Chapter VIII: Introduction: BY (8)

It began on a very beautiful morning in early June. The roses in the rectory garden were all a-bloom, great white clouds were floating as near to earth as they dared, songbirds were busy with nests and nestlings, and the very young rector came out of his house to enjoy it all. It had been his house for only a few weeks; he was so young as a rector that this was his first charge, and so young as a man that he longed to lay aside his clerical suit and go swimming or fishing. He was both old enough and young enough, however, to enjoy every cloud and blossom and song; he was far from those monotonous years of middle life when one day is much like another.

His rectory garden was, indeed, a charming one. His parishioners had seen to that. The rectory was new and looked old, the garden was new and looked old; even the hedge that surrounded the garden and churchyard was tall of growth, but had been planted only a year or so. The church was the fashionable house of worship for the fashionable new village—the village just far enough out of town to make a convenient between-season resting place for those favored townsfolk who could spend their time as they spent their money—pretty much as they willed. They wanted their church and rectory to be as beautiful and Old-World like as possible, and they had made them so.

The rector was not one for whose idle hands his arch-enemy might find mischief; he had come out to his piazza whistling, his hands in his pockets; but he saw at a glance that the roses bordering his front walk would look the better for a little trimming, and straightway he set to work. Still whistling, busy with knife and twine, happy as a school-boy whittling a man-o’-war, he did not notice that some one came through the little gate, and stood quite near, behind him.

A small voice said: “Good-morning!”

The young rector turned quickly, and beheld an amazingly red little figure. Her frock was red, her shoes and stockings were red, and her over-large hat was red. She wore white kid gloves and carried a small red cardcase. But her little face was not red; it was white, very white, and framed in a mass of flying black hair; her eyes were black, too, and large and wide opened. The rector stared at the brilliant little figure; she might have been the picture of an elf-child, were it not for the amusing imitations of grown-up conventionalities, the gloves and cardcase.

“Good-morning!” she said again, in just the same tone.

“Oh! I beg your pardon! Good-morning!” said the rector.

“You are the new rector, I know,” said the child. “I am Miss Torrington, and I’ve come to call on your wife and daughters.”

The rector’s stare turned into a look of frank amazement, even bewilderment. “My—I beg your pardon; I’m afraid I don’t quite understand!”

“I’ve come to call on your wife and daughters,” repeated the little girl. “I’m Miss Virginia Witherspoon Torrington,” she declared convincingly, “and I live next door to you—over there, in the big house.”

“Oh, yes, I see,” replied the rector. He was as punctiliously polite as the occasion demanded, but his mouth twitched just a little. “I’m sure I beg your pardon. I must be very stupid. But I regret to say that I have no wife or daughters.”

“Are you sure you haven’t” asked Miss Torrington.

“I’m afraid I am,” said the rector, humbly and apologetically. “Won’t you come in and call on me instead?”

Miss Torrington pondered for a moment. “I think a gentleman ought to pay the _first_ call on a lady, don’t you?”

The rector bit his lip, but the child went on: “Maggie O’Brien certainly told me there were three ladies in the family here!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the young rector, as if he had found something. “Why, of course, there are! I didn’t think of that! There _are_ three ladies, and it’s very good of you to call on them. They’ll be delighted. You see, it was your speaking of my wife and daughters that made me forget.”

“What are they, then?” asked the child.

“One is my grandmother, and the others are my aunts.”

“Oh, really? I should think you’d like the grandmother one. You know if you don’t have a grandmother already you can’t ever get one, and you can get a wife and daughters.”

“That’s very true,” acknowledged the rector. “I suppose you haven’t a grandmother yourself?”

“No, but I have a father—an only father. You know what _that_ is, I suppose; only fathers are a great deal of care. Mine needs a lot of looking after.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” suggested the rector. “I’ll lend you my grandmother once in a while! That is, if you will come over and help me occasionally, I will. I hope you’ll have the time to come. You don’t have to look after your father every minute, do you?”

“Oh, no,” she replied. “He’s away a good deal. But I think I ought to see her before I borrow her, don’t you?”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the rector again. “If you’ll come into the house I’ll call her, and my aunts, too. I’m so glad you don’t mind their not being my wife and daughters.”

He held open for her the door of the little parlor, and was starting toward the stairs when Miss Torrington called: “Oh—er—!”

When the rector turned toward her she said: “I’d like to send up my cards, please. I don’t often get a chance to use them, you know, and—”

The rector said, gravely: “I quite understand. I ought to have thought of it. I never send my own cards up to them, and I suppose that’s why I forgot.” He was about to take them in his hand, but Miss Torrington drew them back.

“Maggie O’Brien always takes them on a silver tray. I’m very partic’lar about it at my house.”

The rectory owned no silver tray, but there was a silver butter-dish, a valued family heirloom, much too large and fine for every-day use. It was kept on the sideboard in the tiny dining-room. The rector gravely brought it; Miss Torrington seemed quite satisfied, even a little awed at its elegance, and deposited her cards upon it.

