It was past seven o'clock when Kirk, bending over the wheel, withMamie at his side came in sight of the shack. The journey had beenchecked just outside the city by a blow-out in one of the back tyres.
Kirk had spent the time, while the shirt-sleeved rescuer from thegarage toiled over the injured wheel, walking up and down with a cigar.
Neither he nor Mamie had shown much tendency towards conversation.
Mamie was habitually of a silent disposition, and Kirk's mind was toofull of his thoughts to admit of speech.
Ever since he had read Steve's telegram he had been in the grip of awild exhilaration. He had not stopped to ask himself what this madfreak of Steve's could possibly lead to in the end--he was satisfied tofeel that its immediate result would be that for a brief while, at anyrate, he would have his son to himself, away from all the chillingsurroundings which had curbed him and frozen his natural feelings inthe past.
He tried to keep his mind from dwelling upon Ruth. He had thought toomuch of her of late for his comfort. Since they had parted that day ofthe thunder-storm the thought that he had lost her had stabbed himincessantly. He had tried to tell himself that it was the best thingthey could do, to separate, since it was so plain that their love haddied; but he could not cheat himself into believing it.
It might be true in her case--it must be, or why had she let him gothat afternoon?--but, for himself, the separation had taught him thathe loved her as much as ever, more than ever. Absence had purified himof that dull anger which had been his so short a while before. Helooked back and marvelled that he could ever have imagined for a momentthat he had ceased to love her.
Now, as he drove along the empty country roads, he forced his mind todwell, as far as he could, only upon his son. There was a mist beforehis eyes as he thought of him. What a bully lad he had been! What funthey had had in the old days! But that brought his mind back to Ruth,and he turned his mind resolutely to the future again.
He chuckled silently as he thought of Steve. Of all the mad things todo! What had made him think of it? How had such a wild scheme everentered his head? This, he supposed, was what Steve called punchinginstead of sparring. But he had never given him credit for theimagination that could conceive a punch of this magnitude.
And how had he carried it out? He could hardly have broken into thehouse. Yet that seemed the only way in which it could have been done.
From Steve his thoughts returned to William Bannister. He smiled again.
What a time they would have--while it lasted! The worst of it was, itcould not last long. To-morrow, he supposed, he would have to take thechild back to his home. He could not be a party to this kidnapping raidfor any length of time. This must be looked on as a brief holiday, notas a permanent relief.
That was the only flaw in his happiness as he stopped the car at thedoor of the shack, for by now he had succeeded at last in thrusting theimage of Ruth from his mind.
There was a light in the ground-floor window. He raised his head andshouted:
"Steve!"The door opened.
"Hello, Kirk. That you? Come along in. You're just in time for the mainperformance."He caught sight of Mamie standing beside Kirk.
"Who's that?" he cried. For a moment he thought it was Ruth, and hishonest heart leaped at the thought that his scheme had worked alreadyand brought Kirk and her together again.
"It's me, Steve," said Mamie in her small voice. And Steve, as he heardit, was seized with the first real qualm he had had since he hadembarked upon his great adventure.
As Kirk had endeavoured temporarily to forget Ruth, so had he tried notto think of Mamie. It was the only thing he was ashamed of in the wholeaffair, the shock he must have given her.
"Hello, Mamie," he said sheepishly, and paused. Words did not comereadily to him.
Mamie entered the house without speaking. It seemed to Steve thatinvective would have been better than this ominous silence. He lookedruefully at her retreating back and turned to greet Kirk.
"You're mighty late," he said.
"I only got your telegram toward the end of the afternoon. I had beenaway all day. I came here as fast as I could hit it up directly I readit. We had a blow-out, and that delayed us."Steve ventured a question.
"Say, Kirk, why 'us,' while we're talking of it? How does Mamie come tobe here?""She insisted on coming. It seems that everybody in the house was awayto-day, so she tells me, so she came round to me with your note.""I guess this has put me in pretty bad with Mamie," observed Steveregretfully. "Has she been knocking me on the trip?""Not a word."Steve brightened, but became subdued again next moment.
"I guess she's just saving it," he said resignedly.
"Steve, what made you do it?""Oh, I reckoned you could do with having the kid to yourself for aspell," said Steve awkwardly.
"You're all right, Steve. But how did you manage it? I shouldn't havethought it possible.""Oh, it wasn't so hard, that part. I just hid in the house, and--butsay, let's forget it; it makes me feel kind of mean, somehow. It seemsto me I may have lost Mamie her job. It's mighty hard to do the rightthing by every one in this world, ain't it? Come along in and see thekid. He's great. Are you feeling ready for supper? Him and me was justgoing to start."It occurred to Kirk for the first time that he was hungry.
"Have you got anything to eat, Steve?"Steve brightened again.
