The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

"Does it make you feel aisier, Mouse?" Dan leaned close to the quivering lips to catch the answer.

"It helps fine," Larry answered, and fainted again.

"You'll be leavin' me stay wid him, sir?" Dan begged. "'T was for me he's come to this."

Neville gave consent and left the two men together.

Between four and five in the morning, when Neville's watch had lived through thirty-three unbroken hours of the fearful grind, a shout that ended in a screaming laugh ran through the fire-room. High above the toil-crazed men a door had opened and closed. A form, seen dimly through the smoke and steam, was moving backward down the ladder. Again the door opened; another man came through. Every shovel in the room fell to the steel floor; every man in the room shouted or laughed or cried.

The engine-room door, too, had opened, admitting the chief and his assistant. Not until he had examined each mechanical tragedy below did the chief give time to the human one above.

"Where's that man that's hurt?" he asked as he came, slowly, from an inspection of the burned-out bearings down the shaft alley.

Neville went with him to the store-room. Dan, sagging under fatigue, clung to the bench where Larry lay moaning.

"You can go now, Sullivan," Neville told him.

Dan raised his head, remorse, entreaty, stubbornness in his look.

"Let me be! I'll not leave him!"

The chief turned to Neville.

"What's come over that drunk?" he asked.

"Ever since the Mouse got hurt, Sullivan's acted queer, just like a woman."

"Get to your quarters, Sullivan," the chief ordered. "We'll take care of this man."

Dan's hands closed; for an instant he glared rebellion from blood-shot eyes. Then the iron law of sea discipline conquering, he turned to Larry.

"The Blessed Virgin aise you, poor Mouse!" he mumbled huskily and slouched out through the door.

At midday the San Gardo's captain got a shot at the sun. Though his vessel had been headed steadily northeast for more than thirty hours, the observation showed that she had made twenty-eight miles sternway to the southwest. By two in the afternoon the wind had dropped to half a gale, making a change of course possible. The captain signaled full speed ahead, and the ship, swinging about, began limping across the gulf, headed once more toward Galveston.

Neville, who had slept like a stone, came on deck just before sunset. The piled-up seas, racing along the side, had lost their breaking crests; the ship rose and fell with some degree of regularity. He called the boatswain and went to the store-room.

They found Larry in one of his conscious moments.

"Well, Mouse, we're going to fix you in a better place," the engineer called with what heart he could show.

"Thank you kindly, sir," Larry managed to answer; "but 't is my last voyage, Mr. Neville." And the grit that lay hidden in the man's soul showed in his pain-twisted smile.

They carried him up the last flight of iron stairs to the deck. Clear of the engine-room, the boatswain turned toward the bow.

"No. The other way, Boson," Neville ordered.

The chief, passing them, stopped.

"Where are you taking him, Mr. Neville?"

"The poor fellow's dying, sir," Neville answered in a low voice.

"Well, where are you taking him?" the chief persisted.

"I'd like to put him in my room, sir."

"A stoker in officers' quarters!" The chief frowned. "Sunday-school discipline!" He disappeared through the engine-room door, slamming it after him.

They did what they could, these seamen, for the injured man; on freighters one of the crew has no business to get hurt. They laid Larry in Neville's berth and went out, leaving a sailor to watch over him.

The sun rose the next day in a cloudless sky, and shone on a brilliant sea of tumbling, white-capped waves. Far off the starboard bow floated a thin line of smoke from a tug's funnel, the first sign to the crew since the hurricane that the world was not swept clean of ships. Two hours later the tug was standing by, her captain hailing the San Gardo through a megaphone.

"Run in to New Orleans!" he shouted.

"I cleared for Galveston, and I'm going there," the San Gardo's captain called back.

"No, you ain't neither."

"I'd like to know why, I won't."

"Because you can't,"—the answer carried distinctly across the waves,—"there ain't no such place. It's been washed clean off the earth."

The San Gardo swung farther to the west and with her engine pounding at every stroke, limped on toward the Mississippi.

At five o'clock a Port Eads pilot climbed over the side, and taking the vessel through South Pass, straightened her in the smooth, yellow waters of the great river for the hundred-mile run to New Orleans.

When the sun hung low over the sugar plantations that stretch in flat miles to the east and west beyond the levees, when all was quiet on land and water and ship, Neville walked slowly to the forecastle.

