# Winning Rosemary Burke

Extracted from All-Story Weekly, 2 Nov 1918, pp. 367-377. Accompanying headpiece may be omitted.
Winning Rosemary Burke
by Wolcott Le Clear Beard
IN his swarthy, almost Moorish style, Don Miguel Farrello was undeniably handsome. His health was perfect. Also, he was prosperous—exceedingly prosperous. To all appearances, he was contented, as well. Even a bleak and bitter gale that howled and blustered through the streets failed to abate in the slightest degree his air of satisfaction with the world at large and his own position therein.
Don Miguel chuckled infectiously as he braced his big body against the rushing wind. He chuckled again as a mighty gust, tearing around the nearest corner, bore with it a little woman, as it might have borne a dry leaf, and flung her fairly into his arms.
"Sure, 'tis none so ill a wind afther all," he laughed, "if it blows things such as this to a man."
Very courteously he helped the little, wind-driven woman to struggle free from their involuntary embrace. She stood clinging to a lamp-post then, and for the first time he caught sight of her wistful face, framed by a flutter of her shabby draperies. As Don Miguel looked at that face the laughter on his own faded to an expression of mingled wonderment and joy. He saw wonderment come into hers, and saw her lips move; and though all sound was instantly whisked away by the wind, he knew the shape, as it were, of those words as well as if they were spoken.
"Mike!" she gasped. "Mike O'Farrell!"
Already it has been hinted that Don Miguel was astonished, but it may as well be admitted at the start that it was not this name, which the little woman so evidently applied to him, that astonished him. The name was his own. It is true that he had altered it by translating the Christian name into Spanish and transferring the "O" from the head of his patronymic to its tail; but this was a mere detail, suggested both by his exotic appearance and professional expediency. Internally Miguel Farrello was Michael O'Farrell still; Irish, though "black Irish," from his marrow out. It showed now, in the look that came over that darkly pale face of his.
"Rosie!" he cried—and there was no difficulty in hearing him above the storm. "By the rod av St. Pathrick, 'tis Rosie Burke!"
Once more the little woman's lips could be seen to move, but nothing could be heard, and as the shape of these words was unfamiliar, Don Miguel could not understand them. He grasped her arm. She protested, but Don Miguel was endowed with physical strength that is rarely given to mankind, and the little woman had it not. In a doorway they found shelter from the storm. There, with a sort of tender violence, he pinned her against a wall by one thin shoulder, and stood looking into her face as though he could never see enough of it.
"Rosie," he cried, "I'd ha' given the two ears av me for this sight av yer face. 'Tis the face that for all these years, night an' day alike, has been in me mind—in me heart—in me drames!"
"In yer dreams!" echoed the little woman scornfully. "Faith, 'tis yourself, Mike O'Farrell, that was willin' to take it out in dreamin'—good and willin'! You—hardly done swearin' by all the saints in heaven that ye'd care for me till the end of toime, but who ran away with a circus, niver to be heard of from that day to this! You—and your dreams!"
Don Miguel was not hurt by her bitter words. He did not retort, as with perfect truth he might have done, that when he left her he had done so at her own urgent request—or rather, at her command. To this command she had added, by way of emphasis, the statement that she, Rosemary Burke, cared more for the little finger of one Tim Murphy than she did for Mike O'Farrell's whole body. So Mike had left her and gone with a traveling circus, as she said. Her words had meant nothing; they were merely the expression of sudden ill-humor—of a plain, old-fashioned tantrum—but Mike had been deceived by the display of verbal fireworks. Miguel, since those days, had acquired wisdom and understanding far greater than that which Mike had possessed. There was one point, however, which he felt must be cleared up, and cleared up at once.
"Rosie," he demanded, his black eyes narrowing, "is it Tim Murphy? Did ye marry him, and does he ill—"
"Tim Murphy?" interrupted Rosie. "Me marry Tim Murphy? Faith, I'd rather marry Satan himself—hoofs, horns, and tail!"
Of her sincerity there could be no possibility of doubt; yet it left something to be desired in the mind of Don Miguel. Rosie 's speech was too vehement. To him it seemed to indicate that Tim Murphy still was an active factor in her life. That though she might prefer to marry Satan, were the choice offered her, there was a chance that in some way unknown to Don Miguel she would be forced to marry Tim.
Questions, therefore, crowded to the lips of Don Miguel, but never got beyond them. There was no chance for any. Rosie's head drooped quite suddenly, her knees gave way, and she started sliding down the wall against which she still was held. With a quickness that would have been marvelous in any one, but was doubly so in so large a man, he caught her in his arms and carried her, as he might have carried a baby, from the doorway into the street. As he lifted her, and realized the lightness of his burden, and how he could feel the slender bones of her frame through her pitifully thin clothing, he cursed, fluently and horribly—and quite unconsciously as well.
