The Rose in the Ring

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[Illustration: His audience was fairly hanging on his words]

THE ROSE IN THE RING

By GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON

WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR
BY A. I. KELLER

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

I THE FUGITIVE

II IN THE DRESSING TENT

III DAVID ENTERS THE SAWDUST RING

IV A STRANGER APPEARS ON THE SCENE

V SOMETHING ABOUT THE BRADDOCKS

VI DAVID JENISON'S STORY

VII THE BROTHERS CRONK

VIII AN INVITATION TO SUPPER

IX A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

X LOVE WINGS A TIMID DART

XI ARTFUL DICK GOES VISITING

XII IN WHICH MANY THINGS HAPPEN

XIII THE SALE

BOOK TWO

I THE DAUGHTER OF COLONEL GRAND

II THE STRANGER AT THE HALL

III THE MAN WHO SERVED HIS TIME

IV THE DELIVERY OF A TELEGRAM

V THE LOVE THAT WAS STAUNCH

VI DOOR-STEPS

VII TOM BRADDOCK'S PROMISE

VIII COLONEL GRAND AND THE CLONKS

IX IN THE LITTLE TRIANGULAR "SQUARE"

X THE BLACK HEADLINES

ILLUSTRATIONS

His audience was fairly hanging on his words.. _Frontispiece_

"It is my money!" cried David

Her lips parted in amazement, tremulously struggling into a smile of
wonder and unbelief.

"This is the one, great, solitary hour in your life."

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I

THE FUGITIVE

The gaunt man led the way. At his heels, doggedly, came the two short
ones, fagged, yet uncomplaining; all of them drenched to the skin by
the chill rain that swirled through the Gap, down into the night-
ridden valley below. Sky was never so black. Days of incessant storm
had left it impenetrably overcast.

These men trudged--or stumbled--along the slippery road which skirted
the mountain's base. Soggy, unseen farm lands and gardens to their
left, Stygian forests above and to their right. Ahead, the far-distant
will-o-the-wisp flicker of many lights, blinking in the foggy shroud.
Three or four miles lay between the sullen travelers and the town that
cradled itself in the lower end of the valley.

Night had stolen early upon the dour spring day. The tall man who led
carried a rickety, ill-smelling lantern that sent its feeble rays no
farther ahead than a dozen paces; it served best to reveal the face of
the huge silver watch which frequently was drawn from its owner's coat
pocket.

Eight o'clock,--no more,--and yet it seemed to these men that they had
plowed forever through the blackness of this evil night, through a
hundred villainous shadows by unpointed paths. Mile after mile, they
had traversed almost impassable roads, unwavering persistence in
command of their strength, heavy stoicism their burden. Few were the
words that had passed between them during all those weary miles. An
occasional oath, muffled but impressive, fell from the lips of one or
the other of those who followed close behind the silent, imperturbable
leader. The tall man was as silent as the unspeakable night itself.

It was impossible to distinguish the faces of these dogged night-
farers. The collars of their coats were turned up, their throats were
muffled, and the broad rims of their rain-soaked hats were far down
over the eyes. There was that about them which suggested the
unresented pressure of firearms inside the dry breast-pockets of long
coats.

This was an evening in the spring of 1875, and these men were forging
their way along a treacherous mountain road in Southwestern Virginia.
A word in passing may explain the exigency which forced the travelers
to the present undertaking. The washing away of a bridge ten miles
farther down the valley had put an end to all thought of progress by
rail, for the night, at least. Rigid necessity compelled them to
proceed in the face of the direst hardships. Their mission was one
which could not be stayed so long as they possessed legs and stout
hearts. Checked by the misfortune at the bridge, there was nothing
left for them but to make the best of the situation: they set forth on
foot across the mountain, following the short but more arduous route
from the lower to the upper valley. Since three o'clock in the
afternoon they had been struggling along their way, at times by narrow
wagon roads, not infrequently by trails and foot paths that made for
economy in distance.

The tall man strode onward with never decreasing strength and
confidence; his companions, on the contrary, were faint and sore and
scowling. They were not to the mountains born; they came from the
gentle lowlands by the sea,--from broad plantations and pleasant
byways, from the tidewater country. He was the leader on this ugly
night, and yet they were the masters; they followed, but he led at
their bidding. They had known him for less than six hours, and yet
they put their lives in his hands; another sunrise would doubtless see
him pass out of their thoughts forever. He served the purpose of a
single night. They did not know his name--nor he theirs, for that
matter; they took him on faith and for what he was worth--five
dollars.