That was the way her first visit began; it ended in ginger cookies, and hugs and kisses from the grandmother, and tremulous tears, mixed with laughter, from the aunts. On the second visit she went all over the little place with the rector; together they hunted for eggs—the younger aunt owned four hens and a rooster. They plucked delicious red strawberries, and gathered a bunch of red roses. There were two acres of greenhouses on the grounds of the big house—but these were really, truly roses, roses meant to be gathered.

On her third visit she made herself at home, and from that day she owned the rectory, the grandmother, the aunts, and the rector. In everything but years he was as young as she, and sometimes she was as old as he. All through the summer they played together, for the child blossomed into rosiness, and her father came to rely more and more on the advice of the aunts and the borrowed grandmother concerning her. She flitted between the two houses, and that was the way she won her name. The young rector would say:

“Come, little Ladybird, fly away home”—and home was on either side of the hedge. The name stayed with her always, for it suited her well—the black-eyed little elf-child in her red frocks.

The second summer brought her back early, flying through the gate into the arms of the borrowed grandmother, hugging the aunts while they laughed and exclaimed over her growth, and dancing up and down before the young rector, who was far more glad to get her back than he himself knew. They taught each other many things that summer—to fish and to climb trees, to say rimes which some day might catch fairies, to throw stones straight, and to make dolls into Indians and early Christian martyrs.

One day the rector, while writing a sermon, saw through his study window an unusual movement in the hedge just opposite. His window opened to the floor, so he went out of it, on tiptoe, to investigate. Ladybird was on the ground, trying to manage a very large saw, and scraping away with all her might at the trunk of one of the hedge plants. When the rector stood over her she looked up and laughed.

“I wanted to surprise you, old parson,” she said. “I’m going to cut a hole in the hedge; it takes too long to go around by the gates!”

The rector remonstrated, but she had her way, and before long there was a plainly marked path from the gap in the hedge to the study window. It was even more plainly marked during the third summer, for they began to read together, and the study held a new world for her. There were no books at the big house, and the rectory held more of books than of anything else, except peace and gentleness. The next year the borrowed grandmother was not there to welcome her, but the play and the study went on.

When she was twelve she asked him the first question concerning himself. She was sitting on the sill of the long window, her thin little elbows on her knees, her chin in her little claw-like hands; she was looking at the clouds and the sunset, without seeing either. The rector could no longer see to write, and had come to the window to watch the glowing west.

Whenever she scolded him, or was very serious, she would use his name. After a while she asked “Mark, why do you stay in the country?”

“It’s a good place to stay in, isn’t it?” he answered.

“Yes, of course. But father said that you had been asked to go to St. John’s in town. He said you were—you—Why do you stay here, Mark?”

The young rector stood looking over her head at the sunset and made no reply. Ladybird looked up at him, then out toward the west again.

“I know why, Mark! _They_ wouldn’t like the town.”

“They’ve always had the country, you know,” he said simply. “They were so happy to come here, and they love it.”

Presently he lifted her up. “Good-night, Ladybird,” he said gaily. “Fly away home!” But she walked slowly that night, and the rector went back to his sermon, which was on the simple life; his parishioners loved theories.

When Ladybird was fourteen, the rector found her one day weeping over a novel. That night he talked for hours with her father and when she came the next day she told him, delightedly and proudly, but just a little tearfully, that she was going to boarding-school. For two summers she did not come back, but at sixteen she took him again for her confidant, telling him all about the boys, the flowers and notes they sent, what she said in return, how this one had mournful eyes and that one did dance like a dream. He enjoyed it all, and teased her, and after that there were no further breaks in their friendship. She wrote him from time to time, and he knew all her love affairs by heart, and laughed immoderately over them. When she was eighteen she came back for a few weeks, and they were weeks of delight at the rectory; she made them love her all over again, and after she had left for Europe the rector kept the shade of the long window pulled down, until the grass had grown up again on the little path through the hedge.

A year or two after that her father became governor of his State, and Ladybird became Miss Torrington indeed. She wrote long, infrequent letters to the rector, and to the one old aunt; they heard of her through every one, and when she came back to open the big house for a great house-party they saw for themselves how beautiful and charming and gracious she was, and they guessed how many people beside themselves loved her. Even then, with all the house full, she would sometimes steal off, toward sunset time, and flit through the gap in the hedge to the rectory.

Then, after a year or two more, she came back to stay longer, not in red now, but in black. The elderly cousin who lived with her took the care of the house, and Ladybird, in her first loneliness, sought out her oldest friend. She made him drive with her, walk with her, read with her, and he obeyed her will by day and lay wakeful at night, with aching heart and stricken conscience. They read over the old books together, and almost all of their talks began with: “Oh, do you remember?” They went together very often to the grave of the dear borrowed grandmother; Ladybird tried to make some ginger cookies by the old recipe, but they were not very good. They got up at dawn one day, and went fishing again, and as in the old days Ladybird caught all the fish, and wouldn’t take them off the hook. Their favorite walk was along the crest of the hill; there they could look down on the church and the big house, and all the other houses and their beautiful parks. From there they could watch the sunset best, and there it was even cooler and quieter than in the rectory garden.

One day they sat on the rock ledge until the red glow of the setting sun had nearly faded. Their talk had ceased. The man was sitting below the girl, and she looked down at his head; there were gray hairs here and there. Her lips trembled a little, and she leaned over farther. The rector looked up; he found her face close to his.

