Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 4

"I thought we'd find him along here. This is the road they always take,"

a low voice was saying; "you and Sam stand here, John and me'll tackle him from this side. He'll put up a stiff fight, you bet."

Phelan opened his eyes, and tried to remember where he was.

"Gos.h.!.+ look at that bulldog!" came another whisper, and at the same moment Corporal jumped to his feet, growling angrily.

As he did so, four men sprang through the opening of the shed, and seized Phelan by the arms and legs.

"Look out there," cried one excitedly; "don't let him escape; here's the handcuffs."

"But here," cried Phelan, "what's up; what you doing to me?"

By this time Corporal, thoroughly roused, made a vicious lunge at the nearest man. The next minute there was a sharp report of a pistol, and the bull-terrier went yelping and limping out into the night.

"You coward!" cried Phelan, struggling to rise, "if you killed that dog--"

"Get those shackles on his legs," shouted one of the men. "Is the wagon ready, Sam? Take his legs there, I've got his head. Leave the truck here, we've got to drive like sand to catch that train!"

After being dragged to the road and thrown into a spring wagon, Phelan found himself lying on his back, jolting over a rough country road, his three vigilant captors sitting beside him with pistols in hand.

Any effort on his part to explain or seek information was promptly and emphatically discouraged. But in time he gathered, from the bits let fall by his captors, that he was an escaped convict, of a most desperate character, for whom a reward was offered, and that he had been at large twenty-four hours.

In vain did he struggle for a hearing. Only once did he get a response to his oft-repeated plea of innocence. It was when he told how he had come by the clothes he had on. For once Phelan got a laugh when he did not relish it.

"Got 'em off a scarecrow, did you?" said the man at his head, when the fun had subsided; "say, I want to be 'round when you tell that to the Superintendent of the Penitentiary--I ain't heard him laugh in ten years!"

So, in the face of such unbelief, Phelan lapsed into silence and gloom.

What became of him concerned him less, at the moment, than the fate of Corporal, and the thought of the faithful little beast wounded and perhaps dying out there in the fields, made him sick at heart.

Just as they came in sight of the lights of the station, the whistle of the freight was heard down the track and the horses were beaten to a gallop.

Phelan was hurried from the wagon into an empty box car, with his full guard in attendance. As the train pulled out he heard a little whimper beside him and there, panting for breath after his long run, and with one ear hanging limp and b.l.o.o.d.y, cowered Corporal. Phelan's hands were not at his disposal, but even if they had been it is doubtful if he would have denied Corp the joy for once of kissing him.

Through the rest of the night the heavy cars rumbled over the rails, and the men took turn about sleeping and guarding the prisoner. Only once did Phelan venture another question:

"Say, you sports, you don't mind telling me where you are taking me, do you?"

"Listen at his gaff!" said one. "He'll know all right when he gets to Nashville."

Phelan sent such a radiant smile into the darkness that it threatened to reveal itself. Then he slipped his encircled wrists about Corporal's body and giving him a squeeze whispered:

"It's better'n the b.u.mpers, Corp."

At the Penitentiary next day there was consternation and dismay when instead of the desperate criminal, who two days before had scaled the walls and dropped to freedom, an innocent little Irishman was presented, whose only offense apparently was in having donned, temporarily, the garb of crime.

As the investigation proceeded, Phelan found it expedient, to become excessively indignant. That an American citizen, strolling harmlessly through the fields of a summer evening, and being caught in a shower, should attempt to dry his clothes in an unused shed, and find himself attacked and bound, and hurried away without his belongings to a distant city, was an inconceivable outrage. If a shadow of doubt remained as to his ident.i.ty, a score of prominent gentlemen in the city would be able to identify him. He named them, and added that he was totally unable to hazard a guess as to what form their resentment of his treatment would a.s.sume.

The authorities looked grave. Could Mr. Harrihan remember just what articles he had left behind? Mr. Harrihan could. A suit of clothes, a pair of shoes, a hat, a toilet set, and a small sum of money; "the loss of which," added Phelan with a fine air of indifference, "are as nothing compared to the indignity offered to my person."

