I’d ought to go down and kill her and put her out of her misery, but I lack the heart. I’ll give you five dollars to go down there, shoot Kathleen Mavourneen, and give her Christian burial, and, to show you I’m a sport, here’s your money in advance.’

“Well, Jimmy needed that five dollars pretty bad, so he accepts the contract and hikes down the draw, lookin’ for a pinto burro. When he finds Kathleen Mavourneen, she’s in the last agonies, as the feller says; so Jimmy wafts her hence with a forty-five, stakes out a grave, and goes to work; which he hasn’t been peckin’ away five minutes before he realizes that another human jackal has took advantage of his open and confidin’ nature. All of that country is underlaid with conglomerate, and Jimmy soon figures out that the owner of Kathleen Mavourneen is a sight shrewder than he is tender-hearted and truthful. Knowing his gen-burro is too stiff and far gone to be driven outside the camp-limits, there to die in peace and be consumed by the coyotes, unsung, unwept, and unsmelled, he swindles Jimmy, a stranger, into acceptin’ what looks on the face of things like a mighty simple contract; by paying Jimmy in advance he makes the contract binding, and, I suppose, being more or less a judge of human nature, he knows, after one look into Jimmy’s open countenance, that, having accepted the contract, Jimmy will fulfil it if it takes all summer.

“Well, son, it’s just a trifle after sunup when Jimmy bumps the burro off this mortal coil, and by high noon he’s down a foot and a half and has wore the points off two picks. Also, he’s acutely conscious of the fact that he’s operatin’ in the heart of the Mojave desert in midsummer. He’s like to die. He hikes back to town, pays out four bits to get his picks resharpened, has some lunch, and goes back on the job. By sunset, he’s down two feet—when he makes a horrible discovery. Kathleen Mavourneen, having laid in the hot heart of God’s great outdoors all day, is strangely distorted; she’s mebbe a foot and a half thicker through the middle at dewy eve than she was at early morn.

“That night, in Calico, Uncle Jimmy is subject to more or less low humor on the part of comparative strangers. However, he’s too plumb tuckered out to resent this familiarity, and too proud to admit by word or sign that he realizes he’s been swindled. So the camp sets him down as a sort of natural—particularly when he returns to the attack next morning with a drill and some dynamite.

“About ten o’clock he has his shots all tamped home and is about to touch off the fuse when a pilgrim in a buckboard drawn by a pair of big mules comes driftin’ up the draw. He allows he’s headed out of camp, and for a dollar he’ll drag the deceased one statute mile more or less from her present location and clear of the public clamor. Immediately Jimmy sublets his contract, the pilgrim provides a rope, Kathleen Mavourneen is made fast by the neck to the hind ex, and the incubus is presently off Jimmy’s hands. However, the fruit of his lost labor is yawning before him, ready to provide a suit for damages from the first drunkard that falls into it; likewise, the bottom thereof is filled with unexploded shots, which it is necessary to explode before fillin’ in the vacant grave. So Jimmy touches off his shots and flees; returning to the arena of his grief, he discovers that his shots have uncovered something that looks, to his experienced eye, mighty like silver-bearin’ ore.

“Calmly, Uncle Jimmy lays by a few samples, covers up the hole, and, with the dollar he’s got left out of the five, he goes back to camp and tempts the goddess of Luck in a crap game. He has seven silver dollars in front of him when the bones get around to his horny fist, and there are seven gents, all told, buckin’ the game. Well, he quit with twenty-four hundred and eighty-eight dollars in his poke, and jumped to Los Angeles with his ore samples, not being boob enough to have them assayed locally.

“Well, son, them samples run so high Jimmy was like to faint when he read the report. Back he goes to Calico and stakes out the Dyin’ Jenny claim, together with all and singular the ground adjoining or in anywise appertaining which latter he stakes in the name of absentee friends, and later induces said friends to give him quitclaim deeds in favor of the Dyin’ Jenny Silver Minin’ Company, which Jimmy has by this time incorporated. This enables him to do the assessment work on the lead, lode, or deposit for the corporation, instead of being forced to do it on each separate claim.

“A dozen husky miners and a liberal application of powder enables Jimmy to disclose a seventeen-foot ledge in thirty days that’s the talk of the West. The ore is so rich it can stand the overhead of being hauled in wagons to the railroad and shipped to a smelter and still leave Jimmy a whalin’ big margin of profit. In this way, he operates for upward of a year, and about that time, while on a visit to San Francisco, he meets up with a lady who happens to be stoppin’ at the same hotel he is. As near as I can make out, she was the clingin’-vine type of female; golden hair—mebbe; blue eyes that looked up shy-like at the wonderful big men, half wonderin’, half fearful, half confident—naturally, being a full-grown man, you’ve met the type I’m referrin’ to. However, this was Jimmy’s first experience, and, as I’ve stated previous, he’s a simple, trustin’ soul.

“Seems this Lorelei has artistic yearnings—classic dancin’, elocution, piano lessons, and the like. Jimmy told me she was that sweet you could smell her in a room ten minutes after she’d left it. She was his first love, and he played the game of love like he always played poker—table-stakes—so, presently, he quiets her girlish apprehensions long enough to get her to the city hall for a marriage license and to a preacher’s house for the ceremony. However, he never does succeed in inducin’ that female to share his pine shanty at the Dyin’ Jenny Mine in Calico City. She’d heard all about Calico City; she’d die in the desert. Well, son, Jimmy Ballantyne had taken a contract to make her happy; so he sold out the Dyin’ Jenny to a British syndicate for a million dollars, taking therefor their promissory note due in one year at six per cent and secured by all of the stock in the Dyin’ Jenny Minin’ Company. They get Jimmy to fall for that deal by payin’ the first year’s interest in advance. Well, I suppose fifty thousand looked kind of big to Mrs. Ballantyne. She told Jimmy he needed a vacation—all het up to find some Yurropean professor to perfect her art.”

“I suppose they went to Europe and had a wonderful honeymoon,” I suggested.

“Nothin’ compared with what they’d planned,” Chuckwalla replied grimly. “Mrs. Jimmy lost so much of that fifty thousand in plain, old-fashioned roulette and horse-racin’ in Paris that they had to come home before her education in art had even begun. Also, it appears she’d quit heavin’ up them deep sighs and was inclined to scratch and spit a little at Jimmy—on occasion. Oh, I reckon she was a bird!

“Well, to make a long story shorter, they get home in time to discover that, while they’ve been disportin’ themselves in the capitals of Yurrup, the price of silver has kept droppin’ steadily until it’s now that low the Dyin’ Jenny can’t operate at a profit, and the mine is shut down. When Jimmy goes up to the office and allows as how he’d like to be accommodated by a little payment on account of their note, if they can spare the money, the secretary-treasurer is mighty apologetic and says he don’t reckon they can spare it and that Jimmy’ll have to wait until the note’s due. That’s hard waitin’, but Mrs. Jimmy comes through like a thoroughbred in this emergency and hocks enough diamonds to carry ’em along in the style to which they’ve become accustomed until the day the note falls due. Then, as the feller says, alas! Yes—and alack! The British syndicate, while it was makin’ money, puts its winnin’s back into improvements and the roastin’-plant for the ore, and when Jimmy tells them he’d like a million dollars, the secretary-treasurer informs him that the ghost ain’t walked for him in three months! Then Jimmy, growin’ desperate, offers to shave the note right considerable, but the angel of Hope has commenced to molt, and the syndicate isn’t particularly interested in the Dyin’ Jenny any more. So Jimmy is forced to close them out on the stock that secures the note, and the company comes back into his possession again. Naturally, Mrs. Jimmy is some disappointed. Finally, she allows as how she’ll have to go back to her art, and that, in view of the fact that Jimmy ain’t in position to support her accordin’ to her station in life, it won’t be no more than decent of him to give her a divorce.

“From all I ever gather, Jimmy don’t say much, if anything. I can imagine him standin’ there, lookin’ at her with that foolish little twisted smile that always hid his hurts; after a while, he turned and started for the door. ‘Jimmy,’ she calls after him, ‘where are you goin’?’ ‘I’m goin’ back to the mountains,’ says Jimmy. ‘I reckon you need an excuse to divorce me, and desertion is as good as any. You can get it by default.’

“That night, Jimmy started driftin’. His heart was broke—what there was left to break, and when him and me pal up in Ballarat, I can see with half an eye that it’s goin’ to be some job to shake Jimmy out of himself. I’m sure of that when, along in the middle of the night, Jimmy sets up in his blankets and pelts my tarp with sand until I wake up.

“ ‘Partner,’ says Jimmy, and his voice is tremblin’, ‘let’s drift. I’ve had so much hard luck I thought a change might be due about tonight; so, after you fall asleep, I drifted up-town with that five-spot you give me. You know how big a five-spot looks to a silver king, Chuckwalla.’

“ ‘An ex-silver king, Jimmy,’ I corrects him.

“ ‘An ex-silver king,’ says Jimmy. ‘Don’t I own the sweetest silver mine in the world? Silver will come back, Chuckwalla. It’s bound to.’

“ ‘Which the wish is father to the thought with me, too, Jimmy,’ I says. ‘Be a king without a throne if you’ve a mind to. In the meantime ramble along with the tale of your iniquities.’

“ ‘Well, I’m feelin’ that I might just as well be broke as the way I am; so I casually place my lone spot on the double O, and—lo!—the little ivory ball brings home the bacon. Gatherin’ up my thirty-two to one, and inquirin’ of the young man in charge as to the extent of the limit, I’m informed that I can bet ’em as high as the little twinklin’ stars; whereupon I place my entire roll on the thirteen—and again the little ivory ball behaves. And then I grab my wad and fly back to camp while the flyin’s good. Your half of the killin’ is tucked away in your right shoe.”

“ ‘All right, Jimmy,’ I says. ‘Muchas gracias, and thanks very much. Good-night.’

“ ‘Chuckwalla,’ he says, sort of pleadin’-like, ‘let’s drift. I—I want to get out of the desert and back to the mountains. There wasn’t much snow last winter, and the trail will be open by the time we get up there.’

“ ‘The mere thought of the Sierra makes me cold,’ I says, ‘but, still, never let it be said that I was a wanton killjoy. I’ll flip a dollar with you, Jimmy, to see whether it’s the Sierra or the Mojave. I choose heads.’

“He wouldn’t gamble with me. No, sir; this gamblified son of a gay gambolier refuses the issue and begins to plead. ‘We’ll get down into Tuolumne Meadows about the middle of July,’ he urges, ‘and at eight thousand feet the snow will all be gone. The lush grass will be a foot long in the meadows, and the buttercups and California poppies and baby-blue-eyes will be pokin’ their little heads up at us. And I know some creeks in the Sierra where we can pan better than day’s wages, and by the time snow flies, we’ll be droppin’ down on to the head waters of the San Joaquin; there’s some country there I’ve always wanted to prospect for pockets. Please come, Chuckwalla! I don’t want to go alone.’

“He was standin’ up now, all a-tremble, pale and haggard like he hadn’t slept a wink, and it come over me then, my son, that Jimmy Ballantyne’s soul had been ground to powder. He wasn’t an educated man, but he had the brains to think tremendous thoughts, the nature that suffers easy and deep, and the guts to keep his troubles to himself until they sort of flowed over and leaked out. So him and me went over the Tioga Pass and like to froze to death, and down in the meadow the snow-mosquitoes like to eat me alive. But Jimmy was happy. Down on the Mount Lyle fork, he found a half-acre pool, so he whooped, shucked his clothes, and went in swimmin’ in water that flowed from under a glacier and was cold enough to freeze the hand of Death. He was plumb disgusted when I heated my water in a five gallon oil-can and groomed myself with a cloth.

“That was a pleasant and unprofitable summer. We fished a lot and did some mountain-climbin’, and finally got down into the San Joaquin valley broke. But Jimmy’s heart was mended, although I reckon there was a big scar there all his life; so I figured the time wasn’t wasted.

“Well, we worked on a farm in the San Joaquin valley that winter, but, come spring, I had a longin’ for a wider horizon, and while the six weeks of grass is on the desert, there ain’t nothing prettier. I wanted Jimmy to see it then, to prove to him that flowers grow there. Well, we monkeyed round, doin’ a little dry-washin’ here, pannin’ a creek-bottom there, hornin’ out a sample of ore some other place—and neither of us gettin’ weary of the other. Son, we stuck together ever since, and in all that time we never had a ruckus. Jimmy was square, and when things went all to hell, he never talked and said, ‘I told you so.’ He just smiled and suggested the Sierra for a change.

“Well, the third year of our partnership, Jimmy said he’d like to have a look at the Cosos or the Panamints or the Funeral Range. I explained to him that these ranges didn’t have any vegetation to speak of, and he needn’t look for any mountain lakes. ‘Just rock and shale, Jimmy,’ I says, ‘the most awful mountains you ever heard of. Worse than the desert—in fact, they’re desert mountains.’

“ ‘Mineralized, of course,’ says Jimmy.

“ ‘Naturally,’ says I, ‘but unapproachable, and hence unprofitable.’

“Well, he’d stood the sight of the Cosos most all summer and, for all the hell in them, they look blue and invitin’, standin’ off there on the eastern horizon, beckonin’; so, naturally, he leads me up there to see what we can see—and we find Yellow Jacket.

“I reckon that a long time ago, before that country was desert, a glacier had scooped a nice little valley out of the top of the Cosos at that point, and, having accomplished its purpose, slid off down six thousand feet of cliff and chasm and melted off in Owens Valley. Then, for a million years, the meltin’ snow, the rain- and hail-storms and cloudbursts kept peckin’ away at the surroundin’ hills and washin’ the rock dust down into this valley, and, after a while, it was fertile, and grasses, fir trees, and piñon pines grew there, forming a natural park. Of course, it was brown and dry when Uncle Jimmy and I clumb up there first and looked at it, but there’s a little narrow green-and-gold streak down the heart of it, where a little creek rambles, and when we follow the creek, we find it has its source in a big spring. So we camp there, and the jacks grow fat on the green fodder and the buttercups, while we prospect until we strike the high grade well down toward the mouth of the valley. The snow drove us out on the twenty-sixth of September, but we come back in the spring, and others with us, and that year we built Yellow Jacket and put her on the map.

“I reckon that, for two months after the snow melted off Yellow Jacket, there wasn’t anything prettier under heaven that spring. Jimmy said it was a paradise of jade and gold tucked in the heart of hell. We built us a log cabin right on the lip of the valley overlookin’ the jumpin’-off place, and, on summer evenin’s, me and Jimmy always sat out on our front porch and looked down over them ragged, forbiddin’ cliffs and chasms and buttes, clear six thousand feet to the floor of Owens Valley.

“Ah, son, that’s a fair sight, and, from Yellow Jacket, it doesn’t look like the land that God forgot to finish. In the foreground, you see Owens Lake—a sheet of misty silver with the white rimmin’ that comes of the salt and borax deposits. Stretchin’ north from the lake, you see a band of green runnin’ through the brown desert, and in the center of this band of green there’s a streak of silver. That’s the Owens River. The valley is twenty-five miles wide, mebbe, at this point, and as flat as your hand until it bumps up against the ten-thousand-foot buttress of black malpais and granite that is the east wall of the Sierra, with a smear of white, that is the everlastin’ snow, along the top of it. Off to the south, there are blue and red and white and ocher buttes, with a blue haze that floats along their bases, hidin’ them, but permittin’ the crests to stick up like lonely islands in the sea. Yes, sir, son; you can’t always see that desert valley. There’s so much mirage in it you think it’s the ocean, and once Jimmy saw a freight-wagon with a trailer and sixteen mules drivin’ across the sky. Another time, I saw a city, and once we saw a ship with all sails set.

“Well, we laid out a grade and scratched and blasted a trail up the mountainside, wide enough for a pack-train, and, for a while, Yellow Jacket was good to live in, even in winter. And then, as I remarked previous, she died. Me and Uncle Jimmy was the first to go in and we was the last to come out, and as we stood on the rim of Yellow Jacket, and looked down into Owens Valley, Uncle Jimmy gulped.

“ ‘Chuckwalla,’ he says, ‘I love this place. The impious hand of man has ruined our little jade-and-gold paradise, but nature will in time wash away the yellow dumps, smooth ’em down, and cover ’em with grass. The seedlin’ firs and tamaracks and piñons will grow up along the creek to cover the scars, and Yellow Jacket will renew herself.’

“ ‘Well, Jimmy,’ I says, ‘it don’t mean nothin’ in my young life whether she does or not. I’m through.’

“ ‘Well, I’m not,’ he says, quiet-like. ‘Sooner or later, silver will come back, and when it does——’

“ ‘You’ll be too old to enjoy it, Jimmy,’ I says.

“Uncle Jimmy turned and looked up the valley. ‘Good-by, Yellow Jacket,’ he says; ‘I’ll see you when silver comes back.’

“Son, that was a long wait. Me and Uncle Jimmy wore out some shoe-leather, and a heap of water ran down through Yellow Jacket in the thirty-four years he waited. Every year we circled back to Calico City and did the assessment work on the Dyin’ Jenny, in order to keep Uncle Jimmy’s title clear.

“When the big war in Yurrup started and the government called in all the gold, a lot of us hard-boiled Westerners spent our time cussin’ this Eastern paper money and bewailin’ the passin’ of the twenty-dollar gold piece. Not so with Uncle Jimmy. ‘Where’s your gold, Chuckwalla?’ he says to me, triumphant-like. ‘Gone to Yurrup to pay for the war,’ he says, answerin’ his own question. ‘And what’s takin’ its place? Why—paper money and silver! Chuckwalla, it just ain’t nature that rag paper can compete with silver, and you mark my words, partner, silver’s goin’ to come back right soon now. It stands to reason. The purchasin’ power of a dollar in gold is less than half what it used to be; so don’t it seem natural that folks should come to a cheap metal? Chuckwalla, silver’s up to seventy-one, accordin’ to the paper.’

“ ‘Well, she’s got a long way to go before silver minin’ becomes popular again,’ says I. ‘When she hits a dollar twenty-nine, which I believe was high-water mark when silver was king, I’ll think of reopenin’ the Panamint Lily—provided some prospector hasn’t gotten title to her by reason of doin’ the assessment work.’

“ ‘Yes—and I’ve been a-pickin’ on you for years to keep up your assessment work,’ says Jimmy, sort of grieved-like. ‘You can bet your sweet life nobody gets title to my Dyin’ Jenny mine by reason of my slack business methods. No, sir-ee!’

