Part 9

When he had withdrawn from the ring rich and honored, she returned to her father’s home. And before she was thirty, when her father died, unable to leave the Alcazar, she sat outside its gates. Her face withered. The skin of her hands dried up like parchment. She still sits there, wrapped in rags, begging from the tourists.

But after sundown the Alcazar is hers.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Copyright, 1925, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1926, by Konrad Bercovici.

THE LAUGH[6]

By BELLA COHEN

(From _The Calendar of Modern Letters_)

Meyer lay on the bed, the covers drawn up over his mouth. His thin, long nose projected over the quilt seemed very long and wax-like; and his eyes were closed. His feet stuck out beyond the edge of the bed, for Meyer was a tall man, and illness seemed to have stretched him out.

Hannah, his wife, stood near the bed, looking down upon him sorrowfully, her fingers patching her mouth.

“A man who has never been sick in his life to fall so sick. And he only fifty years old--the best years,” she thought.

She turned from the bed and silently began to clean the rooms she and Meyer had lived in for the last eight years. Every now and then she stopped to look at the man in the bed.

“It seems so strange for him to be in the house with me and yet not say a word to me.” Hannah spoke to herself. “I don’t like that white sheet over the quilt.”

Hannah carefully placed the broom in the corner near the stove and pattered over to the wooden trunk where she kept her red shawl. A close, layer-like smell of moth balls and unaired clothing lifted itself sluggishly and receded. The red shawl was near the top. It had white stripes and was made of sheep’s fleece. Hannah had knitted and dyed the shawl when she was still young and wore a black plait down her back.

She placed the red shawl over the sick man’s feet, but they persisted in sticking out--their long, misshapen toes digging into each other with soles as hard as leather. They stood up stiffly perpendicular.

Hannah looked at them and a strange terror gripped her. Her Meyer was sick. Her Meyer was very sick! Desperately, she thought of the House. Perhaps she had better call Mrs. Brandt. Some one....

A knock sounded.

Hannah hurried to the door and opening it softly, looked up into the ruddy, round face of her sister Brahne.

“You!” she cried delightedly. For a moment, the sadness left her eyes. She was no longer alone--all alone--for now, if only for a few moments, she had her sister with her. Some one of her own blood.

“Yes, here I am!” And Brahne stepped into the room. Everything in it became dwarfed, for Brahne was large, large of feet, hands, head, mouth, teeth, and voice. By lifting her hand she could have flattened its palm on the ceiling as easily as she carried her twins on each hip.

The two looked at each other, for they had not seen each other for a year. Brahne had moved her bakery, her husband and children into a suburb, and Hannah, who could not ride in cars because it made her dizzy, did not visit her.

“Meyer is sick, very sick,” Hannah finally said. Her hand went up to her mouth again.

Brahne turned to the bed and looked at the man.

“He doesn’t seem so bad,” she decided. “What is it, a cold?”

“No, it’s something more. The doctor wouldn’t tell me. I think it’s his heart.”

“Heart! That’s how much you know about men.”

Brahne seated herself and discoursed in bellows.

“Men are children. They don’t know how to bear even a scratch on the finger. They get a little cold and right away they want to go to Coloraydo and get consumption. They want to be petted and fondled like a month-old baby. The more attention you give them the more they want. Many times I think to myself, why do they send men to fight in the wars when they are such weaklings!”

Hannah listened meekly, her hand on her mouth.

“Maybe that’s true what you say, Brahne,” she offered timidly, “but Meyer is now laying like this the third week. And, you know, he’s never been sick since we’ve been married.”

The tears formed in her eyes and dropped down her cheeks.

Brahne’s large, limpid eyes wandered from the sick man’s face to his feet. The red shawl threw a new light into her eyes.

Hannah wiped the tears away as she mumbled:

“God should spare him for me. If he should die----”

“Die!” scoffed Brahne, with difficulty shifting her eyes from the shawl to the man’s face. “People don’t die so fast.”

The sick man stirred and the cover moved down from his mouth. He was smiling.

Brahne rose from her chair and walked heavily to the bed. She beckoned her sister.

“See!” she said. “He’s not sick. He’s smiling. A man who sees Death doesn’t smile, hah Meyer?”

The sick man did not open his eyes nor move at all at the sound of his name. But the smile was still there.

“I could make him laugh!” Brahne wagered.

“Laugh!” her sister repeated, sadly. “What wouldn’t I give to hear him laugh again!”

Brahne looked at the red shawl, lips drawn in, one eye half shut.

“Well,” she said finally, “would you give me the red shawl if I made him laugh?”

Again the hand went up to the mouth, and Hannah considered. Brahne had always wanted that red shawl she knew.

She nodded.

“Yes,” she finally assented. “But you must make him laugh.”

Brahne leaned over the bed and tickled the soles of those stiff feet. A broad smile already stretched across her face.

