Tom Grogan Part 11

Before she could speak he s.n.a.t.c.hed a handkerchief from a woman's neck, plunged it into the water of the horse-trough, bound it about his head, dashed up the short flight of steps, and crawled toward the terror-stricken child. There was a quick clutch, a bound back, and the smoke rolled over them, shutting man and child from view.

The crowd held their breath as it waited. A man with his hair singed and his shirt on fire staggered from the side door. In his arms he carried the almost lifeless boy, his face covered by the handkerchief.

A woman rushed up, caught the boy in her arms, and sank on her knees.

The man reeled and fell.

When Carl regained consciousness, Jennie was bending over him, chafing his hands and bathing his face. Patsy was on the sofa, wrapped in Jennie's shawl. Pop was fanning him. Carl's wet handkerchief, the old man said, had kept the boy from suffocating.

The crowd had begun to disperse. The neighbors and strangers had gone their several ways. The tenement-house mob were on the road to their beds. Many friends had stopped to sympathize, and even the bitterest of Tom's enemies said they were glad it was no worse.

When the last of them had left the yard, Tom, tired out with anxiety and hard work, threw herself down on the porch. The morning was already breaking, the gray streaks of dawn brightening the east. From her seat she could hear through the open door the soothing tones of Jennie's voice as she talked to her lover, and the hoa.r.s.e whispers of Carl in reply. He had recovered his breath again, and was but little worse for his scorching, except in his speech. Jennie was in the kitchen making some coffee for the exhausted workers, and he was helping her.

Tom realized fully all that had happened. She knew who had saved Patsy's life. She remembered how he laid her boy in her arms, and she still saw the deathly pallor in his face as he staggered and fell. What had he not done for her and her household since he entered her service? If he loved Jennie, and she him, was it his fault? Why did she rebel, and refuse this man a place in her home? Then she thought of her own Tom no longer with her, and of her fight alone and without him. What would he have thought of it? How would he have advised her to act? He had always hoped such great things for Jennie. Would he now be willing to give her to this stranger? If she could only talk to her Tom about it all!

As she sat, her head in her hand, the smoking stable, the eager wild-eyed crowd, the dead horses, faded away and became to her as a dream. She heard nothing but the voice of Jennie and her lover, saw only the white face of her boy. A sickening sense of utter loneliness swept over her. She rose and moved away.

During all this time Cully was watching the dying embers, and when all danger was over,--only the small stable with its two horses had been destroyed,--he led the Big Gray back to the pump, washed his head, sponging his eyes and mouth, and housed him in the big stable. Then he vanished.

Immediately on leaving the Big Gray, Cully had dodged behind the stable, run rapidly up the hill, keeping close to the fence, and had come out behind a group of scattering spectators. There he began a series of complicated manoeuvres, mostly on his toes, lifting his head over those of the crowd, and ending in a sudden dart forward and as sudden a halt, within a few inches of young Billy McGaw's coat-collar.

Billy turned pale, but held his ground. He felt sure Cully would not dare attack him with so many others about. Then, again, the glow of the smouldering cinders had a fascination for him that held him to the spot.

Cully also seemed spellbound. The only view of the smoking ruins that satisfied him seemed to be the one he caught over young McGaw's shoulder. He moved closer and closer, sniffing about cautiously, as a dog would on a trail. Indeed, the closer he got to Billy's coat the more absorbed he seemed to be in the view beyond.

Here an extraordinary thing happened. There was a dipping of Cully's head between Billy's legs, a raising of both arms, grabbing Billy around the waist, and in a flash the hope of the house of McGaw was swept off his feet, Cully beneath him, and in full run toward Tom's house. The bystanders laughed; they thought it only a boyish trick. Billy kicked and struggled, but Cully held on. When they were clear of the crowd, Cully shook him to the ground and grabbed him by the coat-collar.

"Say, young feller, where wuz ye when de fire started?"

At this Billy broke into a howl, and one of the crowd, some distance off, looked up. Cully clapped his hand over his mouth. "None o' that, or I'll mash yer mug--see?" standing over him with clenched fist.

"I warn't nowheres," stammered Billy. "Say, take yer hands off'n me--ye ain't"--

"T'ell I ain't! Ye answer me straight--see?--or I'll punch yer face in,"

tightening his grasp. "What wuz ye a-doin' when de circus come out--an', anoder t'ing, what's dis cologne yer got on yer coat? Maybe next time ye climb a fence ye'll keep from spillin' it, see? Oh, I'm onter ye. Ye set de stable afire. Dat's what's de matter."

