Blow The Man Down Part 73

"Then send out for your marshals. Let them drag me into court! Your man Bradigh's mouth is closed now, but it has been open. I know what has been done to me. Let them put me on the stand. You don't dare to have me stand up in court and tell what I know."

"Do you suppose I am running the Federal courts?"

"You'd better find out whether you have power or not. There are men in this world who will believe an honest man's true story!"

"Good day!" said Mr. Marston, significantly.

Mayo hesitated, gazed into the impa.s.sive countenance of the magnate, and then conviction of the uselessness of argument overwhelmed him. He started for the door.

"Certain sensible things can be done," Marston called after him. "You'd better get out of New York. If you know of a place to hide you'd better get into it."

Mayo did not reply. He strode out through the offices, descended to the street, and went on his way.

He did not notice that an automobile pursued him through the roaring traffic of the streets, halting ahead of him when, he had turned into one of the quieter thoroughfares.

The car was close to the curb, and Alma Marston put out her hand and signaled to him. "He gave-you no hope-nothing?"

"Nothing!"

"I have waited. I thought of asking you to come for a talk with me."

He shook his head.

"Perhaps it's better as it is! There isn't very much to be said-not now!" She leaned over the side of the tonneau and the clatter of traffic enabled her to talk without taking the eavesdropping chauffeur into their confidence. "I am not worthy of your thoughts or your confidence after this, Boyd. What I was yesterday I am not to-day; I have told you that. No, do not say anything! I know, now, that I was only playing with love. I cannot name what I feel for you now; I have insulted the word 'love' too much in the past. I'm not going to say anything about it. Was it any excuse for me that you had sunk a s.h.i.+p, were going to prison for killing men, so the papers hinted? No, it was not! But I allowed myself to make it an excuse for folly."

"You don't know what love is," he declared. In the agony of his degradation he had no relish for softer sentiments. But he did not dare to look up at her.

"I _did_ not know! But perhaps some day I can show you that I do now know," she replied, humbly. "That will be the day when I can give you the proofs against the men who have tried to ruin you. I am inside the camp of your enemies, Boyd, and I'll give you those proofs--even against my own father, if he is guilty. That's all! Let's wait. But while you are working I hope it's going to give you a bit of courage to know that I am working for you!" She patted his cheek. "Go on!" she called to her driver. The car jerked forward and was hidden among the chariots roaring down through the modern Babylon.

Without power for self-a.n.a.lysis, without being able to penetrate the inner recesses of his own soul in that crisis, he trudged on.

A little later, almost unconscious of volition in the matter, he found himself at a steamboat office buying a ticket. He was going back to the obscurity of Maquoit. But he was fully conscious that he was not obeying Julius Marston's injunction to go and hide. A deeper sentiment was drawing him. He knew where there existed simple faith in him and affection for him, and he craved that solace. There were humble folks in Maquoit who would welcome him.

"I'll go back--I'll go home," he said. Once he would have smiled at the thought that he would ever call the Hue and Cry colony "home."

XXVI - THE FANGS OF OLD RAZEE

A dollar a day is a Hoosier's pay, Lowlands, lowlands, a-way, my John!

Yes, a dollar a day is a Hoosier's pay, My dollar and a half a day.

--Old Pumping Song.

Before leaving New York Mayo made inquiries at offices of s.h.i.+pping brokers and trailed Captain Zoradus Wa.s.s to his lair in the loafers'

room of a towboat office. Their conference was a gloomy one; neither had any comfort for the other. Mayo was laconic in his recital of events: he said that he had run away--and had come back. Of Marston and Marston's daughter he made no mention.

"I have been to see that fat whelp of a Fogg," stated the old master mariner. "I ain't afraid of him. I had a good excuse; I said I wanted a job. I didn't let on to him that I advised you to slip your cable, but I might have curried favor with him by saying so. He seemed to be pretty well satisfied because you had skipped."

"Captain Wa.s.s, that's the main thing I've come to talk over with you.