“Mark,” she began, but he sprang up quickly and held out his hands:

“Come, little Ladybird, fly away home!” The girl did not move.

“No,” she said. “Sit down. I want to say something to you.”

He said again imperatively: “No. Come, Ladybird! It is damp here. It is too near the clouds!” She saw how white his face had grown, and her own flushed; they went down without speaking.

After that day the rector became very busy with parish work, and resolutely refused to take any more walks or drives. Guests came to the big house, and after that more guests and more. There was one who came more often than the others, and at the end of the summer the rector watched him drive away with Ladybird. She had come to bid him good-by, but he had basely hidden himself upstairs!

During the winter that followed the rectory heard from her but seldom. Rumors came of her engagement; the rumors were denied, then re-affirmed. The old aunt declared that the child would have written at once if they were true; the rector made no comment. In the spring he made some changes in his garden, and when the roses bloomed he busied himself there more than he had ever done before. One warm June day, while he way tying up the swaying branches that bordered his front walk, and thinking of the quaint little red-frocked elf-child who had come to him there years before, she came through the gate and up the walk toward him, her hands outstretched, her face all gladness and youth and beauty. “I’ve come here first,” she cried. “I’ve come to call!”

They both laughed, and went in to see the old aunt, the lapse of all the years bridged over between them. She begged to be allowed to stay to tea, and declared the biscuits the most delicious that even the rectory oven had ever baked, and the gooseberry jam as good as ever. After tea she went, uninvited, to the rector’s study. She stood for an instant in the doorway, looking around the familiar room; then she looked up at the man standing beside her, and moved toward the long window. “Come with me to the hedge, old parson,” she called, and before he could answer she flitted through the window and toward the familiar gap.

When he reached her side he found her standing with tightly clasped hands. She heard him come, and cried: “Oh, Mark, Mark, what is it? Who put it there?”

The rector had no voice to answer her, and after a moment of waiting she turned to him. “Did you put that there? Did you, did you put that there?” Still he made no answer, and with a sob she moved off toward the gate. Then he spoke.

“Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, I _had_ to! Don’t go away like that! Ladybird—see—it is a rosebush, a red rose, Ladybird. I tell you I had to! Virginia!”

But she had run through the rectory gate, and was already on her way to the big house. For weeks after that he did not see her. She came to the rectory only when he was away, and again there were guests at the big house, and again one guest who came more frequently than all the others. The rector came upon this young man one day, down by the river. He was looking very unhappy indeed, so evidently unhappy that the rector, accustomed as he was to respond to all appeals for pity and mercy, involuntarily stopped. The young man held out his hand.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, and laughed a little. “I see you know what’s up with me. I didn’t know I was such a fool as to show it.”

“I ought not to have stopped,” said the rector. “I beg your pardon.” He would have gone on, but the boy touched his arm.

“Please don’t say that, sir. I’d rather have seen you than any one else I know. In fact, I was coming to the rectory—later. I thought perhaps I could get you to help me out, sir.”

The rector winced a little at the boy’s deference, but asked: “What is it?”

Again the other laughed, somewhat ruefully. “Oh, I’m sure you know,” he said. “I’ve loved her ever since my freshman year, when she was at boarding-school. She’s never done anything else but turn me down, but she says this has got to be the last time. I thought if you could be persuaded to say a word to her, sir, she might look at it differently. She cares more for you than for any one else, and you’ve always been like a father to her, sir!”

The rector looked at the honest, boyish face, and said: “I’ll do as you ask.”

Therefore, an hour later, Ladybird was standing before him, in her own drawing-room, her cheeks flaming with anger. “Did he ask you to come here, or did you come of your own accord?” she demanded.

“Both, Virginia,” answered the truthful rector meekly.

“Don’t you dare to call me Virginia,” she commanded. “You know I hate it! If you came of your own accord you are an interfering person, and if you came because he told you to, you’re a—you’re a—”

“The boy loves you very much, Virginia, and I think he’d make you a good husband.”

“Do you want me to marry him? Are you tired of looking at me?”

“I think he would make you a good husband.”

“Do you want to see me married?”

The rector got up, and started for the door, but she stood in front of him. “Was that why you planted the rosebush in the hedge?” she asked. He bowed before her, and she watched him grow pale. Then she laughed, a little low, tender laugh, and—kissed him. The rector was dimly aware of her swift rush from the room, and of his own going home blindly.

The next day he left his house early, to walk over the hills to the home of a distant poor parishioner; coming home late in the afternoon he came upon her, seated on the ledge of rock upon the hillcrest. She walked calmly to meet him, and standing bravely before him she asked him the question. It was then that the rector discovered that the Angel with which he had been struggling was not, as he had believed, the Angel of Temptation, but, indeed, the Angel of Life. As they walked down later, in the red glow, hand in hand, he asked:

“Do you remember, Ladybird, the cards on the silver butter-dish?”

She laughed and said: “And those first ginger cookies?”

“Do you remember the day you were up in the apple tree, Ladybird, and hit me with an apple?”

“And that was before I learned to ‘throw straight,’ too!”

“You were very repentant, so we went fishing the next day. You leaned over the brook to see yourself, and your hair fell into the water.”

