# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 31/Number 3/The Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho

Extracted from Red Book magazine, July 1918, pp. 54–59, 144–149. Accompanying illustrations by Arthur William Brown may be omitted.
One of the many bloodless battles of this war fought in Washington —a good-humored love-story by the author of “Seven Keys to Baldpate.”
The RED-HAIRED ROOSTER of the RAPAHO
By EARL DERR BIGGERS
Illustrated By ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN
IGNORING for a moment the picturesque figure of the Rooster, we behold Jimmy Blaine, sitting gloomily on the doorstep of the Administration at Washington. Jimmy had one great urge, one overwhelming desire—he wanted to go out and fight the Hun. But every doctor who had examined him had finished with a shake of the head and a frown, and told him he really mustn't think of it. It seemed these was something wrong with Jimmy's heart.
The average young man would have given up right there, but Jimmy Blaine wasn't the average young man. So he hurried to Washington and sat on the aforesaid doorstep, and now that we have him firmly planted there, I am willing, dear reader, to succumb to your wishes. For I know that you also have a great urge—an overwhelming desire. Your eyes are straying back to the title, and you long to meet the Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho.
He approaches. Note that walk, copied from Napoleon. Note the sweep of flaming hair, falling abundantly about the shoulders. His face beams, he holds out a pudgy hand. Reader, this is the Honorable Cyrus P. Cleek, orator and statesman, pride of the Rapaho.
“I am very glad to have you meet me,” says Cleek, and clears his throat, preparing for further speech.
We mustn't let him get started. It would be all up if we did. He invented talk, and ever since, he has been laboring day and night to perfect his invention. When he opens his tireless mouth, young ladies who have won the high hurdles in stenography scream and faint. If he had the prestige his tiny soul craves, he would make our nation the greatest word-power history has known.
He hasn't that prestige yet; he is only a Congressman from the banks of the Rapaho. Let us not attempt to place the Rapaho. In these troubled times, people are rather touchy. Suffice it to say that it flows lazily through a congressional district somewhere between Fifth Avenue and the trained seals that disport on the rocks around the Golden Gate. Cyrus P. Cleek is a misfortune that might befall as patriotic a section of the country as ever thrilled to “The Star Spangled Banner.” As a matter of fact in this he has.
How to describe him? Perhaps he can best be characterized by repeating a small incident that occurred early in his career. In an obscure county convention in his district, he had risen to make a speech. Even in those he wore his flaming red hair long, so that it caressed his shoulders, and he made a striking picture as he bellowed forth his airy nothings. But his speech was constantly interrupted. A large, stupid countryman redolent of the farmyard insisted on rising to his feet and shouting, “Cleek! Where's Cleek! We want to hear from Cleek!” No amount of hushing would silence the fellow, and finally a neighbor got up, laid hands on the man's shoulders and cried:
“Shut up, you fool! That's Cleek speaking now.”
The honest countryman turned dazed eyes toward the speaker's rostrum.
“The dickens it is!” he said. “That's the fellow who gave me ten dollars to holler: ‘We want Cleek.'”
The wave of laughter this incident aroused did not subside for several years. It annoyed Cyrus P. Cleek considerably. It annoyed—more than that, it deeply hurt—the little woman who was his wife. She was quite different from Cleek, was his wife; she had come from a home of refinement and charm. In a blind moment of infatuation in which she had foolishly taken Cleek at his own valuation, she had married him. But five years of living with him had opened her eyes, and she was far from happy. Cleek assured her that he would live down this laughter; that in time he would go to Congress, and that from then on, his progress to the highest post in the nation would be easy.
His faith in the ultimate triumph of mouth over matter in this queer democracy was justified, and he kept his word regarding Congress. But his wife did not live to know of this. When, on a sharp winter afternoon, Cyrus P. Cleek stood in front of the wonderful white station at Washington for the first time, he was alone. His exulting eyes saw the great dome on the hill, saw the sunlight flashing on the Monument. A bigger man than Cleek would have been awed; though far from religious, he might have said a prayer. But Cleek was not awed; he was not prayerful. Here was his meat. Here was a city that had been waiting through the years for Cleek. Cleek should dominate, Cleek should triumph; the nation, the world, should echo with the name of Cleek. He threw back his head, filled his lungs with the exalted air of the capital and called loudly for a taxicab.
So Cleek settled down in Washington and began his devoted service to the cause of Cleek. For a time no one noticed him; he did not seem to be getting anywhere, and he was worried. One sultry afternoon in August he was making a speech in a sadly depleted chamber. His words had to do with the widening of the Rapaho, a project on which he was keen, and as he poured them out to the boredom around him, he pictured them plastered over the front page of The Rapaho Evening News. The vision kept him going.
