A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
window which he had discovered earlier in the day. It was a low window
and easy of access, and he lost no time in climbing in.
The passage was in utter darkness, but he felt his way along the wall
until he reached a door. Here he fumbled for the knob and opened it. A
street lamp outside threw a dim, wavering light into the room, revealing
the long bar with its shining fixtures. Chick put down his crowbar
and tremblingly removed his coat. According to the moving pictures
of criminals, that was the first move. Then he resolutely grasped his
weapon and with thumping heart approached his enemy.
It appeared a very innocent enemy as it stood there in the half light,
announcing in printed letters across its face, that seven out of every
ten persons who put a nickel in the slot, received a prize in money.
But Chick knew that it lied! Had it not eaten up his nickels week
after week? Had he not worked for it, fought for it, and bled for it,
confidently believing that the prize would be his? And there it stood
gorged with his precious nickels, mysterious and fascinating still, but
treacherous through and through!
In a blaze of wrath Chick dealt it a sounding blow with the crowbar,
then crouched in terror for what might happen. There was no sound but
the dash of rain against the windows, and the heavy rumble of thunder
overhead. Once more Chick grasped his heavy weapon and began the attack
in earnest. Blow followed blow, as fast as his small arms could swing
the crowbar. Suddenly a spring seemed to snap, and out poured a stream
of money that rolled about his feet, and off into the farthest corners
of the room.
Chick crouched on the floor, overcome by his exertions and the success
of his venture. Wealth was within his reach, more wealth than he had
ever dreamed of! Not unintelligible gold and silver, but dear, familiar
nickels, whose purchasing power he knew. But no thought of appropriation
crossed his mind as he knelt there, fingering the glittering pile. He
was carefully counting out his rightful share, the eleven nickels that
the slot machine had stolen from him, and his hesitation came from the
fact that he was trying to select the shiniest ones!
Having gotten what he came for, he once more shouldered his crowbar,
and let himself out into the dark passage. Here he stopped in terror!
Something was snorting and hissing without, something that sounded as if
it _might_ be the Devil!
In Chick's creed there was but one affirmation. He believed absolutely
in the Devil. He knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was red,
and cloven-footed and that his tail ended in a hard, sharp, spike, like
Mammy Flathers' ice-pick. He also knew that when he breathed, it was in
groans and hisses, such as he was hearing at the present moment. Chick's
hair would have risen on his head, it wanted to, but it was not long
enough.
For a moment he stood breathless, then he drew a sigh of relief. It
wasn't anything but an automobile after all! He tiptoed to a window
and peered out. The lamps from the machine threw long lights across the
shining wet street, but nothing else was visible.
After a long while he heard voices at the side door. Somebody was coming
into the saloon! He could hear the doorknob turning, and a key in the
latch. He started back to the barroom, then remembering a little closet
under the steps where he and Skeeter used to play, he felt along the
wall. There it was! And just in time for him to stumble in and pull the
door to, leaving enough crack to breathe through, in case his breath
ever came back.
The side door was flung open, and the sputter of a match was followed by
the feeble light from a gas-jet at the end of the passage.
“Here, I'll take the umbrella!” said a voice he dreaded next to the
Devil's. It was Sheeley; he would go into the barroom, and discover the
wreckage of the slot-machine! Chick was beginning to feel the handcuffs
on his wrists, when he became aware of ascending footsteps overhead.
What were they going up-stairs for? Was it a sparring match? Forgetting
his precarious position he leaned forward to listen, upsetting a box on
the shelf beside him.
“Who's that?” came in Sheeley's fiercest tones from the stairway above,
and Chick cowered back into the dark with chattering teeth. Then he
heard him say something about the window, and followed the sound of his
heavy footsteps down the stairs and up again.
Now was his chance to escape while they were up-stairs. With utmost
caution he pushed open the closet door, and on hands and knees began his
perilous journey to the window. It was at that moment that he decided
positively that he would not be a burglar. A plumber took fewer risks,
and made more money. Once at the window he was unable to budge the
lock. Standing on the sill, whimpering with fear, he wrestled with it
frantically, bruising his fingers, and tearing his nails, but he could
not move it. Then he tried the door but Sheeley had evidently locked it
and taken out the key.
A blinding flash of lightning sent him scurrying back to his
hiding-place, where he sank on the floor, shivering and cringing. Nearer
and nearer roared the thunder, and the wind seemed as anxious to get
into the house as he was eager to get out of it. Gradually his arms and
legs ceased jerking, his head relaxed against an empty box, he laid his
hand against the cheek that had been patted and forgot his troubles in
sleep.
When he awoke he heard loud voices overhead. At first he supposed he was
at home, and that the voice was only Mr. Flathers enjoying one of his
periodical backslidings. But Dick Sheeley's voice recalled him; Dick
was mad at somebody, and when Dick got mad he fought. Not a boy on
Billy-goat Hill but would have faced death to see the ex-prizefighter
in a row. It was a distinction that placed one at a bound in the front
ranks of juvenile aristocracy.
