Johnny Thompson

“ As the operator’s startled senses directed his attention to Johnny’s cubby-hole, and his eyes took in at a glance the full horror of the situation, he stood paralyzed with fear.
His chair overturned, Johnny Thompson lay crumpled on the floor. A shadowy figure reached up and crushed his light as a child might a bird’s egg. The same figure seized the police gong and hurled it through a window. Broken glass flew in every direction. A telephone followed the gong. ”

“ The one chosen by Johnny that night led through a soap factory. There the air was heavy with the clean, perfumed scent of soap.
A man in a shabby sheepskin coat received him in silence, motioned him to a place at the corner of a loaded elevator, clanged an iron gate, and set the elevator to sinking into the earth.
There is something deeply depressing about being lowered beneath the natural surface of the earth. Whether it be a well, a mine, a cave or a tunnel, it is all the same. Johnny Thompson was not free from this feeling of depression. ”

“ Johnny Thompson, young and vigorous, belonged to that ever-increasing army of American boys who realize that no person can fight his best in the battle of life unless he is physically fit. A strong swimmer, fast on his feet and limber as a hickory limb, Johnny was not the least skillful of boxers. ”

“ I have a place for my books and microscope in the chart room, and there I sit and read in the morning much as though I were in my rooms in Agar Street. My immediate superior, Johnny Thompson, is a long-headed good fellow without a morsel of humbug about him—a man whom I thoroughly respect, both morally and intellectually. I think it will be my fault if we are not fast friends through the commission. One friend on board a ship is as much as anybody has a right to expect. ”

“ Scarcely less heroic was a lone gray figure, traveling in the opposite direction. With unerring instinct this gray form followed back over the trail Johnny and his team had traveled. This lone gray figure was only that of a dog; but even a dog, with a purpose, may become a hero.
* * * * * * * *
Once more in Johnny Thompson’s mind, as he felt the strange gray plane whose pilot he had not so much as seen go thundering on, many questions whirled round and round. Why, why was he a captive? Why was D’Arcy Arden here? ”

“ So He gave him a woman to be his companion. Johnny Thompson had read that old Book. He had learned, too, by experience that a man and woman, or boy and girl, fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, will go farther along the road to success in any endeavor than will either alone. It will not seem strange, then, that as he launched forth on a fresh adventure, as he prepared to carry forward the business of solving the mysteries back of the sinister events that had led to the downfall of his good friends Drew Lane and Tom Howe, he should think first of securing a partner for this adventure. ”

“ There was little sleeping that night in Johnny Thompson’s tent at the back of his booth, at the “Greatest of all Carnivals.” True, Johnny remained in the tent to doze off at times. Drew Lane and his partner spent their time in scouting about searching for clues that might lead them to the whereabouts of Greasy Thumb and his gang.
Once, while Johnny was alone, he drew the roll of bills from his pocket.
“What am I to do with these?” he asked himself. “Give them to that truck farmer? Simple enough. But where is he? Where does he live?” ”

“ The words of a great man came to her. “No situation in life is ever so bad but that it might be worse.”
* * * * * * * *
“What,” you may be asking by this time, “have the adventures of a girl from Kansas to do with Johnny Thompson and his friends?” The answer is: “A great deal.” In the first place, Drew Lane, having discovered this little lady while traveling in a bus, was not the sort to desert her in her plight. In the second place, an invisible finger of light moving across the sky was destined to join the fates of Johnny Thompson and Grace Krowl. ”

“ Whether Johnny's image occupied her thoughts, to the exclusion of the huge yellow birch she was one day chopping, or that the wicked genius who takes delight in thwarting the course of true love had caught her guardian angel asleep on his post, I know not; but certain it is, that in an evil hour she miscalculated the cut, and was thoughtlessly continuing her work, when the birch, overbalancing, split upwards, and the side nearest to Mary, springing suddenly out, struck her a blow so severe as to destroy life instantaneously. ”

“ And, as his startled eyes stared fixedly at it, the thing shot downward.
CHAPTER V "FRIEND? ENEMY?"
Johnny Thompson, before he joined the army, had been considered one of the speediest men of the boxing ring. His brain worked like lightning, and every muscle in his body responded instantly to its call. Johnny had not lost any of his speed. It was well that he had not, for, like a spinning car-wheel, he rolled over twice before the hook buried itself to the end of its barb in the pungent plank on which he had reclined an instant before. ”

“ An inch of white steel, a knife blade, protruded from the short person’s sleeve as he muttered menacingly, “Stand where you are!”
[28] CHAPTER II
SOMETHING RATHER TERRIBLE
Johnny Thompson was no weakling. He was a lightweight boxer. He had made his way over the frozen wastes of Alaska and through the jungles of Central America and many other wild places as well. This city held little terror for him.
As he faced the two strangers in the semi-darkness of the street, he considered tackling the little man.
“If I tackle low I’ll catch him off his guard, bowl him over like a tenpin. ”

“ Johnny Thompson was as nearly as possible a perfect physical being. Having been taught from childhood the necessity of physical well-being and muscular prowess to the business man as well as to the mechanic or professional athlete, he had kept himself fit and had never neglected an opportunity to learn some new trick or turn on the wrestling mat or gymnasium floor. ”

“ After a hurried breakfast Johnny went up to Kane's and found an air of tension and suspicion. Men were going in and out of the door through the partition and the half-friendly smiles which he had received the night before were everywhere missing. Feeling the chill of his reception did not blunt his powers of observation, for he saw that both Red Thompson and Bill Long, being unaccredited strangers, drew an occasional suspicious glance. ”

