Chapter I.

HOW I come not to have a last name is a question that has always had more or less aggervation mixed up with it. I might of had one jest as well as not if Old Hank Walters hadn't been so all-fired, infernal bull-headed about things in gineral, and his wife Elmira a blame sight worse, and both of em ready to row at a minute's notice and stick to it forevermore.

Hank, he was considerable of a lusher. One Saturday night, when he come home from the village in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket that was setting on his front steps. Then he got up and drawed back his foot unsteady to kick it plumb into kingdom come. Jest then he hearn Elmira opening the door behind him, and he turned his head sudden. But the kick was already started into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it. And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and steps on himself. That basket lets out a yowl.

"It's kittens,"says Hank, still setting down and staring at that there basket. All of which, you understand, I am a-telling you from hearsay, as the lawyers always asts you in court.

Elmira, she sings out:

"Kittens, nothing! It's a baby!"

And she opens the basket and looks in and it was me.

"Hennerey Walters,"she says—picking me up, and shaking me at him like I was a crime,"Hennerey Walters, where did you get this here baby?"She always calls him Hennerey when she is getting ready to give him fits.

Hank, he scratches his head, for he's kind o'confuddled, and thinks mebby he really has brought this basket with him. He tries to think of all the places he has been that night. But he can't think of any place but Bill Nolan's saloon. So he says:

"Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all day."And then he kind o'rouses up a little bit, and gets surprised and says:

"That a BABY you got there, Elmira?"And then he says, dignified:"So fur as that's consarned, Elmira, where did YOU get that there baby?"

She looks at him, and she sees he don't really know where I come from. Old Hank mostly was truthful when lickered up, fur that matter, and she knowed it, fur he couldn't think up no lies excepting a gineral denial when intoxicated up to the gills.

Elmira looks into the basket. They was one of them long rubber tubes stringing out of a bottle that was in it, and I had been sucking that bottle when interrupted. And they wasn't nothing else in that basket but a big thick shawl which had been wrapped all around me, and Elmira often wore it to meeting afterward. She goes inside and she looks at the bottle and me by the light, and Old Hank, he comes stumbling in afterward and sets down in a chair and waits to get Hail Columbia for coming home in that shape, so's he can row back agin, like they done every Saturday night.

Blowed in the glass of the bottle was the name:"Daniel, Dunne and Company."Anybody but them two old ignoramuses could of told right off that that didn't have nothing to do with me, but was jest the company that made them kind of bottles. But she reads it out loud three or four times, and then she says:

"His name is Daniel Dunne,"she says.

"And Company,"says Hank, feeling right quarrelsome.

"COMPANY hain't no name,"says she.

"WHY hain't it, I'd like to know?"says Hank."I knowed a man oncet whose name was Farmer, and if a farmer's a name why ain't a company a name too?"

"His name is Daniel Dunne,"says Elmira, quietlike, but not dodging a row, neither.

"AND COMPANY,"says Hank, getting onto his feet, like he always done when he seen trouble coming. When Old Hank was full of licker he knowed jest the ways to aggervate her the worst.

She might of banged him one the same as usual, and got her own eye blacked also, the same as usual; but jest then I lets out another big yowl, and she give me some milk.

I guess the only reason they ever kep'me at first was so they could quarrel about my name. They'd lived together a good many years and quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and was running out of subjects. A new subject kind o'briskened things up fur a while.

But finally they went too far with it one time. I was about two years old then and he was still calling me Company and her calling me Dunne. This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and likes to kill her, and it gets him scared. But she gets around agin after a while, and they both see it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.

"Elmira, I give in,"says Hank."His name is Dunne."

"No,"says she, tender-like,"you was right, Hank. His name is Company."So they pretty near got into another row over that. But they finally made it up between em I didn't have no last name, and they'd jest call me Danny. Which they both done faithful ever after, as agreed.

Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to lamm me considerable, him and his wife not having any kids of their own to lick. He lammed me when he was drunk, and he whaled me when he was sober. I never helt it up agin him much, neither, not fur a good many years, because he got me used to it young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else. Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about as often as he licked her, and boss him jest as much. So he fell back on me. A man has jest naturally got to have something to cuss around and boss, so's to keep himself from finding out he don't amount to nothing. Leastways, most men is like that. And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and he kind o'knowed it, way down deep in his inmost gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have me around.

But they was one thing he never sot no store by, and I got along now to where I hold that up agin him more'n all the lickings he ever done. That was book learning. He never had none himself, and he was sot agin it, and he never made me get none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd of whaled me fur that. Hank's wife, Elmira, had married beneath her, and everybody in our town had come to see it, and used to sympathize with her about it when Hank wasn't around. She'd tell em, yes, it was so. Back in Elmira, New York, from which her father and mother come to our part of Illinoise in the early days, her father had kep'a hotel, and they was stylish kind o'folks. When she was born her mother was homesick fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so she named her Elmira.

But when she married Hank, he had considerable land. His father had left it to him, but it was all swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers done the same when he was a boy. But Hank, he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was growing up, cause he liked to tinker around and to show how stout he was. Then, when he married Elmira Appleton, he had to go to work practising that perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing about farming. He'd sell fifteen or twenty acres, every now and then, and they'd be high times till he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get some new clothes.