"Have we?" he said. "We've got everything there is in Connecticut! Why,say, we're celebrating. This is our big day. Know what's happened?
Why--"He stopped short, as if somebody had choked him. They had gone into thesitting-room while he was speaking. The table was laid for supper. Achafing-dish stood at one end, and the remainder of the available spacewas filled with a collection of foods, from cold chicken to candy,which did credit to Steve's imagination.
But it was not the sight of these that checked his flow of speech. Itwas the look on Mamie's face as he caught sight of it in the lamplight.
The White Hope was sitting at the table in the attitude of one who hasheard the gong and is anxious to begin; while Mamie, bending over him,raised her head as the two men entered and fixed Steve with a balefulstare.
"What have you been doing to the poor mite?" she demanded fiercely, "toget his face scratched this way?"There was no doubt about the scratch. It was a long, angry red linerunning from temple to chin. The White Hope, becoming conscious of thefact that the attention of the public was upon him, and diagnosing thecause, volunteered an explanation.
"Bad boy," he said, and looked meaningly again at the candy.
"What does he mean by 'bad boy'?""Just what he says, Mamie, honest. Gee! you don't think _I_ doneit, do you?""Have you been letting the precious lamb _fight_?" cried Mamie,her eyes two circles of blue indignation.
Steve's enthusiasm overcame his sense of guilt. He uttered a whoop.
"_Letting_ him! Gee! Listen to her! Why, say, that kid don't haveto be let! He's a scrapper from Swatville-on-the-Bingle. Honest! That'swhat all this food is about. We're celebrating. This is a little suppergiven in his honour by a few of his admirers and backers, meaning me.
Why, say, Kirk, that kid of yours is just the greatest thing that everhappened. Get that chafing-dish going and I'll tell you all about it.""How did he come by that scratch?" said Mamie, coldly sticking to herpoint.
"I'll tell you quick enough. But let's start in on the eats first. Youwouldn't keep a coming champ waiting for his grub, would you? Look howhe's lamping that candy.""Were you going to let the poor mite stuff himself with candy, SteveDingle?""Sure. Whatever he says goes. He owns the joint after this afternoon."Mamie swiftly removed the unwholesome delicacy.
"The idea!"Kirk was busying himself with the chafing-dish.
"What have you got in here, Steve?""Lobster, colonel. I had to do thirty miles to get it, too."Mamie looked at him fixedly.
"Were you going to feed lobster to this child?" she asked with ominouscalm. "Were you intending to put him to bed full of broiled lobster andmarshmallows?""Nix on the rough stuff, Mamie," pleaded the embarrassed pugilist. "Howwas I to know what kids feed on? And maybe he would have passed up thelobster at that and stuck to the sardines.""Sardines!""Ain't kids allowed sardines?" said Steve anxiously. "The guy at thestore told me they were wholesome and nourishing. It looked to me as ifthat ought to hit young Fitzsimmons about right. What's the matter withthem?""A little bread-and-milk is all that he ever has before he goes tobed."Steve detected a flaw in this and hastened to make his point.
"Sure," he said, "but he don't win the bantam-weight champeenship ofConnecticut every night.""Is that what he's done to-day, Steve?" asked Kirk.
"It certainly is. Ain't I telling you?""That's the trouble. You're not. You and Mamie seem to be having adiscussion about the nourishing properties of sardines and lobster.
What has been happening this afternoon?""Bad boy," remarked William Bannister with his mouth full.
"That's right," said Steve. "That's it in a nutshell. Say, it was thisway. It seemed to me that, having no kid of his own age to play aroundwith, his nibs was apt to get lonesome, so I asked about and found thatthere was a guy of the name of Whiting living near here who had a kidof the same age or thereabouts. Maybe you remember him? He used tofight at the feather-weight limit some time back. Called himself YoungO'Brien. He was a pretty good scrapper in his time, and now he's uphere looking after some gent's prize dogs.
"Well, I goes to him and borrows his kid. He's a scrappy sort of kid atthat and weighs ten pounds more than his nibs; but I reckoned he'd haveto do, and I thought I could stay around and part 'em if they got tomixing it."Mamie uttered an indignant exclamation, but Kirk's eyes were gleamingproudly.
"Well?" he said.
Steve swallowed lobster and resumed.
"Well, you know how it is. You meet a guy who's been in the same lineof business as yourself and you find you've got a heap to talk about.
I'd never happened across the gink Whiting, but I knew of him, and, ofcourse, he'd heard of me, and we got to discussing things. I seen himlose on a foul to Tommy King in the eighteenth round out in LosAngeles, and that kept us busy talking, him having it that he hadn'tgone within a mile of fouling Tommy and me saying I'd been in aring-seat and had the goods on him same as if I'd taken a snap-shot.
