Children of the Tenements Part 21

"What de divil good is dem goats anyhow?" she said, panting. "There's no housekeeper in de United Shtates can watch de ash cans wid dem divil's imps around. They near killed an Eyetalian child the other day, and two of them got basted in de neck when de goats follied dem and didn't get nothing. That big white one o' Tim's, he's the worst in de lot, and he's got only one horn, too."

This wicked and unsymmetrical animal is denounced for its malice throughout the block by even the defenders of the goats. Singularly enough, he cannot be located, and neither can Tim. If the scouting party has better luck and can seize this wretched beast, half the campaign may be over. It will be accepted as a sacrifice by one side, and the other is willing to give it up.

Mrs. Shallock lives in a crazy old frame-house, over a saloon. Her kitchen is approached by a sort of hen-ladder, a foot wide, which terminates in a balcony, the whole of which was occupied by a big gray goat. There was not room for the police inquisitor and the goat too, and the former had to wait till the animal had come off his perch.

Mrs. Shallock is a widow. A load of anxiety and concern overspread her motherly countenance when she heard of the trouble.

"Are they after dem goats again?" she said. "Sarah! Leho! come right here, an' don't you go in the street again. Excuse me, sor! but it's all because one of dem knocked down an old woman that used to give it a paper every day. She is the mother of the blind newsboy around on the avenue, an' she used to feed an old paper to him every night. So he follied her. That night she didn't have any, an' when he stuck his nose in her basket an' didn't find any, he knocked her down, an' she bruk her arrum."

Whether it was the one-horned goat that thus insisted upon his sporting extra does not appear. Probably it was.

"There's neighbors lives there has got 'em on floors," Mrs. Shallock kept on. "I'm paying taxes here, an' I think it's my privilege to have one little goat."

"I just wish they'd take 'em," broke in the widow's buxom daughter, who had appeared in the doorway, combing her hair. "They goes up in the hall and knocks on the door with their horns all night. There's sixteen dozen of them on the stoop, if there's one. What good are they? Let's sell 'em to the butcher, mamma; he'll buy 'em for mutton, the way he did Bill Buckley's. You know right well he did."

"They ain't much good, that's a fact," mused the widow. "But yere's Leho; she's follying me around just like a child. She is a regular pet, is Leho. We got her from Mr. Lee, who is dead, and we called her after him, Leho [Leo]. Take Sarah; but Leho, little Leho, let's keep."

Leho stuck her head in through the front door and belied her name. If the widow keeps her, another campaign will shortly have to be begun in Forty-sixth Street. There will be more goats where Leho is.

Mr. Cleary lives in a rear tenement and has only one goat. It belongs, he says, to his little boy, and is no good except to amuse him. Minnie is her name, and she once had a mate. When it was sold, the boy cried so much that he was sick for two weeks. Mr. Cleary couldn't think of parting with Minnie.

Neither will Mr. Lennon, in the next yard, give up his. He owns the stable, he says, and axes no odds of anybody. His goat is some good anyhow, for it gives milk for his tea. Says his wife, "Many is the dime it has saved us." There are two goats in Mr. Lennon's yard, one perched on top of a shed surveying the yard, the other engaged in chewing at a buck-saw that hangs on the fence.

Mrs. Buckley does not know how many goats she has. A glance at the bigger of the two that are stabled at the entrance to the tenement explains her doubts, which are temporary. Mrs. Buckley says that her husband "generally sells them away," meaning the kids, presumably to the butcher for mutton.

"Hey, Jenny!" she says, stroking the big one at the door. Jenny eyes the visitor calmly, and chews an old newspaper. She has two horns.

"She ain't as bad as they lets on," says Mrs. Buckley.

The scouting party reports the new public opinion of the Kitchen to be of healthy but alien growth, as yet without roots in the soil strong enough to stand the shock of a general raid on the goats. They recommend as a present concession the seizure of the one-horned Billy that seems to have no friends on the block, if indeed he belongs there, and an ambush is being laid accordingly.

HE KEPT HIS TRYST

Policeman Schultz was stamping up and down his beat in Hester Street, trying to keep warm, on the night before Christmas, when a human wreck, in rum and rags, shuffled across his path and hailed him:--

"You allus treated me fair, Schultz," it said; "say, will you do a thing for me?"

"What is it, Denny?" said the officer. He had recognized the wreck as Denny the Robber, a tramp who had haunted his beat ever since he had been on it, and for years before, he had heard, further back than any one knew.

"Will you," said the wreck, wistfully--"will you run me in and give me about three months to-morrow? Will you do it?"

