Chapter I: Front Matter

Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.

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PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, JULY 7, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.

VOL. XVII.--NO. 871. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.

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AN OUTLAW.

A STORY OF JIM-NED CREEK.

BY M. E. M. DAVIS.

The porch of Bishop's store--the heart, so to speak, of the Jim-Ned Creek settlement--was deserted, for the November day was bleak and raw. Half a score or more men lounged over the counters within, or sat silent and ruminant around the smouldering fire. Gideon Bishop, half hidden by his tall desk, was busy with his ledgers, but he glanced furtively and frowningly now and again at his guests.

The Outlaw came up the road at a leisurely pace. She was a small mare, blue-gray in color, with a flowing mane and tail of a fine glossy black, much matted with cockle-burs. She tossed her small head coquettishly in response to the neigh of welcome from the horses hitched to the saplings about the store, and picked her way daintily to the very edge of the porch, where she stood saucily expectant.

"Hullo! There's that blue _mus_tang o' yourn!" exclaimed Sam Leggett, jumping down from the counter. "It's been nigh onto two year sence she _vamoosed_, ain't it, Uncle Gid? Where _hez_ she been a-hidin' herse'f?"

Mr. Bishop picked up a wagon whip, took a lariat from its nail on the wall, and stepped out upon the porch.

"So! You've come back, have you, Lady?" he said, with a grim smile. He reached forward as he spoke and attempted to slip the rope over the mare's neck. She shook her mane gently, and dipping her pretty head, nipped his forearm with her strong white teeth.

At another time old Gid, stern and harsh as he was, might not have resented this playful salute, for the skin on his brown wrist was barely grazed, but he was in no mood for such fooling now. He started back with a quick step; his brow reddened angrily, and the fire leaped to his deep-set eyes. He lifted the whip; the long keen lash curled through the air, and descended with a stinging sound upon the runaway's shining flank. She reared violently, uttering a cry almost human in its indignant protest; then she wheeled about, and galloped away in the direction whence she had come.

The men who had trooped out upon the porch at Mr. Bishop's heels gazed after her until she disappeared in the creek bottom; then they slouched back to their seats.

"Jack broke that _mus_tang hisse'f," Joe Trimble presently remarked. "I mind the first time he ever backed her. _Jing!_ how she bucked!"

"Speakin' o' Jack," Newt Pinson ventured, in an off-hand way, but not daring to look at Jack's father--"speakin' o' Jack, 'pears to me it's nigh about time we was huntin' that boy up."

"Gentle_men_," said Mr. Bishop, in a loud, angry voice, "you 'tend to your own business, if--you--please. Jack Bishop is nineteen year old, and full able to take keer of hisse'f."

These words penetrated through a half-open door into the family living-room back of the store. On hearing them, Jack's mother burst into a fresh fit of weeping, which the kindly neighbors hovering about her tried vainly to soothe.

"He's just as oneasy about Jack as I am," she sobbed. "That onliest child of ourn is the apple of his father's eye. But it's Gid's pride as won't let him give up that a Bishop can get lost. And everybody's plumb afraid of him. Oh, my boy, my boy!"

"Don't ye worrit yo'se'f into a spazzum, Susy Bishop," said Granny Carnes. "_I_ ain't afeard o' Gid Bishop, ner no other male creeter. An' I've give my orders to the boys a-settin' yander in the sto'. Ef Jack Bishop"--here she raised her voice to its highest and shrillest pitch--"ef Jack Bishop ain't inside this house befo' candle-lightin' to-night, them boys has got to tromp out an' find him, an' fetch him home, or not dassen to show their faces agin the len'th an' bre'th o' Jim-Ned."

"Amen!" said Mrs. Leggett and Mrs. Trimble together.

"Double an' thripple Amen!" added Mrs. Pinson, solemnly.

There was indeed no small cause for anxiety. Early on a Tuesday morning young Bishop had started out afoot, with dog and gun, for a few hours' hunting in _The Rough_--a belt of savage woodland which stretched away westward, with wide solitary prairies on either side, to the chain of hills some fifteen miles distant. It was now Friday, past noon, and he had not returned. Newt Pinson had met him at the crossing of Jim-Ned Creek half an hour after he had left home; he had not been seen nor heard of since. He had gone on alone; for the dog, a half-grown puppy, had turned and trotted back, unnoticed, behind Mr. Pinson.

