THE BASKET OF MUSHROOMS
The seventh of May was my father's birthday. I always planned some little surprise for him beside his present, and this morning I had got up very early, before any one else was stirring, to slip down to the Washington Street market for some fine fresh mushrooms. He was extravagantly fond of them, but we seldom had them because Abby was getting too old to be up for early marketing, and father always said that mushrooms should come in with the dew to be good.
I had bought a little straw basket, green and red, and lined it with leaves; and now I put on my white flounced gown and my flat green hat, so that when I should come in with my basket as they sat at breakfast it would seem like a little fête. Then I went a-tiptoe down the stairs that would creak, for I could hear Lee, the China boy, stirring in the kitchen, and it would have spoiled everything to be caught going out with my empty basket. When I had let myself into the street I felt very naughty and festive in my furbelows at such an hour of the morning. The city seemed so dim and still and empty that the rustle of my petticoats sounded loud as I walked along.
The Washington Street market was fully six blocks away, and they seemed the longer for being so quiet. When I got there the men were still taking the crates off the carts, and the stalls were not set out yet. It took me a long time to find what I wanted, so that when I came out the wagons were clattering on Montgomery Street, and in one or two shops the shutters were already down. That made me hurry, for I was afraid of being late. I flew along with my basket in one hand and my flounces in the other. The sunlight had caught the gilt ball on the flagstaff of the Alta California building, and the sky that had been misty was now broad blue above the gray housetops. In my flurry I found myself on Dupont Street before I knew it; but after all it was the shortest way, and everything was quiet, not a blind turned. The houses on either hand were locked and silent, and nothing moved in the steep little street but the top of the green-leafed tree half-way up the block.
I was walking on the upper side of the street, and drawing near the corner. I was opposite Mr. Rood's gambling-house, which was shuttered tight, and looked as blank as the rest, with only the slatted half-doors of the bar and the dark spaces above and below them to suggest that it had an inside. I was just thinking I heard people talking there, when suddenly a sharp splitting noise seemed to ring inside my head, the slatted doors flew open and a man fell out backward. He fell in a heap on the sidewalk; and over him, almost upon him, leaped another man, with such a rush, such a face, and such a wild look, that he filled the street with terror.
I stood there, staring stupidly, too stunned to realize what had happened. He saw me, and for an instant he stood, with the pistol smoking in his hand—the handsomest man I ever saw in my life, and the most terrible. Then he flung the pistol into the street and ran.
He ran down Dupont, and disappeared into Washington; and all the while I stood there, listening to the terrible loud clatter his feet made in the silence. I looked across the street, and blue smoke was drifting out of the slatted door over the man who lay still. Then there seemed to come over me at once the meaning of the horrible thing that had happened, and I ran.
I heard a shutter flung open in the street behind me. I saw a glitter near the curb, a flash of steel, a shine of mother-of-pearl, and that was the pistol he had flung away. I felt suffocating, and my feet seemed weighted with lead as if I were running in a dream. And, strange enough, what filled me with the wildest terror was not the sight of the thing that lay still on the pavement under the drifting smoke, but the sound of those furiously running feet, dying away and away into the sleepy city. I felt as if I myself were a criminal pursued, as if the house was the one refuge that would save me, and with a thousand horrors at my heels I burst in upon father just sitting down with Mr. Dingley, in the quiet, sunny dining-room.
At sight of me both jumped up.
"What's the matter, child?" father said.