Part 13

So fear scourged and shook him. It was physical; there were certain muscular and nervous reactions that went with it. His heels, tucked under his chair, felt naked and chilled by the little currents of air that circulated along the floor. His bowels were sick within him, as though there were an actual, ponderable weight in his mid-section. His ears, attuned to what went on in the room behind him, seemed unnaturally enlarged, and there were pricklings in his scalp.

He had known fear before. Such dull periods come to every newspaper office. But Bob had always pulled through, escaped discharge. He had worked at this same desk for a dozen years.... Had come here from the _Journal_, feeling a little proudly that he was taking an upward step, beginning at last to climb. It had meant more money. Thirty-five dollars a week. He was getting forty, now. So little, yet enough to make a man a coward.

Bob had never been fired from any job. The process of discharge was cloaked, in his thoughts, with an awful mystery. Sometimes men found a note, in a blue envelope, in their mail boxes; sometimes Dade called them to him, spoke to them, explained the necessity which forced him to let them go. They took it variously; defiantly, calmly, humbly, as their natures dictated. But it had never happened to Bob....

He was afraid, these days, to go to his box for mail lest the dreaded note be there; and when Dade stopped at his desk or called him across the room he cringed to his very soul with dread. He was, no doubt of it at all, an arrant and an utter coward.

So he sat, this morning, and wrote, over, and over again:

“_Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. Now is the...._” Or shifted, and tapped off: “_The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog._” He was still thus occupied when Dade called from his broad desk by the window:

“Bob!”

The little old man looked fearfully around, and Dade beckoned. Bob’s heart dropped into his boots; he was fairly white with fear. Perhaps Boswell had told Dade to let him go....

Nevertheless, he faced the music. Got up and went across the room toward where the City Editor was standing. And he managed a smile. Beat down his panic and smiled.

Dade kept him waiting. The City Editor was giving some instructions to Ingalls, the City Hall man. Bob, his thoughts misted and confused by his own apprehensions, nevertheless heard what Dade was saying, and subconsciously registered and filed it away.

“ ...going to start something,” Dade explained to Ingalls. “Mr. Boswell is interested, so you want to get results. The Building Department has been slack. Not inspectors enough, maybe. Fire Department, too. There were two girls caught in that fire in the South End ten days ago. Got out, I know, but it was luck. We’re going to cover every fire, from now on. Going to watch the fire-escapes and the fire-doors and get the goods on this bunch, if they’ve been falling down. You keep it to yourself, but see what you can dig up. There must be stuff filed, up there. I’ll let you know.... Don’t make any breaks till you hear from me, but keep on the job....”

Bob listened, finding some relief from his own apprehensions in doing so. “Another crusade ...” he thought, idly. Abruptly, Dade dismissed Ingalls and turned to him, and Bob turned pale, then colored with relief when he understood that Dade simply wished to give him an assignment.

“Jack Brenton,” Dade said, in the staccato sentences which were his habit. “We hear his wife has run away from him. He lives out in Hanbridge. Here’s the address. I sent the district man over. He says Brenton’s drunk. Threatened to shoot him. You’ll have to handle him right. Jack’s a bruiser, looking for trouble. Ask him if it’s true his wife’s gone. Ask him who she went with, and why, and what he’s going to do about it. Telephone me.”

Bob nodded. “All right,” he said quickly. “I’ll phone in.” He swung back to his desk for coat and hat, eager to be away, eager to be out of the office and away from present peril.

III

Outside the building, Bob headed for the subway. He had no qualms at the thought of Jack Brenton and his drunken pugnacity. Bob was an old hand, a good leg man, a competent reporter. He had handled angry husbands many times. He could handle Brenton.

Yet he might have been forgiven for being afraid to encounter Jack Brenton. The man was a professional pugilist of some local note, and his record was bad. He had once, by ill luck, killed an opponent in the ring; he was known to possess a sulky temper that flamed to murderous heat, and it was said of him that when he was in his cups, he was better left alone.... He was in his cups this morning. Bob knew this as soon as he heard the other’s sulky shout that answered his knock at the apartment door. The prize-fighter yelled: “Come in!” And Bob went in.