Here's my ticket back home. But I feel that I ought to walk up to the United States marshal's office and surrender myself. And I want to ask you about the prospects of my getting bail. Can you help me?"

"I reckon if I saw you behind bars I'd do my best to get you out, son. But you steer away from here on a straight tack and mind your own business! When the United States wants you they'll come and get you--you needn't worry!"

"But I do worry, sir! I am dodging about the streets. I expect to feel a hand on my shoulder every moment. I can't endure the strain of the thing! I don't want anybody to think I'm a sneak."

"As near's I can find out by nosing around a little that indictment is a secret one--even if it really was returned. And I'm half inclined to think there wasn't any indictment! Perhaps those officers were only sent out to get you and hold you as a witness. Fogg has been doing most of the talking about there being an indictment. However it is, if they don't want you just yet I wouldn't go up to a cell door, son, and holler and pound and ask to be let in. Law has quite a way of giving a man what he hollers for. You go away and let me do the peeking and listening for you around these parts. I'm collecting a little line of stuff on this water-front. Haven't much else to do, these days!"

"I reckon my first hunch was the right one, sir!' I'll go along home. If you hear anybody with a badge on inquiring for me tell him I'm fis.h.i.+ng on the _Ethel and May_."

"That's a mean job for you, son. But I guess I'd better not say anything about it, seeing what I have shanghaied you into."

"It has not been your fault or mine, what has happened, sir. I am not whining!"

"By gad! I know you ain't! But get ready to growl when the right time comes, and keep your teeth filed! When it's our turn to bite we'll make a bulldog grip of it!" He emphasized the vigor of that grip in his farewell handshake.

But Mayo did not reflect with much enthusiasm on Captain Wa.s.s's metaphorical summons to combat.

Returning to Maquoit, the young man decided that he was more like a beaten dog slinking back with canine anxiety to nurse his wounds in secret.

His experiences had been too dreadful and too many in the last few days to be separated and a.s.similated. He had been like a man stunned by a fall--paralyzed by a blow. Now the agonizing tingle of memory and despair made his thoughts an exquisite torture. He tried to put Alma Marston out of those thoughts. He did not dare to try to find a place for her in the economy of his affairs. However, she and he had been down to the gates of death together, and he realized that the experience had had its effect on her nature; he believed that it had developed her character as well. Insistently the memory of her parting words was with him, and he knew, in spite of his brutal and furious efforts to condemn her, that love was not dead and that hope still lived.

He swung aboard the _Ethel and May_ one afternoon, after he had waited patiently for her arrival with her fare.

"I have come back to fish with you, Captain Candage, until my troubles are straightened out--if they ever are."

Captain Candage was silent, controlling some visible emotions.

"I have come back to be with folks who won't talk too much about those troubles," he added, gloomily.

"Exactly," agreed the skipper. "Nothing is ever gained by stirring up trouble after it has been well cooked. Swing the pot back over the fire, I say, and let it simmer till it cools off of itself. I thought you would come back."

"Why?"

"Well, I knew they had taken away your papers. Furthermore, Polly has been saying that you would come back."

"And why did she think so?" asked Mayo, in milder tones.

"She didn't say why," admitted Captain Candage. "Maybe women see into things deeper than men do."

"It seems like coming home--coming home when a man is sick and tired of everything in the world, sir."

"Reckon my Polly had something like that in mind. She dropped a few hints that she hoped you'd come and get rested up from your troubles."

"And she has gone back to her work, I suppose?"

"No, she is still on her job at Maquoit, sir--calls it her real job. She isn't a quitter, Polly isn't. She says they need her."

"Like the song says, 'The flowers need the suns.h.i.+ne and the roses need the dew,' that's how they need her," averred Oak.u.m Otie. "Though them Hue and Cry women and children can't be said to be much like roses and geraniums! But they're more like it than they ever was before, since Miss Polly has taken hold of 'em. It's wonderful what a good girl can do when she tries, Captain Mayo!"