Chapter XVI: Red Plays Trumps (3)

Here it come. Something that looked like the Atlantic up-ended loomed over the bows. The wind struck me flat on my back, in one grand crash of snapping wood, roaring water, thunder, and the fall of the pillars of the world. The ocean swept over me, yet I rose high in the air. I felt that the _Matilda_ was turning a back somersault. The rope nearly cut me in half. Just when my lungs were pumping so I couldn't hold my breath a heart-beat longer, the wind suddenly cut over my face. Man! It hit like a fire-engine stream! I turned and swallowed some of it before we went down into the deep again. After that, it was plain disorderly conduct. Part of the time I was playing at home, a little boy again, and part of the time I was having a hard time trying to sleep in strange lands. But the next thing I can swear to is that the moon was shining, and the _Matilda_ jumping like a horse. In spite of the aches and pains all over me, I just lay still for a minute and let it soak in that I was still on board this pretty good old world. Next, I thought of Mary and the rest of them and scrambled to my feet. I was dizzy--a three-inch cut across the top of my head gave reason enough for that, let alone the rest of the racket--and one eye was swelled shut. Otherwise, barring a sprained arm, a raw circle around me where the rope cut, a black-and-blue spot the size of a ham on my right leg, and all the skin off my knuckles, I was the same person.

Saxton got himself up. We stared at each other.

"Hello!" says he.

"Hello!" says I.

"Well, what the devil are you doing alive?" he says. He meant it, too. It seemed to astonish him greatly. This made me mad.

"Well, I guess I have a right to," I says. At this we both laughed very hard. So hard I couldn't stop, till he grabbed me by the arm.

"Mary!" he says.

We both tried to cast our moorings. The knots were jammed beyond fingers and teeth. He took out a knife and we cut loose. On the way to the hatch we come across Jesse sitting up straight, staring out to sea. He put his hand to his head and put it down again, looking at his fingers. What he found so interesting in the fingers I don't know, but he couldn't take his eyes off of them.

"Hurt, Jesse?" we asked him.

He turned a face like a child's to us. "My," he says, "wasn't it wet!"

"Come on!" says Sax; "he's all right!"

We pulled the scuttle off by main strength.

"Mary!" we called. "Mary!"

"Yes!" she answered. The relief was so sweet my knees weakened. She came to the stair and looked up. Durned if the old lantern wasn't burning. That knocked me. I remembered lighting that lantern several hundred years ago, and here it was, still burning!

"Are you hurt?" said Saxton.

"Not--no, not much," she answered. "But nearly dead from fright--is it over?"

"All over, thank God!" says Sax. "We only caught the edge of it, or-- The moon is shining now. There's a heavy sea still, but that's harmless if the boat isn't strained--do you want us to stay with you?"

She looked up and laughed--a great deal nearer being sensible than either Sax or me.

"If I could stand the other, I can stand this alone--where's your promise, Arthur? You never came near me."

He took this very seriously. "Why, Mary," he began, "do you think I would have left you if I could have helped it! They closed the hatch--"

"Come along," I said. "She's joking."

He turned and looked at me. "_Is_ she?" he asked, as earnest as if his life hung on it. Not the least strange memory of that night is when Arthur Saxton turned and said, "Is she?"

"Sure!" I replied. "Come--some of the boys may be badly hurt."

We pulled through that uproar surprisingly good. Of course, every man-jack of us had lumps and welts and cuts, and there were some bones broken. Saxton was slapped down with such force that the flat of his hand was one big blister where it hit the deck, and the whole line of his forearm was a bruise--but that saved his face. One passenger drew a bad ankle, jammed in the wreckage. The worst hurt was Jimmy Hixley, a sailor; a block hit him in the ribs--probably when the mainmast went--and caved him for six inches.

The actual twister had only hit one third of us, from where the mainmast stood, aft. That stick was pulled out by the roots--clean. Standing rigging and all. Good new stuff at that. Some of the stays came out at the eyes and some of 'em snapped. One sailor picked a nasty hurt out of it. The stays were steel cable, and when one parted it curled back quick, the sharp ends of the broken wires clawing his leg.

Nobody knows the force of the wind in that part of the boat. Had there been a man there, no rope could hold him from being blown overboard; but, luckily, we were all forward.

The rails were cut clean as an ax stroke. Nothing was left but the wheel, and the deck was lifted in places as if there'd been an explosion below.

However, we weren't in the humor to kick over trifles. We shook hands all around and took a man's-sized swig of whisky apiece, then started to put things shipshape.

Jesse had an extra spar and a bit of sail that we rigged as a jigger, and though the _Matilda_ didn't foot it as pretty as before, we had a fair wind nearly all the rest of the trip, making Panama in two weeks, without another accident.

VIII

ARCHIE OUT OF ASPINWALL

The thing I recall clearest, when we dropped anchor at Aspinwall, was a small boat putting off to us, and a curly yellow head suddenly popping up over the rail, followed by the rest of a six-foot whole man. That was Jimmy Holton, my future boss.