Into the press-gallery over his head strolled a tall, sallow, cynical young man. Dave Porter had been in Washington ten years, and was rated among the best of the correspondents. With drowsy contempt, he sat staring at Cleek; he saw Cleek parade up and down the aisle, watched the Cleek fist wave, the flaming red hair dust the Cleek shoulders as the head of Cleek trembled in vehemence. It occurred to Dave that this amusing Representative suggested some well-known animal—he was too weary to think just what. And then into his mind flashed a phrase that brought him great joy:
“The Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho.”
Suddenly recalled to life, Porter hurried from the gallery to his typewriter; and the next morning, when a certain New York paper reached its readers, Cyrus P. Cleek was famous!
Thus it happened that the tawny mane of Cleek became a nine days' wonder in the land. There were interviews with his barber; hair-tonic advertisements began to refer to him. Correspondents sat at his feet. Picture-syndicates besieged him for photographs showing his waving locks in all their splendor. At first he had the uneasy feeling that they were making game of him. But he knew his beloved fellow-citizens; he realized that they liked nothing better than to learn that their representatives wore no collar, no socks, sported fancy vests, or had some other eccentricity. It gave them a feeling of renewed confidence in the men who were to guide the nation to its final salvation.
So, for a time, Cleek played the game and was great. But only for a time. Shortly, to his dismay, other topics began to crowd him from the newspapers. The temper of the country became more serious; Cleek was forgotten, while the crimes of Germany on the sea grew as the sincerity of her promises faded. War was on the horizon, and Cleek was nowhere. Despair and bitterness overwhelmed him as he sank farther and farther from sight.
Cleek was tasting the very dregs of obscurity on that memorable April evening when the head of the nation appeared before Congress with a message that will live forever in the annals of free men. As he sat there in that hushed chamber, Cleek gave very little thought to the news that his country, which loved peace so dearly, must now fight for its love. He was turning over and over in his mind the unhappy realization that now, indeed, the nation had no time for Cleek. Thirsting for the limelight as a drunkard thirsts for drink, overwhelmed by an egotism which had become a disease no doctor could cure, he was eagerly seeking for some plan by which he could even now draw attention to Cleek. He found it.
All about him.the honorable men who were his colleagues were giving evidence of their intention to get behind the President. The fools! Once lined up there, they would be forgotten; they would become as cogs in a machine. For the country? Hang the country! How about Cleek?
So Cleek “came out against the war.” He became the mouthpiece—and he was a born mouthpiece—of a little group of little men. No place in the ranks for him! Like a drum-major he marched in advance; exultingly he threw his baton high, caught it in his teeth, twirled it on his thumb. He opened his mouth, and the words flowed out; he pointed out that Rapaho was safe from invasion, that it was against any mix-up with “them foreigners in the old country.” He raved that it was a rich man's war. He declared that those Americans who had business at sea and were murdered there got what they deserved. He asserted that “Germany had been very patient with us.”
A horrified nation that had forgotten the Red-haired Rooster in its excitement now realized that he was still in Congress. The limelight he craved was his again, in greater measure than ever before. His photographs came back into print; they decorated front pages; his plot was a success. Cleek was once more in the public eye. Cleek was a happy man.
If the heated words of denunciation that reached him, even from his own district, made any impression on him, he gave no sign. He was too busy. The disloyal and the weak-minded were wearing a path to his door. All the vile sneaks who had been plotting against the safety of his country began to pour flattery into his ear. All the misguided, wrongheaded pacifists followed him about, rejoicing that at last they had met a man with as little vision as they. And because, as time went on, Cleek met only traitors, he became gradually convinced that all men were traitors, and he dreamed of the day when, elected by the votes of traitors, he should become the leader of the nation.
You asked for it—and you got it. You wanted to meet the Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho, and now that unpleasant experience has been yours. And if you are a little sick at the picture of him, perhaps you will turn all the more readily back to the subject of Jimmy Blaine's heart. For whatever its defects, that heart beat high with patriotism and with a warm desire for sacrifice in a just cause.
Dave Porter came back to his rooms one evening about six o'clock and discovered Jimmy Blaine sitting in his best chair, looking as discouraged as a White House suffrage-picket who has just found her name misspelled in a newspaper.
“What luck?” Porter inquired, though he knew the answer without asking.
“Why mock me?” sighed Blaine. “Ten solid hours I've been waiting and pleading, and no more chance of getting to Paris than the Kaiser.”
“What's wrong with your darned old heart, anyhow!” queried the newspaper man.
“It leaks,” mourned Jimmy. “I've offered to call in a plumber, and hang the expense, but they wont hear of it. For peace-times I've got a heart that is all wool and a yard wide, but when it comes to war, I'm a weakling.”
