The Jacket (The Star-Rover) Page 10

  “Now, de Goncourt,” I announced finally. “You see I have you quite helpless. You are mine in any of a dozen ways. Be ready, brace yourself, for this is the way I will.”

  And, so saying, I merely went from carte to tierce, and as he recovered wildly and parried widely I returned to carte, took the opening, and drove home heart-high and through and through. And at sight of the conclusion Pasquini let go his hold on life, buried his face in the grass, quivered a moment, and lay still.

  “Your master will be four servants short this night,” I assured de Villehardouin, in the moment just ere we engaged.

  And such an engagement! The boy was ridiculous. In what bucolic school of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining. He was downright clownish. “Short work and simple” was my judgment, while his red hair seemed a-bristle with very rage and while he pressed me like a madman.

  Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me. When I had played with him and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for the clumsy boor he was, he became so angered that he forgot the worse than little fence he knew. With an arm-wide sweep of his rapier, as though it bore heft and a cutting edge, he whistled it through the air and rapped it down on my crown. I was in amaze. Never had so absurd a thing happened to me. He was wide open, and I could have run him through forthright. But, as I said, I was in amaze, and the next I knew was the pang of the entering steel as this clumsy provincial ran me through and charged forward, bull-like, till his hilt bruised my side and I was borne backward.

  As I fell I could see the concern on the faces of Lanfranc and Bohemond and the glut of satisfaction in the face of de Villehardouin as he pressed me.

  I was falling, but I never reached the grass. Came a blurr of flashing lights, a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of dim light slowly dawning, a wrenching, racking pain beyond all describing, and then I heard the voice of one who said:

  “I can’t feel anything.”

  I knew the voice. It was Warden Atherton’s. And I knew myself for Darrell Standing, just returned across the centuries to the jacket hell of San Quentin. And I knew the touch of finger-tips on my neck was Warden Atherton’s. And I knew the finger-tips that displaced his were Doctor Jackson’s. And it was Doctor Jackson’s voice that said:

  “You don’t know how to take a man’s pulse from the neck. There—right there—put your fingers where mine are. D’ye get it? Ah, I thought so. Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer.”

  “It’s only twenty-four hours,” Captain Jamie said, “and he was never in like condition before.”

  “Putting it on, that’s what he’s doing, and you can stack on that,” Al Hutchins, the head trusty, interjected.

  “I don’t know,” Captain Jamie insisted. “When a man’s pulse is that low it takes an expert to find it—”

  “Aw, I served my apprenticeship in the jacket,” Al Hutchins sneered. “And I’ve made you unlace me, Captain, when you thought I was croaking, and it was all I could do to keep from snickering in your face.”

  “What do you think, Doc?” Warden Atherton asked.

  “I tell you the heart action is splendid,” was the answer. “Of course it is weak. That is only to be expected. I tell you Hutchins is right. The man is feigning.”

  With his thumb he turned up one of my eyelids, whereat I opened my other eye and gazed up at the group bending over me.

  “What did I tell you?” was Doctor Jackson’s cry of triumph.

  And then, although it seemed the effort must crack my face, I summoned all the will of me and smiled.

  They held water to my lips, and I drank greedily. It must be remembered that all this while I lay helpless on my back, my arms pinioned along with my body inside the jacket. When they offered me food—dry prison bread—I shook my head. I closed my eyes in advertisement that I was tired of their presence. The pain of my partial resuscitation was unbearable. I could feel my body coming to life. Down the cords of my neck and into my patch of chest over the heart darting pains were making their way. And in my brain the memory was strong that Philippa waited me in the big hall, and I was desirous to escape away back to the half a day and half a night I had just lived in old France .

  So it was, even as they stood about me, that I strove to eliminate the live portion of my body from my consciousness. I was in haste to depart, but Warden Atherton’s voice held me back.

  “Is there anything you want to complain about?” he asked.

