The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 8

It was about some children that he had once known, who had seen a boot sticking out of a tree, just as we had done, and how a frightful old witch had come along, and told them that if they went away for a year and a day and didn't say a word about the boot to any one, and then went back, they would by that time have grown sufficiently to climb up and get the boot, and that they would find it full of gold pieces. But if, during the year and the day, they so much as mentioned the boot to any one but their father, they would find it full of the most dreadful black and yellow spiders which would chase them all the way to Jericho, and bite their fat calves every few steps.

"This," said he, "may be that kind of a boot. Now promise not to talk about it for a year and a day--not even to me--and at the end of that time, why we'll all go and see what's in it. No," he said, "you mustn't go to look at it every now and then--that would spoil the charm. Let me see. This is the twenty-eighth--a year and a day--hum." And he made his calculations. Then he said: "By the way, Mary, don't you and the children ever get hungry between meals? If you were to take bread and meat, and make up sandwiches to take on your excursions, they'd never be missed. I'd see to it," he said, "that they weren't missed. Growing children, you know." And he strode on, Ellen riding on his shoulder like a princess on her genii.

III

Ellen and I were very firm to have nothing to do with the boot in the oak tree; and we had two picnics in the hollow and played for hours in the adjoining woods without once looking up. Mary had become very strict with us about scattering papers and eggsh.e.l.ls at our out-of-door spreads; and whatever fragments of food were left over she would make into a neat package and hide away under a stone; but in other matters she became less and less precise: as, for instance, she left Ellen's best doll somewhere in the neighborhood of the hollow oak, and had to go all the way back for it in the dusk; and another time (we had also been to the store at Bartow for yeast) she left her purse that had two months' wages in it and more, but wasn't lucky enough to find that.

It was considered remarkable on all hands that Braddish had not yet been caught. Hagan's heelers, who swung many votes, had grown very sharp with the authorities, and no efforts were spared to locate the criminal (he was usually referred to as the "murderer") and round him up. Almost daily, for a time, we were constantly meeting parties of strange men, strolling innocently about the country at large or private estates as if they were looking things over with a view to purchase. And now and then we met pairs of huntsmen, though there was no game in season, very citified, with brand-new shotguns, and knickerbockers, and English deer-stalker caps. And these were accompanied by dogs, neither well suited nor broken to the business of finding birds and holding them.

There was one pair of sportsmen whose makes.h.i.+ft was a dropsical coach dog, very much spotted. And, I must be forgiven for telling the truth, one was followed, _ventre a terre_, by a dachshund. My father, a very grave man with his jest, said that these were famous detectives, so accoutred as not to excite comment. And their mere presence in it was enough to a.s.sure the least rational that Braddish must by now have fled the country. "Their business," he said, "is to close the stable door, if they can find it, and meanwhile to spend the money of the many in the roadhouses of the few."

But I have sometimes thought that the pseudo-sportsmen were used to give Braddish a foolhardy sense of security, so that other secret-service men, less open in method and less comic in aspect, might work un.o.bserved. Indeed, it turned out that an under-gardener employed by Mrs. Kirkbride, our neighbor, about this time, a shambling, peaceful, half-witted goat of a man, was one such; and a perfect red-Indian upon a trail. It was Mary who spotted him. He hung about our kitchen door a good deal; and tried to make friends with her and sympathize with her.

But he showed himself a jot too eager, and then a jot too peppery when she did not fall into his nets. Mary told my father, and my father told Mrs. Kirkbride. Mrs. Kirkbride had had a very satisfactory job at painting done for her by Braddish; and although a law-abiding woman, she did not propose personally to a.s.sist the law--even by holding her tongue. So she approached the under-gardener, at a time when the head-gardener and the coachman were in hearing, and she said, plenty loud enough to be heard: "Well, officer, have you found a clew yet? Have you pumped my coachman? He was friends with Braddish," and so on, so that she destroyed that man's utility for that place and time. But others were more fortunate. And all of a sudden the country was convulsed with excitement at hearing that Braddish had been seen on the Bartow Road at night, and had been fired at, but had made good his escape into the Boole Dogge Farm.

Bloodhounds were at once sent for. I remember that my father stayed up from town that thrilling morning, and walked up and down in front of the house looking up at the sky. I now know that he was conjuring it to rain with all his power of pity--prayer maybe--though I think, like most commuters, he was weak on prayer. Anyhow, rain it did. The sky had been overcast for two days, drawing slowly at the great beds of moisture in the northeast, and that morning, accompanied by high winds, the first drops fell and became presently a deluging northeaster, very cold for midsummer.

