Riggs

“ I whispered to Riggs, and made way for him at the scuttle peephole.
"Blast him!" raged Riggs as he saw the scene on the bridge. "I never thought I would live to see the like of that!"
"But how does he keep her engines going? The fireroom crew must know what has happened," I said.
"What's left of 'em do," said Riggs. "He's likely got a few men below who think they will get a share of the loot if they keep up steam. Perhaps the Filipino chief is at his post keeping the chinkies going—leave that to the devil on the bridge—he knows his game." ”

“ Riggs had become quite dramatic, and was again leaning forward looking me straight in the eyes.
"Well, I stood fast, and he cursed me out and left me, and I began to feel that after all maybe I was a fool. I hadn't let my wife know where I was, but now I wrote to her, and she came right down and comforted me. A brave little woman she is, too. And what was more, she said that a nice young lawyer had just moved into our house and had the flat below, and she would go and get him. ”

“ I can't get myself to give enough thought to how you ought to hold a tea-cup."
⁠"Oh, those things don't matter--they don't matter! Besides, everybody likes you--only you're so terribly cautious that you never let them see the force and courage and all that wonderful sweet dear goodness that's in you. And as for your manners--heaven knows I'm no P. G. Wodehouse valet. But I'll teach you all I know."
⁠"Claire, I appreciate it a lot but---- I'm not so darn sure I want to learn. I'm getting scared. I watched that bird named Riggs here today. ”

“ Excuse me, but I must insist upon THIS, and that you dropped down upon me and Sadie Collinson exactly as you have dropped down here upon her husband."
"Enough of this!" said Riggs angrily. "I admit the woman is part and parcel of the gang, and gets her share,—or you get it for her," he added sneeringly; "but that doesn't permit her to mix herself with my family affairs."
"Pardon me again," interrupted Chivers softly. ”

“ A.L. Riggs, D.D., of Santee Mission and Normal School; Rev. T.L. Riggs of Oahe, or rather the apostle to the Tetons, were the life of the meetings whether in English or Dakota. They came from and returned to the work to which their lives are given. I did not meet these men with the greetings of a certain minister there, who asked, "How many years have you been in the Indian work." "About twenty," was the reply. Then the minister said: "Well, you have been in the work so long that you would not be much good anywhere else." ”

“ I'm not afraid of men in daylight.... Nell, did you ever see such a wonderful looking fellow? What'd they call him? Milt—Milt Dale. He said he lived in the woods. If I hadn't fallen in love with that cowboy who called me—well, I'd be a goner now.”
After an interval of silence Bo whispered, startlingly, “Wonder if Harve Riggs is following us now?”
“Of course he is,” replied Helen, hopelessly.
“He'd better look out. Why, Nell, he never saw—he never—what did Uncle Al used to call it?—sav—savvied—that's it. Riggs never savvied that hunter. ”

“ Riggs and her husband took possession of their one-room home they had much difficulty in making it comfortable, as they had been unable to bring on their furniture and domestic utensils. One person, however, lent them a kettle, another provided them with a pan, and bit by bit they collected the most necessary articles.
In the East missionaries have never experienced a difficulty in obtaining servants, but in Dakota neither male nor female Sioux would enter the Riggs' service. Consequently Mrs. Riggs had to perform all the household duties. ”

“ She has been a christian from early womanhood, is a member of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, one of a corps of teachers who are making its Sabbath-school a success. She is a talented speaker. Her home is in her brother's elegant residence on Portland Heights, Portland Mr. and Mrs. Riggs are childless, but they have adopted three orphan children. ”

“ Riggs’ three full-length plays are the work of a young man who is still close enough to his youth to remember and understand those fleeting moments of exaltation and depression that constitute the glory and the tragedy of adolescence. In Big Lake, more especially than in A Lantern To See By and Sump’n Like Wings, Mr. Riggs has been able on occasion to look at the world about him through the eyes of a child: can you not feel in the second scene of the first act something of the wonder and terror of the more wildly romantic stories of the Brothers Grimm? ”