“Time passes; and inasmuch as I’m a man who believes in trimmin’ his sails to every breeze, I couldn’t see no sense in prospectin’ for minerals that wasn’t particularly in demand. There was a general cry for tungsten and manganese, on account of the war shuttin’ off the importation of these metals, but when I tried to get Jimmy to lift his mind off silver, he hooted at me. ‘The next thing I know,’ says he, ‘you’ll want me to help you locate a platinum mine, just because platinum is in such demand it’s up to a hundred and forty an ounce. Why don’t you keep your eye peeled for radium while you’re at it?’

“So the upshot of it was I’m forced to go out and stake that tungsten prospect myself, whilst Uncle Jimmy goes down to Calico City and does his assessment work again, between times keepin’ his eye on the silver market, which climbs slowly but steadily. When silver’s up to ninety, I beg him to sell out. He has an offer of twenty thousand dollars, and twenty thousand dollars will keep him out of the poorhouse for the rest of his days. But Uncle Jimmy wasn’t that kind of a sport. Even when silver clumb to a dollar, he refused seventy-five thousand for the Dyin’ Jenny, and when it clumb to a dollar ten, Uncle Jimmy was busted wide open. But he was game. Right off, he began pickin’ on me to sell my tungsten claims, and, like I’d been doin’ all my life, I allowed myself to be persuaded and sold for a hundred thousand. Right off, Uncle Jimmy borrowed five thousand dollars from me, owin’ to the high cost of livin’, and allowed that, whilst my money held out, he’d like to see the photograph of the man that could buy his Dyin’ Jenny claim for a cent less than a million dollars.

“Finally come the day when silver gets back where she started from.

“ ‘Jimmy,’ says I, ‘she’s back to one twenty-nine. Sell, and we’ll go to Yurrup and visit the spots where our boys made the Hun hunt his hole.’

“ ‘To hades with Yurrup,’ says Uncle Jimmy. ‘We’ll wait a spell’—and we did. But the day silver hit one thirty-nine and a half and Uncle Jimmy stuck out for a dollar and fifty, I knew something had to be done. So I went to this mining engineer, Scott, and had him prepare a bill of sale and a certified check for a million dollars. Then I dug up all the old stock certificates of the Dyin’ Jenny Silver Minin’ Company from Uncle Jimmy’s war-bags (for, somehow, he’d managed to pay the corporation tax and kept the company alive) and set them and the bill of sale out on a desk, ready for endorsement and signin’. ‘Now then, Jimmy Ballantyne,’ I says, ‘you owe me five thousand dollars, and personally I don’t see no prospect of gettin’ it back unless you grab Fortune by the foretop and wrastle her down when the opportunity offers. Sign them papers, or I’ll never speak to you agin as long as I live. Also, I’ll have a warrant swore out agin you, chargin’ you with insanity.’

“ ‘You go plumb to hades,’ says Jimmy. ‘Silver’ll go to a dollar and a half.’

“ ‘All right,’ I says; ‘I will.’ And I went inside, packed my dunnage, and left without saying good-by to Uncle Jimmy, although he followed me to the railroad station and stood leanin’ agin a Wells-Fargo truck lookin’ sorrowful at me. He made a grab at my coat tails as I clumb aboard the train, but I kicked back and reached him in the chest, and he let go. I knew I’d busted his heart in two. Well, two hours later, the conductor came into the smokin’-car at Lone Pine and handed me a telegram. It was from Uncle Jimmy and read: ‘Have sold the Dyin’ Jenny. Come back.’ I had a mighty good notion to make him telegraph me five thousand dollars before agreein’ to come back, but there’s such a thing as carryin’ a joke too far with sensitive fellers like Jimmy Ballantyne; so I compromised by makin’ him send an automobile for me, and when the automobile arrived at Lone Pine, Uncle Jimmy was settin’ in it.

“ ‘You road-agent,’ he says, ‘git in here and spare me any of your lip. I forgive you that kick in the chest, because it’s the first time you ever showed anger at my weaknesses—and sometimes I used to wonder how you could stand goin’ back to Calico with me year after year to keep the Dyin’ Jenny alive. I guess that finishes all I have to say of a business nature.’

“ ‘I’m glad of it, you dotard,’ I says. ‘If I hadn’t had the foresight to make that man Scott come through with a certified check, most likely he’d have paid you in a promissory note, and right off silver would have gone to bed with the dropsy. I’ve been a-daddyin’ of you forty years, Jimmy Ballantyne, and I’m sick of it.’ ‘Sho,’ says Uncle Jimmy; ‘don’t I know it? Forty year ago, you split your everlastin’ fortune with me—and me a total stranger. Well, I’m no piker, Chuckwalla. Here’s my check for five hundred thousand.’

“ ‘Jimmy,’ says I, ‘you’re plumb daft!’

“ ‘I know it,’ he says. ‘Been crazy for forty year; but I like it. We’re a pair of old men, Chuckwalla; so what do you say if we quit the minin’ game and hell round a little before settlin’ down to the enjoyments of a ripe old age.’

“ ‘On one condition,’ I says. ‘We’ll sink this half of your fortune which you’ve given me in Liberty Bonds, and put ’em away in a safe-deposit box with two keys. We each take a key, and any time one of us is broke, he comes to the box, helps himself to such bonds as he needs, and hocks ’em. Now, that matter having been decided, it is regularly moved and seconded that me and you strike out for the metropolis and stake out a little worldly pleasure.’

“Which we did. But, son, we couldn’t find it. While me and Uncle Jimmy was livin’ our lives far from the maddin’ crowd’s ignoble strife, as the feller says, the world had been quietly changin’—only, we never knew it. Arrived in San Francisco, we put up at the Palace and look round for the kind of enjoyment we’ve been used to. Son, there ain’t a dance-hall a respectable man would be found dead in, and while the Barbary Coast is havin’ one last fling before the prohibition lid goes on, there ain’t no class to it. Son, them hurdy-gurdies is filled with men and women that’d rob a poor-box, and the liquor ain’t fit to drink. There isn’t a game of any kind goin’ on, either, and when we ask where a couple of gents can get action for their money, we’re led to a secret gamblin’-house patronized by the sort of birds I used to let out of camp on twenty-four hours’ notice when I was mayor of Panamint. Son, it sure is one hell of a world that me and Uncle Jimmy bust into, and it ain’t a week before we’ve had a plenty and wish we was back in the sage-brush and the cactus.

“Well, the end come sudden—like that! Uncle Jimmy had been so nervous and depressed that I saw he was goin’ to make a break if I didn’t do something; so, remembering his weakness for mountains, I laid out a day to go up Mount Tamalpais. Tamalpais really ain’t much more’n a respectable hill—about four thousand five hundred feet, I guess; but when a feller needs mountains in a hurry, he can’t be choosy, and I’d been there once before and knew the view was worth while if there wasn’t no fog on the bay. So we get aboard the ferry-boat that takes you over to Marin County, where you take the train up the mountain, and while we’re prowlin’ around on the boat, I’m attracted to a woman who’s standin’ by the rail, lookin’ as if she’s fixin’ to have a cry. She’s mebbe sixty year old, and, the way she’s dressed, I figure mebbe she’s rich if she owns five dollars. Her hair is white, but it’s fine and there’s lots of it, and if she’d had twenty years knocked off her life and a little joy thrown in, she’d have been a handsome woman. Her hands, which she’s foldin’ and unfoldin’ nervous-like, are mighty small and delicate—and presently she stretches them out toward the city we’re leaving and says very quiet, ‘Good-by, you sad old world!’ And, before we can stop her, she’s under the chain stretched across the tail-end of the boat and has fluttered overboard; and while I’m staring at the spot where she went over, Uncle Jimmy slips under the chain with a life preserver on his arm and flutters over after her.

“Well, they stopped the ferry-boat, and the deckhands put out a boat. Mebbe a quarter of a mile back, I could see Uncle Jimmy fightin’ the old woman in the water. I guess she wanted to go through with the job and resented his interference. But Uncle Jimmy’s tougher’n a gad and stays with her until they’re both picked up, and when the deckhands snake them in over the rail, Uncle Jimmy’s eyes are shining like the morning light on Twin Lakes.

“ ‘You tarnation Billiken,’ I says, ‘you’ve plumb spoiled our party!’ And I shook the water out of him.

“ ‘Let go, partner,’ he says; ‘I’ve got to go to her.’

“ ‘You’ll come with me to the engine room and thaw out, you dratted hero,’ I says. ‘I don’t aim to have you catchin’ your death o’ cold—not at your age.’ The truth is, I’m more or less shook up by the incident and a mite worried about Uncle Jimmy.

“Uncle Jimmy blinks like a pink-eyed old rabbit in the strong sunlight, and his chin gives a quiver that didn’t come from the cold water.

“ ‘It’s her, Chuckwalla,’ he whispers.

“ ‘Her who?’ I says, shakin’ him some more.

“ ‘My wife,’ says Uncle Jimmy, and, for the first time in sixty year, I reckon, Uncle Jimmy’s twisted smile couldn’t hide what was in Uncle Jimmy’s twisted heart. I walks him to the upper deck, away from the crowd, and he set down in a corner and weeps some.

“ ‘Chuckwalla,’ he says presently, ‘did you hear what she said before she went overboard? “Good-by, you sad old world.” Oh, partner, can you blame her for wantin’ to get shet of it? I reckon life has used her plumb rough, poor girl!’

“I reckoned it had, and I reckoned she deserved it; but I thought mebbe I’d better not say so to Uncle Jimmy. Privately, son, I’m tellin’ you that if I’d known who she was when I first lay eyes on her, I’d have chucked her overboard and saved expenses; for I never could abide the thought of that woman and her treatment of Uncle Jimmy. I was always agin her, but still I hid my feelings and helped Uncle Jimmy tote her to a hotel in Sausalito and have her cared for—after which, I conclude Jimmy’s interest in the mountain is somewhat dampened; so I leave ’em alone and come back to the city.

“About four o’clock next morning, I’m roused from my fitful slumbers in that six-dollar-a-day room by Uncle Jimmy switchin’ on the light and bangin’ me with a pillow.

“ ‘Chuckwalla,’ he says, ‘ain’t it lucky I held out on the Dyin’ Jenny until silver came back?’

“ ‘On second thoughts, Jimmie,’ I says, ‘I believe I’ll hang on to that half-million you gave me. Something tells me you’re a-goin’ to be a pauper again right soon. What’s the meanin’ of all this early mornin’ excitement, you human Santa Claus?’

“He sat down on my bed. ‘I’ve got the ace of Happiness coppered,’ he confides, childlike. ‘I’ve got this gosh-awful pure, refined, nasty-nice, lunatic, nerve-racking crooked prohibition world beat to death. Chuckwalla, me and Letty’s goin’ back to Yellow Jacket and leave the world plumb behind. Do you want a nice buildin’-site in Yellow Jacket, partner?’

“ ‘Two is company; three’s a crowd, Jimmy,’ I says. ‘Is Letty cured of her art?’

“He looked so hurt I apologized immediately. ‘Letty’s an old lady, Chuckwalla,’ he says, ‘and she’s suffered a heap. Nothing’s ever gone right with her, and she’s plumb tuckered out and ready and willin’ to quit. I—I reckon it’s sort of my duty to look after her, Chuckwalla. You know I took a contract once to do that—and I’d have done it, too, if she’d only let me.’

“ ‘You amazin’ old he goat!’ I says to myself. But, to Uncle Jimmy, I says, ‘Do I give the bride away, Jimmy?’

“ ‘Which you most certainly do—at nine o’clock this mornin’, Chuckwalla.’

“ ‘So be it,’ says I—and it was.

“A week later, Uncle Jimmy left for Yellow Jacket and was gone with Letty all summer, supervisin’ a gang of workmen, makin’ his last camp snug for his old age. He put in a reenforced concrete room in the abandoned drift of our old mine and stored enough liquor to do him fifty years before the lid went on. I reckon he had an airplane flyin’ up there every day for a month, deliverin’ it in little kegs.”

“Did the Yellow Jacket renew herself?” I queried.

“Yes. Uncle Jimmy and Letty found the same old jade-and-gold paradise. The trees had all growed up again, and there the two of ’em reside this minute, up on top of the world, settin’ pretty, and plumb forgetful, in their happy old age, that life has used ’em both mighty rough. With me it’s different—a case of all dressed up and no place to go—and when I begin frettin’ about my good health and longevity prospects and whatever I’m goin’ to do when I get old like Uncle Jimmy, I get sort of despondent. The trouble with me, I reckon, is that I’ve got to have human society or bust myself.”

Chuckwalla Bill kicked off his boots and, for a long time, sat thoughtfully rubbing his toes before turning in.

“There’s some women,” he declared presently, “that just naturally can’t take care of a man, and that there Letty is certainly a frail vessel. I wish I could tell you she has a weak heart, son, and that the altitude at Yellow Jacket will get her before long. But I can’t. She’s as healthy as a three-year-old, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she lived to be a hundred. It’d be like her to be ornery enough to make it an endurance contest and keep me out of Yellow Jacket until I’m that old and dodderin’ I’ll have to fly in, in spite of my prejudices— Well—buenas noches, son.”

CHAPTER VII
The Long Lane

After a man has lived forty years as close to the earth as Chuckwalla Bill Redfield, matters, apparently of insignificant moment, assume the proportions of an event. For instance: This late afternoon, as Chuckwalla sat smoking contemplatively on the bench in front of the dilapidated tent-house which he and his youthful partner, Tommy Tatum, occupied at the base of the Painted Hills, where the pair had a prospect hole they hoped to develop into a mine, he was aware that the black blight of misfortune had fallen upon Tommy.

Tommy had been absent for two weeks. In fact, he was still absent, although less than a mile distant down the white alkaline trail that wound casually through the desert sage and lost itself in the mirage over toward Kelcey’s Wells, Chuckwalla could see his partner coming. During Tommy’s absence no word had come to Chuckwalla touching the fortunes of the wanderer; nevertheless Chuckwalla knew, as truly as if Tommy Tatum’s sworn affidavit to that effect lay in his hand, that Tommy had been separated from every dollar he had in the world.

“I wonder what in tarnation the boy’s been a-doin’,” old Chuckwalla soliloquized aloud, after the fashion of one who has walked for a lifetime in the desert silence. “It wasn’t only natural but necessary that Tommy-boy should hoof it from here to Kelcey’s Wells when he left, because there ain’t no telegraph nor telephone nor wireless nor mail route for him to order in a automobile to ride him out; but when a high sperrited, sensible boy like him employs shanks’ mare on a two-day tour o’ hell comin’ back, I opine there’s a reason. Hell’s bells an’ panther tracks! What’ll Clytie Kennedy say to that!”

Chuckwalla rose, went inside and commenced preparing dinner against the prodigal’s return. Tommy was fully an hour negotiating that last mile upgrade through the deep sand and the meal was smoking on the table when he entered.

“Hello, Chuckwalla, you ol’ hoss thief,” he greeted the stay-at-home with a cheerfulness that, to the shrewd Chuckwalla, was a trifle forced. “Got anything fit to eat in this here shack?”

Chuckwalla opened the oven door, peered in at a batch of raised biscuit and replied presently:

“For a young feller that’s been wallerin’ in hotel fodder for nigh on to ten days, it strikes me you ain’t lost interest in the meager fare of the carefree prospector. You been eatin’ lately—or not?” he challenged suddenly and shut the oven door with a bang.

Tommy looked sheepish, ignored the query and helped himself to a long drink of cool water from the olla beside the door.

“Hum-m-m! Returns to camp in the nigger shirt an’ overalls he went away in. Wonder what he did with them store clothes he was figgerin’ on buyin’. Sold ’em again, I guess, to raise funds to git home on.” Aloud Chuckwalla said to Tommy: “I guess this is one of the occasions, Tommy, when you’d ought to have a jolt or two of that drugstore liquor Doc Bleeker give us over to Kelcey’s Wells last August. I been savin’ it ag’in a black day like this.”

“Well, I been bit by a rattlesnake, Chuckwalla.”

“I see you have, son. Bit you on the pistol pocket an’ got away with your bankroll, didn’t he?”

Tommy mixed himself a highball and drank it slowly and gratefully. Then he drew a rustic stool over to the rough board table and in fifteen minutes disposed of practically four days’ rations, while old Chuckwalla eyed him severely. When, presently, Tommy sat back, whittled a toothpick off a section of stovewood and commenced to pick shreds of bacon out of his fine white teeth, Chuckwalla said gently:

“Well, son, sing the song or tell the story.”

So Tommy told the story with an economy of words peculiar to the desert bred, who are never garrulous.

A month before a desert-rat had put up for the night with Chuckwalla and Tommy and in return for their hospitality had, on leaving, presented them with a newspaper a week old. Therein Tommy had read something that had interested him profoundly. The citizens of Sacramento, the capital of the neighboring State of California, were arranging a grand three day celebration to commemorate the discovery of gold in ‘forty-nine; and by solemn order of the city council all male citizens of Sacramento were ordered to raise the most luxuriant crop of whiskers possible of production on the day of the big parade; it being the desire of the civic committee in charge of the celebration to add a touch of artistry to the occasion by having the citizenry resemble as closely as possible the hairy Argonauts of the “olden, golden days.” Also, this whimsical ordinance provided a basis for much publicity, and in pursuance of his task of inducing the population of Western America to come to Sacramento and join in the festivities, the astute individual in charge of the publicity had organized a club known as “The Whiskerinos,” with a valuable prize offered for the finest set of whiskers in the parade.

Now Chuckwalla Bill and Tommy Tatum had been gophering in the Painted Hills for eight long months and were the proprietors of whiskers that would have been the envy of a billy goat. Nature had endowed Tommy, however, with a hirsute fertility far beyond that of most men; he had a flaming red beard as glorious as a desert sunset and to such length had it attained that he could tuck the extreme end of this facial aureole inside the waistband of his overalls. Which, as the courteous reader must admit, is going some! Chuckwalla, who affected a dignified imperial and mustache in the precincts of civilization, could not understand Tommy’s aversion to shaving at least once a week and had asked him to explain his ambition to raise the longest and thickest set of whiskers in all the State of Nevada.

Thereupon the secret had been laid bare. Tommy had a sweetheart down at Weeping Water—a glorious damsel who answered to the name of Clytie Kennedy. Clytie’s paternal ancestor owned a string of motor trucks and freighted ore out to the railroad, returning with general cargo for the citizens of Weeping Water. Clytie, his only child and motherless, kept books for her father and, in fact, handled all the details of his business. In addition, Clytie was a notary public, agent for the express company, agent for the long distance telephone company and the loveliest girl in Nye County. When Tommy had seen her last she had promised to marry him, and as a guarantee of his fidelity and an earnest of his love Tommy had promised her that he would not shave until, his fortune made, he should return to claim her for his blushing bride. The idea appealed to Clytie. She could not visualize any other girl falling in love with her Tommy in all his whiskered glory, and she had informed him gravely that the length of his beard must be the gauge of the constancy of his love.