"Sullivan," he called, "come with me."

Dan climbed down from his bunk and came to the door; the big stoker searched Neville's face with a changed, sobered look.

"I've been wantin' all this time to go to 'im. How's he now, sir?"

"He's dying, Sullivan, and has asked for you."

Outside Neville's quarters Dan took off his cap and went quietly into the room.

Larry lay with closed eyes, his face ominously white.

Dan crept clumsily to the berth and put his big hand on Larry's shoulder.

"It's me, Mouse. They wouldn't leave me come no sooner."

Larry's head moved slightly; his faded eyes opened.

Dan stooped in awkward embarrassment until his face was close to Larry.

"I come to ask you—" Dan stopped. The muscles of his thick neck moved jerkily—"to ask you, Mouse, before—to forgit the damn mean things—I done to you, Mouse."

Larry made no answer; he kept his failing sight fixed on Dan.

After a long wait Sullivan spoke again.

"An' to think you done it, Mouse, for me!"

A light sprang to Larry's eyes, flooding his near-sighted gaze with sudden anger.

"For you!" The cry came from his narrow chest with jarring force. "You! You!" he repeated in rising voice. "It's always of yourself you're thinkin', Dan Sullivan!" He stopped, his face twitching in pain; then with both hands clenched he went on, his breast heaving at each word hurled at Dan:

"Do you think I followed you from ship to ship, dragged you out of every rum-hole in every port, for your own sake!"

He lay back exhausted, his chest rising and falling painfully, his eyelids fluttering over his burning eyes.

Dan stepped back, and, silenced, stared at the dying man.

Larry clung to his last moments of life, fighting for strength to finish. He struggled, and raised himself on one elbow.

"For you!" he screamed. "No, for Mary! For Mary, my own flesh and blood—Mary, the child of the woman I beat when I was drunk an' left to starve when I got ready!"

Through the stateroom door the sun's flat rays struck full on Larry's inspired face. He swayed on his elbow; his head fell forward. By a final effort he steadied himself. His last words came in ringing command.

"Go back! Go—" he faltered, gasping for breath—"go home sober to Mary an' the child that's comin'!"

The fire of anger drifted slowly from Larry's dying gaze. The little man fell back. The Bunker Mouse went out, all man, big at the end.

RAINBOW PETE 12

By RICHARD MATTHEWS HALLETFrom The Pictorial Review

In pursuance of a policy to detain us on the island at Sick Dog until the arrival of his daughter, Papa Isbister thought fit to tell us the fate of Rainbow Pete, of whose physical deformity and thirst for gold we knew something already. Rainbow Pete had come to Mushrat Portage, playing his flute, at a time when preparations were being made to blast a road-bed through the wilderness for the railroad.

Mushrat Portage had been but recently a willow clump, and a black rock ledge hanging over a precipitous valley: the hand of the Indian could be seen one day parting the leaves of the trail, and on the next, drills came and tins of black powder, and hordes of greedy men, blind with a burning zeal for "monkeying with powder" as our host of Sick Dog said. They were strange men, hoarse men, unreasonable men who cast sheep's-eyes at the dark woman from Regina, whose shack, rented of Scarecrow Charlie, crowned the high point of the ledge. She was the only woman on Mushrat, and at a time just before the blasting began, when Rainbow Pete sauntered over the trail with his pick and his flute and his dirty bag of rock specimens, she was hungrily watched and waited on by the new inhabitants of that ancient portage—Mushrat, whose destinies were soon to be so splendid, and whose skies were to be rocked and rent by the thunders of men struggling with reluctant nature, monkeying with powder.

When Pete laid down his tools and guns on the table at Scarecrow Charlie's, where the woman was employed, had he in his heart some foreshadowing presentiment of the peril he was in, of the sharp destroying fire of a resolute woman's eyes, which he was subjecting himself to, in including her in his universal caress? Who knows? Perhaps his flute had whispered tidings to him. He was, said Papa Isbister, immensely proud of his plaything, this huge gaunt sailor, who had been bent into the shape of a rainbow—the foot of a rainbow—by a chance shot, which shattered his hip and gave him an impressive forward cant, which appeared to women, it seemed—I quote my old friend—in the light of an endearing droop.

