The Happy Warrior Part 44

CHAPTER I

BOSS MADDOX SHOWS HIS HAND

I

Ima asked: "Of what are you thinking, Percival?"

"Of when I shall leave you all--and how."

She replied: "Strange, then, how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."

Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! This trick and that--and this was to be his last night with the van folk. That chance and this--and within a few hours he was to be returned to Aunt Maggie, bade good-by at the close of his visit scarcely four months since. This trick and that, that chance and this, and he was to be put in the way of winning Dora--a way that never had seemed so obscure, never so impossible of attainment as when he came back to j.a.phra with her "I have not forgotten," at once shouting to him that she loved him and mocking him with the difference between her estate and his.

Already the tricks and chances were afoot. He was alone with Ima upon a rising bluff of common land. Considerably below them, so that they looked down as it were from a cliff to a valley, the fair was pitched and in full swing--that it was in full swing and he idle was the first step in the freakish hazards that were to encompa.s.s him this night.

II

A stifling evening had succeeded a burning day. Here on the bluff a breeze moved cool and soft as it had been waftings from the dusky cloak night dropped about them; below was heat and crowded life and clamour, rising in the waving reek of the naphtha flares; in shouts of the showmen; in shrill laughter from village girls at fun about the booths, or horseplay with their swains; in ceaseless rifle-cracks from the shooting-galleries--in drum-thumpings, in steam organs, in brazen instruments; occasionally, high above it all, in enormous _oo-oo-oomphs_ from the caged lions in the huge marquee that housed Boss Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Forest-bred Menagerie--a tremendous sound, as Percival thought when it came booming across the clamour, that was a brute's but that seemed, like some trump of protest against the din, to make brutish the human cries and shouts it governed.

Two crowds, leaving and entering, jostled one another at the entrance to the Royal Circus and Forest-bred Menagerie; stretching on either hand from where they pressed ran the minor shows under Boss Maddox's proprietors.h.i.+p, forming a noisy, flaring street that ended, facing the circus marquee, with "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Maddox's Royal Circus and Forest Bred Menagerie at one end, Pinsent's fine booth at the other--between them Maddox's Living Pictures, Maddox's Wild-West Shooting Gallery, Maddox's Steam Switch-back and Aerial Railway, Maddox's Original Marionettes, Maddox's Premier Boatswings, Maddox's Monster Panorama, Maddox's Royal Theatre and Concert Divan, Maddox's Elite Refreshment Saloons, Maddox's American Freak Museum, and all Maddox's smaller fry--c.o.ker-nut s.h.i.+es, hoop-las, Living Mermaid, Hall of Strength, Cave of Mystery, Magic Mirrors, and the rest of them; owned by Boss Maddox, financed by Boss Maddox, or, if of independent owners.h.i.+p, having the Boss's favour and acknowledging the Boss's owners.h.i.+p.

No booths whose proprietors called Stingo Boss were open: and that was one step in the tricks and chances of the day.

The gaunt figure of Boss Maddox, watchful and urgent this night for the very reason that the Stingo booths were closed, pa.s.sed now along the further side of lights towards Foxy Pinsent's pitch. Head bent towards his left shoulder; hands clasped behind his back; uncommonly tall; uncommonly spare--that was Boss Maddox anywhere.

A further mark, as he moved through his little kingdom, proclaimed him who he was and what he was. Frequent nods of his head he made in response to hat touchings or greetings in the crowd; frequent stoppings to exchange a few words with some figure that stepped into his path--and broke away from others or pushed others aside to step there: the local tradesmen these, or members of the local Borough Council, anxious to be in with Boss Maddox and so to secure the considerable patronage in victualling and provender he was able to distribute; or anxious to let fellow-townsmen observe on what familiar terms they were with the Boss, and concerned to know that he found his pitch to his liking. A mighty man, the Boss in these days, who bought up his pitches and paid handsomely for them a year in advance, who on a famous occasion had fallen into dispute with a Borough Council, refused their district the honour of his shows, and thereby--by loss of entertainment and loss of revenue--had caused the Borough Councillors to suffer defeat at the next election. Things like that were remembered up and down the west of England; Boss Maddox in the result was reckoned a man to be placated, to be done homage, and to have his interests preserved.

Only the old Stingo gang resisted him, and this day he had paid them dear for their want of allegiance.

His parade brought him at length to "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Foxy Pinsent had risen to be his lieutenant and right-hand man in the management of his business, and Boss Maddox was come to compare notes on how the Stingo crowd were taking their set-back.

Eight pugilists in flannels--two of them negroes--displayed themselves upon the raised platform outside the Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Pinsent, in a long fawn coat reaching to his shoes, paced before them, crying to the a.s.sembled crowds their merits, their prowess, their achievements and their challenges. He swung a great bundle of boxing gloves in his right hand and, amid delighted shouts of the spectators, sent a pair flying to venturesome yokels here and there who pointed to one or other of the eight stalwarts in acceptance of combat.

As Boss Maddox pushed his way to the front the eight turned and filed into the booth. He raised a hand. Foxy Pinsent tossed a last pair of gloves to the crowd, came down the steps from the platform and joined him.

"How are they taking it, Boss?"

"Pretty tough. Move round with me and let 'em see we're watching. In a while I'm to have a word with Stingo and j.a.phra--you with me, boy."

Foxy Pinsent spat on the ground. "We've fixed the ----s this time," he said venomously.

