The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  The girl pleaded with the captain. “You won’t hurt him, will you? He don’t know what he’s saying. He’s wounded, you know. Please don’t mind him!”

  “I won’t touch him,” said the captain, with rather extraordinary earnestness; “don’t you worry about him at all. I won’t touch him!”

  Then he looked at her, and the girl suddenly withdrew her fingers from his arm.

  The corporal contemplated the top of the stairs, and remarked without surprise: “There’s another of ’em coming!”

  An old man was clambering down the stairs with much speed. He waved a cane wildly. “Get out of my house, you thieves! Get out! I won’t have you cross my threshold! Get out!” He mumbled and wagged his head in an old man’s fury. It was plainly his intention to assault them.

  And so it occurred that a young girl became engaged in protecting a stalwart captain, fully armed, and with eight grim troopers at his back, from the attack of an old man with a walking stick!

  A blush passed over the temples and brow of the captain, and he looked particularly savage and weary. Despite the girl’s efforts, he suddenly faced the old man.

  “Look here,” he said distinctly, “we came in because we had been fighting in the woods yonder, and we concluded that some of the enemy were in this house, especially when we saw a gray sleeve at the window. But this young man is wounded, and I have nothing to say to him. I will even take it for granted that there are no others like him upstairs. We will go away, leaving your damned old house just as we found it! And we are no more thieves and rascals than you are!”

  The old man simply roared: “I haven’t got a cow nor a pig nor a chicken on the place! Your soldiers have stolen everything they could carry away. They have torn down half my fences for firewood. This afternoon some of your accursed bullets even broke my windowpanes!”

  The girl had been faltering: “Grandpa! Oh, grandpa!”

  The captain looked at the girl. She returned his glance from the shadow of the old man’s shoulder. After studying her face a moment, he said: “Well, we will go now.” He strode toward the door, and his men clanked docilely after him.

  At this time there was the sound of harsh cries and rushing footsteps from without. The door flew open, and a whirlwind composed of blue-coated troopers came in with a swoop. It was headed by the lieutenant. “Oh, here you are!” he cried, catching his breath. “We thought—Oh, look at the girl!”

  The captain said intensely: “Shut up, you fool!”

  The men settled to a halt with a clash and a bang. There could be heard the dulled sound of many hoofs outside the house.

  “Did you order up the horses?” inquired the captain.

  “Yes. We thought—”

  “Well, then, let’s get out of here,” interrupted the captain morosely.

  The men began to filter out into the open air. The youth in gray had been hanging dismally to the railing of the stairway. He now was climbing slowly up to the second floor. The old man was addressing himself directly to the serene corporal.

  “Not a chicken on the place!” he cried.

  “Well, I didn’t take your chickens, did I?”

  “No, maybe you didn’t but—”

  The captain crossed the hall and stood before the girl in rather a culprit’s fashion. “You are not angry at me, are you?” he asked timidly.

  “No,” she said. She hesitated a moment, and then suddenly held out her hand. “You were good to me—and I’m—much obliged.”

  The captain took her hand, and then he blushed, for he found himself unable to formulate a sentence that applied in any way to the situation.

  She did not seem to heed that hand for a time.

  He loosened his grasp presently, for he was ashamed to hold it so long without saying anything clever. At last, with an air of charging an entrenched brigade, he contrived to say: “I would rather do anything than frighten or trouble you.”

  His brow was warmly perspiring. He had a sense of being hideous in his dusty uniform and with his grimy face.

  She said, “Oh, I’m so glad it was you instead of somebody who might have—might have hurt brother Harry and grandpa!”

  He told her, “I wouldn’t have hurt ’em for anything!”

  There was a little silence.

  “Well, good-bye!” he said at last.

  “Good-bye!”

  He walked toward the door past the old man, who was scolding at the vanishing figure of the corporal. The captain looked back. She had remained there watching him.

