THE
IT BORN
ACK LONDON
a characteristic
tale, throbbing
in and virile life
ves pictures of
le, of the South
an Francisco. of
ºl of other parts
ild that border
It is Alaska,
hat leaves the
! impression—
vast north, with
ºlds, its mighty
its dark forests
ant bear f
esponds tº
he mak
º, and
Born” is
in its qu
uch enjº
-











JACK
LONDO
-
THE r
NIGHT BORN
By JACK LONDON
This is a characteristic
London tale, throbbing
with action and virile life
One receives pictures of
the Klondike, of the South
Seas, of San Francisco. of
Mexico and of other parts
of the world that border
the Pacific. It is Alaska,
however, that leaves the
most vivid impression—
Alaska, the vast north, with
its snow fields, its mighty
mountains, its dark forests
and the giant bear and
moose. It responds to his
touch, and he makes it
vivid, alive, and real.
“The Night Born” is very
Londonesque in its quality
and will be much enjoyed
by the many admirers of
his vigorous style.





THE NIGHT-BORN





i;t THE
NIGHT-BORN
AND ALSO
THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED, WHEN
THE WORLD WAS YOUNG, THE BENEFIT
OF THE DOUBT, WINGED BLACK-
MAIL, BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES,
WAR, UNDER THE DECK
AWN INGS, TO KILL A
MAN, THE MEXICAN
BY
l, JACK LONDON.
AUTHOR OF
THE CALL OF THE WILD, SMOKE BELLEW, Etc.
N E W Y O R. K
G R O S S E T & D UN LA P
--- P U B L IS H E R S
Published by Arrangement with The Macmillan Company
Made in the United States of America
[c. 1412 3
* 3


THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
41771B - -
ASTOR, LENOx AND
TTLDEN FOUNDATIONS
k 1939 L.
Copyright, 1913, by
THE CENTURY Co.
copyright, 1910, 1911, by THE Ridgway Company
Copyright, 1910, by the New York HERALD Company
Copyright, 1910, 1911, by The Curtis Publishing Company
Published, February, 1913


– CONTENTS
THE NIGHT-Born . . . . .
THE MADNEss of JoBN HARNED .
WHEN THE WoRLD WAS YoUNG ..
THE BENEFIT of THE Doubt . .
WINGED BLACKMAIL . . . .
BUNCHES OF KNUCKLEs . . .
WAR . . . . . . . . .
UNDER THE DECK AwNINGs . .
To KILLA MAN . . . . . .
THE MEXICAN .e. [e] le) le) we, i.e.,
i.e.
i-
-
tex
i-1
i-
tet
L-1
-1
t-
t-l
i-r
i-
i.e.
t-,
t-
t-
i-
te.
:
I35
I53
183
197
215
243





THE NIGHT-BORN





THE NIGHT-BORN
T was in the old Alta-Inyo Club—a warm
night for San Francisco—and through the
open windows, hushed and far, came the brawl
of the streets. The talk had led on from the
Graft Prosecution and the latest signs that the
town was to be run wide open, down through all
the grotesque sordidness and rottenness of man-
hate and man-meanness, until the name of
O'Brien was mentioned—O'Brien, the promising
young pugilist who had been killed in the prize-
ring the night before. At once the air had seemed
to freshen. O’Brien had been a clean-living
young man with ideals. He neither drank,
smoked, nor swore, and his had been the body of
a beautiful young god. He had even carried his
prayer-book to the ringside. They found it in
his coat pocket in the dressing-room . . .
afterward.
Here was Youth, clean and wholesome, un-
Sullied—the thing of glory and wonder for men
to conjure with . . . after it has been lost
to them and they have turned middle-aged. And .
3


THE NIGHT-BORN
so well did we conjure, that Romance came and
for an hour led us far from the man-city and its
snarling roar. Bardwell, in a way, started it by
quoting from Thoreau; but it was old Trefethan,
bald-headed and dewlapped, who took up the
quotation and for the hour to come was Romance
incarnate. At first we might have wondered how
many Scotches he had consumed since dinner, but
very soon all that was forgotten.
“It was in 1898—I was thirty-five then,” he
said. “Yes, I know you are adding it up.
You're right. I’m forty-even now; look ten
years more; and the doctors say—damn the doc-
tors anyway!”
He lifted the long glass to his lips and sipped
it slowly to soothe away his irritation.
“But I was young . . . once. I was
young twelve years ago, and I had hair on top of
my head, and my stomach was lean as a runner's,
and the longest day was none too long for me. I
was a husky back there in '98. You remember
me, Milner. You knew me then. Wasn’t I a
pretty good bit of all right?” -
Milner nodded and agreed. Like Trefethan,
he was another mining engineer who had cleaned
up a fortune in the Klondike.
4.


THE NIGHT-BORN
“You certainly were, old man,” Milner said.
“I’ll never forget when you cleaned out those
lumberjacks in the M. & M. that night that little
newspaper man started the row. Slavin was in
the country at the time,”—this to us— “and his
manager wanted to get up a match with
Trefethan.”
“Well, look at me now,” Trefethan com-
manded angrily. “That's what the Goldstead
did to me—God knows how many millions, but
nothing left in my soul . . . nor in my
veins. The good red blood is gone. I am a
jellyfish, a huge, gross mass of oscillating proto-
plasm, a-a .”
But language failed him, and he drew solace
from the long glass.
“Women looked at me . . . then; and
turned their heads to look a second time. Strange
that I never married. But the girl. That's
what I started to tell you about. I met her a
thousand miles from anywhere, and then some.
And she quoted to me those very words of
Thoreau that Bardwell quoted a moment ago—
the ones about the day-born gods and the night-
born.
“It was after I had made my locations on Gold-
5


THE NIGHT-BORN
stead—and did n’t know what a treasure-pot that
creek was going to prove—that I made that trip
east over the Rockies, angling across to the Great
Slave. Up North there the Rockies are some-
thing more than a back-bone. They are a bound-
ary, a dividing line, a wall impregnable and un-
scalable. There is no intercourse across them,
though, on occasion, from the early days, wander-
ing trappers have crossed them, though more were
lost by the way than ever came through. And
that was precisely why I tackled the job. It was
a traverse any man would be proud to make. I
am prouder of it right now than anything else I
have ever done.
“It is an unknown land. Great stretches of
it have never been explored. There are big val-
leys there where the white man has never set foot,
and Indian tribes as primitive as ten thousand
years . . . almost, for they have had some
contact with the whites. Parties of them come
out once in a while to trade, and that is all.
Even the Hudson Bay Company failed to find
them and farm them.
“And now the girl. I was coming up a stream
—you'd call it a river in California—uncharted
and unnamed. It was a noble valley, now shut
6


THE NIGHT-BORN
in by high canyon walls, and again opening out
into beautiful stretches, wide and long, with pas-
ture shoulder-high in the bottoms, meadows dot-
ted with flowers, and with clumps of timber—
spruce—virgin and magnificent. The dogs were
packing on their backs, and were sore-footed and
played out; while I was looking for any bunch of
Indians to get sleds and drivers from and go on
with the first snow. It was late fall, but the way
those flowers persisted surprised me. I was sup-
posed to be in sub-arctic America, and high up
among the buttresses of the Rockies, and yet there
was that everlasting spread of flowers. Some
day the white settlers will be in there and grow-
ing wheat down all that valley.
“And then I lifted a smoke, and heard the
barking of the dogs—Indian dogs—and came into
camp. There must have been five hundred of
them, proper Indians at that, and I could see by
the jerking-frames that the fall hunting had been
good. And then I met her—Lucy. That was
her name. Sign language—that was all we could
talk with, till they led me to a big fly—you know,
half a tent, open on the one side where a camp-
fire burned. It was all of moose-skins, this fly—
moose-skins, smoke-cured, hand-rubbed, and goi-
*
7


THE NIGHT-BORN
den-brown. Under it everything was neat and
orderly, as no Indian camp ever was. The bed
was laid on fresh spruce boughs. There were
furs galore, and on top of all was a robe of swan-
skins—white swan-skins—I have never seen any-
thing like that robe. And on top of it, sitting
cross-legged, was Lucy. She was nut-brown. I
have called her a girl. But she was not. She
was a woman, a nut-brown woman, an Amazon,
a full-blooded, full-bodied woman, and royal
ripe. And her eyes were blue.
“That’s what took me off my feet—her eyes—
blue, not China blue, but deep blue, like the sea
and sky all melted into one, and very wise.
More than that, they had laughter in them—
warm laughter, Sun-warm and human, very hu-
man, and . . . shall I say feminine? They
were. They were a woman’s eyes, a proper
woman's eyes. You know what that means.
Can I say more? Also, in those blue eyes were,
at the same time, a wild unrest, a wistful yearn-
ing, and a repose, an absolute repose, a sort of all-
wise and philosophical calm.”
Trefethan broke off abruptly.
“You fellows think I am screwed. I’m not.
This is only my fifth since dinner. I am dead
8


THE NIGHT-BORN
sober. I am solemn. I sit here now side by side
with my sacred youth. It is not I—‘old’ Tre-
fethan—that talks; it is my youth, and it is my
youth that says those were the most wonderful
eyes I have ever seen—so very calm, so very rest-
less; so very wise, so very curious; so very old, so
very young; so satisfied and yet yearning so wist-
fully. Boys, I can’t describe them. When I
have told you about her, you may know better
for yourselves.
“She did not stand up. But she put out her
hand.
“‘Stranger, she said, ‘I’m real glad to see you.’
“I leave it to you—that sharp, frontier, West-
ern tang of speech. Picture my sensations. It
was a woman, a white woman, but that tang!
It was amazing that it should be a white woman,
here, beyond the last boundary of the world—
but the tang. I tell you, it hurt. It was like the
stab of a flatted note. And yet, let me tell
you, that woman was a poet. You shall see.
“She dismissed the Indians. And, by Jove,
‘they went. They took her orders and followed
her blind. She was hi-yu skookum chief. She
told the bucks to make a camp for me and to
take care of my dogs. And they did, too. And
9


THE NIGHT-BORN
they knew enough not to get away with as much
as a moccasin-lace of my outfit. She was a regu-
lar She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, and I want to tell
you it chilled me to the marrow, sent those little
thrills Marathoning up and down my spinal
column, meeting a white woman out there at the
head of a tribe of Savages a thousand miles the
other side of No Man's Land.
“‘Stranger, she said, ‘I reckon you’re sure the
first white that ever set foot in this valley. Set
down an' talk a spell, and then we’ll have a bite
to eat. Which way might you be comin’?”
“There it was, that tang again. But from
now to the end of the yarn I want you to forget
it. I tell you I forgot it, sitting there on the edge
of that swan-skin robe and listening and looking
at the most wonderful woman that ever stepped
out of the pages of Thoreau or of any other man’s
book.
“I stayed on there a week. It was on her in-
vitation. She promised to fit me out with dogs
and sleds and with Indians that would put me
across the best pass of the Rockies in five hundred
miles. Her fly was pitched apart from the others,
on the high bank by the river, and a couple of
Indian girls did her cooking for her and the camp
IO


THE NIGHT-BORN
work. And so we talked and talked, while
the first snow fell and continued to fall and
make a surface for my sleds. And this was her
story.
“She was frontier-born, of poor settlers, and
you know what that means—work, work, always
work, work in plenty and without end.
“‘I never seen the glory of the world,” she said.
‘I had no time. I knew it was right out there,
anywhere, all around the cabin, but there was
always the bread to set, the scrubbin’ and the
washin’ and the work that was never done. I
used to be plumb sick at times, jes' to get out into
it all, especially in the spring when the songs
of the birds drove me most clean crazy. I wanted
to run out through the long pasture grass, wetting
my legs with the dew of it, and to climb the rail
fence, and keep on through the timber and up
and up over the divide so as to get a look around.
Oh, I had all kinds of hankerings—to follow up
the canyon beds and slosh around from pool to
pool, making friends with the water-dogs and the
speckly trout; to peep on the sly and watch the
Squirrels and rabbits and small furry things and
see what they was doing and learn the secrets of
their ways. Seemed to me, if I had time, I could
11


THE NIGHT-BORN
crawl among the flowers, and, if I was good and
quiet, catch them whispering with themselves,
telling all kinds of wise things that mere humans
never know.’”
Trefethan paused to see that his glass had been
refilled.
“Another time she said: ‘I wanted to run nights
like a wild thing, just to run through the moon-
shine and under the stars, to run white and naked
in the darkness that I knew must feel like cool
velvet, and to run and run and keep on running.
One evening, plumb tuckered out—it had been
a dreadful hard hot day, and the bread would n’t
raise and the churning had gone wrong, and I
was all irritated and jerky—well, that evening I
made mention to dad of this wanting to run of
mine. He looked at me curious-some and a bit
scared. And then he gave me two pills to take.
Said to go to bed and get a good sleep and I’d
be all hunky-dory in the morning. So I never
mentioned my hankerings to him, or any one any
ſmore.’
“The mountain home broke up—starved out,
I imagine—and the family came to Seattle to live.
There she worked in a factory—long hours, you
know, and all the rest, deadly work. And after
12


THE NIGHT-BORN
a year of that she became waitress in a cheap
restaurant—hash-slinger, she called it.
“She said to me once, “Romance I guess was
what I wanted. But there wan’t no romance
floating around in dishpans and washtubs, or in
factories and hash-joints.”
“When she was eighteen she married—a man
who was going up to Juneau to start a restaurant.
He had a few dollars saved, and appeared pros-
perous. She did n’t love him—she was emphatic
about that; but she was all tired out, and she
wanted to get away from the unending drudgery.
Besides, Juneau was in Alaska, and her yearning
took the form of a desire to see that wonderland.
But little she saw of it. He started the restau-
rant, a little cheap one, and she quickly learned
what he had married her for . . . to save
paying wages. She came pretty close to running
the joint and doing all the work from waiting to
dishwashing. She cooked most of the time as
well. And she had four years of it.
“Can’t you picture her, this wild woods crea-
ture, quick with every old primitive instinct,
yearning for the free open, and mowed up in a
vile little hash-joint and toiling and molling for
four mortal years?
13


THE NIGHT-BORN
“‘There was no meaning in anything,” she said.
‘What was it all about? Why was I born?
Was that all the meaning of life—just to work
and work and be always tired?—to go to bed
tired and to wake up tired, with every day like
every other day unless it was harder?' She had
heard talk of immortal life from the gospel
sharps, she said, but she could not reckon that
what she was doing was a likely preparation for
her immortality.
“But she still had her dreams, though more
rarely. She had read a few books—what, it is
pretty hard to imagine, Seaside Library novels
most likely; yet they had been food for fancy.
“Sometimes,” she said, ‘when I was that dizzy
from the heat of the cooking that if I did n’t take
a breath of fresh air I’d faint, I’d stick my head
out of the kitchen window and close my eyes and
see most wonderful things. All of a sudden I’d
be traveling down a country road, and everything
clean and quiet, no dust, no dirt; just streams
ripplin’ down sweet meadows, and lambs playing,
breezes blowing the breath of flowers, and soft
sunshine over everything; and lovely cows lazying
knee-deep in quiet pools, and young girls bath-
ing in a curve of stream all white and slim and
14


THE NIGHT-BORN
|
natural—and I'd know I was in Arcady. I’d
read about that country once, in a book. And
maybe knights, all flashing in the sun, would
come riding around a bend in the road, or a lady
on a milk-white mare, and in the distance I could
see the towers of a castle rising, or I just knew,
on the next turn, that I’d come upon some palace,
all white and airy and fairy-like, with fountains
playing, and flowers all over everything, and
peacocks on the lawn . . . and then I’d
open my eyes, and the heat of the cooking range
would strike on me, and I’d hear Jake sayin’—
he was my husband—I’d hear Jake sayin', “Why
ain't you served them beans? Think I can wait
here all day!” Romance!—I reckon the nearest
I ever come to it was when a drunken Armenian
cook got the Snakes and tried to cut my throat
with a potato knife and I got my arm burned on
the stove before I could lay him out with the
potato stomper.
“‘I wanted easy ways, and lovely things, and
Romance and all that; but it just seemed I had
no luck nohow and was only and expressly born
for cooking and dishwashing. There was a wild
crowd in Juneau them days, but I looked at the
other women, and their way of life did n’t excite
15


THE NIGHT-BORN
me. I reckon I wanted to be clean. I don’t
know why; I just wanted to, I guess; and I
reckoned I might as well die dishwashing as die
their way.’”
Trefethan halted in his tale for a moment, com-
pleting to himself some thread of thought.
“And this is the woman I met up there in the
Arctic, running a tribe of wild Indians and a few
thousand square miles of hunting territory. And
it happened simply enough, though, for that mat-
ter, she might have lived and died among the pots
and pans. But “Came the whisper, came the vi-
sion.” That was all she needed, and she got it.
“‘I woke up one day,” she said. “Just hap-
pened on it in a scrap of newspaper. I remem-
ber every word of it, and I can give it to you.’
And then she quoted Thoreau's Cry of the
Human:
“‘The young pines springing up in the corn
field from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.
We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not
the name for his improvement. By the wary in-
ºpiniºn, and aloofness of his dim forest life
he preserves his intercourse with his native gods
and is admitted from time to time to a rare and
peculiar society with nature. He has glances of
16


THE NIGHT-BORN
starry recognition, to which our saloons are
strangers. The steady illumination of his genius,
dim only because distant, is like the faint but sat-
isfying light of the stars compared with the daz-
zling but ineffectual and shortlived blaze of
candles. The Society Islanders had their day-
born gods, but they were not supposed to be of
equal antiquity with the . . . night-born
gods.’
“That’s what she did, repeated it word for
word, and I forgot the tang, for it was solemn, a
declaration of religion—pagan, if you will; and
clothed in the living garmenture of herself.
“‘And the rest of it was torn away,” she added,
a great emptiness in her voice. “It was only a
scrap of newspaper. But that Thoreau was a
wise man. I wish I knew more about him.” She
stopped a moment, and I swear her face was in-
effably holy as she said, ‘I could have made him a
good wife.”
“And then she went on. “I knew right away,
as soon as I read that, what was the matter with
me. I was a night-born. I, who had lived all
my life with the day-born, was a night-born.
That was why I had never been satisfied with
cooking and dishwashing; that was why I had
17


THE NIGHT-BORN
hankered to run naked in the moonlight. And
I knew that this dirty little Juneau hash-joint
was no place for me. And right there and then
I said, “I quit.” I packed up my few rags of
clothes, and started. Jake saw me and tried to
stop me.
“‘“What you doing?” he says.
“‘“Divorcin' you and me,” I says. “I’m
headin’ for tall timber and where I belong.”
“‘“No you don’t,” he says, reaching for me to
stop me. “The cookin’ has got on your head.
You listen to me talk before you up and do any-
thing brash.”
“‘But I pulled a gun—a little Colt's forty-
four—and says, “This does my talkin' for me.”
“‘And I left.” ”
Trefethan emptied his glass and called for
another.
“Boys, do you know what that girl did? She
was twenty-two. She had spent her life over the
dish-pan and she knew no more about the world
'than I do of the fourth dimension, or the fifth.
All roads led to her desire. No; she did n’t head
for the dance-halls. On the Alaskan Pan-handle
it is preferable to travel by water. She went
down to the beach. An Indian canoe was start-
18


THE NIGHT-BORN
ing for Dyea—you know the kind, carved out of
a single tree, narrow and deep and sixty feet long.
She gave them a couple of dollars and got on
board.
“‘Romance?” she told me. “It was Romance
from the jump. There were three families alto-
gether in that canoe, and that crowded there
was n’t room to turn around, with dogs and In-
dian babies sprawling over everything, and every-
body dipping a paddle and making that canoe go.
And all around the great solemn mountains, and
tangled drifts of clouds and sunshine. And oh,
the silence! the great wonderful silence! And,
once, the smoke of a hunter's camp, away off in
the distance, trailing among the trees. It was
like a picnic, a grand picnic, and I could see my
dreams coming true, and I was ready for some-
thing to happen 'most any time. And it did.
“‘And that first camp, on the island! And
the boys spearing fish in the mouth of the creek,
and the big deer one of the bucks shot just around
the point. And there were flowers everywhere,
and in back from the beach the grass was thick
and lush and neck-high. And some of the girls
went through this with me, and we climbed the
hillside behind and picked berries and roots that
19


THE NIGHT-BORN
tasted sour and were good to eat. And we came
upon a big bear in the berries making his supper,
and he said “Oof" and ran away as scared as
we were. And then the camp, and the camp
smoke, and the smell of fresh venison cooking.
It was beautiful. I was with the night-born at
last, and I knew that was where I belonged.
And for the first time in my life, it seemed to me,
I went to bed happy that night, looking out under
a corner of the canvas at the stars cut off black
by a big shoulder of mountain, and listening to
the night-noises, and knowing that the same thing
would go on next day and forever and ever, for
I was n’t going back. And I never did go back.
“‘Romance! I got it next day. We had to
cross a big arm of the ocean—twelve or fifteen
miles, at least; and it came on to blow when we
were in the middle. That night I was along on
shore, with one wolf-dog, and I was the only one
left alive.”
“Picture it yourself.” Trefethan broke off to
say. “The canoe was wrecked and lost, and
everybody pounded to death on the rocks except
- her. She went ashore hanging on to a dog's tail,
escaping the rocks and washing up on a tiny beach,
the only one in miles.
2O


THE NIGHT-BORN
dust, but mostly nuggets, and it was so fresh and
rough that it scarcely showed signs of water-wash.
“‘You say you’re a mining engineer, she said,
‘and you know this country. Can you name a
pay-creek that has the color of that gold?
“I couldn’t. There was n’t a trace of silver.
It was almost pure, and I told her so.
“‘You bet,” she said. “I sell that for nineteen
dollars an ounce. You can’t get over seventeen
for Eldorado gold, and Minook gold don’t fetch
quite eighteen. Well, that was what I found
among the bones—eight horse-loads of it, one
hundred and fifty pounds to the load.”
“‘A quarter of a million dollars!' I cried out.
“‘That's what I reckoned it roughly,” she an-
swered. ‘Talk about Romance! And me a
slaving the way I had all the years, when as soon
as I ventured out, inside three days, this was what
happened. And what became of the men that
mined all that gold? Often and often I wonder
about it. They left their horses, loaded and tied,
and just disappeared off the face of the earth,
leaving neither hide nor hair behind them. I
never heard tell of them. Nobody knows any-
thing about them. Well, being the night-born, I
reckon I was their rightful heir.’”
22


THE NIGHT-BORN
Trefethan stopped to light a cigar.
“Do you know what that girl did? She
cached the gold, saving out thirty pounds, which
she carried back to the coast. Then she signaled
a passing canoe, made her way to Pat Healy's
trading post at Dyea, outfitted, and went over
Chilcoot Pass. That was in '88—eight years be-
fore the Klondike strike, and the Yukon was a
howling wilderness. She was afraid of the bucks,
but she took two young squaws with her, crossed
the lakes, and went down the river and to all the
early camps on the Lower Yukon. She wan-
dered several years over that country and then on
in to where I met her. Liked the looks of it, she
said, seeing, in her own words, ‘a big bull caribou
knee-deep in purple iris on the valley-bottom.”
She hooked up with the Indians, doctored them,
gained their confidence, and gradually took them
in charge. She had only left that country once,
and then, with a bunch of the young bucks, she
went over Chilcoot, cleaned up her gold-cache, and
brought it back with her.
“‘And here I be, stranger, she concluded her
yarn, and here’s the most precious thing I own,'
“She pulled out a little pouch of buckskin,
worn on her neck like a locket, and opened it.
23


THE NIGHT-BORN
And inside, wrapped in oiled silk, yellowed with
age and worn and thumbed, was the original scrap
of newspaper containing the quotation from
Thoreau.
“‘And are you happy? . . . satisfied?”
I asked her. With a quarter of a million you
would n’t have to work down in the States. You
must miss a lot.’
“‘Not much,” she answered. ‘I would n’t
swop places with any woman down in the States.
These are my people; this is where I belong.
But there are times—' and in her eyes smoldered
up that hungry yearning I’ve mentioned—there
are times when I wish most awful bad for that
Thoreau man to happen along.’
“‘Why? I asked.
“‘So as X could marry him. I do get mighty
lonesome at spells. I’m just a woman—a real
woman. I’ve heard tell of the other kind of
women that gallivanted off like me and did queer
things—the sort that become soldiers in armies
and sailors on ships. But those women are queer
themselves. They’re more like men than
women; they look like men and they don’t have
ordinary women's needs. They don’t want love,
nor little children in their arms and around their
24


THE NIGHT-BORN
knees. I’m not that sort. I leave it to you,
stranger. Do I look like a man?”
“She did n’t. She was a woman, a beautiful,
nut-brown woman, with a sturdy, health-rounded
woman’s body and with wonderful deep-blue
woman’s eyes.
“‘Ain’t I woman?” she demanded. ‘I am.
I’m 'most all woman, and then some. And the
funny thing is, though I’m night-born in every-
thing else, I’m not when it comes to mating. I
reckon that kind likes its own kind best. That’s
the way it is with me, anyway, and has been all
these years.”
“‘You mean to tell me—'I began.
“‘Never, she said, and her eyes looked into
mine with the straightness of truth. “I had one
husband, only—him I call the Ox; and I reckon
he’s still down in Juneau running the hash-joint.
Look him up, if you ever get back, and you’ll
find he’s rightly named.”
“And look him up I did, two years afterward.
He was all she said—solid and stolid, the Ox—
shuffling around and waiting on the tables.
“‘You need a wife to help you,' I said.
“‘I had one once,” was his answer.
“‘Widower?”
25


THE NIGHT-BORN
was too preposterous, the whole thing, and I lied
like a gentleman. I told her I was already
married.
“‘Is your wife waiting for you?” she asked.
“I said yes.
“‘And she loves you?”
“I said yes.
“And that was all. She never pressed her
point . . . except once, and then she showed
a bit of fire.
“‘All I’ve got to do,” she said, ‘is to give the
word, and you don’t get away from here. If I
give the word, you stay on. . . . But I ain’t
going to give it. I would n’t want you if you
did n’t want to be wanted . . . and if you
did n’t want me.”
“She went ahead and outfitted me and started
me on my way.
“‘It’s a darned shame, stranger,” she said, at
parting. ‘I like your looks, and I like you. If
you ever change your mind, come back.’
“Now there was one thing I wanted to do, and
that was to kiss her good-bye, but I did n’t know
how to go about it nor how she would take it.—I
tell you I was half in love with her. But she
settled it herself.
*
27


THE NIGHT-BORN
“‘Kiss me,’ she said. “Just something to go
on and remember.”
“And we kissed, there in the snow, in that val-
ley by the Rockies, and I left her standing by the
trail and went on after my dogs. I was six weeks
in crossing over the pass and coming down to the
first post on Great Slave Lake.”
The brawl of the streets came up to us like a
distant surf. A steward, moving noiselessly,
brought fresh siphons. And in the silence
Trefethan’s voice fell like a funeral bell:
“It would have been better had I stayed.
Look at me.”
We saw his grizzled mustache, the bald spot
on his head, the puff-sacks under his eyes, the
sagging cheeks, the heavy dewlap, the general
tiredness and staleness and fatness, all the col-
lapse and ruin of a man who had once been strong
but who had lived too easily and too well.
“It’s not too late, old man,” Bardwell said,
almost in a whisper.
“By God! I wish I were n't a coward!” was
Trefethan's answering cry. “I could go back
to her. She's there, now. I could shape up
and live many a long year . . . with
her . . . up there. To remain here is to
28


THE NIGHT-BORN
commit suicide. But I am an old man—forty-
seven—look at me. The trouble is,” he lifted
his glass and glanced at it, “the trouble is that
suicide of this sort is so easy. I am soft and
tender. The thought of the long day's travel
with the dogs appals me; the thought of the keen
frost in the morning and of the frozen sled-lash-
ings frightens me—”
Automatically the glass was creeping toward
his lips. With a swift surge of anger he made
as if to crash it down upon the floor. Next came
hesitancy and second thought. The glass moved
upward to his lips and paused. He laughed
harshly and bitterly, but his words were solemn:
“Well, here’s to the Night-Born. She was a
wonder.”





THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED


:
THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
TELL this for a fact. It happened in the
bull-ring at Quito. I sat in the box with
John Harned, and with Maria Valenzuela, and
with Luis Cervallos. I saw it happen. I saw
it all from first to last. I was on the steamer
Ecuadore from Panama to Guayaquil. Maria
Valenzuela is my cousin. I have known her al-
ways. She is very beautiful. I am a Spaniard
—an Ecuadoriano, true, but I am descended from
Pedro Patino, who was one of Pizarro's cap-
tains. They were brave men. They were
heroes. Did not Pizarro lead three hundred and
fifty Spanish cavaliers and four thousand Indians
into the far Cordilleras in search of treasure?
And did not all the four thousand Indians and
three hundred of the brave cavaliers die on that
vain quest? But Pedro Patino did not die. He
it was that lived to found the family of the
Patino. . I am Ecuadoriano, true, but I am
Spanish. I am Manuel de Jesus Patino. I own
many haciendas, and ten thousand Indians are
33


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
my slaves, though the law says they are free men
who work by freedom of contract. The law is a
funny thing. We Ecuadorianos laugh at it. It
is our law. We make it for ourselves. I am
Manuel de Jesus Patino. Remember that name.
It will be written some day in history. There
are revolutions in Ecuador. We call them elec-
tions. It is a good joke is it not?—what you
call a pun?
John Harned was an American. I met him
first at the Tivoli hotel in Panama. He had
much money—this I have heard. He was going
to Lima, but he met Maria Valenzuela in the
Tivoli hotel. Maria Valenzuela is my cousin,
and she is beautiful. It is true, she is the most
beautiful woman in Ecuador. But also is she
most beautiful in every country—in Paris, in
Madrid, in New York, in Vienna. Always do all
men look at her, and John Harned looked long
at her at Panama. He loved her, that I know
for a fact. She was Ecuadoriano, true—but she
was of all countries; she was of all the world.
She spoke many languages. She sang—ah! like
an artiste. Her smile—wonderful, divine. Her
eyes—ah! have I not seen men look in her eyes?
They were what you English call amazing. They
34


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
were promises of paradise. Men drowned them-
selves in her eyes.
Maria Valenzuela was rich—richer than I, who
am accounted very rich in Ecuador. But John
Harned did not care for her money. He had a
heart—a funny heart. He was a fool. He did
not go to Lima. He left the steamer at Guaya-
quil and followed her to Quito. She was com-
ing home from Europe and other places. I do
not see what she found in him, but she liked him.
This I know for a fact, else he would not have
followed her to Quito. She asked him to come.
Well do I remember the occasion. She said:
“Come to Quito and I will show you the bull-
fight—brave, clever, magnificent!”
But he said: “I go to Lima, not Quito. Such
is my passage engaged on the steamer.”
“You travel for pleasure—no?” said Maria
Valenzuela; and she looked at him as only Maria
Valenzuela could look, her eyes warm with the
promise.
And he came. No; he did not come for the
bull-fight. He came because of what he had seen
in her eyes. Women like Maria Valenzuela are
born once in a hundred years. They are of no
country and no time. They are what you call
35


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
universal. They are goddesses. Men fall down
at their feet. They play with men and run them
through their pretty fingers like sand. Cleopatra
was such a woman they say; and so was Circe.
She turned men into swine. Ha! ha' It is true
—no'?
It all came about because Maria Valenzuela
said:
“You English people are—what shall I say?
—savage—no? You prize-fight. Two men
each hit the other with their fists till their eyes
are blinded and their noses are broken. Hideous!
And the other men who look on cry out loudly
and are made glad. It is barbarous—no?”
“But they are men,” said John Harned; “and
they prize-fight out of desire. No one makes
them prize-fight. They do it because they de-
sire it more than anything else in the world.”
Maria Valenzuela—there was scorn in her
smile as she said:
“They kill each other often—is it not so? I
have read it in the papers.”
“But the bull,” said John Harned. “The bull
is killed many times in the bull-fight, and the
bull does not come into the ring out of desire. It
is not fair to the bull. He is compelled to fight.
36


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
But the man in the prize-fight—no; he is not
compelled.”
“He is the more brute therefore,” said Maria
Valenzuela. “He is savage. He is primitive.
He is animal. He strikes with his paws like a
bear from a cave, and he is ferocious. But the
bull-fight—ah! You have not seen the bull-
fight—no? The toreador is clever. He must
have skill. He is modern. He is romantic. He
is only a man, soft and tender, and he faces the
wild bull in conflict. And he kills with a sword,
a slender sword, with one thrust, so, to the heart
of the great beast. It is delicious. It makes the
heart beat to behold—the small man, the great
beast, the wide level sand, the thousands that look
on without breath; the great beast rushes to the
attack, the small man stands like a statue; he does
not move, he is unafraid, and in his hand is the
slender sword flashing like silver in the sun;
nearer and nearer rushes the great beast with its
sharp horns, the man does not move, and then—
so—the sword flashes, the thrust is made, to the
heart, to the hilt, the bull falls to the sand and
is dead, and the man is unhurt. It is brave. It
is magnificent! Ah!—I could love the toreador.
But the man of the prize-fight—he is the brute,
37


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
the human beast, the savage primitive, the maniac
that receives many blows in his stupid face and re-
joices. Come to Quito and I will show you the
brave sport, the sport of men, the toreador and
the bull.”
But John Harned did not go to Quito for the
bull-fight. He went because of Maria Valen-
zuela. He was a large man, more broad of
shoulder than we Ecuadorianos, more tall, more
heavy of limb and bone. True, he was larger
even than most men of his own race. His eyes
were blue, though I have seen them gray, and,
sometimes, like cold steel. His features were
large, too—not delicate like ours, and his jaw
was very strong to look at. Also, his face was
smooth-shaven like a priest’s. Why should a
man feel shame for the hair on his face? Did
not God put it there? Yes, I believe in God. I,
am not a pagan like many of you English. God.
is good. He made me an Ecuadoriano with ten
thousand slaves. And when I die I shall go to
God. Yes, the priests are right.
But John Harned. He was a quiet man. He
talked always in a low voice, and he never moved
his hands when he talked. One would have
thought his heart was a piece of ice; yet did he
38


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
have a streak of warm in his blood, for he fol-
lowed Maria Valenzuela to Quito. Also, and
for all that he talked low without moving his
hands, he was an animal, as you shall see—the
beast primitive, the stupid, ferocious savage of
the long ago that dressed in wild skins and lived
in the caves along with the bears and wolves.
Luis Cervallos is my friend, the best of
Ecuadorianos. He owns three cacao plantations
at Naranjito and Chobo. At Milagro is his big
sugar plantation. He has large haciendas at
Ambato and Latacunga, and down the coast is
he interested in oil-wells. Also has he spent
much money in planting rubber along the Guayas.
He is modern, like the Yankee; and, like the
Yankee, full of business. He has much money,
but it is in many ventures, and ever he needs more
money for new ventures and for the old ones.
He has been everywhere and seen everything.
When he was a very young man he was in the
Yankee military academy what you call West
Point. There was trouble. He was made to
resign. He does not like Americans. But he
did like Maria Valenzuela, who was of his own
country. Also, he needed her money for his ven-
tures and for his gold mine in Eastern Ecuador
39


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
where the painted Indians live. I was his friend.
It was my desire that he should marry Maria
Valenzuela. Further, much of my money had
I invested in his ventures, more so in his gold
mine which was very rich but which first required
the expense of much money before it would yield
forth its riches. If Luis Cervallos married Maria
Valenzuela I should have more money very im-
mediately.
But John Harned followed Maria Valenzuela
to Quito, and it was quickly clear to us—to Luis
Cervallos and me—that she looked upon John
Harned with great kindness. It is said that a
woman will have her will, but this is a case not
in point, for Maria Valenzuela did not have her
will—at least not with John Harned. Perhaps
it would all have happened as it did, even if Luis
Cervallos and I had not sat in the box that day
at the bull-ring in Quito. But this I know: we
did sit in the box that day. And I shall tell you
what happened.
The four of us were in the one box, guests of
Luis Cervallos. I was next to the Presidente's
box. On the other side was the box of General
José Eliceo Salazar. With him were Joaquin
Endara and Urcisino Castillo, both generals, and
4O


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
Colonel Jacinto Fierro and Captain Baltazar de
Echeverria. Only Luis Cervallos had the posi-
tion and the influence to get that box next to the
Presidente. I know for a fact that the Presidente
himself expressed the desire to the management
that Luis Cervallos should have that box.
The band finished playing the national hymn
of Ecuador. The procession of the toreadors
was over. The Presidente nodded to begin.
The bugles blew, and the bull dashed in—you
know the way, excited, bewildered, the darts in
its shoulder burning like fire, itself seeking madly
whatever enemy to destroy. The toreadors
hid behind their shelters and waited. Sud-
denly they appeared forth, the capadors, five of
them, from every side, their colored capes fling-
ing wide. The bull paused at sight of such a
generosity of enemies, unable in his own mind to
know which to attack. Then advanced one of
the capadores alone to meet the bull. The bull
was very angry. With its fore-legs it pawed
the sand of the arena till the dust rose all about
it. Then it charged, with lowered head, straight
for the lone capador.
It is always of interest, the first charge of
the first bull. After a time it is natural that
41


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
one should grow tired, a trifle, that the keen-
ness should lose its edge. But that first charge
of the first bull! John Harned was seeing it for
the first time, and he could not escape the excite-
ment—the sight of the man, armed only with a
piece of cloth, and of the bull rushing upon him
across the sand with sharp horns, widespreading.
“See!” cried Maria Valenzuela. “Is it not
superb?”
John Harned nodded, but did not look at her.
His eyes were sparkling, and they were only for
the bull-ring. The capador stepped to the
side, with a twirl of the cape eluding the
bull and spreading the cape on his own shoul-
ders.
“What do you think?” asked Maria Valen-
zuela. “Is it not a-what-you-call—sporting
proposition—no?”
“It is certainly,” said John Harned. “It is
very clever.”
She clapped her hands with delight. They
were little hands. The audience applauded.'
The bull turned and came back. Again the cap-
adore eluded him, throwing the cape on his shoul-
ders, and again the audience applauded. Three
times did this happen. The capadore was very
42


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
bull-fight and you like it—no? What do you
think?”
“I think the bull had no chance,” he said.
“The bull was doomed from the first. The issue
was not in doubt. Every one knew, before the
'bull entered the ring, that it was to die. To
be a sporting proposition, the issue must be in
doubt. It was one stupid bull who had never
fought a man against five wise men who had
fought many bulls. It would be possibly a little
bit fair if it were one man against one bull.”
“Or one man against five bulls,” said Maria
Valenzuela; and we all laughed, and Luis Cer-
vallos laughed loudest.
“Yes,” said John Harned, “against five bulls,
and the man, like the bulls, never in the bull-
ring before—a man like yourself, Senor Cer-
vallos.”
“Yet we Spanish like the bull-fight,” said Luis
Cervallos; and I swear the devil was whispering
then in his ear, telling him to do that which I
shall relate.
“Then must it be a cultivated taste,” John
Harned made answer. “We kill bulls by the
thousand every day in Chicago, yet no one cares
to pay admittance to see.”
44


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
“That is butchery,” said I; “but this—ah, this
is an art. It is delicate. It is fine. It is rare.”
“Not always,” said Luis Cervallos. “I have
seen clumsy matadors, and I tell you it is not
nice.”
He shuddered, and his face betrayed such what-
you-call disgust, that I knew, then, that the devil
was whispering and that he was beginning to play
a part.
“Senor Harned may be right,” said Luis Cer-
vallos. “It may not be fair to the bull. For is
it not known to all of us that for twenty-four
hours the bull is given no water, and that im-
mediately before the fight he is permitted to drink
his fill?”
“And he comes into the ring heavy with
water?” said John Harned quickly; and I saw
that his eyes were very gray and very sharp and
very cold.
“It is necessary for the sport,” said Luis Cer-
vallos. “Would you have the bull so strong
that he would kill the toreadors?”
“I would that he had a fighting chance,” said
John Harned, facing the ring to see the second
bull come in.
It was not a good bull. It was frightened. It
45


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
ran around the ring in search of a way to get out.
The capadors stepped forth and flared their capes,
but he refused to charge upon them.
“It is a stupid bull,” said Maria Valenzuela.
“I beg pardon,” said John Harned; “but it
would seem to me a wise bull. He knows he
must not fight man. See! He smells death
there in the ring.”
True. The bull, pausing where the last
one had died, was smelling the wet sand and
snorting. Again he ran around the ring, with
raised head, looking at the faces of the thousands
that hissed him, that threw orange-peel at him and
called him names. But the smell of blood de-
cided him, and he charged a capador, so without
warning that the man just escaped. He dropped
his cape and dodged into the shelter. The bull
struck the wall of the ring with a crash. And
John Harned said, in a quiet voice, as though
he talked to himself:
“I will give one thousand sucres to the lazar-
house of Quito if a bull kills a man this day.”
“You like bulls?” said Maria Valenzuela with
a Smile.
“I like such men less,” said John Harned. “A
toreador is not a brave man. He surely cannot
46


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
be a brave man. See, the bull’s tongue is already
out. He is tired and he has not yet begun.”
“It is the water,” said Luis Cervallos.
“Yes, it is the water,” said John Harned.
“Would it not be safer to hamstring the bull be-
fore he comes on?”
Maria Valenzuela was made angry by this sneer
in John Harned’s words. But Luis Cervallos
smiled so that only I could see him, and then
it broke upon my mind surely the game he was
playing. He and I were to be banderilleros.
The big American bull was there in the box with
us. We were to stick the darts in him till he
became angry, and then there might be no mar-
riage with Maria Valenzuela. It was a good
sport. And the spirit of bull-fighters was in our
blood.
The bull was now angry and excited. The
capadors had great game with him. He was
very quick, and sometimes he turned with such
sharpness that his hind legs lost their footing and
he plowed the sand with his quarter. But he
charged always the flung capes and committed
no harm.
“He has no chance,” said John Harned. “He
is fighting wind.”
47


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
“He thinks the cape is his enemy,” explained
Maria Valenzuela. “See how cleverly the capa-
dor deceives him.”
“It is his nature to be deceived,” said John
"Harned. “Wherefore he is doomed to fight wind.
The toreadors know it, the audience knows it, you
know it, I know it—we all know from the first
that he will fight wind. He only does not know
it. It is his stupid beast-nature. He has no
chance.”
“It is very simple,” said Luis Cervallos. “The
bull shuts his eyes when he charges. There-
fore—”
“The man steps out of the way and the bull
rushes by,” John Harned interrupted.
“Yes,” said Luis Cervallos; “that is it.
The bull shuts his eyes, and the man knews
it.”
“But cows do not shut their eyes,” said John
Harned. “I know a cow at home that is a Jer-
sey and gives milk, that would whip the whole
gang of them.”
“But the toreadors do not fight cows,” said I.
“They are afraid to fight cows,” said John
Harned.
“Yes,” said Luis Cervallos; “they are afraid
48 -


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
fight cows. There would be no sport in killing
toreadors.”
“There would be some sport,” said John
Harned, “if a toreador were killed once in a while."
When I become an old man, and mayhap a
cripple, and should I need to make a living and
be unable to do hard work, then would I become
a bull-fighter. It is a light vocation for elderly
gentlemen and pensioners.”
“But see!” said Maria Valenzuela, as the bull
charged bravely and the capador eluded it with
a fling of his cape. “It requires skill so to avoid
the beast.” ;
“True,” said John Harned. “But believe me,
it requires a thousand times more skill to avoid
the many and quick punches of a prize-fighter
who keeps his eyes open and strikes with intelli-
gence. Furthermore, this bull does not want to
fight. Behold, he runs away.”
It was not a good bull, for again it ran around
the ring, seeking to find a way out.
“Yet these bulls are sometimes the most dan-
gerous,” said Luis Cervallos. “It can never be
known what they will do next. They are wise.
They are half cow. The bull-fighters never like
them.—See: He has turned!”
49


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
Once again, baffled and made angry by the
walls of the ring that would not let him out, the
bull was attacking his enemies valiantly.
“His tongue is hanging out,” said John
Harned. “First, they fill him with water.
Then they tire him out, one man and then an-
other, persuading him to exhaust himself by fight-
sº ing wind. While some tire him, others rest.
But the bull they never let rest. Afterward,
when he is quite tired and no longer quick, the
matador sticks the sword into him.”
The time had now come for the banderillos.
Three times one of the fighters endeavored to
place the darts, and three times did he fail. He
but stung the bull and maddened it. The
banderillos must go in, you know, two at a time,
into the shoulders, on each side the backbone and
close to it. If but one be placed, it is a failure.
The crowd hissed and called for Ordonez. And
then Ordonez did a great thing. Four times he
stood forth, and four times, at the first attempt,
he stuck in the banderillos, so that eight of them,
well placed, stood out of the back of the bull at
one time. The crowd went mad, and a rain of
hats and money fell upon the sand of the ring,
And just then the bull charged unexpectedly
5o


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
one of the capadors. The man slipped and lost
his head. The bull caught him—fortunately,
between his wide horns. And while the audience
watched, breathless and silent, John Harned
stood up and yelled with gladness. Alone, in
that hush of all of us, John Harned yelled. And
he yelled for the bull. As you see yourself, John
Harned wanted the man killed. His was a
brutal heart. This bad conduct made those an-
gry that sat in the box of General Salazar, and
they cried out against John Harned. And
Urcisino Castillo told him to his face that he was
a dog of a Gringo and other things. Only it was
in Spanish, and John Harned did not under-
stand. He stood and yelled, perhaps for the
time of ten seconds, when the bull was enticed
into charging the other capadors and the man
arose unhurt.
“The bull has no chance,” John Harned said
with sadness as he sat down. “The man was un-
injured. They fooled the bull away from him.”
Then he turned to Maria Valenzuela and said:
“I beg your pardon. I was excited.”
She smiled and in reproof tapped his arm with
her fan.
“It is your first bull-fight,” she said. “After
51


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
you have seen more you will not cry for the death
of the man. You Americans, you see, are more
brutal than we. It is because of your prize-fight-
ing. We come only to see the bull killed.” -
“But I would the bull had some chance,” he
answered. “Doubtless, in time, I shall cease to
be annoyed by the men who take advantage of
the bull.”
The bugles blew for the death. Ordonez
stood forth with the sword and the scarlet cloth.
But the bull had changed again, and did not want
to fight. Ordonez stamped his foot in the sand,
and cried out, and waved the Scarlet cloth. Then
the bull charged, but without heart. There was
no weight to the charge. It was a poor thrust.
The sword struck a bone and bent. Ordonez
took a fresh sword. The bull, again stung to
fight, charged once more. Five times Ordonez
essayed the thrust, and each time the sword
went but part way in or struck bone. The sixth
time, the sword went in to the hilt. But it
was a bad thrust. The sword missed the heart
and stuck out half a yard through the ribs on the
opposite side. The audience hissed the matador.
I glanced at John Harned. He sat silent, with-
out movement; but I could see his teeth were set,
52


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
and his hands were clenched tight on the railing
of the box.
All fight was now out of the bull, and, though
it was no vital thrust, he trotted lamely what of
"the sword that stuck through him, in one side and
out the other. He ran away from the matador
and the capadors, and circled the edge of the ring,
looking up at the many faces.
“He is saying: “For God's sake let me out of
this; I don’t want to fight,’” said John Harned.
That was all. He said no more, but sat and
watched, though sometimes he looked sideways at
Maria Valenzuela to see how she took it. She
was angry with the matador. He was awkward,
and she had desired a clever exhibition.
The bull was now very tired, and weak from
loss of blood, though far from dying. He
walked slowly around the wall of the ring, seek-
ing a way out. He would not charge. He had
had enough. But he must be killed. There is
a place, in the neck of a bull behind the horns,
where the cord of the spine is unprotected and
where a short stab will immediately kill. Ordonez
stepped in front of the bull and lowered his scar-
let cloth to the ground. The bull would not
charge. He stood still and smelled the cloth,
53


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
lowering his head to do so. Ordonez stabbed be.
tween the horns at the spot in the neck. The bull
jerked his head up. The stab had missed.
Then the bull watched the sword. When Or-,
donez moved the cloth on the ground, the bull
forgot the sword and lowered his head to smell
the cloth. Again Ordonez stabbed, and again he
failed. He tried many times. It was stupid.
And John Harned said nothing. At last a stab
went home, and the bull fell to the sand, dead
immediately, and the mules were made fast and
he was dragged out.
“The Gringos say it is a cruel sport—no?” said
Luis Cervallos. “That it is not humane. That
it is bad for the bull. No?”
“No,” said John Harned. “The bull does not
count for much. It is bad for those that look
on. It is degrading to those that look on. It
teaches them to delight in animal suffering. It
is cowardly for five men to fight one stupid bull.
Therefore those that look on learn to be cowards.
The bull dies, but those that look on live and the
lesson is learned. The bravery of men is not
nourished by scenes of cowardice.”
Maria Valenzuela said nothing. Neither did
54


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
she look at him. But she heard every word and
her cheeks were white with anger. She looked
out across the ring and fanned herself, but I saw
that her hand trembled. Nor did John Harned
º at her. He went on as though she were not
there. He, too, was angry, coldly angry.
“It is the cowardly sport of a cowardly people,”
he said.
“Ah,” said Luis Cervallos softly, “you think
you understand us.”
“I understand now the Spanish Inquisition,”
said John Harned. “It must have been more
delightful than bull-fighting.”
Luis Cervallos smiled but said nothing. He
glanced at Maria Valenzuela, and knew that the
bull-fight in the box was won. Never would she
have further to do with the Gringo who spoke
such words. But neither Luis Cervallos nor I was
prepared for the outcome of the day. I fear we
do not understand the Gringos. How were we
to know that John Harned, who was so coldly
ſangry, should go suddenly mad? But mad he
did go, as you shall see. The bull did not count
for much—he said so himself. Then why should
the horse count for so much? That I cannot un-
55