III

The fixing of the Stingo crowd had been Boss Maddox's culminating stroke in the heavy hand he had pressed these many seasons upon those who named Stingo Boss. The bad blood between the two factions of which j.a.phra had told Percival years before had steadily increased with Boss Maddox's increasing dominance and position. Waxing more and more determined to crush under his rule the little knot of Stingo followers--or to crush them out--Boss Maddox had this day given them an extra twist--and they had made protest by refusing to erect their booths.

A new Fair ground had been marked out here since the last visit of the showmen. A broad stream marked one boundary, bridged only by the highroad bridge a mile up from the new ground. The new ground was small. Maddox's would require it all, the Boss announced. Beyond the stream was common land, free to all. "Yonder, you!" said Boss Maddox to the Stingo crowd. "Yonder, you!" and pointed across the stream with his stick.

It meant going back a mile and a mile down again so as to come to the common land. It meant worse than that, with a discovery that changed the first demur to loud and bitter protest: "No bridge except the highroad bridge? Then how were folk going to get over from the Fair Ground? No bridge? What game's this, Boss?"

"Your game," Boss Maddox told them in his stern and callous way.

"Naught to do with me that the Fair Ground's changed. Your game. Get out and play it."

The angry crowd went to Stingo and Stingo to Boss Maddox. Boss Maddox could not refuse parley with Stingo, and gave it where the great pole of his circus marquee was being fixed--his own followers grouped about, enjoying the fun; Stingo's packed in a murmuring throng behind Stingo's broad back.

The interview was very short. "You're going too far, Boss Maddox,"

Stingo said in his husky whisper. "This ain't fair to the boys. Grant you the ground's too small. After your tent and Pinsent's there the rest should fall by lot. That's fair to all. It was done on the road Boss Parnell's time when you and me were boys."

"It's not done in mine," said Boss Maddox, and his words called up two murmurs--approval and mocking behind him, wrath before.

Stingo waited while it died away, then went close with words for Boss Maddox's private ear. "You've been out to make bad blood these three summers, Maddox," he said. "Have a care of it. I'll not be answerable for my boys here."

His tone was of grave warning, as between men of responsible position.

But it was Foxy Pinsent, standing with Maddox, who replied to him.

"We'll drink all we may brew," Foxy Pinsent said, and sneered: "We're not fat old women this side, Stingo."

The flag of a temper kept in control but now burst from his command came in violent purple into old Stingo's face. His huskiness went to its most husky pitch, "By G.o.d, Foxy! I'll stuff it into ye, if need be," he throated.

He took a calmer and wiser mood back to his followers, joining with j.a.phra in counselling a making the best of it across the stream to-night and a deputation to Boss Maddox, when heads on both sides were cooler, on the morrow. They would not listen to him. They would stay where they were, they told him. They could not open their booths here--they would not open them there; here, to a.s.sert their rights, they would stay. What was Boss Maddox's game?--to rid himself of them altogether?--they who had worked the West Country boy and man, girl and woman, in this company before Boss Maddox was heard of? Were they going to be turned adrift from it--from the roads they knew and the company they knew? Not they!--not if Boss Maddox and his crowd came at 'em with sticks! Let 'em come! Ah, let Boss Muddy Maddox and his crowd try 'em a bit further and the sticks would come out in their own hands as they came in their fathers' in the big fight that sent the Telfer crowd north in '30....

IV

So the Stingo vans remained where they had been driven up on the edge of the Fair ground. The men for the most part shared their afternoon meal in groups that sullenly discussed their hurt. Some broodingly watched the erection of their rivals' booths. A few gathered about Egbert Hunt, who had oratory to deliver on this act of oppression. The winters Hunt had spent with "unemployed" malcontents had given a flow of language to a character that from boyhood had shaped away from honest work and towards hostility against authority. In the vans, among men who sweated as they toiled, and worked in the main for their own hands, he was commonly an object of contempt. To-day he found audience. He had words and ranted his best--"Tyrang!" the burden of it; rising, as he tossed his arms and worked himself up, to "'Boss'

Maddox is he? 'Oo appointed 'im boss over you or over me? 'Boss'

Maddox? Tyrang Maddox--that's what I name 'im."

He observed a t.i.tter run round those who listened to him; turned to seek its cause; with Tyrang Maddox found himself face to face; and before he could make movement of escape was sent to the ground with a stunning box on the ear. He shouted a stream of filthy abuse and made to spring to his feet. Boss Maddox's hand pinned him down and Boss Maddox's whip came about his writhing form in a rain of blows that, when they were done and he had taken the kick that concluded them, left him cowering.

"Whose hand are you, you whelp?" Boss Maddox demanded.

Egbert Hunt looked up at him. He was gasping with sobs of pain and sobs of rage. He looked up, hate and murder in his eye, and pressed his lips between his sobs.

The whip went up. "Whose hand?"

Egbert cowered back: "Old One-Eye's."

"Keep to his heel. Cross my sight again and the same is waiting for you."

Boss Maddox stalked away. A crowd had gathered from all parts of the camp, attracted by Egbert's screams. Egbert raised himself on one arm and looked at the grinning faces before him. He got stiffly to his feet, mumbling to himself, his breast still heaving with sobs. "Me, a full-grown man, to be used like a dog! Cross his path!--ill day for him when I do!"

He went a few paces, walking parallel to those a.s.sembled. Suddenly he turned to them, tears running down his face, and threw up his clenched hands. "I'll put a knife in 'im!" he cried. "By G.o.d, I'll put a knife in 'im!"

The crowd laughed.