  At the bugle’s order, the troopers standing beside their horses swung briskly into the saddle. The lieutenant said to the first sergeant: “Williams, did they ever meet before?”

  “Hanged if I know!”

  “Well, say—”

  The captain saw a curtain move at one of the windows. He cantered from his position at the head of the column and steered his horse between two flower beds.

  “Well, good-bye!”

  The squadron trampled slowly past.

  “Good-bye!”

  They shook hands.

  He evidently had something enormously important to say to her, but it seemed that he could not manage it. He struggled heroically. The bay charger, with his great mystically solemn eyes, looked around the corner of his shoulder at the girl.

  The captain studied a pine tree. The girl inspected the grass beneath the window. The captain said hoarsely: “I don’t suppose—I don’t suppose—I’ll ever see you again!”

  She looked at him affrightedly and shrank back from the window. He seemed to have woefully expected a reception of this kind for his question. He gave her instantly a glance of appeal.

  She said: “Why, no, I don’t suppose we will.”

  “Never?”

  “Why, no, ’tain’t possible. You—you are a—Yankee!”

  “Oh, I know it, but—” Eventually he continued: “Well, some day, you know, when there’s no more fighting, we might—” He observed that she had again withdrawn suddenly into the shadow, so he said: “Well, good-bye!”

  When he held her fingers she bowed her head, and he saw a pink blush steal over the curves of her cheek and neck.

  “Am I never going to see you again?”

  She made no reply.

  “Never?” he repeated.

  After a long time, he bent over to hear a faint reply: “Sometimes—when there are no troops in the neighborhood—grandpa don’t mind if I—walk over as far as that old oak tree yonder—in the afternoons.”

  It appeared that the captain’s grip was very strong, for she uttered an exclamation and looked at her fingers as if she expected to find them mere fragments. He rode away.

  The bay horse leaped a flower bed. They were almost to the drive, when the girl uttered a panic-stricken cry.

  The captain wheeled his horse violently, and upon his return journey went straight through a flower bed.

  The girl had clasped her hands. She beseeched him wildly with her eyes. “Oh, please, don’t believe it! I never walk to the old oak tree. Indeed I don’t! I never—never—never walk there.”

  The bridle drooped on the bay charger’s neck. The captain’s figure seemed limp. With an expression of profound dejection and gloom he stared off at where the leaden sky met the dark green line of the woods. The long-impending rain began to fall with a mournful patter, drop and drop. There was a silence.

  At last a low voice said, “Well—I might—sometimes I might—perhaps—but only once in a great while—I might walk to the old tree—in the afternoons.”

  October 12, 14, and 15, 1895

  [Philadelphia Press, p. 11, each issue.]

  * The Little Regiment.

  THE JUDGMENT OF THE SAGE

  A beggar crept wailing through the streets of a city. A certain man came to him there and gave him bread, saying: “I give you this loaf, because of God’s word.” Another came to the beggar and gave him bread, saying: “Take this loaf; I give it because you are hungry.”

&n
bsp; Now there was a continual rivalry among the citizens of this town as to who should appear to be the most pious man, and the event of the gifts to the beggar made discussion. People gathered in knots and argued furiously to no particular purpose. They appealed to the beggar, but he bowed humbly to the ground, as befitted one of his condition, and answered: “It is a singular circumstance that the loaves were of one size and of the same quality. How, then, can I decide which of these men gave bread more piously?”

  The people heard of a philosopher who traveled through their country, and one said: “Behold, we who give not bread to beggars are not capable of judging those who have given bread to beggars. Let us, then, consult this wise man.”

  “But,” said some, “mayhap this philosopher, according to your rule that one must have given bread before judging they who give bread, will not be capable.”

  “That is an indifferent matter to all truly great philosophers.” So they made search for the wise man, and in time they came upon him, strolling along at his ease in the manner of philosophers.

  “Oh, most illustrious sage,” they cried.

  “Yes,” said the philosopher promptly.