"'Tis starrvin' she is!" he muttered aloud. "No wondher she fainted!"
"I've not fainted," was the weak but convincing reply. "I was dizzy for a second, but I'm all right now. Let me down."
"I'll not," answered Don Miguel stubbornly. "Ye're not fit. Ye'll stay where ye are."
"Ah, Mike—please!" she begged. "Sure, even on a day like this, people will see, and I'm known in these parts. Think what the neighbors—"
"May the divvle fly away wit' the neighbors!" interrupted Mike—he had temporarily ceased to be Don Miguel—then, as an afterthought, added: "Will ye do as I say, Rosie—and no back talk?"
"I will," she promised desperately.
She had assumed an implied promise on his part that he would set her on her feet, but if there were such a promise he broke it shamelessly. A providential taxi happened to pass. He packed her into it, obtained from her the address of her neat, barren little flat, and together they drove there.
Having deposited her on a lounge, with strict injunctions not to stir, he once more assumed the character of Don Miguel. He invaded his favorite restaurant, shortly to emerge with two waiters and nearly enough provender to satisfy the hunger of a half-dozen harvest-hands—but the said provender was not of a sort to which most harvest-hands are accustomed. Far from it.
The waiters spread the feast in Rosie's flat, and were dismissed, to return later. Rosie was hungry; there could be no doubt of that. She ate, in spite of herself. For a time Mike sat, watching her as the drawn look faded from her face so that it began to appear younger, instead of far older, than its eight-and-twenty years. It was not until the edge of her hunger was blunted that the proprieties once more recurred to her mind. By way of reply to her remonstrances Don Miguel pointed to a man's cap that hung on a peg. He had marked that cap as soon as he entered, and ever since its presence there had rankled in his mind.
"Ain't thot chappyrone enough?" he demanded. "Whose is ut?"
"Terry's," she answered. "Whose else would it be? But I forgot, Mike; ye didn't know. There's none of us left now but him and me. So we're here together—just us two."
"Just you two," echoed Mike O'Farrell pityingly. "That ain't enough, Rosie—not for you it ain't. Terry, that kid brother av yours—"
Rosie interrupted him with a laugh, half hysterical.
"Kid!" she repeated. "Have ye forgot entirely the years that have gone, Mike O'Farrell?" she asked sadly. "Sure, 'tis no kid that Terry is now, in his looks, anyway, or in his own estimation—as ye'd see in a second if he was only here. And I wish he was! Oh, but I do wish he was!"
"Where is he, then?" demanded Mike.
She answered evasively, and then changed the subject by asking about Mike himself. Mike sighed.
Something was wrong—very, very wrong—with Rosie's little world.
That much was plain, and Mike's impetuous Hibernian soul fairly blazed with impatience to know what that something was. Still, seeing that as yet she was not ready to bestow her confidence upon him, he bided his time, like the wise man that he had grown to be. In fact, he answered her question himself, and answered it at length. It was a clever recital, and a true one withal.
He told of his life, of constant change and excitement, of new sights and sounds. He told of strange countries and peoples and incidents. As Rosie listened, the confining walls of that little room receded beyond vast horizons, revealing worlds of sunlit seas, or of palms, domes, and minarets, of quaint cities or snow-clad peaks. Mike knew that this was so. He could tell by her parted lips, by the rapt look in her eyes, and the color of years gone by that began faintly to reappear in her cheeks. For the time all else was forgotten in the joy of those mental pictures, and at this Mike rejoiced, for he had worked deliberately with such an end in view. Now, quite as deliberately, he destroyed the airy fabric which he had been at such pains to erect. He desired contrast.
"Rosie," he said, "wouldn't ye like to see all this—and more? Not to hear me blandanderin', but to see it—really—you and Terry together, with niver a care, niver a fear for anything the nixt day may bring, but just ready to take what comes, knowin' it'll be good. Wudden't ye like that? Wudden't ye now!"
The little woman straightened in her chair, and the light faded from her eyes, Mike knew that the walls had closed in again, shutting the visions outside the bare, clean room. But Mike had not entirely finished.
"Think, mavourneen! Wudden't ye like it?" he persisted. "Wit' niver a care—niver a fear? Wit' Terry by yer soide—yes, and wit' Tim Murphy at the other end av the earth? Wudden't ye like it? Think!"
Mike O'Farrell had not included himself in the thoughts thus suggested; as above stated, he had acquired wisdom. The strongest evidence of this wisdom, perhaps, lay in his guileful reference to Tim Murphy, which was a chance shot, but one which, nevertheless, rung a bull's-eye. Rosie's elbows were on the table now, and her face was hidden in her thin, work-scarred hands, from between the fingers of which a tear presently trickled, while her shoulders heaved with noiseless sobs.
