Ranson's Folly Part 17

"Well, it isn't fair to the rest of us," protested Keating, launching into his grievance. "There's only a few of us here, and we--we think you ought to see that and not give the crowd a bad name. All the other correspondents have some regard for--for their position and for the paper, but you loaf around here looking like an old tramp--like any old beach-comber, and it queers the rest of us. Why, those English artillerymen at the Club asked me about you, and when I told them you were a New York correspondent they made all sorts of jokes about American newspapers, and what could I say?"

Channing eyed the other man with keen delight.

"I see, by Jove! I'm sorry," he said. But the next moment he laughed, and then apologized, remorsefully.

"Indeed, I beg your pardon," he begged, "but it struck me as a sort of--I had no idea you fellows were such swells--I knew I was a social outcast, but I didn't know my being a social outcast was hurting anyone else. Tell me some more."

"Well, that's all," said Keating, suspiciously. "The fellows asked me to speak to you about it and to tell you to take a brace. Now, for instance, we have a sort of mess-table at the hotels and we'd like to ask you to belong, but--well--you see how it is--we have the officers to lunch whenever they're on sh.o.r.e, and you're so disreputable"--Keating scowled at Channing, and concluded, impotently, "Why don't you get yourself some decent clothes and--and a new hat?"

Channing removed his hat to his knee and stroked it with affectionate pity.

"It is a shocking bad hat," he said. "Well, go on."

"Oh, it's none of my business," exclaimed Keating, impatiently. "I'm just telling you what they're saying. Now, there's the Cuban refugees, for instance. No one knows what they're doing here, or whether they're real Cubans or Spaniards."

"Well, what of it?"

"Why, the way you go round with them and visit them, it's no wonder they say you're a spy."

Channing stared incredulously, and then threw back his head and laughed with a shout of delight.

"They don't, do they?" he asked.

"Yes, they do, since you think it's so funny. If it hadn't been for us the day you went over to Guantanamo the marines would have had you arrested and court-martialed."

Channing's face clouded with a quick frown, "Oh," he exclaimed, in a hurt voice, "they couldn't have thought that."

"Well, no," Keating admitted grudgingly, "not after the fight, perhaps, but before that, when you were snooping around the camp like a Cuban after rations." Channing recognized the picture with a laugh.

"I do," he said, "I do. But you should have had me court-martialed and shot; it would have made a good story. 'Our reporter shot as a spy, his last words were--' what were my last words, Keating?"

Keating turned upon him with impatience, "But why do you do it?" he demanded. "Why don't you act like the rest of us? Why do you hang out with all those filibusters and runaway Cubans?"

"They have been very kind to me," said Channing, soberly. "They are a very courteous race, and they have ideas of hospitality which make the average New Yorker look like a dog hiding a bone."

"Oh, I suppose you mean that for us," demanded Keating. "That's a slap at me, eh?"

Channing gave a sigh and threw himself back against the trunk of the palm, with his hands clasped behind his head.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of you at all, Keating," he said. "I don't consider you in the least." He stretched himself and yawned wearily.

"I've got troubles of my own." He sat up suddenly and adjusted the objectionable hat to his head.

"Why don't you wire the C. P.," he asked, briskly, "and see if they don't want an extra man? It won't cost you anything to wire, and I need the job, and I haven't the money to cable."

"The Consolidated Press," began Keating, jealously. "Why--well, you know what the Consolidated Press is? They don't want descriptive writers--and I've got all the men I need."

Keating rose and stood hesitating in some embarra.s.sment. "I'll tell you what I could do, Channing," he said, "I could take you on as a stoker, or steward, say. They're always deserting and mutinying; I have to carry a gun on me to make them mind. How would you like that? Forty dollars a month, and eat with the crew?"

For a moment Channing stood in silence, smoothing the sand with the sole of his shoe. When he raised his head his face was flus.h.i.+ng.

"Oh, thank you," he said. "I think I'll keep on trying for a paper--I'll try a little longer. I want to see something of this war, of course, and if I'm not too lazy I'd like to write something about it, but--well--I'm much obliged to you, anyway."

"Of course, if it were my money, I'd take you on at once," said Keating, hurriedly.

Channing smiled and nodded. "You're very kind," he answered. "Well, good-by."