“It wasn’t very long,” she laughed.

“How long is it now, Ladybird?” he asked.

She pursed up her lips. “Oh, longer,” she said.

At the edge of the woods they stood for a last look at the churchyard below. “Can you give up the other life, Ladybird?” he asked seriously.

“There is no other,” she replied softly.

“Oh, Ladybird, Ladybird, when will you come home?” he cried.

She shook her head at him, laughing. “Oh, parson, old parson, you couldn’t ask one great, important question, but you’re a genius at asking silly ones!”

THE DRASNOE PIPE-LINE

By Arthur Stanwood Pier

On a windy and sullen morning in May, 1864, a caravan of fifty wagons, each piled high with barrels, crawled down the muddy road from the Drasnoe oil-field. Beside the leading team of the procession walked a one-armed man and a fifteen-year-old boy. The faces of the two were not cheerful. That of the man was sad; the boy’s was anxious.

Behind trooped the other teamsters, shouting, cracking their long blacksnake whips, swearing at the horses, the mud, the threatening sky. They were always boisterous and blasphemous during the long daily haul.

The one-armed man and the boy walked together silently by preference.

“Do you suppose General Grant is done fighting by this time?” the boy asked, at last.

His companion smiled sadly.

“I guess he won’t be done fighting for a good many months yet. But I shouldn’t wonder if he was out of the Wilderness by now.”

“It must be a big battle,” said the boy. “Most as big as Gettysburg, don’t you think, John?”

“Pretty nigh.”

“How long do you suppose before we hear about father—whether he’s all right?”

“Depends on how long the battle lasts. I guess in a week.”

“That’s an awful time to wait. Your folks didn’t hear about you till ten days after it happened, did they?” He glanced at the empty sleeve.

“I believe not. But there was a good deal to ’tend to after Gettysburg. Maybe there won’t be so much in this battle.”

“I wish I was down there instead of hauling oil every day,” said the boy.

“You’re making more money hauling oil,” replied the teamster. The boy glanced at him, hurt and scornful. “Yes,” continued the man, in his quiet voice, “you’re making quite a heap of money. And as long as you’re doing that, what’s the good of running off to fight? That’s what all that gang behind us would tell you—and there’s mighty few of them that are staying away from the war to support their mothers.” In his quiet voice there brimmed suddenly the full bitterness of contempt: “Floaters—and stay-at-homes!”

The boy thought that perhaps John Denny was hard on the men. At least it was not cowardice that kept them hauling oil when they might be shouldering rifles. The boy had seen too many evidences of their courage and recklessness to believe that; he had seen also too many rough-and-tumble fights among them to believe that a distaste for fighting kept them in the paths of peace. Nor was it altogether greed for the dollars that were being so lavishly squandered in the oil country in those days that detained them; among them all there was hardly one who was laying money by.

The boy himself, with his small farm wagon, had earned as much as seventy dollars in a week. But what the men earned so rapidly they spent as royally; it was the excitement of a sudden prosperity, greater than any they had ever expected or foreseen and the joy of indulging it had made them heedless of the call to arms.

The boy was aware that whether they liked John Denny or not—and in view of his ill-concealed contempt it was hard for them to like him—they yielded him position and respect.

The summer before, while the armies of North and South were battling in one corner of Pennsylvania, in another there had sprung up excitement over oil. John Denny had returned from Gettysburg with his right arm shot off at the shoulder, and had found this excitement at its height.

He could make a living, one-armed as he was, on the farm. But instead, he mortgaged the place and drilled for oil. The hole was a dry one; and Denny faced the world in debt as well as crippled.

Fortunately, the great Drasnoe wells began to flow at about that time, and teamsters were needed to transport the oil to the railroad eight miles away. The prices of oil and labor were high; and after six months of hard teaming, Denny had paid off his debt. And his fellow teamsters, who had mostly drifted in from “outside,” yielded him grudgingly a certain admiration. It was not diminished by the fact that he held them all at a distance—all but the boy, Elmer Todd, who was the youngest of the teamsters, and whom he took under his protection.

At a turn in the road they saw a wagon backed up into a field. Two men were unloading sections of pipe. A third, a young man in high boots, such as the teamsters wore, stood by, giving directions. He looked up at Denny and the boy, and his face brightened pleasantly.

“Morning!” he said. “We’ll get the last of our pipe laid to-day.”

Denny stopped his team. “That so?” he said, grimly. “You expect when it’s laid it will stay, Mr. Ross?”

The young man’s eyes narrowed together into a frown; his clean-cut face assumed a more determined expression. “That’s what I expect,” he said.

“There’s some talk to indicate it won’t,” said Denny. He was in a black mood, and this young superintendent, who was making his fortune instead of hearing arms, came in for a share of his contempt.

“When you hear any such talk, Mr. Denny, discourage it,” said Ross. “The men won’t gain by fighting with us over this matter.”

“I guess,” observed Denny, brutally, “that if you were any good for fighting you would be elsewhere, Mr. Ross. Get up, boys!” He cracked his whip and walked on beside his horses.

_From the drawing by W. H. D. Koerner_]

“That brought the blood to his face, didn’t it?” he said to the boy, with a laugh.