"Would I like it!" she gasped forth after a little. "Would I like it! Faith, heaven itself, I'm thinkin', could offer no better. If Terry and me was alone, that is, not bothered by any one," she added as an afterthought.
Now, notwithstanding that he had so carefully refrained from mention of himself, Don Michael-Miguel had not the slightest intention of holding forth this dream as one to be realized without himself as a component part thereof. Rosie was perfectly aware of this, and Mike knew that she was. The latter words of her speech, therefore—the afterthought—were plainly directed straight at him. But because they were an afterthought, Don Miguel was not in the least cast down—quite the contrary. His wisdom still held its sway. Rosie now was crying as though her heart would break.
For a time Mike sat motionless and in silence; then, reaching over, he took one of her hands in his. He was rewarded by feeling her fingers close upon his, though they did not leave her face. In another way as well his silent sympathy met with its reward, for after a little, in fragmentary sentences uttered between her sobs, she told her dismal yet melodramatic little tale. Told it in part, that is. The rest Mike was able to gather for himself.
Tim Murphy was the villain of the piece, as Mike supposed—and perhaps desired, for Mike was very human—that he would be. Tim was big, good-looking in a coarse way, and with a bluff and masterful manner that concealed his overpowering self-conceit. He dazzled many girls, but Rosie had recognized his fascinations only in order to use them as a weapon against Mike when she quarreled with him, or wished to torment him as women will torment the men they love. But Mike, taking her seriously, had vanished; and never, from that day to the present one, had Rosie ceased to resent his stupidity.
Mike was gone, however, and Tim was on the spot. Tim's attention persisted, and were repulsed the more fiercely because Rosie, womanlike, shouldered upon him the responsibility for Mike's defection. The spur of wounded vanity thus was added to Tim's desire for conquest and whatever measure of tepid affection that he might originally have felt.
So Tim became sullen—sullenly persistent. He swore, and made no secret of his vow, that he would win her or break her, or both; preferably both. For the time, however, he was powerless; powerless even though Rosie's father died, leaving her alone in the world with Terry, her brother, who was but a child; for Rosie was well able, and also most willing when occasion arose, to offer battle on her own behalf.
But years went on, as years have a habit of doing. In his chosen way, which was politics of the less savory variety, Tim Murphy had prospered. He was leader of his district, and his saloon was headquarters for the district gang—their sanctuary, wherein the police dare not come. And the course of those years also brought Tim his opportunity, for from a child Terry grew to young manhood, and it was through Terry that Tim made his latest move against poor Rosie's defenses.
"Sure, it's not Terry's fault, Mike," said Rosie. Indeed and indeed it's not! Listen. Tim Murphy is behind the scenes in pollytics. He takes Terry with him behind those same scenes. Not only does he let him see the wheels go round, but makes Terry a sort of leftenint, so he can help make the wheels go-round. He gives Terry power—from behind. Could any boy resist that? Could you have resisted it when you was Terry's age, Mike? Say!"
"No," Mike admitted thoughtfully. "No, Rosie. I misdoubt if I could. But what happened then, mavourneen? Tell me."
It was some time before she could tell him, on account of the sobs that came faster and harder even than before. But after a time she went on.
"We'd been happy, Terry and me," she said. "What with me doin' piece work for the corset factory, and him holdin' down a good job with a commission-house on Little West Twelfth Street, we was gettin' on fine, and savin' money. But he—Terry—began hangin' around that saloon of Tim Murphy's. Not that he drinks. He doesn't—they can't get him to. He had to be there, he says, on account of the political work he had to do. There's a card game in the back room, and—and—"
Once more she had to stop. Don Miguel took up the sentence where she left it off.
"Terry got to playin' to whoile away the time," said he. "At firrst he won, then lost, and the limit was raised so's to let him 'win back his losin's.' He lost more. Most likely he lost some that he'd been collectin' for that commission-house on Little West Twelfth Street. If so, ye made good out av yer savin's, and it tuk thim all and mortgaged yer earnin's besides, so ye haven't enough food for to keep yer big sowl tied fast to yer poor little body. Therefore ye can do no more—yet Terry's still a thryin' for to win back those losses. So the next toime he defaults, it'll be him for jail—or you for Tim Murphy—take yer choice. Which is precisely what Tim Murphy has been workin' for all along. That's why ye're frettin' yer hearrt out, as well as starvin'. And there ye are!"
Rosemary gradually straightened in her chair as she listened. Before the speech was finished her hands had fallen away from her face, and her eyes, filled with tears now forgotten, stared with angry surprise at Don Miguel.
