University of Virginia Library

"THE BOY FROM ZEENY"

HIS advent in our little country town was at once abrupt and novel. Why he came, when he came, or how he came, we boys never knew. My first remembrance of him is of his sudden appearance in the midst of a game of "Ant'ny-over," in which a dozen boys besides myself were most enthusiastically engaged. The scene of the exciting contest was the center of the main street of the town, the elevation over which we tossed the ball being the skeleton remains of a grand triumphal arch, left as a sort of cadaverous reminder of some recent political demonstration. Although I recall the boy's external appearance upon that occasion with some vagueness, I vividly remember that his trousers were much too large and long, and that his heavy, flapping coat was buttonless, and very badly worn and damaged at the sleeves and elbows. I remember, too, with even more distinctness, the hat he wore; it was a high, silk, bell-crowned hat — a man's hat and a veritable "plug" — not a new and shiny "plug," by any means, but still of dignity and gloss enough to furnish a noticeable contrast to the other appurtenances of its wearer's wardrobe. In fact, it was through this latter article of dress that

the general attention of the crowd came at last to be drawn particularly to its unfortunate possessor, who, evidently directed by an old-time instinct, had mechanically thrust the inverted "castor" under a falling ball, and the ball, being made of yarn wrapped tightly over a green walnut, and dropping from an uncommon height, had gone through the hat like a round shot.

Naturally enough much merriment was occasioned by the singular mishap, and the victim of the odd occurrence seemed himself inclined to join in the boisterous laughter and make the most of his ridiculous misfortune. He pulled the hat back over his tousled head, and with the flapping crown of it still clinging by one frayed hinge, he capered through a grotesquely executed jig that made the clamorous crowd about him howl again.

"Wo! what a hat!" cried Billy Kinzey, derisively, and with a palpably rancorous twinge of envy in his heart; for Billy was the bad boy of our town, and would doubtless have enjoyed the strange boy's sudden notoriety in thus being able to convert disaster into positive fun. "Wo! what a hat!" reiterated Billy, making a feint to knock it from the boy's head as the still capering figure pirouetted past him.

The boy's eye caught the motion, and he whirled suddenly in a backward course and danced past his reviler again, this time much nearer than before. "Better try it," he said, in a low, half-laughing tone that no one heard but Billy and myself. He

was out of range in an instant, still laughing as he went.

"Durn him!" said Billy, with stifling anger, clutching his fist and leaving one knuckle protruding in a very wicked-looking manner. — "Durn him! He better not sass me! He's afeard to come past here ag'in and say that! I'll knock his durn ole stove-pipe in the middle o' nex' week!"

"You will, hey?" queried a revolving voice, as the boy twirled past again — this time so near that Billy felt his taunting breath blown in his face.

"Yes, I `will, hey'!" said Billy, viciously; and with a side-sweeping, flat-handed lick that sounded like striking a rusty sheet of tin, the crownless "plug" went spinning into the gutter, while, as suddenly, the assaulted little stranger, with a peculiarly pallid smile about his lips and an electric glitter in his eye, adroitly flung his left hand forward, smiting his insulter such a blow in the region of the brow that the unguarded Billy went tumbling backward, his plucky assailant prancing wildly around his prostrate form.

"Oh! come and see me!" snarled the strange boy, in a contemptuous tone, cocking his fists up in a scientific manner, and dropping into a stoop-shouldered swagger that would have driven envy into the heart of a bullying hack-driver. "Git the bloke on his pins!" he sneered, turning to the crowd. — "S'pose I'm goin' to hit a man w'en he's down?"

But his antagonist needed no such assistance. Stung with his unlooked-for downfall, bleeding

from the first blow ever given him by mortal boy, and goaded to absolute frenzy by the taunts of his swaggering enemy, Billy sprang to his feet, and a moment later had succeeded in closing with the boy in a rough-and-tumble fight, in which his adversary was at a disadvantage, being considerably smaller, hampered, too, with his loose, unbuttoned coat and baggy trousers. But, for all that, he did some very efficient work in the way of a deft and telling blow or two upon the nose of his overpowering foe, who sat astride his wriggling body, but wholly unable to get in a lick.

"Durn you!" said Billy, with his hand gripping the boy's throat, "holler 'nough!"

"Holler nothin'!" gurgled the boy, with his eyes fairly starting from his head.

"Oh, let him up, Billy," called a compassionate voice from the excited crowd.

"Holler 'nough and I will," said Billy, in a tragic whisper in the boy's ear. "Durn ye! holler `Calf-rope!' "

The boy only shook his head, trembled convulsively, let fall his eyelids, and lay limp and, to all appearances, unconscious.

The startled Billy loosed his hold, rose half-way to his feet, then fiercely pounced again at his rival.

But it was too late. — The ruse had succeeded, and the boy was once more on his feet.