Well, we was both getting pretty hot under the collar about it whensuddenly there's the blazes of a noise behind us, and there's the twokids scrapping all over the lot. The Whiting kid had started it, mindyou, and him ten pounds heavier than Bill, and tough, too."The White Hope confirmed this.
"Bad boy," he remarked, and with a deep breath resumed excavating workon a grapefruit.
"Well, I was just making a jump to separate them when this Whiting gooksays, 'Betcha a dollar my kid wins!' and before I knew what I was doingI'd taken him. It wasn't that that stopped me, though. It was hissaying that his kid took after his dad and could eat up anything of hisown age in America. Well, darn it, could I take that from a slob of amixed-ale scrapper when it was handed out at the finest kid that evercame from New York?""Of course not," said Kirk indignantly, and even Mamie forbore tocriticize. She bent over the White Hope and gave his grapefruit-stainedcheek a kiss.
"Well, I _should_ say not!" cried Steve. "I just hollered to hisnibs, 'Soak it to him, kid! for the honour of No. 99'; and, believe me,the young bear-cat sort of gathered himself together, winked at me, andbegan to hammer the stuffing out of the scrappy kid. Say, there wasn'tno sterilized stuff about his work. You were a regular germ, all right,weren't you squire?""Germ," agreed the White Hope. He spoke drowsily.
"Gee!" Steve resumed his saga in a whirl of enthusiasm. "Gee! ifthey're right to start with, if they're born right, if they've got thegrit in them, you can't sterilize it out of 'em if you use up half thegerm-killer in the country. From the way that kid acted you'd havethought he'd been spending the last year in a training-camp. The otherkid rolled him over, but he come up again as if that was just the sortof stuff he liked, and pretty soon I see that he's uncovered a yellowstreak in the Whiting kid as big as a barn door. You were on it,weren't you, colonel?"But the White Hope had no remarks to offer this time. His head hadfallen forward and was resting peacefully in his grapefruit.
"He's asleep," said Mamie.
She picked him up gently and carried him out.
"He's a champeen at that too," said Steve. "I had to pull him out ofthe hay this morning. Well, I guess he's earned it. He's had a busyday.""What happened then, Steve?""Why, after that there wasn't a thing to it. Whiting, poor simp,couldn't see it. 'Betcha ten dollars my kid wins,' he hollers. 'He'sgot him going.' 'Take you,' I shouts; and at that moment the scrappykid sees it's all over, so he does the old business of fouling, same ashis pop done when he fought Tommy King. It's in the blood, I guess. Hetakes and scratches poor Bill on the cheek.""That was enough for me. I jumps in. 'All over,' I says. 'My kid winson a foul.' 'Foul nothing,' says Whiting. 'It was an accident, and youlose because you jumped into the fight, same as Connie McVey did whenCorbett fought Sharkey. Think you can get away with it, pulling thatold-time stuff?' I didn't trouble to argue with him. 'Oh,' I says, 'isthat it? Say, just take a slant at your man. If you don't stop himquick he'll be in Texas.'
"For the scrappy kid was beating it while the going was good and washalf a mile away, running hard. Well, that was enough even for theWhiting guy. 'I guess we'll call it a draw,' he says, 'and all betsoff.' I just looks at him and says, quite civil and polite: 'You darnedhalf-baked slob of a rough-house scrapper,' I says, 'it ain't a draw oranything like it. My kid wins, and I'll trouble you now to proceed tocash in with the dough, or else I'm liable to start something.' So hepaid up, and I took the White Hope indoors and give him a wash andbrush-up, and we cranks up the bubble and hikes off to the town andspends the money on getting food for the celebration supper. And what'sover I slips into the kid's pocket and says: 'That's your firstwinner's end, kid, and you've earned it.'"Steve paused and filled his glass.
"I'm on the waggon as a general thing nowadays," he said; "but I reckonthis an occasion. Right here is where we drink his health."And, overcome by his emotion, he burst into discordant song.
"Fo-or he's a jolly good fellow," bellowed Steve. "For he's a jollygood fellow. For he's--"There was a sound of quick footsteps outside, and Mamie entered theroom like a small whirlwind.
"Be quiet!" she cried. "Do you want to wake him?""Wake him?" said Steve. "You can't wake that kid with dynamite."He raised his glass.
"Ladeez'n gentlemen, the boy wonder! Here's to him! The bantam-weightchampeen of Connecticut. The Sixty-First Street Cyclone! The kid theycouldn't sterilize! The White Hope!""The White Hope!" echoed Kirk.
"Fo-or he's a jolly good fellow--" sang Steve.
"Be quiet!" said Mrs. Porter from the doorway, and Steve, wheelinground, caught her eye and collapsed like a pricked balloon.
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