Blacksheep! Blacksheep! Part 12

"Don't be an a.s.s, Comly," said the Governor. "Leary's ahead of the game ten thousand good plunks and what he offers is a ridiculously modest honorarium. Recovering such property and getting it into shape for the market is worth something handsome."

"Really," began Archie, and then as the "really" seemed an absurdly ba.n.a.l beginning for a rejection of an offer of stolen money, he said with a curl of the lip and a swagger, "Oh, h.e.l.l! I'd feel pretty rotten to take money from one of the good pals. And besides, I didn't do anything anyhow."

The Governor pa.s.sed his hand over his face to conceal a smile, but Leary seemed sincerely grieved by Archie's conduct and remarked dolefully that there must be something wrong with the money. The Governor hastily vouched for its impeccable quality and excused Archie as a person hardly second to himself for eccentricity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It's all right about you, Governor, but the kid better shake the tree"]

"No hard feeling; most certainly not! My young friend is only proud to serve a man of your standing in the profession. It is possible that later on you may be able to render us a service. You never can tell, you know, Red."

Leary philosophically stowed the bills in his clothing.

"You're done, are you?" asked the Governor; "out of the game?"

"I sure have quit the road," Leary answered. "The old girl has got a few thousands tucked away and I'm goin' to pick her up and buy a motion picture joint or a candy and soda shop somewhere in the big lakes--one of those places that freeze up all winter, so I can have a chance to rest. The old girl has a place in mind. The climate will be good for my asthma. She knows how to run a fizz shop and I'll be the scenery and just set round."

"On the whole it doesn't sound exciting," the Governor commented, inspecting a clean s.h.i.+rt. "Did your admirable wife get rid of those pearls she pinched last winter? They were a handsome string, as I remember, too handsome to market readily. Mrs. Leary has a pa.s.sion for precious baubles, Archie," the Governor explained. "A brilliant career in picking up such trifles; a star performer, Red, if you don't mind my bragging of your wife."

Leary seemed not at all disturbed by this revelation of his wife's larcenous affection for pearls. That a train robber's wife should be a thief seemed perfectly natural; indeed it seemed quite fitting that thieves should mate with thieves. Archie further gathered that Mrs.

Leary operated in Chicago, under the guise of a confectionery shop, one of the stations of the underground railroad, and a.s.sisted the brotherhood in disposing of their ill-gotten wares. A recent reform wave in Chicago had caused a shake-up in the police department, most disturbing to the preying powers.

"They're clean off me, I reckon," said Leary a little pathetically, the reference being presumably to the pestiferous police. "That was a good idea of yours for me to go up into Canada and work at a real job for a while. Must a worked hard enough to change my finger prints. Some bloke died in Kansas awhile back and got all the credit for being the old original Red Leary."

This error of the press in recording Leary's death tickled the Governor mightily, and Leary laughed until he was obliged to wipe the tears from his eyes.

"I'm going to pull my freight after supper," he said. "Walker's goin' to take me into town and I'll slip out to Detroit where the old girl's waitin' for me."

The Governor mused upon this a moment, drew a small note-book from his pocket and verified his recollection of the address of one of the outposts of the underground which Leary mentioned.

"Avoid icy pavements!" he admonished. "There's danger in all those border towns."

Walker called them to supper and they went down to a meal that met all the expectations aroused by the Governor's boast of the Walker cuisine.

Not only were the fried chicken and hot biscuits excellent, but Archie found Miss Walker's society highly agreeable and stimulating. She wore a snowy white ap.r.o.n over a blue gingham dress, and rose from time to time to replenish the platters. The Governor chaffed her familiarly, and Archie edged into the talk with an ease that surprised him. His speculative faculties, all but benumbed by the violent exercise to which they had been subjected since he joined the army of the hunted, found new employment in an attempt to determine just how much this cheery, handsome girl knew of the history of the company that met at her father's table. She was the daughter of a retired crook, and it had never occurred to him that crooks had daughters, or if they were so blessed he had a.s.sumed that they were defectives, turned over for rearing to disagreeable public inst.i.tutions.

