T. S. Stribling

“ There must be hundreds of poets in our state penitentiaries.
Down-stairs a clock began to strike six, but was drowned in a chorus of hoarse whistles from furnaces, smelters and reduction plants. Through his dormer window, Sim saw Mount Massive turn russet against a green sky of infinite depth. The air grew cold by swift gradations. Between the bats of Sim's eyes, the street lights winked into brilliance and formally ended the day.
At half-past six, Adele came to the attic door and told Sim supper was ready. ”

“ A whisper out of the shadows of some elms gave the fugitive another turn until he recognized the voice of Peter McGillicuddy. Peter was saying,
“Ain't the dogs bad to-night, Sim?”
A moment later Peter's big form materialized out of the darkness. The presence of his comrade reassured Sim. He did not chide the big fellow for unpunctual earliness, although it was condemned by Orsino, that philosopher ennobled by many murders.
“Sure are.”
“Wonder what's got into 'em?”
“Instinct. A dog can tell a bad man, Lengthy, every pop—dogs and babies.” ”

“ Irene looked up at his flushed face and shining eyes— “Oh, nothing! It was a joke.”
“That's a mighty solemn thing to joke about, Mizziz Petway—you—you are not cynical, are you, Mizziz Petway?”
“No. I'm divorced now.”
Sim spent a moment on this, but decided that it meant nothing, mere girlish chatter, disconnected. So he proceeded to strike deep intellectual chords:
“Well, I'm glad you ain't cynical, Mizziz Petway. Won't do for a woman to be cynical—especially before marriage,” He looked down at her. “But you've been married! That don't seem reasonable to me that you've been married. ”

“ That it's really best to marry young—especially men should marry young, Sim—fellows like before—well, before they know such an awful lot about women—” she broke off and looked up at the boy earnestly, appraisingly.
A queer warm sensation swept over Sim. He felt himself admitted to an intimacy, a nearness, he had never known before. Then under her scrutiny, there crept into him an unhappy sense of deceit. His face reddened.
“But—uh—Mizziz Petway!” ”

“ As he dived, a foot smashed Sim on the chest and stopped his breathing. But the boy flung his arms around it, froze to it. The foot shook Sim back and forth, so the youngster's head snapped to and fro, and the jewelry-store seemed to jiggle in every direction. With a gasp and a wrench, Sim twisted his body to one side of that terrible foot and flung himself into the little man's crotch. He wriggled within range of the head and began a furious bastinado with clenched fists. At every lick the head bobbed down.
“Leggo Lengthy! Turn Lengthy loose!” he shrieked at the owner of the head. ”

“ Peter eased an aching leg. “I say, Shorty—you're fonder of married life than I'd be.”
That recalled to Sim why he had come. He immediately roused and grew dithyrambic. “Lengthy, it's love—you don't know what love is, Lengthy. Just for a smile from her, Lengthy, I'd wade into fire, drink boiling lead—God knows I wish her house would get on fire so I could run in and— Geeminy!”
For at that moment Adele's hooks gave way and she plumped down on the ground. She started a sleepy crying, but Sim leaned over, picked her up, petted her, told her not to cry, and asked if she didn't want to go home. ”

“ Right then I thought, 'Old Goodloe, I'll git even with you for talking about the purtiest, sweetest little girl in Leadville in any such way—I'll kill your little old mean pups!' And I'm going to!”
Adele's eyes were brilliant at the affront. At that moment, Mr. Goodloe, the jeweler lost a friend, whom he was destined never to regain. A distaste for the kindly old man would linger in the heart of the grown-up Miss Breen long after she had forgot how it came to be planted there.
“Don't let a policeman catch you, Sim.” ”

“ Ordinarily, Sim would have stopped and by whistles and cooing, and by tentative offers of his hand, he would have reminded the brute that, a long time ago, an epoch or two, say in the Devonian age, the dog's forebears and Sim's forebears made a firm alliance against all the other animals of the globe, and from that good day, dog and man have been comrades and lovers. ”

“ Sim drew a breath, somewhat relieved, somewhat jealous. “I was afraid you was about to get cynical again. You know I can't stand a cynical woman, Mizziz Petway. It's all right for us men, being cynical is. We got to go up against the cold, hard world, Mizziz Petway, but a woman—uh—uh something wrong—I read that in that book.” ”

“ Stribling is one of the very few people who can write understandingly about young folks in the terrifically serious years just before twenty, and this romance of Sim Toyne, aged seventeen, is as real as your own youth.
SUCCESSFULLY to live down his seventeenth year, a boy should be equipped with a mother, a sister, a shotgun, a husky man friend, a wise altruistic girl friend and a watchful police. ”

“ Sim's face changed. “Sure—sure. Irene gets it.” He kept forgetting Irene at intervals. “Well, now look here, Lengthy, if ever I can do anything for you, s'long as I'm above ground. Lengthy, call on me—for anything. I'm yours till Niagara Falls—”
“Oh it's nothing—nothing—” brushed aside Peter gruffly, very uncomfortable under such stress—— “nothing a tall. Now lemme see. We want some padding to go around this brick——”
“Sure!” Sim moved to the door, also glad of the relief. He opened it and called lustily down-stairs: “Mrs. Breen! Oh Mrs. Breen!” ”