Would the gentleman be satisfied if the cost of these articles, together with the railroad fare back to Lebanon Junction be paid him? The gentleman, after an injured pause, announced that he would.

And thus it was that Mr. Phelan Harrihan, in immaculate raiment, presented himself at the Sixth Annual Reunion of the Alpha Delta fraternity and, with a complacent smile encircling a ten-cent cigar, won fresh laurels by recounting, with many adornments, the adventures of the previous night.

"POP"

The gloomy corridor in the big Baltimore hospital was still and deserted save for a nurse who sat at a flat-topped desk under a green lamp mechanically transferring figures from one chart to another. It was the period of quiet that usually precedes the first restless stirring of the sick at the breaking of dawn. The silence was intense as only a silence can be that waits momentarily for an interrupting sound.

Suddenly it came in a prolonged, imperative ring of the telephone bell.

So insistent was the call that the nurse's hand closed over the transmitter long before the burr ceased. The office was notifying Ward B that an emergency case had been brought in and an immediate operation was necessary.

With prompt efficiency the well-ordered machinery for saving human life was put in motion. Soft-footed nurses emerged from the shadows and moved quickly about, making necessary arrangements. A trim, comely woman, straight of feature and clear of eye, gave directions in low decisive tones. When the telephone rang the second time she answered it.

"Yes, Office," she said, "this is Miss Fletcher. They are not going to operate? Too late? I see. Very well. Send the patient up to No. 16.

Everything is ready."

Even as she spoke the complaining creak of the elevator could he heard, and presently two orderlies appeared at the end of the corridor bearing a stretcher.

Beside it, with head erect and jaw set, strode a strangely commanding figure. Six feet two he loomed in the shadows, a gaunt, raw-boned old mountaineer. On his head was a tall, wide-brimmed hat and in his right hand he carried a bulky carpet sack. The left sleeve of his long-tailed coat hung empty to the elbow. The ma.s.sive head with its white flowing beard and hawklike face, the beaked nose and fierce, deep-set eyes, might have served as a model for Michael Angelo when he modeled his immortal Moses.

As the orderlies pa.s.sed through the door of No. 16 and lowered the stretcher, the old man put down his carpet sack and grimly watched the nurse uncover the patient. Under the worn homespun coverlet, stained with the dull dyes of barks and berries, lay an emaciated figure, just as it had been brought into the hospital. One long coa.r.s.e garment covered it, and the bare feet with their prominent ankle bones and the large work-hardened hands might have belonged to either a boy or a girl.

"Take that thar head wrappin' off!" ordered the old man peremptorily.

A nurse carefully unwound the rough woolen scarf and as she did so a ma.s.s of red hair fell across the pillow, hair that in spite of its matted disorder showed flashes of gleaming gold.

"We'll get her on the bed," a night nurse said to an a.s.sistant. "Put your arm under her knees. Don't jar the stretcher!"

Before the novice could obey another and a stronger arm was thrust forward.

"Stand back thar, some of you-uns," commanded a loud voice, "I'll holp move Sal myself."

In vain were protests from nurses and orderlies alike, the old mountaineer seemed bent on making good use of his one arm and with quick dexterity he helped to lift her on the bed.

"Now, whar's the doctor?" he demanded, standing with feet far apart and head thrown back.

The doctor was at the desk in the corridor, speaking to Miss Fletcher in an undertone:

"We only made a superficial examination down-stairs," he was saying, "but it is evidently a ruptured appendix. If she's living in a couple of hours I may be able to operate. But it's ten to one she dies on the table."

"Who are they, and where did they come from?" Miss Fletcher asked curiously.

"Their name is Hawkins, and they are from somewhere in the Kentucky mountains. Think of his starting with her in that condition! He can't read or write; it's the first time he has ever been in a city. I am afraid he's going to prove troublesome. You'd better get him out of there as soon as possible."

But anyone, however mighty in authority, who proposed to move Jeb Hawkins when he did not choose to be moved reckoned unknowingly. All tactics were exhausted from suggestion to positive command, and the rules of the hospital were quoted in vain.