Sundry Accounts Part 9

A man on horseback might have overtaken him, but with the handicap of Red Hoss' flying start against the pursuing forces no number of men afoot possibly could hope to do so.

At the end of the second mile, and still going strong, the fugitive bethought him to part with his red coat. He already had run out from under his uniform cap, but a red coat with a double row of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and bra.s.s-topped epaulettes on it flas.h.i.+ng next morning across a bland autumnal landscape would be calculated to attract undesired attention.

So without slackening speed he took it off and cast it behind him into the darkness. Figuratively speaking, he breathed easier when he crossed the state line at or about five A.M. As a matter of fact, though, he was breathing harder. Some hours elapsed before he caught up with his panting.

Traveling in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, he reached home too late for the wedding. Still, considering everything, he hardly would have cared to attend anyhow. Either he would have felt embarra.s.sed to be present or else the couple would, or perhaps all three. On such occasions nothing is more superfluous than an extra bridegroom. The wedding in question was the one uniting Melissa Grider and Homer Holmes. It was generally unexpected--in fact, sudden.

The marriage took place on a Wednesday at high noon in the office of Justice of the Peace Dycus. Red Hoss arrived the same afternoon, shortly after the departure of the happy pair for Cairo, Illinois, on a honeymoon tour. All along, Melissa had had her heart set on going to St. Louis; but after the license had been paid for and the magistrate had been remunerated there remained but thirty-four dollars of the fund she had been safeguarding, dollar by dollar, as her other, or regular, fiance earned it. So she and Homer compromised on Cairo, and by their forethought in taking advantage of a popular excursion rate they had, on their return, enough cash left over to buy a hanging lamp with which to start up housekeeping.

Late that evening, while Red Hoss still wrestled mentally with the confusing problem of being engaged to a girl who just had been married to another, a disquieting thought came abruptly to him, jolting him like a blow. Looking back on events, he was reminded that the sequence of painful misadventures which had befallen him recently dated, all and sundry, from that time when he was coming back down the Blandsville Road after delivering Mr. d.i.c.k Bell's new cow and acquired a fresh hind foot of a graveyard rabbit. He had been religiously toting that presumably infallible charm against disaster ever since--and yet just see what had happened to him! Surely here was a situation calling for interpretive treatment by one having the higher authority. In the person of the venerable Daddy Hannah--root, herb and conjure doctor--he found such a one.

Before going into consultation the patriarch forethoughtedly collected a fee of seventy-five cents from Red Hoss. At the outset he demanded two dollars, but accepted the six bits, because that happened to be all the money the client had. This formality concluded, he required it of Red Hoss that he recount in their proper chronological order those various strokes of ill fortune which lately had plagued him; after which Daddy Hannah asked to see the talisman which coincidentally had been in the victim's owners.h.i.+p from beginning to culmination of the enumerated catastrophes. He took it in his wrinkled hand and studied it, sides, top and bottom, the while Red Hoss detailed the exact circ.u.mstances attending the death of the bunny. Then slowly the ancient delivered his findings.

"In de fust an' fo'mos' place," stated Daddy Hannah, "dis yere warn't no reg'lar graveyard rabbit to start off wid. See dis li'l' teeny black spot on de und'neath part? Well, dat's a sho' sign of a witch rabbit. A witch rabbit he hang round a buryin' ground, but he don't go inside of one--naw, suh, not never nur nary. He ain't dare to. He stay outside an'

frolic wid de ha'nts w'en dey comes fo'th, but da's all. De onliest thing which dey is to do when you kills a witch rabbit is to cut off de haid f'um de body an' bury de haid on de north side of a log, an' den bury de body on de south side so's dey can't jine together ag'in an'

resume witchin'. So you havin' failed to do so, 'tain't no wonder you been havin' sech a powerful sorry time." He started to return the foot to its owner, but s.n.a.t.c.hed it back.

"Hole on yere a minute, boy! Lemme tek' nuther look at dat thing." He took it, then burst forth with a volley of derisive chuckling. "Huh, huh, well ef dat ain't de beatenes' part of it all!" wheezed Daddy Hannah. "Red Hoss, you sho' muster been in one big hurry to git away f'um dat spot whar you kilt your rabbit and ketched your charm. Looky yere at dis yere shank j'int! Don't you see nothin' curious about de side of de leg whar de hock sticks out? Well den, cullid boy, ef you don't, all I got to say is you mus' be total blind ez well ez monst'ous ignunt. Dis ain't no lef' hind foot of no rabbit."