“ A click in the receiver told Sim that his comrade had hung up and was speeding toward the rendezvous.
The grocer, who was vaguely affronted that a boy should come in and howl “graveyard” over his wire, lost count of his eggs completely as Sim shot out the door.
The human embryo, it is said, reproduces every physical form assumed by its forebears from protozoa to primate; children, likewise, skim through a synopsis of the mental and moral development of mankind from pithecanthropus to profiteers.
A quaint and a curious thing is humanity's moral development. ”

“ Sim rose in brisk disgust. “Well, the next point is to wrap up that brick to smash the window.”
“Look here, Shorty,” said Peter, coming to life, “I've been thinking about smashing that window—that's giving old man Goodloe a pretty rotten deal, Shorty—bustin' out his big plate-glass window. Old man Goodloe's been pretty decent to us, Shorty, the time our baseball busted out one of his little windows—when we were kids.” ”

“ Sim Toyne owned the dog and gun. He received his pro rata of police surveillance. Doll Breen was husky enough. Mrs. Breen, if not his real mother, had corrected the misdeal by long devotion. But the when it came to a wise altruistic girl-friend, Sim Toyne rocked along in the same boat with the other fifty-odd million American males.
Technically Mrs. Irene Petway was no longer a girl. Her title precluded that. Besides at twenty-four a woman is as set in life's mold as a man at thirty-six. However, if not a kitten, Mrs. Irene was kittenish. ”

“ Sim let her have them. Through that human impulse to keep on trying to do a task when all hope is lost, the trio continued down the street toward the scene of the robbery.
THE police of Leadville, and of all other cities in general, have a reputation for sleeping on their beats, for loafing in all-night groceries, and for dependable absenteeism when lawlessness is afoot. These ideas are fostered by the movies, vaudeville sketches and Sherlock Holmes tales. ”

“ The two boys stared after the officer's broad back.
“Can you beat it?” gasped Peter.
“Lengthy,” philosophized Sim gloomily, “they come into this world able to put it across——”
The burglars arose slowly from their cramped position and hobbled around to the front of Goodloe's jewelry-store.
Goodloe's show-window was a big plate-glass front, flanked by a tall narrow-glass side; and this side formed part of the alcove of the doorway. ”

“ The reason why the police are kept very much in the background of such works is because the inopportune appearance of a cop in the front pages of our picaresque novels would have ruined many a fine romance.
Sim Toyne subscribed to these articles of faith. Therefore when the hobbledehoy peered around Wilson's grocery at the junction of Bonanza and Santa Cruz he was amazed to see Mike Callahan, whom he knew very well, patrolling back and forth in front of Goodloe's jewelry-store. The three crept into the concealing shadow of some banana cases and squatted, looking at Mike. ”

“ At seventeen a boy's career teeters between the White House at Washington and a gray, rather somber house at Leavenworth. A push, a mere nudge at the right moment in the selected direction, is decisive. ”

“ Our jails and penitentiaries are nothing more than selective groupings of men whose answer to this perennial query was out of date—it isn't done that way now; our palaces and mansions are selective groupings of other men who did not misplace the tense of their intents—more like this. ”

“ Sim scratched his head. “I'd thought of that, too.” The burglar stared unseeingly at three cocoons which had lain on his window-shelf ever since the foregoing summer in the fading hope that they would turn into butterflies. “Tell you what I b'lieve I'll do, Lengthy. When—er—me and her are a good safe way down in Mexico, I think I'll send old man Goodloe a check, in disguised handwriting, to pay for his window—I don't want old man Goodloe to lose nothing on this deal.” ”

“ It was Sim's misfortune continually to underestimate Adele's mental resources.
“Wha-a-at! Don't know what you're going to do with it—how did you know you wanted a tow sack?”
An anecdote Sim had once heard gave him a loophole.
“Why, didn't you ever hear of Thomas A. Edison, Adele?” he asked brightly. “Edison never started experimenting until he had ever'thing, simply ever'thing. He would give fifty dollars to anybody who could just mention anything he didn't have. And a girl—about your size—won his fifty. Guess what she mentioned?”
“Don't know—what's that brick for?” ”

“ In our profession, Lengthy, a fellow mustn't loiter around waiting for nobody. It would draw suspicion on both of 'em.”
The tall boy became silent again and stationary, with shoulder and head tilted parallel to the rafter.
The plat Peter received was merely a rough sketch of Leadville showing the location of Goodloe's jewelry store. It was territory which had been strange and uncharted to Peter only once in his life, when at the age of four he ran away from his mother. ”

“ But he didn't want to appear blasé—as he was—not at just this critical juncture. So he joined Mrs. Irene's infectious laugh—at the boys. And they walked up to the show-window having the best time possible.
THE attraction in the window of Goodloe's jewelry store was a large ruby set on blue velvet. Two brass shells, an English and an American flag were spaced so they led the eye to the jewel. In the corner of the window was an art card bearing this legend:
The gem on exhibition, known as the Rajah's Ruby, was mined in Ceylon for Bandomoy, the Rajah of Bhawalpur. ”

“ Adolescent seventeen is somewhere in the robber-knight period of civilization. The reason why boys of this age are not hanged is because ninety-nine per cent. of the robberies, murders, arsons and piracies they commit are mental. Seventeen is too brief to crowd into action such a plethora of violence. ”