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
derstand. The mind of John Harned lacked
logic. That is the only explanation.
“It is not usual to have horses in the bull-ring
at Quito,” said Luis Cervallos, looking up from
the program. “In Spain they always have them.
But to-day, by special permission we shall have
them. When the next bull comes on there will
be horses and picadors—you know, the men who
carry lances and ride the horses.”
“The bull is doomed from the first,” said John
Harned. “Are the horses then likewise doomed?”
“They are blindfolded so that they may not
see the bull,” said Luis Cervallos. “I have seen
many horses killed. It is a brave sight.”
“I have seen the bull slaughtered,” said John
Harned. “I will now see the horse slaughtered,
so that I may understand more fully the fine
points of this noble sport.”
“They are old horses,” said Luis Cervallos,
“that are not good for anything else.”
“I see,” said John Harned.
The third bull came on, and soon against it
were both capadors and picadors. One picador
took his stand directly below us. I agree, it was
a thin and aged horse he rode, a bag of bones
covered with mangy hide.
56


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
“It is a marvel that the poor brute can hold
up the weight of the rider,” said John Harned.
“And now that the horse fights the bull, what
weapons has it?”
“The horse does not fight the bull,” said Luis
Cervallos.
“Oh,” said John Harned, “then is the horse
there to be gored? That must be why it is blind-
folded, so that it shall not see the bull coming to
gore it.”
“Not quite so,” said I. “The lance of
the picador is to keep the bull from goring the
horse.”
“Then are horses rarely gored?” asked John
Harned.
“No,” said Luis Cervallos. “I have seen, at
Seville, eighteen horses killed in one day, and
the people clamored for more horses.”
“Were they blindfolded like this horse?” asked
John Harned.
“Yes,” said Luis Cervallos.
After that we talked no more, but watched
the fight. And John Harned was going mad all
the time, and we did not know. The bull re-
fused to charge the horse. And the horse stood
still, and because it could not see it did not know
57


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
that the capadors were trying to make the bull
charge upon it. The capadors teased the bull
with their capes, and when it charged them they
ran toward the horse and into their shelters. At
last the bull was well angry, and it saw the horse
before it.
“The horse does not know, the horse does
not know,” John Harned whispered like to
himself, unaware that he voiced his thought
aloud.
The bull charged, and of course the horse knew
nothing till the picador failed and the horse found
himself impaled on the bull’s horns from beneath.
The bull was magnificently strong. The sight
of its strength was splendid to see. It lifted the
horse clear into the air; and as the horse fell to
its side on the ground the picador landed on his
feet and escaped, while the capadors lured the
bull away. The horse was emptied of its essen-
tial organs. Yet did it rise to its feet Screaming.
It was the scream of the horse that did it, that
made John Harned completely mad; for he, too,
started to rise to his feet. I heard him curse low
and deep. He never took his eyes from the
horse, which, still screaming, strove to run, but
fell down instead and rolled on its back so that
58


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
all its four legs were kicking in the air. Then
the bull charged it and gored it again and again
until it was dead.
John Harned was now on his feet. His eyes
were no longer cold like steel. They were blue
flames. He looked at Maria Valenzuela, and she
looked at him, and in his face was a great loath-
ing. The moment of his madness was upon him.
Everybody was looking, now that the horse was
dead; and John Harned was a large man and
easy to be seen.
“Sit down,” said Luis Cervallos, “or you will
make a fool of yourself.”
John Harned replied nothing. He struck out
his fist. He smote Luis Cervallos in the face
so that he fell like a dead man across the chairs
and did not rise again. He saw nothing of what
followed. But I saw much. Urcisino Castillo,
leaning forward from the next box, with his cane
struck John Harned full across the face. And
John Harned smote him with his fist so that in
falling he overthrew General Salazar. John
Harned was now in what-you-call Berserker rage
—no? The beast primitive in him was loose and
roaring—the beast primitive of the holes and
caves of the long ago.
59


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
“You came for a bull-fight,” I heard him say,
“and by God I’ll show you a man-fight!”
It was a fight. The soldiers guarding the
Presidente’s box leaped across, but from one of
them he took a rifle and beat them on their heads
with it. From the other box Colonel Jacinto
Fierro was shooting at him with a revolver. The
first shot killed a soldier. This I know for a
fact. I saw it. But the second shot struck John
Harned in the side. Whereupon he swore, and
with a lunge drove the bayonet of his rifle into
Colonel Jacinto Fierro's body. It was horrible
to behold. The Americans and the English are
a brutal race. They sneer at our bull-fighting,
yet do they delight in the shedding of blood.
More men were killed that day because of John
Harned than were ever killed in all the history
of the bull-ring of Quito, yes, and of Guayaquil
and all Ecuador.
It was the scream of the horse that did it. Yet
why did not John Harned go mad when the bull
was killed? A beast is a beast, be it bull or
horse. John Harned was mad. There is no
other explanation. He was blood-mad, a beast
himself. I leave it to your judgment. Which
is worse—the goring of the horse by the buſ,
60


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
or the goring of Colonel Jacinto Fierro by the
bayonet in the hands of John Harned? And
John Harned gored others with that bayonet.
He was full of devils. He fought with many
bullets in him, and he was hard to kill. And
Maria Valenzuela was a brave woman. Unlike
the other women, she did not cry out nor faint.
She sat still in her box, gazing out across the
bull-ring. Her face was white and she fanned
herself, but she never looked around.
From all sides came the soldiers and officers
and the common people bravely to subdue the
mad Gringo. It is true—the cry went up from
the erowd to kill all the Gringos. It is an old
cry in Latin-American countries, what of the dis-
like for the Gringos and their uncouth ways. It
is true, the cry went up. But the brave
Ecuadorianos killed only John Harned, and first
he killed seven of them. Besides, there were many
hurt. I have seen many bull-fights, but never
have I seen anything so abominable as the scene
in the boxes when the fight was over. It was like
a field of battle. The dead lay around every-
where, while the wounded sobbed and groaned
and some of them died. One man, whom John
Harned had thrust through the belly with the
61


THE MADNESS OF JOHN HARNED
bayonet, clutched at himself with both his hands
and screamed. I tell you for a fact it was more
terrible than the screaming of a thousand horses.
No, Maria Valenzuela did not marry Luis
Cervallos. I am sorry for that. He was my
friend, and much of my money was invested in
his ventures. It was five weeks before the sur-
geons took the bandages from his face. And
there is a scar there to this day, on the cheek,
under the eye. Yet John Harned struck him
but once and struck him only with his naked fist.
Maria Valenzuela is in Austria now. It is said
she is to marry an Arch-Duke or some high noble-
man. I do not know. I think she liked John
Harned before he followed her to Quito to see the
bull-fight. But why the horse? That is what
I desire to know. Why should he watch the bull
and say that it did not count, and then go im-
mediately and most horribly mad because a horse
screamed? There is no understanding the
Gringos. They are barbarians.
62


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG





WHEN THE WORLD WAS
YOUNG
E was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of
man, sitting a moment on top of the
wall to sound the damp darkness for warn-
ings of the dangers it might conceal. But the
plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him
save the moaning of wind through invisible trees
and the rustling of leaves on swaying branches.
A heavy fog drifted and drove before the wind,
and though he could not see this fog, the wet of
it blew upon his face, and the wall on which he
Sat WaS Wet. -
Without noise he had climbed to the top of
the wall from the outside, and without noise he
dropped to the ground on the inside. From his
pocket he drew an electric night-stick, but he
did not use it. Dark as the way was, he was not
anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in his
hand, his finger on the button, he advanced
through the darkness. The ground was velvety
and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead
pine-needles and leaves and mold which evi-
dently had been undisturbed for years. Leaves
65


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
and branches brushed against his body, but so
dark was it that he could not avoid them. Soon
he walked with his hand stretched out gropingly
- before him, and more than once the hand fetched
up against the solid trunks of massive trees. All
about him he knew were these trees; he sensed
the loom of them everywhere; and he experienced
a strange feeling of microscopic Smallness in the
midst of great bulks leaning toward him to crush
him. Beyond, he knew, was the house, and he
expected to find some trail or winding path that
would lead easily to it.
Once, he found himself trapped. On every
side he groped against trees and branches, or
blundered into thickets of underbrush, until there
seemed no way out. Then he turned on his light,
circumspectly, directing its rays to the ground
at his feet. Slowly and carefully he moved it
about him, the white brightness showing in sharp
detail all the obstacles to his progress. He saw
an opening between huge-trunked trees, and ad-
Vanced through it, putting out the light and tread-
ing on dry footing as yet protected from the drip
of the fog by the dense foliage overhead. His
sense of direction was good, and he knew he was
going toward the house.
66


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
And then the thing happened—the thing un-
thinkable and unexpected. His descending foot
came down upon something that was soft and
alive, and that arose with a snort under the weight
of his body. He sprang clear, and crouched for
another spring, anywhere, tense and expectant,
keyed for the onslaught of the unknown. He
waited a moment, wondering what manner of
animal it was that had arisen from under his foot
and that now made no sound nor movement and
that must be crouching and waiting just as tensely
and expectantly as he. The strain became un-
bearable. Holding the night-stick before him, he
pressed the button, saw, and screamed aloud in
terror. He was prepared for anything, from a
frightened calf or fawn to a belligerent lion, but
he was not prepared for what he saw. In that
instant his tiny searchlight, sharp and white, had
shown him what a thousand years would not en-
able him to forget—a man, huge and blond, yel-
low-haired and yellow-bearded, naked except
for soft-tanned moccasins and what seemed
a goat-skin about his middle. Arms and legs
were bare, as were his shoulders and most of his
chest. The skin was smooth and hairless,
but browned by sun and wind, while under
- 67


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
it heavy muscles were knotted like fat snakes.
Still, this alone, unexpected as it well was, was
not what had made the man scream out. What
had caused his terror was the unspeakable ferocity
of the face, the wild-animal glare of the blue eyes
scarcely dazzled by the light, the pine-needles
matted and clinging in the beard and hair, and
the whole formidable body crouched and in the
act of springing at him. Practically in the in-
stant he saw all this, and while his scream still
rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full
at it, and threw himself to the ground. He felt
its feet and shins strike against his ribs, and he
bounded up and away while the thing itself
hurled onward in a heavy crashing fall into the
underbrush.
As the noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped
and on hands and knees waited. He could hear
the thing moving about, searching for him, and he
was afraid to advertise his location by attempting
further flight. He knew that inevitably he
would crackle the underbrush and be pursued.
Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his
mind. He had recovered his composure and
hoped to get away without noise. Several times
he heard the thing beating up the thickets for
68


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
him, and there were moments when it, too, re-
mained still and listened. This gave an idea to
the man. One of his hands was resting on a
chunk of dead wood. Carefully, first feeling
about him in the darkness to know that the full
swing of his arm was clear, he raised the chunk
of wood and threw it. It was not a large piece,
and it went far, landing noisily in a bush. He
heard the thing bound into the bush, and at the
same time himself crawled steadily away. And
on hands and knees, slowly and cautiously, he
crawled on, till his knees were wet on the soggy
mold. When he listened he heard naught but
the moaning wind and the drip-drip of the fog
from the branches. Never abating his caution,
he stood erect and went on to the stone wall, over
which he climbed and dropped down to the road
outside.
Feeling his way in a clump of bushes, he drew
out a bicycle and prepared to mount. He was in
the act of driving the gear around with his foot
'for the purpose of getting the opposite pedal in
position, when he heard the thud of a heavy body
that landed lightly and evidently on its feet. He
did not wait for more, but ran, with hands on
the handles of his bicycle, until he was able to
69


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
vault astride the saddle, catch the pedals, and
start a spurt. Behind he could hear the quick
thud-thud of feet on the dust of the road, but he
drew away from it and lost it.
Unfortunately, he had started away from the
direction of town and was heading higher up into
the hills. He knew that on this particular road
there were no cross roads. The only way back
was past that terror, and he could not steel him-
self to face it. At the end of half an hour,
finding himself on an ever increasing grade, he
dismounted. For still greater safety, leaving the
wheel by the roadside, he climbed through a fence
into what he decided was a hillside pasture,
spread a newspaper on the ground, and sat down.
“Gosh!” he said aloud, mopping the sweat and
fog from his face.
And “Gosh!” he said once again, while rolling
a cigarette and as he pondered the problem of
getting back.
But he made no attempt to go back. He was
resolved not to face that road in the dark, and
with head bowed on knees, he dozed, waiting for
daylight.
How long afterward he did not know, he was
awakened by the yapping bark of a young coyote.
7o


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
As he looked about and located it on the brow
of the hill behind him, he nbted the change that
had come over the face of the night. The fog
was gone; the stars and moon were out; even the
wind had died down. It had transformed into
a balmy California summer night. He tried to
doze again, but the yap of the coyote disturbed
him. Half asleep, he heard a wild and eery
chant. Looking about him, he noticed that the
coyote had ceased its noise and was running away
along the crest of the hill, and behind it, in full
pursuit, no longer chanting, ran the naked crea-
ture he had encountered in the garden. It was
a young coyote, and it was being overtaken when
the chase passed from view. The man trembled
as with a chill as he started to his feet, clambered
over the fence, and mounted his wheel. But it
was his chance and he knew it. The terror was
no longer between him and Mill Valley.
He sped at a breakneck rate down the hill, but
in the turn at the bottom, in the deep shadows,
he encountered a chuck-hole and pitched headlong
over the handle bar.
“It’s sure not my night,” he muttered, as he
examined the broken fork of the machine.
Shouldering the useless wheel, he trudged on.
71


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
In time he came to the stone wall, and, half dis-
believing his experience, he sought in the road
for tracks, and found them—moccasin tracks,
large ones, deep-bitten into the dust at the toes.
It was while bending over them, examining, that
again he heard the eery chant. He had seen the
thing pursue the coyote, and he knew he had no
chance on a straight run. He did not attempt it,
contenting himself with hiding in the shadows
on the off side of the road.
And again he saw the thing that was like a
naked man, running Swiftly and lightly and sing-
ing as it ran. Opposite him it paused, and his
heart stood still. But instead of coming toward
his hiding-place, it leaped into the air, caught the
branch of a roadside tree, and swung swiftly up-
ward, from limb to limb, like an ape. It swung
across the wall, and a dozen feet above the top,
into the branches of another tree, and dropped
out of sight to the ground. The man waited a
few wondering minutes, then started on.
II
Dave Slotter leaned belligerently against the
desk that barred the way to the private office of
72


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
James Ward, senior partner of the firm of Ward,
Knowles & Co. Dave was angry. Every one
in the outer office had looked him over suspi-
ciously, and the man who faced him was exces-
sively suspicious.
“You just tell Mr. Ward it’s important,” he
urged.
“I tell you he is dictating and cannot be dis-
turbed,” was the answer. “Come to-morrow.”
“To-morrow will be too late. You just trot
along and tell Mr. Ward it’s a matter of life
and death.”
The secretary hesitated and Dave seized the
advantage.
“You just tell him I was across the bay in Mill
Valley last night, and that I want to put him
wise to something.”
“What name?” was the query.
“Never mind the name. He don’t know me.”
When Dave was shown into the private office,
he was still in the belligerent frame of mind, but
when he saw a large fair man whirl in a revolv-
ing chair from dictating to a stenographer to face
him, Dave's demeanor abruptly changed. He
did not know why it changed, and he was secretly
angry with himself.
73


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
“You are Mr. Ward?” Dave asked with a
fatuousness that still further irritated him. He
had never intended it at all.
“Yes,” came the answer. “And who are
you?”
“Harry Bancroft,” Dave lied. “You don’t
know me, and my name don’t matter.”
“You sent in word that you were in Mill Val-
ley last night?”
“You live there, don’t you?” Dave countered,
looking suspiciously at the Stenographer.
“Yes. What do you mean to see me about?
I am very busy.”
“I’d like to see you alone, sir.”
Mr. Ward gave him a quick, penetrating look,
hesitated, then made up his mind.
“That will do for a few minutes, Miss Potter.”
The girl arose, gathered her notes together, and
passed out. Dave looked at Mr. James Ward
wonderingly, until that gentleman broke his train
of inchoate thought.
“Well?”
“I was over in Mill Valley last night,” Dave
began confusedly.
“I’ve heard that before. What do you
want?”
74.


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
And Dave proceeded in the face of a growing
conviction that was unbelievable.
“I was at your house, or in the grounds, I
mean.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I came to break in,” Dave answered in all
frankness. “I heard you lived all alone with a
Chinaman for cook, and it looked good to me.
Only I did n’t break in. Something happened
that prevented. That’s why I'm here. I come
to warn you. I found a wild man loose in your
grounds—a regular devil. He could pull a guy
like me to pieces. He gave me the run of my life.
He don’t wear any clothes to speak of, he climbs
trees like a monkey, and he runs like a deer. I
saw him chasing a coyote, and the last I saw of it,
by God, he was gaining on it.”
Dave paused and looked for the effect that
would follow his words. But no effect came.
James Ward was quietly curious, and that was
all. -
“Very remarkable, very remarkable,” he mur-
mured. “A wild man, you say. Why have you
come to tell me?”
“To warn you of your danger. I’m some-
thing of a hard proposition myself, but I don’t
75


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
believe in killing people . . . that is, un-
necessarily. I realized that you was in danger.
I thought I’d warn you. Honest, that’s the
game. Of course, if you wanted to give me any-
thing for my trouble, I’d take it. That was in
my mind, too. But I don’t care whether you
give me anything or not. I’ve warned you any-
way, and done my duty.”
Mr. Ward meditated and drummed on the sur-
face of his desk. Dave noticed they were large,
powerful hands, withal well-cared for despite
their dark sunburn. Also, he noted what had al-
ready caught his eye before—a tiny strip of flesh-
colored courtplaster on the forehead over one eye.
And still the thought that forced itself into his
mind was unbelievable.
Mr. Ward took a wallet from his inside coat
pocket, drew out a greenback, and passed it to
Dave, who noted as he pocketed it that it was for
twenty dollars.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Ward, indicating that
the interview was at an end. “I shall have the
matter investigated. A wild man running loose
is dangerous.”
But so quiet a man was Mr. Ward, that Dave's
courage returned. Besides, a new theory had
76