Him and Jesse swore how glad they was to see each other, and pump-handled and pounded each other on the back, whilst I sized the newcomer up. He was my first specimen of real West-Missouri-country man; I liked the breed from that minute. He was a cuss, that Jimmy. When he looked at you with the twinkle in them blue eyes of his, you couldn't help but laugh. And if there wasn't a twinkle in those eyes, and you laughed, you made a mistake. Thunder! but he was a sight to take your eye--the reckless, handsome, long-legged scamp! With his yellow silk handkerchief around his neck, and his curls of yellow hair--pretty as a woman's--and his sombrero canted back--he looked as if he was made of mountain-top fresh air.

"Well, Jesse!" says he; "well, Jess, you durned old porpoise! You look as hearty as usual, and still wearing your legs cut short, I see; but what the devil have you been doing to your boat?"

So then Jesse told him about the tornado.

Jimmy's eyes were taking the whole place in, although he listened with care.

"Well, what brings you aboard, Jim!" says Jesse.

"I'm looking for a man," says Jimmy. "I want a white man; a good, kind, orderly sort of white man that'll do what he's told without a word, and'll bust my head for me if I dast curse him the way I do the pups working for me now."

"H'm!" says Jesse, sliding me a kind of underneath-the-table glance. "What's the line of work?"

"Why, the main job is to be around and look and act white. I got too durned much to see to--there's the ranch and the mine and the store--that drunken ex-college professor I hired did me to the tune of fifteen hundred cold yellow disks and skipped. You see, I want somebody to tell, 'Here, you look after this,' and he won't tell me that ain't in the lesson. Ain't you got a young feller that'll grow to my ways? I'll pay him according to his size."

"H'm!" says Jesse again, jerking a thumb toward me. "There's a boy you might do business with."

Jim's head come around with the quickness that marked him. Looking into that blue eye of his was like looking into a mirror--you guessed all there was to you appeared in it. He had me estimated in three fifths of a second.

"Howdy, boy!" says he, coming toward me with his hand out. "My name's Jim Holton. You heard the talk--what do you think?"

I looked at him for a minute, embarrassed. "I don't seem to be able to think," says I. "Lay it out again, will you? I reckon the answer is yes."

"It sure is," says he. "It's got to be. What's your name?" He showed he liked me--he wasn't afraid to show anybody that he liked 'em--or didn't.

"Bill," says I--"Bill Saunders."

"Now Heaven is kind!" says he. "I hadn't raised my hopes above a Sam or a Tommy, but to think of a strapping, blue-eyed, brick-topped, bully-boy Bill! Bill!" he says, "can you guess Old Man Noah's feelings when the little bird flew up to him with the tree in his teeth? Well, he'll seem sad alongside of me when I catch sight of that sunrise head of yours above my gang of mud-colored greasers and Chinamen. You owe it to charity to give me that pleasure. By the way, William, if you should see a greaser flatten his ears back and lay a hand on his knife, what would you do--read him a chapter of the Bible, or kick him in the belt?"

I thought this over. "I don't know," says I. "I never saw anybody do that."

"Bill," says he, "I'm getting more and more contented with you. I thought at first you might be quarrelsome. You don't fight, do you?"

"Well," I says, flustered, "not to any great extent--not unless I get mad, or the other feller does something, or I feel I ought to, or--"

"'Nough said," says he. "There's reasons enough to keep the peace of Europe. I have observed, Bill, in this and many other countries, that dove-winged peace builds her little nest when I hit first and hardest. I tell you, on the square, I'll use you right as long as you seem to appreciate it. That's my line of action, and I can prove it by Jesse--I can prove anything by Jesse. No; but, honest, boy, if you come with me, there's little chance for us to bunk as long as you do your share. And," he says, sizing me up, "if an accident should happen, when you've got more meat on that frame of yours, be durned if I don't believe it would be worth the trouble."

"Explain to him," says Jesse; "the boy's just away from his ma--he don't know nothing about working out."

Jim turned to me, perfectly serious--he was like Sax--joke as long as it was joking-time, then drop it and talk as straight as a rifle-barrel.

"I want a right-hand man of my own country," he says. "You'll have to watch gangs of men to see they work up; keep an eye on what goes out from the stores; beat the head off the first beggar you see abusing a horse; and do what I tell you, generally. For that, I'll put one hundred United States dollars in your jeans each and every month we're together, unless you prove to be worth more--or nothing. I won't pay less, for the man in the job that ain't worth a hundred ain't worth a cent--how's it hit you!"

A hundred dollars a month! It hit me so hard my teeth rattled.

"Well," I stammers, "a hundred dollars is an awful lot of money--you ain't going to find the worth of it in my hide--I don't know about bossing men and things like that--why, I don't know _anything_--"

He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. He had a smile as sweet as a woman's. He was as nice as a woman, on his good side--and you'd better keep that side toward you. Him and Sax was of a breed there, too. I understood him better from knowing Sax.

"Billy boy," he says, "that's my funeral. I've dealt with men some years. I don't ask you for experience: I ask you for intentions. I get sick, living with a lot of men that don't care any more about me than I do about them--that _ain't_ living. You can clear your mind. I like your looks. If I've made a mistake, why, it's a mistake, and we'll part still good friends. If I haven't made a mistake, it won't take you long to learn what I want you to know, and I'll get the worth of my time training a good pup--is it a go, son?"