“Been to the War Department to-day?” smiled Porter.
“My dear boy, I live there. They stumble over me whichever way they turn. I gave old General Allen a letter you wrote for me. He seemed impressed for a minute, and then in pops some guy with a flimsy telling about a new ruling that made it even more impossible for us to break in. Of course, the ruling didn't mention me—I came under a general head. But between ourselves, Newton D. Baker is lying awake nights thinking up ways keeping me out of France.”
“Regulations,” said Porter, “are regulations—”
“Are they?” cried Jimmy. “To me they look more like iron bars. I'm ready to quit. I've tried the army, the navy; aviation, the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. It's no use.”
“You can get some war-work here at home,” suggested his friend.
“So can my grandfather,” sneered Blaine. “That is, he can if he is strong enough to beat out the bunch of huskies who are choking Washington at this minute, screaming that they want to help their country behind the lines—just as far behind as they can get. No sir, none of that bunch for me. I want to fight, I tell you—”
“So you've mentioned from time to time.”
“What's the use?” Jimmy Blaine was sadder than his friend had ever seen him. “I'm licked already—licked by red tape and regulations—”
His gloomy voice trailed off into silence.
“You're getting maudlin,” said Porter. “Let's go over to the club and eat, and then I've got a suggestion. I propose to take you where you will hear the silvery laughter of women, the popping of corks on ginger-ale bottles, the genial sound of revelry by night.”
“Where in Washington can you hear all that?” asked jimmy.
“In the Sunday-school rooms of Saint James' Church.”
“What?”
“It's a fact. A lot of nice girls over there are giving one of their receptions for the soldiers out at the Fort. You know, some of our best people are now admitting that soldiers are people. It's rather funny—but of course you mustn't notice that. A few of the girls act like Lady Gwendolyn Vere de Vere entertaining the peasants, but most of them are regular fellows and show it. Will you come?”
“Come?” cried Jimmy. “Come, and see all those uniforms? Why, the very sight of a uniform makes me green with envy—”
“In heaven's name—forget it.”
“Dave—I wouldn't talk this way to anyone but you. Most people would think it was bluff, but you know better. And I must talk to somebody—I need sympathy. After a hard day fighting the Government, my soul craves a few kind words—”
“Exactly. And that's why I want to take you to this reception. Along will come a sweet young thing all eyes who can purr sympathy better than I. Have you thought of that?”
“I hadn't,” replied Jimmy, and proceeded to think of it.
“I'm a desperate man,” he admitted. “Yes—I'll come to church.”
IN the Sunday-school rooms of Saint James' Church a few hours later the two young men found a large contingent of the American army very embarrassed and ill at ease in the presence of a superior force.
“It's always a bit strained at first,” Porter whispered. “It will warm up later.”
It did. Gradually the men from the Fort and the young women who could not possibly know them if they met elsewhere became almost chummy.
“Things are going nicely,” thought Jimmy. But not for him! More than ever before, he was conscious of his lack of uniform, and he was on the point of sternly requesting Dave Porter to see him home when, for the first time, he caught sight of a certain girl.
By way of description of this girl it may be added that she was the sort no self-respecting young man could could catch a glimpse of, and be content to let it go at that. One glimpse would naturally lead on to another, and so on, ad infinitum, Jimmy seized hold of a large, excited lady to whom Porter had introduced him earlier in the evening.
“That girl on the bench,” he said hoarsely, “—I've got to meet her.”
“Oh—er—certainly,” replied the flustered one. She led him over. “Miss—-er—Umph,” she remarked hazily, and in a low voice: “Mr.—er—Humph.” And she fled lest more explicit details be required of her.
Miss—er—Umph was sitting on a hard bench built to make religion as uncomfortable as possible. Jimmy dropped onto it, and it was satin and down.
“Don't blame the lady for her presentation speech,” he laughed. “I jumped at her so suddenly she had no time to gather her wits. I just had to meet you.”
“Was it so necessary?” smiled the girl.
“Imperative.”
“And now that you have met me—”
“Give me time. Let me get my breath. I've been in Washington two weeks, and now at last something pleasant has happened to me.”
The girl looked surprised.
“You don't like Washington?”
“A man with a grievance,” said Jimmy, “is sitting beside you. I came here to get into the army—to wear a uniform—and Washington has turned me down cold.”
“Why was that?”
“My heart. Something's wrong with it.”
“Something—serious?”
“Not at all—that is, not until a moment ago, when I saw you.”
“YOU'RE frightfully shy, aren't you?' laughed the girl. “Do you think you could ever conquer it?”
“I might—if you labored with me. You have asked me why I came here to-night—”
“Pardon me—I haven't.”
