The Calico Cat Part 2

Suffering still with the splitting headache which he had been trying to sleep off, angry with Jim for his carelessness, concerned lest the man were really injured, Mr. Edwards was in his least compromising mood.

"How did it happen?" he asked, without preface. His tones were harsh, and he fixed Jim with stern eyes.

"How did it happen!" repeated Jim, in pure surprise. Certainly his father knew much better than he how it had happened.

"Speak out!" said Mr. Edwards, impatiently. "How did you come to shoot that man? I want to know about it."

"Me!" cried Jim, in complete bewilderment. "I--I haven't shot any man, father! You know I haven't."

Mr. Edwards, never a man of nice observation, and now bewildered with anger and headache, took his son's genuine astonishment for mere pretense and subterfuge. Were not the facts plain?

"I don't want any nonsense about this," he said incisively. "I heard your gun. I saw the man fall. No one else but you could possibly have fired it. It's useless to lie, and I won't stand it. Tell me at once what happened."

"I didn't shoot him, father. You _know_ I didn't!" reiterated Jim, more and more dumfounded. "I don't know how it happened, honest Injun--I don't, father!"

Mr. Edwards's mouth shut tight. He swept the room with his eyes until they rested upon the gun in the rack over the mantelpiece.

He stepped forward, took it down, and examined it. Holding it in his hands, he gazed about the floor. A rag which the ashes in the fireplace had not wholly covered caught his attention.

"You cleaned the gun and put it away," he said grimly. "Then you tried to hide the rag with which you cleaned it," and he touched the bit of cloth sticking from the ashes contemptuously with his foot.

"What do you expect me to think from that?"

Jim was silent. The boy was unlike his father in many ways, but they were alike in this: they both were proud. Each would meet an unjust accusation in silence. And Jim was beginning to show another of his father's characteristics. A still anger was beginning to burn in him against this man who accused him of a deed which he himself had done, and he felt rising within him a stubborn will to endure, not to surrender. If his father was going to act like that, why, let him--

"Where is your shot-pouch?" asked Mr. Edwards.

Jim motioned toward the drawer.

"Is your powder-flask there, too?"

"Yes."

Mr. Edwards was silent After all, he was a just man. He was trying, as well as his headache would let him, to see things straight.

"It's plain what happened," he said at last. "You had an accident and got frightened. You cleaned your gun, you hid the rags, you put away your ammunition, you got your books and pretended to study.

You're afraid to tell the truth now."

Jim's face flushed hotly, but he kept silent. Such a.s.surance, such cruelty, he had never imagined. If this was what smugglers were like--if this was a sample of their tricks--

"I'll give you one more chance to tell the truth," said Mr. Edwards.

"Did you do it?"

"No, I didn't!" said Jim, and his jaw snapped close like his father's.

"Very well," said Mr. Edwards. "I'll leave you until you change your mind. You will stay here. Sarah will bring you bread and milk at supper-time. If you're willing to talk to me then, you may tell her that you'd like to see me."

He turned to go, then paused.

"It's a serious matter; and all the facts are against you. It would go hard with you in court. It will go harder if you stick to your stubborn and foolish lie. One thing more: if you don't choose to tell the truth, you will have to reckon with the law as well as with me."

Mr. Edwards, upon this, shut the door and departed. His was a stern figure, but the hurt within was very sore. This, then, he reflected bitterly, was the kind of boy he had. He suffered deeply at the discovery, which for him was unquestionable.

Jim felt outraged. He had done his loyal best to save his father from the consequences of his rash act, and now, with incredible ingenuity and cool injustice, his father was using his son's acts of helpfulness to make it appear that he had done the deed. Without a scruple, his father had made him a scapegoat.

Jim told himself that he would gladly have taken the blame had his father, as chief of the band, demanded the sacrifice of this, his devoted follower. Nay, more, he would have endured the ordeal without a murmur had his father, deeming it unsafe to enter into formal explanations, only hinted to him that this was a farce which they two must play together. If his father had only winked at him!

Surely he might have done that with safety! But not to be admitted to the secret,--not to be allowed to play the heroic part,--to be used as an ign.o.ble tool by a father who neither loved him nor knew his courage,--that was too much! He would not betray his father--no, a thousand times, no! But the day would come--

The afternoon dragged on. Jim sat there in his room, looking out into the pleasant sunshine, conscious that the boys were playing "three old cat" in the field not faraway--as rebellious and magnanimous, as hot and angry, as heroic and morally muddled a boy as one could wish to see. And looking at the affair from his point of view, not many people will blame him. It is delightful, of course, to have a pirate chief for father; but what if he makes you walk the plank?