“Hah, Meyer,” she called out, “don’t think you can fool me!”

Again she trailed her large, square fingers over the calloused feet. A slight trembling took hold of the man. His toes began to wriggle stiffly--creakingly.

“Well, Meyer, how about a little laugh?” Brahne called cheerfully. Hannah stood over her husband, her hand almost hiding her mouth. Now and then she looked at her sister.

Brahne bent to her task with determined lips. She no longer smiled. She wanted that red shawl. This time she played on the soles as if she were playing the piano. Then she changed to a quick tattoo. A weak, little gurgle issued from the parted lips of the man, but his eyes did not open.

“Well, Meyer,” shouted Brahne. “You can do better than that!”

She tickled those stiff feet with the full vigour of her strong fingers. And, suddenly, the covers flew back and the red shawl dropped to the floor. A ringing laugh cut the silence of the room. The sick man laughed again and again like a hysterical girl, but his eyes never opened.

Brahne, her hands on her hips, joined in lustily, and even Hannah smiled tenderly and without sadness.

Suddenly the laugh broke into two and the man stiffened from head to toes. The lips drew themselves together slowly and painfully, and then they were still. The soul of Meyer had fled on the back of a laugh.

“Brahne!” Hannah screamed. “Brahne!”

“What’s the matter?”

But Hannah had already fallen on her knees beside the bed, moaning:

“He is dead! My husband is dead! My husband is dead!”

Brahne, big and powerful, looked down upon the dead man and the weeping woman with a puzzled look in her stupid eyes.

“But anyway I made him laugh,” she said. “The red shawl is mine.”

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Copyright, 1926, by Bella Cohen.

THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY[7]

By CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE

(From _Harper’s Magazine_)

Within a hundred yards of the hill’s crest Walton Pringle’s pocket flash winked spasmodically and died. He paused a moment to catch his breath; the pull up from the creek bed had winded him and the sting of cold rain in his face added a further discomfort. If he hadn’t dawdled at Preston’s Flat, hoping for the rain to cease or abate, he would have made his objective before nightfall. But since he had elected to wait so long it would have been much better to continue there until next morning. As it was, he felt sure that he had strayed from the trail--a

## particularly unhappy thought to a man who could claim only a speaking

acquaintance with the wilderness. And this too under the pall of a stormy night without the slightest ray of light to guide him. Well, the best he could do was to stumble on: it was far better to keep moving in circles than to resign himself to inactivity and chills.

He was glad now that he had been persuaded to take a pistol when he came away from Walden’s Glen. If he were lost, at least he could provide himself with game, and in the mountains one could never tell how long one might wander aimlessly along false paths once the proper trail was abandoned. At first this pistol business had seemed absurd: California was no longer a bandit country, and even if it were he had nothing worth stealing. A jack-knife, a pocket-flash, two bars of chocolate, and a sheaf of notes on “Itinerant and Rural Labor and Its Relation to Crime” were poor pickings for a hold-up man. His notes especially were valueless to any one save himself, and even their loss would not have been irreparable. He was still near enough to his investigations to have the material for his book clearly fixed in his mind and, once back at his desk in San Francisco, he would be able to recall every detail of the last two weeks spent among the economic nomads of the mountains. But in spite of all these obvious guarantees against violence, it appeared that there _were_ reasons for being forearmed.... It was Lem Thatcher, one of the oldtimers, who had put him straight on this point.

“Bandits be damned!” Thatcher had exclaimed. “But how about a stray bobcat? Or a crazy man? Or a lost trail?... A man who goes into the open with nuthin’ but a jack-knife and a couple o’ bars o’ chocolate is a fool.... Give a man a gun and you give him the next thing to a pardner.”

Under the depression of the moment he felt that his original stupidity lay not so much in failing to realize the needs of such a trip as in essaying the venture at all. Why hadn’t he been sensible and taken the stage as far as Rock Point and swung on from there to Marchel Duplin’s cabin? He had no time to waste, and had there been no other reason this alternative would have given him several additional hours with a man who, everybody conceded, knew more about sheep herding than any other within a hundred miles. He had talked to a Basque shepherd near Compton’s and to a Mexican herder just the other side of Willow Creek, attempting to get sidelights on their profession, but they had been taciturn and he without the proper moisture for limbering their tongues. Duplin, everybody conceded, was exceptionally garrulous for a sheep herder even when he had not the help of thin wine. It seemed expedient, then, to go to Duplin if he wished properly to complete the picture of rural economy whose drawing he contemplated. But for an untrained mountaineer--a tenderfoot, in fact--it was nothing save a whimsical extravagance to plunge along a fifteen-mile trail through forest and shifting granite when an easier course was open. Being valley bred he hadn’t expected rain in August, but if he had stopped to think he might have known that anything was climatically possible in the mountains.

