[Philip Verrill Mighels, A Nevada Samaritan, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, July 1905]

 

"MAHOMET HEARD THE SOLEMN PRONUNCIAMENTO OF THE SHERIFF IN SPEECHLESS AWE."

A NEVADA SAMARITAN

BY PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS

Author of " Bruvver Jim's Baby "

WITH PICTURES BY FREDERIC R. GRUGER

I

            HAD Mahomet Ben Ali's circus been furnished with fulminate, which had suddenly exploded, scattering horses, actors, wagons, and canvas in every conceivable direction, the utter annihilation of the show could scarcely have appeared more complete than it did this morning, at the edge of the small Nevada town of Alderville.

            To be sure, the improvised " ring " of turf and sand remained in place, and a few battered stakes and tent-poles marked the spot as one of previous activities, but of all the "superlative and glittering aggregation of marvels, wonders, and beauties " there was nothing left to exhibit save Mahomet himself and his big blind elephant Habiba.

            By the morning light they stood there, "hand in hand," deserted, forlorn, and wretched, Habiba with her great wrinkled trunk across Mahomet's arm, while her master clutched the shirt upon his body and vacantly stared into space.

            Once more, by the sickly light of dawn he beheld the demolition of his show—the wild, irresistible scramble of equestriennes, acrobats, drivers, clowns, and roustabouts to lay mad hands of possession on something in lieu of wages, and to flee the scene. On the horses, in the wagons, and even by foot, they had gone, snatching anything and everything in sight, and trooping forth by roads and trails, till not a stitch of even side-show canvas had been left behind.

            The one apparent consolation was that the town still stood in place. Alderville had been casually jotted down on the map, where cow-boy and mining country met. In addition to many saloons and two or three stores, it boasted a newspaper, court, and jail ; yet its real importance lay in the wisdom of its citizens. The proof of this was soon to come to Mahomet.

            The sheriff and half a dozen stalwarts of the town came hastening to the site whereon the show had briefly flourished, and served no fewer than thirteen attachments—levied on the elephant. Board-bills, hay-bills, and drink-bills comprised the majority of the claims, but no one in town who conceived himself in any manner

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whatsoever a benefactor of the vanished circus or its people had neglected to pounce upon Habiba.

            Mahomet heard the solemn pronunciamento of the sheriff in speechless awe. The thing was incredible ; a cataclysm like this could not be real.

            Stunned, unable to fathom a dread so utterly profound, Mahomet led the great blind beast away behind the long, slim minion of the law, obeying, as one in a trance, when the sheriff presently bade him house Habiba in a shed and tie her fast to a stake.

            Mechanically still he left the lorn big creature there and saw her locked inside.

            " She 's hungry, boss," he said at length. " She ought be having something for eating."

            "That 's all right, my friend," replied the sheriff ; " I'll send around a bag of peanuts and a bale of hay. And don't you try no game of clearin' out with the critter till these here bills are paid, fer it won't be healthy a minute. The law 's a-goin' to keep its eye on you, Mr. Mahomet, to see you don't pull up and skedaddle, like that there circus done in the night. So git away from the shed."

            Mahomet got away. He wandered idly down the street, too dazed to know why he went or where he was going. In his hand he held the notices of his thirteen-ply calamity. Vaguely, and for lack of a more enlightening employment, he looked the bundle through. At the end he wondered if any one in town possessing a business had neglected to sue out a writ.

            After a time he found himself staring at a sign, which he read and re-read, time after time, for no particular reason. It spelled out the legend :

            Mahomet could see no reason why such an office should exist in Alderville, till at last the fact entered the dim uncertainty of his cogitation that the " Enterprise " had advertised his circus in its columns and printed the dodgers tossed about the country. He owed this office money, yet where was the editor's attachment on Habiba ?

            Without requiring any specific reason, save that all the country editors he had ever known were generally penniless, and therefore sympathetic, he crossed the street and climbed the outside stairs to the sanctum of the publication.

            Now Post B. Nichols not only owned and edited, fathered .and mothered, nursed and carried the " Enterprise " alone, but he felt that he had a herd of other troubles into the bargain. He had, just two days before, received the worst of the bruises in a private affray of the heart in which Miss Ellen Watt had declared his hopes and aspirations to be silly, unwelcome, and futile. He listened attentively, nevertheless, to all that his visitor had to impart.

            There should have been something pathetic in Mahomet's tale, but Nichols was not apparently saddened.

            " I used to be an actor once myself," said he, with a grin. " I've been broke and abused and underfed and undershod and underestimated so many times I even forgot how to dream of turkey dinner. But don't you worry over what you owe the ' Enterprise.' We won't slap another attachment on the elephant, you can bank on that, and I 'll do what I can to help you out ; but I have n't got a cent to liquidate your bills."

