Part 15

So she stayed on, in her far-away pew, to the remotest corner of which she was crowded as the enormous church filled to its capacity. With the entrance of the preacher into the pulpit, though, she was conscious of a distinct "let-down." She had never liked sermons; they dealt with things so formally. Even when the priests made their greatest efforts to be plain-spoken and understandable, she seldom got any personal help from their discourse. They were prone to denunciations of adultery and drunkenness and other sins of which she was innocent, and to vague exhortations looking toward a hereafter on which her imagination had never taken any but the feeblest hold. But what was this priest saying? Something about a little household that the Lord had loved, and one of its two sisters had gone astray!

The woman sitting next to Mary nudged her other neighbor and glanced in the direction of Mary's face, thrust forward as if so as not to lose a syllable, the tears chasing each other unheeded down its furrows. In her lap Mary's gnarled hands were clasped in painful intensity.

Over and over, since she was a tiny child in Ireland, she had heard this Catholic rendering, of Mary of Bethany's story, but it had never meant anything to her. To-day it meant everything.

"An' I said I niver wanted t' see her ag'in if she'd disgraaced me," she told herself, and was appalled at the remembrance.

That afternoon, toward the early dusk, she sat in the dark kitchen holding Annie in her lap; all the other children were out. Casey, who had not left the house all day, was huddled up to the stove, smoking his rank pipe; he was unshaven and unwashed, and wore a coarse undershirt of a peculiar mustard color which lent his pallid, grime-streaked face a ghastly hue. He had been talking about a "gran' job" of which a man had told him, and building large castles about moving to a better street and a better house and buying a "parlie suit be aisy paymints."

Mary listened believingly; twenty years of listening to these dreams which never came true had not killed her hopefulness. As she listened, though, her hopes outran Casey's, for she could conceive no possible felicity without Angela Ann. How to introduce the now-forbidden subject of Angela was a problem, but clearly the only way was to plunge in.

"Yis," she assented, "I t'ink we should have a parlie. It have always been my belafe thot if we'd had a parlie Ang'la wouldn't niver 'a' wint away. Ag'in' she come home, I'm goin' t' kape th' parlie noice fer her an' lave her have her beau ivry noight, an' no wan t' bother thim. An' I ain't goin' t' lave her go downtown t' work no more--theer's too manny bad min. She kin stay home an' moind th' house, an' I'll git scrubbin' t' do t' th' Imporium. Wid what you earn an' what I earn, we kin give her mebbe a dollar a wake fer spindin' money."

Mary waxed excited as her dream unfolded, but Casey was ironical.

"Whin d'ye _ixpict_ her?" he inquired, with pride in the sarcasm.

"I dunno," said Mary, undaunted, "but I know she'll come. An' whin she do, I'll not ask her anny quistions. I don' keer how she come t' me, so she come. No matter what she've done, theer mus' be dipths she haven't r'ached yit, an' all I ask now is t' save her from gittin' anny worse than she be. D'ye know what I prayed t' th' Mother o God befoore I lift th' church this mornin'? I prayed that our Ang'la Ann'd git in trouble--in tur'ble trouble 'n' disgraace so thot thim thot's lid her away'd t'row her out, 'n' no wan but God 'n' her mother'd take her in!"

In speechless astonishment Casey gazed at the vehement woman before him. Some instinct made him hold his peace while she told about the priest's first mass, about the sermon, about the answer she confidently expected to her prayer. While he listened, his easy Irish emotionalism caught the contagion of her belief, and his tears flowed unchecked as he alternately cursed the man that had led Angela away, and prophesied glowingly of the "parlie" that was to be.

It was pitchy dark in the kitchen now, and Mary got up to light the lamp. As she did so, a sound at the door caused her nearly to drop the lamp. Hurrying to the door, she threw it open, and with the light in one hand peered out into the black yard.

"Here, pussy, pussy," she called. Then, as her call was answered, "My God! what did I tell ye? Tis the wan-eyed cat!"

III

The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.

With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could "r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too many flourishes.

"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at ---- West Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in the same breath.

Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of Saturday night.

"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the "parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t' take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight, an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind on her clo'es."

The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered stairs led to a "hotel."

They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating without accuracy.

"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room, rear, third floor."

"In a minute!" called Angela Ann's voice when Mary had knocked.

"My God, 'tis hersilf," sobbed Mary, and fell a-weeping violently.

"Ma!" cried Angela Ann, and threw open the door. She had been in bed when they knocked, and had not waited to put on her clothes when she heard her mother's voice. At the touch of her, the clinging clasp of her poor, thin, cold little arms, Mary grew hysterical.

"Don't, Ma, don't," begged Angela.

"She've grieved hersilf sick over ye," said Maggie, unable to forbear this much of a reprimand now that the sinner was found. "Iver since ye wint she've been loike wan crazy. Come, Mary; now ye've got her, brace up!"

