Part 13 (1/2)
”Well, his seeing her seems to have saved the shop from being smashed up, and you from getting a punched head,” returned the Doctor with a laugh. ”He's no fool--yet it's a freak of human nature that a simple hayseed like that--a man who's lived in the backwoods all his life, is likely to be the first to tumble before a pot of French rouge like her.”
Indeed, in a couple of weeks, there was no further doubt of Mr. Reuben Allen's infatuation. He dropped into the shop frequently on his way to and from the restaurant, where he now regularly took his meals; he spent his evenings in gambling in its private room. Yet Kane was by no means sure that he was losing his money there unfairly, or that he was used as a pigeon by the proprietress and her friends. The bully O'Ryan was turned away; Sparlow grimly suggested that Allen had simply taken his place, but Kane ingeniously retorted that the Doctor was only piqued because Allen had evaded his professional treatment. Certainly the patient had never consented to another examination, although he repeatedly and gravely bought medicines, and was a generous customer.
Once or twice Kane thought it his duty to caution Allen against his new friends and enlighten him as to Madame le Blanc's reputation, but his suggestions were received with a good-humored submission that was either the effect of unbelief or of perfect resignation to the fact, and he desisted. One morning Dr. Sparlow said cheerfully:--
”Would you like to hear the last thing about your friend and the Frenchwoman? The boys can't account for her singling out a fellow like that for her friend, so they say that the night that she cut herself at the fete and dropped in here for a.s.sistance, she found n.o.body here but Allen--a chance customer! That it was HE who cut off her hair and bound up her wounds in that sincere fas.h.i.+on, and she believed he had saved her life.” The Doctor grinned maliciously as he added: ”And as that's the way history is written you see your reputation is safe.”
It may have been a month later that San Francisco was thrown into a paroxysm of horror and indignation over the a.s.sa.s.sination of a prominent citizen and official in the gambling-rooms of Madame le Blanc, at the hands of a notorious gambler. The gambler had escaped, but in one of those rare spasms of vengeful morality which sometimes overtakes communities who have too long winked at and suffered the existence of evil, the fair proprietress and her whole entourage were arrested and haled before the coroner's jury at the inquest. The greatest excitement prevailed; it was said that if the jury failed in their duty, the Vigilance Committee had arranged for the destruction of the establishment and the deportation of its inmates. The crowd that had collected around the building was reinforced by Kane and Dr. Sparlow, who had closed their shop in the next block to attend. When Kane had fought his way into the building and the temporary court, held in the splendidly furnished gambling saloon, whose gilded mirrors reflected the eager faces of the crowd, the Chief of Police was giving his testimony in a formal official manner, impressive only for its relentless and impa.s.sive revelation of the character and antecedents of the proprietress. The house had been long under the espionage of the police; Madame le Blanc had a dozen aliases; she was ”wanted” in New Orleans, in New York, in Havana! It was in HER house that Dyer, the bank clerk, committed suicide; it was there that Colonel Hooley was set upon by her bully, O'Ryan; it was she--Kane heard with reddening cheeks--who defied the police with riotous conduct at a fete two months ago. As he coolly recited the counts of this shameful indictment, Kane looked eagerly around for Allen, whom he knew had been arrested as a witness. How would HE take this terrible disclosure? He was sitting with the others, his arm thrown over the back of his chair, and his good-humored face turned towards the woman, in his old confidential att.i.tude. SHE, gorgeously dressed, painted, but unblus.h.i.+ng, was cool, collected, and cynical.
The Coroner next called the only witness of the actual tragedy, ”Reuben Allen.” The man did not move nor change his position. The summons was repeated; a policeman touched him on the shoulder. There was a pause, and the officer announced: ”He has fainted, your Honor!”
”Is there a physician present?” asked the Coroner.
Sparlow edged his way quickly to the front. ”I'm a medical man,” he said to the Coroner, as he pa.s.sed quickly to the still, upright, immovable figure and knelt beside it with his head upon his heart. There was an awed silence as, after a pause, he rose slowly to his feet.
”The witness is a patient, your Honor, whom I examined some weeks ago and found suffering from valvular disease of the heart. He is dead.”
THREE VAGABONDS OF TRINIDAD
”Oh! it's you, is it?” said the Editor.
The Chinese boy to whom the colloquialism was addressed answered literally, after his habit:--
”Allee same Li Tee; me no changee. Me no ollee China boy.”
”That's so,” said the Editor with an air of conviction. ”I don't suppose there's another imp like you in all Trinidad County. Well, next time don't scratch outside there like a gopher, but come in.”
