CHAPTER I
CLEM OF CURRYVILLE

       Clem Pointer walked to the rear of the fire department building, reached behind the lid of a tomato can nailed to the side of the shed, poked out the key and danced it proudly in his hand. The fire department was directly in the rear of the White Front Hardware Store, canned goods a specialty, with a full line of stationery and also a few choice sugar-cured hams for sale.

       Clem inserted the key, and the lock sprang open in his hand like something alive. He laid off his coat and looked around admiringly, then taking a piece of flannel he wiped a splotch off the hand-pump made by the rain where it had leaked through the roof. He hummed at his work, trailing off unexpectedly now and then into an aimless but happy whistle, tightening a perfectly secure bolt, or polishing with his palm the shining brass top of the pump. The sun, slipping down behind the White Front, cut in over his hair, just beginning to turn gray, threw into relief his short square face and filled with light the pleasant lines that ran into the corners of his eyes.

       A silhouette projected itself on the wall. "Why, hello, Mr. Kiggins!" Clem Pointer greeted the proprietor of the White Front. "How's the rheum'tism this evening?"

       There was always something the matter with Mr. Kiggins. He had lived in Curryville for twenty years and no one could remember when he wasn't sick or growing worse. Mr. Kiggins also had a great command of words and an ability for describing his symptoms that was amazing. You could not talk to him five minutes without believing that the poor man would never live through the night, but somehow he always managed to get down to the White Front on time and thriftily, year after year, enlarge his stock of canned goods and his full line of stationery.

       "I'm the last person in the world to talk about my complaints," he began, "but I come mighty near passing over Jordan last night. It was the rheum'tism coming back in that shoulder I wrenched eleven years ago this summer. It come creepin' on me steady-like, just as if it was weather rheumatics, then it got to stabbing me through the shoulder and side like as if you took a rough rat-tail file and jabbed it back and forth. Every time a stab come I would jump till the whole bed was shaking so I could hardly stick on it. Finally I had to get hold of the headboard or I believe to Jerusalem it would 'a' pitched me clean off on the floor. With one hand steadyin' the head of the bed I got up and begun walking up and down the room singin' When We Meet at the River to get my mind off my shoulder when zunk! Seven thousand rat-tail files began jabbing me and pulling the flesh out in little strings. I give just one yell. That was all that was needed. I ain't much of a yeller as a general rule but when I really got something to yell about I can do a pretty good job of it. I never had more spirit for yelling than I had that night and I put it all into one blast. My folks come tumblin' out as if there was something after them — Gerillda carryin' a lamp — but by that time I was cool and collected and says, 'Go back to bed — it's all over. I come pretty near goin' that time but my life has been spared and we'll all go to church to-morrow morning.'

       "That won't happen again, though, for I got something that is curin' me up good and fast. You know how near I have been to the river in the last twenty years, but I ain't afraid of it any more. It's Doctor Fordyce!"

       "That old fake down at the New Palace Hotel!"

       "Doctor Fordyce ain't a fake," returned Mr. Kiggins quickly, weaving nervous fingers through his ragged beard. "He's from Kansas City and's just puttin' up here because he likes the people. We ought to be mighty glad such a famous specialist would consent to come to this town. He showed me what the newspapers said and they was all his friends.

       "I went in just to see what he would say, as I like to ketch 'em up, and he give just one look at me and says before I'd set down: 'You're sufferin' from contusion of the pneumogastric nerve. You're a sick man.' No other doctor'd ever told me tha —"

       "The last pill pounder said it was arthritis deformans," broke in Clem, "and you paid him ten dollars for two bottles of pills and inside of a week you had a relapse."

       Mr. Kiggins knotted his beard over one finger nervously. "But he couldn't tell what was the matter with me just by lookin' at me the way Doctor Fordyce did. People are driving in in wagons for miles and miles to see him. His office is full of crutches of people that have been cured in other cities, and he says he wishes he didn't have to charge anything for the medicine and that he believes his mission in this world is to relieve pain and suffering. He says the demand for Doctor Fordyce's Herb Specific is world wide and growin' every day. I seen with my own eyes a letter from Germany ordering twelve dozen bottles."

       "Was it written in German?"

       "Yes, but he pointed out where it said '12 doz.' and showed me the postmark. He says he likes Curryville so well that he would like to build a fine house and live here, and maybe if he finds the right location he will build a factory for manufacturing Doctor Fordyce's Herb Specific that would give employment to hundreds of people. He says he would like the Bellows Bottom to build a factory on — if he can get enough land. Are you willing to sell your lots, Clem?"