I was so delighted I took right hold of his hand. "I begin to hope you and me will never come to words," said he as he straightened his fingers out.

I blundered out an apology. He reached up and rubbed my hair around. "There was heart in that grip, son," he said. "You needn't excuse that."

Just then Mary came on deck and he saw her. He whistled under his breath. "That the kind of cargo you carry now, Jess?" he asked. "I'll take all you got off your hands at your own price."

"Like to know her?" says Jesse. "She's going to teach in one of them mission schools at Panama. You'll see her again, likely."

"I suppose she ought to be consulted," says Jim; "but I'll waive ceremony with you, Jesse."

So they went aft to where Mary stood, a little look of expectancy on her face. She'd been about to join Sax, but seeing the two come, didn't like to move, as it was evident they had something to say to her.

Jesse and Jim made a curious team. Jesse flew along on his little trotters, whilst Jim swung in a long, easy cat-stride, three foot and a half to the pace. Jesse always looked kind of tied together loose. Jim was trim as a race-horse--yet not finicky. His spurs rattled on the deck. Take him from boots to scalp-lock, he was a pretty picture of a man.

"Miss Smith," says Jesse, with a bob, "this feller's Jim Holton."

"And very glad that he is, for once in his life," says Jim, sweeping the deck with his hat, and looking compliments.

Mary smiled just enough to make the dimples count. They were best of the dimple family--not fat dimples, but little spots you'd like to own.

She wasn't the girl to take gaiety from a stranger; but, somehow, Jim showed for what he was--a clean heart, if frolicsome.

Mary was a match for him, all right. She made him as deep a bow, gave him a look, and in a mock-earnest way, with her hand on her heart, said:

"Am I to suppose myself the cause of so much joy?"

"You're not to suppose--you're to know," says Jim.

"Well," says Mary, with another flying look at him, "it doesn't seem possible; but the evidence of such very truthful and very blue, blue eyes"--she stopped and looked at the eyes--"is, of course, beyond questioning."

That knocked Jimmy. Underneath his dash, he was a modest fellow, and to have his personal appearance remarked openly rattled him. Mary'd got the war on his territory in two seconds. He looked at her, dumb; until, seeing her holding back her laughter by means of a row of the whitest of teeth set into the most interesting of under lips, he laughed right out and offered his hand.

"I'll simply state in plain English," he says, not wanting to quit whipped, "that you are the best use those eyes have ever been put to."

"That's entirely satisfactory," says Mary. "I'd have a bad disposition not to be contented with that--and, Mr. Holton, here's a friend of mine--Mr. Saxton."

Saxton was the only one who hadn't drawn entertainment out of the previous performance. He and Holton shook hands without smiles. It was more like the hand-shake before "time" is called. But they looked each other square in the eye--honest enemies, at least--not like the durned brute--well, he comes later.

There they stood; fine, graceful, upstanding huskies, both; each as handsome as the other, in his own way; each as able as the other, in his own way; one black and poetic-looking; the other fair and romantic-looking. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Sax knew more of books; Jim knew more of men. Sax knew the wild lands of music and such; Jim had slept with an Injun or two watching out to be sure he wasn't late for the office the next morning. Either one was plenty durn good enough to make a girl fix her hair straight.

And there stood Mary, the cause of the look each man put upon the other. She'd brought down Jim in one stroke--he was a sudden sort of jigger. Well, there she stood; and if there's anything in having a subject worth fighting for, those two fellers ought to have been the happiest of men.

I'm glad I can add this: Mary didn't _want_ any man to fight about her--not much! She was the real, true woman; the kind that brings hope in her hand. Of course she had some vanity, and if two fellows got a little cross when she was around, that wouldn't break her heart; but to arouse any deep feeling of anger between two men--why, I honestly believe she'd rather they'd strike her than each other. Oh, no! She stood for nothing of that kind. She stood heart and soul for light and fun and kindness. If she made mistakes, it was from a natural underrating of how the other party felt, or, like her worst mistake, through some twisted idea of duty. There's a saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that's particularly true of women. When a good woman gets hold of half a fact, she can raise the very devil with it.

That two felt disposed to glare put restraint on conversation, and after some talk, in which Jim fished for an invitation to call on Mary in Panama, and got what you might call a limited order--"I shall be very glad to see you, sometime, Mr. Holton"--he turned and treated me to a view of Western methods.

"Pack your turkey and come with me, Bill," he says.

"What--_now_?" says I.

"Well, I'll wait, if you want me to," he says. "But what's your reason?"

"Not any," says I, and skipped for my truck. Isn't it surprising how people, even boys, that ain't much troubled about fixed rules, will keep on going the same old way; not because there's sense, comfort, nor profit in it, but simply because it is the same old way? I've known folks to live in places and keep at jobs, hating both, could quit easily, yet staying on and on, simply because they were there yesterday. I've got so that if people start talking over an act, I feel like saying, "For Heaven's sake! Let's try it and then we'll _know_," while at the same time it happens that their talk is so good, I feel bashful about cutting in. Give me the Western idea. People that get an action on, instead of an oration. That is, if they're the right kind of people. Yet I dearly love to talk. It's a strange world!

