The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (178 page)

At first the painter had seemed resolved to keep his grip, but suddenly he let go her arm in a panic. “I’ve hurt her,” he said, turning to Trescott.

Trescott had swiftly done much towards the obliteration of the hotel kitchen, but he looked up now and spoke, after a short period of reflection. “You’ve hurt her, have you? Well, hurt her again. Spank her!” he cried, enthusiastically. “Spank her, confound you, man! She needs it. Here’s your chance. Spank her, and spank her good. Spank her!”

The painter naturally wavered over this incendiary proposition, but at last, in one supreme burst of daring, he shut his eyes and again grabbed his precious offspring.

The spanking was lamentably the work of a perfect bungler. It couldn’t have hurt at all; but the angel child raised to heaven a loud, clear soprano howl that expressed the last word in even mediæval anguish. Soon the painter was aghast. “Stop it, darling! I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean to — to hurt you so much, you know.” He danced nervously. Trescott sat on a box, and devilishly smiled.

But the pasture call of suffering motherhood came down to them, and a moment later a splendid apparition appeared on the cellar stairs. She understood the scene at a glance. “Willis! What have you been doing?”

Trescott sat on his box, the painter guiltily moved from foot to foot, and the angel child advanced to her mother with arms outstretched, making a piteous wail of amazed and pained pride that would have moved Peter the Great. Regardless of her frock, the panting mother knelt on the stone floor and took her child to her bosom, and looked, then, bitterly, scornfully, at the cowering father and husband.

The painter, for his part, at once looked reproachfully at Trescott, as if to say: “There! You see?”

Trescott arose and extended his hands in a quiet but magnificent gesture of despair and weariness. He seemed about to say something classic, and, quite instinctively, they waited. The stillness was deep, and the wait was longer than a moment. “Well,” he said, “we can’t live in the cellar. Let’s go up-stairs.”

THE
TRIAL
,
EXECUTION
,
AND
BURIAL
OF
HOMER
PHELPS

FROM time to time an enwearied pine bough let fall to the earth its load of melting snow, and the branch swung back glistening in the faint wintry sunlight. Down the gulch a brook clattered amid its ice with the sound of a perpetual breaking of glass. All the forest looked drenched and forlorn.

The sky-line was a ragged enclosure of gray cliffs and hemlocks and pines. If one had been miraculously set down in this gulch one could have imagined easily that the nearest human habitation was hundreds of miles away, if it were not for an old half-discernible wood-road that led towards the brook.

“Halt! Who’s there?”

This low and gruff cry suddenly dispelled the stillness which lay upon the lonely gulch, but the hush which followed it seemed even more profound. The hush endured for some seconds, and then the voice of the challenger was again raised, this time with a distinctly querulous note in it.

“Halt! Who’s there? Why don’t you answer when I holler? Don’t you know you’re likely to get shot?”

A second voice answered, “Oh, you knew who I was easy enough.”

“That don’t make no diff’rence.” One of the Margate twins stepped from a thicket and confronted Homer Phelps on the old wood-road. The majestic scowl of official wrath was upon the brow of Reeves Margate, a long stick was held in the hollow of his arm as one would hold a rifle, and he strode grimly to the other boy. “That don’t make no diff’rence. You’ve got to answer when I holler, anyhow. Willie says so.”

At the mention of the dread chieftain’s name the Phelps boy daunted a trifle, but he still sulkily murmured, “Well, you knew it was me.”

He started on his way through the snow, but the twin sturdily blocked the path. “You can’t pass less’n you give the countersign.”

“Huh?” said the Phelps boy. “Countersign?”

“Yes — countersign,” sneered the twin, strong in his sense of virtue.

But the Phelps boy became very angry. “Can’t I, hey? Can’t I, hey? I’ll show you whether I can or not! I’ll show you, Reeves Margate!”

There was a short scuffle, and then arose the anguished clamor of the sentry: “Hey, fellers! Here’s a man tryin’ to run a-past the guard. Hey, fellers! Hey!”

There was a great noise in the adjacent underbrush. The voice of Willie could be heard exhorting his followers to charge swiftly and bravely. Then they appeared — Willie Dalzel, Jimmie Trescott, the other Margate twin, and Dan Earl. The chieftain’s face was dark with wrath. “What’s the matter? Can’t you play it right? ‘Ain’t you got any sense?” he asked the Phelps boy.

The sentry was yelling out his grievance. “Now — he came along an’ I hollered at ‘im, an’ he didn’t pay no ‘tention, an’ when I ast ‘im for the countersign, he wouldn’t say nothin’. That ain’t no way.”

“Can’t you play it right?” asked the chief again, with gloomy scorn.

“He knew it was me easy enough,” said the Phelps boy.

“That ‘ain’t got nothin’ to do with it,” cried the chief, furiously. “That ‘ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. If you’re goin’ to play, you’ve got to play it right. It ain’t no fun if you go spoilin’ the whole thing this way. Can’t you play it right?”

“I forgot the countersign,” lied the culprit, weakly.

Whereupon the remainder of the band yelled out, with one triumphant voice: “War to the knife! War to the knife! I remember it, Willie. Don’t I, Willie?”

The leader was puzzled. Evidently he was trying to develop in his mind a plan for dealing correctly with this unusual incident. He felt, no doubt, that he must proceed according to the books, but unfortunately the books did not cover the point precisely. However, he finally said to Homer Phelps, “You are under arrest.” Then with a stentorian voice he shouted, “Seize him!”

His loyal followers looked startled for a brief moment, but directly they began to move upon the Phelps boy. The latter clearly did not intend to be seized. He backed away, expostulating wildly. He even seemed somewhat frightened. “No, no; don’t you touch me, I tell you; don’t you dare touch me.”