       Clem scratched a rough spot on the brass nozzle with a thick thumb nail. "I been holdin' them lots for some little time for a raise, on account of their location, but nothing ever seems to come of it. Still, I don't like that man. He's got a shifty eye — and a shifty eye ain't good in horse or human — and I heard him make a remark about one of our girls the other day, as she was passing along the street, that I didn't like. My policy is, get acquainted; you can't tell how new sorghum's goin' to taste till it's settled."

       Mr. Kiggins turned to the door. "Well, Clem, I must be goin'. If you ever need any fixings for the fire house don't forget the White Front, big values and low prices."

       Clem was dreaming of castles far over the horizon of things, a million miles from Curryville; dreams that Mr. Kiggins, looking into Clem's plain face, would never have guessed and would never have understood. There was no one in all Curryville to whom he could tell his dreams, no one who wouldn't laugh or advise him to take Doctor Fordyce's Herb Specific. When you have no one you can share your dreams with the bitterness of the world bites to the heart.

       Another silhouette blackened the square of light on the floor: the shadow showed the figure of a boy; only the shadow could never show the turned-up nose, the thousand freckles and the hair that forked like a current at the ears, a wide tributary flowing in front, and pale clay-colored eddies swirling behind.

       "Why, hello, Rencie. Ain't she some wagon now? I've tightened up the pumps so I think they'll throw better. Takes an eternal lot of watching to keep 'em up to the scratch."

       "You know what Doctor Fordyce wanted me to do?" Rencie bluntly broke in with a fine disregard for the subject. "Wanted me to play hypnotized and let him do fancy stunts. When he begun telling me I had remarkable eyes and a fine mind I smelled a rat. It makes me mad for anybody to put their hand on my shoulder and call me 'sonny.' They always got something to sell. He don't know I'm going to be a detective."

       Clem nodded slowly and thoughtfully, but whether it was in confirmation of Rencie's ideas about Doctor Fordyce or approval over the last sentence it was hard to tell. "So you're going to be a detective," said Clem at last.

       "Yes, I've decided sure. I've got a lot of books I'm practising up now and studying during spare hours. Every time I see a detective's name in the paper I cut it out and save it, and I have the pictures of lots of crooks. My favorite's Kansas Jimmy. I read in a book about how a detective traced a man to a house and found where he had torn a letter all to pieces and throwed it in the fireplace, so he pieced it together and caught the robber slick as a whistle. Pa threw one away the other day. When I got it pieced together — had to wet the kitchen table to make the pieces stick — it was about some company wanting to give a handsome clock with a dollar's worth of soap. Good practise, though; you can never tell when a fellow's going to need it."

       "That's right," agreed Clem. "Our best detectives begun early. I guess they get good pay, too."

       "As much as the president, I guess. Do you know how detectives shoot, Mr. Pointer?"

       Clem plowed a stubby finger into his straw hair in reflection.

       "Can't say's I do, Rencie."

       "Coming down!"

       Clem's eyes opened in a wonderment that Rencie thoroughly enjoyed, and to a request for elucidation Rencie took plenty of time, for that was a secret of the craft that very few knew.

       "Shoot that knot-hole!"

       Clem brought down his forefinger at the gap in the wall and fired a couple of shots with his crooked thumb.

       "There, you brought it down from above the firing-line. Quick as you got it on a direct line you fired. If you bring it up from underneath you don't get such a good bead on it. All the best detectives shoot that way. I read it in a revolver advertisement. Do you know how to take a pistol away from a robber when he holds you up? Suppose he draws a gun on you like that — what'd you do then?"

       Clem's face drew into wrinkled thought for a moment, while Rencie stood keyed to a high pitch of excitement.

       "Why, I dunno; I guess I'd grab his hand," Clem hesitated. "Or maybe I'd trip him."

       "No," said Rencie with a touch of scorn and at the same time with the assurance of one thoroughly versed in his subject. "Here, you be the robber. Take this gun," picking up the sawed end of a broom handle that chocked the wheel of the fire cart, "and as I come in the door flash it on me."

       Rencie stepped out the door and Clem, weapon in hand, waited inside for the luckless passer-by. In a moment Rencie's freckled and flushed face loomed in the doorway.

       "Halt! hands up!" called Clem, carefully bringing down the revolver from above the firing-line.

       Rencie advanced a quick step, threw up his hand and knocked Clem's right arm high. The revolver rattled to the floor. Catching the extended arm, Rencie turned Clem on a pivot and with a half-hitch of his arm over his own shoulder had the villain crying for mercy.

       "Oh, oh!" cried the highwayman, "I give up. It's breaking my arm. This robber business hasn't any attractions for me."