Stumbling, crawling, cursing, somehow in spite of the blackness he felt himself making progress uphill. Presently his feet touched level ground. This in itself was reassuring. He raised his eyes in a desperate effort to pierce the gloom, took a few steps forward--and suddenly, miraculously, found himself in a clearing from which beckoned the friendly light of a cabin. With a smothered exclamation of joy he quickened his gait, almost running forward, and the next instant he had gained the window, instinctively stopping to peer within.

The unreality of the scene which met his eye gave Walton Pringle a feeling that he was either dreaming or gazing down on a stage set for a play; only sleep or the theater seemed capable of a picture so filled with melodrama. But in the theater one was never at once spectator and participant, and in sleep one did not have the tangible physical discomfort which he felt. He drew his rain-soaked body closer against the cabin, raising himself on his toes so that he might get a better view of the interior. A man stood hovering over a table lighted by an anæmic candle, and through his fingers dripped a slow trickle of silver. In a corner, uncannily outlined by a steady gleam of light, was a crucifix nailed to the wall and below it lay a couch piled with disordered bed clothing. On the floor, midway between table and couch, was sprawled the figure of a man--arms flung wide, his black-bearded face upturned--a startling inanimate thing that made Walton Pringle turn away with a shudder. The man at the table undoubtedly was a thief. Was he also a murderer?

For the second time that night Pringle was glad that he was provided with a pistol, and yet in spite of his preparedness he had a momentary misgiving, an indecision: to be secured against an unavoidable contingency was one thing; to push deliberately into trouble was quite another. Pringle was no coward, but he knew his limitations; he was not trained in any superlative skill with firearms. Was it discreet, then, to thrust oneself across the path of a desperate man?

He continued to gaze through the window with morbid fascination and uncertainty: the picture was too revealing--violence had been done, that was obvious; plunder was in process of accomplishment. A sudden disgust at his weak-kneed prudence stiffened his decision. At that moment the wind, flinging itself through the pine trees, sent a shower of twigs upon the cabin roof. The face at the table was lifted with a tragic sense of insecurity and fear; Pringle saw that it was the face of a young man, almost a boy. For a brief moment their eyes met; then without further ado Pringle crept swiftly to the door, hurling his body against it in anticipation of barred progress. The force of the impact carried him well into the room. The youth was on his feet and an exclamation halted on his thin, pallid lips. Pringle whipped out his gun.

Walton Pringle did not utter a word; he merely gazed questioningly at the youth, who began to whine.

“I didn’t do nuthin’, honest I didn’t.... I hope to die if----”

Pringle cut him short with an imperious gesture. The lad’s manner as well as his physique was filled with a shambling, retarded maturity. His face was curiously pale for one from a rural environment, and his hair that should have been vivid and red had been sunburnt to a vague straw color.

“Hand over your gun!” Pringle demanded.

The youth straightened himself with a flicker of confidence. “I ain’t got none!” he threw back.

Pringle searched him: he had told the truth. “Come then, give me a hand here!” he commanded, laying his own weapon on the table.

Together they lifted the inert body from the floor and placed it on the couch.

“He’s dead!” the youth ventured.

Pringle put his hand to the man’s heart. “So it seems,” he returned dryly.

The dead man was swarthy and beetle browed, with wiry blue-black hair and beard. He was undressed save for a suit of thick woolen underwear and his feet were encased in heavy knitted gray socks. An ugly gash clotted his brow and the ooze of blood trickling thickly from the wound was staining the bedclothes. A flash of intuition lighted up Pringle’s mental gropings.

“Is this Marchel Duplin’s cabin?”

The youth stared, then nodded.

“And is this Marchel Duplin?”

“Yes.”

Almost with the same movement Pringle and the youth turned away, the lad dropping into a chair before the table.

Pringle drew a bench from the wall and straddled it. “What’s your name?” he demanded.

“Sam--Sam Allen.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Down--down by Walden’s Glen.”

“Ah!... And what are you doing here?”

“Gettin’ out o’ the wet, mostly.”

Pringle pointed to the heap of coins on the table. “And making a little clean-up on the side, eh?... Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Sam Allen dropped his ineffectual blue eyes. “Nuthin’ much ... I come here to get outa the rain, like I said before. He was layin’ on the bed there, mutterin’ to hisself, and burning up with fever. I went up to him and I says, ‘Marchel, don’t yer know me?’ With that he grabs me by the throat. I never _did_ see anybody get such a stranglehold on a man.... I jest couldn’t pry him loose. He went down like a chunk o’ lead. And when his head struck the ground”--Sam Allen shuddered--“It was jest like a rotten watermelon went squash.... I didn’t dare look fer a minute, and when I did he was dead!”

“And then you proceeded to rob him, eh? Without even waiting to lift his dead body from the floor ... or seeing what you could do to help him?”

