The Calico Cat Part 6

But Jim remained dumb.

After waiting a little, Farnsworth, seeing the boy so miserable, took pity on him.

"Well, never mind, Jim," he said. "You needn't tell if you don't want to."

He would have to let Nancy coax it out of him. But he was puzzled, impressed with a sense of mystery and with a growing conviction that the boy was s.h.i.+elding some one else. He began to talk cheerfully of other things, hoping that Jim might perhaps drop a useful hint, or, at least, that the boy would gain confidence in him as a friend. By chance he asked:--

"Where did you get the knife, Jim?"

"Mr. Peaslee gave it to me."

"Peaslee!" exclaimed Farnsworth. He well knew the "closeness" of his fellow juror.

"It isn't much of a knife," said Jim, apologetic but pleased. Jim's views of the world were changing: his father, although a bandit chief, had let him go to jail, while this stingy old man, with no halo of adventure about him, gave him a knife; and here were Miss Ware and Mr. Farnsworth and Mrs. Calkins and the jailer, none of them smugglers, who were very kind.

Farnsworth rose to go. Then Jim, summoning all his courage, asked a question which had long been trembling on his lips.

"What do they do to smugglers, Mr. Farnsworth?"

"Fine 'em, or put 'em in jail, or both. Why?"

"Nothing much," said Jim, but obviously he was cast down.

Farnsworth walked thoughtfully toward his store. "By George!" he thought suddenly. "I wonder--"

The gossip about the senior Edwards had occurred to him, and at the same time he remembered the quarrel with Lamoury.

"But what nonsense!" he thought. "If Edwards wanted to shoot any one he wouldn't do it in his own back yard, and he wouldn't treat his own boy that way, either." Still, the idea clung to him.

And then he thought of Nancy, and chuckled. "If she comes to the store before she goes to the jail I won't tell her what she'll find there," he promised himself.

Meanwhile, Mr. Peaslee felt a growing discomfort. He ate his dinner and answered the brisk questions of his wife with increasing preoccupation. Like Miss Ware, he was picturing Jim solitary and suffering in his lonely cell. With the utmost sincerity and ingenuousness he condemned Mr. Edwards.

"Hain't he got any feelin' for his own flesh and blood?" he asked himself. "'T ain't right; somebody'd ought to deal with him."

As he pottered about his yard after dinner, he finally worked himself up to the point of speaking to Edwards himself.

Even his righteous indignation would not have led him to this undertaking had he known Mr. Edwards better, or realized the father's present mood. Hurt exceedingly by Jim's lying and contempt of his wishes, hurt even more through his disappointed desire to help his boy, Mr. Edwards was sore and sensitive, discontented both with Jim and with himself. He did not want Jim in jail, he told himself; and the neighbors who were so uniformly a.s.suming that he did might better give their thoughts to matters that concerned them more. He would get the boy out of jail quick enough if the boy would only let him.

As he stepped out of the house to do an errand at the barn, Mr.

Peaslee hailed him over the dividing fence. Somewhat put out, Mr.

Edwards nevertheless turned and walked toward his neighbor. Mr.

Peaslee, leaning over the fence, began.

"Ed'ards," he said, reaching out an anxious, deprecatory hand, "don't ye think you're jest a leetle mite hard on that boy o'

yourn--"

He got no further. Edwards gave him a look that made him s.h.i.+ver, and cut the conversation short by turning on his heel and marching toward the barn.

"Dretful ha'sh man, dretful ha's.h.!.+" Mr. Peaslee muttered to himself.

"Nice, likely boy as ever was. If I had a boy like that, I swan I wouldn't treat him so con-sarned mean!"

He turned away much shocked, and saw the Calico Cat watching him ironically from the chicken-house. "Drat that cat!" said he. "I ain't goin' to stay round here--not with that beast grinning at me."

He got his hat and started up-town, not knowing in the least what he intended to do there. He stopped, however, at every shop window and studied baseb.a.l.l.s, bats, tivoli-boards, accordions. He was beginning to wonder if a twenty-five-cent knife was enough to console Jim for his unmerited incarceration.

He was gazing forlornly in at the window of Upham's drugstore, where some half-dozen harmonicas were displayed, and wondering if Jim would be allowed to play one in his dungeon cell, when Hibbard spoke to him.

He drew the lawyer aside, and, peering closely into his face with anxious eyes exaggerated by his spectacles, said insinuatingly:--

"Jest 'twixt you and me kinder confidential, Pete ain't hurt bad, is he? You don't mind sayin', do ye?"

Jake drew himself up, surprised and suspicious. Did the old fool think him as innocent as all that?

"He's hurt bad, Mr. Peaslee, bad," he said, with dignity. "Of course it isn't fatal--unless it should mortify." He waved his hand deprecatingly. "I can't imagine what that Edwards boy used in his gun."

Mr. Peaslee knew: the marble! He trembled. Still, he knew Jake's reputation. A shrewd thought visited his troubled mind.

"What doctor's seein' him?" he asked.

"Doctor!" exclaimed Hibbard, irritated. "Doctor! You know these French Canadians. They're worse scared of a doctor than of the evil one himself. Pete's usin' some old woman's stuff on his wounds,--bear's grease, rattlesnake oil, catnip tea,--what do I know? I can't make him see a doctor."

"Some doctor'll have to testify to court, won't they?" persisted Mr. Peaslee.

"Oh, I'll look out for that, don't you fear!" the lawyer said easily; but nevertheless he made a pretext for leaving the old man.

Perhaps had Mr. Peaslee's fears not been so keen, he would have taken some comfort from this conversation; but as it was he felt that the lawyer was dangerous; he feared that Pete really was badly hurt. It would go hard, then, with Jim. It would, by the same token, go hard with himself should he confess.

Suddenly he turned and rushed into Upham's store.

"Upham," said he, "I want _that_!"

And he pointed straight at a big harmonica with a strange and wonderful "harp attachment"--bright-colored and of amazing possibilities.

Upham, a neat little gentleman with nicely trimmed side-whiskers, who was always fluttered by the unexpected, hesitated, half opened his mouth, and then forgot either to shut it or to speak.

"Why, Mr. Peaslee," he stammered at last, "it's real expensive!

You--it's two dollars and seventy-five cents."

"Don't care nothin' what it costs," said Mr. Peaslee, who was in a hurry for fear lest he should think twice.

When he came out of the store with the harmonica in his hands, he almost stumbled into Miss Ware. She was on her way to Jim, and, of course, her mind was full of his affairs. Here was Mr. Edwards's next neighbor. She impulsively stopped to ask if the misguided father still held to his resolution about Jim.

Mr. Peaslee had reason to know that he did, and said so. "I tell ye, Miss Ware," said he, with much emotion, "he belongs to a stony-hearted generation, and that's a fact. He ain't got any compa.s.sion in him, seems though."

"It's a shame, a perfect shame!" exclaimed Nancy.

"'T ain't right," said Mr. Peaslee, with a warmth which surprised the young woman, and made her warm to this old man, whom she had always thought so selfish. "'T ain't right--your own flesh and blood so."