Inside the door there was a little hallway, with a bathroom opening off one side, and a living-room at the end. Brenton came into this passage from the living-room as Bob entered from the hall, and they met face to face. Brenton looked down at the little man; and he asked suspiciously:

“What’re you after?”

“Dungan’s my name,” said Bob pleasantly. “I’m from the _Chronicle_.”

He saw the other’s scowl deepen. “I said what I’d do.... Next damn reporter came out here. What you want, anyway?”

“I want to ask you a few questions. About your wife....”

The pugilist dropped his hand on little Bob Dungan’s shoulder. His left hand. His right jerked into sight with a revolver; he thrust the muzzle of it into Bob’s face. “You smell that,” he cried, truculently. “I’ll blow your damn head off.”

Bob--laughed. “Why, that’s all right,” he replied. If he had squirmed, struggled, or even if he had been afraid, the other’s drunken anger might have given him strength to shoot. There was very real and deadly peril in the situation. But Bob, unafraid, laughed; and the prize-fighter could see that there was no fear in the little man’s eyes. “That’s all right,” said Bob. “Go ahead.”

Brenton did not shoot. He hesitated uncertainly, his slow wits wavering. And Bob asked sympathetically:

“Did she treat you pretty bad?”

“Bad?” Brenton echoed. “Why, the things she’s done to me--Why, say....”

“That’s tough,” the reporter murmured.

The fighter’s grip on his shoulder relaxed; the big man’s arm slid around Bob’s neck. He became maudlin and unhappy, weeping for sympathy. “Why, you jus’ lemme tell you....” he begged.

“Sure,” Bob agreed. “Tell me all about it. Let’s go in and sit down.”

They went into the living-room. “Y’see, it was this way....” the pugilist began.

IV

When Bob left the prize-fighter, he called the office and reported to Dade. “Dungan speaking,” he said.

“What you got?” Dade asked hurriedly.

“Jack Brenton. Got his story. About his wife. Good stuff....”

Dade interrupted. “Never mind that now,” he directed. “There’s a big fire in that block of lofts on Chambers Street. Hop a taxi and get there quick as you can. Get busy, Bob.”

Bob said crisply: “‘Right!” He heard the receiver click as Dade hung up. Five minutes later he had located a taxi and was racing toward the fire. As he drew near, he saw the column of smoke that rose from the burning building, black against the sky. “Two or three alarms,” he estimated, out of his long experience in such matters. “Lot of girls working in there, too. Probably caught some of them. Damned rat-hole....”

He had not enough cash in his pocket to pay the taxi fare; so he showed the man his badge and said curtly: “Charge _Chronicle_.” Then he began to worm through the crowd toward the fire. His badge passed him through the fire-lines, into the smother of smoke and the tumult of voices and the throbbing rhythm of the engines. The loft building was five stories high; and when Bob looked up, he saw, as the smoke thinned and left vistas, the red of flames in every window on the upper floors. Beside an empty hose-wagon, he came upon Brett of the _Journal_, and asked him: “Anybody caught!”

Brett shook his head. “Seven rescues,” he said. “Fire started on the top floor, so they mostly had time to run.”

“Got the names?” Bob asked.

“Jake’s got ’em,” said Brett. Jake was the _Chronicle’s_ police reporter. “He’s gone to telephone them in.”

Bob nodded. Jake was a good man. He would have picked up enough of incident and accident to make a story. The rewrite men in the office would do the rest. His, Bob’s, job was to look for a feature the other men might have overlooked.... And abruptly, he remembered Dade’s instructions to Ingalls that morning. Fire escapes; fire-doors. Were they adequate, on this old trap?

There was an alley beside the burning building. He could work in through there and find out, perhaps.... At the mouth of the alley a policeman halted him. Bob showed his fire badge. The policeman said scornfully: “I don’t give a damn for that. That wall in there is going to fall in a minute.”

Bob laughed. “I was covering fires when you were in the cradle, old man,” he said, and slipped by, into the alley. The officer started to pursue, swore, changed his mind, returned to his post. The alley was not an attractive place to enter. It was full of smoke, and sprinkled with bits of glass that still tinkled down in a steady rain from the shattered windows above; and as he had said, the upper part of the wall had been gnawed by the fire till it was like to fall at any moment.