A half-hour later, in the smoking-room of the hotel, Keating addressed himself to a group of correspondents.

"There is no doing anything with that man Channing," he said, in a tone of offended pride. "I offered him a good job and he wouldn't take it.

Because he got a story in the International Magazine, he's stuck on himself, and he won't hustle for news--he wants to write pipe-dreams.

What the public wants just now is news."

"That's it," said one of the group, "and we must give it to them--even if we have to fake it."

Great events followed each other with great rapidity. The army ceased beating time, shook itself together, adjusted its armor and moved, and, to the delight of the flotilla of press-boats at Port Antonio, moved, not as it had at first intended, to the north coast of Cuba, but to Santiago, where its transports were within reach of their megaphones.

"Why, everything's coming our way now!" exclaimed the World manager in ecstasy. "We've got the transports to starboard at Siboney, and the war-s.h.i.+ps to port at Santiago, and all we'll need to do is to sit on the deck with a field-gla.s.s, and take down the news with both hands."

Channing followed these events with envy. Once or twice, as a special favor, the press-boats carried him across to Siboney and Daiquiri, and he was able to write stories of what he saw there; of the landing of the army, of the wounded after the Guasimas fight, and of the fever-camp at Siboney. His friends on the press-boats sent this work home by mail on the chance that the Sunday editor might take it at s.p.a.ce rates. But mail matter moved slowly and the army moved quickly, and events crowded so closely upon each other that Channing's stories, when they reached New York, were ancient history and were unpublished, and, what was of more importance to him, unpaid for. He had no money now, and he had become a beach-comber in the real sense of the word. He slept the warm nights away among the bananas and cocoanuts on the Fruit Company's wharf, and by calling alternately on his Cuban exiles and the different press-boats, he was able to obtain a meal a day without arousing any suspicions in the minds of his hosts that it was his only one.

He was sitting on the stringer of the pier-head one morning, waiting for a press-boat from the "front," when the Three Friends ran in and lowered her dingy, and the "World" manager came ash.o.r.e, clasping a precious bundle of closely written cable-forms. Channing scrambled to his feet and hailed him.

"Have you heard from the chief about me yet?" he asked. The "World" man frowned and stammered, and then, taking Channing by the arm, hurried with him toward the cable-office.

"Charlie, I think they're crazy up there," he began, "they think they know it all. Here I am on the spot, but they think--"

"You mean they won't have me," said Channing. "But why?" he asked, patiently. "They used to give me all the s.p.a.ce I wanted."

"Yes, I know, confound them, and so they should now," said the "World"

man, with sympathetic indignation. "But here's their cable; you can see it's not my fault." He read the message aloud. "Channing, no. Not safe, take reliable man from Siboney." He folded the cablegram around a dozen others and stuck it back in his hip-pocket.

"What queered you, Charlie," he explained, importantly, "was that last break of yours, New Year's, when you didn't turn up for a week. It was once too often, and the chief's had it in for you ever since. You remember?"

Channing screwed up his lips in an effort of recollection.

"Yes, I remember," he answered, slowly. "It began on New Year's eve in Perry's drug-store, and I woke up a week later in a hack in Boston. So I didn't have such a run for my money, did I? Not good enough to have to pay for it like this. I tell you," he burst out suddenly, "I feel like h.e.l.l being left out of this war, with all the rest of the boys working so hard. If it weren't playing it low down on the fellows that have been in it from the start, I'd like to enlist. But they enlisted for glory, and I'd only do it because I can't see the war any other way, and it doesn't seem fair to them. What do you think?"

"Oh, don't do that," protested the World manager. "You stick to your own trade. We'll get you something to do. Have you tried the Consolidated Press yet?"

Channing smiled grimly at the recollection.

"Yes, I tried it first."

"It would be throwing pearls to swine to have you write for them, I know, but they're using so many men now. I should think you could get on their boat."

"No, I saw Keating," Channing explained. "He said I could come along as a stoker, and I guess I'll take him up, it seems--"

"Keating said--what?" exclaimed the "World" man. "Keating? Why, he stands to lose his own job, if he isn't careful. If it wasn't that he's just married, the C. P. boys would have reported him a dozen times."