But when I was found on the door step, the land was all gone, and Hank was practising reg'lar, when not busy cussing out the fellers that had bought the land. Fur some smart fellers had come along, and bought up all that swamp land and dreened it, and now it was worth seventy or eighty dollars an Acre. Hank, he figgered some one had cheated him. Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn too, only they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fish frys than to dig ditches. All of which I hearn Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n once when I was growing up, and they all says:"How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira!"And then she'd kind o'spunk up and say, thanks to glory, she'd kep'her pride.

We ll, they was worse places to live in than that there little town, even if they wasn't no railroad within eight miles, and only three hundred soles in the hull copperation. Which Hank's shop and our house set in the edge of the woods jest outside the copperation line, so's the city marshal didn't have no authority to arrest him after he crossed it.

They was one thing in that house I always admired when I was a kid. And that was a big cistern. Most people has their cisterns outside their house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain water off the roof and scoots it into them. Ourn worked the same, but our cistern was right in under our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with leather hinges opened into it right by the kitchen stove. But that wasn't why I was so proud of it. It was because that cistern was jest plumb full of fish—bullheads and red horse and sunfish and other kinds.

Hank's father had built that cistern. And one time he brung home some live fish in a bucket and dumped em in there. And they growed. And they multiplied in there and refurnished the earth. So that cistern had got to be a fambly custom, which was kep'up in that fambly for a habit. It was a great comfort to Hank, fur all them Walterses was great fish eaters, though it never went to brains. We fed em now and then, and throwed back in the little ones till they was growed, and kep'the dead ones picked out soon's we smelled anything wrong, and it never hurt the water none; and when I was a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living in a house like that.

Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old, Hank come home from the bar-room. He got to chasing Elmira's cat cause he says it was making faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira was over to town, and I was scared. She had always told me not to fool around there none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there I'd be a corpse quicker'n scatt.

So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash, being only a little feller, and awful scared because Elmira had always made it so strong, I hadn't no sort of unbelief but what Hank was a corpse already. So I slams the trap door shut over that there cistern without looking in, fur I hearn Hank flopping around down in there. I hadn't never hearn a corpse flop before, and didn't know but what it might be somehow injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take no chances.

So I went out and played in the front yard, and waited fur Elmira. But I couldn't seem to get my mind settled on playing I was a horse, nor nothing. I kep'thinking mebby Hank's corpse is going to come flopping out of that cistern and whale me some unusual way. I hadn't never been licked by a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is, anyhow, being young and comparitive innocent. So I sneaks back in and sets all the flatirons in the house on top of the cistern lid. I hearn some flopping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's corpse is trying to jump up and is falling back into the water, and I hearn Hank's voice, and got scareder yet. And when Elmira come along down the road, she seen me by the gate a-crying, and she asts me why.

"Hank is a corpse,"says I, blubbering.

"A corpse!"says Elmira, dropping her coffee which she was carrying home from the gineral store and post-office."Danny, what do you mean?"

I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then I hadn't said nothing about Hank being a corpse. And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing more. So when she grabs holt of me and asts me agin what did I mean I blubbered harder, jest the way a kid will, and says nothing else. I wisht I hadn't set them flatirons on that door, fur it come to me all at oncet that even if Hank HAS turned into a corpse I ain't got any right to keep him in that cistern.

Jest then Old Mis'Rogers, which is one of our neighbours, comes by, while Elmira is shaking me and yelling out what did I mean and how did it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's corpse?

And Mis'Rogers she says,"What's Danny been doing now, Elmira?"me being always up to something.

Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she gives a whoop and then hollers out:"Hank is dead!"and throws her apern over her head and sets right down in the path and boo-hoos like a baby. And I bellers louder.

Mis'Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing more. She seen she had a piece of news, and she's bound to be the first to spread it, like they is always a lot of women wants to be in them country towns. She run right acrost the road to where the Alexanderses lived. Mis'Alexander, she seen her coming and unhooked the screen door, and Mis'Rogers she hollers out before she reached the porch:

"Hank Walters is dead."

And then she went footing it up the street. They was a black plume on her bunnet which nodded the same as on a hearse, and she was into and out of seven front yards in five minutes.

Mis'Alexander, she runs acrost the street to where we was, and she kneels down and puts her arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back and forth in the path, and she says:

"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen him not more'n an hour ago."

"Danny seen it all,"says Elmira.

Mis'Alexander turned to me, and wants to know what happened and how it happened and where it happened. But I don't want to say nothing about that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:

"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and that's how he done it,"I says.

"And you seen him?"she says. I nodded.

"Where is he?"says she and Elmira, both to oncet.

But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest bawled some more.

"Was it in the blacksmith shop?"says Mis'Alexander. I nodded my head agin and let it go at that.

"Is he in there now?"asts Mis'Alexander. I nodded agin. I hadn't meant to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that, and get him scared the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself,"so long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or not?"Fur I hadn't had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither, except they had funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort of a big disadvantage from the way Elmira always says keep away from that cistern door or I'll be one. But if they was going to be a funeral in our house, I'd feel kind o'important, too. They didn't have em every day in our town, and we hadn't never had one of our own.