       Rencie released him and Clem leaned against the wheel of the fire cart in more than pretended weakness. "A detective's got to know everything that way," said the young sleuth proudly. "I could break your arm like a pipestem. Now supposing you were a robber and came slipping up behind me."

       "No, sir, I'm going to stick to the fireman business. Feels like you'd pulled a string out of the back part of my arm that I never knowed was there before."

       Rencie came over, sat down on the tool-box and fell into deep thought, the heel of his hand buried in his cheek. "I'm goin' to specialize in bank robbers," said Rencie, slowly and thoughtfully. "They're the hardest to catch, and more money in it, too."

       Clem nodded in sympathy. "My ambition ain't along that line," said Clem at last, baring more of his heart than he would to any other person in all Curryville, for often a boy can understand when an older person would only laugh. He spoke hesitatingly, not as if choosing the right word, but as if such a thing could not be hurried. "I have always wanted to do something big, be somebody. Keep a train from being wrecked; save somebody from drowning — something so they'd say I was a hero. All my life I've wanted to but I've had to drag along in just the same old rut. No chance here and I know there ain't, but I get a lot of satisfaction day-dreaming about it. I guess that's the reason I keep up this fire department. If I'd tell anybody else in Curryville but you, they'd laugh. You can't ever be anything when people have knowed you ever since you had stone bruises. . . But sometime, somehow, I'm going to be a hero. Go ahead, Rencie, and be a detective and if I can ever help you in any way I'll sure do it."

       Rencie nodded slowly and understandingly. Strange companions were these two; trusting each other with their secrets and, what is even more of a test of the communion of two souls, sharing their dreams.

       Rencie lifted his head and on his cheek was the imprint of his hand. He rose slowly to his feet, and nodding a good night to Clem, was gone.

       Clem had locked the door and was turning away when he hesitated and drew back. Strolling by was a girl with the sweetest of faces, but at the same time a shadow of sadness somewhere on her features; it was difficult to tell whether it grew in her eyes, hung in the corners of her mouth or was in her weighted step. She bowed and up went Clem's hand and off came his hat, clumsily, but with great respect. He had met her several times, but she had seemed so far above him that he had been rather abashed. She had been in Curryville only a few months and had kept to herself much of the time; so much, indeed, that a mystery had grown up around her. From whence she had come no one knew; and less why.

       "This is the first time I have seen our fire house," said Miss Mary Mendenhall sweetly.

       "Would you like to go through it?"

       She did not smile at the idea of "going through it," though there was only one room and everything could be seen from the door.

       "Yes."

       After Clem had explained all the mysteries of the place, talking with the eager interest of a boy, they started down the street toward the house she had rented and which she was keeping up with the aid of a servant. To have a servant in Curryville was enough to make anybody talked about, let alone not knowing anything about the person's past history. Before he knew it Clem was talking about himself, telling her intimate things, as we often do to comparative strangers; about his hope of being a hero some day, somehow. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be confiding in her. Suddenly he caught himself:

       "This ain't interesting to you. I never told anybody else half that much. Tell me about yourself."

       Miss Mary Mendenhall shook her head. "There isn't anything to tell. I am alone — and trying to be happy. You know what hard work it is trying to be happy by yourself."

       "Why ain't you happy, Miss Mary?" asked Clem, coming a trifle nearer her edge of the walk.

       She drew away the slightest little bit. "I don't know," she sighed. "Yes, I do know," she said, correcting herself after her kind. "I wish I could tell you — I wonder if I can tell you." She looked at him eagerly, studying his honest blue eyes with the fine wrinkles radiating from the corners. The muscles in her lips took life and she was on the point of speaking when the figure of a man loomed ahead of them. At sight of him her lips drew into two hard lines and she turned her head aside without speaking.

       The man was tall, with the calm conquering air of a traveling salesman. Removing his hat, he bowed sweepingly and beamed elaborately. Had he not had such perfect control of himself the beam would have been a smirk. The man was Doctor Fordyce.

       "It's a pleasure to meet two people who look so happy on such a hot evening." Innocently said, it contained something that made the girl give him a quick look and bring down her lips tight against her teeth.

       "I have been hoping I might meet you again, Miss Mendenhall," continued Doctor Fordyce.

       The girl's lips moved as if to say something, but the words did not formulate themselves.

       "If you will pardon me I'll hasten on," said Miss Mendenhall, and started down the walk. Doctor Fordyce moved to join her, but Clem stepped in in advance and walked with her to her door. When he came back he found Doctor Fordyce waiting for him. The doctor was evidently trying to ingratiate himself into Clem's favor.