"You fight like a dog!" said the strange boy, in a tone of infinite contempt — "and you air a dog! Put up yer props like a man and come at me, and

I'll meller yer head till yer mother won't know you! Come on! I dare you!"

This time, as Billy started forward at the challenge, I regret to say that in his passion he snatched up from the street a broken buggy-spoke, before which warlike weapon the strange boy was forced warily to retreat. Step by step he gave way, and step by step his threatening foe advanced. I think, perhaps, part of the strange boy's purpose in thus retreating was to arm himself with one of the "ax-handles" that protruded from a churn standing in front of a grocery, toward which he slowly backed across the sidewalk. However that may be, it is evident he took no note of an open cellar-way that lay behind him, over the brink of which he deliberately backed, throwing up his hands as he disappeared.

We heard a heavy fall, but heard no cry. Some loungers in the grocery, attracted by the clamor of the throng without, came to the door inquiringly; one man, learning what had happened, peered down the stairway of the cellar, and called to ask the boy if he was hurt, which query was answered an instant later by the appearance of the boy himself, his face far whiter than his shirt, and his lips trembling, but his teeth clenched.

"Guess I broke my arm ag'in," he said, briefly, as the man leaned over and helped him up the steps, the boy sweeping his keen eyes searchingly over the faces of the crowd. "It's the right arm, though," he continued, glancing at the injured member dangling

helplessly at his side — "this-'un's all right yet!" and as he spoke he jerked from the man's assistance, wheeled round, and an instant later, as a buggy-spoke went hurtling through the air, he slapped the bewildered face of Billy with his open hand. "Dam' coward!" he said.

Then the man caught him, and drew him back, and the crowd closed in between the combatants, following, as the boy with the broken arm was hurried down street to the doctor's office, where the door was immediately closed on the rabble and all the mystery within — not an utter mystery, either, for three or four enterprising and sagacious boys slipped off from the crowd that thronged in front, and climbing by a roundabout way and over a high board fence into the back yard, secretly posted themselves at the blinded window in the rear of the little one-roomed office and breathlessly awaited news from within.

"They got him laid out on the settee," whispered a venturous boy who had leaned a board against the window-sill and climbed into a position commanding the enviable advantage of a broken window-pane. "I kin see him through a hole in the curtain. Keep still!

"They got his coat off, and his sleeve rolled up," whispered the boy, in continuation — "and the doctor's a-givin' him some medicine in a tumbler. Now he's a-pullin' his arm. Gee-mun-nee! I kin hear the bones crunch!"

"Hain't he a-cryin'?" queried a milk-faced boy, with very large blue eyes and fine white hair, and a grieved expression as he spoke. — "Hain't he a-cryin'?"

"Well, he hain't!" said the boy in the window, with unconscious admiration. "Listen!

"I heerd him thist tell 'em 'at it wasn't the first time his arm was broke. Now keep still!" and the boy in the window again bent his ear to the broken pane.

"He says both his arm's be'n broke," continued the boy in the window — "says this-'un 'at's broke now's be'n broke two times 'fore this time."

"Dog-gone! hain't he a funny feller!" said the milk-faced boy, with his big eyes lifted wistfully to the boy in the window.

"He says onc't his pap broke his arm w'en he was whippin' him," whispered the boy in the window.

"Bet his pa's a wicked man!" said the milk-faced boy, in a dreamy, speculative way — "s'pect he's a drunkard, er somepin'!"

"Keep still," said the boy at the window; "they're tryin' to git him to tell his pap's name and his, and he won't do it, 'cause he says his pap comes and steals him ever' time he finds out where he is."

The milk-faced boy drew a long, quavering breath and gazed suspiciously round the high board fence of the enclosure.

"He says his pap used to keep a liberty-stable in Zeeny — in Ohio som'er's, — but he daresn't stay

round there no more, 'cause he broke up there, and had to skedaddle er they'd clean him out! He says he hain't got no mother, ner no brothers, ner no sisters, ner no nothin' — on'y," the boy in the window added, with a very dry and painful swallow, "he says he hain't got nothin' on'y thist the clothes on his back!"

"Yes, and I bet," broke in the milk-faced boy, abruptly, with his thin lips compressed, and his big eyes fixed on space — "yes, and I bet he kin lick Billy Kinzey, ef his arm is broke!"

At this juncture, some one inside coming to raise the window, the boy at the broken pane leaped to the ground, and, flocking at his heels, his frightened comrades bobbed one by one over the horizon of the high fence and were gone in an instant.

So it was the hero of this sketch came to be known as "The Boy from Zeeny."