"And you'd have had me believe that ye didn't even know where I was to be found!" she exclaimed bitterly; then demanded: "Where 'd ye hear all that-all what ye've just been sayin'?"
"Was I right?" asked Don Miguel, ignoring the question.
She nodded, shivering. Then, for the first time, Don Miguel realized that the room was chilly. It was not heated by steam. What little heat there was came from an old-fashioned Franklin stove, in which burned a fire carefully dampered to pitiful inadequacy. Rising, Don Miguel poured on coal recklessly and began to open the drafts.
"Who told ye—all what you was tellin' me?" again demanded Rosemary. "I want to know."
"Nobody told me," he answered simply. "Knowin' how such things go, I guessed—and guessed roight. That's all. Where's Terry now?"
"Tim's," she owned reluctantly.
"Playin'?"
She nodded.
"On Sunday? And at"—he locked at his watch—"elevin o'clock in the forenoon?"
"Aye," she admitted still more reluctantly. "He's been gone since nine."
"Was that where ye was goin' when I met ye—to thry and get Terry to come home?"
Again she nodded. With a muttered exclamation too low for her to hear understandingly, he began fiercely to rake the fire, apparently as a sort of vent for his emotions. After a little he spoke, raising his voice in order that she might comprehend in spite of the noise he made.
"Rosie," he said, "listhen. Ye said, a whoile back, that ye'd do what ye was told to do; and now I'm going for to hold ye to yer word. I'll go and see Tim Murphy meself, and—"
With a bound Rosemary had left her chair, and was standing beside him. Her eyes were blazing, her muscles tensed with determination.
"You!" she cried. "You go and see Tim Murphy! Faith, it's a thousand dollars—no less—that he'd give for to have ye do that very thing, Mike O'Farrell, as he's told me a thousand toimes. You go there—the dirrty joint what he himself owns! But he owns more than that. He owns the disthrict, police and all. More, he can lick anny man in that disthrict, he says—anny two men, his friends say. What chance would you have with an outfit like that? Say!"
Don Miguel did not answer in words. He still held the poker. Now, grasping it with both hands, he bent the stout iron bar double, and then, without apparent effort, straightened it again.
It was a wonderful feat of sheer strength. One would naturally have expected fingers that were capable of such an act to be massive and square-ended, but the fingers of Don Miguel were not in the least like that. They were long and tapering and shapely; they were the fingers of an artist. Rosemary, in the old days, had been, accustomed to ridicule them, asserting that they were like those of a woman, which also was true. Even then those fingers were incongruously strong—but not as they were now. Indeed not! There was a sort of vicarious pride in Rosie's shuddering breath of admiration.
"Are ye the strong man in that circus, Mike?" she asked.
"I was," replied Don Miguel, laying down the poker. "I am yet—among other things. But not wit' the cirrcus; sure I left that a long toime back. I have me own show now. I might say, pretty near, that I am me own show."
"You!" she exclaimed. "What sort of show, then?"
Was it real interest in his career that made her ask such a question at such a time, or did she seek to divert him by such talk from his expressed determination to seek Tim Murphy in the Murphy lair? Don Miguel could not decide. Her questions might have been prompted by either motive, or, for that matter, by both. In any case, however, he regarded them as favorable omens. He smiled. Also he answered the questions, not in words, but by ocular demonstration.
He snatched a fragile coffee-cup from the table and dashed it against the wall with enough apparent force to flatten a bullet, but the crash and tinkle of broken china which seemed inevitable never reached Rosemary's expectant ears. Instead the cup rebounded unbroken, ringing softly, to alight upon the back of Don Miguel's hand. Then he tossed the cup into the air and sent a plate spinning after it, followed by a fork, an apple, and a heavy carafe. For a time these objects, so different in weight and balance, whirled up and down and across, weaving intricate patterns, as though each were endowed with a separate and trained intelligence. Then, quite gently, the plate alighted upon the table, the carafe landed upon it without a jar, while the fork, handle downward, inserted itself into the mouth of the carafe, with the apple impaled upon its tines.
Then, after favoring the astounded Rosie with the burlesque of a theatrical bow, he slipped into his overcoat, grasped his hat, and opened the door. On the threshold a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped and looked back.
"Rosie," he commanded, "you stay here. Wait till I come. And while ye're waitin', pack what clothes and little things that you and Terry needs. Have it all ready whin I come back, for it's like there'll be no time then. Undherstand?"
He had passed out of the room and closed the door before she could reply. She watched him from the window as he walked briskly down the street and turn the corner. Then she sat down and started to think things over, for there had been no opportunity until then for uninterrupted thought.
She was angry with Mike O'Farrell—of course. Upon that she decided instantly. She had been angry with him for years, ever since he had taken her at her word and left her. The fault, it is true, had all been hers. That was one reason why she was angry. And then, what right had he to order her about—to command her to do this or that?
