Somewhere in Red Gap Part 8

Could his fallen idol be there, I wondered? Purposefully I also watched the door of the stable. Presently it opened slightly; then, with evident infinite caution, it was pushed outward until it hung half yawning. A palpitant moment we gazed, Boogles and I. Then shot from the stable gloom an astounding figure in headlong flight. Its goal appeared to be the bunk house fifty yards distant; but its course was devious, laid clearly with a view to securing such incidental brief shelter as would be afforded by the corral wall, by a meagre clump of buck-brush, by a wagon, by a stack of hay. Good time was made, however. The fugitive vanished into the bunk house and the door of that structure was slammed to. But now the small puzzle I had thought to solve had grown to be, in that brief s.p.a.ce--easily under eight seconds--a mystery of enormous, of sheerly inhuman dimensions. For the swift and winged one had been all too plainly a correctly uniformed messenger boy of the Western Union Telegraph Company--that blue uniform with metal b.u.t.tons, with the corded red at the trouser sides, the flat cap fronted by a badge of nickel--unthinkable, yet there. And the speedy bearer of this scenic invest.i.ture had been the desperate, blood-letting, two-gun bad man of the Arrowhead.

It was a complication not to be borne with any restraint. I hastened to stand before the shut door of the sanctuary. It slept in an unpromising stillness. Invincibly reticent it seemed, even when the anguished face of Jimmie Time, under that incredible cap with its nickeled badge, wavered an instant back of the grimy window--wavered and vanished with an effect of very stubborn finality. I would risk no defeat there. I pa.s.sed resolutely on to Boogles, who now most diligently trained up tender young bean vines in the way they should go.

"Why does he hide in there?" I demanded in a loud, indignant voice. I was to have no nonsense about it.

Boogles turned on me the slow, lofty, considering regard of a United States senator submitting to photography for publication in a press that has no respect for private rights. He lacked but a few clothes and the portico of a capitol. Speech became immanent in him. One should not have been surprised to hear him utter decorative words meant for the rejoicing and incitement of voters. Yet he only said--or started to say:

"Little Sure Shot'll get that c.h.i.n.k yet! I tell you, now, that old boy is sure the real Peruvian--"

This was absurdly too much. I then and there opened on Boogles, opened flooding gates of wrath and scorn on him--for him and for his idol of clay who, I flatly told him, could not be the real doughnuts of any sort. As for his being the real Peruvian--Faugh!

Often I had wished to test in speech the widely alleged merits of this vocable. I found it do all that has been claimed for it. Its effect on Boogles was so withering that I used it repeatedly in the next three minutes. I even faughed him twice in succession, which is very insulting and beneficial indeed, and has a pleasant feel on the lips.

"And now then," I said, "if you don't give me the truth of this matter here and now, one of us two is going to be mighty sorry for it."

In the early moments of my violence Boogles had protested weakly; then he began to quiver perilously. On this I soothed him, and at the precisely right moment I cajoled. I lured him to the bench by the corral gate, and there I conferred costly cigarettes on him as man to man.

Discreetly then I sounded for the origins of a certain bad man who had a way--even though they might crease him--of leaving deputy marshals where he found them. Boogles smoked one of the cigarettes before he succ.u.mbed; but first:

"Let me git my work," said he, and was off to the bunk house.

I observed his part in an extended parley before the door was opened to him. He came to me on the bench a moment later, bearing a ball of scarlet yarn, a large crochet hook of bone, and something begun in the zephyr but as yet without form.

"I'm making the madam a red one for her birthday," he confided.

He bent his statesman's head above the task and wrought with nimble fingers the while he talked. It was difficult, this talk of his, scattered, fragmentary; and his mind would go from it, his voice expire untimely. He must be prompted, recalled, questioned. His hands worked with a very certain skill, but in his narrative he dropped st.i.tches.

Made to pick these up, the result was still a droning monotony burdened with many irrelevancies. I am loath to transcribe his speech. It were better reported with an eye strictly to salience.

You may see, then--and I hope with less difficulty than I had in seeing--Jimmie Time and Boogles on night duty at the front of the little Western Union Office off Park Row in the far city of New York. The law of that city is tender to the human young. Night messenger boys must be adults. It is one of the preliminary shocks to the visitor--to ring for the messenger boy of tradition and behold in his uniform a venerable gentleman with perhaps a flowing white beard. I still think Jimmie Time and Boogles were beating the law--on a technicality. Of course Jimmie was far descended into the vale of years, and even Boogles was forty--but adults!

