Somewhere in Red Gap Part 10

I saw what a gentleman should do. I turned my back on the piteous figure of Jimmie Time. I moved idly off, as if the spectacle of his ignominy had never even briefly engaged me.

"Shoot up a good cook, will you?" said the lady grimly. "I'll give you your needings." She followed me to the house.

On the west porch, when she had exchanged the laced boots, khaki riding breeches, and army s.h.i.+rt for a most absurdly feminine house gown, we had tea. Her nose was powdered, and her slippers were bronzed leather and monstrous small. She mingled Scotch whiskey with the tea and drank her first cupful from a capacious saucer.

"That fresh bunch of campers!" she began. "What you reckon they did last night? Cut my wire fence in two places over on the west flat--yes, sir!--had a pair of wire clippers in the whip socket. What I didn't give 'em! Say, ain't it a downright wonder I still retain my girlish laughter?"

But then, after she had refused my made cigarette for one of her own deft handiwork, she spoke as I wished her to:

"Yes; three years ago. Me visiting a week at the home of Mrs. W.B.

Hemingway and her husband, just outside of Yonkers, back in York State.

A very nice swell home, with a nice front yard and everything. And also Mrs. W.B.'s sister and her little boy, visiting her from Albany, the sister's name being Mrs. L.H. c.u.mmins, and the boy being nine years old and named Rupert c.u.mmins, Junior; and very junior he was for his age, too--I will say that. He was a perfectly handsome little boy; but you might call him a blubberhead if you wanted to, him always being scared silly and pestered and rough-housed out of his senses by his little girl cousin, Margery Hemingway--Mrs. W.B.'s little girl, you understand--and her only seven, or two years younger than Junior, but leading him round into all kinds of musses till his own mother was that demoralized after a couple of days she said if that Margery child was hers she'd have her put away in some good inst.i.tution.

"Of course she only told that to me, not to Margery's mother. I don't know--mebbe she would of put her away, she was that frightened little Margery would get Junior killed off in some horrible manner, like the time she got him to see how high he dast jump out of the apple tree from, or like the time she told him, one ironing day, that if he drank a whole bowlful of starch it would make him have whiskers like his pa in fifteen minutes. Things like that--not fatal, mebbe, but wearing.

"Well, this day come a telegram about nine A.M. for Mrs. W.B., that her aunt, with money, is very sick in New Jersey, which is near Yonkers; so she and Mrs. L.H. c.u.mmins, her sister, must go to see about this aunt--and would I stay and look after the two kids and not let them get poisoned or killed or anything serious? And they might have to stay overnight, because the aunt was eccentric and often thought she was sick; but this time she might be right. She was worth all the way from three to four hundred thousand dollars.

"So I said I'd love to stay and look after the little ones. I wanted to stay. Shopping in New York City the day before, two bargain sales--one being hand-embroidered Swiss waists from two-ninety-eight upward--I felt as if a stampede of longhorns had caught me. Darned near bedfast I was!

Say, talk about the pale, weak, nervous city woman with exhausted vitality! See 'em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right--no holds barred, an arm like first-growth hick'ry across my windpipe, and me up against a solid pillar of structural ironwork! Once I was wrastled by a cinnamon bear that had lately become a mother; but the poor old thing would have lost her life with this dame after the hand-embroidereds. Gee! I was lame in places I'd lived fifty-eight years and never knew I had.

"So off went these ladies, with Mrs. L.H. c.u.mmins giving me special and private warning to be sure and keep Junior well out of it in case little mischievous Margery started anything that would be likely to kill her.

And I looked forward to a quiet day on the lounge, where I could ache in peace and read the 'Famous Crimes of History,' which the W.B.'s had in twelve volumes--you wouldn't have thought there was that many, would you? I dressed soft, out of respect to my corpse, and picked out a corking volume of these here Crimes and lay on the big lounge by an open window where the breeze could soothe me and where I could keep tabs on the little ones at their sports; and everything went as right as if I had been in some A-Number-One hospital where I had ought to of been.