None—clearly none! He must be taught better. And yet, somehow, in the back of her mind, she liked being told exactly what to do, and given no choice in the matter—liked it vastly, in spite of herself. To have some one to lean upon, some one to order the life which she had found so hard to through its troubled waters, brought with it a sense of inexpressible relief.
Almost automatically she dragged forth a trunk and in it placed her meager personal belongings, and also Terry's. It held them all quite easily. As she ended her task once more she rebelled. She would not be ordered about like that! But the trunk was closed and locked, and she made no move to reopen it. Instead she sat down upon it and tried, with growing apprehension, to visualize Don Miguel's journey to the Murphy stronghold, and to imagine what was happening there.
At least twice Rosemary would have been much surprised had she been able, with her mind's eye, to follow the course of Don Miguel. To begin with, instead of repairing direct to the lair of Tim Murphy, he walked to a neighboring hotel, and there chartered a taxicab in which to continue his journey. So extraordinary a predilection for this method of locomotion could hardly fail to astonish her; yet it is safe to assume that her astonishment, to say nothing of her dismay, would have been much greater could she have beheld the lone occupant of that taxi as he emerged therefrom.
Never in the old days had Mike O'Farrell been given to excess in the use of strong drink, and surely as Don Miguel he could not greatly have changed in this regard, for had he so changed the feats with which he delighted nightly audiences would long before have become impossible to him. Yet the aspect of Don Miguel Farello, as he alighted from the taxi and ordered it to wait, was such as to cause a near-by policeman to wink, with a grin, at the taxi's chauffeur.
"He was all right when he hailed me," was the chauffeur's reply to this wink and grin. "He must have had it with him in a flask. Or more likely," he amended thoughtfully, "in two flasks—pints, both of 'em."
If Don Miguel heard this remark, he made no sign of having done so. Walking with a slight unsteadiness to the Murphy side door, he pushed it open and entered the dingy back room, hung with framed advertisements, typical of the third-rate saloon. The bar, thus formally closed, was making the usual pretense of complying with the law.
Trade was slack at that time of day, and for the moment Don Miguel was alone save for a negligible party of minor political henchmen who conversed among themselves in mysterious undertones, hardly glancing up at the entrance of this semi-inebriated stranger.
Don Miguel pressed a button, and at the summons there appeared a bartender of truculent appearance, whose head was decorated with a "cauliflower" ear. Don Miguel ordered whisky, which was brought him. Diving into a pocket, he produced a roll of yellow-backed bills of a thickness that caused the bartender's eyes to glisten acquisitively. Peeling a twenty-dollar bill from the outside, Don Miguel offered it in payment.
The change of a ten-dollar bill was returned to him. Apparently noticing nothing amiss, Don Miguel crushed the short change carelessly into his pocket and lifted the glass, then paused, the glass held halfway, and listened. His eyes, with that appearance of owlish gravity which is characteristic of a certain phase of drunkenness, wandered from the closed door of another back room to the bartender's face. Then Don Miguel spoke.
"Do my eyes deceive my—my ear-sight?" he inquired thickly.
"Do they what?" asked the bartender in return. "I don't get you."
"I mean—" explained Don Miguel; then nodded toward the closed door, whence the click of chips on a wooden table-top could be heard plainly enough. He went through the motions of dealing cards, then looked at the barkeeper interrogatively.
"Well," said that functionary in reply to the pantomimic question. "There might be a little game at that. Want to sit in?"
Don Miguel nodded. This was easy. The roll of bills, together with the apparent condition of the owner thereof, had accomplished his object far more readily than he had dared to hope. The men at the other table, their attention attracted by this conversation, looked knowingly at each other and turned their faces away in order to conceal their smiles.
The bartender vanished through the doorway into the other room. This auspicious moment was embraced by Don Miguel in order to pour his whisky into a convenient cuspidor, and then, with a resounding whack, to set his glass back upon the table before which he was seated. There was a low-toned buzz of talk in the other room. Then the bartender returned, and, holding open the door, motioned that Don Miguel should enter. Still walking unsteadily, he did so.
"This is the gennelman I mentioned," said the bartender by way of introduction, and closed the door between them.
For a moment, swaying slightly, Don Miguel stood, his eyes taking in every detail of the room in which he found himself. It was a large room, with many chairs, but only one card-littered table, around which three players were seated. One was Terry Burke; Don Miguel could have recognized him anywhere, if only by his resemblance to Rosemary.
Another, an obvious gambler of the less efficient type, and as obvious a henchman of Tim Murphy's, was passed with a glance. The third was Tim Murphy himself.