It is three o'clock of a warm spring morning. The two legal adults converse in whispers, like bad boys kept after school. They whisper so as not to waken the manager, a blase, mature youth of twenty who sleeps expertly in the big chair back of the railing. They whisper of the terrific hazards and the precarious rewards of their adventurous calling. The hazards are nearly all provided by the youngsters who come on the day watch--hardy ruffians of sixteen or so who not only "pick on"

these two but, with sportive affectations, often rob them, when they change from uniform to civilian attire, of any spoil the night may have brought them. They are powerless against these aggressions. They can but whisper their indignation.

Boogles eyed the sleeping manager.

"I struck it fine to-night, Jimmie!" he whispered. Jimmie mutely questioned. "Got a whole case note. You know that guy over to the newspaper office--the one that's such a tank drama--he had to send a note up to a girl in a show that he couldn't be there."

"That tank drama? Sure, I know him. He kids me every time he's stewed."

"He kids me, too, something fierce; and he give me the case note."

"Them strong arms'll cop it on you when they get here," warned Jimmie.

"Took my collar off and hid her on the inside of it. Oh, I know tricks!"

"Chee! You're all to the Wall Street!"

"I got to look out for my stepmother, too. She'd crown me with a chair if she thought I held out on her. Beans me about every day just for nothing anyway."

"Don't you stand for it!"

"Yah! All right for you to talk. You're the lucky guy. You're an orphan.

S'pose you had a stepmother! I wish I was an orphan."

Jimmie swelled with the pride of orphanship.

"Yes; I'd hate to have any parents knocking me round," he said. "But if it ain't a stepmother then it's somebody else that beans you. A guy in this burg is always getting knocked round by somebody."

"Read some more of the novel," pleaded Boogles, to change the distressing topic.

Jimmie drew a tattered paper romance from the pocket of his faded coat and pushed the cap back from his seamed old forehead. It went back easily, having been built for a larger head than his. He found the place he had marked at the end of his previous half-hour with literature.

Boogles leaned eagerly toward him. He loved being read to. Doing it himself was too slow and painful:

"'No,' said our hero in a clear, ringing voice; 'all your tainted gold would not keep me here in the foul, crowded city. I must have the free, wild life of the plains, the canter after the Texas steers, and the fierce battles with my peers. For me the boundless, the glorious West!'"

"Chee! It must be something grand--that wild life!" interrupted Boogles. "That's the real stuff--the cowboy and trapper on them peraries, hunting bufflers and Injuns. I seen a film--"

Jimmie Time frowned at this. He did not like interruptions. He firmly resumed the tale:

"With a gesture of disdain our hero waved aside the proffered gold of the scoundrelly millionaire and dashed down the stairway of the proud mansion to where his gallant steed, Midnight, was champing at the hitching post. At that moment--"

Romance was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hands of Jimmie Time. The manager towered above him.

"Ain't I told you guys not to be taking up the company's time with them novels?" he demanded. He sternly returned to his big chair behind the railing, where he no less sternly took up his own perusal of the confiscated tale.

"The big stiff!" muttered Jimmie. "That's the third one he's copped on me this week. A kid in this choint ain't got no rights! I got a good notion to throw 'em down cold and go with the Postal people."

"Never mind! I'll blow you to an ice cream after work," consoled Boogles.

"Ice cream!" Jimmie Time was contemptuous. "I want the free, wild life of the boundless peraries. I want b'ar steaks br'iled on the glowing coals of the camp fire. I want to be Little Sure Shot, trapper, scout, and guide--"

"Next out!" yelled the manager. "Hustle now!"

Jimmie Time was next out. He hustled sullenly.

Boogles, alone, slept fitfully on his bench until the young thugs of the day watch straggled in. Then he achieved the change of his uniform to civilian garments, with only the accustomed minor maltreatment at the hands of these tormentors. True, with sportive affectations--yet with deadly intentness--they searched him for possible loot; but only his pockets. His dollar bill, folded inside his collar, went unfound. With a.s.sumed jauntiness he strolled from the outlaws' den and safely reached the street.

The gilding on the castellated towers of the tallest building in the world dazzled his blinking, foolish eyes. That was a glorious summit which sang to the new sun, but no higher than his own elation at the moment. Had he not come off with his dollar? He found balm and a tender stimulus in the morning air--an air for dreams and revolt. Boogles felt this as thousands of others must have felt it who were yet tamely issuing from subway caverns and the Brooklyn Bridge to be wage slaves.

A block away from the office he encountered Jimmie Time, who seemed to await him importantly. He seethed with excitement.

"I got one, too!" he called. "That tank drama he sent another note uptown to a restaurant where a party was, and he give me a case note, too."

He revealed it; and when Boogles withdrew his own treasure the two were lovingly compared and admired. Nothing in all the world can be so foul to the touch as the dollar bill that circulates in New York, but these two were intrepidly fondled.

"I ain't going back to change," said Jimmie Time. "Them other kids would cop it on me."

"Have some cigarettes," urged Boogies, and royally bought them--with gilded tips, in a beautiful casket.