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
suggested itself. The wild man was evidently
Mr. Ward's brother, a lunatic privately confined.
Dave had heard of such things. Perhaps Mr.
Ward wanted it kept quiet. That was why he
had given him the twenty dollars.
“Say,” Dave began, “now I come to think of
it that wild man looked a lot like you—”
That was as far as Dave got, for at that mo-
ment he witnessed a transformation and found
himself gazing into the same unspeakably fero-
cious blue eyes of the night before, at the same
clutching talon-like hands, and at the same
formidable bulk in the act of springing upon him.
But this time Dave had no night-stick to throw,
and he was caught by the biceps of both arms in
a grip so terrific that it made him groan with pain.
He saw the large white teeth exposed, for all the
world as a dog's about to bite. Mr. Ward's
beard brushed his face as the teeth went in for the
grip on his throat. But the bite was not given.
Instead, Dave felt the other's body stiffen as with
an iron restraint, and then he was flung aside,
without effort but with such force that only the
wall stopped his momentum and dropped him
gasping to the floor.
“What do you mean by coming here and try-
77


~~~ WORLD WAS YOUNG
ing to blackmail me?” Mr. Ward was snarling at
him. “Here, give me back that money.”
Dave passed the bill back without a word.
“I thought you came here with good intentions.
I know you now. Let me see and hear no more
of you, or I’ll put you in prison where you be-
long. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Dave gasped.
“Then go.”
And Dave went, without further word, both
his biceps aching intolerably from the bruise of
that tremendous grip. As his hand rested on
the door knob, he was stopped.
“You were lucky,” Mr. Ward was saying, and
Dave noted that his face and eyes were cruel and
gloating and proud. “You were lucky. Had
I wanted, I could have torn your muscles out of
your arms and thrown them in the waste basket
there.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dave; and absolute conviction
vibrated in his voice.
He opened the door and passed out. The
Secretary looked at him interrogatively.
“Gosh!” was all Dave vouchsafed, and with
this utterance passed out of the offices and the
story.
78


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
III
James G. Ward was forty years of age, a suc-
cessful business man, and very unhappy. For
forty years he had vainly tried to solve a prob-
lem that was really himself and that with in-
creasing years became more and more a woeful
affliction. In himself he was two men, and, chron-
ologically speaking, these men were several thou-
sand years or so apart. He had studied the
question of dual personality probably more pro-
foundly than any half dozen of the leading spe-
cialists in that intricate and mysterious psycholog-
ical field. In himself he was a different case
from any that had been recorded. Even the
most fanciful flights of the fiction-writers had
not quite hit upon him. He was not a Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nor was he like the un-
fortunate young man in Kipling’s “Greatest
Story in the World.” His two personalities
were so mixed that they were practically aware of
themselves and of each other all the time.
His one self was that of a man whose rearing
and education were modern and who had lived
through the latter part of the nineteenth century
and well into the first decade of the twentieth.
79


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
His other self he had located as a savage and a
barbarian living under the primitive conditions
of several thousand years before. But which self
was he, and which was the other, he would never
tell. For he was both selves, and both selves
all the time. Very rarely indeed did it happen
that one self did not know what the other was
doing. Another thing was that he had no visions
nor memories of the past in which that early self
had lived. That early self lived in the present;
but while it lived in the present, it was under the
compulsion to live the way of life that must have
been in that distant past.
In his childhood he had been a problem to his
father and mother, and to the family doctors,
though never had they come within a thousand
miles of hitting upon the clue to his erratic con-
duct. Thus, they could not understand his ex-
cessive somnolence in the forenoon, nor his ex-
cessive activity at night. When they found him
wandering along the hallways at night, or climb-
ing over giddy roofs, or running in the hills, they
decided he was a somnambulist. In reality he was
wide-eyed awake and merely under the night-
roaming compulsion of his early self. Ques-
tioned by an obtuse medico, he once told the truth
8o


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
and suffered the ignominy of having the revela-
tion contemptuously labeled and dismissed as
“dreams.”
The point was, that as twilight and evening
came on he became wakeful. The four walls of
a room were an irk and a restraint. He heard
a thousand voices whispering to him through the
darkness. The night called to him, for he was,
for that period of the twenty-four hours, es-
sentially a night-prowler. But nobody under-
stood, and never again did he attempt to explain.
They classified him as a sleep-walker and took
precautions accordingly—precautions that very
often were futile. As his childhood advanced,
he grew more cunning, so that the major portion
of all his nights were spent in the open at realiz-
ing his other self. As a result, he slept in the
forenoons. Morning studies and schools were
impossible, and it was discovered that only in
the afternoons, under private teachers, could he
be taught anything. Thus was his modern self
educated and developed.
But a problem, as a child, he ever remained.
He was known as a little demon, of insensate
cruelty and viciousness. The family medicos
privately adjudged him a mental monstrosity and
81


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
a degenerate. Such few boy companions as he
had, hailed him as a wonder, though they were
all afraid of him. He could outclimb, outswim,
outrun, outdevil any of them; while none dared
fight with him. He was too terribly strong, too
madly furious.
When nine years of age he ran away to the
hills, where he flourished, night-prowling, for
seven weeks before he was discovered and brought
home. The marvel was how he had managed to
subsist and keep in condition during that time.
They did not know, and he never told them, of
the rabbits he had killed, of the quail, young and
old, he had captured and devoured, of the farm-
ers' chicken-roosts he had raided, nor of the
cave-lair he had made and carpeted with dry
leaves and grasses and in which he had slept in
warmth and comfort through the forenoons of
many days.
At college he was notorious for his sleepiness
and stupidity during the morning lectures and for
his brilliance in the afternoon. By collateral
reading and by borrowing the notebook of his
fellow students he managed to scrape through
the detestable morning courses, while his after-
noon courses were triumphs. In football he
82


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
proved a giant and a terror, and, in almost every
form of track athletics, save for strange Berserker
rages that were sometimes displayed, he could be
depended upon to win. But his fellows were
afraid to box with him, and he signalized his last
wrestling bout by sinking his teeth into the
shoulder of his opponent.
After college, his father, in despair, sent him
among the cow-punchers of a Wyoming ranch.
Three months later the doughty cowmen con-
fessed he was too much for them and telegraphed
his father to come and take the wild man away.
Also, when the father arrived to take him away,
the cowmen allowed that they would vastly pre-
fer chumming with howling cannibals, gibbering
lunatics, cavorting gorillas, grizzly bears, and
man-eating tigers than with this particular
young college product with hair parted in the
middle.
There was one exception to the lack of memory
of the life of his early self, and that was language.
By some quirk of atavism, a certain portion of
that early self’s language had come down to him
as a racial memory. In moments of happiness,
exaltation, or battle, he was prone to burst out in
wild barbaric songs or chants. It was by this
83


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
means that he located in time and space that
strayed half of him who should have been dead
and dust for thousands of years. He sang, once,
and deliberately, several of the ancient chants in
the presence of Professor Wertz, who gave
courses in old Saxon and who was a philologist
of repute and passion. At the first one, the pro-
fessor pricked up his ears and demanded to know
what mongrel tongue or hog-German it was.
When the second chant was rendered, the profes-
sor was highly excited. James Ward then con-
cluded the performance by giving a song that
always irresistibly rushed to his lips when he was
engaged in fierce struggling or fighting. Then it
was that Professor Wertz proclaimed it no hog-
German, but early German, or early Teuton, of
a date that must far precede anything that had
ever been discovered and handed down by the
scholars. So early was it that it was beyond him;
yet it was filled with haunting reminiscences of
word-forms he knew and which his trained intui-
tion told him were true and real. He demanded
the source of the songs, and asked to borrow the
precious book that contained them. Also, he de-
manded to know why young Ward had always
posed as being profoundly ignorant of the Ger.
84


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
the night Dave Slotter stepped on him in the
woods.
Persuading his father to advance the capital,
he went into business, and keen and successful
business he made of it, devoting his afternoons
whole-souled to it, while his partner devoted the
mornings. The early evenings he spent socially,
but, as the hour grew to nine or ten, an irresistible
restlessness overcame him and he disappeared
from the haunts of men until the next afternoon.
Friends and acquaintances thought that he spent
much of his time in sport. And they were right,
though they never would have dreamed of the na-
ture of the sport, even if they had seen him run-
ning coyotes in night-chases over the hills of Mill
Valley. Neither were the schooner captains be-
lieved when they reported seeing, on cold winter
mornings, a man swimming in the tide-rips of
Raccoon Straits or in the swift currents between
Goat Island and Angel Island miles from shore.
In the bungalow at Mill Valley he lived alone,
save for Lee Sing, the Chinese cook and factotum,
who knew much about the strangeness of his mas-
ter, who was paid well for saying nothing, and
who never did say anything. After the satisfac-
tion of his nights, a morning's sleep, and a break-


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
fast of Lee Sing’s, James Ward crossed the bay
to San Francisco on a midday ferryboat and went
to the club and on to his office, as normal and
conventional a man of business as could be found
lin the city. But as the evening lengthened, the
night called to him. There came a quickening of
all his perceptions and a restlessness. His hear-
ing was suddenly acute; the myriad night-noises
told him a luring and familiar story; and, if
alone, he would begin to pace up and down the
narrow room like any caged animal from the wild.
Once, he ventured to fall in love. He never
permitted himself that diversion again. He was
afraid. And for many a day the young lady,
scared at least out of a portion of her young lady-
hood, bore on her arms and shoulders and wrists
divers black-and-blue bruises—tokens of caresses
which he had bestowed in all fond gentleness but
too late at night. There was the mistake. Had
he ventured love-making in the afternoon, all
would have been well, for it would have been as
the quiet gentleman that he would have made
love—but at night it was the uncouth, wife-steal-
ing savage of the dark German forests. Out of
his wisdom, he decided that afternoon love-mak-
ing could be prosecuted successfully; but out of
87


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
the same wisdom he was convinced that marriage
would prove a ghastly failure. He found it ap-
palling to imagine being married and encounter-
ing his wife after dark. -
So he had eschewed all love-making, regulated
his dual life, cleaned up a million in business,
fought shy of match-making mamas and bright-
and eager-eyed young ladies of various ages, met
Lilian Gersdale and made it a rigid observance
never to see her later than eight o'clock in the
evening, run of nights after his coyotes, and slept
in forest lairs—and through it all had kept his
secret save for Lee Sing . . . and now,
Dave Slotter. It was the latter's discovery of
both his selves that frightened him. In spite of
the counter fright he had given the burglar, the
latter might talk. And even if he did not, sooner
or later he would be found out by some one else.
Thus it was that James Ward made a fresh
and heroic effort to control the Teutonic barba-
rian that was half of him. So well did he make
it a point to see Lilian in the afternoons and early
evenings, that the time came when she accepted
him for better or worse, and when he prayed
privily and fervently that it was not for worse.
During this period no prize-fighter ever trained
88


whEN THE wortLD WAS YoUNG
more harshly and faithfully for a contest than he
trained to subdue the wild savage in him.
Among other things, he strove to exhaust himself
during the day, so that sleep would render him
deaf to the call of the night. He took a vacation
from the office and went on long hunting trips,
following the deer through the most inaccessible
and rugged country he could find—and always in
the daytime. Night found him indoors and tired.
At home he installed a score of exercise machines,
and where other men might go through a particu-
lar movement ten times, he went hundreds.
Also, as a compromise, he built a sleeping porch
on the second story. Here he at least breathed
the blessed night air. Double screens prevented
him from escaping into the woods, and each night
Lee Sing locked him in and each morning let him
Out.
The time came, in the month of August, when
he engaged additional servants to assist Lee Sing
and dared a house party in his Mill Valley bunga-
low. Lilian, her mother and brother, and half
a dozen mutual friends, were the guests. For
two days and nights all went well. And on the
third night, playing bridge till eleven o'clock, he
had reason to be proud of himself. His rest-
89


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
lessness he successfully hid, but as luck would
have it, Lilian Gersdale was his opponent on his
right. She was a frail delicate flower of a
woman, and in his night-mood her very frailty
incensed him. Not that he loved her less, but
that he felt almost irresistibly impelled to reach
out and paw and maul her. Especially was this
true when she was engaged in playing a winning
hand against him.
He had one of the deer-hounds brought in, and,
when it seemed he must fly to pieces with the ten-
sion, a caressing hand laid on the animal brought
him relief. These contacts with the hairy coat
gave him instant easement and enabled him to
play out the evening. Nor did anyone guess the
terrible struggle their host was making, the while
he laughed so carelessly and played so keenly and
deliberately.
When they separated for the night, he saw to
it that he parted from Lilian in the presence of
the others. Once on his sleeping porch, and
safely locked in, he doubled and tripled and even
quadrupled his exercises until, exhausted, he lay
down on the couch to woo sleep and to ponder
two problems that especially troubled him. One
was this matter of exercise. It was a paradox.
90


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
The more he exercised in this excessive fashion,
the stronger he became. While it was true that
he thus quite tired out his night-running Teutonic
self, it seemed that he was merely setting back
the fatal day when his strength would be too
much for him and overpower him, and then it
would be a strength more terrible than he had
yet known. The other problem was that of his
marriage and of the stratagems he must employ
in order to avoid his wife after dark. And thus
fruitlessly pondering, he fell asleep.
Now, where the huge grizzly bear came from
that night was long a mystery, while the people
of the Springs Brothers' Circus, showing at
Sausalito, searched long and vainly for “Big Ben,
the Biggest Grizzly in Captivity.” But Big Ben
escaped, and, out of the mazes of half a thou-
sand bungalows and country estates, selected the
grounds of James J. Ward for visitation. The
first Mr. Ward knew was when he found himself
on his feet, quivering and tense, a surge of battle
in his breast and on his lips the old war-chant.
From without came a wild baying and bellowing
of the hounds. And sharp as a knife-thrust
through the pandemonium came the agony of a
stricken dog—his dog, he knew.
91


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
Not stopping for slippers, pajama-clad, he
burst through the door Lee Sing had so carefully
locked, and sped down the stairs and out into the
night. As his naked feet struck the graveled
driveway, he stopped abruptly, reached under the
steps to a hiding-place he knew well, and pulled
forth a huge knotty club—his old companion on
many a mad night adventure on the hills. The
frantic hullabaloo of the dogs was coming nearer,
and, swinging the club, he sprang straight into the
thickets to meet it.
The aroused household assembled on the wide
veranda. Somebody turned on the electric
lights, but they could see nothing but one an-
other's frightened faces. Beyond the brightly
illuminated driveway the trees formed a wall of
impenetrable blackness. Yet somewhere in that
blackness a terrible struggle was going on.
There was an infernal outcry of animals, a great
snarling and growling, the sound of blows being
struck, and a smashing and crashing of under-
brush by heavy bodies.
The tide of battle swept out from among the
trees and upon the driveway just beneath the on-
lookers. Then they saw. Mrs. Gersdale cried
out and clung fainting to her son. Lilian, clutch-
92


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
ing the railing so spasmodically that a bruising
hurt was left in her finger-ends for days, gazed
horror-stricken at a yellow-haired, wild-eyed giant
whom she recognized as the man who was to be
her husband. He was swinging a great club,
and fighting furiously and calmly with a shaggy
monster that was bigger than any bear she had
ever seen. One rip of the beast's claws had
dragged away Ward's pajama-coat and streaked
his flesh with blood.
While most of Lilian Gersdale’s fright was
for the man beloved, there was a large portion of
it due to the man himself. Never had she
dreamed so formidable and magnificent a Savage
lurked under the starched shirt and conventional
garb of her betrothed. And never had she had
any conception of how a man battled. Such a
battle was certainly not modern; nor was she
there beholding a modern man, though she did not
know it. For this was not Mr. James J. Ward,
the San Francisco business man, but one, un-
named and unknown, a crude, rude Savage crea-
ture who, by some freak of chance, lived again
after thrice a thousand years.
The hounds, ever maintaining their mad up-
roar, circled about the fight, or dashed in and out,
93


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
distracting the bear. When the animal turned to
meet such flanking assaults, the man leaped in
and the club came down. Angered afresh by
every such blow, the bear would rush, and the
man, leaping and skipping, avoiding the dogs,
went backwards or circled to one side or the
other. Whereupon the dogs, taking advantage
of the opening, would again spring in and draw
the animal’s wrath to them.
The end came suddenly. Whirling, the
grizzly caught a hound with a wide sweeping
cuff that sent the brute, its ribs caved in and its
back broken, hurtling twenty feet. Then the
human brute went mad. A foaming rage flecked
the lips that parted with a wild inarticulate cry,
as it sprang in, swung the club mightily in both
hands, and brought it down full on the head of
the uprearing grizzly. Not even the skull of a
grizzly could withstand the crushing force of such
a blow, and the animal went down to meet the
worrying of the hounds. And through their
Scurrying leaped the man, Squarely upon the body,
where, in the white electric light, resting on his
club, he chanted a triumph in an unknown tongue
—a song so ancient that Professor Wertz would
have given ten years of his life for it.
94.


when THE world was YoUNG
His guests rushed to possess him and acclaim
him, but James Ward, suddenly looking out of
the eyes of the early Teuton, saw the fair frail
Twentieth Century girl he loved, and felt some-
thing snap in his brain. He staggered weakly
toward her, dropped the club, and nearly fell.
Something had gone wrong with him. Inside his
brain was an intolerable agony. It seemed as if
the soul of him were flying asunder. Following
the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back
and saw the carcass of the bear. The sight filled
him with fear. He uttered a cry and would have
fled, had they not restrained him and led him
into the bungalow.
James J.Ward is still at the head of the firm
of Ward, Knowles & Co. But he no longer lives
in the country; nor does he run of nights after the
coyotes under the moon. The early Teuton in
him died the night of the Mill Valley fight with
the bear. James J. Ward is now wholly James
J. Ward, and he shares no part of his being with
any vagabond anachronism from the younger
world. And so wholly is James J. Ward mod-
ern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse
of civilized fear. He is now afraid of the dark,
95


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG
and night in the forest is to him a thing of abys-
mal terror. His city house is of the spick and span
order, and he evinces a great interest in burglar-
proof devices. His home is a tangle of electric
wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely
breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he
had invented a combination keyless door-lock that
travelers may carry in their vest pockets and ap-
ply immediately and successfully under all cir-
cumstances. But his wife does not deem him a
coward. She knows better. And, like any hero,
he is content to rest on his laurels. His bravery
is never questioned by those of his friends who are
aware of the Mill Valley episode.


-
:
THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT


*


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
ARTER WATSON, a current magazine un-
der his arm, strolled slowly along, gazing
about him curiously. Twenty years had elapsed
since he had been on this particular street,
and the changes were great and stupefying. This
Western city of three hundred thousand souls had
contained but thirty thousand, when, as a boy, he
had been wont to ramble along its streets. In
those days the street he was now on had been a
quiet residence street in the respectable working-
class quarter. On this late afternoon he found
that it had been submerged by a vast and vicious
tenderloin. Chinese and Japanese shops and
dens abounded, all confusedly intermingled with
low white resorts and boozing kens. This quiet
street of his youth had become the toughest quar-
ter of the city.
He looked at his watch. It was half-past five.
It was the slack time of the day in such a region,
as he well knew, yet he was curious to see. In all
his score of years of wandering and studying so-
4???? is
99


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
cial conditions over the world, he had carried with
him the memory of his old town as a sweet and
wholesome place. The metamorphosis he now be-
held was startling. He certainly must continue
his stroll and glimpse the infamy to which his
town had descended.
Another thing: Carter Watson had a keen
social and civic consciousness. Independently
wealthy, he had been loath to dissipate his ener-
gies in the pink teas and freak dinners of society,
while actresses, race-horses, and kindred diversions
had left him cold. He had the ethical bee in his
bonnet and was a reformer of no mean pretension,
though his work had been mainly in the line of
contributions to the heavier reviews and quarter-
lies and to the publication over his name of
brightly, cleverly written books on the working
classes and the slum-dwellers. Among the
twenty-seven to his credit occurred titles such as,
“If Christ Came to New Orleans,” “The Worked-
out Worker,” “Tenement Reform in Berlin,”
“The Rural Slums of England,” “The people of
the East Side,” “Reform Versus Revolution,”
“The University Settlement as a Hot Bed of
Radicalism” and “The Cave Man of Civili-
zation.”
1OO


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
multitudinous tables, he proceeded to circumnavi-
gate the room.
Now, at the rear, a short hallway led off to a
small kitchen, and here, at a table, alone, sat Patsy
Horan, proprietor of the Vendome, consuming a
hasty supper ere the evening rush of business.
Also, Patsy Horan was angry with the world.
He had got out of the wrong side of bed that
morning, and nothing had gone right all day.
Had his barkeepers been asked, they would have
described his mental condition as a grouch. But
Carter Watson did not know this. As he passed
the little hallway, Patsy Horan's sullen eyes
lighted on the magazine he carried under his
arm. Patsy did not know Carter Watson, nor
did he know that what he carried under his arm
was a magazine. Patsy, out of the depths of his
grouch, decided that this stranger was one of those
pests who marred and scarred the walls of his back
rooms by tacking up or pasting up advertisements.
The color on the front cover of the magazine con-
vinced him that it was such an advertisement.
Thus the trouble began. Knife and fork in hand,
Patsy leaped for Carter Watson.
“Out wid yeh!” Patsy bellowed. “I know yer
game!”
1O2


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
Carter Watson was startled. The man had
come upon him like the eruption of a jack-in-the-
box.
“A defacin’ me walls,” cried Patsy, at the same
time emitting a string of vivid and vile, rather
than virile, epithets of opprobrium.
“If I have given any offense I did not mean
to—"
But that was as far as the visitor got. Patsy
interrupted.
“Get out wid yeh; yeh talk too much wid yer
mouth,” quoted Patsy, emphasizing his remarks
with flourishes of the knife and fork.
Carter Watson caught a quick vision of that
eating-fork inserted uncomfortaby between his
ribs, knew that it would be rash to talk further
with his mouth, and promptly turned to go. The
sight of his meekly retreating back must have fur-
ther enraged Patsy Horan, for that worthy, drop-
ping the table implements, sprang upon him.
Patsy weighed one hundred and eighty pounds.
So did Watson. In this they were equal. But
Patsy was a rushing, rough-and-tumble saloon-
fighter, while Watson was a boxer. In this the
latter had the advantage, for Patsy came in wide
open, swinging his right in a perilous sweep. All
103


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
Watson had to do was to straight-left him and
escape. But Watson had another advantage.
His boxing, and his experience in the slums and
ghettos of the world, had taught him restraint.
He pivoted on his feet, and, instead of striking,
ducked the other's swinging blow and went into
a clinch. But Patsy, charging like a bull, had the
momentum of his rush, while Watson, whirling
to meet him, had no momentum. As a result, the
pair of them went down, with all their three hun-
dred and sixty pounds of weight, in a long crash-
ing fall, Watson underneath. He lay with his
head touching the rear wall of the large room.
The street was a hundred and fifty feet away, and
he did some quick thinking. His first thought
was to avoid trouble. He had no wish to get into
the papers of this, his childhood town, where
many of his relatives and family friends still
lived.
So it was that he locked his arms around the
man on top of him, held him close, and waited for
the help to come that must come in response to
the crash of the fall. The help came—that is, six
men ran in from the bar and formed about in a
semi-circle.
“Take him off, fellows,” Watson said. “I
1O4


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
haven’t struck him, and I don’t want any fight.”
But the semi-circle remained silent. Watson
held on and waited. Patsy, after various vain ef-
forts to inflict damage, made an overture.
“Leggo o' me an’ I’ll get off o' yeh,” said he.
Watson let go, but when Patsy scrambled to
his feet he stood over his recumbent foe, ready to
* strike.
“Get up,” Patsy commanded.
His voice was stern and implacable, like the
voice of God calling to judgment, and Watson
knew there was no mercy there.
“Stand back and I’ll get up,” he countered.
“If yer a gentleman, get up,” quoth Patsy, his
pale blue eyes aflame with wrath, his fist ready for
a crushing blow.
At the same moment he drew his foot back to
kick the other in the face. Watson blocked the
kick with his crossed arms and sprang to his feet
so quickly that he was in a clinch with his antag-
onist before the latter could strike. Holding him,
Watson spoke to the onlookers:
“Take him away from me, fellows. You see
I am not striking him. I don’t want to fight. I
want to get out of here.”
The circle did not move nor speak. Its silence
loš


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
was ominous and sent a chill to Watson's heart.
Patsy made an effort to throw him, which culmi-
nated in his putting Patsy on his back. Tearing
loose from him, Watson sprang to his feet and
made for the door. But the circle of men was in-
terposed like a wall. He noticed the white, pasty
faces, the kind that never see the sun, and knew
that the men who barred his way were the night-
prowlers and preying beasts of the city jungle.
By them he was thrust back upon the pursuing,
bull-rushing Patsy.
Again it was a clinch, in which, in momentary
safety, Watson appealed to the gang. And again
his words fell on deaf ears. Then it was that he
knew fear. For he had known of many similar
situations, in low dens like this, when solitary men
were man-handled, their ribs and features caved
in, themselves beaten and kicked to death. And
he knew, further, that if he were to escape he must
neither strike his assailant nor any of the men who
opposed him. -
Yet in him was righteous indignation. Under
no circumstances could seven to one be fair.
Also, he was angry, and there stirred in him the
fighting beast that is in all men. But he remem-
bered his wife and children, his unfinished book,
106


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
the ten thousand rolling acres of the up-country
ranch he loved so well. He even saw in flashing
visions the blue of the sky, the golden Sun pouring
down on his flower-spangled meadows, the lazy
cattle knee-deep in the brooks, and the flash of
trout in the riffles. Life was good—too good
for him to risk it for a moment's sway of the
beast. In short, Carter Watson was cool and
scared.
His opponent, locked by his masterly clinch,
was striving to throw him. Again Watson put
him on the floor, broke away, and was thrust back
by the pasty-faced circle to duck Patsy's swinging
right and effect another clinch. This happened
many times. And Watson grew even cooler,
while the baffled Patsy, unable to inflict punish-
ment, raged wildly and more wildly. He took to
batting with his head in the clinches. The first
time, he landed his forehead flush on Watson's
nose. After that, the latter, in the clinches,
buried his face in Patsy's breast. But the enraged
Patsy batted on, striking his own eye and nose
and cheek on the top of the other's head. The
more he was thus injured, the more and the harder
did Patsy bat.
This one-sided contest continued for twelve
107


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
or fifteen minutes. Watson never struck a blow,
and strove only to escape. Sometimes, in the
free moments, circling about among the tables as
he tried to win the door, the pasty-faced men
gripped his coat-tails and flung him back at the
swinging right of the on-rushing Patsy. Time
upon time, and times without end, he clinched and
put Patsy on his back, each time first whirling him
around and putting him down in the direction of
the door and gaining toward that goal by the
length of the fall.
In the end, hatless, dishevelled, with streaming
nose and one eye closed, Watson won to the side-
walk and into the arms of a policeman.
“Arrest that man,” Watson panted.
“Hello, Patsy,” said the policeman. “What’s
the mix-up?”
“Hello, Charley,” was the answer. “This guy
comes in—”
“Arrest that man, officer,” Watson repeated.
“G” wan! Beat it!” said Patsy.
“Beat it!” added the policeman. “If you don’t
I’ll pull you in.”
“Not unless you arrest that man. He has com-
mitted a violent and unprovoked assault on me.”
“Is it so, Patsy?” was the officer's query.
lo3


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
“Nah. Lemme tell you, Charley, an’ I got the
witnesses to prove it, so help me God. I was set-
tin’ in me kitchen eatin a bowl of soup, when
this guy comes in an' gets gay wid me. I
never seen him in me born days before. He was
drunk—”
“Look at me, officer,” protested the indignant
sociologist. “Am I drunk?”
The officer looked at him with sullen, menacing
eyes and nodded to Patsy to continue.
“This guy gets gay wid me. “I’m Tim
McGrath,’ says he, ‘an' I can do the like to you,”
says he. “Put up yer hands.’ I Smiles, an’ wid
that, biff biff, he lands me twice an’spills me soup.
Look at me eye. I’m fair murdered.”
“What are you going to do, officer?” Watson
demanded.
“Go on, beat it,” was the answer, “or I’ll pull
you sure.”
Then the civic righteousness of Carter Watson
flamed up.
“Mr. Officer, I protest—”
But at that moment the policeman grabbed his
arm with a savage jerk that nearly overthrew him.
“Come on, you’re pulled.”
“Arrest him, too,” Watson demanded.
109


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
and “CARTER WATSON KNOCKED OUT
BY PATSY HORAN IN THREE ROUNDS.”
At the police court, next morning, under bail,
appeared Carter Watson to answer the complaint
of the People Versus Carter Watson, for the lat-
ter's assault and battery on one Patsy Horan.
But first, the Prosecuting Attorney, who was paid
to prosecute all offenders against the People, drew
him aside and talked with him privately.
“Why not let it drop?” said the Prosecuting
Attorney. “I tell you what you do, Mr. Watson:
Shake hands with Mr. Horan and make it up, and
we’ll drop the case right here. A word to the
Judge, and the case against you will be dismissed.”
“But I don’t want it dismissed,” was the an-
swer. “Your office being what it is, you should
be prosecuting me instead of asking me to make up
with this—this fellow.”
“Oh, I’ll prosecute you all right,” retorted the
Prosecuting Attorney.
“Also you will have to prosecute this Patsy
Horan,” Watson advised; “for I shall now have
him arrested for assault and battery.”
“You’d better shake and make up,” the Prose-
cuting Attorney repeated, and this time there was
almost a threat in his voice. -
N
N
11 1


º
THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
The trials of both men were set for a week
later, on the same morning, in Police Judge Wit-
berg's court.
“You have no chance,” Watson was told by an
old friend of his boyhood, the retired manager of
the biggest paper in the city. “Everybody knows
you were beaten up by this man. His reputation
is most unsavory. But it won’t help you in the
least. Both cases will be dismissed. This will be
because you are you. Any ordinary man would
be convicted.”
“But I do not understand,” objected the per-
plexed sociologist. “Without warning I was at-
tacked by this man and badly beaten. I did not
strike a blow. I–”
“That has nothing to do with it,” the other cut
him off. -
“Then what is there that has anything to do
With it?”
“I’ll tell you. You are now up against the
local police and political machine. Who are
you? You are not even a legal resident in this
town. You live up in the country. You
have n’t a vote of your own here. Much less do
you swing any votes. This dive proprietor swings,
a string of votes in his precinct—a mighty long
string.”
1 12


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
z
“Do you mean to tell me that this Judge Wit-
berg will violate the sacredness of his office
and oath by letting this brute off?” Watson de-
manded.
“Watch him,” was the grim reply. “Oh, he’ll
do it nicely enough. He will give an extra-legal,
extra-judicial decision, abounding in every word
in the dictionary that stands for fairness and
right.”
“But there are the newspapers,” Watson
cried.
“They are not fighting the administration at
present. They’ll give it to you hard. You see
what they have already done to you.”
“Then these snips of boys on the police detail
won’t write the truth?”
“They will write something so near like the
truth that the public will believe it. They write
their stories under instruction, you know. They
have their orders to twist and color, and there
won’t be much left of you when they get done.
Better drop the whole thing right now. You are
in bad.” -
“But the trials are set.”
“Give the word and they’ll drop them now. A
man can’t fight a machine unless he has a machine
behind him.”
113


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
But Watson was soon to learn. Patsy Horan
and two of his satellites testified to a most
colossal aggregation of perjuries. Watson could
not have believed it possible without having ex-
perienced it. They denied the existence of the
other four men. And of the two that testified,
one claimed to have been in the kitchen, a witness
to Watson's unprovoked assault on Patsy, while
the other, remaining in the bar, had witnessed
Watson's second and third rushes into the place
as he attempted to annihilate the unoffending
Patsy. The vile language ascribed to Watson
was so voluminously and unspeakably vile, that
he felt they were injuring their own case. It was
so impossible that he should utter such things.
But when they described the brutal blows he had
rained on poor Patsy's face, and the chair he de-
molished when he vainly attempted to kick Patsy,
Watson waxed secretly hilarious and at the same
time sad. The trial was a farce, but such low-
ness of life was depressing to contemplate when
he considered the long upward climb humanity
must make.
Watson could not recognize himself, nor could
his worst enemy have recognized him, in the
swashbuckling, rough-housing picture that was
115


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
painted of him. But, as in all cases of compli-
cated perjury, rifts and contradictions in the va-
rious stories appeared. The Judge somehow
failed to notice them, while the Prosecuting At-
torney and Patsy's attorney shied off from them
gracefully. Watson had not bothered to get a
lawyer for himself, and he was now glad that he
had not.
Still, he retained a semblance of faith in Judge
Witberg when he went himself on the stand and
started to tell his story.
“I was strolling casually along the street, your
Honor,” Watson began, but was interrupted by
the Judge.
“We are not here to consider your previous
actions,” bellowed Judge Witberg. “Who struck
the first blow?”
“Your Honor,” Watson pleaded, “I have no
witnesses of the actual fray, and the truth of my
story can only be brought out by telling the story
fully—”
Again he was interrupted.
“We do not care to publish any magazines
here,” Judge Witberg roared, looking at him so
fiercely and malevolently that Watson could
scarcely bring himself to believe that this was the
116


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
same man he had studied a few minutes previ-
ously.
“Who struck the first blow?” Patsy's attorney
asked.
The Prosecuting Attorney interposed, demand-
ing to know which of the two cases lumped to-
gether this was, and by what right Patsy's lawyer,
at that stage of the proceedings, should take the
witness. Patsy's attorney fought back. Judge
Witberg interfered, professing no knowledge of
any two cases being lumped together. All this
had to be explained. Battle royal raged, termina-
ting in both attorneys apologizing to the Court
and to each other. And so it went, and to Wat-
son it had the seeming of a group of pickpockets
ruffling and bustling an honest man as they took
his purse. The machine was working, that was
all.
“Why did you enter this place of unsavory
reputation?” was asked him.
“It has been my custom for many years, as a
student of economics and sociology, to acquaint
myself—”
But this was as far as Watson got.
“We want none of your ologies here,” snarled
Judge Witberg. “It is a plain question. Answer
117


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
it plainly. Is it true or not true that you were
drunk? That is the gist of the question.”
When Watson attempted to tell how Patsy had
injured his face in his attempts to bat with his
head, Watson was openly scouted and flouted,
and Judge Witberg again took him in hand.
“Are you aware of the solemnity of the oath
you took to testify to nothing but the truth on this
witness stand?” the Judge demanded. “This is
a fairy story you are telling. It is not reasonable
that a man would so injure himself, and continue
to injure himself, by striking the soft and sensitive
parts of his face against your head. You are a
sensible man. It is unreasonable, is it not?”
“Men are unreasonable when they are angry,”
Watson answered meekly.
Then it was that Judge Witberg was deeply
outraged and righteously wrathful.
“What right have you to say that?” he cried.
“It is gratuitous. It has no bearing on the case.
You are here as a witness, sir, of events that have
transpired. The Court does not wish to hear any
expressions of opinion from you at all.”
“I but answered your question, your Honor,”
Watson protested humbly.
“You did nothing of the sort,” was the next
118


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
blast. “And let me warn you, sir, let me warn
you, that you are laying yourself liable to con-
tempt by such insolence. And I will have you
know that we know how to observe the law and
the rules of courtesy down here in this little court-
room. I am ashamed of you.”
And, while the next punctilious legal wrangle
between the attorneys interrupted his tale of what
happened in the Vendome, Carter Watson, with-
out bitterness, amused and at the same time sad,
saw rise before him the machine, large and small,
that dominated his country, the unpunished and
shameless grafts of a thousand cities perpetrated
by the spidery and vermin-like creatures of the
machines. Here it was before him, a courtroom
and a judge, bowed down in subservience by the
machine to a dive-keeper who swung a string of
votes. Petty and Sordid as it was, it was one face
of the many-faced machine that loomed colossally,
in every city and State, in a thousand guises over-
shadowing the land.
' A familiar phrase rang in his ears: “It is to
laugh.” At the height of the wrangle, he giggled,
once, aloud, and earned a sullen frown from Judge
Witberg. Worse, a myriad times, he decided,
were these bullying lawyers and this bullying
l 19


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
“Patrick Horan has testified that he was in
danger of his life and that he was compelled to
defend himself,” Judge Witberg's verdict began.
“Mr. Watson has testified to the same thing.
|Each has sworn that the other struck the first
blow; each has sworn that the other made an
unprovoked assault on him. It is an axiom of
the law that the defendant should be given the
benefit of the doubt. A very reasonable doubt
exists. Therefore, in the case of the People Ver-
sus Carter Watson the benefit of the doubt is
given to said Carter Watson and he is herewith
ordered discharged from custody. The same rea-
Soning applies to the case of the People Versus
Patrick Horan. He is given the benefit of the
doubt and discharged from custody. My recom-
mendation is that both defendants shake hands
and make up.” -
In the afternoon papers the first headline that
caught Watson's eye was: “CARTER WAT-
SON ACQUITTED.” In the second paper it
was: “CARTER WATSON ESCAPES A
FINE.” But what capped everything was the
one beginning: “CARTER WATSON A GOOD
FELLOW.” In the text he read how Judge
Witberg had advised both fighters to shake hands,
121


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
which they promptly did. Further, he read:
“‘Let’s have a nip on it,” said Patsy Horan.
“‘Sure,” said Carter Watson.
“And, arm in arm, they ambled for the near-y
est saloon.”
IV
Now, from the whole adventure, Watson car-
ried away no bitterness. It was a social experi-
ence of a new order, and it led to the writing of
another book, which he entitled, “POLICE
COURT PROCEDURE: A Tentative Analy-
sis.”
One summer morning a year later, on his ranch,
he left his horse and himself clambered on through
a miniature canyon to inspect some rock ferns he
had planted the previous winter. Emerging from
the upper end of the canyon, he came out on one
of his flower-spangled meadows, a delightful iso-
lated spot, screened from the world by low hills,
and clumps of trees. And here he found a man,
evidently on a stroll from the summer hotel down
at the little town a mile away. They met face
to face and the recognition was mutual. It was
Judge Witberg. Also, it was a clear case of tres-
122


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
pass, for Watson had trespass signs upon
his boundaries, though he never enforced
them.
Judge Witberg held out his hand, which Wat-
son refused to see.
“Politics is a dirty trade, isn't it, Judge?” he
remarked. “Oh, yes, I see your hand, but I don’t
care to take it. The papers said I shook hands
with Patsy Horan after the trial. You know I
did n’t, but let me tell you that I’d a thousand
times rather shake hands with him and his vile
following of curs, than with you.”
Judge Witberg was painfully flustered, and as
he hemmed and hawed and essayed to speak, Wat-
son, looking at him, was struck by a sudden
whim, and he determined on a grim and facetious
antic.
“I should scarcely expect any animus from a
man of your acquirements and knowledge of the
world,” the Judge was saying.
“Animus?” Watson replied. “Certainly not.
I have n’t such a thing in my nature. And to
prove it, let me show you something curious, some-
thing you have never seen before.” Casting
about him, Watson picked up a rough stone the
size of his fist. “See this. Watch me.”
123


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
So saying, Carter Watson tapped himself a
sharp blow on the cheek. The stone laid the flesh
open to the bone and the blood spurted forth.
“The stone was too sharp,” he announced to
the astounded police judge, who thought he
had gone mad. “I must bruise it a trifle.
There is nothing like being realistic in such mat-
ters.”
Whereupon Carter Watson found a smooth
stone and with it pounded his cheek nicely several
times.
“Ah,” he cooed. “That will turn beautifully
green and black in a few hours. It will be most
convincing.”
“You are insane,” Judge Witberg quavered.
“Don’t use such vile language to me,” said
Watson. “You see my bruised and bleeding
face? You did that, with that right hand of
yours. You hit me twice—biff biff. It is a
brutal and unprovoked assault. I am in danger
of my life. I must protect myself.”
Judge Witberg backed away in alarm before
the menacing fists of the other.
“If you strike me I’ll have you arrested,”
Judge Witberg threatened.
“That is what I told Patsy,” was the answer.
124.


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
“And do you know what he did when I told him
that?”
“No.”
“That!”
And at the same moment Watson's right fist
landed flush on Judge Witberg's nose, putting
that legal gentleman over on his back on the grass.
“Get up!” commanded Watson. “If you are
a gentleman, get up—that’s what Patsy told me,
you know.”
Judge Witberg declined to rise, and was
dragged to his feet by the coat-collar, only to
have one eye blacked and be put on his back again.
After that it was a red Indian massacre. Judge
Witberg was humanely and scientifically beaten
up. His cheeks were boxed, his ears cuffed, and
his face was rubbed in the turf. And all the time
Watson exposited the way Patsy Horan had done
it. Occasionally, and very carefully, the face-
tious sociologist administered a real bruising blow.
Once, dragging the poor Judge to his feet, he de-
liberately bumped his own nose on the gentle-
man's head. The nose promptly bled.
“See that!” cried Watson, stepping back and
deftly shedding his blood all down his own shirt
front. “You did it. With your fist you did it.
- 125


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
It is awful. I am fair murdered. I must again
defend myself.”
And once more Judge Witberg impacted his
features on a fist and was sent to grass.
“I will have you arrested,” he sobbed as he lay.
“That’s what Patsy said.”
“A brutal—Sniff, sniff, and unprovoked—
sniff, sniff—assault.”
“That’s what Patsy said.”
“I will surely have you arrested.”
“Speaking slangily, not if I can beat you to
it.”
And with that, Carter Watson departed down
the canyon, mounted his horse, and rode to town.
An hour later, as Judge Witberg limped up
the grounds to his hotel, he was arrested by a
village constable on a charge of assault and bat-
tery preferred by Carter Watson.
V
“Your Honor,” Watson said next day to the
village Justice, a well to do farmer and graduate,
thirty years before, from a cow college, “since this
Sol Witberg has seen fit to charge me with bat-
tery, following upon my charge of battery against
126


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
him, I would suggest that both cases be lumped
together. The testimony and the facts are the
same in both cases.”
To this the Justice agreed, and the double case
proceeded. Watson, as prosecuting witness, first
took the stand and told his story.
“I was picking flowers,” he testified. “Picking
flowers on my own land, never dreaming of dan-
ger. Suddenly this man rushed upon me from
behind the trees. “I am the Dodo,” he says, “and
I can do you to a frazzle. Put up your hands.”
I smiled, but with that, biff biff, he struck me,
knocking me down and spilling my flowers. The
language he used was frightful. It was an un-
provoked and brutal assault. Look at my cheek.
Look at my nose. I could not understand it.
He must have been drunk. Before I recovered
from my surprise he had administered this beat-
ing. I was in danger of my life and was com-
pelled to defend himself. That is all, Your
Honor, though I must say, in conclusion, that I
cannot get over my perplexity. Why did he say
he was the Dodo? Why did he so wantonly
attack me?”
And thus was Sol Witberg given a liberal
education in the art of perjury. Often, from his
127


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
high seat, he had listened indulgently to police
court perjuries in cooked-up cases; but for the
first time perjury was directed against him, and
he no longer sat above the court, with the bailiffs,
the policemen's clubs, and the prison cells behind
him.
“Your Honor,” he cried, “never have I heard
such a pack of lies told by so bare-faced a
liar—”
Watson here sprang to his feet.
“Your Honor, I protest. It is for your Honor
to decided truth or falsehood. The witness is on
the stand to testify to actual events that have
transpired. His personal opinion upon things in
general, and upon me, has no bearing on the case
whatever.”
The Justice scratched his head and waxed
phlegmatically indignant.
“The point is well taken,” he decided. “I am
surprised at you, Mr. Witberg, claiming to be a
judge and skilled in the practice of the law, and
yet being guilty of such unlawyerlike conduct.
Your manner, sir, and your methods, remind me
of a shyster. This is a simple case of assault and
battery. We are here to determine who struck
the first blow, and we are not interested in your
128


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
estimates of Mr. Watson's personal character.
Proceed with your story.”
Sol Witberg would have bitten his bruised and
swollen lip in chagrin, had it not hurt so much.
But he contained himself and told a simple,
straightforward, truthful story.
“Your Honor,” Watson said, “I would sug-
gest that you ask him what he was doing on my
premises.”
“A very good question. What were you doing,
sir, on Mr. Watson's premises?”
“I did not know they were his premises.”
“It was a trespass, your Honor,” Watson cried.
“The warnings are posted conspicuously.”
“I saw no warnings,” said Sol Witberg.
“I have seen them myself,” snapped the Jus-
tice. “They are very conspicuous. And I would
warn you, sir, that if you palter with the truth
in such little matters you may darken your more
important statements with suspicion. Why did
You strike Mr. Watson?”
“Your Honor, as I have testified, I did not
strike a blow.”
The Justice looked at Carter Watson’s bruised
and swollen visage, and turned to glare at Sol
Witberg.
129


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
“Look at that man’s cheek!” he thundered.
“If you did not strike a blow how comes it that
he is so disfigured and injured?”
“As I testified—”
“Be careful,” the Justice warned.
“I will be careful, sir. I will say nothing but
the truth. He struck himself with a rock. He
struck himself with two different rocks.”
“Does it stand to reason that a man, any man
not a lunatic, would so injure himself, and con-
tinue to injure himself, by striking the soft and
sensitive parts of his face with a stone?” Carter
Watson demanded.
“It sounds like a fairy story,” was the Justice's
comment. “Mr. Witberg, had you been drink-
ing?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you never drink?”
“On occasion.”
The Justice meditated on this answer with an
air of astute profundity.
| Watson took advantage of the opportunity to
wink at Sol Witberg, but that much-abused
gentleman saw nothing humorous in the situation.
“A very peculiar case, a very peculiar case,”
the Justice announced, as he began his verdict.
130


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
“The evidence of the two parties is flatly con-
tradictory. There are no witnesses outside the
two principals. Each claims the other committed
the assault, and I have no legal way of deter-
mining the truth. But I have my private opin-
ion, Mr. Witberg, and I would recommend that
henceforth you keep off of Mr. Watson's premises
and keep away from this section of the coun-
22
“This is an outrage!” Sol Witberg blurted out.
“Sit down, sir!” was the Justice’s thundered
command. “If you interrupt the Court in this
manner again, I shall fine you for contempt.
And I warn you I shall fine you heavily—you, a
judge yourself, who should be conversant with
the courtesy and dignity of courts. I shall now
give my verdict:
“It is a rule of law that the defendant shall be
given the benefit of the doubt. As I have said,
and I repeat, there is no legal way for me to
determine who struck the first blow. Therefore,
and much to my regret,”—here he paused and
glared at Sol Witberg—“in each of these cases I
am compelled to give the defendant the benefit
of the doubt. Gentlemen, you are both dis-
missed.”
131


THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
“Let us have a nip on it,” Watson said to
Witberg, as they left the courtroom; but that
outraged person refused to lock arms and amble
to the nearest saloon.
132


WINGED BLACKMAIL