Murphy had aged since last Don Miguel had seen him. Murphy had lain on much flesh, and it was not entirely a good quality of flesh. It was largely owing to a soft life after an active one. A soft life, Don Miguel decided, with a good deal of hard liquor.
He also had a cauliflower ear, acquired since their early days. He was powerful still, but his wind would be poor. He was more brutal than before, and his look more furtive and indirect. Frowningly, and evidently puzzled, he gazed at Don Miguel.
"Ain't I seen you somewhere before?" he asked.
"Likely," answered the person addressed. "If ye ever go to the circus, you did. Ringmaster."
"What circus? And yer name? I didn't ketch that."
"Shaughnessy," replied Don Miguel in answer to the latter question. The first one he ignored, but took from his pocket the roll of bills that had so excited the bartender's interest, and this act served every purpose.
With a wave of his hand. Murphy introduced the other two players, the unknown by the name of Mr. Shea; then counted out celluloid chips for Don Miguel. They cut for deal; it fell to Mr. Shea. The game was on.
It was, of course, the great American game—our national indoor sport—poker. In honor of the stranger's advent they started it with a jackpot. Terry, at the dealer's left, opened the pot. Don Miguel, with a pair of queens, stayed. The other two threw in their hands. Terry, nervously fingering his cards, refused to draw. Don Miguel discarded, held up three fingers, and began clumsily to try and light a cigar. Mr. Shea flipped the indicated number of cards from the pack to the table before Don Miguel.
Now Don Miguel did not appear to be watching the fingers of Mr. Shea as the latter dealt those cards. He—Don Miguel—seemed to be wholly occupied in biting off the end of his cigar, an operation that he had overlooked when trying to light it. But he was watching, nevertheless; and he was, moreover, eminently qualified to watch, as a man who was practically the "whole show"—who was perhaps the only man living whose accomplishments ranged from feats of gigantic strength, through jugglery, to sleight-of-hand—must be qualified to watch a performance of this sort. Don Miguel saw that those cards were dealt from the bottom of the deck. According to his somewhat severely high standard, the work was not at all well done.
Clearly, according to the common practise in such cases, Tim Murphy and the amiable Mr. Shea intended to allow Don Miguel, their prospective victim, to win this first hand—to win it from poor Terry. It would save time, as they looked at the matter, and would be all the same at last—all the money would come to them. In no way, therefore, was Don Miguel surprised to find, when he picked up his cards, that two of those cards were queens. There are not many hands that will beat four queens. He did not wish to win from Terry; yet suspicions must not be aroused. Therefore he flung the fifth card face downward upon the table, held up the remaining four, and gave a half-suppressed but wholly inebriated whoop of exultation as he gazed at them. Even Terry, with a ace-high flush, could not disregard such a warning. He let the pot go, saving much money thereby.
It was Don Miguel who dealt the next hands. This time Mr. Shea lost, and lost rather heavily, while Terry won. Terry won rather frequently after that; but always, or nearly always, when Don Miguel had dealt. He—Don Miguel—lost constantly. He did not lose very much, however.
Except for Terry, who did not care, his opponents were utterly disgusted with a player who showed so lamentable a lack of gameness, and were becoming moment by moment more disgusted still. The most tempting hands that could be dealt him failed to tempt Don Miguel to anything like spirited betting. After a single raise, or two of them at most, he would assume that air of owlish wisdom, throw down his cards, and sacrifice the pot. Who'd have thought, anyway, that so moderate a departure from strict ebriety could have such lamentable results?
Small wonder, then, that the saturnine Mr. Shea became more saturnine still, and that Tim Murphy grew more surly even than he had been before. Tim's increase of ill-temper had, however, an additional cause quite independent of Don Miguel's shortcomings. It is always exasperating when a game of cards is interrupted, and this one was interrupted constantly. Necessarily interrupted, for one cannot be the political boss in a district of that sort without being also a—more or less—benevolent despot, distributing favors and largesse, many of which had not the slightest relation to politics.
Candidates for such favors, or those who desired to be candidates, came with a frequency that increased as the afternoon wore itself away and early evening shadows began to close in. Some of these candidates were of such importance that Tim did not dare offend them, and his conversation with them, though short, was tempered. On those of less importance he vented more freely the ill-nature thus pent up within his bulky chest.
A little later still Don Miguel began to come in for a share of Tim's displeasure. At first it took the form of comments, more or less veiled, upon his—Don Miguel's—style of playing poker, or his refusal to imbibe his share of the liquor which Tim, from time to time, would order in. Then these comments became more thinly veiled and more offensively personal. Though inwardly Don Miguel was fuming, he had concealed his rising anger under an assumed mussitation. Now he resolved, however, to bear it no longer. Terry had won back all he had lost—and then some. And there was Rosemary to be considered. She would be frantically anxious by this time—about Terry, at least.
A new hand had been dealt by Mr. Shea as Don Miguel came to this decision. Hardly glancing at the cards, he threw them down and yawned noisily.
"I shink—" he began thickly.
Tim Murphy interrupted him.
"Ye think!" he said with a guffaw. "The blazes ye do! What with?"
"I shink," Don Miguel repeated imperturbably, "that I'll quit. And if this young gennelman, Misser Burke, will also quit, we'll jus' go out and get a lil' bite of dinner togesher."
"And I t'ink," snarled Tim Murphy, "that ye'll do nawthin' of the sort—see? Here you come buttin' into this game, and—well? What 'n 'ell do you want?"
As he spoke, Tim Murphy leaned across the table, his under jaw truculently pugnacious. His latter words, however, were not spoken to Don Miguel, but to a cripple, a man so young that he was hardly more than a boy—younger even than Terry Burke—who came blunderingly in, his twisted form more twisted even than usual from the weight of a basket which he lugged with both hands.
"Well," demanded Tim Murphy for the second time, "what 'n 'ell do you want?"
That first demand had daunted the little cripple. The second, however, had lent him a courage that was akin to desperation.
"I brought 'em—the whole four dozen," he said.
"Oh—you did!" snarled Tim. "Then you can just chase 'em out again—and chase yourself with 'em. And do it quick! Hear?"
"Aw, Tim!" remonstrated Terry Burke deprecatingly. "Aw, Tim! Don't!"
"Clear out!" barked Tim, unheeding. "Beat it! D' you get me?"
"But it's only two dollars—I gotta have that—and they're worth a quarter apiece anywheres, only I ain't got time to peddle 'em," doggedly persisted the cripple. "You know Katy—my kid sister. It's for medicine for her. They're all here, and they're all right—see? So, Tim, you gotta take em! Like you promised you would."
Then it was that Tim's rage fairly burst its bounds. With profane obscenity he expressed abysmal indifference to any promise that he might have made; and once more, with lurid threats, he ordered the cripple to depart.
From under half-shut eyelids that gave him a delusive appearance of somnolence, Don Miguel glanced around the table. He saw in Terry's face, that was so like Rosie's, a losing fight between loyalty to his political chief and disgust at that chief's conduct. He saw Mr. Shea leaning back in his chair, a cynical smile on his mean face as he listened with mild interest to the tirade. He saw the little cripple, pale, but standing his ground with pitiful bravery. Lastly his eyes rested on Tim Murphy, from whose purple face there poured forth a gushing stream of foulness.
Don Miguel wondered what the discussion was about. Stooping, he uncovered the cripple's basket, which had been set on the floor close at hand. No wonder that the basket was heavy; the wonder was that the frail, malformed little man could lift it at all. It was filled to the brim with ice-picks—massive ones, with long, stout blades and thick handles, stoutly bound with iron.
Don Miguel took one, balanced it in his hand, and held it up before him, his owlish solemnity unabated. Then he gazed once more at the empurpled visage of Tim Murphy. That visage, as Tim, half risen from his chair, leaned across the table, was but a very short distance from Don Miguel's own. Quite gently, yet with a catlike quickness, Don Miguel placed his disengaged hand against that face and pushed. Tim flew backward as though a mule had kicked him. The hind legs of his chair thumped on the floor, the front ones raised, the chair fell over backward, so that the august feet of the local magnate were for a moment all that could be seen of him as they twinkled helplessly in the air. With the same hand Don Miguel fished from his pocket that plethoric roll of bills, stripped off one, and tossed it to the cripple.
"Take that—and beat it," he said.
The cripple, obeying, vanished. Shoving back his chair, Mr. Shea rose and got behind it, as though for shelter. He was a rat of a man, Don Miguel decided, and, like a rat, would fight if cornered. But Terry, now—Terry was different.
Terry was confused and undecided. Tim Murphy—well, Mike O'Farrell knew him also. For the moment, startled and perhaps partially stunned, Tim was silent. But that wouldn't last. It didn't. His former vocal efforts were as nothing to that which almost instantly followed. Tim had been a prize-fighter once, and with a prize-fighter's agility he sprang to his feet, and with the same motion caught up the chair upon which he had been sitting and sent it whirling at Don Miguel's head.
Don Miguel ducked, and the chair missed him, to smash against the wall with a resounding crash. Tim's left fist followed the chair, also to miss its mark. With a gleam of polished metal, a pistol appeared in Tim's right hand, and a shot rang out, but the bullet drilled its way harmlessly into the paneled ceiling. For with a heave, which seemed too mighty by far, and too effortless to have been wrought by human hands, the table had risen from the floor. It knocked Tim's wrist upward, and with all the trained strength of Don Miguel behind it, it flung itself against Tim's chest, throwing him, before it came to the ground, against the paneled partition behind him.