Beside the road and up over the rising meadows ran a ridge of freshly turned earth. “It looks,” said the boy, after a silence, “as if we wouldn’t make many more trips.”

“Yes. Once they begin pumping oil through that pipe-line, it’s back to the farm for you and me. Well—teaming has been a lift for me, anyway, this winter.”

“I’ve got three hundred dollars all my own,” said the boy, proudly. “It will start me in at college some time—when father comes home.”

“It’s more, I guess, than a good many have saved up.” Denny glanced back along the line of wagons. “And when they’re cut off from their day’s work—I expect there will be trouble.”

The teamsters observed no great secrecy in expressing their emotions and in making threats. In consequence of specific declarations which he had heard, at nine o’clock that night Denny was crossing the Drasnoe oil-field, following the ridge that denoted the pipe-line.

As he walked, he kept his eyes on the ridge, intent for any sign that it had been tampered with. After he had gone a mile he came to a strip of woods, through which the pipe-line was laid, although at this point the road diverged and made a circuit.

The woods were not more than half a mile in area, and except for another clump of forest six miles distant, near the railway station, made the only secluded spot through which the pipe-line passed.

The teamsters all lived in the vicinity of the Drasnoe field.

“They won’t go six miles to cut pipe,” Denny thought. “Right here’s the place to catch ’em.”

The sky had cleared during the afternoon; it was a mild, clear night, with a moon that showed the road from the edge of the woods for some distance.

Denny sat down on a log, lighted the lantern he had brought, and taking a book from his pocket, began to read.

Presently he looked up, and made out a figure approaching across the fields, following the pipe-line. He shielded the lantern and waited. When the approaching man entered the woods he stepped out to meet him.

“Mr. Ross!” Denny ejaculated, contemptuously.

“What are you doing here?” The superintendent’s voice was menacing.

“I’m constable of this borough, Mr. Ross, and I’m here to prevent mischief.”

“Then we’re on the same errand.”

“Are we?” Denny asked. “You’d better go home to bed, Mr. Ross. You don’t want to get mixed up in this. You wouldn’t be any good—and it mightn’t be good for you.”

“Look here, John Denny!” Ross stepped up close; his eyes flashed in the light of the lantern that Denny held aloft. “You the same as called me a coward to-day, and because you’ve got only one arm I can’t resent it! You told me that if I was any good for fighting I’d be somewhere else than here. Now I want you to know one thing—my plans were laid last week to leave for the front next Monday. You think I haven’t wanted to go! I don’t tell my private affairs to you or any other man, but I’ll say this much: over in Oil City I’m leaving a family provided for if anything happens to me.”

“If that’s the case,” Denny said, slowly, “I take it back, Mr. Ross. I take everything back.”

They sat down together on the log and talked amicably. Denny’s thoughts were turned back to his war experience. He told the new recruit stories of campaigning and battle. Ross listened with a respect of which his maimed subordinate became somehow conscious. That tribute of respect from one whom he had both envied and despised, and whom he had come so suddenly to like, swept the bitterness from Denny’s soul.

“You’re giving up a good bit to go,” he said, at last. “Old man Drasnoe likes you; you’ve got a start toward being a millionaire. You throw it all up and go off to the war—and you can’t tell what you may come back to.”

“I’ll have to run my chance,” Ross answered.

“Mr. Drasnoe satisfied to have you leave?”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Ross, quietly, “Mr. Drasnoe is quite satisfied. He likes the man I’ve picked to take my place.” Denny’s interest was at once awakened.

“And who might that be?”

Ross hesitated. “It’s hardly time to talk about it yet.”

“Oh, all right. I wasn’t meaning to pry.”

They arranged to divide the night into watches Denny was to sleep until twelve, then Ross would rouse him and sleep till four.

At about one o’clock, while Ross, lying at the foot of a tree, was sleeping, the marauders came. Denny saw them as they climbed over the fence by the roadside. He awakened Ross, and said:

“They’re coming. You’d better leave this to me—as constable. If they see you, they’ll get ugly. You go in behind that thicket and wait.”

Ross protested. “You can come out if you’re needed,” Denny said; and the superintendent reluctantly withdrew. Denny put out his lantern, and stepping behind a great oak, awaited the approach.

There were a dozen men, carrying lanterns, mattocks and spades; they passed close by where Denny stood.

“Spread out, now—and rip it up all along!” cried one; and he lifted his mattock and brought it down upon the earth.

Denny stepped forward.

“Boys,” he said, “hold on!”

They faced him, startled. The one who had spoken caught up a lantern and turned it on him.

“Denny!” he exclaimed. “Spyin’ on us!”

“I’m borough constable,” said Denny. “Destroying property has a penalty attached.” The men crowded round him, disturbed, angry, threatening.

“Well, here we are!” said the leader, scornfully. “Arrest us.”

“There won’t be any arrests if there’s no damage done, O’Brien,” Denny answered.

O’Brien turned and struck his mattock into the earth. “Show him a little damage, boys,” he urged. “Yank up the pipe.”

The others set to work, cursing at Denny meanwhile. The dirt flew; they flung it jeeringly at him.