  Now I had but one fear, namely, that they would unlace me; so that it must be understood that my reply was not uttered in braggadocio but was meant to forestall any possible unlacing.

  “You might make the jacket a little tighter,” I whispered. “It’s too loose for comfort. I get lost in it. Hutchins is stupid. He is also a fool. He doesn’t know the first thing about lacing the jacket. Warden, you ought to put him in charge of the loom-room. He is a more profound master of inefficiency than the present incumbent, who is merely stupid without being a fool as well. Now get out, all of you, unless you can think of worse to do to me. In which case, by all means remain. I invite you heartily to remain, if you think in your feeble imaginings that you have devised fresh torture for me.”

  “He’s a wooz, a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool wooz,” Doctor Jackson chanted, with the medico’s delight in a novelty.

  “Standing, you are a wonder,” the Warden said. “You’ve got an iron will, but I’ll break it as sure as God made little apples.”

  “And you’ve the heart of a rabbit,” I retorted. “One-tenth the jacketing I have received in San Quentin would have squeezed your rabbit heart out of your long ears.”

  Oh, it was a touch, that, for the Warden did have unusual ears. They would have interested Lombroso, I am sure.

  “As for me,” I went on, “I laugh at you, and I wish no worse fate to the loom-room than that you should take charge of it yourself. Why, you’ve got me down and worked your wickedness on me, and still I live and laugh in your face. Inefficient? You can’t even kill me. Inefficient? You couldn’t kill a cornered rat with a stick of dynamite—real dynamite, and not the sort you are deluded into believing I have hidden away.”

  “Anything more?” he demanded, when I had ceased from my diatribe.

  And into my mind flashed what I had told Fortini when he pressed his insolence on me.

  “Begone, you prison cur,” I said. “Take your yapping from my door.”

  It must have been a terrible thing for a man of Warden Atherton’s stripe to be thus bearded by a helpless prisoner. His face whitened with rage and his voice shook as he threatened:

  “By God, Standing, I’ll do for you yet.”

  “There is only one thing you can do,” I said. “You can tighten this distressingly loose jacket. If you won’t, then get out. And I don’t care if you fail to come back for a week or for the whole ten days.”

  And what can even the Warden of a great prison do in reprisal on a prisoner upon whom the ultimate reprisal has already been wreaked? It may be that Warden Atherton thought of some possible threat, for he began to speak. But my voice had strengthened with the exercise, and I began to sing, “Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.” And sing I did until my door clanged and the bolts and locks squeaked and grated fast.

  CHAPTER XII

  Now that I had learned the trick the way was easy. And I knew the way was bound to become easier the more I travelled it. Once establish a line of least resistance, every succeeding journey along it will find still less resistance. And so, as you shall see, my journeys from San Quentin life into other lives were achieved almost automatically as time went by.

  After Warden Atherton and his crew had left me it was a matter of minutes to will the resuscitated portion of my body back into the little death. Death in life it was, but it was only the little death, similar to the temporary death produced by an anжsthetic.

  And so, from all that was sordid and vile, from brutal solitary and jacket hell, from acquainted flies and sweats of darkness and the knuckl
e-talk of the living dead, I was away at a bound into time and space.

  Came the duration of darkness, and the slow-growing awareness of other things and of another self. First of all, in this awareness, was dust. It was in my nostrils, dry and acrid. It was on my lips. It coated my face, my hands, and especially was it noticeable on the finger-tips when touched by the ball of my thumb.

  Next I was aware of ceaseless movement. All that was about me lurched and oscillated. There was jolt and jar, and I heard what I knew as a matter of course to be the grind of wheels on axles and the grate and clash of iron tyres against rock and sand. And there came to me the jaded voices of men, in curse and snarl of slow-plodding, jaded animals.

  I opened my eyes, that were inflamed with dust, and immediately fresh dust bit into them. On the coarse blankets on which I lay the dust was half an inch thick. Above me, through sifting dust, I saw an arched roof of lurching, swaying canvas, and myriads of dust motes descended heavily in the shafts of sunshine that entered through holes in the canvas.