“ I have a left arm that goes back on me when I row hard and long. Got a bullet there once. But you’ll make it all right. You’ll make it. Never fear.”
[236] CHAPTER XXV
THE TRAIL LEADS NORTH
After leaving Drew Lane’s room, Johnny Thompson had walked the streets for hours. He needed to think. He could think best while walking, so he walked.
He had gone back on a man he thought of as a friend. Or had he? At least, it appeared that way to him now. Does there ever come a time when it is one’s duty to turn his back upon a friend? A hard question. ”

“ And roomatiz,” returned Johnny, and vanished within. After a moment’s pause, he added in the dark, apparently from under the bedclothes—“And biles!”
There was an embarrassing silence. The men looked at each other and at the fire.
Even with the appetising banquet before them, it seemed as if they might again fall into the despondency of Thompson’s grocery, when the voice of the Old Man, incautiously lifted, came deprecatingly from the kitchen.
“Certainly! Thet’s so. In course they is. A gang o’ lazy drunken loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen’s the ornariest of all. ”

“ George then said, “Mother, don’t grieve for me, it is for no crime that I have done; it is only because I was to be free. But if you will please send to Washington, as soon as possible, and ask Mr. Brown, the gentleman that [Pg 64] I lived with, to buy me, I know he will gladly do so. Tell him I have one hundred and fifty dollars in my trunk, in my room at the hotel, which he can use towards paying for me.”
The old woman hastened from New Market, which lies on the eastern shore of Maryland, between Cambridge and Vienna, to her own home, a distance of fifteen miles. ”

“ On the way the constable said to me, “John, I always thought you was a good negro; what have you been doing? You ought to behave so well as not to need whipping.”
I replied, “I have done nothing wrong, and if I am whipped, it shall be the last time on that farm?”
“What will you do?” asked Mr. Barber. “Run away,” I answered. “When we are done with you, you will not be able to run far,” said he. “Well sir, if you whip me so that I am unable to walk, I can do you no good; but if I can walk, I will take the balance of the year to myself, and go home to my mistress, at Christmas.” ”

“ But the evidence seems to be against probabilities. Thompson succumbed completely to the influence of the great genius whose temper and circumstances of life were singularly like his own. Experiments in laudanum were made and habits contracted which accentuated a natural unfitness to wrestle with the practical problems of getting on and rendered family intercourse drearier than ever.
In 1885, when he was twenty-six years old, Francis decided to leave home. After a week in Manchester he requested and received from his father the price of a railway ticket for London. ”

“ Miss Thompson, in her fawn-coloured coat and skirt, feathered hat and spotted veil, was a tall, slim, graceful figure, ready now to adorn the hired landau from Mr. Young's livery stables. Her hair was dark and her complexion naturally pallid; with a long straight nose in a narrow face, she resembled her dead father, but what was sheep-like and stupid in him was rather pretty in the girl;—altogether, a decent-looking, fairly attractive young woman of twenty-two, but not likely to obtain from the world at large the gaze of admiring satisfaction with which an adoring mother regarded her. ”

“ Thompson watched the man until he vanished in a cloud of dust far out on the trail.
"Best doggone preacher ever was born," he vouchsafed. "He can ride, an' shoot, an' rope, an' everything a man ort to. An' if anyone's sick! Well, he's worth all the doctors an' nurses in the State of Montany. He'll make you git well just 'cause he wants you to. An' they ain't nothin' too much trouble—an' they ain't no [154] work too hard for him to tackle. There ain't no piousness stickin' out on him fer folks to hang their hat on, neither. ”

“ He early gave evidence of great skill in debate. In 1859 he entered the office of Henry Pryor, attorney, and, learning shorthand, was employed as a reporter in the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia. He was called to the bar in January 1865. He soon acquired a good practice, but still kept his work as a reporter in the assembly, becoming in 1867 reporter in chief. This experience proved valuable to him. Having become an alderman of Halifax and chairman of the school commissioners, Thompson in December 1877 entered the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia as member for Antigonish. ”

“ Thompson felt and evinced in his every word and act. Few home-born lovers of our country have done a tithe as much as he did to save her from the ruin she was bringing upon herself by her recreancy to the fundamental principles, upon which she professed to stand. Not a dozen names, of those who have lived within the last forty years, deserve to stand higher on the list of our public benefactors than the name of George Thompson. ”

“ It was not long before many of his friends gave up trying altogether and let Private Thompson do it all for them. It is even rumoured that on occasions men in distant parts of the line would send for him so that he might come and give adequate expression to feelings which they felt to be beyond their range. ”

“ Another short poem sees the newsboys in Fleet Street shouting the news of the end of the world, and the awful return of God. The writers seem unconsciously to have sought to make a poem as large as a revelation, while it was nearly as short as a riddle. And though Francis Thompson himself was rather in the Elizabethan tradition of amplitude and ingenuity, he could write separate lines that were separate poems in themselves:—
"And thou, what needest with thy tribe's black tents,
Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?" ”

“ Being appointed captain's coxswain and valet suited Thompson to a nicety, and it was amusing to see how he adapted himself to his new position, as from a merry wag he suddenly quieted down into a solemn-looking fellow. We hardly need say this was all assumption on his part, but "quiet dignity tinged with a slight shade of melancholy" he considered the correct sort of thing for the role, and no one who saw him recognized the gay and festive youth of old times.
"Promotion's ruined Thompson," said the boatswain to Price. "He ain't hisself. I shouldn't wonder if he goes into a consumption." ”

“ Thompson said his sensations were similar to those of Captain Cook or Herman Melville when they first landed to skim the cream of the fairy islands of the Pacific.
I was deeply moved, and gave tongue at once. "It is sad to think that these unsophisticated, uninflated people must undergo the change civilization brings with it. The time will come when the evil spirit that presides over watering-places will descend upon this dear little village, and say to the inhabitants that henceforth they must catch men. Neatness, cheapness, good-feeling, will vanish ”