Part 34 (1/2)
She chanced to be reflecting on this subject on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon near the end of the month Hopewell had allowed to Joe Bodley to find the rest of the purchase price for the violin. She had been up to the church vestry to attend a meeting of her Girls' Guild. As she pa.s.sed the Public Library this thought came to her:
”I'll go in and look in the encyclopaedia. _That_ ought to tell about old violins.”
She looked up Cremona and read about its wonderful violins made in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries by the Amati family and by Antonio Stradivari and Josef Guarnerius. It did not seem possible that Hopewell's instrument could be one of these beautifully wrought violins of the masters; yet----
”Who knows?” sighed Janice. ”You read about such instruments coming to light in such queer places. And Hopewell's fiddle _looks_ awfully old.
From all accounts his father must have been a musician of some importance, despite the fact that he was thought little of in Polktown by either his wife or other people. Mr. Drugg might have owned one of these famous violins--not one of the most ancient, perhaps--and told n.o.body here about it. Why! the ordinary Polktownite would think just as much of a two-dollar-and-a-half fiddle as of a real Stradivarius or an Amati.”
While she was at the task, Janice took some notes of what she read.
While she was about this, Walky Dexter, who brought the mail over from Middletown, daily, came in with the usual bundle of papers for the reading desk, and the girl in charge that afternoon hastened to put the papers in the files.
Major Price had presented the library with a year's subscription to a New York daily. Janice or Marty always found time to scan each page of that paper for Mexican news--especially for news of the brigand chief, Juan Dicampa.
She went to the reading desk after closing and returning the encyclopaedia to its proper shelf, and spread the New York paper before her. This day she had not to search for mention of her father's friend, the Zapatist chief. Right in front of her eyes, at the top of the very first column, were these headlines:
JUAN DICAMPA CAPTURED
THE ZAPATIST CHIEFTAIN CAPTURED BY FEDERALS WITH 500 OF HIS FORCE AND IMMEDIATELY SHOT. Ma.s.sACRE OF HIS FOLLOWERS.
CHAPTER XXII
DEEP WATERS
The dispatch in the New York paper was dated from a Texan city on the day before. It was brief, but seemed of enough importance to have the place of honor on the front page of the great daily.
There were all the details of a night advance, a b.l.o.o.d.y attack and a fearful repulse in which General Juan Dicampa's force had been nearly wiped out.
The half thousand captured with the famous guerrilla chief were reported to have been hacked to pieces when they cried for quarter, and Juan Dicampa himself was given the usual short shrift connected in most people's minds with Mexican justice. He had been shot three hours after his capture.
It was an awful thing--and awful to read about. The whole affair had happened a long way from that part of Chihuahua in which daddy's mine was situated; but Janice immediately realized that the ”long arm” of Dicampa could no longer keep Mr. Broxton Day from disaster, or punish those who offended the American mining man.
The very worst that could possibly happen to her father, Janice thought, had perhaps already happened.
That was a very sorrowful evening indeed at the old Day house on Hillside Avenue. Although Mr. Jason Day and Janice's father were half brothers only, the elder man had in his heart a deep and tender love for Broxton, or ”Brocky,” as he called him.
He remembered Brocky as a lad--always. He felt the superiority of his years--and presumably his wisdom--over the younger man. Despite the fact that Mr. Broxton Day had early gone away from Polktown, and had been deemed very successful in point of wealth in the Middle West, Uncle Jason considered him still a boy, and his ventures in business and in mining as a species of ”wild oat sowing,” of which he could scarcely approve.
”No,” he sighed. ”If Brocky had been more settled he'd ha' been better off--I snum he would! A piece o' land right here back o' Polktown--or a venture in a store, if so be he must trade--would ha' been safer for him than a slather o' mines down there among them Mexicaners.”
”Don't talk so--don't talk so, Jason!” sniffed Aunt Almira.
”Wal--it's a fac',” her husband said vigorously. ”There may be some danger attached ter store keepin' in Polktown; it's likely ter make a man a good deal of a hawg,” added Uncle Jason. ”But I guess the life insurance rates ain't so high as they be on a feller that's determined ter spend his time t'other side o' that Rio Grande River they tell about.”
”I wonder,” sighed Aunt Almira, quite unconscious that she spoke aloud, ”if I kin turn that old black alpaca gown I got when Sister Susie died, Jason, an' fas.h.i.+on it after one o' the new models?”
”Heh?” grunted the startled Mr. Day, glaring at her.
”Of course, we'll hafter go inter black--it's only decent. But I did fancy a plum-colored dress this Spring, with r'yal purple trimmins. I seen a pattern in the fas.h.i.+on sheet of the Fireside Love Letter that was re'l sweet.”