"Lunchtime come before I knew it; and I had mine brought to my bed of pain by the Swede on a tray, while the kids et theirs in an orderly and uproarious manner in the dining-room. Rupert, Junior, was dressed like one of these boy scouts and had his air gun at the table with him, and little Margery was telling him there was, too, fairy princes all round in different places; and she bet she could find one any day she wanted to. They seemed to be all safe enough, so I took up my Crimes again.

Really, ain't history the limit?--the things they done in it and got away with--never even being arrested or fined or anything!

"Pretty soon I could hear the merry prattle of the little ones again out in the side yard. Ain't it funny how they get the gambling spirit so young? I'd hear little Margery say: 'I bet you can't!' And Rupert, Junior, would say:' I bet I can, too!' And off they'd go ninety miles on a straight track: 'I bet you'd be afraid to!'--'I bet I wouldn't be!'--'I bet you'd run as fast!'--'I bet I never would!' Ever see such natural-born gamblers? And it's all about what Rupert, Junior, would do if he seen a big tiger in some woods--Rupert betting he'd shoot it dead, right between the eyes, and Margery taking the other end. She has by far the best end of it, I think, it being at least a forty-to-one shot that Rupert, the boy scout, is talking high and wide. And I drop into the Crimes again at a good, murderous place with stilettos.

"I can't tell even now how it happened. All I know is that it was two o'clock, and all at once it was five-thirty P.M. by a fussy gold clock over on the mantel with a gold young lady, wearing a spear, standing on top of it. I woke up without ever suspicioning that I'd been asleep.

Anyway, I think I'm feeling better, and I stretch, though careful, account of the dame in the plush bonnet with forget-me-nots; and I lie there thinking mebbe I'll enter the ring again to-morrow for some other truck I was needing, and thinking how quiet and peaceful it is--how awful quiet! I got it then, all right. That quiet! If you'd known little Margery better you'd know how sick that quiet made me all at once. My gizzard or something turned clean over.

"I let out a yell for them kids right where I lay. Then I bounded to my feet and run through the rooms downstairs yelling. No sign of 'em! And out into the kitchen--and here was Tillie, the maid, and Yetta, the cook, both saying it's queer, but they ain't heard a sound of 'em either, for near an hour. So I yelled out back to an old hick of a gardener that's deef, and he comes running; but he don't know a thing on earth about the kids or anything else. Then I am sick! I send Tillie one way along the street and the gardener the other way to find out if any neighbours had seen 'em. Then in a minute this here Yetta, the cook, says: 'Why, now, Miss Margery was saying she'd go downtown to buy some candy,' and Yetta says: 'You know, Miss Margery, your mother never 'ets you have candy.' And Margery says: 'Well, she might change her mind any minute--you can't tell; and it's best to have some on hand in case she does.' And she'd got some poker chips out of the box to buy the candy with--five blue chips she had, knowing they was nearly money anyway.

"And when Yetta seen it was only poker chips she knew the kid couldn't buy candy with 'em--not even in Yonkers; so she didn't think any more about it until it come over her--just like that--how quiet everything was. Oh, that Yetta would certainly be found bone clear to the centre if her skull was ever drilled--the same stuff they slaughter the poor elephants for over in Africa--going so far away, with Yetta right there to their hands, as you might say. And I'm getting sicker and sicker! I'd have retained my calm mind, mind you, if they had been my own kids--but kids of others I'd been sacredly trusted with!

"And then down the back stairs comes this here sandy-complected, horse-faced plumber that had been frittering away his time all day up in a bathroom over one little leak, and looking as sad and mournful as if he hadn't just won eight dollars, or whatever it was. He must have been born that way--not even being a plumber had cheered him up.

"'Blackhanders!'" he says right off, kind of brightening a little bit.

"I like to fainted for fair! He says they had lured the kids off with candy and popcorn, and would hold 'em in a tenement house for ten thousand dollars, to be left on a certain spot at twelve P.M. He seemed to know a lot about their ways.

"'They got the Honourable Simon T. Griffenbaugh's youngest that way,'

he says, 'only a month ago. Likely the same gang got these two.'

"'How do you know?' I asks him.

"'Well,' he says, 'they's a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles up the road. That's how I know,' he says. 'That's plain enough, ain't it? It's as plain as the back of my hand. What chance would them two defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred Blackhanders?'

