Lifted Masks Part 23

But Stubby did not get the soda. He put the dime in his pocket and turned toward home. Something was the matter with his legs--they acted funny about carrying him. He tried to whistle, but something was the matter with his lips, too.

Counting this dime, he now had a dollar and eighty cents, and it was the twenty-eighth day of July. "Thirty days has September--April, June and November--" he was saying to himself. Then July was one of the long ones. Well, _that_ was a good thing! Been a great deal worse if July was a short one. Again he tried to whistle, and that time did manage to pipe out a few shrill little notes.

When Hero came running up the hill to meet him he slapped him on the back and cried, "h.e.l.lo, Hero!" in tones fairly swaggering with bravado.

That night he engaged his father in conversation--the phrase is well adapted to the way Stubby went about it. "How is it about--'bout things like taxes"--Stubby crossed his knees and swung one foot to show his indifference--"if you have _almost_ enough--do they sometimes let you off?"--the detachment was a shade less perfect on that last.

His father laughed scoffingly. "Well, I guess _not!_"

"I thought maybe," said Stubby, "if a person had _tried_ awful hard--and had _most_ enough--"

Something inside him was all shaky, so he didn't go on. His father said that _trying_ didn't have anything to do with it.

It was hard for Stubby not to sob out that he thought trying _ought_ to have something to do with it, but he only made a hissing noise between his teeth that took the place of the whistle that wouldn't come.

"Kind of seems," he resumed, "if a person would have had enough if they hadn't been beat out of it, maybe--if he done the best he could--"

His father snorted derisively and informed him that doing the best you could made no difference to the government; hard luck stories didn't go when it came to the laws of the land.

Thereupon Stubby took a little walk out to the alley and spent a considerable time in contemplation of the neighbour's chicken-yard.

When he came back he walked right up to his father and standing there, feet planted, shoulders squared, wanted to know, in a desperate little voice: "If some one else was to give--say a dollar and eighty cents for Hero, could I take the other seventy out of my paper money?"

The man turned upon him roughly. "Uh-_huh_! _That's_ it, is it? _That's_ why you're getting so smart all of a sudden about government! Look a-here. Just l'me tell you something. You're lucky if you git enough to _eat_ this winter. Do you know there's talk of the factory shuttin' down? _Dog_ tax! Why you're lucky if you git _shoes_."

Stubby had turned away and was standing with his back to his father, hands in his pockets.

"And l'me tell you some'en else, young man. If you got any dollar and eighty cents, you give it to your mother!"

As Stubby was turning the corner of the house he called after him: "How'd you like to have me get you an automobile?"

He went doggedly from house to house the next afternoon, but n.o.body had any jobs. When Hero came running out to him that night he patted him, but didn't speak.

That evening as they were sitting in the back yard--Stubby and Hero a little apart from the others--his father was discoursing with his brother about anarchists. They were getting commoner, his father thought. There were a good many of them at the shop. They didn't call themselves that, but that was what they were.

"Well, what is an anarchist, anyhow?" Stubby's mother wanted to know.

"Why, an anarchist," her lord informed her, "is one that's against the government. He don't believe in the law and order. The real bad anarchists shoot them that tries to enforce the laws of the land.

Guess if you'd read the papers these days you'd know."

Stubby's brain had been going round and round and these words caught in it as it whirled. The government--the laws of the land--why, it was the government and the laws of the land that were going to shoot Hero! It was the government--the laws of the land--that didn't care how hard you had _tried_--didn't care whether you had been cheated--didn't care how you _felt_--didn't care about anything except getting the money! His brain got hotter. Well, _he_ didn't believe in the government, either. He was one of those people--those anarchists--that were against the laws of the land.

He'd done the very best he could and now the government was going to take Hero away from him just because he couldn't get--_couldn't_ get--that other seventy cents.

Stubby's mother didn't hear her son crying that night. That was because Stubby was successful in holding the pillow over his head.

The next morning he looked in one of the papers he was carrying to see what it said about anarchists. Sure enough, some place way off somewhere, the anarchists had shot somebody that was trying to enforce the laws of the land. The laws of the land--that didn't _care_.