            " No, no, no," said Mahomet, earnestly; " I do not expect. But maybe you have some work my elephant can do. She is wonderful animal. Habiba do everything but talk."

            " All pet animals can do everything but talk," agreed the editor. " But unless Habiba can get up copy or stick a little type, she could n't be of any use to me. Is she all they left you of the show ? "

            Mahomet raised his hands to heaven.

            " Allah ! She is all I have in the world ! " he said.

            " Seems too bad for the boys to freeze onto one poor elephant," Nichols mused aloud. " Where did you say they 've got her locked ? "

            Mahomet described the shed, which the editor knew. For a moment the ex-actor lost himself in thought.

            " Your proposition now is simply how to get Habiba out of the county," said he. " Could n't you tell her to break down the shed and head due north across the hills ? Once she gets over into Piute County, the courts here would have no jurisdiction."

"HE LISTENED ATTENTIVELY . . . TO ALL THAT HIS VISITOR HAD TO IMPART"

            Nichols's thoughts gravitated naturally to Piute County, for there Miss Ellen Watt had domicile.

            " I could get Habiba to break this shed," answered the saddened Mahomet. " She could come out, yes, but she is blind. She don't know this due north."

            " That 's so," agreed the editor. " But if you left the town and she broke out later, could n't she follow your trail ? "

            Mahomet shook his head. " She never is train' this way."

            " Then she ain't as smart as a dog," was Nichols's decision. " I 've got a dog that will go right over into Piute County, day or night, whenever he gets unfastened. I have to keep him chained up all the time. He 'll go to his old-time home from anywhere on earth."

            Mahomet could make no reply. Habiba's ways were not the ways of the canine family.

            The editor was thinking. A merry twinkle began to glow in his eyes. He presently said : " By George ! " Mahomet waited. " Look here," said Nichols ; " I think perhaps I can fix it, with the dog. Can you work up any plan to get your elephant to break down the shed and come outside, about twelve o'clock tonight ? "

            " If I could stan' outside this shed and speak Arabic love to Habiba, she will come out," replied Mahomet. " She will come out of a mountain if I speak this love in Arabic."

            "Yes, but if you go fooling around there the sheriff is going to see you, and the jig will be up," imparted Nichols. " That won't do. I 'll have to think." This he did. He added in a moment : " The only puzzle for us is to get Habiba out of the shed to-night without you being around."

            Mahomet felt a confidence in his editorial Samaritan. He did some fine Oriental thinking for a space of several minutes. Then he said :

            " You speak this Arabic ? "

            Nichols barely knew that " Habiba " had to do with love.

            " No," he said ; " not a word. But I guess I could learn a line or two, if it is n't any worse than Hamlet's soliloquy."

            " Ah —my friend ! my friend ! That is it ! " cried the suddenly exultant Mahomet. " You will learn this love in Arabic and speak it outside this shed to-night, and Habiba— she will come ! "

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            " All right ; that 's just the ticket," said Nichols. " Give me the lines."

            He wrote the jargon down, as Mahomet poured it forth. Such a mixture of Allahs and terms of endearment was certainly never before committed to paper. " Habib " and " Habiba " were employed in every accent, modulation, and construction of verbal caressing, affection, and partnership ; but that was all the editor could guess. He practised, twenty times or more, the voice, the tempo, and the intonation. His dormant powers of mimicry responded to his needs at once. A sharper, more fastidious beast than an elephant might have listened in vain for the tones whereby to detect the difference between the editor's speech and Mahomet's. And then the men shook hands.

            " Here 's a dollar to get you a breakfast," said the man with troubles of his own. "This afternoon you start for Piute County— Meadow's Ranch—by the road that leads due north from here, and tonight I 'll do the rest."

II

            As he sat alone in his dingy little office, Post B. Nichols chuckled warmly to himself for a time, and then became unduly sober. He was thinking of Ellen Watt and the severity of her indifference to his overtures. He shook his head in lugubrious melancholy, then got down to the task of carving up exchanges for the daily feast of news.

            Early in the evening, while the sun still illumined the valley, the editor went to the sheriff, accompanied by his dog. The vigorous little mongrel was held in leash by a light steel chain. He was not much to see, that dog, being a fuzzy little black-and-white combination of energy, audacity, intelligence, and plain doggishness, whose hold on Post B. Nichols's affections was nearly as stout as his own devotion to the far-off home of his puppyhood. He now proceeded to sniff about and otherwise appraise the sheriff, with more or less contempt in his deportment.