Jimmy was the Western idea on two legs. The moment he thought of a thing, he grew busy. And when work was over, I'd talk him against any man I ever met. Perhaps the chief difference between the Western man's way and the Eastern man's way is that the Westerner says it's fun and believes it, whilst the Easterner says it's a great and holy undertaking he's employed in, and wastes lots of time trying to believe it. We all do the things we like to do, and we might as well admit it, cheerful.

I hadn't much more than time to say good-by all around, and find out where Sax and Mary were going to stay, before I was off on the new deal.

"Have you ever ridden a horse?" Jim asks me, when we hit shore.

"Never," says I.

"Well," says he, rubbing his head, "we _can_ go across on the railroad, but I'd like to stop here and there. It wouldn't be so bad if the good critters hadn't been all hired out or bought this last rush. As it is, you stand to get on to something that don't want you. My Pedro'd eat you alive if you laid a hand on him, or I'd trade with you--you got to learn sometime, Bill, but you'll get a tough first lesson here--suppose we take the train, eh?"

Now, I hadn't come to the Isthmus of Panama to exhibit all the things I was afraid of. I didn't like the thought of playing puss-in-the-corner with a horse I'd never met before, a little bit, and I liked the idea of backing out still less.

"Trot your animal out," I says. "I guess, if I get a hold on him, we won't separate for a while."

Jim rubbed his head again.

"I don't want to lose you right in the start," he says. "These mustangs are the most reliable hunks of wickedness on earth--"

"All I need to try and ride is a horse," I says. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I won't quarrel with that spirit," he says. He spoke to a native in Spanish. The feller looked at me and spread both hands. I scarcely knew there was such a thing as a Spanish language, but I knew that those hands said, "This is the impossible you have shoved down my chimney."

Jim translated. "He says he can't think of but one brute, and he can't imagine you and that one making any kind of combination."

"If you're keeping me here to see my sand run out, you'll make it, all right," I says--"otherwise, get that horse."

Jim spoke to the native and the native looked at me again, shaking his head sorrowful. At last he discarded all responsibility and ambled off.

Here come my gallant steed. His neck had a haughty in-curve; he was bow-legged forrud, and knock-kneed aft. His hips stuck out so far the hair couldn't get the nourishment it needed, and fell out. He had a nose like Julius Caesar, an under lip that hung down three inches, and the eye of a dying codfish. I lost all fear of him at once. Ignorance is the papa of courage. According to instructions, I put my left foot in the stirrup and made ready to board. At that instant my trusty steed whipped his head around like a rattlesnake, gathered a strip of flesh about six inches long, shut his eyes, and made his teeth to approach each other. I've been hurt several times in my life, but for straight agony give me a horse-bite.

With a yell that brought out every revolutionist in Aspinwall,--which means the town was there,--I grabbed that cussed brute by the windpipe and stopped his draft. Jim and the native made some motions.

"Keep out of this!" I hollered. "This is my fight!"

So then me and my faithful horse began to see who could stand it the longest. There was nothing soul-stirring and uplifting about the contest. He pinched my leg, and I pinched his throat. He kicked me, and I kicked him. We wrastled all over the place, playing plain stick-to-him-Pete. The worst of having a hand-to-hand with an animal is that he don't tire. You get weaker and weaker; they get stronger and stronger. Besides, the pain in my leg almost seemed to stop my heart. Murder! how it hurt!

At the same time, a horse doesn't do as well without an occasional breath of fresh air, and I had this feller's supply cut off short. Pretty soon he got frantic, and the way he tore and r'ared around there was a treat. It didn't occur to either one of us to let go. Finally, when I'd ceased to think entirely, there came a staggering sort of fall; hands took hold of me and dragged me away.

Jim lifted my head and gave me a drink of water. He swore at himself ferocious, and by all that was great and powerful, lie was going to shoot that horse.

By this time I was interested in the art of riding. I told him he wasn't going to kill my horse; that I intended to ride that same mustang out of the town of Aspinwall if it took some time and all of my left leg.

"What's the good of being a fool?" says he. "Now, Bill, you be sensible."

"Where's the horse?" says I.

He had to laugh. "United you fell," says he. "I honest think he hadn't a cent the best of it."

I got on my feet and made for Mr. Mustang. As the critter stood there, with his sad lower lip hanging slack, thinking what a wicked world it was, I recalled who he looked like. He was the dead ringer for Archibald Blavelt, back home. Archie was such a mean old cuss that the neighborhood was proud of him--he carried it 'way beyond the point where it was a disgrace. I should have known better than to tackle anything that resembled Archie, but I didn't. Instead, I walked up, club in hand, waiting for the mustang to make a crooked move. He paid no attention, let me put my foot in the stirrup, swing aboard and settle down. Not till then did he toss his head gaily in the air and holler for joy. You see, he'd made out that we were likely to break even, both on the ground, so he tried getting under me. I refuse to say what happened next. I thought I was aboard the _Matilda_ with the tornado on. I saw, in jerks, pale-faced men scrambling right up the sides of houses; women shrieking and dusting away from there, and between thirty and forty thousand dogs, barking and snapping and tumbling out of the way.