“Please don't interrupt. I will tell you why I came here to-night. I came looking for sympathy. I'm the most downhearted man in Washington. All day I am buffeted about the War Department—by tea-time I am desolate—I long for some one to confide in. It happens daily. It will happen to-morrow. Would you mind very much if I asked you to invite me to tea—”
Jimmy had been known as a fast worker all his life, but he paused now in his badinage, amazed. An expression of deep unhappiness was on the fine face of the girl.
“You didn't—get my name,” she said softly.
“And you didn't get mine,” he answered. “I'm Jimmy Blaine. Dave Porter and I went to college together.”
“I have heard of him,” said the girl gravely.
“As for your name, it doesn't matter—”
“Oh, yes, it does.”
“Not at all.”
There was a pause, during which the great eyes, very serious now, searched Jimmy Blaine's face.
“My first two names,” said the girl, “are Mary Will—”
“Lovely,” answered Jimmy. “Sounds like the South—”
“My mother's people,” she told him, “were Southerners. My uncles fought bravely in the Civil War. I—I should like to have you remember that—”
“Why—of course,” agreed Jimmy, at sea. “But only one thing matters now. May I come to tea to-morrow?”
“I ought not to let you.” She was silent. Jimmy's face was near, and it was a face hard to resist, honest, good to look at, pleading. “I'll say this,” she went on: “if, to-morrow at five, you still want to come, I shall be glad to see you.”
“Still want to come? If I'm not there, call up the hospitals and the morgue. I—”
“We live at the Clapham Arms—on Connecticut Avenue. The apartment on the third floor. My name—”
“I might get a general idea of the location,” suggested Jimmy, “by walking home with you to-night. The moon is rather exciting—”
She shook her head.
“Too late,” she smiled. “Early in the evening I promised a nice little sergeant with a very red face. Here he comes now.”
A very embarrassed soldier appeared before them.
“To-morrow at five,” said Jimmy.
“Perhaps,” said the girl, and was gone.
WHEN Jimmy left the church with his friend, he was walking on air, and a smile of deep content wreathed his face.
“What's the idea?” asked Porter. “Somebody make you a general, or what?”
“Dave,” said Jimmy impressively, “congratulate me. I've met her.”
“Who's her?” inquired Porter, scorning grammar.
“The finest, sweetest, most wonderful—”
“Good night!”
“Laugh it you want to. All my life I've been reading about love at first sight, and kidding about it. But it's real, Dave. It happens. It happened to me to-night.”
Porter had become very serious.
“I saw you talking to her,” he remarked thoughtfully.
“I don't ask you to agree with me. Dave, she's the girl for me. Leaky heart and all, I'm hers. I asked her to ask me to tea to-morrow—and she asked me. Am I lucky? Oh, no—”
“Rave on,” said Porter.
“Thank you—I will.”
When they arrived at his rooms, Porter manufactured a high-ball for Jimmy.
“Here—take this,” he said. “And sit down. I want to have a talk with you.”
“Great heavens—you act like a grandfather.”
“I feel like one.” The newspaper man waited until Jimmy, clutching the drink, was settled comfortably in a chair. “Did this young lady tell you her name?”
“She did not—only the address. What does her name matter?”
“It matters a lot. Wait a minute, will you? Her name—”
“Her name is Mary Will—”
“Yes. Mary Will—Cleek!”
A pause, during which they heard a trolley-car clatter by in the street below.
“Good Lord!” said Jimmy at length.
“Precisely,” replied Porter.
Jimmy spoke further:
“That contemptible little egotist, that strutting little rooster, that damnable traitor—her father!”
“She must have had a wonderful mother,” said Porter softly.
“She did,” cried Jimmy. “She told me so.”
“It's hard luck,” said Porter. “You can call her up in the morning and tell her that owing to an unexpected engagement, you can't—”
“The devil I can! Don't you see—she needs me. The poor girl is eaten up with the shame of this thing—”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I'm sure. She told me her mother's people were fighters; she asked me to remember that. I understand now what she meant. The poor kid! Her father's the disgrace of the century, and she has to shut her lips tight and pretend that she likes it.”
“Then you're going to tea—”
“Going to tea? I'm going to save her—”
“What do you mean?”
“Dave, I came to Washington two weeks ago itching to get into a uniform and fight. They wont let me. No matter! I've got a chance now to serve my country as no man in uniform could ever serve it. I'm going to convert the Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho. I'm going to convert him to the war!”
Porter threw back his head and laughed long and loud.
“You babe in the wood!” he gurgled. “Try something easy. Make a pro-German of Papa Joffre; tell the Kaiser to keep his promises; but don't waste your time on that blithering little monkey—”
“I'll do it,” raved Jimmy. “I'll do it for her. I'll (illegible text) the light into that befuddled brain under the red head. I'll take out his egotistical little soul and launder it and hang it up to dry where he can't help seeing it. I'll—”
“You're crazy,” put in Porter. .