The romantic visitation of this musical sailorman made the efforts of all Mushrat as nothing. But Rainbow Pete seemed unaware of the fiery jealousies glowing in the night on all sides of him when he fixed his eyes on her for the first time—with that mellow assurance of a careless master of the hearts and whims of women.

"What's this he said to her?" said our old friend. "It was skilful; it was put like a notable question if she took it so."

"You don't want to go out to-night," he said to her, with his guns on the table.

"No, I do not," she said to the man.

"There you will be taking the words out of my mouth to suit your heart," he went on saying to her. "Mark this, I'm making this a command to you. You don't want to go out to-night. Do not do it."

This he told her was on account of stray bullets, because he was meaning to shoot up that place.

Heh! It was a trick of his, to trap her into denying him when he had made no offer.

Old Isbister laughed heartily at this picture of Pete in the days of his triumph.

He was a captivating man, it appeared. He was tattooed. On his arms were snakes and the like of that, daggers and the like of that, dragons and the like of that. This was a romantic skin to the man; and his blue eyes were like the diamond drills they were bringing to Mushrat.

"Oh my," said the woman, leaning at his table, "this is what will be keeping me from mass, I shouldn't wonder."

This was a prairie woman from Regina; now mark, it was whispered to be no credit to human nature that she had had to leave that town. No. She was a full woman, very deep, with burning eyes. It was hard talking with her, because of her lingering speech. Oh, she was a massive woman, for the small shoes she wore. She was tall, as high as Rainbow Pete's shoulder. She purchased scent for her hair. This I know, having seen it standing in the bottles. She was a prairie woman.

This was a wild night we spent on Mushrat, after Pete's reproving the woman there in Scarecrow Charlie's place. Smash McGregor, the little doctor, was sitting between us in his yellow skull-cap; and Willis Countryman was reading and drinking in one corner, listening to the laughing men there. They were laughing, thinking of the fortunes there would be here when blasting begun.

But Rainbow Pete was not one of the rockmen. No. He told them strange tales of gold. Heh! He was athirst for gold. Strange tales he told of gold. Once how in Australia he had hold of a lump of it as big as poor McGregor's skull, but isn't it a perishing pity, oh my, this was just a desert where he was, there was no water, he grew faint carrying the nugget. Our mouths were open when the man told us he had dropped it in the desert, with his name carved on it.

"There it is to this day, sinking in the sands," he said. Oh, the proud woman from Regina. There she turned her dark eyes over our heads, never looking at the plausible man at all; but she had heard him.

"Gold?" said Smash McGregor. "Why, there's gold enough in the world."

"Ay, there's comfort too, if you know where to take it," said Rainbow Pete, twirling here at his mustache and looking at the woman.

"There's gold," said McGregor, "for any man."

"Yes, my hearty," said Pete, "it's twinkling in the river-beds, it shines in the sands under your feet, but still it's hard to get in your two fisties."

"Why," said Smash McGregor, "did you never hear there's a pot of gold at the foot of every rainbow?"

Oh, my friend, as he went mentioning the rainbow, there was a thunder-cap on the brow of that great sailor.

"So they call me—Rainbow Pete," he said.

"Look then," said McGregor, "take the pick, and strike the ground at your feet."

Rainbow Pete was not hearing them.

"This is a man I have been following on many trails," he muttered, "This man who made a rainbow of me. Mark this, he shall thirst, if I meet him. Ay! He shall burn with these fingers at his throat. He shall have gold poured into him like liquid, however."

It was plain he had no love for this man who had fashioned him in the form of a rainbow.

"What is this man called?" said the little doctor.

"It's a dark man wearing a red cap, called Pal Yachy," said Rainbow Pete. "He spends his time escaping me. Look, where he shot me in the hip."

Now we shielded him, and he drew out his shirt showing the wound in the thigh which made a rainbow of him; but stop, didn't McGregor discover the strange business on his spine?

"What's this, however?" he said.

"This is a palm-tree," said the man. "Stand close about me."

Oh my, we stood close, watching the man twisting up his shirt, and here we saw the palm-tree going up his spine, and every joint of his spine was used for a joint of the tree, like; and the long blue leaves were waving on his shoulder-blade when he would be rippling the skin. This was a fine broad back like satin to be putting a palm-tree on. Look, as I am lifting my head, here I see the dark woman silent at the bar, burning up with curiosity at what we are hiding here. Listen, it's the man's voice, under his shirt.

