Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 176

CAREN. Who is he? Quick!

HELPER. Our.... [_Exultantly._] Our King!

CAREN [_open-mouthed, aghast_]. Our ... King!

KRAIG [_laughing triumphantly_]. Ha ... ha ... ha ... ha--HERE! [_He clasps his hands together._]

CAREN [_excited_]. Are you mad, Boy, mad? Our King! Oh!

[_Kraig laughs. Both men stare at him horrified._]

HELPER [_to Caren_]. Ain't you got a flag or something ... some little mark of respect to cover his nibs?

CAREN [_to Kraig_]. Run upstairs and get that big silk flag that....

[_as Kraig does not move_]. Go.

KRAIG [_immovable, abruptly ceasing to laugh_]. No.

CAREN [_threateningly_]. What do you mean? No?

KRAIG [_hysterically_]. This is one place in the world where all are treated fair. Dreams don't count. POWER don't count. There's no rich, no poor....

CAREN. Shut up and get that flag.

KRAIG. You're going to cover him ... but she.... Oh! [_Both men disappear behind the curtains, cringing and bowing to people within.

Caren, with his back to the curtains, does not realize that he is alone._] Even death can't level. No ... not even death. [_For a second he stares ahead of him piercingly into s.p.a.ce, standing taut and rigid.

Then commences to laugh in pure hysteria as_

[_The Curtain Slowly Falls._]

A DEATH IN FEVER FLAT

A PLAY

BY GEORGE W. CRONYN

Copyright, 1919, by Shadowland.

Copyright, 1920, by George W. Cronyn.

All rights reserved.

Reprinted from _Shadowland_, a magazine, by permission of the publishers and the author. The professional and amateur stage rights of this play are strictly reserved by the author. Applications for permission to produce this play should be made to Frank Shay, Care Stewart & Kidd Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.

SCENE: _In the great Far West, i. e., far from the "Movie" West_.

CHARACTERS

HANK [_proprietor of the Good Hope Roadhouse_].

LON PURDY [_about whom the play is concerned_].

MIZPAH [_his wife, called "Padie"_].

THE STAGE DRIVER.

THE GHOST OF HARVEY MACE.

THE GHOST OF THE OTHER MAN.

THE TIME _is the present, about 11 P. M._

This is not a Bret Harte play, nor is it designed for W. S. Hart.

And it should be performed with none of that customary and specious braggadoccio of western plays.

A DEATH IN FEVER FLAT

A PLAY BY GEORGE W. CRONYN

[_THE SCENE is laid in the so-called dining-room of one of those forlorn hostelries of the great Plains, which goes by the name of Mace's Good Hope Roadhouse, a derisive t.i.tle evidently intended to signify the traveler's hope of early escape from its desiccated hospitality._

_This room is sometimes reluctantly frequented by a rare guest, usually a pa.s.senger on his way via auto stage, to some place else, whom delays en route have reduced to this last extremity of lodging for the night. The room is a kind of lumber yard of disused cheap hotel furniture._

_Nothing can be drearier._

_Most of this junk is heaped along the left (stage) wall, and it has a settled look of confusion which the processes of gradual decay will, apparently, never disturb. Tables tip crazily against the plaster of the greasy wall. Chairs upturned on these, project thin legs, like the bones of desert places, toward a ceiling fantastically stained. One table smaller than the rest, sees occasional use, for it stands somewhat out of the debris and has about it three chairs reasonably intact. A pack of cards and several dirty gla.s.ses adorn the top._

_A stairway rises along the right wall, beginning at the rear, and attaining to a rickety landing, supported by a single post of doubtful strength, to which is affixed a gla.s.s lamp in a bracket.

(Inasmuch as the stairway is turned away from the audience, those who ascend are completely hidden until their heads top the last riser.) At the right front, between the landing and the proscenium, a door (now shut) leads to the Bar, the one spot of brightness in this lump, the s.h.i.+ning crack at its sill bespeaking the good cheer beyond. And that crack is the only illumination to this morgue of defunct appet.i.tes, for the moonlight, which enters by way of a small window at the right, is rather an obscuration, inasmuch as it heightens the barren mystery of the room's entombing shadows._

_Double doors center of rear wall lead to the outside. A window on either side of the door._

_So much for the melancholy set._

_From the Bar percolates the lubricated melodiousness of the few regular customers who const.i.tute the population of Fever Flat, with the exception of three worn-out women folks, two haggard cows and three hundred or so variegated dogs. The female element are to home, the dogs, astray and astir, with lamentable choruses._

_Sounds from the Bar, samples only._]

A JOLLY SOUL [_hoa.r.s.ely_]. Pitch into her, boys! Tune up your gullets!

[_With quavering pathos._] "She was born in old Kentucky"--

ANOTHER SUCH [_with peeve_]. Aw, shet up, that's moldy! Giv's that Tennessee warble, Hank!