Golden Stories Part 13

"At San Marcial?" she said wonderingly. "I didn't know he had left Socorro!"

"A week now," returned Webster with much complacence. "Fired him from Socorro for doin' that express job. Socorro's bad enough without Texas----"

His mouth opened with dumb astonishment as Mary Jane whirled around on him with a laugh on her lips.

"Why, dad! Texas Rankin didn't do that job! It was Buck Reible. Texas told me the night it happened. We were walking down near the station and we heard some shooting. I wasn't close enough to see plainly, but Texas said he could recognize Buck by the flash of his gun. And so Texas is dead!"

"I thought," said Webster feebly, "that you was pretty sweet on Texas."

"Sweet!" said Mary Jane, blushing with maidenly modesty. "Socorro is so dull. A young lady must have some diversion."

"Then you don't care----"

"Why, dad! You old sobersides. To think--why I was only fooling with him. It was fun to see how serious----"

"In that case----" began Webster. And then he went out and sat on the front stoop.

Far into the night he sat, and always he stared in the direction of San Marcial.

VII

BETWEEN FRIENDS

A Story of the Italian Quarter

By ADRIANA SPADONI

VINCENZA looked from the three crisp dollar bills to her husband, and back again, wonderingly and with fear in her eyes.

"I understand nothing, Gino, and I am afraid. Perhaps it will bring the sickness, the money--it is of the devil, maybe----"

Luigi laughed, but a little uneasily. "It is time, then, that the devil went to paradise; he makes better for us than the saints, to whom you pray so----"

"S-sh!" Vincenza crossed herself quickly. "That is a great wickedness."

Luigi picked up the bills, examining them closely. Apparently they were good. Nevertheless he put them down again, and went on carving a wooden cow for the little Carolina, with a puzzled look in his black eyes.

"Gino," Vincenza stopped undressing the baby suddenly when the thought came to her. "Go thou and ask Biaggio. He has been many years in this country, and, besides, he is also a Genovese. He will tell thee."

Luigi's eyes cleared, but he condescended to make no reply. It is not for a man to take the advice of a woman. But when it was dark, and Vincenza had gone to lie down with the Little One, Luigi took his hat and went over to the shop of Biaggio Franchini.

Biaggio listened attentively; his pudgy hands, crossed on his stomach, rose and fell with the undulations of the rolls of flesh beneath. From time to time he ceased for a moment the contemplation of the strings of garlic and sausage that hung from the fly-specked ceiling of his diminutive shop, and turned his little black eyes sharply on Luigi.

"So," he said at last, "to-day a lady came to thy house, and after to ask many questions left these three dollars. It was in this way?"

"Just so," replied Luigi, "and questions the most marvelous I have ever heard. And in this country, where everyone asks the questions. How long that I do not work, and if we have to eat?" Luigi laughed; "of a surety, Biaggio, she asked that. She sees that we live--and she asks if we eat--_ma! che!_ And then, if we have every day the meat? When I said once, sometimes twice in the week--thou knowest it is not possible to have more often, when one waits to buy the house--then it was she put on the table the three dollars, and gave me a paper to sign----"

"Thou didst sign nothing?" Biaggio spoke eagerly.

"No. Once I signed the paper in English and it cost me two dollars; not again. I said I could not write, and she wrote for me."

"_Bene_," Biaggio nodded approval. "It is not thy writing. It can do nothing."

"Perhaps it is because I voted twice at the election last week? But already I have taken the money for that. It was one only dollar. I----"

"Non, non, it is not that. Listen!" Slowly Biaggio shut both eyes, as if to keep out the tremendous light that had dawned upon him, and nodded his head knowingly. Then he opened them, shifted his huge bulk upright, and clapped Luigi on the knee.

"Thou art in great luck friend," he cried, "and it is well that thou hast asked me. If thou hadst gone to another, to a man not honest, who knows? Listen. In our country when a rich man dies, he leaves always something for the poor, but he leaves it to the church and it is the fathers who give away the money. Corpo di Bacco! what that means thou knowest well. Sometimes a little gets to the poor. Sometimes---- But in this country it is not so. He leaves to a society. There are many. And they pay the women, and sometimes the men, to give away the money----"

"Santo Cristo," gasped Luigi, "they pay to give away the money?"

"For them it is a job like any other. Didst think it was for love of thee or the red curls of thy Vincenza?"

"Marvelous, most marvelous," murmured Luigi, "and it is possible then for all people to get----"

"Ma, that no one can explain," and Biaggio shrugged his shoulders; in a gesture of absolute inability to solve the problem.

"She will come then again, this lady?" Luigi leaned forward eagerly. He was beginning to grasp it.

"It is for thee to say stop, my son, if thou hast in thy head anything but fat. But thou art a Genovese. Only I say," Biaggio laid a grimy thumb across his lips and winked knowingly--"Tell to none."

"Thanks, many thanks friend," Luigi's voice was deeply grateful, "perhaps some day I can do for thee----?"

"It is nothing--nothing," insisted Biaggio, patting the air with his pudgy hands in a gesture of denial, "a little kindness between friends."

At great inconvenience to himself, Biaggio held the door open to give Luigi more light in crossing the street. As he closed it and turned out the gas, he smiled to himself. "And each bottle of oil will cost thee ten cents more, friend. Business is business, and yesterday thy Vincenza returned the carrots because they were not fresh. Ecco!"

Back in his own room, Luigi folded the three notes neatly, while Vincenza watched him, her gray eyes wide with wonder.

"Marvelous, marvelous," she whispered just as Luigi had done, "to-night I thank the Virgin."

As Biaggio had foretold, the Lady in Fur came every day. Luigi did not understand all that she said, but he always listened politely and smiled, with his dark eyes and his lips and his glistening white teeth.

It made her feel very old to see Luigi smile like that, when he had to live in one room with a leaking water pipe and a garbage can outside the door. Sometimes she was almost ashamed to offer the three dollars, and she was grateful for the gentle, sweet way Luigi accepted it.

Then one day when the air was thick with snow, and the air in the tenement halls cut like needles of ice and the lamps had to be lit at two o'clock, the Lady in Brown Fur came unexpectedly. She had found work for Luigi. She kissed the Little One, patted Vincenza's shoulder and shook hands with Luigi. Again and again she made him repeat the name and address to make sure he had it quite right. The Lady in Brown Fur was very happy. When she went Vincenza leaned far over the banisters with the lamp while Luigi called out in his soft, broken English, directions for avoiding the lines of washing below and the refuse piled in dark turns of the stairs. When the Lady in Brown Fur had disappeared Vincenza turned to Luigi.

"Of a surety, cara, the saints are good. Never before didst thou work before April. In the new house we will keep for ourselves two rooms.

"These people have the 'pull' even more than the alderman, Biaggio says," replied Luigi with a dreamy look in his eyes. "It may be that from this work I shall take three dollars each day."

"Madonna mia," gasped Vincenza, "it is beyond belief."

For five days Luigi stood four hours each afternoon, bent forward, to the lifting of a cardboard block, while Hugh Keswick painted, as he had not painted for months, the tense muscles under the olive skin, the strong neck and shoulders. The Building of the Temple advanced rapidly.