       "Good evening again, Mr. Pointer. Do you know, Mr. Pointer, I like your town so well that I may settle down here and become a taxpaying citizen like yourself? The more I see of Curryville the more I am impressed with it — and its citizens."

       Tall, sleek and watchful, there was about him a forced air of gaiety. He waited a moment to see what effect his words had on his hearer. He wore a frock coat and in its tail he carried a silk handkerchief. That alone prejudiced Clem against him; no possible good could come from a man who wore a coat to his knees and carried his handkerchief in its tail. When he talked he crossed his arms over his chest and tilted back and forth on his heels, swinging so far from the perpendicular that one trembled for his safety and had an almost irresistible impulse to catch him by the shoulders and straighten him up again.

       "Yes, it's a right smart town," agreed Clem with true mid-western civic pride. The quickest way to the heart of a man west of the Mississippi River is to say a good word for his town. The people may quarrel among themselves, but when a stranger comes within their gates they are shoulder to shoulder, swearing their own city is the rose-bed of the national flower garden. Doctor Fordyce was civic wise.

       "By the way, Mr. Pointer, would you like to have a monkey? I have one I've been experimenting with in my research work and you may have it. It's a cute little thing. Come on in and see it." By this time they had reached the New Palace Hotel, where the doctor lived.

       When he swung open the door to his room a little marmoset ran behind the curtains, bearing its tail aloft in an outraged half-circle. When Doctor Fordyce reached for it the queer little thing brushed its face quickly as if clearing its eyes, ran up the curtain and swung on the pole. No sooner had Doctor Fordyce mounted a chair than it leaped to his shoulder and ran down his back; he turned and finally captured it in a corner.

       In a few minutes it was quite content in Clem's arms. Clem took off his gold spectacles and laid them aside so that the marmoset would not seize them. Clem did not need glasses, but his sister, Hulda, with whom he lived, thought that he ought to wear them, so he meekly gave in.

       As Clem stroked the monkey's side and pulled its fingers, his sunburned face lighted with a fine smile. Honesty and an almost childish simplicity showed in every line of it. "Ain't you a cute thing?" he crooned, giving it a poke. "Land o' jumpin', but you got tail to burn. Say, what makes you scratch so — is it fleas or just pastime?"

       Doctor Fordyce half sat in the window studying Clem. His eyes winked fast and he cleared his throat — he was preparing a question. "Oh, by the way, Mr. Pointer, have you known Miss Mendenhall long?"

       "She has not lived here long," returned Clem simply. "Why?"

       "I just wondered — that was all." He lowered his voice. "Has she ever said anything about herself — where she came from and those things — you understand?" His face was expressionless, even though smiling. Doctor Fordyce chose his words carefully. He was too skilled in psychology to say too much.

       "No," answered Clem. "Not a word."

       With the marmoset buttoned under his coat, Clem went hurrying down the street, cut a corner and came into his own back yard. The kitchen porch was as methodically and carefully arranged as an office: the washing-machine with its wringer, the screws carefully loosened so that the rubber cylinders would not meet and flatten during the six idle days, was backed carefully into the corner; a broom stood on its handle that the straws might not flatten and on a nail in the wall, carefully protected from the weather-boarding by pale oilcloth so that the drippings would not show, hung a shining dishpan. Not a spot or a speck could give evidence against the mistress of this house.

       Clem tugged at the white button on the screen door. Here and there a damp spot still splotched the freshly mopped kitchen floor and the odor of stove blacking still hung heavy on the air.

       "Hulda, Hulda," called Clem, "see what I've got!"

       "Be careful of your feet," came a muffled voice from the pantry. "Don't track everything up. I might know you'd be gettin' back just as I got all the work finished."

       Clem paused in the doorway; on her knees, her outer skirt folded up and caught around her hips, a cake of scouring soap in one hand and a brush in the other, Hulda was making a mirror of the pantry floor.

       With Hulda cleanliness was more than next to godliness, for who could hope to be godly without first being cleanly? A spot on the table-cloth made her lose her appetite and a speck on her Sunday alpaca made her positively ill. Her proud boast was that she was always prepared for company; it made no difference how unexpectedly they came she never had to scurry over the house shutting doors, tossing shoes into corners and pushing things under the bed.

       "I got a surprise for you, Hulda," keeping his coat pulled over the marmoset.