The information anent the Whiskerinos left by their casual guest of the night previous had given Tommy a brilliant idea. What finer act could he perform than to proceed to Sacramento, win the silver loving cup offered by the Whiskerinos, and bear it to Clytie waiting for him down in Weeping Water? Chuckwalla had listened to Tommy expatiate on the advantages of this coup de main and when his silence conveyed to Tommy the knowledge that his aged partner regarded the project as irrelevant and immaterial, Tommy had remarked that while in Sacramento he would have a couple of teeth filled. Wherefore the sage Chuckwalla realized that what the boy really wanted was a change. He was a trifle fed up on canned goods, beans, bacon and soda biscuits; the silence of the Painted Hills was growing oppressive; the hard, back-breaking task of sinking their prospect hole and drifting to expose the lead had gotten on Tommy’s nerves, and he now desired a radical change for a week or two. So Chuckwalla announced that the idea was not without merit; they needed clothing and grub and they hadn’t had mail in two months—and while Tommy was “outside” it might be just as well if he slipped down to Weeping Water and made certain nobody had jumped his claim in his absence.

Joyously Tommy had departed, bearing with him several bars of gold bullion which Chuckwalla and he estimated to be worth in the neighborhood of eighty-two hundred dollars. This bullion they had melted in their portable retort out of a pocket of “jewelry” rock found close to the surface on the side of their present prospect hole, but eight months of toil had failed to justify their hope that a rich ore body would be developed at greater depth.

“When I got in to Kelcey’s Wells,” Tommy began, “I chucked these rags I’m wearing and on the strength of our bullion shipment receipt from the express agent I got credit at Abe Wolf’s Emporium for a complete new outfit. Chuckwalla, I was the glass of fashion and the mold of form; I had my head shampooed and my hair trimmed around my eyes and ears, but the rest of it I declined to have touched. My wavy auburn ringlets hung down over my shoulders à la the late Buffalo Bill and when my whiskers had been washed and combed and slicked up with hair oil I was what you might call gorgeous.

“Having donned my fine raiment I checked my old clothes in the hotel check room and blew down to Weeping Water to call on Clytie. She was glad to see me and nobody had jumped my claim; when she saw my whiskers and the shipping receipt for that bullion and when I told her about our hopes that toil and hardship would bring us about a million dollars next year and enable me to name a definite date to get married, the little girl just cried with joy, Chuckwalla. If it hadn’t been that we needed every cent of that bullion to buy lumber and a gasoline hoist and pay for outside labor to hustle this development work of ours along, I would have taken a chance and married her then and there on my half of the swag, plus my high hopes.

“Well, Chuckwalla, I knocked around Weeping Water for a week, trying not to kill everybody that joshed me about my red curtains, and when the returns came in from the mint I went up to Reno and opened an account for us in the Merchants’ National Bank there. Then I went down to Sacramento for the celebration and had a right good time and got my teeth fixed and won the first prize offered by the Whiskerinos.”

“What’d you do with it, Tommy?”

“I sent it to Clytie by parcels post, registered and insured.”

“Then what?”

“Well, Chuckwalla, I got acquainted with a couple of fine fellows in the Whiskerinos and they introduced me to a couple others and it appears one of them was quite a sport. Finally, after we’d been helling around together a couple of days, he let us in on his way of making a living. It seems he had a method of tapping the telegraph wires and getting advance information on the result of every horse race at the Tia Juana track before the poolrooms got it. He had an office right across the street from a big poolroom that was operated on the quiet, and as soon as he knew the result of a race he would go to the window and signal the result in code to his partner who would be standing on the sidewalk in front of the poolroom. Then the partner would go inside, place the bet and wait until the numbers went up; then he’d collect.”

“I suppose, son,” old Chuckwalla interrupted Tommy’s tale, “you told these friends of your’n about that pocket we found and sort of laid it on a bit thick, didn’t you?”

“I believe I might have idealized the situation a little bit, Chuckwalla. No harm in confessing it now . . . Well, they offered to let me in on the good thing and I fell for it and won a lot of money. Seems as if I couldn’t make a bet without winning. The only trouble was that my friend was too conservative. My natural impulse was to force my luck while it was running strong and play ’em as high as a hound’s back, but the others advised against this. They said it might make the poolroom people suspicious and for that reason they always saw to it that their fiscal agent in the poolroom made a couple of bad bets daily, even going so far as to quit loser some days. They told me they had a good thing bottled up and at the proper time I’d get ample opportunity to spread my entire roll, if I cared to, but until that time come I’d have to be a piker. Meanwhile they reminded me that poolrooms do not accept checks, so I——”

“Yes, I understand, Tommy-boy. You drew our bankroll out of the Reno bank by putting a check through your hotel for collection. Then the good thing appeared, you spread your wad at odds of thirty or forty to one—and the doggone horse, after leadin’ the field into the home stretch, fell and broke his leg or was fouled or fouled some other horse and lost the decision and——”

“Chuckwalla, I didn’t begin to suspect I’d been swindled for an hour——”

“And by that time the swindlers had folded their tents like the Aa-rab an’ silently faded away, as the poet says.”

“I hedged just enough to pay my hotel bill and buy a ticket back to Kelcey’s Wells. Sold all my going away clothes and had enough left to pay Abe Wolf and lay in some tobacco. Then I climbed into my old clothes and here I am. Chuckwalla, I’m more or less of a skunk. The gasoline hoist and the timber for the shaft’ll have to wait awhile.”

“That’s all right!” Chuckwalla hastened to assure him. “While you was gone I made up my mind this claim of our’n is a total loss anyhow. So you see, son, we don’t need the money nohow.”

Tommy Tatum’s eyes filled suddenly; his hand went gropingly out and clasped old Chuckwalla Bill’s hard, toil-worn digits. Fell a silence. Then:

“The hell of it is, Tommy-boy, you can’t explain this to Clytie without proving beyond the preadventure of a doubt that in marryin’ you she’s certainly takin’ on a weak vessel.”

“I don’t know why I did it,” Tommy wailed agonizedly. “But I’m not so weak as you seem to think, partner. I didn’t bet your half—although—although——”

“Yes, son, I understand. If you’d won you’d have cut me in on half of it, but now that you’ve lost you’re for totin’ the whole load yourself.”

Tommy nodded miserably.

“Well,” Chuckwalla resumed, “things ain’t so tarnation bad but what they might be wuss. We got a road stake, ain’t we? Cheer up, boy. I could say things to you that would blister your hide, you consarned, blasted born eejiot, but I won’t, although I don’t know what keeps me from shootin’ you an’ puttin’ you out of your misery. Tommy, a young feller like you, raised in the open and a graduate of the minin’ engineerin’ department of the University of Nevada—a boy with all his heads an’ legs an’ teeth—a boy with a fine education an’ a fine girl a-waitin’ to marry him—hell’s bells an’ panther tracks! I don’t understand it. Boy, if that Clytie girl down to Weepin’ Water ever gets wind of your business jedgment her favorite ballad’s goin’ to be ‘No Weddin’ Bells for Me.’ ”

Tommy Tatum held up his hands appealingly. “Don’t, Chuckwalla,” he pleaded. “I’ve suffered enough. I’m bleeding at every pore.”

“You ain’t suffered enough,” Chuckwalla roared. “You ought to be tarred an’ feathered. You ought to be fed to the hawgs. Still, there ain’t no manner of use a-tall tryin’ to reform you, Tommy. You’re just one o’ God’s innocent children, son. You’re—hum-m-m—would you know these race track promoters if you was to see them ag’in, son?”

“I—I dunno, partner. You see, they all belonged to the Whiskerinos and a good barber has probably worked on them by this time. If I thought I could find them again I’d sure devote my life to the job.”

“Well,” Chuckwalla declared furiously, “any time any set o’ swindlers anywhere make the mistake of shearin’ the wool from my partner, you take it from me, boy, I’m goin’ to locate ’em. An’ when I do—oh, jumpin’ hoptoads an’ Gila monsters! I’ll peel ’em down to their undershirts. Tommy-boy, forget it. I’ll marry you off to the Clytie girl yit, or die a-tryin’. Light the lantern an’ we’ll have a rubber o’ cribbage or rummy to while dull care away, an’ tomorrow mornin’ we’ll pack the jacks an’ get out o’ here on the trail o’ them swindlers. Why, Tommy, whatever have you done to your whiskers?”

“I cut ’em off,” Tommy replied in a choking voice. “I—I never expected to see Clytie again——”

“You ain’t writ her nothin’ about what happened, have you?” Chuckwalla yelled. “Because if you have I’m goin’ down to Weepin’ Water an’ tell her you’re a liar an’ that I went an’ shot our bankroll to glory—that you’re just tryin’ to be generous an’ spare my feelin’s that-a-way.”

“No, I haven’t written her—yet.”

“Nor soon. Cut them cards an’ gimme a deal. If we ever meet up with them swindlers you won’t be broke very long, son. I’ll surely make them buzzards come through with the money they hornswoggled you out of . . . Well, here’s where I show you how to play cribbage. . . .”

When Chuckwalla Bill Redfield and Tommy Tatum arrived in Sacramento, California, the innocent Tommy was once more arrayed in his fine raiment. Likewise Chuckwalla Bill. The latter, however, unlike his young partner, still clung to his patriarchal white whiskers. They went directly to police headquarters and asked to see the chief of police, who, when they had given him the gist of their complaint, sent for the captain of detectives.

“Here’s another victim of that bunko ring that operated here during the ‘forty-nine celebration,” he informed his chief of detectives. “They worked the fake poolroom swindle on him,” and he indicated Tommy Tatum.

The captain of detectives grinned. “I congratulate you on your courage, my friend,” he replied. “Has it taken all this time for you to wake up?”

“Not at all,” Tommy replied. “It has taken me all of this time to round up my partner and get back to this town to run those swindlers down.”

“Well, that can be arranged, I think, rather easily, provided you can identify the men who swindled you and are willing to swear out a warrant. The trouble with most of you suckers, however, is that you would rather permit the bunco men to escape than have your friends learn what easy marks you are. Bunco men thrive because their chagrined victims haven’t got the courage to go after them. Now, we know all about this ring that operated here. We know the man at the head of it. We know as surely as death and taxes that his gang swindled you, but we cannot prove it unless you help us——”

Chuckwalla Bill held up his hand. “Whoa!” he interrupted. “Them skunks took upward of four thousand dollars from my partner, but we ain’t complainin’ none about that. An’ we don’t want to bother you none whatever, colonel, with this case, for the reason that we aim to settle it ourselves out of court. All we want to know is the identity of these outlaws and their post-office address.”

The detective head looked at the chief of police and grinned; the chief smiled back covertly at him. Decidedly this was a brand new angle in their experience. Chuckwalla continued:

“My partner here is a mite shy on savvy, but I’ve lived too long in this vale o’ tears an’ sin not to realize that we stand as much chance o’ convictin’ these buzzards as a quart o’ whisky on an Indian reservation. They’ll prove a hundred alibis. Besides, they was all Whiskerinos, an’ how can Tommy swear, when he meets ’em smooth-faced, that they was the gang that took him into camp?”

“I’d know one of ’em if he was as slick as a billiard ball,” Tommy declared. “He had mean eyes, close together, and a nose that had been broken once. And up the inside of his wrist—his right wrist—he had an old scar, like a knife cut. He’s the one that tapped the wire and signaled to the man in front of the poolroom to go in and make the bets.”

Again the guardians of the law exchanged glances. “That was the king himself,” the chief of detectives announced with conviction.

“What king, colonel?” Chuckwalla Bill pleaded.

“Why, the man your partner describes is Smiling Andy Slosson, the king of the bunco steerers. He operates out of Los Angeles, but on the home grounds he is never so bold as to do the actual work himself. He is the brains of a very efficient corps of bunco men. It is his business to locate the prospects and make the balls, but he seldom fires them himself.”

“So he lives in Los Angeles,” quoth Chuckwalla Bill, musingly.

“And operates almost exclusively there. Our late ‘forty-nine celebration, however, proved a great temptation to him. He knew the town would be filled with hill-billies and miners and prospectors, some of them well worth his attention, so he and his gang came up for the easy pickings. The Los Angeles police tipped us off and I told Smiling Andy myself to go home, because I wouldn’t permit him to work here. However, it appears I was a trifle late with my advice. By the way, what do you purpose doing to Smiling Andy when you find him?”

“We purpose gittin’ that four thousand back with enough more to pay for our trouble in gittin’ it,” Chuckwalla answered with conviction. He took out a card and a stub of lead pencil. “Might I have the address of this coyote, colonel?”

The detective laughed and gave it to him.

“Much obliged to both you boys,” the old prospector concluded. “Come on, son. Let’s git goin’.”

They went. They were in Los Angeles the following morning and in conference with the chief of police of that city. From this official they learned that for five years the police had been on the trail of Smiling Andy but as yet had failed to land him. He had operated in all of the principal cities of the Union from time to time, yet he had never spent a single day in jail. And, in view of the fact that the swindling of Tommy Tatum had occurred outside the chief’s jurisdiction, he wasn’t inclined to waste his time on Smiling Andy and would only gather him in on a warrant from Sacramento.

“What sort of a cuss is this here Smilin’ Andy?” Chuckwalla pleaded. “I ain’t here to complain ag’in him but just to get a line on him. What does he do an’ where does he do it when he ain’t otherwise engaged?”

The chief chuckled. “Why, Mr. Redfield, Smiling Andy is a most remarkably complex individual. Fifty percent of all that his lieutenants collect from their victims is Andy’s cut as general manager of the syndicate. The funds which he secures thus he invests in legitimate enterprises. I happen to know that he is a heavy stockholder in a local taxicab company; he buys good bonds and is a very good customer of a broker friend of mine; he has made considerable money in oil wells and he lost a fortune three years ago in the Daisy Bell mine up Randsburg way. The sign on his office door informs the world that he is interested in investments.”

Chuckwalla Bill glanced at his partner. “Come on, son,” he murmured, “let’s git goin’.”

“Where?” Tommy demanded hopelessly.

“Away from this noise an’ clatter,” Chuckwalla answered waspishly. “Back to our camp in the Painted Hills, where a feller can git some sleep an’ do some good, solid, uninterrupted thinkin’.”

“Chuckwalla,” Tommy began solemnly, “he is a wise man who knows when he’s licked. It’s been my belief for the past three months that our prospect in the Painted Hills is worth just about one hundred and fifty percent less than the dynamite we’ve used up trying to develop an ore body with some ore in it. You’re long on hope, partner, but I’m longer on metallurgy and mineralogy.”

“Why, Tommy-boy, you ain’t talking of quittin’, are you?”

“No-o-o, but if you drag me back to that four-flushing piece of ground again, Chuckwalla, you do so at your own risk. I’m liable to go crazy there, murder you and bury you in the shaft.”

“Sho, son,” Chuckwalla pleaded, “a feller’s got to have a lot of patience to foller the minin’ game. We’ll try her three months longer.”

“Not another doggone second,” Tommy replied passionately. “I’m a ruined mining man, so I’m going away somewhere and get five dollars a day for my dexterity with a pick and shovel.”

“Well, then, Tommy, I’ll buy you out if you’ll set a fair price on your interest.”

“Chuckwalla, you’re a confirmed optimist. You haven’t any more mental balance than a chickadee. I’ll give you my interest, provided you loan me about five hundred dollars until I get ready to pay it back.”

“Where you thinkin’ of lightin’, Tommy?”

“Husky young mining engineers, or near mining engineers which is nearer my class, can drag down about three hundred dollars a month gold, plus board and lodging, with American mining companies in Peru. Me for Peru.”

“How about Clytie Kennedy?”

Tommy’s face was sad and serious. “Clytie’s too fine a girl to prejudice her opportunities to marry a regular man by waiting on me. I’m going back to Weeping Water to tell her.”

“That’s logic,” Chuckwalla agreed. “When you git there make me out a deed for your half interest and record it with the District Recorder. Here’s your five hundred, son. On second thought I reckon I’ll hang around this camp a couple o’ days an’ see if I can’t get a peek into one of these here motion picture studios to see how they make the fillums.”

They parted; and when Tommy Tatum arrived in Weeping Water and forced his unwilling feet to march him to old man Kennedy’s office, he learned, with a sense of relief that amounted practically to a shock, that a reprieve had been granted him. Clytie was not in Weeping Water, and her father informed Tommy that she had been feeling the downhill pull for some months and had gone to Southern California to spend a few weeks at the seashore. And having vouchsafed this information, he handed Tommy a telegram which had come to him that day in care of Kennedy’s office. It was from Chuckwalla and Tommy read:

Tommy went back of the freight station, found a secluded nook among the boxes on the loading platform and wiped away a couple of furtive tears.

The lynx-eyed young woman in the general offices of Andrew P. Slosson, alias Smiling Andy, looked up as the door opened to admit a patriarchal old man who entered clinging to the arm of a young woman. The patriarch wore large black goggles and carried a cane, with which he tapped the floor nervously, after the manner of the blind. He was neatly garbed in a broadcloth Prince Albert suit of the early General Grant period of architecture; obviously he was a dweller in a land where a good horse is still regarded as an asset. A critical glance at the very much demoded raiment of the patriarch’s sweet-faced guide confirmed this suspicion and unconsciously Mr. Slosson’s sentry in the general office realized that whatever business this pathetic pair might have with Smiling Andy it was legitimate. She carried an aroma of talcum powder and toilet water with her as she came to the counter to inquire their business.

“We wish to see Mr. Slosson, please,” the country girl informed her respectfully.

“Have you an appointment with Mr. Slosson?”

The girl smiled wistfully and shook her head. The lynx-eyed lady felt herself slipping under the gaze of those sweet, cornflower-blue eyes, so passionless and innocent, so trusting and deferential.

“And your name?” she queried more kindly.

“My name is Clytie Kennedy, and this gentleman is Uncle Bill Redfield. Up our way folks call him Chuckwalla Bill. We’re from Nevada.”

Smiling Andy’s advance guard permitted her severe features to relax a trifle at this naïve statement. “Perhaps if you will tell me the nature of your business with Mr. Slosson——” she began, and waited for her answer.

Chuckwalla Bill raised a trembling old hand. “Well, now, young lady,” he replied in a mild and deprecatory voice that was singularly pleasing, “I reckon the name o’ Redfield ain’t a-goin’ to mean a thing to your boss. You just tell Mr. Slosson, please, that old Chuckwalla Bill Redfield from the Painted Hills, Nevada, is here for the avow-ed purpose of unloadin’ on him an alleged gold mine.”