- ~~~~ ~~~~ »


WINGED BLACKMAIL
ETER WINN lay back comfortably in a
library chair, with closed eyes, deep in the
cogitation of a scheme of campaign destined in
the near future to make a certain coterie of hostile
financiers sit up. The central idea had come to
him the night before, and he was now reveling in
the planning of the remoter, minor details. By
obtaining control of a certain up-country bank,
two general stores, and several logging camps,
he could come into control of a certain dinky
jerkwater line which shall here be nameless, but
which, in his hands, would prove the key to a
vastly larger situation involving more main-line
mileage almost than there were spikes in the afore-
said dinky jerkwater. It was so simple that he
had almost laughed aloud when it came to him.
No wonder those astute and ancient enemies of
his had passed it by.
The library door opened, and a slender, middle-
aged man, weak-eyed and eye glassed, entered.
In his hands was an envelope and an open letter.
135


WINGED BLACKMAIL
As Peter Winn’s secretary it was his task to weed
out, sort, and classify his employer's mail.
“This came in the morning post,” he ventured
apologetically and with the hint of a titter. “Of
course it doesn't amount to anything, but I thought
you would like to see it.”
“Read it,” Peter Winn commanded, without
opening his eyes.
The secretary cleared his throat.
“It is dated July seventeenth, but is without
address. Postmark San Francisco. It is also
quite illiterate. The spelling is atrocious.
Here it is:
Mr. Peter Winn,
SIR: I send you respectfully by express a pigeon
worth good money. She's a loo-loo—
“What is a loo-loo?” Peter Winn interrupted.
The secretary tittered.
“I’m sure I don’t know, except that it must
be a superlative of some sort. The letter con-
tinues:
Please freight it with a couple of thousand-dollar
bills and let it go. If you do I wont never annoy you
no more. If you dont you will be sorry.
136


WINGED BLACKMAIL
sage, “Go to hell,” signed it, and placed it in the
carrying apparatus with which the bird had been
thoughtfully supplied.
“Now we’ll let her loose. Where’s my son?
I’d like him to see the flight.”
“He’s down in the workshop. He slept there
last night, and had his breakfast sent down this
morning.”
“He’ll break his neck yet,” Peter Winn re-
marked, half-fiercely, half-proudly, as he led the
way to the veranda. -
Standing at the head of the broad steps, he
tossed the pretty creature outward and upward.
She caught herself with a quick beat of wings,
fluttered about undecidedly for a space, then rose
in the air.
Again, high up, there seemed indecision; then,
apparently getting her bearings, she headed east,
over the oak-trees that dotted the park-like
grounds.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Peter Winn murmured.
“I almost wish I had her back.”
But Peter Winn was a very busy man, with
such large plans in his head and with so many
reins in his hands that he quickly forgot the in-
cident. Three nights later the left wing of his
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
country house was blown up. It was not a heavy
explosion, and nobody was hurt, though the wing
itself was ruined. Most of the windows of the
rest of the house were broken, and there was a
deal of general damage. By the first ferry boat
of the morning half a dozen San Francisco detec-
tives arrived, and several hours later the secretary,
in high excitement, erupted on Peter Winn.
“It’s come!” the secretary gasped, the sweat
beading his forehead and his eyes bulging behind
their glasses.
“What has come?” Peter demanded.
“It-the–the loo-loo bird!”
Then the financier understood.
“Have you gone over the mail yet?”
“I was just going over it, sir.”
“Then continue, and see if you can find an-
other letter from our mysterious friend, the pigeon
fancier.”
The letter came to light. It read:
Mr. Peter Winn,
HoNorABLE SIR: Now dont be a fool. If you’d
came through, your shack would not have blew up—
I beg to inform you respectfully, am sending same
pigeon. Take good care of same, thank you. Put
five one thousand dollar bills on her and let her go.
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
seemed a barrel of potatoes. Also came another
letter:
Mr. Peter Winn,
RESPECTABLE SIR: It was me that fixed yr sisters -
house. You have raised hell, aint you. Send ten
thousand now. Going up all the time. Dont put any
more handicap weights on that bird. You sure cant
follow her, and its cruelty to animals.
Peter Winn was ready to acknowledge himself
beaten. The detectives were powerless, and
Peter did not know where next the man would
strike—perhaps at the lives of those near and
dear to him. He even telephoned to San Fran-
cisco for ten thousand dollars in bills of large de-
nomination. But Peter had a son, Peter Winn,
Junior, with the same firm-set jaw as his father's,
and the same knitted, brooding determination in
his eyes. He was only twenty-six, but he was all
man, a secret terror and delight to the financier,
who alternated between pride in his son’s aero-
plane feats and fear for an untimely and terrible
end.
“Hold on, father, don’t send that money,” said
Peter Winn, Junior. “Number Eight is ready,
and I know I’ve at last got that reefing device
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
down fine. It will work, and it will revolu-
tionize flying. Speed—that’s what’s needed,
and so are the large sustaining surfaces for get-
ting started and for altitude. I’ve got them both.
Once I’m up I reef down. There it is. The
smaller the sustaining surface, the higher the
speed. That was the law discovered by Langley.
And I’ve applied it. I can rise when the air is
calm and full of holes, and I can rise when its
boiling, and by my control of my plane areas I
can come pretty close to making any speed I want
—especially with that new Sangster-Endholm en-
gine.”
“You’ll come pretty close to breaking your
neck one of these days,” was his father's encourag-
ing remark.
“Dad, I’ll tell you what I’ll come pretty close
to—ninety miles an hour—Yes, and a hundred.
Now listen! I was going to make a trial to-
morrow. But it won’t take two hours to start to-
day. I’ll tackle it this afternoon. Keep that
money. Give me the pigeon and I’ll follow her
to her loft wherever it is. Hold on, let me talk
to the mechanicians.”
He called up the workshop, and in crisp, terse
sentences gave his orders in a way that went to
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
straightened out and went due east. The aero-
plane swerved into a straight course from its last
curve and followed. The race was on. Peter
Winn, looking up, saw that the pigeon was out-
'distancing the machine. Then he saw something
else. The aeroplane suddenly and instantly be-
came smaller. It had reefed. Its high-speed
plane-design was now revealed. Instead of the
generous spread of surface with which it had taken
the air, it was now a lean and hawklike mono-
plane balanced on long and exceedingly narrow
wings.
When young Winn reefed down so suddenly,
he received a surprise. It was his first trial of the
new device, and while he was prepared for in-
creased speed he was not prepared for such an
astonishing increase. It was better than he
dreamed, and, before he knew it, he was hard upon
the pigeon. That little creature, frightened by
this, the most monstrous hawk it had ever seen,
limmediately darted upward, after the manner
of pigeons that strive always to rise above a
hawk.
In great curves the monoplane followed up-
ward, higher and higher into the blue. It was
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
difficult, from underneath, to see the pigeon, and
young Winn dared not lose it from his sight.
He even shook out his reefs in order to rise more
quickly. Up, up, they went, until the pigeon,
true to its instinct, dropped and struck at what
it took to be the back of its pursuing enemy.
Once was enough, for, evidently finding no life
in the smooth cloth surface of the machine, it
ceased soaring and straightened out on its east-
ward course.
A carrier pigeon on a passage can achieve a
high rate of speed, and Winn reefed again.
And again, to his satisfaction, he found that
he was beating the pigeon. But this time he
quickly shook out a portion of his reefed sustain-
ing surface and slowed down in time. From
then on he knew he had the chase safely in hand.
and from then on a chant rose to his lips which he
continued to sing at intervals, and unconciously,
for the rest of the passage. It was: “Going
some; going some; what did I tell you?—going
Some.”
Even so, it was not all plain sailing. The air
is an unstable medium at best, and, quite with-
out warning, at an acute angle, he entered an
aerial tide which he recognized as the gulf stream
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
of wind that poured through the drafty-mouthed
Golden Gate. His right wing caught it first—
a sudden, sharp puff that lifted and tilted the
monoplane and threatened to capsize it. But he
'rode with a sensitive “loose curb,” and quickly,
but not too quickly, he shifted the angles of his
wing-tips, depressed the front horizontal rudder,
... and swung over the rear vertical rudder to meet
the tilting thrust of the wind. As the machine
came back to an even keel, and he knew that he
was now wholly in the invisible stream, he read-
justed the wing-tips, swung back the rudders,
reefed a few more yards of surface, and lit out
after the pigeon which had drawn rapidly away
from him during the several moments of his dis-
comfiture.
The pigeon drove straight on for the Alameda
County shore, and it was near this shore that
Winn had another experience. He fell into an
air-hole. He had fallen into air-holes before, in
previous flights, but this was a far larger one than
he had ever encountered. With his eyes strained
on the ribbon attached to the pigeon, by that
fluttering bit of color he marked his fall. Down
he went, at the pit of his stomach that old sink-
ing sensation which he had known as a boy when
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
he first negotiated quick-starting elevators. But
Winn, among other secrets of aviation, had
learned that to go up it was sometimes necessary
first to go down. The air had refused to hold
! him. Instead of struggling futilely and peril-
ously against this lack of Sustension, he yielded
to it. With steady head and hand, he depressed
the forward horizontal rudder—just recklessly
enough and not a fraction more—and the mono-
plane dived headforemost and sharply down the
void. It was falling with the keenness of a
knife-blade. Every instant the speed accelerated
frightfully. Thus he accumulated the momen-
tum that would save him. But few instants were
required, when, abruptly shifting the double hor-
izontal rudders forward and astern, he shot up-
ward on the tense and straining plane and out
of the pit.
At an altitude of five hundred feet, the pigeon
drove on over the town of Berkeley and lifted its
flight to the Contra Costa hills. Young Winn
noted the campus and buildings of the University
of California—his university—as he rose after the
pigeon.
Once more, on those Contra Costa hills, he
nearly came to grief. The pigeon was now fly-
147