That afternoon as Stubby tramped around looking for jobs he saw a good many boys playing with dogs. None of them seemed to be worrying about whether their dogs had checks. To Stubby's hot little brain and sore little heart came the thought that they didn't love their dogs any more than he loved Hero, either. But the government didn't care whether he loved Hero or not! Pooh!--what was that to the government? All it cared about was getting the money. He stood for a long time watching a boy giving his dog a bath. The dog was trying to get away and the boy and another boy were having lots of fun about it. All of a sudden Stubby turned and ran away--ran down an alley, ran through a number of alleys, just kept on running, blinded by the tears.

And that night, in the middle of the night, that something in his head going round and round, getting hotter and hotter, he decided that the only thing for him to do was to shoot the policeman who came to take Hero away on the morning of August first--that would be day after to-morrow.

All night long policemen with revolvers stood around his bed. When his mother called him at half-past four he was shaking so he could scarcely get into his clothes.

On his way home from his route Stubby had to pa.s.s a police-station.

He went on the other side of the street and stood there looking across. One of the policemen was playing with a dog!

Suddenly he wanted to rush over and throw himself down at that policeman's feet--sob out the story--ask him to please, _please_ wait till he could get that other seventy cents.

But just then the policeman got up and went in the station, and Stubby was afraid to go in the police-station.

That policeman complicated things for Stubby. Before that it had been quite simple. The policeman would come to enforce the law of the land; but he did not believe in the law of the land, so he would just kill the policeman. But it seemed a policeman wasn't just a person who enforced the laws of the land. He was also a person who played with a dog.

After a whole day of walking around thinking about it--his eyes burning, his heart pounding--he decided that the thing to do was to warn the policeman by writing a letter. He did not know whether real anarchists warned them or not, but Stubby couldn't get reconciled to the idea of killing a person without telling him you were going to do it. It seemed that even a policeman should be told--especially a policeman who played with a dog.

The following letter was pencilled by a shaking hand, late that afternoon. It was written upon a barrel in the Lynch wood-shed, on a piece of wrapping paper, a bristly little head bending over it:

To the Policeman who comes to take my dog 'cause I ain't got the two fifty--'cause I tried but could only get one eighty--'cause a man was off his nut and didn't pay me what I earned--

This is to tell you I am an anarchist and do not believe in the government or the law and the order and will shoot you when you come. I wouldn't a been an anarchist if I could a got the money and I tried to get it but I couldn't get it--not enough. I don't think the government had ought to take things you like like I like Hero so I am against the government.

Thought I would tell you first.

Yours truly,

F. LYNCH.

I don't see how I can shoot you 'cause where would I get the revolver. So I will have to do it with the butcher knife. Folks are sometimes killed that way 'cause my father read it in the paper.

If you wanted to take the one eighty and leave Hero till I can get the seventy I will not do anything to you and would be very much obliged.

1113 Willow street.

The letter was properly addressed and sealed--not for nothing had Stubby's teacher given those instructions in the art of letter writing. The stamp he paid for out of the dime the man gave him to get a soda with--and forget his troubles.

Now Bill O'Brien was on the desk at the police-station and Miss Murphy of the Herald stood in with Bill. That was how it came about that the next morning a fat policeman, an eager-looking girl and a young fellow with a kodak descended into the hollow to 1113 Willow street.

A little boy peeped around the corner of the house--such a wild-looking little boy--hair all standing up and eyes glittering. A yellow dog ran out and barked. The boy darted out and grabbed the dog in his arms and in that moment the girl called to the man with the black box: "Right now! Quick! Get him!"

They were getting ready to shoot Hero! That box was the way the police did it! He must--oh, he _must--must_ ... Boy and dog sank to the ground--but just the same the boy was s.h.i.+elding the dog!

When Stubby had pulled himself together the policeman was holding Hero. He said that Hero was certainly a fine dog--he had a dog a good deal like him at home. And Miss Murphy--she was choking back sobs herself--knew how he could earn the seventy cents that afternoon.

In such wise do a good anarchist and a good story go down under the same blow. Some of those sobs Miss Murphy choked back got into what she wrote about Stubby and his yellow dog and the next day citizens with no sense of the dramatic sent money enough to check Hero through life.

At first Stubby's father said he had a good mind to lick him. But something in the quality of Miss Murphy's journalism left a hazy feeling of there being something remarkable about his son. He confided to his good wife that it wouldn't surprise him much if Stubby was some day President. Somebody had to be President, said he, and he had noticed it was generally those who in their youthful days did things that made lively reading in the newspapers.