The Boy from Zeeny, though evidently predisposed to novel and disastrous happenings, for once, at least, had come upon a streak of better fortune; for the doctor, it appeared, had someway taken a fancy to him, and had offered him an asylum at his own home and hearth — the compensation stipulated, and suggested by the boy himself, being a conscientious and efficient service in the doctor's stable. Even with his broken arm splinted and bandaged and supported in a sling, The Boy from Zeeny could daily be seen loping the doctor's spirited horse up the back alley from the stable to the office,

with the utter confidence and careless grace of a Bedouin. When, at last, the injured arm was wholly well again, the daring feats of horsemanship of which the boy was capable were listened to with incredulity by the "good" boys of the village school, who never played "hooky" on long summer afternoons, and, in consequence, never had a chance of witnessing The Boy from Zeeny loping up to the "swimmin'-hole," a mile from town, barebacked, with nothing but a halter, and his face turned toward the horse's tail. In fact The Boy from Zeeny displayed such a versatility of accomplishments, and those, too, of a character but faintly represented in the average boy of the country town, that, for all the admiration their possessor evoked, an equal envy was aroused in many a youthful breast.

"The boys in this town's down on you!" said a cross-eyed, freckled-faced boy, one day, to The Boy from Zeeny.

The Boy from Zeeny was sitting in the alley window of the hayloft of the doctor's stable, and the cross-eyed boy had paused below, and, with his noward-looking eyes upturned, stood waiting the effect of this intelligence.

"What do I care for the boys in this town?" said The Boy from Zeeny.

"The boys in this town," repeated the cross-eyed boy, with a slow, prophetic flourish of his head — "the boys in this town says 'cause you come from

Zeeny and blacked Billy Kinzey's eye, 'at you think you're goin' to run things round here! And you'll find out you ain't the bosst o' this town!" and the cross-eyed boy shook his head again with dire foreboding.

"Looky here, Cocky!" said The Boy from Zeeny, trying to focus a direct gaze on the boy's delusive eyes, "w'y don't you talk straight out from the shoulder? I reckon 'the boys in this town,' as you call 'em, didn't send you round here to tell me what they was goin' to do! But ef you want to take it up fer 'em, and got any sand to back you, jest say it, and I'll come down there and knock them durn twisted eyes o' yourn straight ag'in!"

"Yes, you will!" muttered the cross-eyed boy, with dubious articulation, glancing uneasily up the alley.

"What?" growled The Boy from Zeeny, thrusting one dangling leg farther out the window, supporting his weight by the palms of his hands, and poised as though about to spring — "what 'id you say?"

"Didn't say nothin'," said the cross-eyed boy, feebly; and then, as a sudden and most bewildering smile lighted up his defective eyes, he exclaimed: "Oh, I tell you what le's do! Le's me and you git up a show in your stable, and don't let none o' the other boys be in it! I kin turn a handspring like you, and purt' nigh walk on my hands; and you kin p'form on the slack-rope — and spraddle out like the `inja-rubber man' — and hold a pitch-

fork on yer chin-and stand up on a horse 'ithout a-holdin' — and — and — Oh! ever'thing!" And as the cross-eyed boy breathlessly concluded this list of strong attractions, he had The Boy from Zeeny so thoroughly inoculated with the enterprise that he warmly closed with the proposition, and the preparations and the practise for the show were at once inaugurated.

Three hours later, an extremely cross-eyed boy, with the freckles of his face thrown into vivid relief by an intense pallor, rushed pantingly into the doctor's office with the fateful intelligence that The Boy from Zeeny had "fell and broke his arm ag'in." And this time, as it seemed, the hapless boy had surpassed the seriousness of all former fractures, this last being of a compound nature, and very painful in the setting, and tedious in recovery; the recovery, too, being anything but perfect, since it left the movement of the elbow somewhat restricted, and threw the little fellow's arm into an unnatural position, with the palm of the hand turned forward as he walked. But for all that, the use of it was, to all appearances, little impaired.

Doubtless it was through such interludes from rough service as these accidents afforded that The Boy from Zeeny had acquired the meager education he possessed. The doctor's wife, who had from the first been kind to him, grew to like him very much. Through her gentle and considerate interest he was stimulated to study by the occasional present of a

simple volume. Oftentimes the good woman would devote an hour to his instruction in the mysteries of the book's orthography and rhetoric.

Nor was The Boy from Zeeny a dull pupil, nor was he an ungrateful one. He was quick to learn, and never prouder than when a mastered lesson gained for him the approbation of his patient instructor.

The history of The Boy from Zeeny, such as had been gathered by the doctor and his wife, was corroborative in outline with the brief hint of it communicated to the curious listeners at the rear window of the doctor's office on the memorable day of the boy's first appearance in the town. He was without family, save a harsh, unfeeling father, who, from every evidence, must have neglected and abused the child most shamefully, the circumstantial proof of this fact being evidenced in the boy's frank acknowledgment that he had repeatedly "run away" from him, and his still firm resolve to keep his name a secret, lest he might thereby be traced to his present security and fall once more into the hands of his unnatural parent.