It is amusing to think of Mr. Peaslee and Jim each shut up in his respective room; but if Mr. Peaslee in his gloomy parlor--faced by the crayon portrait of his masterful wife, a vase of wax flowers under a gla.s.s dome, the family Bible on a marble-topped table, and three stiff horsehair-covered chairs--had the advantage of being able to leave at any moment, he was even more perturbed in mind.

"Terrible awk'ard mess," he kept repeating to himself, as he mopped his damp forehead with his handkerchief, "terrible awk'ard." And indeed it would be awkward for a respectable citizen with political aspirations to be accused before a grand jury of which he is a member of a.s.sault with a dangerous weapon upon an inoffensive man.

Mr. Peaslee's reflections rose in a strophe of hope and fell in an antistrophe of despair.

"'T ain't likely it hurt him any--just bird shot," said Hope.

"Bird shot's mighty irritatin'--specially to a wrathy fellow," said Despair.

And alternating thus, his thoughts ran on: "Bird shot'll show I didn't have any serious _in_tent; but mebbe a piece of the marble struck him. He went off mighty lively; don't seem as if he'd been hurt _much_; more scared hurt, likely. But he might have been hurt bad, arm or suthin', mebbe. Marble! 'T ain't anythin' but baked clay; split all to pieces prob'ly--but ye can't tell. I've heard ye can shoot a taller candle through an inch plank--and that's consid'able softer than a marble. And that pesky cat's jest as frisky as ever!"

Had any one seen him? There certainly had not been any one in the street, but where had been Mr. Edwards, Jim, the housekeeper? Where had his own wife been? There were windows from which she might have seen him returning, some from which she might even have seen him fire the fatal shot. But pshaw, there now! Probably no one had seen him at all, not even his wife, not even his victim! Probably no one would ever find out.

"Must have been some worthless feller, stealin' apples, mebbe, who won't dare make a fuss. 'T ain't likely I'll ever hear anythin' of it. 'T ain't no use sayin' anythin' till suthin' happens. What folks don't know don't hurt 'em none."

The structure of comfort which he thus built himself was shaky indeed, but it had to serve. He nerved himself to meet his wife. He must not excite her suspicion by too long an absence. She was doubtless full of curiosity, for of course she had heard the shot, and would expect him to know what it meant.

It would not do to seem to enter the house by the front door, sacred to formal occasions, so, sneaking outdoors again, he slipped round to the side of the house, and with much trepidation went into the kitchen.

His wife began the moment she saw him. "Well, of all the crazy carryings on!" she cried. "What's the Ed'ards boy firin' off guns for, right under peaceable folks' windows? I'm goin' to speak to Mr.

Ed'ards right off."

"Now don't ye, Sarepty, now don't ye!" said Mr. Peaslee, in alarm.

Relieved as he was to find himself unsuspected, he did not like the idea of having his wife pick a quarrel with Mr. Edwards for what he himself had done! The less said about that shot the better he would be pleased.

"For the land's sake, why not, I should like to know?"

"Well, now, Sarepty, I wouldn't. That Ed'ards boy ain't more of a boy than most boys, I guess. Always seemed a real peaceable little feller. And Ed'ards is kinder touchy, I guess. It might make hard feelin'. 'T wouldn't look well for us to speak, bein' newcomers so.

I wouldn't, Sarepty, I wouldn't. Mebbe some time I'll slide in a word, just slide it in kinder easy, if he does it again."

And Mr. Peaslee looked appealingly at his wife through his big spectacles, his eyes looking very large and pathetic through the strong lenses.

"Humph!" said his wife, unmoved. "I ain't afraid of Ed'ards, if you be."

Nor could she be moved from her determination. Mr. Peaslee was vastly disturbed.

But presently he forgot this small annoyance in greater ones. That evening after tea, when he went up to the post-office, he heard that Pete Lamoury had been shot by Jim Edwards, and was now in bed with his wounds. Jim's arrest was predicted. Young Farnsworth, who kept the crockery store, told him the news. And presently Jake Hibbard, the worst "shyster" in the village, shuffled in--noticeable anywhere for his suit of rusty black, his empty sleeve pinned to his coat, the green patch over his eye, and his tobacco-stained lips. He confirmed the report.