“Am I? You watch me. Did I see a copy of 'The Bryce Report' on your desk?”
“Yes. But Belgian atrocities can't reach him. Reason can't reach him. Emotion can't reach him. Nothing can reach him. He's solid stupidity—just a statue of clay built by Cleek to Cleek.”
“I'm asking you to watch me. The War Department wont be annoyed again. They'll never see me after this. I've got my work cut out for me. To-morrow at five I begin it.”
“Go to bed,” advised Porter. “Go to bed, and sleep
off this insanity. And in the morning tell me that to-morrow at five is off for all time.”
When Jimmy Blaine awoke the next morning in Jimmy Porter's guest-room, he discovered in himself a much worried young man. As he lay there planning his campaign, the vast difficulties ahead of him came one by one into his mind and appalled him. But though the great enthusiasm of the night before had faded for all time, he was no less determined. The bigger the job, the greater the glory!
“{di|F}}OR a man who has sworn to make a patriot of Cyrus P. Cleek,” spoke Porter at the door, “you are getting rather late. Better get up and get busy.”
“Oh—good morning,” said Jimmy.
“Perhaps you see more clearly now,” Porter ventured. “The thing is impossible. Nothing but unhappiness waiting for you if you get mixed up with that family. Better call the girl up—”
“Get out of here,” said Jimmy, “and don't bother me. I'm due to serve my country, and I'm somewhat late.”
“You mean you're going up there to tea?”
“Yes—and I'll stay to dinner if she'll have me.”
“God help you,” said Porter, and slammed the door.
Jimmy spent the day marshaling facts and arguments into one grand indictment of Germany. Cleek was no mean debater, and Jimmy Blaine had always loathed debate. As he strolled up Connecticut Avenue to the Clapham Arms that afternoon, he was a very subdued and quiet young man. But as he was going up in the elevator he realized that this attitude would not do, and (illegible text) for his old lightness of manner.
The girl herself opened the door, and at sight of her it required no effort on Jimmy's part to be once more happy and gay.
“You've actually come,” she said, her eyes shining.
“I warned you nothing could stop me.”
“I'll order tea at once. I waited—I wasn't sure—”
“You weren't sure? How can you libel me like that?” Jimmy seemed deeply hurt.
“I wasn't sure,” she went on, “because I knew that Mr. Porter would tell you my—last—name.”
A pause.
“It's a very nice day,” said Jimmy. “A bit warm, but—”
“Don't try to put it off,” said Mary Will. “You know my name, and you know that my father—”
“I'll be frank,” answered Jimmy. “I know that your father is the most misguided man in Christendom. I don't agree with him at all.”
“But he's sincere,” cried the girl.
“No doubt of that,” lied Jimmy promptly.
“He's just—thinking wrong,” said the girl. “I've tried so hard to make him see. I've pleaded and coaxed and—even cried. Oh—I wouldn't admit this to many people. But—somehow—I want you to know—”
“I know without being told,” replied Jimmy. “What you said about your mother's people and—oh, just looking into your eyes—that tells everything. I know you've putting up a fight—a losing fight—and I want you to realize that reinforcements have come. I've decided to help you; between us we'll convert him; we must.”
“Why should you want to help me?”
“Lucky you asked me that. I want to help you because, of all the girls I ever met, you are the loveliest, the—”
“Here's the tea,” said Mary Will.
They sat close on a comfortable sofa and planned the friendly assault on the stronghold of Cleek. The girl seemed to have an absurd confidence in Jimmy's prowess, and it frightened him while it thrilled and delighted him.
“We'll do it,” said Jimmy at last. “We'll make him see the light. How can he help but see it? He's your father. I'll tell you what—invite me to dinner. Just you and he and I—and the war.”
“He's so hard to handle, at times.”
“Tact—tact will do it.”
“Oh, I've never confessed to another soul in Washington how I feel about it. I—I couldn't. It didn't seem loyal But—but you're different. I wonder why—”
“Don't you know?” Jimmy moved very close. “I'm different because—well—er—I suppose we ought to convert Father first. And when we have, may I tell you then? Why I'm different, I mean.”
“You may. But that time is a long way off.”
“Perhaps not. How about the dinner? I'm afraid you'll think I'm- always hungry—no more tea, thanks. But you understand—”
“Yes. Say we make it to-morrow evening—here, at seven. We—we mustn't lose any time.”
“I should say not. I'll be here—crammed for debate.”
“If we could only make him see, I'd be the happiest girl in the world.”
“I'd be the happiest man. And that's the way it's going to be.”