In spite of this, Bob went in. He was not afraid, and he was not excited, and he was not valorous. He was simply matter of fact. The smoke made him cough, and burned his eyes. Nevertheless he located the fire-escape, where it came zigzagging down the wall. Its ladder swung seven feet above the sidewalk. He got a barrel and climbed upon it and so reached the ladder.

He scaled the ladder to the second floor landing. He found there a blank, iron-sheathed door. Locked. He could not move it. “But it probably opens from the inside,” he reminded himself. “Let’s see.”

There was no window on this floor; he looked up and discovered that from the landing above he could reach a window. Flames were streaming thinly out of windows ten feet above that landing. Nevertheless, Bob did not hesitate. He climbed, straddled the iron rail, kicked in a pane of glass and pushed the sash up. The room within was full of eddying smoke; Bob crawled inside. He wished to reach the hall, test the doors that opened upon the fire-escape from the inside.

Smoke in the room was thick, so he crouched below it and slipped out into the hall. When he reached the door, he found it adequately equipped with patent bolts of the sort that yielded at a tug. He tried them; the door swung open. The bolts, he saw, were recently installed and in good condition.... The open door had created a draft. Smoke, with a hot breath of fire in it, began to pour past him and out through the door.

Fire-escapes all right; doors all right. No story. Time to get out, he decided.

To do so it was necessary to traverse the building. He did this. Bob had seen fires before. Experience and instinct guided him safely. On the stairs he found lines of hose leading up to where a squad of firemen were fighting the fire from within. He followed the hose down and to the front door and so to the street.

The fire, for newspaper purposes, was over. Three alarms, seven rescues, a hundred thousand damage.... Bob telephoned the office. Dade asked: “How about fire-escapes?”

“I looked at them,” Bob said casually. “They’re O. K. Fire-doors all right, too.” Dade said: “Well, you might as well come in.”

V

Bob brushed his clothes and washed his face and hands in a hotel wash-room before he returned to the office. When he came into the City Room, no one paid him any attention. He went to his desk and wrote the story of Jack Brenton’s wife, and handed the manuscript to Dade. The City Editor scanned the pages with swift eyes, said over his shoulder: “Good stuff, Bob.” Then tossed the story to the copy-desk. “Top 7,” he directed. “Good little local story. But you’d better cut it down. Half a column’s enough.”

Bob went back to his desk. He was beginning to feel the reaction; he was somewhat tired. So for a little while he sat idly, doing nothing at all.

Then Boswell, the publisher, came in from the corridor; and Bob saw him, and turned to his typewriter, and inserted a sheet of paper, and began to write. He wrote, over and over again:

_“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”_

The little old reporter wished to appear busy. He was, you see, a good deal of a coward; he was desperately afraid of being fired.

NOT A DRUM WAS HEARD

I

This is, in all essentials, a true story. It came through an old friend from the Southwest, a newspaper man, who telephoned an invitation to lunch the other day. He says he remembers, as a boy, seeing the whole population of his home town embark on horseback, in wagons, and afoot to go to the hanging. That was in 1881; but it was not till twenty years afterward that he heard from one Chris O’Neill the true inwardness of that hanging, as he told it to me over our coffee. The thing happened in a little frontier town in the cow country; and since swift justice and a ready rope were characteristics of the time and the place, it occasioned only passing comment in that day. Nevertheless, the tale may well bear preserving.

I cannot hope to reproduce my friend’s words, nor the atmosphere of those reckless times, so long dead, which he brought back to life for me. Nevertheless, here is the substance of the story that he told.

II

There were two cowboys in the O K O outfit, otherwise called the Hourglass; and these two men were pardners. This, I was given to understand, is a very different thing from being partners. In France, a few years ago, they would have called themselves “buddies.” The relationship is the same, though it appears under another name. The two men were named Jack Mills and Bud Loupel. If you hired one, you hired both. If one was fired, the other quit. If you licked one, the other licked you; and if one became involved in a shooting affray, the other was apt to be somewhere in the background with a gun in his hand and an eye out for possible sharp practice by allies of the party of the second part. The foreman of the Hourglass, being wise in his generation, assigned the two to tasks at which they could work together; and they stayed with that outfit for a length of time that was considered extraordinary in those tempestuous days. That is to say, they labored in the vineyard for the O K O for a matter of a year and a half. At the end of that time Jack Mills was twenty-one and Bud Loupel was twenty-two.

