told them apart. Up in the blue air sailed the eagle. Evidently he must find meals in Repose Valley, else he wouldn't be here, sailing and watching. He saw the same horse and the same Bellyful resting beneath the same mesquite. He saw also, away off, the same Aaron riding slowly along the road toward the Forks - only, this morning, Aaron was coming from Push Root instead of going to it. This proved it wasn't yesterday. Aaron had out his practise-table, and his hands were industrious.

Again Bellyful lay thinking. His horse was better for the hay and corn and eighteen hours of rest; but the mines were further than Push Root, and he must get there, there was nowhere else left to get

except out! As he lay under the mesquite, Bellyful made one gesture- he shook his fist at the sky. They might put him out, but he wouldn't get out.

It might be said that the only difference between the Bellyful of yesterday and him of today was the difference of one dollar and four bits. He had nothing now in his pocket; those last coins had paid for what food they could buy him. But there was another difference. It had been wrought during the night hours, wrought while he lay in the stable, unable to sleep, possibly wrought also, even in the sleep he at length fell into just before daylight; for, while he slept, his heart went on beating, of course, and what was his soul doing?

After his single gesture he lay under the mesquite motionless, gazing up through the filmy branches, quiet as a stone, deep sunk in the heart of Repose Valley silence. Stretched so, still beneath the same mesquite, he looked as if he had been there since yesterday, as if in all the tomorrows he might be there, keeping the cattle bones company. But the whole boy

every inch of flesh and spirit was alive, very much alive, not at all in a moderate, everyday fashion; in fact, Bellyful was a powder magazine, needing nothing but a match. Existence had shaken her head at him once too often.

He didn't suspect his own state until the match was applied. Aaron's approaching voice reached him. Even the eagle, a mile up in the air, stopped hunting to witness the sudden proceedings. Bellyful leaped to his feet, looked at the rock which blocked him and his horse from Aaron's view, moved the passive beast a few paces back, looked at the rock again, was satisfied, ran like wild game behind the rock, and waited. His pistol was always in excellent order, a clean-polished, incongruous gleam to flash forth from such a rusty scarecrow.

The talking Aaron came along, happy and busy. His head bent over his shuffled shells; the rise and fall of his cadences grew clearer, the sounds began to take to themselves syllables; first "hand" and "eye" came out distinct, then the links between filled in, and the whole sentence rang perfect through the unstirred air.

"Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye."

Such rehearsals as this must have helped many a monotonous journey to pass pleasantly for Aaron-not to speak of placing him in the foremost ranks of art.

66

'Remember, gentlemen, the hand is quicker than the eye." "Not this morning."

The shells smashed in Aaron's horrified grasp. The little pea rolled to the ground.

Going to the mines?" pursued Bellyful. All his words were sweet and dreadful.

Then Aaron saw behind the pistol who it was.

"That kid a road-agent!" he thought. "Why didn't I spot him yesterday?" And he blamed his own blindness, miserably and quite unjustly, because how could he know that Bellyful had only become a roadagent in the last ten minutes?

"Strip," said Bellyful.

Aaron was slow about it.

A flash, a smoke, and a hole through Aaron's Mexican hat cleared every doubt.

"You're mature, I see," remarked Aaron, and offered his unbuckled pistol.

"The other one now," commanded Bellyful. This was a guess, but a correct one. "Leave 'em both drop down."

Both dropped down.

"Go on strippin'."

The money followed, a good deal of it, and Aaron made a gesture of emptiness.

"That all?"

"Yes, indeed, young man."

"Then I want the rest of it."

"You've got the rest. You've got the whole. The game ain't what it used to be, and I have partners; they

"I'll partner you. Get down. Get down quick."

Evidently a compromise was the very most a poor shell-game man in this hapless crisis could hope for. Aaron got down and addressed the roadagent.

"See here, beau," he began, "you and me oughtn't to be hostile. trade we can't afford it. You and me's brothers."

"Don't you call me brother. I don't lie. I say 'hand it over' and folks ain't deceived. I'm an outlaw and, maybe, my life is forfeit. But you pretend you're an honest man and that your dirty game is square. Throw it all down, or I'll tear it out of you."

Aaron threw it all down. Then he was allowed to go his ways, seeking more fools to cheat.

Up in the air the eagle sailed. He was still looking down upon clots of cactus, thickets of mesquite, and skeletons of cattle. He also saw a horseman going slowly one way, and a horseman going slowly the other. In time many miles lay between them, and the forks of the road were as silent and empty of motion as the rest of Repose Valley.

To me, listening, Scipio Le Moyne narrated the foregoing anecdote while he lay in hospital, badly crumpled up by a bad horse. Upon the day fol lowing I brought him my written version.

"Yes," he said musingly, when I had finished reading it to him, "that

- happened - eight years ago. You've told it about correct as to facts.'

"What's wrong, then?"

"Oh I ain't competent to pass on your language. The facts are correct. What are you lookin' at me about?"

and

"Well the ending."

"Ending?"

