24

JAKE'S SHOW

It was very hard to watch. He told me to take off my hat and hold it out, too. I couldn't, even though the look in his eyes promised me a good beating when he got me away from that town. He seemed to think that I would try to get away, so he said when there was nobody right in sight: “If you try to run, kid, I'll up and after you. When I get you, I'll give you one squeeze and then break you in two. Now, you hang right onto that idea like a bright boy, because it is worth remembering, and don't you make no mistake!”

I figured that he meant it. There was no doubt but that murder was what he was best fitted for by nature and by liking.

It was a good part of the country that we was in, more hills than mountains. There were ranches and cows grazing on those hills by the tens of thousands. There was mines stuck here and there, and into that town of Crossman the big freighting outfits kept coming and then working back to the mines. It wasn't a big town, and it was all built out of shacks, but the men and the women in it were prime. They held their heads right up in the air like they didn't owe money to anybody. They had the look of work around their faces and in the hang of their arms. You look at the shoulders, too, of a gent that does regular labor, and you will be able to see how they've been pulled and strained a little by the wear and the tear of it. One man out of every two, you wouldn't've minded going into camp with, which is about all that you could say of any of the men.

These fellows hated the sight of Jake, as you could see. Just the same they hauled out their money and left him something. Jake was pretty pleased with himself when he had a small scattering of change in his hat. He said: “Well, kid, I dunno that you and Lefty ever improved on that very special. Did you? This is a pretty good part of the country to work. Well, I'm gonna sit down here, and you tune up your voice and sing, I don't care what, and I'll accompany you!”

“Are you gonna sing, too?” I asked him, because he had a voice like a big toad's.

“I got a musical instrument,” he replied, “and here it is.”

He took out a mouth organ—a dirty-looking mouth organ, and picked out from it some threads and straws that was lodged there. After that, he sat down cross-legged and fetched that organ a whack across his mouth. Doggone me if it didn't make a regular scale as true and pretty as you please.

I gave him another look. It seemed like I must have been mistaken about him, but he just looked up at me, giving me a grin that sent the old shudder home in me. It was like standing by and listening to a monkey play!

“Lead off, kid,” he said.

There was nothing that I wanted to do less, but I had sworn to him, and I couldn't back out as late as this. I put my back against the wall, sort of closed my eyes, and hit into the first tune that come into my mind. That tune was the one about the Irish girl in the County of Mayo that was waiting for you, and the rest of that rot.

When I started out singing on that, all at once I got to remembering about poor Kate Perigord and Lefty—and what would have been passing through Kate's mind if she knew? Aye, and by this time most likely she did know, because they must have found Lefty's body and brought it back to Perigord. Well, there was one thing sure. The grave of Lefty never would lack flowers. She would see to that. And inside of her mind how would she feel? Well, as time went on, I knew that Lefty would keep getting greater and greater in the eyes of Kate just because she was one of those that always wanted to see the best that was in everybody. So she would see it in our Lefty.

With all of this busting inside of me, I kept on singing, I don't know how, but with the mouth organ coming in very easy and straight all of the time, it helped me along so that I wouldn't get off the track of the tune at all. Then I felt that a crowd was gathering. I opened my eyes and saw them for myself. There were about fifty folks gathered before I hit the chorus the second time, and that fifty was growing fast. Well, when you stand up there before a crowd like that, it acts sort of funny on you. I couldn't help warming up a little.

Now I would like nothing better than to have you all think that I was extremely true to old Lefty, and that I was grieving pretty bad for him. But how can I make you think that if I step out and tell you the truth—which was that, after I had been singing for a moment or two, I forgot all about Lefty; all that I was thinking about in the whole world was the faces of the men in front of me and wanting to tickle them with that song.

When I slammed through that chorus the second time, I busted out into a buck and wing dance. It was a nice, hard, smooth section of boardwalk that had been done just new, and it was as level and as fine as any stage that you would want to try your steps on. Which I started soft shoeing a part of that dance, and then, after I had danced through a few soft-shoe steps, with my arms swinging free in the gestures that old Lefty had taught me, I lighted in and I gave them a ripping double shuffle that rattled on that sidewalk like a drum being beat.

When I stopped and stood there, panting and laughing at them, they give me a cheer and called me a good kid. That was what I wanted, and that was what I did it for—not at all for the money that they began to rattle into the hat of that swine, big Jake.

You bet that he got his day's haul right there. He was so surprised and so tickled to see how money could be got in that way that he hardly knowed what to do. He gave me another tune, and I went through that. I danced the verse, and I came easy soft-shoeing through the chorus and singing it out. Those gents they just busted themselves laughing and hitting each other on the backs and admiring me very open and fine. They didn't look at what they threw in that hat. That wasn't their way at all; they just dived into their pockets, grabbed what they found there, and chucked it.

Well, I danced about six songs and sang them out. They wouldn't let me go, even when I got tired. That crowd got thicker and thicker, and finally I was so tired that I got old Smiler out and started him off on the tricks that he had done lots of times with me when Lefty was along with us. Smiler liked it, too, it was so much like old times. It would have done you good to see him. Oh, him and me had practiced more times than you could shake a stick at, hours at a time. We had a regular performance that we used to go through, which was something like this: First, old Smiler would come out, growling and seeming to be terrible mad, shaking his head and showing his teeth extreme ferocious. The only way that he would seem to be able to get along would be to stand up and walk on his hind legs, and, of course, I could keep out of his way very easy when he was doing that. Then he would change off and start walking along on his front legs, which is extra hard for a dog to do, but still he proceeded to not want nothing in the world so much as to sink those teeth of his into me.

When he couldn't catch me by walking on his front legs, then he would haul off and come at me throwing somersaults, which he done remarkable well. When he still couldn't locate me that way, he would start after me doing back somersaults. They were wonderful to watch him make, because, right up to the time that he landed, it always did look as though he was going to be hit right on his head. After that, he lit in after me, came a-whacking, dived into the air, and looked like he was going to rip my throat right open. Right at the last minute he would do a flip and so he would miss me entirely. After he had lit out after me and missed, he would come back again, until I was dodging a regular shower of dogs that seemed to be coming from all directions. He would be slipping through my arm on one side, diving over my shoulder, skidding between my legs, and always just missing me with those terrible teeth of his.

It was fine exercise for Smiler. Lefty always used to say it was what kept that dog so fit and ready for a fight; it kept him so very nimble that another dog, fighting him, was mostly biting the air until Smiler would use his chance and rip in with a nose or a throat hold.

Those gents in the town of Crossman thought that was extra fine. They shouted and yelled and hollered and whooped and stamped; some of them got very hilarious, sort of, and begun letting off guns in the air.

Finally old Smiler wound up by sailing through the air and landing right on my shoulder. I staggered around under him, because there was seventy pounds of that dog. It made a pretty good close to our show, and I would be ashamed to say how full that hat was of money.

Old Jake, when I give him the wink, dragged himself up and started to climb onto his crutches. Those gents stepped in and give him a hand under each shoulder and held his crutches for him.

“Who is the kid?” sings out one oldish chap with long mustaches.

“He is my son, gents,” said Jake.

It gives me a shiver just to think of being that.

“He is, your foot!” said the gent with the red mustaches. “Is a trout the son of a shark? He is not!”

“Shut up, Red!” said somebody else. “Ain't the show good enough for you?”

“I like half the show real well,” answered Red, “but I got ideas of my own about the other half!”

I was in hope that Jake would let them see some of the devil in his face, but he was too smart for that. He just hung his head and started off down the street.

The gents hollered to Red: “Why don't you pick on someone with two legs, Red?”