I laid two strong hands on Archie's (I called him Archie) mane and wrapped my legs around his barrel and gave myself up for lost. We spent years tearing that section of Aspinwall to pieces, till, all of a sudden, Archie give a jump that landed me on his rump and pulled out for more room. And didn't he go! It was scandalous, the way he flapped them bony legs of his. Once in a while he kicked up behind, and I made a fine bow. Every time that happened some polite Spaniard took off his hat to me, thinking I was a friend he hadn't time to recognize.

I stayed with that mustang, somehow, until we come to a narrow alley. At the end of it a fearful fat Spaniard, with a Panama hat and a green umbrella, was crossing. I hollered to him to get out of the way, but the sight of me and Archie streaming in the breeze surprised him so he stood paralyzed. He made a fat man's hop for safety, too late. When we were fifteen feet from him, Archie threw a hand-spring, and I put my head, like a red buttonhole bouquet, plumb in the gentleman's vest.

"Assassin!" he cries, and fetches me a wipe with the green umbrella before he expires temporarily on the street.

Of course, there's lots of things will damage you worse than butting a stout gentleman; at the same time I went at him quick, and stopped quicker. This world was all a dizzy show, till the crowd came up, Jim, on his Pedro, leading. They were all there: all the revolutionists, all the women with babies, and all the dogs, down to the last pup. I couldn't have had a bigger audience if I'd done something to be proud of.

Some of 'em held on to the fat gentleman, who was yearning to draw my heart's blood with the green umbrella. Some of 'em stood and admired Archie, who was smacking his lips over some grass that grew on the side, and looked about as vicious as Mary and her little lamb; some of 'em come to help me--all conversed freely.

"Now, darn your buttons!" says Jim, "you might have been killed! Hadn't been for Senor Martinez there, you would 'a' been. Didn't I tell you not to try it again--didn't I?"

It was quite true he had told me that very thing. At the same time, one of the least consoling things in this world, when a man's made a fool of himself, is to have somebody come up and tell him he prophesied it. You'd like to think it just happened that way. It breaks your heart to feel it's like twice two.

I sat up and looked at Jim. "You told me all that," says I, "but what's the matter with letting virtue be its own reward?"

Jim laughed and said he guessed I was not quite done yet. Then he introduced me to Mr. Martinez as the grateful result of a well-lined stomach applied at the proper time.

Martinez sheathed the green umbrella and extended the hand of friendship, like the Spanish gentleman he was.

"Ah me!" says he, "but you ride with furiosity! And," he adds thoughtfully, "your head is of a firmness." He waved his hand so the diamonds glittered like a shower. "A treefle--a leetle, leetle treeful," by which he meant trifle. "Now," says he, as if we'd finished some important business, "shall we resuscitate?"

Jim said we would, so the whole crowd moved to where Santiago Christobal Colon O'Sullivan gave you things that lightened the shadows for the time being, and proceeded to resuscitate.

Inside, Mr. Martinez the Stout told the whole story between drinks. He was the horse, or me, or himself, or the consequences, as occasion required. I'd have gone through more than that to see Mr. Martinez gallop the length of the saloon, making it clear to us how Archie acted. And when he was me, darned if he didn't manage to look like me, and when he was Archie he seemed to thin out and grow bony hip-joints immediately; Archie'd nickered at sight of him. How in blazes a three-hundred-pound Spanish gentleman contrived to resemble a thin, red-headed six-foot-two New England kid and a bow-necked, cat-hammed mustang is an art beyond me. He did it; let it go at that.

Outside, the men went over it all. The women dropped their babies in the street, so they could have their hands free to talk. I think even the dogs took a shy at the story. Never were folks so interested. And, strange to Yankee eyes, not a soul laughed.

I learned then the reason why the Spanish-American incorporated the revolution in his constitution. It's because of the scarcity of theaters. If there was a theater for every ten inhabitants, and plays written where everybody was a king, peace would settle on Spanish America like a green scum on a frog-pond.

Howsomever, I ain't going to jeer at those people. I got to like 'em, and, as far as that goes, we have little fool ways of our own that we notice when we get far enough away from home to see straight.

I didn't ride Archie out of Aspinwall. I went to a hotel, slept strictly on one side, and scrapped it out with the little natives of the Isthmus until morning.

Curious, how things go. After this first experience I shouldn't have said that riding a horse would grow on me until being without one made me feel as if I'd lost the use of my legs. Water is all right. I like boats--I like about everything--but still, I think the Almighty never did better by man than when he put him on a horse. A good horse, open country--miles of it, without a stick or hole--a warm sun and a cool wind--can you beat it? I can't.

IX

ENTER BROTHER BELKNAP

I can slide over my first month's work quick. At least half of us have been boys once, and a good share of that half have run into the stiff proposition when they were boys. I carried on my back most of the trouble in that part of the country--they were a careless people. Jim give me my head and let me bump it into mistakes. "Find out" was his motto. "Don't ask the boss," and I found out, perspiring freely the while. I had to hire men and fire 'em, wrastle with the Spanish language, keep books, keep my temper, learn what a day's work meant, learn to handle a team, get the boys to pull together, and last, but not least, try to get the best of that cussed horse, Archie.