            " Say, Batts, look here," said Nichols, quietly ; " I 've got a certain interest in that elephant you locked in Borden's shed, and I want to leave Blix, my dog, in there to watch and give a warning if the circus-man should happen to sneak around and try to nail his beast."

            " He 's gone ; went and had a talk with

"THE BUILDING OPENED LIKE A BURSTING NUT"

"HE TOOK UPON HIMSELF THE WHOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF HABIBA'S TONS OF BULK"

his critter, and left this afternoon fer Piute County," said the sheriff. " Said he thought he might be able to raise some money from a friend and liquerdate the animile. I don't mind leavin' you put the dog on watch, but Mahomet ain't a-goin' to steal no elephant to-night."

            " He might come back, is what I had in mind," explained the editor.

            " That 's so," agreed Mr. Batts. " I was half-way thinkin' of that when I said I did n't mind your leavin' the dog. Here 's the key. You kin give it back this evenin', and go and tie the dog inside right off. I 've got to put fer home and supper. Elephant 's all fixed up and fed and watered fer the night."

            Nichols made his way to the shed at once. The great gray bulk of the elephant within the structure loomed prodigiously as Post and his dog entered the place. Blix immediately trotted to Habiba's bale of hay and saw the active, wrinkled trunk swing suddenly toward him. He could not move for doggish awe, but something was quickly vouchsafed his animal intelligence. The trunk was the elephant's all, in her blindness, and the rapid, accurate investigation that it gave to Blix was evidently assuring, for the half-scared visitor was received as a friend at once, and up against Habiba's mighty " hand of fellowship " he climbed in immediate confidence.

            Nichols meantime drew from his pocket a second chain, and snapping this to the other, fastened the end to the ring secured in Habiba's polished trunk.

            He left the strangely assorted chums together, locked the door, took the key to the sheriff's office, and went back again to the sanctum of the " Enterprise."

            Night came on, and with it troubles for the editor. The press broke down while the sheet was being printed, and Nichols wrought like a demon to annul the untoward calamity.  He won in the struggle with the obstinate mechanism, but when he had finished, the hour was four in the morning, and Habiba, Mahomet, Blix, and even Ellen Watt had been utterly forgotten. Worn, but triumphant, the man was the last to leave the office. Then he finally thought of the prisoned elephant.

            Already the morning was coming and the world was emerging from darkness. Fearing he might be too late for the execution of his plan, Nichols hurried to Borden's shed, beating his memory hotly as he went, to conjure back the rigmarole Mahomet had taught him the previous day.

            There, with all his arts and sympathies combined in the effort, he raised his voice and sung out the abracadabra — Mahomet's honeyed string of love-words, coaxings, and wooings.

            For a moment nothing happened. With subtler mimicry Nichols spoke again. Then, with one mighty quiver and rending and crashing, the building opened like a burst-

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ing nut, with splinters of beams and boards all raggedly bulging out from the center, and there was Habiba, stalking from the wreckage; bearing upon her massive back a swaying frame of planks that presently fell to the ground.

            Nichols stood stiffly and stared. His gaze was searching the scene in a swift, worried way for his dog. Then he saw him. Blix was on hand, leaping to the fore at once, in terror of the huge eruption.

            The blind elephant halted uncertainly, raised her trunk, and swept it about as if to feel for a presence. She sounded a shrill little trumpet—her answer to Mahomet Ben Ali, master, lover, and friend. Nichols watched her silently as she wavered a little in her tracks and swung her ponderous head. Already Blix was straining at his chain. As if the intelligent beast presently remembered what Mahomet had told her in his " talk " the afternoon before, she put out her trunk, and, feeling the chain, hesitated only for a moment longer, then suffered herself to be led away by the dog.

            True to his homing instinct, Blix was headed "due north," for the place of his birth, a good ten miles away in Piute County. It was this on which Nichols had counted. The dog began to lead with all his might ; he tugged at Habiba in a fever of impatience. He fairly had a list to port, so mightily did he strain.

            Leisurely, quietly, out to the road swung Habiba, like a great dark ship in tow of a tug, for Blix was hotly panting and choking in his superabundant earnestness of purpose. He gouged out the sand of the highway in his lusty scheme of propulsion ; he took upon himself the whole responsibility of Habiba's tons of bulk, as if he felt that he was dragging her bodily. His feet slipped from under him, he lost a heap of motion, but he scrambled forward in an effort to go a hundred times faster than Habiba meant to walk. His one idea was to get to his old-time home.

            Out through the sage-brush, lining the road, the blind and the faithful proceeded, while Nichols, greatly pleased, went home to snatch an hour or two of sleep before he should start for Piute County to recover his dog.