"Oh, if Josh was only with him!" moaned Mrs. Bishop, already alarmed, at the close of the first day.

And Josh, the intelligent old hound, rubbed his head against her knee and whined softly.

The lad--everywhere a favorite--had never absented himself from home before; and when Wednesday, Thursday, Friday came and went without tidings of him, the neighbors from up and down the creek began to gather at the store.

They looked at the heavy sky, sunless and misty these four days past, and shook their heads ominously, whispering among themselves. The poor mother was wellnigh frantic with alarm. Uncle Gid alone maintained an air of obstinate confidence, in the face of which no one dared venture a move.

"Jack Bishop is full able to take keer of hisse'f," he repeated, proudly, in answer to Mr. Pinson's timid suggestions. "Jack Bishop knows every inch of ground betwixt Jim-Ned and Rattlesnake Gap."

"All the same, notwithstandin'," whispered Granny Carnes in Mrs. Bishop's ear, "I've give my orders for candle-lightin', honey."

But before candle-lighting Mr. Bishop's assumed stoicism gave way. About sunset he arose and took his rifle from the rack above the door. "Come on, boys," he said, with a catch in his throat. And a moment later they were hurrying down the rutty road.

At the Jim-Ned crossing the old man paused. "You go back, Susy," he said, with rough kindness, to the frail little woman following a pace or two behind him. "Go back, and stay with the women folks. You ain't nowise fitten for this sort o' thing."

Jack's mother pulled the red knitted shawl closer about her head, and moved steadily forward. "No, Gid," she said, quietly; "I'm not going back--not without my boy."

He put an arm about her without another word, and husband and wife presently entered together the mysterious gloom of _The Rough_.

II.

An hour or two later Jack Bishop was lying on the open prairie, where he had thrown himself in a sort of dull despair. His loaded gun lay beside him; his empty wallet hung from his shoulder; his face looked pinched and wan in the vapory moonlight.

"I crossed Jim-Ned," he was saying to himself, mechanically, for the thousandth time; "I crossed the creek and came into _The Rough_. I left home Tuesday at sun-up.... That puppy ain't worth shucks; I wish I had brought old Josh!... I killed three jack-rabbits in Buck-Snort Gully. By the big cottonwood--what did I do by the big cottonwood? Oh, I ate my corn pone. _Gee!_ how hungry I am!... Then I followed a deer and got into the prairie. Why, I know this prairie 'most as well as I know Jim-Ned! Yonder's Rattlesnake Gap, and yonder's _The Rough_.... And before I knew it, it was plumb dark.... I went back into _The Rough_, and tramped and tramped; and the first thing I knew I was out on the prairie again.... I've been doing the same thing ever since, over and over.... I haven't seen a soul.... If I could just glimpse the sun! But seems like the sun never will shine again.... I reckon I'm lost.... Yonder's Rattlesnake Gap, and yonder's _The Rough_--"

He got up and staggered a few steps, then sank down again. He was a manly lad, and he had borne with hopeful courage the hunger, cold, and loneliness of the long days and nights. But he was exhausted with fatigue, and weakened by want of food; and finally, overcome by a sense of terror and desolation, he covered his face with his hands and groaned aloud.

The painful throbbing in his ears sounded suddenly like the rhythm of advancing footsteps. Something cold and moist touched his cheek; a warm breath mingled with his own.

"Why, Lady!" he cried, springing to his feet. Weariness and hunger and cold had vanished in a trice. Laughing and crying by turns, he clasped his arms about the neck of the little mustang which he had fed and petted as a colt--the wilful Outlaw who had disappeared into _The Rough_ two years before.

Fearful lest the mare should desert him again, he held her long mane with one hand, while with the other he groped, stooping, for his rifle. But the Outlaw apparently did not dream of flight. She stood quite still until the gun was secured and he had climbed with some difficulty upon her back.

"Now, Lady," he shouted, "take me to Jim-Ned! Carry me home!"