Don Miguel stooped. The bartender came running in, and paused for a half second in order to take in what was happening. It was hours before he learned. Don Miguel straightened. In his right hand there was a single ice-pick; in his left as many as it could grasp. More quickly than the eye could follow, Don Miguel's hand flicked forward and back, once and then again.
It sent two of the ice-picks streaking through the air, their blades trailing behind them like the tails of small but efficient comets. The iron-bound handle of one struck the bartender between the eyes; that of the other, arriving immediately afterward, came into violent contact with the point of Mr. Shea's jaw. Both men dropped limply and lay quite still.
Hardly two seconds had passed, and it took Tim Murphy that time to recover from the second shock. Now his pistol flashed upward. This was a mistake. Again there were two of those marvelously quick movements of Don Miguel's hand, and again two of the ice-picks went streaking through the air, but this time the points flew foremost, one to pass through Tim's cauliflower ear, the other to pierce his hand, then to bury themselves, with successive little thuds, deep in the wooden partition.
More ice-picks followed. They formed a continuous stream of shimmering steel, and their thuds, as they landed solidly in that wooden partition, were almost as rapid and regular as those of an air-hammer. By every projecting fold of his clothing, no matter how slight, they pinned Tim Murphy to the wall of his own saloon.
"Sure," remarked Don Miguel, never pausing in his work, "'tis a good knife-thrower I am, but these ice-picks is things I ain't used to. So, maybe, Tim Murphy, they nip you a little here and there. But don't ye care," he added consolingly. 'Twill only be in the thin places, near the edges, and that don't count. Sure, 'tis harrdly worth mentioning at all!"
Tim Murphy thought differently.
"Help!" he bawled.
Mike!" screamed a voice.
It was Rosemary's. Before Don Miguel could speak the door flew open, and Rosemary herself rushed into the room. For a moment she stood while her eyes, wide with horror, took in every detail—the bartender and Mr. Shea, who, though only knocked senseless, lay apparently dead; Tim Murphy, his pistol on the floor by his feet, pinned like a modern and very unattractive St. Sebastian, with ice-picks instead of arrows, against the wall, and Mike and Terry, white and tense of face, but safe.
Then her weakness, and the nervous strain caused by hours of agonized waiting, asserted themselves. Once more her knees gave way under her. Once more Don Miguel caught and carried her, as he might have carried a baby. She had just time to encircle his neck with her arms before she fainted, on this occasion entirely and without reserve. Still dazed by the proceedings—as well he might be—Terry came forward. Don Miguel spoke crisply.
"She'd come to hunt for us—wore out by the waitin'," he explained. "You know me, Terry—'tis Mike O'Farrell I am. Go open the door av that taxi, quick!"
Terry did as he was told. Pausing long enough to make sure of the fact that the other room was empty, and to spring the lock on the outer door, thus securing it, Don Miguel bundled Rosemary and her brother into the waiting car. A word and a yellow-backed bill to the driver, and they moved swiftly away, to draw up before the door of Rosie's home.
"Gee!" said Terry, speaking for the first time since he left the saloon. "We'll never dare stop here! Not after what happened."
"'Tis not long that we'll be stoppin'," Don Miguel assured him. "Go up to the flat and fetch down that thrunk what ye'll find there—and jump to it, lad!"
Again Terry obeyed, and again the taxi moved away. "Where are ye goin'?" he asked.
"Hoboken," answered Don Miguel softly. "In Jersey, d'ye see, ye can get married quick and with little throuble. There's no toime to waste. The steamer leaves at noine o'clock."
"Steamer!" repeated Terry wonderingly. "What steamer?"
"I misremember her name," was the answer, "but, faith, it's no matther what she's called. For she'll take us to South Ameriky—you and Rosie and me. It's down the wan soide av that counthry that we're goin' and up the other, accordin' to the tour long since arranged. But whin the tour was laid out fer me," he added musingly, "I was to go alone. Now I'll have me wife—the wife what I carried away, with her good-will or without it, like men used for to win their wives in days long gone by. 'Tis said, sure, that in thim days women loiked to be won in that fashion; but now—"
Leaving the sentence unfinished, he sighed, smitten with misgivings. Then Rosie opened her eyes, and weakly, yet with unmistakable emphasis, spoke.
"Of course they liked it. And do yet. And always will like it, as well ye'd have known, Mike O'Farrell, if ye had sense."
Rosie closed her eyes.
Don Miguel chuckled sheepishly, his misgivings gone. Terry grinned sympathetically as the taxi, a triumphal car, laden with happiness, rolled on toward the ferry and summer seas that glistened far beyond.
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 1937, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 86 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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