I can't tell which was the worst. I know this, though: while my sympathies are with the hired man, yet that season of getting along with him taught me that the boss's job isn't one long, sugar-coated dream, neither. If the hired man knew more, he'd have less wrongs, and also, if he knew more, he wouldn't be a hired man. What that proves, I pass.

Keeping books wore down my proud spirit, too. I do hate a puttering job. It was all there, anyhow. Jim pulled at his mustache and wrinkled his manly brow when he first snagged on my bookkeeping. "What the devil is this item?" he'd say. "'_Francis Lopez borrowed a dollar on his pay; says his mother's sick. That's a lie, I bet._' You mustn't let the boys have money that way, Bill, and never mind putting your thoughts in the cash-book--save 'em for your diary."

I got the hang of it after a while, and one grand day my cash balanced. That was a moment to remember. I don't recall that it ever happened again. The store made most of my trouble. We handled all kinds of truck, from kerosene oil to a jews'-harp, through rough clothes and the hardware department. My helper was the lunkheadest critter God ever trusted outdoors. You'd scarcely believe one man's head could be so foolish. At the same time the poor devil was kind and polite, and he needed the job so bad, I couldn't fire him. But he took some of the color out of my hair, all right. He was a Mexican who talked English, so he was useful that way, anyhow. But Man! What the stuff cost was marked in letters--"Washington" was our cost-mark word. If the thing cost a dollar fifty, it was marked WIN, then you tacked on the profit. Well, poor Pedro used to forget all about the father of his country, if there came a rush, and as he didn't have any natural common sense, you could expect him to sell a barrel of kerosene for two bits and charge eight dollars for a paper of needles. Whenever I heard wild cries of astonishment and saw the arms a-flying, I could be sure that Pedro had lost track of American history. He'd make a statue of William Penn get up and cuss, that feller. I tried everything--wrote out the prices, gave him lists, put pictures of our George all over the store, swore at him till I was purple and him weeping in his pocket-handkerchief, calling the saints to witness how the memory of the G-r-r-eat Ouash-eeng-tong would never depart from his mind again, and in three minutes he'd sell a twenty-five dollar Stetson hat for eighty-seven cents. It took a good deal of my time rushing around the country getting those sales back.

Then, when the confinement of the store told too much on my nerves and the gangs had all been looked up, I went to the corral and took a fall out of Archibald. Or, more properly speaking, I took a fall off Archibald. That horse was a complete education in the art of riding. I never since have struck anything, bronco, cayuse, or American horse, that didn't seem like an amateur 'longside of him. He'd pitch for a half hour in a space no bigger than a dining-room table; then he'd run and buck for another half hour. If you stuck so much out, he'd kick your feet out of the stirrups, stick his ears in the ground, and throw a somersault. No man living could think up more schemes than that mustang, and you might as well try to tire a steam-engine. At the end of the first hour Archie was simply nice and limber; the second hour saw him getting into the spirit of it; by the third hour he was warmed up and working like a charm. I'm guessing the third hour. Two was my limit.

All these things kept me from calling on my friends in town for some time, till Jim gave me three days off to use as I pleased. I put me on the tallest steeple hat with the biggest bells I could find; I had spurs that would do to harpoon a whale, and they had jinglers on 'em wherever a jingler would go. My neckerchief was a heavenly blue, to match my hair, and it was considerably smaller than a horse-blanket. The hair itself had grown well down to my neck, and she's never been cut from that day, except to trim the ends. In my sash I stuck a horse-pistol and a machete. Contact with the Spaniard had already corrupted me into being proud of my small feet, so I spent one hour getting my boots on, and oh, Lord! the misery of those boots! I tell you what it is, if one man or woman should do to another what that victim will do to himself, for Vanity's sake, the neighbors would rise and lynch the offender. When I worried those boots off at night, I'd fall back and enjoy the blessed relief for five minutes without moving. It was almost worth the pain, that five minutes. I used to know a man who said he got more real value out of the two weeks his wife went to visit her mother than he did out of a year, before he was married.

But I looked great, you bet. Probably my expression was foolish, but I wouldn't mind feeling myself _such_ a thumping hunk of a man once more, expression and all. And I rode a little mouse-colored American horse, with a cream mane and tail and two white feet forward,--a pretty, playful little cuss with no sin in him, as proud of me and himself as I was. There was only one more thing to make that trip complete, and about ten mile out of Panama I filled. Out of a side draw pops a blackavised road-agent, and informs me that he wants my money. I drew horse-pistol and machete and charged with a loud holler. That brigand shed his gun and threw his knees higher than his shoulders getting out of that. I paused and overtook him. He explained sadly and untruthfully that nothing but a starving wife and twenty-three children drove him to such courses. I told him the evil of his ways--no short story, neither. You bet I spread myself on that chance,--then I gave him two dollars for the family and rode my cheerful way. It really is beautiful to think of anybody being so pleased with anything as I was with myself. And the story I had now to tell Mary! We did a fast ten mile into Panama.