       "No, you ain't — you're just as late as ever. There ain't a woman in Curryville that keeps her house in half as good order as I do — you can't put your fingers on top of a single door in this house and find dust — and you ain't here a minute more than you have to be to enjoy it. Just this day Mrs. Kiggins said to me, 'Miss Pointer, you are the best housekeeper I ever see in my life,' and what do I get for it? Nothing. Three meals a day and having to do the dishes myself. Shut that screen before the house's full of flies. Stand on the edge of that zinc till the floor dries. Now, what you got?"

       "A — a monkey, Hulda," said Clem meekly.

       "A monkey!" exclaimed Hulda, coming to her feet with an audible snap in her knees, and bracing a hand on each hip. "A monkey!"

       "Yes, Hulda. I thought it would be company for you while I had to be down-town."

       "Company! A monkey company to me! It takes two monkeys to be company and, Clem Pointer, I ain't a monkey. I hate 'em. I hate the sight of 'em."

       Clem mounted it on his arm; the little thing wiped its face and turned its head to one side as if cleverly calculating, if it made a dash, how far its freedom might extend. Then suddenly it reached behind its ear and scratched.

       "Take it out, take the thing out," wailed Hulda. "They'll drop on the floor."

       Clem backed away.

       "Don't get into that fly-paper, and be careful of that lamp chimney. Don't drop any of — of them."

       "That ain't what you think it is," pleaded Clem. "That's just a habit. I looked it over carefully and it ain't got anything. It would be so amusing to have around on rainy days."

       Hulda's arm shot out into a commanding line, the finger straight at the door.

       Clem edged through it slowly. Hulda put the back of her hand up to her mouth in hesitation, started to raise her voice, then checked herself.

       Slowly an ellipsis of Clem's face cut into the rectangle of the door, growing until it was an eclipse, his nose pressed against the screen.

       "Well, put it in the wood-shed then," said Hulda more kindly, and turned back to her brush and soap.

       "Much talk about the camp-meeting to-day, Clem?" asked Hulda as her brother came back, her voice softer.

       "Yes, people are getting interested. It'll be a big success this year. Can I do anything to help, Hulda?"

       "Yes, rub off the checker-board."

       Up went Clem's hand to his nose.

       "There, that's better! You might help set the table if you want to right bad."

       Clem turned to his duties with more willingness than skill and soon the red cover was spread, the dishes glistening on it.

       "I guess we'd better fall to," Hulda said, bringing out a plate of potato cakes, crisp and brown. They ate in silence until Hulda reached down at her side where a pitcher of milk was cooling in a pail of water, then resting the pitcher on the edge of the bucket until the last drip had splashed, she poured Clem a second glass, and without lifting her eyes asked:

       "What are you going to call it?"

       The way she held on to the last word left no room for doubt as to what was meant.

       "Garibaldi."

       "Why?"

       Clem bent over his potato cake for a minute, then answered more as if thinking aloud than replying to a question:

       "He was a great man — and — and a hero."

       Clem finished and pushed back in his chair. Hulda interpreted the action.

       "Now you just stay home to-night and be company for me. I guess they can play checkers down to the Owl one night without you. I can't understand why you want to leave a spick and span home and hang around an old filthy drug store. Man nature is beyond me!"

       Clem turned back and silently helped clear off the dishes. He drew down the window shades, lighted the lamp and opened his paper. After she had dried the dishes Hulda drew her chair to the other side of the round, white marble-topped table, with a yellow crack running through it, and took up her Bible. She turned through it until she came to a book-mark that at first looked like a blur of red and blue yarn but, held right side up, spelled in fancy letters, "Love thy Neighbor," and began puzzling over where she had left off. With one elbow on the table she read the Holy Word, but after a time the Bible began sinking lower and lower, stopping suddenly and coming abruptly back into place, but each time falling a little below its former mark. Finally it dropped into her lap, struggled once or twice to rise and finally lay there peacefully, her broad thumb in the fold. Across the table, Clem's head turned limply sidewise, the lines in his neck drawn tight, his lips parting to a low rhythmic intake. The paper, slipping farther and farther down his lap, at last worked over his knees and fluttered to the floor.

       Suddenly the sharp insistent ringing of a bell broke over them.

       Clem leaped to his feet. "It's a fire," he exclaimed.

       A runner went clattering by on the sidewalk.

       Clem hurried after his hat; Hulda opened the front door and stood in it with the lamp held high, lighting his way. "Don't catch cold, Clem," she warned as he clicked the front gate, "and don't do any heavy liftin'."

       After his footsteps had died away she came back and set the lamp over the yellow crack. Then she got out a pair of her brother's socks. "Like as not he'll come back wet and'll want to change," she said, turning up the lamp and flattening the end of the thread between her teeth.

(Continued next week.)