"That I will," said Schultz. He had often done it before, sometimes for three, sometimes for six months, and sometimes for ten days, according to how he and Denny and the justice felt about it. In the spell between trips to the island, Denny was a regular pensioner of the policeman, who let him have a quarter or so when he had so little money as to be next to desperate. He never did get quite to that point. Perhaps the policeman's quarters saved him. His nickname of "the Robber" was given to him on the same principle that dubbed the neighborhood he haunted the Pig Market--because pigs are the only ware not for sale there. Denny never robbed anybody. The only thing he ever stole was the time he should have spent in working. There was no denying it, Denny was a loafer. He himself had told Schultz that it was because his wife and children put him out of their house in Madison Street five years before. Perhaps if his wife's story had been heard it would have reversed that statement of facts. But n.o.body ever heard it. n.o.body took the trouble to inquire. The O'Neil family--that was understood to be the name--interested no one in Jewtown. One of its members was enough. Except that Mrs. O'Neil lived in Madison Street, somewhere "near Lundy's store," nothing was known of her.

"That I will, Denny," repeated the policeman, heartily, slipping him a dime for luck. "You come around to-morrow, and I will run you in. Now go along."

But Denny didn't go, though he had the price of two "b.a.l.l.s" at the distillery. He s.h.i.+fted thoughtfully on his feet, and said:--

"Say, Schultz, if I should die now,--I am all full o' rheumatiz, and sore,--if I should die before, would you see to me and tell the wife?"

"Small fear of yer dying, Denny, with the price of two drinks," said the policeman, poking him facetiously in the ribs with his club.

"Don't you worry. All the same, if you will tell me where the old woman lives, I will let her know. What's the number?"

But the Robber's mood had changed under the touch of the silver dime that burned his palm. "Never mind, Schultz," he said; "I guess I won't kick; so long!" and moved off.

The snow drifted wickedly down Suffolk Street Christmas morning, pinching noses and ears and cheeks already pinched by hunger and want.

It set around the corner into the Pig Market, where the hucksters plodded knee-deep in the drifts, burying the horse-radish man and his machine and coating the bare, plucked b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the geese that swung from countless hooks at the corner stand with softer and whiter down than ever grew there. It drove the suspender-man into the hallway of a Suffolk Street tenement, where he tried to pluck the icicles from his frozen ears and beard with numb and powerless fingers.

As he stepped out of the way of some one entering with a blast that set like a cold s.h.i.+ver up through the house, he stumbled over something, and put down his hand to feel what it was. It touched a cold face, and the house rang with a shriek that silenced the clink of gla.s.ses in the distillery, against the side door of which the something lay. They crowded out, gla.s.ses in hand, to see what it was.

"Only a dead tramp," said some one, and the crowd went back to the warm saloon, where the barrels lay in rows on the racks. The clink of gla.s.ses and shouts of laughter came through the peep-hole in the door into the dark hallway as Policeman Schultz bent over the stiff, cold shape. Some one had called him.

"Denny," he said, tugging at his sleeve.

"Denny, come. Your time is up. I am here." Denny never stirred. The policeman looked up, white in the face.

"My G.o.d!" he said, "he's dead. But he kept his date."

And so he had. Denny the Robber was dead. Rum and exposure and the "rheumatiz" had killed him. Policeman Schultz kept his word, too, and had him taken to the station on a stretcher.

"He was a bad penny," said the saloon-keeper, and no one in Jewtown was found to contradict him.

ROVER'S LAST FIGHT

The little village of Valley Stream nestles peacefully among the woods and meadows of Long Island. The days and the years roll by uneventfully within its quiet precincts. Nothing more exciting than the arrival of a party of fishermen from the city, on a vain hunt for perch in the ponds that lie hidden among its groves and feed the Brooklyn waterworks, troubles the every-day routine of the village.

Two great railroad wrecks are remembered thereabouts, but these are already ancient history. Only the oldest inhabitants know of the earlier one. There hasn't been as much as a sudden death in the town since, and the constable and chief of police--probably one and the same person--haven't turned an honest or dishonest penny in the whole course of their official existence. All of which is as it ought to be.

But at last something occurred that ought not to have been. The village was aroused at daybreak by the intelligence that a robbery had been committed overnight, and a murder. The house of Gabriel Dodge, a well-to-do farmer, had been sacked by thieves, who left in their trail the farmer's murdered dog. Rover was a collie, large for his kind, and quite as noisy as the rest of them. He had been left as an outside guard, according to Farmer Dodge's awkward practice. Inside, he might have been of use by alarming the folks when the thieves tried to get in. But they had only to fear his bark; his bite was harmless.

The whole of Valley Stream gathered at Farmer Dodge's house to watch, awe-struck, the mysterious movements of the police force as it went tiptoeing about, peeping into corners, secretly examining tracks in the mud, and squinting suspiciously at the brogans of the bystanders.

When it had all been gone through, this record of facts bearing on the case was made:--

Rover was dead.

He had apparently been smothered.

With the hand, not a rope.

There was a ladder set up against the window of the spare bedroom.

That it had not been there before was evidence that the thieves had set it up.