“All right,” said Denny. “You are twelve men against one. Maybe I can’t arrest you to-night, but I’ve got your names.”

In a few moments they had exposed the pipe, which was not buried deep. Then O’Brien knelt and sawed it through in two places, and cast the section at Denny’s feet.

“There!” he said. “How d’ye like the looks of that, Mr. Constable? And now, so’s you won’t follow us and see where else we operate, we’ll just tie you up for a while.”

“You fellows will be piling up trouble for yourselves,” Denny warned them. “Murphy and Conway, there—you ought to have more sense.”

One of these two men, Murphy, spoke in a low voice, unwillingly:

“I guess maybe we’d better quit. If he reports us—”

“He ain’t going to report us!” interrupted O’Brien. “He don’t dare. Come, boys, get a-hold of him, and we’ll tie him up—”

He advanced a step toward Denny, and in the same instant Denny drew a revolver and leveled it at O’Brien’s head.

“Don’t lay a hand on me,” he said, quietly.

“Get behind him and grab him, somebody!” shouted O’Brien. “Spread out and get round him.”

But the men hesitated. “I said we’d ought to have wore masks!” muttered one. “He’s seen us all now.”

O’Brien made a quick dash, trying to circle Denny, who whirled and held the revolver pointed at O’Brien’s face.

“Jump on him now!” shouted O’Brien; and then one, bolder than the others, sprang upon Denny’s shoulders and bore him to the ground. O’Brien was instantly upon him also, got possession of his revolver, and then with breathless imprecations began winding a rope about his ankles.

“All right!” muttered Denny. “You’ve got me—but you fellows will pay for this.”

Then Ross walked into the midst of the group. The leader of the gang looked up from where he knelt. “It’s you, is it?” he said, defiantly.

Ross turned from him to the others.

“Will you give me five minutes?” he asked. “I’m in your power; I’m all alone. Will you let me have five minutes to talk?”

“Go on,” said one of the men.

“Just five minutes, mind,” said O’Brien, truculently. He tightened the rope that bound Denny’s arm behind his back and stood up.

“When I came here to-night,” Ross began, persuasively, “it was with the idea that there might be some trouble over this pipe-line. But though I was expecting trouble, there was only one man that I looked on as my personal enemy, and that was John Denny. He called me a coward to my face this morning; and when I came here a couple of hours ago, and found him on duty as constable, I felt I’d found more trouble than I was looking for. Well, we talked the whole matter out—and came to an understanding. And maybe, after talking this other matter out, you and I can come to an understanding.

“Here’s the situation. A pump and a pipe together are going to do for almost nothing more than all you men have been in the habit of doing for a good deal of money. They’re going to put you out of business. So you get together and decide to put the pipe out of business. And you mean to keep putting it out of business just as often as it resumes. Isn’t that stating the case.”

Two or three of the men laughed uneasily; there was no dissent.

“Now you can do that to-night; you can keep on doing it for a while. But you must see—your common sense must tell you—that when an economical way of doing a thing is discovered, the expensive way has got to be abandoned. They are to have a pipe-line over in the Deepwater valley, and the teamsters will have to quit; they are to have another up at Anderson, and the teamsters will have to quit; they’re putting pipe-lines in everywhere. It’s a fact you’ve got to face; the day of the teamster in the oil regions is over.

“Just to make it practical—to demonstrate it, not to make threats—listen. You cut this pipe to-night. What happens? There are two witnesses against you—John Denny and myself. All that the law requires is two witnesses. It’s true you have us in your power to-night—but I hardly think any of you mean to do murder in cold blood. You may think of keeping us out of the way for a while—maybe using force on us to make us hold our tongues. But some time you’ll have to let us go free—and I expect we will go free without making any promises.”

He spoke these words with slow distinctness and emphasis; there was an uneasy stirring in the crowd.

“Moreover,” Ross continued, “before I started out to-night I left a note at home, saying where I was going and why. If I should mysteriously disappear, that note will afford a clue. You may all feel that you’re strong enough to defy the law and destroy property and commit violence. But even supposing this is true—what can you gain by it? Do you think the company whose pipe you cut will ever again employ you to drive its wagons? Drasnoe would rather let his oil forever run to waste than be coerced into letting you handle it. And you can’t so easily carry matters with a high hand—”

“You begin to threaten us!” cried O’Brien. “We’ve had enough—”

“I don’t mean to threaten,” Ross replied. “I’m just trying to make a complete statement of the case. In a moment I’ll talk in a way that you can’t regard as threatening. But as to your being able to override the law—you know, of course, what will happen. The company will spend its last cent fighting for its rights. It will hire men to protect its property. The community will be roused against you. You’ll have to fight with the company’s watchmen; you can’t go on cutting its pipe with impunity. And meanwhile you’ll be blacklisted by the company, whereas, if you accept this overturn in a peaceful spirit, the company will try to give work of some kind to as many of you as want it. Now I’ve come to the end of everything that may sound threatening. Are you willing I should go on for a few moments longer?”

“No,” shouted O’Brien. But “Yes!” cried the others; and some of them turned to O’Brien and bade him be still.