The Governor had said that they were to spend a day or two at Walker's but Archie was now hoping that he would prolong the visit. When next he saw Isabel he would relate, quite calmly and incidentally, his meteoric nights through the underworld, and Sally, the incomparable dairy maid, should dance merrily in his narrative. In a pleasant drawing-room somewhere or other he would meet Isabel and rehabilitate himself in her eyes by the very modesty with which he would relate his amazing tale. It pleased him to reflect that if she could see him at the Walker table with Red Leary and the Governor, that most accomplished of villains, eating hot biscuits which had been specially forbidden by his physician, she would undoubtedly decide that he had made a pretty literal interpretation of her injunction to throw a challenge in the teeth of fate.

Walker ate greedily, shoveling his food into his mouth with his knife; and Archie had never before sat at meat with a man who used this means of urging food into his vitals. The Governor magnanimously ignored his friend's social errors, praising the chicken and delivering so beautiful an oration on the home-made pickled peaches that Sally must needs dart into the pantry and bring back a fresh jar which she placed with a spoon by the Governor's plate.

At the end of the meal Walker left for town to put Leary on a train for Boston. The veteran train robber shook hands all round and waved a last farewell from the gate. Archie was sorry to lose him, for Leary was an appealing old fellow, and he had hoped for a chance to coax from him some reminiscences of his experiences.

Leary vanished into the starlit dusk as placidly as though he hadn't tucked away in his clothing sixty thousand dollars to which he had no lawful right or t.i.tle. There was something ludicrous in the whole proceeding. While Archie had an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from investments, he had always experienced a pleasurable thrill at receiving the statement of his dividends from his personal clerk in the broker's office, where he drew an additional ten thousand as a silent partner. Leary's method of dipping into the world's capital seemed quite as honorable as his own. Neither really did any work for the money. This he reflected was both morally and economically unsound, and yet Archie found himself envying Leary the callousness that made it possible for him to pocket sixty thousand stolen dollars without the quiver of an eyelash.

II

The Governor, smoking a pipe on the veranda and chatting with Mrs.

Walker, recalled him from his meditations to suggest that he show a decent spirit of appreciation of the Walkers' hospitality by repairing to the kitchen and helping Sally with the dishes. In his youth Archie had been carefully instructed in the proper manner of entering a parlor, but it was with the greatest embarra.s.sment that he sought Sally in her kitchen. She stood at the sink, her arms plunged into a steaming dish pan, and saluted him with a cheery h.e.l.lo.

"I was just wondering whether you wouldn't show up! Not that you had to, but it's a good deal more fun having somebody to keep you company in the kitchen."

"I should think it would be," Archie admitted, recalling that his mother used to express the greatest annoyance when the servants made her kitchen a social center. "Give me a towel and I'll promise not to break anything."

"You don't look as though you'd been used to work much," she said, "but take off your coat and I'll hang an ap.r.o.n on you."

His invest.i.ture in Mrs. Walker's ample ap.r.o.n made it necessary for Sally to stand quite close to him, and her manner of compressing her lips as she pinned the bib to the collar of his waistcoat he found wholly charming. His heart went pit-a-pat as her fingers, moist from the suds, brushed his chin. She was quite tall; taller than Isabel, who had fixed his standard of a proper height for girls. Sally did not giggle, but acted as normal sensible girls should act when pinning ap.r.o.ns on young men.

She tossed him a towel and bade him dry the plates as she placed them on the drain board. She worked quickly, and it was evident that she was a capable and efficient young woman who took an honest pride in her work.

"You've never stopped here before? I thought. I didn't remember you.

Well, we're always glad to see the Governor, he's so funny; but say, some of the people who come along--!"

"I hope," said Archie, turning a dish to the light to be sure it was thoroughly polished, "I hope my presence isn't offensive?"

"Cut it out!" she returned crisply. "Of course you're all right. I knew you were a real gent the first squint I got of you. You can't fool me much on human nature."

"You've always lived up here?" asked Archie, meek under her frank approval.

"Certainly not. I was born in Missouri, a grand old state if I do say it myself, and we came here when I was twelve. I went through high school and took dairying and the domestic arts in college and I'm twenty-three if you care to know."

He had known finis.h.i.+ng-school girls and college girls and girls who had been educated by traveling governesses, but Sally was different and suffered in no whit by comparison. Her boasted knowledge of the human race was negligible beside her familiarity with the mysterious mechanisms of cream separators and incubators. Fate had certainly found a strange way of completing his education! But for the shot he had fired in the lonely house by the sea, he would never have known that girls like Sally existed. As he a.s.sisted her to restore the dishes to the pantry, she crossed the kitchen with queenly stride. Isabel hadn't a finer swing from the hips or a n.o.bler carriage. When he abandoned his criminal life he would a.s.semble somewhere all the girls he had met in his pilgrimage. There should be a round table, but where Isabel sat would be the head, and his sister should chaperone the party. When it dispersed he would tell Isabel, very honestly, of his reaction to each one, and if she took him to task for his susceptibility it would be a good defense that she was responsible for sending him forth to wrestle with temptation.