  “Oh, most illustrious sage, there are two men in our city, and one gave bread to a beggar, saying: ‘Because of God’s word.’ And the other gave bread to the beggar, saying: ‘Because you are hungry.’ Now, which of these, oh, most illustrious sage, is the more pious man?”

  “Eh?” said the philosopher.

  “Which of these, oh, most illustrious sage, is the more pious man?”

  “My friends,” said the philosopher suavely addressing the concourse, “I see that you mistake me for an illustrious sage. I am not he whom you seek. However, I saw a man answering my description pass here some time ago. With speed you may overtake him. Adieu.”

  January, 1896

  [The Bookman, Vol. 2, p. 412.]

  ONE DASH—HORSES

  [Horses—One Dash]

  Richardson pulled up his horse and looked back over the trail, where the crimson serape of his servant flamed amid the dusk of the mesquite. The hills in the west were carved into peaks, and were painted the most profound blue. Above them, the sky was of that marvelous tone of green—like still, sun-shot water—which people denounce in pictures.

  José was muffled deep in his blanket, and his great toppling sombrero was drawn low over his brow. He shadowed his master along the dimming trail in the fashion of an assassin. A cold wind of the impending night swept over the wilderness of mesquite.

  “Man,” said Richardson, in lame Mexican, as the servant drew near, “I want eat! I want sleep! Understand—no? Quickly! Understand?”

  “Si, señor,” said José, nodding. He stretched one arm out of his blanket, and pointed a yellow finger into the gloom. “Over there, small village! Si, señor.”

  They rode forward again. Once the American’s horse shied and breathed quiveringly at something which he saw or imagined in the darkness, and the rider drew a steady, patient rein and leaned over to speak tenderly, as if he were addressing a frightened woman. The sky had faded to white over the mountains, and the plain was a vast, pointless ocean of black.

  Suddenly some low houses appeared squatting amid the bushes. The horsemen rode into a hollow until the houses rose against the somber sundown sky, and then up a small hillock, causing these habitations to sink like boats in the sea of shadow.

  A beam of red firelight fell across the trail. Richardson sat sleepily on his horse while the servant quarreled with somebody—a mere voice in the gloom—over the price of bed and board. The houses about him were for the most part like tombs in their whiteness and silence, but there were scudding black figures that seemed interested in his arrival.

  José came at last to the horses’ heads, and the American slid stiffly from his seat. He muttered a greeting, as with his spurred feet he clicked into the adobe house that confronted him. The brown, stolid face of a woman shone in the light of the fire. He seated himself on the earthen floor, and blinked drowsily at the blaze. He was aware that the woman was clinking earthenware, and hieing here and everywhere in the maneuvers of the housewife. From a dark corner of the room there came the sound of two or three snores twining together.

  The woman handed him a bowl of tortillas. She was a submissive creature, timid and large-eyed. She gazed at his enormous silver spurs, his large and impressive revolver, with the interest and admiration of the highly privileged cat of the adage. When he ate, she seemed transfixed off there in the gloom, her white teeth shining.

  José entered, staggering under two Mexican saddles large enough for building sites. Richardson decided to smoke a cigarette, and then changed his mind. It would be much finer to go to sleep. His blanket hung over his left shoulder, furled into a long pipe of cloth, according to a Mexican fashion. By doffing his sombrero, unfastening his spurs and his revolver belt, he made himself ready for the slow, blissful twist into the blanket. Like a cautious man, he lay close to the wall, and all his property was very near his hand.

  The mesquite brush burned long. José threw two gigantic wings of shadow as he flapped his blanket about him—first across his chest under his arms, and then around his neck and across his chest again, this time over his arms, with the end tossed on his right shoulder. A Mexican thus snugly enveloped can nevertheless free his fighting arm in a beautifully brisk way, merely shrugging his shoulder as he grabs for the weapon at his belt. They always wear their serapes in this manner.