“I want you to know that last week I tendered my resignation as superintendent, to take effect next Monday. Next Monday I start for Virginia, to join Grant’s army. It’s just occurred to me that that would be a pretty good thing for those of you to do who are out of a job and so have a hankering to fight somebody.” He spoke the words with a smile; by the lantern-light he could see the smile reflected on the face of some of the men. “I hope you’ll think better of fighting the company—for if you don’t, I’ll have to stay here and deprive General Grant of my services.” This time the smile on his face was echoed by a murmur of laughter. “I’d be mighty glad if those of you who feel bound to fight somebody would join me next Monday and start for the Wilderness. I don’t know that it would be any more of a fight than you’d get by staying here and tackling the company—but I guess it would be enough. That’s all I have to say; and now if you think the only thing is to string me up on one of those trees, I can’t help myself.”

“I guess there won’t be any lynching!” muttered one of the men; from the others there issued only sheepish, uncomfortable laughter. O’Brien was silent.

“Well,” remarked Murphy, at last. “I don’t know but I may join your soldier squad on Monday, captain. Looks like things will be kind of quiet round here for a full-grown fightin’ man.”

At this there was loud laughter, and Ross knew that he had won.

“You think, Mr. Ross,” said a man, hesitatingly, “if a fellow was to stay, the company might find him a job?”

“I think so. That will be one of the problems for my successor—who, by the way, is lying there with his feet tied.”

The men gazed at one another; Denny lay speechless and amazed. Then one of the men turned to O’Brien.

“O’Brien,” he said, gravely, “if you and me are looking for jobs, suppose we untie his feet.”

At eight o’clock on Monday morning there waited at the railway station a group of ten men, who were starting South to join Grant’s army. Among them was one whom the others half jestingly, yet half-seriously also, called “Captain.” He stepped apart from the rest to speak to a one-armed man and a boy who had just driven up to the platform. The sound of the approaching train made itself heard.

“You’ll be sure to see father for me, won’t you, Mr. Ross?” said the boy.

“Sure. I’m glad you had word he was all right. I’ll send you a letter as soon as I see him—and I’ll tell him all about you. Good-by, Elmer!”

He turned to the one-armed man.

“Good-by, Denny!”

The train rushed along the platform as Denny gripped Ross’s hand.

“Good-by, Mr. Ross—thank you—” His voice broke, but he regained it. “Come back to us—and come back—_whole_!”

Then, amid the cheers of the few who had gathered to see the departure, the recruits boarded the train, and the train pulled away.

“He _will_ come back!” said Denny to Elmer, with conviction. “Even if the whole of Lee’s army lays a trap for him, he’ll come back.”

MANUK DEL MONTE

By Rowland Thomas

Early one morning, just before the dawn, three of us were riding wearily down the slope of one of the great grassy hills—some people call them mountains—which lie between the provinces of Isabella and Nueva Vizcaya.

We had been travelling all night by moonlight, and now as the east was growing rosy we were winding down to a little wood in the valley, where we hoped to find a mountain stream to give us water for our breakfast, and a thing of far more importance, grazing for the horses, for it was the dry season, and the grass on the hills was parched and dead. The breakfast swung with mocking lightness behind Justin’s saddle, merely a few handfuls of cold rice rolled in the butt of a banana leaf. It was also tiffin and dinner, for we were travelling light and fast, and carried not even chocolate, nothing but the rice.

I was watching the gyrations of the breakfast moodily, for I was sleepy and hungry and sore, when suddenly from the wood below us the crow of a cock rang out, shrill and triumphant. I was surprised, for few people live along a trail used mostly by bandits and head-hunters.

Suddenly from the slope of a farther hill the call rang out again, and then the whole wood echoed with the sounds of the farmyard.

“What town is this?” I asked the boys, although we were at least a day’s journey from any settlement which I knew.

Justin laughed, and even Tranquid smiled stiffly.

“It is no town, señor,” said Justin. “It is the _manuk del monte_—the wild chicken—which you hear.”

After saddles were off and the horses’ backs were washed, the animals rolled and grazed luxuriously by the swift, clear stream, and Tranquid, prince of servants, dexterously unrolled the breakfast.

He laid stones on the corners of the leaf, and patted the snowy mass of rice out smoothly, and filled a bamboo drinking-cup from the brook, while I pretended not to see. At meal-times Tranquid has a solemn and important air worthy of the most autocratic of London butlers, and I am a babe in his hands.

“Breakfast is served, señor,” said Tranquid, gravely.

“I come,” I replied, with equal gravity, and rolled over twice and came up on my knees, Japanese fashion, beside my lowly table.

Just as I was going to plunge my fingers into the rice, a cock crowed loud and clear among the trees close at hand. A great ferocity of meat hunger swept over me.

“Give me the boom-boom, Justin!” I commanded. “We will have manuk del monte for breakfast.”

The cock crowed often while I stole through the undergrowth, as softly as the ferns and bristly creepers would let me.

As I drew near, the crowing ceased, and I was peering about the brush and shrub for a sight of the cock when—_whir_! From the lower branches of a tree, fifty feet above my head, a splendid bird shot out with a boom like a partridge and sailed away between the tree trunks, a dazzling vision of white and green and gold.

I was too startled to shoot, for I had never before seen chickens that roost like eagles and flew like pheasants and were as brilliant as humming-birds.