The lynx-eyed young woman’s mouth closed until it resembled the line of a new buttonhole. “Mr. Slosson isn’t interested in mining investments, Mr. Redfield,” she informed him coldly.

“Neither am I, my dear,” he answered, not a whit disturbed by her chill demeanor. “That’s why I want to unload this one on somebody that can develop it. It’s only a prospect hole now, but as a prospect hole she’s a lulu bird! Look at me, young lady. Do I look young enough to be interested in the development of a mine? Not a-tall, young lady, not a-tall. The next prospect hole I find myself in is a-goin’ to be six feet long by six feet deep an’ three feet wide, but whilst a-waitin’ that sad day I got a notion me and Clytie’d like to dwell in peace an’ free from poverty. We don’t need much but we’ve got to have what we need. Now, you wouldn’t act mean-like to an old duffer like me an’ bar me from presentin’ my proposition to Mr. Slosson?”

She shook her head. “Nothing doing,” she replied.

Chuckwalla sighed and opened his gnarled old hand. Out dropped a hundred dollar bill. “That’s for you,” he whispered confidentially. Her lean hand closed over it and she flashed him a property smile. A minute later he and Clytie were in conference with Smiling Andy.

“I’m a man of few words, Mr. Slosson,” Chuckwalla announced, “an’ I can see right off that so are you. I come here because I know you’re a man that’ll take a chance on a mine if you’ve got reason to think it’s an attractive proposition. I remember you when you was associated with that bunch that put over the Daisy Bell mine. You took quite a lickin’ there?”

Smiling Andy smiled but said nothing. His cold eyes continued to appraise Chuckwalla Bill, who resumed:

“I been prospectin’ all my life an’ in my day I’ve drove my pick into the jewelry many a time an’ oft, as the feller says, but somehow none of it ever seemed to stick to my fingers. Easy come, easy go, as the sayin’ is. But now I’m to the p’int in life where I’ve got to get my last road stake an’ then hang on to it, if I ain’t aimin’ to end my days in the poorhouse. I’ve worked hard all my life——”

“Your hands tell me that much,” Smiling Andy interrupted. “Unfold your proposition. You said it was a mine, I believe?”

“Well, some folks might call it a mine—an’ some might call it the United States Mint. However, ‘sfar as I’m concerned it’s just a prospect hole, an’ it’s too far from water an’ transportation for me to monkey with it. Me an’ my partner was a-goin’ to develop her an’ we had eight thousand dollars to do it with an’ get her on a payin’ basis, but Tommy, like all young fellers, gits itchin’ for a change. The tarnation jackass has growed a red beard the like of which ain’t to be found in all North America, an’ when he hears about that ‘forty-nine celebration at Sacramento a couple o’ weeks ago, he’s bound an’ determined to go down there an’ enter a whisker contest for a silver lovin’ cup. Which he wins the cup at that, but bein’ sap-headed by nature, birth, breedin’ an’ inclination, he allows himself to be lured into gamblin’ on hoss races an’ plumb loses four thousand dollars of the firm’s bankroll, after which he comes ramblin’ back to the mine without havin’ done none of the things I told him to do while he was outside. Of course, him an’ me bein’ partners, it ain’t illegal for him to draw checks on the partnership bankroll, although between friends such a proceedin’ of one partner, without the knowledge an’ consent of t’other, ain’t to be stood nohow. So me an’ Tommy Tatum ain’t in the minin’ business no more an’ I own the claim in fee simple, as the feller says. Dog my cats, I could have forgive the boy ruinin’ us that-a-way, but come to find out, as near as I can get from what he tells me, both me an’ him is inclined to suspect as how he’s swindled out of the money in a fake poolroom. Which Tommy’d died rather than have this found out by the general public an’ more particular by a girl he’s fixin’ to marry down at Weepin’ Water, in Elko County.”

Smiling Andy moved in his seat and sat up. He was all attention now. Chuckwalla Bill produced a plug of eating tobacco and bit off a mouthful. After a long silence he sighed.

“The worst of it is now,” he complained. “I’m too old an’ helpless to putter around without a young partner, an’ after what Tommy Tatum up an’ done seems like it’d be sort o’ foolish to trust him ag’in.”

“It would, indeed,” said Smiling Andy. “What sort of mine have you got?”

“A gold mine. Free millin’ rock on a contact between limestone an’ andesite. Got enough ore blocked out to run a twenty stamp mill from now till Gabriel blows his horn. The only drawback is power an’ water. However, a feller with the money can easy overcome that. Back in the hills two mile is a big spring that’s runnin’ forty miner’s inches down t’other side of the range. A feller could lead that water around the slope o’ the hill in a ditch to our side of the watershed, then run her downhill to the mine an’ give her a six hundred foot seventy degree drop through a penstock to a little power plant an’ generate five hundred horse power. That’s more than enough to run your hoists and a twenty stamp mill, an’ after your water’s gone through the penstock an’ turned over your wheels you can run it over your plates an’ after you’ve run it over your plates it’ll raise alfalfa an’ vegetables in a little valley right below.”

“What does your ore assay, Mr. Redfield?”

Chuckwalla raised a deprecating hand. “Mr. Slosson, I ain’t a-goin’ to answer that question, because if I was to tell you what that rock assays you’d just naturally chuck me out of your office. I said I was here to sell you a prospect hole. I’m old, I’m shy on funds, an’ since my only boy got bumped off a-fightin’ them Prussian Huns in the Argonny forest, somehow I got the notion that sufficient to keep me and Clytie here comfortable the rest of our days is better than a couple of million dollars I can’t take with me nohow when my summons comes. Consequently, the Dandelion Mine—so-called because there ain’t nothing but piñon pines an’ greasewood growing within a hundred miles of it—is for sale for one hundred thousand dollars. You don’t know it, but you’re goin’ up to the Painted Hills at my expense an’ you’re goin’ to take a miner’s hammer an’ a lantern an’ go down in the Dandelion Mine an’ git your own ore samples yourself an’ dig as deep as you tarnation please for the same said samples, an’ carry ’em back to this city with you an’ git them assayed by your own assayer. All I ask is this: Come an’ look the proposition over at my expense—an’ after you’ve examined it thoroughly an’ searched the title an’ looked up the water right, if you still refuse to buy I’ll give you the danged mine. That’s tradin’ talk, ain’t it?”

“That’s trading talk,” Smiling Andrew admitted. “Unfortunately, however, I cannot go up to look at your mine. I will, however, send a mining engineer in whom I have every confidence, and if he recommends the purchase of your mine I will talk with you again about it.”

“What’ll be the feller’s fee, Mr. Slosson?”

“At least a thousand dollars.”

Chuckwalla Bill brought forth a roll of bills and counted out a thousand dollars. “I suppose he’ll want his money in advance, seein’ as how I’m not known to anybody in this here camp,” he explained.

His magnificence completely disarmed Smiling Andy. “Well,” he declared admiringly, “you have got confidence in the goods you have for sale, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. However, if you buy the mine I expect you to stand the cost of the examination. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

Smiling Andy said it was and, never for an instant forgetting his rôle as a man of vast emprise, he had Chuckwalla Bill and Clytie out in the hall almost before the latter knew it. Half an hour later four of his trusted lieutenants met with him to discuss the proposition, and as a result of the conference it was the consensus of opinion that they had everything to gain and nothing to lose and that, therefore, no time should be lost in engaging a competent and trustworthy engineer to accompany Chuckwalla Bill to the Dandelion Mine and examine the same thoroughly.

Smiling Andy had been thoroughly disarmed by Chuckwalla’s frankness—nay, his childish innocence—in revealing to the king of bunco steerers the identity of his gullible partner. As long as he lived the king would never forget Tommy Tatum and his magnificent array of radiant whiskers! He remembered several things that Tommy had told him about his old partner, Chuckwalla Bill—and he remembered a great deal of Tommy Tatum’s exuberant brag about their mine. Already the king knew that the shaft had been sunk on the spot where an eight thousand dollar pocket had been found in the grass roots. Tommy, with the confiding nature of the born sucker, had told his new found friends all about it; and that the pocket had been found the astute Smiling Andy had ocular evidence in the shape of four thousand dollars of Tommy’s money!

Of course the predatory instinct in him bade the king of the bunco steerers go slowly. Had the crafty Chuckwalla not reminded him of the loss he had made in the Daisy Bell mine he would have wondered why this old prospector should have picked on him as a prospective purchaser of his mine. Certainly Chuckwalla had presented his proposition in the plain, simple, straightforward manner of his kind. He had made no brag but had confined himself to the simple statement that he had a mine to sell and was so confident of it that he was willing to pay for the examination. On the other hand he was not such a fool in business that he had neglected to stipulate that the king should assume this expense in case he elected to buy the mine. Certainly no man in his senses would make such a sporting proposition unless he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the property had but to be seen to be appreciated.

“The old man’s got the best of reasons for selling,” Smiling Andy declared. “I’ll be shot if him and his daughter or niece or whatever she is weren’t pathetic. All the time the old man was making his plea to me to buy she never took her eyes off him; I could see they were playing their last trump cards. That young sucker we trimmed in Sacramento was sort of necessary to the old man, and now that he can’t trust the young chap any more the only thing he can do is to sell out. He’s more than half blind; the girl has to lead him around and take care of him. Pretty little thing she is, too, by the way. Reminds me of a little brown bird.”

Three weeks later Chuckwalla Bill Redfield, arrayed in decent black and with his patriarchal whiskers neatly trimmed and combed, was Tommy Tatum’s best man at the latter’s marriage to Clytie Kennedy, in the little frame church at Weeping Water. After drawing Clytie and Tommy out to the back porch, where he claimed the best man’s prerogative of kissing the bride, he surrendered Clytie to a bevy of women and turned to Tommy.

“Tommy,” he said a trifle mournfully, “this here ceremony ends our partnership. You’ve took on a new partner, which if that sweet damsel would only take my advice she’d take an ellum club and start workin’ you over here an’ now. I advanced you four thousand dollars to git married on because, in the case of girls like Clytie, I’m opposed to long engagements. With all your faults, Tommy, I don’t want to see you take no more chances on losin’ that girl, which is why I quit prospectin’ long enough to take charge of these here obsequies. If I——”

“What’s worryin’ me, Chuckwalla,” Tommy interrupted, “is this: Where did you dig up that four thousand dollars?”

“Smilin’ Andy give it to me,” said Chuckwalla quietly. “However, that didn’t square his crime by no means—just a-givin’ back the money he swindled you out of. I figured as how you was entitled to exemplary damages and me to a fee for promotin’ the deal—so I sold Smilin’ Andy our little old Dandelion Mine back yonder in the Painted Hills. It ain’t worth a hoot for nothin’ except street pavin’, but it seems as though Smilin’ Andy sort o’ had his heart set on ownin’ it an’ I didn’t have the courage to refuse him. So he organized the Dandelion Minin’ Company an’ him an’ his four chief bunco steerers constitute the board of directors—accordin’ to the chief of police of Los Angeles—an’ wherever they managed to dig up the money I don’t know—from dumb fools like you, most likely—but they give me a certified check for a hundred thousand dollars, of which sum you have had four thousand dollars. Four thousand dollars is enough money—too much, in fact—for you to be trusted with all at the same time, so the other forty-six thousand dollars I have give to your wife, which her name was Clytie Kennedy an’ her parents come from Scotland an’ she’s a smart business woman an’ anybody that swindles her will know he’s been in a fight. The other fifty thousand dollars I keep for myself, as a road stake in my old age. Me, I’ve got my eye on a little alfalfa ranch down in the Carson Valley and hereafter I aim to do considerable fishin’ and keep bees.”

“Chuckwalla,” said Tommy Tatum, and there was awe in his voice, “you’re a most infamous old man.”

“Son,” Chuckwalla replied, “if I’d ever experimented in bunco steerin’ earlier in life, Smilin’ Andy an’ his kind would be out on the streets hustlin’ a livin’ for me!”

“But, Chuckwalla, how did you put that swindle over?”

“Hush, son! Don’t use that word swindle. It gravels my finer feelings. Call it retributive jestice an’ let it go at that. Remember, Tommy, it’s a long lane that ain’t got a blind pig at the end of it, an’ this Smilin’ Andy lizard has preyed on society so long that no honest man’ll dispute my statement that he’s plumb outside the law. Yes, sir, there’s an open season on the Smilin’ Andys of this old world twelve months in every year. As for hookin’ that skunk, nothin’ could be easier. His kind are always in the market for quick profits an’ large ones. Their victims are always hayseeds like you, so when they meet an old pappy guy like your old Bill-partner, with corns on his hands an’ his back bowed from drivin’ picks into country rock, they naturally jump to the conclusion he’s a sucker—an’ after they sample the Dandelion Mine they know I’m a sucker. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be sellin’ a mine worth five million dollars for a paltry hundred thousand. You see, son, when you played their game they had it all over you like the main tent of a circus, but when they played our game they learned somethin’ new in the gentle art of real bunco steerin’. Son, I got a notion Smilin’ Andy ain’t a-goin’ to relish salt on his dandelion, but fortunately he ain’t a-goin’ to realize it for some months to come. I reckon he’ll spend another hundred thousand on equipment for the property, unless his engineer decides to take some more samples and have them assayed. That’s what me an’ you would do because we know the details of our business, but Smilin’ Andy’s quit his legitimate business to monkey with a game he doesn’t know, so I reckon he’s due for some losses and a lot of heartbreak.”

“You antedeluvian fox. Chuckwalla, how did you put that job over?”

“Why, on more than a passin’ knowledge of human nature an’ rattlin’ good knowledge of the minin’ game. I ain’t been studyin’ both all my long, wicked life for nothin’. Smilin’ Andy sent a young an’ trustful engineer up to look at the Dandelion and he was impressed by the water situation just as much as we was when we located the claim. He went down in the drift an’ worked all day an’ got his samples where he knew they couldn’t be salted, come up, tied ’em up in little canvas bags an’ noted on each bag approximately where the sample had come from. Then he put all of the bags in a leather grip, wired up the lock on the grip, lays the ends of the wire flat on one of his business cards, drops a big blob of sealin’ wax on the card to hold down the wire ends an’ seals that doggone bag with a big seal ring he’s wearin’. He had expected to work up some of the ore in my retort. I told him I had all the equipment at our camp and that he needn’t bother to bring his own retort with him. So he didn’t. But—strange to relate, partner—when we come to usin’ the retort danged if we wasn’t out of gasoline to burn in the blowpipe! So all he could do was to put his samples in his grip an’ seal ’em up.

“Of course, Tommy, me an’ you knows that this young feller done exactly what he’d been taught to do in college where he studied minin’ engineering. He’d took every precaution to guard ag’in his samples bein’ salted. While that seal was intact he knew the samples was safe. So did I, Tommy, which is why I give Long Shorty Ferguson a hundred dollars to come up to our old camp an’ hire this youth for an’ in consideration of the sum of five hundred dollars to journey with him ten miles into the Painted Hills an’ make a report on an abandoned claim there. The young feller was anxious to make that extra fee—sort of like killin’ two birds with one stone—so off he went, leavin’ me alone with his sealed grip of samples. And in order to afford the young feller a pleasant journey and sort of make him leap at the prospect, my niece by adoption—Clytie Kennedy that was—rides on with him. Tommy, that young engineer sure had a bad case on Clytie an’ the way she strung him along was a outrage.

“Well, son, he ain’t out of sight before I have took a matrix of that seal ring impression of his in plaster of Paris. Then with a wave of my hand I materialize some gasoline out of thin air and melt down that twenty-dollar gold piece I been usin’ for a watch charm these forty-odd year. Havin’ melted my lucky piece I pour the metal into my plaster of Paris matrix and when she cools, barrin’ the ring part of the seal, I have just as good a seal as our young minin’ engineer friend; whereupon I carefully scrape the boy’s seal off the card, remove the wire, open the leather grip, remove the rock our careful young friend has filled his canvas bags with, substitute some samples I’ve picked up off the dump of the Minaret Mine, which the same is free milling ore and running eighty dollars a ton, tie up the canvas sacks exactly as I find them, close the grip, wire it up again, pour some new sealin’ wax on that card an’ place a duplicate seal upon the same. In due course our young minin’ engineer returns and departs with his samples to a Los Angeles assay office. Naturally the assay reports prove me the king of suckers, so Smilin’ Andy and me do some quick tradin’.”

Tommy gazed upon his old partner in amazement. “That was a clever deal, Chuckwalla, but you’ve overlooked one item, which forces me to forbid the gift of that forty-six thousand dollars to Clytie. You’ve ruined professionally a young mining engineer, and he was an innocent bystander and didn’t deserve that fate. Chuckwalla, I’m sorry you’ve done this.”

“You tarnation jackass,” Chuckwalla roared, “how dare you insult me? Ain’t you got no respect a-tall for my gray hairs? Don’t you know I wouldn’t do nothin’ like that? Son, it ain’t possible to ruin a professional reputation that ain’t even budded yet—and the gumshoe man I hired to shadow Smilin’ Andrew an’ find out in advance what minin’ engineer he was sendin’ made a bluff at earnin’ his fee. Smilin’ Andy just couldn’t bear to see that thousand dollar fee get out of the Slosson family in case he didn’t buy the mine, because, you see, I was game and paid it in advance. So he sent his own son, who’s had three years in a school of mines but got hove out for theft before ever they gave him a sheepskin——”

Tommy Tatum took old Chuckwalla Bill in a bear-like embrace and pressed him to his heart. “You lovable old crook,” he muttered fiercely.

“Don’t use that word ag’in,” Chuckwalla shrilled. “All I did was to collect some exemplary damages long overdue society. However, if you must have the straight of it, here goes. In the early days of the Rochester rush I cleaned up an even hundred thousand dollars an’ this Smilin’ Andy person took it away from me in a Los Angeles bucket shop!”

“You tarnation old idiot! You ought to be tarred and feathered! You ought to be fed to the hogs! You——”

“Son,” pleaded Chuckwalla, “whatever you do, don’t pull no rough stuff at your own weddin’. Come on, Tommy. I hear that Clytie girl a-callin’ for me.”

Tommy Tatum grabbed his ancient partner by the arm. “Chuckwalla,” he demanded, “do you mean to tell me you wired Clytie to meet you in Los Angeles, when all the time you knew I was headed for Weeping Water to meet her?”