  I was a child, a boy of eight or nine, and I was weary, as was the woman, dusty-visaged and haggard, who sat up beside me and soothed a crying babe in her arms. She was my mother; that I knew as a matter of course, just as I knew, when I glanced along the canvas tunnel of the wagon-top, that the shoulders of the man on the driver’s seat were the shoulders of my father.

  When I started to crawl along the packed gear with which the wagon was laden my mother said in a tired and querulous voice, “Can’t you ever be still a minute, Jesse?”

  That was my name, Jesse. I did not know my surname, though I heard my mother call my father John. I have a dim recollection of hearing, at one time or another, the other men address my father as Captain. I knew that he was the leader of this company, and that his orders were obeyed by all.

  I crawled out through the opening in the canvas and sat down beside my father on the seat. The air was stifling with the dust that rose from the wagons and the many hoofs of the animals. So thick was the dust that it was like mist or fog in the air, and the low sun shone through it dimly and with a bloody light.

  Not alone was the light of this setting sun ominous, but everything about me seemed ominous—the landscape, my father’s face, the fret of the babe in my mother’s arms that she could not still, the six horses my father drove that had continually to be urged and that were without any sign of colour, so heavily had the dust settled on them.

  The landscape was an aching, eye-hurting desolation. Low hills stretched endlessly away on every hand. Here and there only on their slopes were occasional scrub growths of heat-parched brush. For the most part the surface of the hills was naked-dry and composed of sand and rock. Our way followed the sand-bottoms between the hills. And the sand-bottoms were bare, save for spots of scrub, with here and there short tufts of dry and withered grass. Water there was none, nor sign of water, except for washed gullies that told of ancient and torrential rains.

  My father was the only one who had horses to his wagon. The wagons went in single file, and as the train wound and curved I saw that the other wagons were drawn by oxen. Three or four yoke of oxen strained and pulled weakly at each wagon, and beside them, in the deep sand, walked men with ox-goads, who prodded the unwilling beasts along. On a curve I counted the wagons ahead and behind. I knew that there were forty of them, including our own; for often I had counted them before. And as I counted them now, as a child will to while away tedium, they were all there, forty of them, all canvas-topped, big and massive, crudely fashioned, pitching and lurching, grinding and jarring over sand and sage-brush and rock.

  To right and left of us, scattered along the train, rode a dozen or fifteen men and youths on horses. Across their pommels were long-barrelled rifles. Whenever any of them drew near to our wagon I could see that their faces, under the dust, were drawn and anxious like my father’s. And my father, like them, had a long-barrelled rifle close to hand as he drove.

  Also, to one side, limped a score or more of foot-sore, yoke-galled, skeleton oxen, that ever paused to nip at the occasional tufts of withered grass, and that ever were prodded on by the tired-faced youths who herded them. Sometimes one or another of these oxen would pause and low, and such lowing seemed as ominous as all else about me.

  Far, far away I have a memory of having lived, a smaller lad, by the tree-lined banks of a stream. And as the wagon jolts along, and I sway on the seat with my father, I continually return and dwell upon that pleasant water flowing between the trees. I have a sense that for an interminable period I have lived in a wagon and travelled on, ever on, with this present company.

  But strongest of all upon me is what is strong upon all the company, namely, a sense of drifting to doom. Our way was like a funeral march. Never did a laugh arise. Never did I hear a happy tone of voice. Neither peace nor ease marched with us. The faces of the men and youths who outrode the train were grim, set, hopeless. And as we toiled through the lurid dust of sunset often I scanned my father’s face in vain quest of some message of cheer. I will not say that my father’s face, in all its dusty haggardness, was hopeless. It was dogged, and oh! so grim and anxious, most anxious.