"But that looked foolish, even to me. 'Shucks!' I says. 'That don't stand to reason.' But then I got another scare. 'How about water?' I says. 'Any places round here they could fall into and get drownded?'

"He'd looked glum again when I said two hundred Blackhanders didn't sound reasonable; but he cheers up at this and says: 'Oh, yes; lots of places they could drownd--cricks and rivers and lakes and ponds and tanks--any number of places they could fall into and never come up again.' Say, he made that whole neighbourhood sound like Venice, Italy.

You wondered how folks ever got round without gondolas or something.

'One of Dr. George F. Maybury's two kids was nearly drownded last Tuesday--only the older one saved him; a wonder it was they didn't have to drag the river and find 'em on the bottom locked in each other's arms! And a boy by the name of Clifford Something, only the other day, playing down by the railroad tracks--'

"I shut him off, you bet! I told him to get out quick and go to his home if he had one.

"'I certainly hope I won't have to read anything horrible in to-morrow's paper!' he says as he goes down the back stoop. 'Only last week they was a n.i.g.g.e.r caught--'

"I shut the door on him. Rattled good and plenty I was by then. Back comes this silly old gardener--he'd gone with his hoe and was still gripping it. The neighbours down that way hadn't seen the kids. Back comes Tillie. One neighbour where she'd been had seen 'em climb on to a street car--only it wasn't going downtown but into the country; and this neighbour had said to herself that the boy would be likely to let some one have it in the eye with his gun, the careless way he was lugging it.

"Thank the Lord, that was a trace! I telephoned to the police and told 'em all about it. And I telephoned for a motor car for me and got into some clothes. Good and scared--yes! I caught sight of my face in the looking-gla.s.s, and, my! but it was pasty--it looked like one of these cheap apple pies you see in the window of a two-bit lunch place! And while I'm waiting for this motor car, what should come but a telegram from Mr. W.B. himself saying that the aunt was worse and he would go to New Jersey himself for the night! Some said this aunt was worth a good deal more than she was supposed to be. And I not knowing the name of this town in Jersey where they would all be!--it was East Something or West Something, and hard to remember, and I'd forgot it.

"I called the police again and they said descriptions was being sent out, and that probably I'd better not worry, because they often had cases like this. And I offered to bet them they hadn't a case since Yonkers was first thought of that had meant so much spot cash to 'em as this one would mean the minute I got a good grip on them kids. So this cop said mebbe they had better worry a little, after all, and they'd send out two cars of their own and scour the country, and try to find the conductor of this street car that the neighbour woman had seen the kids get on to.

"I r'ared round that house till the auto come that I'd ordered. It was late coming, naturally, and nearly dark when it got there; but we covered a lot of miles while the daylight lasted, with the man looking sharp out along the road, too, because he had three kids of his own that would do any living thing sometimes, though safe at home and asleep at that minute, thank G.o.d!

"It was moisting when we started, and pretty soon it clouded up and the dark came on, and I felt beat. We got fair locoed. We'd go down one road and then back the same way. We stopped to ask everybody. Then we found the two autos sent out by the police. I told the cops again what would happen to 'em from me the minute the kids was found--the kids or their bodies. I was so despairing--what with that d.a.m.ned plumber and everything! I'll bet he's the merry chatterbox in his own home. The police said cheer up--nothing like that, with the country as safe as a church. But we went over to this Blackhanders' construction camp, just the same, to make sure, and none of the men was missing, the boss said, and no children had been seen; and anyway his men was ordinary decent wops and not Blackhanders--and blamed if about fifty of 'em didn't turn out to help look! Yes, sir, there they was--foreigners to the last man except the boss, who was Irish--and acting just like human beings.

"It was near ten o'clock now; so we went to a country saloon to telephone police headquarters, and they had found the car conductor, he remembering because he had threatened to put the boy scout off the car if he didn't quit pointing his gun straight at an old man with gold spectacles setting across the aisle. And finally they had got off themselves about three miles down the road; he'd watched 'em climb over a stone wall and start up a hill into some woods that was there. And he was Conductor Number Twenty-seven, if we wanted to know that.