Sam Allen shook his head. “I know when a man’s dead ... and I don’t like to touch ’em, somehow--that is--not all by myself. It was different when you come. Besides, I’ve heerd tell that the law likes things left in a case like this--that it’s better not to touch nuthin’.”

Pringle could not forego a sneer; really, the youth was too ineffectual! “Nothing except money, I suppose!”

Sam Allen ignored the sarcasm; it is doubtful if it really made an impression. “It musta got kicked out from under his pillow in the scuffle.... Anyway, I seen it layin’ there on the floor, jest where his head struck, almost. Of course I was curious.” He turned a childishly eager face toward Pringle. “Do you know, he had nigh onto fifty dollars in that there bag.”

“Indeed!”

But again Pringle’s sarcasm rebounded and fell flat. Apparently Sam Allen was not quick witted. He mistook irony for interest. Without further urging the youth began to tell about himself. His father had a hog ranch just this side of Walden’s Glen--a drab, filthy spot. This father kept drunk most of the time on a potent brand of moonshine which he himself distilled. The whole drudgery of the place had fallen on the boy. “Cows, I wouldn’t have minded so much--they ain’t dirty like pigs--leastways what they eat ain’t!” He breathed hard when he spoke and his clipped words took on descriptive vehemence. The whole atmosphere of the Allen ranch rose in a fetid mist before Walton Pringle: hog wallow, sour swill, obscene grunts and squealings, the beastly drunkenness of Allen senior. Since no mention was made of a woman’s presence, Pringle divined that there was none. Sam Allen had grown sick to death of it all and had run away: without money, provisions, or proper clothing--even lacking decent footgear--without plans. It was a pitiful story and yet it damned him superlatively; gave point to the situation in which he had been found. Listening to him Pringle lost the conviction that he was a premeditated murderer, but there seemed no reasonable doubt that he was an accidental one. It seemed he knew well the Duplin cabin; used to steal up there on rare occasions, when Marchel was out shepherding, to share the Frenchman’s dribbles of thin wine. He liked wine. One mouthful and your heart felt freer, more gay. Why, one could sing then--almost. At least Marchel Duplin could. Moonshine never gave a man a singing mood--only a nasty one. At this point Pringle could not forego a question: Did he know that Duplin had money?... Allen hesitated and Pringle had an impulse to warn him against answering; it didn’t seem fair to let the boy unwittingly incriminate himself. But before Pringle could caution him the youth blurted out the truth: he had heard something of it. Pringle felt his heart contract in a rush of pity: the whole situation was so obvious--a desperate, weak, perhaps degenerate boy rushing blindly toward freedom and disaster. Had Duplin’s wine jug been part of the youth’s hapless plan? Had he attempted to get the shepherd drunk before he despoiled him?

At all events he hadn’t managed skillfully and the Frenchman had put up a fight. The results spoke for themselves. Well, it all came back to heredity and environment. He’d have an interesting lot of notes to make on this case. No theorizing this time, but something at first hand, alive and palpitating. Quite suddenly he found his pity receding, submerged by his scientific desire for truth. The youth before him was like a moth pinned to the wall, before which the investigator lost all sentimental interest in his eagerness to measure the duration of the death agony. Now was the time to get data, before fear or caution stepped in to dam up Sam Allen’s naïve garrulity. Pringle was interested in the youth’s mother. But Sam Allen couldn’t remember much: Lizzie Evans, that had been her name--a girl who “worked out.” Yet the very economy of this picture was illuminating. Lizzie Evans, a girl who “worked out.” It was perfect! A girl who doubtless had been ruined, to use the phrase of unemancipated women. She probably had had just such a pinched, yellow, wistful face as the son she had borne to feed the hangman’s noose. Pringle had a fad for reconstructing the faces of mothers from the bolder outlines of their male offspring. He usually found the test successful even with the most rugged material; he had a feeling that in this case his imagination did not need to overleap any confines whatsoever to achieve its goal. Lizzie Allen, born Evans, had died: a futile, weak anæmic slip of a girl, stifled by the nauseous vapors of the hog pens. Not that Sam Allen put it so, but Pringle could read a shorthand of life almost as skillfully as a complete script. He swung the conversation back to Allen senior. The son embellished the portrait with a wealth of sinister details, finishing with a malicious little chuckle.

“An’ he’s deputy sheriff for the district, too, moonshinin’ an’ all.... Oh, I’ve seen him track fellars down an’ shoot ’em when they had the goods on him. Didn’t matter whether they was guilty or not.... I’ve seen him beat ’em, too--over the head--with the butt of a pistol--or anything else that came handy!”

Pringle turned his eyes to the inanimate figure on the bed. How completely everything was dovetailing! “_I’ve seen him beat ’em, too, over the head._” Precisely. For all the youth’s inadequacy he had absorbed some of the inhumanities from his sire.

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