When the kitchen was in perfect order they reported the fact to Mrs.

Walker and Sally suggested that they stroll to a trout brook which was her own particular property. The stream danced merrily from the hills, a friendly little brook it was--just such a ribbon of water as a girl like Sally would fancy for a chum.

"We must have a drink or you won't know how sweet and cool the water is!" She cupped her hands and drank; but his own efforts to bring the water to his lips were clumsy and ineffectual.

"Oh you!" she laughed. "Let me show you!"

Drinking from her hands was an experience that transcended for the moment all other experiences. If this was a rural approach to a flirtation, Miss Seebrook's methods were much safer, and the garden of the Cornford tavern a far more circ.u.mspect stage than a Vermont brookside shut off from all the world.

He had decided to avoid any reference to the secrets of the underground trail, but his delicacy received a violent shock a moment later, when they were seated on a bench beside the brook.

"Do you know," she said, "you are not like the others?"

"I don't understand," he faltered.

"Oh, cut it out! You needn't try to fool me! When I told you awhile ago I thought you were nice, I meant more than that; I meant that you didn't at all seem like the crooks that sneak through here and hide at our house. You're more like the Governor, and I never understand about the Governor. It doesn't seem possible that any one who isn't forced by necessity into crime would ever follow the life. Now you're a gentleman, any one could tell that, but I suppose you've really done something pretty bad or you wouldn't be here! Now I'm going to hand it to you straight; that's the only way."

"Certainly, Miss Walker; I want you to be perfectly frank with me."

"Well, my advice would be to give yourself up, do your time like a man and then live straight. You're young enough to begin all over again and you might make something of yourself. The Governor has romantic ideas about the great game but that's no reason why you should walk the th.o.r.n.y road. Now pop would kill me if he knew I was talking this way. It's a funny thing about pop. All I know about him I just picked up a little at a time, and he and ma never wanted me to know. Ma's awful nervous about so many of the boys stopping here, for she hung on to pop all the time he was shooting up trains out West, and having a husband in the penitentiary isn't a pleasant thing to think about. Ma's father ran a saloon down in Missouri; that's how she got acquainted with pop, but ma was always on the square, and they both wanted me brought up right. It was ma's idea that we should get clean away from pop's old life, and she did all the brain work of wiping the slate clean and coming away off here. We were a couple of years doing it, trying a lot of other places all over the country before they struck this ranch and felt safe. Pop's living straight; you needn't think he isn't, but he's got a queer hankering to see the sort of men he used to train with. It's natural, I suppose."

"I suppose it is. But you must have suffered; I can imagine how you feel," said Archie, who had listened to her long speech with rapt attention.

"Well, I don't know that I've suffered so much," she replied slowly, "but I do feel queer sometimes when I'm around with young folks whose fathers never had to duck the cops. Not that they've any suspicions, of course; I guess pop stands well round here."

"I can understand perfectly how your father would like to see some of the old comrades now and then and even give them shelter and help them on their way. That speaks highly for his generosity. It's a big thing for me right now to be put up here. I'm in a lot of trouble, and this gives me a chance to get my bearings. I shall always remember your father's aid. And you don't know how wonderful it is to be sitting beside you here and talking to you just as though nothing had ever happened to me; really as though I wasn't a lost sheep and a pretty black one at that."

"I'm sorry," she answered. "When I told you you'd better go and do your time and get done with it, I didn't mean to be nasty. But I was thinking that a man as sensitive as I judge you to be would be happier in the long run. Now pop had an old pal who drifted along here a couple of years ago, and pop had it all figured out to shoot him right up into Canada, but, would you believe it, that man simply wouldn't go! The very idea of being in a safe place where he was reasonably certain of not being bothered worried him. He simply couldn't stand it. He was so used to being chased and shot at it didn't seem natural to be out of danger, and pop had to give him money to take him to Oklahoma where he'd have the fun of teasing the sheriffs along. And he had his wish and I suppose he died happy, for we read in the papers a little while afterward that he'd been shot and killed trying to hold up a bank."