"Whut is it den?"

"It's de right hind foot, dat's whut 'tis!" He tossed it away contemptuously.

After a long minute Red Hoss, standing at Daddy Hannah's doorstep with his hands rammed deep in pockets, which were both empty, spoke in tones of profound bitterness. He addressed his remarks to s.p.a.ce, but Daddy Hannah couldn't help overhearing.

"Fust off, I gits fooled by de right laig of de wrong rabbit. Den a man-eatin' mule come a-browsin' on me an' gnaw a suit of close right offen my back. Den I runs into a elephint in a fog an' busts one of Mist' Lee Farrell's taxiscabs fur him an' he busts my jaw fur me. Den I gits tuk advantage of by a fool lion dat can't chamber his licker lak a gen'l'man, in consequence of which I loses me a fancy job an' a chunk of money. Den Melissa, she up an'--well, suh, I merely wishes to say dat f'um now on, so fur ez I is concerned, natchel history is a utter failure."

CHAPTER IV

IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN TO-MORROW

"Sorry, ma'am," said the Pullman conductor, "but there's not a bit of s.p.a.ce left in the chair car, nor the sleeper neither."

"I'm sorry too," said the young woman in the tan-colored tailor-mades.

She was smartly hatted and smartly spatted; smart all over from toque-tip to toe-tip. "I didn't know until almost the last minute that I'd have to catch this train, and trusted to chance for a seat."

"Yes'm, I see," commiserated the man in blue. "But you know what the rush is this time of year, and right now on top of all that so many of the soldiers getting home from the other side and their folks coming East to meet 'em and everything. I guess though, miss, you won't have much trouble getting accommodated in one of the day coaches."

"I'll try it," she said, "and thank you all the same."

She picked up her hand bag.

"Wait a minute," he suggested. "I'll have my porter carry your valise on up to the other cars."

Men of all stations in life were rather given to offering help to Miss Mildred Smith, the distinguished interior decorator and--on the side--amateur investigator for Uncle Sam with a wartime record for services rendered which many a professional might have envied. Perhaps they were the more ready to offer it since the young woman seemed so rarely to need it.

This man's reward was a brisk little nod.

"Please don't bother," she said. "This bag isn't at all heavy, and I'm used to traveling alone and looking out for myself." She footed it briskly along the platform of the Dobb's Ferry station. At the door of the third coach back from the baggage car a flagman stopped her.

"All full up in here, lady," he told her, "but I think maybe you might find some place to sit in the next car beyond. If you'll just leave your grip here I'll bring it along to you after we pull out."

As she reached the door of the coach ahead the train began to move. This coach was comfortably filled--and more than comfortably filled. Into the aisles projected elbows and feet and at either side doubled rows of backs of heads showed above the red plush seats. She shrugged her shoulders; it meant standing for a while at least; probably someone would be getting off soon--this train was a local, making frequent stops. It was not the train she would have chosen had the choosing been left altogether to her, but Mullinix of the Secret Service, her unofficial chief, had called her away from a furnis.h.i.+ng and finis.h.i.+ng contract at a millionaire's mansion in the country back of Dobb's Ferry to run up state to Troy, where there had arisen a situation which in the opinion of the espionage squad a woman was best fitted to handle, provided only that woman be Miss Mildred Smith. And so on an hour's notice she had dropped her own work and started.

Now, though, near the more distant end of the car she saw a break in one line of heads. Perhaps the gap might mean there would be room for her.

She made her way toward the spot, her trim small figure swaying to the motion as the locomotive picked up speed. Drawing nearer, she saw the back of one seat had been turned so that its occupants faced rearward toward her. In this seat, the one farther from her as she went up the aisle, were a man and a woman; in the nearer seat, facing this pair and sitting next the window, was a second woman--a girl rather--all three of them, she deduced from the seating arrangement, being members of the same party. A suitcase rested upon the cus.h.i.+ons alongside the younger woman.

"I beg your pardon," said the lone pa.s.senger, halting here, "but is this place taken?"

The man's face twisted as though in annoyance. He made an undecided gesture which might be interpreted either as an affirmative or the other thing. "I'm sorry if I am disturbing you," added Miss Smith, "but the car is crowded--every inch of it except this seems to be occupied."

"Oh, I guess it's all right," he said, though in his begrudged consent was a sort of indirect intimation that it was not altogether all right.

He half rose and swung the suitcase up into the luggage rack overhead, then tucked in his knees so she might slip into the place opposite him next the aisle.