“ MRS. ADELAIDE RIDEOUT RIGGS. A beautiful life has gone out from our work, taking from it one who was loved and admired by the Indian people as well as by her fellow-workers.
Mrs. Riggs was born in 1867 in Dorset, Vt., graduating in 1887 from the Western Reserve Seminary, and after spending two years in Bradford Academy, Mass., she came as a teacher to the Santee School, Nebraska, where she made herself exceedingly useful and was afterward employed by Dr. Riggs as his secretary. In 1893 she was married to Mr. ”

“ I reckon you're Nell Rayner, who got left all old Auchincloss's property.”
“No. I'm Bo Rayner. Nell is my sister. She owns the ranch. Beasley wanted her.”
Anson cursed deep and low. Under his sharp, bristling eyebrows he bent cunning green eyes upon Riggs.
“Say, you! Is what this kid says so?”
“Yes. She's Nell Rayner's sister,” replied Riggs, doggedly.
“A-huh! Wal, why in the hell did you drag her into my camp an' off up here to signal Beasley? He ain't wantin' her. He wants the girl who owns the ranch. Did you take one fer the other—same as thet day we was with you?” ”

“ The influence of a man like Riggs cannot be estimated. There is no way of computing this, but there is no person who will deny that he has been a power. He has not had his head turned by flattery. He has been “Riggs—of the Sun.”
One of Mr. Riggs’s last great pieces of newspaper work was a twenty-thousand-word history of national conventions which appeared in the Sun in 1912—the first history of its kind ever written. Mr. Riggs was also a frequent contributor to the editorial page.
Arthur Brisbane, when he became a Sun reporter in347 1882, was almost the youngest reporter the Sun had had ”

“ Griggs’ remarks roused the interest of all present, and at the end of half-an-hour, spent by the boys in washing the sand in a pool lower down, where they found a few scales of the rich metal, the journey was continued, Griggs leading, to where all further progress seemed impossible, for they were compelled to halt by the apparent closing-in of the gorge, which presented, in fact, an unclimbable precipice. ”

“ Griggs burst into a laugh that sounded like a horse's neigh. "Brace up, old man," he adjured me, slapping me on the back. "You don't seem to get on to my meaning, but you don't need to look like an idiot. I'll tell you the whole business."
Briefly, it seemed, he had happened to meet my friend Harold that day, and had mentioned his proposed visit to my farm; incidentally, a warm discussion had arisen. Harold had been convulsed with merriment at Griggs's conception of the extensive scope of my farming operations. ”

“ Griggs followed him, and came up with him just as he sat down upon a step beside one of the big stone posts, to take breath and light his pipe. The man looked up, touched his hat, smiled, and struck a sulphur match, which he applied to the tobacco in the red clay bowl before the sulphur was half burned out, after the manner of his kind.
"You have taken a walk, Signore," he observed, puffing away at the willow stem and watching the match.
"You walk fast, Stefanone," answered Griggs. "You can walk as fast as Lord Redin." ”

“ I wuzn’t as purty as her, but I uz young like her. Look at me now!
Butch
You’re talkin’. You’re puttin’ words together. Whut good are they to me? They won’t save my neck frum hangin’. You got to help me. If you got to talk, tell me whut to do. The Shuruff’ll be comin’ here. Whut’ll I say to him? They ain’t nuthin’ to say to him, unless you help me. I got a plan—
Elly
Not that boy!
Butch
You got to help me. They don’t keer who they hang in this country. One man’s as good as another fer hangin’. They don’t keer. But I do! I keer fer hangin’. It’s got to be some one else. ”

“ Big Lake is that rarest of things, a poetic drama that is at once poetry and drama. To one of his later plays Mr. Riggs has given the title Sump’n Like Wings, and I can think of no words that so accurately describe what I felt when, over a year ago, I read the manuscript of Big Lake. There is a winged lightness in the words that the poet puts into the mouths of his young people, an ecstasy born of the sheer joy of being alive. How poor a thing is the mere “observation” of a clever playwright beside the deeper, [Pg viii] more incisive and highly intuitive scenes in Big Lake! ”

“ But perhaps he invited you to his supper, for it is ordered."
And he laughed again. Griggs glanced at him once more, and then went quietly on towards his own door. He saw that the man had drunk too much, and the idea of bandying words in the attempt to rebuke him was distasteful. Griggs had very rarely lost his temper, so far as to strike a man, even in former days, and it had seemed to him of late that he could never be really angry [282] again. ”