Certain it was that the feelings of all who knew the lad's story showed hearty sympathy with him, and when one morning it was rumored that The Boy from Zeeny had mysteriously disappeared, and the rumor rapidly developed into an unquestionable fact, there was a universal sense of regret in the little town, which in turn resolved itself into positive indignation when it was learned from the doc

tor that an explanation, printed in red keel on the back of a fragment of circus-poster, had been found folded and tucked away an the buckle-strap of his horse's bridle. The somewhat remarkable communication, in sprawling capitals, ran thus:

"PAPS GOT ME AGIN. I HAF TO GO. DAM HIM. DOC TEL HER TO KEEP MY BOOCKS. GOOD BY. I FED OLE CHARLY. I FED HIM OTES AND HA AN CORN. HE WONT NEED NO MORE FER A WEAK. AN BRAND TO. DOC TEL HER GOOD BY."

It was a curious bit of composition — uncouth, assuredly, and marred, maybe, with an unpardonable profanity — but it served. In the silence and gloom of the old stable, the doctor's fingers trembled as he read, and the good wife's eyes, peering anxiously above his heaving shoulder, filled and overflowed with tears.

I wish that it were in the veracious sequence of this simple history to give this wayward boy back to the hearts that loved him, and that still in memory enshrine him with affectionate regard; but the hapless lad — the little ragged twelve-year-old that wandered out of nowhere into town, and wandered into nowhere out again — never returned. Yet we who knew him in those old days — we who were children with him, and, in spite of boyish jealousy and petty bickerings, admired the gallant spirit of the lad — are continually meeting with reminders of him; the last instance of which, in my own experience, I can not refrain from offering here:

For years I have been a wanderer from the dear

old town of my nativity, but through all my wanderings a gracious fate has always kept me somewhere in its pleasant neighborhood, and, in consequence, I often pay brief visits to the scenes of my long-vanished boyhood. It was during such a visit, but a few short years ago, that remembrances of my lost youth were most forcibly recalled by the progress of the county fair, which institution I was permitted to attend through the kindness of an old chum who drove me over in his buggy.

Although it was not the day for racing, we found the track surrounded by a dense crowd of clamorous and applauding people.

"What does it mean?" I asked my friend, as he guided his horse in and out among the trees toward the edge of the enclosure.

"It's Professor Andrus, I suspect," he answered, rising in the buggy as he spoke, and peering eagerly above the heads of the surging multitude.

"And who's Professor Andrus?" I asked, striking a match against the tire of the now stationary buggy-wheel, and lighting the stump of my cigar.

"Why, haven't you heard of the famous Professor?" he answered, laughingly — immediately adding in a serious tone: "Professor Andrus is the famous `horse-tamer' who has been driving the country absolutely wild here for two or three days. Stand up here where you can see!" he went on, excitedly.

"Yonder he comes! Isn't that splendid?"

And it was.

Across the sea of heads, and facing toward us

down the track, I caught sight of a glossy span of horses that in their perfect beauty of symmetry, high heads and tossing manes looked as though they were just prancing out of some Arabian dream. The animals seemed nude of rein or harness, save only a jeweled strap that crossed the breast of each, together with a slender trace at either side connecting with a jaunty little phaeton whose glittering wheels slivered the sunshine into splinters as they spun. Upon the narrow seat of the airy vehicle sat the driver. No lines were wound about his hands — no shout or lash to goad the horses to their telling speed. They were simply directed and controlled by the graceful motions of a long and slender whip which waved slowly to and fro above their heads. The great crowd cheered the master as he came. He arose deliberately, took off his hat, and bowed. The applause was deafening. Still standing, he whizzed past us and was gone. But something in the manner of the handsome fellow struck me with a strange sense of familiarity. Was it the utter disregard of fear that I saw on his face? Was it the keenness of the eye and the perfect self-possession of the man? Or was it — was it the peculiar way in which the right arm had dropped to his side after his salute to us while curving past us, and did I fancy, for that reason, that the palm of his hand turned forward as he stood?

"Clear the track, there!" came a far voice across the ring. — "Don't cross there, in God's name! Drive back!"

The warning evidently came too late. There was an instant's breathless silence, then a far-away, pent-sounding clash, then utter havoc in the crowd: The ropes about the ring were broken over, and a tumultuous tide of people poured across the ring, myself borne on the very foremost wave.

"Jest the buggy smashed, that's all!" cried a voice. "The hosses hain't hurt — ner the man."

The man referred to was the Professor. I caught a glimpse of him as he rose from the grassy bank where he had been flung. He was very pale, but calm. An uncouth man brought him his silk hat from where it had rolled in the dust.

"Wish you'd just take this handkerchief and brush it off," said the Professor; "I guess I've broke my arm."

It was The Boy from Zeeny.