Local Color. Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury

willing to take a woman into your home that you picked up for streetwalking?”

      “I’ll take the chance. You see, Your Honour, I seen somethin’ else – somethin’ I ain’t mentioned – somethin’ I don’t care to mention if you don’t mind.”

      “Suit yourself,” said the other. “I suppose you’ll be looking up the newspaper men before you go. This will make what they call a great heart-interest story.”

      “I don’t figure on tellin’ the reporters neither,” mumbled Schwartzmann, as though ashamed of his own forbearance.

      The magistrate found the detective’s right hand and started to shake it. Then he dropped it. You might have thought from the haste with which he dropped it that he also was ashamed.

      “I’ll see you don’t get into any trouble with the inspector,” he said. Then he added: “You know of course that this brother was a French soldier?”

      “Sure I know it – you told me so.”

      “You’re German, aren’t you?” asked Voris. “German descent, I mean?”

      “I don’t figure as that’s got anythin’ to do with the case,” said the plain-clothes man, bristling.

      “I don’t either, Schwartzmann,” said the magistrate. “Now you go ahead and get that woman out of this hole.”

      Schwartzmann went. She was where he had left her; she was huddled up, shrinking in, against the bars, and as he unlatched the iron door and swung it in and beckoned to her to come out from behind it, he saw, as she came, that her eyes looked at him with a dumb, questioning misery and that her left hand was still gripped in a hard knot against her breast. He knew what that hand held. It held a little, cheap, carved white crucifix.

      I see by the papers that those popularly reputed to be anointed of God, who are principally in charge of this war, are graciously pleased to ordain that the same shall go on for quite some time yet.

      CHAPTER III

      THE SMART ALECK

      Cap’n Buck Fluter, holding his watch in the approved conductor’s grip, glanced back and forth the short length of the four-five accommodation and raised his free hand in warning:

      “All aboard!”

      From almost above his head it came:

      “If you can’t get a board get a scantlin’!”

      Clustered at the White or shady end of the station, the sovereign Caucasians of Swango rocked up against one another in the unbridled excess of their merriment. Farther away, at the Coloured or sunny end of the platform, the assembled representatives of the African population guffawed loudly, though respectfully. To almost any one having the gift of spontaneous repartee it might have occurred to suggest the advisability of getting a plank provided you could not get a board. It took Gash Tuttle to think up scantling.

      The humourist folded his elbows on the ledge of the window and leaned his head and shoulders out of the car, considering his people whimsically, yet benignantly. He wore attire suitable for travelling – a dented-in grey felt hat, adhering perilously to the rearmost slope of his scalp; a mail-order suit of light tan, with slashed seams and rows of buttons extending up the sleeves almost to the elbows; a hard-surfaced tie of pale blue satin; a lavender shirt, agreeably relieved by pink longitudinal stripings.

      Except his eyes, which rather protruded, and his front teeth, which undoubtedly projected, all his features were in a state of active retreat – only, his nose retreated one way and his chin the other. The assurance of a popular idol who knows no rival was in his pose and in his poise. Alexander the Great had that look – if we may credit the likenesses of him still extant – and Napoleon Bonaparte had it, and David Garrick, to quote a few conspicuous examples.

      Alone, of all those within hearing, Cap’n Buck Fluter did not laugh. Indeed, he did not even grin.

      “All right, black boy,” he said. “Let’s go from here!”

      The porter snatched up the wooden box that rested on the earth, flung it on the car platform and projected his person nimbly after it. Cap’n Buck swung himself up the step with one hand on the rail. The engine spat out a mouthful of hot steam and the wheels began to turn.

      “Good-by, my honeys, ’cause I’m gone!” called out Mr. Tuttle, and he waved a fawn-coloured arm in adieu to his courtiers, black and white. “I’m a-goin’ many and a-many a mile from you. Don’t take in no bad money while your popper’s away.”

      The station agent, in black calico sleeve-protectors and celluloid eyeshade, stretched the upper half of his body out the cubby-hole that served him for an office.

      “Oh, you Gash!” he called. “Give my love to all the ladies.”

      The two groups on the platform waited, all expectant for the retort. Instantly it sped back to them, above the clacking voice of the train:

      “That’s all you ever would give ’em, ain’t it?”

      Mr. Gip Dismukes, who kept the livery stable, slapped Mr. Gene Brothers, who drove the bus, a resounding slap on the back.

      “Ain’t he jest ez quick ez a flash?” he demanded of the company generally.

      The station agent withdrew himself inside his sanctum, his sides heaving to his mirthful emotions. He had drawn a fire acknowledged to be deadly at any range, but he was satisfied. The laugh was worth the wound.

      Through the favoured section traversed by the common carrier to whose care genius incarnate had just committed his precious person there are two kinds of towns – bus towns and non-bus towns. A bus town lies at an appreciable distance from the railroad, usually with a hill intervening, and a bus, which is painted yellow, plies between town and station. But a non-bus town is a town that has for its civic equator the tracks themselves. The station forms one angle of the public square; and, within plain sight and easy walking reach, the post office and at least two general stores stand; and handily near by is a one-story bank built of a stucco composition purporting to represent granite, thus signifying solidity and impregnability; and a two-story hotel, white, with green blinds, and porches running all the way across the front; also hitch rails; a livery stable; and a Masonic Hall.

      Swango belonged to the former category. It was over the hill, a hot and dusty eighth of a mile away. So, having watched the departing four-five accommodation until it diminished to a smudgy dot where the V of the rails melted together and finally vanished, the assembled Swangoans settled back in postures of ease to wait for the up train due at three-eight, but reported two hours and thirty minutes late. There would still be ample time after it came and went to get home for supper.

      The contemptuous travelling man who once said that only three things ever happened in Swango – morning, afternoon and night – perpetrated a libel, for he wilfully omitted mention of three other daily events: the cannon-ball, tearing through without stopping in the early forenoon; the three-eight up; and the four-five down.

      So they sat and waited; but a spirit of depression, almost of sadness, affected one and all. It was as though a beaming light had gone out of their lives. Ginger Marable, porter and runner of the Mansard House, voiced the common sentiment of both races as he lolled on a baggage truck in the sunshine, with his cap of authority, crowned by a lettered tin diadem, shoved far back upon his woolly skull.

      “Dat Mistah Gashney Tuttle he sho is a quick ketcher,” stated Ginger with a soft chuckle. “W’ite an’ black – we suttinly will miss Mistah Tuttle twell he gits back home ag’in.”

      Borne away from his loyal subjects to the pulsing accompaniment of the iron horse’s snorted breath, the subject of this commentary extended himself on his red plush seat and considered his fellow travellers with a view to honing his agile fancy on the whetstones of their duller mentalities. On the whole, they promised but poor sport. Immediately in front of him sat a bride and groom, readily recognisable at a glance for what they were – the bride in cream-coloured cashmere, with many ribbons; the groom in stiff black diagonals, with braided seams, and a white lawn tie.