As they did their work jointly, so they took their pleasures together; and it came to pass on a certain day that they rode away to town with full pockets and lively plans for the evenings immediately before them. Jack Mills, always the gayer spirit of the two, pulled his gun at the edge of town and perforated the blue sky above him. At the same time he emitted certain shrill sounds and spurred his horse to the gallop. Bud was more given to a certain sobriety and decorum; he did not shoot and he did not yell. But his horse kept close beside the other’s. They swung into the wide and dusty main street with hats flapping, horses racing like jack rabbits, holsters pounding against their thighs. They swept up the street together, saw the same vision at the same instant, and jerked their horses to a sliding, tail-grinding stop with a single movement of their bridle hands.

The vision’s name was Jeanie Ross. She was the daughter of old man Ross, the storekeeper, and she had just come home from the East. The rattle of the shots had brought her to the door of the store, and she stood there when the two cowboys discovered her. She looked at them; they stared at her. Then Jack Mills swung boldly to the ground and walked toward her, grinning in his pleasantly likable way. He swept his wide hat low, and he said: “Ma’am, I’m Jack Mills of the Hourglass.”

The girl, though she had lived long in the East, was a daughter of the West. She was amused and not displeased, for Jack was easy enough to look at. She smiled, and this emboldened Bud Loupel, who was always conservative, to imitate his pardner’s example. He, too, dismounted and stepped forward, and Jack Mills bowed again to the girl and told her: “Furthermore, ma’am, this here is my bashful friend, Bud Loupel. The cat has got his tongue, but he’s a nice little fellow. Now you know everybody worth knowing.”

Jeanie Ross, still very much amused, asked: “Who were you shooting at?”

“The man in the moon,” said Jack Mills. “But I missed him a mile.”

She laughed and said she was glad of that. “I’d hate not to be able to see him up there once in a while,” she told Jack.

“Just to prove he ain’t hurt,” he assured her, “I’ll ride in and point him out to you when the signs is right.”

She shook her head, looking from one man to the other, withdrawing a little into the doorway. Jack marked, even then, that her eyes rested longest on Bud Loupel. “I’ve studied astronomy my own self,” she said, and while he was still crushed by that she backed into the store and disappeared.

The two mounted in silence and continued more demurely down the street. In front of Brady’s they hitched their horses, tramped dustily inside, and touched elbows at the bar. The first drink was taken without speech; the second followed it.

After a while Bud Loupel said: “Jack!”

“Huh?”

“Me, you know what I aim to do?”

Mills grinned. “I don’t know, but I’m waiting.”

“I aim,” said Bud Loupel, “to quit the range and get me a job in this here little old town.”

Jack Mills banged his open hand upon the bar. “Bud, she sure is that and more,” he cried. “Just make it the same for me.”

III

They had ridden into town, as has been said, with full pockets. They had expected to ride out again in a day or two with empty ones. But the encounter with Jeanie Ross and their subsequent abrupt decision made all the difference in the world. The procedure of each one, in the circumstances, was characteristic. Bud Loupel crossed the street to the bank and opened an account, depositing his money. Jack Mills went into Brady’s back room, where there was a bank of another kind, and set to work to double his.

The bank Bud patronized was owned by Sam Rand, who was also cashier, president, and board of directors. There had been, till some three days before, a teller, but Rand had let him go. Bud found the banker, as a consequence, up to his eyes in unaccustomed work. Rand knew Loupel, knew that the cowboy had a certain aptitude for figures. When Bud, in the casual talk that followed his deposit, mentioned the fact that he was hunting for a town job, Rand hired him on the spot.

An hour or so later Bud went back to Brady’s to tell Jack of his good fortune, and Mills rolled a cigarette and said cheerfully: “Then you’re fixed to lend me five dollars.”

“As quick as this?” Bud asked. “You must have picked ’em mighty scant.”

“I didn’t pick them,” Jack told him. “They picked me.”