"Excuse me," he said a moment later, "but I could change seats with you if you don't mind."

Her eyebrows went up a trifle.

In her experiences it had not often happened that seemingly without reason a male fellow traveler had suggested that she give him a place commonly regarded as preferable to his own.

"I do mind, rather," she answered. "Riding backward makes me carsick sometimes. Still I will change with you if you insist on it. I'm the intruder, you know."

"No, no, never mind!" he hastened to say. "I guess it don't make any difference. And there's no intrusion, miss--honest now, there ain't."

Miss Smith opened the book she had brought along and began to read. She felt that obliquely her enforced companions were studying her--at least two of them were. The one with whom she shared a seat had not looked her way; except to draw in her body a trifle as Miss Smith sat down she had made no movement of any sort. Certainly she had manifested no interest in the new arrival. In moments when her glance did not cross theirs, Miss Smith, turning the pages of her book, considered the two who faced her, subconsciously trying--as was her way--to appraise them for what outwardly they presumably were. Offhand she decided the man might be the superintendent of an estate; or then again he might be somebody's head gardener. He was heavily built and heavily mustached with a reddish cast to his skin and fat broad hands. The woman alongside him had the look about her of being a high-cla.s.s domestic employee, possibly a housekeeper or perhaps a seamstress. Miss Smith decided that if not exactly a servant she was accustomed to dealing with servants and in her own sphere undoubtedly would figure as a competent and authoritative person.

Of her own seat mate she could make out little except that she was young--young enough to be the daughter of the woman across from her, and yet plainly enough not the woman's daughter. Indeed if first impressions counted for anything she was of a different type and a different fiber from the pair who rode in her company. One somehow felt that she was with them but not of them; that she formed the alien apex of a triangle otherwise harmonious in its social composition. She was m.u.f.fled cheek to knees in a loose cape of blue military cloth which quite hid the outlines of her figure, yet nevertheless revealed that she was slimly formed and of fair height. The flaring collar of the garment was upturned, s.h.i.+elding her face almost to the line of her brows. But out of the tail of her eye Miss Smith caught a suggestion of a youthful regular profile and admiringly observed the texture of a ma.s.s of thick, fine, auburn hair. Miss Smith was partial to auburn hair; she wondered if this girl had a coloring to match the rich reddish tones that glinted in the smooth coils about her head.

Presently the man fumbled in a breast pocket of his waistcoat and found a long malignant-looking cigar. He bit the end of it and inserted the bitten end in his mouth, rolling it back and forth between his lips.

Before long this poor subst.i.tute of the confirmed nicotinist for a smoke failed to satisfy his cravings. He whispered a word to his middle-aged companion, who nodded, and then with a mutter of apology to Miss Smith for troubling her he scrouged out into the aisle and disappeared in the direction of the smoker.

Left alone, the woman very soon began to yawn. It was to be judged that the stuffy air of the car made her dozy. She kept her eyes open with an effort, her head lolling in spite of her drowsy efforts to hold it straight, yet all the while bearing herself after the fas.h.i.+on of one determined not to fall asleep.

A voice spoke in Miss Smith's ear--a low and well-bred and musical voice.

"I beg your pardon," it said hesitatingly, then stopped.

Miss Smith turned her head toward the speaker and now for the first time had a fair chance to look into the face of the voice's owner. She looked and saw the oval of a most comely face, white and drawn as though by exhaustion or by deep sorrow, or perhaps by both. For all their pallor the cheeks were full and smooth; the brow was broad and low; the mouth firm and sweet. From between the tall collars of the cape the throat, partly revealed, rose as a smooth fair column. What made the girl almost beautiful were her eyes--eyes big and brown with a fire in them to suggest the fine high mettle of a resolute character, but out of them there looked--or else the other was woefully wrong--a great grief, a great distress bravely borne. To herself--all in that instant of looking--she said mentally that these were the saddest, most courageous eyes she ever had seen set in a face so young and seemingly bespeaking so healthful a body. For a moment Miss Smith was so held by what she saw that she forgot to speak.

"I beg your pardon," repeated the girl. "I wonder if you would be good enough to bring me a drink of water--if it isn't too much trouble. I'm so thirsty. I can't very well go myself--there are reasons why I can't.

And I don't think she"--with a sidelong glance toward the nodding figure opposite--"I don't think she would feel that she could go and leave me.'

"Certainly I will," said Miss Smith. "It's not a bit of bother."

"What is it?" The woman had been roused to full wakefulness by the movement of the stranger in rising.