He reassured Mary Will of this inevitable outcome several times before he came away. He needed reassuring himself. Dave Porter was reading newspapers in his study.
“Cleek made a speech this afternoon,” he said. “I failed to find any trace of the Jimmy Blaine influence in it.”
“Give me a week,” said Jimmy grandly.
HE wished he could feel as confident as he talked. When he went over the top toward the Clapham Arms the next evening, he was experiencing a sinking feeling at the heart, and a dryness of tongue that augured poorly for debate.
One glance at Cyrus P. Cleek told him that his fears were justified. He could only marvel that this strutting, pompous little rooster could be the father of so delectable a girl. Cleek didn't say as much, but Jimmy had the feeling that he was being subtly congratulated on his good fortune at meeting Cleek. The dinner got under way.
Half an hour later Jimmy respectfully informed Cleek that he begged leave to differ with him, and Cleek was annihilating his airy eloquence.
“Big business dragged us into this war,” roared Cleek.
“Why?” asked Jimmy.
“For profits. For profits they would shed the blood of our boys—”
“How silly of them!” smiled Jimmy. “Probably they never realized that war would tax all the profits from their pockets.”
“And it will, too,” agreed Cleek. “I'll tax the hides off 'em.”
“Perhaps, being good business men, however wicked,” suggested Jimmy, “they knew that in advance. Perhaps they realized they could make far more money by letting the war drag on as it was going. Perhaps in one wonderful, unselfish moment they were willing to forget profits, to give all they had that their country might take its place on the frontier of civilization—”
“Nonsense!”
“I notice a lot of those men giving their sons to the slaughter. I notice others sacrificing their incomes and hurrying down here to work for their government for a dollar a year. Somehow, they don't act like men who started a war to get rich out of it. They act more like farseeing patriots.”
“You talk a lot for a child,” said Cleek, ruffled. “You don't understand all the undercurrents—”
“Father!” rebuked Mary Will.
“I understand this,” said Jimmy Blaine. “There's a terrible menace stalking the world to-day in the form of an idea—an idea made in Germany. By spies and treachery and the power of mighty armies that idea hopes to make the world it's slave; and unless it is conquered now, your children and—er—my children must give their lives to down it. We have an opportunity—the most promising We shall ever have—to wreck that idea, to restore freedom and justice to the world—”
“All rot!” raved Cleek. “Rapaho is safe from invasion.”
“There was once a man,” said Jimmy evenly, “who sat in the attic of his house while a maniac with a torch raged in the lower hall, and the man said: 'Why get excited? This is a nice, safe attic.'”
“Perhaps,” said Cleek, “if we talk of something else—”
“Have you read 'The Bryce Report?'” inquired Jimmy. “A calm, quiet report written by an unexcitable old gentleman who doesn't know how to lie! Do you realize what the German idea means when German armies are on the make and think they see victory ahead? Let me tell you—”
AND while Cleek writhed, Jimmy proceeded to tell him, All the horrors of the Belgian invasion, all the suffering of the poor souls caught up in the terrible current of war, he laid bare. But he was talking to a man of stone. Cleek was annoyed, Cleek was angry; but Cleek remained Cleek.
“Porter's a friend of yours, isn't he?” cried Cleek at last.
“He is.”
“Go back to him. He sent you to spy on me.”
“Father—how can you!” Mary Will's eyes were wide with dismay.
“I don't care. Porter was responsible for the infernal story about my hair.”
“Porter made you famous,” said Jimmie. “He could do it again—he could make a hero of you—if you'd only see the light about the war.”
For a long moment the shifty little little eye of Cleek stared into the future.
“I'm sorry,” he said presently. “These are troubled times, Mr. Blaine, and I'm sure it would be better if we discussed other matters than the war.”
Jimmy left the Clapham Arms that night beaten and sore in spirit and mind. Had it not been for the frail little girl who looked so alluring when he said good night, he would have given up the fight forever. But—she depended on him.
So for a week he continued the assault; he caught Cleek in odd corners; he argued with him. If the amusing presumption of his course in thus fighting a member of the Congress ever popped into his mind, he dismissed it on the ground of Cleek's littleness, his vast unimportance as a statesman. Jimmy's success was nil. Cleek permitted the young man to address him, but only at the request of his daughter, whom he really cared for. He told himself that Blaine was an agreeable youth; he made sure that Blaine's money and position were all that could be desired; and he decided that when the war ended, all this would blow over, and that if at that time Mary Will still wanted this young man, then by heaven she should have him.
By the time the battle reached its seventh day, Jimmy Blaine had accustomed his mind to the idea of defeat. He was a very gloomy young man, and Dave Porter had learned that it was no longer safe to twit him on the subject of the red Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho. Porter even refrained from saying, “I told you so.”