As chance would have it, there had been a false scent down on Throgg's Neck, upon which the nearest accessible bloodhounds had been employed.

So that there was a delay in locating them, and fetching them to the Boole Dogge Farm. We went over to the Boulevard--my father, Ellen, and I--all under umbrellas, to see them go by. They were a sorry pair of animals, and very weary with having been out all night, in all sorts of country, upon feet more accustomed to the smooth asphalt of a kennel.

But there was a crowd of men with them, some in uniform, one I remember in a great coat, who rode upon one of the old-fas.h.i.+oned, high bicycles, and there was a show of clubs and bludgeons, and one man wore openly upon his hip a rusty, blued revolver, and on the whole the little procession had a look of determination and of power to injure that was rather terrible. I have sometimes thought that if I had been my father I would not have taken Ellen and me to see them go by. But why not? I would not have missed it for kingdoms.

By the time the pursuit had reached the Boole Dogge Farm so much rain had fallen as to render the bloodhounds' noses of no account. Still the police were not deterred from beating that neck of land with great thoroughness and energy. But it proved to be the old story of the needle in the haystack. Either they could not find the needle or there was no needle to be found. Of course, they discovered the spring with the broken cup, and the hollow oak, and made sure that it was here that Braddish slept at night, and they found other traces of his recent habitation--an ingenious snare with a catbird in it, still warm; the deep, inadvertent track of a foot in a spot of bog; but of the man himself neither sight nor sound.

In the afternoon, the rain having held up for a while, nay father walked over to the farm to see how the hunt was progressing. This, I think, was for Mary's sake, who had been all the morning in so terrible a state of agitation that it seemed as if she must have news for better or worse, or die of suspense. My father was not away longer than necessary.

He returned as he had gone, wearing a cheerful, incisive look very characteristic of him, and whistling short s.n.a.t.c.hes of tunes.

He said that the beaters were still at work; but that they were wet to the skin and the heart was out of them. Yes. They would keep an eye on the place, but they were pretty well convinced that the bird had flown.

If, however, the bird had not flown, said my father, he should be quick about it. We were on the front porch to meet my father, and I remember he paused and looked out over the bay for some time. It was roughish with occasional white caps, and had a dreary, stormy look. Our rowboat, moored to a landing stage or float, just off our place, was straining and tugging at her rope.

"That boat will blow loose," said my father, "if she isn't pulled up.

But I'm not going to do it. I'm wet enough as it is.

"Would you like me to try, sir?" Mary called.

"What's the use?" said my father. "You'll only spoil your clothes. And, besides, the boat's old and rotten. She's not worth two dollars for kindling wood. I rather hope she does blow away, so as to provide me with a much-needed excuse to buy a better one. The oars, I see, are in her. Never mind, they're too heavy. I never liked them."

Then he put his arm around Ellen.

"By the way, Teenchy," said he, "your old boot is still sticking out of the oak tree."

"Oh, papa," cried Ellen, "you said we mustn't talk about it--or it would be full of spiders."

"I said _you_ mustn't talk about it," said he. "So don't. Anyhow"--and he included Mary in his playful smile--"it's still there--so make the most of _that_."

He turned to go into the house, and then:

"Oh, by the way, Mary," said he, "you have not asked for your wages recently, and I think you are owed for three months. If you will come to the study in a little while I will give them to you." He was always somewhat quizzical. "Would you rather have cash or a check?"

Personally I didn't know the difference, and, at the time, I admired Mary exceedingly for being able to make a choice. She chose cash.

But till some years later I thought she must have repented this decision, for not long after she went into a kind of mild hysterics, and cried a good deal, and said something about "such kindness--this--side Heaven." And was heard to make certain comparisons between the thoughtfulness and pitifulness of a certain commuter and the Christ.

But these recollections are a little vague in my head as to actual number of tears shed, cries uttered and words spoken. But I do know for an incontestable fact that during the night, just as my father had prophesied, our rowboat was blown loose by the northeast gale, and has not been seen from that day to this. And I know that when I woke up in the morning and called to Mary she was not in her bed, and I found in mine, under the pillow, a ridiculous old-fas.h.i.+oned brooch, that I had ever loved to play with, and that had been Mary's mother's.

My father was very angry about Mary's going.

"Good Lord!" he said; "we can't pretend to conceal it!" But then he looked out over Pelham Bay, and it had swollen and waxed wrathful during the night, and was as a small ocean--with great waves and billows that came roaring over docks and sea-walls. And then his temper abated and he said: "Of course she would--any woman would--sense or no sense."