Lady threw up her head, neighed, and moved obediently forward. She went at a swift walk, breaking at intervals into the long, swinging, restful mustang _lope_.

"But--you are going in the wrong direction," remonstrated her rider, at the end of a few moments. He tugged at her mane, and endeavored to change her course. "You are carrying me _through_ the Gap. Jim-Ned is on _this_ side. Back, Lady--back!"

The mare shook herself impatiently, and pushed on between the pyramidal hills which loomed up on either side of the Gap, emerging into the open prairie beyond just as the moon, scattering the clouds at last, filled earth and sky with a flood of golden light.

"Well," said Jack, with a shiver of disappointment, "you'll take me somewhere, I reckon, Lady. I can't be any more lost than I've been for the last three days!"

After a while, however, things began to assume a strangely familiar look. "I've never been west of the Gap before," he muttered, "but--yonder looks like Comanche Mound. And, sure as shootin', here's Matchett's Pond! Ah!" he added, after profound reflection, "I am east of the Gap now. I must have been all this time, somehow, on the other side."

His conjecture was correct. Stumbling unwittingly through the narrow Gap in the darkness of the first night, and deceived by the prairie and woodland beyond, he had there continued the incessant and bewildered round into which he had fallen when he had first lost his bearings.

"It's all clear as daylight now," he cried, joyously. "You've got a heap more sense than I have, Lady! Couldn't fool _you_ with roughs and prairies! And now I think I will stretch my legs a little, and rest you, my beauty."

He slid to the ground and limped along beside his four-footed friend, leaning against her, and chattering boyishly as he went.

"Tain't more'n ten miles to Bishop's store now. And mother'll be on the porch, late as it is, looking out for me. Poor mother, I know she's been fretting! And she'll have the coffee-pot on the coals. And father'll be pretending to scold. But, shucks! he won't mean a word of it. Seems like"--a lump arose in the boy's throat--"seems like I never understood father before, nor loved mother half enough!... Where have you been all this time, anyhow, Lady? Why, what a scratch you've got on your side! Run against a mesquit thorn, eh? It's all bloody. I'll doctor it the minute we get home. Hello!--"

One of his legs seemed all at once to have grown shorter than the other, a loud report rang in his ears, a thrill of intense agony racked his whole body, and he dropped fainting to the ground. He came to himself a moment later to find the blood pouring from a wound in his left shoulder, and when he attempted to rise and draw his leg from the deep rabbit-hole into which he had stumbled a sharp pain warned him that both knee and ankle were sprained or broken. He ceased his efforts and fell back, staring helplessly up at the sky.

The mustang, who had darted away at the discharge of the rifle, had returned, and was standing beside him.

"Don't go, Lady," he implored, catching at her mane. "I've shot myself, I reckon. I can't move my leg. Don't, _don't_ leave me, Lady."

The mare thrust her nose reassuringly against his face.

The blood, which he tried vainly to stanch with his free hand, oozed from the gun-shot wound, and formed a red puddle about his head. He felt himself growing dizzy and nauseated.

It was now about an hour past midnight, and the vast moonlighted prairie was hushed and still. Suddenly a curious sound troubled the silence--a trampling, tearing noise, accompanied by a hoarse confused roar. Jack lifted his head a little and looked.

His heart stood still.

A small herd of cattle roving about the prairie, moved by the curiosity inherent in animals, had drawn near, and excited by the smell of blood, were pawing the earth, bellowing with rage, and circling ever closer and closer about the helpless lad. He could see their wide horns glistening in the moonlight. "Mother! Father!" he breathed; and dropping his head back upon the cold turf, he closed his eyes in instant expectation of death.

But he opened them again. For the Outlaw had whirled abruptly from her post beside him, and charged, with a snort, first into one section and then into another of the infuriated circle. Surprised and daunted, the cattle retreated a short distance, stopped, and stood still, uncertain and dumb.

Hardly, however, had the boy drawn a breath of thankfulness and relief, when there was another mad rush upon him; and again the gallant little mustang, plunging and snorting, held his assailants at bay.

Over and over this assault and repulse were repeated. The half-unconscious lad turned his terrified eyes from side to side, groaning with pain, and lifting his voice brokenly in encouragement of his protector.