In a moment I heard his strong wings beating on the other side of the valley, and I went back and ate my rice quietly.

That incident began my acquaintance with the wild chickens, and they soon grew to be a very dear part of the forest life, bringing me an odd mixture of pleasant memory and homesickness as I listened to them.

We heard them always when we made and left our one-night homes along the trail. The cocks proved to be just as exacting husbands as their domesticated cousins, crowing their families home and abroad with fussy punctuality.

If a gay young cockerel or a giddy pullet lingered too long afield, the lord of the flock grew noisy with anxiety as the sunset faded. With the dawn he woke, brisk and important, and woe betide the sleepyhead of the family.

There was no “Rouse up, sweet slugabed” for him, but an ear-splitting call, and we often chuckled at thought of the sheepish haste of the laggard when that sound penetrated to his sleepy brain.

A tropical forest is a thing of awe and mystery, with its eternal dim twilight and tangled creepers, and innumerable dark vistas which hide inhabitants one seldom hears and never sees. Most of the creatures seem to feel the silent immensity and vagueness as a man does, and seek safety in unobtrusiveness.

These brave, cheery birds alone were unaffected by it, and they crowed and cackled and clucked about their business of living as carelessly as if there were no such thing as fear in the world.

Yet with all their independence they showed a baffling shyness, and many weeks went by before I caught more than a distant glimpse of one.

Tranquid hunted them with painful devotion. But he was a child of the cities, lost in the mountains as a puppy would have been. When a cock crowed near a camping-place, his face would brighten hopefully, and he would go creeping off with the noiselessness of a young elephant. Back and forth he crashed in the brush, pulling branches aside with excessive caution and peeping behind them.

At last the bird would flush from a tree and shoot away in a blur of colored light. Then Tranquid would straighten up with a nervous jerk, and cry triumphantly:

“There, señor, I have found him! There he goes. Look! Look!” pointing up to the tree where he had been.

On these occasions Justin always lay on the grass and laughed.

Justin was a woodland philosopher, and had discovered that town-bred folk and wild chickens had been sent into the world for his amusement. He never deigned to take any further part in the pursuit.

When it came to stalking a deer or running down a pig he was all eagerness and skill, and would lead me for hours without a thought of rest, but chickens were beneath him. Occasionally, however, as we rode along, a crow would caw somewhere above us. Then Justin was full of excitement.

“Look, señor!” he would shout, pointing up to the empty sky. “I have found him. There! There!”

In spite of Justin’s jesting, my desire to see a wild cock face to face only increased with repeated failure.

I never tried to shoot one after that first experience. I would as soon have thought of shooting at a monkey. But I wanted to have one for my own, to look at, and draw pictures of, and show to my poor friends who lived down in the plains through the hot season, and complained of prickly heat. I even dreamed of presenting one to my friend, the captain, and letting him create a new and lusty race of fowls, a breed which would meet the hawk in his own element, and laugh at woven-wire fences.

At last, up in a little mountain village, my opportunity came. Tranquid announced, with the respectful elation he sometimes permitted himself, that a man had a wild rooster. Would the señor like to come to see it?

The señor was willing, so we went down the narrow grass-grown street together, stepping carefully over the babies and pigs that were basking in the sun.

In the yard of a little tumble-down shack we found a rusty brown bird tied to a post by a bit of twine about his leg. The old man, his owner, scattered a few kernels of corn, and the poor dingy thing pecked at them in a half-hearted way. A hen came bustling up and he pecked peevishly at her once or twice, and then hopped back to his post and stood there, dull and round-shouldered, like a sulky boy who had decided that the corn was not of much importance, anyway, and had put his hands in his pockets.

I was slow to believe that this could be a brother of the swift, bright bird which had boomed out of a treetop that first morning, but I presently discovered that it was. The long, slender body, the powerful wings, the sharp, heavy bill, were the product of generations of wild life. And under the dust and rustiness of the feathers there were still traces of the green and gold of the forest. The changes were due only to a changed mode of life.

“The man says,” explained Tranquid, “that he has had this rooster for a long time, and it is dirty. He says he will catch a clean one for the señor, if he pleases.”

Of course the señor pleased; and one bright morning we set out. The old man, our guide, marched in front, most importantly, for it is not every day that one has a chance to show a señor what a clever man one is at catching wild chickens, and the old man knew that his grandchildren would tell their children about this expedition.

Under his arm he carried a red fighting cock. It struck me as a bit odd to carry such an animal on a hunting trip, but I asked no questions. One feels no surprise in the Philippines in meeting people with roosters under their arms; it is quite the usual thing. Tranquid followed the old man, respectfully hopeful. Then came Justin, smiling, and I brought up the rear.

A mile or so from the village the wall of the forest rose, dark and impenetrable. But at one point a stream came down from the hills, and there the field extended into the woods for a little way, making a sort of room, cool and shadowy, and carpeted with short, thick turf.

Here the old man halted, and waited till we all stood about him. Then he drew from the pocket of his blouse a bundle of twine, wound on four pointed sticks. Justin stopped smiling. Anything in the nature of a trap, anything which matched man’s wits against the instinct of the wild creatures, interested Justin.