THE WARDEN’S COMING
At ten o’clock in the morning,
the day after Andy Bishop was fitted into Tessibel’s
straw tick, a covered runabout wound its way along
the lower boulevard running to Glenwood. Two
men were seated in it, solemn, dark-browed men, with
dull eyes and heavy faces. The man holding the
reins was heavy set, square shouldered, and more sternly
visaged than his companion. Some one had said
of Howard Burnett, that the Powers, in setting him
up, had used steel cables for his muscles and iron
for his bones; and surely there was a grim grip to
his jaw that presaged evil to those opposing him.
“Devilish queer,” he muttered,
after a long silence, “how that little dwarf
ever disappeared the way he has, isn’t it, Todd?”
“Not so strange after all,”
protested Todd. “Andy Bishop could crawl
into a rabbit hole and still give the rabbit room to
sleep.”
“That’s true, too, but
you’d think his deformity would prevent his
getting very far.... Now wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I don’t know about
that, either.” The speaker struck a match
under the lapel of his coat, and cupping the tiny flame
in his hand, held it up to the dead cigar in his mouth,
and added between puffs, “Human nature’s
a funny thing!... Now Andy’s got a kind
a pleasin’ way with him ... even if he is deformed,
... and he’s got a peach of a voice. Why,
he speaks as soft as a woman.... I wouldn’t
want him to ask me to do anything I was set against
if I didn’t want to do it.”
“Rotten rubbish!” spat
out Burnett. “I don’t give a tinker’s
damn about his voice. It’s up to me to
run the dwarf to earth, and I’m goin’ to
do it.”
After a very long silence, Todd turned to Burnett.
“But what does get me is why
the five thousand Waldstricker’s put up, ain’t
been bait to catch Bishop before this,” he said
ruminatively.
“Well, it hain’t, that’s
evident,” growled Burnett, setting his teeth.
As a rabbit lifts its head, frightened
at unusual sights and sounds, so Jake Brewer lifted
a startled face as Howard Burnett pulled up his horse
suddenly at the squatter’s side. The warden
stopped the man’s progress by lifting his hand.
“Say, you, wait a minute there,”
he added to his imperative gesture.
Jake paused, curious and attentive.
“Haven’t seen a dwarf,
anywhere, named Bishop, have you?” Burnett shot
forth, leaning toward Brewer.
The squatter shook his head.
“There be some Bishops round here,” he
retorted surlily, “but there ain’t no dwarf
as I know of by that name.”
“Where’s the road leadin’
down to that row of shacks by the lake?” demanded
Burnett. “Ain’t there a lot of squatters
living there?”
Brewer assented by a wag of his head.
“No end of ’em,”
said he, “but there ain’t no very easy
way gettin’ down with a horse.... Still,
mebbe ye could.... Might tie yer wagon an’
walk down.”
“Who’re you?” shouted the warden,
gruffly.
Jake cringed as if the questioner had struck him.
“Jake Brewer,” was the unsteady response.
“What’s your business?”
“I ain’t got no real business,”
replied the other apologetically. “I fishes
an’ hunts an’ things like that.”
“A squatter eh?”
“Yep, I air a squatter all right,”
Jake admitted, “but I air a decent man, an’
allers been decent. I don’t do nothin’
I hadn’t ought to.”
“Who’s sayin’ you
do?” snapped Burnett. “Now, I want
to ask you a few questions. I’m from Auburn
Prison, and if you lie to me, I’ll put you where
the dogs won’t bite you.... Do you get me?”
Jake’s jaw dropped, but he stood
still, and looked at the officer anxiously.
“Yep, I get ye,” he returned
submissively, “an’ I ain’t a goin’
to lie to ye nuther.... What do ye want?”
Burnett’s fierce eyes bent a
compelling glance on the man in the road.
“How many squatters ’re
living down by the lake?” he demanded harshly.
Brewer thought a minute.
“I calc’late mebbe there
air fifty, mebbe a hundred,” he answered.
“I ain’t never counted ’em, mister.”
Jake moved on a little, but the warden
stopped him peremptorily.
“Any jail birds down there?” he thrust
at him.
Brewer made a negative gesture.
“Not’s I know of,” he stammered.
“Ain’t nobody down there been in jail?
Anybody ever been to Auburn?”
Jake’s crooked fingers mounted
from his hair line to the back of his skull, lifting
the soft cap partly from his head. Then he scratched
his chin thoughtfully.
“Well, there ain’t no
guilty man down there,” he said, at last.
“There air Orn Skinner ”
Burnett gave an exultant cry.
“My God, I’d forgotten
he came from this part of the country! So Skinner’s
here among this set of squatters, eh? What luck!
I’ll bet ”
“Ye won’t find no dwarf
in Skinner’s shanty,” expostulated Brewer
with conviction.
“That’s up to me to find
out!” growled the warden. “Where does
Skinner live? Near here?”
Brewer’s fingers directed south.
“First turn to the left, ’bout
a mile ahead,” he pointed out. “Skinner’s
shack air close to the lake. A hedge and lots
of flowers air growin’ ’round it.”
Burnett tightened his lines, chirruped
to the horse, and drove on, the squatter staring open-mouthed
after him.