But she too was beginning to be spent and exhausted. He stroked her trembling foreleg with his hand as she hovered over him in a moment of respite. "Poor Lady!" he whispered, faintly: "it's mighty nigh over with both of us, I think. You'd better save yourself now, Lady. You can't do anything more for me. Don't cry, Lady. _Why, Lady, your eyes are just like mother's!_"

And with a sob he lapsed into utter oblivion.

III.

The searching party came out of _The Rough_ in the early dawn, and stood huddled together, forlornly silent, on the prairie ridge that sloped gently away to Matchett's Pond. They were foot-sore and disheartened after their long night's fruitless quest.

"Ain't that Matchett's bunch o' cattle rampagin' an' bellerin' aroun' down yander?" demanded Joe Trimble, breaking the silence, and peering forward curiously, "What are they up to? _Y-a-a-h!_"

He burst into a loud yell and set off running at the top of his speed, discharging his pistol as he ran to scatter the herd.

Swift-footed as he was, however, a woman outstripped him; and by the time the others came up, Jack's mother was kneeling in the grass, and her arms were about her boy.

When Jack, after swallowing a mouthful of water, had revived a little, and the color had begun to come back into his poor pale face, his wound was dressed and his broken leg bandaged. Then he faltered out the story, with his head on his mother's bosom, and his hand held close in his father's strong grasp.

"I could feel the fire in their blazing eyes," he concluded. "I thought I would never see you and mother again, father. And if it hadn't been for Lady-- Don't cry, mother, I'm all right now. _Why, mother, your eyes are just like Lady's!_"

* * * * *

Uncle Gid got up and walked over to where the Outlaw lay panting on the dry grass. He reeled like a fainting man as he went. At his approach the mare threw out her slender forelegs and tried to get up, but fell feebly back, quivering with terror. The old man dropped on his knees beside her, and laid his hand on the whelk that disfigured her flank. "Heaven forgive me for a sinful man!" he cried. "I struck you in anger, Lady; I struck you; and if it hadn't been for you, my son, my only son--" A sob choked his utterance, and he could not finish. But Lady turned her head toward him and whickered softly. She understood!

There was a moment of awed silence.

Then Mr. Pinson blew his nose, wiped his eyes, and stepped forward. "Gentlemen _an'_ Mis' Bishop," he said, with an oratorical flourish. "Lady is a honor to her sect! The female sect, gentlemen _an'_ Mis' Bishop, is ever faithful an' ever true. Lady, notwithstandin' she air a mare an' a Outlaw--"

"Three cheers for Lady!" interrupted Jack, with the old sparkle in his eyes, though his voice was a bit unsteady. "Hurrah for Lady! Hip, hip, hurr-a-a-h!"

And such cheers went ringing over the prairie and across _The Rough_ that old Granny Carnes afterward declared she heard them at Bishop's store, ten miles away.

THE NEW MOTHER GOOSE.

There was a man in our town
Who was so wondrous wise,
He didn't try the bramble-bush
And scratch out both his eyes,

But sat him in a big arm-chair,
Upon a schooner-yacht,
And said to those who jeered at him,
"I'd rather see than not."

BY LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, U.S.N.

(_In Two Installments._)

In that happy hour or more after hammocks are piped down, and before tattoo is sounded on board ships of war, the sailor has his season of unvexed merriment. This leisure is a cherished one, and his pleasure runs the gamut of many physical bouts. He boxes, gives play with single-stick and quarter-staff, both vigorous, determined, and honestly punctuated with resounding whacks and grinning acceptances of pain. The bear is chased amid much license of noise, and Jack swims, dives, rows, wrestles, and dances. And how he dances! Save on board flag-ships, bands are extemporized affairs; for the sailor loves his music dearly, even when he has to pay his piper, and is a prentice hand with various instruments, though, I think, there is an unwritten law against the wheezy and soul-envenoming concertina and a respected prejudice concerning the piccolo.

I do not know that he hornpipes it so much as he jigs it, but when he does go in for form and style his traditional performance is filled with grace and honest delight.