"Are those the lights of the town?" panted one of the masters, a throb
of hope in his breast. The tall man paused; the others came up beside
him. He stretched a long arm in the direction of the twinkling lights,
far ahead.

"Yas, 'r," was all that he said.

"How far?" demanded the other laboriously.

"'Bout fo'h mile."

"Road get any better?"

"Yas, 'r."

"Can we make it by nine, think?"

"Yas, 'r."

"We'd better be moving along. It's half-past seven now."

"Yas, 'r."

Once more they set forward, descending the slope into the less
hazardous road that wound its way into the town of S----, then, as
now, a thriving place in the uplands. The ending of a deadly war not
more than ten years prior to the opening of this tale had left this
part of fair Virginia gasping for breath, yet too proud to cry for
help. Virginia, the richest and fairest and proudest of all the
seceding states, was but now finding her first moments of real hope
and relief. Her fortunes had gone for the cause; her hopes had sunk
with it.

Both were now rising together from the slough into which they had been
driven by the ruthless Juggernaut of Conquest. The panic of '73 meant
little to the people of this fair commonwealth; they had so little
then to lose, and they had lost so much. The town of S---, toward
which these weary travelers turned their steps, was stretching out its
hands to clasp Opportunity and Prosperity as those fickle commodities
rebounded from the vain-glorious North; the smile was creeping back
into the haggard face of the Southland; the dollars were jingling now
because they were no longer lonely. The bitterness of life was not so
bitter; an ancient sweetness was providing the leaven. The Northern
brother was relaxing; he was even washing the blood from his hands and
extending them to raise the sister he had ravished. There was
forgiveness in the heart of fair Virginia--but not yet the desire to
forget. The South was coming into its own once more--not the old
South, but a new one that realized.

Intermittent strains of music came dancing up into the hills from the
heart of S--. The wayfarers looked at each other in the darkness and
listened in wonder to these sounds that rose above the swish of the
restless rain.

"It's a band," murmured one of the two behind.

"Yas, 'r; a circus band," vouchsafed the guide, a sudden eagerness in
his voice. "Van Slye's Great and Only Mammoth Shows--"

"A circus?" interrupted one of the men gruffly. "Then the whole town
is full of strangers. That's bad for us, Blake."

"I don't see why. He's more than likely to be where the excitement's
highest, ain't he? He's not too old for that. We'll find him in that
circus tent, Tom, if he's in the town at all."

"First circus they've had in S---- in a dawg's age," ventured the
guide, with the irrelevancy of an excited boy. "Rice's was there once,
I can't remember jest when, an' they was some talk of Barnum las'
yeah, they say, but he done pass us by. He's got a Holy Beheemoth that
sweats blood this yeah, they say. Doggone, I'd like to see one." The
guide had not ventured so much as this, all told, in the six hours of
their acquaintanceship.

"Well, let's be moving on. I'm wet clear through," shivered Blake.

Silence fell upon them once more. No word was spoken after that,
except in relation to an oath of exasperation; they swung forward into
the lower road, their sullen eyes set on the lights ahead. Heavy feet,
dragging like hundredweights, carried them over the last weary mile.
Into the outskirts of the little town they slunk. The streets were
deserted, muddy, and lighted but meagerly from widely separated oil
lamps set at the tops of as many unstable posts.

Some distance ahead there was a vast glow of light, lifting itself
above the housetops and pressing against the black dome that hung low
over the earth. The rollicking quickstep of a circus band came dancing
over the night to meet the footsore men. There were no pedestrians to
keep them company. The inhabitants of S---- were inside the tents
beyond, or loitering near the sidewalls with singular disregard for
the drizzling rain that sifted down upon their unmindful backs or blew
softly into the faces of the few who enjoyed the luxury of
"umberells." Despite the apparent solitude that kept pace with them
down the narrow street,--little more than a country lane, on the verge
of graduating into a thoroughfare,--the three travelers were keenly
alert; their squinting, eager eyes searched the shadows beside and
before them; their feet no longer dragged through the slippery,
glistening bed of the road; every movement, every glance signified
extreme caution.