Seated on the familiar sofa, drinking tea he didn't want, Jimmy sadly admitted to Mary Will that even with the reinforcements the cause looked hopeless.
“I don't like to say it,' he confided, “but I can't seem to strike any human chord in his heart. I'm about ready to quit. Nothing seems to make any impression on him. The story of sufferings almost too great for human beings to endure, the tale of how splendidly they have endured—all that appears to leave him cold. I'm afraid people mean nothing to him.”
“Only a few, at any rate,” sighed Mary Will.
“Tell me,” said Jimmy, “has he ever any human side? Pardon me for asking, but you understand—”
“He has never seemed to care greatly for anything or anybody,” answered the girl, “except—”
“Except what?”
“Except his dogs.”
“His dogs?”
“Yes—all his life, dogs have been a passion with Father. We have the most wonderful kennels, out home, and he spends hours there when he can. I've known him to sit up all night with a sick terrier—”
“He loves dogs,” cried Jimmy.
“Sometimes I've thought he cared more for them than me. It's wonderful to see him with them; he's so kind and tender—quite different, really.”
Jimmy was on his feet.
“I've got an idea,” he cried, “a real idea. We'll try it, and if that doesn't work—”
“What are you going to do?”
“Will your father be at home to-night?”
“Yes—but he'll be very busy. He's preparing a speech. I wouldn't dare interrupt him.”
“That's all I want to know,” said Jimmy. “I'll be here at eight.”
CLEEK was in a restless mood at dinner; something appeared to be preying upon his mind. Mary Will said little, but watched him eagerly. He seemed unusually irritable and self-centered, and she had the unhappy feeling that the final attack was to find the enemy well intretched. She wondered what Jimmy was planning.
Promptly at eight Jimmy appeared, and Mary Will's questions were answered. For at his heels trotted a little, insignificant fox terrier, whose eyes blinked in the bright lights of the hallways and who seemed unaccustomed to home comforts.
“Mary Will Cleek,” said Jimmy, “meet my friend Tommy. I've borrowed him from the British mission that is now in Washington. He is about to lead our final gas-attack—and it wont be a new experience for him, at that. Where's your father?”
“In the library.”
“Will you please go ahead and warn him that Tommy and I are coming? Thank you. —Here, Tommy!”
He took the dog in his arms and followed Mary Will along the hall. Cleek looked impatiently up from his desk as the odd procession entered.
“I must not be disturbed,” he bellowed. “I thought I told you—” He stopped, for Jimmy Blaine had dropped Tommy to the rug, and the dog ran eagerly to Cleek's side and stood there waving a friendly tail.
“What's this?” cried Cleek, and smiled in spite of himself as the dog leaped to his knee.
“Oh—that,” said Jimmy Blaine, “that's a friend of mine. His name is Tommy.”
The Red-haired Rooster ran his hand lovingly over the wirelike hair of Tommy's back. He gasped.
“Great Scott,” he cried, “what's that? That horrible scar!”
“That's Tommy's badge of honor. He won it at the battle of the Marne.”
“The battle of the Marne?”
“Precisely. Your German friends sent over a shell, and Tommy caught a fragment on his back. He caught it because he wouldn't leave the side of a British officer who was lying wounded on the field.”
“This little fellow was there—at the Marne?” Cleek's eyes were wide.
“He was. He was also at the first and second Ypres. And he had a lot to do with the battles of the Somme. Yes, Tommy has been a pretty busy little chap since the German invasion swept across Belgium in the fall of 1914. When the cyclone hit him, he was living in luxury in Bruges—just a nice, quiet little dog who had no quarrel with anybody. A British officer happened to pass along that way, and persuaded Tommy to come away with him. It was rather unusual—I mean, for Tommy to leave home.”
“Rather unusual?”
“Yes—you know most of the Belgian dogs wont leave. They tell me it's one of the most heartbreaking features of the invasion. Many a Belgian village is just a pile of ruins, not a soul left there—except the dogs. They hang round the pile of débris that was once their home, waiting, waiting—”
“Waiting for what?” The hand of Cleek patted Tommy's back abstractedly.
“Waiting for their masters—the men who will never come back. A friend of mine who did relief-work over there told me about it. When a stranger approaches the ruins, the dogs all run to him—sort of eager and pathetic-like. You see, they're hoping. They're hoping still. After all the dark nights and lean days, they hope on. They wonder if some one they love has returned. So they come tearing down the ruined street, and then they see who it is, and—my friend said—it would break your heart. They just put their tails between their legs and go sadly back—back to guard the pile of bricks that used to be home, the pile of sticks and stones where a warm fire used to wait for them, and a juicy bone, and the affection of their people. They don't understand what it's all about, but they stand on guard till they die of starvation.”
