Part 17 (2/2)

”Huh!”

The powers of this brief utterance had not yet been exhausted. It now conveyed despair. With bowed head the speaker dully turned and withdrew from our presence. As he went I distinctly heard him mutter:

”Huh! Four-teen! Four-teen! And seven! And twenty-eight!”

”Say, there!” his callous employer called after him. ”Why don't you get Boogles to embroider that name of yours on the front of your s.h.i.+rt? He'd adore to do it. And you can still read, can't you, in the midst of your agonies?”

There was no response to this taunt. The suffering one faded slowly down the path to the bunk house and was lost in its blackness. A light shone out and presently came sombre chords from a guitar, followed by the voice of Sandy in gloomy song: ”There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway--”

I was not a little pained to discover this unsuspected vein of cruelty in a woman I had long admired. And the woman merely became irrelevant with her apothegm about foreigners. I ignored it.

”What about that sufferer down there in the bunk house?” I demanded.

”Didn't you ever have toothache?”

”No; neither did Sandy Sawtelle. He ain't a sufferer; he's just a liar.”

”Why?”

”So I'll let him go to town and play the number of them st.i.tches on the wheel. Sure! He'd run a horse to death getting there, make for the back room of the Turf Club Saloon, where they run games whenever the town ain't lidded too tight, and play roulette till either him or the game had to close down. Yes, sir; he'd string his bets along on fourteen and seven and twenty-eight and thirty-five, and if he didn't make a killing he'd believe all his life that the wheel was crooked. St.i.tches in a mule's hide is his bug. He could st.i.tch up any horse on the place and never have the least hunch; but let it be a mule--Say! Down there right now he's thinking about the thousand dollars or so I'm keeping him out of. I judge from his song that he'd figured on a trip East to New York City or Denver. At that, I don't know as I blame him. Yes, sir; that's what reminded me of foreigners and bazaars and vice, and so on--and poor Egbert Floud.”

My hostess drew about her impressive shoulders a blanket of Indian weave that dulled the splendours of the western sky, and rolled a slender cigarette from the tobacco and papers at her side. By the ensuing flame of a match I saw that her eyes gleamed with the light of pure narration.

”Foreigners, bazaars, vice, and Egbert Floud?” I murmured, wis.h.i.+ng these to be related more plausibly one to another.

”I'm coming to it,” said the lady; and, after two sustaining inhalations from the new cigarette, forthwith she did:

It was late last winter, while I was still in Red Gap. The talk went round that we'd ought to have another something for the Belgians. We'd had a concert, the proceeds of which run up into two figures after all expenses was paid; but it was felt something more could be done--something in the nature of a bazaar, where all could get together.

The Mes-dames Henrietta Templeton Price and Judge Ballard were appointed a committee to do some advance scouting.

That was where Egbert Floud come in, though after it was all over any one could see that he was more to be pitied than censured. These well-known leaders consulted him among others, and Cousin Egbert says right off that, sure, he'll help 'em get up something if they'll agree to spend a third of the loot for tobacco for the poor soldiers, because a Belgian or any one else don't worry so much about going hungry if they can have a smoke from time to time, and he's been reading about where tobacco is sorely needed in the trenches. He felt strong about it, because one time out on the trail he lost all his own and had to smoke poplar bark or something for two weeks, nearly burning his flues out.

The two Mes-dames agreed to this, knowing from their menfolk that tobacco is one of the great human needs, both in war and in peace, and knowing that Cousin Egbert will be sure to donate handsomely himself, he always having been the easiest mark in town; so they said they was much obliged for his timely suggestion and would he think up some novel feature for the bazaar; and he said he would if he could, and they went on to other men of influence.

Henrietta's husband, when he heard the money wouldn't all be spent for mere food, said he'd put up a choice lot in Price's Addition to be raffled off--a lot that would at some future date be worth five thousand dollars of anybody's money, and that was all right; and some of the merchants come through liberal with articles of use and adornment to be took chances on.

Even old Proctor Knapp, the richest man in town, actually give up something after they pestered him for an hour. He owns the People's Traction Company and he turned over a dollar's worth of street-car tickets to be raffled for, though saying he regarded gambling as a very objectionable and uncertain vice, and a person shouldn't go into anything without being sure they was dead certain to make something out of it, war or no war, he knowing all about it. Why wouldn't he, having started life as a poor, ragged boy and working his way up to where parties that know him is always very careful indeed when they do any business with him?

Some of the ladies they consulted was hostile about the tobacco end of it. Mrs. Tracy Bangs said that no victim of the weed could keep up his mentality, and that she, for one, would rather see her Tracy lying in his casket than smoking vile tobacco that would destroy his intellect and make him a loathsome object in the home. She said she knew perfectly well that if the countries at war had picked their soldiers from non-smokers it would have been all over in just a few days--and didn't that show you that the tobacco demon was as bad as the rum demon?

Mrs. Leonard Wales was not only bitter about tobacco but about any help at all. She said our hard storms of that winter had been caused by the general hatred in Europe which created evil waves of malignity; so let 'em shoot each other till they got sense enough to dwell together in love and amity--only we shouldn't prolong the war by sending 'em soup and cigarettes, and so on. Her idea seemed to be that if Red Gap would just stand firm in the matter the war would die a natural death. Still, if a bazaar was really going to be held, she would consent to pose in a tableau if they insisted on it, and mebbe she could thus inject into the evil atmosphere of Europe some of the peace and good will that sets the United States apart from other nations.

Trust Cora Wales not to overlook a bet like that. She's a tall, sandy-haired party, with very extravagant contours, and the thing she loves best on earth is to get under a pasteboard crown, with gilt stars on it, and drape herself in the flag of her country, with one fat arm bare, while Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, Ma.s.sachusetts, and the rest is gathered about and looking up to her for protection. Mebbe she don't look so bad as the G.o.ddess of Liberty on a float in the middle of one of our wide streets when the Chamber of Commerce is giving a Greater Red Gap pageant; but take her in a hall, where you set close up to the platform, and she looks more like our boasted liberty has degenerated into license, or something like that. Anyway, the committee had to promise her she could do something in her flag and crown and talc.u.m powder, because they knew she'd knock the show if they didn't.

This reminded 'em they had to have a program of entertainment; so they got me on the committee with the other Mes-dames to think up things, me always being an easy mark. I find out right off that we're a lot of foreigners and you got to be darned careful not to hurt anybody's feelings. Little Bertha Lehman's pa would let her be a state--Colorado or Nebraska, or something--but he wouldn't let her sing unless it would be a German song in the original; and Hobbs, the English baker, said his Tillie would have to sing ”Britannia Rules the Waves,” or nothing; and two or three others said what they would and wouldn't do, and it looked like Red Gap itself was going to be dug up into trenches. I had to get little Magnesia Waterman, daughter of the c.o.o.ns that work in the U.S.

Grill, to do the main singing. She seemed to be about the only American child soprano we had. She sings right well for a kid, mostly these sad songs about heaven; but we picked out a good live one for her that seemed to be neutral.

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