Where Your Treasure Is. Holman Day
Just think of it! A secret between Celene Kingsley and myself!
I gulped and shook my head.
“Won’t you tell the boys—you’ll know just how to pass the word—that folks are talking of having a detective to watch the village nights?” She probably saw that I was incapable of uttering a sound and she went on, hurrying her words. “Mr. Sidney, of course you understand that I am not picking you out as the ringleader. That’s not why I am asking you to pass the word. But I know you are popular among the boys. They all speak so well of you! And I was so sorry when I heard that your dear mother had passed on. I wanted to write a bit of a note, but they are very strict at the boarding-school—we are not allowed to write to young gentlemen.”
Think of two shotes, squalling their heads off, furnishing accompaniment to that! But I’ll say this of the shotes, they had spirit enough to use their voices—I was dumb.
“It would be terrible to have anybody arrested here in Levant for boyish pranks—it’s all thoughtlessness, I’m sure. You and I ought to be able to straighten everything out.”
I stood up.
“Enough said!” I shouted.
She flinched. Then I realized just how I must have sounded, for she said, “I didn’t mean to make you angry!”
I couldn’t blame her for mistaking my looks; I was so mad at myself that I wanted to lash my back with my own whip.
“No, no, no! It isn’t the way you seem to think it is! I want to say that after this—after what you have said to me—if there’s any more cutting-up in this village I’ll-strip the pelt off the chap who does the job.” I beat my hand on my breast. “It’s the proudest day of my life when I can take orders from you.”
“But I haven’t given orders, Mr. Sidney.”
“You have. They’re orders to me. The littlest thing you can wish for is orders to me. If you said for me to cut my hand off I’d do it. Oh, you don’t know! I have—I don’t know how to say it—but for years—oh, I’m crazy—” And I was. It was lunacy provoked by the passion of love trying to outvoice those devilish shotes.
By the funny look she gave me she was taking me at my word. She hurried to step into her little chaise.
“All I mean is this,” I quavered. “I’ll make ’em quit. You look to me. I’ll be responsible. Don’t you worry.”
“I’m sure everything will be all right after this,” she told me. “I’ll depend on you, and I thank you.”
She went on her way, and the burden I had assumed seemed lighter than feathers and more precious than golden ingots.
She had given me her confidence—she had asked me for a service!
She had thought of me and my trouble when she was away at school!
A few minutes before I had not dreamed that she was conscious that such a person as Ross Sidney walked the earth.
Now, at all events, my poor self was in a little corner of her thoughts. She was looking to me for help in something which she had made her own concern.
I rode down Purgatory Hill, hugging my joy and cursing those shotes.
III—ON ACCOUNT OF A GIRL
I TRUST you have noted, by this time, that my yarn is not a mere chronicle of disconnected incidents. Linked circumstances seemed to be tying me up. One happening had pushed me on to another and I had allowed myself to be pushed. It might be urged, of course, that I had no business in inciting a mob to play hob with Mr. Bird—but I had my own interests to consider, and I had been listening to my uncle’s teachings on the subject of looking out for number one.
“You know what happened to your father when he went to running his legs off on somebody else’s business,” he told me. “If it hadn’t been for me helping him in his other scrapes, your mother would have been playing hungryman’s ratty-too on the bottom of the flour-barrel oftener than she did. I hope you’ve got an ambition to be somebody and to have something.”
I did have, but you may be sure I did not tell my uncle that my principal hankering to get money was so that I might lay it at the feet of Zebulon Kingsley’s daughter.
Now, by the expressed wish of that daughter, I started out to control happenings and to set myself in new ways.
I passed the word to the Skokums, keeping my promise to Celene.
I was obliged to be indefinite, for I was guarding that little secret between her and myself as my most precious treasure.
As I remember it, I put it to the gang this way: “We ought to behave ourselves and protect the good name of the town.” They laughed at me and asked me if I had joined Judge Kingsley’s Sunday-school class.
I knew they didn’t suspect the truth, nevertheless that dig nearly put me out of countenance on account of the secret I was cherishing. I blushed and stammered and I lost my grip then and there as a leader—and it was the same old story—it was on account of a girl. A girl does rattle the gear of man-business!
One of the fellows remarked that I was getting almighty pious after I had used them to clean up my own dirty job. He said the most of them had matters of their own which needed attention, and wanted to know if I proposed to sneak out on them after all the help they had given me.
I told them that I had thought the thing over carefully and had decided that what we had done to Mr. Bird was not right or lawful and we’d better make no more mistakes.
“Then perhaps you want us to correct that mistake and make up a bee and carry the furniture back to the old cuss,” suggested one of the Sortwell boys.
When I failed to welcome that notion they turned on me in good earnest, and in my own heart I had to admit, looking on the surface of the thing, that they had good reason for thinking that I was both selfish and ungrateful.
In the Sixth Reader, at school, I had found the story of Frankenstein’s monster. I saw that in organizing the Skokums I had built a lively little monster of my own.
“I have a special and a private reason for asking you to quit and be good, boys,” I told them.
“A member who keeps his private and special reasons to himself and doesn’t trust the rest of us isn’t much of a help in time of trouble,” said Ben Pratt. “I have never taken a whole lot of stock in you, Ross Sidney, and now I take less than ever before.”
From remarks which were dropped I gathered that the rest of them held similar sentiments.
“They’re going to have a detective in here,” I told them.
“Who said so?”
But that was Celene Kingsley’s secret.
I had hoped that the threat might scare them. It had just the opposite effect; the boys of Levant had never seen a detective, but they had read every five-cent thriller on the subject. To be the object of a real detective’s attention seemed like glorious adventure—and they were sure that they were, when on their own prowling-grounds, match for any sleuth who ever dodged behind trees.
But I had stood up before her and had beaten fist upon my breast and had assured her that she could trust all to me. What sort of a knight was I to wear lady’s favor and then fail to do and dare in her behalf?
“I had hoped that you knew me better and that I stood higher with you fellows,” I said. “I’ll admit that you did a big job for me, and I am grateful. But you all had your fun out of it, for you have said