Cleek bowed his head over Tommy's back.
“War is war,” he said.
“You bet it is,” said Jimmy. “And Tommy knows that now. He's fighting—he's fighting with the British—he's fighting like the devil. They tell me—the men on the British mission who brought him over here on a furlough—that he seems to realize it when the enemy is on the run. He's wild with joy.”
“You borrowed this dog from the British mission?”
“Just for the evening. I wanted you to know him.”
“Poor little fellow!” said Cleek.
“I've told you about the babies and women and the sick and the old,” said Jimmy. “I've pictured to you what happened to them. Now—for a change—think of the dogs. Think of the dogs who had no quarrel with anyone—who were lying at peace with the world beside the hearths of Belgium. And then think of your friends the Germans—”
“They are not my friends,” roared Cleek.
“They believe they are. The German papers claim you. They hail you as one of them. Think of the great flood of your German friends sweeping in, wrecking the roofs over the heads of the dogs of Belgium, driving out the children the dogs loved, to die on the roads, murdering their masters, and leaving the dogs themselves to starve beside the ruins they are too loyal to desert!”
“I never attempted to defend their invasion of Belgium—”
“Yet you're fighting to perpetuate it in a manner of making war. You're upholding the hands of the men who could carry it through in cold blood. If you have your way, the war will end in a German victory and the eyes of Germany will turn greedily to America—to Rapaho—to your own kennels. You are the friend in this country of the war of lust and loot!”
THERE was a silence. Jimmy was aware of Mary Will, her eyes shining upon him; he was aware of a strangely humble Cleek, rubbing the back of a comfortable and happy Tommy. Suddenly Cleek lowered his head and buried his great face in the hair of Tommy's back. Jimmy Blaine could never be sure, but he had the feeling that Cleek had kissed the scar!”
“They wait—the dogs,” repeated Cleek softly. “They wait by the ruins for their masters to come home.”
Another pause. Cleek got slowly to his feet, and the dog dropped to the rug.
“American soldiers,” said Cleek, “will in God's good time pass through the pitiful towns of Belgium on their way to the Rhine. At the point of their bayonets they shall drive back the misguided creatures of the most shameless autocracy the world has ever known. Belgium, France, the world, shall be free.”
“What?” cried Jimmy, unbelieving.
“Go back to your friend Porter,” cried Cleek. “Go back and tell him that, by thunder, a rooster can fight!”
He stooped laboriously and patted the head of the terrier on the rug.
“Good dog,” he said huskily, and strode out of the room.
For a long moment, unable to credit their ears, Jimmy and Mary Will stared at one another.
“By heaven,” said Jimmy at last, “we've won! We've won! You told me you'd be the happiest girl in the world.”
“I am.”
“All my life,” said Jimmy, “is to be devoted to keeping you happy. If—if you don't mind?”
“I think—I might—like it.”
Jimmy came close.
“I've got more news—good news. They accepted me for the ambulance-service to-day. I leave next week for Allentown to train. Everybody's getting married in a great hurry these days.”
“I know—they are.”
“Mary Will—”
“But Tommy's looking.”
“Sure he is. It's all right. Tommy's going to be best man.”
OUT on the quiet avenue under the trees, Cyrus P. Cleek walked along with firm, determined step. Many thoughts were racing through his brain. It would be useless to pretend that he had entirely forgotten Cleek. If one wanted to be mean, one might mention that only that morning he had received a letter from his sole remaining friend in Rapaho, telling him that he was on the wrong track, that all Rapaho despised him, and advising that he find at once some dramatic means of changing his course. One might go further in one's meanness, and add that among other matters in the Cleek mind now were huge headlines in Dave Porter's newspaper: “Cleek Comes Out for War. Won Over by a Dog's Mute Appeal—”
No, Cleeks are not made into patriots in one blinding moment. Undoubtedly mixed motives were carrying him down the avenue, but the end was to be the same and not even Mary Will was ever to guess the truth. And it cannot be denied that among his emotions were some fine and pure and noble that seemed to purge his soul and leave him for the moment exalted, happy. For Cleeks, like better men, are a mixture of good and bad.
Cleek reached a barber-shop and passed through the door. He plumped down in a chair.
“Yes sir?” said his favorite barber, holding a white apron.
“Hair-cut,” bellowed Cleek.
“Yes — er — yes sir, You mean, trimmed.”
“I mean cut!”
The barber gasped. Cleek leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
And now let us give the devil his due. Before his closed eyes there flashed no headlines from Dave Porter's newspapers. Instead, he saw a pile of ruins in Belgium, and a group of sad little dogs who ran eagerly to meet the strangers who passed that way.
“Don't be afraid to cut it close,” said the Red-haired Rooster of the Rapaho.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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