“I ain’t admittin’ nothin’, son, but I’ll unbend far enough to state that at last you’re showin’ signs of real intelligence. I figured it was best for me to tell her what a tarnation eejiot you was an’ cuss you out somethin’ scandalous to her. Women is queer, Tommy. They reserve the right to raise all the hell they want to with their own men, but it sure riles ’em to have somebody else do it. So, as I figured, me an’ Clytie had a fight an’ I see right off she was a-goin’ to overlook your sap-headedness, if only to spite me. Which she done the same an’ after I’d begged her pardon I unfold to her a half hatched scheme I have for puttin’ the skids under Smilin’ Andy. Son, she’s on in a minute an’ what my plan lacks she supplies. Son, she supplies the psychology an’ rehearses me in the piece I’m to speak for Smilin’ Andy. Tommy, that girl writ out every last word of it for me. It’s her idea that I wear black goggles an’ go tappin’ along with a stick like a blind man when we call on Andy. Neither of us lies an’ says as how I’m blind. Andy just concludes I am and in his mind it supplies a fine reason why a hundred thousand dollars for a five million dollar mine looks bigger’n a Bunker Hill monument to me an’ Clytie. Son, I don’t tell this Andy skunk nary lie. Clytie wouldn’t let me. Tell the truth an’ shame the devil, Chuckwalla,’ says Clytie, an’ it was ever so. Naturally, she bein’ my new minin’ partner, we split our profits fifty-fifty.”

“Chuckwalla,” said Tommy Tatum, “you’re a most infamous old scoundrel.”

“Well,” the old prospector replied, “I’m bettin’ my share of the swag that if you an’ Clytie Kennedy is ever favored with a son he’ll be named William Redfield, after me!”

CHAPTER VIII
Semper Fidelis

Of one thing old Dan Pelly, dog trainer and worshiper at the shrine of the Little God of the Open Spaces, was thoroughly convinced. A bucksaw is an invention of the Devil. In the contemplation of three cords of peeled Valparaiso live oak and the instrument of torture hereinbefore referred to, plus a slab of fat bacon rind with which to grease the recalcitrant blade, Dan felt his spirit wither; a low melancholy settled over him; in his search for solace he sat down on the sawbuck, loaded his pipe and gazed about him for a dog, into whose receptive ear he might pour the burden of his disgust.

From his nest of clean straw in the corner of the woodshed he saw Clonmel Knight, whose kennel name was Toby, rise to Dan’s unspoken plea for social intercourse.

“Well, Toby, you old ruin,” Dan greeted the dog, “how about you?”

Toby yawned loudly, stretched himself and in effect replied: “Nicely, thank you, Dan, for an old dog.” Then he slouched across the woodshed and crept in between Dan’s knees, where he sighed with relief in a very human sort of way. As he approached Dan noticed the uncertainty in his walk, a pathetic swaying of his hind quarters, accompanied by electric jerkings of the head.

“Well, Toby, old pup,” he said, ruffing the little, alert V-shaped ears, “the years tiptoe by and we’re old and doddering before we know it. Holy cats, I never know I’m past fifty until I start sawing and splitting wood for the winter, and then, as the feller says, I get a pain in my back and anguish in my heart and, in a manner of speaking, they sort o’ wring my brow.”

Clonmel Knight, alias Toby, coughed—the cough of the aged and infirm—and wagged his brief tail. Not that he heard a word Dan Pelly had said, for Toby was quite deaf, but because Dan was ruffling his ears and in a happier day loving words had always accompanied that loving caress.

Dan continued to talk to the dog. “You’re feeling the downhill pull worse than ever this past month, Toby. I think you’ve got a touch of rheumatism and this cold weather doesn’t improve it any; your appetite ain’t any too good and I notice you’ve got a cataract on one eye. Confound your picture, Toby, what are you aiming to do, anyhow? Live forever? Don’t you know you were whelped in April of nineteen six and here it is coming Christmas in the year Annie Domino nineteen twenty-two? Toby, you’re plumb see-nile.”

Following unconsciously the habit of a lifetime, Dan’s calloused hands roved over Toby in search of a possible wood tick. “Toby,” he admonished the decrepit Airedale, “if I hadn’t kept these visitors away from you by two baths a week in tepid water, one bath a month in creolin, plenty of grooming and a nice bed of pine or cedar shavings, you’d have been a memory years ago. And at that I ain’t done right by you, Toby. Five years ago, when that scourge of virulent distemper killed almost every dog in my kennels and left you with chorea and a disconnected sense of equilibrium, I should have eased you out under the rose bushes in the back garden. But I didn’t have the heart to.

“I kept banking on that iron Airedale constitution of yours to outgrow it—and besides, you’d been Johnny’s dog, and every time I’d think I ought to do the decent thing by you, Toby, I’d get a vision of you standing on your hind legs by the coffin looking in at him and wondering why he didn’t whistle to you like a little boy should—ah, Toby, I can close my eyes and see you two trudging off up the cañon, Johnny with his twenty-two caliber rifle on his shoulder and you trotting ahead a little bit, looking back over your shoulder at my little man from time to time—I get thinking of him around Christmas time, Toby, and when I do I don’t want to saw wood. I want to get out in the woods and tramp and tramp and try to forget.”

Toby raised his head—long and broad and flat, as all good Airedale’s heads should be—and smiled. His small dark eyes, long since robbed of the fire of youth, were very wistful; his tasseled, three-vertebræ tail semaphored, in the language of his kind, the ancient message of dogdom: “I love you.”

“Yes, yes, I know you do, Toby. And I love you too, old pal. It hurts me to see you in misery. I got you as a three months’ old puppy for Johnny, when he was ten years old. You were a valuable dog, Toby, a lineal descendant of the first great dogs of your breed ever imported into the United States—Clonmel Marvel and Bath Lady. I traded a two year old, well trained Irish setter for you to a gentleman that had a weakness for the big, red, headstrong fool. You were Johnny’s dog for four years—and how you loved him! You wouldn’t have any false gods before you in those days, would you, Toby? The best you ever had for me was a polite ‘Good morning to you, Dan, but the rest of the day for Johnny.’ But when Johnny left us you came to me for comfort—and oh, Toby boy, the days we’ve spent afield together trying to forget Johnny! Toby, do you know that the coons, lynx, skunks, badger, gray foxes, rabbits and bobcats you’ve killed single-handed, and the bear and cougar you’ve treed for me in your day would fill a couple of box cars? Well, that’s a fact; and the blood you’ve shed a-doing it would fill one of them ten gallon hats like the movie cowboys wear.

“You’ve been mauled an’ bitten an’ scratched until your old hide must look like a crazy quilt; you’ve been poisoned and run over by buckboards and a flivver; you’ve been sprayed by skunks till you was blind and cried with shame because you couldn’t see the enemy nor smell him and you were afraid he’d get away; you’ve clumb trees and fell out of them or been knocked out of them by what was in the tree first; you’ve rolled over cliffs and once you dropped into an old dry well and was there twelve days without food or water before I found you; you’ve allowed big buck coons to take you into water, where Old Man Coon aimed to get you under and drown you—and you went under with him and killed him on the bottom. That grip across the brisket and no let-go till the breastbone cracked, eh, Toby?”

Toby whisked his tail in sad remembrance of a halcyon youth.

“Remember that day you and Johnny and me was out gathering mushrooms in the Little Antelope Valley? It was just our luck not to have a gun with us. You were scouting up an arroyo when I spotted a coyote headed straight for Johnny. Of course I knew an ordinary coyote would naturally head straight away from Johnny, and in a jiffy I realized that this one had hydrophobia.

“I yelled to Johnny to climb a madrone tree close by and he just did get up in time. Then I whistled for you—and you came. You bet you did, Toby—and that mad coyote went to meet you. He bit you twice before you got the right hold and killed him. He had rabies, all right. I sent his head up to the University of California to be examined, and you, you reckless old fool, I had to take you up to the city and have a regular doctor give you the Pasteur treatment. That’s the time you and Johnny got your pictures in the city paper—and I guess, if it hadn’t been for that, Johnny would have died without us ever having a picture of him!”

Toby shivered with the old chorea shiver, augmented by the tremors of age; he swayed and seemed half minded to sit down abruptly, but recovered himself.

Dan nodded understandingly. “Yes, Toby, and you would have set down if you’d been anything but an Airedale terrier. Your kind ain’t much on beauty, but if handsome is what handsome does, you’re the most beautiful dog in the world. You’ve just naturally got too much courage to die, Toby. I’m on to you. You just stay alive to fight that chorea and the disposition of your hind quarters to skid off the right of way, don’t you?—although Martha says the only thing that keeps you alive is the hope that some day I’ll relent and take you hunting again.

“She says you’re just a-hangin’ on by faith. I keep telling her I dassen’t take you afield, because you’re so old and that distemper has left you with such a weak heart you can’t stand much exercise. You’d keel over with heart disease, just like little Midgie, my old black and white pointer bitch. She’d retrieved a quail and was coming out of a thicket with the dead bird in her mouth when she stopped to point a live bird in the grass in front of her. I made her hold it while I tried to get a picture with my kodak, but the exercise and the excitement and repression was too much and she dropped dead on point. Martha says that’s the way a good field dog should die—in action, faithful to the end.

“Well, that’s all right for a setter or a pointer, but you’re a varmint dog, Toby, and I can’t risk you on the field of honor. Your teeth are about gone, your speed is gone, your sight is at least half gone, and while you threw back pretty strong to your otter hound ancestors in the matter of a nose—for I always did believe you hunted more by scent than sight—and might be able to waddle along somehow on a coon track, I’m afraid, Toby, when you caught up with your coon he’d turn and give you an all-fired licking! You’re the only Airedale I ever knew that lived up to the old brag of the Airedale fancy that an Airedale can do everything any other dog can do—and then lick the other dog; only—you ain’t the dog you used to be, Toby.

“You wouldn’t want me to take you afield wheezing along on two legs and a half and have a skunk cover you with disgrace, would you, Toby? Of course you wouldn’t. You can’t be killed in action, Toby. You’ve just got to figure yourself an old soldier that’s been crippled up in a dozen campaigns and finally lands in the Old Soldiers’ Home. Faithful to the last, Toby, but they don’t die sword in hand.”

Toby again raised his dim eyes to his master. Yes, he was finding it increasingly difficult to resist that impulse to flop over awkwardly after any exertion, and, as Dan Pelly had remarked, he was living on faith and courage. However, he would buck up—he would buck Dan up. All his life he had carried a merry tail. Tomorrow was another day!

He took Dan’s wrist in his snags of teeth, growled ferociously and pretended to be a very devil of a fellow.

Dan Pelly closed his eyes in sudden pain. He had a vision of Toby doing that to Johnny’s wrist, in a vain effort to make him play, a few minutes after Dan and the neighbors had taken Johnny from the swimming pool and laid him in the grass along the bank. Ah, memories, memories! And yet ’twas better to have loved and lost than never to have known those fourteen years of fatherhood. Dan was not embittered—he was too hopeless a sentimentalist for that—but a part of him had stayed with Johnny among the wild flowers in an old country cemetery. He knew the fallacy of life and the sweet mercy of death.

Toby continued to threaten and growl. Suddenly his hind legs skidded out from under him and he collapsed on the woodshed floor. It was the chorea.

Dan thought the old dog was dying and knelt beside him. He lifted his head and Toby smiled apologetically and tried to kiss the wrist which a moment before he had pretended to bite.

“So be it, Clonmel Knight, called Toby,” Dan murmured, with sudden, adamantine resolution. “We’ll call that our last good-by. I’ll play fair with you, boy. I’ll not let you hang on and suffer and die by inches. Wait for me in the Happy Hunting Grounds and when you see Johnny-boy kiss him for me.”

Like all out-o’-door men, Dan Pelly was a pagan. He believed that all field dogs have souls.

He went directly to the house. His wife, Martha, was in the kitchen making mincemeat and as he entered she turned her old sweet face toward him and smiled, for she saw that the old visions had taken possession of him again, that he was unhappy.

“Have a piece of mince pie, dear?”

“No-o-o,” he sighed. A long silence. Then: “Martha, I can’t saw that wood until Toby gets out of the woodshed. Have we got any chloroform in the house?”

“Oh, Dan, how can you bear to do it?”

“I can’t, Martha. But it’s got to be done. I think he suffers a lot, although you can never tell about an Airedale. They never complain. I’ve a notion his grub doesn’t taste any more like grub to him than sawdust does, and he’s getting those blind staggers more and more frequent. Is there any chloroform left?”

Martha nodded. Dan rose, took from its buckhorn rests over the fireplace his most treasured possession—a 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Schoenauer sporting carbine—and faced Martha.

“I’m going for a pasear up into the timber on Little Butte,” he explained. “Heard grouse drumming up there last week and I have a notion I can shoot the heads off a brace of cock grouse for next Sunday’s dinner. Got a few traps out up that way, too. They ought to be looked after. Lafe Foster, who rides for the Diamond Bar outfit over in the Little Antelope Valley, came through here yesterday on his way to town. I asked him to bring out our mail. He’ll come by about four o’clock, I reckon, so’s to get over the pass before dark. Give him the chloroform and a sponge and five dollars and tell him to bury Toby in the back garden next to Pathfinder’s Princess and Old Keepsake.”

He walked to the door and stood a moment looking out across the white fields. “I reckon there must be two foot of snow out there, Martha,” he said presently, “but we had a fair freeze last night, so it don’t seem likely I’ll need snowshoes. The sun’s out but there ain’t no warmth to it to speak of—well, so long for a few hours, Martha.”

He went to the kennels where he kept the dogs sent to him to board and train. Among the dozen or more dogs there he kept his own grand little field trial winner, an English setter named Tiny Tim. “Come on, Timmy,” he called, and opened the kennel door for Tiny Tim to squeeze out. “We’re going for a hike up on Little Butte. The snow’s just that hard it won’t ball up on your feet, and it’s a grand day for a bit of exercise.”

Martha watched him disappear across the field that sloped gently up to the mouth of a cañon which in turn swept gradually upward two miles to a broken and rugged country, sparsely timbered with mountain pine, laurel and madrone, and known as Little Butte from a small conical hill which buttressed its western flank. From the time Dan left the house until he and Tiny Tim disappeared up the cañon his trail was quite distinct in the snow.

Martha’s eyes were sad and troubled, but around her mouth grim little lines of determination now appeared. In the Pelly household she was the leader—the strongest link in the matrimonial chain. Dan never disputed her leadership, and the fact that he had left to her the task of arranging Toby’s obsequies was only another of his ways of admitting it. Lacking the courage to do the job himself, he assumed, quite naturally, that Martha would be equal to the task; so, having acquainted her with his wishes, he had beaten a retreat before she had time to protest or suggest other arrangements for Toby’s disposal.

“Poor old Dan,” she murmured. “He has the heart of a child. Well, Lafe Foster is not similarly troubled—oh, dear! Dan’s gone away with an empty rifle. There are the six cartridges in his desk in the living room.”

It was true. Dan Pelly lived in a country where coyotes, coons, lynx and bobcats were all too plentiful to suit him, notwithstanding the fact that with his half-dozen foxhounds and Toby, who used to run with the hounds before distemper laid him low, he enjoyed hunting them. They raided his poultry roosts; once coyotes had killed a calf and on numerous occasions they had taken young pigs.

Each winter the deep snows at the high altitudes drove a few panthers into the lowlands to prey on the lonely ranches thereabout, and as a result of these prowlers Dan Pelly had for a quarter of a century practised preparedness. His rifle, with one cartridge in the breech and the magazine full, always hung on the buckhorn rests over the fireplace, where he could find it readily and rush forth to investigate any unusual noise around his establishment day or night. It was a rule of the household that this rifle must never be touched and never unloaded—and Martha had broken this rule a week previous.

While seated in the kitchen whipping some cream her glance had wandered carelessly to Dan’s rifle and she recalled having seen a hornet emerge from the barrel of the rifle that fall. At the time she wondered if the insect or several of his kind had not elected to occupy the rifle barrel for the winter, and the possibility of their bringing mud or other foreign substances into the gun barrel had occurred to her at the time, to be forgotten in the rush of her household duties.

To be of service to her husband—to anticipate his simple wants, to surprise and please him by anticipating them—was a religion with Martha. Hence when the memory of the hornets returned to her she took down the rifle, pumped the cartridge out of the chamber and squinted down the barrel, with the breech presented against the white wall opposite. Gracious, the rifle was filthy! She couldn’t see through it. With the instinct of a clean and orderly woman, therefore, she pumped the remaining five cartridges out of the magazine and cleaned and oiled the rifle thoroughly. Then, noticing that the brass shells of the cartridges, having been in the magazine several months, had commenced to accumulate verdigris, she had set them aside to clean them also.

Presently a neighbor had called and the task had been deferred; the neighbor stayed for dinner and, seeking to keep from her Dan the knowledge that the only fixed rule of his existence had been defied, Martha had placed the cartridges temporarily in a drawer in an old desk. Then she forgot about them entirely and Dan, too sure of his rifle even to slide the bolt and see that it was loaded, had departed in ignorance of the fact that he carried an empty gun and would have his appetite for grouse restrained accordingly.

Martha was annoyed but not frightened. She knew Dan would not say anything, even though he might resent her interference in the affairs of his department. But it distressed her to think of his disappointment, and since discovery was inevitable she resolved to do her best to right her error. She would tie the cartridges in a bandanna handkerchief, fasten them to Tiny Tim’s collar and turn him loose on the trail of his master, with instructions to “Go—fetch.” Nothing could be simpler.

She tied the cartridges in a flaming red bandanna handkerchief in order that Dan could not possibly fail to see it against the snowy pelt of Tiny Tim, and went out to the kennels. But Tiny Tim was not there and when she found the footprints of a man and a small dog in the clean snow back of the barn and leading away across the field, she realized that Dan had taken the little setter with him for company. Tiny Tim was almost entirely white and against the snowfield he had not been visible.

Disappointed, Martha returned to the house, pausing en route at the woodshed to look in at Toby. The woodshed door was locked but through a knot hole in the door she saw a small dark eye set in a halo of grizzled hair that had once been fawn-colored. Toby, standing on his unsteady hind legs to reach this knot hole, had gazed out across the field and seen his master, rifle on shoulder and accompanied by Tiny Tim, faring forth along the paths of glory while he, poor, helpless prisoner, remained behind, like a sick soldier in hospital. Martha opened the door and with a short, quick, rapturous bark, Toby sprang out, skidded, rolled over in the snow, got up foolishly and started at a stiff, unsteady lope along the track taken by Dan Pelly and Tiny Tim.

“Toby!”

Martha’s high, somewhat shrill cry penetrated to the old dog’s dull ears; he paused and faced about inquiringly. With a crook of her finger Martha summoned him to her and he came obediently but reluctantly.