Slowly they approached the vacant lots beyond the business section of
the town, known year in and year out to the youth of S---- as "the
show grounds." Now they began to encounter straggling, envious atoms
of the populace, wanderers who could not produce the admission fee and
who were not permitted by the rough canvasmen to venture inside the
charmed circle laid down by the "guy-ropes." At the corner of the
tented common stood the "ticket wagon," the muddy plaza in front of it
torn by the footprints of many human beings and lighted by a great
gasoline lamp swung from a pole hard by. Beyond was the main entrance
of the animal tent, presided over by uniformed ticket takers. Here and
there, in the gloomy background, stood the canvas and pole wagons,
shining in their wetness against the feeble light that oozed through
the opening between the sidewall and the edge of the flapping main
top, or glistening with sudden brightness in response to the passing
lantern or torch in the hand of a rubber-coated minion who "belonged
to the circus,"--a vast honor, no matter how lowly his position may
have been. Costume and baggage wagons, their white and gold glory
swallowed up in the maw of the night, stood backed up against the
dressing-tent off to the right. The horse tent beyond was even now
being lowered by shadowy, mystic figures who swore and shouted to each
other across spaces wide and spaces small without regulating the voice
to either effort. Horses, with their clanking trace-chains, in twos
and fours, slipped in and out of the shadows, drawing great vehicles
which rumbled and jarred with the noise peculiar to circus wagons:
tired, underfed horses that paid little heed to the curses or the
blows of the men who handled them, so accustomed were they to the
proddings of life.

And inside the big tent the band played merrily, as only a circus band
can play, jangling an accompaniment to the laughter and the shouts of
the delighted multitude sitting in the blue-boarded tiers about the
single ring with its earthen circumference, its sawdust carpet and its
dripping lights.

The smell of the thing! Who has ever forgotten it? The smell of the
sawdust, the smell of the gleaming lights, the smell of animals and
the smell of the canvas top! The smell of the damp handbills, the
programs and the bags of roasted peanuts! Incense! Never-to-be-
forgotten incense of our beautiful days!

Warm and dry and bright under the spreading top with its two "center
poles" and its row of "quarters"; cold, dreary and sordid outside in
the real world where man and beast worked while others seemed to play.

Groups of canvasmen now began to tear down the animal tent--the
"menagerie," as it has always been known to the man who pays
admission. An hour later, when the big show is over, the spectators
will stream forth, even as their own blue seats begin to clatter to
earth behind them, and they will blink with amazement to find
themselves in the open air, instead of in the menagerie tent. As if by
magic it has disappeared, and with it the sideshow and its banners,
the Punch and Judy show, the horse tent, the cook tent, the blacksmith
shop. Where once stood a dripping white city, now stretches a barren,
ugly waste of unhallowed, unfamiliar ground, flanked by the solitary
temple of tinsel and sawdust which they have just left behind, and
which even now is being desolated by scowling men in overalls. The
crowd oozes forth, to find itself completely lost in the night, all
points of the compass at odds, no man knowing east from west or north
from south in the strange surroundings. The "lot" they have known so
well and crossed so often has been transformed into a trackless
wilderness, through which strange objects rumble and creak, over which
queer, ghastly lights play for the benefit of grumbling men from
another world.

Blake and his companion, standing apart from the lank, wide-eyed
guide, were conversing in low tones.

"We'd better make the circuit of the tents," said Blake, evidently the
leader. "You go to the right and I'll take the other way round. We'll
meet here. Keep your eye peeled. He may be hiding under the wagons
where it's dry. Look out for these circus toughs. They're a nasty
crowd."

Then he turned to the guide.

"We won't need you any longer," he said. "This is as far as we go.
Here is your pay. If I were you, I'd buy a ticket and go inside."

"Yas, 'r," said the smileless guide, accepting the greenback with no
word of thanks. A brief "good night" to his employers, and the lean
mountaineer strolled over to the ticket wagon. He purchased a ticket
and hurried into the tent. We do not see him again. He has served his
purpose.

His late employers made off on their circuit of the tents, sharp-eyed
but casual, doing nothing that might lead the circus men to suspect
that they were searching for one among them. In the good old days of
the road circus there were thieves as well as giants; if a man was not
a thief himself, he at least had a friend who was. There was honor
among them.

A scant hour before the three men came to the "showgrounds" their
quarry arrived there. That Blake and his companion were man-hunters
goes without saying, but that the person for whom they searched should
be a hungry, wan-faced, terrified boy of eighteen seems hardly in
keeping with the relentless nature of the chase.

The ring performance in the main tent had been in progress for fifteen
or twenty minutes when the fugitive, exhausted, drenched and
shivering, crept into the protected nook which marks the junction of
the circus and dressing tops. Here it was comparatively dry; the wind
did not send its thin mist into this canvas cranny. Not so dark as he
may have desired, if one were to judge by the expression in his
feverish eyes as he peered back at the darkness out of which he had
slunk, but so cramped in shadow that only the eye of a ferret could
have distinguished the figure huddled there. Chilled to the bone, wet
through and through, this white-faced lad, with drooping lip and
quickened breath, crouched there and waited for the heavy footstep and
the brutal command of the canvasman who was to drive him forth into
the darkness once more.

He had watched his chance to creep into this coveted spot. When the
men were called to work at the horse tent he found his chance. It
looked warm in this corner; a pleasant light on the inside of the two
tents glowed against the damp sidewalls: here and there it glimmered
invitingly under the bottom of the canvas. He knew that his tenancy
must end in an hour or two: the big top would be leveled to the
ground, rolled up and spirited away into the stretches that lay
between this city and the next one, twenty miles away. But an hour or
two in this friendly corner, close to the glare of the circus lights,
almost in touch with the joyous, bespangled world of his ambitions,
even though he was a hated and hunted creature, was better than the
sopping roadside or the fields.

He knew that he was being hounded and that those who sought him were
close behind. Once in the forest, far back in the hills, he had heard
them, he had seen them. Off in other parts of the country men were
looking for him. In the cities throughout Virginia and the adjoining
states there were placards describing him ere this, and rewards were
mentioned.

Resting in the bushes above the trail, late in the afternoon, he had
seen Blake and his men. They had stopped to rest, and he could hear
their conversation plainly. With all the wiliness of a hunted thing,
he had slipped off into the forest, terrified to find that his
pursuers were so close upon him.

He had learned that they were making for S---- and it was easy to see
that their progress was slow and grueling. His feet were light, his
legs strong; peril gave wings to his courage. Something told him that
he must beat them by many miles into the town of S----. Once, when he
was much younger, he had gone to S---- with his grandfather to see the
soldiers encamped there. He remembered the railroad. It was imperative
that he should reach the railway as far in advance of his pursuers as
legs and a stout heart could carry him.

A wide _detour_ through the sombre forest brought him to the road
once more, fully a mile below his pursuers. He forgot his hunger and
his fatigue. For miles he ran with the fleetness of a scared thing,
guided by the crude sign-boards which pointed the way and told the
distance to S----. Night fell, but he ran on, stumbling and faint with
dread, tears rolling down his thin cheeks, sobs in his throat.
Darkness hid the sign-boards from view; he reeled from one side of the
narrow, Stygian lane to the other, sustaining many falls and bruises,
but always coming to his feet with the unflagging determination to
fight his way onward.

Half-dazed, gasping for breath and ready to drop in his tracks, he
came at last to the open valley. Far ahead and below were the lights
of a town--he could only hope that it was S----. Tortured by the vast
oppressiveness of the solitude which lay behind him, peopled by a
thousand ghosts whose persistent footsteps had haunted him through
every mile of his flight, he cried aloud as he stumbled down the rain-
washed hill,--cried with the terror of one who sees collapse after
human valor has been done to death.

He was never to know how he came, in the course of an hour, to the
outskirts of the town. His mind, distracted by the terror of pursuit,
refused to record the physical exertions of that last bitter hour; his
body labored mechanically, without cognizance of the strain put upon
it. He had traversed fifteen miles of the blackest of forests and by
way of the most tortuous of roads. A subconscious triumph now inspired
him, born of the certainty that he had left his enemies far behind. It
was this oddly jubilant spur that drove him safely, almost
instinctively, into the heart of S----. The music of a band both
attracted and bewildered him. It was some time before he could grasp
the fact that a circus was holding forth in the lower end of the town.
The subtle cunning that had become part of his nature within the past
forty-eight hours forbade an incautious approach to the circus
grounds. There, of all places, he might expect to encounter peril. To
his bewildered mind every man who breathed of life was a sleuth sent
forth to lay hold of him.

He gave the circus--loved thing of tenderer days--a wide berth,
finding his way to the railway station by outlying streets. His first
thought was to board an outbound train, to secrete himself in one of
the freight cars. The sudden, overpowering pangs of hunger drove this
plan from his mind, combined with the discovery that no train would
pass through the town before midnight. Disheartened, sick with
despair, he slunk off through the railway yards, taking a roundabout
way to the circus grounds.

There was money in his purse,--plenty of it; but he was afraid to
enter an eating-house, or to even approach the "snack-stand" on the
edge of the circus lot. For a long time he stood afar off in the
darkness, his legs trembling, his mouth twitching, his eyes bent with
pathetic intentness upon the single pie and hot sandwich stand that
remained near the sideshow tent, presided over by a kind-faced, sleepy
old man in spectacles.

A huge placard tacked to the board fence back of this stand attracted
his attention. Impelled by a strange curiosity, he ventured into the
circle of light, knowing full well, before he was near enough to
distinguish more than the bold word "Reward," that this sinister bill
had to do with him and no other.

Held by the same mysterious power that a serpent exercises in charming
its victim, the lad stared at the face of this ominous thing that
proclaimed him a fugitive for whom five hundred dollars would be paid,
dead or alive.

Stricken to the soul, he read and re-read the black words, unable, for
a long time, to tear himself away from the spot. A quick alarm seized
him. He slunk back into the shadows, his hunger forgotten. For many
minutes he stood in the grisly darkness, staring at the white patch on
the fence. Curses rose to his lips--lips that had never known an oath
before; prayers and pleadings were forgotten in that bitter
arraignment of fate.

Then came the sudden revival of youthful spirits, carrying with them
the reckless bravado that all boys possess to the verge of folly. The
band was playing, the show had begun. In his mind's eye he could see
the "_grand entree._" A fierce desire to brave detection and boldly
enter the charmed pavilion took possession of him. First, he would buy
of the pieman's wares; then he would calmly present himself before the
ticket wagon window, after which--But he got no farther in his dream of
audacity. The placard on the fence seemed to smite him in the face. He
drew farther back into the darkness, shuddering. With his arms clasped
tightly across his chest, shivering in the chill that had returned
triumphant, he dragged himself wearily away from the place of
temptation.

Circling the dressing-tent, he came upon men at work. They were
drawing stakes with the old-fashioned chains. For a while he dully
watched them. They passed on. He crept from his place of hiding and,
attracted by the lights as a moth is drawn by the candle, made his way
to the sheltered spot at the joining of the tents.

After a few moments of restless vigil an overpowering sense of
lassitude fell upon him. His eyes closed in abrupt surrender to
exhaustion. The rhythmic beat of the quickstep leaped off into great
distances; the champing and snorting of horses in the dressing-tent
died away as if by magic; the subdued voices of the men and women who
waited their turn to bound into the merry ring faded into
indistinguishable whispers; the crack of the ring master's whip and
the responsive yelp of the clown trailed off into silence. His head
fell back, his body relaxed, and he slipped off into sweet
unconsciousness.

A man in motley garb, with a face of scarlet and white, sitting on a
blue half-barrel near the flap which indicated the entrance to the
men's section of the dressing-tent, caught sight of an arm and hand
lying limp under the edge of the canvas. He stared hard for a moment
and then, attracted by the slim, unfamiliar member, arose and advanced
to the spot. As he stood there, looking down at the hand, a woman and
a young girl approached.

"Drunk," observed the clown, with a grimace.

They stopped beside him, looking down. The woman spoke. "How long and
fine the fingers are. A boy's hand, not a man's. See who is there,
Joey, do."

And so it was that the fugitive was taken.

The clown lifted the sidewall and bent over the form of the lad,
peering into the white, mud-streaked face.

"He's not drunk," he said quickly.

"He looks ill, poor fellow. How wet he is,--and _so_ muddy. Is he
asleep? It isn't--it isn't something else?" She drew back in sudden
dread.

"He's alive, right enough. I say, Mrs. Braddock, there's something
queer about this. He can't belong in this 'ere town, else he wouldn't
be sleepin' 'ere in the mud. He's plain pegged out, ma'am. Like enough
'e's some poor fool as wants to join the circus. Run away from 'ome, I
daresay. We've 'ad lots of 'em follow us up lately, you know. Only
this 'un looks different. Shall I call Peterson? He'll wake 'im up
right enough and conwince 'im that the show business is a good thing
to stay out of while he can."

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