Colorado Jim. George Goodchild
Conlan spends his time. It’ll make a fine story. …”
Jim’s brain was working fast; but he was slow in the uptake in such circumstances as this. The woman had seemed so genuine. Why did she maintain silence? It was a novel experience in his life. All the ways of this strange city were foreign to him.
The man’s voice broke in:
“A fine story it will make in the press.”
“Eh——!”
“The morals of a millionaire.”
“Eh!” growled Jim again. 25
“Maybe you wouldn’t like this to appear in print? …”
And then Jim saw it all. It was like a story from a magazine. He had never believed those things could be true. But here it was in real life. A frame-up—a dirty piece of blackmail.
“Can’t we come to terms, Mr. Conlan. …”
The suave voice got no farther than that. He saw six-feet-odd of bone and muscle rear up like a piece of steel and descend on him. A great hard hand caught him by the neck and bounced him up and down the room.
“You swab! You tinhorn! I’ve manured a potato patch with better stuff, by Gawd! And she’s your wife, you dirty trash! She ain’t your wife—no, sir. I savvy what she is. Suffering rattlesnakes! I’m waitin’ to hear about it. When did you frame to put this over me? Talk up or I’ll yank you outer the window into the street.”
“Damn you—let me go!”
“I’ll ’damn you,’ you muck! Take that!”
A resounding slap sounded as a hand like leather met the man’s face. Edith screamed.
“Talk up!” 26
“We—arranged—it—this afternoon,” gasped the man.
Jim flung him to the floor and advanced on the pallid Edith. She retreated before him. He was about to clasp her when a voice rang out.
“Hands up!”
He swung round to find his late victim brandishing a revolver. An ugly leer crossed his face. He evidently meant business. Jim stared at the revolver.
“Put ’em up or I’ll drill you. I can plead the unwritten law. I’ve got you now, my buck-jumping desperado.”
Jim coolly blew his nose.
“Put ’em up!”
He put up his hands and dropped the handkerchief. He stooped to pick up the latter and, with a lightning movement, caught the edge of the mat and pulled with all his strength. The man, standing on the end of it, came to earth with a crash. Jim flew at him and made for the hand that held the gun. Over and over they went like cats. Then it was that Edith lent a hand—to her confederate. She ran to the dressing-table and took up a small penknife. Jim was leaning over 27 his victim, wresting the gun from his hand, when she reached him. The knife came down twice in his shoulder. The intense pain caused him to drop the gun, but he picked it up again, hurled his inert opponent across the room, and went to Edith. The knife dropped from her fingers as she saw the blood streaming down his white shirtfront.
“I don’t fight wimmen,” he growled. “There ain’t nothing I can do to you, ’cept this.”
He suddenly caught her and, holding both her wrists in one hand, with the other tore every shred of clothing from her. … Then without a word he strode out of the room.
“I’m through with this place,” he muttered. “Bright lights! Gosh, I’m looking for where they don’t shine so strong.”
Somewhere in England were the graves of his ancestors. He didn’t want to see the graves of his forefathers, even if he could find them, but the desire to give London the “once over” was now stronger than ever. The next day he booked a steamer berth and packed his bags.
28
CHAPTER III
SOCIAL ADVANCEMENT
Jim’s first impression of London was an ocean of flying mud, through which myriads of phantasmagorial creatures and things moved in sullen, unceasing procession; an all-enveloping wall of brown fog; and a roar like unto some monster in pain. When he stood on the Embankment and strove to get a glimpse of the river, he came to the conclusion that “the hub of the Universe” was not up to specification. The famous Strand amazed him by its narrowness and its shortness. The buildings were dirtier than any buildings he had ever seen before, and the people cold, self-contained, units who seemed visibly to shrink back into their shells at his every attempt to hold conversation.
For a whole week the fog and the drizzle continued as though no sun existed, or ever could 29 exist. He wandered aimlessly, like a lost sheep, wondering how long a man could swallow quarts of dirt with his oxygen without getting permanently transformed into a human sewer.
But he was getting a grip on things. His brain was gradually adapting itself to changed conditions. No longer did he gasp when a child in Stepney picked up orange-peel from the gutter and ate it. Here was the unending manifestation of Nature’s inexorable law, the survival of the fittest, more clearly and cruelly displayed than in New York. Wealth and Poverty were more definitely marked. If they merged at all, it was away in the suburbs, or in the Jewish quarter, whence issued, on Saturdays, thousands of dark-skinned lads and girls, westward bound, to spend one hectic evening in the pleasure-ground west of St. Paul’s.
The East End, strangely enough, appealed to him more than the West. He took expeditions down among the docks, and sat in squalid public-houses listening to the coarse conversation of their habitués. There was always something new to shock, or interest, the eyes. It was no strange thing to find a woman performing certain domestic 30 avocations before a pot of beer. Some of them brought potatoes and peas, peeling and shelling these in the bar in preference to the hovels which they inhabited. The “pub” was their club and general meeting-house.
Once he managed to get into conversation with one of these products of “the hub of the Universe.” Her point of view staggered him. Her meek acceptance of her lot sickened him. Why didn’t she fly—she and her man—away to green fields and fresh air, away from this plague-ridden, dismal city? The suggestion brought from her a peal of mirthless laughter. Later he arrived at the truth. These people suffered from the greatest disease of all—The Fear of Living. Their hearts were rotten. They lived and died, rooted to some few acres of mud and muck because they feared what lay beyond. Like children they feared the unknown. Daylight lay beyond the jungle, but they believed it to be the pit of doom—of empty stomachs and endless tribulation.
Nothing could be done for them until the system was smashed. Unsophisticated, uncultured as he was, he succeeded in grasping the 31 root of the problem—Education. They were living a lie. The very environment conspired to perpetuate that lie. When one among them stood up and averred that Life meant something more than this, that Man was not made to eke out his life in bitter misery, that the result of the toil of the worker was filched by some inexplicable process, he was immediately voted “balmy.” They were not ripe for fighting. There was as yet no clearly seen Cause that would rouse them from their torpor. But one day the flood would burst the dam of besotted ignorance, and the human cataract would descend with appalling force.
Colorado Jim, born out of Nature, succored by the sweet winds of heaven, was learning things. When at nights he stood at his window, at the top of the hotel, and gazed over the vastness of this squat monster, London, Colorado seemed very far away.
Hitherto he had been a