I found the house where Mary boarded without much trouble. It was one of the old-fashioned Spanish houses where the upper stories stick out, although not like some of 'em, as it had a garden around it. A bully old house, with sweet-smelling vines and creepers and flowers, and statues and a fountain in the garden. The fountain only squirted in the rainy season, but it was good to look at. A garden with a fountain in it was a thing I'd always wanted to see. Seemed to me like I could begin to believe in some of the stories I read, when I saw that.

Everything had a far-away look. For a full minute I couldn't get over the notion that I'd ridden into a story-book by mistake. So I sat on my horse and stared at it, glad I came, till a soft rush of feet on the grass and a voice I'd often wanted to hear in the past month calling, "Why, Will! I was sure it was you!" made me certain of my welcome.

Now, I'd been too busy to think much lately, but when my eyes fell on that beautiful girl, running to see me, glad to see me--eyes, mouth, and outstretched hands all saying she was glad to see me--I just naturally hopped off my horse, over the wall, and gathered her in both arms. She kissed me, frank and hearty, and then we shook hands and said all those things that don't mean anything, that people say to relieve their feelings.

Then she laughed and fixed her hair, eying me sideways, and she says: "I don't know that I should permit that from so large and ferocious looking a person. But perhaps it's too late, so tell me everything--how do you get on with Mr. Holton? What are you doing? Why haven't I heard from you? I thought certainly you wouldn't desert me in this strange country for a whole month--I've missed you awfully."

"Have you, Mary!" I said; "have you really?" I couldn't get over it, that she'd missed me.

"I should say I had, you most tremendous big boy, you!" she says, giving me a little loving shake. "Do you suppose I've forgotten all our walks and talks on the _Matilda_? And all your funny speeches? Oh, Will! I've been homesick, and your dear old auburn locks are home!"

"Why, there's Sax!" says I, in the innocence of my heart. "Hasn't he been around?"

"I haven't seen much of Mr. Saxton," she answers, cooling so I felt the need of a coat--"and that's quite different."

Well, I hustled away from the subject fast, sorry to know something was wrong between my friends, but too durned selfish to spoil my own greeting. I plunged into the history of Mr. William Saunders, from the time of leaving the _Matilda_. Mary was the most eloquent listener I ever met. She made a good story of whatever she harkened to.

Well, sir, I had a pleasant afternoon. There was that story-book old house and garden, Mary and me at a little table, drinking lime-juice lemonade, me in my fine clothes out for a real holiday, smoking like a real man, telling her about the crimp I put in that road-agent.

Yes, I was having a glorious time, when the gate opened and a man came in. Somehow, from the first look I got of him I didn't like him. Something of the shadow that used to hang over home lay in that lad's black coat.

Mary's face changed. The life went out. Something heavy, serious, and tired came into it, yet she met the newcomer with the greatest respect. As they came toward me I stiffened inside. Mr. Belknap and Mr. Saunders shook hands. His closed upon mine firmly and coldly, like a machine. He announced that he was glad to meet me in a tone of voice that would leave a jury doubtful. We stood around, me embarrassed, and even Mary ill at ease, until he said: "Shall we not sit down?" Feeling at school once more, down I sat. If he'd said: "Shall we not walk off upon our ears!" I'd felt obliged to try it.

He put a compulsion on you. He made you want to please him, though you hated him.

Well, there we sat. "Mr. Belknap is doing a wonderful work among these poor people," explained Mary to me. There was something prim in her speech that knocked another color off the meeting.

"You are too good," said Mr. Belknap. He was modest, too, in a way that reproached you for daring to talk of him so careless. I wished that Mr. Belknap would get to work on his poor people and leave us alone, but he had no such intention.

"Miss Smith," says he, "is one of those who credit others with the excellencies they believe in from possession."

Mary colored, and a little frown I could not understand lay on her forehead for the second. It was curious, that man's way. When he made his speech it was like he put a rope upon the girl. I didn't see much meaning to it, except a compliment, but I felt something behind it, and suddenly I understood her frown. It was the way you look when something you feel you ought to do, that you've worked yourself into believing you want to do, although at the bottom of your heart you'd chuck it quick, comes up for action.

I'd have broken into the talk if I could, but Brother Belknap had me tongue-tied, so I just sat, wishful to go, in spite of Mary, and unable to start. It seemed like presuming a good deal to leave, or do anything else Mr. Belknap hadn't mentioned.

We talked like advice to the young in the third reader. Mr. Belknap announced his topics and smiled his superior knowledge. I'd have hit him in the eye for two cents, and at the same time if he told me to run away like a good little boy, darned if I don't believe I'd done it--me, that chased the road-agent up the valley not three hours before!

Mary moved her glass in little circles and looked off into distance. Something of the change from our first being together, to this, was working in her. "It is hard," she said, trying to pass it off lightly, "to bear the weight of virtues that don't belong to me!"

Mr. Belknap leaned forward. He was a heavy-built, easy-moving man; you had to grant him a kind of elegance that went queer enough with the preacher-air he wore of his own will. He put his head out and looked at her. I watched him close, and I saw a crafty, hard light in his eyes as if the tiger in him had come for a look out of doors. He purred soft, like a tiger. "Nowhere is humility more becoming than in a beautiful woman."