"Sure, Ma," echoed the girl, "now ye've got me, brace up, I ain't never goin' t' lave ye no more, Ma--honest t' God, I ain't."

"Wheer ye been?" Mary raised her head, and drawing back from the girl peered anxiously into her face. "In God's name, Ang'la Ann, wheer you been? Tell me ye've kep' dacint, gyurl, tell me ye've kep' dacint!"

Angela sat down on the dingy, disordered bed and began to cry, hiding her face in her hands. For a long moment the silence, save for her soft sobbing, was profound. Then a low moan escaped Mary, a moan of anguish inexpressible, showing how deeply, notwithstanding her resolution of yesterday, she had cherished the hope of her daughter's safety.

Angela raised her head. The pain in her mother's moan was beyond her comprehension, and she could only understand it as horror and condemnation.

"Are ye--are ye--goin' t' t'row me off?"' she asked.

"T'row ye off? Ah, me gyurl, if ye'll on'y stick t' me as long as I'll stick t' you, 'tis all I'll ask o' Hiven! Tis fer yer sake I was prayin' no harm had come t' ye--not fer mine. Whativer happen t' ye, ye're me Ang'la Ann thot I nursed from yer first brith. An' ye don' know all I'm fixin' t' do fer ye--me an' yer pa an' yer Aunt Maggie, here, and yer Uncle Tim----"

And there followed a glowing account of the feast prepared for the prodigal's return.

"Th' idare o' you bein' afraid o' yer pa," chided Mary, "an' him fixin' t' git a stiddy job an' not have ye go downtown no more."

Far shrewder than her mother, Angela Ann did not overestimate this excellent intention of her pa's, but she said nothing of the bitterness that was in her heart on account of his past crimes. It was a long-standing grievance with her that her mother could never, for more than a fleeting, irritated moment at a time, be made to see Casey as others saw him. Angela Ann had been working for him since she was eleven (child-labor laws were lax, then) and giving up her every penny to pay rent and buy insufficient mites of coal and food--just enough to keep them alive and no more--and it was starvation of many sorts that sent her at last into the clutches of them that prey. The girl was full of self-pity, and impatient with her mother because the older woman had forgotten how to rebel.

"Yer pa say, though," added Mary, "thot he won't promise not i' kill the felly thot lid ye away; he've got tur'ble wingeance on him--yer pa have."

Angela Ann smiled grimly. "I guess theer's quite a few pa's lookin' fer him," she said, "but they don't ever seem t' find him."

"Did he prom'se t' marry ye?" asked Mary anxiously.

"I should say not! He promised to make me a primmy donny."

"What's that?" fearfully.

"'Tis a kind of actress that wear tights an' sings," explained Angela. "I'm after r'adin' in books how gran' they be, an' in the papers it tell how the swell fellies do be runnin' after thim with diming necklusses, an' marryin' of 'em. 'Tis all a lie!" she cried shrilly.

"Ye see," Mary could not refrain from reminding her. "I tol' ye thim theayters was all wrong. We kind o' t'ought it might be thim thot got ye, an' yer pa wint t' see this here Halberg, whin we foun' the caard out o' yer pocke'-book. But he said he niver hear tell o' ye."

"Did pa go there?" questioned Angela eagerly. She was all interest to know how the search for her had been carried on, and "did th' p'lice know?" and "how did ye kape it out o' th' papers?"

Yes, it had been Halberg "all the time," she admitted. She had answered his advertisement, and after a week's drill he had sent her, true to his published word, in a "road company" that mitigated the gloom of coal miners' lives by singing and dancing--and carousing--in a circuit of saloons in the soft coal regions of Illinois. When she fell sick, the company abandoned her without the formality of paying her any salary, and a foul-tongued, soft-hearted landlady, whose own young daughter was God knew where, had let Angela stay in her wretched hotel until she was able by dishwashing and lampfilling chores to earn the few dollars to take her back to Chicago.

"But I couldn' get no stren'th back," the girl went on, "an' that woman at th' hotel, Mis' Schlogel, she sez t' me, 'You better go home t' yer ma, that's wheer you better go,' an' she bundled me off Friday mornin'. But I was scairt t' go home right t' wunst till I seen how youse was goin' t' be t' me, so I come here wheer I stayed whin I was studyin' wid O. Halberg, an' Friday night I got awful sick an' laid here all night awake an' burnin' up an' my head achin' t' beat th' band. An' all day Sat'day an' Sunday I wasn't able to go out fer nothin' t' eat, an' th' propri'ter wouldn't order me nothin' sent in fer fear I wouldn't be able t' pay. A woman in the nex' room light-house-keeps, an' she made me tea a couple o' times after she heard I was sick an' alone."