It is at this hour, too, that the dumb pets of the crew have their rarest frolic; for, by the association--by the inspiration perhaps--of the same sentiment, this twilight season becomes to the sailor what the children's hour is to the luckier landsman in homes where love is sanctified by the tender witcheries of happy childhood. The isolation of the sailor, the craving during long years of exile for something that cares for him purely for himself, is a charm to conjure with, and lucky indeed is the dumb brute whose life falls in the pleasant places of the forecastle. Indeed, the fondness sailors show for their pets is proverbial, and so intimately are these associated with certain famous deeds of the sea that they have acquired a definite name and fame, and are as well known and as fondly remembered and lamented as are the races of bygone days by ancient jockeys and stable-boys.

With sailors this feeling often borders on a sincere affection, and in the early twilight of a second dog-watch I have seen weather-beaten, battle-scarred bluejackets fondling some pet as tenderly as a mother would her first-born; and then, when darkness fell, stowing it in a secure bed and bidding it a most affectionate good-night. The catalogue of sea pets would read almost like the Homeric enumeration of the ships, for these are of every description, from field-mice to bears. Those most generally found are dogs, cats, monkeys, and parrots. The accomplishments of the parrots are especially weird, and sometimes uncanny, and there is a tradition that sailors teach them to talk by feeding them with bread balls in which grains of red pepper are secreted. When the parrots taste the pepper they begin to scream and squawk most fiercely, and this is the apt season for their teachers to repeat fast and furiously the words they seek to have learned. In their rage the parrots repeat the words thus spoken, and by dint of mild torture and bad temper acquire a vocabulary which sometimes becomes very varied. Monkeys are usually dressed in ludicrous copies of foreign soldiers' uniforms, are taught to drill, and especially to salute and salaam profoundly at the word of command.

The west coast of Africa, Brazil, and the waters about the Asiatic station are famous for the queerness, variety, and cheapness of pets, and if the crews were not restrained the ship would soon become as riotous as a bear-garden and as clamorous as a menagerie. Among the animals that have been mustered among a ship's family are black pigs from Hong-kong; silvery gray squirrels from Shanghai; long-haired chrysanthemum-tailed dogs from Kobe; rabbits from Chin-kiang; bears, and quaint little black chickens with feathers that stick out like porcupine quills, from Nagasaki. From the mud shores of Yang-tse-kiang the sailors get "miners," birds of the crow family, which with patience and care soon learn to talk cleverly in the quaint dialect of the sea. At times more than one of these pets claims the allegiance of its owner. I recall an aged fore-mast-man of one of our sloops of war, the _Vandalia_, I think, who had collected a most interesting family, consisting of a dog, goat, cat, rabbit, hen, parrot, and monkey, all living in a harmony which put to shame the quarrelsome members of like households in stuffy museums. So well behaved and decorous were they that even the strictest of first lieutenants, watchful for holy-stone decks and shining paint-work, could not complain. Another of our war-ships mustered a pig, a bear, and a dog in its books.

These had become thoroughly sailorized, going at drum-beat to quarters, mustering with their divisions, and observing with a fine precision the routine of the day. By an unexplained but accepted assumption of rank, the pig took his station on the quarter-deck, the bear mustered amid-ships, and the dog clung to the eyes of the ship, each in the wake of his adopted guns' crew. Nothing was allowed to disturb this ceremonial precedence, not even the riot and roar and the slaughter sometimes when the ship was in action. At times the bear, with misty recollections of pine woods and underbrush, would cut adrift from the restraints of education and run _amook_ in the gangways, more or less violently hugging members of the crew. He showed a fine discrimination between friend and foe, cherishing for days the remembrances of an affront, and never losing an opportunity of avenging it, as many a madcap youngster had occasion to remember.

Of all pets, none is better suited for ship life than the wily goat, and the traditions of the navy are jocund with quaint stories of this animal. Once in the good old days of tarpauling hats and true-lover's knots, a famous ship's company owned one that fell into evil ways, such as chewing tobacco, drinking grog, and challenging the best men in the ship to butting-matches. Indeed, he became a very rakish, swashbuckling, timber-shivering goat, who lived long and not well, and died after a prolonged debauch in a fit akin to what Jackie calls the "horrors."

