The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 24

Lou Garou, somewhat excited by painful recollections, went on in a stronger voice. "I puts up my hind sight to three hundred yards and draws a bead on Ruddy, between the shoulders. Then I lowers my piece and unc.o.c.ks her. 'Stop a bit,' I says. 'How about that twenty?'

It's gettin' dark, and I follows them to Ruddy's. I hides my gun in a bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin' his big teeth and laughin.' He closes the door behind him.

'Come for that twenty, Lou?' says he.

'Sure,' says I.

He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door.

'Come in,' he says.

I goes in.

'Hallo!' says he, like he was awful surprised. 'Here's a friend of yours, Lou. Well, I never!'

I sees Jenny sittin' in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, 'Hallo, Jenny'; she says, 'Hallo, Lou.' Then I turns to Ruddy. 'How about that twenty?' I says.

'Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!' he says. 'All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, here you are.'

He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it.

'There,' says he; 'you've got yours, and I've got mine.'

I don't find nothin' much to say, so I says, 'Well, good-night all, I'll be goin'.'

Then Jenny speaks up. 'Ain't you goin' to do nothin'?' she says.

"'Why, Jenny,' says I 'what can _I_ do?'

"'All right for you,' she says. 'Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep me tied after that.'

"So I says 'Good-night' again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don't make no sign. I says to myself, 'I can see him because of the light at his back, but he can't see me.' So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and there's Ruddy still standin' at the door lookin' after me into the dark.

It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack and unties Jenny.

"'Lou,' she says, 'I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooled _me_!'

"By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy's shack, and that's all."

The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down.

"Madam," said the judge, "may I ask you to rise?"

The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her black eye.

"Madam," said the judge, "is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as it concerns you, true?"

"Every word of it."

"The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?"

"He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn't bear the pain."

"You are, I take it, the prisoner's wife?"

The color mounted slowly into the woman's cheeks. She hesitated, choked upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet.

"Your honor," he cried, "in a question of life or death like this Jenny and me we speaks the truth, and nothin' but the truth. She's _not_ my wife. But I'm goin' to marry her, and make an honest woman of her--at the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy Boyd's wife."

There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly.

"Your honor," he drawled, "I can find it in my heart to pa.s.s over the exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to pa.s.s over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses to have given her."

Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. "That night in the shack," he cried, "I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me moanin' in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what's the matter. I think it's Ruddy bendin' over to choke me, and I hits out!"

"That's true, every word of it!" cried the woman. "He hit me in his sleep. And when he found out what he'd done he cried over me, and he kissed the place and made it well!" Her voice broke and ran off into a sob.

The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one they shook hands with him, and with the woman.

"I propose," said the foreman, "that by a unanimous vote we change this court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after the spring break up."

The motion was carried.

The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans.

"Wheneffer," he said, "you need a parrel of flour or something, you comes to me py my store."

THE MONITOR AND THE "MERRIMAC"

THE STORY OF A PANIC

I

Two long-faced young men and one old man with a long face sat upon the veranda of the Country Club of Westchester, and looked, now into the depths of pewter mugs containing mint and ice among other things, and now across Pelham Bay to the narrow pa.s.s of water between Fort Schuyler and Willets Point. Through this pa.s.s the evening fleet of Sound steamers had already torn with freight and pa.s.sengers for New Haven, Newport, Fall River, and Portland; and had already disappeared behind City Island Point, and in such close order that it had looked as if the _Peck_, which led, had been towing the others. The first waves from the paddle-wheels of the great ships had crossed the three miles of intervening bay, and were slapping at the base of the seawall that supported the country club pigeon grounds and lawn-tennis terraces, when another vessel came slowly and haughtily into view from between the forts. She was as black as the king of England's brougham, and as smart; her two masts and her great single funnel were stepped with the most insolent rake imaginable. Here and there where the light of the setting sun smote upon polished bra.s.s she shone as with pools of fire.

"There she is," said Powers. He had been sitting in his shirt sleeves, but now he rose and put on his coat as if the sight of the huge and proud yacht had chilled him. Brett, with a petulant slap, killed a swollen mosquito against his black silk ankle bone. The old man, Callender, put his hand to his forehead as if trying to remember something; and the yacht, steaming slower and slower, and yet, as it seemed, with more and more grandeur and pride of place--as if she knew that she gave to the whole bayscape, and the pale Long Island sh.o.r.e against which she moved in strong relief, an irrefutable note of dignity--presently stopped and anch.o.r.ed, midway between the forts and City Island Point; then she began to swing with the tide, until she faced New York City, from which she had just come.

Callender took his hand from his forehead. He had remembered.

"Young gentlemen," he said, "that yacht of Merriman's has been reminding me every afternoon for a month of something, and I've just thought what.

You remember one day the _Merrimac_ came down the James, very slowly, and sunk the _c.u.mberland_, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when the _Merrimac_ came down to finish destroying the fleet the next day, the _Monitor_ had arrived during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off.

Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it expression of the _Merrimac's_ that I've been seeing in the _Sappho_."

"You were on the _Monitor_, weren't you?" asked Powers cheerfully.

The old man did not answer, but he was quite willing that Powers and Brett, and the whole world for that matter, should think that he had been. Powers and Brett, though in no cheerful mood, exchanged winks.

"I don't see why history shouldn't repeat itself," said Powers.