“ Griggs, out by the ash barrel, with his hands in his pockets to keep them warm, dashed the boy’s hopes to the ground. “Got about through, Stephen? Then I guess you may hitch up, after all. The wind has gone down, and Mis’ Griggs is disappointed, and she thinks we better try it. You may get things ready as fast as you can; we ought to be off if we are going; then you’ll have a long warm day in the kitchen. ”

“ Piled in baskets upon the shore and lying in bluish wet lumps upon black rocks are the clothes; and the linen is stout indeed that resists the battering those furious workers give it—a heavy club, a powerful right arm, a rough bare stone in running water which contains not a little sand and never a trace of soap. Indeed, the more pieces one’s linen comes home in, the more certain he may be that he has a good laundress! ”

“ Half a dozen of them, headed by Jack Mullin, started on a tramp along shore, with their lunch in their hands. Two or three others borrowed a gun of Griggs and struck off inland.
“Let’s we have dinner over on that big rock,” suggested Dick. “The Point makes nearly out to it,—just one or two hops, and there you are.”
“Griggs says those low rocks and that strip of sand are all covered at high tide,” remarked Bill Finnegan.
“High fiddle-sticks!” said Will Carter, who never lost an opportunity of snubbing poor Bill. “Better wait till you’re asked for advice. ”

“ Only something struck me as being very funny. We don’t have to read the comic sections of the papers, Griggs. All we have to do is look for the comedy in our own lives.”
“Yes—Madame—I suppose so. But don’t you think you had better let me send for Marie? She will help you to your room. You are——”
“No, Griggs, I’ll pull myself together in a moment, and I’m not going to my room. I shall wait here until Miss Elinor or Mr. Howard come in.”
“But it is only ten-thirty,” Griggs protested, “and they may not come for hours.”
“Miss Elinor is bound to come in early. She is at the Thurstons’. ”

“ I’m a man. Let up!
Elly (goes away from him. Bitterly....)
You’re lower’n I thought you wuz. I never thought t’ be livin’ with a murderer. (He comes toward her.) Oh, I ain’t so good. I know. You don’t have t’ tell me. But I never thought t’ come t’ this. I thought I knowed w’at I uz gettin’ into when I went away with you. I knowed you uz a bootlegger. I didn’t keer. It’s clean. It’s right. But killin’ ... I stop at killin’! Why’d you go and do it? Why did you? Now they’ll come and take you. They’ll take you away from me!
Butch
Christ’s sake, shet up! They’d a-took me away fer bootleggin’. ”

“ Anybody, even the Shuruff a-lookin’ at him would know that that boy couldn’t do nuthin’ wrong, he couldn’t kill a man....
Butch
Elly!
Elly
He couldn’t even hurt any one’s feelin’s! And besides,—his story’s as good as yourn. They’d know w’at he said wuz the truth! You got to try some other plan, Butch. You got to try to get away. You got to sneak out in the woods an’ hide a day or two. I’ll take you grub t’ eat some way. Then when things blows over more we’ll light out fer Texas till they fergit all about us. You could hide close to the old sawmill some’er’s. ”

“ The boy members of the Guild amuse themselves and shock the beholder by pulling their ghastly masks awry, contorting their faces into uncouth grimaces, and winking portentously through the large eyeholes. ”

“ So long as the child lived, to do or die for him was the question, while life should last. But Paul Griggs defied fate, for fate's grim hand could not uproot his heart from the strong place of his great dead love, to buffet it and tear it again. He was alone, bodily, but he was safe forever.
Out of the dimness of twilight shadows the pale face came to him, and the sweet lips kissed his; in a light not earthly the dark eyes lightened, and the red auburn hair gleamed and fell about him. In the darkness, a tender hand stole softly upon his, and words yet more tender stirred the stillness. ”

“ Rigg is a widow, and has been ever since the memory of man, and concerning the original Mr. Rigg nothing is known; but, whoever he was, people take [97] more interest in the fact that his wife knows how to keep a good homely inn, called by Mrs. Rigg herself the “Royal Oak,” but known to all the neighbourhood as “Mrs. Rigg’s.” Mrs. R. herself is a tall, stout old lady with a false front and an imposing cap, and when she sits in the little bar parlour behind the steaming tea kettle, reading the Family Herald, she presents a picture of comfort not easily surpassed. ”