"I hope I may die--I wuz a-carryin' de can er ker'sene home, an' when de roof fell in I wuz up on de fence so I c'u'd see de fire, an' de can slipped"--

"What fence?" said Cully, shaking him as a terrier would a rat.

"Why dat fence on de hill."

That was enough for Cully. He had his man. The lie had betrayed him.

Without a word he jerked the cowardly boy from the ground, and marched him straight into the kitchen:--

"Say, Carl, I got de fire-bug. Ye kin smell der ker'sene on his clo'es."

XIII. MR. QUIGG DRAWS A PLAN

McGaw had watched the fire from his upper window with mingled joy and fear--joy that Tom's property was on fire, and fear that it would be put out before she would be ruined. He had been waiting all the evening for Crimmins, who had failed to arrive. Billy had not been at home since supper, so he could get no details as to the amount of the damage from that source. In this emergency he sent next morning for Quigg to make a reconnaissance in the vicinity of the enemy's camp, ascertain how badly Tom had been crippled, and learn whether her loss would prevent her signing the contract the following night. Mr. Quigg accepted the mission, the more willingly because he wanted to settle certain affairs of his own. Jennie had avoided him lately,--why he could not tell,--and he determined, before communicating to his employer the results of his inquiries about Tom, to know exactly what his own chances were with the girl. He could slip over to the house while Tom was in the city, and leave before she returned.

On his way, the next day, he robbed a garden fence of a ma.s.s of lilacs, breaking off the leaves as he walked. When he reached the door of the big stable he stopped for a moment, glanced cautiously in to see if he could find any preparations for the new work, and then, making a mental note of the surroundings, followed the path to the porch.

Pop opened the door. He knew Quigg only by sight--an unpleasant sight, he thought, as he looked into his hesitating, wavering eyes.

"It's a bad fire ye had, Mr. Mullins," said Quigg, seating himself in the rocker, the blossoms half strangled in his grasp.

"Yis, purty bad, but small loss, thank G.o.d," said Pop quietly.

"That lets her out of the contract, don't it?" said Quigg. "She'll be short of horses now."

Pop made no answer. He did not intend to give Mr. Quigg any information that might comfort him.

"Were ye insured?" asked Quigg, in a cautious tone, his eyes on the lilacs.

"Oh, yis, ivery pinny on what was burned, so Mary tells me."

Quigg caught his breath; the rumor in the village was the other way. Why didn't Crimmins make a clean sweep of it and burn 'em all at once, he said to himself.

"I brought some flowers over for Miss Jennie," said Quigg, regaining his composure. "Is she in?"

"Yis; I'll call her." Gentle and apparently harmless as Gran'pop was, men like Quigg somehow never looked him steadily in the eye.

"I was tellin' Mr. Mullins I brought ye over some flowers," said Quigg, turning to Jennie as she entered, and handing her the bunch without leaving his seat, as if it had been a pair of shoes.

"You're very kind, Mr. Quigg," said the girl, laying them on the table, and still standing.

"I hear'd your brother Patsy was near smothered till Dutchy got him out.

Was ye there?"

Jennie bit her lip and her heart quickened. Carl's sobriquet in the village, coming from such lips, sent the hot blood to her cheeks.

"Yes, Mr. Nilsson saved his life," she answered slowly, with girlish dignity, a backward rush filling her heart as she remembered Carl staggering out of the burning stable, Patsy held close to his breast.

"The fellers in Rockville say ye think it was set afire. I see Justice Rowan turned Billy McGaw loose. Do ye suspect anybody else? Some says a tramp crawled in and upset his pipe."

This lie was coined on the spot and issued immediately to see if it would pa.s.s.

"Mother says she knows who did it, and it'll all come out in time. Cully found the can this morning," said Jennie, leaning against the table.

Quigg's jaw fell and his brow knit as Jennie spoke. That was just like the fool, he said to himself. Why didn't he get the stuff in a bottle and then break it?

But the subject was too dangerous to linger over, so he began talking of the dance down at the Town Hall, and the meeting last Sunday after church. He asked her if she would go with him to the "sociable"

they were going to have at No. 4 Truck-house; and when she said she couldn't,--that her mother didn't want her to go out, etc.,--Quigg moved his chair closer, with the remark that the old woman was always putting her oar in and spoiling things; the way she was going on with the Union would ruin her; she'd better join in with the boys, and be friendly; they'd "down her yet if she didn't."