“Toby, dear,” she said, as she fastened the bandanna around his collar, “you’re a poor old invalid, but you want to go so go you shall. You haven’t got another hunt left in you, but you might reach Dan with these cartridges before he climbs the hogsback to Little Butte. The run and the climb will probably break your poor heart, but that will be as it should be. You should be given your chance, Toby—the chance that all good hunting dogs merit—the chance to die on the field of honor. Good dog, Toby. Go find Dan. If you can’t smell him you can track him through the snow by sight. Don’t come back, Toby. Lafe Foster will be waiting with a chloroform sponge at the bottom of his cowboy boot, and he’ll slip the boot leg over your poor head. Good-by, Toby. Good-by, Johnny’s dog . . .”

She was weeping silently as she returned to the house. Toby, uttering his short, rapturous barks, scurried uncertainly and not very speedily away through the snow. His head hung low as his dim eyes and dull nose sought the trail, but his tasseled tail hung high and twitched merrily. Frequently the devilish short circuit between his brain and his hind legs made him sit down clumsily, but after a minute’s rest he would start on again. For Clonmel Knight, called Toby, was an Airedale, a descendant of champions, and in his family tree there had never been a coward or a weakling. He possessed in superlative degree the will to live, the will to plod on, to fight to the finish. Come what might he would not quit.

His short bark grew shriller and there was in it an eager, sobbing note as he turned into the cañon that led upward to Little Butte, for another trail had crossed that of Dan Pelly and Tiny Tim. Toby stood, swaying, on the trail and studied these footprints; then he ran his old nose into them and sniffed and sniffed.

“Dan, Dan Pelly,” he barked. “It’s a panther. He crossed here. He’ll go up the other hogsback and come down into Little Butte. Come on, let’s get him.”

But there was no Dan to cheer him on, to consult with him as to the proper course to pursue. Toby hesitated, wept a little—or so his complaining whimpering appeared to indicate—and reluctantly abandoned the panther’s trail to follow that of Dan Pelly. Where the trail led straight up to the hogsback from the cañon floor, Toby sat down of his own free will to rest. He was badly winded, his legs trembled and his heart ached and thumped. After a five minute rest, however, he felt better, so he started, very slowly and laboriously, to follow Dan Pelly’s footprints up the hill.

Although no longer young, Dan Pelly was in the pink of physical condition. All his life he had hunted, he had never dissipated; he went up a hill faster than most men go down it. There was no game in the valley in which he was at all interested; he knew there were grouse on Little Butte, so to Little Butte he went as fast as his sturdy old legs would carry him, with Timmy frisking on ahead, ranging wide and sniffing every prospect in a vain search for quail.

Suddenly as Dan toiled upward there came to him, borne on the clear, cold air, a shrill bark from Tiny Tim. Dan paused, frowning. Was Tiny Tim forgetting his manners and barking at a grouse in a tree, or was he disgracing himself as a quail dog by running a rabbit?

The dog was not in sight. He had disappeared into the scrubby timber. But presently he barked again and this time there was terror in his bark. Indeed, it was scarcely a bark. It was a most disgraceful yelp, portentous of death in its most violent form, and Dan was not at all surprised when a black speck, which was Timmy’s black ears preceding Timmy, burst from the timber and came toward Dan with all the speed of which he was capable. Indeed, so fast did he come that whatever had been pursuing him must have realized the futility of pursuit, for although Dan’s keen eyes searched the edge of the timber he saw nothing. Nevertheless, he knew!

Timmy came flying up in a flurry of snow and tried to leap into Dan’s arms for protection. “So you ran slam bang into a hungry panther, eh?” Dan queried the little setter. “Well, there’s nothing a hungry panther likes better than a juicy little dog, so I reckon he give you a run for a hundred yards or so. Well, they’re fast for a little way, Timmy, but they can’t keep it up. You come to heel, Timmy, if you don’t want to get et up, and we’ll get on that panther’s trail and see if we can’t tree him. There’s a state bounty on panthers, Timmy. Thirty dollars for a female and twenty for a male, and the Diamond Bar outfit over in the Little Antelope pays an additional bounty of twenty dollars for any kind of a panther killed on or near their range. And I get the pelts, too. Dang it, why didn’t I bring the hounds? If old Toby were only here now, and in his old form, he’d have that panther treed in jig time. Come on, Timmy. I won’t let him hurt you.”

Tiny Tim, however, was not so certain of that. He was a bird dog, not a warrior, and his recent experience had quite shocked his gentle nature. He had never been pursued by a panther before and he was not anxious to repeat the terrible experience. Timmy held strongly to the opinion that it is no disgrace to run when one is afraid, so, acting upon that opinion, he turned and, tail between his legs, fled ignobly for home. Dan chuckled at the runaway and pressed on at a trot to the timber.

By following the line of Timmy’s ignominious retreat Dan came promptly to the evidence of Timmy’s fright. As he had suspected, it was a panther, and a full grown one at that. Following the plainly visible trail through the snow he came abruptly upon the evidences of a panther party which Timmy had evidently interrupted. In a small open space among the trees the snow was stained red, and from the opposite direction, leading up to the point of an evident tragedy, Dan observed the small, neat imprint of a deer’s hoofs.

“Hum!” Dan Pelly soliloquized. “Old Señor Panther killed a deer here and was about to dine when Timmy, the little fool, dashed in and interrupted him. The panther chased Timmy away and then returned to his kill. He has carried the carcass away to eat in a spot where he will not be likely to be interrupted again.”

The trail was easier to follow now. There was no possibility of mistaking it, for the drops of blood from the freshly killed deer stained the snow crimson each place the panther set his gory burden down and rested for a few moments before proceeding.

“Good big buck,” Dan soliloquized. “Hello, there’s another panther track—no, by Jupiter, there are two of them. An old lady with two yearling cubs. Great snakes! I hope they’re all females! That would be ninety dollars bounty from the State, sixty from the Diamond Bar Cattle Company and at least twenty dollars for the pelts. Here’s where I land a Christmas present for Martha!”

He pressed eagerly on. Once he paused, listening. Far down the hogsback he heard, very faintly, a short, sharp, apprehensive bark. Timmy, doubtless. “Little lobster,” Dan soliloquized and pressed on swiftly. For a quarter of a mile he followed the trail, momentarily expecting to catch a glimpse of the three panthers squatting around the carcass of the deer. He was disappointed, however.

“Dragging it home,” Dan thought. “Well, if I don’t get a shot at them before dark I’ll find their den and come back after them tomorrow with the hounds. Hello, they’ve left the timber and gone down over that broken country . . . they hole up in one of the caves in that limestone wash.”

He ran at top speed along the trail and as he ran he heard again, far behind him, the eager bark of a dog. Dan was running downhill now and the grade was growing more and more precipitous. The snow had piled in huge drifts on that side of the hill and the sun had warmed it; Dan’s feet sank deeper and deeper. The gory trail led straight ahead.

Dan paused. Ahead of him the slope of the hill pitched abruptly downward at an angle of about sixty-five degrees. Forty feet in front of him three panthers stood with their backs to him, the carcass of the deer lying on the snow between them. As Dan had suspected from the tracks they were an old female and two yearling cubs.

“Don’t like these end-on shots,” Dan murmured, and raised his carbine to his shoulder. Then he whistled. Instantly all three cats half turned and Dan knew he just couldn’t help placing a bullet back of the old lady’s left shoulder.

To his amazement and chagrin the firing pin fell on thin air or a defective cartridge. He jerked back the bolt and slammed it home again, his glance still on his quarry—and then something struck him in the middle of the back and knocked him forward on his face. It was a snow avalanche. He started to slide downhill with incredible swiftness, straight toward the trio of panthers, who, seeing him coming, abandoned their kill and fled before him.

Their speed, however, was not greater than that of the avalanche of snow upon the crest of which Dan Pelly rode; almost instantly it engulfed them and hunter and hunted, rolling over and over, suddenly shot out into space and landed with more or less shock in the bottom of what Dan realized must be a deep ravine. He was not hurt, however, and he still clung to his rifle; in a few seconds he had fought his way clear of the few feet of snow in which he was buried. Up he came, like a ground hog to have a look at the weather, and his first thought was:

“Where are those doggone panthers?”

Almost instantly he saw them. They were three very badly frightened cats—likewise they were very angry and that they held Dan Pelly accountable for their fright, their undignified tumble and the loss of their supper, Dan had not the slightest doubt, for all three stood in a row on the snow about thirty feet from him, growling low, throaty growls, flashing huge, business-like teeth, and slowly switching their tails from side to side.

“Gosh!” Dan Pelly thought, “they mean business. They’ll jump me for less than a stale cooky.” He took aim at Mother Panther’s broad forehead—and again the firing pin fell harmlessly. As if at command, all three cats squatted and glared at him; then the old lioness crept forward a few feet on her belly and Dan backed hurriedly away, pumping his gun swiftly.

It was empty. “Oh, Martha, Martha, why can’t you respect my one simple wish, my sole inflexible rule?” Dan muttered. He was so angry he yearned with a great yearning to sit down in the snow and blubber like some great lubberly boy. Instead he compromised by swearing what is technically known as a blue streak. He hadn’t been so angry in thirty years.

“You damned fools,” he yelled at the panthers, “I can’t shoot you, so why don’t you beat it?” He backed away some more and Mother Panther, reading this move as a sign of weakness and indecision, crept after him. Goose flesh ran up Dan Pelly’s spine.

Dan looked about him, found a stone as large as a baseball lying on top of the snow, and hurled it at the old panther. It struck her fairly on the nose and she screamed with rage and amazement; followed by her progeny, she turned to retreat and leave Dan Pelly in possession of the field.

And then to Dan Pelly came a realization that started his heart to thumping furiously. His unwelcome neighbors could not retreat. They had all fallen into a huge “pot hole” at the head of a ravine through which, except in freezing weather, a little stream had run for untold centuries. At the head of this ravine, where the slope of the hill pitched so precipitately, Dan remembered that ordinarily there was a waterfall some eighty feet high. The water, mixed with gravel and occasional stones, and falling from that height, had gradually eroded in the sandstone formation below a pot hole about fifty feet in diameter.

From the crest of the waterfall—now frozen solid—the hill sloped abruptly east, so that the walls of this hole were some sixty feet perpendicularly at the upper end but decreasing gradually to about forty feet at the lower end. As a usual thing this pot hole contained a pool the surface of which when the stream was flowing normally reached about halfway to the top of the lower wall and trickled out through a six inch fissure in the sandstone—a fissure which gradually widened into a little gully that divided the floor of the cañon below.

Despite the fact that the avalanche, piling in on top of the frozen pool, had half filled the pot hole with snow, the problem of escaping from this natural prison was not an easy one, although Dan realized that given his time he could climb out of it via this fissure, albeit as he contemplated the prospect of three panthers clawing at his trouser seat while doing it, he was filled with misgivings.

Meanwhile the panthers padded around their half of this natural cage, striving to climb the almost perpendicular wall and falling back ignominiously on their haunches each time they tried. Dan knew they could not escape from that pot hole; they were still his panthers, and it behooved him to climb out, hasten home for some cartridges, return and dispatch them.

He essayed to claw his way up the lower wall by using the inequalities of the formation on each side of the six inch fissure. He was up six feet when a ledge upon which he had been clinging with one toe broke and precipitated him back into the snow on the floor of the pot hole. Again and again he tried it, but each time he failed and fell back into the snow. Each time he fell, the panthers growled and spat, facing about on him as if to repel an attack.

“Dog my cats,” murmured Dan, “this is no business. A mountain lion is the greatest coward on earth—maybe! Hence the old saying: Brave as a lion. But I know panthers well enough to realize that the more frightened they become the braver they get. An animal always charges because it is frightened. These panthers are hungry, they’ve been robbed of a meal, they’ve been rolled end over end in a little snow avalanche and dropped into a cage with their enemy. Pretty soon they’re going to realize they can’t get out that way and they’ll take a notion to try to get out this way. Then I’ll have to slide by them somehow and as we pass each other the old lady’s going to maul me out of respect for her cubs. I’ll have to start cutting toe holds in this sandstone crevice with my pocket knife and get out of here P. D. Q. if I’m to get out alive.”

Far above him, on the hilltop over which he had come, a dog barked.

“That wasn’t Timmy,” Dan Pelly thought. “Sounds like Toby, but it can’t be. And yet—I ought to know Toby’s voice. It can’t be——”

He backed against the north wall of the pot hole in order to gain a clear view over the crest of the southern wall and up the hillside down which he had been swept. On the skyline, sharply outlined against the snow, stood an extra large Airedale terrier, with a dash of red at his breast; and as Dan Pelly gazed the dog started slowly and weakly down the hill, following the trail he and the cats had lately taken. From time to time the dog barked, but there was an anxious, whimpering timbre in that bark—a sort of “Wait for me boys I’m coming” note—and then Dan Pelly knew that the impossible had happened.

Clonmel Knight, alias Toby, was afield again—for the last time. He would be in at the death—his own and Dan Pelly’s—unless—unless——

What was that red thing at his collar? Dan thrilled. A bandanna handkerchief! Martha had sent him! He was bringing cartridges! That was it! He was bringing the cartridges!

Dan’s joyous whoop echoed up the pot hole and reverberated against the surrounding hills. “Oh, you Toby! Come on, boy! Here I am, Toby. Come, Toby, come on, boy! Hot trail, Toby!”

He glanced toward the panthers. They had abandoned their futile efforts to climb the walls of their prison, and now the old female realized that the affairs of herself and family had reached an impasse. She knew dogs! To her, poor, feeble, staggering Toby and his dauntless war cry spelled death. However, all was not yet lost. It might not be too late to escape after all—via that crack in the east wall; and between her and possible liberty stood nothing more formidable than a man who showed no disposition to molest her—who showed, indeed, a most unmanly desire to escape. And the creature uttered cries! He appeared more distraught than she! She would chance it, for the sake of her cubs.

Dan saw her crouch low to the ground and noted her fixed, blazing glance bent searchingly upon him. Slowly she advanced, a few inches at a time. She would bluff him out of the way if she could, but if he would not be bluffed——

A dozen yards from the brink of the pot hole Dan saw Toby stagger, turn a complete circle, and flop on his side. Was this to be the finish? Would Toby, done in with victory in sight, give up the ghost where Dan could not reach the precious cartridges, or would he make one more effort? If he would only start rolling he was bound to arrive, dead or alive. But no, he lay there, utterly spent, and with a shriek Dan gathered a handful of snow, pressed it into a ball and hurled it at the advancing death. The old female shrank back and considered the situation a moment, seeing which Dan threw snow with both hands, made a short dash at her, still shouting, and flung his hat at her.

Here was a situation Mother Panther had not counted on. She could smell Toby—a light breeze, blowing from the south, brought her the unmistakable scent; but—he was not coming closer, and his barking had ceased. What did this mean? And what meant this sudden furious advance on the part of the natural enemy she had already, against her better judgment, commenced to hold cheap! She retreated to the other end of the pot hole with her cubs to consider the situation, but she still growled and swung her tail.

In the slush that remained in the track of the avalanche Toby still lay motionless. He had come to the end of the trail. For some mysterious reason the footprints of his beloved Dan had disappeared, likewise the footprints and scent of the hereditary enemy. Toby was puzzled and broken-hearted. Dan Pelly and the panther had been swept out of his ken.

Down in the pot hole Dan retreated to the crack in the wall again and feverishly commenced digging toe holds with his pocket knife; seeing which, the mother panther crouched flat again and regarded him speculatively. The whole situation was a most suspicious one and she was loath to start an assault until quite certain she could win. The dog was not advancing and he no longer barked. She would think it over.

Up on the hillside Toby stirred in the chilly snow slush. He was gasping, a-tremble all over, and he wanted very much to lie there and die quietly. But the will to live, to struggle on, to fight on, is never absent in an Airedale, and Toby was resolved to cast about in a couple of wide circles and see if he could not pick the trail up again. He stirred and whimpered and willed that his crazy hind quarters might obey him, but they refused, for at last the short circuit had been completed and Toby would never walk again. But he might crawl. His front legs would still obey that adamant will to follow on and ever onward, for somewhere out front there things were happening, Dan needed him and he must come. He barked encouragement to the unseen master and faced forward.

Hark! What was that? Toby’s old ears were erected. In his poor puzzled brain a faint voice beat ceaselessly: “Toby, Toby boy! Come on, Toby, Toby! Toby!” Toby wasn’t certain that he heard, but he barked a reply—and then there came to him a sound which even his old dull auditory nerves were not proof against—the shrill, piercing whistle of a man calling his dog from afar.

Toby’s answering bark was almost a sob. He was catching up! Dan had seen him, was inviting him to the fray—at last! In his pocket Dan had found the powerful “warble” whistle which he used when training dogs for the field trials, and he was blowing it like mad, while the she panther, puzzled and somewhat repulsed by this inexplicable noise, retreated still farther.

“Coming, Dan!” Toby barked, and down the slush trail of the snow slide he slithered, his dead hind quarters dragging behind him. Inch by inch, foot by foot he came, whimpering, barking, crying—and presently he reached the brink of the pot hole and saw his master. Dan waved his hand in encouragement and without a moment’s hesitation Toby crawled over the edge of the pot hole and tumbled down—into Dan Pelly’s waiting arms!

Dan laid him on the snow and with a slash of his knife ripped the bandanna from his neck and found the cartridges. But the arrival of Toby had thrown the old lioness into a panic, and as Dan jammed the last cartridge into the magazine and stood erect, she charged. As she left the ground on her first leap Dan fired, but failed to stop her; almost before he knew it her heavy body struck him full on the breast.

Involuntarily he had thrown up his rifle to guard his face and as he went over backward with the big cat on top he heard the teeth of the lioness crunch into the stock of the gun. And then Dan Pelly shrieked—a single word:

“Toby!”

The sleek flank of the lioness was within six inches of Toby’s muzzle, where he lay in the snow at Dan’s feet—the pungent odor of cat assailed his old nose for the last time. With a growl he summoned his little remaining strength and all of his courage to the aid of his stricken master. He rose on his good front legs and hurled himself forward; his long jaw closed over the cat’s flank and the few snags of teeth he still possessed sank to the gums in her flesh.

With a roar of rage, the old lioness, who had just managed to free her mouth of the stock of Dan’s rifle—for on the instant that she bit blindly at it Dan had thrust it farther into her mouth with his free hand—whirled to meet this new assault, and for a couple of seconds Toby and the panther sprawled together across Dan Pelly’s legs, with Toby hanging on resolutely and the big cat twisting her body to reach him.

She succeeded! She bit him and crunched in his loins. But what did Toby care for that? He did not even know he had been bitten, for had he not died in his rear end five minutes before? Nothing now mattered save the front end of him—the business end—and that still lived and was all Airedale! Toby continued to chew silently, so with a snarl of rage the lioness commenced whirling like a pin wheel in an effort to shake Toby off.

Ah, if Toby had only been the dog he used to be! If only the big, ripping chisels of teeth he used to have had still been his! They would have met in that panther’s flank and she might whirl and be damned to her! But alas! Toby was very old and half dead, with the other half dying; his teeth were few and short and the strength was gone from that long and powerful jaw. At the second whirl he was catapulted off into space, rolling over and over in the snow; before he had finished rolling the old lioness and both cubs were on him—and Dan Pelly was momentarily free with a loaded rifle beside him.

Toby died fighting, in absolute silence in so far as he was concerned. One of the cubs mouthed him just back of the shoulders—and that hurt, but Toby did not whimper. He died with the cub’s foreleg in his mouth, and as his canine soul—granting, as Dan Pelly believed, that all good hunting dogs have souls—mounted to the Happy Hunting Grounds where Johnny waited, Dan Pelly, scratched, bruised and somewhat dazed, rested his back against the east wall of the pot hole and placed his shots where they would do the most good.

An hour later he had his toe holds dug up each side of the crevice and was ready to go home, but before he started he sorted what was left of Clonmel Knight, called Toby, out of the bloody snow, bound the rapidly stiffening legs together with the ruin of the bandanna handkerchief, swung the old hero around his neck as he was wont to carry deer and climbed laboriously out of that gory amphitheater. On the morrow, his scratches attended to, he would return for the pelts, but for the present he needed all of his strength to carry a dead forty-five pound dog four miles and arrive home before Martha should begin to worry.

Shortly after dark he staggered in, a welter of blood and rags, and stood in the middle of the kitchen, weaving a little on his old legs and gazing upon Martha with extreme severity.

“Martha,” he said very distinctly, “the next time you fuss with my rifle I’ll be tee-totally doggoned if I don’t let your hear from me something scandalous!”

“Oh, Dan,” she cried tremulously, “are you badly hurt?”

“No,” he replied, “not very, but I’ve been mighty badly scared. I been playin’ the part o’ Daniel in the lions’ den. Got three of ’em—one male an’ two females. When I had ’em cornered and discovered I’d been carrying an empty rifle, Martha, I was that angry I swore I’d keep every cent of the bounty for myself, but after Toby arrived with the cartridges I commenced feeling a little better disposed toward you, so I reckon you get the bounty just the same.”

“So Toby got there?” Martha queried, and sat down weakly.

“Yes, the going was hard on him, but he made the grade and was in at the death. At the finish he was granted a privilege he had always desired, but which I had always denied, because I knew it meant death to him if he ever tried it. He died with a taste of live panther in his mouth, and he did it to save me. The old pup’s gone, Martha. He was Clonmel Knight at the finish and died gloriously on the field of honor. I brought most of him home. It’s lying in state in the woodshed.”

He drew himself a dipper of cold water, which he drank with averted face.

Presently he queried in a husky, strained voice: “Martha, what’s that mot—motto—of the—Mar—ine Corps?”

“First to fight,” replied Martha, remembering the wartime recruiting literature of that gallant little corps.

“That isn’t it, Martha. The Munson boy had it on the—insignia—in his—cap when he—came home from—the war. It’s Latin.”

“I understand, Dan. We’ll carve it on Toby’s tombstone. Semper fidelis, Dan. It means ‘Always faithful.’ ”

Dan nodded and commenced to weep. He couldn’t help it. He always paid his favorite dogs the tribute of a tear when they passed on, for Dan Pelly was a hopeless sentimentalist, as, indeed, are all who bear true faith and allegiance to the Little God of the Open Spaces. And moreover, Clonmel Knight, called Toby, had been Johnny’s dog.

CHAPTER IX
Point!

Little old Dan Pelly occupied a position in life analogous to that of a tragedian who aspires to play comedy rôles. By reason of early environment, natural inclination and years of practise, he was a dog trainer; now, in the sunset of his rather futile life, he was a cross between a chicken raiser, farmer and dreamer of old dreams that had to do mostly with dogs and good quail cover. In a word, old Dan was not happy, and this morning as he sat on a fallen scrub oak tree on the highest point on his alleged ranch and gazed off into Little Antelope Valley, he almost wished that a merciful Providence would waft him to heaven or hell or some other seaport. Anywhere, in fact, out of this cold world.

“The Indians had the right idea of a hereafter,” mused Dan Pelly. “To them the next world was a happy hunting ground. This world is no longer fit for a white man to live in. It’s getting too civilized. Travel as far as you will for good trout fishing and upland hunting and you’ll find some scrub there ahead of you in a flivver. Get out on your own ground at dawn on the day the shooting season opens—and you’ll find empty shotgun shells a week old. Tim, old pal, the more I see of some men the more I love you.”

Tim—or, to accord him his registered name, Tiny Tim—ran his cool muzzle into Dan Pelly’s horny palm and rested it there. Just rested it and spoke never a word, for Tiny Tim was one of those rare dogs who knows when his master is troubled of soul and forbears to weary his loved one with unnecessary outbursts of affection or sympathy. He leaned his shoulder against Dan’s knee and rested his muzzle in Dan’s hand as who should say: “Well, man alone is vile. Here I am and I’ll stick, depend upon it.”

Tiny Tim was an English setter and the last surviving son of Keepsake, the greatest bitch Dan Pelly had ever seen or owned. Dan had wept when an envious scoundrel had poisoned her the night before a field trial up Bakersfield way. All of her puppies out of Kenwood Boy had survived, and all had made history in dogdom. Three of them had been placed—one, two, three—in the Derby. The other two had been the runners-up, and the least promising of these runners-up had been Tiny Tim.

Tim had been the runt of the litter and as if his physical deficiency had not been sufficient handicap, he had grown into a singularly unbeautiful dog. He had a butterfly nose, one black ear, a solid white coat with the exception of a black spot as big as a man’s hand just over the root of his tail; and his tail was his crowning misfortune. Dog fanciers like a setter with a merry tail, but Tiny Tim carried his very low when he ran that Derby, and he had never carried it very high since. As if to offset the tragedy of his tail, however, Tiny Tim ran with a high head, for he had, tucked away in that butterfly nose, a pair of olfactory nerves that carried him unerringly to birdy ground. He could always manage to locate a bird lying close in cover that had been thoroughly prospected by other dogs.

Dan Pelly had sold Tiny Tim’s litter mates at a fancy figure after that memorable Derby, but for homely Tiny Tim there were no bidders; so Dan Pelly expressed him back to the kennels. He was homely and lacked style and dash in his bird work; he appeared a bit nervous and uncertain and inclined to limit his range, and it seemed to Dan that as a field trial prospect he was so much inferior to other dogs that it was scarcely worth while spending any time or money on his education. However, he did have a grand nose; when he grew older Dan hoped he might outgrow his nervousness and be steadier to shot and wing; in view of his undoubted instinct for birds, it seemed the part of wisdom to make a “plug” shooting dog of him. Every dog trainer keeps such an animal, if not for his own use then for the use of stout old bank presidents and of retired brewers whose idea of the sport of hunting is to come home with “the limit.” A grand hunting dog means little in the lives of such “sportsmen”; they want a dog that will work close to the gun, thus enabling them to proceed leisurely, as becomes a fat man. It is no pleasure to them to be forced to walk down a steep hill, clamber across a deep gully and climb the opposite hill to kill a bird their dog has been pointing for fifteen or twenty minutes. It is reserved for idealists like old Dan Pelly to thrill to the work of a dog like that. The dead bird is a secondary consideration.

So Tiny Tim had been thrown back in the kennel, and now, in his fifth year, he was still on Dan Pelly’s hands. But that was no fault of Tiny Tim’s. And he had never again been entered in a field trial. That was no fault of his, either. Dan Pelly had merely gone out of the dog business, and Tiny Tim, his last dog and best beloved, was neither a field trial dog nor yet a potterer for fat bankers and retired brewers who came down to Dan Pelly’s place for a week-end shoot in the season. No, Tiny Tim had never achieved that disgrace. Dan Pelly had given up dog training and dog boarding and dog raising and dog trading after his return from that field trial where old Keepsake’s litter had brought him more money than he had ever seen at any one time before. Consequently, Tiny Tim was Dan’s own shooting dog and Dan had trained him not for filthy lucre but for that love and companionship for a good dog which idealists of the Dan Pelly type can never repress.

Tiny Tim had known but one master, and but one code of sportsmanship; he responded to but one set of signals; he had never been curbed in his range or speed; he had never been scolded or shouted at or beaten, but he had received much of love and caressing and praise. He had been fed properly, housed properly, wormed regularly every three months, bathed every Saturday afternoon and brushed and combed almost every day, and as a result he was an extremely healthy dog, albeit a small dog even among small, field type English setters. Dan Pelly loved him just a little bit more because he was a runt and because, though royally bred, his bearing was a bit ignoble.

“I’ll have none of your bench type setters,” Dan was wont to remark when speaking of setters. “I could weep from just lookin’ at them—the poor boobs, with their domed foreheads and their sad, bloodshot eyes and dribbling chops. Too heavy and slow for anybody but a fat man. An hour’s hard going of a warm day and they’re done. I’ll have a light, neat little setter for a long, hard, drivin’ day of it.”

Dan Pelly’s choice of dog was an index to his character. He, too, was a light, compact little man, with something of a lost dog’s wistfulness about him. Dan didn’t like pointers. They were too aggressive, too headstrong, too noisy for him. The sight of a bulldog or a bull terrier made him angry, for such dogs could always be depended upon to pounce upon a shooting dog and worry him. Toy dogs depressed him. They seemed so unworthy of human attention and moreover they had no brains.

This morning Dan Pelly was more than ordinarily unhappy. He needed five hundred dollars worse than he needed salvation . . .

And only the day before while he and Tim had been working a patch of low cover just off the county road, a man in a very expensive automobile driven by a liveried chauffeur had paused in the road to watch them. Presently Tim had made one of those spectacular points which always give a real dog lover a thrill. In mid-air, while leaping over a small bush, he had caught the scent of a quail crouching close under that bush. He had landed with his body half turned toward the bush, his head had swung around and there he had stood, “frozen.” Dan had walked up, kicked the bird out, waited until the quail was forty yards away and fired. Meanwhile Tim had broken point and, head up, was following the flushed bird with anxious eyes.

As the gun barked the bird flinched slightly but did not reduce its speed. Wings spread stiffly, it sailed away out of sight and Dan Pelly, seeing himself watched by the man in the motor car, grinned deprecatingly.

“Missed him a mile,” he called.

“You let him get too far away before you fired,” the stranger replied with that hearty camaraderie which always obtains between lovers of upland shooting.

“My gun is a full choke; I can kill nicely with it at fifty yards, but I like to give the birds a chance for their white alley so I never shoot under forty yards.”

“Grand point your little setter made then. Steady to flush and shot, too. Homely little rascal, but man, he’s a dog! I must have a look at him, if you don’t mind, my friend.” And he got out of the car.

“Certainly, sir. Come, Timmy, lad. Shake hands with the gentleman.”

But Tiny Tim had other and more important matters to attend to. He was racing at full speed after that departing bird. Dan whistled him to halt, but Tim paid no attention. He crossed a gentle rise of ground and disappeared on the other side. He was out of sight for about five minutes; then he appeared again on the crest and came jogging sedately back to Dan Pelly. In his mouth he held tenderly a wounded quail. Straight to Dan Pelly he came, and as he advanced he twisted his little body sinuously and arched and lowered his shoulders and flipped his tail backward and forward and smiled with his eyes. In effect he said:

“Dan, you didn’t think you hit that bird, but I saw him flinch ever so little. I’ve had a lot of experience in such matters and experience has taught me that a bird hit like that will fly a couple of hundred yards and then drop. So I kept my eye on this one and sure enough just as he reached the top of that little rise I saw him settle rather abruptly! So I went over and nosed around and sure enough I picked up his trail. He had an injured wing—numbed, probably—and he was down and running to beat the band. It’s sporty to chase a runner, because if we don’t get him, Dan, a weasel will.”

The stranger looked at the bird in Tim’s mouth and then he looked at Dan Pelly. “Well, I’ll be swindled!” he declared. “If I live to be a million years old I’ll never see a prettier piece of bird work than that. The dog’s human.”

“Yes, he’s a right nice little feller,” Dan declared pridefully. “Timmy, boy, take the bird to the gentleman and then shake hands with him.”

Timmy looked at the stranger, who smiled at him, so he walked sedately to the latter and gently dropped the frightened bird into his hand. Not a feather had been disturbed; not a tooth had marred the tender flesh.

The stranger reached down and twigged Tiny Tim’s nose; then he tugged his ear a little, said “good dog” and stroked Tim’s head. Tim extended a paw to be shaken. They were friends.

“Want to sell this dog, my friend?” the newcomer demanded.

“Oh, no! Timmy’s the only dog I have left. He’s just my little shooting dog and I’m right fond of him. He has a disposition that sweet, sir, you’ve never seen the beat of it. If I sold Timmy I’d never dare come home. My wife would take the rolling pin to me.”

“I’ll give you two hundred and fifty dollars for him.”

“Timmy isn’t for sale, sir.”

“Not enough money, eh? Well, I don’t blame you. If Timmy was my dog five thousand dollars wouldn’t touch him. It was worth that to me to see him perform. Let me see him work this cover, if you please.” To Tiny Tim: “All right, boy. Root ’em out. Lots of birds in here yet.”

The dog was off like a streak. Suddenly he paused, sniffing up wind, swung slowly left and slowly right, trotted forward a few paces and halted head up, tail swinging excitedly, every muscle aquiver.

“It’s dry as tinder and the birds don’t lay close. He’s on to some running birds now, sir. Watch him road ’em to heavier cover and then point.”

Instead, they flushed. Tim watched them interestedly, marked where they had settled, moved gingerly forward—and froze on a single that had failed to flush. Dan Pelly handed the stranger his gun. “Perhaps, sir,” he said with his wistful smile, “you might enjoy killing a bird over Timmy’s point.”

This was the apotheosis of field courtesy. The stranger took the gun, smiling his thanks, walked over to Tiny Tim, kicked out the bird and missed him. Tim glanced once at the bird and promptly dismissed him from consideration. He made a wide cast to come up on the spot where he had seen the flushed covey settle.

“Point!” called Dan Pelly. This time the stranger killed his bird, which Tim retrieved in handsome style.

“He brought the dead bird to me!” the stranger shouted. “Did you notice that. He brought it to me!”

“Of course. It’s your bird. You killed it. Timmy knows that. It wouldn’t be mannerly of him to bring it to me. I see you appreciate a good shooting dog, sir. I suppose, living in the city and a busy man, you don’t get much afield. There’s a lot of birds scattered in this cover. Have a little shoot over Timmy. I have four birds and that’s enough for our supper. I’ll sit down under this oak tree and have a smoke.”

“That’s devilish sporting of you, my friend. Thank you very much.” And the stranger hurried away after Tiny Tim. He was an incongruous figure in that patch of cover, what with his derby hat and overcoat, and he seemed to realize this, for he shed both, stuffed a dozen cartridges into his pockets—he was far too big a man to wear Dan Pelly’s disreputable old hunting jacket—and hurried away after Tiny Tim. From the far corner of the field Dan presently heard a merry fusillade, and in about fifteen minutes his guest returned with half a dozen quail and Tiny Tim trotting at his heels.

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars for Timmy, my friend,” was his first announcement. “Why, he works for me as if I were his master.”

“You’re the first man except his master who has ever shot over him,” Pelly replied proudly. “Sorry, but Timmy is not for sale.”

“I’ll bet nobody has ever offered you a thousand dollars for him. Here’s my card, Mr.—er—er——”

“Dan Pelly’s my name, sir.”

“Mr. Pelly, and if you change your mind, wire me collect and I’ll send a man down with the cash and you can send the dog back by him.”

Dan took the card. The stranger thanked him and departed with his quail in his expensive car.

And this morning Dan Pelly sat on the highest point on his so-called ranch and looked down into Little Antelope Valley and was unhappy. He needed five hundred dollars to meet a mortgage; he could get a thousand dollars within twenty-four hours by sending a telegram collect to the man who had admired Tiny Tim—and he didn’t have the courage to send the telegram. In fact, he hadn’t had sufficient courage to tell Martha, his wife, of the stranger’s offer. Martha was made of sterner stuff than her husband and a terrible panic of fear had seized Dan at the mere thought of telling her. What if she should accept the thousand dollars?

Dan loaded his pipe and smoked ruminatively. He thought of his wasted and futile life. Twenty-five years wasted as a professional dog trainer. Faugh! And all he had to show for it was a host of memories, sweet and bitter; sweet as he remembered the dear days afield with good dogs and good fellows, the thrill of many a hard fought field trial; bitter as he thought of dogs he had loved and which had been sold or poisoned or died of old age or disease; bitterer still as he reflected that he and Martha had come to a childless old age with naught between them and the county poor farm save a thousand acres of rough sage covered land which, with the exception of about twenty-five acres of rich, sub-irrigated bottom land, was worthless save as a training ground for dogs. It had numerous springs on it, good cover and just enough scrub oaks to form safe rooting places for quail. It was rather a decent little game preserve and sometimes Danny made a few dollars by granting old customers the privilege of a shoot on it. He ran about a hundred head of goats on it, while in the bottom land he and Martha eked out a precarious existence with a few chickens and turkeys, a few hogs, a few stands of bees, three cows, a couple of horses and Tiny Tim. For Tim was known to a few dog fanciers as the last of the old Keepsake-Kenwood Boy strain in the State and not infrequently they sent their bitches to Tiny Tim’s court.

Poor Martha! Hers had not been a very happy life with Dan Pelly. A dog trainer is—a dog trainer. He can’t very well be anything else because God has made him so. And in his heart of hearts he doesn’t want to be. He trains dogs ostensibly for money but in reality because he loves them and the job affords him a legitimate excuse to be afield with them, to enjoy their society and that of the jovial devotees of upland game shooting. Dan Pelly wasn’t an ambitious man. He had no desire to clip coupons or wear fine raiment; his taste in automobiles went no further than an old ruin he had picked up for two hundred dollars for the purpose of carting his dogs around in the days before Martha took over the handling of the Pelly fortunes, when Dan had had dogs to cart around.

The crux of the situation was this. Dog trainers are so busy with their dogs that they neglect to send out bills for board and training, and the men who can afford to buy expensive dogs and have them boarded and trained seldom think of their dogs until fall. Then they pay the bill and sometimes wonder why it is so large. In a word, the income of a dog trainer is never what one might term staggering, and it is more or less uncertain.

Martha had grown weary of this uncertainty and when distemper for the second time had swept Dan Pelly’s kennels, taking many of his own dogs and either killing or ruining the dogs of his customers, Mrs. Pelly felt that it was time to act. She knew it would be years before Dan’s old customers would send dogs to him again. Friendship and a reputation as a great trainer are undoubtedly first aids to a dog trainer’s success, but men who love their dogs hesitate to send them to a kennel where the germs of virulent distemper are known to exist. It was up to Dan Pelly to burn his old kennels and build new ones far removed from the location of the old. He could not afford to do this and since Martha was desirous of seeing him engage in something more constructive, Dan Pelly had gone out of business and become a farmer in the trifling manner heretofore described.

Martha told him she was weary of dogs. She had shed too many tears over dead favorites; she had assisted at too many operations for the cure of canker of the ear, fistula, tumor and cancer, broken legs, smashed toes and cuts from barbed wire. She was already too learned in the gentle art of healing mange and exorcising tapeworms. She loved dogs, but to have thirty pointers and setters set up a furious barking whenever a stranger appeared at the Pelly farm had finally gotten “on her nerves.” She understood Dan better than he understood himself and she knew how bitter was the sacrifice she demanded; yet she realized that she must be firm and lead Daniel in the way he must go, else would they come to want and misery in a day when Dan would be too old to tramp over hill and dale training dogs. Dan had readily consented to her direction—particularly after she had wept a little. Poor Martha!

From where he sat Dan Pelly could this morning see great activity on the floor of Little Antelope Valley, just below him. Half a dozen men on horseback were riding backward and forward and at least a dozen white specks that Dan Pelly knew for hunting dogs were ranging here and there among the low sage cover.

“The first arrivals for the Pacific Coast Field Trials, and they’re out on the grounds, looking them over and seeing how their dogs behave. Three days from now they’ll be running the Derby, and after that the All Age Stake. Ah, Timmy lad, if we two could only go to a field trial again! How like old times it would be, Timmy. We’d be down at the station to greet all the gentlemen coming in for the trials, and then we’d be crowding around the baggage car watching the dogs in their crates bein’ lifted out. And we’d be peekin’ through the air holes in the crates to see whether they’d be setters or pointers, and if setters, whether they’d be Llewellins, English or Irish. And then the banquet up at the hotel the night before the Derby and the toast-master rappin’ for order and sayin’: ‘Gentlemen, we have with us tonight one of the Old Guard, Dan Pelly. Dan is going to tell us something about the field trials of other days—other days and other dogs. Gentlemen—old Dan Pelly.’

“Ah, Tim my lad, we’re out of it. Think, Timmy, if we two were driving out to Antelope Valley in the morning, with you in my lap, and the entrance fee up and me wild with excitement if you were paired say with a dog like Manitoba Rap or Fischel’s Frank or Mary Montrose or Ringing Bells or Robert the Devil—any one of the big ones, eh, Timmy? No, Timmy, I wouldn’t be excited. They’re all great dogs. Didn’t Mary Montrose win the All America three times—the only dog in the world that ever proved her championship caliber three times?

“But Timmy lad, you’d run circles around her. You might run with a low head and a dead tail—though your head is high and your tail is none so low as it was in the Derby, when you were a wee puppy and nervous and frightened—but you’d make the judges notice you, Timmy. You’d show them dash and range and speed and style and brains; steady to flush, steady to shot, steady to command, no false pointing, no roading birds to a flush if you could help it, picking up singles on ground the other dog thought he had covered, marking where the flushed coveys settle and picking them up again. Ah, Timmy dog, it’s breaking my heart to hide your light under a bushel basket. I owe it to you to let men that know and can appreciate a good dog see you work. Of the hundreds of dogs I’ve owned, of the thousand I’ve trained since boyhood, you are the king of them all. God help me, Timmy, I gave Martha my word I’d never attend another field trial or handle another dog in one, either for myself or another. We’re licked, Timmy. Licked to a frazzle.”

Tiny Tim leaned a little closer and licked the palm of Dan’s hand. He was an understanding little dog. Even when Dan finally heaved slowly to his feet and started down the hillside toward home, Tiny Tim followed at his heels, forbearing to follow his natural instinct, which was to frisk ahead of Dan far and wide and attend to the business for which he had really been created.

Arrived at the house Dan’s sheepish glance encountered the searching one of his wife.

“Where have you been, Dan?” she queried.

“Oh, takin’ a little walk,” he replied.

She sat down beside him on the porch and put her arm around his neck. “Hard to be out of it, isn’t it, dear?”

“It’s hard to think that a dog like Timmy shouldn’t have his chance, Martha. Why not make an exception to our agreement in this one case? I’m sure I could win the All Age Stake with him. The entrance fee is twenty-five dollars and there’ll be upwards of forty dogs entered. That’ll be a thousand dollar purse, divided five hundred, three fifty and a hundred and fifty. Might win first prize and be able to pay the mortgage. Somehow I got a notion the bank won’t renew the loan.”

Martha’s eyes were as wistful as her husband’s but hers was a far more resolute nature. She kept her bargains and expected others to keep theirs; she knew the weakness of Dan Pelly. If he should go down to the field trials and enter Tiny Tim, he would meet old friends and old customers. It was four years since he had quit the game—long enough for men to forget those distemper germs and take another chance on Dan, for Dan’s fame as a trainer was almost national. Somebody would be certain to ask him to train a field Derby or Futurity prospect for next fall, or to handle a string of dogs in the Manitoba chicken trials.

And Dan was weak. He was one of those men who could never quite say no as if he meant it. Let him go down to dogdom and he would be back into the game again as deep as ever within a year. Decidedly (thought Martha) they couldn’t afford to go over that ground again.

“Yes,” Dan sighed, “it’s a pity Timmy can’t have his chance. He never was a kennel raised dog. He’s been allowed to rove and roam and he’s hunted so much on his own I don’t really understand why he hasn’t been spoiled. But the exercise and experience he’s had in one year exceed that of most dogs in a lifetime. He’s little, but he’s well muscled and tough and can hold his speed long after other dogs have slowed up. I wish he could have his chance, Martha.”

Martha felt herself slipping, so, to avoid that catastrophe, she left Dan and entered the house.

All day long Dan sat on the porch, glooming and grieving. Having the field trials held practically at his own door was a sore temptation. Dan dwelt in Gethsemane. All day he suffered until finally, being human, he was tempted beyond his strength and fell. About four o’clock, while Martha was busy feeding the chickens, locking them up and gathering eggs, Dan Pelly sneaked into the house, donned his Sunday suit, abstracted the sum of fifty dollars from Martha’s cache in the tomato can back of the jars of preserves on the back porch, cranked his prehistoric automobile and with Tiny Tim on the seat behind him fled to the fleshpots. He left a note on the dining room table for Martha.

Dan Pelly felt like a criminal as he coughed down the dusty country lane. But if he could only have seen Martha’s face as she read his note! She laughed at first and then her eyes grew moist. “Poor old Dan,” she murmured to the cat, “I’m so glad he defied me. It proves he’s a human being. I’m so grateful to him for his weakness. He didn’t force me to a decision.”

Arrived in town Dan Pelly parked his car at the village square, went to the local hotel and engaged a room. He registered, “Dan Pelly and his dog, Tiny Tim.” Before he could go up to his room he was seen and recognized by the secretary of the field trial club, Major Christensen.

“Hello, Dan, you old fossil. When did they dig you up?” the Major saluted him affably. “Back in the game again?”

“Oh, no,” Dan replied. “Just blew in to look ’em over. Got a son of old Keepsake and Kenwood Boy here. Thought I’d start him in fast company and see if he has any class. He’s just a plug shooting dog.”

“Well,” the Major answered, looking Tim over with a critical and disapproving glance, “it’ll cost you twenty-five dollars to glean that information, Dan.” He took out an entry blank; Dan filled it out and returned it together with the entrance fee. Next he visited the hotel kitchen, where he did business with the chef and procured for Tiny Tim a hearty ration of lamb stew with vegetables, after which he took the little dog up to his room. Tim sprang into bed immediately, curled up and went to sleep.

That night Dan attended the banquet. Old friends were there, fellow trainers, trainers he had never met before, with dogs from Canada to the Gulf, from Maine to California. It was an exceedingly doggy party and poor old starved Dan reveled in it. He was living again, and under the stimulus of the unusual excitement and a couple of nips of contraband Scotch whisky he made the speech of his career, ripped the Fish and Game Commission up the back and ended by going upstairs and bringing Tiny Tim down in his arms to exhibit him to those around the festal board as the only real dog he had ever owned.

“He’ll win every heat in which he’s entered,” Dan bragged, “and he’ll win in the finals. He looks like a mutt, but oh boy, watch his smoke!”

When the drawing for the next day’s events took place, Dan discovered that Tiny Tim had been paired with a famous old pointer from Nevada, known as Colonel Dorsey. Dan knew there were better dogs than Colonel Dorsey, but they weren’t very plentiful, and under the able handling of a veteran trainer, Alf Wilkes, Dan knew Tiny Tim would have to extend himself to center the attention of the judges on his performance. To have Tim paired with Colonel Dorsey pleased Dan greatly, however, for if Tim merely succeeded in running a dead heat with the Colonel, that meant that Tim and the Colonel would fight it out together in the finals; for Colonel Dorsey was, in the opinion of all present, the class of the entries; he was in excellent form and condition and as full of ginger and go as a runaway horse.

A gentleman who had arrived too late for the banquet came shouldering his way through the crowd in the hotel lobby just after the drawing. Dan recognized in him the gentleman who had offered him a thousand dollars for Tiny Tim that day in the patch of cover by the side of the road. He came smiling up to Dan Pelly and shook his hand heartily.

“I’m the owner of Colonel Dorsey,” he announced. “It’ll be a barrel of fun to run my dog against Tiny Tim. A sporting dog owned and handled by a sportsman. Mr. Pelly, we’re going to have a race.”

“I hope so, sir,” said Dan simply. “I want Timmy to have a foeman worthy of his steel, as the feller says.”

“He will,” the other promised.

He did. They were put down in a wide flat with a little watercourse running through the center of it. The cover was low, stunted sage, affording excellent cover for the birds and opportunities for them to sneak away from a dog without being seen, for there was much open space between the sage bushes. They were away together, headed for the watercourse, Colonel Dorsey in the lead.

Suddenly Tiny Tim stopped dead and commenced to road at right angles, coming up into the wind. The Colonel pressed eagerly on and flushed, but was steady to flush. So was Tiny Tim. A moment later the Colonel pointed and Tiny Tim, standing in the open, honored the Colonel’s point beautifully, but broke point after a minute of waiting and scouted off on a wide cast. The Colonel held his point and his handler, coming up, attempted to flush. The point was barren. Undoubtedly the bird had been there but had run out.

The Colonel’s owner, who had been following the judges in a buckboard with Dan Pelly in the seat beside him, looked at his guest. “I own a colonel, but you own a general, Mr. Pelly. Your dog is handling his birds better than mine.”

“Point!” came a hoarse shout from the direction in which Tim had gone. He had come back on his cast and was down in the watercourse on point. Dan Pelly got out of the buckboard and flushed a double, at the same time firing over the birds. Tim was absolutely staunch to shot and flush. He looked disappointed because no dead bird rewarded his efforts, but immediately pressed on up the gully. Dan Pelly thrilled. He knew the birds would lie close in this cover and that Tim would run up a heavy score. He did. Point after point he scored and always a single was flushed. When he had made nineteen points on single birds the whistle blew and the dogs were taken up.

Colonel Dorsey ranging wide, had shown speed, style and dash but had found no birds. Tim had made but one cast but it was sufficient to show that he, too, had speed and range, albeit his style was nothing to brag about. But he had performed the function for which bird dogs are bred. He had found game and handled it in a masterly manner. The dogs were down forty minutes and both were fresh when taken up. The judges awarded the heat to Tiny Tim.

Colonel Dorsey’s owner slapped old Dan Pelly on the back. “I came a long way for a splendid thrashing,” he admitted gallantly. “However, the Colonel was out of luck. He got off into barren territory and rather wasted his time. We’ll meet again in the finals.”

And it was even so. Three days later Tiny Tim again faced the Colonel, who in the succeeding heats had given marvelous performances and disposed of his antagonists in a most decisive manner. But likewise so had Tiny Tim.

It was a battle from start to finish. Both dogs got on birdy ground at once and worked it thoroughly, and at the finish there was little to choose between them. Tim had two more points to his credit and no flushes; the Colonel had one flush, due to eagerness at the start, and he had failed to honor one of Tim’s points. These errors appeared to offset Tim’s lack of style, but the latter’s marvelous bird work could not be gainsaid; and remembering the decisive manner in which the little setter had disposed of the Colonel in the initial heat, the judges awarded the All Age Stake, which carried with it the Pacific Coast championship, to Tiny Tim and Dan Pelly retired to the hotel richer by five hundred dollars and a silver loving cup. That afternoon he paid two hundred and fifty dollars on the mortgage and had it renewed for another year. Then he wrote a letter to Martha, bought a new crate for Tiny Tim and—started down the field trial circuit.

In some ways—notably dog ways—Dan Pelly was a weak vessel. He lacked the moral courage to come home and be good forever after. Timmy was so much better in big company than he had anticipated that should it mean death to both of them, Dan Pelly simply had to try him out in Oregon on pheasant. Poor Timmy had never seen a pheasant, and it was such a shame to deny him this great adventure.

So the next Martha heard of Dan was a wire to the effect that Timmy had taken second place in the trials on pheasant at Lebanon, Oregon. A week later came another telegram, informing her that Timmy had taken first money in the Washington field trials, handling Hungarian partridge for the first time. A letter followed and Martha read:

Timmy was third on prairie chicken. Everybody said his performance was marvelous in view of his total ignorance of this splendid game, so Dan Pelly did not think it worth while to advertise the fact that he had introduced Timmy to two crippled chickens the day before in order that he might know their scent when he ran on to it. The International in Montana was won by Timmy, and Dan’s cup of happiness overflowed when the judges handed him his trophies and a check for a thousand dollars. Colonel Dorsey gave him a stiff run but the best the Colonel could do was second place.

And then came the never to be forgotten day down in Kentucky when Timmy went in on bobwhite quail for the All America, the field trial classic of the Western Hemisphere. Timmy was at home again on quail. He had some bad luck before he learned about bobwhite’s peculiarities, but he had enough wins to put him in the finals, and at the finish he was cast off with a little Llewellin bitch whose performance made Dan Pelly’s heart skip a beat or two. Nothing except Timmy’s age and years of experience enabled him to win over her; up until the last moments of the race predictions were freely made that it would be a dead heat.

But just before the whistle blew, Timmy roaded a small cover to a staunch point—the sole find made during the heat—and Dan Pelly went home with Timmy and more money than he had ever seen before in his life except in a bank; although better to wistful little Dan was the knowledge that he had bred, raised, trained and handled the most consistent winner and the most spectacularly outstanding bird dog champion in North America. Old Keepsake and her wonderful consort, Kenwood Boy, had transmitted their great qualities to their son, and Dan knew, in view of Tiny Tim’s great record over the field trial circuit, how much in demand would be the puppies from that strain. Please God, Timmy might live long enough to perpetuate his great qualities in his offspring.

Dan’s return was not a triumphal one. He felt like anything except a conquering hero. Indeed, he felt mean and low and untrustworthy; he had to call on a reserve store of courage in order to face Martha and explain his dastardly conduct in appropriating her fifty dollars, breaking his promise and running away with Timmy.

Martha was sitting on the porch in her rocking chair as Dan and his dog came up the lane. Tiny Tim romped ahead and sprang up in Martha’s lap and kissed her and whimpered his joy at the homecoming—so Martha had ample opportunity to brace herself to meet the culprit.

“Hello, Martha, old girl,” Dan cried with a cheerfulness he was far from feeling. “Timmy and I are home again. Are you going to forgive me, Martha?”

Martha looked so glum and serious that Dan’s heart sank.

“Oh, Martha!” he quavered and came slowly up the steps and tossed into her lap a huge roll of banknotes. “I know I done wrong, Martha,” he declaimed. “I’ve been gamblin’ on the side—you know, honey—side bets on Timmy. I’m afraid we’re never going to be real poor again. We’ve got the mortgage paid off and three thousand in reserve, and I’m going to sell Timmy for seven thousand five hundred dollars, with a half interest in his sire fees for three years——”

Martha stood up, her eyes ablaze with scorn and anger.

“Dan Pelly,” she flared at him, “how dare you?”

Dan hung his head.

“Oh, Martha,” he pleaded, “can’t you realize how terrible it is to keep a good dog down?”

“Who offered to buy Timmy?”

“Mr. Fletcher, the owner of Colonel Dorsey.”

“Tell him to go chase himself,” Martha suggested slangily. “If you expect to make your peace with me, Dan Pelly, you’ll give up all idea of selling Timmy.”

“But Martha—seven thousand five hundred dollars! Think what it means to you. No more worry about our old age, everything settled fine and dandy at last after twenty-five years of hard luck.”

“Do you really want to sell Timmy, Dan?”

“No, Martha, I don’t. It’d break my heart. Bu-bu-but—I’ll do it for your sake.”

“Dan, come here.”

Dan came and flopped awkwardly on his old knees while Martha’s arms went around him.

“Sweet old Dan,” she whispered. “What a glorious holiday you two have had. I’ve been so happy just realizing how happy you have been, Dan!”

“Yes, Martha.”

“Perhaps we can get back into the dog business again. Don’t you think you’d like to buy about half a dozen really fine brood bitches? Timmy’s puppies would be spoken for before they were born. The least we could get would be a hundred dollars each for them.” She stroked his old head. “I’m afraid, Dan, it’s too late to reform you. Once a dog man, always a dog man——”

What else she intended to say remained forever unsaid, for little, weak, foolish, sentimental old Dan commenced to sniffle, as he had the night old Keepsake was poisoned. He wasn’t a worldly man or a very ambitious man; he craved but little here below, but one of the things he craved was clean sportsmanship and love and understanding and a small, neat, field type English setter that would be just a little bit better than the other fellow’s. And tonight he was so filled with happiness he just naturally overflowed. Tiny Tim, observing that something was wrong, came and leaned his shoulder against Martha’s knee and laid his muzzle in her hand and rested it there.

It was a big moment!

THE END

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