At that minute his hold on me snapped. Believing him honest, he had me kiboshed--seeing that expression, which, I suppose, he didn't think worth while hiding from a gawky kid--I was my own man again, hating him and ready for war with him, in a blaze. Too young to understand much about love-affairs and the like of that, I still knew those eyes, that had shifted in a second from pompous piety to cunning, meant no good to Mary.

"I don't know about humility," says I, "but I'll go bail for Mary's honesty." I laid my hand on hers as I spoke. Funny that I did that and spoke as I did. It came to me at once, without thinking--like I'd been a dog and bristled at him for a sure-enough tiger.

Mary wasn't the kind to go back on a friend in any company. She put her other hand on mine and said: "That's the nicest thing you could say, Will."

Mr. Belknap didn't like it. He swung around as if he found me worth more attention than at first, and when our eyes met he saw I was on to him, bigger than a wolf. All he changed was a quick tightening of the lips. We looked at each other steady. He ought to have showed uneasiness, consarn him, but he didn't. Instead he smiled, like I was amusing. I loved him horrible for that--me and my steeple hat and sash to be amusing!

"You have a most impulsive nature, Mr. Saunders," says he.

I wanted to tell him he was entirely correct, and that I'd like to chase two rascals the same day. I had sense enough not to, but said:

"I'm not ashamed to own it--particularly where Mary's concerned."

"Ah!" he says, raising his eyebrows, "you are old friends?"

"Not so very _old_," says Mary. "That seems cold--we're very warm, young friends."

"It is pleasant for the young to have friends," says he.

"That's hardly as surprising a remark as your face led me to expect," says I. "It's pleasant for _anybody_ to have friends."

It was his turn not to be overjoyed. I hid my real meaning under a lively manner for Mary's benefit, and while perhaps she didn't like my being quite so frivolous to the overpowering Mr. Belknap, she saw no harm in the speech. He did, though.

"Am I to count you among my friends?" says he.

"Any friend of Mary's is a friend of mine," I answered. He took. "Then that is assured," he says, with his smoothest smile.

We all waited.

"Ah, Youth!" says Mr. Belknap, with a look at Mary, and an explaining, indulgent smile at me. "How heartening it is to see its readiness, its resource in the untried years! Rejoice in your youth and strength, my young friend!--as for me--" he stopped and looked so grave he near fooled me again. "I am worn down so I barely believe in hope. My poor, commonplace ambitions, my dull idea of duty puts me out of the pale of friendship entirely--I have nothing pleasant to offer my friend."

"Oh, no! Mr. Belknap!" says Mary. "How can you speak like that? With your great work--how can you call it dull? I'm sure it is a high privilege to be listed with your friends!"

I felt a chill go over me--the whole business was tricky, stagy; of a piece with the highfalutin talk. Belknap was no old man, not a day over forty, and powerful as a bull, by the look of him, yet the tone of his voice, the air he threw around it, made him the sole and lonely survivor of a great misfortune, without a helping hand at time of need.

I felt mad and disgusted with Mary for being taken in. I had yet to learn that even the best of women are easy worked through the medium of making 'em feel they are the support of a big man. They'll take his word for his size, and swallow almost anything for the fun of supporting him. Saxton made the great mistake of admitting his foolishnesses to be foolish, and swearing at 'em; he should have sadly regretted them as accidents. A woman has to learn a heap before she can appreciate a thoroughly honest man. There is a poetry in being honest, but like some kinds of music, it takes a highly educated person to enjoy it. Sing to the girls in a sweet and melancholy voice about a flower from your angel mother's grave, and most of 'em will forget you never contributed a cent to the angel mother's support--and it ain't that they like honesty the less, but romance the more, as the feller said about Julius Caesar. But when a woman like Mary does get her bearings she has 'em for keeps.

Now Sax was a durned sight more romantic really than this black-coated play-actor, but he would insist on stripping things to the bones, and the sight of the skeleton--good, honest, flyaway man frame that it was--scart Mary.

It came across me bitter that she looked at Brother Belknap the way she did. I got up.

"I must go," I says.

"Why, Will! won't you stay to supper? I thought you surely would."

"No," I says, "I've got another friend here it's time to remember--I'll take supper with Arthur Saxton."

Mary looked very confused and bothered. Belknap shot his eyes from her to me and back again, learning all he could from our faces. And in a twinkle I knew that he was the cause, through lies or some kind of devilry, of the coolness between Mary and Arthur Saxton.

The blood went to the top of my head.

"Good-by, Mr. Belknap," I says, "we'll meet again."

"I most certainly hope so," says he, bowing and smiling most polite.

"You keep that hope green, and not let it get away from you like the rest of 'em, and it sure will happen," says I. I turned and looked hard at Mary. "Have you any message for Arthur?" I asked her.

She bit her lips, and glanced at Belknap. "No," says she, short, "I have no message for Mr. Saxton."

"Too bad," says I. "He was a good friend of yours." With that I turned and stalked off. She followed me, and caught me gently by the sleeve.

"You're not angry at me, Will? I'm all alone here, you know."