”La.s.s time,” suggested Li Tee blandly, ”me tap tappee. You no like tap tappee. You say, alle same dam woodpeckel.”
It was quite true--the highly sylvan surroundings of the Trinidad ”Sentinel” office--a little clearing in a pine forest--and its attendant fauna, made these signals confusing. An accurate imitation of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r was also one of Li Tee's accomplishments.
The Editor without replying finished the note he was writing; at which Li Tee, as if struck by some coincident recollection, lifted up his long sleeve, which served him as a pocket, and carelessly shook out a letter on the table like a conjuring trick. The Editor, with a reproachful glance at him, opened it. It was only the ordinary request of an agricultural subscriber--one Johnson--that the Editor would ”notice” a giant radish grown by the subscriber and sent by the bearer.
”Where's the radish, Li Tee?” said the Editor suspiciously.
”No hab got. Ask Mellikan boy.”
”What?”
Here Li Tee condescended to explain that on pa.s.sing the schoolhouse he had been set upon by the schoolboys, and that in the struggle the big radish--being, like most such monstrosities of the quick Californian soil, merely a ma.s.s of organized water--was ”mashed” over the head of some of his a.s.sailants. The Editor, painfully aware of these regular persecutions of his errand boy, and perhaps realizing that a radish which could not be used as a bludgeon was not of a sustaining nature, forebore any reproof. ”But I cannot notice what I haven't seen, Li Tee,”
he said good-humoredly.
”S'pose you lie--allee same as Johnson,” suggested Li with equal cheerfulness. ”He foolee you with lotten stuff--you foolee Mellikan man, allee same.”
The Editor preserved a dignified silence until he had addressed his letter. ”Take this to Mrs. Martin,” he said, handing it to the boy; ”and mind you keep clear of the schoolhouse. Don't go by the Flat either if the men are at work, and don't, if you value your skin, pa.s.s Flanigan's shanty, where you set off those firecrackers and nearly burnt him out the other day. Look out for Barker's dog at the crossing, and keep off the main road if the tunnel men are coming over the hill.” Then remembering that he had virtually closed all the ordinary approaches to Mrs. Martin's house, he added, ”Better go round by the woods, where you won't meet ANY ONE.”
The boy darted off through the open door, and the Editor stood for a moment looking regretfully after him. He liked his little protege ever since that unfortunate child--a waif from a Chinese wash-house--was impounded by some indignant miners for bringing home a highly imperfect and insufficient was.h.i.+ng, and kept as hostage for a more proper return of the garments. Unfortunately, another gang of miners, equally aggrieved, had at the same time looted the wash-house and driven off the occupants, so that Li Tee remained unclaimed. For a few weeks he became a sporting appendage of the miners' camp; the stolid b.u.t.t of good-humored practical jokes, the victim alternately of careless indifference or of extravagant generosity. He received kicks and half-dollars intermittently, and pocketed both with stoical fort.i.tude.
But under this treatment he presently lost the docility and frugality which was part of his inheritance, and began to put his small wits against his tormentors, until they grew tired of their own mischief and his. But they knew not what to do with him. His pretty nankeen-yellow skin debarred him from the white ”public school,” while, although as a heathen he might have reasonably claimed attention from the Sabbath-school, the parents who cheerfully gave their contributions to the heathen ABROAD, objected to him as a companion of their children in the church at home. At this juncture the Editor offered to take him into his printing office as a ”devil.” For a while he seemed to be endeavoring, in his old literal way, to act up to that t.i.tle. He inked everything but the press. He scratched Chinese characters of an abusive import on ”leads,” printed them, and stuck them about the office; he put ”punk” in the foreman's pipe, and had been seen to swallow small type merely as a diabolical recreation. As a messenger he was fleet of foot, but uncertain of delivery. Some time previously the Editor had enlisted the sympathies of Mrs. Martin, the good-natured wife of a farmer, to take him in her household on trial, but on the third day Li Tee had run away. Yet the Editor had not despaired, and it was to urge her to a second attempt that he dispatched that letter.
He was still gazing abstractedly into the depths of the wood when he was conscious of a slight movement--but no sound--in a clump of hazel near him, and a stealthy figure glided from it. He at once recognized it as ”Jim,” a well-known drunken Indian vagrant of the settlement--tied to its civilization by the single link of ”fire water,” for which he forsook equally the Reservation where it was forbidden and his own camps where it was unknown. Unconscious of his silent observer, he dropped upon all fours, with his ear and nose alternately to the ground like some tracking animal. Then having satisfied himself, he rose, and bending forward in a dogged trot, made a straight line for the woods.