"Well I don't like the way Bellyful just went off and prospered

"D'you claim he'd oughtn't? Think of him! Will y'u please to think of him after that shell game? He begging honest work and denied all over, everywhere, till his hat and his clothes and his boots were in holes, and his body was pretty near in holes - think of him, just a kind of hollo' vessel of hunger lying in that stable while the shell-game cheat goes off with his pockets full of gold." Scipio spoke with heat.

try

"Yes, I know. But, if Bellyful afterward could only feel sorry and

"Are you figuring to fix that up?" he was still hotter "because I forbid you to monkey with the truth. Because I never was sorry.”

"What?"

"I was Bellyful," said Scipio, becoming quiet. "Yes, that was eight years ago.' He mused still more, his eyes grew wistful. "I was nineteen then. God, what good times I have had!"

1

THE SEED OF MCCOY

BY JACK LONDON (1876–1916)

The huggishly, and made it easy for the man who was

HE Pyrenees, her iron sides pressed low in the water by her cargo of climbing aboard from out a tiny outrigger canoe. As his eyes came level with the rail, so that he could see inboard, it seemed to him that he saw a dim, almost indiscernible haze. It was more like an illusion, like a blurring film that had spread abruptly over his eyes. He felt an inclination to brush it away, and the same instant he thought that he was growing old and that it was time to send to San Francisco for a pair of spectacles.

As he came over the rail he cast a glance aloft at the tall masts, and, next, at the pumps. They were not working. There seemed nothing the matter with the big ship, and he wondered why she had hoisted the signal of distress. He thought of his happy islanders, and hoped it was not disease. Perhaps the ship was short of water or provisions. He shook hands with the captain, whose gaunt face and care-worn eyes made no secret of the trouble, whatever it was. At the same moment the newcomer was aware of a faint, indefinable smell. It seemed like that of burnt bread, but different.

He glanced curiously about him. Twenty feet away a weary-faced sailor was calking the deck. As his eye lingered on the man, he saw suddenly arise from under his hands a faint spiral of haze that curled and twisted and was gone. By now he had reached the deck. His bare feet were pervaded by a dull warmth that quickly penetrated the thick calluses. He knew now the nature of the ship's distress. His eyes roved swiftly forward, where the full crew of weary-faced sailors regarded him eagerly. The glance from his liquid brown eyes swept over them like a benediction, soothing them, wrapping them about as in the mantle of a great peace. "How long has she been afire, captain?" he asked in a voice so gentle and unperturbed that it was as the cooing of a dove.

At first the captain felt the peace and content of it stealing in upon him; then the consciousness of all that he had gone through and was going through smote him, and he was resentful. By what right did this ragged beach-comber, in dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a thing as peace and content to him and his overwrought, exhausted soul? The captain did not reason this; it was the unconscious process of emotion that caused his resentment.

From The Century Magazine, April, 1909; copyright, 1909, by the Century Co. Copyright, 1911, by the Macmillan Co., and republished by special arrangement and permission from their volume, South Sea Tales (1911), by Jack London.

"Fifteen days," he answered shortly. "Who are you?"

"My name is McCoy," came the answer in tones that breathed tenderness and compassion.

"I mean, are you the pilot?"

"We are

McCoy passed the benediction of his gaze over the tall, heavy-shouldered man with the haggard, unshaven face, who had joined the captain. "I am as much a pilot as anybody," was McCoy's answer. all pilots here, captain, and I know every inch of these waters." But the captain was impatient.

"What I want is some of the authorities. I want to talk with them, and blame quick."

"Then I'll do just as well."

Again that insidious suggestion of peace, and his ship a raging furnace beneath his feet! The captain's eyebrows lifted impatiently and nervously, and his fist clenched as if he were about to strike a blow with it.

"Who in hell are you?" he demanded.

"I am the chief magistrate," was the reply in a voice that was still the softest and gentlest imaginable.

The tall, heavy-shouldered man broke out in a harsh laugh that was partly amusement, but mostly hysterical. Both he and the captain regarded McCoy with incredulity and amazement. That this barefooted beach-comber should possess such high-sounding dignity was inconceivable. His cotton shirt, unbuttoned, exposed a grizzled chest and the fact that there was no undershirt beneath. A worn straw hat failed to hide the ragged gray hair. Halfway down his chest descended an untrimmed, patriarchal beard. In any slop-shop two shillings would have outfitted him complete as he stood before them.

"Any relation to the McCoy of the Bounty?" the captain asked. "He was my great-grandfather."

"Oh," the captain said, then bethought himself. "My name is Davenport, and this is my first mate, Mr. Konig."

They shook hands.

"And now to business." The captain spoke quickly, the urgency of a great haste pressing his speech. "We've been on fire for over two weeks. She's ready to break all hell loose any moment. That's why I held for Pitcairn. I want to beach her, or scuttle her, and save the hull."

"Then you made a mistake, captain," said McCoy. "You should have slacked away for Mangareva. There's a beautiful beach there, in a lagoon where the water is like a mill-pond."

"But we're here, ain't we?" the first mate demanded. "That's the point. We're here, and we've got to do something."

McCoy shook his head kindly. "You can do nothing here.

anchorage."

There is no beach. There isn't even

"Gammon!" said the mate. "Gammon!" he repeated loudly, as the captain signaled him to be more soft-spoken. "You can't tell me that sort of stuff. Where d'ye keep your own boats, hey your schooner, or cutter, or whatever you have? Hey? Answer me that."