And, indeed, the more I know of women, which is to say, and I thank G.o.d for it, the less I know of them, the convinceder am I that my father was right.

In other words, if a woman's man has nine chances in ten of drowning by himself she will go with him so as to make it ten chances, and a certainty of her being there whatever happens. And so, naturally, man cannot tolerate the thought of woman getting the right, based on intelligence, to vote.

IV

Twenty-five years later I paid Mary and Braddish a pleasant Sat.u.r.day-to-Monday visit in what foreign country it is not necessary to state. The tiny Skinnertown house of their earlier ambition, with its little yard, had now been succeeded by a great, roomy, rambling habitation, surrounded by thousands of acres sprinkled with flocks of fat, grazing sheep. It was a grand, rolling upland of a country that they had fled to; cool, summer weather all the year round, and no mosquitoes. Hospitable smoke curled from a dozen chimneys; shepherds galloped up on wiry horses and away again; scarlet pa.s.sion-vines poured over roofs and verandas like cataracts of glory; and there was incessant laughter and chatter of children at play.

Of their final flight from the Boole Dogge Farm in my father's boat, across the bay to Long Island in the teeth of the northeaster, I now first heard the details; and of their subsequent hiding among swamps and woods; and how, when it had seemed that they must be captured and Braddish go to jail forever and ever, Mary thought that she could face the separation more cheerfully if she was his wife. And so one rainy night they knocked upon the door of a clergyman, and told him their story. They were starving, it seems, and it was necessary to look about for mercy. And, as luck would have it, the clergyman, an old man, had officiated at the wedding of Mary's parents; and he had had some trouble in his day with the law about a boundary fence, and was down on the law.

And he fed them and married them, and said that he would square matters with his conscience--if he could. And he kept them in his attic for two days, which was their honeymoon--and then--a night of dogs and lanterns and shouting--he smuggled them off to the swamps again, and presided over their hiding until an opportunity came to get them aboard a tramp s.h.i.+p--and that was all there was to it, except that they had prospered and been happy ever since.

I asked Mary about my father's part in it. But she gave him a clean bill.

"He put two and two together," she said, "and he dropped a hint or two--and he paid me all my back wages in American money, and he made me a handsome present in English gold, but he never talked things over, never mentioned Will's name even."

"It was the toe of my boot," said Will, "sticking out of the tree that made him guess where I was. You see, I'd climbed up in the hollow to hide, and to keep there without moving I had to stick my foot out through a knothole. I was up there all the day they tried to get the bloodhounds after me, with my boot sticking out. And they were beating around that tree for hours, but n.o.body looked up."

"I've always wondered," said I, "why, they didn't send a man up inside the tree."

"I've always thought," said Will, "that n.o.body liked to propose it for fear he'd be elected to do it himself. But maybe it didn't enter anybody's head. Anyhow, all's well that ends well."

"Mary," I said, "do you remember how my father told Ellen and me to go back in a year and a day, and look in the boot?"

She nodded.

"Well," I said, "we went--hand in hand--and there was still a boot sticking out. And I climbed up, after several failures, and got it. It wasn't full of gold, but it did have two gold pieces in it. One each."

"What a memory your father had," said Mary: "he never forgot anything."

Later I was talking with Will alone, and I asked him why he had run away in the first place.

"Why," he said, "I had no chance with the law. The only outsiders who saw the shooting were friends of Hagan's; there was bad blood between us. They'd sworn to do for me. And they would. I shot Hagan with his own gun. He pulled it on me, and I turned it into him, by the greatest piece of quickness and good luck that ever I had. And somehow--somehow--I couldn't see myself swinging for that, or going to prison for life. And I saw my chance and took it. I told the whole thing to the minister that married us; he believed me, and so would any one that knew me then--except Hagan's friends, and whatever they believed they'd have sworn the opposite. Do you think your father thought I was a b.l.o.o.d.y murderer? Look here," he said, "I don't know just how to put it--it was twenty-five years ago, all that--Mary'll tell you, if you ask her, that she's been absolutely happy every minute of all that time--even when we were hiding in swamps and starving. Now that side of it wouldn't have entered the law's head, would it?" He smiled very peacefully. "Out here, of course," he said, "it's very different. Almost everybody here has gotten away from something or other. And mostly we've done well, and are happy and self-respecting. It's a big world," he looked out affectionately over his rolling, upland acres, "and a funny world. Did Mary tell you that I've just been re-elected sheriff?"

THE DESPOILER