"We beat it to that spot after I'd powdered my nose and we'd had a quick round of drinks. The policemen knew where it was. It wasn't moisting any more--it was raining for fair; and we done some ground-and-lofty skidding before we got there. We found the stone wall all right and the slope leading up to the woods; but, my Lord, there was a good half mile of it! We strung out--four cops and my driver and me--hundreds of yards apart and all yelling, so maybe the poor lost things would hear us.

"We made up to the woods without raising a sign; and, my lands, wasn't it dark inside the woods! I worked forward, trying to keep straight from tree to tree; but I stumbled and tore my clothes and sprained my wrist, and blacked one eye the prettiest you'd want to see--mighty near being a blubberhead myself, I was--it not being my kids, you understand. Oh, I kept to it though! I'd have gone straight up the grand old state of New York into Lake Erie if something hadn't stopped me.

"It was a light off through the pine and oak trees, and down in a kind of little draw--not a lamplight but a fire blazing up. I yelled to both sides toward the others. I can yell good when I'm put to it. Then I started for the light. I could make out figures round the fire. Mebbe it's a Blackhanders' camp, I think; so I didn't yell any more. I cat-footed. And in a minute I was up close and seen 'em--there in the dripping rain.

"Rupert, Junior, was asleep, leaned setting up against a tree, with a messenger boy's cap on. And Margery was asleep on a pile of leaves, with her cheek on one hand and something over her. And a fat man was asleep on his back, with his mouth open, making an awful fuss about it. And the only one that wasn't asleep was a funny little old man setting against another tree. He had on the scout's campaign hat and he held the gun across his chest in the crook of his arm. He hadn't any coat on. Then I see his coat was what was over Margery; and I looked closer and it was a messenger boy's coat.

"I was more floored than ever when I took that in. I made a little move, and this funny old man must have heard me--he looked like one of them silly little critters that play hob with Rip Van Winkle out on the mountain before he goes to sleep. And he c.o.c.ks his ears this way and that; then he jumped to his feet, and I come forward where he could see me. And darned if he didn't up with this here air gun of Rupert's, like a flash, and plunk me with a buckshot it carried--right on my sprained wrist, too!

"Say, I let out a yell, and I had him by the neck of his s.h.i.+rt in one grab. I was still shaking him when the others come to. The fat man set up and rubbed his eyes and blinked. That's all he done. Rupert woke up the same minute and begun to cry like a baby; and Margery woke up, but she didn't cry. She took a good look at me and she says: 'You let him alone! He's my knight--he slays all the dragons. He's a good knight!'

"There I was, still shaking the little old man--I'd forgot all about him. So I dropped him on the ground and reached for Margery; and I was so afraid I was going to blubber like Rupert, the scout, that I let out some words to keep from it. Yes, sir; I admit it.

"'Oh! Oh! Oh! Swearing!' says Rupert. I shall tell mother and Aunt Hilda just what you said!'

"Mebby you can get Rupert's number from that. I did anyway. I stood up from Margery and cuffed him. He went on sobbing, but not without reason.

"'Margery Hemingway,' I says, 'how dare you!' And she looks up all cool and cunning, and says: 'Ho! I bet I know worse words than what you said!

See if I don't.' So then I shut her off mighty quick. But still she didn't cry. 'I s'pose I must go back home,' she says. 'And perhaps it is all for the best. I have a very beautiful home. Perhaps I should stay there oftener.'

"I turned on the Blackhanders.

"'Did these brutes entice you away with candy?' I demanded. 'Was they holding you here for ransom?'

"'Huh! I should think not!' she says. 'They are a couple of 'fraid-cats.

They were afraid as anything when we all got lost in these woods and wanted to keep on finding our way out. And I said I bet they were awful cowards, and the fat one said of course he was; but this old one became very, very indignant and said he bet he wasn't any more of a coward than I am, but we simply ought to go where there were more houses. And so I consented and we got lost worse than ever--about a hundred miles, I think--in this dense forest and we couldn't return to our beautiful homes. And this one said he was a trapper, scout, and guide; so he built this lovely fire and I ate a lot of crullers the silly things had brought with them. And then this old one flung his robe over me because I was a princess, and it made me invisible to prowling wolves; and anyway he sat up to shoot them with his deadly rifle that he took away from Cousin Rupert. And Cousin Rupert became very tearful indeed; so we took his hat away, too, because it's a truly scout hat.'