"Why in Hivin's name," Maggie broke in, "did ye niver drap yer ma a line t' say ye were aloive? Ye needn't 'a' tol' wheer ye was, but ye could 'a' said ye were in the land o' th' livin', surely?"

"I was 'shamed," whimpered Angela; "I fought ye wouldn't keer wheer I was if I wasn't doin' dacint."

"Think o' that, now!" cried Mary. "That's all a gyurl do know about her ma. Whin yer a ma yersilf ye'll know better, an' not till thin, I suppose."

Thus was Angela Ann made sure of her welcome home.

"An' not wan but yer own kin know ye've been missin'" said Mary, as she helped the girl to get ready for the return, "so ye kin hol' up yer hid an' look th' world in th' faace. An' may God fergive yer mother the loies she've tol' t' save yer name!"

BORDEN

BY GEORGE C. SHEDD

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER BIGGS

One rainy afternoon I was sitting with my friend Carter, in his log house. Through the open door we could see the road, all cut up by wagon-tracks, running with water; lumps of mud thrust their black heads up in it everywhere; the bordering grass was wet and heavy. And down by the creek the fringe of trees made only a gray blur.

We had talked ourselves pretty near out when a rider splashed up to the door. His ragged beard stuck out stiff, full of rain-drops, and his slouch hat had an unpleasant tilt forward. To Carter's invitation to enter he shook his head, asked if such-and-such a person had passed within the hour, and, receiving an affirmative reply, pulled his hat down tighter and galloped away west. "Who is that?" I inquired.

"That! Why, that's Borden. It's easy to see you're new out here. His hand holds the river from Saint Joe to Omaha, and men think twice before trying to break his grip." He drew out his pipe and tobacco, stuffed the bowl thoughtfully, and struck a match. "If you want to hear about the first time I saw him at work, I'll tell you."

I nodded.

"Eh? Well, this was the way of it":

* * * * *

At the end of the war I settled here--that was five years ago. Borden lived a mile up the creek, and so, as times went, we were neighbors. By the people yonder in Kinton he was not liked, being grim, rough, savage, altogether unsociable and short of word. Besides, they remembered '57. In that year he appeared from no one knew where, took his claim, and proceeded to live after his own fashion. Then the high-handed Claim Club of the village went about it to drive him "in or over the river"--a bad night for them. They rode back to Kinton with three dead men laid across saddles. That was in the rough days of the Territory, the days when men in the Nebraska hills along the Missouri were a law unto themselves.

Once he tied up on his own deck a steamboat captain who was drunk and bent on murder; single-handed he ran down two horse-thieves; and another time he choked the money out of a river-gambler who had robbed a boy. Oh, they knew Borden up and down the river in those days! Then he went to war as one of Thayer's sharpshooters, returning at the end of it to be appointed United States marshal. And he had been riding that saddle six months when I came.

One day he and another pulled rein at my door.

"Come with me," he said abruptly. "I want you to look after this fellow--you're my deputy till further notice." He did not waste time over oaths or official nonsense.

"Now, see here--" the man started to say. But Borden cut him off with a scowl.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Him?--Fitch. You've heard of him, I guess."

Heard of him, of course, as everyone had; of his sly, petty legal tricks by which he grabbed land here and land there until his titles spotted the country about Nebraska City; of his rent-squeezing that smelled over the whole town; of these, and other things. He was a lean, dark, uneasy fellow, wearing a rumpled tile and a shiny coat, riding all crouched up, and pulling his horse away from everybody we met.

After we started, Borden told me that Fitch had brought him notice to serve on Dempster--old John Dempster, his friend. Now, that made a bad job for the Marshal. I saw it from the way he answered not a word to Fitch, who now and then pressed up--intent on the business--to make him talk. Once Borden pulled out his heavy wrinkled boot from the stirrup and kicked the other's horse in the belly until it reared on its haunches. For Borden was the law's officer, but no man's servant.

Our way ran three miles up from Kinton. There was no road, and we followed along the edge of the bluffs as best we were able, until finally we dipped down into a ravine and so came to our destination. It was a wooded flat on the bank of the river, made by a sudden retreat of the hills--a sort of pocket. The space was not large, a handful of acres, and it looked smaller than it really was. The bluffs curved around it on three sides in a yellow, crumbling wall; on the fourth flowed the muddy waters of the Missouri. The house was in the center of a small clearing, and when we came in sight of it Fitch pulled up behind a small thicket of scrub. Borden, as if he never saw the fellow halt, rode straight up to the door where John Dempster sat shaping an axe-haft.

"Jack," said Borden, swinging down from his saddle, "I've come to have a talk with you."

Dempster shaved the haft a minute, laid it aside, and gazed off toward the clump of scrub. The two men were something alike, though the man seated on the door-sill was the older, both past the prime, both spare of words, both come to the West in the same year. They had lain side by side behind a sleety log before Fort Donelson, and each in his three years of service had felt the touch of hot lead.