"This was done in the South Seas, when I was young," he said to us, "and the bigger I grow, the bigger the tree is. And now what next?" Then he put his shirt back, and stood up to be fixing an eye on the woman from Regina.

He was first to be waited on at Scarecrow Charlie's. Yes, he was first. This was a mystery of a man to that dark woman from Regina.

Now in these days before blasting began, they were fond of talking marriage on Mushrat, thinking of this woman from Regina, who was at the disposal of no man there. They were full of doubts and wonderments, when they would be idling together in Scarecrow Charlie's. But now one morning when they were idling there, Shoepack Sam must be yawning and saying to them,

"Oh, my, this is the time now, before the sun is up, I'm glad I am not married. It's a pleasure to be a single man at this hour."

Heh! Heh! As a usual thing we are not gratified at all for this favor of heaven. A single man, Shoepack Sam was saying, would not have to be looking at the wreck of his wife in the morning; and this is when women were caught unawares in the gill-nets time is lowering for them.

"They are pale about the gills then," he said. "They are just drowned fish. They have stayed in the nets too long."

"No, it's not certain," said Rainbow Pete. "She might be pleasant-looking on the pillow with her hair adrift."

Then Shoepack told him that the salt water had leaked into his brains, what with his voyages.

"Still, this is a beautiful cheek," said Pete, speaking low, because she was moving about beyond the boards.

"These things are purchased," said Shoepack, scraping his feet together in yellow moosehides. "Listen to me, I have seen them in a long line, on her shelf, with many odors."

So they were talking together, and Rainbow Pete was putting his fingers to the flute and staring down the valley, where Throat River was twisting like a rag.

"I could have had a wife for speaking at Kicking Horse," he said.

"There is one for speaking now," said Shoepack.

"In a few days I go North," Rainbow Pete went muttering. "There is gold at Dungeon Creek. I have seen samples of this vein."

"She will be the less trouble to you then, if you are not satisfied on this question," said Shoepack Sam.

Then Rainbow Pete said he was not so certain of her, on questioning himself. He was a modest man.

"This palm-tree and the other designs you have not been speaking about will be enticing her," said Shoepack Sam. "But do not speak to her of going away at the time of asking her."

"This is wisdom," said Rainbow Pete, and he put his lips to the flute, to be giving us a touch of music.

This was a light reason for marriage, disn't it seem? This was what Willis Countryman called a marriage of convenience, in the fashion of frogs. Ay! It was convenient to them to be married. He was a great reader—Willis.

So they were married, I'm telling you, but it's impossible to know what he said to her in speaking about it. They were married by the man called Justice of the Peace on Mushrat. This was before the blasting, and it was the first marriage on Mushrat.

Then they lived together in the little house she had chosen, sitting on the black ledge above Scarecrow Charlie's eating-place. Now it was a wonderment to Mushrat, to hear the sound of Rainbow Pete's old flute dropping from the dark ledge, by night, when they were taking their opinion of matrimony up there together, with a candle at the window.

But now look here, when Shoepack Sam came plucking him at the elbow, saying, "Was I right or was I wrong?" then Rainbow Pete stared at him with his eyes like drills, and he said to him, "You were curious and nothing more." Oh my, isn't this the perversity of married men.

They bore him a grudge on Mushrat, for his silence, because, disn't it seem, this was like a general marriage satisfying all men's souls. It was treasonable. Oh my, it was sailor's mischief to be living on that ledge, and dropping nothing but notes from his greasy flute. These are sweet but they are hard to be turning into language.

Now one morning, when I saw him coming from the ledge with his bag of specimens over his shoulder, I saw without speaking to him that he was parching with his thirst for gold. He was going away into the bush, thinking no more of his new wife. Oh, he was a casual man.

"How is this?" I said. "Can she be left alone on the ledge?"

"Can she not?" said Rainbow Pete. "Old fellow, this is a substantial woman. She was alone before I came."

"This is not the same thing," I said.

"It is the same woman," said Rainbow Pete, "she will be missing nothing but the flute."