Chick crept from his hiding-place and listened. The voices grew louder
and more excited. Drawn as by a magnet he slipped up the stairs step by
step. At the top was an off-set in the hall, a corner in which he could
hide, unseen from the open door beyond. There he lay on his stomach
and wriggled forward until his eye was on a line with the crack in the
half-open door.
Three men were sitting around a card table, two of them with their backs
to him; and Dick facing them with his jaw set and his teeth showing. All
three were talking at once, and Dick was the most excited of the three.
“You didn't have no ace of spades to show down! You discarded it. You
know you did, you--cheat!” He had risen and was shaking his fist in the
face of the thin young man.
“It's a lie, you common cur!” cried the other wildly, but before the
words were well out of his mouth, Sheeley's mighty right arm had shot
out across the table and struck him in the face.
“Sheeley! For God's sake, don't you see Dillingham's drunk?” protested
the other young man whom Chick recognized as his friend of the
afternoon.
“Drunk or no drunk, he can't call me a liar!” yelled Sheeley, and the
next instant Chick, with his heart pounding madly between him and the
floor, was in his element. It was a fight! A real one, in which the hero
of Billy-goat Hill held his own against two opponents.
The tumblers and the whisky bottles went first, the liquor dripping
from the table to floor; then a chair was overturned, and a window-pane
shattered to the ground below.
The thin young man hadn't sense to stop; again and again he flung his
insults at the infuriated Sheeley, impatiently fighting off the efforts
of his companion who sought to part them. Suddenly Chick saw him step
back, while the others were grappling, and fumble in his rear pocket.
He saw him steady himself against the door jamb, not four feet away,
and raise a pistol. There was a sharp report, a smothered groan, then a
heavy fall.
The man with the pistol flung it through the broken window, then
staggered to the table where he sank down with his head on his arms.
What had happened in the corner, Chick could not tell, but in a few
minutes _his_ young man came swiftly into his line of vision, and shook
the limp figure half lying on the table.
“Get up, Dill! For God's sake! Are you too drunk to crank up your
machine? As soon as I can get that blood stopped I must go for a
doctor.”
The dazed eyes of the drunken man looked at him in helpless terror!
“I can't stay here!”
“You've got to stay here! Can't you see you are in no fix to run a
machine? Brace up, you idiot; we've got to _do_ something and do it
quick. Go down and try to crank up. Here's the door key! I'll be there
as soon as I can get the blood stopped!”
The man at the table staggered to the door, passed through the hall, so
close to Chick that he almost trod upon him, then went swaying down the
stairs, steadying himself by wall and banister. Chick heard the side
door slam, and the chug of the machine, then realized that it was
turning the corner.
The young man in the room rushed frantically to the window and leaned
out, then he said something savage under his breath, and plunged out
into the passage and headlong down the steps. Chick heard the side door
bang again, and a moment later the gallop of a horse.
Then everything was still, but the noisy beating of his heart that
threatened to burst its confines. Through the crack he saw the table
with its broken tumblers, and the whisky drip, dripping on the floor; he
saw the chairs overturned, and the gas-jet flickering in the wind from
the broken window.
The thing he could not see was what lay in the corner, the huddled-up,
blood-stained hulk of a something for which a smiling, fat woman and six
tow-headed youngsters were waiting across the common. Chick crawled to
the head of the stairs, and as he reached the top step his hand touched
a hard object. He picked it up and held it to the light, and as he did
so, the joy that often blossoms on the brink of tragedy was his for a
moment. It was the riding whip whose handle he had fallen heir to that
afternoon!
Down the steps, through the door and out into the rain-soaked night he
sped; across the common, through the switch-yard, and down the narrow,
noisome darkness of Bean Alley. Over a ram-shackled fence, and up a
dilapidated porch he clambered like a cat, until he reached the small
loft in the Flathers' two-roomed mansion which he called home.
Here the hardened criminal, the breaker of laws, and of slot machines,
the would-be burglar, threw himself upon an old mattress, and with two
grimy fists in his eyes sobbed out his heart to the rafters above.
It was not repentance for his sins, neither was it terror of the secret
that was locked behind his inarticulate lips, although both of them had
a part. It was because a beautiful young lady had taken his part, and
put her arms about him, and refused to believe that he was as bad as
Skeeter Sheeley said he was.
CHAPTER V
During the rest of the week the rainstorm, that had started all the
trouble, continued to hover ominously, breaking forth day after day in
fierce, petulant showers. Out at Thornwood the aspect was most dreary;
the low-lying ground in front of the house was under water for a quarter
of a mile, trees, limp and draggled, stood disconsolate in an unfamiliar
lake, the bridge below the dam was washed away, and horses going to the
creek for water were constantly being caught by the current, and having
to be rescued by ropes. In the flower garden dirty-faced little blossoms
lay in the mud, vines trailed across the paths, all the fragrance and
color seemed to be soaked out of everything by those continuous, pelting
showers.
Within the house it was not much gayer. The front hall, with its steep,