"How d'you come--friend or enemy?"

"The first, and always, I hope. It depends on you. Why did you kick him off of here yesterday, Jack? He's full of poison over it."

"Let him keep off then," was the gruff response.

Both looked again at the clump where Fitch could be seen through the thin screen of bushes. After a while Dempster took out his tobacco, cut off a piece, and passed the rest to us.

"You're in a dirty way of business when you're mixed up with him," he said slowly. "An' I 'spose you've come to run me out."

"What's at the bottom of this trouble?" returned Borden, evading the point. "'Tain't the land--what is it he's after?"

Dempster spat. "He's gettin' even. I knocked him down last spring when I was at Nebraska City, for lyin' about--never mind. That's all. So he sneaked around an' hunted out where I live an' filed on the land." A dull fire lighted up under his bushy eyebrows.

"Why didn't you file long ago?"

"Does the gover'ment take away a man's home when he's fought in the war?"

"You know how I feel about it," replied Borden, and he laid his hand on the other's shoulder. "But it's too late for you to try to keep it now. You'd better look up another place."

"No, I'm goin' to stay here, I guess, or nowhere."

Borden knew that the decision was inflexible. As he rose, put his foot in the stirrup, and raised himself into the saddle, he determined, however, to have another try.

"Come and settle up along the creek by me. There's an open claim just beyond mine, better than this piece."

Dempster shook his head; maybe he was thinking of the clearing back in Indiana and the boughs under which he had drawn his first breath, maybe this poor fringe of woods along the river was dearer to him than all the treeless prairie.

"We've lived here near ten years now," he said at last, "the old woman an' Joe--an' me, 'ceptin' when I was at war. I guess if we go, you'll have to use your gun."

"I'm sorry, Jack, but you've got to go. And I give you a week. It's not me that says so, it's the law."

"Law!" answered Dempster, with sudden rising fierceness. "Does the law drive a man off his own?"

It was the law, not justice, that was driving him. Without replying a word, Borden, and I by his side, rode away. When we reached the lean, eager face behind the scrub, the Marshal broke out, "You vulture, keep behind us! If you try to ride even, I'll sink your carcass in the river." And in that order, with him trailing us, we came back to Kinton.

Well, during the next week the more I turned the thing over on my tongue the less I liked the taste of it, but Borden was not one to consider dislikes--neither another man's nor his own--when he was riding the law's saddle. So I resolved to go through with it, and was ready Thursday morning. He came out from Nebraska City, accompanied by six deputies, men he had tried, who would not back off from the mouth of a gun, for he knew the door he must enter that day. Fitch was among them; oh, he was yellow over it! Borden had dragged him along to the whole end of the dirty business. The tale, too, was out among the deputies, and Fitch saw plainly what rope they would have swung him by. Grim looks were his every mile; when he pushed up among them, they crowded his horse to the withers until it hung back from the others; one cursed him fully and foully. They intended that he should earn that bit of ground before the day was done.

In the ravine at the edge of the flat we tied our horses. The men unslung their rifles, hitched their revolvers about, and waited, while Borden went down the hollow to reconnoiter. Perhaps half an hour had passed when he climbed down the bank above our heads and dropped into our midst.

"Quick! The boy's gone for water to the spring. Straight ahead there. No shooting till I give the word."

The men nodded, we filed down the ravine single-file, and the next minute were advancing noiselessly through the trees, spreading out gradually as we crossed the flat toward the clearing where stood the log house. The deputies went ahead, alert, silent, with an eye on Borden, who walked a little before them, each keeping a tree in line with the door.

Perhaps things were no different that morning than they were at any time; yet the little flat seemed possessed of a very great quiet, broken only by the slight swish of our boots through the dry grass. As we neared the cabin, we saw that its windows and door were shut. Fitch, who clung to me as though he found more comfort in my company, occasionally wiped drops of sweat from his yellow forehead, and removed his high hat to let the wind blow through his hair.

The other men went ahead unconcerned enough. One big fellow dropped his gun into the crook of his arm, pulled out a piece of tobacco, and carefully picked the lint off it. When he had had a bite, he tossed it to a comrade, who caught it handily, buried it for a moment under his mustache, and then held up the remnant to the other's sight, grinning. He tossed it back; neither had lost his place in the advancing line.

Fifty yards from the house Borden signaled a halt. Rifle-butts slipped to the ground, and the men leaned with backs against their trees--all except two, who handed their guns to others and veered off towards the bluffs, the direction Borden indicated, to the spring. A brown, grizzled fellow, sheltered behind an elm a few feet from me, turned his attention to Fitch, whom he examined curiously and at leisure, concluding his inspection by spitting his way. Then his look strayed south. After a little he began to sing softly: