CHAPTER XIV—IN WHICH HICKS COMES TO HIS REST
HE stood a moment with his hands against the closed door behind him, listening to Coglan's heavy breathing. Then he crossed noiselessly to the table, took the lamp and went through to the inner room.
There were two cot beds in it. Shays lay asleep on one in all his clothes, except his shoes. The other bed was broken down, a wreck on the floor. Evidently Coglan had been using it, and it was not built for slumberers of his weight, so he had gone back to the hides that had often furnished him with a bed before.
Shays turned his face away from the light and raised one limp hand in half-conscious protest. He opened his eyes and blinked stupidly. Then he sat up.
“Don't make a noise, Jimmy,” said Allen. “I'm going pretty soon.”
“G-goin'—wha' for?” stammered Shays. “Wha's that for?”
“I've broke jail. I'm going to change clothes and shave, then I'll light out. You won't see me again, Jimmy.”
He sat down on the side of the bed and rocked to and fro, twisting his fingers.
“You're decent, Jimmy. When they get to posting notices and rewards, you see, you don't do a thing. Nor you don't wake Coglan. He's a damn hound. See?”
Shays shook his head, indicating either a promise or his general confusion and despondency.
“Wha' for, Hicksy?”
Allen was silent a moment.
“Jim-jams, Jimmy,” he said at last. “You'll die of those all right, and Coglan will squat on you. You ain't bright, but you've been white to me.”
“Tha's right! Tom don't like you. Hicksy, tha's right,” whispered Shays with sudden trembling. “Maybe he'd—'sh! We won't wake him, Hicksy. Wha' for?”
“He's sleeping on my clothes, so I'll take yours. Get me your razor.”
“Wha' for? Wha's that for? All right! I ain't going to wake Tom.”
He stepped unsteadily on a shoe that lay sidewise, stumbled, and fell noisily on the floor.
There he lay a moment, and then scrambled back to his feet, shaking and grumbling.
“What's the matter?” Coglan cried, now awake in the shop.
“Nothin', Tommy! I'm gettin' back, Tommy!”
“What you doin' with thot light?”
“Nothin', Tommy.”
Allen stood still. When Coglan came stamping unevenly to the door, he only made a quick shift of the lamp to his left hand, and thrust the other inside his coat till he felt the wooden handle of the chisel.
“Oi!” said Coglan.
His eyes seemed more prominent than ever, his face and neck heavier with the drink and sleep than was even natural. Allen looked at him with narrowed eyes.
“He's broke out,” Shays said, feebly deprecating. “He's goin' off,” and sat on the bed to pull on his shoes.
“Is he thot!” said Coglan.
Coglan turned back slowly into the shop. Shays shuffled after. Allen followed, too, with the lamp and said nothing, but put the lamp on the table. Coglan sat down, drank from the black bottle, and wiped his mouth. The first dim light of the morning was in the windows.
“I'll be getting along, Jimmy,” said Allen. “I'll take your razor.”
Coglan wiped his mouth again.
“An' ye'd be goin' widout takin' advice of a sinsible mon, Hicksy, an' a friend in need! Sure, sure! Didn't I say ye weren't a wise mon? Nor Jimmy here, he ain't a wise mon. An' ain't I proved it? Ain't it so? Would ye be jailed if ye was a wise mon? No! Here ye are again, an' ye'd be runnin' away this time of the mornin', an' be took by a polaceman on the first corner. I do laugh an' I do wape over ye, Hicksy. I do laugh an wape. An' all because ye won't take advice.”
“What's your advice?”
Coglan moved uneasily and cleared his throat. “'Tis this, for ye're rasonable now, sure! Ye'll hide in the back room a day or two. Quiet, aisy, safe! Jimmy an' me to watch. An' what happens to ye? Ye gets away some night wid the night before ye.”
He lowered his voice and gestured with closed fist.
“Ye'll lie under Jimmy's bed. The polaceman comes. 'Hicks!' says Jimmy, 'we ain't seen Hicks.' 'Hicks!' says I, 'Hicks be dommed! If he's broke jail he's left for Chiney maybe.' I ask ye, do they look under Jimmy's bed? No! What do they do? Nothin'!”
Allen drew a step back.
“You're right about one thing,” he said. “That reward would be easy picking for you.”
“What's thot?”
“I ain't a wise man. I know it. But I know you. That's what it is. I'm going now.”
“Ye're not!”
“Hicksy!” cried Shays feebly. “Tom, don't ye do it!”
Coglan plunged around the table and grasped at Allen's throat, at Allen's hand, which had shot behind his head, gripping the heavy chisel. Allen dodged him, and struck, and jumped after as Coglan staggered, and struck again. The corner of the chisel seemed to sink into Coglan's head.
Allen stood and clicked his teeth over his fallen enemy, who sighed like a heavy sleeper, and was still. It was a moment of tumult, and then all still in the shop. Then Shays stumbled backward over the work bench, and dropped on the hides. Allen turned and looked at him, putting the chisel into one of the side pockets of his coat, where it hung half-way out. The light was growing clearer in the windows.
“That's the end of me,” he said.
And Shays cried angrily, “Wha's that for?” and cowered with fear and dislike in his red-lidded eyes. “Keep off me! You keep off me!”
“I got to the end, Jimmy. Goodbye.”
“Keep off me!”
Allen hung his head and went out of the shop into the dark hall.
Shays heard his steps go down the outside stairway. He scrambled up from the pile of hides, and snatched his hat. He kept close to the wall, as far as possible from where Coglan lay against the legs of the table. He was afraid. He vaguely wanted to get even with the man who had killed Coglan. He had loved Coglan, on the whole, best among living men.
People in the rooms about the hall were roused by the noise, and were stirring. Someone called to him from a door in the darkness. He hurried down the outside stair. On Muscadine Street he saw Allen a half block away, walking slowly.
At the corner of the next street, as Allen stepped from the curb, the chisel dropped from his pocket, but he did not notice it, plodding on, with head down and dragging steps. Shays picked up the chisel when he came to the spot, stared at it stupidly, and thrust it in his pocket. The two kept the same distance apart and came out on the bridge.
The city and water-front for the most part were quite still, though it was nearly time for both to waken, and for the milk and market waggons to come in, and the trolley cars to begin running. The street lights had been turned off. There were forebodings of sunrise, over and beyond the disorderly roofs of East Argent. In the hush of that hour the muttering of the Muscadine whispering, rustling along the piers, seemed louder than by day. The dark buildings on the western river-front had the red glimmer of the sunrise now in their windows. No one was on the bridge except Shays and Allen, possibly a hidden and sleepy watcher in the drawbridge house.
Close to the drawbridge Allen stopped and looked back. Shays stopped, too, and muttered, “Wha's that for? Wha' for?” and found his mind blank of all opinion about it, and so, without any opinion what for, he began to run forward at a stumbling trot. Allen glanced back at him, leaped on the guard rail, threw his hands in the air, and plunged down into the river.
When Shays came there was nothing to be seen but the brown rippled surface; nor to be heard, except the lapping against the piers. He leaned over limply, and stared at the water.
“Wha' for?” he repeated persistently. “Wha's that for?” and whimpered, and rubbed his eyes with a limp hand, and leaned a long time on the rail, staring down at the mystery, with the other limp hand hung over the water pointing downward. “Wha' for?”
The city was waking with distant murmurs and nearby jarring noise. A freight train went over the P. and N. bridge.
Shays drew back from the railing and shuffled on till he had come almost to Bank Street; there he stopped and turned back, seeing a trolley car in the distance coming down Maple Street. He went down on the littered wharves, close to the abutments of the bridge, sat down on a box, leaned against the masonry, and took from his pocket the chisel he had picked up, stared at it, rubbed it in the refuse at his feet, and put it back in his pocket. The sun was risen now, the spot grew pleasantly warm, and he went to sleep muttering in the morning sunlight on the wharf by the Muscadine, and over his head went the trucks, waggons, trolley cars, the stamp of hoofs, and the shuffle of feet.