They went out together and sought a restaurant and food. By supper time Jack had a job in the blacksmith shop. He was as good with horses as Bud was with figures. That evening they hired a room, and Bud wrote a note to the Hourglass foreman, telling him not to expect them back again. Then they settled down to live the life of sober and substantial citizens. Object matrimony.

Now, this is not a story of how a woman came between two men and turned good friends into enemies. Jeanie Ross did nothing of the kind. It is a fact that they both loved her and that they both wooed her, but it is also a fact that they continued to be pardners just the same. And it is furthermore true that when Jeanie made up her mind between them, Jack was the first one she told.

She told him she was going to marry Bud. And Jack rolled a cigarette with both hands, slowly and with care; he fashioned it neatly, and stroked it between his fingers, and twisted the ends and lighted it before he spoke at all.

“Said so to him?” he asked then.

Jeanie shook her head. “No. I wanted you to know first, because I want you and Bud to keep on being friends. I like you, Jack. But you’re--flighty. Bud’s steady. You’re more amusing sometimes, but he’s more reliable. I couldn’t ever really count on you. I can count on Bud, Jack. But you will go on being friends with him, won’t you? That’s why I’m telling you.”

“He’s steady, he’s reliable, and you can count on him,” Jack repeated, ticking the points off upon his fingers. “Now, is there maybe any other little thing besides?”

“Yes,” said Jeanie softly. “Yes. I love him, Jack.”

He flicked his cigarette away. “Keno!” he exclaimed. “And Bud’s a good scout too. I don’t reckon you’ll ever need to be sorry at all.” He picked up his hat and started away.

“Where are you going?” she asked softly, and there were tears in her eyes for him.

“I aim to tell Bud you’re a-waiting,” he said.

And he did. Bud was working late that night at the bank. Jack bade him go and find her. “And, Bud,” he warned good-humoredly, “I’ll aim to perforate you, sudden and complete, if you don’t name the first after me.”

When Bud was gone Jack stood very still for a while, whistling a little tune between his teeth. Then he went across to Brady’s and had a drink or two, but the liquor would not bite. It was still early in the evening when he sought the room he shared with Bud, and went to bed. Bud, returning two hours later, undressed quietly, because he thought his pardner was asleep.

But Jack Mills was not asleep.

IV

The first was a boy, and was well and duly named Jack Loupel; and Uncle Jack used to go to the house for Sunday dinner and play bear all over the floor of the sitting room. The next was a girl, and the next was a boy again. Bud was by that time cashier of the bank, and Sam Rand left most of the work to him. Jack Mills was just what he had always been; that is to say, a likable, wild young chap with a quick gun and a reckless eye and a fondness for the society he found at Brady’s. Sometimes, after eating one of Jeanie’s dinners, he would take his horse and ride out of town and be gone for a day or two. He was always alone on these excursions; but ranging cowboys came across him now and then and reported that he seemed to be just sitting around, smoking, doing nothing at all. When he got ready he would drift back into town and go to work again. Old man Ross liked him; Jeanie liked him; everybody liked him. But the sober citizens were also inclined to disapprove of him; and some of the stories that came to Jeanie’s ears made her think that when the children were a little older she had better quit asking Jack to come to the house. She hated to think of doing this; and because she was kind of heart, it is unlikely that she would ever have come to the actual point. But that the possibility should occur to her is some measure of the man’s standing in the town.

One day, about seven years after Bud and Jeanie were married, Bud sought out Jack Mills and asked him to get his horse and come for a ride. “Want to tell you something, Jack,” he explained.

Mills saw the trouble and distress in the other’s eyes, so he saddled up, and they trotted out of town. When the last building was well behind them, Jack asked mildly: “What’s on your mind, Bud?”

Bud Loupel, with some hesitation, said: “I’m in trouble.”

“Yeah! I judged so,” Mills told him. “Well, what brand?”

“I’ve been putting money in the market at Wichita,” Loupel said. “I’ve had rotten luck. It’s gone.”

Jack nodded. “I got three-four hundred in the bank,” he suggested. “Take that.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Maybe I could look around and raise five hundred more.”

“It wouldn’t do a bit of good.”

Mills produced tobacco and papers and rolled a slow cigarette while their horses jogged along. At last: “How much?” he asked.

“Forty-four hundred.”