WINGED BLACKMAIL
ing low, and where a grove of eucalyptus pre-
sented a solid front to the wind, the bird was sud-
denly sent fluttering wildly upward for a distance
of a hundred feet. Winn knew what it meant. It
had been caught in an air-surf that beat upward
hundreds of feet where the fresh west wind smote
the upstanding wall of the grove. He reefed
hastily to the uttermost, and at the same time de-
pressed the angle of his flight to meet that upward
surge. Nevertheless, the monoplane was tossed
fully three hundred feet before the danger was
left astern.
Two more ranges of hills the pigeon crossed,
and then Winn saw it dropping down to a land-
ing where a small cabin stood in a hillside clear-
ing. He blessed that clearing. Not only was
it good for alighting, but, on account of the steep-
ness of the slope, it was just the thing for rising
again into the air.
A man, reading a newspaper, had just started
up at the sight of the returning pigeon, when he
heard the burr of Winn's engine and saw the huge
monoplane, with all surfaces set, drop down upon
him, stop suddenly on an air-cushion manufac-
tured on the spur of the moment by a shift of the
horizontal rudders, glide a few yards, strike the
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WINGED BLACKMAIL
ground, and come to rest not a score of feet away
from him. But when he saw a young man,
calmly sitting in the machine and leveling a pistol
at him, the man turned to run. Before he could
make the corner of the cabin, a bullet through the
leg brought him down in a sprawling fall.
“What do you want?” he demanded sullenly,
as the other stood over him.
“I want to take you for a ride in my new ma-
chine,” Winn answered. “Believe me, she is a
loo-loo.”
The man did not argue long, for this strange
visitor had most convincing ways. Under Winn’s
instructions, covered all the time by the pistol,
the man improvised a tourniquet and applied it
to his wounded leg. Winn helped him to a seat
in the machine, then went to the pigeon-loft and
took possession of the bird with the ribbon still
fast to its leg.
A very tractable prisoner, the man proved.
Once up in the air, he sat close, in an ecstasy
of fear. An adept at winged blackmail, he had
no aptitude for wings himself, and when he gazed
down at the flying land and water far beneath
him, he did not feel moved to attack his captor,
now defenseless, both hands occupied with flight.
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES





BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
RRANGEMENTS quite extensive had been
made for the celebration of Christmas on
the yacht Samoset. Not having been in any
civilized port for months, the stock of provisions
boasted few delicacies; yet Minnie Duncan had
managed to devise real feasts for cabin and fore-
castle.
“Listen, Boyd,” she told her husband. “Here
are the menus. For the cabin, raw bonita native
style, turtle soup, omelette a la Samoset—”
“What the dickens?” Boyd Duncan inter-
rupted.
“Well, if you must know, I found a tin of
mushrooms and a package of egg-powder which
had fallen down behind the locker, and there are
other things as well that will go into it. But don’t
interrupt. Boiled yam, fried taro, alligator pear
salad—there, you’ve got me all mixed. Then
I found a last delectable half-pound of dried
squid. There will be baked beans Mexican, if
I can hammer it into Toyama's head; also, baked
papaia with Marquesan honey, and, lastly, a won-
153


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
“The nasty stuff! For a sick man! Don't
be greedy, Boyd. And I’m glad there is n’t any
more, for Captain Dettmar's sake. Drinking al-
ways makes him irritable. And now for the
men’s dinner. Soda crackers, sweet cakes,
candy—”
“Substantial, I must say.”
“Do hush. Rice and curry, yam, taro, bonita,
of course, a big cake Toyama is making, young
pig–”
“Oh, I say,” he protested.
“It is all right, Boyd. We’ll be in Attu-Attu
in three days. Besides, it’s my pig. That old
chief what-ever-his-name distinctly presented it
to me. You saw him yourself. And then two
tins of bullamacow. That’s their dinner. And
now about the presents. Shall we wait until to-
morrow, or give them this evening?”
“Christmas Eve, by all means,” was the man’s
judgment. “We’ll call all hands at eight bells;
I’ll give them a tot of rum all around, and then
you give the presents. Come on up on deck.
It’s stifling down here. I hope Lorenzo has bet-
ter luck with the dynamo; without the fans there
won’t be much sleeping to-night if we’re driven
below.”
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
They passed through the small main-cabin,
climbed a steep companion ladder, and emerged
on deck. The sun was setting, and the promise
was for a clear tropic night. The Samoset, with
fore- and main-sail winged out on either side, was
slipping a lazy four-knots through the smooth sea.
Through the engine-room skylight came a sound
of hammering. They strolled aft to where Cap-
tain Dettmar, one foot on the rail, was oiling the
gear of the patent log. At the wheel stood a tall
South Sea Islander, clad in white undershirt and
scarlet hip-cloth.
Boyd Duncan was an original. At least that
was the belief of his friends. Of comfortable
fortune, with no need to do anything but take
his comfort, he elected to travel about the world
in outlandish and most uncomfortable ways. In-
cidentally, he had ideas about coral-reefs, dis-
agreed profoundly with Darwin on that subject,
had voiced his opinion in several monographs and
one book, and was now back at his hobby, cruising
the South Seas in a tiny, thirty-ton yacht and
studying reef-formations.
His wife, Minnie Duncan, was also declared an
original, inasmuch as she joyfully shared his
vagabond wanderings. Among other things, in
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
the six exciting years of their marriage, she had
climbed Chimborazo with him, made a three-thou-
sand-mile winter journey with dogs and sleds in
Alaska, ridden a horse from Canada to Mexico,
cruised the Mediterranean in a ten-ton yawl, and
canoed from Germany to the Black Sea across the
heart of Europe. They were a royal pair of wan-
derlusters, he, big and broad-shouldered, she a
small, brunette, and happy woman, whose one
hundred and fifteen pounds were all grit and
endurance, and, withal, pleasing to look
upon.
The Samoset had been a trading schooner, when
Duncan bought her in San Francisco and made
alterations. Her interior was wholly rebuilt, so
that the hold became main-cabin and staterooms,
while abaft amidships were installed engines, a
dynamo, an ice machine, storage batteries, and,
far in the stern, gasoline tanks. Necessarily, she
carried a small crew. Boyd, Minnie, and Cap-
tain Dettmar were the only whites on board,
though Lorenzo, the small and greasy engineer,
laid a part claim to white, being a Portuguese
half-caste. A Japanese served as cook, and a
Chinese as cabin boy. Four white sailors had
constituted the original crew for’ard, but one by
157


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
one they had yielded to the charms of palm-wav-
ing South Sea isles and been replaced by islanders.
Thus, one of the dusky sailors hailed from Easter
Island, a second from the Carolines, a third from
the Paumotus, while the fourth was a gigantic
Samoan. At sea, Boyd Duncan, himself a navi-
gator, stood a mate's watch with Captain Dett-
mar, and both of them took a wheel or lookout oc-
casionally. On a pinch, Minnie herself could
take a wheel, and it was on pinches that she
proved herself more dependable at steering than
did the native sailors.
At eight bells, all hands assembled at the wheel,
and Boyd Duncan appeared with a black bottle
and a mug. The rum he served out himself, half
a mug of it to each man. They gulped the stuff
down with many facial expressions of delight, fol-
lowed by loud lip-smackings of approval, though
the liquor was raw enough and corrosive enough
to burn their mucous membranes. All drank ex-
cept Lee Goom, the abstemious cabin boy. This
rite accomplished, they waited for the next, the
present-giving. Generously molded on Polyne-
sian lines, huge-bodied and heavy-muscled, they
were nevertheless like so many children, laughing
merrily at little things, their eager black eyes
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
flashing in the lantern light as their big bodies
swayed to the heave and roll of the ship.
Calling each by name, Minnie gave the pres-
ents out, accompanying each presentation with
some happy remark that added to the glee. There
were trade watches, clasp knives, amazing assort-
ments of fish-hooks in packages, plug tobacco,
matches, and gorgeous strips of cotton for loin-
cloths all around. That Boyd Duncan was liked
by them was evidenced by the roars of laughter
with which they greeted his slightest joking allu-
sion.
Captain Dettmar, white-faced, smiling only
when his employer chanced to glance at him,
leaned against the wheel-box, looking on. Twice,
he left the group and went below, remaining there
but a minute each time. Later, in the main
cabin, when Lorenzo, Lee Goom and Toyama re-
ceived their presents, he disappeared into his state-
room twice again. For of all times, the devil that
slumbered in Captan Dettmar's soul chose this
particular time of good cheer to awaken. Per-
haps it was not entirely the devil’s fault, for Cap-
tain Dettmar, privily cherishing a quart of
whisky for many weeks, had selected Christmas
Eve for broaching it.
* *

1.59


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
It was still early in the evening—two bells had
just gone—when Duncan and his wife stood by
the cabin companionway, gazing to windward and
canvassing the possibility of spreading their beds
!on deck. A small, dark blot of cloud, slowly
forming on the horizon, carried the threat of a
rain-squall, and it was this they were discussing
when Captain Dettmar, coming from aft and
about to go below, glanced at them with sudden
suspicion. He paused, his face working spasmod-
ically. Then he spoke:
“You are talking about me.”
His voice was hoarse, and there was an excited
vibration in it. Minnie Duncan started, then
glanced at her husband's immobile face, took the
cue, and remained silent. -
“I say you were talking about me,” Captain
Dettmar repeated, this time with almost a snarl.
He did not lurch nor betray the liquor on him in
any way save by the convulsive working of his
face.
“Minnie, you’d better go down,” Duncan said
gently. “Tell Lee Goom we’ll sleep below. It
won't be long before that squall is drenching
things.”
She took the hint and left, delaying just long
16o


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
enough to give one anxious glance at the dim
faces of the two men.
Duncan puffed at his cigar and waited till his
wife's voice, in talk with the cabin-boy, came up
through the open skylight.
“Well?” Duncan demanded in a low voice, but
sharply.
“I said you were talking about me. I say it
again. Oh, I have n’t been blind. Day after
day I’ve seen the two of you talking about me.
Why don’t you come out and say it to my face?
I know you know. And I know your mind's
made up to discharge me at Attu-Attu.”
“I am sorry you are making such a mess of
everything,” was Duncan's quiet reply.
But Captain Dettmar's mind was set on trouble.
“You know you are going to discharge me.
You think you are too good to associate with the
likes of me—you and your wife.”
“Kindly keep her out of this,” Duncan warned.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what you are going to do?”
“Discharge you, after this, at Attu-Attu.”
“You intended to, all along.”
“On the contrary. It is your present conduct
that compels me.”
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
“You can’t give me that sort of talk.”
“I can’t retain a captain who calls me a liar.”
Captain Dettmar for the moment was taken
aback. His face and lips worked, but he could
'say nothing. Duncan coolly pulled at his cigar
and glanced aft at the rising cloud of squall.
“Lee Goom brought the mail aboard at Tahiti,”
Captain Dettmar began. “We were hove short
then and leaving. You did n’t look at your let-
ters until we were outside, and then it was too
late. That’s why you did n’t discharge me at
Tahiti. Oh, I know. I saw the long envelope
when Lee Goom came over the side. It was from
the Governor of California, printed on the corner
for any one to see. You’d been working behind
my back. Some beachcomber in Honolulu had
whispered to you, and you’d written to the Gover-
nor to find out. And that was his answer Lee
Goom carried out to you. Why did n’t you come
to me like a man? No, you must play under-
hand with me, knowing that this billet was the
one chance for me to get on my feet again. And ,
as soon as you read the Governor’s letter your
mind was made up to get rid of me. I’ve seen
it on your face ever since for all these months.
I’ve seen the two of you, polite as hell to me all
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
the time, and getting away in corners and talking
about me and that affair in 'Frisco.”
“Are you done?” Duncan asked, his voice low
and tense. “Quite done?”
Captain Dettmar made no answer.
“Then I’ll tell you a few things. It was pre-
cisely because of that affair in 'Frisco that I did
not discharge you in Tahiti. God knows you
gave me sufficient provocation. I thought that
if ever a man needed a chance to rehabilitate him-
self, you were that man. Had there been no
black mark against you, I would have discharged
you when I learned how you were robbing me.”
Captain Dettmar showed surprise, started to
interrupt, then changed his mind.
“There was that matter of the deck-calking, the
bronze rudder-irons, the overhauling of the en-
gine, the new spinnaker boom, the new davits,
and the repairs to the whale-boat. You O K’d
the shipyard bill. It was four thousand one hun-
dred and twenty-two francs. By the regular
shipyard charges it ought not to have been a cen-
time over twenty-five hundred francs—"
“If you take the word of those alongshore
sharks against mine—” the other began thickly.
“Save yourself the trouble of further lying,”
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
he yielded to your family's plea and pardoned
you; and that in his own mind existed a doubt
that you had killed McSweeny.”
There was a pause, during which Duncan went
on studying the rising squall, while Captain
Dettmar's face worked terribly.
“Well, the Governor was wrong,” he an-
nounced, with a short laugh. “I did kill
McSweeny. I did get the watchman drunk that
night. I beat McSweeny to death in his bunk.
I used the iron belaying pin that appeared in the
evidence. He never had a chance. I beat him
to a jelly. Do you want the details?”
Duncan looked at him in the curious way one
looks at any monstrosity, but made no reply.
“Oh, I’m not afraid to tell you,” Captain
Dettmar blustered on. “There are no witnesses.
Besides, I am a free man now. I am pardoned,
and by God they can never put me back in that
hole again. I broke McSweeny's jaw with the
first blow. He was lying on his back asleep.
He said, ‘My God, Jim! My God!” It was
funny to see his broken jaw wabble as he said it.
Then I Smashed him . . . I say, do you
want the rest of the details?”
“Is that all you have to say?” was the answer.
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
“Is n’t it enough?” Captain Dettmar retorted.
“It is enough.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Put you ashore at Attu-Attu.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime . . .” Duncan paused.
An increase of weight in the wind rippled his hair.
The stars overhead vanished, and the Samoset
swung four points off her course in the careless
steersman's hands. “In the meantime throw your
halyards down on deck and look to your wheel.
I’ll call the men.” Z
The next moment the squall burst upon them.
Captain Dettmar, springing aft, lifted the coiled
mainsail halyards from their pins and threw them,
ready to run, on the deck. The three islanders
swarmed from the tiny forecastle, two of them
leaping to the halyards and holding by a single
turn, while the third fastened down the engine-
room companion and swung the ventilators
around. Below, Lee Goom and Toyama were
lowering skylight covers and screwing up dead-
eyes. Duncan pulled shut the cover of the com-
panion scuttle, and held on, waiting, the first
drops of rain pelting his face, while the Samoset
leaped violently ahead, at the same time heeling
166 *


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
all Lorenzos and 3torage batteries, he heard his
wife moving in the adjoining stateroom and pass
out into the main cabin. Evidently heading for
the fresher air on deck, he thought, and decided
it was a good example to imitate. Putting on his
slippers and tucking a pillow and a blanket under
his arm, he followed her. As he was about to
emerge from the companionway, the ship's clock
in the cabin began to strike and he stopped to
listen. Four bells sounded. It was two in the
morning. From without came the creaking of
the gaff-jaw against the mast. The Samoset
rolled and righted on a sea, and in the light breeze
her canvas gave forth a hollow thrum.
He was just putting his foot out on the damp
deck when he heard his wife scream. It was a
startled frightened scream that ended in a splash
overside. He leaped out and ran aft. In the
dim starlight he could make out her head and
shoulders disappearing astern in the lazy wake.
“What was it?” Captain Dettmar, who was at,
the wheel, asked.
“Mrs. Duncan,” was Duncan's reply, as he tore
the life-buoy from its hook and flung it aft.
“Jibe over to starboard and come up on the
wind!” he commanded.
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
And then Boyd Duncan made a mistake. He
dived overboard.
When he came up, he glimpsed the blue-light
on the buoy, which had ignited automatically
when it struck the water. He swam for it, and
found Minnie had reached it first.
“Hello,” he said. “Just trying to keep cool?”
“Oh, Boyd!” was her answer, and one wet hand
reached out and touched his.
The blue light, through deterioration or dam-
age, flickered out. As they lifted on the smooth
crest of a wave, Duncan turned to look where the
Samoset made a vague blur in the darkness. No
lights showed, but there was noise of confusion.
He could hear Captain Dettmar's shouting above
the cries of the others.
“I must say he’s taking his time,” Duncan
grumbled. “Why does n’t he jibe? There she
goes now.”
They could hear the rattle of the boom tackle
blocks as the sail was eased across.
“That was the mainsail,” he muttered. “Jibed
to port when I told him starboard.”
Again they lifted on a wave, and again and
again, ere they could make out the distant green
of the Samoset’s starboard light. But instead of
169


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
remaining stationary, in token that the yacht was
coming toward them, it began moving across their
field of vision.
Duncan swore. “What’s the lubber holding
over there for?” he demanded. “He’s got his
compass. He knows our bearing.”
But the green light, which was all they could
see, and which they could see only when they
were on top of a wave, moved steadily away from
them, withal it was working up to windward, and
grew dim and dimmer. Duncan called out
loudly and repeatedly, and each time, in the in-
tervals, they could hear, very faintly, the voice
of Captain Dettmar shouting orders.
“How can he hear me with such a racket?”
Duncan complained.
“He’s doing it so the crew won’t hear you,”
was Minnie's answer.
There was something in the quiet way she said
it that caught her husband's attention.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he is not trying to pick us up,”
she went on in the same composed voice. “He
threw me overboard.”
“You are not making a mistake?”
“How could I? I was at the main rigging,
17o


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
looking to see if any more rain threatened. He
must have left the wheel and crept behind me.
I was holding on to a stay with one hand. He
gripped my hand free from behind and threw me
over. It’s too bad you did n’t know, or else you
would have staid aboard.”
Duncan groaned, but said nothing for several
minutes. The green light changed the direction
of its course.
“She’s gone about,” he announced. “You are
right. He's deliberately working around us and
to windward. Up wind they can never hear me.
But here goes.”
He called at minute intervals for a long time.
The green light disappeared, being replaced by
the red, showing that the yacht had gone about
again.
“Minnie,” he said finally, “it pains me to tell
you, but you married a fool. Only a fool would
have gone overboard as I did.”
“What chance have we of being picked
up . . . by some other vessel, I mean?” she
asked.
“About one in ten thousand, or ten thousand
million. Not a steamer route nor trade route
crosses this stretch of ocean. And there are n’t
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
any whalers knocking about the South Seas.
There might be a stray trading schooner running
across from Tutuwanga. But I happen to know
that island is visited only once a year. A chance
in a million is ours.”
“And we’ll play that chance,” she rejoined
stoutly.
“You are a joy!” His hand lifted hers to his
lips. “And Aunt Elizabeth always wondered
what I saw in you. Of course we’ll play that
chance. And we’ll win it, too. To happen
otherwise would be unthinkable. Here goes.”
He slipped the heavy pistol from his belt and
let it sink into the sea. The belt, however, he re-
tained.
“Now you get inside the buoy and get some
sleep. Duck under.”
She ducked obediently, and came up inside the
floating circle. He fastened the straps for her,
then, with the pistol belt, buckled himself across
Dne shoulder to the outside of the buoy.
“We’re good for all day to-morrow,” he said.
“Thank God the water's warm. It won’t be a
hardship for the first twenty-hour hours, anyway.
And if we’re not picked up by nightfall, we’ve
just got to hang on for another day, that’s all.”
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
For half an hour they maintained silence.
Duncan, his head resting on the arm that was on
the buoy, seemed asleep.
“Boyd?” Minnie said softly.
“Thought you were asleep,” he growled.
“Boyd, if we don’t come through this—”
“Stow that!” he broke in ungallantly. “Of
course we’re coming through. There is n’t a
doubt of it. Somewhere on this ocean is a ship
that’s heading right for us. You wait and see.
Just the same I wish my brain were equipped with
wireless. Now I’m going to sleep, if you don't.”
But for once, sleep baffled him. An hour later
he heard Minnie stir and knew she was awake.
“Say, do you know what I’ve been thinking?”
she asked.
“No; what?”
“That I’ll wish you a Merry Christmas.”
“By George, I never thought of it. Of course
it’s Christmas Day. We’ll have many more of
them, too. And do you know what I’ve been
thinking? What a confounded shame we’re
done out of our Christmas dinner. Wait till I
lay hands on Dettmar. I’ll take it out of him.
And it won’t be with an iron belaying pin either.
Just two bunches of naked knuckles, that’s all.”
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
Despite his facetiousness, Boyd Duncan had
little hope. He knew well enough the meaning
of one chance in a million, and was calmly cer-
tain that his wife and he had entered upon their
(last few living hours—hours that were inevitably
bound to be black and terrible with tragedy.
The tropic sun rose in a cloudless sky. Noth-
ing was to be seen. The Samoset was beyond the
sea-rim. As the sun rose higher, Duncan ripped
his pajama trousers in halves and fashioned them
into two rude turbans. Soaked in sea-water they
offset the heat-rays.
“When I think of that dinner, I’m really an-
gry,” he complained, as he noted an anxious ex-
pression threatening to set on his wife's face.
“And I want you to be with me when I settle with
Dettmar. I’ve always been opposed to women
witnessing scenes of blood, but this is different.
It will be a beating.”
“I hope I don't break my knuckles on him,” he
added, after a pause.
Midday came and went, and they floated on,
the center of a narrow sea-circle. A gentle breath
of the dying trade-wind fanned them, and they
rose and fell monotonously on the smooth swells
of a perfect summer sea. Once, a gunie spied
174.


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
them, and for half an hour circled about them
with majestic sweeps. And, once, a huge ray-
fish, measuring a score of feet across the tips,
passed within a few yards.
By sunset, Minnie began to rave, softly, bab-
blingly, like a child. Duncan's face grew hag-
gard as he watched and listened, while in his
mind he revolved plans of how best to end the
hours of agony that were coming. And, so plan-
ning, as they rose on a larger swell than usual, he
swept the circle of the sea with his eyes, and saw
what made him cry out.
“Minnie!” She did not answer, and he shouted
her name again in her ear, with all the voice he
could command. Her eyes opened, in them flut-
tered commingled consciousness and delirium.
He slapped her hands and wrists till the sting of
the blows roused her.
“There she is, the chance in a million!” he
cried. “A steamer at that, heading straight for
us! By George, it’s a cruiser! I have it!—the
Annapolis, returning with those astronomers from
Tutuwanga.
United States Consul Lingford was a fussy,
elderly gentleman, and in the two years of his
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
service at Attu-Attu had never encountered so un-
precedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd
Duncan. The latter, with his wife, had been
landed there by the Annapolis, which had
promptly gone on with its cargo of astronomers to
Fiji.
“It was cold-blooded, deliberate attempt to
murder,” said Consul Lingford. “The law shall
take its course. I don’t know how precisely to
deal with this Captain Dettmar, but if he comes to
Attu-Attu, depend upon it he shall be dealt with,
he—ah—shall be dealt with. In the meantime,
I shall read up the law. And now, won’t you
and your good lady stop for lunch?”
As Duncan accepted the invitation, Minnie,
who had been glancing out of the window at the
harbor, suddenly leaned forward and touched her
husband's arm. He followed her gaze, and saw
the Samoset, flag at half mast, rounding up and
dropping anchor scarcely a hundred yards away.
“There’s my boat now,” Duncan said to the
Consul. “And there’s the launch over the side,
and Captain Dettmar dropping into it. If I don’t
miss my guess, he’s coming to report our deaths
to you.”
The launch landed on the white beach, and,
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
leaving Lorenzo tinkering with the engine, Cap-
tain Dettmar strode across the beach and up the
path to the Consulate.
“Let him make his report,” Duncan said.
“We’ll just step into this next room and listen.”
And through the partly open door, he and his
wife heard Captain Dettmar, with tears in his
voice, describe the loss of his owners.
“I jibed over and went back across the very
spot,” he concluded. “There was not a sign of
them. I called and called, but there was never
an answer. I tacked back and forth and wore
for two solid hours, then hove to till daybreak,
and cruised back and forth all day, two men at
the mastheads. It is terrible. I am heartbroken.
Mr. Duncan was a splendid man, and I shall
Inever .”
But he never completed the sentence, for at
that moment his splendid employer strode out
upon him, leaving Minnie standing in the door-
way. Captain Dettmar's white face blanched
even whiter.
“I did my best to pick you up, sir,” he began.
Boyd Duncan's answer was couched in terms
of bunched knuckles, two bunches of them, that
landed right and left on Captain Dettmar's face.
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
Captain Dettmar staggered backward, recovered,
and rushed with swinging arms at his employer,
only to be met with a blow squarely between the
eyes. This time the Captain went down, bearing
the typewriter under him as he crashed to the
floor.
“This is not permissible,” Consul Lingford
spluttered. “I beg of you, I beg of you, to de-
sist.”
“I’ll pay the damages to office furniture,” Dun-
can answered, and at the same time landing more
bunched knuckles on the eyes and nose of Dett-
IIlal I.
Consul Lingford bobbed around in the turmoil
like a wet hen, while his office furniture went to
ruin. Once, he caught Duncan by the arm, but
was flung back, gasping, half-across the room.
Another time he appealed to Minnie.
“Mrs. Duncan, won’t you, please, please, re-
strain your husband?”
But she, white-faced and trembling, resolutely
shook her head and watched the fray with all her
eyes.
“It is outrageous,” Consul Lingford cried,
dodging the hurtling bodies of the two men. “It
is an affront to the Government, to the United

178


BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
States Government. Nor will it be overlooked, I
warn you. Oh, do pray desist, Mr. Duncan.
You will kill the man. I beg of you. I beg, I
beg .”
But the crash of a tall vase filled with crimson
hibiscus blossoms left him speechless.
The time came when Captain Dettmar could
no longer get up. He got as far as hands and
knees, struggled vainly to rise further, then col-
lapsed. Duncan stirred the groaning wreck with
his foot.
“He’s all right,” he announced. “I’ve only
given him what he has given many a sailor and
worse.”
“Great heavens, sir!” Consul Lingford ex-
ploded, staring horror-stricken at the man whom
he had invited to lunch.
Duncan giggled involuntarily, then controlled
himself.
“I apologize, Mr. Lingford, I most heartily
apologize. I fear I was slightly carried away by
'my feelings.”
Consul Lingford gulped and sawed the air
speechlessly with his arms.
“Slightly, sir? Slightly?” he managed to
articulate.
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BUNCHES OF KNUCKLES
“Boyd,” Minnie called softly from the door-
way.
He turned and looked.
“You are a joy,” she said.
“And now, Mr. Lingford, I am done with
him,” Duncan said. “I turn over what is left
to you and the law.”
“That?” Consul Lingford queried, in accent of
horror.
“That,” Boyd Duncan replied, looking rue-
fully at his battered knuckles.


!.
-
---
WAR


WAR
headed to the north again along the oak-covered
top of the ridge.
The ridge ended in a steep descent—so steep
that he zigzagged back and forth across the face
of the slope, sliding and stumbling among the
dead leaves and matted vines and keeping a
watchful eye on the horse above that threatened
to fall down upon him. The sweat ran from
him, and the pollen-dust, settling pungently in
mouth and nostrils, increased his thirst. Try as
he would, nevertheless the descent was noisy, and
frequently he stopped, panting in the dry heat
and listening for any warning from beneath.
At the bottom he came out on a flat, so densely
forested that he could not make out its extent.
Here the character of the woods changed, and he
was able to remount. Instead of the twisted hill-
side oaks, tall straight trees, big-trunked and pros-
perous, rose from the damp fat soil. Only here
and there were thickets, easily avoided, while he
encountered winding, park-like glades where the
cattle had pastured in the days before war had
run them off.
His progress was more rapid now, as he came
down into the valley, and at the end of half an
hour he halted at an ancient rail fence on the
185


WAR
edge of a clearing. He did not like the openness
of it, yet his path lay across to the fringe of trees
that marked the banks of the stream. It was a
mere quarter of a mile across that open, but the
thought of venturing out in it was repugnant.
A rifle, a score of them, a thousand, might lurk
in that fringe by the stream.
Twice he essayed to start, and twice he paused.
He was appalled by his own loneliness. The
pulse of war that beat from the West suggested
the companionship of battling thousands; here
was naught but silence, and himself, and possible
death-dealing bullets from a myriad ambushes.
And yet his task was to find what he feared to
find. He must go on, and on, till somewhere,
some time, he encountered another man, or other
men, from the other side, Scouting, as he was
scouting, to make report, as he must make report,
of having come in touch.
Changing his mind, he skirted inside the woods
for a distance, and again peeped forth. This
time, in the middle of the clearing, he saw a
small farmhouse. There were no signs of life.
No smoke curled from the chimney, not a barn-
yard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen door
stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into
186


WAR
the black aperture that it seemed almost that a
farmer's wife must emerge at any moment.
He licked the pollen and dust from his dry
lips, stiffened himself, mind and body, and rode
out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing stirred.
He went on past the house, and approached the
wall of trees and bushes by the river's bank.
One thought persisted maddeningly. It was of
the crash into his body of a high-velocity bullet.
It made him feel very, fragile and defenseless,
and he crouched lower in the saddle.
Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood,
he continued a hundred yards on foot till he came
to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was, without
perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was
very thirsty. But he waited inside his screen of
leafage, his eyes fixed on the screen on the op-
posite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat
down, his carbine resting on his knees. The
minutes passed, and slowly his tenseness relaxed.
At last he decided there was no danger; but just
as he prepared to part the bushes and bend down
to the water, a movement among the opposite
bushes caught his eye.
It might be a bird. But he waited. Again
there was an agitation of the bushes, and then,
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WAR
so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from
him, the bushes parted and a face peered out. It
was a face covered with several weeks' growth
of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were blue and
wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the corners
that showed despite the tired and anxious expres-
sion of the whole face.
All this he could see with microscopic clearness,
for the distance was no more than twenty feet.
And all this he saw in such brief time, that he
saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder.
He glanced along the sights, and knew that he
was gazing upon a man who was as good as dead.
It was impossible to miss at such point blank
range.
But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the
carbine and watched. A hand, clutching a
water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard
bent downward to fill the bottle. He could hear
the gurgle of the water. Then arm and bottle
and ginger beard disappeared behind the closing
bushes. A long time he waited, when, with thirst
unslaked, he crept back to his horse, rode slowly
across the Sun-washed clearing, and passed into
the shelter of the woods beyond.
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WAR
stains unmistakable where the wounded had been
laid down.
Again outside, he led the horse around behind
the barn and invaded the orchard. A dozen trees
were burdened with ripe apples. He filled
his pockets, eating while he picked. Then a
thought came to him, and he glanced at the sun,
calculating the time of his return to camp.
He pulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and
making a bag. This he proceeded to fill with
apples.
As he was about to mount his horse, the animal
suddenly pricked up its ears. The man, too,
listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of hoofs
on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the
barn and peered out. A dozen mounted men,
strung out loosely, approaching from the opposite
side of the clearing, were only a matter of a hun-
dred yards or so away. They rode on to the
house. Some dismounted, while others remained
in the saddle as an earnest that their stay would
be short. They seemed to be holding a council,
for he could hear them talking excitedly in the
detested tongue of the alien invader. The time
passed, but they seemed unable to reach a de-
cision. He put the carbine away in its boot,
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WAR
hundred yards away, and still the shot was de-
layed.
And then he heard it, the last thing he was
to hear, for he was dead ere he hit the ground
in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And
they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw
his body bounce when it struck the earth, and
saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that rolled
about him. They laughed at the unexpected
eruption of apples, and clapped their hands in
applause of the long shot by the man with the
ginger beard.
193








UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
AN any man—a gentleman, I mean—call
a woman a pig?”
The little man flung this challenge forth to the
whole group, then leaned back in his deck chair,
sipping lemonade with an air commingled of
certitude and watchful belligerence. Nobody
made answer. They were used to the little
man and his sudden passions and high eleva-
tions.
“I repeat, it was in my presence that he said
a certain lady, whom none of you knows, was a
pig. He did not say swine. He grossly said
that she was a pig. And I hold that no man who
is a man could possibly make such a remark about
any woman.”
! Dr. Dawson puffed stolidly at his black pipe.
Matthews, with knees hunched up and clasped
by his arms, was absorbed in the flight of a
I gunie. Sweet, finishing his Scotch and soda, was
questing about with his eyes for a deck steward.
“I ask you, Mr. Treloar, can any man call any
woman a pig?”
197


UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
Treloar, who happened to be sitting next to him,
was startled by the abruptness of the attack, and
wondered what grounds he had ever given the
little man to believe that he could call a woman
a pig.
“I should say,” he began his hesitant answer,
“that it—er—depends on the-er—the lady.”
The little man was aghast.
“You mean . . .?” he quavered.
“That I have seen female humans who were as
bad as pigs—and worse.”
There was a long pained silence. The little
man seemed withered by the coarse brutality of
the reply. In his face was unutterable hurt and
WOC.
“You have told of a man who made a not nice
remark and you have classified him,” Treloar said
in cold, even tones. “I shall now tell you about
a woman—I beg your pardon—a lady, and when
I have finished I shall ask you to classify her.
Miss Caruthers I shall call her, principally for
the reason that it is not her name. It was on a
P. & O. boat, and it occurred neither more nor
less than several years ago.
“Miss Caruthers was charming. No; that is
not the word. She was amazing. She was a
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UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
young woman, and a lady. Her father was a
certain high official whose name, if I mentioned
it, would be immediately recognized by all of
you. She was with her mother and two maids
at the time, going out to join the old gentleman
wherever you like to wish in the East.
“She, and pardon me for repeating, was amaz-
ing. It is the one adequate word. Even the
most minor adjectives applicable to her are bound
to be sheer superlatives. There was nothing she
could not do better than any woman and than
most men. Sing, play—bah!—as some rhetori-
cian once said of old Nap, competition fled from
her. Swim! She could have made a fortune
and a name as a public performer. She was one
of those rare women who can strip off all the frills
of dress, and in simple swimming suit be more
satisfying beautiful. Dress! She was an ar-
tist.
“But her swimming. Physically, she was the
perfect woman—you know what I mean; not in
the gross, muscular way of acrobats, but in all
the delicacy of line and fragility of frame and
texture. And combined with this, strength. How
-she could do it was the marvel. You know the
wonder of a woman's arm—the fore arm, I mean;
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UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
even, grand and remote as she was, who, at her
bidding, would have hesitated to souse the Old
Man himself with a plate of soup. You have
all seen such women—a sort of world’s desire to
all men. As a man-conqueror she was supreme.
She was a whip-lash, a sting and a flame, an elec-
tric spark. Oh, believe me, at times there were
flashes of will that scorched through her beauty
and seduction and smote a victim into blank and
shivering idiocy and fear.
“And don’t fail to mark, in the light of what
is to come, that she was a prideful woman. Pride
of race, pride of caste, pride of sex, pride of
power—she had it all, a pride strange and wilful
and terrible.
“She ran the ship, she ran the voyage, she ran
everything, and she ran Dennitson. That he
had outdistanced the pack even the least wise
of us admitted. That she liked him, and that
this feeling was growing, there was not a doubt.
I am certain that she looked on him with kinder
eyes than she had ever looked with on man be-
fore. We still worshiped, and were always
hanging about waiting to be whistled up, though
we knew that Dennitson was laps and laps ahead
of us. What might have happened we shall
2O2


UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
“She was especially keen on their jumping.
You know, jumping feet-first from a height, it
is very difficult to hold the body perpendicularly
while in the air. The center of gravity of the
male body is high, and the tendency is to over-
topple. But the little beggars employed a
method which she declared was new to her and
which she desired to learn. Leaping from the
davits of the boat-deck above, they plunged down-
ward, their faces and shoulders bowed forward,
looking at the water. And only at the last mo-
ment did they abruptly straighten up and enter
the water erect and true.
“It was a pretty sight. Their diving was not
so good, though there was one of them who was
excellent at it, as he was in all the other stunts.
Some white man must have taught him, for he
made the proper swan dive and did it as beauti-
fully as I have ever seen it. You know, head-
first into the water, from a great height, the
problem is to enter the water at the perfect angle.
Miss the angle and it means at the least a twisted
back and injury for life. Also, it has meant
death for many a bungler. But this boy could
do it—seventy feet I know he cleared in one dive
from the rigging—clenched hands on chest, head
2O4


UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
light. The boy had it. Life poured out of him
almost in an effulgence. His skin glowed with
it. It burned in his eyes. I swear I could al-
most hear it crackle from him. Looking at him,
it was as if a whiff of ozone came to one's nostrils
—so fresh and young was he, so resplendent with
health, so wildly wild.
“This was the boy. And it was he who gave
the alarm in the midst of the sport. The boys
made a dash of it for the gangway platform,
swimming the fastest strokes they knew, pelle
mell, floundering and splashing, fright in their
faces, clambering out with jumps and surges, any
way to get out, lending one another a hand to
safety, till all were strung along the gangway and
peering down into the water.
“‘What is the matter?' asked Miss Caru-
thers.
“‘A shark, I fancy,” Captain Bentley answered.
“Lucky little beggars that he did n’t get one of
them.”
“‘Are they afraid of sharks?” she asked.
“‘Aren't you?” he asked back.
She shuddered, looked overside at the water,
and made a moué.
“‘Not for the world would I venture where a
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UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
shark might be,” she said, and shuddered again.
“They are horrible! Horrible!”
“The boys came up on the promenade deck,
clustering close to the rail and worshiping Miss
Caruthers who had flung them such a wealth of
backsheesh. The performance being over, Cap-
tain Bentley motioned to them to clear out. But
she stopped him.
“‘One moment, please, Captain. I have al-
ways understood that the natives are not afraid
of sharks.’
“She beckoned the boy of the swan dive nearer
to her, and signed to him to dive over again.
He shook his head, and along with all his crew
behind him laughed as if it were a good joke.
“‘Shark,’ he volunteered, pointing to the
Water.
“‘No,” she said. “There is no shark.”
“But he nodded his head positively, and the
boys behind him nodded with equal positiveness.
“‘No, no, no,” she cried. And then to us,
‘Who'll lend me a half-crown and a sovereign?
“Immediately the half dozen of us were pre-
senting her with crowns and sovereigns, and she
accepted the two coins from young Ardmore.
“She held up the half-crown for the boys to
2O7


UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
see. But there was no eager rush to the rail
preparatory to leaping. They stood there grin-
ning sheepishly. She offered the coin to each one
individually, and each, as his turn came, rubbed
his foot against his calf, shook his head, and
grinned. Then she tossed the half-crown over-
board. With wistful, regretful faces they
watched its silver flight through the air, but not
one moved to follow it.
“‘Don’t do it with the sovereign,” Dennitson
said to her in a low voice.
“She took no notice, but held up the gold coin
before the eyes of the boy of the swan dive.
“‘Don’t,” said Captain Bentley. “I would n’t
throw a sick cat overside with a shark around.”
“But she laughed, bent on her purpose, and
continued to dazzle the boy.
“‘Don’t tempt him,” Dennitson urged. ‘It is
a fortune to him, and he might go over after it.”
“‘Would n’t you?' she flared at him. ‘If I
threw it?’ This last more softly.
“Dennitson shook his head.
“‘Your price is high, she said. ‘For how
many sovereigns would you go?”
“‘There are not enough coined to get me over-,
side,” was his answer. -
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UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
“She debated a moment, the boy forgotten in
her tilt with Dennitson.
“‘For me?” she said very softly.
“‘To save your life—yes. But not otherwise.”
“She turned back to the boy. Again she held
the coin before his eyes, dazzling him with
the vastness of its value. Then she made as
to toss it out, and, involuntarily, he made a
half-movement toward the rail, but was
checked by sharp cries of reproof from his
companions. There was anger in their voices as
well.
“‘I know it is only fooling,” Dennitson said.
‘Carry it as far as you like, but for heaven's sake
don’t throw it.”
“Whether it was that strange wilfulness of
hers, or whether she doubted the boy could be
persuaded, there is no telling. It was unexpected
to all of us. Out from the shade of the awning
the coin flashed golden in the blaze of sunshine
and fell toward the sea in a glittering arch. Be-
fore a hand could stay him, the boy was over the
rail and curving beautifully downward after the
coin. Both were in the air at the same time.
It was a pretty sight. The sovereign cut the
water sharply, and at the very spot, almost at
209


UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
face, nor did he move an eyelid. He took a
cigarette from his case and lighted it. Captain
Bentley made a nasty sound in his throat and
ſº overboard. That was all; that and the
'silence.
“She turned away and started to walk firmly
down the deck. Twenty feet away, she swayed
and thrust a hand against the wall to save her-
self. And so she went on, supporting herself
against the cabins and walking very slowly.”
Treloar ceased. He turned his head and
favored the little man with a look of cold in-
quiry.
“Well,” he said finally. “Classify her.”
The little man gulped and swallowed.
“I have nothing to say,” he said. “I have
nothing whatever to say.”
211


TO KILL A MAN
-- Though dim night-lights burned, she
moved familiarly through the big rooms
and wide halls, seeking vainly the half-finished
book of verse she had mislaid and only now re-
membered. When she turned on the lights in
the drawing-room, she disclosed herself clad in
a sweeping negligee gown of soft rose-colored
stuff, throat and shoulders smothered in lace.
Her rings were still on her fingers, her massed
yellow hair had not yet been taken down. She
was delicately, gracefully beautiful, with slender,
oval face, red lips, a faint color in the cheeks,
and blue eyes of the chameleon sort that at will
stare wide with the innocence of girlhood, go
hard and gray and brilliantly cold, or flame up
in hot wilfulness and mastery.
She turned the lights off and passed out and
down the hall toward the morning room. At the
entrance she paused and listened. From farther
on had come, not a noise, but an impression of
movement. She could have sworn she had not
heard anything, yet something had been different.
The atmosphere of night quietude had been dis-
215


TO KILL A MAN
turbed. She wondered what servant could be
prowling about. Not the butler, who was no-
torious for retiring early save on special occasion.
Nor could it be her maid, whom she had per-
mitted to go that evening.
Passing on to the dining-room, she found the
door closed. Why she opened it and went in,
she did not know, except for the feeling that the
disturbing factor, whatever it might be, was
there. The room was in darkness, and she felt
her way to the button and pressed. As the blaze
of light flashed on, she stepped back and cried
out. It was a mere “Oh!” and it was not loud.
Facing her, alongside the button, flat against
the wall, was a man. In his hand, pointed to-
ward her, was a revolver. She noticed, even in
the shock of seeing him, that the weapon was
black and exceedingly long-barreled. She knew
it for what it was, a Colt's. He was a medium-
sized man, roughly clad, brown-eyed, and swarthy
with sunburn. He seemed very cool. There,
was no wabble to the revolver, and it was directed
toward her stomach, not from an outstretched
arm, but from the hip, against which the forearm
rested.
216


TO KILL A MAN
“I’d sure have to,” he answered, and she saw
his mouth set grimly. “You’re only a soft
woman, but you see, Miss, I can’t afford to go to
jail. No, Miss, I sure can’t. There’s a friend
of mine waitin' for me out West. He's in a
hole, and I’ve got to help him out.” The mouth
shaped even more grimly. “I guess I could choke
you without hurting you much to speak of.”
Her eyes took on a baby stare of innocent in-
credulity as she watched him.
“I never met a burglar before,” she assured
him, “and I can’t begin to tell you how interested
I am.”
“I’m not a burglar, Miss. Not a real one,”
he hastened to add as she looked her amused un-
belief. “It looks like it, me being here in your
house. But it’s the first time I ever tackled such
a job. I needed the money—bad. Besides, I
kind of look on it like collecting what’s coming
to me.”
“I don’t understand,” she smiled encourag-
ingly. “You came here to rob, and to rob is
to take what is not yours.”
“Yes, and no, in this here particular case.
But I reckon I’d better be going now.”
He started for the door of the dining-room,
2.1Q


TO KILL A MAN
but she interposed, and a very beautiful obstacle
she made of herself. His left hand went out as
if to grip her, then hesitated. He was patently
awed by her soft womanhood.
“There!” she cried triumphantly. “I knew
you would n't.”
The man was embarrassed.
“I ain't never manhandled a woman yet,” he
explained, “and it don’t come easy. But I sure
will, if you set to screaming.”
“Won’t you stay a few minutes and talk?” she
urged. “I’m so interested. I should like to
hear you explain how burglary is collecting what
is coming to you.”
He looked at her admiringly.
“I always thought women-folks were scairt of
robbers,” he confessed. “But you don’t seem
none.”
She laughed gaily.
“There are robbers and robbers, you know. I
am not afraid of you, because I am confident you
are not the sort of creature that would harm
a woman. Come, talk with me a while. No-
body will disturb us. I am all alone. My—
my father caught the night train to New York.
The servants are all asleep. I should like to
º
i


TO KILL A MAN
give you something to eat—women always pre-
pare midnight Suppers for the burglars they catch,
at least they do in the magazine stories. But I
don’t know where to find the food. Perhaps
you will have something to drink?”
He hesitated, and did not reply; but she could
see the admiration for her growing in his eyes.
, “You’re not afraid?” she queried. “I won’t
poison you, I promise. I’ll drink with you to
show you it is all right.”
“You sure are a surprise package of all right,”
he declared, for the first time lowering the weapon
and letting it hang at his side. “No one don’t
need to tell me ever again that women-folks in
cities is afraid. You ain’t much—just a little
soft pretty thing. But you’ve sure got the
spunk. And you’re trustful on top of it.
There ain’t many women, or men either, who'd
treat a man with a gun the way you’re treating
me.”
She smiled her pleasure in the compliment, and
her face was very earnest as she said:
“That is because I like your appearance. You
are too decent-looking a man to be a robber.
You ought n’t to do such things. If you are in
bad luck you should go to work. Come, put
221


TO KILL A MAN
away that nasty revolver and let us talk it over.
The thing for you to do is to work.”
“Not in this burg,” he commented bitterly.
“I’ve walked two inches off the bottom of my
legs trying to find a job. Honest, I was a fine
large man once . . . before I started look-
ing for a job.”
The merry laughter with which she greeted his
sally obviously pleased him, and she was quick
to note and take advantage of it. She moved
directly away from the door and toward the side-
board.
“Come, you must tell me all about it while I
get that drink for you. What will it be?
Whisky?”
“Yes, ma'am,” he said, as he followed her,
though he still carried the big revolver at his side,
and though he glanced reluctantly at the un-
guarded open door.
She filled a glass for him at the sideboard.
“I promised to drink with you,” she said
hesitatingly. “But I don’t like whisky. I
- I prefer sherry.”
She lifted the sherry bottle tentatively for his
COnSent.
“Sure,” he answered, with a nod. “Whisky's
222


TO KILL A MAN
As he spoke, he drew his right hand from the
table, and after lighting the cigarette, dropped
it by his side.
“Thank you for your confidence,” she breathed
softly, resolutely keeping her eyes from measur-
ing the distance to the revolver, and keeping her
foot pressed firmly on the bell.
“About that three hundred,” he began. “I
can telegraph it West to-night. And I’ll agree
to work a year for it and my keep.”
“You will earn more than that. I can prom-
ise seventy-five dollars a month at the least. Do
you know horses?”
His face lighted up and his eyes sparkled.
“Then go to work for me—or for my father,
rather, though I engage all the servants. I need
a second coachman—”
“And wear a uniform?” he interrupted sharply,
the sneer of the free-born West in his voice and
on his lips.
She smiled tolerantly.
“Evidently that won’t do. Let me think.
Yes. Can you break and handle colts?”
He nodded.
“We have a stock farm, and there’s room for
just such a man as you. Will you take it?”
230


TO KILL A MAN
“Will I, ma’am’.” His voice was rich with
gratitude and enthusiasm. “Show me to it.
I’ll dig right in to-morrow. And I can sure
promise you one thing, ma'am. You’ll never
be sorry for lending Hughie Luke a hand in his
'trouble—”
“I thought you said to call you Dave,” she
chided forgivingly.
“I did, ma'am. I did. And I sure beg your
pardon. It was just plain bluff. My real name
is Hughie Luke. And if you’ll give me the ad-
dress of that stock farm of yours, and the rail-
road fare, I head for it first thing in the morn-
ing.”
Throughout the conversation she had never re-
laxed her attempts on the bell. She had pressed
it in every alarming way—three shorts and a long,
two and a long, and five. She had tried long
series of shorts, and, once, she had held the but-
ton down for a solid three minutes. And she
had been divided between objurgation of the
stupid, heavy-sleeping butler and doubt if the
bell were in order.
“I am so glad,” she said; “so glad that you are
willing. There won't be much to arrange. But
you will first have to trust me while I go upstairs
231


TO KILL A MAN
holding the heavy weapon extended, the butt of
it and her forearm rested on the table, the muzzle
pointed, not at his head, but his chest. And he,
looking coolly and obeying her commands, knew
there was no chance of the kick-up of the recoil
producing a miss. Also, he saw that the revolver
did not wabble, nor the hand shake, and he was
thoroughly conversant with the size of hole the
soft-nosed bullets could make. He had eyes,
not for her, but for the hammer, which had
risen under the pressure of her forefinger on the
trigger.
“I reckon I’d best warn you that that there
trigger-pull is filed dreadful fine. Don’t press
too hard, or I’ll have a hole in me the size of a
walnut.”
She slacked the hammer partly down.
“That’s better,” he commented. “You’d
best put it down all the way. You see how easy
it works. If you want to, a quick light pull will
jiffy her up and back and make a pretty mess all
over your nice floor.”
A door opened behind him, and he heard some-
body enter the room. But he did not turn his
head. He was looking at her, and he found it
the face of another woman—hard, cold, pitiless,
233


TO KILL A MAN
upon what a fool you have been, taking other
persons’ property and threatening women with
revolvers. You will have time to learn your
lesson thoroughly. Now tell the truth. You
have n't any friend in trouble. All that you told
me was lies.”
He did not reply. Though his eyes were upon
her, they seemed blank. In truth, for the instant
she was veiled to him, and what he saw was the
wide sunwashed spaces of the West, where men
and women were bigger than the rotten denizens,
as he had encountered them, of the thrice rotten
cities of the East.
“Go on. Why don't you speak? Why don’t
you lie some more? Why don’t you beg to be
let Off?”
“I might,” he answered, licking his dry lips.
“I might ask to be let off if . . .”
“If what?” she demanded peremptorily, as he
paused.
“I was trying to think of a word you reminded
me of. As I was saying, I might if you was a
decent woman.”
Her face paled.
“Be careful,” she warned.
“You don’t dast kill me,” he sneered. “The
235


TO KILL A. MAN
world’s a pretty low down place to have a thing
like you prowling around in it, but it ain’t so
plumb low down, I reckon, as to let you put a
hole in me. You’re sure bad, but the trouble
with you is that you’re weak in your badness.
It ain’t much to kill a man, but you ain’t got it
in you. There’s where you lose out.”
“Be careful of what you say,” she repeated.
“Or else, I warn you, it will go hard with you.
It can be seen to whether your sentence is light
or heavy.”
“Something’s the matter with God,” he re-
marked irrelevantly, “to be letting you around
loose. It’s clean beyond me what he’s up to,
playing such-like tricks on poor hunianity. Now
if I was God—”
His further opinion was interrupted by the en-
trance of the butler.
“Something is wrong with the telephone,
madam,” he announced. “The wires are crossed
or something, because I can’t get Central.”
“Go and call one of the servants,” she ordered.
“Send him out for an officer, and then return
here.” -
Again the pair was left alone.
“Will you kindly answer one question,
|
236


TO KILL A MAN
ma'am?” the man said. “That servant fellow
said something about a bell. I watched you like
a cat, and you sure rung no bell.”
“It was under the table, you poor fool. I
pressed it with my foot.”
“Thank you, ma'am. I reckoned I’d seen your
kind before, and now I sure know I have. I
spoke to you true and trusting, and all the time
you was lying like hell to me.”
She laughed mockingly.
“Go on. Say what you wish. It is very in-
teresting.”
“You made eyes at me, looking soft and
kind, playing up all the time the fact that you
wore skirts instead of pants—and all the time
with your foot on the bell under the table.
Well, there’s some consolation. I’d sooner be
poor Hughie Luke, doing his ten years, than be
in your skin. Ma'am, hell is full of women like
you.”
There was silence for a space, in which the
man, never taking his eyes from her, studying
her, was making up his mind.
“Go on,” she urged. “Say something.”
“Yes, ma'am, I’ll say something. I’ll sure
say something. Do you know what I’m going
237


TO KILL A. MAN
to do? I’m going to get right up from this chair
and walk out that door. I’d take the gun from
you, only you might turn foolish and let it go
off. You can have the gun. It’s a good one.
As I was saying, I am going right out that door.
'And you ain’t going to pull that gun off
either. It takes guts to shoot a man, and you
sure ain’t got them. Now get ready and see if
you can pull that trigger. I ain’t going to harm
you. I’m going out that door, and I’m start-
ing.”
Keeping his eyes fixed on her, he pushed back
the chair and slowly stood erect. The hammer
rose halfway. She watched it. So did he.
“Pull harder,” he advised. “It ain’t half up
yet. Go on and pull it and kill a man. That’s
what I said, kill a man, spatter his brains out on
the floor, or slap a hole into him the size of your
fist. That’s what killing a man means.”
The hammer lowered jerkily but gently. The
man turned his back and walked slowly to the
door. She swung the revolver around so that it
bore on his back. Twice again the hammer came
up halfway and was reluctantly eased down.
At the door the man turned for a moment be-
fore passing on. A sneer was on his lips. He
238


THE MEXICAN





THE MEXICAN
OBODY knew his history—they of the
Junta least of all. He was their “little
mystery,” their “big patriot,” and in his way he
worked as hard for the coming Mexican Revolu-
tion as did they. They were tardy in recogniz-
ing this, for not one of the Junta liked him.
The day he first drifted into their crowded, busy
rooms, they all suspected him of being a spy—
one of the bought tools of the Diaz secret serv-
ice. Too many of the comrades were in civil and
military prisons scattered over the United States,
and others of them, in irons, were even then being
taken across the border to be lined up against
adobe walls and shot.
At the first sight the boy did not impress them
favorably. Boy he was, not more than eighteen
and not over large for his years. He announced
'that he was Felipe Rivera, and that it was his
wish to work for the Revolution. That was all
—not a wasted word, no further explanation.
He stood waiting. There was no smile on his
lips, no geniality in his eyes. Big dashing
243


THE MEXICAN
Paulino Vera felt an inward shudder. Here was
something forbidding, terrible, inscrutable. There
was something venomous and snakelike in the
boy's black eyes. They burned like cold fire, as
with a vast, concentrated bitterness. He flashed
them from the faces of the conspirators to the
typewriter which little Mrs. Sethby was indus-
triously operating. His eyes rested on hers but
an instant—she had chanced to look up—and she,
too, sensed the nameless something that made her
pause. She was compelled to read back in order
to regain the swing of the letter she was writing.
Paulino Vera looked questioningly at Arrellano
and Ramos, and questioningly they looked back
and to each other. The indecision of doubt
brooded in their eyes. This slender boy was the
Unknown, vested with all the menace of the Un-
known. He was unrecognizable, something quite
beyond the ken of honest, ordinary revolutionists
whose fiercest hatred for Diaz and his tyranny
after all was only that of honest and ordinary
patriots. Here was something else, they knew
not what. But Vera, always the most impulsive,
the quickest to act, stepped into the breach.
“Very well,” he said coldly. “You say you
want to work for the Revolution. Take off your
244


THE MEXICAN
and sensed by them all, was evidenced by phy-
sical proofs. Now he appeared with a cut lip,
a blackened cheek, or a swollen ear. It was
patent that he brawled, somewhere in that out-
side world where he ate and slept, gained money,
and moved in ways unknown to them. As the
time passed, he had come to set type for the little
revolutionary sheet they published weekly. There
were occasions when he was unable to set type,
when his knuckles were bruised and battered,
when his thumbs were injured and helpless, when
one arm or the other hung wearily at his side
while his face was drawn with unspoken pain.
“A wastrel,” said Arrellano.
“A frequenter of low places,” said Ramos.
“But where does he get the money?” Vera de-
manded. “Onlv to-day, just now, have I learned
that he paid the bill for white paper—one hun-
dred and forty dollars.”
“There are his absences,” said May Sethby.
“He never explains them.”
“We should set a spy upon him,” Ramos pro-
pounded. -
“I should not care to be that spy,” said Vera.
“I fear you would never see me again, save to
bury me. He has a terrible passion. Not even
25o


THE MEXICAN
he would disappear through the heart of each day,
from early morning until late afternoon. At
such times he came early and remained late.
Arrellano had found him at midnight, setting
type with fresh swollen knuckles, or mayhap it
was his lip, new-split, that still bled.
II
The time of the crisis approached. Whether
or not the Revolution would be depended upon
the Junta, and the Junta was hard-pressed. The
need for money was greater than ever before,
while money was harder to get. Patriots had
given their last cent and now could give no more.
Section gang laborers—fugitive peons from
Mexico—were contributing half their scanty
wages. But more than that was needed. The
heart-breaking, conspiring, undermining toil of
years approached fruition. The time was ripe.
The Revolution hung on the balance. One shove º
more, one last heroic effort, and it would tremble
across the scales to victory. They knew their
Mexico. Once started, the Revolution would
take care of itself. The whole Diaz machine
would go down like a house of cards. The
252


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“It’s all right, Kelly,” came the slow response.
“He can put up a fight.”
“I suppose you’ll be sayin' next that he can
lick Ward,” Kelly snapped.
Roberts considered judicially.
“No, I won't say that. Ward’s a top-notcher
and a ring general. But he can’t hashhouse Rivera
in short order. I know Rivera. Nobody can get
his goat. He ain’t got a goat that I could ever
discover. And he’s a two-handed fighter. He
can throw in the sleep-makers from any position.”
“Never mind that. What kind of a show can
he put up? You’ve been conditioning and train-
ing fighters all your life. I take off my hat to
your judgment. Can he give the public a run for
its money?”
“He sure can, and he’ll worry Ward a mighty
heap on top of it. You don’t know that boy.
I do. I discovered him. He ain’t got a goat.
He’s a devil. He’s a wizzy-wooz if anybody
should ask you. He'll make Ward sit up with
a show of local talent that’ll make the rest of
you sit up. I won’t say he’ll lick Ward, but
he’ll put up such a show that you’ll all know
he’s a comer.”
“All right.” Kelly turned to his secretary.
258


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“Ring up Ward. I warned him to show up if
I thought it worth while. He’s right across at
the Yellowstone, throwin’ chests and doing the
popular.” Kelly turned back to the conditioner.
“Have a drink?”
Roberts sipped his highball and unburdened
himself.
“Never told you how I discovered the little
cuss. It was a couple of years ago he showed up
out at the quarters. I was getting Prayne ready
for his fight with Delaney. Prayne’s wicked. He
ain’t got a tickle of mercy in his make-up. He'd
chopped up his pardner's something cruel, and I
could n’t find a willing boy that’d work with
him. I’d noticed this little starved Mexican kid
hanging around, and I was desperate. So I
grabbed him, slammed on the gloves, and put
him in. He was tougher 'n rawhide, but weak.
And he did n’t know the first letter in the al-
phabet of boxing. Prayne chopped him to rib-
bons. But he hung on for two sickening rounds,
when he fainted. Starvation, that was all.
Battered? You could n’t have recognized him.
I gave him half a dollar and a square meal. You
oughta seen him wolf it down. He had n’t had
a bite for a couple of days. That’s the end of
259


THE MEXICAN
don’t take advice. There’s a fortune in it for
the fellow that gets the job of managin' him, only
he won’t consider it. And you watch him hold
out for the cash money when you get down to
terms.”
It was at this stage that Danny Ward arrived.
Quite a party it was. His manager and trainer
were with him, and he breezed in like a gusty
draught of geniality, good-nature, and all-con-
queringness. Greetings flew about, a joke here,
a retort there, a smile or a laugh for everybody.
Yet it was his way, and only partly sincere. He
was a good actor, and he had found geniality a
most valuable asset in the game of getting on in
the world. But down underneath he was the de-
liberate, cold-blooded fighter and business man.
The rest was a mask. Those who knew him or
trafficked with him said that when it came to
brass tacks he was Danny-on-the-Spot. He was
invariably present at all business discussions, and
it was urged by some that his manager was a
blind whose only function was to serve as Danny'sſ
mouth-piece.
Rivera's way was different. Indian blood, as
well as Spanish, was in his veins, and he sat back
in a corner, silent, immobile, only his black eyes
261


THE MEXICAN
“What will sixty-five per cent of the gate re-
ceipts be?” Rivera demanded.
“Oh, maybe five thousand, maybe as high
as eight thousand,” Danny broke in to ex-
plain. “Something like that. Your share’ll
come to something like a thousand or six-
teen hundred. Pretty good for takin' a licking
from a guy with my reputation. What d’ ye
say?”
Then Rivera took their breaths away.
“Winner takes all,” he said with finality.
A dead silence prevailed.
“It’s like candy from a baby,” Danny's man-
ager proclaimed.
Danny shook his head.
“I’ve been in the game too long,” he explained.
“I’m not casting reflections on the referee, or the
present company. I’m not sayin' nothing about
book-makers an’ frame-ups that sometimes hap-
ºpen. But what I do say is that it’s poor business
for a fighter like me. I play safe. There’s no
tellin'. Mebbe I break my arm, eh? Or some
guy slips me a bunch of dope?” He shoºk his
head solemnly. “Win or lose, eighty is my split.
What d'ye say, Mexican?”
Rivera shook his head.
264


THE MEXICAN
“It means five pounds,” Roberts complained to
Rivera. “You’ve given too much away.
You've thrown the fight right there. Danny 'll
be as strong as a bull. You’re a fool. He’ll
lick you sure. You ain’t got the chance of a dew-
drop in hell.”
Rivera's answer was a calculated look of
hatred. Even this Gringo he despised, and him
had he found the whitest Gringo of them all.
IV
Barely noticed was Rivera as he entered the
ring. Only a very slight and very scattering
ripple of half-hearted hand-clapping greeted
him. The house did not believe in him. He
was the lamb led to slaughter at the hands of
the great Danny. Besides, the house was disap-
pointed. It had expected a rushing battle be-
tween Danny Ward and Billy Carthey, and here
it must put up with this poor little tyro. Still
further, it had manifested its disapproval of the
change by betting two, and even three, to one on
Danny. And where a betting audience's money
is, there is its heart.
The Mexican boy sat down in his corner and
267


THE MEXICAN
waited. The slow minutes lagged by. Danny
was making him wait. It was an old trick, but
ever it worked on the young, new fighters. They
grew frightened, sitting thus and facing their own
apprehensions and a callous, tobacco-smoking
audience. But for once the trick failed. Rob-
erts was right. Rivera had no goat. He, who
was more delicately coördinated, more finely
nerved and strung than any of them, had no
nerves of this sort. The atmosphere of fore-
doomed defeat in his own corner had no effect on
him. His handlers were Gringos and strangers.
Also they were scrubs—the dirty driftage of the
fight game, without honor, without efficiency.
And they were chilled, as well, with certitude that
theirs was the losing corner.
“Now you gotta be careful,” Spider Hagerty
warned him. Spider was his chief second.
“Make it last as long as you can—them 's my in-
structions from Kelly. If you don’t, the papers
'll call it another bum fight and give the game a
bigger black eye in Los Angeles.”
All of which was not encouraging. But Rivera
took no notice. He despised prize fighting. It
was the hated game of the hated Gringo. He
had taken up with it, as a chopping block for
268


THE MEXICAN
others in the training quarters, solely because he
was starving. The fact that he was marvelously
made for it, had meant nothing. He hated it.
Not until he had come in to the Junta, had he
fought for money, and he had found the money
easy. Not first among the sons of men had he
been to find himself successful at a despised voca-
tion.
He did not analyze. He merely knew that he
must win this fight. There could be no other out-
come. For behind him, nerving him to this be-
lief, were profounder forces than any the crowded
house dreamed. Danny Ward fought for money,
and for the easy ways of life that money
would bring. But the things Rivera fought for
burned in his brain—blazing and terrible visions,
that, with eyes wide open, sitting lonely in the
corner of the ring and waiting for his tricky
antagonist, he saw as clearly as he had lived
them.
He saw the white-walled, water-power factories
of Rio Blanco. He saw the six thousand workers,
starved and wan, and the little children, seven
and eight years of age, who toiled long shifts
for ten cents a day. He saw the perambulating
corpses, the ghastly death's heads of men who
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labored in the dye-rooms. He remembered that
he had heard his father call the dye-rooms the
“suicide-holes,” where a year was death. He saw
the little patio, and his mother cooking and moil-
ing at crude housekeeping and finding time to
caress and love him. And his father he saw,
large, big-moustached and deep-chested, kindly
above all men, who loved all men and whose
heart was so large that there was love to overflow-
ing still left for the mother and the little muchacho
playing in the corner of the patio. In those days
his name had not been Felipe Rivera. It had
been Fernandez, his father's and mother's name.
Him had they called Juan. Later, he had
changed it himself, for he had found the name
of Fernandez hated by prefects of police, jefes
politicos, and rurales.
Big, hearty Joaquin Fernandez! A large
place he occupied in Rivera's visions. He had
not understood at the time, but looking back he
could understand. He could see him setting type
in the little printery, or scribbling endless hasty,
nervous lines on the much-cluttered desk. And
he could see the strange evenings, when workmen,
coming secretly in the dark like men who did ill
deeds, met with his father and talked long hours
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THE MEXICAN
-
seeking and finding, stripped and mangled, his
father and his mother. His mother he especially
remembered—only her face projecting, her body
burdened by the weight of dozens of bodies.
Again the rifles of the soldiers of Porfirio Diaz
'cracked, and again he dropped to the ground and, .
slunk away like some hunted coyote of the hills.
To his ears came a great roar, as of the sea, and
he saw Danny Ward, leading his retinue of
trainers and seconds, coming down the center
aisle. The house was in wild uproar for the
popular hero who was bound to win. Everybody
proclaimed him. Everybody was for him. Even
Rivera's own seconds warmed to something akin
to cheerfulness when Danny ducked jauntily
through the ropes and entered the ring. His face
continually spread to an unending succession of
smiles, and when Danny smiled he smiled in every
feature, even to the laughter-wrinkles of the cor-
ners of the eyes and into the depths of the eyes
themselves. Never was there so genial a fighter.
His face was a running advertisement of good
feeling, of good fellowship. He knew everybody.
He joked, and laughed, and greeted his friends
through the ropes. Those farther away, unable
to suppress their admiration, cried loudly: “Oh,
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you Danny!” It was a joyous ovation of affection
that lasted a full five minutes.
Rivera was disregarded. For all that the au-
dience noticed, he did not exist. Spider
Hagerty’s bloated face bent down close to his.
“No gettin' scared,” the Spider warned. “An’
remember instructions. You gotta last. No
layin’ down. If you lay down, we got instruc-
tions to beat you up in the dressing rooms.
Savve? You just gotta fight.”
The house began to applaud. Danny was
crossing the ring to him. Danny bent over,
caught Rivera's right hand in both his own and
shook it with impulsive heartiness. Danny's
smile-wreathed face was close to his. The au-
dience yelled its appreciation of Danny's display
of sporting spirit. He was greeting his opponent
with the fondness of a brother. Danny's lips
moved, and the audience, interpreting the unheard
words to be those of a kindly-natured sport, yelled
again. Only Rivera heard the low words.
“You little Mexican rat,” hissed from between
Danny's gaily smiling lips, “I’ll fetch the yellow
outa you.”
Rivera made no move. He did not rise. He
merely hated with his eyes.
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he enveloped in Danny's man-eating attack. A
minute of this went by, and two minutes. Then,
in a separation, it caught a clear glimpse of the
Mexican. His lip was cut, his nose was bleed-
ing. As he turned and staggered into a clinch,
the welts of oozing blood, from his contacts with
the ropes, showed in red bars across his back.
But what the audience did not notice was that his
chest was not heaving and that his eyes were
coldly burning as ever. Too many aspiring
champions, in the cruel welter of the training
camps, had practiced this man-eating attack on
him. He had learned to live through for a com-
pensation of from half a dollar a go up to fifteen
dollars a week—a hard School, and he was
schooled hard.
Then happened the amazing thing. The
whirling, blurring mix-up ceased suddenly. Ri-
vera stood alone. Danny, the redoubtable Danny,
lay on his back. His body quivered as conscious-
ness strove to return to it. He had not staggered
and sunk down, nor had he gone over in a long
slumping fall. The right hook of Rivera had
dropped him in midair with the abruptness of
death. The referee shoved Rivera back with one
hand, and stood over the fallen gladiator counting
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THE MEXICAN
the seconds. It is the custom of prizefighting au-
diences to cheer a clean knock-down blow. But
this audience did not cheer. The thing had been
too unexpected. It watched the toll of the sec-
onds in tense silence, and through this silence the
voice of Roberts rose exultantly:
“I told you he was a two-handed fighter!”
By the fifth second, Danny was rolling over
on his face, and when seven was counted, he
rested on one knee, ready to rise after the count
of nine and before the count of ten. If his knee
still touched the floor at “ten,” he was considered
“down,” and also “out.” The instant his knee
left the floor, he was considered “up,” and in that
instant it was Rivera's right to try and put him
down again. Rivera took no chances. The mo-
ment that knee left the floor he would strike again.
He circled around, but the referee circled in be-
tween, and Rivera knew that the seconds he
counted were very slow. All Gringos were
against him, even the referee.
At “nine” the referee gave Rivera a sharp
thrust back. It was unfair, but it enabled Danny
to rise, the smile back on his lips. Doubled
partly over, with arms wrapped about face and
abdomen, he cleverly stumbled into a clinch. By
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THE MEXICAN
land nothing vital, he proceeded scientifically to
chop and wear down his opponent. He landed
three blows to Rivera's one, but they were pun-
ishing blows only, and not deadly. It was the
sum of many of them that constituted deadliness.
He was respectful of this two-handed dub with
the amazing short-arm kicks in both his fists.
In defense, Rivera developed a disconcerting
straight-left. Again and again, attack after at-
tack he straight-lefted away from him with ac-
cumulated damage to Danny's mouth and nose.
But Danny was protean. That was why he was
the coming champion. He could change from
style to style of fighting at will. He now de-
voted himself to infighting. In this he was par-
ticularly wicked, and it enabled him to avoid the
other's straight-left. Here he set the house wild
repeatedly, capping it with a marvelous lock-
break and lift of an inside upper-cut that raised
the Mexican in the air and dropped him to the
mat. Rivera rested on one knee, making the
most of the count, and in the soul of him he
knew the referee was counting short seconds on
him.
Again, in the seventh, Danny achieved the
diabolical inside uppercut. He succeeded only
28o -


THE MEXICAN
Rivera refused to be licked. Through the
eighth round his opponent strove vainly to re-
peat the uppercut. In the ninth, Rivera stunned
the house again. In the midst of a clinch he broke
the lock with a quick, lithe movement, and in
the narrow space between their bodies his right
lifted from the waist. Danny went to the floor
and took the safety of the count. The crowd
was appalled. He was being bested at his own.
game. His famous right-uppercut had been
worked back on him. Rivera made no attempt
to catch him as he arose at “nine.” The referee
was openly blocking that play, though he stood
clear when the situation was reversed and it was
Rivera who desired to rise.
Twice in the tenth, Rivera put through the
right-uppercut, lifted from waist to opponent's
chin. Danny grew desperate. The smile never
left his face, but he went back to his man-eating
rushes. Whirlwind as he would, he could not
damage Rivera, while Rivera, through the blur
and whirl, dropped him to the mat three times
in succession. Danny did not recuperate so
quickly now, and by the eleventh round he was in
a serious way. But from then till the fourteenth
he put up the gamest exhibition of his career.
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He stalled and blocked, fought parsimoniously,
and strove to gather strength. Also, he fought as
foully as a successful fighter knows how. Every
trick and device he employed, butting in the
clinches with the seeming of accident, pinioning
Rivera's glove between arm and body, heeling
his glove on Rivera's mouth to clog his breath-
ing. Often, in the clinches, through his cut and
smiling lips he snarled insults unspeakable and
vile in Rivera's ear. Everybody, from the ref-
eree to the house, was with Danny and was help-
ing Danny. And they knew what he had in
mind. Bested by this surprise-box of an un-
known, he was pinning all on a singie punch.
He offered himself for punishment, fished, and
feinted, and drew, for that one opening that
would enable him to whip a blow through with
all his strength and turn the tide. As another
and greater fighter had done before him, he might
do—a right and left, to solar plexus and across
the jaw. He could do it, for he was noted for
the strength of punch that remained in his arms
as long as he could keep his feet.
Rivera's seconds were not half-caring for him
in the intervals between rounds. Their towels
made a showing, but drove little air into his pant-
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THE MEXICAN
ing lungs. Spider Hagerty talked advice to him,
but Rivera knew it was wrong advice. Every-
body was against him. He was surrounded by
treachery. In the fourteenth round he put
Danny down again, and himself stood resting,
hands dropped at side, while the referee counted.
In the other corner Rivera had been noting sus-
picious whisperings. He saw Michael Kelly
make his way to Roberts and bend and whisper.
Rivera's ears were a cat’s, desert-trained, and
he caught snatches of what was said. He wanted
to hear more, and when his opponent arose he
maneuvered the fight into a clinch over against
the ropes.
“Got to,” he could hear Michael, while Rob-
erts nodded. “Danny's got to win—I stand to
lose a mint—I’ve got a ton of money covered—
my own—If he lasts the fifteenth I’m bust—The
boy’ll mind you. . Put something across.”
And thereafter Rivera saw no more visions.
They were trying to job him. Once again he
dropped Danny and stood resting, his hands at
his side. Roberts stood up.
“That settled him,” he said. “Go to your
corner.”
He spoke with authority, as he had often
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