Oh my, wasn't the flute a little thing to reckon with. He went North, dreaming of gold, and here the matter they were thinking about was locked in his heart. They were angry with the man on Mushrat. This was not what they were looking for between friends. They were hoping to learn the result of the experiment; but this was vain.

When he was gone, I saw her looking down into the valley, where the first shots were being fired in the rock. Ay, the sun was dazzling her eyes, but she dis not move, sitting as if her arms have been chopped from the shoulders.

Now it was not many days after this that the blasting was begun on Mushrat. Men came with instruments stamped by the government; these they pointed down the trail and drove stakes into the ground. These were great days on Mushrat. Oh yes, numbers of Swedes and Italians were in a desperate way monkeying with powder. It's a fetching business. In a week, look here, Scarecrow Charlie left his eating-place to go monkeying with powder like the others, and disn't he get a bolt of iron through his brain one morning? Oh, it's very much as if some one had pushed a broom-handle through his skull.

That dark woman from Regina was not dismayed. She ran the eating-place herself. This was a famous place: they heard of this as far West as Regina and they came here to work and eat, attracted by her. She was valuable to the contractors, bringing labor here. Disn't it seem an achievement for a married woman? Still, Rainbow Pete was not remembered after a time; and she was a dark beauty, with a reputation for not saying much.

My, my, these were golden days for Smash McGregor. I ponder over them, thinking what a business he had. He was paid by the contractors to be sorting out arms and legs, putting the short ones together in one box, and the long ones in another, marked with charcoal to be shipped. Oh, they were just gathering up parts of mortals in packing cases, dispatching them to Throat River Landing; and blood was leaking on the decks every way in little lines. They were unlikely consignments.

Then, my friend, there came one night a dark man wearing a red cap and here under his arm he had the instrument with strings. This was the Chief Contractor under the Government in this region. He was rich; at Winnipeg he had stabled many blood horses. Then they were clustering about him at Scarecrow Charlie's, asking him his name. This, he said, was Pal Yachy.

Oh my, now we knew him. This was the man who had given Pete his shape of a rainbow. Disn't it seem an unfortunate thing for him to be coming here? Still he did not know at first that this dark woman standing there was the wife of Rainbow Pete.

He went flashing at her with his teeth, the dark musician. Ay, he was better with the music than Rainbow Pete's old flute. He sang, plucking this instrument, with a jolly face. Heh! Heh! She leaned over the bar, looking at him, and dreaming of the prairies.

Then they told him that this woman was the wife of Rainbow Pete.

"Aha," he said, "but, my friends, a rainbow is not for very long. It is beautiful, but look, it vanishes in air."

Was he afraid, without saying so? That I can not tell you. Still he stayed on Mushrat. He was the destroyer of his countrymen. They blew themselves to pieces in his service, coming in great numbers when he crooked his finger.

Then my friend, he made himself noticeable to that dark woman. He took his instrument to the ledge and sang to her.

This I know from Willis Countryman who lived near that place. He told me that the man sang in the night a soft song and that the woman listened. Ay, she listened in the window, looking down into the valley where Throat River went roaring and the great Falls were like rags waving in the dark. Ay, she sat watching the River come out of the North, where Rainbow Pete was cruising after gold.

This Willis Countryman I'm telling you about was a fine man in his old age for reading. Oh, it was not easy talking to the man, with his muttering and muttering and his chin down firm intil the book. When he had his shack on Mouse Island the fire jumped over from the wind-rows they were burning in a right of way. What next? Disn't he put his furs in a canoe to sink in the lee of the island, and there he went on reading in the night with his chin out of water, and the light from his house blazing and lighting up the book in his fist. Oh my, he was great for reading, Willis.

Well, here, one night he came telling me about some queer women on a beach, singing. "Ay! It was impossible to keep away from them while they were at it. What is their name again?"

He made a prolonged effort to remember, sighed painfully, fixed his gaze. I brought him back as if from a fit of epilepsy by the interjection of the word, "Siren."

"Ay," he said, slowly and sadly. "The men put wax in their ears—" Now mark this. The day after I was hearing this of Willis, the woman put her hand on my arm as I was passing the ledge.

"You are a friend of my husband's," she whispered to me.

"What now?" I said.

"Will he come back to me, I wonder?" she said, looking in the valley.