The others did not seem anxious to engage. They moved slowly, watching the desperate light in his eyes. The chieftain stood with folded arms, his face growing darker and darker with impatience. At length he burst out: “Oh, seize him, I tell you! Why don’t you seize him? Grab him by the leg, Dannie! Hurry up, all of you! Seize him, I keep a-say-in’!”

Thus adjured, the Margate twins and Dan Earl made another pained effort, while Jimmie Trescott manœuvred to cut off a retreat. But, to tell the truth, there was a boyish law which held them back from laying hands of violence upon little Phelps under these conditions. Perhaps it was because they were only playing, whereas he was now undeniably serious. At any rate, they looked very sick of their occupation.

“Don’t you dare!” snarled the Phelps boy, facing first one and then the other; he was almost in tears—”don’t you dare touch me!”

The chieftain was now hopping with exasperation. “Oh, seize him, can’t you? You’re no good at all!” Then he loosed his wrath upon the Phelps boy: “Stand still, Homer, can’t you? You’ve got to be seized, you know. That ain’t the way. It ain’t any fun if you keep a-dodgin’ that way. Stand still, can’t you! You’ve got to be seized.”

“I don’t
want
to be seized,” retorted the Phelps boy, obstinate and bitter.

“But you’ve
got
to be seized!” yelled the maddened chief. “Don’t you see? That’s the way to play it.”

The Phelps boy answered, promptly, “But I don’t want to play that way.”

“But that’s the
right
way to play it. Don’t you see? You’ve got to play it the right way. You’ve got to be seized, an’ then we’ll hold a trial on you, an’ — an’ all sorts of things.”

But this prospect held no illusions for the Phelps boy. He continued doggedly to repeat, “I don’t want to play that way!”

Of course in the end the chief stooped to beg and beseech this unreasonable lad. “Oh, come on, Homer! Don’t be so mean. You’re a-spoilin’ everything. We won’t hurt you any. Not the tintiest bit. It’s all just playin’. What’s the matter with you?”

The different tone of the leader made an immediate impression upon the other. He showed some signs of the beginning of weakness. “Well,” he asked, “what you goin’ to do?”

“Why, first we’re goin’ to put you in a dungeon, or tie you to a stake, or something like that — just pertend, you know,” added the chief, hurriedly, “an’ then we’ll hold a trial, awful solemn, but there won’t be anything what’ll hurt you. Not a thing.”

“FROM THIS BOOT HE EMPTIED ABOUT A QUART OF SNOW”

And so the game was readjusted. The Phelps boy was marched off between Dan Earl and a Margate twin. The party proceeded to their camp, which was hidden some hundred feet back in the thickets. There was a miserable little hut with a pine-bark roof, which so frankly and constantly leaked that existence in the open air was always preferable. At present it was noisily dripping melted snow into the black mouldy interior. In front of this hut a feeble fire was flickering through its unhappy career. Underfoot, the watery snow was of the color of lead.

The party having arrived at the camp, the chief leaned against a tree, and balancing on one foot, drew off a rubber boot. From this boot he emptied about a quart of snow. He squeezed his stocking, which had a hole from which protruded a lobster-red toe. He resumed his boot. “Bring up the prisoner,” said he. They did it. “Guilty or not guilty?” he asked.

“Huh?” said the Phelps boy.

“Guilty or not guilty?” demanded the chief,
peremptorily. “Guilty or not guilty? Don’t you understand?”

Homer Phelps looked profoundly puzzled. “Guilty or not guilty?” he asked, slowly and weakly.

The chief made a swift gesture, and turned in despair to the others. “Oh, he don’t do it right! He does it all wrong!” He again faced the prisoner with an air of making a last attempt, “Now look-a-here, Homer, when I say, ‘Guilty or not guilty?’ you want to up an’ say, ‘Not Guilty.’ Don’t you see?”

“Not guilty,” said Homer, at once.

“No, no, no. Wait till I ask you. Now wait.” He called out, pompously, “Pards, if this prisoner before us is guilty, what shall be his fate?”

All those well-trained little infants with one voice sung out, “
Death!
”

“Prisoner,” continued the chief, “are you guilty or not guilty?”

“But look-a-here,” argued Homer, “you said it wouldn’t be nothin’ that would hurt. I—”

“Thunder an’ lightnin’!” roared the wretched chief. “Keep your mouth shut, can’t ye? What in the mischief—”

But there was an interruption from Jimmie Trescott, who shouldered a twin aside and stepped to the front. “Here,” he said, very contemptuously, “let me be the prisoner. I’ll show ‘im how to do it.”

“All right, Jim,” cried the chief, delighted; “you be the prisoner, then. Now all you fellers with guns stand there in a row! Get out of the way, Homer!” He cleared his throat, and addressed Jimmie. “Prisoner, are you guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” answered Jimmie, firmly. Standing there before his judge — unarmed, slim, quiet, modest — he was ideal.

The chief beamed upon him, and looked aside to cast a triumphant and withering glance upon Homer Phelps. He said: “There! That’s the way to do it.”

The twins and Dan Earl also much admired Jimmie.

“That’s all right so far, anyhow,” said the satisfied chief. “An’ now we’ll — now we’ll — we’ll perceed with the execution.”

“That ain’t right,” said the new prisoner, suddenly. “That ain’t the next thing. You’ve got to have a trial first. You’ve got to fetch up a lot of people first who’ll say I done it.”

“That’s so,” said the chief. “I didn’t think. Here, Reeves, you be first witness. Did the prisoner do it?”