  The firelight smothered the rays which, streaming from a moon as large as a drumhead, were struggling at the open door. Richardson heard from the plain the fine, rhythmical trample of the hoofs of hurried horses. He went to sleep wondering who rode so fast and so late. And in the deep silence the pale rays of the moon must have prevailed against the red spears of the fire until the room was slowly flooded to its middle with a rectangle of silver light.

  Richardson was awakened by the sound of a guitar. It was badly played—in this land of Mexico, from which the romance of the instrument ascends to us like a perfume. The guitar was groaning and whining like a badgered soul. A noise of scuffling feet accompanied the music. Sometimes laughter arose, and often the voices of men saying bitter things to each other; but always the guitar cried on, the treble sounding as if some one were beating iron, and the bass humming like bees.

  “Damn it! they’re having a dance,” muttered Richardson, fretfully. He heard two men quarreling in short, sharp words like pistol shots; they were calling each other worse names than common people know in other countries.

  He wondered why the noise was so loud. Raising his head from his saddle pillow, he saw, with the help of the valiant moonbeams, a blanket hanging flat against the wall at the farther end of the room. Being of the opinion that it concealed a door, and remembering that Mexican drink made men very drunk, he pulled his revolver closer to him and prepared for sudden disaster.

  Richardson was dreaming of his far and beloved North.

  “Well, I would kill him, then!”

  “No, you must not!”

  “Yes, I will kill him! Listen! I will ask this American beast for his beautiful pistol and spurs and money and saddle, and if he will not give them—you will see!”

  “But these Americans—they are a strange people. Look out, señor.”

  Then twenty voices took part in the discussion. They rose in quivering shrillness, as from men badly drunk.

  Richardson felt the skin draw tight around his mouth, and his knee joints turned to bread. He slowly came to a sitting posture, glaring at the motionless blanket at the far end of the room. This stiff and mechanical movement, accomplished entirely by the muscles of the wrist, must have looked like the rising of a corpse in the wan moonlight, which gave everything a hue of the grave.

  My friend, take my advice, and never be executed by a hangman who doesn’t talk the English language. It, or anything that resembles it, is the most difficult of deaths. The tumultuous emotions of Richardson’s terror
destroyed that slow and careful process of thought by means of which he understood Mexican. Then he used his instinctive comprehension of the first and universal language, which is tone. Still, it is disheartening not to be able to understand the detail of threats against the blood of your body.

  Suddenly the clamor of voices ceased. There was a silence—a silence of decision. The blanket was flung aside, and the red light of a torch flared into the room. It was held high by a fat, round-faced Mexican, whose little snake-like mustache was as black as his eyes, and whose eyes were black as jet. He was insane with the wild rage of a man whose liquor is dully burning at his brain. Five or six of his fellows crowded after him. The guitar, which had been thrummed doggedly during the time of the high words, now suddenly stopped.

  They contemplated each other. Richardson sat very straight and still, his right hand lost in the folds of his blanket. The Mexicans jostled in the light of the torch, their eyes blinking and glittering.

  The fat one posed in the manner of a grandee. Presently his hand dropped to his belt, and from his lips there spun an epithet—a hideous word which often foreshadows knife-blows, a word peculiarly of Mexico, where people have to dig deep to find an insult that has not lost its savor.

  The American did not move. He was staring at the fat Mexican with a strange fixedness of gaze, not fearful, not dauntless, not anything that could be interpreted; he simply stared.

  The fat Mexican must have been disconcerted, for he continued to pose as a grandee with more and more sublimity, until it would have been easy for him to fall over backward. His companions were swaying in a very drunken manner. They still blinked their beady eyes at Richardson. Ah, well, sirs, here was a mystery. At the approach of their menacing company, why did not this American cry out and turn pale, or run, or pray them mercy? The animal merely sat still, and stared, and waited for them to begin. Well, evidently he was a great fighter; or perhaps he was an idiot. Indeed, this was an embarrassing situation, for who was going forward to discover whether he was a great fighter or an idiot?