Each day, by common consent, the men added a pint of water to the grog tub, and regularly in his turn Bill came for his tot. At seasons, when the master's mate of the spirit-room was disguised with over-much drink, the goat, like his two-legged messmates, doubled on the tub, securing a smuggled ration. He came to grief at last, for on an occasion when the grog was stiff to his liking he got well to windward of the tub, charged like a first boarder over a clear hammock rail at the mate and purser's clerk, took possession of the marine bar, and got so gloriously fuddled, so gloriously uncoo' fou, that he never recovered, but went overboard, in a middle watch, through sheer despair and misery.

Another goat was the prized shipmate of one of our vessels wrecked on the coast of India, fortunately in weather moderate enough to launch the boats and rafts. Each man was detailed for his place, and allowed to carry his bag of clothes or his hammock--no greater provision being needed, as the shore was close aboard. As the men slowly lowered themselves over the ship's side, the nanny-goat stood amongst the waiting ones, watching her master, the ship's cook, who stood irresolutely at the mast until his turn came. The cook was an old sailor, and his kit was very valuable to him--it was probably all he had in the world--but when his name was called, he dropped the bag, and touched his hat, and said:

"If you please, sir, I can't bear to leave Nanny behind. I'll take her instead of the bag, for there isn't room for both." And then, appealingly, "Can I, sir?"

Nanny went over the side and landed with him, marched by him through the desert, and when relief came bleated her enjoyment in a way that repaid him for the sacrifice. For many years she browsed among the scrap-heaps and rare grass-plots of the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, where, surrounded by a numerous progeny, she doubtless told, with many butts, the yarn of the day when her cook and master saved her up Mozambique way.

I remember some pets of my sea-going days, cherished in life and mourned in death. One was a scraggy hen, of no known breed, raised in Polynesia, and given to one of our officers by a native woman in Nukahiva. Her abnormal thinness saved her from the steward's knife in the early days at sea; but finally all hopes of fattening her failed, and she was doomed for a ward-room ragout. One of the men, a queer character in his way, who had made a study of chickens, begged permission to keep her, and as we had fresh grub enough, Nell, as he called her, was saved. In a little while it was more dangerous than a Grain Coast _fetich_ or a Hawaiian _taboo_ to harm her, and Nell thrived and flourished.

She was carried through all the islands down to New Zealand and Australia, and back to Chili and Peru, improving daily, and displaying an intelligence that was marvellous. She was the queen-regnant of the coop, when she deigned to enter it, and was as jealous of her prerogatives as the King of Yvetot. Her cackle proclaimed the daylight, and then there was a row if Jemmy Ducks, guardian and feeder of sea poultry from time immemorial, didn't hobble aft to give her a morning ramble to leeward. The first of the corn and water was hers, and having the coigne of vantage beyond the coop bars, all the lesser chickens, save some favored chanticleer, suffered.

She displayed a passion for bananas and yams, had strong marked personal likes and dislikes, and though coquettish, manifested an affection that was not hampered by official rank, but ran by a descending scale of years--a white-haired quartermaster possessing more than a tender spot in her capacious heart, while the ship's boys were held in a contempt beyond expression. The men vowed by all the pet warrantees of their profession that she whistled and talked, and I know she was as good a storm-glass as any standard instrument on shipboard. Her favorite roost was over the ward-room skylight, her chosen time the dinner hour, and there she would perch, eying with respectful familiarity the senior lieutenant. Her interest gradually increased as the dessert stage approached, the appearance of the fruit awaking a cooing, beseeching cackle that invariably brought her the ripest banana or the juiciest mango.

She often kept the deck officers company in the middle watches, dozing to leeward of the mast until the bell struck, when she would straighten with an assertive air, as if she had never slept, and cooed a warning hail to the lookouts.

Poor Nell died during the Darien survey, from indigestion and old age, and when she was carried ashore for burial, in the neat coffin Chips, the Scotch carpenter's mate, had fashioned for her, we all felt that she had made a place in our lives and memories that some day deserved a record.

A VIRGINIA CAVALIER.[1]

[1] Begun in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE No. 868.

BY MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.