  A thrill seemed to run along the train. My father’s head went up. So did mine. And our horses raised their weary heads, scented the air with long-drawn snorts, and for the nonce pulled willingly. The horses of the outriders quickened their pace. And as for the herd of scarecrow oxen, it broke into a forthright gallop. It was almost ludicrous. The poor brutes were so clumsy in their weakness and haste. They were galloping skeletons draped in mangy hide, and they out-distanced the boys who herded them. But this was only for a time. Then they fell back to a walk, a quick, eager, shambling, sore-footed walk; and they no longer were lured aside by the dry bunch-grass.

  “What is it?” my mother asked from within the wagon.

  “Water,” was my father’s reply. “It must be Nephi.”

  And my mother: “Thank God! And perhaps they will sell us food.”

  And into Nephi, through blood-red dust, with grind and grate and jolt and jar, our great wagons rolled. A dozen scattered dwellings or shanties composed the place. The landscape was much the same as that through which we had passed. There were no trees, only scrub growths and sandy bareness. But here were signs of tilled fields, with here and there a fence. Also there was water. Down the stream ran no current. The bed, however, was damp, with now and again a water-hole into which the loose oxen and the saddle-horses stamped and plunged their muzzles to the eyes. Here, too, grew an occasional small willow.

  “That must be Bill Black’s mill they told us about,” my father said, pointing out a building to my mother, whose anxiousness had drawn her to peer out over our shoulders.

  An old man, with buckskin shirt and long, matted, sunburnt hair, rode back to our wagon and talked with father. The signal was given, and the head wagons of the train began to deploy in a circle. The ground favoured the evolution, and, from long practice, it was accomplished without a hitch, so that when the forty wagons were finally halted they formed a circle. All was bustle and orderly confusion. Many women, all tired-faced and dusty like my mother, emerged from the wagons. Also poured forth a very horde of children. There must have been at least fifty children, and it seemed I knew them all of long time; and there were at least two score of women. These went about the preparations for cooking supper.

  While some of the men chopped sage-brush and we children carried it to the fires that were kindling, other men unyoked the oxen and let them stampede for water. Next the men, in big squads, moved the wagons snugly into place. The tongue of each wagon was on the inside of the circle, and, front and rear, each wagon was in solid contact with the next wagon before and behind. The great brakes were locked fast; but, not content with this, the wheels of all the wagons were connected with chains. This was nothing new to us children. It was the trouble sign of a camp in hostile country. One wagon only was left out of the circle, so as to form a gate to the corral. Later on, a
s we knew, ere the camp slept, the animals would be driven inside, and the gate-wagon would be chained like the others in place. In the meanwhile, and for hours, the animals would be herded by men and boys to what scant grass they could find.

  While the camp-making went on my father, with several others of the men, including the old man with the long, sunburnt hair, went away on foot in the direction of the mill. I remember that all of us, men, women, and even the children, paused to watch them depart; and it seemed their errand was of grave import.

  While they were away other men, strangers, inhabitants of desert Nephi, came into camp and stalked about. They were white men, like us, but they were hard-faced, stern-faced, sombre, and they seemed angry with all our company. Bad feeling was in the air, and they said things calculated to rouse the tempers of our men. But the warning went out from the women, and was passed on everywhere to our men and youths, that there must be no words.

  One of the strangers came to our fire, where my mother was alone, cooking. I had just come up with an armful of sage-brush, and I stopped to listen and to stare at the intruder, whom I hated, because it was in the air to hate, because I knew that every last person in our company hated these strangers who were white-skinned like us and because of whom we had been compelled to make our camp in a circle.

  This stranger at our fire had blue eyes, hard and cold and piercing. His hair was sandy. His face was shaven to the chin, and from under the chin, covering the neck and extending to the ears, sprouted a sandy fringe of whiskers well-streaked with gray. Mother did not greet him, nor did he greet her. He stood and glowered at her for some time, he cleared his throat and said with a sneer:

  “Wisht you was back in Missouri right now I bet.”

  I saw mother tighten her lips in self-control ere she answered:

  “We are from Arkansas .”