            The sun came up, and Alderville was calm. Apparently not a citizen had been disturbed in his lulling dreams.

            It was seven o'clock when Habiba and her straining and panting little pilot crossed the divide, came on down toward the Piute County farms, and approached a ranch that was hidden from view by a turn of the road. As they came around the curve the dog espied a group of three small children walking by the fence, and farther away, in the orchard, a plump young woman.

            Blix gave a bark, and the children turned. For a moment the sight of a huge gray beast, occupying all the road and swinging forward toward them, held them rigid with alarm. Then one found legs and found his voice. He ran like one possessed and screamed :

            " Aunty Ellen, the mountain 's coming! the mountain 's coming! the mountain 's coming ! "

            At his heels his two small companions joined in the fright and retreat, and, like so many quail, the three dived under the fence at once, into the orchard where the plump young woman stood as if petrified with awe. Then abruptly inspired, she hoisted the youngsters into a tree, and herself scrambled into its branches in a panic.

            Meantime Blix redoubled his pressure to tow his vast companion faster. Habiba, however, had heard the childish voices. She liked children. Moreover, the odor of apples came deliciously upon the air from certain of the orchard trees. She slowly extended her trunk to the chain, drew in the dog, and taking him up in her gentlest, firmest manner, placed him on top of her head.

            Momentarily appalled, Blix looked about from his eminence in peculiar silence : he could not fall from a lump so broad, and he dared not leap from a monument so high ; but he presently regained his wits, and barked and yelped, in fury, protestation, and scolding. Habiba calmly turned from the road, bumped up against the fence, went through it as a warship goes through a smack, and entered the orchard with confidence, the frenzied and helpless little Blix walking restlessly about on her cranium and voicing the sharpest indignation.

            " Aunty Ellen " gave a half-smothered scream of terror. The children were momentarily dumb with consternation. Habiba, guided by the human voice, came ponderously up to the tree and extended her trunk in mute appeal for apples, almost in the faces of the horror-stricken occupants of the branches. Finding the

A NEVADA SAMARITAN   433

children indisposed to assist the blind, she duetted her " fingers " from twig to twig till she found an apple. She tucked it away and began to hunt for another.

            From time to time she touched the children or the plump young woman in the tree; but as neither they nor she responded with food the creature continued to strip the fruit from the boughs, in a calm that Blix, for all his noisy energy, could not disturb.

            For half an hour Habiba trod about the tree and took its offerings ; for half an hour Blix stamped in futile rage upon her skull and barked and yelped.

            Then, from far up the road, in the clear morning air, came the rattle and clatter of a buckboard, almost advertising, by its dry-bone song, that it hailed from the sand and sun of Alderville. It was Post B. Nichols, driving to Meadow's Ranch, the next farm beyond, to call on Ellen Watt and to get his dog.

            The plump young woman knew his rig. She gave a lusty scream of mingled joy and fright, in which the children joined. Nichols heard it above the barking of Blix, and then descried Habiba, standing eating apples in the orchard.

            At the voice of " Aunty Ellen," who was otherwise Miss Watt, he leaped from the buckboard, hastily secured his trembling horse to the fence, and strode in, unafraid, to confront the elephant.

"HABIBA TROD ABOUT THE TREE AND TOOK ITS OFFERINGS".

            What he should do he did not know, till he suddenly thought of the abracadabra, spoken so successfully at dawn. He repeated it at once.

            Habiba paused in the act of plucking an apple. She lowered her trunk, and swinging about, approached him quietly.

            " Post ! Oh, Post dear ! Post ! Look out ! " cried the terrified Ellen from the tree.

            But Nichols smiled assuringly, and softly repeating the " Arabic love," led the puzzled Habiba serenely away, toward the fence.

            As he reached the road, a wild, strange shout of joy resounded abruptly from near at hand, and poor Mahomet, dusty, weary, abandoned of hope, and all but unstrung

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with worry, bounded forward in a madness of glee.

            Trumpeting shrilly, the blind Habiba trotted awkwardly, actively ahead. She met Mahomet, and the two were instantly embracing. She heard his wild, soft speech of love, endearment, and reunion.

            Then at last the faithful Blix was lifted down by Habiba herself and leaped upon his master in a frenzy of doggish adoration.

            As Nichols took the four from the tree, they clung to him fondly, crying in his arms, and Ellen Watt declared he was the bravest man that ever lived.

            Then, when they reached the road, they saw, almost down at the turn, the big gray form of Habiba, with Mahomet riding like a raja on her head. He waved his hand in token of his thanks. Habiba halted, wheeled in her tracks, saluted with a trumpet note from her upraised trunk, then turned and disappeared into the glory of the sunlit trees.