The summer sun bathed the hillside
and warmed the Skinner shanty. Tessibel’s
hedge lifted its green head upward as if to catch the
golden rays. The flower beds rimmed the hut like
a bewildering, gorgeous rainbow. Everything belonging
to Tess seemed at absolute peace with itself and the
world.
Orn Skinner, his head sunken between
the two humps on his shoulders, was lazily whittling
a stick when the sound of a horse’s hoofs in
the lane near Young’s barn arrested his attention.
It was the one sound the squatter expected that day,
yet dreaded. Furtively, he leaned back near the
partly open door.
“Some ’un’s coming, Tess,”
he warned.
Evidently, the fisherman did not expect
an answer, for he straightened up once more and proceeded
to whittle. The pitter-patter of the trotting
horse, and the clatter of the wheels upon the flinty
road, broke rudely upon the familiar little noises
of the quiet summer morning. One sidewise glance
satisfied Orn that the men in the vehicle were from
Auburn prison. He stopped whittling but a moment
when Burnett drew up.
“Hello, Orn,” called the officer, stentorian-voiced.
“Hello,” and the squatter made a polite
salute with his stick.
Burnett tossed the reins to the man
at his side and climbed to the ground, advancing toward
the fisherman.
“This your hut, Skinner?” he interrogated.
Orn Skinner’s tongue clove to
the roof of his mouth. He endeavored to speak,
but apprehension and dread had apparently paralyzed
his vocal organs. He hadn’t fully realized
until that moment how desperate the venture to which
he had committed himself and Tess. Between Andy
Bishop and this formidable giant from Auburn was but
the brave little daughter inside the hut. Would
she be able to carry through the hazardous task she’d
undertaken?
“You remember me, don’t you, Skinner?”
It took several seconds before the
fisherman could clear his throat enough to speak.
“Yep,” he succeeded at
length in muttering. “I remember ye all
right.... Ye air Burnett from Auburn, ain’t
ye?... What do ye want around here?”
Suddenly there came to the powerful
officer a wild desire to throttle the heavy-headed
squatter. He had a feeling that this man knew
more than he could be forced to tell, perhaps.
“Better hold a civil tongue
in your head, old fellow,” he threatened, “if
you know what’s best for you.”
Orn lifted one great shoulder.
“Ye ain’t got nothin’
on me, Burnett,” he snarled defiantly, “but
I know ye wouldn’t be comin’ ‘round
here if ye didn’t have somethin’ to come
fer.”
The warden shoved his grim face so
close to the speaker’s that he drew back, intimidated.
“Sure, I come for something,” snorted
Burnett, viciously.
“Then peel it off,” answered
Skinner, deep in his throat. “I air listenin’.”
He was bending so far back now that
his shaggy head rested against the shanty boards.
Burnett was piercing him with a strange, mesmeric gaze.
“Where’s Andy Bishop?”
boomed like thunder from the warden.
That name, though he knew his questioner’s
errand, so suddenly falling on Orn’s ears, congealed
his blood and knotted his muscles with fear.
“Andy Bishop?” he echoed
irresolutely. “Andy Bishop? Who air
Andy Bishop?”
Burnett lifted a huge fist, but dropped
it again. The time hadn’t arrived to punch
from Skinner the knowledge he wanted. Later, perhaps
“Now none of that, Skinner,”
he barked savagely. “None of that, you
hump-backed brute. You know perfectly well who
I mean, and you know where the dwarf is, and we want
him and we want him quick.... He made his getaway
from Auburn.... Now give him up, see?”
Second by second, and minute by minute,
Orn Skinner was gathering his courage and strength.
All through his life he had been used to brutal officials
like Burnett; so swallowing hard, he raised his great
gray head and looked straight into the other’s
dark face.
“If ye mean that little dwarf
who were up to Auburn when I were there, I don’t
know nothin’ about him,” he said.
“I ain’t never heard he come from this
end of the lake.”
The warden’s fist knotted once more.
“You’re a liar, Skinner,”
he scraped from his throat. “Now look here!
I know confounded well you know where he is.
If you don’t want me to hand you trouble by
the bushel, you’d better cough up that little
dwarf. Get me? Eh?”
The fingers holding the broad-bladed
knife sank to the fisherman’s knee, and for
a moment the stick Orn had been cutting poised in the
air. Then a slow, broad smile showed his discolored
teeth.
“It air the truth I been tellin’
you,” he declared deliberately. “I
don’t know nothin’ about Bishop, an’
I don’t want to know nothin’.... Ye
ain’t got anything on me, Burnett. I air
a livin’ here peaceful with my kid.”
“Well, I’m goin’
to search your shanty, anyhow,” Burnett growled
menacingly, his under jaw sticking out like a bull
dog’s.
“Well, search it, I ain’t
carin’,” consented Orn. “But
my kid air sick in there, an’ I don’t
want ye to scare her.”
Without waiting for further parley,
Burnett, like an enraged lion, bounded to the shanty
threshold and one long stride took him well on his
way across the kitchen. Suddenly he stopped, staring
straight ahead of him, as if some shining spectre
from another world had appeared in his path.